A stupid Aussie farmer, Mike Vick turns my stomach again and R. Seacrest needs to be taken out right now.....

- When your movie is billed in promos as being from the guy who brought you Knocked Up, you’re starting the race with one major strike against you. In spite of that, everything I saw leading up to the release of Superbad had me excited to go see what looked like a genuinely funny, goofy movie. And no, it wasn’t residual good karma from one of the movie’s stars, Michael Cera (Evan) appearing in an episode of one of my all-time favorite TV shows, Veronica Mars. (I still HATE you for canceling it, Dawn Ostroff and the CW.) The best way to sum up Superbad is to say that it has all of the humor and laughs that good teen comedies have without the constant, lowest-common-denominator, bathroom humor that drags those same movies down into the mud. It’s a comedy with at least a modicum of intelligence, and for that reason it’s a really good movie. Ok, so there is a fair amount of that crude, crass humor throughout, but it’s never focused on to the detriment of the movie and the focus stays mainly on the ideas of love, relationships, friendship and being an outcast – basically, what it means to be a teenager. The plot centers on two geeks, Seth and Evan, endeavoring to move up the social ladder at their school and become the kind of guys that girls notice. Their quest for popularity leads them to volunteer to provide the beer for a party thrown by classmates, and the resulting night of theatrics, hijinks and pratfalls is at the core of the story. Without giving too much away, I’ll say that this movie proves that if you take the average elements of a teen comedy and mix in just a small amount of intelligence, creativity and sensitivity, you actually end up with a good movie.

- How apropos is it that the network promos for the CW’s (Crappy Watching) fall schedule features a theme song by one of the Pussycat Skanks? No, I’m not referring to the fact that the Skanks regularly have a new season of their series Search for the Next Skank on the CW, I’m referring to the fact that a slate chocked full of terrible shows has a theme song by one of the three worst artists in all of music right now. As this season prepares to kick off, the CW will feature all of one show I care to watch (Smallville) and one show returning at midseason that I watch but don’t love (One Tree Hill). Given the fact that just one or two years ago, the WB, one of the two networks that merged to create the CW, had seven shows I watched regularly, I’d say Dawn Ostroff and her cache of clowns (a.k.a. her advisors/underlings) are going in the wrong direction, programming-wise. Outside of the two shows I mentioned, the rest of the CW’s fall schedule is a giant pile of dog vomit and I can't think of better music to represent it than the Pussycat Skanks.

- I didn’t think I could be more repulsed by the Mick Vick story, but clearly I was wrong, my mistake. For the first time since this whole mess began several months ago, I found myself literally becoming nauseous as I listed to today’s developments in the case. Hearing about how Vick and two of his co-defendants reportedly murdered eight dogs back in April, hanging all eight dogs in the woods behind Vick’s Surrey County, Virginia property. Unfortunately, these three ass hats couldn’t even get this brutal act done quickly and effectively, so three of the dogs survived the attempted hanging. Vick and his two accomplices than took the surviving dogs and drowned them by submerging their heads in five-gallon buckets filled with water. Disgusting……just disgusting. Yes, these were dogs and not people, but to exhibit that type of brutal cruelty to any living thing shows a level of depravity that I am disheartened to even admit exists in any person. These tales of dog murdering are in statements of fact from Purnell Peace, one of Vick’s two co-defendants who agreed to plea bargains in hearings held today at the courthouse in Richmond, Va. The statements of fact are required in the plea deal and they address the various allegations that the defendant is entering a plea for. With Peace and Quanis Phillips formally agreeing to their plea deals, Vick is left alone to fight the case, although his attorneys are reportedly in negotiations with prosecutors for a plea as well.

- NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell has spoken loudly and wielded a large disciplinary stick in his first year at the helm, so I’m hoping he can do something about a big problem facing the league’s biggest event, Super Bowl XXIII. The problem, quite frankly, is FOX and its decision to make the man-blouse-wearing, teeth-bleaching, über-effeminate, girly-man host of the world’s worst karaoke contest, Ryan Seacrest, the “host” of the Super Bowl. What this tool will do as host, I don’t know, but here are a few things I do know. First, there is no one (well, perhaps Clay Aiken) who is less masculine and manly than R. Seacrest, so he has no place anywhere near any football game or any other physical competition of any sort. Make him the host of the ice skating events at the next Winter Olympics, that’s a much better match. Second, this is a blatant, shameless case of cross-promotion for American Karaoke, and I don’t need one of my favorite sporting events linked with a bunch of talentless, hack karaoke-ers in any way, shape or form. Lastly, I don’t need Seacrest ruining the broadcast with any awkward, uncomfortable and forced banter with the announcers for the game. “Gee, Joe Buck, I’m here in the stands with my man blouse and frosted tips and I don’t have any idea what’s going on in the game, but Peyton Manning sure is my Super Bowl Idol, ha ha…..” Please, someone just go ahead and plant an ax in my forehead before I have to endure that.

- Those email scams about fortunes and wealth in an obscure African nation don’t really sucker anybody into responding, do they? Clearly the answer is yes, because Australian farmer Des Gregor bit on just such a scheme and ended up being held hostage in Mali for 12 days by a gang of men who had posed as an online love interest has urged others to be careful when seeking romance on the Internet. Gregor traveled to Mali to meet what he thought was his new bride and to collect a dowry of gold bars worth $85,000. However, when he arrived, the wheat and sheep farmer was abducted by a gang of armed bandits who bound him, beat him with a machete and stole his cash and credit cards. Gregor, who returned to his home state of South Australia with a police escort late Sunday, said the men told him they would hack his limbs off with a machete unless he paid them a $85,000 ransom. The scam was stopped when Australian and Malian police, alerted by Gregor's family in Australia, tricked the kidnappers into taking Gregor to the Canadian Embassy to collect the ransom money. “It's hard to explain what I thought,” he said. “I basically was wondering what the hell was going on and then they started demanding money — then I knew things were serious. I reckon another couple of days and I wouldn't have returned," he said. "Just be careful — make sure you check everything out 100 percent." Yeah, that and don’t fly to other continents to pick up some mail-order bride you’ve never met and claim a massive dowry in the process. Let’s hope that the rest of us aren’t as incredibly stupid as you are, Des, because if we are, the world is going to come to an end very, very soon.

Me vs. Hugo Chavez, me tired of Pacman Jones and me cracking ABC for lame new shows

- Could it be? Am I finally tired of Pacman Jones and his never-ending saga of knuckle-headedness? The answer is yes, at least for today. News that Pacman is embarking on a rap career with producer and collaborator Stoagey barely registers on my radar. Pacman may have his own record label, National Street League Records in Nashville, but a lot of athletes, both current and former, have their own labels. Even more of them have tried to have musical careers, so the fact that Pacman is merely the latest to follow this trend merits a light yawn at most.

- Did someone at ABC actually speak up in a planning meeting and say, “Guys, what we really need is for someone to create a bastardized, male version of Sex and the City for our fall schedule, that’s what will really elevate us above the other networks,” or was it just a giant collective brain fart? The show I’m referring to is Big Shots, a new drama featuring retreads (not retards – I don’t think) from other old ABC series like Michael Vartan (Alias) and Dylan McDermott (The Practice) and also-rans like Christopher Titus and Joshua Molina as four privileged, wealthy, white CEO-type dudes who have a sort of boys club where they hang out together and b*tch about the problems in their lives and relationships. Of course, this show can be nothing more than a sanitized version of Carrie Bradshaw and her band of middle-aged shrews because Big Shots is on a major network instead of HBO, where most anything goes. If the idea of this show is appealing to men the same was Sex and the City did to women, I’ll say right now it’s going to fail because this isn’t the type of show that male viewers gravitate toward. If it’s supposed to appeal to women, I think it will fail because I don’t see how the lives of four spoiled, rich, middle-aged white guys (with no big-name, sex-symbol main characters – well, Vartan you could make an argument for – and no great actors among the main characters either) complaining about the women in their lives appeals to women. In short, I think this show is going to fail no matter what. Sorry, ABC, but at least it looks to be better than your sure-to-bomb new comedy-without-the-comedy series Cavemen. The initial pilot for this show had to be entirely re-shot because it was so abysmal that the network demanded a completely new episode. But no matter how many times they re-film it, it’s still going to suck big time, as polishing a turd doesn’t change the fact that it’s still a turd. It’s a show heisting its premise from a series of low-rent, tired, played, lame 30-second car insurance commercials, so what else can it do but suck? Yeah, and it was a great idea to cancel an awesome, exciting show like Traveler, ABC, because clearly you have so many great new shows on the way to replace it.

- If you’re a New York pro sports franchise and you’re not in the process of securing funding for or building a new stadium/arena, it has to be a lonely feeling for you. With the two baseball franchises in town, the Mets and Yankees, both already in the building process for their new stadiums, the two NFL franchises in the area, the Giants and Jets (who actually play and practice in New Jersey despite their monikers) have announced plans to build a $1.3 billion new stadium at the Meadowlands Sports Complex in East Rutherford, N.J. The two teams currently share a stadium at the same complex. Each team has secured financing with a major investment bank to finance its half of the stadium cost and the 82,500-seat stadium is slated to open in time for the 2010 season. As for New York’s other pro sports franchises, let me break down your respective situations. To the Rangers and Islanders of the National Hockey League, tough nuts, but no one really cares about hockey in any American city outside of Detroit, so no new arena for either of you. The NHL has a tough enough time getting games on a TV network that more than six people get, so work on that first and get back to me. Hockey is not a major sport in this country, so enjoy your current venues and be thankful that we don’t make you play your games on a frozen pond in someone’s back yard. As for the Knicks, NYC’s flailing, bumbling NBA franchise…..as soon as you stop sucking and get rid of one of the five worst executives in NBA history (Isaiah Thomas), you might have a case for a new arena. But you already play in the world’s most famous arena, Madison Square Garden, so maybe just enjoy that and don’t complain.

- Glad to see that Courtney Love is back in the spotlight, because being there seems to be the entire point of that woman’s life. After latching on to Kurt Cobain’s rising star and pushing him into the kind of famous rock-star lifestyle she so adored, Courtney squeezed as much attention as she could out of her late husband’s death. She gave interviews, released his private journals to the public and all the while sought to further her own career and the career of her band, Hole. Now Ms. Love is on the cover of the upcoming issue of Harper’s Bazaar because she’s lost a lot of weight, whoopee. Love is enthused to be down to 139 pounds and to no longer be a size 8, so that means everyone gets to hear all about it. As happy as I am when any overweight person slims down and does all of our retinas a favor, count me as one of those who don’t care or want to know about these “amazing” lifestyle changes that have helped Courtney shed the lbs.

- Fight this one, Venezuelans, fight it with every ounce of your collective strength. The reigning terror that is President Hugo Chavez is again on the offensive, and if he has his way he will be re-elected……indefinitely (BA-BA-BA-BUUUUM!…P.S. That’s my dramatic music indicating impending terror and doom)! As he opened a lengthy speech to the Venezuelan National Assembly, Chavez called for major changes to the country’s constitution as part of a series of reforms which would allow for his indefinite re-election. According to my boy Hugo, his proposed changes would affect less than 10 percent of the constitution but would bring his nation “new horizons for the new era.” Because Chavez’s political allies control the legislature, the proposed reforms are expected to be approved within a few months. Again I implore the people of Venezuela to fight this, because an oppressive, dictatorial ruler is a friend to no man…..except himself. Already this despotic tool is booting any foreigner who dares criticize his regime out of the country. Why would anyone be so naïve as to believe that he’ll be any kinder or more diplomatic to dissenting voices among his own people? Fight the power, Venezuelans, before it’s too late.

Ways to make NYC travel more expensive, Jose Offerman goes mental and a former Sopranos star takes a bad cue

- The Atlantic League is an independent baseball league where washed-up and wannabe major leaguers go in one last attempt to revive their flagging baseball careers. They go out and play for little money, make long road trips, hustle, grind and battle, all for one last shot at making it back to the majors. Either that or they go mental and start clubbing people with their bat when they’re hit by a pitch. Take former MLB all-star Jose Offerman, for example. Offerman was playing for the Long Island Ducks in an Atlantic League game against the Bridgeport Bluefish when pitcher Matt Beech dotted him with an inside pitch following Offerman’s home run off of Beech earlier in the game. No problem, right? It happens all the time in baseball, batters being hit by pitches. Sometimes the batter takes it in stride, shakes it off and heads to first base. Occasionally, there’s some sort of beanball war or bad blood going on between the two teams and the batter will glare at the pitcher, perhaps point and yell or once in a rare while, charge the mound. Even in those rare instances, though, baseball players are notorious for not actually wanting to fight. They basically push each other, roll around in a big pile and look for someone to grab on to so they don’t have to fight. Not my main man J. Offerman, though. Dude went out to the mound with bad intentions, bat in hand. He proceeded to strike Beech and Bluefish catcher John Nathans with the bat, inciting a brawl that ended with Offerman escorted from the field. He was allowed to go to the clubhouse and change into street clothes before being escorted out of the stadium by the Bridgeport police. The cops escorted him outside in handcuffs and into a waiting squad car, which took him to the police station to continue an already fantastic night. Offerman now faces two charges of second-degree assault and has been suspended indefinitely from the Atlantic League. Jose, I’m sorry to say it, but your baseball career might be over. You may, however, have a promising new career ahead of you, in Ultimate Fighting, Mixed Martial Arts or as Pacman Jones’ tag-team partner in Total Nonstop Action Wrestling. Embrace the octagon, Jose, it’s your only hope now.

- For actors and actresses dealing with the end of a successful TV series on which they’ve been a fixture, the adjustment to life without that series can be difficult. The fame, income and status are gone and you have to figure out where to go next. However, no matter how tough life becomes, I can state with absolute certainty that one place you should never go is where former Sopranos star Joseph R. Gannascoli went. Gannascoli, who played homosexual mobster Vito Spatafore on HBO’s recently concluded dramatic series, has signed an endorsement deal with Rockwell Billiards to promote a $100 pool cue with the slogan, “A cue to die for.” Why is this so problematic? Well, Gannascoli’s Sopranos character was beaten to death and sodomized with pool cues once they discovered he was homosexual. Thus G.L.A.A.D., the homosexual rights group, is livid and although I don’t share their zeal and outrage, I do think the ads are classless. I don’t know about you, but the idea of a person, male or female, straight or homosexual, being sodomized with something as crude as a pool cue is revolting. To turn around and capitalize on that portrayal with a tongue-in-cheek ad campaign is sleazy. It would be like Dennis Hopper cashing in on his raping-a-woman-with-scissors scene from Blue Velvet by endorsing scissors with a campaign of, “You’ll feel violated if you buy any other scissors.” Make better choices on what you endorse, Gannascoli, so no one wastes any more time talking about you.

- I love Buddhists, really I do. I can't afford the bad karma that comes from being at odds with these peace-loving souls. That being said, not everyone is so welcoming and embracing of the Buddhists and their often-unusual antics. The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection has stated that the Amitabha Buddhists who bought hundreds of eels, frogs and turtles and set them free in a Paterson, N.J. river did not have a permit for the mass release and could be fined as much as $1,000 for their efforts. The Buddhists apparently hoped that the animals would survive in the once-polluted stream and reach their karmic potential. Instead, the D.E.P. is going to be receiving its own share of bad karma, which I’d say they are richly deserving of for having that ginormous stick up their a** and harassing these poor Buddhists……..

- As if parking rates and exorbitant taxi fares weren’t enough, Mayor Michael Bloomberg wants to make car travel in New York City even more expensive. The mayor’s plan calls for extra tolls for driving in the busiest parts of Manhattan, a tactic being labeled congestion pricing. If Bloomberg can talk the state legislature into supporting this measure, he will also receive $354 million in additional federal funding to help his quest to reduce traffic and pollution in NYC. Quite frankly, I couldn’t be more thrilled about this blatant cash grab by a self-serving politician. It should result in a great boost for my new business, a fleet of rat-drawn rickshaws, which will put some of the city’s larger, stronger, more physically able rodents in the workforce instead of roaming around subway stations, pestering travelers……

- Pope Benedict XVI has already pissed off leaders from every other major religions in the world by erroneously claiming that Roman Catholicism is the only true way to heaven, but now he’s running afoul of an even more hostile, vocal group: environmentalists. In preparing for His Arrogance’s visit to Austria next month, officials there are planning to tear down four trees originally planted near a popular Roman Catholic shrine for a 1983 visit by Pope John Paul II. The trees will now come down to make room for a grandstand to be used during His Pomposity’s visit. Environmentalists are predictably upset by the decision to fell the four trees, while I’m angrier about anyone catering to this jerk in any way at all. Let’s go environmentalists, there have to be four of you willing to chain yourselves to these trees, let’s get it done!

Riot Watch takes us to Gaza, Mike Vick takes a major hit and my take on last night's episode of Greek

- Life just got a teensy bit worse for Michael Vick, and by a teensy bit I mean he’s totally screwed. Already one of his three co-defendants in the federal dogfighting case that has become a national uproar has reached a plea deal with the government, and now the other two men charged in the case have scheduled plea hearings as well. Once Purnell Peace, 35, and Quanis Phillips, 28, join Tony Taylor in having plead guilty in exchange for testifying against Vick and have received lesser sentences because of it, Vick will be left standing alone to fight his case. The prosecutors in the case have given Vick until the end of the week to strike a plea or else he will face additional charges in the case courtesy of a superceding indictment. The additional charges would likely come under a federal statute named R.I.C.O. (look it up, you might learn a lil’ somethin’), a measure designed to target, as ESPN legal analyst Lester Munson so brilliantly put it, in a phrase I love insanely and can't wait to incorporate into my vocabulary, “syndicate hoodlums.” I’m not sure what a syndicate hoodlum is, but I’m eager to find out. The bottom line for Vick is that he has three former friends and co-defendants and four other witnesses ready and willing to testify against him. He needs to take whatever plea deal he can get from the feds, considering that he has very little leverage right now. He could face as many as six years in prison, so maybe he can be very fortunate and plead down to a two or three-year stint in federal prison. The sky really is falling on Mike Vick, and he needs to salvage what he can before he’s buried under the fallout for the next six years.

- Every show or series on a major network in the past twenty years had done the whole “creepy, crawly, supernatural, ghost-themed” show at least once. Last night’s episode of ABC Family’s Greek was in that vein, but for once it wasn’t a tired, hour-long collection of clichés and totally predictable plot “twists.” To be sure, some of the plot was predictable, but even those parts of it were still well done and interesting for the most part. Part of the episode centered around a mysterious girl showing up at a Kappa Tau party, part was about pledge Calvin and Omega Chi president Evan stuck at the frat house trying to catch a pesky mouse and a third part on the Zeta Beta Zeta sorority having a slumber party for pledges to build a spirit of togetherness. Instead of trying to be spooky, scary and clever all at once and pulling off a crap-tacular episode, Greek went straight for the laughs and succeeded. Watching Rusty learn the truth about the mystery visitor and attempting to alert Cappie was hilarious, especially when Rusty ended up on the wrong side of some minor physical abuse from the girl calling herself Destiny (real name Patty). Casey, Rusty’s sister, had a night of “supernatural” hijinks in store for her pledges, all of them part of her ulterior motive of gaining support for her bid to be the sorority’s president. And of course, with the Calvin trapped at the Omega Chi house storyline, the show’s producers again hit heavily on the “Calvin is gay, what does he do about it,” theme, which again is getting really, really old really, really quickly. If there’s one thing to dislike about this show, it’s dragging this topic out and beating it into the ground. Otherwise, it was interesting to see the show back-burner Rusty’s new relationship with Zeta Beta pledge Jen K., who is now his girlfriend. Other than a picture message during the party and a passing mention of the relationship in a Casey-Jen K. conversation, not much happened. You’d think that after making Rusty out to be such a dork thus far in the series and struggling with girls that once he kissed a girl and had a girlfriend it would be a central theme in the show, but clearly not. A welcome aspect of the show this week was the zero minutes of screen time for Rusty’s roommate, one-note Dale, which meant a dearth of clichéd religious quotes spouted every second of Dale’s screen time, as is his custom. The previews for next week’s episode teased more of the same as far as those last two points are concerned, with the focus being on Casey’s romantic entanglements with Cappie and Evan, but teasers are often misleading so tune in to find out what really happens, 9 p.m. next Monday night on ABC Family….

- I’m going to directly challenge Bar-roid Bonds and his new-fangled legal “strategy” of hiring two lawyers to make sure that any private citizen who makes allegations about illegal activities Bonds has committed gets sued. The reality is that this is much more of a publicity stunt than anything, a feeble attempt to fire back at people like Curt Schilling who have repeatedly asked why Bonds, if he truly is innocent of steroid use, tax evasion, etc., isn’t proclaiming his innocence 24/7, screaming from the proverbial mountain top and suing anyone who dares to make such a bogus allegation. However, if Bar-roid really wants to take the approach he’s claiming to take now, why did he not sue the authors of the book Game of Shadows when they alleged in great detail that he knowingly and repeatedly used ‘roids? The only action Bonds took against them was to sue them on the basis that their information was illegally obtained, not that it was false or slanderous. That suit was eventually dropped by Bonds, so it’s not like he actively pursued that either. I’m going to call Bar-roid’s bluff here and say it outright: Barry Bonds used steroids knowingly and has lied about it ever since. He used steroids to boost his performance on the field and without those steroids he would not have the 758 career home runs he now has. So let’s see if Bar-roid’s new legal eagles come after me now…….

- Aren’t you glad when science uses its technological advances and insights to uncover truly important, relevant truths and discoveries that advance mankind and our collective well-being? If so, you’ll be thrilled to know that scientists have done laser scans of two life masks made from plaster casts of former President Abraham Lincoln’s face and found that our 16th president’s face had an unusual degree of asymmetry. Apparently the left side of Lincoln’s face was much smaller than the right side, a fact that I’m sure is impactful and relevant to the daily life of absolutely no one who is alive today. Why people are researching this and whether A. Lincoln had other ailments such as smallpox, heart illness, etc. is beyond me. I don’t think any of this changes the fact that this guy was a great leader, a great president and that he is now deceased. Can’t we focus on finding what sort of mental defects and deficiencies our current president has? That could take a while to accomplish, but at least it would be beneficial to all of us.

- A major thumbs down to the Hamas rulers in Gaza and their goonish security personnel for brutally clubbing and beating down protestors with the butts of their rifles. The protestors were demonstrating against the brutal, totalitarian rule of Hamas in the region as well as the mere presence of Hamas in Gaza. The thug-like, oppressive response to the protest, which included Hamas personnel seizing video cameras of TV cameraman to prevent footage of the incident from getting out, seems to contradict Hamas’ continued assertion that it is willing to tolerate dissent. Right, because nothing says tolerant of dissenting views like beating down people who express dissenting views and stealing video cameras to prevent footage of the melee from getting out. That’s verrrry tolerant of you, Hamas. What’s next, arresting anyone who speaks out against you and sending them to prison for fifteen years without so much as a trial? Maybe you want to follow the example of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and boot any non-Hamas person who criticizes you out of your country. Welcome to Hamas-ruled Gaza, where civil liberties go to die………..

LAX = Ellis Island, the Tennessee Titans have an interesting weekend and VH1's horrifically hilarious new show

- Quite a weekend for the Tennessee Titans. First, the team rushed to court to secure an injunction preventing suspended cornerback Adam “Pacman” Jones from taking part in a Total Nonstop Action (TNA) Wrestling pay-per-view held Sunday night. After getting their injunction, the Titans then worked out an agreement with Pacman that allowed him to participate in the event but prevented him from physical contact with other participants, using any object (or being hit with a similar object) that could cause injury and basically anything else that could injure him in any way. Then came Saturday’s preseason opener for the Titans, where star quarterback Vince Young was suspended from the game by head coach Jeff Fisher for violating team rules. The infraction turned out to be Young spending the night before the game at his home instead of at the team hotel, a luxury afforded only to Titans with at least four years of NFL experience. Young is in his second season in the league, so Fisher sat him for the game, which isn’t actually as big of a deal as it might seem because starters usually only play one or two series in the first preseason game. The capper for the weekend was Sunday night’s TNA PPV Hard Justice, where Pacman Jones verbally sparred with another wrassler, then was “discovered” laid out backstage, supposedly the victim of a brutal attack by his adversary. The sequence was obviously fake, but TNA went all-out, having Jones loaded onto a stretcher and whisked away by ambulance. All in all, one of the more interesting weekends for a pro sports franchise lately.

- I was hit with a new emotion over the weekend as I flipped through the channels and stumbled across a new show on VH1. The show is called Mission: Man Band, while the emotion I felt upon discovering it was horr-laugh-sad-musement. The show’s premise is resurrecting one of the darkest ages in the history of music (running neck and neck with disco), the era of man bands, wherein grown men frosted their hair, bleached their teeth, wore matching outfits and danced in unison with other grown men to the delight of pre-teen girls everywhere. This new show has recruited for former man-banders from groups like Backstreet Men of O-Town Sync Degrees and slammed them all into one house to form an über-man band. The leader of of group appears to be the short dude with a bad goatee who used to be in a man band with the weasel-voiced Justin Timberlake. I think that’s who it is, but if it is him then he clearly spent all the money he made on Bon-Bons, pork rinds, beer and ice cream (or consumed several small children and has yet to digest them), because dude is massively fat. Honestly, I’m horrified at the prospect of more man band music, but I’m also amused at the notion of seeing four middle-aged dudes, three of them in abysmal physical condition, all with zero musical credibility and at least three of them with unjustifiably bloated egos try to carve out some semblance of a musical career. Sure their music will suck, but watching these four tools bumble and stumble their way through the process of making that awful music is going to produce no shortage of hilarious moments of unintentional comedy. Tune in and catch the hilarity!

- Things are going well in Iraq, really they are. Just look at…..the $40 million black-market arms deal between Iraqi government officials and Italian mafia groups involving more than 100,000 Russian-made automatic weapons intended for use in Iraq. U.S. officials in Iraq are denying that they gave approval for the transaction, which they obviously have to say whether it’s true or not. The cache of illegal arms was discovered by anti-Mafia investigators in baggage at Rome’s busy Fiumicino Airport. A month-long investigation followed a trail of emails and telephone calls and led police to search the baggage stored in a remote corner of the airport. The U.S. officials in Baghdad claim to have no knowledge of the transaction, but even so it doesn’t reflect positively on the “progress” being made in Iraq. You’ve got the government of the country buying tens of millions of dollars in black-market weapons, but we’re all supposed to believe that W.’s rebuilding plan for the country is going just fine and that the Iraqi democracy will be flourishing in the near future? It doesn’t matter what kind of shiny wrapping paper and pretty bow you put on this political turd, it’s still a load of crap and it’s not getting any better until we pull our forces out of Iraq, period.

- Rush Hour 3 is going to need to do a lot better than it did during its opening weekend if the studio hopes to turn a profit. The movie brought in $50.2 million at the box office over the weekend, but that figure looks a lot less impressive when you consider how much of that money is already spoken for. Chris Tucker’s contract calls for him to receive a wholly unjustifiable $25 million or 20 percent of the movie’s gross, whichever is greater. Jackie Chan gets either $15 million of 15 percent of the gross, again whichever is greater. He also controls the film’s distribution rights in China and Hong Kong. Director Brett Ratner is due $5 million for leading an utterly mediocre movie as well, so between those three they’re guaranteed at least $45 million. That doesn’t take into account the production and distribution costs either. Oh, and the opening weekend tallies are more than $20 million less than The Bourne Ultimatum earned on it’s opening weekend, good times……………

- So it looks like LAX is the new Ellis Island, at least for one weekend. More than 20,000 arriving international passengers were stuck in four of the airport’s terminals on Saturday when a computer glitch prevented customs officials from processing their entries into the U.S. The marooned passengers spent the majority of the day in travel limbo, unable to formally enter the United States. What better thing is there to have happen after hours and hours of international travel filled with stops, layovers, bad airplane food and boring in-flight movies? I’m guessing there were nothing but smiling faces throughout all four of those terminals on Saturday, am I right or am I right?

Bad news for Sharapova fans, good news for a summer music sales and why I'm heading to Canada (hint, it involves W.)

- Congrats to NBC on its new series, Blatant Rip-Off. Actually, the name of the series is Life, but it’s such a blatant rip-off of another popular, current show that a copyright lawsuit is almost assuredly in order. Let me describe the premise of Life and see if you can figure out which show it’s copycatting. A guy is framed for a murder, goes to prison but eventually gets out. On the outside, he has millions of dollars waiting for him and he’s on a mission to prove his innocence with the help of a huge chart/collage on his wall detailing the facts, dates and events in his case. Yes, good guess…..this is a clear, obvious rip-off of Prison Break. Now the creators of Life might have rolled the Michael Scofield/Lincoln Burroughs characters into a singular entity for their series, but make no mistake, this is a rip job, period. In PB, Michael Scofield’s brother is wrongly convicted of a murder (Commonality #1), Scofield erects a wall collage laying out the facts of the case (Commonality #2), the person wrongly convicted of murder gets out of prison (despite being by different means on each show, Commonality #3), once outside prison, the character has millions of dollars waiting for him, (D.B. Cooper’s mythical Utah fortune in PB, Commonality #4) and once on the outside, the character who has been wrongly convicted tries to prove that he’s been set up for the murder in question (Commonality #5). Call the television police, get Law & Order and CSI on the phone, we’ve got a slam-dunk case of creative property rights violation here, with NBC as the culprit.

- Army Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute, congratulations, you’ve won my “Ginormous Tool of the Week” award! Lute, in the unfortunate role of the new war advisor to W., told an NPR audience that frequent tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan have stressed our military to the extent that it’s worthwhile to consider re-instituting a military draft. “I certainly think it makes sense to consider it,” Lt. Moron Lute said, presumably with a straight face. Can I ask who appointed this ass hat as a presidential advisor? This is worse than the blind leading the blind, it’s the deaf, dumb, mute, lame and blind leading a drunken, brain-damaged sewer rat with cataracts. Hey Lute, I’ve got a great strategy to reduce the stress and burden on our troops: Stop fighting an f’ing war in Iraq that we have no business being involved with in the first place! That would correct a lot of problems, actually. If anyone cares to respond to any of this, you all know where to find me: hiding in the remote wilderness of Canada. I’ll see you all when this whole war in Iraq/draft revival mess dies down, probably around 2014 or so.

- The music industry is suffering through a summer of lackluster album sales, and using my keen musical insight, I think I’ve managed to figure out why. I could be way off base here, but when your industry’s hopes are pinned on new albums from the following artists, you’re what I like to call “screwed”: Kelly Clarkson, Avril Lavigne, Fergie and Shakira. I hate to be the bearer of bad news (not really), but combined, those four don’t have the musical ability of the late John Lennon’s shoestrings. Blaming the sagging album sales figures on the rise of digital music and piracy explains only a small portion of the problem. If you take a serious look at the quality of music being put out right now, you’ll find that an alarming percentage of it is totally unlistenable bullsh*t. To compound the problem, most of the best music is from artists receiving little or not attention or backing from the promotional arm of the music industry. The newest album from Someone Still Loves You Boris Yelstin is a dozen times better than any offering from Nickelback, but guess who gets more promotional backing and radio play? Hopefully this rant has been enlightening to you, music industry, I do what I can.

- I wish someone would have called me, because this is one situation I would have been more than happy to help with. Maria Sharapova withdrew from her match at the East West Bank Classic in Carson, Calif. against Nadia Petrova 20 minutes before it was scheduled to start, citing a lower leg strain as the reason for her decision. The withdrawal advanced Petrova to the finals while simultaneously ending any interest I had in watching the finals. Had someone called me, I would have been on the first plane out to L.A., ready to administer a deep tissue massage or whatever other treatment was necessary to get Sharapova on the court. Watching her matches ups the interest in women’s tennis of most any guy over the age of 12, so having her bow out of a tournament with an injury is the worst possible outcome. Perhaps if she spent a little less time filming commercials and campaigning for a role as the next Bond girl……….nah. Who am I kidding, I can’t be angry with her about that stuff. The more we see of her, the better.

- Thomas Leyshon III of Mountain Top, Pa., you are officially a piece of crap. How else do you describe a person who bursts into a beauty salon, robs the place for less than $90 and in the process assaults four grannies with a hammer, fracturing the skull of one victim? Dude, you might be hard up for cash, but can’t you rob a convenience store or a liquor store? Do you have to go to a place frequented by elderly women and bludgeon them with a hammer so you can make off with less than a C-note? The scumbags who bilk old people out of their Social Security money with confidence schemes think that you’re a bad guy. Oh, did I mention that the four women Leyshon assaulted didn’t even offer any resistance but were beaten anyway? The victims ranged in age from 56 to 76 and all were taken to the hospital for treatment, with one requiring surgery. Leyshon has been arrested after a prolonged manhunt, and something tells me he’s not going to evoke much sympathy from the judge or jury who hear his case.

Longing for the good ol' days of the rap wars, how Kelly Clarkson ruined my summer and two golfers softer than Charmin

- Glad you could get around to this, Chinese government. The powers that be in China have finally released Xi Hailiang, one of the last protestors still in jail for opposing the 1989 military crackdown on pro-democracy protests in Beijing’s Tiananman Square. Of course, the communist government in China has never actually owned up to their brutal and indefensible actions in one of the most brutal and memorable assaults on citizens in history, but even if they refuse to own up to what they did in that tragic time, it’s nice to see them finally release an individual who has been jailed for nearly two decades simply for having the courage to oppose an oppressive, despotic government and stand up for the chance at democracy. Enjoy your freedom, Xi, even if it comes without an apology for all of your wrongful suffering and the many years of your life you’ve lost in prison.

- Breathe easier, out-of-shape, desperate middle-aged women with no lives, Sex and the City WILL be coming to the big screen after all. Chris Noth, a.k.a. Mr. Big, has finally signed a deal to appear in the film, which means all of the major players are in place. It’s nothing short of amazing that the four stars of the show – Sarah Jessica Parker, Kim Cattrall, Kristin Davis and Cynthia Nixon – and their massive egos all got on board before Noth did, but now they’re all signed to deals and one of the most overrated TV shows of all time can now become one of the most overrated, over-hyped and ultimately disappointing movies of all time. Production on the movie is set to begin next month in New York, assuming that no massive deluges of water drown the city and send it into pandemonium again. Hopefully all of the “stars” of this movie will be spending significant time doing two things before filming starts: 1) Taking acting classes, because let’s face it, the level of acting displayed in the many seasons of the series was anything but stellar, and 2) Hitting the gym, because none of them were in great shape the first time around, and with several years having passed since the series went off the air, odds are that they haven’t gotten into any better physical condition.

- Niclas Fasth and Colin Montgomerie aren’t exactly helping to dispel the belief that golfers aren’t legitimate athletes. Both are playing in the PGA Championship this week in Tulsa, Okla., where temperatures are routinely pushing triple digits. Predictably, all of the golfers are struggling with the heat, as evidenced by the omnipresent sweat stains and frequent water drinking on the course. However, Fasth and Montgomerie are the only two players in this tournament soft enough to have their caddies walking around, holding up umbrellas over them to ward off the mean old sun. I thought only elderly people, those with illnesses caused and aggravated by the sun or weirdo stoner freaks who decorate their black umbrellas with dangly knick-knacks and use the umbrellas to preserve their pasty complexions carried umbrellas when it wasn’t raining. But clearly Monty doesn’t agree, what with his doughy frame and sour disposition, nor does Fasth, still in desperate search of that missing “o” to round out his first name. These two are apparently such wusses that they too need umbrellas to battle the sun on a hot summer day. Way to go, guys, your toughness and manliness are evident to all.

- Well my summer is ruined now, just ruined. I hope you’re happy, Kelly Clarkson, because you have broken my heart. I had THE big event of my summer and quite possibly of my young life ripped from me when the former American Karaoke-er canceled a summer arena tour across the U.S. Seriously, who else am I going to pay exorbitant ticket prices to go see sing sugary sweet, over-produced, crappy, slick pop songs while wearing midriff-bearing outfits and dancing like one of those giant mechanical puppets at Chuck-E-Cheese? Oh wait, you mean to tell me that that type of music totally sucks and that there are dozens of Britney Spears wannabes I could see doing the exact same thing? Reportedly, my girl K. Clarkson is restructuring her tour plans into a new tour at smaller, “more intimate” venues, which is code for not being able to sell out larger venues and wanting to avoid the embarrassment of playing to half-empty arenas while singing the garbage pop songs that someone else wrote for you. Good thinking, Kel, I wouldn’t want you doing anything to damage the sterling musical legacy you’ve built. Maybe in your free time, you can find time to make From Justin to Kelly 2, seeing as how the first installment of that vaunted movie franchise was so well received and won so many awards…..

- Who else misses the good old days of the rap wars, East Coast vs. West Coast, rappers brawling outside of clubs, killing each other for no viable reason, etc.? The battle has now gone corporate, with 50 Cent taking the “fight” to nemesis Kanye West because 50 is pissed about speculation that West’s new album Graduation will outsell 50’s new CD Curtis, with both of them due out on Sept. 11. 50 Cent, in real life known as Curtis Jackson, says that if those predictions come true and West outsells him on 9/11, he will retire from the music business for good. “Let’s raise the stakes,” Jackson told an industry website. “If Kanye West sells more records on Sept. 11 than 50 Cent, I’ll no longer write music. I’ll write music and work with my other artists, but I won't put out any more solo albums.” Double bonus points for referring to yourself AND directly contradicting yourself in a single brilliant eight-word linguistic burst. You will no longer write music and you’ll still write music? Which one is it, genius? Can none of you at least bust a cap in someone’s a** anymore, so we can avoid having to hear you Mensas speak and try to say something intelligent? I don’t think it’s too much to ask, really.

Pacman tramples the English language, Cindy Sheehan fulfills a promise and I give the Army a piece of my mind

- Pacman Jones or the police, who do I believe? On the one hand, you have a rain-making, bouncer-assaulting, pro-wrestling-wannabe thug, a guy who spits on women and is suspended from the NFL for a year. Pac is maintaining that he has only been arrested twice in his life, not the six-pack of arrests that is being commonly reported. The police have a somewhat different take, basing their claim on Pacman’s police records. Now I know the cops can and do lie, fabricate evidence, abuse citizens, etc., but in this case I’m going to take their word, sorry Pac. The police tend to be good about documenting things like when people get arrested. While I’m on a Pacman tangent, how’s about a second gem he dropped in the same interview that gave us that first bit? Addressing his decision to go to a New York City strip club the night before his meeting with NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell to address Pacman’s involvement in and legal troubles resulting from a February strip-club brawl in Las Vegas, Jones dropped the following grammatical gem: “If I could do anything different, I wouldn’t have went and gotten nothing to eat then. There wasn’t even no girls there.” Wow…..um….wow. Stepping past the repeated, gross and egregious abuse of the English language, let me ask one obvious question: You’re telling me that while in New York City, you had to go to a strip club to get your chow on? You’re in NYC, a place I recall as having no less than a dozen restaurants on every block covering every type and ethnicity of grub, and yet you’re going to a strip club to eat? Forget for a minute that those places are the dirtiest, slimiest, most disgusting and gross places around, why would you want to go to place to eat whose primary purpose has nothing to do with food and where you have to pay a cover charge just to get in the door? Either Pacman is really dumb or a terrible liar (or based on the evidence at hand, both). But if you’re involved in a strip club melee that leaves a bouncer paralyzed and results in you being charged with two felonies, don’t you think you could mix in a run to Sbarro or a visit to one of the hundreds of hot dog vendors on the streets of Manhattan instead of eating at a strip club? Personally, I have to admit that I’m torn on the issue of Jones’ potential return to the NFL next year. Part of me knows he’s a moron and a bad guy, but part of me loves the nonstop entertainment he brings through sheer stupidity as well as the nuclear implosion that’s bound to happen whenever he finally screws up his football career for good.

- Hey Army, offer me whatever you want, I’m still not enlisting to join your merry band of crew-cut-sporting, camouflage-wearing yes men (and women). Because of lagging enlistment numbers and the need for more soldiers to wage unnecessary, expensive, bloody and indefensible wars against other countries, the U.S. Army is considering once again upping enlistment perks for new recruits. The new plan would allow enlistees to choose from a “buffet” of incentives, including up to $45,000 tax-free money that could be used to buy a home or start a business upon re-entry into civilian life. What, you mean the chance to be berated by an angry drill sergeant, shipped all over the world, never see your family on a regular basis and possibly die fighting a pointless, idiotic war created by your own president aren’t incentive enough to sign up? The opportunity to surrender your individuality, do as you’re told without questioning it and do so for a paltry salary don’t have ‘em flocking to the local recruiting office? Look Army (and all other branches of the military), you can offer me $500,000 tax free, give me ten extra pairs of cool camouflage pants and throw in a set of steak knives strong enough to cut a tree trunk and I’m still not signing up. Maybe you should take a hint and realize that people aren’t signing up because shock of all shocks, they don’t want to.

- Kate Hudson is a wildly underrated actress. I base this opinion not on any roles she’s had recently on TV or in movies, but rather on comments she made for an upcoming issue of Harper’s Bazaar. “As primal beings, men are not supposed to be monogamous….Part of what I love about men is it’s hard for them to be monogamous. Women, I think, need to spend more time understanding men than trying to change men.” Also on the agenda was another issue which further underscores how great and talented an actress Hudson is: her love of lingerie. “I am totally obsessed with lingerie,” she explained. “However often I wear it is not often enough.” Can’t you just see my point here? This hot, hot blonde is both rich and famous, loves lingerie and loves the fact that men have a hard time being monogamous! Get her an Oscar and a hefty pay raise for her next movie, pronto!

- The epedmic of preists sexually abusing children here in the U.S. is terrible enough, but just as disgusting is the tale of one Mexican priest who murdered his illegitimate son because he feared discovery of the boy’s existence might cost him his job. The Rev. Dagoberto Valle Arriaga confessed to killing his son, Oscar Emmanuel Valle Hernandez two years ago, according to the attorney general’s office for the central state of Mexico. Arriaga feared that church officials would learn of the child’s existence and remove him from the priesthood, so he killed the boy. Right, because that’s the logical step if you have an illegitimate child and don’t want him discovered. Just snuff Junior out so you can keep your job as a man of God. Something tells me that murdering a person to cover up an illegitimate child runs contrary to the teachings of any church that doesn’t double as an insane cult. Arriaga has been sentenced to 55 years in prison for his crime, a sentence that isn’t nearly long enough.

- I’m predicting an unsuccessful political career for Cindy Sheehan, the grieving mother of a U.S. soldier killed in Iraq who on Thursday made good on a promise to run for the U.S. House against Rep. Nancy Pelosi. Sheehan had vowed to run against Pelosi in 2008 if Pelosi didn’t impeach W. by July 23. Pelosi failed to reach this most noble of goals, so on Thursday, Sheehan formally announced her candidacy for Congress. The reason I think she’s doomed as a politician is because she’s already done the one thing that no true politician ever does – make good on a promise. By announcing at a rally in San Francisco that she was following through on what she said she would do, Sheehan has proved she does not have what it takes to be a bona fide member of Congress. If you can't learn to check your ethics and morals at the door, C., you’ll never be elected to any political office in this country.

- I’ve gotten some criticism for not including Rush Hour 3 in my list of third installments in major movie franchises that have hit theaters this summer, so allow me to explain why. The Rush Hour franchise isn’t in the same class as movies like Ocean’s Eleven/Twelve, Spiderman 1-2, Pirates of the Caribbean or the Bourne movies. Rush Hour movies follow a more predictable script than your average episode of Saved by the Bell. Chris Tucker is LAPD officer Carter, in trouble with his superiors for his maverick ways, and Jackie Chan is Lee, the great Hong Kong cop called in to pair with Carter on a major international crisis. Isn’t it great how director Brett Ratner and the writers don’t even bother to concoct a plausible story line explaining why a cop from L.A. and one from Hong Kong end up backstage at the Folies Bergere in Paris? When you pair a predictable, formulaic plot with equally predictable dialogue, paint-by-numbers humor and action sequences, you arrive at the unmistakable conclusion that this return from a six-year hiatus in the series is nothing more than a cash grab via an unoriginal movie only appealing to the small number of people who are already (unexplainably) fans of the franchise.

A-Rod is yellow, a cliched Real World premiere and a stabbing punter catches a break

- How verrrry macho of New York Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez, sitting out last night’s game between the Yankees and Toronto Blue Jays with a “sore calf.” If by “sore calf” you mean ducking another confrontation after being thrown at by Blue Jays pitchers for two straight games, including two benches-clearing incidents in Tuesday night’s game, then I agree, his calf must have been very sore. Of course, all of this could have been avoided if A-Rod hadn’t gone bush league in New York’s last visit to Toronto earlier in the season, yelling “Ha!” at Blue Jays third baseman Howie Clark as A-Rod ran right behind Clark as he attempted to catch a pop-up. That classless, cheap and tacky move started a feud that has built up into genuine bad blood between the two teams. It’s not A-Rod’s first dirty play, either; you may remember back in the 2004 playoffs when he broke out his karate-chop move in an illegal attempt to knock the ball out of Red Sox pitcher Bronson Arroyo’s glove as Arroyo went to make a tag. Clean up your act, Alex, stop playing like a bush league loser or you really will be deserving of the bounty of criticism directed at you on a daily basis.

- Last night’s season premiere episode of The Real World: Sydney was many things, but enlightening, original and groundbreaking were not among those things. Amazingly, MTV has somehow managed to end up, once again, with a cast comprised of several character types that have become constants on every season of the show, some twenty seasons in all. There’s the big, strong, athletic guy who all the female roommates love but who has a cute girlfriend back home that he’s vowed to be faithful to. Then you have the hot, overly horny girl who flirts with every male roommate and will undoubtedly hook up with a minimum of a half-dozen guys during the course of the season. Another of the female roommates fills the role of the chick with the cartoonishly big rack who likes taking her top off and giving the censors something to do. Next is a socially and culturally stunted redneck with an accent so thick you can barely understand half of what he says. Oh, and don’t forget the overly sensitive, thoughtful roommate who acts pissed off when the rest of the roommates act like the college kids that they are. In other words, this season is going to be a carbon copy of every other season of the show that has preceded it, but it has the built-in advantage of knowing that at least it can't suck any more than last season’s reunion of the Las Vegas cast.

- Stabbing a teammate in the leg doesn’t normally entitle a person to catch a break, but former University of Northern Colorado punter Mitch Cozad has caught one nonetheless. Today, Cozad was convicted of second-degree assault but acquitted on attempted first-degree murder charges stemming from a 2006 incident in which Cozad, at that time the backup punter at UNC, stabbed starting punter Rafael Mendoza in the leg because Cozad couldn’t beat out Mendoza on the field for the starting gig. Cozad didn’t deserve leniency or to catch a break, but dodging that double-murder bullet has to feel pretty good. Still, had ‘ol Mitch adhered to rule No. 854 in my seminar manual for aspiring criminals (i.e. make sure that the potential punishment for a possible crime is in reasonable proportion with the value of what you hope to gain by committing the crime), he could have avoided all of this. After all, when the potential “reward” is the uber-prestigious starting punting job at Northern Colorado, the only crime worth committing is jaywalking. Enjoy your time in the slam, Mitch. You’re already an expert at shanking unsuspecting people, so you should have a head start on the other inmates.

- You’re not helping your case, Harry Potter dorks. Everyone that is mocking you incessantly for standing in line outside bookstores at midnight waiting for the release of the new Potter book, dressing up like characters from the book despite the fact that most of you are 48-year-old corporate accountants and for generally having no life is starting to look very smart for that mocking. When some random French teenager spends dozens and dozens of hours translating Harry Potter and the Deathly Swallows into French so he can post it online less than three weeks after the book’s release, the words dork and loser are actually two of the kinder, gentler terms that could be applied to you. The unidentified 16-year-old spent a night in jail because of his hijinks and now he may faces intellectual property violation charges, although prosecutors in the Aix-en-Provence say that the teen did not appear to be seeking financial or commercial gain through his efforts. Hope that was worth it, dork, going to jail for a night as possibly going on trial for the sake of a fictional wizard.

- If the terrorists really want to cripple the city of New York, they don’t actually need guns, bombs or other weapons. All they really need is lots and lots of water, because that was enough to send the city into utter chaos yesterday. When more than two inches of rain fell during two hours in the morning, the resulting mini-floods and chaos were startling. Outside Shea Stadium in Queens, a layer of water that reached up to the bottom of the doors on passing pickup trucks was a major hazard. On the island of Manhattan, CBS’ The Early Show was thrown into disarray because of the heavy rain, with the show’s normal studio plagued by a leaky roof that had staffers scrambling to cover over valuable equipment, flooded the studio floors and sent water rushing into a control room packed with electrical equipment. The show was hurriedly moved across town and took place at the vacant CBS studio used by Katie Couric for The CBS Evening News. Guest Stephon Marbury and a collection of models set to appear on the show to show off chic fashions on a shoestring budget had to be ferried across town by taxi, as did building materials for a home improvement segment and the show’s cast and crew. One possible side benefit of the flooding? Perhaps a few thousand of the tens and tens of thousands of rats who call NYC home were drowned, which could help the pest problem at least temporarily.

- Who will dare to oppose Russia as it stakes a claim to ownership of the riches of oil and natural gas ‘neath the Arctic Sea? Why it’s those warriors to the north, the Canadians! Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper began a three-day trip to the Arctic on Wednesday in an attempt to assert Canadian control over the region less than a week after the Russkies made their own claim. Actually, Harper’s visit had been planned long before the Russian made their claim, but in light of recent events it has taken on added significance. “The Russians sent a submarine to drop a small flag at the bottom of the ocean. We’re sending our prime minister to reassert Canadian sovereignty,” proclaimed a senior Canadian official. The United States, Canada and Norway are also in the mix for control of the region, and may I be the first to suggest that we send our very own leader to the Arctic for a……how many months until the 2008 election…..14 months, you say? I recommend we send W. on a 15-month mission to the Arctic, just to be safe……….

Keith Richards tries to clarify things, Russia makes another enemy and a movie so bad no one should have to see it

- At long last, the nightmare is over. Bar-roid Bonds has hit his 756th career home run and set a new record, so the nonstop Bar-roid Watch can cease, ESPN can stop broadcasting every Giants game and the most joyless death march in sports can stop. I consider myself fortunate for not having watched the milestone home run live, because finding out about it on SportsCenter this morning was bad enough. On one hand I was thankful it was over, but on the other hand I did have a decent amount of anger that it had happened. I don’t look at Bar-roid any differently now that he has the record, because pre-record I saw him as a surly, bitter jackass cheater and now that he has the record I see him as a surly, bitter jackass cheater. Thanks for nothing, Bar-roid, you will be forever irrelevant as far as I’m concerned, I’m just going to pretend that your entire career never even happened. One humorous note from last night’s broadcast of the game between the Giants and Washington Nationals: Announcer Rick Sutcliffe, who apparently is still living in 1984, made the comment that a lot of film was wasted in Monday night’s game photographing Bar-roid because he didn’t hit a home run in that game, but that it looked like fans had restocked their cameras with film in time for Tuesday night’s contest. No Sutt, the rest of us are living in 2007, where most people have digital cameras and there’s no need for actual film. You can take hundreds of pictures and delete them off your memory card if you don’t want them, it’s an amazing concept. I actually like Sutt, he’s generally a good announcer but it’s funny that someone can be that far behind the times.

- Sometimes I feel genuinely bad for people who end up seeing a bad movie in the theater. A movie might look promising before you actually go see it and then bomb out once you see it for real. However, I have no such sympathy for anyone who pays even two cents to go see Daddy Day Camp. The movie is a sequel to the lame, pathetic Daddy Day Care film of 2003 starring Eddie Murphy. I actually think that the ideal title for this movie would have been The Perfect Storm, but George Clooney and Mark Wahlberg have already used that one. I say The Perfect Storm would be a good title, but a more complete name would be The Perfect Storm of Bad Acting, Atrocious Writing, a Lame Premise and No Intelligence Whatsoever. The premise sets the stage for a predictable, awful movie, with a rundown old camp bought by a loveable loser (Paul Rae) who used to be a camper there. He gets a motley crew of kids to come to camp and they end up competing with a group of kids from a much nicer, better-furnished and funded camp and guess what, the loveable losers come out on top! Yeah, even Stevie Wonder would see that plot twist coming before the opening credits even finished. All of the predictable bad jokes and lame-o humor are present as well, rounding out one of the five worst movies to come out this year. Cuba Gooding Jr. may have won an Oscar previously, but this movie is bad enough that maybe the Academy should think about asking for that trophy back.

- Hmm, to watch the MTV Video Music Awards or not……….hmm. Let’s see, who are some of the most-nominated artists, people who are likely to be a big part of the broadcast…..well, there’s the weasel-on-helium-voiced, Michael Jackson-wannabe Justin Timberlake, tied for the lead in nominations with seven. Who’s he tied with? Oh, it’s Beyonce, a dancing, acting pop singer whose awful music would be completely unlistenable if not for the fact that she has quite a bit of vocal ability. Other nominees include the following artists whose music I wouldn’t listen to even if it were found to increase your IQ tenfold and make you a hundred times more attractive to the opposite sex: Rihanna, Amy Winehouse, Maroon 5, Akon, Fergie and Nelly Furtado. Yes, that’s right, you don’t need actual music talent to be nominated for an award, just lip sync your way through a special effects-laden music video with a few celebrity cameos and you too can be nominated for an MTV Video Music Award! The White Stripes actually received a few nominations, so they can be the ambassadors of good music in a gathering of mostly crappy, overrated hack jobs (yeah, looking right at you, Fergie and N. Furtado, you both suck). Should you care to tune in for this crap-tacular shindig, it airs live on MTV at 9 p.m. on Sept. 24, then again at a rate of seven or eight times a day for the next several months, as is MTV’s custom with all of its awards shows.

- Occasionally, when you say something incredibly stupid and receive a lot of heat for your verbal misstep, you should simply let it go and move on. Going back to clarify what you said or what you meant to say can actually land you in more trouble than you were in after your initial comments. Keith Richards needs to hear that message, because he’s either too stoned, too brain damaged or just plain dumb enough not to realize that trying to explain what he really meant by claiming that he’d snorted his deceased father’s cremated remains is making matters worse, not better. A couple months ago, my main man K. Richards (who happens to be blasting through my iPod right now) got a lot of criticism for telling a British publication that he mixed his father’s ashes with some cocaine and snorted the mixture. Now, he’s backpedaling and claiming that he didn’t cut his old man’s remains with some toot, but instead snorted the ashes straight up. Yeah, because that’s much better, to snort a dead family member’s ashes pure instead of mixing them with blow. How is that any better or more palatable? “The cocaine bit was rubbish,” Richards said. “I said I chopped him up like cocaine, not with. I pulled the lid off [my father's urn] and out comes a bit of dad on the dining room table. I'm going, 'I can't use the brush and dustpan for this. What I found out is that ingesting your ancestors is a very respectable way of...y'know, he went down a treat.” Oh, I get it now…no, actually I don’t. How is it respectful or honoring to a dead loved one to treat them like nose candy, do a few lines of them and act like everything is cool? Ozzy Osborne may have snorted a line of ants off of a popsicle stick, but at least none of those ants shared DNA with the Prince of Darkness.

- Russia just isn’t making any friends in the international world, is it? Already at odds with the United States on a plethora of issues (well, a lot of countries have every right to be pissed at us because of the idiotic stuff W. is doing) and creating a political stir by staking claim to the oil and natural gas riches at the North Pole, the Russkies are now going toe-to-toe with Britain over the Brits’ refusal to extradite Boris Berezovsky, a vocal critic of the Kremlin and a man exiled from the mother land for some times now. The Basmanny District Court issued a new arrest warrant for the wealthy tycoon, who is accused of stealing $13 million from Russian banking giant SBS-Agro. The British government has maintained that it will not extradite Berezovsky, a stance that has angered many Russian officials. Can anybody say Cold War, Part Two? And no, W., before you ask, restarting the Cold War doesn’t mean you get to make up fictitious WMD’s and invade a foreign country for no real reason. I was just getting used to the idea of not hating Russia, now it looks like I’m going to have to reverse field and start loathing them again. But how exactly are you supposed to hate a country who gave the world Maria Sharapova? I’m just not sure that’s a world I’m prepared to live in…………

Supernaturally bad new TV shows, a cash grab for Van Halen and last night's episode of Greek

- Hope that was worth it, Brady Quinn. The greedy, arrogant would-be golden boy quarterback has finally signed a contract with the Cleveland Browns and now we can all see if he’s as good as he thinks he is. Quinn and the Browns have reached an agreement on a 5-year deal, meaning he can sign it and get into camp. I’ve been hard on the guy for holding out, and that resentment stands for now, but realize one thing, that if he comes in and performs extremely well, most of the animosity from his holdout will go by the wayside. Yes, he may still have a bit of a stigma from holding out for so long, but what ultimately matters to players, fans and coaches is whether you can be out there on the field, helping your team win. If Quinn does that, then in the long term you have to weigh his contribution to the team against holding out for a week and a half and decide which is more important to you. Now, if that holdout retards Quinn’s growth and hinders his play during the season, that obviously changes things. However, five years down the road he’ll be judged on how he has played on the field and not on how long he held out. In other words, during a long holdout, the holdout itself becomes a big issue, but once a player gets on the field the holdout fades into the background and you move on. For the first half of this season or so, it might linger in the air for Quinn because he could have had a chance to win the starting quarterback job outright if he’d been in camp on time and now he’ll have to sit and wait, but in the long term the past week and a half won't matter nearly as much – if he plays well, that is. But at this point, Browns fans would be well advised to put the holdout out of their minds and judge their new signee by how he does on the field.

- Last night’s episode of Greek was a mixed bag, fluctuating between hilarious and overly obvious in its humor and resulting in an uneven, decent episode that definitely wasn’t among the series’ best so far. High points for humor would include Cappie (Scott M. Foster) calling for a pledge to fetch him his “Cougar Sack” so he could sweet talk an older woman named Gladys into approving the fraternity’s noise permit for their Vesuvius party, the scene where Rusty’s (Jacob Zachar) plan to fix the broken mini volcano of the Kappa Tau house results in beer “raining” from the sky and Rusty’s roommate Dale (Clark Duke) sweet talking a particle-accelerating weather device like it was a girl, even as those around him looked on mortified at the weirdness of his monologue. Still, minus points go for the clichéd, tired scene where a girlfriend (Spencer Grammer) tries to secretly crash a party to check in on her boyfriend and ends up making a scene and embarrassing herself instead. Plus, the show continues to hammer on two topics that are totally unimaginative and have little entertainment value: 1) Every scene Duke’s Dale character appears in, the guy is spouting religious talk nonstop, which I think is supposed to be humorous because he’s such an uptight dork, but at some point it just gets annoying when a character is that one-dimensional, which brings me to the second topic, 2) the same thing that’s true for Dale is true for Calvin, the character whose sole known quality on the show has been that he’s gay and doesn’t want people to know. Every scene he has centers on his trying to live his life as a gay guy while at the same time keeping those around him from knowing that he is gay. Right now, keeping every character but the main two or three (Rusty, Casey and possibly Evan) so one-dimensional isn’t a big deal, but this show is going to crap out much sooner than it should if the producers and writers don’t develop more of the characters and give them some depth. The fact that Rusty is such a likeable character and you’re always rooting for him helps immeasurably, so props for ending the whole dork/virgin/never been kissed drama and finally having the poor guy get a kiss from an equally awkward, overly talkative fellow pledge from his sister’s sorority (Jen something-or-the-other, like the girl said, there are three girls named Jen at the sorority, it’s hard to keep them straight). If I were giving a grade for this episode, it would be a B or B-, still not bad. As always, if you missed it you can catch a re-air Friday on ABC at 9 p.m.

- Different lead singer, same blatant cash and glory grab. Van Halen is back on tour, this time with Eddie Van Halen at the mic, fresh out of rehab and ready to rock. Yes, rock fans, one of the most sellout, corporate, arena rock bands of all time is back and just as mediocre as ever. Break out the big hair, black leather jacket and pompous attitude, because Eddie and the boys are about to embark on a 50-city U.S. tour to rake in millions of your hard-earned dollars. There had been talk of an amphitheater tour this summer, but E. Van Halen’s trip to rehab scuttled that idea. Well, at least he can be thankful that his rehab stint was longer and more successful than any of Lindsay Lohan’s many, many trips to posh detox centers. I don’t think the combined time from Lohan’s four or five rehab trips is as long as the few months Van Halen spent getting clean, so props on that Eddie. If you recall, the band’s last tour was in 2004 with Sammy Hagar as lead singer and the tour grossed nearly $40 million. Eddie Van Halen hasn’t toured with the group in two decades, but my guess is that his goal for this tour, besides padding his bank account and satisfying his ginormous ego, is to earn more than the Hagar-led tour. Allow me to take you on a hypothetical tour experience so you can avoid wasting time and money on attending a show in your area: Tickets will be grossly overpriced and you won't be able to shake the feeling that you wasted a lot of money on them. Souvenirs will also be overpriced, with t-shirts selling for $35-40 and concessions going for three or five times their normal cost. The music will be mediocre and the musicians will be overweight, poorly conditioned versions of their former selves, leading to a nonstop series of remarks between you and your concert companion about how the band just doesn’t sound as good as they did twenty years ago. So there you have it, now you can spend that money on something more worthwhile, perhaps some new socks or a new iPod.

- Researching booze is a career that at least two-thirds of Americans aspire to at some point in their life. Like many other “scientific” studies done, though, alcohol research seems beset by the problem of spending loads of time and money yet reaching blatantly obvious conclusions that we all already knew before the study was done. This new study has set the scientific world on its ear by revealing that teens tend drink what they can get from their parents liquor stash, while adults who can legally buy alcohol tend to go for beer because it’s cheaper. Wow, you mean that kids who want to experiment with alcohol tend to drink whatever is close at hand? No way! And then you want me to believe that adults tend to drink beer, which is cheaper, easier to find and more socially acceptable to drink en masse? With findings like those, I’m inclined to believe that the researchers were the ones binging on alcohol instead of studying those who do. What was the budget breakdown for this project, anyhow? Was half of the money spent on beer, then ten percent each on buying vodka, gin, tequila, rum and scotch? Good job researchers, once again you’ve succeeded in “informing” us about things we already knew, mission accomplished.

- The success of supernatural-themed shows like Smallville, Supernatural and Heroes has inevitably inspired a slew of shows attempting to gravy train off the genre’s success, two of the more pathetic examples of which can be seen coming up in a few weeks when the fall TV season kicks off. Maybe you think I’m jumping the gun by shooting down two shows that haven’t even premiered yet, but Reaper (CW) and Pushing Daisies (ABC) both look….umm…..bad. Reaper looks to be the worse of the two, with the laughably bad premise of a guy whose parents have sold his soul to the devil and conscripted him to a life of capturing souls that have escaped from hell and returning them to the devil. Worse yet, this is supposed to be a comedy. However, when you can't even find funny sequences with decent acting for the promos, your show doesn’t have much potential for success. Seriously, the acting is so bad in these promos that it makes Gigli look Shakespearean by comparison. Add the bad acting to the ludicrous premise and you have a show I not only won't watch, I’ll go out of my way not to even flip past the channel when it’s on. Pushing Daisies has a slight advantage in that it’s produced by ABC, an actual major network instead of a hack-job amateur-hour joke of a network like the CW. Still, Daisies relies on an equally absurd premise, that a guy can touch dead people and bring them back to life and presumably uses this ability to revive murder victims, get them to tell him who killed them and then touches them again, thus rendering them deceased once more. Again, the way the network is promoting this, it’s supposed to be a comedy, ha ha. If you’ll notice the three shows I listed at the beginning of this paragraph, the reason they worked is that they are supernatural-themed shows that are dramas. Supernatural dramas work, supernatural comedies invariably fall flat on their faces. But at least when both of these new shows are canceled a few weeks into the season, I won't have invested any time in watching them and won't be sad to see them go.

A golfer acts like a big baby, a moron tries to scale a White House fence and a Notre Dame football player busted for solicitation

- What’s one of the biggest recruiting pitches schools make to athletes? Come here and you’ll have a campus full of hot girls, nearly all of whom are eager and willing to hook up with you. Even though every single college and university would deny making such a pitch, they would all be lying in making that denial because even if it’s a wink-wink, nudge-nudge, under-the-table type thing, you can be sure it’s going on. Schools may be banned from using sex as an incentive for recruits, but that doesn’t mean they can have plenty of hot girls around when a recruit visits and suggest that the recruit can expect more of the same if they come to the school. Bearing that in mind, I have to ask Notre Dame football player Derrell Hand what the hell he was thinking. Hand, a defensive lineman at one of the most prestigious football schools in America, was suspended indefinitely from the football team, after soliciting sex from an undercover cop posing as a hooker last Thursday. He was released on $250 bond, but his troubles are far from over. My main question is how a football player, one of the most visible people on campus, has to pay for sex. Aren’t football players pretty much guaranteed sex just by showing up at a party on any given Saturday night? It’s a known fact that a lot of girls like to be with athletes, and on college campuses, athletes don’t get any more high profile than football players, especially at Notre Dame. Stand in the middle of a room at any frat party on a Saturday night, do a 360 and you’ll see no less than a dozen girls who would hook up with a football player right then and there. I know it’s summer and the campus is somewhat empty, but there’s no way Hand should be resorting to a hooker to get his freak on. Not a smart move, my man, and now it could cost you your football career and your scholarship.

- It was nice knowing you, two Cuban boxers deported from the Pan Am Games after going missing and running up an exorbitant bill as a luxury resort. Brazilian police arrested the pair and hauled them off to jail. Now they’re back in Cuba, where they are confined to guest houses and awaiting punishment from the Cuban government. Ailing leader Fidel Castro, a man renowned worldwide for his mercy, compassion and leniency, has promised that the two boxers will not be punished severely, so I’m sure things will turn out OK for them. Either that or they’ll spend a couple decades in a dirty, dark prison, disappear and never be heard from again or be otherwise tortured brutally. After all, Cuba doesn’t have a history of dealing kindly with athletes and others who run away and try to escape when visiting a foreign country. Normally those doing the running are looking to defect and leave Cuba for good, but based on the actions of these two tools, I’m not sure what their end game was. If they really wanted to leave Cuba, wouldn’t they have gone straight to the embassy and tried to seek political asylum? Instead, they holed up at a resort, ordered pay-per-view movies out the ying yang, raided the mini bar repeatedly and dug themselves a hole that they’re not going to get out of.

- There is no bigger baby, no more immature whiner on the PGA Tour right now than Rory Sabbatini. Sabbatini, who is a master at shooting his mouth off and then not backing it up, had a run-in with a fan at the Bridgestone Invitational in Akron, Ohio on Sunday because the fan had the audacity to call him on something Sabbatini had said several months ago. The fan, Steve Banky, called out to Sabbatini after the golfer made a double-bogey on the ninth hole, asking him if he still thought Tiger Woods was beatable. The comment made reference to a statement Sabbatini had made a few months ago at a tournament in Charlotte when he said that with his new swing and new approach to the game, Tiger was now much more beatable. Woods responded the next day by saying that he has won a ton of majors and tournaments and that Sabbatini has won a total of three tournaments and no majors. When the fan made the comment, though, Sabbatini flipped out and ran down a security guard who then had the fan ejected from the course. No, the fan didn’t threaten Sabbatini, nor did he use a profanity or throw something at him. He merely reminded Rory of a comment he’d made and that was enough to lead to a meltdown. Well, actually Sabbatini was melting down long before the incident, because he was in the midst of turning a one-shot lead over Woods heading into the final round into an eight-shot deficit by day’s end. It’s hard to see why he played so poorly under pressure, given the grace and deft touch he showed in handling Banky. Hey R., if you can't handle one fan and a harmless comment he makes in passing, how are you going to hang tough when you’re paired with Woods, the best player in the world, in the final round of the tournament? Sounds to me like someone was overly sensitive about playing so poorly with the spotlight on him and decided to take it out on an innocent fan.

- It was a great opening weekend for The Bourne Ultimatum, with the action thriller bringing in more than $70 million at the box office. For once, a movie lived up to the ginormous hype and was rewarded for it, a lesson that Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End could have learned from. Unlike Pirates, Bourne stayed true to the spirit and character that made the first two movies in the series so great and having a lead actor like Matt Damon, someone who by all appearances seems like a good guy and someone who has character in real life, as your protagonist helps as well. What’s noteworthy about the $70.2 million raked in by this movie is that it nearly equals the total of the opening weekends of the first two Bourne movies combined ($27.1 million for The Bourne Identity in 2002 and The Bourne Supremacy in 2004 with $52.2 million). Runner up in the weekend earnings race was The Simpsons Movie, followed by the universally panned Underdog. Not a good sign for Underdog, because if your movie can only hit third place with meager earnings on its opening weekend and critics are roundly ripping the film, the combination of poor word of mouth, low opening weekend numbers and bad reviews does not bode well for the film’s prospects. It’s shocking, I know, that a live-action film with a talking dog and Patrick Warburton as one of the voiceover artists for the film isn’t doing well. Poor Warburton, ever since he lost his gig as Elaine’s lovable oaf of a boyfriend David Puddy on Seinfeld, things haven’t been going very well.

- Get a blog and spend your time writing snippy, sarcastic putdowns about the president, Justin Manuel Arrieta, because your strategy of trying to scale the wall at the White House to get to W. didn’t go well. Arrieta was not surprisingly nabbed by Secret Service agents at about 10:30 a.m. Sunday when he tried to enter the White House grounds by climbing a fence on the north side of the property. Arrieta, a 22-year-old from Cocoa Beach, Fla., was taken into custody and charged with unlawful entry, although his intentions for trying his climbing antics were not known. Here’s hoping it wasn’t some sort of dare that he and a few drunken buddies made to each other, because if so, that’s the dumbest dare I’ve heard of yet. If it was some sort of political statement, then where was the sign, the banner or the t-shirt with a political message on it? Or maybe Arrieta is just crazy, which actually seems like the most logical explanation here. But let’s face it, millions of Americans would love to get into the White House and smack W. upside the head with a blunt object or ten, but most of us are smart enough not to climb a fence and be captured by waiting Secret Service agents.

- Sunday came and went with no real progress on the Brady Quinn contract front, although two things did happen that make B. Quinn look even worse for continuing to hold out from Cleveland Browns training camp. Two first round picks from Quinn’s area of the draft (Nos. 23 and 25, respectively) signed contracts with their new teams and were in camp today, leaving Quinn, top pick JaMarcus Russell and No. 14 pick Darrelle Revis of the New York Jets as the only unsigned draft picks left. Jon Beason, picked 25th by the Carolina Panthers, and Dwayne Bowe, chosen 23rd by the Kansas City Chiefs, both signed deals Sunday, even as Quinn continues focusing on things that don’t matter (interviews, autograph signings, etc.) and not getting a deal done so he can focus on what does matter (getting into camp so he can start competing for a starting position). Not that Quinn is going to take anyone’s advice and get his ass into camp any time soon, but he really should sign a deal and get in before the Browns’ first home preseason game, because the scene at that game if he hasn’t signed will be ugly – really ugly. I can guarantee there will be no shortage of signs at banners blasting Quinn for his selfishness and greed, blasts that will be well-deserved by the way. Quinn is just fortunate that Russell appears poised for an equally lengthy holdout, because being the last unsigned first-round pick would take the ignominy of this whole mess to another level entirely.

Ecuador's president is a douche, James Brown had game and the real Ocho Cinco is back

- A new album from Interpol is a rarity for music fans. The New York quartet has only released one album since their 2002 debut, Turn On the Bright Lights, so their new album Our Love to Admire is noteworthy for that reason alone. As an Interpol fan, I was curious how the group’s sound would change going from indie label Matador Records to major label Capitol Records. Unfortunately, the ever-corrupting influence of a major label can indeed be heard on the album, where it’s clear that Paul Banks and Co. are aiming for a more mainstream appeal instead of retaining the indie cred that had made them so great up to this point. Before, Interpol was a serious, powerful and thoughtful group that relied on Banks’ powerful, driving and often overwhelming vocals and a somberness that recalled the sound of indie pioneers like Joy Division. This time around, the change is obvious in the incorporation of keyboardist Carlos D into the band’s repertoire as well as Banks’ more melodic, mainstream vocal stylings. On songs like The Lighthouse and Pace is the Trick, the new sound of Interpol is at its most visible. The lead single, Heinrich Maneuver, is more along the lines of what we’ve come to expect from Interpol, although I can't help but wonder if that choice was made to give fans the illusion that the record in general isn’t as much of a departure as it really is. So on one hand, I’m inclined to give this album a thumbs up because it’s still a good listen and better than the majority of the crap clogging up the airwaves right now, but on the other hand I’m wary because it just may be the bridge that takes Interpol from cool, individualistic indie rock to a future of mainstream, blasé crap that makes the first part of their career nothing more than a wistful memory. If I could say one thing to the band, it would be to do a 180, turn around and head back to the spirit and sound that has given you two nearly gold records and a spot at the top of the indie scene. Don’t go the rest of the way to the dark side, sell out and turn into another Killers or Blondie……..

- Distanced, underwhelmed and angry. Those three adjectives would be a good description of how I felt last night as I watched the bobble-headed, egotistical, steroid-fueled Barry Bonds hit his 755th career home run to tie Hank Aaron’s record. As the ball sailed out of Petco Park in San Diego, flying into the left field seats where a scrum ensued for possession of the ball, I was partly angry and upset because the dreaded moment had finally arrived when baseball’s biggest cheater had reach the game’s most revered record. Still, I wasn’t overwhelmed with rage because I also felt a sense of distance and disconnect, almost as if I were watching a video game that didn’t really matter. Because truthfully, if Bar-roid did use performance-enhancing drugs to hit many of his 755 career home runs, why should I care about his record. His bitterman act and surly demeanor, coupled with the mounting evidence of steroid use, have made him a figure that I and many other fans just don’t give a crap about. So as that ball left the yard, the one word that popped to mind most powerfully was, “Whatever.” I was glad it was mostly over (not totally, because Bonds still has to hit one more to break the record) and that within a few days I can go back to following Major League Baseball without 3/4 of the stories focusing on, either directly or indirectly, Bar-roid and his pursuit of Aaron’s record.

- Ocho Cinco is back, and that’s good news for all of us. Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver Chad Johnson is absolutely the best character in the NFL, a free-spirited and fun-loving guy whose colorful touchdown celebrations and antics garner a lot of attention and no shortage of criticism. What’s great about Ocho Cinco’s act is that it’s never malicious and never hurtful to anyone, because O.C. is looking to have fun and put on a show, nothing more. In an interview with SI.com writer Peter King, Ocho Cinco says that he had a subpar season last year (he was on my fantasy team and nearly cost us the championship, so I can validate that) and he knows why. O.C. says that last year he was hurt by attempting to stay down and maintain a relatively low profile instead of acting like, well, Ocho Cinco. At the behest of Bengals coach Marvin Lewis, O.C. was a toned-down version of himself last year and he feels not being himself hurt his play. Thus, my man Ocho Cinco is promising to be back to his old self this year, with a collection of touchdown celebrations so good that he’s been collecting money to pay for the fines the NFL will impose on him for them. One TD celebration that O.C. has planned in the event of a touchdown in the first game of the season is so outrageous that he claims Lewis will suspend him a game for doing it. “I need to be myself, I need to get my sex back,” O.C. explained. I don’t exactly know what that means, but I know it’s good news for football fans, because Ocho Cinco at his best is him going Riverdance in the end zone, proposing to cheerleaders on the sidelines, using the end zone pylons as putters and attempting CPR on the ball after scoring touchdowns. Glad to have you back, O.C., I’m looking forward to a 15-20 TD season this year.

- When a wealthy or even semi-wealthy person passes away, what is one of the givens that always goes down? Let me help you out: That person’s family engages in a huge brawl over the contents of the deceased’s will, arguing who should get what, how much money should go to whom, etc. What you usually don’t have is a titanic struggle just to find out who the person’s heirs are. But such is the case with the estate of the late James Brown, Godfather of Soul. Brown died on Christmas day, but the search for all of the children he fathered is still going on. The will only listed six children, but since his passing DNA testing has been done on several more individuals claiming that Brown is their baby daddy. Recently two of those claims were substantiated, and although the names of those two people have not been released, one of them is believed to be 45-year-old LaRhonda Petitt of Houston. She is one of the dozen would-be children of Brown who have been tested so far, but smart money is on the number of confirmed children for the G.T.S. rising into double digits. I’m not sure whether to be impressed or mortified, actually. On one hand, it should not take widespread DNA testing and nearly one year’s time to decide who your rightful heirs are once you die, but on the other hand, J. Brown clearly had game if he was able to get with that many different women over the course of that many years. I mean, most guys like to get their freak on, but Brown was definitely one of the most prolific when it came to that.

- Upon learning that two people were shot in a Vegas altercation over the weekend, my first response was the same as yours probably was: What was Pacman Jones doing back in Vegas? Alas, Pacman was not involved in this incident, although signing a contract to wrassle with TNA Wrestling isn’t a much more helpful step if he’s looking to rehabilitate his damaged rep. The shooting in the Caesar’s Palace hotel-casino took place early Saturday morning when a man who had been knocked to the ground in a fistfight decided to escalate things by pulling a gun and squeezing off a few rounds. Richard Earl Shepherd Jr., 34, is still being sought by Las Vegas police. The two victims were treated at a local hospital and released. I have to say, not the smartest move on the part of Shepherd. Casinos are notorious for being the most heavily surveilled, photographed and videoed places in the world, with security systems that rival most nuclear missile silos. If you want to do something illegal, you’re almost better off doing it in the street in front of your local police station than you are doing it in a casino, especially a Las Vegas casino. There are probably no less than four video clips and six still photos of Shepherd engaged in the brawl and firing off his gun, so he really should just turn himself in and expedite this process before things get worse for him.


- Take that, Hugo Chavez! The Venezuelan president has some competition in the realm of oppressive, restrictive and overly sensitive South American leaders, courtesy of Venezuelan President Rafael Correa. Correa has ordered the deportation of a U.S. environmental activist for taking part in a police seizure of two tons of shark fins that were apparently illegally fished. Sean O’Hearn of the environmental rights group Sea Shepherd was detained in the capital city of Quito and will now be booted out of Ecuador. “I am not going to allow any foreigner to come here and tell us what to do,” an incensed Correa declared. You show ‘em, Rafael! Because it’s not important that your country do things the right way, abide by laws, not damage the environment and be a responsible member of the international community, dammit! What IS important is that you don’t let some foreigner be the one to come in and tell you that you’re doing something wrong! The key issue is not whether something is right or wrong, but rather who the messenger is for telling you what is right or wrong! Because let’s face it, no one outside of Ecuador is smart enough, educated enough or capable of looking at something your country is doing and determining if it is legal, ethical or correct. I’m sure this governing policy will serve your nation verrrrry well and won't lead to any problems at all……….

Elton John is enormously stupid, so is Brady Quinn and so is anyone who watches The Singing Bee

- I‘m expecting a bevy of thank you cards from the producers, execs, writers, cast and crew of Greek to land in my mailbox any day now. Clearly, my shameless and nonstop efforts to extol the virtues of my favorite new summer show have paid off, because word is out that ABC has ordered 10 more episodes of Greek. You’d like to think that putting out a good show with interesting characters and fun storylines would be enough to compel networks to keep a series on the air, and other than shows airing on the CW network (you still suck, Dawn Ostroff) that’s usually the case. But as ABC proved just last month when putting another great new series, Traveler, on permanent hiatus, no network is totally devoid of idiots in its executive suites. It’s so rare that I get to report good times in the world of television, but another 10 episodes for a show that’s still getting better and more interesting with each new episode deserves the extended run. Again I’ll throw this out for those of you who still haven’t gotten on board: Monday at 9 p.m. on ABC Family, don’t miss the next episode.

- As summer rages on, the impossible happens in the world of TV. We started the summer faced with a crap load of crappy summer shows, but the fare I’m seeing on my screen now clearly indicates that the shows are getting worse, not better. The current target of my ire is FOX’s Don’t Forget the Lyrics, which is basically a half-assed knock-off of MTV’s old karaoke show Say What Karaoke. Of course, Say What Karaoke at least had the benefit of hundreds of hot girls in bikinis being on the set at the beach, whereas FOX just has some fat, middle-aged dudes with poorly maintained facial hair singing subpar karaoke versions of popular songs (and if it’s a subpar karaoke performance, you know it’s really, really bad). I already know America is grossly out of shape, not especially smart and generally not the most attractive and talented lot of people, so why do I need to see FOX gather them in a studio and butcher a bunch of songs that were terrible to begin with? I’ll just keep repeating to myself that Prison Break is only three weeks away, so at least this network has one redeeming show on its schedule…..

- For 99.999 percent of the actors and celebs in Hollywood, hosting a show like The Singing Bee on NBC would be a major step backward in their careers. For former man-bander Joey Fatone of the Backstreet Men of O-Town Sync Degrees, though, hosting a terrible, hokey hack-job of a reality show is actually a step up. After all, when you’ve made your rep on dancing in unison with four other dudes, lip syncing to crappy pop music while wearing matching outfits and sporting frosted hair, there’s really nowhere to go but up. I had the misfortune of flipping by NBC as this monstrosity of a show was coming on the air and apparently it was a salute to ‘80s music. Fatone’s dancing, which appeared to be marred by heavy doses of narcotics, alcohol and repeated blows to the back of the head with a blunt object before coming on stage, would have been offensive and out of place in any decade. His cast of dislikeable losers in costumes that didn’t really represent any ‘80s I was a part of only added to the uber-laughable, mock-able quality of the show, which made one thing utterly and perfectly clear: Heroes can't start its fall season soon enough. Left to its own devices, NBC is clearly as dumb and inept as every other major network, so Tim Kring and crew need to come back soon and set things right.

- Of all the things Brady Quinn could do right now, shutting up would be the most beneficial. Bad news for you, Brady, but no matter how fair and right you think your holdout from Cleveland Browns training camp is, nothing you can say in any TV or radio interview is going to help you right now. You can tell us over and over that you and your agent aren’t seeking exorbitant amounts of money or that you aren’t demanding to be paid like a top-five pick despite being drafted 22nd, but all Browns fans and any other football fan with an IQ above 45 hears is that you’re being a big, greedy baby and that if you truly wanted to be in camp, playing football, you would tell your agent to get a deal done yesterday even if it meant making a few small concessions now. Because let me tell you champ, if you’re as good as your egotistical behavior is indicating you believe yourself to be, you’ll earn all the money you’re seeking and then some in your career. Tom Brady was a sixth-round pick and I don’t remember hearing him b*tching and whining about being drafted so low and deserving more money. He signed a deal, came in and has proven to be one of the elite quarterbacks in the NFL. He has a mega deal now, but the way you’re going, Brady, you won’t even start a single game this season because you’ll be so far behind by the time you do sign a contract that you won't have any chance to earn the starting job. So stop trying to wage a PR war on the airwaves, because no matter what you say, what we see is you out in Arizona, more concerned with protecting your image than signing a deal and getting into training camp.

- Never trust a man wearing a feather boa, furry sunglasses and a sequined suit jacket, that’s my motto. Proving me oh, so right for adhering to that mantra is the idiot known as Elton John, who not only hates the digital side of the music world but is so backwards and ignorant as to suggest that it would be a great idea to get rid of the Internet for five years to “see what kind of art would result.” First off, E., I think you need to stop inhaling paint fumes and realize that digital music is a good thing, not a bad thing. Last I checked, you hadn’t refused to accept any profits and royalty payments from the sale of your songs on iTunes, so you’re being a hypocrite right there. Also, realize that the digital music front is the only way many people, especially those under the age of 30 (those you seem intent on alienating with your inane ramblings), get their music. That way, they can conveniently buy music from their home and have it right away without going to the store. Also, digital music allows us wonderful things like the iPod, meaning we can bring thousands of songs along with us anywhere we go without having to lug around tons of CDs. As for abolishing the Internet for the sake of art……….i don’t care what type of art you’re talking about, that’s just a dumb, dumb thing to say. The world is so reliant on the Internet and it is such a valuable means of communication and learning that to reject it so completely is so ignorant and idiotic that it almost doesn’t warrant a response. Besides, E., I can tell you what kind of art would result if people took your suggestion and abolished the Internet for five years: Elton John voodoo dolls. I’d make at least five a day and stick so many pins in them that they’d look like friggin’ porcupines on steroids. See, this is a shining example of why just being famous doesn’t mean you can or should share thoughts and opinions on the world. Famous people are just as stupid, sometimes more so, as the rest of us.