- So what kind of life does a former Olympic gold medallist and world champion sprinter live once his or her days as an active competitor are over? Not a very good one, apparently, at least if you’re using Marion Jones as an example. You might remember Jones as the woman who dominated the sprint events in the track and field world just a few years ago, including multiple Olympic gold medals. She was on top of the world then, whereas she’s making her way to the bottom of that same world right now. It came to light over the weekend that Jones is nearly broke and has only $2,000 left to her name. All the money she won from competing and all the endorsement revenue she earned have vanished, the result of what you have to assume is a continued pattern of bad decision-making that has plagued Jones for a long time now. Evidence of that bad decision-making can be seen especially in the types of people she has associated with during her career. First, she was married to C.J. Hunter, an Olympic shot putter whose career crashed and burned when he was shown to be a heavy steroid user. Jones and Hunter were eventually divorced and she took up with a new gentleman friend, with similarly disastrous results. That new beau was world-class sprinter Tim Montgomery, the man who held the title “World’s Fastest Man” at one point. However, both Jones and Montgomery were saddled with steroid allegations of their own, and Montgomery was ultimately stripped of his title and also found himself charged and convicted in an intricate money-laundering scheme. Jones continued to fight the steroid allegations, but as she fought, her career plummeted into mediocrity, with a minimal level of success on the track that best she could attain. Now, she’s burned through nearly all of her money and life is looking bleak. She’s a prime example of why, no matter what skills of speed, strength, quickness and agility and athlete may possess, the most important skill any of them can hope to have is good decision-making, because without it, their lives are all too likely to end up like this.
- Jesse Jackson is always good for livening up drab, stodgy situations, mostly because his colorful, rhythmic rhetoric and controversial stances on issues are sure to piss off the majority of people in any given situation. On Saturday, the outspoken civil rights leader was arrested in Chicago after taking part in a demonstration outside of a gun shop in a suburban community on the south side of the city. Jackson refused to move away from the entrance to Chuck’s Gun Shop in Riverdale, a community just outside the city. He was charged the criminal trespass to property because of his efforts in joining with other community activists to raise attention to the gun violence issue in Chicago. The shooting death of a 16-year-old boy on a city bus several weeks ago was the incident that sparked this particular protest and led Jackson to claim that the proximity of the gun shop to Chicago provides gang members and criminals easy access to firearms. Hats off to Jackson, he’s our Agitator of the Week. I do think it would be interesting to see a showdown between Jackson and NRA leader Chuck Heston, though………….
- So you’ve had a rough day of traveling and you’re looking to grab your bags, get out of the airport and get home or to your hotel. Maybe your flight was delayed or cancelled, maybe you missed your connecting flight, maybe that whining, annoying infant sitting in your row wouldn’t shut up the entire flight or perhaps that frakkin’ brat of a four-year-old wouldn’t stop kicking the back of your seat during the entire cross-country trek. Regardless of what made your flight so miserable, what would really make you feel better is to zip through the concourse, find your bags on the baggage carousel quickly and without hassle and get out of the *$(%#%^#%^%^@*($& airport. Imagine the utter joy and glee you would then feel if, as you stood at baggage claim, to suddenly feel a drop of water come from above and hit you in the head. Then, another drop hits you in the shoulder and next thing you know, water is raining down from above like you’re standing in downtown Seattle on one of its 344 rainy days of the year. That was the wonderful experience shared by some intrepid travelers at Los Angeles International Airport, where sprinklers went off in one of the facility’s main terminals and doused a whole lot of people. Terminal One was temporarily evacuated after a water pipe broke and set off the sprinkler malfunction, with “minor flooding” taking place in the terminal. That’s certainly a new message to put up on the flight info screens around the concourse, “Flight delayed - minor flooding in terminal.” Of course, if more than three ounces of water fell in the terminal and they weren't contained in a see-through plastic bag, the TSA agents at the security checkpoint probably confiscated them and didn’t allow them to board their plane………..
- Any ideas what the topics of conversation might have been yesterday at the National Football League kicked off its annual rookie symposium? This meeting is where the NFL gathers first-year players and informs them on issues (mostly off-field) that they may face and challenges they could encounter in adjusting to the lifestyle and world of the pro football. This year, my guess is that the symposium has taken on a different slant, namely one of advising players of ways to make sure they don’t get arrested and don’t end up on the wrong end of Taser blast from their local law enforcement officials. You know how you always get a binder filled with all sorts of literature and papers when you attend a conference or symposium? While I haven't gotten my hands on a binder from this symposium, I’m going to go out on a limb and say that at least 75 percent of it will be dedicated to advising players on things not to do in order to avoid being arrested, including, but not limited to: making it rain, giving alcohol to underage girls, boating while intoxicated, driving while intoxicated, biting a bouncer on the ankle at a strip club, being involved in a dog fighting ring, being caught by the cops with copious amounts of weed in your vehicle, beating up your woman, refusing to obey orders from police during a traffic stop, stockpiling enough weapons to conduct a hostile takeover of most Third World Countries, etc. The sad thing is, none of those crimes are things I just made up. All of them are crimes that have been committed by actual NFL players within the past 12 months. One would also have to assume that at least two copies of NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell’s player-conduct policy are included in the binder given to players, with all text in 24-point bold font. Here’s hoping the rookies pay attention to what they’re told, because if they don’t, Goodell is going to drop the disciplinary hammer on them and there may not be enough non-felons to populate the league’s rosters when he’s done.
- Not that there’s ever a good time for a tragedy like this, but World Wrestling Entertainment could not have had worse timing for this. WWE wrester Chris Benoit, one of the company’s most well-known performers, was discovered dead, along with his wife and young son, at their suburban Atlanta home today. The sad news comes just as the WWE was in the midst of a storyline for its Monday Night RAW show centering around the alleged demise of the company’s chairman, Vince McMahon, in a limo explosion. Instead, the WWE and its fans are left with the real-life tragic news of the death of Benoit and his family. Definitely sad news all around, but at this time no cause of death has been announced and an investigation is underway.
No comments:
Post a Comment