We gonna big-dog it tonight, Torn Slatterns and Nugget Ranchers

Who knew?
ESPN reports that Brett Favre is considering coming out of his all-too-brief retirement. Apparently Favre is a French-Cajun name that means Frank Sinatra.

How did they do it?
CW is re-shooting “Beverly Hills, 90210” with all of the former stars. Gosh, how was it possible to book all of them? It is a modern scheduling miracle.

CW is re-shooting “Beverly Hills, 90210” with all of the former stars. Actually the timing worked out perfectly, thanks to Starbucks closing 600 stores, all of the cast members were available.

Say it ain’t so, A-Rod
New York Yankee slugger Alex Rodriguez is rumored to be having an affair with Madonna. For the love of decency, A-Rod, don’t do it; you’ve heard how Madonna can screw a guy’s brains out? It’s true, she did it Jose Conseco and Dennis Rodman.


$125 mil-New York Yankee slugger Alex Rodriguez is having an affair with Madonna and A-Rod’s wife, Cynthia, is having an affair with Lenny Kravitz. Who says money can’t buy class?

Badaboom
New York Yankee Alex Rodriguez is having an affair with Madonna; A-Rod bats fourth in the lineup. And then after his date with Madonna he goes to the ball park.


Good question
New York Yankee Alex Rodriguez is having an affair with Madonna and A-Rod’s wife, Cynthia, is having an affair with Lenny Kravitz. Here’s the question: if Cynthia is also having an affair, does that mean she doesn’t get the $4 million dollar-diamond-Kobe-Bryant-gold-digging-bimbo-appeasement ring?

Since you asked:
New York Yankee Alex Rodriguez is having an affair with Madonna and A-Rod’s wife, Cynthia, is having an affair with Lenny Kravitz. For those who feel sympathy for Cynthia, informed Yankee sources say Cynthia is such a mean-spirited gold-digging underling-abuser she makes Kobe Bryant’s wife, Vanessa, seem like Mother Teresa.

Apparently the pattern of famous jock gold-digging wives being nasty psycho bitches is not unprecedented. In the pattern of Vanessa Bryant, Debbie Clemens, Liz Bonds, whichever-bimbo John Daly married lately, Julie Romanowski, Karolyn Rose, Juanita Jordan just to name a few. All of these women made a pact with the devil and they know exactly what they were getting into by marrying well-known megalomaniacal philanderers.

And the wife’s husband doesn’t even have to have been any good. A friend of mine was on hand at a restaurant- that rhymes with Dead Bobbin - to witness a tantrum thrown at a waiter by world-famous-NFL-wash-out Ryan Leaf’s wife, former Charger girl, Nicole Leaf. (They are now divorced, not shockingly) Nicole Leaf screamed at the top of her lungs to the waiter;

“Don’t you know who I am?”

Allegedly, the waiter, bless his heart, coolly replied;

“Yes, you’re the wife of that moron who ruined the Chargers, but legally I have to wait on you anyway.”

Reportedly a huge ovation erupted and the future former Ms. Leaf ran out of the restaurant in a red-faced huff that would have done Bill Clinton proud.

And if the husband’s affairs become too embarrassingly public, ala Michael Jordan, the wives then cash in on a wildly lucrative divorce. Prenuptial agreement not withstanding, these women have Gloria Allred’s number on speed dial.

Have a great Fourth of July, Torn Slatterns and Nugget Ranchers

ESPN reports that Brett Favre is considering coming out of his all-too-brief retirement. New rule: If you hold a press conference and tearfully announce your retirement, you have to stay retired for a year for every tear you shed. We had to endure it, you have to follow up on it.


Venus Williams qualified for the finals at Wimbledon setting up a potential all-Williams sister final with Serena. Asked to comment, the Williams sister’s father, Richard, said; “I want them both to do well, but the angry voices in my head are leaning toward Venus.”


The Tour De France begins today. The Tour is a cycling race that takes place in France. “I’ll take something Americans don’t give a rat’s ass about since Lance Armstrong retired, for 100, Alex.”


This Sunday at 4:30 pm, NBC is airing the AVP Crocs Slam Boulder Open women’s beach volleyball tournament. Come on, is that really a sport? Four beach babes in tiny bikinis jumping up and down and hugging each other and slapping each other’s butts when they score? So what time did you say that was on NBC? Sunday at 4:30 huh?


It turns out a Russian businessman promised to give “two beautiful chicks” for each goal scored by Russia in the Euro semifinals against Spain. Russia lost 3-0. This just in: the Russian soccer team is gay. Not that there is anything wrong with that.


The Tour De France began. Despite all of the doping scandals – including last year’s winner, Floyd Landis - I feel Americans are going to watch the Tour De France if for no other reason than to support the French who have been such brave and staunch allies of the United St. . . ha ha ha, oh my, I thought I could say it without cracking up. Whew.


Major League baseball is considering whether to ban maple bats because they break too often and are dangerous. Supporters of the maple bats point to the fact that some teams like the San Diego Padres and Seattle Mariners, have not broken a maple bat all year. Of course that is because the Mariners and the Padres have not hit a ball all season.


Pamela Anderson said she has never slept with a woman. This just in: In my mind, Pamela Anderson is a liar, liar, pants on fire.

Lex waxes sentimental about the Fourth of July.

Besides my birthday and Christmas, this was my favorite holiday growing up. Every year in the beautiful, Midwestern Norman Rockwell-like Winnetka Village Green, a huge open grass field a block in diameter just west of town with a playground and a war memorial, Winnetka held their Winnetka Township Championship Footraces. Guess who won his age group every year but when I fell down at 9 (I think I was pushed but I can't prove it) including the Open Championship when I was in college at Santa Barbara? (Sniff, teeth-suck, chortle and sigh of smugness)

Oh yeah, buuhhhh-beeeeeeee. Who's the man? I'm the man.

In all honesty I had an advantage in this race as my birthday was August 15th so I was usually the oldest one in the age-group race. But I would get a knot in my stomach from July 1st on worrying about it.

If all went well and I won, after getting the awesome gold shield-shaped medal with the red, white and blue bunting ribbon pinned to my shirt, my parents had a barbeque in the back yard where we played croquet and flung Frisbees.

And then we ate, bless-my-Dad’s-heart, char-burned hot dogs smothered in mustard, baked beans and fresh-from-a-farm corn-on-the cob, rapidly melting Neapolitan Sealtest Ice cream followed by ice cold watermelon. We always got in trouble for spitting seeds at each other.

“Gross, Dad, Howie just spit on me.”

“Howie, don’t spit on Alex and Alex, stop being a tattletale. Nobody likes a tattletale.”

“Bob, you’re burning the hot dogs again.”

“Oh, Ann, I am not. Besides they taste better that way. Right, Alley-Cat?”

My dad called me Alley-Cat when he was proud of me instead of telling me he was proud of me which I understood and was more than fine with. He was a great guy.

That night we walked/ran the six or seven blocks down to the Winnetka Park District baseball fields to watch the fireworks. The fireworks were so beautiful they would actually distract me from the warm glow of the excitement I would get from looking down at that medal pinned to my ice-cream-and-mustard-stained red and blue striped Lacoste alligator shirt and remembering, for about the five hundredth time, that I had won the race again that year.

And, just like about every year when I won, I would think, man, if this medal feels this wonderful, what will it be like when I win the gold medal in the Olympic Decathlon? Not if, when. Then I would get too excited thinking about it and return to watching the fireworks to calm myself down.

Cue: Bruce Springsteen's "My Hometown."

I was eight-years-old and running with a dime in my hand
To the drugstore to pick up a paper for my ol' man
I'd sit on his lap in that big ol' Buick and steer as we drove through town
He'd tossle my hair and say son take a good look around
This is your hometown, this is your hometown

This just in:

In Virginia, archeologists have discovered George Washington’s childhood home and there was no chopped-down cherry tree. But they did find a toy ship given to Washington by his boyhood friend John McCain.

We gonna saddle up and ride her out, Torn Slatterns and Nugget Ranchers

Mmmmm
On July 4th Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest will be on ESPN in Hi Def . And who doesn’t want to see in detail a bunch of lard-asses shoving greasy wieners and water-soaked buns into their big fat, hairy mouths? It’s as appealing as watching a Roseanne Barr and Tom Arnold sex video.

A-Rod in Midge
Rumor has it that 49-year-old Madonna is getting divorced and is having an affair with married 32-year-old Yankee Slugger, Alex Rodriguez. Madonna better have fun now because, as everyone knows, when it turns to Fall, A-Rod cannot produce.

It may be true, today A-Rod tested positive for over-publicized bad acting.

Say it ain’t so, S-Buckizzle
Starbucks is closing 600 stores. You could tell they had over-expanded when they accidentally opened a Starbucks inside another Starbucks.

This is going to be very inconvenient to a lot of people, they may actually have to walk across the street to the other Starbucks.

Gosh, I hope they don’t close the Starbucks that just opened in my kitchen.

Starbucks is closing 600 stores. Man, Starbucks are closing, no hand-held cell phones when driving, Hummers are prohibitively expensive gas-guzzlers, it is a bad time to be an a-hole.

“Funeral for a Friend”
Funeral parlors are reporting traditional organ music is being replaced by rock classics like Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven” Bob Dylan’s “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door” and Elton John’s “Candle in the Wind.” Some of the less requested rock songs at funerals? James Brown’s “I Feel Good” Sly and the Family Stone’s “Thank You” and the Pointer Sisters “I’m So Excited.”

A thankful nation sighs out loud
Gas prices are out the roof, the real estate market is in the tank, unemployment is up and the war in a Iraq is an ongoing mess. But the good news? None of this will have any effect whatsoever on the birth of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s twins. So everything is OK. Whew. What a relief.

Sounds Familiar
Gas prices are out the roof, the real estate market is in the tank, unemployment is up and the Middle East is an ongoing mess. We better hope our Olympic hockey team beats the Soviets at Lake Placid.

Free fireworks
If you don’t have plans for the Fourth of July, just find one of those jerks in Hollywood who is furious he can no longer talk on his hand held cell phone while driving his gas-guzzling Hummer and tell him that his Starbucks is closing. And then stand back and watch the fire works.

Since you asked:
So I was flipping through the channels and landed on “Field of Dreams” during Kevin Costner week, and it suddenly dawned on me. Am I the last dumb guy to figure out that his character’s name, Ray Kinsella, sounds like reconcile?

Turns out the book’s author was W.P. Kinsella. Oops. Heh, heh. Ahem.

I’m not saying Tiger Woods isn’t the greatest golfer of all time. With all due respect to Jack Nicklaus, he is.

All I’m saying is that I am not going to cry myself to sleep during his absence. Now I know I have said that a PGA tournament without Tiger is like hoping for “Caddy Shack” but getting “Caddy Shack 2”. But that was when Tiger was choosing not to play. Now with the surgery he is really out. As Tiger likes to say, it is what it is and what it is is that Tiger can’t win with a surgically recovering leg.

But I am also not going to miss Tiger’s “Can’t you see I am trying to save the world here?” glare. And I would like to think, no, I know that if I knew I was live on TV with kids watching, I wouldn’t swear like a sailor who got his putter caught in his zipper every time I missed a shot by two yards.

Tiger is nothing if not a master at studying his own image and spinning his own legacy. It would be wrong to say that Tiger may have exaggerated the extent of his injuries, but we will never really know unless we see the X-Rays, will we? Playing with two broken bones and a torn ligament? Who would do that and knowingly risk their playing career?

But if Tiger pulls a “miraculous” early comeback, I am going to say I smell a P.R. spinning rat.

Put your hands in the air like you just don’t care ‘cause that how we do, Torn Slatterns and Nugget Ranchers

Top Four
The top four women seeds have been eliminated at Wimbledon. They were Maria Sharapova and Anna Not-Maria-Sharapova, Heidi What-happened-to-Maria Sharapova? and Helga Where-the-heck-is-Maria-Sharapova?

Loud
Before being eliminated in the second round of Wimbledon, Maria Sharapova’s grunting reached 103.2 decibels, louder than a lawnmower, a train or even louder than a teenage boy yelling at his mother to get out of his room while he is looking at Internet pictures of Maria Sharapova.

Sweet
Hefty former “American Idol” winner Rueben Stoddard got married. It was very romantic, his fiancé wrote their vows: “Do you promise to love honor cherish and always be on the bottom?”

Uh, no Sir
It was a little awkward when they told President Bush that Friday was the Fourth of July, Bush said; “Wow, is it just me or does it seem the Fourth of July came early this year?”

Them too
A new study has found that most married couples have better sex when they're on vacation. And so did their partners, the bellhops and the chamber maids.


Good advice
The Chicago Cubs and the Chicago White Sox are leading their divisions. It's looking like the Cubs and the White Sox could be in the World Series. In the event they are, Illinois farmers are being advised to lock their pigs in the barn so they don’t fly off.

Since you asked:

There are a lot of rules - to paraphrase John Cusak’s character in “High Fidelity” - to making a good playlist. You got to start strong but you can’t blow your wad. Then you want to throttle back, but not lose them.

On Wednesday’s the parents of our girl’s under 10 soccer team participate in a Speed to Burn class for adults, which is sports training. So I made a playlist to play on my new awesome iPod Bose portable speakers.

“Can’t Find My Way Home” Clapton with Yvonne Elliman. It is a good song for the warm up.

“Start Me Up” Stones. Sorry, I know this is obvious but it is now hardwired into our brains to get you going.

“Stay With Me” Faces. Ron Wood tears this up with ripping guitar-hero chords that can make you run through a wall.

“Up Around the Bend” by CCR. Another seismic jammermammer.

“Word Up” Cameo. What? It’s a cool song. And it is hilarious to picture Steve Carell dancing Karaoke to this alone in his apartment when he is reviewing how full his life is in “Forty-Year-Old Virgin.” “You framed an AJA poster? How hard did the people at the frame store laugh?”

“I Got You” (I feel good) by the Godfather of Soul, James Brown. Again, when he goes “Whooooaaaaa” we are hardwired to boog, Sug.

"Hard to Handle" Black Crowes. The hook classic R&B Mo-Town. Try and not to gyrate when you hear it.

“You Shook Me All Night” AC/DC When a hot babe in a short skirt starts shaking it to this, well, that’s not just foreplay, that’s four, five, six, seven and “I need a cigarette and a cuddle” play.

“U Can’t Touch This” M.C. Hammer. My buddy Stewie Dawgs will never, ever, forgive me for using this. But it is a guilty pleasure jammer. And it is fun. Try and get this out of your head.

“Smooth” Carlos Santana and Rob Thomas. Cooler than a cool coolster. And, yes Stewie Dawgs, chicks dig this.

“Honky Tonk Women” I can just hear Stewie’ s sigh of relief. A great KHDAFH song. (Knock her down and, givl her)

“Gimme All Your Lovin’” ZZ Top may not know how to groom themselves but they do know how to rub some funk on it.

“Dani California” Red Hot Chili Peppers. Great drums.

“Mississippi Queen” Mountain. One of the all time great one-hit-wonders. I got a disease and the only cure is more cowbell.

“Running on Empty” J.B. OK, so this is a little too cute to end on but it works. At the end of the class we are draggin’ major tookus.