Street fighting with beach balls. Just what I always wanted.
The OP video is actually the new trailer for Mad Max: Renaissance Faire.
Sometimes I wonder if I've turned myself into a stereotype/joke, but I was literally quivering with excitement when I saw this. No idea that this existed. It is perfect. I love it so much.
After playing each other in two opening games, the two overall winners go into the final which occurs each year on June 24; this is San Giovanni (St. John)'s Day, the Patron Saint of Florence. The modern version of calcio allows tactics such as head-butting, punching, elbowing, and choking but sucker punches and kicks to the head are banned.[1] It is also prohibited for more than one player to attack an opponent. Any violation leads to being thrown out of the game.
At the end of the Olympics, there should be a gigantic calcio storico battle of the nations, in which each country's Olympic team battles its arch-rival. Would this not be the best thing ever.
5: The next thread indicates that opinions are varied enough that you aren't a single stereotype.
I'm mystified like a stereotypical girl.
It kinda reminds me of the gigantic inter-communal town brawls of late 19th century Georgia (the country) which I learned about reading a biography of Stalin. One night a year the town would sponsor a gigantic organized brawl, refereed by priests, in which teams of the different ethnic groups would good-naturedly beat each other up, while the priests refereed and served everyone alcohol. Does that not seem like the best thing ever? Would the Baltimore riots, Ferguson riots, or Charleston shooting have happened if we had cathartic state-sponsored ethnic megabrawls?
6 would certainly be a good thing. And is probably the only way in which I could rekindle any interest in the Olympics, whose organisers make Sepp Blatter look like Francis of Assissi.
There used to be a similar thing in Britain, but they called it football, which is closer to the calcio tradition.
I actually did have an idea for a crazy sport recently, but it was nowhere near as awesome as this.
OK more of a variation on an existing sport. But anyway . . .
There was a moment during the women's world cup final when the ball went out of bounds, and by accident two new balls were provided and tossed inbounds at the same time. And I thought, "Why not have more than one ball in play on the field at once?"
Everybody has a big enough TV now for split screen.
13.last: I know a fun game you can play with two balls.
14. There are two balls in play, but the players don't know which is the one that counts.
13 is good. 17 leads to terminal Quidditchism.
Is that the term for a game whose point-scoring system makes the first 99% of the game irrelevant? I've never understood that.
There was a video on this and one of the towns have a bunch of 40-year olds that are pigging up the team slots and refuse to let younger dudes play. They need to resign for the good of the game.
19. Keeps you playing at maximum effort since a turnaround is always possible, less coasting or giving up if there's a wide spread mid-game.
Multiball is a tried and true tactic for improving pinball. It would completely improve low-scoring soccer but make the game less focused, less "serious."
I wouldn't mind seeing some games--or perhaps only a part of each game, say overtime--following the rules of that one weird Caribbean soccer match where one team was trying to score in either goal and the other was trying to defend both.
This game is right up there with bazkashi in my book.
23: An improvement in that the equipment is easier to procure and transport. Where would we get a herd of trained horses and a slaughtered goat at this hour?
I could get the goat pretty easily.
They have some of the finest Arabian horses here you've ever seen.
I'm not even sure they have foxes here. They've got some serious falconry here though. I think that should be incorporated into buzkashi. Trained falcons ripping at your opponents faces. The sport of men. Heavily scarred one-eyed men, sure, but men all the same.
Damn it Barry Freed, just when we'd thought we'd found the greatest sport ever in calcio storico you had to correctly point out that it would be even better if it included falconry.
The only cool part of wandering around Doha was stumbling upon the falconry section of the souk. Multiple stores with live falcons for sale! I was so tempted, but I don't think they would have let me on the flight with one. Though that might have solved the armrest fight problem.
Though that might have solved the armrest fight problem.
I would pay someone to fake a photo of this for my desktop.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/falcon-prepares-sits-plane-cabin-article-1.1957780
OT: It's official! The Republican Party has just Poe's Lawed itself.
http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/247383-trump-leads-gop-presidential-field-in-new-national-poll
From the link in 38:
The vast majority of respondents -- 29 percent -- said they believed Jeb Bush would ultimately claim the GOP presidential nomination.
That's some high-quality journalism there.
37: just when you thought that rich Gulf Arabs couldn't possibly be any more obnoxious, you learn that their favourite pastime is to go and hang out with the Taliban and hunt endangered species.
34 They have a falcon hospital too.
36 is kind of terrifying. I guess I'll have to make sure never to fly Emirates from Dubai to Pakistan.
It's kind of fun* to watch pundits talk about how Trump has just become the frontrunner and about how he's just now gotten a lot of attention for saying really incredibly awful racist stuff while desperately trying to keep those two facts as far apart from each other in their minds as possible.
*but in that black 'yes we're clearly doomed as a species' way.
Trump does seem to have very effectively tapped in to the incoherent mix of selfishness, resentment, and racism that forms the worldview of a significant number of people who make up an important segment of the Republican base. It's harder for mainstream candidates to reach these voters because they have to talk in carefully designed code to appeal to them without alienating other segments of the electorate, particularly the corporate money people, but Trump clearly doesn't care about that because he has enough of his own money to ignore those types.
I wonder how much of it is the "America sucks" tack he's taken, which has been taboo among presidential candidates since Carter. Obviously he means it in a different way, but it allows him to say stuff that other candidates can't (beyond the racism and stupidity, I mean).
The vast majority of respondents -- 29 percent
A universe which thinks 29% is a vast majority deserves Trump. How about "a large plurality"?
44: Lee Atwater: too nuanced for today's Republican base.
I've been reading NRO's coverage of Trump so you don't have to, and what's crazy is it appears while the Overton window has moved slightly left for the American populace at large, it's shifted pretty hard right for the Republican party. Jeb Bush is facing a name recognition problem among NRO commenters in that the Bush name is now synonymous with "establishment RINO." GWB's presidency is in retrospect remembered as being barely acceptable and borderline too liberal (there is an actual conservative critique that using expensive pointless wars to beef up the security apparatus of the state is not consistent with smaller government), but by and large that is not where GWB is being attacked, instead it's for his failure to dismantle social security or being soft on immigration or for not fucking up the environment more. I don't know if it's the fact we've had a black president for almost 8 years and most of America is pretty ok with it, but the Right wing is now completely foaming-at-the-mouth rabid.