The Old Blog

The idiot county commissioners over in Rhea County took two days to unanimously overturn their ban on gay people in the county, claiming they only wanted to ban gay marriage, not the people themselves.

I don’t know what’s more insidious: attempting to ban gay people from living in your county, or having an entire board of county commissioners lie about it and kowtow to the firestorm. If you’re going to do something as strong as banning a certain type of people from your county, at least have the balls to stick with your decision for more than two days.

Everybody else is doing it, so why can’t I? Unfortunately, with the power out this morning, I was unable to post this before the games started. I watched very little college basketball this year, so I told my girlfriend not to brag about her/my second place finish in her office pool last year (damn you, Syracuse!), since I don’t know if we have much of a chance of repeating.

Nonetheless, here they are, in all their glory:

St. Louis Bracket:
1st Round Winners: Kentucky, UAB, Providence, Kansas, Boston College, Georgia Tech, Michigan St., Gonzaga.
2nd Round Winners: Kentucky, Kansas, Georgia Tech, Gonzaga
3rd Round Winners: Kentucky, Gonzaga
Final Four Participant: Kentucky

East Rutherford Bracket:
1st Round Winners: St. Joe’s, Texas Tech, Florida, Wake Forest, Wisconsin, Pittsburgh, Memphis, Oklahoma St.
2nd Round Winners: St. Joe’s, Wake Forest, Wisconsin, Oklahoma St.
3rd Round Winners: Wake Forest, Oklahoma State
Final Four Participant: Oklahoma State

Atlanta Bracket:
1st Round Winners: Duke, Arizona, Illinois, Cincinnati, North Carolina, Texas, Xavier, Mississippi St.
2nd Round Winners: Duke, Cincinnati, Texas, Mississippi St.
3rd Round Winners: Duke, Mississippi St.
Final Four Participant: Duke

Phoenix Bracket:
1st Round Winners: Stanford, Southern Illinois, Syracuse, Maryland, Vanderbilt, NC State, Dayton, Connecticut
2nd Round Winners: Stanford, Maryland, NC State, Connecticut
3rd Round Winners: Stanford, Connecticut
Final Four Participant: Stanford

Final Four:
Kentucky Beats Oklahoma State
Stanford Beats Duke

Kentucky Beats Stanford for the Title–Final Score 70-63

Bonus
Check out the aggregate picks by all ESPN.com users here.

The 20,000th visitor to this blog came here just before midnight last night. And what were they looking for?

Well, here’s the google search they did to find me:
heidi strobel jenna morasca playboy pictures.

Hey, I never claimed my readers were high class (though I know some of you are).

Tennessee’s Rhea County, which hosted the Scopes Monkey Trial nearly 80 years ago, wants to ban homosexuals from the county. County commissioners voted unanimously to attempt to find a way to charge gays with crimes against nature.

So here’s a new slogan for Rhea County:
“Nearly a century in the future, we’re still behind the times.”

Got one of your own? Add it to the comments, and I’ll put them in a post later this week.

Everyone else, enjoy their Saint Patrick’s Day!

And if you’re an employee of the City of Boston, you already had the day off, as it also happens to be Evacuation Day. Because, you know, the government of a largely Irish city having a day off on an Irish holiday that also happens to be the biggest drinking day of the year is a complete coincidence.

Speaking of St. Patrick’s Day
The Guinness ad campaign touting St. Patty’s as the Irish/Beer Drinker’s Christmas, is, to quote their other current campaign, “Brilliant!”

(Yes, I know the link to the commercial goes to an anti-Guinness site, but just try getting the damn URL for the ad off Guinness’ own website)

The Boston Archdiocese rejected a plea to allow area Catholics to consume hotdogs at Fenway Park on Opening Day, which just happens to be Good Friday.

According to this story (ignore the Michael Jackson offering and read the second one), the Church said wanting to eat meat was “too weak an excuse” to ignore the dietary rule. What they didn’t explain was the logic and reasoning prohibiting people to eat meat just because it’s Friday.

There’s a growing number of vegetarians who only practice once in awhile. According to this story, they call themselves “flexitarians” because they sometimes choose not to adhere to their vegetarianism.

Let’s see, people who sometimes eat vegetables and sometimes eat meat. Isn’t that just 90 percent of the population?

Dubya is anti-stem cell research if it involves human embryos. In fact, the entire administration is so queasy about embryonic stem cell research that they won’t allow federal funds to be spent on it, even if it could, say CURE CANCER. But they seem perfectly willing to throw a quarter million bucks at Sweden in hopes of curing Parkinson’s Disease.

Putting aside the idiocy of the “an embryo is a person” claim, if the Administration is pandering so hard to the religious right that they would actually put embryos above the hopes of patients with degenerative diseases, then why are they willing to pay other countries to conduct it?

Mark Cuban responds to a negative column in the Dallas Morning News in his blog. If I’m ever rich and famous, I certainly hope to have the same sensibilities as Mr. Cuban–though with a better haircut.

Just caught a few minutes of VH1′s “Child Stars of the 80s.” Saw the second half of Brian Bonsall (Andy Keaton on Family Ties), who said he’d like to get back into sitcoms “if the circumstances were right.” Having no credits since 1994, I’m assuming the “right circumstances” means “being asked.”

Then, just after my roommate mentioned the inflated senses of denial so common to former child stars, on came a segment about Danny Pintauro (Johna-tun Bower on “Who’s the Boss?”).

In the course of two minutes, Pintauro said 1: that he was happy with his decision to “work with” the National Enquirer on a story that outed him to the nation, and 2: that people who said he was out of money and forced to work at the Gap were wrong.

“I wanted to see what is was like to work in retail,” Pintauro, who hasn’t had a credit since 1990, said.

Not even Donald Rumsfeld has a case of denial that bad.