Wednesday, September 05, 2007

Is Mike Vick in Addis Ababa, is a Wisconsin football player in trouble with the law and is Larry Craig quitting on being a quitter?

- This is a new one. I’ve heard of college football players being academically ineligible to play, being suspended from the team for disciplinary reasons and players missing games due to injury, but up until now I’ve never heard of a player not being able to play in away games because the judge in their battery case won’t allow them to travel across state lines. University of Wisconsin running back Lance Smith won’t be able to travel with his teammates when they head to road games at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas, Ohio State, Penn State, Illinois and Minnesota because he’s currently facing battery charges and is not allowed to leave the state. On a side note, props to UW coach Brett Bielema for allowing Smith to remain a member of the team in good standing even though he is facing such serious charges, because you’re not going to become a national championship-caliber team unless you’re cultivating a culture of criminal behavior, general thuggery and recklessness. You need some solid criminals and accused criminals on your team if you aspire to be an elite program. I’d just love to be in the coaches’ meetings during the weeks of away games for UW, because you know it’s going to escape someone’s memory that Smith cant travel with the team. “Let’s see, depth chart for running backs this week, I figure we’ll have P.J. Hill in for about 85 percent of the plays and maybe we can work Smith in for – what’s that? Smith isn’t playing this week? Why? He’s healthy, he’s been doing well in practice all week….oh, he’s under court orders not to leave the state? Damn, I forgot about that.” Just another reason to love college football…..

- Duuuuuuuude, I though SoCal beach bums were supposed to be mellow, man. Isn’t it s’posed to be about chilln’, soakin’ up rays, catchin’ some gnarly waves and gettin’ a good tan? Apparently some Labor Day partiers on a beach in San Diego didn’t get that memo, because their holiday party got so out of hand that the cops were called and had to come in with their riot gear, smoke and tear gas to restore order. There were beer bottles and cans being thrown and general chaos on the beach, which I don’t see as a major problem unless someone was in physical danger as a result. However, some concerned citizen or member of the beach security guard unit called the disturbance in to the cops and this melee resulted. Sixteen people were arrested for their roles in the fracas, with most of them set to face charges of fighting and public intoxication. I’m all for having a good time on Labor Day, having a few pops and hanging out at the beach, but mass arrests tend to put a damper on the festivities. Also, please note that although riot gear was broken out by the police, this does not fall under the heading of an approved riot/protest in my unconditional support of protests and riots worldwide, because this was nothing more than a party that got out of control because a few knuckleheads got all fueled up and couldn’t keep themselves out of trouble. I don’t think these guys and girls were protesting anything, except the policemen’s orders that they put down their beer and stop throwing their bottles and cans.

- The only thing worse than being a quitter is to be a quitter at quitting. Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, is reconsidering his decision to resign from the U.S. Senate following a guilty plea on charges of lewd behavior in a public restroom at the Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport. He announced earlier this week that he would resign on Sept. 30, but according to his spokesman Craig is now reconsidering that decision. “We’re still preparing as if Senator Craig will resign on Sept. 30, but the outcome of the legal case in Minnesota and the ethics investigation will have an impact on whether we’re able to stay in the fight – and in the Senate,” Craig’s representative Sidney Smith stated. First off, good use of the collective pronoun on that on, Sid, “we” are going to see if “we” can stay in the Senate. I do so love it when people use that word, “we,” and they actually have little or nothing to do with whatever it is they’re talking about. But anyhow……I don’t want to sound hypocritical, because I am on record as saying that I didn’t think Craig should resign based on a guilty plea to a misdemeanor, no matter how sexually perverted that misdemeanor was, but now that he made an offical statement that he was going to quit, he needs to stick with that decision. No one likes a quitter, L., but if you are going to quit something, stick with that quitting decision and don’t quit on quitting. It’s like a double negative in a sentence; it’s just not no way to do things. I don’t care what the Senate Ethics Committee says, if you didn’t want to quit then you shouldn’t have said you would. So take your sexually perverted, lewd-behaving, quitting a** and get out before the rest of the Senate kicks you out.

- Even thug rappers can’t get away with acting like, well, thug rappers. The Game, whose real name is Jayceon Jerrell Taylor, has been ordered to stand trial on felony gun charges after he allegedly pulled a gun on another player during a pickup basketball game at a South Los Angeles educational center. That’s right, this moron pulled a gun at a place where there are tons of kids around, all because he didn’t like how another dude was playing. To be fair, Taylor didn’t go for the gun first; he actually punched the opposing player first before retrieving the gun from his Cadillac Escalade and threatening to shoot the man. Taylor now faces charges of making criminal threats, possession of a firearm in a school zone and exhibiting a firearm on the grounds of a facility for minors. Look, Game, I know as a rapper you’re more into clubbing, ballin’, ho’s and Cristal, but just because you’re not really a role model for kids doesn’t mean that you can go pulling your piece out on a dude at a pickup basketball game on a school playground. Even you have to know better than that, my man.

- Did I miss something here? As part of his plea deal on federal dogfighting charges, was Michael Vick sentenced to serve time in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia? Oh, you mean to tell me that authorities in that city are just going to kill thousands of dogs and Vick isn't involved? Seriously? Well if he isn't involved he should be, because as everyone knows, when you need some dog-icide done, he’s the guy you call. But instead, officials in one of Ethiopia’s largest cities will be looking to combat rabies in their city before thousands of tourists descend next week to celebrate the Coptic millennium. They plan to kill the dogs by feeding them strychnine-laced meat, clearly eschewing the hanging/drowning/electrocuting/slamming-to-the-pavement-til-dead methods that Vick and his cohorts in the Bad Newz Kennels operation favored. Clearly city officials in Addis Ababa feel like they have too many stray dogs on hand and they don’t have a doggie octagon handy to pit them against each other in brutal dog fights, so the poisoned-meat strategy is the next best choice. I have no idea what the Coptic millennium is, but I’m guessing that having thousands of rabies-infested dogs roaming the already crowded streets of your city, terrorizing terrorists would be bad. Just goes to show you that there are still many countries in the world that do not view dogs in the same respected light that most Americans see them in.

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