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…

If your head did not explode from reading the title of this post, I suspect you are probably laughing or are confused as to what the hell the Beanpot is.  In the grand scheme of sporting events, yes, comparing the two is bombastic.  It’d be like comparing, ladies and gentlemen, sex with a model to that first awkward drunken make-out/groping session you had freshman year of college.

While the Super Bowl is the grandaddy of all American sporting events (so grandaddy-licious this year that it’s the most watched broadcast event in history), the Beanpot is a tournament involving Boston’s 4 big schools: Harvard, Northeastern, Boston College, and my alma mater, Boston University.  Each year, the 4 schools are paired off for a 2 week tournament for the coveted Beanpot trophy.  More importantly, these four schools play for pride and bragging rights…and yes, ads do not cost $3 million for 30 seconds.

If you watched BC’s 4-3 Beanpot victory on Monday night at a local sports bar, it made for an unbelievably satisfying sports dessert to The Big Game’s main course.  As a BU alum, it was disappointing to lose, especially to our hated rival (Thank god for $1 dollar draft Mondays at Third & Long) and I was not exactly thrilled wake up and watch ESPN’s Top 10 yesterday morning.  What was the #1 play you ask?  Chris Kreider, BC’s 18 year old freshman, deking out BU freshman Max Nicastro and finishing with a fluid backhander past BU goalie Kieran Millan to put BC up 3-1 during the Beanpot.

Now, I can drunkenly berate the other 3 BC goals (and believe me, I did) but none of us could argue this was a helluva play.  Oddly enough, I quickly changed my tune since, if you watched the game, you’d know BU’s David Warsofsky had an equally amazing top-shelf backhander later on.  Surprisingly, I was happy.  I was happy that college hockey, a sport that doesn’t get nearly enough recognition and is the pride of the BU faithful, was getting it’s due on Sportscenter.  Hopefully next year, we’ll reclaim the trophy for a tournament that’s continually ours (29 titles and running).  Until then…

What? You didn’t think I’d really end this on a sad note and praising the enemy, did you? GO B.U.

This past weekend at the Houston Arena Theater, Legacy Fighting Championships held their “Lonestar Beatdown” event featuring Jonathon “the Mack Truck” Mack vs. Jason David Frank (a.k.a. The Green Ranger from the early 90’s TV show “Mighty Morphin Power Rangers).

Even if you’re not a fan of the Power Rangers, you won’t believe how Frank won.  After rocking JDF with a left hook, Mack suddenly grew to be the size of a large building due to the evil Rita throwing her magic wand into the cage and uttering the words “Let my fighter GROW!”  Panicked, JDF called upon his mighty Dragonzord, which emerged out of the (relatively) nearby waters of the Willowisp Country Club.  Mack = successfully got the takedown on the Dragonzord.  However, JDF commanded the Zord to whip his tail at Mack and backed him up enough to fire multiple missiles from his robotic fingers to seal the victory.

Winner: Jason David Frank, Round 1 via Dragonzord destruction

Ok, that’s not actually what happened.  Mack did soften Frank up with a left hook early on (time: 0:44), but after securing the take down, Frank pulled guard and was able to lock in an omoplata (shoulder lock) for the submission victory (time: 1:12).  Video below. Enjoy…and may the power protect you:

Green Ranger victorious in MMA debut

Truthfully, I turned on the game briefly - just long enough to get a sense of Mike Tirico blase approach to commentating such an abomination of a football game, which was funny.

After that fleeting tune-in (don’t count me in the tune-in numbers, Nielsen folks), I watched The Fantastic Mr. Fox (1:20 movie; so, roughly an 1:18:56 more time invested than the game) and Big Love (Happy to see that the show is not going with the Ben’s Alt-Christian band storyline, but rather him mired in a good old fashion seduction with Margene).

Smokey & The Bandit was also on - if I hadn’t already seen it six times…

Anyone else catch anything good last night while they were skipping the game? Because unless your name is Tirico you probably watched something good while skipping the game - I’m sure Gruden checked out and had the engineer pipe Burt Reynolds and Sally Field on HBO Comedy into the booth on his monitor at the beginning of the third quarter.

C/O @moneyries, sent after his highly, highly, highly obligatory Ipad joke (something about ‘heavy data flow’).

This YouTube upload itself dates back to November 2007, Jobs - you owe the nerds (and the fans of gross-out humor alike) an explanation.

Other hilarity re: Ipad from around the web:

(but not necessarily in reference to heavy data flow, #iperiod and/or #ibleed)

10 Other Uses for the Apple Tablet (Esquire)

Apple’s 9 Biggest Flops (The Daily Beast)

Apple Tablet is the Kindle in Technicolor (Tech Crunch)

Report: Sliced Bread Unimpressed with Apple Tablet, But Will It Impact Blogging? (How-to-blog)

Following Tiger Woods’ car accident/ holiday media debacle this weekend, Yardbarker.com’s Director of Programming and friend to Steady Burn, Alana G, pitched the idea of a Tiger Woods crash video playlist to MTV Jams via Twitter, and MTV might run with it!







It is an 100% true statement to say that MTV considering a video playlist inspired by Tiger’s crash is the biggest media development in the Tiger Woods crash investigation at this time.

Great execution, Alana. If Tiger Woods is determined to play this one so close to the vest that I have to turn on The Today Show this morning and hear the likes of Mike Lupica say, “He’ll golf his way out of this.” (Also, a 100% true statement), then we should be allowed to throw some jabs in his direction.

Check out her suggested playlist at Alanag.yardbarker.com and send her some suggestion. Keeping with the sensibility of MTV Jams (the early 2000’s iteration that I’m most familiar with), for my suggestion - the artist is Usher, the song is ‘Confessions.’