I hear your calls, and I obey. I blog for YOU!

I know, I know. I have been remiss in my blogging duties.
It's not to say that I don't have anything to say, I just haven't had time to say it. OK?
The winter is crawling along here in the Okey-Dokey. The weather is warming slightly, which means the picturesque vistas of pure, driven snow have all melted away, leaving slush, dirt and salt everywhere. Throw in the S.A.D. that everyone is experiencing, and, well, it's kind of depressing.
So where to start... Well, Stephanie is moving out, heading to Edmonchuck to take a job there, where she will be paid obscene amounts of money to oversee a development team. It's been three years of pseudo-marital "bliss," as she frequently says, "You know Jar Jar, it's like we're married ... without the sex." Don't worry, folks. The divorce will be amicable.
How amicable she is to me after she sees the pictures I have from her going-away party, well, that remains to be seen. I'll have them up in the next few days.

As for the other Stephanie, for all you inquiring minds, she is fine, and not in the least bit sick of my antics. Yet.

I was a little disappointed recently when told we had filled our entertainment editor's spot. When I approached our ME about a month ago, he said they wouldn't be making a decision for about a month and to take some time to think about it. When I finally felt this was a direction I wanted to go, I ran into the dreaded "Oh, sorry. We filled that position last week."
But I'm over it now. And still trying to track down a position with a Hawaiian paper. ;)

From the files of J.J. Adams ... my column from last week.



REBAGLIATI STILL SMOKING ... BUT JUST ON THE MOUNTAIN

Ross Rebagliati hears the whispers wherever he goes.
"Hey — do you think that's him? It looks like him. Man, I can't believe it!"
And, then, inevitably . . .
"Hey — do you think he has a joint?"
For Rebagliati, his fame, or perhaps infamy, is inexorably linked to that fateful day — 10 years ago today — when the Vancouver native became the first person to win a snowboarding gold medal in the Winter Olympics. That feat was quickly overshadowed by the news that post-race test found traces of marijuana in his system, sparking a tumultuous week in which he won, then lost, and won back his medal on appeal.
"Everywhere I go, I can hear people saying my name in the background," said Rebagliati, who now lives in Kelowna.
"For every one person that says 'Are you Ross Regabilati?' there's 10 of them that don't come up and do the same thing. It took me a long time to adjust to that kind of attention.
"(The win and the drug-test controversy) go hand-in-hand, but the fact of the matter is, without the controversy, people wouldn't have remembered me at all.
"If you think back to '98, can you name the guy that won the half-pipe contest? Forget about it. The exposure that I got during the controversy was world-wide, and in every media medium . . . and it never went away. If just kind of kept lingering."
(The answer to Rebagliati's trivia question, by the way, is Swiss rider Gian Simmen.)
At the time, the baby-faced blonde was labeled Canada's biggest Olympic goat since Ben Johnson's run of shame at the 1988 Summer Games in Seoul. But once his appeal made him a champion again, he became a celebrity.
And 10 years down the road, he's a legend.
He recently returned from Italy, where he was holding his own snowboard camps, cheekily named R.A.S.T.A.
That stands for Rebagliati Alpine Snowboard Training Camps, and has nothing to do with Jamaica (he's never been) nor weed (I won't touch that one), though Rebagliati says, with a hint of a smile, "I love reggae."
His camp clientele consisted of mostly affluent Europeans in their 40s, who lined up for the prestige of training with one of the most recognizable names in winter sports.
"My name has just been immortalized because of all that media," said the 36-year-old. "The notoriety that goes along with it has had its good points."
And it's humorous ones, too — like the time he was part of the Canada Day parade in Whistler.
"One of the guys in the crowd yelled at me really loud. I look at him, and he hucks this huge joint at me," Rebagliati said, laughing.
"He was filming it with his video camera, and I guess he hoped I was going to catch it, or had some grand plan of how it was going to turn out, but he missed me by about 20 feet.
"I just shook my head. I was like, 'What in the world? People are crazy.'"
The fallout of his positive test for THC, which he said at the time was from second-hand smoke at a going-away party in Whistler, had effects unseen by most of the general public.
While those momentous few weeks during the Games will forever have enshrined his name in snowboarding lore, it also proved to be the downfall of his professional career.
The positive test meant he couldn't travel to the U.S. for three years, and was on a no-fly list for nine. That meant no X Games. No Europe. No World Championships.
And no sponsors.
"I paid a price for it," he said. "I don't think people really understood the ramifications of what occurred because of that. They think that I got away with it, but really, I didn't.
"When you're at the height of your snowboard career, and all of a sudden, you're not allowed to go into the States . . . well, that was it."
He tried to resurrect his career, and was even seriously training as recently as last spring, but when he was named the director of skiing and snowboarding at the new Kelowna Mountain resort development, he put his racing days behind him.
Now, the closest Rebagliati will get to the 2010 Games will be from his Whistler home.
"I thought about my family, my future," he said. "When you're a (professional) snowboarder, you don't come out of it with any scholarships to universities, or degrees, or dental plans or anything. This was the perfect position for me. It was the perfect way to seguay into the rest of my life.
"For me to quit racing, it had to be something special. And this is. It was the chance of a lifetime."

The Links of the Day:

This picture. made me glad I wasn't him. As Roy Scheider (RIP) would say, "You're going to need a bigger boat."

Damned Liverpool. At least they're not the Pats. (Whose fans, by the way, are sore losers.)
And on that subject, I think I want one of these shirts.

Also, I have a new favourite dance team. For those of you whose sensibilities were offended by those pics, take heart, because that kind of 'filth flarn filth flarn filth' doesn't sit well with Bill Cosby. He's coming out with a new album!

Check out the story story from Houston Williams at Allhiphop.com



COSBY WORKING ON NEW HIP-HOP ALBUM

Bill Cosby - a staunch critic of some rap music - is set to release a Hip-Hop album called State of Emergency, which will be a sanitized, issue-oriented CD.
Sources told AllHipHop.com that the actor, comedian and philanthropist will address issues like proper parenting, teen pregnancy, drug abuse, Black-on-Black crime and the dropout rate in America's high schools.
In 2004, Cosby said in a speech, "Your dirty laundry gets out of school at 2:30 every day, it's cursing and calling each other [the N-word] as they're walking up and down the street. They think they're hip. They can't read. They can't write. They're laughing and giggling, and they're going nowhere."
Cosby's album will not contain any profane language, nor will it offer any denigrating comments towards women.
State of Emergency would be the 35th album for the legendary comedian, actor, who released his first album Bill Cosby is a Very Funny Fellow in 1963.
Whether or not Cosby will work with rappers on his lyrical flow or his musical selection was not known at press time.