The Cougar Lounge - The History Of Myron The Elder

"I'm just going to sit on it. It wasn't a ton. I'm going to spend it wisely."

- Former Wazzu pitcher Jeremy Johnson, indicating that his signing bonus offered by the MLB's Cleveland Indians was not in the $232 million range such as was won by the recent lottery winner in South Dakota.

"We take pride in our defense and we get mad at each other when we don't make defensive assignments and it's become a big deal to us."

- USA men's hoop U19 team member, Howard Thompkins. The Americans have held each of their three first round opponents to 55 points.

"I was just thinking that she was any other player and this was any other match and I was at any other tournament – you know, not like on the biggest stage at Wimbledon playing my first Top 10 player."

- American teen upstart Melanie Oudin - ranked 124th in the world, making her Wimbledon debut by defeating former #1 Jelena Jankovic [currently ranked 6th] before being subdued in the fourth round.

"My love life is terrible. The last time I was inside a woman was when I visited the Statue of Liberty."

- Filmmaker/actor Woody Allen in the film Hannah And Her Sisters.

Michael Jackson, even in death, is still setting records. News of the King of Pop's unexpected demise broke the one-day traffic record at Yahoo! as well as other news sites. On Yahoo!, Jackson's sudden death generated a 16.4-million visitor tidal wave which far surpassed the previous record of 15.1 million for last year's presidential election day. It has been over a week now and the Lounge still cannot believe it – but the networks can – as they have been waging a war of Jackson tribute attrition over the last week and are planning extensive coverage of Jackson's memorial this week.

Of course, at BYU, they are just now hearing of the big news. Never really a university on the cusp of cultural events nor of reality [having only recently recognized the existence of humans with dark skin pigmentation and the practice of monogamy but still believing that beer becomes evil at 3% alcohol content], the Mormons have been way behind the cultural curve because they still did not have access to this newfangled whatchmacallit everybody is talking about on the internet called YouTube. The university had blocked access to YouTube for the last three years but professors wanting to know about Jackson's death [and some other educational stuff] finally convinced the Mormons in charge to lift the video ban. Their reward? - This. Oh yeah, we almost forgot – if you do not like it, do not ban it - just pretend it is not there.

That is what many Division I schools across the country would like to do with Stanford when it comes to the NACDA Director's Cup, the multi-sports award which goes to the school which performs best in the top 10 men's and women's sports across the board. Coming into this year, despite numerous scoring format changes over the years, Stanford had won the award for 14 consecutive times. There was no change this year. We expect this annual ritual has become so routine for Stanford that they have probably begun to get creative with the awards – crafting them into a toaster, a lamp, a candy dish or a really interesting hat. But it was good news all the way around for the Pac-10 conference as conference members secured eight of the spots in the top 25 of the contest, which was also no surprise since the conference collected 11 national titles this year – more than double any other conference in the land.

In fact, we think we should write a song about that and have it in the soundtrack of our new movie, entitled "The BCS Taliban Bites The Big Banana". But we will have to make it good because we just found out that there will be no Academy Award given out for Best Song at next year's Oscars unless they reach a certain scoring level. We can live with that since we have heard our fair share of poor movie songs over the years, but they also took out the granting of an honorary Oscar altogether and moved it to a separate award show in November. Great, just what we need – another award show – and at the expense of the dignity of a genuine film star. Instead of honoring said genuine star in front of a national television audience, we are going to relegate you to a sideshow while we add five more films to bore the audience to death with, seems to be what the Academy is saying with this move. Oh well, people watch too much television anyway.

"I could not agree more with CougZone's selections of athlete and coach of the year," says Fred the Oyster.

Yes, Fred, both were runaway victories but both had their share of deserving candidates. The awarding of the athlete of the year to Jeshua Anderson was fairly anticlimactic. Even though Anderson failed to make the USA squad for the World Track & Field Championships in Berlin next month when he finished fifth in the men's 400-meter hurdles at the USA Track & Field Championships in Eugene, he did set the new school record last month when he ran a 48.47 in claiming his second consecutive NCAA championship. It is difficult to top those accomplishments even though there were laudable accomplishments from Kiersten Dallstream in soccer, Taylor Rochestie in men's hoop, Matt Way in baseball and Brittany Johnson in volleyball. But a special recognition goes out to Kate Kamendova in tennis, who received votes for her courageous return from a collapsed lung early in the season. The coach of the year voting was mostly a two-man race between soccer head coach Matt Potter and eventual winner Donnie Marbut. Both went to the NCAA tournaments in their respective sports, both did well against their regional Pac-10 opponents [although Marbut's team defeated all three], both finished well within the conference [though Marbut's team finished higher] and both had academic achievements [though Potter had the higher APR and better representation on conference teams]. In the end, with Marbut having the edge in most of the criteria categories, the award went to him and CougZone did not require that he score an 8.25 to get it – we already knew the quality was there [and we did not have to pretend that it was there]. It was two deserving selections out of many deserving candidates.

"I would like to see the boys come back with a world championship trophy," says The Village Idiot in reference to current Cougar men's hoop players DeAngelo Casto and Klay Thompson playing for the USA's entry in the FIBA U19 World Championships in Auckland, New Zealand this week.

Yes, VI, that would certainly be a nice feather in their caps – and it is a very reasonable feather to attain seeing as they came into the tournament as the world's second-ranked team. The Americans breezed through the first round games, holding every opponent to 55 points, culminating in the win over Egypt! They will be playing Greece, Puerto Rico and Lithuania in the second round and will almost surely make the medal round later this week. But even if they do not win the world championship, the experience for Casto and Thompson is immeasurable when it comes to Pac-10 play. Both have been getting plenty of playing time and Thompson has been averaging near double digits while Casto currently leads the tournament with a 71% field goal percentage after making eight of his 11 shots in the first round. Incoming Cougar recruit Brock Motum is right behind him at 64% as he plays for his native Australia, a team which could very well test the USA for world title aspirations. All in all, it is a win-win-win for Wazzu.

Summer just started and holiday plans are being made if they have not been made already and people are going off to visit the relatives or some other adventurous or fun destination before it is all over two months from now and school starts again. The Lounge will not be visiting Costa Rica this year but when we do, you can be sure we will staying in the 727 suite at the Hotel Costa Verde. Best of all – you do not have to put your tray in the locked, upright position nor do you have to go through another oxygen mask spiel.

Meanwhile, the Lounge Scientists know that everybody will be out barbecuing in their backyards this summer and thinking they are Bobby Flay with their special tropical surprise or cheese king burgers and whatnot. The scientists discovered long ago that garlic salt was an essential ingredient to any successful burger concoction but that nasty e. Coli still has to be eliminated and the only way to do that is to make sure the meat temperature has reached 160 degrees or above – high enough to kill off the notorious barbecue-ruining bacteria.

"If you're worried that it's overcooked and dry, cook it to 150 degrees and let it rest five minutes so the residual heat will finish off any lurking bacteria in the center of the burger," says Lounge Scientist #160, Doug Powell, a food safety expert at Kansas State University, who reputedly is a smart man and likes garlic-salted mushrooms on his burger.

We expect news of these important summer barbecuing tips to reach BYU by about 2012.

+++++++sponsored by Clark's Restaurant+++++++++

Attention COUGAR fans and well-wishers! Summer is here and you have the hunger. How can you afford to go one day further without some tasty morsels from Clark's Restaurant in Grays Harbor – home of the Best Hamburger in Twin Harbors for nine consecutive years? Come in for the burger, fresh homemade fries and milkshakes concocted from homemade ice cream. Go ahead, we dare you to try and pass up more than 12 varieties of hamburgers to choose from, full dinners, lunch and full breakfast served daily. Clark's Restaurant 360.538.1487. Seven miles south of Aberdeen, Washington on Highway 101. Proud supporter of CougZone. Mention this ad for a free small ice cream.