- Just because I’m a sports junkie and watch ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNEWS and ESPN Classic incessantly doesn’t mean I’m down with every show, segment and new idea the Worldwide Leader has. Sometimes, they come up with a new SportsCenter segment or gimmick that I absolutely loathe, then they compound the issue by giving control of that segment to Stuart Scott and the hideously butchered bastardization of the English language that he speaks. The current target of my ESPN ire is “Who’s Now?”, a terrible gaffe of an idea that is so abstract and out in left field that it took me all of two seconds to pause, take a look and say, “Aww, screw it, this idea sucks!” The concept, and it’s still really fuzzy so I’ll do my best, is to factor in things like on-field success, marketability, popularity, ability to make a good fondue, tendency to have a bad case of morning breath and ability to complete Sodoku puzzles and come up with an athlete who is the most “Now,” whatever the frak that even means. Having Stu Scott speak his gibberish-ese into the camera only compounds the problem. Now, this segment has become one of the parts of SportsCenter (right up there with any talk about auto racing, NASCAR and horse racing) that I make a point of not watching. The only now I’m concerned about as it relates to “Who’s Now” is wishing that this whole shtick would end now so I can get back to actually wanting to watch one of my favorite shows on TV.
- She’s been freaking dead for ten freaking years, people! Every time I see another $&#%$&%#^! special, concert or investigation into the death of Princess Diana, I feel the need to scream that at every person involved. The woman is dead, she’s been dead and since she died, a lot of other people, famous people even, have died as well and I don’t see concerts or shows in their honor. Good grief, the woman didn’t cure cancer, bring peace to the Middle East or win a Nobel Prize and yet because she was a member of a decaying, only-for-show monarchy in a small island nation in Europe and died in a car crash, everyone insists on continuing to focus on her like she’s a combination of Gandhi, Mother Therese, the pope and Martin Luther King all rolled into one. The latest dog-and-pony show in honor of Diana was a concert over the weekend where a bunch of sucky musical acts sang, her two sons spoke to the crowd and viewers with no friends, no hobbies and no sense of self-respect tuned in on VH1 to watch. Hacks like Nelly Furtado and Duran Duran performed at the concert, held on what would have been Diana’s 46th birthday. Note to Price William and Prince Harry, Diana’s sons: Holding a public concert for your deceased mother isn't cool, it’s creepy. Birthday parties are for people who are still alive. If you want to gather the family for a private event, that’s cool. If you want to hold a special service at her graveside to honor her, that’s also fine. But having N. Furtado sing Man Eater……….well, that’s just dumb. That song is enough to ruin anyone’s birthday, living or dead. The bottom line is that Diana is gone and the sooner people start facing up to that and stop trying to act like she was the greatest poet/humanitarian/philanthropist/philosopher/warrior/savant ever, the better off we’ll all be.
- The box office champion this past weekend? None other than an animated rat, Disney’s Ratatouille took the top honors, grossing $47.2 million and edging out its competitors. Another big story is the precipitous drop in earnings for the crap-tastic Evan Almighty, which brought in $15 million, down 52 percent from its opening weekend. The movie’s producers had hoped to rake in $175 million in profits, but given the fact that even the theatrically simple, lacking-in-good-movie-taste public is treating the movie like it’s the most offensive piece of cinematic crap since Gigli, those hopes look like they’ll be dashed. Also worth noting is the $4.5 million total posted by Michael Moore’s new movie Sicko, good for ninth place in the box office standings but with one significant caveat: that’s an amazing total for a documentary. For a normal film it would be a subpar opening weekend, but for a documentary about the deplorable state health care has been allowed to sink into under the inept leadership of W., it’s a great total. But overall, not a strong weekend in terms of new movie openings, because when Live Free or Die Hard is considered the “blockbuster” for a given weekend, going to the theater is about the eighth or ninth best thing to do with your time on a Friday, Saturday or Sunday.
- Props to England for killing two big problems with a single shot. England became the final country in the United Kingdom to join the 21st century and drop a smoking ban on the entire country. In so doing, British officials also unwittingly took a major step towards solving another major issue in their country: the absolutely atrocious state of the teeth in the mouths of British citizens. There are jokes made about the disgusting state of British chiclets in so many movies and TV shows for a reason; your average Brit sports molars, canines and incisors that are a nasty shade of yellowish-brown. By banning smoking, which has a fantastic ability to expedite the yellowing process for teeth (as well as turning your face into a leathery mess resembling a used baseball catcher’s mitt), the British government has inadvertently helped many of its citizens avoid both lung cancer and nasty teeth. The new smoking ban is so extensive that it even includes Buckingham Palace. Of course, if you’re taking a trip around Europe for vacation, you can actually make up for the secondhand smoke you’ll miss inhaling in Britain simply by spending an extra day or two in France or Greece, so no worries.
- On very rare occasions, you wish really hard for something and it actually happens, usually about as often as Pauly Shore releases a watchable movie (OK, a little more often than that). For millions (AND MILLIONS) of baseball fans worldwide, that wish was to see the pudgy, arrogant, self-important mercenary Roger “Pocket Rocket” Clemens fall flat on his fat, ugly, steroid-bloated (allegedly) face in his return to the team with a fat, bloated payroll of aging superstars that everyone loves to loathe, the New York Yankees. A month in, everything is going according to plan. After a brief surge of competency, the Yankees have returned to their underachieving ways, having lost 9 of their last 11 games to fall to 37-40, a hulking 11 GB of first-place Boston and in third place in the American League East. And what of the would-be savior, Clemens, and his return to the mound for the team he once lied to about retiring and then jumped ship to Houston? That piece of crap is a verrrrrrry impressive 1-3 with a 5.30 E.R.A., meaning that he’s done exactly 0.005% of what the Yankees are paying him $1 million per start to do. He had his first start pushed back several days due to a groin injury and has pitched like there’s something wrong with him ever since. No, Yankee fans, there is no second-half surge on the way for your mediocre team and its broken down “ace” and all of America is going to spend the rest of the baseball season laughing our butts off at the absolutely suck-tacular season you’re putting together.
P.S. So what are the Yankees doing to get their season back on track? Lighting their equipment on fire right on the field, of course. At least that’s what relief pitcher Scott Proctor is doing. After yet another dreadful outing (yes, I know Yankee fan, they’re all blending together right now), Proctor proceeded to haul some of his gear out onto the gravel area near the home dugout at Yankee Stadium and set it ablaze. Rumor has it that he lit the fire from the smoldering remains of the fire he’d created when he entered the game, doused the infield with gasoline and started flicking around lit blue tips to send the team’s chances of winning up in flames. Proctor attempted to downplay the whole pyromaniac episode by saying that he’s done the same thing numerous times before, which makes me feel a lot better. What’s more reassuring than a player who likes to set fire to things when he doesn’t play well? Proctor’s assertion that his burning of equipments lightens the mood is nearly as funny as it is scary. If burning things makes him feel happier, what does he do when he’s really pissed? Create a homemade bomb and blow up a car? Find the forest nearest his home and light the whole thing on fire? Yes, it’s a decidedly good time to be a Yankee Hater………
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