>>> Balls to the Wall
By staff writer Dan Opp
October 5, 2005

Look out PIC readers. There’s a new kid in town. Before we get started here, I’d like to tell you a little bit about myself in hopes that we can build a good rapport and you’ll let me in your pants. Whoops. I must’ve mistaken my hookup game plan for my comedy game plan. Sorry about that. On second thought, it would probably work best for me if you drank heavily anyway.

I’m a white, American male. My waking day is consumed by sports. Please stop me if I begin to sound redundant. Such as my role in society dictates, I spend unmentionable amounts of time and slightly less obscene sums of money trying to placate my lust for all that is sport. To cope, I watch ESPN programming like a dog watches a hamburger. Once, my friends all left the room at halftime and I ate the TV. I had to sleep outside that night, but I don’t feel my actions warranted such a harsh punishment. After all, my friends were the ones who left me unattended with the flat-screen sitting at mouth height.

“In sports, you endure great pain in practice to receive subsequent reward on the playing field. In drinking, you receive immediate reward only to endure great pain the following morning.”

I hail from the great state of Massachusetts, the birthplace of Thanksgiving, basketball, John F. Kennedy, and—fuck yes—college. Apparently over the course of our history, the constituents of the Bay State have ruffled a few too many feathers, so much so that our reputation and a certain derogatory insult often precede us. Go ahead. Call me a Mass Hole to my face. I’ll gladly extend you a fist in return. I’ll then open that fist and shake your hand, kind stranger. It’s nice to meet you. I’m a proud Mass Hole through and through, so I gave you a stink-palm to prove it.

Being from Massachusetts, I’m a diehard Red Sox fan. By now, I’m sure you’ve heard enough about how the Red Sox finally won the World Series and how the Yankees pulled the biggest choke job since Latrell Sprewell tried to squeeze the cream filling out of P.J. Carlesimo, so I’m here to help dispel the smug Red Sox fan stereotype. I hereby promise that I won’t devote any of my creative license to telling you how much better my team is than the other guys’. On a similar note, I also vow to lower taxes, increase government spending, and erase the national debt.

Now, growing up on the rough-and-tumble streets of suburban Massachusetts was no cakewalk, but I always had sports to keep me focused. In high school, I did the whole three-sport, honors student thing before coming to college and doing the whole no-sport, underachiever thing. Looking back, the aspect of high school I miss most—or, should I say, the only aspect of high school that I miss—is athletics. There really is no substitute for the camaraderie and competition of sports. So, to supplement, I’ve turned to the camaraderie and competition of social drinking.

I’ll be honest. At first, the culture shock was almost too much to bear, because while sports and drinking often co-exist in beautiful harmony, they function in completely opposite fashions. In sports, you endure great pain in practice in order to receive subsequent reward on the playing field. In drinking, you receive immediate reward only to endure great pain the following morning. The respect I’ve developed for this principle serves as the foundation for my hatred of Chaser pills and all similar products. Seriously, if your pansy ass can’t handle a little hangover, DON’T DRINK. What part of cause and effect don’t you fairies understand? If you touch a hot stovetop, you get burned. Likewise, if you drink excessively, you get a hangover the next day. This is the nature of the situation. Hike up your skirt and deal with it.

As you can see, I need to vent from time to time. A lot of things piss me off to no end, so you can expect plenty of rants in the future. I’m fully aware that this is a humor website and not some hopeless emo blog, so you can also expect a heaping helping of jokes and otherwise amusing commentary. In addition, I realize every punchline won’t be a smashing success, but I’ve come to grips with this rather easily due to the fact that even the athletes we so dearly revere can’t always score a perfect ten. Just look at Kurt Warner and the k.d. lang wannabe he married. All anti-capitalization lesbians aside, I hope to cover a broad spectrum of topics over the course of this column. You can expect anything and everything from fantasy sports, to sportswriters, to “water sports,” to how irresistibly cute Orlando Bloom looked in Cosmo last week. Yes, I made a glaring concession here, but I figured since my banter was going to be so male-centric, I’d throw you ladies my bone every once in a while.

Okay, so I deserved that slap, but what I don’t deserve is an open forum to continually subject innocent seekers of low-brow, college-oriented humor to my sports-related drivel. Wait a minute. That came out all wrong, like an anally birthed infant. I guess proper delivery is important in all fields.

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