Great Hall of Fame Speeches Today
There’s just something special about watching grown men – men who have achieved the highest distinction in sport – break down in tears while expressing their love and respect for the game of football. If you have ever played the game of football, at any level, it changes you. Football’s all about personal responsibility and pride, execution and trust in other men. It’s a beautiful game that forces you to become more than you are, and to strive for something bigger than yourself.
The Hall of Fame speeches I saw on Saturday we’re fantastic. Watching Deion Sanders and feeling that guy’s passion was incredible. Hearing him explain how he was embarrassed by his mother and her job cleaning up at a hospital, but how he flipped that into motivation to make sure that she’d never have to work a day again in her life. Just great stuff.
Watching Sterling Sharpe trying, desperately and unsuccessfully, to choke back the tears after his brother Shannon gave him a Hall of Fame shout out like no other, you could just feel the weight and importance of that emotional moment for both of the brothers Sharpe. That shit was just real, raw, once-in-a-lifetime emotion right there.
Sure, football’s just a game. And yea, there’s all kinds of cliches about football being a metaphor for life and all that, but you just can’t underestimate how respected and beloved the game of football really is, and how deserving the game is of that respect. When you see football legends break down on an open mic while expressing their appreciation for the game, it’s the closest thing us dudes have to a perfect cathartic moment.
If you haven’t see this year’s Hall of Fame speeches, spend some time and get in touch with your man-emotions this weekend. You’ll feel better after you do.
Aug 7th
Marc Ecko Bedding Collection Giveaway
Fashion designer Marc Ekco founded eckō unltd. in 1993 when he was just 20 years old. The serial entrepreneur now oversees a billion dollar empire that includes top fashion brands like Ecko, Zoo York and Eckored (the flagship brand’s female counterpart) as well as Complex Media (which published Complex Magazine) and the guy even got into the video game space, teaming with Atari to develop a video game based on the Showtime series Dexter.
Now Marc Ecko is getting into the bedroom and home decor business with the launch of his new comforter and duvet collections. The bedroom collections are now available at Bed Bath & Beyond. Here’s a look at the complete collection:
Painted Love Duvet
Undercover Duvet
Platinum Links Duvet
Kickback Denim Comforter
Popover Hoodie Comforter
Zip It Comforter
To help promote the launch of Ecko’s new home décor collection, we’re giving away a Painted Love full/queen duvet cover (the first one pictured above) to one lucky reader.
Aug 4th
Randy Moss Straight Retires, Homey
Despite reports that he’s crazy fit, Randy Moss is calling it quits. And it’s probably for the best. Moss rejuvenated his career with the Pats, catching 250 passes for 3,765 yards and 47 touchdowns in his first three seasons with the team. That production dropped dramatically last year. After the first four games of the season, Moss put up nine catches for 139 yards and three scores. In his final game with New England, Moss didn’t even catch a pass. He wore out his welcome, and the Pats shipped him to the Vikings for third round pick.
The return to Minny didn’t last long. Moss played in only four games. He caught 13 passes, scored twice and acted pretty douchey. The Vikings cut him and 19 teams past him up on waivers before he was claimed by the Titans. In eight games with Tennessee, Moss caught six passes for 80 yards and didn’t find the endzone.
Moss was looking to go to a contender this season, but apparently he didn’t get any offers from teams with a chance to win. He didn’t want to the TO thing, bouncing from crap team to crap team on one-year deals, so he decided to hang ‘em up.
Moss exits the scene with some pretty sweet numbers (954 passes for 14,858 yards and 153 touchdowns). He set the single season TD reception record in 2007 (23), after previously setting the record for TD receptions by a rookie in 1998 (17). He’s second all time in career TD receptions (tied with TO), career 100 yard games (64) and 1,000+ yard receiving seasons (10).
The thing we’ll miss the most about Randy is his way with words. From “straight cash, homey” to smoking weed “every blue moon,” Moss had a knack for expressing himself. Sure he had run-ins with traffic control officers, caterers, water bottles and refs, coaches and players, and yea, at times he lacked effort and professionalism, but Moss was still fun to watch and always entertaining in interviews and press conferences.
Here’s a tribute to the this future Hall of Famer, courtesy of DJ Steve Porter:
Aug 1st
Robert McGinnis Gallery
Lately I’ve been binging on the artwork of Robert McGinnis. I even picked up a few of his movie posters at Comic Con. I just love this guy’s style; pulp realism with heavy doses of sexy sophistication. His work is extra-provocative without ever being low brow. His pieces are a throwback to a bygone, classy era when women were chic and men were dapper. Plus the guy’s really good at painting attractive women.
McGinnis packs personality, danger, flirtation and subtle exploitation into his paintings. These compositions come across as simple, visually-appealing works of playful, pulpy, advert art. I just love it.
You’ve probably seen his work before. Think of the classic movie posters for films like Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Barbarella and the original Bond movies. In addition to his poster work, McGinnis has produced tons of pulp-crime paperback covers, advertising pieces, western paintings and even romance novel covers.
The thing he’s best known for is his women. McGinnis just loves painting hot, stylish, perfectly breasted women. Take a look at some of his work:
If you want to learn more about this great American illustrator, check out the film Robert McGinnis: Painting the Last Rose of Summer. It came out in 2000 and its solid introduction to the man and his work.
Jul 29th
Mike Tyson Main Event iPhone App
Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out was one of the best NES games of all time. The thrill of knocking out Soda Popinski or Piston Honda was a treasured memory for kids that grew up in the 80s. Today’s gaming tastes are much more sophisticated, obviously. You got complex, HD cinematic console games, large-scale gaming universes on social networks, and of course, time consuming mobile games like Words with Friends.
Sometimes it’s a nice change of pace to play an old throwback game. If you have a hankering for some Punch-Out, you don’t want to dig through your closet to pull out your NES console, then check out the Mike Tyson: Main Event app from SoBe and RockLive. The game is available for free on iTunes,
As an added bonus, SoBe’s also offering up a free trip to Vegas that includes a “Try Everything” experience with Mike Tyson. The person who owns the SoBe leaderboard after a month will get to fly out to Sin City with a friend and kick it with Iron mike himself. Not a bad return for some fun, time-wasting throwback mobile gaming.
Jul 29th
Valvoline Fan Poll and NextGen Oil Giveaway
Valvoline has teamed up with Sporting News to give fans a chance to vote on their college football preseason top 25. It’s called the Sporting News Fan Poll backed by the Valvoline Engine Guarantee. Fans can check head-to-head comparisons with expert predictions and other media-generated polls. You can submit your picks from now until August 31 at SportingNews.com/fanpoll.
Leading up to the kickoff of the college football season, Valvoline and Sporting News will also feature an ongoing weekly column called “Count on It,” where experts Matt Hayes and Steve Greenberg will debate the hot college football topics of the week.
Jul 28th
MIMOBOT Flash Drive Review
The fine folks at MIMOBOT sent us one of their units to review this month. We also saw their booth at Comic Con this past weekend. Mimobots are stylish little USB flash drives that are sculpted into detailed, big-headed characters from franchises like Star Wars, DC Comics, Hello Kitty and other iconic figures. It’s like a little goofy action figure that stores up to 2 GBs of data for you.
The unit that we got to review is the Green Lantern MIMOBOT. It’s a sturdy, detailed and colorful little device. Hal Jordan’s Green Lantern head is about twice the size of his body and his melon pops off to reveal the USB port. He can stand easily and the top of his head pops back on in a secure fashion, so you don’t have to worry about the Green Lantern losing his dome.
When you pop the Green Lantern into a USB port, you’ll see that he comes with an 80mb zip file. Unzip this and you’ll get four folders with 14 avatars, 24 icons, six screensavers and wallpapers of various sizes for mobile devices, iPads and desktops.
The one complaint we have is that the unit is kind of large, so if you have multiple things plugged into your USB ports, you could end up losing a slot. But if you have the slots to spare and you want to add a touch of action figure-ness to your media storage needs, the MIMOBOT is pretty nifty.
MIMOBOTs are compatible with Macs and PCs. The unit comes with a hoodie, some stickers and a little catalog that shows you other MIMOBOT unites. Check out the MIMOBOT site to see the full selection of characters.
Jul 26th
New Captain Morgan Spots Directed by Tom Hooper
Check out these classy new Captain Morgan spots from award-winning director Tom Hooper (King’s Speech, The Damned United):
The ads are part of the new “To Life, Love and Loot” campaign.
Jul 26th
