Happy new year, you funny little frogs...

Ah, lots of reasons to cheer in 2006. One of my friends tells me that Nostradamus predicted that the world was going to end in August (hopefully not before my birthday on the 8th) but right now I'm excited that the new series of America's Next Top Model is showing in the UK, a new Belle And Sebastian album is coming out next month and Let's Get Lost finally goes on sale on February 6th, I

An Introduction To Rory Bumpers

So over the weekend, I was going through some of my old files and came across the long lost Rory Bumpers columns. In 2000, my friend Max and I worked at a place called SportsPage.com. We didn't have any sports reporters, we didn't go to games and yet somehow, we still lost out to cbsportsline and espn.com. What can you do?

Anyway, Max and I created a character called Rory Bumpers, who was basically an old school super celebrity. As the story goes, he was huge between '51 and '78, then disappeared for about 22 years, only to make a triumphant return at SportsPage.com.

Now - for only the second time online! - I offer you the entire Rory Bumpers catalog. Sixty-some daily columns written between March 30 and June 26, when SportsPage.com went kaput.

And again, this was in 2000, so the sports news is, um, somewhat dated.

April 3rd

Good day, people! The Showman here. Holy crap, was I wrong about last night’s game! Not at all what I thought it would be like. Turned out completely different. I had no idea. But what a game! I haven’t seen such excitement since that time Bing Crosby and I beat Jimmy Demaret and Uncle Miltie in a three-legged race at the Binger’s annual clambake. Yes, that sure was some game. I don’t think I’ll ever see anything like that ever again.

All right, I can’t lie to you. I didn’t watch last night’s game. Forgot all about it. Oh well, there’s always next year…I guess.

I read in the paper this morning that Opening Day for baseball was yesterday. Sports Illustrated picked Boston to win it all. Then yesterday Larry King picked the Red Sox to win it all, too. Memo to Larry: Reading something somewhere and then writing it down in your column does not make for good reading. I think it’s over, buddy.

Which reminds me, I read that NBC cancelled God, the Devil and Bob. I don’t know what that means, but it sure sounds interesting.

A friend told me Carson Daly mentioned me by name on his little music television program there yesterday. Said I was a washed up old coot, or something to that effect. I didn’t see it, but if he did say something, I like his moxie. I’ll make sure he gets a case of Chivas courtesy of The Showman.

But this column is about sports, not those bright lights of Hollywood that burnt me up so severely. So let’s see what’s going on in the sports world. Well, there was that basketball game last night. And baseball is underway. Just think, in only six months we’ll be talking about the World Series, the Fall Classic. It really makes you think, doesn’t it?

Let’s get back to the American pastime. A lot of people out there are carping because the Yankees and Braves keep buying championship teams. It’s not fair, they say. Let me tell you something. This is America! And we love capitalism! If somebody has the money to buy themselves a nice ballclub, I say God bless ‘em. If money was a bad thing, we’d all hate the Vanderbilts.

Man, those Lakers are something else, huh? I don’t know what it is, but they keep winning.
I think that’s about enough for today. I gotta do one of these five times a week for the next who knows how many weeks, and I don’t want to burn myself out too fast. Lord knows I did that the first time around. So until tomorrow, this is The Showman saying good night, and you know I love you.