AaronGleeman.com

ESPN often defends their dumbed-down content and annoying on-air talent by pointing to increasingly high ratings, but it's nice to know that they can't always get people to buy every kind of crap they decide to sell. No, what they've got now is a guy whose entire act is essentially yelling nonsensical things into the camera while people turn their televisions off.

I was telling my boss at Rotoworld, Rick Cordella, about the story earlier this week and he asked, "Do you have any idea which players were involved?" I didn't, of course, since the reports weren't naming any names. But just for the hell of it I tried to think of a random, somewhat prominent player and said, "My guess is that it's Fred Smoot, just because."

And then what did I read just a couple days later?

Incidentally, the above is excerpted from a Minneapolis Star Tribune story that was written by one of my journalistic idols, Paul McEnroe, whom I talked about in this space yesterday.

If someone has uttered a more amusing string of sentences in the last month, I'd sure like to see it.

* There have been few moments in my life when I've felt as proud as I did yesterday, when I discovered that this site is now Google's #1 search result for the phrase "Waffle Crapper." Seriously, go look.

* Jessica Alba reenacted some scantily clad scenes from her favorite movies in Esquire. Is it odd that I was disappointed by Alba's pictures, mainly because I have only seen two of the movies in question? Something tells me that in 20 years no one will be reenacting any scenes from Alba's new movie, Into the Blue, although -- and this may come as a huge shock -- I haven't seen it yet.

* Only the Official Fantasy Girl of AG.com, Elisha Cuthbert, could make a hat this ridiculous look good.

* Eva Longoria and Spurs point guard Tony Parker went scuba diving together recently. And if you can't spot Parker, he's the guy swimming head first into Longoria's butt in this picture. (Don't worry, it's "safe for work.")

* When the Looks Department opened for business, Keira Knightley was clearly there bright and early, at the front of the line. Meanwhile, Ron Jeremy was clearly busy doing something else, like say eating a sandwich or having sex with someone on film, and showed up too late to claim anything good. You could not find two people further apart on the physical spectrum, yet here they are mere inches apart.

Anyway, the counter that tracks visitor totals rolled past 1.5 million this week. In the early days this blog often had a single-digit readership, so the visitor count has long since passed the point of shocking me. I want to thank everyone who has accounted for one of those 1.5 million ticks on the counter. And a special thanks goes out to my mom, who if my calculations are correct has been responsible for approximately 1.4 million of the visits.