Greek wraps up a great season, a country music fight over undeserved income and adios, Cedric Benson

- Good ol’ Bob Mugabe, now there’s a guy you can count on. Granted, you can count on him to do the wrong thing, to continually oppress his constituents, to brutalize and kill those who oppose him and to be a general menace to all of Zimbabwe, but you can still count on him. A reign of terror that has included refusing to accept the results of a presidential election that should have booted him from office has continued in the weeks and months leading up to the country’s June 27 runoff election between B. Mugabe and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, with this past week taking things to a new low, even for Mugabe. In preparation for an election in which he is assured of defeat if the election is conducted under fair and even terms, Mugabe is seeking to beat, stab, shoot, slash and kill the wind right out of the opposition’s sails. His most recent act of dictatorship was to ban all opposition rallies between now and the election, that coming on the heels of Tsvangirai being stopped at two roadblocks as he tried to enter Bulawayo, Zimbabwe’s second-largest city, to campaign last week. What’s truly rich about Mugabe’s transparent oppression of those who oppose him is that the reason he’s giving for banning opposition rallies is that he’s concerned for the safety of Tsvangirai and other opposition leaders. Attaboy, Bob! Lie right to their faces and pretend you give a damn about what happens to them. Pretend that you wouldn’t actually be thrilled if the harm or death you allegedly fear might happen to your rivals actually took place, that’ll fool them! It’s almost enough to make me think that we here in the United States don’t have the world’s worst leader….almost. I suppose it comes down to which one you feel is worse: total incompetence or sheer oppression by brute force. Pick your poison, world, and if you don’t live in the U.S. or Zimbabwe, be thankful that it’s a choice you don’t have to make.

- Season 2 of Greek came, it saw, it conquered and it kicked ass. Even with a so-so season finale that wasn’t even among the best episodes of the season, it was still a strong second year for the show. Things kicked off with everyone departing from Cyprus Rhodes University (located in beautiful Cyprus, Ohio) for Myrtle Beach. I never knew that entire fraternities and sororities all traveled together for spring break to the same destination as nearly every other frat or sorority on campus, but it is the magical world of TV, so suspend your disbelief a bit. Everyone got to Myrtle Beach in their own way, some on their politician father’s private jet (Zeta Beta Zeta pledge Rebecca Logan and her fellow ZBZ pledge sisters), some drove in their own cars (the ZBZ sisters and Omega Chi’s) and others piled into an old, dilapidated school bus with the rest of their fraternity (the Kappa Tau’s). Once everyone arrived, the fun could begin. Rebecca and her fellow pledges had snagged their own posh hotel room thanks to her father, while a booking mishap at the hotel crammed all of the ZBZ sisters into only two rooms. That still may have been better than the crummy motel where the Kappa Tau’s lodged, a rundown place straight out of the spring break on TV handbook. Everyone settled in and started hitting the parties and booze hard….everyone except for Rusty Cartwright and his estranged pal Calvin. While the rest of his KT brothers hit the clubs, used their fake IDs and had a blast, Rusty didn’t enjoy the spring break scene as much and after getting a nasty case of sunburn within 24 hours of arriving, he was on a bus back home. This was actually the lamest part of the episode, because it just took a lot of fun out of the episode, and who bails on spring break to go back to an empty campus? However, Rusty wasn’t alone because Calvin decided that while his Omega Chi brothers were meeting girls and playing beach volleyball, he wasn’t enjoying being away from his new boyfriend Michael and he too wanted to leave to go back to campus. Of course Calvin and Rusty ended up on the same bus back to Cyprus, a bus that broke down in North Carolina and left them searching for another way back home. When attempts to secure a rental car failed, Rusty called his roomie from CRU, the evangelical, conservative, one-note stick in the mud also known as Dale. Dale was on a turkey hunting trip in Virginia with his family but gladly picked up Rusty and Calvin. On the way back to CRU, Dale locked both of them out of the car and refused to let them back in until they resolved the hurt feelings between them that had existed since the prank war between their two houses earlier in the season. With that done, they were on their way home. Back in Myrtle Beach, Rebecca’s penthouse suite wasn’t enough to shield her from scandal when, in a turn of events eerily mirroring the plight of former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer earlier this year, her father was implicated in a high-profile prostitution ring. That led her to rebel like only she can, first entering herself in a wet t-shirt contest and then breaking up with Cappie when he tried to stop her. That also led to a random drunk dude at the concert where the contest took place punching Cappie. The punch then led to Cappie getting looked after by old flame Casey, Rusty’s big sis and one member of the Cartwright family who actually seemed to grasp the concept of spring break. They walked along the beach and as they talked about their respective murky futures, they kissed. It looked like a reunion could be coming, but when they got back to the hotel and were about to go get breakfast together, the news about Rebecca’s father was on a nearby TV. Cappie went to console Rebecca and Casey supported the decision, so no reunion for now. One couple that did come together was Evan Chambers and Frannie. The coupling of Casey’s ex and her ZBZ sister and former ZBZ president came even as both of them admitted having mixed motives for getting together, but it sure seems like a perfect match of devious, manipulative people. Casey’s BFF Ashleigh was on her own quest for love, meeting a cute guy at a party the first night in Myrtle Beach but not getting his name. She spent the next few days trying to find him again, spotting him once on the beach and again at the concert featuring the band American Bang. All she was able to find at the concert was one of his flip flops, but what she didn’t see was her new crush putting on a Cyprus Rhodes hat after she passed by him in the crowd without seeing him. In other words, look for this love match to happen thi fall when the new season debuts. It kinda helped to reinforce that notion when Ashleigh told Casey the next morning that finding the flip-flop gave her hope that she’d see her dream guy again. The year concluded with Ashleigh and Casey completing the last task on a list of 10 spring break “to do’s” that they made as freshmen - skinny-dipping. They hit the water and in another time-honored tradition, two guys who happened by whil they were in the water stole their clothes. As far as season finales go, it wasn’t a great one; no big, huge surprises or plot twists, but coming at the end of a really good season, it was a nice wrap-up. Nice to know that the show is definitely locked in for a third season, which will start in September. For all intents and purposes, this puts a final capper on this TV season for me, as this was the last show I follow to have its finale. An outstanding second season for Greek, a fun trip from start to finish. I’m already looking forward to Season 3…..

- Quite a weekend at the box office, even if it was fueled by an overrated chick flick and an unfunny comedy that would have been better off (and still too long) as a five-minute SNL skit. However, neither Sex and the City (fourth with $21.3 million) or the new Adam Sandler stink bomb You Don’t Mess with the Zohan (second with $40 million) were tops in theaters for this past weekend. That honor went to Jack Black’s new animated flick Kung Fu Panda, which was not only the best of those three movies but the top earner at just over $60 million for the three-day period. The third spot was filled by geriatric archaeologist Indiana Jones, with Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull raking in $22.8 million to bring its three-week domestic gross to a whopping $253 million. Overall, the top 12 films for the weekend earned a total of $172.4 million, a 32 percent increase from the same weekend last year. The biggest film that weekend was Ocean’s Thirteen, one of the third installments in major movie franchises that were a letdown last summer (along with Spiderman 3 and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End). If you go on those numbers, the summer movie rush has clearly begun and studios with major movies still to come out this summer (yup, looking at you, producers of the new Batman epic The Dark Knight) should be geeked about the prospects for their films.

- Chicago Bears running back - scratch that, ex-Chicago Bears running back - Cedric Benson certainly is intent on getting convicted for an alcohol-related crime. Last month, he was arrested on charges of boating while intoxicated near Austin, Texas and the case has since taken a series of twists and turns that included his denials of the police reports and a witness on the boat claiming he was not drunk at the time of the incident. With that case still hanging over his head, Benson got back after it this weekend, getting himself arrested on charges of driving while intoxicated, again in Austin. This time Benson was cruising through downtown Austin early Saturday morning when he was pulled over by an Austin police officer. The officer suspected Benson of being intoxicated, so he administered field sobriety tests, all of which Benson failed. After that, Benson refused to take a breath test of provide blood samples and was booked on a DUI charge. He posted bail and was released, but clearly this is just the start of another very bad run for him. If only Benson attacked opposing players and his training program the same way he hits the booze, he’d be freaking Jim Brown and Walter Payton rolled into one. For a guy who was the target of numerous critical columns and rants demanding his release following the boating incident, Benson didn’t bother staying down and trying to keep a low profile. I get that when you have a problem with alcohol it’s not something you can just conquer in a month, but if you’re picked up for boating under the influence, get beaten up by the cops in the process and end up at the center of a ginormous crap storm because of the mess, don’t you think you could find the willpower and assistance to stay at least partially sober and avoid arrest for the remainder of the offseason? Benson is now reaching the point where these off-field issues are casting serious dark clouds over his NFL future, but he seems oblivious or just blissfully ignorant to the gravity of the situation. The Bears waived him yesterday, making him a free agent but one with a serious amount of baggage and limited production that other teams won't be so excited to scoop up. Benson needs to get some help with his alcohol problems and he needs someone who can get through to him and clue him in to the fact that he’s about to throw away the chance to make tens of millions of dollars playing professional football unless his life does a massive U-turn immediately….

- Maybe this is asking a little too much, but could country music acts like Alabama please find a way to get some perspective on life? After all, these jokers are purveyors of one of the absolute worst brands of music known to man, a style of music so bad that even at it’s best it barely edges out atrocities like disco and polka at the bottom of the musical ladder. The prevalence of things like yodeling, twang, songs about losing women, dogs, money, houses and cars, tunes abort moonshine and drinkin’ at the local pub makes country music a Genre to Avoid. So when I see ungrateful, spoiled a-holes like the former members of Alabama, it seriously pisses me off. Instead of being grateful that anyone would be so dumb as to pay money to hear or own what they try to pass off as music and appreciate what they have been so undeservedly given, these fools are locking horns in a court battle because three of the band’s members feel that the fourth member owes them money. Drummer Mark Herndon is being sued by his fellow band members - Teddy Gentry, Randy Owen and Jeff Cook - for $202,670. The suit, filed May 9 in the Circuit Court of DeKalb County, Ala., alleges that during the band’s 2003 American Farewell Tour that Herndon was paid in advance for his share of net merchandise sales before the final accounting for the tour was done. Once that final accounting was done, according to the suit, it showed that there were no net merchandise revenues as defined by the band’s contract and thus Herndon took money that he ultimately was not entitled to. The other three members of Alabama are haggling over that money and also alleging that Herndon’s demand that he receive a $65,047 advance payment on sales of the group’s “The Last Stand” CD, an album recording during the tour, should not be resolved until he pays back the $202,670 he owes. Incidentally, the CD is being sold mostly at Cracker Barrel restaurants, giving me one more reason not to eat there and also lowering any hopes that the CD is going to crack any album sales charts anywhere, ever. Again, I have to rip all of these guys because for a band that has made a sizeable chunk of undeserved cash over the years, $202K is a small amount to be suing an alleged friend over. More than that, you’re freaking country music artists; be glad anyone is willing to remain in the same zip code as you when your horrid music is playing. Stop suing one another and get down on your hands and knees to thank the good Lord for the money you’ve already earned…..

The Real Deal is real broke, ways to see your dismal financial future and a corrupt government employee - shocker!

- Evander Holyfield has been telling everyone that he continues to box at age 45 and despite slurred speech and other signs that his time in the ring is taking a major toll on him because he wants to be a heavyweight champion once again. That’s the story he’s been selling, but the revelation that his 109-room, 54,000-square-foot mansion is being foreclosed upon seems to indicate otherwise. With the threat of having a pad with three kitchens, bowling alley, 17 bathrooms and a $10 million price tag ripped from him, the cynic might argue that Holyfield is boxing because he’s desperate for cash and not be he holds aspirations of being the champ once again. Adding to his financial woes are allegations by the mother of one of the nine children he has fathered saying that Holyfield has stopped making child-support payments and by a company claiming that he owes $500,000 for landscaping services. Holyfield was apparently supposed to pay that bill out of the purse for next fight but has yet to follow through. Maybe he can pawn off the gifts he receives on Father’s Day from each of his nine kids to help foot the bill….or maybe not, given the fact that he doesn’t appear too keen on paying the child support he owes to them. The home will now be put up for auction and if you’ve always dreamed of owning a home located on Evander Holyfield Highway, this could be the chance you’re seeking……

- Without having reviewed the teacher handbook for Mount Zion High School in Jonesboro, Ga., I can’t say for sure whether threatening to rip out a student’s eyeballs, kill a family and then throwing a chair are forbidden, but I can venture a guess. Based on the fact that Travis Heckstall, who was a science teacher at the school, has since resigned after allegedly committing said acts and threats, I’m going to go ahead and assume that doing any or all of them is a no-no. Heckstall being arrested after the chair-throwing incident may have put the exclamation point on his demise, but personally I’m torn between calling the threat to rip out the eyeballs of a student and the threat to kill a student’s family as the best facts here. I’m not a psychologist, but part of me suspects that Mr. Heckstall has a bit of an anger problem. I get that dealing with today’s high school students can be frustrating because a lot of them have attitude problems, but somewhere in between rebuking them and threatening to rip out their eyeballs or kill their family, there exists a happy medium. It’s called a detention or demerit, maybe even a suspension if the kid is really out of line. You have to know that making a death threat is going to cost you your job, T. And unless you’re wearing tights, oiling up your chest, sitting under a sun lamp and competing in a pro wrestling ring, throwing a chair is a bad, bad play. Might be tough to find another school district willing to bring you on after that one…..

- When your country is fighting wars on multiple fronts, including the most unjust, ill-advised, catastrophically idiotic war in modern history (thanks again, W.!), you’d hope that the country’s military is operating at the highest standards. You’d hope that they are keeping track of personnel, weapons, supplies and anything else needed to make the military machine hitting on all cylinders. In short, you’d hope that they’re not mistakenly strapping B-52 bombers with six nuclear-tipped cruise missiles before flying it over American soil or mistakenly shipping four Air Force electrical fuses for ballistic missile warheads to Taiwan. Yet that’s what happened to the United States Air Force in recent months, leading Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to demand and receive the resignations of the Air Force’s top military and civilian leaders. Air Force Chief of Staff Michael Moseley and Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne are out after the two high-profile incidents that are both being attributed to what Gates has termed “a decline in the Air Force’s nuclear mission focus and performance.” Of course, Gates’ solution is the predictable governmental response to a situation like this: appoint a task force to investigate and give recommendations on how to fix the problem. Nothing like a good task force, getting together a bunch of bureaucrats in suits to hold meetings, hearings and waste a lot of time before offering up a bunch of useless, impractical suggestions that will never be implemented anyhow. Gotta love big government, solving problems in board rooms and meeting rooms instead of combating them directly…..

- Gee, wonder what kind of problems this could cause. An inspector for New York City’s cranes and derricks division has been arrested on charges of taking thousands of dollars in bribes and falsifying reports. James Delayo, an assistant chief inspector for the cranes and derricks division, allegedly accepted the bribes from a local crane company and according to the city’s Department of Investigation, he then tampered with crane licensing exams by providing answers to the tests to the crane company in question. Now what could possibly go wrong when you have people operating large, powerful cranes weighing several tons and able to lift ginormous amounts of weight high into the air, often in heavily populated areas and those people don’t know what they’re doing? Other than fatal accidents, property damage and serious injuries, I can't think of a single thing that could go bad when you have guys who only passed their crane operators exam because they were fed the answers working those big cranes. I guess when people talk about there being corruption at every level of government and in every branch of it, they’re not kidding….

- Great news for those of you planning your summer vacations! You can now get an advanced, digitally-enhanced look at how you’re about to get ripped off for an astonishingly large chunk of your life savings should you choose to visit Walt Disney World! Walt Disney announced late last week that it has completed a new 3-D Google Earth map project of its vast Florida empire that will now assist visitors as they plan out their trip to the world’s most overpriced amusement park. You can see the gate to the park where you will be gorged for in excess of $70 for tickets to one of Disney’s four theme parks, then scroll down to get a better look at the souvenir stand where you’ll fork over $35 for a ridiculously small stuffed Goofy that your kid has to have before finally zooming in on the concession stand where you will fork over $14.50 for a soft drink, small hamburger and fries. Included on the map are the four theme parks, Disney’s 22 hotels and objects as small as park benches. More than 100,000 photographs from eight different photographers were used in the project, which ended up with 1,500 composite images, embedded videos and photos, commentary and links to blogs and YouTube clips. So if you just can’t wait to get ripped off and blow your entire travel budget and then some at the happiest place on Earth, hop on over to the Disney web site and get started on your journey towards massive debt right now…..

Prison Break news, losers on Craig's list and trouble at Survivor: Africa

- French brides beware: you had better be exactly who and what you claim to be, otherwise you may find yourself on the receiving end of a lawsuit from you soon-to-be ex-husband. A French judge ruled this week that a husband had the right to annul his marriage simply because his wife lied to him about her degree of experience in the bedroom. The woman, a student in her 20s, had claimed to be a virgin and her husband, an engineer in his 30s, believed her. When they finally tied the knot and began their life together, the husband discovered that he had been lied to as wasn’t particularly happy about it. I can see where you might be upset if your new bride lied to you about anything, especially this particular subject, but this guy was incensed and his first move was to go to court and seek to annul the marriage. This week, Judge Minister Rachida Dati agreed with the husband, ending the Muslim couple’s union less than two years after it began. The ruling caused concern that the country’s secular values system is being altered by the religious customs of immigrants, an ironic contrast to the United States where our previously faith-based traditions, ideals and mores are being altered and changed by secular views. This case was held behind closed doors in the city of Lille and the identities of the involved parties are not known, but the outrage and debate across France are raging nonetheless. The judge has asked for and received an appeal from the prosecution in the case, meaning that a panel of three judges could hear the appeal later this month. Interesting to see that a marriage can be totally wiped off the books for something like this, as it sets a dangerous precedent for an entire legal system. But hey, the French wouldn’t be the French if they didn’t allow people to quit or give up at the slightest hint of adversity, would they? Didn’t think so……

- Now this I might tune in every Thursday to watch this fall. Usually I’ve got better things to watch than Survivor even though it’s one of the two or three watchable reality shows out of the dozens on TV. I’d rather see Smallville or Lost on Thursday nights, but if there was an even-money chance that contestants would get eaten by an angry hippo during taping, that could change my mind. That’s what the show’s current season - Survivor: Gabon — Earth's Last Eden - is facing as it tries to get rolling. According to host Jeff Probst, production has hit several snags, among them wild hippopotami roaming the area. “We have a danger problem with animals that we're trying to figure out how to handle. We don't want the animals around for safety reasons, but we'd love to have a hippo sneak in every so often. I just got a call from our executive producer that we've got hippo tracks at base camp.” Yeah, you might want to handle that, lest you have some emaciated barista from L.A. get turned into lunch for a hungry, hungry hippo on Day 14 of the season. Compared to those dangers, the
month-long shipping delays, missing cargo hold containing $100,000 worth of food, a fallen crane, and housing problems for the crew seem like a small issue. The issues haven’t been enough to bring production to a complete halt, so all you Survivor fans out there don’t panic. Filming in the West African nation is scheduled to begin later this month and premiere — in high definition — this fall. The show has filmed in Africa before, but Season 3 in Kenya wasn’t quite so problematic. Stay tuned…..

- A quick question for all the ladies out there: where do you go to meet guys? The local bar? Maybe. To your church? Perhaps. Some of the more desperate sorts might even resort to using online dating services like Match.com or eHarmony. Somehow I don’t think that Craig’s List is on the agenda for most date and relationship seekers, so maybe an unidentified Boston-area woman got what she had coming for being so pathetic and gullible. This woman was cruising around craigslist.com and somewhere in between the dude selling his used bike and the couple looking to pawn their old condo, she found an ad placed by a man who claimed that he was former NBA player Jeff Turner. Turner played a few un-distinguished seasons with the Orlando Magic, never becoming more than an end-of-the-bench guy and retiring with most NBA fans having little or no idea who he was. That didn’t stop this chick from responding to the ad seeking a date, so she and Turner, a.k.a. Ronnie Craven, went out and things escalated. They had sex, they were getting along…..then a friend of the woman’s (if you’re really her friend, where are you when she brings up the idea of dating some dude she met on Craig’s List in the first place?) suggested that she do a little Internet research on her new man to see if he was who he claimed to be. When the woman dug into Craven’s story, she found that he wasn’t employed by the Seattle SuperSonics, wasn’t a former NBA player and was not, in fact, Jeff Turner. Once the woman found out the truth about her boyfriend, she broke up with him. Of course, Craven/Turner doesn’t seem too broken up about it. “I lied to her. Does that mean I can go out there and represent the Sonics? No. Does that mean that I did it to get some (sex)? Absolutely.” Wow….pretty ballsy to say something like that, even if it’s what most guys would be thinking. Dude isn't ashamed of what he did, nor does he regret it one bit. “Does that mean that I did it to get some (sex)? Absolutely.” wow. Ronnie, my man, I don’t know if anyone has told you this, but you are a piece of crap. While I might marvel at a guy who is willing and able to pull off this scam, you are absolute garbage if you do it. Still, I have to wonder what kind of tail Craven could have gotten if he’d posed as Luc Longley or Bill Wennington? How many chicks could he have pulled pretending to be, say, Chris Dudley? Personally if I’m stooping so low as to pretend to be a former pro athlete to get women, I’m aiming higher than a career bench player. I understand that there’s a tipping point here, that you need to pick someone obscure enough that people won't recognize the name and immediately know you’re not really him, but you couldn’t aim higher than Jeff Turner? I do have to give Craven bonus points for a blatant rip-off of O.J. Simpson’s famous “People die every day line,” a comment the Juice made while saying he would have traded places with wife Nicole when someone (him) decapitated her and her friend Ron Goldman but that he wouldn’t have swapped places with Goldman because people die every day.” Craven’s take on his scam was “People get lied to all the time. Did I do anything illegal against the Sonics? No. Did I go out and represent the Sonics in any fashion? I'm not actually proposing that I did that. Did I do this for the broad? Yes.” People get lied to all the time? Is that supposed to make what you do okay? And you did go out and represent the Sonics on Craig’s List, even if you didn’t do it in a major public venue. The bottom line here, other than Craven being a total scumbag, is that Craig’s List, maybe not the best place to look for a date…..

- For those of you who were getting yourselves psyched for the season premiere of Prison Break on Aug. 25 (hey, some of us like to get ready early), push your excitement back one week. Fox announced this week that instead of debuting its best show the same week as the Democratic National Convention, the show will kick off its fourth season on Sept. 1. The premiere will still be a two-hour blowout, with Michael Scofield continuing his quest to bring down the Company and avenge the death of his father and his girlfriend Sarah Tancredi. Even with the one-week delay for the season premiere, PB is still one of the earliest shows to return in the fall, so you can't be too upset about it. During the show’s off time, another Company assassin has been added to the cast, Cress Williams, formerly of Grey’s Anatomy notoriety. So whenever it finally kicks off, Season 4 should be another great ride….

- Dodger Stadium may not be the only pro sports venue where lesbians aren’t welcome. There was a much-publicized incident at a Dodgers game several years ago in which two lesbians were asked to leave the park by an usher after they were spotted kissing. The extent of their physicality has been debated, but what is known is that an usher approached them and after confirming that they were in fact lesbians, asked them to vacate the premises. An eerily similar incident took place during a Seattle Mariners game on May 26 at Safeco Field in the Emerald City, where Sibrina Guerrero and her date were approached by a stadium usher and asked to stop kissing because a woman seated nearby was uncomfortable having to see them lock lips. The woman apparently felt that it would be a problem for parents, having to explain to their children why two women were kissing. Bad news for you, lady, but your kids have seen two women kissing and probably a whole lot more on the Internet. Kids are exposed to a lot of that kind of thing, not like it was a few decades ago when you were growing up. Never mind that a lot of guys in the stands were probably rooting Guerrero and her lady friend on…..but I digress. The Mariners are trying to get ahead of this story and spin it in their favor but are having a tough time doing so. Team spokeswoman Rebecca Hale explained that the usher was responding to a report of two women “making out” and “groping,” but that the club was investigating the matter. For the team’s sake, I hope that what Hale is alleging is true. Fact is, anyone who gets into a hardcore make-out session at a sporting event needs to tone it down. You want to do that, go to a dark movie theater or some other venue where mass quantities of people don’t have to see you having what amounts to clothed sex. But if the women were merely kissing and not getting overly physical, then the team is going to end up apologizing to them and making some sort of donation to a gay and lesbian organization to smooth things over. I guess you never know what you’re going to get when you go to the ballpark….

Why Hank Clinton should be VP, a good riot story and a bad day in the ATL

- Let the bribes begin! With the announcement of the four finalist cities to host the 2016 Summer Olympics, officials and business leaders in those cities should ready their caches of cash, fitness equipment, electronics, free meals and other perks if they hope to beat out the other finalists and land the games. Chicago was one of lone American city selected as a bid finalist Thursday, along with Tokyo; Madrid, Spain, and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. If past experiences have shown us anything, it’s that a steady stream of bribes and gifts to members of the International Olympic Committee significantly boost your chances of winning. One funny note from the process of whittling the field down to four is the failure of Doha, Qatar to make the final four because Doha because it proposed holding the games in October. Look Doha, I know you’re in the freaking Middle East where it’s 8,000 degrees every day of the year, but you can’t hold the Summer Olympics in October. Different parts of the world experience summer differently climate-wise, but the Summer Olympics are typically held in the…..wait for it….SUMMER. That means June, July or August. But I digress….the finalists now advance to a 16-month race that will culminate on Oct. 2, 2009, with a secret ballot by the full IOC at its session in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Thankfully for all U.S. Americans, our representative doesn’t appear to be a strong contender for the bid. Chicago was smacked in the IOC's report assessing the technical bids, with the report citing problems with finances and transportation, among other things. “We really respect the experts who have done the evaluation,” said Chicago bid leader Patrick Ryan, who had not yet read the report. “We're going to learn from that. We're going to respect it and we're not going to alibi to ourselves about it. We're going to do everything we can to correct all the deficiencies.” No you won't, P. You may think you want the bid, but no one else does. The Olympics are a passé, tired event that puts a major, unnecessary burden on your city. For three-plus weeks, the Olympics turn your city into an absolute zoo in terms of traffic, hotel space and travel. Furthermore, they make your town the prime target for terrorist groups and whackos of all political persuasions who are looking to make a statement. You’re better off without the Games, take my word for it. Hopefully Tokyo, Madrid and Rio have a much better plan for bribing, er, submitting a winning plan to the IOC so that Chicago doesn’t win this thing. Cities must submit their detailed bid files to the IOC by Feb. 12, 2009 and after that, a panel of IOC experts will visit each of the cities to tour the proposed sites and meet with bid and government leaders. Their report will be released to the IOC members a month before the October 2009 vote. I and millions of Americans are rooting for you, Tokyo, Rio and Madrid, do your best to beat us…..

- I long ago gave up on Hollywood bothering to come up with original new ideas for movies and accepted the fact that we’re going to be faced with an ever-widening stream of remakes and retreads to the point that finding good flicks is going to become nearly impossible. That being said, can we at least wait more than five years before we start remaking movies? You know what I’m talking about too, because you’ve seen plenty of the Incredible Hulk trailers by now, starring Edward Norton and looking suspiciously like a remake of the 2003 movie starring Eric Bana and Jennifer Connolly. That movie was actually decent, thanks to some strong supporting acting from the always unpredictable Nick Nolte, but for no apparent reason, some idiotic studio exec out there decided that dammit, this is a movie that needs to be recycled after just five years. What’s hilarious about this is that it’s not a case where some major technological advance has occurred since a film was made and thus the remake makes sense on some level because it will look totally different. This is just a gratuitous cash grab by a filmmaker who can’t summon up a single worthwhile original idea and so he chooses to recycle a movie that hasn’t even passed its expiration date yet, so to speak. While I enjoyed the first incarnation of this remake back in 2003, I won't be enjoying, hating, liking or disliking this new version because I’m not wasting my time or money watching it. Ed Norton is a good actor, just not good enough to make me go see this movie.

- Wednesday was a terrible day for baseball fans in general and for Atlanta Braves fans specifically. Just before noon, longtime Braves pitcher and certified class act John Smoltz announced that he will be having season-ending shoulder surgery, making it disturbingly likely that we’ve seen the final pitch of an absolutely stellar, hall-of-fame career. Smoltz has pitched for the Braves for 20 seasons, an amazing feat because finding a player who has spent his entire career with one team in this day is remarkable, but finding one who has spent two decades with the same franchise is unbelievable. During his career, Smoltz has recorded 210 wins, 154 saves and a career postseason mark of 15-4 with a 2.65 E.R.A. His win total isn't what you’d expect from a sure-fire hall of famer, but he did spend several seasons as a closer and you have to factor his 154 saves into the equation. The only other pitcher with at least 150 wins and 150 saves is Dennis Eckersley, who is in the Hall of Fame. So it was sad to see Smoltz say that he needed surgery that would end his 2008 season after only one outing, a blown save against Florida this week. He went on to explain that he is having surgery with the hope of pitching again, but that his ability to do so won't be known until doctors go in and see how severe the damage is. The interesting theory being thrown around is Smoltz, Tom Glavine and Greg Maddux all retiring after this season and being elected to the HOF in five years. Of course, they played many seasons together with the Braves as the cornerstones of a team that won every freaking division title they competed for during a 14-year span, with Maddux and Glavine having played for other teams while Smoltz stayed in the ATL later on in their careers. They both attained the 300-win plateau, but after this year, all three of them could ride off into the sunset together. Regardless, best wishes for a successful surgery and full recovery, J. Smoltz….

- I can't believe I’m saying this, but I think Hank Clinton has finally gotten the message. After her speech Tuesday night about not making any decisions about pulling out of the race despite the fact that she was no longer in it, Hank’s aides are confirming that she will now be endorsing Barack Obama as the Democratic candidate for president. This comes after party leaders spent the past few days and even weeks in some cases urging her to drop out of the race because she had no actual chance of winning. With all 54 Democratic primaries concluded, Obama has enough delegates to clinch the nomination and even a raging femi-Nazi like Hank can’t fight the inevitable any longer. I did get a good laugh out of her saying that she would accept the vice presidential spot on the Democratic ticket if Obama offered, but my laughing stopped and a cold chill ran down my spine when I thought about the situation further. Seriously, is it a good idea to have Hank as second in command, perched right there next to the throne, ready to take over if something happened to Obama? Does anyone think for a second that Hank and her advisors don’t already have a half-dozen sinister plots for ways to bump off Obama as soon as he gets in office, thus allowing Vice President Hank to step in as commander in chief? Play this one smart and pick another running mate, B.O., your candidacy and maybe even your life depend upon it….

- We haven’t had a good riot story in a few days, so take a jaunt with me to Port-au-Prince, Haiti for a small, yet spirited riot outside government buildings in the country’s capital city. The locals were pissed about a four-year epidemic of kidnappings in the largely lawless, poor regions of the city and its suburbs, and rightfully so. The government and local law enforcement have done precious little to combat the kidnapping problem, offering little or no suitable explanation in the process. Clearly these commoners finally had enough of governmental inaction and indifference, so they rallied outside these government buildings with signs, chants and general displeasure. Unfortunately, no cars were overturned, no buildings were burned and no police in riot gear were called upon to fire tear gas and unleash water cannons to quell the unrest, so this was a C+ protest at best, but you have to cut the Haitians a little slack given the abject poverty many of them live in. They simply don’t have the resources to properly train and develop as social dissidents. Good effort, Haitians, way to stand up to an apathetic, unresponsive government…..

More Patriots' secret surveillance, a real life Lechero and Noah Herron plays Whack-A-Burglar

- Few things bring a husband and wife together faster and bond them more permanently than running a major cocaine distribution ring out of their home. Vicente Esteves, 35, and wife Chantal, 30, of Manalapan, N.J. know what I mean because they created one heck of a coke business out of their palatial estate and built a lavish, luxurious lifestyle off of that business. Their home was described by police as fortress-like and their empire was so large that Chantal actually needed photos to keep track of the more than 100 pairs of Prada shoes that she owned. The couple was arrested Monday on charges of drug trafficking and money laundering following a 14-month investigation. Boy, you know you’re a major player on the drug scene if the cops take more than a year to construct their case against you. They’re scheming, working and busting their humps to infiltrate your operation, turn some of the lower-level members and get enough witnesses and evidence to put you away while you’re busying buying new Prada shoes, electronics, cars, etc. But that’s the sort of thing you can do when your operation earns $1 million a week, I guess. And again, what develops that tight marital bond better than committing multiple felonies together each and every day? Quality time spent together deciding how to use commercial airline flights from Mexico and Colombia into the United States to transport the drugs and other flights from the U.S. to those countries to send money back to investors brings a couple closer, no doubt.

- Would-be burglars, I have a word of advice for you: steer clear of Noah Herron’s house. Two not-so-bright thieves found that out the hard way last Friday night when they attempted to break into Herron’s Green Bay home in the middle of the night. Herron called police at 11:19 p.m. after he heard glass breaking in the lower level of his suburban home and informed police that an unknown number of people had entered the house. But he didn’t just sit back and wait for the police to come help him; Herron was looking to turn someone’s skull into a freaking piñata. While waiting for the burglars to make their way upstairs to the bedroom, Herron unscrewed one of his bedposts and waited for the intruders to come to him. When they did…….WHAM! He crushed one of them in the head with the bedpost, turning the dude’s head into an oversized softball that Herron tagged for a monster home run. He connected with such force that even though the incident occurred late last Friday, the injured intruder remained hospitalized as of Wednesday afternoon. A second burglar was apprehended just outside the home, making it an all-around bad night for these two tools. Sadly, you could see it coming from the start of their amateurish operation. Their first move was to ring Herron’s doorbell at approximately 11:15 p.m. Herron told police he didn’t answer because it was late and he wasn’t expecting guests. What he did do was prepare himself with his trusty bedpost, which turnout out to be a good move. In a statement issued earlier this week, police decided that, “Noah Herron used necessary, reasonable and justifiable force in protecting his life and property. Herron, the victim in this random home invasion, is co-operating with law enforcement.” Stolen property and a vehicle believed taken earlier Friday from another home were found near Herron's home, Gossage said. The two a-holes in custody are suspects in numerous burglaries and home invasions throughout Brown County, according to police, but it looks like they won't be burglarizing any more homes any time soon, thanks to Babe Ruth Herron. What I wouldn’t give to have video of this thing to see on YouTube. Can’t you just see the two burglars, ransacking the first floor when one turns to the other and whispers, “Dude, I got this floor, go upstairs and see what they’ve got up there.” How great would it be to see that moron sneak down the hall to the bedroom, tiptoe inside and…..THWACK! Yet another piece of evidence to support the belief that burglars are not the smartest sect of society, but a damn funny mental picture nonetheless….

- Go ahead and scratch Yucca Mountain in Nevada off your list of family travel destinations unless you plan on going there in the next few years. Future years won't be such a good time to visit Yucca Mountain, what with the W. administration ignoring pleas from environmental groups and activists and going ahead with plans to create a nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain. The battle over this project has dragged on for years, but administration officials have confirmed that they will be submitting a formal license application to turn Yucca Mountain into a giant wasteland for nuclear refuse. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission now has three years to review the application, with their main concern being whether the project will adversely affect public health and safety as well as the environment. What’s so awesome about this application is that whether it’s approved or rejected, it’s already freaking killing the environment because it contains literally tens of thousands of pages worth of documents, a total of 17 volumes that the NRC will now pore over. The site is 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, meaning that some day you could make your Vegas run to get your gamble and drink on, then make a short hour-and-a-half drive up the road to subject yourself to mass quantities of radiation from nuclear waste, good times! With $6 billion already spent researching the project, it’s hard to imagine any regulatory body that is government-based actually having the kahones to reject this proposal, which would be the right thing to do. The projected completion date for the underground dump site is currently 2020, so you may actually have a little while to go and visit….well, whatever there is to visit at Yucca Mountain.

- Whaddya know, it’s another example of life imitating a fictional TV show. Season 3 of the hit Fox series Prison Break featured an inmate at the SONA correctional facility in Panama who had a luxurious “suite” inside the prison, decked out with a refrigerator, TV, cell phone, fully stocked bedroom, etc. The inmate’s name was Lechero and he even had a stockpile of alcohol in a storage room under his suite. I can’t say that I expected to hear of a real-life inmate in a Central or South American country who had a suite of his own that could rival or better that of Lechero, but that just might be the case. At the Lemos Brito prison located in the northeastern city of Salvador de Bahia, Brazil, a drug trafficker who, like Lechero on Prison Break, managed to continue his illicit operations was also living the high life behind bars until guards discovered his ill-gotten gains this week. Gilson Lino da Silva had 280,000 reals (172,000 dollars) of cash stashed under the mattress of the king-sized bed he had in his cell, which was also decked out with two refrigerators, a flat-screen television with DVD player and a personal gym set-up. How prison guards managed to miss all of this before now, I don’t know. I doubt the guy just acquired all of it the day before. Plus, how do you not see people sneaking refrigerators and flat-screen TVs into a cell? This isn't like in The Shawshank Redemption where Morgan Freeman can sneak a tiny rock hammer into Tim Robbins’ cell by concealing it inside of a blanket. These are refrigerator and flat screens, guys. Maybe try to pay at least a little bit of attention to what goes on inside your prison. Something that might help you focus is the fact that two pistols and a hit list on which contained the names of police officers and police chiefs were also found by the guards. Perhaps the idea that this guy is looking to kill several of you might inspire you to keep a closer eye on him. Da Silva, who was serving time for drug, murder and weapons charges on the outside, was an even bigger player on the inside, where he supplemented his narcotics income by organizing illegal gambling sessions and running a loan-shark operation for other prisoners. Rare to find a guy who’s a bigger criminal inside prison than outside of it. Something tells me that when prison officials finish their investigation, they’re going to find a few of their own were complicit in da Silva’s operations, because no way this happens without some inside help. That being said, it’s pretty freaking impressive…..

- I’m like 99 percent sure that this is not the “Patriot Way.” For the New England Patriots, an NFL franchise that has built its reputation on doing things the right way, being classy and first-rate (well, except for the whole Spygate mess) you can’t be too proud of offensive lineman Nick Kaczur and how he’s been spending his offseason. Kaczur was arrested in April for illegal possession of prescription painkillers and in order to receive leniency in his case, he then cooperated with federal agents in a sting of his alleged supplier. According to the alleged dealer's lawyer, a federal affidavit and two sources who had been briefed on the investigation and were speaking on condition of anonymity, Kaczur, 28, wore a wire during three drug buys in southeastern Massachusetts. Following the third of those buys, federal agents arrested the alleged supplier. The drug troubles started for Kaczur when New York State Police arrested him and charged him with criminal possession of a controlled substance in the seventh degree, a misdemeanor, following an April 27 traffic stop on the New York State Thruway. According to the lawyer for the alleged dealer, Kaczur told investigators he had been purchasing hundreds of oxycodone pills from the man since November 2007. If that’s true, then it’s just as scary as the drug arrest because it indicates that this guy has a major addiction to painkillers. The alleged dealer, Daniel Ekasala, was indicted by a federal grand jury Tuesday on three counts of possession of oxycodone with intent to distribute. Kazcur must still think he’s undercover, because he’s denying his involvement in the whole sting operation. “I don't know what you're talking about, bro,” Kaczur said on the front porch of his Attleboro, Mass. home. “I don't know where this is coming from. I don't know what you are talking about.” Ironic, isn't it? A member of the New England Cheat-riots taking part in wearing a wire, listening in on someone’s conversations and then lying about it? Brings back warm, fuzzy memories of Spygate, no? Kaczur may dispute that he was the informant in question, but what is not under dispute is that he was pulled over for speeding in Whitestown, N.Y., on April 27 and police discovered a “small amount of controlled substance for which he did not have a prescription,” a substance identified as the painkiller oxycodone. New York State Police Sergeant Kern Swoboda confirmed that much, although the current disposition of Kaczur's case in New York isn't known. Normally I’d say that a pro franchise would be horrified to learn that one of its players had been buying mass quantities of pain pills from some drug dealer and the Cheat-riots might be, but part of me thinks they have to be mighty proud of one of their guys wearing a wire and engaging in an undercover surveillance op. Heck, head coach Bill Beli-cheat is probably grilling Kaczur as we speak, demanding to know what kind of wire he wore, where the microphone was placed, how the whole setup was powered…..

Moises Alou proves his idiocy once again, a fan one ups arena security and an Album to Avoid

- You know it, you love it.….it’s Albums to Avoid, the absolute worst in new music brought to you as a public service so that you can keep a safe distance from atrocious new albums that take awful music to new depths. This week our Album to Avoid comes courtesy of dancing, crooning, music-mangling poseur Usher, a man who has tried to blend a smooth, lady-pleasing style with the illusion that he has some hip-hop cred and failed in both arenas. The U-man has a new album out and it’s titled Here I Stand. When he says he stands “here,” my hope is that his “here” is always far, far away from where I am, because this album (and his entire act) blows in royal fashion. It’s exactly what you would expect from a poppy, dancing loser who really should have been a member of a man band like O-Men Back Sync Street Boys at some point in his career. This album finds him trying in vain to successfully straddle the gap between the slick player image he’s crafted up to this point and his new role as a father and family man. That theme might work for someone who didn’t make crappy music, but for Usher it’s a recipe for disaster. Songs like This Ain’t Sex hail back to forgettable, poppy, slick club music of Usher’s past, back when he churned out garbage songs like Yeah! with astonishing regularity. This is one album where even the contributions of Jay-Z as vocal backing can’t help save an album from the trash heap. It’s also nice when an artist rips off a song name from a crappy, chick-centric home-remodeling show, so the song Trading Places is a great addition to a terrible album. In this sh***y tune, Usher offers to serve his woman bed in breakfast, mow the lawn, etc. Riveting stuff, U., really. But if you think that you’re only getting terrible, dancy pop music on this album, don’t worry. There are equally terrible ballads, songs such as His Mistakes, which showcase Usher’s true limited vocal abilities. Put all of this crap into a big musical blender, stir it up and press the button and out comes Here I Stand, an album that sucks from many different angles and on a variety of levels, making it a true Album to Avoid…..

- Stoners always come up with the best stories to explain away their possession of large quantities of weed. By the best, of course, I mean the most ill-conceived and pathetic stories, ones that would make you laugh out loud if they weren’t so utterly fraudulent and transparent. Take for example an unidentified 30-year-old pothead arrested near Iowa City, Iowa over the weekend, a man who tried to talk his way out of trouble by explaining to police that he planned to turn the several one-gallon trash bags full of marijuana he possessed into compost. For some reason, the cops didn’t buy what he was selling and the man was sent to jail and remained there when he was unable to post the $14,000 bail on charges of possessing marijuana with intent to distribute. Of course he couldn’t post bail; all of his wealth was in those bags of the chronic that were seized from him. The Johnson County Sheriff’s Office reported that the man was arrested early Saturday morning and at that time, deputies found the bags of pot in his possession. I don’t have this verified, but based on the circumstances of his arrest I’m guessing that this idiot used some of his own product before attempting to transport the rest of it. How else do you explain hauling that much tree in a place where police could see it and not having a better story for them? At least try to lie and tell the officers that you found the plants on your neighbor’s property and were driving them to the police station to turn over before some of the neighborhood kids found them. That story probably would have landed you in jail as well, but it’s a hell of a lot more plausible than the compost idea. Next time, stay home with your bong, Cheetos, hackey sack and Planet Earth DVDs and leave the transporting to people who know what they’re doing, unidentified Iowa stoner.

- Zach Smith is my kind of sports fan. The 19-year-old Cleveland resident is a big Detroit Red Wings fan and managed to score tickets to Game 4 of the Stanley Cup Finals, played a couple hours east of Cleveland in Pittsburgh. Being a Red Wings fan, Zach Smith has also embraced the Detroit hockey tradition of throwing an octopus onto the ice when his team scores a goal. It’s a practice the Red Wings have discouraged in recent years because it holds up the game and presents other issues for anal, humorless pro franchises such as theirs. But the tradition lives on with fans like Smith, who snuck a live octopus into Mellon Arena for Game 4 and hurled it onto the ice. Here’s where the story gets good; Smith was immediately ejected from the game by security and at that point, he looked like a complete idiot, wasting a ticket he paid hundreds of dollars for just so he could chuck an octopus onto the ice. “You're outta here,” Smith said they told him. “Come back in and you get arrested.” However, my man Zach was two steps ahead of security, having bought a second $300 ticket to the game in advance, knowing he would be ejected after his octopus toss. He also brought a change of clothes with him (he was wearing a regular T-shirt, instead of Red Wings gear, when he threw the octopus and changed into a Red Wings sweater post-ejection) so he wouldn’t be recognized and with his second ticket in hand, he walked back into the arena and enjoyed the rest of the contest. Before you pragmatists out there go nuts, yes he did spend a lot of money on this stunt, but if he can afford it, I think the whole thing is hilarious. The plan began actually Friday as Smith was visiting his girlfriend in Detroit. They bought an octopus at Superior Fish Co. in Royal Oak, stored it in a cooler and drove to Cedar Point, a.k.a. America’s Roller Coast and hands down the best amusement park in the country. On Saturday, drove to Pittsburgh with the cold, smelly and uncooked octopus in tow. Smith wrapped it in a plastic bag and taped it to his belly, under his shirt. “Before the national anthem, we made our way down there and stood there,” he said. “I got it out and just tossed it.” Awesome, just awesome. Here’s arena security being made to look like a bunch of ginormous ass hats, which in reality arena security tends to be. These tools take themselves way too seriously and have no sense of humor or humanity. They’re like fleshy robots, pre-programmed to stamp out fun any enjoyment wherever it may occur. Summing up that sourpuss attitude was Jay Roberts, general manager of Mellon Arena. “You're not allowed to throw things on the ice in the building, and we kick people out for throwing all sorts of things,” he said. “That could have hit somebody.” Just shut the hell up, you overbearing, humorless bastard. Yeah, it could have hit someone if Smith threw like a drunk, stoned elderly guy with a torn rotator cuff it could have. Your position looks even more tenuous when you’re asked about fans throwing hats onto the ice to celebrate hat tricks (scoring three goals in one game) by players and your response is, “That's part of the game, and they are allowed to throw the hats.” So here’s a 19-year-old knucklehead outsmarting Roberts and his ass-hatted security crew, violating one of their rules and finding a way around the punishment. I love it and I honestly wish there were more fans out there like him. Props to you, Zach, enjoy celebrating the championship your team won this week following your wacky hijinks.

- It may be the offseason for nearly every TV show that matters, but just because it’s summer break for television doesn’t mean there isn't news to report. For those of you who have forgotten about 24 since it hasn’t been on the air in more than a year and won't return until November with a two-hour movie to fill in the happenings to Jack Bauer and Co. during hiatus and bridge the gap until the series comes back to Fox in January. The show’s producers have been busy building in some new characters, including actress Sprague Grayden a regular on CBS’ Jericho who also had a short run on Weeds on HBO. She has now landed a recurring role on the new season of 24, playing daughter to Cherry Jones' POTUS. In other casting news, for those of you who enjoyed Charisma Carpenter in her first stint on ABC Family’s Greek, she will reprise her role as the national sorority representative she played in the series' Season 1 finale. Back then, her Tegan character launched an investigation into the scandal surrounding expose of the partying, misbehaving culture in the Zeta Beta Zeta chapter at Cyprus Rhodes University. In her encore, slated for this fall's season premiere (yup, Greek will be back for a third season, good times), she helps ZBZ president Casey deal with a pledge who is causing trouble for the sorority. Don’t forget to tune in Monday at 8 p.m. for the show’s Season 2 finale, it should be a good one.

- Up to now, I’ve been ambivalent toward the whole Steve Bartman-Moises Alou hysteria over Bartman interfering with a fly ball during Game 6 of the National Leaue Championship Series in 2003. As a Cubs fan, I’ve always realized that the blame for the loss lay with the players who were unable to field several other balls they should have gotten to, get outs from their pitchers and come up with the hits necessary to win the game and the series. Those idiots who terrorized Bartman and bought the ball he snagged over a leaping Alou so they could blow it up and supposedly reverse the mythical curse on the franchise are just a joke in my book. So when Alou came out earlier this year and was quoted as saying he would not have caught the foul ball that Bartman reached for in the eighth inning of the 2003 NLCS, it still seemed like a non-story. After all, who cares about it five years later when everyone has moved on? It didn’t help Bartman either; his life was already ruined. I’ve overlooked everything about this story…..right up to the point where I read that Alou is now reversing field and recently said that he would have indeed caught the ball had it not been for fan interference, according to the Palm Beach Post. Back in March, Alou was quoted by the Associated Press as saying that he would not have caught the foul ball, but Alou said last week that he did not recall telling the AP that. “I don't remember that,” he said. “If I said that, I was probably joking to make [Bartman] feel better. But I don't remember saying that.'” You seem to have a problem here, Moises, and it isn't Steve Bartman. Your problem seems to be that it takes you a hell of a long time to get around to explaining things and those massive gaps tend to create a whole lot of misunderstandings, inaccuracies and make you look like an ass in the process. First it takes you four and a half years to comment on whether you really would have caught the ball or not and once its’ reported that you said you couldn’t have caught it and everyone talks about it like it’s big news, you let that story sit out there for months before saying you never made those statements? Now I am pissed and I am into this story, but it’s for the simple reason that I think Alou is a freaking joke and that his statements on this topic have rendered him useless and a piece of crap.

The biggest chick flick of all-time, I rip Puerto Rico and MTV's awards show flop

- For a guy who is already alienating a city and his fan base by demanding a trade and ripping his organization, this next bit of news isn't going to help Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver Chad Johnson out. Apparently Ocho Cinco not only wants out of Cincinnati, he hasn’t been paying his property taxes while living there the past four years. A review of property records shows O.C. owes thousands of dollars in back taxes on his Cincinnati home. According to the Hamilton County Auditor's Office, he hasn't paid any property taxes on his condo since he bought it four years ago. According to property records, Johnson owes more than $13,000 in taxes for his condo and of that amount, he's delinquent $12,780. Making matters worse is the fact that $8,000 of the money he owes would have gone to Cincinnati schools. A local television station attempted to reach Ocho Cinco for comment but there was no answer to a knock on the front door at his condo and his neighbor said he's out of town. No surprise there, given the fact that 1) it’s the offseason and who wants to spend their offseason in Cincinnati when they’re a millionaire star athlete and 2) he’s currently demanding a trade to get out of the city anyhow. That being said, you need to take care of your taxes, O.C. As Wesley Snipes and Jimmy Hoffa have proven, you can be rich and famous and get away with a lot of crimes in the United States, but try to stiff the government on your taxes and you’re going to take a fall. Besides, you make more in one game check than you owe on your property taxes, so just settle up. If Charles Barkley can even the score on a $400,000 gambling debt, you can pony up $13,000 for taxes. No one likes paying them, especially property taxes because why should you be taxed on property you bought and rightfully own, but you need to pay. Not only that, but after welching on your property taxes for four years and gipping the local schools out of $8,000 during that time, you need to scratch off a nice $25,000 donation to them to make up for it. Pay your taxes, O.C., no matter where you’re playing next season.

- If you didn’t get a chance to see the MTV Movie Awards Sunday night…..you can probably tune in to MTV right now and catch the show re-airing for the 1,405th time this week. But if you aren’t able to do that, don’t worry because you won't be missing much. The show had a few good moments but mostly it was a big snooze. Any show that has the Pussycat Skanks as one of its musical acts is a loser by definition, so that’s one big strike against the show. Seriously, why would anyone be down with a group that consists of five tramps dressed like hookers, dancing in unison and lip-syncing to garbage pop music that wouldn’t be good if it were sung live by people with actual musical talent? The eye candy factor doesn’t play because last I checked, by listening to the Pussycat Skanks, you don’t actually get to make physical contact with them. The other big musical act for the night was Coldplay, a group that I can stand but one that had the entire crowd sitting on their asses, watching passively as lead singer Chris Martin pranced around the stage in all his pomposity and tried to rev them up. The awards themselves were….well, they were no better. Never, under any circumstances, should I hear anyone say, “And the winner is…..Transformers!” It was a bad movie that flopped big time, an action flick that never got on track and was plagued by mediocre acting. Seeing host Mike Myers team with Dana Carvey to bring back their famed Wayne and Garth characters from Saturday Night Live was actually pretty funny, with the pair taking names of movies from the past year and turning them into names for porn films. Other than that, the best comedy of the night was when Anne Hathaway, Steve Carrell and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson presented an award and used a funny heckler in the crowd for a good laugh or two. The “controversial” moment of the night came when Seth Rogan and James Franco of the upcoming movie Pineapple Express brought out a bag of fake weed and a fake joint and pretended to smoke the fake hippie lettuce while the show went to wide-angle camera shots to avoid showing the faux weed-smoking session up close. It was a stunt that was allegedly supposed to be axed by MTV at the last moment but word didn’t get passed along in time to stop it from happening. All in all, one of the worst MTV awards shows in recent memory, a forgettable evening that was thankfully kept to two hours….

- Even though Tatum O’Neal isn't really relevant as an actress anymore and hasn’t been for two or three decades, you have to admit that it’s funny to imagine her on the street in Manhattan’s Lower East Side Sunday night, jonesing for a crack fix and getting busted by the cops while making her buy. O’Neal, 44, was nabbed by police on the Upper East Side at approximately 7:30 p.m. Sunday when they spotted her trying to procure some coke from the local crack dealer. She was taken into custody and charged with criminal possession of a controlled substance, a misdemeanor that becomes a lot more interesting when it happens to someone who is at least moderately famous. That’s especially true for O’Neal, a woman who penned a book in 2004 about her road to sobriety after battling drug and alcohol addictions during her time in show business. It also doesn’t bode well for a mother of three to be trolling the street corners near dawn on a Sunday night in Manhattan, trying to score some Colombian nose candy. I don’t care if your kids are grown, teenagers or toddlers, having mom arrested, thrown into the back of a squad car and hit with drug possession charges is going to be a major negative influence. Besides, since when do famous people go out onto the street to buy their own drugs? Isn't that what they have personal assistants and posses for? Isn't there one grungy loser in the crew of every celeb who has connections to the drug world and is responsible for scoring the weed, coke, X and heroin for the rest of the group? C’mon, T., you have to know better than this….

- Thank God you don’t have a vote in this fall’s general election, Puerto Rico, because you showed this weekend that you most definitely are not capable of making good use of your right to suffrage. Your ill-reasoned decision to hand Hank Clinton a landslide victory in your Democratic presidential primary shows that you are not very smart, not well-informed and quite possibly mentally handicapped. Hank should not be winning any states period, let alone by a 68-32 percent margin. Never mind that the victory was totally symbolic and that Barack Obama now stands at 2,071 delegates, 47 short of the 2,118 needed to officially secure the nomination. Not that it’s going to matter, but Sunday’s victory in Puerto Rico inspired yet another round of false bravado from Hank, who tried to pretend that the victory somehow proved that she was still the right choice for the Democrats and that the 200 uncommitted superdelegates should disregard the wishes of voters and tab her as the party’s candidate. “In the final assessment I ask you to consider these questions. Which candidate best represents the will of the people who voted in this historic election?” Hank asked. “Which candidate is best able to lead us to victory in November and is best able to lead our nation as our president in the face of unprecedented challenges at home and abroad?” You really want me to answer those questions, Hank? Okay, but just know that you aren’t the answer to any of the three. You are not the choice of the people, you have no chance to win in November and there is no way in hell I want you ever leading any country I’m a citizen of in this or any other time in its history. Obama leads in the popular vote, in delegates and superdelegates, so he’s the choice and we all know it. Deep down, so do you, Hank, even if you won't admit it. Thank God that after last night’s primary Obama has enough delegates to win the nomination so that Hank has one less false pillar to base her continued candidacy on. Quit and stop making a pest of yourself, Hank, for your own best interest and that of America as well.

- What a big weekend at the movie theater for middle-aged, desperate, lonely women. The opening weekend for the new Sex and the City movie cemented the franchise’s status as the chick flick queen, resulting in a take of $55.7 million that was the biggest opening weekend ever for an R-rated comedy. Never mind that it’s absolutely lame unless you’re a chick or gay and that unlike some chick flicks that have at least a moderate appeal to some guys, this movie had a high level of success in spite of itself. I would never have imagined that collecting four barely, marginally, debatably attractive women who are all well past their prime go around Manhattan whining about their pathetic love lives and buying expensive clothes would be a good idea for a successful TV show or movie, but this just goes to show that quality of a movie and its success at the box office have no correlation whatsoever. The funny part of the weekend was seeing the reaction after the movie took in $26.9 million on Friday, a development that prompted industry analysts to start issuing insane projections for what the film would earn for the weekend. Of course, it made nowhere near that much, but by chick-flick standards, it was still a good start.

An arson conspiracy theory, Greek's episode from last night and reinforcing Hank Clinton's need to give up

- Maybe I didn’t make myself clear enough last time we discussed this, so allow me to try it again. HANK CLINTON, YOU HAVE LOST THE RACE FOR THE DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL NOMINATION. NO POSSIBLE CHANGES ARE OUT THERE TO REVERSE THAT OUTCOME, YOU HAVE LOST. I hate feeling like I’m beating my head up against a concrete wall, but that’s the feeling I’m getting here with Hank. Even as Hank’s advisors are privately conceding that my man Barack Obama will probably reach the necessary 2,118 delegates to secure the nomination by the time tomorrow’s primaries end, the Clinton camp is still bitching about things like the disputed primaries in Florida and Michigan as if they will make one damn bit of difference. Back when people outside of Hank’s delusional inner circle still believed that she had any shot at winning the nomination, having Florida and Michigan stripped of their delegates at the Democratic National Convention in August was considered a major blow to Hank’s campaign. Now that Obama has won the nomination, the relevance of delegates from those two states being counted or excluded is all but gone. That being said, the Democratic Party Rules Committee decided over the weekend to strike a compromise that will count delegates from Florida and Michigan as half-votes in a striking similarity to those dark times in our nation’s history when laws like the Three-Fifths Compromise relegated the votes of African Americans to a value of 3/5 of the value assigned to the votes of white people. Of course, the crime here wasn’t being so audacious as to have a different skin color than the ruling majority but rather moving up the primary elections in the offending states to January, breaking party rules in a lame attempt by Democratic leaders in Florida and Michigan to elevate the importance of their states’ primaries. The decision by the committee still leaves Clinton without four delegates that Hank’s camp was expecting from Michigan, prompting adviser Harold Ickes to lament, “Hijacking four delegates is not a good way to start down the path of party unity.” Read between the lines and you can see that even Ickes is basically conceding the race to Obama, yet he’s whining about four irrelevant delegates? You and your candidate seem to be the problem when it comes to party unity, Harry. What’s funny here is that back in January, both Hank and Obama agreed that results from Florida’s and Michigan’s primaries should not be counted because they were held too early, but now Hank has reversed field. Methinks that maybe it has something to do with the fact that in January, she was still the frontrunner for the nomination and figured she could win without those two states. Now that she’s desperate and grasping for straws, suddenly her views on the situation have changed. Tough luck, Hank, but it’s O-V-E-R.

- You might be asking yourself, “Is soccer still totally ridiculous and are its fans still rabid, psycho lunatics?” Maybe it’s been a while since you last asked yourself that question and you’re wondering if the answer has changed. Sadly, the answer to that question is no. Fans in places outside of the United States, places where soccer actually matters, are still killing and injuring one another for no real reason. Take the World Cup qualifying match in Monrovia, Liberia between host Morocco and Liberia where eight fans suffocated to death when the unruly crowd at Samuel K. Doe stadium in Monrovia pushed up against a metal bar designed to restrain exactly the type of hooligan-ish behavior they were engaging in. The bar snapped and the forward motion of the soccer hooligans sent dozens of people crashing onto the floor below. Those falling fans crashed onto others below. crushing them and causing the aforementioned fatalities. “Spectators tried all sorts of means to save (them), but could not help,” said Liberian Red Cross rescue worker Emmanuel Johnson. The sad thing is that you could see this whole mess coming. Hours before the start of the match, United Nations peacekeepers had closed the stadium when it became clear that the stadium was going to be filled well beyond its 33,000-seat capacity. Thousands of those inside got into the game using fake tickets, leaving legitimate ticket holders stuck outside. How very soccer of you, soccer. First your officials aren’t smart enough to differentiate between fake tickets and real tickets, then you allow your stadium to overcrowd to the point that people are pushing up against metal barriers, breaking them and killing other fans by falling onto them. Because that’s the way you want to go, dead because some idiot soccer fan can’t stop from jostling and pushing against a barrier and breaking it in a vain attempt to get closer to the field. Yet another reason why soccer is ridiculous and why it will never, ever catch on in the United States.

- It was all about lies, plots, deceit and misdirection on last night’s episode of Greek. Of course, when a group of fraternity pledges get their hands on their very first fake IDs, that sort of thing is bound to happen. With spring break looming just one week away, the pledges at Kappa Tau were given their own fake IDs to break in as they prepared for their spring break trip to….Myrtle Beach? Not exactly the spring break hot spot you might expect, but whatever (according to Dale, Rusty’s roommate, Satan himself lives in Myrtle Beach, who knew?). Rusty, pledge brothers Ben Bennett and some dude named Pickle all set out to give their new IDs a try. Their trial run came at a mock club entrance Cappie and the KT brothers set up in the house, with Rusty failing miserably to pass himself off as Chad Stewart. That failure inspired him to throw himself into a major research project on Chad Stewart, a member of KT three years ago who had since traveled around southeast Asia and become a singer-songwriter with a strong underground following. On his next try, Rusty succeeded where Ben and Pickle failed, getting served alcohol at a local hotel bar. The only problem came when the bartender believed he really was Chad Stewart and ‘fessed up to being a huge fan of his music. She asked him to go to a party with her that weekend, which Rusty decided to go to despite Cappie’s warnings that he couldn’t pull of being Chad Stewart for a whole night. When Rusty/Chad showed up with über-square roommate Dale in tow, the girl revealed that she had lied to him about the party. It was actually her sister’s wedding and she wanted Rusty/Chad to sing her favorite song off his underground album, the song Hunter’s Heart. When Rusty bombed out and couldn’t play the guitar or even sing more than one line from the song, he was forced to admit his real identity, much to Dale’s amusement. Hopefully Rusty can get back into Chad Stewart mode for next week’s season finale. Also practicing his own type of deceit was Evan Chambers, who was still trying to lie his way back into a relationship with his ex, Casey Cartwright. For weeks, Evan has been busy trying to weasel his way back into Casey’s good graces. This week those efforts took the form of helping her study for her LSATs by getting her to take the same LSAT prep course Evan took last semester. Since her avowed goal is law school, just like Evan, it seemed like a natural fit. Once in the class, Casey realized how far behind she had gotten, with everyone else in the class having applied to law schools and been taking LSAT practice tests for months. With help from Evan, Casey studies and sees her scores on the practice test improve, prompting a “friendly” dinner with Evan to celebrate. At the dinner, he offers her a chance to have a meeting with the dean of admissions for Harvard Law School, who happens to be on campus at Cyprus Rhodes. Casey is initially suspicious because Harvard is also where Evan plans to go, but when he assures her that he’s not plotting to get her back, she agrees to the meeting. Those plans hit a wall when her BFF Ashleigh is at Dobler’s for a beer with former Zeta Beta president and allegedly reformed b*tch Frannie and Frannie spots Shane, the Lambda Sig who stood up Casey after the Zeta Beat Mr. “Purr”fect contest because Evan paid him $1,000 to leave her alone. Frannie knows the real story and spurs Ashleigh to confront Shane so she’ll find out the truth to and tell Casey, thus putting a stop to the seemingly inevitable Casey-Evan reunion that both Frannie and Ashleigh see coming. That’s just what happens, with word getting back to Casey about Evan’s evil plot and her blowing up at him. Frannie’s motives remain unclear, whether it’s because she thinks Casey can do better than Evan or because she wants him for herself. Whatever her reasons, Casey still goes to the meeting with the Harvard dean of admissions and while she’s there, realizes that she doesn’t actually want to be a lawyer. She never really thought about what she does want to be and settled on law because when she began dating Evan during their freshman year, that was what he wanted and so she picked it up as her dream too. Now, she’s not sure what her major should be and looks to be on her way to a new one. Maybe she should ask Cappie for a recommendation since he’s pretty much tried every possible major at CRU during his time there, although sadly there were no new “I once was a ___________ major” moments for Cappie this week. Those have been lacking this season, but maybe in the finale……anyhow, back to this week’s episode, where Ashleigh found herself wrapped up in a scheme to pay for her spring break trip despite having blown through the entire allowance her parents had given her for the month. To pay for her trip and all of the clothes she wanted for it, she fell into the extremely clichéd trap of college students getting baited into signing up for credit cards pushed by credit card companies who set up shop in the quad and offer quick credit to any sucker dumb enough to sign up. Because she wants a credit card of her own with a bill that doesn’t go to her parents, who can then monitor her spending, Ashleigh signs up and immediately goes on a spending binge that quickly sends her over her credit limit to the point that she can’t even buy some gum at a local convenience store. Her problems appear to be solved when she calls the credit card company to get on a payment plan but instead has her credit limit increased. Call me insane, but I think she’s headed for disaster in next week’s finale when it comes to her free-spending ways. Going AWOL this week was Cappie’s girlfriend Rebecca and the rest of the Zeta Beat pledges. Nearly absent were all of the KT’s outside of Cappie, Rusty, Ben and Pickle, with brothers Wade and Beaver appearing only in the first few scenes in the ceremony to bestow the new fake IDs on the pledges. You’d figure that it will be all hands on deck next week for the finale, so be sure to tune in then as most of the Cyprus Rhodes campus will apparently be heading to sunny Myrtle Beach, S.C……..

- What is this, London or the campus at Big State University? With authorities in London set to impose an alcohol ban on the city’s mass transit system, lushes, alcoholics and revelers of all shapes, sizes and degrees of mental stability came out for one final night of alcohol-fueled fun on the subway system before the new rules went into place. The subway was engulfed by thousands of revelers Saturday night, with eyewitnesses recounting tales of totally smashed, fall-down-drunk partygoers dressed in a wide range of costumes that included fancy. prom-style dresses and causing a hell of a lot of damage. These drunks fought with each other, damaged subway trains and vomited all over the place - in other words, a typical night for an out-of-control frat party on the campus of your state’s major university. It’s almost like the dean is hitting the students with a no-alcohol policy and every frat and sorority on campus is wheeling keg after keg into their house for one final, mass blowout party. The mayhem in London forced authorities to close six stations on the network, including major hubs at Liverpool Street, Baker Street and Euston. At least 17 arrests have been reported thus far, with much of the insanity occurring on the Circle Line, which rings the center of the city. The event initially began good-naturedly, but as always happens when you mix mass quantities of booze with mass quantities of people, bad things happened quickly. Partygoer David Mudkips, 25, of east London, described the event as “like rush hour but fun. There were people’s sweaty armpits in my face but I didn’t care because I was drinking.” Sounds like my idea of a good Saturday night, crammed into a small, moving subway car that’s packed with drunk people who are likely to be vomiting regularly due to the combination of motion and beer. This does sound like it would have been a fun night if you were there, one of those great stories to tell people about down the road. I don’t believe for a second that the alcohol ban will totally stamp out people sneaking beer, vodka, gin, rum, tequila, etc. onto trains, but this should be the last frat party on wheels that London will see in the foreseeable future anyhow….

- Who loves a good conspiracy theory more than me? No one, that’s who. Nothing puts a smile on my face quite like someone who is disappointed with the outcome of a situation, competition or event alleging that things didn’t go their way because of some vast, secretive conspiracy to do them in. That being said, I’m not sure that I’m buying the allegations by Shaniqua Tompkins, ex-girlfriend of rapper 50 Cent, that the fire which destroyed the multimillion-dollar home she and her 10-year-old son occupied in Dix Hills, N.Y. was caused by arson and that 50 was involved. Tompkins and son Marquise were taken to a hospital after suffering smoke inhalation but were later released. The allegations of arson came even as 50 Cent, a.k.a. Curtis Jackson, was hundreds of miles away, filming a movie in Louisiana. The home essentially burned to the ground, leading investigators from the Suffolk County arson squad to launch an investigation. The fire was first reported at 4:59 a.m. and put out a mere 45 minutes later, showing once again that if you live in a rich neighborhood, emergency response services tend to be better. In addition to alleging arson by 50 Cent and his associates, Tompkins also claims that the rapper had previously promised to give her the house but had not made good on the promise. Apparently she’s now under the impression that 50 would rather burn the house to the ground and take the insurance money rather than give it to her. A nice theory, to be sure, and factoring in the crime-for-insurance-money idea always makes for a fun debate, but I’m going to go the other way on this one and say that 50 Cent is not bruning down houses he owns to dislodge former girlfriends and collect insurance money…..

MMA on CBS, corrupt juvenile court judges and an Inconvenient opera forthcoming

- Maybe you couldn’t get enough of Al Gore’s captivating environmental documentary An Inconvenient Truth. Perhaps a couple hours of real-life footage about how we’re steadily ruining the environment and polluting the very world we count on to sustain is wasn’t enough for you. If so, do I have some exciting news! Italian composer Giorgio Battistelli was so inspired by the film that he’s turning it into an opera based on both the book that inspired the movie and the movie itself. Battistelli began work on the opera a year ago and the Milan opera house La Scala plans to present it during the 2011 season (so much for immediacy) as it celebrates the 150th anniversary Italy’s unification in 1861. Instead of following suit with the film and using a narrator to tell the story, the opera will use characters to tell the tale. Other than that, it’s expected to be a close replica of its source material. A character modeled on Gore will also be in the opera, although it could be a bit like the debate over the Elvis stamp a few years ago. Do you go with the slimmer, shaven Gore of his vice presidential days or with the rotund, bearded Gore of present day life? I say the old Gore, because America is already getting too much of a stigma as a nation of fat asses, so let’s represent Gore in his thinner days if you don’t mind….

- If I were coming up with a concert lineup that would appropriately honor the legacy of Nelson Mandela and all he stands for, I could not come up with a more appropriate performer than Amy Winehouse. After all, what honors a dignified humanitarian who has spent years in jail fighting the injustice of apartheid in South Africa quite like a coked-up, vodka-snorting lush like Winehouse? What is Winehouse if not dignified, classy and humanitarian? Assuming that by dignified, classy and a humanitarian you mean that she’s a drug addict, an alcoholic and spends so much time in rehab that they’re going to erect a statue of her there soon because she’ll more or less have paid enough to finance the rehab center for decades. The concert will take place July 27 at London’s Hyde Park and Winehouse will be far from the only performer, but her inclusion is still pretty humorous. Simple Minds, Queen, Leona Lewis and the Soweto Gospel choir will also perform and raise money for Mandela’s AIDS charity, a noble cause to be sure. Notable figures such as former President Bubba Clinton and Oprah Winfrey will also attend in an obvious and much-deserved show of respect for a great man in Mandela. Hopefully Amy Winehouse limits herself to two lines of coke before taking the stage, otherwise things could turn ugly…..actually, they will turn ugly the second she starts the indecipherable mumbling and whining that she calls singing, but at least if she’s clean and sober that will mitigate the damage.

- Much respect to the Movement for Democratic Change, Zimbabwe’s main opposition group in seeking to rid dictatorial President Bob Mugabe from office. The MDC has basically decided to act as if it’s the country’s ruling party, which in truth it is since its candidate won the presidential election whose results Mugabe refused to accept and which must now be followed by a runoff election because of Mugabe’s campaign of terror to destroy the results of that first election. As a direct show of defiance to Mugabe, the MDC convened what it called a session of parliament and declared itself Zimbabwe’s new ruling party. The session also contained a self-proclaimed “state of the nation” address by opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai promised Zimbabweans that they are about to witness a “new and different era of governance. What, you mean one where the ruling party accepts the results of elections that its citizens vote in and doesn’t beat and even murder those who oppose it? Neat-O. Besides, my policy has always been to disregard and ignore governments I don’t feel are legitimate and capable, which would explain why I’ve refused to recognize W. as our nation’s president for the last seven-plus years. Best of success to you in this new endeavor, Movement for Democratic Change, the world is rooting for you.

- Surreal and different, those would be the first two words to come to mind when watching the debut of mixed martial arts on network TV Saturday night on CBS. With the overly excitable Gus Johnson on the mic, CBS became the first major network to embrace MMA with its broadcast of EliteXC fighting. The main event featured YouTube sensation and MMA up-and-comer Kimbo Slice, a man who has gone from paying kids at local parks $100 to get tackled by him on film and brawling with dudes in back yards for money to MMA’s most visible face. Kimbo scored a victory over James Thompson by a third-round TKO, and overall it was a successful night for MMA in terms of putting its product onto a mainstream stage with five great matches that included one women’s MMA bout. The action was good - physical, even brutal at times - and for those of us who weren’t already heavily into MMA in all of its forms and governing bodies, it was a great way to sample the sport and see what it’s all about. If you’re squeamish or not big into guys kicking the crap out of each other, you’re probably never going to be a big MMA fan. But if you go into it with an open mind and take it at face value, you could end up like me, enjoying the show and looking forward to watching future MMA events on broadcast TV.

- Money may not be able to buy you love, but in some courtrooms it can clearly but you a more palatable dispensation of justice. This is true in every state, but especially in Louisiana, where two judges were convicted Saturday of taking bribes to set low bonds or remove court holds on defendants. A federal jury found District Judge Michael Walker and Caddo Parish Juvenile Court Judge Vernon Claville guilty on one count each of racketeering. The charge carries up to 20 years in prison and a possible $250,000 fine. A small price to pay if you’re looking to supplement your meager judicial salary with bribes from those appearing before your bench, I say. After all, who can be bothered with dispensing justice in a fair and honest manner when there’s an extra buck to be made on the side? Also, how hilarious is it that one of these corrupt judges served in the juvenile court system? Nothing like kids who have gone down the wrong path and are in need of correction and rehabilitation before they become lifetime criminals going into juvenile court and being able to procure preferential treatment if they and their lawyer are willing to slide the judge a few bucks under the table. I bet that was just the corrective action those kids needed to get their lives back on track. Either that or you just reinforced the same beliefs and values that put them into the juvenile system in the first place and fast-tracked them to a life filled with stints in prison, one or the other…..

A felonious quarterback recruit, a whiny shortstop and a devious lawmaker

- Let’s not be hasty and have a quick trigger finger when it comes to releasing recruits from their national letters of intent, Washington State University football program. Let’s stop and think about what kind of dangerous precedent you’re setting when you dismiss a recruit such as Calvin Schmidtke of Lakes High in Tacoma just because he’s been cited 11 times in the past 18 months, seven of the violations were related to traffic stops and has also faced alcohol- and drug-related charges. Schmidtke has confirmed WSU's action, saying, “I understand the situation they're in. I knew for a couple of weeks [it was a possibility]. Obviously, what happened wasn't pleasant. But I really think it's going to make me stronger.” What’s going to make you stronger? That back-breaking eleventh citation? What is it about this particular occurrence that’s going to get through to you where the first ten didn’t? I know that you’ve finally reached the point where your scholarship offer has been ripped from you, but that possibility didn’t occur to you after any of your first ten run-ins with the cops? Bro, I don’t care if you threw for 2,724 yards and 37 touchdowns last season and were named co-player of the year for your league. These aren’t just simple, routine citations either. When at least a few of your charges of either drug- or alcohol-related, that’s going to be a problem, especially the drug charges. How exactly do you not figure out somewhere in the midst of those first two or three citations that you need to clean up your act? And how the heck are you still allowed to play football in high school with all of that going on? Most people are getting a clue somewhere during those first 3-4 citations and making some changes, but not my man Cal Schmidtke.
New WSU coach Paul Wulff issued the standard boilerplate statement on the Schmidtke matter that read in part, “We feel this is in the best interest of both Washington State University and Calvin. We wish him well with his future endeavors.” Thanks for that, coach, very heartfelt. Enjoy playing at some obscure Division 1-AA school, Cal.

- So now it’s unacceptable to buy tickets for your favorite college football team’s games using campaign funds and resell them for a profit? Since when? So what if people contribute money to your campaign to ostensibly get you elected to the state legislature where you can serve them and your state by being a key part of the legislative process and you reward them by using their contribution to buy football tickets that you sell online and keep the profits of for yourself? State Rep. John Widowfield, R-Cuyahoga Falls (Ohio) gets where I’m coming from because he’s the one who engineered this brilliant scheme. Rep. Widowfield (a badass name, by the way) decided that he wanted to use campaign funds to purchase some Ohio State football tickets. That would be a solid option in and of itself, breaking off a slice from your campaign budget so you could take yourself and your wife to the big game. But when you compound that by turning around and selling those tickets at an online ticket auction site, then pocketing the money from that sale….pure genius, By pure genius, of course, I mean one of the single dumbest things you could do as an elected official. I say that because now, instead of keeping his seat in the state legislature and progressing toward bigger and better things in the political world, Rep. Widowfield has been forced to resign his legislative seat and could face investigation and punishment by the Legislative Inspector General for the state of Ohio. Solid play by you, Widowield, solid play. I know that OSU football tickets are hard to come by and that you probably made a tidy profit selling yours, but I sincerely doubt that the money you made was worth throwing away your political career.

- Is there anything more ridiculous than the National Spelling Bee on television? I’m not against having the event; it has its purpose and it’s a great chance for kids who probably aren’t going to become star athletes or even remotely cool in their lifetime to get recognition and compete. That being said, it has to be one of the worst events to televise in the history of television. First, you have these dorky kids with their thick glasses, some of the older boys sporting pathetic pube mustaches and the girls looking geeky in their own special way. Then you have a competition where the spellers come up to the microphone one at a time, which is where the real train wreck begins. The judges give them their word and the kids spend nearly all of their allotted two and a half minutes asking the same five damn questions over and over. “Can you pronounce the word again?” is the first one. “Can you use the word in a sentence?” is next. Then comes, “What is the language of origin?” and after that, are there any alternate pronunciations, followed by “Are there any alternate pronunciations?” And these kids don’t just ask each question once. When they don’t know a word and are clearly stalling for time, they’ll ask some of the questions multiple times. It’s painful, it’s sad and it’s not good TV. You see their families perched on the edge of their seats in the audience, acting like their child spelling this one word right is what the fate of the world depends on. Then comes the awkward wait while the judges get ready to ding the bell when the word is spelled incorrectly, followed by a crushed kid trudging off stage in defeat. So congrats to 13-year-old Sameer Mishra of West Lafayette, Ind. for winning this year’s bee and to all the other children who competed, but do them and us a favor next year and keep them off of network and cable television.

- It’s about f’ing time. Flopping has become an epidemic at all levels of basketball, with players substituting falling down like they’ve been shot in place of actually playing good defense and stopping their opponent with superior skills. The trend has even made its way to the offensive side of the ball, where guys act like they’ve been hit with a sledgehammer every time a defensive player so much as breathes on them, all in an attempt to lure officials into calling a foul that will send them to the free-throw line. It’s cheap, it’s gutless, it’s weasel-y and it’s definitely not basketball, but starting next season, it will be something that the NBA is looking to stamp out. The NBA announced to its teams this week at its annual pre-draft camp that fines will be imposed on players starting next season for clear cases of “flopping.” The league office has yet to determine exact fine amounts for offending floppers and how fines might escalate for repeat offenders, but those are just small details with the decision to crack down on these losers having been made. The process will reportedly hinge on in-game arena observers and video reviewers who will be instructed to report instances of theatrical flopping for potential punishment as part of postgame reports on officiating and other matters. NBA executive vice president of basketball operations Stu Jackson spoke about the new policy Wednesday night saying: “What was clearly expressed to the committee is that we would begin imposing fines next season for the most egregious type of flops. When players are taking a dive, for lack of a better term.” This is a fantastic idea, one that could be supplemented with a penalty system that suspends players who are serial floppers in the same way that players who accrue significant numbers of technical fouls during a season. Hotheads who can’t avoid technical fouls are fined and suspended once they reach certain limits, just like serial floppers need to be. Don’t believe me? Just as Detroit Pistons forward Rasheed Wallace, himself a regular violator of the technical foul policy, about flopping in his team’s Eastern Conference Finals series against Boston. “All that bull(bleep)-ass calls they had out there. With Mike [Callahan] and Kenny [Mauer] -- you've all seen that (bleep),” Wallace said. “You saw them calls. The cats are flopping all over the floor and they're calling that (bleep). That (bleep) ain't basketball out there. It's all (bleeping) entertainment. You all should know that (bleep). It's all (bleeping) entertainment.” Well said, ‘Sheed…….

- Way to keep your eyes on the prize, Orlando Cabrera. Cabrera is the starting shortstop for the Chicago White Sox, a team that is currently leading the American League Central and exceeding what was expected of them this season. He’s batting .242 and is one of the better shortstops in the AL, but playing on a winning team and hitting for a high average clearly aren’t his primary concerns - not when Cabrera is calling up to the press box during games to argue with the official scorer to argue about errors being charged to him. That’s right, rather than doing everything in his power to make sure that his team wins games, Cabrera is diverting time, energy and focus to trying to protect his own stats while games are going on. He’s not waiting until afterward to go and confront the official scorer for charging him with errors on plays that Cabrera feels were base hits, he’s picking up the dugout phone during games and having it out right then and there. It happened Sunday during a home against divisional rival Cleveland and it happened earlier in the season at Toronto. While his teammates are ostensibly focused on the score of the game, getting the other team out and scoring runs to help their squad win, Cabrera is more concerned with his fielding percentage taking a hit. Never mind that his team won the games in which he was arguing scoring decisions, he wants those errors changed to hits. Furthermore, he’s pissed that White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen isn't the one berating the official scorer for calling those plays errors. "If it happens again, I will call again," Cabrera whined. “I don't have to do it with other teams because they always had my back.” The funny thing is that on that one small point, Cabrera is accurate. If Guillen has a problem with Cabrera, he needs to talk to him directly instead of going through the media. That being said, Orlando, your manager is right in what he said even if he chose the wrong channel to send the message through. Your insistence on arguing with the official scorer over statistical decisions during games instead of focusing all of your efforts on helping your team win does reek of selfishness. If you can prove to me that you getting an error taken away and having it changed into a hit after the play has already happened and the inning is over helps your team win, then and only then will I concede that you’re right. Until then, I’m going to agree with Guillen when he says, “I'm not going to say we're going to have a problem, but I don't think it looks good to his teammates for him to worry about his numbers. I know I never did that.” Suck it up, keep your mouth shut (at least during games) and worry about winning games rather than boosting your fielding percentage, Orlando. Plus, you could always stop making errors and that would alleviate much of the problem…..