Strange Sports Stories
Posted on | January 7, 2007 at 11:55 pm | 7 Comments
Last night, the Scott-Younger family, who usually split their time between L.A. and Melbourne, were in town to conduct some business and to visit with friends and relatives. Ben (frequent blog commentor InfK), wife Fahey, and newly produced offspring Spike Riley braved the road detritus from Weekly Winter Storm #3 (#4 is coming next weekend) and came over to share some conversation and takeout Chinese/Thai food with the girlfriend and I. Aside from a bit of hassling around to get the two vehicles properly positioned in the driveway (there’s no street parking around here due to the forever lingering mounds of snow), everything went splendidly. Nearly three-month old Spike is cute as a… (sorry, I can’t say it, and it doesn’t make sense to me anyway) and was a perfect little gentleman, aside from when he was coveting his daddy’s hard cider. Nancy was introduced to the wonder of Drunken Noodles and she now understands why I like Thai food so much. Fahey and Ben are taking full credit for that.
The most bizarre part of the evening was when I was showing off my HDTV set and was flipping through the various Dish HD channels, where we came upon the Asian Kabaddi Finals on one of the HD sports channels. At first, we had a hard time believing it was a sport at all, and couldn’t figure out the rules. It featured a bunch of guys in tight shorts holding hands and dancing around, while another guy tried to touch them and then got wresetled to the ground for his efforts. I am not making this up. Fahey declared, “Gayest… Sport… Ever“. It started to make a little more sense when they showed the women’s finals, as the women seemed to be much more competitive and aggressive, making it look more like a real sport. We still couldn’t really figure out just what was going on though. It wasn’t until I read about the sport in Wikipedia that I found out part of the object is for the “raider” to not take a breath when trying to touch the hand-holding guys, and he has to prove he is not breathing by constantly chanting the name of the sport. We did not figure any of that out by watching it. This is the national sport of Bangladesh, and I hope to heaven that it becomes an Olympic event. Because, really, it’s a lot more fun to watch than almost any summer event, like water polo. I’m already getting some ideas about who should be on the American team.
I really need to surf the weird channels more often.
Latre.
Comments
7 Responses to “Strange Sports Stories”
January 10th, 2007 @ 4:58 pm
I will add only that simply reading about Kabbadi is probably pointless unless you already like that sort of thing; it was the watching that was so funny. Last time I just gaped in disbelief at the TV – except for the news, of course – was when I first saw that infomercial with the identical-twin midget real estate moguls… (I’d post a link but don’t want to boost anyone’s pagerank – just Google for the Rice brothers’ advertisement)
And in answer to what I can safely assume is going to be everybody’s question, no – Spike’s hair does that by itself, we don’t use any products for the effect.
Thanks again for dinner! Swing by L.A. sometime and we’ll try to find someplace to take you with a low risk of bullet wounds – or better still, Melbourne! It’s only 60,000 frequent-flyer miles away.
January 10th, 2007 @ 5:50 pm
The Thai food was excellent, the company fabalicious but the Kabbadi – that kicks oriental ARSE!
Playing Kabaddi as we speak…………. *thunk*
(ran out of breath)
See you in Melbourne!
FSY xxxx
January 10th, 2007 @ 5:51 pm
I am the cutest baby alive.
Seriously, check me out. Could I be any cuter?
Spike Riley xxxx
January 11th, 2007 @ 8:24 pm
It would be much better coed and/or in mud/jello/other-organic-slime. Really, people should check with me first.
January 23rd, 2007 @ 11:30 pm
Yr it. (Blame dmw.)
January 23rd, 2007 @ 11:31 pm
*sigh*… http://spanghew.blogspot.com/2007/01/in-which-author-succumbs-to-common.html
January 26th, 2007 @ 10:15 am
Working on it now… in my head… at least the part of my head that is not devoted to trivia and tv…