- 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.
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