This Week's Metro Column

The guy standing center ring in a standing-room-only South Philly wrestle-teria Friday resembled a Skynyrd enthusiast. The guy flying through the air with the greatest of ease had an epic perm and smiley-face covering his singleted rump. My cell camera captured the blurry moment when Perminator took feet to foe’s skull.
Confession: I enjoyed the unapologetic Ring of Honor Wrestling violence as much as anybody, but later – thinking about legs, arms, chairs and whatnot being forcefully applied to skulls – I couldn’t shake flying-head-shot physics from mine. It’s just not good. You know it. I know it. And Chris Nowinski knows it.
A Harvard grad, Nowinski went from 2002’s WWE “Newcomer of the Year” to 2003’s concussed shell of an athlete to 2009’s advocate for sports-related brain-trauma awareness with the Sports Legacy Institute near Boston. He cites former Eagle Andre Waters and former Flyer Keith Primeau as local ties to his ultimate goal. After Waters’ Nov. 2006 suicide, docs posited damage from hard-hitting pro football contributed. This April, Primeau donated his post-death brain for study so that others careers mightn’t be cut short by multiple concussions like his.
On Saturday, Nowinski keynoted the “Connections for Life After Brain Injury” gathering at Thomas Jefferson University. He showed a video of co-workers roughing him up. “The guy who kicked the back of my head broke his foot,” he commented. That resonated in a room of injured brains.
Nowinski’s battle to get the NFL to man up and take responsibility for former players’ game-related head injuries has recently gotten big-time attention. He testified before an Oct. 28 Congressional committee hearing – NFL interest can help youth players, Nowinski offered, along with a “10 Point Plan to Save Football” – and national publications have finally written about science supporting his stance. Once woefully under-reported from youth to pro leagues, it’s becoming a topic du jour. This is good.
But what isn’t good is players getting sent home to shattered lives while team owners roll around on beds of billion-dollar bills. Nowinski says the NFL has started budging because “it’s in their best interest to change” which explains the closer eyes kept on Brian Westbrook’s mental-fitness to play. That’s not enough.
“If a group profits off of destroying people’s brains and is not willing to change, they’re the enemy,” Nowinski says. “We need to prevent people from dying because of ignorance.”
Even head-kicked wrestlers know that.

Sayeth the NFL, ye shan't do anything to promote a product that doesn't line arrr pockets with clams

Christ, Brent Celek's Captain Morgan TD pose has risen to the level of controversy. We have too much time on our hands to worry about things we shouldn't worry about.

During the third quarter of Dallas’ 20-16 win, Eagles tight end Brent Celek(notes) caught an 11-yard touchdown pass from Donovan McNabb(notes), then appeared to purposefully back up and align himself in front of television cameras. Putting his hands on his hips, Celek raised his right leg, mimicking a pose similar to the pirate on Captain Morgan’s label.
As far as anyone knows, it’s the first time we’ve seen that type of guerilla-style advertising campaign in an NFL end zone. And if the league has its way, it will be the last, too. The “Captain Morgan” was effectively banned this week after the league learned of a wider campaign meant to get players to repeatedly strike the pose during NFL games.
“A company can’t pay a player to somehow promote it’s product on the field,” NFL spokesman Greg Aiello told Yahoo! Sports this week.

Psst, hey Commish: Why not start worrying about retirees whose brains are scrambled because of your sport? Atta guy.

Three Great Things

1. I don't know how to say this other than just saying it, so here goes: One week after he emblazoned his version of Poker Face into my brain in perpetuity, Eric Cartman became Glenn Beck last night. Complete with an attack on Smurfs.
As an aside, I'm not saying Cartman is classier than ole Glenn-Bo. I'm just asking questions.


2. That Twilight guy on the cover may be getting all the attention, but Mark Bowden has a remarkable piece in this month's Vanity Fair, with MontCo ties, about a nuanced online sexual-predator case that may not be all that authorities made it out to be. Translation: They could have entrapped a local guy into saying he'd have sex with a woman's daughters just so he could have sex with her. I know, a tricky fine line. But, well worth a read before you decide for yourself.

Like other popular delusions, fear of the Internet child-molester contains a trace of logic. It is reasonable to ask if the explosion of Internet pornography, including child pornography, might lead more troubled souls down a path to criminal depravity. But the Internet has been with us since the mid-1990s. If it were going to cause a sudden increase in molestation, wouldn’t we have seen it by now? In fact, the trend lines go the opposite way. For instance, sexual assaults on teens fell dramatically—by 52 percent—between 1993 and 2005, according to the Justice Department’s National Crime Victimization Survey.

3. I stopped paying attention more than 24 hours ago so the whole thing may have gone berzerker crazy by now, but in the Sunday Times, there was an interesting sidebar about non-abortion nuances to the House health-care bill that bear understanding.

Lower taxes for gay couples who receive health benefits from employers. Nutrition labeling requirements for snack food sold in vending machines and many restaurants. A new program to teach parents how to interact with their children.
Those are some of the little-noticed provisions in a mammoth health care bill taken up Saturday by the House of Representatives.

3a. I'll post the link to my Metro column when it runs this week; it's about rasslin', at least in part it is.

Mobile blog update: Eric Cartman is playing Glenn Beck tonight!

America Rules!

You know it. I know it. And Charlie Kelly knows it.

USA. USA.

Veterans Day

Tomorrow's a holiday, but perhaps everyday for the rest of your days will be too! Just drop Angelo Totti a line. He's a soldier. With much of Saddam's money to spare, or so sayeth this scam of an email I got last night!

Very Important message:

My name is Angello Totti I am an American soldier. I am serving in the military of the 1st Armored Division in Iraq, as you know we are being attacked by insurgents everyday and car bombs. We managed to move funds belonging to Saddam Hussein family. The total amount is US$25 Million dollars in cash, mostly 100 dollar bills. We want to move this money to you, so that you may invest it for us and keep our share for banking.

We will take 70%, my partner and I. You take the other 30%. No strings attached, just help us move it out of Iraq, Iraq is a war zone. We plan on using diplomatic courier and shipping the money out in one large silver box, using diplomatic immunity. If you are interested

I will send you the full details, my job is to find a good partner that we can trust and that will assist us. Can I trust you? When you receive this letter, kindly send me an e-mail signifying your interest including your most confidential telephone/fax numbers for quick communication also your contact details. This business is risk free. The box can be shipped out in 48hrs.

Respectfully,

Sgt. Angello Totti
angelototti@aol.com

Poltergeist Revisited?

So, did anybody else have this picture flash up on their TV during the first half of the Broncos game last night? It freaked me out, until I realized I remembered that all good children go into the light. So, I have that going for me in the fight against random elder-porn foreplay.

A mobile blog-post test from the Acme. Holla atcha food-shopping boy.

Non-Spoiler WSOP Post

So, the World Series of Poker's over. All it takes is a simple google-news search to find out who won. Which is why I know who won. But all I'll say is this:
A pair of nines beat a suited Queen-Jack to win the $8.5 million pot.
Fear not: Final Table's on ESPN tonight.
(And if you must spoil it for yourself, you can do so here.)

Product News-Placement

Listen, I used to collect Campbell's Soup wrappers like the rest of my Strawbridge School brethren and sisteren so I got nothing but love for the Camden company. But product placement on a news show? So veddy sad.

The Soccer's Savior Award ...

... goes to New Mexico's Elizabeth Lambert for being one bad-ass bitch. Check it out, yo!

Weekend Reading Roundup (Faces of Death Edition)

Astley!!!

From the looks of the reading highlights this weekend, it's a damn good thing health-care got through the House last night. No, not because some close-minded God freaks were able to shoe-horn even more state controls over what a woman does with the unformed fetus inside her. But, because all the good reading was about sufferin' pain.
-- Like how the Beltway Sniper is scheduled for righteous execution on Tuesday.

For those wounded by the D.C. snipers and for the relatives of those killed, the emotions leading up to Tuesday's scheduled execution of the mastermind behind the 2002 attacks vary as widely as those who found themselves in the cross hairs. ...
"The reason why this life is going to be taken has everything to do with choices that he made and the process that those choices took him through," (Robert) Meyers said. (Meyer's brother Dean was killed.)

Say, anti-death-penalty folks, I don't hear much protest out of y'all. It couldn't be that you realized you were fucking wrong about the issue the whole time, could it? Open your veins wide, John Muhammad. You're on the highway to hell now.

-- Or how the case of a woman who left Sixer Willie Green's house and hasn't been heard from again is still unsolved. And, quite frankly, is really hinkey, especially when Green's agent goes out of his way to say Green's in the clear.

The Knebels wonder why the basketball player and his guests did not take steps to ensure their daughter got home safely.
Green would not comment, saying: "I've already talked to the authorities, and they have all the information."

Somebody knows something, that's for sure.


-- Or how the sociological, societal impact of "Fight Club" continue to expand to this day.

In the academic sphere, as an Internet search of scholarly journals reveals, “Fight Club” has inspired a host of interpretations — Nietzschean, Buddhist, Marxist — in papers that take on topics including the “rhetoric of masculinity,” the “poetics of the body” and the “economics of patriarchy.”

-- Or how America has a very violent history.

Scholars ranging from theologians and psychologists to evolutionary biologists have offered theories about murder—theories of evil, theories of disease, theories of disposition—but the analytical burden placed on any general discussion of murder, freighted, as it is, with atrocity, is nearly unbearable. Nothing suffices, or can.

Maximum sensory overload

I'll have a lot more to say about the subsequent pictures from South Philly ROH Rasslin' tonight and verbatim email from the Divorce Court contestant (I like calling pretty much all of them that) and new Facebook friend who doesn't think I captured the real essence of her day in court. Enjoy.

hey, what's up with all the innuendos!
I am an innocent China lady, they (the show) made me up to look like da bitch.

teaser: a clip that didn't make the show, please please leave a comment on the facebook page.
http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=132276462555

Gin Ling
http://www.myricegirl.com
http://www.myghostcat.com

Introducing Glenn Beck, King of Simpleminded Hatemongers

Yesterday, upon hearing about the Ft. Hood mayhem, I wrote, "I can't wait to see how the 9.12 Brigade blames Obama for that 'A-Rab' soldier going on a Texas kill spree."
Well, today, not only did I read a NY Times piece about the shooter that stated ...

[F]amily members said that he had complained about being harassed expressly because he was a Muslim.

... but then I got an email from Glenn Appendixless Beck, subject line: "Obama's shocking post shooting insensitivity‏."

As if blaming Bush for the floundering economy and the continuing effort to pile on to an already enormous deficit weren't evidence enough that Barack Obama isn't exactly presidential -- he poured more gasoline on to the fire with his remarks after the shooting at Fort Hood. He should have come out completely somber and measured in his remarks. Instead, he did THIS.

Ft. Hood shooter yelled 'Allahu Akbar'
"A US army psychiatrist about to be deployed to Afghanistan allegedly shouted 'Allahu Akbar,' or 'God is greatest,' as he opened fire at a military base in Texas, killing 13 people and wounding 28."

So, in summary, here's how I'm interpreting this thing: Among a litany of motives, simple-minded religious hatred drove this guy crazy, and those simple-minded enough to hate someone for their freedom of religion are harping on about it.

This chick...

... was on Divorce Court yesterday. She brought a duck head for display purposes.