San Francisco Blog

Michael Phelps, who deviated from a training-driven lifestyle that put Communist Chinese programs for 12-year-olds to shame only to channel Frank "The Tank" Ricard with a boozy, druggy bacchanal at the University of South Carolina is coming here.

A full-page spread in the Sunday Chronicle pitched the forthcoming "Get Motivated! Business Seminar," featuring speakers such as Colin Powell and Rudy Giuliani as well as Phelps. In addition to Phelps' speech on "competitiveness," one can presumably learn how to shill the nation into an unnecessary war in Iraq, or, in Giuliani's case, Abyssinia (Whoops, never mind! Wrong fascist).

Anyhow, given Phelps' recent induction into the pantheon of pot-smoking legends, the ad's touting of his superhuman "focus" and use of the phrase "Get fired up!" were less than ideal. SF Weekly phoned "Get Motivated!" to query whether the swimmer is still scheduled to make his March 24 Cow Palace speech. He is.

While the good folks over at Kellogg's have dropped Phelps -- as if 75 percent of the adult consumers of Frosted Flakes aren't stoners -- and the swimmer has been suspended for three months by the United States' swimming federation, his motivational speaking career is buzzing right along. In fact, he'll be lecturing in Vancouver next month for "The Power Within." His speech's subject -- no joke -- is "High Performance."