Today's Opinions

Growing up in the 1990s, there were cigarette ads everywhere. I can plainly recall the dazzling young women who showed off the fact that they were smoking a Misty Light on the back of my mother’s endless supply of home and garden magazines. I remember Joe Camel at the pool, playing a mammal who wore sunglasses and was always suavely dressed. And oh, how I remember the Marlboro Man – that handsome guy on horseback who just happened to always have his picture taken in the middle of he desert – firing one up.

There is a lesson to be learned in the firing of University of Kentucky Basketball Coach Billy Gillispie.

If you don’t succeed at your job, you will be fired.

With the failure to reach the NCAA tournament, Gillispie’s fate wasn’t hard to guess. There have been rumblings around the Big Blue faithful for weeks that Gillispie’s time should come to an end.

Everyone has an expectation of success. Some teams would be excited to make it to the National Invitational Tournament but none of those teams are headquartered in Lexington.

Although I consider myself current with pop culture, this is the first season I’ve watched “American Idol.”

In years past, I’ve seen the last 15 minutes of some of the final shows to see who wins, but not knowing who’s who, I didn’t really care one way or another.

This season, mostly because I hate being left out of the water-cooler conversation, I decided early on to watch every episode – from first auditions to finale – and I even hope to buy tickets to see the Top Ten Idol contestants when they go on tour this summer.