The Dark Lord Awakens

Forget Kid Rock or the Undertaker. I am the original American Badass.

Why you ask? Because after having my flight out of Pittsburgh Friday cancelled as I got to the gate and no flights in the foreseeable future, I decide to rent a car and drive back...in a Nor'easter. My boss thought that I was nuts, but I didn't want to give these weather bastards the satisfaction.

When you make a drive like that in the middle of night, you learn a few things about yourself. I decided to jot some of my epiphanies at the dashboard light down to share with you.

That you can do the Fat Joe's Rockaway dance to "Sweet Home Alabama", while driving in an ice storm in the middle of the night and not crash your car and die.

That after seeing several posters of CW programming....upon further review... if I had a choice between blazing Lauren Graham (Mom from Gilmore Girls), Eric Durance (Lois Lane on Smallville) or Persia White (the hippie chick on Girlfriends)...the answer would be yes.

That commercial radio really, really sucks.

That anyone who calls into a Rock station at one in the morning during a nor'easter to requests "Rainy Days and Mondays" should be pummeled and shot dead in front of their families. And the DJ that acquiesces to the request should have a special place in hell reserved for them after they're publicly executed by stoning.

That the Band might have been a better band than the Stones.

That the fact that I just wrote that means that I'm officially middle-aged. The fact that I would rather see Norah Jones live than Jay-Z means whatever cool points I might have had are as shriveled up as my liver after last summer.

That I'm really starting to hate Hip-Hop. Not quite at the level of Oprah and Bill O'Reilly hating on Ludacris or Stanley Crouch's general hate for anything with a drum machine. But close. The Hip-Hop I grew up with was clever and creative. Now I have to listen to every Hip Hop station in three states play a hip hop cover of Patrick Swayze song? Who's next, David Soul? Don Johnson?

That at 3 in the morning in Carlisle, PA, I sing a better version of "You Are So Beautiful" than Joe Cocker but not quite as good as the originator, Billy Preston. I am deadly serious.

That I'm very close to getting my ghetto card revoked. And could care less.

That upon further review, I could really care less about the Jeter-A-Rod melodrama created by the New York Media. Or the drama created after Alex's interview on the FAN this week. Everything he said in the interview was on point. If he doesn't produce that Yankees don't win, the fans will want to run him out of town. Should he shut up? Probably. But he didn't say one thing that wasn't on point this week. The storm created after he praised Lou Piniella on Real Sports was a farce as well.

The real story should have been the amazing off-season Brian Cashman has had this winter. He unloads two over-the-hill curmodgeons and gets valuable chips back in return in each case. He signs the best pitcher available this off season (Barry Zito wishes he had Andy Pettitte's resume). All of this, without giving up any young prospects. I feel comfortable going into a series with Wang, Andy and Moose. Couldn't say that last year with Unit. All of this along with King George III essentially handing over the reins of power to Cash and his son-in-law Steve Swindal, these were the stories that should been probed into throughly this winter. Not whether or not Jeter not wanting to hang out with Alex anymore is going to affect his performance this year.

But in spite all of this, I wouldn't begrudge the man if he did an Eddie Murray this season with the press. But it'll never happen.

When do the games start to count?