A listener turned me on to this website, and I will forever be grateful. Be prepared that once you visit the badass of the week, you will feel ashamed at how much of a wuss you really are and will immediately feel the need to start kicking more ass in your own life. If you’re not prepared to start kicking more ass in your daily life,(getting extra mayo on your sandwich, watching Die Hard once a week, preparing for the zombie apocalypse etc.) you may fall into a deep depression. So proceed with caution and realize you’ve been warned. Here’s a little taste of a former winner of the badass of the week.

Mitchell Paige

Born Mitchell Pejic in 1918, the son of Serb immigrants, “Mitch” was always interested in doing things that kicked ass. He went out and learned how to tie a bunch of freakalicious knots and start raging bonfires simply by banging kindling together somehow, becoming an Eagle Scout in 1936, and once he’d made Eagle he didn’t even wait around to pick up his award before packing his shit up and joining the Marine Corps. He went through the ball-busting rigors of boot camp, served as a gunner on the battleship Wyoming, played on the all-Navy-Marine baseball team, and once pummeled a Japanese officer senseless in a huge barroom brawl in Beijing when that fucking doucheburger had the audacity to try and impale our boy Mitch through the neck with a goddamned samurai sword when he wasn’t looking. Sure, almost being decapitated was fun and all, but it was after all that unpleasantness at Pearl Harbor went down that things got a little more serious. Mitch got so pissed he started spitting blood, and was immediately shipped off with the 7th Marines to demonstrate the appropriate way of handling a situation in which someone is begging to be kicked in the throat with a well-polished boot.

When the 7th Marines landed on Guadalcanal in 1942, Mitchell Paige was already a Platoon Sergeant in command of a machine gun section. Now, in terms of things being so ungodly terrible that you want to puncture your own face with a letter opener, Guadalcanal was pretty much an epic clusterfuck on par with the Star Wars prequel trilogy or Saturday Night Live post-Tina Fey. The Americans were intent on capturing and holding a vital airfield to further establish their presence as big dogs in the Pacific and take the fight to the Japanese homeland, and the Japanese were understandably a little hesitant to allow the Yanks the ability to start sending bombers on strafing runs over downtown Tokyo. The Marines were able to get a slight foothold on the island at first, but relentless attacks from super-pissed Japanese asskickers and insane amounts of heavily-armed enemy aircraft, giant warships, malaria-infected mosquitoes, and fully-loaded troop transports made the entire affair essentially a massive exercise in sucking balls. At one point during the campaign things were looking so hopeless that the Marines were actually given the go-ahead to surrender the island to the Imperial Japanese Army.

Well if the American high command wanted their forces to surrender, they shouldn’t have sent in the Marines.

The Marine effort at Guadalcanal can be almost completely encapsulated in the actions of one neck-breaking buzz saw of asswhomping bloodlust – Sergeant Mitchell Paige. At 2 am on 26 October 1942, Paige was stationed in his foxhole on the perimeter of the American lines, when suddenly he noticed a massive throng of Japanese assembly lights in the forest before him. Within a few minutes, his small, 33-man machine gun platoon was facing off against a seemingly-unstoppable advance of roughly 2,500 Japanese men and officers – a full regiment of Imperial soldiers eager to crack skulls and shred faces. Well, as I said before, the Marines don’t back down without a fight, and as soon as the first wave of infantry was close enough that he could hear the clinking of their canteens, Paige leapt up and ordered his men to start kicking some ass.

A dump truck’s worth of bullets mowed down the surprised Japanese troops, exploding many of them into red mist and sending the rest spiraling to the ground. This is great and all for the Americans, but I should also say that part of the reason why the Pacific War was so brutal was because neither side was going to back down just because they were getting torn up by bullets and explosions, and the heavy thumping of Paige’s machine gun platoon only served to make the Japanese even more ripshit pissed out of their minds. A second wave of determined warriors charged ahead, plowing through no-man’s land, and before long the horde of bayonet-and-rifle swinging infantrymen charged pointy-end-first into the Marine foxholes. At one point during the close-quarters, hand-to-hand fighting Mitch’s hand was slashed badly by a Japanese bayonet, crippling his ability at taking on his enemies in vicious thumb-fighting duels, but he still managed to kill the dude with a ka-bar to the throat. Pulling himself up, Paige got right back to manning his machine gun. This rampaging human chaingun continued firing at everything that didn’t have a Marine Corps helmet on, blasting away in every direction Smash TV-style while blood was exploding all over the place. When he ran out of targets, he repositioned his gun to a location that provided more targets. When his gun overheated, he changed it out for another. He was like fucking John Matrix fragging an entire hacienda of soldiers at the end of Commando or some shit. After an insane couple of hours of near-constant battle, Mitch ran down the line to pump up his men, only to realize that he was the last guy standing – it was him, by himself, surrounded by a full regiment of Japanese on all sides.

Mitchell Paige somehow managed to clear a path through the enemy, and by chance he discovered a small group of Marines heading his direction. Paige ran out, took one look at them, unhooked his machine gun from its tripod, and ordered the men to, “fix bayonets and follow me.”
Carrying the machine gun under his arm Rambo-style, Paige led little more than a dozen Marines on a full-on fucking bayonet charge against a couple thousand take-no-bullshit Japanese troops in what should have amounted to little more than a suicide mission. The Japanese soldiers, however, disoriented and out of position in the pitch-dark night, didn’t seem to realize what the deuce was happening and actually began to fall back and retreat in the face of this pointy onslaught. At one point, an Imperial officer jumped up, fired an entire clip of pistol ammunition at Mitch, and then rushed after him with his samurai sword, but Paige cut him down with a burst of automatic weapons fire. The Japanese called off their attack, and ten hours after the first gunshots were fired, Mitchell Paige still held his position. He won the Medal of Honor for his actions, becoming one of only seven men to be both Eagle Scouts and Medal of Honor recipients.

After Guadalcanal, Mitch transferred to Australia, where he finished up the war. He made officer, retired as a Colonel in 1959, and went on to achieve the great honor of having a G.I. Joe action figure modeled after him. He dedicated the later part of his life to tracking down dickheads who owned or sold fake Medals of Honor, and died in 2003 at the age of 85 - a man who took on an army by himself and somehow emerged victorious.

Oregon and Oregon State have been battling for the last ten years to claim the right hand of USC for
Pac-10 football supremacy. USC had won 7 straight Pac-10 titles and 2 national championships in that time frame so it wasn’t much of a debate as to who was king, but Prince was up for election with the Ducks and Beavers were the two candidates. The race was very close but most would agree that Oregon held the slightest of edges. Last night in arguably the biggest sporting event in the state of Oregon since the Blazers Championship in 77”, the argument ended and the election was closed. For the second straight year the Beavers had their Rose Bowl dreams dashed by their bitter rivals. And much like the argument to who was the better program, in the game, the Ducks were just slightly better. If those teams play 10 times I think Oregon wins 6. It’s that tight folks, but there is a winner and it’s Oregon. Whether Beaver nation wants to admit it, the Duck Empire is just better. It just seems like in the places it matters most Oregon seems to win by a nose over the Beavers, and last night on a national stage the rest of the country saw that and now has that very thought cemented in it’s conciseness. I think they have a healthy respect for OSU,and the Beavers did nothing to shame themselves, in fact I think they showed very well but the lasting imagine will be Oregon, who already had a bigger national reputation, being the first team in eight years not named USC heading to Pasadena. That’s a huge deal for the Ducks and a damming blow for the Beavers. The argument is over, the perceptions put in place. And those are hard things to change. The Beavers needed that one, and I feel bad for those kids and Mike Riley who I just love. To get that close only to fall short again, that will stick with them for a long time. How they fell short is simple in my mind and I haven’t heard many people talking about it. During yesterdays show I had a caller say the difference was going to be the Beavers kicking game. That Justin Kuhut would win the game for the Beavs. I told her that if that was the case, the Beavers were done. That you needed 7’s not 3’s against the Ducks. That Mike Riley needed to treat this game like the Hoodie did against the Saints last Monday night. 4th and short? Go for it. Because field goals weren’t going to beat the Saints, and they weren’t going to beat the Ducks. In the fourth quarter Mike Riley realized that and went for it on 4th and 15. When a Field goal would have cut it to a one point game with 6 minutes left to play. But he knew he couldn’t stop Oregon and needed 7. He went for it and didn’t get it. This was a huge mistake, not that he went for it but that it took him so long to figure it out. 4 times earlier in the game, they had the ball deep in Oregon territory, at the 23,11,12,and 28 yard line. Some they needed less than 3 yards to move the chains and they settled for 3 every time. Then on 4th and 15 you decide to go for it? It cost Oregon State the game. I love Mike Riley and I don’t like to second guess coaches, but those were the wrong decisions and it cost them the game. Oregon State had converted 80 percent of their 4th downs this season and they kick 4 field goals against a team like Oregon? It just doesn’t make sense. On the other side of the coin, Chip Kelly had no problem going for it on fourth down, and it turned out ok for him. It was the difference in the ball game, and the difference in the programs. Oregon is just simply better, even if its by the slightest of margins.

Out of one fire and into another. Tiger Woods stone walled the police and managed to keep all the details of his car wreck and the alleged fight with his wife out of police hands and will only suffer a traffic ticket to the tune of 164 bucks. But the spotlight that has been placed upon him from all this isn’t going anyway anytime soon. And that traffic ticket just got a lot more expensive,Kobe’s cost him a 4 million dollar ring,as woman are now coming out of the wood work to claim their place at the I’ve slept with Tiger table. What classy women. But Tiger now realizes that it’s futile to deny these allegations because one of the women, Jamie Grubbs, has proof of her taming the Tiger. Including a pretty damning voicemail left by Tiger. Take a listen here. So of course that lead to the apology statement. I have to admit though I’m a little disappointed that we didn’t get a Kobe esc presser out of this whole deal. Either way we now have for the first time in his storied career something that Tiger can’t control or spin. He has crafted an image as this great family man and used it to sell use cars, sports drinks, and clothes. We shouldn’t be surprised that he wasn’t what he said he was, but I am a bit disappointed. You can call me naïve if you want but I always hope that these guys really are as good as advertised, but usually that turns out not to be the case, but that’s not going to stop me from hoping. After all I still have Tim Tebow. It will be interesting to see what effect this has on Tiger’s golf game. He has always been able to block out all distractions, even the death of his father. But this is a completely different situation, and Tiger is never going to be looked at or covered the same way again. Everything changes from here on out, now it will be interesting to see if his game is included in that.