By Chris Cosci

They say that truth is stranger than fiction. As proof, I offer you these three articles that caught my attention in the newspaper recently.

The first article involved Dean Valentine, president of UPN, home to what could possibly be the worst collection of television shows assembled on one network. Apparently, after the failure of their so-called attempt at reality television ("Chains of Love"), Mr. Valentine compared viewers’ addiction to reality shows to drug addiction. He said, "Reality television is starting to look a lot like heroin. A really quick high and a really long, long low that has to lead to another fix again."

Apparently, Mr. Valentine has extensive knowledge of the powers of heroin, which could possibly explain his comments on "Chains of Love," where he blames the critics for killing the show and claims, "I still think it’s a really good show." For those of you who missed this "really good show," the idea was that one guy is chained to four women (or one woman to four guys) for three days. At the end of each day, the guy (or girl) releases one of the other contestants. When it's down to one guy and one girl, they decide whether or not they want to continue their relationship (without the chains - or maybe they keep the chains - I'd rather not know). If this is "really good" television, I might as well boot my television out the window now.

Moving on to article two, Andre Agassi and Steffi Graf have recently been given a lucrative offer regarding their baby due in mid-December. If it's a girl, tennis promoter John Korff is offering $10 million to have the girl play in the 2017 A&P Tennis Classic women's tournament.

Is this guy really expecting this to be a good investment? Does he really think that 16 years from now, people are going to flock to this tournament so that they can watch the wonder child of two tennis greats from the past play? What if she grows up not liking tennis? The pressure that will be put on her, even before she's born, will be horrible. You might as well choose one of tennis star Chris Evert's three boys as a future husband for the girl.

Finally, we have the most disturbing article. Philip Morris, who has taken quite a hit to their reputation by finally admitting the lethal effect of smoking, has teamed up with researchers and released a study showing the economic benefits of cigarettes.

One of the benefits? Governments can save millions of dollars in health care and pensions because of the early deaths of many smokers. The report concluded from research in the Czech Republic that savings on health care, pensions, and housing for the elderly totaled $30 million. With that money, they can get three children from tennis stars to play in their tennis tournaments!

Think of that. $30 million dollars saved because smokers died early. Think of how much more they could save if they encouraged people to drink and drive.

Well, while you think that over, I'm going to try and raise money to get Benny Agbayani's new baby to play in the 2017 Chris Cosci Fund Baseball Tournament.