Wednesday, January 02, 2008

Cam Cameron gets his, Kenya goes all-out riot and I wonder why America cares about celebrity couples

- You had it coming, Cam Cameron, and I could not be happier to see you get fired as head coach of the Miami Dolphins. You clearly did not have a good team and you clearly did not know how to coach what you did have. You couldn't even get your guys to focus and not do what it takes to win when they were 0-14 and staring at a chance for immortality as the first 0-16 team ever in the NFL. All season long you proved to be overmatched both in games and during the week when it came to preparing your team and making personnel decisions. Thus, I'm ecstatic to see that new team executive Bill Parcells has fired Cameron after just one season at the helm, albeit a 1-15 season of epically bad proportions. Parcells brought in a new general manager as well, hiring old friend Jeff Ireland away from the Dallas Cowboys. Ireland put it succinctly when evaluating Miami's season: "They were struggling on both sides of the ball," Ireland said. "Looking at it from afar, we've just got to put the right person in place." Yes, they did struggle, both in terms of winning games and in losing them when doign so would have made the dream season a reality. That's the 2007 Miami Dolphins in a nutshell, an all-around failure and disappointment. For your part in all of this, Cam, worst wishes for you wherever you go next.....

- Boy, that escalated quickly. I mean that really got out of hand. It jumped up a notch. It did, didn't it? Of course, I'm referring to the grwoing violence in Kenya, where a disputed presidential election has turned into an absolute melee, with property destruction, riots, killing and ethnic unrest. Ever since opposition candidate Raila Odinga, who led in the opinion polls leading up to the election and also in early election returns, but saw that lead mysteriously evaporate once the final votes were tallied, lost out to incumbent Mwai Kibaki, all hell has broken loose in Kenya. The rioting and all-out warfare has caused hundreds of deaths and Tuesday, an angry mob (really, is there any other kind of mob?) torched a church where dozens of refugees had been staying, killing many of those inside, including children. Those who didn't die in the blaze were hacked to death with machetes, which is even worse. Those deaths in the city of Eldoret brought the death total to 275 for the first foru days of the uprising, with no real end in sight. Normally I'm the first person to salute rioting and rioters everywhere, but this is no longer just a simple riot. It's a mini-civil war and people are dying, which is not a part of what I love about riots. Whether the election was rigged or not, I don't know, but what I do know is that this is a disturbing conflict that no one in Kenya seems to have a clue as to how to handle.

- Celebrity couples. It's one thing I'll never understand America's fascination with. Famous people are just like the rest of us, they need love and companionship too. So I found it funny when the buzz over Heroes stars Hayden Panettiere and Milo Ventimiglia broke out. They're dating and this is supposed to affect me how? It's not like Ventimiglia hasn't done this before; while appearing on one of my all-time fave shows, Gilmore Girls, he dated co-star Alexis Bledel. Memo to America: What the frak does it matter what celeb dates what other celeb? They're certainly not going to date you, Average Joe or Jane American, so who else is there for them to date? Get a life, all of your celebrity relationship gossip lovers, find a real hobby.

- People should have learned by now, thanks in large part to Ron Mexico, er, Michael Vick, that people really, really aren't down with abusing and killing animals, especially dogs. That fact clearly escaped the consciousness of an unidentified man in San Diego who decided that when the police began pursuing him from driving erratically, his best bet was to stop the vehicle on the Coronado Bridge along Interstate 5, get out of the vehicle and grab a police dog that had been release to catch him and jump off the side of the bridge holding the dog. The 200-foot fall into the frigid waters killed the dog, while the a-hole criminal survived and remains hospitalized. Good work, ace. I'm sure you'll get a lot of sympathy from the police, what with you fleeing from them and killing one of their own dogs in the process. Now you're not just going in for reckless and/or drunken driving and fleeing the cops, you're also on the hook for the killing of a police dog. If you wanted to jump and injure or kill yourself, fine. The world really wouldn't be worse off without you. But next time you make a drunken leap from a bridge, idiot, make sure it's a solo flight.

- This is definitely a new one in terms of air travel delays. Along with weather, mechanical problems with the plane, connecting flights being late, bomb threats and in-flight illness, add "passenger-to-passenger groping" as something else that can cause your flight to be delayed or have its path diverted. That's what happened en route from Dulles Airport in Washington, D.C. to Seattle when Michael Lamar Holland began copping a feel on a 39-year-old female passenger. The resulting disturbance caused the pilot to divert the flight to Pittsburgh, where Holland was escorted from the plane by federal air marshals. He appeared before a magistrate earlier this week on charges of abusive sexual contact. I'm sure everyone aboard was thrilled by this development and that none of them were bothered by the delay at all. I'm sure, though, that there were a lot of confused people at the Seattle Airport when the flight code DELAYED-GROPING was posted on the flight information screen around the airport. Maybe the flight attendants need to mix a few words about keeping your hands to yourself into their pre-flight instructions about emergency exits and seats acting as floatation devices, that couldn't hurt....

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