- Wow, what a Saturday of college football. Since I watched a total of 24 games in a daylong effort that began before noon on Saturday and lasted into the wee hours of Sunday morning, I have more thoughts than I can possibly jam into a single paragraph, but I’ll try anyhow. First, there remains no better way to kick off a day of football than College Game Day on ESPN. I’m a sucker for the mascot-head stunt from Lee Corso with his weekly prediction of the game of the week, just as I’m a sucker for Miss Teen South Carolina Caitlin Upton, who ESPN managed to work into a story about Appalachian State and their upset of Michigan last week. As it turns out, Upton will be attending App State next year (yes, she was admitted, you sarcastic jerks) and so she helped by pointing out where the school is located on the map, showing a good sense of humor about her misspeak during the Miss Teen USA Pageant. Personally I would have been ok with her standing there, just smiling at the camera, but if she wants to talk, I’m fine with that as well. Speaking of Michigan, nice of UM to not show up this week against Oregon, getting trounced 39-7 at home, seeing their three star players injured and showing about as much interest as Rosie O’Donnell at a salad bar. Also in the early games I got the chance to see the lamest motivational ploy in sports firsthand in the game between the University of Miami and the Oklahoma Sooners. New Miami coach Randy Shannon has gone with the cheesy, worthless tactic of removing the player’s last names from the backs of their jerseys, a move that I think is supposed to inspire team unity by reminding players that they are supposed to play for the name on the front of the jersey, not the name on the back. It’s lame because it never works and because it doesn’t actually impact anything, other than my ability to know who the players are. Fact is, if you need to go to corny tactics like that, your team is in far more trouble than a simple sartorial switch can fix. Stop your guys from getting arrested and make sure they go to class, R., that should be more effective. I’d also like to congratulate Western Kentucky University and The Citadel for their verrrry sporting 87-0 and 76-0 victories over lesser opponents. Great job guys, way to pull back before you hit the century mark against significantly smaller and clearly overmatched schools. I draw the line at 60 points, in case you were wondering, because you can keep pushing to that point but once you get past 60 and the other team can’t score once, you’re just being classless. On the other end of the competitive spectrum there was the game between Texas A&M and Fresno State, a game that took three overtimes to finish, with A&M winning 49-47 in the sweltering Texas heat. The suspense was boosted by a lengthy replay delay in the first overtime that actually resolved in a fashion beneficial to both teams, which never happens. Also heading to overtime were Auburn and South Florida, with USF bailing out abysmally bad kicker Jose Alvarado, who was the reason the game went into overtime to begin with because he missed four short field goals in regulation, to win 26-23 on a Matt Groethe touchdown pass and stun the #17 Tigers on their home field. Hawaii also won an overtime thriller when Louisiana Tech inexplicably went for the two-point conversion in the first overtime on their home field instead of kicking the extra point and going to a second overtime, a mistake that resulted in a 45-44 loss to the Rainbow Warriors. Oh, and the reason I was able to watch a ginormously large number of games can be found in three words: Big Ten Network. With BTN added to my satellite package this week, I got eight games I normally wouldn’t have seen and I got to watch every Big Ten team except Indiana. While I worry that this pace might kill me if I attempt to continue it all season long, I’m already looking forward to next Saturday to see if I can do it all over again……
- I won't be watching Sunday night’s MTV Video Music Awards, live from Las Vegas, for a number of reasons, but this particular reason is motivation enough for any fan of real, legitimate, good music to abstain from viewing this debacle. The network that has worked its arse off to homogenize and bastardize music for two decades now will be featuring, as the show-opening performer for the broadcast, the lip-syncing, marginally insane pop tart known as Britney Spears. This nut job’s music blew before she went insane and packed on thirty or forty pounds, so I’m going to go out on a limb and say it hasn’t gotten any better since. Usually donning a naughty Catholic schoolgirl outfit and dancing like a skank isn't the high point of anyone’s career, well, unless your career is as a stripper, but it was definitely the high point for Spears. She will reportedly be performing her new single, which I don’t know the name of and have no motivation to find out. Still, Spears is assured of being the worst performer at the show, which is tough to do when other performers include Timbaland Nelly Furtado. MTV is promising that Spears will open the show in dramatic fashion and captivate everyone, which could be true, assuming everyone is captivated by something as exciting as watching a rock sit in place and with as much musical ability as a sack of potatoes. I know it’s been a long time since MTV was cool and actually relevant and unfortunately it’s not headed back in that direction any time soon, but is it too much to ask that you not resort to putting one of the biggest punch lines in music history on as the opening act for one of your signature events of the year? Not even a makeout session with Madonna could save this train wreck in the making……
- Score one for the everyman in the fight against the U.S. government’s continual blatant intrusion on the privacy of its citizens. U.S. District Court Judge Victor Marrero dealt a blow for the common man from a courtroom in New York with his ruling that invalidated several parts of the Patriot Act which would have forced Internet providers to turn over their records to the government without first notifying customers. Marrero ruled the investigators must have approval from the courts before they can turn over the records without customer notification, although the judge did immediately stay the effect of his ruling, which gives the government time to appeal. So I guess it’s a very minor victory for we citizens, but when it comes to W. and his army of ass hats and their ongoing battle to strip us of every last aspect of our privacy and rights to that privacy, you have to take any victory you can get.
- It’s always funny when a person, especially a celebrity or well-known athlete, has a revealing picture of themselves or a sex tape they’ve made that becomes public and then that person is angry, acts violated and tries to criticize everyone for talking about it. If you don’t want to picture or sex tape to come out, then don’t make them in the first place and you won't have that problem. Vanessa Hudgens does have that problem, and I’m sure that plenty of parents out there are peeved at her for it. Hudgens is one of the stars of Disney’s High School Musical and thus a hero to many teens and pre-teens who love those movies, but she also is the star of a far more revealing and far less celebrated production – a nude photograph which shows the 18-year-old actress standing naked in what appears to be a bathroom, with a red shower curtain serving as a backdrop. The picture is all over the Internet, but no worries, Hudgens’ spokesman has made a statement that should take care of all of this. “This was a photo which was taken privately,” the statement reads. “It is a personal matter and it is unfortunate that it has become public.” Yeah, because how many of us don’t regularly take nude photographs in bathrooms just for the heck of it? I think that’s something most everyone has in common – either that or it something that pretty much no one does and those who do it do so with the full knowledge that it could eventually be leaked out. Sorry, V., you seem like a nice girl, but putting that kind of ammo in anyone’s hands is a major risk because you never know when the person taking that picture may decide that they want to put it out there for whatever reason. Hey, at least Hudgens can be thankful that at the moment, Disney is denying that the mini-scandal will cause her to lose her spot in the upcoming feature film High School Musical 3. Take solace in that, V., and from now on keep your clothes on when any sort of camera is present unless you want those images going out to the whole world.
- Wow, two MTV mentions in one post, and neither one is remotely positive, can you imagine that? Well if you’ve watched much MTV lately, I’m sure you can. Clearly eager to prove that it is still working feverishly to plumb the absolute depths of the bottom of the barrel when it comes to programming, the network will soon be featuring a new reality show wherein 16 men and 16 women compete for the affections of bisexual MySpace icon Tila Tequila. Tequila, in real life Tila Nguyen, is one of those prototypical MySpace skanks with revealing pictures and 5,654 horny guys all vying for that elusive spot in her “Top Friends” portion of her page and MTV is desperate/stupid enough to give her a forum to advance her joke of a singing/modeling/acting career with the show A Shot at Love With Tila Tequila. Ahhhh, so clever, MTV, the whole pun of “shot” and tequila, you crack me up. This isn't even about the whole bisexuality issue either, because MTV has obviously done much more bizarre things than this. It’s about taking some random bimbo whose sole “accomplishment” is having a surgically enhanced body that she is trashy enough to exhibit for free to tens of thousands of desperate, horny, deviant losers with nothing better to do than cruise MySpace for hours on end and giving that bimbo a TV show. I knew the bar for getting your own show was low, but this low? What’s next, are you going to feature some of the sexual predator pervs on MySpace in their own reality series, A Shot at Being Arrested for Trying to Seduce 13-year-old Girls? C’mon MTV, even for you this is embarrassingly low.
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