Recapping this season's penultimate episode of Greek, beef strewn across a highway and Larry Johnson proves athletes and Twitter like idiots too

- Thanksgiving came early on last night’s Greek. Leading up to next week’s season finale, it was a long holiday weekend for everyone at Cyprus-Rhodes U. Everyone prepared to head home for the holiday, but of course those plans didn’t go as planned for everyone. As her fellow Zeta Beta Zeta sisters left, Casey was preparing to do the same until she stopped by her brother Rusty’s apartment to pick him up for the trip to the airport. He delivered the bad news that their parents had ditched them to spend Thanksgiving in Hawaii, something she would have known if she’d listened to any of the five voicemail messages her mother left her. So Casey is stuck on campus for the holiday weekend and thinks she has the ZBZ house to herself until Rebecca Logan interrupts her off-key singing of a Katy Perry song while dancing on her bed. Rebecca claims her flight was canceled and so the two of them are stuck together for the weekend. But the old ZBZ house proves a little creepy at night when it’s nearly empty and a freaked-out Rebecca decides to bring her humidifier and ambient noise machine with her and sleep in Casey and Ashleigh’s room. The next day is Thanksgiving and Casey plans to spend the early part of the day volunteering with a group called Moveable Meals to deliver Thanksgiving dinners to the elderly. Rebecca initially wants to write a check for $10,000 to charity instead of volunteering, but she ends up tagging along because she has no other plans. The volunteerism is short-lived, however, as the Moveable Meals people have all the helpers they need. The leader of the group says that a check would still be welcome and Rebecca hands over her generous donation, looking like a hero in the process. Still in search of something to break her string of bad karma lately, Casey searches for something else to do the trick. In a strike of inspiration, she decides to have an impromptu Thanksgiving meal at the ZBZ house and to invite all of the MM volunteers. In lieu of turkey, the group dines on pizza topped with turkey sausage and drinks “cranberry sauce,” a mixture of cranberry juice and leftover booze. The meal goes well until a drunk volunteers wanders upstairs, steals an ugly sweater from Casey and Ashley’s room and sprints out of the house with Rebecca in pursuit. After the party, Casey ends up talking with Evan and confessing that she had been planning on hooking up with her old boyfriend Derek while home for the weekend, but that plan went out the window when her parents ditched her. He seems to want to fill that void for her, but Casey isn't looking for that from him. She does still have Thanksgiving dinner at Rusty and Dale’s apartment later in the day after they invited her, but those plans end up going down in flames – literally. Both Rusty and Dale have made plans to cram their long weekend full of work on their respective research projects, with both of them having a shot at a prestigious engineering grant. Dale and his sponsor, Dr. Larson, have made the grant a priority. Rusty’s sponsor, Dr. Hastings, suggests it only after Rusty comes up with a new idea for a self-healing polymer wire. So while they try to prepare a traditional Thanksgiving feast, both guys are also spending time at the lab working on their projects. Dr. Hastings takes exception when Dale tags along with Rusty, reminding his young protégé that, “There are no friends in the lab.” That lesson proves true when Rusty’s project continues to make progress while Dale’s suffers a bad setback, literally going up in flames. With the double-whammy of his faltering project and news that Rusty has a real shot at winning the grant, Dale becomes so tense that he calls of Thanksgiving dinner and instead sneaks into the lab, where he spies on Rusty’s research in an attempt to gain an edge. When Rusty walks in on him, the sh*t hits the fan. Rusty accused Dale of looking down on him, not being honest with him and not being a true friend. Dale has no defense and the next time the two see one another in the lab, they don’t even say a word, not even after Rusty makes another huge leap forward in his project. Two guys who are making friendship work are Cappie and Evan, who make plans to play some Thanksgiving golf because neither is going home for the holiday. Evan promises to call with a tee time once he gets off work, but when he is running late and Cappie has the chance to do something else, he takes it. That something else is the annual Kappa Tau turkey hunt, which consists of a KT brother who is leaving for the weekend leaving behind clues for those brothers stranded on campus to hunt a turkey. When Wade, Heath and Beaver beg him to join in and show complete ineptitude in following the first few clues, Cappie joins the turkey hunt. The hunt takes the group to different rooms of the KT house and ultimately to the Omega Chi house, where Wade, Beaver and Heath want to also pull a prank, perhaps trashing Evan’s room. When Cappie shoots down the idea, they are shocked. He explains that it’s a KT tradition to cease hostilities with their enemies on Thanksgiving and when he brothers remark about how nonchalant and un-Cappie-like he’s been lately, he explains that his fallout with Casey after the “End of the World” party is to blame. Wade, Beaver and Heath encourage him to try again, even if it means potential heartbreak, so that he can be with the love of his life. With the turkey hunt completed, the KT’s head back to their house for the KT Thanksgiving dinner. Rusty is also on hand and he’s invited Casey, who in turn invites Rebecca and Evan, with whom she’s hanging out when she gets Rusty’s text. Evan’s presence causes predictable turmoil with the KT’s, him being the president of their hated rival frat and all, but Cappie makes the decision to let him in (and his brothers agree) because Evan comes bearing gifts: alcohol .The motley crew gathers around a table in the backyard and enjoys a “meal” that consists of nothing more than snack foods, candy and alcohol. When Wade finally announces that it’s time for turkey, the turkey turns out to be a bottle of Wild Turkey and not actual food. Rusty takes his cue to leave and head back to the lab, while Casey also decides to leave and Cappie offers to walk her home. At the ZBZ house, he escorts her inside but confesses that he has something he needs to say. Casey suggests they talk tomorrow when they are a little more sober, but Cappie insists on talking now. He pours out his heart, admits he should have came after her when she confessed her feelings for him at the KT “End of the World” party and says that he wants to be with her now. They kiss and she admits that she wants to be with him too, so happy ending, right? The previews for next week’s season finale would seem to indicate not, so be sure to tune in for that……..

- How about some more proof that famous people – athletes, actors, musicians, etc. – are just like the rest of us, that they have the same problems and shortcomings as the common man? Let’s welcome in Kansas City Chiefs running back Larry Johnson to help me illustrate this point. My man LJ is a member of one of the NFL’s worst teams, the 1-6 Chiefs. On Sunday, Johnson and his teammates were on the wrong end of a 37-7 home beatdown by the San Diego Chargers. Johnson didn’t exactly tear it up in defeat, tallying a mere 49 yards on 16 carries. However, that didn’t stop him from joining the millions of idiots around the world who manage to take a simple social networking site like Twitter and turn it into their own personal stupidity magnifier. Just like the tool with a mullet, vintage Guns N’ Roses concert t-shirt and rusted-out 1986 Ford Bronco down the street from you who gets all liquored up and posts some idiotic, grammatically stunted messages on his MySpace or Twitter page, Larry Johnson knows how to open his mouth and jam his foot halfway down his esophagus. Following the game Sunday, Johnson took to Twitter to slam his rookie head coach, Todd Haley. LJ posted that Haley has "nuthn" when it comes to NFL-quality credentials. "My father got more creditentials than most of these pro coaches,” Johnson wrote. He followed that with a Tweet saying that: "My father played for the coach from "rememeber the titans". Our coach played golf. My father played for redskins briefley. Our coach. Nuthn." Wow…..just wow. First and foremost, are you kidding me? As always, if you have a problem with the coach, go talk to him. If nothing else, maybe your frustration comes out after the game when you’re talking to the media. That’s not the right means of expressing yourself, but at least someone is in your face, bugging you for answers and you can say that you snapped and lost your cool. By going on Twitter and posting your own message, you’re showing a clear intent to take a hacksaw to your own coach’s reputation. Secondly, did Larry Johnson ever go to class while at Penn State? Furthermore, how the hell did he ever get admitted in the first place? My man, you absolutely butchered the words credentials, remember and briefly. Yes, those are multi-syllabic words, but anyone who attended even one day of college in their life should be able to spell them. If the story ended here, it would already be bad enough for Johnson. But wait……there’s more. After the Tweets I just mentioned, one of his Twitter followers took exception to his comments and shot back with a dig about the incident a couple of years ago in which Johnson allegedly spit his drink in a woman’s face at a club. That provoked a rant in which Johsnon “be-downgraded” the follower, touting his own talents, wealth and status as an NFL player and telling the follower to, "Make me regret it. Lmao. U don't stop my checks. Lmao. So 'tweet' away." To top it off, Johnson hit the follower with a three-letter homophobic slur. Nicely done LJ, nicely done. Now, you not only need to apologize to your head coach, you’ll also be issuing an apology that someone elser writes for you, er, from your heart to the entire gay and lesbian community for using a word that is incredibly offensive to them. Once again, thanks for showing that just because you are rich and famous doesn’t mean that you are any smarter or better than the rest of us………

- Thanks for ruining an American legend, researchers at The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR). For decades, we’ve bought into the story that legendary aviatrix Amelia Earhart crashed into the ocean while attempting to fly around the world. She died in a blaze of glory, doing what she loved to do – or so we thoughts. According to these party-pooper researchers, Earhart most likely died on an uninhabited tropical island in the southwestern Pacific republic of Kiribati. To refresh your memory, Earhart disappeared while flying over the Pacific Ocean on July 2, 1937 in a record attempt to fly around the world at the equator. Ever since, her final resting place has been the stuff of legends and no one has ever definitively determined the answer. People like Richard Gillespie, TIGHAR's executive director and author of the book "Finding Amelia," and his crew have been searching the Nikumaroro island for evidence of Earhart. The island is actually a tiny coral atoll located 300 miles southeast of Earhart's target destination, Howland Island. TIGHAR has recovered several artifacts which suggest that Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, made a forced landing on the island's smooth, flat coral reef. "We know that in 1940 British Colonial Service officer Gerald Gallagher recovered a partial skeleton of a castaway on Nikumaroro. Unfortunately, those bones have now been lost," Gillespie said. Those bones were found in a remote area of the island, in a place that was unlikely to have been seen during an aerial search. Along with the bones, researchers have also found a woman's shoe, an empty bottle and a sextant box whose serial numbers are consistent with a type known to have been carried by Noonan. All of the items were found near the site where the bones were discovered. "The reason why they found a partial skeleton is that many of the bones had been carried off by giant coconut crabs. There is a remote chance that some of the bones might still survive deep in crab burrows," Gillespie said. Okay, now that sounds far-fetched at best, Richie. Giant sand crabs carrying off human bones and burying them at the bottom of their burrows? I’m going to need much stronger evidence if I’m going to subscribe to your half-baked theory and ruin the image of Earhart crashing into the ocean and going instant legend in the process. There have been some great theories about her fate over the years, including suggestions that she was a spy, that she was captured by the Japanese, that she died in a prisoner-of-war camp, and that she survived and returned to live her life as a New Jersey housewife. Of course, if Gillespie’s theory is true and we knew it to be so a few years ago, we could have avoided the crap-tacular Earhart biopic starring starring Hilary Swank and Richard Gere, but that would be about the only good thing to result from the theory being proven true………

- It was a vegetarian’s nightmare early Monday morning at the Weston toll plaza on the Massachusetts Turnpike. State troopers aren’t sure what the cause was, but they know that the end result was a chain-reaction tractor-trailer crash that left sides of beef strewn across the roadway, a toll booth damaged and at least one driver hospitalized. First and foremost, best wishes to the injured driver for a full recovery. But the aspect of this that I’m more enthralled with is the sight of hundreds of slabs of been strewn across the highway in what could only be described as University of Kansas football coach Mark Mangino’s dream scenario. The spilled beef came from a refrigerated tractor-trailer carrying hundreds of pounds of meaty goodness which then rear-ended several other big rigs at the Weston tolls about 2:30 a.m. A third truck and a car were also hit in the accident. The beef truck wasn’t the only food carrier involved in the accident, as a truck carrying tomatoes was also caught up in the accident. Troopers believe that the truck carrying beef rear-ended a truck carrying a load of styrofoam cups on board, which in turn hit the car and tomato truck. The optimist in me looks at this and sees two thirds of a delicious hamburger (beef and smashed tomatoes, i.e. ketchup), but the sight off those sides of beef scattered across the highway is nearly as awesome. The cause of the accident, which occurred about 15 miles west of Boston, is unknown at this point. The one thing troopers are adamant about is that driver fatigue does not appear to be the cause. "I saw him coming behind me. No way I could get out of the road. He didn't even stop: the guy with the meat," the driver of the truck carrying the styrofoam cups said of the meat truck driver. "Ran into me, knocked me over this way, and I ran into the back of this." The accident actually proved quite beneficial to motorists who came through the toll plaza during the seven hours it took authorities to clean up the mess. Turnpike officials decided to wave most drivers through without requiring fares in order to keep traffic moving. The real loser in all of this was the beef, all of which was condemned by the state Board of Health even as front-end loaders were brought in to remove it from the road. Next time, if there’s going to be an accident causing a spill of a massive quantity of food products, let’s make it something disgusting and unappetizing, something that most of us hate anyhow, perhaps mayonnaise or sour cream………

- Never let it be said that Metallica doesn’t care about its fans. Well, it didn’t seem too concerned about them when Lars Ulrich was going in front of Congress, leading the charge to persecute and prosecute people who downloaded music for free from Napster, but at least in this instance the band is concerned with the well-being of one of its followers. On Oct. 17, Virginia Tech student Morgan Harrington attended a Metallica concert at the University of Virginia. During the show, Harrington called her friends inside to say she was outside the arena and would find her own way home. She explained that she had gone to the restroom and somehow ended up outside John Paul Jones Arena on the University of Virginia campus in Charlottesville. Security wouldn’t allow her to re-enter the arena, so she apparently decided to head home. That’s the last anyone heard from her and the next day, her phone and purse were found in a parking lot near the arena. Friends and family say she never went anywhere without her phone, so finding it in the parking lot was a disturbing sign. In the week since her disappearance, those close to Harrington have been feverishly searching for her and now they are receiving help from Metallica. The famed rockers are participating in the search, adding $50,000 to the reward for information leading to Harrington’s whereabouts. Her parents, Dan and Gil (pronounced “Jill”) Harrington, have been keeping a high public profile to keep their daughter’s story in the public eye. They live about 35 miles from the Virginia Tech campus in Blacksburg, so they’re not far away. The day of the concert, Morgan Harrington spent the day at home planning with her mother what she was going to wear to the show, so this was clearly something she was looking forward to. Lt. Joe Rader of the Virginia State Police wasn’t exactly a beacon of sunshine and hope when asked about Harrington, although you can’t exactly blame him. “We have a purse and we have a cell phone. We have a missing girl,” Rader cryptically stated. “We do not know whether if she is alive or has met some ill fate.” The FBI is working with the state police in the search for Williams, who is described as a5-foot-6, 120-pound blonde with blue eyes. All humor aside, I would encourage everyone out there in and around Virginia to keep an eye out and an ear open for anything that might help find Morgan Harrington……………