Two Catholic-related stories rolled into one, bad news for Las Vegas and good news for N.Y. music fans

- In the interest of conserving a little space while still giving ample coverage to two Catholic related stories, I’m combining the following two topics. First, a controversial New York City sculptor has enraged many Catholics by creating a nude 6-foot chocolate Jesus during Holy Week. Cosimo Cavallaro used 200 pounds of dark chocolate for the sugary creation, but the lack of clothing has riled up many in religious circles. Call me cynical, but I’m guessing that this kind of outrage and controversy is exactly what Cavallaro was after in creating this sculpture. If no one made a fuss about it and ignored it, his reach for attention by concocting the odd and impractical work of art would have gone for naught. However, those outraged Catholics could solve their problems by moving to…….(awkward transition to second part of this story) Ave Maria, a special Cathol-a-centric town in southwest Florida being built by Domino’s Pizza founder Thomas Monaghan. The basic gist of the community is to “espouse traditional Catholic values” (so probably no nude 6-foot chocolate Jesus statues) and to provide a place for like-minded citizens to enjoy one another’s company. Originally, Monaghan had stated that Ave Maria would ban birth control, pornography and abortion, but he has since backed away from those claims. Whether you like the concept of a religious town or if you think, as some detractors have said, it’s a “Catholic Disney World”, you have to admire Monaghan using the ruse religious ideology to sell expensive homes and make himself a real estate fortune. What, you thought that this was some altruistic venture and he was doing good, charitable work? Riiiiiiiight………..with homes reaching a price level of $600,000 something tells me this is more about the green than about the God.

- For the time being, online porn will have to stick to using the conventional “.com” label. The board of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers rejected a proposal to lump all of the sick, degenerate freaks of the online porn world into an address format ending in “.xxx”. The label would have been voluntary for porn sites, but members of ICANN worried about who would be charged with deciding what type of content would qualify a site for the .xxx designation. ICM Registry LLC was the company making the proposal, and the 9-5 vote against matter means that no similar proposals will be allowed before ICANN for quite some time. This means you’ll just have to be your own judge on which sites might be porn-related, and as always, words like the following might tip you off: juggs, tits, nude, lesbian action, threesome and barely legal. Something tells me that if you use those words prominently on your site or to advertise it, you’re probably featuring adult fare, whether you have .xxx after your site name or not.

- Child safety alert, child safety alert! In a startling bit of news that I really didn’t like hearing, plastic surgery addict/child molesting (allegedly) freak/former-black-man-turned-white-woman Michael Jackson is now living in Las Vegas. Like the rest of America, I felt a lot better knowing that Jack-O and his freakery were living abroad, but now he’s back in America. Right now would be a good time for Las Vegas (or the state of Nevada in general) to enact a terror-alert color-coding system like our national security color system, except this new system would be for child safety. Parents and guardians of young boys need adequate warning when Jack-O is coming to their area or will be out and about, lest they inadvertently put their son in harm’s way. No word yet on whether Bubbles the chimp has moved to Vegas with Jack-O, nor is there any information about plans to build a new Neverland Ranch in the middle of the desert.

- C.B.G.B.’s may have closed due to a rent dispute in October and left New York without one of it’s musical meccas, but in May, the inaugural High Line Festival should be a great event for music in the city. The festival will be held May 9-19 and will include musical acts such as David Bowie and The Arcade Fire, a nice mix of old and new, as well as film, comedy and performance art. Bowie himself will be selecting musical acts for the event, so you can be sure it’ll be an eclectic and extremely interesting slate of acts. Proceeds will benefit Friends of the High Line, an organization co-founded by Bowie and one that is working with the city to transform the 1930s High Line rail structure into a park. Yet another benefit to living in the world’s most famous city, you get the chance to have festivals filled with top musical acts take place in the streets and in places like Radio City Hall and Irving Plaza.

- As an alumnus of a Mid-American Conference school (Go Akron!), I’m always rooting for the MAC to gain acceptance and recognition as a major conference, even though it continues to be saddled with the “mid-major” moniker. Well, nothing can help to establish your conference as a major like a big-time scandal at one of its member universities. It could be recruiting, it could be a booster scandal, it could be academic fraud or as in the case of the University of Toledo, a major gambling scandal involving a football player. Harvey “Scooter” McDougle Jr., 22, has been charged in connection with a gambling ring that shaved points and fixed the outcome of games for a Sterling Heights, Mich. man identified only as “Gary.” McDougle is charged with recruiting fellow football players at UT and also basketball players to the gambling operation. The case, set in Detroit, currently includes “Gary”, McDougle and others, but as of now, none of the players McDougle recruited to the gambling ring have been charged with any crimes. This is a momentous day for the MAC, and I have a feeling that we’re only one good recruiting scandal and a half-dozen academic fraud cases away from joining the ranks of the true big-time athletic conferences in college sports.

Chaos in Chile, Easter basket hazards and a grrrreat investment opportunity

- Political showdown or spring break gone wild? I’ll leave that question up for debate, because the following skirmish between police and far-left groups observing what they label “The Day of the Young Combatant,” a gathering in honor of two brothers killed by police on March 29, 1985 in a protest against fascist dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet. On Thursday, police used water cannons and tear gas to disperse hundreds of rowdy high school students in Santiago for the gathering. It’s the water canons and chemicals that make me wonder, because rowdy and likely intoxicated high school students (especially girls) being hosed down and having their gathering marred by chemical usage (granted, tear gas, not necessarily Ecstasy and marijuana)…….sounds like Daytona Beach gone bad. Thankfully, there were no deaths on this day, the protestors made their voice heard and hundreds of Chilean parents got the thrill of going down to the jail to bail out their son or daughter, good times all around.

- Congress ain’t scared of no presidential veto! By a 51-47 vote, the Senate followed the example of the House of Representatives and passed war-funding legislation that contains troop-withdrawal language. By passing the $97.5 billion appropriations bill in its current state, the Senate has directly challenged the president and his stance that we’re pretty much going to be in Iraq from now until the end of time with no real direction or plan. Democratic senators, in what I consider to be a bit of reach, were trying to paint the impending veto by President Bush as an action that will undermine U.S. troops so as to curry support for an overriding of said veto. I sincerely hope that the veto will be overridden, but I doubt it and I definitely think efforts to this end by Democrats will be futile. Sadly, no one is going to be able to save us from the sheer idiocy of our Dumbass-in-Chief until the 2008 election, at which time the American people will be able to choose someone who can help put and end to this debacle. Start the countdown to the inauguration ceremony, to be held in January 2009, folks, it’s only about 21 months away!

- I hate to keep ripping potential treats from the Easter baskets of kids across America, but the Centers for Disease Control have decreed that all you parents considering putting a live baby chick in your child’s basket this Easter should reconsider. The CDC reports that last spring, 81 people in 22 states became ill after contracting salmonella that came from contact with the baby birds. Maybe it’s time to ask if there’s anything to include in your Easter basket that won't potentially give you salmonella or a similar illness. If you recall, last week a recall of several varieties of the Harry London Co. candy known as Cheggs took place because those Cheggs could, like contact with a baby chick, give you or your child salmonella. More and more it appears that we’d all be better off celebrating our holiday in a hermetically sealed bubble with a can of disinfectant spray ready and clad in HAZMAT suits.

- Soccer players just can't turn off their faking mechanism, even when it’s been several years since they’ve played a competitive game. Diego Maradona, Argentinean soccer legend and scorer on the famous “Hand of God” goal in the 1986 World Cup, was rushed to a Buenos Aires hospital for what was basically a glorified bender. He was over-grubbing, over-drinking and over-smoking himself to a weight that his physician cited as nine pounds over his usual weight and somehow, this was cause enough to call 911 and have him rushed to the emergency room. Only a soccer player can make a food, booze and cigar binge into an emergency-room- worthy incident. Based on my wealth of soccer-watching experience, I have to imagine that once at the hospital, the scene unfolded thusly: Maradona was carried in on a stretcher, acting as if he were on the verge of death. Once inside the emergency room, he immediately leapt off of the stretcher, began waving and smiling at the doctors and nurses and pleaded with the docs to let him go back home in order to appear tough and heroic as they checked him over. On the way out of the room, an orderly wheeling a gurney down the hall came within 18 inches of Maradona and he went down like he’d been shot, writhing in pain on the floor. Ultimately, Maradona tried to check out of the hospital soon after arriving, and from the looks of it, he’s going to be fine - well, until he goes on his next grub-and-booze bender next week.

- It’s never been my policy to give out investment advice, but when an opportunity as amazing as this comes up, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention it. How would you like to get in on the ground floor of a floundering, third-world airline operated by a government whose country is overrun (and partially run) by terrorists? Yup, I thought you would be intrigued, because I know that I am. Air Afghanistan, on the verge of collapse due to corruption, mismanagement and crippling airplane leases, is looking for investors. The Afghani government, which currently operates the airline, is desperately searching for investors to help privatize up to 75 percent of the company. Gee fellas, stop tugging at my heart strings - you had me at corruption and crippling airplane leases. Mix in that particular government’s ineffectiveness and inefficiency in running their country and there’s no way you come up with anything but a winner here. Now, if there are enough of us interested in investing, perhaps we can pool our resources and go in for a large chunk of the ownership of A.A., say 40 percent, but regardless of the breakdown, this is something you need to jump on right away, lest you miss out on the chance to - well, you don’t need me to spell it out for you.

- Prediction time: the people out there who are trying to “protect” children by neutering youth sports and making these activities a warm-and-fuzzy, everyone-wins situation where you’re declared a winner just for participating and where we don’t keep score so no one has to be labeled the loser, these people are going to end up f’ing up those same kids they’re trying to protect. Youth sports governing bodies are obsessed with political correctness and not offending anyone, so they’re enacting moronic measures like the one now being foisted upon Little Leaguers in Cincinnati. The new rule will ban any cheers or chants that are classified as negative or derogatory toward opposing players, and one of the “derogatory” chants is “Hey, batter, batter, swing batter!” Yes, I can see how that might decimate the psyche of an 11-year-old batter. Little Timmy will never recover from the psychological trauma of being ridiculed with “Hey, batter, batter, swing batter!” In fact, I can't even count the number of times I’ve seen a Little Leaguer sprint from the field during an at bat, bursting into tears as he ran because of that hurtful, hateful chant. There must be some sort of organization or concert that all of these imbecilic youth sports leagues take part in where they share terrible ideas for ways to inject political correctness and namby-pamby sissy-fication into sports. Perhaps the Cincinnati group conferenced with the youth soccer leagues in Massachusetts who refuse to keep score in their games so no one will have to carry the shameful social stigma of losing a youth soccer game. Ultimately, something in me believes that maybe, just maybe, these kids aren't going to be better served growing up in a world where no one ever fails or loses, where no one is ever criticized or forced to deal with anything difficult………

full of vitriol and ready to fight

- The double talk and beat-around-the-bush statements keep on flowing from the mouth of our Ignoramus-in-Chief. W. says we’ll withdraw from Iraq some time and has in past speeches stated that our commitment there is not open-ended, but in the face of mounting pressure from both houses of Congress to choose a withdrawal date, he refuses to say when we will begin pulling out. So to clarify, there will come a day when we leave and it’s a fixed point, but we’re not going to pick that date or decide when it will be. Hope that makes sense to all of you, because it sounds like a load of bull crap to me. Well, if W. is able to stave off impeachment for the next couple years, I can tell you when we’re going to start pulling out of Iraq: the instant our next president takes office. Unless it’s one of the Republican honks who are staunchly behind W.’s plan (and even many of the Republican candidates would probably end the war if the decision was theirs to make and they were in charge), whomever we elect in the 2008 election will come in under intense public pressure to end this war. Odds are good that the winner will have won because he (or she) clearly stated that a part of their campaign platform was ending this God-forsaken war. W. did have the audacity to accuse Congress of delaying funding for our troops by including the troop-withdrawal language in the funding bill, a bill they know he will reject. I disagree; it’s smart strategy by Congress, as it is one of the only means of leverage they have against W. in this struggle, other than impeachment (which I also support enthusiastically).

- It is not truly a day at the beach unless a severed human leg washes up on said beach, right? In Cove Neck, N.Y., one such severed leg washed ashore on beachfront property located on the estate of billionaire businessman and owner of the New York Knicks, James Dolan. While it would be more apropos if a gigantic pile of dog crap were mysteriously found on the property (what with the current feces-like quality of the Knicks and their coach/GM Isaiah Thomas), Dolan has to be very happy about this development. Nothing elevates property values like a severed human body part, eh? Police believe that the severed leg may be connected (pun intended) to a tattooed torso found inside a suitcase on another beach in the area three weeks ago. The leg was discovered in a plastic bag by a landscaper working on the Dolan property, which I’m sure made his day extremely pleasant and not at all disgusting. Three-week old severed human body parts aren't at all gross or odoriferous. However, I do have to ask how, in New York of all places, on Long Island, murderers don’t know how to properly dispose of a body once they’ve dismembered it. Can't you shove it into an empty oil drum or give the person you killed a pair of cement shoes so that they don’t end up washing up on shores in the area, piece by piece?

- If Michael Jackson has a favorite U.S. congressman (or former congressman), I have to think it is former Rep. Mark Foley. Foley is under investigation for allegedly going Jack-O, by which I mean (allegedly) having sexual relationships with young boys. There is a distinction to be made here; whereas Jack-O is widely assumed to have had actual physical relationships with the boys, Foley stands accused of having online relationships with them. This, coupled with Foley’s resignation last year following the revelation that he’d sent wildly inappropriate, sexually themed messages to teenage boys working as pages on Capitol Hill, definitely thrust Foley into the pedophile category in a major way. In October, he tried the now-popular tactic of public figures checking into rehab when they say or do something wildly offensive/criminal, at the time citing a problem with alcoholism and “other behavioral issues.” Call me crazy, Mr. Foley, but something tells me there’s a safe haven for you in Bahrain or Europe, wherever it is that Jack-O is calling home these days. You two can hang together and he can teach you the skill of how to wear one glove, style your hair into a man-perm and moonwalk, and you can show him how to locate the best websites for posting lewd messages to teen boys, it’s a win-win.

- For the American Karaoke honks out there who continue to try and sell that show as legitimate and as anything but the undeniably massive hunk of monkey crap that it is, your case is becoming a tougher and tougher one to make. When there’s a picture out there of a karaoke-er/contestant sporting a freakish mohawk that makes him look like the illegitimate love child of Tina Turner and Joakim Noah, I find it really hard to view the show as anything other than a big, unfunny joke. According to the photo caption, this dude (I think it’s a dude, not sure) is named Sanjaya, which definitely sounds like the name of the next big karaoke star ready to take the world by storm. Maybe this dude/chick will get lucky and he/she will end up as this season’s contestant that Paula Abdul has a fling with, that way he/she can squeeze out an extra few seconds of fame before people move on to more interesting things, like mowing their lawns.

- Michael Ray Richardson had come so far. Back in 1986, Richardson was banned by the NBA because he had basically drugged himself right out of the league. His talent on the court was overmatched by his demons off of it, and so he was booted from the Association and left to piece together a career playing in European professional leagues. He actually attained a high level of success in Europe, becoming something of a fan favorite and playing well for several years. More recently, he returned to the American basketball scene, had latched on to a role in the Denver Nuggets organization and been hired as the coach of the CBA’s Albany Patroons. Now, all of that hard work has been undone because Richardson let the world in on the secret that he is a bigoted, small-minded racist who has a curious take on Jewish people. "I've got big-time lawyers," Richardson said. "I've got big-time Jew lawyers.” This was his explanation when asked about the profitable new contract he had been offered. When told that the comment could be offensive, he responded, "Are you kidding me? They are. They've got the best security system in the world. Have you ever been to an airport in Tel Aviv? They're real crafty. Listen, they are hated all over the world, so they've got to be crafty. They got a lot of power in this world, you know what I mean?" he said. "Which I think is great. I don't think there's nothing wrong with it. If you look in most professional sports, they're run by Jewish people. If you look at a lot of most successful corporations and stuff, more businesses, they're run by Jewish. It's not a knock, but they are some crafty people." So for some reason, M.R.R. doesn’t believe that what he said is at all offensive. He doesn’t see how stereotyping an entire race of people under the “crafty” label is wrong, and that he is actually being complimentary of Jewish people. This will of course do wonders in dispelling the dumb-jock stereotype. Coupled with Tim Hardaway’s anti-homosexual rant a couple months back, Richardson’s comments only illustrate that there are at least a few small-minded bigots in the athletic world who aren't smart enough to keep their moronic beliefs to themselves. Of course, you can't paint all (or even most) athletes with that same broad stroke, because then you’d be no different than Richardson and Hardaway, but no one can deny that there is a disturbing trend amongst athletes to say incredibly offensive and bigoted things, a trend that is unfortunately gaining momentum.

- Because we anti-authority, rebellious types need to stick together, I have to give a major shout-out to the political dissidents in Vietnam who are having their worlds turned upside down by the country’s oppressive, ruling Communist Party. In America, we can't totally appreciate the nightmare that life can be for those who voice dissent with the government in third-world nations like Vietnam, but still their efforts deserve respect and admiration. Last year, these dissident groups looked like they were gaining a foothold in the country’s political scene, but recent attacks on its leaders by the government now say otherwise. Two well-known human rights lawyers in Hanoi have been arrested in recent weeks, and Nguyen Van Ly, a Catholic priest who has been one of the opposition’s most outspoken voices, goes on trial this week for crimes against the state. Vietnam has evolved somewhat over the past decade in terms of individual freedoms, but the Communist Party still actively seeks to quash any voices who dare to oppose its policies. Now, a man such as Ly, who was freed from prison only 2½ years ago, could be headed back there because of the renewed crackdown on all things opposition in ‘Nam. Keep up the fight, guys, take every chance you have to stick it to The Man.

A ban in Tajikistan, a Senate vote against W., random riots in Paris

- For the first time since the war in Iraq began, it feels like there is genuine momentum towards ending this long-running national nightmare. This is not to say that the war will end any time soon (or soon enough), because God knows that ending this type of monstrosity will be a bureaucratic exercise in frustration that will take 4,485 steps and will drag out over months and months. Still, a Senate vote on a proposed amendment to the war-spending bill currently before the legislature provided the first tangible statement by a group with actual clout that this war needs to have a clear, defined endpoint. The amendment, proposed by Sen. Thad (note to all: never trust a man named Thad) Cochran, R-Miss., would have removed troop-withdrawal language from the war-funding bill currently before the Senate. A 50-48 vote that mostly split along party lines rejected the amendment, keeping the war-funding bill as is, withdrawal language included. Thus, W. is still threatening to veto it, and sadly, the two-thirds majority needed to overturn the veto isn't there. However, if Congress keeps including troop-withdrawal language in war-funding bills and won't pass one without it, we will have an interesting impasse. Who will cave first? Will the president sign a bill that has a definite plan for pulling American troops out of Iraq, or will Congress pass a bill to fund the war that doesn’t mandate that our men and women in the armed forces start leaving Iraq by a given date? I’ll choose option C, that we go ahead and impeach the glorified baboon sitting in the Oval Office and get someone in there who will actually end this war for good.

- Animal rights activists are the best. By the best, of course, I mean that they are overzealous freaks who provide comic relief for the rest of us as they wage their insane campaign against people who dare to eat meat, serve meat and wear clothing made from animal fur. Unfortunately, the animal rights crusaders have gotten to the good folks at Burger King, prompting BK to change its policies on buying the pork and eggs it uses for its food. Now, you PETA honks will have to bear with me, as I am typing this while eating a big, juicy steak with a side of chicken wings and bacon, sitting on a bearskin rug, wearing my fur coat and beaver-pelt hat and resting my computer on a table made from the ivory of elephant tusks, so just give me a little leeway. Burger King has agreed that it will begin buying an increasing amount of its eggs and pork from suppliers that do not confine their animals in cages and crates. Free-range chickens and pigs, super idea, except for the part where we’re concerned about the living conditions of animals while millions of people in our country are poor and homeless. But I’ll even give you the chicken issue, because after all, the chickens who produce those eggs aren't going to be killed and slammed into a sando. However, who the frick cares if the pigs used to make bacon, pork and other pig-related food products are kept in cages or crates? They’re going to be freaking killed, people! Whether you keep them in a crate, cage, pen or let them roam free, ultimately they will still be executed, so what does it matter? Do you want to go down to the farm and see the smiles on their little piggy faces as they run free, all the while having the knowledge in your mind that they are going to die anyhow for the sake of making that bacon and egg breakfast sando that Joe in Milwaukee will order at his neighborhood BK? Yup, animal rights activists still suck.

- U ain’t in America anymore, Ugueth Urbina. That sentence was brought to you by the letter “U” and that statement is pointedly directed at the former Major League reliever who has been sentenced to 14 years in a Venezuelan prison for his alleged role in a gasoline-and-machete attack on workers at his family’s farm south of Caracas. The attack on the workers involved (again, allegedly) Urbina and several other men dousing them with gasoline, beating them and attacking them with machetes. The charges on which Urbina and his compatriots were tried included attempted murder, illegally depriving the workers of their freedom and violating a national law against vigilante justice. In America, if a rich, famous athlete committed a crime like this, he would walk away free and clean, thanks to the best justice money can buy and a jury of people not smart enough to actually avoid jury duty. O.J. Simpson essentially decapitated two people and got away with it, so attempted murder would be a step below that in this country. However, Urbina has the misfortune of being Venezuelan, and in Venezuela, apparently perpetrating acts of violence and abuse on innocent people actually does earn you a conviction and substantial jail time. Tough fortune for ya, U. However, I’m sure that the prisons in Venezuela are verrrrrrry modern, clean and sanitary. See you in about a decade and a half, Ugie.

- There are more than enough stories about disenfranchised segments of society rioting and clashing with police in Europe, Asia and South America over social, political and economic issues, so how’s about a good old fashioned story of angry “bands of youths” clashing with John Q. Law for no real reason? That’s precisely what happened at a busy Paris train station, where the police and approximately 100 angry teenagers got after one another, a clash that led to nine arrests and riot police busting out with batons and tear gas. This wasn’t a protest or a rally of any kind, just a bunch of kids getting out of hand, smashing some store windows and generally doing what disenfranchised youths do. But since no one was killed or seriously injured in the melee, let’s go ahead and chalk this up as a successful riot. If you can create a little chaos, piss of the cops and have 91 percent of your group not get arrested, I think you have to count that as a victory. Gare du Nord, the site of the incident, could probably use a little livening up anyhow, what with all of the America-loathing, snobbish, un-showered French people milling about, doing their best to look as pretentious and important as possible.

- A win-win situation for 99.99999% of America in the case of the Justice Department v. Walter Anderson, the successful telecommunications entrepreneur accused of cheating the feds out of hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes. Anderson was sentenced to nine years in prison and required to repay about $23 million in back taxes, but the U.S. District Court in D.C. ruled that Anderson could not be made to repay the government between $100 million and $175 million more because the Justice Department’s binding plea deal listed the wrong statute. Ah, the feds screwed over by themselves because they cited the wrong piece of bureaucratic BS in a lengthy legal document, there’s a certain beautiful symmetry to it. Judge Paul Friedman explained that he could have worked around the gaffe by including the repayment of the money as part of Anderson’s probation, but the feds omitted any talk of probation from the paperwork, so they’re simply out of the money. Thus, America gets to see a convicted criminal brought to justice while also receiving the humorous benefit of watching the federal government screw itself out of money when normally all the feds do is find ways to screw the average American out of his or her money. Again, some nice symmetry to the whole story, as well as proof that the government is as inefficient, blundering and mistake-prone as we all believe it to be.

- Any high school students planning to transfer to a school in Tajikistan for their senior year (and there are a lot of you out there, I’m sure), you’re going to want to reconsider your decision after reading this bit of news. President Emomalii Rakhmom has banned high school graduation parties in the country, another attempt by the Tajik regime to cripple the cultural and social aspects of life in the central Asian nation. Why so down on the idea of celebrating a momentous occasion, E? How can you not be down with a proud graduate inviting over a couple hundred people, many of whom he or she doesn’t even know, in the hopes that they will drop a few extra dollars in his pocket and slam down some cake and hot dogs? Where’s the harm in a bunch of people drinking too much, playing some drunken volleyball and horseshoes and celebrating a special day in the life of a young person? Rakhmom wasn’t done, though; in his attempt to wipe out of all the aspects of high school that make it fun, he’s also banning cell phones and private cars at schools. Basically, dude is taking away everything but classes, books and teachers’ dirty looks. No cellies, no students with their own cars, no graduation parties - why not just slap inmate numbers on the students’ backs and force them into manual labor, E? I know, I know, Muslim nations like Tajikistan don’t have the same take on cultural and societal matters that Americans or Europeans do, but my main man Emomalii needs to find a good proctologist so he can have that massive stick removed that’s stuck up his butt.

- Nice try, Chris Henry, nice try. The oft-arrested Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver, who has tallied four arrests in the past 14 months, must have heard my lament about his Bengals falling short of the dream ten-arrest season I and so many others had hoped for, and Henry sprung into action. He was dinged by the police in Cincy for driving with a suspended license and making an illegal turn, but his brush with the law doesn’t do anyone any good. For one, he wasn’t actually arrested, so who cares? Two, the season is over and now the Bengals, like every other team, have to start from zero in the arrest column of the standings. Thirdly, the NFL is enacting new, tougher player conduct rules, so now players will be cut or suspended long before they can reach the lofty standards that Henry and his cellmates, er, teammates set last season. Thanks for nothing, Chris.

An ego trip for the King, a customs agent gone bad and Kumar a faculty member at Penn

- If this keeps up, I may have to cease and desist with my continual mocking and derision of Gwen Stefani for trying to portray herself as a rocker of any degree while being little more than an over-glitzed pop princess. Stefani will be appearing on my least favorite TV show, American Karaoke, putting the symbolic nail in the coffin for her credibility in the rock world. The reason I personally may have to stop mocking her for this transgression is that she’s doing an impeccable job of it on her own, and there’s almost nothing left to say. You can whine about how your band, No Doubt, once toured with U2, and you can claim that shows you know how to rock, but when you appear on the sugary, bubble-gum pop crapfest that is AK, you’re selling your musical soul and that’s the bottom line. Manufactured crooners engaging in what has been appropriately termed “athletic balladeering” on a poorly concocted reality TV show isn't anything that U2, the Clash, the Ramones or any other rock group would have taken part in, and after this, if I ever hear Gwen Stefani try to justify herself as a rocker, I’m going to take a page from the Ramones’ book, find this chick and beat on the brat with a baseball bat.

- Want to know the proper way to display your blatant arrogance and ego in architectural form? LeBron James has found just the right method, including a gigantic bas-relief limestone sculpture of his head, clad in trademark headband, as a part of his new ginormous home in Bath Township, Ohio. There’s no reason to quibble with the size of the house or say it’s too extravagant; if you’re that rich, you can build as big and as luxurious of a home as you want, wherever you want. However, a humongous sculpture of your likeness in bas-relief form is the quintessential display of pomposity. It’s a “hey, look at me, everyone needs to see my likeness in oversized form displayed on the exterior of my home” kind of declaration. For someone who guards his privacy and personal life tightly, why advertise to blatantly which house is yours and provide such a public reminder that this is your crib? Of course, the sculpture may be dwarfed in its showiness if and when the 15-foot bronze statue of James is erected in the front yard and the giant video board playing a continual loop of his highlight plays is installed near the end of the driveway.

- One possible alternative to building a giant freaking wall along to U.S.-Mexico border in an attempt to keep out illegal immigrants: find a way to eliminate border inspectors who are willing to take cash and cars as bribes in order to allow illegal immigrants to cross the border into the U.S. Richard Elizada, a 10-year veteran of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection service was sentenced Monday to six years in prison for his complicity in a smuggling operation that allowed many illegals access to American soil. This criminal genius, as with so many would-be crooks, does not possess an exceptionally high IQ, which is what ultimately led to his demise. His operation was founded on the practice of sending text messages to smugglers on their cells and directing them to his inspection lane, where he would then wave them across the border. The fact that text messages and cell phones in general leave all sorts of evidence to track must have eluded him, and using disposable, untraceable cells must not have crossed his mind. As a result, the feds were able to investigate his scam and bring him down, which I’m sure will reduce the number of illegals crossing into America each day from a few thousand to a few thousand minus twenty.

- See, this is why when you have a chance at a historical achievement, you had better capitalize on the opportunity. The Cincinnati Bengals had a shot at a double-digit arrest season last year and stalled out with a measly nine players dinged by the law. Now, the NFL is about to restructure its player conduct policy drastically, with increased penalties expected for players who run afoul of the law. Additionally, teams may be fined and/or penalized if their players are arrested. Previously, the penalties for such infractions were limited to players and ranged from one to four games. Now, however, suspensions of one full season could be imposed, with a player/felon like Tennessee Titans cornerback Adam “Pacman” Jones potentially the first to receive the one-year ban. Under these new rules, there is no way any team is going to approach the double-digit marker, and the 2006 Bengals will go down in history as chokers and underachievers both on the field and off of it. When the new policy is announced, some time during the next few days at the NFL meetings in Phoenix, my dream of a 10+-arrest campaign for an NFL team will go by the wayside and the world will be a little darker place.

- Have you ever asked yourself what kind of credentials you need to teach at an Ivy League school? Surely you need a master’s degree or doctorate in some field from a distinguished university, maybe years of research in your respective field and many articles published in obscure professional journals….or you need to star in a movie about a fast-food joint that features Doogie Howser joyriding in a stolen car with two topless chicks on either side of him. Apparently satisfying that standard is good enough for the University of Pennsylvania, where Kal Penn (ironically named) will teach two undergrad courses next semester. Kal Penn played Kumar Patel in the 2004 cult classic Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle, a film whose cinematic greatness has never been established but a film that has nonetheless garnered a massive following from stoners and undiscerning movie fans under the age of 30. If you haven't seen it, the plot is simple: two random guys, one Indian (the Asian country, not Native American) and one Asian, have a late-night hankering for White Castle hamburgers. Their trek to White Castle becomes very complicated, resulting in brushes with the law, all sorts of unsavory characters and their car being stolen. Ultimately, they get their car back and get their burgers after a hellacious night, and that’s the end of it. Now, Penn will be capitalizing on that “success” by teaching two courses, Images of Asian-Americans in the Media and Contemporary American Films. Granted, anyone who took a movie class in college (I took six) knows that you don’t need a Mensa member to teach the course, but you can't do better than Kumar? Will Screech from Saved by the Bell be a guest lecturer for sociology courses, and will Starsky and Hutch be your criminology professors for the fall semester? Good to know that the high-priced Ivy League education is still worth all the money that is being shelled out for it.

NBA hypocrisy, another cruise ship incident and another reason American Karaoke sucks

- Reason #4,801,744 that American Karaoke has sucks, has always sucked and will always sucks for as long as its miserable existence continues: Taylor Hicks, who I am told won the last rendition of that moronic “talent” contest passed off as a reality TV show, released an album in December. By all accounts, his album was unremarkable and pedestrian, and stunner of all stunners, it has already dropped out of Billboard’s Top 100. That’s right, even though a quality album is only released a few times a month and the public generally ignores albums that are actually listenable and decent, this loser and his prematurely gray hair (a disturbing phrase if I’ve ever heard one, just creepy) no longer have an album that is one of the top 100 selling in this country. But hey, at least he got to get up on stage and writhe around like a drunken serpent while three losers sat there and “judged” him and millions of other losers paid money to call in and vote for him. These are the reasons the rest of the world hates us, because we foist crap like this on them as a representation of American culture.

- For our second straight day with a pimpin’-related story, it’s time to turn to Reno, Nev., where the last remaining building on the grounds of the Mustang Ranch brothel went up (or down) in flames Sunday as part of a firefighter training exercise. The this building was one of the more well-known establishments where pimps and ho’s could ply their trade, but the place had been un-operational since 1999, when the government padlocked the place and shut it down due to continual tax problems. It burdens me greatly to have to bring news of a negative pimpin’ story two days in a row, but it’s true what they say, pimpin’ ain’t easy.

- For the “Catastrophe on a Cruise Ship” portion of today’s news, take a trip to the Gulf of Mexico, where a young couple fell overboard from a Princess Cruise ship into the water. The unidentified 22-year-old man and 20-year-old woman fell between 50 and 60 feet from a cabin balcony, but rescuers were able to locate them after a four-hour search. Princess Cruise Lines claims to have no knowledge of how the pair fell off the ship, but a spokesman for the company seems sure it was an accident. That’s convenient excuse, because things like falling overboard, crashing into an island and spilling harmful diesel fuel and having hundreds of passengers contract Norovirus are always accidents. These things never happen for a specific reason as the result of any kind of error or bad judgment on the part of the cruise ship company; they’re accidents, just harmless oops! moments that are merely funny anecdotes to tell people when they ask about your vacation. That is, of course, provided you can stop vomiting long enough to finish the story.

- Time to pass out my Congressman of the Week award, and this week’s runaway winner is………Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb. Sen. Hagel wins the award because he’s the first congressperson to openly consider what I’ve been championing for months, the notion of impeaching our president if he continues to blissfully disregard the opinion of 99.99999% percent of people in America, Congress included, who know that the Iraq war is a farce and a debacle that needs to come to a swift and definitive conclusion. Now Sen. Hagel hasn’t yet called for impeachment or declared it to be the best option, but his willingness to talk about it and float it out there despite being a member of the same party as the president is admirable. All it takes is one person to get the ball rolling. Sometimes hearing an idea spoken out loud is all it takes to crystallize it and to generate the momentum needed to bring that idea to fruition. Of course, there are also party hacks like Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., tools who continue to stand behind their imbecilic leader and try to convince us all that we just need to give this whole thing more time, that W. will successfully lead us to victory. Tell you what, Trent, you and the rest of your Republican lemmings can go ahead and follow your leader right off the cliff. The rest of us can continue to mock you and count the days until the abomination of a presidency finally ends.

- The NBA needs to get a sense of humor and learn not to take itself so über-seriously. The league has reprimanded Washington Wizards guard Gilbert “Hibachi” Arenas because he had the audacity to make, gasp, $10 bets with two fans at a recent game in Portland. Arenas made a wager with the two fans that he would hit the game winning shot, which he failed to do. His team lost to Portland by two points and he got the fans’ contact information so he could pay off the bets. He mentioned the wagers in his blog on NBA.com, but in addition to reprimanding him, the league also removed any mention of the betting from the blog. Good to see that the league is alright with holding its All-Star game in the biggest gambling city in America, Las Vegas, but they aren't down with a player making a fun, $10 bet with a couple of fans at a game. NBA players are abusing animals (Ron Artest), squeezing off rounds with their pistols at strip clubs (Stephen Jackson) and running afoul of the law in a dozen other ways, but the league is pissed about Arenas and his friendly wagers of ten measly dollars. Heaven forbid a player does something to connect with the fans and engages them in something silly and simply. Oh, and I seriously doubt that Arenas would have tracked down the fans to collect his $10 if he’d won the bet, so how can you really be upset about this? The NFL and its uniform police fining players for wearing their socks an inch too low think this is absurd.

Eight topics, one giant bowl of Sunday sunshine!

- Here’s a fun new game to play with your friends: which rogue nation is going to explode (figuratively, not literally) and declare war on us first, Iran or North Korea? America and its allies seem intent on agonizing both because of their continued development of nuclear capabilities. Economic sanctions have been imposed, and on Saturday, the United Nations Security Council voted unanimously to impose additional sanctions on Iran for its refusal to stop enriching uranium. Iran immediately denounced the resolution, and when you combine that with the simmering tensions of 15 British sailors captured and held hostage by Iranian forces, this situation could escalate quickly. North Korea, if you remember, has been boycotting a six-nation meeting in China on the topic of halting its nuclear programs, and both countries are led by fascist dictators who really aren't too fond of America and those who side with us. I figure it’s only a matter of time before one of them actually goes nuclear and lobs a nuke or two our way, so why not start an office pool and try to make some money off of it? You could bet on which country will strike first, when they’ll strike, where they will strike at, the possibilities are endless. It’s a way to add some intrigue to the political process, and it could help keep your mind off the fact that there’s still an embarrassing, ridiculous debacle of a war going on in Iraq, a war with no end in sight.

- Time for the weekly addition of a food item to the list of recalled products that could kill you or make you extremely sick. This week’s addition is something that’s actually bad for you, healthy-eating wise. Candy eggs from Green, Ohio-based Harry London Candies have been recalled by the Food and Drug Administration. The recall include the following products, many of which sound disgusting to begin with: the Mint Chegg, Double Chocolate Chegg, Marshmallow Chegg, Peanut Butter Chegg, Caramel Chegg and Toffee Chegg. I’m not sure what the heck a chegg is supposed to be, but Macy’s shoppers who bought them better hope they haven't yet eaten these curious culinary concoctions. Previously, the recently recalled foods had been veggies like spinach, tomatoes, mushrooms and celery, but this is the first unhealthy addition to that list. This is going to put a dent or two in the haul of many kids from their Easter baskets, and I’m sure there will be a few clueless parents who don’t hear about the recall and let their kids wolf down five or six of these candy eggs. Thus, in about a week I will look forward to bringing you stories of those kids being rushed to the emergency room and having the hazardous cheggs pumped from their stomachs, good times.

- Pimpin’ ain’t easy, and apparently pimpin’ can also land you in prison for 23 years, at least when you combine it with money laundering. Matthew “Knowledge” Thompkins of Trenton, N.J. pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy to transport minors to engage in prostitution and conspiracy to engage in money laundering and received the lengthy sentence on Friday. I gotta say, what kind of street name is Knowledge, anyhow? Does that earn you much street cred, rolling with that kind of nickname? Pardon me for saying so, Mr. Knowledge, but that moniker doesn’t incite too much fear or panic into anyone, and I hafta figure you could have gone with something a little harder and edgier. Of course, you really won't be needing a name like that where you’re going, you can simply be known as “Inmate #433041.”

- I keep giving this advice, but it continues falling on deaf ears and I don’t know why. If you don’t want kids, don’t have unprotected sex and you won't have to worry about it. You cannot become a parent if you avoid that whole sex thing; it’s a 100% certainty. I feel the need to repeat this advice because of people like Charles G. Hope, Jr., 32, and Amber M. Revlett, 26, of Owensboro, Ky., who attempted to sell their 15-month-old daughter for $3,000 and a sport utility vehicle. Do me a favor and at least tell me you were getting a tricked-out Range Rover Limited Edition, guys. Of course, these two criminal masterminds had a great plan, using their profits to pay off Hope’s fines from previous criminal charges. In the pantheon of get-rich-quick schemes, this is one of the all-time dumbest. Selling a kid is going to raise some suspicion and draw more than a little attention, that’s for sure. At some point, your neighbors and family will notice that you haven't had your kid around for a while and they’ll start to ask questions. They aren't going to buy the excuse that a 15-month-old is on vacation or visiting relatives out of state for months on end. It’s clear the pair doesn’t place much value on being parents on raising a child, so again I feel obliged to point out that no one is making you have sex or have a child. You made the choice, so if you really don’t want the kid and it’s on the way anyhow, we do have a legal process for getting rid of it, it’s called adoption. I know that wouldn’t raise the necessary capital to pay off your fines, but maybe you can come up with a slightly more intelligent plan for that part of the equation.

- Glad to see that the principle of free speech is alive and well in Russia. Well, it is as long as you count the police violently beating down protesters with truncheons and hauling them off to jail. In the third major demonstration in the country in recent weeks was met with heavy police resistance. Protesters were speaking out against local issues, but they also lobbied accusations of the Kremlin stifling free speech, silencing dissenters and depriving them of a free and fair political process during December’s national elections. Ironic, isn't it, that in a march decrying the suppression of free speech, protesters had their voice bludgeoned and silenced by The Man? Nothing rebuffs claims of infringement on one’s right to free speech quite like beating them down when they try to exercise their right to free speech. Of course, tens of millions of Americans are exercising our right to free speech and using our voice to rip, ream and eviscerate our incompetent president and it’s not doing a bit of good in ending the debacle in Iraq. But hey, at least being able to vent makes us feel better…..until we see that more American soldiers have been killed and more billions of dollars wasted on this futile war.

- The Bush family made an attempt to gain some fake educational credibility, and that attempt was rebuffed. Jeb Bush, the erstwhile governor of Florida and brother of our Bozo in Chief, was denied an honorary degree at the University of Florida when the university’s board of directors voted against the honor. There’s much humor in the fact that this family can't even get a fake degree from a legitimate university, although that might not be true because I suspect that W.’s college degree from Yale is probably a fake because there’s no way that buffoon graduated from an Ivy League school with rigorous academic standards. Cheer up, Jeb, the University of Phoenix Online and DeVry Institute are still out there for you……..

- Tired of having multiple IDs with horrific-looking pictures of you on them? For those who try to hide embarrassing driver’s license photos and embarrassing passport photos, the state of Washington may have the solution for you: combine the two items into one, dual-purpose ID. Gov. Chris Gregoire signed a bill into law that calls for “enhanced” driver’s licenses that will allow the state’s residents to travel across the Canadian border without having a passport. The so-called “smart” IDs will look like normal licenses, but will be loaded with citizenship and other information that can be scanned at the border. Radio frequency ID chips and other advanced security features would also make these particular licenses less susceptible to forgery. I have a sneaking suspicion that the cost of driver’s licenses will also be going up in Washington, but hey, I’m sure that the many low-income families in the state won't mind shilling out a few extra bucks so they can have a new, souped-up driver’s license.

- Intensity and passion in sports are great things; players who give a crap and show emotion are what draw fans in and make them care about the games. That being said, freakish-looking University of Florida forward Joakim Noah is pushing the envelope with his on-court antics. Not to crack someone’s appearance, but someone who strongly resembles a fish and sports an ugly pony tail while belting out guttural yells every time he gets a rebound, makes a shot or is fouled somewhat detracts from the whole experience of watching a basketball game. Seriously, you get the feeling that dude is just out there to get his yell on, and actually playing the game is secondary. It got me wondering if he lets out the same disturbing yell during other activities, such as brushing his teeth in the morning. If he does a good job cleaning the plaque off of his molars, do his roommates her “Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh!!!!!” come from the bathroom. When he gets a good grade on a test or a paper, does he stand up in the middle of class, pound his chest and let out a roar? Take it down a notch, J, and try saving those screams for the actual stellar plays you make and the truly special moments in a game, otherwise you are cheapening the cinematic value of your bellowing and just end up looking like a circus sideshow act.

Joey Dorsey can't back up his smack, but neither can a guy claiming to have smallpox

- Someone needs to get Joey Dorsey a towel, because right now, dude has a whole lot of egg on his face. The big-mouthed Memphis University forward ran a lot of smack prior to today’s contest against top-ranked Ohio State about OSU center Greg Oden being overrated and Dorsey himself being underrated. He also claimed he was like Goliath and Oden was “the little guy”, ostensibly forgetting that Goliath actually lost the battle. Personally, I think Dorsey is accurately rated, because he’s decent player who receives a lot of favorable words from those broadcasting Memphis games. However, when slightly above-average players start running their mouths, running their MOUTHS….then they go out in their team’s biggest game of the season and lay a zero-point, X-rebound game while the opposing player they criticized as being “overrated” goes for 1X points and rebounds while leading his team to a resounding 92-76 win, the smack talking “underrated” player looks like a giant horse’s ass. Thus, Dorsey and his snarky ‘tude need to go away and enjoy the offseason while Oden and his crew march on to the Final Four. Well done, Joey, you’ve proven that you are: 1) a guy who doesn’t know when to shut up, 2) not very intelligent and 3) a choker who comes up small in big games. Hope you enjoy watching OSU compete for a national championship, chump.

- You can get on an airplane if you’re a mentally unstable whack job who incites panic by claiming he has smallpox, but you can't carry a 4 oz. tube of toothpaste on a plane. Makes sense, right? A man aboard a US Airways flight from New Orleans to Charlotte claimed to have smallpox, even though the disease was eradicated in the U.S. in 1980. He was taken to a local medical center following a quarantine of the plane, and shockingly, the man was found to not have smallpox. But nice to know that someone unstable enough to make a claim like that can't board a plane freely, but don’t you dare try to stick a normal-sized tube of toothpaste or mouthwash in your carry-on bag.

- Sounds to me like Anthony Albert Gomez of Minneapolis has been watching a little too many Godfather movies lately. Drawing on the scene from the popular movie series where a severed horse head is placed in a bed for intimidation purposes, Gomez (this is graphic) decapitated his ex-girlfriend’s dog and left the severed head on her front porch in a gift wrapped box. This sick frrrrreak either thought he was funny or was trying to seriously scare his ex, but ultimately he’s the one facing animal cruelty and torture charges. Oh, and his girlfriend is still a teenager, so this loser not only murdered his ex-girlfriend’s dog, but he did so to mess with the head of someone who’s not even old enough to drink. The unidentified young woman has to be badly shaken up about this whole mess, but one positive is that she is undoubtedly, undeniably better off not having a piece of crap like Gomez as her boyfriend.

- Menu Foods and its subsidiaries had better hope their “cuts and gravy and rat poision” style pet foods have made their last appearance on store shelves. Menu is a ginormous conglomerate with 95 subsidiaries who recently recalled a large quantity of pet food after reports of at least 16 cat and dog deaths surfaced as a result of eating the contaminated food stuffs. The best part of all this is that the company is claiming it doesn’t know how the poisonous substance once used to induce abortions in the United States made its way into the food, but that Menu will take responsibility for all medical costs incurred as a result of eating its pet food. Still, how in the world is a poison like this anywhere near the production of food for anyone, even if it is animals? Can anyone explain that to me? Someone? No, didn’t think so.

- On the upside, at least progress is being made in locating the source of renegade spinach that caused a national E. coli outbreak. A cattle farm near California’s central coastline is believed to be responsible for the E. coli scare, which sickened more than 200 people. Authorities found the bacteria at the Pacines Ranch in San Benito County, near a field the ranch leased to a company called Mission Organics. Maybe they should be changing their name to Mission: Food-Borne Illness………Now, everyone is pointing fingers and trying to shift responsibility for the E. coli problem, with neither the ranch nor Mission Organics wanting to step up and assume blame. Just to be safe, I’m going to go ahead and keep avoiding spinach for the next fifty years or so, as has been my policy thus far in life. It’s worked out well up to this point……

Hunting illegal immigrants, relaxing porn laws and whaddya know, Billy Packer's still an ass!

- And so it continues….the 2007 NCAA Tournament continues to be a walking contradiction, still the greatest sporting event in the world, period, but experiencing a year without two of the staples that have made it such. The absence of a single buzzer-beating, my-team-would-have-lost-without-it shot is a profound disappointment to me, because the sight of an exuberant team spilling onto the floor and piling on top of one of their own players who made a clutch shot at the buzzer to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat is, for me, the quintessential March Madness moment. A second disturbing ingredient in this year’s tournament is the presence of a single double-digit seed in the Sweet 16 round. The lowest remaining seed is UNLV, seeded seventh. Worse still, the two regional final games already set for Saturday feature 1-2 matchups in terms of seeding. Seeing the chalk emerge victorious nearly every game is boooooring. Still, I wouldn’t trade this event for the Super Bowl, the World Series or either incarnation of the Olympics. Even at its worst, it’s still better than anything else sports has to offer - well, except when Billy Packer is announcing a game, then not so much. The fact that Packer and his surly, bitter, curmudgeony act weren't a part of any of Thursday night’s game meant that it was a good night for basketball. Unfortunately, he’s back tonight, and we’ll have to endure two games full of his caustic, perpetually dissatisfied, bitter old man routine. Ultimately, though, it’s still the NCAA Tournament, and that supercedes all of this other crap.

- Further proving my point about how f’ed up the TV schedule has been this year, Smallville returned to the CW for two new episodes after an inexplicably long winter hiatus, and now next week we’re back to reruns. The CW doesn’t understand the concept of flow and rhythm, that’s for sure. This much is made clear by the fact that they can’t seem to show enough consecutive new episodes to actively engage those who watch the show, and every time you do see a new episode, you’re plagued by the thought in the back of your mind that you had better enjoy this one, because there’s no telling when you’re going to catch another new episode. Also, mad props to the CW for bringing the show back during the two jam-packed NCAA tournament Thursday nights of late March instead of coming back a few weeks earlier and showing maybe 3-4 new episodes in a row, great thinking ass hats. P.S.………..thanks to ABC for bringing back Six Degrees, an early season favorite of mine, gone for three or four months due to ratings trouble, and dropping it randomly on a Friday night with little fanfare. I was fortunate to catch the TV listings and tune in, but when you have a show that has been plagued by low ratings and you bring it back, presumably in the hopes of having it do better with viewers than the first go-round, maybe making a concerted effort to make people aware that it’s going to be back on the air is in order, just a thought.

- I’m on record as saying my favorite part of soccer, especially everywhere in the world outside of America (where no one gives a crap about the sport) is the rioting and general mayhem caused by mentally unstable fans who throw urine bombs, burn cars and loot their cities when their team wins, when their team loses and pretty much any time they feel like it. Fans going nuts and making fools of themselves is an integral part of sports, but here’s where we’re going to draw the line between being a crazy, passionate fan and just being a world-class scumbag and flat-out wrong: when you start murdering your team’s coach after the team suffers a bad loss. That’s precisely what happened to Pakistani cricket coach Bob Woolmer after his team dropped a World Cup contest to Ireland in a game played in Kingston, Jamaica. Now comes the brutal part: Woolmer was found in his hotel room in a pool of his own vomit and blood, the victim of asphyxiation by strangulation, and authorities are treating the death as a homicide at this time. This is one of those times where I am almost at a loss for words - almost. But to whomever did this and left a grieving widow in their wake, know that you are one of the lowest life forms roaming this planet, perhaps even a rung below O.J. on the Ladder of Scum. At least the Juice had a legitimate reason to be upset with the people he murdered (allegedly), as they had an actual relationship and their actions had indeed caused emotional damage to one another. Of course, that doesn’t justify murdering or injuring anyone in any way, but at least the Juice had a legit reason to be angry. The lothario who murdered Woolmer likely didn’t even know him personally and was pissed because their team lost a cricket game - yes, cricket. Normally I’m not a death penalty honk, but for this case, I think you can make an exception once you find the person responsible. String them up, hang them, give ‘em the guillotine, firing squad, do whatever you want, just make it painful.

- Who doesn’t agree that we need fewer laws restricting the access kids have to online porn? That’s what I thought, we’re all on board with that. Well, at least U.S. District Court Judge Lowell Reed of Philadelphia thinks, as evidenced by his decision to repeal the 1998 Child Online Protection Act. He claims the measure doesn’t address new threats, especially things like MySpace, that have occurred since the law was initially put into place. His reasoning also relies on the fact that Internet content filters do a better job of protecting kids than this law does, so the law was thrown out on the grounds of the First Amendment. Call me nuts, judge, but why not keep the current law in place while lawmakers work on a new one? Just because this law doesn’t go far enough doesn’t mean you toss it out and say the heck with it. This is one case where you can't have too much of a good thing. The more measures in place to protect kids from things like online porn, the better.

- Well this is gonna end well……a Hackensack, N.J. radio show is encouraging its listeners to turn in suspected illegal immigrants to the station, 101.5-FM, or to immigration authorities. Hispanic leaders are predictably outraged over the promotional stunt (that’s what it is, even if the station claims otherwise). These leaders claim it is anti-Hispanic and might encourage racial profiling, and although it initially may appear idiotic to defend the cause of illegal immigrants, I’m going to have to side with the Hispanic community on this one. As much as it’s a good idea to make sure that we take every possible step to ensure that everyone who enters this country does so legally, for security and other reasons, spurring average citizens, many of whom are, let’s face it, not especially bright or competent, to go out looking for possible illegals is a bad idea. I don’t think you want Tommy from Trenton following some guy he sees on the train out of the city around the streets in the hopes of proving that the guy is an illegal immigrant. Just leave that to the professionals, if you don’t mind. Now, if you know someone who is employing an illegal immigrant and you know for sure that this is the case, it’s your call if you want to turn in your friend, but going on the air and encouraging vigilante immigration policing is neither wise nor something that a radio station has any business doing.

Drunken managers, unhealthy General Tso's and the Mennonites vs. Missouri

- Spring training in Major League Baseball is all about getting ready for the regular season. Pitchers look to build their arm strength and fine tune their mechanics, position players try to get back into a groove at the plate and hone their defensive skills. So what do managers do, you ask? Well, normally I would answer that they use spring training to evaluate players, determine who to keep on the roster and who to send back to the minors and to settle battles between players for starting spots at different positions. That would be my answer normally, but apparently spring training is also where managers go to get pass-out drunk and fall asleep at the wheel of their running car in the middle of the road. St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony LaRussa did just that this morning, blowing a .093 on the breathalyzer when police pulled him out of his rig. Never a good sign when the cops find you asleep at the wheel of a running car after your vehicle has failed to move through the course of two straight green lights and you reek of booze, as LaRussa reportedly did. That’s the kind of behavior that will raise a red flag or ten with law enforcement. Someone should have pointed out to Tony that he is not yet in St. Louis, where he could possibly pull a stunt like this and find a way to get out of it because he’s Tony Freakin’ LaRussa, an icon who won that baseball-crazed city a World Series last year. Right now, he’s in Jupiter, Fla., and the cops there aren't going to look at this the same way. Call a cab, Tony, call a player, team official or a friend and have them come pick you up when you’ve had a half-dozen beers or so, because otherwise you look like you do now, a lush who recklessly goes out on the roadways when he’s too plastered to be driving.

- Brace yourself for what will undoubtedly be earth-shattering news: Chinese food is not healthy for you. No, seriously, that grub you snag from your local Chinese restaurant is not exactly health food. The Center for Science in the Public Interest, undoubtedly after many intense “research sessions”, has declared than food such as a plate of General Tso’s chicken contains about 40 percent more salt and more than half of the calories an average adult needs in a day. I, for one, am flabbergasted. How can healthy food like sweet and sour pour, egg rolls and fried shrimp not be good for you? I just don’t get it. Can't you picture the “researchers”, deciding that five trips to the local Chinese joint this week just aren't enough to make a definitive statement about the health value of the food and that they need one or one hundred more trips to decide for sure? What’s next, CSPI, are you going to undertake a two-year study that concludes that Big Macs and McNuggets are also bad for you? Always good to have science pushing the limits and boundaries of knowledge and bringing us relevant, groundbreaking new developments like this.

- Following the run of success for the recent troika of Spiderman movies starring Toby Maguire, the great Batman Begins film with Christian Bale and the massive support for the X-Men movies, it was only a matter of time before The Green Hornet made his way to the big screen. The Hornet, originally created in 1936 by George W. Trendle and Fran Striker of Detroit’s WXYZ-FM, has been on the radio, television and in comic books for seven decades, but this will be his first foray into the movie world. The TV series version of the Hornet’s story in 1966 even pulled Bruce Lee, and certain comic book dorks out there still argue that The Green Hornet is the coolest superhero around, better than Batman or Superman. Columbia Pictures is banking on that fact, because they’re the ones who will bring Green Hornet to theaters, although no release date is set as of now. The reality is that with all of the crap-ola at our nation’s multiplexes right now, this movie doesn’t have to do much to be better than the other options moviegoers have at any given time.

- It’s the Mennonites vs. the state of Missouri. The Mennonite community in Missouri (and yes, they’re in Missouri, they’re surprisingly diverse geographically) has fought the law and as The Clash declared so eloquently in their 1978 tune, the law won. The state is mandating that Mennonites comply with a 2004 law that all driver’s licenses in Missouri contain a photo ID, a practice Mennonites claim violates their religious beliefs against “graven images.” Previously, Missouri had an exemption in place for the Mennonites, but the repeal of that exemption is leading many from the religious sect to flee the state to Arkansas, where a similar exemption still exists. Not to belittle anyone’s religious beliefs, but this sounds more than a little absurd. How does a picture on a driver’s license qualify as a graven image? Are you building an altar to the little three-inch piece of laminated plastic and offering sacrifices to it? Do you object to having your picture taken anywhere by anyone? You’re going to abandon your whole life in one state over something like this? It’s certainly their right, but that doesn’t mean it isn't nonsensical. They aren't telling you what to wear, whether you can worship in your own way or that you can't sport those Mennonite beards that we’re all familiar with, they just want your picture on the driver’s license that you otherwise have to objection to possessing. Hope you all enjoy Arkansas, and that they don’t decide to repeal that exemption any time soon…….

- Protests are a good thing, as they serve to highlight segments of society who feel their voice is not being heard and that a given entity, usually their government, is not properly tending to their needs or is abusing their rights. However, protests stop being a good thing when protests by two opposing groups merge into one giant protest/brawl that leaves 25 people dead and 35 wounded. This is what happened in Nepal, where a fight between former Communist rebels and ethnic rights activists led to a total of 60 deaths and fatalities. The southern city of Gaur was the site for this tragedy, which came after the two groups tried to hold separate rallies inside city limits. While this doesn’t diminish my support for protest marches and rallies, I may need to tack on an addendum to that support: when you start killing and injuring people who are trying, like you, to make their voice heard on an issue through a protest, it stops being cool and starts being way out of line.

My business proposal for Man-Ram, birthday wishes for O'Fat and Gus Johnson gets the heave-ho

- Let’s say you’re having a six-nation summit on halting the nuclear capacities of Nation X….wouldn’t it be good idea to have Nation X in attendance? That would seem like a given, but apparently not for the six countries meeting in China to discuss putting the brakes in North Korea’s development of nuclear capacities. North Korea is boycotting the meetings because of a dispute over $25 million in sanctions that have been imposed on it by the international community. So basically you have six other countries sitting around discussing another nation and what it should do, but all that nation is going to do is ignore whatever those six countries say and keep doing what it wants. It’s akin to staging an intervention for a friend who’s an alcoholic, only that person won't go anywhere near the intervention. Kudos to those who have made the obvious observation that North Korea boycotting the talks “severely diminishes” the chance that they will help in the quest for disarmament. I suppose these insightful geniuses would also agree that the exclusion of Northwest Oklahoma A&M University from the NCAA Tournament “severely diminishes” the chances that NWOAM will be winning this year’s tournament. Good work, people, good work all around on this one.

- By now, the Manny Ramirez story about him selling a top-of-the-line grill on eBay for $3,000 is ubiquitous. Everyone has heard it and has an amused reaction to it, but it got me thinking about ways to capitalize on this “Manny on eBay” phenomenon. The affable, erstwhile outfielder for the Boston Red Sox can cut throws from the center fielder, disappear into the Green Monster to take a leak during games and wear sunglasses with an MP3 player in them during a game, so the following scenario isn't all that far-fetched. Why not offer a service on eBay whereby you could rent Manny out to pimp your eBay items, for a small fee of course? Reportedly, the grill he is hawking isn't even his; it belongs to a neighbor that Man-Ram is trying to help out. So why couldn’t you plunk down $50 bucks for Manny to pose with your digital camera, used TV or exercise bike and then throw it up on eBay? You’d make back that $50 easily with the extra cash people would bid for your item now that it’s Man-Ram endorsed. Throw in that autographed baseball he’s offering with the grill and you might even triple your original asking price for your item. Call me, Manny, I think we could have something here……..

- A very happy, calorie-heavy birthday to Rosie O’Fat, who turns 45 today. As a gift to the ginormous, gargantuan, bloated daytime TV talker, I’m going to pass along a helpful piece of advice I like to call the 6-to-1 rule: if you are over the age of 35 and your weight is more than six times your current age, it’s time for a drastic alteration of your eating and exercise habits. Yet I get the feeling that I’m going to be seeing images in the next few days of a porky, fooded-up O’Fat shoving her fat, ugly face (Donald Trump’s words, not mine) into a birthday cake as horrified onlookers try to get out of her way, lest they lose a hand in her rush to wolf down the entire freakin’ cake. The only possible upside to all of this is the potential that the Donald will be motivated to unleash another round of verbal mortar shots at O’Fat, because that’s the best present any of us could hope to get on this day.

- In the down time between the opening weekend of the NCAA Tournament and the upcoming Sweet 16 and Elite 8 games, one of the hotly debated stories has been an announcer, namely Gus Johnson of CBS. If you’ve watched any of the tournament, then you’ve undoubtedly heard Gus’s enthusiastic, borderline-nervous breakdown style of calling a game. His excitement and energy are at an astonishingly high level during games, to the point that you wonder if his head is going to pop right off his body with steam pouring from his neck. Well, normally Gus gets to call games beyond the first weekend of the tournament, but with CBS fawning over James Brown (why, I don’t know - this is, by the way, the broadcaster James Brown, not the now-deceased Godfather of Soul), Brown has been given one of the top broadcasting positions for the tournament in order to secure his services for hosting CBS’s NFL pregame show. Brown made that demand, and CBS caved in, so he gets to announce this weekend’s games, Johnson does not. I’m not one of those pro-Gus Johnson honks who thinks the guy is a basketball announcing savant (Bill Raftery is my guy for that), but I do think it’s a negative for CBS and for basketball fans to not have Johnson around for this weekend’s games. A lot of the buzz around this story is some conservative, stick-up-their-butt pundits who feel Johnson’s uber-enthusiastic persona is a bad thing on broadcasts. As someone who has pissed off a media member quite recently on press row for being too enthusiastic, I tend to side with Gus on this issue. I’d rather have him announcing than a pompous, arrogant, self-centered blowhard like Billy Packer, whose surly, caustic, bitter demeanor not only ruins the games, it makes you wonder if he’s even enjoying the game or if he just enjoys being a whining horse’s arse. If CBS were smart, it would ditch Packer and his flat-lining partner, Jim Nantz, and give Gus Johnson and Bill Raftery the primo assignments for the tournament.

- Have I mentioned how pissed off I am about the jacked-up nature of thus year’s TV schedule? It’s as if the networks are intentionally trying to jerk us around so we don’t know when our favorite shows will be on and when they will have new episodes broadcast. There was the prolonged hiatus starting right after Thanksgiving, a break that lasted varying amounts of time for each individual show, even within a certain network. So you had shows coming back at random intervals during January and February, and you were never sure if your shows were back to new episodes yet or when to expect them. Then, just as we started to settle back into a decent rhythm, POW! In come a bevy of new shows (most of them crap, i.e. the Pussycat Skanks reality show, the newest installments of American Karaoke and America’s Next Top Runway Bimbo) and then you had some shows showing new episodes, with others taking another extended break to make room for these new shows for eight weeks or so. Then, for example, most every regular show on a network like the CW was on break from new episodes except Smallville, which just returned from its winter break on March 15, just in time to collide with the first night of March Madness. Thanks for nothing, TV networks, you’ve taken your normal moronic hijinks to a new level, and in the process you’ve managed to confuse and discombobulate the very people you supposedly want to watch your shows each week.

'Roids for wrasslers, where celebs go for community service and giving away frozen land

- The scope of the steroid scandal brought upon us by a federal raid on an Orlando-based medical supply facility keeps widening. As is to be expected, more names are leaking out every few days, and now those names include eleven professional wrestlers, a fact that isn't surprising to anyone, anywhere. Current WWE stars Randy Orton and Adam Copeland, who wrestles under the name Edge, are among those listed in the records of the Orlando pharmacy. Orton received eight shipments from the company, and all told he ordered six different drugs, including Stanozol and Nandrolone, both classified as steroids. Those who are trying to draw some sort of similitude between pro wrestlers using steroids and professional athletes doing the same are badly misguided, I gotta say. This goes back to the fundamental point that pro wrestling, while it contains some elements of sports and athleticism, is entertainment and more like a TV drama than a professional sports. Randy Orton taking steroids is the same as an actor like Sly Stallone taking HGH, because both are performing in a setting where the outcomes are predetermined and where there is no “competitive balance” to be altered by using performance enhancers. Most pro wrestlers achieve success because of their physiques and conditioning, so it’s not surprising that they would turn to steroids for help. Now if that help is classified as illegal, then they are going to be subject to prosecution, but just don’t try to sell me on the fact that Orton and his Nandrolone are the same as Barry Bonds (allegedly) ‘roiding up in an attempt to break baseball’s career home run record.

- I can think of nothing more symbolic of the absolute absurdity of the war in Iraq than the fact that the President made a speech at a special ceremony to commemorate the fourth anniversary of our wrongful, misguided invasion of Iraq. Not to sound all British, but who in the bloody hell commemorates an awful milestone like that? Those are the things we should be ashamed of, not things we should be commemorating. An amusing part of W.’s speech came when he warned about a “contagion of violence” that could ensue if American troops were withdrawn, and I say amusing because you know that there is no frakkin’ way that he has any idea what the word contagion means and that it took him and a speech coach the better part of a week to hammer out the correct way to pronounce the word. The basic focus of the speech was a message of opposition to Congress and its impending debate and vote on imposing deadlines for pulling out of Iraq, but based on his record of stupidity, short-sightedness, ineptitude and incompetence, W.’s words no longer carry much weight. He’s shown he has no clue how to best handle this situation, and that someone else is going to have to step in and throw down some mandates or this war will drag on for another five years. Toss out all the idle words and meaningless proclamations you want, W., anyone with more than four brain cells and a hint of capacity for critical thinking has long since stopped listening to you.

- Celebrities have trendy vacation spots, trendy diets and workout spots, but did you know there’s also a popular spot for celebrities to perform court-order community service? It’s true, as model Naomi Campbell has embarked on a five-day sentence of community service at the Manhattan District 3 Garage after being convicted of assaulting her maid. Freak show and sexual deviant Boy George was sentenced to work off his court-ordered community service at the same sanitation depot, so clearly this is the place to go when you’ve assaulted a maid or falsely report a burglary, as Boy George did, and a judge decides you need to spend time serving your community. On the flip side, it would definitely make your own community service more interesting if you showed up to mop floors and empty trash cans and there was Naomi Campbell working right alongside you. Just don’t get on her bad side or you would quickly find out what her maid felt like when Campbell hurled a cell phone at her………

- Just because you have the right to free speech doesn’t mean that what you say has any merit or isn't completely moronic. Whether moronic, bizarre free speech is allowed is the question before the Supreme Court as it considers a five-year old case pitting a high school senior (now probably out of college) against his old high school principal. The student, as he was at the time of the incident, is Joseph Frederick, unfurled a 14-foot banner across the street from his school that read “Bong Hits for Jesus” that, amazingly, his principal, Deborah Morse, objected to. She suspended Frederick, who brought suit on the basis that his banner was a nonsensical message that did not promote drug usage and was merely an experiment testing the bounds of the First Amendment. In his defense, the incident did take place in Alaska, and there really isn't much excitement in that frozen tundra of a state, so mixing it up with some bong hit humor might cross the mind of your average teenage guy. Something in me suspects that Frederick might have done a little, um, experimentation, in this area, but that’s just my hypothesis. But you get a group of high school guys together, mix in a little alcohol, weed and a need to cause trouble and a banner like this is almost a logical result. While I would label Frederick as a tool for putting up the banner, I can’t say that it’s anything more than a harmless stunt that should not have gotten him suspended. Morse sounds like she’s got a stick up her butt that needs dislodged, and what she needs is a sense of humor, not a win in this court case.

- Need proof of my criticisms of Alaska as a dismal place to live with no real appeal to anyone outside of Eskimos? The town of Anderson, located in the southern portion of the state, literally gave away 26 large plots of land on Monday. All you had to do was get in line and plunk down a refundable $500 deposit and you could get the land, although why anyone would want a frozen chunk of Alaskan real estate, even if it was free, is befuddling. The lots were all given out, but the bottom line is this: if you have to give away land in order to entice people to come live in your town, then your town is not worth living in. I don’t see any states in the non-Arctic portions of the U.S. giving away free land, because those states are actually habitable and don’t require five layers of clothing for the 11½ months of the year that comprise winter in Alaska. My basic rule when deciding if I would live in a town is thus: if I don’t need a refrigerator because it doesn’t get warm enough outside to thaw my food out for weeks on end, then I’ll take a pass on living in that place. ‘Nuff said.

- A point of clarification needs to be made regarding the evaluation of the work done by this year’s NCAA Tournament selection committee. The suggestion that simply because 10 of the top 12 seeds and no team seeded lower than seventh (seeds are 1-16 in each of four regions), that the committee did its job well. Basically, those making this argument claim that the teams the committee seeded higher validated their seeding by beating teams seeded lower. I can only surmise that the people making this claim are not especially knowledgeable about college basketball and about the selection process, because an overwhelmingly large portion of the complaints lodged against the selection committee aren't about the seeding of teams in the tournament; 99.9% of pissed off fans, coaches and alumni are angry that their team didn’t even make the tournament. As an alum of a team (Akron) that was egregiously screwed over by the selection committee despite 26 wins, I don’t give a crap who was seeded where amongst teams who did make the tournament. The fact that Arkansas received a 12-seed and Stanford was seeded at 11 in their region does little to assuage my outrage over the fact that these undeserving squads made the tournament to begin with, then subsequently were routed in the opening round. I don’t care if all four of the top seeds make the Final Four, the correct grade for this year’s committee is clear: F-.

Places you can't assault people, reasons you can't assult sled dogs and being held hostage on an airport runway

- Someone needs to let Joey Porter know that just because a guy is your rival on the football field and you engage in intense physical combat on the gridiron, that doesn’t mean you can also assault said guy when you see him across the table from you at a Vegas casino. Porter, recently released by his old team, the Pittsburgh Steelers and signed by the Miami Dolphins, punched Cincinnati Bengals offensive lineman Levi Jones in the head at the Palms hotel-casino Sunday night, according to a police report. It’s worth noting that the Steelers, with whom Porter had played his entire career before his release due to salary cap issues, are major rivals of the Bengals, Jones’ team. They play one another twice a year, so undoubtedly Porter and Jones have locked horns a few times on the field. That being said, Joey, you need to learn how to turn the switch on and off in terms of your aggression and physicality toward opposing players based on whether you are playing football or just seeing them in a social setting. While it might be appropriate to crack a guy upside the head within the context of a game (even then you may be penalized), it is not acceptable to do likewise when you find yourself at the same blackjack table and you don’t like that he doubled down and then stayed on 17. Another example which may help you: when a running back comes around the end of the line and turns up field, it is acceptable for you to lower your shoulder and fly at him to make the tackle. You can spear him to the ground viciously, you can try to drive him right into the ground if you want. However, if you are in Vegas and that same running back tries to cut in the buffet line ahead of you, it would then be inappropriate to execute that same vicious tackle on him. Hope that helps, Joey, I’m here for you if you have any other questions on social etiquette vs. football field etiquette.

- Now I think that the producers of Dancing With the (D-list) Stars are deliberately baiting me. I’ve been on their case for a while now because they take people they allege to be “stars” that are actually either a) washed up, b) have never actually been stars and are only known because they are connected to someone who is connected to someone who achieved a marginal degree of fame a decade ago, or c) are furiously scrambling to build an acting or movie career and are looking for any vehicle they can find to facilitate that. This season’s cast of hacks, losers, nobodies and pariahs include an amputee (Heather Mills, known only because she was married to someone with actual talent, Paul McCartney, Laila Ali (famous only because her dad is a world-famous former heavyweight boxing champ), Billy Ray Cyrus (never had actual musical talent but had one terrible hit about 12 years ago in the country music world because quite frankly, you don’t need actual talent to succeed in country music), Shandi Finnessey (who? I’ve honestly never heard of this woman), Paulina Porizkova (again, who are these people?) and Ian Ziering (still trying to ride the momentum of appearing on one of the most contrived TV shows ever, 90210). I defy you to argue that any of these people are A-list stars or that you’d be excited about the prospect of spending a day with any of them…..yeah, that’s what I thought.

- Like a cranky two-year-old (and with about the same level of intelligence), W. has decided that no matter what the bill is that Congress sends his way, right now he’s just going to stomp his foot and say “No!” to everything. In the past week, he has promised to veto bills dealing with presidential records, with protection for corporate whistle-blowers and a Senate bill that would have set a deadline for American withdrawal from Iraq. Of course he was going to veto the Iraq bill, this putz has no use for any logical, practical, smart or reasonable suggestions when it comes to the war in Iraq. He’s made a huge blunder, and by God, he’s going to take this joke as far as it can go. The more absurd and destructive it is for our country, the better! A fourth bill, this one with a war-spending focus, is also in line for a veto because Congress had the audacity to include “Iraq withdrawal language.” Why W. has picked now to start his “no” phase, I don’t know. He’s only vetoed one bill in his previous six years in office, but perhaps someone just told him what veto means and now he’s anxious to exercise that right. If I were a member of Congress, I would continue passing bills on random subjects with no real purpose, just to flood W.’s desk and totally overwhelm this poor sap. It’s be fun to see if he just started vetoing bills without even reading them, kinda like when you have a lot of papers to sign and you start signing your name without even reading the pages. I’m on record now as saying that, even with a couple years left, this is the worst presidency in U.S. history. We’re witnessing world-class ineptitude here, folks, take a moment to step back and appreciate it in all of its ignominy.

- It’s the worst travel experience you can find yourself in (well, outside of your plane crashing anyhow): you’re out on the end of the runway, waiting for takeoff, and your plane just sits there. Every few minutes, in ever-decreasing frequency, the pilot comes on and gives some half-hearted update, promising you’ll be taking off soon. Yet there you sit for hours on end. Thankfully, I’ve only been a part of a three-hour wait on the runway (due to fog, of all things), but passengers at New York’s JFK airport ended up waiting for freaking nine hours or more due to inclement weather. One passenger was on a flight to Vancouver that was canceled and he waited on a plane from midnight to 9:30 a.m. Theoretically, the airlines keep the planes out on the runway in the hopes that they will be able to take off and they won't have used up all that fuel for nothing, which would be true if they return to the gate. Also, perhaps they don’t want to lose their spot in the pecking order for takeoffs. But at some point, you really have to stop and consider your passengers. Y’know, the people who pay hundreds of dollars to fly on your planes? You may not want to keep them cramped up inside a metal tube on wheels for nine hours. They start getting pissed off, cranky and claustrophobic. Many of them (who invariably sit next to me) have small infants who never stop making noise. After three or four hours, there ought to be a federal law that you have to return to the gate and allow people to exit the plane if they want to. Holding someone hostage on a plane with nothing but tiny bags of mini pretzels and Sprite is just cruel and unnecessary. On top of that, you’ve probably already confiscated many of their toiletries (toothpaste, mouthwash, etc.) from their carry-on bags because they were, gasp, over three ounces! Now I realize how smart John Madden is to have his tricked-out bus he takes to every football game he broadcasts instead of flying.

- I used to outright mock people like Paris Hilton and Britney Spears for having those itsy bitsy dogs that fit into their purses and for outfitting those dogs in designer sweaters and pet jewelry. I say “used to” because I’m starting to realize, courtesy of those at the other end of the Pet Owner Spectrum, that maybe having an annoying little yapper dog and spending thousands of dollars on it ain’t so bad. Three people have helped convince me of this lately, all three athletes: Sacramento Kings forward Ron Artest, Atlanta Falcons defensive lineman Jonathan Babineaux and most recently, Iditarod competitor Ramy Brooks. If you don’t know much about the Iditarod, it’s an uber-long dog race through the frozen nowhere lands of Alaska where competitors drive teams of husky sled dogs for miles and miles over the course of several weeks. Brooks is one of those competitors, and he took Artest’s and Babineaux’s examples of animal cruelty and pushed them to new heights. Artest was accused recently by a neighbor of leaving his dogs out in the yard for weeks on end without feeding them, and Babineaux was accused of animal abuse after his girlfriend’s pit bull, in his custody, died of a “massive head injury”; Brooks, however, took it up a notch when he went all out raging psychopath on his sled dogs, beating two of them to death with a trail marking lathe. I’m literally at a loss for words. Dragging those dogs through the cold, barren wilderness is bad enough, but if they aren't cooperating when you want them to mush, then you are left with several options, but none of them is beating the animal to death with a trail marking lathe. Find some new dogs, yell at them, try to push and cajole them forward, but how’s about you leave the fatal assault out of the equation, Ramy? Maybe you, Artest and Babineaux need to bust a phone call to NBA star Kevin Garnett for some lessons on how to care for your animal. After all, Garnett has his dogs in a heated kennel with a flat screen TV in each dog’s living quarters. Also, I’m 100% sure that KG doesn’t bust out with a trail marking lathe when his dogs don’t obey orders AND he feeds them regularly, so you three can definitely learn a lot from him.