Archives for July 2012

People are always surprised to find out that I love the Olympics. I seem more of a traditional sports kind of guy, baseball, football, etc. And I am. Those are my main loves. But once every four years the world goes bat-guano crazy over sports they know nothing about and it frees me up to sit at the other end of the bar and not be bothered. It’s like a vacation from idiots. People who can’t see their toes are suddenly experts on how to “stab a landing” in the vault event. People who need water wings to take a shower suddenly can tell you everything you never even cared to know about the butterfly stroke. Granted, there is a certain element of being trapped in a performance art piece that is kind of fun. But that wears thin as soon as some fool, usually emboldened by alcohol, tries to regale the crowd with the winner of the 1912 poetry Olympics – “O Sport, you are Beauty! … O Sport, you are Justice! … O Sport, you are Happiness! The body trembles in bliss upon hearing your call … ” – which makes sober people call for tranquilizer darts.

Most people know that the Olympics were begun in ancient Greece as a way to celebrate the ideal male. A man of great athletic prowess and intellect. The fact that the athletes were all naked and oiled as a tribute to the gods was not as innocent as many like to claim since Greeks liked gawking at naked people too and bisexuality was accepted. Obviously you have an odd beginning to the modern bromide of “excellence and purity of sport.”

Oh, and just for fun, you should know that some of the earliest prizes weren’t medals but women and livestock. And sometimes money.

But, what the heck, everything has to start somewhere.

After a minor hiatus of around 1,500 years, in 1870, a Frenchman named Pierre de Coubertin tried to revive the games. He gave this speech.

Let us export our oarsmen, our runners, our fencers into other lands. That is the true Free Trade of the future; and the day it is introduced into Europe the cause of Peace will have received a new and strong ally. It inspires me to touch upon another step I now propose and in it I shall ask that the help you have given me hitherto you will extend again, so that together we may attempt to realise [sic], upon a basis suitable to the conditions of our modern life, the splendid and benefvicent task of reviving the Olympic Games.

The French, whose army didn’t practice marching then because it made them sweat, yawned, shrugged and went out for more wine. This, by the way, was the reason France kept getting invaded and why Msr. Coubertin wanted them to get off their asses.

Even so, in 1892 79 countries got together and began the modern Olympics and, yes, France was one of them.

In an attempt to make the events more “fan friendly” and add a bit of spectacle in 1908 London held the first opening ceremonies ever. So, blame them for those bloated spectacles that have little to do with anything other than waste and excess.

Which brings us up to date. The basic form and structure of the games has changed little. Sure, there have been some minor sports changes. The New York Daily News ha a nice list of sports that no longer make the cut.

Since the modern Olympic Games kicked off in 1896, a few weird and wonderful sports have come and gone, from live bird shooting to solo synchronized swimming. Here is a glimpse at a few of the wackiest.

1. Tug of War – Dates played: from 1900 to 1920
This feat of strength worked like the classic playground game: two teams pulled a rope in opposite directions until the midpoint of the rope passed into the winning team’s territory.

2. Jeu de paume – Date played: 1908
The indoor precursor of tennis, jeu de paume was only included as a medal event at the 1908 Olympic Games in London, and only two countries competed, Great Britain and the US, with the latter taking home the gold.

3. Live pigeon shooting – Date played: 1900
When Paris hosted the 1900 Olympic Games, live pigeon shooting was a key event, with Belgium’s Leon de Lunden earning gold with 21 hits.

4. Long jump for horses – Date played: 1900
In this event, horses were the athletes with 17 competitors jumping for gold medal glory. Belgium’s Constant van Langendonck on the horse Extra-Dry earned the top prize with a distance of 6.1 m.

5. Rope climb – Dates played: 1896, 1904, 1906, 1924, 1932
Perhaps with the CrossFit fury, good old-fashioned rope climbing may once again appear at a future Olympics. Prior to being discontinued, the rope climb marked the final event of the gymnastics competition. While typically being judged on time to reach the top, in 1896, athletes were also judged on style.

6. Solo synchronized swimming – Dates played: 1984, 1988, 1992
Before catching on to the oxymoronic nature of this sport, individual athletes performed choreographed routines to music in the water, while synchronizing their moves to the music.

7. Swimming obstacle race – Date played: 1900
For the Paris Olympics, competitors had to climb over a pole, crawl over a row of boats, then swim under another row of boats against the current of the Seine.

I would like to see Michael Phelps try #7.

Okay, so we have a history of weird to work with here. The opening ceremonies this year added a new element that I had not considered; alien invasion.

Talk about an uninvited guest at the Olympics.

Friday night’s spectacular pyrotechnics display of the most watched opening ceremony in summer Olympics history attracted more than the eyes of over 40 million people. A clearly seen unidentified flying object was videotaped making its way over London’s Olympic stadium, reports Examiner.com.

The disc-shaped object is first seen entering the upper left portion of the video as the fireworks erupt over the stadium. The UFO — which appears to have a dome or bulge rising from its center — moves slowly across the sky as if deliberately observing the light-show spectacle below it.

While NBC Olympics — a division of NBC Sports — has chosen Goodyear blimps for all of its 2012 Olympics aerial coverage, the strange-looking object that appeared over the opening ceremonies doesn’t appear to be a blimp.

So what was it?

On an evening that included an apparent Queen Elizabeth and 007 agent James Bond parachuting out of a helicopter into the Olympics stadium, most people probably wouldn’t have been surprised if a staged UFO was also on the entertainment menu, just two weeks after the U.K. released its most recent batch of UFO documents.

Last month, former Ministry of Defense UFO desk officer Nick Pope suggested that a huge event like the London Olympic Games, could present itself as a prime target for otherworldly craft to show themselves to a gigantic viewing audience.

“With the summer of mass events, we are all on high alert for terrorism. But we must also cast our eyes further afield and be prepared for even the most seemingly unfathomable,” Pope said, according to PressTV.

Pope wrote earlier this year of a conspiracy theory rumor that suggested a fake alien attack would be staged at the London Olympics.

“A combination of special effects and holographic technology will be used to create the illusion of an alien invasion, the rumor claims,” Pope wrote on TruTV.com.

“If aliens have studied our psychology, they may choose to appear in our skies on a significant date — the closing ceremony of the Olympic Games is one date being widely circulated by conspiracy groups,” PressTV quoted Pope.

Maybe Friday night’s UFO appearance was a dress rehearsal.

A couple of things; (1) it is clearly a spotlight reflecting off a cloud and (2) Nick Pope is a moron.

I cannot emphasize #2 enough.

I have already dealt with the whole UFO conspiracy thing up here so I won’t belabor the point. Suffice it to say if you want to put people like Mr. Pope back under a rock just click on my link and grab some talking points.

It’s fun, you’ll like it.

As to the Olympics, feel free to join my end of the bar. I’ll even let you buy me a drink.

PORN StAr TheBody-XXX & Gemini LovellXXX in * C I G M * New Video ft @WodG26 @Team_Ockz & @BeanieSigelSP from Woodnites Entertainment on Vimeo.

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG (FOX! Sports) every Friday around 9:10 AM.

I got a confusing email this morning. Since I’m not a dick I didn’t delete it or write something smarmy back to prove my superiority. Instead I asked for some clarification. I was glad I did. It turns out that the guy had wandered into Bewildering Stories’ web site and read my story And the Beat Goes Phut. What Google search got him from where he started to there is a mystery. Anyway it turns out that the guy was, is still I’d guess, a DJ. He was curious what drove me to make a DJ the main witness to the apocalypse. Since there is an actual story behind that I promised I’d answer him here and share with you. As some of you know I used to run a dance music label. One of our artists was DJ Russ Harris. He was wrapping up a divorce just as I was starting one. I wanted to blend him into one of my stories just because he’s a cool guy and a lot of fun to talk with. But I didn’t want his wife’s lawyer to be able to say something like “Sure, you go to church, own a solid business and love your family but you also know Bill McCormick so this court can never, ever, allow you to see your children again.” I like Russ so I changed the name of the DJ to Sparks. I forget why I chose that name. Of course, since Russ had been featured in DJ Times I had to give them a shout out too.

But this story almost stayed on my computer. And if it weren’t an exciting taco recipe it might have.

You see, prior to writing this I had been suffering writer’s block and was further brought low by severe constipation. My neighbor’s wife tried cooking a new meal and invited me over for a taste. I barely made it home in time, but I did make it. I later learned that her cooking ranges from “You may be poisoned” to “This may resemble food.” The meal in question was somewhere in the middle.

Nevertheless, as I was sitting there feeling as though some meth head was using a roto-rooter in my lower intestine, a story came to mind. It was fun, it was odd and it was dark. When I finally left the confines of my throne room I sat and wrote it in one take. It felt like it would be a successful short story. Rereading it later I realized it most certainly would. Since it already was. I had re-written Jerome Bixby’s masterpiece, It’s a Good Life. Oh, my version had a girl instead of a boy and a couple of other minor differences, but I would have gone to plagiarizer’s jail. There were, however, three small parts that were not in the original. I copied them into a text file, named it “Notes for Bill” and went back to my life.

Oh, yeah, I deleted the heck out of the story I’d written.

And now back to And the Beat Goes Phut. I had gotten to the part where Sparks is sitting in a bar watching the world end. This was not as riveting as one might hope.

Drink beer, see catastrophe on TV, drink beer, see catastrophe on TV, drink beer ……

Not exactly gripping literature.

Then I remembered my file of notes. I had written a scene where my little girl had a sock puppet who justified her killing pretty much everyone. Well, justified to her satisfaction, at least.

I snagged it, changed sock puppet’s name from Socky to Ibrahim, added some references to the Queen song Mustapha which I happened to be listening to and went to work. About 80% of that final scene was written for the story I’d killed.

And it worked.

So I sent the story out to people who might publish it. The nice people at Bewildering Stories responded back that they kind of sort of liked it and wanted to give it a whirl. So I said “Coolio” and kissed my story goodbye.

Then something funny happened. The editorial staff at Bewildering Stories slated my story for release around 09/11/11. Since my “bad dude” had an Arabic name and the whole story was about terrorism, I thought this was on purpose and said nothing. It turns out I was wrong.

That happens a lot, I’m used to it.

They quickly moved the release back a month so they wouldn’t have the tackiest tie-in to a tragedy ever conceived and the world marched merrily on.

No, seriously, had the story been released then it might have seemed as if I wanted to use “Celebrate” as the soundtrack for the towers coming down. That would have been very wrong. Even for me.

Anyway, after the story came out I heard from a couple of other people who wanted to publish it. I said it was already out but they could with some minor considerations, which none of them wanted to do.

Oh well, juck them if they can’t take a foke.

So, Aban, I hope this clears everything up for you although I somehow doubt it. Feel free to write me again with any other questions.

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG (FOX! Sports) every Friday around 9:10 AM.

There is something to be said for thinking things through. Granted, we are all occasionally guilty of a bad idea or two. That tri-colored haircut in the 80’s, your attempt to be cool and grunge after you got an accounting degree and so on. But, while embarrassing, they are usually relegated to the “lesson learned” bin and only brought out when people who love you dearly want to make fun of you. In other words, around once a month. Twice on holidays. There are others who walk among us who set the bar a little higher, or lower – depending on your point of view, and demand not only to be noticed for their stunning level of stupid but somehow lauded as well. People like Rodney Dwayne Valentine who served his time and was released from jail. But he wanted a ride to the local hotel. They told him to take a cab. He refused and was …. wait for it …. jailed for refusing to leave jail. That would be funny if it …. no, wait, it’s funny.

Cops in Pennsylvania are laughing at the mom who broke into a school computer to alter grades for her kids.You’ll have to read to find out why.

I think most parents want their kids to get good grades, and I had assumed that most parents wanted their kids to earn those grades.

But I stand corrected as a Pennsylvania mother is accused of hacking into her kids’ school computer system to change their grades.

According to UPI , this mom was actually a former employee of the school district in question. She allegedly used the superintendent’s login and passwords to view district emails and personnel files and to alter her own children’s grades.

She was charged with three counts each of unlawful use of a computer and computer trespassing, all of which are felonies.

Court records indicated her daughter went from a failing grade to a “medical exception” while her son’s grade of 98 percent climbed a point to 99 percent.

I bet her son is furious. He presumably worked hard to earn the 98%, and she hacked in to up it to a 99%?!

Way to set a good example for your kids lady.

Why not go whole hog and give the kid 100%? Oh, wait, it’s because she’s dumb.

Cops in Gainsville Florida also found out that the dumb walk among us. A guy got drunk and locked himself out of his apartment. Or so he thought.

When someone gets drunk and loses their keys, the least they could do is have the decency to break into their own apartment.

But I guess this guy from Florida didn’t get the memo.

According to Gainesville.com , this 25-year-old went out for a night of drinking he came back to his apartment complex and couldn’t find his keys, so he smashed out a window in apartment 527. The big problem here is that he lives in apartment 427.

He went inside, set down his phone and took off his shoes. Meanwhile the two people who actually lived in the apartment were hiding in a back room calling police.

Our guy was arrested and charged with criminal mischief and trespassing.

Speaking of Florida, you’re going to love this story. It’s got all your favorite elements; WalMart, shoplifting, stupid sisters and a baby.

Allison Niemeyer’s first bad decision was allegedly plotting to rob a Walmart. Her second bad decision was bringing her baby along. But the third was truly the charm: Seems the Florida 19-year-old and her sister, 22, are accused of stuffing some clothes into the infant’s diaper bag Friday, Central Florida News reports. Upon exiting the store, the sisters were asked to return by a loss prevention officer—and police say Niemeyer ran away, leaving her son with her sister.

Then her sister, too, allegedly fled, leaving the boy—and the $57.12 worth of merchandise. The sisters were picked up by a getaway van, but were later arrested at a dance club, the Gainesville Sun reports. Niemeyer was already on house arrest until 2021 because of a home invasion robbery involving a gun, which happened while she was pregnant. Niemeyer’s baby is with the Department of Children and Families.

Yep, even in Florida they frown on that level of narcissistic stupidity.

This next lovely story tells why some days all cops need to do is sit around and fill in the paperwork after the criminals toss themselves into jail.

According to an al.com report , Timothy Tressler, 41, of Oneonta, Ala., was arrested last Friday after setting up a drug deal with a Jefferson County Sheriff’s deputy over the phone.

Tressler dialed up his drug dealer, Jonell White, seeking a gram of heroin but White wasn’t picking up the phone. After ringing him up several times, he finally got White on the phone or so he thought.

After being stopped by police for an equipment violation on his 26-year-old Ford F-150 (shocker), White was arrested for possession of marijuana and trafficking heroin. During his arrest, officers noticed his cell phone being blown up and using their common sense, they assumed that somebody was itching for some of White’s now confiscated drugs. So they decided to kill two birds with one stone.

One of the deputies finally answered Timmy’s call, and the fix was in. How Tressler didn’t know the difference in the deputy’s voice and that of White’s is laughable, but I guess that’s what heroin does to people.

Tressler asked the deputy to meet him at a tattoo shop with a “G”, or gram, of heroin and the kind officer was happy to oblige, kind of. Upon their arrival, cops arrested Timmy and found him to have two outstanding warrants for missing court appearances to face first degree theft charges. Bamboozled and booked, he is now stuck in the county slammer without bond.

Not a bad day’s work for the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department.

You and I both know that this guy’s contact list is now being vetted by the cops and that there will be several more geniuses visiting the local jail.

“Hey Scooter, wanna G?”

“Who’s this?”

“Bob, Jonell’s cousin.”

“Oh, okay, you sound legit.”

Bear Hands // “Crime Pays” from Cantora Records on Vimeo.

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG (FOX! Sports) every Friday around 9:10 AM.

Last year I got hired to do the packaging for The Ex Senators’ debut single, The Kids Are Trouble. I had the idea of creating fictitious warning labels for the CD that would make people laugh. I came up with these; “Do not operate a vehicle with the sun shield in the windshield. Product will be hot after heating. Do not use hair coloring as an ice cream topping. Keep out of the reach of children. Defrost all frozen foods before consuming. Not for human consumption. Do not place unattended wombats in washer or dryer. May cause blindness in cats. Prolonged exposure may exponentially increase carnal desires. Not intended for use as a dental drill.” Believe it or not, only one of those is fake. The rest were too real to ignore. And yet, pervasive as warning labels are and as much as they try to speak to the lowest common denominator (that means really stupid people) it seems that someone will come along and add a whole new layer of dumb to the discussion. There is a reason a child’s costume comes with the warning “Wearing Superman costume will not give you the ability to fly.” You know why? Because some parent didn’t stop little Timmy from jumping out of their third floor window. And the odds are pretty good that the reason the parent didn’t stop little Timmy is because they saw he was wearing his Superman suit and figured he’d be fine.

Such is the world we live in.

It is with this in mind that I present the sad tale of Mandi McKee who used to be William McKee until he took a Propecia knock off.

Don’t take my word for it.

A software engineer who was trying to combat hair loss says a generic form of Propecia caused him to develop breasts and made his hips widen like a woman’s.

And now, after nine months of taking finasteride, 38-year-old William McKee goes by the name Mandi and is considering having a complete sex change.

“My rock-hard chest from the gym began to soften . . . reaching the point where I had noticeable ‘breasts’ even under my clothing,” McKee told the New York Post.

“My shoulders were literally falling into a more feminine position, and my hips were loosening and becoming wider as on a woman’s body.”

The changes have left McKee’s former life in disarray. He is now separated from his wife of 10 years, with whom he has a five-year-old son. The Tampa, Florida, resident has also left his career in Silicon Valley behind, now describing himself as an aspiring music producer and DJ.

Describing his former self as “athletic and driven,” McKee now wears a blonde wig, makeup, women’s clothing and says he is thinking of having breast augmentation. In addition, McKee says he has gone from heterosexual to homosexual.

“It felt like the ‘me’ that I’ve always known was not there anymore,” he told the Post.

There are several possible sexual side effects associated with finasteride, but they typically involve a lack of libido. The drug itself works by inhibiting the conversion of testosterone.

Writing on his personal blog, McKee says the drug is commonly taken by men who are in the early stages of gender reassignment.

“I wasn’t always this way. I am early on my path of transitioning to live full-time as a woman, although for 9 months I did take 1 of the 2 most popular drugs that doctors prescribe to men who wish to become a woman,” he writes.

“The thing is… I didn’t take Finasteride to become a woman. I took it to prevent male-pattern hair loss (baldness) after seeing Merck’s ad campaign for years saying that Propecia (Finasteride) can stop hair loss in men.”

And as the Daily Mail notes, the transition has been a painful one for McKee. In addition to losing his wife, he writes that he considered suicide as the physical changes also began affecting his emotional state.

“My entire life has fallen apart in a slow and agonizing downward spiral that led me on a roller coaster ride of depression, anxiety, panic attacks, a severe and disabling loss of focus and concentration, feminization of my body, loss of and inability to work, homelessness, social rejection and isolation, and a complete alteration of my body’s chemistry and self-identity,” he writes.

“And it was more than just my life being affected. I was married to an amazing and beautiful woman who lost her husband, and I am father to an amazing 5 year-old-boy—who lost his dad.”

In a recent statement, Merck denied any known association between Propecia (finasteride) and sexual side effects:

“Merck believes that Propecia (Finasteride) has demonstrated safety and efficacy profiles and that the product labeling appropriately describes the benefits and risks of the drug to help inform prescribing,” the company wrote in the statement.

And while several lawsuits have been filed by men who say the drug affected their sexuality, McKee is not eligible to join the suit since he purchased a generic form of the drug from an online distributor based in India.

Still, Mandi has been active on his personal Facebook page, writing that he hopes all of the media exposure of his story helps others who might be going through a similar experience.

Forgive me for asking the obvious, but why the hell did he keep taking this stuff when he first noticed the changes? And why does this stuff only seem to happen in Florida?

Okay, let’s look at everything that went wrong here; (1) he bought fake Propecia from an online drug dealer in India. That is never a wise choice. (2) He kept taking the stuff long after it was clear that he was having a reaction to it. And, (3) he …. oh hell, he’s an idiot, let’s move on.

Just consider him a human warning sign and don’t do as he has done. Your life will be fine.

Top 5 Reasons People Choose 2 B Gay from FCKH8.com on Vimeo.

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG (FOX! Sports) every Friday around 9:10 AM.

I like to start these blogs with a personal observation or two. Most of the time they are funny. And meant to be so. Not so many yucks today. I have seen a person die from a gunshot wound. I was bravely lying under a garbage dumspter trying to stay alive at the time. I owned a gun. It was a nice one. It was also in my car. And, even if it had been on my hip, I’m not sure what good it would have done. The guy I’d just met was the target and he was very dead with no hope for a cure. I could tell that since his brain was outside his head. Maybe that’s why many of the comments I have read on the Internet and seen on TV concerning the shootings in Colorado pissed me off so much. They are completely disconnected from reality.

There are those who see the shooting in Colorado as proof of a government, or other powerful group, working behind the scenes. How did an unemployed college student come up with $20,000 to buy all that armor and ammo and so on? He must have been funded. Or so they claim. Well, just for giggles, I trolled eBay and Craig’s list yesterday. I could have gotten everything that’s been listed in the news for around $5,000. A medical student from a solid family could get a line of credit that large in a heartbeat. Earlier reports that the apartment was wired with C4, a deadly explosive, appear to have been inaccurate. So, no need to for military intervention to explain that. Although, to be blunt, I could get my hands on C4 in two phone calls if need be, as long as I had the money. It’s not that difficult.

There are those who assigned political motives to the shooting. ABC Television breathlessly announced that the shooter was a member of …. wait for it …. THE TEA PARTY!!! Which was wrong on so many levels as to be frightening. Even if it were true, which it wasn’t, what the hell difference would it have made? Are they seriously implying that anyone who votes for Mitt Romney is capable of being a spree killer? Even for a died in the wool lefty like me that seems a touch extreme.

And stupid.

Then there are those who seem to be claiming, all while stating that this is not what they’re claiming – because that would be tacky, that the audience was somehow cowardly. The fact that they did not rush the gunman and subdue him makes them weak. The fact that some of the dead died lying on top of the people they’d sworn to protect is lost on them. The fact that the adults did all they could to remove their charges from harm’s way is meaningless to them. The fact that people tried to do the right thing, protect their loved ones and get everyone to safety makes them feeble according to these morons. Those making these claims cite Flight 93 where the passengers attacked the hijackers. They leave out the fact that those passengers knew they about the towers, knew they were about to die and had no choice. They also leave out the fact that the passengers had time to plan and act. None of those circumstances were in play in Colorado.

I know, facts are irritating.

Of course there are also those who claim that the outcome would have been very different if the audience had been armed. For the record, I am an excellent shot. With a pistol I can get 4 out of 5 head shots at 50 yards on a range. In a dark theater, filled with smoke and flying bullets with less than a minute from the start of the killing to the end, the odds are much greater that I would have killed an innocent bystander or six long before I got a round in the gunman. A room full of panicked people firing in the general direction of a shadowy figure in body armor? With a hundred or so people in the way? The carnage would have been insane. Just because someone took a basic gun safety course and had enough money to purchase ammo does not make them a Marine quality sniper.

I don’t care how many episodes of NCIS they’ve seen.

The sad underlying theme to all of these critiques is “I could have done better” as though there is a grade for situations like this.

“Oh look honey, Bobby got a ‘B+’ in his ‘Attacked by a Deranged Gunman’ class. I smell a trip to Dairy Queen!”

I know that facts suck the fun out of everything but they need to be heeded here. This was a room full of suburban moms & dads & uncles & aunts who were leading families or scout and/or church groups for an evening of fun. Their first thought, and their only thought, was the safety of those who trusted them.

The fact that they did not live up to whatever adrenaline fueled fantasies others may have says nothing bad about them. But it does say something very disturbing about the people making the criticisms.

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG (FOX! Sports) every Friday around 9:10 AM.