Thursday, May 10, 2007

A new TV show gets thumbs up, a new war-funding bill is gonna get a thumbs down and O.J. gets the heave-ho

- Of all the places in the world that O.J. Simpson should not be (anywhere where class, dignity, honor and integrity are needed), restaurants are high on the list. It’s not that O.J. doesn’t deserve or need food, it’s more that he should never, ever be in close proximity to waiters for any reason. I think we all know what (allegedly) happened with the Juice and waiter Ron Goldman, so why run the risk of that happening again? Jeff Ruby, the owner of an upscale steakhouse in Louisville, Ky. understands this, and he was smart enough to boot the double-murdering (allegedly), money grubbing (confirmed), worst guy in the history of the world (also confirmed) from his restaurant during Kentucky Derby weekend. Ruby didn’t want the kind of sideshow and notoriety that the Juice brings, so he marched right up to the table where the former Heisman Trophy winner was sitting and told him to leave. It was the right choice, but from that point on, Ruby was putting his waiters in a dangerous position. I doubt the Juice was happy about being refused service, and having him angry in the vicinity of both knives and waiters is a recipe for disaster. This time, no one got hurt and O.J. left peacefully, but it’s not a chance you want to take on a regular basis. Go away, Juice, you’re the worst dude in the world and you’re the most despicable piece of crap I’ve ever seen. No one likes you and no one wants you around, so just go away and stay gone.

- Kudos to the NBA’s schedule makers for being nearly as idiotic and inept as their NHL counterparts. The geniuses who draw up the Association’s playoff schedule have somehow managed to construct a five-day stretch wherein one series, the one pitting the Cleveland Cavaliers against the New Jersey Nets, has only one game played in five days, while in another series, the Golden State Warriors versus the Utah Jazz, three games are played in the same span. Worse yet, from Wednesday to Friday of this week, Utah and Golden State play two games in two separate cities while the Cavs and Nets play no games during that time. Not even a quarter of drunken, stoned baboons throwing darts at a schedule board while blindfolded could come up with a playoff schedule this absurd and retarded, so well done NBA. There’s a fine line between prolonging your season to extract maximum attention and coverage and being a bunch of moronic imbeciles who waste time and drag things out to a ridiculous length, and the NBA has crossed this line and is watching it fade quickly in the rearview mirror. Why is it so hard to find a simple formula for playoff scheduling and stick with it, something like one day off between games if the series stays in the same city, two days between games if the series shifts from one city to another? Seems easy, seems logical……..but it also seems -waaaaay beyond the grasp of the pea-brained NBA schedule makers.

- This will shock and awe you, but it appears likely that W. will veto another war-funding bill. This one is on its way to his desk after he vetoed a bill that would have dared to set actual timelines for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq and the new bill would only provide funding for the war through July, at which time the issue would be revisited. Once again, though, the president will reject a war-funding bill, showing that he just doesn’t get it and doesn’t understand that no one is buying his lies about the war anymore. Congress isn't going to give him money to drag this thing out indefinitely, they and the American public want answers, explanations, reasons and actual evidence. W. maintains that if he was open-minded and considered anew strategy with an actual chance of success, then his current doomed, incompetent, failing strategy would not have a chance to work. Again, allow me to ask how a strategy under which the situation has continually and drastically worsened for four years and which has pissed off nearly everyone involved (including people who initially supported the war) is suddenly going to start succeeding. I feel like I’m watching an especially stupid bird fly into a glass door over and over again, not realizing he’s slowly killing himself and that there is no opening for him to fly through, only a solid glass door he’s going to keep smacking into over and over again. Give it up W., no one is buying the steaming, stinking pile of monkey crap that you’re selling. It’s over, just admit you’re totally incompetent and accept whatever funding Congress will give you.

- As promised, I tuned in for the special advance preview of ABC’s new show, Traveler, on Thursday night. Going in, all I really knew was that the show centered on three friends visiting New York and a terrorist attack in the city happened while they were there. My first impressions of the show were good; I think it has a chance to be a great show to watch, depending on how the writers and producers build on the themes and feel of the pilot. There was a lot of action and a fast pace to the entire hour, with one of the three main characters, Will Traveler, involved in an explosion at a museum and two of his friends, Tyler and Jay, seen fleeing from the museum right before the blast and immediately the two prime suspects in the attack. The rest of the hour was those two on the run, and thankfully there wasn’t the totally implausible, miraculous escape from the cops in which two average guys outrun, out-leap and outsmart an entire police force with helicopters, multiple cars and all sorts of resources at their disposal. One thing the show will have to do is develop more back stories and secondary characters, because the pilot was devoted almost exclusively to setting up the three main characters. We didn’t get to know any of the other characters very well, which I’m sure will come in the shows ahead if the series is going to be successful. Shows where you only care about the one or two main characters don’t work, you need more depth. Also, we found out that a special advance preview means you see the pilot on a given day, then nearly three weeks later, the show debuts in its normal time slot. Not sure of the logic behind that, because waiting three weeks wouldn’t exactly have been the end of the world. But whatever, the bottom line is that Traveler merits watching when it returns on May 30 for an eight-week summer run, so tune in and give it a chance.

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