Expedition: Impossible – Week 4 Recap

When last we saw our competitors they had finished the 3rd leg of the race and were in the 105 degree Sahara Desert. This week they’ve been magically transported to the below freezing temperatures of the High Atlas Mountains. The first checkpoint 10,000 feet high on the mountain. The Gypsies start off before everyone…again. This week they’ll keep their eyes on No Limits as they’ve already climbed Mt. Everest and should be strong with this challenge. Starting 2nd with No Limits are The Country Boys. After them is the group of The Fab 3, The Firemen and The Football Players. The last group to go is The Cops, The Fishermen, California Girls and last weeks 10th place winners, Team Kansas.

We get a shot of No Limits with Jeff calling out directions to help Eric through the snow-covered rocky terrain. After watching this show I’m never going to feel bad for a blind person again. This guy is unstoppable. Meanwhile, The Country Boys are not doing so well as we see multiple teams passing them and The Fab 3, being hurt and sick have fallen back to 6th place.

Expedition: Impossible – Week 3 Recap

Last week on this race across Morocco we saw The Gypsies take first place again while Mom’s Army was honorably discharged and sent home. To start off this week, host Dave Salmoni tells the teams that this next leg will take 2 days and start off with each squad having to obtain camels by gathering feed and lugging it 1.5 miles to camel station. As it was last week The Gypsies get a five-minute head start for coming in first the previous leg. The next group to take off is No Limits, The Football Players and The Country Boys. After them, Team Kansas, Fab 3 and The Fishermen take off. The last group to leave is The California Girls, Grandpa’s Warriors, NY Fireman and Team Cops.

Expedition: Impossible – Week 2 Recap

The first week of ABC’s new reality adventure series saw 13 teams start their tour across the Kingdom of Morocco and finished with Latin Persuasion heading home. This week our remaining 12 teams continue the race that some wold call amazing. Our host Dave Salmoni tells the teams the first leg of this stage starts when they a half-mile on foot to a horse outpost where each member will choose an Arabian Stallion and ride 7 miles to the next checkpoint.

AJ from The Fab 3 lets us know he hates horses because he doesn’t want a hoof to his pretty face. Please let this be foreshadowing. Team Gypsy came in first last stage so they will begin with a five-minute head start. The first group to go after them has The Fab 3, The Football Players and Team Kansas. After them The Country Boys, Firemen, No Limits and The Fisherman launch their start followed by the last group of Grandpa’s Warriors, Mom’s Army, California Girls and The Cops get to go.

UFC on VERSUS – MARQU….KONGO VS BARRY

As of Friday morning, Nate Marquardt was set to make his welterweight debut against Rick “The Horror” Story but he failed his medical clearance and do to strict privacy laws in Pennsylvania the reason can not be disclosed.

"The Great" may need to change his name after the last 48 hours.

Whatever the reason was though was bad enough that UFC President Dana White announced over his Twitter account that Marquardt has been fired and will never fight in the UFC again. Earlier tonight, Marquardt himself took to Twitter and advised he will be addressing all the issues this Tuesday. So until then we’ll just have to watch some fights!

The heavyweight bout between Cheick Kongo and Pat Barry has been moved up to our main event while Charlie Brenneman will take Marquardt’s spot against Story. Also in welterweight action we have Matt Brown taking on John Howard.

Expedition:Impossible – We turn it up to 11!!

Reality show super producer Mark Burnett just can’t get enough shows on TV these days. Burnett is currently riding high with the success of his non-idol singing competition The Voice on NBC and is also the creator of Survivor, currently in it’s 98th season and The Apprentice, celebrity or otherwise, with political powerhouse Donald Trump. Now Burnett brings us Expedition: Impossible, which from all accounts looks like the Amazing Race but with three person teams instead of two. You see, it’s not the same. Burnett wants us to know that team size isn’t the only thing that separates this show from the CBS hit. E:I takes place entirely in Morocco, contestants will not be taking taxis or buses or planes. “Here, you actually need to put yourself on the line, really be willing to cross the deserts and the mountains and use the camels and the horses. So, it’s a very, very much more difficult competition.” he said. So let’s see how it goes.

FX feeds you a double helping of hilarious tonight.

FX is quickly becoming my favorite network, if they would only stop showing Two and Half Men reruns. Home of Sons of Anarchy, Justified and Rescue Me, last season they gave us Louis C.K’s simply titled Louie. Shot on such a low-budget that the network let the comedian do almost whatever he wanted for six episodes and it resulted in the best half hour of comedy on cable. C.K. stars as a TV version of himself, a single divorced father of two daughters and a stand-up comedian. The show mixes in scenes of his life in New York with scenes from his stand-up shows through out the city. The show had appearence from fellow comdians Ricky Gervais, Jim Norton and Robert Kelly. My favorite episode had C.K. annihilating a women who was talking during one of his sets then trying to hook up with her afterward. While the show doesn’t get the same liberties as his previous sitcom, the unjustly canceled after one season Lucky Louie on HBO, FX does push boundaries that the big four networks would never do and the language in this episode was vicious. I couldn’t recommend it enough.

Before the second season starts tonight, FX is bringing all new comedy starring Elijah Wood. Wilfred center’s around Rick, a beaten man, depressed and pushed around by his sister and father. After a failed suicide attempt the night before he answers his door the next day to find neighbor Jenna asking him to watch after her dog Wilfred, but while the rest of the world sees Wilfred as a cute and cuddly dog, Rick sees a pot smoking, foul-mouthed, belligerent Australian man in a dog suit. And so our story begins. Jason Gann plays Wilfred and had originally wrote this with Adam Zwar as a short film and then a TV series in Australia where it had aired for 2 eight episode seasons. FX has produced 13 episodes for this series with the first airing tonight at 10 pm et followed by Louie at 10:30 et.

FOOTBALL COPS!! Justice is a team sport.

Thanks to DirectTV for looking out for us. Though it seems an end may be in sight to the NFL labor disputes, the satellite television provider had a back-up plan in-case their NFL Sunday Ticket just broadcast a blank screen this fall. The Brothers Manning, along with father Archie, hitting the hardened streets of Morristown as Mike Tahoe and C.J. Hunter, The Football Cops!

The preview states coming to DirectTV this fall, speculation is the “episodes” will be short commercials slyly advertising their Sunday Ticket program. Go to www.FootballCops.com for character breakdowns, episode guides and even wallpapers and ring-tones.

Boston is Feeling Wicked Awesome.

It took 39 years but after a tremendous 7 game finals series, the Boston Bruins are once again Stanley Cup champions. Up until tonight, the wins in this series all came from the home teams. The most dominant wins came from Boston in game four (4-0) and game six (5-2), basically proving detractors of Canucks goalie Robert Luongo correct in their assessments of his inconsistent play.

Try to find your happy place Vancouver.

Tim Thomas continued to be the man of the hour stopping ?? shots on his way to cementing the Conn Smythe trophy as the MVP of the play-offs. Thomas ends the play-offs with 16 wins, a GAA of 1.98, a .940 save % and 4 shutouts. Patrice Bergeron scored his fifth goal of the post-season late in the first to give the Bruins the 1-0 lead over Vancouver and grinded out a short-handed goal with less than 3 minutes to go in the second that made it 3-0. Brad Marchand scored the Bruins other two goals and notched an assist on Bergeron’s first goal to end his post season with 11 goals and 8 assists. Center Dave Krejci though not scoring tonight led Boston and the league with 23 points (12g, 11a).

A big congrats Mark Recchi who gets his name on the cup for the 3rd time in what is sure to be the final game in his long 21 year career.

Alex Burrows is eating the Bruins alive!

After causing a ruckus in game one of the Stanley Cup finals by biting on the finger of Bruins forward Patrice Bergeron, Canucks winger Alexandre Burrows factored in on three of the goals Vancouver got tonight including this shocker 11 seconds into OT.

Just as Daniel Sedin intercepts a pass, Burrows breaks for the Boston net and gets the pass. Zdeno Chara prevents him from taking a shot but Burrows gets the puck behind the net a just circles past the net and Chara to slide it in the empty net as Bruin goalie Tim Thomas was out of position after sprawling for at Burrows first attempt.

Vancouver won the game 4-3 and takes a 2-0 series lead headed into Boston. Burrows ended the game with 2 goals and an assist.

THE ULTIMATE FIGHTER FINALE

Season 13 of UFC’s The Ultimate fighter comes to a close tonight as Ramsey Nijem takes on colossal douchebag Tony Ferguson to see who Dana White gives the six-figure contract to. The c0-main event is a matchup between UFC vet Clay Guida and the last man to hold the WEC Lightweight Championship belt, Anthony Pettis.

We start of the night with TUF semi-finalists Chris Cope (4-2)and Chuck O’Neil (8-4) stepping into the octagon to face each other. There were no huge strikes landed in the first but both fighters landed a few with Cope landing the more impressive strikes, particularly slighty after the half way mark he stunned O’Neil with a solid left hook. He seemed to gain a lot of confidence after that strike. Cope takes the first round 10-9.

The second round was much of the same, again lacking in huge strikes but Cope won out on quantity. Cope 10-9 again. In the third you could really see the difference. Cope came out as fresh as he did in the first and O’Neil was clearly tired. With about a minute and a half left Cope lands a nice spinning backfist and O’Neil never really had any offense. Cope takes this fight by unanimous decision. WOOOOOOOOOO!!!

Our next fight is a light heavyweight battle and it features season 8 contestant Kyle Kingsbury (10-2, 1 NC) taking on Fabio Maldonado (18-3) who has won 11 in a row. Kingsbury was in control early in the first before Maldonado took over and at one point almost had a submission. Kingsbury started with some great clinch work but Maldonado countered any strikes with blows to the body that forced Kingsbury to back off. I’d give the first to Maldonado 10-9.

Kingsbury gained some ground in the second. He got solid knees off while in the clinch and scored a few takedowns though nothing came from them but they should get him some points from the judges. Kingsbury takes round two 10-9.

Maldonado leads off the third with some jabs that end up damaging Kingsbury’s left eye which swells shut by mid-round. Kingsbury did manage to get some shots in a score a takedown before loosing that left eye. With about a minute and a half left the fighters tangle and wind up on the ground with Maldonado on top but neither fighter does anything and the ref stands them up. Kingsbury’s eye is disgusting right now. He scores a few knees before the end of the round but Maldonado scores a takedown right at the end. Tough round to call. The judges must have seen it for Kingsbury as wins the unanimous decision 29-28.

Our third fight sees the UFC return of TUF season 3 finalist Ed Herman (17-7) as he takes on season 7 contestant Tim Credeur (13-5) in a middleweight bout. It didn’t take long for Herman to show why he deserves another shot in the UFC. 45 seconds into the fight Herman drops Credeur with a right upper cut and reigns a few more punches down on him before Herb Dean calls the fight. Herman wins by TKO at 48 seconds into the first round.

Next up is the battle between Clay Guida (28-8) and Anthony Pettis (11-1) in a lightweight fight.  Guida as usual did not stop moving the entire round. He managed to take Pettis down twice and kept active with strikes and even lunging his shoulder into Pettis’ face. Pettis did well off his back but the majority of the action came from Guida. Guida 10-9.

Pettis lands a few good jabs to start off the second before Guida scores another takedown where he does more work with his shoulders. The fighters get back to their feet and spend some time against the cage before separating. Pettis tries an innovative back-kick but Guida just steps aside and Pettis hits only the cage. With under a minute left Guida gets another big takedown. Pettis tries for a triangle but Guida just has too much movement. Pettis locks in an armbar in the closing seconds but Guida breaks out as the round ends. 10-9 Guida.

In the third Guida lands a great right and grabs Pettis for another takedown. Guida works from the top and works his way into half-guard while fighting off any attempt from Pettis to lock in a submission. The fighter’s get to their feet and Guida tries to bring Pettis back down but winds up on the bottom. Pettis quickly maneuvers and takes Guida’s back with about 80 seconds left in the fight but Guida works his way out from underneath and then takes top control.  What a great move! The round ends with Guida on Pettis’ back. Guida should win this 30-27 and the judges agree. Post fight Guida campaigns for a shot at the winner of the Frankie Edgar and Gray Maynard title fight.

The final fight of the night is up as Ramsey Nijem (5-1) takes on Tony Ferguson (11-2) to see who is crowned the latest champion of the Ultimate Fighter. Tonight’s fun fact, Nijem has been training with the past two TUF winners, Court McGee and Jonathan Brookins while Ferguson spent the time after the filming of the show training at Brock Lesnar’s Deathclutch camp. Ferguson starts off taking a few punches before scoring a takedown. He spends some time in half-guard before the fighters scramble and are back on their feet. Nijem starts throwing before Ferguson ties him up to slow him down. Separated and back in the middle of the octagon, the fighters spend some time feeling each other out. Nijem connects with a few more flurries but with about a minute left Ferguson clocks Nijem with a stiff left hook and follows up with a right bomb but Nijem was out before that. Tony Ferguson wins by KO and is the Ultimate Fighter season 13 winner.

We get some bonus action from the undercard as we get to see Scotty Jorgenson take on Ken Stone in a bantamweight match-up. In the first we see Jorgenson takedown Stone around the 3 minute mark. Stone tries for a triangle but Jorgenson wriggles out of it. From the guard, Jorgenson starts throwing bombs down on Stone and the ref steps in to end it. Replay shows Stone was KTFO after the first right. Jorgenson wins by KO at 4:01 of the first.

Another bonus fight as we featherweight action between Josh Grispi and George Roop. Grispi ties up Roop and takes him to the ground. He works to side control then switches to a guillotine attempt. The fighters are on their feet briefly before Grispi gets Roop down again and works his way to full mount. Roop manages to escape again and get back to his feet. This whole time Roop has been landing great elbows and punches while being tied up. Grispi presses forward but keeps running into Roops strikes. Roop gets control and scores a takedown and hammers down strikes to end the round. I’d say Roop wins 10-9 based on his striking in the defense.

Roop starts off the second round with a front kick to Grispi’s stomach which sends him to the mat. Roop works his ground and pound for the rest of the round. Roop wins this one 10-9.

In the third, Grispi manages a takedown and the fighters scramble for a bit till they’re up against the cage. After a while the ref stands them up. There’s a time-out taken as a kick to the thighs by Roop may have caught part of Grispi’s cup. When we start back up, Roop starts pressing the action and lands a huge right hook to the gut that sends Grispi down to the mat and Herb Dean calls the fight. Roop gets the TKO victory at 3:14 of the third round.

That’s it for tonight.

X-MEN: FIRST CLASS

I sense a sequel will be in the works soon

For me a good comic book movie has to be two things. First, and most importantly, is that it has to remain faithful to the source material. I’m not saying it has to follow it exactly, just hold to the spirit and the characters that made the book successful. Secondly, it has to make that source material enjoyable to a wider audience, a group that knows nothing of secret origins and future story lines, one that wants to invest $10-$15 and two hours of their time on this story. X-Men: First Class has a slight advantage in that department. Movie goers know some of these characters already. Professor X, Mystique and Magneto were introduced on the big screen by Bryan Singer in X-Men. He followed that up with X2. Both were successful and well received by movie goers and comic book readers. He left the franchise to take a shot a re-booting the Superman franchise. He failed. Meanwhile, he who shall not be named, gave us X-Men: Last Stand. While the movie did give us some character’s we were waiting to see in the franchise (Beast, Archangel, Juggernaut) it failed with it’s plot and hack directing and the franchise was dead. Now Singer returns, this time as a producer and brings in Matthew Vaughn (Layer Cake, Kick-Ass) to direct. Where Last Stand and Wolverine failed First Class greatly succeeds. Is it perfect? No, but the good thing greatly outweigh the bad.

The Stanley Cup Finals begin Wednesday and Winnipeg couldn’t be happier!

But you say “Kevin, Winnipeg isn’t in the finals! In fact, they don’t even have a team dummy!” I say that was yesterday but today the sale of the Atlanta Thrashers was approved. Purchasing the team is True North Sports and Entertainment. The deal is reportedly worth $170 million and will see the former Thrashers move to Winnipeg, Manitoba for next season. This will give Winnipeg it’s first franchise since The Jets relocated to Phoenix in 1996 and became the Coyotes. Meanwhile this is the second NHL franchise the city of Atlanta has lost since 1980 when the Atlanta Flames moved to Calgary. I’m guessing third time’s not a charm for Hotlanta. No word on if the team will adopt the Jets moniker or not. Here’s hoping they do. Just so we can hear some Canadians chant J-E-T-S, JETS JETS JETS, EH?

even J Biebs has cup fever!!

Now let’s take a look at the most exciting series in sports, The Stanley Cup Finals! This year we get The Vancouver Canucks taking on The Boston Bruins. Vancouver finished the regular season as the best team in the NHL winning the President’s Cup with 117 points. The next closest were Philadelphia and Pittsburgh who each had 106 points. Boston finished with 103 which was good enough for the number 3 seed in the conference. The Bruins beat out The Montreal Canadians, Philadelphia and advanced to the finals by beating The Tampa Bay Lightning in a thrilling 7 games series which ended Friday night. Vancouver meanwhile have been off since last Wednesday after taking out The San Jose Sharks in 5 games, before that Vancouver had beaten last year’s champs The Chicago Blackhawks and The Nashville Predators.

UFC 130: Superman Returns!

Last night the UFC kicked off the first night of it’s 3 week extravaganza (Next Saturday we get the Ultimate Fighter finale on Spike TV and the week after we get UFC 131 live from Vancouver). Originally slated to be headlined by Edgar vs Maynard but due to injuries both fighters had to pull out. That left us with the card being headlined by Quentin “Rampage” Jackson and Matt Hamill. Also featured was a heavyweight fight between Frank Mir and Roy Nelson, former Marine Brian Stann taking on Jorge Santiago, fast rising star Rick Story taking on former contender Thiago Alves and Travis Browne versus giant Stefan Struve.

Before we jump into the main card we’ll highlight the preliminary matches. Three fights were streamed live on UFC’s Facebook page. In bantamweight action Renan Barao grinded out a unanimous decision over Cole Escovedo (30-27, 30-27, 29-28). Another bantamweight fight saw phenom Michael McDonald vs Chris Cariaso push each other to a 3 round split decision in McDonald’s favor (29-28, 29-28, 27-30). The final Facebook fight was the only submission of the night as lightweight Gleison Tibau gets Rafaello Oliveira to tap at 3:28 of the second round due to a rear naked choke. Since that was the only tap of the night Tibau walked away with a little bonus for submission of the night.

The next set of preliminary fights were broadcast live on Spike TV and saw Tim Boetsch (12-4) make his debut at middleweight by man-handling TUF season 3 winner Kendall Grove (14-8) and earning a unanimous 30-27 win. In more bantamweight action we got former WEC champ Miguel Angel Torres (38-3) loosing by unanimous decision (29-28) to Demetrious “Mighty Mouse” Johnson (13-1).

SUMMER MOVIE PREVIEW EXTRAVAGANZA: THE SEQUEL!!!!

We’re back!!! As Pirates of the Caribbean reigns as box office champ, The Hangover 2 opens tomorrow. Both films feature monkies. Coincidence? Yeah, probably. So here we go with our second half of summer movie preview.

July 8th

This one’s a tough week. The big opening is this massive turd, The Zookeeper starring Kevin James. To help James win over a girl, the animals at his zoo reveal to him that they can talk and give him love lessons. The CGI looks atrocious, the voiceovers are horrendous and oh yeah, IT HAS KEVIN JAMES!! Saving grace in this is that it looks like in the end he ends up with the awesome Rosario Dawson instead of the shallow bitch he was trying to get with. And I swear I saw Joe Rogan in this trailer. Guess he signed this contract while he was really high.

The better looking movie opening this week is Horrible Bosses. Jason Bateman, Jason Sudeikis and Charlie Day star as three friends who agree to kill each other’s bosses. The evil bastard bosses are played by Kevin Spacey, Jennifer Anniston and Colin Farrell. Jamie Foxx also stars. It’s directed by Seth Gordon who did the awesome documentary King of Kong: A Fistfull of Quarters and created the recently cancelled FOX sitcom Breaking In, which I thought was pretty damn funny. I really hope this slaughters Zookeeper this weekend.

SUMMER MOVIE PREVIEW EXTRAVAGANZA!! part one

Okay I know some big movies have come out in the past few weeks (Thor, Priest, Bridesmaids) but the summer movie season really doesn’t start until late May, which brings us to this Friday May 20th and we run through August. They’ll be a few obvious ones to check out below and some that I’ll warn you against without having seen. You don’t have to listen to me, if you want to throw your money at Kevin James and talking animals go ahead, but don’t say I didn’t warn you. Let’s begin.

May 20th

It all begins with the fourth installment of Jerry Bruckheimer and Johnny Depp’s Pirates of the Caribbean franchise titled On Stranger Tides. For this adventure we ditch Orlando Bloom and Kiera Knightly and are joined by Penelope Cruz and Ian McShane as Blackbeard as Depp’s Captain Jack Sparrow and Geoffrey Rush’s Barbosa try to find the fountain of youth. This will do just fine especially if they keep the story straight and to the point. Even Depp has admitted he had no idea what was going on in the last two films. Oh and there are mermaids. BONUS!!