Baseball in D.C., gun problems and Pa. support for B.O.

- Here’s hoping a sparkling new stadium is enough to jump start baseball in the nation’s capital. The Washington Nationals have been playing in D.C. for three years now, occupying the stodgy, rotting rat hole that is RFK Stadium. It’s a park not designed for baseball, not really for any sport you’d like to enjoy as a fan or player actually, but definitely not for baseball. When the franchise now known as the Nationals (formerly the Montreal Expos) relocated from Canada, the hope was that leaving a place where the locals were totally and completely apathetic to the franchise (crowds of 5,000 were actually considered good nights in Montreal’s Olympic Stadium) and putting it into a thriving metropolis like Washington, D.C. would be the shot of adrenaline that the Expos/Nationals needed. That hasn’t happened, mostly because the team has been mired in last place in the National League East and playing inside the aforementioned crap hole of a stadium. The latter part of that equation has changed with the team moving in the awesome Nationals Park, a spacious new abode for the team that should buy it a 2-3 year reprieve from fans in spite of subpar play. A new stadium buys those years of goodwill because people are taken in by a shiny new venue, eager to attend a game there and willing to overlook poor play on the field for a short time. After those 2-3 years, the novelty wears off and a sucky team won't draw in spite of a nearly new stadium, so the Nats need to improve their play as well or this will be just a temporary fix. But a 41,888-seat stadium (a nice, round number) located two miles southwest of Capitol Hill should be a great draw for a young team that has talent but isn’t ready to contend yet.  The four restaurants three stores and 78 luxury boxes are tucked inside a geometrically simple, sleek modern ballpark that bucks the trend of recent new stadiums in MLB being built in a retro, throwback style. Last night, in the park’s official opening game, the Nats defeated the Atlanta Braves 3-2, starting off a new chapter of their history in Washington in style with a walk-off home run by stud third baseman Ryan Zimmerman. For the sake of baseball fans in D.C., I hope this year’s team exceeds expectations and gives them something to cheer about after the luster of their new stadium fades.

 

- I’m glad I came across this bit of news before the cops discovered my own illegal stash of machine guns. Boy, would that have been embarrassing. Thankfully rapper T.I., whose real name is Clifford Harris (what, Clifford isn’t a good rap name, you need to go with T.I.?) has shown us all that having that kind of cache of illegal weapons is a bad idea. Actually, that’s not fair. Not only did T.I. have those illegal machine guns, he also had the silencers to go with them. Either he was planning an all-out, Jack Bauer-like raid on a foreign embassy or my man C. Harris is just not smart. It’s one thing if you want to have your 9mm or maybe even a hunting rifle, those are bad choices but not even close to being on the same level as having a stockpile of machine guns and silencers. Police seized the weapons and Harris has since plead guilty to charges of possession of unregistered machine guns and silencers, unlawful possession of machine guns and possession of firearms by a convicted felon. In weapons-possession circles, that’s referred to as hitting the trifecta. Under the terms of his plea agreement, T.I. will perform 1,000 hours of community service by speaking to youth groups about the dangers of drugs, guns and gangs and once those 1,000 hours are completed, he will report back to the judge in his case for sentencing to time in jail. Currently, he’s set to spend a year behind bars, but after he’s done with his community service that sentence could be shortened or lengthened, depending on a variety of factors. Now if anyone knows a good way to dispose of a s**tload of machine guns, silencers, land mines, hand grenades and rocket launchers, would you please shoot me an email so I don’t end up in jail sharing a cell with T.I……

 

- Welcome aboard the B.O. bandwagon, Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey! With your state’s primary fast approaching and its 158 delegates up for grab, now is the time for all of us to bind together as Americans and do whatever we can to avert the travesty that a Hank Clinton run for the White House would be. So thank you, Sen. Casey, for doing your part by publicly announcing your support for my main man Barack Obama. Political pundits believe that the endorsement will help Obama with white, working-class voters and personally, I hope so. Black, white, Asian, Hispanic, Indian…we all need to be against Hank Clinton. That dude is a confirmed liar, a vitriolic femi-Nazi and scary as heck. As of right now, polls show Clinton with a solid lead in the state, so the endorsement Sen. Casey is a big “get” for Obama and for all Americans. Casey’s father is a popular former governor of the state, so that’s a plus as well. Clinton’s only hope to salvage a win in this election is to crush Obama in Pennsylvania and every other major state left on the primary schedule. If she falls short of that on April 22 in the Keystone State, we can all avoid weeks or sweating out the final few primaries and sticking those last pins into our Hank Clinton voodoo dolls…that isn’t just me, is it? Moving on…..

 

- Hmm…no. That was my thought process when it came to a request from the Material Skank, a.k.a. Madonna, that everyone leave Britney Spears alone and stop ripping her for things like failing to show up for child custody hearings, shaving her head like a deranged lunatic and leaving her home without underwear on regularly. “They need to step off,” whined the MS. Step off? Way to pick up “hip” phrases that were cool about five years ago, Material Skank. Even more amusing is the fact that the MS says her 11-year-old daughter Lourdes feels the same way. Oh, so the pre-teen daughter of some slutty pop singer thinks that everyone needs to be nicer to Brit, so we’ll all comply….or not. How ‘bout this, MS: Britney stops acting like a mental patient on crack and starts remembering to leave her house fully dressed, attends court-mandated custody hearings and ceases her alcoholic ways and then we’ll all stop making fun of her, how’s that? One coherent appearance on some hack CBS half-hour comedy show doesn’t confirm that she’s back on the right track, sorry MS.

 

- This is one of those concessions that appears great on the surface, but when you dig deeper it’s not as wonderful as it seems. New Cuban dictator/president Ramon Castro has reversed a policy upheld by his despotic brother Fidel, allowing ordinary Cuban citizens the right to have cell phone service. That right had previously been restricted to a select few in the Communist island nation, but Ramon is looking to extend a hollow olive branch to the masses in the hopes that it will quell demand for other larger reforms. Why is this such a hollow act? Stop and ask yourself this: can the majority of Cubans afford cell phones? These people can’t afford basic necessities like food, clothing and a decent place to live much of the time, but they’re going to have the cash to spring for a Razor, iPhone or Chocolate? It would take the average Cuban a year to afford just the phone, let alone the monthly fees. It’s like giving free Internet to a person living in the Amazonian jungle: meaningless. Unless the Cuban government suddenly becomes extremely munificent and also agrees to provide subsidies to people looking to sign up for cell service, this gesture is every bit as empty and meaningless as it seems. The more things change…..the more Cuba is still a heartless, Commie dictatorship that oppresses its citizens early and often.

Corruption abroad, Argentinian riots and NCAA Tournament blues

- Way to go, Argentinean farmers. These guys have had enough of their government’s proposed tax hikes on export crops and dammit, they’re doing something about it. First, the farmers went on strike, always a solid first step in your crusade against The Man. Refusing to produce any more of valuable crops that your country needs both for its own use and for export tends to get people’s attention. But the farmers didn’t stop there; in fact, they were just getting started. As the strike headed into its third tension-filled week, the farmers built highway blockades on some of the most important roads through Argentina’s agricultural heartland. One of the country biggest exporters of beef, soybeans and wheat has been all but crippled by the strike, which means it’s having its desired effect. The barricades resulted in massive backups and fisticuffs at at least one location, also a positive. Adding violence and social unrest to the mix, another vital ingredient in any good social dissidence. I’ll be looking for some riots, property destruction and maybe a march or two on the nation’s capital to complete a successful uprising, Argentinean farmers, but so far, so good.

 

- Overall, this NCAA Tournament weekend has been horrifically bad, with very few good games. Only the continued, improbable run of underdog Davidson and the scintillating Xavier-West Virginia overtime game in the Sweet 16 saved us from a total lost weekend of hoops. Consider the fact that of the eight Sweet 16 games, seven were decided by double-digit margins. Of those seven, six were decided by margins of 17 points or more. In other words, there were far too many blowouts for a round this deep in the tournament. Yes, games like UCLA-Western Kentucky were close until 6-7 minutes left, but did anyone really get the sense that WKU was going to surge back and win? For the most part, too many of these games were like the Michigan State-Memphis game, a contest that saw Memphis bolt to a 50-20 halftime lead and render the second half of a primetime game meaningless. I don’t know that there’s a solution to this, because regardless of how you match teams up to begin the tournament, at some point teams that advance 2-3 rounds begin to play one another. Let’s hope this was just an anomaly, a spike in the number of bad matchups that exacerbated flaws and shortcomings in particular teams. Maybe teams like Stanford (20-point loss), Michigan State (18-point loss) and Washington State (21-point loss) just came up against teams that were the absolute worst possible matchup for them at that time. As a college basketball fan, I have to hope that because this is my favorite time of year and seeing it have a down year would just make the entire sports year as a whole a lot less appealing.

 

- From time to time, I give you Albums to Avoid (horrifically bad offerings from lame artists) and also great albums you should listen to, but I can't ever remember an album that fell into the gray area somewhere in between that I’ve mentioned here. That trend ends now, because the first new studio album in 16 years by the B-52s isn’t one that I’m really pumped about, but I’m not as dead set against it like I am against artists like Mary J. Blige, Fergie, Justin “Weasel on Helium” Timberlake, etc. The B-52s have their place in music as the quirky, fun, oddball, kitschy pop rockers responsible for hits like Love Shack and Roam. You don’t take them seriously as you do with artists like the Beatles, U2, the Clash, Ramones, etc., but you can’t totally disregard them either. So instead of giving a big thumbs up or thumbs down to Funplex, the group’s new album, I’ll just let you know that at midnight today, the cable TV network Logo will air a video for the album’s first single, the title track, on its NewNowNext Music show. B-52s members Fred Schneider and Kate Pierson will host the telecast and look to send their new project off with a bang. If their music is something you like, tune in and see what you think of their newest material. If not, no big loss…..

 

- I believe we may have found our first home built on a foundation of crap. Mary J. Blige (hey, didn’t I just rip her music a few sentences ago?), an R&B crooner whose ear-assaulting musical stylings have terrorized listeners for years, has used proceeds from her sales of E.B.M. (excruciatingly bad music) to purchase an 18,250-square-foot, $12.3 million mansion in a posh New Jersey neighborhood where luminaries such as Wyclef Jean, Ja Rule, Vince Carter and Danny Aiello live. On the backs of the poor, musically stupid souls who have bought her albums and attended her concerts, Blige will move into a home that includes amenities such as: a 14-seat movie theater, a fitness center, hardwood basketball court, gourmet kitchen, wine tasting room and eight bedrooms.” Amazingly, the home started out with a price tag of $17 million, then dropped to $13.9 million before Blige picked it up at $12.3 million. Just think what she would be able to afford if she actually made good music…..

 

- The top export for the United States just might be political corruption after all. We’re already famous for having morally bankrupt leaders such as Eliot Spitzer and Kwame Kilpatrick, not to mention past notables like Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton and our current leader W., men who think nothing of lying and distorting the truth to serve their own ends and trampling all over the Constitution if it helps them out. So it really should come as no surprise that a U.S. territory like Puerto Rico has its own leaders incorporating some of those same shady tactics into their own governing style. Gov. Anibal Acevedo Vila was charged Thursday with 19 criminal counts in a campaign finance probe, including but not limited to conspiracy to violate U.S. federal campaign laws and giving false testimony to the FBI. False testimony to the feds? Who does this guy think he is, a ‘roid-using, hall-of-fame MLB player (allegedly)? Included in the indictment were 12 other members of Vila’s Popular Democratic Party, all following a two-year sting operation and investigation. What makes this all the more interesting is that Vila is a superdelegate for the Democratic Party who has pledged his support for Barack Obama at the Democratic National Convention later this year. Oops. Not really the kind of support you want, eh Barack? Adding a healthy dose of irony to the whole sitch is the fact that Vila was elected Puerto Rico’s governor in 2004 largely on the strength of an anti-corruption campaign. Apparently Anibal Acevedo Vila translates into English as “Eliot Spitzer.” Both ride law-abiding, anti-(insert criminal activity name here) campaigns into office, then are hit with criminal charges for those very crimes they crusaded against while in office. One solicits $1,000-per-hour hookers, one runs corrupt campaigns. So where did things go wrong for Vila? Well, prior to his stint as governor, he did serve as the island’s nonvoting delegate to Congress, so I think it’s safe to assume that the corrupting power of being around all of those lying, deceiving, law-breaking crooks on the Hill was what led him astray. Welcome to the political big time, Puerto Rico, a corrupt leader indicted while in office, you’re one of the big boys now.

A Texas-sized blunder, Hank Clinton lies and you can't spell Laguna Beach without DUI for one guitarist

- Add liar to the list of descriptions that are valid for the impending loser in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination. Sen. Hank Clinton. A couple of days after claiming that she was qualified to serve as president because among other things, she had once faced danger by racing across a tarmac in Bosnia while avoiding sniper fire, Clinton was forced to admit that she fudged, er, misspoke when she made that claim. After CBS News footage showed her walking calmly across said tarmac in 1996, holding daughter Chelsea’s hand, Clinton went into full spin mode. She tried to smooth things over by saying that prior to landing at the airport that day, she was told the party would have to move quickly upon landing because of the “threat of sniper fire.” Damn, don’t you just hate it when video footage catches you in a lie, er, when you misspeak and totally “misremember” an event that you hoped would give a boost to your faltering presidential campaign? Sorry Hank, but you’ll have to find other ammo to bolster your campaign and carry you to victory in Pennsylvania in a few weeks. Oh, and you also have the added bonus of having to overcome to stigma of being a proven liar just weeks before that primary you so badly need to win.

- Brace yourself, America, because another head-in-the-sand denial about global warming should be forthcoming from the W. administration shortly. This week, a chunk of ice roughly the size of the island of Manhattan broke off of an Antarctic glacier, plunging into the icy waters below and adding yet another piece of evidence to the argument that global warming is not just the latest myth in the pattern of unicorns, minotaurs and the fact that Rosie O’Donnell actually has a functioning brain. Satellite imagery shows the dislodging and disintegration of the 160-square-mile ice chunk in western Antarctica, a development researches attribute to the effects of global warming. British scientist David Vaughan is among those pointing to global warming as the cause, and you can be sure he’s British because if he were an American scientist, someone from the W. administration would have already pressured and coerced him into changing his story and claiming that it was just a lot of obese polar bears jumping up and down on the top of the glacier that broke the chunk of ice loose. So thanks for having the decency to tell the truth, Brits, too bad our leaders over here aren’t so forthcoming.

- Mark it down, everybody. This is the first (and possibly last) time in recorded history that the French were the first to suggest an oppositional uprising of any kind. For a country that has made surrendering its national pastime, the Frenchies are showing a considerable amount of chutzpah this week with President Nikolas Sarkozy becoming the first world leader to admit that a boycott of the opening ceremony at the Summer Olympics in Beijing are possible if the current situation in Tibet doesn’t improve. Of course, leave it to a Frenchie to suggest only skipping the meaningless opening ceremonies, but it’s still more than leaders of other world powers such as Germany, Britain and the United States have been willing to do. Everyone wants to condemn what the Chinese are doing, but no one wants to actually take action against them. Our best move might be calling Jack Bauer, because he survived two years in a Chinese prison and prolonged torture without cracking in the interim between Seasons Five and Six in 24, but short of that, some actual testicular fortitude on the part of our political leaders will have to do. The Chinese obviously aren’t going to pull back from their heinous crackdown in Tibet, not if the two civilians killed during protests in a western Chinese province bordering Tibet on Tuesday are any indication. Man up, world leaders, and do the right thing for the people of Tibet. As an added bonus, you don’t even need to pull a W. and needlessly invade China or Tibet and start a never-ending war to do your part. Just join this boycott, it’s that simple.

- No longer is Laguna Beach known solely as the place that spawned the “acting” careers of people like Stephen Colletti, Lauren Conrad and Kristin Cavalleri thanks to MTV’s oh, so contrived “reality” show Laguna Beach. Now Richie Sambora, lead guitarist for one of music’s more famous hair bands, Bon Jovi, has added his own bit of notoriety and infamy to the town’s history by getting liquored up and driving around with an SUV full of passengers that included two minors. Sambora was pulled over just before 11 p.m. Tuesday after a local police officer spotted him driving erratically and pulled over the black Hummer Sambora was driving. Good decision-making, R., driving a ginormous vehicle like that while hammered out of your mind. Mix in the two minors in the vehicle and you’re really doing well, a-hole. Drunk off your head, and you’re to blame….you give alcoholics everywhere a bad name…..ok, so maybe those aren’t the correct lyrics to Dead or Alive, but Bon Jovi could always release a new version of the song, right? Call a cab, Richie. You’ll need to learn how to do that anyhow given the fact that you’re about to have your license ripped. Enjoy rehab, lush.

- Don’t do it, Jerry Jones. You may see yourself as some patron saint of troubled NFL players, a man who can bring in head cases and guys gone wild from other teams and get them in line with your Dallas Cowboys, but bringing in Adam “Pacman” Jones is the worst personnel decision you could possibly make, period. You may have brought in malcontents like Terrell Owens and Tank Johnson, guys with immense ability and immense baggage, and had success incorporating them into your team, but if you think Adam Jones is going to be the same way, you’re sadly mistaken. The Cowboys are reportedly in heavy pursuit of a trade with Adam Jones’ current team, the Tennessee Titans, that would send a seventh-round draft pick and a player to Tennessee for the right to have Jones ply his rain-making, bouncer-assaulting, woman-striking trade in Big D next season on whenever he gets reinstated by the NFL. Undoubtedly, this is a guy with big-time, big-play ability - when he’s actually allowed on the field. He’s a game-changer as a cornerback and kick returner, but don’t forget that he hasn’t even been reinstated by NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell yet. Furthermore, there’s no guarantee if or when he will be reinstated. He could be out another year, for all we know. On top of that, if Dallas does acquire him and he is reinstated, does anyone seriously believe that he’ll go more than a few months without getting into trouble again? This is a guy who was going to strip clubs in New York on the eve of his meeting with Goodell wherein he was to apply for reinstatement following a shooting at a Las Vegas strip club. He’s not bright; just listen to him talk. He’s a dumb individual, not well-educated or able to put together a single sentence without committing as near-homicide on the English language. He’s shown violent tendencies toward women and that he has a rebellious streak a mile long. Time and time again he has proven that he is not smart enough to learn from his mistakes. If Dallas acquires him, they’ll be lucky if they go a single year without regretting it colossally. So hope for the best in this one, Cowboy fans, with the best being that this trade never, ever happens. Pacman will hurt your team far more than he will ever help it.

Jose Canseco just a slezeball, nothing more, Smallville news and a bad way to spend your time when you're 19

- I used to be at least partially in Jose Canseco’s corner. After many details in his first book proved to be true, I was willing to overlook his shady motivations for writing said book and accept that he might be telling the truth on many issues in the tome. Now….let’s just say I’m no longer in Jose’s corner. To clarify, I’ve been among the many who’ve felt that he’s a disgusting, despicable, self-serving sleazeball all along, but up ‘til now I was willing to get past those traits because in his first book he said things that, regardless of their motivations, were true and spurred a lot of necessary inquiry and debate in baseball. However, with the release of his second book, “Vindicated: Big Names, Big Liars, and The Battle to Save Baseball,” Canseco has made the leap from loathsome-but-mildly-credible jerk to totally reprehensible, duplicitous jerk that I don’t believe. It all started with rumors before the release of this second book that Canseco was trying to shake down various players and former players for money to finance a movie project by threatening to include them in this book in a negative light if they didn’t pay up. Amazingly, Detroit Tiger Magglio Ordonez was alleged to have been one of those Canseco hit up for money and after Ordonez reportedly refused, he ended up being named in Vindicated. Conversely, Roid-ger Clemens, one of Canseco’s buddies and someone who reportedly has helped Jose out financially, is painted in a favorable light in the book and in interviews Canseco is now giving. In other words, Jose looks like someone who may tell the truth sometimes, but only if it benefits him directly, and he’s willing to obscure or fabricate the truth if spurned. One situation that would seem to fall into the latter category is one involving New York Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez. Rodriguez has earned a whole chapter of ripping in “Vindicated: Big Names, Big Liars, and The Battle to Save Baseball,", but Wednesday he refused to address allegations by Canseco, who claims he introduced the three-time MVP to a steroids dealer. “It's over as far as I'm concerned,” Rodriguez said Wednesday after his New York Yankees lost 4-0 to the Philadelphia Phillies. "No further comment on the matter. I'm just excited to be playing baseball." In the book, Canseco claimed he introduced Rodriguez to a steroids dealer named Max. Excerpts from the book, slated for publication on April 1, were posted on deadspin.com before being removed Wednesday. Canseco claims that Rodriguez approached him years ago and inquired as to where “one” might acquire steroids. However, during an interview to be broadcast Friday on ABC's "Nightline," Canseco stonewalled and said that he won't produce evidence to back his claim. “The timing's not right,” Canseco said, according to excerpts released by ABC. “Let's see how Alex reacts. Let's see if they all call me a liar again. How's that for you? Let's see if all of a sudden they're going to call me a liar again.” What the frak? Whether or not you provide evidence to back up your heinous allegations depends on whether someone you fingered will call you a liar? That’s not how it works, Jose. The irony here is that if you can actually provide credible evidence that you’re telling the truth about A-Rod, it would send sales of your book through the roof. I don’t even like A-Rod in general and I’m siding with him on this one, so you know it’s bad what Canseco is doing. You may be loaded and have signed two of the biggest contracts in MLB history, A-Rod, but if you decide to sue Canseco for defamation of character and libel, put me down for $10 bucks to fund your attorney for the case, just so I can say I was a part of shutting up that sleazy, slimy, lowlife bastard Canseco.

- All in all, last night’s episode of Smallville was phenomenal, one of the two or three best of the season. The arrival of BRAINIAC, the Brain Interactive Construct, at the Kent Farm set everything in motion. BRAINIAC, also known as Dr. Milton Fine in previous stints on the show, popped up at the farm and tried to talk Clark’s cousin Kara into helping him with some mysterious project he claimed would allow her to go back and save everyone she loved who died when Krypton wad destroyed. Kara refused despite BRAINIAC’s mind games and Clark showed up on the scene to provide some, um, physical coercion for BRAINIAC to leave. The man/computer did, but not before warning Clark and Kara that they would eventually cooperate with him and had they done so from the start, they could have avoided getting hurt. As BRAINIAC takes off and flies into the atmosphere, Kara worries that although she can fly like BRAINIAC, Clark can't. She undertakes the challenge of teaching him to fly, but a frustrated Clark pulls the plug and insists that his time would be better spent trying to track down BRAINIAC, who seems to have vanished into thin air. He goes to Chloe for help and together they start looking for massive power anomalies around the world, which are signs that BRAINIAC has been at a location to refuel with the power he needs. Clark is horrified to learn that one such outage has taken place within the past few hours in Metropolis, near Lana’s Isis Foundation office. He super-speeds over to the office, only to find Lana gone and only Lionel Luthor around. Clark ignores Lionel’s pleas to listen to a warning about impending danger, insisting that Lionel is the same sleazy, dishonest man he’s always been. Lionel leaves behind something at Isis, an envelope for Lana that he hopes will help prove his innocence in the death of Patricia Swann, who died at the end of last week’s episode. It’s one of the reasons Clark no longer trusts him, but Lionel hopes that Lana can help prove his innocence by linking the man who killed P. Swann to Lionel’s’ son Lex. Of course, Lana isn’t going to be helping anyone because when BRAINIAC visited her, he did something to corrupt her central nervous system and make her basically catatonic. She can speak only programmed Kryptonian messages, her eyes are glassy and glazed over and she can't communicate outside of the messages BRAINIAC sends through her. In a rooftop meeting with Clark and Kara, BRAINIAC reveals that she can feel pain and is in great agony, but she cannot communicate those things. BRAINIAC claims that if Kara agree to help him with his mystery project, he will release Lana from her neurological prison, so she agrees and off they fly into the outer reaches of space. Doing a little flying of their own are Lois and Jimmy Olsen, who are in search of a big story to impress their new boss, Lex, at the Daily Planet. They believe Patricia Swann’s death is directly linked to Lionel, so they press him. He denies it but realizes that part of their claim is problematic because it involves a locket ripped from Swann’s dead body. The locket contains one of two keys to a safe-deposit box at a bank in Zurich where Lionel and the other members of his Veritas secret society hid information they believed would allow them to control the Traveler, the code name they assigned to the outer space visitor who turned out to be Clark Kent. Lionel has one of the keys, but Lex found the other one in the locket he had stolen from Swann’s body after having her killed. Coupled with the discovery of that key is the fact that Lex has been regaining some long-suppressed childhood memories ever since being shot in Detroit while tracking down Kara Kent. Part of what Lex remembers is playing hide and seek with Patty Swann and other children of Veritas members and stumbling across a secret meeting between members of the group when they were discussing the Traveler. Lex also recalls a visit to his father’s office the day of the meteor shower in Smallville that changed his life so dramatically. During that visit, Lionel learned of the deaths of Oliver Queen’s parents, both members of Veritas. One of Lionel’s men gives him one of the keys to the safe-deposit box. Lex realizes that the other key he needs to open the box is in the possession of his father, so that’s his next move. Clark’s next move, meanwhile, is visiting the hospital where Lana is being kept now in her catatonic state. He needs to find Kara and BRAINIAC as well, but has no leads on them. There will be no new episodes the next two weeks, so the story will be on hold here until April 17, stay tuned…..

- To be honest, I’ve always been skeptical of visiting Japan. After all, centuries of historical architecture, amazingly modern cities like Tokyo, great cuisine and some kickin’ professional baseball just aren’t enough. Even geographical marvels like Mount Fuji weren’t enough to push me over the edge, but I think I’ve finally found something that will: a praying Buddhist Chihuahua. It’s true, Conan the Chihuahua joins his master, priest Joei Yoshkuni, at the altar at Naha’s Shuri Kannodo temple daily. The 1½ -year-old pooch sits up on his hind legs and puts his paws together, mimicking the pose he sees from his owner and parishioners. According to Yoshkuni, Conan goes through his prayer routine before morning and evening meals, a trick that has drawn in a lot of tourists. “Word has spread, and we are getting a lot more tourists,” he explains. Great, because that’s why you want to book a ticket to Tokyo, to see a praying Chihuahua. Never mind the hundreds of other great places and landmarks to visit in the country, just head straight for Naha’s Shuri Kannodo temple once you land at the airport.

- Disgraced political leaders don’t just reside in the state of New York. No, you can also find this not-so-rare creature in its natural habitat in the city of Detroit. Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick followed up on New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s hooker scandal with his own indictment on eight felony charges, including perjury, obstruction of justice, conspiracy to commit obstruction of justice and misconduct in office. Kilpatrick’s former chief of staff, Christine Beatty, 37, was hit with many of the same charges, all stemming from their alleged intimate relationship in 2002 and 2003. Both of them denied the relationship under oath, which appears to have been a lie from the start. Lying under oath…just ask Roid-ger Clemens and Bar-roid Bonds what kind of problems that can cause. For now, Kilpatrick is refusing to resign and vowing to remain in office, but the spectacle of a presiding mayor being put on trial for eight felony charges may force his hand on that one. Way to lead and set an example for your constituents, K., you are truly a shining light of integrity and honor in office.

- When you’re just graduating from high school, figuring out your next move is difficult. Where do you want to go and what do you want to do with your life? For some of us, that question is answered by life and circumstances, such as being sent to jail for several years due to your role in a February 2007 bank robbery. That’s the plight of Ashley Miller, 19, and Heather Johnson, 19, the so-called “Barbie bandits,’ who were sentenced this week for their part in the heist that netted $11,000 from a bank in Marietta, Ga. The pair were seen wearing sunglasses and laughing in security footage during the robbery and went on a shopping spree afterward. Miller was hit with a 10-year sentence but will have to serve only two, while Johnson will have 10 years of probation. Benny Allen - who was a teller at the bank and was part of the plan - was sentenced to 10 years and will have to serve five. Michael Chastang, another co-defendant, will be sentenced soon. But on the bright side, Miller and Johnson are going to have some bitchin’ stories to tell at their first high school reunion….

New music from Malkmus, a reason to skip the ESPYs and ungrateful prisoners in Vermont

- Need proof that the world’s most ginormous losers reside on eBay? Look no further than the idiots involved in buying and selling a corn flake shaped like the state for Illinois on the popular web auction site for $1,350. The state-shaped flake was found and sold by two sisters from Virginia, with Melissa McIntire speaking on behalf of herself and her sister after the sale. “We were biting our nails all the way up to the finish, seeing what would happen,” she explained. The pathetic dork/winner of the auction runs a trivia website and hopes to make the cornflake part of a traveling museum for people with no lives and no friends. Monty Kerr of Austin, Tex. (you’re right, Texans, everything really IS bigger in Texas, because this guy is the biggest loser I’ve heard of in a long time) says he’s starting a collection of pop culture items and felt that this piece of cereal was a fantastic add. Keep telling yourself that, Monty, because you obviously need everything you can find to divert your attention from the pathetic, loser existence you lead. Now let’s please move on before I’m forced to repatriate myself and move to Europe just to avoid being a citizen of the same country as people like M. Kerr….

 

- I tell you, I just don’t get the beef prisoners in Vermont have with the über-tasty treat known as nutraloaf. The Vermont Supreme Court is hearing a class action lawsuit by prisoners this week claiming that the nutraloaf served to certain misbehaving inmates is cruel and unusual punishment and that inmates should be subjected to a formal disciplinary process before being subjected to what I had always known as a mighty tasty treat. Nutraloaf is a mixture of cubed whole wheat bread, non-dairy cheese, raw carrots, spinach, seedless raisins, beans, vegetable oil, tomato paste, powdered milk and dehydrated potato flakes. I don’t know about you, but I got hungry just writing that last sentence. What a pleasant cornucopia of foods and such a delightfully unique combination! Prison officials call it full meal in one neat package, but I just call it a treat for the taste buds. These ungrateful prison inmates are really out of line, trying to complain about receiving something so amazing. Back in 1988, a federal judge in Michigan ruled that the use of nutraloaf was punishment, but I’d like to think that we’ve come a long way in the past 20 years. I urge the Supreme Court in Vermont to reject this lawsuit and allow nutraloaf to be given out freely and liberally. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go finish some leftover nutraloaf I’ve been meaning to get to…..

 

- Stephen Malkmus has always been a great force and influence on the music world because he’s never been focused on going mainstream and making music that will get him welcomed into the popular, standardized segment of the industry. His work as a member of the band Pavement in the ‘80s and ‘90s was notoriously anti-rock in sentiment and was marked by powerful, introspective lyrics that were headed in a thousand different directions and seemingly bound by no normal conventions. Since Pavement ended its run as a pioneer in the world of Punk, Malkmus has done his own thing as a solo act, sometimes supported by a band known as the Jicks. These past seven years, he’s put out four albums on his own, each of them slightly more intense and focused. His latest, Real Emotional Trash, dropped this week and it’s a great listen. Songs like Hopscotch Willie, Emotional Trash and Cold Son are marked by meandering lyrics, strong guitar solos and a tempo that strikes a good balance between super-fast and too slow. Janet Weiss, former drummer of alt-rockers Sleater-Kinney, joins the Jicks on the drums for this album and her contributions are solid as well. At times the lyrics may be hard to follow, but if you make the effort to push past some of the misunderstandings, you’ll find a great album that keeps one of the more underappreciated careers in rock n’ roll going strong.

 

- Well, that’s settled. I won't be watching the ESPYs this year. I already held a strong despisal for self-important, self-congratulatory awards shows, but ESPN has found a way to take those shows and make them oh, so much worse. The network has announced that former man-bander Justin Timberlake, a man who sings like a weasel that has just ingested a ginormous tank of helium and been blasted in the package, will host the 16th annual ESPY Awards on July 20. Right, because I can't think of anything that says toughness, testosterone and hardcore competition like a guy who spent years frosting his tips, wearing matching outfits, dancing in unison with four other dudes and lip-syncing to über-awful pop music. Predictably, Timberlake is excited, as is pretty much anyone who gets a great opportunity that they don’t deserve. “I'm very excited to be hosting the 16th edition of the ESPYs. I can't wait for the day of the show as I'm truly a sports junkie,” Timberlake said. “Since the last ESPYs, there have been amazing moments in sports and I'm looking forward to recapping all of them with ESPN's diehard fans.” No, man bander, you won't be recapping them for this sports fan. You can take your Michael Jackson rip-off act elsewhere, because you most definitely do not represent the sports world that I love and follow. Being a member of a man band like O’Sync Degrees Boys or whatever group you were in basically disqualifies you from ever being considered for a single manly, masculine or sports-related post in my world. Much like being a convicted felon follows you around for the rest of your life even after you get out of prison, being a convicted member of a man band is a scarlet letter you cannot escape. So bad choice, ESPN, maybe you’ll do better in 2009…..

 

- Working in the kitchen can be hazardous. Lots of heat, things of different textures, temperatures and consistencies flying around, sharp objects and the like. Now you can add flying bullets to the list of kitchen hazards. No, I’m not talking about cooking with your favorite NBA or NFL player, which invariably would involve a minimum of five handguns. I’m referring to an incident at the Zurich Classic of New Orleans involving celebrity chef Paul Prudhomme. While setting up his cooking tent Tuesday morning at the golf tournament in Gretna, La., Prudhomme felt a sting on his right arm, just above the elbow. Initially he thought it was a bee sting, but after taking a look at his shirt sleeve, he discovered a .22 caliber bullet. Police deputies believe Prudhomme was hit by a falling bullet, probably shot about 9:30 a.m. Tuesday from somewhere within a 1 ½-mile radius of the golf course, according to Col. John Fortunato of the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office. No medical attention was required and within five minutes, P. Prudhomme was back to cooking. He did have a hole in his white chef’s coat, but that’s more of a bonus than anything. A war wound like that scores big points with the ladies, for sure. I’m not sure I’d be so eager to hang around and keep cooking if I were in his shoes, even if it was just a superficial wound. Bullets falling from the sky usually equates to me vacating the premises. Where the frak is this tournament being played, anyhow? In rural Louisiana or on a street corner in Compton? Try to keep from shooting visitors, Louisiana, it doesn’t exactly boost tourism when people leave your city or state with bullet holes in their body.

Prison Break escapes cancellation, the NFL goes brain dead and four riots in one weekend

- Great news, TV fans. In the midst of the deluge of über-crappy shows flooding the airwaves, one network has managed to make a smart programming decision amongst the many idiotic ones being made on a seemingly daily basis. Fox has ordered a fourth season of one of my absolute favorite shows, Prison Break, to run for 22 to 23 episodes. With the renewal comes a change in venue, with production for the show shifting all the way to the Left Coast. According to TVGuide.com, the fourth season of PB will pick up where the strike-shorted Season 3 left off, with Michael Scofield on the loose and seeking revenge against The Company and production will relocate to Los Angeles, moving from its previous home in Texas. Allow me to be one of the first to say….who cares? As long as the show remains on the air, you can produce it in Zimbabwe, Antarctica, Iceland or Fiji. Just give me my Prison Break every Monday night and give me a full season and all is well in my TV universe. So thanks for Fox, despite continuing to propagate the unmitigated abortion that is American Karaoke, for making at least one good decision by returning PB for another season.

- The ass clowns in the league offices of the NFL just can't help themselves. They’re bent on shoving their heads as far up their behinds as possible and implementing as many asinine new rules as possible while in said position. This is a league that already regulates the length of towels players are allowed to tuck into their waistbands during games, fines guys if their socks aren’t worn at the right height, flips out at even the most pedestrian endzone celebration and basically seeks to legislate all of the fun and individuality out of its game. Now, the numb nuts who run the league are reportedly considering a rule that would bar a player from wearing his hair long enough on the field to obscure his name on the back of his jersey. The matter is currently before the league’s competition committee  and the proposed rule change would affect players like Pittsburgh Steelers safety Polamalu and Jaguars cornerback Rashaen Mathis, both of whom sport long dreadlocks that flow out of the back of their helmet and would either need to get a haircut or figure out a way to stuff all that hair in their helmets throughout a game. According to NFL Network’s Adam Schefter, the Kansas City Chiefs proposed the rule change, and may have been motivated by the incident in October 2006 when Chiefs running back Larry Johnson pulled Polamalu's hair to drag him down from behind -- which is legal -- and then held onto the hair after both players hit the ground, drawing an unnecessary roughness penalty. Nothing like acting out of spite and being bent about something that happened a couple of seasons ago, eh Chiefs? Because of your inability to get over it and move on, the players should have an unnecessary, moronic and overly restrictive rule foisted upon them? Schefter reports that the Chiefs have argued that the hair requirement should be enforced as a uniform violation, similar to the league's requirements that players wear their socks a certain way. But there's also some support for the rules change from league insiders who believe it's unsafe to have players running around with hair hanging out their helmet. Yeah, either that or a bunch of rich, old white dudes can’t grasp the fact that this isn’t the 1960s anymore and long hair isn’t some sign of a “goddamn hippie” or other freak seeking to subvert societal norms and overthrow the establishment. Memo to you, rich, old white dudes: LONG HAIR IS JUST HAIR THAT’S A DIFFERENT LENGTH THAN YOURS. It’s not a sign of the apocalypse, nor is it something you need to legislate out of your game. Fact is that if you actually took the time to look at the fans in the 15-34 age range who provide a lot of support for your league, you’d find a lot of dudes with long lettuce who enjoy seeing guys who look like them out on the field. Speaking as one such individual, I hope you a-holes have the good sense to reject this proposed rule.  The 32 teams are expected to vote on the proposed rules change at the league meeting at the end of the month, so let’s get it right, fellas.

- Is there anything about the Beatles that isn’t controversial? During their time together, they sparked one uprising after another for everything from being anti-war to their dabblings in various religious and cult-like organizations and movements. Now that their time as a band is long gone, they’ve been at odds with Apple Computer over the use of the Apple name because the band had its own claim to the Apple name with the Apple Corps Ltd. record company they established decades ago. Now, the current point of contention is with music distributor Fuego Entertainment, which plans to release 1962 German club recordings believed to have been made during Ringo Starr’s first performance with the group. Fuego claims the recordings are important historical entities because they document the first live gig after Starr replaced Pete Best as Beatles’ drummer and that although seven of the songs from the event were later released by E.M.I., eight others were never released by anyone. Apple Corps Ltd. argues that the recordings are bootlegs and also that they are of poor quality and “dilute and tarnish the extraordinarily valuable image associated with the Beatles.” In other words, someone else is trying to make money off the Beatles and no one is allowed to make money off of their legacy besides us, says Apple Corps. The case will now go to court, but one has to wonder why, if Apple is so intent on preventing the tarnishing and dilution of the Beatles’ legacy, why they’re not suing those poseur karaoke hacks on American Karaoke who spent most of last week butchering so many of the band’s legendary tunes? Those are the people who really need to be sued…..

- It’s vital to always be on the lookout for ways to better celebrate your favorite holidays. No one who’s anyone is content with celebrating in the same tired ways they’ve celebrated a given holiday before. If all you do is break out some cheesy, lame fireworks in your back yard on the Fourth of July or watch the same boring Memorial Day parade every year, that holiday eventually becomes something you dread rather than look forward to. In that spirit, even though I think St. Patrick’s Day is a pretty lame holiday, I wholeheartedly salute the intrepid souls in Marietta, Ohio who spiced up their holiday celebration in that most festive of manners….by dyeing their crack cocaine green. Undercover cops in Marietta seized the festive crack (and really, is there any kind of crack that isn’t festive? I say no) and amazingly, this isn’t the first time they’ve seen something like this. Apparently during the Christmas season several years ago, the Washington County Sheriff’s office seized cocaine that had been dyed red. Personally, this is great news. Like many of you, I’m sure that the plain, white or off-white crack being sold in your town is getting old. Anyone and everyone who’s enough of a degenerate to be a crack addict is doing that stuff, so having something to set you apart is important. Everyone wants to be a pioneer, an innovator and an original. Green or red crack sends that message, along with the message that you’re a freaking crack addict and one of the more dangerous, scary people around.

-Riot Watch! Riot Watch! This edition is a special treat, a whirl-about that will take us around the globe to uprisings in four different countries. Let’s begin in Venezuela, where prison inmates from rival gangs took part in a brutal fight that left nine inmates dead and 20 more wounded. The melee began in the morning at the San Fernando de Apure lockup in central Venezuela and it took more than 100 prison guards and members of the national guard to quell it. Inter-gang prison riots are just about the dumbest kind of riot there is, to be honest. You’re in jail, locked up by The Man, but you choose to rebel against one another? Good one, gang members. Nothing says “reformed and ready to re-enter society” like starting the same kind of crap that probably got you imprisoned in the first place. Thankfully, there are better incidents of social dissidence on this day, one of which took place in London. Hundreds of Londoners marched through the city’s streets over the weekend to show their support for Tibet in its struggle against forced Chinese rule in their country. The London-based Free Tibet campaign sponsored the march, one of many around the world showing support for a worthy cause. Keep it up, Tibetans and pro-Tibet forces, because those Communists in China aren’t going to give up easily. Staying in Europe, our third riot/protest of the day comes from Amsterdam, where citizens were able to separate themselves from their bongs long enough to organize a demonstration against anti-immigration lawmaker Geert Wilders. Despite heavy winds and sleet, protestors showed up en masse to speak out against a short film by Wilders set to be released next month in which he denounces the Quran as a “fascist” book. The protest, called “Netherlands Shows Its Colors,” showed that many citizens don’t share Wilders’ slanted views, which is a good thing. Our fourth and final riot/protest comes from Turkey, where Kurdish protestors supporting rogue separatist guerrilla fighters clashed with police, leaving dozens injured after men in the crowd hurled large rocks at police to kick things up a notch. The direct clashes with police clearly make this the best riot of the four, because going toe-to-toe with the man always gives you bonus points. Police responded with tear gas and by administering beatdowns to some rioters, but among the four seriously injured people was one cop, so the protestors managed to do some damage of their own. All in all, a great day for rioting and one that will hopefully spark a wave of social dissidence ‘round the globe…..

Greek returns, a bad horror movie and a lame scam artist

- Oprah’s next give could just end up being to a woman who was a member of the studio audience at The Oprah Winfrey Show recently. Orit Greenberg claims that while in Chicago to attend a taping of the show on Dec. 5, 2006, she was trampled by other audience members in the rush for seats when the doors of the studio opened. According to her suit, audience members were told that they could sit wherever they wanted, so everyone went haywire running for the best spots. Greenberg claims she was pushed down a flight of stairs in the melee, sustaining “permanent and severe” injuries in the fall. She contends that Harpo Studios, where the show is filmed, failed to properly control the crowd and thus owes her $50,000 in damages. Oddly enough, something tells me this case will end up being settled out of court. It’s a paltry amount and O. Winfrey doesn’t need the negative pub, so she’ll pony up. Not that Orit Greenberg deserves what she’s asking for, mind you. She was probably right there in the midst of everyone, jostling and positioning to get the best seat. If she had been at the back of the pack, patiently waiting for the mess to clear up so she could find a seat, she would have been just fine. Also, if I’ve suffered “severe and permanent” injuries because of someone else’s negligence, I’m asking for a lot more than $50K. Sorry, Orit, but you look like a money-grubbing loser, even if you do get paid.

- After a six-month-plus break, Greek returned to the air on ABC Family last night. The show’s return is fortuitous given the fact that a lot of shows are going into a one-month lull as their stash of already filmed, pre-strike episodes runs out and they wait for new, post-strike episodes to get ready to air. After a great daylong marathon of all episodes from last fall’s first season, the season premiere kicked off at 8 p.m. Only four weeks had elapsed in the magical world of Cyprus Rhodes University from the end of last season to the beginning of this one, so not much had changed from where last season ended. Unlike shows such as 24, where several years can elapse between seasons, Casey, Rusty and Co. began this year where we found them last year. Rusty is still depressed about his breakup with Jen K., the girl who threw the entire campus into chaos last semester with an expose on the campus Greek system’s debaucherous ways. His trusty pal and fraternity president Cappie forces him to delete pictures of her from his computer and erase an old voice mail message, but that isn’t enough for Rusty. When his puritanical roomie Dale finds one of Jen’s hair clips laying around the dorm room, Rusty decides to seize the chance to see Jen face to face and delivers the clip himself. Unfortunately for Rusty, he finds out the Jen is now dating someone else and has moved on. His hang-up on her leads to him letting down his frat brothers for a second time in the episode by not getting to the hardware store in time to pick up a snow machine for the Kappa Tau booth at the semester-opening Greek Carnival. The event is part of the Greek system’s attempt to get back in the university’s good graces after last semester’s scandal. The scandal is also hitting the Zeta Beta sorority, led by Rusty’s big sis Casey, hard. A national representative from the sorority is on hand at CRU to make sure the Zeta Betas there are abiding by the organization’s high standards after the scandalous fall semester. The rep, Trisha, is quite the anal-retentive stickler for the rules and wastes no time in becoming the wet blanket that ruins all of the sorority’s fun. In no time, she bans clapping in meetings, forces the sisters to dress like they’re living in a Leave It to Beaver rerun and has Casey walking on eggshells. At the same time, the university’s new rules for the Greek system are pressing from the other direction, making life miserable. The university wants to crack down on underage drinking, institute curfews and other restrictive measures designed to regulate fraternities and sororities. Of course, everyone is looking for a way around them as soon as they rules come down, with the Kappa Tau house leading the charge. Rusty’s pal Calvin is out of that mess, having left the Omega Chi fraternity in last season’s finale after his brothers’ cold reaction to learning that he’s gay. Omega Chi president, blueblood and all-around upper-cruster Evan Chambers tries to talk Calvin into coming back to the frat, but continued concerns from the fraternity’s members cause him to reconsider. Evan is also busy reconsidering how he treats his ex, Casey. He starts out friendly and cordial, turns cold and heartless by asking for his pin back after pinning Casey last semester, and stripping her of her title as Omega Chi Sweetheart. That leads to multiple beers to drown his sorrows and musings about how he should really be treating Casey. Sadly, there were no new revelations about other majors Cappie has had previously in his time at CRU, which was one of the best parts of last season. Every episode, something would come up that would inspire a remembrance of his time as a ________________ (fill in the blank) major. Definitely one of the comedic high points of any episode, but hopefully we’ll get a few of those this season as well. You can't be too harsh on this episode because season premieres are always a tough task. There are loose ends to tie up, gaps in time to fill in since last season ended, etc. Greek actually did a good job of juggling all of those tasks and delivered a solid episode, which is hopefully a precursor for another awesome season.

- Don’t expect my help in tracking down the people whose names are on your list of wanted rioters from this past week’s demonstrations against your rule in Tibet, Chinese government. Aside from the fact that I live a couple, two or three continents away and don’t know a single one of them, even if I lived right next door to them, I wouldn’t lift a finger to help you track them down. Chinese officials have issued a “Most Wanted” list of 21 individuals involved in last week’s protests against Chinese oppression/governance in Tibet. The wanted men and women are shown in grainy photos distributed by the Chinese as they seek to stamp out all vestiges of free speech and independent thought. According to figures provided by the Chinese government, 18 civilians and one police officer were killed in last week’s uprisings and 623 more people were injured. Things are getting so contentious that the Chinese are considering banning live television broadcasts from Tiananmen Square during the Olympics this summer. Yes sir, this is going to be a glorious celebration come summertime, the world’s biggest violator of human rights and a government oppressing not just their people but those in neighboring countries as well, all on display for the world to see. Hard to imagine anyone not being pumped about heading to Beijing for the Games, no?

- Why? That’s the first question that pops into my mind when I hear about a man in Western Pennsylvania scheming, scamming and plotting so he can rip off…..McDonald’s? No, not McDonald’s corporate headquarters, just local restaurants. This tool put time and effort into formulating a plan in which he drives around to local McD’s, pretends to be a basketball coach and then scams the restaurants out of food and small amounts of cash. He’s been working the same scam in three towns, driving a school bus or something resembling one to a McDonald’s. He goes inside, orders about $50 worth of food for his “team” and then pays for it with a $150 check that appears to be from his school district. He takes the food and his change, in cash, and splits, leaving the phony check behind as the primary evidence for police trying to track him down. Again I ask why….why put time and effort into a plan and then operate on such a small scale for such a miniscule payoff? Clearly getting this bus, keeping gas in it and making up phony checks takes time and money. Heck, with the price of gas, this guy might actually be losing money by driving to these restaurants and making off with $150 in food and cash. If you’re going to put all of that effort and money out there, at least aim a little higher. Heck, you’re going to end up in prison for fraud, writing bad checks, etc. The least you can do is aim higher than scoring a few big Macs, apple pies and McNuggets, bro.

- The mysterious, creepy, supernatural scare movie has been done to death (pun intended) in recent years. Movies like The Grudge, both installments of The Ring, One Missed Call, etc. have squeezed all the life out of that type of movie. To be honest, there wasn’t much life there to begin with, so any new movie in the same vein would have to be extremely original and innovative in order to succeed. Unfortunately, Shutter just doesn’t bring anything new to this tired genre and for that reason it’s an underwhelming failure of a flick. Rachael Taylor and Dawson’s Creek alum Joshua Jackson star as a newlywed couple heading off to Japan for a photo shoot that Jackson’s character has landed. Unfortunately, his pictures from the sessions are all flawed because of a certain grainy quality, which he surmises is a problem with his camera equipment. His wife isn’t so sure and asks around, eventually finding out about “ghost photos,” a well-known phenomenon in Japan. Eventually we learn that the ghost in Jackson’s photos is a girl he used to be involved with, which explains why she’s haunting he and his new girl. I won't spoil the rest of the plot for you, not that there’s much to spoil. The film clocks in at a mere 86 minutes, meaning that although it’s one big cliché and totally unoriginal, at least it doesn’t bore you for 3-4 hours (yeah, I’m looking at you, Titanic). I wish I could tell Hollywood to take a break from these supernatural, tech-based scary movies, but we all know that’s not going to happen. If they can squeeze even a minor profit margin out of these copycat films, they’ll keep churning them out, cinematic quality and integrity be damned. Of course, you don’t have to be one of the mindless sheep handing them your money to see this garbage, and in this case I strongly suggest that you don’t.

Putty in space, a great counterfeiting scam and MLB kicks off....in Japan?

- Maybe we aren’t paying our airport employees enough…either that, or many of them are thieving, lying, duplicitous scumbags. I’ll let you decide after I tell you about a counterfeiting ring at the Newark Liberty Airport in which $2 million worth of U.S. Treasury checks were stolen and their security features copied by a group that included several baggage handlers working at the airport. Federal authorities in Jew Jersey say that the operation started with those baggage handlers stealing the checks from luggage and then passing them on to others in the ring who copied security features from them and subsequently cashed $2 million worth of bogus paper. See, this is why you always put your millions of dollars in U.S. Treasury checks in your carry-on bag, because you send them through the baggage-handling department and they’re going to be stolen. Ideally you wouldn’t be traveling with large amounts of these checks, but I understand that’s how some of your roll. Welcome to the Newark Airport, where you can’t carry on a toothpaste tube bigger than 3 oz. because of an alleged security hazard, but our security isn’t good enough to protect a multimillion-dollar counterfeiting ring. Yet another reason why air travel is a nightmare more often than not….

- I loves me a good conspiracy theory just as much as anyone, but the Chinese government is barking up the wrong tree in accusing followers of the Dalai Lama or staging violent clashes with police in the hopes of sabotaging this summer’s Olympics in Beijing and boosting their campaign for independence from the brutally oppressive Chinese rule in their country. Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao made those accusations this week, but I regret to inform Jiabao that he’s missing the point here. Yes, Tibetans and their supporters are violently clashing with police and trying to end your forced rule in their country, but they don’t have some ulterior motive. Their motive is clear and openly stated - returning their exiled government, led by the Dalai Lama, to power. Maybe having the eyes of the world focused on their region because of the Summer Olympics helps, but I don’t think they’re looking to sabotage the Games, because you all are doing a great job of that already by having such polluted air that athletes fear for their health if they compete in it, trying to use ‘roided-up chickens to feed athletes and continually oppressing human rights to the point that the world recognizes you as one of the absolute worst in that category. You trying to put a spin job on the resistance effort is actually comical and no one believes you, but keep on selling it if you want.

- Planning on catching the beginning of the Major League Baseball season? Looking forward to tuning in on TV or radio on a sunny spring afternoon or evening as your favorite team kicks off its season? Think again, friends. If you want to catch the official start of the season, you’re going to need to either stay up really late or wake up between 3 a.m. and 6 a.m. (depending on the time zone you live in) if you want to see the Boston Red Sox and Oakland A’s start the 2008 season live from Japan. Yes, in a terrible tradition that MLB insists on continuing, those two teams will start the season for AMERICA’S national pastime in Japan. I understand the importance of reaching out to baseball-loving nations like Japan, I truly do. I also get that the logistics of a Japan trip are a bit easier if you put the trip at the start of the season and then give the teams playing aboard a few extra days off. That being said, you can’t start the season on foreign soil. Play the first games in this country as long as MLB is a U.S.-based league. You’re throwing them on at a time when 99.9 percent of people in this country can’t or won't watch. Plus, you’re having the defending World Series champs play in these games, further compounding your error. I know this will fall on deaf ears and that MLB is going to keep pushing these season-openers in Japan year after year, but that doesn’t mean it’s right or that someone shouldn’t stand up against the practice.

- Well this is one of the more bizarre reenactments of the Boston Tea Party that I’ve ever seen. Some Nicaraguan drug smugglers were looking to move a little product this past week and for some odd reason, the Nicaraguan authorities weren’t down. Being the typical sticks in the mud that those in authority tend to be, officials in the country went hard after the smugglers and their stash of 3,300 pounds of cocaine. The U.S. Coast Guard, ever the squares and party-poopers, joined in on the pursuit and these poor drug traffickers had no choice but to dump more than a ton and a half of coke overboard and escape. The smugglers did get away, but all of that blow is now lost forever. The price of coke will skyrocket as a result and cocaine addicts everywhere will feel the pinch. But just like those revolutionaries in Boston more than two centuries ago were taking a stand against the tyranny of British rule and the principle of taxation without representation, I can’t help but see a message being sent by these intrepid, modern-day revolutionaries off the coast of Nicaragua. No seizure of our blow without proper payment, that’s the new battle cry. In related news, Keith Richards and Amy Winehouse have announced that they will be taking an extending deep-sea diving trip off the coast of Nicaragua immediately….wonder if there’s a connection here I’m missing….

- People often use the space program as a point of comparison when talking about advanced technology and sophisticated, advanced activities. “It’s not rocket science,” they’ll say. It gets me to thinking and wondering if our space program is really as advanced and sophisticated as we think it is. For example, say there’s a problem with the physical structure of a space shuttle or station and some sort of repairs are needed. Do our astronauts have some über-advanced technology, something “space age” that will allow them to pinpoint the problem and fix it in a way that would confound mere mortals. Oddly enough, the answer is no. When tiles on the international space station, the tool of choice for fixing the damage is a caulk gun and some putty. Astronauts from the shuttle Endeavour arrived at the space station last week to deliver a robot and the first section of a Japanese lab to be installed, but their duties have expanded to include puttying up damage to the station. Using the pink goo and a caulk gun-like contraption, they are now fixing up the holes like modern day, space-walking handymen. When they’re done patching those holes, maybe they can move on to fixing that pesky space station garbage disposal and finding a way to keep the station’s toilets from clogging up. Good work, guys, I’m sure Neil Armstrong would be very proud of your efforts.

Reasons to marry well, Great White manager paroled and a grisly plot in the Congo

- Let this be a lesson to everyone out there age 18 or above, and maybe even for those a little younger. When you go to marry someone, think carefully and really consider who you’re about to wed. Make the right choice and you have a great partner to go through the rest of your life with. Make the wrong choice and you’re paying alimony and child support out the wazoo and being forced to fork over $375,000 to cover your ex’s legal fees in the child custody case they’re fighting against you. Yes, the Insane One, Britney Spears, has been ordered by an L.A. court commissioner to pony up nearly $400K to finance the attorney’s fees for her former leech, er, husband, K-Dirt Federline. K-Dirt’s attorney had been asking for $500,000, but the commish put the cap on at $375,000. Spears’ own attorney argued that 1) K-Dirt’s lawyer was over-billing his client and 2) K-Dirt could pay for his own attorney, which actually does seem like a reasonable request. Well, reasonable until you realize that Spears is basically financing K-Dirt’s life through alimony and child support payments. All his lawyer needs to do is to throw on a track from K-Dirt’s attempt at a rap album and no judge is going to believe that this guy has any shot of earning a living in his attempted profession. All of this could have been avoided if Brit had been smart enough to not marry a dirtbag, leech, trailer-park bum to begin with, but she really doesn’t have the best judgment, does she…….

- Thanks for nothing, NCAA Tournament higher seeds. You all systematically destroyed my bracket this weekend by turning in your worst performances at the worst possible time. Let’s begin with America’s chokers, the Duke Blue Devils. Now I’m the first to admit that I hate the Dukies, those arrogant, pompous, condescending, rich, Van-uppity a-holes. However, I bit the bullet this year and actually picked them to advance safely through the tournament’s first three rounds, all the way to the Elite Eight. I usually pick them to get bounced in the first round out of spite, but I banked on them this year. Of course, they promptly let me down by getting bounced in the second round by West Virginia, 73-67. The second-seeded Blue Devils proved they never deserved their seed and busted my bracket with a lackluster effort. Fast forward to today, when Georgetown choked away a double-digit second-half lead to mid-major Davidson, basically a one-man team led by super-shooter Stephen Curry. Davidson 74, Georgetown 70. Thanks for nothing, Hoyas. You became the second #2 seed to lose, but your loss is worse because of that big lead blown and also because you lost to a team seeded 10th. Coming on the heels of colossal letdowns by fourth and fifth-seeded Connecticut and Drake in the opening round and a no-show by fourth-seeded Vanderbilt in the same round, I feel betrayed and bamboozled by you, high seeds. Not that I’m the guy filling out 50 brackets and gambling away half of his savings on the tournament, but when I do pick you to win on the one bracket I fill out, you could at least bother to play a reasonably good game, that’s not too much to ask.

- Looking to get an early jump on the next 007 movie? You can do it, as long a you either live in Britain or don’t mind buying a plane or boat ticket there to see Quantum of Solace, the latest James Bond adventure. Can I pause for a moment and say how horrible of a name that is? It sounds like you just wrote down impressive-sounding, multi-syllabic words on index cards, threw them in a hat and pulled out two of them. Quantum of Solace doesn’t even sound interesting or sensical, just a bizarre word combination designed to wow. Now I’ll still end up seeing this movie because I’m a theater junkie and I do enjoy action films, I just think you could have come up with a better title. That being said, the film initially had a Nov. 7 release date worldwide and for the United States, that date will remain. But over in Bondland, a.k.a. Britain, the film will be released a week earlier on Oct. 31. Normally it’s the U.S. getting films before the rest of the world, but this time the tables are flipped. You won't believe it, but once again James Bond is tracking down a vague, far-reaching international conspiracy. So you can either wait until Nov. 7 to find out the who’s, how’s and why’s, or you can hop a bird to Britain and find out a week earlier. If you do, do me a favor and don’t spoil it by telling me the plot before I can see it for myself.

- Murder plots don’t usually involve gorillas, but here is one case where they do and also where the gorillas might be the smarter of the individuals involved in the whole mess. A park ranger in the Congo, located in central Africa, has been arrested and charged with masterminding the slaughter of 10 endangered mountain gorillas as part of a scheme to thwart local conservationists’ plan to save the creatures’ mountain habitat. This ass hat thought that by killing the gorillas that lived in the area, he could clear the way for loggers to cut down trees in the region to make charcoal, a lucrative business in the Congo. So to review, this guy, likely in league with or being paid off by the logging companies, concocted a murder plot to take out 10 gorillas. He set up the plan that led to these poor animals being massacred, a park ranger who was supposed to be protecting the creatures and their habitat. This is one of the more despicable things I have heard of lately, so let’s hope that life in a prison in the Congo is every bit as gruesome and dirty as I imagine it to be.

- Five years later, the fallout from the massive nightclub fire that killed 100 people in West Warwick, R.I. continues. Just a few months ago, lawsuits by friends and families of people who died in the blaze against a local TV station whose cameraman impeded club patrons from escaping the burning building were settled. Now, the manager of the band Great White, whose pyrotechnics sparked the fire, has been released from prison after serving less than half of his four-year sentence. Daniel Biechele, 31, is a former manager for 1980s rockers Great White and he’s now a free man, although he won't ever be truly free from the stigma of being linked to this disaster. His name is going to be linked with the fire and those 100 deaths for the rest of his life. He had been in prison in Cranston, R.I., but the first thing he should have done upon being released was make a beeline for the border (which couldn’t be too far, given how tiny Rhode Island is). It’s a small state and everyone there knows who he is and if he ever returns, let’s just say they won't be buying him a beer. So go free, Daniel, live your life, but stay clear of our nation’s smallest state if you value your life and health.

A losing election team, more riots in Tibet and the NBA's absolute disgrace of a team

- Sorry to burst your bubble, CBS, but Secret Talents of the Stars should stay a secret. You all are apparently going brain-dead as a network, because if you think that more than five Americans have an interest in watching George Takei attempt to be a country music singer, you are mistaken. Problem one would be that right now, most people reading this are wondering who the frak George Takei is. If one of your “stars” in someone that most people don’t know, that’s a problem. Allow me to fill in the blanks for all of you on that one. Takei was on one of the many TV installments of Star Trek, but more of you would know him as Hiro Nakamura’s father on NBC’s current hit show Heroes. Problem two would be that if someone like Takei or country singer Clint Black (making a run at being a standup comic) is famous for one thing, odds are that they aren’t holding another talent ace in their back pocket. More than likely, they’re holding the two of hearts and the four of spades, amigos. If they could have made it as something else, they would have. Them being famous for one thing doesn’t mean we need to or want to see them try something else (see Michael Jordan, the greatest basketball player of all-time, trying and failing miserably at minor-league baseball or that idiot Billy Crystal playing for the Yankees in an exhibition game). I get that you all are grasping at straws here because you’re waiting for new episodes of your other crappy shows to roll in now that the writers’ strike has ended, but allowing pseudo-celebs to indulge their long-held desire to try and become a country singer or standup comedian just won't cut it. Nice try, CBS, but no.

- Obscenities on the airwaves. It’s an issue that’s been up and coming for a while now, especially given obscene acts and comments on air during Super Bowls, radio shows and the like the past few years. With Howard Stern, Don Imus, Janet Jackson, etc. making the FCC sweat every time they’re on air, the issue of what is allowable on radio and TV has become more and more debated. This week, the Supreme Court has stepped into the fray when it comes to curse words and what is appropriate. The specific case before the court centers on a Federal Communications Commission policy that allows for fines against broadcasters for “fleeting expletives,” one-time uses of the F-word and its derivatives. Fox, CBS, ABC and NBC have challenged the policy after awards shows they broadcast in 2002 and 2003 were obscene because of profanities using during the broadcasts by Bono, Nicole Richie and Cher. In the initial challenge, a federal appeals court ruled that the policy was unconstitutional and may constitute a violation of the Ninth Amendment. Two airings of the Billboard Music Awards are the point of contention here, a show that aired on Fox. The FCC, being the über-square, anal retentive bastards they are, felt like one or two tiny slips of the tongue merited major ramiprecussions. Of course, as with all things in our justice system, actually getting justice will take a long time. The case won't be heard until the fall, so for now both sides are trying to put on a happy face and act like the Supreme Court hearing their case is exactly what they want. So this fall, the eternal debate of freedom of speech versus censorship will go down, stay tuned….

- The Miami Heat are an absolute disgrace. That hasn’t been a secret for the duration of this NBA season, but now their disgracefulness is reaching a level that demands outrage and action. Yes, they are 12-56 on the season and have sucked on the court from Day One. But as the season nears its end, things have taken a turn for the worst, to the extent that the Miami Heat fans need someone to intervene on their behalf. At the season’s outset, their roster was filled with aging, overpaid players and any playoff hopes were a pipe dream. Then, they traded star center and main attraction Shaq O’Neal to Phoenix just past the midway point of the season. If only that were the end of it….but it’s not. Around that same time, coach/GM Pat “Oil Slick” Riley announced that throughout the remainder of the season, he might miss a few of his team’s games because he would be out scouting college talent. After all, the Heat will have a high draft pick, so he reasoned that he needed to see the talent firsthand. Coaching his team be damned, Riley was going scouting. Forget about doing his job and giving his best effort to help the team he has right now win. Screw the fans who pay exorbitant ticket prices to see the Heat try to win games too. But wait, there’s more. A few weeks ago, the team’s franchise player Dwayne Wade decided he was shutting himself down for the year because of a nagging knee problem. He’ll probably end up having surgery on it, but he also is holding out hope that he can play for team USA in the Summer Olympics. Yup, he won't play another game this season for those fans paying nearly $100 a game to see the Heat, but he’ll play in the Olympics. So already you have one star traded, one sitting out the rest of the season and a coach who isn’t giving his all to help his team win. But wait, there’s more! Forward Dorrell Wright and center Alonzo Mourning have also had their seasons ended prematurely with injuries, further decimating the roster. With all of this going on, the team gave one of the most crap-tacular efforts in NBA history this week, losing 96-54 Wednesday night to Toronto with only seven players active for the game. But wait, there’s more! yesterday, forward Udonis Haslem had season-ending surgery to remove bone spurs from his left ankle. Fans, your 2007-08 Miami Heat! I know this would set a bad precedent, but this franchise needs to refund every damn dollar that fans have paid for tickets the second half of this abortion of a season - well, season ticket holders anyhow. Fans buying single-game ducats knew what they were getting and chose to go anyhow. Season ticket holders had paid their money months ago and couldn’t get out of it. Do the right thing, Heat, and make it right for the fans you’ve spent the entire season giving a ginormous middle finger to.

- And the riots rage on in the Tibet-China conflict. The protests going on by Tibetans spread to three neighboring provinces this week, showing that despite a crackdown by the Chinese in a furious attempt to gain control before this whole mess totally desecrates their nation’s image on the precipice of this summer’s Olympic games. Tibetan communities in Sichuan, Qinghai and Gansu marked another week of social dissidence by Tibetans as they emphatically restated their belief that the Chinese rule in their country should end. These three new areas of protests forced the Chinese government to mobilize security forces all across western China, showing once again that the power of the people is strong when they band together against The Man. At the same time as these three areas were exploding in protests, police in Tibet’s capital city of Lhasa were busy going building to building, searching for people who had the audacity to take part in a violent anti-Chinese protest last week. A deadline for those individuals to surrender is fast approaching, and if they don’t turn themselves in, they face severe ramiprecussions. Of course, the way the Chinese do business, these people will probably be killed even if they do turn themselves in, so by trying to hide they really aren’t upping their risk factor all that much. I’ve said it before, I’ll keep on saying it as long as is necessary….FREE TIBET! FREE TIBET!

- There are some teams you’d love to be a part of. Your favorite baseball team, NFL team, the League of Justice, the Olympic team for your country, etc. Let’s just say that the team of Hank Clinton and Elton John is not among teams most of us would want to join. A femi-Nazi, runner-up in the Democratic presidential race and an effeminate, homosexual, glitter, sequin and feather-wearing pop singer just aren’t the kind of winning team I’m eager to be a part of. But there they are, E. John preparing for an April 9 concert in New York City to help raise funds for the sinking ship that is Hank’s campaign. The show will take place at Radio City Music Hall in Manhattan, which will be verrrrry helpful to me when I’m looking to be as far away from the site of the show as possible when it happens. “I’m not a politician, but I believe firmly in the work that she does,” E. John said of Hank. Look Elton, I get it, I do. Hank is ten times more masculine than you and she scares the crap out of dudes who actually dress and act like dudes, let alone a softie like you, with your sequined outfits and feather-trimmed sunglasses. The funniest part of this is that the two ticket prices for the show are $125 and $250….seriously. In other words, the show will be for a bunch of rich, old white people. I might pay that much for tickets on a U2 farewelll tour, but for an Elton John fundraiser for Hank Clinton, I’m thinking I’m the one who would need to be paid if I was going to attend.

Stop corrupting the madness, movie mayhem and Lost/Smallville recaps

- Great opening day of the NCAA Tournament yesterday. Yes, there were a lot of lopsided games early, but when you get the chance to witness history being made, it’s still a great day. That history came courtesy of the Kent State Golden Flashes, who were anything but golden in scoring a tournament record-tying low 10 points in the first half. The Flushes were absolutely putrid, turning the ball over 17 times and mustering only five field goals in the half. Their 10 points in that half tied the record for the fewest points scored on a half in the history of the NCAA Tournament, which has to be a proud way to cap the season for your team. And no, I don’t care that in a second half where the outcome was a foregone conclusion, Kent scored 48 points. They still lost 71-58 and never closed the gap to single digits. Watching these clowns toss the ball around like it was greased up with Crisco and they were wearing blindfolds just proved that although they may have won the Mid-American Conference, they are nowhere near the level of the so-called BCS conferences, not even close. I’d argue that their performance is worse than that of Mississippi Valley State, which only scored 29 points the entire game but has the defense that they played UCLA, the top seed in their region. Top seeds are supposed to beat #16 seeds by wide margins, period. Kent was seeded ninth (nice job on that one, selection committee) and playing a UNLV team seeded eighth, so theoretically it should have been a fair matchup. At least the rest of the day’s games featured teams that actually looked like they had played basketball before, so there’s something to be thankful for.

 

- Believe it or not, last night’s episode of Smallville was marked by deception, half-truths and scheming. I know, I know, it’s hard to believe. But things kicked off in arresting fashion (pun intended) as Clark Kent was abducted by men in black, military-like garb with the help of Kryptonite-laced Taser guns. Just as he was about to pull out the key for the portal to the Fortress of Solitude, CK was nabbed and Lana and Chloe were left to find the aftermath. They went to Lionel Luthor for help and he lied to their faces, telling them he thought Lex might be responsible when Lionel directed the whole plan. Of course, Lionel was dealing with a blackmail threat of his own from Patricia Swann, daughter of the late Victor Swann (played on the series by the late Christopher Reeve), a scientist who helped Clark figure out his destiny. P. Swann had been sending Lionel threatening notes because she believed that he had offed her father and three other members of a secret society known as Veritas that had been formed by four wealthy families looking for one they called “The Traveler,” who turned out to be Clark Kent. Patricia Swann believed the Lionel killed the other Veritas members to have Clark all to himself. Also included in the group were Oliver Queen’s (Green Arrow) parents, whose plane Lionel sabotaged. Patty Swann threatened to release evidence implicating Lionel in the deaths of the other Veritas members unless he took her to see Clark and then released CK. Clark was being held at a special, Kryptonian-proofed detention facility Lionel had set up, complete with über-thick concrete walls, a Plexiglas cage and waves of Kryptonite running through the walls of the cage. A sadistic former security chief for Lex’s 33.1 meteor-freak project had charge over him and was bent on killing someone he viewed as a threat to the world. When Lionel revealed that killing Clark wasn’t in the plan, this guy flipped out. Patty Swann had already been knocked out and Lionel was going to screw her over by flying her out of the country without meeting Clark, but this gun-toting security whack-o knocked him out as well. Just as this nut job was about to kill Clark with a fatal surge of Kryptonite, a miraculous intervention happened. Kara Kent, who had been living at the Luthor Mansion with Lex, was just about to have a memory retrieval procedure that Lex insisted would help her get back the memories she’d lost when she had amnesia. Of course, Lex only wanted her memory back so he could exploit her and get closer to the truth about Clark. Chloe and Lana broke into the mansion just in time to save Kara, ushering her off to the Fortress where Chloe talked Clark’s Kryptonian father Jor-El into helping Kara get her memory back. Once Kara was back to normal, she had her Kryptonian powers back and bum-rushed the facility where Clark was being held. She disabled the cage, freed Clark and they were able to escape. In the aftermath, Patty Swann visits Clark back at the Kent Farm and declares that if he won’t accept her offer to get away from Smallville to a safer place, she will be getting an apartment in Metropolis so she can be close to him and give him the same support her father provided to Clark. Clark then goes to confront Lionel, who launches into a trademark diatribe about how he was only kidnapping Clark to protect him because initially he didn’t know who the threatening messages that were ultimately revealed to be from Patricia Swann were coming from or what danger there was to Clark. To keep Clark from going after their source and finding danger, Lionel tried to spin the fact that he kidnapped the Man of Steel. The detention facility, he explained, was for other Kryptonians, ones who have proven much more violent than Clark. Clearly Clark didn’t believe the story, because he pronounced Lionel to be the same deceitful, duplicitous man he’s always been. Proof of that comes near the end of the episode when Patty Swann’s driver pulls off the road on the way to Metropolis and shoots her, making her the latest Veritas-related death and ending her run on the show at one episode.Thankfully, Smallville is one of the only shows that won’t be beginning a several-week gap in between new episodes next week, so next Thursday it’ll be time for more Smallville talk, but that’s all for now….

 

- Maybe the writers and producers on Lost haven’t been paying attention to what I’ve been saying about a largely underwhelming season of their show, because last nights’ episode Lost was more of the same. In other words, 95 percent of the episode is about one character and almost the entire rest of the cast gets zero screen time. Other than a quick scene with Ben, his daughter Alex, her boyfriend Carl and Danielle Rousseau, the crazy French chick who has lived on the island for nearly 20 years, and another with Rousseau, Carl and Alex and the end, everything in between was Michael-centric. At the beginning of the hour, Ben warns Alex, Carl and Rousseau to leave the barracks immediately because when the people from the freighter come to the island to get Ben, Alex will be in danger because they will use her to get to Ben. So the trio departs and aren’t heard from until the end of the hour. In between, we find Michael on the freighter, being confronted by Sayid and Desmond. They demand to know what he doing on the boat, posing as a man named Kevin Johnson. Michael tells them his tale, which we see in the form of a flashback. As it turns out, after leaving the island on an Others-provided boat at the end of Season Two, Michael and his son Walt returned to New York. Unfortunately, life back in Manhattan wasn’t able to wipe away the memories of the island. Michael, overcome with guilt over shooting and killing Libby and Ana Lucia in Season Two when the Others had kidnapped Walt and forced him to break Ben out of custody of the Oceanic 815 survivors, tells Walt about the two murders he committed. At the same time, Michael operates under the belief that no one can know who he and Walt really are or that they have survived the crash of Oceanic 815. Walt goes to live with his grandmother, Michael’s mom, and she refuses to even let Michael in the house when he comes to visit his son. Michael’s response is to repeatedly attempt to commit suicide, beginning with crashing his car into a wall in a local shipyard at high speed. He has a suicide note pinned to his shirt, a note written to Walt, but when paramedics find him in his crashed car, still alive, they take him to the hospital and he refuses to give his name to the nurse or to tell her who Walt is. Michael next attempts to kill himself in a dark alley by shooting himself in the head with a gun he bought courtesy of pawning the watch he was given back on the island by Jin. However, just as he’s about the pull the trigger, Tom, a.k.a. Friendly of the Others, appears out of the shadow with a mysterious offer. He asks Michael to go onto a freighter about to port in Fiji and pose as a member of the crew. He also tells Michael that no matter how many times he tries to commit suicide, the island won't allow it. Its mysterious powers extend beyond its physical boundaries, it seems. Tom tells Michael that he has work left to do and to come find him in his penthouse hotel room when he’s ready to do it. Michael pus Tom’s words to the test by attempting suicide again inside of his apartment, but a news broadcast about the supposed recovery of the remains of Oceanic 815 at the bottom of the ocean gives him pause. When he does try to pull the trigger, the gun jams, which finally convinces him that Tom is telling the truth. When Michael goes to see Tom in his hotel room, he’s presented with evidence that Charles Widmore did indeed fake the recovery of the remains of Oceanic 815 by digging up 324 graves in Thailand for the bodies to stage the fake wreckage, buying an old plane and shipping it out to sea to a location where it could be dropped and sink so deep that recovering any remains or identifying any of them would be impossible. All of this, Tom explained, were done so no one would look for the real location of the crash and thus find the island that Widmore so badly wants. Based on this evidence, Michael signs on to go aboard the freighter posing as Kevin Johnson and to kill everyone on board, one by one, to keep the freighter from reaching the island. When he arrives in Fiji, Michael begins meeting members of the crew that we’ve already come to know this season - Naomi, George Mintkowski, Miles, etc. - and starts to have second thoughts about killing them. However, a care package from the Others changes his focus. Inside, hidden under some tools, is what looks like a bomb. The message seems clear: blow up the boat. But when Michael takes the “bomb” to the engine room and enters the code to detonate it, nothing happens. He’s cringing, preparing to be blown to bits, but all that happens is a flag popping up, just like in a cartoon. The flag has two words written on it: NOT YET. Shortly after this scare, a call comes in to the boat for Michael/Kevin. It’s allegedly from Walt, but when Michael picks up, Ben is on the other end of the line. Ben tells him that he was just making a point with the fake bomb, that although he’s willing to go to war to save the island, he won’t kill innocent people to do so. Some of the people on the boat are innocent and don’t understand what a monster Widmore is, so Ben didn’t want to kill them. As Michael finishes his story and we’re back in the present, Sayid doesn’t take the whole situation in very well. In a rage, Sayid forced Michael into an impromptu meeting with the captain and then rats Michael out by revealing his true identity. Meanwhile, back on the island, Alex, Rousseau and Carl are on the run in the jungle, headed for the Temple, a sanctuary where Ben told them that the rest of the Others are. As they stop for a water break, they are taken down by gunfire. Carl’s water bottle takes the first hit, followed by a fatal shot to Carl. When Rousseau and Alex make a run to save themselves, Rousseau is shot as well. Alex is left alone and surrenders, yelling that she’s Ben’s daughter and pleading with her faceless enemy not to shoot her as well. She stands up, puts her hands in the air and….that’s where things ended. Oh, and because the f’ing writers’ strike held the show to only eight pre-strike episodes and this was the eighth episode, new ones won’t be airing until April 24. So two months after the season kicked off, we get a great big gap to further disrupt and already rocky campaign. So until April 24….

 

- Heading into a new weekend at the box office, the defending champ from last weekend is the animated Disney flick Horton Hears a Who!, which pulled in $45 million in its opening weekend. With Jim Carrey voicing the lead character, the film scored big with moviegoers and with this being a holiday weekend, it looks to have a good chance for a second consecutive big payday. Last weekend’s second-place movie was the historical epic 10,000 B.C., a film with cavemen, mastodons, sabertooth tigers and more…and a film I have no interesting in seeing. Great FX aside, I just don’t have any desire to watch a film about what some filmmaker thinks the world might have looked like 12,000 years ago. Third in last weekend’s box office earnings race was the clichéd fight film Never Back Down, which made $6 million. However, since the estimated cost for the movie was just $20 million, it was actually a decent haul. Stay tuned for this weekend, which should be a decent one at theaters.

 

- One other NCAA Tournament note: Memo to all businesses out there across all sectors of our economy - stop trying to gravy train on March Madness by attempting to work the word “madness” into your company’s commercials or ads. Doing so isn’t clever, cute or amusing. Including the word madness doesn’t link your company with the excitement of the tournament; it makes you look like an unoriginal, un-creative ass. CBS tried to link the madness concept to its Monday night lineup of lame comedies for this coming week, failing to realize that no matter what term you use, those shows still suck. Same goes for tire stores, electronics stores, restaurants, clothing outlets, etc. What you’re trying to sell has absolutely no relationship to the real March Madness and basically by using the madness concept you’re just showing that you either can’t or don’t want to take the time and effort to come up with a slogan or tag line that’s actually good and related to what you’re pitching. So if you’re reading this and what I’ve said hits a little too close to home, I make no apologies because I’m doing you a favor by pointing out something you need to fix.

How to make money if you're a disgraced skank, eavesdropping news and gun control advocates in trouble

- Score on for Big Brother. While Congress passed a bill late last week establishing rules and guidelines under which the government can invade the privacy of private citizens and intrude on their personal lives via its eavesdropping program, the bill is going to be vetoed by W. and based on the slim 213-197 margin the bill passed by in the House, there will be no override of that veto. Because the bill does not reach back and grant amnesty to telecommunications companies for acts of intrusion they already committed by monitoring private phone calls and emails without court permission, W. has already promised to veto it. In other words, if it doesn’t provide carte blanche for illegal actions already committed by order of him and his stooges, he’s not interested. Because of the impending veto and the small voting margin, “this bill has no impact at all” declared Republican Whip Rep. Roy Blunt of Missouri. I hate to admit it, this rich, old white dude is right. As nice as it would be to see the government be restricted from infringing upon our constitutional rights and horning in on our private communications, unless W. can get a bill that excuses his past crimes, er, mistakes, er executive decisions, he’s not going to sign it. Maybe in about 10 months when we swear in a real president, we can revisit this issue and reach a fair conclusion.

- What to do when you’re a disreputable skank and a known hooker involved with a sex scandal that brought down a former governor of the state of New York? Should you write a tell-all book, go on the talk show circuit or maybe go the unconventional route and use the sheer embarrassment from having people know you as a trampy slut who got after it with a middle-aged governor as motivation to turn your life around? Or, as Ashley Alexandra Dupree, a.k.a. “Kristen,” the petite blonde hooker that former Gov. Eliot Spitzer used on repeated occasions has chosen to do, you can release a couple of crappy pop songs on some lame music downloading site and try to capitalize on your notoriety as a whore that way. Dupree has put up two songs on a music site I won't name here mostly because I’m not about to facilitate this skank’s shameless attempt to further her music career through acts of prostitution, but the site uses a sliding pricing scale that ups the cost of a song as it becomes more popular. Her songs began as 68 cents apiece (no, sickos, not 69 cents) but are now up to 98 cents each because losers out there are somehow desperate for music from some talent-less hooker (well, talent-less musically, I assume she has talent in the bedroom based on the $1,000 a session E. Spitzer paid her for her services) even though it a) sucks and b) comes from someone they’ve never heard of as a musician. So far, Dupree has raked in more than $200,000 from the various pervy schmucks out there dumb enough to get suckered into buying her songs. Good luck explaining that one when someone asks you what you’re rocking on your iPod. What are you listening to there, buddy? Oh, it’s by this new artist, Ashley Alexandra Dupree, but you probably know her as Kristen. You mean that brunette hooker Eliot Spitzer hit it with? Yeah, that’s her. So why are you listening to her music anyhow? Stop trying to think of an answer for that final question because there isn’t one other than you being a perverted, sick freak. Next……..

- Gun control advocates, our nightmare may be coming true. Those of you out there who cling to an antiquated ideal that we should all be allowed to pack heat no matter where we go because the Constitiution allows us the right to bear arms (even though that refers to the ability of the country to raise a militia to defend itself against the British, not exactly a huge concern anymore) must be thrilled the Supreme Court currently has a case before it that could strike a serious blow for your right to strap your 9mm and take it with you to the mall, the grocery store, the dry cleaner, etc. For the first time in nearly 70 years, the court will consider whether the Second Amendment actually grants individual citizens the right to own a gun. The amendment reads, “A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” Yes, you read it right, to equip a MILITIA, the right to a gun should not be impeded. Aside from anti-government whack-a-doos looking to set up their own compounds and cults, how many gun owners ou there are looking to arm their own militia. How many knucklehead athletes who carry a gun into a club and end up shooting someone or getting shot are part of a militia? The specific case before the court centers on Washington, D.C.’s near total ban on gun ownership, a ban declared unconstitutional last year by a federal appeals court. Briefs supporting each side of the case have been coming in fast and furious to the Supreme Court, which heard arguments in the case Tuesday. Lord help us if the NRA and other gun honks get their way, because no matter how you try to spin the self-protection argument, it doesn’t fly. Putting more guns out there in the hands of anyone, trained or otherwise, licensed or not, makes the world a more dangerous place and ups the likelihood of someone getting shot and/or killed. Decide in favor of the Constitution the way it is written and intended, Supreme Court justices: just say no to lifting the gun-ownership ban in D.C. and don’t set a dangerous precedent that could cause a lot of problems.

- Some of you have been asking when I’d announce the next Album To Avoid. These are albums so atrociously bad that you may actually be in physical danger, especially that of hearing loss, if forced to listen to them. I’ve been holding off because I wanted to have this vital feature return with a bang, and boy do I have it. This was an easy one to spot because it contains the two most horrific, terrifying and terrible words in music today: American Karaoke. Yes, there is an album out now that has a direct link to the world’s biggest hack karaoke contest, having been produced by none other than the portly, cherubic, annoying Randy Jackson, dawg. Yo, dawg, this album is terrible, dawg. Jackson, having clearly been corrupted by years spent in close proximity to the many karaoke hacks on AK and having not been that capable musically before then, has put together a gawd-awful album of songs that might actually be able to make your ears bleed just by holding the disc in your hands. Let’s start with the fact that one of his fellow publicity hounds, er, judges on AK has a song on this album. Paula Abdul puts on a tragically, mind-bendingly bad performance on the poorly written, heavily synthesized, musical-talent-lacking Dance Like There’s No Tomorrow. Just imagine the worst pop song you’ve ever heard, times ten. It’s like putting Britney Spears, Mandy Moore, Jennifer Lopez, Fergie and Lionel Richie in a blender and mixing in a giant pile of monkey crap. Furthermore, Jackson reaches out the blend in another horrible music genre, country, with his crap-tacular pop music by bringing country singer John Rich in to duet with R&B singer Anthony Hamilton. Throw a tune from chubby, over-the-hill, mentally unstable Mariah Carey and you can begin to understand just how putrid this album is. I’d advise you to buy as many copies as possible….then burn them to keep them from inflicting any damage on the general public. However, advising you to do that would give Jackson and these artists money they don’t deserve. Instead, I’m advising you to either steal the album and burn it or just burn it right there in the store. Yes, you run the risk of going to jail for shoplifting, but it’s a small price to pay for destroying truly bad music.

- Finally….this season of MTV’s Real World/Road Rules Challenge: Gauntlet 3 has come to an end. Normally these shows are fun to watch, but this season was an absolute abortion from the start. The team comprised of Challenge veterans dominated from the start and only lost missions when they did so on purpose so they could send weaker members of their team home. Of course, with that kind of momentum going into the final challenge on this week’s episode, you just knew it was going to swing back the other way. Some way, some how there would be another momentum shift and the Rookie team would catch a break. That break came as the two teams raced through and über-obstacle course comprised of mini-challenges based on previous missions from this season. After a half-mile swim, the Veterans’ largest member, Eric, was already struggling. The big fella has to be pushing three bills and he couldn’t keep up with everyone else. Between the third and fourth parts of this mission, he collapsed and was taken to the hospital. In spite of that, the Rookies were so pathetic that they allowed the Veterans to make up what had to be 15-20 minutes lost because of Eric’s’ collapse and actually finish the mission first. Unfortunately for the Veterans, the rules for the final mission explicitly stated that ALL of a team’s members had to cross the finish line in order for them to win. Because Eric was in a hospital bed instead of with his team, the Veterans weren’t officially able to finish the race. The Rookies, who had quit when they thought they had lost, resumed digging for the chest buried in the sand and containing their team flag and hoisted it on the flagpole to win. The six members of the team split $300,000, so obviously each of them got $60,000. The truly sad part of all of this was that several members of the Veteran team, especially lesbian Evelyn and loudmouth Kenny, seemed more concerned with the fact that they lost their chance at the money than they were to see a friend and teammate collapse and have to be hospitalized. Good job, guys, way to keep perspective. All told, this was a truly forgettable season and next time, MTV needs to find a way to balance the teams better so we don’t end up with such a lopsided season of bad TV.

One Tree Hill, ugly green uniforms and "ligthing the place up"....good times

- The offseason can be a trying time for college football players. Without the structure and organization of in-season practices and activities, there is extra free time to fill and thus additional chances to get into trouble. You could argue that going to class, studying and hanging out with friends in legal, ethical activities are all great ways to fill that time and theoretically, you’d be right. Life is no theoretical, though, and the truth is that a lot of college athletes are complete knuckleheads. Rather than lay low in the offseason and try to better themselves academically while also keeping in good physical condition with an eye toward next season, they have a habit of finding trouble. University of Missouri football player Marquis X. Booker knows just what I’m talking about, because he was arrested last weekend following an incident outside of an apartment near the Mizzou campus in which he grabbed his gun from his car following a dispute and threatened to “light the place up.” Apparently there was a heated disagreement and several of the participants threatened one another with weapons, but Booker was the only one to actually pull his piece from his car and look to take action. Thankfully no actual shooting took place, but one thing was killed that night: Booker’s football career. Coach Gary Pinkel dismissed him from the team following his arrest on weapons charges. I’m actually a little confused here. Arrest him? Kick him off the team? Why? Dude clearly sees himself as the next great shoot-‘em-up action star, so why aren’t you all supporting his dream. He aspires to be the next Jack Bauer, Rambo, James Bond or mob boss and you need to be encouraging his dream, not shutting him down. My man Marquis thinks he’s a hardcore gangsta and the fact that no one is getting behind him on this disappoints me. After all, what coach doesn’t want on of his players going “light this place up” on an apartment complex full of innocent people? Best of success in your new career as an action hero, Marquis, you have my full support.

- St. Patrick’s Day was already on my list of lame holidays. It’s not even a holiday, just an excuse for people to get hammered on green beer and wear stupid outfits. Ask 99 percent of the people throwing disgusting green beer down their gullets in a bar on St. Patty’s Day and they will have no clue what the holiday is even about. So kudos to professional sports teams everywhere for adding to the idiocy by wearing stupid outfits of their own to mark St. Patrick’s Day in the form of green jerseys. You may have noticed this if you saw highlights of Monday’s Chicago Bulls-New Orleans Hornets game wherein the Bulls, whose official team colors are red and black, inexplicably donned green uniforms. Good one, Bulls. Neither your nor your team name have anything to do with Ireland or anything even quasi-Irish, but go ahead and put on ugly green jerseys. Several Major League Baseball teams followed suit by wearing green unis for their spring training games on Monday, making the same mistake but on a less-visible stage. Let me save you all some time and effort for next year and years ahead. Green jerseys on St. Patty’s day aren’t cool, fresh or celebratory. They’re a lame marketing ploy and a horrible attempt to cash in on a holiday that no one wearing those green duds has a freaking clue about. Ditch the green gear and stop trying to be cutesy and clever.

- Paris Hilton has consistently contributed nothing of value to the world, so why should she start now? With all of her wealth and the fact that she’s famous for no apparent reason - well, other than being a slut who likes to get it on while being filmed - Hilton could actually do some good in the world by taking up a good cause and using her resources to support it. Instead, the only thing she seems interested in is stroking her own ego with another vanity project with MTV. The Skank Also Known As Paris will be co-producing a new series titled Paris Hilton’s My New BFF, a lame-duck of a series whose premise is Hilton sorting through 20 wannabe lackeys to find her next confidante/buddy. For starters, the premise is all wrong. If the show was about Hilton auditioning to find the next dude she’s going to make a sex tape with, then you might have something. As is, you have 20 desperate, low-self-esteem, attention-starved losers vying to prove themselves in the areas of loyalty, endurance and “girl politics” to one of the most spoiled, skanky, vapid bimbos of this or any other century. Of course, the show will follow the mandate that all crappy reality shows follow, that contestants must live together in a house filled with cameras. Supposedly, Hilton will teach them “the secrets of celebrity living - how to turn your enchanted life into a multimillion-dollar brand, how to manage public feuds and always rise above, how to survive scandal and then make it work for you, all while wearing 6-inch heels.” Funny, but last I checked, P. Hilton isn’t qualified to teach anything other than how to get plowed on camera and how to say “That’s hot.” When hot is the most complex word in your entire vocabulary, you should not be attempting to teach anything to anyone. So to the 20 idiots set to appear on this show, know this: there will be no true winner. You’re already losers just by taking part, a-holes.

- Now that’s what I call taking it up a notch. Over the weekend, Buddhist monks in Tibet escalated protests against Chinese rule in their country with property destruction and fire, leading to direct clashes with riot police and the dispersal of tear gas. Protests against the Chinese went from contentious to violent and destructive, sending plumes of smoke rising to the sky in the city of Lhasa and raising tensions to a new high. Even the Dalai Lama got involved, imploring the Chinese not to use force to end the largest protests in decades against its iron-fisted rule in Tibet. Photographs from the city show protestors chucking rocks at security forces, hotels and restaurants. Gunfire was also reported by Americans in the city, with a state-sponsored radio station in Lhasa reporting two fatalities. Two shops along main streets were also set on fire, both of them near the Jokhang temple, Tibet’s most sacred temple. Rebels also burned a Chinese flag in the street and a large bonfire smoldered nearby. A Tibetan activist group protesting outside the United Nations in New York City claimed that more than 70 people have been killed in the uprising and 1,000 more have been arrested, but those figures have yet to be substantiated. So let’s review here: clashes with police, property destruction, arson and the burning of the flag of the government you’re opposing. Check, check, check and check. Yes siree, I’d say we have a full-fledged, Grade-A riot on our hands here. This is great stuff, Tibetans. This is the kind of riot you can tell you grandkids about some day….well, assuming you aren’t shot and killed during it. Striking out at The Man in such vitriolic, hostile fashion is great and doing so with every major facet of rioting is even better. Keep it up, because the world is taking notice of what you’re doing and many people around the globe support you in your quest against those Commie bastards in China.

- Last night’s episode of One Tree Hill was surprisingly good, making back-to-back weeks of solid episodes for a show that I honestly had doubts about the CW even bringing back this year. There was plenty of drama this week, with the Lucas-Lindsey wedding being the center of it all. The one negative this week was the continual use of daydream/fantasy sequences from various characters, mostly because you never knew if they were real and you should be paying close attention or if they were in fact daydreams. There was Peyton imagining herself being the one marrying Lucas, Nathan imagining himself reuniting with Hayley, etc. But things kicked off with Lucas, Hayley and Hayley and Nathan’s son Jamie taking a drive along the back roads of Tree Hill, just as Lucas once did with his own uncle Keith and his mom. The road trip ends at the docks, where Lucas’ mom Karen is returning from the world’s longest European vacation. She’s home for the wedding and bringing Lucas’ little sister Lindsey and surprisingly, former and now current boyfriend Andy, the über-rich Aussie businessman/professor she dated back in Season Three. With everyone back together, things got interesting quickly. In large part, that was due to the return of Dan Scott to society. After hitting it with the sports store clerk chick last week, Dan got all dressed up to crash his estranged son’s wedding this week. He was intercepted in the parking lot by Hayley, his daughter-in-law and one of the many people in Tree Hill who truly detest him. Hayley told Dan to leave and never come near her or her family again, but of course he didn’t listen and that proved to be a good thing in the end. Why? Because OTH has an abundant supply of crazy, psycho stalkers and after last year’s Derek/Peyton’s fake brother/stalker sitch, this season got its own certified psycho where Carrie, the former nanny for Nathan and Hayley’s son Jamie, popped up at the wedding despite being fired as the family’s nanny and being warned to stay away from them. She abducted Jamie when he left the sanctuary to go to the bathroom during the wedding, taking him to a local motel and showing her true psycho colors by immediately looking to dye his hair so they could go on the run and not be recognized. Back at the church, things were also interesting. Skillz, Mouth and Mouth’s girlfriend Millie were tailgating outside of the church, enjoying a beer or two when they were joined by Peyton and Brooke. Skillz badgered Peyton about what she was going to do to stop Lucas from marrying Lindsey, but as it turned out, Peyton didn’t need to do anything. As the couple were exchanging their vows, Lindsey was remembering a line from Lucas’ new manuscript and realizing that the comet referred to in the book, the one whose appearance gave hope and meaning to the life of the book’s main character, was inspired by Peyton and her car, which just happens to be a Comet. Lindsey realized it was more than a Freudian slip and that Lucas was still hooked on Peyton despite also loving her. She raced from the church in tears, leaving a devastated Lucas in her wake. As the fallout from the bolting bride came down, Brooke told a hesitant Peyton that despite everything else happening that day, she needed to go after Lucas if she still loved him. Meanwhile, everyone else went into full-fledged panic upon realizing the Jamie was missing. Everyone assumed Dan was responsible, but in truth he was their best hope for getting Jamie back safe. He followed Crazy Nanny Carrie to the motel and when she left to buy hair dye for Jamie, he approached the motel room door and talked Jamie into letting him in. He then rescued the boy and took him home, where stunned, bewildered looks from Nathan, Hayley, Lucas, Brooke, Karen and Andy greeted him. That’s where things ended and where they’ll remain until April 14, when OTH returns and shifts to a new night, Monday. As always, great job by the CW, moving its shows around from night to night during the season, having ginormous gaps in between new episodes and generally making it as hard to follow its shows as humanly possible. Great job, tools.

'Roids in billiards, CBS is full of idiots an hey, whaddya know, more problems in Beijing

- Now The Bachelor has gone too far. Already this show has been on my target list because it’s such a lame, contrived, pathetic excuse to shove 25 sexed-up, desperate skanks on a show for some T&A to presumably compete foe the affections of some quasi-successful, equally desperate, attention-starved dude with a square jaw and nice abs. Invariably, the happy couple you see at show’s end when the bachelor picks his skank, er, soul mate, breaks up within a month of two, citing some predictable differences that tend to occur to any couple jammed together in an artificial, forced reality TV setting. So I was already an enemy of this show, but now the producers have taken this confrontation to a whole new level by ripping off the name of a classic song and album like London Calling for their show. Just because you have some pathetic British dude as your bachelor for the season doesn’t mean you can insult the name and legacy of an utterly classic punk rock band, an icon like The Clash. Joe Strummer, may he rest in peace, didn’t pen classic songs like London Calling, I Fought the Law, Clampdown, White Riot and more so you could capitalize on his legacy by using the name of one of his legendary albums for your joke of a reality show. If you want to name your show after a song or album, choose one from an artist that is more appropriate to what your show is all about. Allow me to offer a few suggestions: Justin Timberlake, Fergie, Black Eyed Peas, Madonna, Janet Jackson, Mary J. Blige, Britney Spears, Lindsey Lohan, ABBA, Donna Summer, Right Said Fred, Milli Vanilli, the Spice Girls, Gwen Stefani or any current or former man-band. All of those artists suck and so does The Bachelor, so stop demeaning the legacy of The Clash for the benefit of your abortion of a program.

- Up to this point, none of the steroids scandals in sports have bothered me too much. So far, they’ve all occurred in peripheral fringe sports like professional football, baseball, track and field and cycling. Let’s face it; no one cares about the NFL, MLB, track and field or the Tour de France. But inevitably, this plague of ‘roids has touched a sport that all of us hold near as dear to our heart: pool. Yes, I’m sorry to inform you that steroids have made their way into the land of cue balls, corner pockets and green felt. German billiards player Axel Buescher is the man we have to thank for this unsavory development, because he has teste positive for the blood-booster EPO. Why a pool player is taking a blood-booster, I don’t know. Cyclists and runners take it to improve their endurance and overall performance, but they actually need those qualities in high supply. Pool players need to be able to stand upright for a few minutes, wield a light wooden stick and use it to poke tiny ceramic balls around a rectangular table. Drunk dudes and chicks in pool halls everywhere seem to be able to muster the strength and endurance to accomplish this task, but Buescher still felt he needed that extra edge over his competition. The billiards community has to be devastated over this one - or at least it would be if there were more than a few dozen of them around and if their “sport” weren’t already the 741st most popular one in the world as it is. I really can't wait to see the day when we’ve got 6’3, 285 pound dudes with 24” biceps, veins popping out of their arms and peaking on testosterone and nandrolone competing in billiards tournament everywhere, waiting to snap into fits of ‘roid rage when the seven ball doesn’t drop into the corner pocket like they wanted it to. Welcome to the steroid era, pool, what took you so long?

- Regardless of whether nations around the world support a boycott of this summer’s Olympic games in Beijing, Tibetan citizens are not giving up on their burgeoning crusade against the oppressive Chinese rule in their country. More than 100 Tibetan exiles who were marching back to their homeland to protest China’s hosting of the Olympics have been arrested and jailed in India, but they’re not taking this temporary road bump as a sign to stop their resistance. Now in a northern Indian prison, the exiles have begun a hunger strike in the hopes of bringing attention to their cause and getting their message out. That message is supported by protesting monks in Tibet and by like-minded people around the world, but as I mentioned at the top, the potential boycott of the Summer Olympics isn’t getting much traction. Multiple European nations and the United States have gone on record as saying that while they oppose the fashion in which the Chinese are treating Tibet, they will not take part in any boycott of the Games. Of course, as I told you yesterday, the endurance athletes from those countries might disagree, just not because of their support for Tibet. No, the endurance athletes probably share the sentiments of marathon legend Haile Gebrselassie of Ethiopia, who admitted that he has serious worries about the ill effects Beijing’s toxic, polluted air will have on his body should he compete. Boy, what a joyous celebration these Olympics are turning out to be for China. Pollution scares, water shortages, allegations of tainted food, human rights crises…..maybe the Olympic motto should change from “Higher, faster, stronger” to “Toxic pollution, oppression and Communism.”

- Have you been wondering lately what Richard Gere is up to? Me neither. But as it turns out, he was facing prosecution for breaking public obscenity laws in India by, gasp, kissing Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty at an AIDS awareness event last year. The incident took place on April 15 at a ceremony in which Gere, ever the freak for all things Buddhist, embraced and kissed Shetty in plain view. Hardcore Hindus saw the display of affection and argued that it violated India’s traditionally conservative values and standards. Other than these Hindu hardliners, Indians haven’t seemed to care much about the perceived misdeed, but that small pocket of outrage was enough to keep the possibility of prosecution alive. However, the country’s top court just suspended the arrest warrant for Gere, meaning he is no longer under any threat of arrest or prosecution should he visit India. “Gere is allowed to come and leave,’ stated Anil Grover, an attorney for Shetty. “He can’t be arrested.” To be fair, Gere probably couldn’t get arrested here in America either; no one gives a crap about him in this country either. But I am certain that he’s happy to no longer have that arrest warrant hanging over his head, now he’s free to do whatever the heck it is he’s been doing for the past few years.

- I LOVE the NCAA Tournament. From the selection show to the championship game, it is the absolute best time in sports (curmudgeon-y, bitter, condescending ass/CBS announcer Billy Packer notwithstanding). The first two days of the tournament, with wall-to-wall games from noon to midnight, is as good a two days as any sports fan can have. That all being said, I really had a beef with this year’s NCAA selection show in terms of how it was structured. One of the facets of the show in recent years has been stationing cameras at the tournament watch parties held at various colleges and universities who have a good chance of being selected for the tournament. The obvious idea is to get immediate reaction from coaches, players and fans when they either learn that they have made the tournament or that they have been left out. My beef comes in at the point when this year’s bracket announcements on CBS seemed to be interrupted every time a team was announced so CBS could break in with a live feed from that school’s campus. A team would be announced and bam!, there was the same freaking shot of players jumping out of chairs, dancing, pointing at the camera and yelling. It could have actually been the same footage, just with different clothes superimposed over the people in the shots. Either way, there were simply too many cameras at sites. When you limit it to a select few, the concept remains somewhat fresh and interesting. When you jam in as many as possible, the celebrations all just run together, mostly because they’re all pretty much the same. There are only so many sequences of dudes hopping up out of their seats and popping their school-supplied March Madness shirts I can take. Just tell me who’s in, who’s out and where everyone is headed. Give me a few shots from campuses around the country, but don’t make it gratuitous and excessive. Instead, maybe have a couple more interviews with players and coaches, because at least then you could get some variety in their responses. C’mon CBS, I have to put up with Billy Packer doing games for three weeks, the least you can do is to provide a top-notch selection show.

Olmypic-sized difficulties in Beijing, a coach tries a motivatioal A-bomb and Pennsylvania is a battleground

- Y’know, I had stated before that based on various developments, maybe Beijing wasn’t a good choice to host the Summer Olympics this year. After all, the city is suffering a major water shortage that is crippling local farmers and food-safety scares in the area have led U.S. Olympic officials to take along their own grub for American athletes to eat at the Games. But maybe all of that was premature and an overreaction on my part….or maybe not. Not when the International Olympic Committee (IOC) is commissioning studies to determine whether the wretched air quality in Beijing is bad enough that athletes will be put in serious danger by competing there, it’s not an overreaction. It’s true, the IOC did a study on the air quality in Beijing and to the surprise of exactly no one, they found that the conditions are awful. In a country with 16 of the 20 most polluted cities in the world, Beijing’s air is so bad that the IOC is now drawing up contingency plans in case the polluted air is so bad that is poses a health risk to athletes participating in endurance events. Yes, the IOC is trying to figure out what to do if the host city is so heavily polluted that it can’t actually host certain events. Call me old fashioned, but I firmly believe that if your city is going to host the Olympics, then it should be able to host all of the events. I don’t remember Barcelona, Atlanta, Sydney, Salt Lake or Lillehammer having to draw up last-minute contingency plans because their city’s air was in such poor shape that athletes’ health was as risk. Good job on that one, Beijing. I guess last week’s promise that your air would be clean enough that there would be no problems and no danger to athletes was a flat-out lie. Does anyone know if it’s too late to rip the games from Beijing entirely? Maybe move them to a place more capable and cleaner, perhaps Scottsdale or Fresno. Heck, even Bismarck would be an upgrade at this point.

- Coaches at all levels of every sport love motivational ploys. Whether it’s the classic (and lame) ripping the names off the back of the jerseys, playing the disrespect card, showing clips from inspirational movies like Gladiator or something else, you can bet that at any given time, some coach in some sport, somewhere is employing it. However, not too many coaches go as far as University of Florida men’s basketball coach Bill Donovan did this past week. Donovan was concerned that his team wasn’t as focused and on-point as he wanted, so he decided to take drastic steps to get their attention. After the Gators flamed out in the SEC Tournament and cost themselves an NCAA Tournament bid, Billy the Kid kicked his team out of their new, $12 million practice gym. That in and of itself isn’t unprecedented, because coaches are known for that sort of ploy. But Donovan wasn’t done; the then ripped his players’ gear, taking away their jerseys and practice threads. So now the UF players can’t use their gym and they don’t have their gear. Maybe they could use the chance to hit the weight room and work out, right? Nope. Donovan booted them from the weight room as well, the third step in his plan. Close behind was the fourth step, locking the players out of the video room. So they can't practice in their gym, wear their gear, use the weight room or watch film. Basically, they’re preparing for their NIT game against San Diego State in some secondary gym, wearing whatever they can pull out of the dirty clothes pile in their dorm room or apartment and working out on the same student rec center workout equipment as the dude they sit beside in their philosophy class three days a week. Memo to UF players: Learn your lesson. Start doing what your coach asks and stop pissing him off. Billy Donovan has put up with all his going to take from you and he’s swinging back. Unless you want him looking to rip your scholarship, have you expelled from school and run out of Gainesville, you need to get your act together. The NIT may not be the prestigious NCAA Tournament and you may be down after coming off back-to-back national championships and now playing in a second-tier tournament, but at this point you can’t afford to play poorly at this point.

- David Hernandez is a loser. I can say that without equivocation because of two things: 1) he appeared on American Karaoke and 2) he is a former stripper. People who take part in even one of those two activities are automatically a loser, but someone who has done both of them…yikes. Best of all, I can say these things without ever having witnessed D. Hernandez ply his trade in either one of these roles. The day when I watch American Karaoke is the day someone is holding two guns to my head and threatening to simultaneously lop off both my arms and legs if I don’t watch. However, judging from Hernandez’s comments after being kicked off the world’s biggest karaoke contest, he doesn’t really get it. He’s not famous, he’s not talented and he’s not someone that people outside of his immediate family care about. “This isn’t the end of David Hernandez,” he said in a statement. First, my man, you need to stop it. Stop referring to yourself in the third person like you matter. Heck, even for someone famous, that’s a questionable play. For a nobody karaoke-er, it’s just wrong. “Adversity is my best friend,” he went on to say. No my man, if adversity were really your best friend, adversity would have told you not to become a male stripper or to appear on American Karaoke. See, that’s what best friends do, they tell you the truth when you’re about to embarrass yourself. They try to stop you from making a total fool of yourself, and clearly no one did that for you. Maybe being on that show has warped your since of reality, but once you detox from it, maybe you’ll start coming back to reality and understanding that you are no one and that none of us want to hear from you ever again.

- You can look at the following situation in one of two ways. Either you see that an Amtrak train struck and three employees inspecting train tracks outside of Providence, R.I., killing one of them and focus solely on the tragedy here. Undoubtedly, that tragedy is part of the story and you feel terrible for the friends and families of the one man who was killed here. That being said, if you’re looking for a silver lining here, you can find it in the fact that at least an Amtrak train was actually on the tracks where it was supposed to be and not careening off those tracks causing a crash with dozens of fatalities. This just goes to prove that it doesn’t really matter what Amtrak trains do, they’re death machines. Stay on the tracks or go off of them, people die. Heck, I wouldn’t want any part of those trains from the mining of the metal that goes into building them to the process of scrapping them once they are out of operation. Amtrak is either cursed or just incredibly dangerous by nature, so you might want to make plans to steer clear of anything and everything even remotely associated with the company.

- The clock is ticking on the Pennsylvania presidential primary and for the next month-plus, residents of the state are going to be subject of an all-out barrage by both Barack Obama and Hank Clinton. They’ll also be the subject of national scrutiny because among all of the states left to hold their primaries, Pennsylvania has the most delegates to yield with 158. North Carolina is next in line with 115 delegates, but Pennsylvania is in the nation’s crosshairs as its April 22 primary approaches. As you might imagine, I’m in a state of sheer terror because this could be a devastating day for me and our nation if Hank Clinton gets the lopsided victory she’s hoping for and is able to significantly close the gap between herself and Obama. I am begging Pennsylvania Democrats right now, make sure you are registered to vote and make sure you do the right thing: Vote B.O. It doesn’t matter if you watch the debate on a TBD date that ABC News will host featuring Obama and Hank, because your mind should be made up right now. Hank Clinton and that dude’s reign of terror can’t be allowed anywhere near the Oval Office, so Pennsylvanians need to step up and help us all out. Same goes for you, North Carolinians. If your two states can get the job done, come April Hank Clinton’s campaign will be dead and our national nightmare will be over. Heck, I’ll even go so far as to encourage residents of Guam to turn out in force for their primary and vote B.O., because ultimately we can leave nothing to chance and leave no cracks in the wall for Hank to creep through. So circle April 22 on your calendar, because it’s either going to be a historically great day for our nation or it will be one of the most devastating days in our history, but there will be no in between.

People smuggling, reality assault and Greek garbage tossing

- I know the Atlanta Falcons sucked last year, what with their former star quarterback in prison as a dog murderer and all, but this is ridiculous. The team has spent the offseason jettisoning nearly every recognizable face on its roster to the point that if the season started right now, I don’t know how they’d field a full team. First, the two quarterbacks who started nearly all of their games this past season, Joey Harrington and Byron Leftwich, were released. Tight end Alge Crumpler, a multiple-time Pro Bowler, was also let go. Gone too is running back Warrick Dunn, a mainstay of the Falcon backfield for the past few years. Starting offensive tackle Wayne Gandy was also released between the end of the season and now. The Falcons had also cut starting defensive tackle Grady Jackson during the latter part of this past season, so as you can see, they’re gutting their roster like a fish. But all of the above moves weren’t enough, because now the Falcons have reached an agreement in principle with the Oakland Raiders to trade cornerback DeAngelo Hall for the Raiders' second-round pick in the 2008 draft, pending the Raiders finalizing a contract with Hall. Hall is reportedly close to agreeing to a contract with the Raiders that will pay him just below what Asante Samuel signed with the Eagles in the premier defensive free-agent signing of this offseason. Samuel signed a six-year deal worth a reported $57 million, with $20 million guaranteed. Hall, who is a former first-round draft pick, is one of the NFL’s best cornerbacks but has clashed with the team, most notably despicable liar, piece of crap and gutless weasel/former coach Bobby Petrino, who quit on the team with three games left in his first season as coach to go back to the college ranks. Hall made a spectacle of himself in one particular game this year against the Carolina Panthers drawing two unsportsmanlike conduct penalties on a drive that allowed the Panthers to win a game that the Falcons should have had wrapped up. Still, with Petrino gone you had to think that maybe Hall would be able to move past his grievances and play ball, but apparently the dislike for a man so egotistical that many peers have glossed him “Me-Angelo” extends well up the organizational hierarchy. He’s now gone to one of the few teams that might have been worse than the Falcons last season, the black hole of ineptitude that is the Oakland Raiders. Really, it’s a lateral move for Hall, but Oakland is the place for malcontents in the NFL these days, so he should fit right in. As for the Falcons, you really will need a program to know who’s who for them when next season rolls around. Enjoy, Falcon fans!

- Ah, Greece….a place of beauty, historical significance, the birthplace of the modern Olympics and home to amazing places like Santorini…and also of riots in which striking garbage men hurl trash at riot police. That amusing sight came outside the Labor Ministry in Athens as an estimated 5,000 rioters marched on the Parliament in the largest of a string of recent protests against a proposed overhaul of Greece’s debt-ridden pension system. Greek garbage collectors don’t seem to be on board with those changes, so they made use of the tools of their trade to take on riot police. Normally I’m the guy out in front, leading the charge for rioters and protestors to burn things, destroy property and engage in hand-to-hand combat with the law, but I’m willing to make an exception here. Throwing garbage is a creative, smelly and effective way to make your point. It shows creativity and utility; making use of what’s handy and not wasting things. These protests aren’t just limited to garbage collectors, either. Flights have been canceled and power outages have occurred because striking workers from a wide range of industries are busy making a stink about the possible pension changes. However, nothing says “I’m pissed about your decision” quite like pelting a man with stinky, smelly, rotten garbage. So here’s to you, Greek garbage collectors, for showing you know how to get down and dirty with your riots.

- Reality TV losers need to know their role and place in life and stop acting like they matter or like people care about them. Just because you were on a reality show throwing down on a plate full of worms or running through an obstacle course against a bunch of other rejects doesn’t mean you’re famous or relevant. The Fox Reality Channel isn’t helping by giving these a-holes an extra forum to ply their dubious trade, nor is FRC helping by hosting the annual Really Awards to honor these detestable individuals who aren’t deserving of any kind of award. See, when you encourage reality TV losers by giving them an awards show, this is what you get: lawsuits by one reality TV loser against another. Jon Dalton, a.k.a. Johnny Fairplay of Survivor notoriety, is suing the producers of the Really Awards because during the 2007 edition of the show, Dalton was onstage with child-star-turned-reality-loser Danny Bonaduce when Dalton tried to jump into Bonaduce’s arms as part of a celebration and had the likely ‘roid head Bonaduce toss him over his shoulders and face-first onto the stage. In the incident, Dalton lost a tooth, broke another and loosened two more, so he feels like the producers were negligent and thus allowed the assault to take place. That he incited it with his own actions of his own free will doesn’t seem to matter to him. Unfortunately, the court dealing with his lawsuit doesn’t see things that way and has given him 20 days to amend his complaint explaining why the producers of the show, the network and Bonaduce himself are responsible for the alleged battery, negligence and emotional distress Dalton says he was the victim of. I have a better idea than wasting the court’s time and taxpayer dollars trying this suit, Dalton. Why don’t we just throw you and that piece of crap Bonaduce in a steel cage together and let you fight it out. Winner gets whatever financial compensation he wants from the loser, how does that sound? Personally, I believe you deserve that kind of beating just for being a reality TV participant, you idiot.

- From someone who has extensive experience in trying to smuggle human beings into various countries, let me tell you, smugglin’ ain’t easy. Seriously, the horror stories I could tell you about….just kidding. Well, about my experience as a human smuggler, that is. I’m definitely not joking when it comes to the perils or trying to sneak people into a country. The fifteen people just rescued late last week from a boat off the Pacific coast can attest to that fact as well. The people on board that vessel were trying to smuggle several Mexicans and one Salvadoran into the U.S. via San Diego. Before I go any further, let me applaud these smugglers for be inclusionary in their operation. When trafficking in human beings, it is vital to have diversity. Having one Salvadoran in your group shows that, gosh darn it, you welcome people from all countries and nationalities. You’re not a smuggling bigot, that’s what mixing in that one Salvadoran says. U.S. Coast Guard officials and those of the Customs and Border Protection Agency found the 24-foot boat several miles off shore, just north of the Mexican border. There was no food or water on the boat and many of those on board were dehydrated or sunburned. So the smuggling operation was a failure in terms of actually reaching the target destination, it may have had poor planning and a lack of resources, but at least those responsible for it made it a multicultural operation and did not discriminate….

- I’ve said repeatedly that only two reality shows are even mildly watchable: Amazing Race and Survivor. In saying that, I’ve neglected one show that I just didn’t think of because although it’s reality show, it’s not some contrived, lame competition setup (i.e. American Karaoke, My Dad is Better Than Your Dad, etc.). That show would be Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, which airs Sunday nights on ABC. By now, everyone has heard about the show and knows its premise. Needy, struggling families who are doing a lot of good for their community or are facing unusually trying circumstances and who live in subpar, often miserable housing conditions have their homes torn apart or torn down and rebuilt to help get them back on their feet. I don’t watch the show every week, especially during football season and college basketball season, but when I do watch, I’m always uplifted and inspired. Just this week, a family in a rural, tiny Nevada town got a brand new house and rec building to replace to dilapidated ones they had before and were using to run a ministry to at-risk teens in their town. The family, led by a man who is a pastor at the local church, has a daughter with a 2-year-old son who has major physical problems and needs 24/7 care. To see this family get their rotting, falling-apart house replaced and get one that meets their needs and the needs of the kids they minister to was awesome. So in the future, I will make sure to say that there are not two, but three reality shows on that don’t suck……

Of defectors, dorks and skanky pop singers hosting SNL....

- The leadership may have (allegedly) changed in Cuba, but the story of the country’s athletes traveling abroad and looking to defect remains the same. For years, Cuban athletes traveling to the United States or pretty much any other country that isn’t governed by a horrendous dictator have looked to defect in large numbers the instant they land in that foreign country. Now that Fidel Castro has theoretically stepped down as the dictator in Cuba, you may have wondered if that trend would change. The answer would be no. The day after five members of Cuba's under-23 national soccer team left their hotel with the intention of defecting, two more players disappeared Wednesday night. The team is in Tampa for Olympic qualifying tournament and the original five defectors -- Jose Manuel Miranda, Erlys Garcia Baro, Yenier Bermudez, Yordany Alvarez and Loanni Prieto -- left Tuesday after a 1-1 draw against the United States. Then, teammate Yendry Diaz told ESPN International on the phone that he and Eder Roldan also had left the Cuban team. According to Diaz, he and Roldan intend to join their fellow defector teammates in Lake Worth, Fla. “We're fine, calm, feeling hopeful about our new lives,” Bermudez stated in an interview. “Of course, we're nervous because we're young, have no family here, and we don't yet know the way of life here, but we hope the Cuban and American communities will help us get started.” Loosely translated, assume that statement means: “We wanted to get the hell out of Cuba and this was our best chance. We don’t care where we live, just as long as it’s not there.” These guys had barely made it back to the hotel when they got away and bought a cell phone, contacted a lawyer and then celebrated with a Cuban meal. If you have any doubt that they have what it takes to succeed here in America, check out this spin job by Bermudez in trying to smooth over he and his comrades’ defection from Cuba. “Of course, my heart will be in Cuba with my family, but I want to have the freedom to better my life, to play professional soccer, to be the best I can be, and for that we had to make this sacrifice," Bermudez said. “The key now is to get the legal paperwork out of the way as quickly as possible so we can get on with our plans.” Good one, Y. That sure sounds nice, but it’s not about where your heart is, it’s about where the rest of your body is, and that would be the U.S. You may miss your family back in Cuba and they may now get the screws put to them by the Cuban government, but clearly being with them was not as important as being free of Cuban oppression. Not saying I blame you, I just don’t believe your weepy sob story. But hey, things are looking up for you because Luiz Muzzi, general manager of United Soccer League club Miami FC, has already said that he plans on hosting a tryout for the seven defectors next week after being was contacted by a friend of the players’. “I watched their game against the U.S. on TV, and I thought the Cuban team played very well,” Muzzi said. “We were kind of scouting that game because anytime a Cuban team comes to the United States, there's a chance someone might defect.” Either “a chance” or a 99.9 percent chance, L. Welcome to America, Cuban soccer players. However, you should have done more research and defected to a country that actually gives a crap about the sport you play.

- Bureaucratic red tape is holding up Michael Vick’s state trial on dogfighting charges. Vick, who already plead guilty to federal charges of gambling and other activities related to, but not including, the dogfighting ring he and three friends ran, is currently in federal prison out in Leavenworth, Kan. State officials in Virginia are looking to extract their piece of Vick’s hide, but their quest has been put on hold. Vick was scheduled to stand trial on April 2, but the trial has been delayed because of the logistics of transporting the Vick and co-defendants Quanis Phillips and Purnell Peace back to Virginia, which is the responsibility of the local prosecutor's office. The Surry County Commonwealth Attorney's office says no new date has been set yet and that the official rescheduling of the trial will occur on March 25. Right now, Vick is serving a 23-month federal prison term in Leavenworth. His trial postponement came after officials had already delayed the state trials of Phillips and Peace. All three pleaded guilty to federal charges of conspiring to run an interstate dogfighting operation on land owned by Vick, but the state case will focus on different aspects of their operation. Color me sadistic, but I’m rooting for Vick, Peace and Phillips to get hit up for additional jail time at the state level. These three are despicable, low-life jerks who didn’t have the decency to treat animals in a humane fashion and don’t deserve any leniency from the justice system. Give them the max sentence allowable for their crime and keep them away from the rest of society as long as possible. Trust me, the rest of us will be better off for it.

- Every now and then, you hear about obscure, bizarre laws like people not being allowed to have lawn gnomes in their yard, being prohibited from having blinds on their windows or shopping for fish on Thursday because of an obscure local ordinance. Those laws are often outdated and forgotten, but on rare occasions you find an entire country having a legal faux paus that permits a horrible practice instead of prohibiting it. Such is the case in Britain, where authorities investigated more then 400 forced marriages last year and are trying to determine whether dozens of girls who vanished from school rosters were among those forced into wedded bliss/distress. They’re investigating, yes, but the fact is that in Britain, it is still legal to force someone into a marriage. There is no law forbidding the practice, which is as outdated and archaic a legal standard as I can possibly imagine. What century is this anyhow, the 21st or the 15th? Forced marriage is legal? Are you also beheading people convicted of serious crimes or having them put to death by a firing squad comprised of dudes with arrows? he only way the practice of forced marriage becomes cause for police involvement in Britain is when criminal practices such as abuse, assault, rape and murder are involved. You may want to shore up that part of your legal code, Brits, so you can join the rest of us in the year 2008.

- Don’t believe that skanky pop-tart singers are interchangeable, worthless parts? Then maybe you can explain how Saturday Night Live was able to trade one aging skank singer, the flu-ridden Janet Jackson, for another aging, skank singer in Mariah Carey and not miss a beat in preparing for tonight’s show. Jackson was supposed to perform one of the crappy songs from the absolute piece of garbage that is her new album Discipline, but she’s been ill lately and according to her publicist she “needs time to get better.” Funny, but I think the same can be said for anyone who had the misfortune of hearing even one minute of one song from that album. SNL used to be a relevant show and all, but having overrated tramps like Jackson on is not the way to make a comeback. Of course, SNL has never had high standards for its musical acts, even if they do manage to snag a good one every now and then. But it’s always nice to know that if one of your pop-tarts goes sick in the middle of the week, you can find another one to replace her without much trouble. After all, their music is pretty much the same homogenized, over-produced crap, so sliding one of them in to take the place of another should be easy.

- Dorks, losers and pale, pasty, basement-dwelling nerds rejoice! You all are the idiots dressing up in Harry Potter costumes and waiting outside of bookstores in inclement weather at midnight on days when new books in the fictional wizard series are released, so I’m sure each and every one of you is thrilled with news that the final book in the series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Swallows, will be made into not one, but two movies. Because the book was so long and expansive, producers decided that there was just too much content for one film, a la Quentin Tarantino and the Kill Bill movies. “It was born out of purely creative reasons,” explained producer David Heyman. “Unlike every other book, you cannot remove elements of this book.” The films are set for release in 2010 and 2011, respectively, which will give costumed losers everywhere not one, but two chances to get in their wizard gear despite the fact that they are 30, 40 or 50 years old and make punch lines of themselves by camping out at their local multiplex for days on end so they can be the first ones to see these films. Those scenes are 2-3 years away and already I feel sorry for these dorks. Oh well, at least I can take solace in knowing that this is the last book in the series, meaning this is the last time we’ll have to worry about this problem.

Rich old people hate bums, Smallville and Lost reviews and monks return to the protest front

- We want to help people and provide comfort, just not those people. I could be reading this wrong, but that’s the message seemingly being sent by donors to a merchants’ association in La Jolla, Calif. Esther Viti (and with a name like Esther, you know she has to be at least 84 years old) is leading the charge to “protect” benches that have been donated for an upscale shopping district in La Jolla by keeping those dirty, filthy, nasty homeless people from sleeping on them. Yes, Esther and her bench-protecting posse are pissed that rich, spoiled, upper-class people are having their nice, new park benches soiled by the filth of vagrants for whom sleeping on those benches is actually an upgrade over their normal sleeping arrangements on street corners, in alleys or in cardboard boxes. To prevent this appalling miscarriage of justice from taking place, Esther sent out an email to 45 other members of her group last week, urging them to take three-hour shifts sitting on the benches to prevent homeless persons from sleeping on them. “After all, you MUST OCCUPY THAT BENCH for three hours to prevent that homeless person from sitting on that bench,” the bitter, curmudgeon-y Esther wrote in her email. Who that homeless person is, I don’t know. Sounds like Esther just has a hateful, elitist heart beating inside of her, if she has a heart at all. Why stop, there, E.? Why not ban homeless people from your mall entirely? Maybe charge a $100 entry fee to get inside the perimeter or require that anyone wishing to shop there or even set foot on the premises do so after driving onto the property in a car valued at $30,000 or more? It’s people like Esther Viti that keep elitist, arrogant America alive and pump life into that truly detestable segment of this nation’s population. You suck, Esther, and so does anyone who follows your bigoted, small-minded lead.

- It’s on to Pennsylvania for the Democratic presidential candidates. After my main man Barack Obama ripped Hank Clinton a new one in both Wyoming and Mississippi this past week to stake himself to a 112-delegate lead heading into the race’s next big contest in the Keystone State, the two of them made their way to Pennsylvania and sniped at one another all along the way. Hank had the testicular fortitude to imply that Obama would make a great vice presidential candidate as her running mate, but clearly B.O. wasn’t going to take that sort of backhanded compliment. He stated clearly that voters’ only choice was between he and Hank for the top spot and that whoever lost should be out of the mix altogether. “I don’t know how somebody who is in second place is offering the vice presidency to the person who is in first place,” Obama declared at an appearance. Well said, Barack. America is behind you and no one is buying Hank’s false bravado. She may be projecting confidence and the power to verbally hand herself the nomination, but underneath it all even a tough, rugged, femi-Nazi like Hank knows the truth. Obama has won 28 states so far to Hank’s 17, which works out to a hearty 62.2 percent of states preferring Obama over Hank. So why don’t we go ahead and end the sniping here, let’s do the right thing and I think we all know I’m looking at you, Pennsylvania residents. Vote for Obama en masse, deal the death blow the Hank’s campaign and get that dude out of the race permanently.

- In what has become an erratic season, I thought last night’s Lost was one of the better episodes this year. The episode, titled Yi Jeon, manages to balance the goings on at the beach camp and those on the freighter. On the beach, Sun is increasingly suspicious of freighter team members Daniel and Charlotte after she learns that they attacked Kate in the jungle. Sun questions Daniel and when he dodges her inquiries about whether his team is really here to rescue to survivors of Oceanic 815, she decides it’s time to leave the beach camp and go live in the barracks with Locke’s group of followers. However, Juliet refuses to allow the pair to leave and as a last resort, she tells Jin about his wife’s affair prior to their coming to the island. That creates some tension for Jin and Sun, but after a day or so, Jin realizes that his own detachment led to the affair and he forgives Sun. However, flash-forwards throughout the show reveal that both Jin and Sun get off the island, albeit under confusing circumstances. Throughout the episode, it appears that Sun is delivering the baby back in Korea and that Jin is rushing to the hospital to be there with her. At the end of the episode, the twist is revealed: Jin is in China, not Korea. Furthermore, he’s there to deliver a giant stuffed panda bear as a gift to the daughter of an ambassador who has just given birth to a baby boy. It’s official business, as Jin is there representing Paik Automotive. On the way out of the hospital, a conversation with a nurse reveals that Jin is married to someone else now, having gotten hitched two months ago. Meanwhile, Sun welcomes a visitor to her apartment to see her new daughter: Hurley. Together, they go to a cemetery to visit a grave that they believe to be Jin’s. The questions are obvious: How did Jin and Sun both get off the island but without Sun knowing that her husband is alive? How does Sun think Jin died? Why did he fake his death or choose not to let Sun know he was alive? And oh yeah, is there anyone out there who speaks Korean or Chinese and watches Lost? Because if so, then those people knew from the start of this episode that something was off. They would have known that Jin was speaking Chinese, not Korean, in all of the flash-forwards. Us ugly Americans didn’t have a clue, but such is life. On the non-Korean front, Sayid and Desmond are learning lots of new things on the freighter. First, they learn that the ship’s calloused captain is willing to allow a crew member who jumps overboard to drown rather than take the risk of trying to save her. Second, someone has been sabotaging the freighter’s engines, preventing the craft from moving out further from the island and thus mitigating the harmful effects that being in its proximity has on the crew. Third, the spy Ben Linus has on the boat is….Michael. Michael and his son Walt left the island on an Others-provided boat at the end of Season Two, but somehow Michael got himself onto the crew of the freighter. Next week we’ll learn how, plus the always-popular “Someone….will….DIE!” tactic is going to be employed. So there you have it for this week of Lost, until next Thursday……..

- Last night, Smallville finally returned and with it came a blast from the past, Pete Ross. It’s been three years since Sam Jones III left the show, but last night he was back and in fine form. The theme for the night was shameless promotional plugs, with Pete kicking things off from the start by working as a roadie for (SHAMELESS PLUG #1) the band One Republic, performing in Metropolis at (SHAMELESS PLUG #2) a makeshift club with Stride emblazoned on the front a massive logo. Why, you ask? Because miraculously, the club is set up inside of a recently vacated factory manufacturing Stride gum. The Stride logo is everywhere, slamming you over the head with the message over and over to chew their gum. One Republic also has a professional-looking lighted sign behind the stage, reminding you of their name in case you forgot from the dozen previous shots of said sign. In between, there was an actual plot. Pete winds up chewing Stride gum laced with Kryptonite and develops a meteor power of his own, the ability to turn into the incredible stretching man. He can turn his arms, hands, legs, etc. into ginormous rubber bands, basically. He first realizes he has this power when he instinctively reaches out his arms to pull Kara Kent from under falling speakers set up near the stage. His act of heroicism comes as Kara is about to be hit by a massive speaker tumbling from fifteen feet in the air. The reality is that Pete didn’t really save her, because even though her amnesia prevents her from remembering, Kara, like cousin Clark, is from Kryptonite and thus indestructible. But again, Kara doesn’t remember that. She’s at the club with Jimmy Olson, who she was dating before losing her memory. They were trying to jump-start that memory by going to a familiar place, but it didn’t work. When Pete makes his miracle save, Jimmy catches it on his camera phone and the story starts to spread. Pete also goes back to visit his old best friend Clark in Smallville and reveals his new abilities to CK. Clark is alarmed and warns Pete that a lot of potential problems could happen if he doesn’t get rid of his powers. That leads to a good ol’ fashioned Pete-Clark argument wherein Pete is hurt and indignant that he has to live in Clarks’ shadow and that Clark seems to not want him to get any of the attention. An angry Pete decides to become a vigilante, taking on Lex Luthor when Lex makes Chloe’s life miserable at the Daily Planet by snooping in all of her computer files. Pete uploads a virus that corrupts the Planet’s entire computer system, but Lex sees him doing it and says that to even the score, Pete needs to retrieve something for Lex from Lex’s dad Lionel Luthor’s vault: Kara Kent’s Kryptonian bracelet. Lex doesn’t know exactly what the bracelet is, but he believes it will bring him closer to discovering the secrets about Kara and by connection Clark. Pete breaks into Lionel’s office and is about the steal the bracelet when Clark arrives and tries to stop him. Pete uses kryptonite to put down his friend and then goes to his meeting with Lex where he tries to set Lex up by leaving the bracelet behind and attacking Lex. Lex, ever the paranoid one, has backup and takes Pete down. A torture session ensues until Clark, having been rescued by Lionel, arrives and knocks out Lex and his hired muscle. All is well again between Clark and Pete, but Clark and Lionel have new issues. Clark is pissed that Lionel had Kara’s bracelet and didn’t share that information, so Clark hangs onto the bracelet and stashes it under a floorboard in the Kent barn. However, it’s exactly that type of behavior from Clark and Lana that is also driving Kara away. She’s been snooping around the farm, going through Clark’s things and trying to find ways to reconnect with her past, but nothing works. When she talks to Lana and asks for proof that she and Clark are Kara’s real friends and that Lex is merely using her, Lana won't tell Kara about her true past. Kara decides she can no longer trust Clark and Lana and goes to live at the Luthor mansion with Lex. Also making a relationship move are Jimmy and Chloe, who decide to give their relationship another try. So aside from the shameless promotional plugs, it was a good episode. Next week’s episode looks awesome, what with Clark ending up locked in some sort of Dr.-Evil-in-a-plastic-bubble prison and Lex apparently linked to it. Unfortunately, that episode coincides with the first day of the NCAA Tournament, so I’ve got me a decision to make….

- Welcome back to the protest front, monks. Ever since the brutal oppression in Burma following a revolt against that country’s repressive regime that was led by Burmese monks, we haven’t heard much from the men of the cloth in terms of standing up to The Man. So I salute the monks of Tibet for having the kahones to stand up and be heard when it comes to opposing the brutal Chinese rule in their nation. This past weekend, monks in Tibet’s capital city staged two protests against the Chinese government, showing that singer Bjork is not the only one willing to stand up to a regime that the United States had just branded as one of the worst abusers of human rights in the whole world. No one was arrested or killed in the monk-led protests, so we may need to do some work here to kick things up a notch, but it’s a good start. After all, it did help inspire hundreds of Tibetan exiles to continue with their six-month march from northern India back to their Himalayan homeland, a demonstration in direct defiance of a ban on any and all demonstrations against Beijing’s hosting of the 2008 Summer Olympics. Anyone standing up to Communism is a friend to us all, so let’s throw our support behind the people of Tibet as they fight to throw off the shackles of the abusive, overbearing Chinese rule in their nation. FREE TIBET! FREE TIBET!

John Daly about to self-destruct, a Naval beatdown and $12 billion a month wasted, wahoo!

- What price do you pay for being a total dick on television? Apparently if you’re NBC talking head Tucker Carlson, the price you pay is your choice gig of hosting a one-hour program on the cable network each night. The bow-tie-wearing, über-arrogant conservative a-hole has been ousted from his customary slot in MSNBC’s nightly lineup due to the network’s desire to respond to heavier-than-normal interest in the political scene with the presidential election coming up later this year. David Gregory will be taking over Carlson’s vacated time slot but it was not immediately clear if he would also take over Carlson’s role of being the biggest dick on television. It would be tough to strike that right mix of condescension, small-mindedness, arrogance and rudeness, so if you can't quite put it together, no worries David. Just by treating your guests with a modicum of respect and class you can be a marked improvement over my boy T. Carlson. Gregory’s show will be called Race for the White House and you can keep an eye on your network listings to find it in your area. If you find yourself having dick-head withdrawal because Carlson’s show is no longer on, I advise you to turn on your radio and pick up Rush Limbaugh’s show, you should find it to be a satisfactory substitute.

- It hasn’t been a good spring training for the New York Yankees. First, they had backup catcher Francisco Cervelli plowed over by Tampa Bay (Devil) Rays baserunner Elliot Johnson in the ninth inning of an exhibition game and get his wrist broken in the collision. Yankee manager Joe Girardi was none too happy about a play most around baseball saw as a clean, legit play on Cervilli’s part. Girardi and former Yankee coach Don Zimmer, now a member of the Rays’ front office, exchanged angry words in the aftermath, but the situation was far from over. Next, the Yankees made asses out of themselves by signing washed-up, irrelevant comedian Billy Crystal to a one-day contract so he could try to grab some publicity, er, fulfill his lifelong dream of suiting up for the Yanks. Now, the team sparked a benches-clearing brawl in which its starting pitcher and two coaches were ejected in the first inning of a rematch with Tampa in an exhibition game in St. Petersburg, Fla. This was New York’s first chance for retaliation after the Cervelli-Johnson incident and although it came in a meaningless spring training game with about 1,000 people in the stands, the Pinstripers wanted to make their point: Your fourth-string players had better not go around hurting our third-string catcher or dammit, one of your minor league guys is getting drilled with a pitch from a guy who isn’t going to make our major league roster. Pitcher Heath Phillips beaned Rays third baseman Evan Longoria with a pitching in the first inning of yesterday’s game, sparking a brawl that saw Tampa outfielder Jonny Gomes and Yankees first baseman Shelley Duncan ejected, along with New York coaches Bobby Meachem and Kevin Long. I’m not sure what point that served, other than deepening the already intense hatred these two franchises have for one another. I just wish Tampa wasn’t so gawd-awful every year, because if they could actually break the .500 mark, this rivalry might actually mean something and be worth following.

- On one hand, wasting $12 billion a month on an unjustified, idiotic and unnecessary war should be reason for rioting. In a less civilized country, the leader responsible for that kind of atrocity would have his head on a pike and marched through the streets by angry villagers within a month. In the United States, we don’t do that sort of thing to our leaders, no matter how bad they are. On the other hand, is it wrong to have at least a little admiration for an administration so incompetent that it manages to find a way to waste $12 billion a month on anything? Throwing away that kind of money is hard to do, even if you’re Paris Hilton on a shoe, drugs and sex binge or if you’re a famous rapper looking to add a half-dozen more Bentleys to your fleet. Yet as the Mess O’Potamia, i.e. the war in Iraq, heads into its sixth f’ing year in 2008, $12 billion a month is what the United States is spending to finance this atrocity. That claim comes in a new book by Pulitzer Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz. The idiotic troop surge of last year is a major factor in allegedly tripling the cost of the war from its first few years to the present. Compounding this comedy of errors is the fact that W. and his stool pigeons are currently backpedaling from previous pledges to begin rolling back the number of troops in Iraq and backpedaling at an alarming rate. Carmelo Anthony didn’t backpedal this fast in trying to cower out of last season’s NBA brawl at Madison Square Garden between his Denver Nuggets and the New York Knicks (YouTube it, you’ll see what I mean). Between the sheer horror of these figures and the fact that the terror of a Hank Clinton presidency is still at least a possibility, I don’t think I need to tell you that this is one of the darkest, scariest times this country has had in its 232 years of existence. Keep fighting, America, and together we can turn this around.

- When a criminal assault takes place, you always hope there was a good reason for the brawl. You know, like someone looking at someone else’s girl the wrong way, someone momentarily leaning up against someone else’s car, one drunk dude accidentally spilling a beer on another drunk dude, etc. Thus, you can imagine that when a couple of Australian Navy sailors roll up on an American civilian in San Diego and administer a beatdown on the sidewalk outside of a bar, they also had a good reason. As it turns out, you would be right. Sailors Phillip Graeme Ferres and Kolis Barba were out on the town, having fun when some random guy crossed their path and an argument about the merits of American versus Australian Rules football. I’m not sure which side won the argument on the merits of their verbal skills, but I know that the two Aussie sailors won the physical side of things because they pleaded guilty this week to assault charges stemming from the November incident. Maybe I’m out of line here, but aren’t members of a country’s military supposed to represent the best that country has to offer and be men (and women) of honor? Either that or commit felonies on foreign soil because some American dude says that American football is better than Aussie football. Well done fellas, you did your country proud.

- John Daly has just about ceased to be the loveable train wreck that golf fans everywhere root for. J.D. is known for his larger-than-life lifestyle, replete with booze, cigarettes, gambling, multiple divorces and portly physique as much as he’s known for his monstrous on-course talent. He has more ability than any golfer outside of Tiger Woods, as evidenced by the two majors he has won despite being a drunk, a compulsive gambler and a compulsive eater. Through four divorces, innumerable gambling binges and multiple trips to rehab, fans have stood behind him and continued to cheer J.D. when he actually was able to sober up enough to play. However, the tide seems to be turning for Daly and this time the effects may not be reversible. Last week, Daly was playing at the PODS Championship in Florida when he decided it would be a good idea to let his buddy, Tampa Bay Buccaneers head coach John Gruden, be his caddy for a round. If you’re not a big golf fan, you might not understand the significance of the caddie, but suffice it to say that he consults with the player on club selection, gives him insights on course conditions, yardage to the hole and shot setup. In other words, the caddie is the player’s right-hand man, so having an experienced, knowledgeable caddie is a must. Having a pro football coach come and carry your bag for a day basically is equivalent to the L.A. Lakers bringing Jack Nicholson out of the stands to coach the team in a pivotal playoff game. The decision to bring in Gruden didn’t sit well with renowned swing coach Butch Harmon, an ex-Marine who is one of golf’s best swing gurus. He’s been working with J.D. to help get his game back on track, but when Daly brought in Gruden as his caddie, Harmon went off. “QUOTE HERE.” Wow. That’s as thorough a blow-up as you’ll see in golf or most any other sport, but even that comment and Harmon terminating his working relationship with Daly didn’t seem to get through to J.D. His downturn continued this week when he missed his tee time for the pro-am portion of the Arnold Palmer Invitational and was disqualified from the whole tournament. Worse yet, he was there on a sponsor’s exemption, which means one of the event’s sponsors gave him a chance to play even though he didn’t qualify because they thought he was worth having in their event. Instead, Daly went AWOL and got himself DQ’d, DQ’d from an event hosted by golf icon Arnold Palmer nonetheless. I have to admit that up to this point, I’ve been one of those willing Daly enablers, someone who rooted for him whenever he teed it up and hoped he would turn his life and his career around. Now, I’m becoming worn down by his constant screwing around, his refusal to own the responsibility for making changes in his life and his blatant disregard for everything in his life but booze and gambling. J.D., you’ve walked that thin line twixt greatness and disaster too long and you’ve finally fallen firmly onto the wrong side of the line. The difference this time as opposed to your past falls is that I really don’t believe you’ll ever make it back from this one…..

Mary Ann goes Mary Jane, crack smuggling takes a hit and a man-bander ventures into TV

- Looking back, you have to feel genuinely bad for Mary Ann of Gilligan’s Island fame. After all, being stuck on that damn island for all those years with nitwits like Gilligan, the Professor and Ginger couldn’t have been much fun. However, it had to have been doubly tough for Mary Ann, given how hard it is to get a decent supply of the hippie lettuce on a deserted island. Oh, you didn’t know? Mary Ann is/was a stoner, it’s true. Well, at least the actress who played the wholesome, farm-girl-next-door on the show is a stoner, as evidenced by the fact that in Dawn Wells, who played Mary Ann, has been busted for weed in Idaho just this week. A local patrolman stopped Wells’ car and found a couple of blunts in her whip. She was pulled over because she was driving erratically; swerving, speeding up and slowing down and generally operating her vehicle like someone who was high. When Wells was pulled over, she had a great excuse locked and loaded to try and explain the blunts found in the center console of her car. She claimed that the fatties belonged to three hitchhikers that she picked up, but that she kicked them out once she realizing they were getting baked. Plausible…assuming that the person you’re telling the story to is as baked as you are. If the person hearing your explanation is even mildly straight and sober, they’re not buying that one. Why is it that weed never is in the hands of the person it belongs to? It’s always a friend’s, a relative’s, a random hitchhiker’s, etc. How does the chronic ever get smoked if it’s never actually in the possession of the person it belongs to? Nearly as good as Wells’ explanation for the bud being in her car was the reason her attorney gave for her erratic driving that led the cops to pull her over. According to that attorney, Mary Jane, er, Dawn Wells was driving erratically because she was looking for the controls for the heater. A likely story, counselor. That still doesn’t explain why Wells still had the pot in her car even after kicking out those she alleges were responsible for bringing it into the vehicle to begin with. Call me insane, but if someone is in my car and I boot them out for smoking blunts, I’m throwing the weed out with them. Keeping it would lead one to believe that it was yours all along, D. Wells. But credit to you for being 69 years old and still being cool enough to get high, not many grannies can pull that off.

- I didn’t think it was possible to hate the New York Yankees any more, but turns out that it is possible. Yes, their archrivals in the American League East, the Boston Red Sox, have become every bit as detestable as the Bronx Bombers, but the men in pinstripes seem intent on edging back ahead in that race. In keeping with a recent spring training tradition that just needs to die, the Yankees have brought in a minor celebrity to sign a one-day contract and play for them in an exhibition game. Garth Brooks has done it before to raise money for charity, most recently playing with the San Diego Padres in spring training a few years ago. But the Yanks found someone nearly as irrelevant and as much of a has-been as Brooks, inking former alleged funny man Billy Crystal to a one-day deal as a 60th birthday present for the gung-ho Yankee fan. Crystal will play tomorrow for the Yankees against the Pittsburgh Pirates, which I’m sure will be oh, so funny and interesting. Well, it’ll be interesting in the same way that having a two-ton anvil dropped on your head would be amusing. Look, I know Crystal is a major fan of your team and has been a vocal and public supporter of yours for years. I understand that he has a lot of money and is fairly well-known. I also know that he hasn’t made a decent movie in two decades and is the textbook definition of a has-been. Anyone under the age of 30 can't remember a time when he mattered or was a major motion picture star. A lot of people out there, famous and otherwise, would like the chance to play even one game with their favorite team. Just because you’ve made a lot of bad movies and hosted a few awards shows over the years doesn’t mean that the rest of us should be subjected to you “living out the dream.” Major League teams need to stop signing geezer actors and singers to grab publicity or for whatever reason they do it. It’s not funny, it’s not interesting and it’s not amusing - it’s just lame.

- Gaining possession of things that used to belong to famous people is becoming a lot easier than it used to be. No longer do you have to stalk the celebrity of your choice and wait for them to leave some small trinket - used napkin or glass, a towel they used, et. - that you can snatch. Instead, you can simply wait for that person to default on their mortgage, run afoul of the IRS or engage in some other action that will lead to their belongings being auctioned off to the public. Whether it’s the owner of a storage facility raffling off Whitney Houston’s belongings because she hadn’t paid her storage bills, a collection agency auctioning off Michael Jackson’s crap at his Neverland Pedophile Park, er, Ranch or the latest, the belongings of deceased socialite Leona Helmsley being sold off as fulfillment of her last wishes, you have some legitimate shots at buying a famous person’s unwanted or unneeded junk. This particular sale has an edge over Houston and Jackson’s respective auctions, though. Helmsley specified that all proceeds from the sale of items that include some of her more famous and infamous outfits go to a charitable trust set up in the name of herself and her late husband. So if you want the threads she wore when she began serving her sentence for tax evasion, be sure to keep tabs on this auction.

- Knowing how I loathe the existence of Justin Timberlake, you might think that I’d have a negative reaction to news that he’s developing a new TV show for NBC. Actually, if you think that you’d be wrong. I may hate Timberlake for being a former man bander and for putting out some of the most unlistenable crap imaginable as a solo artist, but my thinking when it comes to his non-musical pursuits is not the same. From where I stand, anything that keeps him from signing, or what he tries to pass of as singing, is cool with me. If we wants to pursue a career as an elephant trainer in the circus, so be it. He wants to be a kabuki theater performer in Japan? Thumbs up. Even him developing a show about a thirty-something named Jose as he tries to come to grips with his romantic failures through therapy sessions. Honestly, it sounds like a show that’s going to be canceled after about four episodes, but if Timberlake and Reveille Studios want to work on it, I say go for it. Any activity that keeps a former man-bander out of the recording studio is great. All of those guys should receive a lifetime ban on recording music anyhow, but in lieu of that, diverting their attention into other, non-musical projects will have to suffice.

- Well that’s certainly not going to help drive down the street price of crack. Hermagoras Gonzalez, a man accused of smuggling literally tons (yes tons, not pounds or ounces) of cocaine into the United States in recent years, has been arrested and jailed in Venezuela. Venezuelan authorities staged a raid that netted them Gonzalez, which I’m sure they’re pretty happy with. His lawyer is insisting that he’s innocent, but this is a foreign court case and I just don’t feel right about advocating either side in this one. The side I will advocate is that of all the crack heads around the United States who are now going to have a much tougher time trying to finance their drug habit. Did you think about that before you went and nabbed a true hall of famer (allegedly) in the crack-smuggling world, Venezuelan police? Or did oyu just think about yourselves and boosting your own ego and reputation by apprehending someone who is a big name in the drug world? There are going to be a lot of unhappy crack heads in these here United States….well, until the drug rings do what they always do and simply find the next guy in line waiting to replace Gonzalez. That’s the great part about drug cartels; they don’t so much care who’s transporting their product or what happens to those people, just as long as their drugs are delivered and they get paid.

Soccer riots, One Tree Hill and hooker-trolling governors

- I shouldn’t be having back-to-back days where I’m talking about people who are supposed to be enforcing and upholding the law being guilty of breaking the law in reprehensible fashion, but here I am. Yesterday it was the story of the police chief in Gary, Ind. who assaulted and wrongfully jailed four people he suspected of burglarizing his home. Today, there’s an even bigger fish swimming in the waters of corrupt, morally bankrupt behavior by an elected official. New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, a man who has built his reputation on being a hard-liner against crime, a law-and-order hombre with a distaste for all things illegal and immoral, apparently solicits hookers. Actually, to be fair, he solicits sexual favors from hookers on Valentine’s Day eve while on business trips to Washington, D.C. My man E. Spitzer was snagged by a federal wiretapping program when he made a phone call arranging a meeting with a hooker in his hotel room. This wasn’t the first time for this kind of liaison, either, because the feds have Spitzer on the client list of the Emperor’s Club VIP as “Client 9” and those records show him paying $4,300 for various sessions with a “petite, pretty brunette, 5-feet-5 inches and 105 pounds” named Kristen. According to a witness in the case, Kristen was ordered to take a train from New York to D.C. on the night of Feb. 13 to meet “Client 9,” who would be paying for all of her expenses, including train tickets, cab fare, room service, travel time and hotel. Spitzer was dumb enough to use his credit card for some of these transactions, so clearly being a powerful elected official doesn’t mean he’s very intelligent. This same witness told the feds that payments for this particular encounter would be done the same way as previous transactions, so Spitzer has done this more than once. Honestly, I can't think of anything more hypocritical than this situation. Not only is Spitzer the governor of one of the most prominent, populous states in this country, head of that state’s executive branch, but he made his mark by cracking down on the very acts he was committing on a regular basis. Whether Spitzer resigns now or not doesn’t matter much unless you’re a New York resident. His remaining in office or leaving doesn’t affect those outside of NY, because from here on out, he’s going to be known first, foremost and always as the governor who got after it with a hooker. Hope that was worth it, Eliot, a few sessions with some petite, brunette prostitute that will now ruin your marriage, political career and life….

- Well rehab is certainly changing Amy Winehouse. She’s gone from a druggie, drunken lush who will snort, shoot or ingest any drug you put in front of her to a druggie, drunken lush who will snort, shoot or ingest any drug you put in front of her and now lights vodka on fire and snorts it as well. Yup, you read that right. No longer content with imbibing alcohol the normal way, Winehouse has taken to a tactic that stunned even some of her junkie, alkie buddies. While out at a club recently, Winehouse and her crew apparently were hanging out when the bar they were at closed. All of us have been there, when the lights come up and the night is over. If you’re having a good time, you don’t want it to end but the place is closing, so what to do? Most people gulp down one last drink for the road and either call it a night or move the party elsewhere. Notice I said gulp. Instead of putting alcohol into her body through the normal channel, my girl Winehouse decided that lighting her vodka on fire and snorting it was the best choice. After all, you get it into your bloodstream quicker and thus get your buzz on quicker, so why not? Well, other than it being totally out of hand and something that would make even Ozzy Osbourne and his snorting a line of ants off a popsicle stick do a double take. Call me crazy, but rehab is supposed to help you get better and stop doing this sort of crap, right? It seems to be having the opposite impact on Winehouse. Rehab is galvanizing her desire to get wasted and be a degenerate lush. Her people had better get her out of rehab and keep her out, otherwise she’s going to be mainlining Jack Daniel’s snorting heroin and drinking gin at the same time, all while smoking a joint and mumbling one of her incoherent songs in between drags off of her joint. Over/under on the date she buys the farm: June 15. I’ll take the under…..

- Ever heard the saying, “If you feel like you need to carry a gun to go somewhere, then that’s somewhere you probably don’t need to be going to begin with”? Those words are usually uttered in reference to incidents involving athletes and celebrities who end up in shootings and brawls at nightclubs, strip clubs, etc. that involve firearms. The thinking is that if a place is so dangerous that you won't go without a gun, then that’s a place you should be going to at all. Allow me to be the first to extend this mantra to Colombia and any other nation in the world that is home to the rare species known as Soccer Hooligan. See, like every other nation in the world where soccer is the preeminent sport, Colombia often experiences soccer-related riots. Fans don’t like the outcome of a match, they don’t like the officiating or they don’t like the opposing team’s fans, so they’re looking to go. Maybe someone throws a lit emergency flare, maybe someone throws a punch or lobs a beer bottle. All of that is typical for soccer riots, but a riot in the city of Cali clearly shows that there’s another, more explosive component to soccer riots: homemade explosives. Extending that motto about guns, the lesson should be that if you need a homemade explosive device to go somewhere, then that’s a place you don’t need to be going. The riot in Cali got underway during a match between Deportivo Cali and America de Cali. The exact cause is still undetermined. Local official Diego Cardona explained it by saying that, “This is one of the theories, but when you have so many people drunk, drugged up and looking for a fight, sometimes it’s hard to find out what really started it.” Great, Diego. You don’t know what started it and honestly, it doesn’t matter. It’s not like soccer fan needs a legit excuse to riot, so I’m sure this one was no different. One theory is that a jealous boyfriend sparked a brawl that ignited the whole riot, which would be so typically soccer it’s perfect. Regardless of how it started, once the riot got going it spiraled out of hand quickly. Knives and rocks were the primary weapons of choice initially, but once the cops jumped in to intervene, things escalated quickly. That’s when fans took out their homemade explosive devices and really started causing damage. In the ensuing chaos 83 people were injured, including six cops. One of the cops was shanked and One 18 fans were also treated for stab wounds. Let me say this for you again, soccer fan: If you need a homemade bomb to attend a game, go ahead and assume you shouldn’t be attending games. How does that thought process go, anyhow? “Man, Team X is coming to town, I hate those punks. They’re a bunch of a-holes and their fans are even worse. Y’know what we need to do? No, not make signs mocking them. No, not come up with some creative heckles to toss at them. What we need is to rig up a few homemade bombs. That’ll shut those b*tches up.” That’s just an incredible leap, from not liking an opposing team or fans to the point of making incendiary devices to throw at them. Last time I checked, Red Sox and Yankees fans hate each other, but they’re not rigging up explosives to take to the game to hurl at one another. Same goes for Duke and North Carolina fans, Cubs and Cardinal fans and Browns and Steelers fans. Once again, you’ve showed how truly ridiculous you are soccer, congrats.

- When people do moronic, illegal things and then try to explain away their actions, it’s almost always funny to hear their lame rationales. They fail to realize that regardless of why you committed a crime, you still committed a crime and nothing you say will make it not a crime or make it acceptable. For example, if you are at a car wash and your 2-year-old throws a temper tantrum, you response can't be to yank the kid out of the car and hit them with a blast from the sprayer arm dispensing soap and water to clean your car. Niurka Ramirez incorrectly decided that using the sprayer on her infant daughter was a good idea, but she thinks it’s ok because while she may have sprayed the child, at least she didn’t hit the girl with the pressure-washing feature of the sprayer. Orlando police have charged her with abusing her daughter, and since stupidity and lack of IQ aren’t things you can bring someone up on criminal charges for, that’ll have to do. But great excuse, that it’s not a big deal because you didn’t use the high-pressure setting on the sprayer. Oh, ok. As long as you didn’t kick it up to the highest possible level, then it’s ok to abuse your child. Does that also mean it’s all right to burn your child as long as you don’t give them anything worse than a second-degree burn? Niurka, you are perfect evidence of the fact that just because you are physically capable of having children, that doesn’t mean you are mentally capable of raising them.

- So I finally caught up with the last half of last week’s One Tree Hill that I missed, which dovetails nicely into this week’s episode. Last week’s second half wrapped up with Hayley being confronted by the nanny she had just fired, Carrie, who revealed that she and Hayley’s husband Nathan had kissed and that he’d also seen her skinny-dipping. That led to a tearful Hayley-Nathan argument that was interrupted when their son Jamie fell into the pool and they ran out to rescue him. Nathan got him out in time, but after Jamie caught his breath, Hayley took Nathan’s away by informing him that she wanted a divorce. Also headed for a divorce of sorts were Peyton and the lone artist on her record label, Mia - or so it seemed. Just when it seemed that Peyton was resigned to the fact that she really couldn’t offer Mia the kind of career launch and promotional support she deserved, she and Mia sprung a plan on John, the exec from the major record label Peyton worked for in L.A. who was in town trying to steal Mia away. However, Mia insists on remaining loyal and so she and Peyton set John up by Mia “happening” in on a meeting between Peyton and John where Peyton tells John that he’s right and that she can’t give Mia what she needs. Mia pretends to be livid with Peyton and also with John. She tells John she’ll never, ever sign with him or work with him and she also calls Peyton a sellout. After her performance, John is rattled and agrees to a deal Peyton proposes that allows Mia (and Peyton) to keep the rights to Mia’s music and give her full authority over most of her career while allowing John’s label to distribute and promote her music. So that’s where last week left off, so on to…….This week’s episode, which was all about returns. Dan Scott, father of Lucas and Nathan and murderer of his own brother in Season Three, somehow got paroled from prison and is now a free man. He chose to celebrate by hitting on the checkout girl at the sporting goods store where he was buying a present for his grandson and then sleeping with the chick later that night. But Dan’s self-interjection into the lives of the show’s main characters didn’t happen this week; next week’s Lucas-Lindsey wedding will be the setting for that one. Making a return of her own was Rachel Gotina, who was back in Tree Hill because when Brooke found her OD’d in Brooke’s New York apartment and wanted to send her to rehab, Rachel begged Brooke not to leave her alone in New York. So back to Tree Hill it was, where reactions from all ends of the emotional spectrum awaited her. Peyton and Brooke were supportive, allowing her to stay with them and get back on her feet. Mouth McFadden welcomed her back as well, going to visit Rachel despite the objections of the girl he’s now dating, Brooke’s assistant Millicent. Rachel actually tried to get Mouth to have sex with her, but he does what he always does, making the right choice, the honorable choice by saying no and encouraging Rachel to stop thinking that she’s not good enough to have the life she wants. Then there’s the reaction from Bitch-toria, er, Victoria, Brooke’s mom. She stops by her daughter’s house, finds Rachel and in one of the most calloused, heinous displays of bitch-dom I can remember seeing on TV in some time, rips Rachel a new one by calling her a leech and telling her that she’s not strong enough to beat her drug addiction and will eventually relapse. That little pep talk rattles Rachel badly enough that she takes off and takes an envelope full of money that Peyton had given to Brooke earlier in the day to repay the loan Brooke gave her to help start Peyton’s record company. Everyone else spent the episode getting ready for and enjoying Lucas and Lindsey’s joint bachelor/bachelorette parties, which they combined and held at Nathan and Hayley’s house in an attempt to force Nathan and Hayley to talk and perhaps reconcile. Nathan, who has been living on Lucas’ couch for the past week since Hayley kicked him out, wants to return home but Hayley isn’t so sure. Their separation is hard on Jamie, who wants his family back together. In the midst of the party planning, the gang makes a stop at Macy’s (this Macy’s connection is taking shameless promoting and shilling to a new low this season) where Lucas and Lindsey pick out gifts for their wedding registry and Brooke and new boy toy Owen are for a meeting Brooke has with Macy’s officials. They bump into old Tree Hill HS buddy Bevan and she’s her ditzy, bubbly self. She reveals that she’s now married with a son, and Brooke realizes upon seeing a picture and learning the boy’s name that Bevan is married to Tim Smith, also an old Tree Hill HS buddy and the loveable loser sidekick from the show’s first four seasons. Brooke gets another surprise when Victoria pops up and reveals that she moved up the Macy’s meeting and took it herself, cutting Brooke out of the whole deal. After that stunt and her treatment of Rachel, Brooke finally gets the guts to fire her mom from her position at Clothes Over Bros, Brooke’s company. Another twist for Brooke comes when she and Owen prepare to leave for the party and the friend Owen brings along because he’s in town and needs something to do is Brooke’s high school boyfriend from her senior year, Chase (Stephen Colletti from Laguna Beach fame). Chase is actually Peyton’s date for the evening, but things are awkward for all involved, although Chase and Peyton make the best of it and have a fun evening. The party is actually a success, but it still doesn’t bring Nathan and Hayley back together. Still, later in the night when Hayley is proofing a few chapters of Lucas’ new novel that he’s working on, something in it strikes a chord with her and she calls him in the middle of the night. She surprises him by telling him that he can’t marry Lindsey but doesn’t say why, not on camera anyhow. All of this sets the stage for next week, which will be OTH’s 100th episode. It’ll be Lucas and Lindsey’s wedding, so obviously there will be drama with Peyton possibly trying to break up the wedding and also with the return of the evil one, Dan Scott. For now, that’s it and that’s all, so until next week, peace out…….

Seinfeld news, waterboarding opinions and Rosie O'Fat needs to shut her mouth

- For those of you naïve enough to believe the rumors, there’s bad news to report. Despite talk that Jerry Seinfeld was in talks with NBC about developing a comedy series for the network, his cult favorite show Seinfeld is not returning in any way, shape or form. I would have loved it just as much as any of you, probably more, but to believe that Jerry would make any attempt to resurrect the show or even start a new project that bore any resemblance to the show that defined a decade of television was misguided and ignorant at best. Seinfeld is a legendary series and one that I can still watch a decade after it went off the air with just as many laughs. Reports had Seinfeld and NBC working on a deal that would have created a New York-centric series similar to HBO’s hit show Curb Your Enthusiasm. Spokespersons for both Jerry Seinfeld stated that the rumors are false and that although they appreciate the public’s enthusiasm on the issue, there’s nothing further to report.

 

- It may seem like there’s not much at stake in this week’s Democratic caucus in Wyoming and primary in Mississippi, but I beg to differ. Yes, Wyoming only has 12 delegates at stake and Mississippi doesn’t have much more with 33, but after the horrific results of last week’s Tuesday primaries in Ohio and Texas, this is an important day regardless of the number of delegates at stake. Whereas you may see a mere 45 delegates, I see a chance for Barack Obama to regain his momentum and move that much closer to the necessary number of delegates to secure the Democratic nomination and terminate the tragedy in the making that a Hank Clinton presidency would be. That dude scares me, period. I’ve said it many times, but I will say it again: Hank is a terror that our nation does not want, need or deserve. Of course, because Mississippi is a heavily black state and Wyoming, for whatever reason, is a state where Obama is the prohibitive favorite, Hank is playing up the underdog status for all it’s worth. That dude knows how to politick his way around tough situations, but even taking the “woe is poor me” tact here doesn’t look to be enough to give Hank the votes to win. I plead with all voters in Wyoming and Mississippi to do what voters in Ohio and Texas were too stupid to do: Choose B.O. Obama may not be the perfect candidate in the greater scope of things, but in this situation, any candidate other than Hank Clinton is the perfect candidate. Do your civic duty, Mississippians and Wyomingites, vote B.O.

 

- While many people in America saw Saddam Hussein’s reign in Iraq as something terrible and a tyrannical regime needing to be taken down, David Chalmers saw something different. He saw what America could not or would not see…..and now he’s going to jail because of it. Chalmers has been sentenced to two years in prison after pleading guilty to approving millions of dollars in kickbacks to Saddam Hussein’s now-toppled regime in order to secure massive oil shipments from a United Nations program. Chalmers was also fined $9 million for his crimes, but since he’s going to a federal prison and he’s a white-collar criminal, you have to doubt how hard his time behind bars will really be. But props to him, I guess, for having the, um, vision to see past the brutally oppressive, human-rights-violating, tyrannical, abusive and horrific regime run by Hussein and find a way to boost your personal bank accounts by ripping off a program run by an organization looking to help the oppressed people of the world. Why would anyone want the U.N. using its resources to help needy people across the globe when a wealthy businessman can instead divert those same resources to himself? And so what if you have to facilitate those gains through one of the most heinous, despicable, despotic rulers in world history? As long as you get what you want, who cares? Well, other than the United States and every other country who worked so hard to take Hussein down and also the people of Iraq and Kuwait who saw Hussein and his forces kill their countrymen, oppress them and occupy their countries? Great job, Chalmers, you’re officially a piece of crap.

 

- Well at least now we have a formal stance from the W. administration on waterboarding and other torture techniques: they’re all for it. Late last week, W. vetoed a bill Congress had passed and sent to his desk that would have outlawed the use of waterboarding and other dehumanizing torture techniques by the United States and its agent, but W. wasted no time shooting it down. After Congress served up a chance to condemn detestable practices like waterboarding and served it up on a silver platter, W. rejected it with an immediate veto. Critics say W. ignored the advice of 43 retired generals and 18 national security advisors in vetoing the bill, but he defended torture techniques by saying they have helped to avert terrorist strikes and that the CIA will be allowed to continue using them. Personally, I’m going to look for the silver lining here, which I think I’ve found. For a long time now, W. and his administration have hedged, hemmed and hawed about waterboarding and similar tactics. Even Attorney General Michael Mukasey refused to say whether he felt waterboarding was a torture technique during his confirmation hearings before Congress, but now we know where W. and his cadre of ass hats stand on this. They’re all for torturing people and they don’t want any sort of standards or guidelines for when those tactics can be used. They probably watch old episodes of 24 and get a good laugh out of Jack Bauer brutally torturing and interrogating the fictional terrorists on the show. So gracias for letting us know where you stand, W., even if you are wrong.

 

- I haven’t had any Rosie O’Fat news lately, mostly in keeping with doctor’s order to avoid fat, loud, crass, classless, unfunny, angry lesbians who ruin any show or program they appear on. However, this is an opportunity even I can’t pass up. Here I have an opportunity to not only rip O’Fat, but also the one entity in the entertainment world I despise even more than I despise O’Fat: American Karaoke. This opportunity comes courtesy of a posting on O’Fat’s website wherein she praises some random karaoke singer who was recently voted off AK by all of the no-life-having losers who are pathetic enough to call in to vote on the hacks performing on the show. According to O’Fat’s post, karaoke-er…..um….uh….Danny Noriega….I think, is an amazing talent whose rendition of Tainted Love inspired her. And before you crack me for not knowing who Noriega is, realize that in the video posting on her site, O’Fat herself couldn’t remember his name until someone reminded her. O’Fat also predicted who the winner of this season’s rendition of AK will be, but I don’t know or care enough to write his/her name. What I will write is that O’Fat invited Noriega to perform on the next R Family Vacations cruise with O’Fat herself and to sing Tainted Love together. R Family Vacations cruises are specifically for gays and lesbians, but that’s not where I take issue. No, I have a much bigger problem with any company or organization that allows a classless wench like Rosie O’Fat to be a member and to speak on its behalf. I’m not sure whether to recommend to Noriega that he accept the invitation or reject it, because let’s face it, when you’ve appeared on American Karaoke, you’re at the lowest point you can be at. Even singing on a cruise ship with Rosie O’Fat isn’t a step down. Well, it’s more of a lateral move, so do whatever you want, Noriega. Just make sure I never have to hear from you ever again.

Corruption in Gary, Indiana, Lou Pearlman is a scumbag and China shoots down Bjork's free speech

- You always hate to say that the world is a better place without a given person in it, especially when that person dies in a horrific manner. However, the world is a better place without Carlos Edward Tellos. Tellos, 52, had just been convicted of child molestation in a trial held at the Central Justice Center in Santa Ana, Calif. last Tuesday when he made the decision that his life just wasn’t worth living anymore. He leapt to his death from a ninth-floor balcony at the courthouse, avoiding having to spend the next 20 years in prison and doing so the hard way. He tucked a suicide note into his clothing, but even without one it would have been pretty clear what he was up to. Aside from questions of how he got unattended access to a ninth-floor balcony and who was supposed to be guarding him, I have to say that losing a convicted child molester doesn’t make the world a worse place to live. Dudes who are in their 50s and molesting kids aren’t likely to suddenly grow a conscience and change their ways. So I guess post-mortem thanks are in order to Tellos for not taking up a space in California’s already overcrowded prisons and using taxpayer dollars to sustain his life when he didn’t have the will to live it anymore.

 

- Lou Pearlman is indeed guilty of a heinous, reprehensible crime, one far worse than the crime he’s plead guilty to and is going to prison for. Pearlman may have pleaded guilty to federal charges of conspiracy, money laundering and making false statements during a bankruptcy proceeding, but I submit to you that he is guilty of a far greater offense, one that should net him a lifetime in solitary confinement as opposed to the 25 years behind bars and $1 million fine he’s facing on these federal charges.  Pearlman is the man most responsible for plunging the music world and America into the era of the man band, wherein he would create groups of 4-5 dudes in their late teens or mid-20s, dress them up in matching outfits, frost their tips, bleach their teeth, have writers write horrific pop-music crap for them to sing and then unleash them on us all. He was responsible for three of the biggest perpetrators of this crap-ola; the Backstreet Men, ‘N Suck and O-Clowns (actual names of the bands could vary and might be Backstreet Boys, ‘N Sync and O-Town, but I think my names fit better anyhow). So while I don’t think it’s cool that Pearlman bilked banks and investors out of more than $300 million by setting up a fake accounting firm to create business documents and tax returns for himself and his companies, that doesn’t piss me off nearly as much as his creating some of the most awful music acts ever to grace a stage or recording studio. Even something as scummy as using the signature of a deceased business partner, Henry Milner, to hold off anyone looking for payment isn’t as utterly reprehensible as subjecting us to one single man-band song. Rot in prison, Lou. You are a vile, disgusting man and you deserve so much worse than what you’re getting.

 

- Having a big rack can surely be an advantage for chicks, but up to now I didn’t know it could also help them reverse a wrongful conviction on criminal charges, including breaking and entering. A well-endowed Japanese model who goes by the name Serena Kozakura had originally been sentenced to 14 months in prison for allegedly smashing in the door to her boyfriend’s apartment after an argument with another woman she discovered in the dwelling. Kozakura, whose distinguished career has gone from the prestigious field of bikini modeling to aspiring actress (soon to be porn, I’m guessing), found a unique way to get her conviction overturned. Through a re-creation of the alleged crime, she and her attorney were able to demonstrate that Kozakura couldn’t have committed the crime because her rack is too big for her to have fit through the hole that was kicked in the door during the forced entry. Now how her boyfriend or the other woman mistook the identity of the angry, mentally unstable, large-breasted bikini model breaking through that apartment door, I don’t know. But both Kozakura and her ample chest have been acquitted and are now free to pursue that acting career. So props to her attorney, although if that attorney is male, dude probably did not mind doing that recreation of the crime scene one bit.

 

- Gary, Indiana has long been one of the most crime-ridden cities in the United States. There are plenty of felons and petty criminals residing there, so needless to say that the city doesn’t need any help boosting its crime numbers from the man who is supposed to be in charge of curbing crime. Police Chief Thomas Houston either doesn’t know the laws and standards he’s supposed to uphold or he chooses to blatantly ignore them, because when his home was burglarized, he didn’t exactly follow proper police procedure in terms of dealing with four people he believed were responsible for the burglary. Houston is alleged to have assaulted two of those individuals and had them and two others illegally jailed for three days. Two of his deputies took part in this scheme and along with Houston, they have now surrendered to U.S. marshals and subsequently been released on $20,000 bond each. Both Houston and the two deputies face federal civil rights charges, just what a crime-ravaged city like Gary needs. Way to set and example for the people you’re supposed to be serving and protecting, Sheriff. But hey, maybe you’ll be lucky and someone you’ve arrested and sent to jail during your career will end up as your new cell mate when you’re convicted and sent off to jail….

- Ah, China, that bastion of free speech an tolerance where….wait, what’s that? The Chinese government is looking to enforce strict new laws on musicians and other performers visiting their country because of what they perceive as an anti-Chinese blast by singer Bjork at a recent show in Shanghai? Oh. As it turns out, Bjork was finishing up what I am sure was a stirring rendition of her song Declare Independence where she shouted, “Tibet! Tibet!” The proclamation apparently referred to China’s harsh, often restrictive rule over the Himalayan region. Chinese officials weren’t down with basically being called overbearing oppressors, so now they’re looking to make sure that no performers who take the stage anywhere in their country have the opportunity to do what Bjork did and utter a single critical word about their government. What she did “broke Chinese law and hurt Chinese people’s feelings,” read an official statement on the incident. Seriously? Hurt their feelings? Hurt feelings are what happens when you get picked last for a game of dodgeball at recess in third grade, Chinese government officials. Try making your official statements sound a little more official next time. And actually, I’m sure a lot of your people agree with what Bjork said. They’re just afraid to say so because they (rightly) figure you’ll jail and/or kill them if they do. But hey, no worries here, it’s not like this is a country preparing to host a major international event in a few months, like the Summer Olympics, right? 

What makes Costa Rica go, UCLA gets undeserved help and Greek comes back in 2 weeks

- Like me, I’m sure you often wonder just what the Costa Rican economy is founded upon. What industries drive the economic success of such a pivotal country in this world? As it turns out, the answer, at least in part, is the selling of babies. Yes, in Costa Rica you can find baby-selling rings where new mothers are paid for their infants. Just this week Costa Rican police detained 14 people, including a family court judge and a lawyer, on suspicion of taking part in an operation in which mothers received payments in order to give up their babies. Police estimate that adopting couples paid an average of $10,000 to purchase a child, possibly less if they had a coupon or went for a 2-for-1 special. Ok, so I’m kidding about the coupons and discount pricing, but the rest of it is true. With a corrupt judge and lawyer in the fold, this scheme was apparently a pretty well concocted one. Of course, when you have that kind of money regularly changing hands and oh yeah, newborns are with their birth parents one day and gone the next, replaced by a nice new car or maybe some new living room furniture, people may get a tad suspicious. But nice try, Costs Rican baby retailers, you really are something….something despicable, but still something…..

- If UCLA is going to get this kind of help in the NCAA Tournament, you may as well just hand them the national championship trophy right now. Earlier this week, the Bruins got a phantom foul call in a pivotal game against Stanford that gave UCLA a shot at two game-tying free throws when trailing Stanford by two points with less than three seconds left in the game. The home victory allowed UCLA to clinch the Pac-10 regular-season title, but the men in stripes weren’t doing giving the Bruins extra help to pull out “miraculous” wins. Today, as the Cal Golden Bears were about to knock off UCLA, another contest that took place on UCLA’s home court at Pauley Pavilion, the zebras intervened. After UCLA freshman sensation Kevin Love hit a contested three-point shot with about 17 second left in the game to bring UCLA within one point at 80-79, Cal was inbounding the ball in the far corner of the backcourt. Two UCLA players trapped the Cal ball handler and hacked him severely, forcing the ball loose and out of bounds. The problems here are twofold: 1) both UCLA players fouled on the play, and 2) even without a foul call, the ball looked to go out of bounds off of a UCLA player. Of course, those two facts didn’t stop the refs from refusing to call a foul and then giving the ball to the Bruins. After that, divine intervention seemed to take over, because with less than two seconds left, UCLA’s Josh Shipp drove the right baseline, threw up a garbage layup attempt that actually left his hand from behind the backboard, floated upwards over the top corner of the glass and dropped through the hoop. Game, set, match. Thanks to the zebras, UCLA escaped with a win it didn’t deserve for the second time in a week. Let’s just hope that come March Madness, this kind of help isn’t available to them….

- One quick TV note for you…..with a lot of shows either already done for the season thanks to the %^$^$%^$! writers’ strike (including great shows like Prison Break and Heroes, damn you writers!) and others featuring only hit-and-miss, once-in-a-while new episodes (yeah, I’m looking at you, Smallville), the return of a promising newcomer from last year is a bright spot on the bleak TV landscape. Greek, the college-centric drama on ABC Family that got off to a great start in 2007 will return on March 24 with 10 new episodes. To refresh your memory in case you can’t think all the way back to last September when Greek wrapped up its first season, the show left off with the campus of fictitious Cyprus Rhodes University (located in Ohio) embroiled in controversy when Jen K., girlfriend of one of the show’s main characters, loveable dork Rusty, exposed the campus’s Greek system as corrupt and shady after spending a semester pretending to be a pledge at a sorority while actually doing an undercover piece for the campus paper. Rusty broke things off because he felt betrayed and every frat and sorority on campus was up in arms, including Zeta Beta, the sorority led by Rusty’s sister Casey. She also had her own personal drama, torn between blue-blooded boyfriend Evan Chambers and her former flame, the goofy, charming, man of a thousand majors, Cappie. So this new season will pick up around that point, and as with any show returning for a new season, I’m sure there’ll be a few new characters to get to know. So mark it down, Monday, March 24, 8 p.m………..

- Ding, ding, ding. We have a winner! For the past few months, the near-publication of a parenting book by America’s worst mother, Lynne Spears - mother of train wreck Britney and knocked-up 16-year-old Jamie Lynn - has held the top spot as both the most ironic and most moronic idea ever conceived. It’s held that dual distinction without much of a challenge, other than new reality shows like My Dad Is Better Than Your Dad. Now, Lynne Spears and her now-dead book have been bumped from the top spot in both polls by none other than Dina Lohan, gravy-training mother of America’s favorite lush, Lindsey. Dina isn’t happy with just creating an enabling the debacle that is her posing-nude, drug-and-booze-addicted, club-hopping eldest daughter. She’s looking to capitalize on Lindsey’s fame by inking a deal with the E! network for her own reality show, Living Lohan, all about Dina’s attempts to wreck the life of her youngest daughter Ali. Well, Dina claims she’s trying to make Ali a star, but we all know how this one ends. The Spears family laid out a pattern for us: older daughter shoots to stardom, acts and dresses like a skank, puts out crappy music, goes to rehab, followed by Mom trying to gravy train off Daughter A and propel Daughter B to her own success. We’ve seen where that’s taken the Spears family; Brit losing custody of her kids to K-Dirt and forgetting how to wear underwear, younger sister knocked up before she could even get her driver’s license. Now, Dina Lohan wants to take her youngest daughter down this path even as her eldest child is well on her way to becoming every bit the spectacle and object of ridicule that Brit has become. If you’re someone who likes to gawk at disasters and revel in their horror, you’ll be able to see this train come off the tracks this summer, only on E! and only if you have nothing better to do than watch a teen girl have her life ruined by her overly ambitious, horrible mother.

- Clearly, there are two things the Afghani people can’t stand - people who are intolerant of other people’s cultures….and the Dutch (a little Austin Powers in Goldmember humor for you). Actually, the Dutch aren’t the only people that Afghans are currently pissed at. The Danes are also feeling the wrath of Afghanistan, with hundreds of angry protestors (one of the more beautiful phrases in any language, angry protestors) burning both the Dutch and Danish flags late this week as part of a demonstration demanding that troops from both nations leave Afghanistan immediately. Burning another country’s flag, always a strong play during a riot. It says, “We despise you enough to torch the symbol representing your entire country, but not enough to kill anyone or cause actual physical harm to someone from your country,” striking just the right balance of anger, indignation and yet moderation. The stimuli for the protest were the reprinting of a cartoon negatively depicting the prophet Muhammad in Denmark and an upcoming Dutch film criticizing the Quran. With Afghanistan being a predominately Muslim country, those things are bound to play poorly. On the bright side, at least there was a riot/protest on foreign soil and no one was pissed at the United States, which doesn’t happen very often nowadays…..

Last night's Lost episode, MTV's unwatchable show and the Food Network's famous liar

- The theme for this season on Lost is clearly entire episodes focused on one character with regular exclusion for most of the cast for two or three weeks at a time. Last night’s featured performer was Juliet, with the episode providing a back story on her time on the island and specifically her relationship with Ben. Flashbacks took us back in time three years to Juliet’s arrival on the island wherein she met up with Harper Stanhope, a psychologist among the Others who began having sessions with Juliet to help her adjust to life on the island. However, Juliet made the mistake of falling in love with Goodwin, the Other who died in Season One after being sent by Ben to infiltrate the survivors of Oceanic 815. Goodwin was Harper’s husband, so when Juliet began sleeping with him, there were obviously problems. One was a pissed off wife, but a bigger concern for Juliet was Ben finding out about the affair. Ben had developed a serious crush on Juliet and since he was responsible for bringing her to the island, he felt she belonged to him in a creepy, stalker-ish, get-a-restraining-order way. In fact, by sending Goodwin on the mission to infiltrate the group of crash survivors, Ben was sending him to his death because he knew once they survivors realized that Goodwin was a spy and wasn’t on the flight, they would kill him. That’s exactly what happened, a point Ben drove home to Juliet by taking her out into the jungle to see the decomposing body of her deceased lover and reminding her that, “You’re mine.” Meanwhile, back in the present, Ben is forming a strange alliance of his own, talking Locke into allowing him out of the underground bunker where Locke is keeping him prisoner in exchange for information about whose freighter it really is that’s anchored near the island and who put together the team of people that have come to the island. Once Ben has talked his way out of the bunker, he shows Locke a tape of Charles Widmore, father of Desmond’s girlfriend Penny, taking one of Ben’s former Others prisoner and killing them when they refused to tell him what he wanted to know - the location of the island. It seems Widmore wants the island so he can exploit all of its magical, mystical properties for financial gain. Since Ben sees the island as a sacred place, he wants to keep that from happening, as does Locke. Of course, that love of the island doesn’t keep Ben from carrying out maniacal schemes on it. He has apparently used some sort of toxic gas stored in one of the Dharma stations on the island to kill “hostiles” before and Daniel and Charlotte from the freighter team were on a mission this week to disable that station so the gas couldn’t be used again. When Kate encounters them in the jungle on her way back to the beach from the barracks where Locke and his followers are living, Charlotte knocks her out so she can't interfere with their mission to neutralize the gas supply. Jack and Juliet come upon Kate shortly thereafter and as Jack checks on a bleeding, disoriented Kate to make sure that she’s all right, Juliet disappears into the jungle. She comes upon the station where Daniel and Charlotte are shutting down the gas system and after a brutal hand-to-hand combat session with Charlotte, Juliet accepts the pair’s explanation about the gas. She’s leaving the station with Charlotte when Jack and Kate arrive and Kate goes inside with Charlotte to see the situation for herself. Jack and Juliet stay outside and end up sharing their first kiss, but it comes with a warning from Juliet to Jack. She tells him that Ben still believes she belongs to him and that Ben will hurt Jack if he finds out about their relationship. Left out of this week’s episode was the freighter and everyone on it, which is exactly the kind of glaring omission that is making this season subpar to this point. We know it belongs to Charles Widmore, but Desmond, Sayid, Frank and the rest of the ship’s crew didn’t appear on screen once this week. Neither did Hurley or anyone at the beach camp. So another week, another effort that quite frankly didn’t live up to the standard set by the show’s first three seasons. For now, that’s it and that’s all….

 

- First the New York Times is rocked by the revelation that one of its writers, Jason Blair, fabricated nearly all of his stories. Notre Dame hired George O’Leary as its head football coach only to fire him once the university learned that much of his resume was lies. Former Toronto Blue Jays manager Tim Johnson lied about being a decorated Vietnam veteran and didn’t last much longer with the team. Former major leaguer Al Martin fabricated stories about playing football at USC and was eventually found out. Just recently, author Misha Defonseca admitted to having made up almost all of the material in her 1997 book, Misha: A Memoire of the Holocaust Years, about her experience as a young girl traveling around Nazi-controlled Europe during World War II after her parents were captured by Nazi police. My point is that liars are everywhere, looking to make money and careers off of their fabrications. I just didn’t think that trend would extend to one of my new favorite entities, the Food Network. I recently tuned in to an episode of Iron Chef where “Iron Chef” Bobby Flay squared off in an elk-cooking competition against two Cajun brothers, the

brothers Rathbun. It was scintillating TV, but now the Food Network has its own fibbed-resume scandal to deal with thanks to the host of the network’s Dinner: Impossible series, Robert Irvine. While he may be stellar at cranking out seemingly impossible meals under difficult circumstances, apparently R. Irvine does find at least one thing impossible: telling the truth about his past. Irvine claimed that he had cooked meals for the British royal family and several U.S. presidents, claims he now admits were lies. “I was wrong to exaggerate in statements related to my experience in the White House and the Royal Family,” he said in a statement. The Food Network will allow the final four episodes of Dinner: Impossible to run this season, but the network will not renew Irvine’s contract and thus he’ll effectively be fired. Hope that was worth it, R. Now you can try to find a gig at your local seafood joint because you’re a compulsive liar. Next time, opt for lies that are a little less fantastic and you just might get away with them. Say you cooked dinner for the governor of New Mexico and see how that works. But for now, go away and stop ruining my new fave, the Food Network.

 

- You wacky environmentalists, you slay me. Your über-hilarious pranks, protests and social statements are a never-ending source of amusement. Take, for example, the recent actions of an activist group that goes by the name the Earth Liberation Front (ELF). In the name of the environment, these ass hats have taken environmental extremism to a new low. In the suburban Seattle neighborhood of Woodinville, the ELF set three seven-figure homes on fire early Monday morning and left a spray-painted sign mocking the builders’ claims that the 4,000-plus-square-foot abodes were environmentally friendly. The homes are all located on the so-called “Street of Dreams,” an exclusive street filled with unoccupied, high-end model homes that visitors have been flocking to for months. This location obviously drew the attention of the a-holes at ELF, a loose collaboration of activists who have been pulling this kind of crap since the early 1990s. The local sheriff’s office estimates that the fires did $7 million worth of damage, a figure I’m sure tickles the losers who are members of ELF. What they don’t realize is that the cost of their stunt is going to get passed on to people whose insurance premiums will go up so the insurance companies can pay for the damages caused to these homes. Look, ELFins, I’m down with protecting the environment and I agree that rich people are some od the biggest offenders in terms of polluting and taking advantage of our environment. That being said, throw a Molotov cocktail through the window at their posh corner office or roll their Mercedes and set it on fire. Don’t go burning houses that could start even bigger fires and hurt people who really can’t afford it. Fire crews found incendiary devices around the burned model homes, so it would seem the ELFins planned this one out. Just a question, ELFins….even if the trees have been cut down to make wood, doesn’t it still violate your ethics to do harm to those trees by burning them, even if they are in processed form? Or in you whack jobs’ collective mind, does a tree lose its soul once it’s cut down. If you burn a tree in its processed, milled form, does it not still make a sound as it cries out in pain once you burn it? Answer me, you environmental whack-a-doos…….

 

- Is it just me, or is this the most utterly unwatchable season of MTV’s Real World/Road Rules Challenge yet? This season of The Gauntlet has been horrifically bad, mostly because MTV managed to choose the most lopsided teams in the history of the show. This season is set up with the Rookies (players who have appeared in less than two previous challenges) and Veterans (those with 2+ appearances). Thus far, the veterans have dominated, losing only challenges they’ve intentionally tried to throw in order to ensure that their weaker players were eliminated from the game. Even challenges specifically slanted toward the team with fewer players (i.e. obstacle course races and the like where having less players to push across the finish line is optimal) have gone to the vets. The only “drama” has been the guys on the veteran team throwing specific missions so they would have the chance to have some of the veteran girls, who they view as a liability, eliminated in the Gauntlet. Aside from who’s sleeping with who, there hasn’t been much question about how this season will go. It’s just depressing to watch every challenge and know that as long as the veteran guys aren’t throwing the mission, they’re going to win. No one likes watching non-competitive competitions, and that’s what this has been. That, coupled with the stiff, rigid, non-charismatic personality of host T.J. Lavin (or the automated robot who’s been playing T.J. this season, it’s hard to tell), has made this easily the worst season of the Real World/Road Rules Challenge in recent memory and it can't end soon enough.

 

- Call me crazy, but I thought that slavery in these here United States was something we all agreed to leave back in the 1800’s. That whole Emancipation Proclamation thingy that Abraham Lincoln signed was supposed to abolish slavery, but that message never got through to a mother/daughter tandem in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla. that managed to keep a Haitian teen prisoner in their home for six years and forced the girl to serve as their slave. Evelyn Theodore and Maude Paulin (Who the freak names their kid Maude? What is this, the f’ing Beverly Hillbillies?) have been convicted of conspiring to violate Simone Celestin’s Thirteenth Amendment rights to be free from slavery by forcing her into indentured servitude in their household. Paulin was also convicted of harboring an illegal alien for financial gain. Kudos to both of these fine ladies for keeping alive an ancient, horrible tradition of enslaving people, depriving them of their freedom and forcing them to do manual labor. The rest of us have, for some reason, been working to move past this practice, but you two idiots saw fit to revive it. For that, you deserve all the jail time you receive and then some.

A stupid race car driver, Ohio lets America down and a new football league folds before it begins

- Now I know that not only are NASCAR drivers not athletes, they’re also not very intelligent. I’ve always maintained that driving a car around in circles, making only left turns without signaling, cutting off other drivers and going really fast makes you an athlete, then myself and tens of millions of Americans are athletes every day when we get into our cars and hit the freeway. But NECKCAR driver Ryan Newman is proving my point that not only are drivers not athletes, they’re also clueless and more than a little dumb. When asked recently why he considers NECKCAR drivers to be athletes, here was his response: “Because we are. Are poker players athletes? Yeah, they are. Because it is a sport. Not just poker players, but any thing that requires physical and mental characteristics to be able to beat your competitors, if you're shooting a basketball through a hoop or driving a golf ball down a fairway - it's athleticism and therefore it defines it as a sport and a sport makes it's competitors an athlete. I don't think that there is any sport out there that doesn't have athletes competing in it. Obviously some athletes are better than others, but what we do mentally and physically behind a wheel is true athleticism. Now, am I in the same tip-top shape as Tiger Woods or Tom Brady? Probably not, but we are for what we do. I think it would take those guys some training to do our job as much as we would theirs.” Hey R., I’ve got bad news for you. An activity necessitating training to complete it does not a sport make. I couldn’t do brain surgery or construct a particle accelerator either, but that doesn’t make those activities sports nor does it make people who do them athletes. Old people compete at Bingo at their local Catholic churches and their game requires they use physical and mental characteristics and abilites to defeat competitors. You think they’re athletes and that Bingo is a sport? You assertion that poker is a sport sinks your argument as well, ass hat. Dudes sitting around in ugly Hawaiian shirts, smoking cigars, wearing sunglasses with crazy animal patterns on the lenses to hide their eyes and playing cards is not a sport. If you can get drunk, get fatter and get older and still be just as good at something, it’s not a sport. The game of poker doesn’t require strength (well, you have to be able to lift cards weighing .00000001 pounds), speed, agility, quickness, leaping ability or coordination. It’s not a sport and neither is your sorry excuse for a competition. Nice try, NECKCAR driver, but stick to the shallow end of the intellectual pool where you stand a chance.

 

- I am sorry America, I truly am. But I did everything in my power to make sure than the biggest threat to our nation’s well being in this election year, the possibility of a Hank Clinton presidency, did not happen. My home state of Ohio had its primary Tuesday and when all the chips had settled and the ballots had been counted, my fellow Ohioans inexplicably handed a primary victory to that militant femi-Nazi. Hank scares the crap out of all of us, so maybe Ohioans were just so terrified that they voted for Hank in the hopes of not having that dude track them down and hurt them if they had voted for Barack Obama. Hank’s 56 percent-42 percent win is bad news for all of us, but let’s just be thankful that her wins in Ohio, Rhode Island and in the Texas primaries were not enough for her to overtake Obama. She still needs a minor miracle to win the nomination for the Democratic Party, as she trails in the overall delegate count by a margin of XXX-XXX. States like Indiana, Kentucky and Wyoming still have their primaries coming up, as does Mississippi, a state my man B.O. should dominate because it is a heavily African-American state. All told, Tuesday was a day that kept Hank Clinton’s hopes for the presidency alive for now, but it did not make her the frontrunner she once was and for that we can all be grateful. As for Ohio choosing Hank by a 14 percent margin, again I apologize, America…..

 

- Big record label politics strike again. Warner Music Group and the company’s Atlantic Reocrds label stand accused of taking advantage of the little guy, which of course neeeever happens. Massive corporate machines never screw people over who are too small or don’t have the resources to fight them, right? Not if you ask songwriter/producer Linda Perry. Perry is suing Warner Music Group for not turning over millions of dollars in royalties from the debut album of her protégé, English singer James Blunt. Blunt’s debut album “Back to Bedlam” sold more than 11 million copies worldwide; the lead single "You're Beautiful" soared to the top of charts worldwide. Atlantic has grossed more than $100 million dollars in sales from Blunt, according to documents in Perry’s lawsuit. Blunt isn’t being accused of anything here because both Perry and Warner/Atlantic agree Blunt has nothing to do with the dispute. Everything centers on Perry's California-based record company, Custard, which has filed suit against Warner Music Group and is seeking lost royalties and $5 million in punitive damages through the suit, filed Tuesday in Manhattan federal court.

“Atlantic's wrongdoing follows the far too familiar scenario involving a large multinational corporate record company which takes advantage of a small, independent production company after the production company presents the major label with a promising new artist,” the lawsuit said. In other words, Atlantic saw something it liked and since it’s the biggest kid on the block, it stole Perry’s lunch money and shoved her into the mud puddle. Warner Atlantic sees it differently, with Warner Music Group spokesman Will Tanous going the phony, “We meant to harm, we respect and like her” roué by saying that Atlantic valued its relationship with Perry. “Custard has always been and will continue to be compensated in accordance with the terms of its contractual arrangement with Atlantic,” he said. Way to not actually address the issue and give a non-responsive reply, Willy. Perry’s claim is based on the fact that after discovering Blunt in 2003, she signed him to her label and delivered “Back to Bedlam” to Atlantic, which initially showed a “general lack of support” for the album, according to the suit. She went on to claim that had it not been for her and her record company, “it is likely that Blunt's album would never have been released and no one would ever have known who he was,” according to the suit. Hmm, big, corporate label that regularly muscles lesser people and entities around to get what it wants vs. a small-time record company….I’m going to side with Perry here and say that ultimately, she’s either going to win the case or more likely, Warner/Atlantic will offer her a settlement in which the company doesn’t actually admit to any wrongdoing but amazingly is still willing to settle in the interest of ending the dispute. Gawd, I hate big corporate companies who think they can do whatever they want…..

 

- Brace yourself for some shocking news, America. The new All American Football League will have to postpone its 2008 season unless it finds new financial backing. The AAFL was looking to become the latest pro football league to challenge the NFL in this country, coming up on the heels of previous failed endeavors like the USFL back in the ‘80s. The AAFL now has run into financial problems before it could even open training camps in its first season, which is pathetic even by poseur pro football league standards. The announcement that the inaugural season is in peril came less than a week before camps were to open for the six-team league. The league held its inaugural draft in January and has rosters and staffs in place for six teams: Detroit; Little Rock, Ark; Gainesville, Fla.; Birmingham, Ala.; Knoxville, Tenn., and Houston.

Before deciding that they were out of money, the AAFL’s training camps were scheduled to open Wednesday, followed by the first games in April. Of course, they’re delusional enough to think that they just need more time to work this out and the league will push its plans back to 2009 unless it secures a TV deal or other funding. Right, because another year is going to be enough time to sell everyone on watching subpar rosters filled with NFL rejects and has-beens play B-level football. But kudos to those running the AAFL for having the balls to announce Thursday they are exploring “multiple financing options” to address the AAFL’s funding crisis. I didn’t know scouring under the cushions on your office couches for spare change, selling candy bars door to door and having car washes at the local middle school were considered “multiple financing options.” Theoretically, the AAFL was looking to fill the void created when the NFL shut down NFL Europe earlier this year after 16 seasons. Maybe the organizers of the AAFL didn’t pay attention to the fact that NFL Europe was shut down because the league was losing a reported $30 million a season. Heck, NFL Europe even had a TV deal, something the AAFL doesn’t have. Why? Because the networks, as dumb as they are, realize that no one wants to watch a second-rate football league and no advertisers would buy time during such broadcasts.  The kicker in all of this is that, according to a statement released by the league, the AAFL's financial crisis is tied to the national subprime mortgage crisis. League CEO Marcus Katz co-founded a company that provides student loans. Great, so the student loan crisis in this country is sinking your league. Don’t remember the NFL, NBA or MLB ever having that problem. Heck, even a fringe league like Major League Soccer doesn’t have that kind of trouble….

 

- IMAX/3=D movies normally make me nauseous and give me headaches (literally), so if I’m recommending one, you know it has to be good. To put up with feeling a little queasy, a movie had better be great. U2 3D is just that, featuring one of the planet’s greatest rock bands in concert in a way that will give you a whole new appreciation for Bono and the boys. The film is straightforward and the producers basically allow the power of U2’s live show to come through the screen with a minimum of gimmicks and gadgets. It’s not a documentary or a behind-the-scenes look with band members piping in with their own thoughts; it’s a concert in 3-D form on the big screen and it rocks. You get the chance to feel like you’re right in the audience during classic, iconic songs like Sunday Bloody Sunday, New Year’s Day, Pride (In the Name of Love and Where the Streets Have No Name. All told, the movie is a brief 90 minutes, but it packs a lot into that short time. For fans who can’t afford to pay upwards of $100 a ticket to see U2 in person when they come to town on tour, it’s a great alternative. Plus, when you compare it to a lot of the crappy movies currently playing to half-empty theaters in our nation’s metroplexes, it’s a great reason to head to the theater.

Thanks for Brett Favre, One Tree Hill news and Hugo starts a war

- Thank you very much, Brett Favre. Was that really so difficult, to make a damn decision about whether to retire or return next season and announce it before you’d held the football world and your team hostage for the entire f’ing offseason? For once, Favre has spared us all the horr-a of having to listen to months of “will he, won’t he” debates on every sports network in existence as he sits on his butt at his Mississippi farm and lets us twist in the wind. Yesterday, Favre announced that he was retiring after 17 NFL seasons, ending his streak of 253 great games started and capping a career where he set most of the prominent records for quarterbacks in the NFL. I don’t dispute his credentials, but last year’s brief resurgence aside, Favre hasn’t been relevant in a long time. Aside from this past season, when his team capitalized on an über-weak NFC to go 13-3 and reach the NFC Championship Game, the Packers have been either mediocre or bad for most of this decade. Favre has had a lot of erratic, turnover-plagued years before 2007, taking him from one of the top quarterbacks in the game to just a guy who’s good, not great. Hearing experts debate all offseason long about what would factor into his decision to return, can he be an elite quarterback again….gag me. Favre ended that speculation yesterday, saying in part that, “I know I can still play, but like I told my wife, I’m just mentally tired. I’m just tired.” Whatever your reason, Brett, I thank you for going away and doing so in (relatively) expedient fashion. Now let’s move on an enjoy NFL players who are actually still relevant and an offseason that has been fast-paced and frenzied already. The NFL Draft comes up next month as well, good times…..

 

- If nothing else, this week’s One Tree Hill fulfilled a lot of dudes’ naughty nanny fantasy. The episode began with a bang when Nathan and Hayley’s now-former nanny Carrie decided to reinsert herself into their lives - well, specifically Nathan’s - by sneaking into their house and jumping into the shower with an unsuspecting Nathan. He threw her out immediately and told her to leave, but of course Hayley walked in at just the wrong moment and saw them getting out of the shower. She assumed the worst and tossed them both out of the house, sending Nathan to seek a place to sleep with half-brother and fellow Tree Hill basketball coach Lucas. The news greeting Nathan there wasn’t any better, because no sooner had the door opened than Lucas showed him a letter informing him of their father, convicted murderer Dan Scott, having a parole hearing coming up. Another unwelcome arrival came when Peyton’s former boss John from the “major label” she worked for in L.A. before returning to Tree Hill, showed up in town to try to poach Peyton’s one and only artist on her new record label, Mia. John first met with Mia behind Peyton’s back, then showed up in Peyton’s office and told her she should let Mia go to a major label because Peyton didn’t have what it took to launch Mia’s career. About the same time as this showdown was happening, crazy nanny Carrie made another appearance, this one at the school where Nathan and Hayley’s son Jamie is a student. She told him that his mom was making her go away and basically lied to the kid about why, adding once again that she wished he were her son. When Hayley picked Jamie up from school, he called her on making Carrie leave and….I don’t have a clue what happened from here on out. My power died at this point and until the f’ing CW puts this week’s episode up on their site so I can watch the rest, I’m in the dark. I’ll post the rest of the recap when I watch it, but until then…..

 

- Hugo Chavez is a despotic whack job, but I still didn’t have any inclination that he was a war-starter. The Venezuelan president is clearly prepping for a war with neighboring Colombia after a Colombian air strike into Ecuador killed a rebel commander and apparently pissed off the ever-irritable Chavez. “This could be the beginning of a war,” he ominously stated on a public TV broadcast in Venezuela. He followed those comments by ordering the closing of his country’s embassy in Colombia and moved thousands of Venezuelan troops near the border with Colombia. Honestly, it looks a lot like Chavez was simply looking for an excuse to launch a war and this incident was his reason to do so. It’s a stretch at best, but to a maniacal dictator like my boy Hugo, any excuse to go off is a good one. The irony is that in starting a war for little or no reason at all, Chavez is acting exactly like the man he so despises and once compared to the devil, W. So good job Hugo, you’ve forced me into comparing you with the worst president in the history of the world, I hope you’re happy.

 

- What a thrill it is when kids step up and become the next generation of social dissidents. Adults can’t do all of the protesting and rioting, and the sooner kids learn the value of rebelling against The Man, the better. I salute a group of about two dozen Miami high school students who took the initiative to stage a demonstration the day after one of their classmates was arrested under what they felt were unjust circumstances. Those students were subsequently jailed and released, but the fallout from this incident isn’t over yet. Seven police officers were injured in the melee, meaning that Judge Barbara Areces will have more to deal with in the days ahead. However, for the time being all of the students are free after Areces ruled that there was insufficient evidence to hold two of the students arrested in the incident and gave home detention to the remaining teens until the next hearing in the case takes place. All in all, a very solid effort from these kids, a nice mini-riot and one showing that they just might have what it takes to become the next great American social dissidents. Taking a stand against authority figures when they’ve hassled and harassed one of your peers is always a solid move, so keep it up and you all have a bright future of rebellion ahead of you….

 

- Critical slams aside, it was a solid opening weekend for Will Ferrell’s new comedy Semi-Pro. The flick about the old American Basketball Association garnered a haul of $15.3 million to lead the box office, outdistancing last week’s top film Vantage Point, which brought in about $13 million for the weekend. The R rating that Semi=Pro was slapped with definitely hindered its success and as a result, it earned less than half of what Ferrell’s two previous sports movies took in on their respective opening weekends, $47 million for Talladega Nights and $33 million for Blades of Glory, but in my opinion, this new movie is funnier than either of them. Coming in third for the weekend was The Spiderwick Chronicles, a movie so stellar that I’d venture a guess that most of you have never heard of it, but a film that still grossed $8.7 million this past weekend. Just holding on in the fifth spot was the latest bomb of a Matt McCaughnahey film, Fool’s Gold. Of the top five, three of them are actually good movies (the top three, actually), so for once America, you’ve actually gone to see movies that are decent, well done.

A Holocaust faker, a Beauty and the Best scumbag and Jamaica is my new favorite country

- This week’s Jason Blair Award for near-total fabrication of a book or story goes to Misha Defonseca, who recently admitted that nearly all of her alleged Holocaust memoir was made up. Her 1997 book Misha: A Memoire of the Holocaust Years, was made into a movie and it also inspired an opera, but those projects were actually built on a foundation of lies and fiction. The best-selling book, which tells the tale of a 7-year-old Belgian girl and her journey across Europe during World War II after her parents were arrested by Nazi police. Word is that there were questions about the book’s authenticity even before it was published, but making it into a movie exacerbated those doubts and a Belgian publication recently began raising new questions about the book. Faced with all of that pressure, Defonseca relented and admitted to making the whole story up, including the fact that she was Jewish. “I felt Jewish,” she’s quoted as saying. Well that makes it all right, then. As long as you felt Jewish, it’s ok to pretend that you were among the millions of people from a race that was mercilessly persecuted and exterminated in mass numbers and to profit off of those falsified claims. I’m sure no Jews who actually were part of the Holocaust would take offense to that. Know what, I feel Nepalese today, so I’m going to write an entire book about my travails as a Sherpa guide and how I was there when the first climbers reached the summit of Mount Everest. Nice work, Misha, you are officially a despicable human being. Your only saving grace here would be to take all of the money you’ve made off this book, selling the movie and theater rights and donating them to true Holocaust victims. You’d still be a scumbag, but at least you’d be a scumbag who did some good for people who suffered such a horrible atrocity.

- James Barbour clearly took his role as the Beast in a Broadway production of Beauty and the Beast a little too seriously. Aside from playing the grotesque, hirsute Beast in the production, J. Barbour is a beast off stage as well. What other way can you describe a dude who has admitted to getting his freak on with a minor? Barbour, 41, was sentenced Friday to 60 days in jail and three years’ probation for sexual encounters with a 15-year-old female drama student. He pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor counts of endangering the welfare of a minor after fondling the girl when she visited him backstage in 2001 when he was starring in Jane Eyre. The girl, who is now actually an adult at 22 years of age, looked up to him and I’m sure was thrilled to go backstage to meet a professional Broadway actor and this piece of crap decides to grope her? Getting off with 60 days in jail and probation is too lenient for this guy. If that’s all he gets and it took seven years to get punished for this one, what’s to stop him from repeating his actions. Hope you enjoy bit parts in local community theaters, James, because that’s all you should get after you get out of jail.

- I see what you’re doing Jamaica, and I am down with it. The island nation that inspired a true comedy classic in the John Candy film Cool Runnings is at it again, strongly considering the legalization of marijuana in the country. Such a move would play well with the island’s Rastafarian population, a large part of the Jamaican population and the dreadlocked, ganja-loving individuals you think of when you think of Jamaica and do your best imitation of a Jamaican accent. The Rastafarians claim that smoking tree is part of their religion, and who is the Jamaican government to argue? No word on whether Cheetos and Doritos watching Planet Earth on DVD is also a part of their religion, but if they’re true devotees of the hippie lettuce, those things are a given. A government commission has been researching possible changes to the country’s anti-drug laws. The move to legalize the chronic would also play well with some in the country’s law enforcement agencies who claim that jails and courts are being clogged up with marijuana-related cases. For the benefit of everyone involved, let’s just go ahead and rubber-stamp this one. Pass it into law and help make Jamaica an even mellower place than it already is. Heck, it’ll probably vault Jamaica to the top of the list for spring break destinations for college students around the world. No longer do they need to go all the way to Amsterdam to find a place where weed is legal. Everybody book your tickets now for Jamaica, the new stoner capital of the world.

- Maybe I’m not much for following fashion, but it still has to be a little surprising that flak jackets are the chic new look, right? Camouflage maybe, but flak vests? Mexico City appears to be the epicenter of this new trend, where a store run by designer Miguel Caballero has been closed down by the police because M. Caballero was selling bulletproof vests without a permit. The designer, sometimes known as “the Armani of bulletproof clothing,” (what a great nickname to have, right up there with King James, P. Diddy and the Sultan of Swat) had been hawking the bulletproof threads - including a casual line and formal jackets for women - for months. Yes, there is a casual line of bulletproof clothing, for when you’re going out on the town for a shooting rampage but also want to be comfortable yet stylish. The Mexico City police cited city laws designed to prevent bulletproof gear from falling into the hands of criminals at the reason for their decision, but personally I think they’re just fashion haters. What woman doesn’t want a bulletproof coat to perfectly match that new pair of shoes she just bought? Lighten up, Mexico City police, I’m sure Marc Jacobs and Giorgio Armani will be joining in on the bulletproof clothing craze any time now and when that happens you all are going to end up looking very foolish…..

- Has there ever been a clearer example of a puppet regime than the “new” government now in place in Cuba? Raul Castro may have been named the country’s new dictator, er, president, but does anyone doubt that Fidel is still in charge (with all due respect to Cosmo Kramer of Seinfeld fame, Dennis Castro is not involved)? In the Communist Party newspaper Granma - no, not Grandma - Fidel wrote an article in which he admitted that he chose candidates for Cuba’s new government but insisted that Raul is still in charge. He may be on his sickbed, but make no mistake about it, Fidel is still calling the shots. You think a despotic, power-hungry SOB like that is going to give up control as long as he’s still alive? To paraphrase Napoleon Dynamite, heck no. Raul is a figurehead, a guy to go out and do the parts of the job that requite a healthy body. Fidel is still the one wielding the decision-making power and will be until he’s dead. So enjoy having the fancy office an d getting to wear the good fatigues, Raul, just don’t forget who’s really in charge.

Another bad Janet Jackson album, Congress is cranky and one Chicago Cub twists a nut...seriously

- I absolutely love it when music artists set up a slam-dunk of a joke about their crappy new album by giving it a name that screams “Mock me!” So I say thank you to one of the most overrated acts in the past decade, Janet “I sound like a breathy 12-year-old” Jackson, for christening her new album with the moniker Discipline. Why, you ask? It’s simple; actually listening to every second of this album would take a Herculean display of discipline and even then your ears would never be quite the same. While there are a lot of ways for an artist to make a bad album, the particular one that Jackson has chosen is the most offensive. It’s one thing to try something new, to forge a new direction musically and have it not work out. You tried something new, tried to grow as an artist and it didn’t work. I can live with that because at least you made an effort. What Jackson has done is far worse, because she’s basically recycled the same garbage she’s always done and tried to pass it off as being new. As the nickname I’ve given her would indicate, I’m not a fan of her voice. She literally does sound like a pre-teen girl who’s out of breath when she sings. Couple that with the fact that she’s carved her niche out as being a skank most of the time, as evidenced by her “wardrobe malfunction” at the Super Bowl a few years ago, and you have an altogether undesirable package musically. Need more evidence of her skank-itude? Take this line from the album’s title track: “Daddy I disobeyed u/Now I want u to come punish me.” Kudos for the “u” instead of “you,” Janet. Not only do you sound like an out-of-breath pre-teen girl, you write like one too. Bonus points for the S&M imagery too. Other songs on the album like Control and Feedback are equally bad, making this quite possibly the worst album yet from an artist who has produced a career filled with stink bombs. Thanks for contributing absolutely nothing to the music world once again, Janet, you still suck.

- Congress is really on the war path, aren’t they? Well, that might be a poor choice of words, given the fact that our abomination of a president basically put a gun to their heads and forced them to enter the never-ending, unjustified war in Iraq by feeding them lies and misinformation and then extorting them into continuing to fund the Mess O’Potamia. However, I’m referring more to the fact that Congress is now hunting down people they think have lied to them or otherwise wrong them and is looking to make those people pay. Roid-ger Clemens is in their crosshairs for allegedly lying repeatedly during his testimony before a congressional subcommittee last month during a hearing on steroids in baseball. Congress has told the Justice Department to investigate Clemens, but he’s far from the only person on their radar. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who I’m a fan of because of her vocal support of ending the war in Iraq immediately (Pelosi for president in ’08!), has asked the Justice Department to initiated an grand jury investigation into whether W.’s chief of staff and former counsel should be prosecuted for contempt of Congress. Harriet Myers, W.’s former legal counsel, refused to testify before Congress back in 2006 about the (illegal) firings of eight state attorneys general for (allegedly) political reasons and not because they actually weren’t doing their job well. That was the whole Alberto Gonzales mess where ol’ Alberto forgot everything he once knew, evaded questions and tried to lie and “misremember” his way out of the mess he’d made. White House chief of staff Josh Bolten also is under fire from Pelosi for refusing to turn over key documents related to the dismissals. I can't say for sure if these two are guilty (they work or did work for W., so let’s just assume they are), but I simply have to marvel at the fact that Congress is so angry and militant these days at people who mislead or disrespect them. If only they were this vigilant about stamping out dishonest and corruption in Congress itself, what a difference in would make in this country…..

- Right up front, allow me to admit that I am a Chicago Cubs fan, so I’m talking about this next story as someone who roots for the team and has done so for a long time. It’s not easy being a Cubs fan, but rarely is it as painful as it was today when I visited the team’s official website and read up on the team’s injury news. And no, I’m not referring to star outfielder Alfonso Soriano being out for a week with a broken finger sustained while catching fly balls from a pitching machine at the team’s spring training complex in Mesa, Ariz. No, I’m referring to the fact that Felix Pie (pronounced Pee-A) is out with what the team is calling a “twisted testicle.” I winced just writing that, and I know every dude reading it did the same. I would ask how you sustain a twisted testicle, but honestly I don’t want to know. That’s one of those things you’re better off just not knowing. It’s about the worst sports injury I’ve ever heard of, bar none. I’d rather tear an ACL or rotator cuff muscle than twist a testicle. Those injuries might put you out for a year or more, but no way are they more painful than a twisted nut. How Pie is ever going to be the same, I don’t know. The team needs to give him as much time as necessary to recover from this one, especially after they made the mistake of not covering from him and telling everyone he had pulled a groin muscle instead of divulging the real nature of the injury. Get well Felix, and whatever you did to cause this injury in the first place, make sure you never do it again. You can’t go through another twisted testicle and I can’t bear to hear about it ever again, my man.

- Ohio and Texas, the time has come for you to rise up and do your part to help our nation avert disaster. The rest of the country has been stepping up one state at a time and for the most part rejecting Hank Clinton’s bid for the Democratic presidential nomination. Early in the race, Hank’s name value carried her to a lead, but the more America has been exposed to her angry femi-Nazi ways, the more support has been thrown Barack Obama’s way. Tomorrow, voters in Ohio and Texas, two states with a significant amount of delegates, will hold their primaries and will basically be the deciding factor in who becomes the Democratic Party’s candidate for this fall’s general election. As someone living in Ohio, I can tell you that both candidates have been hitting the state hard with nonstop messages that have resulted in commercial breaks during prime-time TV with multiple commercials from one candidate in a single break. Both are hitting the NAFTA issue hard, but Obama has clearly been gaining on Hank in Ohio on the strength of his nine straight primary victories leading up to tomorrow’s vote. The only way tomorrow won't be a deciding factor is if Ohio and Texas split between the two candidates, giving each of them a chunk of votes but not giving either the two-state slam-dunk win they’re after. I urge all Ohioans and Texans one more time, let’s make sure it is not Hank Clinton who gets that victory. This country has almost managed to survive the debacle that is W.’s presidency, but coming on the heels of that adversity, a Hank Clinton term in office could be the death blow.

- Can someone tell me now if this is going to turn into another NFL off-season of Brett Favre dragging his feet, hemming, hawing and holding the Green Bay Packers hostage by prolonging his decision to retire or come back for another season? It’s not that I feel bad for the Packers and them being unable to really move forward with their organizational plans for the 2008 season. Rather, I’d like to know if I’m going to have to find the nearest blunt object and start bludgeoning people with it to get them to stop talking about freaking Brett Favre and the “will he or won't he” debate for the entire damn off-season. If Favre is intending to stage another of his marathon, back-and-forth, I’m retiring/I’m returning filibusters and hold the NFL world hostage, I’ll start by picking up a barbed-wire-covered 2x4 and heading down to that damn farm in Mississippi where everyone talks in such flowery terms about Favre spending his off-season farming and being a good ‘ol country boy and I’ll beat him into submission, or at least until he makes a freaking decision. Next on my Tour O’ Pain, I’ll head to ESPN and the NFL Network to beat down every talking head still discussing the topic. In case you’re not catching my drift, I’m freaking sick and tired of hearing about one good-but-not-great, wildly overrated, past-his-prime quarterback whose team overachieved this year due to a weak schedule and next season will be sliding back to the pack at about 9-7. Favre seems like a decent guy, albeit self-absorbed and a tad arrogant, but overall a good guy. However, he’s not one of he league’s premier players anymore and face it people, he’s not winning another Super Bowl ever again. Move on, forget about him and his inner turmoil on whether to retire. When he makes a decision, we have something to talk about for a brief time, but until then, no one needs to pay attention to him. Don’t encourage this shenanigan of his….

Bar-roid's troubles, more bad reality TV is coming all college hoops has a great weekend

-Boy, I did not see this coming. You mean to tell me that the previous reports of Bar-roid Bonds only having one failed steroids test on his record were erroneous? I’m not sure if I can believe that kind of outrageous accusation….but tell me more. Apparently, a federal judge in San Francisco told prosecutors on Friday to redraft their multiple-count indictment of Barry Bonds and ordered the slugger's 2003 grand jury testimony unsealed. Multiple sources have leaked word that among the information contained in the unsealed 149-page court transcript is evidence of an additional positive steroids test beyond the previously reported one in November 2000. The U.S. Attorney's office had previously disclosed that Bonds tested positive for testosterone, but so far that’s the only positive test that has been confirmed publicly. However, with U.S. District Court Judge Susan Illston ordering prosecutors to amend Bonds' indictment and unsealing those records, odds are we’re about to learn about other positive tests for the mercurial, egotistical, ‘roid-fueled slugger. Prosecutors originally accused Bonds of lying 19 different times (why not make it an even 20?) during his grand jury appearance and subsequently charged him with four counts of perjury and one count of obstruction of justice. Illston did actually agree with Bonds' attorney Dennis Riordan that prosecutors must edit out many of the alleged lies or seek a new indictment in light of recent developments, but that’s more of a semantics issue than anything else. The feds could actually mix in additional charges if they re-file, and prosecutors are expected to decide whether to seek a new indictment before Bonds' next court date March 21. But don’t worry, Bar-roid, I’m sure you have nothing to worry about…..uh huh, yeah right.

- Fox, you have competition. You may hav the single biggest abortion of a reality show in the history of television in American Karaoke, but ABC is not going to let you run away with the title of King of Terrible Reality TV. NBC is in there too with bombs like My Dad is Better than Your Dad and Deal or No Deal, but ABC made a strong move this past week by re-upping Dancing With the (D-List) Stars for another season in 2008-09. But wait, they didn’t stop there. That wouldn’t be nearly enough to upgrade their Awfulness of Schedule factor enough to vault them up the CRTCS (Crappy Reality Television Championship Series, much like college football’s Bowl Championship Series only for things that suck instead of things that are good). No, ABC also decided to bring back the single most tired, played reality show ever, America’s Funniest Home Videos. That show is the king of irony because despite its name, it has never been funny. Pets falling into toilets, people “accidentally” running into closed sliding glass doors and dads getting whacked in the junk by their four-year olds with wiffle ball bats are al just as lame now as they were when this show was pulling those same gags back in 1990. Supernanny and Wife Swap willl also return, giving ABC a solid four-=pack of garbage reality shows. Fox may have the top dog in bad reality TV and a decent No. 2 in The Moment of Truth, but ABC’s overall depth puts them right in the race. At this point it’s too close to call…..

- Some college basketball thoughts from the weekend…..a possible theme would be “That Didn’t Last Long.” That would refer to three teams, one of them being the University of Tennessee, which ascended to its first No. 1 ranking in men’s basketball at the start of the week only to lose their first game while at the top, falling 72-69 Tuesday night to intrastate rival and 14th ranked Vanderbilt. The Commodores scored the win on their kooky court that drops off like ten feet on every side right outside the court boundaries and has the team benches at the end of the court instead of on the sidelines like every other college gym except Minnesota. UT rebounded to scrape by Kentucky 63-60 at home today, but UK was without their best player and the win isn’t going to be enough to keep Tennessee at No. 1. That didn’t last long would also apply to the losers at Kent State, who got their school’s first-ever Top 25 ranking this week at No. 24 and proceeded to drop their first game as a ranked team at a .500 Bowling Green, 89-83 Saturday afternoon. BG’s offense normally has as much sizzle as a week-old, opened can of Diet Pepsi, but against the Golden Flushes of Kent State, it soared. Wave bye-bye to the Top 25, Kent. Also not lasting long was St. Mary’s College’s run at the top of the West Coast Conference. The Gaels had led the WCC all season, wresting the top spot from perennial conference champs Gonzaga, but Gonzaga kept it close and after losing their first match-up with St. Mary’s earlier in the season, they won 88-76 on Saturday to more or less win the conference regular season title once again. Aside from those three teams, I also need to rip the a-hole student at the University of Arizona who threw a water bottle on the court during a XX-XX Arizona loss to USC on XXXXXXX. You can do a lot of things to support your team, but throwing things on the court and chanting racist, sexist, homophobic or hateful things aren’t among them. Your team is a mediocre 17-12, UA fan, so deal with it. Stop throwing crap on the court, because no one thinks that makes you a good fan - well, other than Euro soccer fans who lob lit flares at players, bag their urine and make urine bombs to hurl and riot after basically every game. A big whoops also committed by Kansas State freshman standout Michael Beasley, who was clearly still riding the high of his team’s win over archrival Kansas earlier this season when he declared that KSU would gladly play KU any time, any place - even Australia - because they felt like they would win. Either that or they would go to Kansas and get beaten by double digits, which is what happened Saturday. Cheer up though, Michael, because you might get another shot to get your ass kicked, er, beat Kansas any time, any place when the Big 12 Tournament gets underway. That’s all on college hoops for now…..

- A key difference between how the Brits handle their elite members of society/the ruling class and their military service versus how the United States handles things…..in America, leaders like W. (just an example) “find their way” into national guard units that have no chance of ever being deployed to the front lines or being in any real danger in terms of combat. Whether it’s using their family’s affluence or just weaseling their way out of fighting in combat, they just don’t go where it’s dangerous. By comparison, the British royal family’s male members are right there, serving in combat, taking risks just like their fellow soldiers. Prince Harry, 23, is the latest member of the royal family to continue the tradition, is close to coming back from serving on the front lines with his British army unit in one of Afghanistan’s roughest, most dangerous and lawless provinces. His uncle, Prince Andrew, flew helicopters over combat zones in the Falkland Islands during England’s war with Argentina in 1982. By comparison, W., um, did nothing. He never really served at all, using his daddy’s power to find a safe, non-combat role with the national guard until the danger had passed. You still suck, W., just in case you were wondering.

- I don’t know about you, but I’m not sure how to process this net piece of information. For the first time in the history of this country, 1 out of every 100 adults is in prison, Yes, 1 percent of America currently resides in jails and prisons, so what to make of it? Should we be thankful that our felonious 1 percent are behind bars and that we are theoretically safe from their criminal act, or should we be disheartened that so many people in our country are criminals? All told, 2,319,258 people are currently incarcerated in the U.S., with the percentage a new high for the nation. Not surprisingly, high-population states like California, Texas and Florida have the largest prisoner populations, but it’s the state of Kentucky that really has reason to boast, since the Bluegrass State had the single biggest jump in percentage increase for its prison population between Dec. 31, 2006 and Jan. 1, 2008. The state saw a 12 percent jump during that time, and to answer your question, no, I don’t think that’s entirely attributable to arrests for moonshining. So make of it what you will, America, but now more than ever, we are a nation of criminals….and that’s just the ones behind bars and doesn’t count the many criminals currently serving in public office at every level of government…..

Water problems in Beijing, Will Ferrell brings the funny and a place to get your pedophile memorabilia

- I would hate to think that while the United States was busy prosecuting an unjustified, unnecessary war in Iraq that we weren’t making nearly enough of an impact in fighting a war in Afghanistan that is justified and necessary. I would hate to think that, but National Intelligence Director Michael McConnell has already thought (and said it) for me. McConnell told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the now-resurgent Taliban controls 10 to 11 percent of Afghanistan, with the U.S.-backed Kabul government of President Hamid Kirzai controlling 30 percent and the remainder under the control of local tribal leaders. Yes, we’ve been fighting there for six years, the Taliban is still alive and making a comeback, we haven’t found Osama bin Laden, but damn it, we need to keep sending the bulk of our resources to Iraq, a place where we’re busy hunting for non-existent WMD’s and forcing our ideas about government onto a people who didn’t ask for our help. But heck, let’s keep making the rest of the world hate us while sticking our nose in where it doesn’t belong and thus deprive Afghanistan, a place where our efforts really are needed and our resources would be well spent, of the men and weapons it would take to get things done. How many months is it until our Ass Hat in Chief W. is booted out of office and we can elect a new leader?

- If you’re running short on pedophile memorabilia to display in your home, may I offer a helping hand? Allow me to present the trustee’s sale to be held later this month in Santa Barbara County, Calif. that will auction off many belongings from the Neverland Ranch of black dude turned white woman/confirmed pedophile/most overrated musical act of all-time Michael Jackson. Whacko-Jacko hasn’t paid the more than $24 million in back taxes he owes on the property, so Financial Title Co. has filed notice of the trustee’s sale with the Santa Barbara County Superior Court. Court documents reveal that Jack-O has been notified by the court that he has until the date of the auction, Mar. 19, to settle his debt if he wants to keep his pedophile paradise, er, personal amusement park. He no longer lives at the property and has been jetting all around the world lately, so I doubt he’s going to save his butt by paying his back taxes. So maybe you can buy his adult alarm, the gadget he allegedly had installed in the house to warn him if adults tried to approach his bedroom while he was inside sexually assaulting a child (seriously, I’m not making that up, wish I was). Or you could buy the merry-go-round, the locomotive or dozens of other mementos to a place where so many young children were abused in such a vile manner. Personally I say we just burn it all and try to expunge this chapter from our collective memory.

- If you have a pulse and even a mediocre sense of humor, Will Ferrell’s movies usually make you laugh. Some have an abundance of laughs (Anchorman) and some have too few laughs amongst an otherwise bad movie (Blades of Glory). His latest film, Semi-Pro, falls more into the former category than the latter. Maybe I’m biased because I’m a big basketball fan, but don’t let the movie’s hoops premise fool you. It’s not a sports movie in any of the traditional senses, so even non-sports fans can enjoy the laughs. Ferrell plays Jackie Moon, owner/coach/player of the misnamed Flint (Michigan) Tropics, one of the teams in the 1970s basketball league the ABA (American Basketball Association). The ABA really existed and while it ultimately folded because it couldn’t compete with the NBA, the ABA did force the NBA to up its game and adopt new strategies and ideas. In this movie, Jackie Moon’s Tropics are one of the teams trying to be accepted into the NBA as the ABA folds. Only four teams from the ABA can go, so Moon is left to figure out a way to keep the Tropics from being left out in the cold. The only means available is elevating the last-place Tropics to fourth place, since the NBA wants the ABA’s top four teams. Moon also seeks to increase attendance at Tropics’ games to make them more appealing and does so through a variety of stunts, including motorcycle jumps inside their tiny arena and fighting a bear inside a steel cage. As with all Ferrell movies, there’s crude humor from time to time, but Semi-Pro is definitely one of the best Ferrell movies to come out so far. I won’t spoil the ending for you, but rest assured you’ll get to it laughing.

- Out of respect for the late, great Mr. Rogers, I’m going to give this next idea more consideration than I otherwise would. I’ll still be rejecting the idea, mind you, but Fred Rogers, late PBS legend and children’s TV icon of bygone decades, is involved and so I’m not going to derisively mock “Sweater Day” as I would if Rogers weren’t linked to it. Mister Rogers Neighborhood was gone before I was old enough to really enjoy it, but Rogers and his collection of puppet friends were familiar to millions during his time on TV. March 20 would have been Rogers’ 80th birthday, so a tribute is being organized to pay homage to Rogers and people across America are being asked to wear a sweater on that day to honor Rogers, whose trademark was the butt-ugly sweaters he rocked on each and every episode of his show. Mr. Rogers was a cool dude, but his gear left a lot to be desired. Normally I’d laugh at/ignore anyone asking me to don a sweater for any reason, but in this case I’ll make an exception. I’m still not going to wear a sweater, but in deference to the late Fred Rogers, I’ll leave it and that and not crack any jokes about the idea…..moving on…..

- You have to love it when a country screws over its citizens and their fundamental needs in the name of a tired sporting exhibition that most of us don’t bother to pay attention to anyhow. The Olympic Games have become tired and passé for most Americans and in many other places in the world. They contain a whole lot of fringe sports than no one outside those participating in the sports themselves care about, plus the fact that when they’re held in a different part of the world, as they will be in Beijing this summer, the majority of the world has to watch the competition on tape delay and thus we already know what happened before we can watch thanks to the magic of the Internet anf cell phones. Don’t tell this to the Chinese government, though. Even though Beijing is suffering from a major water shortage and many of the city’s residents are struggling to get the H20 they need on a daily basis, their government is giving preferential treatment to athletes and officials coming to town for the Olympics. The available water resources per person are 1/30 the world average, even lower than Israel, which as you may know is a desert-laden place, but the 16,000 arriving athletes and officials won’t be the ones taking the hit. They’ll have all the water they need for half-hour showers and various other activities, but people who actually live in Beijing won’t be so fortunate. Farmers in the region around Beijing have been ordered to grow only corn because it requires less water than rice or other vegetables. Of course, it also brings in far less in terms of revenues, but I’m sure the $30 in compensation from the government makes it all right. Well, it might if all of the affected farmers had received the money, but many say they haven’t. But hey, let’s funnel everything into putting on a tired, archaic event like the Olympics and giving visiting athletes the water they need even though they don’t give a f**k about China! Thanks Chinese government, you guys rock!