Jerks of the Week - Jan. 17, 2011

Jerks of the Week for Jan. 17, 2011


JERK OF THE WEEK NO. 1: Arizona Shooter

I followed Jenn Brown on Twitter a couple of weeks ago. If you don't know who Jenn Brown is, she's a hot ESPN sideline reporter. You may not know her because Erin Andrews hogs all the attention, but Jenn Brown is just as good - if not better. In fact, weirdos like Eric Mangini are bound to begin stalking Jenn Brown soon.

***
Side note: How creepy was Mangini on SportsCenter? And why would ESPN hire him?

"So, Eric, you have an impressive resume, and it appears as though you have thousands of pictures of Erin Andrews on your phone. Can you start Monday?"

Congrats on another great hire, ESPN.
***

Last Saturday, I logged onto Twitter (@walterfootball) and saw that Jenn Brown posted something about some sort of shooting in Arizona. Being a very ignorant person, I had no idea what she was talking about.

Nor did I really care. You see, there are dozens of shootings here in Philadelphia every day. Tons of murders go unreported each year to fudge the crime numbers. And the ones that are reported flood the news. The eighth story on the 11 o'clock news on a typical day is, "Five kids were shot and killed in North Philadelphia today." Meanwhile, the people watching the news are thinking, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, what else is new? What's the weather going to be?"

Growing up in Philly, I thought it was like this everywhere - until I went to Penn State 10 years ago. On the news up there, the top story was typically, "Miss Williamson's cat was stuck in a tree today," or "Miss Johnson, the school librarian, celebrated her 80th birthday today." Ooooooh, so exciting. Now give me the damn weather.

I remained ignorant about the Arizona shooting until Sunday night, when I tuned into Philly's sports-talk radio station, 610 WIP. I forget who the host was, but he gave his prayers to the victims of the Arizona shooting, including the 9-year-old granddaughter of Dallas Green, former manager of the Philadelphia Phillies.

A little white girl shot and killed? It was time to start paying attention.

Reading up on some things about Jared Lee Loughner, the lunatic shooter, it seemed like most people on comment boards were calling for the death penalty. Now, I'm all for the worst possible punishment for psychopaths like Loughner, but I have one big problem with the death penalty:

It's pointless if the criminal is suicidal to begin with.

Seriously, what if Loughner was so distraught about his weird haircut that he wanted to die? What if instead of just killing himself, his plan was to take down as many people with him? Wouldn't the death penalty be a reward for Loughner in that case?

So, how do you punish scumbags like Loughner without zapping them in an electric chair? I say we go to a torture penalty!

You want to murder a politician, a couple of old ladies and an innocent girl, Jared? Fine. How about we lock you in a room and have you watch five million consecutive episodes of the Big Bang Theory? Murder doesn't seem so fun now, does it?

Furthermore, what's with this waterboarding crap? Waterboarding is for sissies. I say we start urineboarding people like Loughner. No one will ever kill anyone ever again if they have to drown in urine as a consequence.

At any rate, I was curious as to what kind of person Loughner is, so I watched his videos on YouTube. Some of his comments were ridiculous. Here are four and my thoughts on each:

1. "Dear friends,.....Please don't be mad at me. The literacy rate is below 5%. I haven't talked to one person who is literate."

Emmitt Smith should be thankful that Loughner didn't like watching TV. If Loughner thinks everyone is illiterate, he may have nuked this entire country upon hearing Emmitt debacle the English language with quotes like, "That can be a swing their way eventually. I just hate to be the team that they winned it against." Go here for some more wonderful Emmitt Smith quotes.

2. "In conclusion, reading the second United States constitution I can't trust the current government because of the ratifications: the government is implying mind control and brainwash on the people by controlling grammar."

The government controls grammar? So if they say that "Walter" is now a verb instead of a noun, they're controlling my mind? Right. It's good thing I only Waltered five times today. Government's got no control over this mind!

3. "Thus a terrorist is a person who employs terror or terrorism, especially as a political weapon. If you call me a terrorist then the argument to call me a terrorist is Ad hominem. You call me a terrorist. Thus the argument to call me a terrorist is Ad hominem."

Hominem? Ah... so Jared's gay. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

4. "I'll let you in on their little cruel joke that's genocidal. They're argument is appeal to force on their jurisdiction with lack of proof of evidence."

Jared, you claim to be literate, but you can't differentiate between "they're" and "their" and "there" and "thurrrr?" For shame, man.

Maybe Loughner knew he was illiterate, so perhaps he wanted to kill himself. Hence, why we should use the torture penalty over the death penalty.

You get the urineboarding ready. I'll grab my Big Bang Theory DVD.

JERK OF THE WEEK NO. 2: GameCenter People

Believe it or not, Jared Lee Loughner isn't the only crazy person posting nonsensical stuff on the Internet. Yeah, there's me, but there are also hundreds of lunatics on NFL.com's GameCenter pages.

If you don't read my football stuff, what I like to do is scour the GameCenter pages, find the dumbest comments on there, post them on this site and make fun of them. For example, this frustrated Colts fan named Taton wrote things like:

"Manning always got pick in the last minutes that is sux!!!!"

"Colts offense and defense not good too many pass drop could catch!!!!"

"Manning you sux always choke!!!!!!!!!!!!!! bye bye no more hope for playoff!!!!!!!!!!1"

I've been doing this for two years now, and it never gets old. In fact, lots of people send in GameCenter comments that they find on their own.

One such person is e-mailer Joey B. He's sent me tons of GameCenter comments over the past couple of months. Here are the 10 best, including my thoughts on each:

1. "Hehe Texans Beatin Eagles?? Nah Mat Shaub Is A Catfish"

You may laugh, but in the GameCenter community, "Catfish" means "ugly mother-f***ing c*** who f***s his brother up the a** and then eats his s*** while f***ing a dead person." It's true. Look it up.

2. "DESEAN MOSSD THAT GUY!!!!"

I'm beginning to think that Loughner was right about grammatical mind control.

3. "steeler fan better move on out of eastern penn cuz the eagles are pas new team"

That's right, Pittsburgh! Move out of eastern Pennsylvania, and go somewhere else - like... umm... western Pennsylvania!

4. "nah nah nah u got my last coment all missed up. i ment the nfc is bette then the afc. the afc has some good teams but all the leet players in the nfl are in the nfc like my boy brees petersen jackson oh and wen the colts boot manning mfc scoop him to"

I'm thinking the guy you're talking to got this "coment" all "missed" up too.

5. "the north be won by the team with the best record!"

Oh, man. I've been covering the NFL for 11 years, and I always thought that they randomly picked the division winners every year.

6. "why u all hatin on finnegan???? so he punch a black guy and he black that happens all the time in tenesse"

Note to all black people: Don't move to Tennessee. You will be punched by another black person.

7. "kerry playin how he look a korpse! gagagagagagaga"

Speaking of korpse, medics pronounced this person brain-dead hours before he posted this comment. How he logged into GameCenter is beyond me.

8. "Jules edelmen jsut returned a punt 04 years for an td"

A 4-year touchdown? That's an awfully long time. How the hell did I miss that?

9. "OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH THATS RIGHT BIZ ITCHES MY HAWKS BE STR8 SOMPIN DEM SAINTS!!! THOT YALL SAID DONT SHOW UP CUZ WE AINT GOT NO CHANCE GO BACK TO MISSOURI"

The good old Saints, from New Orleans, Missouri. Not only did this person fail English; he also sucks at Geography.

10. "nwx week gonna be goooooooooood! interconf matchupa like stlers pats falcon eagles pack hawks jets pats ravns saints an the"

This comment just ends with "the." No one has any idea what happened to this person or why he couldn't finish his sentence, but I'm hoping that Loughner didn't off him mid-sentence because of his illiteracy, or anything.

JERK OF THE WEEK NO. 3: Off the Map

If the Big Bang Theory doesn't work on Jared Lee Loughner, we can always try ABC's new show, Off the Map.

To put it simply, Off the Map is the biggest piece-of-crap show I've ever seen. I wish I weren't exaggerating.

I was watching college basketball Wednesday night, when ESPN ran a commercial for Off the Map. I didn't really pay close attention, but I saw that the show was set on an island. I still have Lost withdrawal, so I flipped over to ABC.

It took me 15 minutes to realize that this wasn't the sequel to Lost. Instead, it's about doctors without borders who are tasked with taking care of Mexican people on some sort of tropical island.

I would have switched back to college hoops almost instantly, but two things kept me watching:

1.The brunette chick on the show was hot.

2. I quickly realized that this would be a viable candidate for Jerks of the Week.

In the Off the Map premiere, the three doctors -the kid who played Matt Saracen on Friday Night Lights, a hot brunette, and a mediocre-looking blonde - were adjusting to their new lives on the island. They each split up at the beginning of the episode, treating a different patient throughout the story arc.

All three scenarios were equally ridiculous, so let's begin with the hot brunette:


Hot Brunette's Big Melons

Sounds like the name of a porno. I wish.

The hot brunette teamed up with the chief doctor on the island, as they took a call in the jungle. Once they arrived on the scene, they quickly noticed that a fat, old white guy (Michael McKean) had his hands stuck on the wire of some sort of gondola.

After rescuing McKean, the hot brunette asked McKean what he was doing in the middle of the Mexican jungle. McKean told her that he and his wife spent a glorious honeymoon there years ago, and in the wake of her death, he decided to go back to the island and scatter her ashes.

That's great, Mike. So, why the hell were you riding the gondola again? Thought you could go for a fun joyride before getting down to business and dealing with your wife's ashes?

Unfortunately, things took a turn for the worse for McKean, as he began convulsing. The suave chief doctor instantly recognized that McKean needed his spleen removed. Marooned in the middle of the jungle, however, they didn't have the proper supplies to treat him.

So, did McKean die? Nope. The chief doctor quickly realized that melon juice could stabilize McKean's ruptured spleen. So, he and the hot brunette traipsed into the jungle in search for melons. Fortunately for McKean, they were able to secure just enough melons in time to save his life.

I really wish I were joking about this. Watch the premiere for yourself if you don't believe me. And stay tuned for next week's episode, when the hot brunette will cure Ebola with an apple and a grape.


Saracen's Pleas

It was cool to see this guy not play a stuttering quarterback for once. And that's where the positives end.

Saracen was asked to travel across the island to help a sick family. Unfortunately, Saracen was too late; the mother of this family was already dead of tuberculosis when he arrived. The father and the other kids were also sick with the same malady.

So, all Saracen had to do was inject those people with a bunch of needles, right? That would be too easy. You see, the Mexican father didn't want help from a white man. Here's how the conversation went down (and I don't speak Spanish, but I'm pretty sure Mexican Dad said the following):

Saracen: I can help yewww!

Mexican Dad: Nacho burrito taco arriba arriba arriba!!!

Saracen: But yerrrr kids are gonna daaaaah of tuberrrrculosis!

Mexican Dad: Guapa chica agwa taco taco taco!!!

Mexican Dad wouldn't have it. He'd rather have his kids die than receive help from a white man. Silly foreigners.

Saracen gave up and went back to the medical building. After receiving a verbal lashing from an angry black doctor, Saracen went back to Mexican Dad's hut the next day. Saracen said something about losing his own family. Upon hearing this, Mexican Dad inexplicably gave in to Saracen even though he didn't understand a word he was saying.

By the way, I'm suddenly very hungry for tacos, so I'll make this next one quick.


The Inept Blonde

Unlike Saracen and the hot brunette, the blond doctor didn't have to go anywhere. Instead, she was tasked with helping some old hag at the medical building.

The blonde and the old hag had two exchanges. The first time, the blonde diagnosed the old hag with a cold, so she gave her medicine.

Later, the old hag returned and continuously complained. After yelling for about two minutes in Spanish, the old hag collapsed. The blonde stuck the old hag in the leg with some sort of needle, and everything was OK.

As it turns out, the old hag didn't have a cold; she had asthma.

Umm... if you graduated medical school, shouldn't you know the difference between asthma and a cold?

Call me crazy, but I'm thinking the blonde is in the wrong profession. Unfortunately for her, she's stuck on some crappy island with no smoke monster and a bunch of Mexicans who yell out the word "taco" every five seconds.

Speaking of which, I'm going to Taco Bell. I just hope I don't have to cure anyone using giant melons while I'm there.