Utah's Gary Coleman Obsession II

The Utah media's morbid fixation with with Gary Colman continues.

This guy sneezes and the local media runs 2 minute news clips and front page stories about the guy. Maybe if they stop giving him attention, he'll move to another celebrity-deprived state like Iowa and start torturing the people there with his antics.

Video deposition of Gary Coleman will not be released by Janice Peterson - Daily Herald

A judge ruled Tuesday that the videotaped deposition of Gary Coleman will not be released to the public until a personal injury lawsuit against him has been settled.

Coleman's attorney, Terry Plant, argued that if the video is released, it could quickly get onto Web sites like YouTube and destroy Coleman. Judge Samuel McVey agreed that releasing the video could be harmful, but he said he worried about the likelihood of a fair trial if people in the jury pool see the deposition.

"I do not want to come in here and have the whole jury challenged off," he said.

The attorney for plaintiff Colt Rushton, Dustin Lance, objected to keeping the deposition sealed, saying the likelihood of a fair trial is the same whether the video is released or not. Many people around the county already know all about the case from media reports, and Coleman is just asking for special privileges, he said.

"We've got an uphill battle," Lance said. "This case has already been tried in the media."

Read the rest of the article here.

Imitation: The Sincerest Form of Flattery

Our kids are napping and I’m taking advantage of a couple hours of quiet time to finish the last chapter in my novel. I feel eyes on me and look at the door to the bedroom and see my four-year-old son standing there. He always had a hard time napping on my days off. He’d much rather play with Dad then nap.

I tell him he needs to nap. He shakes his head and climbs up on the bed with me. He watches me write for a few minutes and asks if he can use Marathon Girl’s laptop.

“Sure,” I tell him. If he’s not going to nap, he might as well stay busy.

I get Marathon Girl’s laptop and start it up for him. He knows how to login to the kids account we have set up on there and start the games he likes to play so I go back to my writing.

A minute later I feel eyes on me again. I look at him then at the computer screen. He’s not playing games.

“Why aren’t you playing games?” I ask.

“I don’t want to play games,” he says.

“What do you want to do?”

“I want to write. I want to write like you.”

I smile and show him how to open Word. He begins “typing” then looks at me for approval.

“You’re writing really good,” I tell him.

He smiles and I return to my book.

A couple minutes later I feel a tug on my sleeve.

“Look,” he says.

I look at the screen. All by himself he’s figured out how to change the font, size, and color of the type. There’s a ton of green and red text of different sizes across the screen.

“Wow. That’s really good,” I tell him.

He smiles.

“What are you writing?” I ask

“A book,” he says.

“What’s it about?”

“I can’t tell you until it’s done.”

I give him a hug and we both go back to writing.

In another 30 minutes I’ll be done with my novel. Then I’ll tell my four-year-old what it’s about.

I hope he’ll tell me what his book’s about too.

LOST: This Place is Death

Did the writers really have to kill Charlotte so soon? I was hoping to learn more about her first. A series of flashbacks would have been nice. You know, something that would give the viewer more of sense of why she was so determined to find the island again and why her mom took her off the island again. Instead all we get is this story about how she grew up on the island and how Faraday may have warned her as kid not to come back. Since the writers have generally done a good job fleshing out even minor characters in the past, I was a little disappointed that we never got a really good sense of who Charlotte was. Who was her father, after all? Hopefully they don’t take out the Ghostbusters before we can learn a little more about him.

But learning more about the smoke monster was cool – even if Rousseau told us way back in Season 1 that it was a security system. At least we know that it’s guarding the temple now. And the temple seems to be the last structure on the island that we haven’t seen yet and it was the place that Ben told the Others to flee for safety. I’m looking forward to seeing more of it.

Even though I was left wanting when it comes to Rousseau’s story, it was nice to see them tie up the story she told Sayid back in Season 1 about her lover, Robert, not noticing the firing pin was missing on the gun. (Remember when Sayid pointed the rifle at her and pulled the trigger only to have it not fire?) And now we got to see it. Little tie-ins like that really make me appreciate the detail the writers adhere to when writing this show. Of course we need to know more about why the heck happened to those guys that made Rousseau think they were “infected.” Hopefully we get to see more of Rousseau’s story before the wrap up the show.

And isn’t Ben just a killer character. The more he manipulates people, the more I can’t stand the guy. But he really is becoming the central character since his actions seem to determine the what everyone else does. I just hope he gets what’s coming to him by the time the show comes to an end next year.

A Street Fighter Named Abel

See the above picture?

That’s me.

Well, not the real me. It a new character in Street Fighter IV named Abel.

Wikipedia describes Abel as “a French mixed martial artist. He is described as an amnesiac, a "man with no past" looking to defeat surviving members of Shadaloo.”

So it’s not exactly me.

I’m not French. I don’t have blonde hair.

But he’s built like me. And he has all my trademark fighting moves.

So it’s close enough.

Watch me take out Gouki in the video below.

LOST: The Little Prince

I was a little bummed to see that Jin was alive. It’s nothing personal. I think he’s a wonderfully engaging, complex character. My worry is that the writers are losing control of the story. Why was Jin able to survive the explosion and end back up in 1988 when Rousseau came to the island? The ship he was on was way outside the time radius of the island. If he’s alive, does that mean Michael’s still alive? And are we going to have three storylines (Jin and Rousseau, the Oceanic Six, and the time shifting island survivors) instead of two? That’s simply going to make the show even more difficult to follow.

The writers have opened a huge can of worms with this. If they don’t have a good explanation for it all, I’ll be very disappointed. I hope they didn’t do it just to make it easy play to get Sun back. That’s what the preview for next week’s episode made it look like anyway. If that’s the only reason then the writers are getting lazy.

And what effect will this have on Sun? She’s become such an extremely resourceful and calculating person since Jin died and I’ve really liked how she’s changed. I worry that bringing Jin back will simply put Sun back into the role she played before he was thought to have died.

The cool thing about Jin being back is that we can finally learn the back story of Danielle Rousseau and what happened to her group. That’s a story I’ve wanted to see for years. I’m hoping her story will shed some light on the numbers, the smoke monster, how Ben ended up with her child, and a few of the other mysterious aspects of the island.

***

Here’s a LOST conspiracy theory that me and a co-worker were throwing around this morning. Three of the survivors on the island are getting nosebleeds: Charlotte, Miles, and Juliet. According to Faraday, their nosebleeds and sickness correlates to how long they’ve been on the island. We know that Juliet’s been on the island for several years and it’s kind of assumed that Charlotte was born there. Miles however seems very surprised that his nose is bleeding and says he’s only been on the island a short time to which Faraday replies, “Are you sure?” and he says it in such a way that implies that he knows that Miles has been on the island longer than he knows.

Our theory is that Miles is the son of Dr. Pierre Chang. You know, the guy in all the Dharma Initiative videos. He was born on the island but, for whatever reason, left when he was little. (Remember that the first scene in the episode “Because You Left” shows Chang’s wife waking him up and telling was his turn to take care of the kid. The fact he was born on the island (if he’s Chang’s kids) would go a long way in explaining the reason he can apparently sense dead people and why he’s getting the nosebleeds.

What say you?

Friends Don't Let Friends Watch LOST

This is what will happen if you try to get someone caught up on LOST. Freaking hilarious.

The Best Damn Mexican Restaurant on the Planet

I make it a point to eat at the Red Igauna on the last day of January. If you've never eaten at the Red Igauna before, watch the below from Food Network's "Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives" to see what you're missing out on. It's the best Mexican restaurant on the planet.

***

And Happy Birthday wishes to Alice! Hope you have a good one!

My Super Bowl XLIII Prediction

I haven’t followed football as closely this season as I have in years past. Still, I was as floored as anyone when the Arizona Cardinals dumped the Falcons, Panthers, and Eagles on their way to the Super Bowl XLIII.

Everyone is touting the Cardinals as a sad-sack organization that won’t stand a chance against the vaulted Pittsburgh Steelers.

I don’t see it.

They have a starting quarterback who’s won the big game already and has plenty of weapons to throw too. Their defense had no problem stopping the best teams in the NFC. Yes, the Steelers have QB that's played in the big game but Roethlisberger's play hasn't been consistent. Watch for Arizona will find a way to stop them when they really need to.

The Steelers are a good team – don’t get me wrong. It’s just that the Cardinals have the intangible factors of momentum and underdog spirit that’s going to carry them past the Steelers and a victory in their very first Super Bowl appearance.

Look for the Cardinals to jump out to a large and early lead. The Steelers will rally in the second half and close the gap to a touchdown in the last five minutes of the fourth quarter but, unfortunately for them, Roethlisberger won’t be able to tie it before the clock runs out.

Final score: Arizona 31 Pittsburg 24

LOST: Jughead

*** Spoilers Follow***

Charles Widmore is an Other?!?!?!

That was seriously the best revelation LOST has given us in a long time and goes a long way to explaining why he wants to get back to the island. Maybe at one point Widmore was even the leader of the others before leaving/getting banished/transported off the island. I hope the writers are planning a Widmore-centric episode soon. That would be great to learn more about him, how he left the island, why he can’t get back, and see what’s really going on between him and Ben.

Here’s my theory as to who the Others (with the exception of Richard Alpert) really are. They’re survivors of the British trading ship, the Black Rock, that crashed on the island back in the mid-nineteenth century. This explains their British accents. My guess is that after they crashed, they were unable to get off the island and started their own society. They’ve been there long enough that they feel the island is theirs and don’t want to give it up.

Another thing about the Others I’m still trying to figure out: They don’t really seem to be into building places to live. They were living in the tents of the army people they killed in the 1954 flashback in this episode and moved into the Dharma Initiative homes once they eliminated all of them. I find it odd that they don’t really seem capable of building any kind of permanent settlements. I’m sure there’s a reason for this, I just haven’t figured it out yet. If anyone has a theory, feel free to throw it into the comments below.

Meanwhile it looks like Desmond, Penny, and their son are headed to Los Angeles. Fate is bringing everyone back together. It looks like Desmond is headed back to the island, no matter what kind of promises he made to Penny. It appears, at least in LOST’s universe, you really can’t mess with fate.

Dating a Widower Group on Facebook

I’ve created a Facebook group for those who are dating widowers. I thought it would be a great place for those who are dating a widower to post links and other resources, and be able to talk to others who are dealing with widower-related issues.

You can find the group here.

Anyone who’s in a relationship with a widower can join.