- Hang on…..didn’t the Jacksonville Jaguars get rid of their coke head wide receiver? I remember it clearly: last summer wide receiver Matt Jones was spotted by police in Arkansas in the back seat of a car, cutting coke with a credit card while two other shady characters sat in the front seat. He tried to hide the drugs when he saw the cops, but to no avail. Jones was arrested, charged and after the legal process ran its course and he endured a tough 2008 season, the Jaguars released him. So how is it now that I’m hearing news of a Jaguars’ receiver getting charged with drug possession after off-duty policemen used a Taser to subdue him when he refused to leave a bar in Houston? Oh wait…..that’s a different Jacksonville Jaguars receiver? Gotcha. This time, it was apparently Reggie Williams, an immensely talented athlete who has never been able to translate those gifts into on-field production. That will become even tougher now that he has a) refused to leave a bar when asked to, b) tussled with off-duty cops who tried to get him to leave, c) received a nice Taser blast and d) most importantly, been found to be in possession of a small bag containing cocaine. And no, I don’t know if he yelped, “Don’t Tase me bro! Don’t Tase me!” before the cops shot those bolts of electricity through his body. What I do know is that Williams was charged on Monday with possession of a controlled substance and freed after posting a $2,000 bond. Oh, and technically he’s no longer a member of the Jaguars, having been let go this offseason. Still, you have to admit that it looks bad for a team to have two guys who spent several seasons on its roster get busted for coke within a year of one another. Best of success finding a new gig, Reggie. Teams just LOVE signing affirmed cokeheads who produce an average of 460 yards and three touchdowns per season…….
- I realized something during tonight’s episode of Lost. The problem the show has been having, of excluding key characters from entire episodes for one or even two weeks, is going to continue for the foreseeable future. It may suck, but the writers and producers just aren’t going to find a way to get the majority of the major players on screen each week. Knowing that, I tried to just enjoy the ones who did make it on the screen and….nope, it was still a disappointment. This week’s list of exclusions included: Jack, Kate, Hurley (unless you count people looking at a 30-year-old photograph with them in it), Sayid, Miles, Juliet and Jin. The only principal characters who made it on screen were Ben, Locke, Sun, Desmond and Penny. For the most part, the episode was all about Ben and a series of flashbacks detailing his many misdeeds literally over the course of his life, on and off the island. The episode began with Richard Alpert taking heat from Charles Widmore (in 1977) for bringing young Ben to their camp. Richard explained that it was the island’s will for Ben to live and Widmore seemed to accept that. He went into Ben’s tent to introduce himself and Ben actually pleaded not to go back to his father and the Dharma Initiative. He also didn’t remember being shot or how he came to be with the Others, just as Alpert promised when he took Ben from Kate and Sawyer. The next flashback took us to Ben as a young adult, when he snuck into Danielle Rousseau’s hut near the beach (accompanied by creepy Other Ethan) and stole her daughter Alex. Widmore had ordered him to kill Rousseau but Ben couldn’t follow through when he saw the baby. Widmore scoffed that he should have killed the baby too, but Ben turned it around and shoved the tot at Widmore, telling him, “You do it.” Instead, Ben took the baby and raised it as his own. When Alex was about five, we found out the root of the hatred between Ben and Widmore: Ben forced Widmore to leave the island after discovering that he’d been leaving the island regularly, having an affair with a woman off the island, having a child with that woman and coming back to the island. As we now know per Ben’s warnings to Locke last season, leaving the island and coming back can't be done. Widmore was predictably angry when he was escorted to the submarine and off the island, barking at Ben that someday they would meet again and Ben would find himself in the same position in which Widmore stood at that moment. “I’ll see you again….boy,” Widmore snarled. However, when Ben did find himself gone from the island and back in civilization, it was he who had the upper hand on Charles Widmore once again. It turns out that the “thing” Ben had to go and do following the meeting on the Santa Monica pier with Jack, Kate and Sun earlier this season (in 2007) was going to a nearby marina and killing Penelope and Desmond to exact revenge for the death of Alex at the hands of Martin Keamy and his Widmore-sent mercenaries on the island. Ben even calls Charles Widmore from the marina and taunts him about returning to the island and killing his daughter. However, his shot at Desmond isn’t fatal and when Ben arrives at the boat to kill Penelope, he once again finds himself unable to pull the trigger because of the presence of a child. Penny and Desmond’s son Charlie stops Ben from killing his mother by his mere presence, giving Desmond time to recover and pummel Ben with his bare hands. That’s why Ben showed up for Ajira Flight 316 bloodied and beaten, having been speed-bagged by Desmond and tossed into the bay. With the flashbacks covered, things turned back to 2007 and the sick bay set up on the smaller island adjacent to the main island, where Ajira 316 crashed. Locke was waiting for Ben when he awoke in the sick bay and they talked about several topics. The most obvious was Locke’s return from the dead, which stunned even Ben. They also talked about why Ben killed Locke and why Ben had come back to the island. He claimed it was to be judged for all of his sins, but Locke wasn’t convinced. There was a palpable tension between the two and Ben went so far as to intimate to Caesar, the de facto leader of the Ajira 316 survivors, that Locke hadn’t even been on the flight and was some deranged whack job who was already on the island when they crashed and was making outlandish accusations about Ben killing him. Yet a short time later, there were Locke and Ben inside an office located in one of the buildings near the crash site. The two continued to talk about their issues and Ben explained that he’d killed Locke because he knew it would bring the Oceanic 6 together and get them to come back to the island. He also said he killed Locke rather than let him commit suicide because he needed the information Locke had about Eloise Hawking and after he had that, “I just didn’t have time to talk you back into killing yourself. I took a shortcut.” Shortly after the talk, Locke and Ben were uncovering one of the boats stashed on a nearby beach and preparing to paddle over to the main island. There, Ben claimed he would summon the Black Smoke Monster and it would judge him for his sins. Caesar and two of the other crash survivors attempted to stop them, but when Caesar went for his gun to stop them, Ben pulled the weapon from his own possession and shot Caesar with his own gun. He then asked the other two men if they had any problem with he and Locke taking a boat. They were cool with that and off Locke and Ben went, docking at the same dock where Sun and Frank Lapidus had docked. Like Sun and Lapidus, they ventured into the abandoned barracks and saw a light on in what used to be Ben’s house. He went inside to check things out and found Sun and Lapidus in Alex’s old room. When they showed him the 1977 Dharma picture with Jack, Kate and Hurley in it, Ben was stunned. Sun then explained that Christian Shephard had given them the picture and told her that if she ever wanted to find her husband she needed to wait in that bedroom for John Locke. Lapidus mused that with Locke dead, that was unlikely. Ben countered that they should look out the window and see for themselves. Locke was waiting and waved to them, after which he came inside and told Sun that he had some ideas about how to go back in time to find Jin. Lapidus had heard enough and wasn’t about to stick around; he took a boat and went back to the secondary island with the rest of the Ajira 316 survivors. After that it was time for Ben to get down to the business of summoning the Monster. He went through a series of hidden doors and panels in that began in the closet of Alex’s bedroom and ended in an ancient cave with a pool of water on the floor. Oddly enough, Ben began fishing around in the muddy water and pulled some sort of plug to drain the pool. When it emptied, he spoke into it, “I’ll be outside.” He went out to wait for the Monster to arrive and found that Locke had taken off and left Sun behind. She and Ben had a talk about Locke returning from the dead and Ben admitted that, “Seeing John Locke walking around on this island scares the hell out of me. Dead is dead, and you don’t get to come back from that, not even here.” Yet there came Locke, tromping out of the jungle and asking where the Monster was. When Ben admitted it hadn’t shown up, Locke informed him that they would go to the Monster. When daylight broke, the trio tromped through the jungle to the wall outside the Others’ temple, where Locke saw the Monster disappear earlier this season. Down into the hole under the temple went Sun, Locke and Ben, but before he went Ben asked Sun to find Desmond if she ever made it off the island and apologize for Ben. “He’ll know why,” Ben cryptically remarked. Down under the temple, Ben and Locke made their way through a dark, damp passageway. Near its end, Ben informed Locke that he could go the rest of the way on his own. Seconds later, Ben fell through the floor and into a hidden chamber where there were all sorts of freaky carvings and hieroglyphics on the walls. He approached what appeared to be an altar with a stone slab in front of it, raised at a 45-degree angle and with a series of indentations on it. Next thing Ben knew, the BSM (Black Smoke Monster) was pouring out of those indentations and engulfing him. The BSM swirled all around him and put out his torch in the process. Ben saw visions of his past sins flash before him and was forced to watch his daughter get shot by Keamy once again. The BSM then withdrew as quickly as it appeared, retreating back through the holes in the slab. Ben turned around to find his torch was reignited and behind him was his own daughter. Whether she was real or a vision brought on by the BSM, Ben apologized to her for allowing her to die and she agreed that her death was all his fault. Alex then grabbed Ben by the throat and informed him that she knew he was planning to kill Locke for a second time. She declared that he must obey Locke’s every order and not harm him, demands that Ben agreed to. After that Alex disappeared and Locke was back at the opening where Ben fell, He threw done a vine to help Ben up following a relieved explanation from Ben that “it let me live.” The episode ended with an unsettling turn of events in which Lapidus arrived back at the secondary island and was greeted by a crash survivor who told him that Ilana, who had been Caesar’s unofficial second in command, had found guns and that she and two other survivors had declared themselves to be the leaders of the group, When Lapidus approached her and asked what was going on, she began talking crazy talk and asking what was in the shadow of the statue. Crazed fans of the show have been clamoring for more info on the mysterious four-toed statue off the coast of the island ever since it first appeared in Season 2 when Sayid, Sun and Jin sailed around the tip of the island in their attempt to rescue Jack, Kate, Sawyer and Hurley. We may be about to find out what the statue is all about, but Lapidus had no idea and couldn’t answer Ilana’s question. She clubbed him in the head with the butt of her rifle and informed her cohorts to tie Lapidus and the other survivors up because “it’s time to go.” If I had to guess, I’d say that the same sort of craziness that drove the other members of Danielle Rousseau’s team insane in 1974 had managed to infect Ilana and her two gun-toting companions, which can’t be a good thing. Next week, it appears we’ll be back to the Dharma Initiative scene in 1977 and Miles will factor heavily into the plot with his ability to speak to the dead, so tune in for that one………
- Is it just me, or is it exceptionally bizarre for you to see Fidel Castro, the longtime communist leader of Cuba, meeting with visiting members of the U.S. Congressional Black Caucus on Tuesday? I realize that the same caucus members also met with Castro’s brother, Raúl, who succeeded him as president, but the sight of Fidel sitting down with American leaders in Havana is just a jolt to the system. As you may remember me reporting last week, the U.S. Senate has introduced a bill that would pave the way for Americans to be able to travel freely to the Communist nation that sits just 90 miles from the Florida Keys. I don’t know exactly what they - the three members of Congress discussed when they met with the bearded, fatigues-wearing despot during a visit to the Latin American School of Medicine, but when they were invited to meet with him they clearly felt it was an opportunity they couldn’t pass up. Rep. Barbara Lee, a Democrat from California, was among the members of Congress who met with Fidel Castro, but the identities of the other two congresspersons were not immediately known. "Members of Congress have the right to travel where they want and to discuss issues with whom they want," State Department spokesman Robert Wood said. "And I am sure members of that delegation will be raising some of the concerns that the U.S. government has with Cuba, in terms of allowing Cubans to have some of the same rights and freedoms as other countries in the hemisphere.” This does raise another interesting point, as it comes on the heels of the aforementioned bill on Cuban relations being introduced in Congress and yet we still have no specifics or official statement from President Obama on the issue of relations with Cuba. He has said previously that he is in favor of changing the relationship with Cuba but has not offered specifics. Fact is, after 48 years of having both a travel and trade embargo against Cuba in effect, it’s going to have to be the man in charge who really takes the necessary steps to patch up the relationship. Sooner or later, B. Obama is going to have to tackle the issue and be prepared to deal with a lot of heat whichever way he leans on the issue…….
- Speaking of Obama….one of the more interesting show business stories I can remember in a while took place this week when actor and longtime Obama supporter Kal Penn’s last episode of House aired, featuring a suicide by Penn’s character, because the actor is joining the Obama administration as part of the White House Office of Public Liaison, which is run by Obama senior adviser Valerie Jarrett. Rumors of a suicide by a major character on a major show on a major network had been floating around all season long, but it wasn’t until Monday night, when the episode aired, that viewers knew for certain that Penn was the one leaving the show by suicide. It’s always jarring any time a show features a suicide, which is why most shows shy away from it and at most, refer to a suicide by someone in a key character’s past. But I guess when Penn decided to leave the show and transition into the political world, Fox and the producers of House decided not to have him go meekly into the night. Instead, they gave him a poignant, emotional ending and one that will undoubtedly generate a lot of buzz for the show. The day after the episode aired, the White House confirmed Penn’s addition to the administration in a position where he will be primarily involved in dealing with Asian American and Pacific Islander communities and the arts community. Seems like a natural fit given his career and ethnicity, so hopefully Penn will give fans a reason to remember him for more than being one half of the stoner comedy tandem in Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle. Best of success with that, K…….
- Riot Watch! Riot Watch! This very special and very awesome edition of Riot Watch! takes us to the country of Moldova, where not only do we have a first-class, Grade-A riot on our hands, we also have a delusional president throwing around wild conspiracy theories. In other words, it’s a win-win. Let’s begin with the riot, because that’s always the most important thing. An estimated 10,000 mainly students gathered Tuesday to protest what they say was a rigged election and these protestors were looking to get violent. They hurled computers through windows and burned furniture at the country’s parliament offices. Government buildings were ransacked and police futilely attempted to fend off the rioters with tear gas, water canons and even firecrackers. Yes, you read that right: mass property destruction, burning furniture, clashing with police and necessitating the use of tear gas, water cannons and firecrackers. This literally may be the best riot of the decade. I couldn’t be prouder of the Moldovan rioters, because they showed a total disregard for authority, a nice violent streak, a willingness to torch or smash anything in their path and the quintessential riot spirit. So where do the conspiracy theories espoused by the nutty president factor in? Well, yesterday Moldova's president Wednesday accused Romania of involvement in the riots, much of it coordinated on Facebook and Twitter. Vladimir Voronin described riots in the Moldovan capital Chisinau against his ruling Communist party's victory in Sunday elections as "very serious" and pledged to take action in response. “Romania is involved in everything that has happened. Patience also has its limits." So basically he’s accusing a neighboring nation of spurring on these riots because they want to absorb his country AND he’s fingering Twitter and Facebook for their role in the riots. I know I said Twitter had jumped the shark and I had no use for it, but if people are going to use it to organize violent riots I may have to change my mind. Any social networking tool you can use to recruit people willing to throw bricks at riot police who attempt to silence them is okay in my book. The most beautiful sight in the whole riot may well have been the outnumbered police who were forced to retreat, leaving rioters to enter the parliament building and presidential offices to smash the windows and start fires. Fueling them as they rioted was the belief that Voronin's ruling Communist Party manipulated Sunday's election results to make it appear that it had won 50 percent of the vote, a majority that would allow the party to and amend the Constitution to allow Voronin to rule for a third term. I believe the claims and no, I don’t care that the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe found the voting largely free. This is yet another case of The Man trying to hold the little guy down and tens of thousands of angry Moldavians decided that enough was enough. They rioted and did so in spectacular fashion; I couldn’t be prouder………
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