- Lighten up, NCAA. I know you feel the need to be the big, bad arm of the law for collegiate athletics, but it would really be better for everyone if you would just loosen up. For example, when five Division II wrestlers, one head coach, two assistant coaches and a donor attend the D-2 the national championships in Houston, get liquored up and trash hotel rooms, you should consider not suspending them and perhaps even applauding them for bringing some fun and excitement to what could otherwise be an extremely dull few days. Let’s face it: who gives a crap about the NCAA Division II wrestling championships? The overwhelming majority of sports fans don’t care or know about the D-I wrestling championships, so there’s no way they have any interest in the second-tier of the sport. Instead of reprimanding and fining these nine individuals, you should be celebrating them. I’ll assume that the fines were levied against the non-athletes, as the NCAA can't exactly impose financial penalties on student-athletes. The fines weren’t huge, totaling only $4,000, but it’s the principle of the thing, dammit. Fine, upstanding colleges and universities such as Nebraska-Omaha, Findlay, Upper Iowa, Newberry and Minnesota State, Moorhead had their names sullied because the NCAA has no sense of humor or concept of fun. Big deal, one wrestler, both assistant coaches and a donor were arrested for public intoxication, another wrestler was arrested for evading arrest and the others were cited for unruly behavior and property damage. They are likely not the first to do property damage to the Hyatt Regency in Houston and I’m guessing they won't be the last. At least people are talking about the NCAA Division II wrestling championships, which is something you can't normally say…….
- Nothing livens up a weekend quite like a military coup and the arrest of a country’s president. That means Honduras is having quite a fun time at the moment, given the fact that the Honduran military arrested President Jose Manuel Zelaya Sunday morning, the same day he vowed to follow through with a referendum that Honduras' Supreme Court had ruled illegal. A government official confirmed that Zelaya was detained and sent out of the country, landing in Costa Rica later in the day. He was seized at his official residence by a military team, which encountered resistance from Zelaya's guards. Reports on whether Zelaya was injured during his capture varied, but it is not believed that he was seriously harmed in any way. He has been a lightning rod of controversy since being elected in 2005. Zelaya is an extreme leftist who has openly opposed the other branches of government. Their issues came to a head over the issue of Sunday's planned referendum, which would ask voters to place a measure on November's ballot allowing the formation of a constitutional assembly that could modify the nation's charter to allow the president to run for another term. In other words, dude doesn’t want to leave office and is looking to rig the constitution to allow him to run again. Why he doesn’t just force the legislature to pass such a measure, as Hugo Chavez did, or fix the election, as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad did, I don’t know. Zalaya’s four-year term ends in January 2010 and the current law prevents him from running for re-election. In a desperation measure, he attempted to push the issue to a vote and it took the Honduras Supreme Court all of a few days to rule the poll illegal. Congress and the top military leaders agreed, but Zelaya wasn’t hearing it. When he went ahead with printing the ballots, the military confiscated them from the presidential residence. The military also ripped the state-run television news station from the air, further silencing Zelaya’s voice. In response, Zelaya fired the country's top military commander, Gen. Romeo Vasquez Velasquez. He also dubbed the court as the "Supreme Court of Injustice," which would be funny if it weren’t so unimaginative. I do like the fact that Zelaya was so intent on holding his referendum that he led a protest to the military base where the ballots were being held and took them back. That being said, the military ruled Honduras for 25 years, right up to the point a democratically elected civilian government came to power in 1982, so it’s not as if they don’t know how to seize control and rule with an iron fist. Still, I would be remiss if I didn’t thank everyone involved for an extremely entertaining spectacle, regardless of how it turns out…….
- Here’s someone you’re going to want to avoid inviting to your birthday party. Taylor Chee Walls of Naples, Florida isn’t exactly the most gracious, giving party guest. In fact, not only is she not very giving, she’s much more focused on taking. According to police reports, Walls went to Ryan Fibble’s house on June 18 to help celebrate his birthday. The two are (or were) apparently friends and so it made sense that she would go over and help him celebrate his birthday. Other friends came as well and brought gifts and cash for the birthday boy, but those gifts wouldn’t be in Walls’ possession for long. When Fibble woke up in the morning, he found that Walls and all of his birthday gifts— including $300 cash— were missing. Uh oh. He immediately contacted the Collier County sheriff’s office after learning that Walls dropped off an Adidas bag full of the stolen gifts, minus the $300, in the driveway of another friend’s house. Hmm, so the gifts disappear and then reappear and she’s the one bringing them back, except that the cash is missing. Do you think that perhaps she’s the one who stole the….no, it can't be. Wait, you mean to tell me that later in the day, Walls was dumb enough to send Fibble a text message, offering to repay him the stolen $300? Oh. But wait, there’s more. Later in the day, she reversed field and sent a second text message taking back her offer to return the cash. Good one, lady. No one is going to think you have the stolen cash then! Just tell the guy that you were kidding about offering him the money back because you don’t have it and that the person who saw you dump the bag of stolen gifts in their driveway was just hallucinating. Police didn’t seem confused by Walls’ antics at all, tracking her down at her home, arresting her and charging her with felony grand theft. It has been a while since I offered up a lesson from my seminar for aspiring-but-stupid criminals, so let’s break one out here. If you are enough of a scumbag to steal $850 worth of presents and cash from your friend at their birthday party, do not return the non-cash gifts by dumping them in the driveway of a mutual friend and do not, under any circumstances, send a text message, email or leave a voice mail offering to return the stolen money. Take the money and run, both from the police and the realization that you are a douche bag without a soul and don’t deserve any friends. Thank you to Ms. Walls for providing me a chance to teach that valuable lesson…….
- Hmm…..the tech dorks out there looking to come up with new iPhone apps are among the least likely to have kissed an actual girl or had sex with one in their life, so they would probably be among the chief consumers of online porn, no? Sounds like solid reasoning to me, which is why I’m not the least bit surprised at reports that Apple was considering the approval of the first iPhone apps containing pictures of naked women. Reports that Hottest Girls had become the first application approved for sale in the iTunes App Store that contains nudity proved to be premature. The app itself is nothing new, but what has changed is the addition of topless women to its gallery of “2200+ sexy bikini babes and lingerie models.” Of course, pathetic losers have been able to access all the porn they need on their iPhone through its Internet browser, but this would have been the first time Apple officially sanctioned images of naked women for the iPhone. With the addition of expanded parental controls in the new iPhone 3.0 OS software, some industry observers felt that approving a porn app might make more sense. Those who have test-driven the Hottest Girls app haven’t exactly given it glowing reviews, but then again, it’s porn, so what sort of quality is to be expected. As long as there are pictures of naked chicks to be seen, pathetic losers everywhere will come a flockin’. But not only did Apple not approve the porn twist add-on for Hottest Girls; the app actually disappeared from the iTunes store shortly after news of the approval began circulating. Of course, a website allegedly run by Hottest Girls app developers had an explanation locked and loaded for the situation. “The Hottest Girls app is temporarily sold out. The server usage is extremely high because of the popularity of this app. Thus, by not distributing the app, we can prevent our servers from crashing. Those who already have the app will still be able to use our app. To answer the question on everyone’s mind: Yes, the topless images will still be there when it is sold again.” Thanks for that, never-kissed-a-girl dork. Apple also had its say on the matter, with Apple spokesman Tom Neumayr weighing in thusly: “Apple will not distribute applications that contain inappropriate content, such as pornography. The developer of this application added inappropriate content directly from their server after the application had been approved and distributed, and after the developer had subsequently been asked to remove some offensive content. This was a direct violation of the terms of the iPhone Developer Program. The application is no longer available on the App Store.” Sounds to me like the Hottest Girls app developer is a lying sack of sh*t attempting to obscure the truth about what really happened. Oh well, I guess dorks will have to go back to getting their iPhone porn the old-fashioned way, through the Web browser……..
- This next story is a truly sad one. I want to wish a very melancholy happy trails to legendary infomercial pitchman Billy Mays, who died at his Tampa, Florida, home Sunday morning. First and foremost, thoughts and prayers to the Mays family for what appears to be a totally unexpected tragedy. Mays, ironically enough, was 50 years old, the same age as Michael Jackson, who died Thursday. The one complicating factor in Mays’ death could be the fact that he was on the US Airways flight from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Tampa on Saturday that had a hard landing at Tampa International Airport when the plane's front tire blew out. Although no injuries were reported from the crash, Mays said in an interview that he did take a hit to the head from falling baggage during the bumpy landing. "All of a sudden as we hit you know it was just the hardest hit, all the things from the ceiling started dropping. It hit me on the head, but I got a hard head," he declared. The Hillsborough County medical examiner will perform an autopsy, which should determine if the blow to the head played any role in Mays’ death. He was officially pronounced dead at 7:45 a.m., making him the fourth big-name celebrity (Jackson, actress Farrah Fawcett and TV personality Ed McMahon) to pass away within the past week. Mays was known as a pitch man for a variety of products, but perhaps none more so than his shouting ads for the cleaning product OxiClean. He could also be seen in commercials for ESPN’s “ESPN 360” online video service and on the reality TV show ''Pitchmen'' on the Discovery Channel, which follows pitch people in their jobs. His signature jet-black hair and beard were also key parts of Mays’ persona, which seemed to translate no matter what product he was pitching. His enthusiasm and exuberance drew in people who had no interest in a given product and kept them watching simply to see Billy Mays do his thing. So it is with immense sadness that I once again wish happy trails to Mays and marvel at what a true downer of a week this has been………
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