Cheap Seats

Rainy days, Super Sundays

Doomsday scenarios of El Nino ravaging the Southern California coast, pounding beachfront property and rendering the Jan. 25 Super Bowl in San Diego unplayable, make Jim Steeg, the NFL’s executive director of special events, rather testy.

“If I hear that one more time, I’m going to throw up,” Steeg says.

Much ado about something

Reporters at North Carolina basketball coach Bill Guthridge’s first post-Dean Smith press conference were puzzled by the 60-year-old rookie coach’s opening comments:

“We have decided today to withdraw the troops and no more bombing raids, and hopefully there will be peaceful coexistence among the two groups,” he said with a straight face as reporters tried to figure out what he was talking about.

Then Guthridge threw in his punch line:

“As many microphones here, you would think some world-shattering incident has happened.”

We’ve got news for him.

Soccer’s grateful dead

A company has begun offering coffins in colors of Germany’s soccer clubs, in case fans want to stay true to their favorite team even after “the final whistle,” as the company put it. The Ahorn company said it got the idea when a fan of Bayern Munich demanded that his coffin be painted in team colors.

Catch her if you can

The first time she climbed behind the wheel of a car all by herself, Cristen Powell went 158 mph in a Super Comp dragster.

The next day, Powell turned 16 and got her racing license.

A week later, she got her “real” license from the state of Oregon.

“When I got my learner’s permit to drive normally, I was just 15 and I thought that was just the best thing in the world,” said Powell, 18. “I just kept thinking, ‘I can drive a car now - that’s so cool.”’

Now she drives a 1967 black Chevrolet Camaro on the road and, oh yeah, a nitromethane-burning Top Fuel dragster with a 500-cubic-inch engine capable of producing as much as 5,500 horsepower.

But that doesn’t mean she leads a fast life.

“I do all the normal stuff - I don’t act like some weirdo superstar dragster or anything,” she said. “I go to college. I go to class. I’m kind of a dork, really.”

Now that’s a real team doctor

In a frenzied exhibition, Peruvian witch doctors cast spells earlier this month against Chile, Peru’s opponent in a World Cup soccer qualifying game.

“Long live Peru! Peru! Goal!” the cloaked witch doctors shouted as they spat alcohol over team photos, raised deer’s feet to ensure swift-footedness and held the claws of a condor to guarantee fighting spirit.

“Let them have cramp! Let them remain blind night and day!” they chanted, stabbing knives at a Chilean soccer shirt hung upside-down during the ceremony.

The last word …

“As for Tiger, once my tennis elbow (heals), I’ll be glad to take him to school on my miniature golf course in my front yard.”

- Shaquille O’Neal, who lives in the same community as Tiger Woods.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo