- 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
- 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.
- 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…………..
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