A night of Heroes and Prison Break, a 13-year odyssey and Marion Jones wants forgiveness

- I think we can all agree that everyone hates paddleboats. They look like they’d be a lot of fun, right up to the moment you actually get out on the water in one of them and start spinning around and veering in all different directions because you can’t control them. Five minutes in one of those things is more than enough for me in a decade, so I’m flat-out amazed at the13-year paddleboat odyssey just completed by British adventurer Jason Lewis. Lewis circumnavigated the globe in a 26-foot pedal boat, traveling 46,000 miles with only the strength of his legs to power him. Aside from seeing the world and having an amazing adventure that most of us can only dream about having, Lewis can also take from this experience some of the most chiseled calf muscles this side of the workout room at the BALCO labs. To be fair, he didn’t use the paddleboat exclusively; he mixed in a bike, a kayak and some roller blades as well, but however you break it down, it’s an amazing trek. The trip, like the cruise for the crew from Gilligan’s Island, wasn’t supposed to take that long, but accidents, illnesses and border problems prolonged the journey. The original plan was for 3 ½ years, but what’s an extra decade when you’re circumnavigating the globe? Lewis finished his journey by paddling his boat across the Meridian Line in Greenwich, England, on the River Thames. I would try to cover some of what’s changed from the time he began his journey to the time it ended, but it might be easier to focus on what hasn’t changed. When Lewis began his voyage, Michael Jackson was a bizarre, freakish pedophile who made awful music, and that’s still true today. When Lewis began his trip, the Chicago Cubs hadn’t won a World Series since 1908, and that’s also still true. And in 1994, when Lewis was setting out on his trek, Pauly Shore still had not made a single watchable movie, and that too is still true today. Welcome back, J. Lewis, I’m looking forward to what you have planned next.

- It’s common knowledge that O.J. Simpson is the biggest piece of trash known to man, but now we’re learning that in addition to being a murderer (allegedly), a bad husband, a bad father, a memorabilia thief, a burglar, the worst criminal plotter of the decade and the most despicable life form currently inhabiting the Earth, the Juice is also a total fraud. The family of Ronald Goldman, the waiter and friend of Nicole Brown Simpson whom the Juice turned into a human Pez dispenser, tried to collect part of the $33.5 million wrongful death civil judgment against O.J. for knifing their son to death by selling off O.J.’s Rolex watch. The family thought the watch was a genuine Rolex worth $22,000, but found out when they had it appraised that it was a knockoff worth $100. Nice, Juice, everything about you is sleazy and low class, so why wouldn’t you be rocking a fake Rolex. Do you have the fake gold chain to match? Just don’t tell me that your search for the real killer is fake, because I just don’t think I could take that kind of disappointment. Since the watch is of virtually no value in the face of what is owed to the Goldman family, it will be returned to O.J. What use it will be to him in the hole, I don’t know, but that’s where he’s headed once this memorabilia sting operation case against him goes to trial. I see the Goldman’s working here, though. With their nemesis (actually, the Juice is a nemesis to all mankind, he’s not exclusive to the Goldman’s), they’re even less likely to see any of the money they’re owed, so why not try to pawn the watch off? If it’s me, I’m forgetting about selling off any more of the Juice’s stuff, because 1) he’s liable to come bursting through the door of whoever possesses it and threatening them at gunpoint to get his stuff back, and 2) anything this guy touches is cursed, so I want no part of it. Take a sigh of relief, Juice, you’re still the worst guy ever and no, it’s not even a close race.

- There just isn't a better night of television right now than Monday nights with Heroes and Prison Break. Of course, the fact that the other nights of the week are abysmal wastelands of unwatchable shows helps, but it doesn’t lessen the awesomeness of these two shows. Last night’s episodes were stellar, with Prison Break kicking things off with an episode that reminded me why I love watching this show. All of the smarts, cleverness and drama that make PB so great to watch were on display as the pressure was ratcheted up a notch on the characters inside of SONA as well as those on the outside. The most obvious place to start is where last week’s episode ended, namely the mystery box in the corner of the hotel parking garage that Lincoln found from the Company. Based on his reaction in opening the box, you knew it was something horrific, and that’s exactly what it was. The head of Dr. Sarah Tancredi was a warning sign to Linc and Michael to play ball with the Company, although Linc elected to keep the news from Michael because he knew what it would do to his brother. Killing off Sarah wasn’t a surprise because if you’ve been following entertainment news at all, you knew that Sara Wayne Callies wasn’t with the show any more and they weren’t going to recast the role, so killing her off was the only real option. Also on the outside, Sucre’s lazy ass finally decided to do something, namely migrate to Colombia to do some farming work and earn money to send back home to Maricruz. He never made it to Colombia, though, but more on that in a minute. Whistler’s girlfriend also continues her orbit around the Lincoln-Michael-SONA saga, wanting to get involved but not knowing how. She’s a bit whiny and needy at this point, but hopefully that will change as the season progresses. Inside SONA, things were heating up, or more aptly put, shutting down. In order to further his escape plan, Michael Scofield temporarily shorted out the power by placing a cheap metal cross necklace in the circuitry for SONA’s electricity, a move he knew would force Lechero (Robert Wisdom), the de facto leader of the prison, to come and ask for his help in restoring power. That gave Michael a chance to get outside the prison walls and fix wiring that would make the dormant electrical fence surrounding the prison live again. Why was that important? Well, another part of the escape plan calls for a chemical that is sprayed on dead bodies of SONA prisoners to prevent them from smelling as they decompose to be sprayed on the fence. When the chemical reaches a certain temperature, it also melts metal, which is where the live fence comes in. Who’s spraying that chemical on the fence? It’s Sucre, who Lincoln and the company have helped to get a job on the body disposal crew. The dynamics inside the prison are in play as well, with Mahone insisting on being involved in the escape plan and Michael stringing him along, making him think he’s part of the plan by giving him tasks to do, such as securing a black felt tip pen. Mahone wises up and figures out he’s being played, leading him to threaten Scofield to stop jerking with him. The fact that Mahone is being haunted by the ghost of Haywire, the mentally ill inmate who he forced into committing suicide for the Company last year, is disturbing, so hopefully that will stop. Bellick also wants in on the escape plan, but Scofield resists him as well, which leads Bellick to try and rat Michael out to Lechero, a move that backfires when Michael is able to convince Lechero that Bellick’s allegations of an escape plan are fabricated. That earns Bellick a severe burn to the back with a cup full of hot coffee, although you know he’s not giving up that easily. Sadly, it looks like PB will be pre-empted next week by the Major League Baseball playoffs, so we may have to wait an extra week for the story to continue. I’m pissed because as much as I want to see Indians v. Red Sox, I would rather be watching Prison Break. Still, that should be the only time this scheduling conflict happens this year, which is better than most years. And of course, we’ll still have Heroes on next Monday, so the night won't be a total TV loss. This week, my favorite hero, Peter Petrelli, threw a wrench in the process of his return to New York by deciding that maybe life isn't so bad in Cork, Ireland after all. As with so many distractions and downfalls of great men, Peter’s diversion involves a woman – Kaitlin. After pulling an armored car robbery with and her brothers and thus earning back the box containing his belongings and personal property that will help him remember who he was, Peter decides that maybe he doesn’t want to remember and maybe that life in that box isn't one he wants. He likes where he is now, with Kaitlin, gradually rediscovering his powers. Speaking of regaining powers, our old friend Sylar is back, just as devious and manipulative as ever but in some trouble. He was rescued by the mesomorph Candace, who continues her ways of changing her appearance and making other people see whatever she wants them to see and makes Sylar think the two of them are on the beach in Maui. Instead, it turns out that they’re in the middle of the Amazon jungle in a dilapidated metal building. Sylar pretends to be struggling to get back to good health and not having his powers, but once Candace lets her guard down, Sylar reveals that he has all his powers back, killing Candace and trying to take her power. That leaves her in her actual form – as a fat, pasty chick – and leaves Sylar falling to the floor, clutching his stomach and groaning in pain as he realizes he hasn’t actually been able to co-opt Candace’s power and has instead become very ill. Mohinder Suresh is still in the practice of helping ill people with powers, but he’s having a hard time coping with the constant monitoring by his new friends at the company. He and H.R.G. are still seeking the paintings by the late Isaac Mendez that tell the future, which becomes easier when the Company buys Isaac’s old loft and converts it into a lab for Mohinder. That allows him to discover a disturbing painting, the last in a series of eight, that shows H.R.G. as a victim of the mysterious individual hunting down the original heroes, which began with the murder of Hiro’s father last week. Speaking of Hiro, he’s still back in 1671, helping his friend, Japanese legend Takezo Kensei, find his own way as a hero. This week’s challenges included convincing Kensei that his healing and regenerative powers are a gift, not a curse, and starting him on the way to accomplishing the heroic feats that history remembers him for. Hiro finds a way to link to his old life in the future by slipping notes inside the heel of the sword of Kensei that he and old pal Ando stole back in the 21st century and Hiro is about to go back to that life but decides to stay in 1671 for now, partly because like Peter Petrelli, he’s in love with a girl, except she’s Kensei’s girl. And what about H.R.G. the Bennet family, living their normal lives in California? Well, Claire’s new friend West confronts her about her abilities and reveals that he has his own ability, the power to fly. The story takes an unsavory turn when Claire sees the two black marks on his shoulder that indicate tagging and tracking by the Company. She is horrified to learn that it was her father, when he was with the Company, who kidnapped West and brought him in to be experimented on by the Company, although West doesn’t know this – yet. Niki and Micah are also back on the radar, popping up long enough for Micah to be left by his mother in New Orleans with his grandmother, who clearly has powers of her own that we’ll find out about soon enough. But Niki is on her way to New York to see the mysterious man from the Company that Mohinder is working with because he’s promised her that he can “cure” her and eliminate her powers. Lastly, new faces Maya and Alejandro continue their quest to reach New York as they race through Mexico, stopping only when Alejandro is arrested for trying to steal a car and Maya uses her power to cry and somehow cause blood to flow from the eyes of others as they die to free her brother. A fellow escapee from the prison offers them a ride in his car and off they go. There’s almost too much going on to process it all, but the first three episodes of this season have been so amazing that I’m tempted to say this season could be better than Season One, but there’s still a long way to go…….

- After Heroes and Prison Break were over and while I was partially concentrating on the Indians dispatching the Yankees from the postseason, there was still time to catch a Monday Night Football thriller between the Dallas Cowboys and Buffalo Bills that proved you don’t need to play a great game or be a good team to put on one of the most dramatic contests of the season. The person not playing a great game was Cowboys quarterback and perennial chaser of B-list celebrity tail Tony Romo, who had six freaking turnovers but still managed to rally his team to a win over a team they should have beaten for three touchdowns. The 25-24 margin shouldn’t deceive Buffalo fans or distract them from the fact that they have one of the two or three worst teams in the NFL. Romo’s six turnovers, including two interceptions returned for touchdowns, kept Buffalo in the game, along with a kickoff return for a touchdown by Terrence McGee, but in the end Buffalo proved why they really are a bargain basement team by throwing a costly interception when they were about to put up a clinching score, then failing to recover an onside kick that the Cowboys secured and then used to propel them into field goal range where rookie kicker Nick Folk sealed the win.

- You want forgiveness, Marion Jones? Fine, as long as you realize that forgiving you doesn’t mean that I don’t still think of you as a lying, thieving cheater with no ethics and no credibility. As long as you’re cool with me thinking of you in the same vein as Bar-roid Bonds, Ben Johnson, Mark McGwire and others of their ilk, then consider yourself forgiven. You’re a fraud, a phony and a cheater who built one of the most successful careers in the history of women’s track and field on the back of steroid use. You can give back the five medals you won at the 2000 Summer Olympics, forfeit all of the results, winnings and records you set during your ‘roids period dating back to September 1, 2000, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen and it won't keep this scandal from being the first thing people think of whenever they hear your name from this point on. On a side note, how is Jones going to give back those winnings when she reportedly only has $2,000 or so to her name? A few months ago, a story was published that alleged among other things that Jones has only $2,000 left and that she’s fallen on hard times, so I’m wondering how she plans on giving back her winnings. Was she lying about being broke too, since lying seems like her forte? Or will she set up some sort of payment plan, the “I cheated and used steroids so here’s ten dollars a week until I pay it all back” plan? The truly sad element of this story is that the U.S. Olympic Committee is now demanding that Jones’ teammates from the gold and bronze medal-winning relay teams in the 2000 Olympics give back their medals as well, which I hope they don’t do. It’s not their fault the Jones cheated and tarnished their performance, so they should keep their medals and tell the USOC to suck it. Yet another great result of your cheating ways, Marion, you really did as much damage as possible on this one…..

Yankees lose! Thhhheeeee Yankees lose! Plus college football thoughts and will.i.am's bomb of a new album

ftover college football thoughts from the weekend, since I didn’t do my usual rundown of the entire day of action. One, how pissed does Pete Carroll have to be right now? After new Stanford head coach Jim Harbaugh spent all offseason tweaking Carroll by making comments about how USC might be the best team in the history of college football, Stanford goes into the L.A. Coliseum and stuns the #2 Trojans 24-23 with a last-minute touchdown. Gone are USC’s national title dreams, down the drain at the hands of a coach that Carroll has to want to kill right now. Meanwhile, LSU salvaged its own title dreams for now by rallying from a 10-point fourth-quarter deficit to defeat Florida 28-24, handing the Gators their second consecutive loss in the process. LSU’s vaunted defense had a mediocre game at best, but in crunch time they stopped the Gators and for the time being, LSU is on course for a berth in the national title game. There were some real barnburners all day long, many of them involving non-ranked teams as usual. In the Big Ten, Northwestern actually won a conference game, 48-41 in overtime against Michigan State in a game where there literally seemed to be a score every time a team got the ball. Northwestern’s C.J. Bacher threw for more than 500 yards and five touchdowns and thanks to a porous defense, his team needed every yard and every point it could get. Really off the map was a Mid-American Conference game in which the University of Akron Zips scored 15 points in the final four minutes, including a safety with less than a minute left and a lateraled free-kick return for a touchdown with no time left on the clock, to win at Western Michigan, 39-38. Out in Hawaii, the Rainbow Warriors won the game against Utah State, 52-37, but may have suffered a bigger loss when star quarterback and Heisman hopeful Colt Brennan left the game with a leg injury in the third quarter. However, UH is still undefeated at 6-0 and sits at #XX in the polls, one spot behind the University of Cincinnati, which ruined the season of Big East rival Rutgers for the second consecutive year with a 28-23 victory in Piscataway, N.J. Also joining USC as a Top 5, undefeated team losing to an unranked conference opponent was Wisconsin, which fell 31-26 to the surging University of Illinois Fighting Illini. Believe it or not, the Illini have shaken their status as perennial doormats in the Big Ten and currently sit alone in first place atop the conference standings with a 3-0 league mark. Perhaps the best way to sum up the weekend is to say that when the dust had settled, the fourth and fifth-ranked teams in college football, respectively, are Boston College and South Florida. Yeah, it sounds insane, but it’s true – and we’re still only at the halfway point of the season.

- You brought this on yourself, America, with your inexplicable support of idiotic, gawd-awful TV shows like American Karaoke on FOX and Making the Band and its 45 different incarnations on MTV. Now, FOX and MTV have decided to lower the bar even further, if that’s possible, with new shows America’s Next Great Band (FOX) and Making Menudo (MTV). That’s right, MTV is resuscitating the rotting, decomposing corpse that is Latin America’s original man band, Menudo. Why they’re doing this, I don’t know. After all, this is the group that spawned the musical mistake that is Ricky Martin, so why reward it by casting a new bunch of matching-outfit-wearing, unison-dancing, hair-frosting man-banders to create more of the absolutely un-listenable music that Menudo is known for? Allow me to use this analogy: If a guy goes out and brutally murders a family of four, chops them up and burns their remains and then offers to make you a delicious strawberry cheesecake if you’ll overlook his transgressions, do you accept the offer? Heck no. Likewise, if a musical group spawns something as hideous and horrendous as Ricky Martin and his crap-ola music, then that group wants to reform with new members and produce more music and theoretically more guys like Martin, there’s no way you allow that to happen. Yet here’s MTV, not only supporting that effort but acting as a facilitator. Joining them in their stupidity is FOX, which clearly isn't satisfied with having crappy glorified karaoke contests to launch the careers of effeminate warblers like Clay Aiken and now wants to go out and find all the hack musicians it can, regardless of genre, and put them on TV as well in America’s Next Great Band. That poseur rockers INXS already tried this concept as failed miserably doesn’t seem to have deterred FOX, which will now parade an endless line of losers on stage with their subpar playing of instruments to supplement the mind-numbingly bad vocals that American Karaoke provides the network with a never-ending supply of. But I don’t feel the least bit sorry for you, America, because you brought this on yourself. If you’d had the good sense to not watch shows like American Karaoke on FOX and Making the Band in the first place, you wouldn’t be dealing with this new round of terrible TV.

- As strange as this might sound from someone who loathes the music of the Black Eyed Peas with every fiber of his being, I sincerely wish the members of the group would stick together and focus on only making music as a group. Why, you ask? Well, although every single album from the Peas has been utterly crap-tastic in the worst possible way, at least when they’re together, you only have to worry about avoiding music from a single source. Instead, we’ve been subjected to some of the most horrifically bad, sickeningly pathetic pop music ever made from the joke of an artist that is Fergie, and now will.i.am., who should apologize to e.e. cummings for ripping off the concept of putting your entire name in lower-case letters and using it for such a crappy musical career, is putting out his own album, Songs About Girls. Wow, how original, Will I Ain’t. Who would have guessed that as the “mastermind” behind the farce that is the Black Eyed Peas, whose music contains less depth and lyrical skill than the drunken ramblings of your average frat dude on a Saturday night and is far more painful to listen to, your solo album would be songs about girls. Not so coincidentally, your Peas pal Fergie also likes singing about girls – no, make that girl, as in singing about herself, how hot she thinks she is and how much guys wanna get with her. For this album, Will I Ain’t goes with a concept album, with the songs about a guy who meets and falls in love with a girl but ultimately loses her. It mixes funk, soul, dance and club music into one appalling ball of musical garbage. I didn’t know it would be possible to take so many different types of music, incorporate them and fail to pull out any of their good qualities into the finished product, but Will I Ain’t has done just that. It’s akin to taking every piece of leftover food – pizza, Chinese, hot dogs, watermelon, French Fries, a half-eaten quesadilla – and throwing them all into the same blender to mix. The result is going to be ugly, it’s going to smell bad, it’s going to be messy and you’re not going to want to be within a thousand feet of it, let alone eat it. The same can be said for Songs About Girls, except it might be even more unappealing than the mixture coming out of that blender.

- The Buddhist monks in Myanmar might be in a state of detainment or repression from the military in their nation, but clearly their example has inspired monks (and non-monks) worldwide to speak out against the brutally oppressive military regime currently governing Myanmar. Activists in cities across Europe and Asia held vigils Saturday in support of the pro-democracy forces in Myanmar, where the ruling military junta has been busy harassing beating, killing or jailing those who dare speak out against him and his regime. Some activists within the country also held their own secret vigils in support of those who have been injured, jailed or killed in the resistance efforts. While the worldwide demonstrations aren’t expected to have much of an effect inside Myanmar, they should help to keep the issue on our collective global conscience and thus increase the chances that someone will step in to help the people of Myanmar if they ask for international support in their fight against the elitist regime that has now ruled their nation with an iron fist for 45 years. Some of the protests on Saturday took place in locations such as Taipei, Melbourne, London and Paris, where police actually blocked demonstrators from marching on the Chinese embassy. That’s notable and amusing because I didn’t know that French military or law enforcement were good for anything but surrendering…..but I digress. Even in nations where protest marches are done in support of a conflict thousands of miles away, this situation is creating tension and strife. Keep the pressure on, world, because eventually this junta and his regime will go down.

- Thhhhhheeeeeee Yankees LOSE! Thhhhheeeeeeee Yankees lose! Suck it, John Sterling. Sterling is the Yankees radio announcer famous for belting out an elongated “Yankees win! The Yankees win!” every time the Bronx Bombers are victorious, so I thought it only fitting that I pay tribute to him on this glorious day when the Yankees are eliminated from the postseason yet again, this loss costing manager Joe Torre his job. That gem comes courtesy of the biggest ass in all of baseball, on the executive side anyhow, George Steinbrenner. Big Stein dropped the bomb before Game Three that unless the Yanks won the series, Torre was gone. That led to the predictable compulsion of TBS to show a close up of Torre every time something bad happened to the Yankees in the third and fourth games of the series. Now, that fatal loss has happened. Torre will be canned, while legendary Yankees public address announcer Bob Shephard, who is missing this series with some sort of throat malady and prompting the Yankee ass-kissing TBS broadcasting crew to continually fall prostrate at his proverbial feet and lament Shephard missing this series, can have until next year to rest his pipes and get ready to announce more baseball at Yankee Stadium. Speaking of that TBS crew, could Skip Caray, Tony Gwynn and Bob Brenly have been more biased in favor of the Yankees. If you watched the game tonight, you know that the answer is no. Every time the Yankees got so much as a 2-0 count on a batter, even if there were no runners on base and they were down by four runs, Caray ramped up his enthusiasm and jacked his voice up a notch, telling us that the Yankees are ready to make a comeback. Even as they trailed by two runs in the ninth, this ass hat was trying to tell us what the broadcast schedule would be for Game Five, as if it was a given that they would rally and win despite the two-run deficit and no runners on base. This isn't about an anti-Cleveland bias, either. I don’t believe it would have been any different if it had been the Angels, the Tigers, the Twins, the Mariners or the White Sox playing the Yankees. Clearly, the networks are sluts for the Yankees, desperate for the ratings boost that they provide. Should this affect the way the game is announced? No, but it does, and you could clearly hear it tonight. However, for the third straight year, the Bronx B’otches have failed to make it past the first round of the playoffs, setting up an American League Championship Series that won't make the rest of the country sick to watch. The Boston Red Sox aren’t the darlings they once were, but they aren’t nearly as hated as the Yankees. So I look forward to a great ALCS, but mostly I look forward to knowing that the Yankees will be watching that series from their couches. You suck, Yankees and Yankee fans.

University of Florida fans, world's biggest losers? High school reunions, could there be a way to make them worse? Justin Long, can't you do better?

- Two days ago, I wrote about how big a bunch of losers Star Trek dorks were, dressing up in their costumes, going to conventions and so rarely venturing outside of the darkness of their mothers’ basements. But you know who’s just as big a bunch of losers, if not bigger? It’s you, University of Florida football fans, those of you who made threatening phone calls to the owner of the impound lot who says that he received more than 200 menacing calls from you UF psychos who were irate that someone dared cal the cops on one of your beloved felons, er, players, when he broke the law. Worse yet is the fact that more than a dozen of the calls were death threats and others were bomb threats, Stan Forron told Florida Today. Several callers even offered to pay the $76 towing bill if Forron would drop the charge. Forron was surprised by the response, clearly forgetting that many fans are ignorant a-holes who excuse everything their team does and always thinks that someone else is in the wrong. “I've been in the [towing business] since '77 and I've never seen anything like it,” Forron told Florida Today. "The fans are very passionate. I think that's a big part of it. ... I'm disappointed that people could be like that. I realize how passionate people can be. But it's disappointing that they would threaten lives and property over something like this." Yes, disappointing is one word for it, while other applicable words would be moronic, indefensible, idiotic, brainless, ass-hatted, etc. How does your mind go from, “Hey, Joiner just got arrested for breaking into an impound lot,” to, “I need to call and threaten to blow up that guy’s home and business if he doesn’t drop the charges against my boy T. Joiner,”? Whose mind works in that contorted, malfunctioning a way? Clearly Florida Gator fan’s mind does. Oh, and what are these a-holes defending Joiner for? Well, according to Gainesville Police, Joiner pushed open an electric gate, got into his girlfriend’s car, inside the lot, and started to drive off. When Joiner stopped to close the gate, he was confronted by a witness who called police. Shortly after Joiner's arrest, Forron said the player had arranged to pay the bill and pick up the car. But Forron said no one was around to take Joiner's money, so he must have thought it was OK to take the car and settle up later. "He was a perfect gentleman," Forron said. "That had a big influence on why I wanted [the charge dropped]. If he had been yelling and screaming, they wouldn't have been dropped." Hey Forron, you already caved in and gave everyone what they wanted, you don’t have to continue the brown-nosing. I don’t know any perfect gentlemen who burglarize other people’s property. And I’m sure that’s what Joiner was thinking, that since no one was around to take his money for the car, it was acceptable for him to break in and take it. This isn't one of those roadside stands in some rural town where you pick up a quart of strawberries and drop your money in the pickle jar if no one is there to take it. This is a guy deciding he didn’t like someone impounding his girlfriend’s car and thieving it back before getting the charges thrown out because hundreds of ginormous tools who also double as Florida Gator fans scared the lot owner into dropping the charges. But what does Florida coach Urban Meyer care, he played Joiner quite a bit in Saturday’s loss to LSU. But maybe karma evened things out, because that loss ends Florida’s national title hopes, so Joiner, Meyer and Co. got a little bit of payback after all from the universe.

- High school reunions already suck, why does anyone need to do anything to make them worse? You go and pay $80 bucks for a mediocre meal that you eat in a room filled with a hundred or more people that you didn’t like when you went to school with them and probably like even less now. You listen to awful music, marvel at how badly many of your former classmates have aged and wonder if any of them have ever heard of a treadmill or elliptical machine, all while hearing them talk about their lives, which you could not possibly care less about. All the while, you’re reminded of how old you’ve gotten and how you can't do a lot of the things you used to be able to do. All of this would be bad enough to cause most people to avoid their reunion like Rosie O’Donnell avoids the salad bar, but then you have people like Timothy Joseph Vaughn, 39, of Lakeland, Fla. Vaughn is a deeply disturbed soul who decided that a good way to spice up his 20th high school reunion would be to threaten a massacre that would make the tragic Virginia Tech shootings look “like a birthday party.” He mentioned the Va. Tech shootings in an email to the reunion coordinator for the Lakeland High School class of ’87 reunion, then police found hundreds of homemade explosive at his home and arrested this tool. Look, I know every class in every school has their lunatic loner, the guy who you figure might go Unabomber, but hundreds of homemade explosives? And this guy was cracking jokes about a tragedy like the Virginia Tech shootings? On second thought, maybe seeing fat, annoying, dull former classmates and having to look at pictures of their kids isn't so bad……

- How’s about a story featuring a college athlete not acting like a complete knucklehead? That would be Washington State basketball player Taylor Rochestie, who displayed a complete lack of selfishness and ego by voluntarily giving up his scholarship for his senior year so the team could sign a highly touted recruit from Florida. Rochestie is a starter and will be one of the team’s senior leaders this year, but he will also be a non-scholarship guy paying his own way because he and his family can afford the $25,000 cost of attending WSU for a year and he felt the scholarship would better benefit the team if it were used on this new recruit. You could point out that yeah, he’s only doing this because he and his family are well off and he doesn’t need the financial help, but not all wealthy people are that way. Not everyone is a Bill Gates-esque philanthropist who gives away his or her money to help others. Many people who have a lot keep it and don’t use any of it to help others, so props to Rochestie for not just keeping what he could have said was rightfully his, but instead doing something to make his team better. Not only is he not getting arrested, testing positive for weed, driving drunk or assaulting girls, but he’s actually sacrificing to help his team win. Now go sleep in and skip your early class tomorrow or build a beer-can pyramid in your living room so we know you’re still a real college dude, T.

- Mac is dating Drew Barrymore, but who is PC dating? Mac would be Justin Long, the actor who played the part of an Apple computer in the popular TV spots, and PC would be John Hodgman, who played the role of Windows-based computers. Long, who was in the most underrated TV series of all time (Ed, which NBC still needs to put out on DVD, get on it!) is dating Barrymore after the two acted together in the upcoming film He’s Just Not That Into You. The seem likely to continue the ever-present trend of on-screen hookup, on-set love, breakup within a few months, but you never know. After all, he does have a great operating system, isn’t susceptible to viruses like PC and….never mind. They’ve been seen out and about in Vegas, making out, and are said to be “very serious,” which is code for “they’ll break up in about a month.” Justin, I know you’re not an A-lister, my man, but Drew Barrymore in 2007, you can do better. If this were 1997, I’d say you were doing as well as you could, but you should at least be able to bag one of the girls on the new CW FALL shows like Life is Wild or Gossip Girl, right?

- It’s “It depends on what your definition of ‘is’ is,” all over again. While our former president, one Bubba Clinton, used that evasive wording and phrasing to talk his way around what women he’d had sex with, our current Moron-in-Chief W. is using the same verbal two-step to dance around the issue of whether or not the United States is in the practice of torturing terrorism suspects when they are being interrogated. In comments clearly written for him by someone else because they actually made sense – kind of – W. insisted that “this government does not torture people.” However, his administration sycophants still refuse to discuss certain torture, er, interrogation techniques that have reportedly been used, including head-slapping and water-boarding. Head slapping? What is this, terrorist investigation or the WWE? Head slaps are what HHH does to Mick Foley in their big WrestleMania match, it’s not a method an interrogator should be using to coax information from a suspect. What’s next, shots to the head with a steel chair and slapping on a submission hold until the alleged terrorist gives you what you need to know? Both Congress and the Justice Department have publicly denounced torture as an interrogation technique, but reports this week suggested that the department has secretly authorized torture techniques at some of the CIA’s secret overseas prisons. But if you parse words, get knee deep in semantics and double talk your way through questions about torture, I guess you could make it seem like you don’t allow torture and in no way is it going on. However, when your administration has lied, deceived, manipulated and misled the public and Congress on so many issues over the past seven years, don’t expect the rest of us to buy the load of sh*t you’re selling, W. You’ve shown over and over that you have no respect for the Constitution, the laws of this country, Congress or the wishes and beliefs of the American people. So is there torture going on? Yes, almost certainly. Are you lying when you say that torture is not going on? Yes again. Are we all über-thankful that in about a year your sorry ass will be gone from the White House for good? You better believe it.

- The Kaiser Chiefs said it best: I predict a riot. The same is true any time you mix angry French teenagers and the police, the authority figures those teens despise. Dozens of hooded teens in Saint Dizier, France, put on an impressive display of looting and rioting Friday, using metal bars to demolish two police cars, set fire to more than a dozen other cars and then set fire to a community center in the latest clash against authority in a region of northeast France that has seen more than its share of raging against the machine. The cause for this particular clash wasn’t anything more than the usual strife between angst-ridden teenagers and authority figures, but the ability of these hooded hoodlums to take their looting and rioting to the next level shows that they have the potential to be truly great social dissidents. If your only cause to riot is tensions with the police that aren’t even over a major issue like police brutality, racial profiling or a similar issue and you can get yourself worked up enough to do that much damage, just think what you could do if you were fighting for a major cause. So take pride, young French rioters, because you’ve staged this week’s Riot of the Week! Here’s to many future successful social demonstrations featuring violence, property destruction and general mayhem for all of you.

- Somebody’s lying here, and call it a hunch, but I’m going to say that the liar is Gen. Than Shwe, the military junta ruling over Myanmar. Conflicting reports about the detainment of Buddhist monks in the country and the number of protestors killed in the large-scale demonstrations in the capital city of Yangon on Sept. 26-27 are emerging, with the government insisting that the number of detainees is around 2,100 and the death toll at approximately 10, with the opposition movement placing those figures closer to 6,000 detainees and 200 deaths. Also, the government is claiming that only 109 of the hundreds of detained monks remain in custody, while they continue their search for four monks they have labeled as ringleaders of the rebellion. Both sides have reason to lie, with the government wanting to downplay the brutality and excessive force it use to stop the rebellion and the opposition wanting to make the government out to by as brutal and villainous as possible. Of course, that’s not a difficult task when your military is beating down and firing on civilians and arresting anything that moves on a city street and the whole world can see images of what is going on. Even going by the limited footage and images I’ve seen, it seems impossible that only 10 people were killed in those protest marches, so I have a very difficult time buying the government’s story. Either way, this conflict looks to be bogging down at the moment, with both sides entrenched in their positions and many citizens in Myanmar resigned to the fact that without outside intervention, they don’t have much hope of dislodging their oppressive government from its spot atop their country’s hierarchy. Hopefully the more bold and outspoken among them won't allow hope to be lost completely, because this is a fight worth fighting. Plus, it’s nice to see a country actually fight its own battle for democracy and not have the United States (well, pretty much W.) impose democracy on it whether the people want it or not (sound familiar, Iraq?).

Felons welcome at UF, Radiohead pioneering once again and The Black Donnellys resurfaces

- Welcome to the University of Florida football team, where our policy is that you can play in the game on Saturday as long as the felony charges are dismissed by kickoff! Yes, I know that UF defensive back Tony Joiner had the felony burglary charges against him dropped by state prosecutors after the owner of the impound lot Joiner broke into did not want to press charges. Coach Urban Meyer took the “massive” disciplinary step of….brace yourself…..stripping Joiner of his position as one of the team’s captains! Boo-yah, take that, Tony! Yeah, I’m sure that’s a devastating blow. Meyer also promised that Joiner will “pay a heavy price” with internal team discipline in the weeks ahead, which translates to some extra wind sprints and probably practicing with the second stringers, whoop-de-do. If Meyer does as he’s expected to and allows Joiner to play this week, he’s showing how little value he truly places on discipline and responsibility for his team. If that’s how you want to play it, that’s fine, just don’t pretend you’re some legendary hard-ass disciplinarian who’s really going to teach this kid a lesson. Don’t allow the lot owner not pressing charges to be confused with Joiner not having broken the law. Spencer Mann, chief investigator for the State Attorney's Office, said the charge was dropped because the towing company “believes it's a big misunderstanding. The victim is adamant that he sustained no loss or damage and does not wish to pursue criminal charges,” Mann said. “Based on that information, we cannot sustain a criminal charge. Without a victim, I have no crime.” Call me crazy, but if this were any normal student at UF, one who wasn’t an athlete, he or she would still be facing those criminal charges and the lot owner would be out for payback. You skated on this one, T. Joiner, hopefully you realize that.

- Radiohead have always marched to their own beat, musically and otherwise, making mostly great music in the process. Ten years ago, the melancholy rockers released the album OK Computer, which set the music world on its ear with a unique, computer-guided vibe. Now, the band is doing something even more revolutionary by releasing its newest album, In Rainbows, on its website and allowing consumers to decide how much they want to pay for it. Literally, you can download the entire finished version of the album for free, or you can decide to pay $5, $10, $15, etc. The decision has infuriated many in the music industry who already wrongly view the fight against listeners downloading music online for free as the battle their inudstyr needs to fight and win. Radiohead is currently without a record deal and are also one of the only artists of note not selling any of their songs on iTunes. Thus, if you want your copy of In Rainbows, you can go to www.radiohead.com beginning Wednesday and get it for whatever price you decide to pay. Obviously this isn't going to set an example for most bands to follow, because most bands don’t have the massive, loyal fan base and deep pockets that the members of Radiohead have. Still, it’s a novel approach to take and I’m really interested to see what the effect of this will be.

- The 2007 Chicago Cubs are the worst, most undeserving playoff team in the history of Major League Baseball. I may not have seen every playoff team from the past century plus of MLB postseason action, but I don’t need to because I know that there can not possibly be a single playoff team in the history of baseball that was as inept in every phase of the game as this year’s edition of the Cubs. In getting swept right out of the playoffs on their asses by the Arizona Diamondbacks, the Cubbies showed an astonishing lack of skill and execution on offense, a shocking level of awfulness in their pitching and all the defensive skill of a team of drunken baboons wearing blindfolds and trying to field the ball with cast iron skillets strapped to both of their hands and cinder blocks tied to their feet. In all seriousness, Major League Baseball needs to amend it rules so it can go back and retroactively award the playoff spot the Cubs wasted to a team that actually would have shown up for a game or two. The New York Mets may have flamed down the stretch, but I bet they would have at least won or been competitive in a game or two of their series, unlike the Cubbies. They struck out in timely situations, grounded into double plays like they were being paid to do so and pitched like it was batting practice all series long. Also, it has to be disheartening for every Cubs fan to know that their team has thrown away $136 million for this year and the next seven years on the contract they gave to Alfonso Soriano this past off-season. Soriano grounded out, flew out, struck out and found most every way there was to not get on base, not move runners up and not drive in runs, proving that he is as undeserving of an 8-year, $136 million contract as any player could be. He contributed absolutely nothing good to the team all series long, which is the same thing all his teammates contributed as well, but the fact that Soriano is making more than any of them makes this so much worse on his part. Good riddance, you losers, the playoffs will be a much better place without you. There is no curse on the Cubs, there’s just a roster full of incompetent, choking players who are never going to win a playoff series, let alone a world championship.

- An interesting TV note for all you fans of the short-lived NBC series The Black Donnellys, the entire series, including episodes that never aired on NBC but were only available at NBC.com, is now available on DVD. Since the series didn’t get a full 26-episode season, the DVD doesn’t have as much content as a normal DVD set for one season of a TV show, but in spite of NBC’s cancellation, I still argue that Black Donnellys was a very good show that could have gotten a lot better if given a chance. There are also some cool bonus features on the DVD, and although I might want to wait a bit longer to watch it so it doesn’t piss me off so much to know that the show was canceled as I’m watching it, this is a DVD that will be worthwhile to have.

- It’s a small crack in the wall of Myanmar’s military junta, Gen. Than Shwe, but it’s a crack nonetheless and a sign that the strong resistance of the country’s government is finally starting to have an impact. Gen. Shwe has hinted that he might be willing to meet with Aung San Suu Kyi, the detained democracy activist who has become a figurehead for the anti-government movement in Myanmar, but only if she stops urging international sanctions against the country and ceases urging her countrymen to confront the country’s military regime. On the one hand, it seems like selling out your principles a bit to stop opposing a government you are rebelling against and trying to overthrow just to get a meeting with its leader, but I believe San Suu Kyi should accept the stipulations and get the meeting, for several reasons. One, the resistance movement isn't going to stop doing what it’s doing just because San Suu Kyi is no longer urging them to rebel. They have momentum, they’re taking their stand and they believe in what they’re doing enough that the cause has force sustaining behind it, with or without San Suu Kyi’s words. Second, she only has to stop doing these things until she gets the meeting with Shwe, then she can right back to speaking out against this fascist regime. Or, if she so chooses, she can continue complying with the general’s demands, pass her messages along to someone else within the opposition movement and have that person or persons spread them. Regardless, I think San Suu Kyi should do what she needs to do to secure this meeting, although she also must approach it with extreme caution, because Gen. Shwe and his men should not be trusted under any circumstances. They could be setting up a trap of some sort with this meeting and might plan on using it to threaten and intimidate San Suu Kyi, so she should beware. Also, Shwe could be using this meeting to make a phony gesture to the rest of the world that he’s willing to hear the opposition out, but in reality he isn't planning on changing a thing. Bottom line: this meeting isn't likely to solve or resolve anything, but it is an interesting turn of events that could take this whole saga in a new direction.

No sympathy for Marion Jones, a dumb "no" from W. and no fear, eh, Londoners?

- It would be easy to feel sorry for Marion Jones right now….if she hadn’t made the rope, tied the noose and built the gallows that she and her career are about to swing from. She might be putting the final nail in that steroid-fueled coffin by pleading guilty to a charge of lying to federal investigators about her use of performance-enhancing drugs, but she started greasing the track for her freefall several years back when she threw out those ironclad, firm and specifically-worded denials about the fact that she had never, ever used steroids and was 100% clean. She could not have been more emphatic about asserting her innocence, yet here she is now in 2007, sending a letter to friends and family detailing how she went about building a legendary track and field career on the back of steroids. That letter expresses Jones’ disbelief that her coach Trevor Graham, a man who has been at the heart of the steroids problem in track and field of late, was mixing in ‘roids to her training regimen. She writes in the letter that she found it odd when Graham asked her not to tell anyone about what she was doing in the program, which should have been a red flag and either Jones saw it and chose to ignore it or she’s just so incredibly stupid that she didn’t put two and two together. But it’s hard to believe that she didn’t know something fishy was going on when she suddenly began to run like a thoroughbred and soar through the air in the long jump like freaking Bob Beamon and Carl Lewis rolled into one. It’s also hard to believe that she’s telling the truth about all of this now given the fact that she’s spent several years lying to everyone about this issue in the first place. The only thing that’s going to provide a modicum of relief for Jones at this point is the fact that she’s retired from active competition and out of the public eye in a sport, track and field, that’s so far on the periphery of sports in the U.S. that you need a GPS and binoculars to find it. Don’t let that fact make you think that you’re not a lying, cheating scumbag, though, Marion, because you are. Your entire career will now be thought of as a total fraud by anyone who takes the time to look at it and you deserve whatever punishment you receive.

- At this point, I think W. is just saying no to everything Congress sends his way just to be disagreeable and to give them another middle-fingered salute. He’s like a two-year-old going through their “no” phase, when every question, statement or request is greeted with the same negative reply from the tiny tot. Actually, since both W. and your average two-year-old are on the same level mentally, it’s not that much of a stretch….but I digress. W. has rejected a new children’s health care bill sent to him by Congress, a bill that would have expand federally funded children’s health care. The measure would offer health insurance from the government for children of families with up to three tiems the federal poverty level, approximately $62,000. Even fellow Republicans aren’t totally behind W. on this one, although their concerns are partially motivated by the fact that their leader taking a hard line against expanding children’s health care is akin to drop kicking puppies and beating up nuns and could cost them support in the 2008 elections. The Senate passed this bill with more than enough votes to override the veto, but the House fell a little short of the necessary two-thirds majority. W., showing he is anything but a friend of the common man, had this to say in response: “The policies of the government ought to be, help people find private insurance, not federal coverage. And that’s where the philosophical divide comes in.” First, props to whoever on W.’s speech writing team mixed in philosophical AND worked with him for the excruciatingly high number of hours it took for him to learn how to pronounce it correctly, even if he still has no idea what it means. Secondly, yes, it would be nice if everyone could find private insurance for their families, ass hat, but they can’t and that’s why there’s a problem. No amount of philosophizing and well-wishing are going to change the fact that many, many families can't get private insurance no matter how hard you try. Unless the government steps in and helps, the problem will persist and here you are, W., opposing a fairly logical solution. Had everyone followed my lead and moved to impeach you several months ago, this problem could have been averted, but it’s too late for that now.

- Here’s when you know that you are overly sensitive to terrorism: when a super spicy chili sauce causes road closings and evacuations in one of your city’s busiest districts, you might need to relax a bit. Such was the case in London’s Soho district Wednesday, when passers-by complained that a chemical smell coming from a Thai restaurant was burning their throats. These wusses put in enough calls to the police that a chemical response team from the London Fire Brigade was sent in, only to discover that it was simply one of the ingredients in the food that was causing the uproar. Hey Brits, I know that you all might be nervous about a terrorist attack, but have none of you ever eaten Thai food before? It’s one of the spiciest varieties of food around, spicy enough that if you’ve never eaten it before, doing so can cause serious problems. So maybe on of you Mensa’s should have put two and two together and thought, “Hmm, I’m right outside a Thai restaurant where they serve insanely spicy grub, maybe that weird smell that’s burning my throat has something to do with the food there.” Zero points on the intelligence scale for all of you and negative five points for being so soft that the mere smell of a spicy chili sauce is enough to send you running to the police. Boy, the terrorist have it easy with you, just mix up some cayenne peppers, horseradish and leftover Thai takeout and they could strike panic into the heart of all of London. The spicy sauces are coming! the spicy sauces are coming!

- This should help your case that you’re not the world biggest virgins and losers, Star Trek dorks. One of your own heroes, a man after whom you have tried to pattern much of your pathetic existence even though he’s a fictional character on one of the most loser-ish shows of all-time, has had the honor of having a giant ball of space rock named after him. Actor George Takei, best known as Hikaru Sulu in the Star Dork, er, Star Trek movies and TV shows, now has the asteroid 7307 Takei named after him, an honor bestowed on him by the International Astronomical Union’s Committee on Small Body Nomenclature. Ah, the I.A.U.C.S.B.N., who doesn’t long to be honored by them. I just want to know if these tools are the same ones that are offering to sell me “exclusive” naming rights to my very own star for $50. Even if they aren’t, why would I need your honor, I.A.U.C.S.B.N., when I can buy my very own star with no actual authority or weight given to the name that I’m getting ripped off to “buy”? But I’m sure that Star Trek losers worldwide are celebrating this one in full costume in their mom’s basement, their pale pasty skin accented ever so slightly by their wispy pube mustaches and their authentic Star Trek uniforms decorated just like their heroes, Takei and Capt. Picard. Enjoy your moment in the sun, dorks, just make sure you don’t actually go outside where the real sun and its rays might make actual contact with your skin…..

- This isn't going to help you make al of your child support payments, Travis Henry. The Denver Broncos running back, known as much for his skills as a prolific procreator with nine kids in with nine women in four states as he is for his skills on the field, is staring down a possible one-year suspension from the NFL after testing positive for marijuana for a third time and less than a year after a second positive test that landed him a four-game suspension. Henry, who is currently the NFL’s leading rusher, has filed a lawsuit to prevent the NFL from using the results of his urine sample for testing of its own and thus being able to drop the one-year suspension on him, and the case is currently making its way through the court system. However, this looks like a losing effort for Henry and in the end it’s likely to amount to little more than a stall tactic to delay the suspension for a few weeks. As I said, though, not playing for a year is really going to make things tight for Henry financially, because when you’re scratching off nine child support checks per month, you need all the income you can get. If you do get suspended for the year, Travis, I feel compelled to offer a bit of advice: Stop knocking chicks up, because the last thing you need in your year off is to add the expense of yet another child to your ledger. Actually, that’s good advice whether you’re suspended or not, because reaching double digits in the “Illegitimate Kids I Have to Support” column of your life ledger is something we should all strive to avoid. A second suggestion for Henry with his impending year off is to get his life in order, stop burning blunts and learn the meaning of the words birth control. Wake up, T., because what should be a promising, productive career leading to financial security for the rest of your life is slipping away from you quickly and it’s all your fault, my man.

Smallville keeps going strong, what comedian I want killed and another person W. could learn a lesson from

- See W., it IS possible. You can withdraw troops from Iraq, you aren’t limited to just adding more into the fracas. This isn't like putting your pennies in one of those clear plastic donation boxes that sit on store counters, collecting money for charitable causes. Those things have only one tiny slot to put money in and once you put your change in, you can’t get it back out. Conversely, you CAN get your troops out of Iraq, it is possible. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has declared that his country will be pulling out 20 percent of its troops that are currently in Iraq and will do so in the next few weeks. What’s amazing about this is the Iraqi leaders say that within two months, they’ll be ready to take up the responsibilities of the British troops that are leaving. So they can survive losing British troops, but we can't bring any of our troops home and need to send more? How f’d up is that? I realize that we have scores and scores more troops there than anyone else (yay us!), but we need to follow the lead of the British and get our guys the heck out of there. This upcoming fight over additional funding for the Mess O’Potamia is going to get very ugly and contentious and W. is going to have even less of a leg to stand on in asking Congress to help him further this debacle when other countries are pulling their troops out and the Iraqi government is still failing to meet the majority of the benchmarks set for it. This new announcement from Brown comes on the heels of the Brits abandoning their last remaining base in Basra last month, so the British government is clearly responding to the outcry from its citizens against the war in Iraq, something from which W. and his stooges out to take a hint.

- Youth rallies? What are we talkin’ about, youth rallies? Yes, Allen Iverson, we are talking about youth rallies, specifically the youth rallies and personal appearances you were scheduled to make in Omaha, Neb. during one recent weekend, the same rallies and appearances you bailed on. These may not be the high-priced commercial and advertising gigs you go out and die for and film every commercial like it’s your last, but that doesn’t mean you can just not show up at all, which is what a promoter in Omaha alleges that you did. A.I. was allegedly scheduled to make appearances at a youth rally and two other events in Omaha in early August but failed to show up for any of them, leaving a conspicuous void in the schedule at all three locations. The promoter has filed a lawsuit against the Denver Nuggets star, seeking $44,000 in damages. I hate to crack on A.I., especially because he’s responsible for one of the greatest spoiled, I-just-don’t-get-it athlete quotes of all time, but this is bad form. If you agree to appear somewhere, then you either follow through or you let them know in advance that you can’t make it. Don’t big-time people, not when you already have a reputation for not being the best guy in the world and being a troublemaker. Show up when and where you promise to show up, A.I., and that includes showing up at youth rallies and actually bothering to show up in the NBA playoffs instead of no-showing there when your team needs you most…..

- Someone might want to tell the Philadelphia Phillies that the playoffs have started, because they don’t seem to know. The Phills opened their series with the Colorado Rockies in the worst possible fashion, not only losing the first two games at home but not looking very competitive in doing so. The Phillies were shut down by Jeff Francis in Game One, getting a hearty 0-11 from their three top hitters. In Game Two, their offense showed up but their pitching was on par with what most Little Leaguers could do. Now the have to get on a plane, fly to Denver and win two games in the home park of the hottest team in baseball if they want to keep their season alive. Puss-throwing veteran lefty Jamie Moyer is set to pitch Game Three for Philly, but if their offensive tandem of Utley and Howard don’t contribute something, the pitching isn't going to matter much one way or the other. Over in the American League, the Yankees definitely know the postseason has started, because the Indians informed them of that fact by taking out their Louisville Sluggers and bashing the Bronx Bombers’ collective head in. Before the series, everyone seemed enthralled by New York’s offensive firepower, but it was the Indians who took advantage of the Yanks’ pathetic pitching to score a 12-3 win. That same subpar pitching should allow the Indians to win the series, although it is just one game. Still, with 19-game winner Fausto Carmona going Friday, the Indians have a great chance to stake themselves to a solid 2-0 series lead. Oh, and I hope all the Cub fans out there enjoyed the team’s brief foray back into the playoffs, because it’s going to be a very short visit for the loveable losers from the North Side. The Cubs have shown in the first two games of their series against Arizona that of all the eight teams to make the playoffs this year, they absolutely don’t belong. Shoddy pitching in key spots, a totally anemic offense and a lack of execution in pressure situations are clear evidence that the Cubs are only in the postseason because they won a crappy division and someone from the NL Central had to make the playoffs. Honestly, the swooning Mets or the San Diego Padres, who lost out in a tiebreaker for the wild card, would have made far better playoff teams than the choking Cubbies. Thursday night’s game featured a stink bomb of a start by Ted Lilly, more ineptitude by Whiff-meister General Alfonso Soriano and a lack of offense that is offensive to t-ballers everywhere. Seriously, Soriano is conjuring up an eerie resemblance to Cerrano from Major League, because clearly anything other than a straight-as-an-arrow fastball baffles this guy. Hey Alfonso, there’s this crazy pitch called a curveball, it doesn’t go in a straight line, it curves. Pitchers throw it and you have to actually try to hit it with a different swing than you normally use. You can’t just flail at it the same way you do at a fastball and expect to hit it. But hey, after Game Three on Saturday, your season will be over and you’ll have plenty of time to try and figure this out. Adios, losers.

- So we finally started to get some answers for the fallout from last season’s Smallville finale and this season’s premiere, and as it turns out, I’m just as smart as I thought I was. Tonight’s second episode the season for Smallville formally introduced us to Clark Kent’s cousin Kara, but just as importantly, it confirmed my guess that Lana staged her own death and jumped onto the passing delivery truck in last season’s finale. OK, so maybe I’m gloating too much on being right, so let’s move on to this new episode. As it turns out, Kara has a spaceship of her own, just like Clark had, and when Clark and Lois discover the ship, Kara isn't happy. Lois ends up unconscious and Clark is left in the dust when Kara takes flight. Kara doesn’t immediately recognize Clark because she doesn’t realize that she’s been in suspended animation for 18 years and thus Clark isn't the cute baby she remembers, but rather the same age as her. The spaceship saga also introduces us to a mysterious new character, a government agent working for the Department of Domestic Security. This guy steals the special crystal from Kara’s ship that contains vital instructions and information for her and takes it in for analysis. On the other side of the world, literally, Lana and Lex have a less-than-joyful reunion when Lex is cleared of murder charges and realizes that Lana is still alive. He tracks her down in Shanghai, apologizes and says she can return to Smallville and live her life peacefully, which based on the previews for next week, she decides to do. And how did Lex get off for murder, you ask? Well, despite the fact that Lionel Luthor (John Glover) has been AWOL on screen this season so far, he paid off a LuthorCorp employee who was dying of cancer to take the fall for Lana’s murder – except there was no murder. That’s because although I called the jump-onto-the-delivery-truck move, what I didn’t see was the culmination of the whole fake pregnancy story from last year, which as it turns out was Lex cloning Lana as part of his 33.1 experiments. Lana found her clone, which hadn’t been brought to life yet, and used it to plant in her vehicle before she blew it up, thus making it appear that she really did die and providing all the necessary DNA evidence to prove it. An interesting monkey wrench was thrown into the show at the end of the episode, when Clark returns to the Fortress of Solitude and is told by his father, Jor-El, that his cousin Kara is more dangerous than she appears and insinuating that she’s up to no good. Is that true, or is it just sour grapes from Jor-El to the child of his brother, Zor-El? Also, how is the Clark-Lana reunion going to go, now that she’s returning to Smallville and for the first time when she knows his secret? Right now, the show is mixing in a lot of new characters and information and changing quickly, which is a good thing (oh, Zach from The O.C. has joined the cast too), because hopefully it will add more life and length to Smallville’s run. Regardless, it’s been a very strong start to the season for the only good show remaining on the CW.

- That’s it, I’m officially starting a campaign to kill Frank Caliendo and destroy all the footage he’s shot for commercials for his new show, who’s with me? There’s saturation, there’s overkill and then there’s what TBS is doing with promoting Frank TV, Caliendo’s new show on the network premiering next month. I get it, OK? The guy does impressions of famous people, ha ha. I don’t care if it was Jerry Seinfeld in his TV prime, Dave Chapelle, Dane Cook, Johnny Carson or Jay Leno, if you show me that many commercials of the same entertainer over and over, I’m going to start devising painful and torturous ways to kill that individual. Honestly, I’m not saying this for effect: I am genuinely against this show even though I’ve never seen it and from everything I’ve heard, Frank Caliendo is generally considered to be a funny guy. I am that put off by TBS’ attempts to ram this show down my throat that I won't even consider watching it. Just think of a song you’ve heard, maybe even one that you actually liked. If you play that song over and over and over and over, eventually you stop enjoying it and start despising it. TBS and every other network with a new show to promote needs to understand this principle and stop the overkill, because the backlash from it is going to far outweigh any good you all think you’re doing by promoting the show so heavily.

Blackwater in trouble, college football players in jail and baseball finally in its postseason

- How about a trio of college football players ending up on the wrong side of the law in the past week and their respective fates, does that sound like something you’d be interested in hearing about? I thought so. Let’s start with Troy Joiner, a University of Florida safety who was arrested at about 5 a.m. Tuesday on charges of felony burglary. Joiner was taken into custody outside the fenced impound lot of a local towing company, Gainesville police said. He allegedly pushed a heavy electric gate open to enter the lot in an attempt to retrieve his girlfriend's car, which was being held in lieu of a $76 towing bill, a police report said. The owner of the towing company is now reversing field and saying the whole thing is a big misunderstanding, which I’m sure is true. After all, who doesn’t call the police and tell them someone is breaking into their property only to change their mind and say it was just a misunderstanding. Maybe this guy is a big UF fan and once he realized who he’d just busted, he had a change of heart. Maybe someone from the athletic department or associated with it got to him and “worked things out.” Regardless, I don’t buy this for a second. Joiner is the eighth Florida player in the past nine months to get in legal trouble. That might be the way to show you really are an elite program, by how many criminals are on your roster, but that doesn’t mean coach Urban Meyer isn't going to get a major black eye if his hooligans/players keep this up. Then you have former University of Northern Colorado punter Mitch Cozad, who has been sentenced to seven years in prison after a conviction for second-degree assault stemming from a 2006 incident in which be stabbed fellow UNC player Rafael Mendoza in the leg. Cozad was actually fortunate to get off so easily, because he was also facing charges of first-degree attempted murder that he was able to beat. Hope that was worth it, Mitch, formulating and carrying out your moronic plan to win the prestigious starting punter job at Northern Colorado and getting seven years in the hole instead. Good work, Einstein. Getting that gig is definitely worth the risk of being convicted on second-degree assault and ruining your life. Speaking of not helping yourself out…..one thing that definitely does not help your case when you’re trying to prove your innocence on rape charges is the revelation that you were already wanted on another rape charge in a different town before this new charge was levied. Central Washington University football player Josh Rojas is facing two rape charges, the first coming after he allegedly raped an 18-year-old freshman after he met her at a party last Friday night. Rojas, a sophomore linebacker, is described by CWU head football coach Beau Baldwin as “a model citizen.” I have to disagree with that, because I don’t know too many model citizens who allegedly rape a girl and then return to their hometown, where they’re informed by Snohomish County Sheriff's deputies that there is a warrant out for their arrest for another alleged rape last November in Ellensburg. Rojas and the alleged victim in his most recent (alleged) rape met at a house party on the 1800 block of Chestnut Street. Police say they left the party and went back to Rojas' house, where the 18-year-old girl says the raped occurred. Police also say Rojas and the alleged victim went to high school together, they were three years apart. Astonishingly, he’s no longer allowed on campus without permission from the campus police or office of student affairs, although Rojas is still officially enrolled as a student. Kinda hard to be a student and do the things that students need to do when you’re banned from campus, but I think J. Rojas has bigger things to concern himself with than reading assignments and research papers right now. Such are the travails of an (alleged) serial rapist in the making…..

- Two new movies coming out in the next couple of weeks have caught my attention, both for very different reasons. The first is Across The Universe, which looks great even though I’d normally be the last person to recommend a musical. However, given that most of the music is songs from the Beatles, I’ll make an exception in this case. The movie is about……….. On the flip side, we have a movie that’s already in the running for worst movie of the year even though it hasn’t officially hit theaters yet. However, when a movie comes from executive producer Jennifer Lopez, stars Omarion and features some of the stiffest, most wooden dialogue and sad-sack acting this side of Gigli (oops, wasn’t Lopez involved in that one too?), you get a feeling that Feel The Noise is gawd awful, no doubt about it. Amazingly, the movie is about dancing and crappy club music masquerading as hip hop, which is astonishing, given that a crappy club music-producing, faux hip hopper like Lopez is the EP. It just feels like Lopez is trying to force-feed her one main skill, dancing, into a movie even though there’s not really a plot or the acting talent to make it anything other than a waste of time and money. You can find a really hot female lead, as this movie has, but when the story is nonexistent, predictable and weak and the acting is awful, your movie is D.O.A. So for those of you keeping score at home, that’s a resounding yes for going to see Across The Universe and a strong suggestion that you do absolutely anything but waste your time and dollars going to see Feel the Noise.

- The opening day the Major League Baseball playoffs has arrived, so of course I have a few thoughts on the day on the diamond…..Although it’s not a fatal disaster, the first game of the NLDS went as badly as it could have gone for the Philadelphia Phillies without losing the series officially or seeing one of their key players injured. They lost Game One at home with their ace on the mound, meaning that they now have to win three of the next four games and do so relying mostly on the shaky second, third and fourth starters in their rotation. The Phils’ big hitters, Ryan Howard and Chase Utley, combined to go 0-for-8, with Utley wearing the fabled golden sombrero for his four-strikeout game in which he saw more than the three pitches needed to strike out in only one at bat. Just up the East Coast in Boston, the power pitching of Boston’s Josh Beckett silenced the Angels and never gave the Halos a chance to play their trademark style of baseball. The Angels thrive on hit-and-run plays, stealing bases, going from first to third on base hits and generally being a menace on the base paths, but it’s tough to do that when you can barely get any runners on base. Beckett shut them down for eight innings and with home runs from David Ortiz and Kevin Youkilis, the Sox are out to a 1-0 lead. I’m not moving off my prediction of Angels in five, though, because I have a feeling that Boston’s next two starting pitchers, Daisuke Matsuzaka and Curt Schilling, aren’t going to be nearly as stellar as Beckett. This game was also noteworthy because it bucked the usual trend of playoff games going on and on and on, instead coming in well under three hours. Meanwhile, out in the desert, the Cubs and Diamondbacks matched aces on the mound, albeit aces at different ends of the personality and composure spectrum. The intense, combustible, emotionally-erratic Carlos Zambrano took the ball for the Cubs, while low-key, even-keeled Brandon Webb started for the D-Backs. Zambrano pitched well……but not well enough to overcome an inept offense led by the whiff-meister himself, the human windmill known as Alfonso Soriano, who again struck out in key situations when his team at least needed him to put the ball in play. The Cubs lost 3-1, which isn't a surprise to me or any other true Cubs fan. Expecting winning and postseason success from the Chicago Cubs is like expecting an Oscar-winning movie from Pauly Shore. The Cubs had numerous chances to bat with runners in scoring position and less than two outs and failed nearly every time. Some credit goes to Webb for great piching, but much blame goes to the Cubs for choking in the clutch. Now, they face a huge Game Two that could put them in an inescapable hole if they lose. We don’t have to wait long to see if that happens, with that game coming tomorrow night at 10 p.m.

- Caught some of the new ABC drama Pushing Daisies and honestly, I wasn’t swayed one way or the other. I didn’t love the show, nor did I hate it. It wasn’t totally boring, but it also wasn’t that entertaining. With shows like this, i.e. ones with a supernatural premise, you have to really buy in to the whole idea of the show or you’re not going to enjoy it. I just didn’t find the idea of a guy having some sort of bizarro Midas touch that allows him to temporarily revive murder victims so he can ask them who killed them. Also hurting Daisies is the fact that it aspires to be something of a comedy and as Reaper has so clearly shown, the combination of the supernatural and comedy in a TV show doesn’t bring good results. Look at the supernatural shows that have been successful and are actually good and you’ll see that they’re dramas, period, not comedies. Shows like Smallville, Heroes, Supernatural, Ghost Whisperer, etc. aren’t constantly trying to weave the supernatural and the super funny together and thus, they succeed. Unfortunately, their success has inspired others to try and capitalize on the supernatural fad and to incorporate comedy for a change of pace and the result has been abysmal failure. Is Pushing Daisies as bad as Reaper? No, not even close. Only the new, soon-to-be-canceled ABC bomb Cavemen can approach that level of suck-itude. But is Daisies anywhere close to the great new series that ABC is trying to paint it as? Not even close…..

- Hey, did you know that comedian Frank Caliendo has a new show on TBS? If you watched even a few innings of the MLB playoffs yesterday, not only do you know that, but you’re already so sick of Frank F’ing Caliendo that you want to shove a rusty ice pick through his forehead just to make him go away. Why is it that whenever there’s a major sporting event on TV (NCAA Tournament, baseball playoffs, the Super Bowl, etc.), the network broadcasting that event has to ram a new show down our throats with nonstop promos to not only the point of saturation, but to the point that you go from interest in the show if it happens to look appealing to resentment and irritation because you see the same promos over and over and over and you just become sick of them. So guess what, TBS? Frank Caliendo might be good at doing impressions, but any slim chance I would watch his new show is pretty much gone because I saw every f’ing one of his promos at least two or three times and now I can't stand the guy.

- Sorry, but no sympathy for you music industry. The recording industry continues its b*tching about illegal downloading of music and how it’s going to kill to industry, even though the practice has been shown to have a minimal, negligible effect on album sales. However, that isn't stopping the litigation and anti-piracy division of Sony BMG from taking Jammie Thomas, a 30-year-old woman from Brainerd, Minn., to court on charges that she illegally shared more than 2,000 songs online. Oh no, she shared songs! I’m sure that she and other miscreants like her are going to bring the recording industry to its knees…..or not. Just to be safe, though, Jammie, my suggestion is that you do something I do, check that, something I think might be helpful if you do it. Just check out music you want from your local library and rip it to your computer, which also gives you lots of free music. Of course, I’ve never, ever done this and don’t at all advocate finding ways to get free music from a music industry that squeezes money from consumers at every turn…..uh, let’s just move on…..

- When the W. administration hires a private security firm to go to Iraq and act like a bunch of vigilante commandos without being subject to any real oversight or regulation, should we really be surprised when the head of that security firm goes before Congress and acts like his company is above the law? Watching Eric Prince, the 38-year-old former Navy SEAL and chairman of Blackwater USA. “I believe we acted appropriately at all times,” Prince told a congressional committee investigating his companies activities in Iraq. When asked if he admitted that his men had shot and killed innocent civilians, which clearly they have, Prince denied this was true. These hearings were inspired by a Sept. 16 shootout that left 11 Iraqis dead, a shootout in which Blackwater personnel were involved. Not surprisingly, the State Department is being uncooperative and vague about what it is doing to monitor and investigate Blackwater. Hmm, you mean a part of the W. administration is screwing around, lying and deceiving when it comes to investigating a shady, underhanded practice that the administration itself initiated? Wow…..I’m shocked. Prince actually spent much of the hearing leaning back in his seat to listen to his lawyer’s advice to not actually answer questions asked of him, most of them about whether Blackwater employees are guilty of the murders of Iraqi citizens. Of course, if you give me the option of having American soldiers in Iraq, in harm’s way, in a war they never should have been involved with in the first place, or some private security vigilantes doing the same thing, I’m going with the latter, because I won't feel nearly as bad if anything happens to them. That being said, stop killing innocent civilians, Blackwater personnel, this isn't a shooting gallery, it’s a country with a lot of innocent civilians who really don’t deserve to have you kill them.

A great night of TV, a controversial night of baseball and a new world marathon record

- I was really torn between watching a Monday Night Football game that was a total mismatch, the Rockies-Padres wild-card tiebreaker game to make it to the playoffs and episodes of Heroes and Prison Break….no I wasn’t. I watched the latter two and then when they were done, I locked into the baseball game for a thrill ride of a contest that ended in dramatic, controversial fashion. In a game that decided what the first 162 games of the regular season could not decide, the Rockies and Padres went back and forth for 13 innings, with the Rockies winning an epic 9-8 contest that saw two blown calls and a blown save by baseball’s all-time saves leader that has many fans in San Diego tearing down Trevor Hoffman, a man they’ve cheered for more than a decade. The two major controversies came in the sixth inning and the last inning, respectively. In the sixth, a ball hit by Colorado’s Garrett Atkins that looked to go over the fence, hit the seats and bounce back onto the field was ruled in play instead of being a home run, which would have been the correct call. Those who are saying replays on the play are inconclusive are missing a key point: no ball that hits off the top of a padded wall is going to bounce as far, as fast as that ball did. It struck something solid and firm, namely the seats. However, it was ruled in play and kept the Rockies from scoring…..until the 13th inning, when the Padres pushed across two runs in the top half of the inning and the Rockies countered with three to win it in the bottom of the inning. The last run scored on a disputed play in which Colorado’s Matt Holiday slid into home and appeared to miss touching the plate while Padres catcher Michael Barrett blocked home. Replays were again inconclusive, but home plate umpire Tim McClelland ruled Holliday safe, so that’s that. Again, everyone is missing something key in discussing this play: Barrett never tagged Holliday anyhow. He lost the ball before he could make the tag and after he recovered it, McClelland’s safe call caused Barrett to stop trying to make the tag and walk off the field. So to this point, 24 hours later, Holliday still has not touched home plate and Barrett has still not tagged him. Those three runs to win the game came off Hoffman, who blew a crucial save for the second time in three days and cost his team a shot at the playoffs. San Diego fans want his head on a pike, but a contrite Hoffman stood up and took the blame for the loss and it should be left at that. He didn’t get the job done, period. It was a great game, and for someone who didn’t have a rooting interest, it was a great way to start the opening week of the MLB playoffs.

- That’s the Heroes we all know and love. Last night’s episode, coming on the heels of an entertaining-but-erratic season premiere, was flat-out awesome, still whirling us around the globe and the space/time continuum but with a lot more coherence and flow. A large part of the reason that this episode was better is that our pal Peter Petrelli was on screen a lot more often. Milo Ventimiglia is great in this role and seeing Peter start to get a grip on his powers and piece together who he is was cool. He’s in trouble with some common Irish thugs who think he stole the shipment of iPods that they were going to steal, but ironically Peter doesn’t realize that with all of his powers (some of which he still doesn’t remember that he has yet) he could easily steal the box containing all of his belongings and possessions and get back more of his memories. There was also plenty of Hiro Nakamura comedy, with the diminutive, bespectacled time traveler helping his friend, Japanese legend Taketo Kensei, by putting on Kensei’s armor and using his ability to stop and bend time to perform feats of heroism in Kensei’s name. Another twist is added when the real Kensei is shot with arrows and appears to die, only to recover and heal himself, a la Claire Bennet. Speaking of Claire, she continues to try to blend in as a normal high school student but new friend West, with his own secret ability, makes it tough and he even sees her cut off one of her own toes and grow it back so she can know how far her regenerative powers really go. I didn’t exactly get the point of Claire having her new car stolen at school, but I have a feeling that there’s more to it than a simple car jacking, so stay tuned on that. I’m also not completely sure who it is that Mohinder Suresh and Mr. Bennet are trying to bring down with their scheme, but they used to resources of “the Company” that Mohinder has infiltrated to bring the mysterious Haitian from Season One back into the picture. The previews for next week showed our first glimpses of Nikki/Jessica (Ali Larter) and Micah (Noah Gray-Cabey), so htat’s something to look forward to. There’s also the saga of Maya and Alejandro, the Latino twins who are trying to reach America for a cure to their mysterious powers, which we also learned more about last night. As it turns out, Maya’s tears cause other people to have some sort of seizure/reaction where they die and blood comes from their own eyes like tears, Alejandro seems to be a yin to Maya’s yang, because by holding her hands and reciting some weird chant, he can reverse the effects of her powers and his own eyes do some weird color-changing and mutation. Also on the schedule last night was Prison Break episodes, which wasn’t quite as good as Heroes on this night but was still awesome. The dynamic between James Whistler and Michael Scofield continues to evolve, and anyone who thought that Whistler was some shrinking violet, wallflower type who would just be grateful to Scofield for his help was mistaken. Whistler, an Australian with a bad attitude and a mean streak of his own, is clearly not going to follow blindly wherever Scofield leads. He revealed that his involvement with “the Company” (there seem to be a lot of “Companies” going on, eh?) came when he took a mystery man out on a charter fishing trip and two months later, some “government types” came around, asking questions about where he’d taken the man and what they’d seen. This took place near Seattle, but Whistler fled to Panama, got into a bar fight and as previously stated, killed the son of Panama City’s mayor, thus his presence in SONA. On the outside, both Lincoln and Whistler’s girlfriend continued their fight to get their respective loved ones out of SONA, but Linc’s episode also included an ill-fated attempt to rescue Sara and L.J. when he and Michael figured out that they were being held captive in the town of Santa Rosa. Obviously the rescue attempt wasn’t going to be successful this early in the season, especially not when Sarah Wayne Callies is no longer on the show. The most likely outcome seems to be that she’ll be killed off somehow during the season while in captivity or trying to escape, because there’s no way you can try to recast the part and pass off a new actress in the role. Back in SONA, in typical PB style, we saw Michael in various moments of careful analysis of his surroundings, flashbacks of goings on at the prison and details that you know are going to be a part of his escape plan. So far the hints seem to involved the fact that the only known way out of SONA is if you’re dead, which would lead you to believe that the escape plan will involved he and Whistler being thought dead, although as always with this show, the obvious and likely are usually the opposite of what happens. So it was a great night of TV, which means a lot this season because the rest of the week contains only one really good show (Smallville), and it’s not on until Thursday, yikes……

- Maybe I’m biased on this next one because I’m a marathoner myself, but a truly amazing sports feat took place over the weekend and odds are that most sports fans didn’t hear anything about it. Haile Gebrselassie, one of the top distance runners in the world, set a new world marathon record, running an amazing time of 2 hours, 4 minutes and 26 seconds in the Berlin Marathon. To break that down for you a bit, that’s a pace of 4:xx per mile. It wasn’t more than a few decades ago that breaking the four-minute mile barrier was a huge deal, and based on personal experience I can say that even running a marathon at a eight-minute per-mile pace is tough. Yet here’s Gebrselassie, running an absurd pace of 4:45. I tip my hat to him, and not just because he was busy running that 2:04:26 while I was running a 3:44:59 in a different marathon on a different continent. Not nearly enough people recognize and respect marathon runners, especially the elite ones, and this is a great sporting accomplishment. Well done, H., you deserve a whole lot of respect for this one.

- I’m not really pro or con when it comes to The Dr. Phil Show because who cares if some egotistical, arrogant shrink wants to gravy train off of his fame from being a friend of Oprah Winfrey to score his own talk show where he brings on screwed up losers and tries to help them out? If he does help these people, then good for him and for them. If not, who gives a crap, because it’s a freaking TV talk show, so how much can you really expect? However, I do have one particular bone to pick with the good doctor, and that’s this: how the hell can Dr. Phil’s show have seasons, aren’t those for shows with plots and characters, not some souped up therapy session masquerading as a talk show? Yet there was a commercial promoting the new season of The Dr. Phil Show, just like NBC promoted a new season of Heroes. Let me help you out, Phil. You don’t have a plot, you don’t have storylines and you don’t have an actual legitimate TV program. You go on every day and conduct a glorified therapy session for clueless losers who look to you as some sort of life savant. Unless and until you mix in characters, story arcs, soundtracks, sound stages, special effects, action scenes and something other than one show after another dealing with different psychological issues, you don’t have seasons. How the hell do you even determine where one of your “seasons” ends and the next one begins? Do your “season finales” have cliffhangers where you try to help someone and something goes terribly wrong, but we have to wait all summer to find out what really happened? Again, I’m not saying you can’t do your thing and have your show, just don’t pretend that you’re something you’re not, namely a legitimate TV series.

- If I ever run for elected office, one of the issues in my platform is going to be ridding the world of The Guinness Book of World Records. Nothing encourages more morons around the world to attempt idiotic, pointless and waste-of-time feats in the hopes of achieving “greatness” like this absolute plague of a book. In the hopes of getting their name published in a massive waste of paper that only other losers with aspirations for similarly ridiculous feats ever read, people do things like compile 40-foot-thick balls of yarn, line up with a couple thousand other a-holes to play the famous opening riff from Smoke on the Water or they see how many people they can shove into a 1979 VW Beetle. Then there are ass hats like Russell “Rock Bottom” Byars of Franklin, Pa., who has so pathetic a life and such a dearth of friends that he went out to a stretch of river near his home, about 70 miles north of Pittsburgh, set up his video camera and recorded his “feat” of skipping a stone across the water 51 times, with the stone traveling an estimated 250 feet. Why videotape it, you ask? Because Byars submitted the tape to the equally pathetic people who publish The Guinness Book of World Records and they actually did a detailed analysis of the video to make sure that Byars’ effort was legitimate. No word on whether he will also be brought in for a drug test to ensure that he was not on any performance-enhancing drugs at the time, but I wouldn’t put it past these people. Someone needs to inform Byars, though, that he may have a world record in one of the most pointless, peripheral activities known to man, but holding that record does not make him famous, cool, great or a person of significance. No one knows who you are and no one cares, R., so go back to your one-bedroom trailer and make sure I never hear from you again unless you actually do something worthwhile.

- I’ll skip right past all the bad chess-related puns and talk about former world chess champion Gary Kasparov’s decision to enter the Russian presidential race sans lame jokes. That Kasparov was selected as the candidate for the Other Russian coalition isn't a huge surprise; he’s been active in politics for a long time now and in a country where opposing the president is almost a given (sound familiar, America?), you have to like his chances as long as he sticks to the “I’m nothing like Vlad Putin” card. After a president who seems determined to drag the country back to communism, nearly any candidate has to seem like an upgrade for Russians (again, sound familiar, America?). Kasparov received 379 of 498 first-place votes in a national congress held by the opposition coalition, but his candidacy still needs to be registered and because the opposition coalition is not officially in registered and can’t take part in elections for the State Duma, the lower house of Russia’s parliament, which will play a big part in the selection process for the candidates for president. The move to put Kasparov on the ballot is likely to be blocked, so his chances of defeating the candidate endorsed by Putin and the country’s ruling party are not good. But if he fails here, G. Kasparov can always go back to playing the supercomputer Big Blue in chess matches for man v. machine supremacy.

- The weekend has come and gone at the box office, and the Rock has once again succeeded in his quest to layeth the smacketh down on the candy asses of all the other movies currently in our nation’s theaters. Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, now light years removed from his career in WWE, has scored with his second-consecutive No. 1 film, The Game Plan, a football-themed comedy on the heels of last year’s Gridiron Gang, a football story with a dramatic, real-life-story slant. The Game Plan grossed $22.7 million on its opening weekend, edging out runner-up The Kingdom, which came in at $17.7 million despite rocky reviews. In spite of an opening weekend that exceeded expectations and that top spot in the earnings race, I don’t think I’ll be seeing Game Plan any time soon. The Rock is great and I loved him as a wrestler and even in Gridiron Gang and Walking Tall, but a Disney comedy about football is where I’m drawing the line. So I hope the film does well, just as long as none of my dollars contribute to its success.

Traveler's final farewell, the Mets finalize their collapse and Freedom's Watch = blathering idiots

- During the summer, I became a devoted follower of the ABC drams Traveler, which was unfortunately and wrongly canceled after its short summer run. Since then, the show’s fans have waged a campaign to get it back on the air and one of the show’s creators, David DiGilio, has maintained a blog about the show on TVGuide.com. Unfortunately, despite ABC putting mind-bogglingly bad shows like Cavemen and Big Shots on this fall, the network refused to bring Traveler back and so things are now over for Will, Jay and Tyler. However, before the show goes away for good, DiGilio used his space on TVGuide.com to answer the many questions fans had about things left unresolved due to the series’ early cancellation, things like what would have happened with current storylines as well as in future seasons. Here is the link to that blog so you can check it out yourself and see all of the great action we’re missing out on so that we can instead see a show about a group of cavemen from a series of lame auto insurance commercials in the most moronic comedy ever to come to the small screen and other brainless shows like it. Thanks again, ABC, for showing why I won't even bother acknowledging that your network even exists until Lost premieres in January.

- The New York Mets’ collapse is complete, but I have to admit that it still seems surreal and hasn’t entirely sunk in. I watched the MLB standings the past few weeks and it always seemed like the Mets were able to fend off the Phillies and Braves, but over the past two weeks, the Metropolitans have choked away all of a seven-game lead and today, on the season’s final day, they lost the NL East when they were hammered 8-1 by the Florida Marlins and the Phillies beat the lowly Washington Nationals. Mets manager Willie Randolph was a ­Seinfeld­-esque low talker as he mumbled about his team’s September swoon, while Mets players exited the dugout after the game like they were headed for the gas chamber. If you’re a part of an epic collapse like this, then New York is the worst possible place to be, because obviously New York as a whole is harder on and more scrutinizing of its sports teams. The Mets are going to be mercilessly ripped in the Apple for a long, long time because of this, and with good reason. That being said, if you’re not a Met, a Mets fan or a New Yorker, this could not have happened in a better place because now the rest of us get to look on with a sick pleasure from the outside as NYC devours one of its own for their massive meltdown. I would have much rather seen it happen to New York’s other MLB team, the Yankees, but I’ll take what I can get. See you on the golf course starting this week, Mets players……

- I love it when someone tries to do something genuinely benevolent and beneficial to others…..and no one cares. I don’t have hard numbers to back me up on this, but something tells me that when Nickelodeon went off the air for three hours yesterday at noon to promote its fourth-annual worldwide day of play, which encourages children to get off their obese behinds, go outside and be active, very few kids paid attention. When they saw the dead air on Nickelodeon, they inevitably switched over to one of the other hundreds of channels offered by their cable or satellite provider, hopped online to post and blog on their MySpace page or turned on their Nintendo Wii for an afternoon of video games instead. It’s a nice concept for Nickelodeon and it gives them a chance to claim that they’re actively promoting healthy lifestyles for kids, but I hope behind closed doors the suits at the network know that it’s nothing more than a shallow, irrelevant gesture that isn't going to make much of a difference to anyone.

- I’d be remiss if I didn’t take some shots at one of the most asinine, idiotic groups of complete and total tools I’ve seen on the political scene in a long time: Freedom’s Watch. I could sum the whole thing up neatly and convince you what a bunch of ass hats these people are simply by telling you that they have close ties with the W. administration, but where’s the fun in that? No, more needs to be said about a group of wealthy, white a-holes who are so far out of touch that they make Zubaz pants look current by comparison. The group is fronted by two former W. administration officials and was founded this summer by 12 über-wealthy individuals. Its most visible campaign thus far is as clear an indication as you can get as to the absolute cluelessness and lack of mental acuity these people possess: trying to convince the American public to support the floundering debacle of a war in Iraq and W.’s indefensible, inexcusable troop surge plan. Bradley Blakeman, a former deputy to W. and president of Freedom’s Watch, is now leading the group’s charge against Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Let me stop for a moment and point out that Bradley Blakeman is perhaps the whitest-sounding name in the history of whiteness. Can’t you just picture Bradley Blakeman sitting in his study, sipping hundred-year-old Scotch, smoking Corona cigars and talking about the travails of being in the country’s highest tax bracket while his wife Muffy puts on her tennis outfit and prepares to head to the country club in the Bentley? Something tells me that Freedom’s Watch isn't going to be including Sal, the deli owner from the Bronx whole drives a 1984 Chevy Caprice and lives in a two-bedroom apartment with his wife and three kids any time soon. Freedom’s Watch also has its overpriced tighty-whities from Sacks Fifth Avenue in a bunch because of the good folks over at MoveOn.org who have smartly been advocating, well, moving on from the war in Iraq. The word used by Freedom’s Watch for the MoveOn.org folks is obnoxious, which is only one of the many derogatory adjectives I could think of for the Freedom’s Watchers. Besides, if you all are so smart, shouldn’t you know how much average Americans who don’t have two or three homes, several luxury cars and their own private jet feel about having arrogant, self-righteous, out-of-touch ass clowns tell us how we ought to think? How’s about you watch me giving you a double-middle-finger salute, Freedom’s Watch, then I’ll take your pompous, Cristal-sipping a**es and put my size 12’s up them…..

- In what may be the first case ever of a male model and fake-butter pitchman being mistaken for an airplane, an AirTran flight taking off from Philadelphia and heading for Atlanta had to return to Philadelphia Friday after a bird flew right into the craft’s windshield, cracking it and slightly injuring the co-pilot as well. My only thought is that this bird is a distant cousin of the one that flew into the face of Fabio at an amusement park several years ago when he was riding a roller coaster. I mean, you can see how a bird might confuse those two things, what with Fabio’s ginormous beak so clearly resembling the large, pointy nose of an aircraft in both size and shape. The plane was able to land without further trouble, although I’m sure there was a plane full of angry travelers who weren’t amused when they found out why their flight had been waylaid. Actually, having been on many flights with many impatient travelers, I’m guessing many passengers on the flight were actually pissed at the pilot and co-pilot for being such wusses and not continuing the flight in spite of the cracked windshield and minor injuries. But add this to the ever-growing list of weird, annoying and always irritating reasons for flight delay and cancellation: bird damage to the windshield. And why do I get the feeling the PETA is somehow going to get snippy about this and try to attack AirTran for the death of this bird? Ah, the friendly skies…..