The EU knows what makes you fat, I know who not to attack when rioting and AirTran doesn't know what it's doing

- Whoopsie! You might remember that not so long ago, a hazardous and highly dangerous industrial chemical found its way into some pet food and forced a massive recall of the product. It turns out that the very same chemical also was used by a Toledo company that manufactures ingredients for feeding livestock, fish and shrimp. Thus, your recent trip to the local seafood restaurant just took on a slightly dangerous tint. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced that Tembec BTLSR Inc.’s use of the chemical melamine was the first known time that a U.S. company had used this particular ingredient in animal feed. Fortunately, it doesn’t pose a major health threat to anyone who ate meat from an animal fed the contaminated food, but it is comforting to know that the regulatory bodies governing what can and cannot be fed to creatures that we intend to eat is being so strict about what they allow those creatures to be fed. Why not just toss some strychnine and rat poison in while you’re at it, because eating your shrimp, fish taco or hamburger just isn't as thrilling or satisfying if there’s no threat of serious illness and/or death, right?

- Well, well, the American justice system really does work better for the rich, amazing. A millionaire couple from Central Islip (Long Island), N.Y. accused of keeping two Indonesian women in their home as slaves were able to buy, er, temporarily re-attain their freedom by posting a $3.5 million bail that comes with a few conditions attached. Varsha Mahender Sabhnani, 53, and her husband Steve (kidding), Mahender Murlidhar Sabhnani, 51, are subject to home detention, phone taps and 24-hour surveillance, but other than that they’re free as a bird until trial. The couple operates a worldwide perfume business out of their home on Long Island, which they can presumably continue to due after buying their way out of jail, and they thus prove that if you’re rich, you get your own special brand of justice in America. Now I know you’re saying, “Hey, most people can get bail, so what’s the big deal?” Well, not everyone can plunk down $3.5 million for bail, most people end up going to some greasy, slick bail bondsman and working out a deal that way. It must be nice to be able to scratch a $3.5 million check and walk out of jail, that’s for sure.

- I’ve never understood music fans’ fascination with Prince, nor do I subscribe to the theory that he’s some musical genius/savant who transcends musical genres and is a quasi-deity in the music world. To me, he’s some freak show who sings like a woman, dresses like a mix of a leftover from the 1970s, a pimp and Fez from That 70’s Show and whose music assaults my ears in a distinctly unpleasant way. His lyrics are bizarre, as is his fascination with changing his name to a symbol and back again, as is the fact that he went Picasso on a house he rented from NBA star Carlos Boozer last year and painted freaking purple stripes and swirl patterns all over surfaces on the property even though it wasn’t his, prompting Boozer to sue his androgynous arse. Now, though, I think a more apt description of Price would be this: sellout and corporate b*tch. The enigmatic rock star formerly known as Some with a Shred of Credibility left is using his new fragrance (not, no Eau de Bizarro) 3121 as a platform to go corporate and give any idiot willing to shell out $250 the following package: a bottle of the fragrance, a ticket to a “special” concert to be held at a Macy’s store in Indianapolis and a ticket to his concert the same night at the Target Center in Minneapolis. Umm, I could be wrong, but isn't playing concerts at malls and department stores what you’re supposed to do when you’re a musical nobody, not a supposed megastar? And I should correct myself, that deal is not available to just anyone with $250, it is for the first 1,400 suckers, er, people, to throw away their money for this offer. Personally, if I want to see some crazy dude with a high pitched voice sing crappy music, I’ll just buy a crushed velvet suit from the local thrift story, a tank of helium and pay some homeless dude on the street to put on the suit, suck down the helium and sing weird songs with dumb lyrics. Thanks for nothing, P.

- Life just isn't getting any better for Mike Vick, and he’s starting to get dinged with a few small hits of justice that are about to turn into a giant crap storm of trouble. As it turns out, there are more than a few snitches, er, informants coming forward to point the finger at Vick as a major player in the world of dog fighting, and a couple of anonymous law enforcement officials say they believe there is now enough evidence to secure an indictment against the Atlanta Falcons quarterback. Whether that evidence is enough for a conviction is another matter, but investigators are still digging, so stay tuned. Also, AirTran, the company on whose plane I shared a ride with Vick last year from Atlanta to Virginia Beach, has dropped Vick as a spokesman in light of the troubling accusations against him. Why, I’m not sure, because I think if you polled AirTran customers, they would be pumped to have a guy who trains dogs to kill each other and pits them against one another in vicious, brutal, violent death matches as the spokesman for the airline they fly. What says “great travel experience” like two dogs being trained up as killing machines and fighting one another to the death? C’mon AirTran, don’t listen to the naysayers, there’s still time to reverse your decision before some other airline that loves animal violence and cruelty snatches M. Vick up.

- Riot time, riot time! (I really need some theme music for this segment, perhaps something along the lines of what YouTube sensation Ronald Jenkees could put together, can we got Jenkees on the phone?) The score for the following riot is what you would officially term a rout for the bad guys, with the scoreboard reading: Indonesian Marines 5, Civilians 0. The marines shot and killed five people on Java Island Wednesday during a violent protest over a plot of land whose ownership is being disputed between the citizens and the military. If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it thousands of times: When rioting, it’s best not to direct violent outbursts at the best armed, most well-trained individuals in your area who are willing and able to shoot and kill you if you come after them. I appreciate the effort by the Indonesian rioters, I really do, but the goal, folks, is to keep as many anti-establishment, free-thinking rebels around as possible, and your getting killed doesn’t help us accomplish that.

- Thanks for not making Americans feel so alone, Europe! The top health officials for the European Union announced this week that more than half of the adults in EU nations are overweight or obese, making Europe a great companion for the ginormously, disgustingly fat population of our own United States. What’s truly awesome about the EU study is that factors cited in the obesity epidemic are things like diets based on sweet and fatty ingredients combined with lack of physical activity. Umm, and this is a revelation in what sense? Eating sweets and fatty foods then not exercising makes you gain weight? I didn’t see that coming. What about drinking copious amounts of beer and eating five meals a day, will those things also make you gain weight? A hearty salute to Markos Kyprianou for those fascinating, revealing insights into what makes people fat. With top-notch analysis like that, the EU should find out a way to lick this obesity problem in no time at all.

A 4-H pageant scandal, a sickening reality show and Mischa Barton apparently doesn't know basic chemistry

- Rarely do I get to speak on behalf of the NFL commissioner, so let me say how much I value this opportunity to utter the following statement on behalf of the esteemed Roger Goodell: “NO.” That pretty much sums up what the response is going to be when Goodell gets around to making an official statement about the NFL Players Association’s request for him to shorten the one-year suspension of Tennessee Titans cornerback Pacman Jones, so I thought I would save Goodell the trouble. The Players Association’s contention is thus: “Your suspension of Jones without pay for the entire 2007 season is clearly excessive and much greater than discipline imposed upon other players for the same or similar incidents,” the NFLPA said in a letter to Goodell on May 23. No, NFLPA, what’s excessive is a freaking dozen run ins with the cops the past couple years, including two (soon to be three) incidents in which Jones was charged with crimes. Also, if this tool had shown any remorse, any contrition or taken responsibility for his actions, Goodell might have considered slightly lessening the suspension. Instead, Jones maintains that he’s some sort of victim, and that’s a load of crap that the commish isn't interested in hearing. Seriously, after seeing Goodell’s act and swiftness to bring the hammer of justice down, Jones and the NFLPA had better just shut up now before Goodell gets even more pissed and extends the suspension to two years.

- It’s about frakkin’ time. Finally, a university president is willing to actively advocate the implementation of a playoff system for college football. University of Florida president Bernie Machen has headed to the annual Southeastern Conference business meetings with a plan to push the idea of a playoff system among his SEC brethren. Machen has been trumpeting such a plan since December, when he worried that his school’s team wouldn’t make the national championship game, a fear that ultimately proved unfounded. Still, the other university leaders in the SEC appear ignorantly opposed to Machen’s idea, with people like Ole Miss chancellor Robert Khayat uttering the idiotic, prepackaged reply of, “We are opposed to extending the football season deep into January. We are aware of the wear and tear on football players over a four-month period.” Bull freaking sh*t, Mr. Khayat. Football isn’t a three-month sport and you know it. With spring practices, year-round conditioning and the like, football is an all-year sport, as are many other college sports. It’s not about academics, strain on the student athletes or any other B.S. the powers-that-be are selling as excuses. The reality of it is that those in charge are getting filthy rich off of the current system and thus have no motivation to change it, so even though a playoff would be 1) fair, 2) workable, 3) logical and 4) adored by every college football fan around, the good ‘ol boys in charge of college athletics are going to resist every effort to make such a system reality.

- So Mischa Barton hasn’t been too productive since leaving The O.C., and now I think I know why: she’s a ginormous lush. Barton was rushed to an L.A. hospital after mixing booze with antibiotics, which even a ditzy actress has to know isn't a good idea. Unless she was trying to recreate the dramatic scene from the first season of The O.C. where her character OD’d on booze and pills and nearly died, Barton just looks like one of the dumbest people in America for not knowing that pills + booze = disaster. Of course, I can't say as I’ve heard of one major success she’s had since her run on FOX’s former hit teen drama ended, so being rushed to the hospital after a bender might be the only was she’s going to get any attention, other than dating spoiled rich guys who use way too much product in their hair, of course.

- I’m all at once proud and sickened to report that the second most offensive and despicable concept for a reality TV show, right behind American Karaoke, is going to go forward. The Dutch network BNN has overcome objections, legally, ethically, morally and dignity-wise, and won the right to air a reality show called The Big Donor in which three contestants in need of a kidney transplant will fight for the needed organ to be given by a 37-year-old woman suffering from inoperable brain cancer. The woman will choose from the three contestants after they compete in various tests and also after hearing interviews with them and their families. BNN is trying to tell everyone that their goal is to promote awareness of the need for organ donors, but that lame story doesn’t lessen that nauseous feeling in the pit of my stomach. Basically, you have three people trying to poach an organ from a terminally ill woman and openly rooting for her demise so they can get the kidney. BNN is no doubt seeking the attention and notoriety it is already getting from the show, and in the process human dignity and decency are the big losers.

- Beauty pageant scandals are becoming increasingly common, and quite a few pageant queens have been forced to cede their crowns because of misbehavior and misconduct, but I believe this is the first time I’ve ever heard of a girl being stripped of her title as a 4-H club queen. For those of you in metropolitan areas, 4-H is an agricultural and livestock club for kids where they raise animals and are involved in related activities. The queen in question is Kate Mills, 20, a student at Michigan State University who could lose her crown and has been suspended from 4-H after being charged with animal cruelty when authorities removed seven dead lambs, a dead horse and three malnourished dogs from her family’s farm. And oh yeah, Mills is a freakin’ preveterinary student at MSU, which makes her offenses all the more egregious. Her parents and brother are facing the same charges as Kate, but how ironic is it for a girl who’s a member of a club that promotes animal welfare and nurturing, a girl who is aspiring to someday be a veterinarian, to be a part of such blatant animal abuse? That’s not going to be good for business if Mills ever does become a vet, because “Bring your treasured family pet to the vet who once had a dozen dead animals on her family farm as was charged with animal cruelty” doesn’t exactly draw in the customers, nor does it fit all that well on a business card. Might be time to consider a new major, Kate, perhaps pre-law, as that might come in handy for you and your family.

Karma for the Yankees, karma for Elisabeth Hasselbeck and undeserved suffering for fans of good music everywhere

- Irony is great, especially when it’s coming back to bite the New York Yankees in the arse. On the same day that their would-be savior for the 2007 season, Roger “Pocket Rocket” Clemens made his third much-ballyhooed minor league rehab start, this time at AAA Columbus, with overwrought, intense media coverage of every single pitch, the big-league Yankees suffered yet another loss to drop into last place tie with Tampa Bay. This loss came north of the border, 7-2 to Toronto, and it gives the Bronx Bombers a hearty 21-28 record, a tally that puts them whopping 13.5 games behind first place Boston. What I wouldn’t give to hear Clemens’ thoughts as he rushes to get to New York only to see the team he’s going to help plummeting so far down in the standings that not even Nolan Ryan and Cy Young in their primes could save the season. This could be quite possibly the best baseball season of my life if I have the distinct pleasure of watching that pompous, egotistical bastard Clemens as he suffers through an entire summer of pitching for a terrible team that is continually fighting to stay out of last place. Well, it might not be quite as pleasant as seeing Clemens blow out his elbow or rotator cuff and have to watch the same spectacle from the bench, but it’s a close second.

- It’s sad that we need this, but unfortunately it’s something that all states should follow suit with. The state legislature in Texas has given final approval to a bill that would establish random mandatory testing for performance enhancing drugs for all high school athletes, and the bill will now go to Gov. Rick Perry for his signature. The testing would go into place at the start of this next school year, and while I’m sure all of the tweakers and ‘roid heads in the state’s high schools are cursing under their breath at the thought of random testing, this is a bill that will do a lot of good. If you think there aren’t high school kids emulating their professional athlete heroes and trying to get an edge by using steroids, you’re either extremely naïve or just very wrong, and it doesn’t matter which. If all states would institute testing, the number of kids using steroids would decrease (but unfortunately not all the way to where the tally should be, zero) and not only would that eliminate a lot of cases where high school kids suffer health problems due to steroid usage, it would eliminate a lot of problems that won't pop up until later on in life when these kids become adults and see their bodies fall apart because of what the ‘roids have done to their insides. Also, if you break this kids of that habit of ‘roiding up now, hopefully they will stay away from the steroids as they progress in their athletic careers. Props to Texas for doing something about a problem that too many people are willing to ignore.

- Pakistani Justice Update: Last week I wrote about a Pakistani couple who married to avoid the woman being sold off for marriage to pay her uncle’s gambling debts, only to have the woman’s father demand the dissolution of the marriage based on the fact that the husband used to be a man and had a sex-change operation 16 years ago. The couple has been sentenced to three years in prison for lying to the court about the nature and history of their marriage/sex change bidness. The ruling was based largely on the fact that court-appointed doctors who examined the man/it in question ruled that the previous operations he/it had were not complete and that Shumail Raj, the being of questionable gender, is in fact still a woman. Honestly, even writing that last sentence creeps me out substantially and I don’t like the potential mental imagery it could generate for anyone reading this, so let’s just move on.

- I hope I’m not the only one who finds it infinitely disturbing that the Pussycat Skanks, er, Dolls, are going to be back on the CW this fall for another round of their reality show: The Search for the Next Skank to Sing Our Inane, Shallow Lyrics and Dress Like a Hooker. What exactly does it say about your group that you can come back for a second year and use the cesspool that is reality TV as the means of locating another member to plug into your group? Even a crappy band like INXS only did one season and one search for a new member via reality TV. If you can and will come back for a second go round, it only shows that you are an artificial, contrived musical malady that has no artistic integrity and no ability to survive on its own merits. You come back for a second season because you need it to generate publicity and attention for your piece of crap group and you come back because your band is so pathetic that you can just churn out another assembly-line style member through an unwatchable reality show. I didn’t think it was possible for bad music to ruin the postseason of an entire professional sport, but the Pussycat Skanks are doing just that because ABC is using them to sing intro music for NBA playoff games, and now we’ll be subjected to another season of their piss-poor reality show? Can’t say it’s huge surprise, though, what with the Crappy Watching (CW) network the one making the decision to bring them back.

- When you put good out into the world, you do indeed get good things in return. Elisabeth Hasselbeck knows this, because after she did us all a huge favor by expediting Rosie O’Fat’s exodus from The View, Mrs. Hasselbeck got a great present: O’Fat says she is never going to speaker to Lizzie again. In my book, that’s about as big a present as anyone can get, never having to talk to a fat, ugly, crude, crass, unintelligent, belligerent, militant lesbian with a bad haircut like Rosie O’Fat. I think O’Fat meant it as a threat and in a negative sense when she made the promise, but I’d venture to guess that Hasselbeck and myself aren't the only ones who would be thankful if that flabby, fugly pig of a human being promised to never talk to us again. All Hasselbeck did was dare to stand up to O’Fat when she started throwing around accusations about where Hasselbeck stood on the war in Iraq, and when Hasselbeck stood up for herself and demanded that Rosie let her speak, Rosie had a combination meltdown/hissy fit. “I haven't spoken to her, and I probably won't, and it’s just as well,” blabbered O’Fat in a posting on her website. Actually, O’Fat, what would be just as well would be if you promised to go away and never, ever appear on TV, radio, on stage or in public ever again and we never had to see your pudgy, misshapen mug in any form again, ever.

I teach aspiring criminals another lesson, angry Venezualans stage a gutsy riot and a slice of musical enjoyment just for you

- My seminars for criminals haven't gotten up and running yet because I’m still working on the curriculum, but it looks like I’d better hurry and get this project rolling because lives are being ruined because I’m not helping the less intelligent criminals among us. For example, the second lesson in my curriculum would be especially helpful to Atlanta Falcons quarterback Mike Vick, who had been getting intense heat for alleged dog fighting going on at a house in Virginia that he owns. However, the initial outrage had died down and it appeared that Vick’s vehement and consistent denials of any wrongdoing were going to hold up because there just wasn’t any evidence against him. Here’s where Lesson #2 in my series comes in: when lying to cover up a crime, be sure that there aren't credible witnesses out there who are willing and able to contradict the story you’re selling. A witness who describes himself as a regular in the world of dog fighting, a man who claims he has trained thousands of canines for combat, revealed to ESPN’s Outside the Lines that in 2000, one of his dogs squared off against a dog owned by someone he referred to as one of the “heavyweights” of the dog fighting world: Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick. “He's a pit bull fighter,” the source said of Vick. “He's one of the ones that they call 'the big boys': that's who bets a large dollar. And they have the money to bet large money. As I'm talking about large money -- $30,000 to $40,000 -- even higher. He's one of the heavyweights.” Damn. That kind of contradictory evidence isn't going to help your case, Mike. The interview this anonymous source gave to OTL goes into great depth and contains detailed accounts of encounters between the source and Vick, with those stories involving large amounts of cash and lots of dog fighting. What had been a dying investigation has new life, and if Vick had learned Lesson #2 in my seminar for criminal plotting, he could have saved himself the embarrassment and shame of lying boldly and continually to everyone about his involvement with dog fighting and the punishment he ends up receiving wouldn’t have been so bad, because he could have just been honest and forthright from the start and then everyone wouldn’t have the added anger of being lied to in the back of their minds as they pass judgment on the “Heavyweight of Dog Fighting.”

- Chicago must be the new L.A. Used to be that police brutality was a SoCal thing, but the men in blue in the Windy City are beginning to establish their own credentials when it comes to viciously pummeling civilians. A couple weeks ago, three officers were charged with an array of crimes in conjunction with the beating of two men at an upscale Chicago bar, now another CPD officer has been arrested for an off-duty beating of a 15-year-old high school student. Roberto Gallegos is charged with aggravated battery after he reportedly gave a Juarez High School student a broken jaw and other injuries in an attack that is most definitely not conduct becoming of a police officer. “To serve, protect and maim” is not, nor has it ever been the official motto of any police department, and the Chicago PD had better get its officers under control or the people of the city are going to start fighting back and demanding that something be done about the out of control hooligans in blue that are supposed to be policing their city.

- I know I’ve hit on this before, so I’ll keep this brief, but as I perused the TV listings for today, it struck me once again how utterly absurd it is that the NHL’s championship round, the Stanley Cup Finals, is in the Versus network. Here’s a sport that once considered itself on the same level as the NFL, MLB and the NBA, and yet its ultimate happening, the series to decide the league’s title, is on a network that an overwhelmingly large portion of America doesn’t have access to. I can't even begin to imagine the World Series or NBA Finals being relegated to a secondary, peripheral network, and if the NCAA Tournament was on any channel I didn’t have access to, I’d be the first one with a crow bar and burning torch looking to start a riot. Thankfully, with a Canadian team in the Stanley Cup Finals, half the games in the series won't even be on American soil, so it’ll be even easier to forget that the games are going on at all. Then again, nearly all of America does a good job of forgetting about them anyhow, so maybe we don’t need the help.

- This music recommendation is a bit tardy, as the album in question came out on September 26, 2006, but I’ve enjoyed it so much since discovering it last week that I’d be remiss if I didn’t give the artist major props, tardy or not. The album is Colorblind by Robert Randolph & the Family Band, and the experience of hearing this CD for the first time was one of the best musical thrills I’ve had in quite a few months. Randolph and his band bring an amazing fusion of rock, blues, jazz, funk and more together and over the course of the 11-song album, there are at least five songs I would describe as flat-out awesome. Ain’t Nothing Wrong With That is the single you’re most likely to have heard/seen the video for, and it is absolutely one of those five top songs. With wicked guitar riffs, great harmonies, innovate percussion in the form of stomps and clapping and a fast, rollicking pace, it kicks off the album in style. Homecoming has some hip-hop, old school flavor to it, some funky bass lines, a bluesy guitar backing and takes you down home to in rockin’ style. Collaborations with Leela James, Eric Clapton and Dave Matthews give an extra boost of star power to an album that would be great even without them. It’s tough to find rock that has soul and can incorporate funk, jazz and blues while still maintaining good rock cred, but Robert Randolph & the Family Band manage to do that and much more on what is one of the two or three best albums I’ve heard in the past year, no doubt.

- Oppression Update time: Police in Caracas broke up a massive opposition protest in the country’s capital city using water canons and tear gas after protesters gathered to demonstrate against President Hugo Chavez’s decision to shut down the country’s most widely watched TV channel. Hundreds of angry Venezuelans gathered to voice their anger about Chavez’s decision not to renew the license of Radio Caracas Television, an independent station that he believes played a role in a failed 2002 coup against him. The protesters might have thought they were at a giant block party with the huge water canons, but when the tear gas was shot, I’m pretty sure they knew things were going downhill. The soaked dissidents scattered temporarily, but in a tremendous show of chutzpah, they regrouped, marched to the state telecommunications commission offices and stared down riot police while singing the national anthem. A big, hearty, Stick It To the Man salute to all those Venezuelan protesters, not many people have the testicular fortitude to reassemble after police try to disperse them, then march down the street and stare down riot police while singing their national anthem. If only Chavez and his administration had half the amount of balls and sheer tenacity these protesters did, Venezuela would be a lot better off.

- Maybe bad reviews can sink even the biggest super-movie. Following lukewarm analysis of its plot and execution, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End came in with weekend tallies of $126 million, which is a new Memorial Day weekend record, but not nearly enough to match the loot brought in on the first weekend of the last movie in the Pirates series or by Spiderman 3. Don’t feel too bad for producer Jerry Bruckheimer and the film’s cast and crew, though, as the movie has already more than earned back the $300 million spent on production when you factor in the take from international showings. The good-but-not-overwhelming response to this movie does make you wonder if those in charge will reconsider making a fourth movie in the series, which they definitely left the door open for based on the way they ended At World’s End. I for one hope they end the series here, because from the first movie in the trilogy to the third, the films have gotten progressively worse and with Keira Knightley not willing to be part of a fourth edition of Pirates, ending things here is the right decision.

My sarcasm and snappy wit don't take any long holiday weekends off

- The Juice just will not go away. Personally, if I double-murdered a couple of people (allegedly) and got away with it, I’d consider myself incredibly fortunate and attempt to drop off the edge of the map, never to be heard from again. Not O.J., though. This dude keeps finding ways to resurface and to remind us each time that he is the worst guy, ever, in the history of the world. A federal court judge has ordered a bankrupt company officially owned by the Juice’s kids to turn over any copies of his “How-to Guide to Double Murder”, a.k.a. hypothetical-murder book If I Did It, Here’s How It Happened, about the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman, lest those books be distributed or disseminated in any way. Lorraine Brook Associates, which has O.J.’s oldest daughter, Arnelle, as its head, retains all rights to the book, but its publication was canceled HarperCollins following a massive outcry from every person with a soul and more than one ounce of compassion and dignity. The book has also been the topic of the most recent legal battle between the Simpson and Goldman families. And oh yeah, another O.J.-related note………the suit and tie he wore on the day of his (wrongful) acquittal of the double murder he committed (allegedly/definitely/assuredly) is the hot item on the sports memorabilia block, with one dealer hawking it for $25,000 and another would-be buyer believing he could purchase it and flip it for $100,000. Keep on greasing the tracks for your express ride to eternal damnation, Juice, because you are the definition of despicable.

- Welcome to Zimbabwe, where freedom and democracy go to die. That message was sounded loud and clear by riot police in the city of Harare, where 200 members of the Movement for Democratic Change were seized at their headquarters. The MDC is the primary opposition group to the current regime in Zimbabwe, a regime that isn't so fond of concepts like freedom, civil rights and fairness. Astonishingly, there was no immediate comment from Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe or his administration. Of course, why do you need to explain anything when you rule your country in dictatorial, repressive fashion and can choke out any opposition through sheer force and military might? Nothing sucks quite as much in this world as when The Man holds down the common people, especially when those common people are advocating democracy and a more fair, just society. Stay strong, Movement for Democratic Change, you’re on the right side in this fight.

- A couple days ago we had real-life snakes on a plane, now we have a flight in England grounded by bees on a plane, or more specifically, bees in the engine of a plane. After the thick cloud of bees was sucked into the engine of a passenger flight bound for Portugal, those on board were delayed for 11 hours before reaching their destination. Ironically, this isn't even the dumbest or most bizarre reason a plane has ever been delayed, and in the grand scale of things, an 11-hour delay is relatively mild. Look for airlines to tack on a bee-removal surcharge to all airfare, that way they can hire someone to clear bees from the tarmac and charge you an extra fifty bucks in the process.

- I am going to absolutely love watching the New York Yankees-Roger Clemens marriage over the next four months. The Yankees are clearly a bad team that is more than one aging, suspiciously-strong 45-year-old over-the-hill pitcher from being any good, and they’re going nowhere this season, a fact that is becoming increasingly clear as the Pocket Rocket makes his way through minor league starts to prepare for his return to the Yanks. Meanwhile, the big-league club has stumbled and bumbled its way to a 21-26 record, a whopping 11 ½ games back of first-place Boston and in fourth place in the American League East, ahead of only last-place Tampa Bay. Also, Yankee pitchers are succumbing to injuries at a breakneck pace, so by the time Pocket Rocket Clemens makes it to the team, he may be the only healthy hurler in sight. The ultimate karmic occurrence, of course, would be for Pocket Rocket to suffer a season-ending arm or shoulder injury in the first inning of his first 2007 start for the Yankees. What better payback for an arrogant, self-centered mercenary who has screwed over multiple teams, including the very one he is now returning to, on his quest to continually feed his massive ego. Here’s hoping for a torn rotator cuff or blown-out elbow for you, Pocket Rocket, you officially suck.

- Nothing is a bigger freak magnet that the prospect of anything alien or extraterrestrial, and the city of Roswell, New Mexico is the Mecca for many seekers of the weird. City officials in Roswell want to open a UFO-themed amusement park to capitalize on the town’s alien mojo, complete with an indoor roller coaster that would take passengers on a simulated alien abduction. No word on how anyone knows what an alien abduction actually feels like, because I’m going to go ahead and assume that everyone who claims to have been abducted at any point is either as unequivocally insane as they appear or that they’re dropping massive hits of peyote and LSD twice an hour, twelve hours a day. The Alien Apex Resort, as it would be named, could open as early as 2010, which means you still have time to book your tour on the dork wagon. I might actually consider visiting this place, if for no other reason than to see the biggest gaggle of misfits and freak jobs known to man. The scary thing is that the city has already received a $245,000 legislative appropriation to get this project going and there’s an 80-acre site ready to host the nutty park. You may find me near the city limits of Roswell if this park ever gets opened, and I’ll be the one selling giant butterfly nets and tranquilizer guns should you mental health professionals want to come to Roswell and bag yourself some new patients for your psychiatric wards………….

Chastising Hugo Chavez, pimping a new TV series and an elderly mobster gets his

- If I praise you when you are smart enough to publicly rip and verbally excoriate America’s intelligence-deprived leader, then I also must rip you when you engage in an act of oppression and bullying, Hugo Chavez. The Venezuelan presidente is forcing Radio Caracas Television, the country’s oldest private TV station, off the air at midnight tomorrow because of lingering resentment and hostility he has against RCTV because of the part he believes it played in a failed coup against him in 2002. Nothing like holding a grudge for five years and refusing to renew the station’s license, H., it’s refreshing to see that your administration won't be so petty and small-minded as to quash someone who dared oppose you half a decade ago. Of course, you can bet that Chavez will release some official statement denying that this is any sort of payback for RCTV and that he had a completely justified, reasonable motivation for the decision - the typical political-speak B.S. that you always hear when a scheming, conniving and indefensible move like this is made. Yet I can’t help but theorize that America probably wouldn’t be any worse off with H. Chavez as our leader than we are with the current idiot sitting in the Oval Office………

- Hey everybody, major news flash: the IRS is inept and ineffective, can you believe it!?!?! This may come as a shock to you, but in addition to its slowness, insensitivity, lack of responsiveness and general disdain for taxpayers, the Internal Revenue Service also does a poor job identifying tax-exempt groups that may have ties to terrorist groups, according to a report by the office of the Treasury Inspector General. I am shocked and appalled to learn that a fine, upstanding and efficient organization such as the IRS does a poor job of anything. Other than losing my tax return this year and taking four months and running to get me a refund that I am due, all the while feeding me a dozen different excuses and showing all the enthusiasm for getting me my refund that Rosie O’Donnell shows at a salad bar, I can't think of a single reason to doubt the competency of the Internal Revenue Service. Just because their heads are shoved so far up their collective arse doesn’t mean that they screw things up, except for the fact that they continually f’up everything in sight. The true stunner will be if and when the IRS does something correctly and on time……….

- When our justice system is on its game, it takes a bite out of the real criminals among us, those who are a threat to society and need to pay for their misdeeds. For example, when you have a nearly century-old former mobster living in a retirement haven in south Florida filling his days with bingo, shuffleboard and the early bird special at Bob’s Big Boy, you need to bring the smack down on his hardened criminal arse big time. Albert Facchiano, a 97-year-old convicted mobster, has been sentenced to six months’ house arrest after pleading guilty to federal racketeering conspiracy and witness tampering charges. I’m not sure exactly how a 97-year-old dude intimidates potential witness, other than threatening to beat them with his cane and choking them with the chain on his eyeglasses, but so be it. No word on whether Albert will be allowed out of his house for the condo shuffleboard tournament or the early bird special at the Sizzler, but something tells me that in sentencing him to house arrest, the court is hoping he’ll kick the bucket before the end of his sentence and they won't have to waste money and jail space incarcerating him. Still, kudos to this guy for still being gangsta enough to have the federal government coming after him on major criminal charges when he’s nearly at the century mark of his life.

- College basketball coaches are hard driving and dogmatic by nature. They have to go hard after potential recruits and fight like heck against the other schools trying to recruit prized players, but there comes a time when that dogmatism and relentless pursuit need to be switched off, which is a lesson Florida A&M coach Mike Gillespie Sr. doesn’t seem to know. Police in Tallahassee, Fla. arrested Gillespie on a misdemeanor stalking charge Friday, although he was later released on a $1,000 bond. The arrest came after a woman phoned police to tell them she was being stalked Thursday night and Friday morning. Gillespie was nabbed during the day Friday, and apparently this isn't his first foray into the realm of being a creepy, weirdo stalker. A police report states that Gillespie has been investigated several times for stalking since March 2005 and had received numerous warnings from law enforcement to change his behavior. Then, once he was arrested, he twice refused to tell police his side of the story, which certainly doesn’t do anything to disperse the dark clouds of suspicion hanging over his head. This stalking tendency should do wonders for recruiting at A&M, because what parent wouldn’t want their son going to play basketball for some creepy 56-year-old dude who has a habit of stalking people and then lying about it? Stop following random women around, Coach, and learn that if they don’t want anything to do with you, you need to respect that and leave them alone.

- Not sure what to make of the return of ABC’s new series, Traveler, this Wednesday, May 30. I watched the pilot a few weeks ago and it was interesting enough to watch again, but my optimism is balanced by the knowledge that the show doesn’t have any sort of time slot of scheduled night for the upcoming season on ABC. In fact, one piece I read said the series won’t be a part of ABC’s 2007-08 lineup, but I have to believe that’s faulty information, otherwise why bother bringing it back for eight weeks this summer. At this point, the show has to have at least some life in it and a shot to be included in the network’s lineup at some point, be it as an in-season replacement or otherwise. Here’s hoping enough other viewers tune in so that the suits at ABC are encouraged by the ratings and give this promising series a real shot. Tune in Wednesday night at I believe 10 p.m. and see what should be good viewing…….

Adios, Rosie O'Fat, adios, creepy snakes-on-a-plane guy and adios to illegal immigrants if you heed my advice

- For future reference, attempting to re-enact Snakes on a Plane in real life is a bad idea. Yahia Rahim Tulba, a would-be passenger attempting to board a flight out of the main airport in Cairo, Egypt was detained by customs officials after it was discovered that his baggage included 700 live snakes, some of them poisonous. Tulba was asked to open his bag after he informed officials of the snakes’ presence but asked everyone to stay at a safe distance. He intended to sell the snakes in Saudi Arabia, although the total value of his scaly supply of crawling creatures was not immediately known. No word on whether Samuel L. Jackson was also on board the plane, but this is yet more proof that no matter how many pictures they put on the security signs at the airport to show things you can't bring on a plane, some moron will try to sneak something else onto a plane that shouldn’t be there. You’ve seen the signs, pictures of guns, knives, water bottles, explosives, etc. with a red circle around them and a red slash mark diagonally across them. Looks like airport security will now need to add a snake graphic to that list so that would-be snake smugglers don’t try to board the plane with hundreds of dangerous animals. I’m still at a loss as to how you could think this was OK under any circumstances, but then again the world is not a smart place……….

- Good to see another state legislature engaging in the pointless, idiotic and wasteful notion of apologizing for an act that happened nearly a hundred and fifty years ago. The state legislature in Alabama has become the latest to issue a formal apology for slavery, even though all those who were enslaved are dead, the people who owned slaves are dead and anyone who was directly affected by the horrible practice of slavery in Civil War times is also dead. The Alabama Legislature officially passed a resolution Thursday that expresses “profound regret” for the state’s role in slavery and also apologizes for slavery’s wrongs and their effect on this country. Virginia, Maryland and North Carolina have already passed similar legislation, which I am sure are of great comfort to the people buried in cemeteries around the country who actually suffered those effects and wrongs, even though those people have no knowledge of these resolutions and never will. I move for a new resolution that no one should be apologizing for anything they didn’t do when those who were wronged are no longer alive. More or less, these measures are a feeble attempt to garner favor with African Americans of this day and age and a way to put a happy face on a terrible time for America - except they don’t accomplish any of that because you can't apologize for something you didn’t do to someone who no longer exists.

- So the verdict is in on the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End and the verdict is…..ehhhhh, it’s OK. That’s the best I can muster for this movie, which unfortunately continues the recent trend of third installments in major movie series that are definitely weaker than the first two editions (see Spiderman, Shrek and even the last version of the Matrix trilogy a couple years back). While the plot is decidedly less complicated and difficult to follow than the preceding Pirates movie, Curse of the Black Pearl, At World’s End is unwieldingly long, two hours and 45 minutes, and while there’s plenty of action to fill that time, the picture has numerous holes that make it a bit of a sinking ship long before the final credits roll down the screen. The most obvious beef I have with this movie is its ending, specifically the ending for Will Turner (Orlando Bloom) and Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightley). Without giving it away, I’ll just say that it’s neither really positive nor really negative, but more of a halfhearted cop-out that won't make much of anyone happy. Also, the dialogue in large chunks of the movie is terribly indiscernible, with the main culprit being Capt Barbosa, played by Geoffrey Rush. During climactic action sequences on the high seas, Barbosa’s loud proclamations sound like garbled gibberish that you need subtitles to understand. Also, the movie devotes a large chunk of time and effort toward the relationship between Davey Jones and the goddess of the sea, Calypso, but ultimately this storyline proves to be of little relevance to the main focus of the movie. Ultimately, I think At World’s End falls victim to the massive expectations for it based on the preceding two pictures in the series. Everything in a movie of this magnitude has to be big, over the top and excessive, and the movie as a whole suffers for it. Still, the great special effects and visuals, plus a cast of interesting characters and plenty of great action do save the film to some degree, and as such it’s not a total waste.

- Elizabeth Hasselbeck, you are my hero. Besides being considerably hot, Hasselbeck has done all TV watchers a huge favor and delivered a swift kick to the sizeable arse of Rosie O’Donnell that has propelled the chubby former comedienne out the door of ABC’s The View even sooner than planned. Hasselbeck and O’Fat tangled about the war in Iraq, which O’Fat is a vocal critic of. There was some haggling about O’Fat tagging American troops in Iraq as terrorists and whether she actually said that, and several times Hasselbeck stood up to O’Fat’s bullying tactics and pounded the table while insisting she be allowed to speak. I’m going to go ahead and forget that I actually agree that the war is a terrible thing, because even though I don’t agree with Hasselbeck’s stance on the issue, I more importantly agree with her standing up to the tyranny of idiocy that is Rosie and sending her fat, ugly face packing. If an argument is enough of an irritant to cause O’Fat to ask for an early release from her contract and leave the show immediately, I have to side with whomever is on the other side of that debate. Well done, Liz, you’re a hero to all of us…………..

- We could save ourselves a lot of trouble on debating and hashing out this new immigration bill currently making its way through Congress with two things: a ginormous wall and a whole lotta guns. The Senate has overwhelmingly endorsed a wide-reaching bill that would tighten border security and create a strict verification program designed mainly to deny jobs to illegal immigrants. Rejected by the Senate were two measures also relating to immigration, one of which would have ended the temporary worker program for immigrants after five years, and another bill that would have allowed government authorities to question a person about his or her immigration status if authorities had reason to believe that person was in the United States illegally. Both of those measures were rejected by a narrow one-vote margin, showing the contentious and hard-fought nature of the immigration issue. There would be no need to question illegals or to find a way to deny them jobs, though, if my solution was adopted: a 35-foot wall along the whole border, topped off by five rows of razor wire, with guard towers stationed every quarter mile, manned by guards with high-caliber automatic rifles. Think about it Congress, it could just be the answer to all of your immigration problems……….

The real American Karaoke winner, why Clinton Portis really a moron and why Chinese toothpaste is really dangerous

- China and its Communist regime may be a great threat to the world after all, but it may not be in the form of military might or nuclear power. No, the bigger threat could come from deadly Chinese toothpaste. Health authorities in several Latin American countries, including Panama and the Dominican Republic, have pulled the toothpaste brands Mr. Cool and Excel from store shelves in their countries after learning that the product contains diethylene glycol, a chemical commonly used in antifreeze and brake fluid. Chinese authorities say they will investigate, which I’m sure will be of great relief to those who may have inadvertently used the tainted toothpaste. Hmmm, honey, is this a new flavor of toothpaste? Why does it have such a chemical taste to it, and why does my mouth feel like it’s inside a car engine? Could this “slip” of toxic chemicals in toothpaste be the first stage of a subtle yet powerful attack by the Chinese against the Western world? Keep your toxic toothpaste out of our hemisphere, China, we’re only down with cinnamon, vanilla, mint and various fruit products as flavor agents in our hygiene products, we draw the line at poisonous chemicals from car care products.

- This just in: Clinton Portis is a moron. Portis used to be the funny, charming Washington Redskins running back who showed up for interview sessions once a week during the season dressed in outrageous costumes (Napoleon Dynamite, the fictitious Coach Spanky Janky, etc.) and everyone laughed. No one is laughing now, and no one would include his own team and NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell following Portis’ indefensibly stupid comments re: Michael Vick and the alleged dog fighting ring at a Virginia property with Vick’s name on the deed. Portis said basically that it’s Vick’s property and Vick’s dogs, so he can do whatever he wants and everyone should leave him alone. Well, the Redskins and Goodell have both spoken out and publicly condemned Portis’ comments and now Portis and his agent, the abrasive and irritating Drew Rosenhaus, are doing spin control. Rosenhaus tried to spin his client’s comments by saying that Portis was simply urging everyone to reserve judgment on the situation until the police investigation is complete, and that as of yet Vick has done nothing wrong. Sure, because that’s exactly what everyone thinks you mean when you say clearly and explicitly that it’s his property and his dogs, so he has every right to do whatever he wants with them. Next time you want to offer a bogus apology and have it sound at least somewhat plausible, Drew, make sure you’re client doesn’t so clearly enunciate and eloquate his thoughts. Portis left no room for revision with his statement, and now he’s trying to backpedal faster than Carmelo Anthony in the brawl at Madison Square Garden this past NBA season. Part of what agents do when their clients f’up is to clean up the mess, but this time Portis stepped in it big time and no amount of spinning will clean up the mess. Let it go, Drew, and spend your time on a more useful pursuit, namely explaining to your client to use his brain and think for more than .00005 seconds before speaking.

- American Karaoke is over and the winner is…………..me, and anyone else who loathes this abomination of a TV show/glorified karaoke contest. I really don’t care who the declared winner was, because any time a new season of this debacle airs, the real loser is quality music. Oh, and mad props to Joe Perry for whoring out his musical legacy and appearing with that tool Sanjaya, which I hope Joe was paid well for, because seeing him sell out and take part in that farce broke the heart of every true rock fan when they saw a picture online or elsewhere of Perry and the effeminate, finger-nails-on-a-chalk-board-voiced loser performing together. Thank the Lord I didn’t actually see the broadcast of that, because I’d prefer not to have to smash my TV set to pieces with an axe, as I’ve grown relatively fond of it. Not since the Joe Perry Project and its ill-fated run has Perry been involved with such an atrocity of a musical act, and I may have to build a time machine to go back 20 years and retroactively start hating Aerosmith’s music because of what he’s done by appearing on AK. You suck, Joe, and you have your new buddy Sanjaya and his amorphous, feminine hairdo and voice to thank for that.

- NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell has a zero tolerance policy for player misconduct, but I wonder what his “sending porn emails to the entire league, including the commish, NFL GM’s and their secretaries” policy is………..Pittsburgh Steelers offensive line coach Larry Zierlein may find out what the policy is, because Zierlein was either technologically stupid or immature and inappropriate enough to send out a league-wide email containing what has been described as an “inappropriate e-mail message”, with one copy of that going to Goodell. No word as of yet on whether Zierlein sent the email intentionally and thought it was funny or if he intended to send it to one or two buddies and accidentally forwarded it to the whole league, but I would have loved to see the look on Goodell’s face when he opened his email inbox and found that beauty there. How’s about using a little more caution and making sure who you’re sending a message to, coach? Even if you’re the world’s biggest porn freak, you can’t be sending out crude, offensive and obscene porn messages to every coach, GM and exec in the NFL.

Karma bites the Yankees, a riot by Chinese farmers and what I want Exxon Mobile to do

- Props to the NBA for showing us what those three letters really stand for: No Balls Association. The league decided that there should be a two-day break between games of the Eastern Conference finals even though the Cavaliers and Pistons aren't changing locations for Game 2. It’ll be in Detroit, just as Game 1, but the league refused to schedule the second game on Wednesday night, supposedly because of an irrational fear of competing with the American Karaoke finale for viewers. Way to man up and show the tough, balls to the wall attitude that sports are supposed to embody, No Balls Association. You’re afraid to compete with a bunch of glorified karaoke singers, one of whom may or may not be a transvestite (Sanjaya whatever-his-last-name-is), a trio of judges comprised of a bitter, uninteresting, pub-hungry Brit, a pill-popping former Laker Girl and a fat black dude who serves no apparent purpose at all - for anything. Yeah, because the people who are dedicated NBA fans are exactly the same people who watch AK. This is just one more reason why the NBA will never, ever be as interesting or legitimate a basketball entity as NCAA hoops and why the NCAA Tournament is bar none the best sporting event in the world, because it doesn’t kowtow to a glorified karaoke contest or anything else in its scheduling.

- Never let it be said that Minnesota legislators don’t know how to party. Just a few hours after gaveling the 2007 session of the state legislature to a close, the president of the Democratic-led Minnesota Senate, James Metzen, was arrested on suspicion of drunken driving. Metzen was weaving back and forth in his lane and driving erratically, which I am confident in saying (even though I am not a law enforcement professional) is a very good indicator of someone driving drunk. Metzen seems to have wasted no time making a mad dash to a local inn popular with lawmakers and downing a beer or eight at a celebration of the end of another “grueling” legislative session. Good to see that someone who plays a major part in creating laws and sculpting the government for his state is so dedicated to following those same laws he helps put in place. Something tells me that the first bill proposed to the legislature in Minnesota next session will be a measure to increase the legal limit for intoxication to .25-ish.

- When your company is responsible for one of the biggest environmental disasters in modern times, you really should just pay whatever the courts order you to pay and not complain. Exxon Mobil Corp. refuses to go quietly into the night by ponying up the $4.5 billion in damages that a federal appeals court ordered it to pay as restitution for the damage caused by the 1989 Valdez oil spill that contaminated 1,500 miles of the Alaskan coastline and killed thousands of wildlife creatures. Exxon could still appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court and knowing the reluctance of major international corporations to part with any of the money they wring out of consumers, that’s exactly what Exxon will do. The company’s attorneys argue the fine is excessive, but then again so is the damage they did to the environment. I’d call dumping millions of gallons of oil into the water and killing all those animals is excessive too. Pay what you owe, Exxon, and in the future do a better job of making sure you don’t hire some drunken lush as a captain for your tankers so you won't have to worry about another mess like the Valdez spill.

- Riot time, riot time! If there’s a political, social or economic-based uprising anywhere in the world, you know I’m down. Today, the uprising de jour, as it were, comes to us from the southern Guangxi region of China, where authorities detained 28 people after thousands of local farmers rioted to protest fines levied on those who have had more children than allowed under the country’s family planning policy. Basically, the Chinese government only allows one child per family in order to put the skids on out-of-control population growth, and these fines are a way of enforcing the policy. Ah, the joys of Communism, dictating to people how many children they can have and what their family is allowed to consist of, you gotta love it. Not that the big, bad Chinese government is going to abandon its controlling ways and give these people a break, but props to the people of the southern Guangxi region for taking the fight to The Man anyhow………

- Does anyone else think it’s poetic justice that the New York Yankees are seeing two of their biggest free-agent signings of the past five years go up in flames/down in ‘roids? Jason Giambi and Carl Pavano both came to New York for $100 million-plus contracts, but each has been a major disappointment to the Bronx Bombers in his own special way. Giambi battled health problems early on, mysteriously apologized for something shortly thereafter, the something that was steroids but he wouldn’t say explicitly, and since then he’s been producing less and less of the power and offense he was brought in for. Now, Giambi gave an interview in which he hinted even further at using ‘roids and also reportedly tested positive for amphetamines, also banned by baseball, and the Yankees are considering voiding his contract. Pavano rewarded the team’s faith in him by accumulating a measly five wins in his entire Yankee career, and now he’s headed for major reconstructive surgery after his umpteenth injury. For more than $200 million, that’s what the Yankees now have, a washed up slugger whose contract they want to void and a broken-down pitcher who may never throw another inning for them. Yes, the Yankees can afford to write off these mistakes more than any other team because of their deep pockets, but it’s still great to see them suffer, because for me and millions of baseball fans worldwide, it’s a beautiful thing………….

A hammered Hasselhoff = good TV, W. making threats = not much and rioting villagers = a thumbs up from me

- There’s only one way I’m watching even a half-second of NBC’s ridiculous and embarrassingly-awful returning summer series America’s Got Talent: David Hasselhoff must agree to film every single episode with a blood-alcohol content of .15 or above. That’s nearly twice the legal limit in most states, and if Hasselhoff is that hammered, the show might actually be entertaining instead of incredibly lowbrow, stupid and worthless. Normally a self-glossing poseur like “The Hoff”, a druggie, plastic-surgery-loving old British woman like Sharon Osborne and whoever the third loser judge is on this show would ensure that I would watch zero hours of it, but if Hasselhoff is fall-down drunk, I’ll reconsider. I’ll still have no desire to see losers perform karaoke, see cats work miniature parallel bars, idiots juggling fire and wannabe comedians do their shtick, but if there’s any chance D. Hasselhoff will recreate the utter hilarity we saw on that video his daughter took when he was hammered and making a total fool of himself, then it’s worth watching. All NBC needs to do is stock Hasselhoff’s green room and trailer with enough vodka, rum, tequila and gin to drown an elephant and I think they’ll have a hit on their hands………

- Not many things are as sickening as a sports fan as watching LeBron lovers in my area of Northeast Ohio fawn over No. 23 and continue to apologize for his shortcomings and lack of killer instinct 24/7. You can debate whether Bron Bron should have shot the ball or passed it to Donyell Marshall for a potential game-winning three-pointer in the final seconds of Monday night’s game, but that play is just one piece of a much bigger puzzle. As talented as LeBron James is, he doesn’t inspire that same “we can’t lose, he won’t allow it” confidence that stars like Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird or even Dwayne Wade and Tim Duncan do. True superstars possess an infallible, unfailing will to win that will not accept failure and for that reason, they compel their teams to win games they shouldn’t win just on sheer willpower. Watching Cavs games, I don’t get the feeling that the Cavs will win games they have no business winning because James is there. He has the talent to be that player, but not the killer instinct and tenacity. He mails in games regularly and most other games, he puts it on cruise control for the first half or so and then figures he can't flip the switch and pull through in the end. In other words, he spends more time worrying about being cool and smooth than he does about going balls to the wall and ripping the other team’s heart out. The Cavaliers reflect his personality because he’s their leader, and as a result they can never drop the hammer on opponents when it’s necessary. The Cavaliers will be fortunate to win two games in this series because the Pistons do have that killer instinct and they have guys who will go with reckless abandon after the W every game.

- If you’ve read this blog for more than a few days, you know that I love riots, demonstrations and citizen vs. police clashes worldwide. I love the average man or woman giving the proverbial middle finger to The Man, so there’s no way I could not love this next story, courtesy of the town of Singur, India. About 200 villagers in Singur clashed with police on Monday for a second straight day as the citizens continued to voice their displeasure for the new factory that is to be built in their town. The villagers want more compensation from the government for land acquired to build the factory on, so they tried to break down the boundary wall around the site where Tata Motors Inc. is building a small car factory. No counts of injuries or arrests were immediately available, but this is a class struggle of the little guy versus the government and big business, and I’m rooting for the villagers in Singur to get what they deserve - better compensation for the land the government took from them.

- The Piece of Crap Club is proud to induct John Orlowski as its newest member. Orlowski was able to bypass the normal waiting period that esteemed clubs like sports halls of fame have for induction because his crime is so heinous, so deplorable and so reprehensible that he not only qualifies for immediate induction but he’s quite possibly among the worst one percent of people in the club. This scumbag attempted to hire a hit man to whack his entire family, including his 7-year-old daughter, and told the hit man that he had no qualms about having his family killed as long as the killer agreed to several stipulations as to how the murders would be done. Orlowski’s requests were as follows: his wife and mother-in-law were each to be shot twice in the head, while the 7-year-old daughter was to be shot in the chest. Now, Orlowski is facing murder-for-hire charges after the mother of the gang member who Orlowski hired to do the murders called the FBI. Personally, I don’t care if the death penalty is normally reserved for people who have actually carried out or organized murders-for-hire, but Orlowski needs to get the gas chamber even if no one has died in this plot. He’s absolutely a piece of garbage and clearly has no conscience, and our planet would be a better place without him inhabiting it.

- Talk about your hollow threats…..the W. administration has begun hinting that it will reconsider its support in Iraq if Iraqi leaders don’t make major reforms and progress by the fall. The Iraqi government in turn has allegedly begun formulating plans for dealing with a quick U.S. military withdrawal from their country. Am I the only one who laughed out loud at this news? Does anyone actually believe that W. has the brains or the balls to end this war and bring the American troops home? That would mean admitting he’s been wrong about this situation and that he actually has been wasting time, money, lives, more money and more lives on a pointless, unjustified war. This comes even as Democrats in Congress appear to be capitulating to W.’s demand for a war-funding bill without troop-withdrawal language in it. So other than vacant, meaningless words from our Tool in Chief that we might pull our troops out of Iraq if they don’t meet some vague, amorphous “progress” guidelines that probably don’t even exist. Don’t waste your time on those contingency plans, Iraqi government, I really, really doubt you’re ever going to need them.

A Pakistani sex change scandal, another woman-beating athlete and is it adios for Alberto G.?

- In a story almost too salacious to be true, a Pakistani couple were arrested by police on charges of lying to a judge about the gender of the husband, who was born female and had a sex-change operation 16 years ago. Shumail Raj, 31, originally went to court to seek protection for his wife amid harassment from her family, but the High Court discovered Raj’s past and their reaction was swift and severe, to say the least. Raj and his bride allege they married in order to prevent her from being sold into marriage to settle her uncle’s gambling debts, while the bride’s father wants their marriage annulled because the sex-change operation Raj had done is against the principles of Islam. So to review, we have a gender-switching husband marrying a woman to keep her from being used as a marker to cover uncle’s gambling debt and the father of the bride wants the marriage annulled on religious grounds. If only there were a Pakistani Jerry Springer Show, we could settle this the right way……..

- Raise your hand if you view duct tape as an effective and acceptable method of discipline for an unruly toddler……….anyone? Nobody? Well you may know that using such methods is a no-no, but nobody sent that memo to the now-infamous über-abusive childcare worker daycare worker in Tulsa, Okla., who bound a 2-year-old boy’s hands with masking tape when he would not be quiet at nap time. The woman, who was caring for eight children under the age of seven at the time, called for an ambulance and tried to perform CPR, but the toddler died anyhow. Now, this sad excuse for a human being is facing murder charges, and it’s hard to feel any sympathy for her no matter what the punishment ends up being. Again, since not everyone seems to get this, your options when a child won’t stop crying are: 1) have someone else watch the child and go for a long walk to calm down, 2) put the child in their bed/crib and sit down in another room and try to relax, 3) buy yourself a heavy bag, put it up in the corner and pound out some stress on an inanimate object without doing any harm to the child. Any solutions involving masking tape, duct tape, electrical tape, zip ties, rope or other means of subduing the child or any other means of inflicting physical or emotional harm on them are not acceptable, ever. Thanks for your attention……

- With all the shenanigans and screw-ups going on in the W. administration, there should be high-ranking government officials resigning or being fired on a weekly basis. That isn't happening, unfortunately, but it looks like a high-up member of the administration may in fact be resigning soon. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales may resign, and let me be the first to say: yippee! While Alberto isn't the one I would most like to see resign (nope, that would be you, W.), he definitely needs to go for the shady, deceitful, wrong and quite possibly illegal method in which he conducted the firing (and attempted cover-up) of eight attorneys general whose politics didn’t jive with the administration’s views. Now, the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., says he believes Gonzales may resign before the Senate can even hold its planned no-confidence vote in him. I’m not sure why there needs to be an official vote on this, because anyone who has been following this whole saga already has zero confidence in Alberto and his ability to be a competent Attorney General. Good riddance, Alberto, you’re an absolute joke and America would be no worse off if a chimp served in your post for the rest of the W. administration.

- Continuing a disturbingly high rate of professional athletes assaulting women, New York Jets defensive back/kick Justin Miller has been charged with third-degree assault after punching a woman in an incident at a New York City club over the weekend. Miller was in an altercation with another man and when he swung his fist, the other guy ducked and Miller accidentally punched the female bystander instead. On the football field, you can get away with accidentally hitting the wrong guy when going in for the tackle on a ball carrier, but Miller needs to be able to get himself in check in social settings because there, the rules are different. You aren’t going after another player in pads with a helmet; you’re around unarmed, unprotected people who aren't actually expecting to be hit. Also, Miller might want to familiarize himself with the new crackdown policy that NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell has for lawbreaking players, because he’s about to experience the commish’s wrath firsthand. Goodell has brought the hammer on assaulters, illegal-gun-havers and miscreants of all kinds in the NFL. You get arrested for a crime, you’re going to hear from Goodell as well as the police. Miller had better make sure that whatever charges he is convicted on for this incident are the only criminal charges he sees for the rest of his NFL career, otherwise that career will be a short one. Just ask Pacman Jones if you don’t believe me………….

More crooked cops, more indifference to hockey and a TV trend I can use less of

- As a Chicago Cubs fan, you become immune and numb to nearly every possible type of disaster that could befall a baseball time because to cheer for the Cubs is to embrace a life of disappointment. Still, no five words strike sheer terror into my heart like hearing, “Wood to test arm Monday.” Wood would be Kerry Wood, the pitcher who burst onto the scene with a scintillating 20-strikeout game in 1998 and hasn’t been able to stay consistently healthy since. Now Wood is attempting to come back from his 488th stint on the disabled list and Monday will be the time he tests his arm for that, er, blows out another muscle, joint or ligament and heads back to the DL. Seriously, this dude would be the most fragile, injury-prone hurler ever….if not for the fact that his porcelain-bodied teammate Mark Prior already holds that title. Thankfully, Wood is operating on a one-year contract with the Cubs, so once he blows out his arm again and goes back on the DL for the remainder of the season, the Cubs can finally cut ties with him once and for all after this year ends. And if by chance Wood’s throwing session Monday doesn’t end in disaster, Cubs fans need not be too excited, because with this guy, every day and every activity is another chance for an injury. This is, after all, a guy whose last stint on the DL came after a fall getting out of his home’s hot tub.

- Great to see Jimmy Carter taking a break from his humanitarian work to engage in another worthwhile activity: excoriating our inept leader, W. Carter labeled the W. administration as “the worst in history” in international relations, which is surprising not because it’s untrue but rather because Carter is not the type to throw around that kind of criticism lightly. He also took a run at W. for his environmental policies and faith-based initiative funding, but I think the focus belongs squarely on the “worst in history” blast. This may shock you, but I have to contend with Carter over his analysis. I don’t think you should be calling the W. administration the worst in history in international relations because, let’s face it, this administration is just simply the worst in history, without any qualifiers attached to that label. You can't just focus on the ineptitude in international relations, nor on the shady environmental policies or initiative funding. There are plenty of other points to quibble on, things like warmongering, repeatedly lying to the American public, the scandal with Alberto Gonzales, etc. Let’s not ignore all the other low-quality work this administration has put together and limit criticisms to one specific area. Give them the (dis)credit they’re earned across the whole spectrum or don’t bother criticizing them at all.

- Because so many of my favorite TV shows have been cancelled the past couple of years, I’ve been able to pick up on a disturbing and absolutely retarded development in the world of television: the straddle-the-fence season/series finale combo platter. This is a practice that has become all too common as networks near the end of a season with a particular show and can't make a decision as to whether that show will be back the following season. Thus, the show’s producers and writer’s are forced to craft a finale that could ostensibly be just a capper to the season and set up the next one and could serve as the end of the series, period. The problem with this is that these are two mutually exclusive concepts and the way you end a season is drastically different than the way you end a series. Take, for example, Gilmore Girls, which just concluded a seven-year run and got the season/series finale treatment. Because the show’s two stars, Alexis Bledel and Lauren Graham, kept stringing out contract negotiations, the network wasn’t able to say that the last show of this season was also the series finale at the time it was filmed. Thus, the show’s execs had to straddle the fence and create a show that attempted to function on two levels. When it was decided that the series was to end this season, the finale ended up with a rushed, hollow, schmaltzy, unresolved feel that wasn’t at all what you would want for the final show ever in a wonderful, wonderful series. The same thing is about to happen to Veronica Mars, which will meet its premature end tomorrow night on the same CW network. I’m not sure what the solution is, maybe a drop-dead date for deciding if a series will continue, a date well in advance of shooting for the finale so things can be wrapped up properly……..all I know is that these rushed, hackneyed, half-baked farewells for great shows need to stop.

- I ignore hockey, most of America ignores hockey, and now NBC is following suit. The network made the decision on Saturday to preempt Game 5 of the NHL Eastern Conference finals as the game went to overtime so they could……………show horsies warming up for a race. Yes, NBC felt its commitment to pre-race coverage for the Preakness Stakes was more important than showing a hockey game in which one team (not sure which one, nor do I give a crap) could win the series and advance to the Stanley Cup Finals. I’m on record as saying that horse racing isn't even a sport because the central participants aren't even human and the only humans involved are midgets beating the horsies with a whip, so I find it absolutely laughable that NBC would cut away from what is, at least in the hockey world, an incredibly important game to show not the actual Preakness Stakes, but more than one hour of pre-race crap, basically horses walking around and in their stalls. Yeah, but you’re still relevant and valued, hockey fans and advocates. Your sport is in no way a punch line, a forgotten relic or an inconsequential frivolity on the fringes of the sports landscape. You all had just better hope that when the Stanley Cup Finals roll around that NBC doesn’t have one of those dog long jumping contests to show, because then you’ll really be screwed.

- Some men and women get into law enforcement to make a difference and to make our cities and neighborhoods safer, while some get into it to scam off the very criminals they’re putting behind bars. Count New York City police officers Hector Alvarez and Miguel Castillo into the latter group. These two integrity-deficient individuals were jailed over the weekend in New Jersey on accusations of attempting to steal drugs and money from a suspected drug dealer. The pair of bungling, dishonest cops has been charged with attempted kidnapping, armed robbery and armed burglary, which I’m guessing they knew were wrong, seeing as they are police officers themselves. The motto, I believe, it “Protect and serve,” not “Profit and self-serve.” Get it right next time, officers………..

The Bengals fight back, a zoo gorilla does the same and another dumb criminal needs my help

- The Bengals are back, baby! Commissioner Roger Goodell can try to bring down the disciplinary hammer in the NFL and rid the league of criminal talents that the Bengals seem to possess in massive quantities, but the criminal spirit will not be snuffed out. Bengals linebacker A.J. brought an end to the team’s incredibly disappointing period of good behavior and no arrests on Friday by getting picked up by the cops on a domestic violence charge. This wouldn’t officially be another Bengal to find his way to the inside of a jail cell; Nicholson was already among the Bengals who have arrested in the past year. Still, it restores my faith in the team to see a player willing to stand up and do his part in maintaining the Bengals’ rep even as the NFL is trying to keep these guys from being who they truly are - felons. Yes, A.J. will face a suspension if he’s convicted on these new charges, and perhaps that will cause some on-field trouble for the team, but what’s a little difficulty when it accomplishes something of worth? Actually, the NFL and the legal system might be better served to see this situation as a chance to try something new. Since an inordinately high number of crimes and arrests take place with Bengal players, the ideal solution is something I have devised: a combination courthouse/jail/stadium complex for the team. There’s already a nice, new stadium in place, so what needs to happen now is to build on the courthouse portion of the structure, then convert the Bengals’ locker room into the jail portion of the facility. Slam some bars and metal-frame beds in each locker space, hang some prison-orange jumpsuits into each player’s locker and you’re good to go. This way, everything is consolidated into one place and with each new Bengal arrest, the player in question can be jailed, tried and held in the same place, all the while able to continue playing football and not having to miss any practice time. Heck, consider practice each day to be their yard time, and when they’re at the facility, players eat together in a dining hall a la prison anyhow, so this all works beautifully. Actually, I’m rather proud of myself for coming up with the concept to begin with…………

- Good thing I wasn’t in attendance at the CW upfront on Thursday, because I can pretty much guarantee that if I had been, you would have seen the first-ever death-by-beating-with-a-microphone of a network executive, namely the CW’s Dawn Ostroff. I would have had no choice but to take the microphone she was using on the dais and repeatedly crack her over the head with it, WWE-style, until I’d beaten the stupid right out of that wench. My anger would be well justified, though, as Thursday made official the one billionth in an never-ending series of horrifically bad programming decisions made by Ostroff and her staff of intellectually stunted minions: the cancellation of the network’s best remaining series, Veronica Mars. Mars was the smartest, most cleverly written, funny and interesting series the CW had, especially after the ending of Gilmore Girls (more on that shortly). Its ratings weren't through the roof, yet it was steady and praised by anyone who took time to watch it for more than a few seconds. Now, it’s inexplicably canceled, meaning that in a little over a year, Ostroff and Co. have managed to kill of the three best shows on their network and leave only one good show, Smallville, on its fall schedule. When asked if Mars was officially dead, my least-favorite executive admitted, “Veronica Mars is over, but we're talking about something else. I don't know if it's going to be anything. I'm being honest with you. It could come back in some form, but I don't know what form that would be.” Wow, that’s, umm……….uninspiring. Of course, it’s not as bad or insulting as the totally backhanded compliment Ostroff “paid” to the one of the two or three best shows on TV the past seven years (and no, fans of Lost, Grey’s Anatomy, 24, your shows aren't the best, sorry) Gilmore Girls: “While we're sad to see Gilmore Girls go,” she said "the truth is Beauty and the Geek actually performed better among young adult viewers.” What a heartfelt/bitchy tribute that was! Way to show appreciation for a show, including cast, crew and fans, who invested so much over the past seven years. Hey bitch, at least try to sound appreciative for the show and what it meant to so many people, even if the first six years were on the WB network, which was one of the two that merged to form the CW. In case you haven’t gotten the message by now, I really, really, really hate Dawn Ostroff and like many TV fans I’ve heard talk about this, I’m all but done with the CW network. I’ll watch Smallville as long as it’s on, but I won't be tuning in to any new CW shows ever, and once Smallville is over, so is my relationship with the CW.

- Yesterday I ruminated about creating my own seminar for those aspiring to craft a successful criminal plot, with the thinking being that most people who commit crimes reveal themselves to be Grade-A morons who couldn’t outthink a gold fish. Well, I need to inform you that if you want to register for the seminar, you’re gonna need to do it soon because spaces are being filled quickly. Our latest registrant is Johnnie Jerome Kerns, 29, of Springfield, Mo. Mr. Kerns decided that in order to terrorize his ex-wife, he would kidnap her child from a different marriage. After kidnapping the 5-year-old girl, Kerns tossed her off a bridge into the freezing waters of a nearby lake where two fishermen found and rescued her. Now, Kerns faces five felony charges, including kidnapping, child abuse and assault. All of this because he was pissed at his ex-wife and couldn’t think of a creative way to get back at her that wouldn’t land him in prison. The very first lesson in my criminal plotting seminar, by the way, deals with analyzing the cost-benefit ratio of any plan so you don’t end up in just this type of situation. Something along the lines of threatening phone calls from a pay phone or stealing the tires off of her car would have been a more appropriate tact here, as they would not have Kerns facing five freaking felony charges.

- See kids, this is why you don’t taunt and harass the gorillas when you visit your local zoo. A 400-pound gorilla at a zoo in Netherlands got loose and ended up injuring four people in a violent rampage. The zoo, located in the city of Rotterdam, was evacuated and authorities eventually captured the AWOL ape in one of the zoo’s restaurants, where he was destroying the kitchen in protest of the exorbitant prices charged for sodas and hot dogs. OK, so I made that last part up, but the 11-year-old gorilla named Bokito was indeed captured at a zoo restaurant after his outburst, which included biting a woman and dragging her around the zoo. For those of you looking to avoid this particular zoo on your next visit to the Netherlands, it’s the Diergaarde Blijdorp Zoo where this happened. No word on whether the woman who was bitten by the gorilla was making funny faces or taunting Bokito by holding food outside his cage, just beyond the animal’s reach. It would also be wise for the zoo to stop showing its gorillas King Kong DVDs, it’s just a bad influence on them.

- eBay is a great place to sell your knick-knacks, toys, electronics, etc., but I really don’t understand why celebrities ever bother selling wildly expensive merchandise on the online auction site. Inevitably, some joker thinks he’ll be sooooo funny and bid $20 million dollars on the item, which of course he can't afford to pay and the celebrity just ends up looking like a tool for trying to cheap out and sell their item on eBay instead of holding an actual legitimate auction and a reputable auction house. Actor John Schneider, who is known to those of you from the way back as Bo Duke on the original Dukes of Hazzard series and as Jonathan Kent for the first five seasons of the hit TV series Smallville, tried to sell the famous orange “01” car that the Dukes of Hazzard made famous on the popular ‘80s show. Predictably, a ginormous tool put up a $10 million bid on the car, only to have it revealed that the bid was a hoax. Schneider will re-list the car on eBay, but this time bidders will have to prove up front that they can pay. Should’ve gone to Christie’s or Sotheby’s, Johnny, you could have saved a lot of trouble.

What I can teach aspiring criminals, why you shouldn't defend wife-beating baseball players and what the worst people in America have been up to

- Earlier this week, I wrote that no one cares about cycling now that Lance Armstrong is retired and that Floyd Landis should stop prolonging the fight to clear his name of steroid-usage allegations and just fade gracefully into, as Mike Tyson would say, Bolivian. Well, I have to man up and admit I was wrong, because if Landis was going to force the issue and continue the battle, he may as well go big and that’s just what happened on Thursday. Landis’ manager, well his former manager now, William Geoghegan decided that former Tour de France winner and American cycling legend Greg LeMond testifying at Landis’ hearing before officials from anti-doping agencies would be a bad thing. Based on this belief, Geoghegan, formulated a plan - more precisely, he formulated the worst plan in the history of criminal-activity planning. Geoghegan decided that in order to prevent LeMond from testifying, he would call LeMond and pretend to be an uncle of LeMond’s who had sexually abused him when LeMond was eight years old, after which he would threaten to reveal the details of their sexual interactions to the public if LeMond testified. The problem with this plan other than it being despicable, slimy, disgusting and revolting on a colossal level? Geoghegan made the call from his own freaking cell phone, meaning it took about five minutes for the police to trace the call. Well done, Mensa, you always want to use one of the most easily traced methods of communication when phoning in a sexual assault revelation threat to a witness in a case against your friend. Mix in a pay phone and something over the receiver to distort your voice, Willy, at least then the police won't have hard proof that you made the call even though all circumstantial evidence would point in your direction. How scary is it that I (a person who has never committed a crime in his life) could give a seminar on how to formulate a successful criminal plot and it would actually be informative and beneficial to the overwhelming majority of the losers who actually do commit criminal acts in this country? Along with the gaggle of goons Tonya Harding employed to whack Nancy Kerrigan at the Olympic Trials a few years ago, Geoghegan has to be considered one of the biggest morons to hatch a criminal plot anywhere, ever.

- I’m as excited as any American to see the rebuilding and reconstruction going on at the site of the World Trade Center project in downtown Manhattan, but is it too much to ask that the process occur without dropping 15-foot pipes through the roofs of firehouses in the area? Thanks, I and the firemen who were injured by the falling pipe appreciate your consideration. Demolition work was being done on the former Deutsche Bank building this week when the renegade piece of metal sprinkler pipe fell from the building’s 35th floor through the roof of Engine 10/Ladder 10. The firehouse, coincidentally, was almost destroyed in the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attack. Nice to know the building survived the worst terrorist attack in the history of our nation but some lackluster demolition crew can nearly take it out. Neither of the firefighters injured in the incident are seriously harmed and both should recover fully, but I for one believe firefighters and people of all professions should be able to go about their daily business in their workplace without fear of huge pieces of pipe crashing through the roof and crushing them. Let’s go ahead and make that a rule we all live and abide by, k?

- Time to enter the name of another finalist into the contest for the worst parent in America for 2007! Rosie Costello of Tacoma, Wash., come on down! Rosie, it seems, decided that the best way to support her two children wasn’t getting a job and earning the money, but rather to coach her children to fake mental retardation so she could collect disability benefits for them. Costello was convicted in U.S. District Court of conspiracy to defraud the government and Social Security fraud and will now serve three years in prison. Her son Pete Costello, 28, was sentenced last week to 13 months in prison for his role in the scam. Investigators have not been able to locate Rosie Costello’s daughter Marie, but when they find her, she’ll face similar charges. Hope you’re very proud of yourselves, Costello family, taking money that’s intended for mentally retarded people who really are handicapped and can’t care for themselves. I’m sure they appreciate able-bodied people faking retardation and making a mockery of their condition. The Costellos would be the most despicable, deceitful and duplicitous pieces of crap in today’s post if not for……….

- On the surface, it might appear wrong and insensitive to protest the suspension of two major leaguers from their respective teams after being charged with assault on their wife or girlfriend…..and it would appear that way once you considered the matter further. Still, the Major League Baseball Players Association filed grievances Thursday to protest the suspensions of Seattle Mariners pitcher Julio Mateo and Arizona Diamondbacks infielder Alberto Callaspo. Mateo was arrested in New York when the Mariners were in town to play the Yankees and police responded to a call from a Manhattan hotel where Mateo and his wife were staying. The cops found a woman, revealed to be Mrs. Mateo, in need of five stitches to close a wound to her mouth and they booked good ol’ Julio on a charge of third-degree assault. He posted bond and was released, but the team optioned him to the minor leagues and suspended him for 10 days without pay for missing that day’s game. Callaspo was placed on the restricted list without pay (i.e. suspended without pay) by his team, the D-Backs, after he was taken into custody on suspicion of misdemeanor assault against his wife and felony criminal damage. He too was released from jail following a hearing, but like Mateo he stands to lose a decent chunk of change if the suspension from his team holds up. You can make the case that a person’s conduct outside of work shouldn’t subject them to punishment at work, and partially that’s true. However, the NFL has already made a point of saying that guys who get into trouble off the field and drag the league down in the mud with them will face ramiprecussions from the league. Also, Mateo and Callaspo were both unavailable to their teams because of their legal troubles, so that colors the situation as well. Lastly, you’re going to have a hard time cultivating any sympathy at all for a guy who is accused of physically assaulting his wife, fiancée, girlfriend, etc. Take your punishment like men, Julio and Alberto, and then start acting like men by stopping your abuse of your wives.

- Working at a funeral home has to be one of the more difficult, challenging jobs around. Working with dead bodies, grieving families and being surrounded by death all day, every day absolutely would take a toll on you. That being said, if you are going to work at a funeral home, you need to conduct yourself with a modicum of dignity and honor. I shouldn’t have to say this, but I do because of three funeral home directors in Rochester, N.Y. who, along with four former employees of a biomedical supply company, have been indicted on charges of body stealing, unlawful dissection and related counts after removing skin, bones and other body parts from dozens of corpses awaiting cremation. Seems clever, right, because if the body is being cremated, who’s going to know anyhow? So maybe there are a few less ashes in the urn, who cares, right, because you’ve got most of your loved one in there. Either that or you’re a despicable, loathsome piece of garbage who can't give the most basic, fundamental respect to the remains of a dearly departed loved one as their final request for cremation is being carried out. You can't conspire with some biomedical supply employees to give them body parts off corpses to line your pockets at the expense of those you’re supposed to be serving. Here’s hoping that when all of seven of you body-part-snatching scumbags die (sooner rather than later if you live the rest of your lives with the same lack of character and integrity you’ve shown here) that those dealing with your remains show more class and respect than you were able to muster.

More terrible new TV shows, mindless Republican senators and exploding dishwashers

- Crap. A measure before the U.S. Senate to cut off funding for the war in Iraq was soundly defeated Wednesday, even though a growing number of senators from both sides of the aisle are incredibly unhappy with W.’s (mis)handling of the war. The 67-29 vote against the measure seems bad on the surface, but when you consider that only 12 senators backed a similar initiative last summer, it’s clear that anti-war sentiment isn't just growing in every state of the Union, every country in the world and in the mind of everyone with an IQ above 60, it’s also becoming prevalent in Congress. Ignorant Republican leaders such as Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., went so far as to wrongfully assail the bill as declaring a “surrender date” for the United States. I’ve said it before, Mitch, but I’ll say it again, more slowly and in smaller words so you will understand: We….have….already…..lost…..the….war. There….was…..no…..reason…..for…..the…..war…..to…..begin…..with……so…..no……matter……what…..we…..do…..there…..is…..no…..way……to….win. Letting…….more…..American…….soldiers…..die…..for….no…..real…….reason……won't……..prove…….

anything. Now that we’ve cleared that up, why not get the ball rolling on those impeachment proceedings for W. As incompetent as that dude is, he has to provide mountains of new ammo for an impeachment every day, so by now getting rid of him shouldn’t be all that hard. Besides, he’s not bright enough to understand what the word impeachment means, so just tell him he’s getting an extra-long vacation to spend at his ranch in Texas, hand him a box of goobers, a Big Gulp of Mountain Dew and a coloring book and send him on his way.

- This can't end well. The state legislature in South Carolina is considering a measure that would allow concealed weapon permit holders to carry their guns onto college campuses and school grounds at all levels. The law would mirror one already on the books in Utah, which proudly declares its willingness to fill its school grounds with as many guns as legally possible. Like Utah’s leaders, the powers-that-be in South Carolina are under the false impression that more guns will equal less school shootings. Right, because someone having a permit to carry a gun automatically means they are mentally stable, never get angry and never lose control of their emotions to the point that they might shoot someone. Also, it’s not like anyone who has a permit and carries a piece is anything less than a high-level marksman who is an absolute pro with their 9mm. A House subcommittee in the state legislature approved on Wednesday the bill to allow weapons at schools. Again, I’ll take exception to the assertion that having more people with guns at a school at any level, elementary to college, makes a school safer. Accidents happen, people in stressful, dangerous situations with guns make mistakes, period. Keep guns out of schools, because you’re not making them safer, you’re just packing the powder keg with more dynamite so that when there is an explosion, it’ll be that much bigger.

- Lastings Milledge is no longer satisfied with being a disappointment to the New York Mets on the field, he’s now determined to let them down off the field as well. The former prize prospect turned mediocre major leaguer has run afoul of the organization because of the racially and sexually explicit lyrics he songs on a song that’s included on his new album of hip hop music. Milledge, who founded his own record label (a growing trend among athletes with too much time and money on their hands), uses derogatory terms for women and African Americans in the song, which can be found on his label’s website, www.souljaboirecords.com. Nice word play there, L., but alluding to yourself as a “soldier boy” is laugh-out-loud funny because the last thing you are is a soldier of any kind, and wearing that hideous camouflage suit jacket you were recently photographed in doesn’t change that fact. “We don’t approve of his lyrics,” New York General Manager Omar Minaya stated succinctly. Safe to say that in their closed-door meeting, Minaya used much stronger language to explain his feelings to Milledge about the lyrics. No disciplinary action will be taken by the organization against him, but Milledge needs to realize that he’s Lastings Milledge, not David Ortiz or Alex Rodriguez. He doesn’t have nearly enough credibility or status as a player to do anything he wants without fear of retribution by his team. Clean up your act, L., and before you release any more racially and sexually explicit music, hit about 500-600 home runs and win a half-dozen Gold Gloves and then you might be able to get away with acting like an idiot.

- Dishwashers can suffer from many types of problems such as not getting your dishes clean, leaving ugly spots on the dishes, being excessively noisy and disruptive……..and catching on fire. Betcha didn’t think of that last one, eh? But General Electric Co. has issued a massive recall on dishwashers it sold under the brand names Eterna, GE, GE Profile, GE Monogram, Hotpoint and Sears-Kenmore. Seems these particular models are prone to a nasty wiring malady that could spark a fire in your kitchen. Go ahead, honey, turn on the dishwasher, let it run and…………BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!! FIRE!!! FIRE!!!!! Not exactly what you want to have happen after a long hard day when you’re trying to save some time and energy by letting your trusty dishwasher do the hard work in cleaning your plates and utensils. A good rule of thumb for any kitchen is that at no point should any of your appliances have flames protruding from it, just for future reference.

- I was curious about this, and it seems that despite widespread speculation and expectation, CBS is holding firm at three versions of its CSI franchise. At the network’s upfront on Wednesday, the lineup for the fall season was announced and all of you residents of Boise, Topeka, Knoxville, Yuma, Concord, Fairbanks and Galveston won't be getting your much-anticipated CSI show based in your hometown. Among the new offerings from CBS that should be in the running to be the first show canceled this fall is Moonlight, a show about a private investigator who is also a vampire. Yeah, that’s a great premise…….FOR ME TO POOP ON! Another CBS newbie, Big Bang Theory, is about geeks trying to impress a beauty (a lot of shows that area geek-centric being introduced this fall) and is automatically DQ’d in my book because it’s a half-hour show and thus not worth watching. Other new shows are Viva Laughlin, which I don’t know much about other than it’s a mystery set in Nevada and its music is inspired by a British show, and Cane, about a Cuban rum-smuggling family headed up by Jimmy Smits. I’ve never been a big Smits fan, but these two shows, Cane and Viva Laughlin, look like the best bets for new CBS shows worth watching. Of course, Survivor will be in its usual Thursday night slot and my all-time favorite reality show, The Amazing Race will be back midseason (thankfully minus Charla and Mirna, the two most unlikable reality show contestants ever). Oh, and crotchety old Andy Rooney will still be around to spew his bile-laced, bitter, out-of-touch geezer-isms on 60 Minutes every Sunday night, which I am sure is a relief to exactly no one.

You suck, Brett Favre, you'll assault anyone, police officers and you're a beast, Appa Sherpa

- As someone who would love to climb Mount Everest once, I would be absolutely remiss if I didn’t give major props to my new main man Appa Sherpa, a celebrated mountaineer in Nepal who has now climbed the fabled peak 17 freaking times. Sherpas are well-known as the mountain people who serve as guides for those looking to climb Everest, but that doesn’t mean they should be scaling the massive mountain like they’re climbing a flight of stairs to get to the second floor of a suburban home. Facing grueling climbs, extreme temperatures, decreased oxygen levels and the omnipresent threat of death from many different dangers shouldn’t be something you just shrug off 17 times without a care. The climb was a charity endeavor, to raise money for the education of mountain guides, but honestly you could raise money for any cause at all and it would still be absolutely macho to climb freaking Mount Everest 17 times. Appa, you are hardcore, my man, but you need to stop it because you’re making the rest of us look weak and feeble by comparison.

- Progress is being and equity achieved in the way our law enforcement personnel treat citizens. It used to be that police were harsher and less forgiving with poor, uneducated and lesser members of society and the rich and privileged among us were treated far more favorably. I’m proud to report that this is changing, that rich, white-collar citizens are also being subjected to the same type of abuse and beatdowns that were once reserved for the lower reaches of society. Four businessmen dining at an upscale city bar in Chicago were viciously beaten by three police officers in an attack that was caught on video. The three officers have been charged with crimes that include obstruction of justice, aggravated battery and official misconduct. Sgt. Jeffrey Planey, 33 hit the trifecta and was tagged with one count of each of the above-mentioned crimes while Officers Paul Powers, 25, and Gregory Barnes, 39, were only charged with aggravated battery. No one is immune now, it would seem, because both rich and poor, professional and blue-collar, black and white are finding themselves on the wrong end of good ol’ fashioned police brutality. Welcome to the 2007 version of the United States, where physical abuse and the violation of rights are becoming more and more colorblind.

- Buying a foreclosed home at an auction can be a dicey proposition, because you may not know exactly what you’re getting yourself into. The house might need repairs to the plumbing, roof, heating or electrical wiring that you just can't know about…….or you might be walking into a 21st century version of Psycho. That’s what a man who purchased a foreclosed home in the Spanish town of Roses found when he entered a house he had just purchased. A la Norman Bates’ mother in Alfred Hitchcock’s famous film, this man found the corpse of the home’s previous owner sitting on the couch in a mummified state. The body had mummified largely because of the salty seaside air in Roses, which is located in the Catalonia region of Spain. Officials in the town estimate that the body had been in that spot on the couch since 2001, when the now-deceased woman had stopped making house payments on her home. I feel bad for the new owner, because you can get rid of that couch, you can fumigate the room, spray it with 50 coats of industrial-strength disinfectant, paint that room, redo the flooring and bring in all new furniture and you’re still not getting rid of that creepy feeling you get every time you enter that particular room. Turn right around and sell that house, only this time make sure that all dead bodies have been removed from the premises so the new owners don’t have the same unpleasant experience of finding a mummified corpse in the living room.

- Another day, another network upfront, this time ABC. Admittedly I’m not the biggest ABC fan because after the network axed Alias a last year, there wasn’t a single show on ABC that I had any interest in watching. The network has leaned heavily toward pandering to the chick flick crowd, with a slate of programming that seems to make every effort to appeal to woman and repel men (Dancing with the D-List Stars, The Bachelor, Grey’s Anatomy, Desperate Housewives). With eight new shows being presented at the upfront, ABC has a slightly more promising fall lineup than NBC, whose new schedule looks like a big pile of monkey poop even when contrasted with a TV landscape quickly becoming devoid of great shows. Three of ABC’s new shows are automatically DQ’d in my rankings because they’re half-hour shows, which are basically a ginormous waste of time because there’s not enough time to develop anything worth following. Also, one of those half-hour shows is the moronic, idiotic, imbecilic comedy Cavemen, based on the caveman characters from the GEICO commercials. This premise is already tired and barely entertaining enough to carry a 30-second commercial, there is no way it’s going to work as a TV series. Other new offerings from ABC are Private Practice, the Grey’s spin-off (umm, I’ll pass, since the original incarnation of the show holds zero interest for me), Pushing Daisies, about a young man able to bring things back to life (hey, already seen that kind of stuff on shows like Heroes and Smallville, try coming up with a more original premise), Dirty Sexy Money, about an idealistic lawyer working for an extremely wealthy family (in spite of the fact that the whole lawyer-drama concept has been done to death, this actually sounds possibly watchable) and Big Shots, a series about four would-be CEO’s who are friends, which I might give a chance to if only to see how old favorite Michael Vartan of Alias fame is faring nowadays. Overall, not an inspiring slate of shows, but again, better than what NBC has to offer, which is something to hang your hat on, I guess………

- I’ve been tired of Brett Favre’s act for quite a while now, but it’s still nice to see the Green Bay Packers and their management joining me in my disdain for it. Favre already threw a hissy fit after the team failed to trade for talented and enigmatic wide receiver Randy Moss during the draft. Favre wanted Moss to supplement a shaky receiving corps, but instead New England swooped in and traded for him instead. Reports have Favre demanding a trade from Green Bay after that, but of course the two-faced, image-conscious golden boy came out denying that rumor, saying that while he was unhappy, he never demanded a trade. Sure, because Brett Favre would never, ever put his own welfare ahead of the team’s success, except for every season he’s strung them out, vacillating between retirement and playing another year and left the team in a bind, unable to move on because they don’t know what he’ll do. But Favre was allegedly backed off of the “trade me or else” ledge by coach Mike McCarthy and all seemed well……until word came that Favre was refusing to attend this week’s mandatory team mini-camp so he could stay in Mississippi and help plan his daughter’s graduation party and take part in all of the festivities associated with her graduation. He also alleges that due to his physical status (recovering from surgery) that the team wasn’t going to have him actively participate in camp anyhow. The team says otherwise, and they want Favre at camp because they have the idea that it is mandatory and not optional, as their quarterback seems to believe. Basically, Brett Favre is being a selfish jerk who will only play if everything is totally on his terms, the team be damned. He’s out for himself and his image, and if pursuing that goal helps the team win, all the better. It is sickening to see how much of the media, football fandom and sports fans in general kowtow to this guy and buy into his shtick. It’s time to see him for what he is: an over-the-hill, egotistical, self-centered glory hound who is no longer helping his team but is substantially harming it.

An indication I might be a TV savant, finally W. sets a deadline of some sort and why are Miami motorists so angry?

- Not being an NBA fan and following the Association in only a distant, cursory sense, I can't say for sure if the San Antonio Spurs are a thoroughly dirty team, but based on the actions Robert Horry and Bruce Bowen during the past two games of the Spurs’ series against Phoenix, they at least have two really dirty players. In case you missed it, in Game 3 of the series, Bowen was pivoting on the left wing, outside the three-point arc, with the ball over his head when he lurched forward and swung his knee right into Steve Nash’s groin. That blast to the junk was as deliberate and dirty as you can get, and Bowen can’t hide behind his reputation as an agitator and annoyance on this one. That wasn’t getting under someone’s skin, that was blasting him in the package and it’s a crap play. In Game 4, Horry one-upped his teammate by body-checking Nash into the scorer’s table late in the game after the Spurs blew a big lead and it was clear they were going to lose. What a classless, dirty action by Horry. That went way over the line of being physical and tough and landed squarely in the category of thuggery. For a team that tries to cultivate a professional, take-care-of-business reputation, the Spurs sure are looking like a group of common streets thugs this series.

- Back by popular demand, it’s cruise ship disaster time! This story takes us to the frozen tundra of Alaska, where a riverboat-style cruise ship ran aground near Juneau on Monday. More than 200 passengers had to be evacuated from the ship before the Coast Guard could come in and get the boat moving again. Only one passenger was taken to the hospital for injuries suffered in the crash, while the rest of the happy travelers were taken by ferry back to Juneau. I’d like to know why cruise ship companies don’t go ahead and change their emergency procedures signage and literature to read “When an emergency happens” instead of “In case of emergency.” Your chances of a crash, virus outbreak or food-poisoning incident happening are just as good, if not better, than your chances of avoiding these maladies. But at least with most cruise ship disasters, you’re in a warm, tropical climate. This time, you’re freaking Alaska, surrounded by……well, wilderness, snow, glaciers, etc. Do they even have summer up there or do they just move right from winter to the really bad portion of winter and then back again?

- According to the latest installment of an annual survey by Connecticut-based automobile membership club AutoVantage, Miami drivers are the angriest and most hostile, and I’m not sure that result makes total sense. You live in one of the most beautiful cities in the world, with gorgeous weather, gorgeous women and miles of beaches. You’ve got palm trees, great night life, tons of amazing restaurants and a local team in all three major sports leagues. On the other hand, if I was forced to shell out copious amounts of cash to park every freaking day because there’s so little real estate available for parking, I might be a little pissed off too. The results of the survey are based on how often drivers in a city slam on their brakes to mess with tailgaters, run red lights, talk on their cell phones while driving and a host of other dangerous on-road behaviors. Other cities near the top of the list were shocking entries such as New York, Boston, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.

- Ok, ok, so maybe that whole destroying the environment and global warming thing, perhaps it really is an issue, I guess. That would be the oh-so-overwhelmingly-enthusiastic attitude shown by the W. administration, which has reluctantly declared that it will decide how to regulate pollution from new motor vehicles by the time our un-esteemed leader leaves office. This comes only after some serious prodding from the Supreme Court, efforts which “inspired” W. to sign an executive order that will “cut gasoline consumption and greenhouse gas emissions from motor vehicles.” Thanks for that, W. Is it any wonder we can't get this tool to set a timetable for troop withdrawal from Iraq? It took the Supreme Court chastising him to get him to do something about greenhouse gas emissions from cars and even then all he would say is that he’ll take care of it sometime in the next 20 months or so. Dude, not being willing to set any timetables or deadlines for anything doesn’t keep people from criticizing you because you’re not officially late or behind schedule (because there is no schedule), it just makes you look like an inept ass who never accomplishes anything of worth.

- Some shocking news from the NBC upfront (a big event where TV networks unveil their lineups for the upcoming fall season, trot out stars from those shows, promote new series, etc.). Andy Barker, P.I. is not returning for a second season! I know, I was floored too, especially since I said before the show even premiered that it had a horrible premise and looked like a total joke based on the promos. Hmmm, you mean a poorly written comedy with a B-list actor based on the absurd notion of an accountant by day becoming an private investigator by night didn’t work? Wow. I can't say as I’m wowed by any of NBC’s new shows being offered up this fall, either. There is one newbie that isn't really a new show as much as a small offshoot of another, Heroes. There will be a small addition to the Heroes franchise, a show titled Heroes: Origins, which will introduce potential new characters to the main show and allow viewers to vote and decide which new characters will be added to Heroes. Other than that, NBC’s new shows will have a time-traveling reporter (borrrrrring), a computer geek who becomes a secret agent (a tired, hack-job rip-off combination of about two dozen other shows in recent memory), and new game show that takes karaoke to a new low, even lower than American Karaoke. And from what I can gather, Howie Mandel will still be around, doing that creepy, bizarre wave/salute/hand gyration thingy he does at the end of every episode of that gawd-awful game show he hosts. Good times all around…………

Morons at the MPAA, the wrong way to go about pimpin' and a doping trial full o' fun

- Absolutely, unequivocally, smoking sucks. If you smoke - be it cigarettes, cigars, cloved cigarettes, a pipe - you suck and that’s a statement I’m not backing off of, because I can guarantee that you have not smoked every single cigarette of your life in total and complete seclusion in an airtight box where none of the fumes were breathed in by another person. Thus, someone else has been forced to breathe in your hazardous, cancer-causing smoke and increase their chances of lung cancer because you lack the willpower and common decency to stop killing them and yourself with the toxin-laced smoke from your tobacco product of choice. As bad as smoking is, however, it’s still absolutely laughable that the Motion Picture Association of America is now factoring the presence of smoking in movies when it assigns ratings to films. Along with sexual content, language, nudity, violence and dialogue, smoking will be a part of the equation in determining whether a movie is rated PG, PG-13, R, etc. I can think of a lot of reasons I wouldn't want children seeing a movie, but smoking isn't one of them. God help us if kids are indeed gullible and stupid enough to pick up smoking because they saw a character do it in a movie and there wasn't a single authority figure in their life to stop them from picking up the most disgusting habit known to man.

- Most of America, even the most rabid sports fans among us, stopped giving a crap about the sport of cycling the instant Lance Armstrong retired. Without Lance’s commanding presence, cycling wasn’t something the majority of fans cared about enough to follow. Still, when Armstrong’s friend and former teammate Floyd Landis made a heroic comeback from hip surgery to win the Tour de France last year, many Americans cheered him and rallied behind his victory. That support turned sharply to disappointment and outrage when a mandatory drug test revealed traces of synthetic testosterone in a sample taken from Landis. Over the past year plus, Landis and the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) have waged a pitched battle over the validity of those positive test results. There have been twists and turns as some samples have tested negative and some positive, as Landis and his team of lawyers and lackeys have attacked the testing process, the labs doing the testing and anyone else they think might be against them. The U.S. Anti-Doping Agency is also involved, but its own rules prevent the agency from publicly discussing the case. Now, Landis and the anti-doping agencies in France and the United States will go toe-to-toe in a formal hearing at Pepperdine University in Malibu, Calif. to try to reach a conclusion on the situation. Landis has already spent more than $1 million on his defense against the doping allegations, and at this point I think he’s just wasting his time. Just as everyone forgot about cycling after Armstrong retired, everyone has forgotten about cycling and your (alleged) cheating has faded into obscurity. Let it go, move on to your next endeavor in life and quit dredging up the issue and wasting money. At this point, you’re not going to change the perceptions that most people have about you and what you may or may not have done. Let it go, Floyd, you’re doing as much harm as good at this point.

- Hard to see how this idea backfired: A group of teachers from a Murfreesboro, Tenn. elementary school decided to stage a fake gun attack on school trip as a sort of crisis training exercise for their sixth-grade students. For some reason, when parents of those children learned about what had gone on, they weren’t down. The teachers began the simulated gun attack during the last night of the trip, telling students that a gunman was on the loose and that they needed to lie on the floor or hide under tables. They even had one teacher in a hooded sweatshirt act as if he was trying to break down the door, only to reveal to the students as they began crying and panicking that it was only a drill. What these idiots intended as a “teaching experience” didn’t sit well with parents, who took umbrage at their children being subjected to psychological trauma, emotional distress and outright terror. Memo to teachers and administrators at Scales Park Elementary School: You are dealing with young children, not a commando unit in the Army. Simulated terror exercises are too extreme for kids that age, so next time try sitting them down and just telling them what they should do in case of a dangerous situation such as a gunman on the loose. And oh yeah, tell their parents in advance so they know what you’re doing and aren't taken by surprise when they hear news about your simulated gunman exercises with their children.

- The average NFL career lasts between three and four years, which leaves the majority of players with a difficult decision when their short pro football life is over. What do they do with their life after that? For many of them, football is all they have ever known and they didn’t put that much time or effort into learning and building their knowledge base in college. They’re at a loss as to what they should do next once their playing days are done. Not former Pittsburgh Steelers player Richard Seigler, though, because he had a plan and he most definitely put it into motion once he was done playing. Oh, did I mention that Seigler’s plan was both highly immoral and illegal and could land him in prison as well as on the list of worst guys in America? Such is the life of a pimp, which is what Seigler has allegedly decided to become. He is charged with felony counts of pandering and living off the earnings of a prostitute after flying a young woman from Spokane, Wash. to Las Vegas, forcing her to engage in prostitution and then taking most or all of her earnings for himself. He could be sentenced to 10 years in prison if convicted on all charges. Now I’ll be the first to admit I haven't kept up on the going pimp/ho earnings-split rates, but I have a feeling that most ladies of the night get to keep some of what they bring in. As far as post-playing career moves go, this is one of the more creative and less intelligent ones I’ve seen. Seigler needed to do a bit more research, because while prostitution is legal in certain Nevada counties, it isn't within the city limits of Vegas. Additionally, even if he hadn’t been arrested at this point, I don’t see how Seigler’s pimping business could have been too successful, because how many hookers are going to go to work for a pimp who doesn’t allow them to keep any money they bring in? Use your upcoming time in prison to hammer the kinks out of your business model, Rich, so this kind of problem doesn’t arise again.

- A word of advice to Timbaland, Nelly Furtado and Justin Timberlake: If the three ingredients in your musical recipe are equivalent to combining horse manure, cow manure and monkey crap, it doesn’t matter what order you put them in or if you choose to combine any two of the three, the end result is still going to be crap. These three artists just keep churning out one steaming, stinking pile of rancid musical garbage after another, teaming Timberlake with Timbaland, mixing in Timbaland with Furtado or bringing all three of these acts together for songs, albums and videos. Let’s see, you have the weasel-on-helium voice of Timberlake, the suddenly skanky, urban-leaning Furtado and her questionable vocal ability and a mediocre rapper in Timbaland who should have stuck with producing instead of stepping behind the mic…….and you’re expecting good music from this combination? Just because it’s club friendly and some of the music-stupid public likes the sound doesn’t mean anything, because you can slam most any song to a dance beat, synthesize and distort the vocals and the Ecstasy-loving clubbers at most nightclubs will dance to it. Plus, the oh-so-terrible musical taste of your average 13-year-old girl will always embrace Timberlake because they think he’s dreamy. With lyrical and topical depth rivaling that of a drop of spit, the Furtado-Timberlake-Timbaland trio is one of the worst things in music this side of American Karaoke, and I sincerely hope that they all go their separate ways soon.

Radio is ruled by morons, Mexican mobsters lack originality and a special day for Major League Baseball

- The powers of petitions and protests are great things, and using them to fight wrongs and injustices in the world are a huge part of what makes free speech and rebellion so great. However, using those powers on a petition to have California Governor Ah-nold Schwarzenegger pardon Paris Hilton for her conviction on a probation violation doesn’t make you an outspoken dissident or a proponent of free speech, it makes you a dumbass. Trying to get a billionaire socialite skank out of a 45-day sentence because she not once but twice violation probation is about as big a waste of time as you can get. Paris should serve twice that much time in jail for wasting everyone in the world’s time by having to hear the nonstop gossip and coverage she gets because she’s famous without actually doing anything that should make her famous. She’s contributed nothing to the world at large (no, her multiple sex tapes don’t count) and yet she’s in the news nonstop. She’s made one terrible movie (House of Wax) that didn’t involve her taking her clothes off, so I’m with the Governator when he laughed off the petition to free Paris by saying he has more important matters to focus on.

- In what has become an annual tradition, Major League Baseball teams took part in a special promotion today, with players using pink bats (still standard wooden bats, just pink) and wearing pink wristbands to show support for breast cancer research on Mother’s Day. Teams do promotions for every game, but this is definitely a classy and great one, and props to all of the players using the pink bats and showing their support for an awesome cause.

- Skydiving is a dangerous activity and that’s part of the thrill. However, deaths involving skydivers typically happen when a parachute malfunctions and fails to open either partially or doesn’t open at all. Four intrepid thrill seekers in Marion, Mont. didn’t even get the chance to jump before their skydiving trip turned into a disaster. The plane the skydivers were planning on jumping out of crashed shortly after takeoff in a remote field (wait, isn't everything in Montana remote?), killing the four men and the pilot. That’s like going to bungee jump and getting killed because the ladder you climb up to the jump platform collapses or going whitewater rafting and being killed by a snake bite before you even make it to the water. It also doesn’t engender much faith in the potential success of a jump if the plane can't even make it up to jumping height before crashing. If disaster struck on what should be the easiest portion of the event, what kind of problems might have arisen once the plane was tens of thousands of feet above the earth?

- Godfather fans, they are indeed everywhere. At a military base in Veracruz, Mexico, some wacky Mexican gangstas left a severed head with a threatening note, with the “gift” intended as some sign of defiance by the organized crime sector in the area. The body that the head formerly belonged to was found shortly thereafter in a nearby neighborhood, but I really doubt the Mexican military is going to be badly shaken by this one. Let’s see……all manner of high-grade automatic weapons, tanks, bombs, grenades, planes, ships……yeah, I think they’ll be just fine. Organized crime has power and resources, no doubt, but if there’s one group I’m not going to directly challenge, it’s my country’s military. However, if you’re going to do so, you can do better than a severed head and a mean letter. The Godfather movies are a couple decades old, Mexican gangsters, so why don’t you use some of your ample financial resources to update your DVD library and perhaps catch the last few episodes of the Sopranos as well. If you’re going to base all of your intimidation tactics off of 20-year-old films, people are going to start thinking you have no imagination or originality.

- Why is it that the dumbest, most brain-dead morons in broadcasting are the ones who manage to land their own national show? Guys like Howard Stern and Don Imus became famous for acting like a-holes and saying insanely moronic things on air, and now Imus has been canned and Stern quarantined on satellite radio. Two other shock jocks on a New York-based show aired by CBS radio with Stern-like tendencies have just been given the heave-ho for a blatantly offensive skit rife with offensive stereotypes about Asians. Jeff Vandergrift and Dan Lay of The Dog House with JV and Elvis on WFNY-FM are the boneheads in question, and after their ill-advised skit they found their walking papers tacked to the brim of their urban sombreros, so to speak (a Seinfeld reference for you fans). I’d love to hear these guys explain how they thought this skit was going to be acceptable on air, especially after the uproar over Imus’ comments, which weren’t nearly as out of line and offensive as what Vandergrift and Lay said on air. Way to show your intelligence guys, your comedic talents obviously don’t extend beyond puerile, gimmicky and blatantly offensive material that most drunken frat dudes would find beneath them.

The Pope and I disagree, suspicious liquids run wild and graduating seniors at St. Vincent College get screwed

- The Pope is old and out of touch, so I’ll forgive him for his speech on Friday in which he ripped pop culture for promoting sexual immorality. An estimated crowd of 1 million people who apparently didn’t have anything better to do gathered on an empty airfield to hear Pope Benedict XVI talk, in part to canonize Friar Antonio de Sant’Anna as a saint and partly to take a run at the pop culture we’ve come to know and love. I could point out several problems with the Pope’s argument, but I’ll just say this: pop culture (i.e. music, movies and television) are a reflection of society more than they are a tool to shape it. Yes, these mediums do have an influence on people who view or listen to them, but pop culture is not some living entity with a mind of its own; it is a non-carbon-based entity that the people who create it structure and shape through their own preferences, values and ideas, so if you have a problem with pop culture, your real problem is with people. Don’t waste your time attacking industries and mediums that don’t give a crap what you think and focus your efforts on changing the minds and beliefs of people, because that’s how you’ll win the fight. This is what happens when you live inside your own structured little city, isolated from the world. Besides, what is the Pope doing tuning into MTV2 and visiting YouTube anyhow, which I assume are the types of pop culture entities that are so lacking in virtue? Thanks for nothing, Pope B.

- WANTED: A new member for the U.S. ski team who will be responsible for the following: 1) showing up for races drunk, 2) giving controversial interviews where he comports himself like a horse’s arse and says at least five stupid things per 15 minutes, 3) fails miserably in the team’s biggest races and events. Sound appealing? It’s all thanks to the departure or Bode Miller from the U.S. ski team, a move that should surprise no one and disappoint even fewer. Miller talked big, drank big, partied big and performed small in his time with the team, frequently crapping out in major international races, including the Olympics. Now he’s quit because he’s not happy with his place on the team and because the philosophy that the team focused on for its members. Gee, as hard as it is to see you go, Bode, the team will just have to make due/be much better off without you.

- Bottles of suspicions liquid are everywhere, so beware. A few months ago, it was Atlanta Falcons quarterback and esteemed dog fight kingpin (allegedly) Mike Vick carrying a water bottle with a mysterious dark particulate through airport security and refusing to turn the bottle over to security officials. Now, a school in Timonium, Md. has been evacuated because firefighters found a bottle containing a suspicious liquid inside a classroom. A teacher was taken to the hospital after experiencing dizziness, and a student was arrested several hours after the evacuation as a suspect in the incident. Nobody loves a good end-of-the-year senior prank like I do, but it stops being funny and worth the effort when you’re cuffed and put in jail. People stop laughing at you and start thinking you’re a ginormous tool when you’re driven off in the back of a squad car and facing serious charges. Next time, stick to taking the wheels off the principal’s car and putting it up on blocks or letting a bunch of rats or cockroaches loose in the school hallways, intrepid Maryland high school prankster.

- Wow….normally you’d want a great capper for your college career, a fitting sendoff and a time to symbolize all of the great times and experiences you’ve had over the past four or five years. My heartfelt sympathies go out to the graduating seniors at St. Vincent College in Latrobe, Pa., who suffered the indignity of having the worst president in United States history as their commencement speaker. I realize that sometimes, a school isn't able to secure their first or even second choice for a commencement speaker, but St. Vincent must’ve whiffed on its first 1,485 choices to end up with a brain dead, war mongering, head-in-the-sand goober like W. as their speaker. On the rankings for commencement speaker choices, I’d rank him behind even Ryan Seacrest and his man blouses right now. Nothing like having a graduation speaker who inspires 150 anti-war protestors to demonstrate outside the hall where the ceremony was held. It isn't truly a graduation unless angry anti-war demonstrators are marching outside while you receive your diploma. How’s about establishing a rule that no one can be a commencement speaker at your school if he’s not smarter than the quartet of stoner dudes wearing their knit beanies and playing hackey sack outside the student union.

- Let’s try a bit of legal strategy here, see if you can come up with the correct analysis here. Imagine you’re an NFL player who has been in trouble with the cops 12 times in a two year span, been charged with crimes three times and has been suspended by the league for a full year after your latest criminal activity. You’ve appealed the suspension and in four days, you will be meeting with the NFL commissioner, the same man who suspended you, to present your case for reducing the penalty you’ve received. Is the following a solid part of your strategy in preparing for said hearing, answer with a simple yes or no: being pulled over by the police for speeding and additionally charged with failure to produce a driver’s license. Anyone? You’re saying……..no? That’s right, another run-in with the law, even a minor one, is not a wise part of your appeal strategy. Adam “Pacman” Jones could have used a smart legal brain like yours this week, because he elected to commit the above-mentioned faux paus, and now he gets to head into his appeal hearing with Commissioner Roger Goodell with a fresh mark on his record of legal troubles. The heck with shortening your suspension at this point, P., you’d better hope the commish doesn’t extend it to two years.

The dilemma for stoners, the worst idea ever for a reality show and a funny penalty for smuggling cocaine

- Trying to decide between smoking weed and playing in the NFL wouldn’t seem to be a difficult decision, but don’t tell that to Ricky Williams. The dreadlocked Miami Dolphins running back who has endured multiple drug suspensions from the league, including the most recent, a one-year ban during which he traveled the world and also played in the Canadian Football League, was just about to return to the NFL when the hippie lettuce intervened. Williams, who is now tested regularly as part of the NFL’s substance abuse program, has tested positive for the wacky weed once again and now won't be able to apply for reinstatement until September. Furthermore, when he does apply he’ll have a fourth strike against him and will be trying to convince a commissioner who is being harsh and vigilant on misconduct and drug use by players to reinstate him. And oh yeah, any team that considers signing him would know that it runs the risk of having a guy who still can't stay away from his bong be booted from the league on a permanent basis if he tests positive again. I always knew that pot heads were a bunch of degenerate stoners who like hackey sack and Cheetos and can make a bong out of nearly any object in less than five minutes, but I didn’t know they were such a bunch of addicts that they would be willing to throw away a chance to make several million dollars and enjoy the NFL lifestyle just so they could continue getting baked.

- Bingo on ABC, really lame. Yeah, because what people have really been after is a reality show they can sit down and watch with their Nana. The only people who have any interest in Bingo are the ones down in the basement of their local Catholic or Methodist church, using the money from their Social Security check to play Bingo with Ethel, Betty, Estelle, Edna and the rest of their elderly friends. America at large isn't crying out for a forum for Bingo to exhibit its greatness on a national scale. This isn't a hotly debated issue that has our nation deeply concerned, ABC. Sometimes the reason there’s not a show about a certain subject on TV is because there’s no interest in seeing a show about that subject and it’s a terrible idea to do one. My life won't be complete once I have a mustachioed Indian man in a referee’s shirt yell, “No Bingo!” Nor do I need to see that British dude who used to be on Extreme Makeover: Home Edition with that lush Ty Pennington try to launch his career hosting National Bingo Night. This would be the absolute worst idea for a new TV show on the way this summer if not for………..

- Of course, as lame as National Bingo Night on ABC is, even higher on the lame-osity scale is…..Pirate Master, a show that will be debuting this summer on CBS. I have oh, so many questions about this worst idea for a reality show ever: What exactly do you do if you win? What’s your next step? With American Karaoke, you at least have a recording contract to produce a couple albums worth of over-produced, over-polished crap that someone else writes for you and tells you to sing. If you win America’s Next Top Runway Bimbo/Model, you have a modeling contract and a career you’ve embarked on. So what the frak do you do if you’re the Pirate Master? Is there really a market for Pirate Masters right now? And where exactly do you go to capitalize on your fame and accomplishment as Pirate Master? Does it entitle you to free meals at Long John Silver’s? Can you get in for half price at the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie? Also, exactly what skills that would help you win this God-forsaken show are of any good to a person in everyday life? Looting, pillaging and plundering haven't been en vogue for a few centuries; peg legs, eye patches and wooden legs are no longer stylish and “Shiver me timbers!” hasn’t been anyone’s catchphrase since before the Revolutionary War. I know that most reality show contestants are wannabe actors trying to launch their nonexistent careers, but I don’t believe that appearing on a pirate-themed reality show is going to boost anyone’s profile. Just because people will go see a movie about a certain topic doesn’t mean they want to see a reality show about it. Nobody is itching to see a show where people genetically mutate after being bitten by radioactive spiders, are they? Pirate Master is going to go the way of Armed & Famous within a few weeks of debuting, namely to the bottom of the ratings and then off the air entirely.

- If you’re an inept coach or general manager in the professional sports world, there are two franchises you absolutely want to work for: the Boston Celtics and the Detroit Lions. The Lions, owned by the Ford family, continue to employ GM Matt Millen Despite a 24-72 record in his six seasons at the helm and a slew of bungled draft picks. The Celtics used to be one of the NBA’s flagship franchises but have fallen on hard times, including the last four seasons with Doc Rivers as head coach. Their futility reached its zenith this season as the Celts went 23-59, the second worst record in the NBA, yet Rivers has not only kept his job but has now been given a contract extension of yet-to-be-announced length. It’s not as if the Celtics have gotten better under Rivers either; they’ve gotten progressively worse. The team’s younger players haven't developed and improved, and Rivers constantly juggles starting lineups and his rotation of players to the point that his team develops zero continuity and cohesion. He doesn’t have the most talented squad, but he manages to get even less out of the talent he has than he should get. Many fans complain incessantly about how out of whack player contracts and salaries are, but equally or possibly more absurd are the contracts and innumerable second chances given to coaches and executives like Millen and Rivers who are consistently awful over prolonged periods of time.

- If this is the penalty for a charge of conspiring to traffic cocaine, I’m going to reverse field and openly advocate that everyone get into the coke toting business. Jorge Hernandez-Villalvazo, a Mexican native with permanent U.S. residency, has been freed as a part of a plea deal after a federal agent made him pose for a demeaning photo wearing a sombrero and holding a Mexican flag. I know no one likes to have their heritage mocked, but tell me you wouldn’t take the risk of smuggling cocaine across the border and making a few thousand dollars if you knew that you could get off with little more than having to pose for a humiliating photo and that photo would include you being fully clothed. Sounds like a decent deal to me, and props to the federal agent who botched an entire smuggling case because he or she possesses and incredibly juvenile sense of humor and zero professionalism. Glad to see that those we charge with protecting our borders and policing the drug world are operating at the absolute highest level 24/7.

- Normally finding myself on the same side of any argument as radical Shiite lawmakers would scare the crap out of me, but I’ve found an exception to that rule. Members of the Iraqi legislature are pushing for an actual deadline for the withdrawal of U.S.-led troops and a freeze on the number of foreign troops already in their country (i.e. no troop surge). You guys want to know when our troops will be leaving and when this whole debacle of a war will end? So do we! Pretty much everyone is wondering that except for a select group of Bush administration sycophants who have either drank the Kool-Aid and believe the B.S. that W. is selling or are too terrified of him and too enamored with keeping their vastly overpaid government jobs to say what they really think. The Sadrist block of the Iraqi government, which holds 30 seats in the country’s legislature, is the group pushing for the withdrawal deadline and freeze on foreign military increases, and I have only one question for them: Do you guys have some sort of flag or bumper sticker for your party that I can get ahold of? I’m with you all the way on this issue, because the more people we can get from all over the world and the political spectrum to confront W. and demand he start fixing the mess he’s made and bring the war to an end, the better our chances are that this war will finally end.

A new TV show gets thumbs up, a new war-funding bill is gonna get a thumbs down and O.J. gets the heave-ho

- Of all the places in the world that O.J. Simpson should not be (anywhere where class, dignity, honor and integrity are needed), restaurants are high on the list. It’s not that O.J. doesn’t deserve or need food, it’s more that he should never, ever be in close proximity to waiters for any reason. I think we all know what (allegedly) happened with the Juice and waiter Ron Goldman, so why run the risk of that happening again? Jeff Ruby, the owner of an upscale steakhouse in Louisville, Ky. understands this, and he was smart enough to boot the double-murdering (allegedly), money grubbing (confirmed), worst guy in the history of the world (also confirmed) from his restaurant during Kentucky Derby weekend. Ruby didn’t want the kind of sideshow and notoriety that the Juice brings, so he marched right up to the table where the former Heisman Trophy winner was sitting and told him to leave. It was the right choice, but from that point on, Ruby was putting his waiters in a dangerous position. I doubt the Juice was happy about being refused service, and having him angry in the vicinity of both knives and waiters is a recipe for disaster. This time, no one got hurt and O.J. left peacefully, but it’s not a chance you want to take on a regular basis. Go away, Juice, you’re the worst dude in the world and you’re the most despicable piece of crap I’ve ever seen. No one likes you and no one wants you around, so just go away and stay gone.

- Kudos to the NBA’s schedule makers for being nearly as idiotic and inept as their NHL counterparts. The geniuses who draw up the Association’s playoff schedule have somehow managed to construct a five-day stretch wherein one series, the one pitting the Cleveland Cavaliers against the New Jersey Nets, has only one game played in five days, while in another series, the Golden State Warriors versus the Utah Jazz, three games are played in the same span. Worse yet, from Wednesday to Friday of this week, Utah and Golden State play two games in two separate cities while the Cavs and Nets play no games during that time. Not even a quarter of drunken, stoned baboons throwing darts at a schedule board while blindfolded could come up with a playoff schedule this absurd and retarded, so well done NBA. There’s a fine line between prolonging your season to extract maximum attention and coverage and being a bunch of moronic imbeciles who waste time and drag things out to a ridiculous length, and the NBA has crossed this line and is watching it fade quickly in the rearview mirror. Why is it so hard to find a simple formula for playoff scheduling and stick with it, something like one day off between games if the series stays in the same city, two days between games if the series shifts from one city to another? Seems easy, seems logical……..but it also seems -waaaaay beyond the grasp of the pea-brained NBA schedule makers.

- This will shock and awe you, but it appears likely that W. will veto another war-funding bill. This one is on its way to his desk after he vetoed a bill that would have dared to set actual timelines for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq and the new bill would only provide funding for the war through July, at which time the issue would be revisited. Once again, though, the president will reject a war-funding bill, showing that he just doesn’t get it and doesn’t understand that no one is buying his lies about the war anymore. Congress isn't going to give him money to drag this thing out indefinitely, they and the American public want answers, explanations, reasons and actual evidence. W. maintains that if he was open-minded and considered anew strategy with an actual chance of success, then his current doomed, incompetent, failing strategy would not have a chance to work. Again, allow me to ask how a strategy under which the situation has continually and drastically worsened for four years and which has pissed off nearly everyone involved (including people who initially supported the war) is suddenly going to start succeeding. I feel like I’m watching an especially stupid bird fly into a glass door over and over again, not realizing he’s slowly killing himself and that there is no opening for him to fly through, only a solid glass door he’s going to keep smacking into over and over again. Give it up W., no one is buying the steaming, stinking pile of monkey crap that you’re selling. It’s over, just admit you’re totally incompetent and accept whatever funding Congress will give you.

- As promised, I tuned in for the special advance preview of ABC’s new show, Traveler, on Thursday night. Going in, all I really knew was that the show centered on three friends visiting New York and a terrorist attack in the city happened while they were there. My first impressions of the show were good; I think it has a chance to be a great show to watch, depending on how the writers and producers build on the themes and feel of the pilot. There was a lot of action and a fast pace to the entire hour, with one of the three main characters, Will Traveler, involved in an explosion at a museum and two of his friends, Tyler and Jay, seen fleeing from the museum right before the blast and immediately the two prime suspects in the attack. The rest of the hour was those two on the run, and thankfully there wasn’t the totally implausible, miraculous escape from the cops in which two average guys outrun, out-leap and outsmart an entire police force with helicopters, multiple cars and all sorts of resources at their disposal. One thing the show will have to do is develop more back stories and secondary characters, because the pilot was devoted almost exclusively to setting up the three main characters. We didn’t get to know any of the other characters very well, which I’m sure will come in the shows ahead if the series is going to be successful. Shows where you only care about the one or two main characters don’t work, you need more depth. Also, we found out that a special advance preview means you see the pilot on a given day, then nearly three weeks later, the show debuts in its normal time slot. Not sure of the logic behind that, because waiting three weeks wouldn’t exactly have been the end of the world. But whatever, the bottom line is that Traveler merits watching when it returns on May 30 for an eight-week summer run, so tune in and give it a chance.

Lots of cheaters, lots of riots and a lack of good jihad music

- Is a new, totally revamped and possibly barely recognizable version of your favorite show preferable to not having that show around at all? That’s the question facing those of us who have come to know and love Veronica Mars. The creators of the show, in an attempt to save it from the horrifically and incapably wielded ax of the CW network, have pitched a revised version of the show that would have major cast changes and would fast forward from the show’s eponymous main character being in her first year of college to her working for the FBI. Also, there could be a name change for the show, so lead actress Kristen Bell might be the only constant between the two incarnations of the series. Last time I wrote about this, I ranked this option as the second best choice, behind bringing back the show as is, without the leap ahead in time, as the best option and canceling it altogether the worst choice. I still feel that way, but at this point I’d be both happy about the show’s return and worried about whether it will be at all the same or if it will be like a whole new show and have little connection to the first three seasons. Of course, the CW hasn’t yet said for sure if Mars is coming back, and since these ass clowns canceled Everwood well before its time and have shown a general lack of aptitude for properly running a network, there’s still a chance for them to f’up this situation as is their M.O.

- I didn’t know the French had it in them to riot and actually show some testicular fortitude, so kudos to the Frenchmen who rioted following the election of the country’s new president, Nicolas Sarkozy. Sarkozy’s policies and alliances are already in question, as he is seen as too U.S.-friendly and frighteningly brutal on crime and immigration. Still, the Socialist Party, which was defeated in the just-completed elections by Sarkozy and his followers, appealed for calm and an end to the rioting (cars burned, storefronts smashed, the usual) that took place after the election results were announced. Why quash the enthusiasm, I have to ask? This is the most life and toughness the French have shown since……….well……pretty much ever. Granted, they were attacking cars and windows, which can't fight back, but still, everyone has to start somewhere.

- Ah, those wacky Islamic militants and their nonstop crusade for jihad. In a remote region of Pakistan, these radicals are trying to eliminate any and all music, in its varying forms and mediums, that doesn’t promote their radical hateful way of thinking. They began their crackdown in the region of North Waziristan, a mostly lawless frontier region that has been partially cooperative with the Taliban. Were I a resident of this region, I would be doubly pissed, first about having my tunes ripped, but secondly about the mandate that only music promoting the jihad agenda will be allowed. I mean, do you have any idea, Islamic militants, how hard it is to find good jihad songs on iTunes? You type in “jihad” to the search bar in iTunes and the pickings are slim, guys. For whatever reason, the music industry just isn't eager to crank out hits promoting radical, violent, large-scale religious warfare. It’s crazy, I know, but have you ever tried to rhyme with jihad? It’s almost impossible.

- Apparently Zimbabwe is African for “Los Angeles East”, because police in that nation have decided to employ the exact same tactics that the LAPD uses against protestors. Riot police in the nation’s capital used riot sticks to beat down dozens of lawyers who gathered outside Zimbabwe’s High Court on Tuesday to protest the arrest of two colleagues. Usually there’d be a line of people wanting to whack a lawyer, but this is not that kind of situation. These lawyers were fighting the mistreatment of two of their own and were deliberately disobeying an order by President Robert Mugabe to cease any sort of demonstration and the accompanying warning that police have the right to snuff out any sort of dissent. Giving props to lawyers goes against my instincts, but I’ll make an exception here and salute the Zimbabwean lawyers for taking a stand against The Man.

- There’s a reason the Rusted Steel Sandwich and the Sharp Piece O’ Iron Burger haven't become staples on the menu at Cracker Barrel restaurants nationwide. After a customer eating a hamburger at a Myrtle Beach, S.C. location of the national chain cut her mouth on a piece of metal in her sandwich, Cracker Barrel pulled hamburgers from hundreds of its restaurants nationwide. I’ve heard of people planting severed fingers in food in an attempt to extort money from restaurants and consumers trying to say that they found hypodermic needles in their cans of soda, but this is a first. I have a hard time figuring how a piece of metal could find its way into a hamburger with no one noticing. Wouldn’t you feel a hard, sharp piece of metal in the meat as you cooked it on the grill? Americans may need more iron in their diets, but I don’t think this is the kind of iron that the FDA is referring to.

- Curt Schilling always has something to say about any issue he’s asked about, and usually the Boston Red Sox pitcher sticks his foot in his mouth and ends up apologizing. This time, though, I wish he wouldn’t have apologized, because he’s said out loud what most of America is thinking about everyone’s least-favorite ‘roid-head, Bar-roid Bonds. Schilling said in an interview that Bonds had cheated the game of baseball, he had cheated on his taxes and he had cheated on his wife, all of which are pretty much true. But as is the custom in sports nowadays when anyone has the balls to speak out and tell the truth instead of spout clichés, Schilling got heat from those around him and backed off his statements the following day. Normally I’d be the first to rip someone for making such comments about a person he or she barely knows and attacking said person’s character, but this isn't just any person we’re talking about here, it’s the biggest cheater in sports….ever. Everyone, everywhere, whether they know Bonds or not, should be free to rip him 24/7 because he’s lied to, bullied and disrespected the game and those in it and is about to break the game’s most respected record on the strength of something a chemist cooked up in a laboratory instead of his own abilities.

- Testing baseball players for steroids and other performance enhancers might not be enough anymore, we might need to start testing these guys for something far more dangerous: stupidity. I say this in light of the news that New York Mets minor league pitcher Jorge Reyes has become the first player to receive MLB’s 100-game suspension that comes with a second positive test for ‘roids. It’s bad enough when you’re either enough of a cheater to deliberately take steroids once or dumb enough to take them unintentionally as a part of some kind of supplement that you don’t bother to learn the ingredients of, but a second test just means you’re either a huge, huge cheater and can't help but be dishonest or you’re really, really stupid and just don’t realize that you’re going to ruin your career if you keep doing what you’re doing. Considering that Reyes is only at the Class A level, the lowest level of the minor leagues, you have to think that the Mets aren't going to keep him around based on his proclivity for performance enhancers and his blatant cheating. Way to submarine your career before you even advanced to the majors, J., hope that was worth it to take those ‘roids.

- Speaking of cheaters in sports…..this one involves not a player, but rather a coach. Someone entrusted with shaping, molding and instructing young men in both football and life shouldn’t be trying to defraud their university out of thousands of dollars, but Eastern Carolina University assistant football coach Donnie Thompson doesn’t appear to be bound be integrity or ethics. Thompson has been arrested and charged with one count of obtaining property by false pretenses after a scam in which he submitted more than $11,000 worth of fraudulent receipts to ECU for reimbursement. Thompson claimed he’d spent the money for expenses while out recruiting, but the $11,373.70 worth of purchases he claimed were from false receipts that he had created. Way to set an example for your players, Donnie, to show them that character counts.

A simpleton sheriff in Wisconsin, what I'll do if the Roger Clemens coverage doesn't stop and a new show I'm going to take a chance on

- If I lived in Grant County, Wisconsin, I would be feeling less than thrilled about the current state of law enforcement in my community. The current sheriff, a man who actually changed his name to Andy Griffith in an attempt to gravy train off of the popular 1960s TV series The Andy Griffith Show, has just finished up a legal battle with the original Andy Griffith over the legality of his name change. The law enforcement artist formerly known as William Harold Fenrick won a lawsuit against him by Griffith when U.S. District Court Judge John Shabaz ruled that Fenrick/Griffith did not violate trademark and copyright laws, as well as the actor’s privacy, by changing his name. The sheriff may not have violated those laws, but he did violate the Moron’s Code when he based a real-life campaign for public office on comments such as: “They never did unethical stuff like that in Mayberry (the fictional town where The Andy Griffith Show was set)!” Wow….you got us there, Sheriff, because it’s hard to refute what a fictional character on in fictional town on a fictitious TV show four decades ago did. If you’re basing your policies on law enforcement as practiced on TV, how’s about going for something more recent, say Miami Vice, NYPD Blue or Law & Order? Must be a great time to be a criminal in Grant County right now………

- So help me God, if I’m beaten over the head with Roger Clemens stories by ESPN every day for the next month until he actually makes his 2007 Yankee debut, I will drive to Bristol myself and burn the entire ESPN complex to the ground. The news of Clemens and his self-promoting ego trip of a career restarting with the New f’ing York Yankees has led every ESPN broadcast I’ve seen this week, and it just goes to show what a lack of intelligence and discernment the network’s decision makers have. The guy is in his mid-40s, he can't even get through more than six innings a start anymore, he doesn’t even care about baseball enough to travel with the team and be in the dugout for road games and series where he won't be pitching and he’s on a team that is a 50-50 shot to miss the playoffs at this point. Yet you tools at ESPN act like you’ve got Nolan Ryan in his prime coming back to the best team in baseball and forget that a dozen other stories, both inside baseball and in sports in general, are more noteworthy and relevant right now. Non-Yankee fans are already sick of hearing about the ass clowns in pinstripes, so maybe talk about how the Milwaukee Brewers have the best record in baseball, how the Red Sox are playing stellar baseball and lead the Yankees by six games, how the Cleveland Indians have gotten amazing pitching and lead the AL Central (baseball’s toughest division) or how the Chicago Cubs are finally putting things together after a massive off-season roster overhaul and have won six games in a row. Those are just a few thoughts for stories you may want to focus on instead of an overweight, injury-prone pompous ass of a pitcher coming back to a mismanaged, overpaid team of rotisserie all-stars that 98.4 percent of America despises.

- It’s always seemed like Ty Pennington is on some type of drugs and/or a bender based on his insane, loopy act as host of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, and now we have confirmation of those suspicions. The freakishly energetic actor/host who spends an inordinate amount of time yelling into a megaphone and bossing people around while traveling the country in an RV with a crew of designers and carpenters to fix up homes for needy families was picked up by the LAPD’s West Traffic division Saturday for suspicion of driving while under the influence of alcohol and drugs. In an ironic twist, he probably had the chance to hear someone yelling at him over a bullhorn, as in “Step out of the car, keep your hands where we can see them!” As bad as this is, the whole driving under the influences of drugs and booze, Pennington can take solace in one thing: at least the LAPD officers didn’t administer their trademark brand of justice during the stop. He wasn’t beaten with a baton or shot with rubber bullets, so there is a silver lining in all of this.

- I don’t know what a special advance preview of a TV show is exactly, but I’m planning on giving a shot to ABC’s new offering Traveler this Thursday at 10 p.m. Partly it’s because the premise of the show looks interesting, but an equal if not larger part of the equation is the fact that by the time the fall TV season kicks off, as many as four of the shows I faithfully watched this year (The O.C., Gilmore Girls for sure, maybe Veronica Mars and a small chance for One Tree Hill) could be gone, so I need to find new shows to watch. Maybe the special advance preview means the series will officially debut this fall, but then having an episode air now doesn’t make much sense. Of course, I got burned by ABC with Six Degrees last fall/this spring and the network hasn’t had anything of quality to offer (and no, Desperate Housewives is not quality, it’s crap-ola) lately outside of the mildly decent Brothers & Sisters. In case you haven't seen the promos for Traveler, it centers on a trio of friends, two of whom are forced to go on the lam on New York City after their friend Will Traveler is involved in a terrorist attack. Not sure how this could be sustained for more than a season or two max, but I’m willing to give it a chance.

- Quite a week for Calvin Borel, the winning jockey in Saturday’s Kentucky Derby. On race day, he whipped and beat his horse to a win, then after the race use a sopping-wet sponge to cool down his horse, including a swipe across the horse’s rear end with the sponge followed by him wiping his own face with the sponge. Then on Monday, he got up close and personal with another horse’s ass, except this one was named George W. Bush. Borel was invited to a formal dinner at the White House, where he also met Queen Elizabeth II of England. W. used the event as a platform to hawk his farce of an agenda for the war in Iraq, yammering on and on about the U.S.-British partnership in Iraq and dropping his meaningless buzz words “freedom” and “liberty” a combined seven times. The queen didn’t discuss the war at all, saying she was using her vacation to get away from that sort of thing. Makes me wish W. would take an extended vacation of his own, say for the next 19 months to Siberia, Antarctica, someplace he’s likely to do the least amount of damage.

One year later, the CW is still stupid, Spencer Tunick needs a screening system and an NFL legend dispenses pointless grooming tips

- A year ago I was livid and incredulous when Everwood was inexplicably axed by the CW network while the insipidly awful 7th Heaven was dragged back from the dead for another season. As pissed as I was then, I’m going to be equally upset if the same inept network, which is killing off its good shows one by one and keeping the crappy ones for some reason, brings back the teen drama One Tree Hill, a show with mediocre ratings and zero critical acclaim, and doesn’t bring back the smart, thrilling, snarky detective drama Veronica Mars, a show whose worst episode is ten times better than OTH’s best show? At present, the network appears likely to bring back OTH but is still on the fence when it comes to the fate of Mars. I would ask, “Are you freaking kidding me?” but I know based on prior terrible decision making that Dawn Ostroff and her crew of CW minions are just morons, plain and simple. Amazing how a network that was able to cherry-pick the best shows from two merging networks (WB and UPN) is becoming such a haven of unwatchable and downright awful programming. At this pace, the CW will be off the airwaves within five years and will have no one but its own executives to blame.

- Are you more excited about boxing now? Going into this past weekend, some in the world of sports (I’m looking right at you, Sports Illustrated) tried to argue that the Oscar De La Hoya-Floyd Mayweather Jr. “superfight” was going to save the sport of boxing. Two problems with this argument: First, even before the fight began, the argument was flawed because in order for the fight to save the sport, fans would need to believe that it was a precursor to, a harbinger of other similarly great fights to come. With a fragmented heavyweight division (four different champions holding belts from four different organizations), corruption rampant and a discernable lack of great, interesting fighters, there aren't any must-see fights on the horizon. Second, the fight itself was good but not great, and most definitely not a fight for the ages. Mayweather won a split decision, hardly the kind of highlight-reel result that a dramatic knockout or even a unanimous decision would have been. This fight didn’t have the potential to save boxing before it took place, and an underwhelming performance meant it didn’t live up to whatever life-giving ability it might have had for the sport of boxing. There was no blood spilled and no knockout punch, which in turn means it might have been a night where the real losers were those hoping that boxing was about to be saved.

- Until now, I’d thought of Jo Theismann in positive terms, mostly as an accomplished NFL quarterback from years past and a decent game analyst for broadcasts. Now, however, I’m rethinking that evaluation because Theismann opened his mouth and uttered one of the single dumbest sports-related comments I’ve heard in a long time. He cracked on Cleveland Browns’ draft pick Brady Quinn for not looking “businesslike” at the draft, with the criticism apparently based on Quinn’s longish hair with heavy doses of styling products and his chewing of gum (gasp!) on camera at the draft. Who the frak cares, Joe? What kind of moron worries about whether an NFL quarterback’s hair is too long and if he chews gum on camera? I know you want to contend that image is important and that players, especially quarterbacks (the leaders of most teams) need to look like leaders, but this isn't the 1950s, so short hair isn't a necessity and the school principal isn't going around demanding students spit their gum into the wastebasket. Quinn’s hair has no effect on his play, nor does it affect his ability to lead. Call me loco, but if you’ve got integrity, character, strength and charisma, your teammates will follow your lead, especially if they know they can count on you. You can have green hair down to your waist if you want and it doesn’t matter 1/1,000th as much as your character and integrity. Stick to your gig in the Monday Night Football booth…..oh, wait, you got booted from that gig, didn’t you Joe? Oops. Well, at least you can take solace in knowing that your hair is nice and neat and you didn’t chew gum on camera, and isn't that what really matters?

- Spencer Tunick is either a unique artist or the world’s most successful pervert…..or a combination of the two. Tunick is the photographer who creates controversy in cities around the globe as he travels to photograph large crowds of people who all agree to pose nude en masse for a picture. The latest shoot took place over the weekend in Mexico City, where more than 18,000 individuals struck a variety of poses for Tunick’s lens. I don’t so much take issue with the concept of a massive nude photo shoot; my issue is what kind of screening process Tunick has for subjects in his pictures. If he simply accepts anyone who’s willing to show up and pose, that’s not good. There are just far too many people out there who should never, ever, ever be seen by anyone, anywhere without several layers of very bulky clothing concealing their out of shape, overweight, pale and pasty bodies. Just as there should be licensing guidelines for anyone wishing to purchase and wear spandex clothing for the same reason, Tunick should be required to screen out these types of people from his pictures. Residents of the cities he takes pictures in should not be subjected to the possibility of walking through town and having to see some 5’10, 250 lb. person without their clothes on, that’s just not right. And before you go criticizing this viewpoint as mean-spirited and superficial, ask yourself if you really want to see a sight like the one I just described……didn’t think so.

- No longer will the word lynx be solely associated with a near-anonymous women’s basketball team from the state of Minnesota. While the WNBA franchise whose mascot is the exotic jungle cat sadly remains operational thanks to the continued subsidy of the NBA, the lynx is garnering additional attention thanks to a group of IQ-depraved thieves in Johnstown, Pa. who decided that stealing one of the huge exotic animals was a good idea. These Mensas duct-taped a central Pennsylvania breeder (who refused to sell them a lynx without a proper license) of the rare cat to a chair and tried to steal a male and female lynx, but couldn’t get the two animals out of their cages and into a trailer. They then un-taped the breeder and forced him to corral the cats, but that too failed and so the thieves made off with the female cat and gave the breeder $2,000 for it. A few days later, a large cat was spotted near Plymouth, Pa. and wildlife authorities tranquilized the animal and found it to be the stolen lynx. So to review, the three thieves gave up $2,000, got possession of a lynx that they then lost and are now being sought by police. Well-crafted plots like this are what enable law enforcement officers to appear as if they are actually winning the war on crime as opposed lo lucking out with criminals whose intelligence ranks slightly above that of your average lamp post.

Two eminently despisable politicians square off, clown vs. clown in Connecticut and a load of crap hits the Hudson River

- Because America on the whole is grossly obese and unable to put down our Big Macs, hot fudge sundaes and doughnuts, there are more and more stories on nightly news programs and news magazine shows about obesity and related issues. While grossly overweight people aren't all that amusing as a general rule (they’re, well, gross) what is funny are a staple of every obesity story on any network, those shots of fat people from the neck down, waddling down the street or walking around in a mall or airport. How sad is it that your only way of making it onto the airwaves is an anonymous shot of your gargantuan body without showing the head attached to it for privacy reasons? You’re being used as a poster child for how out of shape our nation is, but you don’t even get recognized, they just use your torso and legs and exclude the head. Personally, I think we should show these people from head to toe, privacy and rights to the use of your likeness be damned. If the disgustingly fat people of America had to see their flabby likenesses plastered on the television in stunning HD, maybe they would be motivated to stop eating, start exercising and stop being so fat and disgusting.

- It’s a rare showdown of clowns versus clowns, with a group of politicians on one side and Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus on the other. The famed circus is threatening a boycott of the state of Connecticut if the state legislature there passes a bill outlawing the use of an elephant-herding tool known as a bullhook. Connecticut is the home state of the legendary P.T. Barnum, but the company he founded won't be doing any shows there if the law is put in place. Small children in Hartford, Southington and Norwich won't be able to see the clowns piling into the tiny car, the crazy dude swallowing swords or the man swimming in a tank with alligators, and quite frankly, I am devastated for them. Can’t we all just accept a little animal cruelty in order to provide a truly magical moment in the life of a child? I don’t think it’s too much to ask, really, and hopefully this decision by Connecticut won't spur other states to make the same bad decision.

- Bad news for my Metro New York Rivers Swim team: we’re going to have to cancel our weekly swim in the Hudson River because it’s full of crap. A broken sewage pipe has spilled more than 4 million gallons of raw sewage (really, is there any other kind of sewage but raw?) into the river north of Manhattan and Westchester County health officials have warned boaters, water skiers and divers to stay out of the water. This isn't going to sit well with Cosmo Kramer, either, because I know he loves swimming in the discolored waters of New York’s rivers for the therapeutic powers they have on his back. You know what this means, of course: there’s going to be a major overcrowding problem in the East River for the next week or two until this mess gets cleaned up.

- This is one of those disputes where I’m not rooting for a winner and a loser, I’m simply rooting for the earth to open up and swallow both of these individuals whole. Sen. John McCain, who dopily supports the Mess-O’-Potamia that our un-esteemed Moron-in-Chief has created in Iraq, is picking a fight with the presidential candidate that would horrify a nation if he/she is elected, Sen. Hank Clinton. Hank wants to repeal congressional authorization of the Iraq war, a move McCain labels as “the worst possible idea that anyone could have.” Sorry, Johnny Boy, as much as I hate Hank, dude’s idea is not the worst idea anyone could have, not when it comes to the war in Iraq and not in a broader sense. It’s behind several things on the list, including: waging the war in the first place, continuing the war with no justification, sending more troops over to die when it’s clear the war is a disaster and can't be won, electing W. to begin with, giving more funding to a war that’s a total farce and of course, going for a fourth patty and slice of cheese on a burger at Hardee's that already has about 4,500 calories. Furthermore, McCain is ignorant enough to argue that W.’s new war strategy, introduced in January, is showing “some progress.” What f’ing strategy?!?! There is NO STRATEGY. THERE IS NO PROGRESS! IF ANY AMERICANS ARE STILL DYING IN A PLACE THEY SHOULD NOT BE TO BEGIN WITH, THEN THERE IS NO PROGRESS! Is there any way to disqualify both of these tools, McCain and Hank, from the presidential race immediately? Can we get to work on that like, yesterday? Thanks.

- I freaking hate Roger Clemens, I freaking hate the New York Yankees and I hope these two representations of evil incarnate fail miserably together for the rest of this baseball season. The arrogant, pompous, ass-faced franchise that a nation loves to loathe has signed the unlikable, piece of crap pitcher for the remainder of the season, appropriately enough to a bloated, overpriced $28 million prorated contract, meaning Clemens will make $4.5 million a month for the next six months to throw decent but not great games for a Yankees team that’s headed for another disappointing campaign. I’ll be rooting for a torn rotator cuff muscle, a torn groin muscle, torn knee ligaments or a blown-out ACL for Clemens and a sub-.500 season for the Yankees, who are once again trying to buy their way out of a mess and don’t have to worry about being smart of shrewd with their personnel decisions because like most arrogant rich people, they believe their money can right all of the wrongs. You suck, Yankees, and you’re a piece of crap, Clemens, you two deserve each other and I hope you both flame out horrifically.

A house with stripper poles, a misguided TVstar and the NRA is a bunch of morons

- Ever wanted to own a house that once belonged to a psychopathic, misogynistic, clinically insane rapist/heavyweight boxing champion and a thug gangsta rapper who was once shot nine times and considers Eminem one of his boys? If so, the house for you is the 52-room mansion in Connecticut that rapper 50 Cent is selling after buying it a few years ago from everyone’s favorite ear-biting boxer Mike Tyson. Before I go on, can someone please explain to me what a hardcore hip hopper like 50 is doing living in a state occupied largely by old, rich, white liberal blue-bloods? I can't really picture 50 (or Tyson for hat matter) drinking coffee in some small-town café, going to the county fair or playing tennis with Milt and Buffy Haddleston. Insane heavyweight boxers and bullet-riddled rappers aren't supposed to live in quiet, picturesque communities in the Northeast, they’re supposed to want to live in places that don’t get a couple dozen feet or snow each winter, places that sport miles and miles of beaches and places where the median age is 25, not 50. But back to the house……be assured, it’s not gaudy or distasteful - except for the stripper poles, which actually make for great conversation pieces, assuming your guests are loose-moraled women between the ages of 18 and 29 who don’t mind skanking it up a bit.

- Another sign you’ve really f’d up as a police force……your city’s mayor cuts short a trade mission to Mexico to come home and deal with the fallout from your egregious abuse of civilians at a protest rally. After officers beat down citizens with batons and pelted them with rubber bullets at an immigration rights march, for some reason people weren't happy. Now, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is coming home from Mexico to clean up the mess. For the sake of the policemen in question, I hope that this stops at the local level, because if the Governator gets involved, things could turn even uglier for the LAPD. Good to see that no one learned a lesson from the Rodney King fiasco and that the police in L.A. still view the use of excessive force as an acceptable practice.

- The National Rifle Association sucks. Now it is risky to say that a group of gun toting marksmen sucks, but I’ll go ahead and run the risk. The NRA is urging W. to withdraw his support of a bill that would prohibit suspected terrorists from purchasing firearms, with the justification being that it’s an arbitrary denial of Second Amendment rights based solely on suspicion. Umm…..so what? Normally I’m all for giving the government a collective middle finger, but keeping guns out of people’s hands doesn’t seem too problematic. None of the arguments about why you need a gun sway me even if you’re a responsible, law abiding citizen, so if you’re a suspected terrorist, let’s go ahead and make sure you’re not one before you are able to purchase guns. Besides, how much good is this bill going to do in stopping terrorists anyhow? You think your average terrorist group goes through legal means and buys their weapons at the local gun or sporting goods store? I’m inclined to say that black market arms dealers is more the method of choice for terrorists, but that’s just me.

- A quick word on the news that Lauren Graham, appearing on the Ellen Degenerate Show, said that the end of Gilmore Girls is a good thing. Hey Lauren, thanks for the input, I know you’re on the show and all, but you’re wrong anyhow. Maybe you think it’s a good thing because you didn’t get enough money offered to you, maybe you worrying staying on the show one more year would result in you being typecast in your role from the show and prevent you from getting offers to do other types of roles elsewhere, but either way, you’re in the wrong. It’s a great show and even if people are critical of it, that doesn’t mean we don’t still love it. This is a rare case where you owed it to the fans to give them another year, even if it was a shortened one, so we could so goodbye to a show we love.

- Raise your hand if you think Adam “Pacman” Jones is going to win his appeal of his yearlong suspension from the NFL……….no hands? You’re correct if you kept your hand down, because Commissioner Roger Goodell is not going to reduce his suspension by even one game, because clearly the commish is making a statement about what players can expect if they repeatedly run afoul of the law and bring reproach to the league. Jones is gone for the year, and if he thinks the very guy who determined his suspension in the first place is suddenly going to change his mind, he’s even dumber and crazier than I thought. Shut your mouth, sit out the year and stop getting arrested, P., and we’ll see if you can be reinstated for the 2008 season.

When idiots stage a coup, when skanks go to prison and when, oh when, will the NHL season end?

- Anyone know if the NHL playoffs are still going on? I think I heard they were starting sometime in the past month or so, and since the least-followed “major” sport in America has a habit of dragging its postseason out for three or four months even though no one south of the Canadian border gives a crap, I figure they must still be going on. I can't say for sure because NHL playoff games are televised on that media giant known as the Versus network, which 0.004% of Americans get on their cable or satellite system. I also can't tell you any of the teams still playing (assuming anyone is still playing) or any of those teams’ players, which means I’m an astonishingly good representation of the American sports fan in general. Thanks for another “scintillating” season and postseason of crap, soccer on ice. Please tell me why the sport the least amount of people pay attention to is the one that stretches its season out for 11 months and 2 weeks, leaving an all-too-brief two-week hiatus between the end of one unbearably boring season and the start of the next one. You suck, soccer on ice, and I wish you’d just go away on a permanent basis.

- One of the best television shows of my short lifetime is done, thanks to a combination of incompetence and/or incredible greed and selfishness. Gilmore Girls, the always funny, interesting, thoughtful and intelligent drama about the life of a single mother, her daughter and a small town full of colorful, offbeat characters and their respective lives is ending in just over two weeks, more or less because the two stars of the show, Lauren Graham and Alexis Bledel, rejected contract offers for a shortened eighth season of the hit show even though to contracts reportedly contained significant raises in their salaries. Without knowing the whole story and all of the behind-the-scenes details, it’s impossible to assign all of the blame to the two leading ladies, but a lot of it has to go there. How you can let down legions of fans and walk away from a show that has meant so much to so many people over a contract dispute is befuddling. Plus, Graham and Bledel could have had the benefit of a shortened season, all while enjoying a farewell tour that would pay appropriate respect to a show that’s been a wonderful part of Tuesday nights for seven years. Kudos also to the CW and its always incompetent executives for their part in failing to seal the deal for an eighth season, I am sure Dawn Ostroff and crew did their absolute best to f’up the process. I am immensely sad for all fans of the show, myself included, and the remaining three episodes of the show will now be viewed through a bittersweet lens in addition to serving as a hackneyed, inadequately short sendoff for such a great show.

- The bad news about Spiderman 3 is that the movie isn't up to the standards of the first two incarnations of director Sam Raimi’s adaptation of the legendary comic book. The good news is that even at a level slightly below expectations, Spidey is still significantly better than almost anything else in theaters right now. The basic problem with Spiderman 3 is that the film is too busy, too cluttered and tries to weave too many storylines into its two hour, 20 minute running time. Each story line is interesting, but none of them are given much time to develop. There’s the Peter Parker-Mary Jane Watson dynamic, the Peter Parker-Harry Osborne dynamic, the Spiderman-Sandman dynamic, the Spiderman-Venom dynamic and a few other peripheral ideas, and following them is nearly as difficult as trying to keep up with some of the film’s uber-high paced action sequences, which are so rapid fire that you aren't able to figure out what’s going on and who’s hitting who many times. Having said all of that, this is overall a good movie, because the visual effects, costumes and dialogue are all good and there are characters you are genuinely invested in. There are more than a few good laughs in the film, many of them as Peter Parker gets caught up in his celebrity as Spiderman and generally acts like a pompous, self-absorbed ass. Ultimately, it’s worth your time and money to see the movie, even if it doesn’t entertain you quite as much as the first two editions in the series.

- Paris Hilton now has a chance for her best-selling sex tape yet, besting the other dozen or so she’s cranked out over the past few years. The vapid, famous-for-no-real-reason socialite is on her way to jail after a judge in Los Angeles sentenced her to 45 days in county jail Friday for violating her probation. The mega-skank must report to jail on June 5 and won’t be allowed any work release, furloughs, use of an alternative jail or electronic monitoring in lieu of jail, Superior Court Judge Michael T. Sauer ruled. Hilton was found guilty of violating the terms of parole she received after an alcohol-related reckless driving case. Depending on the cellmate she is assigned, Paris could actually find herself living out some of the freaky fantasies that sexually deprived pervs worldwide have been imaging her in since they watched her previous sex tapes for the 14,688th time. Good news, though: Paris says she’s “very sorry” and in the future she will “pay complete attention to everything.” Umm, thanks Paris, that was vague, unspecific and tells me absolutely nothing. You’ll pay attention to everything? Everything where? Everything in your immediate vicinity, everything you agree to when you receive probation, everything you allow guys to stick in your…..never mind. Enjoy jail, P., it seemed to work out all right for Martha Stewart so I’m sure you’ll be just fine.

- Whatever happened to strapping together some branches, milk cartons and cardboard boxes and fashioning a makeshift raft to paddle across the ocean from Cuba to the United States? Would-be refugees used to ride their hastily crafted dinghies over choppy seas and try to wash up on the shore in Florida, but now things have turned violent. A group of fugitive army recruits from the island nation attempted to hijack a plane to the United States on Thursday and killed a military officer they had taken hostage in the process before being captured and hauled off the jail, which is more or less a death sentence in Communist Cuba. This came after the rogue recruits hijacked a bus that they used to drive themselves to the tarmac, where they then hijacked the plane. These doofuses should have known rule No. 1 about hijacking schemes: never hijack more than one type of vehicle or method or transportation in the course of any single plan. You wanna hijack cars, then stick with cars. Same with boats. You try to mix it up, be versatile and hijack both a bus and a plane, your plan fails. Just think of the loss the U.S. will suffer without these geniuses being adopted into our society, their intellectual and military contributions alone would have made our country a better place by far……

A "major" move by the Yankees, what Bob Wolfowitz has in common with a hot chick and the LAPD does what it does best

- All of the New York Yankees’ problems are solved! Seriously, the team’s 10-14 start, underachieving pitching staff and rash of injuries are no longer concerns, because the Yanks have cut to the core of the trouble and fixed everything - by firing their strength coach, Marty Miller. Yes, it’s a bit unorthodox and doesn’t seem to do much to cure what ails the team - terrible pitching and porous defense - but don’t let the unconventional nature of the move deter you from recognizing its brilliance. Just look at all the teams who have turned their failing seasons around by firing their strength coach. There’s……well….uh….ok, so technically no team has used this tactic to save a disappointing season, but let’s not get hung up on the small stuff. Forget trading for players who can actually catch and throw the ball at a competent level and pitchers whose earned-run averages are below 6.50, replacing your strength coach is where it’s at. Either that or the team is miserably below where Big Stein expected them to be and he was looking to whack someone just to make a point. After all, Miller was just hired by the Yankees in the offseason as director of performance enhancement, so he wore out his welcome quickly. Maybe if the team had hired a director of performance enhancers instead, they would have done much better in April. Then again, I don’t think Jason Giambi needs anyone’s advice on performance enhancers……….

- When you become a parent for the first time, you’ve got a lot to learn and it has to be extremely intimidating. However, even if you’ve lived in a cave all your life and have just had your first child born, there are a few things you should still know even without any parenting experience. The father of an unidentified 1-year-old boy in Chattanooga, Tenn. who left his infant son in the car with temperatures in the 80s clearly didn’t get those parenting skills encoded in his DNA. This tool left the 1-year-old in the car unattended for hours in the stifling heat, and now that the infant has died from heat-related illness, the father has been charged with negligent homicide. On one hand, you feel a tin shred of empathy for the guy because regardless of the circumstances, he did lose his son and he has to carry that burden around for the rest of his life. But mostly you want to smack him over the head repeatedly with a rusty cheese grater, because how do you even begin to think it’s ok to leave a 1-year-old alone anywhere for hours on end, let alone inside of a giant metal box on wheels on a scorching hot day? That baby wasn’t the one who needed to be removed from the gene pool, it was the ignoramus father who needs to be weeded out so he can’t further infect future generations. This goes on the list of parenting techniques to avoid, right behind the woman who put her infant grandson through an X-ray machine at LAX and the woman who took a nap and left her unattended 3-year-old to wander onto the nearby freeway and play in rush-hour traffic.

- Brace yourselves, because you’re about to hear something utterly shocking. Police in Los Angeles are guilty of using abusive tactics and excessive force on civilians. I know, I’ll give you a moment to recover from that, because I’m sure you’re as floored as I am by that. Police Chief William Bratton admitted Wednesday that his officers did indeed err in clubbing people with their batons and firing rubber bullets into the crowd as they tried to clear immigration protestors from a park. The crowds in question contained children, yet the police fired away with their rubber bullets and went about beating people down, as is their custom (cough, cough, Rodney King, cough). Maybe we can take solace in the fact that this time, there was no racial profiling or discrimination and beatings/shooting were administered without bias. At least the LAPD has learned some lessons and they are now equal-opportunity abusers, good job fellas.

- ESPN can just give it up with its campaign to push soccer on us, because we’re not fans and we do know it. The recent collection of ads identify good aspects of other sports, like basketball or football, then try to show those same qualities exist in pro soccer. Thus, if you are a fan of those other sports and those particular traits, then you’ll love pro soccer too, you just haven't given it a chance yet. Well, ESPN, allow me to point out some other characteristics of the real major sports in this country and ask where they are in pro soccer. First, sports like the NBA, NFL and MLB have regular scoring, whereas your sport regularly boasts thrilling tallies of 1-0. If I’m going to spend a couple hours watching a game, I need to see more than one goal scored. Two, those other sports have athletes who don’t fall to the ground and writhe around like they’ve been shot the second someone so much as taps them gently on the arm, whereas soccer players appear to be on the verge of death each time they are touched. Then, once they are carried to the sideline on a stretcher, those same players leap up and wave to the crowd, totally recovered from their (fake) injury. Oh, and I don’t remember seeing any greasy haired, mullet-sporting, one-name Euros in the NFL or MLB, looking like they’ve yet to discover soap or shampoo and whining about people not understanding the beauty, creativity and passion of their game. The assertion that Americans are fans of pro soccer and we just don’t know it yet could not be more wrong. We know who you are, soccer, we know what you’re selling and we’re not buying it. Now go eat your orange wedges, drink your Capri Sun and stop bothering us.

- Nothing like creating a giant crap storm by your own inappropriate actions, then chastising everyone for paying attention that that mess instead of what you want them to focus on. World Bank President Bob Wolfowitz is upset that no one wants to talk about the work World Bank as it seeks to provide loans and financial assistance to needy third-world governments and instead the main topic of discussion is the scandal he created by giving his girlfriend an undeserved promotion to a cushy government job accompanied by a huge raise. Wolfowitz’s lady friend, Shaha Riza, was an employee at World Bank when B. Wolfowitz took over, but to sidestep a rule that said an employee could not work for someone they are dating, Bob-O transferred her to the State Department, along with giving her the aforementioned raise and guaranteed positive performance reviews. Now, he’s angry because all anyone talks about in relation to World Bank is the huge mistake he committed and the controversy it has brought upon the entire organization. He maintains that attention needs to be “focused on the very, very important work of the bank” and not on the current investigation into his actions. “The bank’s work goes on,” B. Wolfowitz said. “It is critical.” In some sense, he’s like an über-hot girl who wears a super-short leather mini-skirt and a tight, low cut shirt and then b*tches about guys staring at her and checking her out. You made the mess, you screwed up, Wolfowitz, and now you’re reaping the whirlwind. If you don’t want to deal with the ramiprecussions (a new word I’ve crafted, ramifications + repercussions), don’t exhibit blatant nepotism and break rules by giving your girlfriend a new job and a big raise she doesn’t deserve. And hey, at least now people know a little about the World Bank and what it does, whereas before you’re faux pas, 80 to 90 percent of Americans had no idea that your organization even existed.

- Because many Americans are mindless sheep, they blindly follow whatever trends celebrities say are popular, be it in terms of clothing, language, diet or music. These followers never quite realize that celebrities aren't smarter than us, and that in many cases they’re dumber by a wide margin. Just because Johnny Knoxville or Brad Pitt wears something, drives a certain car or eats a certain diet, that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea for you. For a recent example, consider the following: Why imitate celebrities when there’s ample evidence that they’re stupid and will try things like a diet consisting totally of a lemon juice/syrup/cayenne pepper concoction, saltwater and laxative tea? Yes, that’s the diet of choice that’s the newest weight-loss scheme, thanks to famous people like Beyonce who swear they’ve lost copious amounts of weight on the diet. Yes, I know man Americans are orca fat, as evidenced by the fact that every commercial break on every network features one or more commercials from Jenny Craig, Nurti-System or Weight Watchers. But reducing yourself to some crappy lemon juice concoction, saltwater and laxative tea is not evidence that you’re serious about losing weight, it’s evidence that you’re a moron. Last time I checked, if you stop eating potato chips, Doritos, French fries, greasy hamburgers, fast food and desserts and work out on a regular basis, you’re going to shed some lbs. Pouring disgusting, bastardized mixtures of various liquids down your gullet because you want to be like Beyonce shows two things, neither of them good: 1) you’re a spineless follower who can't think for yourself, 2) you’re a lazy piece of crap who hasn’t yet realized what a treadmill, elliptical machine at exercise bike are for.

- I know sometimes pro athletes miss out on certain parts of growing up and rites of passage because they’re so devoted to succeeding in their sport and have little time for anything else, but you’d think that some time in between the end of a guy’s playing career and the time he becomes a senior citizen that he’d get that stuff out of the way. Not Orlando Cepeda, apparently, because this 69-year-old Hall of Famer is still into drugs hardcore, enough to put most meth heads on your average college campus to shame. Cepeda was pulled over in Cordelia by a California Highway Patrol officer for doing 83 mph in a 65-mph zone on Interstate 80. As the officer approached the car, the pungent odor of drugs alerted him that something might be amiss. Upon searching the car, the officer found weed, cocaine and meth in “usable quantities.” To quote Ron Burgundy, I’m not even angry, I’m impressed. That’s amazing, O., because most seniors fill their cars with those massaging back pillows, ugly quilt covers on the seats, Metamucil and several pairs of those hideous wraparound sunglasses they buy in bulk at the flea market. Yet here Cepeda is, still drugging it up big time, in possession of three different drugs at one time. In his defense, Cepeda’s attorney claims the marijuana was intended for medicinal use by a relative with diabetes, but that doesn’t explain the coke or the meth. On a side note, if I’m rolling with those three drugs in my car at the same time, I’m going to be extra sure that I’m not breaking any traffic laws. All Cepeda needed was an open bottle of vodka in the car and he truly would have hit for the cycle.

A pathetic punishment, smart kids ain't so good at cheating and rich people in ridiculous outfits with stupid hats

- Frank Martinez, the New York Mets fan who was arrested and booted from Shea Stadium after shining a high-powered flashlight into the eyes of two Atlanta Braves players during a game, has received his punishment and it’s as ridiculous as you might expect. Martinez has been banned from attending any Mets’ home games for three years and must spend 15 days in jail after pleading guilty to charges of interfering with a professional sporting event. This punishment is absurd, but not for the reasons you might think. I do concede that wasting jail space on a person for shining a flashlight in the eyes of a couple of pro baseball players is absurd, the truly stupid part of this sentence is the notion of banning anyone from a sporting venue for three years. Tell me exactly how you can enforce this kind of ban, because I don’t see it happening. Just prohibiting someone from buying a ticket isn't enough, because that person can scalp a ticket, they can have a friend buy it for them or they can buy it using cash at any ticket-selling location. So what, you’re going to hand a glossy, color picture of this guy to every ticket taker at Shea Stadium and instruct them not to let him in? Right, because ticket takers aren't at all a transient group whose composition changes regularly. Plus, what’s to prevent Martinez (or any fan in his situation for that matter) from dyeing their hair, wearing a wig, growing a goatee, slapping on some glasses or wearing a hat to disguise themselves? There is no way the Mets or the local government is going to be able to enforce this ban, and in order to fly in the face of its absurdity, I hope Frank Martinez does attend many Mets games over the next three years, sans flashlight of course.

- Now things get interesting. W. has indeed vetoed the newly passed war-funding bill containing troop-withdrawal language, and today he met with the Democratic leaders of Congress to work toward an alternative solution. In vetoing the bill, W. stood firmly by his ill-reason, ignorant and oblivious thinking that has led him so far through this war. “It makes no sense to tell the enemy when you plan to start withdrawing,” W. said. “You would be setting a date for failure.” No, ass clown, that date has already been set and it’s the date you decided to wage this ill-fated atrocity of a war. We failed the second an American soldier set foot on Iraqi soil looking to find WMD’s that never existed, from the second the first American soldier was injured or killed in Iraq and from the second you decided that you would continue waging this war with no plan, no timetable and no valid reason for its continuation. We’ve already failed because there was no way to win to begin with. Your staunch refusal to admit this is placing everyone, from the soldiers fighting the war to the legislators bound to fund it, in a terrible position. As bad as you may think you would look for actually deciding to withdraw American troops from Iraq, you’re going to look a hundred times worse for prolonging a war that’s becoming an even more ginormous debacle than Vietnam was for Nixon. In fact, history is probably going to remember you even more critically than Nixon, because at least after all his foul ups, he resigned and left the White House in shame, whereas you, W., keep sticking your head in the sand and refusing to admit how wrong and incompetent you are.

- Ah, the pageantry of rich people in ridiculous outfits and funny hats, overpriced mint juleps and tiny men in brightly colored outfits flogging giant equines around an oversized oval, it’s why the Kentucky Derby (set for Saturday) is truly one of the great sporting events in the world. That is, of course, assuming that by calling it a great sporting event you mean it is neither great nor an actual sport, but rather an idiotic contest featuring tiny men atop big horses that far too many people wager far too much money on. You’ll have to excuse me for refusing to recognize something as a sport when the primary participants are animals without opposable thumbs and the only humans involved in the race itself are resigned to the role of beating the horse with a whip and looking like a slightly oversized lawn ornament. Just as auto racing fails to qualify as a real sport in large part due to its reliance on a piece of machinery as the real “competitor” and thus allows out-of-shape schlubs to excel with minimal physical exertion, horse racing doesn’t pass muster as a legit sport in my book. Something tells me there will be one or 4,015 better things to do this weekend than watch the horsies run around in a circle for a few minutes while wealthy ladies in funny hats sip expensive drinks and cheer them on from their private boxes at the racetrack.

- Ah, international slap fights, God love ‘em. In a near-perfect example of big versus small, the tiny Caribbean island of St. Lucia has stepped to China and thrown down the political gauntlet. St. Lucia has decided to sever its 10-year diplomatic ties to China and restore its ties to Taiwan, a country that is one of China’s biggest rivals. Both the Chinese and Taiwanese have sent diplomatic envoys to the tiny island nation in attempts to curry favor, but China has lost the battle and now its government is pissed. Of course, if I had built a stadium and a psychiatric hospital for a country and then they cut ties with me, I might be a smidge upset too. “We express indignation and opposition,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jian-chao said in an official statement. Not a lot to go on there, but I’ll hazard a guess and say that China isn't going to take St. Lucia up on its offer to still be friends despite the new alliance with Taiwan. You’ve got to admire a 240-square mile island with a population of 168,000 being willing to stick it to the world’s most populous nation and one with nuclear capacity nonetheless. Well done, St. Lucia, you’ve definitely got a lot of testicular fortitude.

- American Karaoke, ruining countries all over the world one debacle at a time. It just isn't enough for the creators and participants of this horrific train wreck that they continue to erode musical standards and quality in America and Great Britain; no, these losers are spreading their disease worldwide and now seven people in Tunisia have died as a result. At a concert in the southern city of Sfax featuring the “stars” of the Arab version of American Karaoke, a stampede in the crowd left seven individuals, all between the ages of 12 and 21, dead and 32 others seriously injured. No word on whether the stampeded ensued when the gawd-awful, ear-damaging musical crap-ola started and those in the crowd tried to flee, but this is just another example of this excruciatingly bad show bringing more pain and suffering on the world. Isn't it enough that we have an ever-growing crop of degenerates who think they can sing because they appeared on AK and now they insist on producing unlistenable albums and showing up on any and every TV and radio show they can beg their way onto in a desperate grab at fame? For the sake of the health, well being and sanity of people the world over, someone needs to step up and take the initiative to shut down any and all versions of American Karaoke around the world by whatever means necessary. It’s not good, it’s not really music and it’s not doing anything but dragging us down, so let’s end this charade, once and for all.

- With finals bearing down on students at colleges and universities across the country, there are a few guarantees: 1) hundreds of gallons of Red Bull and coffee will be consumed, 2) students will cram desperately in an attempt to learn in a few hours material they’ve ignored and put off learning for months and 3) cheating in a wide array of shapes, sizes and strategies will ensue. Students at the Air Force Academy and Duke have gotten an early start on the cheating angle, with fifteen Air Force cadets being booted from the school and 34 Dukies awaiting punishment after their roles in cheating scandals at their respective schools. At the Air Force Academy, the cadets in question either confessed or were found guilty by an honor board of sharing answers to a test of knowledge about the Air Force. At Duke, graduate students at the school’s Fuqua School of business face severe punishment, including nine who are staring down expulsion, after their own cheating scheme was discovered. It’s the largest cheating scandal in the school’s history and proves the adage that if you’re not cheating, you’re not trying, and it’s only cheating if you get caught. I just thought wicked smart kids like those attending Duke might be a little smarter when cheating and could avoid being caught.

Admiring the entrepreneurial spirit, a space spat and pride over toxic air

- Is a person being an international drug lord any reason to persecute them and refuse to admire the entrepreneurial spirit? I say no. Drug cartels in Mexico have taken to expanding their business to include people-smuggling in order to supplement their normal practice of transporting massive quantities of weed, cocaine and hash into the United States. The human cargo is used to distract law enforcement from billions of dollars in cocaine shipments coming across the same section of the U.S.-Mexico border. The diversified crime syndicates get protection money from the illegal immigrants and then use them to provide an easier path for their drug shipments. Why this is a problem, I don’t know. It seems to me that when a business faces a challenge, as the smugglers do with a new crackdown by the border patrol on drug smuggling, that business should be praised for finding new and innovative ways to grow their business. Yes, they’re using human beings as shields to help facilitate trafficking of drugs that could kill people, but as with any advances in business, some sacrifices must be made. By using the same routes for smuggling both drugs and humans across the border, drug smugglers are showing creativity and ingenuity. It’s the American spirit at work, and even if our government, our border patrol, local and state police, federal law enforcement and society at-large can't respect that, I’ll be the lone voice in the crowd to express admiration for these human-exploiting, narcotic-pushing druggies who are finding new ways to foist their lethal product on the American public.

- Taking pride in your hometown or the area you grew up in is a natural instinct. We all want people to know the good things about the place we live and to recognize its good qualities. Thus, I am exceptionally proud that my area, the Cleveland-Akron area of Northeast Ohio, has cracked the list of cities in America with the worst air quality. What makes this honor so meaningful is that everyone in the community needs to pitch in to make it possible. This isn't something one environmentally ignorant, toxin-producing loose cannon can bring about. You need a collection of pollutant-emitting factories, citizens driving environment-wrecking vehicles with poor emissions systems and a general disinterest in keeping your community’s air clean and breathable if you’re going to be honored by the American Lung Association for having some of the most polluted air in the country. In case you’re wondering, the Los Angeles metropolitan area reclaimed its usual spot at the top of the list after dropping off in recent years when the tree huggers in the state of California made that push to clean up the air in the Golden State. Plus, not only does my area rank sixth on the list, Pittsburgh (a short two-hour drive to the east) is second on the list behind L.A. Few times in my life have I been as proud of my hometown and my fellow Northeast Ohioans as I am right now………

- Demanding that your nation’s radio stations portray another nation as an enemy and taking a directly hostile stance toward that national in the political arena makes for a tempestuous relationship. Russia has taken an increasingly hostile stance toward the United States (and pretty much everyone else in the world) lately as President Vlad Putin marches the Russkies back toward Communism, and now the good ‘ol U.S.A. has decided our feelings are hurt and we’re not going to play nice with Russia anymore. The chief of Russia’s space agency claims that the U.S. has rejected a Russian proposal that the two nations join together in exploring the moon, a claim American space program leaders deny. In fact, NASA claims no such offer was made, so someone here is lying. I’m torn as to who that might be, because our current government and agency leaders have shown a clear talent and predilection for lying, but how can you believe a Communist, totalitarian, dictatorial regime over your own country’s word? Whatever the case, you can be sure that the United States and Russia will not be scheduling any lunar play dates any time soon, although I would be all for taking the president of each nation and shooting those two up into space together for an extended moon exploration project through the year 2045.

- Raise your hand if you didn’t think the new movie starring Jamie Kennedy would be a bomb. No hands? Didn’t think so. Kennedy is rapidly becoming the next Pauly Shore, a pathetic wannabe comedian who makes absolutely ridiculous, unwatchable pieces of crap that appeal to a non-existent group about five rungs down the evolutionary ladder from the lowest common denominator among movie fans. After playing lead rules in acclaimed theatrical classics like Malibu’s Most Wanted and Son of the Mask, Pauly Shore Jr. is back in Kickin’ It Old Skool (no word on whether the movie’s producers intended to spell it that way), a movie with an implausible, idiotic premise of Kennedy as a coma survivor who wakes up after 20 years and is still living in the 1980s, with hilarity supposedly ensuing. Hmm, lemme see, has this kind of idea been done recently….oh yeah, Brendan Fraser as a guy who lived in a bomb shelter for a couple decades and reemerges into a world that he’s 20 years behind and struggles to adjust to in Blast from the Past. So with a retread of a plot and an exceptionally bad thespian in the lead, plus a “climactic” break-dancing throwdown, you can see where this movie is headed…….yup, pretty much straight to DVD after an underwhelming two-week run in theaters. I feel bad about seeing Michael Rosenbaum, who plays Lex Luthor in one of my favorite TV shows (Smallville) being a part of this cast, so I’m going to go ahead and pretend that this movie never happened so I can still watch Smallville and not laugh derisively every time Rosenbaum appears on screen.

- Not that anyone is going to miss her, but it is bad timing for Rosie O’Fat’s decision to leave The View. Elizabeth Hasselbeck, the show’s ditzy, perky blonde eye candy, has announced that she is pregnant, which would have been a positive development for O’Fat if she were staying on the show. With Liz adding all of that pregnancy weight and ballooning up to several times her normal size in the months ahead, Rosie would have finally had someone in the same general weight class as her so she wouldn’t appear so obscenely fat and disgusting on national television. Don’t get me wrong, Rosie still would’ve been the fattest person on the show by a wide (pun intended) margin, but at least Hasselbeck would have been in the same weight zip code for a few months. When you’re as obese, crude and disgusting as O’Fat, you need to take what you can get. Don’t let the door hit you in your ginormous ass on the way out, Rosie, which means you’ll need to find someone who doesn’t hate you (it’ll be hard, I know) and have them hold the door open for four or five minutes to give you time to make it through the opening.

- Was it something he said? Following his stint as a guest analyst for ESPN at the NFL Draft over the weekend, Keyshawn Johnson has been released by the Carolina Panthers. Johnson spent extensive airtime talking about the Panthers’ draft needs and raving about the players they selected. He talked with the team’s second round pick, Dwayne Jarrett, and consoled him about not being picked higher coming out of the same school Johnson attended, the University of Southern California. He promised to mentor Jarrett with the Panthers and to take care of him there, but it looks like those plans will never come to fruition. Johnson is gone, and ironically Jarrett may be the one taking his spot. Like Keyshawn, Jarrett is a big, physical receiver and he may slide right into the role Johnson once held. Wonder if Keyshawn would have been so effervescent and enthusiastic talking about the Panthers and their draft picks if he’d known what was coming……Of course, that experience as a TV analyst might be helpful to Johnson sooner rather than later now that he no longer has a job catching passes in the NFL. Still, dude does have the all-time best quote from any athlete, anywhere: “If you don’t like me, you’ve got a problem with yourself."