Back in the Saddle Again

It only took 35 days, but I am once again up and running with Internet at Casa G Spot. To celebrate I surfed the 'net nonstop Saturday for approximately 6 hours after the technician left my place, visiting every site on my bookmarks and saying "yes" to every person from Nigeria who wanted money and all solicitations for Viagra. I haven't been this giddy on my computer since upgrading from Windows Millennium Edition to XP in the spring of 2006.

After once again implying that it was a problem with my computer (the network card in this case), the so-called Internet service provider (AT&T in this case) was again proven wrong when it was once again determined that THEIR equipment (modem) was defective. In your face Comcast, um, I mean AT&T. Unfortunately, being proven correct did not change the fact that I was without Internet for over a month. A pyrrhic victory indeed.

It has been a while since I have posted regularly, so for this entry I am going to eshew (that's right, I used "pyrrhic" and "eschew" in the last two sentences of this post) my "long form on one topic" blogging style in favor of some thoughts on people and news items that have gotten my attention during the last month. Note: As fantastic as it was for myself and fellow members of Red Sox Nation and as much as I'd like to gush about it some more, I am not going to include the recent Red Sox World Series victory on this list. Without further adieu, let's get things started.

1) Stephen Colbert Enters and Withdraws from 2008 Presidential Race.

Ever since he came on the air a couple of years ago, I have been a big fan of fellow Northwestern alum Stephen Colbert and his show "The Colbert Report" on Comedy Central. A spinoff of "The Daily Show" where Colbert was initially a correspondent, the Report is similar to the Daily Show in terms of the heavy focus on satirical political humor. However, what makes it different is the fact that unlike the Daily Show, where host Jon Stewart is playing himself as host of the show, Colbert is essentially playing the character of a right wing pundit a la Bill O'Reilly while doing the show. The high wire act he has been pulling the last two years is quite brilliant, actually, and is so utterly convincing that you sometimes can forget the whole thing is a big put on.

Colbert took this character to a new level last month when he announced that he was entering the 2008 Presidential race. The caveats included that he: A) Was only doing so in his native South Carolina; and B) Would run as both a Democrat and a Republican. Upon announcing his candidacy, Colbert added Doritos as his official campaign sponsor and included nightly "The Hail to the Cheese Stephen Colbert Nacho Cheese Doritos 2008 Presidential Campaign Coverage" reports on his show. He also made the rounds on the political talk shows, including a grilling by moderator Tim Russert on NBC's "Meet the Press" (see video below).



Unfortunately, things began to unravel early for Colbert in his bid to take the White House. After learning that the fee to file for the South Carolina Republican primary was $35,000, Colbert abandoned plans to run as a Republican. And although he paid the $2,500 fee to be included in the South Carolina Democratic ballot, on November 1st he was denied a place on the ballot by the South Carolina Democratic Party executive council despite numerous campaign activities in the state. On November 5, Colbert officially dropped his Presidential bid. So yes, a Presidential campaign began and ended in the time it took me to get Internet service back at home.

2) Women's tennis player Martina Hingis retires from the tour for a second time amidst allegations of cocaine use.

This very well could have gone in one of my "What Famous Person is in Deep S%#t This Week?" posts except for the fact that Hingis isn't really that famous anymore, at least to people who don't follow tennis. As someone who played junior tournaments in New England and on the team in high school, I am still a casual fan of the sport and enjoy both playing and watching it. I maintain this interest despite the fact that I can't stand our country's best female players, the talented yet petulant Williams sisters, and that Swiss Roger Federer has pretty much been steamrolling the opposition, top American men Andy Roddick and James Blake included, for the last 4 years. Federer is to men's tennis what Tiger Woods is to men's golf, yet nobody cares about tennis so this guy's dominance flies under the radar relative to Woods. He will go down as perhaps the greatest men's player ever and few casual sports fans will ever fully appreciate his greatness.

Earlier this month, Hingis revealed a positive drug test for cocaine after her third round loss at the 2007 Wimbledon Championships last summer. She then threw the curveball of immediately retiring from the tour yet at the same time vehemently denying that she used the drug. Most people, myself included, would react to that contradiction by saying "If you're innocent, then why not fight to clear your name and maintain your livelihood?" In his article on ESPN.com, Mark Kreidler wrote "Martina says she'd be terrified of doing cocaine, and her lawyer suspects the doping procedure was botched. That's usually the last refuge of the accused sports figure, to question the system."

Hingis' announcement gets to the current climate regarding drug use in sports, where athletes from Barry Bonds to Marion Jones to every rider in the Tour de France have been tainted by either allegations or proof of drug use. Unlike the aforementioned athletes Hingis is not accused of nor did she admit to the use of performance enhancing drugs (her third round loss at Wimbledon indicating that she received no advantage from performance enhancers), so it is not exactly an apples-to-apples comparison. That said, the fact is that she was likely to face a skeptical public as well as a protracted legal process to clear her name, after which she would probably still have a negative stigma attached to her whether proven innocent or guilty. It's too bad it had to go down like that for Hingis, a multiple Grand Slam champion and former world number 1, but in a weird way (and given her injury history) I can kind of understand why she chose the path of least resistance.

3) Talk show host Conan O'Brien stalked by Boston priest.

This story is so bizarre it could have only been found in The Onion, except that it's actually true. According to an article in The Boston Globe, The Rev. David Ajemian, a priest in the Archdiocese of Boston, has been sending the "Late Night With Conan O'Brien" host harrassing letters (on parish letterhead, no less) and e-mails since September 2006. Ajemian, who was arrested earlier this month while trying to attend a taping of the show at 30 Rockefeller Center in New York City, referred to himself as "your priest stalker" in the letters and after being snubbed from attending an earlier show taping wrote "Is this the way you treat your most dangerous fans?" Yikes.

There really are no winners here. It has been a rough few weeks for O'Brien and his show, what with this strange incident and the current writers strike (which I will try to blog about at some point) that effectively shut down all late night talk shows and could threaten the jobs of members of the "Late Night" staff if it continues. And it is not like Catholic priests have been lacking for bad publicity either, though I'm thinking that the stalking of a late night talk show host by one priest does less damage to their collective reputation than the Church's ongoing child molestation lawsuits. As "Late Night" regular Triumph the Insult Comic Dog might say, "This is a good story...for me to poop on."