- We want to help people and provide comfort, just not those people. I could be reading this wrong, but that’s the message seemingly being sent by donors to a merchants’ association in La Jolla, Calif. Esther Viti (and with a name like Esther, you know she has to be at least 84 years old) is leading the charge to “protect” benches that have been donated for an upscale shopping district in La Jolla by keeping those dirty, filthy, nasty homeless people from sleeping on them. Yes, Esther and her bench-protecting posse are pissed that rich, spoiled, upper-class people are having their nice, new park benches soiled by the filth of vagrants for whom sleeping on those benches is actually an upgrade over their normal sleeping arrangements on street corners, in alleys or in cardboard boxes. To prevent this appalling miscarriage of justice from taking place, Esther sent out an email to 45 other members of her group last week, urging them to take three-hour shifts sitting on the benches to prevent homeless persons from sleeping on them. “After all, you MUST OCCUPY THAT BENCH for three hours to prevent that homeless person from sitting on that bench,” the bitter, curmudgeon-y Esther wrote in her email. Who that homeless person is, I don’t know. Sounds like Esther just has a hateful, elitist heart beating inside of her, if she has a heart at all. Why stop, there, E.? Why not ban homeless people from your mall entirely? Maybe charge a $100 entry fee to get inside the perimeter or require that anyone wishing to shop there or even set foot on the premises do so after driving onto the property in a car valued at $30,000 or more? It’s people like Esther Viti that keep elitist, arrogant America alive and pump life into that truly detestable segment of this nation’s population. You suck, Esther, and so does anyone who follows your bigoted, small-minded lead.
- It’s on to Pennsylvania for the Democratic presidential candidates. After my main man Barack Obama ripped Hank Clinton a new one in both Wyoming and Mississippi this past week to stake himself to a 112-delegate lead heading into the race’s next big contest in the Keystone State, the two of them made their way to Pennsylvania and sniped at one another all along the way. Hank had the testicular fortitude to imply that Obama would make a great vice presidential candidate as her running mate, but clearly B.O. wasn’t going to take that sort of backhanded compliment. He stated clearly that voters’ only choice was between he and Hank for the top spot and that whoever lost should be out of the mix altogether. “I don’t know how somebody who is in second place is offering the vice presidency to the person who is in first place,” Obama declared at an appearance. Well said, Barack. America is behind you and no one is buying Hank’s false bravado. She may be projecting confidence and the power to verbally hand herself the nomination, but underneath it all even a tough, rugged, femi-Nazi like Hank knows the truth. Obama has won 28 states so far to Hank’s 17, which works out to a hearty 62.2 percent of states preferring Obama over Hank. So why don’t we go ahead and end the sniping here, let’s do the right thing and I think we all know I’m looking at you, Pennsylvania residents. Vote for Obama en masse, deal the death blow the Hank’s campaign and get that dude out of the race permanently.
- In what has become an erratic season, I thought last night’s Lost was one of the better episodes this year. The episode, titled Yi Jeon, manages to balance the goings on at the beach camp and those on the freighter. On the beach, Sun is increasingly suspicious of freighter team members Daniel and Charlotte after she learns that they attacked Kate in the jungle. Sun questions Daniel and when he dodges her inquiries about whether his team is really here to rescue to survivors of Oceanic 815, she decides it’s time to leave the beach camp and go live in the barracks with Locke’s group of followers. However, Juliet refuses to allow the pair to leave and as a last resort, she tells Jin about his wife’s affair prior to their coming to the island. That creates some tension for Jin and Sun, but after a day or so, Jin realizes that his own detachment led to the affair and he forgives Sun. However, flash-forwards throughout the show reveal that both Jin and Sun get off the island, albeit under confusing circumstances. Throughout the episode, it appears that Sun is delivering the baby back in Korea and that Jin is rushing to the hospital to be there with her. At the end of the episode, the twist is revealed: Jin is in China, not Korea. Furthermore, he’s there to deliver a giant stuffed panda bear as a gift to the daughter of an ambassador who has just given birth to a baby boy. It’s official business, as Jin is there representing Paik Automotive. On the way out of the hospital, a conversation with a nurse reveals that Jin is married to someone else now, having gotten hitched two months ago. Meanwhile, Sun welcomes a visitor to her apartment to see her new daughter: Hurley. Together, they go to a cemetery to visit a grave that they believe to be Jin’s. The questions are obvious: How did Jin and Sun both get off the island but without Sun knowing that her husband is alive? How does Sun think Jin died? Why did he fake his death or choose not to let Sun know he was alive? And oh yeah, is there anyone out there who speaks Korean or Chinese and watches Lost? Because if so, then those people knew from the start of this episode that something was off. They would have known that Jin was speaking Chinese, not Korean, in all of the flash-forwards. Us ugly Americans didn’t have a clue, but such is life. On the non-Korean front, Sayid and Desmond are learning lots of new things on the freighter. First, they learn that the ship’s calloused captain is willing to allow a crew member who jumps overboard to drown rather than take the risk of trying to save her. Second, someone has been sabotaging the freighter’s engines, preventing the craft from moving out further from the island and thus mitigating the harmful effects that being in its proximity has on the crew. Third, the spy Ben Linus has on the boat is….Michael. Michael and his son Walt left the island on an Others-provided boat at the end of Season Two, but somehow Michael got himself onto the crew of the freighter. Next week we’ll learn how, plus the always-popular “Someone….will….DIE!” tactic is going to be employed. So there you have it for this week of Lost, until next Thursday……..
- Last night, Smallville finally returned and with it came a blast from the past, Pete Ross. It’s been three years since Sam Jones III left the show, but last night he was back and in fine form. The theme for the night was shameless promotional plugs, with Pete kicking things off from the start by working as a roadie for (SHAMELESS PLUG #1) the band One Republic, performing in Metropolis at (SHAMELESS PLUG #2) a makeshift club with Stride emblazoned on the front a massive logo. Why, you ask? Because miraculously, the club is set up inside of a recently vacated factory manufacturing Stride gum. The Stride logo is everywhere, slamming you over the head with the message over and over to chew their gum. One Republic also has a professional-looking lighted sign behind the stage, reminding you of their name in case you forgot from the dozen previous shots of said sign. In between, there was an actual plot. Pete winds up chewing Stride gum laced with Kryptonite and develops a meteor power of his own, the ability to turn into the incredible stretching man. He can turn his arms, hands, legs, etc. into ginormous rubber bands, basically. He first realizes he has this power when he instinctively reaches out his arms to pull Kara Kent from under falling speakers set up near the stage. His act of heroicism comes as Kara is about to be hit by a massive speaker tumbling from fifteen feet in the air. The reality is that Pete didn’t really save her, because even though her amnesia prevents her from remembering, Kara, like cousin Clark, is from Kryptonite and thus indestructible. But again, Kara doesn’t remember that. She’s at the club with Jimmy Olson, who she was dating before losing her memory. They were trying to jump-start that memory by going to a familiar place, but it didn’t work. When Pete makes his miracle save, Jimmy catches it on his camera phone and the story starts to spread. Pete also goes back to visit his old best friend Clark in Smallville and reveals his new abilities to CK. Clark is alarmed and warns Pete that a lot of potential problems could happen if he doesn’t get rid of his powers. That leads to a good ol’ fashioned Pete-Clark argument wherein Pete is hurt and indignant that he has to live in Clarks’ shadow and that Clark seems to not want him to get any of the attention. An angry Pete decides to become a vigilante, taking on Lex Luthor when Lex makes Chloe’s life miserable at the Daily Planet by snooping in all of her computer files. Pete uploads a virus that corrupts the Planet’s entire computer system, but Lex sees him doing it and says that to even the score, Pete needs to retrieve something for Lex from Lex’s dad Lionel Luthor’s vault: Kara Kent’s Kryptonian bracelet. Lex doesn’t know exactly what the bracelet is, but he believes it will bring him closer to discovering the secrets about Kara and by connection Clark. Pete breaks into Lionel’s office and is about the steal the bracelet when Clark arrives and tries to stop him. Pete uses kryptonite to put down his friend and then goes to his meeting with Lex where he tries to set Lex up by leaving the bracelet behind and attacking Lex. Lex, ever the paranoid one, has backup and takes Pete down. A torture session ensues until Clark, having been rescued by Lionel, arrives and knocks out Lex and his hired muscle. All is well again between Clark and Pete, but Clark and Lionel have new issues. Clark is pissed that Lionel had Kara’s bracelet and didn’t share that information, so Clark hangs onto the bracelet and stashes it under a floorboard in the Kent barn. However, it’s exactly that type of behavior from Clark and Lana that is also driving Kara away. She’s been snooping around the farm, going through Clark’s things and trying to find ways to reconnect with her past, but nothing works. When she talks to Lana and asks for proof that she and Clark are Kara’s real friends and that Lex is merely using her, Lana won't tell Kara about her true past. Kara decides she can no longer trust Clark and Lana and goes to live at the Luthor mansion with Lex. Also making a relationship move are Jimmy and Chloe, who decide to give their relationship another try. So aside from the shameless promotional plugs, it was a good episode. Next week’s episode looks awesome, what with Clark ending up locked in some sort of Dr.-Evil-in-a-plastic-bubble prison and Lex apparently linked to it. Unfortunately, that episode coincides with the first day of the NCAA Tournament, so I’ve got me a decision to make….
- Welcome back to the protest front, monks. Ever since the brutal oppression in Burma following a revolt against that country’s repressive regime that was led by Burmese monks, we haven’t heard much from the men of the cloth in terms of standing up to The Man. So I salute the monks of Tibet for having the kahones to stand up and be heard when it comes to opposing the brutal Chinese rule in their nation. This past weekend, monks in Tibet’s capital city staged two protests against the Chinese government, showing that singer Bjork is not the only one willing to stand up to a regime that the United States had just branded as one of the worst abusers of human rights in the whole world. No one was arrested or killed in the monk-led protests, so we may need to do some work here to kick things up a notch, but it’s a good start. After all, it did help inspire hundreds of Tibetan exiles to continue with their six-month march from northern India back to their Himalayan homeland, a demonstration in direct defiance of a ban on any and all demonstrations against Beijing’s hosting of the 2008 Summer Olympics. Anyone standing up to Communism is a friend to us all, so let’s throw our support behind the people of Tibet as they fight to throw off the shackles of the abusive, overbearing Chinese rule in their nation. FREE TIBET! FREE TIBET!
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