“I’m interested in pursuing my sport,” said the tennis star, who was wearing a low-cut red tank-top. “I don’t want to just be eye candy, I want to be a role model to young people and a real competitor.”

Stefanopolis, who’s measurements are 36C-24-36, complains that too often she is simply objectified, and hopes that her tennis record will be thought of as the real story, rather than her beautiful smooth legs, firm breasts, and perfect abs. After her success at the Australian Open this last year, during which she wore an entirely black outfit, tight around the hips and waist, which gave generous views of her bare legs (as well as her breasts), Stefanopolis expresses confidence that her image in the public will shift to a more serious nature.

“I think I’ve started to prove myself,” said Stefanopolis, flashing a succulent smile with her full, red, enticing lips, and running a hand through her luscious, smooth, sweet-smelling hair. “There are still some who doubt me, I’m sure, but I’m earning peoples respect for how I play, and not for what I wear. And I’m going to keep on doing that.”

Stefanopolis, who sat with her long tanned legs crossed during her interview, uncrossing them twice at 5 minutes and 15 minutes in, has beautifully sculpted calves, and has expressed interest in cultivating an image less aloof than she is currently considered. She insists that this is well worth any hit she may take in terms of her popularity. “The Press makes a big deal of an athlete being good looking, and I’ve gotten some sponsors off of it, I know. But I don’t want that to be my legacy. If I lose those endorsement deals, so be it – I’m not going to be defined by something so irrelevant to my sport as physical attributes,” said the athlete, while her supple breasts pressed stubbornly against the fabric of her shirt.

Stefanopolis is seeded 17th at Wimbledon this year, and she is very excited to compete. She will be wearing a blue spaghetti strap tank-top which will cover her generous breasts, and hopefully be short enough to also reveal her smooth, firm stomach, as well as a short white pleated skirt, just barely covering the matching white spandex which will be hugging her firm beautiful buttocks.

Our home team, the Opossums, on the other hand is made up of: Larry, the gangly bespectabled nerdling, Archie, the fat one; Sarah, the girl, Tommy, the wheelchair bound, Jake, the jokester, Sam, the bully with a heart of gold and there’s some others too. These unlikely comrades, over an indeterminate amount of time that was filled with trials and triumphs, learned to set aside their differences and overcome all odds. Or at least the odds that said they would overcome the odds and win.

Some may chalk up the Opossums monumental loss to the fact that none of the members had any formal training, or even a basic knowledge of the conventions of baseball. Others point the finger at the coach, an incompetent alcoholic with a bitter distaste for children. Still others lay blame on the fact that the other team was really really good.

The game, which can more accurately be described as a beating, lasted only one hour and five minutes. Fifty nine minutes of which was spent in a steady rain. One glimmer of hope appeared near the bottom of the seventh inning when Jake hit a ball deep into left field and began to run like a man possessed by drunk Irish demons. He made it round first, then second, then third, and five feet from home plate he slipped in the mud, landing face down and remaining there until he was tagged out by the opposing team.

In the stands, another drama was unfolding. Several groupings of parents, in what has become almost typical for youth baseball leagues, were enthusiastically cheering and jeering. They seemed to be more emotionally involved that their children, yelling at the umpire and coach, cursing and throwing garbage at certain intense moments. But when this reporter dug a little deeper, she realized that an overwhelming number of the parents were routing for The Rockets – far more than made sense based on the size of the visiting team.

When asked who their child was, I found again and again that parents of Opossum players were rooting against their own children. “It just doesn’t make sense to root for ‘em,” said Mr. Sandoval, Sarah’s father, “no way they could win.” “They’re just a band of misfits- their winning is incredibly unlikely,” said another parent who wished to remain nameless.

The third annual Chubby Bunny Championship took place in Arco Arena before a sold-out crowd and was the first truly international contest of such nature. Besides Mr. Jagger, there were delegations from Mexico, Canada, Australia and Japan. Ushering in a new era of professional eating competitions, the CBC boasted an impressive lineup of competitors, which included Sir Mick, Takeru Kobayashi of hot-dog eating fame, and Steven Tyler, the large-lipped frontman of Aerosmith.

The competitors present at the finals had already made it through two days of rounds designed to whittle down the list of competitors from 300 to ten. While anyone was welcome to compete, all eyes were firmly fixed on Mr. Kobayashi and the rock ‘n roll royalty. Going into the final round, all three were at roughly the same level, having all managed at one point to contain 35 marshmallows in their mouths while still able to say the words “Chubby Bunny.”

“The athleticism of these eaters is astounding,” says Del Rogers, a sports reporter for local news KRCA. “It’s clear just by watching Takeru warm up that he is a dedicated eater and it’s amazing what a guy like him was able to do by sheer will-power. But in the end, it comes down to physiology. His mouth is just smaller than either Mick Jagger’s or Steven Tyler’s and he got knocked out pretty quickly.”

By the time they were at Competition Marshmallow 30, the two rock legends were the only competitors left and remained locked in heated battle. The stage was set up so that the two competitors faced each other. In front of each of them was a small table with a bowl of marshmallows and each took turns putting a marshmallow in their mouths and saying “chubby bunny.” On the big screen in the middle of the arena, you could see the intense glares in each man’s eyes, daring the other match him.

“It was the most exciting thing, like, ever,” says Jim Benson, 11. “I couldn’t believe how big their mouths were. My dad said it was because both of them have spent so many years singing and stuff and that stretched their mouths out.”

“I got pretty worried for them,” says Delores Santos. “It’s not like either of them are young men anymore and you could see it was a great strain for them. I’d heard about people dying in contests like this because they couldn’t breathe with so many marshmallows in their throats. I didn’t worry too much because I saw the fire department was there just in case.”

Although Mr. Jagger faltered with marshmallow 41, nearly spitting soggy, half-chewed marshmallows all over the referee, he regained his composure and came back to a great roar from the crowd. With each successive shout of “chubby bunny,” the singers executed their trademark dance moves, spinning around and twirling the myriad scarves each wore for the occasion. Sir Jagger knocked Mr. Tyler out of the competition with marshmallow 43.

“OW OO IKE E OW UDDER-UCKERR?” Jagger shouted, thankfully with enough marshmallows in his mouth as to not offend parents of small children with his vulgar language. Spinning around and attempting to do the splits, Sir Jagger could no longer contain the marshmallows and they exploded from his mouth into the VIP section which was in front of the stage. Both singers required assistance clearing the blockage in their throats, but once recovered they were not visibly shaken. The two then embraced like old friends and sang an acapella version of “Start Me Up,” a hit by Jagger’s band The Rolling Stones.

Officials from Arco Arena say they were very pleased with the event.

“We haven’t even been able to sell out a King’s game for a few years, but the Chubby Bunny Championship was packed and people were actually scalping tickets for about 120 bucks a pop,” says Walt Whiteman, a spokesman for the sports stadium. “It was an exciting event and we’re happy to have been a part of it.”

Wicked Cow Entertainment, managers for Takeru Kobayashi, say that they’re proud of what he did for his first Chubby Bunny Competition, but that he’ll be improved for the next competition.

“Takeru is not a holder,” says Ward Holgaluffer, a spokesman for Wicked Cow. “His technique is designed for getting foods through his mouth and his throat very quickly, not holding it there. But now he’s going to work on some new skills and cheek-widening exercises. We’re hoping to see Mr. Jagger back here next year.”

Although a statement like that certainly puts Wicked Cow’s representative in the running, for now it seems clear to this reporter – and to the world – just who has got the biggest mouth.

David “Fried Nuggets” Putnick, hero of snow-sports enthusiasts and adventurers the world over, left this dimension last week from the slopes of the Chilean ski resort Valle Nevado. Vowing to be gone no more than 8 days, Mr. Putnick has returned ahead of schedule after 6 of “the greatest days of [his] life”.

“People have been looking for a way into other dimensions for centuries,” says Putnick, assuming a scholarly air. “The problem is that they’ve only ever done it from inside the domeage that alights their shoulders. Now don’t get me wrong, I give big ups to astral projection and drugs, but I wanted something more. I wanted to take my bones up there with me.”

Putnick’s biography writes itself: Raised in a Colorado hippie commune, he grew up in an atmosphere in which mind expansion and interdimensional travel were a fundamental part of life. Putnick was praised as a child for having a special aptitude for accessing the astral plane, purported to be the first dimension removed from ours. Putnick would often thrill members of his community with tales from his travels there, such as the time he played Wii tennis (a technology not then invented) with Joan of Arc.

“He used to hide in the hybrid squash-berry barrels at the organic co-op,” says Lyzra Walbaum, a former commune resident. “He would always tell the most interesting stories. Mice who wear underwear on their heads and grow leftist political cartoons from their ears, old sailors teaching him the most effective knots for hog-tying an eight-limbed creature, a young Elvis giving a blow job to a raccoon…Most people would just write them off as the sweet nap-time dreams of a child, but we all knew he was really going somewhere while he was under those genetically altered squash.”

As a young man, Putnick devoted himself to snowboarding and began traveling the world in search of an “endless winter.” Working at ski resorts and spending as much of his free time as possible out on the slopes, he quickly became a respected figure in the ski bum world, renowned for his board skills, his other-worldly quality and his fantastic drug connections. After spending a rare few months of summer in Brazil learning to surf, Putnick became enamored with the burgeoning sport of kite-surfing, in which the rider is harnessed to a large, often inflatable kite. He was among the first people to adapt the use of these inflatable kite-surfing kites to snowboarding.

“When [Putnick] came back from Brazil, he was on a newer level,” says Jose Mendes, a comarade of Putnick’s who learned English primarily through the slang-laden international crowd that staffs ski resorts. “Hardly anyone was snowkiting at this time. At first, he sometimes was in a kitemare and the kite would Hinderburg into things or peoples, but it didn’t take him long to get shit hot. Dangerous weather was no problem for him and he would go out even when it was nuking. That’s how he got such big air.”

“Big air,” the term used to describe the fantastic jumps one can achieve while snowkiting, is a prized aspect of the sport. Some jumpers have managed to remain airborne for up to 20 seconds at a time. Taking an inside joke that a snowkiter with that much hangtime would be able to “glide straight to heaven” more seriously than it had been intended, Putnick launched himself on a quest to snowkite into a different dimension.

“I was out there every day, boosting off everything I could, trying to send it through the power zone 100 % of the time. On the big jumps I started to feel something opening up. Then I glimpsed it – like a golden hole in the middle of sky. I knew I could make it after that point so I called a Babe Ruth for Monday and said I’d be coming back in a week. There was nutty people gathered there, but I pulled it off.”

What exactly Putnick pulled off is unclear because, while it has been confirmed that he disappeared into the sky and did not return until six days later, he will not talk about what he saw there, or what level dimension he may have attained. Since the affable Putnick is usually happy to talk about his adventures, there has been rampant speculation as to what is currently holding his tongue. Some people believe that the experience has humbled him so much that he doesn’t want to brag, or perhaps that what happened up there was extremely personal. Other more cynical observers have mentioned that Putnick is currently in negotiations for a book with Random House and has been sworn to secrecy prior to a marketing campaign. Either way, this dimension continues to wait for its far-out ambassador to let us know what it was like up there.

The marriage of Nascar Nation’s technology-fueled speed obsession with rampant consumerism has produced here a hazy vision of our country’s increasingly complex, yet ultimately lowbrow future that rivals the work of any good dystopian. It comes as no surprise then that this should be the site of the first human contact with aliens.

It was roughly 9:00pm on August 23rd when amateur racing enthusiast Jeff Johnson says that he began a conversation on his radio scanner with a being claiming to be a member of the Niblix clan from the planet Chinlax:

“It was lap 98 and most of the lead cars were on pit road,” says Johnson. “I wanted to hear what the crews were saying about mechanical changes, but I was getting a lot of interference so I started pushing my SC230 up to the stratosphere out of sheer frustration, but once it hit the peak at 1300 MHz it just kept going, straight into no man’s land. I was at about 1570 MHz when I started noticing the blips.”

“The blips,” as Johnson describes them, are a series of beeps heard in the upper frequencies that combine to form intelligible sentences when scanning quickly up and down through the range of 1550 – 1620 MHz. Each frequency itself has no discernible pattern, but when flipped through in rapid succession one can hear words, much the way that looking through a gap in a fence shows only a tiny bit of what’s beyond it, but when walking quickly by the fence, all the bits combine to give a fairly complete image of what’s on the other side.

The fact that the aliens chose to speak directly to Johnson was an affirmation for the 47 year old project manager.

“I felt pretty special about it,” said Johnson. “They were asking me to spread the word about them and make sure that people weren’t afraid of ‘em. They’ve seen the movies we make and they know we’re scared of ‘em, so they wanted to talk to me an’ see if I could convince people otherwise. They were nice to me, asked me how my mom was doing and everything, so I told everybody around me about how wise and understanding they are and a whole bunch of people were interested.”

Johnson says that he asked the aliens if they wanted to speak to someone with a little more influence and they told him that they only wished to speak to him.

“They wouldn’t even talk to the announcers,” says Johnson. “They said the way to spread the word about the coming revolution was through someone ordinary and unassuming, a regular guy. I told them I could hook them up with the agency that does Carl’s Jr. ads, but they said they just wanted me. It was flattering.”

Not everyone is as welcoming and excited about the impending arrival of extraterrestrial beings here on Earth. Nashville xenobiologist and local crackpot Alan Milbourne heard about the event through one of the alien chatboards he runs. Milbourne feels that the aliens intentions are not as friendly as Johnson believes, but rather that the aliens wish to lure us into a false sense of security before attacking.

“The ‘Greys’ are finally starting to show some smarts worthy of the phrase ‘intelligent life,’” says Milbourne. “They know that L Ron Hubbard has cornered the celebrity market, so they’re taking a lesson from classical religion and concentrating their efforts on the general public, who are much easier to fool than anyone else. They’ll act really nice at first, but the next thing you know they’ll be eating people’s eyeballs and running forceful takeovers of major companies. People really need to ask themselves whether or not they actually want these extraterrestrials to touch down terrestrial-like.”