News you can't really use

Guess what everybody? Mark McGwire did steroids? I know, can you believe it? I never in my life thought that an adult male could put on twenty pounds of muscle mass in a year and have his most productive baseball years in his late thirties without any help other than clean living and drinking lots of milk. Next thing you are going to tell me is that Sammy Sosa was an arrogant jerk who suddenly became unable to speak English when asked about his alleged steroid use…

Yeah, this is pretty much the biggest non-story of the day. We’ve known for years that he had bulked up on steroids especially after the nonadmittal admission in front of congress. I find it more surprising that it took him this long to just be up front about it. The only reason he is doing so now is because he is going to be a bench coach for the Cardinals. Otherwise he would continue to put up the façade that everything he did was clean. Basically that entire era of baseball is viewed through the lens of steroids and I feel sorry for guys like Frank Thomas and Jim Thome who from all indications took nothing over that time frame. People will never quite appreciate how great their performances were over those years.

(Also, Sarah Palin has taken a position at Fox News. Anyone who didn’t see this coming when she resigned as governor really needs to give up their pop culture card. Fox gains Sarah Palin but loses Simon Cowell. Probably an even trade there.)

In fact, the biggest shocker of the day is Domino’s Pizza admitting that their pizza tastes like cardboard. I mean the Noid must be shaking his head in disbelief at this one. I must admit it is a rather daring advertising campaign to basically admit that what you have been serving for the past twenty five years has been rather crappy but we have now improved it so give it another try. I actually think it might work. And I have to say, the Domino’s Pizza we had in Iceland was quite tasty.

(Yes, we ordered Domino’s one night. Look, there are only like three restaurants in the entire island and at some point you have to turn to fast food.)

Oh, and I may have told this one before but my favorite urban legend ever involves the “Avoid the Noid” campaign. For those too young to remember Domino’s used to blitz the airways reminding us to “Avoid the Noid” with the Noid being a cartoon creature who symbolized bad delivery pizza. Well, they had to dump the catchphrase due to a lawsuit by a Mr. Noid. Mr. Noid, who was rather depressed to begin with, found it psychologically damaging to have everyone be told to avoid him. I am still using this in my continual lawsuits against the producers of “Everybody Hates Chris” and hopefully once we get it to the Supreme Court I’ll finally have my day.

8th Best Album of the Decade: My Morning Jacket “Z” (2005): Most of the members of My Morning Jacket look as though they’ve just walked down a hillside somewhere in Appalachia. This makes sense when listening to Z, a dark, mysterious and occasionally dangerous album. It is one of those discs where you never quite know where it is going to lead you no matter how many times you listen to it.