Daily News Unveils 2015 Sexy Singles. YOU WON'T BELIEVE WHAT HAPPENED NEXT!

(HAHAHAHAHA! Clickbait headline, suckers!)

As I mentioned in my previous post, I failed to write about the annual Sexy Singles feature in the Philadelphia Daily News for the last two years, but I did save the information from both the 2013 and 2014 editions. So let's run though the numbers before we get to 2015, where something interesting finally happened. (YOU WON'T BELIEVE WHAT...never mind.)

2013: 26 singles. A slight increase in...no, wait, wait...I'm sorry, it's actually 25 singles. For the second straight year they included someone who stated she was in a "committed relationship." I'm sorry, Daily News, but what part of "committed relationship" don't you understand? If you're "committed" you aren't available, which means YOU. ARE NOT. SINGLE. Anyway, of their 26: four came from local TV/radio, three worked at least part-time in the fitness industry, three people appeared in movies, TV shows and an off-Broadway production of "Dreamgirls," a Playboy centerfold, and three "pro" athletes: a member of the Philadelphia Union, someone from an "Ultimate Frisbee" team and a woman from...the Lingerie Football League. When you want to watch serious football as much as I do, you head to the LFL, right? So, 14 of 26 non-"regular people." But we had, apparently, after a four-year drought, LGBT representation. It's not blatantly stated but the woman in question "organizes women-oriented Stimulus Production parties for the LGBTQ community." So I counted her.

2014: Still at 26, but none in relationships, and not only did we have another lesbian, unlike the previous year, it's definite! Mostly. She was quoted as saying, "I'm 90 percent into women, but I'll take a Viking boy with a beard and some tattoos any day." Ooooookay, then. Moving on: three from local TV/radio, two members of the Philadelphia Wings (again, a team that's no longer around), five part- or full-time fitness/model types (including one who is a model/actress -- but aren't they all?), a manager/agent for athletes and performers (close enough for me), someone who is (or was) known as "America's Foot Doctor" and makes TV and radio appearances, a member of the Philadelphia Orchestra, and rapper Schooly D. 14 of 26 non-"regulars."

After the jump: 2015 -- and my nomination for a Sexy Single!

Today's Daily News: A Page Full Of FAIL

It's nice that, because I am a Philadelphia Daily News subscriber, each day the newspaper is on my doorstep when I leave the house. (Especially now that I'm actually awake every morning to go to work.) It irks me, however, that in order to have it on my doorstep so early in the morning they seem to have a printing deadline of midnight, or earlier. What this means is, stories about any night games played on the West Coast are guaranteed to not be in my paper. Worse, there have been times when games played in the Eastern or Central time zones were not covered or, at best, a very short, bare-bones wire service article was published. There was one time when a two-paragraph AP story was all that appeared in the paper for a 76ers game that didn't go to multiple overtimes (or even one, if I recall correctly) -- and was played in Philadelphia.

Modern technology doesn't help them put together a newspaper more quickly, it seems. Until recent years, it wasn't quite so bad. Now it seems more and more prevalent. It also leads to errors. And one page in today's paper was a doozy.  First, note the date of the paper and check out the photo and caption in the first two photographs (click on them for larger versions).

Somehow a photo from the Raiders-Chargers Thursday night NFL game from last week ran in this spot (along with the caption correctly identifying Carson Palmer) instead of one from last night's Jets-Broncos game. This is typical, by the way: run a photo from early in the game and tell the reader to go visit philly.com for the result.

Catching Up With Philly Sports

For some reason I've not written so much on sports lately. Let's fix that now.

Since the playoffs always have priority, we'll start with the Flyers. Since they fell behind Boston 3-0 in Game 7 of their historic Eastern Conference semifinal series, they've outscored their opposition 13-0 -- the four-goal comeback in that game has been followed by 6-0 and 3-0 wins over Montreal in the Eastern finals. In particular in the second game, the Flyers haven't played their best. It is similar to how the Flyers outplayed the Bruins for a sizable portion of the first three games, all won by Boston. Of course, we'll hope this series doesn't reverse itself the way that one did. The Flyers could be getting Ian Laperriere and Jeff Carter back before the end of this series, which would be a huge help.

If the Flyers get two more wins and move on to the Stanley Cup finals, they'd play the winner of the Chicago-San Jose series. The Blackhawks won the first two games at San Jose, putting the Sharks in a huge hole.

Meanwhile, a slight digression:

Philly Sports FIVE-team update!

Finally! I don't know why I haven't really blogged about the local teams much recently, but I promised I would do so this weekend. As I begin to write this, there's an hour before Daylight Saving Time takes effect. If you don't believe me, it says so at philly.com:

See? The Associated Press confirms it. I suppose that makes for something of a deadline, like professional writers have to deal with. So let's get to work, shall we? And hey, I've got a mention of a brand new team! In order of best to worst...

The Phillies are in the midst of spring training, and even so they're in the best shape of our local teams. They're a pretty solid favorite to win their third straight National League championship. I have some concerns (the bullpen, the bench) but if their key players are in good health, I don't see why they won't be in the World Series once again. Thus far in the spring, their starting pitchers have been excellent. Roy Halladay, of course, is the main focus, and in his first two starts he hasn't allowed a run in 5 innings while striking out 8 batters. With the offensive support he should get, with the switch to the NL meaning he'll face lineups that include opposing pitchers instead of designated hitters, with the fact that he's now in the same division as the Nationals and Marlins instead of the Yankees and Red Sox, he ought to rack up a lot of wins.

The Flyers need to rack up a lot of wins to secure a playoff spot, but they're still too inconsistent. The Olympic break, as I feared, dented their momentum. They've gone 4-2-1 over the last two weeks, but have been rather subpar defensively, capped off by an embarrassing 5-1 loss at home to Boston on Thursday night. But they followed that up with a 3-2 win over the tough Chicago Blackhawks today, coming from behind to tie the game with 2:04 left, and winning on a Chris Pronger goal with 2.1 seconds left. Besides the inconsistency, their goaltending has to be considered a question mark. Ray Emery is out for the season (and may never play again), and even though Michael Leighton has played very well, this is the first time he's had such a stretch of success. There's no guarantee it will last, or that he can step it up for a playoff run, and after Leighton there's Brian Boucher, who has been poor in very little playing time.

The Eagles need a great draft to shore up their weaknesses because they haven't done it through free agency. It's a weird situation because clauses in the collective bargaining agreement that's going to expire in a year or so have led to there being no salary cap, but also to most of the quality free agents being restricted instead of unrestricted (meaning if you want to sign one, the player's current team can either match the offer or receive draft picks as compensation). Still, all the Eagles have done is sign a guy coming off injuries (we saw how well that worked out with Stacy Andrews in 2009) and bring back Hank Baskett, who is now known for his fumble of the onside kick that jump-started the Saints' comeback to win the Super Bowl, but is still best known as Mr. Kendra Wilkinson. Also, they still haven't traded any of their quarterbacks, so the endless Donovan McNabb debate continue to pollute the airwaves.

And now for the new team: the Philadelphia Union, a new expansion franchise of Major League Soccer. There are three things wrong with this. One, it's soccer. Two, their stadium is in Chester. Three, the team may be shut down before it plays a game because the league's players are threatening a strike.

Still, they rank ahead of the pathetic 76ers. One of the worst teams in the NBA but probably not pitiful enough to really improve their draft lottery odds. A building that's half-empty almost every game. A coach who seems to be a moron, even to a non-basketball expert such as myself. And Allen Iverson's season was ended because of some combination of his daughter's illness, his wife's filing for divorce, his alleged gambling problem and his alleged alcoholism. Sorry, Sixers. Thanks for playing...



One bit of good news: I've beaten my deadline!