So who will pick up the sponsorship of the stadium after this? Not that I’ve ever been to a soccer game or plan on it, but I’d hate to see a stadium sized opium den installed within eyesight of Kodak’s ninth-floor cafeteria. I vote for Nick Tahou’s, personally. At least you know they’re not going anywhere.

But who else could sponsor the stadium?

Lyell Ave Smoke Shop Stadium?
The Diplomat Party House and Stadium?
Naughty and Nice and Soccer Stadium?
The Mirage Stadium?

Hmm. . . lots of potential, there. . .

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I’m very stoked to see one of my favourite current U.S. gymnasts from the Olympic trials – edged out of the team until today – is going to Beijing to compete for the U.S.: Raj Bhavsar. The unfortunate injury of Paul Hamm, last Olympics’ U.S. superstar, created one empty space to be filled, and Raj just got the nod to fill it.

So, pack up your Hepa filter, grab a wet towel to cover your face and head on out to Beijing, Raj man!  The wife and I are pulling for ya.

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Brett Favre leaves Green Bay for the Jets?  Isn’t that a little like taking a shit in reverse?  Maybe it’s just me.

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Roger Clemens apologizes for ’mistakes in personal life’ – BostonHerald.com

Roger Clemens apologized today for unspecified mistakes in his personal life but denied having an affair with a 15-year-old.

“Even though these articles contain many false accusations and mistakes, I need to say that I have made mistakes in my personal life for which I am sorry,” Clemens said in a statement issued by spokesman Patrick Dorton. “I have apologized to my family and apologize to my fans. Like everyone, I have flaws. I have sometimes made choices which have not been right.”

Exactly. We all have flaws and make bad choices. Though in Mr. Clemens’ defense, it should be pointed out that the fifteen year old in question was pumped full of performance enhancing drugs at the time and had the strength of ten teenie boppers.

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“Oh, smashing news,” you say. “Hang on. Survive where? The moon?” No, Beijing, the world’s most polluted city, which is hosting the Olympic Games. Now, get out there and compete:

Athletes safe in Beijing air for up to an hour: IOC | Reuters

International Olympic Committee scientists have proved that Beijing’s air will present no health risk to athletes competing for up to an hour at the 2008 Games, IOC chief inspector Hein Verbruggen said on Wednesday.

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The question in my mind is: are these bad financial dealings the result of an inept leadership or were they the desperate tactics of a failing business model?  The truth is doubtless somewhere in the middle, but it makes a  big difference in terms of what happens next.  My suspicion has always been that the city’s market is just too small to support all those teams, especially for things like soccer and arena football, which are niche sports with a very small audience in the first place.

I’m just hoping that, in an effort to save face for the city, the mayor doesn’t decide to try to take over Paetec Park unless it can be proven to be a money-maker.  I would say that we need to have someone take a serious look at what kind of entertainment/sports venues this city can really support – that we could use a master plan against which to work – but I think we all know by now these things are run by the contractors, not by our elected officials.

Vive la CMCE.

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Really, what is it about steroids that is so bad? I don’t mean that they’re not bad, but I’m just wondering what it is about them that we object to so strenuously while not in the same moment objecting to any number of other chemicals players dope their bodies up with. There is an entire industry built around the idea of either making professional athletes stronger or patching up injuries so they can go back out onto the field and play hurt. Are we so sure what they’re doing is ethical simply because they might have eschewed the use of one chemical over another?

It is an interesting question once you begin to dig beneath the veneer of major league sports and get at the truth of what they’re all doing. Really, ethics are a very relative thing in a world where athletes push their bodies beyond breaking and corporations making billions actively encourage it so they can sell beer during the commercials. And it’s a fair question: are we just kidding ourselves about the steroids thing?

Roger Clemens was on 60 Minutes last night, doing an amazingly poor job of convincing me he didn’t take steroids to improve his performance. He did an fine job of convincing me his ego wouldn’t allow him to admit any failing as an athlete. Over the course of the conversation with Mike Wallace, among the more interesting revelations was this passage:

Clemens Vehemently Denies Steroid Use, Tells Mike Wallace Trainer Only Injected Legal Drug – CBS News

Clemens says McNamee did in fact inject him, but only with “Lidocaine and B-12. It’s for my joints, and B-12 I still take today.”"And that’s all?” Wallace asks.

“That’s it,” Clemens says.
. . .

Clemens told 60 Minutes he got legal injections from team trainers, mostly painkillers.

“The number of shots that you get over the course of a season, which was many for me. Whether they be vitamins or for pain, Toradol. Pain shots. To go out and perform. I had one of my biggest arguments with Joe Torre. He’s wanting to scratch me on one of the biggest starts of the season. Had a small tear in my hamstring and a golf ball in my elbow,” Clemens recalls. . .

Lidocaine, B12, Toradol, Vioxx. Presumably, other unnamed “painkillers.” So, now I know why at least one MLB team is called “the Phillies”: Man o’War never had this many chemicals shot into his veins.

If we are to understand Mr. Clemens correctly, he had no problem getting doped up on painkillers before a game so he can get out there and play. He had no problem popping Vioxx so he could ignore the screaming of his torn muscles. He had no problem shooting up vitamins instead of just eating right like a normal person. . . . but steroids, well, those are just beyond the pale.

He might very well be innocent of actually taking steroids. I don’t believe it for a second, but what the hell? I wasn’t there, and maybe he really didn’t take the damned things. But if he didn’t, and every other thing he did to his body is entirely legal and considered ethical, where does that leave us?

When the investigations into alleged steroid abuse started four years or so ago, we were told that the danger was that kids who looked up to athletes might start using steroids if they knew their heroes did. The point was to show kids that the use of steroids was unethical cheating and that needed to be brought to justice. The point was that we didn’t want kids getting hurt in an abusive system.

But this is an industry where, before anyone has made dime-one, kids are leaving high school with permanent injuries. Wrestlers are wrapping their bodies in cellophane and exercising to lose weight. If they make it to college ball, they’re definitely becoming aquainted with sports “doctors” who will pump them full of painkillers and bandage up injuries to get them back out onto the field. Then they get into the majors, where every day, they risk getting replaced by someone younger and stronger. And every step of the way, their bodies get treated like machines, patched up to momentarily delay their inevitable collapse.  Athletes are admired for “playing hurt,” and showing their dedication to the game.

But we don’t want kids getting hurt?  I kinda think we do, just not our own.

And what about the rest of us? Housewives on anti-depressants; executives on Viagra; musicians getting high before shows; “Those Damned Blue Collar Tweakers,” snorting meth and going to work. It seems to me that any life you want to live, there is a pill to get you there quicker. Are we hurting kids by letting them grow up to be athletes, or are we all just using the predispositions nature gave us and “building” ourselves out of chemicals science provides us?

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Anyway, allow me to say I could really give a rat’s patoot what MLB jocks do to their bodies, with the exception that impressionable young kids might get the idea that “doping until you die” is the way to excel in this world. That said, if the Mitchell report has revealed anything, it’s that there is no possible way Bud Selig could not have known what was going on. Hell, there had to be gumball machines filled with steroids in every locker room across America, and this douche has the balls to say this:

MLB report outs stars; Selig vows action – Yahoo! News

“If there are problems, I wanted them revealed,” commissioner Bud Selig said. “His report is a call to action, and I will act.”

Yes. It’s a call to action. And the action is: why don’t you go outside and play a game of Hide and Go F*ck Yourself.

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There’s been a lot of talk about how lame the Winter Olympics are this year. I’m not sure if this is a product of the same sour-grapes thing or just a general boredom, but I for one very much enjoy them and hope this isn’t a harbinger of a poorly covered 2010 games. Patt Morrison at the HuffPo certainly has her ideas about what people hate about the Winter Olympics.

She might even be right about a lot of it, but then again, not everyone despises snow and even some of us that do don’t mind watching other people play in it.

I have some suggestions which I think will probably make the whole thing a lot easier on all of us. For one, let’s stop trying to make one person carry the weight of the entire nation every time they go out and ski. Sure, Olympic gold is nice, but do we really need to blame Body for the fact that no one’s watching?

Second, let’s have NBC spend just a little less on the games, and maybe have a little less coverage of better games. There are, I suspect, very few people who would miss curling, and many who would rather just get to the ski jumping. We can eliminate a bunch of those stupid snowboard games while we’re at it. Snowboard Cross? Seriously, people.

Third, try as he might, Bob Costas does not care about the Winter Olympics. Get rid of him and bring in someone who cares about the games. How can anyone be expected to be enthusiastic when the freakin’ host could care less? That on top of the over-blown, vapid time-filling that national TV media is known for is a recipe for a sleeping pill.

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John Moody, Senior Vice President for News Editorial at Fox, proves he is worth his weight in gold with this quote:

“I think he wanted to make sure he got a fair interview and a good interview — good in the sense of thorough — and Brit is sort of the pre-eminent journalist in Washington right now.”?

I’m sure that comes as quite a shocker to those people who actually went to college for journalism.? Britt Hume is now the pre-eminent journalist in Washington.? And what about that “fair interview?”? Well, Think Progress has what appears to be a preview.? Everyone at Fox News is apparently very concerned. . . for Dick Cheney’s feelings:

CAVUTO: This is a Fox News alert. The lawyer accidentally hit by Vice President Dick Cheney suffering a mild heart attack this morning. Doctors say he?s doing just fine and could be released in a week. Meanwhile, the White House press corps again beating a dead horse as it tries to find out why they were not told right away about the Vice President?s hunting accident. Not one person bothering to ask, in the meantime, how Dick Cheney?s feeling about all this. After all, he?s a human being and injuring someone else in an accident can take a huge toll. With us now someone who knows the Vice President pretty well. Ron Christie is a former Cheney advisor and author of Black in the White House. Good to have you back my friend.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.? Blah, blah, blah.? The guy got shot, ok?? What we all want to know is if Dick Cheney might have accidentally damaged his trigger finger in the process.? After all, Dick Cheney is a human being, and shooting someone can take an enormous toll on the guy who did the shooting.

Back to some choice interviewing:

CAVUTO: Do you think he should be talking more about this? Should he have come out himself and said something?

CHRISTIE: No, I don?t. Why? I mean, his office has already released a statement.

Ah!? So I guess the next time I shoot a guy, all I need to do is have my office make a statement!? Who knew?? That would be especially convenient if I was actually in the woods with the chick I’m sleeping with on the side, whilst drinking down a forty with a shotgun in my hand.? The cops always want to ask a bunch of exhaustingly pointless questions in those situations.