BYB Express

It's Friday again and you know what that means - it's time for the BYB Express. Don't think of it as getting less blog. Just think of it getting more time to pretend you care about soccer.

F My Life Moment of the Day
Today, after sitting for hours at my desk, my legs fell asleep. When I got up to go to the bathroom on my break, I couldn't walk properly and leaned against things so I wouldn't fall over. My supervisor then came over and started lecturing me about being drunk at work. FML

Wal Mart Person of the Day

Two in the pink

How Chip Brown stole the Big 12 spotlight
Richard Deitsch/SI.com MEDIA CIRCUS

He has covered Bush Family politics, the Branch Davidian standoff, a defamation trial against Oprah Winfrey, and even wrote a front-page story for The Dallas Morning News on the physical makeover of Jerry Jones. But only one story has given Chip Brown a national profile. "The Big 12 realignment," says Brown, "is by far the biggest I've ever broken."

In what might be the first (but won't be the last) example of a fan-based Web site leading the coverage of a national sports story, Orangebloods.com, a Rivals-owned site that focuses on the University of Texas football and recruiting, owned the Big 12 realignment story, starting with its June 3 report that the Pac-10 planned to invite six Big 12 teams to join its conference.

"Its pretty simple: Chip dominated the story beginning to end," said Pete Thamel, the national college football writer for The New York Times. "He's a first-class reporter, always has been, and he used his connections to keep the whole country on a string for two weeks. It was impressive wire-to-wire dominance."

Brown joined Orangebloods.com (he has an ownership stake in the site) in August 2008 after a two-decade career as a newspaper reporter for the Associated Press and The Dallas Morning News. With the Big 12's television contract negotiation scheduled for 2011, Brown said he sensed that some conference shifting might be in the offing. "There was talk at the BCS meetings earlier this year that the Pac-10 might want to do a non-conference football scheduling alliance with the Big 12," Brown said. "The Pac-10 also had a major TV deal with Fox up for renegotiation in 2011. The more I looked into it, the more I found. I think I was looking in the right place at the right time and was able to build my base of sources as the story went on. I literally did nothing else for 12 days except report this story, including miss time with my family and my radio show (Brown co-hosts a daily sports show on an FM station in Austin)."

For the rest of the story click here.

Well I'm certainly glad to hear Chip Brown has a serious media background because I was going to be grossly disappointed if he was just some busy body UT fan. Disappointed one, in the legitimate media he whipped on getting this story (and getting it right) and disappointed in myself for doing jokes about a story where a dude was whacking in in a cemetary while this blogger is blowing the doors of college football's biggest story in recent memory. So good job Chip. You keep up with the big time stuff in East Texas and I'll worry about imposters crashing high school basketball and dude's whacking it in cemetaries.

Texts From Last Nite Moment of the Day!

(785): Once you realized you couldn't finish the 30 you started walking down the street and leaving a beer in everyone's mailbox.

Painter misspells Wis. town's name on tower
AP

STOUGHTON, Wis. - A painter working on a Wisconsin water tower left behind one big typo. The mistake had Stoughton residents scratching their heads. The new paint job had the town's name without the second T. It was spelled "S-T-O-U-G-H-O-N," rather than "S-T-O-U-G-H-T-O-N."

It turns out a painter from Neumann Co. in Romeoville, Ill., had the correct information but simply forgot the second T when painting the 6-foot letters.

And the name was spelled right on one side of the tower. It's just the side facing town that's wrong.

Painter Mike Sandmire says it was the first time he had made such an error. He added that it would be easily fixed with a new coat of paint.

Is Stoughton even that big of a town that they need to fix this? In fact, why do water towns always have to have something written on them anyway? To tell travelers where they are? The city limit signs should do that. I know I feel sorry for the poor bastard that has to climb up there and repaint the things, especially with the whole town knowing you screwed up. I bet the neighborhood kids go screw with him while he does it.



On this day in…
1947 – The Diary of Anne Frank is published.
1949 – Long-Haired Hare, starring Bugs Bunny, is released in theaters.
1950 – The Korean War begins with the invasion of South Korea by North Korea.
1981 – Microsoft is restructured to become an incorporated business in its home state of Washington.

Plus, singer Carly Simon was born in 1945, 'Good Times' actor Jimmie "J.J." Walker, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor was born in 1954, chef and drunk Anthony Bourdain was born in 1956 and center Dikembe Mutombo was born in 1966. But today we're highlighting comedian Ricky Gervais who was born in 1961. He's a done a lot of things that I'm luke warm about but I do sort of enjoy his current HBO show where he belittles one of his friends for 30 minutes. Here's a clip.



Al Gore Accused of Sexual Assault
By Tiffany McGee/People.com

An Oregon masseuse filed a complaint last year accusing Al Gore of sexual abuse following a nearly three-hour massage session at an upscale Portland hotel in 2006, reports the Portland Oregonian.

The alleged incident took place at the Hotel Lucia Oct. 24, after the masseuse, 54, was called by the hotel to administer a late night massage to a "VIP" client, who was later identified as Gore, 62, the former U.S. Vice President, senator from Tennessee and Nobel Prize-winning advocate for the environment.

An Oregon masseuse filed a complaint last year accusing Al Gore of sexual abuse following a nearly three-hour massage session at an upscale Portland hotel in 2006, reports the Portland Oregonian.

The alleged incident took place at the Hotel Lucia Oct. 24, after the masseuse, 54, was called by the hotel to administer a late night massage to a "VIP" client, who was later identified as Gore, 62, the former U.S. Vice President, senator from Tennessee and Nobel Prize-winning advocate for the environment.

The woman, who says she notified two friends following Gore's alleged groping, also saved the black pants she wore after discovering stains following the session. Since the alleged incident, the masseuse says she has been traumatized, has trouble sleeping at night, and that her work has been "more stressful and frightening since the incident." She is also seeing a specialized counselor.

I guess I'm kind of burying the lead a bit with the Al Gore sexual assault story but it just seems too surreal to be true. I would have never had this guy pegged as a horndog. It was different with John Edwards. I knew that guy would squirrely from the day I first laid eyes on him but not Al Gore. But with his marriage ending only a couple weeks before maybe this story is just an inconvenient truth. Of course I still ain't gonna be mad at him. How did this lady expect to dole out a massage and not make with the happy ending. That's just bad massage etiquette.

P.S. - I wish Gore's incident actually went like this.