Four Quickies

-The Sports Emmys were held the other night and once again I came up short. I've narrowed down the reasons I did not come home with a statue to a couple of possibilities: 1) I wasn't nominated and 2) I don't work in sports television. I've tried to whittle it down more than that, such as one or more of the judges could be holding a grudge against me, but those feel like the two overwhelming factors in why my trophy case remains barren. Still, when the list of winners came out I wasn't about to let a little problem like not being remotely considered get in the way of reality and began to scan the list, looking for my name. As stupid as I know this behavior is I can't help it and I do it all the time. Whenever I see a long list of names I instinctively begin to look for myself, even when it is something like a list of donors for a cause I never gave money to or alumni for a school I didn't attend. I think it is because I just want to make sure there isn't an eccentric millionaire out there donating a lot of money in my name to a cause I don't particularly believe in. Sure, the possibilities are extremely remote, but it is still better not to chance it. I get enough junk mail as it is.

-Last week the Fox Network announced that the next season of its sci-fi show "Fringe" will also be the last. After years of sub-par ratings and the show almost being cancelled numerous times only to be rescued by a late-season protest by the shows loyal (but clearly low-in-numbers) fans, Fox will finally be pulling the plug. Now, I am not a fan of the show, but if I was I would appreciate the head's up. There is nothing more annoying than a show being cancelled after the season had already been wrapped up when the writer's didn't know it was coming and left the story with all kinds of cliff-hangers. Letting the writers know this early that the show only has 13 episodes to wrap everything up in a neat little bow is a real bonus, as they can put all their effort in. (Also, much like an athlete in a contract year, I wouldn't be surprised if next season of "Fringe" was the best one yet.) But, I also feel like announcing the show's cancellation this early is a message to the fans: Go away. By telling them months in advance it lets them know that no amount of begging, pleading, letter-writing or online petitions are stopping this from happening. I would say that it would save them a lot of time and aggravation, but if you are the kind of person who starts a letter-writing campaign to get a TV show saved from cancellation I'm guessing free time isn't much of an issue.

-There was an odd story out of Poland the other day. A couple days after breaking up with her to start dating another woman, Marek Olszewski went to see his ex-girlfriend, Anna Mackowiak, a 34-year-old dentist, to have a troublesome tooth checked out. Apparently Olszewski had faith she could be a professional about the entire situation. Mackowiak told him it was no problem, sedated him and promptly pulled all his teeth out. She then wrapped his mouth up in bandages, woke him up and sent him home to make the discovery of what she had done a couple hours later. She faces three years in prison and Olszewski's new girlfriend has broken up with him - he says it is because she can't be with a man who has no teeth, I say it is because she doesn't want to date a man who is this stupid. Seriously, I worry about the dentist doing something funky to my mouth and that is without any personal issues in our past. Unless this woman is the only dentist within 100 miles or his health insurance simply wouldn't cover him seeing another dentist than that guy might be the dumbest person I have heard about in a few years. This is also why I don't remain in contact with any of my ex-girlfriends, let alone have sharp instruments near my mouth while I am unconscious.

-No matter how often I see it happen, I can still be amazed at how quickly the internet can make someone famous one day and then make their life a living hell the next. This week's reminder comes from ESPN's Sarah Phillips, who gained some fame writing on a gambling website's message board and was eventually given her own column on the site. ESPN quickly picked her out as a rising star and hired her to be a freelance blog writer. But, with internet fame comes internet scrutiny and over the past 24 hours numerous reports have surfaced that Sarah and her partner have been running a complicated scam in which Sarah would use her byline at ESPN to get the owners of popular Twitter feeds and blogs to sign her on as an co-administrator, thinking she was going to fold them in to a new sports site she was starting in conjunction with ESPN. Once she had the passwords she would freeze the other guys out, essentially stealing their websites out from under them. While you can question the wisdom of the people she duped, there is no doubt the ESPN name carries a lot of weight on the internet. Not surprisingly, ESPN quickly fired her when the story came out. Personally, this is just shocking. I mean, who would have thought someone associated with online gambling would also have some kind of shady deal going on? Those people are usually so on the up-and-up.