Dark days for Adrian Pasdar, possible peace in Darfur and revenge for Tracy McGrady

- Pardon me for playing armchair psychologist for a moment here, but perhaps Adrian Pasdar hasn’t taken all that well to being axed from the cast of NBC’s formerly good and now mediocre drama Heroes. Granted, learning that you are being cut from a show by reading of your character’s death in a script isn’t ideal, but it is certainly no excuse to get all liquored up, get behind the wheel of whatever type of luxury whip you drive and go cruisin’ down the 405 in SoCal at a hearty 94 mph. That’s what Pasdar was arrested for in Los Angeles last month: driving under the influence. He was pulled over in January after clocking 94 mph on the 405 and was taken into custody when the responding officer determined he was under the influence. He was released after posting $15,000 bail, but this kind of reckless DUI isn’t something that’s just going to go away. Losing your spot on the cast of a prime-time drama is one thing, but ruining your life (and potentially the lives of others you could injure or kill while driving drunk) is something entirely different. Although my theory about leaving Heroes leading to the DUI is largely tongue-in-cheek, I sincerely do hope that whatever caused Pasdar to get behind the wheel drunk is something he addresses sooner rather than later. A judge can rip his license for six months, order him to rehab and fine him, but none of that is going to address a more serious problem if one exists. Step your game up, Adrian, because your act on the 405 was decidedly un-heroic…………

- No telling if it will hold up for more than a couple of days, but I still welcome news that Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir's government will formally sign a framework agreement for a cease-fire with rebels in Sudan's volatile Darfur region this week. The alleged peace deal was confirmed by both a rebel representative and state media Saturday. Dr. Tahir al-Fati, chairman of the rebel group Justice and Equality Movement's legislative assembly, explained that a preliminary document for the framework agreement was signed Saturday in Chad between representatives of the two sides. The formal agreement is scheduled to be signed Tuesday in Doha, Qatar. As a gesture of good faith, Sudan’s president also called off death sentences against members of the rebel group who were convicted after clashes in the Khartoum suburb of Omdurman. According to Mahamat Hisseine, spokesman for the government of Chad, the document to be signed on Tuesday will "be an agreement as a cease-fire between the government of Sudan and the Justice and Equality Movement [JEM]. All these details would be part of a general cease-fire agreement that is still being finalized." The obvious hope is that the agreement leads to a permanent cease-fire, but that is obviously a tall order under any circumstances. Still, the deal is a hopeful sign on the heels of last year’s confidence-building agreement in Qatar, signed by both Sudan's government and the JEM. This is a grueling six-year conflict that has killed hundreds of thousands, so it cannot end soon enough. Qatar has been the chief mediator between the two sides in the Darfur conflict, which began in 2003 after rebels started an uprising against the Khartoum government. In response, the government did what governments always do when rebels attack: launch a brutal counter-insurgency campaign. The campaign was aided by government-backed Arab militias that went from village to village in Darfur, killing, torturing and raping residents. Those facts come from none other than the United Nations, Western governments and human rights organizations. The U.N. may be a toothless international punchline for the most part, but that doesn’t mean they can't tell the truth in situations such as this. Al-Bashir is not exactly a saint himself, having been charged with genocide by the International Criminal Court last year for the government's campaign of violence in Darfur. The death tallies are literally staggering: In the past seven years, more than 300,000 people have been killed through direct combat, disease or malnutrition and another 2.7 million people fled their homes because of the incessant fighting. So even though the peace process is tenuous at best, I am choosing to land on the side of hope here and root for a long-awaited end to one of the most heinous and heart-breaking situations anywhere in the world……………

- Rarely do I root for multimillionaire athletes because I feel like they have been greatly wronged. That’s doubly true for those making eight figures in a given season and yet, I found myself cheering and rooting for guard Tracy McGrady in his New York Knicks debut Saturday night. It was his first game since being traded from the Houston Rockets, the team he had played for the past five-plus seasons. Things went sour for McGrady in Houston after he had knee surgery midway through the 2008-09 season and struggled to get back on the court. He felt like he was finally healthy more than a third of the way through this current season and pressed the Rockets to put him back on the court. Instead, they continued to downplay his return and push it back over and over again. The more McGrady felt like he was ready to play, the more the team seemed determined to keep him off the court – for no good reason. Perhaps they worried about him disrupting the chemistry of their scrappy, overachieving squad, I don’t know. What I do know is that he played a mere six games with Houston this season and wasn’t allowed to play more than seven minutes in any of those games. The tension between he and the team reached such heights that he was given permission to leave the team and stay home until they decided what to do with him, meaning finding a suitable trade. That trade came just before Thursday’s NBA trade deadline in the form of a three-team deal that sent McGrady to New York. After months of the Rockers pooh-poohing his ability on the court and casting doubts as to whether or not he had anything left from his All-Star past, all eyes in the basketball world were on the world’s most famous arena, Madison Square Garden, for Saturday night’s game against Oklahoma City. Knicks coach Mike D’Antoni announced earlier in the day that McGrady would be in the starting lineup and indeed he was. Not only that, T-Mac looked every bit like a starter and star on the mend, posting an impressive , 26 points on 10-of-17 shooting, five assists and four rebounds in 32 minutes. Yes, he MSG sat most of fourth quarter and overtime because his conditioning still isn’t fully at game level yet, but he’ll get there. It was his first real action of 10-plus minutes in over a year and his first action of any kind since December. And no, his efforts weren’t enough to help the Knicks avoid a121-118 overtime loss. However, it was still good to see T-Mac prove that it was the Rockets who were wrong in their little showdown and that had they given him a chance to play, he still had something to offer…………

- Dammit, I told you all that if we did not do something to address this problem, it would come back to bite us all in the ass. Did I or did I not suggest some sort of mentoring program to prevent young, at-risk bears from turning to lives of crime and unruliness to support their eating habits? Well look at what we have on our hands now and it’s safe to say that you all should have listened to me. The incident I am referring to occurred in Altoona, Fla., where a woman called police after discovering her car window was smashed out, her seats were ripped to shreds and claw marks were scratched all along the vehicle’s exterior. The police came to take the “victim’s” statement and process the crime scene, but their search for suspects quickly went from human to bear when they found a large noseprint on one of the non-broken windows and a healthy dose of bear fur inside the trashed car. Determining why the bear chose to break into this particular car wasn’t difficult; the owner said she left a bag of garbage in the trunk, which undoubtedly drew the bear in and sparked his anti-vehicular rage. But honestly, the culprit here isn’t the car’s owner or that bag of garbage she left in her trunk. No, the finger needs to be pointed at a society which so lazily and callously ignores the mounting problems and descent into lawlessness by young bears and refuses to deal with the problem until it’s too late. These bears don’t have solid role models growing up and they begin with small incidents like scaring people on nature hikes and raiding coolers left out at campsites. But they gradually escalate and eventually, they are raiding cars in random parking lots simply because there is a bag of smelly garbage sitting in the trunk. The sad thing is that incidents like this one could easily be avoided if anyone cared enough to give of themselves and their time to mentor these young bears and steer them in the right direction. Heck, Tony Dungy will mentor anything with a pulse these days, so maybe he could get the ball rolling. No matter what, someone has to step up and take action so we don’t have any more incidents like the one that took place on Dorrwood Lane in Altoona Tuesday morning……………

- On a weekend when many Americans were expected to tune in to the Olympics, Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island took advantage of weak competition to b*tch-slap the rest of the box office field and win the earnings race with a $40.2 million take. With no other wide-release films making their debut, Shutter romped to a win and posted a total that marks a career best for both Scorsese and star Leonardo DiCaprio. It was markedly better than the result from their last project together, 2006’s The Departed, which opened to $26.9 million. Critics were fairly harsh on Shutter and you know that the suits at Paramount had to be gripping in the days leading up to its release. Heck, the studio even pushed back a schedules Oct. 2009 release date for the film, a move the studio officially blamed on marketing expenses. Coming in a distant second was Valentine’s Day with its star-studded cast and ridiculous plot ($17.2 million). A 69-percent drop from last weekend isn’t surprising for this particular movie, given the fact that last weekend was Valentine’s Day weekend and all. In third place was James Cameron’s animated stalwart Avatar, which posted yet another record-breaking performance in its 10th weekend, earning $16.1 million more to boost its cumulative total to a record high once again. In fourth place was Percy Jackson and the Olympians ($15.3 million), which dropped a hefty 51 percent in its second weekend of wide release, the same sort of fate suffered Universal’s crap-tacular horror flick The Wolfman (No. 5, $9.8 million) as it lost 68.7 percent of its audience from last weekend. The other noteworthy debut for the weekend was, Roman Polanski’s The Ghost Writer, which is noteworthy not so much because of the film itself but rather its director. Y’know, the dude who fled the United States a couple decades back rather than face trial for having sex with a 13-year-old girl and has remained at large since then, only to find himself arrested and on the verge of being shipped back to the U.S. recently. Well, his new film banked a $179,000 from four theaters, no doubt owing much of that success to attention garnered by Polanski’s ongoing legal troubles. But I suppose that in the current movie landscape, you take attention for your project any way you can get it and were Polanski to score a record-breaking run with Ghost Writer, perhaps other directors would follow his example. Umm, then again, prolly not. Never mind that one………..

Inspirations to get into politics, when your NBA team trades for an unpatriotic alcoholic stoner and "Lost" casting news

- Few things inspire Americans to become involved in politics. Unless they are outright provoked, the average resident of these United States will sit on his or her lazy ass and do nothing when it comes to getting involved in the running of the local community. Allow me to cite the example of Mary Wymer of Sunset Hills, Mo. as a prime representation of exactly what I am talking about. Wymer was prosecuted for honking her car horn and charged with disturbing the peace. Court records show that Wymer's criminal conduct was a prolonged horn honk of a few seconds. A week after she honked at neighbors walking in the street, Sunset Hills police came to her home and led her out in a pair of the silver bracelets. "Everybody, everyday, honks their horn," Wymer said. Her neighbors disagreed, which is surprising until you find out that Wymer lives in a very upper-class, uptight neighborhood, the type of place where people take themselves far too seriously, do things like form homeowners organizations telling their neighbors how high they can grow their grass and look down their noses at the rest of the world as if having money somehow makes them superior. Here’s how Wymer described the incidents in question: "One was with a stroller, one was with a dog. They were in the street. I came up behind them and I honked my horn once to get out of the way...I did it for safety purposes and there was a UPS guy coming on the other side. They had their backs turned to me. They did not see me.” They may not have seen you, M., but they heard you and for that, the city managed to exact a $500 fine after a prolonged court case that included two appeals. To Wymer’s credit, she made the process a Catch-22 for the city, as prosecuting the case cost them thousands of dollars in order to secure that $500 fine from her. Wymer, a neo-natal intensive care nurse and mother, has responded by running for mayor. "I just want to let the voters be aware of what kind of people are running this city and to let them know, now they have a choice...I want to bring integrity back to city hall," Mary Wymer said. That’s not true, by the way, because one place integrity has never resided is city hall in any city. Either way, the election is April 6th…………

- Not that coming back from the dead isn’t eventful and dramatic in and of itself, but Lost's Sayid (Naveen Andrews) may have some very difficult and panic-inducing moments ahead as not one, but two of his former lovers return to the show that seems to raise ten new questions for every existing question it answers. After being mortally wounded in last season’s finale and apparently dying in this season’s premiere, Sayid came back to life and before the show’s final season comes to a close, so will two of his former lady friends, both of whom have died during the course of the series. Shannon (Maggie Grace), his dead girlfriend from the island, and Nadia (Andrea Gabriel), his dead off-island wife, will both make appearances in Lost’s sixth and final campaign. Grace has been busy with multiple films and unable to return to the show to reprise her role as Shannon, stepsister of Ian Somerhalder’s Boone, who was killed by Ana Lucia in Season 2. "We're really excited about having her back on the show," executive producer Carlton Cuse said, "and we have a good story for her." In a trend for female friends of Sayid, Nadia also was murdered, run down in a hit-and-run car incident by one of Charles Widmore's assassins, as Sayid helplessly looked on. Network executives and Lost producers won't comment on when either woman will return or for what number of episodes, but they join a growing list of former cast members who died in previous seasons of the show but are slated to return this season. Libby (Cynthia Watros), Michael (Harold Perrineau), Charlotte (Rebecca Mader) and Daniel Faraday (Jeremy Davies) will also be back this season as Lost looks to go out in style…………

- And the last stronghold has fallen. AT&T, flagship provider for the iPhone in America, has finally struck a deal to offer Android-based phones. AT&T Thursday set a March 7 release date for the Motorola Backflip, the first Android-powered smartphone to run on AT&T's 3G network. The Backflip is designed with a "flip-out" QWERTY keyboard that well-suited for texting and is designed to be opened more like a book than like a traditional slide-out keyboard. It will also feature Motorola's Motoblur overlay, which allows users to combine friends' status updates and uploaded pictures from sites like Twitter, Facebook and MySpace onto their home screens. The price point is actually not that ridiculous, weighing in at $99.99 after a $100 mail-in rebate. Oh, the Backflip will also be the first Android-powered phone to run on the HSPA 7.2 network that AT&T has been building up over the past year. It’s an upgraded version of the HSPA technology that AT&T has used in its GSM-based 3G network. AT&T hopes to have HSPA 7.2 cover 90% of its 3G network by the end of 2011. By that point, it will actually be preparing for its transition to Long Term Evolution 4G technology. Now that AT&T has agreed to carry Android-based smartphones, the carrier falls in line with its primary rivals, Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile. That trio all rolled out Android phones in 2008 and 2009, but perhaps having the iPhone as its leading smartphone offering dissuaded AT&T from following suit until now. The Android mobile operating system, which Google designed, is a Linux-based open platform for mobile devices that includes an operating system, middleware and some key mobile applications. Google created the system purportedly to encourage the development of mobile applications that will give users the same experience surfing the Web on their smartphone as they would have on a computer. Not being a big smartphone guy myself, I can’t confirm whether Android succeeds in this endeavor, but for those whose lives are wrapped up in their phones, now you have all four major carriers from which to choose when looking for an Android-equipped phone…………

- Do not freaking encourage the National Enquirer, Pulitzer Prize. The second you let these bottom-dwelling, story-fabricating, no-soul-having scumbags believe that they are not the wretched filth of the Earth, then you’ve got a serious problem on your hands. I wish the folks who award the Pulitzer and I could have had this informative chat before they placed the Enquirer in the running to receive a Pulitzer Prize for its breaking coverage of the John Edwards scandal. The Enquirer is nominated in two categories: Investigative Reporting and National Reporting, but to be honest, once you nominate them in one, additional nominations become superfluous. I don’t think I need to remind all of you of the numerous absurdities (100-lb. babies, space aliens, deceased celebrities back from the dead, etc.) that the Enquirer and its tabloid compatriots have reported on over the years and that’s why it stuns me that the Pulitzer Prize commission would even think to nominate that rag for any award. Initial indications were that the Enquirer's submission packet would be tossed out because of a variety of technicalities, any of which would have been satisfactory in my opinion. One of them was a debate over whether or not the Enquirer is actually a newspaper or more of a magazine (neither, as it’s more of a glorified toilet paper). Prize rules stipulate that the Pulitzer can only be given to a newspaper or news site that is published at least on a weekly basis. Unfortunately, the fools entrusted with making the decision ultimately determined that the Enquirer is a newspaper, and therefore will be judged in the competition accordingly. Being nominated is bad enough and will embolden these fools all the more, but let’s not compound the mistake by actually giving them the award, Pulitzer peeps…………

- For Washington Wizards fans who are happy that their team acquired forward Josh Howard as part of a seven-player deal with the Dallas Mavericks, I would advise you to listen to what I’m about to say before you make your decision. Bear in mind that we already know that Howard is an avowed stoner (and yes, I still love stoners, some of the world’s most awesome people). We know that because he admitted in a radio interview during a playoff series in 2008 against the New Orleans Hornets that he occasionally smoked the hippie lettuce. We also know that he’s not a big fan of the national anthem, as he appeared in a 2008 video in which he mocked disparaging the anthem at a charity flag football game, with Howard saying, "I don't celebrate this sh*t. I'm black." We also know that he’s a big fan of street racing, having been was arrested in North Carolina for street racing. Oh, and while with the Mavs, he passed out flyers to his birthday party in the locker room right after a critical loss. That led to then-coach Avery Johnson canceling the next day's practice. All of those facts were already on record, but now that they’ve traded him away, the Mavericks are looked to heap additional dirt on his basketball grave by revealing, through unnamed sources of course, that while he was with them, Howard also missed a game because of a hangover. Multiple team sources confirmed that Howard missed the Mavericks' Jan. 20 win over the Washington Wizards because of a hangover after boozing it up the night before. Ironic that the game was against the Wizards, because I have o wonder if they would have been willing to complete the deal if they had known these allegations. Of course, Howard initially refused comment on the allegations, then doubled back and stated that he was "not responding to a lie.. My lawyers ar taking action... Thanks.. That's a response." To that, he added after his Washington debut that he intended to "stick it to the Mavs." No word on whether he needs to remain sober or un-stoned to do so, but probably not. All in all, this doesn’t bode well for a guy whose contract is expiring after this season and has only a team option for $11.8 million for next season. Something tells me the Wizards won't be picking up that option and no other team is likely to hand an eight-figure per-year deal to an alcoholic stoner who hates the national anthem, doesn’t give a damn about his team’s success and enjoys street racing in his free time. Enjoy your fate, J. Howard, because it’s of your own making. As for you, Wizards fans, still excited? Probably not…………

I find a new trend to support, Richard Seymour's own personal hell (Oakland) and a Smallville recap

- When I spot a trend I like, I jump behind it with all my might and hold on tight. I’ve found just such a trend and it appears to be originating out of the home of the 2009-10 Super Bowl champions, the New Orleans Satins. Apparently the good folks of the Big Easy are big fans of a product being labeled and sold as incense, but used for a very different purpose than most incense. It's called mojo, or spice, and instead of using it for some sort of ritualistic purpose, people are smoking it to get a marijuana-like. Different varieties of mojo are sold all across the metro New Orleans area and best of all, there are no regulations on it. Some party-poopers are calling it "legal weed," to which I reply: 1) a bit harsh, y’all and 2) and the problem is? If people want to light up their "spice" or "spice gold to get high, so be it. Heck, the stuff is sold at convenience stores and gas stations. “I'd say it's readily available in the metropolitan area and on the Internet,” said New Orleans Police Department Deputy Superintendent of Narcotics James Scott. Quite a lengthy title you’ve got there, Jimmy. I suppose the biggest complaint against mojo (or whatever you call it) is that while a few shops only sell to people over age 18, most have no age restrictions. “It allows the children to become intoxicated in some cases, probably right under their parents' noses,” Scott said. Or with their own noses, as the case may be. As for me, I choose to look on the positive side. For one, mojo offers a hippie lettuce-like high without the hassle of acquiring or smelling like marijuana. Second, and more importantly, it doesn't show up on standard drug tests. “This will not show up on a field test kit because the field test kits test for THC,” said Jimmy Fox Special Agent in Charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration. Although the chronic should be legal (another argument for another time), right now it’s not and so law enforcement uses field kits to test and see if drugs they find contain THC, the chemical in marijuana that federal law (wrongly) deems an illegal drug. Detailed DEA analysis has shown that a combination of three synthetic chemicals, including the compound jw8-018, is what gives stoners the marijuana-like high, but even though the DEA has included that specific combination in their list of controlled substances, only detailed chemical analysis in a lab detect the combination – not field tests. In fact, spice by itself is herbal in nature and for that reason, it’s not the same as tree. Savvy manufacturers routinely change the chemicals used in mojo to mimic THC, meaning each combination would have to be both outlawed and traceable in order to enforce it. As it now stands, the synthetic combination used in mojo is perfectly legal and packaging for the product states that it contains a group of natural herbs. Even so, many users, er, people using incense to liven up their home, will attest to the fact that mojo often packs a more powerful hit than weed. Thankfully, Louisiana hasn’t followed the regrettable example set by the state of Kansas, which outlawed mojo or spice on January 1. Stay stoned, er, strong, Louisiana……………

- Not that Clark Kent needed any more powers, but he got them (temporarily, of course), on tonight’a Smallville. CK finds himself is accidentally infected with gemstone kryptonite, which has wish-fulfilling properties. But the episode kicks off with Lois and Clark investigating RAO corporations (Zod's company that's building the towers they plan to use to turn the sun red and give them back their powers). It’s not exactly an ideal Valentine’s Day and Clark says as much. Suddenly, a Cupid-like fairy blows her pixie dust at the couple and Clark's eyes go purple. Back at the Daily Planet, Lois insists on getting a story out. Clark argues that maybe they should put their relationship first for a night and for once, he wins out – because of his new power. Lois is under his spell after her eyes flash purple as well and even when Clark changes things up because the towers are set to open in two days, she replies, "Anything for your career sweetie." Over at Watchtower, Clark arrives to pick up some new documents to establish lives and indentities for the Kandorians. Chloe laments feeling hollow and empty and also disagrees with helping the Kandorians, but Clark’s power to control others surfaces and Chloe’s eyes flash purple as well. "I will protect you no matter what it takes," she answers robotically. Clark takes the documents to the RAO site and several Kandorians accept them with profuse thanks. He asks for a favor in return: the identity of his father’s killer. Instead, they warn him that Zod has many loyal followers and he should rethink his quest. Clark zips back to the Kent Farm, where Lois is in true un-Lois fashion: homemaker. She takes a fresh pie out of the oven and has moved in, albeit in the guest room – until they get engaged. Lois then serves up dinner with a pot roast so bad that even Shelby the dog won't eat it. She also drops a bombshell – she quit her job at the Planet to focus solely on his happiness. Tension with the opposite sex is also in order at the Luthor mansion, where Zod walks in on Tess taking a bath. She offers him a chance to join her, but he caustically remarks that she’s already in bed with Kal-El, a.k.a. Clark. "You're digging your own grave," she says to Zod of his tower-building project. He is already upset about that topic because he’s found out about Clark supplying the new identities for some of his people. Tess taunts Zod that Clark will someday be their leader and that they see him as their future. Zod shoots back that Tess will be in need of mercy once he has his powers, then storms out. Back at the farm, Chloe shows up and finds Lois scrubbing the floor. Clark’s powers to control suddenly become a problem when an angry Chloe rips into Lois, saying she's seen Clark in love before and this is a definite distraction. "It's just a little sad that the only way you can get close to Clark right now is to play mother hen," Lois retorts. Chloe shoots back that Lois isn’t trustworthy, having pimped out her previous relationship with the Blur to the public. "If you really love him," she goes on, "the best thing you can do for Clark is leave him." Meanwhile, Clark is on a trip to Metropolis and he tracks down the Valentine's fairy. He learns that the pixie dust comes from a quarry in Smallville and realizes that it probably has meteor rock in it. That epiphany is interrupted by am emergency text from Lois, who is back at the farm bawling her eyes out because she’s taken what Chloe said to heart and is worried that she’s not good enough for him. Furthermore, she theorizes that she needs to leave Clark and escape from Smallville. Always one with the right thing to say, Clark assures her that they'll be together forever and they hug. Back at Watchtower, Dr. Emil is working feverishly to hack into Chloe’s system, but she’s put a series of impenetrable safeguards in place before leaving. Clark arrives and his new power again proves troublesome when his attempts to calm Emil down lead to the good doctor losing interest entirely, grabbing a beer from the fridge and taking a break. When Clark details his current dilemma, Dr. suggests using it to his advantage. At the farm, Lois calls up Martha Kent (looking forward to Annette O’Toole’s impending return) in Washington to ask if she can try on her wedding dress. "Thanks mom," she says before modeling the dress, then calling up her family, including her sister and dad, to break the news of her engagement to Clark. As for Clark, he heeds Dr. Emil’s advice and goes to find Zod so he can use his power of persuasion to stop the towers from being finished. He also attempts to force Zod to be truthful about who killed Jor-El, but Zod insists that Tess killed Jor-El. Zod clearly sees a win-win for himself, because if Clark kills Tess for revenge, she’s out of Zod’s way. But if Clark does that, then he is no better than Zod himself. Zod even manages to Jedi-mind-trick Clark into turning his new power inward, causing him to want to kill and get revenge for his father's death. While Clark sets off on his new quest, Chloe returns to her old stomping grounds at the Planet, but not as a journalist. Instead, she’s attempting to launch a massive computer virus to stop the satellites that will work in tandem with the RAO towers. Tess warns her that if she does that, Clark will be in even more danger. Tess actually offers to work with Chloe, but Chloe decides that she’d rather pistol-whip Tess. That means, yes, chick fight time! Tess ultimately gains control of the gun, but before she can use it, Clark super-speeds in and whisks her off to a nearby rooftop. There, he encircles them in a ring of fire and angrily informs her that his powers would disappear if the towers go up. She claims she had no idea, but Clark doesn’t seem to believe her. "Don't worry, Tess. I'll save your world, just not with you in it," he snaps before almost burning her alive. Ironically, it’s Chloe who saves Tess’ life by bringing Clark down with good-ol’ green Kryptonite. It snaps everyone out of their various states of altered consciousness and undue influence. Elsewhere in Metropolis, badass Kandorian ninja/assassin Alia admits to Zod that she was the one who killed Jor-El. She surrenders herself to her fate by handing Zod a gun and he obliges, shooting her dead. On to lighter matters, Martha Kent learns from her son that the engagement was a misunderstanding, even though the announcement made it on the front page. Having snapped out of her spell of influence from the pixie dust, Lois clues Clark in to the fact that things are moving too fast and they agree to slow down and be honest with one another. The episode closes out Alia's traditional Kandorian funeral, where Zod admits to Clark that he killed her, but only because she murdered Jor-El. Clark informs Zod that this isn’t his kind of justice, but Zod confronts him with the reality that he will have to decide whether he really is one of them in the coming days. At Watchtower, Clark and Chloe share a quiet moment as friends and she confides that she really believes he's the savior. Then, in a dramatic close to the show, Clark blows up the towers using his heat vision the night before they are to open, proving that he really has succeeded in changing the future that we saw courtesy of Lois’ apocalyptic dreams of the future earlier this season…………

- There are FAT passengers (like director Kevin Smith), there are loud and disruptive passengers (i.e. whiny babies) and now, there are passengers so spectacularly smelly that they must be booted from flights. This practice has been initiated by Jazz Air, a regional airline in Canada that also serves U.S. cities. The B.O. bandit was kicked off a flight originating from Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, on February 6. "People were just mumbling and staring at him," said a woman who sat near the offensive passenger. Another fellow passenger described the smell as "brutal." Asked about the incident, Jazz Air spokeswoman Manon Stuart confirmed that a passenger was "deplaned" from the flight but cited privacy issues when asked to give further details. "As an airline, the safety and comfort of our passengers and crew are our top priorities. Therefore, any situation that compromises either their safety or comfort is taken seriously, and in such circumstances, the crew will act in the best interest of the majority of our passengers," Stuart said. "It's important to understand that our crew members make every effort to resolve a situation before it becomes an issue. Unfortunately, in some circumstances, it may become necessary for our crew to remove passengers." I like this trend because if I’m ever stuck next to someone with overwhelming B.O. for a long flight, I want to know that I and my fellow passengers have the option of pulling a crew member aside and having the olfactorily-offensive person removed from the flight. Where I see an issue is in the fact that Jazz Air, like most other airlines, does not have a specific policy addressing body odor. That needs to change and it needs to change right now because I freaking guarantee you that this is not the first or last time this specific problem will come up and something needs to be done about it preemptively……………

- Welcome to your own personal hell, Richard Seymour. The Oakland Raiders are a dysfunctional enough organization to ruin even the best player and they have managed to sink their claws into Seymour. Prior to this past season, the Raiders traded for Seymour from the New England Patriots and he had the same reaction any player would have when asked to go from one of the NFL’s best organization’s to its worst: stay the hell away. That’s just what Seymour did, refusing to report to the Raiders and basically going AWOL for as long as possible. Eventually he showed up because not doing so would have meant forfeiting his chance at a free agency this offseason and not getting paid to play in 2009 as well. So he went to Oakland, displayed a marginal level of interest and effort for a team that set an NFL record with its seventh straight season of double-digit losses and didn’t cause any trouble. The problem for Seymour is that now the Raiders won't let him go and there’s not much he can do about it. While he is a free agent, the Raiders invested a 2011 first-round pick to get him from New England and rather than allow him to walk away as a free agent after one season, the team will use its franchise tag on him if the two sides cannot agree on a long-term contract extension. The franchise tag is a way for NFL teams to avoid losing their marquee free agent in a given year without signing him to a contract. Basically, they slap him with the franchise tag and he becomes a member of their team for the next season and must pay him a salary that is the average of the top five players in the league at his position. That is his guaranteed salary for the season and the team cannot franchise that same player the following season. The franchise tag for defensive ends is $12.398 million, which is what Seymour would then earn for another season of losing and despair in Oakland. It’s not a bad salary and most people would wonder why any player would be upset with the arrangement. Basically, it prevents that player from signing a long-term contract with a new team that could neat them a lot of guaranteed money, theoretically more than they will receive for one season under the franchise tag. The thing with Seymour is, the Raiders and everyone who follows the NFL saw this coming. Everyone knew that Seymour would be miserable in Oakland and want to leave after being forced to play there this year. Likewise, everyone knew that the Raiders would not simply trade a first-round pick for a guy and allow him to go free after one season. So here we are, at the inevitable standoff, and Richard Seymour is about to become a) much richer and b) much more miserable in Oakland over the next 12 months…………..

- I didn’t know Oprah Winfrey was currently vacationing in Argentina. After all, it was Oprah who went to war against beef in the United States and was looking to wipe the beef industry off the map in her whirlwind of rage. Now I have no direct evidence that she’s involved in the ongoing beef boycott in Argentina, but I have my suspicions. If you believe the story currently being told, it was a leading consumers' group that called for a meat boycott some five days ago. The head of Argentina's beef industry responded Thursday by stating prices will fall by week's end. Gustavo Valsangiacomo, president of the Argentina Beef Industry Union, would not admit that the boycott was responsible for the price drop, but his acknowledgement that he is concerned that demand for beef is falling is enough of an admission for me. "There are a sum of factors," Valsangiacomo said in an interview. "I don't want to take importance away from the boycott, but it will be analyzed by the end of the week. Nonetheless, we undoubtedly believe that prices reached a point that the public cannot and does not want to accept." The Association of Free Consumers, the Argentinean consumer group that called for a one-week beef boycott in an attempt to lower prices, has been buoyed by the success of a similar recent boycott of tomatoes, which also had risen in price. Beef is an especially important dietary staple in Argentina, which eats more beef than any other country in the world. I am 100 percent behind this boycott because, unlike Oprah’s misguided rampage, this one stems not from alarmist health and safety “concerns,” but rather from the fact that the price of beef has increased 40 percent to 50 percent since December. Valsangiacomo speculated that the problem stems from cattle growers attempting to maximize their profits despite their access to cheaper feed for their animals. "There has to be an equilibrium between their costs and what consumers are paying," he said. Another complicating factor is the decline in cattle supplies in Argentina. Those supplies have dipped to their lowest levels in 45 years, according to the Argentina Farm Federation. Demand for beef hasn’t declined on a similar curve and Argentineans eat more beef than any other nation in the world -- 150 lbs per person annually. Unfortunately, a one-week boycott seems like only a temporary fix and if things simply go back to the way they were once the boycott ends, one has to wonder how much will really be accomplished……….

Jack Bauer has surgery, Donte Stallworth gets an undeserved second chance and more Toyotas join the recall parade

- DAMMIT, I AM NOT GOING TO ASK YOU AGAIN? DO I NEED SURGERY OR NOT? I can't say for sure that this is how Jack Bauer, a.k.a. actor Kiefer Sutherland, handled the interaction with his doctor when told that he had a ruptured cyst near one of his kidneys, but I like this version of events and so I’m going with it. Either way, the answer Sutherland received was a resounding yes and so he will soon be having elective surgery to deal with a ruptured cyst near one of his kidneys, temporarily stopping production on "24." For fans of the show, take solace in knowing that the medical problem is not considered serious and the disruption to "24" is expected to be negligible. "We are temporarily suspending production of "24" while our friend and colleague Kiefer Sutherland undergoes a medical procedure," the network said in a statement. "We hope to resume production shortly and do not anticipate any disruption in the broadcast of this season's episodes." True enough, because big shows like “24” work far enough ahead that they can work around something like this. As much as Sutherland is the star of the show, there are scenes in which he does not appear and the producers can work on those scenes while Sutherland is out of action. One of Sutherland’s representatives issued a statement addressing the situation that further downplayed its seriousness: "While Kiefer Sutherland is frustrated to miss even one day of work, he and FOX decided together that it would be best to complete this minor elective procedure now as a precaution as opposed to six weeks from now when production wraps. He looks forward to returning to work (this) week." It’s good to hear that and for the show’s producers, I am sure that a minor elective surgery is much more palatable than their meal ticket being hit up for a DUI or accused of assaulting some fru-fru fashion designer at a black-tie event in New York and disrupting production that way, because both of those incidents really did happen. Get well soon, K., and hopefully a strong season for your show continues in the weeks ahead……….

- Some of you were skeptical when a make a tongue-in-cheek prediction that eventually, every Toyota vehicle ever produced would eventually be recalled for some potentially deadly flaw in its design. Well, allow me to inform you of the next step toward my vision becoming reality. A Transportation Department official stated Wednesday that the department plans to open a formal investigation into the 2009-2010 Toyota Corolla over potential problems with the car's power steering. The investigation didn’t officially commence until today, so the official spoke on the condition of anonymity because Toyota had not yet been notified of the planned probe. Toyota did announce earlier in the day Wednesday that it was investigating complaints of power steering problems with the Corolla and was considering a recall. The company claimed that there have been fewer than 100 complaints, but the government clearly feels it’s enough of an issue to dig deeper. I would agree, given the fact that drivers who complained of power-steering issues said they felt they were losing control over the steering, particularly at highway speeds. Hmm, think losing control of your steering wheel at 65 mph is much of a problem? With Toyota selling nearly 1.3 million Corollas worldwide last year, including nearly 300,000 in the United States, this is something that Toyota should feel free to address any time now. Shinichi Sasaki, Toyota’s executive in charge of quality control (talk about not getting the job done lately), said drivers may feel as though they are losing control over the steering, but at this point, Toyota is not sure exactly why. Thanks for the reassurance, S. All Sasaki could offer were theories about how problems with the braking system or tires might be the underlying causes for the problem. Oh, and in a truly magnanimous gesture, Sasaki promised that the company was prepared to fix any defects it finds. Very big of you, Toyota. But at least you are confident that you can fix this issue, which is a marked improvement over your mystified reaction to the initial occurrence of issues with your company’s Gas Pedal of Death that led to a massive recall. The power-steering issue could also lead to a recall, although no official decision has been made. In one final bit of Toyota-related news, company president Akio Toyoda said would consider appearing at congressional hearings next week in Washington after being officially “invited” by the committee looking into his company’s ever-growing stable of death machines on wheels. Hope you can make it, A., because it should be one heck of a show………….

- With one alleged murderer on their team (sorry Ray Lewis, but you were once accused of killing a dude in Atlanta), the Baltimore Ravens must have asked themselves, “Why not add a second one, but this time, a guy who for sure killed another person?” They got their man Wednesday, inking wide receiver Donte' Stallworth to a one-year contract as he seeks to resurrect a career that was halted by a manslaughter conviction. You may remember Stallworth getting drunk off his ass, getting behind the wheel of his luxury car and striking and killing Miami construction worker Mario Reyes back in 2008. Somehow, the taking of another person’s life only necessitated Stallworth serving 24 days of a 30-day sentence in a Miami jail. He was released from jail and then released by the Cleveland Browns, with whom he played only one lackluster season. He also spent this past season suspended by the NFL for violating the league's personal-conduct policy after pleading guilty to a DUI vehicular manslaughter charge, but reinstated once the season ended. Now, he’s been handed a contract worth $900,000, with an additional $300,000 in incentives, at a time when he should still be sitting in jail for senselessly and indefensibly ending the life of another person. "There was a time I felt the mistake I made was the end of the world for me," Stallworth said in a statement. "I will never get that morning back. It weighs on me every day and will for the rest of my life. What I can do is move forward, try to be a better person, try to convince others not to do what I did and warn others about the dangers of drinking and driving. I have to show otherwise that what happened doesn't reflect who I am.” All of that is great and you should feel like crap, but you shouldn’t feel like crap while potentially earning seven figures and playing professional sports for a living as a free man. No, you should be wearing an orange jumpsuit for another five years minimum, working out in the prison yard instead of an NFL team’s weight room and eating your meals at a table bolted to the floor and off of a plastic cafeteria-style tray instead of grubbing from the post-game buffet in the Ravens’ locker room. I also fault the Ravens because while I appreciate giving people second chances, this goes above and beyond that. Ravens general manager Ozzie Newsome is a great guy by all accounts but inking a confirmed killer to his roster doesn’t exactly scream high-character organization. "We've given a lot of thought to this and we've done extensive research into Donte' beyond football," Newsome said. "He made a huge mistake. There's no doubt about that. He has paid a significant price for that and, as he has said, he carries a heavy weight. As [Ravens owner] Steve [Bisciotti] has said, we believe in second chances, and Donte' does deserve that.” I believe it too, Oz, just not at this point in time. And if another five years in prison would have meant that Stallworth never played another down in the NFL, so be it. He took a ginormous dump on that privilege when he made the decision to order about four drinks too many at that hotel bar in Miami and get behind the wheel. The judicial system and the Ravens both dropped the ball on this one and I for one will be rooting against Stallworth every down of his NFL career from here on out…………

- Adventure and archaeological travelers, good news for all of you: Peru's ancient Inca ruins of Machu Picchu should reopen April 1, more than two months after rain stranded hundreds of tourists at the mountain-top site. Back in January, torrential downpours set off mudslides that cut off roads and blocked a rail line between Machu Picchu and the nearby city of Cusco. The government has finally decided that water levels at the Vilcanota River have receded enough to allow repairs to the rail line, said Martin Perez, head of Peru's Ministry of Exterior Commerce and Tourism. "We expect that starting April 1, we will start to receive the millions of tourists who always have come," he said Tuesday. At the time of the mudslides, officials had to use helicopters to evacuate more than 1,000 stranded tourists. The effects of the mudslides extended beyond tourists and all told, authorities estimated that 10,000 people were affected by the rain and 2,000 homes were ruined near Machu Picchu by the mudslides and flooding. Additionally, seven deaths were reported. While respecting those who lost their lives and also those who have been displaced from their homes by this tragic incident, it is good to see an amazing site like Machu Picchu reopen because it does bring a lot of tourists to the region and their spending is definitely a key cog in the region’s economy. And if you have any doubt about how cool this place is, just Google some images or videos of it and see for yourself. If it looks that awesome through the lens of someone’s camera just multiply that shock value by about 1,000 when you see it in person and you’ll have an accurate idea of how great it is…………

- Here is a decision that goes against everything that St. Patrick’s Day stands for and what makes it such a great holiday. The town of New Haven, Conn., home to Yale University, has decided that the consumption of alcoholic beverages at its annual St. Patrick’s Day parade is forbidden. Police will be ticketing anyone who dares to consume alcohol in public at the parade, which travels down Chapel and Church Streets in New Haven. This is particularly despicable because in the past, St. Patrick's Day was one of the only days of the year when people could get away with bringing their own booze and having a party along Chapel Street. Yet the authorities have decided that they can no longer look the other way on drinking at the parade and must ram a ginormous stick up their collective ass instead. . "It's getting to the point where it has gotten out of control," said New Haven assistant police chief Ken Gillespie. "It's not people having a beer, it's people coming out staggering drunk and causing problems.” See, that’s an issue right there. It’s freaking St. Patrick’s Day, so what problems could possibly be posed by peoeple who are falling-down drunk? If anything, they will add to the festivity and fun of the parade. The city plans to put in an extra 50 police officers on the streets to ticket and or arrest people who have open containers. What that means, everyone, is that you’re going to need to be much more creative when it comes to finding ways to stash your booze. My best advice is to find a container that looks like something your kids would drink out of, say a thermos featuring Dora the Explrorer or Hannah Montana, and using to hide the alcohol. If you don’t have a child, simply stand near a family that does have kids. No one is going to think that a guy with a Blues Clues thermos standing next to a stroller with an infant in it is downing a fifth of Jack Daniels. Another possible solution is to avoid the parade all together because parades are lame, but if you absolutely must go because there is nothing else to do in a craphole of a town like New Haven, heed my advice and be wise about hiding your liquor……….

Tough times call for kidnapping dogs, PETA freaks get loose in New York and a Lost recap

- It’s a tough economic landscape for all Americans right now and you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do in order to survive. For someone in the greater Brooklyn area, that means kidnapping someone’s family dog and holding the pooch for ransom. The "dog-napper" took Sugar, a 3-year old bulldog/basset hound, from the Belman family. The family adopted the dog her from a shelter in Hong Kong before moving to Brooklyn, so Sugar clearly has great importance to them. This was Sugar’s first American winter and the dog was out in the snowstorm that hit New York Wednesday. Sugar was accompanied by 10-year-old Henry Belman and his 7-year old brother Leo. Along with their mother Drucie, they went down the street from their apartment to Prospect. Suddenly, Sugar took off running and the family was unable to keep up with her. "I think the snow drifts were a lot, and she's got little legs, and she just pulled and his glove came off, and she just kept going," said Drucie Belman. The chase took the Drucie and her sons so far from home that they had had to get a ride home from a police officer. They took the usual step of putting up fliers around the area and posting a message on a dog lovers' website, fidobrooklyn.org. Not long after Sugar went missing, the family received a cryptic phone call from an unidentified man with a threatening message. "I was surprised when he said, "What are you going to give me for your dog?" said Ms. Belman. "How much are you going to give me?" She says she offered the man $50, after which he hung up. Later that same day, the same man called back and said "Good luck finding your dog." Both calls came from an unknown number. So looking at those facts, you might be inclined to feel sorry for the family. You would……until I told you what Sugar was wearing when she went missing. See, the Belman family is comprised of the sort of tools who dress their dog in a pink fleece coat. That’s what Sugar was wearing when she went missing and for that, I say the Belman family got what it had coming. Ass hats, it’s simple: Your dog is an animal. Don’t buy it special bedding, don’t put clothes on it and don’t spend more on food for it than you do for yourself. Treat it well, but don’t treat it like a person because it isn’t a person. If you fail to heed my advice, something like what has happened to the Belman family could happen to you and you’ll deserve it 107 percent. Hopefully the Belman family gets its dog back safe, but in the meantime, hopefully they will think long and hard about dressing a freaking animal in a pink fleece coat and make some serious changes in their lives…………

- I’ve heard a lot of complaints about Lost raising too many new questions and not answering any of them thus far in its sixth (and final) season. So when the show finally does attempt to answer one of those big questions, do people appreciate it? Of course not. But we’ll get to that in due time. For now, on with the recap…..we begin in Oceanic-land (the world in which Oceanic 815 landed on time in L.A. and never crashed on the island). There, John Locke arrives home from Australia and as he exits his handicapped-accessible van, he has wheelchair ramp trouble when the hydraulic lift that helps him out of the van stalls out. Rather than wait for help, he attempts to roll his wheelchair out of the ramp, several feet off the ground, and instead falls onto the lawn, face down. Worse still, the sprinklers come on and he’s left lying there to get drenched. Out of the house comes his fiancée Helen, who helps him into the house and into the bathtub to clean himself up. While he sits and soaks, she begins talking about their wedding in October. She also finds the business card that Jack Shephard gave to Locke when they met at the airport lost baggage claim center and encourages Locke to call him. Back on the island, we see world through the Black Smoke Monster’s eyes as he/it scours the island. Stops include the Dharma Initiative barracks (where Iggy Pop’s classic punk tune “Search and Destroy” is playing in one of the houses a spot in the middle of the jungle, where the BSM finds Richard Alpert, stuck inside a trap the BSM/Locke constructed to hold him high above the ground. Finding a hunting knife, BSM/Locke cuts the rope, releasing Richard and offering him a drink of water. Richard seems to realize who this faux Locke is, but is extremely skeptical when faux Locke criticizes Jacob and asks what Jacob has told Richard all these years. When he finds out that Jacob told Richard next to nothing yet Richard did as he was told, faux Locke is incredulous. He insists that he wouldn’t have kept him in dark. Back at the remains of the four-toed statue on the beach. Ilana enters the room that remains in the base of the statue and asks Ben Linus what happened to her team that entered the room to take out faux Locke. Ben cautions her that she won't believe him, but tells the tale of Jacob being killed, Locke kicking him into the fire to burn up and then turning into the BSM and killing her team. Ilana doesn’t seem the least bit surprised and instead begins scraping up Jacob’s ashes from the fire and explaining that Locke carried Richard off into the jungle for “recruiting.” In Oceanic-land, Locke returns to work in his office (not sure what kind of company, although it’s been a brief topic on the show before) and finds himself confronted by his angry boss, Randy. Apparently Locke was supposed to be in Australia to attend a work-related conference but blew it off for his walk-about. Randy checked in on him while he was gone, found out that Locke didn’t show up for the conference at all and when Locke refuses to explain, he’s fired. On the island, faux Locke visits Sawyer at Dharma barracks, where Iggy Pop is still playing on the record player. They chat and after dismissively informing Sawyer that the house he’s in really isn’t his own and refusing to sit down and drink whiskey with a despondent Sawyer, faux Locke says that he can answer the most important question Sawyer has: why he’s on the island. So off they go into the jungle, destination unknown. In Oceanic-land, Locke is on his way out of the building after being fired when he finds a yellow Hummer blocking the wheelchair access he uses to get into his van. He tries to put the ramp down anyhow to damage the Hummer, but it stalls out again and he throws his keys on the ground in disgust. He’s approached by none other than Hugo Reyes, a.k.a. Hurley, who informs him that a) he owns the company Locke was just fired from, b) Locke’s old boss, Randy, is a total douche and c) that if he calls a temp agency that Hurley also apparently owns, they will hook him up with a new job. It’s then back to the island and the jungle, where Locke and Sawyer continue walking until Sawyer cites a sudden love of John Steinbeck and pulls a gun on Locke, just as a character did in one of Steinbeck’s books. Unafraid, Locke seems willing to allow Sawyer to shoot him, but cautions that if he does, he’ll never find the answers he’s seeking. Their chat is interrupted by the appearance of a young blond-haired boy, dressed in the cave-dwelling regalia of the Others. Faux Locke is surprised that Sawyer can also see the boy but when the kid takes off running, it’s only faux Locke who gives chase. He eventually stumbles and falls in the jungle and when he look up, the boy is standing over him. “You know the rules. You can’t kill him,” the boy chides him before walking away. Over at the temple, Ilana tells Sun to come to the temple with her because if Jin is on island, he’ll be there. But first, they must bury the actual body of the real John Locke and head off to complete that task. In Oceanic-land, Locke goes to temp agency Hurley referred him to and when the employee he meets with asks bizarre questions like what type of animal he imagines himself as, Locke demands to speak to her supervisor. That supervisor turns out to be fellow Oceanic 815 passenger Rose. When a temperamental Locke demands to be given any job he wants, as per Hurley’s promise, Rose wonders whether he’ll fit well in the construction site supervisor role he wants because he is wheelchair-bound. When he asks what she knows of challenges and being realistic, she shares that she is dying of cancer (which was cured by the island in the alternate reality where Oceanic 815 crashed). An apologetic Locke backs off and Rose suggests that they find a job that fits him better. That job turns out to be as a substitute school teacher, a role in which Locke runs into Ben Linus, who is a history teacher at the same school, hmm. Back on the island, Richard approaches Sawyer in jungle and says that faux Locke doesn’t want to help him finds answers, but rather to kill him and everyone he cares about. When faux Locke returns from chasing the blond boy, he asks who Sawyer was talking to and Sawyer says no one. They march on and faux Locke explains that he used to be a man, just like Sawyer, and he too felt the pain of losing someone he loved. He now feels trapped and wants his freedom. In Oceanic-land, Locke finally calls Jack’s office for the free consult about his spinal injury that Jack promised, but he hangs up. At that moment, his lost luggage from Oceanic 815 is delivered and Locke finally comes clean with Helen about his trip. He admits to having been fired and to explain why, he asks her to open his lost luggage. Inside are the infamous knives we saw in the series’ pilot episode, right after the plane crashed on the island. He details his attempt to take the walk-about and that he was rejected because of his paralysis. When he muses that if Helen needs him to see more doctors and have the possibility of walking again in order to be happy, he tells her none of that is happening. She counters that she doesn’t care about any of those things and merely wants to be with him. Back on the island, Sun, Ilana, Ben and Lapidus set about burying Locke. Sun asks about the faux Locke now on the island and how this will affect him and Ilana rplies that he has now chosen the form he wants to take and he’s “stuck” looking like that – like Locke. Locke is buried at the same makeshift graveyard where previous deceased individuals from Oceanic 815 have been buried and Ben delivers an eerie eulogy in which he praises Locke as a man of faith and expressed regret for murdering him. “Strangest damn funeral I’ve ever been to,” Lapidus mumbles. Around the same time, faux Locke and sawyer reach a cliff at the edge of the island and climb down on rope ladders to a cave. After nearly falling into the sea below when one ladder breaks (and being saved by faux Locke), Sawyer and his new pal step onto a small ledge and walk down to an opening in the cliff face. Inside is a cave with a mini scale of justice, balancing a black rock on one side (representing the Black Smoke Monster/Man in Black/faux Locke) and a white rock on the other side (representing Jacob). Faux Locke picks up the white stone and chucks it into the sea below, explaining that the scale was some sort of inside joke. Mmm hmm, sure it wasn’t. He then lights a torch and leads Sawyer down a tunnel into a larger cave. He points to the ceiling and says that it explains why Sawyer and his friends came to the island. On the ceiling, in white letters, the names of all Oceanic 815 passengers written on the ceiling, along with hundreds of other names. Many of the names are crossed off, apparently because those people are deceased. Faux Locke explains that each of those people were “recruited” by Jacob to come to the island. He met all of them at some point in their life (Jacob met Sawyer when he was very young, remember) and influenced them in a way that, as faux Locke put it, things in their life they thought were choices they made weren’t really choices at all. Jacob was recruiting them to take his place as the so-called protector of the island. As such, faux Locke tells Sawyer he has three options: 1) do nothing and see how everything plays out, 2) accept the job and become protector of the island or 3) leave the island and go home. Furthermore, faux Locke says that the island doesn’t need to be protected because there is no one to protect it from. He asks Sawyer if he’s ready to go home and Sawyer replies unequivocally, “Yeah.” So there is one question answered – sort of. Those who come to the island were somehow led there by Jacob. Still many more questions to be answered, but one step at a time, y’all……………

- Way to ruin the fun, PETA freaks. Not that I have any love for the ginormous tool-fest that is the Westminster Dog Show, but that doesn’t mean I need the ass hats from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals to crash the party. After Sadie the terrier won America's top dog show Tuesday night, the awards ceremony was about to take place when two clowns from PETA bum-rushed the center ring at Madison Square Garden and held up signs that said "Mutts Rule" and "Breeders Kill Shelter Dogs' Chances." The crowd of 15,000 losers with nothing better to do than watch insanely pampered dogs and their aloof, out-of-touch-with-reality owners run around in circles and preen for judges was stunned to see these idiots and their signs, but the two women were tossed from the arena by security guards as the crowd cheered their removal. Both women were charged with criminal trespass and I would be seriously pissed at them – if I weren’t enjoying a nice, juicy steak with sides of chicken tenders, grilled fish, a turkey burger and grilled chicken breast, sitting in my leather recliner with my feet resting comfortably on my bear-skin rug inside my alligator-skin boots, topped off by my floor-length fur coat and coonskin cap. The PETA intrusion occurred between judging of a Doberman pinscher and brittany and lasted about a minute. Moments after the PETA debacle, 4-year-old Sadie climbed podium and was crowned best in show. "I thought it was well-controlled by our people," Westminster spokesman David Frei said. Leave it to the a-holes at PETA to throw a fit at an event where dogs are treated literally better than most human beings. Seriously, these animals are fed gourmet diets, transported like they are heads of state, showered with all sorts of toys and other luxuries and put on a pedestal by owners who clearly have no friends, no life and no grasp at all on reality. Some 2,500 purebred dogs were entered in the show and I’m guessing that all 2,500 of them ate better today than you or I did. But PETA has issues because they feel that these purebreds somehow lead to mutts in shelters not being adopted and eventually put to sleep? Look, the only dog I ever had was a mutt from a shelter and he was a freaking awesome dog, so no argument there. However, what does PETA want? What should be done with the purebred dogs? Should they be forced to mate with dogs of different breeds or prevented from breeding all together? Just a total train wreck on PETA’s part and even for them, this is an embarrassing stunt…………

- Not good enough. Those three words accurately and succinctly describe Tiger Woods’ despicable plan to hold a bizarro public announcement to publicly address his stunning run of infidelity that became public after his Thanksgiving night car accident. After three months of hiding out in his Florida mansions, going to sex rehab and doing everything possible to not be seen in public, Woods will gather together a small number of media members he believes will spin his lame apology in the most favorable light and speak to them – not with them – about his indiscretions. The bizarro-event will take place at 11 a.m. ET Friday from the clubhouse at the TPC Sawgrass in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., home of the PGA Tour. "This is not a press conference," agent Mark Steinberg said Wednesday. Clearly not, because Woods will not be taking any questions. Yes, he is making his first public appearance since Nov. 27, when he crashed his SUV into a tree outside his Florida home, but no points for that. He’s acted like an absolute coward for three months and now this is the best he can do? This is no better than posting statements and scripted apologies on his Web site, which is all he’s done up to this point. "This is all about the next step," Steinberg said. "He's looking forward to it." Of course he’s looking forward to it; there is no risk, no danger and no chance for any mistakes. This is the prototypical Tiger Woods event/maneuver: artificial, scripted, controlled and forced. He is a manipulative, controlling guy and that is the exact opposite of what he needs right now. Him getting up at the podium and faking emotion as he reads a prepared statement about how sorry he is for screwing a bunch of porn stars, hookers, Denny’s hostesses and anything else with a skirt that came into his immediate vicinity means absolutely nothing. I’m more interested in one of his harem of skanks, porn star Joslyn James, claiming that Woods impregnated her twice, both when his wife Elin was pregnant. In other words, he was basically unable to get after it with his wife at the time, so he went looking for some action elsewhere while she was carrying his children, awesome. So you’ll have to pardon me if I don’t give a damn about you gathering a "small group of friends, colleagues and close associates” to listen to you read your scripted apology, Tiger. Plus, now funny is it that only one camera will allowed in the room and its purpose will be to provide live coverage via satellite? Oh, and how magnanimous of Woods and Steinberg to allow other writers with proper credentials could watch from a hotel ballroom more than a mile away! How big of you, fellas. What the hell good does that do? What are they going to get from sitting in a hotel ballroom a mile away that they couldn’t get from just watching your little dog-and-pony show on television? Lastly, kudos on timing your fake apology to coincide with the Accenture Match Play Championship in Arizona, the first big event of the year for the PGA. Nothing vindictive there, since Accenture was the first sponsor to drop Woods when he became mired in the sex scandal. Nothing about this little charade it respectable, admirable or legitimate. It’s a contrived, phony event and as such, it’s the perfect representation of who Tiger Woods is and what he’s all about……………

- A fair warning for all aspiring adulteresses out there: Do not – I repeat, DO NOT – commit your acts of infidelity in Malaysia. Rumor has it that ladies there who are unfaithful to their husbands are forced to watch American Karaoke on an endless loop while seated next to Rosie O’Donnell as she devours bag after bag of Ring-Dings……just kidding. No, the punishment isn’t quite that painful, it’s just flogging. That’s the sentence that was administered to three Malaysian women found guilty of having extra-marital sex. They are the first women to receive such a sentence under Islamic law in the country and I am sure that they are oh, so proud to be pioneers in this way. Never mind that caning is the same punishment proscribed for another Malaysian woman for the “crime” of drinking beer – there need not be a rationale to justice, as we here in the United States know full well. Get drunk and kill someone with a car, serve a year in jail (Donte Stallworth), but fail to pay $5,000 in income tax and you’re going to the hole for a long, long time. Justice in Malaysia is a bit different, as the country’s majority Malays are subject to Islamic laws, while the large Chinese and Indian minorities are not. According to Malaysian Home Minister Hishammuddin Hussein, the punishments were carried out in a prison outside the capital, Kuala Lumpur, on February 9. Each woman was whacked with the cane six times. "Even though the caning did not injure them, they said it caused pain within them," Hishammuddin stated. "The punishment is to teach and give a chance to those who have fallen off the path to return and build a better life in future.” As for the case of the rebel beer-drinker, Kartika Sari Dewa Shukarno, who sentenced to six strokes of a rattan cane for drinking beer, is awaiting a review of her case by judicial authorities. She was arrested at a hotel in December 2007 for daring to live the high life and enjoy a brewsky. Just goes to show that the world is a diverse (and often confusing) place………….

Not apologizing to FAT people for airline troubles, the dumbest pro athlete fight yet and a "Greek" recap

- I’d love to tell actor/director Kevin Smith that I sympathize with him and support him in his outrage over being kicked off a Southwest Airlines flight from Oakland to Burbank, Calif., Saturday because he was deemed too fat for the seats…….but I don’t. The Clerks and Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back director claimed that he was ousted from the plane by the captain and crew because he was considered a "safety risk." The reason I don’t support Smith is because celebrity FAT people don’t deserve to be treated any differently than average FAT people and you all know how I feel about FAT people in general: Slim down or face the consequences. Fact is, being FAT is a sign of laziness, poor eating habits and a lack of discipline. It makes you an ugly sight for the rest of us to look at, it leads to poor health and the resulting health-care costs that burden our health care system and it lessens your quality of life. I’m not saying we all need to be thin and trim (although that would be awesome), but not being classified as medically overweight or obese is a reasonable goal. If Smith (or anyone else) falls into one of those categories and in so doing causes a safety hazard on a plane, give ‘em the boot. And if you are booted, don’t react with a barrage of angry Twitter posts, as Smith did. He wrote, "I know I'm fat, but was Captain Leysath really justified in throwing me off a flight for which I was already seated? I broke no regulation, offered no 'safety risk' (what, was I gonna roll on a fellow passenger?).” Instead of taking offense, feel free to view such an occurrence as a sign that it’s time for you to push away from the buffet table, put down the doughnuts and Yoo-Hoo and hit the gym. I understand that Smith complied with the airline’s requirement that, as a FAT man, he purchase two tickets because he’s too large to fit completely into one seat. However, the reality is that when he attempted to take an earlier flight and was only able to get on standby, just one seat was available. Just because the airline attempted to placate him by offering him a $100 voucher, don’t take that to mean that Southwest was in the wrong here. Stand your ground, Southwest. I definitely don’t want to be crammed into an uncomfortable seating arrangement caused because one of my fellow passengers is so obese that he or she oozes over the boundaries of his or her seat and into my seat, so you stick to your principles. Whether the offended FAT party is a famous actor/director or a construction worker from Omaha, that person needs to know that being FAT is not okay and that there are ramipercussions……………

- If there’s an argument dumber than two professional athletes - grown men - who both make eight figures in a given year arguing about who owns the theoretical rights to a nickname, then I’ve yet to hear it. Orlando Magic center Dwight Howard and Cleveland Cavaliers center Shaquille O’Neal have both laid claim to the Superman nickname during their career, but since O’Neal has played in the NBA more than a decade longer than Howard, he apparently feels he has the rights to the moniker. Last week, after the Cavs defeated the Magic in both teams’ final game before Sunday’s All-Star Game, Shaq said he was "offended" to be compared to Howard. "You tell me who the real Superman is," he said. Not to correct you, big fella, but there is no “real” Superman because Superman is a fictional character owned by DC Comics. Neither you nor Howard is the real Superman unless and until you can: a) fly, b) have X-ray vision, c) have super-hearing, d) shoot fire from your eyes and e) be invincible to everything but actual Kryptonite. In response to O’Neal’s comments, Howard threw his own hissy fit. "It didn't sit well with me personally," Howard said. "I'm a young player trying to get to where he's at. I felt it would be better if he tried to help me instead of trying to put me down." He followed those comments up with a post-game interview after Sunday’s All-Star Game in which he attempted to take the high road and position himself as merely looking for a mentor, which he would like O’Neal to be. "The whole Superman thing, there's no battle of nicknames. I mean, if he wants to be Superman, he can be Superman. But I never tried to steal that title from him or take away anything that he's done for the game of basketball. I would like, instead of people fighting over a nickname, for us to be able to talk about what it's like to win a championship. Just little things that him being who he is can help me," Howard said. “I would just ask that somebody like Shaquille O'Neal to help me become a better basketball player and a better person.” All of this over a nickname? Guys, you’re both multi-millionaires, so how about using so of your massive net worth to buy a freaking clue? The only thing that irritates fans more than billionaire owners and millionaire players bickering over how they can get more money is stupid crap like this…………

- The real world infringed on last night’s Greek and the results weren’t pretty for those involved. For Casey and Cappie, the reality of their relationship hit home when Casey came to the realization that her summer internship in a congresswoman’s office last year had whet her appetite for politics and that the political world could be her future after graduation. She goes to the Kappa Tau house to share the news with Cappie, who is out in the back yard with his brothers in the midst of the Kappa Tau 500, a race in which they paint up the shells of turtles and race those turtles around a track set up in the back yard. Casey realizes that Cappie’s perpetual student act and her aspirations for a successful future in politics might not mesh. For help with her political aspirations, she enlists the help of ZBZ sister/nemesis Rebecca Logan, whose father is a disgraced U.S. senator. She points Casey in the direction of the local campaign manager for another senator who is operating in Cyprus Rhodes, but only after discouraging Casey from getting involved with politics at all because everyone in it is so corrupt. They stop by campaign headquarters and Casey is assigned the task of helping register voters on the CRU campus. She isn’t faring too well until Rebecca suggests she use some scare tactics (claiming that the military draft will be reinstated or that porn will be outlawed unless students register and vote against them). That turns the voter registration drive around and the campaign manager is duly impressed. He is further impressed when Casey pitches an idea for a huge voter registration event at Dobler’s, offering free cover for those who register to vote. That event is a big success as well, but things take a turn for the ugly when the campaign manager makes a comment to Casey about stopping by his apartment later for a debrief and she takes it as him hitting on her. Acting on advice from Rebecca and BFF Ashleigh, she tells the campaign manager off only to find that he really did invite her and other campaign staffers to a real debrief at his apartment. The next day, she decides to stop by campaign headquarters to apologize and also to lobby for a legislative aide position with the candidate if she is elected. What she finds out is that she is too inexperienced and doesn’t have enough education to actually be considered for a legislative aide position. The campaign manager suggests that she either get more experience or go to grad school, possibly even law school. That inspires Casey to reconsider law school, which she had thought about before but decided against. Cappie also finds himself in a tough spot, faced with the reality that Casey might be moving on without him. Everyone, from her sorority sisters to Evan Chambers, tries to tell Casey that Cappie is a CRU lifer who will never leave. Uanble to utter the “G-word” for so long (graduation), he finds himself forced to consider it if he wants to keep the girl he loves. After being ripped by Evan at the Dobler’s event and responding only with “turtles” when Casey visits the KT house a second time to broach the subject of their future, Cappie decides to man up and head to the ZBZ house to talk to Casey. Not only does he support Casey’s political aspirations, he manages to say the “G-word” and admit that as scary as graduation might be, he doesn’t want to be anywhere that she’s not. By episode’s end, the two of them are sitting on the back porch of the KT house, her doing prep for the LSAT and him having actually picked up a form from the registrar’s office for declaring a major. Sure, the form is still blank, but it’s all about “baby steps,” as Casey puts it. As for Rusty, the real world for him comes in the form of a feature story that Engineering Weekly wants to do about him and his new breakthrough with a self-healing wire that uses polymer technology. Rusty is being celebrated by the entire CRU engineering department, including Dr. Lundquist, the dean of the department. Rusty is celebrated at a party, introduced to all of the big-wigs in the department and prepared for his interview with the encouragement that his project will benefit the entire university. However, things hit a bump when his project sponsor and advisor, Dr. Hastings, assigns Rusty a promising student from one of his other classes to serve as his assistant on the project. It turns out to be Dana, the girl who had a crush on Rusty since freshman orientation and whom he blew off earlier this season, forgetting her name and offending her in the process. When he tried to recover and ask her out, she shot him down in inglorious fashion. Now, she’s his assistant and has the gall to suggest that his formula for the wire is faulty and that he’s headed for a dead end, with his wire capable of regenerating and conducting for no more than half an hour. At first, Rusty blows her off – again. But closer examination reveals that she’s right and rather than go on with his big EW interview, he tells the interviewer that his project is being blown out of proportion and that at this point, all it has is potential. Hastings is furious, as is the dean, but Rusty buckles down and gets back to work. Dana agrees to continue being his assistant (although clearly they’ll end up dating at some point) and the project is still alive for now. Rusty’s roommate Dale is going to extreme measures to fund his project after Rusty beat him out for the Gary Wyatt grant. Dale applies for the vacant hasher job at the ZBZ house and after hooking up (and breaking up) with Fisher, the last ZBZ hasher, Ashleigh wants a replacement who won't tempt her to get involved with him. Dale – the dorky, Bible-thumping science nerd – seems like the perfect candidate. Initially, the sisters reject him as the hasher because they want a hot guy, but when that hot guy turns out to be a perv, they ask for Dale back and he accepts, but only after Ashleigh agrees not to hit on him because he thinks she only hired him to be her man-candy like Fisher was. Overall, it was a good episode and one of the better ones this season even while dealing with a little more drama and a few less laughs………….

- Political corruption and abuse of power: They aren’t just American things. Not when the chief of staff for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is denying allegations that he used the power of his office to extract sex from a female job seeker, they’re not. My man Rafiq Husseini is the second in command in President Abbas' office, but he may just as well be second in command to former President Bill “Slick Willie” Clinton. Husseini held a hastily arranged news conference Sunday after it was reported that Abbas had suspended him from his job for three weeks due to the allegations. Additionally, a committee had been formed to look into the charges of sexual misconduct against him. All of this stems from the airing of grainy surveillance footage of Husseini undressing in a bedroom and calling for a woman to join him in bed. An Israeli television station aired the footage, which was shot in 2008. It was released by Fahmi Shabaneh, a former agent in the Palestinian Authority's General Intelligence Department. Shabaneh said that he released the tape to the media to expose ethical and financial corruption within the Palestinian Authority. Furthermore, he claimed that he presented evidence of the sexual and financial wrongdoing to Abbas before going public, but he was ignored. In response, he made the recording of Husseini after a Palestinian woman had approached him complaining that Husseini was trying to "sexually blackmail her." Bascially, this was a sting operation made with this woman’s cooperation and Husseini fell right into it. Now, Husseini would have you believe that he was been framed by a gang "working for the interest of Israeli intelligence" and that the tape was "dubbed." I haven’t seen this tape, but unless it is impossible to identify those on the tape and there are obvious jump cuts and inconsistencies in it, then those claims don’t hold much merit. It’s great that Husseini has pledged to fully cooperate with those investigating the matter, but until we see that cooperation in action, I have my doubts. Abbas is in a tough spot here because a) they can't really back an accused sexual harasser and b) they need to defend their organization in case of the likelihood that these allegations are true. To that end, an Abbas spokesman called the allegations "recycling baseless lies and asinine stories told by a former junior officer in the Palestinian intelligence service who was sacked more than two years (ago) from his position." As of now, neither Abbas nor Husseini has provided evidence to prove that he was not attempting to use his position of authority to force a job applicant into getting after it with him in some hotel room and the footage against him is the only tangible evidence in either direction at this point. How very American of you, Abbas…………

- It’s the rest of the computer world v. Apple and the battle is about to be waged. Some of the world's largest telecommunications companies have decided that they can’t possibly take on Steve Jobs and Co. on their own and have partnered up to create an apps store that they hope will compete with Apple's and those of other smartphone makers. Included in the supergroup are AT&T, Sprint, Verizon, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, LG Electronics and 24 other companies that have formed the Wholesale Applications Community. In an announcement made at the Mobile World Congress, they laid out details for the new store, which will be designed to encourage developers to create mobile and online applications for all smartphones and operating systems. An open platform is the central tenet for the new store, the group said in a prepared statement. "For customers this means a broader choice of innovative applications and services available on a wider choice of devices than ever before," the group said on its Web site. Without specifying how, the group said its site will provide app developers with a simple route to publishing and marketing and will bring those apps to customers faster and with more variety than anyone else (a veiled shot at Apple). "This is tremendously exciting news for our industry and will serve to catalyze the development of a range of innovative, cross-device, cross-operator applications," said Rob Conway, CEO of the GSM Association. What is noteworthy about the new store is that Apple has thus far maintained complete control over the apps that officially run on its iPhones and they have been available exclusively through the company's official online store. Tech-savvy users have been able to "jailbreak" their phones to run other apps, but few are capable of that maneuver and so most users are bound to what they can find in the Apple store. The Wholesale Applications Community would allow developers to write programs for multiple smartphones instead of just one. Again, not only are Apple’s apps available only from their store, but they can also be used only on iPhones. Apps from the Wholesale Applications Community would not be bound by such rules and might be able to alleviate complaints by developers that Apple is often slow to approve their new apps. Of course, any excitement over the WAC should be tempered by the reality that it will be some time – months – before any apps will be available through the WAC. Until then, it’s still Apple’s world when it comes to smartphone apps………….

Polygamy alive and well in Isreael, a 24 recap and more reasons auto racing isn't a sport

- Normally, you would not expect attendees at a memorial service to bring Frisbees, but in the case of Walter Fredrick "Fred" Morrison, there is a good reason. Many mourners brought the flying plastic discs to Saturday's memorial service for Morrison, who invented the flying disc. He died this week at his home in Utah at the age of 90. His passing was confirmed by Wham-O, the company that has sold the Frisbee since signing a contract with Morrison in 1957. "Fred's the one who thought of commercializing something that people had been doing forever -- picking up a round, flat object and watching it sail," said Phil Kennedy, Morrison's biographer. "It's so simple that anyone could pick it up and fly it acceptably well in a few minutes. It's inexpensive and adaptable to existing games and to new games." To date, Wham-O has sold more than 200 million Frisbees to date, which is pretty freaking remarkable over the course of five-plus decades. Even more remarkable is that Morrison didn’t sign his contract with Wham-O until 20 years after he first began experimenting with flying disc designs in 1937. Inspiration struck after his girlfriend's uncle invited him outside to toss the lid from a popcorn tin. After that, Morrison borrowed a cake pan from his mother's kitchen to throw with his girlfriend, who later became his wife. So the Frisbee not only made him a lot of money, but it was a key part of his relationship with the woman he loved, which is very cool. As his idea progressed, Morrison began selling "Flyin' Cake Pans" for 25 cents on beaches and parks around Los Angeles, California. His love of flying things can be traced to his stint as a fighter pilot during World War II, when Morrison was shot down and held as a prisoner of war for 48 days. Not long after the war, he worked as a carpenter and puttered around with designs for aerodynamic discs in his free time. His first stab at the concept, the plastic Flyin-Saucer, was a commercial failure. Morrison achieved much more success with the Pluto Platter, which sold well enough to attract the attention of Wham-O. "The Pluto Platter was more aerodynamic, with more weight in the rim," Kennedy said. "It was sleeker -- without ribs sticking up -- and a little bigger, so it flew better." Wham-O combined the redesigned disc with the name Frisbee, which it derived from New England college students who'd been throwing empty tins from the local Frisbie Pie Co. So a melancholy happy trials to my man Walter Morrison, who brought a lot of fun and memories to a lot of people, including yours truly, with his simple, yet great invention……………

- Polygamy is alive and well in Israel and it can thank Goel Ratzon of Tel Aviv for that. Ratzon stands accused of having 23 wives and fathering 59 children (stop for a minute and really drink those statistics in because this guy makes legendary procreators like former NBA star Shawn Kemp and former NFLer Travis Henry look like amateurs) and was charged Sunday in a Tel Aviv court with multiple counts of sexual assault, rape, sodomy and enslavement after being arrested last month. To briefly sum up the case against Ratzon, the 60-year-old (alleged) polygamist is charged with living in a compound with the 23 wives, all of whom he had somehow convinced that he was omnipotent. This was a truly freaky and disturbed place, with all 23 women sporting tattoos of Ratzon's name and picture on their arms. Oh, and their children's names are all derivatives of his name. This charade began when Ratzon married his first wife in 1972. He stuck with monogamy for an impressive eight or nine years before adding a second wife in the early 1980s. He settled into life as a bigamist for the next decade, but early in the 1990s, something spurred him to begin collecting wives like Madonna collects orphans from poor African nations. Between 1991 and now, Ratzon brought 21 more wives into the fold and managed to Jedi mind-trick them into believing that he had the power to heal and curse, through which he gained "complete control of their lives, desires, thoughts, emotions and actions," the court papers say. As he appeared in court for first time last week, Ratzon made no attempt to deny any of his alleged actions. He rationalized them, saying he was innocent, because everything was done with consent. He added that any women who wished to leave could do so, a claim that seems a) dubious at best and b) tough to prove or disprove. The details of the indictment truly are stunning and mind-numbing, as Ratzon allegedly "captured the women in a 'pseudo-family' structure that revolved around the worship of his image, making the birth of his children a supreme goal that the women must aspire to, and all this was to glorify him while serving and fulfilling all his needs.” He also allegedly demanded that his wives and children completely obey all of his orders and set up a penalty system if they disobeyed him. As with any good cult leader, he also "abused his wives by trampling their self-worth and cut them off from any outside social contact including their families, and by this enslaved them to him and his desires," the court papers state. Yeah, that’s Cult Leader 101: Isolate your followers from the outside world and only allow them to experience the reality you create for them. There is so much more in the indictment - allegations of rape and sodomy of two of his daughters, sexual assault of another daughter, and rape, assault and sodomy of four other girls and complete control over the finances of everyone in his cult – but I think I’ve had enough of this sick freak’s twisted take on the world for now. What’s sad is that authorities have known about Ratzon's cult for about 10 years, but it was only about six months ago they finally convinced one of the women to file a complaint. Now that they’ve cracked that wall of silence, hopefully the entire perverted empire will come crumbling down…………

- Way to show off your little driving competition’s supposed ultimate event, NECKCAR, er, NASCAR. People who ordinarily would never watch your fake sport tuned in Sunday to catch some of the Daytona 500 and instead of seeing whatever it is you deluded fools think people should see in a bunch of dudes driving souped-up cars around in circles for three or four hours, those viewers saw those souped-up cars sitting idly by because of none other than potholes, the bane of every driver’s existence. Yes, nothing screams “premier sporting event” quite like a pothole that I could just as easily see by walking out to the street in front of my house. See, a ginormous pothole pocked the surface of the track at the Daytona Motor Speedway and delayed the Daytona 500 – twice. The race was stopped for the second time with 39 laps remaining after drivers had completed 36 laps on the repaired superspeedway following a 1 hour, 40-minute delay for the initial fix. "This is a bad predicament to be in -- for NASCAR, the fans, for everybody," driver Kyle Busch (no idea who the guy is, but I’m told he’s a driver and I don’t have any interest in spending any time digging into it, so whatever) said. The pothole developed on an area between turns one and two (again, what I’m told and too lazy to research for the sake of auto racing) and actually, it fits perfectly into my anti-auto racing views. See, my argument is that getting behind the wheel of a car, driving really fast, cutting off other drivers, changing lanes without signaling and getting into wrecks is not a sport because tens of millions of Americans already do those things every single day. Old people do them, young people do them, men do them and women do them. If NASCAR drivers are athletes, then my grandma is an athlete too because she drives and does many of the things I just mentioned while behind the wheel. Having a pothole – a problem that plagues every single street in the United States and affects your average driver every day – show up in NASCAR’s supposed premier event only underscores my point. When race officials initially stopped the race with 78 laps remaining in the 200-lap competition and cars parked on pit road for about 30 minutes, my beliefs about NASCAR and auto racing in general were galvanized, reinforced and cemented. Track workers may have been out there patching the hole, which was about 18 inches long and 8 inches wide, with blowtorches and other tools, but they may as well have been putting the final touches on the foundation of my ironclad theory about their (not-a) “sport.” So while drivers may have been lamenting the pothole, I thoroughly enjoyed the whole saga. "That hole's pretty bad," driver Dale Earnhardt Jr. said. "Hit it. That's what killed all the momentum we had." It may have killed your momentum, D., but it exponentially increased the momentum of my own theories on your cute little driving competition and made me look like even more of a freaking genius. Thanks for the support of me trying to tear you down and clue everyone in to the fact that yours is not a real sport in any sense of the word, auto racing……………

- Now that Heroes has mercifully ended yet another disappointing season, it’s time to begin recapping episodes of 24 once again on Monday nights. I know, we’ve missed a few episodes, but that can be rectified quickly. Jack Bauer is again having a bad day, he tried to get out of the spy game but was pulled back in because he’s the only one who can do the job, Renee Walker is back too, she’s had a break with reality, there are unsecured nuclear materials controlled by Russians on the open market and a rogue faction in a fictional country called the Islamic Kingdom looking to acquire the nuclear material. So there you go. As for tonight’s episode, Jack has allowed himself to be captured by the Russians he believes to have the nuclear materials with the belief that the resurrected CTU (Counter-Terrorism Unit) is tracking him so they can find the nuclear materials, which are rods of weapons-grade enriched uranium. The problem is that the Russians who capture him lead Jack out of the warehouse/auto repair shop where he was “captured” through an underground tunnel, emerging several blocks away and hopping into a waiting SUV. Back at CTU, no one has any idea where Jack is or how to track him. Cole Ortiz (Freddie Prinze Jr.), the lead agent for the CTU tactical team, shows up at the auto shop to pick up Renee Walker and assess the scene after she murdered her contact in the Russian crime syndicate, Vladimir Lehtanen. Renee is clearly shaken up and can’t offer much help as to where Jack went, so CTU director Brian Hastings orders her back to CTU for a debrief and psych evaluation. Jack is taken the restaurant that doubles as a headquarters for Sergei Petrovich Bazhaev, the man currently in possession of the nuclear fuel rods. He stays in character as Ernst Mir, a supposed international arms dealer looking to buy the fuel rods for a consortium he represents. Bazhaev isn’t buying Jack’s story, especially when Jack won't reveal who he works for. Bazhaev, who shot and killed his youngest son Oleg after the son was exposed to the nuclear rods, developed radiation poisoning and was taken for treatment by his older brother Joseph, orders Jack tortured until he comes clean about who he works for. Back at CTU, the search to find Jack is in high gear. Chloe is hard at work, as is Arlo (a dorky, pervy data analyst. This also brings us to unquestionably the lamest, most pointless, moronic, stupid and time-wasting storyline this season: Dana Walsh (Katee Sackhoff), a CTU data analyst with a shady past that she is trying very hard to hide. Basically, she was somehow an accomplice to a murder while living as a Podunk redneck back in Arkansas, was paroled and came to New York to start a new life. In Arkansas, she was Jenny, but in New York she is Dana Walsh. Life has become complicated because one of her accomplices in the murder, a hick named Kevin Wade, has tracked her down and threatened to blow her cover and ruin her engagement to Cole Ortiz unless she helps him and a redneck pal of his pull off some sort of heist that will net them in excess of $100,000. She settles on hitting an NYPD evidence locker to steal confiscated drug money, gets Kevin and his friend access cards and codes and uses her resources at CTU to facilitate the break-in. Things turned sour last week when Kevin and his cohort stayed too long at the storage facility, were found out by a cop and beat him down to escape. This week, they are at a strip club in New York, celebrating their $120,000 windfall. The agreement had been that once Dana helped them pull off the job, Kevin and his loser friend who leave her alone and go away permanently. But now, seeing how much money they made in such “easy” fashion, Kevin refuses to hold up his end of the deal. Instead, he reminds Dana that she’s now a part of their burgeoning criminal operation and that he’ll rat her out unless she continues to be a part of it. This storyline is a total hunk of crap because it’s not essential to the main storyline, it doesn’t involve any characters we give a crap about and it’s going nowhere. Still, Dana’s co-workers are becoming suspicious of her erratic behavior, including stepping out to take personal calls, meeting with Kevin in the CTU parking lot and ducking out of work to go meet with him. Arlo threatens to spill her secret to Chase unless Dana comes clean and when Cole returns to CTU after picking up Renee, she asks to speak to him privately. However, when she tries to tell him about the skeletons in her closet, he’s too stressed by the search for Jack to get into the subject deeper and simply says that he trusts her and doesn’t need to know every embarrassing thing from her past. Dana decides that she knows what to do and that she will go take care of her problem. That apparently means staking out the strip club where Kevin and his friend are hanging out, packing a gun and looking for a chance to shoot them once they leave, good times. But back to the storylines that actually matter in the bigger picture of the show………Jack’s torturer, Dmitri, uses electrical shocks, opens up the stab wound that Jack received last episode from Renee and tries everything in his power to break Jack. But being Jack Bauer, he holds out. Meanwhile, upstairs Bazhaev speaks to Fahrad Hassan, the original buyer for the nuclear rods. To explain briefly, he’s the brother of President Omar Hassan, leader of the fictional United Islamic Kingdom. President Hassan is in New York to sign an important peace treaty with American President Allison Taylor. Fahrad Hassan is aligned with opposition groups who oppose the peace treaty because it will mean reducing their country’s nuclear arsenal and earlier this season, they made an attempt to assassinate President Hassan in New York. Now, he’s cracking down back home, arresting those who oppose him, and Fahrad has gone into hiding in New York, still working to acquire the nuclear rods and overthrow his brother’s government. Bazhaev is so alarmed by Jack showing up and knowing about the rods that he halts their delivery to Fahrad and his men. At the same time, Jack manages to gain the upper hand in his tormentor by pretending to have passed out due to pain, only to attack once Dmitri turns around. Jack turns the tables, electrocutes Dmitri and manages to free himself from the water pipes to which he has been bound. He then nabs Dmitri’s cell phone, calls CTU and orders Chloe to trace the call while he goes off to find Bazhaev. That leads to a pretty freaking awesome shootout in the restaurant, with Bazhaev blasting away with some sort of high-powered shotgun and Jack dodging bullets and ducking under tables. He manages to ambush Bazhaev and knock him out with the help of a table. The CTU tac team rolls in and secures the scene, but Jack demands they give him a chance to speak to Bazhaev. When the Russian demands immunity in exchange for revealing the location of the nuclear rods, Jack dials up President Taylor and Hastings. The president authorizes the immunity deal for Bazhaev and his oldest son, Joseph, and in exchange, he gives up the location of the rods. They are at a truck stop just outside the city and Hastings dispatches Cole and his tac team to recover them. They swoop in, sirens blaring and helicopter blades whirring, only to find the truck containing the rods has been attacked. The two guards have been shot in the head, the rods are gone and a gold cross necklace has been left behind as some sort of message. When the information is relayed back to Jack, he angrily confronts Bazhaev, who instantly realizes that his son Joseph must have stolen the rods. And indeed that is the case, as Joseph is trucking the nuclear material himself and on his way to meet Fahrad. Now it’s up to CTU to find them. The last key storyline was the fate of Tarin, one of President Hassan’s security guards. He and other important members of Hassan’s delegation in New York have been arrested at Hassan’s orders because he is completely paranoid in the wake of the assassination attempt. The problem with Tarin is that he is romantically involved with Hassan’s daughter Katya, who is also in New York. She pleads with her father for his release, but he refuses and is further infuriated to learn of their relationship behind his back. Desperate to help her boyfriend, Katya goes to the win of the U.N. building where Tarin is being held to try to see him. Nabil, another of Hassan’s security team, tells her that he can’t let her in, but suggests that when Tarin is moved to a more secure location in an hour, she might be able to speak to him then. Satisfied, Katya leaves and heads back to her room. So that’s where things stand and yes, recapping 24 episodes is a lot more fun than recapping Heroes episodes on Monday nights because, at this point anyhow, Heroes is going down the crapper fast……………

- Hopefully none of you are visiting sunny southern California over the next couple of days with the hopes of snapping a picture of yourself with the famed Hollywood Sign in the background. The sign is (and will be until Wednesday) obscured by an overlapping sign spelling out "SAVE THE PEAK". The message refers to the effort by a group called Trust for Public Land to protect the Hollywood Sign from having an obstructed view by the development of new homes. The group has an agreement to purchase a parcel of land adjacent to the icon sign, but needs $12.5 million to complete the deal. Fox River Financial Resources Inc. bought the property eight years ago for $1.7 million, but now the trust wants to own it in order to protect the landmark. It has until April 14th to raise the necessary funds, having already raised half of the needed payment. After the potential purchase, the land would go to Griffith Park and be protected from the sort of housing development that could throw up a few more McMansions near the sign, obscuring it from view for many people. Not that anyone should need to be told not to do something stupid and selfish like that, but you just know that the spoiled rich people of SoCal would brawl with one another for the right to throw up their own 5,000-square-foot palace in a location blocking the sign if given the chance…………