Frankie Boyle fashions himself a comedian. He's also someone who obviously doesn't read.
Boyle gave his two cents on Donald Trump giving an award to Conan, the dog who helped snuff out Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in Syria. Mr. Tough Guy leader of ISIS blew himself up rather than be caught and, being the super-duper brave man he was, took three children with him as human shields. Now, we all know how it went down but Boyle had a problem with Conan getting an award because two children were killed. 0-for-2, dingus.
Anyway …
The kids are alright
Canada very nearly pulled it off at the Davis Cup finals in Spain late last month.
They had quite the run in the new format, which saw the top 18 countries in terms of team rankings enter into a round-robin, followed by an eight-team playoff, but Spain was always going to be too tough to beat, especially on home soil.
photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
Still, Denis Shapovalov, Vasek Pospisil and Felix Auger-Aliassime played out of their skin to get to the final and looked awfully good doing it. Almost made us wonder where Milos Raonic was. Oh, right – he was busy nursing yet another injury. Would he have made a difference? No, because the rest of the team stepped up.
Pospisil had the week of his life and turned in some impressive performances. Not bad for someone who's coming off of back surgery and was merely hoping to be in shape for next season. But because Raonic came up lame (again), he was pressed into action and didn't disappoint. Auger-Aliassime was hurt but managed to make himself available to play against Spain in the final.
Shapovalov was always going to be Canada's go-to guy and he was awesome, proving that he is the real deal and his antics from two years ago in the Davis Cup – drilling a chair umpire in the eye with a ball after losing a game and being disqualified for it – were just a one-off.
Auger-Aliassime even said himself that Spain was too good and they were, to be perfectly honest. The good thing that comes from this is that the kids seem to be alright and it's proof that someone like Raonic isn't needed in order to bring success.
A novel yet touching approach
Professional sports teams like doing weird and funny things with their social medal accounts. But one Italian soccer club has done something unexpected but very touching.
Like other clubs, AS Roma announced its summer signings on Twitter but instead of just showing a picture of the latest big-money signature on the dotted line, it also published photos of missing children – 109 from 12 different countries in 72 posts to be exact – and asking for help in finding them. Now, you're probably wondering why they would do something like that – putting sadness alongside happiness and opening up wounds for families. It worked like a charm, though, as the club's publishing of photos helped to find five children that hadn't been seen for a long time. Now, the club wasn't responsible for finding the five children in question but it certainly played a supporting role.
Part of the trick was that whenever a player was signed from a certain country, the club would show the image of a child from that country knowing it would get more attention. It would go viral, you see, and it would be spread around the world faster than by simply mentioning it in a press release or something similar.
If you're old enough to remember, it's along the same lines as the video for Runaway Train by Soul Asylum, which featured missing children as part of it. AS Roma's campaign saw some amazing results and there's nothing bad you can say about it because even if it resulted in helping to find one missing child, it would have been a success.
And finally …
Good Idea: Scoring a goal to clinch victory.
Bad Idea: Having that goal come from the opposing goalkeeper in his own area.
We take you to Mexico for one of those moments which shouldn't happen but is always fun – and funny – to watch.
Antonio Rodriguez of Chivas Guadalajara managed to score from inside his own area against Veracruz on Nov. 23 and this only happened because Veracruz sent its goalkeeper to give the team an extra man to try and get the tying goal late in the game.
Welp, it didn't happen as Rodriguez was able to corral the ball off of a Veracruz corner kick and looked upfield for his options. Seeing none, he decided to simply crack the ball downfield and, sure enough, it had enough mustard to skip all the way into the Veracruz goal.
High-risk and high-reward in this case, for sure, but this almost always never ends well and besides, isn't it cool to see a golakeeper score a goal in soccer that isn't in a penalty shootout?
Until next time, folks …