>>> Text-Heavy
By staff writer Emmanuel Witzman
Volume 66 – February 1, 2004

“Humor reliant on broad stereotypes”

Now Playing: “Two Beds and a Coffee Machine” by Savage Garden

Hello boys and girls. Today we're going to talk about a subject that hasn't really been pertinent since Saved by the Bell: jocks! Yes, if you go to college, chances are you're going to run into your share of athletes. Unless you hang around the engineering buildings, in which case you're probably only going to see mathletes. Don't call them mathletes, though, because they'll probably stab you to death with their protractors. I don't know if that actually made any sense, because I'm pretty drunk and I can't remember the name for those pointy things I always got in my elementary school geometry sets that I never used for anything besides carving boobs into my desk, and then I got caught by Miss Duchesne and she made me sit in detention and copy words out of the dictionary for a MONTH while everyone else went outside for recess and got better at sports than me, which explains why I'm a little bitter on the subject but doesn't explain why I still can't spel wurds korectlee. Anyway, here's what happened:

-Is there a reason why photocopiers are as big as they are? I mean, they're basically just a hybrid scanner/printer. Scanners are small. Printers are small. Why the hell do photocopiers look like they've been injected with anabolic steroids? I bet it's so fat people can photocopy their asses without breaking the thing.

-In addition to not being very funny, the previous ‘joke' begs an interesting question: Do people actually inject anabolic steroids? Or is it like a pill? I should probably do some sort of research before writing these articles. In order to answer this and other pressing questions, I decided to spend a week with the university athletes. You can imagine how I didn't fit in with the jocks because I'm a Hebrew, and so I was unable to find any performance enhancing pharmaceuticals (they're a tight-lipped group) (the athletes, not the pharmaceuticals), but I was able to make the following semi-humorous observations:

-At what point do you join the track team? I can understand if you're really fast or can run marathons or something like that, how that would make you an athlete. But what about people who are masters of, say, the triple jump? Do they realize how useless and unathletic they are? Do other members of the track team make fun of them? I mean, come on, it looks like you're doing a goddamn line dance. I think the triple jump should be performed while wearing a cowboy hat.

-There are lots of sports that aren't really sports, but people seem to think they are. Like fencing. That's not a sport. That's not even an pastime, really. If I were to dress up like some kind of mummified Storm Trooper and start poking you with a salad fork, you'd think I was criminally insane. And yet there are people on the university fencing team that are going to the OLYMPICS for doing just that. This has got to stop.

-Have you ever seen people wrestle? Real wrestling, not the WWF or WWE or whatever the hell they're calling it these days where Oily men taunt each other and try to keep up the pretense that the whole thing's not fixed. Did you know there are still people who believe that pro wrestling is real? That there's a guy actually called ‘The Rock'? Here's a question: Suppose pro wrestling actually was real, and those storylines were really true, how come the conclusion of every wrestling storyline is a big matchup? Does that ever happen in reality? (“Hey, Bill! You killed my brother and stole my girlfriend and her pet bull weevil!” “Yeah, well what are you going to do about it?” “I'm going to kick your ass… In a tag team ladder match! At Wrestlemania!”)

-But getting back to what I was saying before I finished my Irish Coffee and lapsed into an unstructured rant, college wrestling is totally different. The athletes still wear tight spandex and grapple homoerotically, and the refs are still about as useless as anything you can buy at Crabtree & Evelyn, but in college hitting someone in the face with a steel chair will almost definitely result in a minimum 2-game suspension. Especially if you hit the coach.

-Quote of the Moment: My friend, when asked why he joined the hockey team: “I don't really like playing the game. I just like punching people and hitting them with my stick. It provides a release.” I'm sure his therapist would approve of this sort of release. By the way, this is exactly why I don't play hockey. I don't like playing any games where giant sticks fly at my face. Also, I'm auditioning for the sequel to Clueless (“Clueless 2”).

-They say the only people in the world who watch and play hockey are Canadians, but I can't understand why. I mean, apart from their love of hockey, Canadians are perfectly normal people and not irrationally drawn to sports that are TERRIBLY BORING.

-If you want to be good at sports, you have to work out. And if you want to work out, you're going to have to go the gym. But you can still be good at sports games on Xbox if you eat at White Castle four times a day. And which one do you think will lead to better memories?

-Today is Superbowl Sunday (Go Panthers!) A lot of you are probably going to be placing wagers on the big game. Some people have asked me for betting advice, and I'm proud to announce I've devised a plan that guarantees you'll win every sports bet you ever make. Here's how you do it: send me an email and ask me who I'm betting on. Then put all your money on the other team.

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