- She’s a former Miss USA pageant finalist and he’s a busted NFL draft pick with a big arm who is playing out the string as a subpar backup quarterback on the worst team in the NFL. Separately, they have endured trials and turmoil and now they will go through life together – or at least for a year or two until they split up. Former Miss California Carrie Prejean, who became famous for giving a pro-same-sex marriage answer to a question posed by quasi-celebrity freak show Perez Hilton during the Miss USA pageant in April 2009, is now engaged to St. Louis Rams quarterback Kyle Boller. Boller was a first-round draft pick by the Baltimore Ravens in 2003, bombed out because his on-field performance failed to match his big arm and big ego, and spent this past season as the backup for the worst team in the NFL, the St. Louis Rams, who stumbled to a 1-15 season as Boller and starting quarterback Marc Bulger traded the starting gig while both battled a litany of injuries and were both ultimately unable to finish the season. " The two got engaged in Prejean's hometown of San Diego, where Boller spends part of the off season. They apparently began dating in July after she became famous for her pageant antics and had the kahones to call weirdo TV talker Larry King "inappropriate” during an interview. Heck, they could have been dating extensively during the football season because most of it, Boller was either holding a clipboard and wearing a backwards baseball cap on the sidelines or injured and unable to play and Prejean was doing……well, whatever a disgraced former beauty pageant contestant does with her time. In all seriousness, I wish these two a happy life together and based on the fact that both of them seem to be on the tail end of their 15 minutes of fame and on the verge of slipping off the public’s radar for good, they may be able to step out of the spotlight and live happily in obscurity from here on out…………
- It was a night to be uncomfortable on last night’s Greek. For starters, Calvin decides that forcing his best friend Rusty and his boyfriend Grant hang out even thought they hate one another. The trio meets for beers at Dobler’s, but even though the evening ends without a fight, their history (Grant helped duct-tape Rusty to a wall freshman year and helped his girlfriend, Jordan, get the internship that led to her moving away) makes for a miserable night. Evan Chambers is uncomfortable in his own right now that he is dating Rebecca Logan. Part of his discomfort stems from having given up his trust fund and being broke while she’s still rich and living the lifestyle and part of it is her insistence that true love doesn’t exist. Casey Cartwright’s discomfort comes from spending too much time hanging out at the Kappa Tau house with boyfriend Cappie and thus, as BFF Ashleigh puts it, “smelling like the KT house” – stale beer and out-of-date food. To combat the problem, Casey launches a cleaning initiative of Cappie’s room, but during the cleaning, a bad idea comes to fruition. Discussing Ashleigh’s romantic dry spell, Cappie convinces Casey to set her up for a date with KT brother Beaver, the loveable lug who is equal parts consummate frat guy and clueless knucklehead. The double date turns out to be to the batting cages, as all of the frats and sororities on campus are preparing for the annual all-Greek softball game. The date goes south when Beaver tries the requisite clichéd date-movie come-on with Ashleigh and she excuses herself to the bathroom to chat with Casey. They discuss how poorly the date is going but are interrupted by Gamma Psi officers Katharine and Natalie, who taunt them about the upcoming softball game and ZBZ’s lack of a fraternity to partner with. Cappie offers to have the KT’s team with ZBZ and Casey (of course) likes the idea, but the KT’s have other concerns to worry about besides the softball game. Rusty’s job as pledge educator continues to be difficult as his pledges keep screwing up, losing their pledge pins and proving to be as lazy and uncooperative as pledges can be. The pledges do make him a pledge educator shirt, but even it is messed up, spelled “pledge edcucater.” Rusty’s troubles extend to his friendship with Calvin, which seems to be on the uptick after they find time to hang out together, sans grant. They play pool and are about to video game it up when in walks Heath, Rusty’s KT brother and Calvin’s former boyfriend. Turns out Rusty has set the whole thing up to possibly lure Calvin away from Grant. Calvin sees right through it and walks out, leading Rusty to stop by the Omega Chi house later to apologize. Meanwhile, Evan continues to try to convince Rebecca that true love exists on another date, but she once again disagrees and points out that their own parents are examples of that fact. In an attempt to curry some favor, Evan arranges for the Omega Chi’s to switch from pairing with Gamma Psi for the all-Greek softball game and team up with ZBZ instead. Despite the KT’s offering first, the ZBZ sisters vote to accept Omega Chi’s offer. That leaves the KT’s to partner with Gamma Psi, much to Casey’s chagrin. She and Cappie engage in some good-natured smack talking about the game, but Casey turns out to be much more conflicted about the game than she realized. Early in the game, things go the way of the KT-Gamma Psi team, with Rusty scoring the game’s first run after Grant fails to tag him out on a play at the plate. Both benches empty to argue the game and in the mini-basebrawl, Trip, one of the Omega Chi brothers, calls the umpire’s decision “gay,” which offends Grant enough for him to turn on his own brother. Others step in to keep them from fighting, but Grant finds support from an unexpected source: Rusty, who agrees with him and says as much. The game wears on and aside from Ashleigh finding a cute new Omega Chi brother to flirt with and get asked out on a date by, things don’t go well for their team. But in the end, it is Casey (prepare for a ton of heavy-handed plays on words and pop-culture references) comes to bat with the game on the line. Carrying a bad inscribed with the word “Wondergirl” on the barrel (a reference to “The Natural,” of course). Cappie has promised to give her easy pitches to hit and she wants to win for her team and to get the blue-ribbon points to help ZBZ in the campus sorority standings, but she knows that Cappie hates Evan and the Omega Chi brothers with a passion and badly wants to beat them. Does she strike out for her boyfriend’s sake or try to get a hit for her sorority’s sake? After swinging and missing at the first two pitches, she connects on a ridiculously unbelievable and far-fetched home run that smacks into the scoreboard, breaking the clock on the board (another “Natural” reference) and winning the game in the bottom of the seventh inning. As she rounds the bases and her joyous teammates meet her at home plate, Cappie walks off dejectedly. After the game, Casey begins to realize how hard making her relationship with Cappie work is going to be. At Dobler’s that night, Rusty and Grant find themselves face to face again, but this time they manage to get along and Rusty realizes Grant might not be such a bad guy. The KT’s cap the night and salve their wounds by having the actives sit back and watch as Rusty forces the pledges to dress in drag an re-enact what he deems the greatest baseball movie of all time: “A League of Their Own.” A fun episode to be sure, especially when the ever-annoying Dale Kettlewell isn’t involved, so I’d call this one a winner…………
- You may be wondering why it’s two days after the Super Bowl and I have yet to say a single thing about the Super Bowl ads. Well, here goes: Who cares? Not me, that’s for sure. I’ve always been partly amused be the tools who say they only watch the game for the ads, but mostly it pisses me off. You don’t watch a football game for commercials for the same reason I don’t watch Dancing With the (D-List) Stars for the commercials: No one should sit through a TV show they have no interest in simply for the commercials. It’s lame, it’s stupid and it’s a total waste of time. The point of ads is to sell products or services and Super Bowl ads generally fail in this endeavor. People who love these 30-second monuments to waste and excess ($3 million for one ad? Seriously?) aren’t going to buy a damn one of the products as a result of the commercials and that makes them a waste on so many levels. So I have no thoughts on talking babies selling stocks, the ever-pandering-to-the-lowest-common-denominator GoDaddy.com ads, the litany of beer and snack food commercials or any of the other ads. For starters, I missed most of them because I, unlike the tools out there who remain glued to their televisions during commercial breaks, I use those breaks as a time to go to the bathroom, get some more food or do anything that involves me not being in the room to watch Betty White get laid out in a backyard football game. Having to hear you all discuss these ads like they are freaking Gone With the Wind the next day is more than enough ad exposure for me. Heck, this was the first year in forever that I even bothered to watch the Super Bowl halftime show because that too is generally a ginormous waste of time. This year, The Who performed and although that setting is not conducive to a great, memorable set by any musical act, I thought Daltry, Townsend and Co. did a great job banging out a few of their hits. But back to the commercials, which I have to admit (from the limited number I did see) were pathetic. The one ad that made me want to smack a lot of people was the E-Trade spot with the talking baby. Hey E-Trade, that’s been your gimmick for several years now and it’s not funny, clever or cute. Talking babies are lame, they suck and there is a reason why every time a network is dumb enough to try a sitcom featuring a talking baby, it flops miserably: talking babies are so absurd that no one is interested. Find a new shtick, move on and I still won't have any use for your services, but at least I won't be plotting ways to obliterate your corporate headquarters using a bare minimum of explosives. Oh, and I do have to wonder whether Super Bowl ads were so hard to sell this year that CBS gave out volume discounts, because every commercial break I saw any part of seemed to feature ads by both Doritos and Bud Light. Did they receive a 20-percent discount for buying six or more ads, or perhaps a “buy six, get one free” discount? Either way, these ads are still a total waste of time and so is anyone who watched the game simply for the ads…………
- Heading to Dubai any time soon? If so, make a point of stopping by the "Local House" restaurant chain for a culinary sensation that is sweeping the (Arab) nation: camel burgers. Apparently making a meal out of the hump-having, spitting, oft-ill-tempered transport animals is all the rage these days, according to those who run the restaurant. "It's a sensation," said a man named Ramesh, restaurant manager at a Local House location.. "Everyone's bored of beef and chicken. So, as soon as the word got out, we had queues of customers eager to give it a try." As you’d expect, customers pay a steep price for novelty dining, as the "camel quarter-pounder" costs a robust $6. On the upside, it is much healthier than a traditional beef hamburger, Local House claims. My man Ramesh says that the camel burger is virtually fat and cholesterol-free. Of course, putting a camel patty (gotta be careful which kind of camel patty you use, if you catch my drift) between buns is not a new idea. The sandwich is a new take on a centuries-old Bedouin delicacy. Instead of a sesame bun, the burgers are served with freshly-baked "khameer" -- a yeasty regional bread. "It also comes with melted cheddar cheese, our very own burger sauce and a portion of fries," Ramesh said. So far, both tourists and locals seem to enjoy camel burgers and few have complained about the meat’s gaminess, which is something camel meat is known for. Local House claims it has a secret for making the meat more tender, but they won't give it up. "Khalib [camel-burger inventor and the restaurant's owner] spent over two months perfecting the recipe and working out how to tenderize the meat. I'm not permitted to tell you how it's done," Ramesh said. If you have a camel burger and like the taste, you can also wash it down with a vanilla-flavored camel milkshake. With these and other camel products. the restaurant plans to open a new section called the "Camel Corner." Also included will be camel soup, camel salad, camel steak, camel kebab, camel biryani and a 'camel special.’ The use of camel meat in everyday dining is becoming more widespread in Dubai, as last year, the ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum founded "Al nassma," which produces exclusive camels' milk chocolate. I don’t have plans to visit Dubai any time soon (indoor skiing in the middle of scorching-hot desert just doesn’t appeal to me), but if any of you are going, feel free to bring me back an extra camel burger…………
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