The Packers Channeling "Austin Powers in Goldmember" For TD's Is So Goddamn Stupid

I'm a month late on this but I refused to believe it until now so here we are.

When the Packers look to the sky with their arms raised after scoring a TD, their praise goes not to the heavens but to a villain from the third installment of 90's-00's comedy franchise Austin Powers. Johan van der Smut, better known as "Goldmember," is a Dutch nightclub owner with a habit of eating his own skin flakes who, above all else, loves gold. Yes, when the Packers break the goal line, they're longingly shouting "I love gooooold" like van der Smut:

Giphy Images.

It turns out that Green Bay OC Nathaniel Hackett loves the movie (nay, film!) and has dubbed the end zone as the "gold zone," resulting in the demonstrative celebration.

What a fuckin' year. You can line up all the crazy shit that happened in 2020 and nothing was less likely than an NFL team building a mantra out of Austin Powers, let alone the worst one in the bunch.

I don't mean to throw shade at Austin Powers because those first two movies were iconic and they served as the perfect comedic bridge from the mid-90's Sandler/Carrey/Farley era into the new millennium. Here are just a few scenes of many that were 10-out-of-10 hilarious:

Side note: I don't mean to tread on Trent's territory, but Elizabeth Hurley with multiple exclamation points.

But the problem was that most of the comedic juices of Austin Powers had been squeezed by the time Goldmember released in 2002. By the late 2000's, if you were at a party and someone hit you with a "Yeah Baby!" Austin Powers impression, it would be like someone dropping a "my wife" Borat impression any time over the past decade (prior to Borat Subsequent Moviefilm). Mike Myers and Sacha Baron Cohen are absolute geniuses, but I figured we as a society had closed the book on some of these references.

But no! Into the year 2021, as a Bears fan, I will have the distinct pleasure of seeing Aaron Rodgers imitate a tertiary antagonist from a tertiary farce on my television each weekend en route to a Super Bowl (2nd in odds overall at +600). I'll just start preparing myself now for a Freddy Got Fingered end zone celebration next season.

Giphy Images.

But if I'm a Packers fan, I love this. It's incredibly stupid, but this is the type of shit that keeps a team loose and gives them something to rally behind. And when it comes to my star QB, the weirder the better. Whether it's Russell Wilson giving his naked family the reach-around in a photoshoot, Tom Brady smooching his 11-year old son on the mouth, or Aaron Rodgers idolizing an outdated character who lost his genitalia in a smelting accident, I want my QB living in his own world. This lets me know that the leader of my team is so insulated from reality that he gives negative-infinity fucks about public perception, and that translates to winning football.

Packers, I'll make you an offer: I'll give you full rights to this track about cumming gold that I rapped on a decade ago (2nd verse, 2:26-3:26) to bump in the locker room after wins if you kindly lay down next week to keep the Bears’ playoff hopes alive. Very fair trade.

Sure, the guy on the first and third verse had never rapped in his life and the production sounds like an off-brand Korn song, but with your affection for Goldmember we can't say that discerning taste is an issue. Let's make this happen.