| Pitch of his life: Clemens gives it his best in Congress
We got the tough childhood, the fact his father died when Clemens was 9 years old and how he used baseball to get to college. We got how hard he's worked at his craft. We got how he went out and pitched for Team USA, all but wrapping himself in the flag. We saw flashes of his indignation, or as he asked in the beginning: how can you disprove a negative? And in the end? After the five hours of yesterday's dog-and-pony show? We don't know much more than we did before. Because someone is lying here, there's no question about that. Clemens says he never took performance drugs. Brian McNamee, his onetime trainer and friend, says he administered them to him. Take your pick. But ask yourself this: Why would McNamee lie when he'd been told by the government before the Mitchell Report that he would be prosecuted if he didn't tell the truth? That's the bind Clemens has been in since the Mitchell Report was released, and it goes way beyond whether you think McNamee is someone who was accepted into Clemens' inner world and then betrayed him, the ultimate rat.
Convention center hotels were a great idea for Denver and Houston, but ...
Louis raised nearly $200 million to build a new headquarters hotel for the city's convention center. ''St. Louis has accomplished something that has eluded most other cities for years,'' tourism director Bob Bedell said after final approval of the plan. The 1,100-room hotel ``will put our hospitality industry into the first tier of convention cities.'' Eight years later, the Gateway City is still waiting for that status upgrade. Meanwhile, the headquarters hotel is flirting with bankruptcy and not expected to cover the debt payments until 2012. ''The picture wasn't as rosy as everybody thought,'' said Gary Andreas, a partner at H&H Consulting, which tracks the St. Louis hotel industry. ``Just about everything that could go wrong, did.'' The St.
Comments on ‘ BOFH : Insecurity complex’
Is a ninja. No, really. He's studied Bujinkan Budo Taijutsu (the name of the organisation that licences "official ninja schools" in the UK) since before birth (ok, since he was about 20), can smell blood at 100 feet (that one's a REAL CLAIM) and is an expert in every martial arts weapon, ever (so's that one). He's an athletic 18 or so stones, and straps a knife to his bike (in case anyone steals it. He hasn't yet figured out that they would then have the knife, too). He refuses to tell any of us where he trains, because it's a "secret school" (despite the Bujinkan listing openly where they teach), and the only instructor in the area (whom I know) has never heard of him. This is particularly hilarious for me, as I'm a martial artist myself, and about the nearest he could get to a ninja is sumo wrestling.
News From Backstage at the Oscars
6:52 p.m. Here's the unofficial transcript of the press room's Q&A with Best Makeup winners Didier Lavergne and Jan Archibald:Q: [In French]?A: [In French].Q: [In French]?A: [In French].You get the idea, mes amis. 6:57 p.m. An hour-and-a-half in, and no major winners have made their way backstage. We're just told that Javier Bardem was ''called back to his seat'' (for what? reaction shots to that awful "That's How You Know" number?) and will be coming back to us later. 7:00 p.m. With the press more and more focused on their pressing deadlines and cookie intake, Jon Stewart's baby award routine catches a rare laugh. 7:02 p.m. Finally! A big winner arrives! A loose and witty Tilda Swinton's in the house, and her first line is a winner, referencing the numbers all the writers hold up to ask a question: ''This looks like a bingo room.'' Asked what she thought after her name was announced, she says she had a ''reverse Zoolander moment I thought they called somebody else's name....
THQ oils up Big Beach Sports
THQ has made a major push onto Nintendo's hot-commodity console the Wii in recent weeks. Two Thursdays ago, the publisher debuted its combative music rhythm game Band Mashups, where players arm themselves with sniper violins and flame-throwing guitars to best their opponents and change up the music style. Last Thursday, THQ continued to attack the underbelly of the Wii with the creepy-crawler action game Deadly Creatures. Today, THQ said it would be adding yet another title exclusively to the Wii's library with Big Beach Sports. Slated for a global release in summer 2008, Big Beach Sports plans to bring fun in the sun indoors with a variety of sand-friendly physical minigames. Aiming squarely at the casual Wii-gaming crowd, Big Beach Sports will include football, volleyball, soccer, cricket, disc golf, and bocce.
McCain’s life experiences will suit road ahead
A man who survives torture and five years in a prisoner of war camp most assuredly has the constitution to withstand determined opposition. That opposition comes from unrelenting critics on the left — and from an impatient citizenry grown unaccustomed to the steadfastness required to defeat an often abstract enemy. We are a nation of rationalizers, skeptics and negotiators best defined by Rodney King: "People, I just want to say, you know, can we all get along?" We should live in terror that the U.S. president sitting across the bargaining table from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, or committing to Israel's security, or confronting the ambitions of Hugo Chavez, is animated by Pollyannish notions that words and good intentions can substitute for power and resolve. We can't get along if you want to kill us — and we can't co-exist if the desire translates into deeds.
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