They’re giving away gold medals to kids riding bicycles and skateboards, and even for driving cars around parking lots. Yes, the X-Games are back!

At the end of each school year, my son’s elementary school has an awards ceremony. Parents show up in the cafeteria to watch their kids accept awards for various achievements. For two hours, the children file across the stage in endless lines, grabbing trophies as their names are rattled off. By the time it’s over, the kids are so overwhelmed with fake gold statues; they can barely cradle them in their little folded arms. Everybody is a multiple winner!

I look around at the proud parents, pushing and shoving their way forward to take pictures of their kids being winners. Am I the only person in the room that sees a problem with this trophy-fest?

We are attempting to social engineer a future generation of confident adults by acclimating our youth to awards ceremonies. The plan seems simple – give all kids numerous awards, regardless of their effort and talents, so that everyone feels good, and just as important – equal.

I think they should take this a step further: Stop wasting class time teaching our kids the difference between two and three toed sloths, and start instructing them on how to walk on red carpets and compose acceptance speeches.

“Oh my God! This is so exciting! I’d like to thank my teacher, Barney, Blues Clues, Thomas the Tank Engine, the cafeteria ladies, (Wait for audience to chuckle) and of course my teacher – I hope I’m not leaving anybody out. Without them, I wouldn’t be standing here as one of 600 winners of the Math Superstar Award.”

At this school, there’s a curriculum called “Thumbody Special” in which the kids are given a large thumb, cut from a sheet of construction paper, upon which they spend several days writing all the things that make them special, in pretty glitter. Then, the teachers tack these pre-teen publicity campaigns on the classroom walls, so everyone can learn such things, as Chelsea is special because she cares about Polar Bears. Thumbody needs to tell Chelsea that nobody gives a shit, including the bears – and she better get used to it.

Last year, cute little Chelsea received five trophies and two medals, including one for “caring”. The reality is that this poor kid needs to repeat the grade, because she can barely read, yet one day while I was volunteering in class, she confidently told me that she was smarter than me. I can see why she thinks this way – I don’t have 35 trophies with my name on them at home.

The local soccer league I coach in no longer allows score keeping. The league president, (who looks like he never played a sport), gave us a speech about the damage that could result to the children’s self-esteem, so regardless of the score, they request that the coaches lie to the kids and say such things as “We all won today!”

Not me. Here’s what I tell them after a loss: “That sucks, doesn’t it? Do you like that feeling you have right now? If you don’t want to feel this way again, then next week, DO something about it! The only reason you lost is because they wanted it more than you.”

I’m probably not going to be asked to coach again.

So, how’s little Dylan going to learn to live a passionate life, if he’s told that even though he played with no enthusiasm and was a revolving door on defense, the fifteen goals that he gave up make him a winner? I’m guessing not too well. At the end of the season, the worst kid on the last-place team receives the same trophy as the best kid on the undefeated team.

Dylan asked me when he was going to get a trophy on the first day of practice!

Dylan also came up to me weeks later and said, “Hey coach – I can’t come to the game next week. I think the team will lose without me.”

The D-train, as his goof-ball parents refer to him, is the worst kid in the league. He completely lacks passion, yet society has allowed this 8-year old kid to live in a dream world in which he actually believes he’s the most important player on the team. I’m sure it’s the same thing in class, where the D-train sits around picking his nose, secure in the fact that there will always be a table full of trophies waiting for him at the end of the year.

Dylan’s parents told me after the season that their son decided he doesn’t want to play soccer anymore because he thought it was “too easy”, so he wanted to race snowmobiles. Huh? We live in Florida.

Oh, how I would love to be a fly on the wall when reality finally comes crashing down on this kid – and his asinine parents.

Maybe it never will. There are always the X-games – the latest bastion of glory for losers, geeks, failures, and anyone not passionate enough to excel in a real sport. It’s a tiny community of dudes with rich parents, playing around with over-priced recreational vehicles, which allow them to perform with the illusion of athleticism, thanks to strategically placed cameras that make them look gravity defying, and gas powered motors that compensate for their lack of strength.

Old adage: If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.

New adage: If at first you don’t succeed, you’ll still get a trophy, and lots of them – just find a sport that no one else can afford to play.

There’s still hope for Chelsea and Dylan, and all Americans desperate for their 15 minutes of fame and shiny new additions to their trophy cases. All you have to do is create a brand new sport that nobody else plays, and submit it to the X-Games. How about Snowmobile Polar Bear Rodeo?

In two thousand years, when archeologists are digging around in the ruins of what used to be America, they are going to unearth plastic trophies by the hundreds of millions. It would be fascinating to see how future societies interpret the meaning of this. The big question will be: How could a civilization of so many winners have ultimately lost?

While it cannot be said that war was made for TV, it sure looks great on it – At least the parts the Pentagon allows us to see. And it’s always on TV. So it got me to thinking about the enormous potential that exists for generating advertising revenue from our wars. I’m not talking about television commercials, but actually turning the various elements of the war machine into a revenue machine.

These wars, (is it five now? I’m losing count) are driving us $750 million dollars a day further into debt. It is time for a serious dose of the type of inspiration and American ingenuity that took this empire to the top. At first, my plan may seem a bit shocking. What I’m proposing is unconventional, but as you will see, it is uniquely American. Time is of the essence and we have no other choice. So, let’s begin…

*****

Corporations pay big money for naming rights to athletic stadiums and arenas, so why not open up the biding for the rights to military divisions and fleets? The new Meadowlands stadium owners are asking close to a billion dollars to get your name on their new stadium. Here in Miami, the once respectable Joe Roby stadium has been whored out in a revolving door of revolting names so frequently changed, that I don’t know anymore which is valid: Pro Player Park? Sunlife Stadium? Landshark Stadium? The place where that crappy team plays? Corporations are beating down the door to have their brands associated with crappy franchises like the Jets and Dolphins, so you know they’ll pay even larger sticker prices to get them associated with real winners. I say rename our aircraft carriers!

“This is Wolf Blitzer reporting from the deck of the USS Budweiser, flag ship of the 1st fleet, and home of Bud-bowl 15. If you look off to the port side, you can see her sister ships, the unmistakable black and white markings of the USS Jack Daniels and just to her right, the USS Wild Turkey. In just moments, they’re set to launch Operation One Bourbon, One Shot, and One Beer against a reported insurgent stronghold.”

There’s really no need to paint our fighting vessels gray anymore, is there? The People huddled in caves and basements that we’re bombing never get within a thousand miles of our ships, so what’s to hide? The USS Reagan would look spectacular in red and white, with a gigantic Budweiser logo across the flight deck. At Christmas time, they could even repaint the deck to a nostalgic scene of the famous clydesdales pulling a wagon full of beer through a snowstorm. We have 13 aircraft carriers. If we sell the naming rights to each vessel for 2 billion, that’s enough money to cover 100 days of fighting. Not a bad start, but we’ve still got work to do!

*****

Another obvious place for selling advertising space is our slick military aircraft. One hundred years ago during WWI, the Red Baron’s famous scarlet tri-plane was painted in flashy colors, but then somebody figured out that you were less likely to get killed if you didn’t paint your vehicle to look like a giant target, so camouflage was created. Nowadays, technology has put an end to visual combat in the skies because pilots simply fire missiles at each other from dozens of miles away. More over, we seem to be picking fights with enemies that don’t EVEN have combat aircraft, so is there any reason to continue painting airplanes to look like the sky?

The time has arrived to bring back bright, attractive paint schemes and turn our fighters and bombers into flying billboards. It costs on average, $10 million dollars per year to get your company’s logo painted on a racecar, and there are significantly more aircraft in our military than NASCAR has racers.

With aircraft, there can be various sponsorship packages available to fit a wide range of corporate budgets: From buying the naming rights to an entire air wing, like The Chevrolet 8th Airforce for example, to slightly less expensive options, like sponsoring smaller units, such as The Sharper Image 509th Bomber Wing, (Stealth bombers have a sharp image, do they not?). There are also great opportunities available for start-ups, mom and pop businesses, and non-profits to get in on this exposure bonanza….

“This is Christiane Amanpour reporting from a ditch, where not 30 meters from my current location, a funeral procession was just strafed by an F-16 bearing the markings of Ed Davinport’s Pre-owned Lexus Emporium of Milwaukee – Home of the Wisconsin Handshake Deal.”

Of course, the same type of advertising packages could apply to the Army and Marine Corps as well. Tanks, trucks, transports, Hummers, APC’s, drones, and helicopters are natural billboards. I’m no Madison Avenue wizard, but even I can conjure up these wonderful pairings of fine consumer products with some of America’s finest, along with some clever new slogans…..

Home Depot 1st Armored Division (The Big Red Orange 1)
Keebler Chips Ahoy 3rd Infantry Division
Liquid Plumber 343rd Rear Tactical Operations Center
Bass Pro Shops 127th Air Wing (They fly A-10 Warthogs.)
Marlboro 2nd Cavalry.
Enzyt 4th Engineering Battalion. (Erecting bridges is our job!)
Nike 5th Recon Battalion. (Just find it!)
Crate and Barrel 25th Artillery Regiment. (Putting the Barrel in C&R)

*****

In Europe, athletic teams sell advertising space on their uniforms to help offset the cost of payroll. FC Barcelona is a globally recognized soccer team. This season, they are selling the space on the front of their soccer jerseys for $40 million. Manchester United has an extremely lucrative $478 million dollar deal with Nike. Surely, the 101st Airborne, an established and well respected military division with a long history of winning equal to ManU and Barca, can ask that kind of money for the rights to have a corporate logo on the front chests of their combat fatigues.

I know what you’re thinking: “Hold on a second – We can’t have our front line infantry running around in the mountains of resource rich countries with brightly colored Mountain Dew logos on their chests and helmets! You’ll get those kids killed!”

I understand your concerns. That’s why I’m advocating logos that are toned down to blend in with the camo. All logos must be drab shades of tan and green. Think monochromatic Dale Earnhardt Jr. with an assault rifle, handing out free soda samples to the survivors of a just bombed out village, and you get the picture. Motivated enough to sell every square inch of ad space on our soldiers’ uniforms, the end result will be a dizzying collage of black and green patches packed together so tightly, it will function as camouflage of the highest quality.

*****

By now, you must be thinking, “Wow! That should be enough revenue to cover the costs of these wars; America can keep freedom on the march forever!” True, but I don’t just want to break even – I want America to turn a profit. That’s why I’m also advocating America taking the next logical step: Product placement.

During the first Gulf War, soldiers were frequently seen on TV drinking Evian water, and the bottled water craze soon swept through America. It was a brilliant move by the French company, and far ahead of its time. If Hollywood can ask upwards of $50 million to have some overrated clown like Matt Damon hold up a bottle of soda in a movie, can’t The Army do the same with a real life private named Ryan?

There’s potential far beyond drinks and chips: Lip Balm, Sunglasses, Comic books, Best of Hank Williams CD sets, Energy Drinks, Insect Repellent, Cell Phones, Laptops, Watches, Tattoo Parlors, Collectable plates from the Franklin Mint, Razors, Guns, Condoms, Earrings, Gold teeth grill manufacturers, Toothpaste, Greeting Cards, Spaghetti-O’s, Suntan lotion, and Oprah’s book club.

Of course, it would be silly and quite foolhardy for me to advocate our brave soldiers attempting to hold up a consumer product such as a can of refreshing Dr. Pepper with its label facing the cameras, while kicking in the front door of a goat salesman. Such product placement should only be allowed during rests, back at the base, while conducting interviews, and at water boarding photo-ops.

*****

Product placement doesn’t have to be restricted to our soldiers. Look at the fantastic opportunity that was just lost when the Navy Seal team killed Osama Bin Laden: If somebody at the Pentagon had been thinking, they could have sold the crime scene as a chance to get global exposure on an unprecedented scale. Instead, what did we get? Just a photo of a shabby room devoid of any corporate logos.

If it had been me running these wars, I would have called Vivid Video, Frito-Lay, Coke, Oakley, Johnson & Johnson, Chrysler, Island Records and Disney, then presented them with a once in a life-time opportunity to have their products strategically placed in an upcoming top-secret mission that would have given them worldwide exposure greater than the Olympics and World Cup combined.

Then after the checks cleared, and the double-tap finished tapping, I would have instructed the assault team to commence with Operation Cha-Ching, by placing a stack of pornos and Justin Bieber CD’s next to Osama’s computer with the labels facing up. Next, the assault team would have been told by the interior decorator I embedded with the unit to place a large bag of Doritos corn chips and a six pack of Diet Cokes (Bin Laden was diabetic) on the nearby table along with a pair of Oakley sunglasses and a box of Tylenol PM, then finish off the job by tacking to the wall two posters: One of a Dodge Ram truck, and another of The Magic Kingdom.

Only after the room had been carefully checked over by the Navy Seal interior decorator, would the embedded photographer, (hand picked from the pages of Architectural Digest), been allowed to photograph the scene. OBL’s bedroom layout would have been on every news broadcast all over the world for weeks! Consumers would have been buying up Jenna Jamison DVD’s and Artisan corn chips like they were going out of style, from Kandahar to Cleveland.

Just as important, the ad revenue from Operation Cha-Ching would not only have paid for the mission and the replacement cost of the top secret helicopter they wrecked: it would also have covered the cost of that classy funeral we gave The O-train at sea, with a sweet tip for both the chaplain and florist, and a cool 2 billion left over to take care of Mrs. Clintons Flu.

Next Week: The Final Solution (to our boredom)

Obviously, the Mavericks are much better than most everyone thought, especially on the defensive end. We all knew about their depth and shooting, but to quiet Lebron, and slow down both Wade and Bosh is a phenomenal job – they have earned my respect. It should have been obvious a few weeks back, when they easily dismissed the Lakers, that Dallas was a powerful and well-rounded team. Soon after, when they repeatedly came back from large deficits to finish off the Oklahoma City Thunder, we should have realized that Rick Carlyle’s boys had heart. I wrote three years ago that I thought Dirk Nowitzki would win MVP before an American soccer player would win MVP in a European League. He was heroic and clutch, performing a Jordan-esque finish to game four while dealing with a fever. And despite all that, we still thought the Heat would win the championship.

Unfortunately for Dallas, this series was about Lebron, and always will be. It’s the day after the Mavs claimed the trophy, and every sports media outlet is too busy analyzing and criticizing, and reveling in LBJ’s perceived failure. The great question will always be what happened to The King? Personally, I think he was tired – both emotionally and physically. It was a crazy year for him. From day one, the Heat contended with a media frenzy not seen since the glory days of the Chicago Bulls, and a nation of haters from New York to LA. He went from icon to villain, and then had to learn a new system while burdening the expectations (self-imposed) of winning a championship.

See? Even I can’t help thinking about the finals from a Lebron perspective. Somehow we can’t help it. I hope Dallas wins multiple championships. I hope Dirk wins the MVP next season, and that Rick Carlyle is coach of the year. They all deserve it.

Within 20 years, there will be a television show featuring an Australian man running around in the wilderness, enthusiastically stalking large animals with the sole purpose of checking out their private parts.

The show will be called Monster Cock Stalker Unchained, and will go a little something like this: Dressed in the mandatory safari shirt, hat and pants, a blond host will crawl up to a herd of large animals, then look back at the camera and say with an over-the-top Oz accent, “I’m gonna sneak up to one of the larger bulls and tryin’ get him aroused so we can take a looook!”

Then, he’ll run at the animals, wrestle one to the ground and tell it, “Easy mate, not gonna hurt ya, ol’ boy – just wanna take a looook-see at your wanker.”

America has a perpetual craving for Australian guys groping wild animals for entertainment. It started with Crocodile Dundee, who charmed us with his “shrimp on the barbie” talk. Then came Steve Irwin, whose abundant enthusiasm for harassing animals created the Crocodile Hunter cult. But we became bored with Steve wrestling everything on four legs to the ground, so he turned his attention to the water, but was killed by a stingray. America needed a new animal stalker, not only to reinvigoarated our lust for Aussie dudes bothering wild animals, but to give us a measured level of revenge against these menacing aquatic killers. Take that, you stingray bastards!

Enter Jeremy Wade, a cross between Rutger Hower and Udo Dirkschneider with a nervous eye twitch, who in each episode of River Monsters, takes us to exotic locations as he performs an audacious catch-and release of aquatic species. These mysterious creatures aren’t really monsters in the Loch Ness sense of word, as I soon found out. My redneck neighbors call them catfish.

Moments before settling in to watch Jeremy cast his monster bait into the murky waters of some third-world river, my attention had been waylaid by a startling relevation: There is now a shop-at-home TV channel selling women’s sex toys.

I stumbled across this gem on a non-porn channel, in the area of cable reserved for Hollywood gossip, cooking shows, and teenage vampire softcore. There were two young women in chairs, carrassing vibrators and telling the viewers that a devise called Purple Pleasure will make them feel magical. A clock in the lower left corner counted down what was either how long I had to buy it, or finish masterbating.

It wasn’t that long ago, that a woman stroking an object even remotely phallic, would not have been allowed on TV. Maybe it was the erection I was getting, or that unique delerium that you get at 2am, but I could swear I felt the entire country begin circling the drain. I decided to hit the remote and surf out of there.

That’s when I crashed onto the beach of Mr. Jeremy Wade – Fish Stalker. In this waste of half an hour of my life, Jeremy was in a boat, trying to uncover the mystery of a monster that “the locals” claimed eats children. Luckily for them, a goofy, short white dude with a fishing rod and a camera crew showed up to save the villiage. After all the build-up, and moments before the show was about to end, the great white hunter caught….. a catfish? Disappointed, I hit the return button on my control, hoping to find a great buy on butt-plugs.

America’s bored with this nonsense. Wildlife is best admired from a distance, where it retains a sense of mystery, dignity, and danger. The downside of these hands-on nature shows is that they’ve eliminated those aspects, turning our planet’s beasts into stupid, yet lovable spectacles. When you see an Australian clown playing around with a massive predator and it doesn’t eat him, the thrill is gone.

So, where are we to go from here? We’re bored with crocs and catfish. We’ve seen them all…… but we haven’t seen their Purple Passions!

We’re close now America – real close. The USA is picking up momentum as the culture circles the drain. In no time at all, full frontal nudity will be prevalent during primetime. They’ll be fornicating on Star Trek Deeper Space 9 before you can say, “Captain Kirk Junior’s beamin’ that Romulan chick ALL the way up”.

Of course, nature shows will follow suit – and you will watch. You know that you will, because it’s the shock of the new that keeps you tuned in, and for all of you who’ve never been to Bangkok, the sight of an Australian dude grasping a dingo’s member and saying, “Wowie Zowie mate! Look at the beautiful color variations around the gooch.” is something you will not want to miss.

I have the worst headache of my life. Last night at 11pm, I walked around the lake to my fishing buddy Henry’s house. In my hand was a 5th of Maker’s Mark that I had set-aside during September of 2001 for this precise moment. I had assumed that it would not have taken ten years for me to drink it, but the moment of Osama Bin Laden’s death had finally arrived. Despite fully understanding that it was sipping whiskey, we were guzzling it and firing rifles into the air before I fell off his dock into the lake. USA!

Coincidently, earlier that day I had been hanging out with Ken, the most Liberal of all my left wing friends. He was foaming at the mouth, telling me how appalled he was that his neighbor’s 13 year-old son wanted to join the military. “The child has obviously been brainwashed!” All I kept thinking, as I watched the spit fly from his lips, was how lucky America was that it still has citizens who love the country enough to fight for it. At one point, Ken said, “I wanted to puke – the kid even said he wanted to serve his country! Do you know that’s a line from a video game?”

Ken is convinced that the military is inserting subliminal messages into video games like Call of Duty and using them as a recruiting tool. I think that’s a brilliant idea. How else are they going to accomplish it? When’s the last time anyone saw a parade of tanks and missile launchers rolling down Main Street? That’s how they hype the military in other countries, but not in America, where we prefer our military to remain unseen except for Super-Bowl flyovers.

The video game paranoia is part of Ken’s broad ranging string of conspiracy theories that connects dots as far flung as reptilian rich people, subterranean civilizations, secret CIA bases on Mars, and a bevy of 9-11 inside-job theories. Of course, Obama has now fueled the 9-11 conspiracy fires even further by making the announcement of Osama’s assassination at midnight on a Sunday, when most Americans were asleep. Its almost like he tried to slip it by while we slumbered. Why not wait until noon the next day, so that every American (except Ken) could simultaneously erupt with joy?

And for those of you awake at midnight, did you witness the CNN broadcast showing several hundred people at the gates of White House cheering and holding up signs within minutes of the historic news being leaked? That’s impressive – No one lives that close to the National Mall. How could they all arrive so quickly?

Imagine yourself living in the suburbs of DC when you hear the news and decide that hell or high water, you have to get over to the White House ASAP and celebrate. How many minutes would it take for you to find the giant American flag you’ve got stored away in a box along with old VHS tapes? How many more minutes to grab a piece of blank poster board, a marker, and make a clever sign that says “Ding Dong – Osama’s Dead”? Then you’ve got to change your clothes, get in the car, drive into the city, and find a parking spot. Ever try to find parking near the White House? I’m guessing it would take 90 minutes minimum, even on a Sunday night and you’ve got your shit together enough to locate a marker under the couch.

At one point, shortly after the official announcement, there was a split screen on CNN showing the White House perimeter on the left and Time’s Square on the right. The scene in New York, home of the famous “New York Second”, paled in comparison to the party going on outside Barack’s abode. I would think that New Yorkers, considering the wounds they suffered ten years ago, would have taken to the streets in that famous second, yet a small crowd was just beginning to gather as the party raged on in the Capital. And it didn’t appear that any of those New Yorkers milling around had signs and flags. WTF near the WTC. Come on NYC – Its bad enough that the Knicks got swept like chumps. Go big or go home!

Despite my raging headache, I’m happy today for so many reasons: I’m thankful that there are still plenty of people who love this place even more than I do, and they are willing to fly in a helicopter over enemy territory, repel out of the night sky, dodge bullets, and provide for us a sense of closure. We really needed this. I am happy to know that the little kids that allegedly become brainwashed by video games, grow up to be brave soldiers, keeping Ken safe so that he can continue to smoke weed, be irresponsible, and hyperventilate as he describes them as Nazis. And I’m happy Henry had a big net to fish me out of the lake.

USA!

Why isn’t there a law requiring athletic teams, both professional and amateur, to construct rosters that more accurately reflect the racial breakdown of America?  Shouldn’t there be punishment for these organizations for not giving Asian, White, Native American, and Hispanic kids more opportunities to make millions of dollars playing around with a ball?  Its not fair, and something must be done!

For example, if the roster of an NBA franchise reflected the racial mix of this country, there would be 9 White, 3 Hispanic, and 2 Black players, along with a final roster spot to be given to a player of either Asian, Oceanic, or “Mixed” ethnicity, (Aren’t we all mixed?).  As it stands now, the current NBA roster percentages are 80% black, 19.9% white dudes with foreign accents, and Yao Ming.

Both college and professional sports organizations seem to have no problem fielding teams that are acute in their racial balance, yet they’ve become very concerned that there aren’t enough minority coaches.  In 2002, the NFL’s workplace diversity committee enacted a rule forcing that league’s teams to interview minorities for any head coaching vacancy.  College football’s BCA annually publishes a report card on the status of minority coaches.  MLB has taken this several steps further, not only requiring additional minority hiring for front office positions, but has also implemented a plan to “identify and attract minority businesses for utilization as suppliers of goods and services”.  What happened to free markets?

Its laughable and absurd that any organization would scrupulously examine one aspect of itself, yet turn a blind eye to the blatant imbalances in another.  Are they serious about making this an equal society or not?

By the way, in our current environment, in which a façade of political correctness has lead us to more and more ridiculous terms to mask any sign of perceived racism, the term minority no longer means a statistically small portion.  Asians (4%) and Jews (2%) are not considered minorities.  Apparently, being stereotyped as smart and successful trumps physical numbers of any ethnic group vying for the preferential treatment that comes with the coveted status called minority.

So why aren’t “majority” people raising hell about the injustices that are being perpetrated in American sports?  Is everyone so gagged by political correctness that they’ve become cowards?  Not me.  I’m starting an organization called NAAMS.  National Association for the Advancement of Majorities in Sports.

I used to champion the idea that any entity that hired people based on race was only shooting itself in the foot.  To succeed in a competitive environment, it is vital to hire only the most qualified individuals, regardless of race and gender.  Modern sports are a shining example of how this behavior can produce the finest quality product possible.  Just take a look at some old b/w footage of the NBA when all the players were white.  Now that teams hire players based purely on athletic talent, the game has evolved and has never been more entertaining.  The same goes for the NFL, MLB, and big time college basketball and football.

I actually thought that America had arrived at a fantastic milestone.  We have a black President, a female Secretary of State and a Vice President who appears to have a sleeping disease.  We’re even bending over backwards, cooking pork-free meals and providing prayer carpets to make prisoners of war feel comfortable.  We like to think we’re an open-minded society.  Lawyers for enemy combatants?  Open borders?  Morgan Freeman playing God in every-other movie?  We’ve come along way!  It made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.  No longer would it be necessary for our government to force us to pretend to be color, gender and handicapped blind – We ARE!

Well, I was wrong.  The cold, hard reality is that every segment of our population has, and always will have an agenda: To topple those above them and acquire their power and wealth.  It is natural – We’re all Starless Belly Sneeches at heart, and I have no problem with revolutions, peaceful or otherwise.  However, what I don’t like is how we pick and choose when and where to cry foul.  Either we step back and allow natural laws to play out or we institute the same rules equally to every corner of our society.

Get ready for the 2^nd coming of the Jewish power forward – NAAMS has arrived!  Game on.

Witch-hunts are a good time, but they never get the real witch.

We’re hearing quite frequently that the Barry Bonds steroid/pergury/obstruction of justice trial has a rascist element to it. However, when it comes to enduring racism, he’s no Hank Aaron. In today’s era of overplayed political correctness, and current environment of white guilt that has infested America, Bonds has actually been spared any sharp criticism by white sports writers, who are too afraid of bigot accusations to truly speak their minds. (Same thing can be said about Obama). Imagine for a second what would have happened if Hammerin’ Hank had been caught doping. Lynch mob anyone? In the arena of racism victims, Bonds is no Henry Aaron.

I don’t think this is a racism issue, but I do believe this circus is a misguided witch-hunt, orchestrated by traditional elements of our society that fear for baseball’s future. We have been told for so long that baseball is a symbol of America, along with apple pie and Chevrolets. However, it has become obvious that baseball is in decline, and baseball purists think going after steroid users will reverse this trend.

I’m going to be the first to say it: Baseball is soon to be as inconsequential as steam locomotives, vinyl records, and rotary phones. My great grandchildren will only witness baseball at county fairs, being performed by the same type of fat losers involved in Civil War Reenactments. Their fears are not without merit. Among all major sports in America, baseball now ranks 3rd in sales of logo gear, 4th in attendance, and consistently ranks beneath the NFL in fan polls. If you throw NASCAR into the mix, the rankings sink even further.

Baseball purists believe this downward trend is because its most unique aspects, statistics and records, have been ruined. Growing up, I knew Aaron’s homerun total, but couldn’t tell you Marino’s TD passes, Jabbar’s scoring record, or Gretzky’s either. This witch-hunt is targeting Barry Bonds because he symbolizes how modern science, nutrition, and training have made a mockery of the most coveted records in all of sports, but tossing out the old record books is not why baseball is in decline – Its because our country has changed and the game has not. We live in a world of instant, magnificent entertainment, and such a slow moving, pastoral game as baseball has little place in our Internet driven world.

Not only has what Americans crave as entertainment changed, the demographics have shifted, and it seems that everything around us is changing at breakneck speed. The Ipad I received for Christmas has already been replaced by a new version. Where the hell did Newspapers go? My kids turn up their noses at animated movies that aren’t 3-D. I can now see my wife’s face while she’s bitching me out on my I-phone. Anyone know what happened to Rock n Roll? At times, I feel I can no longer keep up – but things sure are exciting, which is something baseball is it. Even boxing is not entertaining enough for us anymore. Ultimate fighting has kicked it to the curb. If two guys repeatedly hitting each other’s bloody faces with giant red gloves isn’t fun enough for America, than how can guys standing around spitting with caps on survive?

I’d like to dispel the notion that Baseball’s records are sacred. Would Barry Bonds have hit 758 home runs if he had played in the cavernous Astrodome for most of his career? How many more games would Ferguson Jenkins have won if he had not pitched at Wrigley Field with crappy teams that gave him meager run support? And what do we do with any hitting record achieved by a Colorado Rocky player? Thin air allows the ball to travel farther. Cy Young didn’t pitch to black hitters. Babe Ruth didn’t face Latin hurlers. The pitching mound’s height was lowered in the 60′s to increase hits. So are baseball’s records valid when it’s ridiculous to compare them from era to era? The glue that holds this sport together is nothing more than wheat paste.

So leave Barry Bonds alone. Rubbing bovine hormones on your ass is a victimless crime, and the world’s a mess right now. Let’s go find the real witches.

Don’t you just love Charlie Sheen? Its moments like these, in which celebrities lose their inhibitions and show us what delusional egomaniacs they truly are, that I think such self-absorbed wastes of times such as Twitter and Facebook are a Godsend. Of course, if Charlie were my kid, I would have driven over to Malibu and beaten some sense into him by now. But of course, I don’t live in Hollywood, so maybe there’s something I’m missing and Charlie’s dad Martin is probably staying away for a good reason.

Both these famous Sheens stared in two of the finest Vietnam movies ever made. In Platoon, Charlie played a morality fueled college kid who volunteered for the war, only to witness his buddies posing as Jesus as they got shot. Martin played a burnt out special forces soldier sent on a modern-day Iliad to kill an AWOL American colonel who had lost his mind in Apocalypse Now. His target Colonel Kurtz, played by Marlon Brando, had fled to Cambodia in order to start a bizarre ham radio show from deep inside the jungle – Not unlike the younger Sheen has been doing via social media the past several weeks from the jungle of Malibu.

See if you can determine which of these wacky bits of insanity, masquerading as philosophy, belong to the fictional Colonel Kurtz, and which have recently foamed from the mouth of Charlie Sheen….

1. I should have been a pair of ragged claws scuttling across floors of silent seas
2. I got magic and I got poetry at my fingertips
3. There’s nothing that I detest more than the stench of lies.
4. We must incinerate them. Pig after pig… cow after cow
5. If you try it once, you will die. Your face will melt off and your children will weep over your exploded body
6. I was shot with a diamond… a diamond bullet right through my forehead

I’ve got a fantastic concept for the ultimate reality TV show: Martin Sheen stars in a reprisal of his Apocalypse character, but this time he sails a yacht down the coast of California through Big Sur to Malibu. His mission: Assassinate his wayward son Charlie. Joining him on this mission will be Justin Bieber as the naïve surfer dude, Nicolas Cage as Chef (Cage will take any roll – he needs the money), Snoop Dog as the weed smoking cat manning the twin 50cal, and the dude who played the bartender on the Love Boat as the Yacht’s Captain.

Along the way, they encounter crazy hoards of California Liberals throwing eco-friendly spears at them for smoking on the boat, then witness a liquor fueled orgy at the Playboy Mansion, before landing on Johnny Carson’s beach so that Dad can brutally dispatch his kid while we are simultaneously shown images of a bloated Michel Moore, starring as the metaphorical sacrificial cow, being cut in half by a machete. I know it’s a bit over the top, but you would watch it over American Idol, wouldn’t you?

ANSWERS: 1-sheen. 2-sheen. 3- kurtz. 4-kurtz. 5-sheen. 6. kurtz