- What a final weekend it should be for Major League Baseball. While some teams – the Angels, Cubs and Dodgers – have wrapped up their divisions, or in the cases of the Cubs and Angels, the best record in their respective leagues, but there are plenty of postseason positions left to settle. In the American League Central, the White Sox and Twins are battling for the division title and are separated by only a half game after the Twins swept the White Sox in three straight games earlier this week. The Twins are doing what they do, scrapping, battling and refusing to quit despite being undermanned and sporting a smaller payroll than nearly everyone they are competing against. I admire the heck out of the Twins and will be rooting for them. I will also be watching closely to see if the New York Mets can complete yet another late-season choke job to miss the playoffs like they did in 2007. Last year, the Mets blew a seven-game lead with 17 games to play and lost the NL East title to Philadelphia. This year, the Mets had a slimmer lead over the Phillies that evaporated a couple of weeks ago. Now, the Mets are just trying to hold off Milwaukee for the wild card. Despite a late-season swoon that cost them a shot at the NL Central title, the Brewers have hung tough and stayed within striking distance of the Mets. The two teams are tied heading into this weekend and while the Mets host Florida, the same team they completed their collapse against last year, and the Brewers host the Cubs, who have nothing to play for in terms of postseason standing. If I had to hazard a guess, I’d bank on the Mets choking again this season despite a new manager, Jerry Manuel, and the motivation of last season’s failure to spur them on…….
- For the first time in the history of the series, Smallville showcased Clark Kent in a place most closely associated with the Superman mystique: the Daily Planet. With CK on the job in the basement of the Planet, situated at his desk across from Lois Lane, the day starts off with a bang when a bus blows up on the street in front of the building. As Lois reacts to the shock of the blast, she finds Clark already gone, super-speeding to the scene to help rescue passengers. One of the passengers he rescues turns out to be Tess Mercer, the acting CEO of LuthorCorp with Lex AWOL and thus new boss at the Planet. After things die down, Tess calls Clark to her office and thanks him for saving her, then tries to pump him for information about Lex’s whereabouts. When Clark denies knowing anything that would help locate his former best friend, Tess says she accepts his response but once CK leaves, she directs a staffer to keep tabs on Clark because she believes that he does know something. Another of the passengers Clark helped to save was a teen girl named Bet, who ended up collapsing on the sidewalk shortly after Clark helped her off the bus. When she collapses, Chloe is there to pick her up, along with a paramedic named Davis (Sam Witwer, a.k.a. the new Doomsday on the show). Together, they get Bet to the hospital where she checks out fine. However, Chloe learns that Bet is a street kid and she has nowhere to go, so Chloe offers to put her up for the night. Davis has an offer for Bet, too; a friend of his runs a home for street kids where she could go and get the education and training she needs to turn her life around. Bet is hesitant to accept Davis’ offer, but she does stay with Chloe for the night at her apartment above the Talon in Smallville. Everything seems fine until Clark and Lois continue digging into the bus explosion. Using his super hearing, Clark overhears investigators saying that there are no traces of explosive material on the bus. With Smallville’s background of meteor freaks, Clark suspects something is afoot. He goes to question Bet, who says a friend of hers had been bragging about being able to generate extreme heat with his body and blow things up. When Clark and Bet find this friend at a skate park in Metropolis, he runs and Clark pursues. When this guy is cornered in an alley, Clark tries to talk him down from his panic, but before that can happen, the guy explodes as Bet and Clark look on. Clark assumes he blew himself up, but when the autopsy reveals no traces of meteor rock in his body, it dawns on CK that Bet is actually the one with the meteor power. He speeds back to the Talon, where Bet has become agitated with Chloe’s insistence on helping her and tries to use her powers on Chloe. Clark arrives and saves his friend, but Bet is taken into custody and sent to Smallville’s favorite crazy haven, Bell Reeve Sanitarium. There, Bet receives a visit from Tess Mercer. As it turns out, Bet was held by LuthorCorp at the same Montana testing facility that Chloe herself was held at, escaped and was on the run from the company when Tess tracked her down on the bus. That was the reason for the explosion, but Tess offers Bet a second chance, a chance to “join a team” of people like her, i.e. a Bizarro League of Justice to combat the one that Clark, Oliver Queen and Co. have formed of good superheroes. Also in this episode, Clark and Lois finally learned about Chloe’s engagement to Jimmy Olsen, a week after the fact. Clark heard the news from Davis, who inadvertently spilled the beans at the hospital as Clark was on hand to search for the aforementioned autopsy on the exploding man. Clark reassures Chloe that he is happy for her, even if that means he and Chloe’s relationship will change once she is married. The most interesting part of the episode, though, may have been at the end as Chloe calls Davis from the Isis Foundation offices, Lana Lang’s foundation that Chloe has agreed to watch over for now. After deciding to use her firing from the Planet to make a change in her life, Chloe settles on counseling people with meteor powers at Davis’ urging and calls him to tell him the news. However, as she leaves her message on his phone, we see Davis, lying unclothed in a Metropolis alley, shivering and convulsing. So why the curious state in an odd place? Tune in next week and find that out…………
- Want some good news for the environment? So do I, but that’s not what I have for you now. International researchers announced this week that the world significantly increased its pollution of the chief man-made global warming gas last year. The fallout from that reality is that the world has now put itself on a course that could push beyond leading scientists' projected worst-case scenario. The new numbers are being tagged with the label of "scary" by some. They come as a surprise because scientists thought an economic downturn would slow energy use, but instead, carbon dioxide output jumped 3 percent from 2006 to 2007. That amount is well above even the most dire outlook for emissions from burning coal and oil and related activities as projected by a Nobel Prize-winning group of international scientists in 2007. On top of that, forests and oceans, which suck up carbon dioxide, are doing so at lower rates than in the 20th century. If both of those trends continue, they put the world on track for the highest predicted rises in temperature and sea level. Wanna guess who the two worst offenders were? . Yup, everyone’s favorite Communist behemoth, China, and the United States. The pollution leader was China, followed by the United States, which is the leader in emissions per person in carbon dioxide output. So there’s something the U.S. is still tops in, because although several developed countries slightly cut their CO2 output in 2007, the United States churned out more. U.S.A.! U.S.A.! U.S.A.!
Emissions in the United States rose nearly 2 percent in 2007 after declining the previous year, with the U.S. produced 1.75 billion tons of carbon (1.58 billion metric tons). The emissions numbers are based on data from oil giant BP PLC. One country that did roll back its pollution contribution was Denmark, whose emissions dropped 8 percent. The United Kingdom and Germany also reduced carbon dioxide pollution by 3 percent, while France and Australia cut it by 2 percent. However, those numbers aren’t enough to prevent this scientific panel from predicting that under present conditions, temperatures would increase by 4 to 11 degrees Fahrenheit (2.4 to 6.3 degrees Celsius) by 2100. Good times…..
- Give Phillip Seaton what he wants and give it to him now. After what the 61-year-old Kentucky man has gone through, dude deserves whatever he wants and then some. Seaton claims his penis was removed without his consent during what was supposed to be a circumcision as a result, he has sued the doctor who performed the surgery. Seaton and his wife are seeking unspecified compensation from Dr. John M. Patterson and the medical practice, Commonwealth Urology, that performed the circumcision for “loss of service, love and affection.” The Seatons also are seeking unspecified punitive damages from Patterson and CU. According to an attorney for Patterson and the practice, the doctor's post-surgical notes show the doctor thought he detected cancer and removed the penis. Nice try, doc. But that would be something you would probably want to discuss with the patient before lopping off his crank. Either you just f’d up or you’re lying, and to be honest it doesn’t matter which. Seaton is missing a very important, non-regenerating part of his anatomy and one that is pretty crucial in the life of a guy. No guy, anywhere, ever, should go into a procedure better treat inflammation and come out of said procedure sans unit. The lawsuit is similar to one in which an Indianapolis man was awarded more than $2.3 million in damages after he claimed his penis and left testicle were removed without his consent during surgery for an infection in 1997, but to be honest, $2.3 million seems low for what you lose in the trade-off. Like I said, you took dude’s crank without permission, so give him what he wants and be glad that money is all you have to part with………..
- Hey, we’ve got something else to blame that trashy, skanky pop tart Janet Jackson for. Already, you could blame her for decades of awful, over-produced, heavily synthesized pop music showing off her uber-limited vocal talents. Now, her “wardrobe malfunction” at the Super Bowl halftime show in 2004 has condemned us to the NFL going with a litany of aging, middle-of-the-road, safe rock acts from here on out. We’ve had the Rolling Stones (great, but well past their prime), Paul McCartney (ditto), and Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers (double ditto).Now, we’ll be seeing another over-the-hill rocker strut his stuff at this year’s Super Bowl. The Super Bowl will be played Feb. 1 at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa and at halftime, we’ll be seeing Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. Woah, way to take a chance there and go with something edgy, NBC. Springsteen is the working man’s hero and all and I like some of his music, but unless we accidentally stepped into a time warp and this is 1986, he’s not the right choice to perform on one of the biggest stages in the world. Last year's halftime show was watched by more than 148 million viewers in the U.S., it’s a major event (although one that I always skip because I’m actually concerned with watching the game and thus use halftime for a snack run, bathroom run, etc.). Unfortunately for those of you who will watch, it’s a case of another Super Bowl, another past-his-prime rock 'n' roll star at halftime………
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