While some regions of our great nation pursue their mysterious ritual of "hockey" and other indigenous winter pursuits in workaday fashion through the middle/end (!) of February, SMQ's neck of the woods is commemorating its own hedonistic rite, Mardi Gras. Literally, "Fat Tuesday." Traditionally, this would be accompanied by a gratuitous picture of Charlie Weis, but circumstances lead us instead to this girth-related news from the Notre Dame coach's stomach stapling malpractice trial in Boston:
The juror, an older man, began moaning as he listened to an expert testifying in defense of Massachusetts General Hospital surgeons Charles Ferguson and Richard Hodin. Weis claims they botched his care after gastric bypass surgery in June 2002.
The judge immediately ordered the other jurors out of the courtroom, but some saw Ferguson, Hodin and other doctors who were in the courtroom rush to the collapsed juror's aid. [...] Spectators were ordered out of the courtroom shortly after the man fell ill. He was taken away in an ambulance; his condition and identity were not immediately known.
Since the condition of the juror remains unknown, the requisite "collapse" joke questioning the presence of a Notre Dame cornerback on the jury would be in bad taste for the time being.
In the meantime, a brief Fat Tuesday homage, headed by an appropriately somber Weis, to the unabashedly beefiest of the nation's sideline beefcake:
Apologies to Orson and others invested in the generous proportions of Philip Fulmer, whose waistline SMQ deems worthy of honorable mention but falls just short of the truly Amstutzian. Maybe next year.
