Weekend Wrap-Up

It has been reported that Salma Hayek (top) is not only pregnant but she is also engaged. Um, this won't exactly do wonders for our relationship. See, if she would have just been patient, I was only a couple of years away from asking her if she wanted to go out for a snow cone or something. But there's only so much I'm going to put up with. Do you know that I even actually sat through one of her movies one time? Well, actually that might have been Penelope Cruz now that I think about it, but still. According to zap2it.com, her fiance's name is Francois-Henri Pinault and he is "the CEO of PPR, a luxury goods firm that owns Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent, Stella McCartney, Balenciaga, a french department store and national music chain". Aw, c'mon man! Now how am I supposed to compete with that? And how in the world does someone own Stella McCartney? Salma, consider yourself kicked to the curb!

WWE Diva Ashley Massaro will be on the cover of the April edition of Playboy, which would be a bigger deal if 1) anybody knew who she was and 2) if she hadn't already posed for them a couple of years ago under a different name. She has recently done autograph signings in different cities, including the one in the second photo above, where someone was thoughtful enough to bring their kid along-- to a Playboy signing. Ladies and Gentlemen, once again, I present to you: Wrestling Fans!!!

I guess everyone is happy now that this year's bad guy, Antonella Barba, was voted off American Idol. I will miss the controversy, but she was so bad that she had to go. Maybe now she can go on a national tour, posing in different fountains around the country. Can you imagine: "Antonella Barba appearing live in the Kiener Plaza Fountain in downtown St. Louis Friday evening at 7PM!" They would have to shut the streets down. She can forget about a singing career though. She might as well take that offer from Girls Gone Wild while it is still on the table. As it is, the girl is only two years away from appearing in Barely Legal Magazine and doing porn with real lighting. You better grab that cash now!

(As I am writing this, I am listening to Wrestling Observer Live. A guy just called in to ask "When was the last time someone wrestled an animal?". I present to you once again: Wrestling Fans!)

The "Big Cat" Ernie Ladd passed away this weekend. After he finished playing in the NFL, he also had a successful career in wrestling. He was a little bit before my time so I never got to see him wrestle except for a few old clips, but I always read about him. He was one of the first blacks to work behind the scenes in the front office of a wrestling company, first for Mid-South Wrestling (my favorite league as a kid) and then for the World Wrestling Federation. He is also a member of the WWE Hall of Fame. He died at the age of 68 from cancer. It almost seems like a rarity when a wrestler makes it over the age of 50.

As I posted earlier, wrestler Bad News Brown also died last week. He was also a judo champion and was known as a legitimate tough guy. He was involved in one of the legendary stories of wrestling that I've heard a few times. As the story goes, the wrestlers were overseas somewhere and traveling on a tour bus. Andre The Giant (one of the biggest and strongest wrestlers who nobody would mess with in those days) was telling some racial jokes and Brown took offense to it and was ready to fight. He told the bus driver to stop the bus and challenged Andre to get off the bus and fight him. Andre wanted no part of it and wouldn't get out. He ended up apologizing. Brown later said something to the effect of he didn't know if he could beat up Andre, but he was going to find out. The funniest part of the story was that when Brown was preparing to fight, he took off the earrings that he often wore and reached to put them in his gym bag. When he reached into the bag, Hulk Hogan's scary ass thought Brown was reaching for a gun so he jumped and hid under a seat.