And the rest are that awesome too. Check them out here at Paul Rogers.

And if you don’t know the answer, you suck.

Quickly moving on from stuff that I know nothing about (e.g. current events, the recession, etc.), the Midnight Rider Tundra Tailgater (pictured below) was developed through Toyota’s partnership with Brooks & Dunn. Now, this truck is a tight ass truck. Brooks & Dunn, on the other hand, are…well, I have no freaking idea what/who they are, aside from a country music duo whose “involvement” in the design of this vehicle was probably equivalent to Eminem and Jay-Z’s “involvement” in the just-released DJ Hero (i.e. lend name to project, do nothing & reap benefits, namely in the form of cash money). Or maybe they’re awesome, hand-built every single one of these trucks and financed the entire operation; I have no idea though because, well, I don’t give a fuck about Brooks & Funn. I DO give a fuck about this truck, however, and officially want one (hint, hint - Chanukah is coming up friends…), so peep it here and the specs below:

(as always, click the picture for a not-much-closer look)

The Ultimate Tailgating Experience® occurs when you slide out the tailgate, exposing a Grill N Chill® cooking area from Go! Products.  The pull-out Grill N Chill features a cooking space with countertops, infrared barbeque, beverage tap and ice chest.  An electronically operated tonneau cover enhances your tailgate party with a bed-installed 42-inch flat screen TV and sound system by Kicker.  The sound system features a dual subwoofer system and a separate amp, four two-way speakers with tweeters and separate crossovers, and dual two-channel amps with separate equalizers and speaker control units.

[via Toyota and Like Cool]

[via Elitaste]

How badass?

[via (the almost entirely bomb ass) Letters of Note]

[via I’ve Made a Huge Tiny Mistake]

THE

ARE

ONCE AGAIN!!!

It really is hard to fathom, but after 25 years of title-less seasons, of excruciating playoff departures and of heart-breaking losses, the Philadelphia Phillies, professional sports’ first 10,000-loss team, have now advanced to their second consecutive World Series by closing out the NLCS at home last night with a 10-4 beatdown of the Los Angeles Dodgers. Now, incredibly, the Phillies stand in position to do something that no National League team has done in over thirty years: successfully defend their World Championship. This quest will begin on Wednesday, October 28th, and it will almost certainly not be easy. All indications point towards a showdown with what was inarguably the best team in baseball all season, The New York Yankees, who just happen to play their home games less than two hours north of ours. Wow.

The Phillies going for back-to-back World Series titles against the New York Yankees of all teams? I mean, is this really happening?

All I do know is that this is going to be a crazy couple of weeks, and even if we get swept right out of the playoffs, the Phightins have once again placed an entire city on their collective backs and have reinvigurated the passion of an entire fanbase. The Yankees are about as strong a team as they come, and they are probably playing their best baseball of the season right now, so this mountain may be a bit too tall for even this team to climb.

But, hey, could you imagine if we went out and beat them??!! Because I can…

OUR HEROS

Oh shit, how did that get in there???

GO FIGHTINS!!!

That’s the flag of the Benin Empire, a pre-colonial African state situated in modern Nigeria that lasted from 1440 until 1897.

[The] flag was changed upon the renaming of the country to Zaire in 1971. The Zaire flag….was created as part of Mobutu’s attempted re-Africanization of the nation and was used officially until Mobutu’s overthrow in 1997.

So, apparently, it’s THAT big…at least according to a random picture I found on the internet.  So that was kind of surprising.

Um, so, to read more about Antarctica click here I guess…

[via Twitpic]

Don’t Worry Jimbo: Those First 100 Games of this Season are Now LONG Forgotten…

One of the biggest downsides of being in Central Africa, 6,070 miles away from Philadelphia, in October, aside from the risks of genocide, is not being able to watch my team do what it does so well in the playoffs.  Luckily, although the internet is not fast enough here to stream video or even watch highlights on YouTube, it was fast enough to allow me to read about one of the greatest comebacks, nay, one of the greatest games, in playoff history, three hours after it had happened.  So follow me on my journey through the internet’s coverage of Game 4 and relive the heroics of this year’s Phightin Phils!

What They Pulled Off This Time

Well, first, here’s what happened:

Second, hysterically, watch Barkann, Dutch, and Ricky Bottalico’s (back in the Comcast SportsNet studios preparing for an excruciatingly somber post-game show) reactions, as they watch Rollins’s GW hit live in the studio:

Relive the Moment as Called by Franzke and L.A.

I am starting to really like Scott Franzke.  So, for you out-of-towners, notice why some of us are talking about the fact that we might have another special broadcaster here as you listen to Harry’s-replacement, Scott Franzke, make the call:

Download audio file (rollinswalkoff.mp3)

(click here to download or click the image above to listen)

Everytime I hear him I like him more and more…and though some people find L.A.’s antics over-the-top and/or unecessary, I actually find them both entertaining and endearing. I have no problem with biased announcers and, dog-gone-it, L.A.’s one of the most biased announcers around! Moving on…

Four Awesome Phils Articles

“Walk-off double puts Phils one win from World Series”

The first is from Beerleaguer, which pretty much sums up Monday night’s Game 4 in a neat two-paragraph package:

Beerleaguer: Just another day at the park for the toughest team in baseball. This one goes out to all the national writers who needed further proof as to why the postseason should be framed around a single question: Which team will be the first to hold down the Phillies? Because so far nobody has come close during their reign, and the Dodgers are about to be dragged from the ring after falling asleep on them, just as they did at this exact same point last postseason. The toughness, the thrills: this is what Phillies baseball is about. Cherish it. Fans of 29 other teams only wish they were so lucky.

Reader: “It’s pretty cool that Stairs’ historic bomb could still have such a resounding residual effect at precisely the same point in the season a year later.”

“These Guys Are Unreal [And, They’re a Win Away from the World F. Series]”

Next, we’ve got a couple of examples that show just how close the Phils were to losing, as by the time Jimmy stepped to the plate with two outs in the 9th, several media outlets decided to get a head-start on their news and had already posted news of the Dodgers’ win!

Here’s MLB.com’s gaffe:

Oops! ESPN.com killing you guys that badly…?

But it wasn’t just the mainstream media guilty in this case, as even some of the local blogs had lost hope/failed to watch the Phightins over the past two seasons as well…but then again, being down a run with Jimmy Rollins up and two outs in the 9th against one of the league’s premier closers probably sucked the hope out of even most of the optomistic Phils fans.  The author of one of the best Philly Sports blogs out there, Balls, Sticks and Stuff, was guest-blogging for The700Level Monday evening, and he too had begun to write his sad follow-up to the Game 4 loss when things suddenly changed for the better:

“Still pinch-hitting over at The 700 Level, I half-heartedly began to write up a post-game story before the final out.  Here’s the gist of it [link]:

As exhilarating as Sunday night’s 11-0 win over the Dodgers was, there had to be at least a part of you bracing for a loss this evening.  Don’t beat yourself up, it’s not Philly pessimism, it’s just the nature of baseball in general and our Phillies in particular.

It’s not as if the game was a clunker for the Phillies, but

JIMMY!

RUN CHOOCH!  RUN!

This group of Phillies players…  They just don’t quit, ever.  Sure, without Jonathan Broxton hitting Carlos Ruiz in the 9th, Jimmy’s gapper only ties the game, but there are a ton of teams that can’t take advantage of a situation like that, don’t even get the gapper.

Only one out left…

…These guys are unreal.  I’d love to know what Harry and Whitey are talking about right now.”

“I Love These F*ing Guys!”

Next, an all-out, love-fest of an article from the always-great but continually under-appreciated The House that Glanville Built:

That was that, I thought. Series tied 2-2. The Phils were down to their last out, and Broxton seemed like he could get one more. Except he couldn’t. Jimmy sensed that fear, looked for a pitch to drive, and on the third pitch he saw from Broxton, a 1-1 fastball in, Rollins roped one to the right-centerfield gap. The second he hit it, I jumped up off my chair and starting screaming/laughing/yelling/screaming some more. I knew not only was Bruntlett gonna score, but Chooch was too. I just knew. And I as I saw him coming into home, I screamed at the tops of my lungs, “I LOVE THESE FUCKING GUYS!!!!!!!!” I was losing my mind, running around the house, to the back door and running right into it. Then out the front door, running up and down Girard screaming. I couldn’t believe it. I still can’t. In an instant, I went from despondent, depressed and pissed to overcome with joy. In an instant, the Phils went from a 4-3 loss to even the series at 2-2, to an improbable, impossible 5-4 win to take a commanding 3-1 series lead. This team is un-fucking-real.

Honestly, un-fucking-real.

THTGB also decided to link to the following (which THTGB then described as “the hardest ball he’d ever seen hit”), which I decided to post myself as well, because, frankly, does watching Matthew Stairs tear the heart out of the Dodgers in the 2008 NLCS EVER get old?

“For Phillies it’s Not As Easy This Time But So WhaT”

“Stairsy walked and you hear everybody in the dugout yelling, ‘Same seat, same seat,’ ” reliever Scott Eyre said, recounting the baseball superstition. “All that stuff we yell all the time. Then Carlos got hit and they were yelling even louder, ‘Same seat, same seat.’

” When Rollins got the hit, Eyre described the scene in the dugout as “pandemonium.”

And, a little while earlier, Lidge just shook his head and marveled and said, “A lot of teams say they play all 27 outs. I’ve never seen a team actually do it like this one.

More Angles of Chooch!!!

[via The Fightins, Beerleaguer, The House That Glanville Built and Philly.com]