The Cougar Lounge - What The Hey

"We have never felt like anybody did anything wrong, and it was portrayed like maybe there was something horrible that happened here, and it wasn't that."

- USC head football coach, Pete Carroll – when he's not dressing as movie characters - making sure everybody knows that nobody did anything wrong in the recent Dwayne Jarrett fiasco [What? Anybody in L.A. can find a utility-free $3,866 apartment for only $650 – c'mon! It's those $400 roach-infested dives that are hard to find.] and some big meanies were just saying some bad things about the Trojans and… and…sniff…sniff…he's tellin' Mom!!

"If people have information like that, it'd be a lot more helpful if they came forward with it rather than burying it on a message board."

- University of Oklahoma sports information director Kenny Mossman speaking about the website message board post that correctly fingered starting quarterback Rhett Bomar in an illegal payment scandal. Riiiight, Kenny. Those people should have told the university so that the university could have given it a proper burial [in, say, June of 2007, so as not to jeopardize the poor young man's eligibility] – what were they thinking!?

"If the Queen of England called right now and said, 'I want you to come perform "Hey Ya!" for my son's birthday.' I couldn't do it. I have moved on. Period."

- Hip-hop artist Andre 3000. Oh man, the Queen is going to be so disappointed – not to mention her son Edward, he was so looking forward to it, he even sent out invitations already [there was going to be an Outkast pinata and everything!]. Now he'll have to settle for 50 Cent.

The Lounge was suspended indefinitely – over a bowl of boiling hot chili con carne – for breaking team rules last week and paying too much attention to one celebrity goofball [we have had a pleasing Mel Gibson motif in the Lounge lately] when, according to the Lounge bylaws [the Britney Spears Addendum], it clearly states that we were supposed to spread out the goofball goodness more evenly. At first, we attempted to adopt the Pete Carroll-defense and claim that "C'mon! Nobody did anything wrong and nobody was hurt!" [Well, except for a few feelings over at Spielberg's place – but he has enough money to buy the bluebird of happiness off twice over]. But the clientele was not buying that and it was looking mighty grim for the Lounge until Oklahoma and their Rhett Bomar circus came to town. Whew - that was a close one! Bomar got caught in that age-old getting-paid-for-work-you-never-did scheme [up here in the Pacific Northwest, some people refer to that ploy as the Husky Shuffle] and that took everybody's mind off Mel v. Jews upcoming World War III battle. Bomar was getting paid for doing a lot of nothing at a car dealership and was having the BBQ of his life when he discovered it was all fun and games until someone loses a wiener. Ouch. Now it is nothing but lima beans [see below] for Bomar. The best part of the entire three-ring affair was that an anonymous poster on a message board broke the scandal as first, he was roundly derided for rumor-mongering [sigh…the usual suspect] then was proven to be truthful when Bomar was outed.

No sooner had that circus pulled up the stakes on their tents when Carroll's came to town – touting innocence on behalf of his angelic star wide receiver, Dwayne Jarrett, whose only offense was that he suffered from an apparent bacterial affliction medical researchers have called by its scientific name common senseitis stupidicus. The bacteria evidently enters the victim's bloodstream [presumably through continued long-term contact with seamy Trojan boosters] and causes the victim to believe that fancy $3,866 Los Angeles apartments can be had utility-free for only $650 and everything is on the up-and-up! The NCAA investigated and discovered that, indeed, poor Jarrett was missing half his brain [it was misplaced somewhere in a field in New Jersey] when he made the deal – but leaving open the question as to how he is remaining eligible at such a stalwart academic factory as USC. The Lounge clientele speculates that perhaps they are on the Auburn sociology department curriculum. Meanwhile, Jarrett is at home [his new pad that does not cost $3,866] nursing the nasty welt he got from the vicious wrist slap the NCAA administered as a form of discipline – a payment of restitution but, fortunately, no missed games. Has not the young man suffered enough from the stigma of stupidicus?

New scientific evidence has indicated that the collegiate football world revolves around ESPN, so it came as no surprise that ESPN spokesman Eddie Copernicus or whatever his name was, announced last week that, from now on, you must call his network Elizabeth. No, no, wait…we are receiving a text message right now…that is not right. You, the college football peasantry, are supposed to bow down and refer to his highness as "ESPN on ABC" whenever, you know, there is collegiate football on that other network that is really supplied by Elizabeth, uh, we mean, ESPN. Also, the world is flat [especially in Texas].

"I don't want to be a complainer but could somebody at Wazzu convince a football team from east of the Rockies to come to Pullman – not Seattle - sometime in my lifetime?!" pleads Edmund Goosestep, who came into the room for a reason but now can't remember what it was.

You wish, Ed. Well, so does athletic director Jim Sterk. But see, here is what happens on the off-season NCAA cocktail circuit. When the Pac-10 people leave the room at a party, the SEC and Big 12 people huddle together and compare bowl game affiliations and payoffs and how they will never have to worry about academics as long as they have control over the best post-season games. Then, after they have all had a good snort about that, they pull out the one-liners about how they can get any Pac-10 team they want to travel across the country just by snapping their fingers and attaching money to this string and watching the Pac-10 teams follow it around like puppy dogs following a biscuit – bumping into walls and furniture chasing that big payday without ever having to return the game at the Pac-10 place. It is quite a hoot. Then everybody goes home and rides their lawnmowers. So in short, easy-to-understand words – don't hold your breath, Ed – particularly if you have a hard time breathing from all the tilting at that windmill.

"I am just as excited as the next gal for the hoop season but I am not very excited by UT-San Antonio," says Ms. Dee Ceased, who was seen out pulling legs recently.

Well, Dee, you could play good defense and stick that hand in WSU's face until they change the schedule. Well, on second thought, that might not work, they might just shoot over you. Yes, some of the opponents leave something to be desired, this is true, and it was awfully generous of WSU to move one of the basketball Apple Cup games to accommodate Washington's scheduling of LSU. However, hoop scheduling is not as easy as renting an expensive apartment in Los Angeles – nobody is giving away games for the chance to play the Cougars – at least not while Pullman International Airport is still unable to handle the larger PJ-301's [Puddle Jumper series]. So until they can get some success on the court, their cachet for scheduling marquee opponents at home will be somewhat lacking. If the turnaround begins this year, it may translate into better non-conference opponents in the near future and perhaps even more exciting than UT-San Antonio.

What is really exciting is that somebody finally figured out a way to make text easily readable on a computer screen, but, alas, they have yet to figure this out at Gratuity Slip. Brick walls, delivery trucks, insides of aquariums [at least that is what it looked like to us] are all used as backgrounds to irritate your eyeballs. But if you can somehow get past that minor, albeit annoying, technicality, you will find an interesting service with some interesting anecdotal tales. Essentially, Gratuity Slip is selling a note that looks like a $20 bill but is really a note to the waiter/waitress letting them know how they can, ahem, improve their service next time. There are 12 choices to choose from on the note and the Lounge – whose service has always been impeccable – took a particular shining to Choice #7 – Undesirables Found in Food. Lima beans are always – always, no exceptions! - uninvited guests in the Lounge food pyramid [which actually resembles more of a rhombus], so we can relate to that reference although we could have done without the Elvis and John Wayne references. We will just stick to peanut butter and Rooster Cogburn as our mental bookmarks, thank you very much.

Finally, the Lounge Scientists were stunned to discover a freak of nature – no, not another mouth to feed on the human face, but rather the reptilian world's literal interpretation of the human rock music world – a white snake [but without Tawny Kitaen writhing all over the hood of a car]. A new species of snake recently discovered in Indonesia, normally an iridescent brown, can turn itself white within a matter of minutes, which certainly must be helpful in job interviews with large corporations.

"I put the reddish-brown snake in a dark bucket. When I retrieved it a few minutes later, it was almost entirely white," says Lounge Scientist #74 Mark Auliya, a scientist associated with the Alexander Koenig Museum in Germany, who is reputed to have once found a Whitesnake CD at a garage sale and claims to have known Whitesnake back when they were playing gigs at Holiday Inns.

While we are anxiously awaiting football season to begin, the Lounge will be out pricing Los Angeles apartments and trying to find a way to get Rhett Bomar a new job as cushy as his last one. Either that or we will be watching Elizabeth – and making sure she does not run with scissors.

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