Cheap Seats
Does Ken have next?
More than a few eyebrows were raised when the WNBA, the league that proclaims young girls are not inhibited by their sex, announced an agreement with Mattel to create the WNBA Barbie.
But the WNBA and Mattel think Barbie’s popularity with young girls makes it a natural fit for the league.
“We want Barbie to do what girls are doing,” said Lisa McKendall, director of marketing communication for Mattel. “We want Barbie to be as positive as possible.”
The WNBA Barbie line will feature four dolls: the traditional blond Barbie and friends Kira (she is Asian), Christie (African-American) and Teresa (Hispanic). Barbie and Kira play on one team, Christie and Teresa on the other.
The WNBA Barbies will come equipped with a hoop, backboard and an orange-and-white WNBA basketball.
The dolls will have magnets in their hands to hold the ball and a button on their backs that will allow them to shoot it.
They might as well play in high heels, though. Mattel says Barbie’s physical dimensions will remain the same.
Texas or Minnesota? Is that a choice?
Prospective Minnesota Vikings owner Red McCombs is serious when he says he has no plans to move the team to his hometown of San Antonio and play in the Alamodome. Vikings fans are skeptical and many San Antonio residents are hopeful.
San Antonio Express-News columnist David King revealed facts about Minnesota “that don’t beg the team to stay.”
Minnesota’s main body of water, Lake Superior, is the temperature of an average glass of ice water. Texas has the Gulf of Mexico year-round.
King listed other reasons why “Texas is better than Minnesota.”
Visitors walk along our river during the winter, not across it.
Five words: Last freeze date, April 1.
In Texas, our mosquitoes are insects; in Minnesota, they are referred to as the state bird.
Minnesota’s stadium (Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome) was named after a guy who was vice president - under a Texan.
What’s so great about Texas?
Texas Monthly writer Skip Hollandsworth says the Dallas Cowboys are in for a shock when they see their new training camp surroundings in Wichita Falls, which is near the Oklahoma border.
Hollandsworth, a Wichita Falls native, said the heat there is “as heavy as wool” and “after sweating under the sun for an afternoon, you start smelling like road kill. If you spend too much time outside, the temperature of your blood starts to rise, your vision blurs and your legs start quivering like dying fish on hooks.”
The “Wichita Falls Times Record” struck back on its editorial page.
“Of course, it’s hot here,” wrote editor Carroll Wilson, “and that’s the way we like it, us and the 103,000 other souls who believe there’s more to a city than interminable traffic tie-ups, indefatigable drug dealers and insufferably smug magazine editors.”
The last word …
“My checkbook is balanced because of Mr. Steinbrenner. I get my car tuned up on a regular basis. I’m sure even my underwear is folded more neatly, just because he demands perfection from everyone.”
- New York Yankees GM Brian Cashman.