[An astonishingly handsome man steps into camera frame.]
RIKKI-TIKKI-DEADLY: Hi there! This past week at [Door Flies Open] we dug out a bunch of “old” posts from the “archives” to trick you all into thinking that DFO had actually been around for 50 years. And you fell for it! Ha ha ha ha ha…
[touches earpiece]
RIKKI-TIKKI-DEADLY: Okay, so my producer is telling me that you didn’t fall for it, that nobody was that stupid, and that a lot of people are insulted that we would even suggest that they would get hoodwinked by such an idiotic scheme. Well, folks, I think it’s time we come clean. It was all just a ploy to create a veneer of respectability so we could sell DFO Corporación stock to foreign investors.
[pulls up chart showing skyrocketing growth]
RIKKI-TIKKI-DEADLY: But it turns out those foreign investors were too small-minded to invest in a scheme with a guaranteed* annual return of 28%. They couldn’t see the big picture. But their loss is your gain! What we have available for you to purchase is [a decorative] stock [certificate] that certifies your ownership of a percentage of the [available certificates that were produced by the] corporation. It’s just like being a part owner of the Green Bay Packers! We…
[touches earpiece]
RIKKI-TIKKI-DEADLY: …and it turns out you’re not falling for that either. Okay, full disclosure. It’s our SECOND anniversary here. To celebrate, we thought we’d engage in a good old-fashioned circle jerk. Each of us picked one of our own posts from the past two years that we’re particularly proud of, and one of our favorites that was written by someone else. We’ll be posting half now and the other half tomorrow, following Sunday Gravy and Yeah Right’s interview of BIG DADDY BALLS himself. These last two years have been a blast, and we’re looking forward to at least two more years of fun, dick jokes, and mind-warping horror [until the SEC catches up with us]. Enjoy!
*guarantee not guaranteed.
AUTHOR: Low Commander of the Super Soldiers
FAVORITE PERSONAL POST: BOLTMANIAN RHAPSODY
EXPLANATION: This piece combines my favorite song with every emotion I have gone through following the loss of my football team. As I was getting ready for work one morning, I had some idea I was kicking around for a post, when I hit shuffle on my iPod and Bohemian Rhapsody appeared. Inspiration split my head in two and I came up with most of the lyrics in the car that morning. It fit too perfectly, and while it takes me on an emotional rollercoaster with each read, there is nothing that I am more proud of. And since it came out on my birthday, it was a wonderful gift to myself.
FAVORITE OTHER POST: President Obama Commutes Drug Sentences, NFL Suspensions by Pickett’s Charge
EXPLANATION: Much like how my own work feels best when written in a bout of some kind of heavy emotion (usually BLINDING RAGE) I always found Pickett’s Charge’s Fake Press Conferences to be the perfect commentary to a glaringly obvious issue that won’t be fixed because of equally glaring ineptitude. This one in particular seemed to perfectly capture my anger towards the whole Ray Rice video debacle, as well as the random suspensions for things that are (mostly) lawful and just an image issue the NFL is hellbent on maintaining to a fault. Or maybe it’s because I was a teenager who took a briefcase to school…
AUTHOR: Brett Favre’s Colonoscopy
FAVORITE PERSONAL POST: MLB Opening Day Reflections on NFL Team Names
EXPLANATION: When we look at what drives traffic to DFO, it’s not surprising to see “Sexy Friday,” “Slutty Saturday,” and “Milanya Vayntrub.” But every once in a a while the #content does it, too, e.g. Horatio’s Oak Island stories, Don T’s moving tribute to Dr. Z, and DTZM’s Jeff Fisher as Rasputin piece. I often find myself wishing I could contribute like that or like RTD, balls, makeitsnow, OSZ, and the other All-Stars here. I don’t, but I do bring to the table methodically researched inanity and necessary use of the too many links tag paired with the broader DFO sensibility/dick jokes. This post may not have been my best written piece (that may be the Raven tribute) but it let me get the creative juices going at a time when I was struggling at work and missing football. Also fuck baseball.
FAVORITE OTHER POST: So Long (Heh, LONG), And Thanks For All The Dick Jokes by TrollSoHardUniversity
EXPLANATION: I mainly picked this post because when I went back and re-read it, it still almost made me cry. The comment section also makes it a little dusty in here. Obviously we all miss Ape (ook!), and TSHU captured the raw emotions we were all dealing with as not just a website felt like it was being taken from us, but a community that accepted and supported all was shutting down. TSHU’S post doesn’t relate to me or my journey professionally, but it hits the nail on the head why we flocked there, why we flocked here, and why we won’t go the flock away.
AUTHOR: The Maestro
FAVORITE PERSONAL POST: ALL HAIL BLEERGH: Your 2016 New England Patriots Preview
EXPLANATION: I was drunk when I started writing this. I think that goes without saying. Normally I write everything pretty quickly – typically within about 2-3 hours, which is doable because of most of what I do is just straight fact-based stuff and not real storytelling… but I guess I wanted to give myself a challenge and flex my creative muscle a little bit. At any rate, I think this took over a week to put together, all things told. As the resident fan of everyone’s favorite team to hate, there was no doubt in my mind that I needed to ham it up in order to get the maximum effect I could out of it. Brady as quasi-charming ringleader was a given when things started, but I didn’t think of the twist at the end until much later on. I was glad about that. I think it was ultimately this ritual that brought them their most recent Super Bowl win (THE GREATEST FACKIN’ WIN OF ALL FACKIN’ TIME OTHAH THAN THE OH-FOAH WOHRLD SERIES), so I will happy with claiming full credit for the victory.
FAVORITE OTHER POST: Coach Zimmer Gets Ready For Work by yeah right
EXPLANATION: I loved this whole series of Coach Zimmer’s adventures- and I will admit that I have a total soft spot for any story that involves monkeys and wolverines. Like good sex, this post starts off with excitement and lots of promise… it takes its time to really build, but there’s so many good things that happen along the way that while you’re excited for the ending to come in dramatic fashion, you’re enjoying the entire ride all the same. Plus I love seeing Coach Z doing the slow burn as he gets himself ready for the upcoming season. I, too, have felt that firey rage build up inside of me far too many times to count. Still nowhere close to Fozz-levels, though.
AUTHOR: Don T
FAVORITE PERSONAL POST: Good Night Sweet Patriot
EXPLANATION: I woke up, saw that Aaron Hernandez died, and everything on the post came to me at once. Quickest post I’ve written. Full disclosure: I gave it an edit in the evening it posted, as the original was full of typos.
FAVORITE OTHER POST: Marcus Mariota Visits Golden Gate Park by Low Commander of the Super Soldiers
EXPLANATION: I’ll say it again: this is my fave [DFO] post EVAH and one of the funniest things in everything. Mariota had a miserable rookie season, and TEN’s outlook was grim. LCSS captured perfectly what I thought Marcus would be feeling WITH HIS FIRST SPEAKING LINE. The rest is dynamite. I’ve read it at least 10 times.
AUTHOR: yeah right
FAVORITE PERSONAL POST: Getting to know the new Dallas QB
EXPLANATION: I had no idea where this came from apart from the fact that whenever I saw the name DAK Prescott, it made me think of a canned ham. Low Commanders mad photoshop skills really carried the day. Well that along with some possible cannibalism. I actually made my own self laugh putting it together which is a pretty decent endorsement since I’m an old curmudgeonly motherfucker.
FAVORITE OTHER POST: The Masque of the Yellow Lightning Bolt by Old School Zero
EXPLANATION: OSZ dropped a perfect balance of offbeat, horror and general lunacy to this post. This was early in the DFO origin of Boltman. A character that has many ridiculously fun posts written about him. I love this story and it inspired me to join in the following year’s Scary Texans Halloween Tales, one of my favorite days on the DFO calendar.
AUTHOR: Balls of Steel and Fury
FAVORITE PERSONAL POST: Breaking News
EXPLANATION: The post I had the most fun putting together was the one I did after we all found out that Teddy Bridgewater had done fucked up his leg and was out for the year and then the Vikings went out and traded for Sam Bradford. I imagine Yeah Right’s reaction to this event was not too far off from what I wrote. I also loved the fact that I was able to introduce the world to the magic that is the KTLA news staff. And they’ve added more hot girls since.
FAVORITE OTHER POST: The Curse of Oak Island, Part the Third by Horatio Cornblower
EXPLANATION: I was most impressed by the fact that Horatio wrote this up during the second half of the game and had it posted so quickly. Rage writing is good writing in his hands.
AUTHOR: Rikki-Tikki-Deadly
FAVORITE PERSONAL POST: Meanwhile, in Burbank
EXPLANATION: Every summer, the football offseason leaves me bereft of the senseless violent entertainment that I need in my life to make it through each day without resorting to the gruesome murder of random strangers. Last summer, Battlebots did a splendid job of filling that void. Plus, since it’s just machines, I feel less conflicted about supporting it. Chomp Chat (Meanwhile, in Burbank, actually) is structured as an homage to Bobby Big Wheel’s “Gruden Talk” series, and I had about as much fun writing it as anything else I’ve done here. Plus, it features a pair of the best photoshop images I’ve ever made.
FAVORITE OTHER POST: NFL Speakeasy Stories: The Future Of Fred by Blaxabbath
EXPLANATION: There are easily a dozen posts that I could have taken, but I went with Blaxabbath’s original Speakeasy Stories post because it featured some of the absolute best writing we’ve had on the site and spawned an entirely original series of stories and characters. I loved the mood of the piece (and subsequent pieces), I loved the characterization of Todd Bowles, and I loved how his story ultimately concluded (in a later post) with an image that still haunts me to this very day.
Join us tomorrow for Part 2!
So is this the blog version of a clip show?
Happy Anniversary, you stupid talented idiot geniuses.
There’s a movie that keeps showing up on Canadian HBO-it’s called “A Miracle on Christmas Lake”. The description is, “A teenager discovers a magical hockey rink on a pond where he and a friend used to play”.
/I will review the fuck out of this movie before I die.
OH FUCK! ACTUAL DIALOGUE FOLLOWS…
“You cheated on dad-MERRY CHRISTMAS!” [runs away]
Bad Editing Bonus:
Truck won’t start so he gets out of the vehicle and the hood is already open.
Well that’s your problem right there!
https://imgur.com/QHk85Xd
“if a player commits a crime as the result of either – or indeed by possession or use of unambiguously illegal drugs – there is another system by which they can be punished: the goddamn judicial system.”
Obama’s oratory skills are sorely missed. But, on the other hand, TAX CUTS!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6Y7sEO7Low&app=desktop
Relevant to LCSS’s memory
We’ll never forget you Lowes Commenter!
Some of Lowes Commenter’s best work:
Happy anniversary! What did you get me?
A spa event. Soon; gotta wait for the Groupon to mature.
I’m sure Don meant to say a “sponch” event.
A Groupon savings bond? Sign me the fuck up!
/Don’t sign me the fuck up
I *am* sorta proud of Speakeasy Stories.
Still doesn’t touch my high school track state championship though.
Being able to beat a retarded kid at the shot put really doesn’t count.
I wish! Those special ed kids are brute strength.
But that’s why the SEC is the premier conference in college football.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7aDstrDMf0
I’ll be right back. I need more lotion.
I’d list honorable mentions, but there would be FAR too many.
blax’s Remembering Peyton one is outstanding. Reprint:
blaxabbath
I was in Afghanistan from 2004 to 2005 dicking around, protecting freedoms, making a sweet eighteen-grand tax-free — you know, whatever. And since it was post-9/11 America AND an election year, the USA’s Support Our Troops game was strong. Even with beam-melting hot takes such as, “Support the troops, bring them home!” or “You go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you might want or wish to have at a later time,” it was April into a year-long deployment but many-a-Joe were looking for motivation, as complacency was casting a cloud of weakness over our firebase (as well as dozens of FOBs like our own across the small, dusty, shitbox country.
I remember that I was on my routine duties, a daily review of potentially useful (but never actually) intelligence reports from other HUMINT teams in theater. Each report was about 65% administrative/filing information, 35% error-ridden documentation of poor intelligence collection efforts. Coupled with the complete scrubbing of any worthwhile details so the classification level could be dropped low enough to share with our Pakistani “allies”, I took intel analysis as more of a chore than a patriotic duty. Oh, the Taliban hates the US government and wants to kill President Bush; are you sure 51+% of America isn’t the Taliban? Or another 19 year old blonde ‘Counterintelligence Agent’ report that reflects an insightful nugget that “an anonymous source cites third-hand knowledge that an anonymous Arab and/or Pakistani male may be planning to blow up a U.S. convoy somewhere on the roads of Afghanistan. NO FURTHER DETAIL.”
During the latest hours of the 23rd, I was working in the command room (in the private sector, this might simply be called ‘The Conference Room with the Speak Phone”) with a single lonely private who was manning the radio. I had an office but it contained orange juice, vodka, and some bootleg dvds of The Sopranos where the episodes were out of order so, midseason, Pussy turned up dead but then the next episode he was alive and everyone was acting fishy around him — yeah, it was a frustrating watch. So, apart from the distractions in my own workspace, I liked the command room because our position on the mountain allowed our radio to pick up all kinds of signals and it wasn’t unusual to hear the calls of a firefight going down on a clear night, such was this.
My stack of reports was triple the normal thickness as the Pat Tillman fratricide (which was already reported to the US news as a Killed By Enemy Fire, the deliverable of a massive institutional cover up by the Army) somehow had become a [leading, I’m sure] topic of conversation with intelligence collectors and sources from Herat to Khost. Tillman wasn’t in my unit, nor the unit to which I was attached. He wasn’t even operating near our AO when the ambush occurred. Still, I read the reports because…well, I don’t know why. Maybe because I thought they may share information about enemy tactics or tendencies. Probably just because it was my patriotic duty.
When the private on radio duty asked me to cover for him while he freshened his coffee, I naturally agreed. Never forgetting that keeping an eye on our own was another part of my patriotic duty, it was always good business to maintain rapport with the wiener private who had access to every classified conversation over his head simply because the Colonel was afraid that his computer would freeze up at any moment.
The moment the private turned out of sight the radio came to life. Like a pair of balls dropped on my face, I couldn’t turn my attention away from the transmission, which bellowed through the space, clear as day.
“All roads clear…Beginning movement to waypoint Charlie-Omaha-Lima-Tango…Approximately 15 Taliban fighters confirmed at waypoint…All units ignore artillery sounds…Repeat: ignore artillery sounds. Do not run to shelter.”
I rushed to my reports and dove into the pile. After making a small mess, I pulled out a report from an interview with an english-speaking school teacher near Sperah. The morning of the attack, the old man (this detail was not in the report but everyone in Afghanistan is an old man) was inadvertently picking up the calls of Tillman’s Ranger convoy while trying to listen to a cricket game on his radio. He had reported that a deep male voice with a “different” American accent had informed the convoy that their route was clear and to ignore sounds of “rocket fire”. When pressed for further detail about the radio transmissions, the report stated that the source found it memorable that every other US transmission he had heard since 2001 called for “Oscar Bravo” while this voice spoke as “Omaha Budweiser”.
I heard a faint thud break through the silent night as I ran across the room to the alarm control. It wouldn’t matter, I knew. The alarm was a pre-event warning. At this point, we’d be better off leaving everyone in their huts where, at least, they’d be safe from random shrapnel. As the thuds continued and the whistling began, I keyed the microphone and spoke. “You’d better hope you get all of us because we’re coming for you when this is over!”
The dials of the radio bounced to life during the response.
“Some guys leave a place after a long time, and they’re bitter. Not me.”
Damn – what drug combo was THAT written on?!
Mescaline?
Remember that short window during which both bath salts AND Krocodyl were a thing?
I do love that Blax created the Sue Lynn character that has found her way into other posts.