Someone needs to take Carrie's cell phone away.

I don't care how similarly-shaped their chins are - Carrie Underwood is Barbie-Perfect and Barbies should know better. Barbies don't date inarticulate super-human neo-celebs with perpetually pruned fingers and toes and lunatic mommies...I don't care which party initiated the "text message romance," but for the love of Flipper, please Perfect-Carrie - step AWAY from Michael Phelps...pass him off to Hollywood's other single super-chin, Jennifer Aniston (and you thought I'd say Rumer Willis...)

The one thing I can give Flipper is that he had the good sense to suggest their first date be something unrelated to eating. Apparently he's afraid he'd scare her off if she saw him eat too soon. I can only imagine that watching a grown man pick up an entire pizza, fold it in half calzone-style and shove it down the gullet for an appetizer would engender something other than lust in the average girl.

And let's be frank - the man waxes more of his body than even the average Barbie-Perfect-Starlet waxes...and that prune-skin thing...I can only imagine how delightful it would be to snuggle up to something clammy and chlorinated after a long day in the studio. AND (as long as I'm picking Flipper apart and giving him more screen time than I ought for a guy that I am as patently disinterested as I am in Michael Phelps...) are we forgetting about his...um...face? He may be chiseled from stone from the traps down, but, um...can we say Fieval Mousekewitz? My apologies if this is "unAmerican" of me to call the hunk bluff here (afterall, even Amanda Beard recanted her "eww!" comment since it was eschewed as "mocking.") but come on, we can't ALL want to marry the guy and have his web-footed super-babies. Can we really say that if we saw his face flashed on a billboard and had NO IDEA who the man was that we'd be so slack-jawed and weak-kneed? Carrie, Carrie, Carrie....

Maybe I'm debasing two young American legands here (Carrie's legendary as far as I'm concerned, gold medals or no gold medals), but Carrie...I hate to use this analogy (because it just fits too well) - but there are plenty of other FISH. IN. THE. SEA. Even gold-medal-winning fish, if that's her taste.

Ms Underwood's phone keeps getting her into trouble. If she's not being flip about calls from her ex (and how quickly did Jess jump to dispel the idea that Tony would so much as SPEAK to another woman?), she's texting her way into what could well become the most overexposed several dates in American history.

A word to the silver medalists..

I'm no athlete (let alone an Olympian) so on one hand I'm about the last person qualified to make this particular argument. On the other hand, I'm an American who loves to see American athletes perform well at the Olympics, so I'm just as qualified as the next guy to pick a bone with the host of athletes that seem to see a silver or bronze medal as "a devastating loss."

I watched Allyson Felix run a beautiful 200 meters and win a silver medal for the US. You'd think she'd been disqualified in the quarterfinals for all of the disappointed tears she shed. I understand that you train for the gold. I understand that being called the "Olympic Favorite" empowers you with a certain feeling of inevitability that means you fall harder and faster back to the earth when you're edged out by a super-human Jamaican with whom you've got a "friendly rivalry," but for a moment, appreciate the fact that you're basically the best in the world. There's only one other person on the planet at that moment in time that's any better than you. You're standing on a medal podium before all the world, the best of the best, as good as they come. You've trained, you've run, you've won! Cry, if you must - but cry tears of JOY! You've worked hard to get where you stand!

Cry if you drop the baton. Cry if you tumble over a hurdle. Cry for a false start or a busted Achilles or a "big splash" or a two-step on the landing. Cry when you're out of bounds or disqualified. Don't cry because you beat all of 'em....but one. Don't cry because you ran your hardest, gave your best and came in second to one. Be proud of yourself, be proud of your hard work, be proud of your country, be proud of your OLYMPIC MEDAL.

I'll never have one. I'll never know what it's like to stand up on that podium and lean down to have a medal hung around my neck. I'll never know what it's like to represent my country in athletic competition. I'll never be such a finely tuned machine, such an excellent example of what a human body can accomplish. There's a reason they award three medals - it's EXCELLENT to be second or third in the world. Its an amazing feat.

Be proud.

People having a worse Friday than I: August edition

Here's another dose of perspective for me...I know that on any given day there are people having a harder time of it than I:

Heidi Dalibor, aka: The Library Lady



This sweet young thing from Grafton, Wisconsin owed $30 in library fines. Let's hope she REALLY loved "White Oleander" and "Angels and Demons," because they landed her 20-year old parts in jail. Not sure what she did to offend the Grafton Library VIPs, but failure to pay her library fines (and failure to take the library's calls or heed their notice to appear in court) resulted in a warrant for her arrest. Cops showed up at her door, cuffed her, and hauled her off to the clink. Her mother coughed up the $172 needed to free her daughter (whom I'll call the "Black Widow of the Grafton Library System"), Heidi ponied up the $30 in late fees. The library director claims that "a couple of dozen people are cited each year for failure to return materials or pay fines." Apparently "cited" is a nice way of saying "tossed behind bars." A visit to the U.S.S Liberty Memorial Public Library of Grafton website offers the following information about the library's policies:

Loan Periods
Books check out for 28 days.
New Books check out for 14 days.
DVDs and Videos check out for 7 days.
Magazines check out for 14 days. The most current issue does not circulate.
Compact discs check out for 14 days.
Books on CD and Audiocassettes check out for 28 days. New audio books check out for 14 days.
CD-ROMs and Software check out for 14 days.

Fines for Late Items
Books, magazines, compact discs and software and audiocassettes are charged 10 cents for each day overdue.
DVDs & Videos are charged 50 cents for each day overdue.
CD-ROM are charged 50 cents for each day overdue.
Damaged materials: a charge is assessed when materials are damaged. Fee ranges from cost of replacing the item to 50 cents.

Looks like that could use an update - something along the lines of "Occassionally the library exercises its right to incarcerate card holders for unpaid late fines. Thank you; happy reading."

The Phelps Ghost Writer

I just don't envy the person responsible for milking an entire book out of the story of Michael Phelps' success story. Oh - I'm sorry, am I being hasty to assume that Flipper isn't going to write his own book? Am I underestimating the Human Submarine to assume that the same man that uttered the phrase, "A vintage Aston Martin, like a James Bond car would be sick," when asked what he'll do with his million-buck Speedo bonus will have what it takes to pen an entire novel about "his philosophy on training and competition, as well as his life being raised by a single mother and coping with an attention-deficit disorder" in just 3 short months (because, in true "Capitalize on Flipper" fashion, the publisher is cranking out the book in time for the holidays)?

Sure, he can do that.

And the poor soul that has to crank out a few hundred pages of compelling material about the copious amounts of Frosted Flakes, chocolate chip pancakes and Mac & Cheese Flipper puts away before swimming his 5 miles a day and the rumours he deflects about which She-Swimmer he was glimpsed slipping tongue to in the Olympic Village is having a worse Friday than I'm having, that's for sure. I wonder how many different ways you can spin, "I'm just speechless!" to fill the pages of that book destined to stuff billions of stockings and be translated into every language ever spoken before Christmas?

This is one kid that hasn't jumped on the Phelps wagon.

Will women please learn to stop dating John Mayer....

OK famous-girls: enough already. How much of Hollywood has to break up with the guy before someone figures it out: the dude is skeezy. He lauds his own wandering eye. He admits to being unable to commit. He has a short attention span. He's USING YOU TO GET MEDIA ATTENTION. Those paparazzi numbskulls that make their living off of catching you in a "cellulite-moment" on the beach? John's buddies with those guys.

Frankly, as far as I can tell, he doesn't much like women. Not really. He likes what he gets from them. He likes having one around. He likes writing songs about them that paint him as a romantic. But I don't think he's a romantic. There have been a few toooooo many photos of him staring straight at the camera during otherwise "intimate" moments with girl-of-the-month for me to believe that he's not just "in it for the exposure."

My word of advice to the ladies: stop thinking you'll be his lifelong "wonderland." Unless you can personally supply him with a never-ending busload of nubile groupies and a glut of photographers and don't mind that he'll probably never be faithful and will get tired of you when the tabloids get tired of him....then frankly, you're out of your league....

A public service annoucement is in order: Women who know better don't date John Mayer.