- Time to celebrate, America! The United States has qualified for 2010 World Cup in South Africa! Wait, why am I shouting? This is soccer we’re talking about, after all, whoop-de-do. A solid 0.04 percent of the American public gives a rat’s ass about soccer, with most of those being kids whose sole association with the sport is putting on brightly colored uniforms, kicking the ball around aimlessly for a couple of hours and enjoying a Capri Sun pouch and orange wedges after the game. For those old enough to vote, soccer is waaaaay down the sports interest chart, behind football, basketball, baseball, golf, tennis, hockey, track and field, X-Games, dodgeball and fencing. Notice I didn’t include auto racing in that list, mostly because auto racing still is not a sport. Bearing all of that in mind, it wouldn’t be surprising if you had no idea that the U.S. won its World Cup qualifying group, the CONCACAF (Confederation of North, Central American and Caribbean Association Football) region. Apparently the U.S. not only won the group by tallying the most points via scoreless ties and 1-0 high-scoring affairs (just kidding, soccer fans), but the Americans were also the highest scoring team in their group, which also included Mexico, Honduras, Costa Rica, Trinidad & Tobago and El Salvador. Of course, being the highest scoring team in a qualifying group in international soccer usually means scoring about .7 goals per game on average, so don’t get too excited. Nor should you be too pumped up that the U.S. will now be a part of the biggest event in all of soccer. The world’s best teams will be there to compete, teams like Brazil and Argentina, teams that will clobber the U.S. if they face one another on the field of play (or pitch, as you soccer losers call the field). Anyone who hopes that the strong showings by the Americans in recent international competitions are going to vault them into the elite of the soccer world are begging. Besides, even if we cease to completely suck at soccer, that doesn’t mean the average American sports fan is suddenly going to care about a bunch of dudes with hideous, greasy soccer hair running around not scoring goals while falling down and faking an injury every time an opposing player comes into their ZIP code by throwing themselves to the ground and writhing around as if they’ve been shot. Plain and simple, soccer is not, has not been and will never been a major sport here in the United States and for that reason, anything “we” accomplish in soccer is going to continue to be irrelevant and go unnoticed………………
- It was an explosive night on Smallville – or at least it was supposed to be. The Toy Man, a.k.a. Winslow Schott, made his triumphant return. Last season, Schott emerged as the madman who had been fired by Oliver Queen’s Queen Industries and sought revenge by placing bombs inside toys and looking to kill Oliver with them. Oliver gained revenge by framing Schott for Lex Luthor’s murder, but now Ollie has fallen off the grid. Schott is determined to smoke him out of hiding and force him to face his crimes. As step one, Schott takes hostages at a factory owned by Queen Industries, rigging one employee with a bomb on a timer that will go off and kill everyone in the room. Unfortunately for Schott, Clark Kent super speeds onto the scene, removes the hostages and rips the bomb off the wired man. CK takes the blow when the bomb goes off, absorbing the explosion and emerging unharmed. Some people are injured by the explosion, but no one dies. Post-explosion, Clark changes into his civilian attire in a phone booth (a nice Superman homage) and steps out of the booth only to be met by Lois Lane, who has heard about the explosion and is there to cover it for the Daily Planet. While talking to Lois, Clark realizes that the explosion has done something odd to him. He can now hear people’s thoughts, specifically Lois. After hearing some revealing thoughts about how she really views him, Clark wonders what is going on. Clark talks to Chloe about his new ability because she’s an expert on all things “Wall of Weird,” but she draws a blank. He goes to the Fortress to ask Jor-El what’s going on and his Kryptonian father informs him that this is a temporary ability to help him along in his training, to alert him to the fact that there is danger all around him that he isn't picking up on. If he understands how humans think and perceive, he will be better able to protect them, Jor-El reasons. Meanwhile, the aforementioned Oliver Queen is drinking his sorrows away at a dive bar somewhere in Mexico, too drunk to really care much but sober enough to throw all of his money on the bar and buy drinks for two local hotties. When the hotties’ husbands show up and object to Oliver’s act, he make a wise crack and gets punched in the face repeatedly for his efforts. The fight ends abruptly when automatic weapon fire begins flying, courtesy of Tess Mercer. She’s tracked Oliver down because the stock for the merged LuthorCorp/Queen Industries company is in the crapper and she wants him to come back and address their shareholders to assure them that it’s all good. Tess also tells Oliver that he’s clearly punishing himself for something and asks if he wants to talk, but he cuts through the offer with a sharp blade and gets right to what she wants from him. Her request to speak to the shareholders accepted, Tess flies back to Metropolis with Oliver, where a black-tie event at the Ace of Clubs has been arranged for the occasion. The night is also a special one for Clark and Lois, who have been at the hospital talking to the witnesses from the bombing at the factory. Clark has been using his new power of perception to get the truth from the witnesses, but none of them know enough to reveal the whole story. Convinced that they’ve hit a dead end, Clark and Lois decide to call it a night. But when Clark reads Lois’ thoughts and hears that she’s been wanting to go to a monster truck rally in Metropolis, he suggests they go – but no as a date. No, it’s “something like a date,” but not a date. Lois agrees, psyched that Clark has asked her out. Chloe finds her cousin back at her Talon apartment, making cutoff shorts from her jeans and donning a sleeveless flannel shirt to perfect her monster truck rally getup. When Chloe hears that it’s Clark that Lois is going out with, she realizes that CK has been using his power to read Lois mind and trick her into going out with him. She confronts Clark at the Planet to warn him not to hurt Lois, but he confronts her with the truth that he was merely trying to shake Lois for the night so he could pursue information he got from reading the mind of a witness at the hospital. Realizing that the Toy Man is back in town, Clark is trying to find him. Chloe says that Oliver has come back for the event at the Ace of Clubs and Clark realizes that’s where Toy Man is planning his attack. At the club, Clark reads the mind of the door man to find out a name on the guest list and is about to head inside when a huge monster truck rolls up and out hops Lois. She’s heard all about the event and the story Clark is working on and is not about to be sidelined. Her attitude changes inside the club when Clark insists he can fly solo and get the job done. A miffed Lois leaves and Clark joins the crowd as Oliver takes to the podium to address his shareholders. The shareholders’ thoughts reveal that they are less than thrilled with Ollie, so his speech needs to be good. Instead, Schott has hijacked the teleprompter and tells Oliver to put in an earpiece set out on the podium. Through the earpiece, he directs Oliver to read everything on the teleprompter or else Schott will blow up a bomb located right under his feet. Try to flee and the bomb also goes off because it’s rigged to a pressure plate. And so Oliver reads, a painful speech about how selfish he has been and of the crimes he has committed. Clark X-rays the stage and sees the bomb during the speech, so he calls Chloe and asks her to hack into the club’s security feed to find out where Schott is at. Back on the podium, Oliver keeps speaking and gets to the coup de grace, his confession to being a murderer. He can’t bring himself to say it and the clock on the bomb is ticking, but Chloe finally hacks the security system, sets off the alarm and causes everyone to evacuate the building. Once they’re out, Clark spots Schott in the back, grabs him and super speeds to the roof. He interrogates Schott about the bomb, dangling him over the edge of the roof to get the information. Schott tells him that Oliver doesn’t have long before the bomb goes off, but something about his demeanor doesn’t sit right with Clark. The real Winslow Schott would be terrified of being thrown over the edge and would want to live to see Oliver killed, so Clark acts on a hunch and uses his heat vision to melt what turns out to be the prosthetic face off of a robotic Schott look-alike. Inside the mask it the timer for the bomb, which has been ruined by Clark’s heat vision. The real Toy Man is at large, so Clark sprints back into the club and finds Oliver stepping off of the pressure plate. When Clark asks Ollie how he knew the pressure plate wasn’t real and that the bomb wouldn’t go off if he stepped off of it, Oliver confesses that he didn’t know. He was willing to die but waited until everyone else got out safely. Once the scene is cleared, Clark finds Oliver outside the building and has a chat with his friend. He tells Oliver that he’s simply missed a lot of what’s going on around him, including how bad things have been going for Oliver. In turn, Ollie admits that he’s been living a life that’s a lie, simply stepping into the same life his parents left when they were tragically murdered years ago. CK promises that he hasn’t given up on Oliver and for the first time in a long time, Oliver seems willing to fight for his life as well. Elsewhere in the city, Chloe has been able to track the feed from Oliver’s earpiece to the real Winslow Schott and he’s been arrested and hauled off to jail. In the interrogation room, he demands his lawyer, but instead it’s Tess Mercer who walks into the room. She’s managed to bribe the officer on guard somehow and get some alone time with the Toy Man. Her first move is to put a bullet in his knee, then inform him that the guard will simply say he tried to flee and had to be stopped. She then kneels down on the floor beside the wounded Toy Man and opens up a large metal box, telling him it’s his newest toy. Inside is the Kryptonite-powered heart that General Zod and his crew implanted in John Corben, a.k.a. Metallo, last episode before he was killed by the Blur. Tess wants Schott to work with the artificial heart and figure out how it works, a task he seems more than willing to do. All in all, a pretty linear episode, with everything clustered around the same general storyline. Not the best episode of Smallville I’ve ever seen, although it was fun seeing the seeds planted (albeit heavy-handedly) about the budding Lois-Clark romance, which included the final scene in which they talked “theoretically” about what “people” in their situation would do if one stood the other up for a first date and wanted another shot. No actual Zod screen time this week, so tune back in next week to see if that changes……………
- In what is fast becoming a regular (and unwelcome) feature here, it’s time for our weekly installment of “Uh-oh! For the Environment.” Basically, it’s a look at what part of our environment, ecosystem or habitat is colossally f’ed up and in danger of extinction/destruction/disappearance. This week, it’s the Arctic ice caps - at least during the summer months - according to data released Thursday by the Catlin Arctic Survey and the World Wildlife Fund. The study examined ice thickness in the Arctic and based on the findings, researchers postulated that the Arctic Ocean will be "largely ice free" during summer within a decade. These same experts predict that within 20 years ice cover will be completely gone during the warmer months. Leading the way for the expedition, which was completed in May, was well-known explorer Pen Hadow. He and his team did hands-on research by drilling into the ice and recording its thickness along a 450-kilometer route across the northern part of the Beaufort Sea. During their exploration, Hadow and his crew found that the area surveyed was comprised almost exclusively of first year ice. Traditionally, the region has been made up of much older, thicker ice. "Discovering this area of younger ice provides another body of information that supports the rapidly emerging scientific consensus that it's going to be nearer 10 years from now that we will see roughly 80-85 percent free waters in the Arctic Ocean," Hadow explained. Measurements taken by Hadow and his team report that the ice-floes were on average 1.8 meters thick. If you haven’t kept up on your Arctic ice math, that means the ice is too thin to survive next summer's ice melt. "We are now in a loss period," Hadow stated. "Maybe losing this sea ice, this roof on the top of our planet in going to be an important moment, a big visual aid to the science that in combination can bring about some sort of global agreement on emissions." Martin Sommerkorn from the WWF International Arctic Program piled on further, saying that he believes that the changes in sea-ice cover in the region are likely to increase global temperatures further. "Such a loss of Arctic sea ice has recently been assessed to set in motion powerful climate feedbacks which will have an impact far beyond the Arctic itself," Sommerkorn said. "Arctic sea ice holds a central position in our Earth's climate system. Take it out of the equation and we are left with a dramatically warmer world.” Great. Look what you’ve done now, world. Even in the freaking Arctic, ice can’t survive year round. But hey, somewhere in America, our ass hat of a former president W. is probably still adamant that global warming doesn’t exist and that all is just fine with the environment. It’s tools like him who have exacerbated this problem and have basically signed the death warrant for these Arctic ice caps. Hope you’re happy now, enviro-haters…………
- Feel my excitement, everyone. It’s just oozing from every inch of my being because of news that Garth Brooks said Thursday he was coming out of retirement after nine years away from the music business. As previously stated, I am a huge country music fan - as long as by “huge fan,” you mean I hate it with every fiber of my being, think it’s one of the three worst genres in all of music (along with techno/dance and disco) and wish it had never existed. Brooks made the announcement at a press conference at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, followed by a second announcement Thursday from a different location, to which Brooks transported a number of media members of the news. But even with his comeback, the man responsible for….well, whatever the frak this yahoo sang before he retired, Brooks is only coming back to one half of the music business. He won't be going on tour any time soon, according to spokeswoman Nancy Seltzer. "If he tours again, it still won't be until his youngest goes to college," Seltzer said. Even without a tour, Brooks’ return is noteworthy (at least in country music circles) because his albums have sold in excess of 100 million copies. Maybe he’s reluctant to begin touring again because he was infamous for making his concerts into huge spectacles in which he pushed himself, his band and his crew to ridiculous lengths to put on a show. No word on whether Brooks alter ego rock singer, Chris Gaines, will also be coming out of retirement. When Brooks hung up his guitar in 2000, he cited a desire to spend more time with his family. Perhaps that desire has been fulfilled or perhaps he’s just sick of his family, but either way, expect his first album of new material since 2001’s "Scarecrow" some time in the months ahead. I know that I’m totally psyched for it and will be sure to go out and pick up the album…..just as soon as I get rid of all my good taste in music, have both of my ear drums removed and am paid to go pick up what is sure to be a terrible album……….
- Sunday was not a good day for the Jacksonville Jaguars. Coming off of back-to-back wins to salvage their season for the time being, the Jags boarded a plane and traveled across the country in literally one of the longest possible road trips in the NFL, a game in Seattle. With all of their momentum and Seattle’s lackluster performance in the first four weeks of the season, there was hope that the Jags would be able to overcome the curse that inevitably plagues teams making a road trip to the opposite coast. That hope evaporated thanks to an inept Jacksonville offense that was shut out in a 41-0 beatdown that was easily the widest margin of victory in the league this season and should hold up as such for the remainder of the year. Quarterback David Garrard was sacked four times, fumbled on two of those sacks and stud running back Maurice Jones-Drew gained a measly 34 yards on the ground. The team was also without one of its top offensive weapons in rising young receiver Mike Sims-Walker, who was coming off a two-touchdown effort in the team’s previous game and has easily been one of the top surprises at his position in the NFL this season. Was Sims-Walker (the Jaguars seem to love guys with hyphenated last names) injured? Nope. Was he sick? No again. Did he do something stupid and get himself arrested or in trouble with the law? Again, no. So why wasn’t he on the field Sunday? Well, right before kickoff, the team announced Sims-Walker had been deactivated for the game because of the infamous violation of team rules. No one knew what that cryptic message meant, but come to find out that Sims-Walker missed bed check at the team hotel Friday night because……well, because dude was getting after it with a female friend and their session in the sack went a little long. This chick must have gotten a room in the same hotel as the team and when the coaches went around doing bed check that night, Sims-Walker was nowhere to be found. When the coaches did find out where their top receiver had been, they weren’t placated. Being in the hotel isn't good enough, nor is not doing anything illegal or dangerous. My man Mike, I get that your lady friend in the Seattle area is someone you may not get to see that often on account of living on opposite sides of the country, but that doesn’t mean you get a mulligan when it comes to sleeping with her and missing bed check. If you’re going to get with this chick, you need to find a way to do so before lights out, period. Heck, if all else fails you can simply wait until after bed check, ask your roommate to go hang out in the lobby and sneak your woman into the room. Instead, you went full-on bonehead and while your absence wouldn’t have changed the outcome of the game, perhaps your team could have managed a touchdown or two…………
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