- I told you so. I said a few days ago that there was still time for more college football players to be suspended or declared academically ineligible by their teams before their respective bowl games, and so it is. Two more teams have lost players because they ain’t enough smarter to stay eligible. Michigan State, set to play Boston College in the Champs Sports Bowl, has lost five players, including defensive standouts SirDarean Adams and Jonal Saint-Dic, as well as reserves Terry Love, T.J. Williams and Abre Leggins, while Texas A&M, facing Penn State in the Alamo Bowl, loses defensive end Michael Bennett to the dreaded academic eligibility monster. On the one hand, you feel bad for the teams because they have players they’re counting on to make contributions in their most important game of the year and now they don’t have those players, but on the other hand, there’s just no excuse for a player being ineligible, ever. There is far too much academic help available to them and college classes are not nearly hard enough for these guys to fail, especially given the fact that most of them aren’t taking graduate-level astrophysics courses. The only way you end up academically ineligible is if you don’t give a crap about classes and you don’t try to pass them. Academic troubles aren’t the only hurdles for college footballers, either; staying out of jail is proving problematic as well. You might remember the story of Penn State players Chris Baker and Navorro Bowman, a story that ends with them kicking the living sh*t out of a fellow student at a campus hangout after the student made the mistake of accidentally bumping into a PSU football player as they passed near the Hub. Bowman, Baker and several other players surrounded this guy and beat him down, which has resulted in criminal charges being brought against them and also in their suspension from Penn State’s Alamo Bowl appearance on Saturday. I was counting on all you college ballers out there not to let me down and to come through with more suspensions, ineligibilities and other knucklehead behavior before this season ended, and you didn’t let me down. Way to go, guys!
- Who doesn’t love those wacky pranksters who strike during the holiday season and steal pieces from the Nativity scene set up at their local church? Heisting baby Jesus is always good for a laugh, except apparently in the city of Bal Harbour, Florida. There, those responsible for overseeing the local Nativity scene have decided to strike back at pranksters who stole the baby Jesus statue from the manger even though it was bolted down. These enterprising fun-lovers didn’t let some bolts and screws stand in the way of their fun, so now the people who oversee the Nativity scene have taken things up a notch. The new baby Jesus statue will be equipped with a GPS system, as will the Mary and David statues used in the display. Why Jesus needs a GPS, I don’t know. He is God in the flesh, so he always knows where he is and he created the whole world, so why he needs a global positioning system and a satellite to inform him where is he confuses me. Either way, the holy GPS will be put in place to prevent future pranksters from ripping baby Jesus from the manger, although I don’t think that’s going to stop them, what with the fact that they know the GPS is there and they can just remove it, and also because they don’t want to actually possess the stolen statue, they just want to take it from the manger scene. They can smash the thing to pieces and throw it out the window of their car for all they care. But go ahead and waste your money on that GPS system, Nativity scene officials, if it helps you sleep better at night.
- And here I was thinking that YouTube was only for losers and stoners with too much time on their hands to post juvenile, amateurish clips of themselves doing stupid things and parodies of popular songs, shows, movies, etc. Not so, it appears. No, YouTube is also for aging monarchs who wear funny hats and have too much time on their hands as well. Queen Elizabeth II, the 81-year-old monarch of England, has launched her very own Royal Channel on YouTube, with the debut of the channel being yesterday. She plans to use the site to send out her annual televised Christmas message, archive footage of herself and of other royals and of course, her very own parody of Michael Jackson’s Thriller starring Prince Charles as the King of Pedophiles, er, Pop. Ok, so I made that last one up, but tell me you wouldn’t watch that clip on a loop for hours on end if it were available…..
- In this holiday season, I’d be remiss if I didn’t stop and wish all of you a very happy….Festivus. Yes, in a tribute to Frank Costanza of Seinfeld fame, I’m pulling the aluminum pole out of the crawl space. There’ll be no decorations, because I find tinsel distracting. We will, however, be performing the feats of strength, which means Festivus is not over until one of you pins me. Also, we’ll be starting the Airing of Grievances soon, where you gather your family members around the dinner table and tell them ALL THE WAYS THEY HAVE DISAPPOINTED YOU IN THE PAST YEAR! As you know if you’re a Seinfeld fan, Frank Costanza created Festivus when he was Christmas shopping years ago for his son George and came to blows with another man as they both reached for the last doll on the shelf at the same time. As Frank reigned blows down upon the man, he realized that there had to be a better way, and so Festivus was born as an alternative to all that is wrong with Christmas. It’s a Festivus….for the rest of us. So Happy Festivus to all of you, make sure you celebrate accordingly…..
- Sometimes I have the unpleasant duty of informing people of obvious truths that they are in denial of. This is one of those times, and the people I must inform about their state of denial are parents of extremely obese children around the United States. A new survey conducted by researchers at the University of Michigan asked parents of uber-fat kids their opinion of their child’s weight. A disturbing 43 percent of the respondents said their child was “about the right weight,” with an equally disturbing 37 percent saying their child was “slightly overweight.” Again, these kids are classified as obese and extremely overweight by established standards of the medical community, yet these parents don’t see that their kids are (in my best Mike Gundy voice) FAT! Memo to you, parents of fat kids: Your kids aren’t the right weight and they aren’t even close. You may love them more than you can explain, but condoning their obesity isn’t loving them and it isn’t good for them. Your flabby son or daughter is at an increased risk for diabetes, high cholesterol, high blood pressure and other heart problems down the road because you can’t show them the tough love to make them put down the Twinkies and start getting some exercise. Stop being part of the problem, parents of fat kids, and start doing things that will actually help your child live past 45, i.e. feeding them healthy foods and getting them some exercise.
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