- Now we have our answer as to what happens when a team tries to violate the laws of physics and the universe by having two Roy Williamses on its roster. Less than five days after trading for wide receiver Roy Willams from the Detroit Lions with safety Roy Williams already on the roster, the Cowboys saw safety Roy Williams brake his right forearm for the second time Sunday in his first game back from the previous injury. Now, he’s out for the remainder of the season and I can’t help but think that this is the universe trying to level things out, find its equilibrium. You try to bring together two Roy Williamses and bad things happen. Just be glad that my worse case scenario of safety Roy Williams putting a big hit on receiver Roy Williams in practice and tearing a hole in the space/time continuum in the process. So the Cowboys’ season will go on with only one Roy Williams on the active roster, and judging by the 0-1 record they sported with both men on the field (a terrible loss to the lowly St. Louis Rams, no less), that may be the best thing for all involved….
- Plenty of internal and interpersonal dram highlighted last night’s episode of Prison Break. Inside Michael Scofield’s convict crew working to steal the data on the Company’s Scylla card system, Roland, the team tech dork who managed to lose his sophisticated wireless hard drive device that has been used to copy the first five Scylla cards, and to lose it cheating at a progressive slots machine in Las Vegas, was bound to his bunk by Michael for his idiotic mistake. Roland isn’t happy and acts out in a dangerous way; by using a phone number he lifted from the phone that Alex Mahone used to call and threaten Company hitman Wyatt last week to contact Wyatt and offer to sell out Michael and brother Linc to the Company. Roland communicates via untraceable text messages and eventually cuts off his GPS ankle bracelet to flee the warehouse and meet with Wyatt. He does so as the rest of the crew is busy executing a plan to steal the contents of the final Scylla card from “The General” Jonathan Krantz, a.k.a. Pad Man, the head of the Company. The plan mirrors one Linc used several years ago in Chicago when he was involved in some serious criminal activity. The plan revolves around crashing ramming a car, demolition-derby style, and using the resulting pandemonium to steal what you want. For this plan, Linc and Sucre pick up a car from a local scrap yard and outfit it for the crash. Michael, Sarah and Brad Bellick posed as the ambulance crew, set to arrive on the scene in an ambulance that Michael and Linc had stolen from a local federal impound lot earlier in the day while Homeland Security agent Don Self provided a distraction. The plan called for Sara to pump the General full of morphine and thus keep him from remembering anything about the card being taken and copied. Mahone was also on hand to provide a set of eyes to track the General’s limo as it left company HQ at GATE Industries. But the plan came unglued when Roland told Wyatt where the ambush was to take place and Wyatt warned the General. The General’s driver altered his route at the last minute and Wyatt showed up to ambush Linc and Sucre, shooting their car and wounding Sucre. Everyone was able to get away, but back at the warehouse, Sucre was in bad shape. Sarah hearkened back to her days as a doctor, removing the bullet and stopping the bleeding. She also played doctor in the episode by confronting Michael about his recent rash of nose bleeds, the same symptom Michael’s mother had before developing a brain tumor that took her life and the same symptoms Michael had at the same ages as his mother, specifically as a teenager and then again at age 31. While Sarah doctored up Sucre, the rest of the group went to find Roland using a tracer Michael secretly placed inside Roland’s laptop. They arrived in the back alley where Roland met with Wyatt and was ambushed because he went in naïvely believing that he was actually going to receive $1 million for turning in Michael and Linc. Instead, Wyatt arrived with bad intentions, shooting Wyatt in the knee caps until Roland gave up the location of the warehouse. Once Wyatt had the information, he called the General, but the call was aborted when Michael, Mahone, Linc, Sucre and Bellick arrived on the scene and clobbered Wyatt from behind. Mahone went nuts, trying to kill the man who murdered his son, but he was pulled off with Linc promising that once they got what they needed from Wyatt, he would have his chance for revenge. Revenge was also on the agenda for Sarah, who was given a message from Gretchen, the former Company operative turned outsider seeking revenge against them who tortured Sarah in Season 3 and made Michael believe she had been killed, via Don Self. Gretchen offered Sarah the chance to meet at a local motel and “resolve their differences.” Initially Sarah said no to the meeting, but she ended up deciding otherwise and taking a cab to the motel. There, Gretchen offered Sarah a chance to inflict the same punishment on her that she had inflictede on Sarah back in Panama - bull-whipping. Sarah had other ideas, using a sharp piece of metal to cut Grtetchen’s neck at a pressure point and inflict pain while forcing her nemesis to reveal the name of a guard at the camp in Panama where Sarah had been held, a guard Gretchen had killed for trying to help Sarah escape. After receiving that information, Sarah left with a warning similar to the one Michael gave to Gretchen in last season’s finale, namely that revenge was coming once this is all over. Gretchen also continued her business with T-Bag, meeting in the GATE office where the secret tunnel to the building where Scylla is housed begins. In that office, Mr. Xang, the intimidating Chinese crime boss who threated to kill T-Bag last episode for not having Scylla yet, returned make good on his word. Gretchen stopped him by promising that she would deliver Scylla -for $125 million. T-Bag is told that he will receive a $25 million cut of that amount, so he turns around and tells his secretary, the one he’s been collaborating with in recent weeks on various schemes, that his payout will be $1 million and that she gets part of it. Together, they lift a fingerprint from Gretchen so they have something to use against her if she turns on them. As the episode ends, the two pre-eminent images are 1) the General telling his fellow Scylla cardholders that security be damned, he wants Scylla moved immediately because it’s in danger, and 2) Michael holding a dying Roland in his arms. That will be all until next time kids, so until then….
- Amazingly, governments around the world are actually claiming that they oppose technology that could be used to further violate the privacy rights of their citizens. Normally, governments are down with anything allowing Big Brother to further extend its greasy paws into the private lives of citizens, so it’s surprising that European Union lawmakers have joined U.S. civil liberty advocates in criticizing a new scanner that allows airport security to see through passengers' clothes. The pervy new scanner is being labeled it a virtual strip search, which seems like something you should pay a quarter for in a booth at an adult video store, not an acceptable airport security measure. Its creators and supports say it would only be used as a last resort - uh huh, sure. The new system allows guards to see an outline of passengers' bodies beneath their clothes, theoretically with the benefit of making it easier to detect any concealed objects. Already, this blatant invasion of privacy has been introduced in several U.S. airports and has also been tested in other countries around the world, including Britain and the Netherlands. While the EU plans to implement the system soon, officials said it could face a ban if the 27-nation bloc does not include it in a new regulation listing acceptable airport security equipment. “Many travelers will consider these scanners an enormous intrusion” on their personal privacy, Philip Bradbourn, a British Conservative member of the EU assembly, declared. Right on, Phil. This goes several steps too far and would be just one more brick in the road toward total and indiscriminate violation of all private rights of common people on a daily basis……
- Once again, I am disheartened to find out about another arrest and conviction of a key figure in the world of illegal drugs, knowing that this is going to make even harder for me to score my illicit substances at an affordable price. So it is with great sadness that I relay news of Luis Hernando Gomez-Bustamante pleading guilty to related federal drug trafficking conspiracy charges in New York, meaning he faces at least a 10-year prison term. Gomez admitted in U.S. District Court that he was a leader of the Norte Valle drug cartel that engaged in murder, bribery, money laundering and drug trafficking in moving cocaine from Colombia and through Mexico to the U.S. And the problem here is? Dude is an entrepreneur, and sometimes in the business world, you need to break a few arms, bribe a few public officials and yes, maybe kill a person or two. So what if Gomez also worked with a terrorist organization and helped to move billions of dollars worth of cocaine to the United States? What, you’re telling me that none of you has done the exact same thing in earning a living? Now, this guy has pleaded guilty to federal racketeering charges and he’s going to prison all because he tried to follow the American dream of making a fortune, albeit by heinous, illegal and immoral means. The Justice Department says Gomez will not face a life sentence as part of an extradition agreement with Colombia, which is positive news. Prosecutors said they instead will seek a prison term of unspecified years for Gomez, which isn’t great news. If you’re wondering what the exact numbers in the case are, the U.S. government accuses the Norte Valle cartel of sending more than 1 million pounds of cocaine -- worth more than $10 billion -- to the United States between 1990 and 2004. Wow…..that is a lot of blow. But now that Colombian nose candy is going to have to find its way to the U.S. by other means, because once again our government is hell-bent on spoiling all of our illegal narcotics fun.
- I know I said that once my beloved Chicago Cubs were booted from the Major League Baseball playoffs following a colossal first-round choke job. However, for a sports fan it’s tough to avoid news of any one sport completely (unless it’s a fake sport like NASCAR or a peripheral, secondary sport that .04 percent of America gives a crap about like hockey), and as such, I was happy to see the Tampa Bay Rays win the American League Championship Series over the weekend. More accurately, I was ecstatic to see the Boston Red Sox LOSE! I now hate the Red Sox as much as I hate the New York Yankees, as they have essentially morphed into mirror images on one another: high-spend, arrogant teams who think they can buy titles, with annoying fans who mistakenly believe that the baseball world revolves around them and rosters full of overpaid superstars with bloated egos. The Sox are so irritating that seeing them lose almost - ALMOST - made up for the Cubbies being eliminated from the playoffs. Even though the Sox proved to be like the villain from a bad horror movie, coming back from a 3-1 series deficit to force Game 7 last night, the Rays prevailed. And even though Boston made a miraculous comeback in Game 5, rallying from being down 7-0 to win 8-7, it wasn’t enough to push them back into the World Series. Finally, a Fall Classic that doesn’t involve the Yankees, Sox, Cardinals or Braves……..good times…..
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