- It’s only a matter of time before the Chinese completely take over this country (and bring their litany of toxic products - toothpaste, toys, food, etc. - with them), so the revelation that Chinese heavy equipment maker Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery Corp. has struck a deal to buy the Hummer brand from General Motors Co. is far short of stunning. In all honesty, shedding the Hummer brand isn't exactly a huge hit for GM. A paltry 8,193 Hummers have been sold in the U.S. through the first nine months of the year, a decline of 64 percent from last year. No one wants these giant hunks of fuel inefficiency because Hummer’s smallest model gets 16 miles per gallon in combined city and highway driving. Back when the American economy wasn’t totally in the crapper and gas didn’t cost $2.50 a gallon or more, people would buy Hummers because our American arrogance was all about bigger, shinier and more gaudy. Now that so many Americans are struggling under the weight of this recession, overpriced, oversized sport-utility vehicles just aren’t that popular. Reportedly Hummer will focus on improved efficiency and performance and include alternative fuels, more efficient gas engines, six-speed transmissions and diesel engines under its new ownership. Tengzhong will get an 80 percent stake in the company, while Hong Kong investor Suolang Duoji, who indirectly owns a big stake in Tengzhong through an investment company, will get 20 percent. The two investors will also be purchasing Hummer's nationwide dealer network, with the overall value of the deal being estimated at $150 million. That’s not exactly the figure GM gave for a potential Hummer sale when it filed for bankruptcy last summer, when it clamed such a sale could bring in $500 million or more. Both the U.S. and Chinese governments still must approve the deal, which shouldn’t be a huge hurdle to clear. The one positive note for the current regime at Hummer is that its management team will stay with the new company, which will be headquartered either in Detroit or suburban Auburn Hills, Mich. Given that the Chinese already own a ginormous chunk of our national debt, I suppose them taking on a sinking, fading car brand isn't a huge deal. After all, Hummer sales peaked in 2006 and in September, only 426 Hummers were sold nationwide. GM can shed some unneeded weight and make good on its intentions to focus on four core brands: Chevrolet, Cadillac, Buick and GMC. Manufacturers in Indiana and Louisiana who produce components for Hummers are expected to remain up and running for the next 2-3 years as well, so the news of a Communist takeover isn't quite as bleak as it might otherwise seem…………
- There were a lot of duds on this college football Saturday, a full slate of games that could have been a whole lot better. Too many games were like the matchup between No. 3 Alabama and No. 20 Mississippi. The Rebels lost their spot as the fourth-ranked team in the country by laying an egg against South Carolina in their last game and followed that up with a 22-3 loss to Alabama in which they accumulated a whopping 212 yards of offense. Ole Miss didn’t score until the third quarter and was never in the game. Ditto for previously undefeated Wisconsin, which took its 5-0 record into Columbus and came out with a 31-13 ass-kicking at the hands of ninth-ranked Ohio State. The OSU offense did next to nothing on the day, but two interception returns for touchdowns and a kickoff return for another TD were enough to get the win. Oregon was another team to lay a double-digit beatdown on its opponent, with the No. 13 Ducks going on the road and throttling unranked UCLA by a score of 24-10. Other games involving Top 25 teams were far worse, as #2 Texas (24 points), #19 Oklahoma (26 points), #5 Virginia Tech (34 points), #11 Miami (32 points) and #14 Penn State (49 points) all won by at least 24 points on the day. There were a few close games, with the best probably being #16 Kansas, undefeated on the season, outlasting Iowa State 41-36 when the Cyclones failed to cap off a long drive at the end of the game by getting into the end zone. Big 12 counterpart Oklahoma State also scored a five-point win, 36-31 over Texas A&M, but this was far from a stellar game in terms of the level of play. And speaking of South Carolina, the Gamecocks narrowly avoided a colossal blunder by beating hapless Kentucky 28-26 in Columbia. The Gamecocks might be five points (a loss to Georgia) away from being unbeaten, but they were also far too close to a bad home loss to a bad Kentucky team. Oh, and the SEC isn't helping its case for being the nation’s best conference when one of its members, Vanderbilt, loses to freaking Army. I know that Vandy is the doormat of the SEC, but if the conference is as good as its sycophants would have everyone believe, then no way should any SEC team ever - EVER - lose to a service academy. Perhaps my favorite win of the day came courtesy of Duke, the perennial laughingstock of the ACC in football. The Blue Devils not only managed to win a conference road game at North Carolina State, they whupped the Wolf Pack 49-28, getting 462 yards passing, five passing TDs and a rushing TD from senior quarterback Thaddeus Lewis for the win. It was not nearly as good a day for Syracuse quarterback Greg Paulus, who is on the radar because he is using his one remaining season of eligibility to play a single year of football after playing his entire college career as a point guard for the Duke basketball team. A bizarre NCAA rules quirk allowed him to transfer to Syracuse for football for one year as he pursues a graduate degree, but the Orange and their fans are probably wishing that Paulus had just said no to football at this point. Today, he was 5-of-9 for 30 yards and an interception before being yanked at halftime. On the season, that makes eight touchdowns and nine interceptions for Paulus, not exactly the stellar stat line you want for your starting signal caller. But the premier game of the night was, of course, Florida and LSU. The icon himself, Tim Tebow, bounced back from the concussion he suffered in Florida’s last game, two weeks ago against Kentucky, and led his team to an ugly 13-3 win in Death Valley. Sure, LSU was ranked No. 4 coming into the game, but their national rankings on both sides of the ball were so low that they clearly were getting by on smoke and mirrors up to this point and didn’t deserve to be anywhere near the top of the polls. Of the six weeks of the college football season up to this point, this weekend was the worst and least exciting of all, I’m sad to say. Hopefully the excitement that was lacking this weekend will be tacked on to the next one and we’ll have a great weekend of games in Week 7…………..
- If you’re like me and you enjoy the doses of the smokin’ hot Kristen Bell that you get on TV before her shows are either prematurely canceled (the still-great Veronica Mars) or her character is killed off of a show (Heroes), you might be wondering what one of the world’s most beautiful vegetarians is up to now. As it turns out, Bell is joining the case of the upcoming musical movie Burlesque alongside pop tart Christina Aguilera and the tacky, ugly and surgically-enhanced, musically-inept Cher. Bell will be playing Nikki, a character described as “the loose-cannon lead dancer and main attraction at the club who spirals out of control when Aguilera’s character suddenly gets the spotlight.” Who knows, perhaps there will be a sweet chick fight involving Bell and Aguilera, which would be cool with me for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that it would mean that Cher would not be on screen) theoretically and more importantly, Cher would not be singing. The club that is the main setting for the movie is being called a “neo-burlesque club,” a term that no one seems to quite understand the meaning of. If nothing else, the cast has enough star power and name recognition to draw a strong audience for its opening weekend, a crowd that will undoubtedly consist of a whole lot of gay dudes based on Cher’s presence and the fact that it is, after all, a musical. Oh, I’m sure there will be plenty of straight guys dragged to see the movie by their significant others, so all those guys have my heartfelt condolences in advance………….
- If you got up at 4/5/6/7:30 a.m. Friday because NASA told you that you would be able to see a NASA rocket striking the moon, then you deserved what you got - namely a big waste of your time. Losers, er, outer space enthusiasts around the world took NASA up on its suggestion to "impact parties" to view the impact of the Centaur upper-stage rocket as it struck the moons lunar surface. The prediction by NASA officials was that the impact would result in plumes of dust of more than 250 metric tons, but the most common refrain from those who got up early in the morning, busted out their telescopes and went outside to see the spectacle was, “We saw nothing.” So whether you are a West Coast loser who got up at 4:30 a.m. or an East Coast idiot who rose at 7:30 a.m. to see the lunar impact that NASA said would be visible through "mid-sized backyard" telescopes 10 inches or larger, you got the disappointment you had coming. Perhaps NASA should be more careful about posting messages and interactive maps on its Web site so people could find "a public event near you" to watch the event. If you’re asking yourself what the heck NASA was crashing rockets into the moon for in the first place, the goal of the $79 million mission was to determine whether there is water on the moon. And in spite of the fact that tools who got up early to watch the impact (or attempt to) saw nothing, NASA officials called the mission a success, saying the satellite sent back a good amount of data that now will be analyzed. The most popular locations for gatherings to watch the impact were, as you might expect, planetariums and observatories. Many such facilities had all-night events with food, music and other entertainment. One such place was California’s Fremont Peak Observatory, which has a 30-inch telescope described as "the most accessible public telescope in the [San Francisco] Bay area.” Accessible or not, that telescope was like every other telescope being used by every single tool who either stayed up all night or got up early to see a lame-duck lunar event that was all hype, no production. Thanks for nothing, NASA………….
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