And a collective sigh from sorority row is heard emanating from Oxford...

So after months of anticipation, the campaign to adopt Admiral Ackbar as the official mascot of the Ole Miss Rebels is officially dead. For politically correct reasons, Colonel Reb was dropped as their mascot back in 2003, and they've been without a mascot since then. Predictably, most of the traditional Ole Miss students were against installing the leader of the Rebel Alliance fleet to lead them into football games in the SEC. What surprised me, though, was what actually killed the dream of geeks throughout the South--George Lucas! The guy pimps out Star Wars merchandise to anything that can make a dime, so why stop at the college mascot level?

A dirty mind is a horrible thing to waste...

A screen capture of a real page from Fox News (via The High Definite):

CAAAATFIIIIIIIGHT!!

Now this might make me more interested in women's soccer:

Now if only they could teach him how to push a bobsled...

Usain Bolt shattered yet another of his world records at the world championships in Berlin by recording a time of 19.19 seconds in the 200 meter sprint. Watching the video, I'm still amazed at how completely relaxed he looks before and during the race in comparison to his competitors. And the margin of victory is freakin' insane!

As Bolt said, "I'm on my way to being a legend."

What makes his unstoppableness so unstoppable?

I'm just loving these Nike MVPuppet ads. My wish is that the Lakers and Cavaliers go all the way so that these commercials may continue:

Tweny dollar Chinese food...

The problem with having a DVR/TiVo is that you sometimes miss some pretty clever commercials.  Still not a reason that I would give up skipping ads.  Anywho, I saw this Nike commercial the other day and was laughing my ass off:

I guess this is one way to disguise yourself in a hurry...

I was never much of a guy to wear hoodies all that often, nor was I ever much of a fan of Marc Ecko fashion, but damn is this get-up cool (well, in a geeky Star Wars kind of way).  It's probably much more hip than the backpack that looked like Yoda I saw hanging off some girl's back in the grocery store the other day.

On a tangential note, Marc Ecko is the guy that bought Barry Bond's home run record ball for $750,000+ and branded it with a big asterisk before donating it to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown.  Classic.

No. 2 in the Country is Not Bad for Now

McCoy is the hottest quarterback in the league as Big 12 play begins. He's completing 80 percent of his passes, which leads the nation. And in a telling sort of stat, he's accounted for almost as many touchdowns (18) as incompletions (20).

Enough said.

Now that's what I call an ego boost...

It must feel awesome to know that you could school LeBron James with a basketball:

He seems to smell of 'Cock...

Life must be a bit difficult with a last name like this.

Phelps Phan...

Given the topic of my posts recently, I guess you can probably tell that, like a large number of Americans and other sports fans in the world, I've been caught up in Olympic fever this week (or more specifically, Phelps fever).  As if the 4x100m freestyle relay wasn't exciting enough, the 100m butterfly final last night will probably played be over and over again on any highlight reel for these 2008 Beijing Games, as Michael Phelps tied Mark Spitz's record for most gold medals in one Olympic Games by beating out Milorad Cavic by 0.01 seconds.  Conspiracy theories will probably abound for quite some time as to whether the Omega touch sensors were rigged given the fact that Michael Phelps is partially sponsored by the time-keeping company, but it's great to see that the Internet has already been hard at work to debunk such theories.  Sports Illustrated has a frame by frame review of the finish, which is pretty incredible to see just how behind Phelps (on the left of the picture) seemed to be at the end:

Frame by frame review of the broadcasted video from NBC further shows just how close the race was.  Amazing!

Slightly better form than Eric the Eel...

OK, so Equitorial Guinea won't be an Olympic swimming powerhouse for awhile. Here's the underwater view of the epic 4x100 freestyle relay this past week, though, to show why the United States will continue to be a dominant player in pool for a long time to come.

The greatest swimmer ever...

Sure, Michael Phelps is getting all the Olympic glory this week in Beijing with all his gold medals and world records as he attempts to become the greatest Olympian of all time. But let's not forget the Olympic heroes in the pool of games past. Previous American swimmers like Mark Spitz and Matt Biondi, the great Ian "Thorpedo" Thorpe from Down Under--incredible athletes indeed. They don't hold a candle, though, to the amazing swimming prowess of Equitorial Guinea and "Eric the Eel." From Wikipedia:

Eric Moussambani, nicknamed "Eric The Eel" by the media after the name first appeared in an article by Craig Lord in The Times newspaper in London,[1] won brief international fame at the 2000 Summer Olympics when he swam his heat of the 100m freestyle in 1:52.72 and won, because the two other competitors Karim Bare and Farkhod Oripov were disqualified for taking a false start. His time was more than twice that of his faster competitors, and outside even the 200m world record. However he had set a new personal best and national record.

At some point the publicity isn't going to be good for her...

It's been awhile since I ragged on Michelle Wie, but her insistence that she's good enough to play on the men's PGA tour despite the fact that she still hasn't won a professional tournament EVER against men or women, just begs for constant ridicule. I felt validated by reading Annika Sorenstam's latest remarks about her, too:

"You know, I really don't know why Michelle continues to do this," Sorenstam said. "I mean, we have a major this week, and if you can't qualify for a major, I don't see any reason why you should play with the men."

And why didn't Wie qualify? Because she failed to do a simple thing--she forgot to sign her scorecard.

If my life was the game of Life ...

... I would be losing. Two weeks ago today, I ran into a weeks worth of setbacks.

After gaining some unwanted weight, I had been running for exercise in the morning, and I really started to feel the benefits. I decided that on this particular morning I would do some sprint intervals. It was the morning after a thunderstorm, and I quickly approached a tree branch that needed to be skirted. I skirted it, but in the process my foot hit the edge of the pavement. I then skidded along the ground writhing in agony because I knew I had sprained my ankle. Hoping up quickly, I decided to assess the damage while moving. While walking 1/3rd of a mile uphill to my house I realized it was a bad one. The x-rays and the doctor told me that I broke my 5th metatarsal and sprained two ligaments and one tendon. Bummer. This amounts to me wearing a boot that comes up to my knee to immobilize everything. What I really love though is the padding on the inside of the boot. It is essentially foam cushioning surrounded by flannel. I love it when it is 100 degrees outside. Setback Number 1.

Setback Number 2 is directly related to Number 1. We had a weekend vacation planned for the beach, and this last weekend we had another vacation planned for Universal Studios Theme parks in Orlando (rabbit trail ... the new Simpson's ride was a lot of fun). We opted to stay the course and go on both vacations. There is nothing quite like probing for treasures in the sand with crutches, and is there anything that epitomizes walking and standing more than going to a theme park.

Setback Number 3 is also related to Number 1. When we arrived at the beach, I thought it might be nice to elevate my swollen ugliness. Within 30 minutes I received a phone call from our dog sitter. To protect my dogs identity, I will call him Bonham. Bonham had escaped from the clutches of our dog sitter while she was on her way in the gate to play with him. He ran straight for the 6 lane highway and proceeded to get hit by the bumper, tagged by the front wheels, and run over by the rear wheels of a Ryder truck. Bonham is not one of the smartest dogs I have ever met, but I think he could be the strongest. He made it out alive, and only lost his tail. Plus the sitter and her friend still had to chase him down after that. (This is the second time he has been hit and run over by a car with no major problems.) Setback 4a was that her friend got hit by a car in the process. He is fine. Setback 4b ... I will just say that emergency vet care is damn expensive. Major piss off number 1 ... the people who ran over my dog didn't even slow down. The fu&kers just kept on driving.

I don't remember the game of Life much, but the next thing is like drawing a card that says you have to move back one more space on top of everything else. While at the beach feeling pretty useless and confused about the dog situation, I decided to take my daughter for a little swing in the hammock. Major piss off number 2 ... the hammock broke and we go plummeting to the ground where I bruised my back and rear-end pretty good. Thankfully she was okay.

Last major piss off is the fact that I am getting fat again and can't do things like this ...

BA Baracus

I love MMA! Rarely do I considere purchasing pay-per-view stuff other than a college football game here or there, but I always find myself wishing I had a lot more disposable income whenever there is a MMA fight on pay-per-view. Last night Forrest Griffin squared off with Quinton "Rampage" Jackson for the light heavyweight title.

They competed against each other as coaches on the reality television series The Ultimate Fighter on Spike this spring. Because these are free to watch, I typically set my DVR to record all the episodes. I usually have a clear cut favorite of who I want to win based purely on the likability of each guy. I had a hard time picking who I wanted to win last night because both guys are hilarious and really good. Rampage, though, is a mean dude. Heck even Kimbo Slice has respect for the guy, and that could be one of the meanest dudes I have ever seen. Rampage was a 3 to 1 favorite.

Believe it or not Griffin ended up beating him in a five round decision, and I found myself pleased with the result.

What I also find to be pleasing is that Rampage is being considered to play the role of BA Baracus for the upcoming A-Team movie. I think it is a pretty good choice.

Tiger for President...

Yeah, I know. Watching golf is about as exciting as sitting around for hours watching Firecracker George play Metroid and waiting for your turn to play that never comes...except when it's Tiger Woods at the tee.

I don't know what it is about Tiger, but somehow the game of golf becomes mesmerizing when he shows up to play. It's not like he hits the ball that much different than anyone else. Yet for some reason I become transfixed to the TV when he's on the greens.

And it's not like I really don't know the outcome. Nine times out of ten, he'll probably end up winning. Which makes days like yesterday all the more odd--did anyone really expect the greatest golfer to ever live was going to lose? Bum knee or not, who really thinks that was going to keep him down? Yet, the entire 2008 U.S. Open was pretty darn exciting. Yeah, really, I'm talking about golf. Some have already called it one of the greatest tournaments in history. Heck, I couldn't even watch the playoff live yesterday obviously because I was working, but still was checking frequent updates on my computer until the final nail-biting sudden death hole.

In any other sport, we'd all probably be rooting for the underdog. For some reason, though, we all root for Tiger.

For the Longhorns in the audience...

Sometimes baseball at UT seems to take a rather dramatic backseat to football even though you could argue that the baseball team has had more success.

Richard Linklater, of Dazed and Confused fame, will debut his first foray into the documentary genre with Inning by Inning: A Portrait of a Coach which follows Augie Garrido, one of the winningest coaches in NCAA history, and the University of Texas Longhorns baseball team, the winningest team in NCAA history, during their 2005-2006 season.

Set your DVRs to ESPN2 at 10:00 PM EST on Sunday, June 15. Hopefully, no cameo appearances by Matthew McConaughey.

Lucky for the kid he didn't have lunch with a crappy baseball team like the Rangers...

They always use this situation in the movies, but I don't recall seeing it much in real life.

Miguel Tejada of the Houston Astros was so touched by an 8 year old boy he met with muscular dystrophy, he promised him a home run.  And sure enough, he delivered. Not to be outdone, the following two batters did the same.  In total, the Astros hit five homers last night against Milwaukee to beat them 7-4.  From ESPN:

"I was so excited," said Tejada, who'd never promised a home run before. "I know it's hard to tell someone you'll hit a home run and do it. But today when I went to lunch with this kid I wanted him to be happy. So I told him I'd do it."

How awesome does that kid feel right now?

Yeah, sure. It's all fun and games until your sandal melts...

I'm not exactly sure what is going on in this video, but it sure looks cool...or stupid depending on your point of view: