rosslangager

More recommended Twitter feeds for your consideration and consumption. Previous iterations: the first, second, third. @Sidslang can be examined and judged and found wanting here.

@TheBig_Sam

Parody accounts have populated Twitter like a multiplying brood of satiric spiders, but the true champs of the form leap off from the parodic target’s stereotyped qualities into inventive brilliance. Witness, therefore, an exhibit of this craft at its highest level with this parody feed focusing on English Premier League football manager Sam Allardyce. Currently helming West Ham United, the voluble Allardyce (nicknamed “Big Sam” for his physical size as well as expansive personality) is as well-known for his lusty, outspoken public image as he is for his managing prowess, which has mostly been burned away on second-tier clubs.

@TheBig_Sam, though infrequently updated, leaps off from this base on flights of inspired and often explicit creative riffing on not only current developments for his club or in the game, but also in the world at large. His discourse is rather Brit-centric, understandably, and an outsider to the island’s culture often required a quick Google search or two to gain the measure of the references. But the effort is ever rewarded; once you’re all caught up, it’s ripping stuff.

Multi-tweet bursts detailing with comically-reimagined figures that “Big Sam” encounters are true highlights. Scroll through the tweet archive for his befriending of Swansea’s Danish manager Michael Laudrup on February 3rd (they share a Toblerone after a game between their clubs, and Laudrup invites his counterpart over to his place to “watch ‘The Passion of the Christ’ and have some Mai Tais”) or West Ham player Matty Taylor telling him on December 7th of last year that he found a bird that closely resembled a disappeared rock star.

To be truthful, the completely inspired litany of tweets about prominent British Conservative politician Michael Heseltine from today (Feb. 22, 2013) forced my hand on this point of recommendation, it must be said. Proceeding from an off-colour quip about South African amputee runner Oscar Pistorius’ artificial legs to a nighttime stroll with Heseltine during which “Big Sam” watched Heseltine “hold the moon in his hands, and orchestrate the stars”, it’s a perfect distillation of @TheBig_Sam’s imaginative, crude, and killer comic method.

Representative Tweet:

It absolutely repulses me that we live in a country that has a problem with poofters getting married. Get with the fucking times, dickheads.

—
notBigSam (@TheBig_Sam) February 05, 2013