- With all due respect to President-elect Barack Obama, no. I’m on board with his push for a playoff system in Division I college football, but I refuse to support his personal appeal to bring the 2016 Summer Olympics to his home city of Chicago. No, no and no. I know you think hosting the Olympics is good thing, but thankfully you have me to tell you that you are wrong. While you might get all starry eyed imagining the prestige and pageantry, allow me to remind you of the gritty realitiy of hosting the most overrated sporting event in the world. First, you have the fact that whatever city hosts the Games turns into one giant mess of traffic congestion for an entire month, wreaking havoc in the lives of people who actually live in the city year round. Second, it’s a freaking security nightmare. Every terrorist group looking for an easy target to blow up and make a grand political statement in the process will be gunning for your town. Third, most sports don’t view the Olympics as their true top event anyhow. Soccer, basketball, tennis, etc. all have world championships or major events on their own that are far superior to their Olympic rivals, so they don’t place that much stock in the Games. So reagardless of P.E. Obama’s 90-second taped video message played by Chicago bid leaders to the general assembly of European Olympic Committees at its meeting in Istanbul, here’s hoping those doing the voting make the right choice - anyone but a city in the U.S. “The United States would be honored to have the opportunity to host the Games and serve the Olympic movement,” said Obama, wearing a dark suit and sitting at a desk in his Chicago transition office. “As president elect, I see the Olympics and Paralympic Games as an opportunity for our nation to reach out, welcome the world to our shores and strengthen our friendships across the globe.” No, sorry P.E. Obama, I have to step in and save you from yourself. We haven’t hosted the Games since the 1996 Atlanta Olympics and we don’t need to. I urge the International Olympic Committee to choose one of the other worthy candidates: Madrid, Tokyo and Rio de Janeiro. Heck, who doesn’t want to see Tokyo, already a nightmare of congestion and a teeming mass of humanity, try to cram the Olympics in? So when the IOC votes on the host city Oct. 2, 2009, in Copenhagen, Denmark, do the right thing - pick anyone but Chicago. Ignore the pleas of Chicago mayor Richard M. Daley, bid leader Patrick Ryan and President-elect Obama. Those images of Chicago's skyline, Lake Michigan, museums, restaurants, theaters and sports venues you saw in the video, just ignore them, leave them alone. Don’t listen when Ryan proclaims, “I pledge to you that Chicago will deliver a wonderful Games experience with full stadiums and arenas. Chicago surprises. Chicago inspires. Chicago unites.” Most importantly, Chicago doesn’t want the Olympics….no matter what its leaders say…..
- Five years probation and a mandate to register as a sex offender just aren’t enough in cases like the one involving former Catholic priest Robert Whipkey. You may remember Whipkey as the pervert who was caught jogging naked in the small Weld County town of Frederick. He became a national story, mostly because of the disturbing nature of his crime, and on Thursday he was given five years probation Thursday and was ordered to register as a sex offender. Additionally, Whipkey was ordered not to have contact with any children younger than 18, including family members. On top of that, he must also serve 100 hours of community service and pay various court fees. Again, not enough. Lest you forget, on June 22, 2007 an off-duty police officer who saw him walking nude along one of the main streets in Frederick just before daybreak. At the time, the excuse Whipkey gave was that he was nude because he "sweats a lot" when he exercises and that after jogging on the track at nearby Frederick High School, he needed to cool down. My man, that is repulsive. We all sweat a lot when we exercise, that’s part of the gig. However, we don’t all take off our clothes and walk the streets in broad daylight. That’s not cooling down after a workout; that’s indecent exposure. I mean, I guess if you want to go shirtless, it’s not a pretty sight but you can get away with it. However, pants in public are a must - unless you are Donald Duck or at a kegger after 3 a.m. and on your tenth or eleventh beer. How someone who was the pastor of St. Theresa Catholic Church in Frederick at the time of his arrest and had been a priest for 24 years didn’t know better, I don’t know. Yes, Catholic priests have been no strangers to sexual perversion in recent years, but nothing this public. Why don’t we just go ahead and deny that appeal Whipkey's attorney has filed, get on with sentencing wash our collective hands of this nightmare. Honestly, I’m still pissed at Weld County Judge Timothy Kerns for not sentencing Whipkey up to 18 months in prison as he could have done. “This conviction has cost me my career and my life,” Whipkey is quoted as saying. Good, because you’ve ruined a lot of lives with it, so I’d say you still came out on the better end of this deal, perv…..
- ABC Family has decided to take up the challenge of bringing one of the quintessential teen movies of the 1990s to the small screen. the 1999 hit film 10 Things I Hate About You, which starred Julia Stiles and the late Heath Ledger, will be remade for TV and the cast will include Gregory Peck's grandson, Ethan Peck. The movie was based on Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew and starred Stiles as Kat, Ledger as Patrick, and also Joseph Gordon Levitt (3rd Rock From the Sun) as Cameron, the would-be beau of Kat’s sister Bianca, and was Ledger's breakthrough film role in America. Seeing it remade, even for TV, is a sad reminder that he’s no longer with us. Taking his place as the leading man will be Peck, who will play Patrick in the updated version while Aliens in America's Lindsey Shaw will fill the role of Kat. In case you’re not familiar with the plot (and why wouldn’t you be?), it centers on two sisters, one an anti-establishment feminist, independent (Kat) and one an aspiring popular girl (Bianca, to be played by Meaghan Jette Martin), who have to find ways to fit in at their high school. This will be interesting, watching how this plays out, because 1) remaking a movie is always dicey and usually ends up making it worse, and 2) because ABC Family is the one doing the remake and an overwhelming amount of the original shows on their network absolutely suck……
- Having Kelvin Sampson as your university’s men’s basketball coach…..the gift that just keeps on taking….and taking…..and taking. Every school this scumbag coaches at ends up paying a hefty price once he’s gone because of the crooked, dishonest way in which he conducts business. His most recent stop, Indiana University, is still paying a lot of money to resolve the many problems Sampson caused during a very limited time on the Bloomington campus. The university spent $750,000 to buy out Sampson, who resigned (rather than be fired) after he was charged with five major NCAA rules violations, but even after getting rid of Sampson, the school has spent nearly $500,000 in legal fees to lawyers handling allegations of those violations by Sampson and his staff. Best of all, that figure isn’t done growing. It’s expected to keep going up, up, up as the university deals with an additional NCAA investigations and inquiries into allegations of failure to monitor the men's basketball program under Sampson. Multiple sources have claimed that the most recent bills, obtained through public records requests, show that the university spent $497,646 on outside legal counsel through July. The overwhelming majority of that amount, about $470,000, was paid to the Indianapolis law firm of Ice Miller. The remaining $27,000 and change went to an attorney representing Sampson and the university at a 2006 hearing regarding NCAA rules infractions at Oklahoma while Sampson was the coach there. So in other words, not only did IU pay (and is still paying for) Sampson’s misdeeds, the school also had to help him out with legal issues from his last stop prior to IU. It’s only been nine months since he resigned, and accepted a buyout after the NCAA charged him with major rules violations, dealing with his specialty, illegal telephone calls to recruits, but it’s impressive to see the damage this tool was able to inflict. Heck, Indiana is still waiting for the NCAA to decide whether it will subject the Hoosiers to additional penalties besides those already self-imposed by the university, including the loss of one basketball scholarship. Like I said, this is the one gift that just never ends, having Kelvin Sampson coach your team and plunge the entire program into the toilet in the process…..
- In stark contrast to the three ass-hatted auto industry CEOs who flew private jets to Washington to ask Congress for a massive taxpayer-funded bailout of their failing industry, it’s nice to see that there are executives out there who do understand the concept of being willing to sacrifice some of their own perks and benefits before asking others to bail out there company. For example, look at Japan Airlines boss Haruka Nishimatsu, who had to bring bad news a few months ago in announcing massive job losses for his company. So did Nishimatsu then fly to his country’s capital and ask the legislature to fork over billions of dollars to help him out? No, instead he turned inward in his search for answers and ended up relinquished his personal office and chauffeured car, taking a 60 percent pay cut, to an amount ($100,000) that is less than what many of his pilots make. Additionally, Nishimatsu takes public transportation to work, eats in the cafeteria with the other employees and works at a desk in the same area as the rank-and-file operate in. Are these Mother Theresa-like sacrifices that have put Nishimatsu in the poor house? No, but they are certainly better steps than throwing up your hands, whining like a 5-year-old and asking your legislature to bail you out like a kid who blew his entire allowance Bubble Yum and baseball cards and who won't change any of his own behaviors to alleviate the problem. on When told of the attitudes and actions of U.S. executives on $200 million salaries, Nishimatsu laughed, incredulously musing that, “We have learned, businesses that concentrate only on money fail.” Haruka, my man, are you interested in running an American company or three? Can I interest you in a position as CEO of one of the Big Three auto makers in this country? Think about it……
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