BEVERLY HILLS (MI) — On the day when Wacko Jacko and Farah Fawcett both bit the big one, let us pause and reflect. Okay, enuf of that nonsense, on to the links:

— Jamal Richards’ We Fly High Ballers blog with some updates on UD recruiting targets Roy Marble, Jr., Anthony Fields, Josh Herbeck and Jordan Myrick:

http://www.freewebs.com/michiganballers/apps/blog/

— The Wall Street Journal on the dearth of basketball fundamentals in today’s crop of AAU players:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204621904574248282288269744.html

— Former Miami Redhawk pain-in-the-backside Michael Bramos is hoping to get a look from an NBA team:

http://www.daytondailynews.com/dayton-sports/miami-university-redhawks/redhawks-star-trying-to-land-spot-in-nba-177053.html

— If you’re like me you’ve probably gotten really tired of those Scott’s Money Blog pop-up ads that constantly appear all over the intrawebs. Yup, it’s a scam:

http://adage.com/digital/article?article_id=137587

— Nick Green of the Red Sox is lucky he didn’t get impaled by a shattered bat the other night, when the Sawx were facing UD’s own Craig Stammen. This is some scary stuff:

http://boston.redsox.mlb.com/media/video.jsp?mid=200906255224267&c_id=bos

— Natstown fans got a little tired of Red Sox followers taking over their stadium for the teams’ three game set this week. How to exact their revenge? Send Sox fans without tickets to a gay bar to watch the game:

http://www.sportingnews.com/blog/the_sporting_blog/entry/view/25938/did_nats_fans_send_sox_fans_to_gay_bars

Not that there is anything wrong with that, mind you.

— Here’s an in-depth look from YahooSports.com into the MLB maple bat problem:

http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news?slug=jp-maplebats050808

— Shaq to the Cavs! What a great trade! 10 years ago, maybe:

http://www.daytondailynews.com/dayton-sports/report-suns-trade-shaq-to-cavs-177043.html

— Didn’t watch much of the NBA draft, but I did hear the always classy Noo Yawkers booing the Knicks #1 pick, Jordan Hill. The Knicks’ fans problem with Hill: basically, that he isn’t Stephen Curry. Well, who the hell is?

— It’ll be interesting to see how Ricky Rubio, the 18 year old Spanish ball-handling sensation who was selected by the T-Wolves works out in The League. As this video can attest, Rubio was “Born to be Wild”:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12FOZsjWxwk

— I’ve always enjoyed reading Joe Posnanski’s stuff in Sports Illustrated. You know how you sometimes get a picture in your head of what a guy looks like? I figured Joe was a young skinny dude who grew up in Cleveland and now lives and writes in KC. Wrong! He’s middle aged, bald and big boned…and he’s got a great blog:

http://joeposnanski.com/JoeBlog/

— Excuse me, but what the hell is “unnatural sugar” anyways? The Chicago Tribune explains it all:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/health/chi-high-fructose-corn-syrup-25-jun25,0,7627724.story

— Who knew that George Lucas was clairvoyant? Six years before the release of “Star Wars” (and all those Star Wars action figures) Lucas described himself as “a toymaker who makes films”:

http://chud.com/articles/articles/19949/1/A-TOYMAKER-THAT-MAKES-FILM-GEORGE-LUCAS-INTERVIEWED-IN-1971/Page1.html

— Ever wonder how they cast those gawdawful reality TV shows? Now you know:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/chi-0625-realitytvtalentjun25,0,3440521.story

— What’s the number one program on TV now? Undoubtedly “Paid Programming” as local TV stations and even cable nets like CNBC on weekends fill their off hours with infomercials. Entertaining? No. Profitable? Hell yeah.

That’s it “From the Swamp.”
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