SPOKANE, Wash. -- Washington State coach Bill Doba and his assistants think they have figured out a way to stop No. 1 Southern California.

"We agreed the best place to attack 'em is in the tunnel before they get out on that field. At least that way, Reggie doesn't have as much room to run around, see, and we can corral him in there," Doba said of Reggie Bush, USC's all-everything tailback, as Washington State prepares to play on the Trojans' home turf.

The Trojans (7-0, 4-0 Pac-10) last season's national champions, have won 29 consecutive games, including 23 in a row at home and their last 19 Pac-10 contests.

"How do you beat them? Ask those other 29 teams they've just beaten," Doba said Tuesday in his weekly teleconference from Pullman.

since her show got canceled....

here's a great photo of tara reid:

graffiti from queens and beyond...

happy 50th birthday to the village voice...

here's 50 covers to look through. some favorites.

been meaning to get this on the blizzy...

love that he rocks a 2006 lamborghini and love that his manager is "big joe"



WASHINGTON - Police in the nation's capital say they're not convinced Cam'ron was the victim of a carjacking attempt.

The 29-year-old rapper, whose real name is Cameron Giles, was shot in both arms after leaving a party at a local night spot early Sunday morning. He said he was shot when someone tried to take his 2006 Lamborghini.

But The Washington Post quotes authorities as saying they're looking into several other potential motives. Among the theories: Cam'ron was shot at in an attempt on his life, he may have been attacked because of some personal beef, or he was shot at in a road-rage incident.

According to one official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, carjackers tend not to shoot a person first, but try to get them to leave the car.

Police also cite the fact that another vehicle with the rapper's friends was nearby when the shooting began. Investigators say a carjacker is unlikely to target his prey while others are around.

Cam'ron's manager, Big Joe, was quoted on Sunday as saying the shooting came as a result of a carjack attempt. He told the Post he feels the shooting "was a random act."

The rapper, whose hits include "Hey Ma" and "Oh Boy," will release his latest album, "Killa Season," in February. He also plans to release a film by the same name.

one of the greatest soccer players ever...

Football legend George Best remains "very seriously ill" despite the easing of internal bleeding he has been suffering, his consultant has said.

"Quite what will happen over the next 24 hours is difficult to say," Professor Roger Williams said.

more:

Playing alongside greats such as Denis Law and Bobby Charlton at Manchester United, Best's talent and showmanship made him a crowd and media favourite. He was dubbed "the fifth Beatle" for his long hair and good looks, but his extravagant celebrity lifestyle led to problems with gambling and alcoholism. Best often tells a story of a bellboy who entered his hotel room with breakfast in the early 1970s. Seeing Best drunk, in bed with the current Miss World, with a magnum of champagne and several thousand pounds of cash won from a nights gambling, the youth exclaimed, "George, where did it all go wrong?" In 1974, the 27-year-old Best was sacked by Manchester United for excessive drinking and persistent failure to attend training and matches. Over the next decade, Best drifted between several clubs including Fulham, Stockport County, Dunstable, Hibernian, Los Angeles Aztecs, San Jose Earthquakes and finally Bournemouth until he retired from the game in 1983 at the age of 37.

i think i'll go as muhammed ali this weekend...

this costumes were so disapointing back in the day. the box made it look so good and then when you got home and took out the plastic bib it was just heartbreaking. here's a great collection of all those budget costumes. and here's one that i found for someone else:

talk about it birdie....

Rarely do three well-known art collections come to the auction block in the same season. Even more rarely does one auction house get to sell them all.

Starting Tuesday, Christie's will offer several exceptional works, including a Toulouse-Lautrec painting of a red-haired model, one of the centerpieces of the recent exhibition "Toulouse-Lautrec and Montmartre" at the Art Institute of Chicago; a 1954 Rothko inspired by Matisse's 1911 "Red Studio"; and an abstract de Kooning from 1977 that has had only one owner: the artist's lawyer, Lee V. Eastman.

Experts at the auction house are trying not to gloat. They know all too well that memories are short and sellers fickle. Only 18 months ago, Sotheby's was in the limelight when it sold "Boy With a Pipe (The Young Apprentice)," a 1905 painting from Picasso's Rose Period, for $104.1 million, the highest price ever paid for a painting at auction. And six months from now, it could easily be Sotheby's that catches the next big fish.

But when the fall auction season opens on Tuesday night - the start of two weeks of back-to-back evening auctions - all eyes will be on Christie's. A combination of longstanding relationships, a strong team of experts and aggressive financing are the reasons.

cause i love tintin...

Fabien Cousteau, 37, has been involved in his family's business since he was a boy, sailing regularly with his father and grandfather to remote archipelagos on grand adventures to film the silent, undersea world. Now an oceanographer and film-maker in his own right, he has just completed work on a project that he believes would have made his grandfather proud.

Inspired by no less than the fictional comic character Tintin, Cousteau has devised and co-designed a submarine the size and shape of a great white shark. Encased within the shark, which is called Troy, Cousteau has for the first time been able to swim with great whites and film them without being confined within a submerged steel cage.

another one of these tonight....

can't wait to watch this one at the greatest hockey bar in town, kettle of fish. barry, how's about a pre-game ranger report?

congrats to the sox...

sort of could care less, but i'm happy for the south side. the cubs fans' head must be ready to explode.

A confrontation erupted Tuesday at a Williamsburg synagogue that has been at the center of a long and bitter feud for control of the Satmar Hasidic community.

At least one person was injured in a faceoff between hundreds of members of two opposing factions at Congregation Yetev Lev D'Satmar. Some Hasids complained that they were roughed up by cops while praying, something police denied.

Police had to separate several hundred members of the factions inside and outside the synagogue at 152 Rodney St.

Police estimated the crowd ranged anywhere from 500 to more than 1,000.

Police eventually restored order, and many of the members of the faction from upstate New York retreated to a nearby tent where they have been praying.

don't step to artest...

In my world
All I got is my fam
Important to live right by them
Do right by them
Support 'em
Don't abort 'em
Focus focus
But sometimes strangers think I'm hocus-pocus
'Cause I'm in the league
Like I won't Carlesimo choke 'em
Throw 'em, ice pick 'em, poke 'em
For starting problems
Then my dreams are smoking
Slowly leaving my mind
'Cause all I'm thinking is respect
When strangers get out of line.
- Ain't Easy, Part I, by Ron Artest



INDIANAPOLIS - An hour after igniting a brawl at The Palace at Auburn Hills by confronting a
Detroit Pistons fan who threw a beverage at him,
Indiana Pacers forward Ron Artest settled into the team plane, pulled out his BlackBerry and began writing the rap song that he says changed his life.

"It took me about 10 or 15 minutes to get it down," he says of the opening verses to Ain't Easy, Part I. "It allowed me to put my feelings into words, to calm myself down."

Eleven months later, Artest maintains he has undergone a renaissance after serving the NBA's stiffest non-drug-related suspension (73 games), forfeiting $5.4 million in salary and being sentenced to 60 hours of community service and a $250 fine for pleading no contest to misdemeanor assault and battery charges. And after ballooning at one point to 284 pounds.

When he and the Pacers open the regular season in Orlando on Nov. 2, Artest, 25, promises he will be a much-improved player, a more generous teammate and a wiser man.

andre's favorite new joint gets killed by the times...

CONFUSING the point of a restaurant with the mission of a "Saturday Night Live" skit, Ninja New York deposits you in a kooky, dreary subterranean labyrinth that seems better suited to coal mining than to supping. You are greeted there by servers in black costumes who ceaselessly bow, regularly yelp and ever so occasionally tumble, and you are asked to choose between two routes to your table.

The first is described by a ninja escort as simple and direct. The second is "dark, dangerous and narrow," involving a long tunnel and a drawbridge that descends only when your escort intones a special command, which he later implores you to keep secret.

I recommend a third path: right back out the door. Granted, you will be denied the sating of any curiosity about what a $3.5 million design budget permits in the way of faux stone walls, make-believe gorges and mock torches. You will forgo an iota of modest amusement.

But you will be spared an infinitely larger measure of tedium, a visually histrionic smorgasbord of undistinguished food and a discordant bill that can easily exceed $100 a person with tax, tip and drinks.

eight years ago today...

26 Oct 1997 Basketball great Charles Barkley is charged with aggravated battery and resisting arrest after throwing 20-year-old man Jorge Lugo through a plate glass window in an Orlando, Florida dance club. Barkley later tells reporters: "I regret we weren't on a higher floor."

Barkley said Jorge Lugo, 20, threw a glass of ice at him and three women sitting with him for no reason and he was only protecting himself. Police said the athlete chased Lugo outside Phineas Phogg's bar and threw him into the window.

vader made of butter...

no brothers on the 'stros...

HOUSTON Oct 25, 2005 — Joe Morgan worries about the face of baseball. Watching the World Series, the Hall of Famer is troubled by what he sees. His old team, the Houston Astros, is down 2-0 to the Chicago White Sox, but it's not their lineup that concerns Morgan. It's their makeup.

The Astros are the first World Series team in more than a half-century with a roster that doesn't include a single black player.

ah the legends of western maryland...

MOUNT NEBO, Md., Oct. 24 -- There's a new hunting legend in the mountains of Western Maryland.

Born to the woods, she's 4 1/2 feet tall and 8 years old, with a shock of light brown hair and a steady trigger finger that put two bullets into a black bear's chest cavity Monday, according to her and her father and granduncle, who were hunting with her. State officials backed the claim by Sierra Stiles and credited her with the first kill of Maryland's second bear season since hunting the animals resumed after a half-century ban.

the sneakers game is a favorite....

HOUSTON, Oct. 25 - As night crept into morning, Paul Konerko could sense what would happen. Even the longest game in World Series history was bound to end eventually, and the winner of Game 3 would have a huge psychological lift.

"If they're going to walk us off," Konerko, the Chicago White Sox first baseman, said he thought to himself, "that's a big momentum shift going into tomorrow night."

A walk-off victory in the first World Series game ever played in Texas would not have given the Houston Astros the series lead. But it would have vaulted them back into it and dealt a body blow to the White Sox. It could have happened, too, if only the Astros had managed a big hit.

Instead, it was a former Astro, the reserve infielder Geoff Blum, who played the hero for the White Sox. Blum's line-drive homer to the right field corner in the 14th inning carried the White Sox to a 7-5 victory and the brink of their first World Series title since 1917.

for mac-fu....

this is from a college football site, every day should be saturday, and it was about the college football teams (that are not the one you root for) that deserve respect. miami was number two to penn state, but i loved the explination. also loved vilma. respect.



Miami Hurricanes. They came from nowhere in the span of ten years and brought ass-shaking, ball-spiking, camo-wearing theatrics to college football, all backed up with airtight skill and speed like college football had never seen before.

If Penn State was class, Miami was all ass: ass shaking in the endzone as Randall Hill almost singlehandedly created the term excessive celebration, ass getting beat by their demonic defensive lines, and ass disappearing into the distance on an INT return or perfectly thrown play-action post route against your team.

Academics and integrity? Who needs that when South Beach is calling and Luther Campbell’s on the phone? The best gold-chain wearing bullies college football ever had. They kicked your ass once, admit it–and you liked it.

love the snake...

jake the snake has one of the top mugshot photos in the n.f.l. every time they showed it on sunday during the giants/broncos game i loved it. i wonder if he's as pleased with it as i am?

my new favorite blizzy...

sumo freaking rocks. me and andre once placed dollar bets on sumo matches. more fun than you might think actually.

pirate report....

Pirates have seized a cargo ship off the coast of Somalia, local officials have confirmed.

They said the Maltese-registered ship, Pagania, was attacked late on Wednesday as it sailed from South Africa to Europe with a cargo of iron ore.

The hijackers are reportedly demanding a $700,000 (£394,000) ransom for the release of the ship and its crew, all believed to be Ukrainian.

More than 20 ships have been seized or attacked in the area since March.

The International Maritime Bureau - which records such attacks - has recently advised ships "to keep as far away as possible from the Somali coast".

A UN-chartered ship carrying food aid to tsunami victims in northern Somalia, the MV Semlow, was released this month, after being held by hijackers for 100 days.

for the nascar fans...

Sunday afternoon, in Nascar's Subway 500, Rocky Ryan will be responsible for protecting a millionaire driver and a $100,000 car. If he does his job well, his team gets a chance at the race's top prize, a minimum of $139,490. If he makes a mistake, people can be seriously hurt or even killed as a result.

For his efforts, he will earn about $750.

Mr. Ryan is a spotter, Nascar's version of aerial reconnaissance. Spotters stand high above the track, watching the race and advising their drivers via radio on the positions of competitors and any potential danger. During a race a driver might hear on his radio a sequence like "Three wide, three wide, three wide, clear high!" That's his spotter telling him he's one of three cars running side by side, and that there's space to pass the car in front of him on the outside.

As Nascar tightens rules to protect drivers, their view of the race around them is increasingly obscured by safety equipment. As a result, races are getting tighter and crashes are up, according to spotters and drivers. So drivers rely more on their spotters, teammates a mile and a half away with binoculars and a walkie-talkie.

For all their work making an inherently dangerous sport safer, spotters can feel like spare parts. Top Nascar drivers earn as much as $10 million a year. Even pit-crew members earn as much as $100,000 a year. Yet a spotter charged with protecting both investments can be had for $500 to $1,000 a race.

25 most shocking moments in film...