Cathy Taylor covered a story about odd (and unsettling) product recalls this morning, one of which was a recall of defective…ahem…”athletic cups” from the Under Armour Company.

Click here for the story.

Of all the things in the world to have a manufacturer’s defect.

I mean, come on. How hard is it to test a plastic cup?

Hell, if you give my son an aluminum baseball bat he’d be a very efficient “product tester” for the Under Armour company.  He works cheap too…..

Did you ever stop to think that for as challenging as it must be to PUT a band together, it must be equally as challenging to come with a cool name for your band.

It’s gotta be short….and memorable….and It should be a fun name….but not too fun…otherwise no one will take you seriously.  And it’s okay if it’s an edgy name, but it can’t be too edgy…..otherwise you’ll just end up with like 6 nerdy goth kids listening to your band……and no one wants that.

And, of course, it’s got to sound contemporary….but not too contemporary…because it’s gotta be timeless….just in case you and your buddies end up being as big as the Beatles, or whatever.

See what I mean?  It’s challenging.

All that said, here are 10 bands that get the award for “probably should’ve put a litttttle more thought into your name” 

10. Goo Goo Dolls (it’s either a baby with mushed up carrots all over its face or one of those ugly prizes you win at the state fair)
9. Blue Oyster Cult (sounds like a compound in Waco)
8. Jethro Tull (wasn’t he Ellie Mae’s cousin on the Beverly Hillbilles)
7. Travelling Wilburys (sounds dirty)
6. Steely Dan (IS Dirty)
5. Sniff N’ The Tears (sounds like a bad ventriloquist act),
4. Manfred Mann’s Earth Band (all you need is an appearance from Billy Mummy and you have bad episode of the old TV Show Lost In Space)
3. Fleetwood Mac (does it come with a sesame seed bun)
2. Supertramp (is it a Disney movie or a lady who’s been walking the streets for way too long?)

1. And for the worst band name of all time, the award goes to:  Mott The Hoople.

I know they named themselves after a book……but from what I recall……it wasn’t that great of a book to begin with.  Both parts together “Mott….The Hoople” remind me of a character name from that old TV show HR Puffenstuff …..and if you separate the names, the Mott part reminds me of applesauce…..and Hoople makes me think of the “Don’t squeeze the charmin” guy from those old TV commercials ………

Applesauce, toilet paper, and HR Puffenstuff aren’t exactly the hallmarks of rock n roll.  But fortunately, history judges a band by the music it makes and not by its name.  Because when you think about…..The Beatles isn’t really that great of a band name either…..but it didn’t seem to hurt them any.

The audio version of In Case You Wondered happens weekdays at 5:15 and 7:15 on 995 The Mountain

Nuggets win by 58!!!  Lead the series 3-1!!! I’m Mike Casey and I’m addicted to exclamation points!!!!!!!

Nothing against the Hornets….but how weak is it to make the playoffs and get blown out AT HOME by almost 60 points?

Like waving the tea bag at a cup of lukewarm tap water…THAT weak….

My advice to New Orleans?  Save the money on plane fair and have your ring-man throw in the towel….no need to make the trip to Denver on Wednesday.  This baby is OV-AH……

Did you see this story about Florida teachers posing for a calendar to raise funds for their school?

FL Teachers Use Sexy Calendar For Fundraising Efforts

(Undated)  –  A group of Florida teachers are taking it off for a good cause.  According to MyFoxOrlando.com, the educators are posing in a sexy calendar to raise money for cancer research.  Patrick Kile, who was diagnosed with tongue cancer in 2005, is the motivating force behind the project.  The 33-year-old Geometry teacher says he wanted to find a fun and creative way to help a worthy cause.  He adds, quote, “It’s for a good cause.  I went to the school board and spoke with the ethics director of human resources and he thought it was a great idea!” However, not everyone is on board with the fund raising efforts.  One concerned parent states, quote, “They need role models not sexy muscles.”  To date, Kile has sold 100 calendars at 20-dollars apiece.  His goal is to eventually sell one-thousand while raising ten-thousand-dollars for charity.

I’m all for raising funds for a worthy cause but how is it that every Tom, Dick and Harry on Wall Street can raise a billion bailout dollars just by screaming “too big to fail!  We’re too big to fail!” and a bunch of teachers have to cheesecake it up for a calendar in order to raise funds to support their school???

Perhaps there’s something WRONG with this picture? 

(Above) Casey gets “in gear” for the Courage Classic in July.

Yesterday afternoon I made the trip over to Campus Cycles to get myself geared up for the Courage Classic in July…. which is a bike event that benefits Children’s Hospital.

Now, I’m no cycling expert but I was feeling pretty good about myself until I had to start trying on bike shorts.  Have you had this experience before?  Wow…..talk about the great equalizer……

Bike shorts are made out of some high tech space age fiber that has two main purposes from what I can tell:  number 1 is to reduce friction and wind drag while riding, number 2 is to make your average guy look as BAD as humanly possible. 

What looked like a somewhat angular body earlier in the day, now looks like a bowl of really white jello covered in saran wrap …..the padding in the shorts is making it look like I stuffed two baloney sandwiches and a dozen donuts into the back and like I’m trying to pass myself off as Ron Jeremy in the front.

I never even knew I had a “trunk” before…and now there’s so much “junk” back there I feel like I should be in a Sir Mix A Lot video or something…..

And while there’s a certain “lifting” sensation to bike shorts that any guy my age can appreciate, this is more than offset by the fact that every single cheese product and every single beer I’ve ever had in my life is now hanging dangerously over the belt line of the shorts casting a disturbingly broad and wobbly spandex shadow on the ground that could cast a colony of ants into complete and total darkness. 

All of a sudden I’ve turned into an insecure 14 year old again…..standing in front of a dressing room mirror in bike shorts…just BEGGING for validation of some kind…….so I turn to Ned, the guy from Campus cycles who’s helping me gear up, and I say “Well….whaddya think, man?  Do these work or not?”

After turning his head slightly so as not to be struck blind right there on the spot, Ned said, “Uh…..honestly man…I’d really rather not comment……but on the upside, I don’t think it’s going to take you real long to shave your legs before the race….might want to pick up some sun screen while you’re here too….”

Damn you Lance Armstrong for turning bike shorts into a fashion statement….

There are open slots on my Courage Classic team if you’re interested……the great incentive to ride in front of me is not having to see me in bike shorts from behind……GO TEAM!

(Send me an email if you want to ride…I can wave the registration fee for you.)

On Monday, Cathy Taylor covered this story about Fairview High School in Boulder being evacuated due to a bomb scare which turned out to be the result of “geocaching”. 

What is “geocaching”?  Basically a high tech treasure hunt using GPS systems to unearth buried trinkets.  I guess it’s all the rage these days…who knew?

I believe when Cathy covered the story I made a semi-snarky comment along the lines of “so…Geo-caching is a high tech treasure hunt with really lame treasure?  Man….I hope I have that kind of time in my life someday….!

Several Mountain listeners took me to task on these comments (very nicely, I might add)…including this note from Jackie in Lakewood:
Answer: Hi Mike, First, I love listening to you in the morning. I wanted to comment on Geocaching. I understand the comment about the drive to get to the cache, but the big things are spending time with friends and family, getting outdoors and working together on a mission. Kids really enjoy the hunt for treasure and those times spent together can’t be replaced. When visiting out of state it has been a way for us to find areas we wouldn’t normally have gone and have found some beautiful and awesome areas off the beaten path. However, I wouldn’t hide one on school or government property. Keep doing what you do! Jackie

Mike’s Response:

Hi Jackie-

Honestly, I didn’t know what Geocaching was until Cathy covered the story this morning and I guess in the context of this practice causing a school evacuation I may have come off as a bit more jaded on this topic than I meant to.

Anything that could keep my kids occupied for 7 hours sounds like a pretty worthwhile pursuit to me!

As you point out, burying stuff on school grounds is never a good idea though.  Especially in this day and age.

Unless of course it’s my high school report card…which I believe is STILL buried outside the doors of my alma mater in Pittsburgh.  Of course..NO ONE wants to dig that up.  Except for maybe my parents….

Thanks!

Mike Casey

Did you catch this story out of the UK?  Apparently, despite everything we’ve been led to believe, there’s no truth to the notion that drinking alcohol impacts a person’s ability to make decisions about who is attractive and who isn’t.  (i.e. “Beer Goggles”)

Wow…if this is true, I’ve got about a hundred friends from college I need to call right away….them boys got some ’splainin’ to do!!

Newsgal Cathy Taylor says I smell vaugely like bologna today.  I guess the money I’ve been spending on cologne is WASTED.

I think the first year I played organized baseball was when I was in 3^rd grade.  It’s not like today where some parents have their kids on the traveling elite team with the matching uniforms and equipment bags before they even turn 2…..

 I think my batting average that first year was .076.  And no, I’m not kidding.

 You know why I remember that?  Here’s why; my coach was a total jerk.  No, seriously, he really was.  He made a point at the end of every game to run through the five worst batting averages on the team.  Lucky me.  Mine was always one of the five worst.  Keep in mind…I was 8 years old……

 He yelled at kids when they missed balls or missed the cut off man or whatever.  He let his kid pitch every game even though he wasn’t very good.  He kicked bats when we struck out (and no one struck out more than me). And he even made fun of the baseball glove I had, which admittedly, wasn’t anything fancy but We all knew I wasn’t going to catch anything standing way out in right field anyway.

 I don’t want to belabor the point here, but this guy actually made me HATE baseball.

 Then, in my second year of little league (and don’t ask me why I decided to play another year after that first one) I played for a guy named Bill Lampe. 

 If I remember right, Coach Lampe was about as close to a real version of Walter Matthau’s character from the “Bad News Bears”as you could get.  He always looked like he had just rolled out of bed and thrown on whatever clothes he found on the floor.  His socks usually didn’t match. His face was sort of oddly shaped and rumpled, like either he had been a boxer at one time, or spent his nights sleeping face down on a hard wood floor.  He smoked cigarettes during practice, which would certainly be taboo these days, but of course, no one thought much about back then. 

 And you know what?  Bill Lampe was the single best coach I ever had; In any sport, at any age, all the way up through high school.

 He never kicked bats, or swore or yelled at us, even when we struck out.  And whenever I struck out, which was still fairly often though not nearly as often as the year before, he’d put his big old arm around my shoulder and say “Don’t you worry, Mikey.  You’ll get ‘em next time.”

 His son played for our team and he was really good.  But he didn’t get to pitch every single game and sometimes he had to sit on the bench so some of the other not-so-good kids could play too. 

 And Coach Lampe always, always, always made us believe that the way we played the game and the way we interacted with our teammates was infinitely more important than whether we won or lost.  He didn’t tolerate better players making fun of weaker ones and he set the perfect example of how we should all treat each other.  Not just in baseball….but in life.

 I got a lot better playing under Coach Lampe and even made the All Star Team that year.  I’m not sure that my skills had improved that dramatically, but my attitude had.  I really believed that Coach Lampe thought I could be good, or at least better, and I wanted to prove that he was right.

 I’ve had the chance to coach my son’s baseball team for the last 3 or so years. While I was never much of a player, I think I’m a pretty good coach.  And that’s because at least once every practice or game I think to myself “- WWCLD……..What would Coach Lampe do?” 

 And Coach?  Thanks for teaching me as much about life as you did about baseball.

Cathy Taylor did a news story yesterday about the possibility of former NFL Quarterback and convicted ‘dog fighter’ Michael Vick landing a deal for his own reality show.

LOTS of Mountain listeners shared their thoughts on this matter.  This email from Sandy seemed to be the best summary of how most people felt: