- Noooooooooooooooooooo! Someone please tell me that this story about the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox talking about a trade for Minnesota Twins ace and arguably baseball’s best pitcher Johan Santana aren’t true. Santana is on the trade block for the same reason that many Twins star players have been over the years – it’s a small-market team with a miniscule payroll that can't afford to pay top dollar to elite players. Just this off-season, Minnesota let perennial Golden Glove winner Torii Hunter walk and sign with the Anaheim Angels of Los Angeles in Southern California near Disney World rather than pay him the $16-18 million per year he wanted. For the same reason, the Twins are looking to deal Santana now, with a year left on his contract, so they don’t have to watch him leave via free agency next winter and get nothing in return. Still, the prospect of seeing him go to the original Evil Empire is horrifying, because no one outside of the Bronx wants the Yankees to get the starting pitching they so badly have needed for several years. The only thing worse at this point would be seeing Santana, with his filthy stuff and 15-20 wins per year go to the new Evil Empire, the Boston Red Sox. At this point, you can't really differentiate between the two and I now hate them both equally. They have nearly the same obscenely high payroll, the same arrogant, bandwagoning fan base with the same sense of entitlement and the same uneven playing field over the rest of baseball. Reportedly there are other teams in the market for Santana, including the Dodgers and Mets, so if he is going to be traded, let’s all hope for the sake of baseball that it’s to somewhere other than Boston or the Bronx.
- The power of Oprah compels you to vote for Barack Obama! The same unstoppable force that declares war on beef several years ago and has launched many a book to the top of the bestseller lists is throwing her considerable weight behind Obama as he seeks to beat out Sen. Hank Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination in the 2008 election. I don’t have any special preference for Obama except for the preference I have for the rest of the candidates in the Democratic and Republican primaries, namely that they are not Hank Clinton. Regardless of their position on any issue, I wholeheartedly support any candidate who is not a wishy-washy, double-talking, angry, militant feminist with a butch-hairdo like Hank Clinton. The thought of that dude running our country terrifies me, so if Oprah wants to throw her support behind Obama, then it’s my patriotic duty as an American to applaud her efforts. As part of those efforts, Oprah will be traveling to Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina to make campaign stops with Obama. In September, she held a fundraiser in California for Obama that raised $3 million for his campaign, but clearly that’s not enough for a man she calls “my favorite guy.” Tickets for the campaign stops will be regulated tightly, with precinct captains and campaign volunteers getting first dibs. Volunteers can actually guarantee a ticket by completing a four-hour volunteer shift prior to the event they wish to attend. Unfortunately, I don’t think Oprah will be giving out cars or plasma TVs to everyone who comes to one of these campaign stops, so I’ll be skipping them.
- Angry French youths riot. Those are four of the most beautiful words in any language if you’re a riot lover like me. You can substitute a different nationality in place of the French, but if angry youths are rioting anywhere in the world, I’m down with it. Not many things in this world are as much fun to see as angry rioters, and these French teens clearly know how to stage a great riot. It all started Sunday when two teens on a motorbike were killed in a crash with a police car just outside Paris. Residents of the troubled neighborhood claim that police left the scene without helping the boys, a claim that police officials say they doubt but will nonetheless investigate. Of course, that wasn’t nearly enough to placate the locals and so it was time, time to riot. In stellar riot fashion, some local teens went pyromaniac, torching dozens of cars around their neighborhood and tossing Molotov cocktails to get their message across. As I always say, it’s not a real riot until property is destroyed and things are set on fire. Bonus points for the Molotov cocktails, not too many people know how to make a proper one in order to get the biggest possible explosion. Of course, you are dealing with French law enforcement/authority figures, so you probably could have waved a few sparklers at them and they would have surrendered….just kidding, French police. I’m sure you’re very tough and imposing. I just hope for your sake that your men are telling the truth about what happened at that accident scene, because if they’re not, you’re going to be dodging Molotov cocktails and putting out car fires for quite a while. Riot on, angry French teenagers, riot on…..
- Today I’d like to take a moment to salute the utterly courageous efforts of Miami Dolphins running back Ricky Williams. Williams, of course, is the tree-smoking hippie/holistic healing student who in his spare time, when he’s not suspended by the NFL for failing drug tests, plays football. He’s been away from the NFL for two years on his latest suspension(s) and spent part of his time off playing in the Canadian Football League and the rest of it traveling and training for a return to the Dolphins. A few weeks ago, the NFL finally reinstated him, with the understanding that this would be his last chance. If he tested positive for drugs one more time, he was permanently banned from the league. So Ricky returned to the Dolphins, took part in a few practices and weight-lifting sessions and made his 2007 debut Monday night against the Pittsburgh Steelers. He took the field, starting in place of the injured Jesse Chatman, and proceeded to give his team all of six carries for 15 yards before tearing a pectoral muscle on a play where he lost a fumble and was inadvertently stepped on while on the ground. That’s it, six carries and now he’s out for the season with a torn pec. Good work, Rick. I’m sure your teammates appreciate all you contributed to the team this season. You’re not around for the first half of the year as the team stumbles to an 0-8 start; you come back and can’t even last one half. On the positive side, at least this time the reason you can’t play has everything to do with something that happened on the field and not in a lab somewhere where a scientist slapped a positive result on one of your drug tests. That might be of some consolation to Williams, but his teammates are probably less than impressed. Of course, I couldn’t be happier with this development, and it’s nothing against Williams. I actually like him, he seems like a cool, laid back guy (probably has a lot to do with being high so often), and as far as stoners go, he’s a likeable one. But the reason I’m pumped about his injury is that anything that can happen to disrupt Miami’s season and keep them off balance is good news for their chances to lock up the reverse perfect season so many of us are dreaming about. You don’t go 0-16 without a lot of breaks going your way, and this is just one more break to go against the Dolphins. Stay unfocused, guys, keep not doing what it takes to win and when you’re presented with a legitimate chance to win a game, don’t take advantage. I believe in you, and so does America…..
- Thanks for your generous concession, R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., I’m thrilled that you extended yourself so far to capitulate to demands that you stop pedaling your death/cancer sticks in print ads. The death merchants at R.J. Reynolds have bowed to pressure from anti-smoking groups and members of Congress because of print ads that have been appearing in many national publications recently. The complaints focused on the fact that the colorful and feminine ads for Camel No. 9 cigarettes appeared mainly in fashion magazines and were targeted at young women, especially teens. Another of the company’s ads, a four-page spread in Rolling Stone, was blasted as eerily reminiscent of the Joe Camel ads blamed for contributing heavily to underage smoking in the 1980s and ‘90s. As a result of the outcry, R.J. Reynolds has stated that it will not advertise in newspapers or consumer magazines next year. Wow, what a magnanimous gesture, R.J. Reynolds, glad you could help. Now if you can just find a way to even things up for the tens of thousands of people who have developed lung cancer and other health problems from using your addictive products or even worse, from unwillingly inhaling secondhand smoke from someone else who’s using your death sticks, then we’ll be good. By the way, I’m still waiting for someone to show me a story, any story, of a person whose life has been dramatically improved because they became a smoker. Just as you won't find anyone whose life really took off when they became a stoner or crack addict, you likewise won't find anyone who really saw things turn around when they started choking down cancer sticks. You suck, tobacco companies, go away and stop killing people with your products.
- Did I miss something here? Since when did making illegal payments (i.e. bribes) to foreign governments to secure lucrative contracts for your oil business become illegal? Texas oil tycoon Oscar Wyatt Jr. and I were both obviously under the impression that doing business this way was a-ok, because he’s just been sentenced to a year in jail after helping to corrupt the U.N.’s oil-for-food program through his, um, innovative business practices. The 83-year-old Wyatt will now do what so few rich people ever do, especially when they’re guilty of a crime, go to jail. Again, I have to ask what the problem is. So the United Nations has a program designed to provide food to needy people around the world and this already-rich dude took advantage of it to make even more money for himself at the expense of those far worse off. If we start quashing the entrepreneurial spirit of every person who wants to bribe foreign governments and corrupt U.N. food programs, we’re going to seriously cripple our nation’s economy. Lighten up, federal government, since when did illegal business practices hurt anyone, huh? Oh, wait….never mind on that one……
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