- What a night of action at the Final Four last night in Detroit. Too many people counted out the Michigan State Spartans in the first game of the night and although it appeared early on that UConn would indeed be too much for MSU, Tom Izzo’s team used a great effort by its bench and several freshmen to race past the Huskies in the second half. MSU scored one fast break basket after another and withstood a tremendous last-minute rally to win. Durrell Summers had unquestionably the highlight of the night when he went high on a fast break and slammed home a dunk over UConn’s Stanley Robinson, posterizing Robinson even thought the defender got a hand on the ball well above the rim. It was one of those moments where the heavily Michigan State crowd of more than 70,000 fans was absolutely deafening. It was also Michigan State’s second straight win over a No. 1 seed, something that not many teams do in any one NCAA Tournament. They’ll get a shot to knock off a third top seed tomorrow night when they face North Carolina in the national championship game. UNC won the second semifinal last night in a game decidedly less interesting than the first one, mostly because Villanova couldn’t shoot straight most of the night and that was doubly true from three-point range, a distance they missed 12 straight shots from at one point. In spite of those shooting woes and foul trouble plaguing star point guard Scottie Reynolds virtually all night long, the Wildcats rallied to within five, 50-45, early in the second half. Ultimately, they just couldn’t withstand the Tar Heels’ barrage from long distance (UNC made nearly half of its three pointers on the night) and lost 83-69. Two very different semifinals, but together they help us reach an interesting conclusion about college basketball this season: the Big East wasn’t that damn good. All season long, all of the so-called experts wanted to label it the best conference ever, but how can it be so if the league didn’t put even one team in the national championship game? Just a thought. Oh, and one other thing I have to mention after last night: the Final Four is infinitely, INFINITELY better without that sourpuss, curmudgeon-y ass Billy Packer calling the games for CBS. Clark Kellogg does a great job, although to be fair he gets a massive boost in my book simply for not being Billy Packer. But one game remains in the season, one game to cap off what remains the best event in all of sports in spite of this being an overall down year for the NCAA Tournament……
- A double dose of bad news is on the way for you, Aerosmith fans. First, one of rock’s legendary bands is postponing its next album and that postponement is due mostly to the fact that….well, the fact that the guys are getting old. But don’t take my word for it; take the word of Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry. Perry revealed this week that the recording sessions for the group's first album since 2004's "Honkin' on Bobo" and first of all-original material since 2001's "Just Push Play," were delayed when he had to have surgery earlier this year to clear out an infection in his knee replacement. That was followed up by singer Steven Tyler coming down with pneumonia. At that point, the Boston-based rockers realized they had no chance to finish recording before they hit the road for their summer tour, so they put the new album on hold. “Basically we had to push (the album) back, and when the band gets off the road, that's when we'll pick up the Aerosmith record,” Perry declared. The tour will be Aerosmith's first since 2007 and it begins in June with ZZ Top. Perry says about 40 dates are set so far for North America, with South America, Europe and Japan also under consideration. Well, I assume those dates are in place based on the assumption that no one in the band breaks a hip or has some other age-related heath issue in between now and June. It’s always a little sad when you see your heroes get old and lose their skills little by little, but I think that’s doubly true for rock stars because they are the quintessential famous people who live the rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle that most of us always dream about. Prior to the old-dude health issues, Perry states that Aerosmith had "probably two or three (songs) that could be mixed right now, maybe even more. But there's a long way between two or three and doing the 12 or 14 that you have to have to do a whole project.” Those songs were done at Perry’s home studio with producer Brendan O'Brien and "sound like 'Rocks,'" with some similarities to the sound of "Honkin' on Bobo.” With the extra free time on his hands, Perry has also been working “full blast” on his next solo album, the follow-up to 2005's Grammy-nominated "Joe Perry." For that record, he claims to have 10-12 songs ready. Here’s hoping he plays it safe for the next few months, and I mean health-wise, not musically. No extreme sports, no contact sports and maybe wrap your body in bubble wrap when you go outside, Joe. Same goes for the rest of the members of Aerosmith as well, because I think I speak for a lot of fans when I say that I want these guys to be health enough to tour when summer rolls around……
- Dammit, dammit, dammit. As many complaints as I’ve lodged and as many pleas as I’ve made to law enforcement officials around the world to stop arresting suspected drug cartel leaders, no one seems to be listening. The law just doesn’t seem to understand the hurt it’s putting on Joe Crackhead or Jane Pothead by busting these drug lords. Drugs don’t just magically appear in your bong or needle, someone needs to make sure they get from the field to the production process, a cross the border, into the hands of your local dealer and to the user on the street. By arresting men like Vicente Carrillo Leyva, a leader of the Carrillo Fuentes drug cartel, law enforcement officials are disrupting this process. I’m directing my anger right at you, Mexican authorities, because you’re the ones who arrested Leyva. Dude was simply looking to get his exercise on at a park in a residential area of Mexico City, where he had been living under the alias Alejandro Peralta Alvarez. He was trying to be someone new and trying to live a healthy lifestyle, but nooooo. You had to go and arrest him. Leyva’s downfall turned out to be his wife, who did not change her name and thus allowed the authorities to track her. According to police, Leyva "is considered one of the heirs to the criminal organization known as the Juarez Cartel, after the death of his father, Amado Carrillo Fuentes.” See, this is a man who inherited the family business and has done his best to keep it up, even after taking over in tragic circumstances. See, his father died in July 1997 while undergoing plastic surgery to alter his appearance in an effort to avoid capture. The old man had a sweet nickname was well, known as "El Senor de los Cielos," the "Lord of the Skies," because of the fleet of jetliners he used to transport cocaine from Colombia to Mexico. So while you may have been patting yourselves on the back for capturing Leyva, Mexican law enforcement, the sight of him in dark-frame glasses, a white jogging suit and long and shaggy hair was a sad one for many of us. The arrest marks yet another significant blow to the drug cartels in Mexico, as Wednesday's arrest was the fourth detention of a top drug cartel leader in recent weeks. Last week it was Hector Huerta Rios, also known as "La Burra" or "El Junior," a top lieutenant of the Beltran Leyva cartel. The week before that, it was Sigifredo Najera Talamantes, a drug-trafficking suspect accused of attacking a U.S. consulate and killing Mexican soldiers. In other words, it’s not a good time to be a high-ranking member of a Mexican drug cartel and quite frankly, that pains me to say that. The Mexican government needs to stop offering rewards of $2 million apiece for leading cartel suspects, because if they’re not careful, they’ll ruin the lives of drug users across the United States who can no longer afford their narcotic of choice due to price increases brought on by these arrests…..
- I have a major bone to pick with ESPN.com and if you’ve visited the site in recent weeks, you know why: super-annoying banner ads on the site that literally have so infuriated me that I go to other sports sites - cnnsi.com, foxsports.com, etc. - until there are new ads on ESPN.com. Two ads in particular have pissed me off: one for the new iPod Touch from Apple and the other for the movie “The Day the Earth Stood Still.” Let’s tackle the iPod ad first, since it did come first. The freaking ad contained Adobe Flash technology that allowed the ad to extend well beyond its space at the top of the page and actually created a graphic portion of the ad that mirrored the content it was covering over, so you thought that part of the ad was actually part of the normal page content. The ad was also accompanied by annoying music, which coupled with the content of the ad itself, which you had to click on “close” to keep from expanding all over the page, to make visiting the site a total nuisance. The ad was on the site for at least two days and for those two days, ESPN.com lost me as a reader. They lost me again yesterday with the uber-intrusive, annoying ad for “The Day the Earth Stood Still.” It was one of those ads that takes up half the page with sound effects and if you want to shrink the ad to a manageable size, you have to click on “close” every time you go to the page or return to it from another part of the site. The bottom line is that I realize ESPN.com is a very popular website and thus a lot of advertisers pay good money to buy space on it, but ESPN needs to be conscious of how unusable and irritating the site becomes when it allows these ads to run amok. Keep the ads in small, confined spaces and get rid of the sound, because if you don’t then you’ll be losing a lot of page views and readers because people just won't put up with that crap………
- Thanks for showing you have absolutely no sense of humor, Morris County (N.J.) Prosecutor Robert Bianchi. When someone pulls a stupid prank that doesn’t hurt anyone or even damage any property, most prosecutors (all of the sane ones) would let it slide, but not you. When mysterious lights that appeared over Morris County in the town of Morris Plains, local residents predictably overreacted and panicked, so you seemingly felt the need to pander to those fears by going after the two men who dared to have a sense of humor and pull the prank. Chris Russo and Joe Rudy, a pair of local residents, admitted to their culpability in the hoax in videos they posted online. In the videos, titled "How We Staged the Morristown UFO Hoax," the two demonstrate how they tied flares to helium balloons and launched them in a field near the border of Morris Plains and Hanover. They videotaped their actions and got the word out about what they were doing by anonymously tipping off local TV stations. Residents who spotted the bizarre glowing lights described them as moving north and traveling with the wind, creating intrigue and curiosity in towns such as Morristown, Morris Township, Hanover, Denville, Parsippany and Montville. The light shows went on for nearly two months, from the beginning of January to the end of February. As you might expect, The Man (in the form of Robert Bianchi) immediately began throwing a fit and demanding that whoever was responsible cease and desist because they were putting air traffic safety in jeopardy. Just a thought, but what if it really had been Martians? Would Bianchi really have expected them to comply with his demands? What if he antagonized the aliens so much that they launched an attack on New Jersey simply out of spite when they otherwise would have just passed peacefully by? I’m not saying, I’m just saying. Next time, think it over before you go antagonizing what could be lethal aliens, Bianchi. Oh, and lighten up on your threats to charge Russo and Rudy with a count of disorderly conduct too. Grow a sense of humor or resign and clear the way for someone who already has one, you tool. Fining these two is even more ridiculous than the prank they pulled, so just let it go…...
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