Mets Update

Since we last spoke about Fred Wilpon's comments in the New Yorker, there has been a major development. Hedge fund manager David Einhorn bought 49% of the Mets for $200m.

This solves any short-term liquidity crisis the Mets may have had and it tells us who the likely next owner would be if the Wilpons were forced to or chose to sell their remaining stake.

I don't think it means the Mets as a team are worth only $400m. The Wilpons refused to give up control of the team and very few powerful billionaires would be willing to fork over hundreds of millions of dollars without getting say in how that money was spent.

But that's exactly what Einhorn did because he is a lifelong Mets fan. That could be good or bad. If he someday becomes the principal owner and runs the team like a fan he could run it like a rational fan (desperate to win, but willing to be patient and build an organization the right way) or a crazy WFAN caller (buy free agents, trade every prospect) which as we have seen doesn't work for anyone other than the Yankees.

Most likely though the Wilpons will reach a settlement for $300m - $400m in the Madoff case and still have enough money left over to keep running the Mets.

Separately, a brilliant Wall Street Journal article analyzes the Beltran signing and agrees with my assessment: it was a good deal at the time, it didn't work out as well as hoped because of injuries and the bad team around him, but it was still worth it. Comparing Beltran's value to the average cost in the free agent market that season, the Mets got their money's worth on Beltran, according to the article.

One more thing, poker watching Mets fans may remember Einhorn from the 2006 World Series of Poker Main Event. He finished 18th, good for $660k. And he wore a sweatshirt with kids' handprints on it for some kind of charity.

Important SEC Porn Update

In February the Poop reported that SEC staff were often using their government computers, at their government jobs, to search for porn, often excessively.

A recent investigation found 31 serious offenders over the past two and a half years. Seventeen of the offenders were senior SEC officers with salaries ranging from $100,000 to $222,000 per year.

One senior attorney at SEC headquarters in Washington spent up to eight hours a day accessing Internet porn. When he filled all the space on his government computer with pornographic images, he downloaded more to CDs and DVDs that accumulated in boxes in his offices.

An SEC accountant attempted to access porn websites 1,800 times in a two-week period and had 600 pornographic images on her computer hard drive. Yes, that said "her," even a female was involved in this.

Note: that might seem hard to believe but Master Bates reports (though doesn't remember) a secretary at his office was once caught visiting the website bigblackroosters.com (that might not have been the exact URL

Another SEC accountant attempted to access porn sites 16,000 times in a single month.

In one case, the report said, an employee tried hundreds of times to access pornographic sites and was denied access. When he used a flash drive, he successfully bypassed the filter to visit a "significant number" of porn sites.

The employee also said he deliberately disabled a filter in Google to access inappropriate sites. After management informed him that he would lose his job, the employee resigned.

Ironically, the report says most of these cases began in 2008, just as the financial system began to collapse. The same SEC officers who should have been safeguarding the economy were instead spending their working hours surfing the Internet for pornography, and the problem hasn't stopped.

The most recent case cited in the report is from just four weeks ago.

Luther Wright Has His Life...But Not His Toes Back

A couple years ago I posted the sad story of former Seton Hall center Luther Wright. The link is worth clicking just for Mrs. Poop's insensitive comment.

Now AOL has a Luther Wright update that updates us on the 8-toed big man's life now.

Miserable Weekend Update

Two footnotes to the weekend of my discontent when Nebraska, Bones Jones and the Redskins all suffered heartbreaking losses.

I watched the Ultimate Fighter Finale a couple hours late because I was watching Nebraska, and by the time I got to his Facebook page there were about 100 comments on his wall, yet mine stood out enough in his mind for him to respond.



The Redskins cut their awful kicker Shaun Suisham and replaced him with Graham Gano.

Voting is Efficacious

A couple weeks ago I asked the Poopheads if I should give a dollar to the homeless woman who complimented my Mitchell & Ness Mets jacket. The overwhelming response was yes. But after the votes were counted, I didn’t see her again – until yesterday. When I stopped to give her a dollar she started telling me her life story (“I was always poor, my father worked in a furniture store”) and asked me for another dollar. Sounds like old sob story-beg for more hustle you often see in strip clubs. Whatever the case I gave her $2 at the behest of the Poopheads and it’s going to take me 300 ad clicks to make that money back.

Don't Forget What I Said About the Clown Car

Michelle and Jim Bob Duggar added another member to their ridiculously engorged family, little Jordyn-Grace joins her 17 brothers and sisters in this nuclear (explosion) family.
I won't go into all the details again but this continues a disturbing trend of people procreating irresponsibly in the pursuit of a show on the Discovery Channel. Add the Duggars, Jon and Kate and the two dikes who each had twins to the growing list of people who became famous doing things with their uteruses they probably shouldn't have done.

Hot Chips Gets Heated, Goes on a Heater

I've been following the World Series of Poker online very closely but decided this year I would offer no spoilers, except for this:

Heading into Day 3 (after 4 Day 1s and 2 Day 2s) my favorite female poker player, Tiffany "Hot Chips" Michelle is still alive, and doing quite well.



She had a nice sized stack at the beginning of Day 2, but ran into some bad luck. Here's how PokerNews.com (for which she is an on-camera hostess) described the action:

"That Ain't Right
Tiffany Michelle just suffered a big beat. After an opponent raised to 2,000 preflop and Tony Antonious called, Michelle reraised to 10,000. The original raiser folded, but Antonious, who has already been given an "excessive celebration" warning, made the call.

The flop came down 2h, 7h, 10h. Antonious led out for 16,000, prompting Michelle to quickly push all in. Antonious called for less, a total of 65,000.

Antonious: Qc 10h
Michelle: Ad As

Antonious didn't have to sweat long -- the turn was the 10d and the river fell Qc to make a full house, tens full of queens, for Antonious. Michelle was described as "fuming," asking Antonious questions like, "How could you call?" When Antonious pointed out his flush draw, Michelle responded that she made it 10,000 preflop. Antonious responded by showing a photo of his house in Florida and suggesting they should both go fishing after the tournament was over.

We doubt that will happen. Michelle is still in the tournament with 24,000 chips, while Antonious now has 190,000."

Shortly after that beat Michelle slipped to a low of 8,800 and apparently stayed mad. She reported said "justice!" when Antonius took a bad beat a few hours later. She stayed between 20,000 (the starting stack size) and 40,000 for most of the day. But late in the evening she caught a couple big hands and is taking 120,000 chips (a slightly above average stack) into Day 3.

I'd love to see her make an even deeper run and get a lot of ESPN camera time. And it would be even cooler to see her at the final table which is in November.

Proving His Point

Earlier this year I wrote about Milton Bradley Syndrome, where I suggested that Bradley was actually overrated because every time a story about his bad behavior was told, the qualifier was that he'd be such a great player if he could control his emotions.
This year, Bradley was starting to prove me wrong by hitting like one of the best players in baseball.
So on Wednesday he decided to prove the Kansas City Royals play-by-play announcer right.
Bradley who was DHing that day happened to be in the clubhouse and heard these comments from Ryan Lefebvre.



Now I agree with everything Lefebvre said, but Bradley was so mad that he decided to prove Lefebvre's point.
After the game, at least he waited until after the game, he stormed up four flights of stairs to meet Lefebvre, but was stopped by Rangers GM Jon Daniels who had to chase him up the steps.
Bradley's point is that Lefebvre never met him so he shouldn't be talking about his personality like that. That's a fair point in general but that wouldn't have proven anything because Lefebvre was only talking about his outbursts of temper, not his day to day behavior.

Even worse about this is that the Rangers are excusing Bradley's actions, probably because they don't want to make him angry (you wouldn't like him when he's angry).

Daniels said: "It's a situation you want to avoid, but I don't see where disciplinary action is warranted. I was there the whole time. There was no aggressive action. There was no foul action, nothing of the sort. We move on."

Rangers President Nolan Ryan said: "we're disappointed that things were said that upset Milton. From my observations since spring training, he is really trying to change the part of his life that has plagued him during his career. We're very supportive of that, and we feel as if he's made great strides. It's an incident that came up, and I think it was handled properly. Milton was upset and disappointed about it, but I'd like to think this is behind us and we'll move on."

If Bradley is trying to change, then why didn't he try for once ignoring something or someone he didn't like.

So he said you have no self-control. So an umpire said you were a piece of shit. So a fan threw a bottle at you. That's no reason or excuse to act like that.

I actually feel badly for Bradley. I'd hate to go through my life where everything bad someone said about me or did to me, caused me to break into a violent rage.

Bad Fat Kid Back in the News

Our old friend Latarian Milton is back in the news.
When last we saw the poster child for childhood obesity he was joyriding in his grandmother's car because he wanted to do hoodrat stuff with his friend.
That's when his grandmother said she wanted to whip his behind.
Evidently grandma ain't so tough.
Latarian was taken for a mental health evaluation after he beat up his grandmother in Wal-Mart.
Here's the grandma's story:
The problem began when Latarian asked her for some chicken wings. When she refused, he walked over over to the counter and ordered them anyway.
When she confronted him about it, he just snapped.
"He just started hitting me -- just started hitting me in front of the whole Wal-Mart. Every one in there was upset," she said.
He hit her stomach, legs and "wherever he could reach me."
Police picked up Latarian from his home and took him to an area hospital for a mental health evaluation. He can be held for up to 72 hours while he is evaluated by mental health officials.
The grandmother blames his problems on his parents:
"I know what causes the behavior, cause all he's ever seen was his parents do physical and abusive and verbal things, and I don't want him to continue in this direction so I'm doing the best I can to get him the help."
She is worried about what will happen when he is released from his evaluation. She is making sure he won't have access to her rental car while her SUV is being repaired.
"When I first got the rental he said, 'Oh, you know, let me take this for a spin. So now I just sleep with the keys. I lock them up."

When Worlds Collide

Much to my surprise Farrell Kaye (as Farrell Kellener) was a constestant on the World Series of Pop Culture.
Farrell was on a team called "The Truffle Shuffles" with the Museo brothers from Staten Island (don't think I ever knew them). He flamed out in the first category and his team lost in the first round.




In the interview, he was asked what he does in "real life" and this was his response: "I used to be a radio talk show host in Aspen and Denver where I met my wife who originally hired me to help run her modeling agency. Now I’m an aspiring writer hoping to succeed in writing movie scripts."

His appearance on the show generated new interest in my story about him.

I even got a comment from his wife (presumably) asking that I remove the photo of her children. I did.

The story of Farrell Kellener gets more interesting everyday.

Sextuplets - Update

Another of the Morrison sextuplets of Minnesota died. The Morrison six were born 22 weeks premature, 3 died within a few days, now Cadence Morrison died, Lucia Rae and Sylas Christopher are the last two remaining.
Still the Morrisons say their faith keeps them strong, failing to see how their faith helped contribute to their current situation.
There are no new updates on the Masches sexes from Arizona so I'll assume that no news is good news on that front.