Where's My Magazine?

Just finished reading last week's issue of Sports Illustrated, and boy is my ass chapped. 130 pages in the mag and 55 of them are devoted to a special advertising section called "SI Tailgate Nation." Six and a half pages (counting generously) were devoted to baseball. Not sure about you, but for me, 55 pages of advertising section + 6.5 pages baseball content = trashcan fire.

I will admit, I don't read special advertising sections for precisely the same reason I don't stop to watch infomercials -- even if the subject matter is kind of entertaining (nothing better than a light blue suit and an unkempt mullet), you still come away feeling completely sleazy knowing that you just spent 15 minutes of your not-that-precious time tuning in to a commercial. Since I didn't read it, I suppose this little expose on tailgating could have been nothing short of thrilling, but I feel insulted just on principle here. Don't feed me this crap and call it journalism. I understand you have to advertise, but there are pages for that. Don't label half the actual "content" in your magazine an advertisement, or I'll stop subscribing faster than you can say "ESPN the Magazine." Yeah, that's right -- I said it. Without my $44.24 a year, the Time Warner empire is most certainly doomed!
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• Could it have been just a coincidence that on today, Talk Like a Pirate Day, on one city block during one 30-second period I saw a woman wearing an eyepatch and a man who was missing a foot whose (for lack of a better word) nub looked oddly like a peg leg?

• And speaking of coincidence, what are the chances that two guys named Chacin and Chacon would take the mound against one another twice in less than a month? For the record, Chacon won both matchups, and yes, I am quite annoyed at myself for pointing this out.

• You know what has to suck even more than tearing your Achilles' tendon? Tearing the same one again nine months later, which Ronald Curry did last night.

• Given that I have an ongoing campaign to point out all that's irritating about ESPN, I'm kind of trying to make a concerted effort not to link to ESPN.com unless I can't avoid it. And when the Worldwide Leader blows it out with a huge tribute to King Leo complete with an animation of him rocking back and forth in his seat, well...I can't help it.

• Ominous sign from ATL: the Hawks are bringing in free agent Anthony Grundy for a look. Has this once-proud franchise fallen so far that management is now looking to bring in players who very closely resemble grundle? That's embarassing.