I was interested in hearing about some new athletes out there worth following who, despite showing promise on Twitter, remain obscure, non-mainstream, questionably professional or – best yet – all of the above. I asked a group of my sports blogging constituents to contribute to a quick poll: Who’s the most fringe athlete that you follow? The list is good to the point that it inspired me to go the extra mile and create Fringe Athletes on Twitter Lists*.

First, mine: Gerald McCoy, the Tampa Bay Bucs’ first round draft pick.



I first became engrossed with Gerald on Twitter when he was pointing out his fellow draftees’ “wrist game” on Draft Night. Since then, here’s what Gerald’s been up (according to @GK_McCoy):

1.) He got a Droid
2.) He threw out the first pitch at a USA woman’s softball game vs. Japan
3.) He’s been enjoying the Twilight saga

Thurman Thomas (Isaac, Guyism)

He has over 21,000 Tweets right now, and I’m confident every single one of them occurred after his career ended in 2000. Thurman may be a Hall of Famer, but when it comes to Twitter, he remains largely misunderstood – the man has a Top-5 Stupid List (http://huggingharoldreynolds.blogspot.com/2010/05/thurman-thomas-dares-me-blocks-me-moves.html) and only 7,300 Followers.

The Iron Sheik (Eric, Camel Clutch Blog)

Is your mom on Twitter? There’s an 11% chance she follows the Iron Sheik.

These first two probably weren’t fringe enough for purists, it’s about to get super fringe on this list.

Leonard Weaver (Matt Lo Cascio, Jay Cutler Superstar)

If you didn’t know who Leonard Weaver is professionally (an NFL fullback), you wouldn’t learn from his Twitter bio. He’s currently using that forum to promote the Leonard Weaver Family Foundation (respectable) and ask people to help him name his new dog (sort of ridiculous). He’s currently calling that dog New Baby.

Mix Haxholm (Jared, The Atlantic Wire)

She’s a professional archer. A former Miss Thailand. And was recently named Cosmo’s Fun Fearless Woman. Less than a month into her Twitter tenure, but possessing a tremendous upside as she works towards the 2012 Olympics.

Todd Stottlemyre (Scott Lewis, TheScore.com)




When he submitted this, Lewis called ex-MLB pitcher Stottlemyre “the worst follow going” on account of the fact that he just tweets about stocks all day. I just scanned the feed, most recent conversations were around a recent life-changing Financial webinar that Stottlemyre was involved in.

Don’t worry, I didn’t add him to the Fringe Athletes Twitter list.

Speaking of great submission copy for athletes who probably don’t belong on this here…

Jose Canseco (Sooze, Babes Love Baseball)

“@JoseCanseco isn’t obscure at all, but he’s by far the biggest douchebag/delusional moron I follow on Twitter.” – Sooze





Andre Caldwell (Chris Richardson, Intentional Foul)



How annoyed is Viacom that this tweet only came from the Cincinnati Bengals third string Twitter wide-out?



Marcus Jordan (Ethan Jaynes, NESW Sports)




Michael Jordan’s son who averages 8.0 pp. for the University of Central Florida men’s basketball team – an all-around fringe human being, if you ask me. Worth following,  although he probably peaked during Game 7 of the Finals this season.

Robbie McEwen (Phil, Gunaxin)

This guy is an Australian cyclist, and even if you care very little about him you’ll want to hear what he has to say. Decorum is not his strong suit.



Here’s one linked to a video where he does a lot of effin’. Here’s another one linked to a photo Robbie referred to as “the best picture of the day” from Tour de France, Stage 10.

Dee Gordon (Paul Raymond, My Sports Rumors)

He’s the son of Tom “Flash” Gordon, and according to Raymond, one of the best hitting prospects in the Dodgers organization. Must be something. He’s got one of those fabled verified account with just 603 followers.

Last, but not the least fringe, not by a long shot: Jason Richards (Bob, Detroit For Lyfe)



It’s with a heavy heart that Bob, Davidson alum, submits Jason Richards, but I believe he decided to do it because he knew that Richards was almost too perfect for this list. here’s what he had to say:

“He’s a friend and also the point guard of the Stephen Curry-led Davidson squad that lost in the 2008 Elite Eight to Kansas. He’s the one Curry inexplicably passed to for the final shot that missed just left and crushed our itty bitty school’s hopes of reaching the Final Four.

Jason went on to play for the Miami Heat summer team and fall team after being undrafted. He tore his ACL in a fall practice,but got paid a handsome minimum contract because he was injured on their clock. After rehabbing and living luxuriously off that min. contract, he bounced around between Europe and D-League teams before re-tearing his ACL. All that in the past 2 1/2 years. He is now an assistant coach/film guy for Pitt’s basketball team.”

*Note: As soon as Twitter is not over capacity I’ll finish up that Twitter list.

Big deal. Did you see the music video for Dancing Pigeons’ song Ritalin? Boy, oh, boy, it’s good.

Dancing Pigeons – Ritalin from Blink on Vimeo.

via Laughing Squid

If you’re like me – meaning you don’t like Justice and don’t pay attention to them, even though they look really cool – you had never heard of French director Romain Gavras until this morning’s agitating M.I.A. video release. Now, if you’re like me, you not going to forget his name for sometime.

To be honest, I’m not sure I can name a single music video director other than Hype Williams. It takes a lot to make a lasting impression in that medium (copious overuse of fisheye lenses, etc.). Today, Gavras proved that blowing off a young ginger’s head is one way to do that – can I use ginger colloquially still or is that offensive? And what do the South Park creators think about this? This clip is a conversation starter.

If you want to avoid asking boorish questions like that, here are some more of Gavras’ videos to help get acquainted with his style – I think they call this verite. Or he might just like shooting close-ups of people looking angry.

In descending order of most violent…

And a raucous – highly devolving – rendition of We Are The Champions, to boot!

Found via Mr. Public Service Announcement, himself.

And with that round of applause I think we can crown this spoof of the day.

H/T to @melfi

Really? You found a seminal Rock n’ Roll band with a twenty-year old body of work less entertaining than the voice of Lemony in Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events? Really?

Really.

There’s probably someone out there willing to crucify me for saying – not to mention the karmic payback it sets up when I vie for P.J. tickets this week – but I found Jude Law’s performance last night on Saturday Night Live to be mildly amusing, and Pearl Jam’s mildly underwhelming. Chicago RedEye posted the exact opposite earlier today.

Still, let me make it abundantly clear, there is a 100% greater chance of me buying Pearl Jam tickets this week, than of me paying to see Repo Men, ever.

Here’s Law in the Secret Word skit last night, followed by Pearl Jam performing ‘Unthought Known’ (c/o Hulu).

Couldn’t someone have told Mike McCready: Stop jumping, Rick Springfield!

Kristen Stewart posing in stark contrast outside both the Los Angeles and Sundance premiere of The Runaways, which opens this week. Below, Stewart with Joan Jett in 2009 while filming the movie.

The L.A. Times gave the movie a favorable review, and also not hurting is the fact that there isn’t a single other desirable film out right now.

I kind of felt sinister even entertaining the idea of posting Dakota Fanning and Cherie Curry photos.

Premiere photos via Flickr & Jett/Stewart photo via more Flickr.

The following is an actual (read: completely made up) transcript of a conversation between writer/producers of the 82nd Annual Academy Awards from Sunday night:

Producer: The show is only 3 hours long. How do we make people want to go to bed before the Best Picture is announced and shortchange the winner-to-be’s acceptance speech due to time constraints?

Writer: Another musical number with Neil Patrick Harris?

Producer: Nah, people enjoy him. Might give them a second wind. We want people to go to SLEEP.

Writer: What if we unnecessarily put five actors on stage before both the Best Actor & Best Actress nominees are unveiled…Yeah, Five actors who….who….Who have previous relationships with the nominees and….and….

Producer: Yes….yes…GO on….you’re getting there…

Writer: …who have previous relationships with the nominees and who each ramble for 5 minutes about what great people the nominees are and include a bunch of inside jokes? That’ll make the show AT LEAST 30 minutes longer than necessary, right?!

Producer: Brilliant. Simply brilliant. Say you remember the first time you and I were working on the Academy Awards five years ago? It was your first time doing it and you said to me….

(Five Minutes later)

Producer (cont’d): …and I’ll never forget the fact that you pimp slapped an intern. That really stuck with me. Congratulations on your success, Writer.

Editor’s Note: I’ll give you one guess as to what my only gripe was with Sunday night’s Oscar ceremony. Of course if they really wanted to trim down speeches and time, maybe they should have heightened security…

1.) She used to be married to Jim Cameron.

Here he is wishing her congrats last night – nice find @msaleem

2.) She directed the timeless, tour de force – Keanu’s magnum opus, and one of Swayze’s magnum opi - Point Break.

…that clip is about twice as long as the tribute they gave Swayze last night, which I found irresponsible.

Anything else I should know about Bigelow?

Poems and bones.

Cookie dough & pillow fights.

You don’t want to know what the Twitter search revealed, or (goes w/o saying) any number of Craigslist searches.

Happy Valentines Day, lovers.

…and Happy Nat’l Real Talk Day as well.