Our editor Colin Gawel has been on me, and with good reason. I haven't written a damned thing in weeks. We've given up on my finishing the baseball preview. I got through the American League in March, and started the NL. Now we're a month into the season, and it seems pointless now. To get on the record regarding the senior circuit I'll go with Atlanta, Cincinnati, and San Francisco with the Nationals and Cardinals nabbing the wild cards. Atlanta and Detroit in the series. Detroit wins it all. The Marlins will lose 115 games.
Anyway the idea Colin had over the weekend was for me to draw from my Facebook feed and come up with a digest of the week that was. And why not, though I should warn you that we'll cover everything from interest rate swap rigging to a Wal Mart employee turning tricks in the can during work hours. I'll leave it to you to decide which is worse, though your answer no doubt tells us a lot about you.
Sports
What a run by the Columbus Blue Jackets! The CBJ came up a tie-breaker shy of qualifying for the playoffs for only the second time in franchise history Saturday. The CBJ completed a furious 8-2 finish with Saturday's 3-1 win over Nashville at Nationwide Arena. I was there. The atmosphere was electric. Now the Jackets move to the Eastern Conference with it's somewhat softer competition, and many fewer trips out of the Eastern time zone. Behind goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky the Jackets will make some racket next season. Just to cause trouble check this out. Were the Jackets robbed? Most likely.
Meanwhile up I-71 The Columbus Crew shook off a disappointing performance in Chicago to rip DC United 3-0. I think we'll see a lot more of Jairo Arrieta and newcomer Dominic Orduro running up top together. Unfortunately you'll see none of their fine work on Sport Center. You will however see the Crew Stadium scoreboard on fire.
It appears the blaze started in the scoreboard's speaker system and should be a pretty easy fix.
The NFL Draft concluded Saturday. My criticisms of Seattle's picks last year only proved my ignorance. I'll leave the punditry to the McShay's and Kuiper's of the world. I will only say that the Bills probably got a steal in undrafted wide receiver Da'Rick Rogers out of Tennessee Tech. Rogers was on his way to a stellar career at Tennessee when he got himself into a bit of drug trouble. For more on the value of so called "weed guy" players see Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi's hilarious third annual "The NFL Draft Decoded."
News
George Jones died at the age of 81 Friday. "No Show Jones" lived a hard life, and yet made it to 81 and toured almost to the end, proving once more that booze, cocaine, pills, a fully fueled riding lawnmower, and access to firearms are the key to a long life. For a jaw dropping read, seek out Jones' 1997 autobiography "I Lived To Tell It All." I cannot do it justice here. (Yes, they duct taped him to a mic stand once so he could stand up and perform. Yes, he did leave his Cadillac running, doors open, on the sidewalk in front of the Nashville airport.)
Prediction: The Boston Bombings are about to become an embarrassment for our Homeland Security establishment. This idea that older brother had aroused attention up to two years ago raises many questions. Most of those questions will be answered no doubt by subjecting you and I to more cavity searches and x-rays. Yay!
On a side note, I read that the older brother was influenced by Alex Jones and his Infowars site. Jones took 3.9 seconds after the bombings to Tweet that they were an inside job. To help focus your thinking on the more fringe aspects of the story, I present this helpful chart.
This may have slipped by you with everything else going on last week. The Steubenville School Board extended a giant middle finger to the rest of America by quietly renewing the contract of head football coach Reno Saccoccia for another two years for something called "Director Of Administrative Services." This gig has nothing to do with his head coaching job and probably doesn't have much to do with anything at else either. Take heart though, by the end of last week the Attorney General's office was executing search warrants at ol Steubenville High. Coach Reno will have to answer for what he did and didn't do yet.
Late last week Matt Taibbi (yes the same guy who wrote the NFL piece above) published on Rolling Stone.com his latest on more unimaginable corruption, this time the investigation into the manipulation of interest rate swaps. As arcane as this material can be, Taibbi has a real gift for making it understandable. Read it as I do; with the knowledge that nothing will be done. Our economy and government has been captured by what is essentially organized crime, and it costs everyone more so these few can take a healthy skim from everything.
Remember the Mississippi Elvis Impersonator arrested on suspicion of sending ricin tainted letters to the White House and Senate? Well you know what the King said about Suspicious Minds. Just today another man, who had perhaps had some sort of feud with the fake Elvis, has been arrested. In 2007 James Everett Dutschke lost a Mississippi State Senate election. One of the folks who received one of his ricin direct mail pieces was allegedly the mother of the man who beat him. I'll be following this one because I love weird shit.
I almost hesitate to post this as we've had so many false leads in this story over the decades. Authorities are investigating whether remains found in the wall of a Cleveland bar may be those of long missing Teamster head Jimmy Hoffa. The previous owner found some years ago, and police curiously told him to throw them out. Hey that was the 70's and if you remember that decade people were throwing out body parts all the time.
And Finally Tonight
You won't find this offer in your Sunday circular. An upstate New York Wal Mart associate has been charged with prostitution. Police say the 22 year old was turning tricks in the mens room during work hours. Foster Bills advertised his services on Craigslist.