- Dang it, I thought no one would notice. When I went out to Santa Rosa, Calif. and swiped Lance Armstrong's time-trial bike the night before Stage 1 of the Tour of California, I thought no one would realize it was gone. Heck, Lance had already ridden the bike to a 10th-place finish Saturday in Sacramento and wasn’t going to have need of it for a while, so I figured I could make a clean getaway and pawn that thing for some serious cash before anyone knew what had happened. I just snuck right onto the Team Astana truck during the night, when no one was around, and made off with the bike. I popped the lock on the trailer, Armstrong's time-trial bike was closest to the door and I took it. Okay, so I also swiped three other bikes from the truck, but in my defense, if you’re going to steal one, you might as well steal four. I blame Team Astana for a) parking the truck where it was easily accessible and b) not buying a better lock. This doesn’t mean I don’t support Lance’s comeback to the sport of cycling, because I absolutely do. I’ll be rooting for him to win every race he rides in; I just root for my own bank account a lot more. Times are tough and if a seven-time Tour de France winner is delayed by a post-race trip to doping control, causing his bike to be the last into the team’s trailer and thus in easy reach of thieves, I gotta take the shot. Apologies to Lance’s Team Astana teammates Steve Morabito, Yaroslav Popovych and Janez Brajkovic as well, but economic times are tough and a man’s gotta do what he’s got to do, fellas. Of course, finding someone to sell this bike to now that Lance has later posted a picture of it on his Twitter feed is going to be tough. Now nearly everyone has seen the bike, which has distinctive yellow-and-black wheels and the logo of his Livestrong foundation, and I may have to go international to move this thing. "There is only one like it in the world therefore hard to pawn it off. Reward being offered," Armstrong wrote. Hmm, wonder if….maybe I could turn it in for the reward, say I found it and capitalize that way…..maybe. But again, I thought I had more time on this, as Armstrong won't need his time-trial bike again until Friday in Solvang, where the race holds its second time trial. This just keeps getting more and more complicated, jeez………
- I really, really laughed hard when I heard that actor/director Tyler Perry wants to take his character Madea to Europe. Well, I laughed after I stopped crying and pounding my head against the wall because I just learned that a seventh in this crap-tacularly awful series of films - "Madea Goes To Jail" - will soon be hitting theaters. Every single one of these Madea movies has sucked ass and been a truly prime example of comedic filmmaking that isn’t actually funny and is a huge waste of the time of anyone who goes to see it. And no, I don’t buy the argument by Perry and others that maybe it’s because the humor from African-American culture doesn’t always translate into those outside of that culture. There are plenty of great movies, including comedies, from a wide range of cultures. The Madea moves are lame because they try to be funny and aren’t, with that attempted humor being the only thing they “offer.” As such, I think the people of Europe are incredibly blessed that so far, Perry’s quest to bring the films to Europe has been derailed by studio executives who have told him that audiences there won't relate to his stories about lives of African-Americans. Oh, and don’t bring that weak crap in here about the films having made nearly $300 million at U.S. box offices. Less than $300 million for six films is nothing better than mediocre, period. Yet the challenge to conquer Europe has "sat in my spirit," Perry wrote in a newsletter to his fans. Great, let it sit, let it marinate and do nothing about it. Don’t subject Europe to the same cinematic horrors that the U.S. has been hit with, not unless you want to spark World War III. I 100 percent respect Tyler Perry making the climb from being homeless and broke just a few years ago to making a successful string of low-budget movies based on his Christian-themed stage plays. However, that respect can’t overcome the lameness of having a man dress up as an elderly woman and try to use that as a comedic vehicle. Eddie Murphy and those idiotic “Nutty Professor” remakes look almost decent by comparison to the Madea movies. Perry has managed to talk some decent actors into appearing in these movies, including Angela Bassett, Janet Jackson and Kathy Bates, but that hasn’t been nearly enough to prevent the movies from sucking big time.
I don’t care that Perry flew to Europe in January "to find out for myself” if his movies could connect with European crowds. While I agree with his sentiments that, “We love to laugh, we all have problems, we all want love, and we all have a church in every country,” I have something else all people have in common, regardless of culture or race: we all hate crappy movies. So quit pushing these terrible films on new, unsuspecting audiences and quit widening the damage radius…….
- Smokers, the reasons to hate you keep on rollin’ in. You and that garbage you put out of your cancer sticks that we all know (and hate) as secondhand smoke is becoming a bigger and bigger menace. Not only can it lead to lung cancer and heart disease, exacerbate asthma and cause pneumonia and bronchitis in babies, a new study links it to another serious condition: dementia in adults. Yes, according to a study published Feb. 13 in the British Medical Journal, a significant increase in the risk of dementia and other forms of cognitive impairment occur in people over 50 who have been exposed to high levels of secondhand smoke. We already had plenty of studies linking active smoking with cognitive impairment, but for the first time we actually have a study which associates secondhand-smoke exposure to dementia and other neurological problems in older populations. This study was conducted by researchers at the University of Cambridge, Britain's Peninsula Medical School and the University of Michigan, who tested saliva samples from nearly 5,000 non-smoking adults over the age of 50 for cotinine — a by-product of nicotine — realizing that high levels would indicate heavy exposure to secondhand smoke. Armed with this data and medical histories from study participants, researchers used established neuropsychological tests to assess brain function and cognitive impairment. What they found was that patients with high levels of cotinine were 44% more likely to show signs of cognitive impairment than those with very low levels. Not only that, there was also "an exposure-response gradient" between cotinine concentration and poor mental performance: the more cotinine in a subject's saliva, the worse that subject performed on tests measuring mental agility, memory and clear thinking. "One potential mechanism could be that smoke disrupts the way in which our blood vessels carry blood to the brain," says Sarah Day, head of public health for Britain's Alzheimer's Society. "A type of dementia called vascular dementia is caused by minute hemorrhages in the brain. If smoke is having an effect on the cells in the blood vessel walls, that's a pretty good explanation as to why secondhand smoke would have an effect." Great, so not only are you killing yourselves and others who breathe in that toxic crap coming out of your cancer sticks, you’re also increasing the likelihood of mental illness in people subjected to your toxic air. Like I said smokers, you’re not a tough group to hate……
- Not every day you see a FAT, naked guy running down a city street in Los Angeles (or any other city outside of Topeka, Kansas - just kidding, Topekans). Even rarer that you see a FAT, naked guy running down a city street in Los Angeles who is later Tased by the cops and dies because of the incident. At this point, an autopsy has been scheduled to determine what caused a man to die after being pepper-sprayed and hit with that Taser blast by Los Angeles County Sheriff's deputies. Deputies answered a disturbance call near Silva Street and Dunrobin Avenue in suburban Lakewood at about 10:15 Saturday night and upon their arrival spotted a "very large" man running naked in the street. According to Deputy Art Spencer, the FAT man was extremely angry and their attempts to calm him down were unsuccessful. The man "advanced on the deputies in a threatening manner," which led first to pepper spray than to a nice, big Taser blast. It wasn’t until after the man was handcuffed that deputies realized he wasn't breathing. They began CPR and called in the paramedics, but to no avail as the man was pronounced dead at a hospital. According to witnesses, the deputies described the man as under the influence of PCP, which would certainly complicate matters. The man, whose identity has not been released, was probably tripping out on PCP, which almost certainly led to him becoming one of the almost 50 people each year who die after suffering a Taser blast from the cops. The lesson, as always, is that when tripping out on PCP, always make sure to stay inside your home…..at least I think that’s the lesson……..
- Never before have I said this, but here goes…..except for one great scene at the outset, tonight’s episode of Lost sucked. Just not enough happened and nearly the entire episode was spent setting up future storylines that could draw out over the course of the season. I’m all for big, complicated mysteries, but give me something to enjoy while you’re setting them up. The one great scene came as Eloise Hawking, who is a) Daniel Faraday’s mother, b) the woman who told Desmond four years ago in a London jewelry shop that going to the island was his destiny, and c) the person who will be helping Ben Linus and the Oceanic Six return to the island, takes the group of Jack, Ben, Desmond and Sun to the basement of the church that she apparently never actually leaves. Down a set of spiral stairs, there is a bunker with a ginormous pendulum, swinging back and forth in constant motion. Eloise explains the bunker was built by the Dharma Initiative (who else) because like the Orchid Station on the island, it sits on top of a pocket of negatively charged energy that makes magical things possible. There are several such pockets are the world and they are all connected, she explains. The Dharma peeps used the pendulum to try and find the island’s location and were successful when they realized they needed to stop looking for it where they thought it should be and focused on using equations to predict where it would be at a given time because….well, because the island is always moving. As Eloise put it to Jack and friends, “Why do you think you were never rescued?” So the island is always moving, which means that to return, the Oceanic Six needed to be within the island’s general vicinity the next time it moves, which gave them 36 hours to do so. Eloise gave them details of a flight on Ajira Airlines, leaving from LAX and going to Guam, that would put them directly over the island. When Desmond realizes that the Oceanic Six actually intend to return to the island, he is irate and after delivering the message to Eloise that Daniel gave him (that she needs to help those on the island), Des storms out of the room. He does so even though Eloise tells him that the island isn’t done with him, to which Des retorts, “Well I’m done with the island.” From there, the rest of the episode basically went down the crapper. Sure, Eloise reveals to Jack behind closed doors that John Locke’s death was a suicide and gives him Locke’s suicide note, which was in an envelope addressed to Jack. She also explains that for a successful return to the island, he needs to recreate the original crash as closely as possible, with as many of the original participants as possible. In that vein, Locke’s body in a coffin will be taking the place of Jack’s own father’s body in a coffin, which was on the plane for the first crash. Jack even gives Locke some shoes that belonged to his father to further tie the two flights together. The shoes come from Jack’s grandfather Ray, who lives at a local retirement home and is apparently always trying to escape it and take a bus somewhere. The night before the Ajira Airlines flight to Guam, Jack goes home and finds Kate in his apartment, lying in his bed. She won’t tell him what she did with her “son” Aaron and where he is, promising that she’ll go back to the island only if he never asks about that topic. After that, the two of them hook up and wake up the next morning and have coffee together. That scene is interrupted by Ben, who calls Jack from a pay phone after “going to do a favor for a friend” and getting beaten up badly for his troubles. With his arm in a sling and blood all over him, Ben asks Jack to do the dirty work of picking up Locke’s body from Sam’s Butcher shop, where Locke had been having Jill, a friend of his, presumably connected with the Others and who works at the butcher shop, watch over it as it sat in storage and in its coffin in the back of the shop. Jack takes the body, fills out the necessary forms to get it on the plane and heads to the gate. On the way, he sees Kate, making good on her promise to come along. He meets Hurley at the gate, although we have do damn idea how Hurley knew to be on the flight, as he wasn’t with the group when they visited Eloise. Hurley has also bought up all 78 available seats on the flight to keep anyone else from being put in danger by being on board. On the way through airport security, Jack runs into Sun, and together they spot Sayid, being accompanied through security by some sort of federal marshal. Everyone - Jack, Hurley, Sayid, Kate, Sun and Ben - ends up on the plane, which turns out to be piloted by…..Frank Lapidus, chopper pilot from Charles Widmore’s freighter team of Season 4 and not seen by Jack and friends since their time together on Penelope Widmore’s yacht after leaving the island but before the “rescue” of the Oceanic Six.
Frank realizes something is up with the flight when he spots the Oceanic Six all on board, and his suspicions prove right when turbulence hits and a light flash like the ones signaling time travel events on the island this season hits. Before the turbulence, Jack finally read Locke’s suicide note after trying to avoid it, and just like most of the episode, it too was a letdown. All the note said was, “Jack, I wish you had believed me. JL.” Shortly thereafter, everything goes white when the light flash hits and next thing you know, Jack is lying flat on his back in the middle of the jungle, just like he was on the pilot episode of the show. He hears Hurley screaming, runs to find the big man and locates him in the lagoon where bodies, seats from Oceanic 815, etc. were discovered in previous seasons by Kate, Sawyer, et al. Jack dives off a cliff into the water and assists Hurley, who is floating as best he can using the guitar case he elected to bring with him to the island as a flotation device. Jack also spots Kate, unconscious on the rocks nearby. He swims to her, kneels over her and is able to revive her, but as the trio stands on the edge of the lagoon and wonders where the rest of their friends from the plane are at and how they ended up on the island following the light flash, a Dharma van drives up and out gets a man in Dharma uniform with a rifle - Jin. The episode ends with both parties stunned to see one another, and honestly, I wasn’t sorry to see it end. Not a single freaking scene for those who have remained on the island, who have been having their brains scrambled and health ruined by the island’s jumps through time. No explanation for any of the new points raised and not a lot of action or dramatic twists, just an all-around disappointing episode, easily the worst of the season and possibly for the entire history of this show. Here’s hoping next week is a heck of a lot better……
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