- Someone needs to tell that kook Dick Cheney that he’s no longer even remotely relevant and no one gives a damn about his opinion of the current administration or on any topic outside of the best way to blast your friend in the face with a shotgun while hunting. Heck, D. Cheney was barely relevant when he was the puppeteer, er, vice president under that tool W. Now that he’s out of office, I’m wondering why Cheney’s gums are still bumping and words are still flying out of his pie hole. Dude is relentless attacking the Obama administration and even fellow Republicans. “If I don't speak out, then where do we find ourselves? ... Then the critics have free run, and there isn't anybody there on the other side to tell the truth,” Cheney said on Sunday. Hang on, stop right there. You arrogant bastard, you are actually trying to position yourself as some noble defender of the truth and warrior on behalf of the American public? Hey ass hat, as I remember, you weren’t too reliable for telling the truth when you were in office for eight years, so how do you now become a great guardian of all that is true and right? Here’s a clue, old man: when you’re parroting comments from that pompous blowhard Rush Limbaugh, odds are you’re missing the boat….and a lot of IQ point. In referencing Limbaugh’s comments that Colin Powell no longer belongs in the Republican party, Cheney unleashed this gem: “My take on it was Colin had already left the party. I didn't know he was still a Republican.” Hey-o, can a former vice president get a rim shot? My man, when you shoot out those comedic zingers, you had better have a fake brick wall behind you and urge everyone to tip their waiters and waitresses. Of course, Cheney isn’t limiting himself to irrelevant, erroneous comments about prominent politicians. Last week, he told the five listeners of a North Dakota radio program (it’s not your fault that you have more bison than people, North Dakotans, no disrespect intended) that it would be a mistake for the beleaguered GOP to "moderate" its message. Dude has also become that annoying, omnipresent house guest you can't get to leave for the Sunday TV circuit, where he’s busily (and wrongly) as he also defending the Bush administration's use of interrogation techniques, such as waterboarding, on suspected terrorists that are deemed torture by the current administration. Hey Dick (never has a man’s name more aptly described the type of person he is), we’ve all moved on and so should you. “No regrets," Cheney said on CBS this past Sunday. "I think it was absolutely the right thing to do. I'm convinced ... that we saved thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of lives." In fact, Cheney argued, "20 or 30 years from now, you'll be able to look back on this and say this is one of the great success stories of American intelligence." Whew…..that was another funny one. Us violating multiple tenets of the Geneva Convention AND doing the very things we railed against the Japanese for doing to American soldiers in World War II will be a “great success story”? I guess if you’re that wrong and take that hard a line on your wrong thinking for eight years, you may as well stick by it and continue to look like an idiot once you leave office……..
- Where to begin with the season finale of Lost? Here’s something: it was very good, just not as mind-blowingly good as last season’s finale. The best way I can explain it is to say that it felt like the entire episode was just stringing things along, waiting for the one explosive moment at the end of the two hours. Last season’s finale had the same explosive closing moments, but there were also some great moments along the way. The obvious place to begin is with the revelation of Jacob, the mysterious and so-far-unseen leader of the island. The episode began with a man weaving on a loom in some sort of cave, then walking outside and sitting on a beach. He takes a fish from a trap, sits down to cook the fish over and open flame and stares off at a ship in the distance. The scene is odd because it’s a sailboat, the sort of boat you’d expect to see in the 1700s or 1800s. The man is joined by a second man who sits down and asks what the people on the ship want. The first man answers that they can ask the boat people once they arrive. The second man counters by saying that the first man, whom he calls Jacob, brought the boat here to “prove me wrong.” He then asks Jacob if he knows he much he would like to kill him, and Jacob answers that he does. So that’s Jacob, who has clearly been on the island for hundreds of years. Throughout the episode, we also see Jacob visiting each member of the Oceanic Six off of the island. He’s there when Kate is five or six years old and tries to steal a New Kids on the Block lunch box from the local convenience store. Jacob pays for the lunchbox and makes Kate promise she won't steal anymore. He’s there at Sawyer’s parents’ funeral to offer an eight-year-old Sawyer condolences after his father killed his mother and then himself because the con man from whom Sawyer took his name had swindled them out of their life savings. That’s also the day Sawyer writes his now-famous letter to that con man, vowing revenge for his parents’ death. It’s the letter Sawyer carried with him all his life and forced that con man, who also conned John Locke out of a kidney, and made him read when they finally met inside the abandoned slave ship mysteriously located in the middle of the jungle on the island. Jacob lent Sawyer the pen used to write that very letter. He was there at the hospital after Jack finished his first surgical procedure and tried to get a candy bar out of an uncooperative vending machine. Likewise, Jacob was there when Locke went to confront that man who conned him into donating a kidney, then threw him out of an apartment window several stories off the ground after Locke came to confront him. Jacob sat reading a book on a bench nearby, as if expecting Locke to fall to the ground a few feet behind him. He strolls over, places his hand on an unconscious/possibly dead Locke’s shoulder and brings him back to life/consciousness. Jacob then assures him that it’ll all be okay and walks away. Jacob was there at Sun and Jin’s wedding in Korea, offering congratulations to the bride and groom in fluent Korean even though neither of them knew who he was. Jacob was also on the street in L.A. behind Sayid, asking him for directions at the very moment when Sayid’s beloved Nadia was hit by a car and died. And lastly, he was there when Hurley was released from prison following his return to L.A. from the island as member of the Oceanic Six. Once the police realized that Hurley didn’t kill the people that he was accused of murdering while on the run with Sayid, he was released (although he did try to talk the cop who processed him out into reconsidering) and Jacob was waiting in a cab outside the jail. He was the one who told Hurley to get on Ajira flight 316, the flight that took the rest of the Oceanic Six back to the island. Hurley said he didn’t want to go because he was cursed, but Jacob assured him that he wasn’t cursed, but actually blessed because he could now see and talk to his dead friends. As for life back on the island, Jack is still on his mission to use the nuclear bomb that Daniel Faraday wrote about in his journal to blow up the Swan Station and the hatch that was placed over the pocket of negatively charged energy under the station, thus preventing the hatch from existing and preventing the crash of Oceanic 815 some 30 years in the future because Desmond Hume neglects to press the button to diffuse the negative energy that buildings up every 108 minutes inside the hatch. Jack is helped by Sayid, who follows the directions in Daniel’s journal to remove the plutonium core from the center of the bomb, which is all that is needed to trigger the explosion. Transporting the entire 20-ton bomb is out of the question, so the core will have to do. With the core in tow, the two men move out, accompanied by Richard Alpert and Eloise Hawking of the Others/Hostiles. After trudging through tunnels leading under the island, Richard stops at a section of wall and begin smashing it with a sledgehammer. On the other side is a set of stairs leading up into one of the home in the Dharma Initiative barracks. Eloise is prepared ot lead the charge up the stairs, but at the last moment Richard conks her on the head with his gun and knocks her out. He explains to Jack and Sayid that he and Eloise have fulfilled their promise to help in this mission, but that he won't put the pregnant Eloise into any more danger. They’re leaving and it’s up to Jack and Sayid to complete their mission. That mission becomes tougher when the two men surface inside the house and see the chaotic scene outside as the evacuation of all non-essential personnel from the barracks rages on. Sayid dons a Dharma jumpsuit to match the one Jack has on and they attempt to blend in while making their way across the barracks. However, Dharma security man Phil spots them as does Ben Linus’ father Roger. Roger fires and hits Sayid in his right side, not knowing Sayid is carrying a nuclear device on his back. Sayid goes down, but Jack returns fire while dragging his friend to safety. Pinned down behind a house, all looks lost until a Dharma VW minibus pulls up and the doors slides open. It’s Hurley, Miles and Jin, there to save the day. Jack and Sayid get into the van and it speeds off into the jungle. Jack directs Hurley to drive to the Swan Station because it’s the only way to save Sayid. On the way there, the van makes an abrupt stop in the woods because…..well, because Sawyer, Kate and Juliet are standing in their way. That trio was on the sub leaving the island when Kate told Juliet and Sawyer of Jack’s plan and pleads with them to help her stop him. Sawyer says he’s staying out of it, going back to civilization and accepting his life in 1977. Juliet has other ideas and when a member of the sub’s crew enters the area where the three of them are handcuffed to tables, she knocks him out and takes his keys. After all three are freed from their restraints, they go to the sub’s control room and at gunpoint, force the captain to surface the sub so they can get off. After rowing back to the island, they come across some familiar faces: Bernard and Rose, Oceanic 815 survivors we haven’t seen all season or since the mysterious disappearance of the island in last season’s finale. Rose explains that she and Bernard have simply been living in the woods in an abandoned shack for the last three years, accompanied by Vincent, the golden retriever formerly owned by fellow Oceanic 815 survivor Michael and his son Walt. Bernard and Rose tell Sawyer they had no desire to join the Dharma Initiative with the rest of the survivors who were on the island when it moved through time to 1977 because, “We’re retired.” After hearing about the new mission to stop Jack, Rose marvels that they’ve traveled 30 years through time and they’re “still trying to find ways to shoot each other.” Yet she tells Juliet, Kate and Sawyer where to find the barracks from their current location on the island so they can run off to stop Jack. That leads to the confrontation in the road, which in turn leads to Jack and Sawyer stepping off into a clearing in the jungle to talk. Sawyer requests five minutes to speak his peace and Jack agrees to hear him out. Sawyer’s argument against using the bomb to blow up the hatch turns out to be that after going back in time 30 years, he landed in a year that would have allowed him to go back home and stop his father from committing the murder-suicide that left him an orphan, but that he chose not to do so because what is done, is done. Jack counters that Locke told him he had a purpose to serve by returning to the island and that revising history by destroying the hatch and preventing the crash of Oceanic 815 was that purpose. When both men see that they can’t win the other over, an all-out brawl breaks out. Both men land good shots and are soon bloodied and cut up. Sawyer gains the upper hand and is set to choke the life out of Jack when Juliet intervenes and demands that he stop. She says that she’s changed her mind about stopping Jack and now thinks they need to help him complete his mission. When Sawyer asks why she changed her mind, Juliet tells him that when she saw the way Sawyer still looks at Juliet, she knew that she had lost him. She goes on to say that if Jack can blow up the hatch, rewrite history and prevent Oceanic 815 from ever crashing, meaning Sawyer will never come to the island, never meet her and she won't have to experience the pain of losing him. With that settled, everyone heads back to the Dharma van, where Jack takes the bomb and proceeds alone, on foot toward the Swan. Their path becomes tougher when Phil radios Radzinsky, who has been at the Swan making sure that Dr. Chang and his team keep the drill going to drill down into the ground and the pocket of energy under the site. Radzinsky orders Phil and a team of guards to come out and help secure the Swan. Phil and his men arrive and set up a perimeter, which poses major trouble for Jack. He’s crept up to the site with the bomb on his back and Phil spots him lurking in the bushes. A firefight breaks out and Jack is badly outnumbered until the rest of his friends come bum-rushing onto the scene in the Dharma van. With extra guns to back him up, Jack is able to get close enough to the hole to drop the bomb in. Sawyer, Juliet, Kate and Miles subdue Phil, Radzinsky and the other Dharma security guys long enough to create that opening. After a moment of hesitation in which Jack, Kate, Juliet and Sawyer all exchange meaningful glances because they could well eb seconds from rewriting history and making it so that none of them ever met, Jack drops the bomb down the hole and……nothing. The bomb doesn’t go off and instead, the negative energy from the pocket below the ground begins pulling everything metal towards it. Tools, vehicles, chains and even the drilling equipment is sucked in. Juliet is caught by a chain that is being pulled down the hole and it wraps itself around her waist. Sawyer tries to save her, as does Kate, but the chain has a hold of her and ultimately Juliet can’t hold her grip and falls down into the hole. Up top, Jack and Kate must pull Sawyer back from the hole to save him. Miles also helps Dr. Chang, a.k.a. his father, who has gotten caught up in the rigging for the drill. Down at the bottom of the hole, Juliet has landed at the bottom and is actually still alive. She spots the un-detonated bomb a few feet away and pounds it with a rock in a last-ditch attempt to detonate it. Her efforts work and in what is actually the last scene of the episode, a massive flash engulfs the island. However, we still haven’t talked about what’s going on in 2007 on the island, where Locke is leading “his people” to a meeting with Jacob. At the same time, Ilana (one of the Ajira 316 survivors) is arriving on the island with some of her friends and Frank Lapidus, the pilot from the flight who was also the pilot from Charles Widmore’s freighter team last season. Frank was last seen being rendered unconscious by the butt of Ilana’s rifle on the smaller island across the water from the main island, so he’s just coming to as she and her comrades paddle ashore. They discuss whether Frank might be a “candidate,” though it’s not clear what that means. When Frank is back up and conscious, he asks what’s inside a massive trunk that Ilana and her team are carrying. She decides that he can see the contents and when Frank does, he’s blurts out, “Terrific.” The group then marches through the woods and ends up at what we’ve been told in the past is Jacob’s cabin. Ilana is then shown in a flashback in a hospital in a foreign country, where she is visited by Jacob. He asks her if she’s willing to help him, and she answers yes. We don’t know what the project is, but based on what’s happening in 2007, that project would seem to involve what in the trunk and also had to do with being on Ajira 316. At the cabin, Ilana goes inside alone and finds the place abandoned. She does see a piece of cloth pinned to the wall by a knife and takes the cloth with her as she exits and tells her group that the cabin has been empty for some time and that Jacob isn’t there. On the cloth is a picture of the mysterious four-toed statue that we’ve seen in numerous scenes on the island the past five seasons. One of Ilana’s companions say that now they know where to go and off the group heads. They reach the state - or what remains of it, which is the right foot - at nightfall and there they meet Locke’s people. While Locke and Ben go inside the statue to meet Jacob (after Alpert shows them the way in), Ilana and her group come trudging out of the jungle and asks to speak to Richard. He steps forward and Ilana asks him, “What lies in the shadow of the statue?” When Richard correctly answers (in Latin, I believe), Ilana knows he;s the person she’s looking for an opens the box her friends have been carrying. They dump its contents and inside is….the body of John Locke, just as he looked after being killed and placed on Ajira 316 before it crashed on the island. Sun asks how Locke can be dead on the beach AND inside the statue, which is a pretty good question. Maybe this explains why on the walk to the statue, Locke told Alpert that after seeing Jacob, he would need to “take care” of the other Ajira 31`6 survivors. Inside the statue, Locke and Ben walk down a short hallway and into a larger room. Locke has told Ben that not only is the plan to kill Jacob, but that Ben should do it to gain revenge over the pain the island has put him through (his tumor, his daughter being murdered, being forced to leave the island). Jacob is indeed waiting for them and has clearly been expecting them. Like Alpert, Jacob seemingly hasn’t aged from any of the moments we’ve seen him in over the course of literally years, and he’s also a man of surprisingly few words. He listens patiently to a soliloquy from Ben about why Ben never saw him even once while leader of the Others, but when Locke becomes leader and demands to see Jacob, he gets an immediate meeting. “What about me?” a distraught Ben asks. “Yes, what about you,” a dismissive Jacob replies. When Locke reminds Ben to do what they came to do - kill Jacob by stabbing him with a knife - Jacob tells Ben that he has a choice on what he does. Ben’s choice turns out to be stabbing Jacob right in the heart, repeatedly. A wounded Jacob falls to the ground and as he gasps for breath, tells Lock that, “They’re coming.” He says it twice, but Locke is unmoved and kicks Jacob into the nearby fire pit, setting him ablaze. So Jacob is dead, or so it seems, but what did he mean and what to make of the two Locke’s? That’ll have to wait until next season, which won't come ‘til next calendar year……..
- I think your goal is an admirable one, Iran. After all, who can’t get with a legit attempt to reduce the number of "unnecessary executions" a nation carries out? Let’s face it, executions are messy, time-consuming and because they tend to be fairly bloody, you can’t exactly drop them in primetime TV and sell ad space for top rates. In other words, they’re a drain on society and other than offing a despicable scumbag who has committed a horrific crime, there just aren’t many benefits. The country is trying to amend some of its laws to recognize "developments," said Alireza Jamshidi a spokesman Iranian judiciary said over the weekend. “We act according to and within the framework of our laws, especially our Islamic laws. Of course, there has been a huge development in our laws in recent years. Certain measures have been sent to parliament for approval. In particular, regarding cases involving unnecessary executions. Those laws are in the process of being changed, after the approval of Parliament and the Guardian Council. We hope to see a reduction of such sentences.” I suppose it would be beneficial and helpful to clarify what you mean by “unnecessary executions,” but then again, with the amount of people Iran executes, there are bound to be a few unnecessary ones no matter how you define that term. The needed approval will come from the Guardian Council, an unelected body of six high clerics appointed by supreme religious leaders and six lawyers nominated by the head of the judiciary branch. Should the approve these legal changes, look for Iran to drop off that solid 25-30 execution per month pace it has been on while on the way to executing at least 140 people this year. Included among that number are quite a few juveniles, a fact that has not escaped the attention of human rights groups around the world. Perhaps these new laws will do enough to quiet their cries of outrage just a bit……
- Well here’s a shocker. Donald Trump will let Miss California USA Carrie Prejean keep her title despite controversy over seminude photos and charges by state pageant officials that she had abandoned her duties to devote time to opposition to same-sex marriage. Really? You mean to tell me that the lecherous, superficial, arrogant and attention-whorish Trump (who I will always love for the verbal beatdown he gave Rosie O’Donnell a couple of years back) is cool with a hot young beauty queen taking revealing pictures? No way. Following weeks of controversy touched off by Prejean having the kahones to answer honestly when flake job/quasi-celebrity blogger Perez Hilton’s question about her stance on gay marriage during the Miss USA Pageant, Trump ended all the talk of stripping Prejean of her title by announcing that she would keep her crown. Trump made the announcement at his New York headquarters Tuesday, but not before tooting his own horn by claiming that his Miss USA pageant stays "so relevant," unlike the rival Miss America pageant seen only on a small cable channel. The photos of a topless Prejean do not violate the contract she signed when entering the pageant competition, Trump said. "Some were very beautiful," he said. "Some were risqué, but again, we're in the 21st century." The Trump-ster also praised Prejean for standing up for her values while also admitting that the low scores she received from Hilton likely hurt her chances to win the pageant. Still, she’s gained a lot from the whole saga and should have a much longer-lasting presence in the public eye because of it. Had she won, she would have been just another hot, blond chick in a tiara who talked about wanting world peace and to help kids and no one would have even thought of her within a couple of weeks. Now, she’s better known than the woman who won the Miss USA title -- Kristen Dalton of North Carolina and she’s become the poster girl for anti-same-sex marriage groups. In the aftermath of the pageant, Hilton is actually the one who has conducted himself with the least class and integrity. No one was looking to bash him for being gay (not in this case, I mean), but I sure as heck will bash him for the classless, low-brow video he posted online in which he called Prejean "a dumb bitch." Why? Because she has the audacity to believe differently than you do and the courage to publicly stand for what she believes in? That’s what’s great about this country: You can believe something different than others and you have every right to do so and to speak out about what you believe. The issue of Prejean losing her crown as Miss California was an entirely different topic, as that pageant’s organizers seemingly felt that she was abandoning her “duties” as their reigning champion to crusade against same-sex marriage. Lawyers for the Miss USA group demanded that the National Organization for Marriage, a same-sex marriage opposition group, stop using video clips of the pageant in its TV ads. Miss California USA officials then seized on the relase of a seminude photo taken of Prejean to make their case that she had breached the contract she signed with the pageant. Fortunately for Prejean, the man deciding her fate is D. Trump, and I think we all know how the Donald feels about hot, young blond chicks……
- Like Jose Canseco, a self-promoting loudmouth whom people either love or hate but whose words - at least on the topic of steroids in baseball - have been proven true time and again, Shaquille O’Neal is being shown to be a basketball savant over and over - or at least every time the Orlando Magic take the court this postseason. Earlier this season, Shaq took a verbal shot at Orlando coach Stan “Ron Jeremy” Van Gundy - who does bear a striking, eerie resemblance to the infamous porn star - by calling him the “master of panic.” O’Neal explained that when Van Gundy’s team needed him the most in the playoffs, he would let them down and panic. If anyone doubted the veracity of those words, they can’t now, not after the last two games of the Magic’s series with Boston. In Game 4, the Magic lost on their home court because they couldn’t knock down a field goal in the last three minutes of the contest, nor could they defend a mediocre, overweight power forward nicknamed “Big Baby” on the game’s final play. Yet Game 5 was by far the more egregious example of Van Jeremy choking as a coach and passing that unenviable trait on to his players. The Magic, dubbed the Orlando Panic in some circles, had a 14-point lead IN THE FOURTH QUARTER. Yes, they were on the road and Boston does have a legit, upper-echelon superstar in Paul Pierce. But the Magic have a superstar too; his name is Dwight Howard. You know, the same Dwight Howard who only got 10 shot attempts in Game 5 and who proceeded to rip his coach publicly in interviews following the game for not getting him the ball more. The Panic were outscored 17-3 down the stretch and while the Celtics are a good defensive team, they’re not that good. Van Jeremy is a freaking maniac on the sidelines, rarely appears in control and doesn’t do a good job of steadying his team when an opponent makes a major run. That was true even in the Magic’s first-round series against a completely inferior Philadelphia team. The Sixers came back on the Magic multiple times and pushed them to six games when a team with Orlando’s talent and not coached by the Master of Panic probably would have swept Philly easily. At this point, I don’t see how Orlando recovers and wins this series. Van Jeremy is still their coach and he’s not changing his stripes at this point in the series. Even if they somehow manage to ride the energy from their home crowd to win Game 6, no way they win Game 7 in Boston. Not when no lead, no matter how late in the game, is safe in the hands of the M.O.P……….
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