Two Catholic-related stories rolled into one, bad news for Las Vegas and good news for N.Y. music fans

- In the interest of conserving a little space while still giving ample coverage to two Catholic related stories, I’m combining the following two topics. First, a controversial New York City sculptor has enraged many Catholics by creating a nude 6-foot chocolate Jesus during Holy Week. Cosimo Cavallaro used 200 pounds of dark chocolate for the sugary creation, but the lack of clothing has riled up many in religious circles. Call me cynical, but I’m guessing that this kind of outrage and controversy is exactly what Cavallaro was after in creating this sculpture. If no one made a fuss about it and ignored it, his reach for attention by concocting the odd and impractical work of art would have gone for naught. However, those outraged Catholics could solve their problems by moving to…….(awkward transition to second part of this story) Ave Maria, a special Cathol-a-centric town in southwest Florida being built by Domino’s Pizza founder Thomas Monaghan. The basic gist of the community is to “espouse traditional Catholic values” (so probably no nude 6-foot chocolate Jesus statues) and to provide a place for like-minded citizens to enjoy one another’s company. Originally, Monaghan had stated that Ave Maria would ban birth control, pornography and abortion, but he has since backed away from those claims. Whether you like the concept of a religious town or if you think, as some detractors have said, it’s a “Catholic Disney World”, you have to admire Monaghan using the ruse religious ideology to sell expensive homes and make himself a real estate fortune. What, you thought that this was some altruistic venture and he was doing good, charitable work? Riiiiiiiight………..with homes reaching a price level of $600,000 something tells me this is more about the green than about the God.

- For the time being, online porn will have to stick to using the conventional “.com” label. The board of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers rejected a proposal to lump all of the sick, degenerate freaks of the online porn world into an address format ending in “.xxx”. The label would have been voluntary for porn sites, but members of ICANN worried about who would be charged with deciding what type of content would qualify a site for the .xxx designation. ICM Registry LLC was the company making the proposal, and the 9-5 vote against matter means that no similar proposals will be allowed before ICANN for quite some time. This means you’ll just have to be your own judge on which sites might be porn-related, and as always, words like the following might tip you off: juggs, tits, nude, lesbian action, threesome and barely legal. Something tells me that if you use those words prominently on your site or to advertise it, you’re probably featuring adult fare, whether you have .xxx after your site name or not.

- Child safety alert, child safety alert! In a startling bit of news that I really didn’t like hearing, plastic surgery addict/child molesting (allegedly) freak/former-black-man-turned-white-woman Michael Jackson is now living in Las Vegas. Like the rest of America, I felt a lot better knowing that Jack-O and his freakery were living abroad, but now he’s back in America. Right now would be a good time for Las Vegas (or the state of Nevada in general) to enact a terror-alert color-coding system like our national security color system, except this new system would be for child safety. Parents and guardians of young boys need adequate warning when Jack-O is coming to their area or will be out and about, lest they inadvertently put their son in harm’s way. No word yet on whether Bubbles the chimp has moved to Vegas with Jack-O, nor is there any information about plans to build a new Neverland Ranch in the middle of the desert.

- C.B.G.B.’s may have closed due to a rent dispute in October and left New York without one of it’s musical meccas, but in May, the inaugural High Line Festival should be a great event for music in the city. The festival will be held May 9-19 and will include musical acts such as David Bowie and The Arcade Fire, a nice mix of old and new, as well as film, comedy and performance art. Bowie himself will be selecting musical acts for the event, so you can be sure it’ll be an eclectic and extremely interesting slate of acts. Proceeds will benefit Friends of the High Line, an organization co-founded by Bowie and one that is working with the city to transform the 1930s High Line rail structure into a park. Yet another benefit to living in the world’s most famous city, you get the chance to have festivals filled with top musical acts take place in the streets and in places like Radio City Hall and Irving Plaza.

- As an alumnus of a Mid-American Conference school (Go Akron!), I’m always rooting for the MAC to gain acceptance and recognition as a major conference, even though it continues to be saddled with the “mid-major” moniker. Well, nothing can help to establish your conference as a major like a big-time scandal at one of its member universities. It could be recruiting, it could be a booster scandal, it could be academic fraud or as in the case of the University of Toledo, a major gambling scandal involving a football player. Harvey “Scooter” McDougle Jr., 22, has been charged in connection with a gambling ring that shaved points and fixed the outcome of games for a Sterling Heights, Mich. man identified only as “Gary.” McDougle is charged with recruiting fellow football players at UT and also basketball players to the gambling operation. The case, set in Detroit, currently includes “Gary”, McDougle and others, but as of now, none of the players McDougle recruited to the gambling ring have been charged with any crimes. This is a momentous day for the MAC, and I have a feeling that we’re only one good recruiting scandal and a half-dozen academic fraud cases away from joining the ranks of the true big-time athletic conferences in college sports.