- Last week when I ripped the NBA for its über-moronic playoff schedule, clearly I did not give them enough credit for their idiocy. As horrific as the scheduling was for the first round of the playoffs, the schedule of one particular second round series takes the word moron to a whole new level. Of course I’m talking about the lame, stupid, imbecilic, asinine three-day (three day!) layoff between Game 6 and Game 7 of the New Orleans-San Antonio Western Conference semifinal series. Instead of bringing the exciting conclusion to a back-and-forth series between two of the NBA’s best teams in a (mildly) timely fashion, the league has gone brain dead and set up a imbecilic three-day break between the final two games. Now I’ve done a little research (there’s a first time for everything) and discovered that the distance between San Antonio and New Orleans is about 543 miles. I may not be a Harvard-educated mathematician, but I’m like 98.4 percent sure that it doesn’t take three f’ing days to make the drive from San Antonio to the big Easy. Actually, it doesn’t take two days, one day or even half of one day. Yes, with decent traffic you could make it in 9-10 hours! So why thee days between games? Why did the Cleveland Cavaliers and Boston Celtics play not one, but two games in between the Games 6 and 7 of the New Orleans-San Antonio series? If anyone from the NBA has the balls to attempt an explanation for this, I’d love to hear it. There is no good reason logistically, logically, competition-wise or in any other realm for three days off at this point. Heck, there wasn’t a single NBA game Saturday, why couldn’t the Spurs and Hornets play then? Was the arena booked in New Orleans? No, it was available…..too bad functional replacement brains weren’t also available for NBA Commissioner David Stern and his associates, because then we might have gotten a non-retarded schedule for this series. Thanks for nothing, NBA…..well, nothing other than showing why you are and will remain the third-best professional league in this country and nowhere near as fun to follow as college hoops.
- You’re late to the party, John Edwards, but my policy of blanket inclusion and acceptance for anyone who supports Barack Obama and thus opposes that tyrannical femi-Nazi Hank Clinton still stands. Edwards announced this week that he is endorsing Obama after being in the race against him a few months ago. Among the also-rans for the Democrats, Edwards was the one with the most staying power in the race, but he still bowed out and left Obama and Clinton to duke it out. The official endorsement came at a rally in Grand Rapids, Mich. and only after Edwards said some kind words about Clinton in a very politically correct monologue. Personally I would have said nothing positive about Hank, but that’s why I’ll never be a politician, because I’d never play the game of double talk and patronizing people for the sake of getting ahead. “The Democratic voters in America have made their choice, and so have I,” Edwards declared. Not exactly a balls play by Edwards, what with Obama leading in the popular vote, in delegates and in superdelegates, but whatever. He may have made a pointless endorsement in terms of affecting the race because he didn’t have the testicular fortitude to pick a candidate until the race was basically over, but any show of support for Obama and against Clinton is a true act of patriotism. Because Edwards is seen as a working class guy, the son of a mill worker, his support should be helpful to Obama in bridging the gap with middle-class America that has become more pronounced in recent weeks. It should also help in nudging undecided superdelegates closer to the right side of this battle, Obama’s side. So while Hank is busy trying to sell a 41-point victory in West Virginia as actually having meaning, the rest of us can go on ignoring her and focusing on Obama and John McCain, the two candidates who are still in the race for the presidency.
- If law enforcement in this country keeps this kind of crap up, there aren’t going to be any good places left in the United States to buy agents of mass chemical warfare and you’ll be forced to go overseas to purchase your neurotoxins and chemicals with which to commit acts of terrorism. Police in Muskogee, Oklahoma have arrested a 38-year-old Texas man after he allegedly tried to sell a 25-gallon drum of cyanide to an undercover FBI agent. Jeffrey Don Detrixhe claimed to possess the drum of cyanide and touted its usefulness in mass killings while attempting to broker the container’s sale to a man who turned out to be a fed. Dertrixhe was arrested last week in southeastern Oklahoma and hit with charges of possession or transfer of a chemical weapon. What’s the big deal here, anyhow? So what if the guy had a drum full of cyanide and was willing to sell it to someone he believed was going to use it for mass murder? Why so uptight, feds? Can’t a man make a living selling chemical weapon of terror anymore? Who doesn’t wish they had a friend or neighbor like Detrixhe, a person who could provide just the right thing to help them in their terrorism plot? Well, setting aside those of us with moral and ethical oppositions to terrorism and chemical warfare, there has to be someone out there who appreciates people like Jeffrey Don Detrixhe….no one? A little advice for you, Jeff: next time, whenever it is that you get out of jail, try not being a moron and see how that works for you. Assume that you’re not going to be able to broker deals for 25-gallon drums of cyanide and maybe try earning some income in more law-abiding fashion, amigo…
- Finally, some good news surrounding the developing train wreck that is the 2008 Summer Olympics. With a slew of problems - human rights crises, pollution, food safety issues, water shortages, etc. - in China, the need for a positive story right now is great. Enter double-amputee sprinter Oscar Pistorius, who won his appeal Friday and can compete for a place in the Beijing Olympics. The Court of Arbitration for Sport rightly ruled that the 21-year-old South African is eligible to race against able-bodied athletes, overturning a ban imposed by the International Association of Athletics Federations, which said Pistorius’ prosthetic, carbon fiber “Cheetah blades” give him an unfair advantage over able-bodied athletes. The unanimous CAS ruling goes into effect immediately, clearing the way for this inspirational athlete to compete for a spot on his country’s Olympic team.
“I am ecstatic,” Pistorius told reporters in Milan, Italy. “When I found out, I cried. It is a battle that has been going on for far too long. It's a great day for sport. I think this day is going to go down in history for the equality of disabled people.” This doesn’t guarantee Pistorius a spot in the Olympics because while he holds the 400-meter Paralympic world record of 46.56 seconds, that time is outside the Olympic qualifying standard of 45.55. So he still needs to run a fast enough time to qualify, but for a guy like this, the opportunity to compete is what he’s after and you’d have to figure that as long as he’s given a fair shot to compete, he’ll be satisfied and blame no one but himself if he doesn’t make it. However, even if he doesn’t qualify to run in the individual 400 meters at the Aug. 8-24 Beijing Games, he can still be picked for the South African relay squad without qualifying. That relay squad has not yet qualified for the Olympics, but they are likely to do so. This decision to allow Pistorius to take his rightful place in competing for the South African team comes after he appealed to CAS, world sport's highest tribunal, to overturn a Jan. 14 ruling by the IAAF that banned him from competing. The a-holes at the IAAF said his carbon fiber blades give him a mechanical advantage, but thankfully my main man Oscar didn’t let that stop him. He filed his appeal and a two-day hearing was held before a panel of three arbitrators at CAS headquarters last month. The irony is that because of this whole situation, he is likely to become very popular with track and field promoters across the world who want him to run at their meets before Beijing. He could make himself a lot of money and fame in the weeks ahead, which isn't what he was after but should be nice compensation nonetheless. You also have to love the phony, disingenuous response from the International Olympic Committee, which welcomed the verdict. “Oscar Pistorius is a determined and gutsy athlete who will now no doubt put all his energy into reaching the qualification standards for the Olympic Games,” the IOC said in a statement. “If he makes it we would be delighted to welcome him.” Funny, IOC, but I don’t remember you professing your support for this guy before he was forcibly thrust down your throat. No one in any of the track or Olympic regulatory bodies was supporting him at all until he won his appeal and they had no choice but to get behind him. So good for you, Oscar, I hope you are able to get that qualifying time and that I can watch you run in Beijing this summer amidst the human right oppression, rampant smog, water shortage and steroid-laced, 14-inch chicken breasts being served in the Olympic village…..
- With networks announcing their fall lineups last week, a lot of people were wondering about CBS, wondering if the network would finally stop sucking an put on some scripted shows worth watching. After all, the network’s two best shows were reality series (Survivor and Amazing Race), CBS’ weekly sked has been littered with unwatchable, gawd-awful shows like The Big Bang Theory, Two and a Half Men and How I Met Your Mother in recent seasons. The half-hour sitcom is a dying breed in television, and with good reason. It’s a tired, played and uninteresting genre that doesn’t give you nearly enough time to develop plots and storylines and thus resorts to recycled jokes and comedy bits that are as funny as a root canal. So the question was, what would CBS do? Would they alter their lineup and improve things for once? Of course not! Instead of trimming the fat and getting rid of some of their lame comedies, the network is keeping all of them and adding two more. One of those shows will star the not-funny comic Jay Mohr as a recently divorced painter and Paula Marshall, who was really hot….about 10 years ago, as his ex-wife. The show is called Project Gary, but its title should be Project: Canceled After a Month, because this half-hour stink bomb is already being critically panned and it hasn’t even made it to air yet. But that sad truth is that Project Gary might not even be the worst new comedy CBS will air this fall. That honor just might go to Worst Week, a single-camera (great idea for a sitcom, really CBS, bravo!) show about a bungling magazine editor. Gee, how original and not at all clichéd. If you’re looking for the two aforementioned decent shows on CBS, Amazing Race can be found in its usual Sunday night, 8 p.m. time slot and Survivor is in its familiar place at 8 p.m. Thursdays. The network’s other flagship show, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, which became played and jumped the shark several years ago when CSI: Miami, CSI: New York, CSI: Bismarck, CSI: Topeka and CSI: Myrtle Beach made the franchise ubiquitous and inescapable, will follow Survivor on Thursday nights. All in all, not a great up-front for CBS, but can't say as I expected anything different.
- File this under really, really creeping and almost inhuman. I’m not prone to throwing those terms around too often (okay, so maybe a little bit), but there’s no other way to describe the charges levied by a Los Angeles County grand jury late last week against the former head of UCLA’s cadaver program. According to the indictment handed down by the grand jury, Henry Reid harvested body parts from the university’s willed-body program and sold them to a man named Ernest Nelson, who operates a truly bizarre business that transports body parts. Reid was hit with eight felony charges and Nelson was also indicted as part of the operation. Nothing like willing the body of your loved one to their favorite university in the hopes that future medical professionals will be able to learn from them, train by working on them and some day become a great doctor who can help save lives and finding out that instead, the body of your departed family member was picked apart like a used car at a junk yard, its parts sold off to earn extra cash. How can you even do something like that and not have nightly nightmares about it? How do your conscience and even one shred of basic humanity break through and make you stop? I know anyone working with cadavers has to develop a kind of morbid humor and detachment about the whole process, but this is taking that to a discomfiting extreme. Here’s hoping that when you pass away, Henry Reid, that those dealing with your remains show more respect and class than you showed to the remains of those whose bodies were donated to UCLA during your time heading up the willed-body program…..
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