Perks of living in Vermont (non-maple syrup-related), Venezuela stays classy and a Smallville recap

- Way to stay classy. Venezuela. Your presidente may be a vitriolic, arrogant, oppressive and fascist dictator, and you continue blasting your neighbors in Peru for granting of political asylum to Venezuelan politician Manuel Rosales, who is wanted on corruption charges. “Despite the amount of evidence, the Peruvian government decided to grant political asylum," Venezuela's government said in a statement Monday. "It's a decision that thwarts international law, inflicts a blow to the fight against corruption and is an affront to the people of Venezuela.” Either that or they’ve decided to honor their own laws and give asylum to a man who is likely the target of a witch hunt/lynch mob fueled by fabricated, trumped-up evidence. Only you would rip a country for granting political asylum on humanitarian grounds, Venezuela. As for Rosales, he is the mayor of Maracaibo, Venezuela and a leading political opponent who lost the 2006 Venezuelan presidential race to Hugo Chavez. He faces charges of illegally enriching himself while governor of Zulia state, but fled to Peru on the very day he was to turn himself in. He denies the corruption allegations against him and says Chavez is persecuting him. “Since they haven't been able to take me off the political map by the electoral route, no Rosales' claims seem much more believable in light of the fact that Chavez said publicly in October 2008, before Rosales was charged, that he wanted the mayor in prison. The impetus for Rosales’ flight from Venezuela was a 26-count complaint filed last month by Katiuska Plaza, district attorney for Zulia state, claiming that Rosales illegally enriched himself in 2002 and 2004. Funny how another prominent Chavez opponent, former Venezuelan Defense Minister Raul Baduel was arrested this month on corruption charges, too. It’s just bizarre how everyone who opposes ol’ Hugo is suddenly corrupt, eh? Baduel played a key role in turning back a coup attempt against Chavez in 2002 but broke with him in November 2007 over constitutional changes Chavez was proposing. He’s been an outspoken critic of Chavez since then and for those efforts, Baduel was arrested at gunpoint in front of his wife April 2 on charges that he stole $14 million from the armed forces. But don’t worry, getting arrested on falsified charges isn’t your only option as an opponent of Hugo Chavez. You could also find your political powers as, say, the mayor of Caracas being gradually eroded. That is what’s happening to Antonio Ledezma, an opposition figure who is mayor of Caracas. Last week, the pro-Chavez National Assembly shifted many of his powers to the federal government and Ledezma has accused Chavez of orchestrating protests against him. Honestly, just a very proud time for all Venezuelans………

- You’re not helping your school’s reputation Florida State receiver Cameron Wade, you’re hurting it, and you shouldn’t be failing to appear in court for pre-trial conferences in your misdemeanor battery case, man. There’s a good reason why people call your school’s teams the Florida State Crimi-noles and you’re reinforcing those reasons. Whether it’s football players stealing clothes from department stores, athletes from multiple sports engaging in a massive academic cheating scandal or five football players brawling with fellow students at the student union, there are always reasons aplenty to mock the Crimi-noles. Because of that, no one was surprised when Wade failed to appear in court Wednesday and a bench warrant was issued for his arrest. Judges are likely to notice when defendants don’t show up, especially when those defendants are 6-foot-6, 209-pound football players. Now I’m no legal expert, but ditching a pre-trial conference seems like a bad way to start off a case. The judge is going to have a big say in your fate, so you’ll want to do everything possible to stay on his or her good side. Of course, not getting into a fight on campus with fellow students in which you are alleged to have thrown the first punch would also help, but no use dwelling on the past. For the record, Wade was arrested along with receiver Bert Reed last November after a campus fight near the student union that involved five FSU receivers and the probable cause affidavit states Wade threw the first punch, allegedly because he thought one of the fraternity brothers was raising a hand to strike one of his teammates. Cameron Wade needs to remember that he’s Cameron Wade, he of the three catches for 59 yards last season. If he were a star player, a 1,000-yard receiver with double-digit touchdowns, this crap might fly and he could skate on the charges. However, when you’re Cameron Wade and average a solid 0.25 catches per game, that’s not going to happen. Wade would do well to consider setting a new example for the FSU receiving corps, given the following: 1) Earlier this month, receiver Rod Owens was suspended indefinitely after he was charged with DUI, and the NCAA denied Corey Surrency another year of eligibility, 2) former Florida State receiver Preston Parker was dismissed from the team earlier this year after his third arrest since 2006 and 3) Reed was suspended last year for missing class and ultimately was suspended three times in a one-month period and 4) receiver Taiwan Easterling was sidelined this spring with a ruptured Achilles. Guess Bobby Bowden needs to figure out ways to design pass plays around guys having to run them while wearing their court-ordered monitoring devices on their ankles and with the parole officers in tow…….

- F^%!&^%%@^&! D^*%!^%&!%%*^! This is f&*^!*^(ing b*(@^*(! I cannot f^&*@^&^*%!ing believe that the f8&&*!^(ing Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday federal regulators have the authority to clamp down on the broadcast TV networks that air isolated cases of profanity, known as "fleeting expletives." In a narrow 5-4 vote, the court showed it still is suffering from a W.-era hangover. This decision would have been right at home during the administration of that colossal ass hat, when officials openly pushed fines and sanctions when racy images and language reached the airwaves. The topic of controversial words in both scripted and unscripted programming on all the major over-the-air networks have been a major issue over the past six years -- dating back to when the Federal Communications Commission began considering a stronger, no-tolerance policy. “It suffices the new policy is permissible under the statute, there are good reasons for it, and the agency believes it to be better,” said Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the conservative majority. About the only plus to come from this debacle is that the high court refused to decide whether the commission's policy violates the First Amendment guarantee of free speech, only the agency's enforcement power. The justices then ordered the free-speech aspect to be reviewed again by a federal appeals court. The specific case that the Supreme Court heard involved ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox. Unfortunately, the FCC couldn’t just man up and accept it when a federal appeals court in New York had ruled in the networks’ favor, calling the commission's policy "arbitrary and capricious." Like your typical weasel-y, whiny government agency, the FCC appealed to the Supreme Court, seeking restoration of its power to penalize the networks airing "indecent" speech, even if it is broadcast only one time, and even if it does not describe a specific sex act. Leave it to good ol’ Tony Scalia and Co. to inexplicably f^&$%$^%%!ing agree with the FCC. “Even when used as an expletive, the F-word's power to insult and offend derives from its sexual meaning,” wrote Scalia. Go ahead and direct your expletive-filled hate mail to the FCC's acting chairman, Michael Copps, who had the audacity to call Tuesday's ruling a "a big win for America's families." Maybe your f&^%%*’d up family, Mike, but not the rest of us. All of this debate stems from the commission’s decision to formally reverse its policy in March 2004 to declare even a single use of an expletive could be illegal. The changes have become known as the "Golden Globes Rule," for singer Bono's 2003 acceptance speech at the awards show on NBC, where he uttered the phrase "really, really, f---ing brilliant." Yes, these a-holes are persecuting Bono as well, well done. Would you like to attack Steven Tyler next, perhaps Mick Jagger, Billy Joe from Green Day and other music icons? What also galls me is that the complaint against ABC involved NYPD Blue, a now-canceled scripted police drama. The show doesn’t even exist anymore, yet you’re pressing a case against it. Props to Justice John Paul Stevens for writing in dissent that "customs of speech" and context made the Federal Communications Commission's position unworkable. “As any golfer who has watched his partner shank a short approach knows, it would be absurd to accept the suggestion that the resultant four-letter word uttered on the golf course describes sex or excrement and is therefore indecent,” he wrote. "But that is the absurdity the FCC has embraced in its new approach to indecency.” Well said, Justice Stevens, well said. Too bad five or your counterparts weren’t smart enough to agree……..

- Gotta say, not the biggest fan of Chloe Sullivan right now. One of Smallville’s central characters since Season 1 is really pissing me off with her dogged devotion to Davis Bloome. This week’s episode kicked off with Chloe waking in the middle of the night after a dream in which she is awakened in the middle of the night by a call from Davis in the Talon basement and he asks her to come down to see him. In the basement, Davis has laid out rose petals everywhere and set up a romantic night for he and Chloe. She initially protests, but eventually gives in and makes out with him - until a trail of blood on the floor nearby catches her attention. Chloe follows the blood and finds half of a body hanging from the ceiling, another victim of Doomsday. At that point, she wakes up and realizes it was all just a bad dream. In the morning, she tries to shake the bad vibes with a cappuccino but is greeted by more stress when Clark shows up and hands her a copy of the day’s Daily Planet in which Tess Mercer has launched an all-out war to brand Davis as the “Cornfield Killer.” Chloe insists that the new murders aren’t linked to Davis because he’s dead, a lie that Clark has his doubts about. He wonders if Davis is still alive and continues pursuing that theory, soon finding proof when the grave where Davis is supposedly buried is empty and appears to have been “clawed” out of by someone on the inside. Clark stops by LuthorCorp to talk with Oliver Queen about a solution to the problem, a solution he believes can be found at the Fortress of Solitude. Clark asks Oliver to find Chloe and get her to safety while he goes to the Fortress. Oliver actually has more than one problem on his hands, mostly because of Jimmy Olsen. Jimmy, now a raging druggie, interrupts Oliver’s business meeting at the Ace of Clubs to ask him for money to allegedly repair Jimmy’s car. Oliver takes one look at Jimmy’s condition and surmises that he’s high and actually asking for drug money. When he offers to pay for Jimmy to go to a very posh, private rehab program, Jimmy declines. The two men meet up again a few hours later when Oliver follows through on Clark’s plan and goes to the Talon to find Chloe. Instead, he finds Jimmy rifling through her apartment to steal money for drugs. A confrontation ensues, but before things can go to far, doom encroaches on Oliver and Jimmy both. More specifically, it’s Doomsday. Davis hears the commotion upstairs from his basement home, figures Chloe might be in danger and rushes to the apartment. He clobbers both men with a shovel, drags them to the basement and ties them up. Together, they wait for Chloe to arrive back at the Talon so she and Davis can launch their plan to flee Smallville together for a fresh start. Because Chloe’s presence is the only thing than can keep the beast in Davis in check and prevent him from turning into Doomsday, he refuses to be away from her and leaving town is the only way to make that happen. The police are now searching for Davis, so he needs to go. But while waiting for Chloe, Jimmy does his best to antagonize Davis and spur him to turn into Doomsday. “You’re already taken everything else from me,” he snarls at Davis after Davis admits that if Chloe doesn’t come back soon, killing either Oliver or Jimmy is the only way he can keep from turning into Doomsday. However, it’s Clark who arrives on the scene first. He speeds into the Talon as Davis is attempting to choke the life out of Oliver. Clark stops the attack, pulls Davis off Oliver and rushes away with Davis firmly in his grasp. The next stop is the Fortress, where Clark reveals to Davis that this is a piece of Krypton on Earth. He then tells Davis that he can send him to a place where he will never be able to hurt anyone. That place is the Phantom Zone, where Clark himself has made a couple of stops. When CK voiced this plan to Chloe, she was vehemently against it. This is where I really began to get irritated with her, because she wouldn’t just let Clark send the being sent to destroy the Earth off to a place where he can’t escape or hurt anyone? She feels there just has to be a way to redeem him and make him a good person? For much of the episode, Chloe has been consulting with a scientist to whom she gave a sample of Davis’ DNA in the hopes of finding a cure for his condition. That scientist informs her that there is no cure and that he wants nothing to do with Davis because he’s so dangerous. Yet just as Clark jams a crystal into the Fortress’ console to open up a portal to the Phantom Zone, there’s Chloe. She uses the metallic, Kryptonian disc that has been used throughout the show’s history for transportation from Smallville to the Fortress and shows up just in time to remove the crystal and close the portal. She then has the gall to chastise Clark for being willing to send Davis to the Zone and leaves with Davis in tow. Clark returns to Smallville to find Chloe and Davis gone, fallen off the grid. Oliver is unhappy with Clark for not killing Davis when he had the chance, but now Clark vows to hunt him down and save Chloe no matter what. Oliver then makes a curious decision: hiring Jimmy Olsen to be a member of his staff. The position is somewhat ambiguous, but Oliver cites Jimmy’s ability to see the killer inside Davis before anyone else and his willingness to do battle with him as admirable qualities. Jimmy accepts the offer, so what will he be up to? The episode ends with Chloe calling Clark from a gas station on Route 7 as she and Davis stop to refuel before heading for the border - not sure if that means Canada or Mexico. Chloe tells Clark she’s doing what she’s doing to save him, to keep Davis away from him and from turning into Doomsday because Doomsday’s avowed mission is to destroy Clark. Clark begs her not to be the hero, but she won't listen. She hangs up and gets back on the road with Davis after wiping the tears from her eyes. This was an OK episode, but you do have to be frustrated with the sporadic screen time of Lois, who wasn’t in this episode at all. Two more weeks to go until the finale, so plenty of drama left to unfold…..

- Only in Vermont….and possibly Maine, maybe Alaska. But you have to admit that there aren’t many states where a wayward moose could disrupt the flow of traffic by wandering out onto a major interstate. A young moose (isn’t it always the young moose causing the problem?) meandered across southbound lane of Interstate 89 Wednesday afternoon and became trapped by fencing between the northbound lane and Route 2 in the town of Bolton, near an area known to locals as the "Bolton Flats.” The governor's Vermont State Police security detail (without governor inside) saw the moose and pulled over. Members of the detail attempted to keep the moose on the grassy shoulder, away from speeding cars and trucks. Soon thereafter, a cruiser arrived, then a game warden. With all of these brilliant law enforcement minds gathered in one place and needing to outsmart a moose, the group decided it had two options. According to game warden Chad Barrett, officials realized could either get the moose to safety or shoot it. The moose appeared to be an orphan, about 1 year old, and did not appear to be sick, so the decision was made to try and get it over the fence and back into the woods. The Vt. Fish and Wildlife Dept. does not have tranquilizer guns available, so the officers and wildlife officials would have to work with the moose to make that happen. Barrett coaxed it to keep walking, slowly, along the fence line for one full mile to an opening in the fence used for emergency vehicles. Bolton officials came with the key to the padlock and opened the gate while Barrett did everything in his power to keep the animal calm and headed away from traffic. “This is time of year when moose come out of mountains to the valleys -- and tend to cross roads -- that section of interstate is hot section for moose crossings in recent years" Barrett said. "It all worked out well.” Once through the gate, Barrett got the moose across Route 2 and into the woods to safety. Just one of the many perks - mostly maple syrup-related - to living in Vermont…..

Lost back on track for a week at least, I call Lance Briggs a liar and Ben Folds goes a cappella

- Could finishing second in the Miss USA pageant actually end up being better for Carrie Prejean than winning the competition? Let’s face it, no one gives a crap about Miss USA once the pageant ends and anyone who wins that crown and thinks that she’s going to really change the world is begging. Yet Prejean came in second and because of the way she lost, she may end up having a bigger impact on whoever the chick was that won (already forgot her name). Prejean, the Miss USA contestant from California who declared her opposition to same sex marriage on the pageant stage in response to a question from celebrity blogger Perez Hilton, is now using her 15 minutes to further the cause she believes cost her a chance to become Miss USA. Prejean will star in a new $1.5 million ad campaign funded by the National Organization for Marriage, a group that promotes marriage as being between a man and a woman only. Before you rip Prejean for her stance, understand that she’s taken a lot of heat from same-sex marriage advocates after she stood up for what she called "opposite marriage" (marriage between a man and a woman) when responding to Hilton’s query during the pageant. She has every right to stand up for herself and to fire back at those who are so liberally taking pot shots at her. Same-sex marriage opponents are lining up to support her, perhaps none more vociferously than the National Organization for Marriage. N.O.M. has scheduled a press conference with Prejean in Washington on Thursday to unveil the new ad, called "No Offense." The ad will reportedly call "gay marriage advocates to account for their unwillingness to debate the real issue: gay marriage has consequences.” The group is also waging a public battle to defend Prejean as she wages her anti-same-sex marriage battle. “She is attacked viciously for having the courage to speak up for her truth and her values,” the group said in a press release. "But Carrie's courage inspired a whole nation and a whole generation of young people because she chose to risk the Miss USA crown rather than be silent about her deepest moral values.” So whether you agree with Prejean’s beliefs or not, you can’t argue that she has every right to stand up and be counted for what she believes in……

- If only the entire season of Lost had been as good as tonight’s episode…..wow. Despite being mostly focused one character - Daniel Faraday - the episode did a great job of including nearly all of the show’s principal characters. There were plenty of flashbacks, so let’s start there. We learned about Daniel’s childhood, in which he was an aspiring piano prodigy when his mother put a stop to his playing. Eloise Hawking, Daniel’s mother, informed him when he was about 10 years old that he had a great mind that was destined to be used for science and mathematics, not for “distractions” like piano. Daniel followed his mother’s wishes and attended Oxford, where he became a prolific researcher and the youngest person ever to earn his doctorate. He also met and fell in love with Theresa, his research assistant. Of course, Theresa is the woman that Desmond Hume found after leaving the island, going to Oxford and searching for Daniel’s mother. Theresa ended up in and out of a coma and with severe brain damage because of Daniel’s time travel experiments. Eloise had no tolerance for Theresa and informed Daniel that he would have no time for relationships. That comes the day of his graduation, but in the next flash forward, Daniel is sitting in his home as an adult, watching footage of Charles Widmore’s staged “recovery” of the remnants from the crash of Oceanic 815. As we’ve seen in past episodes, the footage makes Daniel very emotional but he doesn’t know why. A woman is in the house with him, but it’s not clear what their relationship is. A knock on the door comes, with Charles Widmore showing up. He informs Daniel that he is the one who provided the $1.5 million (pounds actually, not dollars, but no pound sign on the ol’ keyboard) research grant for Daniel’s time travel experiments. Widmore then tells Daniel that his condition - worsening memory loss - that has resulted from testing the time travel experiments on himself prior to testing them on Theresa can be cured. That leads to a real bombshell: the news that the Oceanic 815 wreckage recovery is a fraud. It’s not news to us, but to Daniel it is. Widmore then details the wonders of the island where the flight really crashed and says that to cure his illness, Daniel must go to that island. A couple days later, Eloise visits Daniel and urges him to accept Widmore’s offer. Daniel agrees to go because it will make his mother proud. That leads to the scene we saw two weeks ago, when Daniel hopped off the submarine on the island - back in 1977. He had been in Michigan, of all places, working for the Dharma Initiative there. Upon arriving on the island, he meets Miles and demands to be taken to see Jack. Jack can barely get the door open before Daniel barges in and demands to know how the Oceanic 6 got back to the island. When Jack admits that Eloise Hawking told them how to get back and that it was their destiny, Daniel informs him that Eloise was lying. When morning rolls around, things start to get very bizarre. For starters, Daniel demands that Miles take him to the location where the Swan station is being built. There, Daniel takes his journal that he brought with him and sneaks below ground to the work site to speak with Dr. Chang, the Dharma Initiative’s head scientific mind. Daniel tells Dr. Chang that he’s from the future and that because of that, he knows that a massive explosion is about to take place at the Orchid station. Chang doesn’t believe a word Daniel says, but Daniel tries to win him over by cluing him in to the fact that Miles is his son, only from the future. Unfortunately, Miles refuses to verify that claim and Chang blows off Daniel and his demand to evacuate everyone on the island. Daniel moves on to Plan B, which takes him back to Sawyer’s (a.k.a. LaFleur) house in the barracks. There, a meeting is going on of Sawyer, Jack, Kate, Hurley, Juliet, Miles and Jin. All of them are gathered to talk about what is to be done now that Phil, one of the men on Sawyer’s Dharma security team, has discovered the security footage of Sawyer and Kate turning young Ben Linus over to the Others, or the Hostiles, as they were known in 1977. Sawyer offers the group two options: 1) commandeering the Dharma submarine and fleeing the island, or 2) fleeing the barracks, heading out into the jungle and “starting from scratch.” Hurley and Jin both vote for the second option, but Daniel and Miles burst in before the voting can finish. Daniel demands to be taken to the Hostiles to find Eloise Hawking so he can talk to her. Sawyer refuses the request because Daniel won't explain why he needs to talk to Eloise, but Kate knows how to find them after taking Ben to them and Juliet gives up the code to turn off the security fence at the border. Kate, Jack and Daniel head for the Dharma motor pool to commandeer a vehicle and stock up on guns for their trip to meet the Hostiles. Timing isn’t on their side, as Radzinsky and some of his men are arriving back in the barracks at the same time and immediately recognize that Daniel a) isn’t where he’s supposed to be and b) has a gun. When Daniel tries to talk his way out of the mess, a shootout ensues in which he takes a bullet to the neck, but manages to escape in a jeep along with Jack and Kate. Radzinsky is shot in the hand and nearly blown up by an exploding fuel drum, but he survives. At the security fence, Kate uses the code to shut down the current and the trio crosses over into Hostile territory. As they walk, Jack finally gets Daniel to explain his plan. The plan is to stop the explosion at the Swan from happening, thus preventing the Dharma Initiative from building the hatch to contain the pocket of energy that causes the explosion. In turn, that will prevent Desmond from ever ending up inside the hatch, pushing the “every 108 minutes” button that was used until Season 2 to keep another explosion from happening. In turn, all of this will prevent Desmond from one day neglecting to push the button and unleashing the burst of energy that crashed Oceanic 815. That in turn will prevent Charles Widmore from ever sending his freighter, on which Daniel came, to the island. In other words, preventing one explosion will totally rearrange history. With that settled, it’s time to get walking again. They soon stumble across the Hostiles’ camp and Daniel goes in alone, gun drawn. He fires off warning shots and is soon face to face with Richard Alpert, who informs him that Eloise isn’t in camp right now. That turns out to be a huge lie, because Eloise shoots her own son from behind and wounds him severely. She doesn’t know it’s her son, but as Daniel lies bleeding on the ground, he tells her the truth. He also muses that she knew all along that “this would happen,” but she still sent him to the island. Of course, that was 2007 Eloise sending him back to the island, but it doesn’t make her transgression any less horrific. Back at the barracks, life is becoming nearly as dire for Sawyer and Co. Radzinsky storms into the house and demands to know where he’s been while the shootout at the motor pool was going on Sawyer, Juliet and the rest of those who didn’t leave with Kate and Jack have been busy packing in prepartion for fleeing back into the jungle, but Radzinsky’s intrusion spoils those plans. When Radzinsky hears Phil struggling and attempting to yell for help over the gag that Sawyer put in his mouth before hiding him inside a large cabinet, the gig is up. Radzinsky realizes that Sawyer is somehow involved in Jack and Kate’s plot and points the gun right at Sawyer and Juliet. They are forced down on their knees and now have some ‘splainin to do. The last bit of news came from 2007, where we saw the aftermath of the marina shootout in which Ben Linus tried to kill Desmond and Penny on the same day he and the Oceanic 6 left on Ajira flight 316 to get back to the island. Desmond was rushed to the Long Beach Marina Medical Center and into surgery, leaving Penny and son Charlie to sit in the waiting room. While they wait, Eloise walks in and tells Penny her connection to Desmond. She apologizes for him being shot because he was only in Los Angeles to find her after Daniel found him on the island during one of the time shifts earlier this season and told Desmond to track her down. When Penny realizes that Eloise is telling the truth and can foresee the future, she asks if Desmond will be okay. Eloise admits that for the first time in a long time, she doesn’t know the future. Just then, a nurse pops into the waiting room and tells Penny that Des it out of surgery, in a recovery room and asking for her. They share a tender moment together while Eloise departs and is met outside the hospital by none other than Charles Widmore. He asks if Desmond is okay and when Eloise says he is and that Widmore should go inside to see his daughter and her husband, Widmore says that sacrificing his relationship with Penny is something he has been forced to do. Eloise is incensed at the idea that he understands sacrifice, saying that she had to sacrifice her own son by sending him back to the island. Widmore then drops a bombshell, saying that Daniel is his son too. That earns him a b*tch slap to the face from Eloise, who then gets into a cab and leaves. So it seems that Daniel is actually Charles Widmore’s son, which would make him Penny’s brother as well. All told, a really interesting episode and aside from no Ben, Locke or Sun on screen, it was the best episode in quite a few weeks. So until next week…….

- You hate to see it come to this for a pretty solid musician, but it wasn’t until Ben Folds came across a bunch of videos of university a cappella groups singing covers of his songs on YouTube that he truly realized how far his music reached. Never mind bitchin’ tunes like “Rockin’ the Suburbs” and “Brick,” it took a bunch of college students singing those and other of his tunes for the singer-songwriter to see the impact of his work. “I was really moved," he says. "I thought it was better than what I had done when I first heard it. That's how it struck me because it was so fresh.” A very interesting and very humble take, to be sure. Better still, seeing those videos inspired Folds to travel to university campuses around the country and record an entire album of a cappella covers. Folds chose 15 ensembles from 250 submissions for "Ben Folds Presents: University A Cappella!" which came out Tuesday on Epic Records. To keep the album from sounding too slick and polished, Folds kept the recording process simple: Each performance was recorded using six wide-range microphones, and most of the groups got it down in one or two takes. “It's a completely different point of view,” says Folds. “They're not signed singers and artists that have their egos to contend with. And sometimes they're not thinking about the song that much, which I think is kind of cool.” Lest you think that the album is all a cappella dorks from various colleges and universities singing their take on Folds’ music, know that there are also two a cappella tracks on the album from Folds himself. Those songs are "Boxing" from his Ben Folds Five days, and "Effington" from his 2008 solo album "Way To Normal." "It was really difficult because we were doing my tracks from the bottom up," he says. "We didn't have a bunch of people to work with and I just about gave up.” This is a really interesting project and even if you weren’t not a huge fan of Folds prior to now, I’d encourage you to check it out……

- When a natural disaster strikes you town, how do you and your fellow residents go about bouncing back? And no, I’m not talking about having to endure another season of Cleveland Browns football or a Justin Timberlake concert; I’m talking about actual natural disasters like the massive tornado that tore through Greensburg, Kansas on May 4, 2007. The tornado ripped right through Greensburg, rural town, killing 11 people and leaving little more than empty slabs and stacks of debris. Greensburg, 109 miles west of Wichita in south-central Kansas, consists of about 1,400 people who all lost their homes and nearly all of their possessions. They had to figure out a way to rebuild, lest their town die out. Over the past two years, that rebuilding process has taken shape - or to be more specific, it’s taken color, and that color is green. City and county officials, residents and business owners are striving to make Greensburg a national model for environmentally conscious living. They are using solar and wind technologies to harness power and geothermal heat and conserving energy by building with solid concrete, using more natural light, and installing better insulation and state-of-the-art windows. The town even has a Web site detailing its efforts, with a message on the home page that reads, "Greensburg: Better, Stronger, Greener!" Greensburg resident Daniel Wallach, a transplant from Denver, Colorado, has also been a key figure in the green-ing up of Greensburg. He founded Greensburg GreenTown, a nonprofit organization that provides resources and education for sustainable rebuilding. "It's about working with the sun. It's about working with the wind," Wallach said. "The community itself will even have a community-owned wind farm, and that will power the town's general power needs." Greensburg GreenTown also is building a series of "Eco-Homes" -- 12 green houses with energy-efficient features, with the first home is currently under construction and slated to be ready this summer. The Silo Eco-Home will feature ground-source heating and cooling, solar hot water and even a vegetable garden on its roof. Best of all, the homes are virtually tornado-proof, with Wallach hoisting a Ford pickup truck up on a crane and bouncing it off the roof of the home to prove it last week. Props to the citizens of Greensburg for not just bouncing back fro ma devastating natural disaster, but bouncing back and becoming an even better version of themselves……

- Simply put, Lance Briggs: I don’t believe you. Quoting legendary, fictional TV news anchor Ron Burgundy seems like the appropriate response to claims by the Chicago Bears linebacker that he cut the palm of his right hand while shaving with a straight razor. Briggs showed up at an autograph signing during the weekend wearing a bandage on his right hand and the story he sold was that he sliced himself while shaving with a straight razor. Right, because we’re living in 1922, right? What, did you also have trouble because your homestead has no electricity and you didn’t have enough light to shave? Were you not able to buy a safer, disposable razor because they haven’t been invented yet? My man, this is 2009. No one uses straight razors anymore, period. Even old-timey barber shops with the red-and-white barber polls out front have moved into modern times. Straight razors are a thing of the past, just like muskets, the Great Depression and government cheese. It doesn’t even matter that Briggs participated at the team's voluntary workouts on Tuesday, because the issue isn’t what impact his sliced hand will have on his on-field performance. It’s the off-season, so what Briggs wants to do with his time is his own business. I just don’t care for being lied to, and I have a feeling that I’m being lied to here. “I'm definitely not going to miss the season," Briggs said, according to the report. "I'm not the first person to cut themselves with a grooming mechanism.” No, and you’re also not the first person to lie about it. At least come up with a better story than that, like saying you were working on your whip, installing some new speakers when you cut your hand on the trunk lid. There’s also a question about if the injury is severe enough to require Briggs to report it to the team. If Briggs had failed to report the injury to the Bears, it could constitute a violation of his contract. But Briggs insists that the injury wasn't nearly that serious. “You don't have to report if you cut yourself with a razor," he said. “If I was cutting a cake with a knife and cut my finger, and I felt like I was in danger, then I would have called a doctor. If it had been something dire, then I would have notified the Bears organization. After I cut my hand, I wrapped it up myself and went to my appearance. I treated it the best I could.” Yeah, well you’ll have to pardon me doubting your truthfulness, Lance. After all, you are the guy who once wrecked his $200,000 sports car on an expressway in Chicago, left the scene and then lied about what happened. Remember that? You claimed that your car was stolen, except you waited nearly a day to report it as such. That being considered, I’ll continue doubting how that cut on your hand came to be and you keep on lying about it, bro……

Reviewing 24, the family atmosphere continues for Michigan football and an M.I.T. prank gone awry

- Not that it’s been a feel-good tale up to this point, but I have a sinking suspicion that the story of ex-NBA star Jayson Williams is headed for a tragic ending sooner rather than later. He was convicted in 2004 of trying to cover up the shooting death of his hired driver Costas "Gus" Christofi at his mansion in Alexandria Township, N.J., in February 2002 after being acquitted of aggravated manslaughter. Also, that same jury deadlocked on a reckless manslaughter count, a retrial is pending and he has been free on bail since the shooting. That being said, J. Williams isn’t doing very well with his life at this point he was hit with a Taser blast by police in his swank Manhattan hotel suite Monday after he refused attempts by officers to take him to a hospital because he was acting suicidal. Police were called to the hotel in lower Manhattan's Battery Park City around 4 a.m. when a female friend reported the former New Jersey Nets player was acting suicidal, and the officers arrived to find a very scary situation. The 6-foot-10, 325-pound Williams appeared drunk and agitated, with empty bottles of prescription drugs strewn around his hotel suite and several suicide notes. Officers wasted no time in summoning the Emergency Services Unit, an elite team trained to deal with emotionally disturbed people. Those are the individuals who Tased Williams, marking the latest sad incident in the life of a former NBA All-Star who played nine seasons with the Nets and the Philadelphia 76ers before retiring in 2000. Now, no one remembers that he was a first-round pick in the 1990 NBA draft, named an All-Star and ranked second in the NBA for the 1997-98 season with 13 rebounds per game. All Williams is known for now is being the bad guy who tried to suggest that a limo driver who was shot and killed at his mansion committed suicide despite being shot with a shotgun. Add to that this latest frightening incident and well, this story appears headed for a very tragic ending more so than ever before……

- Oh, you wacky M.I.T. pranksters! You guys crack me up with your student pranks that end with a furious bomb squad from the Cambridge Police Department storming your campus and finding out that they were there for nothing. For some odd reason, Cambridge police were not quite as amused as I was (am) about a prank on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology campus in which a bomb squad was called to dispose of a suspicious object spotted outside a dormitory early Friday morning. Never mind the fact that the object turned out to be a harmless block of concrete disguised as a bomb. The bomb squad just couldn’t see the humor intended by a student group called the Burton Third Bombers when they put a faux explosive in front of the dormitory as a publicity stunt for a dance party they were hosting. “It looked like a cartoon bomb, like what you would see in Wylie Coyote, but clearly Cambridge Fire felt that they had to take due diligence and call in all of the Cambridge bomb squad to come check it out,” M.I.T. student Greg Steinbrecher said. What’s odd is that students said they told M.I.T. police the object was just a prank at 3 a.m., but two hours later police called the Cambridge Fire Department and then the Cambridge Bomb Squad to the scene. Unfortunately, the Burton Third Bombers backpedaled quickly from their antics, issuing an apologetic statement: “We understand our actions have resulted in significant havoc for… MIT police, and we regret wholly our failure to anticipate such an outcome… We did not intend to convey any threat or danger to the community.” Sorry to see you back down so easily, fellas. I would have expected more from an iconic group like the Burton Third Bombers……

- Tony Almeida has to be the most hated villain in all of television right now, but that’s great news for 24, as bad Tony makes from great TV. The hour began with Dr. Macer from the CDC on the scene with the FBI team searching for Robert Galvez, the Starkwood operative who stole the last canister of the Preon toxin from Starkwood’s bioweapon and is working with Tony. Dr. Macer gives Jack another injection to calm his symptoms from exposure to the toxin, then heads off to treat the FBI agents injured in the explosion that Tony and Galvez set up to kill them last episode. Those two scumbags are busy meeting up at a local motel where Galvez has been awaiting Tony’s arrival. Once Mr. Almeida arrives, he hands Galvez a piece of paper with the account and bank information to confirm the transfer of funds to Galvez’s account as payment for stealing the canister. However, Galvez decides that he wants more and pulls a gun on Tony after handing him a dummy bag that contains a phone book instead of the canister. A fight ensues in which Tony kills Galvez by suffocating him with a shower curtain. Moments later, Cara (the woman who posed as Jonas’ Hodges attorney last week and gave him his suicide pill) arrives and asks Tony to turn over the canister. He counters with a suggestion that rather than waiting six more months and using the canister to produce more of the toxin, the organization he and Cara work for should strike now and take advantage of the opportunity that Hodges and Starkwood have created. Cara is receptive to the idea, but the decision isn’t hers to make. She convenes the various members of this shadowy cabal - all CEOs of large private security firms - via an online conference call in which everyone’s voice is disguised to protect their identity. While the debate rages on, Cara IMs Alan Wilson, one of the leaders of the group. She begs him to weigh in on the debate and when he does, he appears to have the most clout. He agrees with Tony’s plan to strike in a few hours and pin the attack on an Arab immigrant, Jibraan Al-Zarian, who will be found dead at the scene. The plan is put into motion when Tony, Cara and two other men go to Al-Zarian’s D.C.-area apartment and kidnap him. Of course, Al-Zarian is targted only because he’s Arabic. He has no ties to any terrorist groups and is basically serving as a parent for his younger brother because their parents were killed in a U.S. airstrike near the Pakistani border. Tony’s crew cuts the power, allowing him to sneak through the dark and capture Al-Zarian. Capturing Tony is now priority No. 1 for Jack, who ends up on a conference call with Renee Walker and President Taylor to explain what’s going on in the search for the canister. When Jack admits that Galvez escaped, the president informs him that when Hodges was arrested, he alluded to a larger conspiracy bigger than him. Taylor believes that this could be that conspiracy and also informs Jack that Hodges attempted suicide while being transported to the FBI field office. He survived the attempt and is alive and under heavy guard at West Arlington Hospital. No one knows he’s alive because that would put him in danger and prevent the government from extracting any information from him. To that end, Jack demands to go to the hospital and question Hodges. Armed with a promise that the government will make it appear that he is in fact dead and place him into the witness protection program. Hodges reluctantly confesses that he doesn’t know the names of the others in the conspiracy and that all his dealings with them were conducted through an intermediary, a woman whose name he doesn’t know. Jack immediately calls the president and requests that the old CTU servers be recommissioned and taken out of federal storage to assist in tracking down those responsible for the conspiracy. He believs that their best tactical move is to strike immediately, so finding them is vital. The president agrees and as the serves are rolled out of storage and set up in the FBI offices, Jack calls Chloe in to assist with the operation. Never mind that hse was arrested for helping him the day before and subsequently released, she agrees to come back in and for his efforts, she’s greeted with the news that Tony Almeida is in fact a traitor .Chloe also notices Jack’s worsening condition, but he lies and tells her that he’s fine. That lie is soon unmasked when Jack becomes irritated and analyst Janis Gould’s continual whinng about breaking federal laws and breaching protocol by conducting the search and surveillance for the operation using the old CTU servers. He snaps at Gould that, “President Palmer ordered the recommissioning of these servers, is that going to be good enough for you?” As Jack storms away, an alarmed Chloe notices that Jack said President Palmer’s name instead of President Taylor’s and did so twice. Jack and Chloe also give a briefing to the FBI team working the operation as to the current threat they are facing. They can offer no specifics, but tell the agents that they need to look for fabricated evidence that would offload blame for the attacks, which is believed to be the new plan for the conspirators. The last key storyline for the episode centers on Olivia Taylor, the president’s chief of staff/daughter who is enraged at the notion of Jonas Hodges, the man at the head of the conspiracy that led to her brother’s murder and her father’s shooting, receiving a pardon. She bristles and drags her feet when reviewing the pardon agreement and goes so far as to engage Secret Service agent Aaron Pierce in a conversation about how awful the pardon is. After Aaron leaves, Olivia calls Martin Collier, a hardball political consultant she's worked with before. Because he once told her there’s no problem that can’t be handled, she wants his help now. They arrange a face-to-face meeting, seemingly related to retribution against Jonas Hodges. Overall, a pretty riveting hour and another reason why 24 is having the best season of any show I watch regularly…….

- Nice to see that one year into his tenure at the University of Michigan, head football coach Rich Fraud-riguez is still creating that welcoming, family atmosphere that has players itching to transfer away from UM as quickly as possible. Last year, offensive lineman Justin Boren waited all of one month after Fraud-riguez took over the program to transfer to Michigan’s most bitter rival, Ohio State. Other players followed his example and a depleted UM team posted an oh, so inspiring 3-9 record in Fraud-riguez’s first year. Now, the program has taken another hit with redshirt freshman quarterback Steven Threet, a who started eight games for Michigan last season, deciding to transfer to Arizona State. Supposedly, Threet wanted to fit into a pro-style offense after having been previously enrolled at both Georgia Tech and Michigan. Yeah, either that or he hated playing for Fraud-riguez and wanted to go play for a coach he didn’t hate. Heck, Fraud-riguez is so hard up for talent at the quarterback position that he’s offering a possible scholarship to former Duke University point guard Greg Paulus to come in and be the Wolverines’ signal caller for his one remaining season of eligibility. Normally I’d say that I hate to see bad things happen to a good guy, but Fraud-riguez definitely isn’t a good guy and there could never be enough bad things happening to such a classless, soul-less a-hole…….

- I’m not sure how to feel about Fox standing alone as the only Big 4 network that will not reconfigure its May sweeps programming to accommodate President Obama's Wednesday-night news conference — his fourth prime-time appearance since taking office. On one hand, I love anyone sticking it to The Man and I especially hate my regular programming being interrupted by some hour-long snooze-fest in which a political figure says nothing of note and nothing they couldn’t have told us before prime time. That being said, Fox isn’t refusing on the grounds of having quality programming that it doesn’t want to interrupt. Rather than air a news conference marking Obama’s 100th day as POTUS, Fox will stick with its scheduled line-up of Lie to Me followed by the American Karaoke results show. And yes, my main objection there is the American Karaoke part of the equation. Simon, that nut-job Paula and than man-blouse-wearing, tip-frosting freak show Seacrest aren’t worthy of usurping anyone’s TV time, not President Obama, Billy Mays are the Cash 4 Gold people. “The Fox Broadcasting Company will not air the Presidential News Conference on Wednesday, April 29 at 8 pm/ET,” Fox said in a statement. The network will make the news conference available on Fox News Channel and the Fox Business Network, so they’re not telling the Commander in Chief to f’off entirely. I’ve been weighing this topic over and over, trying to decide if a solid anti-authority stance and protection of the viewer’s right to watch something that they’d much rather see is enough to cancel out American Karaoke’s negative karma and to be honest, I think it is. I’d much rather Fox air a test pattern for an hour (which would do less to set back the musical world than AK), but I’ll overlook the choice of programming in this case because nothing in this world is more fun than sticking it to The Man……

Heroes and Greek recaps, a shady sheriff in Florida and idiots claim to see God in backyard rock formations

- Last night was probably the funniest and funnest episode of Greek so far this season. Watching the laughs unfold as Rusty and Dale both tried to hole up in their off-campus apartment to avoid difficult situations outside those apartment walls was great. When Rusty noticed that Dale hadn’t left the apartment except to go to class for more than two weeks, he decided to do something about it. Of course, those efforts had ulterior motives because Rusty wanted some alone time at the apartment so he could avoid having to be on campus and at the Kappa Tau house to see KT pledge and his KT little bro Andy with his new girlfriend, Rusty’s crush Jordan. First, Rusty enlists the help of his RA from freshman year and current boyfriend of his sister Casey, Max. Together, they stage an intervention at the apartment to attempt to talk Dale into leaving once in a while. The talk backfires and Rusty moves on to Plan B: passive-aggressive tactics. That means inviting more than a dozen of his KT brothers over to the apartment in the hopes of making Dale so uncomfortable that he leaves. This plan actually backfires in two ways: first, Dale makes the best of things and turns into the ultimate party host, making nachos and cookies for the KT visitors. Rusty ends up being the one who can’t handle the clamor and calls it a night. When he wakes up in the morning, the second facet of his plan backfiring happens right away. At exactly 7:59 a.m., the manager of the apartment complex stops by to show a couple of possible tenants around. Rusty and Dale’s place is the model apartment for the complex, so she brings the visitors to the door and when Rusty enters, Sheila is horrified to see the mess inside. KT brothers, empty beer bottles and food are literally everywhere. She informs Rusty and Dale that they have violated the terms of their lease and must be out of the apartment by the end of the day. Of course, Casey’s name is on the lease so she’s also affected. To that end, Rusty and Casey decide that their best plan to avoid eviction is to use the one bargaining chip they have with Sheila: her cougar crush on Dale. They pimp him out by sending him in to Sheila’s office to beg for a second chance. Sheila agrees to give Rusty and Dale another apartment in the building because she’s obviously hot for Dale, which clearly makes his purity-pledge-making self very nervous. Rusty also has to face his fears later in the day when he attends a mixer at Dobler’s and admits to Cappie that he’s been avoiding to KT house because of not wanting to see Andy and Jordan together. He then walks to the end of the bar where Andy and Jordan are hanging out and does his best to be friendly, although the preview for next week would suggest that those efforts are short-lived. But most of the action this week centered on the female side of the show, where Jordan was having a tough time blending in as a Zeta Beta pledge. As her big sister, Casey notices the trouble and tries to make Jordan fit in by showering her with ZBZ love. But when Jordan elects not to hang around to watch Dancing With the Stars with the rest of the pledges, ditches a ZBZ event at Dobler’s and gives away a special ZBZ heirloom (a stuff cat that has been passed down from big sister to little sister for 15 years) to a group of Omega Chi pledges doing a scavenger hunt and in need of an item with sorority letters on it, Casey and Ashleigh decide to ramp their efforts up. They give Jordan a makeover after she admits to being a bit of a tomboy and not having many girl friends. She hates the new look and ends up de-pledging that night at Dobler’s, electing to leave with KT brother Beaver to go back to the KT house and watch Tango & Cash with the guys. Losing a pledge hurts Casey, especially when it comes in the midst of the latest battle between the ZBZ’s and their traitorous former president Frannie, who jumped ship to start her own sorority, Iota Kappa Iota. Frannie’s continual barbs about being the best sorority on campus lead Casey to suggest a competition between the two: a karaoke contest. Losing Jordan and hearing about how the only real girl friends she had were on her old softball team, Casey decides to change the contest to dodgeball in the hopes of winning Jordan back into the ZBZ fold. The ploy works after a spirited ZBZ-IKI dodgeball game in which Jordan is the winning player for ZBZ by eliminating Frannie, the last IKI player. So Casey gets her pledge back, but Frannie’s problems run deeper than losing a dodgeball game. She’s trying to make things work with cheating boyfriend and Omega Chi president Evan Chambers, who threw it in her face last episode that he’s cheating with some local townie. In spite of that, Frannie wants to keep the “business relationship” going between her sorority and his fraternity, even if that means keeping up the appearance that they are still a couple. Evan agrees to still have a social relationship between the two of them and their organizations, but doing so leads to him finding out an interesting truth about Frannie. She admits that her own mother was a trust fund baby like him and passed up the chance for a life of luxury to marry her musician father, who turned around and left them. Frannie wonders if her mother made the right choice, but even this common ground isn’t enough to keep she and Evan together as a couple. Overall, a really fun episode and aside from a dearth of good Cappie moments, it was a winner……….

- First things first: I watched several hours of the NFL Draft over the weekend. I caught the first round, when all of the elite players went and took the next step toward becoming multimillionaires. I was there for the 256th and final pick, when kicker Ryan Succop became “Mr. Irrelevant” by being picked with the last pick of the seventh and final round of the draft. I enjoyed all of the analysis of the picks, especially everyone ripping the Oakland Raiders for what might be the worst draft of all-time. However……enough is enough. Typically, getting overloaded and saturated with a sporting event happens before it occurs, like the relentless hype for a big game that never lives up to its advanced billing. In this case, it happened in the aftermath of the event. I’m pointing the finger at every network - mostly ESPN - and sports Web site that had draft stories non-stop not only during the draft on Saturday and on the day after, but even when Monday rolled around. These knobs are busy breaking down every draft pick from 1-256 and trying to pretend like they can even begin to evaluate this draft right after it happened. Look, I realize that in today’s media culture, instant reaction and analysis are all the rage and that debating or grading everything that anyone in sports does is a given, but let’s face facts here. We’re one year out from the 2008 draft and we still don’t have a full grasp on how teams performed there, so why do I need such excruciatingly detailed breakdowns of draft picks for two straight days AFTER THE DRAFT? There were plenty of other things going on in sports, in case you missed it. The NBA and NHL playoffs roll on, Major League Baseball is going strong and honestly, all three of them are more relevant than three consecutive days of draft coverage……..

- I haven’t been giving out a “Tool of the Week” award, but I may have to start on account of Paul Grayhek, a man in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho who says he has seen a massive hand of God in his life in the form of a rock formation he dubbed the "Hand of God Rock Wall.” I’m not cracking faith of religion at all, but merely tools who claim that they see God in a rock formation, a tree, a pile of grass clippings, etc. These people are idiots and they’re the ones that non-Christians mock when they go looking to make fun of organized religion. Fact is, God didn’t appear to Paul Grayhek in a rock formation and if he did, I’m fairly certain he wouldn’t be cool with Grayhek whoring that rock formation out to the highest bidder on eBay. The hand-like formation, approximately 9 feet tall and 4 feet wide, appeared in Grayhek's backyard after a rockfall during Lent on March 8 - at least that’s the story he’s selling. Now, he’s willing to sell you his little backyard miracle - assuming you can beat the current high bid of $250 early Sunday, with three days left to go in the auction. “I prayed between licking my wounds and looking for a job," he said. “We rarely get rockfalls and this formation is 20 feet from my house. It's definitely a symbol of the hand of God in my life.” But wait, it gets better! Should you win this auction, you won't actually be getting the rock formation. No, it will stay exactly where it is and all you’ll receive are the “complete and exclusive rights" to the rock, including literary and movie rights.” In other words, when this rock formation is starring opposite Vin Diesel or becomes a key character in the next “Twilight” book, you’ll have a huge payday (ironically, the rock formation probably has better acting skills than Vin Diesel). And what does Grayhek plan to do after ripping off some poor sucker for a few hundred bucks? He says he plans to use the money from the sale to pursue an unpaid internship in counseling when he graduates with a master's degree in social work in two years. “People think I'm some holier-than-thou person trying to get rich. I'm not," Grayhek said. "The purpose is to spread the story of God and eBay is just a vehicle.” No, the purpose is to give people something to mock and someone to serve as the butt of their jokes and you definitely fit the bill. So thanks for that, if not for anything else…….

- I loves me a good law enforcement corruption scandal. After all, who can’t get with the idea of those who are supposed to be upholding and enforcing the law being every bit as corrupt as the criminals they’re looking to take down? So when I hear tales of stolen bonuses, a trip to Las Vegas and illegal financial transactions by a sheriff, you know how pumped up I’ll be. Okaloosa County Sheriff Charles "Charlie" Morris was arraigned late last week on counts of federal conspiracy, theft and money laundering. Morris and his former administrative director, Teresa Adams, are alleged to have run a kickback scheme in which they gave fictitious bonuses to sheriff's department employees, who were then directed to return some or all of the bonus money to them via cash or cashier's check. The employees were reportedly told the money would be given to charity. Of course, that isn’t where the money went - not by a long stretch. A joint investigation by the FBI and IRS found that after the sheriff handed out $194,002 in bonuses, $115,500 was returned in kickbacks. Morris and Adams gave bonuses to 15 employees ranging from $3000 to $15,000, with kickbacks ranging from $1000 to $12,000. “It was further part of this conspiracy that the accounting entries and payroll records… pertaining to the employees who received these illegal bonus payments with subsequent kickback payments were falsified so as to conceal from auditors' review the nature and degree of the kickbacks ultimately received” by the sheriff, according to the indictment. Appropriately enough, the sheriff was apprehended by federal agents during a trip to Las Vegas. A federal indictment was returned against them last week. They are expected to be arraigned on the charges this morning in federal court. Better still, he’s the president of the Florida Sheriffs Association, he's been in office for 12 years and was just re-elected. Hmm, wonder if the good voters of Okaloosa County would like to have a do over on that…..I think so. Still, don’t let them tell you anything other than that you are a perfect example of what law enforcement in many corners of this country is all about, Sheriff Morris. And yes, that is very much true……..

- Well, this “season” (splitting your fall and spring into two truncated, 12-episode blocs and calling them each a season is lame, but Heroes insists on doing it) of Heroes may have done a crap-tacular job of keeping all of its principal characters on screen on a regular basis, but at least they all met up for the final scenes of the season. Washington was the point of convergence for all roads, with Nathan Petrelli at the center of the drama. He returned at the end of last week’s episode to confront Sylar, who now possesses the power to shape-shift into Nathan’s likeness. Of course, Nathan began this week out cold after being tranquilized by Emile Danko last week. This week began with Sylar apparently rising from the dead after Danko thought he’d offed him by putting a knife in what was supposed to be the one vulnerable spot on Sylar’s body, right in the back of the head at the base of the skull. Sylar stands up, informs Danko that his shape-shifting power allowed him to move that spot to a different part of his body and proceeds to levitate Danko and pin him against the wall. He also drags Nathan’s limp body into the bathroom of Nathan’s office and when Danko’s team of agents shows up, Sylar transforms into Danko and shoots at them, taking out two men. Once the agents believe that Danko has turned on them, Sylar morphs into Agent Taub again and helps them apprehend the man who used to be their fearless leader. Danko is taken into custody and hauled off to a holding cell at Building 26. He’s soon met there by H.R.G., who was just outside of Arlington, Va. with his adopted daughter Claire and Angela Petrelli and heading back to D.C. when they passed a contrusction crew on the highway that gave H.R.G. pause. A mile past the construction site, he pulls over and informs Angela and Claire that the construction was fake and that a team of agents will be waiting at a roadblock half a mile ahead. He directs both of them to get out of the car and make the rest of the trip into the city on foot. He goes ahead on his own and sure enough, he’s apprehended at the roadblock and taken to Building 26. Angela and Claire make it safely into the city and to the Senate office building. There, Claire goes to find Nathan while Angela heads her own way to look for Matt Parkman. She has had a dream about Nathan being in danger and in her dream, Parkman was the one who saved Nathan. Angela finds Parkman getting off a bus, fresh from California. He’s hesitant to even hear her offer until Angela assures him that his goal of shutting down Danko’s operation once and for all and her quest to save her son aren’t mutually exclusive. Meanwhile, Claire arrives at Nathan’s office and is greeted by Sylar posing as Nathan. He’s able to keep her guessing as to if he’s the real Nathan by using his power (gleaned from Angela Petrelli, oddly enough) to see an object’s entire history simply by touching it to touch Claire’s necklace and talks about several of Nathan and Claire’s recent experiences together. Sylar/Nathan is on his way out to meet with the president after the president makes an important speech at a nearby auditorium. Claire goes along and when they arrive, the president’s chief of staff greets them and directs them to a private viewing room to wait for the president after his speech. Around the same time, Peter Petrelli finds his way to D.C. and shows up at Nathan’s office to find his still-groggy brother on the bathroom floor. After rousing Nathan, Peter gets the scoop on what’s happening and off the brothers Petrelli go in an attempt to stop Sylar. Things are also heating up at Building 26, where Hiro and Ando are launching their attack. After suffering a nose bleed last week when using his power to stop time, Hiro nonetheless stops time again and he and Ando make their way inside the building. They happen upon the room where H.R.G and Danko are being held and open the door, only to decide that’s not what they’re looking for. They hit up the operations center next and hack into security to find out where all the prisoners are being held. That leads them to the lab where all of the sedated prisoners are and gives Hiro and idea: while time is still stopped, he and Ando free all of the prisoners and put all the agents in their places, with hoses up their noses to sedate them for a change. With that done, Hiro unfreezes time and all of the prisoners are able to get out. However, when Mohinder Suresh is freed and sees Hiro’s weakened condition, he urges him not to use his abilities anymore. Meanwhile, Danko and H.R.G. are also able to escape their holding cell and make good on their plan to go after Sylar. The plan lasts all of a few minutes, right up until Dank tries to use one of the tranquilizers supposedly for Sylar on H.R.G. Hiro intervenes just in time, stopping time and saving H.R.G. by tranq-ing Danko. That allows H.R.G. to get away and get to the auditorium where the president is speaking. On the way there, he calls Claire and is horrified when Sylar morphs into her, answers the call and then reveals his true identity. While everyone converges on the auditorium, Sylar uses the puppeteer skills he stole from Erik Doyle to force Claire to do his every wish, including pouring them some wine and listening as he creepily muses about how alike they are and how that she might some day come to love him rather than want to kill him. Claire vows to never stop trying to kill him, but for the time being, killing Sylar is the task of Nathan and Peter. They show up and storm the room, touching off a ferocious battle. Ultimately, it’s Nathan and Sylar who take flight and do battle in the air, with Sylar winning and slicing open Nathan’s throat after they tumble back into the room they took off from. With Nathan dead, Sylar morphs into him and leaves, declaring that, “Claire is gonna be so mad at me.” Moments later, Angela and Parkman arrive with H.R.G. and find Nathan dead. Angela is crushed, but things aren’t as bleak as they look. When Sylar morphs into the president’s chief of staff and goes with the presidential party as they leave the building, he steps inside the president’s limo and shakes the hand of the Commander in Chief, expecting that doing so will allow him to then morph into the president whenever he wants. That doesn’t exactly happen; it turns out that Peter stole Sylar’s morphing ability during their fight and is posing as the president. He jabs a dose of tranquilizer in a stunned Sylar’s neck, rendering him unconscious. Sylar’s body is then taken back to the same room where he killed Nathan and Angela and H.R.G. come up with an interesting solution. They convince Parkman to use his mind-control powers to force Sylar to believe that he is Nathan on a permanent basis, wiping away all of memories of his life as Sylar. The ploy works, as Sylar awakes, morphs into Nathan and lives as him. The entire group then returns to Coyote Sands, where a funeral pyre is erected. On the pyre, the body of James Martin is placed. Martin is, of course, the shape shifter from whom Sylar took his power and the one whom Danko and Sylar uses as a Sylar double in their attempt to fool H.R.G. into thinking that the real Sylar was dead. Now, Parkman, Angela and H.R.G. use him to fool everyone else. The plan seems to work and after a few moments watching the body burn, everyone turns to go their separate ways. The fourth season ends that way and as per Heroes custom, we saw a quick look at the beginning of the fifth season. In it, Angela visits Nathan/Sylar at his Senate office and as they are headed out to lunch, Nathan/Sylar stops, walks over to a small clock on a shelf and declares that it’s a minute and a half fast. He adjusts it, then walks out to go to lunch. The subtle, yet terrified look on Angela’s face tells the story: Sylar is still lurking inside somewhere. Elsewhere, a former Building 26 agent returns to his apartment and finds a clogged sink is leaking water all over his floor. He checks it out, but the water flows into his living room and comes together in the form of none other than Tracy Strauss. She informs him that he’s “No. 4” and the next scene shows a newspaper on Nathan’s desk with a headline story about the recent murders of four federal agents. So Tracy is back with a vengeance, Sylar is still lurking and who knows what else…..I do wonder where Micah (i.e. Rebel) is, but other than that, a solid finale………

A Lost lawsuit, the high cost of government paranoia and Gatorade with a really, really bad idea

- File this under the heading of “Let it go, already.” I don’t care if a football game between two high schools is known as the No. 1 high school rivalry in the United States. It could be the best rivalry of all-time in the world, but that doesn’t justify trying to go back in time to resurrect a 16-year-old game that ended in a tie to find out the “real winner.” In 1993, Phillipsburg High School and Easton Area High School left the football field without a clear winner: a 7-7 tie. Back then, there was no overtime in high school games, and clearly there are many participants from the game who can’t let it go and move on in life. “I didn't know how to feel, stopping the end of my high school career being on a tie,” said Bruce Lebitz, an inside linebacker for the 1993 Phillipsburg team. Whoever initiated the idea to restart the game, that person is a tool. Because of their idiocy, a bunch of grown men in their early 30s will be taking the field and looking to settle a score that probably none of them are in any condition to settle. They had a mere eight weeks to get back in game shape, all in the name of one last stab at glory in the feud between the Stateliners of Phillipsburg, New Jersey, and the Red Rovers of Easton, Pennsylvania. The two schools are separated by the Delaware River but connected by their bitter football feud, played on Thanksgiving Day since 1906. The winner walks away with "The Fork of the Delaware" trophy. “We're two blue-collar communities. A lot of factory workers, people like that, that have so much in common," said Steve Shiffert, a former coach for Easton. "I think that's what makes it so unique that for a couple of hours on Thanksgiving morning, then we consider ourselves different.” Back in 1993, Easton was heavily favored to win the game and scored the first touchdown. Phillipsburg immediately answered with a touchdown of its own and the game remained scoreless the rest of the way. With about five minutes left, Easton was lining up for what should have been a gimme field goal, and a Phillipsburg player blocked the kick. Oh, and it turns out that the idiot organizing the reunion game isn’t one person, but rather a company: Gatorade. Te sports beverage company announced that it was organizing a replay and somehow managed to sucker NFL stars Peyton and Eli Manning into serving as honorary coaches for the rival teams. Worse yet, 10,000 to the game were sold in 90 minutes. A local sports training facility has even been helping these out-of-shape dudes get used to working out and training again, but don’t expect that to prevent the dozen or two pulled hamstrings and groins and the one or two inevitable major injuries in this game. Bad idea all around, I feel sorry I even know about it…….

- Grow a sense of humor and a heart, officials at Fawn Elementary School in the Highlands District of Pittsburgh, Pa. Suspending five fourth-grade students on a weapons charge because they dared to bind two pencils together with tape and tie rubber bands around them to make their own sling shots, then used them to fire paper clips, hitting a teacher and three other students, is no reason to suspend anyone. A weapons charge? Is that what they call goofing off in class and showing a little ingenuity? No one was hurt in the “attack” and at worst, these kids should get detention or no recess for a week. I wholeheartedly sympathize with Melanie Chelko, who is the parent of one of the suspended students. “This was not a weapon to them. This was a toy.” Well said, Mel. Principal Kathi Shirey and her minions need to get over themselves and stop treating a bunch of kids goofing off like the world is currently treating North Korea for launching a long-range ballistic rocket. “Everyone uses pencils while in school, but you would never think someone would use them to create a weapon, but that's exactly how the district sees it," said the principal. Shirey said the accused students bound "It’s an object that could have caused serious injury." Shirey said. Melanie Chelko had a very different take, saying that the boys were merely seeing who could flip the paper clip the furthest. What amazes me is the absolute arrogance of Shirey and the powers that be at the school, who said the boys faced expulsion for a year, but considering their age, she said the district decided to be lenient. Lenient? I realize a one-day suspension isn’t going to ruin a kid’s life and that these five boys were probably thrilled to have a day off from school, but booting them for a day and taking away one of their scheduled field trips is still ridiculous. What’s next, expelling a kid who uses his fork to fling mashed potatoes across the lunch room and starts a food fight? Well played, idiots…….

- It’s very rare that a movie that is intentionally sentimental and emotional in its aim hits the mark and doesn’t cross the line into being cheesy and over the top, but “The Soloist” manages to do so. The film is based on the true story of reporter Steve Lopez of the Los Angeles Times meeting a homeless man on the street playing Beethoven on the last two strings on a fiddle. By now, this story has gotten enough attention that you know the rest: the homeless man isn’t performing for the public, but rather playing happily to himself in the shadow of Beethoven's statue in Pershing Square in Los Angeles. The guy tells Lopez that his name is Nathaniel Ayers and that he went to Juilliard. Ayers’ story checks out and Lopez writes about it, telling the world about a musical prodigy who grew up in the ghetto, earned a scholarship to Juilliard School to play the cello, battled schizophrenia, flunked out and 20 years later wound up pushing a shopping trolley up and down Grand Avenue, playing violin for the birds. The story touches the hearts of many readers, one of whom sent a cello to the paper. Lopez delivers it to Ayers and soon finds himself connecting with him on a personal level. Lopez sees Nathaniel as a project of sorts and wants to move to a community shelter take his meds and resume his lessons. Writers Susannah Grant and Joe Wright manage to avoid many of the clichés and movie truisms that such films often rely on, which helps the plot significantly. Robert Downey Jr. plays the role of Lopez well and does a solid job of allowing the hurt of his own losses - his wife and kids, who have left him - to shine through. His own belongings are in boxes, not all that different from Ayers and his shopping cart full of possessions. Jamie Foxx is excellent as Ayers, even if he does take an unneeded backseat to Downey in some scenes. Flashbacks to Ayers’ childhood tell much of his story, but they aren’t the best parts of the movie by far. At times, Lopez’s commitment to Ayers seems on tenuous ground, but the hurt of losing his family because of similar shortcomings seem to drive him onward. The film also sheds some light on the faces of the homeless, faces most of us are all too willing to ignore in real life. Wright shares those faces with us -- old and young, odd, beaten down by life, but very, very real. For a film that runs 109 minutes, “The Soloist” could be even longer and you still wouldn’t have a real problem. All in all, an excellent movie in theaters that are usually filled by really crappy ones……

- What is the price of unjustified paranoia? For the taxpayers of Maricopa County, Ariz., the answer is two easy payments of $7,300. That’s what it would take to pay off the $14,600 bill that county leaders ran up by searching their offices for listening devices twice in the last six months. Maricopa County officials spent $10,000 to sweep the 10th-floor offices of the Maricopa County Administration Building last December, then doled out another $4,600 for a second security sweep in February. Yes, officials in Maricopa County clearly believe that the Mafia is operating in their area or that their county is the target of major terrorist organizations, because otherwise they’d look very foolish for wasting that sort of cash. But sadly, the explanation is much simpler and even more moronic than that. Board of Supervisors Chairman Max Wilson said county employees feared they were being spied on by Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas and Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Yes, they worried that the county attorney and sheriff were spying on them. According to Wilson, those fears stemmed from Thomas’s indictment of Supervisor Don Stapley last December. Look, I realize that Arpaio is a blowhard, media whore of a law enforcement official who loves the cameras and is purposely controversial much of the time, but bugging the county offices? Seems a little ridiculous. Even so, said then-board chairman Andrew Kunasek signed off on the searches and did so at a time when supervisors have asked every county department to cut its budget to make up for an approximately $56 million budget shortfall in fiscal year '09 - '10. “It was to reduce tension so people could go right on functioning and doing their job,” Wilson said. “I think under the circumstances with what there concerns was ...that they did what they thought was right.” Huh? People were so badly rattled by one indictment that they couldn’t function in their jobs? Sounds like firing these nervous Nellies or getting them some serious psychological counseling may have been the more appropriate route. Of course, no bugs were found and now the officials have a very pissed off county attorney and sheriff watching their every move even more closely……..

- Apparently the crash survivors haven’t been the only thing lost on ABC’s hit drama Lost, not if you believe the claims in a lawsuit filed by a former member of the show’s production crew. The woman claims she was sexually harassed by Lost cast member Henry Ian Cusick (who plays Desmond Hume) and subsequently fired from the crew. According to the lawsuit, filed Friday in Los Angeles, Cusick fondled the plaintiff's buttocks and breasts and kissed her on the lips while working on Lost in October 2007. The woman, who was a production crew member at the time, claims she reported the incident to her supervisor, only to be told to avoid contact with Cusick. Twelve days later, the suit alleges that she was fired in an act of retaliation for reporting the incident. She has clearly decided that she has enough of a case to pursue it in court. Both Cusick and the network are named as plaintiffs in the suit, a suit I certainly hope isn’t true. It’s not that I don’t want one of my favorite shows dragged down by a legit claim of abuse; I just hope that Cusick isn’t enough of a scumbag to do what he’s alleged to have done. If he did, then this woman has every right to expect a hefty settlement from both he and the network. Also, if Cusick did what he’s accused of, he needs to apologize profusely and see if his hefty Lost salary can help him buy some class and common human decency. So far, the network, Cusick himself and his agent have yet to comment, so for now the allegations are all we have……..

The right way to handle a reunion, a political leader who is eerily like Bubba Clinton and a trio of former Jacksonville Jaguar receivers/crackheads

- If only I had a time machine, I can tell you the first place I’d go: back to 2005, where I’d be stopping in regularly on the wide receiver meetings for the NFL’s Jacksonville Jaguars. No, it’s not that the 2005 Jaguars were an all-time great team or even that they had one of the best receiving corps in the history of the NFL. No, I’d want to be in those meetings because there’s a pretty high probability that being in those meetings would have led to me seeing one or more NFL players snort or ingest some blow. See, it may not have been known in 2005 that the Jaguars’ receiving corps was comprised of several coke heads, but in the past foru years we’ve learned the truth. Most NFL teams carry five or six receivers on their active roster during the season, so the fact that in the past year, three receivers from that 2005 team have been arrested for possession of coke is noteworthy. Matt Jones and Reggie Williams, both of whom were let go by the Jaguars after the 2008 season, chalked up their crack possession arrests a year ago and two months ago, respectively. But it was until two days ago that former Jacksonville Jaguars wide receiver Jimmy Smith was pulled over by the Florida Highway Patrol and found with crack cocaine and marijuana in his car. Smith, who played 10 seasons for Jacksonville, was pulled over on Interstate 95 in Jacksonville for excessive window tint on his 2009 Mercedes Benz. For some odd reason, the cop who pulled him over became suspicious when the inside of the car smelled like burnt marijuana. Always a bad idea to burn so much weed that your car reeks of it and the cops have all the reason they need to search your car. It’s an even worse idea when inside your car are crack cocaine, marijuana and a business card with powder cocaine residue. Uh-oh! Smith faces multiple drug charges, plus a charge of driving with a suspended license. All in all, a horrific day for him, but it would be a great day for me - if I only had that time machine. With Smith becoming third current or former Jaguars receiver to be busted for crack possession and all of them playing together in 2005, it would have been like a freaking drug supermarket in the Jags’ locker room. Whether you needed blow, a rock of crack or some hippie lettuce, you would have been able to find what you needed. I just feel sorry for the Jaguars’ receivers coach in 2005, because coaching three confirmed crack heads couldn’t have been easy……

- Oh no he didn’t…..actually, yes he did. A Saudi man really did divorce his wife by text message and even worse, a court upheld the texted divorce as legal. The man was in Iraq when he sent the SMS informing her she was no longer his spouse. He followed up with a telephone call to two of his relatives, which I would have loved to listen in on. “Hey bro, what up? You just divorced your wife? By text message? Cool, how is the weather in Iraq?” When the matter came before a court in the Red Sea city of Jeddah, you might think that the judges would reject the legality of divorcing one’s spouse by tapping out a quick text on the ol’ Blackberry, but no. They finalized the split -- the first known divorce in Saudi Arabia by text message -- after summoning the two relatives to check they had received word of the husband's intention. In other words, you can use whatever means you want to ditch your wife, just as long as you tell two relatives what you’re up to. Then again, that is the law in Saudi Arabia, which practices a strict form of Islamic Sharia law, Under the law, clerics preside over Sharia courts as judge and a man can divorce his wife by saying "I divorce you" three times. I believe that’s also the law that Elizabeth Taylor lives under, but maybe I’m mistaken. In the end, this divorce may not even matter. The Saudi man was in Iraq to participate in "what he described as 'jihad',” and if we’ve learned anything about jihad in the Middle East, those waging it often end up going home one way - in a body bag………..

- Some of Andrea Wachner’s former high school classmates may have an issue with her sending a stripper in her place to their 10-year high school reunion, but not me. Wachner didn’t want to go back and see her old schoolmates, not when her answer to the inevitable question of "What do you do?" would be answered with, “I’m a freelance comedy writer.” Instead of paying a lot of money to go back and eat a crappy meal in a room full of people she didn’t like ten years ago and hasn’t talked to since, Wachner elected to hire a stripper to go in her place and filmed a documentary about the whole experiment. “I Remember Andrea" wasn't picked up by the film festivals this go-around, but Wachner did find a manager who took interest in her project. They are shopping it around as a reality TV show or a narrative feature. Some of you may have a lot of fond memories of high school and look back at it as the best time in your lives - you are morons. For most people, high school is best described as Wachner describes it: brutal. Her four years of high school in her hometown, Palos Verdes, weren’t memorable and so if she wanted to send scantily dressed woman named Cricket to her reunion, so be it. Unfortunately, some of her classmates don’t have a sense of humor or the ability to remove that giant stick from up their asses, so when Wachner posted clips on YouTube from her 40-minute documentary, there was a bit of outrage. “There's definitely a contingency of people who hate me because of this,” she said. Hmm, perhaps that has to do with the fact that Palos Verdes in an upper class community for Los Angeles' professional set and rich people don’t like to be embarrassed. On the day of the reunion, Wachner brought a crew, two cameramen and a sound technician to the Marriott Hotel in Torrance, Calif., and set up near the festivities. She also brought her yearbook to aid in identifying the attendees. Cricket showed up in a burlesque outfit: fishnets, a tight black dress that resembled a slip, and tall black spike-heeled boots. She rocked multiple tattoos and short jet-black hair, accented with a purple flower. All of the other attendees were in formal attire, so it was quite a contrast. Cricket and Andrea had met in Jumbo's Clown Room in Hollywood, Calif., where Cricket danced and performed balancing acts. Still, Wachner had to find a way to explain the presence of cameras and microphones to the attendees, so she had Cricket tell the alums that they were filming a documentary about artists called "Work to Live, Live to Work." Wachner communicated with Cricket through an earpiece the entire time, coaching her on what to say and how. Cricket told the reunion attendees that she'd had reconstructive surgery and also suffered from amnesia. At the end of the night came the coup de grace, a striptease performed to what Cricket described as "one of the worst songs of the '90s," Lisa Loeb's "Stay." Cricket took a chair to the dance floor and began stripping, pulling off her top, and then her skirt, revealing her underwear. Several of the alums clapped, some screamed and some laughed. One woman ran up to Cricket and stuffed a bill in her panties. While she danced, the earpiece Wachner had been using to communicate with her, but no one noticed. It was at this point that the wet blankets working for hotel security put an end to the fun. The hotel said it didn’t want footage of someone dancing scandalously in its ballroom. But the bigger uproar came once Wachner threw up her YouTube clips, at which point her old classmates were made to look like the colossal asses that many of them appear to be………..

- This season has not gone the way the New York Yankees had hoped, not in any sense. Their new stadium is a band box that yields more home runs per game than any venue in baseball, their overpriced roster is underperforming at an alarming rate and fans just aren’t spending ridiculous amounts of jack for tickets at the new Yankee Stadium. While four to five homers per game fly out of the yard and high-priced free agent signees like CC Sabathia, A.J. Burnett and Mark Teixeira have subpar starts to the season, the most glaring issue might just be the scores of empty seats at the new ballpark. The issue is glaring enough that commissioner Bud Selig is answering questions about it. Selig the teams will discuss the ticket situation, but that it was not an issue for Major League Baseball to decide. “They're going to discuss it, and whatever adjustments they want to make, they should make," Selig said. "I wouldn't be presumptuous talking about what they should or shouldn't do.” To me, this is just one more example of the arrogance of the Yankees on display. In spite of the brutal economic times and the fact that people have less and less discretionary income to spend on things like tickets to baseball games, the Yankees are charging $500-$2,625 for Legends Suite tickets in 25 sections at the new Yankee Stadium in the first nine rows around the infield, an area that contains 1,895 seats. The only game for which those seats were mostly full was the April 16 opener. However, they were more than half-empty for the remaining five games on the homestand and even worse, some entire sections were unfilled. “Hal Steinbrenner did say a couple of weeks ago that he thought that, you know, they may have overpriced tickets and they'll look at it. Well, good for him," Selig said of the Yankees managing general partner. This isn’t a problem exclusive to the Yankees, as the 30 teams in Major League Baseball were averaging 29,612 fans per game through Wednesday, which is down 5 percent from a similar point last year. However, the Yankees are the only one of the 30 teams with a sparking, new $1.5 billion stadium that isn’t selling out. Things are so bad that even Major League Soccer commissioner Don Garber is taking shots at the Yankees. “It's incomprehensible that you watch a game, and there will be front row seats empty,” Garber said. Garber said the league's law firm had canceled its Yankees season tickets this year. His comments appear to have gotten under the skin of New York Yankees president Randy Levine, who showed how thin his skin is by firing back like an angry fifth grader at recess. “Don Garber discussing Yankee attendance must be a joke," Levine said Friday. "We draw more people in a year than his entire league does in a year. If he ever gets Major League Soccer into the same time zone as the Yankees, we might take him seriously. Hey Don, worry about Beckham, not the Yankees. Even he wants out of your league.” Ouch, a “Beckham wants out of your league blast, zing! True, but still unnecessary. You’re the New York Yankees, so why are you so sensitive to the comments of the commissioner of a league that isn’t even one of the major sports leagues in this country? Take a good, hard look in the mirror, R. Levine. Not only is your new stadium a bandbox that can't hold an average fly ball, not only can you not sell all of the seats, but you’re getting suckered into verbal sparring matches with the commissioner of Major League Soccer. Get ahold of yourself…..

- Did I miss Bill Clinton changing his name, moving to South America and becoming president of a small Spanish-speaking nation there? I must have, because the leader of a country being accused of knocking up three women outside of wedlock sure sounds like Bubba, doesn’t it? For now, I’ll go along with the ruse that this man is Paraguayan President Fernando Lugo. This week, a third woman came forward with an accusation that Lugo fathered a child with her out of wedlock. Damiana Moran, a teacher, said she is confident Lugo will recognize the paternity of the 16-month-old boy. “He has the will to take responsibility as it corresponds to the rights of the child,” she said. What’s amazing is that all three paternity claims against Lugo have come in the past three weeks and all come just eight months after he rose to power after spending years as a Roman Catholic bishop fighting for the rights of his poor parishioners. He’s already acknowledged being the father of a 2-year-old child conceived in the months before he stepped down as bishop. That admission came after the woman, Viviana Carrillo, filed suit seeking a paternity test. The second claim came on Monday, when Benigna Leguizamon came forward with her own paternity claim. She said her son was conceived in 2002, and that she was going public to help the 6-year-old boy, who is starting school. She has asked for a DNA test to establish paternity, and her lawyer is trying to position the case as such that if Lugo refuses to take the test, he’s basically admitting he’s the father. “The law presumed that he who does not take the DNA test accepts paternity," her lawyer, Sergio Park, said. As for Moran, she worked for Lugo's campaign and claims that she’s speaking out about the child to prevent the president's political opponents from exploiting the situation. “The most important thing for me ... is my political role ... with my community and with my society. ... (That) is what drove me to clarify this before this story is manipulated as it was with the two other women,” she said. I have to say, I’m impressed. This guy’s life changes drastically, his position shifts and he’s moving from place to place and yet he remains irrevocably consistent in one thing: he’ll hit that. And by that, I mean apparently any woman who will sleep with him. Lugo might literally rival Bubba Clinton in terms of mojo, but what’s funny is that dude was a bishop, a man of God. Guess it’s a good thing he got out of that particular line of work…….

A Prison Break recap, the limits of unlimited texting and I deny a feeble Florida State appeal

- DENIED! I can’t guarantee that will be the NCAA’s reply to a pathetic, feeble request from Florida State officials to please, please, please not strip victories from head football coach Bobby Bowden and other programs on campus because of an academic cheating scandal that involved dozens of athletes. As part of the NCAA sanctions announced last month, the school will suffer the loss of scholarships in 10 sports and a four-year probation the NCAA announced March 6, along with being forced to vacate all team and individual records for contests where the ineligible athletes competed. Florida State’s weak contention is that the penalty of forfeits in football and nine other sports was too harsh. “Even if this committee upholds the vacation penalty, it should not require the reconfiguration of the records of innocent head coaches," attorney William Williams wrote in the school's submission. BZZZZZZZZZZZ! Sorry counselor, but that was the sound of my “your defense is a ridiculous piece of sh*t” buzzer you just heard. Innocent head coaches? Nice try. Believe it or not, these coaches recruit players to come to their school and play for their program. When they do so, these coaches basically tether themselves to the players in a lot of senses. They base the success of their program on how these players perform on the field, but the players are still a part of the program when they are off the field. In order to compete and do so legally, players must stay academically eligible. If they aren’t, then any competition in which they participate must be forfeited - in every sense of the word. There is no splicing up a win and allowing the coach to keep his or her portion of it because he or she wasn’t the one who cheated on a test. Fact is, the coaching staff should and often does do a heavy amount of monitoring when it comes to the academic endeavors of players. They’re involved in all aspects of a player’s life and no formal 28-page written appeal by a private attorney representing the school will change that. Something tells me that if Bowden didn’t have 382 career wins -- one fewer than Penn State's Joe Paterno, the all-time major college leader, you wouldn’t be making this argument. Also, don’t pretend to give a damn about any of the other sports you are allegedly coming to the defense of with this futile appeal. This is about Bowden and giving him a shot at the record, plain and simple. Normally I don’t defend the tools at the NCAA, but in this case, their decision to force Florida State to surrender victories in games where ineligible student-athletes participated in the fall of 2006 and 2007 and spring of 2007 is the right one. None of FSU’s legal mumbo-jumbo changes the fact that dozens of student-athletes cheated through online testing for a single music history course in the fall of 2006 and the spring and summer semesters of 2007. Staffers helped students on the test and in one case asking one athlete to take it for another, after which these athletes competed for their respective teams. Game, set, match. Sorry FSU and attorney William Williams (who names their kid Williams with the last name Williams? Idiot.), but your appeal is DENIED…….

- I realize that Prison Break is winding down and that the series will soon be killed off, but is it too much to ask that the network pretend it actually gives a crap about what has been one of its best series for the past four years? There was so little promotional energy for this week’s episode that I nearly forgot it was on. Fortunately, I tuned in just in time for a fantastic episode that made me pissed all over again that the show is ending. As for the show…..all roads led to Miami. Michael and Sarah finally arrived in Miami and joined the motley crew led by Michael’s big brother Linc in looking for Scylla. Michael and Sarah had a place to stay courtesy of an old medical school friend of hers who keeps a condo in the city. From there, they went about trying to decipher the note recovered from the man who attacked them while they were trying to make their way through Arizona. Michael is able to pick out phrases that refer to him and the road in Arizona where the attempted abduction took place, but the second line of the note is confusing and refers to something called Rockwell. Some online searching turns up a Rockwell Boulevard in Miami and the sequence of numbers beside it on the note lead Michael and Sarah to a parking garage and to a specific parking space several floors up. There, they find a black Lincoln sedan and Michael picks the lock to get inside. The car appears ordinary, but a briefcase under one of the seats contains driving directions to the Everglades Municipal Airport and a gun. Coupled with the initials “V.S.” on the note, Michael and Sarah made the assumption that V.S. was flying into the airport and whoever was supposed to take the car was also supposed to pick up V.S. Off they head to the airport, but along the way a cell phone in the briefcase rings and when Michael answers it, he ends up talking to his mother for the first time since finding out that she’s alive. The conversation is very short and both parties hang up stunned to have talked to one another at all. Christina Scofield has been having a long day overall, having been working hard to find a buyer for Scylla now that she has the device in her possession. She makes a trip to the Indian Embassy. where she meets with the ambassador and pitches him a plan in which the revolutionary data and research contained on Scylla will help India create all sorts of amazing vaccines for its people and help them grow crops in previously unusable soil. To seal the deal, Christina wants the ambassador to give a speech detailing this new technology at a major scientific conference to take place in Miami the next day. The ambassador agrees after some harsh negotiating, but the scene has gotten more complicated in the few moments he’s spent considering the proposal. While Christina awaits his reply, word comes from her security that Linc, Mahone and Don Self have somehow broken into the embassy. Their path to the embassy began where last week’s episode ended: with the sniper who was trying to kill Linc in Miami when he tried to talk to his mother again to find out her plans for Scylla. The sniper has a clear shot, but Linc walks under a row of trees and out of sight, at which point things turn horribly wrong for the sniper. Mahone, Self and T-Bag are also in the area, looking out for Linc. Mahone has binoculars and spots the sniper from the street below, at which point he alerts the rest of the crew. T-Bag is the wheel man and speeds to the building where the sniper is while Mahone, Linc and Self go on foot. Mahone arrives first, ascends the stairs and shoots it out with the sniper, who manages to get past him and down the stairs. Mahone gives chase but the sniper is several flights ahead. He reaches the ground floor and looks to break out into the open when a nice shoulder tackle from Linc drops him. The sniper then turns knifer, stabbing Linc and making a run for it. T-Bag tries to knock him down with the SUV, but it turns out to be another car that hits the sniper. He falls to the ground and is dead almost instantly, much to the horror of the many onlookers. As sirens wail in the distance and the police approach, Linc and his crew snag the sniper’s cell phone and speed away. Back at their condo, the group takes the SIM card from the phone and tries to hack it to find out who the sniper was and who he was working for. General Krantz calls while they work and not-so-patiently informs Linc that he expects results in the form of retrieving Scylla by the end of the day. Using the SIM card, Mahone pulls off the most recent number the sniper called and after checking with the phone company, he’s able to use the information gathered to track that number. Following he signal leads the group to the streets of Miami and ultimately to the embassy, where they witness Christina and her security team getting out of their vehicles. Self then devises a plan to get inside, namely by having T-Bag make a colossal ass of himself to distract the security guards and allow the other three team members to sneak over the walls. T-Bag does his part, handcuffing himself to the gate and going on a rambling diatribe about how India abuses elephants. He ends up arrested, booted from the property and beaten up for his troubles, but the plan works. Self, Mahone and Linc get inside the embassy and try to find Christina. To that end, they change into fancy suits and attempt to blend in with the rest of the security guards. That part of the plan fails when one of Christina’s guards recognizes them, calls the sighting in over the radio and apprehends all three men. They are herded into a side room and forced down on their knees, with instructions to not move a muscle lest they be shot dead. A few minutes later, Mahone realizes that just as he, Linc and Self couldn’t afford to fire their guns inside the embassy lest the set off a major incident, Christina’s security is in the same spot. No one is going to kill them if they try to flee, so that’s what they do. By the time they escape, Christina is long gone but embassy security buys the lie that they are with her and one of the guards hands Linc a scrap of paper that Christina dropped. It has one notation: that a man named Sandinsky is arriving at 4:30 that afternoon. A phone call to the Company yields information on Sandinsky’s arrival at the Everglades Airport, sending Linc and his crew rushing there with only 15 minutes before Sandinsky lands. Michael and Sarah are already there and have managed to use a little misdirection ploy to distract the clerk working the reception desk so they can get a peek at the log of incoming flights. Sandinsky is set to arrive soon on a small private plane, but Michael and Sarah have no idea how many people will be waiting on him when he lands. In addition to Linc and his team, two of Christina’s men pull up outside the terminal while Michael scans the flight log, necessitating a change in plans. As he does so well, Michael improvises by going to the air traffic controller for the airport, pulling a gun on the man and forcing him to call the tower to direct Sandinsky’s flight to land on a different part of the runway than previously scheduled. Also, Michael forces the ATC to send an emergency vehicle out to meet the plane and to allow Sarah to ride in it. The vehicle zips across the runway as Sandinsky’s plane touches down and Michael follows it in the Lincoln. Christina’s men immediately recognize that something isn’t right and they rush across the runway in their own SUVs, arriving just as Michael and Sarah meet a deplaning Sandinsky and force him into their car. A nice high-speed chase ensues, but when a second vehicle joins the pursuit, Sarah runs out of places to go. Michael has been in the back seat questioning Sandinsky, but with the car surrounded by men with guns, the chase is up. Christina’s men take Sandinsky and are about to leave with gun shots ring out from across the tarmac. It’s Mahone, Linc and Self, who have just arrived on the scene. They shoot down all of the bad guys, then take Sandinsky for themselves. Linc, who earlier in the day refused a request to meet with his brother, finally comes face to face with Michael. “I told you to stay out of this,” he warns his little brother. Michael and Sarah must watch Sandinsky driven away and seemingly their chances of finding Scylla with him. Back at Linc and Co.’s condo, they question Sandinsky and find out that he’s a professor from Dartmouth who is in town to make a presentation at a conference the next day. He denies any knowledge of the Company or Christina Scofield, but he’s lying. Linc doesn’t know that, but Michael does. He managed to pick Sandinsky’s pocket in the midst of the car chase and take the professor’s Blackberry. On the phone are no less than 20 emails and calls between Sandinsky and Christina, so they are clearly working together. Michael calls the last number dialed from Sandinsky’s phone and once again finds himself talking to his mother. “How bad do you want him, Mom?” Michael asks. Before a stunned Christina can answer, Michael tells her that he’ll be in touch and hangs up. Meanwhile, Sarah sneaks off to the bathroom and finds out an answer to the question that’s hung over her all day, ever since she found a pregnancy test in the medicine cabinet upon arriving at the condo: is the pregnant. The test says yes, so it appears that Michael will soon be a father. All in all, a great episode and once again, more than good enough to royally piss me off that the show is ending……

- Just what are the limits of unlimited text messaging plans? Seems like a paradoxical question, but two men in Susquehanna Valley, Pa. decided to test the limits of their plan and the results seem to be murky at best. Nick Andes and Doug Klinger apparently had very little going in their lives and decided that the best use of their time would be to spend an entire month texting each other non-stop - at the office, in the car, even walking down the street. They both have unlimited plans, so what could go wrong? “Basically because of us being bored at work and just texting back and forth a bunch of times and we would try to bother each other,” said Andes. Ah, the “I’m bored at work so I’ll text my buddy thousands of times” line of reasoning, a true classic. Their normal practice of texting instead of working led the two men to go online and find out what the record was for sent and received texts. They found that the record belonged to a loser named Deepak Sharma, a man from India who logged 182,689 text messages in May 2005. “I think initially neither of us thought that the record was beatable; 182,000 texts is a lot of texts,” said Andes. But as with all great-yet-ridiculous efforts by guys to do things that are equally amazing and worthless, Andes and Klinger decided to make a run for the record and spent all of March texting. “With my phone I can set up 45 messages to go out at one time,” said Klinger. “I'd put my phone on silent and it would beep at me once the inbox was full and I'd clear the inbox and they would just keep coming,” said Andes. Oddly enough, sending that many text message got old quickly. By the time March came to a close, both men conceded that they were excited for it to end. When the smoke cleared and all of their inane texts were counted, the scoreboard read Idiots With Too Much Time 217,000, Common Sense 0. Andes and Klinger were pretty pleased with themselves - until Andes’ bill arrived, that is. He came home one day to find a box on his doorstep and inside were thousands of pages of all the text messages. The amount at the bottom of the bill: a staggering total of more than $26,000. “And I panicked, I called T-Mobile and I got their attention in a hurry. The lady asked how she can help me and I said, ‘If you pull up my account, you're going to know,’” said Andes. Fortunately for this loser, he has been assured by T-Mobile that t he will not have to pay the $26,000 bill. His phone is already showing his normal balance, but he said the representative told him it still must be cleared with corporate. The company says it has credited Andes’ account and returned it to its normal balance, but it is still investigating the matter. The explanation given to Andes was that the mix-up happened because when T-Mobile set up its system it had to set some limit, even though the plan is technically unlimited. The company chose 100,000 and no T-Mobile customer had ever exceeded it before. Clearly, they didn’t anticipate two morons with no lives, no hobbies and no real friends in Pennsylvania looking to see just how far they could push the bounds of unlimited text messaging……..

- Someone get the Discovery Health channel or The Biggest Loser on the phone, because one of those two needs to seize this ginormous (and I do mean ginormous) opportunity that is right in front of them. In Tarrant County, Texas resides Karen Ferguson, a woman so FAT that she is unable to leave her trailer home. Being that FAT, you’d expect that a person wouldn’t want much outside attention - and normally you’d be right. But Ferguson is so FAT that she feels she has no other choice but to make a public plea for help. “I would never bring myself down to go on the news looking like this,” Ferguson said. “I would wish it'd be for a cure or that I'm doing good or something. But not like this. It's hard on the family.” So how much does this woman weigh? Ferguson estimates she weighs 700 pounds and in a glimpse into why she may have gotten so FAT in the first place, she offered an excuse by blaming it on her diabetes. Nice try Karen, but making excuses and blaming your FAT-ness on something you can’t control is the sort of cop-out that has likely led to you weighing in at more than a third of a ton. I do feel bad that you haven’t been out of your trailer for a year and very seldom leaves the large chair built to bear your weight, but until you accept responsibility for your condition, nothing will improve. You know it’s bad if you have a broken ankle, which Ferguson does, but you can't wear the medical boot to support it. “I've had three surgeries to save my toes, and they've saved them,” she said. With no other options, Ferguson has now made her first smart play in a long time by going public. Fact is, people love uber-FAT people who can’t get out of their bed or chair. Invariably, some sentimental, emotional sucker out there will be sucked in by this story and offer Ferguson the help she needs. It worked for the world’s former FAT-test man, Manuel Uribe, who turned his obesity in a series of specials on the Discovery Network. So lots of success in losing weight, Karen, but you need to look in the mirror before you do anything else….a really big mirror……

- Attention all women 18-49, homosexual dudes and other fashion lovers: after a prolonged showdown with NBC Universal, Lifetime has won the right to air Project Runway's sixth season and announced that the fashion competition show will return on Aug. 20 at 10 pm/ET. The season premiere will be quite the event, as following the premiere, , a 30-minute companion series Models of the Runway will premiere. The new show will go behind the scenes with the show's mannequins, for whom it is also a competition in case you forgot. Lifetime, the network famous for its female-intensive programming that has an eerily similar thread of abused, mistreated women and/or outdated shows that haven’t been in production for a couple of decades, will be having quite the summer prior to the return of Project Runway. One of the network’s most highly-rated shows, Army Wives, returns on June 7. Lifetime will also be introducing several news shows, including Drop Dead Diva, a new comedy about shallow model-in-training who dies suddenly and comes back as a brilliant, plus-size attorney, which will premiere on July 12. The network is also developing two movies based on the crime novels of Patricia Cornwell and new comedy pilots that feature the quintessential Lifetime actresses - past-their-prime, aging cougar-like women like Sherri Shepherd, Valerie Bertinelli and Cybill Shepherd. If nothing else, at least lifetime is staying true to itself and its demographic…….