- Political karma is a b*tch, eh W.? After giving Congress, the Constitution and the American people a ginormous middle finger for most (if not all) of his time in office, our un-esteemed leader is finding that Congress is now doing the same thing right back to him. W. whined over the weekend that the Senate has failed to vote on 180 of his nominees for federal posts, including many to the federal bench. These judges have been kept in waiting for a year or more, but the Senate doesn’t appear in a hurry to confirm their appointments. In response, the Democratic-led Senate responded by saying that W. nominated many people who had no chance of being approved to begin with. For one, I’m stunned W. can even read a calendar and figure out that his nominees have been stalled for a year. So maybe someone in his administration helped him out there, but what they can’t help him out with is the fact that he’s pissed off Congress over and over on numerous issues, most prominently the war-funding debate wherein he’s strong-armed them into giving more money to continue the Mess O’Potamia, a.k.a. the war in Iraq, W.’s own personal Vietnam. So I’d say this is a nice “Screw you” from the Senate to W. and it’s a long time coming.
- So apparently Bill Gates can’t just buy everything he wants. The Microsoft founder and chairman had made a $44.6 billion bid to take over struggling Internet company Yahoo Inc., but that bid was rejected because Yahoo executives say the unsolicited offer undervalues their struggling company. Even as Yahoo falters and its stock drops substantially in value, apparently the suits at the company don’t feel like $44.6 billion is quite enough. That may not sit well with Microsoft, which is looking to wipe out one of its competitors and do so at a cut-rate price. If Microsoft so chooses, they can try to do and end-around by taking their offer directly to Yahoo’s shareholders, a move that would allow them to get past the rejection of their offer and still get what they want. So who says no to Bill Gates and his billions? For now, Yahoo does, but they had better hope that their shareholders have their backs on this one or they could end up falling victim to the wishes of B. Gates and his high-tech posse.....
- Freaking awesome. I don’t know any other way to describe last night’s episode of Prison Break and capture how much fun it was to watch. This was literally the best episode of the season and one of the top five in the show’s three seasons. It had plenty of the Michael Scofield plotting, conniving, twists and turns that make the show so great. Things kicked off with the seven=man escape group perched at the top of the tunnel they had dug out into “no man’s land,” the area outside the prison wall but inside the facility’s perimeter fence. With Michael’s big bro Lincoln having crashed a stolen bus into a light pole and thus knocked out power to the prison. However, with Lechero, Brad Bellick and T-Bag having forced their way to the front of the line to exit the hole and make a run for the fence, Michael, Whistler, Mahone and “McGrady” were left to wait even though Michael advised them that they had only 30 seconds until the backup generator kicked in and turned the lights back on. Here’s where the first double-cross comes in: Michael had previously expressed regret that in escaping, he was going ot have to take bad guys like T-Bag and Lechero with him. So what does he do? Lie to them about how long it will be before the backup generator kicks in and waits in the escape hole, hidden below the ground and a makeshift cover disguising the hole, while the lights kick on and T-Bag, Lechero and Bellick are seen and captured by the prison guards as they attempt to escape. A mass of military personnel and guards swept in after shooting Lechero and ordering Bellick and T-Bag to the ground. The latter two stupidly decided not to give up Scofield and the other three based on the idea, as T-Bag said, that Scofield might be able to fix the mess they were in. Michael then revealed to the other three still with him in the tunnel that this was all in his plan and as soon as the coast cleared a bit, they eased above ground and made a bee-line for the weakened section of fence that Sucre (more on him later) had sprayed with chemicals to eat away at it. The remaining four made it out of the tunnel just in time, as a weak-minded Bellick cracked under pressure and revealed the escape plan to the guards. Realizing they were four men short, the guards and prison officials went into full throttle to lock things down, but they soon discovered the hole in the fence and realized that the prisoners were gone. Michael and his crew were into the jungle, where they ran in the wee hours of the morning, heading for a beach rendezvous with Linc. They met up with him on the beach where he and Sofia hid a cooler full of gear earlier in the season. Once on the beach, the four escapees and link took off their shoes, dumped them in the cooler, buried it and took out oxygen tanks to use as they swam out to sea, under the water’s surface to avoid detection. When the pursuing guards reached the beach, they found nothing and were about to turn back when they discovered the cooler. Realizing that the escapees were in the water, they decided to call in the coast guard. Meanwhile, the four escapees and Linc reached a buoy out in the water where they were to be picked up by the sixth member of the team, Sucre. Unfortunately, as we saw last week, Sucre had been detained at the prison where he had been working as a member of the grounds crew because of an outstanding arrest warrant. Thus, he never picked up the boat that he was supposed to use to transport the escapees into Panama City for the exchange of Whistler for Linc’s son LJ and Whistler’s girlfriend Sofia. With Sucre unable to do his duty, the five men looked lost until “McGrady’s” dad came through. He had been waiting for his son at a pre-prescribed location after Linc told him that his son would be broken out of prison, but he figured went to the marina where he was supposed to meet his son and found that the boat hadn’t been taken out like it was supposed to be. Using Linc’s directions, he searched and found the five men in the water and transported them back to the marina. From there McGrady and his dad said goodbye and the four remaining men - Scofield, Linc, Mahone and Whistler, left in an old SUV. They weren’t on the road long before they found an angry Gretchen on the tail, looking out for the Company’s interests. She and a car with some of her team both pursued the vehicle driven by Linc, but with some crazy driving, Linc lost Gretchen and took the other car back to the middle-of-nowhere cabin he and Sucre rented earlier in the season. There, they started a firefight but once inside the cabin, turned on the taped recording of gunshots that Linc and Sucre made when they bought the cabin and used that to hold off their pursuers while the four of them escaped out the back door and into a second vehicle, another clunker. When Gretchen arrives at the cabin, she figures out the ploy and places an angry phone call to Linc. By this time, he and the others are at an abandoned warehouse nearby where they demand the exchange take place. Whistler, however, is having second thoughts. He thinks that even if Michael and Linc hand him over to the Company. LJ and Sofia will be killed. As the quartet waits for Gretchen and her team, an opportunistic Mahone sees his chance to bolt. He is about to leave because, as he puts it, “I don’t have a horse in this race any more.” He may not have a reason to stay, but Linc has a reason for not letting him leave. Because Mahone shot and killed Michael and Linc’s dad last season near the Mexican border and because of all the hell he’s brought on their family, Linc is about to shoot Mahone when Whistler sees his own chance to escape. He leaps out of a window on the second floor of the warehouse onto a truck nearby, then runs away, steals a truck from an innocent bystander and speeds off, leaving Michael and Linc in his wake. With no Whistler to exchange, what will they do now? Of course, even if Whistler had stayed, his bird-watching book that he used to write down the coordinates the company wants from him fell out during the escape and is still at SONA (found by T-Bag, actually, not sure how that helps him though). Speaking of T-Bag, at episode’s end, he’s being interrogated for information about Scofield when he spots the departing Sucre and fingers him as having information about Scofield. Sucre denies it, but the warden looks into it and finds out who Sucre really is, a wanted fugitive from the United States who escaped from Fox River Prison with Scofield. So next week, sadly, is the season finale, although with the strike now over, some people hope the season might still have a little more life in it. The teaser for next week showed Whistler, Scofield, Linc and Gretchen all in the same place, so somehow they meet up again. But that’s all for now, so until the all-too-soon season finale next Monday......
- God bless you ESPN, you finally had a good idea. After televising poker extensively and making the spelling bee an annual staple of your network, I was starting to have my doubts. But the Worldwide Leader, which now airs Monday Night Football, is doing something I hope other networks will take notice of and apply to their coverage of all sports. Beginning next season, ESPN will be deep-sixing sideline reporters Michelle Tafoya and Suzy Kolber from the sidelines during broadcasts. The two will still be part of the broadcast during pre-game and postgame, but during games their presence will be virtually nil. Now this is not a slam against them because they’re women; I feel the same way about all sideline reporters, regardless of their sex. They are unnecessary and an annoying part of the broadcast. They ask the same run-of-the-mill questions from coaches and get the same perfunctory answers every game (What do you need to do to turn things around in the second half, coach? Well, we just need to execute and stop making mistakes.) Those oh, so informative Q&A sessions told me absolutely nothing. Nor do I need them to update me on injuries, because someone on the sidelines can get that info and pass it up to the announcers in the booth. Not having a sideline reporter shoving am microphone into the coach’s face two minutes before kickoff will be nice for the coaches too, so that’s side benefit. The less of sideline reporters we see during broadcasts of all sporting events, the better.
- Can bags of sunflower seeds save a TV show from extinction? I’m going with no, but don’t tell that to fans of the USA Network show 4400. Wahpeton, N.D.-based Giants Snacks, which manufactures sunflower seeds that happen to be a choice snack item for the character portrayed by actor Jeffrey Combs, has shipped some 6,000 bags of their most popular snack to USA in an attempt to get the network to revive the show, which was dumped in December during the writers’ strike. Orders from 30 countries and more than a dozen states helped fuel the effort, but USA had already received 30 pounds of seeds before the unsolicited order from Giants Snacks. As I said, I’d love for this effort to have a chance, but I’ve been on the wrong end of two such campaigns to save two of the absolute best shows of all time , Ed (NBC) and Everwood (WB/CW) and neither one worked. We Everwood fans rented a ginormous Ferris wheel, hearkening back to two memorable scenes from the show, and had it set up for a day outside the CW’s California offices in an attempt to keep our beloved show alive (alas, the CW, in its infinite stupidity, would not do so). Fans of Ed pooled our donations to buy ads in several entertainment industry trade magazines urging NBC to keep the funniest show I’ve ever seen on the air, but that effort failed as well. Fact is, when networks make their moronic, financially motivated decisions on getting rid of good shows and keeping crappy ones, there’s no talking them out of it. So best of success with your campaign, 4400 fans, I sincerely hope you can score a victory for the little guy.....
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