- Since when are double amputees considered to have an advantage over able-bodied people? Since now, if you ask the International Association of Athletics Federations, the governing body for Olympic sports and the idiots who have declared that double-amputee Oscar Pistorius, a South African sprinter, cannot attempt to qualify for his nation's Olympic track team because his "Cheetah blade" prosthetic legs give him an unfair advantage over runners competing on their own natural legs. Yes, a physically-handicapped person is being cited as having an unfair edge over people who actually haven't had to see their own legs amputated. Good call, IAAF. "An athlete using this prosthetic blade has a demonstrable mechanical advantage when compared to someone not using the blade," the IAAF claimed in statement. What's funny is that Pistorius has long refused to consider his artificial limbs a handicap, and he won't even park his car in handicapped spaces. He finished second last year in the 400 meters at the South African championships against able-bodied runners. For a guy born without fibulas - the long, thin outer bone between the knee and ankle and was 11 months old when his legs were amputated below the knee, Pistorius has led a remarkable life in his first 21 years and deserves the right to challenge for a spot in the Olympics. He didn't choose to have the prosthetics and I'm sure if given the chance, he would elect to have natural, functioning legs like most everyone else. Instead, he's making the best of what he has and he shouldn't be barred from competing for an Olympic spot by the small-minded idiots at the IAAF because of things he can't control. Pistorius has said he'll challenge the ruling to the highest possible levels, but the International Olympic Committee has already acted like a dumb, slow sheep and fallen in line with the IAAF's ruling, so it looks like my man Oscar is screwed. Too bad, because I would love to see him compete in Beijing and try to win a medal there.....
- The weekend box office was led by a movie about to geriatric old dudes trying to get a few last thrills before they croak. Need I say more? A good weekend for the movies it was not, with The Bucket List starring Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman as two terminally ill senior citizens seeking a few final defining moments before they die. The movie took in $19.5 million, which should be another indication that it was a down weekend at theaters. If the top-earning movie can't crack $20 million, you can be sure that most of America had better things to do than to go see extremely mediocre films at inflated ticket prices. Coming in second was a movie that was certainly worse than the top film, First Sunday, a lame comedy starring Ice Cube, Tracy Morgan and....never mind, that says more than enough right there. The film is about those two trying to rip off the congregation at a church and it bombs miserably. The best movie around over the weekend was Juno, the comedy featuring Michael Cera and Ellen Page that has held strong for a while now near the top of the box office standings. National Treasure: Book of Secrets was next, yikes. Let's hope next weekend is better, because it certainly can't be worse without every theater worldwide being sucked into some evil demon vortex and tearing a hole in the space/time continuum of suckitude......
- Guess the "Do you know who I am card?" doesn't work for King James. On Tuesday, Jan. 1, Cleveland Cavaliers star LeBron James cracked triple digits, which would have been amazing if it had been for points scored on the court and not the miles per hour on his car's odometer. The King was nabbed by a highway patrol deputy on Interstate 71 heading south from Cleveland for driving 101 mph in a 65-mph zone. For those of you a little slow on the math, that'd 36 miles an hour over the speed limit, enough to land you a citation for reckless driving in addition to the speeding ticket. For an explanation, James offered this gem: "I was driving fast. I wasn't drunk or anything. You have to abide by the rules and I made a mistake." Great, King, but something tells me this isn't a mistake in terms of you driving this fast and it being a one-time thing. It seems a lot more like a mistake in that you do it all the time and the mistake was getting caught, or more specifically getting caught by a cop who wasn't awed by your celebrity and willing to let you off with a warning as long as you signed some autographs for his kids and promised him tickets for an upcoming game. No, this isn't some huge red flag on James' character the way a DUI or assault charge would be, but that doesn't mean it's not funny imagining him sitting there in the driver's seat, muttering under his breath and sweating bullets like the rest of us would in the same situation. Normally I don't like cops or authority figures of any kind, but hats off to this particular cop for not having a double standard and treating James just like he would treat anyone else. Memo to the King: You might be above the law on the court, where referees allow you to get away with certain things because you're a star, but off the court, you need to learn that you're no different than the rest of us, with the exception of being able to pay off your traffic fines with money you fish out from between your sofa cushions.....
- I've made no bones about the fact that not only am I not a fan of Mary J. Blige's music, I flat-out hate it. Not her, mind you. I don't know her and don't have an opinion on Blige as a person, but her music I despise. Now comes a pretty good indication that she's not the most high-character individual as well as being a lousy musician. The names of Blige, along with rap artists 50 Cent, Timbaland and Wyclef Jean, and award-winning author and producer Tyler Perry, have emerged in an investigation of steroids trafficking, the Albany Times Union is reporting. Good call, all, because clearly you are people who would need steroids. After all, isn't bigger, faster, stronger and quicker to heal from injury the official motto of hip-hop and rap? What rapper or hip-hopper doesn't need to be able to improve their dead lift and bench press or heal up quicker from injuries sustained during those intense studio sessions? Umm, sure. Whereas I can see why athletes want to 'roid up for a competitive advantage, what are musicians doing trafficking steroids? It doesn't make a ton of sense, but according to confidential sources, information surfaced recently showing those stars are among tens of thousands of people who may have used or received prescribed shipments of steroids and injectable human growth hormone in recent years. I suppose of all the names on the list, 50 Cent does make sense because how else do you explain a fast and miraculous recovery from being shot nine times? It is important to note that law enforcement officials have said they have no evidence that customers violated any laws. The real targets in this investigation are anti-aging clinics, doctors and pharmacists who prescribed the drugs. Nevertheless, good to know that some of music's biggest names are busy pumping harmful substances into their bodies - well, other than copies amounts of booze and hippie lettuce, that is. Sadly, the revelation that Blige and Timbaland have acquired and ostensibly used steroids confirm that 'roids do nothing to help improve the quality of your music, so strike that from the list of possible benefits to be derived from using them.....
- Welcome back, Prison Break. The best show on FOX and the only good one on the entire network outside of the perpetually-postponed 24 came back last night for the start of a five-episode run that will end once the show runs out of new episodes thanks to the writers' strike. The show returned with its protagonist, Michael Scofield, in a familiar place: in the office of the person in charge of the prison of which he is a resident. In Season One, it was Michael befriending warden Henry Pope and then using that trust to help facilitate his escape plan. This week's episode kicked off where the last one ended, with Michael being led out of SONA. However, the assumption I and many others made that he was being shipped out of SONA proved wrong. Instead, he was taken to the office of a general from the Panamanian army who was in charge of the prison. After being questioned and refusing to cooperate, Michael is put in a special kind of solitary confinement. He's crammed inside a small metal wire cage slightly bigger than a phone booth and wrapped in plastic wrap over most of its surface. The cage is left out in the middle of the open space between the outer wall of the prison and the fence surrounding the perimeter. Everyone in the prison, both allies and foes, watches his plight, with veteran prisoners knowing he faces two choices: cooperate or die. On the outside of the walls, Lincoln is taken to see his son LJ, who is still alive but in captivity. Gretchen Morgan, the Company's representative in Panama and Linc's contact with them, has LJ and wants to remind Linc than in light of the failed escape attempt to break James Whistler out of SONA, she still has something he wants. Sucre, still hanging around as a member of the prison work crew, arrives for work and sees Michael in solitary confinement. He relays the news to Linc, but but this time Michael has agreed to cooperate with the general's investigation into the attempted escape. He fingers Whistler, who is pulled out of an equally interesting scene inside the prison, There, Lechero's role as leader continues to be under fire, as his top lieutenant, Sammy, is contacted by a friend on the outside who has a package delivered for Sammy to use on Lechro - a pistol. Also fighting for survival is Brad Bellick, who runs afoul of one of the prison's badder hombres and is challenged to one of the prison's patented two-men-enter, one-man-leaves fights. Using hand wraps with a potent cocktail of chemicals, Bellick is able to subdue and kill his opponent, keeping him alive for now. Alex Mahone is also back at SONA, his deal for a transfer back to the U.S. on lessened charges falling through once he was deemed an unreliable witness. He wants in on the escape plan, but at the moment his bigger problem is fighting the withdrawal symptoms now that he can't get his hands on the prescription drugs he needs. Out of this mess, Whistler is summoned and questioned by the general, who by now has been able to verify much of Michael Scofield's story. At first Whistler plays dumb, but he soon caves and fingers Gretchen, who just happens to be meeting with Linc in Panama City in one hour. The general goes and nabs her from the hotel bar where the meeting takes places, then hauls her off to SONA for torture/questioning. She endures a lot of pain, then appears to fold, admitting her part in the escape plan as well as in LJ's kidnapping. She says she'll take the general to where LJ is, but once there, Gretchen goes Kill Bill on their a**es and kills them both, then calls for a car to come get her. With the general dead, a new man comes to take charge at SONA and he has no interest in taking up the general's investigation. He sends Scofield and Whistler back into SONA, where they're met with a less-than-warm response. Michael immediately finds Lechero and re-starts their escape plan through a tunnel underneath the prison, a plan which stalled out with Michael in solitary. Now the question is whether they can make it out in time, before Sammy kills Lechero, before too many people find out about the plan and before the weak roof of the tunnel caves in - and most importantly, before LJ is killed. Oh, I forgot to mention the coolest moment of the episode - when Michael finally comes face to face with Gretchen while she's being questioned by the general (before he was killed, obviously), he asks if she's the one who killed Sarah. She plays dumb but it's clear Michael knows the truth, because he glares at her and icily remarks, "I'm coming for you." It was a chilling moment and one I'm looking forward to seeing come to fruition in the episodes ahead. Until next time....
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