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Moon landing skeptics, out of my sight!
With my recent discovery of these formerly classified, plasticene-based slippers, I’ve finally irrefutable evidence Homo sapiens once traipsed the lunar landscape.
What’s more amazing is I unearthed them at Big Lots. Read more…
Here’s a photo of Kobe Bryant and his sisters Sharia and Shayla @ LAX nightclub at the Luxor in Las Vegas last night.
Bless their hearts.
We’ve been waiting all these years for Vanessa Bryant to breakout into the public eye, perhaps now she has her chance?
Egypt Sherrod reports this week that “sources are buzzing that Bravo TV producers are trying to add NBA superstar Kobe Bryant’s wife Vanessa Bryant to the cast of The Real Housewives of Orange County.”
(Kobe and Vanessa Bryant’s daughter Natalie - future reality star?)
The longer this whole recession thing sticks around, the more it’s going to affect our delicious, precious sports. Teams are already wringing their hands about slow ticket sales and sponsorship problems. Surprisingly (SARCASM), the inflated ticket prices and payrolls that skyrocketed over the past 10-15 years might not be sustainable over the long haul.
(No need to hurry, really.)
One team in particular, the New Jersey Nets, is having a wee bit o’ trouble putting butts in the seats at inflated prices in a crappy arena to see a terrible basketball team. But they’ve…got….a…plan: Jersey giveaways! No big deal, even if you can’t name a single stiff on the team these days (other than Devin Harris), because they’re possibly the first team ever to give away opposing team’s jerseys.
Not even back on the football field, and already Michael Vick is winning awards. In a poll I can get behind (although I don’t completely agree with the choices), Vick was voted overwhelmingly as the most hated man in sports. Data was collected by E-Poll, an Encino, Calif.-based marketing research firm, and reported by FORBES MAGAZINE.
As you have deduced from our photos above, Manny Being Manny and Alex Rodriguez placed and showed, and the remainder of the 10-man field is, well, interesting. A couple of glaring omissions, and couple of WTFs? And don’t worry: Isiah Thomas is there. Read more…
Rickey Henderson’s upcoming speech after his Baseball Hall of Fame induction on Sunday has the potential to be almost as awesome as a dinosaur fighting a squid and a whale. After all, this is someone who used to scream “Rickey is the best!” while standing naked in front of a mirror in the clubhouse taking practice swings. Who used called Padres GM Kevin Towers searching for a job and left the following message: “Kevin, this is Rickey. Calling on behalf of Rickey. Rickey wants to play baseball.” And of course, who after breaking Lou Brock’s stolen base record, got on the mic and said “Lou Brock was the symbol of great base stealing. But today, I’m the greatest of all time.”
So imagine him getting to give a whole speech dedicated to the matter of his greatness? It’s staggering to think what might come out of his mouth. It’s like taking Mel Gibson out for a night of drinking and then asking him about Jews. But the SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS reports that Henderson is attempting to refine his speech, and some lucky college students at Laney College in the Bay Area are getting to help. For the past several weeks, he’s been practicing his speech in front of a public speaking class and receiving critiques from the students.
The teacher is former major leaguer Earl Robinson, who offered Henderson his help because even Henderson can admit that he needs it:
“Speech and me don’t get along sometimes,” he said. “I’m not a doctor or professor, so for me to go and write a speech or read a speech, it’s kind of like putting a tie too tight around my neck.”
Usually, it’s hard to accuse Rickey Henderson of an understatement, but to say that he and speech “don’t get along sometimes” is like saying Madonna’s face is starting to look “kind of weird.” So where does this leave us for Sunday? Because let’s face facts: it would be tragic if his speech was too good. But it appears that there’s no need to worry, as Robinson assures people that the speech is still all Rickey:
“He’s going to say what he feels,” he said. “How they interpret it, we’ll see. When he throws something out there, whatever else you hear in terms of him being critical of this or that, he overpowers you with the sincerity of his words.
“Like I finally said to him, just do the best you can. Let Rickey be Rickey.”
Yesterday we told you about how Manny Ramirez hit a game-winning grand slam on Manny Ramirez Bobblehead Night into the Mannywood section of seats. And for many people in Southern California, it’s probably a good thing that we did, because they sure didn’t get a chance to watch it on TV. That’s because, as the LOS ANGELES TIMES points out, Time Warner Cable customers missed the homer thanks to a roughly one minute service outage. Whoops!
One minute, viewers were watching the game. Then, they saw a frozen screen followed by back-to-back commercials, only to come back to Ramirez taking a curtain call because…something happened. Not that Time Warner cares about the dozens of angry e-mails and phone calls. I mean, it wasn’t that big of a deal.
Time Warner spokesman Darryl Ryan said that what occurred was “an inadvertent glitch.” He said it affected a “small number” of customers on L.A.’s Westside and the western San Fernando Valley. And, as if this will matter to that “small number” of customers, “it only took them away from the game for 54 seconds,” Ryan said.
Hey, it least you didn’t have the Super Bowl climax replaced by a porn scene. Or, perhaps it’s too bad that you didn’t, depending on if your wife is in the room.
Finally, are you ready for a sitcom called “Jock Itch”? If you said yes, then Dolphins CB Nathan Jones is your kind of man. (Also, if you said yes, please resume beating yourself over the head with a mallet.) Jones is executive producing the show, which he describes as “really ‘Friday Night Lights meets ‘Friends’.” Which I assume means that there will be a ton of cute talking, but no one will watch. Still, it’s an open audition if you’re interested.
For those of you who didn’t watch “The T.O. Show” on VH1 last night, consider yourselves the lucky few: like the residents of Johnstown who weren’t washed away by the giant flood, you somehow missed out on being carried away in a torrent of filth, muck and debris. For those of us contractually obligated to watch the show (this is why you should read contracts before agreeing to become a blogger), there’s no Red Cross volunteers coming to our rescue. We’re left shaking on the banks of the river as we try to comprehend what we just saw.
Maybe I’m being a bit over the top. But man, it wasn’t good.
To recap: Terrell Owens has a great body (honed by only the finest rubber bands your $19.95 can buy), and enjoys spending time showing it off. A lot of time showing it off. As in, going shirtless for about three-quarters of the show. But, as you would hear any good pitchman say, that’s not all.
No VH1 “Celeb Reality” show can just be about following a celebrity around, so there has to be some sort of convoluted plot, and here the one for “The T.O. Show”: his “best friends” and “publicists” Kita Williams and Monique Jackson have convinced him to move to Los Angeles during the off-season to “find himself.” Which - according to the first episode - means the following things:
Somehow T.O. has managed to create a show with less likable characters than “Rock of Love” and even fewer morally redeeming qualities as “I Love Money.” It’s an exercise in egotistical wish fulfillment - T.O. is famous and wants a show, so someone had to give it to him - and the early reviews have been particularly brutal:
Terrell Owens is one beautiful man and he knows it, oh, Lord, he knows it, and so do his publicists, Kita Williams and Monique Jackson, the forces behind “The T.O. Show,” which premieres tonight on VH1. Why else would the publicity art include a nude portrait of the football star, why else would Owens spend at least 60% of his time in front of the camera shirtless?
Good thing too, because the sculpted pecs, mighty shoulders and perfect abs are just about the only thing the show has going for it. No, wait, I take that back; he has a lovely smile as well. - LOS ANGELES TIMES
Your mama never warned you to watch out for reality TV, but it can be poison. You sense its brain destructiveness when you get up in the morning, thinking, “I can’t wait to see if T.O. makes it with the real estate agent.”
The T.O. Show is so shallow mosquitoes couldn’t breed in it, though it appears some of the humans are trying to, as Terrell Owens joins up with two publicists, who are also supposed to be his best friends. -PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER
What VH1 gets out of the deal, frankly, is less clear, other than a strange amalgam of soap-opera pathos and jock-like bravado, with Owens taking marching orders from his ubiquitous “publicists,” who, given their time commitment to the athlete, surely must have no other clients. - VARIETY
…and don’t even get me started on T.O.’s bodyguard Pablo. Just…no.
Meanwhile, while”The T.O. Show” was premiering, another type of muck was being dredged up in Pittsburgh. PRO FOOTBALL TALK reports that Ben Roethlisberger is the subject of a civil suit filed by a hotel employee in Washoe County, NV who says that in July 2008, the Super Bowl MVP called her into his room to fix her TV, and then “forced her to have sex with him.”
Using a little bit of local knowledge, based on the locations given and the date, I’m going to assume this allegedly happened when Roethlisberger was in South Lake Tahoe last year for the American Century Celebrity Golf Championship. And if this sounds a lot to you like the allegations made against Kobe Bryant in Colorado a couple of years ago…you’re not the only one. Of course, the big difference here is that these are civil allegations - no criminal charges have ever been filed by Roethlisberger’s accuser.
Finally, former North Carolina wide receiver and point guard Jason Holley was revealed as the winner of Michael Irvin’s “4th and Long” reality TV show on Spike, and with it has earned a shot with the Dallas Cowboys during their training camp. Is it possible to do a reality show about football and not have the Cowboys involved? So help me, if Alvin Harper gets a show, I’m never watching TV again.
Other sports stories from last night:
(Can Pedro keep his midget well-cared for on $1 million a year?)
Michael Jackson was laid to rest this afternoon with a star-studded (and taxpayer-funded) memorial service that included Mariah Carey swinging ‘n’ missing and Stevie Wonder hitting a home run. (Seems like kind of a weak analogy, with the blindness and all, but whatever - Stevie was way better.) But there were plenty more stars than just those two, some of whom were thoughtful enough not to sing.
(Ever think that the Colonel’s tie was actually a small body dancing like Michael Jackson? Did I just blow your mind?*)
As we reported earlier, two such stars were Laker greats Kobe Bryant and Magic Johnson, because AEG needed to cynically leverage their Lakers/Staples Center assets in order to maximize exposure and advertising dollars since they’re on the hook for MJ’s lost concert revenue everybody needed to know what Kobe Bryant thinks about the late Michael Jackson. Frankly, any Kobe speech that didn’t include something along the lines of “Can you imagine if I blatantly ripped my act off this MJ instead?!” seems like a waste, but we’re getting greedy.
When it was Magic’s turn to speak, though, he went a route that was at once surprising and, really, not even slightly surprising.
• A source says that the wife of Steve McNair was “blindsided” by news that the ex-NFL QB was having an affair with 20-year-old Sahel Kazemi.
Meanwhile, Nashville police are saying that the gun found at the scene of McNair & Kazemi’s death had been bought by Sahel.
• Sunday was a good day to be a Gillette spokesman. Just ask Roger Federer, Tiger Woods & Derek Jeter.
• Chris Cohan may soon not be one of the worst owners in the NBA, as he looks to sell his majority stake in the Golden State Warriors.
• F1 chief Bernie Ecclestone a defender of Hitler? Oh, heavens no - that was just one of those wacky British sitcom-esque misunderstandings.
• How did Ron Artest end up with the Lakers? Would you believe by barging in & setting up a shower summit with Kobe?
