- How about a trio of college football players ending up on the wrong side of the law in the past week and their respective fates, does that sound like something you’d be interested in hearing about? I thought so. Let’s start with Troy Joiner, a University of Florida safety who was arrested at about 5 a.m. Tuesday on charges of felony burglary. Joiner was taken into custody outside the fenced impound lot of a local towing company, Gainesville police said. He allegedly pushed a heavy electric gate open to enter the lot in an attempt to retrieve his girlfriend's car, which was being held in lieu of a $76 towing bill, a police report said. The owner of the towing company is now reversing field and saying the whole thing is a big misunderstanding, which I’m sure is true. After all, who doesn’t call the police and tell them someone is breaking into their property only to change their mind and say it was just a misunderstanding. Maybe this guy is a big UF fan and once he realized who he’d just busted, he had a change of heart. Maybe someone from the athletic department or associated with it got to him and “worked things out.” Regardless, I don’t buy this for a second. Joiner is the eighth Florida player in the past nine months to get in legal trouble. That might be the way to show you really are an elite program, by how many criminals are on your roster, but that doesn’t mean coach Urban Meyer isn't going to get a major black eye if his hooligans/players keep this up. Then you have former University of Northern Colorado punter Mitch Cozad, who has been sentenced to seven years in prison after a conviction for second-degree assault stemming from a 2006 incident in which be stabbed fellow UNC player Rafael Mendoza in the leg. Cozad was actually fortunate to get off so easily, because he was also facing charges of first-degree attempted murder that he was able to beat. Hope that was worth it, Mitch, formulating and carrying out your moronic plan to win the prestigious starting punter job at Northern Colorado and getting seven years in the hole instead. Good work, Einstein. Getting that gig is definitely worth the risk of being convicted on second-degree assault and ruining your life. Speaking of not helping yourself out…..one thing that definitely does not help your case when you’re trying to prove your innocence on rape charges is the revelation that you were already wanted on another rape charge in a different town before this new charge was levied. Central Washington University football player Josh Rojas is facing two rape charges, the first coming after he allegedly raped an 18-year-old freshman after he met her at a party last Friday night. Rojas, a sophomore linebacker, is described by CWU head football coach Beau Baldwin as “a model citizen.” I have to disagree with that, because I don’t know too many model citizens who allegedly rape a girl and then return to their hometown, where they’re informed by Snohomish County Sheriff's deputies that there is a warrant out for their arrest for another alleged rape last November in Ellensburg. Rojas and the alleged victim in his most recent (alleged) rape met at a house party on the 1800 block of Chestnut Street. Police say they left the party and went back to Rojas' house, where the 18-year-old girl says the raped occurred. Police also say Rojas and the alleged victim went to high school together, they were three years apart. Astonishingly, he’s no longer allowed on campus without permission from the campus police or office of student affairs, although Rojas is still officially enrolled as a student. Kinda hard to be a student and do the things that students need to do when you’re banned from campus, but I think J. Rojas has bigger things to concern himself with than reading assignments and research papers right now. Such are the travails of an (alleged) serial rapist in the making…..
- Two new movies coming out in the next couple of weeks have caught my attention, both for very different reasons. The first is Across The Universe, which looks great even though I’d normally be the last person to recommend a musical. However, given that most of the music is songs from the Beatles, I’ll make an exception in this case. The movie is about……….. On the flip side, we have a movie that’s already in the running for worst movie of the year even though it hasn’t officially hit theaters yet. However, when a movie comes from executive producer Jennifer Lopez, stars Omarion and features some of the stiffest, most wooden dialogue and sad-sack acting this side of Gigli (oops, wasn’t Lopez involved in that one too?), you get a feeling that Feel The Noise is gawd awful, no doubt about it. Amazingly, the movie is about dancing and crappy club music masquerading as hip hop, which is astonishing, given that a crappy club music-producing, faux hip hopper like Lopez is the EP. It just feels like Lopez is trying to force-feed her one main skill, dancing, into a movie even though there’s not really a plot or the acting talent to make it anything other than a waste of time and money. You can find a really hot female lead, as this movie has, but when the story is nonexistent, predictable and weak and the acting is awful, your movie is D.O.A. So for those of you keeping score at home, that’s a resounding yes for going to see Across The Universe and a strong suggestion that you do absolutely anything but waste your time and dollars going to see Feel the Noise.
- The opening day the Major League Baseball playoffs has arrived, so of course I have a few thoughts on the day on the diamond…..Although it’s not a fatal disaster, the first game of the NLDS went as badly as it could have gone for the Philadelphia Phillies without losing the series officially or seeing one of their key players injured. They lost Game One at home with their ace on the mound, meaning that they now have to win three of the next four games and do so relying mostly on the shaky second, third and fourth starters in their rotation. The Phils’ big hitters, Ryan Howard and Chase Utley, combined to go 0-for-8, with Utley wearing the fabled golden sombrero for his four-strikeout game in which he saw more than the three pitches needed to strike out in only one at bat. Just up the East Coast in Boston, the power pitching of Boston’s Josh Beckett silenced the Angels and never gave the Halos a chance to play their trademark style of baseball. The Angels thrive on hit-and-run plays, stealing bases, going from first to third on base hits and generally being a menace on the base paths, but it’s tough to do that when you can barely get any runners on base. Beckett shut them down for eight innings and with home runs from David Ortiz and Kevin Youkilis, the Sox are out to a 1-0 lead. I’m not moving off my prediction of Angels in five, though, because I have a feeling that Boston’s next two starting pitchers, Daisuke Matsuzaka and Curt Schilling, aren’t going to be nearly as stellar as Beckett. This game was also noteworthy because it bucked the usual trend of playoff games going on and on and on, instead coming in well under three hours. Meanwhile, out in the desert, the Cubs and Diamondbacks matched aces on the mound, albeit aces at different ends of the personality and composure spectrum. The intense, combustible, emotionally-erratic Carlos Zambrano took the ball for the Cubs, while low-key, even-keeled Brandon Webb started for the D-Backs. Zambrano pitched well……but not well enough to overcome an inept offense led by the whiff-meister himself, the human windmill known as Alfonso Soriano, who again struck out in key situations when his team at least needed him to put the ball in play. The Cubs lost 3-1, which isn't a surprise to me or any other true Cubs fan. Expecting winning and postseason success from the Chicago Cubs is like expecting an Oscar-winning movie from Pauly Shore. The Cubs had numerous chances to bat with runners in scoring position and less than two outs and failed nearly every time. Some credit goes to Webb for great piching, but much blame goes to the Cubs for choking in the clutch. Now, they face a huge Game Two that could put them in an inescapable hole if they lose. We don’t have to wait long to see if that happens, with that game coming tomorrow night at 10 p.m.
- Caught some of the new ABC drama Pushing Daisies and honestly, I wasn’t swayed one way or the other. I didn’t love the show, nor did I hate it. It wasn’t totally boring, but it also wasn’t that entertaining. With shows like this, i.e. ones with a supernatural premise, you have to really buy in to the whole idea of the show or you’re not going to enjoy it. I just didn’t find the idea of a guy having some sort of bizarro Midas touch that allows him to temporarily revive murder victims so he can ask them who killed them. Also hurting Daisies is the fact that it aspires to be something of a comedy and as Reaper has so clearly shown, the combination of the supernatural and comedy in a TV show doesn’t bring good results. Look at the supernatural shows that have been successful and are actually good and you’ll see that they’re dramas, period, not comedies. Shows like Smallville, Heroes, Supernatural, Ghost Whisperer, etc. aren’t constantly trying to weave the supernatural and the super funny together and thus, they succeed. Unfortunately, their success has inspired others to try and capitalize on the supernatural fad and to incorporate comedy for a change of pace and the result has been abysmal failure. Is Pushing Daisies as bad as Reaper? No, not even close. Only the new, soon-to-be-canceled ABC bomb Cavemen can approach that level of suck-itude. But is Daisies anywhere close to the great new series that ABC is trying to paint it as? Not even close…..
- Hey, did you know that comedian Frank Caliendo has a new show on TBS? If you watched even a few innings of the MLB playoffs yesterday, not only do you know that, but you’re already so sick of Frank F’ing Caliendo that you want to shove a rusty ice pick through his forehead just to make him go away. Why is it that whenever there’s a major sporting event on TV (NCAA Tournament, baseball playoffs, the Super Bowl, etc.), the network broadcasting that event has to ram a new show down our throats with nonstop promos to not only the point of saturation, but to the point that you go from interest in the show if it happens to look appealing to resentment and irritation because you see the same promos over and over and over and you just become sick of them. So guess what, TBS? Frank Caliendo might be good at doing impressions, but any slim chance I would watch his new show is pretty much gone because I saw every f’ing one of his promos at least two or three times and now I can't stand the guy.
- Sorry, but no sympathy for you music industry. The recording industry continues its b*tching about illegal downloading of music and how it’s going to kill to industry, even though the practice has been shown to have a minimal, negligible effect on album sales. However, that isn't stopping the litigation and anti-piracy division of Sony BMG from taking Jammie Thomas, a 30-year-old woman from Brainerd, Minn., to court on charges that she illegally shared more than 2,000 songs online. Oh no, she shared songs! I’m sure that she and other miscreants like her are going to bring the recording industry to its knees…..or not. Just to be safe, though, Jammie, my suggestion is that you do something I do, check that, something I think might be helpful if you do it. Just check out music you want from your local library and rip it to your computer, which also gives you lots of free music. Of course, I’ve never, ever done this and don’t at all advocate finding ways to get free music from a music industry that squeezes money from consumers at every turn…..uh, let’s just move on…..
- When the W. administration hires a private security firm to go to Iraq and act like a bunch of vigilante commandos without being subject to any real oversight or regulation, should we really be surprised when the head of that security firm goes before Congress and acts like his company is above the law? Watching Eric Prince, the 38-year-old former Navy SEAL and chairman of Blackwater USA. “I believe we acted appropriately at all times,” Prince told a congressional committee investigating his companies activities in Iraq. When asked if he admitted that his men had shot and killed innocent civilians, which clearly they have, Prince denied this was true. These hearings were inspired by a Sept. 16 shootout that left 11 Iraqis dead, a shootout in which Blackwater personnel were involved. Not surprisingly, the State Department is being uncooperative and vague about what it is doing to monitor and investigate Blackwater. Hmm, you mean a part of the W. administration is screwing around, lying and deceiving when it comes to investigating a shady, underhanded practice that the administration itself initiated? Wow…..I’m shocked. Prince actually spent much of the hearing leaning back in his seat to listen to his lawyer’s advice to not actually answer questions asked of him, most of them about whether Blackwater employees are guilty of the murders of Iraqi citizens. Of course, if you give me the option of having American soldiers in Iraq, in harm’s way, in a war they never should have been involved with in the first place, or some private security vigilantes doing the same thing, I’m going with the latter, because I won't feel nearly as bad if anything happens to them. That being said, stop killing innocent civilians, Blackwater personnel, this isn't a shooting gallery, it’s a country with a lot of innocent civilians who really don’t deserve to have you kill them.
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