- If there’s one thing I’m tired of in all of sports almost as much as I’m tired of the Brett Favre saga, it’s the continual what-if’s about the future of Cleveland Cavaliers star forward and noted egomaniac LeBron James. Pretty much ever since the moment he was drafted by the Cavs, speculation has been that his ultimate goal is to ball under the bright lights of New York. Now that his good friend Jay-Z is a minority owner with the New Jersey Nets, who will become the Brooklyn Nets in a couple of years, that seems to be the trendy place to predict as LBJ’s next stop. Basketball observers went nuts when James was asked about his favorite cities recently and listed NYC at the top of the list. Never mind that he’s under contract with Cleveland for two more years, let’s up the speculation, dammit! But that speculation took a new (and absurd) twist this week when James responded to reports that Greek pro team Olympiakos would consider signing him when his Cavaliers contract expires. James’ response to that prospect was that he would consider making the leap from the NBA to Greece….if Olympiakos pays him $50 million a year. It’s an absurd statement on so many levels. First, no NBA superstar in his prime is leaving the Association to go ball in relative obscurity in Europe. Yes, several NBAers have made that jump this offseason, but also-ran players like Josh Childress and high schooler Brandon Jennings leaving for Europe is entirely different than one of the NBA’s three best players doing the same. Secondly, no one is paying LBJ $50 million a year to ball, period. His goal of becoming the youngest billionaire in the world will have to come courtesy of endorsement deals and investments, because no one is shelling out that much for him to play basketball. All of that being said….why was there even a need to ask this question in the first place? Who cares about two years down the road? We live in the here, in the now. Sorry to go Debbie Downer on you, but there is no guarantee that James or any of us will still be alive and kicking in two years…..
- Good stoner humor in a movie is tough to pull off. Stoners have subtle psychological and character complexities and depth that not everyone can accurately capture on film. However, when done right, stoner humor can make for a stellar film. Helping to revive the sorely underutilized stoner/action genre are James Franco and Seth Rogen, stars of Pineapple Express. There are fights, car chases and shooting, all with the added comedic value of involving potheads. Rogen is Dale, a process server and avowed stoner who has a bit of Roman Polanski and Woody Allen in him in that he’s dating a high school girl. Franco plays Dale’s dealer, Saul. He delivers a new kind of pot - Pineapple Express the supposed marijuana of the future (like the Dippin’ Dots of hippie lettuce) to Dale, who sparks up while waiting in his car to serve papers on an unsuspecting bad guy. He sees the bad guy (Gary Cole) and a cop buddy kill a man, which would be a big enough problem on its own. However, the bad guys spot Dale and realize he saw them commit the murder. This leads to the main plot of the movie, wherein two paranoid stoners try to evade the bad guys trying to kill them and to do so while stoned. Remember, this is the movie that inspired Franco and Rogen to smoke fake joints during the MTV Movie Awards and forced horrified show producers to cut to wide shots of the auditorium to avoid showing the fake toking up on camera. It’s a really good movie, a funny one with two likeable stoners at the center of the chaos. It’s worth your time and movie money, so give it a shot…..
- Too often, members of our government at all levels are rightly accused of not working together. They don’t cooperate because of partisan politics and personal agendas, but the bottom line is that whatever the reason for their broken relationship, they can’t coexist and cooperate. Thus, it warms my heart when I read about stories like this one, where government officials band together for a common goal - even if that goal is scoring fraudulent prescriptions for painkillers and making money off of the drugs. Seeing 56 government employees - including a police officer, a felony court clerk, two corrections officers and 27 school bus drivers and attendants - arrested in a scam using health insurance information to obtain phony prescriptions for the painkiller OxyContin is a beautiful thing. Sure, these individuals are part of a group of 62 facing charges including racketeering, conspiracy to commit racketeering and grand theft, but don’t let those small details obscure the big picture. Maybe they received 130 illegal prescriptions and 12,000 pills in the process, but at least they were working together. They may have finagled $400,000 worth of illegal OxyContin scrips, but can you really put a price on seeing government employees cutting through the bureaucratic bullsh*t and working together? This plan was years in the making, with six “recruiters” enlisting the first few members of the scam. Those recruits then received OxyContin from another member of the scam who is a doctor. The pills were then sold to another member of the scam, with the recruits asking their insurance companies for reimbursement for the pills they had obtained. It sounds complicated and it is pretty detailed, but I’m choosing to look past that and see this for the positive development that it is, proof that our government officials can get on the same page….
- Tracking down the season finale of Last Comic Standing was a major chore because of freaking preseason football. Yes, games that don’t count like my hometown Cleveland Browns clogged up the airwaves and pushed LSC to freaking 3 a.m. That’s what they make TiVo for, though. I got to see my fave for the season, Iliza Shlesinger, take home the win over some other really funny comics - and Jim Tavare. That guy and his comedy with a cello lost me about two seconds before he started. I also didn’t need a performance by last season’s winner, Jeff Peel, or Jon Lovitz, who I have come to abhor in every sense of the word. His voice, his schtik - they’re no good. But at least the right person won this season, even though she was the only female in the final six. So congrats to Iliza on the win, she may be the only truly funny and really pretty female comic I’ve seen in a long time, so she should be all right….
- Toledo, Ohio as the gambling and game-fixing capita of America. Can’t say I saw that coming, but the more evidence pours in, the harder it becomes to dispute that reality. Less than a year after former University of Toledo football player Scooter McDougle was indicted in a gambling and point-shaving scandal, former UT basketball player Sammy Villegas has been indicted on his own set of such charges. According to a federal bill of information filed in U.S. District Court in Detroit this week, Villegas shaved points during the 2004-05 and 2005-06 seasons, his final two on the team. He also allegedly paid another player to help him shave points, although that player wasn’t named in the bill of information. Villegas has been charged with conspiracy to influence sports contests by bribery, a serious federal offense and one that could send him to prison for a significant amount of time. He is alleged to have received cash and gifts in order to affect the final score of games against the spread. The point shaving came in instances like the one where he intentionally missed two free throws during a game against Central Michigan on February 4, 2006. For the sake of college basketball, my favorite sport to follow, I sincerely hope this isn't true. Unfortunately, the feds don’t indict unless they have an ironclad case, so my gut tells me that Sammy Villegas is screwed. Either he cuts a deal and rats out the other involved parties in the case or he’s looking at a conviction and a nice federal prison sentence….
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