For years now Cleveland fans have been asking me — sometimes with dread, sometimes with anticipation — “Are the Browns gonna bring back the brown pants?” My answer has always been the same: “I have no idea.” Throughout all of these back-and-forths, however, I had assumed we were talking about the brown pants being worn with the white jerseys.
Shows what I know. The Browns lived up to their name during last night’s game against the Bills by wearing solid brown for the first time in team history. What shall we call this look: Full-Turd? UPS Driver? Brown-out? Chocolate City? Perhaps the best name is the simplest one: Shitty.
The full-on brownitude would have been bad enough, but last night also marked the first NFL game of October, which meant the players were wearing all sorts of pink accessories. If you tried really hard, maybe you could come up with a worse color combo than brown and pink, but it’s tough to imagine what it would be. (Now we just need a color-on-color game between the solid-brown Browns and the solid-red Chiefs — with pink accessories, natch — and we can probably make get every TV in America to explode.)
Cleveland.com quickly put together an online poll to see what Browns fans thought of the new look, and the results were surprisingly positive.
Uni Watch readers took a less charitable view. All of the many emails I received were negative. One of the best reactions came from Aaron McHargue, who said the players looked like this guy with orange helmets. Then there was Phil, who was more succinct. All jokes aside, though, the Browns won, which means there’s a decent chance we’ll see them do this again.
Meanwhile: In addition to all the pink gloves, wristbands, shoes, socks, towels, mouthguards, captaincy patches, officials’ whistles, penalty flags, and so on, there were also pink ribbons on the helmets and a pink ribbon on the ball. For good measure, the NFL Network’s first down marker was you-know-what. (You can sere more game photos here and here.)
Sigh. It’s gonna be a long month.
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“Help Wanted” reminder: In case you missed it yesterday, I’m currently in the market for a Ticker intern. Details here.
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’Skins Watch: When the NFL holds its annual fall meetings next Monday at the Ritz Carlton in Washington, the Oneida Indian Nation will be holding a public “Change the Mascot” conference in that same hotel. … Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal included a letter to the editor from someone who claims he once met a Native American who had no problem with the Braves or the ’Skins (from HT Adjemian). … “I happen to be in Atlanta for work and scored tickets to Game 1 of the Dodgers/Braves NLDS,” says Patrick Runge. “In the crowd I see some dude rocking the ‘screaming brave’ cap MLB had to pull this preseason — and wearing a John Rocker jersey.” That’s a hell of a double-whammy.
Baseball News: A’s pitcher Jarrod Parker appeared to be wearing a long-sleeved undershirt last Saturday, but he was actually wearing removable arm sleeves (good spot by Andrew Tucker). … “I follow Jack McDowell on Facebook,” says Joe Nocella. “He posted a photo of his old American Legion jersey and made a comment about it being a premonition of his baseball future.” … Oh baby, check out this awesome photo of Pops and Stretch (big thanks to Adam Garrettson). … Jerry Miller posted this on the SABR-L listserv yesterday: “Last Sunday I attended the last game of the season between the Dodgers and Rockies. At one point the opposing pitchers for the respective teams were Brian Wilson (who wears number 00) for the Dodgers, and Adam Ottavino (who wears number 0) for the Rockies. So unless MLB authorizes the use of negative integers, this is a record for the lowest combined numbers for opposing pitchers that will never be broken.” … Pieces of the Fenway Park infield tarp have been repurposed to make a bunch of L.L. Bean boots (from Tommy Turner). … I’ll be at the Bergino Baseball Clubhouse this evening to check out the opening reception for a display of Sean Kane’s amazing glove artwork. Looking forward to meeting Sean, and hope to see some of you there too.
NFL News: The Jets have considered having QB Geno Smith wear a color-coded wristband. … Here’s a rare view of the 49ers’ gold/red/gold sleeve striping from 1957 (from Cas). … Eugene Monroe, newly acquired by the Ravens, will wear No. 60 instead of his usual No. 75, because 75 is off-limits due to its association with Jonathan Ogden (from Andrew Cosentino). … If you go to the 2:07 mark of this video, you’ll see Texans LB Brian Cushing expressing his distaste for baggy jerseys (from Suvo Sur).
College Football News: The biker shorts look is even worse — a lot worse — when you’re a bare-legged college player. That’s Iowa State punter Kirby Van Der Kamp (from Chris Perrenot). … Speaking of Iowa State, here’s something you don’t often see: The Cyclones have two players named Sam Richardson, so they both wear MIOB (screen shots by Ken Tobler). … Maryland will be wearing solid white this Saturday; Florida will wear solid blue; and Missouri will wear black/white/black.
Hockey News: The Rangers’ roster includes John Moore and Dominic Moore, but only John is going with FIOB (from Bill Stewart. … Here’s a list of fun minor league hockey team names (from Yancy Yeater). … Red Wings goalie Jimmy Howard is breaking in a set of pink pads, which he’ll be wearing on Oct. 12 (from Michael Hersch). … Alan Kreit’s son plays on a youth hockey team, which is — of course — wearing pink. … “With the changing of the seasons, I switched from a Nationals browser theme to a Capitals one,” says Wililam Yurasko. “I noticed that it includes two players, Tomáš Vokoun and Alexander Semin, who haven’t even played for the Caps in two seasons. Also, Ovechkin’s sweater is tucked in, so they better change that too.” … This is pretty great: Back in 1991, the Bruins opened the season by wearing 1930s throwbacks, in honor of the NHL’s 75th anniversary. You can see video from that game here (from Josh Tremblay).
Soccer News: This is so awesome — ladies and gents, the world’s first (I’m assuming) broccoli-themed kit! … New crest for Everton. Further info here (from Mark Coales and Brent Kivell). … Ryan Robey was at Wedneday night’s Ohio State/Louisville game and was surprised to see Louisville wearing black. “I asked the goalie if they normally wear black and he said no, that it was a special occasion,” he says.
NBA News: Stephen Curry of the Warriors has signed an endorsement deal with Under Armour (from Tom Mulgrew). … New logos for the Trail Blazers’ arena (from Maks Skuz).
College Hoops News: New uniforms for Arizona State. As you can see the pattern on the back is supposedly a “pitchfork design,” but to me it looks more like a basketball net (thanks, Phil).
Grab Bag: Rugby Ohio, an organization to promote youth and high school rugby in the Buckeye State, has a new logo (from Kevin Mueller). … I love this: a series of infographics about a book about infographics. … New logo for the San Diego Public Library (from Daron Nowak). … They Deserve Each Other Dept.: One douchebag-ish corporation whose logo includes a double-X is suing another douchebag-ish corporation whose logo has a double-X (from Paul Lee).
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What Paul did last night: Some people, including a few friends of mine, absolutely live for kitschy, low-budget sexploitation films, but I rarely have the patience for them. They’re usually fun for about seven or eight minutes and then the lousy acting and painfully bad dialogue tend to render them unwatchable. I spent too much of my 20s sitting through this type of movie and thinking, “Jeez, how much long till this is over?” before I finally wised up and moved on to other trash-cultural pursuits.
But last night I was invited to Anthology Film Archives to check out something that sounded so good, it overcame my usual skepticism:
A Bride for Brenda (1969) is a lesbian-themed grindhouse cheapie set against the now-tantalizing backdrop of late-’60s Manhattan. Shot in Central Park, Times Square, the Village, and elsewhere, it narrates (quite literally — the story is told via female-voiced omniscient narration rather than dialogue) the experiences of NYC-neophyte Brenda as she moves into an apartment with Millie and Jane. These apparently unremarkable roommates soon prove themselves to be flesh-hungry lesbians, spying on Brenda as she undresses, attempting to seduce her, and making her forget all about her paramour Nick. As the narrator intones, “Once a young girl has been loved by a lesbian, it’s difficult to feel satisfaction from a man again.”
Sounds good, right? And I’m happy to report that it is good. The use of a voiceover narration turns out to be a stroke of genius. There’s literally no dialogue in the entire film, which cuts down on the cringe factor. The acting and production values are still laughably bad, but the woman doing the voiceover is reasonably competent, and her script is a hoot. The whole thing is an enjoyably trashy romp, capped of by a lesbian wedding-orgy scene that had the whole theater in hysterics. Recommended (but good luck finding it).
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