My Birthday Party Was Way Better Than Joakim Noah's, Just Like My J

It's not often I outperform professional athletes, in any arena. Fine. I've never one-upped a professional athlete, until last night, when Bulls forward Joakim Noah celebrated his 24th birthday with a small group of friends and family. In section 114 of the Izod Center. In East Rutherford, New Jersey. 

Joakim Noah's posse settled for watching him sit on the bench during the crucial stretch of a loss to a mediocre team. After hearing from Coach Del Negro, and getting changed, Noah and family gathered for a quiet ten minutes of present opening in section 114 of the nearly deserted Izod Center.

As the stadium crews mopped up the spilled popcorn and sticky soda spills, Noah, his parents, some friends and other relatives, including a flock of siblings right down to toddler age, handed around gift bags.

I don't mean to brag, but my party, which I hosted earlier this month, was a lot more fun, for the following reasons: 1.) I celebrated here; 2.) it was better attended; 3.) and absent of arena janitors sweeping up spilled popcorn.  

But surely Noah, the offspring of a former tennis champion and a former Miss Sweeden, received better gifts. Not so fast. 

Noah got this:

 

I got this:
Hells yeah.

Seriously, it's not even close. If this were my old CYO league, the refs would have called this game 150 words ago. In fairness to Noah, though, as Henry Abbot points out in his piece, sometimes it sucks being a professional athlete, mainly because of an impossibly demanding schedule and a total lack of personal time. Bloggers, on the other hand, always have time for a drink, like a rock star or a member of the local VFW.  In your face, Joakim. 

A Dios Mio

Diego Maradona is having a pretty good week. Two days after the Argentine Football Association appointed him coach of the country's national soccer team, Maradona, one the greatest footballers of all time--and the sport's most notorious cocaine abuser--celebrated his 48th birthday with three hundred of his closest friends, who just so happened to have established a church in his honor.  

"Ringing in the year D.D. 48 ("Despues," or "After" Diego), about 300 members of the mock soccer church held processions to their idol with relics that included a soccer ball with a crown of thorns and an oversized rosary with 34 beads--the number of goals Maradona scored for Argentina's national team," according to the Associated Press.

Established ten years ago in the Argentine port city of Rosario, the Church of Maradona has attracted more than 120,000 members around the world. 

Thankfully, they don't actually believe the god of Argentine soccer, or D10S as they call him, is an actual deity. They just treat him like one.

"Members honor June 22, 1986--when Maradona punched the ball into England's net with his hand in a disputed play he called 'the Hand of God'-- as the church's Easter."

Still, I guess there are worse ways for Maradona, who's been known to pal around with the likes of Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez and Madonna (the other Madonna), to spend his birthday. Here's how he's celebrated previous milestones: