Making the stock market go up is easy

Ben Bernanke came out today and said basically that if herds of unicorns stampede out of the forests to save us, the economy could be back on the right track by next year.

And the stock market went up.

Who says we aren't an optimistic people?

Forgive us, Mickey

We mocked the "Mickey Rourke look" last week, but we stand corrected. We watched as much of the Oscars as we could tolerate last night, and Mickey looked like a champ, much better than all the anemic dudes wearing long, skinny black ties. We'd post a picture, but we're painfully lazy. Plus, it's the Oscars -- was there any human there that they didn't shoot a picture of? We know you can find it yourself. (OK, we finally got around to it several weeks later -- we've been busy trying to wipe that awkward Sophia Loren-Meryl Streep moment out of our heads.)

Stuff you don't want to know

A box on the front of the USA Today Life section Feb. 18:

ON 3D: How to pull off Mickey Rourke's look.

And they wonder why newspapers are dying.

Day late, dollar short: OMG, we enjoyed the NBA All-Star Game! What's wrong with us?

Don't get us wrong: We'd rather be manhandled by a homicidal chimp than forced to sit through a regular-season NBA snoozefest. Bored millionaires. Bored fans. Whirling shot clock.

So imagine our surprise when we we're sitting at a friends house with the All-Star Game and found ourselves watching it. Make no mistake, there was even less on the line than ninth-best in the East vs. 11th best in the West in December. The players cared seemed to care even less than usual.

But freed of the constraints of plodding toward an eventual victory, everybody had a good time. Shaq did some weird mime crap with a dance troupe, then passed through somebody's legs. Wild improvisational passes flying toward the basket, out of bounds.

It had the feel of a college blowout, when the better team puts its scrubs in the game for mop-up, and the starters on the bench whirl towels and slap hands and hoot anytime one of them manages to score (we like those games, because our alma mater is usually on the good side of that equation). Except in this game, everybody was a starter, and there was no Florida A&M on the other side.

We've seen NBA All-Star Games. We remember the Magic Johnson lovefest. We know what they're like. But this time around, at least, it hit the right note. Is it something we can build on in our eternal pursuit of a purer state of fandom? Sure. Maybe we should go buy some Globetrotters tickets.

Tomorrow's sports trends today

TREND: Abject apology
TREND-SETTER: A-Rod. We could have said Michael Phelps, but he has weaved down this road before after his DUI. A-Rod broke the mold for big-name juicers by coming right out after the accusations and fessing up, rather than lying or writing a book and trying to cash in on his confession.
PROSPECTIVE COPYCATS: More juicers. Maybe it spreads to the college ranks with coaches and recruits.
SHELF LIFE: Already over. We'll take finely nuanced lies over the truth for entertainment value any day.

TREND: Ticket packages including discounted seats and meet-and-greets with cheerleaders.
TREND-SETTERS: We've seen a couple of NBA teams doing it, but they're probably not the only ones.
PROSPECTIVE COPYCATS: Anybody with seats to sell and dance teams, which is just about everybody outside the NHL.
SHELF LIFE: Could have legs -- mmm, legs -- but the girls may rethink their part-time careers if the meet-and-greets turn into grunt-and-gropes. And once again, nothing for the gay male sports fan -- outrage!

TREND: The pledge to turn the season around.
TREND-SETTER: Jesus H. Tebow.
PROSPECTIVE COPYCATS: On a women's college gymnastics broadcast the other night (we were just flipping past, we swear), we heard the announcers say that the Florida women's gymnasts had pulled a Tebow and guaranteed that they'd work harder, jump higher, etc. Anybody could be next.
SHELF LIFE: It takes the place of the Joe Namath-style guaranteed victory, which is now almost a weekly occurrence. Got to follow up with the manic butt-slapping that JHT treated us to this season, though, so get busy, Florida gymnasts -- do it well enough and we may be able to take a pass on that NBA meet-and-greet package.

Pumped? Not so much

We hate waiting five minutes to see a ruling reversed in a football game. Now you're telling us we have to go back five years and take another look at the AL MVP voting and the home run standings? Try to figure out whether the Texas Rangers should have sucked more than they actually did? We'd rather get out the big ladder and clean out the rain gutters -- with our tongues.

We're sorry, but the whole bust-the-juicer scenario doesn't do much for us. Finding out A-Rod was putting his testicles under the shrink ray in exchange for a bigger bat and greater glory may change things going forward, but it's not going to change much going back, especially in the standings, which is all we really care about. The Rangers were last in the AL West in 2001, 2002 and 2003 -- it's not like they can drop any further. Besides, MLB isn't like the NCAA, where teams' names get wiped from the basketball tourney ledger (1971 was a banner year, for example -- two of the four team in the Final Four were "vacated" and "vacated"). What was, is.

Two questions, though: Would a never-tainted A-Rod have choked harder than the tainted version in the Yankees' postseasons, or not choked as hard? We're not sure on how the polarity works there. Also, why did A-Rod bring his ex to the ESPN interview? The public humiliation on its own just wasn't enough?

Free political advice: The stimulus package

Problem: Democrats want to spend money, a lot of it (even by Democrats' standards), and fast. Republicans don't want them to. They want to cut taxes, a lot (even by Republicans' standards). Gridlock!

Answer: Democrats need to find something that the GOP likes to spend money on. Since $800 billion worth of abstinence-based sex education could probably wipe out sex on our planet for good (and who really wants to do that?), there's only one good answer: war! Or, more precisely: more war!

We've been spending a monster crapload of money on a couple of wars for several years already, and it hasn't been enough to keep the economy from going off a cliff. Time to open a few more fronts.

It would be convenient to pick someone nearby (think fast, you Canuck bastards!), but we're in this to spend money, so our NAFTA pals are out for now. Politically speaking, it's best to pick a country full of people who don't look like us (or at least like our congresspeople). And if you really want to make sure the GOP is all in, make sure it's a country that doesn't like Israel. No shortage of those, it seems.

Problem solved! And you're welcome!

Missed it by that much

Gotta feel for former Cardinals defensive coordinator Clancy Pendergast, who went from the Super Bowl sideline to the unemployment line in less than a week.

So if Santonio Holmes doesn't get one of those tiptoe-feet down, would Clancy still be drawing checks with a big bird head on them? We know the Cards had some crappy games on D, but given the job they did in the playoffs (especially on the Panthers) and that everybody almost walked out of Tampa with rings, was this the way to go?

ON FURTHER REVIEW (2/8): Maybe it's the name. If Clancy were named Jimbo Brickhouse instead, he'd probably be interviewing for a head coaching job.

Inspired

We were driving into the city when we saw what we thought was a burlap bag propped up on the guardrail beyond the inside lane. Instead, it was a guy. He was sitting on the guardrail, straddling it, with a pack next to him. He was hunched over with his head bent down almost to the rail. It looked like he was writing.

Now we witnessed this for all of a few seconds before we had sped past. We didn't take a picture on our phone (we were driving, for God's sake). We don't know the story here. But the one we're superimposing over this scene is that this dude was walking the interstate (my kids might call him a hobo -- they really love that word right now) and was suddenly attacked by an inspiration so great that he had to stop, sit down and put it to paper, a few feet from cars going by at 70 mph.

We would love to have some inspiration like that. We write a little on the job because we have to, and we write a little more on here because … well, we're not sure why, but it's not because our souls would be in anguish if we didn't.

But this guy, at least in the way we interpreted the scene, was feeling it and had to do something about it. Is it odd to think we would roll down the window and shout, "Hey, buddy, can you spare us some of that?"

Seeing him, we thought about what would go into this post, but we didn't stop to write it down. We just kept driving. It could wait. Places to go, stuff to do.

Day late, dollar short: Michael Phelps gets fired up edition

Have you ever been to Columbia? You'd be hitting the bong pretty hard too, brother.

We're ready to give the guy another gold medal. After all, marijuana doesn't enhance your performance or much of anything else, except maybe libido and the desire to hit the Taco Bell drive-through at inappropriate times of the night, or in the case of Columbia, the BBQ place with the yellow sauce. Wash it down with that warm bottle of Bud Light sitting on the coffee table.

Hey, Minnesota Swarm: Michael Phelps Night. Think about it. We know Buzz is burning one and dreaming about the possibilities.

Day late, dollar short: Super Bowl porn edition

Sorry, it's been a while, but we think you'll understand. We've been rolled up in the fetal position since Monday morning, shuddering at the realization of what happened Sunday night (pretty NSFW, including a little bonus smut lite), wondering how it will transform the world for the better, slobbering uncontrollably at the possibilities. OK, we do a lot of slobbering most days, but you get the picture.

It was only for a few seconds, and only in a small area of the country, but when Comcast had its little "isolated malicious act," its "interruption" and put a "dude's stuff" on the air for tens of thousands of Super Bowl viewers in Tempe, it marked the shotgun marriage of the single biggest one-day event on the face of the planet and mankind's great guilty pleasure. The NFL and porn. Football and the nasty. How can anyone say the world will ever be the same?

It's not the first football/porn hookup -- most of those who plied their trade in "Debbie Does Dallas" are probably dead of natural causes by now (if any porn actors/actresses ever die of natural causes). But now that we've advanced from there to Janet Jackson's nipple to full-blown hard-core on the biggest stage TV has to offer, there's no going back.

We still haven't wrapped our head around this -- yeah, we said that -- but we're all in on the conspiracy theory. This was some sort of Comcast test. Sure, when we went from the Cardinals going in to the zipper going down, the phones at the local NBC affiliate nearly blasted off the desks. But outrage generally gives way to acceptance. Next year they slip in little after the national anthem, or maybe even replace the halftime (sorry, Bruce, but if you've seen the clip, you know who's The Boss). Pretty soon it's a pay-per-view enhancement. Bowl for show, smut for dough.

We don't know quite how the integration works or how the NFL gets bought off (that would be a fun negotiation!), but an idea this good has to be monetized. We don't like that word, but we hear people that make lots more money than we do use it, so we're using it too.

So apologize all you want, Comcast, but we know what's really going on. And we're going to keep lying here, rocking ourselves gently and giggling to ourselves, until you fess up.