Since the dawn of time, man (especially Drunk Man) has dreamed of flight.  And before Wilbur and Orvil got it right in Kitty Hawk, several people tried and failed gloriously to achieve even moments of gravity-defying greatness.  Nowadays, flying is something most of have done and we tend to take for granted.  But there are those who choose to chase the elusive dream of flight in spite of its prevalence in today’s world.  Where can you find these creative and somewhat insane individuals?  At a Red Bull Flugtag, of course; an event so wildly creative and addicting fun that it is in my must-experience-before-you-die activities in life. 

The word “Flugtag” is German and literally means “Flying Day.”  It is the brainchild of Red Bull’s owner Dietrich Mateschitz, and since 1991 this unique flying competition has been held every year in over 35 countries.  The contest in simple: design a human powered flying machine, drag it up a 30 foot ramp, and then launch yourself over a large body of water in hopes of flight, or at least a wicked crash.  Your flying machine cannot weigh more than 450 pounds (including the pilot), be constructed of natural materials, and it needs to float so the clean up crew can dispose of it properly. 

Teams aren’t just judged on how far they fly (or fall), but on creativity and sportsmanship.  It’s these later categories that add a real dimension of fun to this sport.  The flying contraptions that I witnessed at the St. Paul Flugtag included a giant mosquito, a Family Truckster (from National Lampoon’s Vacation) and a giant Acme Rocket driven by a Wile E. Coyote himself.  While none of these crafts flew very far at all, they were a ton of fun to watch plummet into the cold Mississippi river. 
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Believe it or not, FIFA isn’t just a video game series put out by EA. No, you ignorant sluts, FIFA actually stands for Fédération Internationale de Football Association, and every four years, FIFA puts on the most important sporting event in the world: the World Cup.

“Most important?”, you ask? I know, it’s hard to believe that despite a complete lack of Budweiser and pickup truck commercials, football (soccer to us), is the most beloved, most watched, and most played sport in the world and not just a pastime reserved for suburban kids and their overbearing, minivan-driving moms.

But it’s not just the sport that makes World Cup great. It’s got that Olympic vibe of the world coming together, but distilled down into one sport and the passion surrounding it. So let’s take a moment from our inward-looking culture and see how the rest of the world plays. Moe and I have put together this list of resources for you to keep up with scores, news, and other World Cup info. If you have more, feel free to post them in the comments below.

On the Web

Official World Cup Site: This is the most obvious, isn’t it? FIFA.com has transformed into an “all World Cup, all the time” site, giving you match times, stats, video, history, and pretty much everything else you can ask for. In addition, they have a handy little PDF schedule for you to print out. Granted, you’ll have to do some time zone math, but if you want to know local times, just hit the Match page and click the icon to convert it to your local time. Nifty, eh?

ESPN: Most of the games will be shown on ESPN, though the games more relevant to the United States will be shown on ABC. Check this site for more news as well as airing times and stations. You’ll also find replays, news, and a lot of other cool information.

ESPN3.com: Not near a television? Stream the World Cup live over at ESPN3. It’s a bit laggy at times, but otherwise it works really, really well.

On the Go:

Twitter: Follow the World Cup on Twitter via @worldcup. Viewing this on your computer pulls up a fancy page allowing you to view Tweets by topic. It’s a very well done site and I highly recommend it.

ESPN 2010 World Cup iPhone App: Featuring live scoring, tournament stats, brackets, this handy – and FREE – app gives you nearly all the World Cup info you could ask for on your phone.

Many apps (like Sports Tap) have this feature, but if you’re not near a television or a radio, this app displays a field graphic showing positions, timelines, and more. It’s not quite as up-to-the-second as the football graphic in Sports Tap, but it’s a very nice feature if you’re out of the loop and want to keep track of a game.

For $8 you can get more customized information, but based on user reviews, you may just want to skip that.

For Fun

EA Sports FIFA World Cup 2010: In between games, why not sit down and create a World Cup of your own? EA’s FIFA has always been a decent series, and while there are video game football/soccer alternatives, this one is “official”. So if you’re looking to get an authentic experience, it’s your only way to go.

Adidas Jabulani Official Match Ball: Speaking of an “authentic experience”, why not get off your ass and play a bit of footy with the official ball of the World Cup. Of course, this will set you back about $150, but fuck it, right? Why puss out with some Target-bought ball when this is the biggest sporting event in the world!

From the site:

“JABULANI, meaning “to celebrate” is the 11th adidas World Cup ball featuring 11 different colors representing the 11 players in every team, the 11 official languages of South Africa, and the 11 South African communities. The colorful design brings together the tremendous diversity of the country in harmonious unity.”

And Just Because…

Major League Soccer: Hey, guess what? There’s probably a Major League Soccer club in your area and you don’t even know it. But you’d probably be even more surprised to find out that MLS fan attendance exceeds NHL and NBA combined. Okay, as Timberwolves fans that stat doesn’t really surprise us, but still. So if you wind up digging the World Cup action, hit the MLS club page and look for a team in your area. Who knows? Maybe someday the States will figure out what the rest of the world is up to.

Longtime listeners of the show may remember that the noble sport of curling was once something of an ongoing joke with us. It got to the point that Carlson from Mad-Gear sent us each a copy of the DS Curling game just so we could further mock what we called “shuffleboard on ice”. Well my friends, I feel ashamed of our former behavior, for I have finally had a chance to experience this godly game. And it has changed my life.

No, seriously.

A couple weeks ago, I entered the St. Paul Curling Club for an afternoon lesson and game of curling. The largest and longest-running curling club in the country, this place was amazing, giving off the vibe of a cross between luxury bowling alley and an exclusive country club. The lobby was filled with leather couches, flat-screen televisions and a giant fireplace, all facing the glass wall looking out to the play area. It was quite impressive. I was instructed to pick out a broom and head out to the ice.

Once I had my broom, I put on my clean pair of shoes (very important) and made my way to the ice. The room was a comfortable forty degrees with six playing areas in total. The moment I walked through the door and looked to my left, I knew I was in a happy place.

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Finally, the first documented example of real progress in green technology.  Powered by grapes and gravity, this is the greenest car you’ll find this side of the sun.  Just don’t buy a house on a hill.  You can learn more about this remarkable visionary’s love of the road and the fermented arts here.

Celebrate it’s smooth lines, aggressive stance, and big, fat barrels.  May he be blessed this holiday season.

Science.

NOTE: I found this in our submissions today. Too funny not to post. -John

You tiwins ar e jackasses!! What the hell ROdneay!?? You pitcht ethem a double?! Youy close games fuckera1 ! close theme! closing!! not 12 eniings! and on ona on oan on! seriously? the twins?! you tiregers wer up by what., sev87 games?? You comae all this way to fuck this up? ? Tha is an asshat movea! teriirible terribel performeance!! Hey maybe if MNiguel Cabrera could get driunk wiht the white sox more and beat iss wfife or whatever he could bat more than tt2 r;uns! unlesazhe Th efURY!!

Look, mennnisota, you owe me a $60 dolalr berr e tab. you owe me sixtya dollars for making me watching this nail bigtters of losing and losing ansd losing. GOodl luck in tghe playoffs. I and amiching MiI MIchigan Detrioti friends will hate your stante in forever times. you are bad freinds.

SIIIGH

With lovee,
DJINcompeatente fron meENnisotata ASuckS!!!2

Last year, I compiled a list of perfectly reasonable excuses to hate NFL football. Personally, I love the game. I love watching it, I love the atmosphere, I love sitting around the television with my family, snacking, drinking, and enjoying Sunday afternoons. But sweet mother of god, there are so many reasons to hate this shit. It’s gotten to the point where I hit the mute button during commercial breaks, and sometimes even during game play. Because, let’s face it, it’s an obnoxious spectacle. So at the risk of beginning a tradition, here is the 2009 Season Edition of “Good Reasons to Hate NFL Football”.

The Fox Football Robot

More of a threat to humanity than The Terminator.

Seriously Fox: what the fuck? Listen, we like robots, okay? We named our site for the damn things. But this idiotic dancing abomination has to be the worst and most pointless mascot of all time. When the Fox Robot’s not doing warmups and pumping himself up into some sort of ‘roid-rage tizzy, he likes to do karate moves and even play air guitar.

How the hell did he even come into existence? I can just imagine some douche walking into a meeting at Fox Sports…

“Say guys? I’ve got this nephew who sits around all day smoking pot. But he’s really good at computer animation. Can we give him a job?”
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I was not the most hardcore WCW fan until the great Monday night wars started in 1995.I stumbled across a couple episodes throughout the years on television, but for the most part, all I knew WCW for was being the home for one of the greatest wrestlers of all time in the “Nature Boy” Ric Flair, and the man that had the bleach blond hair and all types of various face paint patterns, aka Sting. Then when WCW decided to start having its own Monday night telecast, Nitro to compete directly with WWE’s RAW show at the exact same timeslot, I could not help but flip to it during commercials in favor of watching the same Karate Fighters commercial for the umpteenth time. Slowly but surely over the months, I became a fan of the WCW, especially when a lot of my favorite WWE mainstays like Razor Ramon and Diesel defected over to form the phenomenon that bumped pro wrestling into the mainstream in the mid-to-late 90s, the nWo.

Now all the highs and lows of WCW are chronicled into a fantastic documentary (albeit with WWE’s version of history, needless to say they took a few liberties), titled “The Rise and Fall of WCW.” WWE has done a tremendous job putting together documentaries based on other promotions they have put out of business over the years like ECW, AWA and WCCW. For newer fans of wrestling this is a great cliff notes version of the southern promotion, though avid fans of the squared circle will be bummed that they only covered so much ground in the 100 minutes this documentary runs (compared to WWE’s ECW DVD, which was based on a company that was around for a far shorter time that lasted over three hours).

For fans like myself who were not into WCW before the 90s, there is a great summary of the roots of WCW when it was the major player of the NWA (a group of wrestling territories from around the country) and was going by names of Jim Crockett promotions and Mid-Atlantic Wrestling. It covers a lot of ground from how WCW was one of the first promotions to get featured on a coveted cable timeslot, to its tumultuous management problems throughout the 80s that led to the company getting sold to Time Warner which led to another rotating door of management problems until Eric Bishoff came in and getting the promotion on the right track.

The DVD dedicates a fair amount of material to recapping the Monday Night Wars and how ruthless Bishoff was competing with RAW by making Nitro live every week and taking advantage of that and giving away RAW’s results at the top of the show (back when RAW was mostly taped several days before hand). The whole Monday Night War portion of the documentary is the most interesting since I was the most familiar with it and it does a an outstanding job at covering what drove WCW to new highs in the 90s (namely the explosive Cruiserweight division, Goldberg and the mega-popular nWo). I would have liked more detail on the demise of WCW, especially since they paid barely any attention to a couple pivotal moments of the Monday Night Wars that helped propel the downward spiral of WCW – the mishandling of Bret Hart and complete mess of a payoff to the year and a half build up to Sting vs. Hulk Hogan at Starrcade ’97.

I can see some reasons to why Sting is not highlighted (other than briefly seeing him in montages throughout the feature), mostly because he is currently one of the main acts on WWE’s competition, TNA Wrestling. If that were the case however, than why does this DVD take the time to bury two other key TNA figures in Kevin Nash and Jeff Jarrett? Speaking of non-WWE employees, I was surprised that WWE tracked down several figures of WCW past to get comments from in the feature like former WCW executives Jim Crockett, JJ Dillon, Harvey Schiller and even the man, Bill Goldberg himself. Eric Bishoff oddly refused to be interviewed for this documentary, but WWE had enough archival footage of Eric’s past interviews from older WWE documentaries to make his comments relevant in this release.

Rounding out this package is the usual wealthy amount of bonus matches WWE includes with every DVD release. There are 20 bonus matches, most notable are the excellent Chi-Town Rumble bout between Ric Flair and Ricky Steamboat, Hulk Hogan’s WCW debut against Ric Flair and Goldberg vs. DDP at Halloween Havoc ‘98. While this is not the most fully detailed history of WCW it could have been, it does cover a lot of ground in a short period of time. WWE also released a couple other DVDs that would be terrific supplemental viewing to The Rise and Fall of WCW, so if you want to know more about WCW after watching this than I highly recommend tracking down “Ric Flair and the Four Horsemen” for a detailed look at WCW in the 80s and 90s, and “The Monday Night Wars” for a extensive look at one of the most exciting times in wrestling.

Welcome to the Turbolog, an ongoing series intended to educate Robot Panic readers about the Turbografx-16 and Turbo Duo library. In each entry, I’ll be giving brief information about a game in the Turbo library as well as the game’s rarity and my personal rating, both on a scale of 1-5. We’ll be working backwards alphabetically by title. If you’d like to read all the entries in the Turbolog, simply click the “Turbolog” tag below each article.

The Turbografx had a healthy library of sports titles, most of which were non-licensed garbage. And while World Sports Competition wasn’t exactly garbage, it was basically a generic title for fans of the Olympics. The box promises that you can “create an athlete who runs, jumps, and throws” in eighteen “exciting” events, and yes, some of the events here are actually pretty fun. Developed by Hudson, WSC includes track events, swimming, rowing, and other standard Olympic events and up to five players can compete using the Turbo/Duo Tap accessory.

Beyond that, World Sports Competition is pretty standard fare for the 8/16-bit sports game era, not really excelling in any particular area. But if you’re into busting out classic consoles with your friends, this may not be a bad one to tinker with.

Rarity/Cost (1-5): *
As is the case with most classic sports game, copies of World Sports Competition are plentiful on eBay and most vintage gaming shops. If you look hard enough, you should be able to find a copy for under $10.

Rating (1-5): **
While the single-player won’t knock your socks off, a bit of fun can be had out of the multiplayer. That said, few sports games age well, and WSP is no exception, and what may have been fun back in the early 90s may not hold up so well today.

Jarrod brings us another entry in his Best EVARRR Hall of Fame!

Well, the NFL season kicked off when the Giants take on the Redskins (if only there was a way both teams could lose), and it got me thinking. I remember last year before the Giants pulled off the greatest upset in the NFL since Joe Namath’s guarantee almost forty years ago when everyone was talking smack about how the 2007 Patriots were the greatest team EVARRR assembled. Even today I hear how great that team was.

Guess what: They didn’t win shit, they think last year was a failure, and so should you. And if I had a crook of a coach who knew the plays the other team was gonna run, I’d probably be lighting up teams too. So what was the best team EVARRR? It’s not even close. Don’t talk to me about the 72 Dolphins, I don’t care. Because if that team went up against the monsters of the midway that were the 1985 Chicago Bears, they’d get a mud hole stomped into ‘em.
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Being a lifelong wrestling fan, one of the unfortunate things that come with the business is witnessing a lot of former ring veterans pass away at such a young age from drug abuse, health problems, and other sad circumstances as the Chris Benoit tragedy showcased last year. I feel a little redeemed when I see a wrestling great actually manage to live up to their life expectancy. Last week, wrestling legend and WWE Hall-of-Famer Walter “Killer” Kowalski died at the age of 81 after suffering a massive heart attack a few weeks prior.

Kowalski retired from the ring well before I became a wrestling fan; before I was even born actually. WWE does a commendable job at paying tribute to (most) of its former stars, and as I watched wrestling throughout the 90s I recall him being inducted into the 1996 (then) WWF Hall-of-Fame. When his induction was announced, I remember it being accompanied with a montage of clips from classic matches of his, along with interview snippets from his peers remembering his signature style in the ring known as “hooking,” where a wrestler would apply maximum force on his submissions until the point where it would cause serious, long lasting pain.

There are a couple other memories I have of the Killer. Speaking of the nickname, he earned it by legitimately severing the ear of one of his opponents, Yukon Eric, mid-match after a move didn’t go as planned. The fans took a hating for his lack of public remorse and they started calling him “Killer” and the name stuck. Killer had a lengthy career of nearly thirty years from his debut in the late 1940s until finally retiring in 1977. His career highlight had to be winning WWE’s tag team titles with the late Big John Studd as the masked Executioners tag team. In retirement he founded a wrestling school and was responsible as the trainer for arguably one of the most popular wrestlers of this decade, Triple H.

I remember always hearing Kowalski’s name brought up in numerous Triple H matches of being the man who trained “The Game.” I felt a little guilty he wasn’t around when I became a fan. However a couple months ago I finally was able to watch some of his matches off WWE’s superb video-on-demand service, WWE 24/7. Each week they produce a retrospective on one of many past wrestling legends and throw in a couple of his memorable matches and interviews from past friends and foes. Even though the matches that aired from his career were in black and white from the 50s and 60s and it was a completely different style as seen on television today, I made sure to get a glimpse of one of the most feared combatants to step in the squared circle.

It felt good to a get a chance to see some of his past work before he passed on, kind of like how you get to visit a family member during their final years. RIP, Killer. May you forever be ripping the ears off of your rivals.