Cleveland is easily the worst place to be a sports fan right now, Bob Dylan sells out and sexing it up in public bathrooms

- If there’s a worse place to be a sports fan right now than Cleveland, I’ve never heard of it. Yesterday we chatted about the ongoing troubles of Cavaliers guard Delonte West, his arrest on gun possession charges and battles with mood disorders that have him AWOL from the team right now as training camp begins. That alone would be enough to bring the Cleveland sports scene down, but the city’s other two pro sports (and I use that term liberally here) franchises are disastrously bad and show no signs of not sucking any time in the next few years. We’ve also chatted about the Hindenburg/Titanic/Bermuda Triangle-like disaster that Browns coach Eric Mangini’s regime has been and that disaster only regressed this week as Mangini yanked starting quarterback Brady Quinn after just two-and-a-half games, replacing him with the turnover machine that is Derek Anderson. This came after waffling on who would start all preseason long, trying to guard the starter’s identity for the first game like the nuclear launch codes for the United States and vowing that once he did make a decision, that guy would be the starter long-term, period. So the Cavs have a mentally unstable shooting guard, the Browns have a guy who is being called possibly the worst coach hire in NFL history and oh yeah, the Cleveland Indians have lost 93 games, are one game out of last place and have now fired manager Eric Wedge with just six games left in the season. Wedge is 561-569 in seven seasons with the Indians and has guided the team to all of one playoff appearance, so there’s really no case to be made for keeping him. However, the Indians have held midseason fire sales each of the past two seasons, raffling off the reigning Cy Young winner (CC Sabathia and Cliff Lee, respectively) each year along with perennial all-star Victor Martinez this year. They claim to be financially destitute and with sagging attendance this year (gee, wonder why), the team doesn’t seem poised to have the money to add payroll and talent for next season. Furthermore, they got absolutely fleeced in both the Lee and Martinez trades this season, getting back subpar (and in one case, injured) talent in return for two elite players. In other words, the fans of Cleveland have one hope for any sports success in the next few years and that team is dealing with a mentally troubled shooting guard, relying on an out-of-shape, past-his-prime center and hoping that LeBron James doesn’t bolt town when his contract is up at the end of this coming season. Not a good time for you, Cleveland fans, and I wouldn’t be looking for it to get better any time soon…………

- Bob Dylan, sellout? Seems heretical to say, but then again, I can’t imagine the 1960s protest-loving Dylan doing a promotional tie-in with a major banking corporation. That Bob Dylan was as against The Man as anyone, but 2009 Bob Dylan is 68 years old and has apparently mellowed out substantially. In that vein, Dylan has made the decision to release his first Christmas album next month and that album, "Christmas In The Heart," will be available for Internet download to 13 million customers enrolled in Citibank’s rewards program, during the week before it hits stores on October 13. Nancy Gordon, executive vice president of Citibank's rewards program, said she expects the album will have "high appeal" to customers. I’m sure it will, but that doesn’t mean Dylan should have done this. The CD will not be sold in branches of Citigroup banks, but it may as well be. Heck, slam it in Starbucks alongside all the other crappy music they’re constantly trying to foist on their customers while they stand in interminably long lines waiting for their overpriced coffee. The only - and I mean ONLY - saving grace for this instance of selling out is that Dylan will donate his proceeds from the Columbia Records release to charities that feed the needy. Still, what the heck is an icon like Bob Dylan doing teaming up with a soulless corporate behemoth like Citibank anyhow? He doesn’t need the added publicity for his album and no one who downloads that album a week early (but still has to pay for it anyhow) would not have bought it if they had to wait until it was released to the general public. As an avowed hater of Christmas music, I wouldn’t have purchased this album anyhow, even if I am a big Bob Dylan fan, but that doesn’t mean I can't be extremely disappointed in Dylan for showing that in the end, even he has a bit of corporate sellout in him……………

- With all of the iPhone apps out there (the vast majority useless), the new app called Offender Locator might actually be a good resource - assuming that one of your primary focuses in life is tracking registered sex offenders. Offender Locator allows users to access information revealing the sex offenders who live within a 10-mile radius of where their children play sports, watch movies or hang out. The app gives parents the addresses of those sex offenders and allows them to adjust their plans for their kids accordingly. This isn't the first crime-fighting app for the iPhone by any stretch; in fact, there are literally thousands of them, allowing users to do everything from conducting a background check on a potential date to avoiding walking through a high-crime area. Just three months after its release, Offender Locator has already been downloaded more than a million times, breaking into the top 10 most popular apps list on iTunes when it made its debut. In the interest of smartphone fairness, some BlackBerry models and Google's Android also offer crime-fighting apps, but the iPhone is obviously the one that receives the most attention in spite of holding a surprisingly small share of the market. Another crime-related app came onto the market in February, when the FBI worked with NIC Inc., a contractor that develops Web pages for the government, to develop an app that provides updates of the 10 most wanted fugitives and terrorists. This month, a new iPhone app called Date Check will launch and allow users to see whether their date is a convicted rapist within seconds. With all of these apps floating around, a pertinent question to ask is whether the information they provide is in fact accurate. Critics argue that the data is often not completely on point, largely because public records can have errors, and sometimes, court records may be expunged or sex offenders are removed from registries. If you are one of the suckers, er, fortunate souls who can afford to dish out a couple thousand dollars for an iPhone and the attached contract over two years, I guess you can put these apps to the test and see for yourself how valuable they are. As for me, I’m going to keep on giving Apple a giant middle finger as it pushes me to tether myself to its overrated smartphone and I think that in the end, I’m going to be very happy with that decision…………..

- Everyone who attended one of the first games at the new Dallas Cowboys stadium is going to have their special memories of that game. Both of the first two regular-season games were night games, one the Sunday night game of the week and the other a Monday Night Football affair. There were ceremonies, Cowboys legends on hand, more than 100,000 fans on hand and oh yeah, a couple getting after it in a bathroom stall on the Hall of Fame box level. That delightful scene unfolded Monday night when the Cowboys were hosting the Carolina Panthers. While the rest of the country was focused on the action on the field as the Cowboys rallied back in the second half for a 21-7 victory to move to 2-1 on the season. However, near the end of the game, as the home team ran out the clock for the victory, two unidentified fans had something else in mind, namely the most vulgar, disgusting and revolting act I’ve ever seen in a public venue. These two degenerates, both clad in the No. 88 jerseys of Cowboys legend Michael Irvin, made their way into a public restroom (not sure if it was a men’s or women’s restroom), picked out a stall and wasted no time in hitting it. As the fourth quarter wound down, the commotion they were making became so loud that anyone in the vicinity of that restroom could hear it. Predictably, many of those fans had cell phones with cameras and they all made a beeline for the restroom. One intrepid soul managed to get to the stall door, extend his arm up over the top and catch three seconds of the couple doing the deed there on the floor. When they were done, these two freaks strolled proudly out of the restroom as one onlooker yelled "See you on YouTube!" To which the man who had just finished intercourse on a public restroom floor replied "Bring it on!" Let me tell you something, freak, and listen well: You are a scumbag and you are the biggest degenerate freak who ever has or ever will attend a sporting event. There is no freaking way that this tool and his lady friend didn’t go to that game with plans for their “special moment” and that in and of itself is revolting. Who thinks, “Hey, our first game at the new Cowboys Stadium, incredible luxuries, an amazing video board, the chance to see our team win a game on Monday night…..and we can screw on the floor of a public restroom!”? Part of my outrage also comes from the fact that public restrooms are easily the most disgusting, unclean and bio-hazardous places on Earth and I shudder any time I have to make contact with so much as a door handle or paper towel dispenser in one of them. Yet here these two are, taking off their clothes and committing what is supposed to be a special, meaningful act on the floor - the floor! - of one of these cesspools. I know that Cowboys owner Jerry Jones is a publicity whore and loves any attention his team can get, but hopefully Jones will do everything he can to track down these two freaks and drop a lifetime ban on them so that they never have the chance to sex it up at that stadium again……………

- Mmm hmm, sure. Promises of American troops rolling out of Iraq, where they never should have been in the first place, have been thrown out by politicians and military officials for months and months. The W. administration lied about it so much that they took the practice to an art form, while the Obama administration has been slowly finding its way when it comes to deceiving the American people about when their fighting men and women will be leaving the Mess O’Potamia. Thus, you’re going to have to forgive my skepticism over the announcement that the United States will withdraw another 4,000 troops in Iraq by the end of October. Gen. Ray Odierno, the U.S. military commander in Iraq, said in prepared testimony for a congressional hearing Wednesday that because of a marked drop in violence in Iraq recently, the military can afford to pull the troops out. However, all good news in relation to this debacle of a war comes with an equal helping of bad news and in this case, it’s Obama declaring that he plans to keep a range of 35,000 to 50,000 support troops on the ground in Iraq after combat troops are out. "We have approximately 124,000 troops and 11 Combat Teams operating in Iraq today. By the end of October, I believe we will be down to 120,000 troops in Iraq," Odierno said. Only 120,000? Wow, such a low number, General! It’s definitely encouraging to hear that overall attacks in Iraq have decreased 85 percent over the past two years from 4,064 in August 2007 to 594 in August 2009 and that military deaths have decreased by 93 percent in the same time, but no American service personnel should have ever been in Iraq, so 120,000 troops is 120,001 too many. So tone down the rhetoric about the “underlying, unresolved sources of potential conflict” that remain in Iraq, Gen. Odierno. Bombings or no bombings, U.S. forces need to be completely and totally out of Iraq yesterday, no questions asked…............