If you live outside the Philadelphia region, this shouldn’t be a big deal — but it is. And that scares the crap out of me.

Former Kentucky Derby champ Barbaro was put to sleep yesterday after a protracted battle to overcome a broken leg (usually a career-ending injury for race horses). I respect the fact that they chose not to euthanize him immediately, and I applaud the effort made to get him back to racing shape. But then he went downhill. Sadly, this is where his story picked up steam.

See, Barbaro was bred and trained outside Philly. Because the city is grasping for anything they can call a champion (I hear even Rocky gets his butt kicked this time around), they latched onto Barbaro like Rosie O’Donnell on a box of Ho-Hos or a bad hairpiece on Donald Trump (gotta be fair here). The collective emotion of this town ebbed and flowed with the fortunes — good and bad — of a horse.

After he won the Derby, the region rocked like Woodstock. It was as if, in their minds, Donovan McNabb hadn’t thrown up on the field in the Super Bowl two years ago…or Joe Carter didn’t hit a Game 7 homerun in 1993…or the Cowboys didn’t exist in the early 1990s. It was like the lengthy history of sporting failure in this town was erased just becaue a horse ran fast for two minutes. Okay, I can grudgingly accept that.

But then Ol’ B went to horsey heaven, and suddenly the whole nation is crazy about this critter. Yesterday, his death was front-page news for CNN.com and MSNBC.com. newspapers stopped the presses, bloggers posted headline after headline (at which point the B-bloggers followed suit just to keep up) and the local area came to a screeching halt. The death of Ronald Reagan didn’t even garner the kind of coverage this thing got. The evening news ran a music montage along with photos and race footage. I wanted to cry, but surely not for the horse. I wanted to cry for society, because things like soldiers dying and children being kidnapped were pushed “below the fold” — or off the initial screen, for the Web equivalent — just so a huge photo and an obituary for a horse could be shown.

I am all in favor of focusing on the lighter side of the news. Had the upcoming Super Bowl or the NHL All-Star game been the top headline, I would have been thrilled. It’s rare that news outlets focus on things that are actually enjoyable. But if you’re going to feature a tragedy, at least focus on one that’s actually remotely tragic. When my friend’s 21-year-old cat died, it didn’t get mentioned in the city paper, much less USA Today. And believe me, winning the Kentucky Derby — even as a longshot — makes for a much less interesting story than a cat being hit by a semi and then living another 17 years.

Apparently, I can control the weather.  I’ll give you some time to let the value of ability sink in.

…

Okay, now let me explain how I came about finding that I have this talent.  I stood up from my desk to give my eyeballs a rest — staring at a computer screen from eight to 16 hours a day can make you wish someone would gouge them out with a soup spoon to make the blur go away.  As I wandered over to the window, I looked at the gray sky and muttered to myself, “I sure wish it would snow already.”  It’s not forecast to start until around 3:00 p.m. but I would enjoy a snowstorm in the middle of July.  I like snow that much.

Then, something strange happened: a snowflake wafted slowly down in front of me.

Then another.

Over the next 30 seconds, the snow picked up.  Now, it’s coming down in what would be the rainy equivalent of a steady shower and appears to be reaching toward a white downpour.

Realizing that I apparently have some control over the elements, I started thinking how useful this talent could be.  Then, as I always do, I started thinking of the profitability, because that’s where my mind wanders to for just about every thought I have.  Which means I spend most of my day wondering how I can make a buck.  I’m greedy like that.  And I’m cheap, according to a frighteningly large number of my immediate family.  But anyway…

Say my lawn is looking a little parched in the middle of a particularly droughty August.  I’ll just make it rain.  The weekend sporting event is being threatened with a rainout?  Not with me on hand.  I want a new car but I couldn’t possibly afford another down payment.  So what?  I just need to hold the sun for ransom!

Then I crashed back to reality: it was just coincidence.  I have no control over that stuff.  No deity in his left mind (because I assume God is right-handed and very, very creative) would bestow such a power on mischievous ol’ me.

Besides, the shower already stopped.

The big news around Delaware (yes, I live here, stop laughing) this week has been the impending visit of the President. This morning, it happened, and I had pretty much a front-row seat for the passing of the motorcade.

First, let me say this: there are few things that give you the heebie-jeebies more than seeing Interstate 95 completely empty in both directions. After all, the stretch from Washington, D.C. to New York City is the most heavily traveled stretch of road in the world. During rush hour, there are portions of the road five lanes wide in either direction that are at a complete stand-still. It’s a masochistically impressive thing to sit for 45 minutes in the same spot on a road that should easily be able to accomodate half a million vehicles per hour, the whole time wondering if time itself has actually slowed to a halt.

Peering out from the eighth floor, I could see that all alleys and side streets had been blocked by police cruisers. Interstate off-ramps were now heavily congested by drivers who were undoubtedly becoming more and more impatient as each second ticked away. I waited a few minutes by the window, and sure enough, the President’s motorcade sped up the exit ramp and on to Delaware Avenue. A small handful of protestors waited along the road — nothing new, it was the same small group that gathers every Friday and collectively get a chubby in their BVDs every four or five minutes when someone obliges their “Honk 4 Peace” and “Impeach Bush” signs. Personally, I feel the urge to swerve into the standing puddles of water on rainy Friday afternoons, but I usually stop myself. One day I plan to stand next to them with a sign that says, “I’m not with these lazy bums who would rather spend their time holding the same signs week after week rather than doing something effective to change the world.” But I digress.

The moment was fleeting, really. I didn’t expect anything earth-shattering, and I didn’t get it. All I got were a few long-distance photos on my camera phone. The motorcade was impressive, led by about a dozen motorcycle troopers and a few State Police cars. What seemed to be roughly every SUV in the state followed next, then a Cadillac — presumably the President’s ride — more SUVs, and then countless vans carrying reporters that numbered just slightly less than the population of Liberia.

I, for one, thought it was cool.

Other Ramblings

• I read an update about the President’s visit this morning that pointed out that, at 11:26a.m., “Police began shooing pedestrians …” I seriously did a double-take, thinking police began shooting pedestrians, and wondering why such a huge event hadn’t yet made Fox News.
• It snowed here again a few days go (Sunday, if I recall correctly). it stuck and we still have some small drifts and piles laying around. Ever since Winter showed up last week, it’s been coming on strong. in fact, we in the Northeast better break out the parkas on Friday, with a forecast high of 27. Farenheit.
• I skipped the State of the Union address last night. I needed a break from politics, so I opted for Dirty Jobs on Discovery instead. I’m an awful Republican.

We, the intense studiers of NASCAR — those of us who analyze the weekly results, who calculate points, who actually sit an question the questionable calls even weeks later — shuddered Monday afternoon. It was at the precise moment NASCAR CEO Brian France announced changes to the “Chase For The Nextel Cup” format that we all muttered a collective, “…and then?”

We expected something earth-shattering. Heck, we expected that the first time around and never got it. But this time we had faith, and our faith was then shattered. Up went the bonus to the race winners from 5 to 10 points. Out went the 400-point barrier for anyone outside 10th place to achieve in order to earn a berth in the playoffs — in three years, no one really even came close to it. And up went the number of eligible drivers from 10 to 12. This was due to the elimination of the 400-point barrier, according to NASCAR. No it wasn’t, it was because Tony Stewart was 11th last year after 26 races, and NASCAR can’t have one of its top 5 most marketable drivers outside the playoffs. It’s akin to Major League Baseball adding a rule that all but guarantees the Yankees a playoff spot every year (actually, by not instituting a salary cap, they’ve already done this — but I digress).

That’s not what we want. We want an overhaul to the system. We want something that gives more of a bonus for winning and less of a penalty for being the victim of someone else’s inability to control their car. We want a points cutoff somewhere around 25th spot — for one, it limits how badly the aforementioned stupidity of another driver can hurt someone who is otherwise doing well, and it also keeps wrecked cars from returning to the race just to run enough laps to move up one or two positions.

We want something that rewards both the hear-and-now as well as the long-term championship. Give drivers enough incentive to race hard for the win, but make long-term consistency a goal as well. Make the guys in 26th and 27th spot race as hard as the guy in second by keeping a consistent gap between positions, rather than the degrading gap we now have.

And the best change of all that can be made to the chase would be this: stop letting Brian France make the decisions. Give the job to committee of former competitors like Richard Petty, ned Jarrett and Terry Labonte — the people who have a vested interest in it beyond lining their own pockets with gold. Don’t leave those choices to some marketeer.

My beloved Steelers are without a coach no longer.

They announced today that former Vikings Defensive Coordinator Mike Tomlin will take the reigns of a team that has gone through two coaches in the last 38 years (the number of coaches that have come and gone with other teams in that time has got to be staggering) and is just one year removed from the Super Bowl. Bill Cowher amassed 166 victories in 15 season — more than 10 per year — in his stint as the Steelers’ skipper. That’s a tough act to follow, and I commend the Rooneys for taking their time.

I would never have called it this way. I predicted Ken Wisenhunt, and then Russ Grimm after Ken took the head coach job in Arizona. And because neither of them were ultimately promoted, the Steeler Nation is now up in arms, fearful of what may befall our mighty franchise under the guidance of such a young coach. I’ve got my worries too, but as I look deeper into this, I am beginning to feel more at ease with the decision.

First of all, he follows a trend: he is the fourth consecutive defensive coordinator to become the Steelers’ head coach. He’s the fourth straight guy not promoted from within the current ranks of the coaching staff. And his preferred defense, the 4-3 with elements of the Cover 2, was not the brainchild of Tony Dungy, who tends to get the credit — it came from Chuck Noll, the Steelers’ head coach for 23 years. And all he did was win four Super Bowls, more than any other head coach in history.

Many fans will yell about the fact that Tomlin’s pass defense was last in the league last year, and they’ll say the only reason they were first against the run was because it was so easy to throw against them. But consider that the team was under the guidance of first-year coach Brad Childress, and it was inherited from former Vikings coach Mike Tice, who allowed the team to turn into a monument of disrespect and a mockery of the NFL. He didn’t have all that much to work with. Oh, and he was the Defensive Backs coach for Tampa Bay, who won the Super Bowl under John Gruden.

So while we’ll all approach this as skeptics, we need to look back only to the beginnings with our previous coach, Bill Cowher: an unproven assistant who was young and hard-nosed, just like his successor. And Cowher came from the ranks of Marty Schottenheimer, who has spent his career being known as a choke artist who passes that trait to his subordinates. But we watched Cowher make the team a perennial playoff team and eventual Super Bowl victors.

So I offer this advice to those in the Steeler Nation: we are the fans, and our emotions rise and fall with the success of our team. We are the die-hards, the ones who have a passion for the game that rivals that of its best players. But the Rooneys are the true football guys. They’ve put together a staff that has been continually successful and has become just the third team to win five Super Bowls. They have a track record over the last 38 years of patiently finding a gem of a coach, so unless Mr. Tomlin proves us wrong, I say let’s give him not just the benefit of the doubt, but our full support. If we believe we cheer for a team of winners, then winners they shall be.

It’s snowing.

It’s snowing in Delaware.  The snow is sticking to the ground, the flakes are ginormous, and traffic has slowed to a crawl.  Better late than never: winter is here.

Until now, this “winter” has been nothing but a joke, mocking fall with jeers of, “I’m warmer than yooouuuu were!”  It’s really been that bad.  Temperatures sat in the upper 60s for days at a time, occassionally poking past 70 and — rarely — rubbing elbows with 80.  If I had to pick one word to describe winter up until this week, it would “seriously pathetic.”  See how bad it is?  I can’t even do it in a single word.

I wish there was a way I could ground winter for a month or so to make sure it sticks around.  Rest assured, on Groundhog Day (only in America would we have a day to celebrate an animal that does nothing constructive and doesn’t even make for good eating) I will be in Punxatawnee with a spotlight.  Dadgumit, that critter will see a shadow.

In other news, the Steelers are down to three candidates for their new head coach after offensive coordinator Ken Wisenhunt decided to impatiently jump ship for the Arizona Cardinals.  We Steeler faithful grudgingly wish him the best there — because he’ll need all he can get just to take that bastion of mediocrity to an 8-8 season.  Seriously, few teams have that many true studs, but the areas where they are lacking (for instance, the offensive line) are veritable black holes for football talent.  Arizona is where NFL careers go to die.  Just ask Emmitt Smith and Dennis Green.

Because I never mentioned it, you don’t already know that last month was a freakishly good month for InvertedMind, with over 7,500 unique visitors.  Of course, the vast majority of you are failing to comment.  Please, dear God, comment!