Monday, February 05, 2007

Bad news for roid-heads, the environment and those who love Wookies

- Steroids testing has been a major point of discussion in the NFL ever since Shawne Merriman got a four-game ban for testing positive for ‘roids this past season. When the year ended, his peers and all the critics began weighing in on whether he should be selected for or even eligible for postseason awards and activities. In the end, Merriman was selected to the All-Pro team and Pro Bowl, but lost out in the Defensive Player of the Year race to Jason Taylor. Taylor was one of Merriman’s vocal critics, and now it appears that Taylor and everyone else who shares his point of view will have some validation. The NFL and the players’ union have agreed to a rule that any player who tests positive for ‘roids will not be eligible for the Pro Bowl that season. The player would also lose any potential contract bonuses that he could receive as a reward for Pro Bowl selection. Hitting these guys in the wallet is the key to this deal, because let’s be honest: no one cares about the Pro Bowl. Half the players originally picked for the game opt out with a variety of lame, contrived excuses anyhow. They might want the respect of being picked, and that might bother a small, small minority, but what will really piss them off is missing out on that $250,000 bonus they would have gotten by making the Pro Bowl.

- Freak-eration lives here. Here in this case would be L.A., where a tour guide was recently assaulted by Chewbacca on Hollywood Boulevard. Well, to be fair, not the real Chewbacca, because I believe it’s in the Wookie Code to do no harm to foreign visitors. But Frederick Evan Young, 44, a loser who dresses in a Chewbacca costume and wanders Hollywood Boulevard pestering tourists to pose for pictures with him, attacked a tour guide who had the audacity to tell the Wookie to stop touching two Japanese tourists. Brian Sapir, the tour guide, was showing these two visitors around when the 6-foot-5 menace in the giant furry suit approached and began touching the tourists. Sapir told him to stop, at which point an incensed Young/Chewbacca head-butted Sapier. Cops took the Wookie into custody and off to jail, and they had a good idea what happened thanks in part to the eyewitness testimony of Superman. No, seriously, Superman was there too. Well, another freak dressed as the Man of Steel was there. The best part of this all is Young’s reply when Sapier confronted him: “Nobody tells this Wookie what to do.” Amen to that. Nobody bosses around a Wookie, although I’m a little confused. How was Sapir able to understand Chewbacca, because last time I saw a Star Wars movie, all that furry beast did was belt out guttural yelps that were totally indistinguishable. Have Wookies now learned to speak English? If so, those cats might be darn near unstoppable.

- Making unequivocal statements about any subject is difficult. You can’t be totally definitive about much of anything, because our society is one with tons of gray areas and subjective tendencies. But I can say, without a doubt, that if you a) wrote a blog about the Super Bowl ads, b) recorded them to re-watch the ads later on, c) participated in a conversation long then 15 seconds about any of the commercials after the game ended, or d) were a part of any morning show that offered an analytical breakdown of the ads, then you are a loser. Period. No questions asked. They’re freaking ads, people. Most of them are abysmal failures because they don’t do what they’re designed to do, namely create business and revenue for the advertiser. The ratio of money spent to buy and produce the ad to the amount of money generated by it is absurdly high, simply because Super Bowl ads are so frakkin’ expensive. You’re watching the biggest football game of the year, and your main concern is a 30-second commercial? We have these great inventions, called TV shows, they run half an hour or sometimes a full hour, and they actually are designed to entertain you. Try watching one of them. If your excuse is that you’re not a football fan and that the commercials are the only thing you watch the game for, then you have no business watching anyhow. Find something else to do, go work out, go to the mall, whatever. Commercials are nothing more than an unwanted, unwelcome, all-too-frequent interruption to the action on the field, end of story.

- Athletes aren't the only ones with a propensity for getting themselves into bad situations when out at clubs late at night. The average person can put themselves in harm’s way too, as evidenced by the deadly brawl between two nightclub patrons in NYC that resulted in one man falling down an open elevator shaft to his demise. Orlando Valle and Granville Adams got into a fight at BED New York, a club that provides beds for lounging patrons. Adams pushed Valle up against the elevator doors, which then came open. Valle fell six stories to his death, and Adams will now be charged with criminally negligent homicide. Add night clubs after 1 a.m. to the list of places you want to avoid, right alongside cruise ships and the mall on the day after Christmas. Not saying you can't have a good time and go out, but there are way too many people being shot or pushed down elevator shafts at clubs in the early morning hours to make it worth my while. Perhaps in the future, going only to clubs and bars with a single floor in the building would be helpful.

- Seems like just a couple days ago I was lamenting how researchers find a way to waste millions of research dollars delving into the obvious and telling us things we all already know. Well, another group of geniuses has succeeded in this pursuit. University of New Hampshire researchers have discovered that (gasp) an increasing number of children have been exposed to Internet porn! Stunning, right? I mean, it’s so hard to figure out where porn is on the ‘Net, after all. You have to be a Mensa member to figure out how to get to it. And kids never look at things they’re not supposed to see, right? The point is best summed up by Emily Duhovny, 17, who said, “It’s so common now, who hasn’t seen something like that?” Yeah, pretty much. But no one told those funding the UNH research, because they forked over a lot of money to finance this study. The biggest stunner of the study, though: most kids exposed to porn were reported to be between the ages of 13 and 17. So horny teenagers are the ones most likely to have seen porn? Wow, you’re blowing my mind here, researchers. What’s next, you’re going to tell me that a lot of kids under the age of 21 have drank beer and smoked cigarettes? Have they also watched a lot of TV? I look forward to your report that convicted felons are more likely to have committed a serious crime than the rest of people in society.

- Well, an E. coli scare will do that…….sales of leafy green vegetables are down in recent months following a September recall of spinach in the wake of a three-death, 200-illness-causing saga involving Popeye’s favorite snack. People are funny that way. When they get the impression that eating or ingesting a certain substance could make them seriously ill and perhaps kill them, they tend to avoid that substance. Well, except for smokers, who gleefully choke down their cancer sticks knowing full well that doing so dramatically skyrockets their chances of contracting lung cancer. Leafy vegetables will bounce back, though, they’ve been around for a few thousand years and they’re usually very resilient.

- Need evidence that LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers are on their way to a disappointing failure of a season? Well, other than their consistently lackluster play and mediocre record, here’s some more firepower. When ex-man band star and weasel voiced hack Justin Timberlake came to Cleveland for a concert over the weekend, who else was in attendance but James? Yeah, someone who actively supports one of the most auditorily offensive musical acts of our time is going to lead his team to an NBA title? I don’t think so. Everyone has different music tastes and odds are the team that wins this year’s title will have a lot of guys who are fans of hip hop and rap, but JT is neither of those things. He’s a helium ingesting, Michael Jackson wannabe who produces some offensively over-styled, over-polished pop crap and mixes in a few unwatchable videos. I’m ashamed just thinking that the guy most people associate with my area, Northeast Ohio, is a fan of a musician who once danced in unison with four other dudes, frosted his hair and wore brightly colored, coordinated outfits with Lance Bass and Joey Fatone.

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