sometimes i feel like dionne warwick or the amazing crescan

- A lone voice crying in the football wilderness…..that’s what I felt like this week, because I seemed to be the only person who was adamantly saying that the Baltimore Ravens had zero chance to beat the Indianapolis Colts in their AFC Divisional playoff game. True, some did pick the Colts to win, but even they hedged, hemmed and hawed and refused to count the Ravens out. My reason was simple: sooner or later, Steve McNair was going to remember that he is Steve McNair and start playing like it. Heck, he’s had a mediocre season at best. People just willingly allowed themselves to get caught up the euphoria of a feel good story, older quarterback, treated poorly by his former team and jettisoned for a newer model, seeking redemption with a new team. Problem was, the Ravens didn’t win because of McNair this season, they went 13-3 in spite of him. A fantastic defense carried them all year, with Steve-O posting pedestrian 16 TD, 12 INT stats. And of course, against the Colts, he was 18-29 for 173 yards with 2 INT and a lost fumble. Look elsewhere for your pick-me-up NFL story, everyone, because Old Man McNair turned back into a pumpkin when the clock struck midnight.

- Men everywhere will be standing at attention and saluting in February, when a former Air Force staff sergeant will appear on the pages of the magazine that men read for the articles, Playboy. Whether you find those kinds of magazines morally offensive or not, this situation has a funny smell to it, namely because Michelle Manhart, has been relieved or her duties while the military investigates what she did. She maintains she did nothing wrong and thus didn’t expect any punishment, but I beg to differ. Something tells me that she was looking to get into trouble, maybe even get booted from the military by being photographed in (then out) of uniform and holding weapons. Maybe Manhart is looking to set up a modeling or acting career post-military. Regardless, how could anyone believe they could pose for a skin mag and not have the military, a place of conformity, uniformity and conservative thinking, object? Nice try, Sergeant Manhart. Dismissed.

- Cameron Diaz apparently has had her fill of sexy and doesn’t want it back. She and weasel-voiced former man bander Justin Timberlake have broken up, but you can't feel too bad for either. That’s especially true for Diaz, because there are dozens of other former man banders out there, from 98 Degrees of Backstreet Men from O-Town Sync and similar groups. And hey, Cameron, know what, I think Lance Bass is single, and - wait, scratch that, Lance Bass might not be an option, at least not for the women out there. But hey, a hot blond actress with loads of money, I’m sure she’ll be aright. Timberlake, on the other hand, can keep copying old Michael Jackson dance moves and styles for the near future to keep himself going.

- If you thought Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio, seemed especially dorky and loser-ish in recent years, you were correct. Hard to be anything but a giant group of dorks when your president is a full-fledged Trekkie. Kim Goldenberg, the outgoing university president, got the thrill of his loser lifetime when Leonard Nimoy, who played one of the nerdy characters on Star Trek, attended his retirement party. Nimoy, who apparently has become so hard up for cash that he’s appearing at the retirement parties of president’s from mediocre Midwestern universities to make some money, gave Dorken-berg, er , Goldenberg, the Vulcan salute, the proper greeting for guys who have the social skills and coolness of a rock. If President Bush is looking for people to fulfill his desired 22,000-soldier surge in Iraq, may I suggest that we round up all the Trekkies, Star Wars dorks, Lord of the Rings losers and ship them over there first? Those are groups of people that our country would not be worse off without.

- One of life’s ultimate oxymorons: the creation of a George W. Bush presidential library. How on earth can you build a library for a man whose reading level hasn’t risen above Curious George? The library would be located on the campus of Southern Methodist University in Dallas, but the proposed library has caused division on the campus. Some claim the library would wrongfully celebrate a president who led the country into an unnecessary war. My question, though, is how are you going to find enough picture books and coloring books to fill a library? The standard ought to be that no book that the president himself is unable to read can be included, so that would rule out anything that most of us read from, oh, third grade on. The Little Engine That Could might be pushing it, honestly. Let’s scratch the library idea and going with something more appropriate, like a giant diorama depicting all the similarities between W. and another of our warmongering former leaders, Richard Nixon.