All good things, no matter how awesome and entertaining,
must eventually come to an end. The
games are now finished, and it’s going to be a long time before that level of
greatness comes our way again. All we
have left are the memories forged during the recent past, some sunburn, a few
more friends, and a brand new set of scars on my liver. As you may have gathered by now, I’m not
referring to the London Olympics. I’m
telling you about the unfortunate fact that the greatest period of my life is
very rapidly coming to a close. You see,
classes at The University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health
start this upcoming Monday, which will bring a screeching halt to the
three-month long fiesta that I’ve been referring to as the “Summer of
Chode”. Sad times, indeed. My only solace is that I’m fully prepared to
go out in a magnificent blaze of glory this weekend. Now that it’s (almost) over, I’d like to share
with you all a few things I learned this summer:
-
Running a marathon is fucking easy
-
Telling girls that you can give them
“genetically pure Aryan babies” isn’t the best strategy
-
“Team Physician for the Dutch Women’s Field
Hockey Team” has replaced “Team Physician for the Green Bay Packers” as my
dream job description
-
Mark Titus is a poor man’s version of Chode
-
Q-Bombs are probably the greatest shots known to
man.
-
What’s a Q-Bomb?
I’m glad you asked. A Q-Bomb
consists of two parts cheap vodka, two parts cheap gin, and should be chased
with beating your chest while screaming “I AM ALL THAT IS MAN!!” Ask for Q-Bombs at your local
bar/tavern/brothel. And if the bartender
attempts to drop your Q-Bomb into a glass of Red Bull, throw it back in their
face and tell them to get you a new one.
-
Taking too many Q-Bombs may result in being
woken up by the police in front of the Kohl Center, facedown in a pile of your
own vomit. Binge responsibly.
-
Seriously, go get yourself a Q-Bomb. In fact, I’ll give you 100 Chode Points for
every Q-Bomb you take.
Anyways, now that I’m starting medical school, I still plan
on fulfilling my promise to keep writing every week throughout the NFL
season. I won’t have as much free time
to spend on the Picks as I did this summer, but I’ll do my damndest to keep up
the creative brilliance that you all know and love. After all, I’d feel like a fool if I stopped
writing and then the Packers or Badgers went on to win a championship without
me. Also, now is a good time to point
out that it’s completely possible that Green Bay could win the Super Bowl while
Wisconsin wins the Big Ten Championship this season. After two admittedly poor preseason
performances, I’ve found that there are now two types of Packer fans. The first group is worried about losing two
meaningless games because they think that it means we “have no depth”. Coincidentally, these are also the type of
people that get worried about being eaten by sharks when they go swimming in an
ocean. The second group is completely
unfazed, because you know, we just went 15-2 last season, we won the Super Bowl
the year before, we’re the motherfucking Green Bay Packers and we have Aaron
Rodgers. Obviously, I belong to the
second group. Until we stop dominating
the NFC North, I see no reason to be concerned.
As for the Badger Football squad, many ESPN analysts have
suggested that the negative press around Montee Ball after his recent assault
may affect the Wisconsin’s locker room this season. Bull.
Shit. Everyone on the UW campus
loves Montee, and nobody more so than his teammates. He’s one of the nicest, most humble athletes
I’ve ever met (aside from one night at the Kollege Klub when he was hammered
and declared that he would score 90 touchdowns this year). Regardless, even if Ball had went pro after
last season, Wisconsin would still have more quality running backs than the
rest of the Big Ten combined.
Seriously. James White, Melvin
Gordon, Jeff Lewis and Vonte Jackson would all start on most of the teams in
the country. You probably don’t
recognize most of them yet, but a year from now, one of them will pick up right
where Montee leaves off. Also, no matter
who wins the quarterback competition between Danny O’Brien, Curt Phillips and
Joel Stave, we’re going to get solid play from the QB position. Combine that with the fact that we’ve pretty
much got a free pass to the Big Ten Championship game (Ohio State and Penn
State are suspended, leaving us to beat Illinois, Indiana and Purdue. Book your trip to Indianapolis now), and it
seems like the 2012 Big Ten Championship will come down to one game between
Wisconsin and either Michigan, Michigan State or Nebraska. In short, it’s a good time to be a football
fan in Wisconsin.
Alright, time to get back to the Olympics. First off, I want to pat myself on the back
for making the brilliant prediction that the USA would take home the basketball
Gold. I knew I was going against the
grain by picking a plucky underdog like the Americans, but I also knew that the
positive energy and team chemistry of Team USA would be enough to offset their
glaring talent deficit. And I knew that
LeBron could dunk over all of Europe if necessary. Great pick by me. Hooray.
By the way, over the past two years, I have successfully predicted ALL
of the following sporting events: USA
Basketball winning the 2010 World Championship and 2012 Olympic Gold, Spain
winning EuroCup 2012, the Miami Heat winning the 2012 NBA Finals, Wisconsin
winning the Big Ten title in both 2010 and 2011, and of course, the Green Bay
Packers winning Super Bowl XLV. Bow
before the brilliance of the Chode. This
may not be the peak of WINsconsin, but it’s probably the peak of CHODEsconsin,
so I plan on riding it for as long as I can.
Also, Mike Krzyzewski became one of my favorite coaches of
all time last week during an interview the day before the gold medal game. When asked by a Spanish reporter if it really
takes any preparation when you’re coaching team USA, Coach K replied “No. No preparation at all. I’ll be out until 6AM tonight, drunk as a
skunk. And then we’ll just roll the damn
ball out.”
In other Olympic Sports news, Michael Phelps made a fool out
of me by outperforming Ryan Lochte and taking the all-time lead in both gold
and total Olympic medals. At this point,
there’s no sense denying it anymore: Phelps is the greatest Olympian of all
time. He single-handedly made swimming
relevant around the world and gave hope to all of the delusional high school
pothead swimmers who think they can win a gold medal someday. The only two other men in the world who can
compete with Phelps in terms of Olympic legacy are Carl Lewis and Jesse Owens
(‘MERICA!), and although Michael never got a chance to tell Hitler to shove it
up his ass like Owens did, I think it’s a pretty safe bet that he would have
done something equally awesome.
I hope you all got a chance to watch the US Women’s soccer
team avenge their World Cup loss to Japan in the Olympic final. If you didn’t, I’ll recap it for you quick:
Han Solo’s daughter made five ridiculous saves, Carli Lloyd snuck two goals
past the Goalkeeper of the Rising Sun, and Alex Morgan is still one of the
hottest athletes on the planet. And to
be completely honest, I have no idea how the men’s team did. It’s gotten to the point now where the
women’s national team is just as if not more popular than the men’s team in
America. Obviously if they ever played
each other the men’s team would beat them like a bunch of hoodrats, but as long
as the US women keep contending for the World Cup and Olympic gold and the men
keep losing to tiny African countries every four years, the women are going to
get better ratings. In the words of
Tupac Shakur, that’s just the way it is.
Hey, speaking of female-dominated sports…
GYMNASTICS!! Before
these Olympics started, I was fairly certain that there wasn’t a single sport
on the planet that women were straight-up better than men at. Whoops.
After watching the Fab Five fly through the air on their way to a
dominating gold medal performance, I actually think they could kick any of the
men’s teams asses. So there you go,
women are officially better at one sport (unless of course you’re using the
Koehler definition of “sport”, which states that if a female can fairly compete
in an activity and beat a man of similar skill level, the activity cannot be
referred to as a “sport”).
Also, watching the women’s team has led me to two sad
conclusions. The first is that at 22
years of age, it’s no longer socially acceptable for me to find female gymnasts
attractive. The second is that at 5’2”
and approximately 90 pounds, McKayla Maroney scares the shit out of me. Regardless, on to more important events, like
track and field. More specifically…
USAIN BOLT!! Good
Lord. Somebody offer this guy an NFL
contract already. Unless his hands are
literally made of stone, he’d be the best deep threat in league history. Imagine a faster version of Calvin Johnson. In fact, if the Jamaicans were to put
together a team, they’d probably have the best receivers in the NFL. Unless they wanted to put Yohan Blake at
running back, which is almost as scary.
Congratulations to Oscar Pistorious for becoming the first
double amputee to qualify for an Olympic event.
Although he lost pretty badly in the 400m dash due to the fact that all
of his competitors had two functional legs, he’s still the type of underdog
story that makes everyone feel good for a minute or two. Unless of course, you think Pistorious is
cheating and somehow has an unfair advantage (again, the dude has NO
LEGS). In that case, I suggest you go to
your nearest grocery store, buy two sticks of butter, lube up your dominant
forearm, and rapidly fist yourself.
Especially if your name rhymes with “hat-trick shady”.
Son of a bitch. I
just checked my email, and apparently I’m supposed to dress in “business casual”
for my first day of class because we’ll be “meeting actual patients”. Bullshit.
I guarantee that UW has cherry-picked the nicest, most easygoing patients
that they can find, because they don’t want us to know the truth: a lot of
patients are assholes. In fact, the
entire first day is kind of a gimmick that UW uses to tell prospective students
“you get to see patients on the first day!”
What they don’t tell you is that you can’t do a damn thing for them
because you don’t learn anything of clinical importance until your third year. Screw it, I think I’ll just show up in
athletic shorts and a cutoff shirt. And
a tie, or course.
Now that Olympiad XXX has come to its conclusion, it’s time
to sit back, and wait to see just how many future gold medalists were conceived
in the Olympic Village over a two-week period.
The IOC reportedly put in an order for over 10,000 condoms to be delivered
before the games started. Personally, if
I were managing the US Olympic team, I’d put a halt to all shipments for the
Americans. We want them pumping out as
many future studs as possible. And for
the love of God, someone needs to convince LeBron and Serena Williams to have a
kid. In fact, stopping at one would be
too risky. So just how many kids should
LeBron and Serena have? Not one, not
two, not three, not four, not five, not six, not seven…
Anyways, it’s about time to call it a summer for the Chode
Picks. I’ll be back for week 1 of the
NFL season, ready to dominate those of you foolish enough to play fantasy
football with me, and entertain those of you wise enough to keep away. Some final thoughts:
-
Okay, I invented Q-Bombs. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try one.
-
Last night I received possibly the greatest
compliment of my life. A guy who lived
on my dorm floor freshman year told me “When I watch Archer, I think of you.”
-
Fuck you too, Dwight Howard. Damn it, I hate Los Angeles.
-
Graham Harrell is a terrible quarterback, but
B.J. Coleman just might be the worst quarterback in the NFL
Until next time,
- Chode Out.
