- Good news pedophiles and sexual predators worldwide, MySpace will now offer a free service on mobile phones that will allow pedophiles, er, users, to add photos, friends and blog entries to their MySpace pages from their mobile phones. This means that all you sexually deviant freaks looking to pick up teenage girls and use them to fulfill your twisted fantasies can now do so without having to spend hours sitting in front of the computer screen. Not surprisingly, advertising revenue will support the service, which means that you’ll be bombarded with ads from every direction whenever you use this program. Also, the service will be available on all carriers, meaning that no pedophile will be left behind – unless of course you can’t afford a cell phone for some reason. I’m actually leery of adding new features to cell phones, but for a very different reason. We’ve already seen how difficult a time many people have not acting like total morons when they have a basic cell phone used just for making calls. They make total asses of themselves talking loudly in restaurants and movie theaters, they drive 10 miles per hour below the speed limit in the far left lane because they’re more focused on their phone calls than their driving and they have their phones ring at the most inopportune times in the most inconvenient places. Now you want to add yet another service to distract people and consume their attention when they can’t handle the most basic phones without being a total nuisance? Go for it, MySpace, just know that the result of your new service is going to be about 98 percent negative, 2 percent positive at best.
- Nice try, Mike Gundy. Your meltdown after your team’s game on Saturday was entertaining and amusing, but it leaves you looking like a ginormous ass clown who isn’t all that smart and doesn’t have the first clue how to deal with people who write or say something critical about you or your team. In case you haven't heard Gundy’s rant, the Oklahoma State football coach came in to his postgame press conference following his team’s dramatic 49-45 win over Texas Tech Saturday and instead of talking about the game itself, went on a three-and-a-half-minute rant against Jennifer Carlson, a columnist for the Daily Oklahoman who wrote an article heavily criticizing the toughness and on-field performance of OSU quarterback Bobby Reid. Gundy ranted and raved about how three-fourths of the story was inaccurate, yet the next day refused to clarify what the errors were. He also seemed OK with the fact that he ignored a big win for his team in favor of pursuing his own personal vendetta against Carlson based on what she wrote. If I didn’t know better, I’d say those were the words of a nervous coach who realizes that his perennially underachieving team could cost him his job if it continues to post subpar seasons. LSU coach Les Miles spoke out on a similar topic last week when he criticized writers for writing about injuries to LSU players, saying that didn’t help his team and that they weren’t being respectful to his program or seeing things his way. These guys need to realize that writers aren’t there to congratulate them, help them recruit or paint their teams and players in a positive light. What coaches, can people only write and say positive things about your players? Are we all here to pat them on the back, gloss over their shortcomings and tell them that everything is all right no matter what? Good grief, Carlson didn’t call Reid a racist, a murderer, a rapist, a war criminal or anything else that terrible. She portrayed him as a mentally fragile guy, a mama’s boy who can't quite get it done on the field. From where I sit, even college athletes are acceptable targets for criticism as long as it involves their on-field performance and related issues. If Carlson had delved into Reid’s personal life and snooped around, that’s over the line. But she didn’t, and it sounds like Gundy is just pissed because information from inside his team was leaked without his knowledge. He lashed out at the recipient of that information and looked like a jerk in the process. He can hide behind the guise of defending his player and saying Reid is just “a kid,” but he needs to know that this “kid” is 21 years old and is in no way, shape or form a “kid.” He’s an adult in every legal sense, so stop acting like this is Pee Wee or junior high. Gundy might be finding supporters among fellow coaches and ignorant fans who think that the media is out of control and irresponsible, but not here will he find that kind of support. He’s a hothead and a below-average football coach who is going to find himself on his way out of Stillwater, Okla. sooner rather than later based on the season his team is having.
- It’s been a banner 24-hour period for athletes on the police blotter. Yesterday afternoon, Mike Tyson plead guilty on charges of drug possession and driving under the influence stemming from a traffic stop last year as he was leaving a club in Scottsdale, Ariz. That incident took place on Dec. 29, so once again it’s reassuring to see the American legal system work in such a swift, expedient fashion. Tyson might have saved himself some of the time he would have spent in jail by admitting to driving while impaired and possessing cocaine rather than fighting the charges, but County Attorney Andrew Thomas still wants him behind bars. “Mike Tyson is a repeat offender with a violent past. I believe only a prison sentence will send the right message and properly protect the public.” Sentencing is set for Nov. 19, so Iron Mike still has a few weeks of freedom left. However, I’m pissed at him and am rooting for him to receive the full four years and three months in prison allowable under the law. My opinion has nothing to do with Tyson’s continual unlawful behavior, the fact that this is the third different state in which he’s been convicted of a felony or the fact that he once bit off part of a man’s ear in a boxing match. I don’t care that Tyson confessed that he uses cocaine whenever he can get his hands on it and that his favorite method is taking the tobacco out of cigarettes and replacing it with blow. No, what truly angers me is that he’s wasting all of this money on drugs instead of using it to finish off that gnarly facial tattoo he started several years ago. Don’t tell me you’re not intrigued to see what that bad boy would look like fully done, because you know that it would rock. Right now it looks like a half a face covered in a random mass of lines in some sort of weird tribal armband pattern, but if taken to completion, I’m confident it would look like an entire face covered in a random mass of lines in some sort of weird tribal armband pattern. You’ve still got two months before sentencing, Mike, so put down the blow and use your remaining money to finish the tat. Either that, or once you get into jail, have one of your fellow inmates finish it for you, either way is OK by me. Also on the athlete crime front, news came down Tuesday that Michael Vick and his three co-stooges in the Bad Newz Kennels dogfighting ring have been indicted on state charges for essentially the same crimes that led all four men to plead guilty in federal court last month. The district attorney in Surry County, Va., was careful to avoid bringing any charges that would duplicate charges already brought against Vick and Co. by the feds, sticking to the actual dogfighting aspect instead of animal cruelty and gambling. Once again Vick’s lawyers are expected to seek a plea deal, one that would allow any jail time on these state charges to run concurrently with whatever time Vick gets for the federal charges. I, for one, hope that doesn’t happen because Vick has done nothing to deserve leniency and he deserves to spend as much time behind bars as the law allows. Not only did he commit multiple crimes and do so willingly and deliberately, he then lied to everyone who would listen for as long as he could before finally realizing the he was screwed and scrambling for whatever plea deal he could get. I’m looking forward to your sentencing hearings, Mike, both of them. I’ll be the one waving a pennant and holding the sign reading: “Stick it to Vick.”
- I wanted to see if the new CW series Reaper was going to be as bad as it looked from previews and promos. Shockingly, it was worse. Or maybe not so shockingly, because after all, it is a new show on the Crappy Watching network, so it would be a shock if it didn’t suck. Everything that could be bad about this show is. Ray Wise, who plays the devil, is supposed to be one of those charming, roguish bad guys that is funny and entertaining even though he’s fundamentally evil. However, Wise comes off as annoying, his jokes fall flat and you find yourself wanting to reach through the screen to smack him. Sam, the show’s protagonist, is (I think) supposed to be sympathetic and we’re supposed to root for him as he comes to grips with the reality that his parents have sold his soul to the devil and that he’s the devil’s indentured servant in returning escapes souls to hell. Let me pause to say how absolutely moronic that plot point is; before Sam (XXXX) was born, his father was deathly ill and the devil offered he and his wife a deal that would restore his health but allow the devil to take possession of their firstborn’s soul when he turned 21. Then, the devil paid off the gambling debts of the couple’s doctor and in turn the doctor had to lie and tell them they couldn’t have children. They ended up getting pregnant and voila, the devil has his new helper. That might be the single most idiotic and far-fetched plot point I’ve ever heard of and the race isn't even close. What makes the show worse is that it vacillates back and forth between comedy and drama, flailing vainly in both worlds and making for a thoroughly regrettable hour of viewing in the process. With new shows, you sometimes know in the first episode that you’ve stumbled onto something great (Heroes, Veronica Mars, Gilmore Girls), with some, you like what you see but it takes a while to really get into it (Alias, Lost), but with shows like Reaper, it’s easy to tell in the first episode that you shouldn’t waste any more of your time on the show.
- Does the NFL have a secret division whose sole purpose is to snuff out any semblance of fun, individuality or free spiritedness from the league, and to ensure that the ginormous stick lodged up its collective butt remains firmly in place? I’m 99.9% sure that this division not only exists, but that it is the single most productive and efficient part of the entire league. Every frakkin’ day the NFL seems to come out with some new rule or edict to rip another aspect of fun out of the game, and today that energy is directed at none other than cheerleaders. Tuesday the league office sent out a memo to all teams informing them that their cheerleaders would no longer be permitted to warm up in front of or in the immediate vicinity of opposing teams’ benches, because apparently this tactic is (or would be) such a distraction to opposing teams that they couldn’t possibly cope with it. I’m almost not sure what to attack the NFL on first in regards to this issue, but let’s start with the fact that the league puts its stamp of approval on nonstop suggestive commercials that air during its game and has crank-enhancer drug companies as its top sponsors constantly. Or how about the fact that every time a game comes back from commercial, there’s a ground-up shot of a buxom, bouncing cheerleader shaking her pom-poms and also the shiny, shimmering things in her hands too. Sex is in and around everything the NFL does, yet there’s a huge problem with some glorified strippers doing their stretches near the opposing team’s bench? Look, if a player is so rattled by seeing some 36-24-34 blonde in a skimpy outfit to calisthenics that he can't get it out of his mind and go out half an hour or an hour later and focus on playing the game, then I don’t think that’s the kind of guy who is qualified to mow lawns for a living, let alone play in the NFL. Is this really the kind of thing you want your league to be focused on and known for, making sure that some scantily clad skank doesn’t do calf stretches too close to the bench of opposing teams. It’s not as if the cheerleaders are sneaking video cameras onto the sidelines and using them to film the cheer signals being sent in by the other team’s cheerleaders, after all……
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