1,001

I hope you folks don't mind a little self-congratulatory navel-gazing, but I wanted to take a quick moment to acknowledge the fact that the post on Johnny Damon that went up earlier today was the 1,000th to appear on this site.

The very first post came back in the beginning of last October when for some reason, I decided to reserve this domain name and write down a half baked argument for rooting for Red Sox over the Rays in the upcoming ALCS. I didn't bother telling anyone about the site, or writing anything else until over two and a half months later. On Christmas Day, on the heels of the acquisition of Mark Teixeira, I had some more thoughts ruminating and kicked up a 1,000 word post on the implications of the signing.

I followed that with an email entitled "The Fack Youk Manifesto" to a couple of my friends that said, in part:

I realize that there is like an 85% chance that this never really goes anywhere, then dies a slow death from neglect, but there's that 15% that we can carve out this little space for our thoughts, all contribute and make it interesting/entertaining enough for some other people to check it out. I talk enough sports with you guys and hear interesting stuff worthy of a blog post and it makes me think that we could put that stuff to use and concentrate it here.

It's taken a ridiculous amount of time and commitment to keep a steady stream of content flowing into the site, but I'm quite proud that we've established a readership and have a little niche that people seem to enjoy stopping by. We're getting close to 80,000 unique visitors since we started using Google Analytics and even if there is some double counting going on, that still seems like a lot.

Thanks specifically to people like Jason at IIATM,S, Joe at River Ave. Blues, Ross at New Stadium Insider, Craig at Shysterball, Peter Abraham, Tim at The Sports Hernia in addition to Deadspin, With Leather, Big League Stew, Awful Announcing, The Big Lead, BBTF, Jorge Says No!, and countless others who have linked to the site over the past 8 months. Without links from other blogs, it's basically impossible to develop a readership, so the recommendations are much appreciated.

Anyway, if you are new to the site, here are some of Fack Youk's greatest hits from days and months gone by in case you missed them:

• The Many (Awkward) Faces Of Alex Rodriguez
  
  
• An Avalanche Falls On Notre Dame
  
  
• The Chronicles Of Doris: Parts I, II, & III
  
  
• Mets To Play 2009 Season At Javits Center
  
  
• Look At It, Dave!
  
  
• Because You Can't Put Blogs On Your Bookshelf
  
  
• Why Does Love Got To Be So Sad
  
  
• The Extreme Beer Festival Diaries
  
  
• No More Max Kellerman? Um, WHAT?
  
  
• The Great Divider(s)
  
  
• He Also Picked Mickey Rourke
  
  
• Papeljerk

Hopefully these 1,001 posts are only the tip of the iceberg. Stay tuned.

This Just In: The New Yankee Stadium Is F_____g Sick

We've spent our fair share of time pointing out the flaws with the New Yankee Stadium, but actually having the chance to talk around it last night made me forget roughly 99% of them. I don't have time to find the words right now. I wanted to throw this post up real quick, because I've got things to do today so I don't even have time to tag or edit it.

Below, please find a collection of pictures and comments documenting the experience last night. Big Willie Style infiltrated the WB Mason Box somehow and Frank worked his way down to field level. We'll put some more posts up later, once I have a chance get BWS's pics off of his Blackberry and I have time to photoshop other people's heads onto our bodies.

-----

Big Willie Style took time to physically embrace the Stadium.


The Old and the New.
(personal favorite)


Right when you walk in Gate 6, there is a giant HDTV showing the game right on the wall. This was convenient, because at the time we were entering the place, the game was just about to start.

I don't care what you have heard about the screen out in centerfield, you will be amazed at how sick it is. I just nabbed that picture with my camera from our seats in Section 412, and look how it came out:


$36 worth of "fucking finally!!!". For some reason they don't unscrew the caps off of the plastic beer bottles. Why? I guess they are just daring people to shake one up and throw it at a Red Sox fan.

The bathrooms are nice, but two complaints. No dividers between the urinals (is this a thruway rest stop?) and no ledge to rest your beers on. Both of those would have been nice.

The concourses in the Grandstand are totally open-air. That will prevent them from smelling like salty garbage like they did in the Old Stadium.

The view from Section 412. It honestly wasn't that bad considering that our seats were probably in the worst 10% in the Stadium, location-wise.

The facade adds such a nice touch. I was actually happy we were up so high because I had the chance of getting it in a picture, if need be.

At one point, a cop climbed up on the roof for some reason. I asked him if he would take my camera with him and snap some pics, but amazingly he declined that offer.

Big Willie Style airplaning it through the extremely spacious ramps.


A view from the bleachers, with the rain coming down.

Unlike the Old joint, the bleachers have a better view of the game than most of the Upper Deck.


My food choice was the chicken tender platter (box). For $10.50, I got 2 1/2 chicken fingers and 19 fries. I have to say though, they were delicious. As good as chicken fingers get.

The condiment options were decidedly lacking, however. Can a man get some BBQ sauce or honey mustard up in this bitch?

I departed in the 7th, but Frank was kind enough to take my camera on his descent into the seats we could never, ever, ever afford.





Well done, Frank. You define wasted journalism.

Hobo St. Patty's Slideshow

On a certain level, this is sort of a cop out because I'm not up to snarkicizing every one of these photos or really writing anything substantive at all. On the other hand, I trust you will enjoy this slide show commemorating my experience at Hoboken's St. Patty's day celebration.

Most of these photos were snapped from the hip so as to keep them somewhat covert, but as you will see towards the end, I got pretty sloppy and people definitely started noticing. I promise there are some gems in there, especially the one with Sampson and the guy in the yellow shirt.

It's not a coincidence that I set the show to "Keep It Pourin'" by Tha Alkaholiks.

"Who wants ta ride mah bicycle?"

Still trying to make sense of the 98 pictures I took yesterday at Hoboken's preemptive strike of a St. Patrick's Day celebration.

More forthcoming. (Probably)

Check Out This M_____f____r [Creep Of The Week]

It really came down to the wire, and I know that it is technically "next week", but this guy really took [Creep Of The Week] by the horns. Yes, that's him there in the Santonio Holmes jersey.

And the capri sweatpants...

This asshole was calling for the Steelers to challenge Santonio Holmes' near touchdown in the first quarter, and I'm like "WHY??!?!" You have four tries to punch the ball in from the six-fucking-inch line". Of course, the challenge totally backfired and they ruled the play an incomplete pass, at which point, my compatriots and I enjoyed a hearty guffaw.

He was walking around the bar chanting "Let's go Steelers (clap, clap, clap clap clap)" when Willis McGahee was on the ground with a huge crowd gathered around him, which NEVER happens in a football game unless someone is seriously fucked up. After the vicious hit Ryan Clark laid on him, McGahee was splayed on the field, vacillating between twitching spasmodically and laying totally motionless. It was eerie to every person in Bourbon Street except this incomprehensible piece of shit.

We actually watched the game with some Italian kids we met the night before named Ricardo, Ricardo and Eduardo (did I mention I'm not gay?), and fulfilled our offer to extol the virtues of American Football to them. They couldn't understand why there were so many commercials, but were thoroughly impressed by the ridiculous brutality of the "match", as they continued to call it.

When we walked into McAleer's Pub, our waitress asked how we were doing, to which I responded "Not as good as you..."


Nothing prettier than snow in the city.


Good night, great weekend.

"Look At It Dave": A Photo Retrspective [The Fack Youk Experience]

In case you missed this post, we got tickets to the Knicks game last night through www.scalpers.com, er, I mean... StubHub. They weren't that expensive but I still hate StubHub with a passion. They charged us a $36 fee because it was within a certain amount of time before the game began. That is pretty ballsy. I can't imagine why it would cost you more to give me a ticket at one time as opposed to another. You're just being dicks about it. That's the same pricing system the airlines used, and see where that got them? That horrible site led to the extinction of truly cheap tickets, but no one really seems to care. Fuck you StubHub. Fuck you over a rusty park bench.

Anyway, I'm roughly 103% certain that the charges against Eddie Curry are false. Stuff like this always is. We've heard this one a million times, highly paid but underachieving athlete is sued by a personal employee for making homosexual advances. No? Okay, but his driver seems like a bit of a nut job and an anonymous commenter said he knew him and that he's a weirdo (INFALLIBLE!). That doesn't make this any less funny, to us anyway...

We made a two part sign. One (decoy) that said "Lets Go Knicks", and one taped (via a duct tape "hinge" of sorts) underneath that said "Look At It, Dave" and in the process became the oldest people to ever carry a sign to an NBA game without a child in their presence.

Phase One:

Phase Two:Nothing more bad-ass than a Sunday River face warmer.

What we failed to realize during the 25 minute half-drunken flurry that resulted in obtaining the necessary supplies and creating this abortion of an artistic work, is that you can't see fucking orange marker from across a semi-dark arena. We had a friend of a friend sitting about four rows back from the court and told us the only words he could read were "Look" & "It".

We probably would have known this if we were the type of asshats who would actually bring a sign to a professional sporting event for a reason other than to make a joke that about 5% of the people at the game are going to get in the eight possible seconds we would have been on the jumbo-tron.

I was skeptical at first, but the "Knicks City Kids" are downright ridiculous (Terrible picture, sorry. Didn't want to be the creepy guy with the sign taking multiple pictures of 8 year olds). I'm pretty sure they chain them up in an abandoned subway car underneath Penn Station and allow them to do nothing other than practice dancing.

MSG is nice enough to give you a lid to help you avoid spilling your beer on other people on your way back to your seat. It's a nice thought. However, they fill the beers up to the very brim and when you walk, it makes the keg swill inside foam up, thereby creating a constant flow of suds through the straw hole. And when you try to take the lid off, it creates some soft of a vortex, causing you to spill more beer.

I'm guessing the total amount of beer spilled has been reduced by the introduction of the lid, but there is absolutely no way to get from the concession stand to your seat with one, much less two beers without your hands and the side of the cup being covered in shitty light beer.

The Knicks City Dancers' routine included a riveting crescendo where they went through about eight sexual positions in four seconds. It was resplendent, I tell you.

What? I'm Trey Anastasio, lead guitarist of the band Phish, shut up. Does that give me more credibility when I try to talk about music?

[Ed. Note: That terrible photoshop took me like 25 minutes and that "joke" got less funny by the second. I spent so much time on it, I still feel compelled to include it though. I really need to figure out how to use Gimp.]

I took this picture so I would remember the final score.

Oh, about the actual game...

We sat next to some chill kids from Philly, who if they are reading this, probably don't think it's funny because they've heard all the punchlines already.

The Knicks actually were within 1 point (or 3 maybe, I don't remember or care) but it got pretty exciting in the fourth quarter. Danilo Galinari drained a three (in his first game back) and Al Harrington made a few as well in a really awesome, signature SSOL(F?) shootout. Andre Iguodala had super sick dunk that I'm sure made the Top Ten on SportsCenter. One of the guards on Philly (not exactly in research mode at the moment) had a silly juke which should have been up there as well, but probably wasn't.

The penultimate moment of the night, that sort of summed up the whole experience, was when Nate Robinson got free on a breakaway. Every single person not in a wheelchair was on their feet, about to have a sportsgasm and he fucking finished it like John Stockton. I wanted to cry. YOU WON THE SLAM DUNK CONTEST YOU AMAZING LITTLE MAN. DUNK FOR ME!

See what I did there? Someone on 35th & Madison is going to be very confused for about 2/3 of a second.