My Sick Mind

PHILADELPHIA – A Philadelphia cable network's early morning broadcast of Good Friday Mass at the Vatican abruptly changed to something wildly different — a 30-second "Girls Gone Wild" ad. Comcast spokesman Jeff Alexander says the 2 a.m. Friday programming glitch was due to a required test of the Emergency Alert System. He says such tests are usually done in the overnight hours. The test automatically tunes viewers to a preselected channel that would provide information in the event of an emergency. But during tests, the channel airs regular programming, which in this case included a paid advertisement for the racy videos. Alexander says the problem affected the network's entire local area, but only one person called to complain. Of course only one person called to complain. That's because (a) only five people are watching and (b) almost nobody cares. We're supposed to be offended by a religious program that is interrupted by an ad for a half-naked video, bu...

ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. – Terrell Owens can't understand why everyone made such a big deal out of him missing the start of the Bills voluntary workout program last month. "What I find so unfair is that I'm not the only guy out of 32 teams that didn't show up," Owens said Thursday. "That's what's so frustrating about the whole thing." Umm ... no, T.O. What is even more difficult to understand is why a team would call a workout program "voluntary" and get assed-up over a player not attending. What does voluntary mean to the NFL? CHEYENNE, WYOMING — In one month, a Cheyenne teenager sent 10,000 text messages and received about the same — all while her family's plan did not include texting. That means the family's provider — Verizon — charged them for each incoming and outgoing text message. The girl's parents, Gregg and Jaylene Christoffersen, thought texting had been disabled, so one can imagine their surprise when they got ...

Try as I might, I couldn't muster up the strength to scrabble anything here last night. An evening of shivering at Citizen's Bank Ballpark takes a lot of energy out of me. More than you'd think. Add to that being there twice in three nights and maybe you can see the sense of exhaustion setting in. At some point during the Phils' second loss of the season, it dawned on me that I had spent $30 in two nights for nothing more than parking my car. I don't know about you, but to me thirty dollars is a nice sum of money to carry around. While I appreciate value when investing in a stock or spending money on a nice Asian massage, I can't embrace the concept of spending 30 dollars to do nothing more than find a place to keep my automobile while I spent three hours watching a baseball game. Since the early 1970s when I started going to baseball games at Veterans Stadium, the place to park was the Holiday Inn. It's easy to get in and out, and for almost 3 decades it ...

I learn something about myself during baseball season. Between November and March I eat - maybe - two hot dogs. The rest of the year, I eat about two thousand. That's what baseball does. April baseball around here is a crap-shoot, since we play it outdoors, unlike those pussies in Canada and (egad) Texas where they have to put a dome over the ballpark and turn it into a stadium . Here, we have either the balls to play in the cold or the intelligence to stay home and watch it on TV. The next game on my Phillies season schedule is Tuesday night. As of now, it looks like the watching on TV part is the shit. Because valor is not the only thing that discretion is the better part of: Tuesday: A mix of clouds and sun in the morning giving way to a few showers during the afternoon. High 49F. Winds W at 15 to 25 mph. Chance of rain 30%. Tuesday night: A shower or two around the area in the evening, then partly cloudy overnight. Low 33F. Winds W at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 30%. Te...

I sometimes forget what we've been through together, and I hope you don't.

Opening night at Citizens Bank Ballpark started with a beautiful day. I took a stroll around the grounds before the game. I don't know what kind of flowers they are. That's the second biggest U.S. flag I've ever seen. They didn't leave it there once the game started. The players marched in along some sort of procession from center field. There appears to be a few players in the stands, too, but those are just fans in costume. They invited some paratroopers from the Army to drop in with the first ball. One of them dropped into the parking lot. Really. They announced a "sellout crowd." Odd, since the attendance figures for sellouts are never the same twice. I guess I'm the only one who pays attention to stuff like that, but wouldn't you figure that a sellout would mean that there was the maximum number of fans in the ballpark? Reasonable men may differ. This was the view from my seat. That's the bell that lights up when a Phillies player hits a ho...

I'll be in attendance at the Phillies' home opener tonight. Yes, tonight . They do stuff like that for television. Since the Phils are the league champions and all, they pay tribute to them by scheduling their first game at home, at night for national television. Actually, it's ESPN 2 (the deuce) so it's not truly national television, just ask those people who still haven't made the digital conversion. Rather than schedule it in the afternoon when the sun is shining and the temperature is in the mid 60s, they figure, "Why not inconvenience people and make them uncomfortable at the same time?" A night game in Philadelphia in April isn't a fan's idea of a fun evening out. Then, since the game and its ensuing traffic won't be cleared until around midnight, I've scheduled a day off for Monday - which, naturally is going to be rainy and windy. I'm sure, if television ran professional golf, they'd put lights up at Augusta and play The ...