- Did I not just say at the beginning of this week that college football coaches should strongly consider asking not to be ranked in the Top 5 in any of the polls? Before this current weekend began, that advice was proven sage when for the third consecutive week, the second-ranked team in the country lost and saw its national title hopes dashed. The University of South Florida hadn’t even spent a full week as the #2 team in the country when they traveled to Piscataway, N.J. and saw their undefeated season go up in flames after a 30-27 loss to unranked Rutgers thanks to a handful of special teams trick plays. Their chance to crash the BCS party and beat out some powerhouse programs for a title shot ended when the Bulls couldn’t stop the passing game of the Knights – check that, the passing game of the field goal holder and punter for the Knights. Those two threw passes on trick plays, one leading directly to a Rutgers field goal and the other resulting in a Rutgers touchdown. That loss opens the door for Boston College to slide up into the second spot in the polls, something the Eagles can’t f’up simply because they’re on a bye this week. Not playing may be the only way to ensure that the curse of the #2 spot doesn’t get you, although the way this season is going, even a bye might not be enough to outrun that jinx.
- Kudos to you, angry loggers and citizens in Castelos dos Sonhos, Brazil, for your verrry enlightened and not at all angry mob-like response to eight Greenpeace members who tried to leave your town with a scorched tree trunk to use in an exhibit on global warming. Really, hats off to all of you for surrounding these eight environmental activists en masse and refusing the let them leave. Plus, bonus points for forcing them to have police and army soldiers protect them and keep them secure at the makeshift headquarters of the federal environmental agency. Look, I know that their mission and the expressed purpose of their organization runs contrary to your way of life, especially the loggers, but you can’t surround them and threaten to do really bad things to them just because they want to take a single scorched tree trunk with them from your town. Unless one of you owns that tree trunk and has a legal claim to it, I don’t think you can prevent them from taking it, especially if your government doesn’t have a problem with it, which they apparently don’t. Nice restraint, though, on leaving your torches, pitchforks, tar and feathers at home for this little demonstration. By the way, you do know that everyone else in the civilized world (well, everyone outside of W. and his cadre of dimwits in his administration) already know that global warming exists and that excess logging is a big contributor to the problem, right? These Greenpeace activists aren’t going to suddenly expose this shocking new problem and finger you as the chief culprit. So cease and desist on blocking their way out of town, turn around and return to your homes. You’re not going to prevent anything here, other than preventing everyone else from thinking of you as something other than a bunch of small-minded, enraged lunatics who can’t handle a little environmental activism.
- I don’t blame Ellen Degeneres for crying, I just don’t think it’s having a dog she gave to her hairdresser’s family repossessed by the kennel she bought it from that should make her weepy. Crying because of that hideous, mannish, looks-like-it-was-cut-with-a-lawnmower do? Sure. Crying because she will go down in history as the title character in one of the worst sitcoms of all time? Yeah. Crying because your former girlfriend, Anne Heche, left you and decided to start playing for the other team, i.e. dating men? Why not. But Degeneres’ act on her talk show when detailing how she bought a puppy from the Mutts and Moms kennel, kept it for two weeks and then gave it away after deciding she couldn’t care for it was just pathetic. You shouldn’t be that broken up about anything dog-related unless your pet is seriously injured, gravely ill or passes away. This dog is still alive and well, so stop crying on national TV about how it’s not fair to the family and to the kids that this dog was taken away. Compounding the pathetic-ness is the response from the viewers of Degeneres’ show, which was surprisingly University of Florida football fan-like. Just as UF fans phoned in bomb and death threats to the owner of an impound lot who called the cops on Florida football player Tony Joiner after an incident in which Joiner broke into the lot to steal back his girlfriend’s car, viewers of Ellen Degenerate’s show are now calling in bomb threats to the owners of the kennel that she bought the dog from. Marina Batkis and Vanessa Chekroun, owners of the kennel, have received deathand arson threats via email and voice mail and have come under such intense scrutiny that they’re having a hard time conducting the business of their volunteer, nonprofit rescue agency. Hey losers watching the Ellen show, just because you inexplicably worship and hang on the every word of some loser talk show host with a bad haircut and a predilection for public weeping doesn’t mean it’s ok for you to track down the contact information for a volunteer animal rescue agency and besiege it with death and arson threats just because they acted according to their policies and took back a dog when the person who purchased it violated that contract. You may not like what they did and it may seem heartless to you, but that doesn’t give you license to turn the lives of the volunteers who run that agency into a living hell. Back off, losers, you are pathetic.
- It was a short ride for you in Atlanta, Joey Harrington, but I just want you to know that I was pulling for you. The oft-maligned quarterback, a man who was the third overall pick in the 2002 NFL Draft but failed miserably in X seasons with the Detroit Lions and then spent X seasons toiling fruitlessly for the Miami Dolphins, has now lost another starting job, this one with the hapless Atlanta Falcons. Initially brought in to serve as the backup to dog murderer and compulsive gambler Michael Vick, Harrington was thrust into the starter’s role once Vick was suspended for the year by the NFL and plead guilty to federal felony charges. Knowing that they had a journeyman, mediocre quarterback who was totally new to their team under center, the Falcons and new coach Bobby Petrino couldn’t have had too high of hopes for this season. But however low those hopes, Harrington clearly failed to reach them because six games into the season, he’s been yanked as the starter….in favor of a player who didn’t even join the team until four weeks ago and was released before the season by the Jacksonville Jaguars, Byron Leftwich. Harrington and his 63.1 percent completion rate, 1,279 yards, four touchdowns and four interceptions go to the bench and Leftwich replaces him at QB. I feel bad for Harrington (not too bad, he’s still made millions in the NFL) because he seems like a genuinely good guy, a high-character individual who has never been in trouble with the law, never violated the league’s substance-abuse policy and been a good teammate at all three of his stops. In spite of that, my man Joey has not lived up to expectations in the NFL and at this point, I have a hard time seeing him getting another starting spot in the NFL. Sure, he can hang on as a career backup, but when you come into a situation where a team loses its franchise quarterback, probably for good, hands you the starting job and does so with remarkably low expectations for the season and you still can’t get it done, that doesn’t say anything remotely good about you. Maybe I’m wrong, I hope I am, but Joey, it looks like you just wasted your last opportunity to be a starting, productive NFL quarterback. Petrino has already stated that he intends to keep Leftwich as the starter for the remainder of the season, so Harrington should get comfortable carrying a clipboard and relaying signals from the sideline, because that’s where he’ll be spending his time during games from now on.
- If ever there was a group that shouldn’t have a greatest hits album, it’s the Spice Girls. They have less hits than web pages offering free nude photos of Rosie O’Donnell and William “The Refrigerator” Perry yet here they are trying to rip people off by taking 11 of their hack songs from previous albums, mixing in two new musical atrocities, and trying to pawn the whole shabby collection off as their “re-entry” into the music world. The Spice Girls: Greatest Hits will be available in Victoria’s Secret stores beginning Nov. 13 and will also be offered on the store’s website at that time. Its date for dispersal on the rest of us is Jan. 15, meaning there’s still time to organize a top-secret mission to find all those discs, destroy them and destroy all original recordings and files from this debacle. Also, guys may have always felt a little uncomfortable walking into a Victoria’s Secret with their wife or girlfriend, but now we have a legitimate excuse to not want to go in that place. Heck, all you women might want to do all your Victoria’s Secret shopping online for the next few months, because starting Nov. 13, when you walk into one of their stores, you risk having your ears assailed with one of the 13 crappy concoctions from this CD. You just know that since V.S. is in bed, corporately speaking, with the Spice Hacks, that they’re going to be pumping this CD in all of their stores the instant it goes on sale. For those of you wishing to enlist for that secret mission to destroy all materials involved in this horrific album before it gets into anyone’s hands, drop me an email and we’ll talk strategy.
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