News on the new "Guitar Hero, defective helmets for the Army and luck in the NBA playoffs

- The next "Guitar Hero" game is beginning to shape up and some major names are going to find themselves as key figures in new aspects of the game experience. Gene Simmons will act as a sort of host for the game, which makes sense because there is nothing that guy won't slap his name or likeness on if it will advance his brand and make him some more money. The game will also include appearances by Queen, Black Sabbath and Metallica's Lars Ulrich as recruitable characters in a new "quest mode" that allows players to assemble a band of their own. Oh, and the game will now be without a feature that allows gamers to play songs by one band using the avatars of another. You can thank heartless, soul-less wench Courtney Love for that one because she sued the makers of the game after finding out that users could play any song in the game as her late husband Kurt Cobain. She would like to have you believe she did so to protect the name and image of the man she loved, but I think we all know better than that. Love is about one thing and one thing only: making herself as famous and recognizable as possible. The feature of the game that has the most appeal for me (and for old-school punk fans who were shattered when this place closed three and a half years ago) is the inclusion of legendary Manhattan punk rock club C.B.G.B.’s as a real-world venue in which to play. When the club closed down in October of 2006 due to a dispute between owner Hilly Kristal and the Bowery Residents Commission, the music world lost one of its iconic venues from the south end of NYC. The new “Guitar Hero” will also make all songs downloaded for previous versions of the game available in the new one. No release date has been set, but this is already shaping up to be a great game……..

- Not that I am a trained military strategist, but this seems like a matter the U.S. Army would want to deal with in advance and not in retrospect. Rather than recall 44,000 combat helmets -- some of which are being used by U.S. troops in Afghanistan and possibly Iraq -- after they failed to meet ballistics testing standards, my thinking would be to test those helmets out before issuing them to our men and women in uniform. The recall was announced Monday by Brig. Gen. Peter N. Fuller, who's responsible for buying and testing equipment for soldiers. The helmet being recalled, the Advanced Combat Helmet (ACH), which is standard issue for all soldiers. That’s what makes the recall to stunning; these soldiers are out in the field, many in combat situations, without buckets that work in keeping them safe from enemy fire. Although Fuller said he was not aware of any injuries or deaths related to the recalled helmets, that certainly doesn’t excuse the mistake. The Army didn’t even initiate the research on the helmets and only conducted testing after being informed by the Justice Department about an ongoing investigation into the company that makes the helmets, ArmorSource LLC, formerly Rabintex USA LLC. "There is evidence that ArmorSource and Rabintex ACHs were produced using unauthorized manufacturing practices, defective materials and improper quality procedures which could potentially reduce ballistic and fragmentation protection," said an All Army Activities message sent out May 14 to soldiers around the world. The Justice Department's notification prompted the Army to conduct ballistic tests on the helmets, which led to the revelation that they didn't meet service standards. The helmets managed a passing grade in initial Army testing back in 2006 and the Army has 55,000 additional helmets in storage. Not sure what will be done with those, but maybe we can treat them like sports leagues and tournaments do with championship t-shirts made for teams that don’t win the tournament, i.e. shipping them off to some Third World country to be passed out to impoverished villagers. The helmets cost $250 each, so the total cost of these non-functional helmets is in the vicinity of $2.5 million, give or take a few dollars. The Army is investigating whether it can recover funds already paid to the company, so perhaps that will resolve the problem on the financial side. The Army had already broken its contract with ArmorSource earlier in the year because of other problems with the helmets, including paint chipping off, so this shouldn’t continue to be an issue going forward. In the end, all we’re left with is 100,000 defective helmets and unanswered questions about how they were approved for field use in the first place given that they would not protect a solider against a worst-case scenario strike on the helmet. Good to know we’re only providing the best equipment for those who are laying their lives on the line to protect our nation………….

- Not that Lamar Odom won't have ample opportunity to respond on his own, but I felt compelled to address Phoenix Suns forward Amare Stoudemire’s regrettable comments that the Lamar Odom's 19 points and 19 rebounds in the Lakers’ 128-107 win in Game 1 of the Western Conference finals were due to luck. I won't play the disrespect card because nothing is more tired than that, but it seems to me that Stoudemire was speaking more out of frustration and disappointment than anything else. "I'm not giving him no hype right now; he had a lucky game in Game 1," Stoudemire said after Suns practice Tuesday. "We just got to make sure we box him out. I think I focused so much on [Pau] Gasol and [Andrew] Bynum to where he snuck in there and got 19 boards, so now we just got to make sure there's three guys out there that can rebound well [when] adding Odom. So, we got to do a better job on them." Part of that statement is true; just not the part about luck. First off, there is no such thing as luck. There is no magical, mystical force out there in the universe, guiding and controlling events. So if Odom played well (he did) and drastically outplayed Stoudemire (he did), then it was skill, smarts and hard work. Fortunately, Odom didn’t take the bait and get hooked into a war of words over the non-issue. "So be it," Odom said. "Hopefully I can have another lucky one. I just go out there and play whatever the matchup is. I just try to be as efficient as possible in a run-and-gun game.” None of Odom’s teammates lobbed any verbal grenades at Stoudemire either and even normally irascible coach Phil Jackson mostly stayed above the fray. “You make your own luck we say, that's what sports people like to say," Jackson said. "I think he was just aggressive when he came in and tried to feel out where he could help us in the game. He hit a couple open shots and then everything started opening up for him -- drives, offensive rebounds and his whole game kind of came forward. "That's a lot of times the way basketball is. A guy starts playing well and just things fall in his hands. It certainly did for him last night and we hope it continues that way." Overall, it just sounds like a guy having a tough time handling a 21-point loss and looking for get under someone’s skin and start some psychological warfare of his own. Nice try Amare, but you would probably be better served by figuring out a way to stop Odom and get off for a 30-15 effort in every game for the rest of the series because that’s the only way your team has any hope of beating L.A. this time around…………

- Financing a political campaign is difficult in any country. Times are tough and giving to a politician just isn’t high on most people’s list. Politicians are distrusted and despised in most countries and talking a person who is just scraping by financially into giving up their hard-earned money to support a candidate who may not even be elected is a tough sell. Because of that, I can’t be too hard on Eme Zuru Ayortor, a 52-year-old pharmacist and a hopeful for Nigeria's Edo State House of Assembly, for the manner in which he went about raising money (or at least attempting to do so) for his campaign. Seems that Mr. Ayortor was busted at the international airport in Lagos, Nigeria on Monday for trying to smuggle almost five pounds of cocaine in his stomach in a scheme to finance his election campaign. Ayortor was going through airport security when a scanning machine revealed that he was carrying 4.7 pounds of the Colombian nose candy in his stomach. Ayortor was trying to fly out of the country, but never made it to the gate. "After undergoing observation, the pharmacist turned politician excreted 100 pieces of powdery substance that tested positive to cocaine," the airport security said in a statement. "Preliminary check on him revealed that he was preparing himself financially for the forthcoming election into the Edo State House of Assembly." So what was this guy’s plan for avoiding detection and smuggling nearly five pounds of blow out of the country? According to authorities, he told them that he was hoping his status as a politician would help him avoid being arrested. "We do not look at faces in conducting drug screening and we are not moved by credentials. Whoever is dealing in narcotics shall be exposed and prosecuted," said Ahmadu Giade, chairman of the Nigerian drug agency. So what, now a guy can’t smuggle drugs out of the country to raise money for an important campaign? Oh, and what a wonderful world crack addicts live in, snorting, smoking or ingesting drugs that have been inside someone’s stomach and crapped out in their waste. Big ups on that, crackheads…………

- I see what you’re doing, city of San Antonio, and I love it. America is still the FAT-test nation in the world and not nearly enough of us are doing our part to address the problem. I commend your decision to remove sugary sodas from beverage vending machines at city facilities and I dearly wish that other cities would follow your sterling example. San Antonio City Manager Sheryl Sculley requested the change, saying city employees need healthier beverage choices. Her decision means that approximately 250 vending machines will now only carry diet carbonated drinks and low-calorie juices, forcing employees to either drink healthier or find ways to get their Mountain Dew or Dr Pepper on without hitting up the vending machine in their building. "We're having health fairs and a lot of things for our employees," said city purchasing director Janie Cantu. "This is just one of them." Yanking sugar-laced sodas from vending machines is the first step for the city, but it will soon be followed by the removal of high-fat foods from 75 snack machines. Unfortunately, the new policy doesn't prohibit employees from bringing and eating foods at work that are no longer be available in vending machines. Look for overweight city employees to begin toting coolers packed with ice and sodas to work from here on out because if there is one thing Americans love a bit too much, it’s the foods that pack on the pounds and make us the most obese nation on Earth……….