I came across this video today – a Costa Rican sideline reporter named Viviana Angulo at a soccer game getting a little…less than professional.  It’s a faux-pas at the best of times for a reporter to ask an athlete for an autograph.  But asking for one on her bare ass?  That’s…unusual.

     This reminds me a lot of Mexican TV sideline reporter Ines Sainz, who was famously “harrassed” by players while working the sidelines at a New York Jets practice.  (I say “harrassed” in quotation marks because the complaint was filed not by Sainz herself, but by some other lady who happened to be in the vicinity.)  Sainz showed up to the Jets practice dressed like this:

     So that’s what the Spanish-language sideline reporters are up to.  Now, here’s what their English-language, North American counterparts are doing:

     Their sideline reporters are in tube tops and tight jeans, and sometimes even less than that!  Ours are in windbreakers and parkas.  What gives, North America?

 Richard Brooks

 Jill Hennessy

      Carey Lowell

 Alana de la Garza

 Annie Parisse

 Elisabeth Rohm

 Angie Harmon

     For those of you not redirected here from our Doc and Woody poll, this is in honour of the Complete Series Law & Order box set announced for release November 8th, at the low low cost of $700!  104 discs, 7 terrific assistant DAs!

     This post is, in reality, a complaint against Major League Baseball and their policy of allowing NO amazing baseball plays to make their way onto the internets.  You would think that baseball, America’s pastime, would want to reach as many young fans as possible in order to keep their fan base relevant in the years to come.  And I think the best way to do that is to put the amazing highlights from this beautiful game on youtube, so those plays can make their way around the world via computers, for the consumption of young’uns.

     But that’s just me.  The NFL does the same thing, but I get that – they are a corporate juggernaut that has the power to force tuning to the NFL network, or to nfl.com, and their fans are there for life.  Baseball, on the other hand, is less likely to make mlb.com a destination website just so people can see amazing baseball plays.  Just sayin’.

     That brings me to triple plays.  There were TWO amazing triple plays in Major League Baseball last week alone.  I would definitely have put both videos up on this blog, had that been possible.  Of course it isn’t, and you would have seen the “this video disabled at the request of major league baseball” message when you tried to play it. 

     In the minor leagues, on the other hand, we get to SEE the cool plays.  And this triple play was one of the coolest in a long time – far cooler, I might add, than those in the majors.  Did Jed Lowrie start that Red Sox triple play by bouncing the ball off his head?  I don’t think so!

     I realize that the current popularity of vampire movies owes most of its momentum to the awful Twilight series – and True Blood and The Vampire Diaries are just indicative of the trend.  But before Twilight, vampire movies were a little less…lame.  Not to say the Underworld series was cinematic excellence, by any means, but it was far superior to the chaste, sexually-frustrated pale-faced fare that came after.

     Both series have some cool action sequences and a reasonably engaging battle between werewolves and vampires.  But the big difference is, of course, the star.  Where Twilight relies on the bland, vaguely-pretty-but-emotionless Kristin Stewart to carry the films as a constantly apathetic damsel-in-distress, the Underworld series had Kate Beckinsale kicking ass herself, doing an actual acting job, and rather than being vacuous, average-looking and devoid of personality, she was smoking hot, tough as nails, and clad in tight black leather.

     Beckinsale remains gorgeous, and clad in tight black leather, in the upcoming Underworld 4, due out in January.  Really, this whole post was just an excuse to put up this trailer…