David Ortiz Strikes Out At Gender Reveal, Runaway Pig Hits Up McDonald's, Cheese Pizza Breaks Record & A Mascot Conspiracy
The holidays have come and gone and here we all are — tired, 10 pounds heavier and drowning in an email inbox that's been ignored since November.
After two weeks of freezing my butt off in Indiana and Illinois, I have returned to the great state of Tennessee. I love traveling and visiting family, but man it's always nice to get back to my own bed.
And my hot tub. Truly don't know how I made it 14 days without the 'cuzzi.
Oh, wait, yes I do. I ate all the pasta, watched all the football and drank enough wine to drown a small village.
Speaking of booze...
Chuck From Wisconsin's New Year's Resolution Not Off To A Hot Start
Amber, I hope you enjoyed your trip to Monroe. New Glarus brews are probably Wisconsin's best kept secret. My wife banned it from the house because we both like it a little too much. Me Moon Man and her Spotted Cow.
Along that same line, I made a new year's resolution to cut back on booze. I thought I'd try this dry January everyone raves about until I remembered there's too much football in January. Already bought a 12-pack for CFP games. Better luck next month I guess.
Amber:
I'm glad I'm not alone on the "Dry January" thing. Look, I fully support anyone's decision to cut back on drinking, and a month of no alcohol is really good for you.
But just not the month of January. Like Chuck said, too much football. What am I supposed to do while I'm reduced to a screaming ball of anxiety during the Dolphins/Bills game? Sip kombucha? Absolutely not.
Plus, my birthday is in January.
So for those of you also not partaking in Dry January, grab yourself a cold one. The rest of you, maybe a V8 or something? You do you — It's Nightcaps time!
A Tough Football Weekend
Yes, I am still mourning the loss of Bradley Chubb's ACL and the fact that my Miami Dolphins got their fishtails handed to them Sunday afternoon. And to add insult to injury, I lost to Matt Reigle in the OutKick Fantasy Football Championship. I won't pull a Patrick Mahomes and whine about the referees, but I would like to point out that Amari Cooper and Raheem Mostert picked the absolute most inconvenient week to be injured.
At least college football eased the pain.
I know why people hate Jim Harbaugh and Michigan. And I didn't exactly want to cheer for the cheater cheater pumpkin eaters. But when it comes to the Alabama Crimson Tide, I'm on the same page as Charles Barkley.
So now we have an SEC-less battle between the Wolverines and the Washington Huskies, and the trash talking is in full swing.
Even Mount Saint Helens is getting in on it.
So without Alabama to root against, I have chosen my new allegiance. And just like a woman, it's solely based on cute mascots.
Have you ever seen a wolverine? Not cute at all.
Dubs, though? I'd jump in front of a speeding train for Dubs.
And to continue the mascot theme...
Cheez-Its & Pop-Tarts: A Conspiracy Theory
After the internet lost its mind over a giant Pop-Tart last week, the mascot for the Cheez-It Bowl had to get in on the action. One big difference, though: He's not willing to sacrifice himself for the cause.
Unlike his breakfast pastry brother, the Cheez-It did not want to be eaten.
In the story above, I pointed out that Cheez-It and Pop-Tarts are both products of the Kellogg Co., and these bowl games were a marketing masterclass by the company.
Then, Chris brought up an interesting theory: The mascots might be the same person.
I am actually 1000% in agreement here. Why would Kellogg Co. hire two different people to play — essentially — the same role? Gotta be the same guy.
So who is the guy?
According to Sarah Spain, it's the same dude who played Benny the Bull (the Chicago Bulls mascot) for more than a decade until he left the job in 2016.
After a little more digging, I found out his name is Barry Anderson.
So is Barry the Pop-Tart? And if so, was he also the Cheez-It?
I have my Big J journalist hat on now. Email me at Amber.Harding@outkick.com. And someone get me in touch with Barry.
Brian from New Jersey Shares My Good Taste
Your husband and my wife should share some boring Pop Tarts together. I'm also considered crazy for choosing Brown Sugar Cinnamon as the clear Pop Tarts champion. She prefers — ready for this — UNFROSTED Strawberry. Who the hell would choose that?!
And that damn game did almost put me in a sugar coma the next morning, as I strolled through the grocery store and popped two boxes of Pop Tarts into my grocery cart. Took a few steps, picked up the box, read that there are 400 calories in two Brown Sugar Cinnamon Pop Tarts (380 in two unfrosted Strawberry), reversed my tracks and placed the boxes back on the shelf.
I'm still trying to detox from three days of my mom's Christmas cookies, and those weren't going to help the process.
Amber:
I had no idea that people felt so strongly about Pop-Tarts.
When I revealed on Friday that brown sugar cinnamon was my favorite Pop-Tart flavor, it sparked a debate unlike any I'd ever seen. Turns out, BSC is either your favorite flavor or you hate it more than anything else in the world.
My own husband (who picked S'mores as his top Tart) was appalled by my choice, so he ran a poll on his Instagram to see if anyone actually agreed with me. Hundreds of votes later, it was a dead-even tie.
And just like Brian's wife who loves unfrosted strawberry (yuck), one of my husband's friends said his childhood favorite was unfrosted cinnamon. He said his parents used to cut them into strips and serve them up as dessert. Truly eye-opening.
As passionate as I feel about brown sugar cinnamon, I'll also concede that I haven't actually eaten a Pop-Tart in, probably, two decades. Why? Because, as Brian points out, they are 200 calories a piece and completely devoid of any nutritional value.
Sigh. To have a kid's metabolism again.
Cheese Pizza Breaks Guinness World Record
While we're down this rabbit hole, though, here's a pizza that makes a 200-calorie Pop-Tart look like health food.
A group of French dudes broke the Guinness World Record for the most varieties of cheese on a pizza. (Yes, that's apparently a thing.)
The pie includes 940 French cheeses and 61 from other parts of the world. And to get it done, they cut a two-gram cube of each cheese to pile on the base of the pizza.
If you're lactose intolerant, look away.
So that's 1,001 different cheeses (in case you need help with the math) — beating the previous record of 730, which was set in 2016.
"We had to pre-cook the pizza dough to prevent it tearing up with the weight of all that cheese," one of the chefs explained.
Imagine the stench in there.
And in case you're feeling ambitious, there's still plenty of room to break this record. Per Google, there are approximately 1,800 varieties of cheeses in the world. So get baking, friends.
David Ortiz Swings And Misses
David Ortiz might have seven Silver Slugger Awards, but he's clearly out of practice.
Big Papi's girlfriend, Maria Yeribel, is pregnant, and he had one job at the gender reveal party: Hit a baseball that would explode in either blue or pink dust.
But Ortiz struck out. Thank God someone was standing by and prepared with blue confetti to salvage the situation.
The new baby boy will be the fourth child of the former World Series MVP, but his first with Maria.
He might have swung and missed, but I think we can all agree that as far as gender reveals go, this one wasn't so bad. At least they didn't burn down a forest.
Congrats to the happy couple — although I feel like this next post probably should have just stayed in the camera roll.
Anyone Up For A 'Pig Mac'?
A pig got loose from a farmer in Ohio last week — forcing the owner and local police to chase the little porker through the streets.
But instead of running for his freedom, the pig ran straight to the McDonald's drive-thru.
"There was a bit of oinking around in Springfield this week after a pig got loose and went hog wild," Ohio State Highway Patrol said in the Facebook post. "Fortunately, Springfield Post troopers were able to assist the owner and get the insu-boar-dinate pig into custody."
"In the end, the trooper & pig seemed to a-boar each other," the post added.
Puns. So fun.
Thank goodness they got him before he became a McRib (which are disgusting, by the way).
Stuff That Made Me LOL
An update from the Texas (alleged) poop stain guy:
Not a single person thought this through ahead of time, huh?
My printer just sits in my office for decoration, tbh.
And when you get caught breaking your healthy eating New Year's Resolution on Jan. 2.
OutKick Nightcaps is a daily column set to run Monday through Friday at 4 p.m.
Follow me on X / Twitter at @TheAmberHarding or email me at Amber.Harding@OutKick.com.