Pervs in animal costumes, Riot Watch! on Trinidad & Tobago and Tom Morello finally finds something to do

- The Sacramento Kings may not be able to win basketball games, they may receive only the fourth best pick in the NBA draft lottery despite having the best probability of winning the top pick and they may not have a single player whose name the non-diehard NBA fan would know, but at least Kings players care about their fellow citizens. Kings' forward Donté Green was out boating with some friends Monday near Discovery Park in Sacramento and around 7 p.m., they decided to go home. A woman onboard was pulling up the ladder when the driver put the boat in gear, sending the woman flying off the back of the boat and into the chilly waters. "All I hear is somebody yelling, I hear a big splash," Green said. He was able to spot the woman and although the boat Green was on was turning around, he saw several other vessels in the way and decided to dive in. Plunging into the chilly waters of the American River, Green dodged some boats to get to the woman, then latched onto a life preserver that someone threw out to help keep he and the woman afloat. "I honestly don't even think I was thinking -- I was just reacting," Green said about jumping in after the woman. "I was pretty confident in my swimming abilities. It was only a minute, but it felt like a lifetime. It felt like it took forever. Once we got to the boat and everything, I was pretty happy.” Thankfully, unlike this past season for the Kings, the woman didn’t need serious medical attention or to be revived. She was fine, thanks to Green’s quick thinking and solid swimming skills. It’s nice to know that even if fans can’t count on the Kings to give them a good performance on the court, they can count on the players (at least one of them) to come to the rescue in times of danger……

- What to do on a nice early summer day when you and one of your girlfriends are laying around the pool in your bikinis, tanning and talking about the latest episode of The Hills? How’s about casing the nearest parking lot for unlocked cars so you can break in and thieve whatever is inside? Sounds like a lot of fun, if you ask me. It also apparently sounded like a lot of fun to two teenage girls in Lafayette, Louisiana. Early last week, Lafayette police released video of two bikini-clad chicks burglarizing vehicles in one apartment complex. The two can be seen wandering around the parking lot of an apartment complex off East Martial Avenue in Lafayette, pulling on car doors to see if they're unlocked. They are stoned over and over by people who actually remember to lock their doors, but finally the two amateur thieves find a vehicle that is unlocked. In quick succession, they find two other unlocked vehicles and clean out all three. They get away with a number of items including a GPS system, sunglasses and a wallet. Unfortunately, breaking into anything - vehicles, homes, businesses - while dressed only in a bikini doesn’t give one much chance to conceal their identity. As such, police were able to track down one of the thieves within a few days. A 16-year-old girl was arrested and charged with three counts of simple car burglary, while police are still looking for her accomplice. What, you’re having that much trouble getting some 16-year-old thief to roll on her companion? It can't be that hard to get her to talk, just take away her BlackBerry, ban her from watching Gossip Girl and threaten to tell all her friends that she shops for her “designer” clothes at the thrift store unless she gives up her accomplice. What’s actually sad about this story is that you just know there are a lot of dudes out there who would be so focused on two hot chicks in bikinis walking around the parking lot of their apartment complex that it would take them a solid five minutes to turn their eyes away and go call the cops. Why does something like hot chicks in bikinis robbing cars never happen where I live……..

- Maybe you’re asking yourself what the heck Tom Morello has been up to since Audioslave broke up. If you’re an Audioslave fan like myself, odds are that you’re still a little bent about the breakup and wonder if you should be tossing any blame Morello’s way. I can’t answer that definitively, but I can answer the question about what Morello is (and has been) up to. After being a part of great bands like Rage Against the Machine, Audioslave, the Nightwatchman and the Coup's Boots Riley, Morello is stepping into another band with none other than Trent Reznor. The band is Street Sweeper Social Club, started when Morello and Reznor. came together for a tour. “We were finishing mixing our record when Trent called up and said, 'Hey, want to do the (Nine Inch Nails/Jane's Addiction) tour?',” Morello recalled. "So all of a sudden the leisurely mixing process became, 'We gotta get this out right now! We've got to start rehearsing for the tour tomorrow!'” Morello also explains that both bands are friends from back in the day, so they have a good rapport. Street Sweeper Social Club was born in 2007, after Morello and Boots Riley played "innumerable" shows together, including benefits and Nightwatchman tours that featured Riley as the opening act. During the NIN/Jane’s Addiction tour, Reznor joined Morello, Riley and company on stage for a rendition of the MC5's "Kick Out the Jams” (an awesome, awesome song, by the way). “When Audioslave broke up, we had dinner and I made him an offer he couldn't refuse," Morello remembered. "I told him, 'We're in a band. It's called Street Sweeper Social Club. It's revolutionary party jams.' Then I handed him a cassette tape of 24 song ideas and said 'Write to this.' He was given no choice in the matter -- and to date, he hasn't said 'yes.' But it's been going very well.” Whether you’ll like the "Street Sweeper Social Scene" album, which comes out June 16, depends on whether you’re a fan of Morello’s Audioslave sound or Reznor’s Nine Inch Nails sounds. The album features 11 songs with an overtly political slant and a style that’s a blend of rap and rock that's closer to Rage Against the Machine than Audioslave. Also appearing on the album are Galactic's Stanton Moore (drums), Tony Award-nominated David Gibbs (guitar) and Carl Restivo (Satellite Party, Freedom Fighter Orchestra) on bass. According to Morello, the group is planning a late summer/fall headlining tour of North America. Clearly a workaholic, Morello will continue playing with the Coup, his work as the Nightwatchman and with Rage Against the Machine. Right, because one or two bands would just be slacking off……..

- Riot Watch! Riot Watch! Today’s edition takes us to a place we’ve never been before: the small SOUTH Atlantic island Trinidad & Tobago. Formerly, T&T was known as the home of former Olympic sprinter Otto Boldon and little else, but no more. When angry prisoners stage a riot at the San Fernando Magistrates' Court and cause enough of a commotion that Crime Suppression Unit and Guard and Emergency Branch officers are called to subdue them and return them to prison, you’ve got something to talk about. As with all good prison riots, this one started because prisoners felt they were being treated inhumanely by the court system. And as always, I’m going to side with anyone who is lashing out at The Man. In this case, I’m going to do that, but I’m also going to stand a safe distance away from the rioting prisoners, mostly because in the course of the riot, they smeared feces on themselves. Yes, you read that right: dudes smeared solid human waste on themselves. I suppose they figured that the cops wouldn’t want to actually touch them if they were covered in crap, but that wasn’t all these rioting prisoners did. They also smeared feces on the walls of the holding bay, then tore down electrical fixtures and wires and used them as weapons to ward off riot officers. Resourcefulness….check. Anti-authority slant to your riot….check. Property damage…..check. Given the constraints these guys were working with, I’d say they scored a solid 7.5 on a scale of 1 to 10 on my Riot-O-Meter. The man most responsible for inciting the riot is Deputy Chief Magistrate Mark Wellington, who presides in the First Court. Inmates felt that Wellington failed to address complained that holding cells at the facility were too cramped. Obviously, I don’t care what the complaints and problems are, just as long as they’re enough to cause a riot. So well done, prisoners of the San Fernando Magistrates' Court in Trinidad & Tobago, riot on……..

- Be advised, this next story is revolting to the nth degree and not something to read if you’re likely to hunt down and do horrifically violent things to freaky, disgusting pedophiles who attempt to seduce young boys into sexual encounters involving animal costumes. Oops, did I give away too much? May as well proceed at this point and tell you about the freak that is Alan David Berlin. A.D. Berlin worked as a member of an Allegheny County state legislator's staff and had worked in the Senate about a decade, including the last several years with Sen. Jane Orie, R-McCandless. According to Pennsylvania Attorney General Tom Corbett, Alan Berlin allegedly had computer chats with a teenage boy about dressing in animal costumes and having sex. For some odd reason, Orie “immediately and indefinitely suspended" Alan Berlin with no pay or benefits when she learned of the allegations. Why? Just because dude was accused of being a pedophile, the lowest possible class of criminal in this or any other society? “As a former ten-year veteran prosecutor who specialized in prosecuting child abuse and child sexual assault cases and successfully convicted numerous sex offenders, I was shocked and appalled,” Orie said in a statement. “I fully and staunchly support the actions of the Attorney General's Office in investigating and prosecuting all child abuse and sexual assault cases -- including the work of the AG's Child Predator Unit.” Harsh words, senator, harsh words. So how exactly did Alan Berlin go about his freakery? Well, he allegedly used the chat name "alan_panda_bear" and talked about various sex acts with the teen, including the idea of traveling to Harrisburg and having sex in the boy's back yard while his parents slept. Sorry, but I just threw up in my mouth, give me a moment…..okay, back….no, I need to go throw up again……okay, I’m good. Are you freaking kidding me? You sick, sick, sick freak. Not only are you such a perv that you want to dress up in animal costumes and have sex with a kid, you get some sort of sick thrill from doing so while the kid’s own parents slept nearby? I know there are a lot of twisted freaks out there, but Alan David Berlin appears to be a match for any of them. “Berlin is also accused of attempting to arrange a meeting between the boy and another adult, and offered to get them a hotel room if Berlin could take photos of them having sex,” according to the criminal complaint. Hooray, another dimension of this guy’s revolting perversion. He also gets off from taking pictures of other people engaging in statutory rape, goodie. Thankfully, the boy's parents found the sexually graphic messages on his computer and contacted authorities. Oh, and the talk of animal costumes was apparently something that Alan Berlin was totally serious about. Investigators from Corbett's office found a wolf and cat-type costume in Berlin's home. He was arrested, arraigned before District Judge George Zozos and taken to the Dauphin County Jail on $250,000 bail - not nearly enough. I know people always say that inmates are especially cruel to anyone who harms children, but hopefully the inmates at whatever prison Alan David Berlin goes to are especially sadistic and receive a full briefing on just what sort of aberrant, horrific acts he was involved in……

Phil Spector set to implode, signs of hockey's irrelevance and a movie rating system change I can get with

- The parties may be divorced, but that isn’t preventing the University of Kentucky and former basketball coach Billy Gillispie from going after one another with vitriol. Gillespie was fired after only two seasons, mostly because UK has completely unrealistic, insane expectations that it’s men’s basketball program will reach the Final Four every year and Gillispie failed to deliver anything close to that sort of performance in his two-year tenure. He was axed, John Calipari was brought in and now Gillispie is going after the money he claims that the school owes him under the terms of his contract. Gillispie filed his claim Wednesday in Dallas, asking for at least $6 million in pay, punitive damages, attorneys' fees and court costs. It took the university all of one day to fire back, filing a countersuit Thursday in Franklin Circuit Court in Kentucky, which the school contends is the proper venue for any litigation involving the coach's former employment. Thee debate centers on whether or not Gillispie was ever formally under contract at UK. Seems bizarre, given that he was there two years and in no other job would someone work for two years without ever actually signing a contract. But the university contends that Gillispie never signed a formal contract but was working under a memorandum of understanding when he was fired after last season. The contract he either signed or was to sign, depending on whose story you buy, contained a buyout clause that Gillispie claims is binding. That would require the school to pay him $1.5 million for four of five years left on his contract. Additionally, his attorney maintains that there was a contract and now UK needs to own up to its end of that deal. "There's a public misconception that Coach Gillispie did not sign a contract with the University of Kentucky athletic association," Demetrios Anaipakos said. "He absolutely did. They drafted it. He signed it. They signed it and their board approved it. Whether you're in Kentucky or Texas, a deal is a deal.” I can find a lot of fault on both sides here, both in Gillispie for not signing the official contract (what were you waiting for, Bill?) and the university for its absurd expectations for its basketball coaches and refusal to honor the terms of whatever sort of agreement it did sign. Just an all-around ugly situation and one that does nothing to improve the image of a Kentucky basketball program that is a shell of its former self……..

- Score one for love. Father Alberto Cutie, the internationally known Catholic priest who admitted having a romantic affair and breaking his vow of celibacy, is jumping ship from the Catholic Church to join the Episcopal Church to be with the woman he loves. “I will always love the Catholic Church and all its members," he said Thursday. "But I want to start today by going into a new family. Here before this community where I have chosen to serve and where I live, I am going to continue to proclaim the word of God and my love for God.” He was welcome into the Episcopal fold at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral in Miami, Florida, where will pursue the priesthood in the Episcopalian faith. It’s too bad that John C. Favalora, archbishop of the Catholic Church's Miami archdiocese, where Cutie served, couldn’t have taken the high road on this one and let Cutie go without firing off a few final shots to snipe his old buddy in the back as he left. “Father Cutie's actions have caused grave scandal within the Catholic Church, harmed the Archdiocese of Miami -- especially our priests -- and led to division within the ecumenical community and the community at large," Favalora said in a written statement. "Today's announcement only deepens those wounds.” Now is that any way to talk about a guy who is often called "Father Oprah" because of the advice he's given in Spanish-language media? Take it down a notch, Favarola. How about some love, compassion and understanding? Yes, Cutie caused an uproar when photographs of him embracing a bathing-suit-clad woman emerged this month in the pages of TV Notas magazine. He’s admitted to having a two-year relationship with the woman, but Cutie insists that this is a relationship of substance and something he is willing to make huge sacrifices for. The Catholic Church got what it wanted when Cutie was removed from his duties at St. Francis De Sales Catholic Church in Miami Beach and ripped from the airwaves of the Radio Paz and Radio Peace Networks. Ideally, Favarola would just let Cutie go without having to attack him on his way out the door. Let the guy go to the Church of the Resurrection in Biscayne Park, where Cutie is headed, and allow him to begin rebuilding a struggling church there rather than engage in petty sniping. Step your game up, Archbishop Favarola……

- Never have I been more behind a movement than I am with the idea from the American Medical Association Alliance to drop an R rating on any movie with smoking scenes. I find it extremely offensive that smoking in youth-rated movies has not declined despite a pledge two years ago by Hollywood studios to encourage producers to show less "gratuitous smoking.” And while there is no one central cause for kids who start smoking, the fact is that seeing from their favorite stars on the big screen certainly doesn’t help stamp out smoking. “Research has shown that one-third to one-half of all young smokers in the United States can be attributed to smoking these youth see in movies," said Dr. Jonathan Fielding, head of the Los Angeles County Public Health Department. Fielding went on to cite another study that "found that adolescents whose favorite movie stars smoked on screen are significantly more likely to be smokers themselves and to have a more accepting attitude toward smoking.” Good enough for me, I’m sold. If Fielding and his peeps want to drop an R rating on any movie with smoking in it, that’s cool. If they say the current system of upgrading the rating of films with smoking in them isn’t working, I see no need to argue with them. The Motion Picture Association of America, which ratings for U.S. films, claims it factors smoking into its decisions. To quote Ron Burgundy, I don’t believe you. If putting an R rating on a smoking movie means no one under the age of 17 can (theoretically) see it without a parent or guardian, so be it. The fewer people that see smoking in any medium, the better. No one’s life is made better by smoking, not even the leather-faced, coughing, hacking, wheezing, black-lunged losers who choke down a pack or two of cancer sticks a day. They may think their lives are better, but they are wrong. They make everyone around them miserable any time they smoke and our lives are exponentially better the more places we can eliminate smoking from. So when the AMAA says it wants an R rating for any movie with so much as one smoking scene in it, I salute them and jump on board with both feet. I’m getting on this bandwagon early, but I don’t mind making space for the rest of you to cram on board…….

- How do I know that hockey is irrelevant in these here United States? Because if the sport mattered at all to Americans, NBC wouldn’t be bumping the NHL’s premier event of the season, the Stanley Cup Finals, from its airwaves in favor of five straight nights of the reality series I'm A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here! I don’t care if the uber-hot Torrie Wilson is a part of the show, if anyone in the U.S. of A cared about the sport I lovingly call soccer on ice, NBC would not a) be forcing the NHL to play two games in two nights over the weekend to get those games aired on the network and b) ripping the league’s championship series in favor of a reality TV show. I realize that reality series slamming famous people in unusual spots is becoming trendy (see I Get That A Lot, which put famous people in ordinary settings and had them lie about being their famous selves) in the reality TV world, but I don’t see Fox telling Major League Baseball to take the World Series to TBS, ABC letting the NBA know that the NBA Finals will have to be shown on ABC Family or CBS hitting the NFL with a notice that the Super Bowl will have to air on Nickelodeon. I realize some hockey fans will read this and take offense, but hopefully with the decision by NBC and not with what I’m saying. I’m merely commenting on the obvious, that when a television network treats your sport’s championship series with such utter disregard and indifference, it’s a definite sign that people just don’t care about your sport or league……

- This is going downhill quickly. While awaiting sentencing for his murder conviction, music producer Phil Spector wigged (pun intended) out because he wasn’t allowed to keep his favorite hairpiece on in the pen. He was a freaking basket case after spending just a few days in lock up, so how do you think it’s going to go for him now that he’s been sentenced to the maximum sentence of 19 years to life for the murder six years ago of actress Lana Clarkson? Allow me to do the math for you: Spector, 69, would be 88 before he would be eligible for parole. He’s spending nearly two decades in prison and for someone his age, that’s basically a life sentence. Heck, Spector looked near death Friday as he sat slumped and stone-faced throughout his sentencing by Judge Larry Paul Fidler. Fidler also denied a motion for a new trial by defense attorney Doron Weinberg, who said he would file an appeal. “The evidence did not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he is guilty for the simple reason [that] he did not kill Lana Clarkson,” Weinberg said. Well, I suppose you’re entitled to an appeal, D. “Obviously, he's not very happy," Spector's wife, Rachelle, said after the hearing. "I'm going to stand by him and get him out of that awful place so he can come home where he belongs.” Umm, no you’re not. You can stand by him all you want, but you’re going to be standing beside inmate #495011 as he spends the rest of his life in prison. You’ll also be standing besides his coffin when he dies in prison and the authorities turn his body over to you for burial. Nobody feels bad for Spector because we’ve seen much of the evidence against him and are fairly certain that P. Spector did indeed kill Clarkson in the foyer of his Alhambra, California, mansion with a gunshot to the head. The jurors surely were convinced of his guilty after deliberating for 30 hours in October and announcing a guilty verdict on the second-degree murder charge. Fidler even gave them the opportunity consider the lesser charge of involuntary manslaughter, but they chose not to. Not only that, this was Spector’s second trial on the murder charge, with his first murder trial in 2007 ending in a mistrial as jurors said they couldn't reach a verdict after 15 days of deliberations. For someone with two firearms-related convictions on his record, a fatal shooting isn’t something that seems too far-fetched for Spector. His own driver testified against him, claiming he heard a gunshot and Spector exclaim, “I think I killed someone.” Not exactly the end result you would have thought of for someone who was the producer for No. 1 hits like the Ronettes' "Be My Baby,” the Righteous Brothers' "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'” and the legendary Beatles’ album “Let It Be.” Enjoy the hole, Phil, because something tells me you’re exactly where you belong…….

Politics get interesting in the ATL, Jay-Z gets richer again and a big "Uh-oh!" at the U. of Memphis

- Uh oh. Not that anyone is actually going to be hurt by the fallout from this, but the University of Memphis men’s basketball program is currently in the NCAA’s crosshairs because the biggest-name player to come to campus in a long time - albeit for just one season, in 2007-08 - is apparently a test-dodging, transcript-forging fraud. Chicago Bulls rookie Derrick Rose may have played only one season for the Tigers, but if what is being alleged of him is true, he shouldn’t have even played that long. According to a letter sent to the university by the NCAA, an unidentified player - by all accounts Rose - was eligible to play for Memphis only after a) his transcript was altered before being sent to the school and changed back a month after that submission and b) had someone else take his SAT for him. Memphis athletic director R.C. Johnson is circling the wagons and claiming that said the Tigers have no reason to believe a former player -- Rose -- took a fraudulent standardized test prior to enrolling at the university. "If we thought that we wouldn't have played him," Johnson said. Surrrrre. You just because you didn’t think Rose had ripped off a bad Saved by the Bell plot and found someone to take his SAT for him doesn’t mean you’re off the hook. I’d imagine you operate under the belief that anyone who submits an SAT result for admission attained their score legitimately. Thinking and acting otherwise would be impossibly costly and time-consuming: there just isn’t time to investigate every detail of the academic record of every recruit. However, when you give a guy (or girl) a uniform and put them on the field, court or track as part of your team, you tacitly accept any consequences that come if they became eligible fraudulently. The irony is that Rose is gone to the NBA, so the NCAA has no way to punish him. John Calipari has moved on from Memphis and is now coach at the University of Kentucky and by all accounts, the NCAA isn’t likely to charge him with any wrongdoing. The only “penalty” likely to come out of this is Memphis forfeiting its NCAA-record 38 wins from the 2007-08 season and having its participation in the Final Four that season wiped from the record books. At this point, nothing has been decided for certain. The NCAA sent Memphis a letter on Jan. 16, notifying the school of the investigation. The NCAA has asked Memphis to provide copies of the SAT and a Sept. 2, 2008, report by a forensic document examiner who studied the handwriting in the SAT. Yes, they’re going full-on CSI to break down the handwriting on the test. Why stop there? Dust that test for fingerprints or see if whoever took the test licked their fingers, touched the test booklet and left DNA on it. I’m not sure how the NCAA will go about proving that Rose’s academic record at Simeon High School was changed to improve his transcript and changed back a month later, but it can’t be all that hard. Just compare the transcript sent to Memphis with the final, official academic record from Simeon High and see if they match up. The hearing on this matter will take place before the committee on infractions in Indianapolis on June 6. Not that anything that happens to Memphis will hurt those currently in the program, but I’d have to imagine that this isn’t what new coach Josh Pastner hoped to be dealing with when he took the gig. Oh, and there’s also the alleged violation of allowing a person, according to sources Rose's brother, Reggie, to travel on the team plane at no cost on two different occasions. The value of the trips was $1,125. The same person was allowed to stay in the team hotel at no cost on five different occasions for a value of $1,135. Johnson’s counter was that fans are allowed to travel alongside the team all the time if they can afford to pay for it, but that’s not what the NCAA claims occurred here. What’s sad is that this appears to be a very blatant example of cheating and of a guy doing everything the wrong way, all to go to college for the mandatory one year before making the jump to the NBA, and no one is really going to be punished. Gotta love the dark side of college athletics, I guess…….

- Memo to everyone out there with enough of a disregard for their own health and well-being to eat at McDonald’s, ever: should the workers at your local McD’s get your order wrong, dialing 911 is not an appropriate response. You might remember that a few months back, a grmatically-stunted woman who wasn’t happy with her McDonald’s order called 911 because the restaurant wouldn’t give her a refund. When the dispathcer asked if there was a manager on hand to deal with the situation, the caller replied, “She say she are the manager.” Well done, and if that woman isn’t married or engaged, I think I may have found her soulmate: Raibin Osman of Hillsboro, Oregon. My man Raibin rolled through the drive-trough at McDonald’s with his younger brother and when they pulled away with their order, Osman reailized that the juice box that was supposed to be included with the order wasn’t there. So what did R. Osman do? You guessed it, he dialed 911. He said he called emergency dispatchers after the drive-through employee wouldn't come back to the window to give him the juice box. "We ordered some food and we went home and our order wasn't in there," Osman said in the 911 call. "And my little brother is crying for his orange juice and stuff.” No OJ in the fridge? Can’t make a run to the 7-11? Osman’s father, Raof, stepped to his son’s defense and claimed that the 911 call was an innocent mistake. Raof Osman claimed that things only escalated when the McDonald's employee laughed at his son’s poor English. He also said his son dialed 911 in hopes of having deputies help him get the food. Right, because that the job for the police to focus on, helping you get your McD’s juice box. I’m not that familiar with Hillsboro and maybe it’s a low-crime area where the police don’t have a lot of hardened criminals to battle, but even then I can’t imagine that busting local fast food joints who squeeze customers on their juice box orders is high on the priority list. What’s beautiful about this whole charade is that it actually netted not just one, but two 911 calls. The McDonald's employee who dealt with the irate Osman family also called 911 after feeling threatened by the men. When deputies finally showed up on the scene (and you just know they were thrilled to be there), Raibin Osman admitted it was not an emergency call but said he didn't know what number to use, according to the sheriff's office. "You need help from the police, you have to call the 911," Osman's father said. "I don't have any other number." Just a thought, but do you have a phone book? If so, the non-emergency police number is probably in there, Raof. Surprisingly, the Osman family has been going back to the same McDonald’s regularly since the incident. So say what you will about these tools, but at least they don’t hold a grudge. They also don’t seem to hold many collective IQ points in their heads, but I guess you can’t win ‘em all in life……

- File this under the heading of things that just don’t matter. Jay-Z is close to signing a deal that will bring his future recordings to Sony, but this deal is relevant only if you are involved in the business side of Jay-Z’s operation. For fans, his music is going to continue to be great and he will continue to be the top dog in the hip-hop game because of his great beats and even better lyrics and flow. As for that business side of things, the deal will link Jay-Z's Roc Nation releases with Sony's Epic Records for distribution and at this point, the agreement "is 95% complete" according to sources close to the negotiations. A formal announcement could come any time in the next few weeks, but the real angle on this story is Jay-Z’s departure from longtime label home Def Jam. The split cost Jay a reported $5 million (which is amount as big a deal as that whopping $750 fine Major League Baseball slapped White Sox pitcher Bobby Jenks with after admitting he intentionally threw behind a batter), but it does leave H.O.V.A. in control of his future master recordings. That’s a very big deal for a dude whose eleven solo records (including the live "Unplugged" album) and collaborations with Linkin Park and R. Kelly have sold more than 29 million units. The new record deal follows on the heels of last year’s pact between Jay-Z and Live Nation that included touring, publishing and albums. While the financial details of this new deal are still being hammered out, that contract with Live Nation totaled $150 million and includes a partnership in Roc Nation, as well as the rapper's own recordings and tours for the next 10 years. A key to the decision to sign with Columbia would seem to be Jay-Z’s close close relationship with Columbia co-chairman Rick Rubin. In the meantime, I guess Jay-Z can continue showing up courtside to watch his pal LeBron James try to save the Cleveland Cavaliers from a premature end to their season……..

- If you’ve spent the last few decades wondering if Archie Andrews would choose Betty or Veronica (and really, who among us hasn’t done that?), you finally have your answer. Comic book dorks, er, fans of graphic novels must be thrilled to finally know that Archie -- who spent decades in high school, flirting with girl-next-door Betty Cooper and heiress-next-door Veronica Lodge -- is getting married to Veronica. Archie Comic Publications, which produces the comic, announced this week that the August issue of the comic will be a marriage issue featuring the wedding between Archie and Veronica. Sadly, the publisher actually has blogs for each character in which some loser ghost writers actually pens words that are supposed to be from the characters. “I am so excited, I am getting Married to Archie. There is so much to do, so many plans to make. I wonder if Betty wants to be my Maid of Honor? I bet she is so happy for me!" “Veronica” writes on her blog. The marriage issue is due to arrive at comic stores in August and on newsstands in September, according to the publisher. “It's the milestone 600th issue and we're serving up the Archie story of the century as Archie marries Veronica!!!” the publisher says on its Web site. Props for the three exclamation points. You know something is exciting when there are three exclamation points at the end of a sentence. If there were only two, you wouldn’t be sure whether or not to be excited and four would just be overkill, but three lets you know you should be pumped. The issue in question will be 32 pages long and “take a look at Archie and his friends after they graduate college!” I know I can’t wait and will be sure that when the issue hits newsstands in September, I’m right there to….buy some other magazine and be glad I have better things to do in my life than be absorbed in a comic book romance…….

- Is it a problem when the leader of your city’s police union, and second-highest ranking member of the International Brotherhood of Police Officers, says he wants to beat your city’s mayor with a baseball bat? Some people might see that as a big concern, but I actually enjoy the concept. Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin walking around knowing that Sgt. Scott Kreher wants to cave her head in with Louisville Slugger adds a nice bit of intrigue to the political scene in the ATL. “I want to beat her [Mayor Shirley Franklin] in the head with a baseball bat sometimes when I think about it,” Sgt. Scott Kreher said earlier this month during a presentation he was giving to the city council. I thus find it very odd that within days of his hilarious remarks, the 17-year department veteran was suspended. Why? Because dude had the courage to speak his mind and be honest? Because he’s talking about exhibiting the very sort of violent, physical and abusive behavior that cops are commonly rapped for? He even explained what “it” was that made him want to treat the mayor like a Roy Halladay fastball: because police union contends the city is not honoring workers' compensation claims for cops whose careers ended when they were seriously injured on the job. That sounds like a good reason to go after someone with a potentially lethal weapon and bludgeon them into submission, no? Besides, Franklin admits to being badly rattled by Kreher’s words, which makes this even better. “Some people think I'll just shake it off," she said of the sergeant's threat. "I can't shake off an officer at City Hall -- not in his shower or in his front yard, but in official capacity -- threatening to hit me in the head with a bat. That is a severe act of violence. When you hit someone with a bat, you intend to kill them.” Again, the problem is? I realize that even if the claims by Atlanta police that NovaPro, a San Diego-based private insurance company, has refused or made it difficult for them to get the medication they need to alleviate pain and replace medical equipment are true, it doesn’t justify doing or saying whatever a person wants to say or making threats. It’s just that I don’t take issue with someone saying they’d like to go Ryan Howard on a political leader’s dome, that’s all. Mayor Franklin’s office has managed to ignore the pleas made by the officers thus far, so maybe someone needed to step up and say what Scott Kreher said. It’s a shame that Kreher was guilted into doubling back on his comments and apologizing to Franklin in a letter, which was published on the union Web site. Don’t worry about that, S. I know you were strong-armed into that apology by your superiors and that you didn’t really mean it when you called your words "inexcusable," explaining they were out of "frustration and anger.” As much as I despise law enforcement, I equally loathe The Man and in this case, I’m choosing to sit back and enjoy the beauty of those two squaring off……..

Absurdities in MLB All-Star voting, the Juice maintains his sense of entitlement and more rampant corruption in Mexico

- When I hear that a performance-enhancing drug-using, lying, cheating slugger is fourth in the National League All-Star balloting for outfielders, several thoughts cross my mind. First, I wonder whether the 442,763 (and counting) fans who have voted for Manny Ramirez are doing so because they are actually die-hard ManRam or L.A. Dodgers fans and are too blinded by their love affair to realize that Manny is a PED-using fraud or if they are voting for him ironically, reveling in the possibility of seeing the game’s most famous active cheater take the field in the All-Star Game. Secondly, I wonder if cheating has become so ubiquitous and such an accepted part of the game that fans aren’t even fazed by revelations that a player is ‘roiding up. Lastly, I wonder what commissioner Bud Selig must be thinking, knowing that a guy he dropped a 50-game ban on for using a PED could be in the outfield to start the All-Star Game the same week he’s eligible to come off the suspended list. I can't decide if I love the idea of ManRam in the ASG or if I really, really love it. Don’t get me wrong; anyone who cheats and uses ‘roids or any sort of PED is a certified piece of crap. That being said, I think it would be flat-out awesome in the most ridiculous, absurd sense of the word to see a guy who will have played less than half of the games for his team, was suspended for being a drug-using cheater (women’s fertility drugs, no less) and achieved his numbers thanks in large part to those PEDs start the All-Star Game. What would it say about the fans who vote for the game? As I said at the top, it would say that either a) they have an incredible grasp of irony and the absurd or b) are mindless sycophants with no morals or dignity who will support a player no matter how big a douche bag he is. Either way, it’s a triumph for the ridiculous and I for one could not be more excited about the prospect of women’s-fertility-drug-user ManRam starting in left field for the National League at the All-Star Game……

- Let’s just save some time and say which Mexican officials - at all levels of government - aren’t corrupt and in bed with the drug cartels currently running roughshod over their country. The latest incident involving corrupt Mexican politicos came over the weekend when more than two dozen Mexican public servants, including 10 mayors and several police chiefs, allegedly linked to illicit drugs and organized crime were arrested in simultaneous raids in Michoacan state. Because the sting to take down these allegedly corrupt officials was so secret, even the state’s governor was in the dark about the operation. Gov. Leonel Godoy said, that even he did not know about the raids until after they began. The arrested officials all have alleged ties to the Michoacan Family, a major drug cartel in Mexico. “This is an effort to take apart the protection nets that were operating in coordination with the Michoacan Family, an effort to recover the geographical spaces lost to the hands of organized crime,” said Ricardo Najera. The Michoacan Family is a particularly nasty group, having been blamed for some extremely violent, ruthless acts across Mexico in the past year, including the killings last September of seven people and the wounding of more than 100 others. The one major concern Godoy expressed about the sting was whether the legal rights of those arrested were observed. I can’t attest to that, but with that many arrests made in cities such as Morelia, Uruapan, Tepalcatepec, Apatzingán, Buenavista and several others, I’m guessing there is a solid to high chance that a right or two was violated at some point. In spite of that, the key numbers from the sting would be: those 10 mayors and police chiefs arrested, along with 17 current and former government officials, including five municipal presidents and two directors of municipal public security. So for all of my Mexican amigos y amigas out there, I’d advise you to be a little more patient than normal if you notice that your local municipality is operating even less efficiently than usual the next few days. After all, there’s an above-average chance that one or more of your local political leaders is now in the clink and it will take some time to find a new corrupt political leader, er, choose a new humble public servant to fill the opening…….

- It’s goats to the rescue for the state of Maryland. Faced with out-of-control plant growth along several highways around the state, the State Highway Administration dispatched 40 bearded goats to control plant growth. The goats were sent to one particularly overgrown area and have been munching in an enclosed area for a week; they will stay until September, but will be put back to work next spring. The goat brigade is part of Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley's "Smart, Green and Growing" legislative package, aimed at reducing the state's greenhouse gas emissions 25 percent by 2020. At this point, it’s a pilot program that will be evaluated after two years to determine if it has the potential for application on a larger scale. So aside from the benefits of being able to pay goats much cheaper wages (How long until the ACLU steps in on behalf of the goats and demands better food, longer lunch breaks and higher salaries?), the state will also reap environmental benefits including a reduction of the state's carbon footprint and protection of the area's bog turtles, listed as threatened. The financial rewards are obvious - saving $10,000 over two years always helps. So how did the state’s decision-makers settle on goats? Other animals were considered, but cows were ruled out because they are too heavy, and their hooves could stomp the small, colorful-shelled bog turtles, while sheep are notoriously stupid and also have a penchant for eat moving things, like the turtles. Maryland isn’t the first to embrace the grass-cutting power of goats, either. Earlier this year, officials in Hempstead, New York, bought goats to trim the grass for a 50-acre park and preserve. The goats -- Sleepy, Sneezy, Bashful, Happy and Doc may be named after the Seven Dwarves in “Snow White,” but in the town of Hempstead, they are a giant help in cutting maintenance costs. The movite for implanting a goat mowing unit in Vail, Colorado was a little different. Residents wanted to find an alternative to pesticides and chemicals, so officials introduced 500 weed-eating goats in public areas. In nearby Denver, you’ll actually see signs announcing "Goats at Work" to alert passers-by to the animals' presence on vacant lots managed by the park system. Environmental organizations are hailing the use of goats in lawn maintenance projects as a huge step forward, but I do have to wonder who draws the short straw of cleaning up the goat droppings once the grass is mowed…….

- M. Ward and Zooey Deschanel had a lot of success with their music venture last year, forming She & Him and releasing Volume One. You just knew that success would inspire other musically-minded actors and actresses to team up with alt/indie rockers and put out their own albums. Singer-songwriter Pete Yorn and smokin’ hot Scarlett Johannson have become the latest to embrace the trend. Yorn was already on track for a busy 2009, releasing his fourth album Back and Fourth on June 23, but he's also scheduled to release a duets record with Johansson this fall. Entitled "Break Up," the nine song set is set for a September 8 release, with the lead single, "Relator," is available starting Tuesday via iTunes and streaming on the album's website. Johannson has actually ventured into music before, releasing her first album "Anywhere I Lay My Head" in 2008 with direction from TV on the Radio's David Sitek. It wasn’t exactly a revolutionary piece of musical pioneering - the album featured 10 Tom Waits covers along with one original - and reviews were mixed at best. To date, Nielson SoundScan reports that "Anywhere I Lay My Head" has sold 19,000 copies. Yorn was working on "Break Up" two years before "Anywhere I Lay My Head" was released and he said in a prepared statement that the concept for “Break Up” came to him after a bout with insomnia. “When I finally passed out, it came to me in a dream. I woke up and the whole thing was in my head, fully formed,” he explained. However, it wasn’t until he previewed the recordings for some of his friends and received a positive response that Yorn finally decided to release "Break Up." Fans of older rock will enjoy the fact that the album features a cover of Big Star's "I Am The Cosmos” alongside eight Yorn originals. In the meantime, Yorn is looking to drum up interest for Back and Fourth by touring as the opening act for Coldplay on its current U.S. tour. The tour wraps up on June 4 in Cincinnati, Ohio, but that will be far from the end of a busy, busy year for Yorn…..

- This is freaking rich. O.J. Simpson may have lost his battle against armed robbery and kidnapping charges, but clearly the Juice has not lost his sense of entitlement or his belief that he can get off for any crime, no matter how guilty he may be. After a jury convicted him on charges including armed robbery and kidnapping in October and Judge Jackie Glass hit him with a sentence of up to 33 years in prison, with eligibility for parole after nine years, the Juice and his legal team decided not to give up the fight. Five months later, the Juice’s attorneys appealed his conviction to the Nevada Supreme Court, claiming his trial was "fundamentally unfair." I suppose that when you’ve gone to trial after turning two people into human Pez dispensers and been acquitted, being on the wrong end of a guilty verdict for any charge at all might seem fundamentally unfair. To fight the perceived injustice, Simpson's attorneys filed 47-page brief Tuesday, accusing Clark County, Nevada, District Judge Jackie Glass of judicial misconduct, saying her behavior constituted "cumulative error that was so egregious and prejudicial that the defense could not get a fair trial.” Riiiiiiight. Among the charges by the Juice’s legal team are that Judge Glass interjected herself into the trial proceedings, issued improper jury instructions, improperly admitted hearsay evidence and refused to allow defense attorneys to fully cross-examine witnesses or ask prospective jurors about their "known and unknown" biases. They also played the race card by alleging that Judge Glass allowed the prosecution to strike the only two black jurors from the jury pool. Now I’m no attorney, but to the best of my knowledge, both the prosecution and defense are allowed a certain number of strikes for jurors, to remove those jurors from consideration for the case without a detailed explanation. What I find laughable is the portion of the filing that whines about the court giving “no deference to the fact that Simpson brought a lot of baggage into the courtroom.” Baggage? What baggage? Your client was acquitted of a brutal double homicide, that sounds like a positive to me and not a negative. Also, he’s a former NFL player and people love ex-jocks. Again, I understand that it has to be impossibly difficult for the Juice to come to grips with the notion of being convicted of a crime he committed, but it’s true. He set up a memorabilia-rescue mission with new pal Clarence "C.J." Stewart and four others to retrieve items that O.J. believed had belonged to him from dealers Bruce Fromong and Al Beardsley. He was among the six-man posse that busted into a room at the Palace Station Hotel Room and Casino in Las Vegas on September 13, 2007, brandishing weapons and going all A-Team on Fromong and Beardsley. I’ve heard the audio recordings from that night and the Juice’s voice is clearly heard shouting out threats, instructions and demands that no one is to leave the room until he gets what he wants. Now you might want there to be judicial misconduct during the trial and you might need that judicial misconduct to rectify your world view in which the Juice has a deal with the devil that allows him to commit any crime and get away with it, but that doesn’t make it so……….

Why beards make America dominant, North Korea making up its own rules and the beauty of Drew Rosenhaus being fired

- U.S.A.! U.S.A.! Never has there been a moment to be more proud about being an American than right now. No, I’m not referring to the celebration of the many brave men and women who have given their lives over the years to defend freedom, although those are truly heroes. Actually, I’m talking about freaking Beard Team USA, which brought home the championship at the 2009 World Beard and Moustache Championships, held in Anchorage, Alaska over the weekend. Led by new world beard champion David Traver, the Americans administered a beard beatdown to the rest of the world. If you haven’t seen the pictures of these freaks yet, you’re missing out. Traver won the title by rocking a 20 ½-inch-long beard, cultivated over 2½ years. He was one of 300 competitors from around the globe who descended on Alaska to show off their hirsute countenances. Of course, he was the only weirdo who had a beard dyed several colors and woven into the shape of a snowshoe, which earned Traver a commemorative gold pan and a salmon fishing trip. Sadly, now that he’s reached the top of the beard mountain, Traver plans to shave off his face blanket. He says it’s because once you’ve reached the top of the facial hair world, there's nowhere to go but down. He'll shave for whoever writes the biggest check to Covenant House, a charity Traver is involved with. “I'm retired as of yesterday," he explained Sunday from Girdwood. "It's like my wife said, 'You can't go any higher.'” Yeah, I’m sure that’s why your wife was cool with you shaving off that thing you called a beard. Either that or she got tired of having to look at and be around that shaggy mass of ugly hanging from your face, bro. Overall, it turns out that Alaska is the best breeding ground for freaks looking to grow obscenely out-of-control facial hair/ A quarter of the international beard prizes went to Alaskans, with David Casswell of Kenai taking third in the shorter beard category, Douglas Renfro of Anchorage winning first in long beard and Norman Pendergraft from Eagle River taking second in the category. As for Traver, he doubled up by also taking first in the freestyle beard competition, the first such title for an American. Key in Traver’s success was his beard stylist - yes, beard stylist - Ledjha Carson. The two actually brainstormed on designs for the contest and considered - get ready for a laugh - eagle wings, moose antlers and a sled dog team. As you can see, beard and mustache competition is the next big sport in the United States, so I expect to see all of you out there wearing your David Traver jerseys…or whatever the frak those freaks wear when they parade up on stage with those wild animals they call beard on their faces……

- Drew Rosenhaus is easily the most hated agent in all of professional sports. Dude is well-spoken, interesting and colorful, but he’s also an incredibly arrogant, ruthless and disingenuous a-hole who squeezes teams for ridiculous amounts of money to sign his clients even though they’re not worth the dough. His clients are some of the top players in the NFL, most notably team-killer Terrell Owens. However, it’s another of Rosenhaus’ clients who is rapidly becoming my favorite NFLer. Pro Bowl receiver Anquan Boldin is in the midst of a showdown with his team, the Arizona Cardinals, because he wants to be traded. He’s not happy in Arizona and as such, he instructed his agent to get him out of the AZ. So far, those negotiations have failed and Boldin isn’t happy with Rosenhaus, which would explain why he’s firing the uber-agent. Boldin has informed Rosenhaus, the Arizona Cardinals and the NFL Players Association of his plans to fire Rosenhaus amid stalled attempts to force a trade or a new contract. I honestly couldn’t stop laughing and/or smiling when I heard the news, because Rosenhaus is that detestable. He can certainly afford to lose a client, as he still represents more NFL players than any other agent. “Regarding Anquan Boldin, let me say that I have great respect for him. I'm hopeful we can work this out and he can return to the Rosenhaus Sports family in the near future. We are proud to continue to represent his brother, D.J. Boldin," Rosenhaus said in a statement. The ass-kissing agent ‘til the bitter end, eh Drew? Don’t want to bash Anquan because a) you hope he might change his mind, return to your agency and make you some jack and b) it would make you look bad to potential clients. But what amuses the heck out of me is that you know Rosenhaus was pissed when he found out that Boldin had fired him, even if he can afford to lose a client. What I wouldn’t give to be in the room when Rosenhaus receives that notice from Boldin. Probably not so calm and professional then, eh Drew? As for Boldin, he’s arguably one of the NFL’s toughest players and a guy who is loved by fans and teammates. He returned to the field last season after literally having his face broken a few games prior, showing his toughness in case there were any doubts. He helped lead the Cardinals to the Super Bowl alongside fellow top-tier wideout Larry Fitzgerald. Of course, Fitzgerald is also a huge part of the reason why Boldin wants a new deal in the first place. After Fitzgerald signed a four-year, $40 million extension in 2008, Boldin began to look at his own contract and feel underpaid. In preparing for his breakup with Rosenhaus, Boldin has reached out to other agents in recent weeks, including Kennard McGuire, CAA agents Tom Condon and Ben Dogra, and two of Fitzgerald's agents, Eugene Parker and Paul Lawrence. However, any official decision on hiring a new agent will have to wait. Under NFLPA rules, a player must wait five days after firing his agent before hiring a new one. Really, it doesn’t even matter who Boldin chooses because he’s fired Drew Rosenhaus and that’s more than enough to make me happy……

- Some strange new faces could be making their way to Hardin, Montana in the months ahead. Hardin, population 3,400, sits in the southeast corner of Montana and it’s a small town with a big problem. Located in the state's poorest county, Hardin is being ravaged by a terrible economy that is choking the life out of the town. Making matters worse, Hardin borrowed $27 million through bonds to build the Two Rivers Regional Correctional Facility in hopes of creating new employment opportunities. The prison was up and running two years ago, but so far it hasn’t housed a single prisoner. The downtown area of Hardin is all but deserted at midday, the Hardin Mini Mall is already shut and residents are losing hope fast. With a new, empty prison sitting there as a reminder of their town’s financial woes, the city council last month voted 5-0 to back a proposal to bring Gitmo detainees to the facility. "It would bring jobs. Believe it or not, it would even bring hope and opportunity," said Greg Smith, Hardin's economic development director. So the town leaders approve of welcoming Gitmo prisoners, but the state's congressional leaders have lined up against the plan. “Housing potential terrorists in Montana is not good for our state," Max Baucus, the state's senior Democratic senator, wrote to Smith. “These people stop at nothing. Their primary goal in life, and death, is to destroy America.” In other words, when these people get a chance to blow up something American, we want it to be someone else’s state, not ours. Because let’s face it, if they aren’t housed in Montana, terrorists would never have a single reason to launch any sort of offensive targeting anything there. For what? So they can blow up some John Deere tractors and cows? Residents of Hardin are mixed when it comes to supporting the relocation of Gitmo prisoners to their town. While all of them want to see the 464-bed facility, state-of-the-art detention facility used, they also fear for their safety. All of the security equipment at the facility is in place, ready to be powered up. Bright orange prison jump suits emblazoned with the words "Two Rivers" are stacked in a storage room along with shoes, towels, blankets, even razors and underwear, for prisoners. The interior of the facility was designed using single, double, and dorm-style cells, but it could be modified to keep detainees separated from one another and despite being intended to be used as a medium-security prison, it meets maximum-security criteria. Those who oppose bringing in Gitmo detainees worry that the prison is only five blocks from city hall and thus puts the entire town in danger should any prisoners escape. Some Hardin residents have vowed to move away if any Gitmo prisoners are relocated to the Two Rivers facility. Personally I’m rooting for it to happen, partially so we can finally close down Gitmo and turn the page on that national nightmare and partially for the great mental picture of some small-town yokels caring for hundreds of angry, Middle Eastern terrorist suspects, good times……

- Was a real crime committed on the set of CSI? If you believe the lawsuit filed by a Southern California couple against CSI writer and producer Sarah Goldfinger, the answer is yes. However, there will be no need for DNA testing, fingerprinting or analyzing blood spatter patterns in this case. Real estate agents Melinda and Scott Tamkin contend that the crime in question was Goldfinger and her writers ripping off their names and likenesses for use in an episode of the show. The Tamkins’ claim that two characters on the show were modeled after them. They’re suing Goldfinger for defamation and invasion of privacy and seeking $6 million in damages, claiming that the episode hurt their business. In the episode in question, a Las Vegas real estate agent named Melinda dies mysteriously and her husband Scott is a suspect in her death. The CSI couple's last name was actually Tucker, but the Tamkins’ suit claims that their actual last name was originally in the script before a last-minute change. So where is the link between Goldfinger and these two? Apparently Goldfinger was shopping for a new home in 2005 and nearly bought a house from a client of the couple's. She eventually pulled out while the deal was in escrow, on amicable terms. It would seem that she did get something out of the deal, namely inspiration for a script. The question now is whether Scott and Melinda Tamkin can prove that Goldfinger intentionally used their names and likenesses and that the characters on the show were in fact based on them. CBS Corporation and Jerry Bruckheimer Television were also named as defendants in the suit, but of course neither party would comment on the case. Something tells me there will be a settlement on this one and that it will go quietly into the night, but Goldfinger should be more careful from here on out when appropriating names and life details from real people to characters in her scripts……

- Ah, North Korea, making up rules as it goes and giving a perpetual middle finger to the rest of the world in the process. As the rest of the “civilized world” fumes about the North’s recent actions in testing long-range missiles and allegedly firing up productions at nuclear facilities, North Korean leaders are taking an increasingly defiant stance. As concerns over its nuclear aspirations grow, the North is threatening military action and vowing that it is no longer bound by the 1953 armistice that ended the Korean War. "The Korean Peninsula is bound to immediately return to a state of war from a legal point of view, and so our revolutionary armed forces will go over to corresponding military actions," North Korea said through its news agency. That statement came after South Korea joined a U.S.-led effort to limit the trafficking of weapons of mass destruction, so you know that the North is angry now. Don’t get me wrong, South Korea was absolutely correct in joining the 6-year-old Proliferation Security Initiative because of "the grave threat [that weapons of mass destruction] and missile proliferation are posing to global peace," as Foreign Ministry spokesman Moon Tae-young said. Taking nuclear weapons out of play is a huge priority for every world power, as unleashing one of those bad boys could very easily touch off a chain reaction that spawns World War III. Still, I can’t help but feel that the North was simply waiting and watching for something - anything - that would give it an excuse to declare war on its southern neighbors. "Our revolutionary armed forces ... will regard" South Korea's participation” in the PSI as a declaration of war," the North's official news agency said. Funny, but the rest of the world seems to view most everything the North is doing these days as a declaration of war. In turn, ever since the April launch of a North Korean rocket, Pyongyang has considered almost any opposition a "declaration of war.” I can see where the North might feel like a target, what with the U.N. Security Council sanctions and growing participation in the Proliferation Security Initiative. However, the problem is that a) they continue to operate under a veil of secrecy and b) they have a history of aggressive and irresponsible action in these sorts of situations. If it’s me and I’m condemned by at group from the U.N., I just laugh it off, but not the North Koreans. There is no body in the world less respected or feared than the U.N., largely because it has no real teeth behind its declarations. But in the North’s view, the security council’s sanctions are a declaration of war and must be met as such. North Korea is even being opposed by one of its closest allies, China. Firing five short-range missiles this week -- two Monday and three Tuesday -- isn’t going to help matter. Political posturing is rapidly escalating around the globe and it’s only a matter of time before someone switches from verbal salvos to actual salvos. Just don’t expect North Korea to play by any of the normal rules of engagement because they definitely do not feel like those rules apply to them……..

Reveling in last week's Mexican prison break, an NFL player channels his inner Randy Moss off the field and a crazy cat lady I want to hurt

- Let’s just say that I am 100 percent a-ok with this next story. If the resignation of a senior Mexican prison official is the price to pay for a great prison break story in which 53 inmates literally walk out of said prison without a shot being fired, I’m good with that. So when I heard that nearly a week after dozens of inmates walked out of a prison in Zacateca and that the central Mexican state's top security official has resigned because of the incident, I had no bad feelings at all. If Alejandro Rojas Chalico feels that he can no longer serve as the Zacatecas secretary of public security, so be it. Gov. Amalia Garcia Medina can accept Chalico's resignation or not; I simply don’t care. As long as exciting things like this prison break take place, I don’t care who goes down as a result. I am openly rooting for the continued success of the 53 escapees who left Cieneguillas prison in the city of Zacatecas on Saturday with the help of 20 men in evading capture. As I said before, these men broke out their amigos without firing a shot, so props to them for a great plan. The prison break took fewer than five minutes, which is extremely impressive. Yes, the escapees are believed to be connected to the Gulf Cartel, a powerful drug cartel operating in northern Mexico, but you can’t be choosy when it comes to enjoying prison breaks. They just don’t happen often enough to only root for incidents involving non-drug cartel members. Besides, it gives Mexican law enforcement a chance to hone its skills by tracking down men who are targets of the international criminal police organization Interpol and some of the most dangerous men in all of Mexico. These dudes are bad enough hombres to merit the issuance of an "orange notice," and even though I know nothing about Interpol’s color codes, I have to think that orange is a pretty solid color ranking. So to summarize, I don’t feel the least bit bad about Chalico’s resignation or the fact that 53 hardened criminals are now free and roaming around Mexico. I choose to find the silver lining, use these lemosn to make some lemonade and enjoy the excitement of a prison break……

- Randy Starks, this is no good. Channeling your inner Randy Moss (and can’t that mean so many things?) and going all slow-speed battering ram on a traffic cop is not only a bad idea, it’s not even a very badass move if you’re going to indulge your criminal tendencies. Starks, a defensive end for the Miami Dolphins, was arrested early Sunday after police said he struck an officer with a slow-moving Freightliner truck, according to a police report. He faces a charge of aggravated battery, hardly a reputable charge for any self-respecting thug looking to build some street cred. As do so many indiscretions by pro athletes, this incident took place on South Beach. Shortly after midnight, officers saw the Freightliner truck in bumper-to-bumper traffic on South Beach's Ocean Drive. What drew their attention to Starks’ whip? How about having some 13 people inside, a vehicle designed for four, including a woman sitting on the lap of Starks, who was driving? That was enough to draw the heat for Starks and his crew, so officers began pursuing the truck on foot for about a half-block and pounding on the rear driver's-side window. Not surprisingly, the vehicle kept on moving, probably because the music was cranked up so loud on Starks’ pimped-out sound system and he couldn’t hear anything other than his bangin’ beats. Eventually the officer caught up to the truck again, and it stopped after the officer pounded on the window a second time. “I slowly approached the side door and just as I reached it the vehicle accelerated and started moving forward and slightly to the left," the unidentified officer writes in the report. "The vehicle's path caused the driver's side of the vehicle to strike me in the chest pushing me back and pinning me against a vehicle stopped in traffic in the northbound lane.” In other words, Starks swerved to the left and pinned the cop against another vehicle. Was it intentional? I suppose that’s for the courts to decide, but Starks had better hope his actions weren’t purposefully trying to hurt a cop. Courts tend to look down on that sort of thing. Not only that, a second officer was pounding on the passenger's-side window, so the odds that Starks had no clue about what was happening are slim. He did eventually stop his truck and was arrested, but that was far from the end of his troubles. A police check showed that the truck's license plate was not assigned to that vehicle, so Starks faces a charge for that as well. Not exactly the night out on South Beach that Starks and his crew had in mind, I’m sure. The questions now are a) whether this will land him in jail and b) how long the NFL will suspend him for. Well done on all counts, R., you must be very proud of yourself…….

- This should absolutely eliminate that stereotype of the crazy cat lady. I don’t know about you, but I’ve never been cursed/blessed to have a crazy cat lady in any neighborhood I’ve lived in, but the residents of one neighborhood in Lodi, Calif. know firsthand what the experience is like. In this neighborhood lives crazy Tina Teixeira, who clearly a) loves her cats and b) is certifiably insane and has no discernable relationship with reality. See, Crazy Tina Teixeira has a lot of cats on her property and she took great offense when she noticed people regularly speeding down her street - a 35 mph zone - at 20-30 miles over the speed limit. Was she concerned for her own safety or the safety of other human being in the area, especially kids? As you’ll soon see, not only was she not concerned with the safety of the neighborhood kids, she was actually a threat to their safety. In an insane effort to curb speeding on her street, Teixeira posed a sign with the words, "Hit a cat, I'll hit your kid." Yes, this nut bag is threatening to hit people’s children if they hit one of her cats. I literally don’t even know where to begin. First off, you psychopathic bitch, how do you get to the point of likening human life to cat life? And make no mistake, that’s just what this loon is doing. "You don't want me to hit your kid so don't hit mine. You hurt mine, that is just like if I went over and ran over your kid. Basically, that is what I was intending," said Teixeira. Dammit skank, they are CATS, not PEOPLE. Just because you are so desperate and pathetic that you can’t find an actual loving relationship with a human being doesn’t mean you can elevate your cats to the same status as actual humans. Second, if you can’t keep your cats out of the street, it doesn’t matter how fast people drive because if they are hit by a car going 35 mph, 45 mph or 65 mph, they are going to be dead, dead, dead. Second, is everyone who drives down your street a neighbor or someone you know? If not, how are you going to find out who they are and where they live? Thirdly, what about people like me, who don’t have any kids? What do you do then, you certifiable nut? You put this sign up in a neighborhood located precariously close to a school, which is very classy. Just be glad that I don’t live near you, because if you put that sign up and came out yelling at me about my driving speed, as Teixeira admits she often does, I’d probably speed up and aim for either you or your cats, b’otch…….

- So many potential suspects, where to begin? Police in New York may think they have an idea of who was responsible for detonating an explosive device that blew out the windows of a Starbucks coffee shop in an Upper East Side neighborhood over the weekend, but I wouldn’t be so sure. The blast rocked the Starbucks on 92nd and 3rd avenue. Early indications are that the time of day the blast- between 3:30 a.m. and 4:30 a.m. - took place echoed that of a pattern of unsolved early morning blasts that have occurred outside the British Consulate, the Mexican Consulate and the Armed Forces recruiting booth in Times Square over the past two years. “The similarity is the time. The Mexican consulate, the British consulate, the Times Square bombing event at the recruiting station, we have this event. They all happened between 3:30 a.m. and 4:30 a.m. that's the immediate similarity we are looking at,” said Commissioner Ray Kelly. That great Ray, but do you have any idea how many people out there who could be pissed at Starbucks? Customers who have been paying 200-300 percent too much for a freaking cup of coffee, fired baristas, loser musicians who can’t get their songs included on those lame music compilations Starbucks sells, owners of smaller coffee shops who have been squashed by the corporate coffee conglomerate that is Starbucks…..and the list just keeps going. The point is that when you’re charging $7.00 for a cup of mediocre coffee, pushing crappy music on your customers and employing freaks with an average nine piercings in various parts of their bodies, you piss off a lot of people. So go ahead and talk to potential witnesses, review security camera tapes and do what you feel you need to do. The fact is that no one was injured in the blast and Starbucks was closed at the time, so clearly whoever was responsible for the explosion didn’t want to hurt anyone. "We don't know the motive. Obviously it is a cause for concern, but we are going to do an in depth investigation," Kelly said. "Starbucks has been victimized in the past in other cities. So we are looking into that issue as well.” Seems like a good idea, the little guy striking back against the massive, greedy corporate giant. Good thinking, commish……

- So maybe Reaper isn’t completely dead…..yet. Sure, things look admittedly bad for what is the CW's lowest-rated hour-long show. One of its lead actors has landed a leading role on a new show on a different network, its own network hasn’t given it a spot on the fall schedule and there really aren’t any positive signs for the show. In spite of that, there is one small chance that Reaper survives and makes a comeback this fall. If ABC Studios, which produces it, is able to hammer out a deal to air it as a syndicated series, Reaper could be back come the start of the new television season in the fall. The reason the show still has a chance as a syndicated program is that the CW recently revealed its plan to turn its Sunday night programming over to affiliate stations. Thus, ongoing talks between ABC Studios and CW affiliates could land Reaper on Sunday nights on your local CW affiliate (any who isn’t proud to be a CW affiliate?). One issue even if the show does return is the status of Tyler Labine (who plays Sock opposite Brett Harrison's Sam). Labine has the lead in Sons of Tucson, a new Fox comedy recently picked up for the fall. Theoretically, Reaper would be his first commitment, but if the show is merely a syndicated show floating out in space and not attached to any specific network, his contractual obligation to Reaper could be rendered null and void. Oh, and then there’s the issue of show creators Michele Fazekas and Tara Butters, who have signed a two-year deal with 20th Century Fox TV that calls for them to leave Reaper. So I suppose fans should be rooting for the show to come back in any form, but the question seems to be if it would be worth it to make a return if it’s a neutered, watered-down version of Reaper…….

Evidence of why people still love a flawed John Daly, a Greek recap and Iran goes all totalitarian dictator on its people

- Good to see that some 12 years after becoming famous as a statutory rapist, Mary Kay Letourneau has moved on to bigger and better things and finally made something of her life. Either that or she’s still the same classless, trashy skank, just 12 years old. After hearing that Letourneau spent her Saturday night hosting a "Hot for Teacher" night at a Seattle bar, I’m going with the latter. Making the story even weirder is the fact that her former victim and now husband was the DJ at the event. Yes, that wacky couple who came together when he was a sixth grader looking to get after it with his teacher and she was an elementary school teacher looking to commit child rape back in 1997. It’s impossible to say whether the affair would have come to light if Letourneau hadn’t been impregnated by sixth grade student Vili Fualaau, but the reality is that she was. She got knocked up, the affair got exposed and Letourneau served time in prison after being convicted of statutory rape of the then 12-year old Fualaau. Letourneau was arrested while she was pregnant with Fualaau's first child and served 6 months of a 7-year sentence. She somehow managed to get early parole and made good use of that nice break by getting caught having sex with Fualaau just weeks after her release. The second time around, the parole board was smarter about handling her and it wasn’t until she’d served five years behind bars that Letourneau finally got out prison. By that time, Fualaau was legal and the two were married a short time later. They dropped out of the spotlight for a few years (what a loss that was for the rest of us), mostly because at that point there wasn’t the whole statutory rape angle and they were just another May-December romance between a convicted felon and the man she loved. That changed when Fualaau decided that his great aspiration in life - aside from hitting it with his teacher, which he clearly accomplished - was to become a DJ. Because of that, Mike Morris, owner of the Seattle-area bar Fuel, decided to drum up some business by bringing in the Letourneau-Fualaau freak show. Despite outcries by many in the city who say the event sends the wrong message, Morris say the event is all in good fun. “They lived it and they also paid for it," says Morris. “People can look at it the wrong way, but we're doing it for fun. And because she served her time and her sentence and she realizes what she did was wrong, but now she's just trying to live her life.” Mmm hmmm. Look, it’s your bar and you can do what you want with it, but giving any opportunity to a scumbag like Letourneau based on a truly despicable act is just bad form, bro…..

- There is now one less hurdle standing in the way of a great eighth season of 24. And with that show, you can never be too sure of any given season coming off as scheduled. Whether it’s Kiefer Sutherland getting touched up for a DUI, shutting down production for script rewrites or a Hollywood writers’ strike, every season of 24 seems like a high-wire act, and that’s before you even get to the dramatic plots of individual episodes. This time, the hurdle cleared is the apparent resolution of the issues between Kiefer Sutherland and fashion designer Jack McCollough, who accused the 24 star of breaking his nose with a swift head-butt at an after-party for the Met's Costume Institute Gala in New York. The incident occurred on May 6 after a dispute involving the designer and Brooke Shields. Sutherland is alleged to have stepped in to defend Shields and gone all Mike Tyson on McCollough. Yet as the criminal case against Sutherland proceeded and McCollough debated civil litigation, the two somehow managed to resolve their differences, laying the foundation for criminal charges to be dropped. Sutherland's reps are professing his regret about the incident (What, Jack Bauer can’t say “I’m sorry” on his own?) and that McCullough was injured. For his part, McCollough wished the actor well and is seemingly cool with the dismissal of third-degree assault charges against Sutherland, who is still due in court June 22. So a bit of a curious resolution, but I guess in Hollywood, famous people still get away with acting like thugs, even if it is as a high-society gala…….

- Look at you, Iranian government, going all Big Brother and abusing the concept of censorship like nobody’s business! With the country’s presidential elections looming on June 12, the Iranian government has blocked access to Facebook, mostly because reformist candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi -- a former prime minister considered a threat to current hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad -- created a Facebook page for his campaign that has more than 5,000 supporters on the site. Seeing a possibly legitimate candidate build support, the inner tyrannical fascist in Ahmadinejad came out and he quickly moved to shut down access to the site within his country’s borders. Those attempting to visit Facebook received a message in Farsi saying, "Access to this site is not possible.” According to news reports from the region, the Masadiq Committee, made up of representatives from Iran's intelligence ministry, judiciary and others had ordered the action. That’s cool, but I think we all know who was behind the decision. What’s bizarre is that after a few hours, the blockage was lifted, but was then reinstated. No explanation has been given for the block, but I suppose that when you are a repressive, dictatorial government that regularly tramples all over your citizens’ human rights, explanations aren’t your forte. Still, when you’re an opposition group looking to topple such a regime, going online is probably your best option. At least online, your country’s fascist dictator can’t actually run you over with a tank, tear gas you or sic riot police on your ass. Clearly cognizant of that reality, Ahmadinejad's challengers are increasingly turning to new technology to spread their message. In a country with an estimated population of more than 66 million and some 47 million Iranians with cell phones and 21 million with Internet access, it’s a good approach. So to all of the members of opposition groups in Iran who are clearly fighting a tough battle, stay strong. You are in the right and you cannot allow The Man to keep you down, no matter what. Fight the power……

- Bless John Daly’s heart. Dude may have more demons than any of us can ever comprehend, but he also has a big heart to match his outlandish personality, large appetite for women, alcohol and gambling and huge game on the golf course. He’s suspended from the PGA Tour right now because of his many indirections, but JD is playing abroad and even being out of the country hasn’t kept him from making a very cool gesture to a fellow player in peril. After Phil Mickelson's wife Amy was diagnosed with breast cancer last week, Daly decided to honor her during Sunday's final round of the BMW PGA Championship by donning a pair of bright pink golf pants. Sports leagues and teams often wear pink to show support for breast cancer research, so Daly’s tribute was a fitting one. “I had a pair, so I figured I'd do that for her today. I thought it would be a good gesture," Daly said of his trousers. "I know Phil very well and I know Amy. I've known them for a long time -- we've played the Tour together. She's a great lady. She has always been a sweetheart to everybody.” Aside from Daly joining the creepy category populated by anyone who actually uses the word slacks, he’s right on point. He also said that he has not yet spoken to Phil Mickelson, who is taking time off the Tour to be with his wife, but said he had been impacted personally by breast cancer. “I sent out a media message," Daly said. "He's probably surrounded by callers right now and I didn't want to bother him. I'm sure everybody on Tour and everybody in the world is thinking about her. There's been some [breast cancer] in the family and a lot of friends. It's just a tough thing women have to go through. But if they caught it in time, it is curable.” Agreed and agreed, J.D. It’s a small gesture but a very cool one and it underscores why Daly is still something of a beloved cult figure on the golf scene despite his many, many demons…..

- Ah, the stress of midterms. It was midterm week on Greek, but everyone’s midterm week was brutal for a different reason. For Rusty, Calvin, Dale and Jordan, it was their art history midterm. Knowing that a rugged slate of essay questions awaited them, the foursome took a unique approach to studying. Initially, Calvin, Rusty and Dale were setting up a study group of their own. Jordan invited herself in, partially to prepare for the exam but also because (as she later admitted), she missed hanging out with Rusty and having him as a friend after she decided they couldn’t hang out or be friends because she was with Andy, Rusty’s former Kappa Tau little brother, and she and Rusty couldn’t seem to be just friends. The study session is a way to begin rebuilding that bridge, but Andy isn’t cool with the arrangement. He calls Jordan numerous times while she’s studying with the group at Rusty and Dale’s apartment, calls she sends to voicemail. When Andy works around that by calling Calvin’s phone, Calvin doesn’t realize Jordan is avoiding Andy and he hands her the phone. IN the ensuing conversation, Andy breaks up with Jordan. It’s merely one of the myriad of distractions that throws the group off of Dale’s meticulous, neurotic study schedule. When memorizing dates, playing art history-themed board games and hashing over facts gets old, Rusty takes the group on an impromptu field trip. They take a walk to the lecture hall where their class takes place and Rusty uses the hall’s projector to put up a replica of the Cistine Chapel’s roof on the ceiling. The display definitely helps the group understand Michelangelo’s master work better and seems to score Rusty major points with the newly single Jordan, who calls it “amazing.” However, in a plot twist that wouldn’t have surprised even Stevie Wonder, Andy calls Jordan back and pleads for her to take him back. Once the study session breaks up and everyone heads home, Jordan tells Rusty about the phone call and repeats that she does still want them to be friends. In a man’s play, Rusty owns the fact that he can’t be just friends with her because he wants more. In an honest, straightforward way, he tells her that he likes her too much to just be friends. It seems like a kamikaze move, but it turns out to be the right one. The next day (actually later in the same day), during the art history exam, Jordan passes a note to Rusty (Passing a note? Is this college or fourth grade?) telling him that she feels the same way about him that he does about her and that she wants to be more than friends. Unfortunately, the professor sees the note being passed and is about to fail Jordan and Rusty for cheating, along with Calvin and Dale for passing the note. Jordan saves all four by asking the professor to read the note and see that it has nothing to do with the exam. The professor obliges and actually reads the note out loud, which of course a professor would actually do during a midterm exam. Even though the corny, sappy contents of the note draw a few laughs from the class, everything turns out well when the professor allows Rusty, Calvin, Dale and Jordan to continue taking their exams. Rusty and Jordan are both happy about their new relationship, so midterm week wasn’t so bad for them in the end. Same can’t be said for Cappie and Casey, who found themselves facing a tough women’s studies midterm. When Cappie suggests and all-nighter to prepare for the exam, Casey hesitates because of their history and the fact that she’s now with Max, who is still abroad for a month working on a research project. Her apprehension goes away when she finds out that their study session will also include Delia, a girl from their class who Cappie has apparently been seeing. That night, the group meets up at a local coffee bar and Cappie instantly regrets the decision to take part in the study group once he sees Delia approaching….along with another girl from the class he’s also been hooking up with lately. Things go smoothly for all of a few minutes, right up to the point where one of the girls asks Casey if she’s seeing Cappie. Casey says no, but the conversation then leads Delia and this other girl to realize that Cappie has been sleeping with both of them. He and Casey flee the scene because obviously they can’t continue studying with two girls who now hate him. They move things to the library, where the overflow crowd of procrastinating students looking to study for midterms and a crabby librarian who repeatedly hounds Casey for talking too loudly once she bumps into fellow Zeta Beta sister Ashleigh make studying impossible. Kicked out of the library by the overbearing librarian, Cappie suggests Dobler’s as an option. That works for a while, but the combination of alcohol and the bar closing sends them in search of yet another study location. Cappie suggests the Kappa Tau house, but by the time Casey stops for some coffee to fuel their all-nighter, Cappie is asleep on a couch in the house’s common room. Casey wakes up Cappie and the studying resumes - until Rusty pops in to tell Cappie about his decision to finally confront Jordan with the truth about his feelings for her. Rusty’s monologue prompts Casey and Cappie to examine the same issues in their own relationship. She asks if they can just be friends, mostly because she’s been told by Ashleigh that Cappie and Rebecca Logan broke up because he wasn’t over her. Cappie admits he still has feelings for Casey and suggests that she still has feelings for him too. She won't admit it directly, but it sure seems like he’s right. Ultimately, Cappie throws down the gauntlet and declares that they just won't work as “only friends.” A stunned Casey asks what he’s saying and Cappie declares that she knows full well what he means. So is it friendship over? I doubt it….in fact, I’ll go ahead and say no way on that one. Elsewhere, Rebecca Logan is having midterm problems of her own. After she parks in a faculty lot near the library, her car is towed the night before a big paper is due. Her laptop is in her car, meaning it (and her paper) are locked up in the impound lot. She asks Ashleigh to drive her there, but in order to allow Ashleigh to get some study time in, Evan Chambers offers to drive Rebecca to get her car. Getting to the impound lot is one thing, but getting the car back is another. The owner of the lot isn’t around and after hours of waiting for him to show up, Evan decides to try a different tact. Because Rebecca only needs her laptop, he tries to boost her over the fence so she can use her key to get into her BMW and get her laptop. Of course, any good impound lot has a guard dog. This lot has a German shepherd who startles Rebecca, causes her to drop her key and then eats the key. Evan’s next idea is to buy some hot dogs, come back and use the food to distract the dog. While Rebecca feeds the hot dogs to the guard dog, Evan sneaks over the fence. Unfortunately, the dog sees him and gives chase. Because Rebecca’s car key is a smart key and unlocks the door whenever it’s within a few feet of the car, the locks open when Evan and the dog pass by her whip. Evan opens the door and shoos the dog inside to save his own hide, then realizes that doing so wasn’t at all helpful. Now, the dog is in the car along with the laptop. Evan’s next bright idea is to let the dog out of the car, have Rebecca grab the laptop and get out while he distracts the pooch by running. Like his preceding plans, this one fails too. Evan and Rebecca end up inside the car, trapped there by an angry dog that goes about ripping, scratching and biting anything it can get ahold of on the outside of her nice, silver BMW. Ultimately, both of them fall asleep inside the car. In the morning, Rebecca wakes up first and actually manages to finish writing her paper. Using her laptop’s Internet connect card, she emails the paper to her professor and averts disaster. Shortly after Evan wakes up, the owner of the impound lot shows up and finds them, ending an interesting night/morning. I liked the episode for the most part, even with Dale on screen quite a bit. His presence usually annoys the crap out of me and makes the show less watchable, but not so much tonight. Tune in next week, when I’m sure there will be a new round of drama and more than enough of it to go around……

Telling homeowners' associations where to stick it, fall TV changes and why Judge Paul A. Magnuson is forever my hero

- I don’t know many people for whom prom ends up being a highlight of life. When you’re in high school, it seems like a huge event, but one you get some distance from it in your life, you see just how ridiculous it is. Kids spend a lot of money on clothes they’ll only wear once, they go through the agony of finding a date and show up for what is invariably a lame and ridiculous theme punctuated by crappy music and terrible dancing. With all of that said, why not do something to have a little fun with your prom and make it a unique experience? That’s the approach Maranda Smith of Cumming, Ga. took in preparing for the West Forsyth High School Prom. In looking for just the right prom dress, Smith decided to do some web searching. She discovered the idea to create an entire dress out of the tabs on top of soda cans and thought the idea was something she could replicate. The project began more than a year in advance, as compiling enough pop can tabs to fashion an entire dress isn’t something you can do overnight (unless you’re Kate Moss, of course). Smith convinced her mother to buy more canned drinks and slowly the tops started adding up, but not quickly enough. It was then that Smith enlisted the help of r friends and even some teachers at West Forsyth High School. "All my friends, they are pretty much the ones that gave me the majority of the tabs," Smith told. "I had friends who would put them in Ziploc bags. I had friends who would mail me those Ziploc bags.” Once Smith accumulated about 3,000 tabs, she began constructing the dress. Her construction technique consisted of attaching two tabs back-to-back with the scratchy sides facing each other, then weaving them together with plush ribbon to create a row. She would then combine rows to begin building the dress, which oddly enough has no lining and no layering. Smith says that the one row covers everything and she just has to wear a slip underneath it. Thankfully, Smith finished the dress in time for prom and she got the chance to be the one girl at the prom who didn’t have to worry about some other chick showing up wearing the same thing (which I’m told is a big concern for girls). So while prom is still lame and very much overrated, props to Maranda Smith for doing something to improve it at least a little bit……

- You may recall that back in December, I lauded U.S. District Judge Paul A. Magnuson as a true American hero. Why? Because he helped keep my (and millions of other Americans’) dream of an 0-16 NFL season by the Detroit Lions alive. The Lions were 0-14 and about to play a game against the Minnesota Vikings. The problem was that the Vikings’ two mammoth defensive tackles Kevin Williams and Pat Williams, were facing a four-game suspension from the NFL over their positive test for a banned diuretic. Losing the Williamses would have dealt a massive blow to the Minnesota defense and given a much better chance for victory to the Lions, which was the last thing anyone needed. The Lions killed the same dream in 2001 and the Miami Dolphins did so in 2007, so having it happen a third time would have been catastrophic. Thankfully, Judge Magnuson was on the case - literally. He temporarily blocked the suspensions back in December because he needed more time to consider the case after hearing several hours of arguments from the league and the NFL Players Association. Well, Judge Magnuson has had time to consider the case and….he’s decided to throw out most of the Williamses' claims and dismiss a lawsuit brought by the NFL players union on behalf of the Williamses and three New Orleans Saints players also facing suspension. And you know what? I’m cool with all of this. Magnuson can throw out these claims and remand the case to state court if he wants, because the dream has already been realized. The Vikings had the Williamses on the field, they defeated the Lions and Detroit ran the table in reverse, 0-16 baby! I don’t have any particular affinity for Pat and Kevin Williams outside of their role in helping keep the 2008 Lions winless, so at this point it doesn’t matter if they’re suspended for four games, eight games or the rest of their lives. Whether the argument by their attorneys that league officials knew a supplement called StarCaps contained a banned diuretic back in 2006 and did not specifically notify players holds up in court now, I could not care less. So know that I bear no ill will toward you, Judge Magnuson. You played your part in making my dreams come true and I will never forget that…….

- So nearly every TV show worth watching has begun its summer hiatus, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t still some news in the world of television. Obviously, most of that news comes as the various networks have their “up fronts,” which are basically staged news conferences where a network rolls out its falls lineup, introduces new shows and tries to build interest for the coming season. From the past week of up fronts, the key pieces of news for the shows I follow and write about here are: 1) NBC is thankfully bringing back Chuck, although the actual announcement didn’t come until after the NBC up front. Unfortunately, Chuck’s return won't happen until after the Winter Olympics in 2010, 2) NBC has basically cut its season in half, with Heroes remaining on Monday nights but moving at 8 p.m. and ending in time to make way for Chuck to take over its time slot, post-Olympics, 3) The CW is once again moving Smallville, this time to Friday nights. I can’t even recall all the times the show has been moving during its first eight seasons, but I’ve learned to roll with the changes. There is speculation that Smallville’s ninth season could also be its last, which seems like a solid decision if that’s how it goes down, 4) Reaper is done on the CW, meaning Tuesday night’s episode will be the series’ last one after two seasons. That’s ironic because when the show first appeared, I HATED it and ripped it. Over time, I would watch it here and there and have actually enjoyed it for most of Season 2. it’s still not a great show, but it’s decent enough that I’ll be slightly sad to see it go. So those are the main points of the network up fronts as they relate to what you usually read here. There are scores of new shows on every network and as I obviously haven’t seen any of them yet, I don’t have much to say about them at this point. But fear not, as they begin to air and reveal how crap-tacularly bad they are, you can bet on me being there to rip them mercilessly……

- Who among us hasn’t dreamed of dropping a ginormous, Bunyan-esque fork outside our business at some point? Anyone who has ever dreamt of owning their own business has had that dream and probably even people who have never wanted to own a business have had it as well. Damien Watel of Stone Oak, Texas not only had that dream - he made it a reality. Watel erected an 18-foot-tall silver fork outside his business off Stone Oak Parkway after paying San Antonio artist Gilbert Duran more than $20,000 create the oversized utensil. Watel calls the oddly shaped sculpture “art”, I call it the realization of a lifelong dream, but idiots at the Stone Oak Homeowners Association call it an “eyesore.” There always has to be someone there looking to ruin a good thing, but that doesn’t mean the SOHA is anything but a bunch of no-vision-having ass clowns. No, the organization is demanding that Watel either take his giant silver fork down or cover it up. What makes me even sadder is that rather than face a fine and possible litigation, Watel is erecting a massive cinderblock wall to hide the statue from view. No! Don’t cave in, weakling. Tell the Stone Oak Homeowners Association to f**k off and if anything, you build a special platform for that giant silver fork to make it stand a few feet taller. Heck, jam a giant silver spoon, knife and salad fork into the ground and complete the set. Whatever you do, don’t back down. Yes, Watel is doing all of this to attract attention for the Ciel and Caio2 restaurants he owns, but his reasoning for putting up the ginormous fork doesn’t matter. Oh, and what exactly is the SOHA so pissed about? As you might guess, it has to do with the sort of bureaucratic bullsh*t that groups like homeowners associations thrive on, namely that Watel failed to file an application with the HOA for the construction of the sculpture. I agree with Watel’s line of thinking that since the large fork is art, he doesn’t need permission from the SOHA to build it. Bottom line here, Watel is correct and the SOHA is wrong when it contends that the fork is an advertisement for his business and therefore needed to be approved by the association ahead of time. Heck, Watel did eventually file an application with the SOHA and it was summarily rejected. He then filed an appeal, which was also rejected. There is nothing sadder in this country than self-important, pompous groups like the Stone Oak Homeowners Association thinking they can go around telling people what sort of structures and items they can put up on their own property. You can suck it, SOHA, and if it were up to me, Damien Watel would take that 18-foot silver fork, dust it off, turn it sideways and stick it straight up your candy ass……..

- I’m torn on "Colin," a new zombie feature that is receiving rave reviews at the Cannes Film Festival. On one hand, industry “experts” are praising this movie like they’re being paid to do so, largely because of that fact that it cost a mere $70 to make. Director Marc Price put the film together on a shoestring budget and if you believe the hype, it could be the next big thing at your local multiplex. However, my minds hearkens back to another low-budget, “revolutionary” movie that was supposed to be an amazing watch: The Blair Witch Project. I don’t remember the exact totals on what the cost for that train wreck was, but I do know how much I would pay to destroy every piece of film from it, rewind time and make sure its filming never happened: every cent I possess or have ever possessed in my lifetime. Blair Witch was a horrific abortion of a movie, uber-annoying from start to finish, without any real drama or intrigue and not nearly as scary as it was made out to be. The one chick in the movie (whose name I am not inclined to look up) I would literally have reached through the screen to choke the life out of two scenes into the movie if that were possible - she was that annoying. So maybe it’s unfair to tie “Colin” to “Blair Witch” just because both are critically acclaimed and made on the cheap, but I can’t help it. Price is receiving intense interest from Japanese distributors for the rights to the film, along with interest from some major American distributors. “We were almost fainting at the list of people who were coming [to the final market screening of the film],” said Helen Grace of Left Films who is helping the film's publicize the film in Cannes. “Representatives from major American distributors -- some of the Hollywood studios.” Some of the details about how Price put his film together are pretty interesting, including the fact that he advertised for volunteer zombies on Facebook, borrowed make-up from major Hollywood blockbusters - including 'X-Men 3' - and taught himself how to produce special effects on the cheap. “The approach was to say to people, 'OK guys, we don't have any money, so bring your own equipment,'" the director stated. Although he had plenty of help from a ragtag band of friends and volunteers, Price shot and edited the feature mostly on his own over a period of 18 months while working nights part-time as a booker for a taxi company. He took a unique slant on a typically cheesy genre by telling the story entirely from the zombie's perspective. Out of that vision came a movie that Price calls a zombie film "with a heart.” Response to his vision has been very strong, so hopefully “Colin” is able to end any similarities to “Blair Witch” at hype and production value and actually be a decent movie whose stars I don’t want to reach through the screen and bludgeon to death……..

Disgusting goings-on in space, a nice family drug business and NBA playoffs choke jobs

- In what can only be described as the most perfect storm of utterly crap-tacular, absolute garbage “music,” the Hack Eyed Peas performed on last night’s American Karaoke - or so I’m told. As you all know, I believe that AK is the single biggest abortion in music and the single biggest affront to fans of actual music everywhere. Thus, I have never, ever watched a single second of that sh*t-fest and never will. However, I did see reports that the Hack Eyed Peas performed on last night’s American Karaoke-fest, so I’m going to assume those reports are true. You couldn’t make up something that awful, not if I gave you a million years to try. Not only that, in addition to the Hack Eyed Peas performing their God-awful “song” called “Boom Boom Pow” (with backup dancers no less, because nothing says legit, quality musical act quite like cheesy backup dancers), but there was also a “bonus” performance from HEP member Fergie, who showed her originality and creativity by performing….yes, a cover song from one of her garbage albums. The song was “Big Girls Don’t Cry,” but I have to admit that any girl or guy would cry if forced to listen to the Hack Eyed Peas and Fergie sing. There is no shame in crying if you’re just witnessed something truly horrific, and any performance by the above-mentioned acts would qualify. Just when I didn’t think American Karaoke could sink any lower, the biggest, reddest, ugliest zit on the face of the musical world proved that it can in fact get even uglier…….

- This is the type of story that warms my heart. So often, the drug business is a cold, detached world of violence and calloused brutality. When I hear a heart-warming story of a family brought together by running its very own drug business, it’s an uplifting feeling that I can even describe with mere words. So brace yourself to be touched by the story of patriarch Paul Leon Faulkner, son Michael Leon Smith and a family that began as simple moonshiners decades ago and made its way into the thriving, ever-growing world of drug trafficking and money laundering. According to authorities in Trion, Georgia, the family brought the drugs, mostly marijuana, in from Mexico through California and Arizona and then distributed them across five counties in Georgia and one in Tennessee. These resourceful folks his their drugs in just about anything -- furniture, roofs of big-rigs and tire wells. Once the shipments arrived, the drugs were put in 50-caliber ammunition cans and buried in the woods, where buyers would pick up the stash and leave behind thousands in cash. A bit of a primitive system to be sure, but it works. Buying drugs on the honor system is always dicey, as drug addicts, God love ‘em, tend to be less than honest much of the time. Heck, why not leave the pot out on the roadside along with bushels of apples or canned peaches and a glass jar for people to leave their money in after picking up two bushels of Grannie Smiths, a jar of peaches and a dime bag? I also love the fact that Faulkner and his family didn’t limit themselves to just one drug; they also smuggled meth and coke into the country. Sometimes, as people age they become stuck in their ways and refuse to adapt to the changing times. Not so with Paul Faulkner, who morphed from old school bootlegging to dealing Mexican dope. Faulkner also showed a great deal of humility by allowing his son to act as the ringleader from the drug business, realizing that his time as the lead dog had passed. Instead, Michael Leon Smith became one of the richest men in Chattooga County and laundered his drug money by buying up dozens of pieces of property. This was a family business to the core and when police finally cracked the case, Faulkner's grandson (Smith's nephew) was also among the eight men arrested. The break in the case came when police making a routine traffic stop along Interstate 40 in eastern Oklahoma in May 2005 encountered a couple trucking a supply of methamphetamine, cocaine and marijuana with them. In tracing the drugs back to their source, the cops ultimately ended up at Faulkner’s doorstep. Ultimately, he plead guilty to a variety of charges last month and was handed a 20-year sentence that he will likely serve very little of. Faulkner is suffering from cancer and while he’s slated to head to prison in August, you’d have to imagine that he has little incentive to fight to stay alive at this point. To his credit, Faulkner is fighting the sentence and claiming that he is a "full-time mountain shiner" who knew little about the Mexican marijuana operation. The attorneys for father and son are taking time to bash one another’s clients, with Smith’s attorney calling Faulkner a terrible father who “threw his son down the drain” as a child. The government clearly buys Smith’s side of the story more than Faulkner’s, because Smith is only is serving a nine-year sentence in federal prison in Montgomery, Alabama. Faulkner's grandson is also serving a nine-year sentence. The funniest part of the whole story, without a doubt, is Smith’s attorney claiming he is an upstanding family man, a Christian of great faith who views the hippie lettuce as just another plant that the good Lord put on this Earth. “Michael's a wonderful family man, a Christian -- which means a lot to him, a very religious man. And I point out that in the Bible, God gave us every seed-bearing plant, and I think Michael looked at it that way. And, unfortunately, our government since 1937 has not seen it as a God-given right," attorney Cathy Alterman stated. All in all, just a great story and one that has it all: humor, drama, family values and plenty of illegal drugs…….

- Color me disgusted, no doubt about it. The crew of the International Space Station may have been cool with tasting their own urine Wednesday - albeit a purified version - but that’s one crazy train I will not be jumping aboard. The urine tasting marked the initiation of a closed loop water recycling system aboard the ISS. Astronauts celebrated by “clinking” their drinking bags together for a truly revolting toast before sipping water composed of recycled urine, sweat and atmospheric moisture. Let’s get one thing out of the way here: I don’t care if you can scientifically show me how pure this water is and that it has no remains of sweat or urine in it once it’s filtered. Period, point blank, it used to be urine and I’m not drinking it. Besides, this isn’t just recycled human urine these astronauts are drinking. Although NASA claims each crew member creates about a gallon of water from urine every six hours, some of the piss for the recycling process comes from animals aboard the space shuttle. “Lab animals on the ISS breathe and urinate, too, and we plan to reclaim their waste products along with the crew’s. A full complement of 72 rats would equal about one human in terms of water reclamation,” said Layne Carter, a water-processing specialist with NASA. Mmmmm, nothing hits the spot quite like a nice blend of sweat, human and rat urine. I’m just glad I wasn’t watching on NASA TV when Flight Engineer Mike Barrett confirmed “the taste is great This has been the stuff of science fiction.” Yeah, either science fiction or the stuff of nightmares, bro. Had I been watching that broadcast, I would probably still be vomiting several days later. But hey, maybe NASA can work really hard on a vomit-filtering system and find a way to turn puke into a recycled meal for its astronauts……

- Hopefully the Cleveland Choke-a-liers don’t feel too good about last night’s win over Orlando in Game 2 of the Eastern Conference finals. Yes, the Choke-a-liers won on a miraculous last-second three-pointer by reigning MVP LeBron James, but just because they won the game doesn’t mean the Cavs deserved the victory. For the second straight game, they built a huge first-half lead (23 points in this case at 43-20 in the second quarter), led by double digits at halftime and played absolutely garbage defense in the second half as the Magic basically did what they wanted offensively and found one open look after another from three-point range. How funny that up until winning Game 7 in the second round against Boston, it was the Magic who were dubbed the Panic. Now, it’s the Cavs who are choking away huge leads, stumbling down the stretch and trying desperately to give away games that they should win comfortably. Yes, Orlando is a good team with some very talented players. However, a 23-point lead on your home court should be avoid to keep you from needing a desperation 3-pointer at the buzzer over two defenders to win. The series may be 1-1 at this point, but make no mistake about it: the Cavs are freaking blessed to not be down 2-0. Maybe they should try a different strategy in Game 3 on Sunday in Orlando - and yes, playing defense in the second half would help - instead of sprinting out to a huge lead. The Magic don’t do well with prosperity for the most part, so maybe give the Magic a big early lead and see if you can’t bait them into frittering it away throughout the middle portion of the game. All I know is that what the Cavs have been doing these past two games hasn’t worked and if they don’t make drastic changes and improvements, they will not win this series. The 1-1 mark may be the same as the Western Conference finals with Los Angeles and Denver, but the difference there is that both the Lakers and Nuggets have played very good basketball for nearly two straight games and neither of them has choked away 23-point lead in either game. Step your game up, Choke-a-liers, or your NBA title dreams will go the way of every other championship aspiration in Cleveland the past four-plus decades: right into oblivion…….

- I’m not sure which is more perplexing, that a woman who allowed her 14-year-old son to balloon to 555 pounds felt she was still the best person to care for the boy or that it took three days to track down a 555-pound boy. Either way, 14-year-old Alexander Draper and his mother, Jerri Gray, were tracked down in Baltimore after fleeing South Carolina because the state planned to take the boy into protective custody. Draper and Gray were found hundreds of miles from their home at a Woodlawn Laundromat after police received a phone tip. Mother and uber-fat son were taken into custody just after 4:30 p.m. in the 6600 block of Security Boulevard. Alexander was checked at the scene by emergency medical services and was turned over to the Maryland Department of Social Services. He will eventually be returned to the Department of Social Services in South Carolina, where he should receive the medical help he needs to shed the 300-400 extra pounds he’s carrying around. To put that in perspective, the heaviest-ever contestant on The Biggest Loser tipped the scales at 430 pounds this past season, and that was a freaking adult. Jerri Gray needs to a) be put in prison for child abuse and b) kept away from her son as much as possible. She was killing him one bite at a time by serving him whatever garbage diet he was consuming and not doing a damn thing to help him lose weight. I’m not a person who thinks everyone needs to be rail-thin in order to look good, but feel free to mix in a salad and keep your child under 200 pounds while he’s still in junior high. For now, Gray is on police custody and will be held in Baltimore until extradition to South Carolina. Not that what Gray did is cool, but I do find some humor in the mental picture of a (from what I can see, anyhow) grossly overweight mother and her 555-pound teenage son fleeing the state on the very day that they were supposed to appear in court. Even after officials determined that Alexander was considered to be at a critical stage of health risk, his mom takes him on the lam? Why, because you want to go ahead and push him into an even earlier death by cramming more fatty foods in his pie hole? Worse still, officials involved with the case say that Alexander has been offered chances to participate in weight-loss programs and Gray has refused to allow him to take part. I’d say that qualifies as medical neglect on Gray’s part, no doubt. So best of success to Alexander in losing weight and getting healthy and also best of success to prosecutors in South Carolina in pressing charges against Jerri Gray, she deserves it………

Packing heat at your favorite national park, the problems of putting classless idiots on reality TV and the dignified world of international diplomacy

- With all of the buzz about the government demanding that Craigslist crack down on prostitution ads on its site, I suppose it was only a matter of time before this happened. Seven alleged members of a prostitution ring operating exclusively through classified ads placed on Craigslist were arrested in New York early Wednesday morning on charges of enterprise corruption, conspiracy and money laundering. The New York State's Attorney General made the announcement, but in reality it could have been any one of the 50 state attorneys general. Law enforcement has clearly made online pimping one of its top priorities, with agencies around the country staging a series of efforts to curb the alleged use of the site by drug dealers, prostitutes and other criminals. Yes, I said hookers AND drug dealers. The type of ads on Craigslist became a national issue after the April 14th murder of an erotic masseuse Julissa Brisman, allegedly by medical student and Craigslist user Philip Markoff. So "Room Service Entertainment" might be the first major online prostitution ring to be caught up in a sting, but just know it’s far from the only one and will surely be followed by others in the weeks ahead. According to New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, the company used the online service to run its regional prostitution ring both before and after the site reforms Craigslist instituted last fall. Cuomo doesn’t sound impressed by Craigslist’s efforts to reinvent itself and make its site less hooker-friendly. “Until Craigslist gets serious about putting real protections in place, it will continue to be an environment where criminal operations thrive with impunity,” said Cuomo. “Even after so-called reform of the website last fall, this prostitution ring easily gamed the system and allegedly used Craigslist to spread its illegal operation throughout all five boroughs and beyond. Today's arrests underscore the inherent risks posed by Craigslist and, most importantly, the need for protections that are full-fledged, not half-baked.” Cuomo also explained that RSE originally advertised in the Village Voice newspaper, but soon found that Craigslist brought in the bulk of its business. According to the attorney general, RSE used Craigslist's Erotic Services section to post pornographic or semi-pornographic photographs and a phone number to call to arrange a "date." The company’s alleged co-owners, Scott "Sal" Rosenberg, 45, and Josef Davenport, 31, were hit with a 47-count state indictment. Five RSE “bookers,” who fielded calls at RSE's headquarters in Queens County, New York, were also arrested. The indictment charges that the bookers answered telephone lines and asked each potential "John" his location and his desired services. They were under strict instructions not to explicitly discuss sex during the telephone conversations with the "Johns" and instead use designated terms to describe the services. Drivers would deliver the prostitute to the John, then come back to pick her up when the “date” was complete. If you’re wondering what the seven indicted individuals are charged with, they each face charges of enterprise corruption, a B felony. If convicted, Rosenberg faces a minimum of 4 ½ - 9 years and a maximum of 12 ½ - 25 years' imprisonment; the other defendants face a minimum of one to three years and a maximum of 8 1/3 – 25 years' imprisonment. Like I said, expect this to be the tip of the Craigslist hooker ring iceberg………..

- Where else would Eminem go as he prepares to release of his first new studio album in five years and wants to drum up interest in the record but his hometown of Detroit? As he prepares a full-scale blitz to accompany the release of "Relapse," the world’s premier white rapper held a special free concert in Detroit, tearing through eight songs in 35 minutes at the Sound Board theater in the MotorCity Hotel Casino. Seven of the tracks were from "Relapse" (including the singles "We Made You" and "Crack a Bottle" and a medley of "Hello" and "Insane") and of course, he gave the audience an encore performance of the one Eminem song that anyone who has ever heard of him knows: his 2002 hit "Lose Yourself." For the encore, he brought the other members of his group, D12 on stage. Oh, and he may have been gone for five years and made a crap load of money during that time, but Eminem hasn’t ventured from his normal wardrobe. At the free concert, he rocked a gray hoodie, black T-shirt and black baseball cap, right out of the Eminem style book. Em actually admitted to being "a little bit nervous 'cause I don't have my right-hand man (the late MC Proof) with me." Replacing Proof and attempting to fill his role was D12's Denaun Porter, who took over as hype man, while longtime Eminem DJ Alchemist manned the turntables and laptop. The night was also a chance for a little self-efficacy, as Eminem poked fun at the well-chronicled rehab stint he raps in great detail about on "Relapse." Hejoked that, "This might actually be one of the best shows I've ever done, 'cause when I get offstage I'm actually gonna remember it.” In case he doesn’t remember any of the show, he can always watch the portions that will be shown tonight on ABC's "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" for the third of Eminem's appearances on the late-night program. Actually, the entire concert was filmed and it was a packed house, with nearly 2,200 tickets distributed for the show. Showing that even rappers are succumbing to the fad that is Twitter, Eminem Twittered different locations where fans could pick up tickets on Tuesday, including restaurants, a music store, a shoe store, Saint Andrews Hall and under a mailbox. Other notables from the Detroit rap scene also showed up, including Obie Trice. They heard a set list that went something like this: "3 A.M.," followed by "Hello/Insane," followed by "Beautiful," "Crack a Bottle," "We Made You," "Underground” and the aforementioned "Lose Yourself" encore with D12. Not a bad night of music…….

- Ah, the dignity and class of international diplomacy. Who isn’t inspired and moved when political leaders from diverse, radically different nations located halfway around the world from one another gather to work out solutions for the crises facing our world? For example, President Barack Obama has been leading the charge for a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict, defending it as the best way to resolve the world’s most heated, long-running religious royal rumble match. President Obama offered up his idea and Ron Dermer, an aide to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, responded in very classy, dignified fashion by saying that Obama’s idea is "childish and stupid.” You stay classy, Ron Dermer. That’s sure to soothe any tensions in the ongoing negotiations and paint your side as the more respectful, intelligent in the debate. But I suppose if that’s how you feel, then props on having the kahones to say it. What I don’t want to see is the response that Dermer offered up when pressed on his comments. Netanyahu and his entourage had barely arrived home from their visit to Washington when Dermer went on the record to deny that he meant that the two-state concept itself childish and stupid. “I told reporters that the focus by the media on the concept of solving the Israel-Palestinian issue through a two-state solution is childish and stupid, but I deny that I described the idea that way,” he said. No, no, no. You don’t double back on a comment like that. The “I was misquoted / misinterpreted” defense is absolute bullsh*t and you know it, Ron. If President Obama supports the creation of a Palestinian state and you think it’s childish and stupid, stand behind those sentiments. It doesn’t matter if the man you work for, Prime Minister Netanyahu, has yet to weigh in on the concept. Actually, Dermer seems like the only member of the Israeli contingent willing to discuss the idea of a two-state solution in the Middle East. During his trip to Washington, Netanyahu continually ducked questions about Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking and tried to place the focus on the threat posed by Iran's nuclear program. All Netanyahu would say about his peacemaking talks with Obama was that, “There was an agreement that we need to immediately begin the peace process, I said I am willing to open peace talks with the Palestinians, by the way with the Syrians as well, of course without preconditions, but I made it clear that in any peace agreement there must be a solution to Israel's special security needs.” Ya know, I think from here on out, if anyone from the Israeli side is going to comment on this process, it should be my man Ron Dermer. He’s a classy, dignified spokesman for his country and not at all childish or stupid…….

- See what happens when unintelligent, self-absorbed, vapid idiots who should never, ever become famous are suddenly thrust into the public eye for no good reason? Yes, I could be talking about any number of people - really, anyone who has ever appeared on a reality TV show - and you probably think you know where I’m going with this: those tools Heidi and Spencer from The Hills on MTV. But no, I’m actually referring to Jon and Kate Gosselin of TLC's "Jon & Kate Plus 8." These two are on TV not because they have contributed anything worthwhile to the world, but because he knocked her up and she ended up having eight kids as a result. Everyone likes a freak show, and few things are freakier than a woman giving birth to eight kids at once. TLC capitalized on that sad fact by dropping these two idiots into their own show and as its fifth season is about to premiere, the angle for that fifth season seems to be the two attention whores who agreed to appear on a reality TV show now complaining that the public attention and media coverage of their lives is too much. With their marriage supposedly on the rocks, family members are surfacing to give their takes on the situation too. According to the latest story from Kate's brother and sister-in-law Kevin and Jodi Kreider, Kate had Jon sign a contract stipulating that he could date other people -- as long as he showed up for the filming of the show. I would be surprised and disgusted by that - if I could muster even one ounce of interest in the lives of these two ass hats. I don’t care if some random loser with a wife and eight kids is out dating SoCal skanks and showing up at “home” only when the cameras are rolling. It doesn’t matter to me if the two of them are married, on the outs or just two paid actors faking the whole thing. I’ll say it again: when you put two a-holes who have a combined IQ of 74 and the combined emotional maturity of a 7-year-old on TV and make them famous for no real reason, this is what you get. Stop dropping contracts for reality shows on mentally stunted, socially backwards freaks with no moral compass or dignity and you won't have these problems. As for Jon and Kate….do whatever you want to do, live the lives you’ve created for yourselves and stop b*tching. You signed up for this and if you didn’t know what you were getting into, you shouldn’t have signed the contract, losers……

- With the summer upon us, it’s time to hit up your favorite national park….and be sure to pack your favorite firearm when you go. Yes, in times past it may have been illegal to tote your 9mm or Glock into Yosemite or Yellowstone, but no longer. In a 279-147 vote, the House of Representatives approved a Senate amendment that permits concealed weapons in national parks and wildlife refuges where allowed by states. Previously, gun owners were forced to keep their weapons unloaded and stored while in the park. That’s a problem because let’s face it, you never know when some fellow park goer might start a beef and you need to pull your piece to settle things down, maybe fire off a warning shot or two. Thankfully, Congress recognized this problem and now gun owners will be allowed to pack heat at national parks unless firearms are banned by state law. Some officials worry that allowing gun holders to bring their loaded weapons into national parks will make it more difficult for them to pursue wrongdoers, but I like to think that it will spice life up a bit in national parks, which, let’s face it, can get a bit boooooooring. Besides, five of the most-visited national parks are in states that allow concealed weapons, so banning guns in parks is just a bad idea. After all, what could possibly go wrong when you have people with loaded guns in parks where wild animals could startle and/or attack them? That’s what I thought……..

Problems removing prostitution from Craigslist, a stoner who doesn't think well under pressure and Echo and The Bunnymen's music headed to outer space

- So I guess the one obvious upside of former Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick being released from a federal prison in Leavenworth, Kansas early Wednesday is that we can finally talk about a non-playing, unsigned NFL quarterback other than F’ing Brett Favre. Which is not to say that I don’t still loathe Favre and wish every day that he would blow out both of his rotator cuffs and never be able to even consider playing football again, because all of that is true. Dude is annoying, over the hill and needs to go away. But now we can take a few minutes to agonize over the possible return of a dramatically over-hyped, under-performing former No. 1 pick who can now add the rust and decay of nearly two years in a federal prison to the other knocks against him as a legit NFL quarterback. Lest you forget, prior to his revelation as a notorious dog fighter, Vick was a barely passable NFL quarterback whose passing skills were rudimentary at best and who kept his career going based almost solely on his freaky athletic and running abilities. Now, he’s out of the federal pen and headed back to Newport News, Virginia to serve the last two months of his 23-month sentence in home confinement. You can debate whether his punishment is sufficient for someone who pleaded guilty to a federal charge of bankrolling a dogfighting operation at a home he owned, but the reality is that on this divisive issue, everyone has chosen their side and no one is crossing over. You believe what you believe about the appropriate punishment for what Vick did and whether he should be allowed to play in the NFL again, period. The reality is that he’s going to be allowed back into the league at some point, whether commissioner Roger Goodell elects to suspend Vick any additional games or not before allowing him back into the league. If reinstated, Vick could return to professional football as soon as September. In the meantime, he’ll work toward paying the millions of dollars he owes as part of his bankruptcy proceedings by chipping away at an impressive $10 an hour working construction and appearing in a documentary for $600,000. There’s also the matter of shoring up his actual Chapter 11 bankruptcy plan, which U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Frank Santoro rejected last month on the grounds that it would not realistically allow Vick to repay his debtors. Santoro shot down Vick’s initial plan, which called for Vick to come up with $750,000 to $1 million in cash to be paid to creditors. The judge said he saw no evidence Vick could come up with that much and suggested Vick's next plan not call for him to keep two houses and three cars, as did the rejected proposal. So there’s the bankruptcy proceedings to hash over, Vick’s stated plan to work with the Humane Society to discourage dogfighting, especially among teens, and the issue of whether he can return to being a productive NFL player. I’d say all of that is much more intriguing to discuss than some washed up, wishy-washy, indecisive old QB who can’t even decide how to best treat a lingering injury just so he might be able to play again……

- So that whole removing prostitution ads from Craigslist thing isn’t going very well. Even though Craigslist's managers have complied with the wishes of most of the state attorneys general who demanded they rid the site of prostitution ads, it’s still possible to find yourself some Craigslist sex for hire if you are so inclined. Even though the site replaced its controversial "erotic" section with a new "adult" category and company employees now review every ad submitted to the adult area before they appear online, ads for what appear to be sex for money still exist on Craigslist. One such ad was posted by a a self-described sex worker from San Francisco who admitted that she successfully posted an ad for her services to the adult section late last week. So aside from the cosmetic move of changing the name for the prostitution section of the site, the only real difference between Craigslist's erotic and adult categories is the photos. To be succinct, the photos are less revealing, with, less skin showing for the most part. However, the text below the pictures is basically the same, with lots of ads for “massage services.” Oddly enough, these adds for masseuses contain an awful lot of information about the physical appearance of the ladies doing the massaging, things like the masseuse's breast size ("I'm a natural C cup") and they are often photographed dressed in their underwear. There are also the same buzz words as you would have seen in the erotic services section when it existed: words such as "busty," or "fantasy girl" in their descriptions. The problem now is how much further Craiglist and the government can go with this fight. After all, if these ads merely contain pictures of hot chicks in very little clothing who aren’t directly offering sex, what else can be done? Now we all know that shady, hooker-ish things are going on once these ads are responded to, but the question is whether anyone has the authority and jurisdiction to do anything about it……..

- Echo and The Bunnymen have long been punk rock pioneers, even if they aren’t in the forefront of the minds of all but the most hardcore of rock fans these days. Still, the group will now be pioneers in an entirely different musical realm: outer space. The band’s critically acclaimed 1984 album "Ocean Rain" is a favorite of NASA astronaut - and huge Bunnymen fan - Tim Korpa. Korpa recently contacted the band about taking some of the group's music on his next mission, citing the 1984 record as his favorite of their catalog. I guess he figured that tracking down a vinyl copy of the album would be a difficult task that he just doesn’t have time for, so he dialed up the band and asked for their help. “Now it's official. We are the coolest band in the universe," said vocalist Ian McCulloch in a released statement. "As a kid I dreamt of being an astronaut, and now in a way it feels like I'm fulfilling that dream. I cannot wait to hear from Tim what it is like to listen to ‘The Killing Moon' in the actual glow of the moon." Korpa plans to take snapshots of the crew in space with the album during their voyage, which should actually be pretty cool. According to Nielson Soundscan data, "Ocean Rain" has sold 76,000 copies since 1991, then. "Ocean Rain" will also be getting the deluxe reissue treatment on May 30, with a re-release that bundles a live performance of the record from November 27, 2008 at the Liverpool Arena as well as a DVD documentary. The album has been staging quite a comeback over the past year, as it was also performed in its entirety on September 16 at London's Royal Albert Hall and on October 1 at New York's Radio City Music Hall. All three performances paired the group with an orchestra. Echo and The Bunnymen will also perform "Ocean Rain" on June 28 will see the band at the annual Glastonbury Festival and return to the U.S. later this year for two more performances after performing at this year's SXSW festival. The group is also working on their tenth album entitled "The Fountain," set for release later this year. Still, it sounds like having their music blasted in (and into) outer space might be the highlight of the year for Echo and The Bunnymen……..

- Not cool, Coca Cola, not cool at all. Not only do you produce a crappy, way-too-sweet, second-rate soft drink, but now you’re ripping valuable prizes from customers who win them? That doesn’t work for me. It also doesn’t work for Demetrios Tinguirlis of Stratford, Conn., who thought he had won thousands of dollars in scholarship money from a Coca Cola sweepstakes. Tinguirlis bought two bottles of Coke bearing the Twist and Text Sweepstakes and when he texted the cap numbers, the message sent back said, "You won.” "Then the next message said you won a $10,000 scholarship," said Tinguirlis. Awesome, right? Winning a $10,000 scholarship is enough to brighten anyone’s day, and it certainly lifted Tinguirlis’ spirits - right up until the limo driver from Stratford tried to claim his prize. As a father of six who is trying to save for his kids’ college funds, I can see where he would be a) pumped to win and b) pissed when Coke tried to rip that prize from him. “So six kids, $10,000 in scholarship money is great for us now and I was like wow,” he said. Coca Cola’s explanation for snatching the prize from Tinguirlis’ hands is that he bought the soda and sent the text in April. The contest starts on May 1st, as seen on the bottle. The company sent Tinguirlis a letter stating, "The entry was received during one of the promotion testing periods. And, a test win message was generated in 'error.' You could not be certified as an official winner.” Instead, the company is offering $500 in return for making no future claim. That doesn’t fly with Tinguirlis, who feels that Coke is trying to screw him over. “I don't think it's fair," he said. "I think you already said to me that I won $10,000. I was excited for it. I believe that's what I should get; not $500.” To that end, he’s contacted a local TV station and its investigative unit has taken up his case. I do understand that Coke can point to the contest rules and claim that they don’t have to pay up, but I also realize that if your contest is still in the testing stage, people shouldn’t be able to contact the contest source at all and receive any sort of reply. So there is fault on both sides, but Coca Cola still looks incredibly shady in the end. It turns out that Tinguirlis wasn’t the only one who got a wrong winning message because of the promotional test. Step your game up and get a hold on your contests, Coke…….

- Memo to all stoners out there: Respect your stash. I don’t think I need to tell most of you that, but when I come across the stories of people like David I. Pledge of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, I feel compelled to remind everyone of that rule just in case. My man D. Pledge was pulled over by University Heights Police in Iowa City at 12:52 a.m. Sunday for a traffic violation. That would have been bad enough, but Pledge knew that he was going to have an even bigger problem once the cop approached his car. What with being a devout pot head and having a large stash of the hippie lettuce in his possession, Pledge knew he had to do something. Not only did the inside of his car reek of the chronic, but he also had a large bag of weed with him. Officers immediately noticed the strong marijuana-like odor coming from Pledge's breath when they approached the vehicle, just as they easily spotted the green, leafy substance scattered down his shirt. It’s a sad scene to be sure, but it’s about to get a whole lot worse. See, police soon discovered Pledge had a partially eaten plastic bag of marijuana in his mouth. According to the police report, Pledge panicked when he realized his predicament and decided that eating an entire bag of pot was his best option. No throwing it out the window, no trying to stash it under a seat, just eating it, bag and all. Pledge eventually gagged and the "medium sized bag" came out of his mouth, earning him charges of preventing apprehension, obstructing prosecution and third-offense drug possession. Preventing apprehension and obstructing prosecution and third- or subsequent-offense possession of marijuana are aggravated misdemeanors and are punishable by up to two years in prison and a maximum $5,000 fine. All of that is bad, but perhaps not as bad as the stigma Pledge will now have in the stoner community for wasting perfectly good tree by attempting to ingest it. That’s something he may never recover from…….

NBA Draft Lottery issues, the CW continues its downward spiral and finally, a solid use for Facebook

- Not a stellar weekend at the box office, even if you’re a fan of the supernatural, the other-worldly and the outer-spacy. In its opening weekend, Ron Howard's "Angels & Demons" earned a solid, yet unspectacular $48 million to take the to spot in earnings over "Star Trek," which raked in $43 million in its second week. The $48 million for "Angels & Demons" ranks well behind the $77.1 million debut for its predecessor, "The Da Vinci Code," in 2006. Of course, much of that drop in revenue can be attributed to the steady cooling off of the controversy over the religious subject matter in Dan Brown's novels. The strength of the dork following of the No. 2 film for the weekend, J.J. Abrams' "Star Trek," could also have something to do with it. The $43 million weekend haul for “Star Trek” brings its cumulative total to $147.6 million, making it the year's fourth highest-grossing movie after just eleven days in theaters. Finishing third for the weekend was “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” with $14.8 million and a cumulative gross of $151.1 million after three weekends. The fourth spot in the earnings race (sadly) went to Matthew McConaughey' s "Ghosts of Girlfriends Past" with $6.9 million), followed by and the Beyoncé-Ali Larter thriller "Obsessed" at No. 5 with $4.6 million. Other big-name stars weren’t so successful over the weekend, with Jennifer Aniston's "Management" not faring well in limited release. The movie grossed just $378,420 from 212 screens for a measly per-screen average of $1,785. One new movie that did do well, also in limited release, was the comedy "The Brothers Bloom." Appearing in only four theaters, “Brothers Bloom” brought in $82,000 from those four theaters for a $20,500 per-theater haul. Now two weeks old, the is off to a promising start. Overall box office revenues are up 16 percent over last year with a Memorial Day double-header of "Terminator Salvation" and "Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian" on the way………

- It’s about freaking time someone used Facebook for something other than a) organizing a kegger, b) posting pictures of their new pets, c) bitching about how much they hate school or d) throwing up a photo gallery of their latest drunken night on the town. Some out there - I’m talking about you, Israeli security agency Shin Bet - may not be down with terrorism groups using Facebook and other social networking sites to recruit Israeli citizens as spies, but I’m enjoying the trend. If terrorist groups want to create their own Facebook pages, groups and events, (“Suicide bombing party at Ahmir’s house, Saturday at 10:30! B.Y.O.B.”) and try to convince people to trade confidential information for money, what’s the big deal? “The Shin Bet has gotten many reports about cases where terrorist elements are using the Internet to get in touch with Israelis with proposals to enlist in terror activity or to pass classified information in exchange for payment," the statement from Shin Bet said. If you believe the worryworts in the Israeli intelligence community, these efforts could lead to leaked information that would hurt Israeli security or citizens traveling to other countries to exchange the information for money "might lead to them being kidnapped by terror organizations.” As you’d expect, Shin Bet isn’t exactly forking over a lot of details about how this entire Facebook terrorism thingy works, although the Shin Bet statement did describe one example of a person who was recruited by a terrorist organization on Facebook. “Lately, an Israeli citizen contacted the Shin Bet and complained about a request in Facebook from a person that presented himself as a Lebanese merchant, who asked him to give him classified information for money,” the statement said. Do what you want with this development, Israel, but personally I’d like to see you embrace the fact that Facebook is finally being used for something productive/possibly destructive……..

- Lately, I’ve read opinions from a lot of places on the inherent problems of the drafts in various U.S. professional sports, which reward the worst teams with at least the best chance for the top picks in their sport’s amateur draft. The arguments fall along the lines of not wanting to reward organizations that don’t do a good job of running their operations and putting a quality product on the floor. These poorly run teams receive high draft picks, which invariably fail to make them a contender and often ruin the psyche and career of a promising young player before it really gets going. All of that was on my mind as a I caught the latter part of last night’s NBA Draft Lottery, in which the 14 teams that didn’t make the playoffs sent someone tangentially linked to their organization to sit in a TV studio with 13 other team reps and their respective lucky charms to listen as the league announced the results of the lottery. In case you don’t know, the NBA lottery currently operates by placing ping-pong balls in a hopper and drawing balls out to determine the order of picks. The team with the worst record from the just-concluded season has the most ping-pong balls in the hopper and thus the best shot at the top pick, the second-worst team has the second most balls and so on. Watching the reps from these mostly terrible teams sit behind their own individual podiums and await the lottery results, it struck me just how inept most of the teams are and also that you see many of the same teams back in the lottery year after year. Just look at the teams that landed the top picks in the lottery this year: 1) the L.A. Clippers, who boast the league’s worst coach and its worst general manager, all rolled into one crap-tastic package (Mike Dunleavy, take a bow!) and are in the lottery more often than the actual ping-pong balls used to select the order of picks, 2) the Memphis Grizzlies, with GM Chris Wallace running a team in a fashion that combines the financial savvy of Enron with some of Dunleavy’s patented franchise-killing basketball un-savvy and are also perennial lottery participants, 3) the Oklahoma City Thunder, a team hijacked from Seattle prior to this season and which hasn’t been a viable playoff contender for pretty much a decade, 4) the Sacramento Kings, who haven’t been relevant since their exciting battles with the Lakers in the Western Conference playoffs…..back in the ‘90s, 5) the Washington Wizards, whose highest rise has been the opening round of the playoffs for a few years as the sparring partner for Cleveland so the Cavaliers could get ready for the real playoff teams they would face beyond the first round. I could go on, but the point is that these high picks are going to teams that are a) too inept, basketball-wise, to use them in a way that will make their crappy teams relevant and/or b) too cash-strapped to put a good supporting cast around these high picks. So yes, the drafts of the NBA and also the NFL are very much f’d up. The question is whether either league has the guts to actually do something about the problem…….

- Who could have see this coming, other than me the second I heard about the concept for Privileged on the CW network? One of the CW’s 17 shows about rich, privileged kids and their spoiled, party-filled lives won't be returning for a second season. Series creator Rina Mimoun (hard to believe she was ever linked to my all-time fave show, Everwood) confirmed that Privileged won't return for a second season. If I could argue that bad writing, mediocre acting and a lame premise were the only reasons that Privileged struggled in the ratings, that would be disappointing. Then, I couldn’t claim that people are simply overloaded with these shows about spoiled rich kids in New York or Southern California and that the CW is so unoriginal, lazy and brain-less that it can produce nothing but these shows of late. Not being able to make those claims would be very disappointing to me. Some of you (probably females age 15-34) may have enjoyed JoAnna Garcia and her fellow cast members, but the show is getting the ax along with the likely demise of another CW comedy, Reaper. Instead, the CW will do what it does best: recycle old ideas and shows. It will feature a Melrose Place remake (with Ashley Simpson-Wentz), along with new, sure-to-be-canceled shows like Vampire Diaries (starring Ian Somerhalder and Paul Wesley as blood-sucking brothers), the and Beautiful Life (about young, fab models living together). I can only say that I take immense pleasure in seeing a network that killed so many of my favorite shows run itself right into the ground, because it couldn’t happen to a crappier group of people than Dawn Ostroff (damn you, Ostroff!) and her crew………

- Warning to all Haitian women: Slick Willie is on the way. Yes, one of the great womanizers of the past century, Bill Clinton, has been named as a United Nations special envoy to Haiti. Note that it isn’t the Obama administration that tabbed Ol’ Willie to go to Haiti, but rather the world’s most universally ignored and dismissed governing body, the U.N. A senior U.N. official confirmed the appointment Monday and an official announcement was made Tuesday. I guess adding a two-term president who has traveled to Haiti on several occasions as a presence in an impoverished and struggling nations could help, but I do think that the ladies of Haiti need to be forewarned if Bubba Clinton is coming to their shores. Dude will clearly hit most anything that a) moves and is b) female (Need evidence? Just do a Google image search for Paula Jones.) When Clinton made his most recent visit to Haiti in March, he was held somewhat in check by the fact that his battle ax of a wife, Hank, was with him. Both of the Clintons voiced optimism at Haiti's potential back in March because of political stability and economic growth after decades of chaos. Still, I don’t see how Bubba Clinton is going to play a huge role in turning things around for the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere. If only having sex with any woman willing to crawl under a desk or sneak a quickie while your wife is out of town could revive a struggling economy…….

A HUGE edition of Riot Watch!, Greek and 24 recaps and amazing athletes attempting the insane

- You’ve never heard of Campbellsville University pitcher Bryan Fuller and after this, you may never hear of him again. Of course, that doesn’t make what Fuller did over the weekend any less remarkable. Fuller, a senior whose team was competing for a berth in the NAIA World Series in Lewiston, Idaho, knew that he was never going to play baseball professionally and decided to make the final few games of his career count. Campbellsville was playing in an NAIA super regional, where the team had fallen into the loser's bracket and needed to win three straight to get the World Series berth. Due to injuries and a shorthanded pitching staff, the Campbellsville coaches were in a bind. Fuller had pitched three scoreless innings for the save in a game against Lindenwood on Thursday. With just 25 minutes between games, Campbellsville's coaches decided to start Fuller in the next game, against Kansas Wesleyan, which had won 26 straight. At that point, the coaches were hoping Fuller could give them three or four innings and keep them in the game against a powerhouse program like Wesleyan. Instead, Fuller threw a complete-game shutout in only his second career start to snap Kansas Wesleyan's winning streak. Campbellsville won 11-0, advancing them to the final of the super regional. With their No. 1 pitcher prepared to start on two days' rest, Fuller made an unexpected demand: He wanted to start after throwing 12 innings the day before. "We told him no way, because we didn't want to hurt him ... He just threw 12 innings the day before," assistant coach Jake McKinley said. "He told us that he was a senior that will never play pro ball and he was going to be an accountant in just a few weeks. He said he didn't care about his arm and told us he will give us a chance to win.” Fuller not only gave the Tigers a chance to win; he shut out Kansas Wesleyan for the second straight day, leading the way to a 4-0 win, giving the Tigers their first NAIA World Series appearance in school history. He needed just 77 pitches for his second consecutive complete-game shutout and to cap an amazing stretch of 21 shutout innings in 26 hours. Now, Campbellsville (Ky.) is headed to the NAIA World Series, where it will face Lee (Tenn.). on Friday. For a guy who knew he was nearing the end of his baseball career, this is an incredibly way to a) go out and b) go instant legend on the Campbellsville campus, where he has to be the biggest sports story in a long, long time…..

- If you were looking for lots of big fight scenes, explosions and car chases, the season finale of 24 wasn’t for you. The drama was high and the episode was fairly exciting, but it wasn’t one nonstop brawl with guns, bombs and the like. To kick off the final two hours of the season, Jack takes control of the transport van taking Tony Almeida back to the FBI. Under directions from Tony’s cohort Cara via an earpiece attached to his phone, Jack pulls his gun, forces Renee walker and another agent in the van to give him their weapons and then instructs the driver to handcuff himself to the wheel. Amazingly, Jack explinas what he’s doing and why, yet Cara doesn’t mind. Tony does cut Jack off and as the van careens off the expressway and onto a side street, the tension ratchets up. Back at the FBI, Chloe and Janis track the runaway van by satellite, but when Cara directs the van into a tunnel, that option is dead. The van pulls up because Cara’s SUV and stops, leaving Tony and Jack to handcuff Renee and the other agent to their seats and exit the van. To Jack’s surprise (and Cara’s), Tony takes Jack with him and places him into the back of the SUV. He explains to Cara that because Jack is infected with the toxin from the bioweapon and all canisters from the weapon have been destroyed, harvesting the toxin from his body once he dies is their only shot to reconstruct it and make more of the toxin to use in future attacks. The SUV speeds out of the tunnel and to (what else?) an abandoned warehouse complex where a team of doctors are waiting to cut into Jack. The lead doctor first immobilizes Jack to prevent any seizures, then whips out a huge needle and draws a sample of spinal fluid. The sample shows an even higher concentration of the toxin than expected, meaning that harvesting the toxin from Jack’s body once he dies won't be a problem. Cara calls Alan Wilson, leader of the shadowy cabal behind this season’s terrorist conspiracy, and informs him of the new plan. She also relays a message from Tony that based on the days’ events, he wants a bigger role in the organization. Cara concurs with Tony’s sentiments, leading Wilson to decide that he’s going to personally come down to the warehouse to supervise Jack’s transfer to a medical facility where the virus can be harvested from him and also to meet Tony. While Tony and Cara are out of the room, Jack regains consciousness and attacks the doctors working on him. Even in his weakened state, he easily overpowers all three and dispatches them in different ways (slashing the throat, choking, etc.). By the time Jack flees and sets off a fire alarm at a door to an alley outside the warehouse, Tony and Cara are well behind him. Jack scampers down the alley, finds a security door to a small garage that has a small crack at the bottom where it hasn’t been fully closed and slides underneath. Inside, he tries to break into one of the taxi cabs - not sure if he wants to use the radio or drive it - and nearly does so before Tony catches up to him. When Tony tries to slide under the door, Jack finds the controls for it and closes it. Undeterred, Tony goes around to the back door, commandeers a forklift and tears a hole in the door. In the meantime, Jack has seen gas leaking on the floor from a cab whose gas tank has been struck by one of Tony’s stray bullets and he tries to light a road flare to ignite a massive fire. Tony rushes inside and kicks the flare out of Jack’s hands, leaving Jack helpless on the ground. He’s captured and taken back to the warehouse, which is good because Wilson is slated to arrive momentarily. While they wait, Tony finally reveals his plan to Jack after being subjected to a scathing diatribe from Jack about his actions of the day. Tony admits he’s not planning on allowing the conspiracy to use Jack to recreate the toxin, but rather making them believe he is so he can get close enough to Alan Wilson to kill him. Seems that Wilson was the man behind the corruption in former President Charles Logan’s administration, the man who ordered the hit on former President David Palmer and the man who ordered the murder of Tony’s wife Michelle. All of his actions all day long have been about personal revenge and he claims that the only reason people have died is because Jack got involved and tried to stop him. Knowing he won't get close enough to kill Wilson himself, Tony places a belt of explosives on Jack, triggers it to explode via a cell phone signal and walks outside with Cara to meet the arriving Wilson and his convoy in the warehouse’s loading area. Wilson waits inside his limo until his security clears Tony and Cara, then steps out to meet the man who has saved his operation multiple times during the day. He also demands to see Jack’s medical reports and has his men go inside to get Jack. While all of this is going on, the other half of Tony and Cara’s plan has been unfolding at the airport. Sarah and Bob, two operatives posing as a married couple on Kim Bauer’s flight in order to keep an eye on her as she waits for her delayed plane, are still keeping an eye on Jack’s daughter. When she is finally called to the check-in counter to receive her boarding pass along with the other standby passengers, the gate agent directs her to the front of the line to take a phone call. It’s Renee, who has contacted the FBI to tell them of Jack’s actions and the reasons behind them. She’s now calling Kim to warn her about the danger surrounding her. After confirming that Agent Franks, who was sent to keep her safe, has in fact disappeared, Renee tries to get Kim to help her figure out who the bad guys watching her are. When Kim realizes that it’s probably Bob and Sarah, her panic levels shoot off the charts. Bob suddenly appears behind her in line, claiming to be checking to see if Kim got her boarding pass and if she’s having any trouble getting on the flight. Back at her seat, Kim tries to stay calm and pulls pictures of her infant daughter in an attempt to steer the conversation with Sarah and Bob in a safer direction. That doesn’t last long, not when airport security is moving in on the gate following a call from Renee. Bob spots the approaching guards, signals Sarah and readies for a fight. While Sarah pulls a knife and holds it to Kim’s throat, Bob starts a firefight with the guards. Glass doors shatter, guards are shot and passengers duck for cover. In the melee, Kim manages to pull a pen from her pocket and jam it into Sarah’s leg. Sarah releases her grip and Kim drops to the floor, giving a security guard a clean shot to take out Sarah. With his partner down, Bob flees out an emergency exit door and into the bowels of the airport. Kim, realizing that there is no one else to pursue him, takes up the chase on her own. She follows Bob through a baggage sorting area and into the airport’s south parking garage. As Bob ascends to the upper levels, Kim heads to the deck’s main gate to alert the security guarding the gate. No sooner than she tells them the situation. Bob comes barreling down the ramp, guns a blazin’. All three guards are hit but one stays upright long enough to return fire and hit Bob in the head. Bob loses control of the car, strikes the parking toll booth and flips over on the vehicle’s roof. Kim watches in horror as the car bursts into flames. She spots the laptop that Bob was using to keep a video feed or her going, just inside the car. As she runs over and attempts to pull the computer from the car, Bob regains consciousness and grabs her arm. He refuses to let go, but when both of them catch on fire, the pain is enough to make him lose his grip. Kim is also burned, but she gets the computer and some much-needed backup. Renee and her team of FBI agents have arrived at the airport, surveyed the scene in the terminal and received a radio call from the aprking garage. They rush onto the scene, secure Kim and take possession of the laptop. With assistance from Chloe and Janis back at the FBI office, they are able to trace the laptop’s signal and figure out where the video feed was being sent to. That leads them to the warehouse complex where Jack is being held, right as Jack is being hauled from the building by Wilson’s men. They open fire on the incoming helicopter, with Renee and Co. returning serve. On the ground, Renee hops on the side of an SUV and rides along, shooting as she goes and dismounting with a completely non-believable flip and roll on the rock-hard asphalt. She pops up, sees Jack and goes to check on him. He tells her of Tony’s plan and inssits that stopping him from killing Wilson is the only way to find out more about the conspiracy. Inside a nearby building, Wilson and Cara are hiding out, waiting for backup to arrive and extricate them. Tony is close behind and a relieved Cara sees him. She approaches, tells him what’s going on and is summarily shot in the chest for her troubles. Tony kills her, then moves on to Wilson. He berates the man who killed his wife and their unborn child. holds the gun to Wilson’s head and is about to kill him when Jack and Renee arrive. They manage to shoot Tony without killing him, dropping him to the ground and allowing the FBI agents to take he and Wilson into custody. As Tony is led away, he berates Jack for running away (after Season 6) and not fighting the evil forces taking over the country, then asks, “What would Teri (Jack’s deceased wife, killed in Season 1 at CTU) think?” When the chaos settles, Jack is loaded onto a stretcher and prepared for transport to the hospital where Dr. Macer from CDC will take over his care. Before he goes, Renee comes to ask his advice on handling Wilson, who has arrogantly claimed that there is nothing linking him to the alleged conspiracy and no case against him. Renee asks Jack if she should cross the line and use his “enhanced interrogation” techniques, but the only advice he can offer is to make decisions she can live with. At the hospital, Jack is visited by the Imam he and Renee questioned earlier in the day while in their search for Tony. Jack has asked the Imam to come and help him find some peace and forgiveness in his final moments. The Imam is able to help Jack, but Dr. Macer then puts Jack into a coma so he won't have to suffer through some of the toxin’s more painful symptoms. Kim then arrives on the scene, begging Macer to allow her to undergo the experimental stem cell procedure that could save Jack’s life. Dr. Macer concedes that it’s not too late to try and makes a call to set up an operating room for the procedure. So there’s one daughter who doesn’t want to lose her father, while at the White House, the sins of another daughter are being exposed. Ethan Kanin arrives and meets up with Secret Service Agent Aaron Pierce, who lets him into the office of acting chief of staff Olivia Taylor. Kanin accesses the office’s digital recording system, removes a data card containing recordings of the past day and attempts to take it from the White House. Before he can leave the office, Olivia returns from a meeting with Justice Department investigators looking into the murder of Jonas Hodges, the murder she arranged. Pierce and Kanin make up an excuse about retrieving some old files that Kanin left behind when he resigned as chief of staff. Olivia buys the story, but when she sees the panel on the wall that covered the controls for the recording system and that panel is ajar, she peers inside and is floored to realize what’s behind the door. Knowing now what Kanin was really after, Olivia has him detained by White House security and has his person searched. A data card is pulled from Kanin’s pocket and he is then escorted off the premises. On his way out, Kanin is handed another data card from Agent Pierce. While Olivia destroys the one she recovered, the real data card is in Kanin’s possession. He takes it to his car, pops it into the playback device he has on hand for just such an occasion and is horrified to hear Pierce’s suspicions of a murder-for-hire plot between Olivia and Martin Collier confirmed. He strides back into the White House, is led into Olivia’s office by Agent Pierce and plays the recording for her. She is caught in her lies and tries to sweep things under the rug by offering to resign and giving Kanin his job back. His response is to shoot down the offer and demand that she come clean with the president and allow her to decide what to do with the tapes. When Olivia does sit her parents down to come clean, her father Henry is sympathetic and suggests that President Taylor destroy the tapes to protect their family from any further losses. The president is unsure of what to do and is pulled away for a briefing, giving her time to decide what to do. When she returns, she informs Olivia that she won't destroy the tape and that she’s remanding her own daughter into federal custody to answer for her crimes. Henry is livid with his wife, but at least she has Ethan Kanin to rely on. He rescinds his letter of resignation and resumes his duties as chief of staff, effective immediately. The last bit of business centers on Tim Woods, the presidential advisor who departs to pick up Alan Wilson from the FBI so he can be questioned. At the FBI office, Renee has Wilson in an interrogation room when Janis enters to ready the prisoner for transport. Renee demands that Janis leave the office, as she clearly intends to channel her inner Jack Bauer and do some torturing. An indignant Janis refuses to leave and counsels Renee not to throw away her career like this. Renee will have none of it, forcing Janis to handcuff herself to a pole and stepping into the interrogation room with bad intentions. So that’s where the season ends: Jack and Kim about to go into surgery, Renee set to torture Wilson for information, Tony in custody and Olivia Taylor headed there herself. There was also a funny moment of Chloe and Janis grudgingly complimenting one another’s performance during the crisis, but Season 7 ends with a lot of questions and now you have to wonder what will “transpire” between now and Season 8, when the show will be based in New York. So until then…….

- There is a select group of people in the world who are equal parts insanity, daring, adventurer and adrenaline junkie. They attempt the crazy cool feats that most of us would be too scared to even dream about, going to the most remote corners of the globe to take on the most extreme of challenges. At this very moment, people from this group are doing the impossibly insane, running 150 miles, the equivalent of five consecutive marathons, across one of southern Africa's most remote landscapes in a mere six days. They’ve come from around the world -- accountants, school teachers, farmers, CEOs -- to run this race, all without showers, toilets or beds. Racers must fend for themselves by carrying in their backpacks all the food they will need for the week. They must ration their water, battle 120-degree heat and carry an ever-present reminder of the possible dangers they face from wildlife on the course in the form of whistles to summon help should they encounter a wild animal that could turn them into a tasty midday snack. For the privilege to push themselves to the brink and possibly get eaten by a wild animal for their troubles, each person pays $3,100, not including travel costs. "Nothing has ever made more sense to me," said Jim Molaschi, a 46-year-old South Florida engineer. All told 214 racers began running yesterday, ready to cross Namibia as part of latest footrace staged by Racing the Planet Limited, which has hosted 18 similarly styled races, known as the "4 Deserts," since the mid 1990s. Each of the four courses measures approximately 150 miles, with the other three spanning Chile's Atacama Desert, where it hasn't rained in 200 years, China's Gobi Desert, where the first dinosaur eggs were discovered, and North Africa's Sahara Desert, where camels have been known to eat Racing the Planet's pink flag race markers. Of course, in the midst of ginormous deserts with ever-changing winds and landscapes, staying on course is a huge challenge. Racers’ main weapon against getting lost is a GPS unit that can help them determine where the heck they are. Only racers who complete the legs in Chile, China and Africa are allowed to participate in a walk across Antarctica known as the Last Desert. Adding Namibia to the event is noteworthy because Racing the Planet is the first group to stage an endurance event across the country’s mostly barren landscape. “Maybe when everything that you defined yourself by in the 'normal' world isn't so stable, some people want to rediscover who they are outside of 'normal.' They want an incredible experience," said Mary Gadams, Racing the Planet's director, in speaking about the great response to the event. Competitors include the usual roster of thrill seekers, including a Mount Kilimanjaro summiteer from Germany and a few Ironman competitors, but there are also some unusual entries: a British insurance broker, a Spanish government official, a Canadian physician and an American architect. Best of success to everyone running this race, I sincerely hope you all come back alive……

- Riot Watch! Riot Watch! It was a HUGE weekend for prison riots in the United States, so let’s get right to the action and not waste any time. First, a riot inside a U.S. federal prison northwest of Orlando has left eight inmates seriously injured with stab wounds and at least one gunshot wound. Yes, that’s eight inmates with either gunshot or stab wounds….awesome. This melee occurred at the high-security Coleman Federal Correctional Complex located northwest of Orlando, with seven inmates injured in the riot airlifted to Orlando Regional Medical Center’s trauma unit. As with nearly all great prison riots, a) the fight broke out in the prison’s recreation yard and b) no information was available about how the fight started. But this was far from the only prison riot in the U.S. over the weekend. In Chattooga County, Ga., a massive riot at Hays State Prison caused serious damage to areas of the facility. According to Chattooga County Sheriff John Everett, at around noon Saturday, a section of the prison became uncontrollable. Things got so out of hand that correctional officers eventually had to let the convicts take over. It wasn’t until 2:30 p.m. that prison officials finally regained control. This was a freaking beast of a prison riot, as multiple items were set on fire, cells were flooded, graffiti painted on walls, beds destroyed, control room windows shattered and several tables and chairs broken. Flat-out awesome, Hays inmates. Sounds like you guys absolutely went nuts and destroyed everything in sight, which you know I love. Free men and women engaging in massive property destruction is one thing, but prison inmates doing so is even better. Nothing shows The Man that he can’t crush your spirit quite like setting your prison ablaze, breaking things and flooding cells. Oh, and to top it off, there were no injuries to any staff or inmates. Rioting that wildly and having no one injured or killed is an impressive feat. Honestly, this just might be the best edition of Riot Watch! in some time, and I have to think these amazing prison inmates for making that dream a reality…….

- What’s a college-themed show without a good secret society on campus? Greek finally got its own secret society-themed episode last night, with Rusty stumbling upon evidence of it while cleaning graffiti off a wall as part of his community service for last week’s breaking and entering to return a stolen football from the Kappa Tau house to the athletic department. Accompanied by the uninvited presence of roomie Dale, Rusty is cleaning a wall when Dale spots a picture of an ancient Greek vase painted on the wall. He informs Rusty that the jar is the logo of the Amphora Society, a secret society alleged to exist on the Cyprus Rhodes campus. The painting of the vase indicates that the Amhporas are about to recruit a new group of inductees. Rusty decides that hunting down this secret society is a good use of his time and delves into a detailed search for information about the Amhporas. He soon pulls Dale into his search and also finds a post on an Amphora-themed Internet message board from a user named Cappie. Rusty correctly believes it to be Kappa Tau president and his own frat big bro Cappie. However, when presented with the chance to join Rusty and Dale’s Amphora search, Cappie declines. It was something he fanatically pursued his freshman year, he explains, but wants no part of this time around. Rusty’s motives for inviting Cappie to join the search are at least partially self-serving. After news of his scamming on Jordan, girlfriend of now-former KT pledge and his little bro Andy, other brothers take to calling him “Douche Mover” after the douche-baggish move of scamming on a friend’s girl. Cappie picks up the nickname and appears genuinely angry about Rusty’s actions, leading Rusty to hope that the Amphora search could smooth things over. Cappie does turn over his Amphora notebook, filled with maps of possible locations for the group’s secret lair and pages upon pages of notes. Meanwhile, Cappie goes out for some bizarre exercise time (running + tai chi?) and is kidnapped as he works out. Next thing he knows, he’s inside some underground cave/lair, standing alongside a bunch of other people with bags over their heads and in front of a group of dark, hooded figures. The leader of the hooded figures explains that this is the Amphora Society and that they have been chosen for induction. As part of the ritual, inductees must drink from an Amphora jug and say the name of one of the group’s ancient Egyptian inspirations aloud. When Cappie realizes he’s standing next to none other than Evan Chambers in line, he decides to reject the offer to join the Amphoras. No group that wants arch nemesis Evan as a member is for him, Cappie decides. The next night, Rusty and Dale continue their search for the Amphora lair in a local orchard and Cappie is once again kidnapped by the group. He’s presented with a second chance at induction, but this time his response is different. During the day, he and Rusty have had a talk about their current disagreement over what Rusty did with Jordan. Having gotten advice from his sister Casey, Rusty realizes Cappie is angry because in his freshman year, Evan stole Casey from him just the way Rusty almost stole Jordan from Andy. Rusty argues his case for kissing Jordan and he and Cappie seem to settle their differences. When presented with a second chance to join the Amphoras, Cappie changes his tune. He turns to Evan and actually apologizes for going out with Casey freshman year because he knew Evan had a crush on her first. With that, Cappie accepts the Amphora invite - only to have the ceremony disrupted by Rusty and Dale, who can be heard digging into the ground right above the group’s lair, talking about how finding said lair would impress Cappie. Once Cappie joins, the group members all drop their hoods and it’s revealed that the leader is….none other than Dean Bowman, the oft-surly and cantankerous lead administrator of Cyprus Rhodes. The next day, Rusty talks to Cappie about giving up the Amphora chase, doubtful the group even exists and oblivious to the fact that Cappie is now a member. Elsewhere on campus, Casey has a tough decision on her hands. Five of the girls who left Zeta Beta Zeta to join ex-ZBZ president Frannie’s new Iota Kappa Iota sorority want to return to ZBZ. With ZBZ prez Ashleigh out of town, Casey has to handle the situation. She considers the request and talks herself in circles wondering if the girls are really spies Frannie is trying to plant at the ZBZ house or if they really want to come back. She even goes to ZBZ sister and oft-nemesis Rebecca for advice. Rebecca suggests taking the girls back, but Casey still isn’t sure. She even runs into Frannie while getting her nails done and realizes that Frannie has no idea about the defections. In the end, Casey decides to recommend to Ashleigh that they not allow the five girls to return. Rebecca is also in need of advice, as she’s set to go on her “first lesbian date” with former ZBZ sister Robin Wiley. The date goes well, but Rebecca is concerned that the goodnight kiss wasn’t as amazing and impactful as she’d hoped. Thus, she seeks out the input of Calvin, the show’s resident gay guy. He tells her to make up her mind on whether she’s a lesbian or not so she doesn’t string Robin along and hurt her feelings. A second date in two nights confirms to Rebecca that she’s not really a lesbian, something Robin admits she knew and is okay with. So it’s back to guys for Rebecca, although she does kiss Casey the next day at a ZBZ charity car wash because they think some guys standing nearby will freak out over seeing two girls kiss. As for Calvin, he has an embarrassing situation on his hands when a guy at the gym seems to be flirting with him and asks if Calvin would like to watch a Detroit Lions game together at Dobler’s. When Calvin thinks this guy, Jesse, is leaning in for a kiss, he does the same. It turns out Jesse was just reaching for his phone and is actually straight. The next day at the gym, Calvin approaches him to apologize but gets Jesse to admit that he was flirting a bit and did like the attention Calvin showed him. A pretty funny episode overall and although there have certainly been better ones this season, it was still a pretty solid show……

A warning for famous people visiting the ATL, a Preakness observation and cruising with the NMOTB

- Rarely do I feel sorry for scam victims. Fact is, nearly every scam is so bogus and so ridiculous that oyu have to be an IQ-deprived moron to fall for it. Those who get taken by these scams are so stupid and so clueless that it’s almost impossible to feel the least bit bad for them. Same goes for anyone who loses money in any sort of lottery, because the lottery is and will always be a tax on the stupid. Thus, you can imagine what my reaction would be to hearing that a lottery scam has cost people on Colorado's western slope more than $500,000. Yes, something that combines two of the biggest threats to the dumb and inept among us, rolled into one. The Garfield County Sheriff’s Office started investigating a report of a lottery scam on April 24 and investigators found the suspects were contacting individuals explaining that they have won a large sum of money in a lottery. Hmm, sounds suspicious, no? After all, what legitimate lottery contacts people telling THEM that they’ve won and need only to pay taxes and penalties on the winnings before collecting the proceeds? I’m no lotto expert, but I’m pretty certain that the real lottery has no such taxes and penalties assessed by the lottery operators itself. No, those taxes are levied by the Internal Revenue Service itself. Also, shouldn’t it have been a tip-off to these scam victims that they had supposedly won money in a lottery they hadn’t even entered? Yes, victims received multiple phone calls and documentation from alleged government agencies, but again: What government agency is out there calling up people and looking to get money from them in exchange for lottery winnings? Worse still, the suspects told the victims they were representatives of government agencies ranging from the United States to Costa Rica. Yes, some of these suckers sent money to people claiming to be from a government agency in freaking Costa Rica. Well done, idiots. I never want to be a guy who says that people deserve to be bilked out of their hard-earned money, but anyone who fell for this scam deserved to be bilked out of their money. No arrests have been made in the case so far, and with any luck, none will - at least not until the scammers have spent all of the money they made from this operation. No one taken in this ridiculous ploy deserve a cent of their cash back, period……

- I may have just found the ideal place for all you single guys out there to pick up chicks - assuming you don’t mind those chicks being desperate, pathetic, musically retarded chicks still crazy about the crappy boy band that kicked off the boy band phenomenon a decade and a half ago. That place is (or at least was) with man-banders New Kids on the Block as they hit the high seas this weekend on a luxury cruise departing out of Miami. These five poseurs boarded Carnival Cruise Lines "Imagination" Friday afternoon on a sold-out concert cruise with fans. Sadly, tickets for this farce sold out in just 24 hours and the zealots who were looking to waste a weekend with this crap actually crashed The New Kids on the Block website in the bum rush for ducats. Yes, all five New Men on the Block will be there: Joey McIntyre, Donnie Wahlberg, Danny Wood and Jonathan and Jordan Knight. I’m not sure what’s sadder, that none of these losers have moved on to anything better in their lives or that their legions of pathetic fans still have just as abysmally awful music tastes now that they are adults. Either way, both groups of tools can revel in special performances, meet and greets and other festive garbage during the three-night voyage from Miami to the Bahamas and back. Oh, and dork fans got the chance help celebrate Jordan Knight's birthday, which happened yesterday, May 17th. Why the NMOTB reunited after 14 years, I don’t know. Honestly, they released a new album a year ago and I didn’t know that either, so I’m really slipping on my rabid following of man bands. According to Vice President of Business Development for Carnival Cherie Weinstein, about 2,100 people, overwhelmingly women in their 20s and 30s, bought tickets to the cruise. So what to do if you didn’t score a ticket for this loser-fest on the high seas? Well, the NMOTB will kick off their "Full Service" summer tour on June 4th in Atlanta, so there’s still hope for you….assuming that there’s ever hope for someone who is a fan of a man band…….

- Riot Watch! Riot Watch! Okay, so this isn’t technically a riot, but it’s more succinct than Armed Militants Break 54 Inmates out of a Mexican Jail Watch. Either way, big ups to the group of armed men who freed 54 inmates from a prison in central Mexico. This group of badasses raided Cieneguillas prison in the state of Zacatecas on Saturday, releasing the prisoners and making a clean getaway. Mexican authorities - including army and police officials - are searching for them. At this point, details on the breakout are sketchy at best, but I’d have to imagine that plenty of guns and explosives were involved, maybe even some knives. And while I realize that Mexican prisons aren’t exactly renowned for their security and impregnable walls, you have to be bringing some heavy lumber to bust out 54 inmates in one fell swoop. Plus, getting all 54 prisoners out safely and not having any of your own men caught, that’s just well-run operation. It’s not exactly a Michael Scofield-like (still, damn you Prison Break writers and producers for the crap-tacular ending of the series finale!) escape, but every prison escape can be a well-crafted, covert plan. Sometimes you have to settle for a smash-and-grab job, so big ups for giving me a different slant to put on Riot Watch!, everyone’s favorite overview of social dissidence and resistance ‘round the globe……

- Allow me to say this to all of the horse racing honks, analysts and fans who are looking to hail the Preakness as some sort of monumental event because Rachel Alexandria, the only female horse in the field, ran against and defeated twelve of her male counterparts: get over it. Whether a female horse beats 12 male horses, a male horse beats 12 females or anything in between, the bottom line is this: THEY ARE JUST HORSES. This isn’t some huge gender equality moment or occasion for us to all be so proud of how one female horse showed she has what it takes to compete at the highest level. Horse racing is still not a true sport, just as no competition where human beings do not provide the overwhelming majority of the power and energy a sport. Just like auto racing and dog racing, horse racing is little more than an excuse for degenerate gamblers to get their wager on, rich idiots with too much money to blow it owning horses and wealthy socialites to put on ridiculous hats, go to the track and sing absurd horse racing anthems (yes, they do exist). I nearly gagged up my most recent meal every time I heard an expert or analyst rave about the competitive spirit, grace and excellence of Rachel Alexandria. She is NOT AN ATHLETE, SHE IS A HORSE. Until she wakes up in the morning, says she wants to run and talks to her jockey to ask him to take her out for a run, she’s not an athlete. One positive development from Rachel Alexandria winning the Preakness is that Kentucky Derby winner Mine That Bird’s run at the Triple Crown is over and we can go ahead and ignore the upcoming Belmont Stakes even more than normal…………

- Memo to athletes, actors and entertainers: You may be legendary, you may have spent 20 years making great music/movies/plays on the court, but the muggers of Atlanta don’t give a damn who you are or what you’ve accomplished. You give them a chance to shake you down, they’re taking it. Don’t believe me? Just as Pearl Jam bassist Jeff Ament, who was mugged outside a recording studio in the Atlanta area late last month. Ament, the longtime bass player for the Seattle, Washington-based grunge rock band, was mugged along with a band employee shortly before noon on April 27 when they arrived at Southern Tracks Recording. Ament and Mark Anthony Smith were attacked outside the studio, which is the home base of producer Brendan O'Brien, with whom the band has worked before. Pearl Jam is reportedly recording a new album with the producer. Wonder if the new album will include any lyrics praising the people and kindness of Atlanta…..but I digress. On April 27, three men reportedly emerged from a nearby wooded area wearing masks and brandishing knives. They smashed windows of Ament’s rented Jeep Commander, grabbed a BlackBerry phone and other belongings and demanded money. As rock stars tend not to roll with an empty wallet, the suspects allegedly got away with more than $7,300 in goods and cash. Ament leapt from the vehicle and attempted to flee, but he was chased by a suspect and knocked to the ground. According to the police report, Ament "suffered some lacerations" on the back of his head and was treated at the scene. "At this time detectives believe the victims were not specifically targeted," a police spokesperson said. "But they believe the suspects were familiar with the studio because of its isolated location." Unfortunately for Ament and Smith, even though surveillance cameras captured the incident, the masks worn by the attackers have made identifying suspects difficult. The only helpful information came from witnesses who reported seeing the suspects flee through the woods and hop into a waiting black Maxima. Go ahead and write off the stolen items as gone for good and allow this to serve as a warning to any other musicians coming to the ATL to record at Southern Tracks: come packing heat……..

People being kind to hookers, two days of no action = rip the NBA and getting over on The Man in Georgia

- A few years ago, the NCAA had to figure out how to deal with the growing phenomenon of texting. It was a new medium for coaches to use in recruiting and because there were no rules in place to regulate it, coaches used texting as a means to get around the other restrictions that held them back from frequent contact with potential recruits. Some top-flight players received several texts a day, because the NCAA had no limit on how the number of messages coaches could send. To address the problem and to keep recruits from being stuck with massive cell phone bills, the NCAA banned text messaging in August 2007. Now the NCAA is facing a new menace in the recruiting game: Twitter. Yes, Twitter is so ubiquitous that coaches are using it to holler at would-be recruits. This week, the NCAA decreed direct messaging on Twitter permissible for coaches to use in contacting recruits. However, direct messaging on Twitter is viewed much the same way as email is and coaches can't publicly address recruits in their Twitter streams, how can they use the service to their advantage? It depends on what the coaches are tweeting and how they say it. For example, a guy like USC football coach Pete Carroll has some high-profile Hollywood friends because of his L.A. location. He can tweet about pals like Will Ferrell and in so doing, make himself seem cool to possible recruits. A recruit could see that tweet, respond with a direct message to Carroll and there you go, recruiting benefit gained. The process can also work in the other direction for coaches, allowing them to keep up with recruits through their Twitter accounts and their social-networking activities and know about the personalities, likes and dislikes of the guys they are recruiting. That would then allow them to tailor their tweets to appeal to specific recruits, another possible benefit. I still think there isn’t a person in this world interesting enough to need Twitter to keep everyone up to date on the minute-to-minute minutiae of their life, but that doesn’t mean some people won't find uses for it…….

- Is there anything people won't try to smuggle into this country? Whether it’s drugs, wine with snakes packed into the bottle or bootlegged movies and music, there is never a shortage of freaks desperate to sneak something across the border. That being said, a big shout to the two freaks from California who were recently caught attempting to smuggle Asian songbirds into the U.S. As one of the men was returning from a trip from Vietnam, he was stopped at customs and agents discovered 14 birds strapped to his legs. “Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents at Los Angeles International Airport discovered the birds under the pants of Sony Dong. CBP agents inspected Dong and found bird feathers and droppings on his socks, as well as birds' tail feathers visible under his pants," said a CBP release. A subsequent search "discovered 14 live birds attached to two flat pieces of cloth that were wrapped around his calves." Yes, dude was traveling strapped…..with fowl. What he planned to do with them, I don’t know. Probably sell them, but I have to think right now is not the best market for illegal Vietnamese birds. The economy is down, people don’t have as much disposable income and I’d imagine that putting themselves on the wrong side of the law and spending large quantities of money on a bird that some dude shoved down his pants to fly across the Pacific just isn’t something people are lining up to do. Included among the 14 smuggled birds were four bul-buls, four magpie robins, and six shama thrush birds. These men apparently bought the birds for $50 and would resell them at more than triple that price. Hard to see how their foolproof plan failed, but this is the criminal element you’re dealing with and it invariably attracts those from the shallow end of the gene pool……

- Once again, kudos to the NBA league office for its stellar scheduling of the playoffs. This gripe comes in regards to the Game 7s in both the Orlando-Boston and L.A.-Houston series, which each played their sixth game Thursday and will now get right back to action….on Sunday. Way to capitalize on the interest built from the Game 6s played last night, NBA. Nothing keeps the interest going like waiting two days to play the next game. These teams are flying from Houston to Los Angeles and Orlando to Boston, not Houston to Saigon or Orlando to New Delhi. Of course, these two days with not a single NBA game do give us ample chance to speculate when Orlando coach Stan Ron Jeremy Van Gundy will go Master of Panic and cost his team Game 7. Yes. the Panic, er, Magic eeked out Game 6 at home after Van Jeremy stumbled into his best five-men lineup that he’d managed to use exactly zero times in the previous five games. But with as talented a roster as Van Jeremy has, winning an elimination game at home is no stunner. Even the M.O.P. can't ruin every possible win for his team. Oh, and these two days will also allow us another 48 hours to try and figure out whether the L.A. Lakers care enough to show up for Game 7. They didn’t bother to do so for about 95 percent of Game 4 and Game 6, but with their season on the line you’d have to expect that a 50-plus point effort from Kobe Bryant is in the offing. He’ll drag the lifeless bodies of Andrew Bynum and Lamar Odom across the finish line if he has to (really, Bynum is actually lifeless at this point in the postseason, someone check his pulse), but no way the Black Mamba allows his team to lose this series to a Houston team without Yao Ming, Tracy McGrady or Dikembe Mutombo. Having said all of that, NBA commissioner David Stern needs to add fixing the postseason scheduling to his list of stated goals for the Association, which as of Wednesday included expanding the use of replay in games and improving security in arenas. Jump on the scheduling issue what you’re at it, D., because what you’re doing now isn’t working……..

- The Warren (Mich.) police may not be laughing, but I am. They may feel that some intrepid citizen punking them with a 911 call about a cougar on the prowl and sending 10 officers to apprehend what turned out to be a large toy car is infuriating, irresponsible and idiotic, and while it may be those things, it’s also freaking hilarious. “It's huge; it's like a 150-pound cat,” the caller told the operator. That’s what she said….just kidding. Approximately 10 officers arrived at Bates Park on 14 Mile Road east of Van Dyke and saw what looked like a big cat in an old cement drainpipe. "And I went back behind there and shined a light there -- and it's in there," said the caller. So of course the officers did what officers love to do any time they have the chance: Tase somebody, or in this case something. Police hit the cat with a Taser blast, but it turned out to be nothing more than a toy. Police Commissioner William Dwyer said officials now believe the incident was a prank (ya think?), but he said his department could not take any chances since it was near a playground. "We did what we had to do. We want to keep the city safe," said Dwyer. Safe from large stuffed cougars, no doubt. I have no tolerance for listening to Dwyer whine about how the prank cost the city more than $1,000 in wasted police hours between the response from 10 officers and the paperwork they had to file. Hopefully the prankster isn’t caught and was smart enough to place the call from a pay phone where no one saw them, because I’d love to see this person get away with this hilarious punking of the police without having to pay the city back for the wasted police officers and face 90 days probation. Sure, you can argue that some other citizens of Warren may have been unable to receive police assistance during this time because 10 officers were out taking down a toy cougar, but I’ve yet to hear any reports of such problems. For anyone who has ever met a law enforcement officer who was a total dick (which would be all of us), this is a nice bit of karma coming back to bite The Man in the ass…….

- Take heed everyone, because this is how you should treat your friendly neighborhood hookers. Too often, people treat hookers like crap and aren’t nearly nice enough to them. The public by and large needs to be kinder to these skanks. No, I’m not talking about everyone trying to be considerate lovers and kiss the hookers (yeah, I’m looking right at you, Vince “Sham Wow” Shlomi). No, I’m saying more people should take the lead of Brunswick, Ga. business owner Jessie Johnson. Johnson just can’t stand the frequent site of prostitutes roaming the streets of his town, so he’s decided to do something kind for them. Johnson and his brother, who own Otto Johnson Motor Company, have made an offer to buy a bus ticket for any prostitute to get out of town. As long as the hooker promises not to return to Brunswick, Johnson will pay for them to leave. The Johnson’s aren’t the only ones who are tired of seeing prostitutes walk the road near the intersection of Norwich and L streets night and day. The line was crossed for the Johnson's when prostitutes began propositioning their customers. “If they get put in jail for prostitution and they want to get out of town, we will buy them a bus ticket as long as they promise they won’t come back and mess up our little town here,” Jessie Johnson said. “Send them to Las Vegas. It's legal out there, you know. If they want to be a prostitute, go where prostitution is legal. Get the drugs and the prostitution off our streets. This is the only thing we can think that is actually getting some attention.” The main problem with the give-a-hooker-a-bus-ticket approach is that there is nothing to prevent the hookers from coming back to Brunswick. Sure, the Johnson’s are making these women verbally commit to going away and staying away, but I’m going to go out on a limb and say that the word of a hooker is probably not the most reliable thing in the world. You can count on a prostitute for some things, but being truthful and having integrity isn’t one of them. That being said, I do appreciate someone trying to do something nice for practitioners of the world’s oldest profession…..

A TERRIBLE ending to Prison Break's series finale, one tough sea lion in Pittsburgh and Nancy Pelosi is very confused

- The Pittsburgh Zoo & PPG Aquarium is clearly home to one very badass sea lion. Seahawk, a 3-year-old male sea lion, had been moved out of the main exhibit area at the zoo because one of the female sea lions is expecting a pup. Seahawk was moved to an enclosure near the exhibit area but he quickly proved that his temporary new home couldn’t contain him. According to the zoo, Seahawk's temporary enclosure is an area near the zoo's sand tiger shark area. He managed to escape by jumping onto a high keeper escape wall, but that was only the beginning of his escape. Once out of his enclosure, Seahawk then fell into the keeper escape area, hitting a door handle on the way down, which popped the door open. That fall placed Seahawk in a place you’d think a sea lion wouldn’t want to be: in the tank with the sand tiger sharks. One sea lion versus a lot of sharks? How about advantage sea lion on that one? “It was definitely something we were not expecting," said zoo president Dr. Barbara Baker. "Everyone's first reaction to the radio call was, 'What did they say?'” What the sharks “said” was that they wanted no piece of my boy Seahawk. "The sand tiger sharks had no interest in Hawk at all. They moved to the other side of their pool. None of the animals was hurt or injured,” Baker said. You read that right, the sharks moved to the other side of the pool to get away from Seahawk, who is clearly a bad mo-fo. Baker stated that zoo staff were actually concerned that the sharks would be the ones in danger. Once keepers realized what happened, they grabbed buckets of fish to lure Seahawk back to his pool. He obliged them and returned to his own enclosure, but only because he wanted to. I’m rooting for this guy and not only because he tangles with sharks and comes out victorious. See, Seahawk came to the zoo in 2006 after attempts to rehabilitate him to return to the wild failed. He can’t return to the wild and so the zoo is going to be his home from here on out. With that in mind, the handle on the door Seahawk used has been removed and the keeper wall raised to protect the tiger sharks, er, keep Seahawk in his enclosure. Hang tough, Seahawk, but I don’t think I need to even tell you that…….

- Nothing like a good orgy scandal to jump start interest in your rugby team. You probably have never heard of the Cronulla Sharks rugby team and if somewhere in the neighborhood of 11 members of the team weren’t reprehensible perverts, you like never would have. The Sharks are an Australian squad based just outside of Sydney, but these guys would be freaks no matter where they leave. A woman identified only as “Clare” claims one night way back in 2002, six players from the team had sex with her while five watched. Not sure why this matter is just now coming to light, but based on the reaction of the Shark players, the allegations have at least some truth in them. Ten of the players fingered for their involvement in the alleged freakery were running for cover this, leaving Matthew Johns to face the shameful episode alone. The only comments the players have made are denials that they were in the hotel room despite "Clare" claiming otherwise. Others among the accused are claiming to have foggy memories about who was in the room and who wasn’t, despite a plea from Cronulla chairman Barry Pierce yesterday for those responsible to admit their part. “Matthew Johns has been man enough to apologize for his actions and so too should all involved. I look back now appreciating that more should have been done on our part,” Pierce said. Well thanks for getting around to expressing contrition for your lack of effort nearly a decade after the fact, Barr. The problem is that you still have guys like Cronulla legend and then captain David Peachey denying any involvement or knowledge of the incident. "I couldn't tell you who was in the room," Peachey said. So far, only Johns and former Sharks halfback Brett Firman have been identified as having sex with the woman known as "Clare". Present captain Paul Gallen has admitted walking into the room after the session was over. The incident has led sports officials in Australia to call for a change in the male domination of sport and to demand that more women should be appointed to sporting boards. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd called on all sporting codes to foster greater respect for women and backed the sidelining of Johns. Personally, I knew and cared nothing about Australian rugby prior to this scandal and if not for it, I would never have written about it, so I think those associated with the sport need to consider how much attention their game is receiving as a result of this orgy before they start tearing down those who were involved in it…………

- It’s physically impossible for anyone to look quite as bad as W. and anyone from his administration when it comes to the issue of torture and abuse of prisoner rights, but House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is closing that gap quickly. She’s waffled so much on the issue of what and how much she knew about the use of "enhanced interrogation techniques" that I’m seriously questioning whether this woman has a split personality. Pelosi accused CIA officials Thursday of misleading her in 2002 about the use of such as waterboarding, which simulates drowning and has been described by critics as torture. She recycled an earlier claim that she was briefed on such techniques only once -- in September 2002 -- and that she was told at the time that the techniques were not being used. She did admit that the CIA officials who briefed her had admitted to seeking approval for the use of such tactics, but my girl N. Pelosi apparently is so dense or naïve that she couldn’t put two and two together to figure out that the only reason the CIA would ask about the legality and permissibility of using torture tactics was because they planned to….USE THEM! This issue is coming up because the Obama administration recently released the so-called torture memos from the W. administration and one of those Justice Department memos says that the CIA used waterboarding at least 83 times in August 2002 in the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, a suspected al Qaeda leader imprisoned at U.S. facilities in Guantanamo Bay. If you believe Pelosi, when she met with CIA officials just a month later, she was told only that the Justice Department had concluded that such techniques were legal, not that they were being used. One former senior intelligence official was asked about Pelosi’s claims on Thursday and said that it is "inconceivable" that the CIA briefers would not have talked about interrogation methods that had already been used. “I can't prove it," the official said. “The whole point [of the briefings] was to make sure they [lawmakers] understood what we were doing.” Of course, Nancy Pelosi would counter that the briefing she received from the CIA was incomplete and inaccurate. She did she call on the CIA to release a full transcript of it, which seems like a hollow ploy because she knows that won't happen. Following the briefing - whatever happened there - Pelosi claimed that in February 2003, a member of her staff told her that the Republican chairman and the new Democratic ranking member of the Intelligence Committee had been briefed on the use of enhanced interrogation techniques. After those briefings, Pelosi said that the Democratic ranking member of the committee sent a letter of protest, but "no letter could change [the W. administration's] policy.” All of these comments might hold more water if Pelosi hadn’t started out by telling reporters that she was not told waterboarding or any other enhanced interrogation methods were being used and then had to double back after reports came out claiming she was told by her aide about waterboarding in February. Asked why she didn't mention that before, Pelosi said, "I told you what our briefing was. When my assistant told me that the committee had been briefed -- now, I'm not on that committee any more. I'm now out of it.” Yes, you are certainly out of it. You’re out of touch with the truth, with the facts and with reality. This is coming from someone who is more on your side in the torture debate than I am on the W. side, but Nancy Pelosi, you’re not helping your cause, you’re hurting it and you should be publicly waffling on what you know or didn’t know, man……..

- Thank God, our long national nightmare is over. Lindsay Lohan has found a job just one month after blamed the paparazzi for her lack of work. Lohan has joined the independent film The Other Side. She will play a grad student working at a scientific institute on a remote island when she befriends a group of eccentric locals harboring a dark secret. Sounds like a real winner to me, as long as by winner you mean unequivocal train wreck. What I can’t get over is Lohan pushing blame for her sagging career on the paparazzi. Right, because you’re constant boozing, partying, DUIs and unpredictability have nothing to do with it. Maybe if studios and producers felt they could count on you to stay on set and out of jail, they’d give you more of a shot. Then, you wouldn’t be grabbing the first offer that comes along and find yourself starring in a movie alongside loser musicians like Dave Matthews, and Alanis Morissette in what’s being called “a fantasy-comedy.” When Lohan made I Know Who Killed Me back in 2007, I thought it would be tough for her to make a worse movie. But I never should have doubted Ms. Lohan, because this movie could be worse - much worse. Just a thought, but the producers on this movie should strongly consider hiring a driver for Lohan so she doesn’t add to those dual DUI arrests already on her record. You may ask yourself what Lohan has been doing since those two DUIs and the answer to that isn’t going to make her look any better. She shot the film Labor Pains last year, but it's been demoted to a small-screen debut on ABC Family in July. Yes, a movie so bad that it is going straight to TV is her most recent example of her work. Production on The Other Side begins in October at an island off the coast of Massachusetts. Expect the film to be crap-tacularly bad and for whatever insurance company is dumb enough to insure Lohan by the time production starts to seriously regret its decision……

- I’ve watched four years of Prison Break and I have been rightfully pissed that Fox has canceled the show, effective at the end of Season 4. That being said, I cannot tell you how absolutely furious I was by the way the show’s final episode (and the series) ended. I’m almost livid enough to skip recapping it and just tell you how awful the ending was, but allow me a moment to compose myself and I’ll try to trudge through the recap before ripping into the uber-terrible closing moments. The two hours began with Michael having to decide between giving Scylla back to General Krantz to save Sara or to his mother to save his big brother Linc. Michael can’t bring himself to save either at the expense of the other, so he and Alex Mahone, the one non-hospitalized, non-captured member of his group, hunker down in the kitchen of a building near a Miami pier and decide what to do next. Both Christina Scofield and Krantz aren’t patient about wanting Scylla, so Michael must think quick. Mahone is pressuring him to come up with another genius plan, but Michael claims not to have one yet. His first try is to give Scylla back to his mother in exchange for Linc, or at least make it appear that’s what he’s going to do. Because Linc is wounded and in need of medical help lest his lung collapse and he die, Michael goes that route. He rigs up some homemade explosives and arranges a meeting with Christina at a nearby pier. When both show up for the meeting, Michael tries to get his mother to step on a trip wire for the explosives he’s made, but she demands that he bring Scylla to her and won't come a step farther. The meeting comes to an abrupt halt when a worker at the pier recognizes Michael from the news and calls the police, who come bum rushing the pier via boat. That causes both Michael (accompanied by Mahone) and Christina (accompanied by her man Downey and another operative) to flee. However, Christina’s operative tries to make one last move on Michael and steps on the trip wire, triggering the explosion and killing him. Everyone else escapes and goes back to their respective home bases. Christina also takes the chance to berate Linc, telling him that he’s not really her son and how stupid he is. She’s also being pressured by Indian Prime Minister Nadu Banerjee, who is the buyer for Scylla. Christina also gets a call from Michael, who demands to talk to Linc. Christina obliges and in the ensuing conversation, Michael finally learns that Sara is pregnant, courtesy of Linc, who heard it from Christina. Back in his home base near the pier, Michael next has to deal with the General, who is no more patient than Christina. He wants Scylla back or he’ll kill Sara within the hour. In the meantime, she’s being watched and constantly harassed by the despicable T-Bag, who makes no secret of his intentions to force her to have sex with him. While those two are left alone at the General’s loft/condo, the General himself goes with some of his men to the location he gave Michael for the exchange of Scylla. Of course, he promised to bring Sara and trade her for Scylla, but Krantz has no intention of making the trade. Michael knows this too, so he sets Krantz up by leaving the case that holds Scylla (empty inside) at the exchange point and going to the condo while the General is gone. He goes Spiderman, scaling the wall of the building and climbs onto a top-floor balcony. Just as T-Bag is really pressing Sara and about to get freaky, she breaks a door handle free and tries to hit him with it. He dodges the swipe and knocks her to the ground, but Michael comes up from behind and cracks T-Bag over the head with the same door handle. He and Sara escape, then head back to the building at the pier. Meanwhile, Mahone is executing the second part of their plan. He calls Christina and tells her that he has Scylla, having parted ways with Michael. Mahone wants to trade the item for the assurance that his wife Pam, who is being watched by Company men at the General’s orders, is safe. He also wants Linc in the exchange and both terms are acceptable to Christina. When Mahone shows up at the office building where Christina is located, she meets him out front with Downey and another man. First, they verify that he does indeed have Scylla. Mahone then asks for proof that his wife is safe, but all Christina offers is a claim that a mole inside the Company has identified the operative bird-dogging her and that the operative will be taken care of. That doesn’t sit well with Mahone, but Christina says it would be foolish to give him everything he wants before she had what she wants from the deal. After turning Scylla over, Mahone goes inside and up to the top floor of the building with Christina. There, he’s forced to wait inside a small room off to the side with Linc. When Linc asks what he’s doing there, Mahone tells him that he’s saving his life. As it turns out, Mahone doesn’t actually have Scylla either - not all of it. Michael removed the guts from the hard drive and put explosives inside instead before giving it to Mahone. The idea was to have it explode - triggered by an internal timer - and take out Christina, allowing Mahone and Linc to escape. Unfortunately, Christina and Downey work so quickly that they try to access the hard drive before Michael anticipated and the explosion doesn’t go off in time. In fact, it doesn’t go off at all and Christina yanks Mahone out of the room he’s in to figure out what’s going on. Before that happens, Mahone receives a call from Michael to ask what’s going on. Miami isn’t the only place things are going on, either. In Chicago, two old friends of Michael are having an unexpected meeting. Sucre and C-Note, two of the Fox River 8, have met up because C-Note is on a mission. He was out of prison on his deal with the government to testify against Mahone for his dealing with the Company, but with Mahone now disappeared, the government wants to yank C-Note’s deal and pull him from witness protection. He claims to have found a powerful ally who wants to help him and will do so if he finds Michael and Linc, gets Scylla and turns it over to the United Nations. Sucre is hesitant to accept what C-Note is telling him, but the idea of having his record wiped clean and being able to live life without looking over his shoulder is appealing. He follows C-Note out onto the street and is pointed in the direction of a waiting car, where he will be able to talk to this mysterious benefactor - Paul. Paul turns out to be Paul Kellerman, the former Company operative who turned rat by testifying on behalf of Sara at her trial and was supposedly gunned down by the Company while being transported in police custody. He, C-Note and Sucre make their way to Miami (I suppose on a waiting private jet, because they got there awfully quick) and make a call to Sara’s phone because that’s their only lead. The call is answered by T-Bag, who still has Sara’s phone. He talks to C-Note and sets up a meeting in one hour at a nearby park. T-Bag’s plan is to use C-Note’s partnership with Kellerman to reacquire Scylla from Michael, but he is outsmarted by his two former Fox River pals in their meeting at the park. With one of the General’s men nearby to watch his back, T-Bag thinks he’s in control. Sucre meets him and asks for helping finding Linc and Michael, but T-Bag tells Sucre that he needs to cooperate with the General’s agenda. When he turns to point to the Company operative with him on the bench a few feet away, T-Bag sees that the man is slumped in his seat, either dead of unconscious. C-Note appears from behind T-Bag with a gun and together with Sucre, he takes T-Bag into custody. They return to a hotel room/apartment that Kellerman has set up for them and begin torturing T-Bag to find out what he knows. Moments later, C-Note calls Kellerman and reports that he’s recovered Sara’s phone from T-Bag and passes along the one number that has been dialed most from the phone, which must be Michael’s. Kellerman calls Michael, explains the plan to turn Scylla over to the U.N. and tells him that a U.N. representative will be in Miami at 5:00 p.m. to make the exchange. He also says that he was freed by and is now working for the group trying to bring down the Company, the one founded by Michael’s father. Go through with this plan and everyone - Michael, Sara, Linc, Sucre, C-Note, Mahone and Don Self - will receive immunity. Michael isn’t sold on the plan but is willing to at least think about it. Michael hangs up and Sara tells him that Linc’s condition is worsening and he’s out of time. The four of them - Michael, Linc, Sara and Mahone - drive to the nearest hospital, Miami Mercy, to steal some supplies. Sarah and Mahone go inside, where Mahone steals a lab coat for her and distracts the head nurse long enough for Sara to sneak into the supply room and get what she needs. However, this proves to be a bit of a trap for Mahone. Also in the hospital, and on the same floor, is Don Self. After jumping from the balcony of the General’s loft last week and washing up on the beach in bad shape, someone called 911 and he was taken to the hospital. Before he can go into surgery, two FBI agents come to question him about Michael and Linc’s whereabouts. The agents claim that because he’s impeding a federal investigation, he has no rights to protection. They begin to torture him, but Self finally agrees to help them if they guarantee immunity. The attorney general grants the request and an agreement is put in place. Self calls Michael in an attempt to find out his whereabouts, but a suspicious Michael won't give up his location and hangs up before the agents can trace the call. Michael refuses to answer subsequent calls from Self, but the process is interrupted when a man claiming to be Self’s doctor enters the room. He administers a dose of something from a syringe, but when the camera pans up, it’s Downey. He and Christina have learned of Self’s immunity agreement and feel he could be a problem, so Downey drugs him with something that drastically speeds up Self’s heart, causing some sort of heart attack or stroke. Yet the FBI agents refuse to allow him to be taken into surgery because Self can still move his fingers and write, meaning he can still tell them how to find Michael. They also sift through Self’s file and find out about the operation he was involved with in L.A. to recover Scylla. This links him to Michael, Linc and even Mahone. When Mahone shows up at the hospital and the agents see him, they arrest him on the spot. Sarah gets out, but when she makes it back to the SUV and tells Michael what happened inside, there is indecision about whether to flee or go back for Mahone. That becomes a moot point when Krantz’s men show up at the hospital, having gotten a ping off Linc’s cell phone and tracked it there. One of the men breaks the passenger side window and the other, Ralph, points a gun at Michael in the driver’s seat. Left with no other choice, Michael and Co. surrender and are taken back to the General’s pad. Michael tells him that they don’t have Scylla with them, which is technically true. Krantz shows Michael and Linc a lived feed from Panama showing Linc’s girlfriend Sofia being held captive. Unless he gets Scylla, she dies. At the same time, Mahone is being interrogated by the FBI. The same agents who questioned Self press Mahone for the brothers’ location and he tells them that they have done nothing wrong. It’s the Company the FBI needs to be after, but the agents won’t listen. When Mahone refuses to talk, he’s shoved aside. Back at the General’s pad, C-Note and Sucre storm the castle to rescue their friends, having finally learned the General’s location from T-Bag. Several Company operatives go down in the firefight and the General is left with every gun pointed at him and no friendly faces left standing. Michael demands that Sofia be released, so Krantz makes a call and has her let go. With the perfect chance to kill the man who has caused him so much grief, Michael is about to pull the trigger when Sarah and Sucre talk him out of it. Instead, they handcuff Krantz to the stairwell and flee. Their escape is short-lived, as police cars come barreling down the street right behind them. Sucre decides to fall on a grenade for the team and uses his car to block to cops. Michael drives off in the SUV with the rest of the group, but Sucre is arrested and soon finds himself being questioned by the FBI, just like Mahone. And just like Mahone, Sucre won't tell the agents anything. He too goes into custody, but does so knowing his friends got away. They return to the shipping yard, where they face another challenge in the form of Christina and her men. They’ve tracked Michael via his cell phone and come storming into the room where Michael has been working, creating his homemade explosives and hatching plans with Mahone. Michael, Sara, C-Note and Mahone hide before Christina and her men enter, but she isn’t really after them. She wants the guts of Scylla and finds them hidden in one of the kitchen drawers. She turns to leave and Michael leaps up from behind a counter, pointing a gun and demanding that she drop her gun and Scylla. When Christina tries to play mind games, Michael will have none of it. He is fully prepared to shoot his own mother, even if she doesn’t think he can pull the trigger. When Michael finally does, his gun jams and Christina is about to shoot him - but Sara has snuck around behind her and blasts Christina right in the back with her gun. Christina does manage to shoot Michael in the shoulder as she goes down, but she ends up dead and he’s still living. From there, Michael knows it’s up to him to get Scylla to Kellerman and his U.N. contact while Sara takes Linc to the hospital. If Michael gets the job done, Linc won't have to go to jail and his life will be saved, so it’s a win-win. As he nears the exchange point given by Kellerman, Michael is met and surrounded by men in suits. They accompany him inside the nearby high-rise office building and Kellerman joins them in a large conference room. He explains that he was just making sure that Michael wasn’t being followed, then introduces Solomon Okella, the contact from the U.N. Okella asks to see Scylla and plus it in to his laptop to make sure it’s working. When he can’t read the drive, Okella knows something isn’t right. Michael admits that he tinkered with Scylla because he wasn’t sure that he could really trust Kellerman or that Okella was really with the U.N. Kellerman reassures him that everything is legit and Michael admits he just wants to stop running. He fishes the missing piece out of his pocket, completes Scylla and Okella is able to access all of the files on the drive. He leaves the room to make the necessary calls and the next thing we see is everyone - Michael, Linc, Sara, Sucre, C-Note, Mahone - in the conference room, signing their immunity deals. Meanwhile, Krantz is being arrested at his pad, a fitting ending for a truly despicable man. The immunity agreement are signed, hugs are exchanged and everyone goes free. Kellerman informs them that their loved ones have been found and are safe, but there is one final piece of business to discuss. T-Bag has been arrested and wants in on their immunity deal, but his fate is up to them. The group discusses it and Michael and Linc walk out to tell T-Bag of his fate. He very disingenuously asks them to forgive him and let bygones be bygones because there’s “too much hate” in the world. He even quotes Ephesians 4:32, but Linc cuts him off. He says that the group voted and that T-Bag is fortunate. As T-Bag begins to thank him, Linc informs him that what the group voted on was whether to give him a piece of gum to chew on his way back to prison. A raging T-Bag screams at the brothers as they walk away, but his fate is sealed. Later on, Michael and Sara stroll on the beach and talk about becoming parents and the life they’ll live together. A bad omen comes when Michael gets a nose bleed, the very symptom that signaled his medical condition that threatened his life last season and which an operation by the Company was supposed to cure, lest it cause a massive brain aneurysm and kill him. Sara wipes away the blood and all is well. At this point, the show flashes forward in time four years and this is where things start to absolutely BLOW. Mahone is in parts unknown, mailing a birthday card to Pam and then walking off hand-in-hand with former FBI partner Felicia Lang, who is now his lady friend. C-Note is a free man, working for UPS, enjoying his freedom and living a normal life. Sucre is in Chicago with his family, telling his daughter he is going on a trip but will be back in two days. Linc and Sofia are living together in Central America, with Linc’s son LJ in college back in the U.S. Self is a vegetable, living in some sort of facility for invalids. T-Bag is fittingly back in Fox River, where he is once again leading own own little prison gang. Sarah is then shown in Panama, strolling through a public square with her son, now about four years old. They skip off across the plaza and make their way to a local beach, where they meet with up Linc, Sucre and Mahone. Together, the group walks toward the beach and to…..A FREAKING CEMETERY. Yes, you guessed it, Michael is dead. They are gathered to visit his grave, which is about the worst freaking ending possible - EVER. They place a flower on the grave, say a few words and walk off toward the beach, and that’s how it ends. So Michael goes through all of this crap - going to prison for his brother, concocting and executing a brilliant escape plan, fleeing across the country to recover D.B. Cooper’s money, fleeing the country to Panama, going to prison at SONA and staging a second brilliant escape, coming back to the U.S. and chasing, then recovering Scylla, finally getting immunity and his life back - and then he dies? That SUCKS. Again, just an awful ending. I didn’t need a totally sappy, sugary sweet ending, but Michael not dying was a must. Just an awful, awful and depressing ending. It taints the entire series, really. It’s enough to make me glad that the show was canceled, lest it go on another season and I invest more time in it, only to end this way. What a load of crap……

Disgusting food festivals, residents of one small town who need to join the 21st century and Urban Meyer is a tad too sensitive

- Eaaaasy now, Urban Meyer. You might be a two-time national championship-winning coach, but you need to not be quite so sensitive. Meyer is a guy who runs hot and has a bit of a short fuse, so it’s not a huge surprise that he took issue with critical comments made by former University of Florida quarterback Shane Matthews. Matthews played quarterback at Florida in the early 1990s and says he supports the Gators and coach Urban Meyer, but Meyer isn’t buying it. The reason he’s not buying it is because Matthews had the audacity to criticize Meyer's game strategy during Florida's upset loss to Mississippi on his radio show last fall. As the head football coach at Florida, Meyer should expect to be under a microscope, but he seems to be under the impression that anyone who ever played football at the school should never, ever criticize anything that goes on in the program for the rest of their life. The rift started when Matthews criticized the offense following the 31-30 loss to an inferior Mississippi team. “When I watched the Ole Miss game and Ole Miss played our wide receivers about 90 percent man-to-man, it was a slap in the face to our wide receivers and passing game. I can't understand why we didn't take advantage of that,” Matthews said at the time. Woah, look at that scathing, off-base diatribe by Matthews. He reeeeally tore into the Gators on that one. Either that or he was just a radio host doing his job by breaking down the sports that he is supposed to be talking about, one or the other. Unfortunately, Meyer didn’t see it that way and he tore into Matthews - even if he didn’t name names when he levied his verbal salvo. “If you want to be critical of a player on our team or a coach on our team you can buy a ticket for seat 37F, you're not welcome back in the football office," Meyer said, according to the report. “You're either a Gator or you're not a Gator.” Bzzzzzzz! Wrong answer, coach. Matthews is a member of the media first and if you have a problem with that, that’s on you and not him. It’s one thing if Matthews is just some UF alum who is barreling his way onto TV and radio programs and lighting you up with unjustified criticisms, but he’s not. Dude has a job talking about sports and from what I can see, he did so in a fair, balanced fashion. He had a take and he shared it, period. Matthews, the Gators' quarterback from 1990 to 1992, said he was "shocked [this] has been blown out of proportion." He also stated that he has talked to Meyer and expressed his continued support for the Florida football program, but Meyer doesn’t seem to care. Ultimately, Matthews comes out of this looking a-OK and Meyer is the one who looks like a total ass, so perhaps the coach who shows an incredible amount of intellect and cool on the field needs to start showing more of those qualities off of it……

- Chester French is a band that has been heavily pimped by MTV, so factor that in to what I’m about to say. I mention the MTV angle because let’s face it, any time they promote an artist from any genre, the reality is that at their core, that artist is usually a homogenized, pop-sounding take on that given genre. In other words, MTV picks poppy bands that appeal to the widest possible range of teenagers, who by and large have garbage taste in music (Britney Spears and Maroon 5, anyone?). That being said, MTV has been pushing Chester French as an up-and-coming artist and while I’m not sold on their music, I do think the group is taking an interesting approach to releasing its music. Notice I said interesting, not unique. See, C. French is offering fans an entirely free "athletic-themed" album called “Jacques Jams” on its Web site. This isn’t a novel concept, as Radiohead offered its fans the chance to download “In Rainbows” for free, er, determine how much they wanted to pay for the album. So giving away new music for free isn’t a new idea, but that doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea. Obviously, Chester French (Harvard-educated duo D.A. Wallach and Max Drummey, named for sculptor Daniel Chester French) is hoping that hearing their free tunes will entice you to buy the band's official debut album, "Love The Future,” which came out last month. Of course, someone needs to tell Wallach that he isn’t breaking new musical ground by giving away free music, because he’s under the false impression that he and Drummey are the pioneers of this notion. “We're doing something that's never been done by a band before," says Wallach. "It's great because when you put out free music, people can spread it around as much as they want. And right now as we're just trying to expose ourselves to more people. Every new supporter helps.” The band has dubbed its fans the "VIP Concierge Service,” which should help sell a few t-shirts. Wallach and Drummey actually met at Harvard but neither graduated because pursuing their music seemed more interesting. I also have doubts about them because they are signed to uber-producer Pharrell Williams’ label and Williams is typically involved with music that is way too slick, far too heavily produced and heavily augmented. So if you want to bump on over to the band’s Web site and listen for yourself, go right ahead. And no, I don’t care that they won a place on Rolling Stone's "Artists to Watch" list in 2008. The day I allow Rolling Stone to be the arbiter of my musical tastes is the day I strap a block of C4 to my iPod and blow it into a million tiny pieces…….

- We all know that real estate in Manhattan is just about the most ridiculously inflated real estate in the world, so there are bound to be more than a few horror stories of people paying ginormous sums of money for absurdly tiny dwellings. The man standing at the peak of that absurdity right now is Kevin Patterson, who lives in what ApartmentTherapy.com calls the smallest -- and coolest -- in Manhattan. Patterson abides in a midget-small lives the terms "studio apartment" on the West End Avenue, a 210-square foot apartment for which he pays $1,550 a month.. “About 4 steps in either direction you change rooms,” Patterson says of his tiny pad. “My tips for living in a small space is to maximize every piece of furniture that you buy. This sofa converts into a sleeper, it also has storage for linens underneath and ... the bed has cabinetry all below.” To make the room appear bigger, he also has a large mirror on the wall that he claims gives the room a greater feeling of depth he says. Other tactics Patterson uses to create the illusion of having more space are using white paint to make the room seem larger and brighter, while a paper divider to give the apartment more of a two room feel. Mix in a few high shelves and bam, you’ve got yourself New York's smallest, coolest apartment and a $2,000 gift certificate from ApartmentTherapy.com for that distinction. Unfortunately, the gift certificate is to a furniture store and given his rather limited space, Patterson doesn’t exactly have anywhere to put more furniture. So what’s next for him? "I've been here for about 20 months, I'll probably move out now that real estate prices are so great all over the city," Patterson says. "To a bigger place? Probably a little bit bigger. But I do like small spaces.” No kidding, amigo. After all, it would be virtually impossible to move anywhere with less space……

- Attention residents of Reading, Ohio: Lighten up. I’m speaking to the residents who have thrown a temper tantrum about a, um, curvaceous female mannequin that a local eatery has been using as a billboard outside its establishment. The busty mannequin, named "Bar Be Q," was posed on the sidewalk outside K.T.'s Barbecue in Reading wearing a biking top and a short skirt. If you haven’t seen the pictures…..let’s just say this model has had some work done to boost her upper half, if you know what I mean. “She” is rocking a bikini top and an uber-short miniskirt, so clearly the prudes in Reading had to try and do whatever they could to rid their streets of this mannequin menace. These squares lodged a complaint with the zoning board and the restaurant's owner was cited for a zoning violation. Now, it’s up to the town’s zoning panel to sit down and decide whether to issue Bar Be Q a certificate of appropriateness and allow the restaurant to use Bar Be Q as its billboard. Boy, what a riveting town meeting that would be. There is absolutely nothing ridiculous about a bunch of small-town folks sitting around and discussing whether a mannequin is dressed in too racy a fashion to be seen on the sidewalk outside of a local business. Nothing screams provincial, small town, backwater folks quite like that sort of debate. Can’t you just picture middle-aged women and old dudes screaming at the zoning panel about how “she” is setting a bad example for their children? Right, because kids always take their cues on how to dress from inanimate plastic objects. Way to stay with the times and not appear at all old-fashioned and out of date, Reading residents…….

- The summer is festival season, and I don’t just mean music festivals. No, people gather for all sorts of reasons as the warm weather rolls in. They even gather to eat roadkill, if you can believe it. Okay, so considering the fact that the RoadKill Cook-Off festival takes place in West Virginia, probably none of us should be surprised in the least. Yes, thousands of people will soon converge on the small town of Marlinton, West Virginia, to sample dishes like Pothole Possum Stew, Fricasseed Wabbit Gumbo and Smeared Hog with Groundhog Gravy. What’s worse is that the RoadKill Cook-Off is so popular that it fills all the motels and hotels in the county. Granted, all of the hotels in a county in West Virginia isn’t exactly like filling all the hotels in Manahttan or South Beach, but it’s still depressing if you’re not a sick freak who likes grubbing on food scraped from the southbound lane of your local township highway. The festival takes place on the last Saturday in September and is run by some kook named David Cain. He who runs the event and samples all the dishes, which is probably every bit as revolting as it sounds. “There are some that are better than others, but I've never really had anything that I really didn't like,” Cain said. "But there was one year they cooked a rattlesnake in some kind of stew, and ... there was no way I could taste that one.” Wait, you down possum, groundhog and raccoon, but you draw the line at rattlesnake? Drawing a pretty fine line there, aren’t we? You might be asking yourself what inspires someone to create an even quite as disgusting as the RoadKill Cook-Off. The event began in 1991, when organizers thought it might boost attendance at the Pocahontas County Autumn Harvest Festival. Over the past 18 years, the event has grown exponentially and in 2008, nearly 10,000 people from all over the country came to last year's gathering. The rules for participants state that all dishes featured in the festival must have animals commonly found dead on the side of the road as their main ingredient, but the meat doesn't have to be actual roadkill. The RoadKill Cook-Off isn’t the only bizarre food festival, but it’s clearly the most disgusting. It’s definitely more stomach-churning than the annual Waikiki Spam Jam, described by organizers as "a street festival that celebrates the people of Hawaii's love for Spam.” Wow, you must be proud of that one, Hawaiians. Your love of Spam is so legendary that someone felt the need to create a festival to celebrate it. I realize that food and other consumer goods are much more expensive in Hawaii because of the transportation costs to get them there, but that doesn’t mean you all need to resort to Spam as dietary staple. Yet every April, thousands of people descend on Honolulu to honor the world’s most famous canned meat-like product. Hawaii does in fact have the highest per-capita consumption rate of Spam products in the United States, with almost 7 million cans worth of the quasi-meat product eaten every year in the state. I suppose one virtue of Spam is its versatility - food, spackle, putty to plug leaky pipes, a bonding agent when no glue is handy - and as such, it’s appropriate that this year’s menu for the Spam Jam will include diverse items such as Spam Fried Rice, Spam Burgers and Guava Mango BBQ Spam Sliders. “I think people are amused by the whole idea because it is pretty different. Like, why would you celebrate Spam?" said Barbara Campbell, one of the founders of the festival. "It's just about having fun, and they love the different Spam items.” One local eatery even offers Spam Chili Nachos at the festival and has since added the dish to its regular menu. Yes, it’s going to be another interesting culinary summer in these here United States……….

A so-so Smaville season finale, the Hack Eyed Peas with a big gig and Latin American leaders wanna legalize the hippie lettuce

- I’m going to shoot straight here: I’m not a huge fan of extortion schemes. My love for Ponzi schemes and pyramid schemes is well know, mostly because of how totally idiotic the people who get caught in them have to be. But extortion…..it doesn’t matter how smart you are or whether you’ve done anything horrifically wrong, you can find some despicable, sleazy a-hole who sees what you have and decides to extort you to get a piece of it. Thus, I’m not very amused by the revelation that the estranged wife of a longtime aide to University of Louisville basketball coach Rick Pitino was indicted Tuesday on federal charges of trying to extort money from Pitino and lying to the FBI. Karen Cunagin Sypher, you are officially a piece of crap. I say that not only because you committed a thoroughly reprehensible crime that has you facing a combined maximum penalty of seven years in prison and a $500,000 fine if convicted, but mostly because of how morally bankrupt you need to be to engage in such activities. Although it’s not known exactly what Sypher was trying to hold over Pitino’s head in the scam, what is known is that Sypher sent a written list of demands to Pitino courtesy of her husband, Louisville equipment manager Tim Sypher. What I wouldn’t give to have been in the room when Tim Sypher walked into Pitino’s office to hand him that list of demands. “Coach, here’s what my estranged wife wants from you to keep (Personal Secret X) from going public. Oh wait, my bad, that’s actually our grocery list, pulled the wrong piece of paper from my pocket….). As a quick aside, I’m wondering how you put together a list of extortion demands. Do you type it up, write it out or maybe cut out pictures of things you want from magazines and paste them on a piece of plain white paper, a la the way serial killers often “write” their letters to the police chasing them? This is a question I need an answer to. But back to Karen Sypher…a) she pleaded not guilty during her arraignment Wednesday and b) her demands from Pitino included: college tuition for her children, two cars, her house paid off and $3,000 per month. At some point in the saga, those demands escalated to $10 million instead. For some odd reason, Pitino wasn’t willing to play ball with some crazed woman trying to extort him for $10 million and reported the matter to the FBI. Karen Sypher surrendered to authorities a few days later when she was named in a criminal complaint, but so far the details of what she was trying to use as her leverage remain a mystery. Authorities say the coach believed it was related to an unspecified 2003 encounter with her, but the nature and details of that encounter are likewise unknown. Regardless of what happened, I feel justified in saying that if you participate in any sort of extortion scheme, ever, then you are unquestionably a douche bag of the highest order……

- I am pumped. How can a guy be anything but thrilled about the news that a subpar software company is releasing the latest edition of its substandard operating system later this year? Yes everyone, Microsoft confirmed on Monday that it is planning to release Windows 7 this year, in time for the holiday shopping season. "We are tracking well to a Windows 7 holiday," Microsoft Senior Vice President Bill Veghte. Awesome news, Billy. But I do wonder why you would want to replace a real winner like Windows Vista so quickly. After all, Vista made you the talk of the tech world. Of course, that was because everyone was endlessly mocking you and your crap-tacular OS, but you can’t be picky. If there were any real, rabid Microsoft fans, I’m sure they would be excited about this announcement. It was only four months ago that Veghte was saying publicly that such a release was not a sure thing, so this is an abrupt reversal of course. For months now, Microsoft's official position has been that Windows 7 would ship by January 2010 -- the three-year anniversary of Windows Vista's mainstream launch - and who wouldn’t want to mark such a momentous occasion in style? Apparently the feedback on test versions of Windows 7 were positive enough to convince Microsoft it could commit to a 2009 launch. I wouldn’t be so quick to do so, because it’s entirely possible that people are judging the new OS on a sliding scale and next to Vista, the preset buttons on your car radio look advanced and brilliant by comparison. This time around, Microsoft is looking to address one of the major issue that early adopters to Vista struggled with: limited graphics support. To that end, Bill Gates’ boys have been working with graphics chip vendors extensively in preparing for this launch. Veghte explained that once the product is declared final, it could be anywhere from nine to 14 weeks to be ready for launch. Personally, I’m jazzed about this release, but not because I have any intention of ever using Windows 7. No, I’m just excited to see how many ways this system f**ks up and what sort of nightmares it presents for the sad saps who do have to use it. Don’t let me down, Microsoft. I’m counting on you and your new OS for some hearty laughs in the latter half of 2009……..

- Welcome to the party, former Mexican President Vicente Fox. Please, someone pass Mr. Fox a bong and let him take a good rip from it. After all, Fox has joined three other ex-leaders of Latin American nations calling for the decriminalization of marijuana. This isn’t some random stoner playing hackey sack in the quad at the local community college; this is a guy who was Mexico's president from 2000 to 2006. “I believe it's time to open the debate over legalizing drugs,” Fox said on Tuesday. "It must be done in conjunction with the United States, but it is time to open the debate.” So not only does he want to legalize the chronic, but he wants the U.S. to do it as well. Great thinking, Vicente, I like your style. Of course, I might not have made the link between pot and the end of Prohibition in the United States in 1933, but I’ll give you some room to make your point. See, Fox links the lessening of organized crime violence after Prohibition ended to what he believes would be a similar dip in that sort of crime if the hippie lettuce were legalized. “It can't be that the only way is for the state to use force,” he said. Joining Fox in his visionary approach to this issue are his predecessor as president of Mexico, Ernesto Zedillo, and the former heads of Colombia and Brazil. All three men are members of the Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy. They’ve been touting this brilliant plan since the commission called for the decriminalization of marijuana for personal use at a February meeting in Brazil. “The problem is that current policies are based on prejudices and fears and not on results," former Colombian President Cesar Gaviria said at a news conference in which the commission's recommendations were presented. I’m going to go ahead and gloss over the fact that Fox said any change in drug laws must be accompanied by an education campaign in schools and homes and keep trumpeting his championing of the legalization of tree. These fellas on the LACDD also have some interesting thoughts on the state of legalizing weed in the U.S. “In many states in the United States, as is the case in California, they have begun to change federal policies with regard to tolerating marijuana for therapeutic purposes. And in Washington there's some consensus that the current policy is failing,” Gaviria said. Know what? That’s good enough for me. Former leaders of foreign countries think we should legalize pot? Go for it. It doesn’t matter that most of the drug violence spurring their advocacy is taking place outside the U.S.; just legalize the hippie lettuce and give the stoners what they want. If their factual backing for the plan comes from something Prohibition in the United States in the 1920s) that came eight decades ago, so be it. Heck, former
national security adviser Robert Pastor, who served under President Carter in the late 1970s, backs the comparison. “What worked in the U.S. was not Eliot Ness," he said, referring to the federal agent famous for fighting gangsters in the 1920s and 19'30s. "It was the repeal of Prohibition.” Sold. I’m on board with the quest to allow American stoners to get baked legally, so all about the Pineapple Express…….

- I’m trying to think of the best way to describe tonight’s Smallville season finale and the best I can do is…disjointed and not even close to being one of the best in the series’ seven-year history. There were no truly memorable moments and the conclusion was both ambiguous and pretty disappointing. However, let’s start at the beginning and hack our way through…..Clark gets a visit from Rokk, one of the members of the Legion of Justice, who comes from the future with a dire warning. He tells Clark that just as the Legion promised him on its last visit to the 21st century, by destroying BRAINIAC, CK was able to save the world as it exists in the future. However, his recent actions in regards to Doomsday have created other problems. Because he didn’t kill Doomsday when he had the chance and because Chloe tried to kill him by using Kryptonite but failed, Doomsday is now invincible and there is nothing to keep him from killing Clark. In fact, Rokk informs him that in the future, Clark is no longer around and that tomorrow is the day he is to die. That leaves Clark with precious little time to find Davis and Chloe and kill Doomsday/Davis. He has extra motivation from Lois, who is all over his case about not doing enough to find Chloe. Clark is instead taking a few minutes to write out a goodbye letter/quasi-suicide-ish note to the citizens of Metropolis in case he is in fact killed by Doomsday. He then zips out of the room, calls Lois as the red/blue blur and asks her to publish the letter in the Daily Planet if anything happens to him. Lois asks to meet the blur in person, but Clark says it’s not a good idea. After that, it’s back to the Kent Farm to consult with Bart (a.k.a. the Flash) and Black Canary about a plan to kill Doomsday. Clark is still set on using black Kryptonite to separate the Doomsday (Kryptonian) side of Davis from the human side. He suggests drawing Doomsday to the newly re-opened LuthorCorp thermonuclear power plant and trapping him in the miles of tunnel well underneath the plant, then trapping him there by detonating a massive explosion, along with using the black K to peel off the Doomsday side of Davis and send it into the future using the new Legion ring that Rokk gave him so that the Legion can take care of Doomsday, which they claim to be able to do. While the trio meets, Oliver Queen strides into the barn and once again berates Clark for trying to save Davis instead of killing him. Clark will have none of it and coldly informs Oliver that he’s no longer a member of the group of superheroes that he basically helped form. That’s because he crossed the line and killed Lex Luthor (allegedly, I still don’t think Lex is dead), a revelation that stuns Bart and Canary/Diana. While all of this is going on, Chloe and Davis are still on the run and currently on the outskirts of Edge City, staring at the stars on the hood of a junky old car. Davis tells Chloe a story of Persephone, an ancient mythological character who fell in love with a hideous, beast-like creature. Chloe says that they just have to find a way to keep on running and escaping, which becomes more difficult when Oliver Queen sends Jimmy Olsen to break into Tess Mercer’s computer and dig up information on Chloe and Davis’ whereabouts, as he rightly believes that Tess is tracking the two. Of course, Tess is having a really bad day all around, with someone having broken into her vault at the Luthor Mansion and stolen the Kryptonian orb she had been so fascinated with and which had called out to her and lit up magically last episode. Jimmy finds the files he’s looking for on Tess’ hard drive, but he also finds an unexpected surprise lurking under her desk: Lois. She’s there for the same reason Jimmy is, but once he finds out that Chloe and Davis are just outside of Edge City, he takes off. Lois remains behind and views more files on Tess’ computer, including a video of one of her employees at LuthorCorp being tortured and grilled about the orb, the Traveler and the Beast. When Lois finally leaves, she’s confronted by Tess, who accuses her of stealing the orb. Lois takes offense to the suggestion and a short-but-volatile chick fight breaks out at the Planet offices. The two women roll around on top of desks, on the floor and just about anywhere else you could brawl in an office. As both lie on the ground, each digging down deep for another burst of energy, Lois glances next to her and spots the Legion ring that Clark had been hiding in his desk drawer. She picks it up and next thing you know, she’s gone, transported somewhere else in time. As this happens, Jimmy has relayed the info about Chloe’s whereabouts to Oliver, Bart and Black Canary and they’ve shown up and managed to surprise Davis well enough to tranq him and capture him. Canary then sends an audio file to Clark telling him of the location, but it is actually a trap. When Clark shows up, Oliver shoots him in the back from behind with a Kryptonite arrow. It won't kill him, Oliver says, but will keep him out of the way so he and his cohorts can do what they need to do with Davis. That means taking both Davis and Chloe to the geothermal plant and killing Davis/Doomsday. But before that can happen, both Chloe and Davis regain consciousness. She argues against killing him - give it up already, Chloe - but finds a surprising opponent in the debate: Davis himself. He says that killing him is the only choice, that even her presence is no loner enough to calm the beast inside of him. Then, Davis begins to morph into Doomsday and Oliver, Bart and Canary can’t stop him or kill him in time. Chloe grabs the black Kryptonite from Bart and manages to split off Doomsday from Davis, leaving an unconscious Davis lying on the ground and the angry beast on a raging crusade of violence. Doomsday escapes and begins terrorizing Metropolis. Back in Edge City, Jimmy arrives at the scene of Davis’ capture and finds an incapacitated Clark. He pulls the green K dart from CK’s back and then watches in awe as a wound on Clark’s cheek magically heals. Clark is forced to admit to Jimmy his true identity and that Jimmy was right all along about who he and Davis really were. Clark then super speeds to the geothermal plant and gets the bad news about Doomsday’s escape. His uses his super hearing to determine where the beast is and arrives in the city to find total chaos - fires, destroyed cars and buildings and citizens in danger. When Clark confronts Doomsday, he is punched through a building and thrown around like a rag doll. Ultimately, Clark sees and opening just as Doomsday is about to land another colossal punch and surges forward, grabbing his adversary and super-leaping up into the night sky. The two crash land back at the plant, where Clark has directed Black Canary and Bart to be ready to detonate the explosives in the tunnels under the plant once he returns with Doomsday. This was actually a key scene and for that reason, it was very poorly done. Basically, we only saw Clark and Doomsday in a long shot, falling from the sky and crashing down into the plant before a massive explosion and fireball consume the facility. No close ups or views of what happened inside or how Clark got out, just a quick explosion and fade out. The next thing we see is a shot of Chloe and Jimmy inside an apartment in Metropolis that he tells her was to be her wedding present. She never got it because their wedding was ruined by Doomsday and he went to the hospital instead of his honeymoon, but now Clark has asked Jimmy to take Davis (sans Doomsday) there to recover. Jimmy obliges, but as Davis is still out cold on the floor, Jimmy shows her the apartment. It has a view of the entire city of Metropolis and although it needs a lot of work and renovation, Chloe loves it. She tells Jimmy that everything she’s done in running off with Davis was to protect Clark, whose secret Jimmy now knows too. The two kiss and vow to never be apart again, but tragedy is about to strike. An odd metallic sound causes both to look around in surprise and lo and behold, Davis is conscious again and has impaled Jimmy on a long metal pipe. He’s heard everything she just said about not really loving him and only going with him to save Clark and is enraged. He screams at her about why she didn’t love him, un-placated by her claims that she just wanted to save him and help him. Davis appears on the verge of killing Chloe too, but Jimmy summons one final burst of life and rushes up from behind to shove Davis into an expose metal rail, returning the impaling favor. Davis dies on the spot, but so does Jimmy. Chloe loses two of the three guys who mean the most to her all in one fatal moment. Next, we see Chloe, Bart and Diana at Jimmy’s funeral, where Chloe introduces herself to Jimmy’s little brother (don’t think you would have met your husband’s little brother before then? That didn’t work, storyline-wise.) and gives him one of Jimmy’s cameras while telling him that maybe one day he can follow in his big brother’s footsteps. Chloe leaves along with everyone else - except Oliver, who remains and exchanges a tense look with Clark, who has been watching from a distance across the cemetery. Clark goes back to the apartment Jimmy and Chloe had planned to share and sees the scene of the crime. Chloe doesn’t know he has survived his encounter with Doomsday or that he was at the funeral, so she greets him with a big hug before asking about Lois, who Clark assures her there is no sign of so far. Clark then stuns her by revealing that he now agrees with Oliver, that he put humanity up on a pedestal too much. It was the human side of Davis that killed Jimmy, CK explains, and he made a mistake by allowing his human emotions to cloud his judgment and keep Davis alive long enough to commit the murder. Chloe argues that his human emotions help make him the hero he is, but Clark counters that they are preventing him from being the hero he could be. He vows that Clark Kent is now dead and that everything from that life is over for him. He says goodbye to Chloe and walks out the door, off to God knows what. The final scenes of the season feature Tess at the mansion, awakened in the night by a mysterious light from outside the house. She runs through room after room and arrives at a window just in time to se the orb hovering above the ground at the base of an exterior wall. A burst of light comes from the orb and next thing you know, a dark figure is standing where the orb had been. It’s a man with his arms outstretched, standing in the midst of a symbol being burned into the ground: the symbol for Zod, the Kryptonian general who has been Clark’s arch nemesis for most of the series’ history. So is this Zod himself or just another season-ending “major” obstacle that Clark will take care of within the first half-hour of next season’s premiere? Tune in this fall and see for yourself……

- I don’t know for sure where I’ll be or what I’ll be doing on Sept. 24, but I can tell you one place I won't be and at least one thing I won't be doing then: I won't be in Asia and I won't be listening to those hacks, the Black Eyed Peas, perform as part of an international bill of artists set to honor the 250th anniversary of Guinness. Those musical jokes will perform in Asia on Sept. 24 as part of Guinness' global anniversary celebrations, which will simultaneously see 24-hours of live music and festivities take place in various cities around the world including New York, Lagos, Yaoundé, Kuala Lumpur and Dublin. Unfortunately, the country where Black Eyed Peas will be performing is yet to be confirmed. It’s unfortunate because you’d like to see the citizens in that area warned as soon as possible so they can a) being protesting, b) burn down all possible venues for the show, c) buy the world’s best ear plugs or d) flee the country. Of course, the rest of the lineup isn’t much better, with acts currently confirmed to play at the Dublin leg on Sept. 24 including Estelle, the Enemy, Soul II Soul, the Undertones, D'Banj, Reverend & the Makers, Mongrel, Mystery Jets, Johnny Flynn and DJ and producer David Holmes. The only decent acts set to take the stage are Kasabian, Noah & the Whale and the Wombats. I know, when you have a major event like this, you have to appeal to fans from a wide range of musical genres. That’s fine and I’ll go with that, except for the part where the Hack Eyed Peas become part of the equation. Those musical arsonists put douse everything that is good about music with gasoline and light the match to burn it down. Their style and songs are so off-kilter, contrived, over-produced and flat-out awful that you can’t even call them music. But hey, everything else about the event sounds cool. Transforming Dublin's St. James Gate Brewery, where Guinness has long been produced, into a live music studio for the event is a great concept. So is using the venue to host a series of performances for an audience of 2,000 guests. “2009 marks a very special milestone for the Guinness brand, from 1759 when Arthur [Guinness] signed the 9,000 year lease on the St. James's Gate brewery to today, where Guinness is a truly global brand, enjoyed in 150 countries around the world,” said spokesman Brian Duffy. To honor the brand’s year of founding, artists and consumers around the world are encouraged to raise a Guinness at 5:59 p.m. local time on Sept. 24 in a global toast to Arthur Guinness. Guinness has recruited some solid B, C and D-list celebrities to take part, including Bob Geldof, Guy Ritchie, Carson Daly, Jerry Hall and model Sophie Dahl. Now if they could only get rid of the Hack Eyed Peas……..

Lost wraps up its season, the Master of Panic rules in Orlando and Dick Cheney needs to know his role and shut his mouth

- Someone needs to tell that kook Dick Cheney that he’s no longer even remotely relevant and no one gives a damn about his opinion of the current administration or on any topic outside of the best way to blast your friend in the face with a shotgun while hunting. Heck, D. Cheney was barely relevant when he was the puppeteer, er, vice president under that tool W. Now that he’s out of office, I’m wondering why Cheney’s gums are still bumping and words are still flying out of his pie hole. Dude is relentless attacking the Obama administration and even fellow Republicans. “If I don't speak out, then where do we find ourselves? ... Then the critics have free run, and there isn't anybody there on the other side to tell the truth,” Cheney said on Sunday. Hang on, stop right there. You arrogant bastard, you are actually trying to position yourself as some noble defender of the truth and warrior on behalf of the American public? Hey ass hat, as I remember, you weren’t too reliable for telling the truth when you were in office for eight years, so how do you now become a great guardian of all that is true and right? Here’s a clue, old man: when you’re parroting comments from that pompous blowhard Rush Limbaugh, odds are you’re missing the boat….and a lot of IQ point. In referencing Limbaugh’s comments that Colin Powell no longer belongs in the Republican party, Cheney unleashed this gem: “My take on it was Colin had already left the party. I didn't know he was still a Republican.” Hey-o, can a former vice president get a rim shot? My man, when you shoot out those comedic zingers, you had better have a fake brick wall behind you and urge everyone to tip their waiters and waitresses. Of course, Cheney isn’t limiting himself to irrelevant, erroneous comments about prominent politicians. Last week, he told the five listeners of a North Dakota radio program (it’s not your fault that you have more bison than people, North Dakotans, no disrespect intended) that it would be a mistake for the beleaguered GOP to "moderate" its message. Dude has also become that annoying, omnipresent house guest you can't get to leave for the Sunday TV circuit, where he’s busily (and wrongly) as he also defending the Bush administration's use of interrogation techniques, such as waterboarding, on suspected terrorists that are deemed torture by the current administration. Hey Dick (never has a man’s name more aptly described the type of person he is), we’ve all moved on and so should you. “No regrets," Cheney said on CBS this past Sunday. "I think it was absolutely the right thing to do. I'm convinced ... that we saved thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of lives." In fact, Cheney argued, "20 or 30 years from now, you'll be able to look back on this and say this is one of the great success stories of American intelligence." Whew…..that was another funny one. Us violating multiple tenets of the Geneva Convention AND doing the very things we railed against the Japanese for doing to American soldiers in World War II will be a “great success story”? I guess if you’re that wrong and take that hard a line on your wrong thinking for eight years, you may as well stick by it and continue to look like an idiot once you leave office……..

- Where to begin with the season finale of Lost? Here’s something: it was very good, just not as mind-blowingly good as last season’s finale. The best way I can explain it is to say that it felt like the entire episode was just stringing things along, waiting for the one explosive moment at the end of the two hours. Last season’s finale had the same explosive closing moments, but there were also some great moments along the way. The obvious place to begin is with the revelation of Jacob, the mysterious and so-far-unseen leader of the island. The episode began with a man weaving on a loom in some sort of cave, then walking outside and sitting on a beach. He takes a fish from a trap, sits down to cook the fish over and open flame and stares off at a ship in the distance. The scene is odd because it’s a sailboat, the sort of boat you’d expect to see in the 1700s or 1800s. The man is joined by a second man who sits down and asks what the people on the ship want. The first man answers that they can ask the boat people once they arrive. The second man counters by saying that the first man, whom he calls Jacob, brought the boat here to “prove me wrong.” He then asks Jacob if he knows he much he would like to kill him, and Jacob answers that he does. So that’s Jacob, who has clearly been on the island for hundreds of years. Throughout the episode, we also see Jacob visiting each member of the Oceanic Six off of the island. He’s there when Kate is five or six years old and tries to steal a New Kids on the Block lunch box from the local convenience store. Jacob pays for the lunchbox and makes Kate promise she won't steal anymore. He’s there at Sawyer’s parents’ funeral to offer an eight-year-old Sawyer condolences after his father killed his mother and then himself because the con man from whom Sawyer took his name had swindled them out of their life savings. That’s also the day Sawyer writes his now-famous letter to that con man, vowing revenge for his parents’ death. It’s the letter Sawyer carried with him all his life and forced that con man, who also conned John Locke out of a kidney, and made him read when they finally met inside the abandoned slave ship mysteriously located in the middle of the jungle on the island. Jacob lent Sawyer the pen used to write that very letter. He was there at the hospital after Jack finished his first surgical procedure and tried to get a candy bar out of an uncooperative vending machine. Likewise, Jacob was there when Locke went to confront that man who conned him into donating a kidney, then threw him out of an apartment window several stories off the ground after Locke came to confront him. Jacob sat reading a book on a bench nearby, as if expecting Locke to fall to the ground a few feet behind him. He strolls over, places his hand on an unconscious/possibly dead Locke’s shoulder and brings him back to life/consciousness. Jacob then assures him that it’ll all be okay and walks away. Jacob was there at Sun and Jin’s wedding in Korea, offering congratulations to the bride and groom in fluent Korean even though neither of them knew who he was. Jacob was also on the street in L.A. behind Sayid, asking him for directions at the very moment when Sayid’s beloved Nadia was hit by a car and died. And lastly, he was there when Hurley was released from prison following his return to L.A. from the island as member of the Oceanic Six. Once the police realized that Hurley didn’t kill the people that he was accused of murdering while on the run with Sayid, he was released (although he did try to talk the cop who processed him out into reconsidering) and Jacob was waiting in a cab outside the jail. He was the one who told Hurley to get on Ajira flight 316, the flight that took the rest of the Oceanic Six back to the island. Hurley said he didn’t want to go because he was cursed, but Jacob assured him that he wasn’t cursed, but actually blessed because he could now see and talk to his dead friends. As for life back on the island, Jack is still on his mission to use the nuclear bomb that Daniel Faraday wrote about in his journal to blow up the Swan Station and the hatch that was placed over the pocket of negatively charged energy under the station, thus preventing the hatch from existing and preventing the crash of Oceanic 815 some 30 years in the future because Desmond Hume neglects to press the button to diffuse the negative energy that buildings up every 108 minutes inside the hatch. Jack is helped by Sayid, who follows the directions in Daniel’s journal to remove the plutonium core from the center of the bomb, which is all that is needed to trigger the explosion. Transporting the entire 20-ton bomb is out of the question, so the core will have to do. With the core in tow, the two men move out, accompanied by Richard Alpert and Eloise Hawking of the Others/Hostiles. After trudging through tunnels leading under the island, Richard stops at a section of wall and begin smashing it with a sledgehammer. On the other side is a set of stairs leading up into one of the home in the Dharma Initiative barracks. Eloise is prepared ot lead the charge up the stairs, but at the last moment Richard conks her on the head with his gun and knocks her out. He explains to Jack and Sayid that he and Eloise have fulfilled their promise to help in this mission, but that he won't put the pregnant Eloise into any more danger. They’re leaving and it’s up to Jack and Sayid to complete their mission. That mission becomes tougher when the two men surface inside the house and see the chaotic scene outside as the evacuation of all non-essential personnel from the barracks rages on. Sayid dons a Dharma jumpsuit to match the one Jack has on and they attempt to blend in while making their way across the barracks. However, Dharma security man Phil spots them as does Ben Linus’ father Roger. Roger fires and hits Sayid in his right side, not knowing Sayid is carrying a nuclear device on his back. Sayid goes down, but Jack returns fire while dragging his friend to safety. Pinned down behind a house, all looks lost until a Dharma VW minibus pulls up and the doors slides open. It’s Hurley, Miles and Jin, there to save the day. Jack and Sayid get into the van and it speeds off into the jungle. Jack directs Hurley to drive to the Swan Station because it’s the only way to save Sayid. On the way there, the van makes an abrupt stop in the woods because…..well, because Sawyer, Kate and Juliet are standing in their way. That trio was on the sub leaving the island when Kate told Juliet and Sawyer of Jack’s plan and pleads with them to help her stop him. Sawyer says he’s staying out of it, going back to civilization and accepting his life in 1977. Juliet has other ideas and when a member of the sub’s crew enters the area where the three of them are handcuffed to tables, she knocks him out and takes his keys. After all three are freed from their restraints, they go to the sub’s control room and at gunpoint, force the captain to surface the sub so they can get off. After rowing back to the island, they come across some familiar faces: Bernard and Rose, Oceanic 815 survivors we haven’t seen all season or since the mysterious disappearance of the island in last season’s finale. Rose explains that she and Bernard have simply been living in the woods in an abandoned shack for the last three years, accompanied by Vincent, the golden retriever formerly owned by fellow Oceanic 815 survivor Michael and his son Walt. Bernard and Rose tell Sawyer they had no desire to join the Dharma Initiative with the rest of the survivors who were on the island when it moved through time to 1977 because, “We’re retired.” After hearing about the new mission to stop Jack, Rose marvels that they’ve traveled 30 years through time and they’re “still trying to find ways to shoot each other.” Yet she tells Juliet, Kate and Sawyer where to find the barracks from their current location on the island so they can run off to stop Jack. That leads to the confrontation in the road, which in turn leads to Jack and Sawyer stepping off into a clearing in the jungle to talk. Sawyer requests five minutes to speak his peace and Jack agrees to hear him out. Sawyer’s argument against using the bomb to blow up the hatch turns out to be that after going back in time 30 years, he landed in a year that would have allowed him to go back home and stop his father from committing the murder-suicide that left him an orphan, but that he chose not to do so because what is done, is done. Jack counters that Locke told him he had a purpose to serve by returning to the island and that revising history by destroying the hatch and preventing the crash of Oceanic 815 was that purpose. When both men see that they can’t win the other over, an all-out brawl breaks out. Both men land good shots and are soon bloodied and cut up. Sawyer gains the upper hand and is set to choke the life out of Jack when Juliet intervenes and demands that he stop. She says that she’s changed her mind about stopping Jack and now thinks they need to help him complete his mission. When Sawyer asks why she changed her mind, Juliet tells him that when she saw the way Sawyer still looks at Juliet, she knew that she had lost him. She goes on to say that if Jack can blow up the hatch, rewrite history and prevent Oceanic 815 from ever crashing, meaning Sawyer will never come to the island, never meet her and she won't have to experience the pain of losing him. With that settled, everyone heads back to the Dharma van, where Jack takes the bomb and proceeds alone, on foot toward the Swan. Their path becomes tougher when Phil radios Radzinsky, who has been at the Swan making sure that Dr. Chang and his team keep the drill going to drill down into the ground and the pocket of energy under the site. Radzinsky orders Phil and a team of guards to come out and help secure the Swan. Phil and his men arrive and set up a perimeter, which poses major trouble for Jack. He’s crept up to the site with the bomb on his back and Phil spots him lurking in the bushes. A firefight breaks out and Jack is badly outnumbered until the rest of his friends come bum-rushing onto the scene in the Dharma van. With extra guns to back him up, Jack is able to get close enough to the hole to drop the bomb in. Sawyer, Juliet, Kate and Miles subdue Phil, Radzinsky and the other Dharma security guys long enough to create that opening. After a moment of hesitation in which Jack, Kate, Juliet and Sawyer all exchange meaningful glances because they could well eb seconds from rewriting history and making it so that none of them ever met, Jack drops the bomb down the hole and……nothing. The bomb doesn’t go off and instead, the negative energy from the pocket below the ground begins pulling everything metal towards it. Tools, vehicles, chains and even the drilling equipment is sucked in. Juliet is caught by a chain that is being pulled down the hole and it wraps itself around her waist. Sawyer tries to save her, as does Kate, but the chain has a hold of her and ultimately Juliet can’t hold her grip and falls down into the hole. Up top, Jack and Kate must pull Sawyer back from the hole to save him. Miles also helps Dr. Chang, a.k.a. his father, who has gotten caught up in the rigging for the drill. Down at the bottom of the hole, Juliet has landed at the bottom and is actually still alive. She spots the un-detonated bomb a few feet away and pounds it with a rock in a last-ditch attempt to detonate it. Her efforts work and in what is actually the last scene of the episode, a massive flash engulfs the island. However, we still haven’t talked about what’s going on in 2007 on the island, where Locke is leading “his people” to a meeting with Jacob. At the same time, Ilana (one of the Ajira 316 survivors) is arriving on the island with some of her friends and Frank Lapidus, the pilot from the flight who was also the pilot from Charles Widmore’s freighter team last season. Frank was last seen being rendered unconscious by the butt of Ilana’s rifle on the smaller island across the water from the main island, so he’s just coming to as she and her comrades paddle ashore. They discuss whether Frank might be a “candidate,” though it’s not clear what that means. When Frank is back up and conscious, he asks what’s inside a massive trunk that Ilana and her team are carrying. She decides that he can see the contents and when Frank does, he’s blurts out, “Terrific.” The group then marches through the woods and ends up at what we’ve been told in the past is Jacob’s cabin. Ilana is then shown in a flashback in a hospital in a foreign country, where she is visited by Jacob. He asks her if she’s willing to help him, and she answers yes. We don’t know what the project is, but based on what’s happening in 2007, that project would seem to involve what in the trunk and also had to do with being on Ajira 316. At the cabin, Ilana goes inside alone and finds the place abandoned. She does see a piece of cloth pinned to the wall by a knife and takes the cloth with her as she exits and tells her group that the cabin has been empty for some time and that Jacob isn’t there. On the cloth is a picture of the mysterious four-toed statue that we’ve seen in numerous scenes on the island the past five seasons. One of Ilana’s companions say that now they know where to go and off the group heads. They reach the state - or what remains of it, which is the right foot - at nightfall and there they meet Locke’s people. While Locke and Ben go inside the statue to meet Jacob (after Alpert shows them the way in), Ilana and her group come trudging out of the jungle and asks to speak to Richard. He steps forward and Ilana asks him, “What lies in the shadow of the statue?” When Richard correctly answers (in Latin, I believe), Ilana knows he;s the person she’s looking for an opens the box her friends have been carrying. They dump its contents and inside is….the body of John Locke, just as he looked after being killed and placed on Ajira 316 before it crashed on the island. Sun asks how Locke can be dead on the beach AND inside the statue, which is a pretty good question. Maybe this explains why on the walk to the statue, Locke told Alpert that after seeing Jacob, he would need to “take care” of the other Ajira 31`6 survivors. Inside the statue, Locke and Ben walk down a short hallway and into a larger room. Locke has told Ben that not only is the plan to kill Jacob, but that Ben should do it to gain revenge over the pain the island has put him through (his tumor, his daughter being murdered, being forced to leave the island). Jacob is indeed waiting for them and has clearly been expecting them. Like Alpert, Jacob seemingly hasn’t aged from any of the moments we’ve seen him in over the course of literally years, and he’s also a man of surprisingly few words. He listens patiently to a soliloquy from Ben about why Ben never saw him even once while leader of the Others, but when Locke becomes leader and demands to see Jacob, he gets an immediate meeting. “What about me?” a distraught Ben asks. “Yes, what about you,” a dismissive Jacob replies. When Locke reminds Ben to do what they came to do - kill Jacob by stabbing him with a knife - Jacob tells Ben that he has a choice on what he does. Ben’s choice turns out to be stabbing Jacob right in the heart, repeatedly. A wounded Jacob falls to the ground and as he gasps for breath, tells Lock that, “They’re coming.” He says it twice, but Locke is unmoved and kicks Jacob into the nearby fire pit, setting him ablaze. So Jacob is dead, or so it seems, but what did he mean and what to make of the two Locke’s? That’ll have to wait until next season, which won't come ‘til next calendar year……..

- I think your goal is an admirable one, Iran. After all, who can’t get with a legit attempt to reduce the number of "unnecessary executions" a nation carries out? Let’s face it, executions are messy, time-consuming and because they tend to be fairly bloody, you can’t exactly drop them in primetime TV and sell ad space for top rates. In other words, they’re a drain on society and other than offing a despicable scumbag who has committed a horrific crime, there just aren’t many benefits. The country is trying to amend some of its laws to recognize "developments," said Alireza Jamshidi a spokesman Iranian judiciary said over the weekend. “We act according to and within the framework of our laws, especially our Islamic laws. Of course, there has been a huge development in our laws in recent years. Certain measures have been sent to parliament for approval. In particular, regarding cases involving unnecessary executions. Those laws are in the process of being changed, after the approval of Parliament and the Guardian Council. We hope to see a reduction of such sentences.” I suppose it would be beneficial and helpful to clarify what you mean by “unnecessary executions,” but then again, with the amount of people Iran executes, there are bound to be a few unnecessary ones no matter how you define that term. The needed approval will come from the Guardian Council, an unelected body of six high clerics appointed by supreme religious leaders and six lawyers nominated by the head of the judiciary branch. Should the approve these legal changes, look for Iran to drop off that solid 25-30 execution per month pace it has been on while on the way to executing at least 140 people this year. Included among that number are quite a few juveniles, a fact that has not escaped the attention of human rights groups around the world. Perhaps these new laws will do enough to quiet their cries of outrage just a bit……

- Well here’s a shocker. Donald Trump will let Miss California USA Carrie Prejean keep her title despite controversy over seminude photos and charges by state pageant officials that she had abandoned her duties to devote time to opposition to same-sex marriage. Really? You mean to tell me that the lecherous, superficial, arrogant and attention-whorish Trump (who I will always love for the verbal beatdown he gave Rosie O’Donnell a couple of years back) is cool with a hot young beauty queen taking revealing pictures? No way. Following weeks of controversy touched off by Prejean having the kahones to answer honestly when flake job/quasi-celebrity blogger Perez Hilton’s question about her stance on gay marriage during the Miss USA Pageant, Trump ended all the talk of stripping Prejean of her title by announcing that she would keep her crown. Trump made the announcement at his New York headquarters Tuesday, but not before tooting his own horn by claiming that his Miss USA pageant stays "so relevant," unlike the rival Miss America pageant seen only on a small cable channel. The photos of a topless Prejean do not violate the contract she signed when entering the pageant competition, Trump said. "Some were very beautiful," he said. "Some were risqué, but again, we're in the 21st century." The Trump-ster also praised Prejean for standing up for her values while also admitting that the low scores she received from Hilton likely hurt her chances to win the pageant. Still, she’s gained a lot from the whole saga and should have a much longer-lasting presence in the public eye because of it. Had she won, she would have been just another hot, blond chick in a tiara who talked about wanting world peace and to help kids and no one would have even thought of her within a couple of weeks. Now, she’s better known than the woman who won the Miss USA title -- Kristen Dalton of North Carolina and she’s become the poster girl for anti-same-sex marriage groups. In the aftermath of the pageant, Hilton is actually the one who has conducted himself with the least class and integrity. No one was looking to bash him for being gay (not in this case, I mean), but I sure as heck will bash him for the classless, low-brow video he posted online in which he called Prejean "a dumb bitch." Why? Because she has the audacity to believe differently than you do and the courage to publicly stand for what she believes in? That’s what’s great about this country: You can believe something different than others and you have every right to do so and to speak out about what you believe. The issue of Prejean losing her crown as Miss California was an entirely different topic, as that pageant’s organizers seemingly felt that she was abandoning her “duties” as their reigning champion to crusade against same-sex marriage. Lawyers for the Miss USA group demanded that the National Organization for Marriage, a same-sex marriage opposition group, stop using video clips of the pageant in its TV ads. Miss California USA officials then seized on the relase of a seminude photo taken of Prejean to make their case that she had breached the contract she signed with the pageant. Fortunately for Prejean, the man deciding her fate is D. Trump, and I think we all know how the Donald feels about hot, young blond chicks……

- Like Jose Canseco, a self-promoting loudmouth whom people either love or hate but whose words - at least on the topic of steroids in baseball - have been proven true time and again, Shaquille O’Neal is being shown to be a basketball savant over and over - or at least every time the Orlando Magic take the court this postseason. Earlier this season, Shaq took a verbal shot at Orlando coach Stan “Ron Jeremy” Van Gundy - who does bear a striking, eerie resemblance to the infamous porn star - by calling him the “master of panic.” O’Neal explained that when Van Gundy’s team needed him the most in the playoffs, he would let them down and panic. If anyone doubted the veracity of those words, they can’t now, not after the last two games of the Magic’s series with Boston. In Game 4, the Magic lost on their home court because they couldn’t knock down a field goal in the last three minutes of the contest, nor could they defend a mediocre, overweight power forward nicknamed “Big Baby” on the game’s final play. Yet Game 5 was by far the more egregious example of Van Jeremy choking as a coach and passing that unenviable trait on to his players. The Magic, dubbed the Orlando Panic in some circles, had a 14-point lead IN THE FOURTH QUARTER. Yes, they were on the road and Boston does have a legit, upper-echelon superstar in Paul Pierce. But the Magic have a superstar too; his name is Dwight Howard. You know, the same Dwight Howard who only got 10 shot attempts in Game 5 and who proceeded to rip his coach publicly in interviews following the game for not getting him the ball more. The Panic were outscored 17-3 down the stretch and while the Celtics are a good defensive team, they’re not that good. Van Jeremy is a freaking maniac on the sidelines, rarely appears in control and doesn’t do a good job of steadying his team when an opponent makes a major run. That was true even in the Magic’s first-round series against a completely inferior Philadelphia team. The Sixers came back on the Magic multiple times and pushed them to six games when a team with Orlando’s talent and not coached by the Master of Panic probably would have swept Philly easily. At this point, I don’t see how Orlando recovers and wins this series. Van Jeremy is still their coach and he’s not changing his stripes at this point in the series. Even if they somehow manage to ride the energy from their home crowd to win Game 6, no way they win Game 7 in Boston. Not when no lead, no matter how late in the game, is safe in the hands of the M.O.P……….

Some decent reality TV, dorks have a big day and how wildfires start

- Congrats to you, dorks of the world. You all dug deep into the piggy banks you’ve been jamming your spare change into for more than three decades, got your mom to drive you and your buddies to the local multiplex in her minivan and camped out to help make Star Trek the highest-earning movie in theaters for its opening weekend. J.J. Abrams' flick raked in $72.5 million from Friday through Sunday, according to early estimates. That's the second-best opening of 2009 (after X-Men Origins: Wolverine's $85.1 million last weekend). A sizeable chunk of that amount ($8.2 million) comes solely from in IMAX showings, a new one-weekend record for the large format (beating The Dark Knight's $6.3 million). If you include
the $4 million that the movie earned in late-Thursday showings, Star Trek has tallied $76.5 million so far. For some odd reason, that exceeds the expectations of most industry analysts - I’m just not sure why. Don’t they know how many no-life-having dorks live, eat, breathe and drink Star Trek? These pathetic losers have nothing else in their lives, so when a new ST movie comes out, of course they are going to see it in droves - and see it at least a half dozen times. X-Men Origins: Wolverine was next on the earnings list with $27 million, a 68 percent decline from last weekend. That brings the movie’s total to $129.6 million in 10 days. Matthew McConaughey’s latest copy of the same damn romantic comedy he’s been doing over and over for the past five years, Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, was No. 3 with $10.5 million, followed by Obsessed (No. 4 with $6.6 million), and 17 Again (No. 5 with $4.4 million). Not surprisingly, the stupid-looking, poorly written, conceptually moronic comedy Next Day Air, starring Mike Epps, was a huge bomb. It grossed just $4 million at No. 6, which actually managed to underwhelm even the exceptionally low expectations for the movie by most observers. Overall, the box office was up nearly 22 percent from the same weekend a year ago, which continues to be a trend for 2009……

- Not that I take any joy in seeing homes and entire neighborhoods ravaged by the wildfires that regularly plague Southern California, but it is always interesting to hear just how the fires started. Each has its own unique story, whether it’s a disgruntled public employee looking for revenge and sparking the blaze, some incompetent camper who forgets to put out his or her campfire, etc. With the latest wildfire still making life miserable for residents of Southern California, it appears that this blaze, which scorched thousands of acres and destroyed dozens of homes last week, may have started by a power tool clearing brush in the area. The fire started near a trail in the Santa Barbara, California, area and appears to have been "related to the use of power tool equipment involved in vegetation clearance," according to the multi-agency group fighting the blaze. So if you or someone you know were clearing brush in the Santa Barbara area on Monday and Tuesday, the authorities are looking for you. As of this moment, the blaze is 55 percent contained and most of the 50,000 residents and business owners who last week fled the Jesusita Fire near Santa Barbara, California, returned by Sunday afternoon. Not that I would want to be the person responsible for starting a fire that displaced 50,000 people, torched nearly 9,000 acres and destroyed or damaged about 80 homes and other buildings, but this could be someone’s 15 minutes of fame - or infamy, as it were. Thankfully this doesn’t appear to be one of the worse of the California wildfires in recent years, as mandatory evacuation orders have already been downgraded to evacuation warnings. As of yesterday, portions of three roads and Highway 154 remained closed, but don’t expect that to last much longer. Eighteen firefighters were injured, but most of the injuries weren't serious and with area temperatures in the high 60s with winds between 3 mph and 7 mph on Sunday, conditions were favorable for stopping this fire before it really got out of hand. SoCal residents could be bent about having another wildfire to deal with, but they did get a whole six months to recover from , the Tea Fire, destroyed about 200 homes in the area over the winter. Sooner or later, you SoCal’s are going to need to get better at not doing things that touch off massive wildfires, lest you burn yourself right out of paradise…..

- Once again, the international war on drugs is going to hurt the common drug user and I don’t like it one bit. Joe Cokehead or Jane Pothead doesn’t need to hear that federal authorities arrested 25 police officers and two civilians in Tijuana, Mexico Friday over alleged ties to organized crime and drug trafficking. Wanna know why that is? Because drugs aren’t freaking cheap, and developments like this are just the thing to drive the price up even further. Federal authorities said the accused are linked to drug lord Teodoro Garcia Simental, also known as “El Teo,” a trafficker with operations in northern Mexico. What did Senor Simental ever do to anyone other than supply the narcotics to help them get their fix? Nothing, as far as I know. He’s looking to supply their demand and makes their lives happier, yet here are the authorities busting down doors and hauling valuable members of Simental’s operation off to a federal rehabilitation center in the western Mexican city of Rincon. Oh, and verrrry surprising that police in Tijuana would be involved in any sort of illegal drug activity, what with them being the one of the primary gateways between the U.S. and Mexico. Besides, isn’t that part of the legend of law enforcement in Mexico, that widespread corruption that we’ve all come to know and love? Busting two dozen cops and hauling them off to jail just because they were looking to line their pockets with bribes from a drug lord isn’t going to help maintain that image; it’s going to hurt it, and you shouldn’t be arresting corrupt cops like that, man……..

- As previously stated, I’m not a huge reality TV fan. There are dozens of these shows on because they are cheap to produce, easy to produce and they tend to draw big ratings due to the incredible number of mindless idiots in this country with television sets. That being said, there are two of the many that are decent shows to watch: The Biggest Loser and the Amazing Race. Both shows had their season finales this week and both had really good seasons. Between the two, Amazing Race had a better finale. That’s mostly because it contained mostly action and not a lot of filler like Biggest Loser’s finale, which played up to all the terrible clichés about reality competition show finales - lots of commercials breaks, using those breaks to drag out dramatic moments, a live studio audience that they clearly pandered to, etc. Still, seeing people who began the season uber-fat, or as Keyser Soze would put it, orca-fat, lose anywhere between one-tenth and one-half of their body weight was great. Those who read this blog regularly know how depressed obese people make me, so having these 22 individuals improve their quality of life dramatically AND remove a few dozen flabby physiques from this world is a quintessential win-win. The victor for the season was Helen, who lost more than half of her body weight and beat out 18-year-old Mike, who lost 207 pounds yet came in second. As for Amazing Race, the winners were siblings Tammy and Victor, the annoyingly perky, crafty brother-sister duo who beat out Margie and Luke (mother-son) and Jamie and Cara (smokin’ hot former NFL cheerleaders) to win the $1 million first prize. Seeing these three finish a race across three continents and multiple countries was great. The race always brings out a lot of drama and also a lot of really cool locations and pieces of culture from around the world, which is what I enjoy the most. So all in all, these are the two reality shows that are worth your time to watch and both are worth a look on your TV when they return later this year…….

- Uh-oh. Seems that internationally known Catholic priest Rev. Alberto Cutie has a tough decision to make. The man who is sometimes called "Father Oprah" because of the advice he gave on Spanish-language media finds himself in need of some wise counsel because of the difficult position he’s put himself in. As with all public figures (even those the majority of us have never heard of), Rev. Cutie (his real name) attracts attention when he goes out among the masses. Normally, being photographed on a Florida beach embracing a bathing-suit-clad woman wouldn’t be a huge issue, especially if the guy in the pictures is neither married nor engaged to another woman. However, when you’ve taken a vow of celibacy, that tends to color the outlook on your actions a little differently. Cutie admits that he is in love with the woman and is considering his options: Whether to break up with her or leave the priesthood and marry her. The woman, who has not been publicly identified, wants to get married, Cutie said. Cutie will now have some extra time to consider his choice, having been removed from his duties last week at St. Francis De Sales Catholic Church in Miami Beach, and on the Radio Paz and Radio Peace networks. All I can say is that dude better be 100 percent sure about this relationship if he decides to leave the priesthood, because I’d have to imagine that a post in Miami is a tough one to score. Being appointed to a post in a place like Bismarck, not so tough to swing. But Miami Beach…..that’s a prime gig no matter what your profession. To his credit, Cutie is owning his actions and not trying to claim that they are being misinterpreted or misrepresented. “I take full responsibility for what I did, and I know it's wrong,” he said Monday. The photos of the Cuban-American priest, also known as "Padre Alberto," were front-cover in last week's TV Notas magazine and on eight inside pages. The resulting drama led Archbishop John C. Favalora to post a message on the Miami, Florida, archdiocese Web page last week, apologizing to parishioners for what he called a scandal.” What could be good about this is Cutie’s idea (albeit a self-serving one in this case) that celibacy priests should be optional. “I don't support the breaking of the celibacy promise," Cutie said. “I understand fully that this is wrong. "I don't want to be the anti-celibacy priest. I think that's unfortunate. I think it's a debate that's going on in our society, and now I've become kind of a poster boy for it. I believe that celibacy is good, and that it's a good commitment to God. This is something I've struggled with.” Personally, I’m rooting for Cutie to choose love on this one. He and his mystery lady have been friends for a long time and the attraction was there from early on, but it was not acted on until a couple of years ago. “She's also a woman of faith," Cutie said. "She's also somebody who cares about the priesthood, who cares about these things. So it hasn't been easy.” Besides, choosing love doesn’t mean he’s abandoning his faith; it merely means he’s choosing not to be a priest. He does have some noteworthy accomplishments as a man of the cloth, including becoming the first Catholic priest to host a daily talk show on a major secular television network, making frequent TV and radio appearances and writing a self-help book, "Real Life, Real Love." Now, he must choose whether to give that all up for the love of his life……

Greek and 24 recaps, a judge that Ike Turner would've loved and Riot Watch! : Prison Edition

- The Cartwrights didn’t have a banner night on Greek tonight, but I guess every episode can’t be all happy and all laughs. For Rusty, his decision to kiss his crush (and the girlfriend of his fraternity little brother Andy) Jordan when they attended a wedding together proved to be a huge problem. Andy could tell something had happened at the wedding because Jordan was acting weird around him, but she wouldn’t tell him anything. Jordan and Rusty talked about their problem before their art history class together and agreed to pretend like the kiss never happened, but when Andy presses Rusty as to what happened at the wedding, Rusty tells him the truth. Andy is livid and feels betrayed and Jordan is pissed at him for not continuing to lie and say that nothing happened. She explains to Rusty that they simply can’t be friends anymore. The tension between Rusty and Andy causes problems at the Kappa Tau house, which is experiencing an emergency of its own. When an Omega Chi pledge breaks into the KT basement on some sort of dare and spots a stolen Omega Chi artifact - the bust of the fraternity’s founder - in the room, the KT’s discover a cache of stolen artifacts pilfered from all over campus over the past several decades. Omega Chi president Evan Chambers stops by to demand the return of the bust and gives the KT’s 24 hours to comply, which spurs KT president Cappie to come up with an alternative plan - after he and several brothers finish playing with a couple of stolen swords belonging to the archaeology department. The plan was to return all of the stolen items - some dating back 50 years - to their rightful owners in case Evan decided to rat them out to the cops, leading to a search of the entire KT house. Brothers were sent all over campus to return the items - the athletic department, archaeology, a professor’s home, etc. - and for the most part, the errands were successful. However, things turned for the worst when Andy was assigned to return a historical football to the athletic department and Rusty volunteered to go with him, seemingly to try and begin mending their strained friendship. The plan backfires when Rusty tries to get Andy to let his frustration out and without thinking, Andy slings his arm forward, chucking the football through a glass display case in the main hallway of the athletic department. Both of them run for it when the alarm goes off, but campus police snag them and they’re taken into custody. Rusty gets 50 hours of community service for his troubles, while the football coach is able to help Andy get out of any further punishment. Still, the incident gets him thinking about his status with KT. Realizing that he’s been partying too much, struggling with classes and lagging in his responsibilities with the football team, Andy decides that being in a fraternity just isn’t worth it - oh, and his frat big brother kissing his lady friend may have been a factor too. Regardless, Andy turns in his pledge pin and quits KT, forcing Rusty to explain to Cappie the reasons why. A disappointed Cappie admits he expected better from the guy he calls Spitter. As for Casey, she’s still trying to digest the reality that boyfriend Max gave up a great graduate assistant opportunity at Cal Tech to stay at Cyprus Rhodes with her. When she drops by to see him in his office, she finds that the grumpy professor he works for has relegated him to a broom closet and has Max swamped under a pile of papers to grade. Later that day, Max is finally able to shake free from work and meets Casey for a date. He wants to see his favorite movie, Weird Science, but she wants to go to Dobler’s. As they engage in a cute back-and-forth debate on things each of them has done to compromise with the other, Max slips up and jokingly mentions the sore spot about giving up the position at Cal Tech. He means it as a joke, but Casey takes it more seriously. As they hang out at Dobler’s, she brings the topic up again and suggests that Max try to land another prestigious research opportunity that a famous professor is on campus interviewing candidates for. Max explains that he can’t even interview for the position, which entails spending a month in Oxford researching some cutting-edge polymer technology, because his boorish professor won't give him the recommendation he needs ot get a meeting with Professor Stephanopoulos, who is doing the interviews. Casey suggests an alternate plan: crashing a reception that Max’s professor is hosting for Stephanopoulos at his house the next night. Because Max isn’t on the guest list, Casey must scheme with Rusty’s roommate Dale, of all people. Dale works as a student assistant for the same professor that Max is a grad assistant under and Dale is in charge of the guest list for the reception. Despite his new love interest (cougar landlady for he and Rusty’s apartment complex, Sheila), Dale agrees to help Casey and takes her as his guest to the event. She then sneaks Max in and plans to chat up Professor Stephanopoulos, hand her Max’s resume and find a way to get him that research position. Stephanopoulos sees right through the plan because she’s gotten the same treatment from many students seeking the position, so Casey changes her tact. She pretends to be a professor that Max works for who doesn’t want him to get the Oxford research position. She realizes that Stephanopoulos is the sort of person who wants what she can’t have and when she thinks Max is off limits to her, she wants him. The plan works when Stephanopoulos sees Max talking to his real professor, asks about him and finally gets some face time. She offers Max the gig at Oxford, good news he then shares with Casey. She suggests that maybe the time apart will do them both some good since she’s been feeling a bit behind in their relationship. Still, when Max leaves the next day, Casey is extremely sad to see him go and leans on Rusty for consoling. He’s dealing with his own love troubles, but manages to be there for his sister. Elsewhere, Casey’s ZBZ sis Ashleigh is trying to figure out how to keep her secret relationship with ZBZ “hasher” (basically, errand boy/cook) Fisher working. He wants to go public and have a normal relationship, but Ashleigh has her doubts. For one, she worries what her ZBZ sisters will think of their president dating a sorority employee. Second, she worries that once their relationship becomes public and more normal, it might get boring. At first, she agrees to a public date but cheats by going on the date to Gentleman’s Choice, the local gay bar that is having it’s Ladies Night, meaning an entire crowd of lesbians, all so no ZBZ sisters will be there to see the date. Fisher sees through the ploy and leaves, saying he wants more than to be just Ashleigh’s “boy toy.” As he leaves, in walks ZBZ sister Rebecca Logan. She’s there with Omega Chi brother Calvin because she’s having questions about her sexuality (i.e. is she a lesbian after kissing a girl last week and liking it) and as the show’s resident gay guy, he can give her advice. He suggests going to Gentleman’s Choice on Ladies’ Night and surprisingly enough, they meet Ashleigh there. The trio talks about their issues and Ashleigh and Rebecca learn one another’s secrets. Rebecca realizes that she is into girls and decides to call Robin Wiley, the former ZBZ sister she kissed last week. Ashleigh has an epiphany of her own, realizing it’s time to go public about her relationship with Fisher rather than risk losing him. The next day, both girls announce trheir decisions in front of their ZBZ sisters during breakfast, but much to their surprise, the sisters are okay with both revelations. Oh, and as for the KT quest to return all of the stolen items….the plan goes awry when the campus police catch Rusty and Andy and also an off-duty campus cop spots KT brother Wade trying to return two stolen disco balls to Gentleman’s Choice. The officer arrives at the KT house with Wade just in time to find the Omega Chi’s showing up to reclaim their founder’s bust and questions Cappie about the suspicious rash of returned items, specifically about the KT’s being found returning at least two of them. He threatens to dig into what’s going on, expose their misdeeds, shut down their house and see to it that every KT brother is expelled. Evan Chambers has the chance to bury the KT’s by telling what he knows, but surprisingly elects to keep quiet. The Omega Chi’s leave and the officer exits as well, leaving the KT’s to fight another day. Like I said, not a laugh-filled episode and a little heartbreak to deal with, but it’s been a really great season of Greek and this episode kept that going…….

- At least French tennis player Richard Gasquet didn’t test positive for steroids. Of course, Gasquet has admitted to testing positive for cocaine, so I’ll allow you to judge for yourself if that’s better or worse. Not sure what impact blow has on someone’s ability to play tennis, but I have a hard time seeing how it could be categorized as a performance-enhancing drug. Of course, Gasquet is telling anyone who will listen that
he's innocent. “I am gathering together proof of my innocence and I will choose an appropriate moment to express myself,” Gasquet said in a statement Sunday. Great, but you’re urine samples have already express themselves in the lab - twice. And both times, those samples turned up a positive result for Colombian nose candy. The "B" sample from the tournament in Key Biscayne, Fla., confirmed the result of the "A" sample taken the same day. As you might expect, the French tennis federation is playing it safe and not taking any real stance on the issue. The organization called the report "very surprising" and said Sunday it would wait for official confirmation before taking any action against him. Gasquet doesn’t appear to be handling the situation very well, not unless you believe that he was being truthful when he cited a right shoulder injury when he withdrew before his second-round match against Albert Montanes at the Sony Ericsson Open. Looks an awful lot like someone who knows the crap is about to hit the fan and doesn’t want to have to answer any questions about his alleged coke habit. He could face a two-year ban or a three-month ban if the tests conclude the product was consumed out of competition. No worries though, R. There have been elite players banned for snorting Bolivian marching power before, even former world No. 1 women’s tennis Martina Hingis. She was banned for two years early last year after testing positive for cocaine at Wimbledon. Before Hingis, Lourdes Dominguez Lino of Spain was banned for three months in 2002 for snorting blow. Gasquet isn’t some hack who’s barely hanging onto his spot on the tour, either; he reached the semifinals at Wimbledon in 2007 and has developed a backhand widely considered as among the best in the game. He’s
currently ranked 23rd in the world, although at this point he’s not even the French No. 1, dropping behind Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, Gael Monfils and Gilles Simon. Perhaps a few too many eight balls of coke and not enough practice time? Best of luck in fighting your positive test, Richie. I just have a sneaking suspicion that you’re going to fare about as well in the appeals process as good ol’ Floyd Landis did………

- Riot Watch! Riot Watch! Those of you who have read this blog for some time know how much I a) love riots and b) despise law enforcement, so what better combination can there be than a prison riot. Allow me to answer that question for you: there isn’t one. So I’d like to salute the inmates at the Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility who staged a nice riot Friday. The festivities kicked off at 5:45, the normal lock-in time for inmates at the facility, which is located on State Road in northeast Philadelphia. When lock-in time came, about 25 of the 100 inmates in one unit of the D building refused to lock in. Way to go, cell block D. Don’t let The Man hold you down and tell you when you have to be locked in your cell…..even though the guards telling inmates what to do and when is pretty much the fundamental concept that the entire prison system is founded upon. It’s not clear who struck the first blow and which brave inmate kicked things up a notch, but what we do know is that when the dust cleared and the beautiful sounds of a riot had died down inside the Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility died down, three inmates had suffered minor injuries and the inmates damaged a computer at the guard station and phones used by inmates. As a result of the riot, the entire facility was placed on lock-down and guards were searching for weapons possibly hidden by inmates. In other words, a win-win situation. I don’t know or need to know the names of any of the involved inmates; by the mere fact that they rioted, they are all heroes in my book. Well done, inmates of cell block D at Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility, well done………

- Tonight’s 24 was the prototypical 24 in that it offered up what appeared to be a great moment of triumph for Jack Bauer and Co., only to pull back the curtain and reveal another ginormous problem lurking. As the hour kicked off, Tony Almeida and his team of conspirators were in a van on the streets of D.C., preparing their scapegoat, Jibraan Al-Jazarian, to take the fall for the massive terrorist attack they were about to unleash using the city’s metro system. Jibraan was told to get on the metro’s red line and take it to Washington Central station. He wasn’t given any other details on what the plan was, but after heading below street level to board, he tried to tip off the clerk at the ticket counter to call the police and alert them to the plot he was being forced to participate in. Unfortunately for Jibraan, Tony had a) fitted him with an earpiece that functioned as a GPS tracker and a communication device and b) anticipated that he would try to do just what he was doing. When the clerk motioned over a metro policeman, the officer turned out to be part of Tony’s conspiracy and ordered Jibraan to put his earpiece back in and get on the train. Jibraan complied and headed off on what was supposed to be a suicide mission. Meanwhile, Jack and Renee Walker were at Jibraan’s apartment with a team of FBI agents, securing the scene after storming the building last episode to rescue Jibraan’s brother Hamin and capture Harbinson, the member of Tony’s crew who was holding Hamin hostage. After questioning Hamin and determining that he didn’t know anything, Jack presses Harbinson for information even though he was in a very weakened state after being stabbed in the neck by Hamin during the rescue in last week’s episode. After ordering the medic to withhold morphine from Harbinson and telling everyone else to turn away so he could do whatever was necessary to get the information he needed, Jack exploited the man’s wound and inflicted even more pain to make him talk. Finally, Harbinson admitted he didn’t know what the plan was but did have an emergency number to reach Tony. Jack allowed him to then receive enough morphine to talk to Tony with out allowing his pain to seep into his voice before pressing the phone to his ear. Harbinson followed Jack’s orders and lied to Tony, saying one of the phony bank transfers they had created to Jibraan’s account had been rejected by the bank and that he was calling for the authorization to re-post it. Tony took the bait and stayed on the phone long enough for Chloe O’Brian and Janis Gould to track the call back at the FBI field office. In spite of some tech dork squabbling in which Janis expressed resentment for Chloe’s attitude of superiority and Chloe was her usual prickly self, they managed to fight through Tony’s encryption block on his phone and pin his location down to the Adams Morgan district. She directs Jack and Renee there and they soon spot the van Tony is traveling in. Realizing that there is no time for a high-speed chase, Jack decides to end things quickly by twice ramming the van and disabling it. He leaps from the car rips open the side door of the van, putting him face to face with Tony, who is hurriedly trying to destroy some sort of small handheld computer. Jack pulls him off of it and hands the computer over to Renee, then chokes out Tony and renders him unconscious. Back at the FBI, Chloe receives the data from the handheld computer and explains to Jack that it is likely too damaged to pull anything off of its hard drive. That’s Janis’ chance to jump in and show that she can one-up Chloe by pulling data off remote sectors of the hard drive, data Chloe thought wasn’t retrievable. Using the recovered data, Janis is able to access the GPS tracker Tony forced Jibraan to wear and patch Jack through to talk to Jibraan through the comm channel in Jibraan’s earpiece. With the tracker, Jack and Renee figure out that Jibraan is on the metro and Jack explains what is going on. He assures Jibraan that his brother is all right and asks him where the bioweapon canister is. Jibraan has no idea about the canister, but he does remember seeing Cara, one of Tony’s accomplices, exiting the train at the previous stop. From there, Jack deduces that she must have left the canister on the train in some sort of bag or package. Once the train stops at Washington Central station, Jack instructs Jibraan to wait until all the passengers have exited and then search for the package. Jibraan scours the entire car and finds the bag under a seat. With some coaxing from Jack, he opens the bag and finds the canister inside, its timer ticking down to 1 minute, 20 seconds. Knowing that there isn’t enough time to get to the station, get down to the train and diffuse the bomb, Jack tells Jibraan he needs to run to street level and meet the HAZMAT team that will be arriving momentarily. Jibraan sprints through the subway tunnel, only to be stopped after several flights of stairs by a metro policeman. Knowing that the most important thing is getting the canister out of the subway, Jibraan screams that he has a bomb and will set it off. That causes everyone to give him some space and allows him to continue his sprint to the street. Upon arrival, he is met by Jack, who jumps out of his car almost before it stops and takes the canister from Jibraan. Jack then sprints to the HAZMAT truck, leaps inside and tosses the canister into a containment chamber, where it goes off and releases the Preon toxin gas inside of it. The day is saved - or so it seems. Jibraan is reunited with his brother, Jack has saved the world one more time and Renee embraces him and tells him that he can finally rest. Heck, Tony Almeida is even in custody, so it’s a win-win-win, right? Not exactly. As the race for the canister has been going on, Jack’s daughter Kim has been stuck at the airport, waiting to head back to L.A. after coming to town to see her father. Kim’s flight is delayed and after speaking to her husband back in L.A. and turning down his advice to see her delayed flight as a sign to stay in town and spend time with Jack in his final hours, she sits down to wait for her flight to be rescheduled. While she waits, Kim spots a suspicious-looking man in a dark suit lurking down a nearby corridor. Moments later, the same man is sitting in the food court not far away. Now unnerved, Kim moves to a different seat closer to a couple of her fellow passengers. She asks Sarah, the woman next to her, to see if the man in the food court is staring at her, but the woman passes it off as a guy simply checking out a pretty girl and doesn’t make much of it. Moments later, the Sarah’s husband Bob offers to go on a coffee run. Kim also gets up to make a run to the restroom, but she doesn’t see the same mysterious man in a suit lurking in the hallway behind her. As it turns out, the man is FBI Agent Franks, asked by Jack to watch over Kim and make sure she’s safe while she waits on her flight. Agent Franks uses Kim’s restroom break to make one of his own, but that turns out to be a fatal decision. Bob is not who he seems to be and he’s definitely not on a coffee run. He follows Agent Franks into the restroom, jumps him and strangles him. Bob then picks up a couple of cups of coffee and returns to the gate area, where he positions his laptop and its built-in camera to show Kim. That image is relayed to Cara, who has been lurking near the scene where Tony was apprehended and promises Alan Wilson, one of the members of the shadowy conspiracy that has been behind the day’s terrorist attacks, that even though the canister attack has failed, they still have a play left to make. She assures him that Tony won't be in custody long either, which seems cryptic and strangely arrogant. Yet once Cara has confirmation that Kim is being watched by Bob and Sarah at the airport, the plan becomes clear. She calls Jack’s cell phone and demands that he access a link to the video feed of Kim. Cara then explains that unless Jack follows her every instruction and helps Tony escape FBI custody, Kim will be killed (hmm, she hasn’t been in danger of being offed since Season 1, how very old school). Speaking of people being killed…..remember that whole assassination of Jonas Hodges that presidential chief of staff Olivia Taylor arranged last week? After the assassination went through despite her not wiring the funds to the hit man, Olivia called her contact, Martin Collier, to find out what happened. After refusing to discuss the matter over the phone, Collier demanded a meeting at Pershing Park. Olivia sneaks out of the White House without telling her Secret Service detail, leading to an angry call from Agent Aaron Pierce, demanding to know where she is. She lies and says she needed to run a person errand, but will be back within 10 minutes. Agent Pierce isn’t happy, but reluctantly agrees to cover for her. The meeting with Collier is short and sweet. He explains that he told the hit man to go through with the killing even though Olivia didn’t wire the funds because a) she was good for the money and b) he believed that she was absolutely set on killing Jonas Hodges, even if she got cold feet at the last minute. He chides her that the time for having a conscience about this was before she put the plan into motion and that now, she needed to wire that money and stay calm. Collier also promises ot send Olivia a computer program to erase all electronic records from their little transaction and sends her back to the White House. There, she meets Agent Pierce and again lies by saying she just needed to get away for a few minutes to clear her head after the day’s stressful events. She then steps into her office to wire the money and begin erasing her tracks, but there is one factor she didn’t count on. While waiting in the hall, Agent Pierce places a call to the man Olivia replaced as chief of staff, Ethan Kanin. Pierce asks if the automated recording system that was installed in the chief of staff’s office during President David Palmer’s administration was still in place. Kanin says that the system still exists and that when he resigned, he did not turn it off or disable it. That means it has been recording everything that has gone on in Olivia’s office since she took over as chief of staff. Agent Pierce asks how to access the recordings and Kanin tells him that he is the only one who can do so with his thumbprint. Kanin asks what this is all about and when Agent Pierce refuses to discuss it over the phone, Kanin promises to be at the White House within 30 minutes. The sh*t may be about to hit the fan for Olivia, all of which we’ll see in next week’s two-hour season finale, don’t miss it……

- If only the late Ike Turner had been Saudi Arabian. Not to make a point of ripping people who have passed away, but Ike was pretty much the quintessential spousal abuser of his time, so I know that if he were still alive, he would love the latest legal opinion by Saudi Judge Hamad Al-Razine. The judge states that husbands are allowed to slap their wives if they spend lavishly. Al-Razine made this point, and this is the beautiful part….at a freaking seminar on domestic violence. According to this brilliant legal mind, "if a person gives SR 1,200 [$320] to his wife and she spends 900 riyals [$240] to purchase an abaya [the black cover that women in Saudi Arabia must wear] from a brand shop and if her husband slaps her on the face as a reaction to her action, she deserves that punishment.” Well said, judge. What makes his remarks even more amazing is that he wasn’t speaking to an exclusively male audience. There were women in the crowd and the immediately took issue with Al-Razine's statement. Imagine their shock when they learned the remarks came from a judge. How did the conversation get off on this tangent anyhow? Apparently Al-Razine was attempting to explain why incidents of domestic violence had increased in Saudi Arabia. He said that women and men shared responsibility, but added that "nobody puts even a fraction of blame" on women. At this point, I’m tempted to step in and protect the judge from himself. He’s digging an even bigger hole with every word that flies out of his pie hole, but what say we give him a little more rope with which to hang himself? Sounds good. “Women's indecent behavior and use of offensive words against their husbands were some of the reasons for domestic violence in the country," he added. So women say things their husbands don’t like and that gives the men the right to physically abuse them? Hmm, sounds an awful lot like something I’d hear offered up by someone in handcuffs on Cops, not from someone who is supposed to be applying the law to protect the rights of Saudi Arabian citizens. The one lesson I think we can all take from this very enlightening experience: If you are a guy who likes smacking around his woman whenever the urge strikes, Saudi Arabia might be just the place for you…….

Life could be worse for Miami Dolphins fans, boozing and hazing are apparently a bad thing on one college campus and a nasty new T.G.I. Friday's dish

- I know how truly sad all Iraqi citizens must be as this Thursday nears, but I say to all my Iraqi homies, hang in there and we’ll get through this together. Yes, it’s devastating to realize that the Blackwater era ends in Iraq on Thursday and another private security firm will take over the company's security services contract in Baghdad. It’s hard to say goodbye to someone who has brutally murdered your countrymen in cold blood, lied about its widespread abuse of force and been the subject of multiple international incidents during its time operating within your borders. There’s no easy way to say goodbye to a company that once killed 17 of your fellow citizens in a totally unjustifiable shootout, but take solace in the face that as you say farewell to Blackwater, you can say hello to Triple Canopy, a Herndon, Virginia-based company, that picks up the expiring contract of Blackwater Worldwide, which changed its name to XE a few months ago. Who knows, maybe Triple Canopy will even be kind enough to senselessly murder a few Iraqi citizens just for the heck of it, then lie and make you forget that Blackwater even left. Besides, if you want to blame someone for the departure of Blackwater/XE, blame the U.S. State Department, which decided not to renew XE's contract in January. Oh, and I suppose you can toss some blame in the direction of the Iraqi government, which refused to renew the firm's operating license because of a September 2007 shooting in which Baghdad says security guards employed by Blackwater killed 17 Iraqi civilians. Personally, I get all warm and fuzzy thinking back to the good old days when the State Department hired Blackwater for a multiyear assignment in Iraq, renewable annually, to protect American diplomats and other employees around the world. Who could have guessed that these trigger-happy bastards would both murder dozens of innocent Iraqi civilians AND inspire the central storyline for Season 8 of 24? I’d call that a win-win. Plus, who doesn’t get a kick out of Blackwater/XE issuing a statement boasting that, “No one under our protection has been killed or even seriously injured.” Way to pick only the facts that support your case and ignore the remaining 99.6 percent of the truth, Blackwater/XE. And hey, with many of the company’s employees expected to go to work for Triple Canopy, maybe that same irresponsible, murderous spirit will persist. The loss of this contract is a huge blow for Blackwater/XE itself, as it constituted between one third and half of its business. Still, it’s not nearly as big a loss as the Iraqi people are suffering in losing these fine Blackwater/XE employees from their everyday lives. After all, it’s not every day a foreign government is kind enough to send gun-toting whack jobs halfway around the world to commit senseless acts of violence in your country, good times……

- Stories of diners finding disgusting, misplaced items in their food or beverage at a restaurant is nothing new. They happen so frequently that they’re typically not worth discussing - unless they involved popular eatery TGI Friday's coming up with a brand new dish: the vegetable and viper medley. When you order a vegetable medley, you probably expect some corn, a few peas, a handful of carrots, maybe even some beans. What you don’t expect is to find a severed, decaying snake head mixed in with your greens. I’m guessing that Jack Pendleton of Clifton Park, N.Y. wasn’t expecting a snake head either when he headed down to his local T.G.I.F. for what he anticipated to be a nice meal. That changed once Pendleton hit the vegetable portion of his meal. “I started to feel nauseous when I recognized what it was and I realized I had been eating the vegetables where I'd found it,” Pendleton said of the small, gray piece of rotting snake head on his plate. Pendleton had gone to the restaurant Sunday night for dinner and ordered a chicken sandwich and a side of broccoli and string beans. Notice I said chicken, broccoli and beans - no serpentine matter requested. “I finish the sandwich, and I start digging into the veggies, and I see this gray shape,” Pendleton explained. “I thought it was a mushroom, 'cause sometimes you get a mushroom with the vegetables. And I'm turning it over with my fork, and I see this green patch on the bottom. And I'd never seen a green mushroom, so I continued to look at it a little more closely -- and I noticed this v-shaped mouth. It was clearly a reptile. I'm guessing it was a snake because of the shape.” Pendleton he waved the waiter over and explained to him what he had found, but this idiot had the audacity to laugh at him. The response changed when Pendleton showed him the snake head. The waiter "took maybe a second to recognize what it was -- and then he started to gag." The waiter than apologized and took the snake head away, followed by the manager appearing at Pendleton’s table “what seemed just like a few seconds later, just as white as a sheet.” Stating the obvious, the manager told Pendleton that in the five years that he's worked at the restaurant, he’d never seen anything like this. Really? Thanks for that, Captain Obvious. To Pendleton’s credit, his main focus was that the staff scour the kitchen and make sure that the rest of the snake wasn’t lurking in someone else’s dinner. Of course, that didn’t stop him from filing a complaint with the T.G.I. Friday's corporation. An official with the parent company, Carlson Restaurants Worldwide, issued a statement saying, "We are taking this situation very seriously. We immediately pulled the broccoli from this restaurant and began an extensive investigation.” As for the snake head, it’s time for some CSI: Animal Kingdom on that slimy bugger. It’s being sent to an independent lab for testing. Pendleton says he’s satisfied with the way the situation has been handled, although all he got out of it was a comped meal. For some odd reason, dude isn’t looking to sue the pants off T.G.I. Friday’s for serving him a severed snake head for dinner. “I've had some friends say, 'You could have gotten a lawsuit out of this,'" he explains. "That's not anything I'm really interested in. It's the single most horrifying thing that's happened to me at a restaurant, but I don't have any long-term psychological damage or anything like that.” Bro, you’re missing the point. This is the United States of America and it is 2009. It doesn’t matter if you suffered any long-term psychological damage; sue first, ask questions never. If you can make a quick buck off someone else’s incompetence, you do it. Quit being noble, quit trying to act all dignified and forgiving and sue, dammit……..

- And the hits just keep on comin’ for the University of Georgia football team. Last offseason, the Bulldogs led the nation in players arrested and did so by scoring arrests in a wide range of criminal categories - attacking inanimate objects in hospital parking lots, underage drinking, etc. - and head coach Mark Richt became so tired of answering questions about his team’s knuckleheaded ways that he was openly hostile any time the subject came up. Hopefully that hostility has worn off, because it looks like Richt is about to have those same questions thrown his way once again. That’ll happen when you suspend two players for violating the school's substance abuse policy, and have another player who also violated team rules escape suspension only because he is being medically disqualified because of a lingering ankle injury. Junior tight end Bruce Figgins will miss the Bulldogs' first six games this season after failing a drug test for a second time, while sophomore defensive end Justin Houston, a projected starter on Georgia's defense, will miss the Bulldogs' first two games for failing his first drug test. Junior wide receiver Tony Wilson also faced discipline, but he is leaving the team because of an ankle injury suffered during spring practice. Maybe it’s best that Richt confirmed the suspensions in a statement released by the school Saturday instead of announcing them in person. "I'm very disappointed in the poor judgment of these players," Richt said in the news release. "They'll have to pay an appropriate price and I'm confident they will learn an important lesson from their mistake.” They will learn from their mistakes? How about you, coach? Will you learn from your mistakes? You know, the mistakes you seem to make every single year in recruiting classless, thuggish idiots with criminal tendencies to be a part of your program. Will you, Mark Richt, learn from you mistakes and start recruiting players who can stay out of jail, stay off the suspended list, stay eligible and not embarrass your program and university? Guys like Figgins, who has now been suspended twice, aren’t the sort of guys you want on your team. Then again, if Richt can't put a few more wins on the board and actually come out on top in a big game or two, he won't have to worry about who is on the roster at Georgia. He’ll find himself axed and someone else can recruit thugs, drug users and brain-dead tools to play for the Bulldogs……

- What the hey? Since when are hazing and underage drinking acceptable reasons to shut down a sorority? You are befuddling me with your bizarre ways, Zeta Tau Alpha sorority. The organization has shut down its chapter at Longwood University in Farmville, Va. after allegations of widespread hazing and underage drinking surfaced. This all began because some tattletale on the Longwood campus just couldn’t stand people having fun at the expense of others and called a national hazing hotline. Because of that call, the centuries-old founding chapter of Zeta Tau Alpha could be gone for good from Longwood University. Worse yet, this announcement came just two days before commencement, leaving students still belonging to Longwood's Greek community reeling. “I just went into shock because as a Greek, I could not imagine what would happen if my chapter was taken away. It's such a big part around here. I was in shock,” said Alpha Gamma Delta member Amanda Bolton. Oh, and don’t bother pointing out that this was actually the Alpha chapter's second chance at redemption - I’m hearing none of that nonsense. Nor do I care that these new allegations come less than two months after the group had just been reinstated following mid-March complaints of hazing and underage drinking. Where the Zeta Tau Alpha national organization sees members continuing to violate standards after being reinstated, I see a dogged commitment to the very activities that college should be about: getting drunk, having great parties and humiliating people for your own amusement. I’m sorry, but aren’t those the very principles our society is founded upon? Anyone? So not only do the Zeta Tau Alpha sisters have to deal with their sorority being shut down, they now must cope with all of the rumors floating around campus about their demise. The only glimmer of hope during this ugly time is that both Longwood University and the national Zeta Tau Alpha organization say they hope the chapter can return to campus at some point down the road. Just don’t bother bringing it back if you’re not going to allow them to haze and booze, because clearly these girls excel at both of those activities……

- It could be worse Miami Dolphins fans - much worse. As far as whoring out the name of your team’s stadium to a major corporation for a megabucks deal goes, ending up with LandShark Stadium as the name for your team’s home field isn’t so bad. It fits well in South Florida, where sharks and fishing are a big part of the culture. It isn’t awkward to say, it doesn’t sound like some type of disease and for people who aren’t familiar with the LandShark beer brand, it might just sound like a normal stadium name. For those of you who don’t know about LandShark, it’s owned by mellow musician Jimmy Buffett and is a co-project with Anheuser Busch. The announcement came on Friday and a billboard showing the new name and logo for the stadium are already up. Along with the name change, Dolphins fans will notice a whole new look to the stadium when the team hosts its first home game of the season on Sept. 21. The stadium will have a new Margaritaville-inspired area in honor of one of Buffett's most famous songs. Hopefully for Dolphin fans, the stadium will be devoid of those idiot Parrotheads, Buffet’s most hardcore fans who showed up in force when Buffett performed at an event at the newly dubbed LandShark Stadium on Friday. Buffett promoted the new alliance with new lyrics rewritten for Dolphins fans. So far, terms of the contract haven’t been made public, but I wonder how much the cost of naming rights for stadiums have gone down in these tough economic times. Perhaps that economic impact can be seen in the fact that the naming deal was struck only for this coming football season, meaning there is no guarantee that the stadium will still be called LandShark for the Super Bowl when it comes to Miami in 2010. So enjoy LandShark stadium while it lasts, Miami, because next season you might be stuck with an entirely crap-tastic corporate name on your stadium……good times……

A misguided protest in Kenya, more NBA playoff scheduling idiocy and Jack Bauer in more trouble in real life

- I present to you the newest automobile on the market, the Porskwagen. Haven’t heard of it yet? Don’t worry, you will in no time flat now that automakers Volkswagen and Porsche have reached an agreement to merge operations. The announcement of the merger continues a breakneck pace in terms of changes on the worldwide automobile production landscape, coming right after Chrysler filed for bankruptcy protection and Italian carmaker Fiat has announced ambitions to combine with Chrysler and GM Europe operations to form one of the world's largest car companies. The Porsche-Volkswagen merger comes after weeks of talks between the two companies as they sought to combine manufacturing operations. A statement on the Porsche Web site said the management boards of Porsche and Volkswagen had agreed in principle for the creation of an integrated car manufacturing group. “In the final structure 10 brands shall stand below an integrative leading company alongside each other, whereby the independence of all brands and explicitly also of Porsche shall be ensured,” the statement said. Porsche had been aggressively trying to take over Volkswagen, building a 51 percent stake in the company with ambitions to raise the stake to 75 percent. However, in the current, gloomy economic climate around the world, even a company looking to hostilely take over another company isn’t necessarily on solid financial footing. While it sought to buy up Volkswagen, Porsche also built a debt of nearly $12 billion as the world automotive market began head on a downward spiral. As with all contracts involving loads of cash, the exact terms of the agreement weren’t immediately known. The statement from Porsche said only that the agreement includes undisclosed "capital measures.” Either way, I look forward to the mash-up of a Porsche 911 and VW Beetle any day now, but just know that the name “Porkswagen” was coined here first……

- Freaking Jack Bauer is a terror both on and off the screen. However, it would probably be best for all involved parties if Kiefer Sutherland could learn to placate his inner rage when in public. After his DUI arrest in December 2007 and subsequent jail time, producers of 24 had to be hoping against hope that they had seen the last of their star in trouble with the law. Um, not likely. Sutherland was charged with third-degree assault after turning himself in to police Thursday.
 Sutherland is accused of head-butting fashion designer Jack McCollough, but will not be jailed as he awaits a court hearing. He was given a desk-appearance ticket requiring him to appear before a judge in about a month, meaning he’s free to reign terror on society until then. Witnesses have said McCullough bumped Brooke Shields at an after-party for the Met Costume Institute Gala on Monday, and that Sutherland demanded that McCullough apologize. Not sure what the link is between Shields and Sutherland, but he clearly feels strongly about her because he leapt to her defense. McCullough pushed Sutherland, and the actor responded with a head-butt, the witnesses said. I wasn’t there, but I wonder what the conversation between McCullough and Sutherland was like: McCullough: No, I’m not going to apologize and I won't say why I bumped Shields. Sutherland: I am not playing around with you, dammit! Now you will give her that explanation, or so help me GOD, I will extract it from you myself…..DAMMIT, WE ARE RUNNING OUT OF TIME! Of course, any conviction for Sutherland could trigger bigger problems, legally speaking. He is currently serving five years' probation, which started in 2007, on that DUI charge. I’m going to go out on a legal limb and say that committing an assault just might violate that probation. As a fan of 24, I’m hoping that doesn’t happen. As a fan of being able to go out in public and not a) be on the road with a drunk driver or b) get head-butted for accidentally bumping into someone, I’m hoping that it does…….

- I know I’ve written about this before, but the imbeciles in the NBA league office who format the schedule for the playoffs keep doing stupid things that I am contractually obligated to rip. For example…..does it make sense to anyone that in between the time the Dallas Mavericks and Denver Nuggets played Game 2 of their series in Denver Tuesday night that two other series - Lakers-Rockets and Magic-Celtics - would play not one, but two games AND change cities in between those games? Yes, those Mensas who schedule the NBA postseason gave the Nuggets and Mavs three days off between games, as if going from Denver to Dallas is akin to flying from South Africa to the freaking North Pole. Well done on that one, NBA scheduling gurus. Can anyone explain to me a single benefit of teams having three days off while every other playoff series plays at least one game and two of them play two games? Yes, I realize that the Nuggets and Mavs began their series before any of the other second-round matchups, but that doesn’t mean you have to dick them (and the fans) over by mixing in an extra off day to allow the other series to catch up with them. Two days between games - if a series is changing cities - should be the maximum, no matter what. As much as I hate to say it, a second-tier, peripheral league like the NHL runs its postseason a hundred tiems better and more efficiently than the NBA, so maybe David Stern and Co. would do well to take a lesson from Gary Bettman and the Soccer on Ice League……..

- Texting while driving your own vehicle is one thing. Even though many towns and municipalities are cracking down on the practice (the state of Califormia too), texting behind the wheel of your own whip I can at least tolerate. But how’s about we all agree that when operating a mass transit vehicle, leaving the Blackberry in your pocket is a rule that everyone should follow? I’d just as soon avoid incidents like the one that occurred last night in downtown Boston, Massachusetts, where a trolley rear-ended another trolley because the operator of the offending trolley was text messaging at the time of the accident. Just a guess, but the 20 people injured in the collision would probably agree with me. “The operator of the striking train was interviewed at the hospital by two detectives,: said Daniel Grabauskas, general manager of the Metropolitan Boston Transit Authority. “He admitted that he was texting at the time of the accident.” Way to be a straight shoot, unidentified 24-year-old, two-year veteran trolley operator. Perhaps you should have stepped your game up and been a stand-up guy before you decided to fire off a quick text to your girlfriend or your buddy Sal and looked up just in time to realize that "it was too late” as you “applied the brake and the train struck the other trolley.” Grabauskas stated that the MBTA has emphasized to drivers for years that using any sort of electronic device while at the controls is forbidden. The investigation is ongoing, but Grabauskas said that the operator will be fired if his version of events is confirmed. Thankfully none of the injuries was considered life-threatening, but that’s the only silver lining here. The incident happened at 7:18 p.m. as the Green Line trains were traveling between the Park Street and Government Center stations in downtown Boston. Both trains were traveling westbound when one trolley rear-ended the second, courtesy of an unidentified moron whom the MBTA will soon be better off without…….

- Maybe I’m just not grasping this concept, but can someone from the G-10, an umbrella group for women's activists in Kenya, please explain to me how urging women to withhold sex to protest increasingly frosty relations between President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga makes sense? I get the idea of wanting your nation’s political leaders to work together and engaging in protests to get their attention, but how the hell does women not getting after it with their significant others do anything to accomplish that goal? Not only is this a ridiculous protest with no actual impact on those it is designed to affect, it’s hurting innocent bystanders, men like James Kimondo. Kimondo has sued G-10 over its call for women to boycott sex to protest the growing divide in the nation's coalition government. In his suit, Kimondo claimed the seven-day sex ban, which ended this week, resulted in stress, mental anguish, backaches and lack of sleep. A lack of sleep? I’d think a guy would get more sleep if he couldn’t….never mind. The lawsuit filed Friday claims lack of conjugal rights affected Kimondo's marriage and seeks undisclosed damages from G-10. "I have not been served with the papers, but I was told they are coming and I am eagerly waiting," said Ann Njogu, executive, director of Centers for Rights Education and Awareness. "It will be interesting to see the face of a man who is not willing to abstain for the sake of his country.” Listen here, femi-Nazi: your protest isn’t going to do a damn thing to benefit your country. I’m sure if James Kimondo saw any connection at all between not having sex and the Kenyan government functioning more efficiently, he would get on board. But tell me, what about women they don’t know and will never meet refusing to have sex with their significant others will compel these politicians to cooperate with one another? Yes, Kenyan citizens are frustrated by a shaky coalition government, which was formed in the aftermath of post-election violence that left more than 1,000 people dead. They want and need their government to step its game up. The problem with your “protest” is that it does little beyond gaining attention for itself. As a renowned expert in social dissidence, I can safely rank this as one of the five worst protests I have ever, ever seen. Next…….

A proud day to live in Louisiana, a Prison Break recap and Manny being a moron

- Big day for you Wednesday, Louisiana. It’s hard to believe that a state which calls that train wreck Britney Spears and her dysfunctional family its own could be embarrassed at all by anything that happens from here on out, but porn star Stormy Daniels could make that nightmare a reality. For some odd reason Daniels believes that the people of her state would like to have a porn skank who made her living taking it from total strangers on camera as one of their representatives in Congress. She began her two-day Listening Tour in Louisiana Wednesday as she considers a run for the U.S. Senate seat of David Vitter, who will be facing reelection in 2010. The listening tour visited The Roux House in Baton Rouge and Serio’s Po’ Boys & Deli in New Orleans. Yes, those are the two places I’d go to take the pulse of the great state of Louisiana. What’s the over/under on the number of dudes who will show up to have Daniels sign a copy of one of her porn DVDs and spend the next hour staring at her rack while she fields questions from the crowd? I’m going with 95 percent of whatever the crowd is at each stop. Daniels’ possible candidacy has drawn national attention, including "Tonight Show” host Jay Leno wondering if the move from porn to politics is actually a lateral move. Should Daniels find a way to skank her name onto the ballot, it would be quite a contrast to see her fact off with Vitter, a conservative Republican who was implicated in the investigation of "D.C. Madam" Deborah Jeane Palfrey last year. Kinda hard to play the family values, good husband/father card when you’re known to solicit high-priced hookers, but running against a porn star might trump even that. Vitter was elected to the Senate in 2004 and will be facing his first re-election bid next year, and if there is any comedic justice in this world, Daniels will be his opponent……..

- The Sword of Damocles had been hanging over the athletic department at the University of Toledo, but the sword finally fell Wednesday when six former players -- three each from Toledo's basketball and football programs, as well as two Detroit area businessmen -- were charged with conspiracy to commit sports bribery in an indictment filed in U.S. District Court in Detroit. Six former UT athletes - three football players and three basketball players - were named in the 20-count indictment. The indictment charges that between December 2004 and December 2006, Ghazi "Gary" Manni, 52, and Mitchell Karam, 76, paid money and other things of value to the athletes in order to influence, or attempt to influence, the final score of games.
The payments weren’t huge - at times as little as $500 - but that’s enough to make UT the first school to be involved in a major gambling case involving two sports. The indictment list 17 specific games in which participants in the scheme placed bets on Toledo basketball contests. Charged in the indictment, in addition to Manni and Karam, were Harvey "Scooter" McDougle Jr., 24, a former running back from Cleveland; Adam Cuomo, 31, a former running back from Hagersville, Ontario, Canada; Quinton Broussard, 25, a former running back from Carrollton, Texas; Keith Triplett, 29, a former basketball player from Toledo; Anton Currie, 25, a former basketball player from Okemos, Mich; and Kashif Payne, 24, a former basketball player from Chester, Pa. “Today's charges shine a light into the dark corner of illegal sports bookmaking and reveals the unfortunate consequences that the influence of money from betting can have on the integrity of both athletes and athletic contests,” said U.S. Attorney Terrence Berg in announcing the indictment. Just about the only good news for the University of Toledo in all of this is that the investigation found no involvement by any coaches or university employees. Of course, the fact that this was going on and the coaches had no idea doesn’t exactly scream for a glowing endorsement of the way they ran their programs. This story first became public in spring 2007 when McDougle Jr. was charged in connection with fixing games, though that charge was later dropped on a procedural matter. According to McDougle’s father, his son believed the matter was behind him and had no idea that this new indictment was forthcoming. The big break in the case came when Cuomo, a former reserve running back who rushed for 24 yards during his senior season of 2003, admitted to being a key figure in an alleged point-shaving scheme involving both the school's basketball and football teams. During a December 2006 meeting with FBI agents, "Cuomo stated that he was the University of Toledo player who started the point-shaving scheme with 'Gary.'" Cuomo is allegedly the player who provided the gamblers with the information about upcoming UT games and helped them place their bets. He is also the one who brought numerous teammates to meet with the gamblers and become part of the scheme. All told, Manni and Karam wagered approximately $407,500 on Toledo basketball and football games between November 2005 and December 2006. The point-shaving scheme itself took place between fall 2003 and winter 2006. “This case is an example of how organized crime can influence intercollegiate athletics,” FBI agent Andrew Arena, who oversaw the gambling probe, said. Overall, this is just a sad story. College athletics are becoming more a business every day, but that business isn’t supposed to be gambling. You have two sleazy gamblers who seek out these kids with little or no money, get their hooks in them and turn them into point-shaving scammers. It’s an indictment of everyone involved in the process, so go ahead and distribute the blame equally on this one…….

- Never accuse the producers of alcohol of not trying to come up with new, disgusting ways to slam bizarre things inside the bottle. We’ve all heard of the worm at the bottom of a bottle of tequila, but what customs officials in Miami found was a few notches higher on the Bizarr-O-Meter. United States Customs and Border Protection officers were conducting a routine inspection on Wednesday when they happened across a cobra and other poisonous snakes in a bottle believed to be "snake wine." Yes, I said snake wine. And where was the snake wine coming from? The place where all great snake wine comes from, of course: Thailand. The snakes were jammed inside a glass container and drowned in alcohol, all contained neatly inside an express mail package from Thailand. Jose Castellano, a spokesman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, said the agency discovered the bizarre beverage during the course of what otherwise would have been an ordinary search. “We're not just at airports checking passports," said Castellano. "We check mail, boats and planes to make sure that anything that can be harmful or illegal does not enter the United States.” On this particular day, the snake wine was easily the most bizarre find, even with officers also confiscating cocaine hidden in a diaper. Let’s face it, everyone and their brother attempts to smuggle blow inside a diaper, so that’s not news. But if someone wants to cram some tiny snakes inside a bottle of the drinky-drinky, that’s something I have an interest in. Of course, so does the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which is now handling the snake wine investigation. “It is wildlife that was not declared," said Eddie McKissick, a spokesman for the agency. "The issue is that this species of snake is protected by the convention on international trade in endangered species. It applies to live and dead animals.” The practice of dropping whole venomous snakes into an alcoholic beverage originated in Vietnam and is apparently all the rage in Southeast Asia at the moment. Sometimes, the snake is mixed into the booze along with insects or other animals such as turtles. Oddly enough, the alcohol dissolves the snake’s poison and can then be used for medicinal purposes, officials said. The package was headed for the southwestern United States, but whoever was expecting to receive it will be getting a not-so-friendly call from the government instead. The lesson here, as always, is to make sure you have the proper permits and approval when looking to drop a poisonous, deadly creature into a bottle of liquor and ship it halfway around the world to be used for medicinal purposes……

- I’m not really sure to feel about Los Angeles Dodgers left fielder Manny Ramirez being suspended for 50 games by Major League Baseball on Thursday after failing a drug test. ManRam becomes the latest high-profile player to be snagged by MLB’s more stringent testing policy, although ManRam insists that he did not take steroids and was prescribed medication by a doctor that contained a banned substance. Of course, that’s not the story that sources close to the situation are telling. Although MLB doesn’t publicly announce which drugs a player tests positive for, sources said that in addition to the artificial testosterone, Ramirez was identified as using the female fertility drug human chorionic gonadotropin, or hCG. Yes, dude was ingesting women’s fertility drugs. I can only draw one conclusion from this: ManRan is seeing his career wind down and he needs something to fill that void that baseball will leave when it’s no longer in his life. He wants to have a baby to have something to put in its place, that’s the only explanation. Sadly, that bizarre leap in logic would be the more palatable alternative at this point. But instead, we’re left with the reality that ManRam took hCG because athletes use it to restore the testosterone-producing ability of their testicles after ending a cycle of steroids. Steroids stunt testosterone production, so the hCG fixes that problem. It is also used sometimes on its own to boost testosterone production and thus gives users a boost in athletic performance. Ramirez was suspended for using hCG because baseball had documentation to prove his use of the drug and testing by Major League Baseball showed that Ramirez had testosterone in his body that was not natural and came from an artificial source. ManRam, in a statement issued by the players' union, said: "Recently, I saw a physician for a personal health issue. He gave me a medication, not a steroid, which he thought was OK to give me. Unfortunately, the medication was banned under our drug policy. Under the policy that mistake is now my responsibility. I have been advised not to say anything more for now. I do want to say one other thing; I've taken and passed about 15 drug tests over the past five seasons.” Of course, that statement came before the revelation that hCG was what Ramirez allegedly tested positive for. He was all set to fight the suspension and MLB officials were headed to L.A. to meet with ManRam, but he miraculously dropped his appeal and will now serve the 50-game ban without contention. Ramirez's popped up on MLB’s drug radar when a test in spring training revealed he had elevated levels of testosterone in his body. That led to a follow-up test that confirmed the testosterone had to come from an artificial source. As I said before, I’m not sure how to feel. I’m sure as hell not surprised, because at this point there is not a single player in baseball whose confirmation as a ‘roid user would surprise me. Over the years, I’ve loved ManRam’s antics - cutting off throws from the center fielder while playing left field, high-fiving fans in left field while a play was going on, disappearing into the Green Monster to take a leak during a pitching change, etc. - and those moments are still hilarious. However, the image of the fun-loving, free-and-easy hitting savant those moments created in the minds of baseball fans appears to be a fraud, which I suppose makes me sad more than anything…….

- In its penultimate episode, Prison Break once again delivered the sort of thrilling, intense episode that has made the show so great for its four seasons. With Michael and Linc trapped inside the Panda Bay Hotel in Miami and Linc once again framed for the murder of a prominent political figure, things certainly didn’t look good for the brothers. Cornered on an interior balcony overlooking the atrium and with security closing in on them, they appeared to have no way out. Linc, thinking quickly, uses the rifle left behind by the sniper who assassinated Naveen Banerjee, son of the Indian prime minister, to blow out the lock on the nearest door. The brothers then scamper down the stairs to the ground floor of the hotel and wind their way through a maze of hallways to the kitchen. There, they have several near-misses with police searching for them and find a remote corner of the kitchen to call Mahone and Self, who are stationed outside the hotel. Self tells Michael that if he can get to the southwest corner of the hotel, there is a loading dock with only one cop guarding it that could be the best spot for escape. The problem is that Michael and Linc are on the opposite side of the hotel and the police have the entire floor covered. However, Michael uses his engineer’s knowledge of hotels to deduce that hotels like the Panda Bay use laundry ventilation systems to keep their guests from having to smell the odor from the laundry room. If he and Linc can get to the roof, they can access the laundry vent and use it to get to the laundry room near the loading dock. Of course, getting to the roof is a huge obstacle. Even after Michael swipes an employee’s master key card that will give him access to any room, the challenge is still huge. He and Linc sprint to the sixteenth floor, but by that time hotel security has electronically locked down every room in the hotel, meaning no one goes in our out. As chaos continues to reign on the ground floor, Michael and Linc are trapped up on the top floor. A desperate Michael calls Self for help in finding out what the plan of attack is for the cops, which Self accomplishes by again brandishing his Homeland Security badge and posing as an active agent. Meanwhile, Mahone is off at Michael and Linc’s direction to the condo where Michael left Sarah in charge of watching Christina Scofield. Linc tells Mahone to do whatever it takes to get Linc’s own mother to talk and give up the location of Scylla. Of course, if Linc and Michael can’t escape the hotel, that won't matter. When Self learns the cops will be gassing each floor of the hotel to flush out Linc and Michael, he finds a back hallway in the hotel to call them and let them know. Michael then gets a spark of inspiration from a cleaning supply cart nearby and sees a way out of the situation. After electronically picking the lock on a hotel room door, he drags a mini-fridge out into the hall and begins filling it with rolls of toilet paper and spray from aerosol cans. When the guards are close to the sixteenth floor, Michael has Linc throw a lit match into the fridge and close it. The gas canister and gun shots from the guards who arrive on the floor help trigger the fridge’s explosion, rendering the two guards unconscious. From there, Michael and Linc change into the guards’ uniforms and dash right past the glut of security guards who come running up the stairs following the explosion. The plan almost works, but the lead guard catches a glimpse of Michael and Linc’s shoes and realizes that they aren’t the shoes a guard would be wearing. He turns and follows them all the way to the kitchen, where he draws his gun and orders them to take off their gas masks and surrender. Just when it appears to be over for the brothers, a gun shot rings out. From behind, one of General Jonathan Krantz’s men has shot the guard in the back. The shooter is there because the General has seen the news reports on TV about the incident at the hotel and sent the shooter to make sure that Michael and Linc aren’t captured, as they could give up information about his involvement in the situation. So Michael and Linc do make it out of the hotel without being captured by the police, but their fate isn’t much better. Meanwhile, Mahone goes to the condo to check on Sarah and Christina, only to find Sarah bound up and Christina having escaped. When Mahone urges Sarah to leave town for her safety, she refuses and says she’ll stay at the condo so she’s safe and Michael knows where she is. As for Michael, he and Linc arrive back at the condo where the General and his men have set up their base of operations and are reunited with Self and Mahone. The General berates all of them for failing to capture Scylla, then informs them that he intends to make good on his threat to go after their families if they failed in their mission. To illustrate how serious he is, Krantz puts their names on pieces of paper, drops them in a glass bowl and pulls out Self’s name. Krantz tells everyone that Self has a wife, a wife he turned into a vegetable by recklessly getting into a car accident. Because of her condition, Self attempted to steal Scylla for himself so he could sell it and afford better care for her. Krantz then calls up one of his operatives, orders him to “Move on subject four,” then holds the phone up so Self can hear the sound of gunshots and nurses at the facility where his wife is living scream for someone to get help. With his wife dead, Self is devastated and lunges at the General. When it becomes clear that the same fate could befall all of them if they don’t get Scylla, the rest of the group vows to finish their mission. Slef, on the other hand, is done. He sprints across the room and leaps from the balcony into the water below as a hail of bullets fly over his head. He plunges into the water and disappears from sight, but the rest of the team must go on without him. Around this time, Christina is busy hammering out her plan to sell Scylla and make a fortune in the process. She meets with Nadu Banerjee, prime minister of India, who is obviously crushed over the assassination of his son and looking for payback on those responsible. Christina anticipated that response and floats rumors about the Chinese being responsible for the killing. Banerjee demands that Christina sell him Scylla because among its many applications is the potential for some pretty bad-ass weapons. He wants to retaliate against the Chinese and offers Christina $750 million for Scylla. She accepts, but not five minutes after the prime minister leaves, she informs her right-hand man Downey to reach out to the Chinese to see if they want in on the bidding for Scylla. Downey advises against playing the two sides against one another, but Christina insists on it. She also makes a major mistake when she goes to the nearest federal reserve signatory bank to ensure that the funds from the Indian government for Scylla have been deposited into her overseas account. Back at the General’s condo/headquarters, Michael has been strong-armed into cooperating with the General’s search for Scylla and anticipates that if his mother is selling Scylla, she’ll want to verify the receipt of the funds immediately and that means going to a federal reserve signatory bank to withdraw a small amount of the funds. Mahone searches online and finds the nearest such bank, located about 20 minutes away. Together with Mahone and Linc, Michael goes to the bank and has Mahone snoop around the verify that Christina is in fact there. Once she’s spotted, the next step is deciding how to attack in order to steal Scylla without getting killed. Because Christina’s security will shoot them on sight, Mahone suggests a different approach: a fake bank robbery. Clad in ski masks, the three men storm the bank with guns drawn, fire off shots and demand that everyone hit the ground. However, the only thing they grab is Scylla and after that, it’s a mad dash for the door. Downey calls the members of Christina’s security stationed outside and within seconds there is a shootout in downtown Miami. General Krantz catches news of this on TV too, but he’s also been busy putting a plan of his own into motion. After T-Bag suggests that Michael won't turn over Scylla once he acquires it, Krantz warms to the idea of gaining leverage on Michael. The suggestion from T-Bag is getting their hands on Sarah, but they have no idea where she is - or do they? T-Bag managed to pull the last-searched address from the GPS system in Mahone’s car that could be Sarah’s location. The hunch proves accurate and by the time Michael and Mahone escape from the shootout at the bank and find a safe spot in a nearby alley, Krantz is holding Sarah prisoner. He calls Michael and issues a simple, yet scary threat: turn over Scylla or Sarah dies. The instant that call ends, Michael gets a second call, this one from his mother. She informs him that she’s captured Linc in the shootout and that unless he returns Scylla to her, Linc will die. To that end, she shoots Linc in the right side, just clipping to bottom of his right lung and wounding him in a way that will kill him within a few hours unless he gets to a hospital. Now, Michael has a seemingly impossible choice to make: save his brother or save the woman he loves? I’d say he can’t do both, but the promos for next week’s series finale suggest that Michael is going to attempt to do just that. Tune in next Friday to give PB the send-off that a great show like it deserves and see how this all ends…..

Good news for would-be flashers at Disneyland, Obama v. Congress in regards to Gitmo and a Smallville recap

- Tonight’s Smallville was more than a little confusing and didn’t exactly get me hyped up for next week’s season finale, but let’s review it anyhow. Things kicked off with Clark walking in on Tess Mercer in her office atop the Daily Planet just after she ended an intense conversation with someone she was ordering to “wait for the rest of the team” because things were “too dangerous” on their own. Clark proceeds to berate Tess for continuing to make Davis Bloome front-page news every day and inciting a massive manhunt for him. She counters that if Clark would accept his destiny to kill Davis and save Earth, she wouldn’t have to do so. The debate rages on until Clark picks up a faint call for help in the distance courtesy of his super hearing. It’s Chloe, calling out to him as she runs through the woods outside the city. Clark super speeds to the scene and saves Chloe right as she darts across a road and is nearly hit by a truck. However, there is a curious trio of onlookers watching the scene from the woods nearby. All three are dressed in black and one of them is Bet, the meteor-powered girl with the power to blow things up that Clark tried to help earlier this season. One of the three declares that now that Clark has her, it’s time to follow him and put their plan into place. Clark takes Chloe back to the farm and she tells a harrowing tale of holing up in a motel just outside Metropolis with Davis, then escaping one day when they stopped at a gas station. She urges Clark to kill Davis, which marks a stark reversal of heart from her stance against doing so last week. Clark seems to finally get the message and goes to Oliver Queen for help. He asks Oliver to steal a piece of black Kryptonite from Tess Mercer’s vault so he can use it to kill Davis. In the mean time, we learn what the team of meteor freaks in the woods were watching Clark for. They are part of a team assembled by Tess Mercer, comprised entirely of former patients at LuthorCorp’s now-closed scientific facility in Black Creek, Montana. There was Parasite, Plastique (Bet), Live Wire and one other team member who was killed by Davis/Doomsday before we got to know him. Tess shows up at the site of the murder and tears the remaining team members a new one for not sticking together and waiting on the whole team to arrive before taking on Doomsday. When Live Wire voices dissent with Tess’ leadership and decides that she’s no longer a part of the team, it turns out to be a lethal choice. Tess orders Parasite to sap her of her powers, then has Bet and Parasite leave before triggering a small explosive/tracking device implanted in Live Wire’s head during her Black Creek days, killing her on the spot. Tess arrives back at the office to find Oliver waiting for her, apparently trying to get her to sleep with him (they do have a history together). She repeatedly turns his advances down, but in the elevator ride down it becomes clear what Oliver was really after. He examines a bottle of champagne he took from the office and finds one of Tess’ fingerprints on it - just what he needs to gain access to her safe. Dressed as Green Arrow, Oliver breaks into the Luthor Mansion and gets inside the vault. Just as he picks up the black kryptonite, Tess arrives home and to cover his true intentions, Oliver strips and hops into Tess’ bed. She is startled to see him but once again rejects his advances. Meanwhile, Clark has been in contact with both Chloe and Dr. Emil, the scientist Chloe had contacted to try and find a cure for Davis’ condition. Dr. Emil tells Clark about two bodies that have been recovered in Metropolis, apparently the work of Doomsday. Detective John Jones of the Metropolis Police Department, a.k.a. the Martian Manhunter, has managed to tip off the doctor and fend off the local police for a little while, but there is only a short time to examine the bodies before the cops arrive. The first body is in fact the one killed by Doomsday, but the second one is Live Wire and her death clearly wasn’t the work of a monster. Dr. Emil and Clark examine the bodies, but Chloe excuses herself and walks outside against Clark’s advice. Curiously, she meets up with Plastique and Parasite in an abandoned building and talks like she’s a member of their team. When Chloe disappears and won't answer her phone, Clark goes looking for her and finds her at the Isis Foundation offices. Chloe admits she’s been lying to Clark ever since he found her in the woods and begins to tell him the truth about Tess’ team of meteor-powered hunters when a high-frequency shrieking in her head begins. She collapses on the floor and as Clark catches her and tries to help her, something bizarre happens: Chloe isn’t really Chloe. She’s a girl named Eva, a shape-shifter Clark has met before. She’s been posing as Chloe to help Tess get information on Clark, but when she tried to reveal some of her own secrets Tess killed her via remote triggering of the tracking device in her head. Clark realizes that all members of Tess’ team must have a similar device in their heads and he has Dr. Emil come up with a way to track them all. That leads Clark to Bet, who he catches up with in a dark alley in downtown Metropolis. Clark tells her the truth about what Tess is doing and although Bet doesn’t want to believe it, seeing herself on Clark’s GPS tracking device convinces her. She decides to go after Tess and kill her as payback, which Clark tries to stop. His efforts are thwarted when Parasite jumps him from behind and steals Clark’s powers. This isn’t exactly new territory, as lots of people have been imbued with Clark’s powers on a temporary basis: Lana, Pete Ross, various bad guys, etc. But Parasite and Bet/Plastique put those powers to instant use by super speeding to the mansion and attacking Tess. They tie her up and demand that she give them to passwords to access all of the Black Creek files on the LuthorCorp server. By this time, Clark has borrowed a car from Dr. Emil and made it to the mansion himself. However, without his powers he is of no use fighting Bet and Parasite. Parasite manhandles Clark and is choking the life out of him against a wall when Green Arrow intervenes. He first shoots Bet with an arrow and disables her, then breaks out a Kryptonite ring to subdue Parasite. After all, having Clark’s powers also means having his weaknesses. When Parasite begs for the pain to stop, Clark assures him that it will - if he returns the powers. Parasite agrees and Clark is back to normal, but an unconscious Tess sees none of it. What she does see, or see too more accurately, is that the information Eva gained while posing as Chloe is put to use. Tess finds the Kryptonian crystal Clark had been hiding under the floor of the Kent Barn and destroys it. Clark planned ot use the crystal at the Fortress along with the black Kryptonite to separate the Doomsday part of Davis from the human side. He thought of the plan because his own parents once used black K to separate him from his Kryptonian self. With the crystal destroyed, Tess reasons, Clark will have no choice but to kill Davis and ensure the safety of mankind in the process. Oliver has a similarly upset reaction when he hands over the black K to Clark and learns of his true plan, which Clark had been hiding from him. Clark tersely informs Oliver that they are no longer on the same side in this fight and that he will find Chloe - the real Chloe - and save her his way. So as you can see, a pretty complex and at times, confusing episode. It sets up what should be an exciting season finale, which we already know is going to include the death of one major character. Be sure to tune in for that…….

- Dammit, where are freaky losers looking for other losers willing to have sex with complete strangers go now? If Craigslist goes through with its plans to work with state attorneys general around the country to eliminate advertisements from the site for prostitution and other suspected illegal sexual activities, this is going to create real problems. Craigslist representatives met with state attorneys general from Missouri, Illinois, and Connecticut Tuesday in New York City, with those three officials representing a group of state attorneys general from around the country. Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster said his office found several ads offering and seeking prostitution on Craigslist pages for the Kansas City, St. Louis, Columbia/Jefferson City, and Springfield areas. And the problem is? “Craigslist is allowing advertisements for illegal activities like prostitution on its site,” Koster said a statement. “It is blatant. It is irresponsible. It is illegal.” Illegal, shmill-egal. Why shouldn’t one freak who is either to hideous or too lazy to find real love or causal sex be able to surf on over to Craigslist.com and find some equally pathetic a-hole to engage in random sex with? I’m urging you not to back down on this, Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster. Quit expressing optimism toward the goal of reducing illegal activity on your site. Hold the fort and refuse to discuss the removal of the "erotic services" section. “Craigslist looks forward to meeting with the attorneys general, and anticipates making further progress toward the common goal of eliminating illegal activity from Craigslist, while preserving its full utility and benefit for tens of millions of law-abiding Americans who value and depend on Craigslist's free local community services in their everyday lives,” Buckmaster said in a statement. Not good, Buckmaster. Stand strong, don’t back down and stop being wishy-washy. Yes, your site’s erotic services section became cannon fodder for your critics following the arrest last month of Philip H. Markoff, who is suspected of killing a 25-year-old masseuse he met through Craigslist at a Boston hotel. And yes, he’s also suspected of attacks on two other escorts at hotels. Don’t let one demented freak ruin it for the rest of the freaks. I’ll admit that until I started looking into this story, I had no idea that there were so many reprehensible skanks and losers slamming revealing pictures of themselves on Craigslist and basically turning it into an online brothel, but freaks need their corner of the world too. This is a battle worth waging, especially since a group of 40 attorneys general were working on strategies to thwart ads for prostitution and other illegal sexual activities long before the so-called "Craigslist killing. The AGs aren’t the only ones looking to shut down the erotic services section of Craigslist. The sheriff of Illinois' Cook County filed
a federal lawsuit against Craigslist in March, alleging that the Web's largest classifieds publication is "facilitating prostitution." Sheriff Tom Dart asked the court to force Craigslist to remove the erotic services section and compensate his department for the hours they spent working on the illegal activity the came out of those ads. In other words, it’s an all-out war at the bat rack to get to the plate and take a swing at Craigslist, so Buckmaster and his company need to prepare accordingly……

- So about that whole closing down the military detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba…..how attached are you to the idea, President Obama? Because right now, making that dream a reality is proving to be a difficult task. You’d think closing down a place where prisoners were blatantly deprived of their legal and human right and which became a symbol of all that was wrong with the W. administration would be a no-brainer, but House Democrats seem to disagree. They told the president Monday he won't be getting money to close the until he has a "concrete program" for shutting it down and moving its prisoners. Until that plan comes, Congress is doing something that is against its nature: refusing to give out money. House Appropriations Committee Chairman Rep. David Obey stated that the $80 million will be dropped from President Obama's supplemental request for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. “So far as we can tell, there is yet no concrete program for that,” said Obey, D-Wisconsin. “And while I don't mind defending a concrete program, I'm not much interested in wasting my energy defending a theoretical program. So when they have a plan, they're welcome to come back and talk to us about it.” Wait…..so now you want people to have concrete plans and a clear vision when they want money from you? Since when is that Congress’ policy. You all don’t mind doling out tens of millions for federal programs in your own states and seeing that money wasted because the ass clowns entrusted with spending it don’t have concrete, well-reasoned plans. Yet you won't give the Obama administration the $50 million it requested for the Defense Department and $30 million for the Justice Department to close the prison? Could the Democrats be caving in to pressure from Republicans who have been pounding Obama over the proposed closure? The Republican contention is that closing the facility could push detainees into facilities in the United States, making the country less safe. Ah, the old “pander to their fears on terrorism” ploy, a classic Republican maneuver when they know they have nothing. Ironically, Sen. John McCain, Obama's Republican rival for the presidency last year, is the most notable Republican supporter for closing the facility. Sen. McCain has argued for moving the prisoners to the military prison at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas. For right now, those prisoners will be going nowhere. They will continue to have their rights trampled in Cuba, which ironically enough is beginning to rebuild relations with the United States. So the president isn’t exactly on the same page with his own party, which always makes for an interesting political mix in the nation’s capital……..

- Great news for all you losers who get off by flashing your breasts for souvenir photos at Disneyland Rides. The past 10 years have been tough for all would-be flashers because the park has assigned employees to snuff out flashing attempts Splash Mountain and three other rides in the park where cameras take pictures for riders to purchase as souvenirs. Riders are photographed on the attractions and can then buy souvenir copies, but some ladies out there have exposed their breasts in hopes that the picture would make it onto a photo preview screen at the ride's exit. Right, because what could be bad about pictures of your rack popping up on TV screens in a place where kids outnumber adults by a 3-to-1 ratio? I’m sure parents would be pumped if their 6-year-old was exposed to that. Apparently the strategy by Disney has worked well in discouraging potential flashers, because the company confirmed Tuesday that it has reassigned employees at Disneyland and Disney's California Adventure who watched for breast-baring riders. Disneyland spokeswoman Suzi Brown says "actual inappropriate behaviors by guests are rare" and thus, the extra security isn’t needed. I do wonder if this would be Disney’s stance if the economy wasn’t in the tank and they weren’t looking to trim their budget and cut operating costs like every other business in this country. Regardless of the motivation,
the changes took effect Sunday at Splash Mountain, Tower of Terror, Space Mountain and California Screamin'. In other words, if you’re been waiting for just the right chance to flash your boobs on a Disneyland ride and have unsuspecting strangers see the image at the end of their ride, now is your chance……

- Oh, so close. Delaware was this close to opening its arms to the blight that is legalized sports betting, but the state’s lawmakers have voted down such a bill by a mere two votes. The bill that would have authorized sports betting in the First State, but on Tuesday night, the measure fell two votes short of the three-fifths majority needed for the bill to clear the Delaware House of Representatives, with 23 votes in favor, 15 against and three abstentions. Gov. Jack Markell had been eyeing an expansion of gambling as a means of raising an estimated $55 million in revenue for the state, which is struggling to keep its financial head above water like every one of the other 49 states. Markell proposed expanding gaming at the state's three racetrack/casinos and a larger state share of slot machine revenues, but the legislature wasn’t drinking his gambling Kool-Aid. Markell claimed that passing the bill would prevent additional cuts in the fiscal 2010 budget, but the argument wasn’t enough to sway the legislators. The governor has already proposed an 8 percent salary cut for all state workers, but those cuts may even deepen after this vote. Ironically, the bill’s chief opponents were the state's three racetrack/casinos, who said the proposal would drive them out of business. I’m sorry, was that supposed to be a negative? A state with out horse racing and gambling, however would people survive without having a place to throw away their money on sucker bets and rigged games at casinos? Representatives of the NFL and National Collegiate Athletic Association also lobbied against the bill last month, although Delaware doesn’t even have an NFL team and thus it would be a moot point in terms of the NFL’s involvement. This new bill came about because after a failed experiment with a sports lottery in the late 1970s, Delaware is one of only four states, along with Nevada, Montana and Oregon, grandfathered under a 1992 federal law that bans sports gambling. Guess the losers, er, gambling addicts, er, gaming enthusiasts of the state will just have to find another way to get their fix……

Reasons to hate law enforcement, a stunning episode of Lost and proof that not everyone listens to Joe Paterno

- Guess Joe Paterno’s words don’t carry quite as much weight around the rest of the Big Ten as they do at Penn State. On campus in Happy Valley, Joe Pa is a virtual demigod, even if there is serious doubt as to whether he’s still alive or if his staff has been pulling a Weekend at Bernie’s with him for the past decade-plus. Outside of Happy Valley, Paterno’s suggestions aren’t exactly winning over the powers that be in the Big Ten officers. Last week, Paterno last week called on the Big Ten to expand, saying the conference goes "into hiding for six weeks" while other leagues hold championship games and play into the first week of December. In other words, because the league doesn’t have the requisite 12 teams to hold its own conference championship game, its regular season typically ends just the way it will this fall, when nine of 11 Big Ten teams will finish the regular season on Nov. 21, two weeks before teams from the other five BCS conferences. Being out of sight for those two weeks often means Big Ten (11) teams are out of mind when it comes to the polls that determine the participants in the BCS championship game and other BCS bowls. Of course, that has been a good thing for Ohio State the past few years, as they’ve been able to sit back and watch other top teams choke in those two weeks and sneak back up into the title picture. Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany has heard Paterno’s suggestions and let’s just say he’s not interested. The Big Ten has no immediate plans to expand, Delany said, and it would take more than a desire for a football championship game and a longer regular season for the league to add a 12th member. Perhaps Delany thinks that his league’s plan to add a permanent bye week beginning in the 2010 season, thus extending the regular season by one week. "Everybody else is playing playoffs on television," Paterno said. "You never see a Big Ten team mentioned, so I think that's a handicap." Maybe, but what’s really a handicap is that smooth six-game losing streak in BCS bowl games the Big Ten (11) is rocking and the fact that no Big Ten team has won the Rose Bowl since 2000. But I suppose it would only be fair to give Delany a chance to explain why he’s so against expansion, right? “The issue has come up with our football coaches a couple times -- with the extra week and if we did expand, would we be more competitive?” Delany said. "I would say in some years they might be right. But has it enhanced the competitiveness of the ACC in football? Has it enhanced the competitiveness of the WAC? I don't know. Just because you have a championship doesn't make you more competitive. It's about coaching the players. The SEC game has been a marketing bonanza. I wouldn't discount that. But others have struggled with it.” So because you might fail, you’re not even willing to try? No one would ever do anything if they subscribed to that theory. Delany even admits the lack of a championship game puts the Big Ten at a marketing disadvantage, yet he won’t heed the words of an 82-year-old Paterno, who has seen more college football and been a part of the game for six-plus decade. Instead, Delany characterizes the idea of expansion as “a back-burner issue right now.” Guess Joe Pa doesn’t rule the college football world after all……..

- Attention, nudists of Westmore, Vt. You all need to class your act up, because clearly the Vermont Department of Forest Parks and Recreation is not down with what you’ve been doing. No, I don’t mean the whole going to the beach and sitting around with no clothes on. That, apparently, the VDFPC is cool with. No, the agency has a beef with a group of nudists who frequent the picturesque Southwest Cove on Lake Willoughby in Westmore because the nudists were cutting down trees, digging sand out of the lake and other activities that were hurting the ecosystem at the beach. Why they were doing all of this, I don’t know. Then again, they are freaks who think going out in public with no clothes on is cool, so it’s not exactly a surprise that they would do other freaky things. And yes, I am categorizing all nudists as freaks, because the reality is that approximately 0.5 percent of the world’s population looks good without their clothes on and invariably, the people who live a nudist lifestyle are never among that 0.5 percent. Also, as Seinfeld taught us, there is good naked and bad naked, meaning some activities just shouldn’t be done without clothes on - ever. Going to a public beach and acting like it’s normal is one such activity. Yet oddly enough, local efforts to ban nudity at the beach have failed. Instead, the parks department is focusing on making sure that these nudist freaks don’t ruin the beach’s ecosystem while they are there. A memorandum of understanding between the Naturist Action Committee and the state says beach users won't move plants, cut trees, alter streams or build structures or fires. Those seems like things that should go without saying, but again, look at who you’re dealing with………

- Freaking two awesome episodes of