More reasons hockey sucks, elitist white people in the ATL and a new TV show in need of being cancelled

- I don’t give a rat’s ass about professional hockey. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that the majority of Americans feel the same way. How can I make that claim? Well, when the NHL went on strike last year (I think, it’s not that important to me, so I don’t devote valuable memory space to it), no one talked much about it or lamented not having NHL hockey around. Now, when the league is back, people who attend games regularly report that the arena was literally half empty when it should be the prime portion of the season. Plus, all NHL games are on Versus, an obscure cable network that probably 95% of American households don’t have. The most recent piece of evidence: I happened across a story on the radio today about the NHL hockey game being held tonight, and I thought, “Really? I had no idea that was going on, not at all.” It’s not a hot topic anywhere on the sports scene, and if your all-star game is on a little-known cable network on a weeknight, that says a lot about your sport’s popularity. Canadians love hockey, and as far as I’m concerned, they can have it. Move all - well, however many NHL teams there are - of the pro hockey to Canada and keep it there, don’t broadcast any games back to the U.S. either. Sit around eating your round bacon with maple syrup, Canada, asking what life is all “aboot” and with your Royal Mounties and their horsies keeping your streets safe, put on your beloved soccer on ice and don’t subject the rest of us to hockey, a sport we don’t give a crap aboot.

- A big, hearty salute for the newest Captain Obvious, David Petraeus, the general charged with carrying out our moronic president’s doomed plan in Iraq! This dip stick made the startling revelation to Congress that they shouldn’t expect quick results in Iraq, a fact that surprised exactly no one. What, General, you mean that a war that’s dragged on for more than two years, cost thousands of troops their lives and continues trying to unite a country of people intent on destroying one another isn't going to be quickly resolved? Really? I just find that shocking. First off, let me qualify your thoughts: 1) going the idiot’s route, staying and fighting a war we shouldn’t be in at all will take a while, yes, but 2) quick results are possible if we pick the correct route and withdraw ALL American troops immediately. Petraeus characterized the situation as “dire”, again eliciting a big fat “No kidding,” from anyone who heard it. All of these administration honks are just repeating the party line, like mindless little drones programmed to say exactly what W. tells them. Why even bother trotting them out before Congress? Just do like Keanu Reeves did in Speed, loop video footage of them over and over, because they’re all just repeating one another anyhow. Then, we can save everyone the time they waste on these hearings and these stooges can worry about actually fixing the problems that they’ve helped to create instead of attending meetings with Congress.

- My prediction for the quickest cancellation of a new TV show this season has just become clear. The new CBS sitcom Rules of Engagement, starring (I use that term loosely) David Spade, Oliver Hudson and Patrick Warburton looks like a four-weeker at best. That’s a safe rule with any show involving David Spade, who is so universally annoying that despising him is the one issue that Americans, Iraqis, North Koreans, Venezuelans and Cubans could all agree on. I feel badly for Warburton, who was funny as David Puddy, Elaine’s sometimes boyfriend on Seinfeld, but my goodwill from that show isn't enough to force me into watching a bad show with a bad pretense and mediocre acting. Great, you have a guy who’s single, one that’s engaged and one that’s married. You’re trying to roll Friends, Everybody Loves Raymond and a dozen other shows into one and patch it in as a midseason replacement show. Here’s a better idea: FOX seems to have abandoned the Man vs. Beast concept, and I’m hankering for some more airplane pulling contests between an elephant and a group of 50 midgets, a hot dog eating contest between a man and a bear and a former Navy seal running an obstacle course against a chimp. Now that’s TV I can get excited about.

- Some very rich people in the greater Los Angeles area are very pissed off right now. They’ve lost their maids, their gardeners, their lawn guys and their butlers thanks to a federal raid that rounded up more than 750 illegal immigrants. Rich people like their servants and they like not paying them much, i.e. hiring illegals who will work for little money. But if the feds insist on gathering up these border crashers and deporting them, there’s going to be trouble. Who’s going to prune the shrubs, fetch the green tea or plant the tulips now? It’s one of the biggest illegal immigrant sweeps in U.S. history, and you can be sure that the White House will use this as fire for their plan to build that wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. Honestly, I’m surprised they only found 750 illegals, that has to be about 1% of the illegal immigrants in SoCal. Maybe they ran out of room in the detainment center and will be back for the rest later. Adios, muchachos y muchachas, adios.

- In some of it’s college football ads this past season, ESPN used phrases like, “Undefeated lives here,” or “Passion lives here,” to describe where great qualities of football and its fans can be found. Well, in Atlanta, the motto is, “Segregation and elitism live here.” At least they live in two Atlanta suburbs, almost exclusively white and very, very rich, and residents of these suburbs want to split off from the rest of Fulton County, comprised mostly of poor, largely black metropolitan areas and form their own county, Milton County. What’s not cool about wealthy white people wanting to separate themselves from people they esteem as lesser than and beneath them? Will they also want to erect a wall around their county to keep out the undesirables? Supporters claim it’s a move that will help create a more responsive government in a county whose population is larger than that of six other states. Well, if you have more people than Rhode Island and South Dakota, then it’s all good, never mind. What you people mean is that it will create a government of people who look like you, think like you and are in your high tax bracket. Thus, you can avoid associating with poor people, minorities and anyone you think isn't quite on your socioeconomic level. But you know what, rich, white, Republican WASP’s of Atlanta, if you want your own county, here’s an idea: there’s plenty of available real estate in Antarctica, so you can have all of that you want and for your own county there. Hell, most of the landscape there is just like you, white and frosty, so you’ll feel right at home.

- What a perfect match: Microsoft, a second rate operating system creating company, teaming up with LeBron James, the supposed King of the NBA who can’t even get his team to first place in its own division and past the second round of the playoffs. James will be promoting Microsoft’s new Windows Vista OS, which I am predicting will once again be the third best OS out there, behind Mac-OS 10 and Linux. Microsoft keeps creating substandard operating systems that freeze up, crash, are difficult to navigate and are generally a piece of crap, James continues to be unable to elevate his team to an elite level and past their Eastern Conference compatriots. I love the symmetry here, and I would encourage other second banana companies to follow suit, sign this guy up right away. Maybe Revol Wireless can cook up an ad campaign with James, or perhaps Ford can bring back the Pinto and have LeBron be its official spokesman.