- At this point, I’m not even angry with China; I’m impressed. This is clearly a nation dedicated to foisting as many toxic products on the world as possible, so you have to respect their pursuit of being the absolute best at it. As such, I’m happy to see that British candy maker Cadbury has recalled all of its Chinese-made candy products over fears that they may be contaminated with the chemical melamine. “The products that are affected by this withdrawal include a range of Cadbury chocolate products and Choclairs, all produced in our Beijing plant,” Cadbury said in a statement. So are you in danger of yet another potentially deadly Chinese product, just as you were with lead paint-covered toys, toothpaste with chemicals usually reserved for antifreeze in them and tainted milk powder? Well, in this case most of the products were exported to Taiwan, Hong Kong, Australia, the Pacific island of Nauru and Christmas Island in the Indian Ocea, so probably not. To cope with the problem, Cadbury said that it is implementing new food safety and quality checks at its Beijing plant. Coming off of a scandal where
nearly 53,000 children in China have been sickened by tainted formula or other products containing melamine, the fact that this is happening again is astounding. Dozens of countries have banned or recalled Chinese milk products, a trend you’d expect to continue. How melamine, which is commonly used in coatings and laminates, wood adhesives, fabric coatings, ceiling tiles and flame retardants, ends up in candy….I don’t know. Again, it takes a nation seriously devoted to providing the most toxic, deadly products possible to keep up this level of performance. So stick with what you do best, China, just as long as I don’t have to use any of your products…..
- Last night’s episode of Heroes was titled “One of them, one of us,” a clear reference to the Company’s policy of pairing one individual with powers and one without powers to form its teams. This time, the team was the odd pairing of Noah Bennet, a.k.a. H.R.G., with Sylar, the killing machine who not so long ago tortured Noah’s daughter Claire. New Company head Angela Petrelli insisted Sylar was ready to go out into the field and even dressed him up nice in a suit and tie. The first assignment for Sylar and H.R.G. was to go to the site of a bank robbery in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. and capture the four escaped Level 5 prisoners who are responsible for the robbery. Among those four escapees is Peter Petrelli, entrapped in the body of escaped inmate Jesse by Future Peter Petrelli in the season premiere. As the robbery goes down, Peter squares off with his fellow escapees when they try to harm bank patrons, including Knox, whose power is feeding off the fear of others to have super strength. Knox also calls the police and insists that the group wait at the bank for the Company to show up so they can exact revenge on everyone who helped put them behind bars. When H.R.G. and Sylar show up, Knox has already killed one of his fellow escapees, leaving three of them alive. H.R.G. goes into the bank because the escapees have promised that if he goes in, they will allow the hostages to leave. He enters and is immediately attacked, but before Knox can kill him, Peter/Jesse unleashes his power, a Black Canary-like (from Smallville) ability to use his voice to create sound waves that overpower people. As those sound waves pulsate through the bank, knocking down everyone in their way, time is frozen as well and Future Peter steps onto the scene, clearly the one who has stopped time. With everyone frozen in place, he somehow manages to remove Present Day Peter from Jesse’s body, then restarts time. Both Peter’s leave via teleportation, with Future Peter vowing to show his self from past times how bad the future really could be. Their departure leaves H.R.G. alone with Knox and his fellow escapees, Jesse and the one with the power of a flame thrower, to deal with him. Stepping in to save the day at the last minute is Sylar, who busts out a few of his own powers and stops H.R.G.’s attackers. However, Sylar’s own criminal nature pops up and he locks H.R.G. out of the bank and goes back to his old trick of cutting open Jesse’s skull to steal his powers. He doesn’t kill all three super-powered escapees, though, leaving the rest alive to be taken back to Level 5. Out in California, Claire Bennet is fighting her own battle, a much different battle than the one her dad is fighting. She wants to harness her own powers of healing and being impervious to pain and says she wants to do so to help people. For help in using her powers, she turns to her biological mother, Meredith Gordon, who H.R.G. has enlisted to live with his family in order to protect them while he’s gone. Meredith has her own power to create fire, but she uses it to help Claire in a unique way. Meredith tells Claire that she can skip school for the day and the pair goes to some sort of dock where they step inside a cargo container. There, Meredith uses her power to create enough fire and heat to sap nearly all of the oxygen out of the air, making Claire feel like she is suffocating. In her weakened state, Claire is questioned over and over by Meredith about why she wants to use her powers to fight. Eventually, Claire breaks down and admits that her true motivation is to hurt Sylar to gain revenge for him hurting her. Speaking of hurt…..Tracy Strauss, the Nikki Sanders look-a-like who continues to insist that she isn't Nikki, is experiencing pain of the emotional sort. After a visit from Nathan Petrelli in which he once again wonders if she really isn't Nikki, Tracy decides to go to New Orleans, where she knows that Nikki was last seen. There, she finds Nikki inside a casket and meets Micah, Nikki’s son and a kid with the power to talk to and control machines. Micah talks to Tracy, tells her about his mom and then uses his power to track down information that would show a link between Tracy and Nikki. As it turns out, both were born at the same hospital on the same day, with the same doctor delivering both of them. When Tracy goes to see the doctor, Dr. Zimmerman, he not only recognizes her, he tells her that he “created” her. What does that mean? Not sure yet. Another mind-bending development was Matt Parkman’s experience on his spirit walk in Africa, courtesy of Future Peter teleporting him there in the season premiere. Parkman continues to hang with his new African homey, who this week reveals to him a series of paintings on rocks in the middle of the desert that this mystery man has done throughout his life, pictures which tell Parkman’s life story word for word even though the two have never met before. The painter tells Parkman that although the paintings of the past are accurate, the ones depicting the future are no longer so because the future has now changed. The painter then throws on some headphones and just as artist Isaac Mendez did before his demise last season, goes into a glassy-eyed trance and paints the future. The new painting shows Parkman helping a woman he doesn’t yet recognize. Afterward, Parkman tries on the headphones for himself and they send him into his own glassy-eyed trance. AWOL in this week’s episode were Dr. Mohinder Suresh and his new self-administered superpowers, and Maya, his new lady friend. So until next week, that’s it and that’s all……
- That’s the way to show that you’re dedicated to your football career and want to get back into the NFL, Travis Henry. Henry was released by the Denver Broncos before the season because the team questioned his commitment to them, so what does my man T. Henry do? That right, he gets arrested in the Denver suburb of Centennial following an alleged cocaine deal. The Drug Enforcement Administration popped Henry and James Mack Tuesday after they met to buy cocaine from a person who was cooperating with authorities. The sting operation resulted in Mack and Henry being taken into federal custody on suspicion of knowingly and intentionally conspiring to distribute and possess with intent to distribute cocaine. Henry was released by the Broncos back on June 2 after being hampered during training camp by a sprained left knee. The drug arrest doesn’t come as a big surprise, given the fact that he has been suspended three times by the NFL for violating its substance abuse policy. Actually, the real drama here was seeing which would happen first: another drug incident or fathering another child out of wedlock. After all, Henry has allegedly fathered nine kids by nine different women in at least four states, so dude does have skills in that area as well. But no, drugs win out as Henry took part in what is being called “a multikilogram” drug deal. The case has its genesis in Montana, where a trooper and DEA agent stopped a car that was carrying 6 pounds of the hippie lettuce and about 3 kilograms of cocaine on Sept. 16. At that time, an unidentified passenger in the car told authorities Mack and Henry had supplied him with the drugs, which he was supposed to deliver to customers in Billings. The passenger and another customer in Billings claimed to have owed Henry about $40,000 in drug proceeds and also alleged that Henry had threatened him and his family over the debt. So in the span of a little over a year, Henry has gone from productive NFL running back who inked a 5-year, $22 million contract to someone facing life in prison and a $4 million fine. That is what we like to call a decided downward trajectory in your life……
- If there’s one type of criminal arrest that always pumps me up, it’s a good pedophile bust. Nothing makes me feel better when it comes to the legal system than perverted, sick freaks who engage in child pornography and/or sexual abuse get busted. These are the dregs of society, the lowest common denominator whose sick minds make us all feel worse about our society, wherever it is we call home. So I applaud police in Madrid for arresting 121 men and seizing millions of computer files in the country's biggest operation against child pornography on the Internet. Better still, authorities are looking at 96 others who may still be taken into custody. I just wish I could have been there to see eight-hundred police officers bursting in on these 121 sick freaks in raids across most of Spain’s provinces. Better still, this operation was conducted in cooperation with federal police in Brazil, which uncovered a worldwide file-sharing network that was trading millions of files in 75 countries. That’s a whole lot of pervs, folks.
During their search, officers uncovered some truly sick, disturbing computer images of young children in sexually explicit positions, and some of the pictures depict rape, police said. And in what can only be described as a nauseating, disgusting piece of news, two of the men arrested used their nephews, who were under 10 years of age, for the photographs. These pervs come from all walks of life: commercial pilots, school janitors, taxi drivers, bank workers and intelligence agency workers. So I wish the worst to all of you sick freaks, you truly make this world a worse place to live and I hope you experience your own special kind of justice from your fellow inmates once you get to prison……
- Stoners, I’m going to need you to calm down….aww, heck, look who I’m talking to. Okay, so you sonters may not be overly excited because of your pot-induced mellow-ness, but still, it has to be great news for you that one of your favorite bands, Phish, is reuniting. The Vermont-bred jam band, which disbanded in 2004, announced Wednesday it's reuniting for three dates next March in Hampton, Virginia, and will be continuing its run together after those dates. Phish has booked dates for March 6-8, 2009, at the Hampton Coliseum. Dates for the rest of the shows will be announced down the road, but it’s not like you stoners would remember something that far in the future anyhow if you knew now. These will be the first shows for the band since those dark days for potheads back August 2004, when Phish said goodbye to its fans with a two-day festival at Newport State Airport in Coventry, Vermont. But you just can’t keep a good jam band down, not one that has been around since 1983, when Phish formed at the University of Vermont. Rumors of a reunion have been circulating since last May, when all four -- Trey Anastasio, Page McConnell, Mike Gordon and Jon Fishman -- appeared together to accept a lifetime achievement award at the Jammy Awards in New York. Choosing Hampton Colisem for their reunion makes sense for Phish; the band has played there a dozen times, and recorded “Hampton Comes Alive,” a six-CD set, there in 1998. So roll a fattie, spark up and mellow out on the couch, stoners, maybe fire open a bag of Cheetos or Funjuns for me……
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