- Keep it in perspective, Lamarr Houston, keep it in perspective. While I can understand how a season-opening win over a Division I football power like the mighty Florida Atlantic Owls might be cause for a ginormous celebration, you getting molared up after the game and trying to drive home while hammered is a bit too much celebration. When you’re one of the top 10 teams in the nation and you’re taking on a program that plays in the oh, so prestigious Atlantic Sun Conference, the appropriate celebration for a 52-10 ass kicking would be a Natural Light on the front porch with your boys and maybe a game of beer pong. It’s not a win that calls for a blowout celebration, what with it being a six-touchdown beatdown against a team that your third stringers could have beaten. Thus, you getting picked up for drunken driving early Sunday morning by Austin police after being involved in a traffic accident was a bit excessive. That the incident happened only a few hours the game ended seems to indicate that Houston went straight from the locker room to the bar stool. He was involved in a two-car accident where there were no injuries. The accident occurred about 3:15 a.m. and when the cops showed up, it didn’t take long for them to figure out that he was over the legal limit. Again, there’s never an excuse for driving drunk, but if you’re going to do it, at least hold off until a win over Oklahoma in the Red River Shootout or a Big 12 championship game win, my man. Time and place, amigo, time and place……
- My God, it really is possible! American forces in Iraq really can cede control of a location to the people who actually belong there without the universe collapsing upon itself. Security in the Anbar province, a western territory where the country’s violent, brutal insurgency once reigned in terror, has improved to the point that U.S. military commanders are preparing to turn over control of the region to Iraqi forces. The hope, at least what’s being offered up in meaningless statements by those involved, is that this will serve as an example and catalyst for further reductions in U.S. troop levels elsewhere as W. and the other jokers running this war on the American side slowly start to remember that, hey, this isn't our country and we’re not in charge here. It would have been great to understand that before we invaded and started a war that has dragged on for more than half a decade, but I guess you take what you can get…..
- I missed this on Friday, but….okay, so I didn’t miss it, I just figured there were more important things to discuss than a hack, black-man-turned-white-woman, helium-voiced, child-molesting pedophile celebrating his 50th birthday. However, I have some space to fill, so why not take a moment to wish a belated happy birthday to the King of Pedophiles, Michael Jackson? If not for Whack-O Jack-O, Justin Timberlake would have no one to blatantly rip off his entire career plan and shtick from and would be left to drift directionless through life. Without Jack-O, all of those kids he lured into his bedroom and (allegedly) molested wouldn’t have had the chance to have their life ruined by a world-class pervert and could have lived a much more normal existence. Without Jack-O, the public would have missed out on years of overrated, glitzy pop songs with videos featuring this freak show dancing in sequined outfits, wearing one glove and sporting one of the ugliest man perms in history. So happy b-day, Jack-O, here’s hoping the dozens of young boys you tried to lure to your birthday party weren’t able to make it….
- Booyah! That’s what I’m talkin’ about, Thai protestors! These great people are kicking it up a notch, taking it to the local police who are trying to shut down their ongoing protest on the grounds of the prime minister’s office. With the police counter-punching by obtaining court orders demanding that the protestors vacate the premises and also securing warrants for the arrests of nine protest leaders on charges of insurrection, the ball was squarely in the court of the dissidents. They put their numbers to good use, outnumbering the police by a ration of 15-to-1, and drove the police off the grounds. That’s right, not only did they disobey the demands to leave, they made The Man get out. All of this allows their efforts to oust Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej from office, a worthy goal to be sure. Any time a group like the People’s Alliance for Democracy wants to taker a stand against a dictatorial leader, it’s a good thing. These protestors have now spent the better part of a week encamped at the Government House and from the looks of it, they’ll spend as many nights as is necessary to achieve their goal. I, for one, will be rooting them on every step of the way, cheering for them as they extend a huge middle finger of defiance to their government……
- A lot to digest from last night’s season premiere of Prison Break, so let’s give it a shot. Opening with a short narrative by Michael Scofield (Wentworth Miller) was interesting, although for the most part he revealed nothing new, other than the fact that he had tracked Whistler and Gretchen to a fancy reception/convention in Los Angeles. As the show opened, Michael was crashing the reception and confronting Whistler and Gretchen, who were busy stealing a computer memory card of some sort. Their unhappy reunion ended when Gretchen, trying to talk her way out of Michael shooting her, dropped a bombshell: Sara, the love of Michael’s life, is alive. The assumption had been that last season, when the Company sent a box with a severed head inside to Michael’s brother Lincoln in a Panama parking garage that Dr. Sara Tancredi was a goner. The revelation that she’s alive was a stunner and a great way to start the season. That was about the only positive for Michael and Linc in hour one of the premiere, with both finding themselves arrested and in handcuffs within the show’s first 60 minutes. Michael is arrested after returning to Chicago in search of Sara. He’s there because after the run-in with Whistler and Gretchen, old nemesis Alex Mahone contacts him through the Europeangoldfinch.net website Michael told the other Fox River escapees to use if they ever needed to contact him. Mahone learned about the site in Season 2 and used it to trap Michael in that season’s finale. Now he’s using it to set up a meet at the Santa Monica pier with Michael and talk Scofield into meeting Whistler in a back alley in L.A. There, Whistler tells Michael about Sara’s possible whereabouts but also tries to recruit him in a plot to help take down the Company. As Whistler tells it, he and Mahone are working together and the computer memoery card he stole at the reception is something called Scylla, which is the Company’s black book of dark secrets and names. Finding the disk is part one of the plot, with part two being to break into Company headquarters to read the encrypted data on the card. The information on the building’s location is in the bird watching book Whistler lost escaping from SONA, and the book is now in possession of T-Bag. Before Whistler can finish his pitch, a Company hitman who is hunting Michael, Mahone, Linc and anyone else with ties to Whistler, shoots Whistler in the head and takes back the memory card. At that point, Michael flees and returns to Chicago, where he is arrested while contacting Bruce Bennett, an old political ally of Sara’s father. Around the same time, Linc is back in Panama, where he’s trying to start a new life with son L.J. and Whistler’s old flame Sofia. When the Company sends a hitman to take out Linc, he brawls with the man in a market and ends up shooting the hitman, resulting in a near-immediate arrest for Linc. However, when an FBI agent named Donald Self (Michael Rapaport) pulls strings to get both Linc and Michael out of jail, the plot takes a twist. It seems that Self is an old ally of Linc and Michael’s father and has been trying to locate Scylla and take down the Company for years. His last chance to do so was Whistler…..which then became Michael and Linc when Whistler was killed. After initially turning down the offer to retrieve Scylla and break into Company HQ, Michael and Linc leave and are taken by Bruce Bennett to see….Sara. An emotional reunion between Michael and Sara is truncated when the same Company assassin who shot Whistler comes and tries to take out Michael, Linc and Sara. That’s enough to convince the brothers to accept Self’s offer and go after the Company, which means relocating to LA. They’re joined by some familiar faces - Alex Mahone, Brad Bellick and Fernando Sucre. As it turs out, the same thug who tried killed Whistler also murdered Mahone’s family, giving Mahone all the motivation he needs to join up. Sucre and Bellick, along with T-Bag, were beneficiaries of a massive fire back at the SONA prison in Panama which burned the prison to the ground. In the process, many inmates escaped and Bellick and Sucre found a place in a van transporting illegal immigrants, heading north. Five miles from the border, they got out at a diner in the middle of nowhere and were met by Bellick’s mother, who drove them the rest of the way to the U.S. Once there, though, the lure of seeing his newborn child in the hospital lured Sucre into a trap. His girlfriend, Maricruz, allowed him to see the baby but her sister called the cops on Sucre and he and Bellick were nabbed trying to escape from the hospital. Since they, like Michael and Linc, were facing major prison time, they took Self’s deal to go after the Company. T-Bag spent most of the episode off the radar, first saying goodbye to Sister Mary Francis, the hooker who used to belong to the deceased Lechero and who couriered money to T-Bag in last season’s finale. The two of them have been shacked up in a motel room since T-Bag’s escape, but he’s determined to get back to the U.S. to get revenge on Scofield. T-Bag hires two “coyotes,” i.e. shady characters to transport him across the border. Unfrotunately, the two coyotes see the load of cash he’s carrying and toss T-Bag and a fellow traveler out of the vehicle in the middle of nowhere. Left to hike across the desert in the burning sun, T-Bag’s fellow traveler eventually turns on him and tries to kill him, but the ever-resourceful T-Bag wins the fight and as a later comment reveals, ends up snacking on his former companion. In the U.S., T-Bag follows clues from Whistler’s book to a bus stop locker in San Diego and inside finds a driver’s license and information packet intended to Whistler to use to break into Company headquarters. Next stop for T-Bag is LA, where the team of Michael, Linc, Sara, Mahone, Bellick and Sucre has arrived and set up shop in a warehouse near the ocean. They have orders and are told that a new member will be added to their team - Roland, a geeky, tech-dork ID thief who is the ultimate computer genius. Agent Self instructs them to get busy, with Mahone giving the team its first lead by tracking down a driver/security guard he saw while working with Gretchen and Whistler. Using his law enforcement background, Mahone finds the guard, who is designated as the “card holder” for the company and thus the man in control of Scylla. To steal Scylla, Michael’s team must find a way inside the card holder’s home to steal it - or so they think. Roland reveals that one of his inventions, the one that sent him to prison, is a device that looks like a cell phone but is really a sophisticated scanner that can copy data from any cell phone, card reader, ATM or like machine in a matter of seconds. It can be used to steal credit card numbers, PIN numbers, etc. By getting it inside the house where the card is held, Scylla can be copied. Michael puts a plan in motion to sneak the device inside the purse of a maid at the house and posing as the security company in order to move her around the house to the room where the card is located. The plan works and the data is copied…but the maid finds the phone in her purse, knows it’s not hers and leaves it at the house. That necessitates a second plan in which Linc and Sucre trigger the alarm of the house across the street and when those inside the target house go outside to see what’s going on, Michael and Mahone sneak in, retrieve Roland’s gadget and get out. When they take the device back to the warehouse, though, they’re in for a big surprise. Scylla isn't just one computer card; it’s six cards, each a small piece of the puzzle. They need to find the other five in order to complete their mission, along with finding T-Bag and the book containing the location of the Company’s headquarters. In all, a premiere with a lot of content and a lot to wrap your mind around, but a great start to Season 4. When you factor in Sara’s lingering psychological trauma from her abuse at the hands of the Company, the drama is high and it’s only going to get worse. Bruce Bennett is in the hands of the same Company hitman (the guy who played Wallace Fennell’s dad on Veronica Mars), Michael’s team is in an impossible situation and we’ve still got the whole rest of the season to go….good times!
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