8 APR 03: ORANGE YOU UPSET

It's a conspiracy, I tell you. Orange-colored cleaners are all the rage in stores. Orange traffic cones are put up at road construction sites. And now those cheatin' refs have robbed my beloved Kansas Jayhawks, by giving the men's basketball title to a bunch of guys in ORANGE shirts!

(It's only fitting, you know - since orange is the color worn by so many prison inmates....)

It was a night of sulking at my workplace, after Kansas missed a three-point shot at the siren and lost to Syracuse. I wore a K.U. cap to work to show my support - but wound up symbolizing the final score by plopping an orange on top of it at my computer.

(I peeled open that orange during the night, but I simply couldn't bring myself to eat any of it. I'm like the Iraqi Information Minister right now -- still in the denial stage.)

I don't call the Syracuse teams the Orange-MEN, by the way. That's SO sexist. They were the Orange Persons for awhile -- but now I borrow from the Trix commercials. They're simply the "Orange Orange."

Did you see "gentleman" Coach Roy Williams' post-game interview with CBS's Bonnie Bernstein? He uttered a normally-bleeped expletive, when asked about the open job at North Carolina. Maybe Williams should learn a lesson from Atlantic Coast Conference coaches - and have the assistants answer the questions on radio and TV.

To make things worse, Coach Williams pandered to Bonnie Bernstein when she asked a follow-up question about North Carolina. He said, "Somebody in the truck is telling you in your ear to ask that question...." Can't he tell Bonnie Bernstein apart from Jill Arrington?

To be a "fair and balanced" journalist, I had a short clip of the Kansas-Syracuse final in the works for the 6:00 a.m. news - but I had to drop it for time, because of a live George W. Bush-Tony Blair news conference. Sometimes I regret dropping news stories. This was NOT one of those times....

Let's see - what else has happened while I've been busy rooting for the Jayhawks and continuing spring cleaning?

+ Cascade Hills Baptist Church had a weekend sermon on "EGO - Edge God Out." Only the graphics on the screen misspelled "Edge" as "Egde!" This may show what they think of a worldly education.

+ WRCG Radio fired talk show host Doug Graham, before his planned resignation date. The bosses must think he's so conservative that he'll bring in Fort Benning tanks for a final sendoff.

(Doug Graham reportedly called my TV station, WTVM, to see if there are any openings for news anchors. After the negative things he said last fall about Cheryl Morgan and her husband, he'd do well to get a job filling the vending machines.)

+ The South Georgia Waves' opening home baseball game at Golden Park was rained out for the second night in a row. If it keeps raining like it has lately, that nickname actually might be fitting.