- Ron Artest is a bad, bad man. By that, I mean he’s Likes to Fight Guy, and he’s also marginally insane. You probably remember Ron Ron from the incident a couple years ago when he attacked a fan in the stands at a game against the Detroit Pistons. Even non-sports fans heard about this; it was all over the news for days, and the NBA received a lot of negative publicity and made a lot of rules changes as a result of the brawl that ensued. As it turned out, Artest attacked the wrong fan, punching out someone who didn’t actually throw the cup of beer at him as he lay on the scorer’s table in defiance of a foul call he didn’t like. His team, the Indiana Pacers, viewed him as radioactive from that point on and ended up trading him to Sacramento shortly thereafter. There have been minor disturbances since then, but over the weekend, Mount Ron Ron finally blew its top in the most clichéd of all athlete misbehavior, domestic violence. He is accused of pushing his girlfriend to the ground during an argument, then committing another crime by preventing her from using the phone to report the abuse. Best of all, though, is the fact that his girlfriend, apparently a lot braver than most of us, came right back at Ron Ron, busting the window on his Hummer with a frying pan when he tried to drive away. Honestly, I’m terrified just looking at the angry, slightly off-kilter look on Artest’s face in his mug shot, so I admire his girlfriend for being willing to come right back at him after he attacked her. We might as well go ahead and put Ron into a steel cage match with Mike Tyson now, because that’s where both of them are headed as circus freak sideshow acts. But Artest has plenty of time to think about all of this, because Sacramento has given him a paid, indefinite leave of absence from the team. Happy trails, Ron Ron, please stay away from Ohio so I don’t have to build a security wall around my home.
- For a magazine that is all about business and finance and presumably caters to smart, successful people, Forbes magazine is incredibly stupid, at least when it comes to sports. The magazine has named Minnesota Timberwolves GM Kevin McHale as the #1 GM in all of professional sports, which is the most befuddling choice since Richie Nixon and that whole Vietnam thingy. McHale is one of the most inept general managers in sports, not one of the best. His team’s record the past four years: 161-144 (a mediocre .527 winning percentage). Number of championships: 0. Playoff appearances: 1. Coaches hired and fired: 3. Despite having future Hall of Famer Kevin Garnett in his prime, McHale has continually failed to surround KG with any semblance of talent in order to win a title. He was penalized in 1998 for blatantly breaking the rules to sign overrated free agent Joe Smith to an illegal contract, and the team lost draft picks as a result. Currently, he has a guy on his team named Marko Jaric, who McHale traded for, along with a bloated 4-year contract that Jaric has validated by scoring hearty 5.2 points per game and not even being good enough to earn a starting role.
- Have you gotten more than a little tired of those Geico commercials featuring the three cavemen? You’ve probably seen the three Neanderthals (literally) who are insulted by claims that using Geico is so easy “even a caveman can do it.” Not only have those spots been run into the ground, they’ve reached such a subterranean level that they might be piercing the earth’s core any moment. Even the best ads cease to be funny and/or interesting when you see them over and over and over again. Well, ABC apparently is too clueless to realize this, because the network has actually ordered a pilot for a comedy tentatively titled Cavemen, featuring the three characters from those ads. Normally I wait until I see promos for a show to rip it, but I’m going to make an exception here. First, even without the ads, this show would be an abysmally awful idea. A show about three cavemen? Seriously, you want to pin ratings hopes on that pile of manure? It’s so unrealistic that it’s offensively stupid. Yes, some shows (those like Heroes, Smallville, Supernatural, etc.) do require you to suspend your disbelief in order to buy into their supernatural premises, but that isn't what this is. There are no supernatural goings on here, just a trio of individuals from prehistoric times presumably living in today’s world. Any jokes or humor you could derive from that were explored in those commercials, and if there’s not enough humor to carry a 30-second ad, how in the world can you even think of building a half-hour sitcom out of it? ABC really needs to institute a stronger drug testing policy for its executives, because whoever green-lighted this one is clearly high on the ganja.
- If you can't capitalize on a national tragedy and exploit it for political gain, then what good is it? Democratic presidential candidates Barack Obama and Hank Clinton both took advantage of the remembrance of the day in 1965 when white police beat black Alabamans nearly 42 years ago at a civil rights march in Selma, Alabama to promote their campaigns by showing a “genuine” concern for civil rights and remembering their heritage. The only problem? Hank Clinton is a white person and Obama is the son of an African father and a European mother, so neither one of them knows the first thing about dealing directly with the horrible effects of slavery. Showing up for a photo op at a ceremony is as disingenuous as you can get, and seeing a picture of Obama at one end of a line of people and Clinton at the other end, looking at one another with phony, fraudulent smiles makes you’re stomach turn. I’m still overwhelmingly behind Obama and any other candidate who isn't Hank Clinton, but Barack, my man, stop being such a phony and a slick politician. It’s your nature, I know, as a politician, but if you can fight to actually be even quasi-normal and real, you’ve got a great chance at being the next occupant of the Oval Office.
- Once again, fat people are looking for 1) ways to blame everyone but themselves for eating too much and not exercising, and 2) methods to eliminate their portly, blubber-clad physiques without eating too much and actually exercising. Specifically, this story involves obesity in children, based on the fact that the number of U.S. children having obesity (gastric bypass) surgery has tripled in between 2000 and 2003. Nearly 800 children has the obesity surgery in 2003, which is disturbing on many levels. First, nice to know that parents continue to shove greasy, friend, fatty foods down their kids’ pie holes. Also nice to know that parents are able to overlook the fact that they, by and large, control what and when their kids eat and thus could help alleviate the rolls of fat around their children’s waists and ankles by giving them healthier food and making sure they get plenty of exercise and physical activity. Much easier to just wait until your kid weight 200 pounds and have them go under the knife to address the problem, though. It helps the kids to learn that they need not take charge of their own health, because there’s always a quick fix for being fat; just get some surgery. That way, they can be well-prepared to grow into the overweight adults that the rest of the world mocks Americans for being.
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