- Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, everyone. We’ve been down this road before and I think we all remember (vividly) where it led. So before you begin celebrating the end of our long-running national nightmare that has been the final few years of Brett Favre’s career, just realize where we are. That, for the calendar-illiterate among you, would be three full weeks before Super Bowl XLV in Dallas, a game in which Favre will obviously not be playing because both he and his team sucked this season. That puts us about seven months out from training camps and as such, it is far, far too early to believe that the Ol’ Gunslinger is actually retiring for good. Even though league spokesman Greg Aiello confirmed that the Minnesota quarterback had filed his retirement papers with the NFL and this would seem – SEEM – to represent Brett Favre is following through on his vow to finally end his career after 20 NFL seasons, I refuse to get suckered in on this one. This is not the first time that the OG has filed retirement papers and he and could request reinstatement at any time. That’s exactly what happened with the OG done in 2008 with the Packers and 2009 with the Jets, when he insisted in tearful press conferences that he was done only to join the Vikings and play two more years. Even then, the drama persisted. After the 2009 season, he pretended to be torn over returning for another season so he could extort a few million dollars more out of the Vikings and force the team to prostrate itself at his feet by sending then-coach Brad Childress to Mississippi in the offseason to beg him to return and them send a private plane with three of his friends on the team – Steve Hutchinson, Ryan Longwell and Jared Allen – to Mississippi to make a final plea to make that cash grab, er, um, return for one last shot at glory. That shot never materialized because the Vikings were inept on offense and mediocre on defense and Favre’s 10-touchdown, 19-interception effort had much to do with that lack of success. He even saw his NFL record for consecutive starts broken at 297 thanks to a hit by no-name Buffalo linebacker Arthur Moats only to return one game later in a contest pushed back a day when the roof of the Metrodome collapsed because of heavy snowfall, suffering what turned out to be a career-ending his on a jarring sack by the Chicago Bears on a rock-hard college football field. The Vikings had long since been eliminated from the playoff race and the only reason Favre was a hot topic at the time other than his injury was the ongoing scandal involving lewd texts and voicemails he allegedly sent to former Jets game day employee Jenn Sterger when both were with the Jets in 2008. Even as the regular season ended, Favre was sued by two massage therapists who say they lost their jobs with the Jets after complaining about those text messages from the famous quarterback. So what might make this supposed retirement stick when others did not? A new coach in Minnesota, Leslie Frazier, might help. "I cannot think of any circumstance of where I would pick up the phone and say, 'Brett, do you want to come back next season?' " Frazier said earlier this month when he was elevated to full-time head coach. "I can't think of any circumstance where that would occur." Sounds good, coach, but you’ll have to excuse the rest of us for not fully believing that we’re out of the woods on this one just yet……….
- Dear resident of the West Coast…….you may or may not be receiving that important piece of mail you were expecting from your friend, family member or business associate back east. It may or may not be blowing around somewhere on or near an interstate highway in eastern Missouri, to be used by a bird to build its nest or run over by passing motorists until it disintegrates into a thousand irreparable pieces. That sad reality is your after hundreds of pieces of mail fluttered onto interstates in eastern Missouri Sunday after the back door of a contractor's semi carrying mail for the U.S. Postal Service came open. What with it being a ginormous semi, the driver was oblivious to the problem for quite a while and as such, the mail was scattered along 70 miles of highway near St. Louis, according to Postal Inspector Dan Taylor. Taylor tried to offer up a ray of hope by saying that said the tractor-trailer was carrying mostly statements and bills bound for the West Coast and that he didn't think any personal mail was lost. Mmm hmm, because no personal mail is ever lost by the USPS. The unintentional mail dump occurred not long after the truck left a St. Louis-area distribution center and was headed to a Memphis, Tenn., distribution point, Taylor said. For several hours Sunday afternoon, motorists along the affected stretch of highway were treated to the unusual sight of postal employees working on a the first day of the week as police and postal authorities spent hours along the highway picking up. In typical government fashion, the postal service announced that it will launch a thorough investigation of how the incident happened so it can be prevented in the future. Latching and securing the rear gate of semi trucks carrying loads of mail would be an excellent starting (and ending) point………
- Nokia picked a fight and lost that fight….so it’s back to the drawing board in its battle to compete with Apple Inc.'s iTunes. The original idea was to offer its free music downloads for handsets in several markets through a partnership with several record labels. That idea, launched in 2008 as called "Comes With Music," was supposed to be as a rival service to Apple's iPhone and iTunes offerings. The program marked Nokia’s first foray into the digital music world and that foray is no over. Although the world's largest cellphone maker said it will continue to offer Ovi Music Unlimited subscriptions in China, India, Brazil, Turkey and South Africa, but the service is dead and buried everywhere else. Nokia insists that there will be no disruption in the service for existing customers, and any Ovi Music Unlimited devices in the retail channel awaiting sale can be activated until Dec. 31, offering 12 months of unlimited track downloads. For makers of mobile handsets, music has become an important part of the sales mix as scores of competitors enter the market and vie for business. The basic concept of Nokia's music service was for customers to download tracks freely for 12 months to their handsets and keep them after the end of the subscription period. Oddly enough, the project failed even though it was supported by a number of major record companies including Universal Music Group, Sony BMG Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group. The only thing left to do now that it has failed is to find a way to put a happy face on it with some well-polished corporate speak, so have at it, Nokia." We are actively pursuing and planning new music and entertainment services for 2011 with our ecosystem of partners, and will make further announcements at a later date," the company said in a written statement on its Web site. Umm, sure………..
- In this wide, wonderful world of ours, few things are more detestable and annoying that wine/liquor aficionados. You know these people because you hate them. They are the tools who go to wine tastings, swirl an ounce or two of drink around in their mouth to “get the taste” and then spit it out into a bucket without actually drinking it. They speak of vintages and grape harvests and aging processes and…….wow, I’m bored just writing about these fools. They are the very fools who will undoubtedly be excited about news of the discovery of three bottles of Mackinlays scotch that were flown to Scotland by private jet Monday after being found last year in a crate that had been buried beneath a basic hut that famed explorer Ernest Shackleton used during his Nimrod expedition in 1907. The adventure, more formally known as the British Antarctic Expedition, is legendary. But Scots and whiskey lovers may view it a bit differently now that they know Shackelton was absent-minded enough to leave behind a crate full of booze. The crate was found frozen solid after more than a century beneath the Antarctic surface with the three bottles intact and inside. The researchers who found the crate could hear the whisky sloshing around inside, as Antarctica's minus 22 Fahrenheit (-30 Celsius) temperature was not enough to freeze the liquor, dating from 1896 or 1897. Experts say that the whiskey is in remarkably good condition for such a long, deep freeze, which means it would undoubtedly fetch a high price if it ever makes it to a bar shelf. Some trendy bars in the United Kingdom, and especially London, are known to sell some aged cognacs for $80 a glass or more. So valuable are the bottles that they were deemed to pricey to be returned to Scotland on a commercial flight. Speaking as someone who has been on many a flight and seen many a bag manhandled or lost, dare I ask why? Instead, the whiskey returned home on the private jet of Vijay Mallya, owner of Whyte & Mackay's, which bought Mackinlays some years ago. Bizarrely enough, it will remain in Scotland for just six weeks to be studied before being returned to Shackleton's hut under the floorboards of Shackleton's hut at Cape Royds on Ross Island, near Antarctica's McMurdo Sound. Right, because that’s not a waste of time, money and jet fuel……..
- Where one failed basic cable opportunity ends, another begins. In this case, it is actually two basic cable dreams that died and one new offering will spring forth from those ruins. After Discovery Communications’ Discovery Health cable channel went down in flames, the company has decided to merge the remains of the channel with the fitness programming of its FitTV channel and turn the mix into says Discovery Fit & Health. A very unimaginative naming effort, if I do say so myself. Normally, a broadcaster will come up with a snappy, creative (i.e. lame) name for a network when it launches, but Discovery is obviously focusing its efforts and resources elsewhere. What it has done is announce that Discovery Fit & Health cable network will launch on Feb. 1 and be found on the channel currently occupied by FitTV, which is available in approximately 50 million homes. As for programming, the new channel will combine the real-life stories aired by the recently defunct Discovery Health with FitTV’s slate of fitness-oriented shows to create a schedule of forensic mysteries, medical stories, baby and pregnancy programming, and stories of extreme life conditions. You might recall that Discovery Health’s demise was necessary to pave the way for the new Oprah Winfrey Network, which claimed that channel when it signed on Jan. 1 (Oprah takes over something else, old news). So if a network that can share both a good murder mystery solved by forensic science and the travails of a mother going through a difficult pregnancy and do so in a single evening is a component that has been missing from you life, then consider that problem officially solved…………
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