Real Men/Women of Genius #98 [No, that’s not an error or misprint]

[We are sad today to report a case of old-age, dementia, or fallout from last month’s trip to Tennessee and its completely infamous Vol-State Road Rage–oops, I mean Road Race. By so sojourning, it seemed that yours troubly could no longer COUNT the RM/WoG sequence from before he left till after he returned, and thus this archive showed (still shows!) some idiotic skippage from #97 to #99, which your humble servant Le Doof completely missed! So now, to make amends (if not to also set the Table of Contents to rights) and to bring us all up-to-date, we present another whacky RMOG which should’ve been dated a month ago. We are sorry for any cardinal or ordinal mathematical inconvenience this may have caused. In the words of my colleague Larry Gassan: “You may adjust.”]

Bud Light presents…

REAL MEN OF GENIUS

{Re-al men of geeeeeene-yuss!}

Today we salute you, Mr. Rural Weekly Newspaper Just Barely Reporting on Footraces Sportswriter.

{“Theyyyyyyyyyy don’t paaaaaaaaaaaaay me eeeee-nough!”}

Not exactly the town’s main attraction of Little League, the grammar school track meet, or your high school early football practice, is it? No. And if you can be cajoled off your sports desk and out of the newsroom at all, you really are only likely to write *one* paragraph about THE internationally renowned cross-Tennessee footrace now going on in your town.

{“The shaaaaaaades are down; I cannnnnnnn’t seeeeeee an-y-thing!”}

“How far is that 500K race?” you’re likely to ask. Or you’ll come up with a few other inquisitively ingenious gems, like: “How long does that 24-hour race last?” “How many days out of the ten do those runners have to finish?” “Where is that finish on top of Castle Rock?” And the best one, usually: “Just how many miles are in this marathon anyway?”

{Twennnnnnn-ty-six-point-two! But thisssssssssssss is an ulllllllllll-tra-mar-a-thon!!}

Puh-leeeeease. We realize nothing’s changed since Jesse Owens shocked the Third Reich at the ’36 Olympics, but would it kill you to do a little research into more recent history? Do you know the caliber of the runners about to race through your town? Could you possibly appreciate the effort it takes to run 314 miles entirely without a car? Would it kill you, maybe, to actually have to READ another paper’s sports pages; like, say, The Nashville Tennessean? The Chicago Tribune? Or The New York Times??

{“IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII am a wri-terr, not a reeeeeeead-err!!”}

You might actually learn that the race was invented by a true ultrarunning legend, that the projected overall winner is in his 70s, that the first woman trains by running more miles in a week than those precious high school football stars of yours will run in their lifetimes, and that young racer from India has survived up to a fortnight in the steamy Asian jungle, stumbling along non-existent trails, living on weeds and wild berries and, oh yes, the uncooked flesh of all those King Cobras he’s killed with just his bare hands.

{“I thought Tarrrrrrrrrr-zan was jusssssssssssssssst in the mooooooo-vies?”}

So crack open an ice-cold Bud Light, O Perry White of Metropolis’s Daily Planet, because while you’re snoozing frumpily all over your desk chair with the ball game in your ear from the iPod in your pocket, a whole ‘nother sporting drama is parading right outside your window, replete with THE best damn long-distance runners this entire Planet (and not just your “Daily”) has ever seen. Supermen? And Superwomen? Indeed!

{Mis-terrrrrrrrrr Rur-alllllll Week-lyyyyy News-pap-err-Just-Bare-ly-Re-por-ting-on-Foot-ra-ces Sporrrrrrrrts-WRI-TERR!!}

Bud Light beer: we don’t care where they brew it, rural town or whatever; we just dig their commercials.

( O_O )

Yours troubly,
The Troubadour

Check out this new outlet:
http://www.trailrunevents.com/ul/stories.asp.

Resource:
http://thefuntimesguide.com/2004/10/bud_light_real.php.

Yankee Folly of The Day:
Big party this weekend goin’ down along the East Coast! Pass it on!!