- I don’t know what’s going on down in Miami, but it has to be more than the South Beach effect because nearly every sports team in the city is tanking big time right now. The city’s pro football franchise, the Dolphins, are chasing the dream of a reverse perfect season and nearly blew it Sunday against Buffalo before coming from ahead to lose 13-10, dropping them to 0-9 and well on their way to 0-16. They had Buffalo down 10-2 in the fourth quarter but as epically bad teams do, they found a way to give that lead away. I applaud their focus, because in that position, most teams would lose concentration and just go ahead and finish off the win. Not the Dolphins, though, no siree. They allowed Buffalo to march down the field for the tying touchdown, punch in a two-point conversion and then gave the Bills the ball back for the winning field goal. Solid effort, Miami, way to keep the dream season alive. Their college counterparts, the Miami Hurricanes, spent the weekend closing down the fabled Orange Bowl in style. By in style, of course, I mean suffering a 48-0 beatdown at the hands of the University of Virginia. The game was UM’s last at the legendary stadium because next season they’re moving to the to-be-renovated Dolphin Stadium, which they’ll share with the aforementioned Dolphins. The Orange Bowl will see a few more games featuring local high school all-stars and Florida Atlantic University, then it will be demolished. On hand to see the Hurricanes’ final game at the venue were UM legends Bennie Blades, Michael Irvin and Russell Maryland, and the irony is that even though these guys are in their 30s and 40s, they probably could have made the game more competitive than the guys who were actually on the field. Nothing like closing out decades in your legendary stadium with former great players there to watch and suffering a seven-touchdown beatdown. Thanks for that, Hurricanes, you gave us all something to remember the Orange Bowl by – your program’s worst home loss since the WWII era. Surely the Heat, Miami’s NBA franchise, wouldn’t be bitten by the same losing bug, would they? Clearly, they have been, because the team that has been a fixture in the playoffs recently and won the title in the 2005-06 season has fired out of the gate 1-5 this year, losing their first five games before somehow pulling off a win over the lowly New York Knicks on Saturday by an impressive 75-72 win that hearkened back to the trench warfare, street-brawl style these two teams played back in the ‘90s. Miami may not have the designation as the city of champions, but if they keep this up they can have the next best thing – the ability to proudly say that no city has worse sports teams than they do.
- An interesting night of television Monday, beginning on Prison Break, where things aren’t looking good for our hero, Michael Scofield, as this week’s episode of Prison Break kicks off. Prison guards are welding thick, reinforced steel bars over all SONA’s windows after the failed escape attempt, negating the only way out of the prison that Michael knows of. Meanwhile, the woman known as Gretchen who has been Linc’s primary contact with the company and who showed up at SONA at the end of last week’s double episode, visits Whistler at SONA and tells him that he will be broken out today whether he likes it or not. As she leaves, Gretchen also tells him to kill Scofield as he is no longer needed. Throughout the episode, Whistler struggles to complete that task, buying a crude knife from a fellow inmate and looking for the right time to use it. He nearly has the chance when he and Scofield are summoned through a cryptic message from Lechero and delivered by T-Bag. They meet follow directions through a secret door in Lechero’s quarters, down a set of stairs and to a second door, which Lechero shows up to open just as Whistler is about to stab Scofield. Lechero opens the door and reveals a secret underground tunnel that prison guards used to use for going between the prison’s two cell blocks before the riots forced the closing of the other cell block. The tunnel has since been blown up and a pile of debris blocks passage near the middle. Lechero wants Scofield to use his engineering knowledge to find a way through, which Michael sets out to do. Before he gets the chance, he realizes through a phone call with Linc that the company is breaking Whistler out on their own today and that he and his brother are no longer needed. Not only is Whistler told to kill Michael, but on the outside, hit men from the company are sent to kill Linc, Sucre and Sofia. A warning message from Michael through a friend tips Linc off in time and he sets up an ambush that lands he, Sucre and Sofia in a precarious position. After a fight, one of the hit men has a gun to Sofia’s head as Linc and Sucre point their guns at him. Oh, and during the fight, Linc revisits his “Linc the Sink” days from Fox River, putting some dude’s head through a car window – it was awesome. But when faced with the prospect of Sofia being held hostage and the hit man warning him that he needs to learn a lesson from the attempted rescue of his son L.J. where he faced a similar dilemma, Linc admits he did learn a lesson – then he fires a bullet right through the hit man’s temple, killing him. Also during the course of the episode, Linc and Sucre are busy setting up some sort of plan for Michael and them post-escape, renting a crummy cabin in the Panamanian wilderness, making sure it looks as abandoned and run-down as possible and using a boombox and microphone to record the sounds of gunshots for a yet-to-be-revealed reason. Sofia is also busy with her own agenda throughout the episode, visiting Whistler after she receives a call from an apartment manager who says Whistler was his tenant. She goes to visit the apartment, finds it mostly empty with a bag of shredded documents, a small envelope with money and a passport with Whistlers’ picture and the name Gary Miller. Gretchen shows up and threatens here, telling her to go home and wait for Whistler, that he’ll be home today. Sofia asks Whistler about the apartment and he lies, telling her to go home and wait for him and to stay away from Lincoln Burrows today because it’s too dangerous to be around him. Gretchen, meanwhile, is operating under heavy pressure from her boss, a higher up with the company who tells her she must break Whistler out today or suffer dire consequences. She’s directed to use the “bang and burn” technique, which turns out to be an assault with a military helicopter that takes out guards with machine gun fire and plucks Whistler off the prison roof – or tries to. Michael catches Whistler preparing to go up on the roof and a few moments later, while talking with Linc on Lechero’s cell phone, realizes what Whistler is up to. Michael charges to the roof and attacks Whistler right as the helicopter is approaching, having laid waste to many guards and buildings at SONA. Michael latches on to Whistler’s legs as Whistler holds on to a rope ladder dangled from the hovering helicopter. Ultimately the rescue attempt fails when Michael refuses to let go, leaving Whistler stranded in SONA as the helicopter leaves. Both men survive the harrowing moments dangling from the ‘copter as bullets fly in all directions and they hang precariously a hundred feet or so above the ground, but once the helicopter takes off, they have to scramble to get back inside, as the guards are coming in and want to know who was involved in the escape attempt. Both men shed the clothes they had on during the escape, but a military officer still picks Michael out of the crowd of inmates and questions him about the escape. He notes that two escape attempts have happened since Michael came to SONA and decides this isn’t a coincidence. Then, in a plot twist that takes things in a very different direction, Michael is transferred out of SONA and is walking out its gates as the episode ends. On a side note, Alexander Mahone may be on his way back to SONA, having bombed out in his hearing before the panel that was questioning him to determine if he could fulfill the conditions of his plea deal by being a credible witness against the government and the company in the Lincoln Burroughs case. Mahone, clearly suffering withdrawal symptoms now that he can’t get his hands on drugs, falters and rambles throughout the hearing and afterward, his old friend, Agent XXXXX, tells him he’s headed back to SONA. Is he really, or does she have something else up her sleeve? After all, she did fulfill Mahone’s request to get him the drugs he needed so he could get his act together for the hearing, but she ultimately dumped those drugs in the trash when she showed up at the hearing. Of course, answers for all of these questions have to wait two months, until Jan. 14, because PB is now on hiatus because it needs to be around with new episodes to fill the void left by the postponement of the new season of 24. So until January, there won’t be much to talk about in regards to Prison Break, and that’ll be doubly true if the current writers’ strike drags on. Also on Monday night, over on Heroes, “Four Months Ago” was the title of Monday night’s episode, and each segment of the show was labeled “Three Months Ago”, “Two Months Ago,” etc. The idea was to explain what happened to everyone on the show in the four-month gap between last season’s explosive finale and this season’s premiere. The episode begins in the abandoned building in Montreal, with Adam Monroe/Takezo Kensei appearing to explain to Peter why he can’t remember anything about his life. He explains that the Haitian took Peter’s memories but that he can get them back because his mind, like his body, has the power to heal. Adam tells Peter to focus on what means the most to him, which turns out to be a picture of Nathan that start’s Peter’s total recall. That takes us to the fallout from Kirby Plaza, scene of last season’s finale, where we find out that Peter was carried in the air by his brother Nathan until the heat from Peter’s human nuclear activity became too much. Peter persuaded Nathan to let him go, after which Peter exploded but immediately healed due to the healing power he picked up from Claire Bennet. He flew back onto the scene in time to save Nathan and take him to the hospital because of the severe burns Nathan suffered in the incident. After going invisible to elude security and get away into a quiet back hallway, Peter wasn’t able to elude Bob, the head of the company, and Elle (Kristen Bell), who zapped him with one of her lightning jolts to incapacitate him. Peter wakes up at company headquarters and is told by Bob that he can be cured of his abilities and once again become a normal person, but the cure isn’t quite ready yet. For the time being, he must take pills each day to subdue his abilities until the cure is ready and he’s held in a small cell at the facility for the time being. Elle administers his medicine and also reveals an electric habit – she likes to give small shocks out to others as a means of amusing herself. She also tells Peter her story of how she came to be with the company – burned down a house at age 4, caused a massive blackout at age 8 and has been living at the company HQ for the past 16 years. She’s never been on a date or ridden a roller coaster and has been diagnosed as a sociopath with psychotic delusions. Peter is content to remain in his sedated state for a while, at least until the man being held in the next cell starts talking to him. The man is Adam Monroe, and he eventually convinces Peter that the company isn’t looking to help him, they’re holding him prisoner. The so-called cure for his abilities, Adam says, has been “nearly done” for more than 30 years. Adam talks Peter into stopping his meds and regaining his powers. Soon, Peter is again able to use his abilities and using one of them, walking through walls, he and Adam escape and go to Nathan’s hospital room. There, Adam uses a few drops of his blood to administer his power of healing to Nathan, who regains consciousness and has his skin totally heal of all its burns. Unfortunately, Elle and the Haitian track them down outside the hospital and Peter and Adam split in an attempt to escape. Adam’s fate is left untold, although he obviously escapes somehow because in the present day, he’s free and in Montreal with Peter. Peter, on the other hand, can’t escape the Haitian, who beats him up, handcuffs him inside the shipping container where he began Season 2 and wipes away his memories. He shows compassion by not killing Peter, but that compassion may now come back to bite him. Also told in this episode were the stories of Niki, D.L. and Micah, who were a happy family for a few months following the incident at Kirby Plaza before Niki’s personality disorder reared its head. D.L., as it turns out, survived being shot by Linderman. Bob showed up at the hospital and paid all of his bills, then offered Niki helped with a cure for her powers. She decides at the time not to enter the program at the company facility and elects to go home with her family and try to live a normal life with the help of medication. When the medication leaves her numb and unable to feel, she makes the fatal choice to stop taking it and as a result, her split personality disorder pops up again. It’s not Jessica this time, but rather Gina, the name she once used during a summer she spent in L.A. Acting as Gina, she takes off for L.A. and D.L. leaves his new job as a fireman to go bring her home. He finds her at a club, dancing with some sleaze ball, and as D.L. and Niki/Gina leave, the sleaze ball in question confronts them on a back stairway and kills D.L. with a single gunshot. This leads to the first few episodes of this season, four months in the future, when Niki drops Micah off with his aunt and cousins in New Orleans and heads to New York for help from Bob and the company. We also got plenty more screen time, unfortunately, for Maya and Alejandro, two characters who have felt forced on us and unnecessary since their introduction earlier this season. We find that the reason they’re on the run is because four months ago in Venezuela, Alejandro got married to a cheating skank who Maya didn’t like and found getting busy with her ex-boyfriend during the wedding reception. That unleashed Maya’s tears of death for the first time, killing everyone in town – except Alejandro. Maya fled and became a nun, but Alejandro tracked her down and was ready to turn her over to the police before her powers surfaced again and killed the cop, at which point he tried to calm his sister down and realized that his powers were the complement to hers, as he could stop those lethal tears and reverse their effect. They fled and that sent them on the run, where we found them at the outset of this season. Excluded from this episode were a whole lot of characters, including Matt Parkman, Molly, Hiro, Ando, H.R.G., Claire, Sylar and Mohinder. This episode was supposed to answer the questions left by the four-month gap and it did answer a few of them in spectacular fashion, but an even bigger number of questions were left unanswered, at least ‘til next time…..
- College football coaches have a unique and awesome opportunity. They get the chance to shape and mold young men who come through their program, to impart lessons about sports, life, hard work and discipline….and how to make obscene gestures at other people when they try to embarrass you. Well, that last lesson might be exclusive to the football program at the University of Wyoming, where head coach Joe Glenn set an absolutely stellar example for his players when faced with a difficult situation. Glenn’s team was on the wrong end of a 43-0 thrashing at the time of the incident, at which point their opponent, the Utah Utes, decided that trying an onside kick was a good idea. Doing that with the score being 43-0 is a bush league move, no doubt about it. It shows no class as you’re basically looking to rub your superiority in your opponent’s face and run up the score even further, However, if the opposing coach drops that onside kick on your team while he has a 43-point lead, an acceptable response is not to lob an obscene gesture at the opposing sideline for all to see. Joe Glenn has either never learned that lesson or he forgot it, because there he was, sending that obscene gesture in the direction of the Utah bench. The game ended in a 50-0 drubbing, but in the aftermath of his team’s total decimation, Glenn took the time to apologize for his actions, offering up this apologetic gem: “I met with my team on Sunday and apologized to them for the gesture I made toward the Utah bench during the game.” Umm, thanks for that coach. Nice of you to apologize to your because you had to, just don’t think that undoes the effects of your actions. We all saw your true character on the field, because under pressure is when you really find out who a person is. And oh by the way, how’s about an apology to the entire Utah team and coaching staff, that’d be swell too. You may be a good coach, this game notwithstanding, but unless you miraculously take Wyoming football to a national title before you retire, this is the first thing college football fans will think of when they hear your name, if they even have any clue who the hell you are. Next time this happens, wait until after the game to confront the opposing coach, maybe find him in a hallway post-game and lay into him. Leave the obscene gestures for another time and place…..
- Nice to know that I wasn’t alone in taking Radiohead up on its offer to allow fans to download the band’s new album In Rainbows for free. Well, the actual offer was to download the album and determine for yourself how much you wanted to pay. I and 62 percent of those who downloaded the album chose to pay nothing, while the remaining 38 percent paid an average of $6. Ironically, while the album was free, it’s one of the band’s better albums and probably a better listen from beginning to end than most of their other albums that people paid $15-20 for. The album will now have a more traditional release to accompany the digital version, with the normal in-a-case, with-album-notes version hitting stores Jan. 1. I look forward to this for one specific reason – with no physical version of the album out, getting the album artwork for my iPod was impossible, so now I can at least get my hands on that. But for all of you who absolutely have to have hard copies of your music, you can pick up In Rainbows when the new year rings in.
- Just a few days old and already the massive oil spill caused by the capsizing of a Russian oil tanker in the Black Sea is beginning to wreak havoc on the environment. More than 30,000 birds and countless fish have already been killed by the fallout from the spill, which has rightly been labeled as an “ecological catastrophe.” The fallout isn’t limited to the environment, either; several members of the crew of the tanker and other smaller ships that crashed during the storm are still missing, making this a truly devastating tragedy from a variety of angles. I’d say it makes the whole thing more palatable to not have the captain of the crashed oil tanker be heavily intoxicated, a la the Exxon Valdez spill back in 1989, but when you have a disaster of this magnitude, there really are no silver linings no matter how hard you look. The world will be cleaning up this mess for years to come.
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