Beam Me Up

When the story of James Doohan (the Scotty of "Beam me up, Scotty") having his ashes scattered in space isn't the top story of the day, you know it's a crazy, crazy news day.

Saudi officials announced the arrest of 172 militants that might be connected to al Qaeda. After repeated allegations from the U.S. that they were funding terrorism, it's good to see Saudi Arabia having their cake and eating it too.

The New York Times leads with the White House scaling back their grandiose claims of success in Iraq. They are going from calling the situation in Iraq a potential catastrophic failure to clearly identifying Iraq as a catastrophic failure.

A few miles south, the Washington Post leads with reports of Condoleezza Rice deputy Randall Tobias resigning after it was discovered he was linked to an escort service. Tobias claimed he received massages at Deborah Jeane Palfrey's escort service without getting the so-called happy endings. Pete Rose also claimed he only bet on his team to win, so we'll see how that works for Tobias in the court of public opinion.

The Chicago Sun Times runs a story about the Marines dropping a straight A high school student from its ranks after he delivered an improvised Virginia-Tech-shooter-esque project to his teacher. If the Corps won't take him, coach Marvin Lewis might suit the kid up in Bengal stripes after displaying a verbal upside like that.

Finally, after a swarm of government agencies came down on former Mets employee Kirk Radomski for distributing anabolic steroids to a host of MLB players, general manager Omar Minaya might be upset that the Feds got him before he could juice a couple of homers out of third baseman David Wright.

Luol Deng torches Heat...film at 11.

Luol Deng torches Heat...film at 11.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates stopped just short of setting a withdrawal date for Iraq. As soon as Iraq gets the sectarian violence under control, trains troops to patrol and protect the country and finds a cure for Chagas disease, Gates pledges the American forces will leave (a welcome addition after their performance in Haditha). He refuses to mark the calendar because he wants your children's children's children to be paying for this exercise in democracy for years to come.

The Iranian high court exonerated six individuals who killed five people that were deemed to be "morally corrupt." If that defense were permissible in the United States, how many Baldwin brothers would we have left, really?

Speaking of Iranian/U.S. relations, part-time musician and full-time comedian/conservative war monger/Presidential candidate John McCain was winning friends and influencing people when he delivered an impromptu rendition of the Beach Boys' song "Barbara Ann" with the lyrics "Bomb bomb bomb bomb bomb bomb bomb Iran." That's a great way to win the voters who won't vote for John Edwards after his vigorous campaigning in Second Life video games. You can't win them all, and with these masterminds vying for office, everybody involved loses.

Apparently it was illegal for a deranged psychopath with a propensity for stalking college girls and a history of writing literature with references to incest and murder to purchase a hand gun. It was also illegal for him to buy two hand guns after his stint in the care of mental health professionals. Of course, these factors plus the Virginia Tech mass murder are not enough to get the Republicans or the Democrats to talk about gun law reform. Oh well. At least they'll still carry voters in the South.

Ohio University continues to dominate the (bad) news. OU graduate James Filiaggi sent in a last minute appeal for clemency after the governor refused his appeal from the murder of his wife. I haven't seen a Bobcat get beat up by the legal system like this since...football season.

In environmental news, a Stanford study determined that ethanol-powered vehicles would pose a threat to human health if widely used. They suggest moving out of the L.A. smog and to keep burning fossil fuels like a good little consumer.

In governmental news of the strange, NASA is becoming the new Post Office with a standoff that ended with a Nasa-employed gunman killing an engineer before turning the gun on himself. This comes a month after the diaper incident, so I'm thinking that the ranks of NASA aren't much better than the ranks of Republican Presidential candidates.

I don't know much about this particular case other than the fact that the guy is accused of some heinous crimes. Just looking at his mug shot, something tells me he will be found guilty.

Finally, I haven't spent any time hyping Pitchfork Fest, but since Slint, Sonic Youth and the GZA will be performing entire albums on Friday while a host of other indie mega acts fills up Saturday and Sunday, I should start now. As somebody who went last year, I guarantee it will be $50 well spent.

Kick Them While They're Down

It's an exciting time to be alive. I'm excited. You're excited. George Flintstone is excited. Let's do this thing.

Virginia Tech shooter Cho Seung Hui continues to dominate the news. He sent footage to NBC news between his first killing spree and his second. School will be canceled this week. President Bush offered his condolences and suggested that he will carefully reconsider which Korea he will declare war against next. Slate also proposed limiting gun show sales in a move that couldn't hurt but is no better than vaguely related to the Va-Tech incident.

Smooth pimp (and president of the World Bank) Paul Wolfowitz is fighting charges of favorable hiring and cronyism for hiring his girlfriend after an expensive World Bank-funded campaign to get her the position was racked up. Chaos follows the guy who was a key architect of the Iraq war. Apparently, Paul, there are consequences for selling your soul to Satan.

Speaking of Iraq, Sunni Saudi Arabia has agreed to write off 80 percent of the longstanding Iraqi debt. Step number two is to try and get them to pay off America's war debt and then we can put this whole mess behind us.

A U.N. report shows evidence of illegal Sudanese weapons transfers and airplane markings. Hopefully this leads to a military peacekeeping force and an end to the violence.

The Supreme Court voted 5-4 to uphold a law banning (depending on whom you ask) late-term or partial birth abortions. It doesn't make that big of a difference as Gary Sheffield and Andy Rooney are completely born and this procedure would be termed murder if it was used on those clowns.

Jurors are claiming bias against potential defendant and Patriot Act poster boy Jose Padilla. Seriously, how unfair could it be when jury bias is compared to suspending habeas corpus?

Ladies, Prince (and future King) William is single and looking to mingle after jilting his lady love. Remember, he comes from a family with a brother who dressed up as Hitler for Halloween, so high class is a must.

Today is also a tremendous day for crazy stories. Authorities in California continue to uncover giant industrial hydroponic marijuana mills in California. The busts have an estimated street value of $50 million. Harvard University researchers want people to keep on smoking after preliminary research showed that THC, the active ingredient in marijuana, might aid in shrinking tumors. Snoop Dogg and Willie Nelson are actively fighting a disease they don't have this very minute through what can only be called preventative medicine.

After being blessed by having the bomb dropped within its city limits, Nagasaki was hit by another bomb when a Yakuza gangster assassinated the mayor in an argument stemming from an old car problem. And they say America has a gun problem. A pinch Southwest of Nagasaki, Hong Kong diners are being charged for leftovers (some as much as 64 cents per ounce) in a move aimed at limiting waste. The other move restaurant management could consider is requiring diners to tip Rosie O'Donnell and Artie Lang who will just sit around and devour the leftovers.

Finally, Nike ran an ad in the New York Times based around the Don Imus controversy. As these updates entail, it's great to kick a guy when he's down.

News You Can Peruse

The Cubbies...you can set your watch by their consistent inconsistency. Hopefully the new outfielder's potential doesn't end up being Pie in the sky.

The story of the day continues to be the Virginia Tech shooting. The identity of the shooter was announced (he's also a hell of a playwright), but the media angles for this story are deeper than the kid with a gun stories all over the airwaves. Students were keeping up with the story through Web updates. CNN's on the spot reporter was a Va-Tech graduate student with a cell phone camera. This may be the first tragedy brought to you live in grainy YouTube-quality video linked on Facebook.

Sudan has finally agreed to allow U.N. aid workers into the country in a move that is viewed as a potential precursor to a peacekeeping effort. American efforts would most likely be available if they weren't hopelessly quagmired in the Iraq debacle.

Presidential candidates named John are doing everything they can to separate themselves from the crowd by saying and doing stupid things. John McCain still defends guns, even after a South Korean student killed 32 students before he killed himself in Blacksburg. McCain is definitely a few bullets shy of a full clip on gun control...keep your mouth shut, Big Gun. At least he isn't getting multiple $400 haircuts like John "I Feel Pretty" Edwards. When he doesn't make it in Washington, I'm sure Hollywood holds endless potential.

Ohio State was doing their best Ohio University impression when hackers stole the identities of 14,000 employees and 3,500 students. Most identities can be used for ill-gotten gains, but if they got Maurice Clarett's information, they would most likely would get slightly less than the Broncos got by drafting him.

Mother Jones profiled the environmental harm and engineering flaws inherent in Apple iPods. These problems are in addition to the problems they create making oblivious morons to walk in traffic with impunity.

Interesting media stories include the campaign to reform internet radio. The medium may be dying out as the price for royalty fees shot up drastically last year. Great free sites like Pandora will be gradually phased out and replaced by pay-to-play sites. If somebody goes postal because of this, at least you will be able to get video footage at the newly minted Smoking Gun video vault.

In news of the weird, the most popular prophylactic in New York is the official free NYC condoms produced by Lifestyles. The report states that over 5 million lubricated condoms have been used in the back seat of Derek Jeter's limousine this year alone.

Finally, a German military instructor was dismissed after a video of him instructing recruits that they should pretend they were shooting blacks in the Bronx surfaced. People haven't been this upset with the German military since the last time they invaded Poland.

Love You 42 Times

Monday means it's time to play ball. While it's still in play, I would like to extend my hand to any living relative of Jackie Robinson and offer you the opportunity to bat one through nine in the Cubs lineup this spring. Make sure you bring a glove.

The story du jour is everybody's favorite tabloid topic -- school shootings. The Va Tech shooting left 33 dead in a tragic event that raised the casualty bar from previous shootings in Colorado and Texas. This storyline surfaces once every few years, and people blame gun control, religion, video games and/or any other blame peg to hang their pseudo-psychological arguments on. When the report was Virginia Tech, the only broken figure that would be capable of such a thing that easily came to mind was Marcus Vick based upon his previous record in Blacksburg, but those reports were not the case.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is expected to admit that he screwed up in the firing of U.S. attorneys in front of an attentive Congressional audience. He is also expected to tow the party line and explain that the firings were NOT politically motivated but the orders did come from the White House. It doesn't take a pencil to connect the dots, and even if you connected the dots, the outline would be a giant, steaming pile of horse manure.

Jose Padilla goes on trial this week after five years in solitary confinement without charges being filed. After all of the torture and Constitutional tango described in an L.A. Times article, the former Chicago gang member will face reduced charges. This is the smoke-and-mirrors proof that USAPATRIOT Act is working for...somebody other than Jose, apparently.

The NY Times features a story on illegal immigrants filing tax returns before the impending deadline, which should be helpful information for Roger Federer and Zinedine Zidane if they forgot their green cards. It should be on Bill O'Reilly's talking points like yesterday.

Sports Sunday celebrated Jackie Robinson's breaking of the color barrier with memorials around the country and 14 hours of prerecorded features that covered up for the dearth of footage based on multiple rain outs. Chicago also won the competition to be the American bid for the 2016, proving for the fiftieth time why Chicago is great and Los Angeles is a pit.

In another tragic loss to the creative community, New York free jazz spot Tonic closed its doors for good Friday after a pile of musicians including John Zorn, Marc Ribot, DJ Spinoza and Matthew Shipp were among the many played through the wreckers coming in to tear the club down. Places like this need to exist so that real art can be produced, the kind that isn't designed by boardrooms full of M.B.A.s, lawyers and pimps but rather by dynamic, organically realized music that is new and stretches your imagination to places that it couldn't conceptualize over and over, finding music that speaks to you without words. Great music so rarely happens in Madison Square Garden but is always happening in little out of the way places like the Hideout (great shows this Tuesday, Friday and Saturday)and Elastic (great shows this Tuesday and Thursday), and these shows require support from crowds more so than do the big venues and the A&R man driving the Mercedes S-Class. (I'm jumping down from the soap box now, but please please support independent music. Ornette Coleman just won a Pulitzer for music, so I do have some hope.)

Finally, Hawaiian music legend Don Ho died over the weekend. Put on your favorite loud shirt and sing along to some of the favorites in memoriam.