The case of North Face v. South Butt, Delonte West is freaking scaring me and Google Wave about to wash over us

- It would seem tat apparel maker North Face does not have much of a sense of humor, corporate-wise. The company is none too happy with Jimmy Winkelmann, a University of Missouri freshman who created a new clothing line called South Butt, with a logo and name that are obviously clever pokes at North Face, which manufactures, shirts, jackets, shorts and other clothing items. Winkelmann’s South Butt clothes are sold at the Ladue Pharmacy in his hometown of St. Louis, but if North Face has anything to say about it, they won't be there for long. Jim Winkelmann, Jimmy Winkelmann’s father, said that North Face sent a letter asking his son's South Butt line to "immediately" stop production. "We don't understand why they were taking this aggressive posture," Jim Winkleman mused. According to the letter, North Face’s grievance is with the younger Winkelmann’s use of the half-dome design that it has made famous as its logo. On South Butt merchandise, the half-dome is flipped upside down, but North Face doesn’t seem to see the humor. Winkelmann’s attorney, Albert Watkins, stated this week that he attempted to resolve the matter with North Face’s lawyers, but to no avail. "I did try to explain with a great deal of candor to counsel for the North Face that the general public is aware of the difference between a face and a butt,” Watkins humorously recalled. Ironically, Winkelmann's dad says the whole idea behind his son's creation is to offer customers an alternative to North Face’s soul-less corporatism. Jimmy Winkelman admitted that he was nervous at first when North Face came after his company, but now he relishes the attention his merchandise is getting and the fact that it could boost sales. For the time being, the clothing will continue to be sold, which is good on several levels. First, I think this is a clever concept and although I personally wouldn’t want to wear any South Butt gear, I can see where some people might. Second, this has the potential to lead to one of the funniest-named court cases ever: North Face v. the South Butt. Say what you will about Jimmy Winkelman, but don’t tell me you wouldn’t laugh for a good 10-20 seconds at least if you saw “South Butt defeats North Face in landmark case” as a headline……………

- They have not have won a World Series title in nearly two decades, but no franchise in Major League Baseball is deserving of more respect on an annual basis than the Minnesota Twins. For those unfamiliar with the economics of baseball, let’s just say that there is no salary cap and teams like the New York Yankees, Boston Red Sox and Los Angeles Dodgers, all based in major media markets, have infinitely more revenue and bigger budgets than small-market teams like the Twins. This year, Minnesota boasts a payroll of $65.2 million, less than a third of the $201 million the Yankees are paying their bloated, bought roster of all-stars. So the Twins can't sign prime free agents in the offseason and more often than not, they must watch their own elite players leave in free agency when their contracts are up because they simply don’t have the resources to hand out absurd free-agent deals like the Yankees do. In spite of that, the Twins are ridiculously competitive on a yearly basis with rosters filled with cast-offs from other teams, scrappy overachievers and homegrown talent. This year, they overcame an injury to MVP candidate Justin Morneau and missing all-stat catcher Joe Mauer for more than a month during the season because of a knee injury and have battled right back into the AL Central race, currently residing just two games behind the front-running Detroit Tigers. Last year, they were in a similar position and ran down the Chicago White Sox to force a one-game playoff for the division that the Sox ultimately won. They’ve won the division four times in the past seven season, even as their chief rivals outspent them. Manager Ron Gardenhire is a fiery leader who is beloved by his players. They know he always has their backs and will fight for them to the end, an attitude that permeates throughout the clubhouse. Another advantage the Twins always have working for there is their stadium, the infamous Metrodome. With its off-white roof, the dome presents incredibly difficult challenges for opposing players trying to pick up fly balls hit up near the roof. The Twins’ outfielders are adept at doing so because they play 81 games a year there. Also, the hard-as-a-rock playing surfance underneath the Metrodome’s Field Turf artificial grass allows the Twins to absolutely kill teams with multiple-hop base hits on balls that would be fielded easily on natural grass fields. Now, those Metrodome advantages will be gone after this season as the team moves to Target Field, a new outdoor stadium being built in downtown Minneapolis, but the other advantages of coaching, organizational excellence and toughness will still be there. So whether the Twins chase down the Tigers and win the division this year or not, their great pursuit and the toughness showed all season long will only bolster their stellar reputation around Major League Baseball and with knowledgeable fans of the game around the world……..

- Who to oppose here, who to oppose, despise and mock? On the one hand, I hate the American Civil Liberties Union because they basically seem to go around defending the rights of deviants, troublemakers and problem-causers and revel in stirring up dissent in defending those who quite frankly should not be defended at all. On the other hand, you all know my fierce despisal of The Man and especially when The Man tries to go all Big Brother and invade the private lives of Joe Citizen. So with the ACLU pitted against the city of Sacramento in its plan to install surveillance cameras throughout the city. The ACLU is taking the stance that the cameras are an invasion of privacy and may open the door to racial profiling. As for the first charge, I might be able to get with the idea that the cameras invade privacy. Where do you put them, how much can they see and are they strictly limited to non-invasive, public places are all valid questions. As for the racial profiling angle…..that’s typical ACLU bullsh*t. They will pick up the minority angle any time then can and bang that drum even if racism has no correlation to the issue at all. What, are there going to be special cameras that are rigged to follow only black people as they move around the city? Will there be special software installed on the cameras and the system that set off alarms when Hispanic people appear on camera? The race claim is so ridiculous that it basically invalidates the ACLU’s claim right off the bat. The agency points to a recent study which found that police in a city with 1 million surveillance cameras, only 1,000 crimes in 2008 were solved using closed circuit television. The ACLU’s argument is that instead of putting up cameras, the $615,000 grant from Homeland Security should be used to put more police officers on the street. "If you're walking down the street and somebody is thinking about mugging you, crooks are not stupid, they can see the camera," said ACLU Chairman Jim Updegraff. "They are not going to assault you, they will wait until you get to the next corner where there is no camera, then you get assaulted.” Perhaps there could be a camera on the next corner or police patrolling in areas where there aren’t cameras? But I hate the ACLU for putting me in a position where I’m almost defending law enforcement, because I hate that. However, the fact that I disagree with the Sacramento Police Department’s claim that putting up cameras will not infringe on people's rights, so no worries. "You can go online look around the world, there are surveillance cameras monitoring major cities and major iconic places like Tiananmen Square, so cameras are everywhere," said Sacramento police Sgt. Norm Leong. Umm, you probably don’t want to cite any tactic the Chinese government uses to control its citizenry as justification for your own actions, Norm. The Chinese government isn't generally considered a fair, forward-thinking group that makes the right choices in protecting and serving its people. Having taken in the arguments from both sides, I suppose my verdict is…..that we lock the two groups in a small, dark room and…..that’s it. Just lock them in that room, let them do what they want to one another and we don’t have to put up with either of them…………

- Who’s ready to ride the wave? For months now, we’ve been hearing about how Google Wave is going to revolutionize online communication, so now that the product is in the hands of 100,000 beta testers as of today, we’ll see how legit it is. Wave combines e-mail, chat, Wiki documents, blogs and photo-sharing sites to create a form of Internet communication called a "hosted conversation," or a "wave." Google debuted the product at the Google I/O developer conference in San Francisco, California, in May. The invitation-only group of beta testers will be looking to identify and bugs in the application so that Google can release it to the general public by the end of the year. The creators of Google Wave are familiar faces to Google and its users: Jens and Lars Rasmussen, the Australian brothers who developed Google Maps. These two have high ambitions for their new creation, as they have openly stated their hope that Google Wave will eventually replace e-mail as the main way people converse online. "This should be something everybody uses and something everybody knows," Jens Rasmussen said. Hmmm…..no. I’m not sold on Wave yet and don’t really need everything lumped into one ginormous application. Sure, e-mail-like communications can be edited by several users simultaneously in Wave and users can chat about certain sections of documents in real time, but not everyone has a need for that. So Brothers Rasmussen, I appreciate the effort to make online communication more efficient and collaborative, but your implication that email is basically snail mail for computers is off base. "We really have a much too strong tendency to just take things we know and just adapt them to the digital world," Jens Rasmussen said. My suspicion is that the concerns that the app may be too complicated for mainstream Web users are on point and that this thing will take a long time, if ever, to be accepted beyond a small group of niche users………….

- When Cleveland Cavaliers guard Delonte West was pulled over a couple weeks ago in Maryland for cutting off a cop on his three-wheeled Can-Am Spyder motorcycle and was discovered to be packing a .357 Magnum, 9mm handgun and a shotgun in a guitar case, the reaction against him was swift and strong. People viewed him as yet another gun-toting athlete who was trying to act like a gangsta. The reality behind that incident appears to be rooted much deeper in West’s troubled psyche. This is a cat who has a lifelong history of mood disorders and depression. He took 10 days off during training camp last year to seek treatment for these problems and speculation is that he may have been off his medications at the time of the gun incident. At the Cavaliers’ media day Monday, West was in attendance but didn’t want to discuss the incident other than to say he was back on his meds and doing fine. However, he’s missed the team’s first four practices over the past two days, all of which have been unexcused absences according to the team. All the Cavaliers will confirm is that West is in Cleveland and not in any immediate danger. Still, this is a scary situation that doesn’t appear to be getting better. A troubled dude who is taking mood stabilizers, going on and off of his meds and messing around with multiple guns is not good. If he’s struggling this much in the offseason, how is West going to handle the pressures that come with being a key component of a team that is considered a championship contender for the upcoming season? At this point it’s not clear when West might return to the team, but I am among those hoping he will take whatever time he needs to seek professional help, address his mental problems and get himself back on solid footing. Basketball is great and earning a living as an NBA star is the dream of millions, but it’s not worth it if it pushes you to the point that you are going to do something harmful to yourself or others. As much as Cleveland fans are starved for a championship, I don’t think any Cavaliers fan in his or her right mind would want to see West push himself back onto the court if it’s going to lead to disaster for the guy off the court. So best wishes to Delonte and his family during this time, do what you need to do to get right and basketball can wait until you do that…………

Heroes stumbles in Season 4, Week 2, reasons not to emulate the Oakland Raiders and a former Peruvian leader on trial #4 in a year

- The same problems that plagued Season 3 of Heroes are predictably still present in Season 4, namely keeping the key characters who have played a big role in the show up til now a part of the action while also integrating new characters into the action. And as often happened last season, last night’s episode of the show did not do a good job of straddling that line. For the second time in two episodes of this season, Mohinder Suresh (played by Sendhil Ramamurthy) was AWOL and not even mentioned in passing. Nathan and Angela Petrelli, Hiro Nakamura and his pal Ando, all in the season premiere, were also absent from this week’s episode. Same goes for Tracy Strauss and Micah, a.k.a. Rebel. So with all of those key pieces having nothing to do with the episode, things focused in on three separate storylines: Peter Petrelli in New York, Matt Parkman in L.A. and Claire Bennet, in college at an unidentified university in Arlington, Virginia. For Peter, life became a bit more litigious when a process server appeared at his apartment door and served him with a lawsuit from a man he allegedly injured during a rescue from a recent bus crash. The plaintiff’s name is William Hooper and Peter’s first reaction is to go to the records department at the hospital where the crash victims were taken and request the records from William Hooper’s visit. That leads to an encounter with a new PWP (person with powers), Emma, a deaf woman whose ability allows her to see sounds in the form of colors (i.e. reds, blues and purples coming from the bows of an upright bass). More on her shortly, but Peter gets the records he’s looking for and finds that Hooper is still at the hospital. When Peter tracks him down, Hooper tells a sad tale of being in New York because his brother just died and coming to his old hometown to reconnect with his past. However, Hooper is not really Hooper, but rather the enigmatic carnival operator known as Samuel (Robert Knepper) who we met last week as he began his quest to find PWP who could help his “family” and recruit them over to his side. The first scenes of the episode show Samuel at the Sullivan Bros. Carnival with his lady friend Lydia, a.k.a. the Tattooed Woman. Samuel gets dressed in a suit, something he admittedly hates, and tells Lydia that he’s headed to visit someone he thinks could be a replacement for his deceased brother Joseph. He then sucks an entire jar full of ink right into his hands, which of course he can then inject into someone and make the ink take whatever form or shape he wants it to. His power, it seems, is controlling the Earth and any element derived directly from it. Dressed and coiffed so he “looks just like everyone else,” off he goes to New York to unfurl his plan. Samuel leaves Peter in the hospital room with the claim that he was, in fact, on that bus and perhaps Peter is so burnt out by working double and triple shifts as a paramedic that he doesn’t even remember those he’s saved. Hours later, Samuel sneaks into Peter’s apartment, uses some of his absorbed ink to inject his likeness into a picture in a newspaper article of the bus crash that Peter has posted on his wall. Upon returning home, Peter takes a closer look at the picture to see if he can spot Samuel and sees the likeness that Samuel himself injected to fool him. A stunned Peter truly believes that Samuel really was on the bus when it crashed. A few more hours later, Peter runs into Samuel on the street and the two have a conversation about Joseph, about Peter’s life as a paramedic and other related topics. Samuel manages to forge something of a bond, enough that Peter opens up to him and tells Samuel that he should go back and visit his childhood home while he’s in town. The two shake hands and little does Peter know that when he does, Samuel uses his power to transfer the ink he absorbed into Peter’s body. During the night, when Peter and his paramedic partner respond to am emergency call, they find a sink hole that, unbeknownst to them, Samuel has caused. He went to visit the home where he grew up, a mansion where his father was a member of the help staff, and asks if he can go inside to look around. The lady of the house curtly informs him that they are having a dinner party and he needs to leave, so apparently Samuel takes great offense, causes the sinkhole and it swallows up the house, killing those inside. When Peter and his partner arrive, Samuel is lurking in the shadows, watching. He uses his power to manipulate the ink he injected into Peter, causing it to form into the shape of the very compass Samuel spent his henchman Edgar to take back from Emile Danko and then Noah Bennet last episode. The compass “tattoo” is on the inside of Peter’s right wrist and it’s spinning out of control, just like the real compass for the brief moment he held it in his hands. So that’s Peter story, which in the very least was not as deadly as Matt Parkman’s awful day out in L.A. On a stakeout of a drug suspect’s house, Parkman and his partner finally receive word that the judge has granted their warrant, allowing them to enter the house. That’s the good news, but the bad news is that Sylar is still haunting Parkman’s mind, taunting him to start using his mind control powers again and also to help Sylar find his body after transforming it into Nathan Petrelli’s body in last season’s finale. With Sylar haunting him, Parkman and his partner search the house and find nothing. Their suspect hides in a closet and tries to shoot Parkman but misses. As Parkman interrogates him and his partner searches the home, Sylar continues to lurk. At one point, the bound-and-tied suspect looks on in confusion as Parkman has a heated argument with Sylar, who only he can see. When Sylar points him in the direction of clues that seem to suggest a much more sinister crime than selling drugs - kidnapping of a child - Parkman finally caves in and uses his power to read the suspect’s mind, but not before brutally beating the suspect to the verge of death. Inside the mind, he finds what he’s looking for. The man’s thoughts lead him to a hidden room under the stairs where Parkman sees the dead body of a young girl. By this time, his partner returns to the main floor of the house and finds the suspect, bloodied and unconscious - maybe even dead. He is horrified and asks Parkman what he’s done. Parkman tells him about the dead girl, but when his partner looks insdie the room under the stairs, there is nothing there. Everything Parkman has seen - the clues, the girl, etc. - haven’t been real, but rather the ghost of Sylar turning Parkman’s own mind control powers against him and making him see things that didn’t exist. Faced with the reality that he’s killed a suspect who is almost certainly innocent, Parkman knows his career is over and jail could well be in his future. Rather than lose it all, he makes the decision to use his powers to force his partner to say that the killing was justified because the suspect attacked him and Parkman was merely coming to his aid. A satisfied Sylar tells Parkman that they are becoming more and more alike and that it’s the first day of the rest of Parkman’s life. In the third stoyrline of the evening, Claire must deal with new friend Gretchen having seen her fling herself from the third-floor dorm room window last week, hit the ground and heal from her wounds in an attempt to figure out whether Claire’s roommate, Annie, actually committed suicide. At first Claire tries avoiding Gretchen and denying it all, but when Claire’s dad Noah comes to visit, the situation takes a twist. Noah/H.R.G. invites Gretchen along to lunch and while there, it becomes clear through veiled, hint-dropping comments that Gretchen now knows Claire’s secret. H.R.G. wants to call in the Haitian to wipe Gretchen’s memory, but Claire prevails upon him to let her handle the situation. Her method is to come clean with Gretchen, trusting her to keep the secret. Claire also asks Gretchen to be her new roommate, perhaps to keep an eye on her. There was actually one scene where H.R.G called Claire and while she talked on the phone, we saw Gretchen sitting alone in Claire’s room, ominous music playing in the background, seemingly setting things up for the Haitian to swoop in and erase her memory. But when Claire ended her call and came back into the room, Grethcen’s memory seemed intact, so maybe the Haitian didn’t do his thing. Now, as for Emma….after her encounter with Peter, in which she sees colors come up from the floor when he coffee mug breaks and realizes something odd is going on, she goes to the doctor. Her doctor suggests she may have something called synesthia in which senses heighten or combine when a person lacks one sense, i.e. hearing. That theory is put to the test when Emma goes to the park - the same one where Peter and Samuel meet and at the same time - and picks up the bow of an upright bass player who is playing for donations in the park. When he takes a break, she picks up his instrument and plays, drawing a large crowd and raucous applause when she finishes. An embarrassed/confused Emma rushes off, leaving Peter to watch her go and wonder what is up with this chick. So that’s it and that’s all for this episode, one that would earn an “I” for incomplete if I had to grade it but should probably get a failing grade because in all honest, it just wasn’t that good and didn’t do enough to build on a solid season premiere from the previous week…………….

- That’ll show ‘em what a legit, total badass you are, pint-sized female rapper Lady Sovereign. This chick’s rhymes and beats were already suspect and her hip-hop cred marginal at best, but spitting in the face of a doorman at a gay bar in Brisbane, Australia isn't exactly going to get her more respect. Yes, beefs with the law and arrests are general good for street cred, but getting liquored up and hocking a loogie in the face of a bouncer at a gay bar doesn’t exactly scream hardened gangsta. The alleged incident took place on first night of Lady Sovreign’s current Australian tour, just hours before she was scheduled to take he mic for her 4:40 p.m. slot on the opening date of the Parklife national festival tour. Sovereign, whose real name is Louise Amanda Harman, had been in Australia for a mere seven hours when she had one or five drinks too many, spit in the face of the doorman and found herself evicted from Beat, a popular gay nightclub in Brisbane's Fortitude Valley. The 5'1" Harman was reportedly hysterical as she was thrown out of the venue and spend the next few hours sitting in a cell at the local jail. She was released in time for her performance, but that didn’t lessen her ire toward The Man for trying to hold her down. "Brisbane police need to go catch some real criminals... what a waste," she Tweeted. "Spitting in someone's face is nasty, but how about a guy dressed up as a girl running at you in the toilets and punching you in the head?” Umm, OK? Not sure if you’re saying that happened to you or you just saw it happen, but my guess is that you were really, really drunk and the alleged punch to the head didn’t happen to anyone at all. Either way, Harman was charged with assault faced the Brisbane Magistrates Court on Saturday morning, where she pleaded guilty to assault and drunk and disorderly charges and was fined $345 and ordered to pay $172 in compensation to the bouncer. Way to ingratiate yourself to the country you’re visiting, L. Sovereign. Nothing like asking people to pay what I’m sure are bloated ticket prices to come see someone who is hammered out of her mind and spitting on the faces of the natives less than eight hours after landing in the country………….

- Normally, saying a college football program conducts its business like an NFL team would be a compliment and a testament to its professionalism, efficiency and high standards. When that comparison likens your program to the Oakland Raiders……well, let’s just say it’s less of a compliment and more of a scathing indictment. You may recall that last month, an Oakland Raiders assistant coach named Randy Hanson accused head coach Tom Cable of sucker punching him during a meeting, a claim Cable and the team later lied about and tried to cover up by saying that Cable merely flipped Hanson out of his chair, causing him to hit his head on a cabinet in the process. That case is still making its way through the legal process and Hanson is now pressing for assault charges, but suffice it to say that regardless of the outcome, University of New Mexico head coach Michael Locksley would do well not to emulate Cable’s example. Of course, someone should have told Locksley that before he (allegedly) punched wide receivers coach Jonathan "J.B." Gerald in the face after a "heated" coaches meeting around 7:15 p.m. on Sept. 20. Unlike Hanson, Gerald cooperated with the police and filed a report the day of the alleged incident. And unlike Cable, Locksley actually admitted his mistake, albeit in a prepared, cookie-cutter statement. "I apologized to Coach Gerald, the coaching staff and our team for my poor judgment," Locksley said. "I would also like to apologize to Lobo fans. Like I remind our players, when mistakes are made, you acknowledge them and deal with the consequences.” The way the fight went down, according to the police report, was that at one point in the meeting Locksley grabbed Gerald by the collar and later, things got heated again. Other coaches attempted to intervene, but Locksley slipped a nice jab in and hit Gerald square in the face, causing a small cut on the inside of his upper lip. An officer who responded to the scene of the incident also noted a scratch to Gerald's left forearm. This comes on the heels of a sexual harassment suit against Locksley by a former secretary in the football office, a suit that is reportedly on the verge of being resolved. Bottom line here: This guy is out of control, clearly has anger and self-control issues and based on his team’s winless on-field performance, Locksley should be looking for a new job by season’s end. Ironically, it was Gerald who has been on leave and missed Saturday's game against New Mexico State University for what the school termed personal issues. Just for the benefit of all involved, I’m going to go ahead and suggest that the entire New Mexico football program stop emulating the Raiders and start conducting themselves with some class and dignity…………..

- Days like today, I sincerely regret that my man Alberto Fujimori is no longer the acting president of Peru. Because while having your country’s former president plead guilty to charges of illegal wiretapping and embezzling government money to bribe politicians and journalists to support his 2000 re-election campaign is cool, having the guilty party as your current head of state is so much better. It’s also nice that a verdict was finally reached in this case, as this was the fourth criminal trial that Fujimori faced since being extradited to Peru from Chile in 2007. The guy had already been through three other trials for completely different offenses, so I’m sure he was tired of seeing the inside of courtrooms. Sentencing will take place tomorrow, but government prosecutor Jose Antonio Pelaez Bardales has asked the court for an eight-year prison sentence and a fine of $1.7 million to be paid to the state, and $1 million to go to victims of the wiretapping. The kicker is that Fujimori lost the election in question after serving as the country’s president from 1990 to 2000. The trial wasn’t much of a trial at all, as Fujimori admitted his guilt with a short "I agree" to the judges, avoiding the spectacle of the 60-plus witnesses the government planned to call to testify against him. The witnesses were set to include former congressmen, authors, journalists, former United Nations officials and presidential candidates, all of whom were to testify about the bribery and wiretaps. The shame in all of this is that Fujimori did a lot of good for Peru, leading the stabilization of the country’s economy and defeating the Shining Path gorrillas, who carried out terrorist attacks. However, dude also had issues with human rights abuses and corruption - namely that he liked to abuse people’s human rights and was notoriously corrupt. That corruption was on display from the time he took office as president in 1990 and allegedly used public funds to set up surveillance centers to intercept phone conversations of people deemed a threat to his rule. That tradition of corruption was something he carried through his entire term in office, bribing members of Peru's congress after the ruling party failed to gain a majority during midterm elections in 2000. That would have been bad enough, but my man Al Fujimori dipped into public funds for the bribe money. Regardless of the sentence that is handed down, he won’t be seeing freedom any time soon - as in the rest of his life. In his first criminal trial, Fujimori was sentenced to six years for breaking into the home of a political rival’s wife to confiscate incriminating videos and in April, he was sentenced to 25 years in prison after being convicted of authorizing the operation of a death squad responsible for killing civilians. The third installment of Fujimori on Trial came in July, when he was sentenced to 7½ years in prison for paying a $15 million bonus to an ally out of the government treasury. Stacked up against that impressive trio, a simple bribery case doesn’t seem nearly as bad………….

- All beware the Floor Mats of Death! If you are the owner of a late-model Toyota or Lexus, you are hereby advised that the floor mats in your whip could well kill you. Both car companies have advised drivers of 3.8 million of their cars to remove floor mats or risk a forced-down accelerator pedal that could lead to a fatal crash. Teaming up with Lexus and Toyota for this uplifting announcement was the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The trio released a statement Tuesday alerting drivers to the fact that the removable mats could interfere with the pedal and cause it to stick. "A stuck open accelerator pedal may result in very high vehicle speeds and make it difficult to stop the vehicle, which could cause a crash, serious injury or death," the statement declared. I’ve got two words for you on that one: Uh-oh! What’s disturbing is that Toyota recalled accessory all-weather floor mats in 2007 for similar problems, but the NHTSA observed that reports of vehicles accelerating rapidly even after the release of the pedal have continued. This warning applies to drivers of seven different makes of Toyota and Lexus vehicles. One story that helped trigger this warning is a fatal crash involving a family driving a 2009 ES350 loaned by a local Lexus dealer in San Diego, which the car maker admitted could have been caused by an all-weather floor mat interfering with the accelerated pedal because of a faulty mat installation. "There is an urgent matter," said U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood in the NHTSA statement. "For everyone's sake, we strongly urge owners of these vehicles to remove mats or other obstacles that could lead to unintended acceleration." Toyota plans a safety recall soon, but both NHTSA and the automaker warn Toyota and Lexus drivers of certain models to remove that floor mats sooner for safety. So what cars are affected? Here’s the list: the 2007-2010 Camry, 2005-2010 Avalon, 2004-2009 Prius, 2005-2010 Tacoma and 2007-2010 Tundra. The Lexus models are the 2007-2010 ES 350, and the 2006-2010 IS 250 and IS 350. As a quick aside, how nice is it that rich, spoiled people who drive a Lexus are now panicked because something could be very wrong with their cars? Now you know how the rest of us feel, Lexus owners. You’re just like the commoners, having parts of your car recalled and wondering if your ride is all that safe…………..

Saluting Ken Burns, tonight's episode of Greek and Honduras, where oppression is alive and well

- I’m the rare person under the age of 60 who really enjoys the occasional show on PBS. Typically it’s a good episode of This Old House, but for this week it’s Ken Burns' new documentary, The National Parks: America's Best Idea. I admit that part of the allure of this project for me is that I am someone who absolutely loves getting out into national and even state parks and doing some running, enjoying the scenery, etc. However, judging from what I saw in the first installment of the six-part series last night, there is something for most everyone in this documentary. Burns successful highlights the diverse and amazing beauty that makes out 391 national parks so unique and interesting. Considering that the entire system began with just one park, Yellowstone, and built so successfully over the past century-plus is a tribute to the parks system and to those who created it and Burns manages to highlight much of that in this project. On display are the mountains, waterfalls, canyons and seashores that Americans can see simply by making the effort to get in their cars, drive a few hours and use the legs that God gave them to walk around and explore. Heck, because the parks are all technically public land, you even own a piece of them. So on the one hand, I’d encourage you to watch the remaining five episodes of this documentary or track them down on DVD once they come out, hopefully seeing these snow-covered peaks, geysers, rivers of ice, volcanoes, grasslands, bison, moose, bears and eagles will also inspire you to get out and explore. Burns’ also looks to provoke some discussion by raising topics that have been relevant and applicable to the national parks system since it came into existence, arguments like public vs. private, preservation vs. development and use vs. conservation. I saw a recent interview with Burns in which he admitted that his hope is for Americans to be so inspired after seeing his 12-hour documentary that they flock to the national parks in numbers that far exceed the 275 million who visited them last year alone. That sentiment is right on and I second those hopes, so a tip of the cap to Burns and his crew for a job well done…………..

- I’ll admit it, I am absolutely jacked up about the corruption scandals currently sweeping through our nation’s mayoral ranks. It kicked off a few months ago with a massive federal corruption probe in New Jersey that led to the arrest of several mayors, moved on to Connecticut and has now landed in Ecorse, Michigan. That’s where federal agents arrested Ecorse Mayor Herbert Worthy and the city's Controller Erwin Hollenquest on Friday. These two have been charged with conspiracy, bribery and fraud, according to a criminal complaint which alleges that they demanded and accepted things of value in exchange for ensuring that Michigan Municipal Services, LLC would be awarded a multi-million dollar contract to perform public works for the City of Ecorse. And since they were allegedly partners in crime, it’s fitting that Worthy and Hollenquest were arraigned together Friday afternoon in Federal Court. Basically, the criminal complaint paints a picture of these two as your typical greasy, greedy, unethical public officials who took whatever bribes they could get their hands on in exchange for handing out favors. Mayor Worthy allegedly accepted cash payments from the owners of Michigan Municipal Services between November 2007 and December 2008 and Hollenquests is accused of accepting the Lexus automobile. In exchange for those gifts, they allegedly allowed the owners of Michigan Municipal Service to submit false and fraudulently inflated invoices. "These charges are just two examples of corrupt government officials who abuse the public trust and confidence," stated Special Agent in Charge Andrew G. Arena. " Public corruption is a top criminal priority of the FBI and will not be tolerated. This investigation demonstrates the FBI's commitment in investigating public corruption and brings those who betray the public's trust to justice." Hmm…..not quite on the level of douche-baggery exhibited by former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, but a solid effort by Messrs Worthy and Hollenquest nonetheless. Good effort guys, keep on this path and some day you might make it to the big leagues………….

- Traditions were tested on tonight’s edition of Greek. First, Zeta Beta found its role as the top sorority on campus put to the rest. With the Lambda Sigma fraternity putting together its annual calendar featuring the pledge classes of campus sororities, the ZBZ’s were expecting their usual slot in the calendar’s best month, July, and a spot on the cover in festive American flag bathing suits. But when the Lambda Sig’s give the ZBZ’s November instead of July, it forces Zeta Beta to confront some tough truths. Along with the cancellation of two schedules mixers with other fraternities, the pledge class has been having a lackluster run. Despite Casey and Ashleigh trying to rally them, the pledges have fallen into a rut and are mostly sitting around the house, watching TV and acting like lazy bums. Abby, the most vocal of the pledges, seems to be speaking for the group when she continually questions ZBZ leadership and the train seems to be about to come off the tracks. Casey and Rebecca attempt to tell Ashleigh about the pledge class crisis, but she’s still more focused on her on-the-rocks relationship with boyfriend Fisher and Rebecca’s role in that by kissing Fisher at the Kappa Tau “End of the World” party. Thus, she’s still ignoring Rebecca and refusing to talk to her. But Casey gets the message through about the calendar and promises to refocus the pledges and get them to do a kick-ass picture as the girls of November. Her plan doesn’t hold up long, as the unhappy pledges don’t show up for the photo shoot and only Rusty’s girlfriend and ZBZ pledge Jordan comes to explain why. Faced with this challenge, Casey ends up talking to Pan-Hellenic president and frien-emy Katherine about the problem and learns that ZBZ has fallen so much that it’s now the fourth-ranked sorority on campus. Katherine explains that a sinking cumulative GPA, declining philanthropy hours and a run of nonstop scandals are the cause of the decline, but that it’s all part of the cycle for sororities and that every one of them goes through down years from time to time. Casey and Ashleigh dig into ZBZ’s archives and find that the cycle concept is true, with their house having had down years in the late ‘80s. They vow to not let ZBZ have down years on their watch and stage a last-minute photo shoot to get their sexy pilgrims/Indians picture into the calendar. The photo shoot is a success and attracts plenty of attention to the ZBZ front lawn where it takes place, but the picture is too late for the calendar. In its place, the Lambda Sig’s put a picture of the ZBZ logo superimposed over top of a turkey. Thinking the pledges are pissed off by this, Casey and Ashleigh sit at Dobler’s for the party celebrating the calendar’s release thinking that the pledges will no-show again. To their surprise, the pledges not only show up, they show up in their sexy Thanksgiving costumes. Ashleigh is still pissed at Rebecca, although she is at least willing to acknowledge her presence. Still, she blows right past Rebecca for her first “reunion” date with Fisher. Over at the Kappa Tau house, Rusty is dealing with his own romantic issues. His girlfriend Jordan admits to him that she’s drifting in her studies and doesn’t have the same passion for her classes that Rusty has for his major as an engineer. She also asks if everything is OK with them, which causes Rusty to worry. In an attempt to assuage his fears, he decides to engage in a Cyprus-Rhodes tradition and lavaliere Jordan, which basically is some sort of quasi-commitment showing their bond. When Rusty reveals his plans to his fellow Kappa Tau’s, they are…..horrified. It seems that the KT’s, being the “commitment phobes” they are, don’t do much lavaliering and those who have tried saw their attempts end in disaster. Reading from a supposed book of KT history, Cappie tells Rusty a tale of a KT who proposed to his girlfriend at the University of Chicago on Oct. 7, 1871 and the very next day, the legendary fire that nearly burned the entire city to the ground took place. In spite of this, Rusty plows ahead and goes to buy the lavaliere from the on-campus bookstore, which only has one KT lavaliere in stock because as everyone knows, the KT’s don’t do a lot of lavaliering. Rusty asks Beaver to be his lavaliere bearer, i.e. holding onto the item for him until he needs it, but the KT lavaliere curse seems to strike when Beaver accidentally swallows it. Beaver then tries to flush the jewelry out of his system with a high-fiber diet and the help of the pledges who are forced to, um, sift through his waste, but Cappie intervenes and offers Rusty a spare lavaliere he has around and once planned to give to Casey. So Rusty can lavaliere Jordan and is making plans to when she drops a bomb: she’s applied to spend a semester studying abroad. After confirming that she would be allowed to take a semester off from pledging at ZBZ and return, she applies and tells Rusty of her decision. At that point, he’s unsure of how to proceed. Thankfully his ZBZ brothers intervene and kidnap him, looking to prevent him from actually lavaliering Jordan and being in further danger from the curse. Rusty is saran-wrapper to a column on campus, as per the instructions in the KT history book for dealing with the curse, and it’s there that Jordan happens across him after dark. The resulting conversation ends up with Rusty admitting his plans to lavaliere her, Jordan saying that she accepts in spite of wanting to spend a semester abroad and the two sharing a kiss and a happy moment. The moments aren’t so happy for Cappie and Evan after the two former best friends-turned-nemeses-turned-friends bump into each other on campus. Evan is in desperate need of cash because he’s still broke after giving up his trust fund and Cappie points him to an ad for “cater waiters,” serving food at fancy functions. When Evan goes to apply and Cappie tags along, he meets Lana, a hot girl that Cappie of course must have. So Cappie talks himself into a job as well and the two of them help cater a fundraiser, Cappie as bartender and Evan serving food. Throughout the event, Cappie hits on Lana but to no avail. He quits at the end of the night because his only aim was to pick up on her, to which she replies that he could have simply gotten her number from the staff phone list. Evan, on the other hand, looks like he’s found the source of income he needs. All told, a funny episode and not just when Beaver couldn’t tell the difference between bearer (as in lavaliere) and bear. Some good laughs and a fun episode, good times…………

- Honduras: Oppression Lives Here. Not only does the country’s interim government stage military coups to oust elected leaders from power, it’s also apparently in the business of shutting down broadcasters who dare to be dissident and speak out against it. That took place today, as Honduras' coup-installed government silenced two dissident broadcasters on Monday right after it got done ripping civil liberties from its citizens in a supposed effort to prevent an uprising by backers of ousted President Manuel Zelaya. The fist victim of this blatant abuse of power by the government was Radio Globo, which had its offices raided by dozens of soldiers. After that, it was on to Channel 36 television station, which was yanked from the air and left broadcasting only a test pattern. What flimsy excuse is the government hiding behind for this one? Truth be told, they didn’t delve too deep into the “Oppressing Your People 101: Flimsy Excuses for Totalitarian Regimes” handbook, electing to go with the ol’ “right to close news media that attack peace and public order." That was the line of reasoning espoused by Rene Zepeda, a spokesman for the interim government. Zepeda claimed that two outlets had been taken off the air in accordance with a government emergency decree announced late Sunday that limits civil liberties and allows authorities to silence whoever they want, whenever they want and without a legitimate reason. Thankfully Hondurans aren’t taking this lying down and supporters of the deposed presidente marched in the streets Monday in defiance of the emergency order as part of what Zelaya calls a "final offensive" against his ouster on the three-month anniversary of the coup. Still, what strikes me is the nature of these station raids, carried out by literally 200 soldiers in both locations at dawn. The soldiers seized all equipment, storming through the buildings as employees scrambled out emergency exits to escape the raid. For Radio Globo, the drill was a familiar one. Soldiers also raided their station on June 28, the same day Zelaya was ousted. What’s ironic is that up to this point, the interim government has been pointing to the continued operation of Channel 36 and like-minded broadcasters as evidence of its tolerance for pro-Zelaya viewpoints. Now, dictator/ President Roberto Micheletti is yanking civil liberties left and right and issuing ultimatiums to the Brazilian government, which is allowing Zelaya to stay at its embassy in Honduras’ capital city of Tegucigalpa while this mess is resolved. Brazil now has 10 days to turn Zelaya over for arrest or grant him asylum and take him out of Honduras. Should Brazil not comply, the Honduran government hijackers implied that the embassy would become a private office — meaning it could be raided by police. Soldiers are already surrounding the place, so raiding it wouldn’t be that much of a stretch. Keep it up, Honduras, because in no way is this debacle damaging your international rep at all…………

- Life as a Cleveland Browns fan is a miserable existence in any year, but what has to be absolutely killing Browns fans this year is that they could see this disaster coming from way down the tracks. It’s almost like the scene in the first Austin Powers movie where Austin is heading toward a bad guy in a slow-moving steamroller and the bad guy won't move, resulting in crushing death that takes a comedically long time to unfold. This season has been that way for Browns fans, who watched their team fire both its coach and general manager after a lackluster 4-12 season in 2008. Those firings were the absolute right decisions, but the problem is that they mark the last correct decisions the franchise has made. To fill their coaching vacancy, the Browns should have first found a new GM, hired him or her and allowed that GM to find the coach. New England Patriots vice-president of player personnel Scott Pioli was widely viewed as the best available option, but the Browns supposedly balked when he asked for too much organizational control. Pioli found a team not run by morons, the Kansas City Chiefs, and the Browns continued their ass-backwards ways by hiring a coach first, then a GM. That in and of itself would not have spelled disaster if the coach they hired had been someone other than ass hat Eric Mangini, a cryptic, personality-lacking tool who was fired by the New York Jets after last season. Mangini, two seasons into his career as a head coach, had already carved out a rep for being an overbearing taskmaster and a legalistic a-hole who berated and fined players over the most minute, ticky-tack rules (like banning music from the locker room along with cell phones and anything else remotely fun). The Jets fired him and literally no one in the league with a coaching vacancy was interested in him - except the Browns. Just two weeks after being fired by the Jets and even though not one other team’s ownership saw Mangini and said, “Hey, Eric Mangini is available, we gotta get this guy now!,” the Browns and owner Randy Lerner became so enamored with this terrible coach that they snapped him up. Later, the Browns suckered Baltimore Ravens executive George Kokinis into taking their GM job and together with Mangini, he assembled a crap-tacular roster that may actually be worse than the one the Browns sported in 1999, their first year back in the NFL as an expansion team. Mangini inexplicably brought in as many Jets castoffs as possible despite the fact that they a) were second-rate players and not impact guys by any means and b) they were part of an underwhelming 8-8 season last year. So in comes a glut of former Jets, out goes any semblance of fun, personality, skill and talent and into the crapper goes the 2009 season for the Browns. Mangini exacerbated a bad situation by mistakenly believing that when it came to the identity of his starting quarterback for the team’s opening game, he was the director of clandestine missions for the KGB and as such, he must withhold the starter’s identity from the world at all costs. A bad idea because a) everyone knew it was going to be Brady Quinn anyhow, b) the opponent for that game, Minnesota, knew that the offense would be the exact same regardless of whether Quinn or Derek Anderson started and c) any coach dumb and naïve enough to believe that his team would need that sort of asinine tactic in order to win a game has basically admitted his team sucks far too much to win that game anyhow. Predictably, the Browns were waxed 34-20 in that game, suffered a 27-6 shellacking in Denver last week and were utterly decimated in a 34-3 beatdown this week in Baltimore. Add them up and it’s a 95-29 margin, an average of 31.7 ppg against, 9.7 ppg for. That’s neither good nor acceptable and as unthinkable as it might be to consider firing a coach just three games into his tenure, the Browns should absolutely consider it. Players are fighting in the locker room (as happened late last week) and having to be restrained from a full-on brawl by teammates and Mangini is worried about making sure that players always park their cars in their assigned spots at the team’s practice facility (a true story). So not that this is any surprise to you, Browns fans, but this year is going to suck even more for you than most, and for that you have my sympathies…………..

Delusional pet owners, a crack-dealing point guard and who won your CW "show cancellation" office pool

- When the NCAA passed new rules allowing student-athletes to have jobs to earn extra spending money during the school year, I don’t think this is what they had in mind. Binghamton University basketball player Emanuel "Tiki" Mayben took the NCAA up on its offer and found himself a gig - as a crack dealer. Mayben was arrested Wednesday night in his hometown of Troy, N.Y. and charged with selling cocaine twice on June 29 when police found 3.4 grams of cocaine on him. The arrest came as part of a three-month undercover probe of cocaine sales in Troy. At his arraignment Thursday, Mayben pleaded not guilty to possessing and selling cocaine. More than likely, he and his attorney, Greg Cholakis, are looking to work some sort of plea deal with the prosecutor, perhaps to have Mayben roll on others higher up in his operation and name names, but arrests that result from three-month undercover sting operations tend to be more likely to result in the actual guilty parties being arrested, in my untrained legal experience. Not sure this is quite that head coach Kevin Broadus had in mind after his team made its first appearance in the NCAA basketball tournament last year, that his starting point guard would be arrested and revealed as a coke kingpin. "I did all I could," Broadus said. "I tried to help the kid." Hmm, that doesn’t sound like a guy who is all that surprised, no? Of course, one look at Mayben’s illustrious college career raises some major red flags about the type of guy he is. He was recruited by Syracuse University out of high school, but wasn’t smart enough or academically disciplined enough to qualify to play for the Orange. Instead, he began his college career at the University of Massachusetts, where he sat out one season before playing 31 games in the 2006-07 season. He lasted there for all one of year before transferring to Hudson Valley Community College, where he played during the 2007-08 season. In other words, Binghamton was his fourth intended school and the third for which he actually played. I hate to go all cynical on you, but smart, high-character guys don’t jump from one school to another four times in just over three years. On the floor, Mayben was good enough to set a school single-season record for assists at Binghamton, but off the court he clearly is a shady dude. Cholakis’ assertion that he’s never been in trouble before does little to quell my concerns about his character. Don’t confuse never having been convicted of a crime before with being a good guy and an upstanding citizen, counselor. This is merely the latest black eye for the Binghamton program under Broadus. In May of last year, Miladin Kovacevic, who wasn't recruited by Broadus, left a classmate in a coma for several weeks after a barroom brawl in May 2008. Kovacevic jumped bail and fled the country. Then in November, Malik Alvin, a transfer student brought in by Broadus, was charged with stealing condoms from Wal-Mart (I wrote about that one, laughs all around). Call me nuts, but Broadus doesn’t seem to be a good job of bringing in quality guys or policing the less-than-quality guys already on hand………….

- There’s a winner in your office pool for which crappy, low-quality, poorly written and inane CW show about rich, spoiled, famous people living in New York or Southern California will be canceled first and it is…..the person who put his or her money on the Ashton Kutcher-produced series The Beautiful Life! Yes, picking any one of these crap-tacular garbage fests over another is tough, but because the CW can’t get the message that putting hot people on screen with mindless dialogue and absurd plots isn't enough to pull in viewers, it’s a debate we’ll continue having. Beautiful Life, a scripted drama about the world of modeling, is not only the first moronic CW show to be canceled this fall, it’s also the first casualty of the new fall TV season. As a nice tie-in to the previous story, it starred everyone’s favorite coke addict (allegedly), Mischa Barton. But the plug has been pulled and production ahs ceased after the debut episode lost about 60 percent of the audience of its lead-in, America's Next Top Runway Bimbo, and the second episode only attracted 1 million viewers. The real question now is what crappy, low-quality, poorly written and inane show about rich, spoiled, famous people living in New York or Southern California the CW will fill this time slot with and the answer appears to be the revamped Melrose Place, a show also receiving dismal ratings. Reruns of the newest episode of this nightmare of a show will take the place of Beautiful Life, which is akin having a bleeding ulcer replaced by kidney stones. Sure, the CW is far from the only network with new shows bombing out big time, but its shows are just so much worse than nearly everyone else that it’s impossible not to mock them. As for the other networks with shows that will soon be canceled, leaders in that race would seem to be NBC’s Parks and Recreation and ABC’s Accidentally on Purpose. Oh, and I would be remiss if I wrote about crappy TV shows and didn’t rip one of Fox’s lame-tastic reality shows, so here goes: So You Think You Can Dance is registering such lackluster ratings that will probably be relegated back to the summer. So if you are the proud winner of your office pool by virtue of picking The Beautiful Life, I salute you. If you picked another CW show, I recognize you for a valiant effort. If you picked another show on a non-CW network…….you are a moron……………

- Few groups are more deserving of loathing and incessant mockery in our society that overzealous, out-of-touch-with-reality dog owners. I love dogs, I had a dog growing up that was amazing and a great friend to the family, but he was not, as you dog kooks out there would like to believe, a child or an actual family member on par with the humans in our family. If you believe that, then you don’t have any friends and you are a pathetic loser. Get out, meet people and interect with your fellow humans, you loser. It is against that backdrop that this next story is set. Pet food company All American Pet Brands is holding its Cutest Dog Competition, asking dog owners to submit photos of their adorable dogs to the contest's Web site. So far, over 60,000 people have uploaded pictures and visitors to the site can vote for their favorite pooch. "It's a fraternity or sorority with people who don't just have pets, these are their family members, their best friends," said All American Pet Brands CEO Barry Schwartz. Allow me to translate from bullshit-ese for my man Barry: We found a way to squeeze some pub and business out of these pathetic losers and we’re milking every last drop from this. But the contest itself isn't the real debacle here; no, that comes courtesy of one particularly loathsome entrants to this contest, New Orleans piano teacher Cara McCool. Allow me to sat that McCool’s plan to win the contest and use the $1 million prize for New Orleans recovery efforts is admirable. New Orleans is still struggling to recover from Hurricane Katrina and people don’t fully realize that fact. However, McCool acting like some great injustice has been perpetrated against her simply because her dog, Mozart, has been bumped from the first-place spot in the contest by Stephen Colbert el dos, a Pomeranian Chihuahua mixed-breed puppy from Atlanta, Georgia. As you might have guessed, Stephen Colbert el dos is named after Stephen Colbert, the best fake newsman on television. "It's just coming out of nowhere," McCool said. "It's just unfortunate. MoMo is named after a famous person too, but he's dead." Oh shut up, you wench. I already hate you for that comment, but there’s more. "He's my furry child," McCool explained. "Sometimes I pull up chairs for him to sit next to me when I play or teach. He has been known to jump on the bench and actually has put his paws on the keys.” Wow….you are a ginormous, pathetic loser. THE DOG IS NOT YOUR CHILD. THE DOG IS NOT HUMAN. YOU HAVE NO FRIENDS AND NO ONE WHO CARES ABOUT YOU IF YOU ARE TALKING LIKE THAT. I hate to go with the all caps, but McCool left me no choice. It also needs to be pointed out that Stephen Colbert el dos is not owned by the actual Stephen Colbert, although fan sites have speculated that Colbert el dos will appear on "The Colbert Report" if he makes the top 12, but the show will not confirm those reports. Either way, Colbert el dos should benefit from the famous “Colbert bump,” which Colbert claims is given to candidates, products and other entities he endorses. He himself has won a contest to have NASA name a room in the International Space Station for him, although NASA doubled back and instead of naming the room in his honor, the agency sent a treadmill to space with his name on it instead. As for the pathetic loser/owners contest, er, Cutest Dog Contest, the winner will be announced on Thanksgiving Day, so you have until then to vote…………

- Animation ruled at the box office for the second straight weekend as Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs earned $24.6 million worth of tickets and falling off a minuscule 19 percent from the previous weekend to win the top spot yet again. That take brings the film’s total gross to $60 million, not a bad tally at all. Coming in a distant second was a Bruce Willis movie that has gotten surprisingly little buzz, positive or negative, Surrogates, which opened with $15 million. The movie stars Willis as an FBI agent in a futuristic world where people can enter and live through the bodies of others. Willis is curiously absent from much of the movie’s marketing, including an odd poster campaign that featured human-robot hybrids in seductive poses. In third was a recycled version of Fame, which did better than it probably should have in making $10 million despite a solid veteran cast featuring names like Megan Mullally and Kelsey Grammer. Following those three up on the earnings list was The Informant!, which had an underwhelming debut last weekend but dropped off just 34 percent this time around and earned $6.9 million for a fourth-place finish. Sadly, also lingering in the top five was Tyler Perry’s I Can Do Bad All By Myself, a movie I could not think less of and will be glad to see just go away. There were also some new releases that enjoyed mixed results, as the outer space thriller Pandorum earned just $4.4 million from 2,506 theaters for a lame-tastic per-screen average of $1,758. By contrast, Michael Moore’s Capitalism: A Love Story generated a whopping $240,000 from just four theaters for $60,000 per-screen average—the year’s best so far. A movie that you’ve undoubtedly never heard of, the Audrey Tautou period biopic Coco Before Chanel, grossed $177,000 at 5 location for a $35,400 average. Lastly, all fans of The Office out there should be happy that one of the show’s stars, John Krasinski, pulled in $20,600 at a single screen with his directorial debut, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men. The last movie of note to talk about is a movie that hit the promotional hammer hard over the weekend, I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell, which earned a decent $369,000 from 120 theaters. So while having an animated family movie as the top earner for a second straight weekend might seem like a negative development for the cinematic world, just know that it could be worse and temper your complaints accordingly……………

- I’m still deciding whether or not to be pissed at the World Wildlife Fund for ripping the WWF acronym from World Wrestling Entertainment (formerly World Wrestling Federation) about a decade ago, but I’ll set aside my possible hostilities and enjoy the news that the organization has announced that some 163 new species discovered last year in the Greater Mekong region of southeast Asia, including a frog that eats birds and a gecko with leopard stripes. Plants dominate the list, tallying 100 of the 163 spots, with the rest breaking down thusly: 28 fish, 18 reptiles, 14 amphibians, two mammals and one bird species. These 163 new species further highlight the wealth of biodiversity in the region, said Barney Long, head of the WWF's Asian Species Conservation program. "It's a melting pot of diverse habitats. It has some of the wettest forests on the planet, high mountains, and a diverse array of terrestrial and marine habitats, including the Mekong River," he said. "We continue to find new species of fish, primates and mammals, and nowhere else compares to the amount of large mammals that have been discovered in the region. It shows how little we know about species in the region. From a biodiversity perspective, there are still huge amounts to discover about region." For the geographically ignorant among you, the Greater Mekong consists of the countries through which the Mekong River flows: Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam and Yunnan Province of China. I know, I know, it’s extremely ironic that any region including the world’s worst polluter, China, would also be celebrated for its biodiversity. But a big reason for that diversity is the fact that the Greater Mekong has more protected spaces than anywhere else on mainland Asia. That’s why it’s home to new species like the colorful Cat Ba leopard gecko of northern Vietnam, with its large, orange-brown "catlike eyes" and a body of leopard stripes. This curious creature was discovered on Cat Ba Island, the largest of 366 islands in Cat Ba Archipelago and home to many rare species that can only be found on the island, including Limnonectes megastomias -- a fanged frog with an appetite for other frogs, insects and birds. Who knows, not that some of the war and unrest in the region - albeit a very limited portion - have simmered down a bit, scientific exploration could turn up even more new species in the months ahead. With all of the negative environmental news coming at you every day, hearing about new species and biodiversity should be a nice pick-me-up experience, glad I could help………….

The inevitable demise of KFC's health food hopes, a tumultuous college football Saturday and Dustin Diamond tries to start a fight with me

- Hear that? It’s the sound of inevitability. Just as that train was a comin’ down the tracks at Keanu Reeves in the first Matrix movie and nothing could stop it, what I’m about to tell you was also inevitable. For years and years, Kentucky Fried Chicken, a.k.a. KFC, has made it bones selling greasy, fatty fried chicken to customers. Sure, they’ve thrown in buttery biscuits, crappy green beans, corn slathered in butter and dry mashed potatoes, but the fried chicken has always been the heart of the operation. Well, now that America is the FAT-test nation on the planet and looking to reverse its unhealthy ways, KFC attempted to jump on board with its new grilled chicken. The idea was obviously to cash in on the healthy-eating movement, but denying who you are never works and let’s face it, KFC is not a health-conscious establishment. As such, it was inevitable that a national health advocacy group would file a lawsuit against KFC in San Francisco Superior Court, saying the company must post warning signs because its grilled chicken sandwiches contain carcinogens - Uh oh! According to the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, a Washington, D.C.-based group that promotes veganism, KFC's grilled chicken contains a cancer-causing chemical known as PhIP, part of a chemical grouping that has been linked to several types of cancer. Set aside for a minute that I’m no fan of vigilant vegan kooks who run like banshees from any animal products, because I do despise those fools. However, I have to wonder if there is any truth in the allegations. Now let’s not be foolish; I don’t believe that even if there are these carcinogens in these sandos that you would be drastically affected unless you ate like four of them a day for the rest of your life. As you’d exepct, the suits at KFC are dismissing the RCPM’s claims out of hand with gusto. In a statement, a KFC spokesman dismissed the suit as part of PCRM's "vegetarian agenda." Whether that’s true or not…..I’ll allow you to judge for yourself, but know that the PCRM commissioned independent lab studies of grilled - no fried - breasts, wings, drumsticks and thighs from 12 Bay Area (California) KFC restaurants and reports that every single sample contained PhIP. Based on those findings, the group is demanding that KFC be up front with people about the true health value (or capacity for harm) of its grilled chicken sandos. The complaint filed Wednesday morning alleges that KFC is violating the California Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986, commonly known as Proposition 65. Basically, the law requires businesses to notify patrons if significant amounts of cancer-causing chemicals may be present at the business or in its products. KFC’s response to these claims is that PhIP is "a natural byproduct of grilling chicken" and that it is in full compliance with the law. So for those of you who held out hope that the culinary tiger could change its unhealthy stripes, looks like you may have to pin your hopes elsewhere…………..

- Who’s going to be left in the top 10? That’s what most college football fans were thinking as the dust settled on the fourth weekend of the season. After fourth-ranked Mississippi proved how much they didn’t belong among the nation’s elite by dropping a 16-10 stink bomb at South Carolina Thursday night, three more top 10 teams made Ole Miss look not as bad by dropping even bigger turds in big games. Actually, that’s not totally fair. Fifth-ranked Penn State played a solid Iowa team at home and lost a 21-10 decision that was closer than the score indicates, so I won't lump them in with these next two teams. California and Miami…..wow. Just wow. Hope you are both very ashamed of yourselves; I know I am, and I didn’t attend either school, nor do I have any ties to either program. But No. 6 Cal and No. 9 Miami came into their games undefeated and riding high, both angling to get into the national title picture. Losing 42-3 (Cal on the road in Oregon) and 31-7 (Miami on the road at Virginia Tech) won't exactly accomplish that. While Cal played in good weather on the West Coast and Miami played in shi**y weather on the East Coast, the bottom line is that both teams were embarrassed by conference foes and didn’t really bother to show up. Cal had a matchup with USC on the horizon, but that game has lost all of its luster after the Golden Bears had their pants pulled down in Eugene by the Ducks. Miami showed that while it is much better this year, it’s not nearly back to being an elite program after several down years. Elsewhere, the Mississippi State Bulldogs had No, 7 LSU on the ropes, on the LSU 1-yard-line, second down and goal with a few mintues left in the game, trailing 30-24. The Bulldogs has three shots to score the go-ahead touchdown and failed all three times, denying first-year head coach Dan Mullen a huge, program-building win and allowing LSU to stay undefeated following a game it absolutely should have lost. The biggest beneficiary of all this chaos has to be Boise State, which went on the road and throttled Bowling Green 49-14 and should be in the top five come next week. The Broncos have quality wins under their belt and now must simply run the table in the lackluster Western Athletic Conference. Another beneficiary should be Cincinnati, which has one of the nation’s best quarterbacks in Tony Pike and an undefeated record thanks to a 28-20 home win over a solid Fresno State squad. But all of this pales in comparison (at least in the minds of University of Florida fans and Fox broadcaster Thom Brenneman) to the news out of Lexington, Kentucky. Sure, the Florida Gators throttled the host Wildcats 41-7 in a game that was never close, but all-everything quarterback Tim Tebow left the game in the third quarter after a brutal sack that ended with him falling to the ground and cracking the back of his head against the knee of one of his own offensive linemen. The injury was later diagnosed as a concussion and Tebow’s status is up in the air right now, but the horrified looks on the faces of the UF fans at the game (as Brenneman undoubtedly hyperventilated into a paper bag somewhere) made you think they were watching a city destroyed by and earthquake or something. If Tebow is out for any length of time, the Gators take a HUGE hit and could easily lose a game in the rugged Southeastern Conference. One additional note in a Florida-centric review of the football weekend, possibly the biggest stunner of the day came from Tallahassee, where unranked and unheralded South Florida (a misnomer if I’ve ever heard one, as they are located in freaking Tampa - i.e. the middle of the state) marched in and upset No. 18 Florida State. Never mind that South Florida wasn’t ranked and is a member of the ugly stepchild of the six BCS conferences, the Big East, the Bulls came into the game having lost senior quarterback Matt Groethe for the year with a knee injury. Groethe has been the absolute rock of the USF offense since his freshman year, running and passing them to a lot of wins. Losing him and replacing him with untested freshman B.J. Daniels should have spelled disaster, especially on the road against a top 20 team, but the Bulls’ defense stepped its game up and choked the life out of the Seminoles. The result? A 17-7 USF victory and a second loss in four games for Florida State. Guess major academic fraud scandals aren’t good for business, eh FSU football? Quite a weekend of football, plenty of upheaval and I will be extremely interested to see where everyone stands when all of the dust finally settles…………

- With steroid accusations flying around nearly every professional sport the past few years, fans have basically become numb to the “revelations” that their favorite players have been juicing and putting every performance-enhancing drug on the market into their bodies. David Ortiz may have used? So what. Manny Ramirez is a ‘roider? Big deal. I was right there with everyone on the numbness to these announcements…….until now. Now comes news that…..well, that I just can’t….or don’t want to believe. Anyone who has grown up in the past 15 years or so can relate to what I’m about to say: if that a-hole Screech Powers is going to allege that Zack Morris’ performances on Saved by the Bell were steroid-enhanced, he’d better have some f’ing proof. Of course, Dustin Diamond’s shocking news comes as he’s trying to sell a book. Behind the Bell comes after he’s tried his hand at celebrity boxing, bombed out of the acting business and clearly has nothing better to do than grow ugly facial hair. As he makes the round promoting his book, Diamond has been discussing his role as Saved By the Bell's adorable dork while also seeking to tear down the reputations of his former co-stars for profit. “I could smell a certain 'smoke,' wafting from the crack" from under his castmates' dressing rooms, says Diamond. He went on to imply that Mark-Paul Gosselaar, aka Bell's Zack Morris, used steroids before production of Saved by the Bell’s short-lived spin-off, Saved by the Bell: The College Years, in 1994. "He suddenly exploded with manliness, loading 25 pounds of muscle on his once-scrawny frame in, oh, about a month," Diamond observed. All right Screech, them’s fightin’ words. Zack Morris was the coolest guy on campus at Bayside and just because you were his nerdy best friend doesn’t mean you can sully his reputation with your outrageous accusations. Unless you have hard stats to back up your claims, stuff it. Did Zack’s Q-rating suddenly skyrocket or did he nail more of his lines once Saved by the Bell: The College Years started? I will not visually indict Zack Morris for his alleged steroid use and unless Diamond can produce dirty, used syringes with Gosselaar’s DNA on them that Diamond used to shoot him up and then kept in empty beer cans in his garage for years, a la Brian McNamee, I don’t believe a word of this. It’s one thing for Diamond to allege that Tiffani Thiessen, Mario Lopez, Elizabeth Berkley and Gosselaar were hooking up on set; I’m fine with that. Just don’t go throwing around unproven ‘roid accusations, because that’s where I draw the line, Screech………..

- No we didn’t……the United States did not just accuse Russia of having a "Cold War mentality" and waging a "disgusting" smear campaign on a U.S. diplomat in Moscow. Actually, that’s exactly what the American government did in coming to the defense of Kyle Hatcher, a U.S. embassy liaison with religious and human rights groups in Russia. Hatcher is at the center of a controversy created an alleged sex video recorded at a hotel room in Siberia that surfaced last month on a Russian "news" website believed to have close ties to Moscow's Federal Security Service (FSB) spy agency. “We believe ... that he has been the subject of a smear campaign using the Russian press. And of course, this kind of campaign is disgusting and deplorable,” Ian Kelly, a State Department spokesman, said. "It's an example of the continuation of a Cold War mentality ... There clearly are still people who have this Cold War mentality and don't want our relationship to improve." Good, good, invoke memories and mental imagery from the Cold War, that’s how you do it. Better yet, this comes as the U.S. and Russia have been supposedly looking to patch up diplomatic relations after being at each other’s throats for years. Sure, President Obama recently spoke of trying to "reset" the relationship with Russia and his counterpart, Russian President/Vlad Putin’s sock puppet Dmitry Medvedev, backed American calls for tougher sanctions against Iran, but so what? A good sex tape scandal can undermine all of that in no time and I for one am thrilled to see it. The U.S. is doing its part, lodging a complaint to Moscow through diplomatic channels. Another top US official seemingly acknowledged the existence of the video, calling it "really gross" and claiming that it was shot last year at a hotel in Siberia. As a quick aside…..even if Kyle Hatcher was sexing it up with some Russian lady in a Siberian hotel…..what the hell else are you going to do in Siberia? Drinking vodka and hitting it are about your only two options and both are good because they help keep you warm. It’s freaking Siberia, so anything that can take your mind off of the fact that you are stuck in Siberia is welcome. But as for the video, it shows a man, allegedly Hatcher, alone watching television and later standing near the wall close to the hidden camera. The lights are turned off and with what little light remains, a man and a woman are seen touching each other, but the darkened room prevents a positive identification of the man as Hatcher. "It's him in the room in the beginning. But then the lights come down, and that's when a woman comes in and that's when it's not him anymore," said the official, who requested anonymity. Hatcher has admitted being present at the hotel, but denies that he’s the one sexing it up on camera. This anonymous official decried the tape as an attempt to have Hatcher removed from his post. That’s something that all U.S. officials involved in this case have steadfastly declared will not happen, but it’s neither here nor there. As long as the Cold War gets started up again, Hatcher will merely be the blessed catalyst and deserving of our thanks……….

- Dear Evander Holyfield: Please quit boxing before you a) die in the ring or b) lose your remaining ability, albeit scarce, to form a coherent sentence in English - or any other language. Evander should take my advice, but as you’d expect, he’s not going to. Like any proud, former champion boxer, Holyfield is going to keep putting on the gloves, stepping through the ropes and getting his face pounded in until they have to carry him off on a stretcher. Look, I get that aspect of boxers’ psyche. They are warriors, trained to keep getting up no matter how many times they’re knocked down. However, there has to be that voice in the back of their mind that, at some point, clicks in and tells them that they’re no longer battling valiantly at something they are good at - they’re slower, more brittle, battered and in danger of dying in the ring if they don’t stop. It would be great if Holyfield could reach his goal of retiring as heavyweight champion because perhaps that would erase the sting of him being revealed as a guy who has fathered near double-digit kids by multiple women who were not his wife at the time and being found out as a steroid user who tried to conceal his identity when purchasing ‘roids online by using the pseudonym Evan Fields (verrrrry clever, E.), but it just ain’t happening. Just look at where he’s traveling for his next fight: freaking South Korea in November. What’s sad is that my man Evan Fields is getting on board with promoting environmental protection and it’s a great cause, but it’s not so great when it could very likely be tied to boxing’s next in-ring death. Great, Evan Fields is building a 40-acre solar energy farm on his suburban Atlanta estate and turning another acre into an organic garden that can be used by neighborhood youths - those are great things, but he can do those without boxing. Likewise, he can continue appearing in Taco Bell ad campaigns as he continues to dig out of the financial hole he was in when his home twice faced foreclosure notices. But look inside the ring and you’ll see that E. Fields has lost his last two bouts, both in bids to claim shares of the fractured heavyweight title. "I will be the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world," Fields said recently. "I'm sure I will be champion next year sometime." My man, no you won't. Not unless you make up your own Evan Fields Boxing Federation title and hand the belt to yourself, and even then it’s not a lock. Bro, you’re flying to South Korea for a fight on Nov. 8 and you still don’t know who your opponent is; that’s not good. Take your legacy as boxing's only four-time heavyweight champion and ride off into the sunset. Take the hint that losing seven of your last 12 fights should give you, call it quits and spare the rest of us the horror of having to see you die in the ring or become a vegetable who can’t think, walk or talk on his own…………..

A nonsensical Smallville season premiere, the end of a good run for Tiburon, Calif. and a new Cold War over the New Jersey Nets

- It was a good run for the city of Tiburon, California. The city had gone an entire decade without a murder, but that streak came to an end Tuesday when 75-year-old Joan Rosenthal found dead in front of her house, shot in the head. A friend who routinely visited the woman found her body Tuesday morning near the front of the house, which is located along a normally quiet street in the Del Mar neighborhood. Of course, a lot of streets in Tiburon could be described that way; it’s why the FBI considers Tiburon among the safest cities in California. You can tell how unusual this sort of incident is by the fact that when a local TV station went around the neighborhood looking to get reaction to the crime, no one they spoke to wanted to be identified on camera. At this point, police aren’t sure what the motive for the shooting was, as there were no apparent signs of a break-in and no obvious signs of theft. Rosenthal was found with a gunshot wound to the head near her front door in an enclosed patio. Funnily enough, Tiburon police are so unaccustomed to dealing with murders that they have asked the Marin County Sheriff's Department and Belvedere police for help with the investigation. 
"What it is, is a woman who has obviously been murdered on her front doorstep at her residence and beyond that we really don't have any suspects or even a motive at this point," said Tiburon Police Chief Michael Cronin. Not only is this the first murder in Tiburon in 10 years, it’s only the fourth homicide in the past 40 years. Whatever the motive, it’s hard to imagine that anyone set out to kill Joan Rosenthal because they had a beef with her. She was one of the more active volunteers at the Belvedere-Tiburon Library where she volunteered and organized book clubs and those who knew her best say they can’t even begin to imagine why anyone would want to kill her. I wish the Tiburon police and their fellow law enforcement compadres success in solving this crime so that Rosenthal’s friends and family can get the closure they need………….

- Oh, this should solve everything for the Chicago Cubs. They’ve suspended mentally unstable rage-a-holic Milton Bradley for the rest of the season for what amounted to conduct detrimental to the team, one day after he criticized the franchise in a newspaper interview, but Bradley’s momma is taking up for him. Charlena Rector said Tuesday that her son would consider returning to the team if it will have him back. "All the people on TV keep saying, 'Oh, Milton has played his last game for the Cubs,'" Rector said. However, Rector believes that her baby boy will be back with the team as long as Cubs management will have him. “Milton eats, sleeps and drinks baseball. He loves it. That's all he wants to do," Rector told the newspaper. Judging by the way the club has reacted to Bradley’s act this season, don’t count on that. Cubs general manager Jim Hendry said he decided to send Bradley home after learning of the remarks the mercurial outfielder made in a recent interview. “You understand why they haven't won in 100 years here," Bradley mused. He’s also been critical of Chicago fans, who he basically accused of being racist and hating him based on the way they’ve treated him in this, his first season with the Cubs. Hmm….wonder if it could have anything to do with the fact that he’s batting .257 with 12 homers and 40 RBIs this season for a team that is staggering along at 78-73, out of the playoff race despite being a consensus World Series contender at the start of the season. Sorry Milton and momma, but when a guy inks a three-year, $30 million contract and puts up such paltry numbers for an underachieving team, the fans just aren’t going to get with him. That would be true even if it were a personable, likeable guy - something Bradley is most definitely not. He’s temperamental, tempestuous and always on the verge of blowing up. Hendry and the team’s management have suspended him for the remainder of the season and on Sunday, the GM said he did not know if the relationship can be salvaged. "Recently, it's become intolerable to hear Milton talk about our great fans the way he has," Hendry said. "We pride ourselves on having the greatest fans in baseball, so at this time we felt it was best to send him home for the rest of the season." One thing that won't help Bradley’s case is his momma doing interviews in which she blames his lackluster season and poor attitude on racism that his 3-year-old son has faced at school. "When racism hit his 3-year-old baby in school, he couldn't take that," Rector said. "Parents, teachers and their kids called him the n-word. He didn't even know it was a bad word until his mom told him." Seriously? For one, I don’t believe those claims. Second, even if they are true, you cannot tell me that having his kid called racist names is what made this guy so unhappy this season. He’s been unhappy everywhere he’s gone - Cleveland, Texas, Oakland, Montreal, San Diego, L.A. and now Chicago. His son is three years old and ol’ Milton has been pissed off and crazy for much longer than that. Stop making excuses for him, even if he is your son. You’re not helping him, you’re hurting him and you shouldn’t be giving interviews trying to excuse his bad behavior, man……………

- This doesn’t make sense, fit or flow well and it’s not that much fun to watch. If I’m saying that about the season premiere of Smallville, which theoretically should be a great episode in order to get people hooked on the new season, that’s not a good thing. But over and over, that’s what I thought as a watched the show tonight at its new night and time. For one, Clark Kent is apparently a) still lurking around Metropolis, although it’s not clear if he lives at the Kent Farm or has a pad in the city, b) wearing all black with the emblem of his Kryptonian family painted on his shirt, c) has cut off everyone he cares about and d) begun another round of training at the resurrected Fortress of Solitude. Lois Lane, having been beamed to the future by Clark’s Legion ring in last season’s finale, somehow is thrown back in time to the present, landing on a moving elevated train in Metropolis. With her comes a Kryptonian assassin chick who tries to kill Lois. There battle and the bursts of energy that transport them in time cause the train to derail, but Clark catches the falling train and saves everyone. As he speeds off, he leaves his new calling card: the same symbol on his chest, burned into the nearest building. Lois goes to the hospital and refuses to stay long. After being checked out, she is ready to leave. Chloe shows up and is glad to see her cousin, who has apparently been missing (i.e. stuck in the future) for three weeks. After sending Chloe on a bogus errand, Lois rushes from the hospital and goes back to visit the site of the wreck. Apparently the police and emergency personnel don’t bother taping things off or guarding accident scenes, because she waltzes into the fallen train and is soon confronted by a man she believes is a cop. This tall, dark stranger doesn’t say one way or the other, but when a uniformed officer catches them, he kisses Lois to seemingly cover their real motives for snooping around the train. Later, Lois goes to her customary pay phone on the street, expecting another call from the Red/Blue Blur, for whom she’s become a confidant. That call doesn’t come because Clark has made a trip to the Fortress to ask his biological father, Jor-El, why he still can’t fly. Jor-El says the power to do so is within him, but he’s holding himself back because he still hasn’t severed all ties to the human side of his existence. Clark realizes he must say goodbye to “her,” and speeds back to Metropolis, where he calls Lois at her Daily Planet desk with the purpose of saying goodbye. But when he hears her voice, he can’t bring himself to do so. While on the roof of a downtown building to make the call, Clark is also confronted by Chloe, who has also been busy. From the spacious old apartment she and now-deceased husband Jimmy were supposed to share, she’s been trying to track down Oliver Queen, Black Canary and their legion of superhero friends. They’ve all dropped off the map, distraught by the disaster of what happened with Jimmy and Doomsday. Chloe gets some unexpected help from Dr. Hamilton, a colleague of Oliver’s who reluctantly agrees to help her in her quest as Watchtower. But it is actually Lois who finds Ollie, on the outskirts of Metropolis in some sort of bad Fight Club ripoff. She poses as a card girl between rounds of the fight and tries to tell Oliver about her trip to the future and the Kryptonian assassin who mad the trip back with her, but the assassin shows up and makes that point herself. Before this badass chick can do any more damage that destroying a wall, Clark zooms onto the scene and the assassin tells him, without even turning around to face him, that he’s the one she’s after. Clark grabs her and they brawl from the warehouse all the way to the Kent barn, where the assassin reveals that she’s carrying blue Kryptonite, which robs both she and Clark of their powers. She then cryptically informs him that she’s come from the future and she’s after him because “you betrayed us” and would do something that would lead to the destruction of the world in the future. She then attacks Clark and they brawl around the barn, ultimately ending in a KO for Clark when his attacked is impaled on a knife of some sort. Before he can get any more information from the assassin, she dies. But we learn more about her because, in the most nonsensical twist of the episode, we see that she is a member of some bizarre Kryptonian military faction that has taken up residence with Tess Mercer at the Luthor Mansion. The being known as General Zod arrived in last season’s finale, but he’s gone from appearing on the lawn outside the mansion to having a battalion of his soldiers with him, two of whom have begun to turn on him, believing that he is holding out information from them. That information would include why they are on Earth, how they came to be there and why they don’t have their Kryptonian powers. Tess appears to have been taken prisoner and beaten for answers, but to no avail. When the rest of Zod’s (who is being called Major Zod, not General Zod) battalion calls he and Tess before some type of military tribunal, he turns the tables on them, chastising them for not respecting him even after he’s “scoured this land” for they and their families and done all he could to help them in the strange new place. So it would seem that lots of Kryptonians were beamed to Earth and landed all over the place, which is completely out of context and is one big reason this episode made no sense. The soldiers accept Zod’s reasoning and kneel in respect, including the same assassin who we saw Clark kill in the barn. The morning after the tribunal, Tess awakes and the Kryptonians are all gone, along with any evidence they were there at all. She meets with her chief of security, asking for the footage recorded while the Kryptonians were on the premises. In other words, she wanted them there and was looking to do what? No idea. But the footage has vanished, wiped out by the Kryptonians on their way out the door. The last two bits of news from the episode: 1) the man who kissed Lois in the train is John Corbin, a new reporter at the Planet and 2) Chloe, having found the Legion ring in Lois’ room at the hospital and takes it to the barn, where she asks Clark to use it to travel back in time to save Jimmy. He refuses, citing the tragedy that happened when he went back in time before to same the lovely Lana Lang (the über-hot Kristin Kreuk, who I so badly miss on this show) - the end result being his father died. When Clark won't go back to save Jimmy, Chloe caustically remarks that it’s good he’s embracing his Kryptonian roots because “there’s nothing human left in you.” And so it ended, an episode that I cannot describe as anything other than bad, off-kilter, disjointed and making no sense at all. Here’s hoping the season gets better from here and helps all of this make sense, because right now none of it does………..

- As we’ve discussed time and again, the drug business is a tough one. There are never-ending challenges from every direction - the law, competitors, nature - and the mortality rate tends to be high. Yet the intrepid, never-say-quit souls who plant, grow, harvest, process, transport and sell illegal drugs of all kinds love their business far too much to give up and so they forge ahead. With border patrols and policing stepping up across the U.S.-Mexico border, Mexican smugglers need to find new routes into the United States and those routes are taking them away from dry land and out onto the open seas. Smugglers are turning increasingly to the Pacific Ocean for a short sail to the California coast, where they drop off illegal immigrants and marijuana, a nice double dip for sure. "We've seen a huge spike in smuggling by water," said Lauren Mack, a spokeswoman for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in San Diego, California. "It's become very, very risky and difficult to cross by land. Smugglers try to jump where they think we're not looking.” Thanks to those effort, Coast Guard officials estimate that interdictions of human cargo on the Pacific have doubled since last year and drug trafficking increased even more. So while it’s a bummer that authorities have confiscated 60,000 pounds of marijuana this year, I take solace in knowing that if 60,000 pounds have been seized, tens of thousands more have made it into the U.S. - great news for all of my stoner friends. At this point, the water route is popular because in spite of the 60,000 pounds of the hippie lettuce seized there, the land border between the U.S. and Mexico is so heavily policed that the percentage of supply lost taking that route would undoubtedly be much higher. For example, take the trouble one bold smuggler ran into last week. Two Border Patrol agents opened fire on this cat simply because they believed was trying to run one of them over with a vehicle, and the suspect was wounded in the process. Such is life at San Ysidro, the nation’s busiest border crossing. The checkpoint has speed bumps, concrete barricades, a gate and tire shredders, so of course people are going to take to the high seas as they attempt to bring their much-ballyhood product into the U.S. Do these cartels really want to rely much on the high school students they’re paying $200 to $300 for each trip of taping drugs to their bodies and walking across the border? I think not. Instead, it’s time to take to the high seas. Besides, I’m sure that the drivers of the thousands of cars stopped on the road for hours when U.S. authorities closed all 24 northbound lanes into the country following the San Ysidro incident would have appreciated it if the smugglers had simply gotten a boat and tried that approach. So to all the would-be drug smugglers out there who are striving each day to find a way to get the chronic into the hands of the stoners who need it most, I say keep scheming, keep plotting and keep trying………..

- Two days ago I lamented the Communist, er, Russian takeover of the NBA’s New Jersey Nets by Russian tycoon Mikhail Prokhorov. But as unhappy as I am with the idea of a Commie taking over an American pro sports franchise, I may have found some people who are even angrier about this deal than I am. Several Russian legislators and analysts are absolutely ripping Prokhorov for his purchase because they believe it’s a major blow to their nation's sports. "I can't consider this action as anything other than unpatriotic," said Aslambek Aslakhanov, a member of the upper parliament chamber's sports committee. "We also have talented children here, but sports isn't being developed. They're not trying in order for us to return to our former sports ranking of best in the world." Unpatriotic? Wow. I’m not a guy who is huge on that sort of thing, but calling a person unpatriotic is basically saying he hates his country and all but accusing him of being a traitor. But Prokhorov’s purchase of 80 percent of the Nets' shares and agreement to finance nearly half the cost of building a new arena are looking like they may launch the next round of the Cold War if these critics have their way. Perhaps they’re still bitter over the collapse of the Soviet-era "Big Red Machine" as a dominating force on the international sports scene, I don’t know. What I do know is that the idea that a country’s richest man must first and foremost invest in his own country’s sports system before he even considers buying a team in another country is backwards and stunted at best. Prokhorov does own a share in the prominent Russian team CSKA and he’s stated that he wants the deal partly as a way to get access to the NBA's training methods and educate coaches on how to improve Russian basketball. In other words, he wants to steal American secrets and siphon them off for use back in Mother Russia. That should thrill the Russians, not offend them. Just don’t tell that to men like Viktor Ozerov, another upper-chamber legislator, who believes that Prokhorov is sending his money in the wrong direction. "I don't deny that Mikhail Prokhorov has put money into developing sports in Russia, but I would have liked all the means he considered possible to have gone to specifically supporting sports in the fatherland," Ozerov declared. Just about the only party yet to weigh in on this from a Russian perspective is the Kremlin, so hopefully unofficial leader/Prime Minister Vlad Putin will grace us with his observations sooner rather than later……