Big Perks

We've all seen it happen, if it hasn't in fact happened to us.

Guy breaks up with his longtime girlfriend, who is pretty cool by most accounts and all of his friends actually like, to play the field, chase some hotter chick, etc. He fails to get the hot chick, or does for a while then it fizzles out, or he plays the field for a few months and has a blast, but eventually it's going to get old.

Then, 6 to 8 months go by - he's getting tired of being single at this point - and he runs into his ex at a bar somewhere. She has lost that little bit of extra weight she had always carried around, bought herself a whole new wardrobe, and looks smoking hot. He goes over to talk to her, and she is not only still cool, but also has come into some money via some distant rich relative dying and is about to embark on an all-expense paid 3-month sightseeing trip around the world... with her new douchebag boyfriend who plays right wing for the Providence Bruins.

This sends our guy into a deep, dark, month-long depression.

At this point you might be asking yourself where I'm going with this. Well, let me show you:

Kendrick Perkins lost 31-lbs this offseason!!!

If Perk starts beast-ing on people all of a sudden because he can finally get up and down the court without looking like he's moving at the same speed as a scrambling Tom Brady, I'm growing [an even more ridiculous] beard and going on suicide watch until July.

God's son returns?

Did you hear this rumor yet!!!!

The one where Timothy Richard Tebow broke up Lindsey Vonn's marriage and is now dating her?

That's right. A rumor that the should-have-been-aborted-miracle-baby, born-again Christian, Filipino circumcising, saving-himself-for-marriage, inaccurate as all hell, starting Bronco's QB has landed super hot US Olympian Alpine goddess Lindsey Vonn.

Some guys have all the luck.

If this is somehow true (it's not, if there is a fair and loving God, this is not true), then the debate is over. Tebow is the second-coming of Christ, and this time he's decided "You know what, I'm Jesus fucking Christ! Sure, I'll prepare the army of the Lord for judgement day in 2012, but I'll be damned if I don't get to have a little fun along the way this time around!"

Screw it. As discussed here previously, Julia Mancuso is my favorite hot US winter Olympian anyway. (Nastia Liukin gets the summer and overall titles).

U.S. Skiing's Massive Fail...

We here at the Lager have a bone to pick.

It’s been bothering us for two weeks now, but it finally came to a boiling point last night, and we can’t hold back any longer.

Back in December or January, or whenever it was that NBC started repeatedly bashing the American public over the skull with their Olympic coverage promos, one thing really struck us here at the Lager: Lindsey Vonn is a freakin’ BABE!!!

The Sports Illustrated cover, the gold medal potential… it would be fair to say we were quite smitten.

But then the games started, and the slow sinking disappointment began to set in.

See, the more we here at the Lager see of Lindsey, the less attractive she becomes. One could call it the Hilary Duff Corollary. When you first see Hilary Duff, much like when we first saw Vonn on NBC’s Olympic promos (because, let’s be honest, no-one gives a shit about any winter sports besides hockey outside of this quadrennial two week period, and if you had started asking random people on the street who Vonn was prior to December/November of 2009, 85% of them would have erroneously guessed she was an American Idol contestant), you think here’s a hot, blonde, all-American girl… what’s not to love.

Then, as you see more and more of Hilary (like with Lindsey), you start to notice all the little flaws: “Well, she’s always carried a few extra pounds,” “Have you seen her without makeup? It’s like night and day,” “You know what, they’re really not as big as I thought they were,” etc., etc. For instance, this is not the same female that is pictured here.

To make things worse, as far as we here at the Lager can tell, Vonn has roughly the same emotional disposition as a piece of driftwood. She is about as interesting/personable as pre-Ambien/fire-hydrant/sex-rehab Tiger Woods.

And she sucks at skiing to boot!

Allow us to elaborate, clearly Vonn is a world class athlete who is capable of dominating her sport – but in this post-Michael Phelps era, if you want to shine as an Olympian, you have to SHINE baby!!! A gold in one event, crashes that keep you off the podium in two more events (Giant Slalom and Super Combined), and a bronze in an event in which YOU ARE THE REIGNING WORLD CHAMPION (Super-G) is simply not going to cut it.

Now, here’s where the massive fail on the part of the U.S. Alpine team comes in; some brainiac marketing director behind team USA decided to make Vonn the face of U.S. skiing for this Olympics… WHEN THEY HAD JULIA MANCUSO RIGHT THERE!

Let’s examine:

Mancuso is HOT! Really hot! And she’s funny (see her tweets regarding Tiger Woods’ press conference last week), personable, and wears her heart on her sleeve when she races.

When she won her Silver Medal in the Super Combined she was uncontrollable – rolling around on the ground at the finish line, kicking her legs in the air and screaming – and when she finished her second attempt at her not-so-spectacular first Giant Slalom run yesterday, she collapsed in a heap at the finish line like she had just been punched in the gut.

We certainly can’t speak for the rest of the American public, but we here at the Lager enjoy it when our athletes show a little emotion. It let’s us know they’re human, and not some over-marketed, politically correct, PR-contrived hype machines.

AND, Mancuso has managed to finish in the top-10 in all four of her events! Two Silver medals, an 8^th place finish in Giant Slalom despite yesterday’s fiasco one her first run, and a 9^th place finish in the Super-G.

Look, we get that Mancuso has performed at a higher level than expected, and Vonn at a lower level than expected – but not by a whole lot in either case. We also get that as a marketing/PR person with the U.S. Olympic team, you have to market Vonn, she’s your star… BUT, why not market both of them as a pair? Aren’t two hot skiing chicks (well, one hot skiing chick and one masquerading as a hot skiing chick), both who have a chance at medaling, going to attract more viewers than one?

By making it all about Vonn, the U.S. Alpine team marketing people, or whoever, have made it quite difficult for U.S. fans to feel good about the U.S. ski team if Vonn isn’t performing at a high level, a dilemma that was highlighted by Mancuso’s recent comments on the subject, in which she said that, “People (athletes on the U.S. team) are having a hard time reaching their potential because it's such a struggle for attention. You come to meetings after races and it's like it's a bad day if Lindsey didn't do well."

This dynamic is further examined in this Howard Bryant piece for ESPN.com, but the main point is that the U.S. Alpine Skiing team is having one of its best showings in Winter Olympic history, but the casual fan isn’t grasping that fact because all the focus from fans and media alike is on Vonn and her struggles. Why? Because that’s what was force fed to us for the last three months, Lindsey Vonn, Lindsey Vonn, Lindsey Vonn!

So, we here at The Lager feel for ya Julia, this Olympics should not have been the Lindsey Vonn show. So to the marketing idiot at NBC/the Team U.S.A. marketing department who screwed this one up, we would like to issue a simple “Nice job, dickhead.”

And to Julia, we just want to let you know that it’s not all about Lindsey all the time, because at the very least you’ve gained a few fans, fans who normally don’t even like skiing, but who will now follow you for the rest of your career as a direct result of Vonn-fest 2010: all of us here at the Lager.