I’m a bump outta this heayahh beeeeeeeyaaaaahhhtch, Torn Slatterns and Nugget Ranchers


Warning: These two suck

Canadian authorities have discovered another foot that has washed up on the shores of British Columbia, the fifth right foot and one left foot found this year making six feet. They have no description of the size of the culprit but I have a feeling he is probably somewhere near six feet.

Canadian authorities have discovered another foot that has washed up on the shores of British Columbia, the fifth right foot and one left foot found this year. It took authorities a long time to confiscate the foot, they had to wait for a toe truck.

Not fair

Comparing all of Boston’s recent championships to Los Angeles isn’t fair. After all, Los Angeles doesn’t even have an NFL team, just like L.A. didn’t have a team in the NBA Finals.

Title town

In the NBA finals, the Boston Celtics crushed the Los Angeles Lakers by 39 points. Boston teams are the champions in World Series, the NBA and they almost won the Super Bowl. It seems that everyone wins in Boston just so long as their name isn’t John and or Kerry.

Same thing

The New York Mets fired their coach Willy Randolph. Or as this effective baseball move is known in nautical terms: firing the concierge on the Titanic.

My mistake

President Bush plans to write a book after his presidency. I’m sorry, I must not have read that right, I think he said he means to read a book after his presidency. That must be it.

No seriously, Bush considers himself quite a good writer, or as he calls it: he is right goodly writeryified.

Youch

There was another attack by Shiites against other Shiites in Baghdad. It seems one sect of Shiites think the other sect of Shiites isn’t worth a Shiite.

Counter suit

An L.A. woman is suing Victoria Secret because she claims she hurt her eye when she put on a thong; Victoria Secret is planning to counter sue the woman for being so stupid she thought the thong was an eye patch.

Amazing

Barack’s Obama’s wife, Michelle, was on “The View” It was an impressive appearance, she actually managed to squeeze one word in sideways.

Right in there

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s approval rating in California has slipped from around 50% to 40% due to the economy, but it is still high compared to President Bush. President Bush’s approval rating is somewhere between Paris Hilton’s and salmonella’s.

We checkin’ the wreckin’ I reckon, Torn Slatterns and Nugget Ranchers

Not how that works
Lots of gay couples getting married in California; here is my question: when gay couples get married, do they have to hire a straight wedding planner? “Yeah, I’m Chuck, the straight wedding planner and I think your wedding should have a NASCAR /bass fishing theme.”

Fierce
Lots of gay couples getting married in California; if you want to get them wedding presents many of the gay male couples are registered at Bed, Bath and Beyond Fabulous.

Check that
Tiger Woods will have to undergo reconstructive knee surgery and will be out of the rest of the season. You have to feel sorry for Tiger, he will have to lie around on his 150 foot luxury yacht being waited on by his Swedish bikini model wife, Erin. On second thought, just go ahead and feel sorry for me instead.

Oui kid the French encore
France announced they will scale back their military. That’s like Germany announcing they are going to cut down on their stand-up comedians.


France announced they will scale back their military. In a related story, the English are going to trim their number of fine chefs, dentists and orthodontists.


France announced they will scale back their military. That is shocking, that is amazing. France has a military? Since when?

Loopy
The Los Angeles Lakers lost the NBA Championship game by 39 points to the Boston Celtics. Did you happen to catch Kevin Garnet’s post game interview with Michelle Tafoya? I don’t want to say KG sounded crazy, but even Britney Spears said; “Dang, that guy’s nuts y’all.”

Ouch
The Los Angeles Lakers lost the NBA Championship game by 39 points to the Boston Celtics. Not to put too fine a point on it, but when the Celtics were done with Kobe Bryant, they had to give Kobe’s wife a $4 mil diamond ring.


Since you asked:

Now in the 20-20 hindsight of retrospection, Tiger Woods’s performance winning the US Open at Torrey Pines in a 91-hole playoff sudden-death win was remarkable before we knew the severity of his knee injury. Now that we know Tiger played with two stress fractures and a torn A.C.L., the performance borders on heroic. The only thing missing from making the performance heroic was that Tiger didn’t actually save anyone’s life in the process.

Although way short of saving a life, the US Open win at the tough course of Torrey Pines with a badly injured knee has to rank up there with one of the all-time brave sports performances. It rates up there with Willis Reed’s limping comeback to the court; Joe Montana’s fever-addled comeback for Notre Dame; John Elway’s hobbled win in the Super Bowl over Green Bay; Michael Jordan winning an NBA title with the stomach flu, and Kurt Gibson’s limping-fist-pump- around the bases for his World Series game winning homer.

I’ll be forthcoming, at the time Tiger was grimacing and using a driver for a crutch, the cynical part of me was muttering;

“Oh, please, save me the wounded warrior routine, you just hit the ball 360. How bad could your knee be? My knee feels fine, knock on wood, and I can only hit it a golf ball 225 yards, maybe.”

Wrong, Lex. Tiger was covering up how bad his knee really was.

Americans love our sports heroes as much or more as anyone in the world; but where we take our devotion to ethereal heights is when our sports heroes perform bravely when not well*. This is where we leave many Europeans scratching their heads. I will never forget the caustic and bitter words of the otherwise long-forgotten snippy frustrated French journalist who so callously and rudely snipped about our American love affair with Lance Armstrong during the Tour De France;

“You stupid Americans only like him because he was sick.”

Let us never forget that sports is not war and we should never sully the sacrifices made in battle by comparing them with the actions of adults who are merely playing a kid’s game for pay.

And yet one doesn’t have to be in a gun battle to test courage; a snowboarder can test his courage when he makes a thirty-foot jump; a surfer can test his courage by taking off on a fifty-foot wave; a cute 9-year-old blonde girl I know tests her courage when she dives to head a soccer ball.

Having granted the obvious concession sports is not war, let’s not forget that sports can be, and, as was the case with the 2008 US Open, sports often are a great test of talent, training, skill, resolve, fortitude, character, heart and, yes, flat out courage.

At Torrey Pines, Tiger hit on all of eight of those cylinders in front of our very eyes and, I am proud to say, in our beloved San Diego’s own back yard.


* Note to Europeans who think us Americans are soulless morons for not loving European soccer players. When a player gets slightly touched and yet he writhes around on the ground like hundreds of invisible snakes are biting him, and is taken off the field still writhing on a stretcher, only to get to the sidelines and spring to his feet and run back on the field, oh, please forgive me, run back on the pitch, we Americans tend to think that player, pony tail and one name or not, is, as the British call it, a real wanker.

A word on Tim Russert

Man, this one hit hard. Yes, Russert was a great moderator, a brilliant political analyst without a trace of any of that snotty George Stephanopoulis/James Carville "We know so much more than you idiots"-like annoying smugness. Russert was down-to-earth, smart, funny, but it came through that, although he could be tough as a big Irish bull, he was kind. He had a big head, a big laugh and an even bigger heart.

Maybe that is why he reminded me so much of my Dad. Plus he looked a lot like my Dad.

In the Boss's tribute to Tim Russert dedicating "Thunder Road" to his biggest fan:

Roy Orbison singing for the lonely

Hey that's me and I want you only

Don't turn me home again I just can't face myself alone again

How about that US Open at my beloved Torrey Pines, Torn Slatterns and Nugget Ranchers?

Two more
Tiger Woods had three Eagles during the US Open at Torrey Pines; two more Eagles and he could have played “Hotel California.”

Hook ‘em horns, so Fierce
Did anyone catch the sartorial styling of the Friday US Open grouping of Weekly, Jimenez and Katayama? All wore burnt orange shirts, white pants with white hats. They looked like a gay rights parade at the University of Texas:

Cheated
At a magic show in Las Vegas the crowd went nuts when the magician sawed Paris Hilton in half. The guy I feel sorry for? The guy who got stuck with the top half.

Not pretty
On the first hole of the US Open’s final round at Torrey Pines, Tiger had a double bogey. Not just that, but, during that hole, Tiger looked like a drunk guy trying to fold up a map in a wind storm.


Sure signs
A study of gay men’s tendencies revealed gay men tend to be left-handed, have a counterclockwise hair swirl pattern and have larger penises. Another study reveals a guy may be gay if he notices if guys are left-handed, how their hair swirls and how big their junk is.

Yikes
A health study reveals one in four people in New York has herpes. Man, that Barbara Walters has to be stopped.

A health study reveals one in four people in New York has herpes. In fact, in Manhattan, it is easier to catch herpes than it is to catch a cab.

We kid the Badgers
The Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association has banned high school students from baring their upper body at athletic events. The got tired of the Wisconsin students flashing their huge breasts. And that’s just the guys.

Since you asked:
Talk about magic moments in sports? Tiger’s birdie on 18 on Saturday? And then that amazing sunset? And that slug fest on Monday with a 45-year-old guy against a 32-year-old stud with a bum knee? Thrilling. And this one happened a scant few miles from our back yard. Wow.

It made the Celtics 39-point win over Lakers look like a shuffleboard game.

Forget the argument over who was the greatest golfer of all time. Jack Nicklaus was amazing, but Tiger is in his own league. Tiger is now in the argument over who is the greatest athlete of all time. For my money it comes down to, in rough order, Michael Jordan, Rafer Johnson, Joe Montana, Muhammad Ali, Jackie Robinson, Tiger Woods, Babe Ruth, Willy Mays, Jim Brown, Mickey Mantle and Pele. (If I was a hockey fan I would include Wayne Gretzky, but I am not)

Sorry, as great as Daley Thompson was in the Decathlon, no steroid-era Decathletes allowed. That means Bill Toomey to present.

On the morning of that amazing Saturday, I stand up paddleboard surfed at Torrey Pines. Just at the Northern end. While I was out there, a family of SUP’s went by like ducks to check out the Open at Torrey Pines. There was an older dad, his twenty something daughter and her husband – or so it appeared – who cruised by.