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Serena Brooks likes to play rough.

I have very few rules in life. Don't eat ice cream right before bed, unless you want heartburn. Don't watch Jimmy Fallon right before bed, unless you want heartburn. And never, ever, under any circumstances, get high and drunk on a Monday night and have a threesome with another dude and a chick from Niwot named Serena -- especially if Serena looks like the type of girl a Springer Show producer would stop on the street, and especially if Serena's six-month-old is sleeping nearby.

It's a rule I've managed never to break over the years, unlike that damn Fallon rule. But, as the Post and every other outlet reported this week, two local men recently showed they just didn't have the restraint. As you can imagine, it didn't end well.

"Run! Run! Why is no one else running?"

There are days when sifting through the world's deadbeats in search of a stand-out shmuck just doesn't feel right. This, dear reader, is one of those days. So instead, I give you Gary.

For anyone watching from their living-room windows, it must have been quite the sight: a lonely little man sprinting wildly for cover, leaving his golf clubs and his dignity alone in the 13th fairway.

It was around five on Thursday, and I was three holes into a lonely post-work nine at Aurora's Saddle Rock Golf Course. Then, suddenly and violently, the skies opened. Lightning flashed all around me, bolts hanging in the air like unwanted guests. And there I was, having never golfed in a lightning storm, a bewildered California guy, standing on a hill with a copper sand wedge in hand. I imagined myself in line to meet St. Peter, watching MJ moonwalk through the gates to the sound of light applause from Farrah Fawcett. And that, needless to say, scared the shit out of me.

There was a time when I wanted Roger Goodell to come down on Brandon Marshall. It was before the ESPN hit piece, but after Marshall's most recent display of unhinged chauvinism, and around the time former Falcons quarterback Michael Vick was to be released from prison. While most Broncos fans were collectively hoping Commissioner Goodell would ignore Marshall's transgressions, I was hoping for something severe, something season-changing. A four-game suspension at the least; a season at the most. Maybe it's because I'm not a so-called "dog person," but it seemed to me the punishment for throwing around a woman should at least match that of killing dogs.

It didn't happen. Marshall escaped the commissioner's wrath. And now, of course, he wants to be traded and is skipping practices to make it happen. And so it came to be that I no longer want Brandon Marshall to be suspended. I want him to be kicked in the Adam's apple. By someone named Vinny. Preferably in work boots.

It was a banner week shmuckwise for members of Team Nature, which grabbed three of the top four spots in our weekly Shmuck Power Rankings. The rankings broke down like this:

4. Gravity. Newton and his God forsaken apple showed up at my very manly volleyball game the other night and caused me to come down on my ankle, which has since puffed up like that one hot girl from high school.

3. Marilyn Musgrave. She hasn't really done anything since last week, but I'm still a little hungover from that performance.

2. Father Time, for making me too old to eat Sonic corndogs without puffing up like my ankle.

1. Mother Nature, for being a total whore.

Musgrave (left) receives an award from the anti-abortion Susan B. Anthony Center.

First off, apologies are probably in order. It occurs to me that, over the last six months, you've probably managed to wipe clean the stains left on your mind by former Rep. Marilyn Musgrave. Since her election in 2002, Musgrave's devotion to squashing women's rights, gay rights -- basically the rights of anyone with a decent shoe collection -- has made her a front-runner for Shmuck of the Decade. But there she was in November, right-winging her way right out of office, and out of our gray matter too.

And here I am, bringing her back on an otherwise pleasant Friday. It will be brief, I assure you. Painless? Probably not.

I was feeling a little Shmuck Light this week, unsure that anyone had really risen their shmuck game to a level deserving of this honor, which is fast becoming the Teen Choice Awards of the half-baked-insult-blog world. I engaged our Twitter friends, and even they, at first, were a little unsure. One guy suggested we lay the shmuck down on the Conifer teen who injured herself boogie-boarding on the hood an SUV. But Shmuck Bylaw 4.247-A clearly states that all high school students are "permitted to, and in fact encouraged to, engage in otherwise shmuck-worthy behavior for a four-week period beginning two weeks before and ending two weeks after the last day of school." So she was off the hook. In the hospital, but off the hook.

So we were stumped. But then a few people came through with not a single shmuck, but a shmuck collective that is more than worthy of the honor: The NBA referees.

It pains me to bestow such a dishonor on someone with such an honorable mustache, but this week's Knight of Shmuck must be former Congressman Scott McInnis, who's taking one of the more bizarre approaches to governorship since Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jesse Ventura.

After months of not-so-subtly announcing his intention to seek the GOP's gubernatorial nomination, McInnis this week officially announced his bid. But he did it with all the publicity of Leper Tweetup.

Perhaps that's because McInnis's constant "unofficial" campaigning has made him Topic No. 1 at all the cool Ethics Police parties, leaving him leery about making too big of a splash. Or perhaps he simply doesn't get that in order to win votes, people -- not just basement-bound political bloggers, but actual, nose-breathing people -- have to know that you're running, and why.

Either way, he betrayed the audaciousness of his facial hair. After all, if you're going to flaunt ethics codes, you should do it with pizazz. He should have blown it out.

The sweater confirms it: Shmuck.

Sometimes picking a shmuck is hard work. Sometimes the world presents you with such a vast sample tray of worthy shmucks, you have to employ a team of PhDs to measure their shmuckiness. On other, rarer occasions, the calendar presents a virtually shmuck-free week, and you're left to pick Bob Schaffer again, simply for his continued refusal to move to Utah.

This, however, was not one of those weeks.

This week, the world gave us Mark Cuban vs. Kenyon Martin, one of the strangest displays of the 2009 playoffs. And when Ron Artest and Stan Van Gundy are still around, that's saying something.

Snow. Sun. Snow. Sun. Clouds. Thunder. Heat. Cold.

We realize this is Colorado. We realize that if you don't like the weather in Colorado, wait an hour. We realize that it's kind of fun experiencing all four seasons in a 24-hour period sometimes. But c'mon. The past week has been a little much (and it's only going to get worse: Sunshine today and ten inches of snow predicted for Saturday).

I guess Mother Nature is dishing out a little payback for our greedy consumption of 70-degree days in February -- and that's all well and good. But I have patios to sit on and cold beers to drink, and it's no fun to pop open an icy one and tilt my face toward the sun only to have to hurry inside a moment later with my snow-covered tail between my legs (check out the 9News weather "planner" above).

There are flip flops and snow boots next to each other by my closet. I've turned on both the A.C. and the heater in my car in the past few days. I wanted to water the grass, but I don't want to burst my pipes.

Forecast calls for sun, snow and a chance of Shmucky weather.

For previous Shmucks, see our Shmuck of the Week archive.

It's coming up on the ten-year anniversary of the Columbine High School murders -- so what better time to introduce a bill in the state legislature that would ease a restriction on certain people who want to buy firearms?

The bill, pushed by Republican senator Greg Brophy of Wray (pictured) and Republican representative Steve King of Grand Junction, would waive the background check requirement for anyone who has a concealed-carry permit.

Who opposes the bill? Police chiefs and sheriffs who believe that Colorado's conceal-carry permit process isn't standardized or centralized enough to be trustworthy, according to a story in the Denver Post. Other opponents include: gun-control groups (of course) and a number of Democrats, who now control both the state house and senate.

The bill would also do away with the background check in gun stores and at gun shows, something that would undo a portion of the state's landmark Amendment 22, which was passed by an enormous margin in 2000, shortly after Columbine.

Remember, Senator Brophy and Representative King: Guns don't make people into shmucks, people do.

For previous Shmucks, see our archive.