Sunday, June 29, 2008

Justin Gimelstob's crush gone wrong, a contrite prison escapee and a college football drug dealer

- Justin Gimelstob sure does take a long time to get over a hot chick turning him down. Gimelstob, a tennis player on the men’s side of the ATP Tour, had some extremely harsh words recently for a player he used to coach when she was a teen - Anna Kournikova. Gimelstob, who now sits on the ATP’s executive board and isn't a major factor on the court as a player, lit up the über-hot Anna K. in a recent interview, calling her among other things a “bitch” and “douche bag.” He started off in direct fashion, saying, "She's a bitch. Hate's a very strong word. I just despise her to the maximum level, right below hate. I think she falls into the Marcelo Rios scumbag category. And this whole bluff about her retiring because of her back? She had the yips on her serve, she can't get her serve on the court." Also nice was Gimelstob lying about whether he had a crush on Kournikova. Asked if he had ever been attracted to Kournikova, Gimelstob declared: "Definitely not. I have no attraction to her, because she's such a douche.” Sure, Justin, whatever you say. His comments come as he is a month away from squaring off against Kournikova in a mixed doubles match at a World Team Tennis event. Regarding that match, Gimelstob says his prediction is simple: pain. He says that if Kournikova doesn’t leave the court crying, he hasn’t done his job. He also says he plans to nail her in the midsection with a shot. First off, I’ll admit that defending Kournikova on her merits as a tennis player won't work here. She was a colossal failure on the court, never winning any tournament of value and seeing her career end in short order. Her problem was being more focused on her career as a model and actress/vixen in that hack loser Enrique Iglesias’ music videos. To be fair, Kournikova never tried to mislead anyone into believing that she was a serious tennis player intent on being the world best. She was also notoriously arrogant, allegedly telling one young boy who asked for her autograph and had a crush on her that, “You cannot afford me.” All of that being said, Gimelstob’s beef with her sounds like a classic case of a dude having a crush on a hot girl and getting shut down. First, you can be sure that if he was her coach, even when she was a junior level player, he had the hots for her. If you are around a girl that hot day in, day out and you don’t have a thing for her, you’re either gay or you don’t have a pulse. So he had to have a crush on her and now, all these years later, he’s still bent. Few things make a man that bitter for that long and chief among them is being soundly rejected by a hot girl. Maybe she treated his advances with utter contempt and stomped all over his ego, but Justin, you need to let it go and move on. Before your little temper tantrum, no one outside yours and Anna K.’s close, personal circles knew about this. Now…..everyone knows and you look like a jerk on several levels. Making Anna K. cry by hitting her with a tennis ball won't help you reclaim your lost manhood, so just let it go and walk away…..

- The story of Eve Carson’s murder was already tragic, but with the release of six warrants used by police in her case this week, the depth of the tragedy has gone to new extremes. Carson is the former student body president at the University of North Carolina who was brutally murdered this spring, stunning the UNC campus and the Chapel Hill community. The warrants released this week allege that Laurence Lovette, 17, and Demario Atwater, 22, entered Carson’s home through an open window, kidnapped her at gunpoint, took her in her own vehicle to a nearby ATM to withdraw $1,400 from her account and then shot her multiple times. Both are charged with first-degree murder and although their respective attorneys are trying to pick away at the prosecution’s case, I’m not buying it. Lovette’s attorney told a judge that the prosecution’s case relies on hearsay from an unreliable confidential informant, which sounds very much like the desperate plea of a lawyer who knows that he or she is completely and irrevocably f****d. A conviction here would put these two up for the death penalty, which I dare say they’re deserving of. You break into the home of some random girl who is studying for her classes, you kidnap her in her own car so you can steal a measly $1,400 and then you kill her? How are you that desperate for money that you can cross so many lines in such a short span of time? Heck, break in and steal her computer, jewelry and credit cards if you have to. Take her ATM card and force her to give you her PIN number, but killing her….no way. This is just a sickening case all around.

- So what, now getting hit with felony drug charges gets you kicked off your college football team? In an elite program in its heyday, that kind of criminal activity gets you bumped to first string and cements your status as a prime-time player, but now it gets you booted? Go figure. This disturbing bit of news comes courtesy of now-former University of Alabama linebacker Jimmy Johns, who was was arrested on felony drug charges Tuesday and kicked off the team. Johns came to Alabama as a running back and receiver in 2007, then moved to defense for his what was supposed to be his senior year. That senior year isn't going to happen because according to Tuscaloosa police, Johns was “pretty wide open” selling cocaine to students on and around the University of Alabama campus. He also tried to hide the activity from his teammates, not the best move. If you’re the biggest crack dealer on campus, some of your teammates are probably going to find out about it. Hard to explain why strung-out junkies are coming to your apartment at all hours of the night with wads of cash in their hands and others are hitting you up on campus asking if you’ve got any good stuff because they need to get high tonight. “He didn't want them to know he was involved in it,” said Capt. Jeff Snyder of the West Alabama Narcotics Task Force. Johns may not have wanted his teammates to know he was a crack dealer, but as Alabama was conducting spring football practice, police began getting tips that Johns was involved in drug sales. In what I like to call slam-dunk, irrefutable evidence, undercover officers purchased cocaine from Johns five times in the last 11/2 weeks, Snyder said. Hard to argue you’re not selling drugs when an undercover officer buys off of you not one, not two, but five times in less than three months. Police arrested Johns at a gas station near his off-campus apartment, where he lived alone. They searched his apartment and found about 10 grams of cocaine and ecstasy pills. Ooh, let me handle this one for you, Jimmie. The drugs weren’t yours, you were just storing them for a friend. Maybe someone broke into your apartment to smoke crack and drop X and when you chased them out they left the drugs behind. As I’m sure you know, it’s NEVER an athlete or celebrity’s fault when they’re found to have drugs on their person. Someone else is always to blame and there’s always a grrrreat explanation. Johns had better start concocting such an excuse, because he has been charged with distributing cocaine and possessing the pills. Being the team’s second leading rusher your first two years and being projected as a starting linebacker won't get you off of drug charges. You’ll also be amazed to know that Johns missed part of spring practice for academic reasons. A guy dumb enough to deal drugs on campus and who spends a lot of time playing football isn't fulfilling his academic requirements? No way. Head coach and noted liar Nick Saban wasted no time in giving Johns the heave-ho, dismissing him from the team almost immediately after the charges were made. “This type of behavior obviously will not be tolerated and he is no longer a part of our program,” he said in a brief statement. “Not unless you are a first-team All-American and projected first-round draft pick.” Okay, so I made part of that up, but it isn't that far fetched….

- Sometimes life just works out. Circumstances unfold in a way that brings everything into place, with wrongs righted and fences mended. Inmate Luis Camacho-Mendoza had just such an experience this week when he broke out of prison. He is a prisoner at the Crawford County jail in Arkansas and Tuesday, he decided to make his own personal prison break. Using a tool he fashioned from two screwdrivers, Mendoza pried open a kitchen door and found a back way out of the prison. However, as excited as he was to escape, Mendoza also apparently felt guilty about breaking out. He left behind a toilet paper rose as a sign of his contrition for escaping, a noble gesture if you consider foliage made of something you use to wipe your butt as noble. Fortunately for Mendoza, he didn’t have to live with the guilt of his escape for long. Police discovered him in a home not far from the prison on Wednesday, attempting to hide in a closet under a pile of laundry. He even attempted to conceal himself by placing a pillowcase on his head, a tactic that failed to fool the cops. “He wasn’t hiding too good because you could see the outline of his head in the pillowcase,” said grammatically challenged investigator Ken Howard. So it’s back to jail for Mendoza to serve out the rest of his sentence on drug charges and the extra time he’ll receive for the escape. He could potentially be deported back to his native Mexico, so there is that to consider as well. But at least he doesn’t have to feel guilty about escaping because he’s now back where he belongs.

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