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Traina Thoughts: If You've Never Heard Chris 'Mad Dog' Russo's Rant on Harambe, You Should Listen Now
1. Tuesday marks the three-year anniversary since the Cincinnati Zoo gorilla Harambe was shot and killed after a three-year-old entered his cage. Obviously, there is nothing funny about this, but the over-the-top rant unleashed by SiriusXM sports-talk radio legend Chris "Mad Dog" Russo was one of the funniest things you'll ever hear. Whether you're familiar with Russo or not, whether you like Russo or not, it's irrelevant. If you like to hear someone lose their mind and scream and yell like a lunatic in a totally authentic way, you must listen to the clip below.
Since it's nine-minutes long, I've broken down Russo's top 11 lines from the diatribe. But again, you need to listen to it yourself to get the full context, to hear the inflections and to hear all the vintage Mad Dog mispronuciations. Enjoy.
• "No woman wants to see a 3-year-old get beaten around a moat by a gorilla, for crying out loud."
• "The last place you wanna be with a bunch of 5-year-olds is at a zoo on a holiday weekend."
• "I don’t know the percentage, but I guarantee you 99% of these animal activist groups have never in their lives taken a group of kids to a zoo, a park, an aquarium, a roller coaster ride, never in their lives. But they can judge everyone else about how they’re supposed to handle their own kids when all they care about is a dopey gorilla—and I like the gorilla, don’t get me a wrong, good looking gorilla—but you can’t go crazy about a gorilla that got himself knocked off because he didn’t know how to handle a 3-year-old who ends up in his territory."
• "I love animals. I got three dogs. And believe me, they’re a pain in the ass. But I have them."
• "Do we always have to find blame because a gorilla got knocked off? We’ll live. Trust me."
• "I don’t wanna see a gorilla get knocked off, but I don’t wanna see a 3-year-old stomped to death and have his head concussed and he smacks it like a coconut because we gotta make sure the poor gorilla lives? Why?"
• "I’ve heard, 'bring a babysitter with you.' How do you know how much money people have? Bring a babysitter. You know how much that costs? This day and age, $30 an hour for some 17-year-old to be as bored stiff as you."
• "What’s next? The Lindberghs were wrong for letting their kid get kidnapped?"
• "If anybody out there thinks that a parent on a holiday weekend in hot weather wants to drag four kids to a roller coaster theme park, a water park or a zoo or an aquarium, you are freaking crazy. They don’t want to deal with ice cream being spilled all over the place, cranky children in strollers and everything else. That’s the last place ANYBODY wants to be. And if anybody says different, they’re lying to you."
• "We can’t be happy that the child’s alive. We have to be upset that the gorilla got shot. Who cares? A dopey gorilla, my God almighty, who cares, gee whiz. My goodness gracious. Everybody loves gorillas, I understand that. But had to go. Had to go. Not his fault, but he had to go."
• "Say she did a poor job. Alright, she did a poor job. Bad. You’re not gonna take her kids away. You gotta kill the animal and hope she learns form it. Knock him off. Between the eyes. Right. Between. The eyes."
2. No, no, no. Steve Kerr, you are so much better than this.
3. There probably isn't a player in baseball right now who traditionalists hate more than Reds outfielder Derek Dietrich (who we love). To say he took his time admiring his home run yesterday would be a gross understatement.
4. Jeopardy! James is still rolling and Monday night might have been his finest performance yet.
5. This was the best thing I saw all weekend.
6. With the conference finals over, we are sadly done with TNT's Inside the NBA crew this season. Here is a goodbye compilation that the show's crew put together.
7. RANDOM YOUTUBE VIDEO OF THE DAY: Rocky IIIwas released on this date in 1982. Mickey's heart attack still kills me.
Be sure to catch up on past editions of Traina Thoughts and check out the Sports Illustrated Media Podcast hosted by Jimmy Traina on iTunes, Spotify or Google Play. You can also follow Jimmy on Twitter and Instagram.
IN CLOSING: Magic Johnson giving employees panic attacks is quite a nugget to highlight the Lakers' dysfunction.
