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.