"It's always Christopher Burr"
July 21, 2021 11:40 AM   Subscribe

From when Mary Carillo had to fill in some dead air for NBC while nothing was happening at the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, a badminton rant.
posted by MartinWisse (33 comments total) 54 users marked this as a favorite
 
1. Real badminton is insane, not just the equipment, but also the fact that it is at no level just a young person's sport. Spry nonagenarians can kick your ass just with excellent shuttlecock control.

2. If that was extemporaneous, I think we all deserve a lot more Mary Carillo. That can't just be a one-off.

3. Christopher Burr.
posted by ivan ivanych samovar at 11:55 AM on July 21, 2021 [3 favorites]


No matter how many times I watch this it never gets old.
posted by phunniemee at 12:01 PM on July 21, 2021 [2 favorites]


As a suburban parent, I am happy to assert that every word is true.
posted by Orlop at 12:08 PM on July 21, 2021 [3 favorites]


"Come on over, we're playing badminton" LOL
posted by riverlife at 12:11 PM on July 21, 2021 [4 favorites]


As gawd is my witness, I have never seen that clip and, omg, that was brilliant.
posted by Thorzdad at 12:15 PM on July 21, 2021 [7 favorites]


In fact, I love this bit so much that I was going to share it to our work intranet, when I got a strong feeling of deja vu. I searched in my post history and found where I shared it on our work intranet the Monday after the Rio opening ceremony. It's not gonna stop me from sharing again.

This is my thing now.
posted by phunniemee at 12:16 PM on July 21, 2021 [7 favorites]


this is outstanding. thank you for this.
posted by rude.boy at 12:19 PM on July 21, 2021 [1 favorite]


ivan ivanych samovar: "excellent shuttlecock control"

Is that what the nonagenarians are calling it these days?
posted by adamrice at 12:34 PM on July 21, 2021 [6 favorites]


If that was extemporaneous

Even if it wasn't!
posted by trig at 12:48 PM on July 21, 2021 [1 favorite]


All from the left side of the goose? Is that true?
posted by Halloween Jack at 12:58 PM on July 21, 2021 [3 favorites]


All from the left side of the goose? Is that true?

Why would anybody make that up? If I were casting about for something to make up, that would not be it.
posted by halfbuckaroo at 1:04 PM on July 21, 2021 [3 favorites]


"...emptying out the garage.." -- that's awesome.

I think that the pronunciation is a giveaway: if you say "BAD-min-tun" you probably know how to volley, but if you say "bad-MITTEN" you're probably someone (like me) with half a dozen damaged "birdies" (never "shuttlecocks"), floppy rackets with gaps in the strings, and a sagging net strung between splayed poles.

And honestly, the latter is the one we've all played, while those savage volleys in the pro-level game are barely recognizable as the same thing.
posted by wenestvedt at 1:27 PM on July 21, 2021 [1 favorite]


If you liked that; here's Carillo recommended Zamboni bit.

Guido the Zamboni Guy.

Mary's explanation of this from her email to Deadspin.

Can't believe that thing's still around. I was hosting a morning show in Athens that covered a lot of badminton—some table tennis too, but badminton, I'd been assured, was going to be "the curling of the Summer Games." (!) There was no script for that rant—just a little dead time—but it got some chuckles and a head shake from my producer. It was a pretty loose show—I'd already explained a team handball's size by comparing it against various members of the melon family, and when I found out that equestrian horses were listed as "equipment" I did a rant on the fact that horses needed passports to get into the country and dramatically produced one, so surely they needed an identity upgrade..

That sort of nonsense got me a hosting gig on Torino's Olympic Ice show, which is still one of my all-time favorite scams. Don't know if it's still kicking around, but maybe my salute to Guido The Zamboni Guy is still out there from that wackadoodle show..

Don't know how I stay employed,
carillo

posted by indianbadger1 at 1:30 PM on July 21, 2021 [47 favorites]


In my junior year of college I needed an extra credit hour to stay full-time, and I had already taken swimming once and figure skating twice, so I chose badminton.

My first 10 minutes of the class involved playing 'casually' against other people - most of whom were apparently members of the UIUC NCAA Division 1 Varsity Badminton team that needed an extra credit hour like me, who 'casually' burned that shuttlecock at 200m/sec into my clavicle multiple times.

I dropped the class that afternoon.
posted by JoeZydeco at 1:56 PM on July 21, 2021 [8 favorites]


All from the left side of the goose? Is that true?

Only in the Northern Hemisphere.
posted by trig at 1:56 PM on July 21, 2021 [26 favorites]


I love sharing this clip with people and saying, "trust me," when they groan about listening to someone talk about badminton, then watching them forward it to their co-workers, friends, etc.
posted by Caxton1476 at 2:02 PM on July 21, 2021 [2 favorites]


"Badminton is a water sport."
posted by jenfullmoon at 3:34 PM on July 21, 2021 [3 favorites]


Utterly hilarious. And oddly crossed my radar this a.m. just a day after my wife discovered the mind-boggling fact that - I presume from 17 more years of technology - today's shuttlecock's can travel over 100 mph faster than Mary reported in 2004, recently reaching a world's record 306 mph.

Tan Boon Heong of Malaysia hit a smash measured at an eye-watering 493 km/h (306 mph) while testing out new racket technology. That is almost as quick as the fastest car in the world: the SSC Tuatara at 508 km/h (316 mph).

The fastest recorded birdie hit during a competitive game is 426 km/h (264 mph) by the Danish player Mads Pieler Kolding. As a comparison with other racket sports, the fastest serve in squash is 281 km/h (175 mph), tennis’ fastest serve is 263 km/h (163 mph), and table tennis has a world-record shot speed of 116 km/h (72 mph).
posted by thecincinnatikid at 3:36 PM on July 21, 2021 [6 favorites]


I was skeptical when I first clicked on this, but damn this hilarious.
posted by fizzix at 3:45 PM on July 21, 2021 [1 favorite]


thecincinnatikid, that's actually a shot not a serve in squash. That guy hit his brother with one of those shots on some sort of bet, and the result was not pretty. The end of a shuttlecock is harder than a squash ball, so you definitely don't want to get hit by that.

Still not as bad as jai alai though.
posted by ecreeves at 4:42 PM on July 21, 2021 [2 favorites]


Note: Mary Carillo was once a top 50 tennis player and won a Grand Slam title in mixed doubles with John McEnroe, so she knows her racquet sports.

And incredibly, her commentary skills are on an even higher plane.
posted by Caxton1476 at 5:21 PM on July 21, 2021 [8 favorites]


The sad part is all those unbalanced geese with a tendency to lean left and walk in circles.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 5:35 PM on July 21, 2021 [4 favorites]


Just like the Democratic party!

...I'll see myself out
posted by Greg_Ace at 5:51 PM on July 21, 2021 [12 favorites]


Silly me. I know of Aarons, but who is Christopher Burr?
posted by baegucb at 7:02 PM on July 21, 2021 [1 favorite]


Probably a neighborhood kid who was present where there was trouble one time too often.
posted by wenestvedt at 8:08 PM on July 21, 2021 [1 favorite]


Relevant: Oliver Jeffers - Stuck.
posted by that's candlepin at 9:44 AM on July 22, 2021 [1 favorite]


All from the left side of the goose? Is that true?

Why would anybody make that up? If I were casting about for something to make up, that would not be it.


This is a point made on the most recent season of Great British Bake Off, as part of a conversation about a badmitton themed cake. Like Noel Fielding, I too was a little bit in love with Peter during this conversation.
posted by Ideal Impulse at 9:58 AM on July 22, 2021


Can someone, maybe with a physics degree, explain how a feathered object hit by a ~27in racquet achieves a higher velocity than a golf ball, which is a round, smooth, hard-but-also-really-bouncy object hit by long club? Yeah, there are strings and everything, but c'mon.

It just doesn't compute for me and if someone at the pub claimed the record is 306mph, I would definitely call BS and wind up buying a round. But there it is, all over the internet, verified by Guinness.

I can only imagine the measurement is taken within a foot of the impact or something, and that the speed drops really quickly.

Make it make sense plz
posted by Caxton1476 at 2:07 PM on July 22, 2021


This was all new to me, an Australian, and I love it. Here is (an example of) our country's contribution to Olympian plain-talking: noted commentators Roy and HG covering a 100m freestyle qualifier at the 2000 games in Sydney with Eric the Eel from Equatorial Guinea
posted by illongruci at 9:27 AM on July 23, 2021


Make it make sense plz

A golf ball weighs about an order of magnitude more than a shuttlecock. So if you're imparting the same kinetic energy to it, and thinking back to physics in school, KE=½mv^2, so that's velocity going up if mass goes down (though if the mass is dropping by an order of magnitude, velocity is only going up by sqrt(10), and also the shuttlecock will slow down significantly more rapidly than the golf ball.)
posted by Dysk at 5:39 PM on July 23, 2021 [1 favorite]


(For reference, shuttlecocks are about 4.5g to 5g according to google, and a golf ball no more than 45.93, hence the order of magnitude estimate.)
posted by Dysk at 5:40 PM on July 23, 2021 [1 favorite]


(Oh, and you can probably develop and transfer more kinetic energy through a golf club into a golf ball than you can through a badminton racquet to a shuttlecock, but probably not over three times more, which is what you'd need to match the velocity of an object one-tenth the mass. Also strings and things, you know, and a racquet is very light and can likely be swung at higher speeds? Somewhat offset by the longer throw on the golf club? I'm going to stop talking now.)
posted by Dysk at 5:46 PM on July 23, 2021 [1 favorite]


That is fantastic. How is that entire studio not pissing themselves laughing?
posted by turbid dahlia at 5:24 PM on July 25, 2021


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