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.