- Memo to everyone in an around Vancouver right now: If you see Boner, please, please, please help him and alert the authorities immediately. I should probably point out that Boner is former Growing Pains co-star, Andrew Koenig, who has been missing for the past week. His character on the show was nicknamed Boner, hence my initial statement. Koenig, who played best friend Boner to Kirk Cameron's Mike Seaver on the '80s sitcom, was last seen on Feb. 14 during a trip to Vancouver. He was scheduled to return to California on Feb. 16 but hasn’t been heard from since departing for Canada. “Mike and Boner could always work things out when they put their minds to it," Cameron said. "I'm praying for you, pal. Hope to hear from you soon.” Koenig is also the son of Star Trek actor Walter Koenig. The senior Koenig wrote on his website that his son was suffering from clinical depression at the time of his disappearance and that he received a note from Andrew on Feb. 16 that had a "despondent tone." That is certainly the scariest aspect of this story because it makes it sound like Koenig likely is AWOL of his own volition and not because he met with any sort of foul play. Hopefully he is just in a bad funk and laying low because he doesn’t want to see or talk to anyone right now and not because he has harmed himself in any way. Dealing with depression is such a huge battle and doing it while surrounded by people who know and love you is difficult enough. Fighting that same battle such a long way from home has to be more difficult than any of us could possibly imagine. Koenig's family asks that anyone with information about Andrew Koenig contact Vancouver authorities and I would second that request and I sincerely hope that this story ends on a positive note…………
- By now, Microsoft Corp. and I have a nice little ritual. They come up with a crap-tastic new operating system of some sort to replace their previous crap-tacular OS, I and everyone else with a brain and any tech savvy at all rip it to shreds and we all share a good laugh. Okay, so maybe Microsoft isn’t laughing quite as much, but it’s still our ritual and I feel confident in saying it’s one we all embrace and enjoy. So let’s start the process again, because Microsoft unveiled a new operating system for mobile phones Monday. The new OS is designed to help Microsoft compete with rivals Apple, Research in Motion and Google, but that design will undoubtedly be flawed in several significant ways. Simply put, there’s a reason that Microsoft software is embedded in less than 10 percent of all smartphones sold when that figure was nearly 25 percent just a few short years ago. That reason extends well beyond having more competition. The reason is that Microsoft operating systems absolutely suck, they are poorly designed and they are prone to bugs, crashes, freeze-ups and all manner of significant problems. Juxtapose those problems against the introduction of Google's Android and the continued success of BlackBerry and iPhone devices and it’s easy to see why Microsoft’s stock in the smartphone market is going downhill so rapidly. Will Microsoft 7 for smartphones change that? Of course not. But just for the heck of it, the system will be a tiles-based interface and include live access to Facebook X-Box Live for gaming and Zune for music and photos. And yes, the Zune still sucks and is still the bastard cousin of the iPod. Even if Microsoft’s claims that the new OS will look like nothing on the market, that’s not going to be nearly enough to win over customers to one of these phones. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said 7-based smart phones will be manufactured by the likes of Qualcomm, Samsung, LG, HTC, HP, Dell, Sony Ericsson, Toshiba, and Garmin-Asus. Those phones may allow Microsoft to cater to more specific groups of customers with a phone tailored for them, but the fact is that these phones are still operating on a Microsoft OS. The phones won't launch until later this year, so we have to wait a few months for Microsoft’s next inevitable and spectacular failure……….
- A week late, Greek offered up its take on Valentine’s Day. In Rusty and Ashleigh’s marketing class, professor Clarissa rants against Valentine’s Day and its commercialized nature. Rusty and Ashleigh chat about their V-Day plans, with Rusty lamenting not having a date to the Kappa Tau party and Ashleigh excited about her new boyfriend, Omega Chi brother Pete. At the KT house, the pledges are busy preparing for the party and have set up a Cupid-themed archery range in backyard. Meanwhile, Rusty is walking across campus with pal Calvin and decides to find himself a date to the part. He asks a random girl named Tabitha out and she actually seems willing to give him a chance until he hands her a candy Valentine’s heart from a bag of the sweet treats that his mother sent him. It turns out to be an X-rated message on the candy heart (someone sent the wrong bag of candy, it seems) and that offends Tabitha enough to reject Rusty’s invite. Love also hits a bump for Ashleigh, who is having a cup of coffee on campus with Pete when Gamma Psi president Natalie “happens” by and reveals that a) she had been dating Pete and b) she thought they were still together. Pete insists that they broke up a month ago and Ashleigh seems to accept his explanation, but she’s a bit bothered by the incident. Casey and Cappie are having some Valentine’s Day fun of their own, as they recall their first V-Day together during freshman year. Cappie gave Casey a bottle of vodka, drank it all and threw up on her. He promises the perfect gift for her this time around. They also hear about Rusty’s problems finding a date and Casey talks with Ashleigh and decides to set Rusty up with Gamma Psi officer and Pan-Hellenic president Katharine. When Rusty decries Valentine’s Day to his KT brothers and decides that he doesn’t care about not having a date, Casey walks into the KT house and tells him about Katherine. Rusty accepts and because Katharine is a neurotic ball of weird, she insists on a pre-date at Dobler’s before their actual date to the KT party. The date seems to be a total disaster as Katherine gives a string of one-word answers to Rusty’s questions and comments, leaving Rusty thinking that he is once again date-less for the KT V-Day party. Calvin is having exactly the opposite problem, as he worries that his relationship with boyfriend and OC brother Grant is becoming too stale and boring because they are also roommates at the OC house. He seeks out advice from OC president Evan, who is trying to figure out his own relationship with Rebecca Logan. He wants to convince her that true love exists despite her cynical outlook and tries to find the perfect V-Day gift to prove it. That gift, an expensive diamond necklace, is delivered when he picks her up for the Omega Chi Valentine’s party. Rebecca loves the gift and is clearly surprised by it. As for Rusty, he is surprised as well when Casey stops by his apartment and informs him that Katherine had a great time on their date and wants to go with him to the KT party. She came to visit Casey at the Zeta Beta house to gush over how great Rusty is and make sure they would have a second date. Rusty, thinking the first date was a dud, isn’t so sure. In exchange for helping Casey out in her bid to get on Katherine’s good side, he agrees to the second date only in exchange for one month of free access to Casey’s car, to which she agrees. Katherine and Rusty head to the KT “Straight Through the Heart” party after she shows up looking über-hot when Rusty picks her up. At the party, they bond over their shared intellectual dork-dom and wanting to be more than that and have more than a bookish college experience. Katherine falls for Rusty and leans in to kiss him until he sticks his foot in his mouth by inadvertently spilling the beans about how he came to agree to a second date. An angry Katherine stands up and begins to tell Rusty and Casey off until she’s struck by an errant arrow from the KT Cupid-themed archery range. Over at the Omega Chi party, Grant tries to liven things up with Calvin by adopting a new image for the event, bleaching his hair, whitening his teeth and donning a velour smoker’s jacket. What he sees as livening things up, Calvin sees as reminding him of his previous boyfriend, Michael. Calvin gets some advice from an unexpected source: Rebecca. She tells him not to be so uptight and he takes her advice, smoothing things over with Grant. But he also slips up when he shares something Evan shared with him, that he sees a real future with her. That freaks her out and she ends up at the KT party, when she gets really drunk and decides to sleep with lunk-headed KT brother Beaver. It’s the same party that Rusty, Casey and Cappie have exited to take Katherine to the hospital after being shot by an arrow. She’s fine and suffers only a surface wound, but still lands on enough painkillers to be a little loopy. While waiting for her, the other three encounter Dale, who is there because he’s had an unfortunate accident with the braces worn by the nerdy girl, Bridget, that he’s now dating. Once Katherine is treated and released, Rusty walks her back to her dorm room and she forgives both he and Casey. Both Rusty and Katharine agree that this V-Day was least suckiest each of them has ever had. They share an awkward hug and say goodnight. As the episode ends, we catch up with Casey and Cappie, who have been dueling all episode long to see who could come up with the best V-Day gift. After failed attempts to find the right gift, including a bottle of vodka he had a pledge fetch for him in an effort to play on V-Day from freshman year, a frantic Cappie comes up with an idea. He drives Casey to the dark parking lot of a local mini-mart where they are apparently going to exchange gifts. She admits that she copped out because she couldn’t think of anything and got lingerie for him. His gift turns out to be bringing her to the mini-mart because it’s the place he fell in love with her freshman year and he’s been in love with her ever since. He says that they went there because he had an empty fridge and she didn’t want him to go hungry, so she took him food shopping and while standing in the checkout line, she looked back at him and smiled. That’s when he fell in love with her, he explains. A sweet ending to a fun episode and it kept a very good season of Greek going strong……………
- As recently as two years ago, I absolutely loved Manny Ramirez. He was a freaking circus sideshow who disappeared into Fenway Park’s Green Monster, wore sunglasses equipped with an MP3 player into the outfield, high-fived fans after making catches but while the ball was still live and cut off throws from other outfielders while standing 20 feet away from them. But now? He’s a guy who cheats by taking female fertility drugs to boost his on-field performance, who is a malcontent in the clubhouse and no longer has the production to make himself relevant in spite of those deficiencies. So when Man-Ram appeared in the Dodgers' clubhouse for the first time on Monday morning at spring training in Glendale, Ariz. and declared that this would be his final spring training with the club, I could not have cared less. "I won't be here next year, so I just want to enjoy myself," Ramirez said. "I don't know [if I'll play next year]. I just know I'm not going to be here. When the season is over, I will see where I'm at." Whatever, Man-Ram. Based on that bloated two-year, $45 million contract that you are now in the final season of, I’m sure the Dodgers wish you weren’t playing this season. You spent a large chunk of last season serving a 50-game suspension for violating baseball's drug policy and when you did play, your numbers were mediocre at best. While Man-Ram said he hasn't been told by club officials that the Dodgers aren't interested in re-signing him, even he concedes that it would be extremely unrealistic for them to do so. No, it would be downright insane because there is no way Manny is accepting the extremely reduced salary that his production would merit at this point. His main point is that he hasn’t yet decided if the 2010 season will be his last. If he does come back, he would almost assuredly have to return to the American League, which (erroneously) still uses the designated hitter. "The game is still fun, but I think I have to wait until the season ends and see where my family is at before I make a choice," Ramirez said. "I will just wait and see how my body reacts." What I want to see is whether Man-Ram can do better than the .218 average he posted at the plate after Sept. 1 last year because right now, he’s simply an irrelevant clown who no longer merits the attention and tolerance of his many quirks that he once received. Either get back to your usual high level of play or please just fade away, Man-Ram…………
No comments:
Post a Comment