Cap’n Ken’s Homespun Wisdom

From last Thursday’s Oregon / Arizona game, a nice poon fight captured in the stands by ESPN. Slowed to 1/15th speed with blow-by-blow account and set to Loretta Lynn & Jack White’s “Portland, Oregon” (Yes, I know the University of Oregon is in some city that’s not Portland - song just works great with the clip):

I”m pretty fascinated by the fact that a huge stash of Paris Hilton”s private photos, videos, diaries, etc. have been turned into a gawker/porn site after being auctioned off to settle a mini-storage bill. Talk about the perfect marriage of celebrity obsession and technology.

And surely lots will be written about all this. But what interested me - ok, it”s not the only thing that interested me - was reading through the site”s terms of service. I suppose it”s somewhat standard at adult sites to have to agree to things like:

“I VOLUNTARILY CHOOSE TO ENTER THIS WEBSITE BECAUSE I WANT TO VIEW, READ AND/OR HEAR THE VARIOUS MATERIALS WHICH ARE AVAILABLE, FOR MY OWN PERSONAL ENJOYMENT, INFORMATION AND/OR EDUCATION. MY CHOICE IS A MANIFESTATION OF MY INTEREST IN SEXUAL MATTERS WHICH, I BELIEVE, IS BOTH HEALTHY AND NORMAL AND WHICH, IN MY EXPERIENCE, IS GENERALLY SHARED BY AVERAGE ADULTS IN MY COMMUNITY. I AM FAMILIAR WITH THE STANDARDS IN MY COMMUNITY REGARDING THE ACCEPTANCE OF SUCH SEXUALLY ORIENTED MATERIALS, AND THE MATERIALS I EXPECT TO ENCOUNTER ARE WITHIN THOSE STANDARDS. IN MY JUDGMENT, THE AVERAGE ADULT IN MY COMMUNITY ACCEPTS THE CONSUMPTION OF SUCH MATERIALS BY WILLING ADULTS IN CIRCUMSTANCES SUCH AS THIS WHICH TAKE REASONABLE AND PRUDENT MEASURES TO INSULATE THE MATERIALS FROM MINORS AND UNWILLING ADULTS, AND WILL NOT FIND SUCH MATERIALS TO APPEAL TO A PRURIENT INTEREST OR TO BE PATENTLY OFFENSIVE.”

Sure.

But what I figure is fairly unique to this particular site is this piece of the TOS:

PROHIBITED ACCESS AREAS
All of the following areas constitute PROHIBITED AREAS from which no part of the website may be accessed, viewed, downloaded or otherwise received:

A. All parts of the United States of America;

B. All parts of the following countries: Afghanistan, Kuwait, Iran, Iraq, Japan, Jordan, Libya, Pakistan, The Republic of China, Singapore, Saudi Arabia, Syria, The United Arab Emirates; and

C. All parts of every other geophysical place corresponding to a political entity or part thereof in which the access, viewing, downloading or other use of materials at the website would, or could reasonably, constitute a violation of any law, regulation, rule or custom. YOU shall at no time access, view, download, receive or otherwise use, or cause or enable any other person or entity to access, view, download, receive or make use of any portion of said Content, directly or indirectly in places where COMPANY does not authorize such access, viewing, downloading, receipt or other use, including but not limited to “Restricted Areas.” As used herein, “Restricted Areas” means the following geographical areas: any nation, state or province or portion thereof where the access, viewing, downloading or any other use of the Content would, or could reasonably, be a violation of any civil or criminal law, governmental regulation or court decision.

That”s right. You agree not to access the site from the United States - or what sounds like the rest of the civilized world.

I have to assume this is an attempt to deflect liability from the people who bought Paris” tittie pictures by “prohibiting” anybody from accessing the site from any jurisdiction that might lend some rights to Paris to not have her tittie pictures sold by somebody else.

But I wonder how well this kind of shielding attempt will work - especially considering the default country shown in the signup form is, in fact, the United States. I”ll be interested to see how this thing plays out.

I get that landing the first post-baby interview with Angelina Jolie is a big deal in TV “news” land. And promoting the inteview certainly makes sense:

But Jesus has CNN gone overboard on this. They”ve been running little teaser clips all through the day since at least last Thursday promoting Anderson Cooper”s big catch (Larry King, you”re done), then tonight they actually had Anderson Cooper being interviewed live on Paula Zahn”s show about Anderson Cooper”s interview with Angelina Jolie. There”s a good chance Anderson will be on Larry King tomorrow night talking about his experience interviewing Angelina Jolie.

[editor”s note: The one clip I saw last Thursday made me really like Angelina. Anderson asked her “Is it true you donate a third of your salary to charitable causes?” and Angelina whipped back something like “Yeah, but I make a ridiculous amount of money for the work that I do.”]

I”ll admit I haven”t followed LSU basketball all that closely this year. It”s just a lot of work to keep up with basketball season from 500 miles away.

And because I watched the Duke and Texas games live, I was completely unaware of what”s apparently become a CBS obsession with coach John Brady”s wife. In fact, I was unaware that the 51-year-old balding, big-headed coach got married last year to a 33-year-old blonde personal trainer named Misty Champagne.

There”s a good bit of online chatter about Misty - with people calling her everything from a former stripper to a former Golden Girl (I”m not sure where the truth lies). But finding a picture of Misty is quite a challenge.

There is this shot from Yahoo! Sports:

Hard to tell too much from the backside shot except that she seems pretty cute and it”s obvious John Brady makes a lot of money.

Except for the blonde hair, Misty”s back view reminds me a lot of my own wife (she”s 32 but only 6 years younger than me - I”m not rich) in terms of style.

But that one shot on Yahoo! is hardly a satisfactory answer to “who is Misty Champagne?”. As usual, I had started my search on Google, but when I don”t get search satisfaction, I turn to MSN.

Googlefolk take note: More and more, MSN is returning better results.

On MSN I found a “testimonial” page from the site of some weird health/nutrition guy named Mackie Shilstone.

The data (age, location, etc.) matches up, so apparently this is Brady”s own Misty.

The photo there is a somewhat-scary “gal with muscles” shot that makes Misty look only a little bit like Starla from Napoleon Dynamite:

Her testimonial includes such insights as:

Best Bodypart: “Glutes - They add power to all my leg movements.”

Accomplishments: “Being a successful certified personal trainer and being able to effectively manage my personal career and family responsibilities.”

The testimonial doesn”t say anything about her being a Golden Girl, ever attending LSU or - of course - stripping.

My guess is that the talk about stripping or Golden Girling is just dumb Internet yapping. Sure, she probably married the ugly older rich man for reasons you”d expect.

And Brady had no doubt found a deep spiritual connection with the 33-year-old personal trainer.

Geaux Tigers!

The state of Louisiana has launched a new ad campaign to promote tourism in the post-Katrina world.

Unfortunately, the state has no money (well, they have $7 million, which is essentially no money in advertising terms) to really market New Orleans and the rest of Louisiana right now, so The Wisdom is pitching in by providing free advertising space.

This is one of several ads featuring celebrities with connections to New Orleans. I chose the Patricia Clarkson ad because she”s actually from New Orleans, and let”s face it - she”s pretty hot for an older chick.

Now, just the 201,113 pixels I”ve devoted to the ad is worth a considerable amount, but I”m going one step farther and offering this friendly reminder:

Don”t be a dick. Visit Louisiana. It ain”t all that bad - at least in the places you”d be visiting. New Orleans needs your tourist dollars a lot more than San Francisco or anyplace else you”re thinking of visiting.

More information on Louisiana tourism can be found at the Louisiana Travel site.

P.S. They serve free Community Coffee at the Louisiana Welcome Center on I-10. What could be better than that?

If you”re the super-cool type who has Flickr slideshows running on your desktop through the Google Desktop Sidebar or - if you”re a extra-super-cool Mac user - Tickr for Flickr, it”s not a great idea to run the neworleans tag at work this time of year.

But at home … it”s quite fun.