Dumping Them Out: 9/11, The Queen, NFL

9/11, The Queen, and the NFL. Otherwise known as The Big 3.

There are a lot of different directions I could take this week's edition of Dumping Them Out.  Today marks the 21st anniversary of the September 11th attacks on the World Trae Center. It is always my first instinct to make a joke in situations like this, but I do not think that's appropriate for today. It's easy for someone like me to make light of the situation. I was 9 years old living in Bowling Green, Ohio at the time, so 9/11 did not necessarily have a profound impact on me. I couldn't have possibly understood its significance at the time. I remember watching the news coverage through a window while we were playing football in my friends backyard. I have a memory of my friend yelling at me because I was distracted from the game, "Yes John we know it's a burning building let's play football." -- Seems kind of fucked up in hindsight, but again, we were young dumb kids from a small town in Ohio. Even as an adult, I will never be able to fully appreciate what it was like to be living in New York, or to have loved ones living in New York at that time. Large, on the other hand, was working 11 blocks north of the World Trade Center when the planes hit. He posted an incredible blog this morning that details everything he experienced that day. I highly recommend reading it. 

Much like I am not the person to tell you about the significance of 9/11, I am also not the right person to tell you about the significance of The Queen. But unlike 9/11, the internet has decided that Queen jokes are perfectly acceptable.

9/11 jokes = Tasteless

Dead Queen jokes = Tasteful

The Queen's death is tailor made for internet jokes. Here is why:

• She was really old, she lived a great life, and by all accounts she died peacefully. Her death wasn't "expected", but it's not like it came as a shock. It was her time. 
• The Royal Family is pretty shady. I don't have specific examples for you other than Prince Andrew being on Epstein's flight logs, but you don't become the most prominent family in the world without burying some bodies along the way. I'm confident that they've done some not very chill things. You're always free to make jokes about people who are perceived as "bad".
• The Queen doesn't actually do anything. Great Britain props up their Royal Family as being "so important", but in reality, they don't have any real power. A Royal Family who parades around like they're better than us, but in reality has no authority over anyone - that's low hanging fruit for internet comedians. I do think they have a say in some things (maybe?), but as far as the internet is concerned, they are powerless.
• Most importantly, there is a group of people out there who LOVE The Queen, and HATE all the jokes about her. If everyone was on the same page, then it wouldn't make for a great joke. The people who get all worked up about the way the internet is responding to the Queen's death make the jokes about her even better.

I hope you enjoyed that segment of "John Rich explains a joke."

Additionally, the NFL season kicked off this week. I was invited to go to the Ravens/Jets game (and by invited I mean invited to buy my own ticket), but I politely declined. I'm usually good for attending 1 NFL game every 2 years. Football is by far the best sport to watch on TV, and worst sport to see live. Especially NFL games. I like going to college games a little more because of the atmosphere, but regular season NFL games just don't do it for me in person. Especially if it's a Sunday 1pm game. I always have a couple fantasy football teams going, and bets going on multiple different games, so I want to be in a place where I can keep an eye on everything. Half the time you barely even get cell phone service at the stadium.

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You never realize how slow of a sport football is until you're at a game live. When you watch from home, you can flip between different games, or turn on the RedZone channel. But the TV timeouts are brutal in real life. I always find myself in the stands thinking, "Man it's been a real long time since anyone has ran a play." Then when the TV timeout ends, someone runs a 3 yard out route and the refs spend 10 minutes reviewing whether or not the receiver got both feet in bounds. It can really drag out sometimes.

That's all I have for this week. I'm worried that I am going to run out of Boobs GIFS soon. I'm already having to do some digging. It can be difficult because we aren't allowed to use images that we don't have the rights too. I am limited to public domain boobs, and boobs we have paid for. I wish I could share them all, but unfortunately, most boobs are off-limits for the blog. 

Actually, never mind, I just remembered we can pull boobs from Instagram (I think). Problem solved.