Diamonds, Engagement Rings & Diamond Jewelry in popular culture

Courtney Love, who was immensely cool in the 90s when Hole released “Live Through This”, is still controversial, but has pole-vaulted the line into complete madness.  Yes, through the years she has stayed in the papers, mostly by neglecting the needs of her daughter and losing custody a few times.  She has enjoyed many a battle via Twitter, using the social media to air grievances in the most passive-aggressive way possible.  Now she’s released a new album under her old band’s name despite being the only original member left, her daughter has left her completely, her oldest friend and  collaborator hates her, and—oh yeah—she’s claiming that she had a long-term affair with Gavin Rossdale since he’s been with Gwen Stefani.  And that Gwen knew about it.

Oozing class from every pore. Well, oozing something, anyway.

If Gavin Rossdale was sleeping with Courtney Love, I can’t imagine that Gwen would let him touch her with a ten-foot anything.  But Love insists that the pair was very close during the height of their fame, and that she even considered marrying him.  Well, he would have had to ask first, and, as we all know, it was Gwen who got the diamond-studded engagement ring.  The story seems unlikely, especially when she reveals that she needed to end the relationship because everyone was saying that the Bush frontman sounded exactly like Kurt Cobain.  As anyone alive in the 1990s can tell you, it was not difficult to tell the difference.  Apples and oranges.

Now one of Courtney’s only lifelong allies, Billy Corgan, is angry with her.  It seems that they recorded some songs together a while ago, and Courtney chose to put them on her new album.  That’s a financial minefield that Love just strolled into, since Corgan should be receiving credit for his work and hefty compensation as well.  And if the songs are good, well, he really needs the positive press.  His street cred took a beating when he was caught hanging out with Jessica Simpson, after all.  We still haven’t forgotten that dark and confusing time.  Ever the soft-spoken, gentle recording artist, Billy chose to rant at Love as celebrities seem to these days: he tweeted them.  “Thought #1: my face is my face, my heart is my heart, my money is my money.  Oh, and my songs are MY songs+if you can’t write your own songs?”  It’s almost poetic, his hostility. 

But he can’t be surprised.  This is a woman who has been a hot mess since before she was famous.  Then she married Kurt Cobain and got instant recognition—and a ton of money.  And money does things to people.  It can either make you Courtney Crazy, or it can make you like Gwen Stefani, who hasn’t really changed that much and everyone loves.

Her further allegations that she had an affair with a female supermodel came with a totally uncharacteristic discretion.  So she’ll dish about sleeping with a happily-married man, but won’t reveal the name of a single woman she was with once?  The claim seems particularly odd when Love says that the model was chasing after her, and not vice versa.  What was it about her that drove a supermodel and a married rock star wild?  Is it her classy behavior?  Her elegant style of dress?  Her calm disposition?

Or maybe she’s got a new album to promote and a nasty plastic surgery habit to support.  You know, among other things.

Is there anyone from reality television not releasing a dance track lately?  Sure, it was pathetic and sad when Kim Zolciak from The Real Housewives of Atlanta recorded “Tardy for the Party”, a song from which we are all still in recovery.  But at least she’s out in the clubs, chain-smoking Parliaments and drinking wine from a box.  Inappropriate behavior is her thing.  But when Countess Luann de Lesseps, stripped of her wedding ring but not her title, a woman who literally wrote a book about etiquette and cleverly titled it “Class with the Countess”, decides that she’s going to hit the recording studio, well, there are no words.

Yes, there are.  “Why?” is an excellent place to start.  What would make Countess Luann wake up one morning and say “I want a record deal”?  Tired of all the attention that Bethenny is getting because of the pregnancy, the wedding, the naked pictures?  Sick of the fawning over Kelly because of the diva-like behavior, the name-dropping, the naked pictures?  All of the Housewives have their little gimmick, and I guess that, once you’ve divorced the Count, you have to do something drastic.

"For the love of God, pay attention to ME!"

And, true to Real Housewives history, public humiliation is still public, and that’s good enough.  Hence, a song called “Money Can’t Buy You Class”, by Countess Luann.  That’s the name she’s chosen for her career as a recording artist, maybe because it sounds so, um, classy.  The song, on the other hand, no matter how intense the use of Auto-Tune (Jay-Z, where are you when we need you?) is still beyond awful.  When Luann actually did any singing, her voice was carefully distorted to sound like something less in the neighborhood of tone-deaf.  Most of the track is more spoken word, like something she could perform at a poetry slam that doesn’t have very high standards.  I’m sure she was going for Madonna’s “Vogue” (Greta Garbo and Monroe/ Dietrich and DiMaggio/ Marlon Brando, Jimmy Dean/ On the cover of a magazine), but managed to fall short by a unit of measure not yet defined by science. 

And it’s almost four minutes of an etiquette lesson.  She does reassure us that “elegance is learned” over and over, following it up with her real live throaty, borderline masculine voice saying “my friends” in a way that makes one not want to be her friend.  She goes on about men texting while on dates, how to tell if a man is well-bred, and how a woman should behave at a party.  Although the Countess seems totally confident in her lyrics, she leaves us wondering exactly what is classy about this song.  I could go a lifetime without ever hearing her “oh yeah” even one more time.

I want my 3 minutes and 44 seconds back.

Nothing quite says “I love you” like a Sunday night wedding at a Las Vegas chapel where the guests can’t keep themselves from laughing.  It was a week ago that Shayne Lamas, winner of the 12th season of The Bachelor, and Nik Richie, master of the misogynist website “The Dirty”, exchanged vows at the Little White Wedding Chapel.  Although they had known each other for less time than it takes milk to curdle, Shayne wore white and was all giddy, repeating “I’m a bride, I’m a bride,” for the cameras.  Ever the gentleman, Nik (real name: Hooman Karamian) did buy a $130,000 5-carat diamond engagement ring for his slow-witted spouse.  In this case, however, the engagement ring came after the wedding.  That can happen when you marry someone you’ve known for either one day or one week, depending on who you ask.

Makin' Her Papa Proud.

Shayne Lamas was first known as the spawn of the long-haired, wife-beater-wearing former sex symbol Lorenzo Lamas.  He was known for being an 80s icon, appearing on Falcon Crest and then starring in his own show, Renegade, in which he played a fugitive who managed to avoid getting caught while he “roamed the badlands” on a loud, flame-painted Harley and worked as a bounty hunter for a Native American fella with the rockin’est mullet EVER and a taste for pimp-style suits.  So that’s one half of her heritage. 

Then Shayne became a contestant on season 12 of The Bachelor, the one in London, where women competed for the love of a desperate British man.  In the end, Matt Grant chose Shayne to be his future wife.  They were interviewed shortly after the finale aired.  Shayne appeared to be blissfully in love with her engagement ring.  The couple split up a few months later.  Was it the distance?  After all, she lives in LA and he in London.  Was it a difference in values?  Or maybe Matt finally saw a rerun of Renegade and considered the cheese factor in the gene pool.

But it was none of those things.  The real issue became abundantly clear when E! began airing Leave It to Lamas, a reality TV show a la Keeping Up with the Kardashians, only with—believe it or not—more complaining.  Leave It to Lamas capitalizes on the still-famous surname, although Lorenzo himself does not appear in every episode.  Shayne does, though.  As does her brother AJ, who has some difficulties living up to the tremendous legacy of his father, who was trying in one episode to pass out autographed photos of himself by saying his own name and mentioning the show Renegade.  And then there’s Shayne’s mother, Michele Smith, who appears to be intoxicated every time she’s on camera.  The true star of the show is the incessant whining of young Shayne.  Even while wearing stripper heels and drag queen-style makeup, she speaks in the voice of a very dissatisfied 5 year-old.  Perhaps the voice is a nod to the Kardashian girls and Paris Hilton, who also speak like children.

But what would make a girl run off to Vegas with some guy that she knows her family will hate?  What would cause a daddy’s girl like little Shayne to marry a man whose life’s work is to make fun of women?  Well, I’m no psychologist or anything, but could it have to do with the recent announcement that 52 year-old Lorenzo is marrying someone 2 years younger than his daughter after a lengthy 3-month courtship?

Shayne Dahl Lamas married Hooman Karamian in a charming Vegas wedding chapel.  I wonder if she knows his real name.

Tonight begins a new television series for Alyssa Milano.  The good thing for her is that she has a job again.  The bad thing is that she might be remembered for this instead of Who’s The Boss?  Yes, yes, she had that stint on Charmed, but no one really talks about it and fewer watched.  The only reason to tune in was the possibility of seeing Shannen Doherty have a meltdown.  Right now, Milano is still considered wildly sexy to men of a certain age: the ones who grew up watching her on Who’s The Boss? and fell in love with her teased hair, pegged acid-wash jeans, and Brooklyn accent.  And now, she’s throwing all of that away on an already-critically-panned sitcom called Romantically Challenged.  She says that she uses her years of dating experience to help her get into character.

Risking the whole "sex goddess" thing.

Of course, she’s not dating anymore in real life.  30-something men and Major League pitchers mourned when Milano accepted an engagement ring from Daniel Bugliari in January 2009.  They’re married now.  But her social life was much talked about, especially among baseball fans.  She was our own real-life Baseball Annie, with a taste for pitchers.  She dated Barry Zito, Carl Pavano, and Brad Penny.  In her book “Safe at Home: Confessions of a baseball fanatic”, she says that she had sworn off ballplayers until Brad Penny said “Let’s go down to the clubhouse”.  That’s supposed to be some kind of justification, or vindication, or something.  Why couldn’t she just admit that some of us can’t help chasing the tall guys with the bubble-butts? 

But I digress.

On her new show, Milano plays a recently-divorced mother of a 16 year-old girl.  This is like kryptonite to the libidos of the men who are still in love with the 1980s, vintage Alyssa.  But she is determined to have another go at sitcom fame.  She has a younger sister on the show who thinks that promiscuity is the way to go.  Then there are two male friends in the mix.  It’s your basic sitcom platform with different actors thrown in.  And it runs a high risk of turning the men who are still melting all over at the sight of her into guys who think of her as another married chick in her 30s. 

Remember when she played Amy Fisher in one of the three made-for-TV movies about that whole “Long Island Lolita” thing?  That one didn’t disrupt Milano’s reign as Italian-American Sex Goddess because she was wearing the same clothes as she did as Samantha Micelli, and even in the same size despite her growth.  But this is dangerous, this new role.  Playing a divorced mother of a teenager will forever change the way her fans view her.

But then, she’s always got her Dodgers.  And Giants.  And Marlins.  And Yankees.

Well, Reggie Bush has been seen lately with Paris Hilton, who is said to have broken up with boyfriend Doug Reinhardt.  For an ex to date again is one thing.  For an ex to hook up with a walking petri dish is another thing altogether.  Kim Kardashian, after years with Reggie Bush, did not receive the expected engagement ring after his Superbowl victory.  Instead, they broke up.  Again.  And it was likely that they would end up back together, because they complemented each other so well.  Reggie didn’t even seem to mind that all of the Kardashian women have the voices of 5 year-old girls.  Then he met Paris Hilton.  Next to Hilton, the Kardashian girls sound like Barry White. 

Why wouldn't Reggie feel threatened by this testament to masculinity?

And Kimmie met Real Madrid footballer Cristiano Ronaldo.   He has dated Paris Hilton, but really, who hasn’t?  Probably not realizing that there are two different types of football—American football and the kind the rest of the world plays—she found her way to make Reggie jealous.  Apparently they met in Miami, where they were seen kissing and laughing.  Their shared mastery of the English language was probably a bonding point.  That, and their love for shopping, tight t-shirts, and short shorts.

Several different media outlets reported that Kim attended one of Ronaldo’s recent games after flying to Spain to spend some quality time with him.  After the game, she hopped into a car that followed Ronaldo back to his home, where she was seen leaving after about four hours.  That’s plenty of time to watch Spartacus and eat raw cookie dough.  She left for her hotel (no overnight generally means one of two things.  Anyone care to venture a guess?) and flew back to the States the next day to do some kind of photo shoot with her sisters.

Both Kardashian and Ronaldo (that name really should belong to the Brazilian Ronaldo) are very busy with their various occupations, with Kim posing nude for Harper’s Bazaar magazine and C.Ronaldo posing for in tiny underwear for Armani.  They really are a match made in heaven, with only a few things standing in their way.  There’s the complete “ick factor” created by any physical contact with Paris Hilton.  There’s the idea that Kim and Reggie Bush only split about 5 minutes before was seen dining and laughing with C. Ronaldo.  And there’s one other thing, too.  Ask his teammates.  Or check YouTube.

It completely makes sense that Kim and Cristiano would have a great time hanging out together.  They have a lot in common.  But as for making Reggie Bush jealous?  Well, that’s not so likely.

In a list of requirements that Governor-turned-VP-Candidate-turned-joke Sarah Palin gives to a venue before a speaking engagement, she further reveals her inner Diana Ross, showing the diva-like behavior that we began to suspect during her attempted scamper to the White House.  Known as “riders”, they are what bands also give to venues, and some of their requests can range from odd to downright disgusting.  But what is an administrator to do when she is so desperate to have Sarah Palin make a speech (aside from seeking psychiatric care)?  If you want the star, you’ve gotta pay the piper. 

"I have this much of a chance to get an unscripted question right."

During the nearly-apocalyptic Presidential race, Palin bombarded us with assertions that she is just a regular Alaskan woman, a totally normal person who can see Russia from her house, and an average mom who likes to shoot animals from a helicopter.  She was the everywoman.  We were supposed to identify with her.  Granted, with a pregnant teenager at home, she had a good amount of the Appalachian vote locked, but she exhibited a few things that made us wonder is she does, indeed, put her waders on one leg at a time.

Then word leaked out that the Republican party ponied up more than $150,000 for Palin’s wardrobe and $53,000 for makeup.  Then someone made a hilarious video called “Sarah Palin’s Diamond-Encrusted G-String”.  It was not off the mark.  Now that Palin is on Sarah Does America: Tour 2010, she isn’t asking for diamonds, but she is making some telling requests in her 9-page contract. 

First, she requires two (2) round-trip first-class seats and two coach seats (for the lower 48 states).  For international travel, in addition to the two first-seats, Her Holiness needs two business-class seats. 

Any private aircraft MUST BE (that’s capitalized in the contract, too) a Lear 60 or larger for West Coast Events and a Hawker 800 or larger for East Coast events. 

A one-bedroom hotel suite and two single rooms, at a “deluxe” hotel only.  Customer agrees to pay for all charges made to the hotel by the Speaker and her entourage.  For security reasons, her Royal Palinness will be registered in the hotel under an alias.  She will let the hotel know in advance, because she certainly doesn’t want hotel staff to come up with one.

No autographs, please.

For photo-ops, a receiving-line style is mandatory.  Diagrams are provided to show the appropriate way to approach Mrs. Palin, since you most definitely don’t want to startle her.  Guests will arrive to her right and leave to her left.  The photographer must maintain a respectful distance which will best highlight what $53,000 worth of makeup looks like. 

Naturally, all questions are to be pre-approved.  No surprise questions will be allowed, and only the approved askers will be called upon to address the bear-hunter. 

Venue must provide two (2) unopened bottles of still water and bendy straws.  Really.  It says that in the contract, only it calls them “bendable straws”.  Only a representative of the Washington Speakers Bureau or The Entourage is permitted to open the bottles of water.

We all get why.

And then there’s a whole thing about confidentiality.

Granted, she didn’t ask for all of the brown M&Ms to be picked out of a candy dish no more than ¾ full of the delightful chocolate treats, but still.  I just want to know who pays her to speak when most of us would gladly pay her not to.

Let’s face it.  Normal people do not go on reality TV shows.  Normal people do not look for love in front of millions of viewers.  Normal people do not allow intimate moments to be captured on film—to be run in syndication ad infinitum—with the hope of finding a soul mate.  They do it for the fame.  Or the money.  Or both.  Let’s just ponder the idea of 25 women vying for the love of Flavor Flav.

Are you thinking about it?

So beautiful, it could be scripted...oh, wait...

So was it really a surprise to find out the latest winner of The Bachelor has a tainted past?  No one liked her or wanted her to win, but Vienna ended up getting the gigantic 2.02 carat Neil Lane diamond engagement ring (2.72 if you count the setting) from Jake Pavelka.  We already knew that she had “former Hooters waitress” on her resume.  When reports surfaced this week that she had been in a relationship with Central Florida’s most successful weed dealer, there was little shock.  But we all eat up a scandal, don’t we?  Evidently, Vienna dated Chase Alley, called a “drug kingpin” in some of the more melodramatic articles, and was with him until she left for the taping of The Bachelor.  The same articles claim that she was in contact with him throughout the process. 

When your boyfriend is arrested and charged with 50 counts of buying, selling, and possessing an outrageous amount of MaryJane, not to mention trafficking, money laundering, and racketeering, and could be in prison for up to 20 years, what’s a girl to do?

Reality TV is always the answer.  Now she’s got a big ol’ rock on her finger, courtesy of whatever network plays the show.  And she’s engaged and “madly in love”.  Jake has even said that they are “more in love than ever”, even as he takes his next step in the reality TV cycle: Dancing with the Stars.  But while he claims to be happy with Vienna (and her little dog, too!), he seems to be getting more than chummy with his partner on DWTS, Chelsie Hightower.  They act like teenagers together.  The giggling, the flirting, the taking-this-tango-really-seriously.  Jake says that they are just friends.

Yeah, just like the “friendly” $10,000 diamond ring former NFL player Chad Ochocinco gave to his DWTS partner, Cheryl Burke.  With friends like that, who needs a wife?

Something about reality television just breeds drama, drama, drama.  And, while it’s all trash, it is the trashiest of the trash that we love the most.  Flavor of Love set the bar pretty high, but then came I Love New York (in which one of Flav’s reject trannies has 20 or so men compete for her love), RuPaul’s Drag Race, and whatever Tool Academy is.  Not to let basic cable take away viewers, networks had to pick up the slack, and we are now at a point in the devolution of our society that people actually want to compete on something called The Biggest Loser. 

So maybe Vienna is a pot-smoking, two-timing, “can-I-bring-you-an-order-of-buffalo-wings-honey”, not very nice person.  She’s smart enough to know that if her boyfriend went to prison, and even if she didn’t find love on The Bachelor, there’s always the next season of The Bachelorette.  And Jake went onto a show with a long history of relationship failures to find Mrs. Right?  Now that he’s already onto his second reality show, we can pretty much count down to the time he appears on The Surreal Life.  It isn’t about looking for love.  It’s a career move.

We’ll be watching.

90s metal band Guns N’ Roses was forced to cancel a show in Costa Rica when the video screen they require was so heavy that it caused the stage to collapse.  That’s what happens when the stage is made of bamboo and straw.  Did anyone even realize that this band still existed?  I thought that fans scattered after waiting a decade or so for the album Chinese Democracy, which I think is out now.  Axl Rose is still out there, still performing under the name Guns N’ Roses, even though every other member we recognize is off doing something else.  He still feels, apparently, that even though he isn’t as trim as he was in the Welcome to the Jungle Days, and even though his hair is now red and—for some ungodly reason—corn-rowed—he can still draw a crowd.  So he brought his new band to Central and South America on their Chinese Democracy Tour, although the videos on the official GNR Facebook page seem to all be from the Slash/Duff McKagan/Steven Adler/Izzy Stradlin/and even Matt Sorum eras. 

There is the mid-life crisis, and then there is...corn rows.

Axl Rose has been in the middle of controversy since the first time he was accused of Diva-like behavior on the Welcome to the Jungle Tour.  He has managed to offend pretty much everyone, making enemies throughout the music business and in life in general.  He has either sued or been sued by just about every single person who ever touched his life, including controversy over the ownership of the name Guns N’ Roses.  In 1993, he sued his ex, model Stephanie Seymour, for “assault, battery, and the return of more than $100,000 worth of jewelry”, including a 4.5-carat diamond engagement ring.  Really.  Now his manager is suing him for $2.1 million in unpaid fees, per oral agreement between Axl and Front Line Management CEO Irving Azoff.

Azoff should have known better than to trust anything Axl Rose does orally.

On the upside, even though all talk of a reunion has been nixed by the temperamental singer, former bandmate and chief sparring partner Slash had nothing but good things to say about Chinese Democracy.  He referred to it as “the perfect Axl Record…he’s f***ing phenomenal”.  But, when asked about the possibility of the two talking about a reunion, the guitarist says, “I’m more standoffish because I know how vehemently he hates me.”  Well, that puts Slash in pretty good company, actually.  Axl Rose seems to hate almost everyone.  Slash and the other boys have kept themselves quite busy since the breakup of the original band, and none of them really need a reunion to keep themselves in Jack Daniels and Harleys.  It could happen, but Axl seems determined to make it work with his merry band of nobodies. 

So the tour rolls on, despite the stage collapse in Costa Rica and a little incident in Bogota, Colombia.  Axl and the band were performing Knockin on Heaven’s Door on March 30 when the frontman’s feet went out from under him and he fell down.  To everyone’s surprise, he did not throw a hissy fit and storm offstage.  He got up and kept singing.  He kinda has to, though.  Liposuction and Botox do not pay for themselves.

As for an original GnR reunion, it could happen.  But I’m guessing that former Metallica bassist/ ginger hottie Jason Newsted will not attend.

Dame Elizabeth Taylor—a woman we all love and respect—has accepted an engagement ring from 49 year-old Jason Winters, a talent manager whose clients include Janet Jackson.  This will be her 9th trip down the aisle, but the first one she’ll take in a wheelchair.  To be fair, two of those marriages were to the same man, Richard Burton, but this one will nonetheless tie her with Zsa Zsa Gabor for the most marriages for a celebrity.  As non-celebrities go, there is, apparently, a woman out there who has been married 23 times, but she’s not famous.  Taylor’s last marriage, to the mullet-maned construction worker Larry Fortensky, ended in 1996.

Liz Prepares for Luck Number 9

At age 78, Liz Taylor has gone beyond the existing terminology available for an older woman dating a younger man.  She is far from a Cougar, Leopard, Jaguar, and even beyond the over-55 accepted “Snow Leopard”.  But she doesn’t seem to care.  There appears to be genuine affection between the former actress and her fiancé.  At a certain point, it is probably more about companionship than anything else.  Like when there was that giant kerfuffle over Martha Raye marrying the much younger Mark Harris.  At age 75, Raye wasn’t looking for an acrobatic love life.  She wanted someone to be with her and make her laugh.

And now there are rumors that the Liz Taylor/Jason Winters union has even more in common with the Martha Raye/Mark Harris marriage.  Some sources have claimed that Winters is gay.  Mark Harris very clearly was.  He made Liberace look conservative.  If Winters is, it wouldn’t be a tremendous surprise or anything.  Liz Taylor has been a long-time defender of gay rights and fundraiser for AmfAR.  Liz Taylor practically IS AmfAR, holding the title of Founding National Chairman.  But whether or not Winters is batting for the other team, again, it really doesn’t matter.  Elizabeth Taylor has had numerous medical problems and Jason Winters has stayed by her side for years to keep her smiling.  She has said that he is “one of the most wonderful men I’ve ever known, that’s why I love him.”  If he’s swinging from the other side of the plate, that just means he’ll need less direction when she wants him to pick her up some new jewelry.  And Liz loves her diamonds.

At this point, with 8 previous weddings under her belt, Dame Liz is probably going to keep this one small.  Ever aware of how she looks, she has to know that it would be less dramatic to be pushed down the aisle.  Plus, after a while, don’t these things just kind of get old?  It’s not like she needs a big guest list in hopes of getting a new George Foreman Lean, Mean, Fat-Reducing Machine.  She’s Elizabeth Taylor.

Now when people say, “She’s been married more times that Elizabeth Taylor”, it’s an ever higher benchmark.  Gives us all something to aspire to.

You can exhale for a few minutes, Tiger Woods.  Tiki Barber has gone from former RB to current DB in a matter of seconds.  The handsome, charming athlete-turned-sportscaster has ditched his pregnant wife in favor of a 23 year-old former Today Show intern.  When Ginny Cha slipped a wedding ring on the finger of the New York Giant in 1999, she had no idea where it would end up.  Now, after 11 years of marriage, two current kids (ages 6 and 7), and twins brewing, Tiki has gone the way of so many professional athletes.  Young Traci (that’s with an ‘i’!) Lynn Johnson has been his girl-on-the-side for a while now, and is now happily being thrown to the media wolves—as long as she can still wear the big ol’ comfy #21 jersey of her former-NFL star.

The only twin Tiki will be seeing for a while.

That is, until he leaves her for someone else.

Learning of Tiki’s infidelity was a lot less fun than it should have been.  The thing is, he’s a likeable guy.  He was not only a great running back, but he has the uncommon ability among athletes to be able to string words together and form complete, understandable sentences.  Sure, he’s opened his fat mouth to criticize Michael Strahan, Coach Tom Coughlin, and Eli Manning.  And he probably shouldn’t have announced his intention to retire after the 2006-2007 NFL season when they were only 10 weeks into it.  But he’s a professional athlete. Running his mouth and offending people is just par for the course (sorry, Tiger).  Besides, being that critical caused a bidding war between ABC, FOX, NFL, and NBC.  He makes a great commentator.  And that big smile and charm has even put him in the running to replace Matt Lauer on the Today Show when Lauer retires next year. 

We can expect that his books, Tiki: My Life and the Game Beyond and Tiki Barber’s Pure Hard Workout will have increased sales as a result of the scandal.  Honestly, he must be in great shape to keep up with his barely-post-adolescent girlfriend.  But the 6 children’s books he wrote with his brother Ronde?  They might not fare so well.  And as for his recurring role on the children’s show The Electric Company, well, that might not be in his future either.  

It’s hard to recover from leaving-your-eight-months-pregnant-wife-for-a-child syndrome.  When Tom Brady bailed on a very pregnant Bridget Moynahan in favor of a (literally) younger model, he suffered a bit of a PR nightmare.  And he’s still playing. 

Tiki has a few other things working against him as well.  One, he is a twin to brother Ronde, and his wife is pregnant with twins.  It just doesn’t read well.  Also, he was very critical when his father cheated on his mother and left the family, saying, “I don’t give a [insert expletive here] that the relationship didn’t work.  Not only did he abandon her, I felt like he abandoned us for a lot of our lives.  I have a hard time forgiving that.”  Of course, that was six years ago, when his current girlfriend was still in high school.

I hope you’re hungry, Mr. Barber, because you’re definitely eating those words now.