The ESPYs Running Diary

We’re live at the ESPYs in sunny LA for what is sure to be a roast of Lebron James, and a toast to Aaron Rodgers. Obviously, I’m one of 174 Americans watching the red carpet show and from the looks of it, ESPN has their full posse of blonde women who know nothing about sports, but are amazing at awkward jokes in interviews with athletes that lead to painfully stunted answers, employed for the evening. Sorry, that sentence was almost as awkward. Nary ten minutes ago, Kevin Love and Blake Griffin were backed into the “no homo” moment of the night as Erin Andrews brought up how they discussed each other’s outfits/matching Ray Bans.

Truly serious journalists working for ESPN this evening.

Aside from that, some chick named Jenn Brown is backstage interviewing players who can’t stop thinking about getting her drunk after the show, and Michelle Beadle ambitiously plays the less-hot-but-cooler-than-Erin Andrews card. Speaking of odd sexual tension, Brian Wilson is obviously in a tuxedo unitard, and Justin Bieber has stolen the show with his boyish good looks and inability to be taller than Selena Gomez. The show is about to begin, Tunde is going to be in and out making hilarious comments, so let’s get to the diary!

9:00: One of the coolest highlight montages is consistently the ESPYs show open. You forget about some plays, remember others, and see plays you must have missed during a long weekend bender trippin’ on Paoti with Spider Monkey off the coast of St. Barth’s.

9:05: The athlete’s who died in the past year montage reminds us that Sparky Anderson wasn’t already dead.

9:08- Seth Meyers comes out for his montage. Somehow this dude just soared onto the scene because he looks oddly like the special ed kid Timmy from South Park, and for no other discernible reason.

Timmy.

Seth.

– Seth busts out what seemed like 7 consecutive lame Brian Wilson beard jokes.

-Seth only makes one real joke about the Heat and one backhanded joke about them. ESPN and Nike obviously forced that limit, otherwise Seth would have made not one, not two, not three, not four, not five, not SIX jokes about them.

– Seth does a series of “Dodgers are so poor jokes” with his best being they no longer have a 3rd base coach, they just put up a mirror that reflects the first base coach.

– Seth says Yao Ming announced he is ‘retiring from basketball, but he could just be retiling his bathroom,’ arguably his best joke of the entire montage that only drew awkward laughter until people got it, but he had already moved on.

9:21- Consensus on Seth’s grade sat at a 6 within the six humans currently living in our apartment that was legally rented to just four humans.

9:22- Emmanuelle Chriqui comes on to present an award that I obviously forgot by now, because she’s talking and I haven’t heard a word she’s said. She’s in something black and sparkly and her hair is straight a perfect and she’s smiling, and I’m just mush.

Not even fair to other girls.

9:23 Turns out the award is for best breakout athlete. Jose Bautista is in this category with a bunch of rookies, a collegian, and an azn female golfer named three tiny syllables with a dash in there that formed her surname, too. Bautista is turning 31, and just followed up a 54 home run season with 31 at the All Star Break. Does this dude know this is the post-steroids era? Not 1997.

9:24- Blake Griffin wins the award, camera cuts to Cam Newton, and he is STUNNED. Blake thanks “Sloan” for the award– solid move, Blake. Tunde and I aren’t sure how we feel about the new race that’s been created where half-white/black people are now dominating sports. Tunde obviously has a leg up on creating such an athlete in the future, since he is an athlete and I write a blog about them.

9:31- Chris Berman is out presenting a series of serious, uplifting stories from the year including Mark Herzlich’s recovery from bone cancer, and wounded warriors climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro. You could see Boomer shaking, while he held back one of his annoying voices with a last name pun and his own man-made sound effects.

9:35- Best Championship Performance ESPY goes to… Timmy Thomas of the Bruins! Seemingly a no-brainer, Tim is visibly shaken as he graciously thanks his teammates. Dude is like Brian Cardinal, only if Brian Cardinal was the best player in the NBA.

9:38- Video Spoof time brought to you by Blake Griffin and Kevin Love. This clip is legitimately funny, so you should just watch it. Now:

9:43- Maria Sharapova announced the winner for best upset: “The winner is, THE VCU!” I know, I know, it’s awesome when people who speak English as probably a third language put definite articles where they don’t belong in everyday speech.

9:50- They try to do a live skit about the Vancouver Kissing Couple. Basically, it was the worst, least funniest thing that has happened on TV since one of those animal cruelty/adoption ads you see on ABC Family after midnight with a Sarah McLachlin song in the background. At this point, I’m getting physically upset at how unfunny this thing was. Who previews these things and decides they might make anybody laugh? Chris Berman?

9:53- Yes, the Vancouver Kissing Couple skit lasted three painfully long minutes. Kind of like any three-minute interview involving Erin Andrews asking an athlete questions.

9:54- Justin Timberlake is out with Aaron Rodgers, and he’s obviously just being his overacting, trying-too-hard-to-be-funny self. I miss the days when comedic actors were comedians, and not lead singers of boy-bands who started banging Hollywood actresses, so they thought they could act, too.

9:56- Best College Athlete award, and I’m not loving the lax bros chances here. Cam Newton is literally sick to his stomach as he loses another award, and this time it’s to a white guy. As Tunde has so eloquently said, “I mean if it’s a fan vote, the white boy is gonna win. If they ain’t got no internet, how they supposed to vote?!” Before the award was given out, I said Cam’s got this (since he did have arguably the greatest season in college football history), with the caveat that if it’s a fan vote (and it is) Jimmer has it on lock. Bang.

10:04- Kiefer Sutherland is out to present the Arthur Ashe Courage Award. Generally the best part of the ESPYs, we get the added bonus of Matthew McConaughey narrating the story. Maybe we will be brought to tears, similar to his compelling monologue on the highway of the Brooklyn Bridge to win back Kate Hudson’s heart in “How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days.”

Dewey Bozella served over 30 years in prison for a murder he didn’t commit. He was offered parole multiple times if he just admitted to the murder. He refused and finally was proven innocent. Total bad ass. He boxed his way through Sing Sing prison, and hopes to open a gym to train young kids in the community. The situation is even more dire because the gym he currently trains at was just closed down. Something tells me there are a couple people in the audience tonight to help him out. Just sayin’…

10:28- Best Male Athlete intros and Rafael Nadal better not win. I’m fine with any foreigner, but this man-capris wearing fool, taking this award, even a German.

10:30- Dirk takes it… then leans over and kisses his gorgeous African-AmerGerman(?!) wife. So obviously, he’s going to be making the new superbreed Tunde is so worried about. Just picture a 7-foot light skinned fellow burying one-footed jumpers, and jumping over whatever new South Korean car is being made in 2031. On a serious note, is there a reason we didn’t know Dirk’s wife was black? In the pool of all the racially intolerant nationalities who might marry outside their ethnicity, you have to figure the German guy with blonde hair and blue eyes wasn’t a favorite here.

Serena, in the flesh...

1032: Serena Williams breasts are out to announce the upcoming award to Best Female Athlete. I’m not sure where feminists stand nowadays.  They could be proud you can see 62% of Serena’s rack, since no society ruled by men should force her to conform to their ideals of appropriateness. Or, they could be mad that she just got every man’s attention and made us realize we were about to keep watching an award given out to a female athlete, just because we saw 62% of her rack. Total conundrum.

1034: Tim Tebow is out on stage with Brooklyn Decker. ESPN didn’t have to think long about which athlete posed the least threat to want to have a pre-martial, adulterous affair with her.

10:35- Britney’s “Till the World Ends” plays for the Best Female Athlete, and Lindsey Vonn “Did it again.” Tebow just nailed that double entendre: both using Britney, and the repeat award to a T-bow. Boom. I did it too.

Vonn uses her speech to ask Bieber to take a picture with her for her facebook page. Standard.

10:43- As a final bit of torture, Seth Meyers takes the stage following a commercial stepping over the Vancouver Kissing Couple. This joke is more dead than the entire opening montage of dead athletes combined.

10:45- Seth teams up with Bill Hader of SNL to do a “Dirk Nowitzki Academy for Awkward Basketball” skit. German jokes got uber repetitive in this one.

10:47- Kevin Love is on stage with some skinny-fat kid who ESPN tells us is Jonah Hill. Unless Jonah finally popped, this dude on stage being called Jonah Hill has just been released given his “Make a Wish.” Jonah Hill apparently lost 248 pounds without telling anybody. Almost all his fat is gone, besides the back of his neck, which looks like a cancerous tumor is still there. I don’t know what award is being presented because I can’t stop looking at skinny-fat Jonah Hill. Dude officially has no place in Hollywood now. I assumed he’d just get fatter and fatter until his heart exploded that fateful night he did too much coke. Now, he’s not even the funny ugly fat guy– he’s just ugly and chubby (and the kid from Two and a Half Men has that market cornered!). I can’t stop thinking about the amount of surgery required to tuck all that excess skin away. Hope he called Octomom’s plastic doctor.

10:51- Turns out the award was for best game, and the Eagles 4th quarter comeback against the Giants wins it. Pretty sure Brett Favre deserved this one for the game he kicked at Jenn Sturger.

10:59- Stu Scott is out to talk about the V Foundation in honor of Jim Valvano. The foundation has raised over $100 million to date, which only made me say: “Wait, that’s it?!” Susan G. Komen must be smoking that total, no?! I mean come on people, the V Foundation has been around for 18 years now, donate some money in the name of one of the greatest speeches ever given, ever. Google it and try not to get chills.

11:01- Anthony Robles is the V Foundation Award winner, and this should shock nobody. This dude was born with one leg, and went out and won the NCAA Championship in wrestling. Sure, he’s in a lower weight class than he should be because he’s missing 20% of his total weight (obviously didn’t have to Google that), but that doesn’t make this story any less inspiring. Plus, he went to Arizona State, so he obviously gotten more ass standing on one leg than anyone else in the history of mankind.

Anthony Robles, embarrasing an able-bodied person.

11:05- The story only gets better as we find out Robles’ birth dad ditched the family upon his birth. Then his mom got sick, and his stepdad bailed, too. Robles said he wanted to quit wrestling to get a job and help the family, but his mother refused. So, Robles obviously memorized an inspirational poem along the way and recited it to us. Yes, I am currently typing with goosebumps. I could not feel any worse about my life, than right now. Until right NOW, because I’m thinking about you reading this blog, and not even being the one who wrote it, so I feel a little better.

11:11 Cam Newton, Amber Heard and Cee Lo are out to present the award for best play, but let’s be serious, this has all the makings of a perfect threesome. Black dwarf. Black enormous physical specimen, white chick starring in an upcoming show about the original Playboy bunnies.

For the record, I don’t love the random dude in the MLS who scored a game-winning regular season goal in less-than-amazing fashion to win this one…but he is nominated.

Sure enough, Abby Wambach’s header in the final minute to tie the World Cup game against Brazil that happened three days ago, wins the award. Obviously, if Abby didn’t have the Bieber haircut, this goal would have never happened, ipso facto, Bieber just had the best play of the year. Standard.

11:17- Right on uffin cue, the Biebs in the flesh is presenting the final award of the evening with Danica Patrick. If his balls had dropped yet, he’d be considering ditching Selena for Danica by now. He might still bag Danica, though, because he’s Bieber. Anyway, the award is for Best Team, and the soundtrack to the nominees is Fabolous- “It’s My Time.” Easily one of the top three pump up songs of the last couple years.

Since the NHL won’t win this award, the Bruins are out, even though they probably deserve the award for what they overcame in the playoffs to win the Cup. America is voting, and since literally everybody in America hates Lebron (Miami is a part of Cuba, right) the Mavs win the award.

11:27- I’ll wrap this up as quickly as Seth Meyers did since we are over the 2,000 word mark, and quicker than Bieber in bed with Selena. I know this blog caught you all off guard because it’s been a few weeks since you last heard from me. No worries, one day I’ll give you an explanation. Until then…

Bieber straight killin' it.

Stay tuned…