Filming for Puppy Bowl VIII begins today in New York City. Last year's Puppy Bowl drew nearly 10 million viewers for Animal Planet. If puppies and football make such a great combination, maybe Animal Planet needs to look into some other puppy sports.

The hockey Puppy Cup could go on for 7 days, but it might be a bit dangerous to give all those puppies sticks and put them on ice. Tennis' Puppledon would no doubt be cute with all the British-accented barking, but no puppy would be able to pass the dress code. The Tour de Puppy would certainly be dragged down by all the doping accusations. And as much as dogs love cars, no one is going to tune in for the messes made on a PuppieCar track.

The event with the best chance for success is probably PuppyMania. Taking a page from the originator of sports-entertainment, PuppyMania would boggle the mind with the cuteness of the 24-dog Puppy Rumble. Only one puppy would emerge victorious from the dreaded Cage Match. Naturally, the closing number could be the ever-popular Wag Team Championship Match.

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From page 5 of the June 6, 1882, edition of Atlanta's The Weekly Constitution:

To prove that was no aberration, from page 3 of the September 2, 1885, edition of the Dublin Post:

It's official! The citizens of Dublin, Georgia, have always been bat-shoot crazy.

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True story: a man has died in a one-car accident in New Orleans. The man's name was Lance Williams, and he was found dead in the Desire neighborhood of New Orleans after his car left the road and struck a rigid utility pole. According to investigators, speed was an issue.

Punchline: Mr. Williams was known to drive one-handed; he had a police record as a serial masturbator. He had been arrested multiple times for public indecency, his latest as recently as March 23. Reportedly, he liked to drive up to women and pleasure himself from the driver's seat of his car.

If the New Orleans Times-Picayune hadn't run this story last Monday, I would have sworn that it was an April Fool's joke. Though the facts in this case are pretty hard to swallow, to have made jokes about this man's death would have been in bad taste. Let this be a lesson, kids: keep your eyes on the road and your hands off the stick shift, or you might find you've made a big mess of yourself.

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Pee-wee Herman is making a comeback with a new HBO special. The last time Pee-Wee had an HBO special was 1981, and it led to Pee-wee's Big Adventure -- the first DVD I ever bought -- and eventually to Pee-wee's Playhouse. I note this because a recent article about this event in my local newspaper omits the fact that Pee-wee Herman has been a Pee-wee hermit since 1991 because of an arrest for public indecency.

I didn't have a blog in 1991, but if I did, I know I would have made fun of Pee-wee's plight. He was arrested for masturbating in an adult theater, a one-time blight on society since virtually eradicated by the internet. That negative exposure led to the regrettable but probably necessary end of his children's television show. It was an unfortunate climax to his career.

I always enjoyed the antics of Pee-wee Herman, and I'm excited for a new round of Pee-Wee Herman madness, or as I will from here out call it, the second coming of Pee-Wee Herman.

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Someone should have told me that David Hasselhoff was getting a "reality" show on A&E called, appropriately enough, The Hasselhoffs. The series premiered with the episode "Hoff the Record" yesterday, and showcases David shepherding his daughters into the music business. I'm sure that the show will be a big hit. In Germany.

So now that it is clear that my childhood Hollywood icons are selling out their "lives" for another shot at televised fame, who else should I expect to open the doors to their wacky family foibles? Hulk Hogan, Mr. T, Scott Baio, Stephen Segal, and now David Hasselhoff have fallen for the sirens' call. Who's next?

• Harry Anderson (Night Court) in Harry on the Outside?
• Catherine Bache (Dukes of Hazzard) in Baby Got Bache?
• Dave Coulier (Full House) in Coulier Than You?
• Ted Dansen (Cheers) in Dansen with the Stars?
• Emilio Estevez (Breakfast Club) in A Polished Sheen?
• Lou Ferrigno (Incredible Hulk) in Should I Stay or Should I Ferrigno?
• Richard Grieco (Booker) in It's All Grieco to Me?
• Pamela Hensley (Buck Rogers) in Fox in the Hensley House?
• Kathy Ireland (Sports Illustrated) in Ireland Eyes are Smiling?
• Don Johnson (Miami Vice) in Sonny Side Up?
• William Katt (Greatest American Hero) in The Katt in the Hat?
• Joey Lawrence (Gimme a Break!) in Laying Down the Lawrence?
• Ralph Macchio (Karate Kid) in Maccio, Macchio, Man?
• Leonard Nimoy (Star Trek) in Leonard Long and Prosper?
• Jerry O'Connell (My Secret Identity) in Oh, Jerry Art Thou?
• Bronson Pinchot (Perfect Strangers) in A Little Pinchot Goes a Long Way?
• Randy Quaid (National Lampoon's Vacation) in Quaid-y as a Fox?
• Judge Reinhold (Fast Times at Ridgemont High) in Lest Ye Be Judge'd?
• Ricky Schroeder (Silver Spoons) in Schroeder the Load?
• Alan Thicke (Growing Pains) in In the Thicke of It?
• Blair Underwood (L.A. Law) in Fresh Blair?
• Dick Van Patten (Eight is Enough) in Van Patten Down the Hatches?
• Lisa Whelchel (Facts of Life) in Any Whelchel Way but Lisa?
• Xuxa (Xuxa, pronounced "shue-sha") in Shopping for Xuxa?
• Tina Yothers (Family Ties) in Yothers and Sisters?
• Stephanie Zimbalist (Remington Steele) in Last but not Zimbalist?

Never mind. I don't want to know. I won't watch anyway.

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The Times-Herald reports that the Newnan police department is adding to it's repertoire of offbeat crime fighting techniques by hiring a talking golf cart.

You may recall that earlier this year, the Newnan police apprehended a suspect thanks to the timely assistance of a psychic. (Nevermind that the charges were eventually dropped due to lack of evidence. Damn the courts for not recognizing psychic evidence!) Now Police Chief Buster Meadows welcomes Officer Auto to the force. While I applaud his attempt at equal opportunity employment, I'm not so sure that this is the right pace to set for the force.

Officer Auto -- if that is it's real name -- is a cast off from the Department of Defense. There must be plenty of automobiles looking for work in this down economy. Couldn't we do better than Uncle Sam's lemons? Even Chrysler got a bailout, but we got stuck with a used golf cart?

This rookie is supposed to be assigned to a crack detail that will visit locak elementary schools. But it turns out that the upgrades that give Officer Auto its voice were paid for by donations from drug dealers. This new cop hasn't even hit the streets yet, and he's already on the take! We certainly don't need that kind of moral corrosion dropping by our students' classrooms to give them a lift. Officer Auto? More like Speed buggy!

I say it's time we take back the streets, and give Officer Auto the boot! Let's put the brakes on this situation before it can gain traction in our community.

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Today the West Georgia radio newsreader informed me that a local group was joining efforts in "tracking where sea turtles go on the internet." Isn't it just like people to harass those poor turtles who were minding their own business? Just because they have shells doesn't mean that we need to climb all over their backs.

It seems to me that those turtles should be allowed to go wherever they want so long as they are old enough. While I don't think it's appropriate for confused li'l sea turtles to go surfing for pron, I can certainly understand why they might want to hit Wikipedia to study the "jumping the shark" phenomenon. Some of the more advanced turtles may want to take an online course to upgrade to sea++ turtles.

Why can't those turtles be left alone to follow their own hopes and desires? What do we care if they are trying to emerge from their shells via seaHarmony.com? What business of ours is it if they want to reconnect with old friends on Facebeak?

I say let those turtles be! At the very least, they may be the last significant of users content with the download speed of dial-up internet connections, and that's got to count for something.

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I was really pulling for Pyro in today's 134th running of the Kentucky Derby. However, Pyro was unable to catch fire after being snuffed by other runners right out of the gate. This is two consecutive bad races for Pyro, who appears to have burned out after scorching the field with blazing speed earlier in his career. (I'm sorry for all that, really I am.)

Other sad news was the euthanization of the filly Eight Belles following the race for two leg fractures. Ironically, "eight bells" is nautical slang for the end of a ship's watch shift and is used by sailors as a euphemism for death. Someone probably should have told this to the filly's parents.

The moral to this Kentucky Derby is be very, very careful what you name your horse.

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Lois, your boyfriend, Superman, just gave you chocolates and a card. Superman, a man who can generate enough pressure to fabricate diamonds from raw coal, use x-ray vision to find undiscovered gold deposits, and swim to the ocean's greatest depths to recover natural pearls, gives his girlfriend chocolates and a card. Worse yet, Superman, a man whose brain works faster than a computer, who has matched wits and won against Brainiac, the universe's smartest supervillain, who has saved countless lives through the force of his own will alone, couldn't even be bothered to take the time to think of a better inscription for the card than "Be my valentine from Superman."

That expression on Lois' face isn't happiness. And there's a reason that Superman is rushing out that window. He may be super, but he's still just a man.

The best part of all of this? For Valentine's Day, Superman gave Lois the Schaff's.

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It almost seems a requirement to follow a blog posting about choking with an entry about chickens.

It was brought to my attention that chickens are gaining ground on dogs and cats in the pecking order of pets in America. You can now order your own pet chicks via the internet at sites such as mypetchicken.com. (I think it's amusing that they have a shopping cart that lets me put items in a "basket." It reminds me that I should not buy all of my chicken related supplies from them alone. Think of the consequences should they make a mistake and lay an egg with my order. Boy, would they have egg on their faces!)

I don't understand this upswing in poultry popularity. Even my father is now raising chickens in his backyard. He spends half his day running around like a... well, you know, tending to his peep, which is apparently the word for a group of chickens. What does he get for it in the end? Nothing but aches and pains. (After all, he's no spring chicken.) It's hardly a cheep hobby either.

Personally, I think this trend is for the birds. I blame this cuckoo fad on advertising, which places a premium on the sex appeal of chicks in our society, especially the size of their breasts and thighs. It raises my hackles to think that someone might prefer a fowl hen over an impeccable puppy as a best friend. Chicken soup for the soul morally can't be made from a processed pet! If this trend isn't reversed mid-flight, we could have entire generations counting on chickens before they're hatched. And that's a recipe for disaster.

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