My Sunday Feeling

The 2006 Winter Games have begun in Turin and I only have this to say: “Who cares?” Actually, I have more to say but “who cares?” will be the leitmotif wafting in from the orchestra pit anytime the Winter Games are mentioned in this space. Which will be infrequent.

I mean, the downhill racing is cool and hockey and speed skating can be exciting. I confess that I always watch the long jump competition because those guys are crazier than crop dusters. I always enjoy watching crazy people in sports. Which is why I am a fan of the Detroit Pistons and Rasheed Wallace. But who gives a rip about curling or the modern pentathlon? The luge is, well, undignified. And, honest to God, is there anything in sport more ridiculous, more ridiculous than the front office of the Phoenix Cardinals even, than the spectacle of a grown man in sequins and makeup clutching a bouquet of roses and crying while the figure skating scores are announced?

The Winter Olympics are a big con, performed in for the most part by drug-enhanced pseudo-athletes. This is the time of year where college basketball is getting interesting. Who cares about the Olympics?

Wayne’s World- In keeping with the wintry theme of today’s screed, it is noted that NHL icon Wayne Gretzsky, and coach of both the NHL’s Phoenix Coyotes and Canada’s Olympic hockey team, is currently up to his ass in hot water over allegations that his wife, former actress (and we use this word advisedly) Janet Jones and his best friend and Phoenix assistant coach Rick Tocchet are involved in a gambling ring. Jones supposedly laid off around 600,000 bucks on Tocchet to place bets on her behalf.

The question among those sorts of people that harbor suspicions, namely cops and reporters, is whether Gretzsky was using his wife as a beard to place bets on his behalf. And the question that the suits at the NHL want to know is whether Gretzsky, Tocchet, and/or any of the 12-16 active NHL players they suspect were in on it placed bets on NHL games.

Gretzsky says he placed no bets, and that he didn’t know anything about his wife’s extracurricular activities. We don’t know about the former but we know he lied about the latter. We know this because the cops have him on tape talking with Tocchet about keeping the missus from being implicated in this mess.

I know that one can’t know everything about a spouse. But how do you not know that your wife and your best friend (Memo to Wayne: You need to find a new best friend) are up to their eyeballs in an interstate gambling ring? Wouldn’t overhearing your wife say on the telephone, “Hi, Rick. Sure, your best friend Wayne is here. Don’t forget to put 10 grand on the under on the Knicks game for me.” arouse some suspicion? Wouldn’t even a wealthy person notice that 600 grand of the butter and egg money was missing?

I do not know if Wayne Gretzsky will turn out to be Pete Rose on skates. But his soul mate and his friend have given the NHL a hickey it doesn’t need after the labor strife of last year. And there is way more to all of this than meets the eye.

So you think your job sucks?- Consider the plight of Orleans Parish Criminal District Clerk Kimberly Williamson Butler who described the conditions in the courthouse basement where the morgue and evidence room is situated thusly in yesterday’s New Orleans Times-Picayune:

“It’s contaminated. There are about 30 bodies down there. There’s not only mold but fecal matter and all kinds of stuff.”

She went on to say that she is sending her employees down in Hazmat gear to retrieve evidence for the judges.

I don’t know what you do for a living but I bet that it beats wading through fecal matter and “all kinds of stuff.”

Everyone hates Lefty- And speaking of gambling, golf’s Phil Mickelson recently joined the likes of Lleyton Hewitt, Bonzi Wells and Barry Bonds on GQ Magazine’s “10 Most Hated Athletes” featured in this month’s edition. Mickelson is a big player in Vegas and made a couple of million in betting that the New England Patriots would make it to the Super Bowl four years ago. Like he needs the money.

Anyway, Mickelson, is described by an anonymous reporter in the piece as a “preening and insincere” fraud who “literally has no friends” on the PGA tour. Indeed he is referred to by some of his fellow golfers as FIGJAM, which is an acronym for “Fuck I’m Good-Just Ask Me.”

To be so widely despised in a sport populated to its outer banks with egomaniacal assholes is remarkable. And so today we lift up FIGJAM, which is no mean feat given his expanding avoirdupois, on this, the first weekend of the Winter Olympics.

And we wonder if he is betting on the Canadian hockey team.