The new iPhone, a psycho NBA wife and a coach who punches kids in the junk

- Worst coach ever: Gregory Lynn Burr, a now-former high school basketball coach in Monument, Colorado. Any of the three awful things this guy did would be enough to get him, as a person working with young people, fired with a bullet. One, he is accused of showing porn to students, which I have to think is, oh, I don’t know, against the law. Two, he is accused of dousing his players with water and then driving them home in the freezing cold with his car windows down, strike two. But the coup de tat of the whole mess is the fact that he’s been accused of blasting male students in the package. His trick would be asking them what the capital of Thailand is, and when they inevitably answered “Bangkok,” he would then hit them in the junk. One student estimated some of the players were hit in the groin 30-40 times. Hilarious, Gregory……well, it might have been hilarious when I was ten, but now, not so much. How did this guy not realize that kids were going to tell their parents that he did this stuff? One student actually required scrotal surgery (yikes, that’s a terrible phrase) to repair damage done by the coach. Y’know, maybe I was wrong about Bob Knight. I mean, he did throw a vase at a secretary, choke a player, verbally assault a student, etc., but he’s never whacked any of his players in the package, at least not that we know of.

- If you have a chance, check out the new Apple iPhone, the next step toward us having our computers, MP3 players, phones, televisions, cameras and pretty much every other piece of technology we own all rolled into one package. For $499 to $599, you can get one, but only with Cingular service. The device has an unbelievable screen, bright and vivid, and the display can become both a keyboard and a control panel. Overall, this new gadget does look awesome and I’m sure it’ll cause Apple’s stock to shoot up even further, but it does raise an interesting point: when you cram all of these different capabilities and utilities into one small item, how exponentially screwed are you if you ever lose it? I’m not even talking about losing something so expensive, I just mean you’ve not only lost your phone, but your tunes, your online capabilities, your camera, etc. But there will undoubtedly be a line to get the iPhone, just like hundreds of idiots camped out to plunk down $600 for the new PS3.

- Why stop at one story of a teacher or coach abusing their position of authority and harming the very kids they are supposed to teach and help when you can have two? Christine Kosik, an English teacher at South Fayette High School in Morgan, Pa., resigned Tuesday after allegations of an underage drinking party at her home. What’s amazing is that Kosik was a semifinalist for Pennsylvania’s 2007 Teacher of the Year Award. Well, at least now we know why: the kids were absolutely going to love a teacher who gave them free booze, without a doubt. Get an A on this test, you get to come to a kegger at Mrs. K’s house, kids. Keg stands will earn you five extra credit points on your next assignment, students. But since our nation’s teachers and coaches seem to need a refresher course in what is and is not acceptable, here are a few pointers: 1) no drugs, booze, porn or smokes can be given out, 2) you may not tell kids dumb riddles and then punch them in the package when they answer, 3) physical torture is out of the question, period, 4) you should not be participating in any activity with your students if it can land you in prison and 5) teach the lesson, hand out homework, grade tests, coach the players, leave it at that, k?

- The parallels between W. and Richard Nixon just keep on comin’. Both have their own war they started that never should have happened, (Iraq and Vietnam, respectively), both refuse to end said war even though it’s a clear failure, both are incredibly incompetent, and now they have both had lawyer Fred Fielding as their legal counsel. W., feeling that hiring the legal counsel for a man run out of office and implicated in one of our nation’s biggest political scandals ever is a good idea, brought in Fielding to replace Harriet Myers, who resigned last week. Honestly, unless you can be sued for being a humongous dumbass, then I don’t know why W. needs legal representation. Are Iraqis going to sue him for wrongfully invading their country? Can Americans sue him for wasting our tax dollars and the lives of thousands of American military personnel on his self-created war? On second thought, we should be able to do that, but our courts wouldn’t be able to handle all of the cases it would create. Maybe a class action suit………

- Ah, a good border skirmish over a funny odor…….New York and New Jersey, deciding that they want to act like feuding six-year olds, are playing a game of “He did it….no, you did it,” over the funky smell that wafted through NYC this week. New York officials began by trying to pin the blame for the incident on Jersey, but Jersey officials shot back that New Yorkers were doing what they always do, trying to pawn negative allegations off on their ugly stepchild to the south, New Jersey. Later on, though, those investigating the matter were forced to admit that the odor wasn’t emanating from New York’s Greenwich Village, which had been suspected, but possibly from a natural gas pipeline in New Jersey. Above all, I think everyone in America can agree on one thing: we’re thankful to have yet more ammunition from which to fashion New Jersey jokes. For a while there, we were getting short on fresh material, but this one should keep the one-liners flying for years to come. Good times………

- It’s difficult for a man to admit that his wife or girlfriend has abused him, physically or otherwise. Doing so runs contradictory to the macho, manly mindset that guys tend to have, and nobody wants to admit that he’s weak enough to be abused by a woman. In this case, though, I don’t think any less of New Jersey Nets point guard Jason Kidd based on claims he made in his petition filing for divorce from his wife of ten years, Joumana. Among other things, Kidd fingers his wife for using their then eight-year-old son to sneak into the Nets’ locker room and pull the names and numbers of people Kidd had called on his cell phone. Then, according to the petition, Joumana Kidd left the couple’s son alone and went out to her front row seat where she proceeded to verbally berate and heckle her husband during the entire game. Now if that doesn’t say spousal love and cherishing, supporting and caring for your spouse in sickness and health, for richer or poorer until death parts you, I don’t know what does. I wonder this often, so I’ll ask it aloud: for guys who are famous pro athletes, can't you pull better talent? You have to be able to find a hot, mildly intelligent, non-paranoid and psycho chick to marry, right? Oh, and the cherry on the spousal abuse sundae….Joumana Kidd also reportedly placed tracking devices on her husband’s vehicle, y’know, just to keep tabs on him. Worst wife ever? I don’t know about that, but she has to be Top Ten.