The Wide World of Sports

Sports sometimes fail to translate across cultures and borders.

Soccer (football, to many of you) presents a good example. It ignites passion almost everywhere around the globe—except in the most powerful country on the planet.

Curling is a funny one, too, boring just about everyone except people in Canada, Scandinavia, and pockets in central Europe.

OK, maybe in Minnesota.

Then there are the questionable “sports.” Last week, German women ran a 100 meter race—which doesn’t seem odd until you note that they sprinted while wearing heels. And Finns, Estonians, and a few random others love the sport of wife-carrying.

And today I heard about another one—also, oddly enough, from our friends in Finland—which takes the cake: The seventh annual World Mobile Phone Throwing Championship.

I’m sure I don’t have to tell Finnish readers that the big prize went to Lassi Etelaetalo, who hurled his headset almost 100 yards, just short of the world record. (Yes, folks—that means somebody keeps track of world records for activities like for cell phone throwing.)

We can all understand the desire to toss a phone that fails to ring when a call comes in. Or runs out of power randomly. Or drops calls.

Or rings at full volume with the sounds of Justin Timberlake’s “SexyBack.”

Getting your anger out by flinging something as far as you can is an idea with legs. Once the idea of heaving objects reaches full acceptance in David Amulet-land, watch out.

Early candidates for flinging include:

My television. Other than reruns of Dead Like Me and Dark Angel, occasional sports, and a few quality documentaries, this new 55” plasma hasn’t been giving me my money’s worth.

I don’t even have it on very often … but in a week I flip by more crap than I’ve excreted in my lifetime. This TV is begging to be tossed.

Some little blond boy at a Mexican restaurant in northern Virginia. There I was, minding my own business (which, by the way, is how most good stories start), just eating lunch quietly last weekend with a buddy of mine. This hellion toddler marches along the shared booth seat from the next table over and jumps down to the floor—using my table, specifically my chicken burrito platter, as his springboard.

And his useless, waste-of-space mother and father parents didn’t do a damn thing. If they weren’t 300+ pounds each, I’d throw them, too.

John Mark Karr … and Boulder, Colorado authorities. A man confesses to the murder of JonBenet Ramsey to get a free business-class plane ride to the US from Thailand. Only he didn’t do it. This jackass and the keystone cops put her family—and the segment of the US population that still cares one scintilla more about this case than the thousands of other unsolved crimes—through 10 days of hell.

And the media, showing their usual keen insight into what truly matters in the world, overwhelmed the rest of us with coverage of every step, every car ride, and every breath this perv took. Add these ass-clowns to HurlFest ’06.

My cell phone. I never should have downloaded “SexyBack.”

Get ready. This might be a world-record throw.