An explosive "24" recap, another Brett Favre hijacking begins and a huge day for dorks upcoming

- In an explosive night of 24, that hour ended with another plot twist and an explosive disappointment. At the start of the hour, Jack remained at St. Julian’s hospital trying to stop American-born terrorist Marcos Al Zakar from blowing up his suicide explosive vest. The CTU team Jack is leading says it will take 40 minutes to cut into sealed pressure chamber Marcos has barricaded himself inside, but that Marcos must re-arm that explosives in his vest manually and complete four circuit rewires to make it active. Meanwhile, CTU is digging into Marcos’ past and Chloe finds out that he joined forces with the IRK (the forces of the country the terroriss are from) because his father, a professor in the U.S. but originally from the IRK, was jailed by the administration of Jack’s friend, former President David Palmer. The father couldn’t find work after he was released and ultimately committed suicide, precipitating Maros’ joining the IRK’s efforts. Also at CTU, Cole and Dana return from their little shootout in the woods and sinking the bodies of Dana’s (a.k.a. Jennie Scott) former boyfriend/partner in crime Kevin Wade and his loser friend Nick. After committing a crime for the first time in his life, Cole doesn’t want to discuss what happened and angrily vows that they will talk once the terrorist threat is over but that he cannot promise that things will ever be the way they were before he found out about her past. Once they step off the elevator, CTU director Bryan Hastings tears them both a new one for going AWOL during a time of crisis. He informs them that he would fire them if they weren’t essential to the plan against the terrorist threat at the moment, but says their performance from this moment forward will determine if they are ultimately fired or not. He puts Dana under Chloe’s command and orders Cole to go pick up Marcos’ mother and take her to hospital. Already at the hospital are some of the Samir’s (now in charge of the plot to blow up the bomb in New York) men, who are set up at hospital on nearby roof and survelling the ongoing efforts to talk Marcos out of blowing himself up. Samir’s men also have tapped into the hospital’s surveillance cameras so they can more closely monitor what’s going on inside. Samir and the rest of his men are on the road, putting the finishing touches on their plans to take down CTU’s radiation sensors for Manhattan so they can smuggle their bomb onto the island. In the meantime, Jack attempts to talk Marcos into cooperating, saying the U.S. will retaliate against IRK if he doesn’t cooperate and the bomb ultimately goes off in Manhattan. He vows that Marcos will be the one blamed for the U.S. bombing the IRK off the map if he doesn’t cooperate. Elsewhere, IRK President Omar Hassan’s wife Dalia postpones her plans to fly back home and returns to the U.N. building while also calling the couple’s daughter Kayla, who has gone missing in Manhattan and is believed to be with Tarin Farush, Omar Hassan’s former head of security whom he had arrested for possibly being involved in the conspiracy against him. Kayla still refuses to answer her cell phone and remains in bed (literally) with Tarin, who tells her it will take 18 months for their asylum request to officially be processed and that in the meantime, they will have to live off some savings he’s built up. Dalia berates Omar for driving Kayla away with his suspicious and paranoia and in turn, he promises to change and do everything in his power to find her. In east Harlem, Cole and his team arrive to pick up Marcos’ mother, Elaine Al-Zakar. She doesn’t know what Marcos is up to and can only share that Marcos called and told her to get out of the city right away. Then, in the most disappointing part of the episode, the Cole/Dana/her redneck past from Arkansas storyline reared its ugly head again. Bill Prady, Kevin Wade’s parole officer from the Arkansas Department of Corrections is in New York looking for Kevin and wants to speak to Dana him because Kevin called her cell phone several times from a motel he stayed at on his way to New York. After reluctantly admitting to meet with Prady, Dana calls Cole at the hospital and he tells her to deal with it because he doesn’t have time. Also at the hospital, Elaine Al Zakar waits to talk to her son and Jack preps her before she heads in. At the same time, Chloe picks up on Samir’s men piggybacking the hospital video feed and in response, the CTU team on site cuts the feed. Elaine goes in to speak to Marcos and although it’s an emotional talk, he won't change his mind about blowing himself up. Jack has Elaine pulled from the room and steps in to threaten Marcos with an unlikely vow: that he will take Elaine to the nuclear detonation site personally if Marcos doesn’t cooperate, exposing her to fatal doses of radiation so she becomes violently ill and dies a painful, hideous death. Jack’s threat actually works and Marcos agrees to come out of the pressure tank and cooperate with CTU. But the second he steps out of the tank, Samir’s men see him from their rooftop perch and Samir directs them to trigger the suicide vest via the failsafe mechanism. The vest begins beeping and a timer counts down from one minute as Jack rushes to diffuse the explosives. When it becomes clear he may not make it in time, he asks Marcos to give up whatever information he has just in case. Marcos admits that the name he knows as the leader of the plot is none other than Tarin Farush. After spilling the beans, Marcos sprints back inside the chamber and slams the door behind him to shield the explosion as the bomb goes off. Jack is tossed to the ground as the blast rips through the room, but he is mostly unscathed. He looks up to see blood and guts painted all over the chamber door and the room, but is able to pass along the information he garnered from Marcos to CTU headquarters. They relay the information to President Hassan, who is still trying to locate Kayla and has now involved the police in the search. Once he knows Tarin is actually involved in the plot against him, he asks Dalia to call Kayla one more time. This time, Kayla picks up because Tarin is out of the room taking a shower and she talks to her mother. At first Kayla refuses to believe that Tarin is in fact a traitor, but she comes to believe her mother is telling the truth. She gives up her location so CTU can come find her, but that plan takes a hit when Tarin demands she gets dressed (at 3 a.m.) so they can go meet his contact who will help them with their asylum request. Kayla tries to stall and says she needs to freshen up before changing her clothes ,then locks herself in the bathroom. That’s where the hour ends and from the previews of next week, that bathroom door lock isn’t going to hold and Kayla is going to find herself on the verge of being executed live on the Internet as a hostage for the IRK forces, good times……….

- And so it continues. Brett Favre and his game of retirement chicken are hijacking another NFL offseason and there’s not a damn thing any of us can do about it. This why I freaking hate Favre and yet it continues interminably. He does inane, meaningless and innocuous things all offseason long, yet his media toadies hang on every minute action and obsess over it as if the direction in which Favre mows the grass at his palatial estate in Hattiesburg is a direct indicator of whether he’s coming back next season. The latest bit of worthless news is that Vikings coach Brad Childress made a trip this week to visit Favre at his home in Hattiesburg before the indecisive quarterback made his Thursday night appearance on "The Tonight Show." Childress said he told Favre he was only there to "see how you're doing," not to inquire as to how close he was on a decision about playing next year. "He brought it up to me -- 'When are you guys going to need to know?' " Childress said in an interview. "I said, 'You know what, Brett? That's not why I came down here. I came down here to see how you're doing. It's been five weeks since we played.' " Well played Chilly, well played. That’s the way you lie through your teeth. You actually do need to know if Favre is coming back (even though we all know he is), but you also know that no matter what you say, it’s not going to expedite his decision. Favre will let you know when he’s damned well ready to and not a second before. He knows that he owns you and that you are at his beck and call, based on your chauffeuring him from the airport when he finally deigned to show up and play this past season. Oh, and no thanks to Leno for having Favre on and even pretending that he was going to get any sort of answer of substance out of The Ol’ Gunslinger. "Well Jay, it's only been a month, and I know now that I'm just not going to say anything anytime soon, just going to kind of sit back, relax, enjoy the offseason," Favre said on the show. Thanks for telling us nothing that we didn’t already know, T.O.G.S. I look forward to you continuing to hold a gun to the NFL offseason’s head for the next few months and to hog as much of the spotlight as possible as we all await your inevitable decision to come back for yet another season. See you in August……………

- Shocker! North Korea is doubling back on plans to move forward with nuclear disarmament. Sunday’s announcement of the reneging allegedly came in response to a planned U.S.-South Korean joint military exercise, but that’s as big a joke as I’ve heard in some time. The official announcement came from the official Korean Central News Agency, or KCNA. "The maneuvers clearly indicate once again that the U.S. and the South Korean authorities are the harassers of peace and warmongers keen to bring a war to this land," the statement said. Uh huh, sure they do, Commies. Not only is North Korea pulling out of that deal, it has also vowed to no longer abide by the armistice that brought a truce to the Korean War. The justification for that is a claim that South Korea violated the agreement by participating in the military cooperation with the United States. Look, I realize that talks between North Korea, the United States and other nations were already on life support, so this should not be a surprise. However, it is mildly offensive that the North Koreans were sitting there waiting for any excuse at all to hit the eject button on this deal and now they want everyone to believe that they were actually committed to it and only decided to withdraw after incredibly offensive actions by the other involved parties. The claim that the military exercises would bring negotiations to a standstill and push North Korea to boost its nuclear arsenal was a given, I just don’t need the lies about why that’s happening. "The process for the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula will naturally come to a standstill and (North Korea) will bolster its nuclear deterrent for self-defense," the statement said. To borrow a truism used often by those attempting to describe the oft-infuriating and moronic actions of kooky outfielder Manny Ramirez during his playing career, this is just another example of North Korea being North Korea…………

- Being a female bartender is a looks-based endeavor. It’s a superficial thing to say but it’s true because the fact is that bars hire hot chicks because guys like staring at hot girls and are more likely to buy more drinks if a hot girl is the one pouring them. But what happens when one of those hot chicks suddenly becomes a little less hot, at least by traditional standards? Jennifer Paviglianiti, of Centereach, N.Y., claims to be the victim of just such a situation and she is now fighting to keep her job at a gentlemen's club in New York because she claims her employer, Café Royale, discriminated against her because she is pregnant. Paviglianiti filed a claim with the EEOC earlier this month because her boss allegedly treated her differently and was attempting to force her out of her job after she revealed her pregnancy to him. Because of her fears over his reaction Paviglianiti says she waitrf a few months to tell him. However, John Doxey found out before she could tell him and from there, Paviglianiti claims her job became threatened. She alleges that prior to her pregnancy, she was one of the club's most popular bartenders. All of that changed, she claims, when her pregnancy became more outwardly obvious and she had to ask for different hours due to her physical condition. Paviglianiti says she needed this specific bartending job because of her financial situation and to protect herself against possible termination, she secretly recorded her boss on tape. On those recordings Doxey can be heard saying, "Customers don't wanna come in and see a pregnant woman behind the bar!" In other recordings, Doxey openly opines that Paviglianiti's appearance is hurting business. "Maybe they don't go there because the bartender is pregnant and doesn't look sexy." Doxey’s argument is that it is within his right to treat Paviglianiti differently if employees were informed that they had to maintain a specific "sexy look" to qualify for the job. However, proving this would mean proving that Paviglianiti was hired as a "model and a bartender" and signed a written agreement to that effect. It’s a practice common to the casino industry. Paviglianiti says she never signed any paperwork to that effect, but that she was ultimately taken off the bartending schedule for a few weeks, during which she hired an attorney. She later returned to work but was assigned to be a cashier and claims she made much less than she did as a bartender. Doxey’s attorney, Robert F. Milman, counters that this proves she was never fired and her job duties were only adjusted to accommodate her pregnancy. "My client declines to comment on pending legal action except to say it considers that Ms. Paviglianiti allegations are without merit," attorney Milman said in a statement. "Ms. Paviglianiti was not terminated from her employment, she presently is on maternity leave and she has the right to return to work upon the conclusion of her leave." Paviglianiti is due to have her baby this week, but a win in her lawsuit against Doxey would seem to be nearly as nice an addition to her family at this point…………

- Dorks of the world, March 16 is a big day for you and I don’t think I need to explain why. That’s the day you’ve all been waiting for because it’s the day when your dork dreams come true: the release of the most eagerly awaited video game of 2010: the action-adventure sequel "God of War III." The game is for Sony's PlayStation 3 console and represents the culmination of nine years of work for the Sony creative team for the "God of War" series. Just like much-hyped movies, high-profile games rarely live up to the hype (or so I am told by my experts in all things dork), but early reports on "God of War III" are extremely positive. The basic premise of the game is pitting dorks, er, gamers against ancient gods and 'God of War III' is expected to deliver the most over-the-top, visually stimulating dorks-sperience ever in a game. The “God of War” series has sold over 8.7 million copies worldwide since it debuted in 2005. There is actually a storyline that unfolds throughout the first two games in the series and that story will continue in the third installment. Actually, the story is expected to conclude in the third installment because "GOW III" is expected to be the end of the series. Of course, Sony could simply be saying that to drum up interest and sales; I wouldn’t put it past them. Still, the hype is at insane highs. At last year's Spike Video Game Awards, "God of War III" was named Most Anticipated Game of 2010. There is even talk that it could become the fastest-selling PS3 exclusive game of all-time, topping "Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots," which sold 1.7 million units in its opening week in 2008. Work on “GOW III,” like the third movie in Gore Verbanski’s Pirates of the Caribbean series, actually began while the second installment of the sequence was still in production. When designers for “GOW III” began their work, they were also testing out the capabilities of the PlayStation 3. The console has proven to be a huge asset for them over the past several years and its technological advantages over previous incarnations of the PlayStation will reportedly make “God of War III” that much better for the millions dorks who will be lining up outside electronics stores overnight on March 16 to purchase it…………