- The Dallas Cowboys lifestyle can be a tough one to fully embrace. Guys like Nate Newton, Michael Irvin, etc. made it look easy to embrace the law-breaking, egotistical, f’you style that has become synonymous with America’s Team and its blowhard owner, Jerry Jones. But some guys take a while to soak it all up and it isn't until four or more years after their time with the Cowboys that they are able to live that lifestyle the way it’s intended to be lived. Take former Dallas running back Troy Hambrick as a prime example of what I’m talking about. During his career, which included stints with the Cowboys and also with the Arizona Cardinals, Hambrick was a decent player, not a superstar and not a guy who received a lot of attention. He appeared in 61 games with the Cowboys and Cardinals from 2000-04, rushing for 2,179 yards and nine touchdowns and had his best season in 2003, when he ran for a team-leading 972 yards with Dallas. After 2004, he went the route of many also-ran players, simply fading into oblivion and not being heard from again…until he decided to try his hand at a new career. That’s where we find Hambrick now, living more like a Dallas Cowboy than he ever did during his playing days. Hambrick traded in his cleats for a crack pipe, becoming a drug dealer specializing in cocaine. Hambrick, 31, sold the drugs in September 2007 near his home in Lacoochee, Florida. He was apparently doing very well in making the transition from pro athlete to crack dealer, right up to the point where he was busted for selling coke to an undercover informant. Whoops. Not very easy to plead not guilty to charges of selling toot when an undercover cop was the one making the buy. With no out, Hambrick pleaded guilty three months ago to selling 78 grams of crack cocaine and was sentenced to five years in federal prison on Tuesday by United States District Judge Steven D. Merryday. Things could have been much worse for Hambrick if he had fought the charges instead of striking a plea agreement on February 22, admitting to three of the five counts of crack cocaine trafficking. Congrats on joining your fellow former Cowboy Newton in the Colombian nose candy distribution business, Troy. Maybe you guys can get together on the inside, reminisce about your days playing in Big D.
- Never a good sign when you’re pinning your hopes for anything other than top-notch moonshine production and a steady supply of rusted-out 1970s Ford pickup trucks up on block in front yards on the state of West Virginia (just kidding, West Virginians, you guys are so easy to provoke). But seriously, Hank Clinton put every available campaign resource and supply of energy into winning the state’s Democratic primary because she has the mistaken impression that she can still win the party’s nomination. Barack Obama is seen by many working and lower-class citizens to be elitist and unpatriotic, meaning he was projected to do poorly in a state with many such people like West Virginia, which turned out to be the case. This is one of those states that everyone has been conceding to Hank for weeks while simultaneously saying that winning it still won't make a bit of difference. My man B.O. has the nomination all but sewn up, loss in West Va. be damned. So even though Obama campaigned in the state wearing the American flag lapel pin he drew such sharp criticism for refusing o wear earlier in the campaign, it was clear before Tuesday that his focus and efforts were elsewhere - namely on the general election where he, not Hank, will be taking on John McCain. So enjoy the win, Hank, just as long as you know it doesn’t mean nearly as much as you want or need it to mean….
- Nothing like the nation’s highest court being unable to hear a case because too many of the justices have financial ties to the involved parties. An apartheid case involving some of the largest companies in the country made its way through the judicial system and came to the Supreme Court, where it was up to the nine men and women in black robes, stern expressions and no sense of humor to decide it’s face. Their decision was to pass on the case, saying that it was a conflict of interest to hear a case in which several justices had investments in or financial ties to the involved parties. This is believed to be the first such case in more than 25 years, which I guess is reassuring. Personally I’m just not a big fan of the supreme court since Chief Justice Antonin “Grow a Sense of Humor” Scalia went on CNN (or some other cable news network, they all tend to blend together) and ripped my favorite fake news program, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, as being childish and saying that he’s barely seen the program. Bad news Scalia, but more people are informed by that show than by your bland cable TV interview monologues. And I don’t remember Jon Stewart ever saying he couldn’t report on an issue because he and his staff had too many investments or financial ties with the involved parties. So get a sense of humor, try to avoid not being able to hear cases because of lame conflicts of interest and other than that, shut your cake hole, b’otch……
- This is why you always want to double and triple-check your computer and any portable memory devices before using them in any setting where others might be viewing presentations from said devices. When you have explicit porn on your laptop or memory stick and you take it to, say, a high school classroom where you plan to pull a presentation from it for a class full of teenagers, you might have the same problems that former Ohio state Rep. Matt Barrett encountered back in October. That’s when the incident took place, but the facts behind it are still coming out because of Barrett’s own deceitfulness during an investigation into the matter. The problem occurred when the state legislator appeared at Norwalk High School, located near Columbus, and whipped out his portable memory drive to use for his presentation to a class. Instead of the presentation about the business of a state legislator, the kids got an eyeful of something most of them had probably seen no shortage of before then - two pictures of naked chicks in explicit sexual poses. The police were called and Barrett appeared to be helpful in the investigation’s early stages, suggesting ways the porn could have gotten onto his computer and jump drive. First he theorized that political rivals had planted them to set him up, then he pointed the finger at his 12-year-old son, with Barrett’s wife admitting that she knew her son regularly surfed the Internet for porn. The problem was that the helpful witness act was just that - an act, designed to cover up the fact that Barrett and Barrett alone was fully responsible for the pictures appearing on his computer. The school’s computer technician actually pulled him aside before the police arrived that day in October, putting the images up on a computer in a private library meeting room. It was there Barrett admitted to knowing both of the women and soliciting the photos that were sent from cell phones to email accounts he had set up with….wait for it….wait for it….MySpace! Yes, a sexually deviant loser was making extensive use of MySpace. Amazing, isn't it? I mean, who would have seen that coming. Barrett resigned from the Ohio House on April 24, but things haven’t gotten any better for him since. The lessons to be learned here, aside from the reinforcement of the fact that MySpace is the undisputed haven for sexual deviants, pervs and freaks of all shapes and sizes, is to make sure that porn and school presentations never mix and however many checks you need to make to ensure that, you had better do them.
- Where were you when avid TV fans like myself needed this kind of help a year, two years or three years ago, ABC? The very kind of assistance your network is showing by picking up NBC’s discarded fan favorite comedy Scrubs sure would have come in handy back in 2004 when NBC was moronically canceling my all-time favorite show Ed. Same goes for the dumbest network in the history of television, the CW, for pulling the plug on Everwood, Gilmore Girls AND Veronica Mars. Where were you in those cases, ABC? Couldn’t be bothered to save those awesome shows but you’re able to snatch up a decent-but-not-great show like Scrubs? The network would have you believe that a big part of the reason for making the unusual decision to revive a show that another network let go is due in large part to the dearth of new pilots because of the writers’ strike. As further evidence of that problem, ABC will have only two new shows on its fall schedule, one of them a moronic new reality/game show hybrid that has “cancellation after four weeks” stamped all over it. The first new show is Life on Mars, a David E. Kelley (Ally McBeal, The Practice)-created police drama set in 1973. The aforementioned moronic reality/game show is Opportunity Knocks, a lame duck of a show in which producers “randomly” show up at homes with a truckload of prizes and quiz family members on their knowledge of one another. Tell you what, ABC. I’ll watch that show if you agree to go to Compton, Watts. Washington Heights or the crime-ridden ‘hoods of Gary, Indiana and risk getting shot and robbed for the sake of your little game show. Sound good? Otherwise I’ll pass on it, just like I pass on nearly every other show on your pathetic network outside of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. Passing on your shows come naturally to me, so I won't even give a second thought to skipping your sad-sack summer lineup “highlighted” by The Mole. ABC, never have those letters stood more for “A Bunch of Crap” than they do right now….
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