- Now this is what I call setting an example for the next generation. Just a week ago, former Georgia Tech quarterback Joe Hamilton was hired as the school's assistant director of player personnel. Theoretically, his job was helping players on the GT football team grow and develop as players and people, meaning he would be counted on to set a strong example for those players to follow. What did Hamilton do with this exciting new opportunity? Did he seize the moment, plunge himself into his new role and start making a difference? Umm…no. He did make a difference and he did set a strong example, it was just the criminal kind. Hamilton has been charged with marijuana possession, driving under the influence of alcohol and hit-and-run early after being arrested early Tuesday morning. Hamilton, 31, also was charged with having an open bottle of beer in his Ford Expedition when arrested by Georgia Tech police shortly after midnight. He was pulled over by an officer who spotted his vehicle and realized it matched the description of a sport-utility vehicle involved in an alleged hit-and-run. When the arresting officer approached Hamilton’s vehicle, he smelled alcohol on Hamilton. Oops! That’s not good. When confronted with the allegation that he was involved in the hit-and-run, Hamilton admitted he hit another car from behind, according to the police report. Uh oh, that’s not good either! He proceeded to fail a series of field sobriety tests, and the officer reported that he found the open bottle of beer and a marijuana cigarette in the vehicle's ash tray. Say it with me everyone, that’s not good! For a fourth “uh-oh!” we go to the fact that Hamilton recorded blood-alcohol contents of 0.193 and 0.199 in two tests, again according to the police report. As with almost every state in the U.S., the legal limit in Georgia is 0.08. Yes, it’s “uh-oh!” No. 5! Kind of hard to develop players and quality young men when you’re getting high, drunk and rear-ending other vehicles before taking off. Hamilton's new job includes responsibilities in recruiting and serving players' needs, but most parents are unlikely to be down with sending their son to play for a alcoholic stoner who drives while impaired and pulls hit-and-run jobs. The alleged hit-and-run collision occurred near the Georgia Tech campus, where Charles Curry Jr. of Decatur told police he was stopped at a red light when he was hit from behind. Curry said the other motorist drove off. To be fair to Hamilton, who among us has good judgment when our blood-alcohol content is more than twice the legal limit and we’ve been smoking the hippie lettuce? Thankfully a witness took down a license plate number that matched Hamilton's, according to the police report. When he was pulled over, Hamilton’s black vehicle had white paint on its front bumper, a bad development because Curry's car is white. It’s “uh-oh!” moment No. 6, quite a night for Hamilton. I’d feel verrrry good about your football program right about now, Ga. Tech fan, because you obviously have fine, high-character leaders for your players….well, you have the high part of it covered anyhow….
- Last night’s episode of Smallville was, as it turns out, the penultimate show of this season. I didn’t realize the season finale was coming up next week, but clearly it is and the ride is about to come to an end for Season 7. This particular episode featured enough ritualistic carving of Kryptonian symbols into people’s chests for another five seasons and the whole symbol-carving thing is where the episode kicked off. With Lex in possession of the cryptograph device he retrieved the security deposit box at the bank in Zurich, he needed to find an expert in antiquities to help him figure out how it worked and what its purpose was. Reluctantly, Lex allowed this man to take the device back to his shop to study further, but no sooner had this guy left than a mysterious stranger broke into the Luthor mansion and assaulted Lex. Once he had incapacitated Lex, this man carved a series of three Kryptonian symbols into Lex’s chest using a dagger. The symbols, as Clark later realized when looking at pictures of Lex’s injuries, mean “Traveler”, “Savior” and “Sanctuary.” Lex is rushed to Smallville Medical Center and has surgery to address his wounds, but as soon as he was out of surgery he bolted the hospital. He recognized his attacker as the same man who attacked him at the bank in Zurich, which puts Lex’s guard up even further. He gets a clue where to direct his anger when the antiques expert informs him that the cryptograph device was made by a legendary German watch maker who was commissioned to build a bizarre, magnificent time piece that led him to go into seclusion so he could concentrate on the project that would become his legacy. The clock he made was for a noted philanthropist who donated it to St. Christopher’s Cathedral in Montreal upon his death. The philanthropist’s name? Dr. Virgil Swann, a member of the Veritas group and friend of Clark Kent when Swann was still living. Lex is on the Luthor jet immediately, flying to Montreal. Beating him there is Clark, who worked with Chloe to decipher the symbols on Lex’s chest using pictures of the wounds taken by Jimmy Olsen. While Jimmy digs into the symbols themselves and finds himself entrenched in the mystery of the Kowachi caves in Smallville, which were a heavy topic in early seasons of the series, Clark and Chloe realize that St. Christopher’s is the place Clark needs to go to figure out where all of the clues and artifacts are pointing. At the church, Clark meets Edward Teague, a member of Veritas who went into hiding once Lionel Luthor began killing the other members. Teague recognizes who Clark is after CK reads the Kryptonian inscriptions on a huge marble artifact at the church’s altar, follows the instructions and lifts up a bowl standing at the top of the artifact to read more symbols on the bottom. Teague approaches Clark and tells him that he’s been waiting all of his life to serve the Traveler, but when Clark shows reluctance to embrace what Teague feels is his destiny, a destiny that includes killing his adversary, Lex, Teague responds by subduing Clark using kryptonite and then performing a bizarre Kryptonian ritual designed to prevent Clark for ever being controlled by the device Lex is seeking and thus from becoming a force for evil in the world. This is where the whole ceremonial carving of symbols into the flesh of people comes back in, with Teague cutting another symbol into Clark’s chest after placing him on some sort of marble slab with grooves and symbols cut into its face so liquefied kryptonite can be poured into those grooves and surround Clark’s prone body. Following the ceremony, Teague leaves Clark alone and goes to a lower level of the church where he confronts Lex, wh has arrived and placed his cryptograph device inside the clock it was designed for, setting off a chain reaction that spins gears, plays an old Scottish folk song and turns a plate on the front of the clock, revealing a small black disk with the symbol of the German clock maker on it, the same symbol that was on one of the gears in the cryptograph machine. Lex takes the disk but is then met by Teague, who informs him that the Traveler is no longer relevant and for that reason, to balance the equation, the Traveler’s adversary must be killed. A battle breaks out and just as Lex has the upper hand and is about to kill Teague, Clark is freed from his restraints by Chloe, who figured out he was in danger after Jimmy showed her some of the Kowachi cave paintings and told her that they shoed a scene of human sacrifice. Chloe borrowed Oliver Queen’s private jet, flew to Montreal and saved Clark, which in turn allowed him to super-speed onto the scene, knock the weapon out Lex’s hand, destroy the clock and zoom off before Lex saw him. Lex initially believed it was Teague who had performed the miracle disarming, but Teague admitted it was the traveler. Lex didn’t hang around St. Christopher’s long, opting to jump back onto his jet and set course for Scotland on account of the folk song he’d heard the clock play. He recognized it as a song his father made him play when Lex was taking piano lessons as a kid, so he assumed there was a connection between it and his father’s obsession with the Traveler. The folk song came from the island of St. Kilda, which one of Lex’s researchers told him was also the home of a castle and a small village until a wealthy American bought the castle and hauled it away. That wealthy American was Lex’s father Lionel and the castle was the Luthor mansion, Lex’s own home. Instead of heading off the St. Kilda, which is now a bird sanctuary, Lex went home and set to tearing the mansion apart searching for the next clue in his quest. A team of researchers can't find what Lex is looking for, but remembering the lyrics of the folk song and figuring out the orientation and location of the castle at its original site in Scotland help Lex figure out the mystery. He locates the symbol of the German watchmaker (what is it with watchmakers and supernatural things, anyhow? This German guy and Sylar, the super-powered villain on Heroes just to name two) above the fireplace and uses a blunt object to break the concrete and reveal a multi-faced metal orb that has a small depression in it that’s the exact size and shape of the black disk Lex acquired in Montreal. When he places the disk in the slot, the orb expands, lights up and projects some sort of holograph of the Earth, which is where we leave Lex for the time being. Clark is left with his own conundrum, one he mulls over back at the Kent Farm. He’s in his familiar spot in the loft in the barn (seriously, he’s the only one living there, does he have something against being inside the house?), thinking things over when Chloe arrives and confronts him with a harsh reality. He needs to oppose Lex before Lex acquires the power to control him because while Clark wouldn’t harm Lex on purpose, Lex wouldn’t hesitate to destroy or control Clark if given the chance. It’s an issue for Clark to chew on, but Jimmy Olsen may force the issue by doing his own digging. Jimmy uncovers a cave painting pointing back to the story of Namaan and Segeeth, a tale from way back at the beginning of the series, a painting that shows that while in the story’s early stages Namaan and Segeeth are separate, warring individuals, in the final painting they are shown as one being, indicating a decisive battle. Chloe shows the picture to Clark and hits him with the reality that this is a battle between he and Lex. Maybe that battle will be fought next week in the season finale, so tune in then to find out…
- Lost definitely had one of its best episodes of the season Thursday night. Addressing one of my primary complaints about the season, the show managed to work nearly all of the primary characters into at least some of the action. Although the episode was John Locke-centric, there were scenes with Jack, Kate, Hurley, Ben Linus, Sayid, Desmond and the crew of the freighter. There were no flash-forwards this week, just flashbacks to the life of Locke pre-island. The story literally began at the start of his life, with the night Locke was born to a teenage mother who got knocked up by a man twice her age, hit by a car when six month pregnant and rushed to the hospital. Her son was born premature and kept in an incubator for months, but when little John Locke was finally allowed out of the incubator, his teen mother couldn’t bear to even hold him. Her own mother raised Locke in her stead, but in a bizarre twist, scientist Richard Alpert, the same man who recruited Juliet to the Dharma Initiative, was at the hospital when Locke was taken from the incubator and followed him throughout his early years. When Locke was five or six years old, Alpert visited his home and said he was from a school for special children. He gave Locke some sort of peculiar test for intelligence, didn’t like the results and left. Before he left, though, he saw a drawing Locke had done of a stick figure being attacked by a swirling black cloud, a bone-chilling foretelling of the black smoke monster on the island that Locke was decades away from ever going to. He popped up again when Locke was in high school, offering him the chance to come to Portland, home of the DI’s false-front company, for a summer science camp, but Locke refused. The last flashback of the episode showed Locke in the hospital following his paralysis, talking with an orderly who had a creepy, disconcerting demeanor about him. The tall, slender black man kept talking about miracles, saying Locke could walk again some day and that he need to go on a walkabout, an Australian soul-searching adventure. It’s the very trip Locke went on that took him to Australia and eventually onto Oceanic 815, so clearly he heeded the advice of the orderly, who also said that when they met again, Locke would have something to thank him for. Back in the present, Hurley, Locke and Ben are tromping through the jungle, searching for Jacob’s cabin. Locke has a lucid dream in which a now-deceased Dharma Initiative maintenance man named Horace tells Locke to find him and in so doing, he will find Jacob’s cabin. After roaming aimlessly (a good comedic scene there, with all three men saying they didn’t know where they were going and Ben humorously admitting he was only following Hurley, good times), the small posse visits the open mass grave where former DI members’ bodies were deposited. Locke sifts through the remains, finds Horace’s corpse and picks a blueprint out of his pocket that shows the location of the cabin. Using the map, he leads his group through the jungle and night and Hurley finally spots the structure. Hurley and Ben agree Locke should go in alone, which he does. Inside, Locke doesn’t find Jacob, but rather Jack and Claire’s father, the same man who led Claire away from her camp with Sawyer (one of the few absent from last night’s episode entirely) and Miles last week during the night. However, this man is now calling himself Christian and says he speaks on behalf of Jacob. He also has Claire with him and she seems bizarrely, dementedly happy and serene. Christian refuses to answer any of Locke’s questions outside of the one most pressing one: how to save the island. Once he has the message, Locke leaves and passes it along to Ben and Hurley. To save the island, they must move the island. Makes no sense, right? But it is Lost, so it’s not supposed to make sense. Back on the freighter, tensions are high. Martin Keeme and his men have come back from the island with their one man who was seriously injured by the black smoke monster while trying to apprehend Ben Linus. While Keeme and his men reload and restock their arsenal, they also have to deal with the traitor on the boat, who Keeme initially believes to be the ship’s captain. The captain tells him otherwise and points him to the real mole, Kevin Johnson, a.k.a. Michael Dawson, Oceanic 815 survivor. Michael is assaulted by Keeme, as well as being handcuffed to his bed and having his leg pinned beneath the collapsed metal frame of the bed. Meanwhile, Sayid and Desmond realize that Keeme intends to kill everyone on the island and decide they need to go back to save everyone. Sayid talks the captain into giving him the Zodiac motorized boat to go back, but Desmond refuses to go. He explained that he’d spent three years on the island and refused to set foot on it ever again. Sayid speeds off on his own, leaving Desmond on the freighter. Meanwhile, Michael tells the captain the truth about Keeme, leading the captain to confront him as Keeme is readying his men to fly back for the assault on the island. A firefight ensues and the captain is shot and killed by Keeme, who then forces pilot Frank Lapidus to fly the chopper back to the island. As the chopper passes over the beach camp, Lapidus tosses a rolled-up backpack containing a satellite phone out the side and into the middle of the camp. Jack is the first to the pack and takes out the phone. He sees a tracking map on it, showing the helicopter’s flight path. He thinks it means they are supposed to follow the chopper, which must be what Lapidus meant to have them do. Jack is under orders from Juliet to take it easy until the stitches from his emergency appendectomy have a chance to heal, but he may not have a choice at this point. The previews for next week seem to point to the first revelation of the Oceanic Six to the world as a group, so maybe we will see Jack, Kate, Sayid, Hurley, Sun and Aaron getting off the island. Stay tuned for that until next week…..
- This is one of the most sickening, revolting assault stories you will ever hear about. Former Minnesota Vikings defensive lineman Darrion Scott was charged Tuesday with assault and accused of holding a plastic dry cleaning bag over the head of his 2-year-old son. He was charged in Hennepin County Court with third-degree assault and domestic assault by strangulation, both felonies, and also hit with charges of endangerment of a child -- a gross misdemeanor -- for allegedly keeping a loaded, unsecured handgun in his unlocked nightstand, where a 2-year-old could have easy access to it. The gun charge is a side note here, because the image of a massive NFL lineman forcibly holding a plastic bag over the head of his 2-year-old son is disturbing on so many levels. As inexcusable and reprehensible as it is to strike a child when you become angry with them, at least you can call those temporary moments of losing your cool and becoming emotional. How anyone gets to the point where you are finding a plastic bag, placing it over a toddler’s head and holding it there for a prolonged period of time is very, very disturbing and almost beyond belief. According to the complaint, the boy's mother said she went to Scott's home on April 26 to pick the boy up when she heard the boy crying and found him with a dry cleaning bag over his head and Scott holding the bag tight around the boy's neck. Scott said he was playing with the child and wanted to see if the boy could get the bag off his head himself. Seriously, that’s all you came up with that you were playing? Right, because who hasn’t played a fun game of fake strangulation with their 2-year-old? I have many fond memories of my parents placing plastic bags of varying sizes and colors over my head when I was a you boy and seeing if I could forcibly remove that bag from my own head despite being deprived of air and weighing a small fraction of what they weighed, good times! I’m sure you have many such memories of your own, so you know what I’m talking about. The boy’s mother wasn’t buying this explanation, because she reported the incident to child protection and photographed red marks she saw on the boy's neck. This isn’t the first time this child has suffered injuries of some kind while under his father’s care either. According to the boy’s mother, Scott brought the boy to her home at the end of March or early April and asked to bathe him to get the boy ready for bed. dressed the boy in long pajamas, and the next morning the woman noted that the boy had marks on his arm and ear that appeared to be burns, the complaint said.
Although Scott denied knowing the cause of the injuries when asked about them, a doctor examined the boy and reported the marks appeared to be intentionally inflicted and were consistent with either a burn or impact injury, the complaint said. Going a little further back in time to February or March, the complaint said, the boy came home from Scott's with three lumps on his forehead. On that occasion, Scott came up with another gem of an excuse by telling the boy's mother that he and the boy were doing a “victory dance” when the boy's head hit the wood frame of a sofa. Scott admitted to throwing the child in the air to celebrate the boy's use of the toilet and that the boy fell and hit his head, the complaint said. I hate to be Captain Negative here, but this is a disturbing pattern and I’m not just talking about the pattern of this idiot coming up with some of the lamest cover stories in the history of cover stories. I’m referring more to the pattern of this child ending up with injuries and having his life and well-being put in danger by his dad. Darrion Scott needs a parenting class or ten and he also needs to learn to be a better liar. I’d work on the parenting thing first, but that’s just me.
- This is one of those stories where you’re really better off not knowing the whole tale. When you hear that 300 dead cats were founded in freezers at the Sacramento, Calif. home of 47-year-old Robert Louis Vondueren, just leave it alone and don’t ask any more questions. When you hear that 30 more live cats were found in the home by animal control workers over the weekend, be thankful that authorities arrived in time to save those animals and just keep on moving, nothing more to see here people. Do not, I repeat, do not under ANY circumstances devote any additional time or thought to how those cats died, why Vondueren had that many cats to begin with, what he did with them and what possessed him to store them in his freezers once they died. Don’t ask yourself if this was some sort of creepy, frozen cat cemetery or if he was doing scientific expiremtns on them. Don’t think about what would happen if someone was visiting Vondueren’s house and inadvertently opened the wrong freezer while looking for a popsicle. Just take this story at face value, realize that this is a sick, twisted pud and move on……
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