Tuesday, March 27, 2007

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.

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