- It’s not looking good for the Juice. Yet another co-defendant in the Las Vegas burglary case against O.J. Simpson has rolled on the former Heisman Trophy winner and double murderer (allegedly), meaning that two of the cohorts the Juice recruited at that wedding reception have turned on him. Hard to believe that guys he just met at that reception and talked into committing a crime with him aren’t showing more loyalty. Of course, with the Juice, you never want to count him out when it comes to criminal charges against him. The prosecution may have two of his co-defendants ready to testify against him, they may have several other witnesses also ready to finger O.J., they may have an audio tape of the alleged burglary wherein the Juice is threatening people and barking out orders and they may have O.J. himself admitting that he was in the room and took items from the people in that room, but that doesn’t mean they’re going to convict the man. Personally, I think he’s made some Robert Johnson-like deal with the devil wherein he can be the worst guy ever, act like a totally classless, arrogant jerk, commit as many crimes as he wants but never suffer any consequences here on Earth. The prosecutors in his murder case had all kinds of physical and circumstantial evidence against him as well as his slow-speed freeway escape attempt to present to jurors and they still couldn’t secure a conviction. Maybe this time will be different because the case won't take place in front of the idiotic, surgically-enhanced, vapid group of morons that you usually get for criminal trials in southern California, but I doubt it. The Juice is the new Teflon Don, so until he’s formally convicted and locked behind bars for 5-7 years in one of those snazzy orange prison jumpsuits, I refuse to believe that he’s in real trouble.
- The Hardee’s chain of restaurants clearly has one main goal, namely finding new ways to jam as many calories and as much unhealthy crap into their food as humanly possible without having to offer a free angioplasty and quadruple-bypass surgery with each meal purchase. Hence we have the new heart-stopping Hardee’s breakfast burrito, a 920-calorie, cholesterol-laced monster that contains two egg omelets filled with sausage, bacon, diced ham, cheddar cheese, hash browns and sausage gravy, all wrapped in a flour tortilla. I actually think my cholesterol count just jumped 90 points just writing that last sentence. The Country Breakfast Burrito, which should probably be called the Heart Attack-Inducing Burrito instead, is now available at your local Hardee’s, although if you plan on eating it, you should plan on walking, running or biking to the restaurant and back to help offset the calories and also eating nothing but carrots, celery, rice cakes, apples and tofu for the next two months to balance out the fat and cholesterol you’ll be ingesting. Happy eating, everyone. Yeah, but it’s such a big mystery why so many Americans are so grossly obese and out of shape……
- And another one bites the dust. Led Zeppelin, long one of the only major artist in music for the past half-century or so not to make their catalog available digitally, will finally relent and join the rest of us in the 21st century. While you can already get Zep’s music on CD and thus rip, er, um, listen to the tracks that way, their music has, up to this point, not been available through online music retailers like iTunes. That will change as of Nov. 13, thus leaving the Beatles as one of the only remaining legends in the business not to have their work available digitally. Again, you can always borrow, er, buy a CD and rip your own digital copies, so it’s not a big deal from where I sit. Of course, among current acts, Radiohead still refuses to get in bed with iTunes, but even they have their latest album, In Rainbows, available for download from their website, www.radiohead.com. As for the Beatles, who remain in analog-land, their catalog is partially owned by that pervy pedophile Michael Jackson, so it’s hard to tell if or when Beatles music will find its way to the digital realm, perhaps the next time Jack-O is accused of child molestation and needs to sell off some of his assets to pay for his legal fees.
- So Larry Craig is now trying to take back his guilty plea in the lewd behavior case against him in Minnesota. Sorry to have to point this out, L., but that’s not really how it works, my man. You can’t just slam everything in reverse and erase every single part of this utterly regrettable saga, then go back to how things were before you signaled an undercover cop in an airport restroom for some sexual freakery. First you plead guilty and promise to resign from the Senate, then you renege on that promise to quit. Now, you’re asking a the Minnesota Court of Appeals to overturn a ruling by a county judge who said that you cannot withdraw your guilty plea. Did you not understand when you plead guilty and promised to resign from the Seante that those were things you needed to follow through on? The guilty plea especially is something you really can't take back. It’s as if Craig thinks he was not in his right mind and reflexively entered that guilty plea and promised to quit, then regained his wits and in a panicked state tried to reverse everything he’d just done. What’s next, L., are you going to try and talk that undercover cop into believing that you didn’t really signal him for some lewd sexual activity in that airport restroom? Sorry, but no matter how many interviews you give with your wife by your side and how much you continue to insist that this is all some sort of mistake, you can’t change what you did or how you handled it. You are where you are and you need to stop trying to tell us that the sky isn't blue, water isn't wet and that you didn’t really mean to plead guilty.
- I’m not going to bite on Blender magazine releasing its list of the 40 worst pop lyricists of all time, mostly because those lists are totally arbitrary, subjective and designed to get attention and create controversy. Why do I care what some a-holes at Blender think, anyhow? Can’t I listen to the music for myself and decide what’s good and what’s bad? This isn't some foreign language or intricately complicated subject that I can’t possibly understand on my own, so I need the “experts” to decode it for me. Besides, any list that contains such a contradictory group of artists as Paul McCartney, Jon Bon Jovi, Alanis Morrissette, Jim Morrison and Common isn't worth much. Some of those artists are good, some are terrible, but Blender feels that Sting is the worst of them all when it comes to lyrics. Personally his grating, breathy voice irritates me more, but whatever. Either way, just know that your list is completely irrelevant and totally pointless, Blender.
- Fans and pundits who are in an uproar over Manny Ramirez latest comments need to check themselves, because there’s absolutely no reason to be that upset about anything a professional athlete has to say, short of them dropping a racial, ethnic or sexual slur or saying something like Hitler was right and the Jews deserved it. Other than those takes, nothing that flies out of the mouth of your average pro athlete should carry that much weight with anyone. Asked about his team’s challenge in Game 5 of the American League Championship Series, Man Ram responded, in typical Man Ram fashion, “If we don’t win, it’s not a big deal. It’s not like it’s the end of the world, there’s always next year.” Keep in mind that this is a guy who never, ever speaks to the media during the season, so when he does, people listen up, even if the odds are that he doesn’t have much of value to say. Those who are looking to vilify Man Ram are using these comments as ammo to say that he doesn’t care about winning and that he’s not giving his best, but if you look at his numbers, you’ll see otherwise. He’s hitting .462 for the series, he’s gone deep twice and three times he’d driven in runs with bases-loaded walks. Not only that, his defense and base running have been unusually solid, so regardless of what he says, he’s clearly playing hard. Too many fans and critics expect every player to be a maniacal, bloodthirsty psychopath, hell-bent on winning and thinking of nothing else. They want players’ worlds to begin and end with their sport, forgetting that these players are people just like they are and that their lives don’t end when they leave the stadium or arena and that the players have families, friends, interests and passions outside of their sport too. Man Ram is right, if the Red Sox don’t win the series, the world will not end and there are a million things that could happen, both positive and negative, to any of the players in this or any other series before their next game that would remind them how totally inconsequential sports truly are in the big picture. They’re only words, people, and they’re not even racist, sexist, heinous, degrading of anyone, bigoted, obscene, explicit or otherwise over any line. Man Ram is not belittling anyone, he’s not slandering anyone and you all need to relax.
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