- 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……
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