More JT bashing, more cruise ship trouble and some traveling convicts

- Bashing Justin Timberlake on back-to-back days might seem excessive, but when I get the chance to do it, it’s like a meal at the Cheesecake Factory, you have to take the opportunity, even if it’s the third or tenth day in a row. This is more about Macy Gray anyhow, with a choice shot at JT mixed in. I was horrified/exhilarated/floored to learn that on her upcoming album, Gray (who has a voice almost as bad, if not worse than JT), is actually going to do a track that features Timberlake! Maybe I should differentiate between male and female, with Gray as the most annoying, ear-hurting vocalist for the women, JT for the men. If you want to play nice, you can label Gray’s voice as “unique” and “distinctive”, but I’m going to stick with gawd-awful. I don’t need to read the lyrics or hear the notes and chords for her song with JT to know it’s going to be uber-terrible. Same is probably true for her collaboration with will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas, whose talentless void of a musical existence is the group version of the auditory offenses perpetrated by Timberlake and Gray in the solo realm. Just like you could predict that a tandem of U2 and Green Day would produce a good sound in singing “When the Saints Go Marching In”, prognosticating a train wreck when Gray and JT sing on the same song is a certainty on the level of death, taxes and the suckage a Pauly Shore movie will possess.

- For most sports fans, there are a few universals that you can revel in, namely teams whose failure and defeat are cause for celebration no matter what the circumstances. The New York Yankees are the prime example, with their grotesque abundance of wealth and propensity to buy high-priced players left and right in an attempt to purchase a championship. In football, the New England Patriots have become a universally loathed entity thanks to their ass of a coach, the overall arrogance from the team and its fans and the fact that analysts galore can't refrain from constantly yammering on about the team “doing it the right way” to the point that you want to vomit. College sports have their own “Love to Hate” teams, Notre Dame for football, and the topic for today’s entry, the men’s basketball team at Duke. Coach Kryzewski and his merry band of rich, wicked smart high school All-American yuppies are the squad we all love to despise. With snobbish, rich-kid fans and a self-entitled attitude permeating every inch of the basketball program, anyone who isn't a Duke fan or alumnus is giddy with joy when the Dukies get beat. Well, this week was a ridiculous feast of schadenfreude (reveling in the misery of others), with Duke losing not once but twice. First, a loss on the road to Virginia came when Duke missed a last-second shot and fell in demoralizing fashion. Then, today, Florida State came to Duke, to fabled Cameron Indoor Stadium, and beat Duke, who again missed a last-second shot and fell further down the ACC standings. The looks of bewilderment, disappointment and dejection on the faces of Coach K and his boys were the highlight of my sports week, and since this year’s team looks pretty mediocre, I look forward to more similar occurrences in the weeks ahead.

- The highways around the state of California will likely be filled with an alarming number of convicted felons in the days ahead. Yes, I know there are always plenty of cons and ex-cons on the highways in California, especially in the L.A. area, but this time it will be because the state is planning to transfer more than 5,000 inmates out of the state to ease overcrowding problems in its prisons. I’m not sure if this is alarming or relieving; either California has become exceptionally good at catching and prosecuting criminals, or the state has a disturbingly high quotient of criminals in its population. Currently, 174,000 inmates reside in prisons designed to hold only 100,000, and even a vapid, Botox-and-collagen-enhanced, implant-having Malibu bimbo trophy wife can do that math.

- Continuing the theme of America’s judicial system run amok, a Cambridge, Minn. farmer who chased down a thief and held him at gunpoint until the police arrived could actually face more serious charges than the thief he detained. Kenneth Englund, 74, has been charged with second degree assault, a felony, while the thief was charged only with misdemeanor theft for stealing $5 of gasoline from Englund’s neighbor. The lesson to be learned, of course, is that it’s OK to be a good Samaritan and help your neighbor, so long as your good deed does not end with you pointing a gun at someone. Something tells me Englund will be able to strike a deal on this one, but it’s things like this that reinforce the notion that people don’t want to get involved in helping others, lest they incur unnecessary grief in the form of a felon charge.

- Cruise ships are already a breeding ground for illnesses of varying types and severities, and now they’ve moved on to causing serious environmental damage. A Norwegian cruise ship ran aground on a remote Antarctic island and leaked between 130 and 200 gallons of diesel fuel into an already fragile environmental system. The ship ran aground at a place called Deception Island (insert your joke of choice here), which is part of the South Shetland Islands. The ship was able to maneuver itself off of the rocks it ran into, but not before depositing its nice, environmentally damaging present of diesel fuel into the ecosystem. The cruise ship industry is rapidly deteriorating into a disease-causing, environment-damaging albatross whose only redeeming value is all-night buffets.

- A quick note on the Super Bowl: it was great to watch a Super Bowl where you don’t actively hate the winner and aren't spending the entire game vehemently rooting against them (i.e. the New England Patriots). And yes, I did write this simply for the chance to take another shot at the Pats, whom I openly despise. Congratulations to the Indianapolis Colts, 2007 NFL champions.