It's usually because they're just so absurd or really lack even the most tenuous of news angles to give them the go-ahead. Other times it's because they're just absolute horseshit. But every Friday until we get sick of running them, we'll present to you some of these not-so-shiny gems. All items should be treated as [Sic'd]. Enjoy...

Humanitarian Bowl, My Ass,:

Not what you expect or want to see while watching the ESPN bowl pregame show. Dudes standing there with his shorts halfway up his ass, which is bad enough then he just drops trou. My eyes are still burning.

The NBA players were trawling for swimmers during the Olympics? Get out of town.

this is probably way too old to get excited about, but...

up here in Seattle people were thrilled with the amazing and gutsy
performance by Emily Silver. Making the Olympic swimming team, then
breaking hand, then being able to overcome the injury and still get to
the Olympics, and win a Silver medal! and despite the name I am sure
she was going for the gold...

And who else took notice? Kobe Bryant. The swimmers and the NBA guys
apparently hung out a lot while at the Olympics. And being an
attractive blonde, Kobe made the full court press. She also got the
attention of Lebron James. Lebron was more of a pal apparently, but
Kobe kept begging her to leave the parties with him.

Even a bit tipsy, any woman with half a brain and a memory of news
reports, would NOT leave a party with Kobe! She denied him. Not to
be outdone, Michael Phelps. Sitting in a corner not talking to
anybody (apparently not very popular socially speaking with the other
swimmers or the NBA players), he took out the lack of interest in
himself by texting Silver's boyfriend she was sleeping with Kobe
Bryant. Not cool...or true. Kobe got a cell number and still tries
to make that play—offering a trip down to la to check out a lakers
game...but is seen as way too pushy and sadly, a awful past, and even
more obvious—married. The married thing , "yes i am married but my
wife doesn't understand me...." or at least the kind of understanding
that 4 to 8 million dollar rings and jewelry can buy for a little
while.

So what do we have

Lebron James—a pal, low key, a good talker, not married although the
kids are a red flag.

Michael phelps, socially inept

Kobe Bryant—married but still a complete asshole. And probably one
blonde away from another rape allegation. Of course, the next one
probably won't end well, even if you assume it will be an 8 million
dollar ring to his wife for the next brush with the law. I do wonder
if kobe carried a pre-sex legal document for women to sign with him
now—if not he should...or just freaking pay for the blonde hooker
dude..or just try to call jessica simpson.....

Gooses Still Being Gotten On

Hello,

I have pictures of Joe McKnight clutching a Grey Goose Bottle and a cocktail looking pretty intoxicated at a party. If you are interested in purchasing these photos or know any interested parties please let me know.

(Ed.note: Oh, and no. Not purchasing these photos. We're not US Weekly. Yet.)

Um, Thanks?

I read your blog everyday. I found some pics of hot tennis star Ana Ivanovic and golfer Adam Scott at some Australian beach. I am just sending the pics to you guys because of the pics of Ana of course. They aren't really big however. Here is the link.

Define "Man Love"

Ha just saw Brady Quin on South Beach giving some 'man love ' to his bros on New Years. Deadspin material buy can't get a decent pic

You Know, I've Never Seen It Either

In his podcast, Simmons said he's never seen The Big Lebowski.

Perhaps Deadspin could recap it for him.

Oh, For Christ's Sake

Where is the ever popular "to watch tonight " feature??

"Profit by my mistakes, young impudent sir, and do not be at home when the devil comes calling."

Hey AJ: Please call Harvey Levin asap. We have a story you guys will be interested in.

Of course, Speedo's offering a discount to certain NCAA competitors (depending on the tournament they compete in), but that's just like saying the first one's always free. Oh, and did we mention the first one falls apart after a few races and needs replacing? Isn't that a curious by-product of the intense applied science in the suit? How... coinkidinky.

We see a possible solution, though we wonder what they will do for drag...

For Amateur Swimmers, the Cost Of Success Doesn't Suit Everyone [Washington Post]

Some of Costas' mea culpas about that story:

• "I was not focused on it. It wasn’t like I was sitting there thinking, “Gee, I have a chance to get this in.” It was just something that wasn’t on my radar screen to be perfectly honest. But had it been, I would have thought it was a worthwhile thing to mention."

•"What’s more important from my perspective – since I don’t know all the ins and outs of this specific thing – but from my perspective, I think that these issues are more than valid. And if a person is already out and willing to talk about it, then certainly that’s significant in its own way. Just as it is significant if someone is the first African-American coach in the SEC [a Southern college football conference]. Or if someone is the first woman to hold this position or that [position]. These are significant issues, and they’re interesting. "

It's hard to tell if this interview is sincere or damage control by NBC. I don't doubt Costas' motivations for doing the interview — he answered the questions in his typically articulate news-wonky way — but there also seems to be bit of story-teasing for an upcoming "Costas Now!" episode where the issue will be handled more Costas Now-y. Either way, it's good of him to participate in the interview. And congrats to AfterElton to keep pursuing the story even after the Olympics have faded from memory.

NBC's Bob Costas Discusses Gays In Sports [AfterElton.com]

According to the Associated Press, Bolt's ridiculous performance could have been even faster.

Bolt won the final at the Olympics last month in 9.69 seconds, shaving 0.03 seconds off the record he set in May.

Eriksen, a physicist at the Institute of Theoretical Astrophysics at the University of Oslo, said he got the idea to examine how fast Bolt could have gone after hearing his coach say that Bolt could have run 9.52 seconds.

While Bolt definitely could have gone harder, he may not have wanted to just yet due to financial incentives often associated with breaking world records. Something he should be able to do in the future.

But Carl Lewis, speaking in an upcoming issue of Sports Illustrated, thinks something is fishy with Bolt's radical improvement.

"But to run 10.03 seconds one year and 9.69 the next, if you don't question that in a sport with the reputation it has right now, you're a fool. Period."

It's pretty much the status quo in Olympic sports today to suspect world record holders to be using performance enhancing substances. So the fact that Bolt is being questioned is no surprise.

If you thought Bolt cruised too easily in his 100-meter final, you should have seen the preliminary race he ran. I was actually at the Bird's Nest in Beijing to watch Bolt demolish the competition so badly that he did a light jog for the final 40 meters.

I say if you're going to be the fastest man in the world anyway, you might as well look like a badass doing it.

Calculating Lost Time By Bolt's Celebration [AP]
Carl Lewis Implies Bolt's On the Juice [Sporting Blog]
Was Bolt's Celebration Financially Motivated? [FanHouse]

In a letter sent to the leadership group of the Athletes Advisory Council, an attorney for the four cyclists—Michael Friedman, Sarah Hammer, Bobby Lea and Jennie Reed—not only asked the USOC to apologize, but said the flap was “emotionally devastating” and adversely affected their performances at the Beijing Games, where none of them medaled and only Hammer managed a top-five finish.

I'm normally not a fan of frivolous letters from lawyers, but I happen to partly agree with this one. The USOC were the ones who provided the masks in the first place. What's questionable is whether the situation actually prevented them from medaling. I'd totally request a do-over if I were them.

Usain Bolt's new Olympic record is 9.69. You've all seen it. How he paused at the end and seemed to taunt all the white people in the world. Thinking to himself as he slowed up, "See, white people, I spit on you and your ten seconds." Yep, the world record is now .31 seconds faster than a white person has ever run in recorded history. I'm not asking for the incredible—a win—or the amazing—a medal—I'm just asking that somewhere in the white universe there emerge a sprinter who can actually break 10 seconds in the 100 meters. Is that too much to ask? Too much to dream that somewhere from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado to Stone Mountain of Georgia, a white man can run 100 meters in less than 10 seconds?

Yes.

This white shame is, surprisingly, not discussed in public. It's our own private shame—a failing of our fast-twitch muscles that leaves us all quietly ashamed as the Olympics come and go. We see the white sprinters lining up to race and, before anything even happens, we know exactly what Asian men feel like when they show up to audition at porno shoots. No matter what happens, come hell or high-stepping, we are not breaking our own white maginot line. The clock is not rolling beneath 10 seconds.

Sure the white wide receiver is mocked, the white defensive back searched for vainly, but it's important to note that they exist. There are fast white wide receivers and fast white defensive backs (if you count the safety position), but there are no white sprinters who have ever broken 10 seconds. None, zero.

Why are white people so slow? How is it possible that there are a billion of us currently living and not a single damn one of us can break 10 seconds? I have ten hypotheses:

1. Our gigantic penises don't fit in the track suits and cause too much wind shear. (If only this were true.)
2. We are too busy being the agents for fast black people.
3. The patron saint of white people everywhere, Morgan Freeman, has refused all requests to become white national track coach. "Well, (long, tremulous pause) I just don't think (long, tremulous pause) I can."
4. Bob Costas gave up his promising track career to participate as a 1984 Olympic gymnast instead. There's a reason he and Mary Lou Retton are never in the same room at the same time.
5. We were never slaves or indentured servants. Except, you know, for when we were.
6. Our attempt to claim Carl Lewis for our own was stolen away. (Black people disavow all knowledge of Carl Lewis's blackness except for a few seconds of race time in 1984,1988, and 1992.)
7. The 100 meters is racist.
8. Since 1992's White Men Can't Jump we've been focused on proving we can jump. Really, we can. Brent Barry is awesome. High five.
9. There were no lions and tigers in Europe to run from.
10. Aeons ago on the fertile and heat-drenched plains of Africa, before our white ancestors departed on the land bridge for Europe, black people drafted running and we drafted swimming at the racial sports draft. Never the twain shall meet.

Hypotheses notwithstanding, it's time for a Manhattan Project on white speed. I want Balco mobilized; I want us to bring in the white accountants who made Enron possible, sit them down in chairs and tell them they can't leave until they've figured out a way for white people to cheat more efficiently. I want to do the impossible—I don't want to put a man on the moon—I want to move a white man 100 meters in less than ten seconds. We can do it white people—tears are streaming down my face—we can do it!

Or we can spend another four years dreaming for the impossible to happen. For one among our billion, to stride forth faster than any of us have ever striven before. Nope, it's time to do what white people do best...cheat.

A British Olympic Association spokeswoman said: "He was at London House yesterday celebrating his achievements and rolled over the bonnet of a parked taxi that was waiting outside.

"The driver was not very happy and got out and there were some police officers already there who spoke to the driver. It ended up very good-natured with photos being taken of him, the driver and his medals."

So he was out with his medals? Is this common?

Olympic hero's drunken celebration [Lancashire Evening Post]

Beard, appearing on a radio show based in Phoneix, was asked point blank on the "Johnjay and Rich Show," whether she and Michael Phelps had ever dated. Beard exercised about as much restraint with her words as she does to keep her underwear on when there's a camera around.

Her response:

"Eww, that's nasty."

Actually there's more:

"Come on, I have really good taste. He's really not my type."

Now, we're not sure exactly what part of Michael Phelps' "8-time gold medal Olympic champion" she finds "nasty" but that's her own personal opinion.Lucky for Phelps, he can now check one of the 9 million other desperate skanks out there off the list.

Amanda Bear Denies Dating Michael Phelps [NY Post]

Spain's women's team didn't seem to mind doing it either. And the fact that their whole country seems utterly dumbfounded by the controversy indicates that as long as they think it's harmless than nobody else should think otherwise.

Maybe they're right?

The fact is, this wasn't an ad placed in USA Today,yet the chronically bored journalists forced to fly over to Beijing to cover the Olympics sick of fawning over Michael Phelps (or being videotaped chewing on dog penis) are treating it that way.

The most telling, eye-rolling response to the whole controversy came from Spain's head coach Aíto García Reneses:

“If I go to play with a taller team and I put here (raising up on the tips of his toes) it is not an offense,” Reneses said. “I can’t understand anything more.”

Tall Mens' Clubs all over the world have yet to respond to that statement.

IOC Critical Of Basketball Team Ad [LA Times]
That Slanty-Eyed Asian Ad? Misinterpreted [AdRants]

“We would’ve been already thrown out of the Olympics,” he told Yahoo! Sports. “At least, we wouldn’t have been able to come back to the U.S. …There would be suspensions.”

And for his European peers, well, Kidd suggested, “They won’t do anything to them. It’s a double standard.”

Think Jason Kidd is the only person associated with the NBA who believes there's a two-tier system at work here? Well, at least one NBA GM agrees. “The simple question is, ‘Would Stern and the league hold the American players accountable?’ And I think the answer to that is yes...So why wouldn’t he hold the ‘other’ NBA players accountable – unless the rules only apply to the American players.”

Because in David Stern's globalized NBA it's not just Americans who his players have to avoid offending.

In late July, BOCOG proudly announced that all of the 6.8 million tickets for the Beijing Olympics were sold out. Though the Bureau arrived ticketless in Beijing, our scant connections and some random goodwill have gotten us into a few events. At the venues, after we’ve passed by the smiling army of blue and white clad volunteers, metal detectors, and x-ray baggage scanners, we’ve noticed that, once safely in our seats, quite a few others are still available.

It’s not news, exactly, that some Olympic events aren’t well attended; it’s admittedly hard to get jacked up for the kayak slalom. At the Athens Games in 2004, only about two-thirds of the 5.3 million tickets were sold, much to the Greek organizing committee’s embarrassment. To avoid a similar fiasco, Beijing organizers intentionally set ticket prices low making them affordable for average Chinese citizens and, to the chagrin of overseas sports fans, limited how many tickets would be available to foreign visitors. So, um, where is everyone?

Well, BOCOG offered about 40 percent of all event tickets available to the public - a low, though not unprecedented, amount. Knowledge of this might have annoyed the sweaty 50,000 who stormed ticket offices last month during the final round of sales. The other, publicly unavailable “piao” were given out as freebies to Communist Party officials, Olympic sponsors and IOC members.

Aside from the thousands of tickets never made available to the public, a number of overseas ticket-purchasers had their Olympic vacation plans thwarted by the slippery folks at China's visa office. Since most tickets have a face value between $4 and $100 USD, jilted ticketholders likely haven't bothered to claim refunds, and plenty of lonely tickets are waiting at will call in offices throughout Beijing.

Thousands of tickets were also scooped up by agencies that overestimated their demand, and are now stuck with them. We were recently tipped about an agent sitting on a vast reserve of unsold tickets. The agent, desperate to get rid of his stock, sells passes each night to the next day’s events at a local sports bar … for face value. This operation goes down in a sort of amazing multistory sports bar that can only be compared to a lo-fi ESPN Zone (except for the random Montreal Expos relics). On Tuesday night we went to the bar without knowing how to find the mythic salesman, but word of his arrival had spread fast; seemingly half the patrons were there to get them some Olympics tickets. Around the corner from a golf simulator, a miniature basketball court and a batting cage was a rotund fella bellied up to the bar, dripping in sweat from satisfying the mass of Westerners screaming for tickets. He was sick of everyone.
The other way to get tickets is to simply be scalped outside of venues, like one might at any sporting event. The Bureau decided to take in some boxing at Worker's Gymnasium the other day, and outside the arena there were plenty of shady-looking locals with tickets both real and blatantly fake for sale, but none would budge from their initial quote of 300 RMB (for a 30 RMB face value). Also running around with a handful of tickets was an irritatingly energetic man who must have been a professional scalper. He appeared to hail from greater Britain, spoke incredibly fast and sounded sort of like a Welsh carnival barker under a deluge of amphetamines.

DBB: How much for a ticket?
Scalper: 500local
DBB: That's way too high.
Scalper: Wellwhat'syourbudget?
DBB: Don't know, not 500.
Scalper: Tellmeyourbudget,son.
DBB: Around face value
Scalper: (Walking away) I'dratherrip’emupthansellthemtoyouforthat.

And so the man turned his back on the Bureau, flipped his arm up at us, and yelled, “I'DRATHERTEARTHEMAPART!”
The official word on scalping is that it’s against Chinese law and is strictly prohibited. But with eager buyers and conspicuously empty seats, enforcement is understandably lax. Scalpers and their potential customers congregate outside venues and Olympic subway stations in full view of police and Olympic volunteers.
While poorly attended events are not without precedent, at the Beijing Games even the Olympic Green, normally the flashpoint of activity in Olympic towns, is devoid of visitors… because they are locked out.

From the Wall Street Journal:

In past Olympics like Athens and Sydney, the Olympics Green was a gathering place for thousands of people, filled with restaurants and live music. In Beijing, thousands of people stand behind fences outside the venues and the Green with no way to get inside. Legions of people who swap pins, a popular Olympics tradition that is usually a fixture on the Olympics Green, are camped outside the Media Center next to waiting taxi cabs in the summer heat.

Sponsors who spent millions of dollars on massive ads and hospitality tents inside the village are understandably perturbed at overbearing Beijing, as their fun zones are empty, their ads unseen and their free crap uncollected.
To us, the poor attendance at events, the ghost town around the Olympic Green, and the pissed-off sponsors who spent millions creating shiny and now deserted crappy corporate areas boils down to a recurring theme in both the run-up to and now during the Beijing Games: for the organizers, security trumps all else.

Less than a third of Beijing’s predicted 500,000 visitors have swung by, due to visa restrictions and other hassles, costing the city millions of dollars in tourist revenue. BOCOG would rather a deserted but protest-free Olympic Green than a crowded and loose-lipped one… with satisfied sponsors happily watching over. Beijing, as always, wants to have their cake and eat it; they’d like their arenas filled to capacity with polite fans from around the globe, all disinclined to protest. And having shut out eager, legitimate ticket purchasers and having doled out hordes of tickets to disinterested corporate partners, they may have – in the words of the glistening, portly salesman at the bar – “fucked up.”

In the next post of the Deadspin Beijing Bureau, the Iowan contracts Olympic Fever.
Remember, you can reach the Deadspin Beijing Bureau at deadspin.china@gmail.com

Whoops! Does this mean Yahoo! has to start using the NSFW tag throughout the Olympics? Well, congratulations to photographer William West of Getty Images for snapping this action shot during the titillating Australia/Greece women's water polo match-up. NBC should thank him too, as the ratings for this particular event will probably skyrocket now that the potential for soaking wet nip-slips has emerged.

Full areola after the jump. (NSFW)

Olympic Photo Coverage [Yahoo!]

Spain, patron saint of the New World, land of low-priced cerveza, Sergio Garcia's homeland, and where slant-eyed jokes by the Spanish national basketball team leave the entire country rolling on the floor with laughter. Those were the fourth grade days. Just imagine what would have happened if they'd followed up this team photo with bunny ears behind every player's head.

The above photo was actually included in a Spanish newspaper according to The Guardian: "Spain's Basketball Federation has published a good luck advert for their men's team, the world champions, in which they stand pulling at the sides of their eyes in a slit-eyed gesture."

The Spoiler reports that this photo ran on a full page in the Spanish sports daily, Marca. Yep, this ad ran in Spain and not a single person had an issue with it.

Wait, is it slit-eye or slant-eye? I've always gone with slant-eye. Am I wrong? Regardless this will really help Spain's quest to host the Olympics in 2016 and 2020.

Spain basketball team pictured in controversial pose [The Guardian]
Spain brings racism to the Olympic games [The Spoiler]

• Phelps went to Beijing to win medals and it looks like he's pretty darn serious about it. He qualified for the 400-meter individual medley, beating his competitors by 1.44 seconds in the preliminaries and setting a new Olympic record for the event.

• The first U.S. gold medal of the Beijing Olympics went to fencer Mariel Zagunas. Her teamates Sada Jacobson and Becca Ward took silver and bronze respectively, sweeping the event and making the U.S. the first country to three medals.

• The U.S. women's soccer team has rebounded from an embarrassing loss to Norway to beat Japan 1-0. The win was much needed as the U.S. team is playing without their best player, Abby Wambach, before the games started.

• In progress is women's basketball, beach volleyball, and equestrian. Equestrian is like horse racing without the excitement, money, and death.

The television coverage today is chock full of events spanning five channels:

NBC's coverage has begun and will take you to 6:00pm. On tap is women's volleyball (US-Japan), swimming, beach volleyball (US), men's cycling road race, women's fencing, and rowing. It will pick back up again from 8-10:00pm with various swimming, beach volleyball, and men's gymnastics events.

USA will have coverage of various events including women's soccer and women's basketball until 2:00pm. MSNBC will have more soccer, volleyball, and team handball until 5:00pm. CNBC will have your boxing coverage from 5-8:00pm. Telemundo will have Spanish coverage of soccer, volleyball, and boxing.

The opening ceremony of the 2008 Olympics starts tomorrow morning at 8:08 am (for you guys, that is). It seems undeniable that this moment, rather than any upcoming competition, is the glorious and controversial culmination of more than 7 years of planning and 40 billion dollars worth of infrastructure that has left indelible physical and social changes to the fabric of Beijing.

It’s going to be a stunning spectacle, for sure — no country does festive explosions quite like China. For instance, we become aware of our excruciating hangovers every Sunday morning around 9 am after being awaken by the crackle of fireworks exploding in the courtyard of our apartment complex (it’s just like an alarm clock)… Don’t ask us what’s being celebrated, exactly. The point is, the fireworks you’re going to see broadcast on NBC tomorrow morning will make the scene on the 4th of July in Manhattan look like electrified foil in the microwave. It’s going to be bizarre, fascinating, awkwardly over-the-top and presented on an unimaginable scale.

We are sports fans and frankly, we’ve never cared too much about the Olympics. Vague excitement has always dissipated into fleeting interest of daily medal count graphics on SportsCenter amidst the distractions of summer. In our old lives in America, we’d watch basketball, maybe some diving or whatever, as background noise from our televisions. So we understand why one might be disinterested in the Games.

But the opening ceremony tomorrow night isn’t about sports; it’s world history. Soon, the rest of the world will refer to a pre- and post- Olympic China and the point between the two eras will be, definitively, 8/08/08 at 8:08 pm. This thing is as symbolic as an event can be. The way the world is going, seminal events in social history won’t be battles or speeches… but heavily produced, made-for-TV spectacles. Like this one. And if that interests you, well, you might want to tune in.

Remember, the Deadspin Beijing Bureau can be reached at deadspin.china@gmail.com

In other protest-related Olympic news: has anybody heard the ridiculous rumor about swimmer Michael Phelps seriously considering changing his name to "Democracy" in the next couple weeks? There have been a couple deadly serious emails recently sent to the tips mailbox.

In this case, it's a stopper pistol [Copyranter]

We don't know what one has to do to earn the reputation as the biggest reveler in Bangkok, but we'll bet it involves live chickens. And fortunately, it's entirely impossible to get in trouble in Cuba.

Thai Boxer Sent To Cuba To Quit Party Lifestyle [MSNBC]