This is to note that I owe Lawrence $5 on our Gonzaga bet. (Gonzaga!)
(Actually, I would have paid him on Saturday night, but I needed to break a $10, and forgot to do so because we were all distracted by the bidets at the Turkish restaurant.)
(“distracted by the bidets at the Turkish restaurant” is not a phrase I ever thought I would write on this blog.)
Also, Lawrence has bet me $5 that the Cubs will not win the World Series this year.
Gonzaga!
This is to note that Lawrence has bet me $5, straight across, against the Gonzaga men’s basketball team winning the championship this year. (I have Gonzaga, he has the field.) This is a little late, since the tournament has already started, but Gonzaga has not played yet.
Since I know he follows basketball more than I do (heck, Helen Keller follows basketball more than I do, at least when she’s not hiding from the Nazis) I’m curious to see who his pick is. Perhaps he’ll weigh in in comments.
…I still don’t care about college basketball.
But I am picking Gonzaga to go all the way, again, just because I like saying “Gonzaga”. Try it yourself.
(Actually, I’ve seen some speculation on ESPN that this might just be Gonzaga’s year.)
TMQ generally does not publish outside of the NFL regular season (though Easterbrook does do a couple of columns around draft time). But as soon as the Saints scandal broke, we were expecting TMQ to say something, because:
We’ve been watching Page 2 for a couple of days now, but oddly, the first notice we had that Easterbrook’s commentary was up came by way of Pope Jim the First on his Twitter feed. We’ll get to that in a moment. Let’s get started with this special edition of TMQ:
This is to publicly document that I’ve bet Lawrence $5 that the Chicago Cubs will win the World Series this year.
Holy crap. The Saints were paying their defensive players to injure opposing players.
I’m going to out myself here as something of a closet Saints fan, at least since Katrina. I thought they had a great comeback story, and I was delighted when they won the Super Bowl (especially after being so historically bad for so long).
But this? This is beyond the pale. This doesn’t even compare to what the Patriots did; say what you will about Bill Belichick, but illegal videotaping doesn’t even begin to come close to what the Saints have been doing.
This is the kind of thing where the NFL needs to get out in front of this story now. There’s talk of suspensions, fines, and giving up draft choices; my first reaction is that some people need to be tossed from the league for life. Gregg Williams, who is now defensive coordinator with the Rams, participated. Mickey Loomis, the Saints GM, was told by both the team owner and the NFL to shut down any bounty program that may have existed (the NFL has been investigating since 2009); he did not. Coach Sean Payton “was aware of the allegations, did not make any detailed inquiry or otherwise seek to learn the facts, and failed to stop the bounty program. He never instructed his assistant coaches or players that a bounty program was improper and could not continue,” according to the NFL
I would start with lifetime bans for Loomis and Williams, and a suspension for Payton, and work from there.
In other breaking TMQ related news, Anne Arundel County Executive John R. Leopold has been indicted on charges that he misused his personal security detail. This is still a breaking story, and details are sketchy, but the WP is currently stating that he had his security detail drive him to parking lots and wait around while he “engaged in sex acts with another county employee.” (Apparently, they used a separate vehicle for the sex acts, not the one the security detail was hauling Leopold around in. So at least he’s got that small element of class going for him.)
The HouChron has an updated story about Skippy the Therapy Kangaroo.
Well, generally, gerbils, hamsters, dogs, and cats are considered “household pets”. If the HOA went to court over those, they’d almost certainly lose; I think you’d have a hard time convincing a judge and/or jury to rule otherwise. Snakes may be a little more questionable as household pets (depending on the size and perhaps the number of snakes), but I think there’s enough precedent that the pet owner would probably win. A kangaroo? I still think that’s pushing things.
I’m Larry, this is my brother Darrell, and this is my other brother Clipper Darrell. I think the most shocking aspect of this story, and one that I have not seen mentioned elsewhere, is: the Clippers have fans? We are talking about one of the most incompetently run franchises in sports history here…
I think everyone knows by now that Andrew Breitbart passed away. I don’t have much to say beyond that; if you’re looking for discussion, I’d recommend Patterico or your other favorite web sites. I feel certain Battleswarm will have a lively discussion once Lawrence has time to put up a post.
This is a few days old, but worth noting: a longish LAT piece on HitmanForHire.net.
Tommy Tuberville, head football coach at Texas Tech, is being sued for investment fraud:
The linked HouChron article doesn’t add much beyond that. As always, please keep in mind that these are just the plaintiff’s allegations in a law suit, and that there are two sides to any lawsuit. But this comes at a bad time for Tech, no matter what turns out to be true.
Lawrence has a pretty swell writeup on the Piper Alpha disaster. I’m a little surprised that NASA hasn’t covered that in their System Failure Case Studies series yet.
My sister’s latest post over at the Park City Snowmamas site: “8 Items To Pack In a First Aid Kit For Travel”. I think there’s some good stuff in there, even for non-skiers (you might want to think about throwing some of this stuff into a range bag, for example). However, I do have to throw the yellow flag and assess the standard 15-yard penalty for an over sharing violation. Unfortunately, I don’t make the rules; I’m just a neutral ref.
I rely on Lawrence for my NBA news; it would be possible for me to care less than I currently do about the NBA, but that would also be difficult.
Anyway, when Lawrence isn’t feeding me NBA news, I have to depend on FARK.
And it was from FARK that I learned that the Charlotte Bobcats are heading towards the worst season in NBA history (currently 3-25, for a .107 winning percentage).
Question, though: should we really count this? In general, I don’t give a lot of credit to records set during seasons affected by labor stoppages.
ETA: Anybody remember the 2009-2010 New Jersey Nets? (12-70, .146)
I just do not understand this. I get that prisons in other countries are overcrowded and not up to US standards. But I just can’t wrap my mind around that many people dying in a fire in the modern era.
Some stuff from the NYT:
They caught Edward Maher in Missouri last week. Who?
His wife and 3-year-old son had already left for the United States. The money was never found.
Coach Susan Polgar is leaving her championship program at Texas Tech and going to Webster University in St. Louis. Worse for Tech, she’s taking the top ten players on her team with her to Webster’s program.
By the way, Coach Polgar is the chess coach.
Jeffrey Zaslow, prominent author. (Link goes to the WSJ, but I don’t believe they’ve put this behind a paywall.)
The first time I heard of Zaslow, it was in the context of the legendary contest to replace Ann Landers (after she left the Sun-Times for the Tribune). Zaslow was assigned by the WSJ to cover the contest, entered it on a lark (and to get an angle for his story)…and won, writing an advice column for the paper for the next 14 years.
After that, it seems like he went on to books, mostly as a collaborator with other folks. The best known, and I think the most successful (also the only one I’ve read) was his book with the late Randy Pausch, The Last Lecture
Also: Jill Kinmont Boothe, the skier who “The Other Side of the Mountain” was based on.
Obit watch: noted British SF author John Christopher.
Here’s the latest I’ve been able to find in the HouChron on the Rangers/FBI/Harris County DA. It doesn’t add a whole lot to what was reported yesterday, alas.
Paul Farhi in the WP writes about press coverage of the Lance Armstrong probe, including his own paper’s coverage.
Weer’d beat me to this one, but: carry your damn guns, people.
Good news, everyone!
I’ve come up with a way for you to hear these columns in Professor Farnsworth’s voice!
Also, it turns out that this is the last TMQ of the season! Yes, no bad predictions review this year: just the Super Bowl column and then silence until draft time.
After the jump…
