Links: Every Time I Come Around Your City…

by Lang Whitaker

• I’ve been meaning to link to probably the best magazine story I’ve read all year. It was in last week’s New Yorker, and I can’t really say anything too specific about it without giving the whole thing away. Regardless, I highly recommend it and do not click here unless you’re ready to lose the next hour of your life. Seriously, a great read.

• BREAKING: They found the body of Bigfoot. He lived in Georgia, it turns out.

• Not only did I catch Doug Collins endorsing lies on the NBC airwaves, but Sekou Smith, Henry Abbott and John Hollinger all heard him as well. I wonder if Collins will apologize or try to correct himself during the game tomorrow? Somehow I doubt it. But I hope he does.

• BTW, how awesome is it watching the Olympic highlights on “SportsCenter,” where they obviously don’t have the rights to show highlights of the actual events. Last night they had Michael Phelps “highlights,” which consisted of an anchor talking about the race Phelps had just completed while photos of Phelps flashed across the screen. Because nothing really captures the essence of the world’s best competition like photos. They should start a web site or something.

• I received a couple of email earlier this week of incredible importance. Linkstigator Keith writes from England…

So, I live in England and we are fairly sheltered here. We’ve only recently got the internets. That pretty much sums us up.

But brilliantly, I have just had a ‘Ping-Ping’ sighting. He was at the Olympics. No, he wasn’t really but wouldn’t it have been cool if he was holding the torch? Ping Ping was on tv on a programme called ‘Superhuman: World’s smallest people’. Here is a summary:

“Series looking at extraordinary humans, with a focus today on the shortest people on the planet, examining how they deal with everything from work and poor health to shopping and finding love. Including the stories of Britain’s smallest man, who has a normal-sized family and a regular job, and He Ping Ping, who became the official world’s smallest man at 2 ft 5 inches, and found a route out of poverty. Plus, the two athletes competing to become the fastest little person in the world ”

Here is Ping-Ping watch for you:

• Ping-Ping holds a cat. The cat is bigger than Ping-Ping.
• He must get pissed at having to wear the same suit everyday. At least he gets to rock the trainers.
• He washes his face like a cat washes their head but without the licking.
• His family are farmers.
• They have a two room house.
• Saw him on a kid’s electric motorbike which was luminous green. He was one happy chappy.
• He smokes 30 cigarettes a day. I could make a joke about the effects of smoking but instead all I will say is what my mum said to me: “Mr. Ping-Ping frightens me.”

Thanks for the update, Keith. Also, Linkstigator Mike also sent along this link to the web page of the show, but it won’t allow me to watch the show because I’m not in the UK. I did a brief search on Youtube but couldn’t find any footage. If anyone can unearth this on the internets in a form we can all see, please send me the link.

• Because Myles asked: Yes I got Madden and yes it’s amazing. It’s worth buying, I promise. The game looks a little cleaner than before, overall, but there’s a couple of cool innovations, such as the REWIND button. They’re also promoting this as “the game that adjusts to you.” When you start the game it puts you through a quick test and gauges how good you are at Madden, and then the game is supposed to adjust its difficulty to your level.

Whatever, all I know is that it’s really fun to play with the Falcons and not be forced to use Joey Harrington at QB.

• Since I know you’ll care, here’s a bunch of pictures of Kobe modeling suits from some Italian magazine. Yawn.

• Anyone catch this NY Post story about Michael Phelps? Besides them tagging him “Boy Gorge,” the Post also runs down Phelps’ training diet, which seems a little excessive to me…

Phelps lends a new spin to the phrase “Breakfast of Champions” by starting off his day by eating three fried-egg sandwiches loaded with cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, fried onions and mayonnaise.

He follows that up with two cups of coffee, a five-egg omelet, a bowl of grits, three slices of French toast topped with powdered sugar and three chocolate-chip pancakes.

At lunch, Phelps gobbles up a pound of enriched pasta and two large ham and cheese sandwiches slathered with mayo on white bread — capping off the meal by chugging about 1,000 calories worth of energy drinks.

For dinner, Phelps really loads up on the carbs — what he needs to give him plenty of energy for his five-hours-a-day, six-days-a-week regimen — with a pound of pasta and an entire pizza.

He washes all that down with another 1,000 calories worth of energy drinks.

Wow. Sounds like someone could have a Lipitor endorsement in their future.

• Worth noting: Pops Mensah-Bonsu is going to sign with Joventut Badalona, a.k.a. the team Ricky Rubio plays for.

• Also heading for Europe? Disaster!

• That’s it. I’ll be back tomorrow morning with notes from the epic Greece/USA game.