Pizza Hut grants Michael Phelps free pizza for a year

August 20th, 2008 | Posted by PostmanR

Pizza Hut, part of Yum Brands Inc., is giving Phelps and his teammates on the men’s and women’s U.S. swim team free pizza and pasta for a year. The company didn’t say if it would do any advertisements with the team but said it would be willing to join in public appearances.

Man, Pizza Hut is smart. See, what they’re doing here is not paying Phelps a cent, but using his uber-fame at the moment to get their name out a bit. And hey, he apparently likes to eat a lot, so of course he wants some of their delicious pizza. (Aside: how good are the P’Zones from Pizza Hut? Seriously: it’s like heaven in your mouth.)

What I’m hoping here is that there is an intern compiling blog mentions of this story so that the marketing whizzes at the company see how smart they are and how much chatter it drummed up today. Intern, are you there? If so, is there some sort of way myself and E can get free P’Zones for a year? We may not have eight gold medals between us, but we pretty much have eight different blogs between us — which is like, way more important.

Usain Bolt is from another planet

August 20th, 2008 | Posted by PostmanR

Let us get one thing straight: it is not so much that Usain Bolt is setting world records and winning golds. These things happen at the Olympic Games. It is the fact that in races that last but a scant few seconds, he is absolutely destroying the competition.

At the top level of sprinting competition, everyone is so close; the skill sets of athletes are near identical and it’s the little things (like taking PEDs!) that give you that tenth of a second edge against your competition. But with Bolt, this does not exist. I’m pretty confident he could have crawled in the last 10 meters of his 200 meter run last night and still won (video probably down by the time you read this):

Say what you want about Michael Phelps — his records and medals are an amazing feat — but I was much more entranced and fascinated by Bolt’s Olympic endeavors than Phelps’. Dude is a flat out FREAK.

{HT: The Sporting Blog.}

Kobe and LBJ are zuperfans

August 19th, 2008 | Posted by PostmanR

Hey, notice those two basketball stars in the above photo. (Come on, the picture quality isn’t that bad.) If you guessed Kobe Bryant and LeBron James … you are correct, sir! (Or madam.) They were in the stands  at the Kerri Walsh-Misty May vs. the Brazilians match last evening. (Or yesterday morning, or however the hell the time difference works out.)

And look! They saw Michael Phelps swim for gold the other day — or night — too:

They are apparently fanboys of America’s other top athletes, and who can blame them? We are all in a state of Olympic fevor; why women’s gymnastics has kept me up late at night, for Jimmy’s sake. (Don’t get any ideas, it’s for the competition of it all, obvi.)

I like to imagine them giving awkward high fives in the stands. But then I realize they are Kobe Bryant and LeBron James and they are better, much better, than that.

Michael Phelps is a fatass, theoretically

August 13th, 2008 | Posted by PostmanE

I’ve heard a fair amount of praise for Michael Phelps’ physique (and other noticeable parts of his anatomy) throughout the Olympics, and if I may say so myself, the dude’s got abs. I’m not even afraid to admit it. They’re nice. But he also swims like 10 hours a day while the rest of us sit in cubicles. Sorry, ladies: I don’t have time for that kind of body. I make it up in “personality.”

But both males and females, skinny or fat, weight-watching or no, can relate to the twinge of jealousy one feels when reading the following. Because of that strenuous workout routine, Phelps eats just about everything you can imagine. Simon On Sports transcribed some of the details:

By order he is supposed to consume between 8000 and 10,000 calories a day. Take that Dr. Atkins. After the segment was over Bob Costas ran through what his typical breakfast is.

“…Three sandwiches of fried eggs, cheese, lettuce, tomato, fried onions and mayonnaise, add one omelet, a bowl of grits, and three slices of french toast with powdered sugar, then wash down with three chocolate chip pancakes.” Costas

Fatty. Those of you looking for the Phelps abs … I highly recommend this diet. That should work out well.

Michael Phelps: Most popular swimmer evar!!!!11!

August 11th, 2008 | Posted by PostmanE

It’s early in the Olympic Games, and already Michael Phelps is in cruise control. He’s competing in about ten million events, of course, but just as entertaining as seeing him win those events is seeing him effortlessly slide into second- and third-place finishes so he can rest. Dude is so good, he beats everyone else, and people say he’s intentionally dogging it.  It’s like he’s having his personal rec swim out there; the rest of the Olympics just happened to show up.It’s impressive.

But this is 2008, not 1896, and the true test of success in life is not gold, bronze, or silver, but News Feed, Zombies, and Scrabulous. Screw medals; how many Facebook friends does Phelps have?

Darren Rovell investigates:

With a gold in the 4×100 relay this morning, Michael Phelps now has eight gold medals to his name and two for this Olympiad. The bad news? He’s not allowed to have any more friends. On Friday, the day of the Opening Ceremony, Phelps reached the limit on his facebook page of 5,000 friends. More than 1,600 come from the University of Michigan, where Phelps goes to school, almost 200 come from New York and about 170 friends come from Baltimore, his hometown.

See, I was totes going to get 5,000 friends too, but then I was all like, pshh, Facebook is stupid, I don’t need any more friends than 15 anyway, like, screw that. I’m too popular already.

I feel pretty good about my decision.

Anyway, in case you really wanted to tie yourself to another person’s Olympic success, you can still become Michael Phelps’ “fan” on Facebook. The board seems pretty active, but beating the smarmy French will do that to a message board. USA! USA!