Celebrate!

J's World, by Jeremiah Bartz

There's the "Dirty Bird", the "Icky Shuffle" and the "Lambeau Leap".

The "Bob and Weave", the "Sack Dance" and the "Mile High Salute".

Muhammed Ali danced across the ring, Chi Chi Rodriquez twirls his golf club like a baton and soccer players have been known to run around, screaming and topless, for days after scoring a goal.

These are just a few of the popular celebrations in the sports world.

Excessive celebrating has become as big a part of the sports world as injuries, steroid abuse and gambling.

Athletes now can not go longer than 12 minutes without praising their own actions and dancing around their field of play. Routine accomplishments are now cause for excessive celebrations.

In football, defensive players now run from sideline to sideline, jumping up and down after each tackle. Recievers scream first down and jump and point their arm down the field, even if they are losing by 45 points. Kickers like Arizona's Bill Gramatica leap up and down after a modest field goal and tear their ACL.

In basketball, players give a high-five to everyone on the court before they go to the free-throw line. With today's officiating, that happens about 100 times per game.

It may not be long before these celebrations are choreographed, Deion Sanders is hired as the NFL's head instructor of celebrations and Kool N' The Gang's "Celebrate" is the only song played at NFL stadiums. Entire teams will soon join in the end zone and do their best impersonation of the Rockettes.

I think these lavish celebrations are even drifting into the everyday society.

At Wal-Mart, those blue- vested employees are constantly slapping each other on the back after creating those falling prices. Ray Romano shook the hands of everyone in the audience after he mysteriously won an Emmy for his work on "Everybody Loves Raymond". I think I even saw G.W.B. on the news high-fiving Laura after the US raided Afghanastahn.

The excessive celebration bug has even crept into the newsroom of the Frontiersman.

Now it is not uncommon to see reporter Rindi White spike her notebook after a city council meeting or business reporter Scott Christiansen doing his version of the "Icky Shuffle" on his desk, yelling, "business beat is done, business beat is done."

Managing editor Frank Ameduri can be seen daily doing his Shannon Sharpe muscleman pose through the window of his office after talking yet another angry reader out of canceling their subscription, because of what they read in the last edition of "J's World."

Valley life editor Casey Ressler gives his "props" to his newsroom "peeps" with the "Mile-High Salute."

I have been known to do a cartwheel across the office as I get my pages done, just past deadline.

Everyone is eager to glorify their own accomplishments.

Modesty is becoming as rare in this world as honest politics or a quality hip-hop album.

Jeremiah Bartz , the sports

editor for the Frontiersman, (sports@frontiersman.com) pulled a muscle celebrating during the deadline for this paper.