A decapitation and some very ineffective firefighters.....

- It was a stupid idea last year, it’s a stupid idea this year and it will be a stupid idea every year it is done from here on out. The stupid idea would be the two-week layoff in between the NFL’s conference championship games, set for this Sunday, and the Super Bowl, not happening until February 4. All of the momentum and excitement that builds during the first three weeks of the playoffs comes to a screeching halt while we all sit on our butts and wait for the big game. We get dumb stories about things no one cares about, capped by a Super Bowl media day where players get asked the same inane questions two dozen times by media members from all around the world. You get stories like the one we got in college football when there was a 50-day span in between the end of the regular season for Ohio State and OSU’s appearance in the title game, with QB Troy Smith waxing poetic about the virtues of In-And-Out Burger, with its crispy, fresh lettuce and tomatoes and toasted bun. Two weeks is just too much time and serves no real purpose. The teams are ready to go, all the possible angles can be exhausted in one week, so just stick to the normal schedule and stop f’ing around and wasting time, NFL. One more week of trying to keep your sport in the spotlight isn't worth it. Besides, you have your own TV network, the draft is coming shortly and people already follow the NFL pretty much year round. So go back to one week between games and then maybe I won't have to hear about Peyton Manning or Tom Brady’s take on why Quizzno’s has the best tasting subs because they use the freshest veggies and the best cheese.

- Well, it’s about time someone took charge of this: a judge in Britain ruled that she alone, not a jury, will determine the cause of death for Princess Diana and her boyfriend in a crash nearly a decade ago. Baroness Elizabeth Butler-Sloss decided that she would be the one making the call on this, and quite frankly, I’m relieved. After all, no one has paid any attention to this matter at all. No one has written multiple books about it, no one has made documentaries or TV specials about it, no one has debated it endlessly even though it happened ten damn years ago and it really isn't relevant to any of us at all. Oh wait, everyone has done exactly that. So you know what, Baroness, who gives a frak? Decide the matter, don’t decide it, who cares? She’s D-E-A-D, and she’s not coming back, no matter what the cause of her death. She has no effect on my life or the lives of anyone but a few select people who knew her and had actual ties to her while she was alive. Otherwise, it doesn’t matter and I have no idea why we’re still hearing about this ten years after the fact. Then again, people Like Oliver Stone were still making movies about JFK’s death multiple decades after it happened, so maybe we’re stuck with this one for a while too. Now if you’ll pardon me, I’m going to go smash my head into the wall for a few minutes.

- Irony lives here. Here being Draper, Utah, where a major fire broke out in, of all places, a fire station. What’s worse is that the blaze actually gutted the building while firefighters slept through it. I’m sure citizens of Draper feel very good about their prospects should their own home catch on fire. If the firefighters in your town can't even wake up and put out a fire at the actual fire station, how can they help anyone else? It took a police officer passing through the area to see the flames and smoke, but my question is what did he do then? Did he call the fire station? What do you say in that case? “Hey, did you know that your building is on fire? Yeah, the fire station, the building you’re in, the one where you have all of the equipment to, y’know, put out fires? Think you might wanna wake up and take care of that?” Better still, two firefighters were injured when they slipped and fell on ice that formed when water was pumped onto the fire to put it out. Great, fellas, so not only do you let your own building burn while you sleep, but you get taken out by some ice on the sidewalk when trying to put it out. Memo to Draper residents: use all fire retardant materials in any and all future construction projects. It’s your only hope.

- I said it before, and I stand by it: I have got to get myself involved in the beauty pageant industry. Tara Conner, the boozing, partying, sex-crazed winner of the Miss America pageant was Exhibit A, with her clubbing and make-out buddy, Miss Teen USA, Exhibit B and Katie Rees, Miss Nevada USA (banned following slutty pictures of her popping up online), Exhibit C. Well, make room for Exhibit D, Ashley Harder, Miss New Jersey USA, who has had to step down from her title after getting knocked up. She voluntarily resigned, but it just goes to support my theory that beauty pageant contestants are 1) hot, 2) love partying, 3) love sex and 4) tend to be of exceptionally questionable morals. What guy can't get down with being around hot, blonde chicks who love to knock a few back, go clubbing and get their freak on with lots of guys and sometimes other girls? See, the fact that Donald Trump is in the beauty pageant business is yet more proof that the Donald is a model for success that we can all aspire to.

- Whether you are on board with the death penalty or not and regardless of how you feel about the justice that America is supposedly bringing to Iraq, this is a grisly story that has to make your stomach turn. With Saddam Hussein now executed, justice is being administered to some of the former members of his administration. Justice in this case means they, like their leader, are being hanged. Problem is, one of those hangings went really, really awry. Awad Hamad al-Bandar, former head of Hussein’s revolutionary court, was decapitated during his hanging, which of course was not supposed to happen. The gruesome scene, which thankfully I haven't seen pictures of, came after a terrified Bander repeated some Muslim creeds and words of faith and was put into the noose. His head was pulled off of his body, and although he was going to die regardless, this is enough to make your stomach turn and make you very, very queasy. I can't believe I’m saying this, but it almost makes the American execution method of lethal injection look humane by comparison.

O.J. Simpson, angling for a deluxe sweet in the place of eternal damnation

- From the “Bad Career Moves 101” handbook…..Mike Nifong, the district attorney who so vigorously and wrongfully, it would appear, led the prosecution of the Duke University lacrosse players charged with the rape of a stripper they hired for a party, has now been removed from the case and could see things swing the other direction very quickly. He could potentially lose his license to practice law and be disbarred over the many errors and mistakes he made in the case, which itself has fallen apart and been taken over by the North Carolina Attorney General. Most of the charges have been dismissed and honestly, the three players are going to get off with a slap on the wrist at most. There’s no real case against them, and Nifong pretty clearly pushed this case forward in the hopes of it boosting his chances for reelection. Well, he was reelected, but maybe he should have saved himself the trouble and not run, because he’s going to be out as district attorney soon anyhow.

- What a week for Virginia Tech’s men’s basketball team. The Hokies took down two of the three or four most storied programs in college basketball history within a week’s time, downing Duke (at Duke, nonetheless) and then stunning top-ranked North Carolina at home in Blacksburg. Yes, the Hokies nearly blew a 22-point second-half lead to Carolina, but they held on and won, and now they are in first place in the ACC. Don’t expect it to last; the ACC is a meat grinder of a basketball conference, and no team is coming out of there with less than three conference losses, but I don’t think this is what anyone had in mind when Va. Tech joined the ACC a couple years ago. It was a football-first move, made to give the ACC 12 teams and thus the ability to hold a conference championship football game (see here $$$$). But head coach Seth Greenberg has done an amazing job and now he’s given the Hokies and their fans a week that has to go down as the best in the history of Va. Tech hoops.

- Count me out as a fan of 24, the show that apparently the entire world was waiting for the new season of. I hadn't really watched much before now, but in between a few reruns and bits of the season premiere, can’t say I am at all impressed. First of all, enough with the friggin’ multi-frame screen, when you divide the picture up into two or three frames and have separate action in all of them. That was so distracting and diversionary that I lost interest within a minute or two. Pick one scene, devote the whole screen to it and don’t bastardize things with two small windows and one medium-sized one all at once. Second, the acting was….um, not good. I don’t know how this show wins so many awards, maybe the storylines and scripts are good enough to carry what I saw as mediocre to subpar acting, but I’m not intrigued enough by what I saw to keep watching and find out. Just goes to show once again that shows which win awards and have the biggest ratings aren't necessarily the best or close to it, and shows like Veronica Mars, which struggle to build a substantial viewer base, can still be ten times the show that a series like 24 is.

- Not an inspiring weekend at the box office. Stomp the Yard, a movie about step dancing at a fictitious black university, was the top earner at $22 million gross, followed by A Night at the Museum, the kid-oriented comedy featuring Ben Stiller, and The Pursuit of Happyness coming in third. Seems like we’ve hit a post-holiday, pre-summer lull, where there are very few movies that you’re even motivated to see and virtually none that you can get excited about. When I can scan the entire listings section of local theaters and not find a single movie that would be worth $8.50 to go see, that’s bad news. Time to break out the DVD collection and hit up some Seinfeld and Everwood reruns, maybe mix in an old Western or two. Or, and I’m guessing here because it’s been so long that I’ve forgotten…..maybe the TV shows that have been on hiatus for weeks and weeks now will be airing new episodes again some time this year….maybe, but don’t bank on it.

- Not content yet with his special place reserved in hell, O.J. Simpson is continuing to angle for a deluxe suite there by peddling excerpts from his “how to” murder book and continuing to claim that it is a total work of fiction. The Juice says a chapter on the grisly murder of his ex-wife Nicole and her boyfriend Ron Goldman is entirely from a ghostwriter’s research and is not at all factual. All of the bloody clothing, the bloody knife, the evidence against O.J., is it all fictional too? And for someone who maintains he did not commit a crime, Orenthal seems awfully knowledgeable about said crime and seems hung up on it. This all has to be very healthy for his kids, too, hearing how Dad would have murdered Mom, if he did it. O.J., Pete Rose finally admitting he gambled on baseball in order to sell his book thinks you’re a terrible guy. Just admit you’re a double murderer, pay the Goldman family their money and stop insulting your wife and her friend’s memory by debasing them and their deaths in order to make a profit. You’re the worst guy ever, and honestly, they ought to make a one-time exception to the double jeopardy rule so you can be tried for their murders again and get the electric chair. You suck, Juice, and here’s hoping karma finds you out and evens the score.

- Need some laughter in your day? Try this quick hit: W. thinks the Iraqi people owe the U.S. a “debt of gratitude” for what we’ve done in their country. Yes, we’ve thrown your country into turmoil, made it one nonstop military battle and divided the country up amongst warring factions continually killing people. Yes, you have no real leadership and no one holding the country together outside of foreigners who shouldn’t be there and will have to leave eventually, but you should thank us. Why? I have no idea, but then again, no one ever has any idea what W. is talking about, so this is nothing new for him.

Gimme more Trump verbal assaults: Next target - Madonna?

- Hopefully you haven't caught any of that new NBC reality crap You’re the One That I Want. If you have, you have my sympathies, but despite the fact that the supply of good reality show ideas ended shortly after the genre was created (Survivor and The Amazing Race are the beginning and end of the good ideas list), there is a silver lining for this newest monstrosity. Unlike American Karaoke, where the winner will be continually foisted on our collective consciousness by TV magazine shows, entertainment shows and commercials after Randy, Paula and Simon have had their say, the winner of You’re the One That I Want will pretty much drop off the map. Sure, they’ll have roles in a Broadway production of Grease, but the theater is a peripheral entertainment entity here in America. The only way you’ll hear more about the winners on this show is if you’re an active fan of the theater. Otherwise, the two schmucks who are declared victorious will fade off the radar for everyone but the theater community and we won't have to have them continually shoved in our face. So something to be thankful for, unless of course the show gets canceled after a couple episodes, which would be even bigger cause for celebration.

- Next target for Donald Trump: Madonna. The Material Skank came to defense of her pal Rosie O’Fat and objected to the Donald’s full-fledged verbal assault on O’Fat and those who have defended her. I haven't heard Trump’s reply to Madge’s comments yet, but based on the way he coldly, calculatingly blew up O’Fat, then Babs Walters when she rallied to Rosie’s cause, I’m going to go ahead and assume that Trump and his people are polishing up the final version of their next statement slamming Madonna for being a musical hack who has little vocal talent, bases her career on gimmicks and shticks and once wrote an extremely sexually explicit book that made her look like an uber-skank. Heck, the Donald might even take a run at her for her legally questionable adoption kidnapping of a Malawian baby boy last year. I can see it now, “Madonna is just an ugly person, inside and out. I was very happy when he latest album failed, because I like it when bad people fail. She’s lucky to have her new baby she adopted, but she’d better be careful, or I’ll send someone over there to take her baby away from her. Why would he want to be with her and have her as a mother if he had another choice?” Let ‘er rip, Donald, this verbal warring need not end, it’s a lot more amusing than the actual news going on in the world.

- There’s a reason Charles Barkley will never be successful in running for any political office, including for governor of Alabama, which he has hinted at wanting to be. It’s the same reason Sir Charles is so successful as a TV analyst for TNT in its NBA coverage. Chuck just doesn’t have a filter on his pie hole the way most people do, especially those who are successful politicians. He says what he’s thinking, loud and obnoxiously, and doesn’t filter it to be less offensive, less rude or more politically correct. Politicians must be well-versed in the art of double talk and political speak, talking but not really saying anything or taking a definitive stand. Charles, though, will piss people off willingly, as evidenced by his on-air comments about the Cleveland Cavaliers following their 19-point loss in Phoenix. Barkley called the Cavs a terrible team still plagued by the same problems as last season, namely no real point guard and no outside shooting. Furthermore, he advised viewers not to be fooled by the Cavs having the best record in the Eastern Conference, implying that they are paper tigers and not a threat to win the NBA title. Wow, if you’ll say that about the top team in the conference, what will you say about the other teams? Some of his points are valid, albeit exaggerated somewhat, but why so bitter, Charles? You and the Cavs franchise have something big in common - namely, neither of you has ever won an NBA title. The Cavs have about a 1% chance to do so this year, but that’s still a better shot than you, a massively overweight blob whose physical conditioning skills are even worse than Shaq O’Neal’s, have at securing a ring this season or any other.

- The newest album from Switchfoot, Gravity, is drawing divergent responses from various corners of the music listening populace. On one hand, many critics have good things to say about the music itself and about the band’s aspirations to rise above the general greed and bling-heavy culture perpetrated by hip hop, pop and trendy rock groups whose lyrics pander to the lowest common denominator and have as much thoughtful insight as a drunken baboon. But there are those out there who now have Switchfoot at the top of their musical villains list because they feel the band has become a collection of sell-outs. The basis of this is that the quartet, formerly a trio, began as a Christian music artist but has now been reincarnated as a mainstream group. Those in faith-based music circles see it as a loss of principles and message, but that’s a faulty claim. Who says that just because you’re a person of faith that you have to sing songs laced from beginning to end with religious verbiage? Why can't a band sing about life and its issues and leave it at that? Besides, these guys have lives of their own offstage, and as long as they continue living the right way there, then the complainers should just enjoy the music and not demand that every song, album and concert be an evangelical crusade.

- I wanna vomit. I literally feel like I am about to throw up in my mouth. That was the overriding thought in my mind as the end of the NFL’s Divisional Playoff weekend rolled to a close. The San Diego Chargers were in the process of choking away leads of 14-3 and 21-13, frittering away their chance to knock the oh-so-annoying, ubiquitous in the playoffs New England Patriots. I’m so sick of “Golden Boy” Tom Brady and everyone celebrating the so-called genius of the hooded-sweatshirt-wearing Bill Belichick. I hate the Pats because they’re like roaches you can't kill and every now and then, you want fresh blood in the title picture. Yet San Diego couldn’t put them away, making decisive mistakes at the most inopportune moments and seeing their so-called elite players (yes, you Shawn Merriman - “Lights Out”, what a joke, this guy was out like a light all game long) disappear in the clutch. So we’re forced to endure another week of Patriots talk on our nation’s sports stations, and worse yet, the AFC title game matchup is N.E. vs. the Indianapolis Colts, two teams who seem to meet in the playoffs nearly every year and Indy being a team the Pats own in the postseason. Thus, a week of the same tired old stories, can Peyton Manning beat Belichick and Brady (gawd, I hope so), can Manning win the big game, is Belichick just the smartest guy in football……makes me wanna beat my TV set with a sledgehammer. I’ll elect for a less destructive route, though. I’ll boycott all SportsCenter broadcasts, all NFL shows on any network and all NFL news online, all in the hopes that I can avoid hearing about the Patriots and how you just can't stop them. Then, maybe the Colts will do all of America a huge favor and beat New England’s a** on Sunday and we can enjoy a Pats-free Super Bowl.

sometimes i feel like dionne warwick or the amazing crescan

- A lone voice crying in the football wilderness…..that’s what I felt like this week, because I seemed to be the only person who was adamantly saying that the Baltimore Ravens had zero chance to beat the Indianapolis Colts in their AFC Divisional playoff game. True, some did pick the Colts to win, but even they hedged, hemmed and hawed and refused to count the Ravens out. My reason was simple: sooner or later, Steve McNair was going to remember that he is Steve McNair and start playing like it. Heck, he’s had a mediocre season at best. People just willingly allowed themselves to get caught up the euphoria of a feel good story, older quarterback, treated poorly by his former team and jettisoned for a newer model, seeking redemption with a new team. Problem was, the Ravens didn’t win because of McNair this season, they went 13-3 in spite of him. A fantastic defense carried them all year, with Steve-O posting pedestrian 16 TD, 12 INT stats. And of course, against the Colts, he was 18-29 for 173 yards with 2 INT and a lost fumble. Look elsewhere for your pick-me-up NFL story, everyone, because Old Man McNair turned back into a pumpkin when the clock struck midnight.

- Men everywhere will be standing at attention and saluting in February, when a former Air Force staff sergeant will appear on the pages of the magazine that men read for the articles, Playboy. Whether you find those kinds of magazines morally offensive or not, this situation has a funny smell to it, namely because Michelle Manhart, has been relieved or her duties while the military investigates what she did. She maintains she did nothing wrong and thus didn’t expect any punishment, but I beg to differ. Something tells me that she was looking to get into trouble, maybe even get booted from the military by being photographed in (then out) of uniform and holding weapons. Maybe Manhart is looking to set up a modeling or acting career post-military. Regardless, how could anyone believe they could pose for a skin mag and not have the military, a place of conformity, uniformity and conservative thinking, object? Nice try, Sergeant Manhart. Dismissed.

- Cameron Diaz apparently has had her fill of sexy and doesn’t want it back. She and weasel-voiced former man bander Justin Timberlake have broken up, but you can't feel too bad for either. That’s especially true for Diaz, because there are dozens of other former man banders out there, from 98 Degrees of Backstreet Men from O-Town Sync and similar groups. And hey, Cameron, know what, I think Lance Bass is single, and - wait, scratch that, Lance Bass might not be an option, at least not for the women out there. But hey, a hot blond actress with loads of money, I’m sure she’ll be aright. Timberlake, on the other hand, can keep copying old Michael Jackson dance moves and styles for the near future to keep himself going.

- If you thought Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio, seemed especially dorky and loser-ish in recent years, you were correct. Hard to be anything but a giant group of dorks when your president is a full-fledged Trekkie. Kim Goldenberg, the outgoing university president, got the thrill of his loser lifetime when Leonard Nimoy, who played one of the nerdy characters on Star Trek, attended his retirement party. Nimoy, who apparently has become so hard up for cash that he’s appearing at the retirement parties of president’s from mediocre Midwestern universities to make some money, gave Dorken-berg, er , Goldenberg, the Vulcan salute, the proper greeting for guys who have the social skills and coolness of a rock. If President Bush is looking for people to fulfill his desired 22,000-soldier surge in Iraq, may I suggest that we round up all the Trekkies, Star Wars dorks, Lord of the Rings losers and ship them over there first? Those are groups of people that our country would not be worse off without.

- One of life’s ultimate oxymorons: the creation of a George W. Bush presidential library. How on earth can you build a library for a man whose reading level hasn’t risen above Curious George? The library would be located on the campus of Southern Methodist University in Dallas, but the proposed library has caused division on the campus. Some claim the library would wrongfully celebrate a president who led the country into an unnecessary war. My question, though, is how are you going to find enough picture books and coloring books to fill a library? The standard ought to be that no book that the president himself is unable to read can be included, so that would rule out anything that most of us read from, oh, third grade on. The Little Engine That Could might be pushing it, honestly. Let’s scratch the library idea and going with something more appropriate, like a giant diorama depicting all the similarities between W. and another of our warmongering former leaders, Richard Nixon.

hittin' it friday style

- Memo to TV network executives: a two-month lapse right in the middle of the season, with no new episodes all that time, is a terrible idea. Really. You’d think I wouldn’t have to spell that out, but apparently someone needs to. Nearly every show, except for the crappy ones that no one wants to see or the plethora of FOX shows that started late due to the baseball playoffs, are taking a two-month hiatus from airing new episodes from about mid-to-late November to the middle or end of January. You can use whatever explanation you want; holiday programming, people having a lot to do during the holidays and less time for TV, blah, blah, blah. Fact is, the humongously stupid people who decide to set things up this way have now created, in effect, two mini-seasons, meaning all the normal beefs you have with a season of a given show are doubled. First and foremost, you’ve forgotten a lot of the details about what’s going on in the storylines because it’s been so long since you watched a new episode. Over the summer, you have about 3-4 months to forget that stuff, and now a break nearly that long in the middle of the season? Idiotic. Second, whatever momentum the show has built over the first half of the season is effectively killed, so you’re starting from scratch again. And thirdly, you have fans of the show confused as to when new episodes will begin and since the new shows begin at a slightly different time (scattered throughout January and even into February), it’s even more confusing. The new “winter break” is starting to ruin the TV watching experience, creating more confusion and antagonizing more viewers than it is actually benefiting anyone.

- For the first time anyone, anywhere can remember, Barry Bonds is apologizing, kinda. Bar-roid, or more likely his agent or publicist, has issued an apology statement that offers a mea culpa to fans, teammates and the Giants organization. Also, Bonds/his mouthpiece apologized to teammate Mark Sweeney, whom Bonds fingered to a federal investigator as his source for the amphetamines that caused Bar-roid’s positive drug test. Now, he claims he brought Sweeney’s name up but didn’t try to push blame on him. So either he’s lying and covering his own arse, or he reflexively threw someone else’s name out there and cast aspersions on an innocent guy with no reason. Oh, and the sincerity is simply oozing from Bonds on this one. How convenient that after Mark McGwire, who is the #1 steroid suspect outside of Bonds, was resoundingly rejected for Hall of Fame induction, that Bonds is trying to repair damage to his rep and to appear contrite about that egregious error he made here. Well, the egregious error in point the finger at Sweeney. The other error, the one where he took a banned substance and tested positive, he can't really undo that one.

- Maybe you hadn’t heard, but the new season of American Karaoke is starting up. Oh, you’ve seen one of the thousands of commercials FOX has run for the show the past week? Can’t get away from them, you say? At some point, isn't America going to get tired of this crap? Set aside the gawd-awful pop music and bad covers of bad songs, no-talent hacks and a show that takes glee in humiliating the losers who clearly have no ability and try anyhow, and answer this question: how the hell can you really get into a show where the judges are three B-list (at best) celebs who are trying to build their own careers on the backs of this show? It’s not even about the people supposedly trying to make it in the music business, it’s about Simon crafting his bitter, surly image, of Paula Abdul being a washed up pop princess and being so perky and smiling in such a demented fashion that she has to be on no less than four different medications at a given time. Oh, and that man-blouse-wearing, teeth bleaching, tan-in-a-bottle wearing metrosexual freak, Ryan Suck-crest, trying to be clever and funny and to get an upgrade from hosting a second-rate New Year’s Eve show every year. See, now I’m getting pissed and I won't even watch a second of this show. Someone needs to get rid of this crap before I set fire to the studios where they tape the show and use all of the notes, production material and paperwork from the show as fuel for the fire.

- Congress is resisting the president’s new plan for Iraq, and I for one couldn’t be more pleased. Normally Congress resists things like common sense, logic, progress, fiscal responsibility, integrity and honor, but for once they have it right. Well done, Congress, well done. Even some Republicans voiced opposition when W. lackey, Secretary of State and aspiring NFL commissioner (sorry, Condi, that job got filled) Condoleeza Rice appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. In fact, 21 members of the committee voiced dissent, with only two exceptions among the members. The best quote for the day comes from my nomination for Senator of the Week, Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., who accurately labeled the new plan as “a dangerous foreign policy blunder,” and vowed to oppose Bush should he try to implement it. You know a plan is bad when it doesn’t even make it past the first Senate committee before it gets torn to shreds. W. is looking worse by the day, and after the way he handled the first portion of the Iraq war, that didn’t seem possible. Worst quote of the day came courtesy of Rice, who used the world’s most convoluted, nonsensical logic to explain that adding 22,000 troops, as our Idiot in Chief proposes, is not an escalation of the conflict. Increasing troops isn't an escalation? Escalation means a rise or increase, no? I suppose it is comforting to know that W.’s sycophantic henchmen (and henchwomen) will mimic and imitate him to the bitter end, even when doing so requires double talk, stupidity and blatantly ignoring the facts in a futile attempt to ignore a massive failure.

Gorging on Dodger Dogs, wasting big money on soccer

- Normally when a company spends $250 million on something, anything - it’s a significant deal that you just can't ignore. But never has $250 million spent and so little care aroused as when the L.A. Galaxy (I realize you don’t know who they are. Well, the short answer is a pro soccer team in L.A.) signed flopping, injury faking, orange slice eating, Capri Sun drinking soccer “star” David Beckham. Supposedly Becks is the world’s most famous soccer player, but since no one in America gives a crap about soccer outside of the thousands of kids under age 12 whose parents force them to play it, this guy is less well known than the fifty-third man on an NFL roster. Yet the Galaxy ponied up $250 million for five years to sign this guy away from his Euro club, Real Madrid. How a Major League Soccer franchise even has $250 million is a mystery. But don’t you have better things to do with your money? No one cares about soccer here and no one is going to care just because you signed Beckham and he’s bringing his former Spice Girl wife with him. I just hope this guy realizes that once he arrives, no one will care about who he is and that he can keep from acting like a rock star when to Americans, he’s just a nameless, faceless dude who fakes injuries and tries to kick a ball into a net.

- Bad idea by the L.A. Dodgers, creating a $40 “All You Can Eat” pavilion at Dodger Stadium during games. For a mere $40, fans can gain entry into the right field pavilion, where them can jam as much stadium food as possible into their pie holes. So many potential problems with this: 1) You’re going to have to install a huge vomitorium out there or put a giant trash can every five feet to catch all the upchuck from people who try to eat 15 Dodger Dogs or 20 sticks of cotton candy, 2) Some liquored up losers will undoubtedly use the mass quantities of food to either throw at each other or throw at the players on the field, 3) There is gonna have to be a security officer at the exit of the pavilion, wanding people and patting them down so they can't smuggle food to the outside. Y’know, jam a dozen Dodger Dogs into their pockets, purses and pants and trying to get over that way by taking them to friends outside the pavilion…..anyhow, my point is that this idea is going to end disastrously for the Dodgers, but don’t take my word for it, try it out and see for yourself.

- Hard to determine if W. is stubborn or simply myopic at this point. Either he’s so bull-headed and dogmatic that he can't admit defeat in the Iraq war even thought it’s painfully obvious to everyone that this is his own personal Vietnam, or he’s deluded to the point that he actually believes that we still can come out on top in this thing. But outside of a few Republican Party sycophants, do you hear anyone else enthusiastically onboard with his plan to send in more troops? Even those who say they support the idea probably don’t believe it, they’re just being good soldiers and repeating the party line. A thought, though: you’re telling me we actually got to the point of starting the impeachment process with Bubba Clinton, but no one has raised the idea with W? How is this possible? On most issues, he’s clueless, ineffective and incompetent, and those are the good ones. On the Iraq situation and in fighting the War on Terror, this administration is terrible to the point of absurdity, but no one has even suggested we try impeaching W? Why not take a shot? I don’t like the idea of waiting for his term in office to run its course and to elect a new leader in 2008. Get rid of this buffoon and do it now.

- The ladies (actually, with Rosie O’Fat on board, that term no longer applies) of The View might want to dig a fox hole and crawl in, because the verbal onslaught from the Donald is reaching nuclear proportions. Trump has taken repeated and increasingly volatile runs at Rosie since she made the mistake of taking a run at him following the whole Miss America/drinking/partying/sex scandal situation. Besides the fact that every guy in America took one look at Miss America Tara Conner and was on board with Trump allowing her to keep her crown, Rosie seemed to forget that she is loud, crass, fat, ugly, sloppy and not funny. No one likes her, so when the Donald starting unloading verbal salvos and destroying her, he was unanimously applauded. Then Barbara Walters, leader of the View gang, made a feeble attempt to step in and diffuse the Donald’s linguistic bombs, and so now he’s taking her on as well. Among other things, he said Babs was pathetic for having to read her retort off of a cue card and that she’s letting a third-rate comedienne (that’s not really fair, Rosie is a fourth-rate comedienne at best) run roughshod over her show. So the other two women on the show, whose names I don’t know and don’t care to, had best keep their mouths closed and their heads down before the Donald decides to blow them up too.

- Surprise, surprise….Barry Bonds failed a drug test. I know, I can't believe it either. He tested positive for amphetamines in 2006, and of course, being the stand up guy he is, Bonds immediately…..pointed the finger at someone else, namely teammate Mark Sweeney. First, kudos to Bar-roid for being so quick to pass the buck and try to shovel the blame onto someone else. Whatever happened to having your teammate’s back? Granted, the person Bonds ratted Sweeney out to was a federal investigator, but even so….if it’s true, way to support a teammate. If it’s false and he’s just throwing Sweeney under the bus to save his own skin, then that’s even worse. Furthermore, how amazing is it that a guy like Bar-roid, in the center of the steroids maelstrom, would even think of taking something that could lead to a positive drug test? Regardless of whether they came from Sweeney’s locker and Bonds thought they were something along the lines of caffeine pills, how can you take that risk, being that guy and having all the scrutiny you have? Seeing how Mark McGwire is being treated and blackballed from the Hall of Fame right now, Bonds should be doing the exact opposite of what he is doing - in other words, he needs to run in the opposite direction from anything even remotely linked to steroids or performance enhancers. His rep is already in the toilet, and this turd he just dropped is only gonna make it worse.

- College guys who sing in an all-male a cappella group have to expect a lot of grief and heckling. The coordinated outfits, the cheesy doo-wop songs and manly persona of choral singers are going to get plenty of grief and not win over too many hot college girls, but I think we can draw the line of acceptable heckling at hurling anti-gay slurs at said singers and physically assaulting them. The Baker’s Dozen a cappella group from Yale University received that treatment after singing the Star Spangled Banner at a New Year’s Eve party in California. No word on what the national anthem was their song for a New Year’s Eve party or whether they wore matching holiday sweaters, but why not dial it down to wedgies and swirlies, maybe even hit them with a pie in the face? Anti-gay slurring and beating them down is going too far, and the yet-to-be found goons who assaulted them must be feeling quite tough and studly, whipping on an Ivy League choral group.

- There may not be enough morning radio and TV shows to hold all of the announcements by those intending to run for the Democratic presidential bid in 2008. No-name Democratic Sen. Christopher Dodd of Connecticut went on Don Imus’ radio show to announce that he will run, bringing the total to about 152. While I would rather see Dodd or one of his anonymous Democratic brethren run and win rather than see Sen. Hank Clinton of New York be the Dems’ choice, why these E-list candidates are even trying is beyond me. Assuming Barack Obama runs, he’s going to get the nod, so let’s go ahead and end the charade, B. Announce you’re running so all these other wannabes will realize they have no chance and they can stop wasting our time declaring their plans to run.

The new iPhone, a psycho NBA wife and a coach who punches kids in the junk

- Worst coach ever: Gregory Lynn Burr, a now-former high school basketball coach in Monument, Colorado. Any of the three awful things this guy did would be enough to get him, as a person working with young people, fired with a bullet. One, he is accused of showing porn to students, which I have to think is, oh, I don’t know, against the law. Two, he is accused of dousing his players with water and then driving them home in the freezing cold with his car windows down, strike two. But the coup de tat of the whole mess is the fact that he’s been accused of blasting male students in the package. His trick would be asking them what the capital of Thailand is, and when they inevitably answered “Bangkok,” he would then hit them in the junk. One student estimated some of the players were hit in the groin 30-40 times. Hilarious, Gregory……well, it might have been hilarious when I was ten, but now, not so much. How did this guy not realize that kids were going to tell their parents that he did this stuff? One student actually required scrotal surgery (yikes, that’s a terrible phrase) to repair damage done by the coach. Y’know, maybe I was wrong about Bob Knight. I mean, he did throw a vase at a secretary, choke a player, verbally assault a student, etc., but he’s never whacked any of his players in the package, at least not that we know of.

- If you have a chance, check out the new Apple iPhone, the next step toward us having our computers, MP3 players, phones, televisions, cameras and pretty much every other piece of technology we own all rolled into one package. For $499 to $599, you can get one, but only with Cingular service. The device has an unbelievable screen, bright and vivid, and the display can become both a keyboard and a control panel. Overall, this new gadget does look awesome and I’m sure it’ll cause Apple’s stock to shoot up even further, but it does raise an interesting point: when you cram all of these different capabilities and utilities into one small item, how exponentially screwed are you if you ever lose it? I’m not even talking about losing something so expensive, I just mean you’ve not only lost your phone, but your tunes, your online capabilities, your camera, etc. But there will undoubtedly be a line to get the iPhone, just like hundreds of idiots camped out to plunk down $600 for the new PS3.

- Why stop at one story of a teacher or coach abusing their position of authority and harming the very kids they are supposed to teach and help when you can have two? Christine Kosik, an English teacher at South Fayette High School in Morgan, Pa., resigned Tuesday after allegations of an underage drinking party at her home. What’s amazing is that Kosik was a semifinalist for Pennsylvania’s 2007 Teacher of the Year Award. Well, at least now we know why: the kids were absolutely going to love a teacher who gave them free booze, without a doubt. Get an A on this test, you get to come to a kegger at Mrs. K’s house, kids. Keg stands will earn you five extra credit points on your next assignment, students. But since our nation’s teachers and coaches seem to need a refresher course in what is and is not acceptable, here are a few pointers: 1) no drugs, booze, porn or smokes can be given out, 2) you may not tell kids dumb riddles and then punch them in the package when they answer, 3) physical torture is out of the question, period, 4) you should not be participating in any activity with your students if it can land you in prison and 5) teach the lesson, hand out homework, grade tests, coach the players, leave it at that, k?

- The parallels between W. and Richard Nixon just keep on comin’. Both have their own war they started that never should have happened, (Iraq and Vietnam, respectively), both refuse to end said war even though it’s a clear failure, both are incredibly incompetent, and now they have both had lawyer Fred Fielding as their legal counsel. W., feeling that hiring the legal counsel for a man run out of office and implicated in one of our nation’s biggest political scandals ever is a good idea, brought in Fielding to replace Harriet Myers, who resigned last week. Honestly, unless you can be sued for being a humongous dumbass, then I don’t know why W. needs legal representation. Are Iraqis going to sue him for wrongfully invading their country? Can Americans sue him for wasting our tax dollars and the lives of thousands of American military personnel on his self-created war? On second thought, we should be able to do that, but our courts wouldn’t be able to handle all of the cases it would create. Maybe a class action suit………

- Ah, a good border skirmish over a funny odor…….New York and New Jersey, deciding that they want to act like feuding six-year olds, are playing a game of “He did it….no, you did it,” over the funky smell that wafted through NYC this week. New York officials began by trying to pin the blame for the incident on Jersey, but Jersey officials shot back that New Yorkers were doing what they always do, trying to pawn negative allegations off on their ugly stepchild to the south, New Jersey. Later on, though, those investigating the matter were forced to admit that the odor wasn’t emanating from New York’s Greenwich Village, which had been suspected, but possibly from a natural gas pipeline in New Jersey. Above all, I think everyone in America can agree on one thing: we’re thankful to have yet more ammunition from which to fashion New Jersey jokes. For a while there, we were getting short on fresh material, but this one should keep the one-liners flying for years to come. Good times………

- It’s difficult for a man to admit that his wife or girlfriend has abused him, physically or otherwise. Doing so runs contradictory to the macho, manly mindset that guys tend to have, and nobody wants to admit that he’s weak enough to be abused by a woman. In this case, though, I don’t think any less of New Jersey Nets point guard Jason Kidd based on claims he made in his petition filing for divorce from his wife of ten years, Joumana. Among other things, Kidd fingers his wife for using their then eight-year-old son to sneak into the Nets’ locker room and pull the names and numbers of people Kidd had called on his cell phone. Then, according to the petition, Joumana Kidd left the couple’s son alone and went out to her front row seat where she proceeded to verbally berate and heckle her husband during the entire game. Now if that doesn’t say spousal love and cherishing, supporting and caring for your spouse in sickness and health, for richer or poorer until death parts you, I don’t know what does. I wonder this often, so I’ll ask it aloud: for guys who are famous pro athletes, can't you pull better talent? You have to be able to find a hot, mildly intelligent, non-paranoid and psycho chick to marry, right? Oh, and the cherry on the spousal abuse sundae….Joumana Kidd also reportedly placed tracking devices on her husband’s vehicle, y’know, just to keep tabs on him. Worst wife ever? I don’t know about that, but she has to be Top Ten.

New York City terorized by and odor, Austin by dozens of dead birds

- How f’d up has our society become when a funny odor in the air in Manhattan causes an entire city to go into panic? City officials and utility providers scrambled to make sure that nothing was amiss, but after all of their investigating and checking, no one has a clue what the odor was or what caused it. Nothing like a whole city of people going into a panic, though, just because of a smell. But New York is full of smells, many of them unpleasant and disagreeable to the senses, but since when does that mean something is majorly wrong. And honestly, don’t you think that terrorists could find an odorless toxin if they were planning a strike? Isn't that why carbon monoxide is the “silent killer,” because you can't see or smell it? Odds are, an unusually high number of rats happened to die near some sort of ventilation system and the odor got circulated around the island. But we’ve all become too terror-conscious and paranoid if a single funky odor sends us flying into a panic.

- The class of inductees for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame was formally announced Monday, with R.E.M., poet/starlet/singer Patti Smith, Van Halen, Grandmaster Flash and Ronnie Spector filling out the induction class. It’s always interesting to see what diverse blend of characters get inducted in a given year, because when you have a 1970s hippie chick/free spirit like Smith, who was a major figure on the punk scene in New York that time, a rap pioneer like Flash, college rockers turned rock staples like R.E.M. and 80s hair bands like Van Halen, it’s hard to imagine these people, musically at least, having anything to do with one another. But for this occasion, they’ll be tied together, and each has had some influence on rock and roll along the way. On a side note, if you’re interested in learning more about Smith’s wild, radical life, a good place to start is Legs McNeil’s Please Kill Me: An Uncensored Oral History of Punk. Smith is featured prominently in several chapters of the book, including her beginnings as an aspiring poet on the New York art scene.

- When you’ve got the time and motivation to deliberately poison more than five-dozen wild birds, it’s time to take a serious look at where your life is headed. Wildlife experts in Austin, Texas, point to poisoning as the likely cause of death for some 63 birds that were found in downtown Austin. Ten city blocks were shut down while the birds were cleaned up, but officials said that the deceased birds posed no health threat to the people of Austin. Look, I think a lot of us have probably poisoned the neighbor’s annoying cat that wouldn’t stop digging in the flower bed by leaving out some antifreeze or something along those lines (well, at least a few of us have, no need to name names), but mass poisoning of some pigeons or sea gulls is twisted. Yes, they’re annoying, yes, they tend to crap on your car right after you wash it, but you still should not be poisoning them to solve the problem. Poisoning those you have gripes with is not a solid life and conflict management strategy, so next time just buy an umbrella or car cover.

- Surprise, surprise, Mark McGwire wasn’t elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in his first year on the ballot. I guess ducking and dodging questions in a public congressional hearing and looking like a big phony fraud do stick to a person. Big Roid/Red was named on just over 23 percent of ballots, leaving him a mere 52 percent short of the necessary 75 percent required for selection. Cal Ripken, a thin, non-power hitting shortstop, and Tony Gwynn, who only used performance enhancers if pastries and ice cream are considered steroids, were chosen in their first time on the ballot. McGwire’s uber-poor showing portends major problems or him not just this time, but also in the years ahead as he goes through his 15 years on the ballot. If he had gotten 50 percent or so, you could have made a decent argument that as we got some distance from the Congressional hearings debacle and the whole steroids mess, Big Roid could have a chance to make the Hall. But now, with 77 percent of voters rejecting him when he needs about that same amount to approve him, it seems very, very doubtful that he’ll ever get in. Of course, that’s the way it should be, because he’s disgraced himself and the game of baseball with his whole act and with the fact that he most definitely took ‘roids.

- For the sake of USC football fans (and who isn't concerned about the well being of rich, upper class, snobbish SoCal natives with the Blackberries, Botox and Hummers)…..I sincerely hope that USC football coach Pete Carroll just says no to Miami Dolphins owner Wayne Huizenga. Huizenga, whose former coach and noted liar Nick Saban bolted the ‘Fins for the Alabama job, is coming after Carroll to be his next coach, even going as far to take his private jet down to Costa Rica, where Carroll is on vacation. Actually, I hope Carroll says no for his own sake too. Sports “experts” and commentators talk about the NFL like it’s the be all, end all of sports, that it’s the highest level and that any successful college coach will eventually seek an NFL job because it’s what they all aspire to. In my view, it’s an apples to oranges comparison, because college and pro football are two separate and distinctly different entities. Pro coaches are hired and fired at will, given one or maybe two years to succeed and expected to work 20 hour days and sleep in their offices. College coaches work long hours too, but not as extreme. A guy like Carroll, who has achieved great success at the college level, doesn’t have to kill himself with work. He can enjoy life, actually spend time with his family and be at a place where he’s universally loved and revered. Basically, he could hold that job for the rest of his life if he wanted. USC is an established program, and top players flock there almost without being asked. In college, Carroll has the hammer: the players are there because they’ve been given a scholarship by him, and he controls playing time so he’s the final authority. In the NFL, players sign massive contracts and so the owners paying them expect that they will play and produce, and the players are out for their own stats and gain. Most of the time, they couldn’t care less who the coach is or for his well being. Stay in college Pete, it’s a better gig and how are you going to beat coaching in balmy SoCal, being a perennial national title contender and having an up close view of the USC Song Girls at every home game?

Is the Sudan part of New Mexico? The N.M. governor thinks so......

- Thanks for nothing, The Journal of Pediatrics. This pioneering publication has unearthed stunning news that preteen girls are at a higher risk of becoming fat. One, who would have guessed that those in the 9-12 age bracket are at risk for weight gain? Stunning, since that tends to be a time when kids, um, grow a whole heck of a lot. But two, have these researches stepped outside of a lab recently? Have they not seen people in every age group, race and from both sexes become incredibly fat? People from coast to coast need to drop major pounds, and people plump up at varying ages, so I think we ought to just expand our study of obesity beyond a four-year period in the lives of young girls. What’s next, are you going to tell me that girls between the ages of 12-17 are more likely to rack up massive cell phone minutes than the rest of the population? Well done, Journal of Pediatrics, I never tire of people telling me things that everyone with a brain already knows.

- When a state elects a governor and pays the salary of that governor, would it be terribly unreasonable to, I don’t know, expect that individual to actually govern his or her state? New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson seems to be under the impression that the Sudan is one of the legislative districts in his state, because otherwise, how do you explain his visiting the African nation on some sort of peace mission? Bill, many of us are concerned about the Darfur region, and I’m sure Bono will be doing many interviews about it, but you, my main man, are the governor of New Mexico. None of your state’s problems with economy, education, infrastructure or taxes are in any way related to Sudan. I know you want to run for president in 2008, which is cool, but in the mean time, how’s about you stay in New Mexico and try to do the job you were actually elected to do, not the one you hope to be elected to next year. Besides, why exactly would Sudanese officials be concerned with what the governor of one of our nation’s less significant states has to say about their own civil conflict? Ugly American, party of one please.

- Go away and stay away. That’s the message Bill Parcells should heed as he debates whether to return as the coach of the Dallas Cowboys in 2007. Parcells has become a coaching liability, a guy who is more of a sideshow act and distraction than an actual benefit to his team. His main value is to those looking for rude, curt and sarcastic comments from his press conferences and to see if he can act like more of an ass today than he did yesterday. The Cowboys weren't well coached this season, and their offense, especially inside the 10-yard-line, was more predictable than seeing a movie that you’ve watched a couple hundred times. Even blind, deaf, mute, illiterate coma patients who’d never seen a football game in their life knew that Parcells was going to call a running play on every snap once he got within ten yards of the end zone. He couldn’t even coach his team past the first round of the playoffs in a less than mediocre NFC, and Dallas would be taking a huge step back if they have the Tuna back on the sidelines next season.

- Only in professional golf……the PGA Tour opened its 2007 season this past weekend, and for finishing dead last in the field with a score of 20-over-par, golfer Ben Curtis (a Kent State alum finishing dead last, not at all surprising) still received $51,000. Most of America doesn’t care about golf, and those who follow it casually still only focus on the four major tournaments (Masters, U.S. Open, British Open, PGA Championship), but these guys still rake in tons of cash. There are less than five golfers that a casual , non-golf sports fan could pick out, but sponsors throw down millions and millions to sponsor tournaments? Golf is alright, fun to play every now and then, but it’s a ridiculous paradox to have such a peripheral sport in this country pay out such ridiculous amounts of money to guys who don’t even win the tournaments, let alone those who finish in last place. Oh, and of course this particular tournament was in Hawaii, and what a burden to have to play golf in Hawaii……..

- I can't decide if the following is a “We’re desperate for programming,” thing, a “We’re psychotically addicted to Ohio State and can't possibly turn out thoughts to anything else,’ thing, or just a “We’re incredibly stupid and devoid of any original thoughts,” thing, so help me decide: Cleveland radio station WKNR-AM, a sports station, has not once, but twice in this young new year rebroadcast (yes, rebroadcast) the Ohio State-Michigan football game. I know people love their football and their Buckeyes (some people to a scary level), but I think once on TV or radio is enough. What kind of loser listens to or watches the game live, then listens to not one, but two rebroadcasts of the same game on radio? The outcome isn't going to change, people. See, this is what happens when you have two damn months in between OSU’s last regular season game and their bowl game, you have idiotic radio stations trying to feed their Buckeyes jones by twice replaying a game that has already happened. Furthermore, WKNR preempted its best daily show, the M-F Jim Rome Show, for this rehashed OSU crap. As many things as I love about sports, one thing I hate is when coverage for, or things related to a sporting event are so over-promoted and shoved down your throat that you begin to hate that even because of it. Don’t ruin an exciting title game by overdosing everyone on regurgitations of Buckeye games that have already been played, morons.

Sunday fun

- I haven't mentioned it yet this year, but just so you know that it hasn’t changed: George W. Bush is still a moron, just as stupid in 2007 as he was in 2006. His great new plan for Iraq calls for……..yup, you guessed it, more troops! We keep sending more and more, and the rate at which they are being killed is increasing, so this isn't at all a formula for disaster - oh, wait, it is. Our Commander in Chief will keep on ignoring the obvious solution, admitting the whole Iraq invasion was a mistake and withdrawing all of our troops immediately so the Iraqis can figure this mess out for themselves. On Wednesday, W. will address the nation, and of course that means while all of the networks put his speech on, I’ll be finding a college basketball game to watch instead. But his new plan puts him directly in confrontation with the Democratic-led Congress, so we can hold out hope that some Democratic senators and representatives will attend the speech, heckle W. and throw flares and rocks at him like Euro soccer hooligans at a big EPL match. Well, at least that’s my dream. Hank Clinton can even come from stage right and clothesline W., then grab the mic, WWE-style, and declare, “That’s right, b*tch, I’m comin’ for your seat in the Oval Office!”

- Speaking of our (un)beloved and mentally challenged leader….W. is claiming that a new federal law gives him the right to read any letter he wants when that letter is sent via U.S. mail. I haven't read the law itself, so I can't comment on whether that’s true or not, but let’s assume that the worst case scenario is true and that the Prez has the right to be nosy and read your letter if he wants. How can you possibly combat this? Simple, actually: make sure that you write letters only using words with more than one syllable. Multi-syllabic words will absolutely confuse the hell out of that doofus, and if you can work in some three and four syllable words, he’ll need a bottle of Excedrin just to cope with the headache he’ll have from trying to read your letter. “Com-, com-, com-……….aww, Cheney, ‘git in here and tell me what this letter says, I can't read this word!” Stick to things you can figure out, W, namely trying to fish the prize out of your box of Cracker Jacks.

- Worst off season move in Major League Baseball goes to…..the Arizona Diamondbacks. The off season isn't over yet, but the race for this award is. The D-Backs not only traded for a 42-year-old lefty who’s steadily breaking down, both physically and mentally, but they extended his deal by two years and $26 million, further compounding their error. Giving the Yankees three good prospects for him is even worse. This looks a lot like a desperate grab by Arizona for their glory days, when they smacked down the Yanks in the 2001 World Series with Big Unit and Schilling leading the rotation. I know the National League West is very mediocre and you think that adding any semblance of talent at all will give you a shot, ‘Zona, but this was a bad move at a bad time. Remember, in baseball, contracts are guaranteed, so you can't just cut Johnson and save millions when he falls apart.

- Well, it’s certainly good to be seeing some benefits from our efforts to fight the good fight in Afghanistan. By that, of course, I am referring to an insurgence of Afghan heroin into the U.S. following our toppling of the country’s Taliban regime five years ago. Nearly 90 percent of the world’s heroin is made from poppies in Afghanistan, and while the percentage of heroin in the U.S. is still overwhelmingly from South America, South America’s percentage has dropped 19 percent in recent years as the amount coming from Afghanistan has risen. The Drug Enforcement Agency maintains that Afghan heroin isn't becoming a bigger problem, and I for one am stunned to see an official in a government agency during the W. administration refuse to admit an obvious problem. So we liberate Afghanistan, we get more heroin from them, we invade Iraq to protect our Middle East oil interests……who are we going to invade next, Japan or Taiwan so we can get cheaper, better electronics and technology?

- When did a field goal or extra point become the most difficult play in football? In a three week span, the Cincinnati Bengals botched an extra point to lose a game in Denver, a field goal to lose a game that would have put them in the playoffs a week later, then the Dallas Cowboys botch an easy field goal attempt that would have won their first round playoff game in Seattle. The first Cincy botch and the Dallas misfire both came on the snap and hold of the ball, not the actual kick. But how players can't execute one of the most simple, elemental plays in the game is a must, and if you can't get it done, you don’t deserve to be in the playoffs or to win in the playoffs. Tony Romo has been slowly sinking the Cowboys’ ship for weeks with his declining play and abundant turnovers, but mishandling the field goal snap and not being able to recover was the final dagger in a disappointing season for Bill Parcells and the ‘Boys.

- Chart news for music after one week of 2007: despite wearing the fake mustache/fake nose/big plastic glasses disguise, changing address, phone number, email and fax number and filing for a restraining order, we have been unable to keep crappy music from following us into the new year. How do I know that? The year began with a week in which Justin Timberlake, the weasel-voiced former man band star, still with a Top 10 album. Fergie, the skank, synthesized, faux-tough girl whose video features human-sized candy canes and lollipops, has the second ranked single on the charts. And former American Karaoke, er, Idol contestant (she may have won, I don’t know if she did, nor do I care) Fantasia (and by the way, only famous people with actual talent and more of a list of accomplishments than being on some hack reality show are allowed to go with the one name only) is coming out with a second album. I know you get an automatic record deal if you win that stupid show, so you’re guaranteed one album, but handing a second one to any of those losers shows that there are many, many things wrong with this world of ours.

Big hogs, athletes + guns and an Oops! by the Army

- Athletes, guns, shootings and trials. They’re no longer limited to American athletes or American soil, if they ever were. Chicago White Sox shortstop Juan Uribe informed the club that he may miss the entire 2007 because a judge in his native Dominican Republic has ordered his presence at twice monthly court hearings in a shooting case that he’s involved in. Uribe apparently feels he can’t fly to the hearing, fly back and still be able to play for the Sox twice a month, but the team has already said it expects him to be at spring training when it starts in February. Right now I’m going to go out on a limb and say that there will be athlete-gun-incident-outside-of-a-nightclub stories on at least 75 percent of the days this year. We’re off to that kind of start, and things aren't getting any better.

- Tack another one on the “List of Things You Just Can't Apologize For,” that being the Army sending letters to 275 officers killed or severely wounded in action, urging them to re-enlist. Because having military higher ups appear at your door in the middle of the night to inform you that your loved one has been killed in action isn't bad enough, the Army now can't pay enough attention to its communications to prevent those same families from receiving a letter urging their deceased family member to re-enlist. This goes right up there with Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines literally losing a passenger on his honeymoon cruise and settling for $1 million and NATO apologizing for killing too many civilians while fighting insurgents in Afghanistan. Sorry, people, but sometimes you just can't say sorry and make it all better, especially in situations like this. Still, it’s a nice thought, for whatever that’s worth……

- Now I know why so many rednecks love their guns…..especially those residing in Georgia. All of you have my blessing to carry your piece with you based on the fact that an 1,100-pound hog was killed by hunter William Coursey in Fayetteville, Ga. Coursey actually loaded the big pig up and took it to a highway truck weighing station to see how much it weighed. First off, how many guys do you need to lift that into the back of your truck? And when they boast about the payload capacity in a truck, why don’t they ever show someone hauling a half-ton hog as opposed to a load of rocks or lumber? Mrs. Coursey had better find as many recipes for pork and bacon as possible and order an industrial sized meat freezer, because I have a feeling this family will be eating that pig for the next couple years. Bacon, pork chops, pork tenderloin, pig’s feet, pork on a stick, the possibilities are endless. And if I ever happen to be traveling through Georgia, I plan to do so with a shotgun in my hands in case that massive hog has an angry brother still lurking around.

- The Hispanic version of People magazine has named Jennifer Lopez to its list of 100 Most Influential People in the Hispanic community. No word on whether J-Lo’s ass made the list as well or if it was included with the rest of her, but that ghetto booty is a power of its own. It’s made her more money than all of her other parts combined, and in most any movie she’s in, 100% of straight guys would be fine with that booty being the only part of Lopez ever shown on screen. And honestly, how nice is it that this woman is focusing on her acting and not continuing the charade that has been her musical career? She has no musical talent other than shaking her ass in music videos, so she can stop pretending and just focus on what she does best. After all, doing so landed her in another Top 100, so it’s all good.

- Whoops! That wasn’t supposed to happen. The organizers of the 2010 Winter Olympics in beautiful Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada may want to find a new engineer for their venues, because the one they used initially designed a roof that collapsed under the weight of some wet, heavy sleet this weekend. Since these will be the Winter Olympics, and it is Canada, I’m going to assume there may be more snow, sleet and inclement weather during the games, so having the roof of the stadium where the opening ceremonies will take place collapse might be a big problem. B.P. Place was empty this time, but when tens of thousands of people pack the place for the Games, you’re going to want to have a sturdy, reliable roof on the place.

Five Friday thoughts

- Two NFL teams finished with three or fewer wins this season. Yet the one that had only two victories, the Oakland Raiders, seem to have more hope for success in the near future as opposed to the team with three wins, the Detroit Lions. Why, you ask? It’s not because the Raiders have the top pick and the Lions the second pick in this April’s draft. No, it’s because when a guy is blatantly incompetent in a management position, the Raiders actually have the sense to fire that individual, while the Lions keep giving the guy more chances. Art Shell was an abominable failure in his second stint as Raiders coach, going 2-14 this year. he looked comatose and mannequin-like most of the time, the same blank expression and motionless visage regardless of the game situation. It was almost as if he were one of those freaky giant puppets at Chuck-E-Cheese and someone forgot to plug him in. But at least the Raiders fired Shell on Thursday, while the Lions are giving their joke of a general manager Matt Millen a seventh season at the helm despite awful draft, bad free agent signings and general incompetence. The Lions will almost certainly botch their #2 pick in the draft, and while the Raiders don’t have a stellar track record, they still have a better shot than the Lions to get it right. Brace yourselves for more years of mediocrity to come, Lions fans…..although by now, you should all be very used to it.

- Vegas has been “the place” to go for gambling, bachelor parties and spring break trips in the past, but recently so many people go to Vegas as there’s been so much emphasis on making it family friendly and cleaning things up that LV has become almost passé to many people, they’ve moved on to the next popular destination. But Vegas is going to have one big thing going for it very soon; Celine Dion is no longer going to be performing there. So unless you’re gay or a middle aged woman, that is great news. Women can no longer drag their husbands, fiancés and boyfriends to the show, featuring some of the most boring, uninteresting music on the face of the earth. I mean, has Dion even done any new material lately? Because ever since her terrible song in the abomination that was Titanic, no one in the music world mentions her or gives a crap what she does. She’s had a five year run in LV, and although that’s kept her from foisting her music on the rest of us, it’s been one more thing in the “con” column for deciding whether Vegas is the right place for a trip. No word on what Caesar’s Palace is going to do with the special theater they built just for Celine’s show, but it couldn’t possibly be a show I’d want to see less than I’d ever wanna see Celine Dion.

- People hate America, and we keep giving them more reasons to do so. We’re intent on competing in the most idiotic, pointless “contests”, dueling one another in feats of sloth, dishonesty and sheer gluttony. We’ve got a dam competitive eating federation, for crying out loud. Now, we have Jason Pisarik a lazy schlub who outlasted other lazy schlubs for the title of Ultimate Couch Potato at an event held at the ESPN Zone in Chicago. Pisarik, who apparently has no friends, no girlfriend, no hobbies and no life, spent 39 hours and 55 minutes watching sports on a couch at the ESPN Zone and won a prize package for his efforts, as well as another decade with no dating prospects. To top it off, dude is an accountant, and if that doesn’t scream athletic, well-rounded stud, then I don’t know what does. Everyone enjoys relaxing and many enjoy watching sports and lying on their couch to do so, but I think 12-13 hours of football, with meal and restroom breaks, on New Year’s Day with all of the college football bowl games is as far as you need to take it. Best of luck with your life, Jason Pisarik, because by the looks of it, you need all the help you can get.

- What’s a fair price to pay for losing a person? I mean, literally losing a human being, as in having them disappear the same way your luggage might on a cross-country flight or a package could get lost in the mail? Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines has answered that question, reaching a $1 million settlement with the wife and family of George Allen Smith IV, a 26-year-old man that vanished from a Royal Caribbean cruise ship in the Mediterranean on his frakkin’ honeymoon. That’s one of the all time worst times to vanish, not that there’s a good one. But you’ve just gotten married, you’re looking forward to a new life with your new bride, and poof, you disappear. Personally, based on the amount of the settlement, there had to be some mitigating circumstances, because if you knew for sure that a person’s disappearance was directly attributable to a travel entity’s error, I’d be thinking eight-figure settlement, easy. You really can't replace a person, although Royal Caribbean apparently feels like $1 million is a close approximation.

- Join me in feeling terrible for former MLB slugger and roid user Mark McGwire, who amazingly (or not) appears a lock to miss induction into the Hall of Fame on this year’s ballot. Thankfully, a majority of voters look to be steering clear of being culpable in one of the biggest atrocities in baseball history, voting a guy who took performance enhancing drugs to fuel a dwindling career and thus broke numerous home run records. A player has to be listed on at least 75 percent of ballots cast to get inducted, and an early straw poll showed that only 29 percent of those surveyed would vote for Big Roid, er, Red. Save the “Oh, he never tested positive, you can't prove anything,” line of reasoning. The guy hemmed, hawed and danced around answering all steroid questions in a Congressional hearing, once had a bottle of a steroid precursor in his locker in plain view and added copious amounts of muscle mass late in his career. We all have enough evidence to decide, because this isn't a court of law. We don’t need the smoking gun/syringe, a positive test or anything else. Reading the clues we already have, if you don’t think McGwire took steroids, you’re either on his personal payroll or you’re a member of his immediate family. Heck, even those people probably believe he ‘roided up, they just wouldn’t admit it publicly. Let’s all continue pulling for McGwire’s sustained rejection, year after year, for HOF induction. He’s a borderline candidate based on stats alone, so all the other crap circling around his oversized head makes him a definite no, now and forever.

Some fresh Thursday anger and indignation

- The right guy won this year’s NFL MVP award, period. LaDanian Tomlinson was the best player, the most valuable to his team, whatever criteria you want to use. Some were campaigning for Drew Brees because he had such a good season for a Saints team playing in the still hurricane-ravaged city of New Orleans, and that is flat-out erroneous thinking. Yes, Brees was amazing in recovering from shoulder surgery, he did lead the Saints to the playoffs and he was an important influence in helping New Orleans continue its recovery, but sympathy for the Gulf Coast over being victims of a deadly hurricane should not vault a player from that area up the MVP ballot. Tomlinson set several NFL records this season and was the league’s most valuable player beyond any doubt. I can think of a dozen quarterbacks with whom the Saints would have done just as well, but I can't think of a single running back in the NFL who could have completely approximated what LT brought to the San Diego Chargers this year.

- In a classic case of barking up the wrong tree, University of Florida students have been vociferously lobbying the school’s administration to cancel all classes on Monday and Tuesday in conjunction with Monday night’s college football national title game, where the Gators will play Ohio State. Predictably, the school balked at the request and was only willing to move the add/drop date back four days so that if students didn’t go to class and got too far behind, they had more time to drop. Having gone to college, rather successfully, I might add, let me throw some hints out to UF students: 1) since classes tend to run on a MWF or T-TH setup, if you don’t go on both days, you’re only going to miss one class from each course you are taking, not two, 2) it’s the friggin’ first day of the semester, are you really going to miss that much? At least a few profs just hand out the syllabus, give an overview of the course, tell you to buy the textbook and let you go, and 3) you would be better off going to the profs themselves and telling them that none of you are going to show up, so don’t bother having class. Besides, are you all going to be hammered out of your minds both before and after the game? Kickoff is at 8:30 p.m. Monday, so theoretically you could go to your Monday classes, most of which end by early afternoon, and still have the keg tapped and ready to go before the game. Stop being such a bunch of crybabies, suck it up and do what you need to do. Go to class those two days or don’t go, but stop b*tching about it.

- Want musical equipment, costumes and instruments from a cocaine-using, thug-marrying, bill paying delinquent pop diva? If you’re like me, the answer is no. But if you aren't like me, then perhaps you would be interested in an upcoming auction to be held by a New Jersey storage facility where Whitney Houston stored many of her above-mentioned items. Seems that paying for drugs for herself and ex-husband Bobby Brown, plus bailing him out of jail over and over again, put a drain on Whit’s finances, to the point that she stopped paying Speed of Sound Storage in 2005 and now owes them more than $200.000 in back payments. The amazing thing, though, is that any profits from the auction that go above the amount owed to Speed of Sound go to Houston’s company, which rented the storage space. In other words, once more than $200,000 is brought in, those purchasing items will effectively be funding Houston’s drug habit, which she claims is now history, which of course few actually believe.

- Short and sweet: FOX has canceled The O.C., and I’m pissed. The show has actually gotten better this season, yet the network is pulling the plug and the final episode will air on Feb. 22. Rumors have been bandied about whereby the CW network might pick up the show for next season, but at this point, there’s no substantiation for those rumors. It’s just funny to see so many crappy shows on FOX get to stay, yet this good show goes; a show, I might add, that has been jerked around from one night to another, one time slot to another, and yet still has a loyal following. Ratings have dipped this year, and of course the actual quality of a show has nothing to do with it staying on the air (see Ed, Everwood, etc.), because the networks only care about ratings, which equal advertising dollars. So if the best possible scenario comes to fruition, we’ll be seeing The O.C. on the CW this fall, but if not, we can all say farewell to the show far too soon.

- Oops, sorry we killed so many people. That’s what NATO is saying about its role in the ongoing fight against insurgent groups in Afghanistan, specifically during the 2006 calendar year. NATO admitted Wednesday that it killed too many Afghan civilians in fighting last year against Taliban rebels, but rest assured, world, the organization promises to change that unfortunate reality in 2007. Well, I’m sure the “my bad” defense will help ease the pain of everyone who had a friend or family member killed in the fighting. Would this also work for the U.S. in terms of apologizing that so many Japanese were killed and badly wounded by the bomb we dropped on Hiroshima? Can all overzealous mass killings just be apologized away? Call me crazy, but I just don’t think the world works that way; it never has and it’s not likely to….ever.

- At least one part of Major League Baseball was juiced in 1998, and science has proven that it was….the baseballs. While we can't prove that the players (Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa pictures to be inserted here) were on ‘roids because there was no formal testing (other than looking at the hundred or so pounds of muscle they each added and the increasing size of their heads), scientific research firm Universal Medical Systems, Inc. has done CT scans on the baseball McGwire hit for his 70^th home run and found it to definitively have a synthetic layer added around the core. In other words, it’s a sort of super ball, rubberized ball that had an extra layer of oomph under the cover. Of course, in 1998, baseball was still fighting back from the devastating 1994 strike, so juicing the balls and looking the other way as players juiced up (allegedly) would theoretically boost home runs, scoring and excitement, things that fans tend to love. Question is now, was there anything about baseball in 1998 that wasn’t fake or enhanced? At least tell me that you didn’t spike the ballpark sodas or deliver corked bats to all the players, MLB. Yikes……..

Liar, liar, $40 million contract on fire

- Yesterday I wrote about a contest to find the world’s best liar. Well, I think we’ve found him and he wasn’t even in the contest. Your best liar in the world is……..Nick Saban, head coach of…..hang on, he just took a new job…..head coach of…….nope, left that new job for another one…….ok, for the time being, it looks like he’s landed with…..aww, screw it. Saban is a coaching nomad who lies through his teeth habitually, and his latest jump is from the Miami Dolphins, who he coached to a last place finish, to the University of Alabama. How do we know he’s a liar? He spent weeks outright denying that he’d be Alabama’s next coach, even saying, “I will not be the coach at Alabama.” He said that, then two weeks later, ‘Bama offers him between $30-40 million for eight years and presto, change-o, he’s their new coach! Coaches lie and double talk all the time, so most of us figured he was lying anyhow, but that doesn’t make it any better. What I can't figure out is why Dolphins fans are so pissed. The ‘Fins went 8-8 last year and fell to 6-10 this season and didn’t make the playoffs in either year. Him leaving is good for your team, not bad. It’s akin to having bad girlfriend, one that you’re not happy with and who does just enough that you can't make a slam dunk argument for getting rid of her. Yet things keep getting worse and worse, and finally, it ends. Yeah, it sucks getting dumped, but it’s not like you were happy or the relationship was going great. You can move on to something better and that girlfriend can go on with her crazy act somewhere else.

- News flash: the IRS gets angry when you don’t pay your taxes. Shocking, I know. But apparently that memo never got to former Major League pitcher Rollie Fingers, who was popped by the feds for $1.4 million in unpaid taxes. The Hall of Fame hurler was trying to evade his taxes the way his pitches used to evade the bats of MLB hitters, but he has gone the way of MC Hammer and Wesley Snipes, both of whom were clipped by the IRS for the same crime. Fortunately for Fingers, his $1.4 million is significantly less than the $12 million Snipes is on the hook for, but I’m guessing that Rollie doesn’t exactly have $1.4 million in change under his couch cushions. So for all of you athletes, entertainers and wealthy citizens out there (yes, you included, naked guy Richard Hatch, still trying to gravy train off of your Survivor win), pay your taxes. You can murder people and get away with it (O.J., allegedly), you can drink and drive and get about a dozen second chances, you can even start a war with no real reason or plan (yes, you W.) and not be held accountable, but if you try to skip out on paying your taxes, the feds will find you and they will bring you down.

- Good news. We’ve found out where all of the thin women in America have gone. If you’ve been living in the same country I’ve been in, then you undoubtedly see way too many overweight women (men and children too) and not nearly enough people on the healthy side of the obesity line. Well, apparently many of those thin individuals are in New York, where the city’s transit system is experiencing problems because thin women on crash diets keep fainting or feeling weak on the subways and trains. Five women were treated for such problems in December alone, and such incidents are causing regular delays for travelers. A MTA emergency medical technician summed it up by saying, “You have women trying to get their bodies tight for summer and they won't eat.” Isn't there a healthy balance of some sort, where they could eat, say one or two small meals a day and exercise? And wouldn’t that plan translate to the rest of our country so we wouldn’t have to be bombarded with sights of obscenely fat people and have to put up with them spilling over the confines of their own airplane or stadium seats and into your seating area? You’re telling me there’s nothing we can do about this?

- Things were going so well for the Cincinnati Bengals in the 2006 season. They’d been putting together a solid, consistent effort since training camp, with one player after another stepping up and getting it done. A season that included the league’s toughest schedule still found them in great position at the year’s final weeks came near. But the team fell apart at the end, and the year ended with a stunning disappointment. And no, I’m not talking about the missed field goal and subsequent overtime loss to the Steelers that kept the Bengals out of the playoffs, nor the botched extra point that kept them from tying a game in Denver the previous week. No, I’m referring to the fact that the team had its eighth player arrested more than a month ago, and had several weeks left in the season to reach double digits in arrests for the year, yet they failed. They could have put that record out of reach to the point where it would never even be challenged, yet they couldn’t get it done. Call it a lack of focus, or an infusion of discipline and self-control at the worst possible time, but either way, it’s a staggering blow. For a team that had one guy (Chris Henry) arrested four separate times during the season, a final month with zero arrests is unconscionable. Oh yeah, they also crapped out on the field and should have made the playoffs too.

- How could you not love a job where, no matter how poorly you performed, you just couldn’t get fired? The Seinfeld episode where George tries to get fired from the New York Yankees so he can take a job as scouting director for the Mets summed it up best. George told off the owner, destroyed historic Yankee memorabilia, “streaked” in a flesh-colored body suit during a game, but none of it could get him fired. Ultimately, he tied the Yanks’ most recent World Series trophy to a rope, tethered it to his car and dragged the trophy around the parking lot, destroying the trophy while yelling denigrating remarks about the Yankees into a bull horn. Still, he can't get himself fired…..well, Detroit Lions general manager Matt Millen must be a big Seinfeld fan and a fan of that episode in particular. Millen is a colossal failure, with the team sporting a 24-72 record in his six seasons at the helm (and average of 4-12), finishing last in their division in four of the six seasons. At one point, he drafted wide receivers with the team’s first round draft pick in three consecutive years even though the team had glaring needs at every other position on the roster. Now, one of those receivers isn't even in the NFL, another was inactive for almost the entire season and only one remains with the team, and even he has yet to make a Pro Bowl. Fans have twice staged walkouts during games to protest his reign as GM and “Fire Millen” has been the Lions’ fan mantra for the past three or four years. Yet owner Williams Clay Ford announced that Millen will be back for the 2007-08 season, following a spectacularly bad 3-13 campaign this season. I’m starting to wonder if there’s something, anything, that Millen could do to get fired. Maybe if he lit Ford Field on fire and shot up with heroin on national TV………..even that might not work.

- All of your education problems are solved, South Africa, so you can move on to other, more pressing matters. The Oprah Winfrey Academy for Girls has opened in a small town south of Johannesburg, and Winfrey promises it will be a place for girls from disadvantaged backgrounds to better themselves and hopefully change their country for the better. On a serious note, it’s a good thing to help people, especially those most in need, but when did it become passé to help people in your own country? Can no one adopt an American baby or build a charter school for American kids from disadvantaged backgrounds? And at the dedication ceremony, did Oprah have all the kids stand up and then yell to them, “And you get a school! And you get a school! And you, and you, and you, and you, you all get a school!” Hopefully this works out better for the kids than it did for the audience members she gave cars to, who then had to pay a hefty sales tax and other fees for their “free” cars. Otherwise, they can look forward to pay-to-play sports and having to buy their own textbooks and desks.

- I sincerely wish Pat Robertson would just shut up. It’s people like Pat who give a bad rap to faith and religion in general. They make others who call themselves Christians or people of faith look like whack jobs by association simply because they can't keep their mouths shut or prevent idiotic things from flying out of their pie holes. This time, Robertson says God has told him that a terrorist attack on the U.S. in 2007 will result in massive killing. Rest assured though, that God didn’t specifically tell Robertson that it will be a nuclear attack, although that’s what the good reverend suspects. Nothing like inciting fear of a nuclear attack and claiming God told you about it……….did God also tell you when and where it would happen, or how to prevent it? Call me nutty, Pat, but the God I know doesn’t inform us of nuclear attacks through divine messages. And if you have some magic premonition power through the Lord himself, can we also look forward to you predicting the winner of next year’s World Series or the winning Powerball numbers for the next drawing? Keep these things to yourself, Pat, so that people don’t have as many negative stereotypes and misconceptions about Christianity than they already do.

Auspicious beginning for 2007

- What a terrible way to start off a new year, with news of a pro athlete being senselessly killed in a drive by shooting outside of a nightclub. But when Day Two of that same new year includes another athlete being killed in another fight outside of another nightclub, 2007 starts to look like a pretty crappy year. First, Denver Broncos defensive back Darrent Williams was gunned down inside of a rented limo outside a Denver nightclub on New Year’s Day morning. There was a fight inside the club between members of Williams’ crew and another group of patrons, and when they left, a white SUV pulled up beside Williams’ group’s rented limo and starting firing off rounds, killing Williams and injuring two other people. On January 2, the disturbing trend continued when professional boxer Kemal Kolenovic was killed outside of a Bronx nightclub after a dispute with some other clubbers that centered on ethnicity. The offended party drove his or her SUV up onto the sidewalk and ran over Kolenovic, killing him and making all of us wonder 1) why athletes keep going to clubs when it seems like there’s a high probability that they might get killed or arrested, and 2) how bad our world is really getting. Here’s hoping that we start having days in 2007 when athletes aren’t murdered outside of nightclubs.

- This shouldn’t be surprising when guys are creating giant rubber bands balls and thousands of people are hula-hooping in unison in an attempt to set world records and grab for some publicity, but would someone, anyone, please tell me why the hell we have a World Championship of Liars? Yes, that’s right, more than 300 losers gathered recently in Burlington, Wisconsin to see who could tell the best or biggest lie. What the criteria were, I don’t know, nor do I need to know. But if you want to know some particulars, here they are: some loser was declared the champion, while the other 299 losers, well, lost. They all wasted their time doing something lame in an attempt to get some glory, and now they can all go back to their normal lives and practicing for next year’s contest. Congratulations, idiots, for finding new and increasingly pointless ways to waste your time and energy.

- Residents of New Orleans have to be thrilled as they continue to go about rebuilding their still hurricane-ravaged city to find out that in addition to being a magnet for hurricanes, the Big Easy is also sinking and sliding right into the ocean. Now to be truthful, the sinking part of the equation has long been known, as evidenced by severely potholed streets and wobbly porches and floors in many buildings. But scientists researching the geography of the area now cheerfully report that New Orleans is also sliding laterally into the Gulf, meaning that sooner or later, water is going to be the demise of the city, either via natural disaster or simple geographical realities. What better incentive to rebuild your badly damaged city than the realization that eventually it’s going to slide or sink right into the ocean.

- Reason #53 to avoid flying on United Airlines: it was recently revealed that last fall, United employees, among them several pilots, reported seeing some type of UFO at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport. These misguided souls claim the craft was saucer shaped, had no lights and hovered over the terminal for a bit before shooting up through the clouds. The FAA dismissed the claims as a weather phenomenon, but they may be ignoring the real culprit: one too many stops to the airport bar. A quick check of the blood-alcohol content for those same United employees might have shown some interesting numbers. A United supervisor even called the control tower, asking if they had seen a spinning, disc shaped object. What I’m going to want to see, actually, is a sobriety test for all United pilots and a mental health check before I board one of their planes. Whether they’re sauced or just delusional, I don’t want my pilot flipping out because he or she thinks they see a UFO as we prepare for landing. To paraphrase Ron Burgundy, “Hey United employees, you might want to take a break, just stop talking for awhile, champ.”

- Two of the best, most exciting college football games I’ve seen, ever, have come in the past week and both were bowl games that had no bearing on the national title whatsoever. The Boise State win over Oklahoma was breathtaking, an unbelievable twisty, turny thriller that you just couldn’t stop watching, even if it was nearly 1 a.m. on the East Coast. Boise State, disrespected team from the WAC, BCS-crasher that no one felt belonged, rushing out to a 28-10 lead, then seeing Oklahoma rally to tie on a last-minute drive with a two point conversion try twice prolonged by penalty, then having Oklahoma return an interception for a touchdown less than 15 seconds later to go up 35-28…….hang on, almost done…..then to have Boise State win on a hook and lateral play with time running out to tie it, that alone was amazing. But then to have BSU give up a first play TD to Oklahoma in the first overtime, march down and have a former walk-on, wide receiver/running back hybrid throw a fourth down TD pass while their QB split out as a receiver, followed by the Statue of Liberty misdirection play for the winning two-point conversion in a 43-42 win…..it’s still exciting just to write about it, let alone watch it. It’s almost enough to make you forget about the 44-41 Texas Tech win in the Insight Bowl, but that game also is too good to forget. Tech rallied from a 31-point deficit, the biggest rally in any bowl game ever, and won in two overtimes. The collapse by their opponent, the Minnesota Golden Gophers, was enough to cost UM coach Glen Mason his job. What a bowl season, and oh yeah, we’re not even to the national championship game yet.

- Since our society loves projecting blame onto everyone but people who are responsible for their own choices…….researchers at the University of Minnesota have found that…..their football coach sucks. No, kidding, that problem has been addressed already. The researchers claim, actually, to have found that diet articles in magazines lead to eating disorders in teenage girls. No, they’re not referring to the pictures of ultra-thin models in those same magazines, although critics have beaten that blame horse nearly to death as well in trying to assign blame for eating disorders amongst young women. But this study suggests that articles about how to “get the perfect body” and similar headlines can then cause eating disorders and other unhealthy weight loss behavior in girls years down the road. Right, because it can't possibly be that they and their parents have failed to pay attention to and monitor possibly unhealthy eating habits and weight loss behavior. It couldn’t be because peers have teased them about their weight and it couldn’t possibly be because they actually are overweight. It may seem insensitive to be sarcastic about eating disorders; that’s not my beef. They are a real, significant problem. However, trying to assign blame to magazine articles a girl may have read four years ago is a misguided attempt to point the finger at someone else.