Skattershooting while wondering what the future holds:

• Only four U.S. presidents have been Baptist and one of them is Bill Clinton.
• A few years back, "The Webby" was introduced as the award for excellent or interesting web sites. This year, the award for most unusual went to www.carstuckgirls.com.  That's right. Girls who are stuck in cars. There are pictures. There are videos. But there is no nudity and there is no sex. Just attractive girls who have their cars stuck in the mud.  Even I think that's odd.
  
• In the very bad football movie Necessary Roughness (which was filmed at the University of North Texas, by the way), one of the fictitious college football teams wore jerseys reading "Texas State".  Due to a recent name change, there actually is a Texas State.
  
• The amount of winning tickets not cashed at Lone Star Park in 2002: $1,301,867.
• Finally, the North Central Texas Narcotics Task Force has been abandoned. They never really liked me.
  
• Odd sports news. LSU has a good track coach, Pat Henry, and he is paid $167,000 for the job which he has held for 17 years. Texas A & M fired its track coach that was paid $74,000. So what happens? A&M hires Henry away from LSU for $230,000 a year. Once again, this is a track and field coach.
  
• I rented Deliverance the other day because it dawned on me that I had never seen the original R rated version. Let me tell you, that Ned Beatty scene was more shocking than I had imagined.
  
• I remember when everyone went nuts when A&M paid football coach Jackie Sherrill $228,00 a year.
  
• At the All Star Break, the best hitter in baseball is Pudge Rodriguez who is batting .369.
• The fastest qualifier for the U.S. Olympic team in the 400 meters was Baylor sophomore Jeremy Wariner. And he is a white guy.
  
• The Tour de France would be better if we could actually watch a whole race.
• Punch Drunk Love is pretty good.
• A few months back a list was released of the most overused cliches. The winner was "at the end of the day".  Start listening for it. People, especially at news conferences, say it all the time.
  
• Through 92 games, the Rangers are 54-38. They have never had a higher winning percentage than that after 92 games. Never.
  
• The 9-11 Commission report could be downloaded in its entirety on the same day it was handed to the President in the Rose Garden. I have no desire to read it, but it's cool that it was available so quickly. 
  
• At the Nebraska Cornhuskers spring football game,  61,147 fans showed up.
• Mystic River is great.
  
• Remember how we were going to convert to the metric system?
• It's odd how the media just wraps itself around selected missing woman/murder stories. Last year it was the Scott Peterson case and this year it appears to be the case concerning the disappearance of Lori Hacking.  Don't the stories happen all the time but you simply never hear about them.
• It is a good feeling when you discover you can still surprise yourself.
• Wouldn't you like to hold a high school record in UIL track in 1977? That was the last year that "yards" were run instead of meters. If you held the 100 yard dash record in 1977, you always will.
• The federal budget deficit has grown to a record $445 billion. That's not total debt. That's simply how much more the federal government will spend over and above what it will take in this year.
  
• Former Miami runningback Ricky Williams is one odd guy.
• Former Ranger and current Kansas City Royal Juan Gonzales was out for the season as of May 22nd. That guy has always had health issues.
  
• This is a mean trick which was played on me - and it scared the living crap out of me. Here it is: Can you spot three differences in these two photographs. Look closely.
  
• If you like watching videos over the Internet, do you think this guy will ever hold a cat again? 
• John Kerry's theme of his speech at the Democratic National Convention this week was  "Help is on the way!" It is only poignant that one of Reagan's greatest quotes was “The most terrifying words in the English language are: ‘I’m from the government, and I’m here to help you.’”
• The Star Telegram, two days a week, will begin a radical change. No story on the front page will "continued inside". Instead there will just be summaries of stories that are inside.
• I thought this was so odd: I was watching the news Friday night when John McCaa reported about the estimated property damage in Lancaster due to the huge rain storm last week. He reported that the total damage was estimated to be "$5,928,200 in residential property" damage. Isn't that a little too specific for an estimate?