- What’s the going price for selling your 14-year-old daughter? For Marcelino de Jesus Martinez, 36, of Greenfield, California, it’s $16,000 in cash, 160 cases of beer, 100 cases of soda, 50 cases of Gatorade, two cases of wine, and six cases of meat. That’s the price Martinez negotiated with Margarito de Jesus Galindo, of Gonzales, California, an 18-year-old man who struck the deal for Martinez’s daughter and then failed to pay up. Martinez had arranged through a third party to have his daughter marry Galindo, a practice common in the Oaxacan community in the western Mexican state of Oaxaca, where Martinez and Galindo are both from. However, they’re no longer in Oaxaxa and as residents of the United States, they kinda need to abide by our laws. So it may not have been the best move for Martinez to call police when Galindo didn't live up to his end of the deal. Now Martinez is the one who has been arrested and booked into the Monterey County Jail on felony charges of receiving money for causing a person to cohabitate. Surprisingly, police believe the young girl went with Galindo willingly, and no coercion was involved. Unfortunately, she’s four years younger than California's age of consent, although the law does allow 16-year-olds to marry with parental consent. When Martinez initially contacted police on December 18, he reported his daughter as a runaway juvenile and police took a missing-persons report. However, as police began investigating, they began to believe that the girl was not actually a runaway. At that point, they realized that Martinez wanted them to retrieve his daughter because he hadn’t been paid. Then on January 2, Galindo and the girl returned from a trip to Soledad, police learned the couple had never married, but had engaged in sexual relations. In a situation like this, you have to wonder how this sort of bizarre transaction even gets set up. As it turns out, Galindo and Martinez were neighbors at an apartment complex and were from the same area in Mexico. Police are also talking with the third party who helped to broker the deal, but that individual has not been identified. Oh, and Galindo has been cited for statutory rape as well, so there’s that too. The girl has been returned to her family, which I’m sure wasn’t at all weird and awkward for her or them. Memo to you, Martinez and Galindo: this ain’t Mexico. What you did might be legal south of the border, but here in the United States you’re going to need to follow our laws……
- Smallville became the first of my favorite shows to return from winter hiatus last night, with the dominant theme obviously being the whereabouts of Chloe after Doomsday/Davis Blume kidnapped her from her own wedding at the Kent Farm. With her new husband Jimmy hospitalized in Star City and her cousin Lois by his side (meaning neither appeared in this episode), Chloe has been taken over by BRAINIAC after Doomsday takes her back to the Fortress of Solitude, the very place Clark took her earlier this season to have his Kryptonian dad Jor-El rid her of BRAINIAC and his control over her mind. Now inhabited by BRAINIAC again, Chloe informs Davis, temporarily back in human form, that his recent episodes as a giant, spiky and scary creature are the beginning of his metamorphosis. She then places him, despite his protestations, in a chrysalis of ice (a cocoon) to complete the transformation. In the meantime, Clark and the temporarily returning Lana (Kristin Kreuk, makin’ my day just by being around) are left back in Smallville to try and figure out where Chloe is. However, a visitor to the decimated Kent barn makes Clark shift his focus elsewhere. The invader turns out to be a warrior named Persuader, from the future and part of a human supremacy group that refuses to leave in peace with beings from other planets like Clark. Persuader hits Clark with some sort of powerful futuristic ax, wounding CK and allowing Persuader to use the ax to also destroy the Kryptonian crystal Clark had been keeping in his loft. Before Persuader can finish off Clark, a bolt of electric power zaps him dead and onto the scene walk Saturn Girl (aka Imra Ardeen), Lightning Lad (Garth Ranzz) and Cosmic Boy (Rokk Krinn) - i.e. the famed Legion of Super-Heroes, in from the 31st century to assist Clark. The three reveal where they’re from, then proceed to tell Clark what a legend he will become in his future. For the time being, the trio of newcomers is prepared to return to the future until they recognize the crystal Persuader destroyed and realize that its destruction is tied to BRAINIAC. Through Clark, they come to realize that BRAINIAC is still alive (despite Clark’s belief to the contrary) and is probably inhabiting Chloe’s body. They inform Clark that the crystal was the only means of destroying BRAINIAC once and for all without harming the human host, but now that it has been obliterated, killing Chloe is the only way to kill BRAINIAC (they also give Clark a little grief for not knowing how to fly yet and for not being the Man of Steel they expected based on his legend). Clark protests initially, but the more he considers it, the harder the choice is. He even goes to the Fortress looking for Jor-El’s help but instead encounters Chloe/BRAINIAC, who tells him of plans to destroy the world and kill all of its inhabitants via Doomsday. BRAINIAC then tells Clark it chose Chloe to inhabit because it knew he would never harm her being. That leaves Clark wondering if he really does need to kill Chloe, right up until he has a chat with Lana at the Isis Foundation offices in which she informs him that she knows the truth about Chloe too thanks to a visit from Imra and that the real Clark she knew would find a way to save Chloe and the world without killing her. While Clark mulls that over, his new Legion pals are busy figuring out how to kill Chloe on their own to save the planet and the future as they know it. They get their chance when Chloe/BRAINIAC attacks the Daily Planet, infecting the computer system and initiating some sort of computer virus/program that turns everyone looking at a monitor it’s displayed on into a stationary zombie from whom BRAINIAC can download all accumulated knowledge and information. Lana herself is affected as the Isis offices, but as Clark super speeds to the Planet, he finds Garth and Rakk ready to plunge a knife into Chloe, whom they have temporarily shut down with a massive electrical blast. Clark stops them from using the knife, then rushes Chloe/BRAINIAC off to the Kent Farm, away from any computer system when she/it wakes up and reboots, since BRAINIAC is a computer after all. Clark then suggests a different way to stop BRAINIAC while saving Chloe. He wants Garth, a.k.a. Lightning Lad, to use his electrical power to short out BRAINIAC while Rakk uses his power to manipulate metallic objects to pull all of BRAINIAC out of Chloe while Imra uses her power to read minds to help him communicate with Chloe during the process. The cyber-exorcism is successful, leaving Chloe back to her normal self (normal pre-Jor El brain erase earlier this season, that is) and a large black metallic ball as the remains of BRAINIAC. Their work done, the Legion members head back to the 31st century, leaving behind one of their special Legion rings for Clark to use to travel to the future and visit them, although Rakk removes the power to fly from the ring, because as he says, Clark needs to learn that on his own. Left behind are Clark and Lana, who was also told by Imra that she has a great destiny ahead of her, one that is far more than her relationship with Clark. Imra won't spill the secret of what the future holds for Clark and Lana, so they are left to figure that out on their own, although a tender moment on the porch of the farmhouse seems misleading because after all, Kreuk isn’t a full-time cast member anymore. But an interesting episode, one whose final scene was Davis emerging from his ice cocoon at the Fortress as Doomsday, spikes, scales, creepy visage and all, ready to wreak havoc on the world……
- The hits just keep on coming for Plaxico Burress. He’s still facing those concealed weapons charges in New York, but now he gets a nice diversion in the form of a civil trial that began Wednesday in Lebanon, Pennsylvania to determine how much he will have to pay in damages for a car he leased that ended up being impounded by New York City police. The car was impounded by police in August 2005 in connection with a shooting in the Bronx (a shooting and Plaxico is somehow tied to it? Amazing!). Arrests were made in the case, but the records were sealed and thus no other details have been made public. But this civil suit is about the car - a 2004 Chevrolet Avalanche worth more than $36,000 - that a Lebanon County car dealer allowed Burress to borrow in exchange for his agreeing to show up at promotional events and sign autographs. "I thought it would be good for my business," the dealer, Frederick Laurenzo, said in an interview. Umm, not exactly. A month after giving Burress the car, Laurenzo received a call from police in New York, who told him they had impounded it in connection with a crime. As you might expect, Laurenzo called up Burress and asked him to call police. In other words, he wanted his car back and expected Burress to take care of the problem he had created. The only problem is that e police never heard from Burress and Burress never returned another one of Laurenzo's calls. That didn’t sit well with Laurenzo, who understandably felt he was getting jobbed and was willing to go to court to make things right. Laurenzo filed the civil complaint in September 2006 to seeking restitution. Oh, and he’s also suing Burress for breach of contract because he never showed up to sign autographs either. It took Laurenzo a year to get the vehicle back from the police, so that had to piss him off further. Nice to see that Plaxico is just a quality guy all around, carrying concealed weapons, shooting himself in a busy club and trying to cover it up, breaching contracts, screwing over people who do him favors and more. Hard to blame Laurenzo for putting a lien against Burress' house in Virginia when Burress did him like that. To top it all off, there’s also the suit filed against Burress in December in Broward County, Fla. in which a woman alleged that Burress drove his $140,000 Mercedes-Benz into the back of her vehicle. According to the suit, Burress had failed to pay the premium on his car insurance, which had lapsed three days before the wreck. Thus, he was driving illegally because of not having insurance and is now on the hook personally for the damage. Not that dude can't afford it, but just one more black eye for a guy who has no shortage of them these days…….
- Today must be a very proud day for you, staff, administration and alumni of Westminster College in New Wilmington, Pa. How can you be anything other than proud when two of your school’s assistant football coaches fall through a hotel window and tumble four stories to a concrete sidewalk because they were - get ready for this - apparently wrestling with each other. Scott Coy and Darren DeMeio were attending the American Football Coaches Association’s annual convention at the Opryland Hotel and I’m guessing that they had had a beer or five in the hours leading up to the point when hotel security was called around 4:10 a.m. with a noise complaint. When they showed up on the scene, police found a broken window and Coy and outside on the ground below. According to hotel spokeswoman Kim Keelor, these two tools fell through a double-paned with a strong wooden sash in the middle. The fall left the 6-foot-2, 300-pound Coy in critical condition at the Vanderbilt University hospital. DeMeio is a big dude as well, coming in at 6-4, 225 pounds and clearly not a whole lot of IQ points. However, he came out of this a little better than Coy, as DeMeio is in fair condition but still in the hospital. Again, how thrilled must the head coach and administration at Westminster be to know that Coy, their co-offensive coordinator, and DeMeio, the team’s running backs coach, are representing the school so well. Now, it’s not like they were fighting and this is some sort of criminal assault where one guy chucked another one out the window, but that doesn’t make it any less embarrassing. So to Coy and DeMeio, next time you go away to a conference or convention, stay down, stop after a couple of beers and steer clear of windows…….
- Now the tide is starting to turn and it’s turning back in the favor of my boys, the Somali pirates. As global superpowers like the United States, China, Britain and Russia look to shut them down with an international coalition against piracy, the Somali pirates are showing just how truly pirate-y they are and battling back with a fierce resolve. In the past week or so, the pirates have been receiving the ransoms they are demanding for captured ships and setting them loose. Ships ranging from luxury yachts to a Saudi supertanker have been held for ransom, ships like the Saudi-owned Sirius Star, which was let go Saturday after being held off the coast of Somalia for two months. For that, the pirates who hijacked the Star, the largest ship ever seized by pirates (booyah!) received a 3.5 million ransom payment. And yes, that amount was down from the initial demand of $25 million, but if you think that’s a loss for the pirates, you clearly don’t understand the principles of pirate-conomics. See, you shoot really high with your first demand, a pie-in-the-sky figure you know you won't get just to drive the price up. In the end, you get $3.5 million in ransom money dropped by parachute onto the oil supertanker you have captured. The ransom amount hasn’t yet been made public for a Turkish-flagged ship carrying 4,500 tons of chemicals that was released by Somalia-based pirates on Tuesday, but you can bet those pirates earned a nice chunk of change as well. Ditto for the pirates who released the African Sanderling on Monday, a ship that was seized in mid-October. Fact is, when you consider the 20,000 oil tankers, freighters and merchant vessels that pass through Gulf of Aden - which links the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea - each year, you’re not going to be able to totally shut these pirates down. Besides, what’s not great about going out and taking control of something that doesn’t belong to you, holding it by force and releasing it only when you’re paid a hefty ransom? It’s a preposterous premise and yet pirates have been doing it for ages, which is what makes them so awesome. Rock on, Somali pirates, rock on…..
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