- Quite a freaking circus that the recruiting battle for much-ballyhooed recruit Xavier Henry has become. Henry is the No. 2 shooting guard and No. 3 overall player in the 2009 ESPNU Top 100 rankings of this year’s incoming class of college freshmen basketball players. Henry and his brother C.J. might be the most indecisive recruits in years, jumping back and forth between commitments to schools and doing so in very public fashion. The Henry brothers first committed to Memphis when John Calipari was the coach of the Tigers. Calipari left Memphis after last season when the top job at the University of Kentucky opened up and the Wildcats threw absurd amounts of money his way. With the coach they had agreed to play for gone, the Henrys decided that Memphis was no longer the place they wanted to be. Guess they weren’t all that fond ot the school and/or were only going there because of the coach, because they reneged on their commitment to Memphis and switched to the University of Kansas. That in and of itself wasn’t unique; the Memphis class of DeMarcus Cousins, Darnell Dodson and likely Memphis signee John Wall all turned away from Memphis once Calipari left and followed the coach to Kentucky. Xavier and C.J. Henry were the lone exceptions, electing to head to Kansas because of its proximity to their hometown of Oklahoma City. C.J. is 23 and hasn't played organized basketball in four years, but he’s still a valuable basketball commodity because a) he was a highly-ranked recruit coming out of high school and b) he’s Xavier’s brother. So the Henrys made the decision to go to Kansas and everything seemed settled….until this week, when their father went on the radio in Kansas City and began bumping his gums about his sons possibly following Calipari to Kentucky after all. Bringing in Xavier Henry would give the Wildcats the No. 3, 4 and 5 players on the ESPNU top 100, plus adding C.J. Henry would allow them to add a talented player with having to give him a scholarship, as C.J. has the money he made playing professional baseball in the New York Yankees’ farm system and wouldn’t need a scholarship. All of this has played out very publicly and clearly the Henry family has done nothing to quell the storm. Recruiting in high-profile college sports like football and men’s basketball is enough of a circus already, with recruiting services ranking kids from junior high on up, blanket coverage of national signing days and all sorts of nonsense about kids who, for the most part, will never become the megastars that they are being treated like. Ultimately, the Henrys have come to the conclusion - for now - that they will be staying at Kansas. That announcement was finally made and I’d love to believe that’s the end of it….but somehow I know better……..
- Of all the potential hazards of gardening (more than you think), I can’t say that I’ve ever thought of being attacked by a belligerent, borderline-homicidal fox as a possible danger when spending time in the garden. Now I know better, thanks to the cautionary tale of 76-year-old Wenyu Chen of Worcester, Mass. Chen was minding her own business, tending to the vegetable garden at her Mount Hope Terrace apartment when she was ambushed by the angry fox. No one is quite sure what provoked the fox, but fortunately two men working at a pest control job nearby heard Chen’s screams and came running. Leo Dupont and Robert Ford sprinted to the scene and saw Chen with the fox hanging from her arm and yelling her head off. Dupont called the police and Ford attempted to help Chen rid herself of her furry arm candy. “I ran over and I kicked the thing as hard as I could and it went against that wall and I grabbed that woman by her bloody hands and I said, 'Come with me, come with me,' and I dragged her over to this car," Ford said. Oh, a quick aside: expect for Ford to get plenty of hate mail and a possible lawsuit from those freaks at PETA for having the audacity to kick the fox, even if it was attacking a human being. However, the kick didn’t do enough damage to keep the fox down for long. As Ford hurried Chen to safety inside of his vehicle, the fox turned on him. "I hear him yelling to her, 'Go in the house, go in the house.' It wasn't but two seconds after that, the thing came after Bobby," Dupont said. This was a cold, calculating fox, because it systematically backed Ford up onto the roof of the car. The fox then leapt up onto the roof, where Ford delivered another big boot to the head. Even that wasn’t enough to deter the fox, which came back for more. “I kicked him in his head and he flung off and he got even madder and he came back and he jumped up again," Ford said. This time the fox latched onto Ford's shin as he was trapped on the top of the car, but officers eventually arrived at the scene and fired three shots at the fox. Gunshots proved to be enough to ward off the kamikaze fox, which was later euthanized by animal control officers. "That thing was so aggressive and it was out to kill. There's no doubt about it," Dupont said. The animal was being sent to a state lab for rabies testing, although for Chen and Ford’s sake I hope those tests come back negative. Just to be safe, though, all residents of Worcester should probably not do any gardening without either an a) gun or b) gardening buddy until we’re sure this was an isolated incident……
- Here’s a novel (no pun intended): a rock star penning a book in large part because he says he wants to help people. Typically a rock star writing a book is looking to help people, but those people are the rocker himself and his family in the form of the money he’ll make from writing that book. If you believe Aerosmith drummer Joey Kramer, his motives for writing "Hit Hard: A Story of Hitting Rock Bottom at the Top" aren’t financially based, at least not entirely. Kramer insists that he wrote the book in order "to be entertaining, but at the same time to...help people." The book officially published Tuesday, the result of a four-year process with writers William Patrick and Keith Garde. The book’s foreword was written by Motley Crue's Nikki Sixx, so that should make for interesting reading as well. Among the topics covered in the tome are Kramer’s well-known substance abuse problems (I don’t think you can be an official member of Aerosmith if you don’t have a detailed history of drug problems), his trouble relationship with his father and the long-running troubles and battles for control of the band that he’s had with Aerosmith frontman Steven Tyler. I’m not sure how those issues from the life of a rock drummer will translate when it comes to ordinary people making a connection to them, but Kramer seems to believe that the connection will be there and that people will benefit from hearing his tales of woe. “My desire to help people plays a strong part in my character," Kramer says. "Because I've been allowed to do what I've done via Aerosmith, I'd like to be able to carry it on as I get older, on another level. Whatever that may be is really unbeknownst to me -- maybe some sort of a lecture series or circuit or whatever -- but I know that it will come.” Tyler is also writing his own autobiography, "Does the Noise in My Head Bother You?," which has been pushed from an October publication date to the summer of 2010. The band has a group autobiography as well, 1997's "Walk This Way: The Autobiography of Aerosmith," written with help from author Stephen Davis. At present, Aerosmith is going back in time and touring with ZZ Top until mid-September, playing its 1975 album "Toys in the Attic" during the shows. Once the tour wraps, the band plans to return to working on its next album with producer Brendan O'Brien after the tour. Work on the album was delayed by health issues facing various members in the months leading up to the tour, so who knows when the final version will be ready. What is known is that you’ll be able to learn a lot more about the stories behind the music in the next year or so from Kramer’s and Tyler’s books. Happy reading……..
- Is it just me, or is it odd to hear talk about the American military looking to make its "don't ask, don't tell" policy "more humane"? My stance on homosexuality hasn’t changed and I still feel it’s wrong morally, but that doesn’t mean I have any qualms about allowing gay and lesbian soliders, sailors, pilots, etc. to take part in our military operations. The “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy has always been curious from where I stand, given that I agree that a person’s sexual leanings shouldn’t be public fodder but also because I marvel at how someone being gay or straight is such a huge part of determining their fitness to serve in the military. Now, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates is sketching out potential ideas that would allow the Obama administration to enforce the rule selectively so that some gays could serve in the military. Changes could include allowing people serve who may have been outed due to vengeance or a jilted lover. The Joint Chiefs of Staff are also getting behind this idea of an amended policy. Capt. John Kirby, spokesman for Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the chairman "supports the idea of a less draconian way of enforcing the policy." Bonus points for working the word draconian into your answer and to whoever broke open the thesaurus and helped you out with that one, Captain. In case you’re not familiar with the history of the "don't ask, don't tell" policy, it was instituted in 1993. Prior to that, it was routine practice to ask potential service members if they were gay. The policy also requires the dismissal of openly gay service members. Gates indicated that he has discussed the policy with Obama on multiple occasions and the issue of protecting service members who may have been outed with vengeance or blackmail in mind. A change in the current law would have to come through Congress, which would undoubtedly mean months and months of heated debate. However, Obama is undoubtedly looking to get the process started because he has come under heavy fire from the homosexual community for not doing enough about promises he made to it during the campaign last fall. This isn’t the first time a president has attempted to lift the ban on gays in the military; President Clinton tried when he took office, but the military leadership at the time would have none of it. That actually led to Congress stripping Clinton of his power to change the policy and making the "don't ask, don't tell" policy a law that only Congress can repeal. Now it remains to be seen if legislators, with a Democratic-led Congress, have an interest in doing so…….
- Automation can indeed work in your favor. Personally, there are few things I love more than self-checkout lines at the supermarket. Not having to deal with people when I’m not in the mood for it and make small talk with a cashier I don’t know and have no interest in the life of is fantastic. Plus, the old people who pull out their change purse and attempt to pay for everything with coins and exact change tend to avoid auto checkout lines like the plague because technology scares the crap out of them. In other words, it’s a win-win. So I’ll also applaud the arrival of vending machines that dispense prescription medication, which are now making their debut in Oklahoma. The Instymed Machine is a fully automated ATM style machine that dispenses medications to patients within minutes. It is the first of its kind in Oklahoma and looks to address the dilemma of some 20-30 percent of prescriptions that doctors write that are never filled because it’s simply too inconvenient for patients to pick them up. The first machines are now operational in the town of McAlester and so far, the response has been mostly positive. Picking up your medicine from the machine is relatively simple: a medical provider enters a prescription electronically, a patient enters a special code on a touch screen, puts in their birthday and insurance information, pays for it and out comes the medication. On average, the machines contain nearly 50 different types of commonly used medications and although they can't completely replace pharmacies, they are especially useful in more rural areas where there are no drug stores. Of course, there are abound to be depraved, drug-addicted losers looking to hit up the medicine ATM for some free drugs, so what security measures are in place? Well, the Instymed Machine has several security safeguards in place, including electronic monitoring. Let’s go ahead and score this as a good thing for now, although I reserve the right to revisit this down the road…….
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