Getting serious about safe sex, how to pass time in South Bend and weekend movie news

- Some people are just more serious about safe sex than others. Take, for example, the suspect now being sought by police in Indianapolis who stole several boxes of condoms from a grocery store on Indianapolis' north side, fighting with a security guard as he left. The Marsh grocery store on Broad Ripple Avenue was the scene on Tuesday night and according to a store security guard, that he saw a man come into the store and head straight for the condom aisle. That caught the guard’s attention because condoms had been stolen from the store in a previous incident and he didn’t want a repeat occurrence on his watch. So when he saw the suspect "take several condom boxes and place them inside his pants," (maybe getting a head start on the process?), the guard attempted to stop the man, described as black, in his mid 40s, 6 feet tall and 240 pounds. The confrontation took place at the front of the store and the two men began brawling over the stolen condoms. The fight spilled out into the parking lot and somehow, the thief was able to gain the upper hand and break free. He ran to his car, fired it up and drove away. Despite reviewing video of the incident, police aren’t sure who the suspect is or how many boxes of condoms he stole. The guard sustained minor injuries in the fight, but at this point is probably more embarrassed about not being able to stop an overweight, out-of-shape condom thief from raiding the shelves of his store………

- Have police in South Bend, Ind. ever seen South Bend? Because if they had, I have a sneaking suspicion that they wouldn’t be quite so hard on the 11 Notre Dame athletes they arrested on misdemeanor charges of underage drinking at a party Friday night. Among those arrested was Nate Montana, son of former Notre Dame standout Joe Montana. All told, 44 people were arrested after city police responded to a call about a fight near a roadway and discovered the party. St. Joseph County Police assistant chief Bill Redman stated that two non-athletes face a misdemeanor charge of providing alcohol to minors, while the others face charges of underage consumption. Now, I have been to South Bend and it’s a cool place because of the football history and tradition there, but God bless South Bend, it’s not an exciting or action-packed place. There aren’t tons of clubs or things to do and if you’re hanging around, taking summer school classes or working out to get ready for the upcoming football season, finding something to do for fun is going to be difficult. So if Nate Montana, a walk-on who was the backup to starter Dayne Crist coming out of the spring, and Tim Abromaitis, the second leading scorer on the Irish basketball team at 16.1 points a game last season, want to booze it up a little bit, then I’m not surprised. Also in on the fun were wide receivers Robbie Toma and Tai-ler Jones, linebacker Steve Filer, kicker Nick Tausch, cornerback Lo Wood, and offensive linemen Chris Watt and Tate Nichols; incoming freshman point guard Eric Atkins; and incoming hockey goalie Steven Summerhays. The true culprits here seem to be the two idiots who got drunk enough that they started a fight and led the cops to the party in the first place. Obviously, the athletes busted for underage drinking will be punished by their individual teams and probably won't get too much discipline, maybe a one-game suspension or something along those lines. Still, I can't help but think that maybe the less-than-thrilling nature of South Bend should serve as a mitigating factor here………

- For once, a movie that’s actually good won the weekend box office race. Inception, the mind-bendy heist film from director Christopher Nolan, raked in $60.4 million in its opening weekend to top the field. For such a twisted, complicated movie, it’s an impressive total. Second place went to Despicable Me, which scared up $32.7 million to put its ten-day stint at $118 million. In third place was another new release, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, which grossed $17.3 million in a disappointing opening weekend. Unless the film kills it internationally, Nicolas Cage and Co. seem headed for a disappointing result for this one. On the heels of Sorcerer’s was The Twilight Saga: Eclipse, which earned another $13.5 million to put its total cumulative at $265 million and counting. That was enough to hold off another successful holdover, Toy Story 3, which 44 percent to gross $12 million and further strengthen its position as Pixar’s highest-grossing with $363 million. After that top five, it was Adam Sandler’s Grown Ups in the sixth slot after dropping only 37 percent its fourth weekend in theaters for an additional $10 million. The film, which has had a much more successful run than I ever would have anticipated, had now made nearly $129 million. The rest of the top 10 was filled out by: The Last Airbender (from director M. Night Shyamalan and earning $7.4 million its third weekend for a cumulative total of $115 million), Predators (bombing out with $6.8 million after a 73 percent drop from, its opening weekend), Knight & Day ($3.7 million) and The Karate Kid ($2.2 million, pushing its cumulative total to $169 million). The other noteworthy films for the weekend were Cyrus, starring John C. Reilly and Jonah Hill, and Lisa Cholodenko’s The Kids Are All Right, both of which came out in very limited release. Cyrus grossed $1 million in 446 theaters and The Kids Are All Right earned $1 million on only 38 theaters for a screen average of $27,000. But overall, a solid weekend at the box office with some good choices to spend your movie dollars on………

- A lot of people take shots at the NAACP and have a beef with the way the group does business, but not all of them are prominent members of a group of political agitators masquerading as a political party and seeking to overthrow our current political system. With that in mind, Tea Party activist Mark Williams probably should have thought his comments through before attacking the NAACP. In a blog post crafted in the form of a fictional (supposedly) letter to Abraham Lincoln, the conservative radio host wrote, "Dear Mr. Lincoln. We Coloreds have taken a vote and decided that we don't cotton to that whole emancipation thing. Freedom means having to work for real, think for ourselves, and take consequences along with the rewards. That is just far too much to ask of us Colored People and we demand that it stop! Bailouts are just big money welfare and isn't that what we want all Coloreds to strive for? What kind of racist would want to end big money welfare? What they need to do is start handing the bailouts directly to us coloreds!" Wow…..just wow. Even if you don’t like the NAACP, that is some messed up sh*t. Trying to include the fact that your quasi political party couldn't be racist because it opposed government bailouts for Wall Street banks and big corporations after those comments is as laughable and ridiculous as can be. Coming back after the fact and trying to argue that your post was intended as satire, then saying you weren’t going to talk about it any more and likening the resulting uproar to "a World Wrestling style personality conflict" is not exactly handling the matter well. The National Tea Party Federation, an organization that seeks to represent the Tea Party political movement around the country, doesn’t seem thrilled with Williams in light of the post. In fact, this group of tools expelled Williams and his Tea Party Express organization for the blog post. NAACP President Ben Jealous replied Williams' statement by proclaiming, "Good riddance, Mark Williams." As a quick aside, it does make sense for the Tea Party to kick Williams out. This is a group on the outside, the far reaches, of the American political system and with no real hope of affecting significant change within our system. The last thing it can afford is an ass hat like Williams spouting this kind of garbage………

- It’s the end of the road for the Nexus One, Google’s once highly anticipated smartphone. The Web giant has pulled the plug on the phone and the last shipment of the Nexus one has already arrived at the company’s headquarters. U.S. consumers who want a Nexus One will have to buy a phone from this shipment or miss their chance to own one. Well, either that or they will have to take to the friendly skies and head abroad to buy the handset from Vodafone in Europe and some Asian carriers. Additionally, developers will still be able to get their hands on one, but in the U.S. market, other phones like the Droid phones on Verizon will be the ones rocking Google’s Android mobile operating system. In short, the decision appears to deliver the final verdict on Google’s experiment with an unlocked consumer handset in the U.S and that verdict is simple: failure. Sales for the Nexus One have been incredibly disappointing and Google had already closed the Nexus One web store two months ago. The official announcement came on the company’s blog on Friday, but it was widely expected and thus generated little buzz. The failure of the Nexus One came in spite of its popularity with many tech dorks, but the idea of an unlocked handset just didn’t resonate with most American consumers. For its part, Google didn’t exactly throw a ton of marketing muscle behind the phone and thus bears some of the culpability for its demise……….