"This is the hardest thing I've ever done..."

Wow. Too much going on in the world.

Joe Torre trashes A-Rod, Cash, and who knows who else. C'mon... you seriously think the guys called him "A-Fraud" behind his back around the clubhouse?! Nobody really talks that way. "Douchebag" maybe-- but "A-Fraud"???

Stephon "Theseus" Marbury has a new plan every week-- Knicks are buying him out after all, he's gonna play in Greece, etc. Now he's saying the Celtics are on the verge of picking him up, which is completely unfounded by any and all reports out of Boston. What does this guy do all day?

The coach of the Covenant School's girls basketball team was fired for unapologetically trouncing the Dallas Academy by a score of 100-0. Apparently his actions weren't "Christlike" enough for the brothers at the Cov. What hasn't made the papers is the longstanding feud between the schools, which boiled over last spring when the Dallas Academy allegedly cheated in a "pray-off" competition (several girls were caught with snippets of the 23rd Psalm scrawled in pen under their skirts).

So, what else to do tonight but check out Superstars of Dance on NBC?!! I was one of the few that caught the premiere a couple of months ago, which was one of the strangest hours of TV since the (2-hour!) Glutton Bowl of 2002. Sadly, nobody ate testicles from a giant vat this time.

The show is too ridiculous to even begin to explain. Riverdance's Michael Flatley (looking about as lithe as Pat Flatley) hosts with a hilarious lilt of an accent, and feels the need to repeatedly explain the two or three rules of the competition. Dancers from eight countries compete and are judged by experts from the same eight countries. However (this is supposed to be a cool twist), no judge can judge his or her own country's routine-- instead they are compelled to laud their kinsmen in grotesquely broken English. The enduring question of S.o.D. is whether the horrible dancers are offending their own cultures, or just the rest of the human race in general.

But... the rose goes to The Bachelor tonight. Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it, and those who haven't seen The Bachelor are doomed to watch the repeats. It's the skeeviest show of all time, with a fiendishly brilliant premise: a tragically flawed man drinks and fucks his way through a harem of emotionally challenged women, leaving a trail of despair, psychosis and empty champagne flutes in his wake. Yikes.

The $4.5 Billion Man

Forgive me Blogger, for I have sinned... it's been five weeks since my last Knicks entry.

Not that I haven't been paying attention, or that nothing's happened. After a promising start (thank G_d nobody took me up on my Knicks "bet"), the Knicks are back at dysfunction-junction. They simply can't do anything right.

I've been begging the Knicks to get rid of everyone except Crawford and Nate for a while now. They almost did it! Except that they forgot about seven guys (including a few of the biggest salary lodestones on Earth), and got rid of Jamal by accident. You could say they screwed up a little bit.

So who'd they get??!! Al Harrington's finally a Knick, even though he showed up completely out of shape (how?!). Oh yeah, they got Tim Thomas back (???) and Cuttino Mobley (who's already trying to cut Eddy Curry in line for a heart transplant up at Columbia/Presbyterian).

As if that's not enough of a mess, Stephon Marbury is now an extra from Salem's Lot, scratching at the Knicks' bedroom window. There was no doubt in anyone's mind (that is, anyone with a mind) that Steph would be as gone as Coney Island by season opener, but here he is. But just a few days ago, he sat and watched his team stagger through a nightmare in Detroit with only seven guys able to play (sounds like an old tour of mine).

Want more? Our top draft pick ("the Italian Scallion") is hurt, after failing to score a single basket this season. Neither "J.J." has played a single minute this year, which some would say is a good thing. My connection for free Knicks box seats is on the rocks, and we don't have cable.

At least King James is on the way, right? We certainly gave him a royal welcome last Tuesday, which was a bit like trying to show your old friend from out of town a good time for the night and watching him screw the daylights out of your wife.

Oh, the profanity:
Stephon Marbury, $20.8M
Eddy Curry, $9.7M
Malik Rose, $7.6M
Jerome James, $6.2M
Jared Jeffries, $6M
Danilo Gallinari, $2.9M

The players above have combined for a total of 26 points this year, with only Malik Rose actually scoring a field goal. That's roughly $53,200,000 (just this year!) for 26 pts, or just over $2 million per point.

TWO MILLION DOLLARS PER POINT.

So, if LeBron is worth as much as the schmucks above, he would earn $4.5 billion as a Knick when he gets here.

That's without inflation.

ZZZZZZeke?

This has been a weird, weird, weird couple of days in the news.

A woman in Pittsburgh told police she was attacked and had a "B" carved into her face because she was a McCain supporter and volunteer campaigner. She alleged that the attackers were "teaching her a lesson" by etching the Barack initial into her cheek. Too bad the B is sort of, um, backwards-- as if it were self-inflicted in front of a mirror. The woman confessed to the hoax soon after the story went public, but not before both John McCain and Sarah Palin embarassingly made la charlatane their new "Joe the Plumber".

Ash the Slash was trumped by the "Man in Leno suit commits suicide" story, which conjured up the vision of a guy in a Halloween rubber Leno mask and suit blowing his brains out. I had nightmares for hours last night (also due to the weird Toyota "Saved By Zero" commercial).

But none can touch today's Isiah Thomas saga. Stories varied wildly about a 47 year-old man being picked up from Isiah's home for an apparent drug overdose this morning. Isiah spoke to reporters today and tried to pawn the incident off on his teenage daughter, saying she's "very down right now" but denied any overdose taking place. Then the 47 year-old Thomas added, "None of us are OK." Huh?

No two reports were the same on the fiasco all evening. Culprits ranged from Isiah's daughter to his son to Isiah himself-- one source simply ran the headline Isiah Thomas Dies!

Looks like Zeke took ten Lunestas late last night and passed out. Guess you can't really blame the guy, right? The medical report also rules out Eddy Curry as the victim, as EC's mass index would require a minimum of 75 Lunestas to even put a dent in his pulse.

Couple things are fer sure here:

1. If Isiah had taken ten Ambiens, he might have avoided this ugly mess. Instead of being hospitalized, he just would've woken up on the floor in the middle of an oversized chess match with an imaginary opponent in his trophy room.

2. This explains a lot about last season, like the time Isiah called a timeout with ten seconds left (down by two) and called a non-shooting play. I'm serious.

Rays-Sox VI pre-game

Since TBS can't find its ass with a fucking ass-detector, I'll switch topics.

Back in Boston, the Knicks did a nice job putting the Celts to bed. If you think that means anything, you're as delusional as the rest of the team.

If you believe what guys are saying, the Knicks will start their season with seven guys on the court. Eddy Curry is calling himself the starting center, even though he's without a field goal this pre-season and has more fouls than points. Curry has been battling a bacterial infection (rumored to be caused by a botched tattoo) and showed up for training camp so overweight that he exploded an exercise ball with his ass (this is true!).

Marbury claims to be the starting point guard for the Knicks, which has yet to be confirmed by anyone or anything. Allan Houston hasn't even made it through a workout.

Jesus.

Pass the Scalpel

The Yanks are six feet under, the Giants are 3-0... how about our New York Knicks?

I've been so caught up in Thunder fever that I've barely followed the Knicks' doings (I'm still so pissed that I never found an OKC Hornets shirt, even though I looked in Oklahoma City for it!!! Two different times!!!). Clearly the team would continue the post-Isiah restructuring efforts they began off-season, right?

Rebuilding the Knicks will be about as easy as rebuilding Iraq. Curry and Randolph will reprise their post-9/11 "Twin Towers" tragedy, Marbury is still sulking around in his cheap sneakers, and we have another lame-duck top draft pick.

OK, the Knicks successfully removed the cancerous Isiah Thomas from the organization (as well as a cancerous chunk from Donnie Walsh's tobacco-sogged tongue!). They finally got rid of Renaldo Balkman. They brought Mike D'Antoni aboard in a nice move, but what else?!

Unless you count Allan Houston, we don't exactly have a "new-look Knicks" kind of situation here. When Walsh was directly asked what he'd accomplished so far for the team, he replied, "Um, I haven't accomplished anything." At least that's what it sounded like he said.

The Knicks went 2-8 in their first ten regular season games last year. If the Knicks go 5-5 (or better) to open this season, I'll perform a "TBA" drinking feat to show my commitment to my team. I'll give you four choices on my blog poll when we get a little closer.