- 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……
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