Tuesday, November 21, 2006

Pulling the plug on the Juice, W is still confused.......

- Bad week for Cosmo Kramer, i.e. Michael Richards of Seinfeld fame. By now, everyone has heard about his profanity-laced, racial-epitaph-containing tirade directed at two patrons at a West Hollywood comedy club where Richards was performing. There’s no way any performer, radio or TV personality can say “nigger” and have it be acceptable, period. So Richards erred, and he apologized, which obviously he had to do. But isn't it amazing to see everyone rush to condemn him as a bigoted, racist hatemonger, with seemingly no one willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. Who knows, maybe people who know him well aren't surprised and maybe there are similar incidents in the past that foreshadowed this one. But unless and until those come to light, let’s hold off on painting this guy as the next Grand Wizard of the KKK or the leader of a lynch mob senselessly hanging people just because of their skin color. So while I don’t defend your comments, Kramer, I’ll give you the temporary benefit of the doubt, you can still pop into my apartment, eat my food and stash a hose under my kitchen sink for the time being.

- Odds of Fred Goldman murdering O.J. with his bare hands just went down a few percentage points. I know, the odds decreasing from 991% to 975% doesn’t make a huge difference, and I can still see Goldman going Carl Lee Haley in A Time to Kill on the Juice. Yet thankfully News Corp., parent company of FOX, is pulling the plug on the whole “If I did it, here’s how it happened” media blitz that was to include a book and two-part TV special. FOX knew what it was doing in greenlighting the project to begin with, so they look bad even in pulling it because they underestimated the backlash. My question is how long is it until someone gets their hands on the video and it ends up on YouTube, because you can be sure that’s coming. Better yet is what O.J. was planning on doing with the money he was to receive from the project, in the neighborhood of $3.5 million. To skirt the civil case judgment against him that would mandate the money going to settle the judgment in favor of the victims’ families, the Juice set it up to have the money go directly to his kids. Way to slap the Goldmans and Browns in the face one more time, you homicidal (allegedly) loser.

- The next clue in the Prison Break story……..next week will be the “fall finale” for the series, whatever that means. Presumably, it will be back before next fall but after the holidays, leaving plenty of room for vagueness. Who knows, maybe FOX is looking to give extra space and promotional muscle to the new season of 24, and once that gets underway, PB will come back. All I know is that season two of the show keeps getting better and better, with plenty of twists and turns and plenty of explosions, shooting and intrigue.

- Welcome to the “Resisting arrest during a traffic stop” club, Antonio Bryant. The San Francisco 49ers wide received was picked up for reckless driving, DUI and resisting arrest Sunday night. Theories as the reasons for his being drunk and driving around that way are divided into two camps: 1) Bryant was devastated after being cut from my fantasy football team Sunday afternoon and this is how he chose to deal with it, or 2) he went a bit overboard in celebrating his team’s big win over Seattle on Sunday. Either way, props to him for not resisting to the point of getting tasered, which makes him a tiny bit smarter than most athletes in the same situation, as smart as someone driving drunk can be anyhow.

- Could not be happier that Derek Jeter did not win the American League MVP award. No other reason for that than the fact that I hate the New York Yankees, hate them with a burning passion. Their arrogance, massively bloated payroll and annoying fans make it impossible for anyone outside of the Five Boroughs to root for them or their players. Of course, Jeter didn’t actually deserve the award, what with his inferior statistics to the other top candidates and the fact that the only reason he was seriously considered was that he plays for the Yankees and too much of the media is slanted in the favor of all things New York. So to recap 2006, the Captain loses out on the MVP to Minnesota’s Justin Morneau and the Yankees get wiped out in the playoffs by the Detroit Freakin’ Tigers. All in all, a good year for baseball, let’s all hope for a repeat in 2007, 2008, 2009………………….

- Ron Artest’s rap career is off to an underwhelming start. The NBA star/fan assaulter/raging psychopath/aspiring rapper released his debut album a week or so ago on his own record label, and all I can say is………….well, I hope that the other artists on the label are more talented than Ron-Ron. The self-glossed “Tru Warrier” sold a whopping 343 copies of the album in its first week on store shelves. My math would show that selling 343 copies probably isn't enough to cover the cost of producing, packaging and shipping all of those albums, let alone turn a profit. As I heard Jay-Z say in an interview recently, pretty much all NBA ballers want to be rappers and all rappers wanna be NBA ballers, but the Tru Warrier is one NBA player who might just want to stick to basketball. After all, he does have trouble doing that, by which I mean playing the game and not going into the stands to attack the wrong fan after someone throws a cup of beer at him. Keep it on the court, Ron-Ron, see if you can master that first and don’t make any more runs at recording rap albums.

- With rival factions calling for him to either increase U.S. military presence in Iraq or begin withdrawing our troops, President Bush said on Monday that he has decided to…………..do nothing. And why am I not surprised? I can picture W, deep in concentration, wearing his Sponge Bob pajamas, eating some pizza bites and staring pensively at a speck of dirt on the floor as he thinks, “Man, I sure am glad they figured out a way to put peanut butter and jelly in the same jar, wonder when they’ll do that with ketchup and mustard…..” Then an aide will shake him from his trance and remind him that he has a country to run. Obviously this guy hasn’t decided what to do in Iraq, he hasn’t had a clue what he’s doing from the start, so why would he suddenly have a clue? Someone needs to step in and make this decision for him before he thinks a bit too hard and hurts himself. Our best hope at this point is to wait two years for our next president to be elected and hope that he will be better able to figure out how to put an end to a war that never should have started.

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