- Memo to my main man Dennis Franchione: if the majority of your school’s fan base already wants you fired because you annually fail to win the big games and take the team to an elite level, don’t do something so blatantly shady and underhanded as sending out a weekly booster newsletter containing injury updates on your players and critiques of upcoming opponents – after those boosters have given $1,200, money which went to fund your website, coachfran.com. For one, it looks like (and is) a greedy, sleazy play on your part to get more money for yourself and capitalize on your role as Texas A&M football coach to make money off of your team. Second, you tool, how do you know that those boosters giving that money aren’t actually supporters of, or associated with in some way, opposing teams? Yeah, you may not have been sending out PDF copies of the playbook, but any information you sent out had value in the wrong hands, otherwise why would these boosters pay that money if they weren’t getting something the average fan doesn’t get? Franchione was under fire before this news even more than he usually is, so you can only imagine how much gasoline this is going to pour onto the fire to get him, well, fired. I would say that I feel sorry for you, coach, but when you do stupid things like this and do them for the self-serving, greedy reasons you did them for, you deserve and get no sympathy.
- Myanmar isn't the only country around the world where rioting dissident groups are demanding the overthrow of the government. In Georgia (not the state, the western Asian nation), protestors numbering in the thousands assembled Friday in the capital city of Tbilisi to demand the resignation of President Mikhail Saakashvili after the arrest of a former Georgian defense minister who accused the leader of being involved in a murder plot. What, Georgians, you have a problem if your leader, the man charged with governing your country and helping to uphold its laws, is blatantly violating those laws and plotting to have people offed? Can I interest all of you in a leader swap, our warmongering, IQ-deprived tool of a president for your murder-plotting, lying president? It could be similar to two pro sports teams making a trade involving players who are disgruntled and need a change of scenery, so the teams swap their proverbial problem children for one another and see if a new home will have a positive effect. Let’s face it, even a murder-plotting president can’t f’up our country any worse right now, and you live in Georgia, so even W. might not be able to negatively impact the quality of life much there. On second thought, it is W., so you really can't rule it out. How’s about if we throw in Dick Cheney and free season passes to Six Flags, would you make that deal? Call us, Georgians, we’re standing by the phone…..
- I made a mistake talking about new shows that have been or will be canceled soon and what’s the worst new show on this fall. While Reaper is bad, ABC’s new “comedy” Cavemen, premiering this Tuesday night, is worse. While I’m not willing to write Reaper off in the race for worst new show (or just worst show period) on this fall, I think it has incredibly fierce competition from the moronic Cavemen. Remember, this is a show whose first try at a pilot was so bad that the network literally made the show’s producers go back and redo it. Unfortunately, this premise and idea are so bad that I don’t think any number of retries could make it into a watchable program. I’ve seen a few commercials this week trying to build the premiere up as some sort of man-targeted event, but if ABC thinks that this is what appeals to me as a man, then I am extremely offended. I don’t know who the network got for its focus groups on this one and how they got good enough feedback to allow Cavemen to make it on air, but everyone involved with the decision needs to be fired and then subjected to stringent psychological evaluations, as well as being banned from ever working in television again. I guess it’s only fitting that the show will premiere on Tuesday nights, what I have affectionately dubbed “a desolate wasteland of abominable crap.” I don’t care what else you can find to do on Tuesday nights this fall, unless it involves a violent, bloody death or having dinner with Rosie O’Donnell at an all-you-can-eat buffet, it is without a doubt a better use of time than watching anything on network TV on this night of the week…..
- Wow…..there hasn’t been a more upside-down college football weekend than this in a long, long time. Half of the top ten teams in the country lost, seven of the top 13 went down and the top-ranked team almost suffered the same fate. Things got started Friday night when West Virginia went to South Florida and saw the Bulls cement their status as an elite team by knocking off the fifth-ranked Mountaineers by a 21-13 score. The upsets then came fast and furious all day Saturday, with #3 Oklahoma the first to go down, 27-24 at Colorado on a last-second field goal. OU’s Big 12 rival, Texas, with whom the Sooners have a matchup next Saturday in the fabled Red River Shootout, didn’t bother pushing their opponent to the end Saturday, instead receiving a 41-21 drubbing from Kansas State. Later in the day, #4 Florida lost to SEC rival Auburn for the second consecutive year, 20-17. The Gators tried the new favorite tactic of football coaches, calling a timeout milliseconds before the opposing team attempts a crucial field goal, but not only did Auburn’s Wes Byrum make the field goal that didn’t count because of the timeout, he made the kick again after the timeout to down the Gators. I personally loved what he did after the game as well, mocking the über-annoying “Gator Chomp” motion that UF fans and athletes have made so annoying the past few years (yes, you, Joakim Noah). Last year Florida lost to Auburn and it ended up being their only loss on the way to a national championship, but I don’t believe that same fate is in store for them this time around. The fifth team from the top ten to lose was Rutgers, which fell 34-24 in a non-conference game to Maryland. When you mix in 11th-ranked Oregon’s loss to California and #13 Clemson’s boooooring loss (13-3, where’s the offense?) to Georgia Tech, it was definitely not a banner day for college football’s highest-ranked teams. Capping off the day with USC’s narrow 27-24 win at Washington made for a great end of an exciting day of football, thanks in part to the fact that UW has the most beautiful setting for a college football stadium in the country. USC survived the loss of two offensive linemen to injury on a single play, but when you have blue-chip recruits two deep at every position, those losses are less impactful than they would be for other teams. Besides South Florida, another team making a name for itself is Cincinnati, which won't end up the season on a hot streak because it plays in the rugged Big East, but the Bearcats are 5-0 and have a beast of a defense. By the time the weekend ends, the Bearcats and South Florida Bulls will be climbing way up the polls, while the seven teams from the top 13 who lost will be slip-sliding down, some out of the polls entirely, others just a few spots. Oh, and the quiet, workmanlike win by LSU, 34-9 over in-state rival Tulane…..on a chaotic Saturday like this, it might be enough to sneak them to the top of the polls, just wait and see…..
- Tensions are mounting in Myanmar and as a result, all of my Buddhist monk buddies in the country won't be able to read my postings….unless they can find a way to hack into an underground Internet connection. That’s because the country’s ruling military junta has cut off all public Internet access and has also sealed off the nations Buddhist monasteries. The heavy hand of the military was evident in the capital city of Yangon on Saturday, with regular patrols stamping out the public pro-democracy demonstrations that had been taking place daily prior to the crackdown. Troops fired warning shots and tear gas at the few brave dissidents who did venture out and about, with a nice smattering of beatdowns via clubbing mixed in. The scene of military violence and oppression prompted one unidentified resident of the city to cry, “Bloodbath again!” Coincidentally, I believe that is the new tourism slogan for Myanmar, a place of joy, magic and dreams coming true……assuming your dream is brutal oppression and restriction by an overbearing, despotic, dictatorial government looking to stamp out any vestiges of democracy and individuality. The monks who have been the driving force behind this revolt are now sealed inside their monasteries, with troops outside keeping them in. I actually find myself in the unusual position of agreeing with the White House on this one, but the administration’s stance of putting increased pressure on the government of Myanmar is absolutely the right call. Give the people back their Internet, let the monks out of their monasteries, stop shooting, tear gassing and assaulting people and give them their f’ing democracy, military junta of Myanmar, or things are going to continue to get worse for you.
Sunday, September 30, 2007
Saturday, September 29, 2007
Monks still causing trouble, people who are famous for no reason and our first TV casualty of the fall
- Maybe the New York Mets aren’t collapsing as much as the putrid National League is finally reaching some sort of equilibrium as the Major League Baseball season nears its end. You could look at the Mets’ come-from-ahead-to-lose act and insistence on giving away a 6½ game lead over the second-place Philadelphia Phillies as a team collapsing and choking. Right now the Mets and Phillies are one game apart in the NL East standings even though the Mets had that massive aforementioned lead just two weeks ago. However, I don’t think it’s so much the Mets choking as it is the National League evening out and congealing into one massive heap of mediocrity as the season comes to a close. The National League is clearly inferior to the American League this year, with the top five teams in the AL markedly better than any NL team. So it’s fitting that the team that possessed the NL’s best record for much of the season is now slipping back toward the pack, with the last three games of that slide courtesy of one of the NL’s worst teams, the Washington Nationals. The bottom teams in the NL are surging during this final week of the regular season and several of the top teams (Mets, Cubs, Brewers) are stalling out and seeing their winning percentages plummet. Ideally you would take the top four American League teams and let them play it out to determine baseball’s champion, but since MLB’s governing rules mandate that both leagues get to participate in the playoffs, can four National League teams please get their act together, clinch playoff berths and end this erratic lurch toward mediocrity? Thanks guys…..
- A quick note to all my peeps at the CW: You all can re-air Reaper as many times as you want, it’s still going to suck. The network put the most abysmal new show on TV back on for a second straight night to fill and empty spot in this week’s lineup after the sensational season premiere of Smallville, with its normal sidekick show, Supernatural, not premiering until next week. I had the good sense to slam my finger on the power button on my remote and run in sheer horr-a from the TV the second I saw that Reaper was coming on after I’d watched Smallville, so I was able to avoid reliving quite possibly the most painful hour of television I’ve ever watched when I gave the Reaper pilot a try Wednesday night. And no, you IQ-deprived fans of this abomination of a show, I don’t care that the network managed to make up, er, um, find some positive comments on the show from TV critics, because every single show that has ever aired a single episode (with the possible exception of Rules of Engagement) has scrounged up a few positive quotes and managed to cut and edit them in a way that makes it look like there are people out there who love their show. Reaper is the worst show on the CW right now, and with a network that has an über-crappy schedule, that’s really saying something.
- Either we need to change the name of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame or we need to stop inducting no-musical-talent hacks whose “contributions” to music include changing their sound every two weeks, having a set of teeth so bad they rival Austin Powers’ Chiclets, being a total skank who writes sexually explicit books and creating most of her music with the help of a synthesizer and drum machine. Yes, I’m looking right at you, Madonna, because your Britney Spears-in-twenty-years a** has been nominated for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and I can’t be the only one who’s disgusted by this. There is nothing rock about Madonna, other than the fact that she’s probably had sex with as many dudes as most rock groupies from the ‘80s. Has she affected the world of music with her antics and awful music? Yes, but that doesn’t mean she belongs in the Rock H.O.F. Of course, Donna Summer is also nominated, which might be a bigger affront to true rock fans than Madonna because although she’s not an über-skank pop singer like Madge, Summer is a prominent member of the single most offensive musical movement in the history of music: disco. Having hacks like these two on their way to induction only makes me sadder than I already was that a legendary, amazing band like the Ramones placed so much importance on getting into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Why would you be so intent on being a part of something that’s turning into such a joke? Jimi Hendrix’s lunchbox from the third grade is looking like a shining monument by comparison when you consider the other crappy displays that will be in this museum to recognize jokes like Madonna and Summer.
- It was only a matter of time before the conflict in Myanmar turned bloody, and so it has happened. The country’s military took the fight to protestors without weapons by firing automatic rifles into crowds gathered to demonstrate against the government, killing nine innocent people and wounding many more. As they fled, many protestors shouted, “Give us freedom! Give us freedom!” Who knows, maybe those cries for freedom were misunderstood by the soldiers as a request to be shot with automatic rifles…..or not. Not content with this brutal display of excessive force, the military also hopped in their trucks and rode around the outskirts of Yangon, raiding monasteries and administering beatdowns and arrests to dozens of Buddhist monks for the role monks have played in advocating democracy in the country. Always a good play, government of Myanmar, when someone criticizes you, instead of countering their argument with valid points, just massacre them, beat them and arrest them to shut them up. Going to the lethal force card is the surest sign that a government is losing its grip and is afraid of those opposing it, because it ignores the governing part of the equation and goes right to the brutal oppression part. I would ask if the government and military intend to continue killing civilians until all 70,000 demonstrators are dead, but judging from the way the Myanmar government is doing business, the answer to that is probably yes. Even the United Nations has publicly plead for the violence to stop, and the United States has imposed economic sanctions on 12 of the country’s top officials. With the images now coming out from this conflict and the killing of a Japanese photographer in the latest round of protests, this is becoming a global issue and one that Myanmar’s government is going to lose eventually. The question now is how long the opposition groups can keep up the fight and how many casualties will be incurred in the process. Stay strong, dissidents in Myanmar, you all are doing the right thing, so keep on doing it.
- I never cease to be amazed at people who are famous for no reason at all yet keep on showing up on TV, in magazines, etc. For example…..why does anyone need Us magazine to run a feature story on Heidi Montag, the ditzy blonde whose sole claim to fame is as the girl most people loved to hate on MTV’s tired reality series The Hills? Yet there Us is, telling us how Heidi has a surgically-enhanced rack and got a nose job because she’s insecure about her body. Umm, so what? This girl has contributed exactly nothing of note to anyone or anything in the world, yet we need to hear what’s going on inside her head? Even Paris Hilton, the pioneer of being famous for being famous, gave the world numerous sex tapes and is filthy rich. Montag…..well, she’s….screw it. I can’t think of a single thing of note she’s done, so stop giving her space in national magazines.
- You canceled the wrong music-centric reality show, FOX. The network has pulled the plug on Nashville after its paltry ratings, although by virtue of not being American Karaoke, it was far from the worst reality music show on the network. I always love the early-season carnage in the television world, at least when it doesn’t involve shows I like. Nashville might be the first to go, but judging from the extremely low level of programming I’ve seen thus far, it will soon have lots of company in the trash bin of TV. The hole in FOX’s sked will be filled by another “Ville” show, K-Ville, which is kind of like replacing your oil-leaking 1970 Ford Pinto with a rusted, no-transmission-having 1978 VW Mini Bus. Ah, the FOX network, where the motto is: “Prison Break and pretty much nothing else worth watching,” ain’t it grand?
- A quick note to all my peeps at the CW: You all can re-air Reaper as many times as you want, it’s still going to suck. The network put the most abysmal new show on TV back on for a second straight night to fill and empty spot in this week’s lineup after the sensational season premiere of Smallville, with its normal sidekick show, Supernatural, not premiering until next week. I had the good sense to slam my finger on the power button on my remote and run in sheer horr-a from the TV the second I saw that Reaper was coming on after I’d watched Smallville, so I was able to avoid reliving quite possibly the most painful hour of television I’ve ever watched when I gave the Reaper pilot a try Wednesday night. And no, you IQ-deprived fans of this abomination of a show, I don’t care that the network managed to make up, er, um, find some positive comments on the show from TV critics, because every single show that has ever aired a single episode (with the possible exception of Rules of Engagement) has scrounged up a few positive quotes and managed to cut and edit them in a way that makes it look like there are people out there who love their show. Reaper is the worst show on the CW right now, and with a network that has an über-crappy schedule, that’s really saying something.
- Either we need to change the name of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame or we need to stop inducting no-musical-talent hacks whose “contributions” to music include changing their sound every two weeks, having a set of teeth so bad they rival Austin Powers’ Chiclets, being a total skank who writes sexually explicit books and creating most of her music with the help of a synthesizer and drum machine. Yes, I’m looking right at you, Madonna, because your Britney Spears-in-twenty-years a** has been nominated for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and I can’t be the only one who’s disgusted by this. There is nothing rock about Madonna, other than the fact that she’s probably had sex with as many dudes as most rock groupies from the ‘80s. Has she affected the world of music with her antics and awful music? Yes, but that doesn’t mean she belongs in the Rock H.O.F. Of course, Donna Summer is also nominated, which might be a bigger affront to true rock fans than Madonna because although she’s not an über-skank pop singer like Madge, Summer is a prominent member of the single most offensive musical movement in the history of music: disco. Having hacks like these two on their way to induction only makes me sadder than I already was that a legendary, amazing band like the Ramones placed so much importance on getting into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Why would you be so intent on being a part of something that’s turning into such a joke? Jimi Hendrix’s lunchbox from the third grade is looking like a shining monument by comparison when you consider the other crappy displays that will be in this museum to recognize jokes like Madonna and Summer.
- It was only a matter of time before the conflict in Myanmar turned bloody, and so it has happened. The country’s military took the fight to protestors without weapons by firing automatic rifles into crowds gathered to demonstrate against the government, killing nine innocent people and wounding many more. As they fled, many protestors shouted, “Give us freedom! Give us freedom!” Who knows, maybe those cries for freedom were misunderstood by the soldiers as a request to be shot with automatic rifles…..or not. Not content with this brutal display of excessive force, the military also hopped in their trucks and rode around the outskirts of Yangon, raiding monasteries and administering beatdowns and arrests to dozens of Buddhist monks for the role monks have played in advocating democracy in the country. Always a good play, government of Myanmar, when someone criticizes you, instead of countering their argument with valid points, just massacre them, beat them and arrest them to shut them up. Going to the lethal force card is the surest sign that a government is losing its grip and is afraid of those opposing it, because it ignores the governing part of the equation and goes right to the brutal oppression part. I would ask if the government and military intend to continue killing civilians until all 70,000 demonstrators are dead, but judging from the way the Myanmar government is doing business, the answer to that is probably yes. Even the United Nations has publicly plead for the violence to stop, and the United States has imposed economic sanctions on 12 of the country’s top officials. With the images now coming out from this conflict and the killing of a Japanese photographer in the latest round of protests, this is becoming a global issue and one that Myanmar’s government is going to lose eventually. The question now is how long the opposition groups can keep up the fight and how many casualties will be incurred in the process. Stay strong, dissidents in Myanmar, you all are doing the right thing, so keep on doing it.
- I never cease to be amazed at people who are famous for no reason at all yet keep on showing up on TV, in magazines, etc. For example…..why does anyone need Us magazine to run a feature story on Heidi Montag, the ditzy blonde whose sole claim to fame is as the girl most people loved to hate on MTV’s tired reality series The Hills? Yet there Us is, telling us how Heidi has a surgically-enhanced rack and got a nose job because she’s insecure about her body. Umm, so what? This girl has contributed exactly nothing of note to anyone or anything in the world, yet we need to hear what’s going on inside her head? Even Paris Hilton, the pioneer of being famous for being famous, gave the world numerous sex tapes and is filthy rich. Montag…..well, she’s….screw it. I can’t think of a single thing of note she’s done, so stop giving her space in national magazines.
- You canceled the wrong music-centric reality show, FOX. The network has pulled the plug on Nashville after its paltry ratings, although by virtue of not being American Karaoke, it was far from the worst reality music show on the network. I always love the early-season carnage in the television world, at least when it doesn’t involve shows I like. Nashville might be the first to go, but judging from the extremely low level of programming I’ve seen thus far, it will soon have lots of company in the trash bin of TV. The hole in FOX’s sked will be filled by another “Ville” show, K-Ville, which is kind of like replacing your oil-leaking 1970 Ford Pinto with a rusted, no-transmission-having 1978 VW Mini Bus. Ah, the FOX network, where the motto is: “Prison Break and pretty much nothing else worth watching,” ain’t it grand?
Friday, September 28, 2007
Hope Solo rocks, Smallville kicks off with a bang and Joe Torre weeps like a little girl
- Hope you can take off your skirt in time to get ready for the postseason, Joe Torre. How very emboldening it must have been for Yankee fans worldwide to see their manager openly weeping in the locker room after his team wrapped up what will most certainly by the AL wild card. Glad to see that the long, excruciating grind of the baseball season hasn’t totally wrecked your psyche, Joe. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t remember seeing Eric Wedge, Mike Scoscia or Terry Francona crying in the clubhouse after their teams clinched playoff berths. Yes, it was a difficult season for the Yankees, buy your own team made it so by floundering horribly for the first few months of the season and thus necessitating the late-season surge that you’ve gotten in order to make the playoffs. I also realize that working for George Steinbrenner isn't easy, but you’re compensated handsomely for your efforts and you get to manage the most talented roster in baseball. Crying is for tragic occasions like the deaths, serious illnesses or injuries of loved ones or for major life milestones like the birth of a child, getting married, etc. Winning the AL wild card is not a major life event and you should not be crying in the clubhouse when you do it. Besides, from where I sit you’re really going to have something to cry about in a week and a half when the Cleveland Indians sweep your whining, crying, sniveling, overpaid a**es out of the playoffs.
- Now that’s how a season premiere should be done. I’m referring, of course, to the Smallville season premiere which aired Thursday night on the CW. As opposed to the Heroes premiere, which jumped ahead four months in time from the end of last season and was thoroughly disjointed and confusing, Smallville picked up right where last season left off. Everyone was dealing with the aftermath of the disaster at the dam, each in his or her own way. Some questions were answered entirely, some partially and some just touched on in passing. For example, Lionel Luthor woke up in the middle of a stream somewhere near the dam and was rescued, I think, by a person whose face we didn’t see. Actually, I say I think he was rescued because all we saw was Lionel lifted up from a pile of debris and pulled off screen, so the intentions of his finder are still a mystery. Clark’s duplicate, Bizarro Clark, was dealt with in the same fashion that the Lex/Zod storyline was dealt with at the end of Season Five/the beginning of Season Six – namely in one episode. If you thought Bizarro Clark would be a long-term visitor to Smallville, you were wrong. Clark found his weakness (the sun) and destroyed him, just as he defeated Lex/Zod in the opener of last season. Bizarro Clark had his fun, killing a cop and hitting on Lois, but he met his end swiftly and on the receiving end of a Clark Kent uppercut. Clark also found time to rescue Lois and Chloe from the dam, although for the first half of the episode it looked like Chloe was dead. Because I knew from regularly reading TVGuide.com that Chloe was a big part of the whole season, I didn’t buy the death angle, and she proved me right by coming back to life, although her meteor power and how it works are still up in the air. Speaking of not believing people are dead….was I right or was I right? Maybe the writers and producers dropped more than a few clues and hints and didn’t do the best job ever of making us believe that Lana was dead in last season’s finale, but that was still what we were supposed to believe heading into this season. I was 100 percent sure from the time they did the “death” scene that she was alive and although it took about 58 minutes of this episode, sure enough my belief was proven correct. She might be living in Shanghai (ironically, my new computer was shipped from there not more than a month ago) and sporting a blond wig in public, but Lana lives. Back home, Lex is in jail and heading to trial for her murder, so I’m guessing that Lana won't be returning to Smallville any time soon. Actually, my guess is that Lionel is in on her plan, since they’ve been collaborating and crossing paths for a season and a half now and Lionel was the only one there when Lana staged her death. Also, it appears that Martha Kent will be a non-issue this season, because Annette O’Toole is no longer in the shows opening credits. Of course, the same could be said about Allison Mack (Chloe) a few seasons ago and she was still around, so you never know But Clark has a new family member around; his cousin, played by Ira Vandervoort, who is also from Krypton and has the same powers, but has just been awakened from a state of suspended animation by the explosion at the dam. Already, she’s duplicated Clark’s feat of saving Lex from a water-related near-tragedy on her first day in town, but other than that she was mostly absent in the premiere. The previews for next week seem to indicate that there’ll be much more of her, which is a good thing from where I sit. Also back is the Martian Manhunter (Phil Morris), who is helping Clark with his training. Overall, I’d give this premiere an A+, because already this great show is in midseason form and it will only get more exciting in the weeks ahead.
- Because only about 0.4 percent of the American public cares about women’s soccer, I don’t usually waste any time following it or writing about it. Soccer in general is a fringe sport at best in this country, so when you try to discuss it you run the risk of your conversation partner’s eyes glazing over like Rosie O’Donnell after a doughnuts-and-Yoo-Hoo bender. However, when there’s an embarrassing loss and a controversial lineup change for the U.S. women’s national team in the World Cup, followed by snarky, bitter comments from the goalie who was inexplicably benched despite starting and winning every U.S. game in the tournament thus far, you can be sure I’ll have thoughts on that. Here’s what Hope Solo (no, her father Hans wasn’t available for comment) had to say on coach Greg Ryan’s decision to bench her in favor of veteran goalkeeper Brianna Scurry. “It was the wrong decision, and I think that anybody that knows anything about the game knows that. There’s no doubt in my mind I would have made those saves.” Personally, I’m glad than an athlete finally had the intestinal fortitude to stand up and say that they were offended by something like this instead of spouting the company line of, “Hey, whatever the coach thinks is best for the team, I’m all for it.” Because guess what, coaches f’up sometimes. Some coaches f’up a lot of the time, and clearly Ryan did here. He mistakenly looked at Scurry’s record against Brazil in the past and decided that even though the majority of those games were several years ago, Scurry was still the right choice to start this game against the Brazilians. Solo had been playing exceptionally well in the World Cup and while well-intentioned, this movie clearly disrupted the momentum and chemistry the U.S. team had built with Solo in goal. I still don’t give a crap that the team lost and got embarrassed, but at least we got some amusing drama out of it and learned that at least one American athlete on a national team cares whether we’re successful in international competition and has the guts to speak her mind.
- You won't believe this, but W. and his minions are soon going to be asking for even more money to finance their debacle, er, um, war in Iraq. Yes, they want to throw away more money fighting a war that we never should have started in a place we have no business being and where thousands of American soldiers have died needlessly. The Pentagon is demanding an additional $190 billion (yes, billion with a “b”) to keep combat in Iraq going for another year. Although he may be both senile and have one foot in the coffin already, Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W. Va., chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, has vowed to battle against this request and I slute him. “We cannot create democracy at the point of a gun, the senile senior senator declared. “Sending more guns does not change that reality.” No, senator, it doesn’t, and if you’re the man who is going to lead the fight against wrongly giving more money to this abomination, then you have my undivided support. I wasn’t around for the first incarnation of Vietnam, but I’m definitely not enjoying being here for Vietnam II. Here’s the best analogy I can come up with for this situation. Say you have a family member who comes to you and tells you that there’s a major problem with your house and or/property and you need to do major renovations and construction to head off the problem. Maybe you have a neighbor who this family member thinks is a nuisance and so they advise you to build a fence all around your property. You reluctantly pay the money for the fence, but in installing the fence, your family member digs up half of your yard, kills most of your grass, hits both a water and gas pipe in digging for the fence and sets off a major explosion. Things aren’t going well, but here comes your family member, asking for more money and promising that progress is being made, that you can still have a successful result if you’ll bear with them. Next thing you know, there’s a hole in your home’s foundation, your roof has been destroyed and every window in your house is broken. To make matters worse, your neighbor really wasn’t a nuisance at all and the fence wasn’t necessary to begin with. Yet your family member comes back once again, asking for more money to finance the project. At this point, are you even going to consider giving them more money? Heck no. Yet here W. comes, four years-plus into a debacle that has produced one disaster after another, seen thousands killed on both sides and billions of dollars wasted in the name of absolutely nothing, and he wants more money? For who? For what? No one thinks we’re winning except W. and no one thinks our continued presence in Iraq is going to be successful in achieving the goals that have been established for the country. I honestly don’t care what Congress has to do or what laws they need to break in order to deny addition funding for this war, they need to take a stand here and no. Just say no, Congress, it’s one of the few words short enough and simple enough for W. to understand.
- Memo to self: If I ever need to murder anyone and get away with it, make sure the murder is done in sunny
Southern California. Oh, and make sure that before I commit said murder, I’m a rich, famous celebrity, because if that’s the case, there’s no way I’ll be convicted. After all, L.A. is where Orenthal James Simpson turned two people into human Pez dispensers and walked away a free man, and now legendary record produced Phil Spector and his freakishly bizarre hair have seen a trial for the murder of actress Lana Clarkson end in a mistrial. The jury informed the judge that it was deadlocked, with a 10-2 margin in favor of convicting Spector. However, since a unanimous decision is needed, a mistrial was declared and for now, Spector remains a free man. Prosecutors have already said they intend to re-try him, but does anyone really think that a SoCal jury is capable of actually convicting a wealthy celebrity of a violent crime? You might be (probably are) a killer, P. Spector, but at this point I like your chances a lot better than I like the chances of the prosecutors to get a conviction in your case.
- Shouldn’t a nonstop barrage of challenges in court be an excellent indication that a fairly new law is, um, illegal and flat-out wrong? The Patriot Act hasn’t been around all that long, yet Americans keep challenging different facets of the act in court on the basis that they are unconstitutional. A U.S. district court judge in Portland, Ore. has sided with the common man in the most recent example of this phenomenon, ruling that two provisions of the USA Patriot Act are unconstitutional because they allow search warrants to be issued without a showing of probable cause. Judge Ann Aiken (ironically, she’s probably much more masculine than Clay Aiken, and that’s not a negative reflection on Ann) has decided that what the hey, let’s make the government prove it has probable cause to search a person’s home or property before we hand them a search warrant. What, Ann, you mean giving the government free reign to terrorize and intrude upon its citizens when this administration has proven a blatant disregard for the Constitution, the rights of it citizens and the principles of honor and honesty is a bad idea? Wow, all I can say is…..it’s about f’ing time. Not surprisingly, the Justice Department issued the standard “evaluating the ruling” statement, which I’m sure means they’ll pitch a fit and appeal. But for now and until that appeal comes, score one for the every man, the little guy and the person who doesn’t appreciate their overbearing, intrusive government barging in and rooting through their stuff without first proving probably cause for that search.
- Now that’s how a season premiere should be done. I’m referring, of course, to the Smallville season premiere which aired Thursday night on the CW. As opposed to the Heroes premiere, which jumped ahead four months in time from the end of last season and was thoroughly disjointed and confusing, Smallville picked up right where last season left off. Everyone was dealing with the aftermath of the disaster at the dam, each in his or her own way. Some questions were answered entirely, some partially and some just touched on in passing. For example, Lionel Luthor woke up in the middle of a stream somewhere near the dam and was rescued, I think, by a person whose face we didn’t see. Actually, I say I think he was rescued because all we saw was Lionel lifted up from a pile of debris and pulled off screen, so the intentions of his finder are still a mystery. Clark’s duplicate, Bizarro Clark, was dealt with in the same fashion that the Lex/Zod storyline was dealt with at the end of Season Five/the beginning of Season Six – namely in one episode. If you thought Bizarro Clark would be a long-term visitor to Smallville, you were wrong. Clark found his weakness (the sun) and destroyed him, just as he defeated Lex/Zod in the opener of last season. Bizarro Clark had his fun, killing a cop and hitting on Lois, but he met his end swiftly and on the receiving end of a Clark Kent uppercut. Clark also found time to rescue Lois and Chloe from the dam, although for the first half of the episode it looked like Chloe was dead. Because I knew from regularly reading TVGuide.com that Chloe was a big part of the whole season, I didn’t buy the death angle, and she proved me right by coming back to life, although her meteor power and how it works are still up in the air. Speaking of not believing people are dead….was I right or was I right? Maybe the writers and producers dropped more than a few clues and hints and didn’t do the best job ever of making us believe that Lana was dead in last season’s finale, but that was still what we were supposed to believe heading into this season. I was 100 percent sure from the time they did the “death” scene that she was alive and although it took about 58 minutes of this episode, sure enough my belief was proven correct. She might be living in Shanghai (ironically, my new computer was shipped from there not more than a month ago) and sporting a blond wig in public, but Lana lives. Back home, Lex is in jail and heading to trial for her murder, so I’m guessing that Lana won't be returning to Smallville any time soon. Actually, my guess is that Lionel is in on her plan, since they’ve been collaborating and crossing paths for a season and a half now and Lionel was the only one there when Lana staged her death. Also, it appears that Martha Kent will be a non-issue this season, because Annette O’Toole is no longer in the shows opening credits. Of course, the same could be said about Allison Mack (Chloe) a few seasons ago and she was still around, so you never know But Clark has a new family member around; his cousin, played by Ira Vandervoort, who is also from Krypton and has the same powers, but has just been awakened from a state of suspended animation by the explosion at the dam. Already, she’s duplicated Clark’s feat of saving Lex from a water-related near-tragedy on her first day in town, but other than that she was mostly absent in the premiere. The previews for next week seem to indicate that there’ll be much more of her, which is a good thing from where I sit. Also back is the Martian Manhunter (Phil Morris), who is helping Clark with his training. Overall, I’d give this premiere an A+, because already this great show is in midseason form and it will only get more exciting in the weeks ahead.
- Because only about 0.4 percent of the American public cares about women’s soccer, I don’t usually waste any time following it or writing about it. Soccer in general is a fringe sport at best in this country, so when you try to discuss it you run the risk of your conversation partner’s eyes glazing over like Rosie O’Donnell after a doughnuts-and-Yoo-Hoo bender. However, when there’s an embarrassing loss and a controversial lineup change for the U.S. women’s national team in the World Cup, followed by snarky, bitter comments from the goalie who was inexplicably benched despite starting and winning every U.S. game in the tournament thus far, you can be sure I’ll have thoughts on that. Here’s what Hope Solo (no, her father Hans wasn’t available for comment) had to say on coach Greg Ryan’s decision to bench her in favor of veteran goalkeeper Brianna Scurry. “It was the wrong decision, and I think that anybody that knows anything about the game knows that. There’s no doubt in my mind I would have made those saves.” Personally, I’m glad than an athlete finally had the intestinal fortitude to stand up and say that they were offended by something like this instead of spouting the company line of, “Hey, whatever the coach thinks is best for the team, I’m all for it.” Because guess what, coaches f’up sometimes. Some coaches f’up a lot of the time, and clearly Ryan did here. He mistakenly looked at Scurry’s record against Brazil in the past and decided that even though the majority of those games were several years ago, Scurry was still the right choice to start this game against the Brazilians. Solo had been playing exceptionally well in the World Cup and while well-intentioned, this movie clearly disrupted the momentum and chemistry the U.S. team had built with Solo in goal. I still don’t give a crap that the team lost and got embarrassed, but at least we got some amusing drama out of it and learned that at least one American athlete on a national team cares whether we’re successful in international competition and has the guts to speak her mind.
- You won't believe this, but W. and his minions are soon going to be asking for even more money to finance their debacle, er, um, war in Iraq. Yes, they want to throw away more money fighting a war that we never should have started in a place we have no business being and where thousands of American soldiers have died needlessly. The Pentagon is demanding an additional $190 billion (yes, billion with a “b”) to keep combat in Iraq going for another year. Although he may be both senile and have one foot in the coffin already, Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W. Va., chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, has vowed to battle against this request and I slute him. “We cannot create democracy at the point of a gun, the senile senior senator declared. “Sending more guns does not change that reality.” No, senator, it doesn’t, and if you’re the man who is going to lead the fight against wrongly giving more money to this abomination, then you have my undivided support. I wasn’t around for the first incarnation of Vietnam, but I’m definitely not enjoying being here for Vietnam II. Here’s the best analogy I can come up with for this situation. Say you have a family member who comes to you and tells you that there’s a major problem with your house and or/property and you need to do major renovations and construction to head off the problem. Maybe you have a neighbor who this family member thinks is a nuisance and so they advise you to build a fence all around your property. You reluctantly pay the money for the fence, but in installing the fence, your family member digs up half of your yard, kills most of your grass, hits both a water and gas pipe in digging for the fence and sets off a major explosion. Things aren’t going well, but here comes your family member, asking for more money and promising that progress is being made, that you can still have a successful result if you’ll bear with them. Next thing you know, there’s a hole in your home’s foundation, your roof has been destroyed and every window in your house is broken. To make matters worse, your neighbor really wasn’t a nuisance at all and the fence wasn’t necessary to begin with. Yet your family member comes back once again, asking for more money to finance the project. At this point, are you even going to consider giving them more money? Heck no. Yet here W. comes, four years-plus into a debacle that has produced one disaster after another, seen thousands killed on both sides and billions of dollars wasted in the name of absolutely nothing, and he wants more money? For who? For what? No one thinks we’re winning except W. and no one thinks our continued presence in Iraq is going to be successful in achieving the goals that have been established for the country. I honestly don’t care what Congress has to do or what laws they need to break in order to deny addition funding for this war, they need to take a stand here and no. Just say no, Congress, it’s one of the few words short enough and simple enough for W. to understand.
- Memo to self: If I ever need to murder anyone and get away with it, make sure the murder is done in sunny
Southern California. Oh, and make sure that before I commit said murder, I’m a rich, famous celebrity, because if that’s the case, there’s no way I’ll be convicted. After all, L.A. is where Orenthal James Simpson turned two people into human Pez dispensers and walked away a free man, and now legendary record produced Phil Spector and his freakishly bizarre hair have seen a trial for the murder of actress Lana Clarkson end in a mistrial. The jury informed the judge that it was deadlocked, with a 10-2 margin in favor of convicting Spector. However, since a unanimous decision is needed, a mistrial was declared and for now, Spector remains a free man. Prosecutors have already said they intend to re-try him, but does anyone really think that a SoCal jury is capable of actually convicting a wealthy celebrity of a violent crime? You might be (probably are) a killer, P. Spector, but at this point I like your chances a lot better than I like the chances of the prosecutors to get a conviction in your case.
- Shouldn’t a nonstop barrage of challenges in court be an excellent indication that a fairly new law is, um, illegal and flat-out wrong? The Patriot Act hasn’t been around all that long, yet Americans keep challenging different facets of the act in court on the basis that they are unconstitutional. A U.S. district court judge in Portland, Ore. has sided with the common man in the most recent example of this phenomenon, ruling that two provisions of the USA Patriot Act are unconstitutional because they allow search warrants to be issued without a showing of probable cause. Judge Ann Aiken (ironically, she’s probably much more masculine than Clay Aiken, and that’s not a negative reflection on Ann) has decided that what the hey, let’s make the government prove it has probable cause to search a person’s home or property before we hand them a search warrant. What, Ann, you mean giving the government free reign to terrorize and intrude upon its citizens when this administration has proven a blatant disregard for the Constitution, the rights of it citizens and the principles of honor and honesty is a bad idea? Wow, all I can say is…..it’s about f’ing time. Not surprisingly, the Justice Department issued the standard “evaluating the ruling” statement, which I’m sure means they’ll pitch a fit and appeal. But for now and until that appeal comes, score one for the every man, the little guy and the person who doesn’t appreciate their overbearing, intrusive government barging in and rooting through their stuff without first proving probably cause for that search.
Thursday, September 27, 2007
Jack Bauer taken down by a local cop, Mike Vick taken down by his own stupidity and why can't college football players pull chicks?
committed to turning your life around and being a law-abiding, responsible citizen, Michael Vick. After pleading guilty to federal charges related to his dogfighting ring and now having the state of Virginia touch him up with criminal charges as well, today we learned that earlier this month Vick tested positive for marijuana. He must undergo regular testing as part of his pre-sentencing monitoring program, a fact that I’m sure was explained clearly to both he and his attorneys. However, knowing that he would be tested for drugs wasn’t enough of a deterrent to M. Vick to keep him from burning tree and as a result, he has now received stricter release guidelines from a federal judge in Virginia for the weeks leading up to his sentencing hearing in December. Like I said, what better to show that you really are committed to changing your felonious, illegal lifestyle than by breaking the law when you knew there was a 100 percent chance you would be caught. Plus, even though the NFL has suspended Vick indefinitely and will wait to deal with him further until he gets out of prison, you can bet that Commissioner Roger Goodell and his crew won't forget about this positive drug test when they sit down with Vick to discuss his future in the league. He’ll now go into the league’s substance-abuse program, which would mean additional testing for the remainder of his career. Oh, and in case you didn’t know this (and you may not have, given the fact that the judge in your case only said it directly to you once in open court in clear, unwavering terms), but the length of your sentence is still to be determined, Mike. Yes, your plea deal lays out certain parameters, but the final decision is up to Judge Henry Hudson. I don’t know Hudson personally, but I’m guessing that you testing positive for the hippie lettuce is not going to have a positive effect on his sentencing decision. It doesn’t exactly show contrition and a commitment to change. Yes, the pressure Vick is under right now is immense and probably overwhelming to him. Being under house arrest from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. and under constant monitoring with the prospect of 18 months or more in prison looming would be a major mental burden. However, burning blunts to alleviate that stress isn't an option right now, and if Vick sported an IQ anywhere north of 65, he would know that. Dude, you could sit in your house and drink 5 bottles of vodka with a gin chaser and no one is going to care, because that’s no illegal. You can smoke cigars or cigarettes and likewise, no one will care. But getting baked is illegal and if that’s your method for relaxing, you’re going to compound your troubles quickly. Not that many people felt sorry for you before this, Mike, but you’re making it tough for even your staunchest defenders to have your back at this point.
- Like it or not, America is a place where we give people the opportunity to be blatantly and embarrassingly wrong without fear of persecution and retribution. Like him or not (and I don’t), Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has a right to say all the ignorant, ill-informed and stupid things he wants. Many Americans are irate because this week Ahmadinejad has been saying those things while visiting the United States. He even spoke at Columbia University in New York, which drew even more ire. Among Ahmadinejad’s takes are that the Holocaust is just a theory and that Iranian women are the most free in the whole world. I don’t know anyone other than Ahmadinejad and his sycophants who would agree to those statements unless under direct threat of physical harm with a lethal weapon, but I marvel at how so many people want to persecute and attack Ahmadinejad just for having these misguided opinions and being willing to share them. What, are there no Americans with ignorant takes and ill-reasoned opinions running their mouths? You all are beginning to sound like Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who has made it his policy to deport any foreigner visiting his country if they dare to express any views that are critical of or contrary to his government. You know and I know from mounds of physical and factual evidence that that Holocaust really happened and that is was the most horrific mass tragedy in history. We’ve also seen how Iranian women are treated and based on what we believe and think, they are anything but free and liberated. However, none of this invalidates Ahmadinejad’s right to have an opinion different than yours or to express that opinion. Unless he’s broken some law or poses a direct threat to our country, and so long as he goes through the same channels as any foreigner who wishes to visit the U.S., then he has a right to come and visit. Don’t let his words, however off-base and misguided, rile you up so much, they can only have as much of an effect as you allow them to have. Rise above it, America, rise above it.
- Well isn't this something, Major League Baseball umpire Mike Winters has been suspended for remainder of the season. Yeah, but you didn’t say or do anything wrong, eh Mike? You didn’t bait Milton Bradley at all, because Major League Baseball just hands out suspensions to umpires who didn’t do anything wrong. Now would be a very good time for you to stop acting surprised and indignant at the implication that you did anything wrong, because clearly MLB has reviewed the situation and concluded that you did. The cryptic statement the league office sent out may not spell out exactly what went down or what you said to set Bradley off, but whatever it was, it was enough to get you run for the rest of the 2007 season. And while many have pointed out that no matter what Winters said, Bradley needed to rise above it and just walk away, I’m not focused on the player here, but rather on the egotistical, a-hole of an umpire who clearly has a God complex on the field and thinks that he can do what he wants when he wants without repercussion. Oh, and this reportedly isn't Winters’ first incident of this type with a player. It was being reported earlier this week that 10 years ago, he had a similar run-in with then-San Francisco Giants third baseman Charlie Hayes. If that’s true, and there’s no reason to believe it isn't, then Winters has a definite problem and needs to be brought in line. No one comes to games to see umpires do their thing, and really the only time we should notice them is when they’re calling ball or strike, fair or foul, safe or out, or if a player or manager is out of line, then the umpire should simply eject them and not make a big scene out of it. Umpires should never be inciting confrontations with players, ever. It doesn’t matter whether Mike Winters is a good umpire or not in the technical sense, if he can’t control himself and his ego on the field, then he should not be out on the field.
- Ah. the heavy hand of The Man, coming down in an attempt to quash the spirit of those daring to fight for democracy in Myanmar. The country’s repressive military leaders have imposed a nighttime curfew and banned gatherings of more than five people after a Buddhist monk-led 35,000-person march Sunday directly defied the junta’s warnings against such dissent. By the way, these kinds of restrictive edicts are a good sign if you’re part of a dissident group, because it means your efforts are making an impact and that those in power are worried. If they’re instituting oppressive, overbearing measures like this, then clearly they’re rattled and looking to shut you down before you can do any further damage. On the downside, this is going to put a major damper on all of the keggers and block parties the Buddhist monks were planning to celebrate their successes in advocating democracy in their country. It’s tough to have a good kegger when you can't have more than five people gathering together at the same time, beer pong just isn't the same with such a small group. But props to the Burmese military and government, because I’m sure that with these new regulatory measures in place, the dissident groups will just close up shop and go away…..right…..sure…..
- Has being a college football player and thus being able to pull chicks based on that fact ceased to be true? For as long as there has been big-time college football, there have been college girls wanting to get with football players because they like athletes and they like that status of being with a big man on campus. However, recent events (read here: arrests) have me thinking that maybe this has changed. Earlier this summer, Notre Dame football player Derrell Hand was suspended from the team after soliciting sex from an undercover police officer posing as a hooker and being hit with criminal charges. Now, Ohio State third-string quarterback Antonio Henton has popped for soliciting a prostitute and faces misdemeanor charges. Apparently Henton had the good sense to solicit sex from an actual hooker, no an undercover cop, but that didn’t prevent him from being arrested. Like Hand, Henson has been suspended from his team while the legal process plays out. I’ve got to ask once again how all you college football players are having such a hard time pulling chicks that you have to turn to your nearest street corner to get some action. I know for a fact that there are a lot of sororities at Ohio State and hot girls all over the campus, many of whom would love to hook up with the quarterback, albeit a third stringer. Best of all, assuming those girls are over the age of 18, then them agreeing to have sex with you is not a crime, Antonio. Besides, paying for sex not only makes you a criminal, it also makes you look like a loser who can’t pull girls like everyone else and has to resort to getting after it with hookers. Clean it up, my man, because if you don’t it’s going to cost you both your football career and your reputation.
- A follow-up to last week’s note on the new CW series Gossip Girl: I gave the show another try this week and I don’t know if it was just contrasting it with the horr-a that was Tuesday night’s CW new series offering Reaper or the fact that I’m pumped for tonight’s season premiere of Smallville, but this week’s edition of GG was good, better than last week’s episode. While I don’t think the show is good enough to justify the blow-out hype treatment the network is giving it on its promos and website (Gossip Girl – Watch it, love it, blog it, live it!), it’s at least interesting enough to hold your attention for an hour without making you want to shove your head into an industrial-sized blender filled with razor-sharp knives because the jokes are so dumb and the “drama” is so contrived and pathetic. The biggest hurdle of Gossip Girl is not doing the same basic show each week; rich kids at a party, hooking up, spreading rumors and having fights. A similar show from the same producers, The O.C., also centered on the rich and privileged but managed to mix it up enough for four great seasons. Thus far, Gossip Girl has been a one-note song, and while it’s been a fun ride so far, if the show doesn’t get some depth and variety, it’s going to get old very quickly. Stay tuned……
- Some very lucky congressmen had the chance of a lifetime Tuesday, coming face to face with musicians who are surely in heavy rotation on the congressmen’s iPod playlists. For example, I have it on good authority that House Energy and Commerce subcommittee Chairman Bobby Rush, D-Ill., is a HUGE fan of rappers Master P and David Banner, both of whom appeared before Rush’s committee to address the topic of how to deal with violent and sexist lyrics in rap music. Side note….leave it up to a bunch of rich, old white dudes to try and hold a hearing on rap lyrics. You can tell they know nothing about rap based on their choices – two rappers who are about a decade past their prime and on about the third or fourth tier of rappers as far as any fans of the genre could tell you. It would be like holding a hearing about the steroid problem in baseball and inviting Reggie Jackson and Jack Morris to testify about the prevalence and usage of performance enhancers in the game today, or holding a hearing about violence on TV and inviting Crockett and Tubbs to discuss how violence plays into the success of Miami Vice. But back to the matter at hand…..what a juxtaposition, with rich white dudes with as much pop culture savvy and style as a Men’s Warehouse clearance sale, questioning two rich black dudes from the streets. How these guys made it through an entire hearing and achieved anything is amazing, because they’re barely speaking the same language. Well, to be fair, Congress rarely achieves anything anyhow, and they seem to be speaking a different language than most Americans. Master P took one tact in the hearing, admitting that his lyrics early in his career were wrong and inappropriate. “I want to apologize to all of the women out there,” he stated. “I was wrong.” Banner, a.k.a. Levell Crump, wasn’t nearly so contrite. “I’m like Stephen King; horror music is what I do,” he declared, defending his right to rap about what he wants to rap about and use whatever language he wants to use. Oh, and if you don’t believe me saying that Rush is a hip-hop aficionado, don’t take my word for it, take his. “I am a fan of hip-hop,” he declared at the start of the hearing. Never mind that any real fan of rap or hip-hop would never say that in such a grammatically correct, old-white-dude fashion. So what was the end result of the hearing? Like many congressional hearings, it accomplished nothing but left the participants feeling mighty proud of themselves for having addressed and made “real” progress on an important issue. Now we can all go back to the way things were before and revisit this issue in a few years when someone else says or does something wildly inappropriate to stir on discussion on this topic.
- Dammit, he’s Jack Bauer and you’re keeping him from a very important mission that affects the safety and security of every last American and the whole world for that matter! Well, assuming that mission is finding his next beer, gin and tonic or rum and coke, that is. The diminutive star of FOX’s 24 was arrested on suspicion of driving while intoxicated earlier this week in L.A. Police pulled Kiefer Sutherland over after he made an illegal U-turn and when he took a breath test, it registered more than twice the legal limit. To be fair, when you’re roughly the same size as the average Oompa-loompa, it doesn’t take many drinks to push you over the legal limit, but even so you can’t be driving around L.A. when your B.A.C. is roughly equal to the batting average of the Dodgers over the past week. Sutherland was released on $25,000 bail and has an Oct. 16 court date, which I’m sure will only help the production schedule on 24, which is several months behind schedule as it is. My chief hope in all of this is that K. Sutherland wasn’t too drunk to go to the “Do you know who I am?” card when the cops pulled him over, because it’s always hilarious when celebrities or people who mistakenly think that they’re celebrities go that route. So Jack Bauer can outsmart and defeat the Chinese, but he can’t outsmart L.A.P.D. officers patrolling the streets with a donut in one hand and a Breathalyzer in the other hand. Television heroes just ain’t what they used to be…..
- Like it or not, America is a place where we give people the opportunity to be blatantly and embarrassingly wrong without fear of persecution and retribution. Like him or not (and I don’t), Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has a right to say all the ignorant, ill-informed and stupid things he wants. Many Americans are irate because this week Ahmadinejad has been saying those things while visiting the United States. He even spoke at Columbia University in New York, which drew even more ire. Among Ahmadinejad’s takes are that the Holocaust is just a theory and that Iranian women are the most free in the whole world. I don’t know anyone other than Ahmadinejad and his sycophants who would agree to those statements unless under direct threat of physical harm with a lethal weapon, but I marvel at how so many people want to persecute and attack Ahmadinejad just for having these misguided opinions and being willing to share them. What, are there no Americans with ignorant takes and ill-reasoned opinions running their mouths? You all are beginning to sound like Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who has made it his policy to deport any foreigner visiting his country if they dare to express any views that are critical of or contrary to his government. You know and I know from mounds of physical and factual evidence that that Holocaust really happened and that is was the most horrific mass tragedy in history. We’ve also seen how Iranian women are treated and based on what we believe and think, they are anything but free and liberated. However, none of this invalidates Ahmadinejad’s right to have an opinion different than yours or to express that opinion. Unless he’s broken some law or poses a direct threat to our country, and so long as he goes through the same channels as any foreigner who wishes to visit the U.S., then he has a right to come and visit. Don’t let his words, however off-base and misguided, rile you up so much, they can only have as much of an effect as you allow them to have. Rise above it, America, rise above it.
- Well isn't this something, Major League Baseball umpire Mike Winters has been suspended for remainder of the season. Yeah, but you didn’t say or do anything wrong, eh Mike? You didn’t bait Milton Bradley at all, because Major League Baseball just hands out suspensions to umpires who didn’t do anything wrong. Now would be a very good time for you to stop acting surprised and indignant at the implication that you did anything wrong, because clearly MLB has reviewed the situation and concluded that you did. The cryptic statement the league office sent out may not spell out exactly what went down or what you said to set Bradley off, but whatever it was, it was enough to get you run for the rest of the 2007 season. And while many have pointed out that no matter what Winters said, Bradley needed to rise above it and just walk away, I’m not focused on the player here, but rather on the egotistical, a-hole of an umpire who clearly has a God complex on the field and thinks that he can do what he wants when he wants without repercussion. Oh, and this reportedly isn't Winters’ first incident of this type with a player. It was being reported earlier this week that 10 years ago, he had a similar run-in with then-San Francisco Giants third baseman Charlie Hayes. If that’s true, and there’s no reason to believe it isn't, then Winters has a definite problem and needs to be brought in line. No one comes to games to see umpires do their thing, and really the only time we should notice them is when they’re calling ball or strike, fair or foul, safe or out, or if a player or manager is out of line, then the umpire should simply eject them and not make a big scene out of it. Umpires should never be inciting confrontations with players, ever. It doesn’t matter whether Mike Winters is a good umpire or not in the technical sense, if he can’t control himself and his ego on the field, then he should not be out on the field.
- Ah. the heavy hand of The Man, coming down in an attempt to quash the spirit of those daring to fight for democracy in Myanmar. The country’s repressive military leaders have imposed a nighttime curfew and banned gatherings of more than five people after a Buddhist monk-led 35,000-person march Sunday directly defied the junta’s warnings against such dissent. By the way, these kinds of restrictive edicts are a good sign if you’re part of a dissident group, because it means your efforts are making an impact and that those in power are worried. If they’re instituting oppressive, overbearing measures like this, then clearly they’re rattled and looking to shut you down before you can do any further damage. On the downside, this is going to put a major damper on all of the keggers and block parties the Buddhist monks were planning to celebrate their successes in advocating democracy in their country. It’s tough to have a good kegger when you can't have more than five people gathering together at the same time, beer pong just isn't the same with such a small group. But props to the Burmese military and government, because I’m sure that with these new regulatory measures in place, the dissident groups will just close up shop and go away…..right…..sure…..
- Has being a college football player and thus being able to pull chicks based on that fact ceased to be true? For as long as there has been big-time college football, there have been college girls wanting to get with football players because they like athletes and they like that status of being with a big man on campus. However, recent events (read here: arrests) have me thinking that maybe this has changed. Earlier this summer, Notre Dame football player Derrell Hand was suspended from the team after soliciting sex from an undercover police officer posing as a hooker and being hit with criminal charges. Now, Ohio State third-string quarterback Antonio Henton has popped for soliciting a prostitute and faces misdemeanor charges. Apparently Henton had the good sense to solicit sex from an actual hooker, no an undercover cop, but that didn’t prevent him from being arrested. Like Hand, Henson has been suspended from his team while the legal process plays out. I’ve got to ask once again how all you college football players are having such a hard time pulling chicks that you have to turn to your nearest street corner to get some action. I know for a fact that there are a lot of sororities at Ohio State and hot girls all over the campus, many of whom would love to hook up with the quarterback, albeit a third stringer. Best of all, assuming those girls are over the age of 18, then them agreeing to have sex with you is not a crime, Antonio. Besides, paying for sex not only makes you a criminal, it also makes you look like a loser who can’t pull girls like everyone else and has to resort to getting after it with hookers. Clean it up, my man, because if you don’t it’s going to cost you both your football career and your reputation.
- A follow-up to last week’s note on the new CW series Gossip Girl: I gave the show another try this week and I don’t know if it was just contrasting it with the horr-a that was Tuesday night’s CW new series offering Reaper or the fact that I’m pumped for tonight’s season premiere of Smallville, but this week’s edition of GG was good, better than last week’s episode. While I don’t think the show is good enough to justify the blow-out hype treatment the network is giving it on its promos and website (Gossip Girl – Watch it, love it, blog it, live it!), it’s at least interesting enough to hold your attention for an hour without making you want to shove your head into an industrial-sized blender filled with razor-sharp knives because the jokes are so dumb and the “drama” is so contrived and pathetic. The biggest hurdle of Gossip Girl is not doing the same basic show each week; rich kids at a party, hooking up, spreading rumors and having fights. A similar show from the same producers, The O.C., also centered on the rich and privileged but managed to mix it up enough for four great seasons. Thus far, Gossip Girl has been a one-note song, and while it’s been a fun ride so far, if the show doesn’t get some depth and variety, it’s going to get old very quickly. Stay tuned……
- Some very lucky congressmen had the chance of a lifetime Tuesday, coming face to face with musicians who are surely in heavy rotation on the congressmen’s iPod playlists. For example, I have it on good authority that House Energy and Commerce subcommittee Chairman Bobby Rush, D-Ill., is a HUGE fan of rappers Master P and David Banner, both of whom appeared before Rush’s committee to address the topic of how to deal with violent and sexist lyrics in rap music. Side note….leave it up to a bunch of rich, old white dudes to try and hold a hearing on rap lyrics. You can tell they know nothing about rap based on their choices – two rappers who are about a decade past their prime and on about the third or fourth tier of rappers as far as any fans of the genre could tell you. It would be like holding a hearing about the steroid problem in baseball and inviting Reggie Jackson and Jack Morris to testify about the prevalence and usage of performance enhancers in the game today, or holding a hearing about violence on TV and inviting Crockett and Tubbs to discuss how violence plays into the success of Miami Vice. But back to the matter at hand…..what a juxtaposition, with rich white dudes with as much pop culture savvy and style as a Men’s Warehouse clearance sale, questioning two rich black dudes from the streets. How these guys made it through an entire hearing and achieved anything is amazing, because they’re barely speaking the same language. Well, to be fair, Congress rarely achieves anything anyhow, and they seem to be speaking a different language than most Americans. Master P took one tact in the hearing, admitting that his lyrics early in his career were wrong and inappropriate. “I want to apologize to all of the women out there,” he stated. “I was wrong.” Banner, a.k.a. Levell Crump, wasn’t nearly so contrite. “I’m like Stephen King; horror music is what I do,” he declared, defending his right to rap about what he wants to rap about and use whatever language he wants to use. Oh, and if you don’t believe me saying that Rush is a hip-hop aficionado, don’t take my word for it, take his. “I am a fan of hip-hop,” he declared at the start of the hearing. Never mind that any real fan of rap or hip-hop would never say that in such a grammatically correct, old-white-dude fashion. So what was the end result of the hearing? Like many congressional hearings, it accomplished nothing but left the participants feeling mighty proud of themselves for having addressed and made “real” progress on an important issue. Now we can all go back to the way things were before and revisit this issue in a few years when someone else says or does something wildly inappropriate to stir on discussion on this topic.
- Dammit, he’s Jack Bauer and you’re keeping him from a very important mission that affects the safety and security of every last American and the whole world for that matter! Well, assuming that mission is finding his next beer, gin and tonic or rum and coke, that is. The diminutive star of FOX’s 24 was arrested on suspicion of driving while intoxicated earlier this week in L.A. Police pulled Kiefer Sutherland over after he made an illegal U-turn and when he took a breath test, it registered more than twice the legal limit. To be fair, when you’re roughly the same size as the average Oompa-loompa, it doesn’t take many drinks to push you over the legal limit, but even so you can’t be driving around L.A. when your B.A.C. is roughly equal to the batting average of the Dodgers over the past week. Sutherland was released on $25,000 bail and has an Oct. 16 court date, which I’m sure will only help the production schedule on 24, which is several months behind schedule as it is. My chief hope in all of this is that K. Sutherland wasn’t too drunk to go to the “Do you know who I am?” card when the cops pulled him over, because it’s always hilarious when celebrities or people who mistakenly think that they’re celebrities go that route. So Jack Bauer can outsmart and defeat the Chinese, but he can’t outsmart L.A.P.D. officers patrolling the streets with a donut in one hand and a Breathalyzer in the other hand. Television heroes just ain’t what they used to be…..
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Cheerleaders a menace in the NFL, perverts get a boost from MySpace and athletes + the law = fun
- Good news pedophiles and sexual predators worldwide, MySpace will now offer a free service on mobile phones that will allow pedophiles, er, users, to add photos, friends and blog entries to their MySpace pages from their mobile phones. This means that all you sexually deviant freaks looking to pick up teenage girls and use them to fulfill your twisted fantasies can now do so without having to spend hours sitting in front of the computer screen. Not surprisingly, advertising revenue will support the service, which means that you’ll be bombarded with ads from every direction whenever you use this program. Also, the service will be available on all carriers, meaning that no pedophile will be left behind – unless of course you can’t afford a cell phone for some reason. I’m actually leery of adding new features to cell phones, but for a very different reason. We’ve already seen how difficult a time many people have not acting like total morons when they have a basic cell phone used just for making calls. They make total asses of themselves talking loudly in restaurants and movie theaters, they drive 10 miles per hour below the speed limit in the far left lane because they’re more focused on their phone calls than their driving and they have their phones ring at the most inopportune times in the most inconvenient places. Now you want to add yet another service to distract people and consume their attention when they can’t handle the most basic phones without being a total nuisance? Go for it, MySpace, just know that the result of your new service is going to be about 98 percent negative, 2 percent positive at best.
- Nice try, Mike Gundy. Your meltdown after your team’s game on Saturday was entertaining and amusing, but it leaves you looking like a ginormous ass clown who isn’t all that smart and doesn’t have the first clue how to deal with people who write or say something critical about you or your team. In case you haven't heard Gundy’s rant, the Oklahoma State football coach came in to his postgame press conference following his team’s dramatic 49-45 win over Texas Tech Saturday and instead of talking about the game itself, went on a three-and-a-half-minute rant against Jennifer Carlson, a columnist for the Daily Oklahoman who wrote an article heavily criticizing the toughness and on-field performance of OSU quarterback Bobby Reid. Gundy ranted and raved about how three-fourths of the story was inaccurate, yet the next day refused to clarify what the errors were. He also seemed OK with the fact that he ignored a big win for his team in favor of pursuing his own personal vendetta against Carlson based on what she wrote. If I didn’t know better, I’d say those were the words of a nervous coach who realizes that his perennially underachieving team could cost him his job if it continues to post subpar seasons. LSU coach Les Miles spoke out on a similar topic last week when he criticized writers for writing about injuries to LSU players, saying that didn’t help his team and that they weren’t being respectful to his program or seeing things his way. These guys need to realize that writers aren’t there to congratulate them, help them recruit or paint their teams and players in a positive light. What coaches, can people only write and say positive things about your players? Are we all here to pat them on the back, gloss over their shortcomings and tell them that everything is all right no matter what? Good grief, Carlson didn’t call Reid a racist, a murderer, a rapist, a war criminal or anything else that terrible. She portrayed him as a mentally fragile guy, a mama’s boy who can't quite get it done on the field. From where I sit, even college athletes are acceptable targets for criticism as long as it involves their on-field performance and related issues. If Carlson had delved into Reid’s personal life and snooped around, that’s over the line. But she didn’t, and it sounds like Gundy is just pissed because information from inside his team was leaked without his knowledge. He lashed out at the recipient of that information and looked like a jerk in the process. He can hide behind the guise of defending his player and saying Reid is just “a kid,” but he needs to know that this “kid” is 21 years old and is in no way, shape or form a “kid.” He’s an adult in every legal sense, so stop acting like this is Pee Wee or junior high. Gundy might be finding supporters among fellow coaches and ignorant fans who think that the media is out of control and irresponsible, but not here will he find that kind of support. He’s a hothead and a below-average football coach who is going to find himself on his way out of Stillwater, Okla. sooner rather than later based on the season his team is having.
- It’s been a banner 24-hour period for athletes on the police blotter. Yesterday afternoon, Mike Tyson plead guilty on charges of drug possession and driving under the influence stemming from a traffic stop last year as he was leaving a club in Scottsdale, Ariz. That incident took place on Dec. 29, so once again it’s reassuring to see the American legal system work in such a swift, expedient fashion. Tyson might have saved himself some of the time he would have spent in jail by admitting to driving while impaired and possessing cocaine rather than fighting the charges, but County Attorney Andrew Thomas still wants him behind bars. “Mike Tyson is a repeat offender with a violent past. I believe only a prison sentence will send the right message and properly protect the public.” Sentencing is set for Nov. 19, so Iron Mike still has a few weeks of freedom left. However, I’m pissed at him and am rooting for him to receive the full four years and three months in prison allowable under the law. My opinion has nothing to do with Tyson’s continual unlawful behavior, the fact that this is the third different state in which he’s been convicted of a felony or the fact that he once bit off part of a man’s ear in a boxing match. I don’t care that Tyson confessed that he uses cocaine whenever he can get his hands on it and that his favorite method is taking the tobacco out of cigarettes and replacing it with blow. No, what truly angers me is that he’s wasting all of this money on drugs instead of using it to finish off that gnarly facial tattoo he started several years ago. Don’t tell me you’re not intrigued to see what that bad boy would look like fully done, because you know that it would rock. Right now it looks like a half a face covered in a random mass of lines in some sort of weird tribal armband pattern, but if taken to completion, I’m confident it would look like an entire face covered in a random mass of lines in some sort of weird tribal armband pattern. You’ve still got two months before sentencing, Mike, so put down the blow and use your remaining money to finish the tat. Either that, or once you get into jail, have one of your fellow inmates finish it for you, either way is OK by me. Also on the athlete crime front, news came down Tuesday that Michael Vick and his three co-stooges in the Bad Newz Kennels dogfighting ring have been indicted on state charges for essentially the same crimes that led all four men to plead guilty in federal court last month. The district attorney in Surry County, Va., was careful to avoid bringing any charges that would duplicate charges already brought against Vick and Co. by the feds, sticking to the actual dogfighting aspect instead of animal cruelty and gambling. Once again Vick’s lawyers are expected to seek a plea deal, one that would allow any jail time on these state charges to run concurrently with whatever time Vick gets for the federal charges. I, for one, hope that doesn’t happen because Vick has done nothing to deserve leniency and he deserves to spend as much time behind bars as the law allows. Not only did he commit multiple crimes and do so willingly and deliberately, he then lied to everyone who would listen for as long as he could before finally realizing the he was screwed and scrambling for whatever plea deal he could get. I’m looking forward to your sentencing hearings, Mike, both of them. I’ll be the one waving a pennant and holding the sign reading: “Stick it to Vick.”
- I wanted to see if the new CW series Reaper was going to be as bad as it looked from previews and promos. Shockingly, it was worse. Or maybe not so shockingly, because after all, it is a new show on the Crappy Watching network, so it would be a shock if it didn’t suck. Everything that could be bad about this show is. Ray Wise, who plays the devil, is supposed to be one of those charming, roguish bad guys that is funny and entertaining even though he’s fundamentally evil. However, Wise comes off as annoying, his jokes fall flat and you find yourself wanting to reach through the screen to smack him. Sam, the show’s protagonist, is (I think) supposed to be sympathetic and we’re supposed to root for him as he comes to grips with the reality that his parents have sold his soul to the devil and that he’s the devil’s indentured servant in returning escapes souls to hell. Let me pause to say how absolutely moronic that plot point is; before Sam (XXXX) was born, his father was deathly ill and the devil offered he and his wife a deal that would restore his health but allow the devil to take possession of their firstborn’s soul when he turned 21. Then, the devil paid off the gambling debts of the couple’s doctor and in turn the doctor had to lie and tell them they couldn’t have children. They ended up getting pregnant and voila, the devil has his new helper. That might be the single most idiotic and far-fetched plot point I’ve ever heard of and the race isn't even close. What makes the show worse is that it vacillates back and forth between comedy and drama, flailing vainly in both worlds and making for a thoroughly regrettable hour of viewing in the process. With new shows, you sometimes know in the first episode that you’ve stumbled onto something great (Heroes, Veronica Mars, Gilmore Girls), with some, you like what you see but it takes a while to really get into it (Alias, Lost), but with shows like Reaper, it’s easy to tell in the first episode that you shouldn’t waste any more of your time on the show.
- Does the NFL have a secret division whose sole purpose is to snuff out any semblance of fun, individuality or free spiritedness from the league, and to ensure that the ginormous stick lodged up its collective butt remains firmly in place? I’m 99.9% sure that this division not only exists, but that it is the single most productive and efficient part of the entire league. Every frakkin’ day the NFL seems to come out with some new rule or edict to rip another aspect of fun out of the game, and today that energy is directed at none other than cheerleaders. Tuesday the league office sent out a memo to all teams informing them that their cheerleaders would no longer be permitted to warm up in front of or in the immediate vicinity of opposing teams’ benches, because apparently this tactic is (or would be) such a distraction to opposing teams that they couldn’t possibly cope with it. I’m almost not sure what to attack the NFL on first in regards to this issue, but let’s start with the fact that the league puts its stamp of approval on nonstop suggestive commercials that air during its game and has crank-enhancer drug companies as its top sponsors constantly. Or how about the fact that every time a game comes back from commercial, there’s a ground-up shot of a buxom, bouncing cheerleader shaking her pom-poms and also the shiny, shimmering things in her hands too. Sex is in and around everything the NFL does, yet there’s a huge problem with some glorified strippers doing their stretches near the opposing team’s bench? Look, if a player is so rattled by seeing some 36-24-34 blonde in a skimpy outfit to calisthenics that he can't get it out of his mind and go out half an hour or an hour later and focus on playing the game, then I don’t think that’s the kind of guy who is qualified to mow lawns for a living, let alone play in the NFL. Is this really the kind of thing you want your league to be focused on and known for, making sure that some scantily clad skank doesn’t do calf stretches too close to the bench of opposing teams. It’s not as if the cheerleaders are sneaking video cameras onto the sidelines and using them to film the cheer signals being sent in by the other team’s cheerleaders, after all……
- Nice try, Mike Gundy. Your meltdown after your team’s game on Saturday was entertaining and amusing, but it leaves you looking like a ginormous ass clown who isn’t all that smart and doesn’t have the first clue how to deal with people who write or say something critical about you or your team. In case you haven't heard Gundy’s rant, the Oklahoma State football coach came in to his postgame press conference following his team’s dramatic 49-45 win over Texas Tech Saturday and instead of talking about the game itself, went on a three-and-a-half-minute rant against Jennifer Carlson, a columnist for the Daily Oklahoman who wrote an article heavily criticizing the toughness and on-field performance of OSU quarterback Bobby Reid. Gundy ranted and raved about how three-fourths of the story was inaccurate, yet the next day refused to clarify what the errors were. He also seemed OK with the fact that he ignored a big win for his team in favor of pursuing his own personal vendetta against Carlson based on what she wrote. If I didn’t know better, I’d say those were the words of a nervous coach who realizes that his perennially underachieving team could cost him his job if it continues to post subpar seasons. LSU coach Les Miles spoke out on a similar topic last week when he criticized writers for writing about injuries to LSU players, saying that didn’t help his team and that they weren’t being respectful to his program or seeing things his way. These guys need to realize that writers aren’t there to congratulate them, help them recruit or paint their teams and players in a positive light. What coaches, can people only write and say positive things about your players? Are we all here to pat them on the back, gloss over their shortcomings and tell them that everything is all right no matter what? Good grief, Carlson didn’t call Reid a racist, a murderer, a rapist, a war criminal or anything else that terrible. She portrayed him as a mentally fragile guy, a mama’s boy who can't quite get it done on the field. From where I sit, even college athletes are acceptable targets for criticism as long as it involves their on-field performance and related issues. If Carlson had delved into Reid’s personal life and snooped around, that’s over the line. But she didn’t, and it sounds like Gundy is just pissed because information from inside his team was leaked without his knowledge. He lashed out at the recipient of that information and looked like a jerk in the process. He can hide behind the guise of defending his player and saying Reid is just “a kid,” but he needs to know that this “kid” is 21 years old and is in no way, shape or form a “kid.” He’s an adult in every legal sense, so stop acting like this is Pee Wee or junior high. Gundy might be finding supporters among fellow coaches and ignorant fans who think that the media is out of control and irresponsible, but not here will he find that kind of support. He’s a hothead and a below-average football coach who is going to find himself on his way out of Stillwater, Okla. sooner rather than later based on the season his team is having.
- It’s been a banner 24-hour period for athletes on the police blotter. Yesterday afternoon, Mike Tyson plead guilty on charges of drug possession and driving under the influence stemming from a traffic stop last year as he was leaving a club in Scottsdale, Ariz. That incident took place on Dec. 29, so once again it’s reassuring to see the American legal system work in such a swift, expedient fashion. Tyson might have saved himself some of the time he would have spent in jail by admitting to driving while impaired and possessing cocaine rather than fighting the charges, but County Attorney Andrew Thomas still wants him behind bars. “Mike Tyson is a repeat offender with a violent past. I believe only a prison sentence will send the right message and properly protect the public.” Sentencing is set for Nov. 19, so Iron Mike still has a few weeks of freedom left. However, I’m pissed at him and am rooting for him to receive the full four years and three months in prison allowable under the law. My opinion has nothing to do with Tyson’s continual unlawful behavior, the fact that this is the third different state in which he’s been convicted of a felony or the fact that he once bit off part of a man’s ear in a boxing match. I don’t care that Tyson confessed that he uses cocaine whenever he can get his hands on it and that his favorite method is taking the tobacco out of cigarettes and replacing it with blow. No, what truly angers me is that he’s wasting all of this money on drugs instead of using it to finish off that gnarly facial tattoo he started several years ago. Don’t tell me you’re not intrigued to see what that bad boy would look like fully done, because you know that it would rock. Right now it looks like a half a face covered in a random mass of lines in some sort of weird tribal armband pattern, but if taken to completion, I’m confident it would look like an entire face covered in a random mass of lines in some sort of weird tribal armband pattern. You’ve still got two months before sentencing, Mike, so put down the blow and use your remaining money to finish the tat. Either that, or once you get into jail, have one of your fellow inmates finish it for you, either way is OK by me. Also on the athlete crime front, news came down Tuesday that Michael Vick and his three co-stooges in the Bad Newz Kennels dogfighting ring have been indicted on state charges for essentially the same crimes that led all four men to plead guilty in federal court last month. The district attorney in Surry County, Va., was careful to avoid bringing any charges that would duplicate charges already brought against Vick and Co. by the feds, sticking to the actual dogfighting aspect instead of animal cruelty and gambling. Once again Vick’s lawyers are expected to seek a plea deal, one that would allow any jail time on these state charges to run concurrently with whatever time Vick gets for the federal charges. I, for one, hope that doesn’t happen because Vick has done nothing to deserve leniency and he deserves to spend as much time behind bars as the law allows. Not only did he commit multiple crimes and do so willingly and deliberately, he then lied to everyone who would listen for as long as he could before finally realizing the he was screwed and scrambling for whatever plea deal he could get. I’m looking forward to your sentencing hearings, Mike, both of them. I’ll be the one waving a pennant and holding the sign reading: “Stick it to Vick.”
- I wanted to see if the new CW series Reaper was going to be as bad as it looked from previews and promos. Shockingly, it was worse. Or maybe not so shockingly, because after all, it is a new show on the Crappy Watching network, so it would be a shock if it didn’t suck. Everything that could be bad about this show is. Ray Wise, who plays the devil, is supposed to be one of those charming, roguish bad guys that is funny and entertaining even though he’s fundamentally evil. However, Wise comes off as annoying, his jokes fall flat and you find yourself wanting to reach through the screen to smack him. Sam, the show’s protagonist, is (I think) supposed to be sympathetic and we’re supposed to root for him as he comes to grips with the reality that his parents have sold his soul to the devil and that he’s the devil’s indentured servant in returning escapes souls to hell. Let me pause to say how absolutely moronic that plot point is; before Sam (XXXX) was born, his father was deathly ill and the devil offered he and his wife a deal that would restore his health but allow the devil to take possession of their firstborn’s soul when he turned 21. Then, the devil paid off the gambling debts of the couple’s doctor and in turn the doctor had to lie and tell them they couldn’t have children. They ended up getting pregnant and voila, the devil has his new helper. That might be the single most idiotic and far-fetched plot point I’ve ever heard of and the race isn't even close. What makes the show worse is that it vacillates back and forth between comedy and drama, flailing vainly in both worlds and making for a thoroughly regrettable hour of viewing in the process. With new shows, you sometimes know in the first episode that you’ve stumbled onto something great (Heroes, Veronica Mars, Gilmore Girls), with some, you like what you see but it takes a while to really get into it (Alias, Lost), but with shows like Reaper, it’s easy to tell in the first episode that you shouldn’t waste any more of your time on the show.
- Does the NFL have a secret division whose sole purpose is to snuff out any semblance of fun, individuality or free spiritedness from the league, and to ensure that the ginormous stick lodged up its collective butt remains firmly in place? I’m 99.9% sure that this division not only exists, but that it is the single most productive and efficient part of the entire league. Every frakkin’ day the NFL seems to come out with some new rule or edict to rip another aspect of fun out of the game, and today that energy is directed at none other than cheerleaders. Tuesday the league office sent out a memo to all teams informing them that their cheerleaders would no longer be permitted to warm up in front of or in the immediate vicinity of opposing teams’ benches, because apparently this tactic is (or would be) such a distraction to opposing teams that they couldn’t possibly cope with it. I’m almost not sure what to attack the NFL on first in regards to this issue, but let’s start with the fact that the league puts its stamp of approval on nonstop suggestive commercials that air during its game and has crank-enhancer drug companies as its top sponsors constantly. Or how about the fact that every time a game comes back from commercial, there’s a ground-up shot of a buxom, bouncing cheerleader shaking her pom-poms and also the shiny, shimmering things in her hands too. Sex is in and around everything the NFL does, yet there’s a huge problem with some glorified strippers doing their stretches near the opposing team’s bench? Look, if a player is so rattled by seeing some 36-24-34 blonde in a skimpy outfit to calisthenics that he can't get it out of his mind and go out half an hour or an hour later and focus on playing the game, then I don’t think that’s the kind of guy who is qualified to mow lawns for a living, let alone play in the NFL. Is this really the kind of thing you want your league to be focused on and known for, making sure that some scantily clad skank doesn’t do calf stretches too close to the bench of opposing teams. It’s not as if the cheerleaders are sneaking video cameras onto the sidelines and using them to film the cheer signals being sent in by the other team’s cheerleaders, after all……
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Newfound respect for Jessica Alba, more noise from the Burmese monks and Milton Bradley's season is over
- Want to know how hot Jessica Alba is? You don’t need to do a Google image search or watch an E! celebrity news show to find out. Just take a look at the box office earnings for her new movie Good Luck Chuck and you’ll see clearly how strong the pull of seeing Alba’s gorgeous face and smoking hot body on the big screen are. She managed to take a movie with the unenviable burden of having Dane Cook as one of its stars and carry it to a second-place finish in the weekend box office earnings race with $14 million in ticket sales. If you’re wondering, the zombie thriller Resident Evil: Extinction was the top earner at $24 million, so it was not a stellar weekend for movies. However, if anyone can rescue a movie with an absolute idiot like Dane Cook, a flimsy plot and piss-poor writing and make it even a marginal success, then you know she’s either a) really, really hot, or b) a phenomenal actress. Since I’ve seen Alba’s acting before, I can confidently say it’s the former, but then again, does it really matter? I suppose the answer to that depends on your gender……
- I made a promise and gosh darn, I’m sticking with it. The Buddhist monks in Myanmar are at it again, protesting against their dictatorial government, and I’m here to salute them. This time, those crazy dudes were joined by Buddhist nuns in the largest anti-government protest in Myanmar in nearly two decades. More than 20,000 protestors marched in the city of Yangun, showing their support for detained pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi. At one point during the demonstration, a group of about 400 protestors broke off from the larger group and tried to approach the home where Suu Kyi is being held. They were rebuffed, but it was still a solid effort. The monks also held a banner aloft that read: “Love and kindness must win over everything.” I don’t know how that jives with the property damage these monks inflicted on the shops of pro-government store owners, but I really don’t care. You can have love and kindness and still be tough and play a little dirty when need be. Let’s just hope that the result of this large demonstration isn't the same as the last one of comparable size, when the Burmese military used force to crush the resistance and killed thousands nationwide. A spokesman for a coalition of anti-government forces cites the role of monks as leaders in Myanmar as a reason for the large turnout at the march, saying that when monks take a stand on an issue, people will follow. This cause is definitely gaining momentum, so I’m rooting for it to escalate even further in the days ahead. All of this because a small group of monks was fed up with their government and decided to speak out…..
- I had a hard time deciding whether to hit on this next story, because it’s so graphically disturbing that it makes me sick just thinking about it. However, if we don’t openly rip, mock, scorn and ridicule idiots who do things like this, other like-minded morons might think it’s ok to follow suit. Scott D. Clark, an absolute ass-hat of a human being staying at the Embassy Guest Suites hotel in St. Paul, Minn., decided it was a good idea to have a beer or eight and then wander through the hotel lobby. The hotel, apparently a nice establishment, sports a decorative pond in its lobby. In that pond lives, scratch that, LIVED a tame duck that swam around, amused the guests and bothered no one – well, except for drunken imbeciles like Scott D. Clark. This a-hole cornered this poor duck, grabbed it and ripped its head from its body. He then turned to onlookers and exclaimed, “I’m hungry. I’m gonna eat it.” Scott D. Clark is now rightfully in police custody, and whatever charges and jail time can be thrown at this piece of crap are not nearly what he deserves. No, it’s not a human being or even a pet like a dog or cat, but it’s still an innocent and defenseless animal killed in an excruciatingly brutal fashion. Even your average drunk doesn’t do something this despicable, but clearly Scott D. Clark is much dumber, much more ignorant and possesses much less class and intellect that your average drunk, or your average lamp post for that matter. You suck, Scott D. Clark, and here’s hoping that your death, whenever it comes, is equally painful and horrific.
- A Milton Bradley update for you…..as it turns out, the result of that confrontation with umpire Mike Winters in Sunday’s game and Padres manager Bud Black resultant efforts to restrain Bradley that sent Milton tumbling to the ground, Bradley has a torn ACL and will miss the remainder of this season, the postseason and a large chunk (if not all) of next season. Worse yet, Winters is denying he said anything to incite Bradley’s tantrum, which is so obviously a lie that it makes me want to call time out, charge over and assault Winters myself. Milton Bradley isn't the most sympathetic figure and he’s been the driving force behind most of his problems in his baseball career, but this is one time where the wrong was brought upon him by someone else, someone who is supposed to be there to enforce and apply the rules, not to bait players they don’t like into confrontations. If nothing else, Winters should be fined and reprimanded by MLB and banned from working any playoff games this year, because the second the sport begins condoning this kind of offensive, confrontation-seeking behavior from umpires, it’s in for a world of problems that it’s not prepared to cope with.
- I’m going to do the abnormal and take a big picture view of the Heroes season premiere. By that, I mean I’m going to do my best to think of the season as a whole and not focus too much on last night’s premiere, because if I focus solely on that episode, my review isn't going to be very positive. Although there’s no bigger Heroes fan than me, I thought last night’s episode was scattershot, erratic and disjointed. It was al over the map story-wise and had no sort of flow or consistent direction to it. There was Hiro Nakamura, teleported back to 1671 where he comes face to face with the legendary Japanese warrior Takito Kensei, only to discover that Kensei is actually a British mercenary who is more greedy opportunist than hero. Then there’s Nathan Petrelli, who has apparently become a wino/hobo, with a scraggly beard, unkempt appearance and a massive guilt complex over what happened to his brother in last season’s finale. And what of Peter Petrelli? It wasn’t until show’s end we found out his fate; namely, chained to the wall of a cargo container in a ship yard in Cork, Ireland, with no memory of who he is and how he got there. Over on the other side for the world, there’s the Bennett/XXXXX family, with H.R.G./Noah having moved Claire and the rest of the family to Costa Verde, Calif. to assume new lives and new identities. Claire struggles to just be a normal, nondescript teenager, totally unaware that her new friend at school, West, has a special ability of his own, just like her. Flash over to Cairo, Egypt, and there’s Dr. Mohinder Suresh, giving some sort of lecture on a dangerous virus threatening people with special abilities worldwide. He’s followed and courted by a mysterious stranger representing a mysterious foundation that promises to help Suresh in his research for a cure for this virus. Back in New York, the story of Matt Parkman has skipped about two dozen steps and he’s now moved cross-country to New York, where he’s an NYPD detective and has adopted little Molly, the girl whose power is to locate other people with powers. The pair is living in Mohinder’s apartment while he tours the world and Molly is having progressively worse nightmares about the boogeyman. Then there’s the cryptic phone call between H.R.G. and Mohinder which reveals that Mohinder’s lecture trip is a trap to catch the very people who have just contacted him and that H.R.G. and Mohinder hope to bring down “The Company.” Also in New York, Mrs. Petrelli and Hiro’s father both receive death threats with a mysterious symbol painted over top of photographs of them, the same symbol showing up in drawings of th boogeyman that Molly is doing at school. We learn that the person making these threats is someone who was once a part of an organization of which Mrs. Petrelli and Hiro’s father were part of, and at the end of the show, this person shows up and fights with Hiro’s father, with both falling off the roof to their death. Oh, and then there was the substantial amount of time spent following Maya and Alejandro, two twenty-somethings from South or Latin America trying to make their way to New York to meet Suresh (Mohinder’s father, who is actually dead, unbeknownst to these two) in the hope that he can help Maya with her power, which is vague at this point but results in her killing people unintentionally and them bleeding from their eyes. So as you can see, there was a lot of jumping around, both geographically and story-wise, and it made for an uneven, often-confusing episode that didn’t really answer many questions. Also, other than one brief scene with Nathan and his mother discussing what happened in last season’s finale in the climactic scene at Kirby Plaza, no one mentioned what happened there or seemed affected by it. Hopefully this episode was just a necessary evil, a bulky, over-stuffed way to set up a spectacular season. Much better was the second show of the season for Prison Break, which continued the travails of Michael Scofield as he tries to survive in the Panamanian hell hole that is SONA. The episode centered around the quest to find James Whistler, a sought-after man who is hiding in the sewers of SONA because he killed the son of Panama City’s mayor and is wanted dead by many people. However, the people pressuring Michael and brother Lincoln to break Whistler out of SONA want him alive for a reason yet to be disclosed. While Michael tries to break a wanted man out of a prison that no one has ever escaped from and do so in the one-week time frame he’s been given, Sucre comes to SONA to find out where Bellick has hidden his beloved Maricruz. When Sucre learns Bellick never really held her captive, he starts searching desperately and finds out that his girl is back in Chicago, where he plans to go until he realizes that doing so will get him arrested and only bring more danger to those he loves. Lincoln convinces him to stay in Panama and help in the fight to free Michael, a fight that includes Lincoln trailing Whistlers’ girlfriend and stealing an item she has retrieved from a safety deposit box at a local bank. All of this almost goes for naught when Mahone catches wind of Scofield’s plan for Whistler, captures him and tries to hold Whistler hostage, perhaps killing him to collect on a bounty that could free him from SONA. An ingenious plan by Scofield that brings much-needed water to SONA wins him custody of Whistler, but there’s still the tiny matter of how to escape in time to save L.J. and Sarah…..like I said, this season of PB has been stellar so far and it just keeps getting better. The drama is at fever pitch for the entire hour and although the plot is layered and complicated, it’s never confusing or overwhelming. In summary, last night’s episode of Heroes and Prison Break, disappointing and stellar, respectively.
- I made a promise and gosh darn, I’m sticking with it. The Buddhist monks in Myanmar are at it again, protesting against their dictatorial government, and I’m here to salute them. This time, those crazy dudes were joined by Buddhist nuns in the largest anti-government protest in Myanmar in nearly two decades. More than 20,000 protestors marched in the city of Yangun, showing their support for detained pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi. At one point during the demonstration, a group of about 400 protestors broke off from the larger group and tried to approach the home where Suu Kyi is being held. They were rebuffed, but it was still a solid effort. The monks also held a banner aloft that read: “Love and kindness must win over everything.” I don’t know how that jives with the property damage these monks inflicted on the shops of pro-government store owners, but I really don’t care. You can have love and kindness and still be tough and play a little dirty when need be. Let’s just hope that the result of this large demonstration isn't the same as the last one of comparable size, when the Burmese military used force to crush the resistance and killed thousands nationwide. A spokesman for a coalition of anti-government forces cites the role of monks as leaders in Myanmar as a reason for the large turnout at the march, saying that when monks take a stand on an issue, people will follow. This cause is definitely gaining momentum, so I’m rooting for it to escalate even further in the days ahead. All of this because a small group of monks was fed up with their government and decided to speak out…..
- I had a hard time deciding whether to hit on this next story, because it’s so graphically disturbing that it makes me sick just thinking about it. However, if we don’t openly rip, mock, scorn and ridicule idiots who do things like this, other like-minded morons might think it’s ok to follow suit. Scott D. Clark, an absolute ass-hat of a human being staying at the Embassy Guest Suites hotel in St. Paul, Minn., decided it was a good idea to have a beer or eight and then wander through the hotel lobby. The hotel, apparently a nice establishment, sports a decorative pond in its lobby. In that pond lives, scratch that, LIVED a tame duck that swam around, amused the guests and bothered no one – well, except for drunken imbeciles like Scott D. Clark. This a-hole cornered this poor duck, grabbed it and ripped its head from its body. He then turned to onlookers and exclaimed, “I’m hungry. I’m gonna eat it.” Scott D. Clark is now rightfully in police custody, and whatever charges and jail time can be thrown at this piece of crap are not nearly what he deserves. No, it’s not a human being or even a pet like a dog or cat, but it’s still an innocent and defenseless animal killed in an excruciatingly brutal fashion. Even your average drunk doesn’t do something this despicable, but clearly Scott D. Clark is much dumber, much more ignorant and possesses much less class and intellect that your average drunk, or your average lamp post for that matter. You suck, Scott D. Clark, and here’s hoping that your death, whenever it comes, is equally painful and horrific.
- A Milton Bradley update for you…..as it turns out, the result of that confrontation with umpire Mike Winters in Sunday’s game and Padres manager Bud Black resultant efforts to restrain Bradley that sent Milton tumbling to the ground, Bradley has a torn ACL and will miss the remainder of this season, the postseason and a large chunk (if not all) of next season. Worse yet, Winters is denying he said anything to incite Bradley’s tantrum, which is so obviously a lie that it makes me want to call time out, charge over and assault Winters myself. Milton Bradley isn't the most sympathetic figure and he’s been the driving force behind most of his problems in his baseball career, but this is one time where the wrong was brought upon him by someone else, someone who is supposed to be there to enforce and apply the rules, not to bait players they don’t like into confrontations. If nothing else, Winters should be fined and reprimanded by MLB and banned from working any playoff games this year, because the second the sport begins condoning this kind of offensive, confrontation-seeking behavior from umpires, it’s in for a world of problems that it’s not prepared to cope with.
- I’m going to do the abnormal and take a big picture view of the Heroes season premiere. By that, I mean I’m going to do my best to think of the season as a whole and not focus too much on last night’s premiere, because if I focus solely on that episode, my review isn't going to be very positive. Although there’s no bigger Heroes fan than me, I thought last night’s episode was scattershot, erratic and disjointed. It was al over the map story-wise and had no sort of flow or consistent direction to it. There was Hiro Nakamura, teleported back to 1671 where he comes face to face with the legendary Japanese warrior Takito Kensei, only to discover that Kensei is actually a British mercenary who is more greedy opportunist than hero. Then there’s Nathan Petrelli, who has apparently become a wino/hobo, with a scraggly beard, unkempt appearance and a massive guilt complex over what happened to his brother in last season’s finale. And what of Peter Petrelli? It wasn’t until show’s end we found out his fate; namely, chained to the wall of a cargo container in a ship yard in Cork, Ireland, with no memory of who he is and how he got there. Over on the other side for the world, there’s the Bennett/XXXXX family, with H.R.G./Noah having moved Claire and the rest of the family to Costa Verde, Calif. to assume new lives and new identities. Claire struggles to just be a normal, nondescript teenager, totally unaware that her new friend at school, West, has a special ability of his own, just like her. Flash over to Cairo, Egypt, and there’s Dr. Mohinder Suresh, giving some sort of lecture on a dangerous virus threatening people with special abilities worldwide. He’s followed and courted by a mysterious stranger representing a mysterious foundation that promises to help Suresh in his research for a cure for this virus. Back in New York, the story of Matt Parkman has skipped about two dozen steps and he’s now moved cross-country to New York, where he’s an NYPD detective and has adopted little Molly, the girl whose power is to locate other people with powers. The pair is living in Mohinder’s apartment while he tours the world and Molly is having progressively worse nightmares about the boogeyman. Then there’s the cryptic phone call between H.R.G. and Mohinder which reveals that Mohinder’s lecture trip is a trap to catch the very people who have just contacted him and that H.R.G. and Mohinder hope to bring down “The Company.” Also in New York, Mrs. Petrelli and Hiro’s father both receive death threats with a mysterious symbol painted over top of photographs of them, the same symbol showing up in drawings of th boogeyman that Molly is doing at school. We learn that the person making these threats is someone who was once a part of an organization of which Mrs. Petrelli and Hiro’s father were part of, and at the end of the show, this person shows up and fights with Hiro’s father, with both falling off the roof to their death. Oh, and then there was the substantial amount of time spent following Maya and Alejandro, two twenty-somethings from South or Latin America trying to make their way to New York to meet Suresh (Mohinder’s father, who is actually dead, unbeknownst to these two) in the hope that he can help Maya with her power, which is vague at this point but results in her killing people unintentionally and them bleeding from their eyes. So as you can see, there was a lot of jumping around, both geographically and story-wise, and it made for an uneven, often-confusing episode that didn’t really answer many questions. Also, other than one brief scene with Nathan and his mother discussing what happened in last season’s finale in the climactic scene at Kirby Plaza, no one mentioned what happened there or seemed affected by it. Hopefully this episode was just a necessary evil, a bulky, over-stuffed way to set up a spectacular season. Much better was the second show of the season for Prison Break, which continued the travails of Michael Scofield as he tries to survive in the Panamanian hell hole that is SONA. The episode centered around the quest to find James Whistler, a sought-after man who is hiding in the sewers of SONA because he killed the son of Panama City’s mayor and is wanted dead by many people. However, the people pressuring Michael and brother Lincoln to break Whistler out of SONA want him alive for a reason yet to be disclosed. While Michael tries to break a wanted man out of a prison that no one has ever escaped from and do so in the one-week time frame he’s been given, Sucre comes to SONA to find out where Bellick has hidden his beloved Maricruz. When Sucre learns Bellick never really held her captive, he starts searching desperately and finds out that his girl is back in Chicago, where he plans to go until he realizes that doing so will get him arrested and only bring more danger to those he loves. Lincoln convinces him to stay in Panama and help in the fight to free Michael, a fight that includes Lincoln trailing Whistlers’ girlfriend and stealing an item she has retrieved from a safety deposit box at a local bank. All of this almost goes for naught when Mahone catches wind of Scofield’s plan for Whistler, captures him and tries to hold Whistler hostage, perhaps killing him to collect on a bounty that could free him from SONA. An ingenious plan by Scofield that brings much-needed water to SONA wins him custody of Whistler, but there’s still the tiny matter of how to escape in time to save L.J. and Sarah…..like I said, this season of PB has been stellar so far and it just keeps getting better. The drama is at fever pitch for the entire hour and although the plot is layered and complicated, it’s never confusing or overwhelming. In summary, last night’s episode of Heroes and Prison Break, disappointing and stellar, respectively.
Monday, September 24, 2007
A bridge to nowhere falls apart, a Peruvian leader returns to an un-heroic welcome and an entrepreneurial genius
- Never saw this one coming…..oh wait, yes I did. A Nashville high school teacher accused of having an affair with one of her students has disappeared along with her two children after she was released from a mental hospital. Erin McLean has been missing for a week and a half now, as have her two songs, ages 11 and 8, after she was released from the nuthouse. How could she have custody of her children after all she’s done and been through? Well, if you remember her story, her husband is accused of killing to boy she was having an affair with, so by comparison she is the more fit (or available) parent. Look, I know that finding good teachers is hard, but is the situation so dire that standards have to be lowered to allow mentally unstable, pedophiliac, criminal individuals to be in the classroom? Call me crazy, but something like that should come up somewhere along the way and be a clear indication that maybe this person isn't someone you want teaching the children at your school. I just hope that someone finds McLean and her sons so they can be taken far away from her and her husband and raised by people who give them a semi-realistic show to grow up somewhat normally.
- I’m not sure you heard (pun intended), but world famous mime Marcel Marceau has died. I was trying to think of my favorite Marcel Marceau quote, but honestly I couldn’t come up with a single noteworthy thing that guy ever said. However, I’m sure that the mime community is devastated by his loss and that they’re all busy crying their imaginary tears. I do wonder, though, will they bury Marcel in an actual coffin, or will that fake box that mimes are always stuck in suffice? Also, will all of his mime friends ride their imaginary bicycles to his funeral? Will there be a moving tribute at the ceremony wherein all of Marceau’s mime pals climb their imaginary ropes together and bid their silent friend a silent farewell? Will everyone be required to wear white makeup over their entire face in order to attend, and what if you don’t have one of those funny-looking black berets to wear? Marceau was 84 years old, so his death couldn’t have been a surprise to him. If he had seen it coming, he would have said something, right? Also, you may not know this, but we can also thank M. Marceau for inspiring the King of Pedophiles, er, Pop, Michael Jackson, to invent his famous “moonwalk,” because the Pedophiliac One borrowed the idea from an M. Marceau skit, “Walking Against the Wind.” Here’s hoping that the same imaginary wind isn't blowing at your funeral, Marcel, that way those who loved you can pay tribute to you without fear of being blown away.
- This week’s Entrepreneurial Spirit Award goes to…..Jereme James, 33, of Long Beach, Calif., a man who put his prosthetic leg to good use instead of using it as an excuse. While many people with artificial limbs look for special treatment or accommodations, James put his synthetic leg to use by using it to smuggle iguanas from a nature preserve in Fiji and then selling them for a tidy profit here in the U.S. For some reason, the federal government doesn’t share the same appreciation of James’ business smarts that I have, because he’s been indicted on one count of smuggling, a charge that could land him in the hole for five years if he’s convicted. Yes, I understand that people bring foreign, exotic animals into this country without them being screen or approved by the established federal agencies poses some problems, but can we not give the man credit for turning what many would view as a liability into a successful asset? Jereme James saw what he wanted and he took it – then incapacitated it, shoved it in his prosthetic leg and transported it covertly to a foreign country where he sold it for a profit. He carpe’d the diem, if you catch my drift. Sadly, our government rarely sees the courage, industriousness and tenacity of talented entrepreneurs like James, so he’s going to face some jail time most likely, but don’t think I’m not busy printing my “Free Jereme James” t-shirts as we speak.
- Damn, now how are tens and tens of people going to make their way from the Alaskan town of Ketchikan, on one small island, to the town’s airport, located on another small island nearby? Gov. Sarah Palin has ordered state transportation officials to abandon the so-called “bridge to nowhere” project, ending one of the shining examples of wasteful, pork-barrel spending that the federal government is often ridiculed for. The $398 million bridge would have been one of the most expensive projects ever to help such a small number of people in such unnecessary fashion, but for some reason the governor wasn’t down with it. Instead, those wishing to go from Ketchikan to the Ketchikan Airport (and who isn't looking to make that trip) will have to continue to travel by ferry. Actually, what’s amazing is not that a political official had the kahones to put a halt to this kind of wasteful project, but rather that someone was willing to earmark nearly $400 million for an unneeded bridge in our nation’s coldest, most unlivable state. Thanks for that, Congress, glad you’re doing such a solid job keeping our nation’s finances on the straight and narrow!
- Not even when our un-esteemed leader W. goes abroad and returns home after he leaves office is he going to receive the kind of reaction former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori received upon returning to the country he once governed. Well, W. should receive a similar reaction but he won't, so let’s get that straight. But Fujimori was extradited Saturday from Chile back to Peru to face charges of corruption and authorizing death-squad killings. The ex-presidente fled Peru seven years ago when his government collapsed under the weight of the scandals he (allegedly) created. He was taken directly from the airport to a police base until a permanent detention facility can be prepared for him. Like I said, W. should get a similar reaction once he leaves office but he won't. He too has been responsible for the deaths of thousands, albeit soldiers fighting in a war he created and perpetuated, and he too has run a corrupt, dishonest, scheming, lying government that has left his country decidedly worse than it was when he took office. Now if only we could find a way to pressure W. into fleeing the country…..
- I’m not sure you heard (pun intended), but world famous mime Marcel Marceau has died. I was trying to think of my favorite Marcel Marceau quote, but honestly I couldn’t come up with a single noteworthy thing that guy ever said. However, I’m sure that the mime community is devastated by his loss and that they’re all busy crying their imaginary tears. I do wonder, though, will they bury Marcel in an actual coffin, or will that fake box that mimes are always stuck in suffice? Also, will all of his mime friends ride their imaginary bicycles to his funeral? Will there be a moving tribute at the ceremony wherein all of Marceau’s mime pals climb their imaginary ropes together and bid their silent friend a silent farewell? Will everyone be required to wear white makeup over their entire face in order to attend, and what if you don’t have one of those funny-looking black berets to wear? Marceau was 84 years old, so his death couldn’t have been a surprise to him. If he had seen it coming, he would have said something, right? Also, you may not know this, but we can also thank M. Marceau for inspiring the King of Pedophiles, er, Pop, Michael Jackson, to invent his famous “moonwalk,” because the Pedophiliac One borrowed the idea from an M. Marceau skit, “Walking Against the Wind.” Here’s hoping that the same imaginary wind isn't blowing at your funeral, Marcel, that way those who loved you can pay tribute to you without fear of being blown away.
- This week’s Entrepreneurial Spirit Award goes to…..Jereme James, 33, of Long Beach, Calif., a man who put his prosthetic leg to good use instead of using it as an excuse. While many people with artificial limbs look for special treatment or accommodations, James put his synthetic leg to use by using it to smuggle iguanas from a nature preserve in Fiji and then selling them for a tidy profit here in the U.S. For some reason, the federal government doesn’t share the same appreciation of James’ business smarts that I have, because he’s been indicted on one count of smuggling, a charge that could land him in the hole for five years if he’s convicted. Yes, I understand that people bring foreign, exotic animals into this country without them being screen or approved by the established federal agencies poses some problems, but can we not give the man credit for turning what many would view as a liability into a successful asset? Jereme James saw what he wanted and he took it – then incapacitated it, shoved it in his prosthetic leg and transported it covertly to a foreign country where he sold it for a profit. He carpe’d the diem, if you catch my drift. Sadly, our government rarely sees the courage, industriousness and tenacity of talented entrepreneurs like James, so he’s going to face some jail time most likely, but don’t think I’m not busy printing my “Free Jereme James” t-shirts as we speak.
- Damn, now how are tens and tens of people going to make their way from the Alaskan town of Ketchikan, on one small island, to the town’s airport, located on another small island nearby? Gov. Sarah Palin has ordered state transportation officials to abandon the so-called “bridge to nowhere” project, ending one of the shining examples of wasteful, pork-barrel spending that the federal government is often ridiculed for. The $398 million bridge would have been one of the most expensive projects ever to help such a small number of people in such unnecessary fashion, but for some reason the governor wasn’t down with it. Instead, those wishing to go from Ketchikan to the Ketchikan Airport (and who isn't looking to make that trip) will have to continue to travel by ferry. Actually, what’s amazing is not that a political official had the kahones to put a halt to this kind of wasteful project, but rather that someone was willing to earmark nearly $400 million for an unneeded bridge in our nation’s coldest, most unlivable state. Thanks for that, Congress, glad you’re doing such a solid job keeping our nation’s finances on the straight and narrow!
- Not even when our un-esteemed leader W. goes abroad and returns home after he leaves office is he going to receive the kind of reaction former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori received upon returning to the country he once governed. Well, W. should receive a similar reaction but he won't, so let’s get that straight. But Fujimori was extradited Saturday from Chile back to Peru to face charges of corruption and authorizing death-squad killings. The ex-presidente fled Peru seven years ago when his government collapsed under the weight of the scandals he (allegedly) created. He was taken directly from the airport to a police base until a permanent detention facility can be prepared for him. Like I said, W. should get a similar reaction once he leaves office but he won't. He too has been responsible for the deaths of thousands, albeit soldiers fighting in a war he created and perpetuated, and he too has run a corrupt, dishonest, scheming, lying government that has left his country decidedly worse than it was when he took office. Now if only we could find a way to pressure W. into fleeing the country…..
Sunday, September 23, 2007
Scott Boras lies (shocker), TV premiere week and how KT Tunstall will be a part of it
- Major League Baseball is approaching its final week, and clearly the pressure of the playoff push is getting to players, coaches and even umpires. For example, the Milwaukee Brewers are wilting under the heat of their NL Central race with the Chicago Cubs, having dropped three of four games in Atlanta this weekend while the Cubs swept the Pirates in Chicago. Nowhere was the fraying of Milwaukee’s nerves so obvious as in Sunday’s game, when manager Ned Yost was ejected as his team was busy blowing a three-run lead and dropping another huge game. Throwing a tantrum, getting in the umpire’s face and getting thrown out of the game was as trite, predictable and clichéd a motivational ploy as a manager can make in a situation like this, but it didn’t work on this day and it isn't going to salvage the season for a Brewers team that is fading quickly. Of course, Yost’s tête-à-tête with an umpire wasn’t the most noteworthy incident to take place Sunday, thanks to noted hothead and perpetual ticking time bomb Milton Bradley. Bradley has had run ins with cops trying to give him speeding tickets, he’s thrown plastic bottles down at the feet of fans who were heckling him, he’s thrown baseballs out onto the field when ejected from games and he’s done so many other inexcusable things that there’s not room to mention them all. He’d been quiet so far this year, but you just knew he wasn’t going to make it through an entire season without making waves. During today’s game, Bradley was on first base after getting a hit and he took his lead off the base when things went sour. He called timeout emphatically and sprinted back to first, where he proceeded to spin around and head straight for first base umpire Mike Winters, who was stationed a few feet behind the bag in foul territory. Padres first base coach Bobby Meachem restrained Bradley, who was livid at Winters and was screaming at him and gesticulating wildly. Bradley contends that Winters was baiting him because of an incident in the previous game when Bradley was accused of throwing his bat at another umpire. He and Winters got into it over that incident and when Bradley pointed to the crowd and told Winters that they were all over the umpire’s case, Winters allegedly responded with a string of profanities and verbal challenges. It wasn’t long before Padres manager Bud Black came out of the dugout and entered the fray, which ended up being a decidedly bad thing for his team and his player. As Black pushed Bradley away from Winters, he inadvertently knocked Milton to the ground and injured him in the process. Once that happened, the incident fizzled out in short order, but now the Padres could be without one of their best offensive players as they try to hold on to a wild card lead and possibly catch Arizona for the NL West title. If the rest of this final week of the MLB regular season is anything like its first day, this is going to be a phenomenal week of baseball and then some…..
- I’ve got a deal for the Buddhist monks in Myanmar: You guys keep rioting and protesting and I’ll keep giving you props and posting regular updates on your exploits. These dudes are beasts, never-ending in their opposition to their country’s dictatorial, oppressive government and all who support that government. Already they’ve staged protest marches and engaged in property destruction to the stores of shop owners who support the government, and now they’re marching again. This time the monks marched right past police barricades to the home of Nobel Peace Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, a move designed to further pressure the government by linking the monks’ cause to a woman who is an icon of Myanmar’s decades-old struggle for democracy. Again, I marvel at the chutzpah that these monks continue to show, not backing down no matter what measures the government tries to put in place to stop them. They’ve arrested monks, shot at them, put up barricades and still these guys keep coming. Fight the power, Buddhist monks, fight the power. You guys rock and you need to keep this up until you force your government to deal with the issues you’re raising.
- Finally…..the Rock has come back……to…..oops, wrong line. Finally, the time has come…..for my favorite shows to return…..with new episodes. Admittedly, that list of favorite shows with new episodes is much shorter this year, but I’m trying not to allow that reality to dampen my enthusiasm. Yes, with Prison Break getting an early jump on things last week, this week’s slate of premieres for me to be excited about numbers a paltry two: Heroes and Smallville. However, I’m hoping that the premieres of these two shows will be so phenomenal that they’ll take my mind off that other stuff. I’m especially pumped for Heroes because the show was so great during its first season and it continues to weave in new characters all the time. Last season everything built to a crescendo with Peter Petrelli and Sylar battling in New York’s Kirby Plaza and Sylar apparently being killed. Peter was about to explode from absorbing powers from so many other “gifted” people before his brother Nathan grabbed him and flew out of sight into the sky where a massive explosion could be seen from the ground. The questions to be answered are: 1) Where Sylar is, because we saw some weird sort of oozing sludge sliding into a sewer grate where he was killed and Zachary Quinto, who plays Sylar, is going to be back this season, albeit later in the season due to obligations on a Star Trek show whose name I don’t know because Star Trek is for losers, 2) What happened to the brothers Petrelli?, 3) Where is the über-funny Hiro Nakamura, because he appeared to teleport himself back in time at the end of last season and found himself in the middle of an ancient Japanese battle scene. There are actually a lot more questions, including the fate of Matt Parkman (Greg Grunberg), but those are the major ones I’ll be wondering about as Season Two kicks off Monday night at 9 p.m. on NBC. As for Smallville, I’ve read some news bits on TVGuide.com, but nothing huge to the point that it’s got me on the edge of my seat. Much of the early part of the season looks to be focused on the arrival of Clark Kent’s cousin from krypton , a girl who was sent to Earth at the same time as the Man of Steel but has been in some sort of suspended state of animation since then. The explosion at the dam in the season finale woke her and now she has to adjust to life on Earth with the help of her cousin. Also hanging in the balance are the fates of Lana Lang and Chloe Sullivan, both of who were left in perilous positions as last season came to a close. Chloe was in a weird trance/coma after her meteor power surfaced, while Lana was supposedly blown up by a car bomb even though we never saw her in the wreckage of the car and a delivery truck that she could have easily climed into passed by her car and hid her and her vehicle from view right before the explosion. I believe she’s not dead, although the season premiere could prove me wrong (doubt it). But tune in to the CW Thursday night at 8 p.m. to find out in what should be an awesome season premiere.
- Speaking of the new TV season, I’m sure that numerous network execs and producers are breathing a sigh of relief with the release of the new album from KT Tunstall, Drastic Fantastic. Why would this be such a big relief to TV networks, you ask? Well, if you think back to last season, you’ll remember that Tunstall’s songs became so ubiquitous that you literally couldn’t get away with them no matter what network you were watching. The CW used songs like Black Horse and the Cherry Tree and Suddenly I See for numerous shows, American Karaoke used Tunstall’s music for its glorified karaoke contest and the movie The Devil Wears Prada also featured Tunstall’s tunes. It got to the point that the use of Tunstall’s songs was so over the top that VH1’s Best Week Ever did a gag segment about it, which only happens if the topic is something that’s so blatantly obvious that everyone has noticed it. Well, Tunstall is back, full of folk, pop, soul and a few stabs at rock credibility that fall short of the mark. Her signature vocals remain, with their smoky, sultry vibe and if that’s what you’re looking for, then this is an album for you. If you don’t way to buy the album, though, just tune in to any TV network any night of the week and I’m guessing you’ll hear songs from it on your favorite shows this season.
- Nice try, Scott Boras. The über-agent who is largely responsible for negotiating some of the most obscene, outrageous contracts in the history of Major League Baseball is already on the campaign trail, angling for a new deal for his most famous client. Never mind that this client, one Alexander Rodriguez, already has a 10-year, $252 million contract with three years remaining. A-Rod can opt out of the contract after this season and because Boras feels his client can get an even more lucrative deal (and thus earn more money and attention for Boras, the spotlight whore that he is), that’s exactly what Rodriguez is expected to do. Boras will undoubtedly pull out all the stops in seeking a new deal, including flat-out lying, as he’s busy doing right now. Boras claims that a prospective new owner for the Chicago Cubs is already negotiating a new contrct with A-Rod, and that this new deal is worth $30 million per year and would include a partial ownership stake in the team. The first problem with this is that it’s against MLB rules for any team or team representative to negotiate with a player who is currently under contract with another team. That would be tampering, and no one in baseball is dumb enough to do that with the game’s highest-profile player. Also, there’s no way that a prospective buyer of a team is already negotiating a contract with anyone, because the execs and front office personnel currently with the team are still in control. Lastly, it is also against MLB rules for a player to have any sort of ownership share in a team while they are playing, nor can a player negotiate for a future ownership stake for after his career. T his entire “story” is nothing more than Boras trying to drive up the price for his client by creating an imaginary bidding war between suitors who don’t even exist yet. That’s not to say that if Rodriguez opts out that there won't be several teams vying to sign him, because a few can afford his steep price tag and they’ll go after him hard. It’s just amusing that Boras would throw out such obvious fabrications that no one with any sort of real baseball knowledge would believe and expect people to buy in. Nice try, S., but I’m not that gullible.
- I’ve got a deal for the Buddhist monks in Myanmar: You guys keep rioting and protesting and I’ll keep giving you props and posting regular updates on your exploits. These dudes are beasts, never-ending in their opposition to their country’s dictatorial, oppressive government and all who support that government. Already they’ve staged protest marches and engaged in property destruction to the stores of shop owners who support the government, and now they’re marching again. This time the monks marched right past police barricades to the home of Nobel Peace Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, a move designed to further pressure the government by linking the monks’ cause to a woman who is an icon of Myanmar’s decades-old struggle for democracy. Again, I marvel at the chutzpah that these monks continue to show, not backing down no matter what measures the government tries to put in place to stop them. They’ve arrested monks, shot at them, put up barricades and still these guys keep coming. Fight the power, Buddhist monks, fight the power. You guys rock and you need to keep this up until you force your government to deal with the issues you’re raising.
- Finally…..the Rock has come back……to…..oops, wrong line. Finally, the time has come…..for my favorite shows to return…..with new episodes. Admittedly, that list of favorite shows with new episodes is much shorter this year, but I’m trying not to allow that reality to dampen my enthusiasm. Yes, with Prison Break getting an early jump on things last week, this week’s slate of premieres for me to be excited about numbers a paltry two: Heroes and Smallville. However, I’m hoping that the premieres of these two shows will be so phenomenal that they’ll take my mind off that other stuff. I’m especially pumped for Heroes because the show was so great during its first season and it continues to weave in new characters all the time. Last season everything built to a crescendo with Peter Petrelli and Sylar battling in New York’s Kirby Plaza and Sylar apparently being killed. Peter was about to explode from absorbing powers from so many other “gifted” people before his brother Nathan grabbed him and flew out of sight into the sky where a massive explosion could be seen from the ground. The questions to be answered are: 1) Where Sylar is, because we saw some weird sort of oozing sludge sliding into a sewer grate where he was killed and Zachary Quinto, who plays Sylar, is going to be back this season, albeit later in the season due to obligations on a Star Trek show whose name I don’t know because Star Trek is for losers, 2) What happened to the brothers Petrelli?, 3) Where is the über-funny Hiro Nakamura, because he appeared to teleport himself back in time at the end of last season and found himself in the middle of an ancient Japanese battle scene. There are actually a lot more questions, including the fate of Matt Parkman (Greg Grunberg), but those are the major ones I’ll be wondering about as Season Two kicks off Monday night at 9 p.m. on NBC. As for Smallville, I’ve read some news bits on TVGuide.com, but nothing huge to the point that it’s got me on the edge of my seat. Much of the early part of the season looks to be focused on the arrival of Clark Kent’s cousin from krypton , a girl who was sent to Earth at the same time as the Man of Steel but has been in some sort of suspended state of animation since then. The explosion at the dam in the season finale woke her and now she has to adjust to life on Earth with the help of her cousin. Also hanging in the balance are the fates of Lana Lang and Chloe Sullivan, both of who were left in perilous positions as last season came to a close. Chloe was in a weird trance/coma after her meteor power surfaced, while Lana was supposedly blown up by a car bomb even though we never saw her in the wreckage of the car and a delivery truck that she could have easily climed into passed by her car and hid her and her vehicle from view right before the explosion. I believe she’s not dead, although the season premiere could prove me wrong (doubt it). But tune in to the CW Thursday night at 8 p.m. to find out in what should be an awesome season premiere.
- Speaking of the new TV season, I’m sure that numerous network execs and producers are breathing a sigh of relief with the release of the new album from KT Tunstall, Drastic Fantastic. Why would this be such a big relief to TV networks, you ask? Well, if you think back to last season, you’ll remember that Tunstall’s songs became so ubiquitous that you literally couldn’t get away with them no matter what network you were watching. The CW used songs like Black Horse and the Cherry Tree and Suddenly I See for numerous shows, American Karaoke used Tunstall’s music for its glorified karaoke contest and the movie The Devil Wears Prada also featured Tunstall’s tunes. It got to the point that the use of Tunstall’s songs was so over the top that VH1’s Best Week Ever did a gag segment about it, which only happens if the topic is something that’s so blatantly obvious that everyone has noticed it. Well, Tunstall is back, full of folk, pop, soul and a few stabs at rock credibility that fall short of the mark. Her signature vocals remain, with their smoky, sultry vibe and if that’s what you’re looking for, then this is an album for you. If you don’t way to buy the album, though, just tune in to any TV network any night of the week and I’m guessing you’ll hear songs from it on your favorite shows this season.
- Nice try, Scott Boras. The über-agent who is largely responsible for negotiating some of the most obscene, outrageous contracts in the history of Major League Baseball is already on the campaign trail, angling for a new deal for his most famous client. Never mind that this client, one Alexander Rodriguez, already has a 10-year, $252 million contract with three years remaining. A-Rod can opt out of the contract after this season and because Boras feels his client can get an even more lucrative deal (and thus earn more money and attention for Boras, the spotlight whore that he is), that’s exactly what Rodriguez is expected to do. Boras will undoubtedly pull out all the stops in seeking a new deal, including flat-out lying, as he’s busy doing right now. Boras claims that a prospective new owner for the Chicago Cubs is already negotiating a new contrct with A-Rod, and that this new deal is worth $30 million per year and would include a partial ownership stake in the team. The first problem with this is that it’s against MLB rules for any team or team representative to negotiate with a player who is currently under contract with another team. That would be tampering, and no one in baseball is dumb enough to do that with the game’s highest-profile player. Also, there’s no way that a prospective buyer of a team is already negotiating a contract with anyone, because the execs and front office personnel currently with the team are still in control. Lastly, it is also against MLB rules for a player to have any sort of ownership share in a team while they are playing, nor can a player negotiate for a future ownership stake for after his career. T his entire “story” is nothing more than Boras trying to drive up the price for his client by creating an imaginary bidding war between suitors who don’t even exist yet. That’s not to say that if Rodriguez opts out that there won't be several teams vying to sign him, because a few can afford his steep price tag and they’ll go after him hard. It’s just amusing that Boras would throw out such obvious fabrications that no one with any sort of real baseball knowledge would believe and expect people to buy in. Nice try, S., but I’m not that gullible.
Saturday, September 22, 2007
College football fun, another Simpson who's an idiot and two video game losers
- It was a Saturday for favorites in college football. Nine of the top 10 teams in the country won, with only #10 Penn State suffering a defeat. The big dogs ran roughshod over subpar competition, with the lone exception being Florida, which scraped by in a 30-24 win over uppity Ole Miss. Otherwise, USC rolled over Washington State, #2 LSU handled #12 South Carolina in Baton Rouge by a 28-16 margin and Oklahoma was sitting by and watching it all unfold after thumping in-state rival Tulsa 62-21 on Friday night. The biggest thrashing doled out by a top team was Ohio State and its whooping of overmatched Northwestern by a score of 58-7. It’s hard to tell which is the more embarrassing loss for the Wildcats; this pummeling by the Buckeyes or last week’s home loss to the team that had the longest losing streak in the nation, the Duke Blue Devils. Coincidentally, the Dukies saw their winning “streak” end at one after dropping a 46-43 decision to Navy. One losing streak that didn’t end was Notre Dame’s run of losses to start the season, a streak standing at four games after the Irish were defeated 31-14 by Michigan State.
- How’s that taste, Seattle? Your professional basketball team has publicly asked an arbitrator to let it out of its lease at Key Arena so it can bolt from your city and move to a new location, probably Oklahoma City. Unless the SuperSonics can garner a deal for a new arena by the time the season kicks off next month, the team wants an arbitrator to give it the right to void the last three years of their arena lease. “As we approach the Oct. 31 deadline, we've seen nothing tangible,” Sonics chairman Clay Bennett said Friday, referring to movement toward a new, $500 million building and the deadline he created after the team filed a demand for arbitration with the American Arbitration Association this week. Ah, who doesn’t call AAA when they have a mishap along the road….well, usually that road is an actual road with asphalt and lane lines, not the road to a sparkling new basketball arena. Bennett is hoping for a decision from a three-person arbitration panel by January, which would give the Sonics plenty of time to file relocation papers with the NBA, which has a March 1 deadline for teams wishing to relocate for the next season to notify the league of their intentions. So Seattle as six weeks to capitulate to the request for a new arena or its basketball team is going to leave for Oklahoma City, where…..the Sonics are already angling for a new arena to replace OKC’s current basketball arena, the Ford Center? WTF?!?!? They’re not even there yet and already they want Oklahoma City to get them a new arena because their current one isn't good enough? Don’t believe me? Listen to Bennett in his own words: “I absolutely know the team can survive and be profitable in Oklahoma City,” Bennett said. “The Ford Center [there] is quite adequate -- but another building would be needed in the future.” Yes, that’s right, we’re anxious to come to your city…..so long as you don’t intend on making us play in that crap hole you call an arena for more than a couple years. Doesn’t it all just give you the warm fuzzies, seeing a team so concerned with its fans and making sure they’re loyal to those who support the team and make it possible for it to exist in the first place? By concerned for its fans, of course, I mean they don’t care at all about them and are looking only at their own financial interests to the extent that they’re willing to stiff, screw over or hold a gun to the head of anyone involved in this whole mess so long as it gets them the best deal for a new arena.
- Have you ever wanted to watch an hour and a half of footage featuring two dorky, pathetic losers for whom talking to an actual girl is frightening enough to send them into a full-fledged panic attack? If so, The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters is the movie for you, because it follows two men in their quest to be the world’s top player in one of the most popular arcade video games of all time. Billy Mitchell of Hollywood, Fla., is one of the two losers, er, subjects of the documentary. Mitchell is clearly the pinnacle of cool and manliness, as his “career” achievements include having the first-ever perfect score on Pac Man and being named the Video Game Player of the Century in 1999. I’m sure he can’t go more than five minutes without a hot chick hitting on him because he’s obviously just what any girl is looking for. His rival, Steve Wiebe of Seattle, is a high school science teacher with a wife and kids who plays religiously on a Donkey Kong machine in his garage. The plot of the documentary centers on Wiebe breaking Mitchell’s high score on Donkey Kong, a mark that had stood for 25 years, and mailing a video of his record-breaking performance (yes, this loser videotapes himself playing video games) and mailing it in to Walter Day, an Iowa man who runs a gaming website and is the chief scorekeeper for competitive gaming. Mitchell, clearly under the impression that he is something other than a 40-something, never-kissed-a-girl, needs-a-life loser, disputes the claim and so Wiebe travels all the way to Florida for a head-to-head challenge. The true humor in this is that these two dorks are so totally serious and intense about all of this, all the while oblivious to how absurd and pathetic they look to the rest of the world. I won't spoil the ending for you, but I’ll just say that you will be both stunned that such massive losers exist in this world and thoroughly amused by how incredibly stupid these two tools look in their quest for “greatness.”
- Fullbacks are a different breed, even among football players. They’re battering rams, 6’1, 240-pound dudes with no necks whose job it is to blast holes in the defense for the running back to follow and guys who like contact in large doses. That’s how a fullback should be on the field, but that’s not how a fullback should be off the field. Florida State football player Joe Surratt needs to learn that lesson quickly, because he’s landed himself in a whole heap of sh*t by doing things his way. Surratt and FSU teammate Geno Hayes, a junior linebacker for the Seminoles, have been suspended by the school on Friday after they were arrested in a bar fight that resulted in felony charges against Surratt. Surratt, 21, was charged with a felony count of battery on an officer. Hayes, 20, faces three misdemeanor counts: assault on an officer, resisting arrest without violence and disorderly conduct, a Tallahassee police spokesman stated. Hayes and Surratt were arrested early Friday at a bar near the Florida State campus, police and school officials said. Police said Hayes had to be subdued with a Taser and Surratt struck a police officer. On a side note, props to Hayes for forcing officers to break out their Tasers. someone has to carry on that longstanding athlete tradition and it’s great to see the next generation of knucklehead players step forward to carry the torch. Not to be done, Surratt took a swing at an officer, albeit in a misguided attempt to take up for his teammate. This whole incident got started when officers were patrolling outside of Potbelly’s Bar in Tallahassee, looking for underage drinkers. They spotted Hayes, 20, screaming profanities and waving his arms, so they decided to talk with him. He resisted and became aggressive before his friends pulled him away. Still, when officers tried to cuff him, he resisted, necessitating the Taser blast. Surratt was standing nearby and tried to help out his friend, but an officer pushed him away and Surratt went with the obvious response – striking the officer. Thus, the two teammates got to share a real bonding experience, being arrested and booked together and spending the night in jail together. All of this happened on an off week for the FSU football team, so of course this is a clear indication that the players made good use of their down time.
- Must be something about the surname Simpson that bestows incredible stupidity on the bearer. One Simpson is facing eleven criminal charges, including 10 felonies, after a commando-style raid on a Las Vegas hotel room, while another Simpson was arrested yesterday at Boston’s Logan International Airport after walking into the airport wearing a computer circuit board and wiring on her sweatshirt as an alleged fashion statement. Star Simpson, an MIT student flying out of Logan Intl., was arrested at gunpoint after airport security spotted her ensemble and judged her to be a threat. Simpson contends her sweater was art; authorities chose to label it as a fake bomb, thus the arrest. Hey Star, maybe you’re right and your sweater is a fashion statement. The statement is, “Hey, I’m a moron with bad fashion sense who just got arrested because couldn’t wear semi-normal clothes like everyone else.” Heck, you’d be better off wearing a turban or Muslim attire to an airport than you could be donning a shirt with a computer circuit board and wiring on it. After all, the government has so far overstepped its bounds in the name of national security that they can spy on all of your communication without reason and keep extensive files on anyone that might even be a remote threat in the next five decades, so it’s logical to assume that they’re going to overreact to this sort of situation in the name of safety. Now would be a good time to get rid of that “Nuclear Bomb on Board” t-shirt you’ve been itching to wear, Star, maybe just go with a plain t-shirt next time and save yourself the hassle of being arrested as a terrorism suspect.
- How’s that taste, Seattle? Your professional basketball team has publicly asked an arbitrator to let it out of its lease at Key Arena so it can bolt from your city and move to a new location, probably Oklahoma City. Unless the SuperSonics can garner a deal for a new arena by the time the season kicks off next month, the team wants an arbitrator to give it the right to void the last three years of their arena lease. “As we approach the Oct. 31 deadline, we've seen nothing tangible,” Sonics chairman Clay Bennett said Friday, referring to movement toward a new, $500 million building and the deadline he created after the team filed a demand for arbitration with the American Arbitration Association this week. Ah, who doesn’t call AAA when they have a mishap along the road….well, usually that road is an actual road with asphalt and lane lines, not the road to a sparkling new basketball arena. Bennett is hoping for a decision from a three-person arbitration panel by January, which would give the Sonics plenty of time to file relocation papers with the NBA, which has a March 1 deadline for teams wishing to relocate for the next season to notify the league of their intentions. So Seattle as six weeks to capitulate to the request for a new arena or its basketball team is going to leave for Oklahoma City, where…..the Sonics are already angling for a new arena to replace OKC’s current basketball arena, the Ford Center? WTF?!?!? They’re not even there yet and already they want Oklahoma City to get them a new arena because their current one isn't good enough? Don’t believe me? Listen to Bennett in his own words: “I absolutely know the team can survive and be profitable in Oklahoma City,” Bennett said. “The Ford Center [there] is quite adequate -- but another building would be needed in the future.” Yes, that’s right, we’re anxious to come to your city…..so long as you don’t intend on making us play in that crap hole you call an arena for more than a couple years. Doesn’t it all just give you the warm fuzzies, seeing a team so concerned with its fans and making sure they’re loyal to those who support the team and make it possible for it to exist in the first place? By concerned for its fans, of course, I mean they don’t care at all about them and are looking only at their own financial interests to the extent that they’re willing to stiff, screw over or hold a gun to the head of anyone involved in this whole mess so long as it gets them the best deal for a new arena.
- Have you ever wanted to watch an hour and a half of footage featuring two dorky, pathetic losers for whom talking to an actual girl is frightening enough to send them into a full-fledged panic attack? If so, The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters is the movie for you, because it follows two men in their quest to be the world’s top player in one of the most popular arcade video games of all time. Billy Mitchell of Hollywood, Fla., is one of the two losers, er, subjects of the documentary. Mitchell is clearly the pinnacle of cool and manliness, as his “career” achievements include having the first-ever perfect score on Pac Man and being named the Video Game Player of the Century in 1999. I’m sure he can’t go more than five minutes without a hot chick hitting on him because he’s obviously just what any girl is looking for. His rival, Steve Wiebe of Seattle, is a high school science teacher with a wife and kids who plays religiously on a Donkey Kong machine in his garage. The plot of the documentary centers on Wiebe breaking Mitchell’s high score on Donkey Kong, a mark that had stood for 25 years, and mailing a video of his record-breaking performance (yes, this loser videotapes himself playing video games) and mailing it in to Walter Day, an Iowa man who runs a gaming website and is the chief scorekeeper for competitive gaming. Mitchell, clearly under the impression that he is something other than a 40-something, never-kissed-a-girl, needs-a-life loser, disputes the claim and so Wiebe travels all the way to Florida for a head-to-head challenge. The true humor in this is that these two dorks are so totally serious and intense about all of this, all the while oblivious to how absurd and pathetic they look to the rest of the world. I won't spoil the ending for you, but I’ll just say that you will be both stunned that such massive losers exist in this world and thoroughly amused by how incredibly stupid these two tools look in their quest for “greatness.”
- Fullbacks are a different breed, even among football players. They’re battering rams, 6’1, 240-pound dudes with no necks whose job it is to blast holes in the defense for the running back to follow and guys who like contact in large doses. That’s how a fullback should be on the field, but that’s not how a fullback should be off the field. Florida State football player Joe Surratt needs to learn that lesson quickly, because he’s landed himself in a whole heap of sh*t by doing things his way. Surratt and FSU teammate Geno Hayes, a junior linebacker for the Seminoles, have been suspended by the school on Friday after they were arrested in a bar fight that resulted in felony charges against Surratt. Surratt, 21, was charged with a felony count of battery on an officer. Hayes, 20, faces three misdemeanor counts: assault on an officer, resisting arrest without violence and disorderly conduct, a Tallahassee police spokesman stated. Hayes and Surratt were arrested early Friday at a bar near the Florida State campus, police and school officials said. Police said Hayes had to be subdued with a Taser and Surratt struck a police officer. On a side note, props to Hayes for forcing officers to break out their Tasers. someone has to carry on that longstanding athlete tradition and it’s great to see the next generation of knucklehead players step forward to carry the torch. Not to be done, Surratt took a swing at an officer, albeit in a misguided attempt to take up for his teammate. This whole incident got started when officers were patrolling outside of Potbelly’s Bar in Tallahassee, looking for underage drinkers. They spotted Hayes, 20, screaming profanities and waving his arms, so they decided to talk with him. He resisted and became aggressive before his friends pulled him away. Still, when officers tried to cuff him, he resisted, necessitating the Taser blast. Surratt was standing nearby and tried to help out his friend, but an officer pushed him away and Surratt went with the obvious response – striking the officer. Thus, the two teammates got to share a real bonding experience, being arrested and booked together and spending the night in jail together. All of this happened on an off week for the FSU football team, so of course this is a clear indication that the players made good use of their down time.
- Must be something about the surname Simpson that bestows incredible stupidity on the bearer. One Simpson is facing eleven criminal charges, including 10 felonies, after a commando-style raid on a Las Vegas hotel room, while another Simpson was arrested yesterday at Boston’s Logan International Airport after walking into the airport wearing a computer circuit board and wiring on her sweatshirt as an alleged fashion statement. Star Simpson, an MIT student flying out of Logan Intl., was arrested at gunpoint after airport security spotted her ensemble and judged her to be a threat. Simpson contends her sweater was art; authorities chose to label it as a fake bomb, thus the arrest. Hey Star, maybe you’re right and your sweater is a fashion statement. The statement is, “Hey, I’m a moron with bad fashion sense who just got arrested because couldn’t wear semi-normal clothes like everyone else.” Heck, you’d be better off wearing a turban or Muslim attire to an airport than you could be donning a shirt with a computer circuit board and wiring on it. After all, the government has so far overstepped its bounds in the name of national security that they can spy on all of your communication without reason and keep extensive files on anyone that might even be a remote threat in the next five decades, so it’s logical to assume that they’re going to overreact to this sort of situation in the name of safety. Now would be a good time to get rid of that “Nuclear Bomb on Board” t-shirt you’ve been itching to wear, Star, maybe just go with a plain t-shirt next time and save yourself the hassle of being arrested as a terrorism suspect.
Friday, September 21, 2007
A Seattle Mariner goes bush league, Survivor gets started and Dan Rather is a bitter old dude
- It’s over for you, Floyd Landis, so how about you just admit that you’re a cheater and we’ll all move on? Everyone with more than two working brain cells has already reached that conclusion while Landis has been busy protesting his innocence, so even that admission of guilt won't carry as much weight now as it would have if he’d ‘fessed up to what he did before basically being forced to after exhausting every other option. People are funny that way, they don’t feel as good about your apology if you’ve tried every possible way to get out of being guilty and having to come clean and apologize only as a last resort when you’re screwed anyhow. Landis fought his positive drug test after winning the 2006 Tour, but he’s been shot down at ever stop as he’s tried to prove his innocence. Tests on backup samples have confirmed that he had illegally high levels of testosterone, including synthetic testosterone, in his blood during the race. He’s done interview after interview claiming he is clean, but his words have been the only thing declaring him innocent thus far. An arbiter ruled Thursday that Landis’ positive test result will stand and that he must forfeit his Tour de France win. There is still one place left to appeal – the Court of Arbitration for Sport – but if Floyd is smart, he won't go there. Having said that, you know he’s going to appeal because he doesn’t want to give up his title and to be labeled with a scarlet “S” on his chest, but it’s too late for that. By now, he IS a cheater to most everyone and nothing is going to change that because we know the facts and he’s been found guilty, so to speak, so many times throughout this process. As I have all along, I plead with you once again, Floyd, stop fighting this, go away and pray that everyone forgets about you because as long as you keep waging this battle, you’re in the spotlight and you in that spotlight as a cheater.
- I’m not a big fan of Survivor. It’s not that I don’t enjoy the show; it’s just that for most of its time on TV, Survivor has been slotted in the same time slot as some of my favorite shows, such as its recent Thursday night spot where it goes up against Smallville, which is one of my top-five faves. However, this season Survivor kicked off a week ahead of Smallville, and with slim pickings on the other networks, I figured I would watch the season premiere of the world’s most famous reality show. Boy, am I glad I did. The choice to watch was validated within the first five minutes, as each of the contestants was introduced and we got to meet Denise, a school lunch lady from Massachusetts who is rocking a hall-of-fame mullet that is reason enough to watch the show all by itself. This thing is an A+ Mississippi Mudflap/Tennessee Top Hat/Wisconsin Waterfall. This year’s edition of Survivor is set in China, which means lots of rain, some amazing views of a breathtaking landscape and lots of large Buddhas. I also noticed something that seems to be a Survivor theme, although because I don’t watch the show regularly I can't say for sure. It hails back to an episode of Seinfeld where Elaine notices that all of the waitresses at the restaurant that she, Jerry, George and Kramer frequent share similar physical attributes, most notably big racks. For some reason (I just can’t put my finger on it, hmmm…..), Survivor has an inordinate number of women with that same physical characteristic and those women end up spending much of their time on camera in a) bathing suits, b) their bras or c) nothing more than a bandana covering their upper half. Now this couldn’t possibly be because CBS is trying to pander to the lowest common denominator among male viewers, could it? On the topic of liking or disliking certain contestants and rooting for them, I don’t have any that I really am rooting for other than Denise and her mullet, although I’d like to see professional wrestler Ashley Massaro do well because 1) She’s hot and the better she does, the longer she’s on the show, and 2) As a wrasslin’ fan, I’d like to see a wrestler do well. On the dislike side…..only Courtney, a waitress from NYC, stood out, because she’s far too bitter, cynical and crabby to last long, especially when she’s thin enough to make Kate Moss look obese and has the thorniest personality on TV this side of Rosie O’Donnell. Of course, when Smallville returns next week, I’ll be watching it and will lose touch with Survivor, but it looks like it could be a good season for outwitting, outplaying and outlasting.
- You won't believe it, but 50 Cent wasn’t being serious and literal when he promised to retire from recording music as a solo artist if Kanye West’s new album, Graduation, outsold 50’s new album Curtis, during their opening week on shelves after both dropped on Sept. 11. Kanye’s album hammered 50’s, 957,000 to 691,000, in their first week according to Sound Scan. Predictably, the egotistical and self-promoting West celebrated his victory in style at GQ’s 50th anniversary party as a featured performer and then he had some words of self-congratulation afterward. “To be a champion, you’ve got to take out a champion,” West quipped, channeling his inner-Rick Flair. However, it doesn’t appear that 50 Cent is actually going to retire, because the week of the competition, I listened as he did a radio interview on Jim Rome’s radio show and 50 was in full spin mode. First, he reiterated that he didn’t promise to retire completely, just from being a solo rap artist. Then, he explained that he already had a new album in the can and mostly done as a follow-up to Curtis. Finally, he added that after this next new album, he’s done with his current recording contract and will be a free agent, so to speak, so he can just make music “organically.” Oh, and he also admitted, when asked directly about his promise to retire, that it was something he said to stir up interest in his album and create a buzz. In other words, he’s not retiring and everyone who bought into his words about that topic was just naïve and gullible. Imagine that, a celebrity lying or misleading people with their words in order to create more attention for themselves, shocking…..
- Tonight’s top story…..an excessive, petty, ludicrous lawsuit by a famous retired nightly news anchor that makes him look like a bitter, sniveling, egotistical b*tch. Yes, I’m looking right at you, Dan Rather, you and your $70 million lawsuit against CBS because you claim the network made you a scapegoat about a discredited story about W.’s National Guard service. Rather fingers CBS for “intentional mishandling” of the incident, which did major damage to his reputation. I’m not here to dispute those facts, because only the people involved in the case know for sure what happened and why. However, I am here to call out Rather for seeking a whopping $20 million in compensatory damages and $50 million in punitive damages. Hey you greedy old bastard, I’m sure you have enough money for the rest of your life and the lives of your kids and grandkids. So quit being such a money-grubbing whore and asking for amounts that are totally ridiculous for an incident that wouldn’t be worth that much money no matter what the facts were. Unless all of that $70 million is going to help the needy people in Darfur or to hurricane or flooding victims of some massive tragedy in the U.S. or aboard, then you’re every bit the greedy piece of crap you appear to be. Heck, even if you intend to give all $70 million to charity, it’s still impossible to defend attaching that financial figure to this lawsuit. You’re not dead or inflicted with some terminal illness because of it, nor are you physically disabled as a result of what you allege happened. You got your rep dented and you bore at least some culpability in the incident, so own it and at least knock the amount you’re asking for down to a more realistic figure, say $5 million. Otherwise, you just look like a very small and bitter person, one who isn't going to get anywhere near what he’s asking for anyhow.
- Bank robbers traditionally aren’t strong on the ethics front, but even those willing to use force and threats of violence to thieve thousands of dollars can't stoop this low, or at least they shouldn’t. A bank robber in Allentown, Pa. not only chose a sort of human shield to help carry out his crime, he picked up a toddler who was near him and threatened to shoot the boy unless the teller gave him thousands of dollars. The robber got his cash and released the infant, then left the bank with several thousand dollars and not one shred of integrity or humanity. This isn't to defend other bank robbers, but at least they don’t threaten to shoot defenseless toddlers if they don’t get what they want. Heck, I can even make more of a case for a robber who grabs an adult and takes them hostage while making demands for money more than I can defend this loser. Yes, people tend to be more compassionate and defensive of babies and toddlers, but that doesn’t mean you should capitalize on those emotions for your gain. What, you didn’t feel like pointing a gun at the teller would cut it? I realize that no one actually got shot in this heist, but whenever this a-hole is caught and brought to trial, neither the judge nor the jury should have any problem slapping him with the maximum sentence allowable under the law.
- I’m no baseball purist. I don’t take objection to parts of the game that rankle old school baseball guys, things like player styling after home runs, wearing their pants long and not sporting the traditional stirrup socks, showing excessive emotion on the field, etc. I also think it’s idiotic that teams engage in beanball wars, with teams throwing at an opposing player for a perceived sleight and that player’s team responding in kind. What exactly do you prove by doing that? You’re pissed off, we get it. However, getting hit with a pitch doesn’t usually injure a guy and you are putting a runner on base, so I don’t think it accomplishes much. Having said all of that, it’s clear why I so much enjoyed Vladimir Guerrero’s act last night in a game against the Seattle Mariners. The Mariners took umbrage when Guerrero’s team, the Anaheim Angels (yes, I’m still calling them Anaheim, that is where they play their games) hit Mariners catcher Kenji Johjima with a pitch. Seattle pitcher Jorge Campillo retaliated by sailing a fastball up near Guerrero’s head. On a side note, even purists who subscribe to the theory of hitting a batter to defend your own guy think it’s bush league to throw at a guy’s head, you just don’t do it. Guys get hurt that way and it’s not necessary. But after Campillo’s high, hard pitch, Guerrero fired back in a big way. He teed off on the very next pitch, sending it soaring into the night, some 400-plus feet over the center field wall for a home run. Vlad wasn’t done, though; he stood and admired his effort, then mixed in a nice bat flip to top off the metaphorical middle finger to Campillo and the Mariners. It was flat-out awesome, seeing a guy bounce right back from such a dirty, bush-league play to blast a ginormous home run and then stand there to watch it go, with a sweet bat flip to cap it off. Predictably, a low-class pitcher like Campillo threw at Guerrero’s head again the next time Vlad came to the plate, but this time the umpire did the right thing and ejected Campillo. Good for Vlad, firing back at a guy who was so far out of line that even the most hardcore baseball purist couldn’t defend him. This definitely has the appearance of sour grapes from a Mariners team that has fallen out of the playoff race in spectacular fashion and is bitter at the team that’s about to clinch their division title. Stop throwing at dudes’ heads, Jorge, because if you continue to do so, every team in the league is going to be coming after you with bad, bad intentions.
- I’m not a big fan of Survivor. It’s not that I don’t enjoy the show; it’s just that for most of its time on TV, Survivor has been slotted in the same time slot as some of my favorite shows, such as its recent Thursday night spot where it goes up against Smallville, which is one of my top-five faves. However, this season Survivor kicked off a week ahead of Smallville, and with slim pickings on the other networks, I figured I would watch the season premiere of the world’s most famous reality show. Boy, am I glad I did. The choice to watch was validated within the first five minutes, as each of the contestants was introduced and we got to meet Denise, a school lunch lady from Massachusetts who is rocking a hall-of-fame mullet that is reason enough to watch the show all by itself. This thing is an A+ Mississippi Mudflap/Tennessee Top Hat/Wisconsin Waterfall. This year’s edition of Survivor is set in China, which means lots of rain, some amazing views of a breathtaking landscape and lots of large Buddhas. I also noticed something that seems to be a Survivor theme, although because I don’t watch the show regularly I can't say for sure. It hails back to an episode of Seinfeld where Elaine notices that all of the waitresses at the restaurant that she, Jerry, George and Kramer frequent share similar physical attributes, most notably big racks. For some reason (I just can’t put my finger on it, hmmm…..), Survivor has an inordinate number of women with that same physical characteristic and those women end up spending much of their time on camera in a) bathing suits, b) their bras or c) nothing more than a bandana covering their upper half. Now this couldn’t possibly be because CBS is trying to pander to the lowest common denominator among male viewers, could it? On the topic of liking or disliking certain contestants and rooting for them, I don’t have any that I really am rooting for other than Denise and her mullet, although I’d like to see professional wrestler Ashley Massaro do well because 1) She’s hot and the better she does, the longer she’s on the show, and 2) As a wrasslin’ fan, I’d like to see a wrestler do well. On the dislike side…..only Courtney, a waitress from NYC, stood out, because she’s far too bitter, cynical and crabby to last long, especially when she’s thin enough to make Kate Moss look obese and has the thorniest personality on TV this side of Rosie O’Donnell. Of course, when Smallville returns next week, I’ll be watching it and will lose touch with Survivor, but it looks like it could be a good season for outwitting, outplaying and outlasting.
- You won't believe it, but 50 Cent wasn’t being serious and literal when he promised to retire from recording music as a solo artist if Kanye West’s new album, Graduation, outsold 50’s new album Curtis, during their opening week on shelves after both dropped on Sept. 11. Kanye’s album hammered 50’s, 957,000 to 691,000, in their first week according to Sound Scan. Predictably, the egotistical and self-promoting West celebrated his victory in style at GQ’s 50th anniversary party as a featured performer and then he had some words of self-congratulation afterward. “To be a champion, you’ve got to take out a champion,” West quipped, channeling his inner-Rick Flair. However, it doesn’t appear that 50 Cent is actually going to retire, because the week of the competition, I listened as he did a radio interview on Jim Rome’s radio show and 50 was in full spin mode. First, he reiterated that he didn’t promise to retire completely, just from being a solo rap artist. Then, he explained that he already had a new album in the can and mostly done as a follow-up to Curtis. Finally, he added that after this next new album, he’s done with his current recording contract and will be a free agent, so to speak, so he can just make music “organically.” Oh, and he also admitted, when asked directly about his promise to retire, that it was something he said to stir up interest in his album and create a buzz. In other words, he’s not retiring and everyone who bought into his words about that topic was just naïve and gullible. Imagine that, a celebrity lying or misleading people with their words in order to create more attention for themselves, shocking…..
- Tonight’s top story…..an excessive, petty, ludicrous lawsuit by a famous retired nightly news anchor that makes him look like a bitter, sniveling, egotistical b*tch. Yes, I’m looking right at you, Dan Rather, you and your $70 million lawsuit against CBS because you claim the network made you a scapegoat about a discredited story about W.’s National Guard service. Rather fingers CBS for “intentional mishandling” of the incident, which did major damage to his reputation. I’m not here to dispute those facts, because only the people involved in the case know for sure what happened and why. However, I am here to call out Rather for seeking a whopping $20 million in compensatory damages and $50 million in punitive damages. Hey you greedy old bastard, I’m sure you have enough money for the rest of your life and the lives of your kids and grandkids. So quit being such a money-grubbing whore and asking for amounts that are totally ridiculous for an incident that wouldn’t be worth that much money no matter what the facts were. Unless all of that $70 million is going to help the needy people in Darfur or to hurricane or flooding victims of some massive tragedy in the U.S. or aboard, then you’re every bit the greedy piece of crap you appear to be. Heck, even if you intend to give all $70 million to charity, it’s still impossible to defend attaching that financial figure to this lawsuit. You’re not dead or inflicted with some terminal illness because of it, nor are you physically disabled as a result of what you allege happened. You got your rep dented and you bore at least some culpability in the incident, so own it and at least knock the amount you’re asking for down to a more realistic figure, say $5 million. Otherwise, you just look like a very small and bitter person, one who isn't going to get anywhere near what he’s asking for anyhow.
- Bank robbers traditionally aren’t strong on the ethics front, but even those willing to use force and threats of violence to thieve thousands of dollars can't stoop this low, or at least they shouldn’t. A bank robber in Allentown, Pa. not only chose a sort of human shield to help carry out his crime, he picked up a toddler who was near him and threatened to shoot the boy unless the teller gave him thousands of dollars. The robber got his cash and released the infant, then left the bank with several thousand dollars and not one shred of integrity or humanity. This isn't to defend other bank robbers, but at least they don’t threaten to shoot defenseless toddlers if they don’t get what they want. Heck, I can even make more of a case for a robber who grabs an adult and takes them hostage while making demands for money more than I can defend this loser. Yes, people tend to be more compassionate and defensive of babies and toddlers, but that doesn’t mean you should capitalize on those emotions for your gain. What, you didn’t feel like pointing a gun at the teller would cut it? I realize that no one actually got shot in this heist, but whenever this a-hole is caught and brought to trial, neither the judge nor the jury should have any problem slapping him with the maximum sentence allowable under the law.
- I’m no baseball purist. I don’t take objection to parts of the game that rankle old school baseball guys, things like player styling after home runs, wearing their pants long and not sporting the traditional stirrup socks, showing excessive emotion on the field, etc. I also think it’s idiotic that teams engage in beanball wars, with teams throwing at an opposing player for a perceived sleight and that player’s team responding in kind. What exactly do you prove by doing that? You’re pissed off, we get it. However, getting hit with a pitch doesn’t usually injure a guy and you are putting a runner on base, so I don’t think it accomplishes much. Having said all of that, it’s clear why I so much enjoyed Vladimir Guerrero’s act last night in a game against the Seattle Mariners. The Mariners took umbrage when Guerrero’s team, the Anaheim Angels (yes, I’m still calling them Anaheim, that is where they play their games) hit Mariners catcher Kenji Johjima with a pitch. Seattle pitcher Jorge Campillo retaliated by sailing a fastball up near Guerrero’s head. On a side note, even purists who subscribe to the theory of hitting a batter to defend your own guy think it’s bush league to throw at a guy’s head, you just don’t do it. Guys get hurt that way and it’s not necessary. But after Campillo’s high, hard pitch, Guerrero fired back in a big way. He teed off on the very next pitch, sending it soaring into the night, some 400-plus feet over the center field wall for a home run. Vlad wasn’t done, though; he stood and admired his effort, then mixed in a nice bat flip to top off the metaphorical middle finger to Campillo and the Mariners. It was flat-out awesome, seeing a guy bounce right back from such a dirty, bush-league play to blast a ginormous home run and then stand there to watch it go, with a sweet bat flip to cap it off. Predictably, a low-class pitcher like Campillo threw at Guerrero’s head again the next time Vlad came to the plate, but this time the umpire did the right thing and ejected Campillo. Good for Vlad, firing back at a guy who was so far out of line that even the most hardcore baseball purist couldn’t defend him. This definitely has the appearance of sour grapes from a Mariners team that has fallen out of the playoff race in spectacular fashion and is bitter at the team that’s about to clinch their division title. Stop throwing at dudes’ heads, Jorge, because if you continue to do so, every team in the league is going to be coming after you with bad, bad intentions.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)