Tuesday, May 23, 2006

Boy swims from sharks, convicts, Ed Harris

AP Photo

It’s hard to tell if 7-year-old Braxton Bilbrey lost a bet to one of his second-grade buddies, was being severely punished by his father or just likes to do really stupid things.

Based on the AP report, we’ll go with the latter.

Bilbrey recently swam from Alcatraz Island to San Francisco — an estimated 1.4-mile trek — in 50-degree waters. It took him 47 minutes, good enough for the Gold medal and a world record.

The really dumb youngster got the idea when he saw a magazine article about an even dumber 9-year-old who had already made the swim. Bilbrey probably doesn’t know that his inspiration was this guy.

We just don’t buy into the fact that a 7-year-old wanted to swim across the bay because some other kid did it. If he wanted to impress some smokin’ 4th grader he has the hots for, that’d be admirable. But the kid probably doesn’t like girls and has no pubes.

It thus seems reasonable to think that the ghost of Al Capone, who was an inmate on the island, put him up to it. That or he was touring the island for fun or something when General Francis X. Hummel took control of the island, threatening to nuke San Francisco, and Bilbrey split.

Dr. Stanley Goodspeed’s sissy nature may have also played a role.

In other news: Tennessee’s Pat Summit will make $1.125 million next season because she convinced athletic director Joan Cronan that people like women’s basketball. Really.

-Adam Landres-Schnur

Adam is the sports editor at the University of Washington's The Daily. This is how he won back his ex-girlfriend: "Am I supposed to be a man? Am I supposed to say, it's ok, I don't mind? I don't mind. Well I mind! I mind big time! And you know what the worst part is? I never learned to read."

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