- The nature of Michael Vick’s re-established relationship with shoe and apparel maker Nike depends on who you ask. Vick and his representatives would have you believe that Vick has inked an endorsement deal with the Swoosh, which is noteworthy because the company terminated his contract in August 2007 after Vick admitted his involvement in the dogfighting ring. At that time, Nike railed against the "inhumane, abhorrent and unacceptable" nature of Vick’s treatment of animals and ripped plans for the release of his fifth signature shoe, the Air Zoom Vick V. On Wednesday, agent Joel Segal stated that Vick was back with Nike a mere two years after the two parted ways. “Mike has a long-standing, great relationship with Nike, and he looks forward to continuing that relationship,” Segal said. He refused to discuss details of the agreement, but the implication when the deal was announced during a panel discussion at the Sports Sponsorship Symposium was that Vick would be endorsing Nike products once again. It took Nike all of one day to contradict that and state explicitly that the deal was solely and exclusively to provide Vick with apparel, nothing more. The company went out of its way to declare that Vick is not and has not been asked to be an endorser of its products or appear in any sort of Nike advertising. For those who were either decrying this deal or pointing to it as yet another sign in the rehabilitation of Vick’s tattered image, now would be the time to revise your point of view. Perhaps Vick is still too radioactive for companies to want him to endorse their products….or maybe business just aren’t that jacked up to have a third string quarterback who still hasn’t completed a pass in a regular season game since 2007 represent them and their products to the world. Sure, the outrage and protests against Vick never materialized the way everyone thought they might once he actually began playing for the Philadelphia Eagles, but that alone doesn’t make him a worthwhile spokesman for shoes, electronics or sports drinks. Guys who participate in only 11 plays in NFL games aren’t exactly the ones that Gatorade, Nike, Sony, etc. are going to throw their endorsement dollars at. That’s not to say that Vick will never endorse products again, but don’t expect that to happen unless and until he’s back starting under center and making plays for an NFL team somewhere…………..
- Compared to last week’s season premiere of Smallville, this week’s follow-up episode was downright stellar. This week, it was all about John Corben, the new reporter at the Daily Planet with a decided grudge against the Blur, a.k.a. Clark Kent. As things kick off, Corben is walking along the streets of Metropolis and steps off the curb only to be hit by a speeding truck. When he wakes up, Corben is on an operating table in a dark, dank, dingy warehouse. Sheets are covering most of his body, but he can tell that something is amiss. Pulling back the sheets, Corben finds that tubes and wires are running into and out of his arm, along with plenty of shiny metal parts. As he stands up and walks to the nearest mirror, Corben realizes that it isn't just his arm that is now mechanized. He also has a bizarre gizmo attached to his chest, with a metal sphere in the middle and metal pipes running from the device into his body. In the middle of that sphere is a green, glowing substance: meteor rock. Someone has turned him into a meteor-powered Cyborg and Corben has no idea who or why. He rushes to the hospital, where Dr. Emil Hamilton is the first to see him. Hamilton is, of course, a cohort of Chloe and Clark’s, so he has an idea of Kryptonian technology when he sees it. Hamilton realizes that someone has removed Corben’s heart and replaced it with the Kryptonite-fueled gadget now implanted in his chest. Before Hamilton can do much for Corben, Corben goes full-on Kryptonite rage and throws the doctor and a nurse across the room and through plate glass windows. News of the patient on the rampage quickly spreads through the city and Lois is assigned to cover the story. Meanwhile, Corben roams the city streets and happens across the scene of his accident the previous night. There, stuck in the grate over the gutter, is a picture of his sister Becca. The photo clearly has great meaning to Corben and he takes it with him back to his current home, which is, surprisingly enough, yet another dark, creepy warehouse-like structure. He talks to the picture, telling it/his sister that he doesn’t know who gave him the powers he now has, but he knows why he has them: to kill the Blur. As for the Blur, he’s still pulling double duty saving lives around Metropolis and continuing his training at the Fortress with his Kryptonian pops Jor-El. But Clark is torn, unable to totally detach from the non-Kryptonian side of his life as Jor-El has directed him to do. He’s been keeping in touch with Lois as the Blur, a development that is upsetting to Chloe when she finds out. Lois also visits the Kent Farm in search of Clark, who has been AWOL ever since she made her unexpected trip to the future and back. She finds Clark’s dog Shelby alone on the farm, yet with a full bowl of food and water. Wondering who has been feeding Shelby, Lois muses that Clark might in fact be back in Smallville and just hiding out. To test that theory, she dog-naps Shelby and takes the dog to her apartment over the Talon. Chloe visits, sees Shelby and tells Lois that she’s the one who has been feeding the dog. That turns out to be a lie and we find that out because Chloe takes Shelby back to the farm, waits for Clark and has some pointed words for him. Be more careful about leaving evidence that you’re around, she tells him, and also, stop buddying around with Lois as the Blur and get focused on your training, since that’s what you claim is the most important thing to you. Instead, Clark learns about the patient on the rampage at Metropolis General and decides to continue his hero act by stopping the madman responsible for it. In so doing, he makes the mistake of involving Lois. Dr. Hamilton gives Clark a sets of keys with a Planet keychain trinket that Clark recognizes as a gift that every new employee receives. He deduces that the Cyborg on a rage must be a Planet employee and calls Lois at her desk. How did she get her job back? By threatening to blackmail LuthorCorp/Planet CEO Tess Mercer, of course. So Lois digs and prods, trying to find someone around the Planet who is missing their keys. It isn't until later that night, when she stops by to pick something up from her desk, that she finds the answer. Corben is at his desk across from Lois’, angrily searching for something on the Planet’s online records system. The records he’s after haven’t been transferred to the new online system yet, so he has to visit the archives and asks Lois for her keys because he can’t find his. She knows then that he must be the Cyborg and rushes to the pay phone on the street where the Blur always calls her. When the call comes, she shares the intel on Corben as the Cyborg (i.e. Metallo). As she talks, a green light appears behind her and the next thing Clark knows, the line goes dead. Corben has kidnapped Lois and takes her back to his warehouse home. There, he interrogates her as to the identity of the Blur and when she won't answer and fights back, he throws her across the room and into some steam pipes, knocking Ms. Lane out cold. Clark appears on the scene and Corben gets what he was after. He launches into a diatribe about how the Blur was responsible for his sister’s death because when a prison bus crashed a few months ago, the Blur saved the convicts on the bus and in the confusion, a convicted killer escaped. That killer later murdered Corben’s sister while he was overseas on an assignment. Now Corben wants the Blur to pay and the fight is on. Clark, weakened by the Kryptonite that powers Corben, has only one weapon. An electro-wave generator from Dr. Hamilton is his lone option and Clark deploys it at just the right moment. It does the trick, knocking out the complex wiring and circuitry powering Corben and rendering him unconscious. However, the impact only lasts for a few seconds and as Clark tries to rescue Lois, Corben gets back on his feet. Realizing that the Kryptonite is making Clark weak, he pushes the attack. As a last-ditch effort, Clark finds a large sheet of lead and realizes he can use it. After heating it up to nuclear temperature with his heat vision, Clark fuses the lead to Corbin’s chest and the attached artificial heart gizmo. Corben thinks he can simply remove the lead and keep fighting, but the genius of Clark’s plan is that when Corben pulls the lead away from his chest, the Kryptonite from his artificial heart is fused to it. Without the green rock to power him, Corben collapses and powers down, so to speak. Clark is able to save Lois, but retreats to the shadows once she regains consciousness. She asks him to step out of the dark so she can see his face, but the Blur speeds off before that can happen. As the day ends, Clark pays a visit to Chloe’s top-floor apartment in the city and now seems more torn than ever about his decision to cut ties to his old life and devote himself to his Kryptonian training. He admits to Chloe that he’s not sure what to do and she points out that it probably has something to do with his feelings for Lois, which neither he nor Lois seem to want to admit to. Clark leaves after saying that at this point, he’s just not sure what he’s going to do. What he does is show up at the Planet the next morning, where Lois greets him with a big hug and a smile. She tries to pretend that she’s not glad to see him, but as soon as CK sits down at his desk, Lois begins chatting him up about her experience “helping” the Blur catch Metallo. The lingering question, of course, is who turned John Corben into Metallo. The answer to that comes from Tess Mercer, who has been searching for Zod and his Kryptonian posse that invaded the Luthor Mansion in the premiere and then disappeared as suddenly as they came. With the help of her top scientists, Tess has been trying to track Zod and his army and believes she’s found signals that they have converged on a single point in Metropolis. That point turns out to be the warehouse where John Corben was taken and turned into a half-man, half-machine Cyborg. Tess’ scientist unearths some X-rays showing the designs for the device that was implanted in Corben’s chest in place of his heart and although Tess doesn’t know who the X-rays are from, she realizes that Zod and his people are the ones responsible for the design because they are trying to figure out a way to regain their Kryptonian powers on Earth. To do so, they’ve pulled technology and research from a litany of LuthorCorp projects and created this new piece of technology. After Corben is powered down by Clark in their warehouse battle, Tess’ men recover the body and set about deciding whether or not Corben/Metallo should be salvaged now that he’s more of a machine than a man. But the primary focus is on hundreds of Kryptonian symbols that appeared all around the world on the very night that Zod appeared on the lawn of the Luthor Mansion. The symbols translate to things like blood and royalty and inside the huge space carved out by one of the symbols, a satellite image shows a person. Who the person is we’ll have to wait until next week to find out, but part of me thinks this is what the show’s creators were talking about when they referred to Jor-El appearing on screen, in body, for the first time in the series. So until next week………..
- There are a lot of sad stories coming from the ginormous recession that has beset America the past couple of years, stories of people’s lives being torn apart, broken down and ruined because the money is no longer there to keep them and their family going. This is not one of those stories. If anything, this is a nice karmic boomerang, coming back to bite the richest and often the most arrogant among us right in the ass. According to a survey released by Forbes magazine, the collective worth of the 400 richest people in the world fell by $300 billion, or 19%, to $1.27 trillion. It’s tragic to take in, but please try to stick with me. This is only the fifth time in 28 years that the collective worth of the world’s 400 wealthiest citizens has fallen, so it’s definitely a rare occurrence. With that decline, the threshold for making the list dropped to $950 million from $1.3 billion in the 2008 list. The drop was precipitated by upheaval in the capital markets, plunging real estate values, fraud and even divorce. Of the 400 members of the list, 314 experienced a decline in wealth compared to 126 last year. Atop the list is a familiar face, Microsoft’s Bill Gates, with assets worth $50 billion. In spite of taking a $7 billion hit in his wealth, Gates is still the wealthiest man in the world. He was followed by pal Warren Buffett, who came in second with assets totaling $40 billion. Among the top ten on Forbes’ list, Oracle founder Lawrence Ellison was one to avoid major losses with assets that started and ended the year valued at $27 billion. Thirty-two members of last year’s Forbes list were axed this year, while 28 members added to their wealth. So let’s all reach for our imported silk handkerchiefs, dab the tears from our cosmetically-enhanced grills, sit back in our plush leather chairs and raise a glass of Cristal to the horrible, horrible plight of the world’s richest people as they see the once-ginormous fortune shrink to the point where…..well, it’s still ginormous…………..
- Not that I’ve ever liked or been a fan of David Letterman, but that doesn’t mean I’m cool with some scumbag trying to extort $2 million from the late-night host in order to keep quiet about the multiple sexual relationships Letterman has had with female employees of his show. Letterman broached the subject in an unusual setting for such a revelation: the opening monologue of his Thursday show. In a peculiar speech that still contained trademark Letterman humor, the host said that "this whole thing has been quite scary." The audience appeared largely confused as Letterman explained that a CBS News employee is accused of trying to extort millions from him in exchange for silence. That extortioner is alleged to be a "48 Hours" producer named Robert Halderman. Halderman has been suspended from the show and two numbers listed for him were disconnected. Dude was actually part of a team nominated for an Emmy for outstanding continuing coverage of a news story in a news magazine in 2008, but now he could be the subject of a pretty damning investigative piece himself. Letterman’s announcement was even more unique because the audience at the taping of his show was the first group to hear the story. I’m wondering how news of these affairs will play with Letterman’s longtime girlfriend Regina Lasko, who he married in March after they had dated since freaking 1986 (even the most commitment-phobic guy out there shouldn’t wait 20-plus years before popping the question). Hopefully Letterman clued Lasko into these affairs before he proclaimed the news to the world on television, because that would clearly make things worse. This entire charade has apparently unfolded in the past three weeks, starting when Letterman got in his car early in the morning and found a package with a letter saying, "I know that you do some terrible, terrible things and that I can prove that you do some terrible things." Not the most cryptic and threatening blackmail letter, to be honest with you. Even if that sentence was written in mismatched letters cut out from a magazine, it’s still no better than a two-star blackmail letter. In his monologue, Letterman also acknowledged the letter contained proof of his affairs and admitted that it was terrifying "because there's something insidious about (it). Is he standing down there? Is he hiding under the car? Am I going to get a tap on the shoulder?" Letterman then called his lawyer to set up a meeting with the man, who threatened to write a screenplay and a book about Letterman unless he was given money. From there, Letterman’s legal team handled this thing precisely the way that any clown who hatches a blackmail scheme should be handled. They held two additional meetings with the man and in the second meeting, the man was given a phony $2 million check. Soon thereafter, the attorneys went to the authorities with all of their evidence and are now pressing from criminal charges against the individual responsible for the scheme. In presenting his case, my man Dave ‘fessed up to the fact that "the creepy stuff was that I have had sex with women who work for me on this show. My response to that is yes, I have. Would it be embarrassing if it were made public? Yes, it would, especially for the women." Yeah, don’t try to act all noble and appear as if you were trying to protect these women from some horrible embarrassment. No one knows who they are and even if their names had come out, they would have faded from the public consciousness sooner rather than later. But if the details of these sexual escapades have leaked out before Letterman had gotten out ahead of them, then it definitely would have been more damaging for him than this will now be. The timing of this scandal isn't exactly great for Letterman either. Four months ago, he went to war with former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin for crude jokes about her 14-year-old daughter. He also was the target of another scam back in 2005 in which a former painter on his Montana ranch plotted to kidnap his nanny and son for a $5 million ransom. Maybe it's time for you to either retire or at least stop surrounding yourself with so many loons and so much bad behavior, Dave........
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