It’s been a rough few days for news in this country between the theater shooting in Colorado and the on-going saga at Penn State.
Sports have always been entertainment and a nice distraction from the real world, so let’s focus on some fun stories to put a smile on your face and take your mind off the painful reality of the past weekend if just for a moment.
We start with maybe the most likeable team at the Olympics in London — which start this Friday — and their questionable dancing skills. The U.S. women’s soccer team — possibly against their better judgment — filmed a music video of them lip syncing along to Miley Cyrus’s seminal classic “Party in the U.S.A.”
And yes, Alex Morgan is featured prominently. She actually opens the video with fellow star Heather O’Reilly as they strut down a hotel hallway with red, white and blue boas on. Yep, you read that correctly.
By the way, did you catch the :36 second mark in the video? Yes, that would be toilet lip syncing. That might be a first in music video history.
There’s plenty of Megan Rapinoe playing Ping-Pong, Heather Mitts jogging and even Abby Wambach (mock) doing a teammate’s make-up. The video is quite surreal actually. There doesn’t seem to be a concept other than “Let’s do stupid stuff, lip sync very poorly and give all of our friends future blackmail material!”
I think they were successful.
Happy Birthday … you, person, you
Ever been to a really big birthday party where you were “a friend of a friend” and didn’t really know the honoree? You gather around to sing Happy Birthday and you suddenly realize “Oh crap, what this person’s name? Bill? Brett? … Christopher?”
Well the artist formerly known as Fausto Carmona and the Indians had one of those moments this weekend. Fausto Carmona Roberto Hernandez was finally granted a visa to return to the country after his whole fake name kerfuffle last year. And he gained three years as well!
Hernandez — honestly, if your name was so boring you’d change it to Fausto Carmona too — is suspended three weeks (one for each year?) so he won’t be back quite yet. Still, his teammates honored him with a birthday cake. Actually, make that three birthday cakes — one for each year he missed.
I love that one cake says “Fausto” while the other two say “Roberto.” So happy 29th and 30th and 31st birthday, Roberto! May your career last as long as the other Roberto Hernandez.
Follow Metro New York Sports Editor Mark Osborne on Twitter @MetroNYSports. You can call him Mark, but his real name is Max Power.
