All posts by Matthew Callan

Politics Schmolitics

Tortured Transparent Sports Metaphors with Sarah Palin

palin2.jpgI’m struggling to find the right words to express how I feel about my resignation. Because words have never really been my friends. You know who likes words? The liberal media elite. They’ve always been big on words and sentences and paragraphs. They’ll never understand the solid American people that I know, people who talk to each other with handshakes, or grunts, or a series of shrugs and punches.

But if I have to use words, let me use the kind of words that real American people understand: sports words!

A lot of people wonder why I’m resigning. Well, just imagine you’re a point guard. And by “you”, I mean “me”.  You’re naïve if you don’t see the national full-court press coming right at you. A good point guard drives through a full court press, protecting the ball, keeping her eye on the basket, and she knows exactly when to pass the ball so that the team can win. I know when it’s time to pass the ball–for victory!

Granted, a point guard usually helps her team by passing the ball and staying in the game, instead of taking the ball and going home. My point is, by resigning, I’m keeping my eye on the ball that represents sound priorities: smaller government, energy independence, national security, freedom! And also, America, and flags, and freedom.

I don’t know if I’m really getting my point across. Let’s extend this idea. Imagine you’re an awesome, all-world point guard for a terrible team in some podunk town. The kind of place where the only exports are moose meat and meth. You know you could do some great things for a team in a big, flashy city where you can shop til you drop and have cosmos with the girls every night. If only you could get out of that rotten one-horse town!

Plus, you’ve been bitching about this horrible team and its ass-backwards city for a while, and all of the brain dead hicks who used to love you and begged your team to draft you suddenly think you’re a total diva who might have mental problems. So your value drops the longer stick around in this god-forsaken place.

Does this sound like a fair scenario for an all-star fox like me? No, of course not! The world should be this point guard’s oyster–literally! I mean, what’s a promising young Republican point guard to do?

You do what I do: say you’re gonna retire from point guarding. That way, the nasty liberal media stops doing its full court press, and after you’ve been away for a while, all those hockey moms and Nascar dads will remember why they liked you in the first place. And you get to play for any city you like! Even President City, god willing!

In conclusion, my still-fellow Alaskans, don’t think of this as me resigning. Think of this as me looking for a new free agent contract that reflects my true level of talent. In my heart, I’ll always belong to Alaska. You know, like how LeBron James will always belong to Cleveland, even though we all know he’ll wind up on the Knicks sooner or later.

Baseball

Baseball World Shocked, Outraged by Blown Jeter Call

jeter_steal.jpgNEW YORK (AP)–All of Major League Baseball came to a standstill Monday afternoon, when future Hall of Famer and titan of a man Derek Jeter was called out in an attempted steal of third base. Replays clearly showed that, though the ball beat the immortal shortstop to the bag, Blue Jays third baseman Scott Rolen did not apply a tag prior to Jeter’s blessed hands reaching the base itself.

Yankees manager Joe Girardi stormed out of the dugout, rending his garments in grief and disgust. “My Father, why have you forsaken us?!” he cried toward the seemingly deaf heavens. Third base umpire Marty Foster, an insensitive monster who surely has no soul, ejected the skipper for his insolence.

Mr. Jeter, ever the picture of calm and poise, pleaded his case respectfully to Foster, a pitiful excuse for a man, but to no avail. He walked back to the dugout, as grown men wept openly over his grace at a moment of such grave injsutice.

A candlelight vigil was held outside Yankee Stadium Monday night to mark this horrific event. “We have been shaken to the core,” said Dennis Ramirez, a Yankee fan from the Bronx, “but together, we can make it through this dark, dark time.”

A visibly shaken Bud Selig acknowledged the grievous error in a post-game press conference. “I realize this happens often,” he told reporters. “Umpires frequently call a runner out if the ball beats him to the bag, regardless of whether a tag was applied in time or not. But this has never happened to Derek Jeter before, and must never happen again.

“Therefore, I hereby award today’s game to the Yankees, regardless of the final score. In compensation for their pain and suffering, the Yankees shall also be awarded two games of their choosing which have already been played.

“I would also remind our umpiring crews that when Mr. Jeter does not swing at a pitch, it is not a strike.”

Following the game, Jeter calmed down a frothing mob of angry sports reporters with a gentle wave of his hand, and with words of profound wisdom that could have been spoken by the Dalai Lama, or perhaps Gandhi: “I just want to do my best and help this team win,” he said.

Life In These United States, Pointless Nostalgia

We Built This Country on Obscure References

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fourth.jpgFor several years in my feckless post-collegiate youth, I had the same plans every Fourth of July. Two friends of mine shared an East Village apartment with roof access. So every Independence Day, we’d go up there, grill up some grub, drink some beers, and watch the fireworks. The festivities were occasionally enhanced by a live band, or a roving hitman with a squirt gun full of vodka. It was like something out of a Smirnoff Ice commercial, but with more body fat and fewer douchebags.

The fireworks were the highlight of the evening. Partly this was because the roof gave us an awesome vantage point to view them. But mostly, it was because of a weird, dorky tradition amongst my friends. I have no idea how this started, but before long it became just as much a part of the holiday as blowing off your pinky with an M-80.

Basically the game was, as each rocket’s red glare burst in the air, at the exact moment when a normal person would say ‘oooh’, you had to yell out an obscure American history reference. Preferably, one with negative connotations. And you had to scream it out in the same kind of voice heard in that timeless patriotic anthem “America! Fuck Yeah!”

Obscure scandals of yesteryear were the most popular choices. Nothing can make a whole bunch of dorks laugh harder than suddenly screaming out TEAPOT DOME SCANDAL! or XYZ AFFAIR!

Presidents were okay, but not the really big ones, obviously. Thomas Jefferson? No. But Franklin Pierce? Solid!

And since the Fourth of July is about America, anything American was fair game. Whether it be YELLOW NUMBER 5! or RIP TAYLOR! or CASSINGLES! These were initially frowned upon, but permitted once we’d burned through more strictly-history-oriented references like GEORGE WALLACE! and THE BULL MOOSE PARTY!

So what would you yell out during the fireworks this Fourth of July? Let’s hear some suggestions, fellow patriots.