America 2011, a fight breaks out between a security guard and a passer by, who has allegedly harrassed some local women, Joe public films the bout and sends it off to the local news channel. Obviously the news reporter is most interested in the MMA style skills on show, silly of us to expect otherwise.
Pardon the sports digression for a moment if you will. For whatever random reason, somebody has posted this ancient and horribly awkward photo of our Marty Whelan from the RTE Guide (I think) at (what appears to be) a state of full flight on the WTF page of Reddit. The image has generated over 40 comments over the last 18 hours and hundreds of views and has turned Whelan into an American internet microstar. As Marty would tell you, every little helps.
If you haven’t heard – RTE is filming their Saturday evening football highlights show in front of a live audience on April 30. This is pure loco. Try to imagine it from the perspective of a hypothetical audience member – you trek out to Montrose, (hopefully) have a pre-highlights libation, maybe even ask Kenny Cunningham a question or two before packing into an RTE studio to watch highlights of football matches that you already know the result of – and have possibly already seen if you’re a committed supporter – interspersed with some analysis and a bit of banter. If you’re lucky you get your face on the telly and maybe even complain about how shit your team is on national television. Given the existential crisis of the nation, is this really a justifiable investment of three hours?
It doesn’t help that it’s a pretty piss poor day of football – Chelsea v Spurs and five crap matches. I welcome RTE’s Sport’s efforts to pump some life into what’s a pretty staid TV concept, but are 50 awkward blokes going to transform a show best watched on mute into The Killing? It’s a highlights show, ffs. Throw a live audience in on a Champions League taping with Giles and Dunphy and you’ve got TV gold. No offense to Darragh Maloney or Kenny Cunningham, but with a gun to my head, I’d rather sit in on Tubridy Tonight.
I don’t see how he can be in two commentary booths at once with a teleporter or some sort of cloning technology. (Unless he got his employer for the weekend confused…)
Per Twitter, Marcotti, whose football analysis you may know from Newstalk’s Off The Ball show, Corriere dello Sport, Sports Illustrated and the Daily Pennsylvanian to name but a few, has examined his soul on Votomatic to see which Irish political party he is most attuned to. The findings are, well, bad. Very bad.
We’re not sure if that’s the real Des or a hologram of Des winking at us from the future, but either way, we’re petrified.
A big thumbs up to the people behind this state of the art RTE radio advert. I’m sure they asked Des to stop with the winking.
Sure ye can go blind from that sorta stuff Des.
What do you make of these two kids – Adam Kane and Sean Meehan – taking the piss out of Hook and McGuirk? It loses a bit of steam as it goes on, but for a 10-year-old, Meehan’s Hooky impression is pretty damn near spot-on. Are these kids Ireland’s next viral stars?
To the annals of famous sports curses, such as The Sports Illustrated Curse and The Madden Curse, may we suggest a new jinx, the Off The Ball curse?
Hear us out:
Irish Sunday newspaper writes very long feature on the Off The Ball lads. Two days later, said newspaper goes into receivership.
Just putting it out there. Probably nothing in it. We’ve always been big Mick Clifford fans and hopefully, the 43 jobs can be saved.
For anyone wandering home from the pub tonight thinking merrily about the unborn year, we offer one bit of advice, perfectly articulated in a Youtube video that is probably fake: stand in off the road when you pee.
[Jalopnik]
