The guys in our promos department here are some creative and funny people, but sometimes their ideas get rejected for being a little too far out. This is my favorite SNY promo ever. It was meant to air in advance of the 2009 season, but never did:

There’s also this, featuring me channeling my inner Joe Benigno:

For that spot, I was instructed to sit at the desk and just say things that would make for good soundbytes. It was predictably surreal, and I couldn’t come up with anything to say, so I just started repeating all the soundbytes from the existing SNY promos.

I wanted my soundbyte to be, “I don’t speak in soundbytes!” but that was clearly too postmodern to make the air.

Ultimately, I was unable to record even one reasonable soundbyte while keeping a straight face, and they ended up using something else entirely.

Every time I’m close to entirely losing faith in humanity, someone comes out of the woodwork to restore hope.

In this case, that someone was reader A.J., who created this new proposed mascot for the Nippon Ham Fighters, the Japanese baseball team that recently celebrated Tsuyoshi Shinjo.

I’m not even entirely certain what’s going on here, but I know that it’s awesome. As I mentioned yesterday, I was disappointed to learn that the Nippon Ham Fighters were the “Nippon Ham” Fighters and not actual fighting hams.

What A.J. has heroically done here depicts an actual ham — our familiar friend Porky — prepared to fight. And he fights using a sword laden with ham, and, I assume, he fights on behalf of ham. It’s really quite remarkable, and rather meta, and very hammy all around.

Oh, and the ham is made of baseball. I think A.J. just blew my mind.

And speaking of mind-blowing, that Shinjo video from yesterday wasn’t nearly the only Tsuyoshi Shinjo commercial available on YouTube:

And also this:

And this:

There are a lot of Olympic events that seem silly or unnecessary, but perhaps none so much as the luge.

Maybe it’s just that I don’t really fully understand the sport, but it’s basically just sledding, right? I mean, what is the skill set necessary for being a good luger? I understand that there’s steering involved; is that all?

I know that the U.S. Luge team has been doing a ton of outreach lately to recruit more lugers, including an event on Rockefeller Plaza today allowing kids to try out a luge on a tiny little luge track. It looked like this:

Whoopee! Now if that thrilling four-foot drop isn’t going to get them interested, I don’t know what will. Maybe all those commercials that the U.S. Luge team airs showing kids sledding, and basically asking, “Hey, you ever think about sledding… IN THE OLYMPICS?”

And what’s most baffling about the luge is the two-man luge. I just can’t understand what, at all, the second guy laying on top of the first guy can add to luging other than — depending on the lugers’ orientations — to make things way more awkward or way more interesting.

How do you even meet your luge partner? Do you practice by spooning? Is there a mixer? I mean, that’s someone you better have damn good chemistry with, because he’s going to be spending a lot of time speeding down an icy path while laying on top of you wearing a skin-tight unitard.

Good buddy Scott writes a perfect recap of Game 5 at Rockiescast.com.

Other good buddy Jake Rake explains why things keep getting worse for the Mets in a post to The Nooner’s blog.

Storming the floor lists the early favorites for the God Shammgod award.

Sam Page at Amazin’ Avenue joins me on the Mike Fontenot Express. I’ve been riding it for three years, so it’s nice to finally have some company.

This won’t earn Manu Ginobli any points with PETA, but holy awesome: