So exactly how do you "E-L-P-S" ... er, spell, your name

This guy's name spells belortu ... er, trouble.

Anthony Gargiulo, a rookie defensive end from Dartmouth, is a hit at the Calgary Stampeders' training camp because of his ability to take any word and instantly alphabetize the letters in it. For example, in goes "football" and out comes "A-B-F-L-O-T." And "Mississippi" reduces all the way down to "I-M-P-S."

"It's like Rain Man — it's not a normal thing," Stampeders general manager Jim Barker told the Calgary Sun. "Like he says, it's the most useless gift that any person could ever have. So is it a gift?"

"The irony of it all," noted the Sun's Eric Francis, "is the Stamps have his last name spelled two different ways in their press kit, and both are wrong."

He's on the bubble

It's good to be king, but Cavaliers star LeBron James is now a commissioner, too — of the Ultimate Bubble Blowing League, which will crown a national bubblegum-blowing champion and try to break the record for largest bubble, 23 inches.

Alas, the lungfest is open only to those ages 8 to 18, so forget seeing Dick Vitale, Stuart Scott or Chris Berman on your fantasy-league team.

Roll out the barrels

When is a 3K run really a 3-keg run? When it's the Beer Belly Two (Miler), a charity run that features beer instead of water along the way for competitors.

"My kids are running it," racer Doug Burmeister told Green Bay's WBAY-TV at the annual event, "so hopefully they're already at the finish line and I'll see them in an hour or so. You know, there's a lot of beer stops."

Ultimate advice

Snippet from an Associated Press Sports Editors Q&A with ultimate fighter Rich Franklin:

Q: When you go to schools and meet wrestlers and other youths, they must ask how you did it and say that they want to be like you. What do you tell them?

A: "I tell them to learn how to swing a golf club, because it hurts a lot less."

Talko time

• NBC's Jay Leno, on the video showing Kobe Bryant trashing his fellow Lakers: "The good news? This is the first evidence that Kobe's even aware there's other members on the team."

• Mike Bianchi of The Orlando Sentinel, on a mountain climber making the first successful cellphone call from the top of Mount Everest: "Hey, when a guy needs to make a fantasy baseball trade, he needs to make a fantasy baseball trade."

• Reggie Hayes of the Fort Wayne (Ind.) News-Sentinel, on the city's new NBA Development League franchise calling itself the Mad Ants: "Fortunately for us, we never have to play the UC Irvine Anteaters."

Was Goliath on steroids?

The Modiin Miracles defeated the Petah Tikva Pioneers 9-1 on Sunday in what league organizers billed as the first professional baseball game in Israeli history.

Not so fast, say Biblical scholars, pointing out the very first words in the book of Genesis loosely translate into "In the big inning..."

Dwight Perry: 206-464-8250 or dperry@seattletimes.com