5/13
The Scrapple in the Apple
The fifteenth anniversary of one of the biggest fights of our time – Geraldo Rivera v. Frank Stallone, courtesy of genius promoter Howard Stern. Geraldo got hisself a beatdizzle.

5/14
FIGJAM Is On Top of the World
Unsilent recaps Lefty’s big win at the Players Championship and predicts great things for him in the near future. “The idea that a player as volatile as Mickelson could overhaul his swing just months before Sawgrass and come out as a champion is a testament to his phenomenal skills.”

England über alles
On this day 69 years ago, during the ill-fated appeasement period of England’s approach to Nazi Germany, the English football team raised the Nazi salute before a friendly with Germany at the Olympic Stadium in Berlin.

5/16
Symphony for the Dodgers in D
Noted composer and arranger Robert Russell Bennett wrote a symphony for his beloved Brooklyn Dodgers, and debuted it on May 16, 1941. “…it began with a rousing andante – “The Dodgers Win” – followed by a mournful dirge – “The Dodgers Lose.” The scherzo opened with a bassoon exchange that was supposed to symbolize Dodgers’ president Larry MacPhail’s famous offer of the Brooklyn Bridge and Prospect Park to Cleveland for Bob Feller.”

K.O.W. – La Pantera
Our No Mas Knockout of the Week features a key figure in Saturday night’s double-headed Hydra of a fight card on HBO – Edison Miranda, La Pantera. “One wild punch – on the top of Gibbs’ head no less – and Willie was crosseyed. Ridiculous ending, too, as Gibbs waits till the ten-count and then stands up, baffled as to what’s going on. The vacancy in his eyes tells the tale nicely. He’d been read the Miranda rights, with a couple of lefts thrown in for good measure.”

5/17
Mo Rocca v. Renzo Gracie
In a feeble attempt to make up for the absence of this week’s Sharpshootin’ with The Franchise, Large burdens us with some of the AOL noodling he’s been doing with Mo Rocca. This one takes place in Renzo Gracie’s gym at least, and does feature a terrible Paris Hilton wig.

I looked at my watch… I looked at my wrist… I punched myself in the face with my fist
A New Yorker piece tells the tale of Norman Mailer’s search for the perfect punch-sound. “He hit himself at least twenty times – in the face and in the chest – until we finally got it right. I saved that sound effect, and I’ve used it in about twenty movies since. I always tell other directors, ‘You hear that? That’s Norman Mailer punching himself. He’s in your movie.’”

5/18
Birthday Smackdown
A full roster of No Masian birthdays today, including Tina Fey, a snooker champion, two British footballers and a Pope.

Mr. Crazy… meet Mr. Crazier
Greg LeMond… what else is there to say? Evidently the fact that he was sexually abused as a child caused Floyd Landis to test positive for steroids. At least that’s how I understand it.

The No Mas Friday Caption Contest
Congratulations to Kevin, our winner of last week’s Barry Bonds contest. This week’s event features – who else? – Greg LeMond, with a “Darryl – Say No to Drugs” jammie on the line.

First let’s begin with the winner of last week’s contest, which comes to us courtesy of Kevin:

I did not eat Bobby Bonilla, next
question please.

Kevin, you made us laugh, you clever son of a Barry you, and thus you are the proud owner of a brand new BALCO shirt in Giants black and orange. Send me or I-berg your address so we can send along the goods.

And now, onto this week’s contest. We hate to have to continue on the same theme as last week, but… how can we pass this one up? For a prize, how about a “Darryl – Just Say No to Drugs” special? It’s appropriate in reference to a steroid case where increasingly it seems that everyone involved is out of their minds on crack.

So get cracking, No Masians. Win yourself the aformentioned Darryl shirt by providing us with the best caption for the picture below. Send your entries to me (large@nomas-nyc.com) and I-berg (ci@nomas-nyc.com). And lest you be uncertain, yes… it’s Greg LeMond.

What… what… just WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON HERE?

The Roid Landis case took another crazy turn yesterday, when Ole Supercrazy himself, a.k.a. Greg LeMond, testified that he had been sexually abused as a child (evidently he had not been informed that this case was about steroid use in cycling) and that Landis’s manager had called him to threaten to expose that information if he took the stand.

The amazing thing is that it seems like LeMond had nothing really to add to the proceedings, other than the fact of his sexual abuse. As to Roid Landis, all he did was report that he gave Landis advice after the first positive test came through last summer, which began (as does seemingly every sentence out of Greg LeMond’s mouth) by telling him that he had been sexual abused, and then boiled down to “look, if you’re guilty, you should come clean.”

Obviously, this is advice that Landis was not and will never be interested in hearing. Something tells me that five years from now, he’ll be out in Central Park with a bullhorn accosting people as to the details of how his “B” sample of urine was tampered with. With people walking by thinking – “Hey, isn’t that the guy who sexually abused Greg LeMond?”

Stay tuned for tomorrow’s testimony, when Lance Armstrong admits to the courtroom that he has genital warts.

LeMond says he was threatened not to testify (ESPN.com)

A lot of top-notch No Masian birthdays to celebrate today. Here’s the rundown – four footballers (including an gap-toothed English legend) and a football enthusiast who happened to be Pope, four baseballers (including two Hall-of-Famers, one of whom is a No Masian linchpin), two tennis players (both of whom are icons of style and substance), a Chinese martial-arts hero and a Japanese golfer, a member of the 1996 national champion Kentucky Wildcats, the reigning world-champion in snooker, the first Finn to be elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame, the best quarterback to ever come out of Texas and an acid-tongued comedienne from Upper Darby who makes Large all doe-eyed and shit.

MUST-SEE NO MAS TV – ANOTHER SATURDAY DIFECTA

Preakness Stakes
NBC, 5 p.m.

Jermain Taylor v. Cory Spinks
Edison Miranda v. Kelly Pavlik
HBO, 10:15 p.m.

No, it’s not the Derby and then Oscar/Floyd, but it’s still a pretty damn good day. You got the Preakness Rematch of Street Sense and Hard Spun, and then two exciting middleweight bouts on HBO in which the undercard is actually the more interesting fight, but the main event is no slouch either. So enjoy your Saturday, No Masians, and let’s hope these halcyon days of fightin’ and the ponies continue.

BEST OF THE REST

5/18
Friday Night Smackdown
CW, 8 p.m.
Edge holds a big World Championship celebration. Surprisingly, a surprise guest shows up.

Zahir Raheem v. Cristobal Cruz
ESPN2, 9 p.m.
All right look, obviously this is no Miranda/Pavlik we’re talking about here, but Zahir is Philly-born and so I give him love. He hasn’t actually won a bout since he shocked Erik Morales in September of 2005. Cruz, meanwhile, has been around the block many times, and lost about once every four trips.

60 Minutes on Classic
ESPN Classic, 10 p.m.
A must-see interview of Lawrence Taylor. If you’ve never caught this one, you’re in for a treat. He laughs, he cries, he talks about strippers and blow. It’s vintage material.

5/19
Jockey
HBO, 10 a.m.
A doc that gets inside the lives of three jockeys – Shane Sellers, Randy Romero and Chris Rosier – and shows that, well, basically, they starve themselves worse than freakin ballerinas.

Play It As It Lays
Sundance, 12 p.m.
The TV Guide description of this movie reads thusly – “Tuesday Weld stars in this stylish adaptation of Joan Didion’s caustic novel about a disillusioned and self-destructive actress whose career and marriage are falling apart.” So yeah, I know what you’re thinking – man can I give that one a miss. But see, the title makes it seem like it’s about golf. So I’m curious. Does the actress golf? Is that what’s going on? I may have to Tivo this.

Aaron Pryor v. Alexis Arguello II
ESPN Classic, 1 p.m.
A fight that one can’t watch too many times. Not quite the brilliance of the epic first bout, but still a lot of excitement. It was definitely Hawk Time in this one.

Meldrick Taylor v. Buddy McGirt
ESPN Classic, 2 p.m. & 10 p.m.
Hopefully they’ll actually show it this time. They had this on the schedule last week and showed something else. Meldrick wins this one with a 12th round TKO.

Ringside
ESPN Classic, 8 p.m.
The Sugar Ray Robinson edition of Ringside that originally ran last year. Lots of Bert Sugar for Sugar Ray, but whattya gonna do? There’s a lot of Lamotta as well, and a good dose of Gene Fullmer too.

5/20
Back in the Day
Speed, 7:30 a.m.
This one goes back to the 1968 Atlanta 500 (remember it well…) which was won by Cale Yarborough. Man, they love ole Cale on this show.

Million Dollar Baby
CBS, 8 p.m.
Hillary Schwank and Co. make their CBS debut. To Baggiesboy’s Two Pressing Questions about this movie (why isn’t Maggie immediately named champion on a disqualification? how does Eastwood just walk into the hospital, kill Maggie, and then walk out without seeing another soul?), I would like to add my own – why, instead of the preposterous “she breaks her neck on the stool freak accident” plot, didn’t they just have her get fatally injured in the ring, as often happens to fighters? I guess that would have been… what? Not tragic enough?

Searching for Bobby Fischer
ESPN Classic, 8 p.m.
It’s not exactly a crowded genre, but this is undoubtedly the best movie ever made about chess (yes, I take it over The Seventh Seal – I’ve always thought Death was overrated as far as chess goes).

There’s a great “Talk of the Town” piece in the May 21st New Yorker about a reunion for the cast and crew of Norman Mailer’s admittedly awful movie Tough Guys Don’t Dance (awful book, too, just awful). Evidently, despite the prevalent awfulness of everything to do with the film, the people who made it had the times of their lives together, which was largely a function of the magnanimity of the director, Mr. Mailer himself.

So they recently had a twentieth anniversary party at Mailer’s place in Brooklyn Heights. It sounded like a good time, but the one detail about it that caught my eye was the last one, concerning Mailer’s obsessive search for the perfect sound of an actual punch, as opposed to the very fake, dramatic whaps! and whams! that we are used to hearing in the average Rocky or Steven Seagal movie.

Leslie Shatz, the sound director of Tough Guys, told the story at the party:

“Norman said, ‘The sounds of punches in movies are all phony…’ He wanted me to record his own punches. He was a boxer, of course. So we were in my cutting room with a portable digital recorder, and I remember thinking at the time, I’m watching Norman Mailer hit himself and I’m not stopping him. He hit himself at least twenty times – in the face and in the chest – until we finally got it right. I saved that sound effect, and I’ve used it in about twenty movies since. I always tell other directors, ‘You hear that? That’s Norman Mailer punching himself. He’s in your movie.’”

Tough Guy (newyorker.com)

Lately, I’ve been moonlighting a little on my No Masian duties and producing some web shorts for Mo Rocca’s 180 blog on AOL. But as you can see from the video below, I’ve brought a little of the No Mas flavor to the task. For this skit about self-defense tips for Paris Hilton in jail, I took Mo to the great Renzo Gracie’s gym on West 30th Street in Manhattan. Renzo himself wasn’t there, but we did work with Leo Leite, who is a former world champion in both judo and Brazilian jiu-jitsu. We also worked with a very kind (and very violent) woman named Rosie, who really tore Mo a new one. I gotta hand it to ole Mo on that score – she roughed him up good and he took it like a man.

There is no Sharpshootin this week – Franchise is off doing whatever it is he does (I think he might actually be an ultimate fighter by now) so this is going to have to serve as our dose of MMA for the week. You hear that Franchise? This is what we get when you take an unscheduled vacation – Mo Rocca fighting chicks in a bad wig.

Washington v. Michigan
ESPN Classic, 2 p.m.
The legendary 1978 Rose Bowl, which features a miraculous but failed comeback effort by Schembechler’s finest and some heroics by one Warren Moon, who was Washington’s QB at the time and also, as the picture on the right attests, was sporting himself quite a righteous fro.

Any Which Way You Can
AMC, 3:30 p.m.
Maybe it’s overkill, but I don’t know – I just feel like I have to point out whenever this movie is on national television. Read my review/love letter here.

TNA iMPACT!
Spike, 9 p.m.
Who is the NWA Heavyweight title? Is it Kurt Angle? Is it Sting? Does Christian deserve to retain the title? Sunday’s PPV left us with more questions than answers but everything should be resolved tonight. We hope.

Varsity Blues
Showtime, 9:05 p.m.
If we go out and half-ass it ’cause we’re scared, then we’ll always wonder if we were really good enough. But if we go out there and give it all we’ve got… that’s heroic. You guys wanna be heroes?

The Ultimate Fighter 5,
Spike, 10 p.m.
The final two matches of the quarterfinals are featured. BJ Penn desperately needs his team to sweep these fights to avoid looking like the worse coach in TUF history.

Big fights this weekend, and freebies no less, as Saturday night’s HBO card features two noteworthy middleweight battles – Edison Miranda v. Kelly Pavlik and the undisputed middleweight champ Jermain Taylor v. Cory Spinks.

I can’t say I have very high hopes for Cory Spinks against Jermain – Cory probably could still make 147 comfortably, while Jermain is a freaking light heavyweight in there. We’ve already seen what a smaller man with heart – Kassim Ouma – can do against a giant 160 like Jermain, and that’s not a whole hell of a lot. I predict Spinks goes down for the count, possibly in the first four rounds.

Miranda/Pavlik, on the other hand, is just the kind of fight that gets fight fans licking their chops. The nicknames alone hearken to a showdown of consequence – The Ghost versus The Panther. It’s some like Legion of Doom-type shit. Not to mention that both of these guys have power, both are legitimate threats to Jermain’s title, and only one man will come out of this bout with a shot at it. Oh I love it when something is actually at stake in a fight – all the questions surrounding it become infinitely more interesting. Will Pavlik be able to handle Miranda’s pressure? Will Miranda’s clumsiness and inexperience finally prove his downfall?

To whet your appetite, our No Mas Knockout of the Week revisits La Pantera’s one-round destruction of Willie Gibbs this past December. One wild punch – on the top of Gibbs’ head no less – and Willie was crosseyed. Ridiculous ending, too, as Gibbs waits till the ten-count and then stands up, baffled as to what’s going on. The vacancy in his eyes tells the tale nicely. He’d been read the Miranda rights, with a couple of lefts thrown in for good measure.

On this day in 1941, famed composer and arranger Robert Russell Bennett debuted a new symphony on his radio show, Russell Bennett’s Notebook. It was titled “Symphony for the Dodgers in D.” Bennett was born and raised in Kansas City but he moved to New York in 1916 at the age of 22. He had always been a baseball enthusiast and he found immediate kinship with the Bums in Brooklyn.

Based on my research, there is no existing recording of this symphony, which is quite a shame (if anyone out there has any information about this, please send it along). Evidently, it began with a rousing andante – “The Dodgers Win” – followed by a mournful dirge – “The Dodgers Lose.” The scherzo opened with a bassoon exchange that was supposed to symbolize Dodgers’ president Larry MacPhail’s famous offer of the Brooklyn Bridge and Prospect Park to Cleveland for Bob Feller. The whole thing ended with Red Barber, the team’s radio announcer, doing a mock radio call of a ninth-inning walkoff home-run victory over the Giants.

In retrospect, it seems like this piece of music may have had magical powers. In 1941, Brooklyn won its first pennant in 21 years and its first since taking the name “Dodgers” in 1932. Unfortunately for Brooklynites, even a rousing symphony couldn’t address what would be one of the borough’s main problems for many Octobers to come – the damn Yankees. The Bums lost the ’41 World Series to the Yanks, four games to one.