- A memo to Michigan State football coaches: running back Glenn Winston probably won't be in training camp come August and likely won't be able to be on the sidelines for the first game of the season. But don’t worry about his commitment to football, because I’m sure he would be with the team if he could. It’s just that he’s been sentenced to 180 days in jail for his role in an off-campus fight that seriously injured a Spartans hockey player and being behind bars isn’t conducive to being able to be part of a college football team. Winston pleaded guilty in March to misdemeanor aggravated assault and misdemeanor assault and battery and will begin serving his sentence Friday. Once he’s out, he will serve two years' probation and must pay $1,768.43 in fines and court costs. He may also be responsible for additional restitution, depending on medical bills for victims of the fight. On top of that, he must complete an assaultive behavior/substance abuse program and submit to random drug and alcohol testing. In other words, he’s not going to be a normal college student again any time soon. Then again, Winston doesn’t deserve to be, not after Michigan State hockey player A.J. Sturges suffered severe head injuries during the Oct. 19 fight and was hospitalized. Spartans football coach Mark Dantonio could have absolutely kicked Winston off the team for this incident, but instead indefinitely suspended Winston from the team last month. Another football player, freshman wide receiver Mitchell White, was sentenced to 30 days in jail last month for his role in the fight. Hard to see how MSU will replace Winston’s illustrious contributions this coming season, what with his whopping seven games played and for 364 yards on kickoff returns. Classy squad you’ve got there, coach Dantonio……
- About the only thing you can say about last night’s 24 is: Tony Freaking Almeida. This guy switches sides more than anyone short of Anne Heche, but it’s always exciting. The hour kicked off with everyone in the FBI and White House trying to understand President Allison Taylor’s last-minute decision to call off the air strike on the Starkwood compound. The president’s advisors and the Joint Chiefs of staff press for an explanation, but instead she demands that preparations be made for Jonas Hodges’ arrival. Meanwhile, Tony Almeida calls Jack from the Starkwood compound with evidence about why the president called off the air strike. He spots RP-7 rocket fuel being pumped into some underground tanks at the compound and pieces the evidence together to come to the conclusion that Starkwood must have surface-to-surface missiles loaded with the Preon toxin it has in its possession. When Jack calls the president and confronts her with the evidence, she admits the truth and wants to authorize Tony to carry out an operation to blow up the fuel tanks, which would also blow up the rockets and incinerate the toxin. She wants to but can’t because of Hodges’ threat to launch the rockets if any government action is taken against the Starkwood compound. Still, the president implies that Jack should undertake the operation, telling him, “I know you’ll do what you think is best.” She realizes that the operation is the right call but needs to have plausible deniability if anything goes wrong. That’s all Jack needs to hear. He calls Tony and green lights the operation, which Tony needs to complete ASAP. He sneaks up to the fueling area, takes a hostage and knocks the man out once he’s managed to hold Starkwood security leader Stokes at gunpoint. Together, they make their way to the underground bunker where the tanks are situated and Tony rigs up the explosives with a remote detonator. It’s then back to the surface, where the man Tony is ambushed by the man he knocked out a few minutes prior. That gives Stokes a chance to punch a distress code into a nearby key pad, signaling the scientists in the lab to launch the missiles. “You’re too late,” Starks taunts Tony when he recovers and gets up off the ground. Undeterred, Tony gets back on the ground and desperately fishes for the detonator, which has fallen down a grate. He snags it just in time to push the button and blow the rockets, setting off a ginormous explosion that takes out all of the missiles and the toxin as well. That signals Larry Moss and his FBI strike team to storm the compound from their staging area in the woods near the compound. They secure the compound with little trouble, especially since most Starkwood personnel had no idea what Hodges was up to with the bioweapon and didn’t want any trouble. The threat appears to be over, but of course this is 24 and that’s never true. At one of the gates around the perimeter of the compound, an FBI agent is shot and killed by one of Starkwood’s security guards. The guard takes the agent’s SUV and is about to escape when a second agent stops him and finds one of the Preon canisters from the bioweapon in his backpack. That second agent calls Larry Moss to report what just happened, but before he can complete the call, the Starkwood guard grabs his gun, shoots the agent and escapes with the canister. That puts the pressure back on Renee Walker and Jack at the FBI field office. They must track the stolen vehicle, but that task is becoming much tougher as Jack’s condition worsens due to his exposure to the toxin a few hours prior. His convulsions are still mostly under control thanks to the medication given to him by Dr. Mason from the CDC, but now memory loss and personality changes are also occurring. Jack is losing his train of though mid-sentence, even during a phone call with the president. She thanks him for his help and promises to take Tony’s heroic actions into consideration when the case against him for his past crimes is prosecuted. Dr. Mason has more bad news for Jack when she informs him that there is no medication to help cope with his new symptoms. That punch to the gut is followed by Renee’s revelation that she has asked Jack’s daughter Kim to come in and that Kim is now just down the hall. An irate Jack pulls Renee aside and berates her for bringing Kim in because it will only make it harder for him to accept his impending death. Renee counters be explaining that Kim has been trying to see him all day and flew all the way from L.A. to attend his Senate hearing the previous morning. Jack agrees to see Kim and their tearful conversation was one of the more emotional moments in series history. Kim volunteers to undergo the experimental stem cell procedure that could cure Jack, but he refuses to let her take the risk. She apologizes for freezing him out of her life and they manage to patch up many of their issues, but the encounter ends with Kim leaving the building in tears and Jack bawling his eyes out as well. Hearing that Tony’s operation at Starkwood was successful lifts his spirits, but clearly Jack is on a downhill slide. The search for the stolen FBI vehicle and the Starkwood operative who took it are doing much better. Janis Gould and Renee find the vehicle on satellite and pass along its location to Larry Moss. He follows it via helicopter along with Tony Almeida, now in federal custody but along for the ride. When the vehicle is spotted and gets off Highway 42, the chopper pursues and follows into (what else) the parking lot of a big, empty warehouse. The Starkwood operative flees on foot, but Larry and Tony jump from the chopper and a shootout ensues. The helicopter pilot is shot and killed the instant he sets down, but Tony and Larry hold their own. Many shots are fired without anyone being hit - until the Starkwood operative pulls some heavier weaponry from the vehicle and hits Larry with a shot that wounds him badly. As the bad guy closes in for a kill, something very odd happens. Tony holds his hand up and motions for the man to stop, which he does. Tony then suffocates Larry, who is too weak to fight him off. As the shock of Tony apparently switching sides again sets in, he directs the Starkwood guard to find a place to hide with the Preon canister while he finds a way for them to escape from the FBI. Tony has seemingly jumped ship, but to whose team? Definitely not Starkwood’s team, because that team is in serious trouble. After arriving at the White House and presenting the president with an absurd plan that would essentially make Starkwood the fifth branch of the American military, Jonas Hodges and Greg Seaton seem pleased with themselves. Hodges goes so far as to deny any involvement with Gen. Benjamin Juma’s terrorist attacks on the country and invasion of the White House hours ago. President Taylor attempts to shut their presentation down, but Hodges reminds her what will happen if she doesn’t accede to his demands. She grudgingly listens to the presentation, but that patience runs out when news of the successful destruction of the missiles comes in. Expecting to have the president accept his demands, Hodges is instead met by White House security and placed under arrest. “We’ve destroyed your missiles,” a defiant Taylor scoffs. A disbelieving Hodges goes on a rant about only wanting to protect his country and vows that he’s just a small piece in a huge machine, the extent of which Taylor can’t fathom. His words fall on deaf ears with the threat of the missile strikes gone, but Hodges can contemplate all of that in prison. The threat now rests with Tony and his mysterious new ally. The one canister of the toxin they have remains enough to take out a small city. What does Tony want and whose side is he really on? I’m guessing he’s on his own side, but that remains to be seen…..
-I’ve got good news for you, drug addicts! According to law enforcement officials say heroin is fast becoming on of the cheapest, most affordable vices on the market. Although the drug has developed a reputation of being fundamentally evil and extremely addictive (not to mention pricey), the reality is that right now, a tiny, one-dose bag of heroin costs a mere $5-$10. That’s considerably cheaper than highly controlled synthetic opiates like Oxycontin or Hydrocodone, even cheaper than a 6-pack of beer. “Unfortunately, today, a bag of heroin can be cheaper than a 6 pack of beer,” said John Gilbride, Special Agent in Charge of the Drug Enforcement Agency’s New York Field Division. As great as that news is for druggies nationwide, there’s even more good news! According to the National Drug Intelligence Center, today’s heroin can be upwards of 70 percent pure. You can smoke, snort or shoot it and get much higher than druggies of yore did when they used heroin that was often less than 10 percent pure. Much of the credit for those upgrades in the heroin market goes to Mexican drug cartels, who are fingered by the Justice Department’s National Drug Threat Assessment (2009) as expanding Mexican heroin distribution in eastern states, taking over the South American heroin market. The Mexican cartels have been a steadily growing force in the heroin market over the past decade, overtaking the Colombians by increasing heroin production 105 percent from 1999 to 2007, while Colombian heroin production decreased 47 percent during about the same period. The mid-Atlantic and Northeast states are currently the heroin hotbed of the United States, with Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Maryland, West Virginia and Virginia accounting for more than half of the nation’s heroin arrests in 2007. In such a heroin-loving region, Long Island’s Nassau County appears to be ground zero for the movement, as police made 211 heroin-related arrests in 2008 and 135 such arrests in the first three months of this year. I suppose that’s when happens when you can score 70 percent pure heroin for less than the cost of a six-pack………..
- Gotta love it when people attempt to tell their neighbors what to do with their property, what color to paint their home or what sort of lawn ornaments they can put up in their yard. Nothing is more arrogant, rude or out of line that some condescending neighbor or homeowner’s association coming in and telling someone, “No, you can’t put in that garden gnome or paint your front door that shade of blue, not allowed!” You may not like the way someone else chooses to decorate their home or property, but you either learn to live with it or you find a new place to live. Unless what they are doing is illegal, encroaches on your property or is a hazard to low-flying planes, suck it up. The residents of in the Dungeness area of the north Olympic Peninsula in Sequim, Washington need to learn this lesson and learn it well. They are up in arms because Cindy Zechenelly and her husband, Blaine, bought a four-car garage with an apartment on top and elected to paint the structure bright purple. Zechenelly and her husband say they plan to build a house on the property and move there in 2011 or so, but for now the purple garage stays. Ironically, Zechenelly claims that the choice of paint color was largely inspired by Sequim's claim to be the lavender-growing capital of North America. Another factor was the color scheme used for Victorian houses in San Francisco (the Zechenelly’s reside in San Jose), but their reasoning for choosing purple paint is irrelevant, because it’s their choice to make. Equally irrelevant and ridiculous is the petition that about two dozen Dungeness-area residents have signed a seeking property tax relief from Clallam County because of the building. Yes, they are electing to overlook the nationwide recession that has gripped this country and blame their declining property values on a purple building in their neighborhood. Great perspective folks, seriously. County Assessor Pamela Rushton said that it's the first tax relief request she has seen based on bright colors. However, she rightly concluded that even if property values are down, it will be hard to determine whether the garage or the recession is to blame. “I call it the purple people-eater," said Brianna Juel, a neighbor who circulated the petition. Ahhhhhh…..so clever, B. I call you a moron. You don’t need to like the house that was built, you don’t need to paint your own house that color, but what you do need to do is shut your pie hole and stop whining…..
- Believe it or not, Vin Diesel is Miley Cyrus’ b’otch. After a record-setting opening weekend last weekend for Diesel’s new action flick Fast & Furious, the film was booted from the top spot at the box office this weekend by a singing, dancing Disney star. Cyrus led Hannah Montana: The Movie to the top of the box office this weekend, earning an estimated $34 million and making its mark as the second-best Easter weekend opening of all time. Among the other records the movie broke were: biggest April opening Disney has ever had and best opening day of any live-action, G-rated film in history on Friday. Fast & Furious didn’t have a terrible weekend - aside from losing out to a bubble-gum teen pop singer, that is. F & F made $28.2 million, bringing its overall gross to $118 million. Finishing third in the earnings race was Monsters & Aliens, which raked in another $22 million in its third week. The weekend’s No. 4 film was Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2, a.k.a Observe and Report with Seth Rogen. It took the No. 4 spot with an underwhelming $11.1 million haul. The last member of the top five was Knowing with $6.7 million. Rounding out the top 10 were: I Love You, Man ($6.4 million), The Haunting in Connecticut ($5.7 million), newcomer/dork flick Dragonball: Evolution ($4.7 million), Adventureland ($3.4 million), and Duplicity ($3 million). Not your most inspiring crop of movies, Hollywood, but at least you’re dependable in that sense…….
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