Missing another boring speech by W., plus more reasons to love Heroes

- My new favorite college basketball coach (well second behind the coach at my beloved alma mater, the University of Akron, Keith Dambrot) has to be Bruce Pearl, head coach at the University of Tennessee. Pearl is outspoken, energetic, loud and in your face, just not in the Bob Knight, “I’m an asshole whether you like it or not,” manner. But Pearl is a colorful guy, in more ways than one after he went shirtless and painted his entire upper body orange, just like the other rabid UT fans in the stands at Monday night’s Tennessee-Duke women’s basketball game. He topped off the look with a UT headband and a giant “V” painted on his chest in white, the first letter in a four-man group spelling out “Vols”, the shortened version of UT’s Volunteers nickname. Stick in the mud, stodgy, conservative types are all contorted in indignity at Pearl’s colorful display of school spirit and support for UT women’s hoops, but that kind of thinking is several decades behind the times and just plain wrong. How awesome is it to have a coach, in his 40s, who is willing to go shirtless, paint his chest and act like a nut? I love it, and no, it’s not going to go over poorly with his players or cause trouble with them not respecting his authority. I suspect that they, like me, will think it’s hilarious and fresh. Don’t let the haters deter you from doing this kind of thing, Bruce, college basketball and sports are better for it.

- This definitely snuck up on me…..the State of the Union address was tonight, and damn, I missed it again. That really chafes my hide, let me tell you. A boring, excruciatingly long speech by an ignorant. incompetent blowhard made even longer by sustained applause from sycophants after every single sentence W. utters is must-see TV for me. I just wish I hadn't gotten tangled up in stuff like watching college basketball, watching my favorite shows like Gilmore Girls and Veronica Mars, clipping my finger nails, organizing my sock drawer, cleaning the lint trap in the dryer and learning to speak Farsi, because then I might have remembered to watch. But since I forgot, I’ll just have to assume that this speech was like every other one our fearless, mindless leader makes these days; an attempted defense of an indefensible war, feeble, empty gestures aimed at easing tensions with a Democratic-led Congress that hates him and awkward attempts at pronouncing the names of foreign leaders and of any words with more than one syllable. In other words, a rousing good time and the perfect time to break out a new “George W. Bush” drinking game. Y’know, every time W. mispronounces the name of a foreign leader, do a shot of tequila, every time he says we can still win the war in Iraq, do a shot of vodka. Good times all around……….

- I bring you excess criticism of the bad, ugly and awful music, so the occasional slice of quality music is always needed. It’s a bit late if you haven't gotten on board yet, but one of this past year’s better albums still is ridiculously under-noticed, Nightcrawler by Pete Yorn. Yorn, with this third solo effort, has crafted a well-rounded album, mostly rock, but some slower, more melodic tunes, but overall it’s an album that manages to rise above the normal, run of the mill lyrics about chicks, drugs and drinking. That alone is meritorious, but songs like For Us, which has gotten substantial radio play (at least on Sirius) and Alive are just good, straightforward rock with some thought behind it. Unlike some music (Fergie, Nelly Furtado, Justin Timberlake, Akon, I’m looking at all of you) it doesn’t settle for a dance-able beat, reliance on synthesizers and lyrics that your average third grader could string together. Give it a listen if you like rock at all or think you might, it’s worth your time.

- Very, very exciting to have Heroes back from it’s long winter hiatus. It’s pretty much the only show I watch regularly that has yet to have what I’d call a bad episode this season, and it has enough twists, turns and curveballs thrown into the plot to keep you guessing but yet it’s never complicated enough that you’re totally confused and frustrated. With a cast of characters as big as the show has, the natural assumption would be that most are peripheral and a select few are really interesting, but Heroes does a great job of keeping more than a dozen different characters into the plot and interesting. Masi Oka’s character, Hiro Nakamura, is absolutely hilarious, his comedic genius is a high point of nearly every show. There’s the sinister and dark (H.R.G., Nathan Petrelli, the mysterious, faceless Linderman), the confused and on a mission types (Peter Petrelli, Isaac Mendez, Claire Bennett) and just about everything in between. Also, new heroes, people with special abilities and powers, keep getting added to the mix, such as Christopher Eccelston’s invisible man character this past week, so the plot just continues to build in excitement and intrigue. If you haven’t tuned in yet, do it next Monday at 9 p.m. before you fall any further behind.

- Since we’re in the terribly awkward, twice-as-long-as-it-should-be break in between the NFL’s conference championship games and the Super Bowl, there’s plenty of time to talk about the game. Rather than dally on the X’s and O’s, the statistics and what not, I’m struck by the fact that for the first time in recent memory, I won't be rooting against either of the teams. Regardless of who wins, it’ll be cool with me. On one hand you’ve got Peyton Manning, who would silence scores and scores of doubters and haters and critics with a win, and Tony Dungy, coach of the Colts and a man who everyone thinks can't win the big game. Flip over to the other side and there’s Rex Grossman, a quarterback that the entire sports media has been ripping for about three months now as a hindrance to his team that will ultimately keep them from winning anything. Plus, you’ve got a Bears team that people are totally discounting because they come from the NFC, a conference so inferior to the AFC that no NFC team has a shot at competing with an AFC squad in the Super Bowl. Neither team has a rude, crass, abrasive coach like the Patriots have had in recent years at the Super Bowl with Bill Belichick, neither team has been to the Super Bowl in decades, so you’re not tired of them, there is no overly syrupy sweet, saccharine storyline being shoved down your throat like last year’s Jerome Bettis-Detroit native storyline that every single writer, commentator and analyst felt compelled to mention 86 times during every interview, story and show and that you’re so sick of that you actively root for that player’s team (the Steelers, in this case) to lose. So whether Indianapolis or Chicago wins, I won't be upset or disappointed. Regardless of the outcome, I’ll be smiling at the end and happy to have a Super Bowl champion I can get behind