Uptight administrators at Princeton, a black market for Twinkies and a show cancellation that doesn't upset me

- Hey, finally a new show that I didn’t get into got canceled, sweet! The new series drive, a supposedly fast-paced story of a cross country race featuring a collection of characters from different walks of life, was yanked after only two episodes by FOX, which has to be close to setting a new record for the brevity of a TV series on network television. I’ll be honest; I only watched a few minutes of the show and found it to be pretty bland, scatter-brained and uninteresting, and most of America was equally unimpressed with it as evidenced by its abysmal ratings. However, I am super pumped that finally a show has been unceremoniously dumped from the airwaves and it’s one I didn’t actively follow. I think, though, that networks should be forced to create promos for the cancellation of new shows in direction proportion to the amount of hype and promos they cranked out promoting the shows before they debuted. If a network runs promos for two months for a new show and fills them with exciting clips from the show and quotes from critics raving about how great it is, that same network should have to put together promos on the show’s cancellation featuring clips of the atrocious dialogue, bad acting and half-baked action sequences that made the show so unwatchable. Mix in a few scathing critiques of the show from those same critics who now hate the show and you’ve got a suitable punitive measure for the networks for foisting such an unwatchable turd of a show on us. If you spent two months telling me how amazing New Show X is and that I absolutely must see it, then you can spend two months after you cancel it admitting that you were wrong and that the show sucked.

- Here’s proof positive that some people get what college is supposed to be about (fun, freedom and experiencing new and different things) and some people don’t. First, we have a campus administrator at the hallowed, ivy-covered Princeton University shutting down this year’s campus milk chugging contest because he claimed the 30 participants were causing too much of a ruckus as they downed 1 percent, two percent and chocolate milk. Yeah, because that’s a real concern on campus is too much noise being made in a dining hall. It’s a freaking college campus, Mr. College Administrator, so remove the stick from up your butt and learn to relax. Unless the students are spiking their milk with gin or vodka and smashing dining room chairs over one another’s heads, you need to leave them alone. Let them drink milk, and let them drink it in massive quantities so we can know who the true champion is on campus. As for those who do understand what college is supposed to be about, a trio of University of Maryland professors decided to have a little fun at the expense of a colleague who had previously taught at Duke before coming to UM. Right before the first Maryland-Duke men’s basketball game of this past season, the three pranking professors stole a Duke lawn chair from the office of this professor and began hitting him up with ransom notes accompanied by pictures of the chair in “compromising” positions. The prank culminated last week when the three pranksters burst in on one of their colleague’s classes and held a mock trial for the chair for its “crimes.” The chair was found innocent on all charges by reason of insanity, in case you were wondering. Why can't we have more professors and college officials like this, and less like the anal, uptight prick at Princeton? I would have loved to have profs like these three for my college classes, it might have made subjects like geology and politics in Third World countries slightly more palatable.

- Vaya con dios, Mark Prior. The perpetually injury-plagued Chicago Cubs pitcher is officially done for the 2007 season, courtesy of his most recent shoulder surgery. Prior is also believed to done with the Cubs, period if you believe analysts who predict that at the end of this season, the team will cut Prior loose and move on with players who can actually stay healthy. It’s sad to see it end this way for a guy who was supposed to be an annual 20-game winner, but it’s the right move for the Cubs. General manager Jim Hendry offered this nugget of optimistic, sunny thinking about the situation: “Dr. Andrews feels comfortable that he will still have a career.” Wow, that’s incredibly inspiring, that Prior can still “have a career.” Dr. Andrews would be James Andrews, the renowned surgeon who performs operations on many athletes with major ligament and joint injuries. According to a statement from the good doctor, Andrews performed a debridement of Prior's rotator cuff and repaired labral and capsular injuries in the shoulder. I’m no doctor, but that doesn’t sound good because any time the rotator cuff is involved in a surgery, that’s a major problem. Hendry obviously can't come right out and say that Prior is done with the team because teams are always tight-lipped about these sorts of situations, but Prior is a near-lock to be jettisoned by the Cubs after this season. The team cannot keep throwing money at a guy whose health continues to deteriorate and who can’t even stay healthy at age 26.

- The Recording Industry Association of America has been on a lawsuit rampage the past year or so, unleashing its legal fury on college students who continue to give the middle finger to federal piracy laws by “illegally” downloading music files. I use quotation marks for the word illegally because I still contend that if you have a music file and you want to share it, you should be able to without penalty. Still, the RIAA persists in haranguing college students (like they’re going to get any money from broke college kids) and the Director of Student Legal Services at North Carolina State University is coming to the aid of students who are being sued by the RIAA. She is offering legal counsel to the students as they fight the lawsuits, which is good because: 1) the lawsuits are bogus, and 2) when you’re dining on ramen noodles, sleeping on a broke-down futon and digging through your dirty clothes to find something semi-wearable because you don’t have the change to go do your laundry, you really can’t afford to spend a couple hundred bucks an hour paying for

an attorney. Oh, and the RIAA can sue all it wants, but it is not going to ever bring an end to illegal downloading and sharing of music, because I know there are millions of people like me out there who aren't going to abandon the practice.

- When Congress comes after your Twinkies, moon pies, Ding Dongs and Mountain Dew, you know civil rights are under attack. Sadly, that’s exactly what may happen to our nation’s youth as Congress has asked the Institute of Medicine to develop new nutritional standards for foods and beverages for sale in the cafeterias of our nation’s schools. Amidst fear that our uber-fatty population is comprised of too many chubby children, Congress has decided that not only should foods and beverages regulated under federal school lunch program standards be subjected to nutritional scrutiny, but foods sold out of school vending machines need to be evaluated as well. But isn't that part of the fun of being a kid, eating junk food and being able to wolf down pizza, Doritos, cupcakes, candy bars and ice cream and not feel guilty about it? I’ll concede that America is disgustingly fat, but it’s not fair for Congress to legislate healthy eating. If they can take away our Ho-Ho’s, what can't they rip from us? Americans need to eat healthier, but it needs to be their choice to do so. Kids who aren't old enough to know better need to have parents or guardians who explain to them that having a double chin is a bad idea. Setting new standards for the amount of calories, fat and sugar in any food sold in schools is only going to cause problems. You’ll create a black market for Twinkies and those little powdered donuts and have kids selling a six-pack of mini Oreos out of their locker for an inflated price of $5. Fifth graders nationwide will be jumping fellow students in back hallways and beating them up for the Ring Dings that they brought from home because the school will no longer sell them. Is this the kind of mayhem and violence you want on your conscience, Congress? I think not………

- Every single sports analyst, show host, critic or commentator who has spent more than two seconds debating the dragged-up-from-the-dead issue of Curt Schilling and his bloody sock from the 2004 playoffs is an absolute moron. Who the hell cares? It was three years ago, it has nothing to do with the outcome of any games and it’s a freaking sock! No one is being accused of cheating or doing anything to affect the result or integrity of the game itself, so who gives a crap? If it’s blood on the sock, paint, ketchup, strawberry juice or horseradish sauce, it doesn’t freaking matter! Oh, and did I mention it was three damn years ago? I don’t care who said what, who alleged what and who is lying here. Everyone who devoted airtime to this story or does so in the days ahead is an absolute sucker and a total joke and should be ashamed of themselves. If any of them can tell me what relevance this has to Major League Baseball in the here and now, or even how it affected the outcome of any game in those 2004 playoffs, I’ll admit it’s a valid topic to discuss, but since there’s no possible way for that to be true, I’ll just go ahead and figure everyone I’ve just described is as dumb as I have described them to be.