- This is a first, and not in a good way. College basketball players skipping their remaining collegiate eligibility to turn pro is not new, but to the best of my knowledge, this is the first time a female player has done so, which prompts me to ask an important question: why? Word is that All-American forward Candace Parker will skip her senior season at Tennessee and turn pro. The redshirt junior will graduate at the end of this season and wants to participate in the Summer Olympics and pursue a professional career, coach Pat Summitt said Thursday. Really? Does she know that her professional career is going to be in the WNBA, which isn’t even a real professional sports league? It’s a charity project sustained by the NBA in some misguided quest for gender equality in sports. Now I understand that Parker is graduating and maybe she doesn’t have an interest in grad school and hanging around Knoxville for another year. But when the alternative is going to play in the WNBA, another year of college for free and being a big name on campus is a great option. “Obviously we'd love to have her another year,” Summitt told The Associated Press. “Who wouldn't?” The rest of the world outside of women’s college basketball, that’s who Pat. No one out here is going to care about C. Parker because none of us care about the WNBA. Parker may lead her team in scoring with 20.6 points per game and rebounds with 8.8 per game, and she may also be one of six women to have dunked in the college game (the weakest “dunk” I’ve ever seen, she barely tapped the rim). By skipping her final year of eligibility, Parker has the chance to enter the WNBA draft in April. She would likely go as the top pick, which is currently held by the Los Angeles Sparks. Great, can a single one of you tell me a single player on the Sparks’ roster, or any other WNBA roster for that matter? As backwards as it sounds, women’s college basketball in this country is a better and more prestigious gig than women’s professional basketball. Wrong choice, C. Parker, and I have a feeling you’ll find that out soon.
- Well that was one of the simpler episodes of Lost I can remember in any of the show’s four seasons. No mythical, supernatural occurrences, no plethora of plot twists to confuse and no real misdirection. I think the final scene was supposed to come as a surprise, but anyone with a working brain cell or two saw it coming. But let’s start at the beginning....this episode was all about Kate. The flash forwards told us that she not only made it off the island, which we already knew from last season’s finale, but that after her return she was put on trial for the same crimes - murder, fraud, extortion, fleeing the feds - that she was charged with before the crash of Oceanic 815. Her mother is the chief witness against her in this trial and Kate’s attorney wants to use the remnants of her experience as a crash survivor to garner sympathy from the jury. He succeeds in one sense; Jack Sheppard comes to testify on Kate’s behalf. However, Kate wont agree to have her son - yes, she has a child, but not in the way you might think - in the courtroom to get her some sympathy. Her mother actually offers to not testify if she can see her grandchild, but Kate refuses. Still, Kate’s mom is very ill and eventually is unable to testify because of her health problems. Thus, Kate gets off with a plea under which she serves no additional jail time. She’s met outside the courthouse by Jack and she invites him to follow her home to visit “us” but he refuses. She tells him that she understands why he doesn’t want to visit, but that until he does, she won't have a relationship with him When Kate returns home, we find out that “her” child really isn’t hers - it’s Aaron, Claire’s baby from the island. Why isn’t this a surprise? Well, because in a scene back in the present, as Kate and Claire hang out laundry outside the former houses in the former barracks of the Others, where Locke has led his band of survivors to live, Claire asks Kate to pick up a crying Aaron and hold him to stop his crying. Kate refuses on the grounds that she’s not good with babies and doesn’t want to further upset Aaron. Claire picks him up, rocks him and calms him down, then tells Kate she should consider becoming a mother some day. This moment is interspersed among the flash forwards with Kate in the midst of the trial and talking about “her” son, so it was clear long before the end of the episode who the child really was. Kate was also busy back in the present talking to Miles Straume, a member of the freighter crew now on the island, purportedly trying to rescue the crash survivors. Kate tricks Hurley into telling her where Miles is being kept after Locke refuses to tell her. She goes to see Miles and asks what he knows about her life off the island - i.e. does he know she’s a wanted felon. He promises to tell her if she can get him oen minute to talk directly to Ben. Kate enlists Sawyer, who helps divert Locke while Kate sneaks Miles into the basement of Ben’s former house, the house where Locke is now living and keeping Ben prisoner, and Miles tells Ben that he’s willing to lie and tell the people who sent him to find Ben that Ben is already dead - as long as Ben gives Miles $3.2 million. Locke, accompanied by Sawyer (in on Kate’s plan) finds Kate and Miles as they try to lerave the basement. Later in the night, Locke confronts Kate and asks her what Miles said to Ben. She tells him and he then tells her that she is no longer welcome in the barracks. She’s to be gone by morning but instead goes to see Sawyer, ends up sleeping with him and spends the night. In the morning, Kate’s refusal to fool around more leads Sawyer to question her about her hesitancy and leads to her telling him that she is in fact not pregnant as she previously feared after they had slept together in Season 3. When Sawyer reacts with relief, Kate is pissed and an argument ensues. It ends with Kate bitch-slapping Sawyer when he promises that sooner or later, she’ll get angry at Jack again and come crawling back to him. Speaking of Jack....he and Juliet are back at the beach, having seen Desmond and Sayid leave on the helicopter with Frank, a member of the freighter team, in last week’s episode. The only thing of note to happen on this front this week is that Jack and Juliet try to contact the freighter all episode long to get in touch with Desmond and Sayid. They finally get through thanks to help from Charlotte but are stunned and confused to learn that the helicopter hasn’t arrived yet despite having taken off more than a day ago. The teaser for next week tells us we’ll find out more about this topic then, so hold tight. One odd bit of the show that doesn’t mean much yet came when Daniel, also from the rescue team, is playing some sort of card/memory game with Charlotte, is only able to remember two of three overturned cards in the game and is frustrated. Charlotte says his remembering two of three is progress, but progress from what is the question? Again, I’m sure that will come up again as the season goes on, but everything about Daniel is odd, so this is nothing new. Again, this was a pretty simple episode. No Desmond, no Sayid, no Danielle Rousseau, only one fleeting scene of Hurley, so it was kept to a select few this episode. That’s all for now, though.....
- Here’s a question: When going overseas to fight in and possibly die fighting in an unnecessary, unjustified, moronic, unending, debacle of a war that should never have started, does having your tour of duty shortened by three months really make a big difference? In some sense, I suppose it does for U.S. soldiers who will now be limited (allegedly) to 12 months in Iraq at a time as opposed to the 15 months (yeah, 15, good one, sounds like typical fuzzy W. math to me) that has previously been the standard. The Army’s top general, Gen. George Casey, said yesterday that soldiers deployed this summer will likely see their tours of duty shortened from 15 months to 12 months even if W. does the expected and reneges on the troop cuts he promised in July. Actually, it’s not really a promise at all if it concerns W. doing anything to end this unjustified atrocity of a war, it’s more like a total fabrication designed to placate the American people. So Gen. Casey, thanks for the info, but 12 months in Iraq for any U.S. soldier is still 12 months more than any of them should be there.
- Apparently toxic dumplings, toxic toothpaste and led-paint laced toys are enough to inspire the United States Olympic Committee to take drastic measures for the upcoming Olympics in Beijing. After one lethal, toxic Chinese product and food item after another, the USOC has decided to bring its own food to China to feed American athletes. The decision has disappointed the head of food services for the Beijing Olympics, but honestly, who gives a crap? “I feel it's a pity that they [the Americans] decided to take their own food,” Kang Yi, the head of the food division for the Beijing organizing committee, said Thursday. Well, Kang, from what I hear there is good reason for concern. Aside from the above-mentioned products, some USOC reps have reported that they’ve seen chicken breasts as big as 14 inches on the birds that will provide the meat for the athletes at the Summer Olympics. Yeah, because that’s natural, 14-inch chicken breasts. American officials are certain that there are steroids and lots of them pumping through the veins of the birds to be used for food for the athletes and don’t want any U.S. athletes testing positive because they ate a tainted bird. Instead, the USOC is planning to transport tons of meat and other foods to a training camp at Beijing Normal University. The 600-plus American athletes are expected to eat their daily meals at the Athletes Village, USOC spokesman Darryl Seibel said. But the U.S. delegation also includes an additional 400-plus personnel - support coaches, trainers, etc. - who are not eligible for food service at the village and therefore will eat most of their meals at Beijing Normal. The food service at Beijing Normal will serve as a supplement to the village, which will house about 17,000 athletes and officials during the Aug. 8-24 Games and be capable of serving 6,000 meals simultaneously. “We have absolutely no concerns about the quality and safety of the food in the Athletes Village,” Seibel said. “Also, we will be sourcing products from local suppliers for our training table, in addition to bringing some products with us. We had the same approach during the Athens and Torino Games, as well.” In other words, they have major concerns and just don’t want to say it publicly. They’ll bring their own food and quietly make sure it gets to their athletes instead of the grub being supplied at the Olympic Village. “We have made lots of preparations to ensure that they [athletes] can get together at the Olympic Games,” Kang said on Thursday. Get together, yes. Use your country’s dangerous, toxic, ‘roid-fueled food and assorted other projects? No, Kang, I don’t think we want to do that....
- How very big of you, NFL. In an oh, so magnanimous decision, the NFL has decreed from on high that it will allow church groups to show the Super Bowl on large-screen televisions, reversing a policy had drawn intense criticism from elected officials. In a letter to U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said the league will no longer object to “live showings -- regardless of screen size -- of the Super Bowl” by religious organizations. Previously, stories had been circulating about church groups canceling Super Bowl parties over fear of legal action by the NFL, a development which led to protests by some lawmakers and conservative leaders. Normally you’d only see this pop up when people are bootlegging movies or pay-per-views, but an obscure NFL policy holds that organizations showing public viewings of its games on televisions larger than 55 inches violate the league's copyright. The league has made sports bars exempt from the policy, so people can booze it up and eat peanuts out of a filthy, communal bowl, but last year, the NFL sent letters to two church groups, advising them of the rule against them showing the game on their big screens. This year, the league’s tune has changed. In its letter to Hatch, the NFL said it would not object to big-screen viewings in churches as long as they are free and held on premises that the church uses on a “routine and customary” basis, according to the report. Thanks for that, NFL. Wouldn’t want churches gathering members together to watch the biggest game in all of sports at their church, right? Maybe if they were alcoholics who wanted to go to their local bar it’d be cool. But thankfully, the almighty NFL has relented and stopped treating churches like they’re a bunch of freaking criminals.
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