i was listening to KFAN in the car this afternoon. dan “the common man” cole was on; if you’ve never listened to common, his shtick is a little hard to explain. he does no prep. he has no guests. there are a lot of extended pauses. the only “sport” that usually gets covered is his golf game. and yet… he’s entertaining. not sure why. i digress.

anyways. he makes some off-handed reference to something called chess boxing; i assume it’s a joke. however, after doing a wee bit of internet research, i’ve discovered that he wasn’t joking– it’s real. and, it’s basically exactly what it sounds like: opponents play alternating rounds of boxing and chess. if someone knocks out the opponent or puts that person into checkmate, the match is over. if there is a stalemate in the chess game, the person with the highest boxing score wins.

let me just say that this is a sport that i can fully get behind.

mostly because this is what an average chess player looks like. and this is what an average boxer looks like. fantastic. the juxtaposition is fantastic. would it be awesome to have a couple of beers on a friday night and hit a chessboxing tournament? and the best part: they’re taking applications!

unfortunately, it looks like they’re still taking themselves pretty seriously. when that wears off, i look forward to the first season of Celebrity Chessboxing on VH1.

happy weekend.

That’s the question posed to me the other day at lunch. By my milk carton. Ok, I’ll grant you that’s not the exact phrasing, but frankly it was close to that. Who am I to resist the (eventual) exploration of the topic?

As it turns out, they don’t. It’s an oily red secretion that in actuality is a sun block and skin moisturizer. As such, the question isn’t totally out of left field. Still, part of me wonders if making kids ponder whether or not hippos sweat blood over lunch is really the best idea…