Know what starts today? The Olympics! Wooooo! And right at the perfect time too. It’s certainly the dog days of summer, sports-wise. Football is still a month away. Soccer has taken a break from playing every day during June and July. Basketball and hockey don’t start for months. And baseball is, well, baseball.

It also comes as a welcome respite from the political freakshow we’ve been experiencing for the last month. Look, I love a good dumpster fire as much as the next guy, especially when the main accelerants are hairspray, fake tanner, sweat and the black oil that came out of the aliens on the X-Files. But there’s only so many times I can scream “THAT’S A LIE!” or “THAT DOESN’T MAKE SENSE!” or “THAT’S NOT EVEN GRAMMATICALLY CORRECT!” at the TV. So, I’m very ready to switch the channel. Peace out, Joe Scarborough, I’m gonna go watch me some Judo!

Unfortunately, this does mean I’m going to have to put up with seeing Matt Lauer’s smug face everyday, looking like he is putting on the Olympics all by him fucking self. But that’s okay! Because for every time I have to see Matt Lauer trying to look important, I get to watch Johnny Weir and Tara Lipinski being Fucking. Fabulous.

Homeboy packed 9 suitcases for a 2 week trip! And instead of putting her stuff in suitcases, girlfriend just brought entire racks of clothing, including 100 pairs of shoes! God bless these two. I hope they’re not just doing commentary on gymnastics or whatever. I want daily culture updates from Tara and Johnny. I want segment where they go to a bar and drink Caipirinhas till they fall off their stools. I want to see them trying to play foot volleyball on the beach while wearing the most preposterous bathing suits you’ve ever imagined in your life*. I want to see Tara and Johnny singing “Copacabana” and “Girl From Ipanema” at a karaoke bar. I want to see them interviewing athletes about their Tinder habits. I want to see Tara flirt with Lebron, then see Johnny flirt with Lebron. Give me The Tara and Johnny Show. I need it.

*I’m picturing 1920s bathing costume, that is somehow brazil cut in the back. And a giant-ass sun hat, of course.

Of course I fucking love the Olympics. There’s sports on all day, everyday, for 2 weeks. Turn on the TV first thing in the morning? Sports! Come home from work and flip on the boob tube while cooking dinner? Sports! Have a small, secondary window streaming stuff at work? Sports! I’m watching the Olympics right now, and it totally doesn’t matter what time you’re reading this.

Granted, some of those sports are dumb. I’m looking at you dressage. Look at this shit:

What is going on? I can’t even tell if that horse is doing a good job or a bad one. And is that horse getting a medal? No? Then get the fuck outta here. You are not an athlete. You do not belong in the Olympics. Plus, you’re probably already rich*. You don’t deserve MORE acclaim. Save a spot for that Chinese boy ping-ponging his way through college.

*Case and point, that gif is Mitt Romney’s horse

Anyway, silly random sports are part of the fun of the Olympics. Basketball, track & field, gymnastics and swimming are awesome. But it’s also awesome to randomly flip to a sport that you haven’t thought of for four years and watch the two best fencers in the world try to stab each other. Or handball? Why isn’t handball a thing in this country, besides in gym class? Handball is awesome. It’s basically a mixture of all the best rules from basketball, soccer, hockey and dodgeball. And how about synchronized diving? I sometimes mess up just trying to jump into a pool and these two guys are doing flips and shit at the same exact time. Also, I think we need more synchronized events in our lives. Everything becomes, literally, twice as hard when people are trying to do the same thing at the same time. And it doesn’t just have to be sports. Reality shows, take a page from the Olympics. Top Chef should have synchronized chopping. RuPaul’s Drag Race should have synchronized shade throwing. Real Housewives should have synchronized chardonnay drinking and hair pulling.

There’s nothing better than armchair quarterbacking these random events, as well. I get to watch 45 minutes of a sport I haven’t seen before and suddenly I’m an expert. Oh, I totally would deduct points for that vault. That wasn’t a full rotation on that last flip.

It’s also fun to get caught up in rooting for other countries. Sure, America’s great and all that. USA! USA! USA! Yadda yadda yadda. But it’s also really cool to see other countries do really well in some random sport. Like those South Korean archers? They’re mad good at shooting stuff with bows and arrows. Last Olympics, I got caught up in watching this British skeet shooter trying to medal in front of his home crowd. They were going nuts after every shot, and I couldn’t help but getting fired up. This is something everyone knows. That’s what makes multinational sporting events so special. NBC advertises for the Olympics with Michael Phelps, Carli Lloyd, Gabby Douglas and… Usain Bolt. Know why? Because sometimes it’s more fun to root for the guy who’s better at something than everyone else, ever.

But best of all, I saw something amazing while I was going through the broadcast schedule*. I was reading through the events to see what was coming up. I saw Rowing. I saw Archery. I saw Water Polo, but not the U.S, but then I saw they play at 9am, so I made note of that. I saw Air Rifle. Oh word, the Olympics have Rugby now?! It’s just Sevens, but I’ll have to be sure to check that out. And then I saw it. I’d forgotten it existed. But it returned to me in all it’s glory:

That’s right. GOLD ZONE. It’s like Red Zone, but for the Olympics. And much like comparing the Olympics to football, Gold Zone is not as nearly as cool or exciting as Red Zone. And I’m sure the host, if they even have one, is no Scott Hanson. But I’ll take it. Gold Zone, you want to mainline all the best Olympics directly into my veins with no commercials? Give it here. What’s that? You want to give me a double box of Italy-France water polo and Germany-India field hockey? Go right ahead. But be sure to switch the the USA-Spain women’s basketball at 11am. You already have that covered? Nice. Now you want to show me the Men’s Trap Final medal ceremony? Oh, Gold Zone, you know what I like. Gold Zone you are the methadone to my Red Zone heroin.

*NBC’s site is horrific, by the way. I can’t wait to have streams constantly crash for 2 weeks straight. But I’m sure it’ll manage to show me the same Coke commercial in sparkling, crisp HD, every time that happens.

Look, and I know things about the Olympics being in Brazil are awful. There’s zika virus. The government is corrupt. The water is basically poop. The accommodations are terrible. But that’s not the athletes’ fault. That’s the fault of the Brazilian government and the IOC, who ranks second in front of the NFL and behind FIFA in the Corrupt Sports Organization power rankings. This thing should never have been put in Brazil. It should be on Olympic Island in the middle of the Atlantic. We don’t need the Azores do we? We should definitely keep all that stuff in the back of our minds, but, for all those reasons I stated above, let’s all enjoy some dope ass beach volleyball.

Weekend Breakdown

Weekend recaps are getting harder and harder as I feel like they’re just turning into Whatshername came in first with these movies and Whosetheirface came in second with most of those movies but a couple different ones. And FantasyMovieLeague.com gives you the standings and how much money each movie made, so it kinda feels like what’s the point? All that said, Tanya won the weekend. High Five! She grabbed this weekend’s best performer, Nerve, twice, which made $112k per Bux, as well as some other movies. Apparently, the better way to go was this weekend was to grab as much Nerve as you possibly could, as the weekend’s perfect lineup was one of each of Bad Moms ($23.8M) and SLOP ($18.9M) and then just fill out the rest of your lineup with Nerve.

Perfect Lineup

Bad Moms ($23.8M) x 1 / SLOP ($18.9M) x 1 / Nerve* ($9.4M) x 6 = $116,405,216

*Best Performer of the Weekend = 2M bonus, Perfect Cineplex receives a $5M bonus

Coming Attractions

Suicide Squad (Fri: $708, Sat: $443, Sun: $355)

This movie deserves all of the negative reactions it’s getting. And man, is it getting panned. It’s currently at 27% on Rotten Tomatoes, and one of the top “positive” reviews reads:

“Risk-averse” is not exactly a ringing endorsement. The reviews are actually quite fun when you look at them:

It probably won’t surprise you that this movie is racist (the only black guy in the cast plays Killer Croc), sexist (it does a really good job of ogling Margot Robbie), and the only (slightly) good parts involve (in ascending order) Will Smith, Margot Robbie and Queen Viola Davis. I hope she bought a villa in Tuscany with the money she made from doing this movie. At least SOMETHING good should come from this hot garbage.

But no, these aren’t the reasons this movie deserves the suckage it’s getting. The number one reason this movie earned all the shit it’s getting can easily be described by one image:

Anyone who thinks this is a good look, well for ANYTHING, never mind the Joker, an iconic supervillain who has existed for 75 years and never had grillz, obviously is out of touch and has no idea what they’re doing. Also, fuck Jared Leto and his “method acting,” sending weird shit like dead rats and used condoms to his co-stars since he thought that’s what the Joker would do since he was SOOOO CRAAYYZEEEE. Ugh. What a douche bag. Dude’s always been a douche bag. And no, I’m not harboring some long-term resentment of him because he was a heartthrob on My So Called Life and some girl I liked in middle school, loved him instead of me. That’s not the case, because if you must know, I wasn’t cool in middle school and I was watching Star Trek: The Next Generation instead of My So Called Life, so I had no idea who Jared Leto was until he got his face smashed in in Fight Club. So there. AND, after all the focus he gets in the trailer and headlines the poster, it sounds like he gets like 15 minutes of screentime in the actual movie.

This is our first multi-day release, meaning you can select and get the earnings for Friday, Saturday or Sunday (or some combination thereof), but you can’t get the earnings for the entire weekend. Predictions are at record breaking levels somewhere between $133 and $145 million. The most money will come in on Friday, hence it costing the most, especially with all those NERDS who bought tickets ahead of time and now have to go to the movie regardless of it sucking. Fandango reports “the biggest pre-sale for any August title in the company’s 16-year history.” But maybe Saturday is the way to go. It’s much, much cheaper and, even though FMLnerd has a significant drop off from Friday to Saturday, the last few weekends have only had a 10-15% drop off between Friday and Saturday. Sunday feels like a bad choice all around, because Sundays suck in general. I really don’t know what you should do. It feels like this movie is going to do well, regardless of the shitty reviews, and that’s a lot of money to leave on the table. Either way it feels like Suicide.

Nine Lives ($99)

This is a movie where Kevin Spacey voices a live-action cat. You don’t need to see a trailer for that. There aren’t even reviews for this movie. That’s all you need to know about this.

Shade of the Week

Lastly, there are 3 weeks left after this weekend. I’m debating having playoffs, which would mean next weekend everyone would have a matchup, and the only thing that matters about your score is that you beat the person you’re matched up against. Standard playoff seeding would apply: 1st (me) would be matched up against 8th (Sean, at the moment), then 2nd against 7th and so on. Winners would move on to try and win the championship. What do you all think?