- That was quite a kickoff party the NFL threw last night, wasn’t it? Umm, ok, maybe it wasn’t, I’ll admit that. First, a lame collection of musical acts including the man singing the most tired, over-played, irritating song-turned-commercial-jingle in America, John Mellencamp, a tired, Britney Spears/Avril Lavigne combo and former American Karaoke contestant, K. Clarkson and some country singer chick who’s more famous for who she’s married to than her music career (mostly because she’s a country singer and it’s hard to take any of them seriously (I think her name is Faith Hill, but since I skipped that pregame show, I can’t say for sure. Then there was the game itself, where the defending Super Bowl champion Indianapolis Colts took on last year’s feel-good story, the New Orleans Saints. Following a run to last year’s NFC title game in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the Saints are many people’s favorites to represent the NFC in the Super Bowl this year…..or they were until they found themselves on the receiving end of a 41-10 beatdown by the Colts. The Saints didn’t score a single touchdown on offense, with their only score coming on a fumble return by cornerback Jason David. Of course, David was also burned by Colts’ receivers for three of the Indianapolis touchdowns, so his lone success of the evening cant be of much consolation. However, that has to pale in comparison to the clunker of a night turned in by a Saints offense that was arguably the NFL’s most explosive last season. To be fair, the game was 10-10 at halftime, so up to that point it was at least competitive. After halftime, Colts 31, Saints 0. Way to show up when it matters most, Saints, hopefully this isn't an indicator of how your season is going to go. It ended up being a great celebration for the Colts as they unveiled their championship banner, but for the rest of us it was an underwhelming start for the NFL season.
- Now here’s a scientific study I can get behind. I actually wish I had been a part of the study done by researchers at Liverpool John Moores University, published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community health, a study of a sample of British and North American rock stars and other musicians and their premature mortality rate. It turns out, and this may shock you, that musicians tend to die much younger than the rest of the population. The study found that between two and 25 years after the onset of their fame, the risk of death for musicians was two to three times higher than that of the general population when matched up in terms of sex, age and ethnicity. What I wouldn’t give to have been a part of the research team as they sat down to study 1,064 musicians from rock, punk, rap, R&B and other genres to find out when they died and at what rate. What music fan wouldn’t love doing research on the lives and demises of Kurt Cobain, Jimi Hendrix, Elvis Presley, Jim Morrison and Janis Joplin? No, I don’t know if they broke down causes of death and figured how many were via ham sandwich (a la Mama Cass) or how many were mysterious suicide (a la Cobain). I do know that those included in the study were artists with albums in the “All-Time Top 1,000,” a survey published in 2000. The average age at time of death was 42 for North American musicians, 35 for British artists. While it’s true that this study merely confirms what we already knew, that successful musicians tend to drink a lot, do a lot of drugs and live a pretty crazy lifestyle, I still don’t mind time and research dollars being used for it. Again, the only thing that pisses me off is that no one busted me a phone call to ask me to take part in the study…..
- Since we’ve all had an overload of stories about a certain NFL quarterback being exceptionally cruel to dogs, I’m glad to hear about a different NFL quarterback acting as a friend to man’s best friend. Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger may be the leader of the arch rival for the Cleveland Browns, but he’s still doing something good for the city of Cleveland by providing a much-needed explosive detection dog, a training course and a canine protection vest for the Cleveland Division of Police’s canine unit. Roethlisberger has a foundation that will be distributing grants to police and fire departments in Pittsburgh and the surrounding areas and will also make similar gifts to the communities of each of the Steelers’ regular season opponents. When Big Ben learned that Cleveland’s only explosive-detecting dog, Rex, is 11 years old and nearing retirement age, he decided to purchase a new dog for the city. The department didn’t have the necessary funds to purchase a new dog, so Roethlisberger stepped up to meet the need. See, now wasn’t that refreshing to read a story where no dogs were brutally murdered by hanging, electrocution or drowning? Every now and then it’s good to remember that not everyone in the world is a total classless act.
- Classes have just started back at colleges and universities around the country, with most schools in their first two or three weeks of the semester. Inevitably, there are a lot of kids around the country who aren’t thrilled with the roommate that they were assigned in their dorm room. Maybe one of them is a country, rural type and the other is a Goth, or maybe one is a jock and the other is a science nerd. Whatever the case, here’s hoping that no more bad roommate matches end up with the same result as one particularly bad (and fatal) pairing at the University of Arizona. A fight between two roommates there has left one of the girls dead and the other hospitalized with injuries not considered life-threatening. The 18-year-old woman who died last week as a result of injuries sustained in the fight told authorities she suspected her roommate of stealing from her. I get that you’d be very upset if you thought some jerk you’d just met a week or two before and had to live with in close quarters for an entire year was stealing from you, but how does it escalate to the point that you get into an all-out brawl that leaves one of you dead and their other hospitalized and possibly facing criminal charges? Do they not have RA’s at the University of Arizona or university police who could help out with this? I know campus police tend to be useless, what with the fact that they’re not really real cops, but this is the kind of situation that’s right in their wheelhouse. If nothing else, file a complaint and ask to be transferred to a different room, because otherwise things are going to end badly. Even if you choose to get physical and no one is seriously hurt, you’ve just upped the animosity a hundredfold for the rest of the year. Heck, buy a padlock for everything you own, or find a storage facility nearby to stash your belongings, just don’t get into a fight with a roommate who clearly is tough enough to kill you.
- You might know it as Myanmar, but it will always be Burma to me. Those immortal words were uttered by John O’Hurley as Mr. Peterman on Seinfeld, but they were the first thing that sprang to mind when I heard of an unusual anti-government protest march held in Myanmar on Wednesday. The protest was unusual because of who was staging it, namely a group of Buddhist monks. I’m not up on my Buddhist monk knowledge, but I believe these guys take a vow of silence, not exactly the optimum condition under which to stage a protest. Still, Martin Luther King Jr. proved that you can take a stand without being violent and physical, although I do happen to love protests with looting, pillaging, plundering, brawling, burning of cars and property destruction. The monks held their protest march in the central town of Pakokku and only halted their efforts when soldiers fired warning shots and arrested several of them. While the absence of the above-mentioned riot techniques does cost the monks points, they do earn some back for the multiple arrests. Also, most good protests are anti-government because let’s face it, governments are corrupt, often-oppressive entities that usually fail to serve their stated purpose. If citizens don’t speak out and stand up against their governments when they fail or take the wrong path in a given situation, government officials might get the misguided notion that they are actually right. So props to my Buddhist monk riot/protest pals for doing their part in their own way, good job fellas.
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