'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part of W.’s speech came when he warned about a “contagion of violence” that could ensue if American troops were withdrawn, and I say amusing because you know that there is no frakkin’ way that he has any idea what the word contagion means and that it took him and a speech coach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-.