News Of The Week

Earlier in the week, I used an incorrect term when describing Roger Clemens as a possible "pedophile". Technically, a pedophile targets children. I'm not real sure 15 years old qualifies as a child in that respect. Especially since she was a 15 year old who was allowed to sing karaoke in a bar. And no, I'm not making that distinction in case certain aspects of my past ever pop up.

You have to give Roger Clemens credit. He's got an amazing ability to make a bad situation worse. Get mentioned in the Mitchell report as a steroid user. You could just make a little denial and go quietly into retirement. Instead, why not sue the former trainer who narced on you? Works well when he announces he still has the syringes he injected HGH into you with. Go on 60 Minutes to defend your innocense. Come across as a liar. And nut case. Insist on testifying before a Congressional committee. Come across as an even bigger liar and face possible perjury charges. Now, one of your girlfriends is ratting you out in order to help her career which brought a couple more out of the woodwork. You would think giving all that money to McCready would have bought a little more discretion out of her. I think the only person who probably feels like a bigger chump is Clemens' wife who took a bullet for him by letting him tell Congress (and the world) that she took HGH, not him.

As for McCready, what a whore. The story now is that she went up to his room when she was 15, but nothing happened even though "it was love at first sight". I'm sure they only went up there because his room had HBO. The weirdest person in this whole thing is McCready's dad, Tim. He seems to know way too much about when all the sex between his daughter and Clemens got going. Oh, and he thinks the married man who started chasing his teenage daughter was a gentleman. Of course, what do you expect from a guy whose 15 year old daughter is meeting men at bars and going up to their room? And another thing. Wasn't McCready considered a hottie back when she was a star (not really my type; something about the nose)? She's only 32, but that picture in the last article shows she hasn't aged well.

On the plus side, while researching pictures of McCready (okay, I just went to her website), I found a link on her site to some chick named Aki Hoshino. Not often you see a Japanese women stacked like that.

It could be worse. World renowned soccer star (which still puts him about 20 levels below Cameron Mills in Lexington) Renaldo had a little problem when he picked up three hookers. They turned out to be transvestites. There seems to be a dispute about what happened after getting to the room. Renaldo says they tried to extort money. The hookers say he threatened them after finding out they were packing some man-meat. I know one thing isn't in dispute from seeing the picture of the hooker. It doesn't matter whether or not Renaldo thought he was picking up a man or woman, he has lousy taste in hookers.

The value of a Yale education. "Art" student Aliza Schvarts submitted a project that basically consisted of her blood (she claimed she repeatedly inseminated herself and then induced an abortion to get it, but most likely it's "just" menstrual blood) in between sheets of plastic in the shape of a cube. Needless to say, that's a bit controversial. She said she wasn't going for "shock value" (sure she wasn't), but instead wanted to start a conversation. Here's my conversation to her. "You are an idiot. Your project is stupid, quite disgusting and unhygienic. This is typical BS "art" by untalented hacks who couldn't come up with anything worth a crap. You should be kicked out of school simply for wasting everyone's time with that garbage."

Surprisingly, Yale actually decided this could be problematic. So, they announced that she hadn't really had a bunch of abortions. It's just performance art which is code for non-artistic endeavors by people needy for attention. Then the "artist" replied that Yale is wrong and she did do what she said she did (even though she can't really say that she ever got pregnant which shows you don't have to be smart to get into Yale). Surprisingly, Yale won't let her display her idiotic project until she admits it's all fake. Actually, it's not too surprising. It's not very good PR for Yale. How would you like to explain to the parents of prospective students that this is what kind of education will come from those hugely expensive tuition payments? Or to alumni who question why you need money for endowments when this is what it goes for?

To be honest, I'm surprised Yale didn't just try to brazen it out. It's not like higher education is averse to allowing such stupidity. There's been a lot of controversy with some of Barak Obama's associates (Reverend Wright being the most well known). One of them is William Ayers who was one of the Weathermen who is still proud of his behavior to the point that he wishes he had been a better terrorist who bombed more things. His friendship with Obama notwithstanding, but Ayers is a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago. What does it tell you about the state of higher education that a former terrorist is now a professor?

Actually, a lawsuit should tell you about the state of higher education. A former Dartmouth professor is suing Dartmouth for harassment and threatening to sue the individual students for harassing her. How did they harass her? They had the gall to disagree with her opinions. Doesn't seem to be a lot of support from Dartmouth students who seem to think the professors problem was her own incompetence. Which seems rather likely because she has a PhD in literature, but her emails are full of grammatical errors. This is a double whammy to Dartmouth's academic credibility. Not only did they hire that half-wit, they gave her a diploma before hiring her.

Still, the most embarrassed university out there should be Arizona State. They disbanded the cheerleader squad because six of the girls' pictures in underwear at a get-together ended up online. Maybe the girls should have claimed the pictures were an art project. In the interest of telling the whole story, I looked up the original web posting of the pictures. Didn't find the hot lesbo cheerleader pics I was expecting. Seems a bit ridiculous to get rid of the squad over those. Their cheerleading outfits don't have much more material than that.

I finally saw Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby and came away with two thoughts. I finally know what happened to the gray Members Only jacket that I had in high school. Gary Cole is wearing it to Applebee's in this movie. It was nice to see several of the lesser known Steve Earle songs on the soundtrack. Of course, the fact he would peddle his music for this flick kinds of belies his claim of being "Marxist". It's not like he can claim he wanted his songs on the soundtrack due to the artistic merits of the movie.

In more music news, Madonna becomes even more pathetic.

Well, the Kentucky Derby sucked. Big Brown did get the good trip that I didn't think could come out of post 20 which means serial cheater/drug user Rick Dutrow wins the Derby. Pyro gets squeezed at the start which ended his trip before it started. Colonel John hangs back about a mile before he starts running. That leaves the filly to challenge and she runs so hard that she breaks both her ankles after crossing the finish line second. Pretty gruesome injury. In fact, I've seen horses break down before, but never break both ankles at once. Which brought out a poor broadcasting sequence for the NBC people. First, the guys at the desk noted that a second equine ambulance was brought out for Eight Belles without seeming to understand the significance. Then the commentator actually on the track said she thought it might be a heart issue and maybe wasn't that bad. Well, actually, I knew she was a goner the moment that second ambulance arrived. You don't need two for one horse. The only reason to bring the second one is to block the view of the crowd as you put her down.

Not that they were the only ones not to go out of their way to embarrass their coverage. ESPN had the early races at Churchill and did their usual crap of throwing everything up to and including the kitchen sink into their coverage. I know they like their show PTI, but the less I see of Michael Wilbon and Tony Kornheiser the happier I am. Even though both admitted they know next to nothing about horse racing, ESPN still felt the need to do a segment with them. It would have been one thing to just ask for their pick (who the Hell doesn't have a Derby pick), but to have them try to handicap something they admittedly know nothing about was absurd. Kornheiser proved he hadn't done more than Cliffs Notes level research when he said Big Brown got his name because UPS owns him. Not quite. He was named after UPS' nickname, but only because his actual owner does business with them. It's ludicrous to think UPS would own a racehorse.

So much for a coronation in the NBA East. If someone told me when the playoffs began that only one first round series would go seven games, the last one I would have thought was Boston-Atlanta. Boston had the best record in the NBA as they finished with seven more wins than any other team. Atlanta was eight games under .500, and had been swept by Boston during the regular season. Suddenly in the playoffs, Atlanta takes them to game 7?