- How verrrry macho of New York Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez, sitting out last night’s game between the Yankees and Toronto Blue Jays with a “sore calf.” If by “sore calf” you mean ducking another confrontation after being thrown at by Blue Jays pitchers for two straight games, including two benches-clearing incidents in Tuesday night’s game, then I agree, his calf must have been very sore. Of course, all of this could have been avoided if A-Rod hadn’t gone bush league in New York’s last visit to Toronto earlier in the season, yelling “Ha!” at Blue Jays third baseman Howie Clark as A-Rod ran right behind Clark as he attempted to catch a pop-up. That classless, cheap and tacky move started a feud that has built up into genuine bad blood between the two teams. It’s not A-Rod’s first dirty play, either; you may remember back in the 2004 playoffs when he broke out his karate-chop move in an illegal attempt to knock the ball out of Red Sox pitcher Bronson Arroyo’s glove as Arroyo went to make a tag. Clean up your act, Alex, stop playing like a bush league loser or you really will be deserving of the bounty of criticism directed at you on a daily basis.
- Last night’s season premiere episode of The Real World: Sydney was many things, but enlightening, original and groundbreaking were not among those things. Amazingly, MTV has somehow managed to end up, once again, with a cast comprised of several character types that have become constants on every season of the show, some twenty seasons in all. There’s the big, strong, athletic guy who all the female roommates love but who has a cute girlfriend back home that he’s vowed to be faithful to. Then you have the hot, overly horny girl who flirts with every male roommate and will undoubtedly hook up with a minimum of a half-dozen guys during the course of the season. Another of the female roommates fills the role of the chick with the cartoonishly big rack who likes taking her top off and giving the censors something to do. Next is a socially and culturally stunted redneck with an accent so thick you can barely understand half of what he says. Oh, and don’t forget the overly sensitive, thoughtful roommate who acts pissed off when the rest of the roommates act like the college kids that they are. In other words, this season is going to be a carbon copy of every other season of the show that has preceded it, but it has the built-in advantage of knowing that at least it can't suck any more than last season’s reunion of the Las Vegas cast.
- Stabbing a teammate in the leg doesn’t normally entitle a person to catch a break, but former University of Northern Colorado punter Mitch Cozad has caught one nonetheless. Today, Cozad was convicted of second-degree assault but acquitted on attempted first-degree murder charges stemming from a 2006 incident in which Cozad, at that time the backup punter at UNC, stabbed starting punter Rafael Mendoza in the leg because Cozad couldn’t beat out Mendoza on the field for the starting gig. Cozad didn’t deserve leniency or to catch a break, but dodging that double-murder bullet has to feel pretty good. Still, had ‘ol Mitch adhered to rule No. 854 in my seminar manual for aspiring criminals (i.e. make sure that the potential punishment for a possible crime is in reasonable proportion with the value of what you hope to gain by committing the crime), he could have avoided all of this. After all, when the potential “reward” is the uber-prestigious starting punting job at Northern Colorado, the only crime worth committing is jaywalking. Enjoy your time in the slam, Mitch. You’re already an expert at shanking unsuspecting people, so you should have a head start on the other inmates.
- You’re not helping your case, Harry Potter dorks. Everyone that is mocking you incessantly for standing in line outside bookstores at midnight waiting for the release of the new Potter book, dressing up like characters from the book despite the fact that most of you are 48-year-old corporate accountants and for generally having no life is starting to look very smart for that mocking. When some random French teenager spends dozens and dozens of hours translating Harry Potter and the Deathly Swallows into French so he can post it online less than three weeks after the book’s release, the words dork and loser are actually two of the kinder, gentler terms that could be applied to you. The unidentified 16-year-old spent a night in jail because of his hijinks and now he may faces intellectual property violation charges, although prosecutors in the Aix-en-Provence say that the teen did not appear to be seeking financial or commercial gain through his efforts. Hope that was worth it, dork, going to jail for a night as possibly going on trial for the sake of a fictional wizard.
- If the terrorists really want to cripple the city of New York, they don’t actually need guns, bombs or other weapons. All they really need is lots and lots of water, because that was enough to send the city into utter chaos yesterday. When more than two inches of rain fell during two hours in the morning, the resulting mini-floods and chaos were startling. Outside Shea Stadium in Queens, a layer of water that reached up to the bottom of the doors on passing pickup trucks was a major hazard. On the island of Manhattan, CBS’ The Early Show was thrown into disarray because of the heavy rain, with the show’s normal studio plagued by a leaky roof that had staffers scrambling to cover over valuable equipment, flooded the studio floors and sent water rushing into a control room packed with electrical equipment. The show was hurriedly moved across town and took place at the vacant CBS studio used by Katie Couric for The CBS Evening News. Guest Stephon Marbury and a collection of models set to appear on the show to show off chic fashions on a shoestring budget had to be ferried across town by taxi, as did building materials for a home improvement segment and the show’s cast and crew. One possible side benefit of the flooding? Perhaps a few thousand of the tens and tens of thousands of rats who call NYC home were drowned, which could help the pest problem at least temporarily.
- Who will dare to oppose Russia as it stakes a claim to ownership of the riches of oil and natural gas ‘neath the Arctic Sea? Why it’s those warriors to the north, the Canadians! Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper began a three-day trip to the Arctic on Wednesday in an attempt to assert Canadian control over the region less than a week after the Russkies made their own claim. Actually, Harper’s visit had been planned long before the Russian made their claim, but in light of recent events it has taken on added significance. “The Russians sent a submarine to drop a small flag at the bottom of the ocean. We’re sending our prime minister to reassert Canadian sovereignty,” proclaimed a senior Canadian official. The United States, Canada and Norway are also in the mix for control of the region, and may I be the first to suggest that we send our very own leader to the Arctic for a……how many months until the 2008 election…..14 months, you say? I recommend we send W. on a 15-month mission to the Arctic, just to be safe……….
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