Billy Packer - you are an ASS, with extra emphasis on the ASS portion of the word

- My feelings about CBS basketball announcer Billy Packer are one of the more clearly delineated things in my life: Billy Packer is a pompous ass, plain and simple. As such, when something moronic comes flying out of his pie hole on-air, I reserve the right to catalogue it and skewer him for it. Today’s NCAA Tournament broadcasts provided two prime examples of Packer being an idiot, and they are as follows: 1) during the UNLV-Georgia Tech game, Packer commented about UNLV forward Wendell White, “Willie White needs to come back now and expose himself.” I think Packer was trying to say that White needed to make himself available to receive a pass, but he never made that clear with a follow-up comment. Instead, it sounds like he’s reading from Michael Jackson’s Handbook for Interactions with Young Boys, which advocates exposing yourself as often as humanly possible. The second Packer foul-up was when he decided that a tall player for Texas A&M - Corpus Christi was “a tall target in the middle of the court to try and throw a pass over.” Billy, let me go ahead and explain the concept of the word “target” to you….a target is something you throw at, not to. If you are trying to throw over this guy, he is not the target; the spot above him you are trying to throw to is the target and he himself is an obstacle or an obstruction. By their very definition, targets are things you throw at, and since he was on the opposing team and was defending against the pass instead of being its intended recipient, he literally cannot be a target. See, Billy, this is what you get when you’re an arrogant, pompous, self-important, blowhard ass of a man; people look for everything you do wrong (not hard in this case) and tear you a new one for it. I know CBS won't fire you because you’ve been around for decades and you have tenure and all, but the tournament broadcasts would be immeasurably better without your sourpuss, contrarian act around to pollute them.

- How the hell do people come up with ideas like this and actually claim they’ve done any work or put any thought into them? The new NBC comedy (I think) Raines, starring Jeff Goldblum, is not only a pathetic-looking show, it’s a blatant ripoff of two shows already on the air. While Ghost Whisperer and Medium aren't specifically about a male detective who sees visions of murder victims that help him solve crimes, they’re damn close to having the exact same premise. Neither one is a good show, for starters, and both center around protagonists who communicate with deceased people. Heck, Ghost Whisperer even has its main character (Jennifer Love Hewitt, whose, um, physical appeal, is the only redeeming quality of the show) seeing dead people and communicating with them to solve problems left unsolved by their death. The creators of GW and Medium should seriously sue NBC and Raines’ creators for copyright infringement. I know coming up with a premise for a show that’s original is tough nowadays, but this is blatantly offensive because it looks like those responsible for Raines didn’t even make an attempt.

- It’s a bloodbath for my favorite TV shows this spring, and it’s starting to seriously depress me. Already, we’ve seen the demise of The O.C. in February, and now I am forced to cope with the news that three other shows I watch regularly, including one long, long-time favorite and another I consider among the best shows on TV, could be done after this season. At the top of that list is Gilmore Girls, a show in its seventh season and still going strong. Contract discussions for an eighth season have reportedly stalled out, meaning that at this point it’s a near certainty that it’s over for Rory, Lorelai, Luke and Star’s Hollow’s quirky cast of characters. Worse yet, the Tuesday night companion of Gilmore on the CW, Veronica Mars, is also in serious danger of being axed. Mars is newer, only in its third year, but it is an amazingly well-done show, interesting, thought-provoking, funny, charming and with a great cast of characters who you care about. Scenarios of how to squeeze a fourth season out for the show are being discussed, but I have to issue a serious warning to CW head honcho Dawn Ostroff: Listen you brain dead, intellectually stunted piece of crap, you already f’d me and many others over when you inexplicably and unjustifiably cancelled Everwood after last season and kept the gawd-awful 7^th Heaven. So help me, if you get rid of both Gilmore Girls and Veronica Mars, I will hunt you down, kidnap you and systematically amputate every last one of your fingers and toes, without anesthetic. I will then force you to watch a continuous loop of 7^th Heaven reruns while drinking the hottest hot sauce known to man and having your body continually scrubbed with steel wool and thumb tacks. Do I make myself clear? Oh, I almost forgot, the CW is also seriously considering canceling One Tree Hill, another show I watch regularly, even though I’m not nearly as attached to it as I am to the other two shows. Still, this is like a new coach taking over an NFL or NBA team and systematically trading away or releasing every single player who was brought in by the team’s former regime, simply to get rid of any guys that aren’t “his” guys. The CW should be ripped from the airwaves for even considering the moves I’ve just mentioned, and if you think I’m joking about those threats, Ostroff, try me, b*tch, because I’m very much not kidding.