Prince Alwaleed, Lee Nailon & Curling: When's the Last Time You Saw Those Three in the Same Sentence: Friday Odds & Ends

Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, the Saudi Arabian multibillionaire, is planning an IPO for his holding company. he question I pose is this: would you be willing to invest money in his holding company, assuming you thought it was a sound financial move for your individual needs? I am very interested to see some debate on this topic.

Does anybody watch Squawk Box on CNBC? Can you tell me what happened to Mark Haines? He used to be the anchor of the whole show, now he does some reporting from Wall Street. This strikes me as the biggest demotion since Aaron Brooks lost his starting quarterback job to Todd Bauman. Would appreciate any insight on this thing. Haines was a little crotchety, but he kind of kept the whole show together. Liked it better with him quarterbacking from the studio....

Are the Olympics over yet? They have been entirely uninteresting and unwatchable this year, despite some strong storylines like Bode Miller sucking really, really bad, and the catfight between Shani Davis and Chad Hedrick, and Sacha Cohen falling down yet still somehow winning a silver medal (shouldn't this be illegal?). I do, however, have one question. Is Curling a sport that some drunk guys made up one night after a few too many in the pub. As near as I can tell, it involves people sliding a stone and a guy in a tight outfit running down the ice with the stone and smoothing the ice to clear a path for the stone. This is like shuffleboard but on ice and somehow in the Olympics. I could see it being a good drinking game, but an Olympic sport? And you wonder why the Olympics got whipped by American Idol and other shows this week.

I will have the priviledge tomorrow of watching J.J. Redick break the all-time ACC scoring record in person. Considering the zone defense that Temple plays, the odds of them holding J.J. to leass than the nine points he needs to set the record are roughly the same as my winning a Gold Medal in Curling in the 2010 Olympics. In other words, not good. So of everyone who has ever played in the ACC, including Bias, Jordan, Daugherty, Worthy, Perkins, Dawkins, Price, Thompson, Laettner, Price, none has scored as many points as J.J. Pretty good stuff.

Do you remember the song "Insane in the Membrane" by Cypress Hill? Good. Now you can try to get it out of your head, since I am having no luck doing the same.

One thing that really bugs me about reality shows is when there is a 34 year old punk contestant with tattoos all over his body and they label his profession as "Marketing Executive." Who are they kidding? If by marketing executive they mean guy in the customer service department who makes $8 an hour answering customer complaints, I understand. But having played in themarketing world for a good ten years, there are no marketing executives that match that description. Just call these people what they are Survivor and others.

This is a new one. The Sixers traded Lee Nailon and a second round pick for a second round pick. Cleveland has a better record than the Sixers, so the pick the Sixers will get is a worse pick than the one they gave up. So, in summary, the Sixers gave up a player AND a draft choice advantage in the same deal. That is a brilliant move! I would make an Isiah Thomas comparison here but I do not want to step on the Sports Guy's toes, and he owns that one.

Note: Picture courtesy of MSN Money