Introducing The Ham Sandwich: Where Relevance Is All Relative (Or Something)

It’s all fun and games until you wake up facedown on a living room couch and your ass feels like it’s on fire.

What you’re reading now is the result of a lengthy process, but it starts back on the Eastern Shore in like 2006. It was a weekend with a couple friends, that was completely unremarkable except for the legions of greased up meatheads that besieged us when we hit the beach every day.

We’re talking stereotypes here, but these particular stereotypes were in the flesh, pumping their fists, and had us completely surrounded. You’d have thought we were on the Jersey Shore. The sunglasses, the waxed chests, the blowout hair... It all popped off the beach landscape like a blinding horizon of douchebaggery, but nothing was worse than the tattoos. Oh, the tattoos. Flaming skulls and tribal tats here, barbed wire and Chinese tramp stamps there. It’s how we got to talking. What’s the most impossibly inane tattoo you could ever come up with?

Like, no matter what tattoo you’re getting, it’s going to look completely ridiculous to 99% of the general public, so we thought, why not remove any pretense of “meaning”?

Fast forward to New Orleans, circa 2007. My friends and I had arranged a weekend rendezvous around (what else?) a Lil Wayne concert that Friday night. New Orleans is the sort of place where you can buy a shot on the street from a woman in nothing more than a bra and panties, then have that same woman try to rip you off, and lecture you on religion and honesty after you balk. “Y’all need Jesus in your life,” said the woman in fishnet stockings selling shots to underage kids on the street.

I remember this vividly, because it came after the Lil Wayne concert, before a night out on Bourbon Street, and it was the exact moment I decided New Orleans was my favorite place in the world. A place with great food, practically no rules, and all the real-life characters that John Kennedy O’Toole wrote about in A Confederacy of Dunces. And we weren’t leaving until Sunday!

The following day, while we drank at someplace called “The Fly,” on the banks of a muddy Mississippi River, the tattoo conversation came up again.

Pictured here (along with my ass) a man named Black Wolf that claimed to be a Native-American and had only one hand that was fully functional. There he is, gently palming my ass. We later realized that he had a gun in his back pocket, which I think made me feel safer about the whole thing? In any case, the tattoo conversation on The Fly got taken a little bit too far.

Taken to Tattoo Ya Inc. on Canal Street, to be exact.

Two days’ worth of Grenades and 64 oz. beers and Hurricanes and fried food and SEC football and Lil Wayne and strippers and mechanical bulls and ungodly humidity... It was sort of the perfect storm, really. And next thing you know, we’re explaining to the guy getting a tattoo of his new record label, “Yeah yeah, we’re totally serious.” And “No, we know it sounds stupid, but that’s the point. It’s making fun of tattoos that mean something.” Like, say, a tattoo above one’s eye that reads “Outhouse Records.”

Anyway, that’s how all this happened.

And that brings us to the present day, and the new section of SBNation.com where I’ll be writing for the foreseeable future. This new experiment—a good bet to be aborted as soon as I hit “publish” on all these photos of my ass—might prompt an array of questions from readers, chief among them being, “Why is it called the Ham Sandwich?”

And to that question, the above anecdote offers some answers. It’s called The Ham Sandwich because, in an abstract sense, nothing means as much as we think it does, and relevance is all relative. So what you read here won’t always be meaningful, but it’ll always be entertaining. It’s called The Ham Sandwich because the thing I hate most about writing, and sportswriting in particular, is people that take themselves too seriously. Let me just add: it’s really hard to take yourself too seriously when you’ve got the words “Ham Sandwich” tattooed on your ass. And it’s called The Ham Sandwich because me and my best friend once got drunk in New Orleans and got the words “Ham Sandwich” tattooed on our asses. Could it be called anything else?

Anyway, onto more practical questions...

What Is This Thing?

The Ham Sandwich is a part of SB Nation that’ll allow me to write more freely. Over the past year, as SB Nation has grown, it’s become less and less acceptable for me to launch horribly biased attacks against certain teams or individuals, because in some sense, SBNation.com is a representation of all 200+ blogs on our network. Does everyone hate Duke basketball or Indianapolis Colts fans or Brett Favre? No, but I do.

Without going all Whitlock on you and rehashing past instances where there’ve been some conflicts of interest, I’ll just say that I’m glad to have a space where I can write without worrying about indicting someone on behalf of an entire company. What gets written here is my opinion, and not that of SB Nation, anyone else that works on SBNation.com, any of our sponsors, or anyone else blogging for our network. Cool? Cool.

What Will Change?

Truthfully, not much. The only difference between the current situation and that of the past 12 months is that now, you’ll be able to find all my work on one page. I’ll also have some leeway to write about pop culture and certain topics that go beyond sports, but that won’t come at the expense of anything that I’ve been doing on SB Nation’s front page.

So Why Should I Visit The Ham Sandwich?

Basically, because I spend most of the day online, sifting through ridiculous videos, weird stories, and making stupid jokes. The Ham Sandwich will filter all of that for you--ideally, giving you the best of what’s out there, without having to waste your time spending all day on Twitter (Ahem... Not that there’s anything wrong with that.)

Every day there will be a few pieces of commentary in the left hand column (“From Our Editors”) that won’t be featured anywhere else on SB Nation, and the stories in the center column will aggregate some of the best articles from around the web--some from SB Nation, some about sports, and some about other stuff. If it’s really funny, or really smart, it’ll be on The Ham Sandwich.

Won’t This Mean More Work For You?

Yes, and there’s just no getting around it: That sucks.

Nice Enthusiasm! So What Other Features Should We Expect?

Good question. We’ll see what happens as this whole project unfolds, but for now, you can expect a “Photo of the Day” every morning, and a collection of “(Fake) Athlete Tweets” every afternoon, in addition to a collection of links to some of my favorite writing from around the internet each day.

The “Athlete Tweets” feature will involve commentary from some of the biggest stars in sports on some of the most pressing issues of the day. These will be completely fabricated, so... Take them with a grain of salt, and have a sense of humor about all this. As for the links to other writing from around the web, it’ll be everything from the Kissing Suzy Kolber Sex/Fantasy Football Mailbag, to Roger Ebert’s smackdown of Jay Mariotti, to The Making of Outkast’s Aquemini, to Spencer Hall’s superbly understated essay, Why Kenny Chesney Should Be Beaten With Sticks.

And picture of the day? Well, that’s pretty self-explanatory. Everything from this:

To this:

Or maybe this:

Sports is full of awesome photos. We’ll try to highlight as many as possible, with a hearty thank you to the folks at Getty Images, who consistently supply the awesomeness for all of us.

Who Is “Fake Scoop”?

Let’s go to straight to the source.

Fake Scoop is you’re worst goddamn nightmare. Fake Scoop is Martin, Fake Scoop is Malcolm. Fake Scoop is Kwame Kilpatrick meets Kwame Brown. Fake Scoop is talking in the third person, and he’s smackin’ you in the face with the truth. What did the five fingers say to the face? “Fake Scoop is real.”

WHAP!

The truth hurts, doesn’t it haters?

Simple and plain, I will remain like a cranberry stain. Oh yes. Can’t stop Fake Scoop, can only try to contain his truth. Real. Refreshing like a orange peel. You ready? Uh-uh. No way. You can’t be. Short sentences for emphasis. Knowledge of self. America. Hip. HOP.

It’s 2010, y’all. Welcome to the future.

See that? Fake Scoop is one part gibberish, one part swagger, one hip-hop references, one part truth, and... one more part gibberish. You’ll be seeing more of him on The Ham Sandwich.

Okay, I Didn’t Expect To See A Giant White Ass When I Clicked On This Article...

Believe me, nobody’s more disgusted with it than I am.

So, Will This Site Be Safe For Work?

Begrudgingly, yes. This site will be safe for work and confined to the same standards of decorum you’ll find anywhere else on SBNation.com. The stories linked won’t always be safe for work, but that will be noted. If there’s a video that’s borderline, we’ll note that, as well. Basically, you won’t get fired for reading this stuff.

Before We Go, Will You Just Answer Anything We Ask Here?

Pretty much.

Okay, So... What Ever Happened To The White Athlete?

First of all, no one ever asks this question. Second, I guess you could ask Pacers fans?

Country Music: Yay Or Nay?
If you’re drunk and/or Chris Cooley, then yay.

If not... Kenny Chesney really should get beaten to death with sticks.

When Is It Okay For A Man To Get A Pedicure?

Pretty much never, unless you’re filming for a reality show and/or you’re Puff Daddy.

How Long Until Lil Wayne Gets Out Jail?

72 Days. Haven’t you been keeping track at WeezyThanxYou.com?

Does Anyone Still Care About Baseball?

...

Does Kanye West’s Music Mitigate His Insufferable Personality?

Yes.

Does LeBron James’ Talent Mitigate His Insufferable Personality?

No.

Interesting. Did We Create The LeBron James Monster?

Eh... Yes and no, but mostly no.

The people that say we created LeBron are like the Americans that say America caused 9/11. Bottom line: LeBron has powers of self-delusion and narcissism that would have been there regardless. It’s otherworldly. Did the media--and the millions of adoring fans--have a role in incubating those flaws in his personality and creating a climate ripe for a self-indulgent? Of course. But to say that we “created” LeBron James isn’t giving LeBron enough credit; he is the one who chose to surround himself with sycophants, he is the one who goes around talking in the third person, and he is the one who turned himself into a caricature of the modern-day athlete over the past 6 months. We may have given him the stage, but he’s the one who assumed the platform to make an ass of you and me. And him. God he made an ass of himself this summer. Wait, how did we start talking about LeBron James?

How Much Wood Could A Woodchuck Chuck If A Woodchuck Could Chuck Wood?

Now you’re just wasting everyone’s time.

Oh, Like The Little Vignette About Your Ass Cheeks Was Productive.

Well, touche. We’ll end this here then. Hopefully you’ll enjoy The Ham Sandwich as we go, and rest assured, it’s a work in progress. We’re kicking things off with a series of NFL Features this week, so that should be fun, and then... Who knows? But bookmark the page if you’re interested in how this turns out. And if you’re in New Orleans and happen to run into Black Wolf, let him know that I’ve still got that business card he gave me, and he’s getting some great (or terrible) advertising out of it.