Monday Night Open Thread: Barstow Edition

Friends, it has come to this.  We are On the Edge of the Desert, the annual Summer sports doldrums where finding non-baseball sports viewing becomes an increasingly desperate search for anything resembling competitive activity.  “I’ll be up to bed soon, honey- I need to see how this last round of Professional Bull Riders’ Bad Boy Mowers Kalamazoo Open ends!”

Let’s check the graphical representations of the Major Sports, shall we?

Ice Football:

Bouncy Hardwood Football:

Curling:

MLB:

Nor is there any relief to be found from Real Football or its Foreign Cousins. NFL training camps don’t open for several weeks, most of the rosters are fairly set, and police departments won’t be releasing their post-minicamp arrest reports for another week or two.  At this point, the biggest “story” is Gerald McCoy being cheesed off at Tampa for giving Ndamukong Suh his old number before it had a chance to go cold after cutting him.  Seriously Gerald- you got out of Tampa without MRSA, SuperHantaHerpes (as far as we know) or having to split time in Montreal. You won this deal. Calm the fuck down.

The AFL and CFL don’t play until Thursday. Ingrates. We saved your asses during DubbyaDubbyaTwo, ya Commonwealthical bastards.

Tonight’s dearth of sporting material is particularly galling, because no one wants to do shit on a summer Monday night. What am I supposed to do, work out? Go see Shakespeare in the Park? Reflect on the poor choices I’ve made and vow to work on being a better man and husband? Fuck. And. No.

So what do we have? Lesser Football. And not even the better class of Lesser Football- today’s Women’s World Cup games have both wrapped up by the Evening Viewing Period. Pouring one out for America’s Hat- you were beaten by Stina Blackstenius, which I keep misreading as Blackenstein.

No, we have the Gold(ish) Cup and the dregs of the Copa America.

5:30 DFO Time: Bermuda v Nicaragua. Neither team has any points after two games. They’ve been soundly thrashed by Costa Rica and Haiti. Nicaragua was occupied by the US Marines off and on over a 21 year period and Reagan attempted to fund rebels against a freely-elected government by selling arms to Iran after Congress told him he couldn’t do it.  Bermuda has roughly half the population of Naperville, Illinois. So endeth the book report.

6:00 DFO Time: Chile v. Lesser Guay. Both are through to the knockout stage, and Chile is struggling with some injuries. I presume both sides will play relatively conservatively so that the injury bug doesn’t bite anyone. Not that biting is an issue for anyone in this game.

ALSO 6:00 DFO Time: Ecuador v. Japan. THE REAL CENTERPIECE OF THE NIGHT! Not because of the teams playing- they’re both sucking pretty bad just now, and I don’t anticipate any random shining moments of virtuosity from either squad. Japan is trotting out their youngsters and Ecuador…well Ecuador should probably prepare some llapingachos, because cheese-stuffed-fried-potato-pancakes sound like good comfort food. The REAL reason this is the marquee match-up is that a draw will put Paraguay through to the knockout stage! WHO NEEDS WINS TO WIN A TOURNAMENT?!?!? THAT’S WHY THEY ARE #TEAMBETTERGUAY!!!

8:00 DFO Time: Costa Rica and Haiti. Costa Rica is sometimes pretty good! Haiti is not. A few of Deadspin’s writers will still manage to find some basis to bitch about how VAR RUINED ANOTHER GAME despite the fact that there is no VAR in this tournament.

So there we have it.

In the absence of Real Sports, I’ve got nothing. For your conversational prompt, I offer:

1. Best Album (top to bottom) of All Time?
2. Best Classic Arcade Game?
3.  Is the dress a sandwich?