Grove it on down slow, Torn Slatterns and Nugget Ranchers

Apple released their latest invention: the iPad. It is hard for me to imagine, with all of the brilliant people at Apple, not one person thought to say; “Hey, uh, excuse me, but the name iPad sounds a lot like something made by Kotex.”

Apple released their latest invention: the iPad. Doesn’t the iPad sound like a product from Kotex? “Women, it’s not the her-pad, it’s not the them-pad, it is your very own custom iPad.”

You know what I love on “American Idol”? When there is a funny-looking contestant or they say they wrote their song, you can actually see Simon Cowell’s butt cheeks clinch up.

Don’t you love the crowd shots at the State of the Union speech? The republican Senator side looks like a convention of retired morticians and the democratic House side looks like an ABBA reunion concert.

Hangover rating

You can rate hangovers by naming them after celebrities who drink. If you had a few glasses of wine, but were fine, just woke up with a slight hum in the head, that’s a Jimmy Fallon.

You had more than a few glasses of wine, did the two am wake up pee and are pretty tired? That’s a Jimmy Kimmell.

You had cocktails before dinner and then too much wine with dinner and fell asleep on the couch and when you wake up you have to keep rubbing your face and hair? That’s a Zach Galifinakis.

You kept drinking cocktails all night, were slurring your words and don’t remember a patch of what you did and your face is pasty and puffy and there may have been drugs involved? Now you have a Vince Vaughn.

You got absolutely plowed, but you kept drinking anyway and may or may not have puked in the middle of the night and there were drugs involved? That right there is a Bill Murray.

You passed out, woke up and kept drinking like a degenereate and passed out again and started drinking in the morning just so you could get out of bed? That’s either a Charlie Rose or a Pat O’Brien.

Anything worse than that involving copious amounts of booze and drugs is a Nick Nolte, a David Hasselhof or a Rip Torn.

Since you asked:

One of my favorite aspects of this NFL season has been listening to Troy Aikman have to suck up to Drew Brees.

Many years ago when Brees and L.T. were just showing their eminent greatness with the Chargers, I think it was announcer Dick Enberg who told the story of Brees and Tomlinson huddling at the Texas High School All Star game and dreaming out loud that someday they would be on the same team and be the next Troy Aikman and Emmit Smith.

An indignant color announcer, Troy Aikman, veritably sniffed:

“Well, L.T. has a shot at being an Emmitt Smith, but Drew Brees will never be close to a Troy Aikman.”

It was unbelievable, I actually went into a mild shock. Did that a-hole Aikman actually say that?

He did.

Now with Tom Watson coming out against Tiger, I want to re-examine a problem we have with sports stars in this country. We have an unhealthy need to lionize our great athletes as great people when 95% of the time, they simply aren’t. In fact, more often the greatest athletes are horrible people. Two words: OJ Simpson.

Like with Troy Aikman and Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan, the ego, pride, vanity, selfishness, arrogance and competitiveness needed to propel yourself to be a great athlete are simply not the characteristics found in a great guy who is fun to be with on a road trip. Quite the opposite.

Michael Jordan invited his old high school coach to his Hall-of-Fame induction just so he could skewer him on National Television for not putting Jordan on the varsity team when he was a small sophomore. What kind of infected and bitter soul is needed to even think to do that, let alone actually do it?

Every great while the two qualities of being a great athlete and a great guy converge, like with Drew Brees, Joe Namath, Derek Jeter, Gale Sayers, Rafer Johnson, Arnold Palmer and Mark Grace. But for the most part, a great athlete’s personality is going to be that of an insufferable pr*ck, like Aikman, Jordan and Woods.

So when the police arrest Tim Tebow on Sunset Blvd wearing a dress in a whisky induced haze trying to score a tranny hooker and a bag of roofies, please do not say I didn’t warn you.