Well, the ridiculous debate over who’s funnier – men or women – is trending all over the Internet again. I’m quite sure this competition goes back to caveman days when one guy would club another in the balls, igniting guffaws amongst the other dudes and polite chuckles from the ladies – survival chuckles, if you will, so the men would just get the hell out of the cave already and kill some damn dinner – at which point the chicks would crack themselves up with sophisticated (for the times anyway), observational humor at the expense of their Neanderthal husbands.
Ah, plus ca change…
Anyway, if you distill all the studies, it seems men are just funnier to other men — even though they are, ironically and pathetically, mostly using humor to get laid.
If you ask me, of any group, gay men are more naturally amusing than anyone – at the other end of the spectrum being the Lutheran choir director.
Now, I’d like to bring up a premise that I fear will be much harder to prove, but I believe has merit – at least as it pertains to me personally.
Women know as much about sports as men.
I know, sounds crazy, but let me rephrase a bit: Women who do know about sports are often more knowledgeable than their Y chromosome-bearing counterparts.
I’ve got no hard data to back this up – just years of experience – but I can tell you I am sick of hearing: “Wow, you really do know a lot about football.”
Actually, I kind of love hearing it, even though it’s a slam to my gender.
I cannot tell you how many dudes I have taken down (and as an all-too-often unpleasant side effect – turned on) with my football prowess. And though I admittedly know the most about my beloved Packers, I also know the game inside out, and keep up on all the teams – to the point of winning a Chicago Bears trivia contest (know your enemy!).
Just yesterday at our friendly neighborhood video store, I felled three male Bears fans single-handedly – torching one cocky dude for mixing up Vince Lombardi with Curly Lambeau and smoking another for having zero knowledge of Jay Cutler’s QB stats.
BAM!
A few weeks ago my unsuspecting victims were two pumped up young guys decked out in authentic NFL jerseys. Mistakenly assuming I was sporting my Clay Matthews attire because I “loved his hair” or thought his “butt was cute”, they stepped into a heap of statistical whoop ass in a Packer-Bear offensive strategy debate.
It got so bad at one point that the friend, who had long since surrendered, was begging his buddy to give up, oozing an air of desperation that rivaled that of a reluctant sidekick in a botched robbery.
“Yo, step off! You’re making a fool of yourself, bro.” (Nervously looks around.) “She knows her shit.”
POW!
That one was a little tougher than the video store victory, but the ending was even sweeter as the six-foot-plus Bears fan shook my hand on the way out, shaken and jittery, muttering “Hey, go Pack, unless you’re playing us.”
For one of my proudest moments, we need to travel back in time to the 1980s when, in a nightclub, the innocent, interception-prone Mike Tomczak, (Bears quarterback at the time) walked into my web, offered to buy me a drink, then eventually fled our conversation, confidence shaken, admitting his team was ill-prepared for Sunday’s game against the Pack.
SACK! KERPLAT! OOF!
So, as Faye Dunaway articulated so well in Mommy Dearest – “Don’t f#@k with me, fellas.”
And hey — go Pack!
I feel that Jay Cutler’s stats are best described more qualitatively than quantitatively. As in “Sucks”.
Very cool. Lets have some fun and give you a chance to show off. Now that the Broncos have released Orton should the Bears claim him? Would they use him to start or as a backup to Caleb Hanie? What do you think of the Bears playoff chances now that Cutler is out? Would getting Orton change your opinion?
Ok you get the idea. 🙂 I know you are a Packer backer but since you like talking about the Besrs I’m wondering what you think of their current mess?
Well, Ted, I only wish I had more space and time for this reply. Number one: Though Cutler is admittedly the best QB the Bears have had since Sid Luckman, he will never be in the top echelon due to one issue: character. He is, frankly, a putz. He pouts (I call him J-Po), calls out his teammates, and is at his worst when the chips are down. The Bears enable him because they would not recognize a great QB from a woodchuck with shoulder pads and still operate under the old school notion that “defense wins championships”. Not anymore. You need a top level, high scoring offense these days. I believe the Bears playoff chances are exactly the same whether Cutler is at the helm, or Caleb Haney, or Mr. Haney from “Green Acres”. They will perhaps make it, but be eliminated by a team with a solid offense. Getting Orton makes sense to me, so they probably won’t. And if I were him, I would turn them down.
Oops. I meant Hanie. Looking ahead to Green Acres joke. My bad.
You know my proudest sports moment? When I had to give a powerpoint presentation in front of the president of CBS sports, his statisticians and his producers. They realized I knew what I was talking about about halfway through the presentation. Then, they lightened up and it was a good time.
Sad, yet typical, that it took that long… awesome, though…
Your sports knowledge clearly flies in the face of those men who poo-pooed tile IX legislation back in the 70’s. Go Lisa
(:
A friend of mine was chatting a girl up in a bar and I brought up the subject of the offside rule in soccer and watched as he ‘explained’ to the quiet unassuming girl smiling back a him, exactly what it meant. I just happened to know that she played soccer for Finland. The technical, expert way she told him he was wrong was so sweet to watch!
Cool. Must be a Scandinavian thing.