Saturday, August 2, 2008

Sunday Smorgasbord!

David Duval: Smack Dab in the middle of a good 'ol fashioned catfight

Ouch! Duval talks shit, gets punked by a girl

Michelle Wie played host to a good ol' fashioned catfight in the days prior to the Reno-Tahoe Open this week. By skipping the Women's British Open qualifier to play in a PGA Tour event, Michelle caused quite a stir with some other big name female golfers including Annika Sorenstam and Paula Creamer.

David Duval, high on life after his 36-hole performance at the British Open, saw the catfight break out and just couldn't resist jumping in the middle. "I think she would be better off on the Futures Tour," said the cocky Duval.

Oh snap! That was before his opening-round 78, where Wie bested him by five shots. After a complete meltdown on the back nine on Friday, Wie still finished one shot ahead him. The Blazer thinks Duval might be better off on the Canadian Tour... at least for now.




Retief's Got Your Goose

First Regular God, and now the Golf God


The tour funnyman is at it again. And by tour funnyman we mean ... Retief Goosen. Known for his hilarious knee slappers after getting struck by lightning in 1984, Retief "'da Goose' Goosen has now targeted Tiger. After it was announced that Tiger would be out the rest of the season, Retief was asked what he thought now about his comments that Tiger was faking his knee injury. Retief replied something along the lines of, "I was just kidding."

Ha! There he goes again, leave it to 'da Goose to bring the zing, baby. Every time.

But Tiger didn't seem to find it very funny. Let's just hope the Golf God doesn't come down as hard as Regular God came down on him when 'da Goose pissed him off back in '84, (most likely with a similarly edgy "just kidding"-style zinger). You can bet a strike from the golf heavens would not have a positive effect on 'da Goose's game.

Even if Tiger doesn't think Retief's jokes are funny, golf viewers should feel privileged to have a someone like 'da Goose around (and not dead from a lightning strike). Someone who isn't so serious and who has the ability to leave you rolling on the floor laughing. Thanks Retief... We can always depend on you to lighten the mood.




Speak of the week


Smoookin'
Instead of saying into the wind, try into the smoke. "How's 12 playing today, is it into the smoke as usual?" This will certainly make you cooler. Smoking is also certain to make you cooler ... just ask Arnold Palmer.

Palmer is smoking up a storm

Which brings us to our final segment, the question we keep getting, the question that's been on everyone's minds:


What the hell happened to the Blazer's Blazin' Youtube Page, Bro? ... (That shit was hot!)

Why does that bring us to the final segment? Because it might actually be smokin' Arnold Palmer's fault, indirectly, that the Blazer's youtube page was disabled.

See, it all started back in 1960, with IMG consulting. Wait, no, actually it all started recently with the God Damned Golf Channel. Anyone up on the Blazer enough to ask what happened with the youtube page will certainly be aware of the ongoing feud the Blazer Corps has been having with it's arch nemesis, the Golf Channel, regarding the page.

The Blazer's youtube page, arguably the most successful of the various Green Blazer mediums (although this Green Blazer comic book/variety magazine is sure to take the golf world by storm. Brace yourselves, bros) was quite popular among golf enthusiasts, and bros, garnering more than a half a million views collectively. Among the more popular clips was Tiger Wood's camera click at the CA championship, where he threatened to "break the fucking neck" of a hypothetical photog, 120,000 views; Woody Austin sounds like President Bush, which is now immortalized in the July 17 celeb golf look-alike, 30,000 views; and, of course, the Kelly Tilghman lynch him in the back alley clip, which received more that 80,000 views in 48 hours before the golf channel claimed infringement and youtube took the clip down.

Which brings is to what happened to the page.

Perhaps youtube employs a "three strikes and you're out" policy. See, after the Kelly Tilghman incident, the Blazer received an e-mail indicating that "repeat incidents of copyright infringement will result in the deletion of [The Blazin'] account." Then, after the Blazer dissed the golf channel for stealing his celeb-golf look-alike idea, the golf channel retaliated, four days later, by claiming infringement on yet another Kelly Tilghman clip, entitled "Kelly Tilghman: Rusty after break." (See May 6 post.) Who knows, maybe it was Tilghman herself, as some corps members have suggested. Regardless, that represented strike two for the Blazer, if that is indeed youtube's policy.

Strike three is where IMG Media comes in. Apparently IMG is the actual owner of Sergio Garcia's big putt at the 2004 Rider Cup, which the Blazer had posted for no particular reason whatsoever. Much like Sergio himself, the clip was not a major winner, receiveng less than 400 views. But Mark McCormack got his billion-dollar panties in bundle over the clip anyway, and the next time the Blazer tried to log in (from the onboard computer in his blazewing), a very impersonal message informed him the account had been perminantely disabled.















CRAPPY SITE:
For being the number one name in sports marketing, the IMG Web site is actually quite crappy, complete with text extending off the page.

And how is any of this smokin' Arnie Palmer's fault?

According to wikipedia, the ultimate name in lazy men's research tools, "In 1960, after realizing the potential of sports marketing in the television age, Mark McCormack signed golfer Arnold Palmer as IMG's first client," thereby forming the company that would one day take down a major part of the Green Blazer's operation.

Oh but you haven't heard the last of the superhero columnist of golf, IMG, not by a longshot. The Blazer's not a vigilante hero, like the Batman. He operates within the confines of the law. And the law is this: The US copyright "fair use" clause allows creators to legally incorporate copyrighted work into their own works without permission of the copyright owner in certain situations, such as for purposes of criticism, satire, parody, and education.

It doesn't take the word "satire" appearing in the column head to realize the Blazer is an overt satirist. (Although the word satire actually does appear in some of the Blazer's headings.)

No more youtube, whatever will we do? For now we'll just have to rely on Myspace Video, Google Video, Yahoo Video, MSN Soapbox, Youtomb, iFilm, Dailymotion, Bliptv, metacafe and reeltime.com for our video sharing needs. Not to mention the Blazer video site, which will also launch sometime in the future, which IMG will never hack. Unless, of course, they learn the Blazer's secret identity. But that, as Blazer fans know, is nearly impossible. Even the Slice Girls couldn't seduce the Blazer out of his mask. (See March 7 post.)

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