- I would have written about this sooner, but the truth is that it’s taken me this long to begin recovering from a near-catastrophic disaster. My dream season for an NFL team, 0-16 has been an elusive and fickle creature, slipping through my fingertips time and again. Every time a team was bad enough to run the table in reverse, they’ve lost focus and stopped not doing what it takes to win. It nearly happened again Sunday when the 0-7 Detroit Lions had to put on a furious reverse rally to come from ahead and lose, narrowly avoiding winning Sunday against the Chicago Bears. Inexplicably, the Lions showed heart, capability and focus in sprinting out to a 23-13 halftime lead on the road. On top of that, Bears starting quarterback Kyle Orton left the game with an ankle injury and erratic backup Rex Grossman was left to try and save my dream season by rallying against the Lions. Thankfully, the Lions remembered that they are the Lions and came through with a solid second half, punting five times and turning the ball over twice. They did just enough to lose, giving up touchdowns in each of the final two quarters to get the loss. Way to go, Detroit. I appreciate you going the extra mile to make sure that my dream stays alive. Now is not the time to be selfish and start thinking of yourselves and your own pride. Now is not the time to start trying; you’re 0-8, halfway to making the dream a reality. There is a long way to go and if you’re going to get this done, there is no room for error. You can’t slip up and start trying or making plays for a game, that will ruin everything. Next up, a matchup with Jacksonville this Sunday that you should be able to lose without too much trouble, don’t let me down and let’s not make it so close this time…..
- Dorothy Melvin , you’ll have to forgive me if I have a hard time reconciling the inherent inconsistencies and contradictions in your statements at the trial of your ex-boyfriend, music producer Phil Spector, on Wednesday. See, when someone you are dating pistol-whips you and threatens you with guns, you should not be attending events with that same person the next day because “he's easy to forgive.” Pistol whipping is funny like that, it’s one of those things that you can't really get over in a day, or at least you shouldn’t. It’s also never a good sign when you say that you enjoyed being with the someone when he wasn't drunk. If you have to make that qualification about your time with someone, then let’s go ahead and assume that’s someone you shouldn’t be with. “When Phil is not drinking, he's the most charming man in the world,” she said. “He's witty. You want to be with him.” Yeah, right up to the point you remember that he pistol-whipped you. But clearly Melvin is able to overlook a lot, because during her testimony, she admitted she may have exchanged e-mails and phone calls with Spector as many as 10 years after the 1993 incident, in which she claims he struck her with a pistol and chased her with a shotgun. So what was the tipping point for her finally cutting ties with Spector? Apparently murder is what it takes when dealing with Dorothy Melvin, because she says she broke off all contact after he was charged in the February 2003 shooting death of actress Lana Clarkson. Spector is now in his second trial for murder in Clarkson's death a year after the jury in his first trial deadlocked 10-2, with the majority favoring conviction. This time around, the defense is going with the ol’ suicide allegation, claiming Clarkson may have killed herself. A new addition to Spector’s legal team, attorney Doron Weinberg, has also incorporated a new piece of strategy, seeking to show that Spector pulled guns not only on women, but also waved guns at men in the past because the only way he can defend Spector against prosecution claims of raging hatred for women is to show that men were sometimes targets of his anger. That’s it? You want to prove your client is bat-sh*t crazy and rages at everyone, not just women? That doesn’t prove he didn’t kill Clarkson, it just proves he’s a psycho, rage-a-holic that we all need to be afraid of……
- Seriously? Another contaminated product your China? Are you pulling my leg here? Even the Chinese can’t keep up this pace, can they? Aww, who am I kidding, of course they can. Thus, it’s no surprise that federal authorities have seized some of an Ohio company's supplies of contaminated blood thinner containing material from China. After the Food and Drug Administration asked the U.S. marshals to get involved and the marshals seized 11 lots of heparin from Celsus Laboratories Inc. of Cincinnati. “This action will help prevent this contaminated heparin from finding its way into the marketplace,” said Mike Chappell, the FDA's acting associate commissioner for regulatory affairs. Yeah, yeah, whatever, FDA. I’m glad that contaminated drugs won't be on the market, but let’s get back to the real story here: freaking China. These people are amazing, putting out tainted products from one sector of the economy to another: toys, toothpaste, food, drugs - they can do it all. This time, they have branched out into contaminating blood thinner with over-sulfated chondroitin sulfate (OSCS). It isn’t the first time that the Chinese have ventured into this particular arena of contaminated products; earlier this year, shipments of other lots of contaminated heparin were traced from China to 11 countries, including the United States. Best of all, OSCS -- a compound made from animal cartilage -- has bee linked to hundreds of serious adverse events, including allergic reactions causing nausea, vomiting, shortness of breath, a severe drop in blood pressure and death. I even have a great new slogan for the Chinese to appropriately commemorate their place in the global economy, based on their strong contributions of recent months: Merchants of Death. Think about it, turn it over in your head and see if it doesn’t fit right in with what you’re doing, China……
- I’m sorry, but what’s wrong with promotion-seeking officers looking to slaughter waves of civilians in order to inflate rebel body counts and get ahead? Why should that be cause for their commander to resign in scandal? Gen. Mario Montoya, the commander of Colombia's army, should not be stepping down abruptly, as he did Tuesday. Instead of celebrating Montoya’s 39 years of service as he retired this week, people (namely you, pesky civil rights groups), insist on talking about an alleged policy that encouraged soldiers in recent years to kill scores -- perhaps hundreds -- of civilians who were then presented as guerrillas slain in combat. Because of those allegations, 90 army officers are under investigation and Gen. Montoya is being ripped by onlookers in all directions. And so what it Montoya applied an army policy that allegedly encouraged the promotion of officers whose units kill the most leftist rebels. What, none of your have ever unjustifiably slaughtered hundreds of civilians to get ahead and passed them off as leftist rebels in order to justify your actions? Besides, it could be mere coincidence that the bodies of 11 men who disappeared from the poor Bogota suburb of Soacha early this year later were found in common graves in a conflict zone hundreds of miles away. Just because 11 men who disappeared from the same place were found in the same mass grave hundreds of miles away doesn’t mean anything, cynics. Because you all couldn’t just keep your mouths shut, now the United Nations is sticking its nose where it doesn’t belong. Navi Pillay, the U.N.'s high commissioner for human rights, said that killing civilians is a crime against humanity and that if Colombia's criminal justice system doesn’t properly deal with what Montoya has done, the International Criminal Court could step in. I hope you’re happy with yourself, all of you who have made such a fuss about this, a fine mess you’ve made…….
- Welcome back to the Phantom Zone. Tonight’s Smallville was a return to the Phantom Zone, a Kryptonian prison where Clark Kent has been imprisoned before and hoped never to return after his escape from there also enabled the escape of all sorts of vile phantoms and wraiths that terrorized Earth until Clark was able to capture and defeat them. The return trip to the Zone came when Clark received a package in the mail that contained the Kryptonian crystal that LuthorCorp CEO Tess Mercer found in the Arctic while searching for Lex Luthor and had been experimenting on before having it stolen earlier this season. When the crystal arrives at the Kent Farm, Clark opens the package at the same time he’s dealing with the arrival of Lois Lane to take him up on his offer of coming back to live at the farm. The crystal activates when Clark picks it up and because Lois reaches out and grabs Clark to get him to drop it, she is caught up with him when the crystal zaps both of them back to the Phantom Zone. There, Clark realizes where he is and he and Lois begin trudging across the barren landscape, trying to avoid attacks from Zoners, a.k.a. the phantoms living there. Clark also has the added burden of Lois raving about being abducted by aliens and having to hide what the Zone really is from her. Eventually, the pair encounters Clark’s cousin Kara, banished to the Zone by BRAINIAC last season and now surviving as best she can. Kara attacks Clark and Lois before she realizes who they are. After that, Kara reveals that even though there is a portal in the Zone through which she could escape, she has stayed because she doesn’t want a repeat of Clark’s escape from the Zone the last time when so many phantoms got out with him. Clark insists that Lois be sent back even if he and Kara stay, so they work together to send Lois back. The portal opens and Lois gets back to Earth, but escaping with her is a wraith that turns out to be the wife of General Zod, the militant Kryptonian leader who has terrorized Clark and his family before. The wraith of Zod’s wife takes over Lois’ body and searches for her son, who is living somewhere on Earth. She has run-ins with Tess, Chloe and an emergency room doctor before finally finding her son, who turns out to be Davis, the paramedic Chloe has become friends with this season. After being told that he really is an alien being who was genetically engineered by his parents, Davis is stunned and in disbelief. That changes after his mother, albeit in Lois’ body, breaks off a rail from a hospital bed and stabs him through the chest with it. Despite bleeding out, Davis comes back to life and when he tries to stab himself in the same spot with a knife later in the night, the knife shatters, because just as his mother told him, what kills him also makes him stronger. All of this comes after Davis approached Chloe and asked her to use her sleuthing skills to dig into his past, which included stops at six foster homes and a total void for the first three years of his life with no record of anything. While balancing that challenge, Chloe also found herself trying to find a way to get Clark back from the Phantom Zone after stopping by the farm and finding the crystal, along with a broken window that Clark and Lois were transported out of on their way to the Zone. Chloe managed to beat Tess Mercer to the farm by a couple of minutes and stash the crystal in her bag before Tess walked in and started throwing around accusations. Chloe deflected them and went to Oliver Queen for help in accessing the information inside of the crystal. He agreed to steal a generator from Tess to power the crystal and with those tools in her hands, Chloe is able to use the supercomputer powers she’s had since her own encounter with BRAINIAC to access the crystal’s secrets. Doing so turns her eyes white and glassy (a la everyone on Heroes who has visions of the future) and she gains super strength to fling Oliver across the room with one hand when he tries to stop her. She also finds a way to pull Clark and Kara back from the Phantom Zone, despite suffering a nose bleed in the process. Once back, Clark and Kara get busy trying to stop the wraith occupying Lois’ body. At the hospital, Clark confronts the wraith/Lois and tries to get through to Lois, past the wraith’s control of her. That doesn’t work, as he gets thrown out a window for his troubles. When he lands on top of an ambulance and the wraith/Lois jumps down several stories to finish the beating, Kara shows up to save the day. Using another crystal Clark had he retrieve from the Martian Manhunter, a.k.a. detective John Jones of the Metropolis PD, Kara exorcises the wraith from Lois’ body and ends the struggle. The next day, Lois is back to normal and (shocker) doesn’t remember anything about the Phantom Zone or her time being occupied by the wraith. She does receive a nice surprise from the experience, though, in the form of a raise from Tess after an encounter with occupied Lois that shed some light on Tess’ fascination with all things Kryptonian. That run-in led to a tense conversation between Tess and Clark in which Tess again challenged Clark about his role in Lex’s disappearance, using a boot print from the Kent Farm driveway and a matching print from the Arctic as evidence. She said she wanted Clark to trust her because they were on the same side, but Clark continues to insist that he has nothing to tell her. Lois has something to tell him, as her raise has given her the money to get an apartment of her own and alleviate her need to live at the farm. That’s about all for this episode, so until next time, when apparently Chloe’s BRAINIAC-given powers will finally result in her losing her memory completely, adios……
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