Athlete arrests and general debauchery

- So maybe skier Bode Miller hasn’t given up drinking/getting hammered before downhill races…..there’s no definitive evidence on this, but at the World Cup downhill event in Bromo, Italy, Miller was disqualified after skiing off the course near the starting line. You may remember that prior to the 2006 Winter Olympics, Bode said in an interview that he has, in the past, shown up for races drunk and has in general made an ass of himself in the public eye while flaming out big time in the Olympics plus taking runs at Lance Armstrong, a man revered as a hero and inspiration by many sports fans and cancer survivors worldwide.

- The Mike Tyson Downward Spiral has taken another sad turn. The former heavyweight champion boxer turned convicted rapist turned circus freak/sideshow act was arrested early Friday morning in Scottsdale, Arizona after police pulled him over for a traffic stop and found cocaine on Iron Mike. While I’m sure that nothing this guy does will shock or stun anyone at this point, it is ironic to note that Tyson was taken to the very same jail where he recently went to speak to teens about the danger of drugs and drug usage. The cops even said Tyson was great with the kids and did a good job of reaching them with the message. One can't help but wonder, though, why he couldn’t get the same message through to himself. Most of his self-harming acts have hurt no one but him, but the rape conviction and this drug arrest are on another level. If Mike wants an ugly facial tattoo, fine. If he wants to threaten to eat his opponents’ non-existent children, fine. If he wants to call a reporter a scared coward (redundant, but amusing) and threaten to make that same reporter his girlfriend, those things don’t harm anyone. Drugs, rape and biting off a man’s ear, now those are problematic. Mike might be best locked up, because at least there he can be somewhat controlled and isn't a menace to society at large. Even if he’s not a malicious and mean guy, he just can't help himself and no one else seems able to help him either. Sad………

- Continuing on today’s theme of athletes drinking and driving while impaired….San Francisco 49ers wide receiver Antonio Bryant continued a less-than-stellar finish to 2006 by pleading not guilty to charges of reckless driving and resisting arrest after being pulled over when officers spotted him driving in excess of 100 miles an hour. This, coupled with the current four-game suspension Bryant is serving for violating the NFL’s substance abuse policy, makes for a black mark on what has otherwise been a decent season for the rebuilding Niners. Judging by Bryant’s immature on-field antics and conduct, no surprise that he’s getting into so much trouble on and off the field.

- Great of the government to issue an apology to a Muslim woman who was wrongfully detained at the Tampa Airport. Safana Jawad was held in a local jail and strip searched, and I’m sure an apology from the government for ripping her dignity and the racial stereotyping for being Muslim will be easily forgotten. Great how the feds can continue using the “national security” excuse to try and sweep just about any misdeed under the rug. Jawad was flagged for what Homeland Security officials termed “association with a suspicious person,” and hey, they’re right, aren't all Muslims or people of Middle Eastern descent suspicious? What, you mean they’re not? Most of them are good, normal people and not terrorists? Wow, somebody needs to tell the government that.

- Sweet home, Alabama, where the strippers aren't really strippers. The most recently enacted state laws in Alabama require that “exotic dancers” (see skanks working brass poles in your dictionaries) have any area of their bodies that would normally be covered by a “modest” bikini be covered in some way, shape or form when they writhe around on stage for the ones thrown by the degenerate losers who go to strip clubs. Most dancers choose to cope with the regulations by using latex, meaning that not only are you a pathetic, sick loser if you go to strip clubs to see these skanks perform, you’re not even seeing actual nudity or anything close to it. Congratulations, lowlifes who frequent strip clubs in Alabama, you’re even more sad and wretched than previously thought.

Sex scandals in Washington? No way!

- The #1 question to ask potential girlfriends or dates is no longer what they do for a living, how old they are or what their hobbies and interests are. Thanks to a former congressional aide who kept a “sex blog” detailing her sex life with six (yes, six) different men. Aside from being a freaky skank, which having six sexual partners at once definitely qualifies you as, Jessica Cutler apparently fancies herself as the Carrie Bradshaw for the new millennium. Look, I know women love Sex and the City and it was a highly celebrated show, but writing a blog about your sex life and giving graphic personal details is something you’re going to want to reconsider, Jess. That’s especially true if your partner(s) don’t know about the blog in which they are so prominently featured. This issue is coming to the forefront because one of this skank’s partners, Robert Steinbuch, an aide for Ohio Senator Mike DeWine, is suing Cutler for posting the information that publicly shamed him, led to her firing and ultimately drove him out of Washington. He’s now a teacher in Arkansas, but somehow I think this story will follow him around for some time. At stake it there is a responsibility of a blogger to protect the privacy of people they interact with offline. Here’s hoping Steinbuch wins the suit, because Cutler is clearly a sick freak who has more fetishes than a porn star. But perhaps Steinbuch should have been tipped off by the fact that he was dating a woman who had six sexual partners at once. If he didn’t know, he’s either very oblivious or willing to ignore the obvious to get some. But hey, he can be thankful that Cutler didn’t go the extra mile and rig up her web cam to broadcast their sexual encounters.

- FEMA rocks…..really. These ass clowns, the ones who made life miserable for Katrina victims through the organization’s general incompetence and apparent indifference to the plight of those they were supposed to help, have now informed 4,000 storm victims who now reside in Texas, informing these people that they were deemed no longer eligible for governmental aid. Those receiving the letters can appeal to FEMA (boy, bet that inspires a lot of confidence that things will work out) and then they may be eligible for renewed monthly housing payments of about $750. Problem is, the program expires at the end of February and appeals could take up to three months (although it’s the government, so let’s assume three months means five or six). Oh, and an overwhelmingly large portion of the letters were returned as undeliverable. Let’s not forget also that thousands of people have had an impossible time trying to get any aid at all and that many Louisiana residents claim that they’ve seen little or no assistance from the government thus far. Perhaps it’s time for a poll of some sort so we can determine which situation the current administration has f’ed up worse, the war in Iraq or the aftermath of Katrina. Honestly, they’ve screwed both up so badly that it’d be hard to pick one or the other.

- Good luck with your long, laborious move Barry Zito. The former ace of the Oakland A’s pitching staff will have to relocate waaaaay across the Bay to………San Francisco. Apparently, dude did not want to leave NoCal, because San Fran and Oakland are as close together as any two MLB franchises that aren’t in the same city. I imagine that the bloated, 7-year, $126 million contract (yes, $18 million per) helps as well. But when you consider that mediocre, uninspiring hurlers like Gil Meche and Ted Lilly are getting $11 million and $10 million per year contracts this off season, Zito is a freaking bargain. Someone needs to go to Zito and ask him whether he thinks his new teammate Barry Bonds took steroids, too, because God knows not enough people have weighed in on that issue. Also, Zito is gonna have to figure out how to swing a bat because going to the National League means he will now hit in games. Overall, I believe the Giants will come to regret this deal, because they paid $18 annually for a pitcher whose production they could have eclipsed by signing two pitchers who were nearly as good for about half as much. Two 13-14 game winners would be better than one 18 game winner for the same price, eh Frisco?

- So is New York no longer a “safe” city? The Apple is apparently returning to its old ways, with murders on the rise in 2006. That should be easy to incorporate into whatever the tourism board’s new strategy is, “Come to New York, you’ve got an increasingly good chance to be killed.” No word on whether the number of rats in the city also rose in 2006, although that might be tough to quantify. Rats are notoriously bad about filling out and returning census forms, for sure. I still love New York and the increasing murder rate won’t deter me from going there, but it goes to show that no matter how much of an effort the cops make, they can’t definitively control people killing other people. Gangs, drugs, easy availability of illegal guns and the tendency of younger people to pull guns when they don’t get their way (hey, not at all stereotyping or generalizing, love it) are being blamed for the rise in murders. “Visit your city name here and get capped!” It’s a catchy slogan, you gotta admit.

- Ironic when a celebrity’s publicist is denying that the celeb hasn’t finished rehab yet. Normally the denial is that the star isn't in rehab at all, that they don’t have a problem with alcohol or drugs, blah, blah, blah. But the publicist for country singer (one of society’s biggest blights) Keith Urban is in fact denying that by leaving a rehab facility that Urban is declaring himself rehabilitated and done with the process. Instead, it appears he’s just going back to his native Australia to celebrate the holidays with his family. While I wish Mr. Urban a full and healthy recovery from his addiction, I can’t help but view this time as a victory for the music world in general. Whether he’s in rehab or spending down time in Down Under, he’s not making the worst of all possible kinds of music, save polka….country music. If only every country artist could be in rehab or taking time off…….we would have no country music, and the world would be a better place. No line dancing, no songs about drinkin’ at the saloon and losin’ yer woman…….hey, a guy can dream.

- How sad it is to watch a “legendary” college football program absolutely humiliate itself, groveling at the feet of and obsessing over a guy it wants to hire as its next head coach and having that same guy outright reject them - multiple times. Alabama, formerly coached by greats like Paul “Bear” Bryant, cannot find anyone to take their vacant coaching job. They fired Mike Shula after he went 10-2 in 2005 and 6-6 in 2006, and yet with that kind of impatience, shockingly no one is eager to step in and take their shot. Yet the Tide keeps throwing themselves at the feet of current Miami Dolphins coach Nick Saban, believing he’s the savior they need. Saban keeps saying no and reiterating his desire to remain with the Dolphins, yet after multiple rejections, the Tide brass still plans to make another plea to Saban once the Dolphins’ season ends. West Virginia head coach Rich Rodriguez almost took the job but pulled out, and numerous other coaches, including Bobby Petrino of Louisville, have turned Alabama down. The longer this goes, the more pathetic UA looks and the more luster their once-proud program loses. Maybe, though, this will help them to realize that Alabama football is no longer in that class of programs…….

It's my party, and I'll hate Bob Knight if I want to......

- In life, there are certain surreal sights, things that even as you watch them happen, you still never thought you’d see. It could be the Boston Red Sox winning their first World Series in nearly a century, it could be Pauly Shore making a watchable movie (still yet to happen), or it could be what is now certain to take place some time in the next 30 days: the execution of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. His appeal of his conviction and death sentence have been rejected, and now an Iraqi court has ruled that he’s to be offed within the next month. There are still some procedural and legal hoops to jump through, but the realization that soon, we’ll see this S.O.B. swinging from the gallows is just a wow moment. It’s just never pleasant to see someone executed, but this is one case where you can understand why that type of punishment is necessitated. Mass murders bordering on genocide and a tyrannical reign of terror are about as good of reasons as you’re going to find for handing down a death sentence. Still, I don’t think I’ll truly believe it’s happening until I see it with my own eyes.

- For the new year in sports, whatever you might wish to see, be it your favorite team winning a championship or your favorite player have the best season of his or her career, I think there’s one sports happening that everyone should be hoping for. That happening would be the teaming up of volatile, team-wrecking wide receivers Terrell Owens and Randy Moss. Both players have teams are present, the Dallas Cowboys and Oakland Raiders, respectively, but the Cowboys are thought to be seriously considering not bringing Owens back next year and the Raiders are openly seeking trading partners for the perpetually unhappy Moss. In a dream world, some intrepid team would trade for Moss and sign Owens, thereby leading to the most combustible pair of teammates in sports history. Moss, with his petulance, lackadaisical attitude and propensity for quitting on plays, games and teams; Owens, with his tendency to throw teammates under the bus, undermine coaches, sleep in meetings and generally be a malignant malcontent….it would be a dream season. Well, right up to the point that the coach quit in the fourth week and all the other players retired or walked out a week later. But if we’re lucky, we’d get several weeks of high drama and comedy, non-stop conflict and ultimately, a locker room brawl to end all brawls, maybe resulting in the elimination of one or both of these walking abominations to the sports world. Good times…..

- Something tells me that Californians aren't too concerned with the broken leg suffered by the Governator, Ah-nold Schwarzenegger, in a skiing accident over the Christmas holiday. He recently won re-election and will have his inauguration next week, albeit on crutches and with his leg held together by wires and screws. But as I said, I don’t think Californians need be concerned. After all, it’s not like the guy could be any less effective or much less competent even with a bad wheel. Heck, maybe being forced to be stationary for a while will help Ah-nold, he’ll have to focus on actual governing and not on hanging with celebrity pals, working out and being famous. It will never cease to amaze that not a single competent candidate came forth to challenge him in the recent election. Now Schwarzenegger can enjoy his hard-fought victory over porn star Mary Carey, little person Gary Coleman and other “candidates” and have a second term that is as forgettable as his first one has been.

- Remember in school when you had fire drills and everyone was supposed to line up, march down the hall and outside the building to an assigned spot? Those drills were the best, mostly because they got you out of class for a while and outside for some fresh air. I don’t remember, though, ever doing a tsunami drill. People in Indonesia did just that on Tuesday, fleeing the country’s coast as sirens sounded to signify the start of the drill. In light of the recent tsunami that devastated the country, such a drill makes sense, but was everyone directed to exit to coastline in a single file line, keeping their hands to themselves? Did the principal come out to the meeting place outside their city and let everyone know that the drill was over and that they could go back in? And how much would you enjoy seeing Southern Californians participate in a mass earthquake or brush fire drill? The thought of seeing thousands of botoxed, cosmetically enhanced citizens on their Blackberries, behind the wheel of their BMWs, all trying to flee the region would be amusing to say the least.

- My new favorite politician, at least for this month, is Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., who has strongly stated his intent to oppose any further American troops being sent to Iraq. Biden, who is the incoming Senate Foreign Relations Chairman, plans to summon Secretary of State Condi Rice before the Senate next month to testify about the administration’s plans for the Mess O’ Potamia, as The Daily Show with Jon Stewart so adequately termed it. Furthermore, Biden (brace yourself, W, this is amazing) has a real plan for the situation, namely beginning to withdraw U.S. troops and find a political settlement among Iraq’s warring factions. I know this is stunning, someone with an actual plan and clear goals for this mess, because W and his cronies have had no plan all along and don’t seem worried about formulating one, but I’m with Biden. Not saying I plan to vote for ol’ Joe in his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008, but for this particular situation, he’s 100% right.

- What to do when a floundering musical career and the widespread public belief that you are a pedophile have driven you from America and out of the public’s sight and mind? Michael Jackson has the answer: sue your former accountants over allegations that they withdrew $2.5 a year from your bank accounts and didn’t properly pay your bills. This isn't about the money for Jack-O, I have to assume; he’s filthy rich and owns the rights to all kinds of music, including many of the Beatles’ hits. The suit charges negligence and breach of fiduciary duty, but it seems more like a desperate grab for publicity and attention from the Freaky One. Maybe he’s pissed about losing some money, but more likely, he realizes that no one gives a crap about him or cares what he’s up to. Actually, most people seem more concerned with the fate of the exotic animals he left behind as his Neverland Ranch/child molesting playground (allegedly) when he fled to Bahrain. Glad to see you’re still alive and well, Jack-O, I look forward to much more freakery from you in the years to come.

- Sportscasters and commentators need to stop telling me how I just have to respect Texas Tech basketball coach Bob Knight, even if I loathe the man with a passion. He’s done so much for the game of basketball and produced so many great kids from his programs, they say….he’s an abusive, abrasive, rude, belligerent ass, I say. So what if kids who came through his program came out on the other end as productive members of society? You’re telling me they couldn’t have done so under the tutelage of a coach who didn’t choke them, berate them and act like a power-hungry dictator? I’ll go out on a limb and say that any kid who Bob Knight “reached” or helped could have done just as well, if not better, playing for Roy Williams, Dean Smith, Rick Pitino, Tubby Smith, Tom Izzo, John Thompson, Billy Donovan or and number of great coaches. Besides which, the ends do not justify the means, and Knight’s domineering, fear-mongering, abusive ways can’t be excused or overlooked. Plus, did he “reach” or help the secretary at Indiana at whom he threw a flower vase? How did his influence benefit the IU student he verbally berated when the kid greeted him with a friendly, “Hey Knight,” in passing? Stop telling me I have to respect him or admire him somehow, because college basketball would be better off without Bob Knight and with someone who actually treated people with respect and dignity in his place.

Recovering from the holidays, still time for sarcasm

- Random acts of Christmas kindness are great, but when they take place more than 3,000 miles from me, there’s a problem. If people are going to be out and about, doing unsolicited acts of good, giving to others (especially cash) I’m going to have to ask that you perform your good deeds in my area code. Take, for example, a Spokane, Washington woman who boarded random city transit buses and handed out envelopes with cards and $50 cash to passengers. She did her benevolent work quickly and without fanfare, so much so that no one got a good look at her. Her kindness moved one young man to tears, and everyone she helped has a Christmas story for a lifetime. Props to everyone out there that did something similar this holiday season, and zero props to the people in my area who all failed to pass out cash to random strangers, namely to me.

- Looking for signs that Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo’s star is fading just a bit. No, it’s not found it the stats he’s posted in the past month (4 TD, 7 INT) or his team’s mediocre 2-2 record over that same time. Look no further than the current arm candy that dude is sporting: former American Karaoke winner (I think she won, right?) Carrie Underwood. When Romo was first the hot QB on the scene, he was linked to Jessica Simpson, who despite being fairly vapid and ditzy nad producing utterly unlistenable music, is one of the 10 hottest women on the planet. Now, with his play deteriorating and his team fizzling, Romo has stepped down to Jessica-lite, a former reality show winner and (ack) country music singer. Maybe Romo can rebound in the playoffs and lead his team to the Super Bowl, in which case he should be able to bump back up to, say, Jessica Alba.

- There are a lot of reasons we love politicians. The pork barrel legislation that wastes scores of tax dollars on unnecessary projects in the lawmakers’ respective home states…..the taking of bribes, the broken campaign promises….the list goes on and on. But when you get the chance to hear about filthy rich (often millionaire) legislators b*tching about how far they have to walk to go to the bathroom, then your admiration goes to a whole new level. Newly elected speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., lamented that male members of the House have a bathroom right next to the House chamber, while female members have a long walk that includes (gasp) traversing through a public hallway to get to their restroom. Oh, the agony……hey Pelosi, I’m extending a single finger in your direction, can you guess which one it is? Shut up, keep wasting our tax dollars without accomplishing anything and endure your long walk to the bathroom in silence.

- I love college football and its many bowl games. That love doesn’t preclude me, though, from wondering often how the hell the NCAA can sanction a bowl game called the New Mexico Bowl that features……(drum roll please)……..the frakkin’ University of New Mexico! In their home stadium! So basically these guys, with a putrid 6-6 record, get to have an additional home game and you call it a bowl? Why stop there? Why not the Montana Bowl, the South Dakota Bowl or the Rhode Island Bowl? I’m not against adding bowl games, but when the NCAA can no longer find teams with above-.500 records to compete in games and not have them played at a team’s home stadium, then it’s time to stop adding new ones. Raise the eligibility for a bowl to a plus-.500 record and mandate that no team can play a bowl in their home stadium, because you’re doing the unimaginable and making the bowl season into an even bigger farce than many think it to be.

- Let the highlighted hair, man blouses and bleached teeth fly……it’s time for another round of the New Year’s Eve showdown featuring metrosexual girly men Carson Daly and Ryan Seacrest. Daly, taking time off from a late, late night TV show that no one watches (wonder if anyone will notice he’s gone) and Seacrest, using some free time before the next round of American Karaoke, will be hosting their respective New Year’s Eve shows, Daly on NBC, Seacrest on ABC. I move for a new channel to be created for this event alone, one where there are no atrocious, ear assaulting pop musicians or metrosexual hosts, just silence. Maaybe a few microphones to pick up the ambient crowd noise in Times Square and cameras to show the goings on, but without any of the other crap. I see too much of Seacrest on TV as it is, even as I strive to avoid him, so I don’t need a reminder as 2007 starts that he’s still around.

- Cosmo Kramer isn't the only comedian who has trouble with audience members. Comedian Gallagher (apparently, he believes he’s a Brazilian soccer star and only needs one name) is being sued by Branson Partners LLC for breach of contract after the comedian canceled shows in Branson, Mo. last summer after being accused of shoving an audience member. Marcy Kowalski alleges Gallagher swore at her (hey, he and Cosmo have something in common) and bruised her arm in pushing her back to her front row seat at a show last summer. So if we’re keeping score, that’s Abusive Comedians 2, Audience Members 0. Kramer and Gallagher have unleashed verbal abuse, physical abuse….all we need now is for Dane Cook, Larry the Cable Guy or Dave Chapelle to grope or sexually assault an audience member and comedians will have hit for the trifecta.

- Does anybody remember a time when Donald Trump did actual real estate business? Right now, dude is a 24/7 publicity hound, whether he’s seeking out the opportunities or fat, stupid, bitter wannabe celebs like Rosie O’Donnell gift wrap the opportunities for the Donald. The most recent target isn't Rosie, but rather the city of Palm Beach, Fla. The city ruled that the Donald was in violation of city laws in flying a oversized American flag on a giant flagpole on his property. Trump countered that the enormous flag and flagpole reflected his enormous……….patriotism (what did you think I was going to say, sicko?). So he’s suing the city for $10 million over the hassle and promises to donate the money to veterans of the war in Iraq. The Donald is a walking, talking publicity stunt and sound bite, and the only time he’s not amusing is when he’s probably trying his hardest to be, on his lame-o reality TV show.

- Why can't we go one day without someone giving us yet another reason to worry about flying? This reason comes courtesy of an unidentified, mentally unstable traveler on a New York to Portland, Maine flight who passed a note to a fellow passenger that read, in part, he was Jesus and it was time for everyone to die. He also stated that he had AIDS and that the “shedding of his blood and all our blood would cure sickness,” according to fellow passenger Tammy Budek. So some crazy guy with a Messiah complex gets on board and starts telling people it’s time to die, super. I’m sure Angus King, former governor of Maine, was thrilled to be a passenger on that plane. Do we need to start making mental health checks a required part of the security process before boarding? After all, the rest of the security measures take so damn long as it is, may as well prolong the experience even further……..

Blizzards, blondes and fake doctors

- What’s more fun than spending not one, but two nights sleeping in an airport? Travelers stranded in Denver by the massive winter storm blowing through the country are finding out just how much jubilation ensues when you’re trapped at an airport on back-to-back days. Some of those stuck at the airport slept there overnight because they were not from the area and didn’t want to pay the exorbitant hotel rates to stay in the local Holiday Inn. Plus, with most roads closed, there was no way to drive where they needed to go. I wonder if the same thing holds true for sleeping in an airport that holds true for riding on the plane itself….do you inevitably, no matter where you hunker down for the night, find yourself surrounded by crying, loud infants and obscenely fat people whose blubber oozes out of their own seat and into your personal space? I hope the airport at least cut the stranded travelers a few breaks, maybe gave them free wireless access to the airport’s wireless network that they usually charge like $3 a minute for, or maybe a coupon to cut the cost of an airport Whopper from $5.50 to $4.25. An eight-hour delay in the Detroit Airport was the worst I’ve ever had, so I can't even began to fathom what two frakkin’ days in one of those places is like. Happy holidays, Denver-bound travelers, this will be a holiday memory to treasure for years

- Did I miss something here? When did strippers become a viable source for news and information? First, stripper Kendall, the single mother/college student/girl who is just tryin’ to pay the bills, who works the brass pole at the NYC club Scores is quoted in a story saying Ohio State quarterback Troy Smith will make a great pro player. She says she can tell that he’s a leader and that he has “it”, “it” being what it takes to succeed. Now, strippers from a different Scores club on the city’s East Side are bad mouthing lush and movie-wrecker Lindsay Lohan. They say that in training for her role as a stripper (isn't that what her entire career is, essentially, making money off of wearing decreasing amounts of clothing?), they have found out that she is a terrible pole dancer and looks “extremely awkward” when she works the pole. Thanks, strippers, I look forward to reading quotes and insights from you in future stories about the tension in the Middle East, New Orleans’ recovery from Katrina and the 2008 presidential election.

- Blessings in disguise…..Mel Gibson, in an interview with an online entertainment site, says he is thankful for his anti-Semitic rant because it has forced him to re-examine his life and make some changes. Personally, I’m going to buy what Mel is selling, even though it’s probably part of a publicity campaign to rebuild his image. If getting liquored up and blasting an entire race of people causes you to change your life and go in a new direction, then I suppose it could be a good thing, even if you continue to apologize to those offended by your tirade. Some people end up hospitalized, broke and totally lost before reaching that cathartic point, but fortunately for Mel, he got off easy and just had to endure months of bad publicity and public scorn. End result, though, he will slowly get back to where he was and in the process, he gets to keep making movies and millions of dollars.

- I think we’ve found out what Pat O’Brien has been up to lately. Since the whole “leaving sexually explicit phone messages on the cell phones of co-workers” phase of his life, Pat has laid low. Now comes word that two men in Texas, one of them identified as Arthur Daniel Hays, set up a phony medical office and posed as doctors as an excuse to see female “patients” and basically fondle and sexually assault them under medical pretenses. I’m gonna go ahead and assume that the second man is O’Brien, making good on those intentions he laid out in those gross, offensive phone freakery. Whoever the second man is or isn't, he and Hayes opened an office, put on doctor’s white lab coats and even took payment for their services. They’re now being charged for practicing without a license, sexual assault and Medicare fraud. Sounds like your little scheme was well worth it fellas, although getting a girlfriend might have been a better alternative.

- What’s MADD’s problem? Mothers Against Drunk Driving is pissed after stories of Miss Teen USA Katie Blair partying and drinking with Miss America Tara Conner came out and MADD is no longer going to partner with Blair to promote awareness of the hazards of underage drinking. Typically, Miss Teen USA and MADD pair up to inform kids about this issue, but now the group wants nothing to do with Blair. Did they not see Donald Trump’s generous and forgiving response to Conner’s indiscretions? The Donald allowed Conner to keep her crown and fulfill her responsibilities as Miss America, so why can't MADD just forgive Blair and give her a second chance. If they won't, I think guys everywhere (especially those teenage guys who Blair was supposed to warn about underage drinking) will be willing to settle for photos of Blair and Conner making out at clubs, which is part of what has been alleged of both. In fact, I’m going to go out on a limb and say that teenage guys would prefer those images over a message on underage drinking from Blair or anyone else.

- Ken Griffey Jr. is just about the most fragile athlete in the world….ever. He’s pushing Grant Hill for the top spot there, and although I know NBA legend Bill Walton had chronic foot problems that ended his career, Griffey is about as snake bitten as you can't get. He’ll end his career with over 600 home runs and still has one of the sweetest swings you’ve ever seen on a baseball field (plus he plays a great center field), but he can’t stop getting injured. Shoulder problems, torn hamstrings, knee problems, back problems….and now this. KG broke his hand in a “home accident” recently and will have a hard cast on for the next three weeks, after which his hand will be re-examined. Although this injury comes at a rather opportune time for Griffey, one where he won't have to miss games because of it, I just can’t help but feel that a guy who has missed at least 34 games in nine of his 18 pro seasons is going to come up with another two or three injuries once the 2007 season gets underway. Sad to see and I don’t believe in bad luck or luck as a concept, but Griffey will go down as one of the all-time “Could’ve Done More” athletes.

- I have got to get involved with beauty pageants, because apparently they consist largely of hot blond women making out with each other and partying it up. Miss Nevada Katie Rees (Katie apparently a big name for hot blonde girls who like to get their freak on with other hot blondes) has been shown in photos engaging in some very Tara Conner-like behavior when Rees was 17. She insists she’s grown up and become a better person, but we may as well just go ahead and add “making out with your fellow contestants” as a fourth competition in these pageants, right alongside the evening wear, swimsuit and interview portions.

- Rather than b*tching about who was selected to the Pro Bowl and who wasn’t, how about a fun alternative for all of the NFL experts and commentators out there: try to guess which of the selected players will drop out of the game, or predict which excuse they will use - injury, illness, fatigue, time with their family, etc. The second option is better if for no other reason than the fact that annually, it seems like half of the guys originally picked to play in the NFL’s annual all-star contest beg out, despite the chance for a free trip to Hawaii for them and their families. So instead of crying about why Tom Brady or Ray Lewis didn’t get voted in, try to predict who will be the first guy to bow out of the game, or which side, AFC or NFC, will have more of its originally selected members when the game actually gets played. In the end, no one really cares about the Pro Bowl, not even the guys in the game. The NFL is the only league among the Big Four (MLB, NBA, NHL) to hold its all-star game after the season instead of in-season, so everyone has moved on to other sports interests. But the NFL is free to toss my name onto either roster as a replacement player for someone who elects not to go, I’d love a free trip to Hawaii and I promise to play hard, give a crap and even play the whole game if need be.

- Inevitability reared its ugly head today when rape charges against three Duke University lacrosse players were dropped. You remember these guys, who had a party, hired strippers for it and then had one of the strippers accuse them of rape. Yet as time went by, we found out that the stripper’s story was flawed and full of holes and that she was openly looking for ways to cash in on the situation for her own profit. Everyone came to the consensus, with the help of DNA evidence, that while the three accused lacrosse players had been guilty of bad judgment and acting like stereotypical bad jocks, one thing they were not guilty of was rape. And no, this is not a case of rich, privileged white men getting off for a crime they committed and bought their way out of. This is the story of an overzealous prosecutor seeking reelection and a greedy, dishonest stripper looking to get some time in the spotlight. The three men still face other less serious charges, but don’t be surprised if those too are dropped and they end up with a slap on the wrist. Actually, I hope the woman making the charges is the one who is convicted of a crime for falsely accusing the players, because rape is a very serious subject and falsely alleging it when it didn’t occur is a huge smack in the face of women who actually are victims of rape.

Brawling monks and more excuses for fat people

- Hard to imagine a more peaceful, serene group than monks, right? Wearing those long brown robes, going months without speaking, copying manuscripts and studying religious teachings are what you would typically associate with monks. Someone needs to tell that to the rival groups of monks in Mount Athos, Greece. The warring factions are at odds over control of a 1,000-year-old monastery viewed as the cradle of Orthodox Christianity, and as a result, they decided to solve their problems by throwing down with crowbars and sledgehammers. Great idea, guys. Seven monks were injured and had to be transported by boat to receive treatment. Why does this feel like a bad rip-off of the gang fight scene from Anchorman? And if you have monks who are taking vows of silence, what does a fight between them sound and look like? Hard to talk smack to your opponent when you can't talk. Were there other monks from their respective monasteries, using fountain pens to write some good fight smack on scrolls and holding it up as the action went on? I’m going on the record as saying monks are now among my very favorite groups of people.

- Wouldn’t this be the very definition of the phrase “conflict of interest”? A person, acting as a consultant for a pro team, being among the most vocal advocates for the team trading a certain player and actively helping to dictate when and where he’s traded, then deciding to return as a front office executive for that same team once that player, a player he never got along with, was gone? If I were to explain that to you and you had no idea who the involved parties were, it would seem shady, right? Well, it seems even shadier if you realize that the consultant in question is the nomadic Larry Brown, a basketball coaching vagabond who never stays in the same city for more than a couple of years. Brown is rumored to possibly be returning to the Philadelphia 76ers, an organization he’s coached and worked for in the past and loves, after the Sixers traded wannabe gangsta and franchise player Allen Iverson. AI asked for a trade (though he now denies that) and Brown was one of the forces behind facilitating and structuring Iverson’s departure. Now, he’s going to step back in with the organization? I don’t know for sure how much Brown factored into the decision to accommodate AI’s trade request, but if he was even a contributing factor in the team deciding that it would in fact deal AI, then Brown is a fraud and a con artist. I’ve never been a fan of LB, and I think he is vastly overrated as a coach and executive, but if the reality of this situation is anything close to what it appears to possibly be, then even he has hit a new low.

- Fat people everywhere now have another crutch to blame their enormous girth on rather than taking personal responsibility for their own shortcomings. As if obese individuals didn’t already have enough excuses for being fat and not owning up to their own overeating, non-exercising ways, researchers now claim that the guts of fat people, besides being buried beneath rolls and rolls of blubber, also contain a distinctive mix of bacteria that are especially efficient at extracting calories from food and thus make those individuals gain weight. Great….do these bacteria also prevent the fat person from climbing on a treadmill or Stairmaster? Can the bacteria extract extra calories and fat from carrot sticks, rice cakes, celery and lean chicken? Do they have a special gravitational pull that forces the fat person to make four extra trips back to the buffet line? How about we stop looking for medical reasons why fat people are fat and start encouraging them to exercise and not eat fatty foods? Sounds good to me.

- I don’t know that I’ve ever laughed harder at an infomercial for a CD of any kind than I did when I saw the spot for “Kids Rap Radio”. If there’s a more absurd, pathetic, loser album out, then….no, sorry, not possible. This joke of a CD takes major rap and hip hop hits of the past couple years and reworks them into “family friendly” versions. Better yet, “kid rap stars” sing them and the lyrics are something you can “enjoy with your whole family”. The easiest laughs come from watching kids with no rhythm and no actual musical skills attempt hip hop dancing and lip-syncing on the commercial. It looks like a bad faux music act they would conjure up on an old Full House episode, except this makes Uncle Jesse’s Middle Eastern-themed music video look cool by comparison. The kids on this commercial have as much street cred as Mr. Rogers and are more likely to be found eating animal crackers and drinking milk than clubbin’, droppin’ a beat or throwing some 20” spinners on their ride. Then, consider that they’ve taken such kid-friendly hits as Shake Yo Tailfeather and Laffy Taffy, songs that are very much about sex and sexual themes and suddenly with a few new words they’re kosher? Great idea, maybe next you can rework some Marilyn Manson and Slipknot songs into sing alongs for the preschool set….honestly, the first time I saw the “Kids Rap Radio” commercial, I thought it was a joke. Funny thing is, kids who like rap will just listen to the actual rap, not some cleaned up, milk and cookies version. The only ones who will listen to it are the dorky kids whose parents won't let them listen to the real thing, so they’ll get rap-lite and the normal mocking and teasing they get from their classmates will only intensify. Because what kid wouldn’t love rockin’ out to Nelly-lite in the minivan with your mom? Worst idea ever…..at least we don’t have to worry about seeing this one on the Billboard charts ever.

The Donald rips Rosie, people everywhere cheer him

- Great news America. You can ignore those images of chaos and anarchy in Iraq. Forget about the video footage of bombings, explosions and mortar rounds going off non-stop. Overlook those IEDs (improvised explosive devices) going off on roads across the country on a daily basis. Why? Because according to our fearless and intellectually stunted leader, victory can still be ours. Saying difficult choices and additional sacrifices are ahead, W assured Americans that we can still “win”. How the hell we win, I don’t know. Is there a way to reverse the needless deaths of every American solider who has been killed in Iraq? And what difficult decisions? You mean like sending more people who aren't you and aren't your own family members over there? How’s about an easy decision, Georgie? Look right into the cameras and repeat the following: “We are withdrawing all American troops from Iraq immediately and permanently.” Now that’s an easy choice. Let the Iraqis figure this mess out on their own. The only “victory” here would be if you had the goal of creating your very own Vietnam, because you’ve succeeded in doing that.

- Yet another reason to salute Donald Trump. The Donald decided to verbally blow up Rosie O’Fat, one of the least funny, most abrasive personalities on TV today, or ever for that matter. First off, let me admit that I would be on board with the Donald, or anyone else for that matter, taking a run at Rosie whether they had a good reason or not. I don’t need to know the particulars or whether the jabs were justified, but I’ll go ahead and spell them out anyhow. Rosie cracked Trump during an episode of The View, calling him a “snake oil salesman” and ripping him for being a moral arbiter in the Miss America controversy. Gosh, fat, ugly Rosie being bitter about a situation involving a hot, blonde model, who could have guessed……but anyhow, back to Trump’s reply. And here I feel motivated to declare today “Donald Trump Day”, except that I have no power to do so and the man could probably afford to buy a day of the week and name it after himself….but Trump fired back with the big guns. He called Rosie (accurately) fat, stupid, a loser and a plethora of other things. He said he would sue her, he said that he can't believe he’s a billionaire and yet he has to listen to this crap and he generally looked down on plump, bitter, bad-mane sporting O’Fat. Amen, Donald, amen. All true statements about Rosie and it’s about time someone fired back at her the way she goes after others. Rosie needs to realize that she’s a co-host on a subpar daytime talk show and she can't even do that well. She’s not funny, smart, insightful, pleasant to look at or to listen to. So Rosie, keep your head down, your mouth closed and be thankful that you still manage to be on TV daily, because that in and of itself is a major miracle.

- Maybe the Donald was so venomous in his annihilation of Rosie not just because she’s a fat, ignorant, abrasive, militant lesbian, but also because he was pissed because that the state of Pennsylvania rejected his proposal to build a casino in northwest Philadelphia while approving bids for five stand-alone slot parlors in the state submitted by competing groups. The Donald doesn’t like to lose or lose out on chances to make more money, so this decision can't sit too well with him. Philly will now be the nation’s largest city with a casino, but it won't be thanks to D. Trump. Apparently state gambling regulators failed to take into account Trump’s magnanimous decision not to strip Miss America, Tara Conner, of her title following allegations of underage drinking, drug use (cocaine) and sexual misconduct including getting with other chicks, namely Miss Teen USA. This decision alone should entitle Trump to build a casino in every state in the union if he wants and to tax exempt status for the first ten years of operation at each casino. But based on the Donald’s reputation, you can be sure he’ll find a way to stick a new casino somewhere else sooner rather than later.

- College football season is long. Good, but long. It starts in late August and there are games every week and weekend until early December, so it can seem to drag on at times. But there’s always plenty of action, upsets, rivalries, hot cheerleaders, crazy mascots and bands and hundreds of great moments on the field. But now is one of the absolute best times of the whole season, because it’s time for bowl season. The Poinsettia Bowl in San Diego kicked things off, with TCU thumping Northern Illinois 37-7 on Tuesday. But today is when the bowl action kicks into high gear, with bowls pretty much every day for the two weeks, with the exception of no games on Christmas. If you just tune in for the “major” games (Rose, Sugar, Fiesta, Orange, the national title game) you’ll miss some magical moments. Keep your tired holiday traditions like caroling, egg nog, gaudy lawn decorations, last-minute Christmas shopping, etc., and give me a full slate of bowl games any time. My sleeper pick for a great game this year? The Holiday Bowl in San Diego, which is almost always an offensive fireworks display and this year, the game will feature the Cal Bears and the Texas A&M Aggies.

- Winter weather blows. I don’t even live near Denver, but the blizzard there that is expected to dump about 20 inches of snow by the time it ends sends chills down my spine, thousands of miles away. How heinous is that, two feet of frakkin’ snow to deal with? Yeah, you get to stay home from work, school, etc., but it’s not like you can do much else. Roads are closed, so you can't drive over to the mall, and it’s probably closed anyhow. Sledding and ice skating are only fun for so long, and having to cross-country ski just to get into town every day for two weeks would get old really fast. So go ahead and cross Denver off of my list of places I would ever consider living. A good rule of thumb would be that if you regularly have winter storms that drop more than a foot of snow, I don’t want to ever reside anywhere near your city or town.

Why I love the new Miss America, and why X-raying an infant is a bad idea

- Not the best day in child care for an unidentified grandmother who put her one-month-old grandchild in a plastic security bin and sent the kid through the X-ray machine at LAX. No one in line said anything to the woman when she crammed the infant into the bin, nor did the person running the X-ray machine - at least not until the baby had made its way inside the scanner. How can you not know that it’s not OK to send an actual human being, albeit a tiny one, through an airport X-ray machine? Do you think that when you get X-rays at the dentist, they put that heavy lead vest on for the aesthetic value, because it goes so nicely with your shoes? Grandma, you do know that you also cannot stow the kid in the cargo hold, right? You can't check him at the counter with the rest of your luggage and pick him up after he comes tumbling down the baggage claim carousel, right? Do you also need to be told that you can't give him a bath in the washing machine or drop him in the freezer on a hot summer day? Safe to say that the parents of that child will not be leaving him with Grandma any time soon. And to think that they were about to let her get on a plane to Mexico with their infant son………..

- Props to Donald Trump for his magnanimous and uber-wise decision to allow current Miss America Tara Conner to keep her title after allegations of drug use, underage drinking and “sexual misconduct.” Strip her of her title? Heck no, I say we extend her reign by an extra year. I don’t think Trump and those running the Miss America pageant truly realize how antiquated and irrelevant they and their winners have become. No one looks to Miss America as a symbol of virtue and wisdom, and honestly, no one pays much attention to her after she wins and pops up on a few morning shows the day after. Now, Trump, who should realize the “no such thing as bad publicity” slogan better than most anyone, gets his pageant in the news for a lot longer than it would have been normally. Besides which, Conner is smokin’ hot, and the longer we get to see pictures of her popping up when this story is told and re-told, the better. She promises to go to rehab and clean up her act from here on out, but let’s face it, the “I’m a boozing, drugging, partying skank” toothpaste is out of the tube, and you’re not putting it back in. Embrace who you are, Tara, live it up and enjoy your time in the sun.

- The Price is Right has been, well, a waste of time for a long time now, but amidst a slew of horrible decisions, among them those hideous sequined sport coats that their announcer wore and allowing Bob Barker that close to so many hot young blondes that he could sexually harass (allegedly), the show is apparently making a very smart decision in rejecting the advances of Rosie O’Donnell, who is openly campaigning to host the show once Barker steps down. She got a clause put in her contract for The View that allows her to opt out and take the Price is Right job, but sniffs in an interview, “They apparently don’t want me, which is sad.” Not included was if Rosie O’Fat said this with a straight face. But no, Rosie, what’s sad is your inability to push away from the buffet line, to put down your fifth box of Ring Dings and find a treadmill. What’s sad is your militant lesbianism that seems to cloud your judgment and actions to the point that you sound like a raving lunatic most of the time. Also sad is the fact that you can't just do your job as a co-host on The View, stop verbally accosting the hosts of other shows and offending entire cultures like you did with Chinese people recently. Those things truly are sad. You not hosting The Price is Right isn't sad, it’s a reason for celebration.

- People seem pretty pissed that no discipline at all was given to the two head coaches involved in last weekend’s Knicks-Nuggets NBA brawl at Madison Square Garden. Many want to assign blame to Nuggets coach George Karl and Knicks coach/franchise ruiner Isaiah Thomas for their roles in the debacle. Karl, the lament goes, left four starters in in the waning minutes of a 20-plus point blowout, seeking to embarrass the Knicks and Thomas because Karl’s good friend Larry Brown was fired as Knicks’ coach after an awful 2005-06 season and Thomas was recently bad-mouthing Brown in an interview. Thomas, on the other hand, can be seen on camera, warning Nuggets’ player Carmelo Anthony “not to go into the paint” in those final minutes of the game. The consensus seems to be that Zeke instructed or implied to his players to physically punish Nuggets players who he believed were showing off and rubbing the Knicks’ faces in the fact that the Knicks absolutely suck. I’ll meet everyone halfway on this one….fine and suspend Zeke, but leave Karl alone. Zeke probably did orchestrate the “Code Red”, just like Col. Jessup in A Few Good Men. His warning to Anthony is evidence of that. But Karl? First, you can't prove he….well, wait……he did nothing wrong. It’s the friggin’ NBA, not junior high girls basketball. There is no mercy rule, no restriction on how badly you can beat a team. If the Knicks have a beef with the lopsided score, do something about it on the scoreboard!!!! Score more points, don’t suck so badly. Stop blaming the other team for being so much better than you. If Karl says he wanted his team to finish strong after blowing or nearly blowing big leads, then leave it at that.

- If there’s a good time to be a death row inmate, now would appear to be it. A second state, Maryland, has joined Florida in ruling that executions must be halted until the lethal injection procedure is reviewed, clarified, corrected, etc. States all over are re-examining their execution procedures after Florida botched an execution recently, although the guy still was killed, so how botched it was is open to debate. At this rate, though, with a state a week halting executions, there’s gonna be a massive backlog of criminals waiting to be offed in all 50 states by the end of 2007.

- Ohio State quarterback and Heisman Trophy winner can look at his trip to the New York City strip club Scores one of two ways. Either a) he can be embarrassed that the person most vocally touting his pro potential and chances for success in the NFL is a stripper known as Kendall (a single mom looking to feed her kids or a college student majoring in elementary education and looking to make money for tuition, I’m sure), or b) he can be happy that this, while perhaps a little embarrassing, is one of the best-case scenarios that can come from an athlete visiting a strip club. Indiana Pacer Stephen Jackson got into a brawl at a club, nearly got run over by a car and ended up on the hood of said car, firing warning shots from his pistol into the air. NBA legend Patrick Ewing was among scores (pun intended) of athletes who were part of an investigation into prostitution and illegal sexual favors going on at Atlanta-area strip club The Gold Club. So Smith getting off with a stripper, a woman who works a brass pole for a living, campaigning for his potential as an NFL quarterback isn't all that bad when you look at it in the right perspective. Why anyone was asking Kendall about her opinion on Smith’s future football career, I don’t know.

Five thoughts......

- Horror stories about former pro athletes whose lives have gone horribly wrong pop up from time to time, and some of them are so truly bad that you genuinely feel bad for the guy no matter what. You’ve got Hall of Fame running backs turned double murderers (allegedly, I know, O.J.), former NFL kickers shooting at the home of Sigfried and Roy (Cole Ford, mentally unstable ex-Raider) a former baseball pitchers homeless and living under freeway overpasses…..you get the point. What you don’t always hear is the story in between their time as a pro athlete and the tragic ending. Thus, witness the story of ex-Cowboys quarterback Quincy Carter. He had drug problems while in the NFL, and they have followed him out of the league after essentially killing his football career. Carter was picked up by Dallas police on marijuana charges, and the story of how he got bailed out of jail is, to me at least, offensive and a sick, degrading tale. Dallas radio host Rick Gallway, who hated Carter while he was a player and has always ripped on him, caught wind of the arrest and started a gag on his show about bailing Carter out. He had his producer look up bail bondsmen in the phone book, called one and set about bailing Carter out. The bondsman, Cowboys Bail Bonds, knocked the price down from $160 to $100 when they found out it was Carter, then when Gallway kept mentioning the company name on the air, they did the deed for free because of all the free publicity. So Carter got bailed out, yes, but not cool to make him the butt of some promotional stunt/practical joke. He’s so bad off that he had to bum a ride home in the news van of a cameraman from a local TV station. Here’s hoping Carter turns things around before a truly tragic and more permanent ending.

- Deion Sanders and Michael Irvin can no longer be referred to as TV analysts or commentators. From henceforth, they must be called what they truly are: marionettes. Terrell Owens plays puppet master with these two ass hats on a daily basis, making them sing and dance and put whatever happy-face spin he needs on his latest errant behavior. I would venture to say that within a week, these two morons will be trying to sell us the story that T.O. didn’t spit in the face of DeAngelo Hall, what he did was see that Hall’s skin was extremely dry and attempt to moisturize it with a little bit of friendly saliva. The way Sanders and Irvin throw softball questions at T.O. and fawn over him during interviews makes me want to vomit repeatedly. I’ll say it again, ESPN and NFL Network…..fire both of them….now.

- Life just gets worse and worse for Taco Bell. First, they’re still Taco Bell, purveyor of fine food-like products that, when prepared correctly with non-sickness including ingredients, still don’t pass muster as actual cuisine. But the E. coli scandal that has sickened dozens of patrons across multiple state lines may now land the fast almost-food giant before Congress. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, chair of an agricultural subcommittee in the House, plans to call in Taco Bell execs in hearings about food safety concerns in the U.S. And no, commercials about your CEO saying how sorry you are and promising all will be well from here on out aren't going to be a panacea for the situation, T.B. But you had better figure out something soon before you go the way of the Jack in the Box restaurants circa-1990s.

- Tick, tock…tick, tock…BOOM! This is the way we’re headed with the “World vs. North Korea” nuclear showdown, especially with the bumbling Bush administration leading the charge against North Korea. The dance has been going on for months now; the U.S. demands that the Koreans disarm and stop trying to produce nuclear weapons, the Koreans demand that economic sanctions be lifted and that they be recognized as a full-fledged nuclear power. All the while, they toil away, inching closer to being able to produce actual nuclear weapons. Now I don’t know if it will be days, weeks or months until N.K. has the capability to produce live nukes, but I do know that we’re tightening the noose on a highly combustible situation and I won't be surprised if (pun intended) this blows up in our collective faces. But after all, who’s not pumped up about the prospect of an all-out nuclear war? Anyone?

- Dancing with the quasi-Stars is starting to find its niche, it seems. I know the show has achieved a high level of popularity with women ages 15 to infinity, along with their boyfriends/fiancés/husbands they force to watch with them, but I am referring more to the show finding its place as the haven for washed up or never-were “stars” looking to revive their careers or clean up bad images. Take, for example, former man-band star Joey Fatone of N’Sync. Sure he’s acted on Broadway and done other things (I think) since he and his well-choreographed, matching outfit-wearing, frosted-hair sporting sidekicks called it quits. But no one cares about him and if you asked most people, the only thing they still know him for is being one of the perpetrators in one of the most offensive, awful musical travesties ever forced on the American public. So he’s openly campaigning for a spot on the next season of DWTQS, saying he’s turned down previous invitations. First off, what the hell does it say about your show that you got turned down by a former man-bander? And secondly, how magnanimous of you, Joey, to lend your considerable show biz clout to the program. Congratulations to both parties, you are both blights on the entertainment industry and American culture in general.

Athletes gone wild, military recruiters dealing drugs and airport rip-offs

- Forget Girls Gone Wild, our theme for the present is Athletes Gone Wild. Need proof? How’s about the dozen-player plus brawl at Madison Square Garden over the weekend, where multiple Knicks and Nuggets players went at it following a hard, dirty foul by Knick Mardy Collins. Collins ironically went to college at Temple, where his coach, the now-retired John Chaney, sent in a player he labeled as a “goon” to administer a dirty, flagrant foul to an opposing player. Collins whacked Nuggets’ guard J.R. Smith, setting off a bench-clearing brawl. All ten players on the court at the time of the foul were ejected, and the suspensions for the brawl range from one game to the most peripheral participants to 15 games for Carmelo Anthony, who sucker-punched Knick Jared Jeffries. Also over the weekend, Dallas Cowboys wide receiver Terrell Owens spit in the face of Atlanta Falcons cornerback DeAngelo Hall during a game and has since been fined $35,000 for the offense. Top it off with Chicago Bears defensive tackle Tank Johnson, who was arrested when police raided his home and found, among other things, six guns for which Johnson had no licenses or permits. All told, a banner weekend for the world of pro athletes, arrests, brawls, spitting on opponents. I love this game!

- Bizarre choice by Time magazine for its 2006 “Person of the Year” award, given to…….“you.” That’s you, as in whomever is reading those words, assuming you are a person who makes use of the internet in any way. The magazine really copped out on this one, and I have a few theories on how they arrived at this absurd choice: 1) its editors were split evenly among multiple choices and despite locking the door and brawling it out until one person won, they could not reach a consensus, 2) at the annual Time holiday party, everyone got so sauced that they couldn’t make it into work the next day and so they picked you because it was quick and required little thought, 3) they got drunk at the party and some conniving, opportunistic intern hacked into the editor’s computer and changed the actual person of the year story to the dumbest possible thing he or she could think of, which ended up being “you”, 4) they decided to test the theory of seeing what would actually happen if you locked a bunch of monkeys in a room with typewriters, be it recreating the works of Shakespeare or crafting a story declaring that the Person of the Year is “you”…………….So in case you missed it up to this point, I think Time made a poor choice on assigning the award.

- South Dakota gots a whole lotta guns…….in fact, South Dakotans are the most strapped state in the union, with an average of 7.4 out of every 100 adults packing heat. This number is based on people with gun permits, though, so that has to be factored in. I’d guess that if you surveyed illegal gun owners (assuming they didn’t shoot you first), New York or Nevada might be places with more guns per capita. But apparently the guns are mainly for recreational and hobby purposes in South Dakota, according to state officials and representatives. I’ll go along with that, because let’s face it, there ain’t a whole lot to do in South Dakota on the whole, so going out and shooting aimlessly or hunting the scores of wildlife on your expansive country property may be a reasonably fun alternative.

- Weekend box office update………either people suddenly remembered that Mel Gibson went on an anti-Semitic rant last summer, or the opening weekend luster of his new movie, Apocalypto, has worn off. It slipped to sixth in this weekend’s box office earners, behind the holding-strong Happy Feet at fourth, The Holiday at fifth and a trio of newcomers in the top three, The Pursuit of Happyness, Eragon and Charlotte’s Web. Amazing that an animated penguin movie is still so high on the list so many weeks after being released, but it is about winter break time from school for the kiddies, so maybe Happy Feet can hold on a little longer. And as I always say, any weekend where there is no Borat movie in the top six is a wonderful weekend for cinema………

- As if you don’t get screwed enough when you fly, Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport has found a new way to turn you upside down and shake every last cent out of your pockets. On top of paying $5.00 for a whopper and $4.75 for a small cup of soda, you can now pay $9.99 to place your “contraband” (i.e. anything other than your actual body and two articles of clothing) in a bubble wrap envelope that will be sent to the Hilton Hotel. What the hell good that will do is beyond me, but if you want to ship your belongings elsewhere, that will cost you extra on top of the $9.99. You do get to avoid losing the items totally, but if it’s something like liquids, razors or, heaven forbid, a family-sized tube of toothpaste, isn't it cheaper to just buy new ones? The regulations about what you can now bring on planes are idiotic, but this isn't the way to deal with it. Find something new, O’Hare Airport, cause you aren’t getting you hands on any more of my money than you already bilk me out of.

- Recruiting young men and women for the armed forces is really tough right now, I know. Recruitment numbers are down, and the military is even lowering standards for new recruits in order to meet quotas. However, I don’t think that the tactics used by some recruiters in the Tucson area are the right choice……unless you happen to be a big-time drug lord. A dozen Army and Marine recruiters in and around Tucson were snagged as part of a major FBI cocaine investigation, although in all fairness, none has yet been charged with providing drugs to students they were attempting to recruit. But odds are it happened at least a few times, and wouldn’t that just be the all-time best recruiting pitch…….“Excuse me, son, would you be interested in serving your country by joining the U.S. Army? No? You sure? I can score you an eight ball of coke and promise you a gram a week for the duration of your four-year service commitment. Think about it, ok?”

- Prepare to be stunned……..the Boston Red Sox are now worried that potential free agent signee J.D. Drew may be damaged goods. Drew, with whom the Sox have agreed to (but not yet finalized) a $14 million per year contract, is now being subjected to a second physical by the team to check out his ailing right shoulder. I am flabbergasted. You’re telling me that J.D. Drew, who misses about 30-40 games a season at minimum due to injury, might not be totally healthy? The same J.D. Drew who missed 90 games in 2005 and 62 games in 2003? The same guy who’s about as fragile, both mentally and physically, as a China doll? And you didn’t think this over before deciding to pursue him? Thankfully, the deal hasn’t been finalized, so the Sox can still get out of this, the deal that every single Red Sox fan loathed four seconds after it was announced and hasn’t stopped b*tching about since. With a guy like Drew, a team would be better off signing him to a per-game contract, a certain amount for every game played, that way when he missed 52 games in 2007 due to knee, shoulder and arm trouble, you only have to pay him for the 110 games he actually plays.

Weekend odds and ends

- See, O.J. Simpson doesn’t just kill people (allegedly), he kills careers too. Publisher Judith Regan was fired from her post at HarperCollins just a month after her aborted “If I Did It” campaign featuring a book and TV special by the Juice. In short order, the O.J. media tour was announced, ripped by everyone and canceled, although NewsCorp’s cancellation was clearly only a result of the public outrage, not of them actually believing they were doing anything wrong. People need to learn a lesson, that associating with O.J. in any way is not going to end well for you, because let’s face it, Collins getting fired was a relatively good outcome for her, considering that the alternative was, well, you know……….

- Guys everywhere, prepare to be dragged to what will ultimately be the biggest waste of $50+ bucks you ever spend on tickets to an event. The Dancing with the Stars (again, a massive misnomer, most of these losers weren't even stars five years ago when their popularity was at its zenith) tour is taking the country by storm, subjecting guys all over to their wives and girlfriends dragging them to watch a live performance that those same guys struggled mightily to avoid while it was on TV. I’ll say this….I don’t like watching dancing, period, but if you like it and you wanna go see the ballet with its professional, trained dancers, go and enjoy. But if you willingly go to see some E-list “celebrities” attempt to ballroom dance and pay good money for the right to do so, you should be permanently stripped of all rights to control your money and credit cards.

- Never saw this coming……former Phish frontman Trey Anastasio was pulled over by Whitehall, N.Y. police for driving under the influence of drugs……yes, I know, someone associated with Phish being busted for drugs, amazing. You can probably still get a contact high just by holding a ticket stub from a Phish concert that took place in 2004. Anastasio had all sorts of painkillers and antidepressants in his vehicle when police pulled him over for swerving and erratic driving. Yet supposedly he left Phish to escape that same drug culture, where it seemed that both the band and every audience member were high by the second song of the set. It goes to show that you can take the lead singer out of Phish, but you can’t take the Phish out of the singer.

- I love how so many in the sports world are rushing to slurp on Texas Tech hothead/coach Bob Knight as he nears Dean Smith’s career wins record for college basketball coaches. Knight’s win today versus Arkansas puts him one behind Smith, who was a class act through and through and one of the true gentlemen in college hoops throughout his tenure. Knight on the other hand, is a raging psycho, a man who has: 1) choked a player in practice, 2) thrown a ceramic vase at an athletic department secretary, 3) thrown a folding chair across the court, 4) told an interviewer that, “If rape is inevitable, why doesn’t the woman just sit back and enjoy it?”, 5) Verbally assaulted a student who had the audacity to greet him in passing with a “Hey, Knight” and 6) smacked a player in the huddle earlier this season. The first five transgressions came during his tenure at Indiana. Yet so many are so eager to forget or set aside those things and many more now that he’s nearing a record. For the record, no matter how high your graduation rate for your players and how many wins you have, Knight, you will always be an ass, a man who treats people like crap even though they’ve done nothing to deserve it.

- Jeb Bush may find himself excommunicated from the Bush family if he keeps this up. The Florida governor and brother of our incompetent Commander-in-Chief W has suspended all executions in Florida after ruling that executioners botched an execution of a convicted killer earlier this week by faulty insertion of needles. On a side note, executioner is one job that you really should be accurate on 100% of the time, because killing someone shouldn’t be that hard when given the precise procedures and instruments and having that person totally restrained….but I digress. When he was governor of Texas, W had the executioners so busy that they nearly had to install a ticket-issuing counting machine like they use at delis to determine what order people are served (or in this case, executed) in. “Number fifty-three will now be executed, please step up to the table…..” Now Jeb is actually suspending executions? Better get ‘em going again before big brother uses his presidential influence to go over your head and get the executions going again, Jeb………

Britney is stupid, lettuce is lethal and Belgians love hoaxes

- Nobody has ever confused Britney Spears for a Mensa member. But it was funny to see that she was reportedly spotted buying a copy of her own album, apparently unaware of the economics of record sales. See, Brit, when you pay, say even the $9.99 discounted amount your terrible CD was probably on sale for in the “bargain” rack, not all of the money you paid goes back to you just because you are the one who sings (not sure I’d call what she does singing, but anyhow) on the album. You might get a small fraction of the sale price back, but in this equation, you lose money regardless. Besides, I am pretty sure the record company could have given you a spare copy, one that a member of their office staff had been using as a coaster or to prop up the uneven coffee table with one leg shorter than the others. But hey, it looks like hanging out with uber-skank Paris Hilton has really boosted Brit’s already sky-high IQ…….

- Taco Bell patrons can stop worrying….well, no they can’t, they’re still eating the semi-food products that the Bell passes off as Mexican cuisine, but they can worry a little less after health officials reportedly isolated the offending item that caused an E. coli outbreak in this great, overweight nation of ours. The lettuce was to blame, so all of you who had lettuce in the “What ingredient in Taco Bell food is most likely to make you ill” office pool can collect your prize. The allegation that lettuce is to blame was met with a predictably prickly response from farmers, who fear that the claims will harm their crops and overall business. Farmers have it tough, I think we can all agree on that, very hard job, very long hours, very little pay, but fellas, if the lettuce made people sick, I think letting the public know that is more important than worrying about your bottom line financially. As someone who generally avoids leafy green veggies and especially Taco Bell food, I am not worried, but a lot of people are, so simmer down guys.

- Amazing how cavalier our society has become when sports owners or city/state officials announce plans for a proposed new stadium complex that will cost hundreds of millions (or in this case, a billion….yes, billion with a “b”). I know that these plans can sometimes end up as pipe dreams, but still when Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones announces plans for a $1 billion stadium complex, I hafta take notice. Jones wants to lure in the Olympics, college football’s national title game, college basketball’s Final Four, the Super Bowl and the annual Texas-Oklahoma college football game, among other things, but I am going to go on record as voting no on this one. Well, unless Jones himself funds or finds private funding for at least $900 million of the project. I know, Texas Stadium, the ‘Boys current home, is considered a dump in NFL circles, but please don’t stick Dallas/Texas taxpayers with an astronomical bill for the next several decades because you want a stadium that will, most importantly in your mind, make you a lot more money.

- A good media hoax will bring hearty laughter into anyone’s day, that’s for sure. Orson Wells’ War of the Worlds radio program back in the 1930s, which pretended that the world was being invaded by space aliens and caused mass hysteria and some suicides, was a rip-roarin’ good time, right? So the Belgian TV station RBTF network thought it would throw out a hoax of its own, interrupting regular programming to announce that the Dutch-speaking part of the country had declared its independence and that the king and queen had fled the country. For some reason, the royal family was not down with the hoax. RBTF defended its actions, saying they helped to show “the importance of debate on the country’s future.” Because I’m sure that’s all you were trying to do, RBTF, is stimulate debate on the future of Belgium. Boosting your ratings or profile had nothing to do with it. Why don’t you all think a little harder next time in your production meetings so that when an idea like this is proposed, you can all put down your Belgian waffles, search deep inside those apparently very tiny brains of yours and come up with a better idea. Now pass me a waffle and some syrup and stop wasting everyone’s time with your stupid shenanigans.

- For years, some Beatles fans have been pissed at Yoko Ono, believing (and perhaps rightfully so) that she ultimately led to the breakup of the Fab Four. Now, John Lennon’s widow has attracted a new kind of whack job who is out to get her. Well, more specifically she hired and fired this particular whack job, but never mind on that. Her former chauffer threatened to release embarrassing pictures and recordings of her and potentially have her killed unless she paid him $2 million. Koral Karsan is the man behind this brilliant scheme, and now he is going to end up in jail. Nobody - chauffer, butler, maid, gardener, pool guy - likes it when a rich person breaks them off, but Koral would have been better off waxing his car, sweeping out the interior, apply some Armor-All to the dashboard and trying to find a new rich person to ferry around. Now, he can contemplate his own idiocy behind bars for a little while.

- “You’ll never take me alive, coppers!” Sounds like a line from the Wild, Wild West or a good gangster movie set in the 1920s, right? Well, Albany, Ga. motorcycle dealer and newly-minted felon is either a big fan of those eras or he simply shares my general distaste for authority figures and an aversion to going to prison. Wright, sentenced to 27 months in prison for bike smuggling (not sure if they were illegal bikes from the black market or he simply smuggled them without paying the proper import tariffs) but failed to report to prison and instead went on the lam. Furthermore, he sent an email to various news organizations vowing “not to be taken alive.” That takes an impressive combination of testicular fortitude and sheer stupidity, but I hafta say in some way I admire Wright. He’ll be caught eventually and have his sentence lengthened, sure, so in that sense he’d have been better off reporting to prison, serving his time and hoping he’d get paroled in 18 months or so for good behavior. Still, it’s always good to see someone give the finger to law enforcement and fight to stay free. As one of my favorite quotes says, “If bound, fight to break free. If you are free, fight to stay that way.” Stay tuned, Andrew Wright “On the Run Watch” is still in its first week…….

- The Tampa Bay Devil Rays are just so darned cute, trying to imitate their big brothers in the American League East, the Boston Red Sox. The Sox pay $51.1 million to negotiate with Japanese pitching phenom Daisuke Matsuzaka, so the Rays go out and find their own Japanese import, pay their own negotiating fee of $4.5 million to the Japanese team of Akinori Iwamura, the Yakult Swallows, and sign Iwamura. The Rays are so pathetic, they find the D-list equivalent of Matsuzaka, just like they always end up with the bargain basement, homeless man’s version of every player of value in baseball. They sign big name managers past their primes, aging sluggers, knock-off Japanese players, each cementing the Rays’ position as MLB’s biggest doormat.

Suing Kanye, ripping PETA, life is good

- Is this the NFL or the CIA? You’ve gotta begin wondering how much of a difference there is between the two, because for the second time this year, a player or coach has alleged the existence of a snitch or mole within their organization. First it was Oakland Raiders coach Art Shell, he of the blank, dumbfounded sideline stare when he’s supposed to be actively coaching his team, claiming there was a mole inside the Raider organization who was badmouthing then-offensive coordinator Tom Walsh to the national media. Walsh has since been demoted and could soon be back to running the bed and breakfast he was operating for the seven years before Shell hired him to coach an NFL offense. Now, one of my two least favorite people in sports, T.O., is saying there’s a snitch in the Dallas Cowboys organization who is letting out secrets about him being late for team meetings, sleeping in meetings and other various misdeeds. T.O. says now is not the time to deal with the snitch, but that once the season is over he will take them on. Oh, and let’s not forget the Miami Dolphins allegedly buying audio tapes of recent New England Patriots games and using them to decipher the cadences and snap counts of Patriots quarterback Tom Brady. So to recap, we have snitches, moles, secret tapes purchased to decode embedded messages……who’s running this league, Roger Goodell or J. Edgar Hoover?

- Anyone who has played, coached or been around children’s sports has seen him or her. Overbearing Mom or Dad, bent on making the world see that their kid is the next big thing and ready to beat down anyone, coach, fellow players, fans, who doesn’t agree or tries to “stand in my kid’s way.” Usually these parents are bitter, myopic individuals trying to relive their glory days or glory days they never got to have through their kids. Most of the time, you see them at youth soccer games, Little League baseball, sometimes as high up as middle school and high school basketball, football, baseball, etc. Now, parents of three University of Arkansas football players have taken things to a whole new level. The parents of players Damien Williams, Mitch Mustain and Ben Cleveland went to Frank Broyles, athletic director at AU, because they didn’t like the way their kids were being used in the offense. After going over the head of the coach, who by the way has the authority to run his team, the parents then issued a statement, in which Mustain’s mother is quoted, that said basically that all involved parties “concede that the coach has authority to run his team and operate it as he sees fit.” Thank you very much, parents, how magnanimous of you. You are going to allow the coach to run the team, the team he’s paid millions to coach. You, with no authority or jurisdiction here, are going to grant him the right to run things how he wants. Thanks for the stamp of approval, I’m sure head coach Houston Nutt, who guided the squad to an SEC West title and a New Year’s Day bowl bid, is relieved to know that he has your support.

- You’ve done it again, PETA, high comedy, laughs and hijinks galore. Those wacky comedians/civic activists have sent out a letter that attempts to be both humorous and socially conscionable, yet manages to fail miserably at one and be totally irrelevant when it comes to the other. PETA sent the letter to crack on NBA players who criticized the Association’s new, yet soon-to-be-discarded synthetic basketball and claimed, among other things, that it cut their hands. PETA chastised (well, as much as a bunch of deluded, namby-pamby, bleeding heart liberals who have no touch with reality and no actual clout can chastise) the players for being wimps and offered to send them no-animal-harmed-in-the-making-of hand cream to help their ailments. PETA is bent because now the NBA is switching back to the old leather balls, meaning more cows will have to die to make them. Once again, as I munch on my plate of steak, chicken wings, a turkey sandwich and some duck pate, allow me to provide some silver lining on this cloud for the PETA people…..the cows were going to die anyway in order to provide all of the steaks and hamburgers that we love to eat, so using their hides to make the basketballs is just making best use of all parts of an animal that would not have lived even if the NBA had stuck with the synthetic ball.

- Today is Golden Globe nomination day. Wahoo…………I think. Honestly, there are so many awards shows that at present I am drawing a blank as to exactly what industry the Globes honor, but I think it’s TV or film….either way, here’s a question: other than being self-aggrandizing and self-congratulatory, what the hell good are these shows? They honor music, shows or movies that have been on TV, in theaters or on the air for several months, and if said entities are any good, people will already have listened to or watched them. When was the last time you watched an awards show, saw someone win for an album or movie and automatically went out and bought or saw it? People who care about music or entertainment follow it closely enough that they are aware of what’s out there and purchase or take in what they have an interest in. Whether it wins an award or not is irrelevant. After all, most music, shows or movies that a lot of people like don’t win any awards because the awards are given out by snobbish, out of touch groups and organizations that are more interested in perpetuating the status quo and patting themselves on the backs than rewarding artists, actors and others who actually do great work. So best of luck to all GG nominees, I hope you win whatever pointless statue they’re giving out and it validates you and your work.

- Now here’s a fight I don’t want to be in the middle of…..legendary daredevil Evil Knievel is suing legendary egotist and rapper Kanye West for portraying a character called" "Evel Kanyevel" in his video for "Touch the Sky". Honestly, the details of why Evil is suing Kanye aren't all that important, I’m just giddy with excitement over the prospect of these two having it out. But honestly, is a courtroom really the best place to settle a dispute between two guys like this? When you have a guy who has attempted scores of insanely dangerous stunts, including a jump of Snake River Canyon in Idaho that Knievel himself said he went into believing there was a “50/50 chance” that he would die and he’s going after a big time rap star, isn't there a better way to settle this? Maybe have Kanye set up every one of his bevy of tricked out luxury vehicles in a line and construct a ramp for Evil to use in attempting to jump over them all? If Evil clears all the cars, he wins, if he can’t make the jump, Kanye wins, that simple. And with all of the other reality TV crap on the airwaves, you’re telling me you couldn’t squeeze some decent ratings out of an hour program like that? Bring in Judge Judy to oversee the proceedings, give it a corny name like “Knievel’s Court” and slap it on FOX, problem solved.

Wasting tax dollars, sticking it to smokers and boozing it up with Lohan

- So what is a person to do when something they loathe (soccer) comes up against the potential to stick it to a group that they despise (smokers)? I’m conflicted over a plan by the Summit County (Ohio) government to build a new $170 million soccer stadium even though the area has no pro team (thank God) and every team in the area that has existed (Cleveland, Akron, etc.) has folded within a few years at most. So you have the local government wasting hundreds of millions of dollars on something the area doesn’t need, obviously bad……but now comes word that $7 million annually could be raised with a new, additional tax on cigarettes. On the one hand, a gigantic waste of money in a stadium that no one needs. On the other, the chance to screw over smokers. It’s a tough call, because I tend to be bitter against people who drastically increase my chance of lung cancer by foisting their secondhand smoke on me when they light up in places I happen to be. Ultimately, though, I’m going to have to come down on the side of hoping that this stadium doesn’t happen, because the cigarette tax isn't going to cover the entire cost of the stadium and it’s still going to be a colossal waste of money.

- It’s none of your business…..so here’s why I’m gonna tell you about it anyhow. That convoluted line of thinking is brought to you by Lindsay Lohan, who revealed to People magazine that she’s been attending AA meetings for a year but hadn't said anything because “it’s no one’s business.” Great, so why are you telling me about it now? And why should I care? You aren't wrecking production on one of my movies by staying out all night drinking and clubbing, then showing up too hung over to do your scenes. On a side note, what does this say about Alcoholics Anonymous, that Lohan appears to have become more of a lush after attending AA than she was before? The best therapy for Ms. Lohan would seem to be getting fired from a major project because of her drinking and being unable to find any more roles until she cleans up and gets her act together. Seeing her money dry up might be a good incentive to stop boozing.

- The NBA players have spoken, and the league has relented on the use of the new composite basketball in games. As of January 1, the league will bring back the old leather ball in games, heeding the complaints (loud, plentiful and frequent) of scores of players who said the new ball didn’t bounce right, was hard to grip, was cutting their hands, etc. The Players Association went so far as to file a labor grievance over the ball, but Commissioner Stern made the change before the grievance went any further. Oddly, Phoenix Suns guard Steve Nash, a vociferous critic of the new ball, came out against the mid-season switch, apparently feeling it would have been better to finish the season with the new ball and go back to the old one at the start of next season. Nash needs to do one thing: shut up. You sound like a petulant five-year-old, whining to get your way, then when you get it, complaining that it wasn’t the exact way you wanted it. Shut up, Steve, be thankful you got the old basketball back and deal with the change.

- Weighing 85 pounds is looking to be the new Hollywood trend. Waifish Nicole Ritchie claimed that as her weight when arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence of weed, and now rail-thin actress Lara Flynn Boyle is reportedly creeping close to the 85-pound barrier herself. I know most people think thinner figures look better, and most guys tend to go for girls on the thin side, but 85 pounds is perhaps a step too far. When you start more closely resembling a toothpick than an actual human being, you have then taken weight loss too far. Somewhere in between one extreme (Ritchie) and at the other extreme, the bloated, belligerent Rosie O’Donnell, there has to be a happy medium.

- Updating a previously reported on issue……the federal government is fighting a ruling by a U.S. District Court judge that the federal treasury must redesign currency in order to accommodate the needs of blind people. They cannot differentiate between the different paper monies, which are all the same size, and apparently have rejected some of my insightful, thoughtful suggestions for fixing the problem. Justice Department lawyers filed an appeal to the ruling, claiming that blind people are “not denied meaningful access” to money based on the way the nation’s currency is designed. Part of my thinks they just don’t want the expense of redesigning and issuing new currency, but part of me says good for them, because the complaining, whiny, gimme, politically correct sect has far too much influence in America. This should be a good battle, though, so stay tuned.

- NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell apparently fancies himself some sort of peace broker/mediation/counseling specialist. The commish called Cincinn-Attica Bengals owner Mike Brown to offer his “services” in helping the Bengals organization in dealing with its eight wayward players who have been arrested this season. Either the commissioner is some sort of Zen, behavior correcting sage, or he is putting on a happy face and making the offer while fully intending to bring the hammer down on the Bengals players when he gets face to face with them. He’ll pretend, for the public at least, to be doing it for the greater good of the NFL, but you know he has to be pissed to see the league being dragged through the mud by these cons in Cincy. So Goodell goes there, gets these eight players in a locked room with no windows and administers some Sopranos-style “encouragement” to them. Honestly, nothing else has worked, and since the NFL apparently does not share my goal of seeing at least ¼ of the entire Bengals roster arrested before season’s end, I wish the commissioner well in this ill-fated endeavor.

How do I hate Michael Irvin.....let me count the ways

- You know me, I am helpless in refraining from comment when my two least-favorite sports figures, Michael Irvin and Terrell “Sleep Disorder” Owens do something moronic. So when the two of them do it in tandem, it’s like I’m a rat in a cheese factory, I don’t know where to go first. How about Owens saying he basically gives a lackluster effort because he’s just not “that into it” while on the field? He makes, if you break down his salary this season over the 16 games in the NFL regular season, it comes out to $625,000 per game. Yet you can't muster up enough interest to play hard all game? You admit you’re dropping passes because of your lack of interest. Then Irvin, Dallas/T.O. sycophant/Kool-Aid drinker through and through, has the gall to say after the piece airs that T.O. is having “a great season.” Ass hat, the guy himself just admitted he’s played poorly, everyone who has watched him says the same, yet you’re trying to snowball us into believing that he’s having a super year? How stupid are you? Apparently much dumber than I thought, which is hard to do. T.O. could shoot heroin at midfield, kick a puppy and garrot a dozen Cambodian refugees in the end zone and there’d be his buddy Irvin, saying, “Oh, T.O., he’s a great guy, he’s doing the best he can, you all need to lay off of him.” ESPN, fire Michael Irvin NOW! He’s a blight on your network and an absolute travesty and offense to anyone who watches football on ESPN.

- Allow me to announce, on behalf of Barack Obama, that he will be running for president in 2008. Dude is an eloquent speaker, a polished politician and a charismatic leader. He should run away with the nomination for the Democrats assuming he runs. Hank Clinton can’t hold a candle to this guy, and quite frankly, she’s far too scary and has the angry feminist vibe that should send all guys in a ten-mile radius running for cover. She’s too militant and hostile, too polarizing and wouldn’t be a force to unify the different factions of our nation. Not saying Obama is the cure for all that ails America, but given the choice of seeing either he or Hank on the ballot and potentially in the Oval Office, the overwhelming choice for those with an IQ of above 70 would be Obama. Oh, and veeeeeeeery clever spot on Monday Night Football, saying he has reached a decision…….about his beloved Chicago Bears. Ha ha, good one, ESPN. Obama came off alright, not too cheesy, but you can't think of something more amusing than that? Just stick with Hank Williams singing the intro and forego the celebrity cameos you seem to think are interesting to viewers.

- Remember Eric Rudolph, the Atlanta Olympics bomber? He’s spending the rest of his life in prison in Florence, Colorado, but writes in a series of letters to The Gazette of Colorado Springs that the maximum-security federal prison he lives at is designed to drive him insane. Hey paco, you mean that you were perfectly sane when you bombed the Olympics in 1996? Really? What did the Olympics ever do to you? Were you bent about not being able to get tickets for the women’s gymnastics final? Were you bent that the mascot for the Games was some sort of amorphous blue blob that no one ever figured out? And I am tremendously sorry that you, whose irresponsible and malignant actions killed and injured people, feel that the prison you are kept in isn't nurturing and comfortable enough. That’s why it’s prison, idiot, it isn't designed to be a home away from home, it’s there to keep whack jobs like you away from the rest of us.

- Kudos to the Cincinn-Attica Bengals, who had their eighth player arrested this season, with the most recent arrest being cornerback Deltha O’Neal. Other arrests Bengals have been: DE Frostee Rucker, spousal abuse; LB A.J. Nicholson, burglary; WR Chris Henry, DWI (one of five arrests for Henry); DT Matthias Askew, resisting arrest; G Eric Steinbach, operating a boat under the influence; LB Odell Thurman, DWI; WR Reggie McNeal, resisting arrest and drug possession. This kind of commitment, dedication and team unity can only portend to good things for the team. “If one of us is arrested, then every one of us has to get arrested” has to be the new team motto. Henry is the leader in the clubhouse/cell block for now, but I don’t doubt for a second that one of these felons-in-waiting can catch up. I know guys get roster bonuses for playing time, touchdowns scored, etc., but do the Bengals give out similar bonuses for nights spent in the hole or total felony convictions in a season? Warden/head coach Marvin Lewis had better get control of his team before he doesn’t have enough players not locked up to field a squad.

- Living in a northern state, snow is a four-letter word that I’ve come to despise more than just about any other. Winter seems like an interminable eight-month nightmare, a snow-and-ice laden torture chamber that makes driving difficult and outdoor activities miserable. So when I hear about a town such as Lepe, Spain….I want to vomit. Repeatedly. Lepe, which hasn’t seen actual natural snowfall since 1954 (hang on while I Priceline a ticket to Lepe and check out the price of real estate there), is creating artificial snow for 15 minutes every day at exactly 8 p.m. as part of its Christmas festivities. Why anyone would want snow is beyond me. Maybe the residents of Lepe, who come to a virtual standstill in awe of the fake snow, would like to come to my house and scrape the ice off my car windows every morning and shovel the inches of unwanted white crap from the driveway. Enjoy the lack of snow, Lepe, because you wouldn’t be so joyful if you had to regularly deal with the real stuff.

Ohioans hittin' the hard liquor, Nicole Ritchie burning some tree........good times all around

- From the Bureau of Not Stunning News…..Ohioans are purchasing (and theoretically consuming) increasing amounts of hard liquor. Sales have shot up 25 percent in the last decade, and honestly, who would be surprised by that? After all, these people do live in Ohio, where winter is an eight-month odyssey and Northeast Ohio has less sunny days than any other area in the entire country. That kind of weather alone is enough to drive most people to vodka, tequila, rum, etc. The liquor industry tallied $640 million in sales in Ohio last year, and the total gallons sold was the highest total since 1993. Add to the equation gawd-awful sports teams like the Browns, Indians and Reds and it’s easy to see that Ohioans are seriously in need of something to dull the pain and blur their memories.

- The Heisman Trophy ceremony has become one giant commercial, with about 50 minutes of pointless blabbering and about five minutes actually devoted to presenting the award. This year’s broadcast, more anticlimactic than your average, predictable teen slasher movie, lingered on for way too long before reaching the inevitable conclusion of Ohio State quarterback Troy Smith winning the Heisman. With only three candidates invited to the ceremony in downtown Manhattan, that left even more time for banter, postulating and yammering by scores of talking heads. And oh, in case you didn’t know by the scores of commercials crammed down your throat, Nissan sponsored the award this year. That the Heisman has a sponsor is laughable….sponsors are needed to provide backing for things that otherwise might not have the funding or support to happen. So why does the most storied award in college sports need a sponsor? You’re telling me it couldn’t be presented without a sponsor? Really? Cut the crap, take the show down to half an hour and don’t waste our time with all the extraneous garbage, ESPN.

- Now here’s a cat fight that millions of guys would pay to see, assuming there were bikinis and jello involved, how many guys in the 18-49 age bracket wouldn’t plunk down a large amount of money to see top-heavy songstress Mariah Carey duke it out with adult film star and former California gubernatorial candidate (seriously) Mary Carey? Mariah wants to trademark her name, fearing fans would confuse the two, and also to prevent Mary from singing. Right, because no one could possibly tell the two of you apart. One has eight-octave range, wears skanky outfits like skin-tight NBA jerseys passing for dresses and makes bad music. The other…….well, she does what adult film stars do. So ladies, I think we can all agree that this need not go to court. Simply pick out your favorite bikini, hop in the jello pit and when the bell rings, come out swinging.

- Metallica and other artists have spent a lot of time b*tching about copyright laws, Napster, etc. here in the U.S. Many other artists, like the Beastie Boys have gone on the warpath against the “illegal” copying and sharing of CDs. So the British perhaps are feeling left out, and so Paul McCartney, U2 and Eric Clapton are going into battle against the British government to protest the current British copyright laws that only protects sound recordings are performers rights for 50 years. In America, the same laws are for 95 years. Under the British laws, some of the Beatles biggest hits could be up for grabs as early as 2012. It always cracks me up that artists who charge a couple hundred bucks for a concert ticket, twenty-five dollars for a t-shirt and seventeen bucks for an album are so concerned about things like this. I understand you wrote the songs, but how about you just be happy with the hundreds of millions you can rake in from your music in that 50-year span and stay quiet.

- A quick review of the Billboard charts…..the Hannah Montana soundtrack is three spots above the new Beatles album, Love, on the charts, which has to be another sign of the apocalypse……Akon still has two of the top three singles, which still is an abomination…..a song by Bow Wow titled Shortie Like Mine is another top 10 single, which is quite a well-crafted song title for a song that surely contains equally skilled and thoughtful lyrics (please shoot me in the head if I ever have to listen to that song)…….Jim Jones has a top 10 single and a top 5 Hip-Hop single, and no, I’m pretty sure this is not the same Jim Jones who cultivated a cult following before forcing his followers to drink the toxic Kool-Aid, although even if it was I still would have no interest in listening to the music.

- Nicole Ritchie, coming to a driving safety course near you. That could actually happen after the waifish (seriously, 5’1, 85 pounds!) wannabe actress/reality TV skank was pulled over for driving the wrong way on an L.A.-area freeway at 4:30 in the morning. She admitted to being hopped up on Vicodin and marijuana when cops pulled her over following calls from two concerned motorists. I’m actually having a little bit of a problem processing this, actually. Not the driving the wrong way, not the painkillers.…..I’m talking about the hippie lettuce. After all, if you are just over five feet tall and weighing in at a robust 85 freaking pounds, odds are you don’t eat much or often. But I think we all know that smoking tree usually leads to cravings for Doritos, Cheetos and other foods that really aren't good for your figure. Seems like a difficult balance to strike, staying that thin and smoking something that gives you a bad case of the munchies.

Weekend rants

- So Mel Gibson’s anti-Semitic rant doesn’t appear to have affected his box office cred with moviegoers. His latest directorial effort, Apocalypto, topped the box office charts over the weekend, grossing an estimated $14.2 million. The Holiday, Happy Feet and Casino Royale were in the next three spots, meaning that for the first time in quite a while, none of the four highest-earning movies of a given weekend absolutely blows. Kudos to movie fans for going to see films that have actual quality and watchability to them. The total haul for Mel’s movie wasn’t overwhelming, but it was enough to prove that people aren’t still bent about the intoxicated remarks he made last summer……..well, except for Jews, who I imagine might still be a wee bit upset. But other than that, looks like most people have forgiven Mel or at least forgotten what he said.

- Count me among those hoping the Red Sox fail in their bid to sign Japanese pitching sensation Daisuke Matsuzaka. I’m not a Yankees fan (YANKEES SUCK!) or a fan of any other team that might attempt to sign him if the Sox don’t, mind you. I just hope for their sake that they don’t end up ponying up that $51 million negotiating fee, money paid to Matsuzaka’s Japanese team, then pay an additional $100 million to Daisuke himself. The $100 million is the amount his agent, the loathe-able Scott Boras, is looking for in terms of total contract value. So imagine that they give this guy a six-year, $102 million deal. That’s $17 million in salary per year, plus if you
break the negotiating fee down across the life of the contract, that’s about $7.3 million per. In other words, $24 million-plus per year for a guy who’s never thrown a Major League pitch. Call me nuts, but you can get two top level arms for that amount, $12.15 million annually for each. Besides, I have heard reports that in his career already, especially in high school and right after, he pitched crazy amounts of innings and pitches on far too little rest. He seems like a candidate to flame out big time, and even if he’s a 20-win pitcher for the life of his contract, he’s not worth $24.3 million per, none of the past decade’s Cy Young winners have made that much, nor should Daisuke.

- Thanks to the ass hats at the American Film Institute. I’m trying to figure out of their lists of the 10 best movies and TV shows from 2006 are a joke or if they are really that stupid. Maybe an 8-ball of coke was involved or some LSD……all I know is that any list of movies that includes Borat¸ The Devil Wears Prada and Dreamgirls among its top 10 is irrelevant. Are you serious? A pathetic attempt at cross-cultural homor featuring lame gags and a phony accent, a chick flick about a fashion magazine and….well, I’m not even sure how to describe Dreamgirls, other than: bad. The TV list is a little better, especially since it includes Heroes, the best new show this season. I don’t have HBO, so I can’t say yea or nay on The Wire, but Friday Night Lights and The Office aren't bad choices either. But where are Prison Break, Veronica Mars and Gilmore Girls? I know the WB isn't an established network, but to deny shows like Mars just shows a tremendous amount of ignorance on the part of the AFI. The lists were supposedly compiled by show biz insiders and professional critics, but I have to wonder if they all got together and sniffed paint fumes in a poorly-ventilated room before doing the voting.

- Can someone explain to me why people are still writing about and investigating the death of Princess Diana nearly a decade later. She’s dead, people, D-E-A-D. The Kennedy assassination, this ain’t. She wasn’t shot, she died in a car crash. If her driver was drunk, it doesn’t change the outcome. People were far too obsessed with her life (why, I don’t know. I don’t really think she merited the attention given to, say, the Pope, Mother Theresa or people who actually made a major impact on the world and weren't simply members of an outdated monarchy that’s little more than a figurehead). The Brits and anyone else who spend any further time looking into Diana’s death need to realize that there’s a world going on around them right now, one filled with actual problems that matter to people living here and now, not a decade in the past.

- The “Naïve and Ignorant” Award in sports for this week goes to…….all of the University of Idaho fans and players who are surprised/bitter than head football coach Dennis “Vagabond” Ericsson has left UI after one season to take the head coaching job at Arizona State. Ericsson has coached at two stops in the NFL, four others in D-1 football, with ASU being his fifth college stop, following Miami (FL), Oregon State, Washington State and Idaho. I’m sorry, Idaho sycophants, you thought an accomplished coach who has won two national titles would stay in Spud-ville, a bottom-level D-1 program, and eschew a chance to coach at Arizona State, a Pac-10 school with in a conference with an automatic BCS slot every year? A school with a better stadium, better practice facilities, better academics, more money and much better weather than Idaho? How did you not realize that this was going to be anything other than a long layover for Ericsson in between better jobs? Be thankful you landed a coach like him for one season, and lament your own naïveté in believing you could keep him there for any sort of prolonged run.

- Each year I skip the Super Bowl half time show largely on the principle that I hate pregame and halftime shows, which are a waste of time where nothing happens of relevance to the actual game on the field. So this year, the NFL has………given me an especially good reason to skip the Super Bowl halftime show by choosing Prince, or whatever the hell he calls himself now, as the main act. The sexually ambiguous, horribly coiffed soul/funk/just plan bad musician will be performing some of his overrated, sad-sack songs and underwhelming the shmucks who actually do watch halftime. I will continue to use it as a time to refill on snacks and drinks, use the bathroom and do other things that are higher on my priority list, y’know, stuff like clipping my fingernails, dusting under the refrigerator and rearranging my sock drawer.

Rich Rodriguez reverses field, tithing at an ATM and Prison Break comes to Cancun....sort of

- All the makings of a happy football season in 2007 at West Virginia. Head coach Rich Rodriguez has reversed field, declining the offer to become head coach at Alabama in order to remain at WVU. How much better can it get, a guy who had all but left, ditched the Mountaineers for a “better” job and more money, returning to coach the team he nearly left. I’m sure the players and fans won't look at him any differently just because he almost ditched them……..of course, one thing can cure any ill feelings or bad taste left in the mouths of players and fans alike: winning. You can be sure that if next season, the Mountaineers go 12-0 or 11-1, all will be forgiven and forgotten and Rodriguez will be hailed as a coaching genius, at which point we can go through this whole ordeal of will he or won't he leave again.

- Can a drive-thru window be far behind? That’s the next logical step for Stevens Creek Community Church in Martinez, Ga., which has installed two “Giving Kiosk” ATM machines outside its sanctuary. Churchgoers can give by swiping their credit or debit cards, thus avoiding the hassle of needing exact change when the offering plate comes by. I think I’ll hold out for the drive-thru, though, because who wants the hassle of getting out of your car and actually going inside of the church? I’d much prefer talking to a church representative through that audio nightmare of an intercom system they have at the bank, the one where you can't understand the garbled speech of the teller and you also get to send your materials in the little plastic tube to the building. Maybe next Stevens Creek CC can throw up the podcast of their services on iTunes and people won't have to actually attend at all.

- This can't be good for tourism. More than 150 inmates in a Cancun jail overpowered guards using knives and bats (why are that many bats available to them? they must have a hell of a rec yard) and escaped. About half of the escapees were quickly captured, by the remainder are still being sought. I’d check for them tanning on one of the fine tourist-laden beaches or at a resort, having cocktails with an American couple from Minnesota celebrating their twenty-fifth anniversary. “Come bask in the Mexican sun…..with 75 escapes convicts” is a promising new slogan for Cancun’s board of tourism. Until these guys are caught, though, you might want to avoid getting into an argument over who was first in line at the restaurant, because getting seated first is not worth getting shanked in the leg.

- Hooters has competition in the shameless, pander-to-the-lowest-common-denominator arena for restaurants. Because everyone knows that guys just can't keep from fantasizing about nurses (umm, sure, we all fit that stereotype, that’s not insulting), the Heart Attack Grill in Tempe, Arizona is attempting to capitalize on those supposed fantasies. The eatery features, among food that will send you to an actual hospital for heart surgery quicker than imaginable, waitresses in skimpy nurses outfits, including high heels, knee high stockings and cleavage bearing shirts. This would be funny in a frat house, stupid, sophomoric sense, but when you start serving burgers with two pounds of greasy meat, four pieces of cheese and a pound of bacon and French fries cooked in pure lard, that’s just nasty. Nursing organizations are bent because they feel the restaurant is insulting and demeaning to actual nurses, but let’s face it, they have no real leg to stand on. Owner Jon Basso is free to operate his business as long as he’s not violating the law, even if it is insulting to nurses. But c’mon, man, America is fat enough without you serving lard fries. I’m predicting a drastic rise in heart disease and heart attacks in the greater Tempe area in the next couple years……

- Amazing how people jump at the chance to get their hands on the actual truth, at least parts of it, about the mess in Iraq. Having been fed a string of lies by the Bush administration since the debacle began (any luck finding those WMD’s yet?), the American public snapped up enough copies of the Iraq Study Group’s report in paperback form to catapult the book to No. 18 on the Amazon.com bestseller list. Admittedly, this book isn't the same scintillating reading as the newest John Grisham book and won't be making an appearance in Oprah’s book club, but it will be nice to find out what the hell is going on over in Iraq without having the facts filtered and distorted by the Bush administration, seeking to cover their own arses, not give us the truth.

- Wesley Snipes has turned himself in on tax evasion charges, thus proving that the law may not be able to get you if you are a double murderer (allegedly, eh O.J.?), but if you try to skimp on paying your taxes, you WILL be caught and punished. Snipes, in Namibia filming the ironically titled Gallow Walker (trying to cheat the IRS basically ensures that you will be hanged), returned to Florida, attended a court appearance and was then given clearance to return to Namibia, although he must be back in the U.S. by January 10 for his trial. Once again, it’s nice to see that famous people are treated the same as everyone else, because any of us would be allowed to leave the country with charges of $12 million tax fraud hanging over our heads, right? God bless America.

- I shouldn’t need to ask this, but I will. What the frak is President Bush doing (how many times do we all ask that question on a daily basis? 25? 50?) filming a humorous video for the White House website featuring…….his damn Scottish terrier?!?! The video has numerous administration officials in it, along with the Prez, Emmitt Smith and Dolly Parton. I don’t begrudge a President for needing to unwind and have some fun, but c’mon, go running, play golf, whatever. Don’t waste time and I am sure many taxpayer dollars on glorified home movie projects. And why do I get the feeling that with Barney the dog on screen with W, the more intelligent “actor” is the one with four paws and a tail?

Hatin' on the Grammys, finding some decent movies....finally

- Because I am always on the lookout for the crap, drivel and refuse that finds its way into theaters and causes people to pay $8.50 to see it, when a movie weekend rolls around with multiple films that are actually watchable (maybe not great, but watchable), it’s cause for celebration. This would be one of those times, thanks to three movies, two live action dramas, Apocalypto and Blood Diamond, and one an animated sci-fi romp, Renaissance featuring the vocal talents of current 007 Daniel Craig). Set aside Mel Gibson’s drunken, anti-Semitic rant if you will, because Apocalypto, a look at the ancient Mayan civilization set in the action genre, is more than interesting enough to go see. It might rely a little too much on the blood and guts, excess gore crutch, but overall the story of a man straining to escape capture, slavery and separation from his family is a good one. Blood Diamond is the much-hyped Leo DiCaprio film about diamonds illegally mined in South Africa and the political and social atrocities surrounding them, and despite the promotional machine working overtime, the result is a good movie that, even though it is Hollywood slick through and through, may still raise debate on an issue that many people are still extremely ignorant of. The wild card among the three movies is Renaissance, which if your area is anything like mine, is only playing at more artsy, small theaters but could be the best of the trio. It’s set in Paris in 2054, where a researcher at the massive Avalon corporation is kidnapped and a police detective, voiced by Craig, tries to find her with little evidence to go on. The entire movie is in black and white animation, with nevertheless vivid imagery that helps along a good but not stellar storyline. It’s a departure from the norm, though, and worth your time if you were unfortunate enough to get sucked into Borat or Van Wilder: The Rise of Taj and are now looking to evict those images from your movie-going mind.

- The Iraq Study group releases its findings, says the U.S. should be withdrawing from Iraq by early 2008………so of course W isn't going to listen to them. His response to the suggestion was lukewarm at best, although he did re-state the need for a “new strategy.” Great, but if you keep rejecting every new idea that is presented to you, how is a new strategy going to take place? Maybe what you mean is “a new strategy that I totally agree with and one that makes me and what I’ve done in Iraq so far look good,” in which case keep waiting, because that strategy doesn’t exist. W said the group’s studies were “worthy of serious study” and of course, those kinds of glittering generalizations are what make our country’s political process so great, eh? Nothing here to dispel the fear that we’re in for two more years of parsing words and talking
around the issue, at which point a new president will be elected and that person will have the distinct displeasure of cleaning up this mess.

- Who among us hasn’t gotten stuck on a plane near an annoying, loud, overactive small child or baby? Few things ruin a flight faster than one of these tots crawling around, getting in people’s way, spilling things or necessitating trips to the bathroom with their parents at the most inconvenient times. A close relative of this problem is the uber-fat person who spills out from their seat into yours and makes for a most uncomfortable ride. Combine the two and you have, somewhat, the situation that forced itself upon passengers on board a Wednesday flight from Mexico to Chicago. A 42-year-old woman actually gave birth on the plane, and a doctor on board delivered the baby. What a pleasant way to spend a long flight, witnessing that scene and the disturbance it caused. Isn't it recommended that women that close to their due date don’t fly? Of all the travel nightmares to experience, other than a hijacking or crash, that is at the top of my list for things I never, ever want to see in person on a plane.

- Promises from college football coaches are becoming as worthless as campaign promises from politicians. The most recent example is new University of Alabama head coach (and former West Virginia head coach) Rich Rodriguez. Rodriguez, a WVU grad and professed lover of the state and university, apparently loves money more than either of those two things. He spent the early part of this week proclaiming his love for West Virginia, red-necked citizenry and all, then today bolted for a 6-year, $12 million contract to coach at UA. His former players at WVU were pissed, including offensive lineman Dan Moses, who theorized that maybe it was all about the money. Ya think, Danny? No matter how many times a coach promises you anything, especially that he plans to stay at a school forever, assume he is either a) lying, or b) really, really lying. Rodriguez should not have made promises he couldn’t or didn’t intend to keep. Mountaineer fans and players are angry, but they are also naïve if they truly believed Rodriguez would stay there his entire career. I fault him for saying those things, but I also have to fault the fans and players for buying in to them. Enjoy the crazy jack UA is paying you, Rich, and never, ever schedule a road game at West Virginia if you want to come out alive.

- A quick review of the Grammy Award nominations….idiotic. Ok, so that might be a bit too brief. The biggest problems: eight nominations for Mary J. Blige, for starters. Her music has been awful for as long as I can remember, so Frankenstein cross of soul and R&B and hip-hop, complete with boring videos filled with bad dancing. She is apparently attempting to be the black Celine Dion, which would be awful even if you were successful at it. Compounding that egregious error are multiple noms for Justin Timberlake (if he is nominated for album of the year, you can assume one of two things, either a) only four other albums were put out in a year and they needed a fifth to round out the group, or b) the drugs are smoking copious amounts of peyote. Either way, you’ve gotta be kidding me - the guy sound like the fourth Chipmunk on meth, and you think his was one of the year’s best albums? Add to that mess multiple noms for former American Idol Carrie Underwood, including New Artist of the Year. On sound principles alone, any and all former Idol contestants should never be eligible for a Grammy, VMA, etc. And the fourth (but far from last) big time mistake is that the Dixie Chunks, er, Chicks got nominations too. This has nothing to do with their anti-W comments, because I’m with them there. This is about lackluster, snooze inducing country-pop music that no self-respecting music fan should ever be caught dead with in their iPod. Did the voters for the awards look anywhere but the pages of people magazine and the music listings for songs used in popular teen dramas and sitcoms? Otherwise, there is no way to explain a New Artist category that includes nothing but mainstream artists such as James Blunt, Corrine Bailey Rae, Underwood, Chris Brown and Imogen Heap. Now all I need to do is find out when the Grammys will be held so I can be sure not to watch them……

- Stunning news from the baseball world……Barry Bonds has resigned with the Giants. Owner Peter McGowan went on a rant at the end of last season about the team relying too much on Bonds, about how he would not be the centerpiece of the squad next season, then he went out and signed Bonds to a one-year, $16 million contract. Yeah, because guys making more than anyone else on the team, guys chasing the most hallowed record in baseball, guys who cook up their own reality show and have their own plush leather recliner in the locker room next to their locker are never the centerpiece of a team. Not that Bar-roid was going to any other team, but the Giants will be worse off for having him next season and the sooner he breaks Hank Aaron’s record and retires, the better life will be for all baseball fans, teams and players. The only possible solution that could trump that would be a career ending knee or shoulder injury to Bonds this season before he breaks Aaron’s record of 755 home runs, because that type of injury is one happy ending we can all get with.

- As a regular watcher of all four ESPN networks (excluding ESPNU, because next to no one gets or pays attention to it), I’ve come to the conclusion that a three-pronged campaign needs to be waged to rid the airwaves of a trio of ESPN personalities who, for lack of a better term, suck. These three are shtick recycling, cliché spouting, loudmouth ignoramuses who are more tired and played out than anything else on TV. If you watch ESPN at all, you can definitely guess two of these guys: Chris Berman and Stuart Scott. The third, serial T.O.-and-Cowboys apologist and loose cannon Michael Irvin, would be as easily picked out if he’d been on the air as long as the other two. Berman, with his ridiculously stupid, forced nicknames for players, repetitive colliloquisms and a routine that hasn’t been updated or revised in 20 years, may love football and may be enthusiastic about it on air, but his act is older than dirt. Same goes for Scott, who has managed to invent an inane language of his own that goes above and beyond the hip-hop/urban slang into a stratosphere so lame and incomprehensible that most of the time, you just sit there and think, “Huh? What the h*ll did he just say? All I understood was the fifteen times he said ‘Boo-yah’ during that highlight.” Irvin is someone I’ve written on before. His background as a former player doesn’t make him a good commentator, and with his racially insensitive comments about the ethnicity of Tony Romo recently, Irvin continues to show that his only “ability” is to say dumb things and to say them very loudly. As previously stated, it’s my belief that a person’s IQ decreases by five points every time they listen to Irvin talk.

Mocking Gwen, laughing at the Barry Bonds spectacle

- Few things are sadder in the sports and entertainment worlds than when an aging, past their prime superstar tries to hang on when they should hang it up. A boxer like Evander Holyfield is a prime example, a man who has been bruised, battered, beaten and has suffered substantial brain damage from fighting, yet won't quit even though every fight he’s in, you fear he’s going to die in the ring. What I never thought I’d see, though, is an aging Barry Bonds having to fly to Major League Baseball’s winter meetings to campaign for a job with a team, any team. Bonds’ former team, the San Francisco Giants, has been lukewarm at best about resigning the steroid fueled slugger, and so far this off season, other teams have shown nothing beyond a tepid interest in him. So the Barry Road Show is in Florida at baseball’s annual meetings, seeking desperately to drum up some interest in signing him. It’s bizarre, sad, depressing sight to see him rolling through the hotel lobby, on the prowl for the execs of some unsuspecting team. I would say it’s akin to watching the Rolling Stones at an awards show, pleading with record execs to give them a new record deal. Bizarre, right? After all, they are among the most famous and most successful music acts of all time. Well, Barry is one of the most famous and successful baseball players ever, and now he’s openly pleading for a team to sign him, only no one wants to. The Stones and Barry do actually have a lot in common, too. Both are aging, past their prime, have relied heavily on drugs for their success and will end their careers in their respective Halls of Fame. Biggest difference right now is that the Stones are the only one of the two that will be going out with some dignity. If Keith Richards can stop falling out of coconut trees, that is…….

- Let me start by saying I love football. College especially, but pro and even high school football are among my favorite sports. I watch dozens of games every week during the season, often bending the rest of my schedule around the games. So when I say that the NFL’s new concept of Thursday Night Football sucks, you know I mean it. For the final five weeks of this NFL season, the league, in its infinite wisdom, has decided to slap one game a week on Thursday nights on its own NFL Network. Forget that nearly all cable providers aren't airing NFL-N due to a financial dispute with the network. It’s just dumb to string the games out to one more night when they’re already on Sunday all day and Monday night too. Quit diluting your product, NFL. Also, if your local team happens to be playing one of these Thursday night contests, as I have found out with this week’s game, whatever mainstream network has TV rights will also get to show the game, which means………yes, your favorite shows on that network are preempted! This week, that means FOX will not be showing my beloved The O.C. in its regular time slot, but will instead broadcast it at one freakin’ o’clock in the morning. Super….I not only get to have a terrible football game between two bottom feeding teams jammed down my throat, but the show I actually want to see will air at 1 a.m.? Awesome, way to go NFL.

- People love money, that much is obvious. The fact that they are willing to do things that are 1) humiliating, 2) degrading, 3) illegal, 4) unethical, 5) revolting, 6) most any other adjective you can think of is evidence enough. Clearly, that love of money that is the root of all evil doesn’t decrease or diminish the older you get. Take as Exhibit A 81-year-old Ruby Carter of Texas, who had a brilliant idea to get her hands on $2 million. No, she didn’t plan to play bingo or hit the lottery, ol’ Ruby had something much more sinister on her mind. She wrote a letter to NFL Hall of Fame quarterback Bart Starr, formerly of the Green Bay Packers, and threatened to ruin his reputation by exposing a secret relationship between the two of them back in 1960. The only problem? No such relationship ever existed, and thus Starr refused to pay and turned the matter over to police. Ruby was arrested and will be charged in the case, and you really could see this one coming. What, you think that just because you say you are going to expose a fake relationship with a famous athlete, that means it actually happened or that the athlete will pay up? Why? If he doesn’t even know you, why would he pay? I know you can become senile as you get older, but what kind of ass hat doesn’t realize that when you write a letter with a return address on it, people can figure out who you are easily? Putting an octogenarian in jail might seem a little harsh, but I hope Ruby gets to spend a couple years behind bars just on the basis of sheer stupidity.

- I can't be the only one who laughed out loud and laughed for a prolonged period of time when I saw the first video off of and commercial for the new Gwen Stefani album, can I? After all, this is the same woman who once bristled at criticism that she didn’t truly know how to rock, claiming that her band, No Doubt, had once toured with U2. Yet here she is, after a hiatus, coming back at us with more glammed up, sparkly, glittery, slickly produced pop crap. Every one of her videos is like a giant celebration of excess, but not in the rock n’ roll, sex, drugs and rock type of excess. This is more along the lines of a female version of Elton John, outrageous, flashy costumes, lots of dancers, heavy reliance on synthesizers and not an ounce of rock to be found. Gwen has her market, namely teenage girls, but last time I checked, that demographic is all about pop, the Britney and Christina set of the population, not about rock. Gwen needs to make up her mind, because if she ever tries to make the claim to know how to rock with the music she keeps putting out, I’ll be laughing even harder and longer than I did initially.

Fighting obesity and heart disease in NYC, all while people b*tch about college football

- The fight against obesity is apparently going to get a real shot in the arm courtesy of New York City. The place famous for great pizza and bagels, Central Park, Times Square and having more rats than humans has now become the first city to ban all but the most miniscule usage of trans fats in cooking at any and all eateries in the city. Trans fats tend to raise bad cholesterol and have been directly linked to heart disease, so I would have to salute NYC for taking the stand, even if it might alter the good taste of some foods and make life more difficult for restaurants citywide. Violators of the new ban would face fines of at least $200, although I have to wonder exactly who is going to police this law and how. Thousands of overweight New Yorkers who love binging on greasy fries and burgers are going to be upset about this, but I salute Mayor Bloomberg for the effort, because in case you hadn't noticed, America is becoming obscenely fat and honestly, it’s disgusting and depressing to look at.

- Far too many people are b*tching about college football bowl games, right on schedule. This happens every year, sports commentators and media lament that there are far too many bowl games, they start too early, they have funny names, they feature teams people don’t know, blah, blah, blah……..shut your cake holes, whiners. Thirty plus bowls is a lot, and really, we could do with a number in the high twenties or so, but I for one am not going to spend time whining about it. I love college football, it’s one of my three favorite sports, and any chance I have to see more of it is a chance I will take. Furthermore, the complaint that unfamiliar schools that “no one cares about” play in many of them………those teams matter to their fans, as I can attest. Last year, my alma mater made it to its very first bowl game and I, along with tens of thousands of fellow fans, made the trip to the game and had a once-in-a-lifetime experience. It was great, a fantastic and exciting game and definitely worthwhile. So for those out there who have a problem with any of the bowl games, just don’t watch. Your mocking of them isn't funny or clever; it’s trite, tired and played.

- Sucks to be an Iranian citizen right about now. Aside from the oppressive heat, gobs of sand and desert and what not, the oppressive governmental regime isn't making life any more pleasant. The Iranian government has blocked access to YouTube within its borders, meaning if you live in Iran, you have to travel to a neighboring country if you wish to view the hilariously funny clip of William Shatner performing Rocket Man from a few years ago. The same treatment is being given to porn sites and sites of groups opposing the government, but I have to ask why YouTube is being lumped in there. Do you not want your citizens to be able to laugh and to see that there’s actually a world outside their borders? Oh wait, that’s exactly what the Iranian government wants. Just one more reminder why even though America is greatly flawed, it’s still better to be living here rather than in places like Iran.

- We all knew that Taco Bell food was 1) not actually Mexican food, 2) not at all good for you and 3) of questionable origin and composition, but add a fourth characteristic to that list: it can give you E. coli. Yes, now not only can you get indigestion, gas and heartburn from making a run for the border, you an also get food poisoning! Doesn’t that sound like something you’d be interested in? Eleven Taco Bell restaurants in the New York/New Jersey metro area all use the same food distributor and were the source of an outbreak that made at least three dozen people ill in recent days. Nine people remain hospitalized as a result, including an 11-year-old boy with kidney damage. Yet another reason to avoid Taco Bell, as if I needed one. Y’know, heating up ramen noodles on the stove might not seem like a glamorous dining option, but I can safely say that it won't send you to the hospital with kidney damage……….

- Not surprisingly, Disney sold more than five million copies of Pirates of the Caribbean Two: Dead Man’s Chest on its first day in stores Tuesday. Amongst all of the movies that have come out in the past year, Pirates was definitely one of the better ones. Something to consider for movies currently out in theaters, ones of dubious quality and lackluster cinematic value (see here Van Wilder: The Rise of Taj)…..what does it say about your movie when more people buy a DVD of a movie they’ve already seen than are willing to pay about half the amount to go see your movie in theaters? Because truthfully, at the end of one week for each in their respective theatrical venues, I’m willing to bet that Pirates will be much more popular on DVD than Rise of Taj will be in theaters. Of course, all that means is that we’ll see the latter on DVD in about two months as well.

Lax courthouse security, PS-3 related death and oh yeah, Fergie still sucks

- Remember that scene in The Recruit where Al Pacino’s character tells Colin Farrell’s character that the way security works at the CIA is that intense scrutiny is placed on everyone going in, but once you’re inside, no one pays much attention to you? How comforting is it to know that courthouses seem to run the same way? Need proof? How about a freshly convicted felon simply walking out of a courtroom once his conviction is read and vanishing into thin air? It happened in Ohio, where Ronald Nesby, Jr. heard the judge read his conviction aloud in the Summit County Common Pleas courtroom, then stood up, walked to the back of the room where he hugged his brother, then walked away. A search of the area failed to turn up Nesby, who is now being sought by police. Seems like a fair question to ask how someone, especially a man with a felony drug conviction hanging over him, could just walk out of a courtroom with no one stopping him. What exactly is the bailiff there for? Did no one yell stop or give chase right away? Shouldn’t people have been bursting out into the hallway, shouting for someone to stop Nesby before he got away? Don’t know about you, but I would feel very safe in that courthouse, knowing felons are free to come and go as they please with no hassle.

- Suddenly the losers who camped out several days for the right to buy the new Sony PS-3 don’t seem quite so bad. When you contrast them with the two college students in North Carolina who severely beat a fellow student and stole two PS-3’s, people who just camped out for one and took it home to play it don’t seem as bad. Amazingly, things didn’t turn out too well for Peyton Strickland, one of the two dudes who stole the game consoles. He was shot to death by police who were serving an arrest warrant on he and his fellow PS-3 thief. Strickland, a student at Cape Fear Community College, and a friend who was a student at UNC-Wilmington stole the consoles from another UNCW student the day they came out in stores. The reason for police shooting Strickland? Apparently he was holding a game controller in his hand when answering the door and police mistook it for some sort of weapon. Great……and this was a special police task force whose job it is to help the university cops serve arrest warrants. I’d hate to see what might happen if non-specialized forces were in on this sort of thing……..But once again, good things always happen when one person is willing to assault and rob his fellow man for a video game system. Well done, guys.

- David Letterman will have at least one year to try and reach the top of the late night ratings without having to step over nemesis Jay Leno to get there. Leno has already announced his plans to retire from The Tonight Show in 2009, with Conan O’Brien taking over the spot. Letterman just inked a new deal to stay on The Late Show through 2010, meaning he’ll be on the air a minimum of one year after Leno steps down. Rumors have the value of the deal at $30 million annually, which is just stunning. Where else besides pro sports can you get $30 million a year for being runner up year in, year out? Even A-Rod doesn’t rake in that much jack for failing to be the best. My prediction: Letterman isn't going to overtake O’Brien, just like he couldn’t overtake Leno. The hangover effect from Leno’s tenure will carry O’Brien for the first year at least, and Conan might actually do a good job in the role. But hey, Dave can take solace in knowing he has those kick-ass Top 10 lists going for him………..

- Nobody wants Barry Bonds. Seriously, no Major League teams seem to be eager to sign the aging, roided up, size 11 head sporting, broken down slugger. Maybe they’re following the logic I’ve been laying out for a while now, that the hassle of bringing in Bar-roid isn't worth it. The intense media scrutiny, major distraction and surly demeanor weighed against bad knees, terrible defense and a few long home runs just doesn’t make sense. The San Francisco Giants, Bonds’ old team, are in no hurry to resign him but maintain that even though they have thrown crazy money at free agent outfielders Carlos Lee and Alfonso Soriano and continue to pursue a trade for slugging outfielder Manny Ramirez of the Boston Red Sox, that these things in no way mean they don’t want Bonds back. Sure, because what better way to say you want a player back than to try to sign or trade for three star players who happen to play the same position? It’s not that I think it’s a bad decision not to bring him back, I just wish ‘Frisco would be honest about their plans. Then again, if they don’t get any of these other guys and are forced, er, decide to bring back Bonds, they can’t openly say they don’t want him. Tough place to be in, but hey, they do possibly get the thrill of seeing Bar-roid break the MLB career home run record, knowing no one wants him to break it and everyone believes that he will do so on the strength of steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs.

- Wanna live on the moon? You’ve got about 18 years to prepare yourself if you do, because NASA is planning for life on the moon, with astronauts to reside at a permanent base near the lunar pole of the moon by 2024. The scientific research station would house the astronauts, who would clearly only be there in an attempt to escape paying taxes on earth and having to witness the horrible spectacle that is the N’Sync: 20 years later reunion tour. Even if it was for a year, though, who would volunteer to live on the moon? Your life would have to be pretty sad and devoid of connections to friends and family if you’d volunteer to leave the planet to live on the moon. Count me out, although speaking of N’Sync, Lance Bass, former member of the man band, did try to become a cosmonaut a couple years ago, so maybe check with him. Actually, why not take all former man banders - 98 Degrees, N’Sync, Backstreet Boys, all of them - and have them all go live on the moon. Seems a fair punishment for the music they subjected us to. Don’t bother waiting for the moon station to be built either, send ‘em up there now, let them fend for themselves, I’m sure they’ll be fine.

- Back and forth, back and forth………watching President Bush and his stance on Iraq is like watching a game of old-school Pong, only with less intelligent participants involved. W now wants a new direction for the mess known as the Iraq war and is meeting with anyone and everyone who can wear a suit and walk upright in the hopes that someone will give him a good idea. How great is it that he’s not even smart enough to come up with any good ideas on his own, so now he’s meeting with groups and individuals, both inside and outside of the government, seeking recommendations. Actually, maybe we can take this a step further: have W go to his ranch in Crawford, stay there and doodle in his coloring books and allow everyone else to figure this thing out. Have him stay there until, oh, I’d say January 2008…………….

- A word of advice to all music and award show producers: if an act, any act, tells you they plan to perform with giant, eight-foot tall candy canes on stage, you’ll want to pull the plug on their act at that point. It took about two seconds of the very beginning of Fergie’s performance on Monday night’s Billboard Music Awards for me to decide that I was better off flipping back to the channel I was actually watching and suffer through a commercial where Wilford Brimley tries to sell life insurance to the elderly than I would be watching the skanky Fergie sing/lip sync one of her lyrically stunted, musically inadequate songs. Enjoy your time as the new Britney Spears, Fergie, because soon enough everyone will realize that you too are a talentless fraud whose only real ability is looking hot and wearing next to nothing on stage.

- In TV land….what a great “fall finale” for Heroes, which along with Veronica Mars has to be the co-MVP for this TV season thus far. While it’s still exceptionally lame to slap the fall finale tag on a show in an attempt to give it extra clout in the ratings, this week’s heroes ratcheted up the excitement another few notches. The writers and producers continue to do a great job of weaving together the lives of a dozen or so characters from literally all over the world and crossing their paths gradually in a way that keeps you interested while not seeming forced or contrived. The end of the episode dropped what appears to be a major bombshell about the impending explosion in New York, although we all know that these teasers often aren't what they seem to be once things are fleshed out in future episodes. Regardless, I look forward eagerly to January 22, when Heroes returns, along with Prison Break.

Lord of the Rings losers find their mission.....and legions of senators wanna be President

- Losers, dorks, virgins and recluses of the world, unite. Peter Jackson, the master of the hobbits, needs your help. The chubby, bearded, bespectacled director of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, has been kicked off a project that will turn another J.R.R. Tolkien book, The Hobbit, into a movie. Jackson posted a letter on a fan site detailing the split with New Line Cinema, and undoubtedly all of the losers who dressed up like hobbits and camped out in line to see each of the Rings movies will rush to his defense, assuming they can do so without leaving the confines of their basement and exposing themselves to actual sunlight and civilization. One pathetic soul even lamented on a message board that Jackson’s dismissal from the project was “like a death in the family.” While I can't say everyone who watched the LOTR movies is a loser, what I can say is that if you liken a director leaving a project to a death in your family, you are pathetic and in serious need of perspective. It’s a movie, dorks, and whomever directs it, you’re going to go see it in your ridiculous costumes, without your girlfriend who doesn’t exist and you’re going to spend countless hours breaking down every scene with your equally pathetic friends on the message boards.

- Speaking of movies, the animated funfest Happy Feet remains on top in box office revenues, at least for this past weekend. Again, hats off to the animated penguins and their creators, as funny as it is to give props to a CGI penguin-themed flick, again I say it’s way, way better than the abysmal crap that’s hitting most multiplexes right now, movies like the above-mentioned Rise of Taj.

- Another cruise ship virus story, good times! This one comes to us from Miami, where more then 380 passengers aboard the world’s largest cruise ship, the Royal Caribbean Freedom, contracted Norovirus and were treated with over-the-counter medication. Ironic that this took place aboard a ship bearing the name Freedom, because it seems like if you go on a cruise ship these days, you are “free” to get seriously ill, “free” to have memories of vomiting, nausea and headaches that last for years and “free” to wish you had done something, anything else for vacation, even if that meant spending two weeks in prison. Soon, they’re going to hand out industrial sized cans of disinfectant, HAZMAT suits and protective gloves to every passenger as they board a cruise ship. So come sail the open seas, and bring your barf bags!

- What’s funnier than being a pretend racist? Personally, I love feigning racist sentiments, tossing out some hateful words, stereotypes and the like just to have some fun and to prove a point. I mean, who doesn’t get a kick out of doing that sort of thing? Washington, D.C. radio host Jerry Klein gets my point. He suggested on air that Muslims be required to get a special crescent shaped tattoo on their body on wear a special armband…..then, surprise of all surprises, he claimed he was kidding and did it to prove a point. Amazingly, many listeners believed he was serious (maybe because he was?) and actually agreed with him. Klein then reversed field and said he wasn’t serious, and that he was proving a point as to how millions of Germans went along with the extermination of six million Jews in the Holocaust. Klein is currently absent from the airwaves, but of course, he explains it’s due to back surgery, not because of the comments he made about Muslims. Perhaps Jerry should shift over to satellite radio with the likes of Howard Stern so he can make all the blatantly offensive remarks he wants with no repercussions.

- Don’t believe the rumors, people. I have not, I repeat not, declared myself as a candidate for the upcoming (if you consider something two years off upcoming) presidential election. I’m many years short of being old enough to run, sure, but it seems like everyone else with a pulse is declaring their intentions to run, so it’s natural I might get lumped in there. Senators Hank Clinton of New York, Barack Obama of Illinois and Even Bayh of Indiana are among those who plan to run. I feel like I need to issue a warning here, that while I realize that our current President is astonishingly incompetent and ineffective, that should in no way encourage every moron who knows how to sit at a desk and speak into a microphone should run for President. Too many people seem to be figuring, “Hey, if this buffoon can be President, than I certainly can. I mean, I actually know how to pronounce the names of foreign leaders, tie my own shoes and issue an order to pull our troops out of places they have no business being!” At the current pace, we’re going to have 75 candidates on both sides of the ballot in the primaries and so many senators will have declared their intentions to run that the Senate will have to shut down so they can all go out to campaign.

- Lastly, clean air will be occupying the air space of Ohio come Thursday. Well, aside from all of the industrial waste and pollution being created daily, I mean. But smoke from cigarettes, cigars, pipes, etc. will be drastically curtailed with new smoking regulations so into place. No smoking will be allowed in public places, and for the majority of Ohioans who don’t want to dramatically increase our chances of lung cancer by choking down those cancer sticks laced with nicotine, that’s good news. For the rest of you, keep your smokes at home so that only your furniture and clothes have to smell like smoke.

How the Billboard Awards might suck a little less, and Rummy was right

- No one pays much attention to office memos, because too often they deal with topics like cleaning the break room, how to submit purchase orders for office supplies and other inane matters. However, a memo submitted by former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, i.e. Rummy in my book, might be one the Bush administration pays attention to. Or maybe W did read the memo and that’s why Rummy got the boot. The gist of the document was that Rumsfeld believed it was time for a “major adjustment” in the administration’s policy in Iraq. He added that he believed that what U.S. forces are doing in Iraq is not working well enough of fast enough. This is perfect; someone finally admits that Iraq is one big f’ing mess that we aren’t hnadling right and he’s ushered right out the door. Every day, it becomes clearer and clearer how incompetent our President and his administration are and how stubborn they are in admitting their egregious errors.

- Our nemesis to the south, Cuba, is having some political wranglings of their own. Good ol’ Fidel Castro, tyrant, dictator, fascist and he of ailing health, failed to appear at a military parade held in his honor over the weekend. His brother Raul gave a speech at the event and is the designated successor for his big bro. Umm, replacing a guy who is turning 80 with his brother who is only a few years younger……..might want a better plan than that, Cuba. Because let’s face it, until we get a non-Castro, non-Communist in office there, we won't be able to get fine Cuban cigars here legally and Kramer will still have to hire Dominicans to pose as Cubans to roll crepes on old Seinfeld reruns.
- The Billboard Music Awards won't be quite as bad or pointless this year thanks to a decision by ditz/skank/socialite/bimbo Paris Hilton to not appear on the show. She didn’t like the lines written for her to say, fearing that the jokes might be offensive (and probably over the heads of) her friends. Because as we all know, no one ever makes fun of their peers at awards shows for a cheap laugh. Regardless, Hilt-skank won't be there, so a show featuring a lot of bad music, mediocre artists with minimal talent and an auditorium full of people thinking they’re cooler than everyone else in the room won't suck quite as bad. There’ll be one less media whore mugging for the cameras, but Hilt-skank or not, the BMA’s just aren't worth anyone’s viewing time.

- So in a surprising development, Michigan will not get a rematch against archrival Ohio State in college football’s national championship game. After voters in the two BCS polls, the USA Today/ESPN and Harris Polls, moved Florida above Michigan and some computer polls did the same, the Gators got the nod to face the Buckeyes on January 8 in Glendale for the title. As much pissing and moaning as you hear about this, especially from Bitch-igan, er, Michigan, it’s a huge relief for most college football fans. The BCS is a jacked up system that needs replaced by a playoff, but at least this year we don’t have to see an unwanted rematch that would solve virtually nothing and could have left us with a national champion, Michigan, who was actually 1-1 against the team they supposedly beat to win the title. Thanks for nothing, BCS, you still suck.

- I’m too young to remember when the National Lampoon series of movies was actually thought of as funny and worthwhile, but I’m old enough to realize what a joke the franchise has now become. Lots of bad movies get made because studios assume, correctly in some cases, that people will go see them simply because of a star who’s in the movie or because, as is the case with National Lampoon’s Van Wilder: The Rise of Taj, that the picture is the latest in a series of movies that people have liked in the past. They’re made because they’ll make a decent amount of money, at least until a few audiences see them and word spreads about how truly awful they are. The Rise of Taj mirrors a bad trend, though, of recycling the same bathroom humor, anatomical jokes and predictable, clichéd storylines that have become fodder for whatever National Lampoon movie someone wants to crank out in recent years. Now, there’s not even a false pretense that the movie is actually going to be in some way new, unique or fresh; they (director Mort Nathan in this case) insult the public’s intelligence by shoveling out a piece of cinematic manure that has no potential for being decent. Hopefully this movie does well on DVD, because it’s going to bomb out so badly in theaters after about two weeks that on video is the last shot it has at making any money at all.

- Collegiate soccer’s national championships for both men and women were played over the weekend………which I am guessing you had no idea about. Soccer is, and will continue to be, the metric system sport of our fine nation. By that, I mean that like the metric system, which supposedly has been coming to the U.S. for years and is going to be the system we all use from here on out, just mysteriously continues to not catch on. Our parents and their parents were told to learn it because it was coming to America, but it never does. Soccer is “the next big sport” for the U.S., because as we all know, millions of kids play it, the world in general loves the sport and events like the U.S. women winning the World Cup back in 2000 was supposed to put soccer on the map. Amazingly, no one cares. Major League Soccer, which ripped off two-thirds of its name from America’s real national past time, baseball, flounders with meager attendance, no media attention and total indifference by 99.99% of the American public. So the UC Santa Barbara Gauchos, champions on the men’s side, and North Carolina, the women’s champs, should enjoy their titles, albeit with the knowledge that really, nobody gives a crap besides their friends and families.

Choke jobs, apologies and Al Sharpton too!

- What a colossal choke job by the USC football team against archrival UCLA. Southern Cal needed only a win, be it by one point or fifty, to ensure a berth in the national title game on January 9 against Ohio State, but the Trojans choked big time, falling by a 13-9 margin and going down in flames in their biggest game of the season. In the process, they have doomed us to a dreaded rematch of OSU-Michigan in the title game, a no-win situation for college football fans. How you can only put up nine points against a defense more porous than the U.S.-Mexican border in rural New Mexico is astonishing. Guess it goes to show that even though they were able to string together a 10-1 record coming into this weekend, the Trojans were every bit the flawed ball club that lost to Oregon State in Corvallis a few weeks ago. Thanks for nothing, USC, a flameout in last year’s title game and gagging big time before you could even make it to this year’s title tilt.

- This is a bit premature, but I’m going to go ahead and say after five episodes that The O.C. is actually better without Mischa Barton and her Marissa character. Not a knock on her, but the show has gotten better by going in a new direction, one it wouldn’t have taken if she’d still been a member of the cast. Truthfully, the character was getting a bit tired and played out, which, if you read quotes from the show’s execs, was a large part of why they killed Marissa off. Willa Holland, who plays Marissa’s sister Caitlin, has aptly filled that general role of troublemaker/party girl on the show and isn't nearly as annoying and predictable (not yet anyhow) as the Marissa character had become. Not as much humor on the show yet this year, although coming off the “death” of a main character in last season’s finale, you had to figure that the first few episodes were going to be more serious. But overall, very good stuff so far, let’s keep it going.

- Michael Irvin is an idiot. I knew that, you knew that, we all knew that. I’ve said it too many times to count, and I’ll keep saying it as long as that idiot, Michael Irvin, being the idiot that he is, keeps acting like an idiot on TV. This time, the idiot made insensitive remarks about the heritage of rising quarterback Tony Romo of the Dallas Cowboys. The remarks weren't enough, at least in the eyes of ESPN, to warrant firing or suspending Irvin, but they weren't right. I find a lot of things Irvin says offensive, as in offensive to my intelligence and actual working knowledge of the English language and the proper way to use it, but racially based comments like the ones about Romo are dumb even by Mike Irvin standards. But I sincerely hope that he doesn’t stop here, because as I said, these comments aren't going to get him fired. So Mike, you need to dig down deep (get some help if you need it) and come up with some really insensitive, wildly inappropriate comments and blurt them out on air. Offend multiple ethnic and racial groups if need be. Do whatever you need to do, just make sure it’s enough to get you canned so I don’t have to listen to your biased, idiotic, self-serving blathering that comes tumbling out of my TV speakers every time you’re on the air.

- The Michael Richards Apology Tour 2006 continues. After appearances on Letterman, Jesse Jackson’s radio show and an apology to Rev. Al Sharpton (is Al really the person most in need of your apology?), Richards will now apologize personally to the four men he insulted with racial slurs in his comedy club tirade. Even by “I made a terribly offensive racial comment” standards, this apology tour de force is above and beyond the call of duty, which is a good thing. As I said before, I am going to give Richards the benefit of the doubt this time unless and until it is shown that he either has already done, or again in the future does, something along the same lines as what he did here. So this apology conference, which will have a mediator, will hopefully be the last we hear of it.

- Famous musicians aren't the only ones hauling large quantities of illegal drugs. No, bingo-lovin’ grannies are doing it too. Take Arizona senior citizen Leticia Villereal Garcia’s bust by police for carrying 10 bundles of pot in her car, a total of 214 pounds of the hippie lettuce, as an example. She explained to jurors at her trial that she survives on a $275 welfare check each month, along with any money she is able to earn playing bingo. Forgive me if I don’t see the logic in playing bingo, i.e. gambling, if you have such a limited income. However you slice it, though, trafficking massive amounts of the chronic is not the way to supplement your income, Leticia. If they’ll bust Snoop and Willie, then they’ll bust anyone.

- Erie, Pa., where attempted censorship is alive and well. A local bishop is vehemently opposing local Cathedral Prep’s production of the musical Urinetown, because he considers it offensive. The school is forging on, albeit restraining from using the actual name of the musical in promoting it or printing it on tickets for the show. However, since the word “Urinetown” appears scores of times in the lyrics of the musical, people are likely to figure out what play it is quickly. To Anonymous Bishop in Erie, Pa., I give a hearty “Stick in the Mud” salute and encourage him to join the rest of us in the real world, where urine is not a sufficiently offensive term to warrant protesting a musical by a group of high school kids.

Tokin' it up with Snoop and Willie

- Americans can take comfort in knowing that ours is not the only overly sensitive, ridiculously politically correct nation around. Austria is right there with us, with lawmakers in Vienna banning Santa Claus from visiting kindergarten students. Those officials claim that the sight of a large, bearded man at their classroom door frightens the children, but opponents of the measure claim it’s because of lobbying by the city’s growing Muslim population. I’d object if I were having some random guy dressed in a Santa costume at my kid’s school, but for a different reason. I’d venture to say that a large percentage of those playing Santa at malls, schools, etc., in America are freaks or pedophiles of some sort, because otherwise why would one voluntarily subject themselves to hours of kids sitting on their lap, pulling on their fake beard and throwing temper tantrums? So I take it back, Vienna isn't being too politically correct, they are in fact doing their children a favor.

- It’s almost too easy: authorities bust Snoop Dogg or Willie Nelson on drug/weapons charges. Not long ago, Willie’s tour bus was pulled over and bricks of marijuana were found onboard, along with some ‘shrooms. Now Snoop is picked up by police after appearing on the Tonight Show and charged with being a convicted felon in possession of a firearm, possessing cocaine, transporting marijuana and having a false compartment in his vehicle. Look, I know in football it’s said that officials could call a holding penalty on every play if they really wanted to. Well, law enforcement could bust Snoop and Willie on drug charges every day if they wanted to, safe to say both of them partake in a few illegal substances on a daily basis. So it just seems kinda arbitrary to bust them on some random day when you’re sure they’re guilty every day. What the frak, just let ‘em go, Willie toked up on a tour bus he’s not driving or Snoop getting’ high with his crew seem like less of an issue than a lot of other crimes that go unpunished in this country.

- It’s a shame when a great musical group loses a member and tries to slog onward with a reshuffled lineup that’s never quite as good as the original. So it is with a heavy heart I inform you that The Wiggles, the famed children’s group from Australia, has lost its lead singer, the yellow-shirt-clad Greg Page. A chronic health condition causing dizziness, fatigue and nausea is forcing Page to call it quits. Ironically, dizziness, fatigue and nausea are also feelings induced by anyone over the age of four when they have to listen to any music by The Wiggles. Don’t fear, though, understudy Sam Moran is going to step in for Page and The Wiggles will be just as annoying as ever. Oh, and did I mention these guys are the third wealthiest entertainers in all of Australia last year? People need to start getting their kids hooked on rock n’ roll at a lot earlier age so we can eliminate the need/demand for groups like The Wiggles……

- NBA players don’t like the new basketball the league is forcing them to use this season, nor do they like the league’s crackdown on players complaining to officials about foul calls. That much we knew; players have been b*tching about the ball and the plethora of technical fouls assessed for arguing and have been doing so for months. Now, they’ve filed grievances against the NBA on both counts. Controversy creates cash, I know, I know…….but I think the league might want to reverse field when it comes to the basketball they use. Let the players use the ball they have used for years and are most comfortable with. That much I agree with the players on………but the players need to shut their holes about the technical fouls. Just because you all got used to being able to react like whiny, petulant five year olds every time you didn’t like a foul called on you doesn’t mean you should get to keep doing so. Shut up, stop the histrionics and just play ball, fellas. I know it’s a novel concept, but give it a shot.

- NBC is catching grief from the Bush administration for referring to the Iraq debacle as a civil war. Awesome, W, way to go, ass hat, quivel over semantics and do nothing to address the fact that a multi-billon dollar costing, thousands of casualty causing, no end in sight conflict that we should never have been involved in to begin with rages on. Like it matters how NBC refers to the conflict. What they should be referring to, W, is your absolute incompetence as a leader in this conflict, your lack of planning, foresight, intelligence and capability in planning, initiating and bringing a conclusion to the situation in Iraq. So just keep your mouth shut, because honestly, the term civil war makes it sound like this whole thing is Iraq’s problem and it might actually let you off the hook a bit, not that you deserve it. But don’t worry about peripheral issues like terminology in referring to the war, worry about finding a way to end our involvement in it, k?