New Zealand cops to rugby fans: No mankinis, please

January 29th, 2008 | Posted by PostmanR

When I think of New Zealand, thoughts immediately flow to … um, Flight of the Concords? (Brit, present. Jermaine, present. Maury, present.) But my cultural understanding of this nation has now blossomed to one more thing: cops aren’t letting rugby fans wear mankinis to matches anymore. For shame!

New Zealand cops have slapped a ban on Borat fans wearing his trademark ‘mankini’ to a rugby competition in a bid to protect kids’ innocence.

Police let dozens of rugby fans wear the skimpy green swimsuit last year.

But this year, the luminous thong made famous by Sacha Baron Cohen will be banned at the world rugby Sevens tournament in Wellington as police crack down on public decency.

A police officer told New Zealand TV: “It’s a family event and there will be children there.”

He pleaded with fans to have “a sense of decency” as police pledged to turn anyone away wearing the swimsuit.

What’s really weird about all this is I heard some hedge fund firm is dropping business suits in favor of mankinis in an effort to regain “a sense of decency.” To each their own, I suppose.

{Via Fark.}

Rick Majerus bares it all

January 18th, 2008 | Posted by PostmanR

You know, when St. Louis scored an embarrassing 20 points in a loss to George Washington last week, I felt sorry for Rick Majerus. Why, he could be at Iowa instead this year, feasting on burritos to his heart’s content. Instead, yeah: his team scored 20 points in a game. But you know, he’s always seemed like a jolly old feller, so I’m sure he’s doing OK. And as a recent Sports Illustrated article has taught us, (via Larry Brown Sports) he sure is a jolly guy, especially when he’s naked.

Another player remembers Majerus calling him up to his hotel room on various occasions, and “he’d answer the door in his towel and I’d come in and the towel would fall off and it was like nothing had happened. He’d just be standing there buck naked. One year he had this lower-back injury, and he would have the trainer massage it with the ultrasound. But instead of just lowering his pants a little bit, Majerus would pull his pants down to his ankles and sit in a chair and coach us. Sometimes he’d be like, ‘Guys, bring it in, take a knee.’ We’d come in, and we’re just like, No way this is happening.”
…
Majerus kept telling [former Utah player Michael] Doleac that he needed to keep six inches between himself and his opponent in the post. When Doleac was caught shortly after leaning on his man, the coach erupted. “‘Jesus ****in Christ, Doleac! When a guy catches the ball in the post, you gap him six inches!’” Doleac recalls Majerus yelling. “Then he turns to the guys sitting on the baseline and says, ‘Six f***** inches,’ and he says, ‘the size of the average white d***!’ and pulls it out.”

This sort of reminds me of that scene in Borat where him and Azamat are fighting naked and sticking their nether regions in each other’s faces. Sexy time! It also reminds me of just about every Will Ferrell bit. Because if Will Ferrell’s taught us anything, it’s that recycling the “hey, look at my weird naked body!” shitck is comedy gold. Unless you do it all the time like Will Ferrell. Then it just gets annoying.

Your promised Borat review

November 5th, 2006 | Posted by PostmanE

Check RottenTomatoes.com. More specifically, check the Borat section of the site. 96 freakin’ percent! For the record, Flags of Our Fathers, an early Oscar contender, has 73%, Babel has 75%, and The Departed has 92%. But those are just some of this year’s best movies. How about Pulp Fiction, considered by most to be the best movie of the 1990’s. Wow, 95%! Just one percentage point worse than Borat!

Sure, those are only aggregations of critical praise, and critics aren’t always the best gauge of quality - but, I mean, don’t those numbers just about say it all? Is there any reason to add another voice to the fray, to sing out about the genius of Borat in similar fashion?

No. There isn’t. So instead, let me just say add one quick question, which may possibly fuel discussion or will - more likely - fall on deaf ears: Is Borat the first movie of its kind? By that, I mean: Is Borat the first successful half-documentary, half-staged movie of all time? It’s not Jackass, but it’s not Talladega Nights, either, though it is simultaneously both. It has one foot in both worlds, both in the real and the fantastic, and it hedges one against the other almost constantly. Is it the first to do so, and to do it so well?

From there, there’s not a whole lot else that needs to be said. So how about closing with a favorite quote from the movie:

Borat: Whoa! There is a woman in a car! Do you want to go catch up with her and make a sexytime?
Driving Instructor: No, because in this country a woman has the choice about who she wants to have sex with.
Borat: WHAAAAAAT!?!!

Weekend Fun: You probably saw this one coming

November 3rd, 2006 | Posted by PostmanE

If you didn’t, then you just haven’t been paying close attention.

Thus, instead of a long, rambling Weekend Fun, I’m going to make this quick and to the point, with a simple formula:

This weekend = Borat

There are no variables or outstanding qualifiers. Got it? Awesome.

You know the drill for the weekend: no baseball, tons of hoops, a fat NFL schedule, some decent college football tilts. (By the way, how about those Cardinals? A right proper time in Loo-uh-vulle.)

So, like me, go see Borat, and then come back, and we’ll talk. Seriously, we’ll have a Borat discussion post. Or at least a quick review. See you there; happy weekending.

(Not seeing them movie? Console yourself with this video, courtesy of reader Don. Rock on Don, rock on.)

(EDIT: Thanks to an somewhat unbelievable Bloomington, IN, surge to see a British man pretend to be a Kazach foreign correspondent, I couldn’t get tickets to the show. Will re-attempt tomorrow…sigh.)�