All over the map

- Nasty incident involving Penn State football coach Joe Paterno in Saturday’s Wisconsin-PSU game. If you haven't seen the highlight, a collision between a Penn State players and a Wisconsin player spilled onto the sideline and took out Joe Pa. The nearly 80-year-old coach suffered an injury to his left knee and was bleeding as they carted him off the field. Obviously, best wishes to Joe Pa for a full and speedy recovery, but in one sense, it is a good thing. See, Paterno is so old and has looked exactly the same for as long as I can remember, so I’ve always had a sneaking suspicion that some PSU football staffers may be pulling a Weekend at Bernie’s with the old man - y’know, propping him up, moving his limbs, making it look like he’s alive when he’s actually been lifeless for awhile now. But the fact that he was bleeding confirms that he is still alive, so question answered.

- Can’t say exactly where I’ll be tomorrow and while I can’t tell everyone in the world where they should go, I would advise one and all to avoid Pierre, S.D. for the next few days. Why, you ask? In three simple words: Dick Cheney hunting. I think we all remember the Vice President’s last hunting excursion, the one in which be blasted a friend in the face with a shot from his gun. Generally speaking, older people don’t tend to become more physically capable and stable as they age, so odds are that the ol’ Dickster isn't going to be any better with a gun this time around. If anything, he’ll be less stable and even more unsafe. Couple that with the fact that his Republican party could suffer some bad losses on Election Day and you have a Molotov cocktail of danger. Erratic, elderly, pacemaker-wearing VP who may get some bad news about his political future who shot a friend last time out in the woods and a hunting rifle………if he’ll shoot someone he actually likes (accidentally, sure, sure), I personally would not risk being anywhere near him in the coming days.

- It will be interesting to see the results of this weekend’s Nicaraguan elections, where a former Sandinista leader is testing the concept of “be a heinous despot, then disappear for about 16 years and resurface to see if people have forgotten all the crap you did and will thus re-elect you.” The despot in question would be Daniel Ortega, the former Nicaraguan leader that the U.S. (hey, we’ve been doing this whole butting into other countries’ governing and sticking our nose where it doesn’t belong for a while now, eh? Cool.) helped to oust back in 1990. Surprisingly (or maybe not, given the fact that most people have incredibly short memories), Ortega is the odds-on favorite to win the election. People paddled canoes down remote, dangerous rivers, hiked through the jungles and sweated it out under the hot sun to vote, presumably many of them for Ortega. He did lead the country through a time period that left it in economic ruins and into a mini-war against U.S. backed Contra forces, as well as failing in bids for re-election in 1996 and 2001, but what the hell, maybe he’s all of the sudden a good guy and deserving of another chance……….good job, Nicaraguans, you should be very proud. You’re about to re-elect a man that crackpot Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez considers “a brother.” A very, very proud day in your country’s history, to be sure.

- Barry Bonds is the best. By “the best”, of course, I mean the biggest a-hole in baseball history and somebody that 11/10ths of those in MLB would like to punch in the face. Leading the pack to land the first punch would be his soon-to-be-former teammates in San Francisco, based on some recent revelations about Barr-oid’s behavior this past season. Seems our roided-up pal, in a game where the rival L.A. Dodgers clinched the pennant on the Giants’ home field, took off his uniform during the game and made himself unavailable to pinch hit in a key ninth inning situation. A rookie teammate had to pinch hit instead and grounded into a game-ending double play, giving the Dodgers the win and the division title. Think it might have helped the team to have one of the game’s all-time best sluggers bat in that situation? Additionally, in another game where Bonds deigned to pinch hit and give the team the benefit of his greatness, he then refused to remain in the game to play left field. Manager Felipe Alou had to insert teammate Pedro Feliz in left field, a spot Feliz hadn’t played all season. Thanks for the help, Barry, glad to see you have your teammates’ backs as they fight to win games during the long MLB season.

- The top three movies at the box office over the weekend? Borat, The Santa Clause 3 and Flushed Away. I am now officially going to go whack myself in the head with a giant rubber mallet until I am able to forget that this ever happened. C’mon, people, I realize that the average American moviegoer has the same cinematic sensibility as a lima bean, but have we really sunk this low? A hack-job of a movie about some loser from a former Soviet-bloc country coming to America, a sequel to a not-so-funny holiday movie series and an animated kids’ movie as the top three in the country? We need to lock Spielberg, Lucas, Soderbergh, Coppola and Bruckheimer in a bunker for the next two years under orders to produce as many new scripts and movie ideas as possible so we can run the rest of the crap off of the screen and have to actual quality pictures on the screens of our nation’s cineplexes.

- Good luck with the appeal of your conviction and death sentence, Saddam. Of course, I don’t believe in luck, so maybe you’ll need something else, something on an apocalyptic level, because there’s no way this guy won't be executed. Well, unless he commits suicide before then so he can give everyone the finger one last time. But his crimes are pretty well documented, and I don’t foresee any debate in Iraq as to whether the death penalty violates a person’s civil rights, etc. Even though the current president in Iraq doesn’t believe in the death penalty, he has previously deputized one of his VP’s to sign an execution order on his behalf, and he could do that again here. Watching Saddam in court is akin to watching a little kid throwing a tantrum. They stomp around, throw things, yell, pound on the floor, yet you know that nothing they do is actually going to do any good. Saddam would’ve been better off to pull a “Dr. Evil at the World Court” and just moon everybody in the courtroom, because either way, dude was going down. Not that I want to see it when he’s hanged, I’ll just take everyone’s word for it. A gruesome hanging just isn't pleasant, no matter how heinous the person being executed.

- Monday nights feature some great shows, foremost among them two series, Heroes and Prison Break, that share a unique yet common thread in my mind. Both of them are set up with premises that make you wonder how they can possibly survive in the long term, and many times during an episode, you feel like they’ve painted themselves into a corner that they can't get out of. But both shows continually find ways to branch off into new directions and keep you on the edge of your seat. And while you realize that they probably aren't built for long, Seinfeld-ian runs on the air (then again, how many shows are gonna go nine season on-air from this point on?), both Heroes and Prison Break are good enough to make you suspend that realization and flat-out enjoy every minute.

- On the Saddam front one last time…….great rhetoric from President Bush after Hussein’s conviction and sentencing. “(The verdict) is a milestone in the Iraqi people’s efforts to replace the rule of a tyrant with the rule of law.” You mean your efforts to replace a man you didn’t want in office and who was a threat to your beloved oil supply in the Middle East? I don’t seem to remember any Iraqi people saying, “Hey, United States, we wish to replace the rule of our tyrant leader with a rule of law, can you help us out?” So Mr. President, stop congratulating the Iraqi people on something you forced on them and are still trying to shove down their collective throat at this very moment. Call it what it is, a misguided, underhanded attempt to further your own interests.

- Evander Holyfield needs your help. Yes, you. Currently, ads are running on TV for Holyfield’s next pay-per-view match, touting it as, “The Next Step.” Correct, but not in the way Holyfield and his promoter intend. See, it is the next step, but not the next step in his quest to get back to the top of the boxing world and once again become a champion. No, it is instead the next step in his road to being an invalid, because he’s been on that road for a while now. He’s taken so many blows to the head and declined so noticeably in recent years in terms of speech and mental acuity that I seriously fear that the next shot he takes in the ring is going to turn him into a vegetable, or worse, kill him. Evander, I say this for your own good: I know the competitive fire is strong, and that you have long derived your identity from being a tough guy, a boxer who won't back down. But this time, quit. Back away from a fight you can't win. This fight isn't against a physical opponent, but rather against your untimely incapacitation and demise. You can't reverse the brain damage you’ve already suffered and all the things you’ve lost up to this point by having your skull bashed in, but you can prevent further damage. So I advise everyone out there to write, email, call or talk to Evander in person and implore him to stop while he is still upright and able to form a complete sentence every now and then.