Just so you know, there will be no links tonight because I'm feeling particularly lazy. But I have somethings to say. It's just another post with an ESPN theme. Obviously they spent a lot of time on the Daytona 500, today and the breaking story was the bizarre episode of All My Morons that has been the 2006 San Diego Chargers. There was the linebacker shot by an off-duty cop. There was the safety arrested by Federal authorities for allegedly selling codeine. Then there was the waiting until the offensive and defensive coordinators accepted head coaching positions with other teams. Now they hire Norv Turner, who was once chased from a blackjack table in Las Vegas by Bill Simmons and one of his super-cool friends.

But there was a substantial amount of coverage dedicated to the All Star Weekend. First, on Mike and Mike in the Morning, Greenie made the pronouncement that no one puts on a show like David Stern. Meanwhile, he admitted later that he gained a renewed appreciation for Bono as he watched Mary J. Blige flounder her way through the classic U2 song "One."

And then there was Wayne Newton. It took me 2 days to come to terms with his presence. He was terrible. Actually, he was far, far, far, far worse than terrible. First, as Mike Wilbon would say on PTI, he looked like he'd escaped from the wax museum. Whatever they did to lift his face and Botox away his wrinkles made him look like a 2 week old sandwich in Saran Wrap. And there was his "tan." I don't know how to describe it, save to say that it made him look like one of those oranges that have those rough brown patches that the growers call wind scars.

Then there was his hair. It looked like his hair had been dyed with the black paint they use to rustproof metal benches and chairs. I don't know that it can be fairly called hair, but it sits on his head and it's not a hat, so we'll call it hair. It looked to me as though some drunken hair restoration technician had sewn the hair on somewhat imperfectly.

And there was his singing. I don't know much about octaves and that sort of thing, but I know he was nowhere near the high notes that made up the falsetto that made the song unique in the first place. His version of Viva Las Vegas was an insult even to people who aren't Elvis fans (I, however am an Elvis fan). Basically he looked and sounded like a bad impersonator. I get the feeling that Englebert Humperdink sat up somewhere in Branson, Missouri or wherever old lounge singers go to die and called his agent wondering why he couldn't get a gig with the NBA.

Then there was the triumphant return of Around the Horn. Because the show had been bumped all last week for NASCAR Now, they hadn't had a chance to excoriate Tim Hardaway. Everybody's conscience, Jay Mariotti, was in top form. He commended David Stern for the swift and fair response in banishing the homophobe from All Star Weekend. The voice of the voiceless went on to lament that certain other commissioners (Bud Selig, by name) do not act with such probity.

It was truly inspired, or at least it was, before I translated it from Mariotti-speak into English. Basically, Jackass Jay said: "Whah, Whah! Big Bad Ozzie Guillen was mean to me, please fight my battles for me, Mr. Commissioner." I've had enough of Mariotti. He's a total tool. And of the off chance that one of his minions monitors my site, feel free to tell him this. Jay Mariotti is a middle aged guy just coming off an angioplasty. The actuarial tables are in my favor on this one. He's going to die before I do, and I'm going to find his grave and take a leak on it. A little harsh, and totally lacking in my customary good humor, but I am so sick of phony tough and crazy brave reporters.

Speaking of people monitoring my site, I've been setting traffic records lately. It got me thinking. For those of you who are new to this site, Catch 22 is one of my favorite books. In the novel, the protagonist was forced to censor letters written by enlisted prisoners while he stayed in the officer's ward at the military hospital. Since it was boring duty, he got creative and started censoring all the modifiers, then all the romance words, then everything but the salutation while he rewrote the letter's body and finally he censored the envelopes. When he censored the letters, he signed Washington Irving's name.

Once he censored the envelopes, the military bureaucracy sprang into action. The Army sent a man from the the Criminal Investigations Division to the hospital to catch Washington Irving. This triggered an entire series of misadventures which ended up with the first CID man getting sick. The Army then sent a second CID man. Eventually, the two CID men spent all their time investigating each other.

I went through that long aside to say something, believe it or not. The other day, I joked with one of my friends that my spike in traffic was due to a number of people monitoring me for Mariotti, the CHB, the Red Sox, the Pats, NASCAR, Ainge and the other targets of this blog. After keeping an eye in this site for a while, I imagined that they would eventually use this site as a means to monitor one another. It seemed like a funny image.

Can you picture it? Across the country, recent college graduates who always wanted to be athletes, but lacked the size, speed, strength, talent or any/all of them to make it became jock sniffs and gave up their dreams to enter the world of sports journalism. Now they sit in their cubicles, dividing their time between monitoring my site and mooning over the hot receptionist who is hopelessly out of their collective league. And I bet they're questioning their career choice as they try to remember whether Mr. Mariotti takes his coffee with cream and sugar and wonder if Jay will release his pent up aggressions on the lowly intern after Ozzie or Hawk Harrelson disses him again.