- Riot Watch! Riot Watch! Let’s go tropical for this edition, everyone. Okay, so I’m not sure the Dominican Republic technically qualifies as tropical, but work with me if you will. Protesters in the D.R. shut down businesses and street traffic near the national university for about an hour Tuesday because they are extremely angry over a lack of government services. Because of the large, violent protests, students were prevented from traveling in or out of the campus. This was merely the latest in an awesome series of protests by an angry group of Dominicans who want the government to increase spending for roads, highways and utility services. Why so upset about frequent power outages and other major disruptions to your daily lives, Dominicans? Who needs power, useable rods and reliable utilities? Oh, that’s right. We all need those things.
The fact that these protestors have staged a demonstration somewhere on the island nearly every day for the past several months is great. It pumps me up to see average citizens get angry and take it to the streets (or in this case, take control of the streets). And yes, I realize that the Dominican government is in a tough spot with decreased tourism, falling remittances from relatives abroad, a drop in exports and the closure of several mining projects. Simply put, the revenues aren’t quite what they used to be. But does that mean the people can’t riot to let the government know how they feel? Of course not! When power blackouts are fairly common and some last 18 hours or more, you have a right to riot and demand that your government do better. Oh, and if you think I’m biased in the favor of these rioters because they donned masks, set tires on fire and threw rocks and garbage on the street Tuesday…..you’d be right. Even after the protest ended, few cars dared travel on nearby streets for fear of more rock-throwing and possible broken windshields and windows. Creating terror, panic and fear while committing major destruction of property? Score that one as a major win, riot lovers. If you’re looking to give credit for this beautiful display of dissidence, look no further than a Dominican group called Alternative Social Forum. ASF is looking to hold President Leonel Fernandez accountable after he promised when running for a third four-year term last year that he would pump money into public works, education and other social projects but nothing to back up those promises. A big wag of my thumb and recipient of scorn would be presidential aide Cesar Pina Toribio, who had the audacity to say last week on the president’s Web site that the protesters are trying to destabilize society and sow chaos and disorder. So? Sometimes society needs to be thrown off its axis and given a fresh perspective and honestly, whose life isn’t better with a dash of chaos? Until your administration and fearless leader can back up the campaign promises he made, shut your pie hole Toribio. Besides, you’ll catch a bit of a break next week, when protesters said they will call off the demonstrations for Holy Week. After that, bring back the riots…..
- Ever since 9/11, security for individuals looking to enter the United States has been much tighter and created a whole lot of problems for those who had been less than truthful about various aspects of their life or past prior to that tragic day. That has especially held true for baseball players from the Dominican Republic and other Caribbean nations who fudged their ages on passports or provided falsified birth certificates suddenly had to add several years to their ages and come clean if they wanted to be allowed to legitimately enter the country. Now that the FBI is working in the Dominican Republic to investigate two major scandals involving the Chicago White Sox and Washington Nationals involving falsified birth records, kickback scandals, and smuggling of performance-enhancing drugs that evaded security, Commissioner Bud Selig is being forced to actually address the issue seriously. Bud’s habit, as seen in dealing with the steroids crisis, is to stick his head in the sand and ignore it for as long as possible. However, with the FBI involved Bud has been cornered into giving Major League Baseball's security division an open checkbook in an attempt to clean up these in the Dominican Republic and other foreign countries. As always, there is a self-serving aspect to MLB’s efforts; one league official estimates that there are more than 70 young players who are being detained in the Dominican and other countries, including several “major” prospects. If these players are found to have falsified their names, birth dates or other information, they may not clear immigration. The Commissioner's Office was content to sit on the sidelines in the scandal until it became known that White Sox personnel director Dave Wilder smuggled cash into the United States, and the resulting investigation revealed a major scandal involving kickbacks of cash that was supposed to be bonus money paid to teenage prospects. This couldn’t have been what Selig and Co. had in mind for the start of the baseball season, but I guess when you’ve sown so much laziness, fake obliviousness, indifference and all-around bad will, you deserve what you get…….
- Looking for a Lost that was disjointed, erratic and confusing? If so, tonight was your night. The flashbacks were back, flipping us between 1977, 2007 and 2004, ignoring key characters and tossing in some truly confusing conversations to really f’up things even further. The obvious place to pick up is where last week’s episode ended: Sayid shooting young Ben Linus in 1977. Sayid was on screen exactly zero scenes this week, on the run from the Dharma Initiative. At the outset it appeared that Horace Goodspeed and Co. would be actively hunting him down, but their focus quickly shifted to a) finding out how Sayid escaped and b) Ben, who was broguth back to the barracks by Jin after Jin recovered from being assaulted by Sayid in the jungle. Young Ben was bleeding profusely and with the primary doctor on the other side of the island, Juliet was forced to play doctor and attempt to save him. When she could not stop the bleeding, Sawyer/LaFleur asked the only other doctor in town to step in, but Jack refused. He, Kate and Hurley had been placed on house arrest by Sawyer to keep them from getting in the way and talking too much in regards to Sayid, since only they knew his true identity. When Sawyer came to ask Jack to work on Ben, the answer was a definitive no. “If he dies, he dies,” Jack callously answered. Later, he told Kate basically the same thing when she pressed the issue and he shot back, “Whatever happens, happens.” While Jack sat idly by, Kate sprung into action. First, she offered to donate blood to help keep Ben alive. After meeting his father, Roger, the previous night during the burning bus-into-a-house incident, Kate clearly felt compelled to help a child in need. That feeling also clearly sprung from what happened off the island in the flashbacks to 2004. There, we finally learned the favor Sawyer asked her to do before jumping out of the helicopter in last season’s finale. He asked Kate to visit Cassidy, the woman we learned about through previous flashbacks with whom Sawyer ran his cons after initially trying to swindle her. While he was in prison, Cassidy visited Sawyer and told him that he had a daughter named Clementine. Despite no contact with the girl, Sawyer asked Kate to visit her in L.A. and give Cassidy and Clementine a huge envelope full of cash to take care of them. The trip turns out to have an unexpected benefit for Kate, who finds a confidant in Cassidy. The two knew each other previously, their paths having crossed while Kate was on the run from the law, but this time is different. Kate spills the beans about what actually happened on the island, making Cassidy possibly the only person outside of the Oceanic 6 and those who remained on the island who knew the truth at that time. Cassidy also figures out that Aaron isn’t really Kate’s son, but suggests that a) she kept him to make up for the hurt of leaving Sawyer behind on the island and b) that Sawyer stayed behind because he was afraid of having to own up to his responsibilities if he came back to the U.S. As the flashbacks inch closer toward 2007, Kate visits Cassidy again to tell her of the plan to return to the island. After that, it’s on to the motel we saw Claire’s mother Carole staying at when Jack and Kate followed her lawyer in an attempt to figure out who was looking to rip Aaron from Kate. Mrs. Littleton knew nothing of her grandson at that time when Jack talked to her, but her antennae was clearly up when Kate stopped by. Learning that she had a grandson and that Claire was presumably still alive on the island, Carole is suspicious but seems to warm up to the idea. Kate then drops a bombshell: she wants Carole to care for Aaron when she goes back to the island, she says to find Claire. Kate then leaves while Aaron is asleep in bed two rooms down from Carole’s room, which we know was when she went to Jack’s apartment, told him never to ask what she had done with Aaron and then slept with him. All of that led to Kate feeling compelled to help out young Ben in 1977, but after giving blood wasn’t enough Kate and Juliet were left with only one unpalatable option in light of Jack’s continued refusal to help. That option was taking Ben to the Others, who they felt might know how to heal the boy. Kate offers to drive a Dharma van on her own out to the sonic fence marking the border between the Dharma land and the area occupied by the Others, with Juliet vowing to buy her as much time as possible before telling Sawyer where she’s gone. When Sawyer does find out, he makes a beeline for the fence, but not to stop Kate. He wants to help her and his reason is because he loves Juliet and she’s dead set on saving the boy, regardless of the monster he will grow up to be. The mission to take Ben to the Others works, with a patrol team finding Kate and Sawyer and at their request, bringing them to Richard Alpert. Alpert agrees to help Ben, but cautions that when he does so, “he will never be the same - his innocence will be gone.” Cryptic words to be sure, but Alpert is helping Ben, so it’s hard to complain. One interesting note came when one of the Others approached and wondered what would happen if Charles or Ellie found out about the boy, meaning Charles Widmore and Eloise Hawking, who we now know were somehow booted from the island in the years that followed and had varying roles in bringing people back to it in the present day. Alpert retorts that he doesn’t answer to those two and off he goes with Ben in his arms. Back at the barracks, Horace continues his investigation into how Sayid escaped and the search is a short one because keys are found in the door of the holding cell, meaning someone broke Sayid out. Sawyer figures out the who when Roger Linus’ keys are missing, meaning it was Ben who released Sayid because he was angry with his father at the time. Other points of note for the episode was the hilarious, mind-bending conversation between Miles and Hurley about time travel. As Hurley tries to reason where in time they are and whether their actions in THEIR present (1977) will affect the future that they once lived in 2007, Miles tries to explain that when Ben moved the island in 2004, time for those on it ceased to be a straight line. Hurley goes back and forth on the issue, but ultimately he manages to stump Miles by asking if Sayid shot young Ben in 1977, why Ben didn’t remember that very same man when Sayid tortured him in Season 2 when Ben was first captured by the Oceanic 815 survivors. “Huh,” is all Miles can manage after that. Another interesting conversation came when Juliet bum rushed Jack’s house, booted Hurley and Miles out as their chat was winding down and ambushed Jack as he got out of the shower. She chided him for not helping Ben and pressed him as to why he came back to the island. He tries to tell her it was to save those who stayed behind, but she counters that they didn’t need saving. Jack then admits that he came back “because I was supposed to,” although he admittedly doesn’t know what that means yet. “You’d better figure it out soon,” Juliet cautions before leaving. The end of the episode was the jarring, disjointed scene I alluded to earlier. We snap from 1977 Ben in the jungle with Alpert to 2007 Ben, sitting in the makeshift infirmary set up by the survivors of Ajira 316 on the smaller island off of the main island. Ben regains consciousness and finds John Locke sitting beside his bed. “Welcome back to the land of the living,” Locke caustically remarks to the man who killed him back in L.A. Seeing Locke alive clearly rattles Ben, but the fact that this scene had no lead-up and these two hadn’t been on screen (as adults, anyhow) for weeks made it totally out of the blue and disconcerting. As has been the case much of the season, what was on screen was mostly good, but so much is omitted on a weekly basis that the show is extremely hard to follow and disjointed. Maybe next week will be better………..
- If you’re going to row across the Atlantic Ocean solo, you’d better have a damn good reason for doing so. It’s a brutal 3,000-mile journey that will undoubtedly kick the crap out of you for three months, so you need great motivation to make the trip. Paul Ridley is a man with just that sort of motivation, having completed the 2,950-mile journey in 88 days to raise cancer awareness and hopefully raise money for cancer research. Ridley’s voyage and his organization "Row for Hope" were inspired by the death of his mother from skin cancer in 2001. On day 88, he finally completed the journey he began January 1 when he set out from the Canary Islands off the north African coast in his 19-foot boat. The trip ended when he landed on the Caribbean island of Antigua at 2:30 p.m. on March 29. Along the way, Ridley endured bouts of seasickness, equipment failure and salt sores. In the end, but he doesn’t sound like he regretted making the journey for even one second. "I'm exhausted. Overwhelmed with all the excitement from my arrival," Ridley said. "It was incredible. The whole Island of Antigua came out to greet me. The harbor was swarming with boats. A big crowd on dry land. It's really been an amazing reception." If he can still have that enthusiasm after rowing 12 hours a day for three months, you have to respect the guy. He lost 20 pounds in the process, but he succeeded where most of the 85 people to attempt the nearly 3,000 miles east-to-west crossing previously have failed. Ridley becomes just the third American to complete the trip and the youngest to do so. A large chunk of his success - other than the obvious strong motivation for a great cause - can be traced to the fact that Ridley was a rower in college at Colgate University. This project was a three-year endeavor, with Ridley working two of those years as a rowing coach and nutritionist and spending the final year training by rowing up to 10 hours a day, every day. Additionally, he and his sister spent $60,000 of their own savings to have his boat custom built, and he took a leave of absence from his financial services job. What’s especially amazing about Ridley’s journey is that he did it with no support vessel and sustaining himself largely on the freeze-dried foodstuffs as astronauts eat in space. The only true safety measures in place were GPS navigation devices that kept friends informed as to his progress and a satellite phone. Sadly, Ridley arrived at his destination about $400,000 short of the $500,000 he hoped to raise for research at the Yale Cancer Center. I sincerely hope that many people out there will step up and donate that remaining $400,000 to make this trip a true success for Ridley and his Row for Hope foundation……
- Teenage and pre-teen girls everywhere are devastated right now. They all have crushes on the dreamy Zac Effron, he of the High School Musical fame, but dreams of seeing Effron in the remake of the '80s box-office smash Footloose appear to be dead. Paramount, which is producing the movie-musical, has placed the entire project on hold while it decides whether to move forward without Effron in the lead. He reportedly pulled out of the project after more than a year and a half because his advisers cautioned against doing another musical and being typecast in that role. So ironically, it was his great success in HSM that helped land the Footloose role in the first place and that same success led to him ejecting from the role before the project really got going. Industry experts maintain that Paramount is unsure of the project’s future, although the studio insists that it’s full steam ahead. "While Zac is no longer attached, we remain excited and committed to the collective brain trust of Kenny Ortega, Neil Meron, and Craig Zadan, who will reinvigorate the franchise,” Paramount said in a statement. To that end, many are reporting that Gossip Girl heartthrob Chace Crawford tested for the role last weekend, although Paramount predictably denies those rumors. Either way, they need to find someone to fill the role made famous in 1984 by Kevin Bacon. Can Paramount find a suitable leading man to revive a movie that it shouldn’t bother reviving and which will only perpetuate the belief that Hollywood is out of new ideas and now only recycles old ones in the hoping of scraping up some more cash without having to come up with a single creative, original thought? I’d say no, but since when does Hollywood listen or do the smart thing creatively? How about never……..
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