Today in Pictures: September 2011

Thursday, September 15, 2011

Brian Urlacher rejoins Bears; Drew Brees says, ‘You have to prepare as if he’s going to play’

It isn’t easy to prepare for a game against Brian Urlacher and the Chicago Bears defense under the best of circumstances.

For the New Orleans Saints, their preparation is complicated by the fact that Urlacher has been with his family since learning of his mother’s death. He returned to the team today and, although reports out of Chicago indicate that Urlacher “plans on playing” Sunday in New Orleans, the Saints can’t count on that.

“You have to prepare as if he's going to play,” quarterback Drew Brees said (via Chicago Sun-Times). “If they don't, then you change gears.”

Brees’ mother, Mina, died in August 2009. “It was a sudden thing. Very unexpected,” Brees said. “So I left training camp immediately, to be with my brother and my family. On two different occasions, I had to leave for a period of time, to be with family and to go to her memorial service and help plan that.”

If Urlacher, called “the heart and soul of this team” by Bears quarterback Jay Cutler, is anything like Brees, he’ll probably play Sunday. “I can tell you this. For me, as hard as that was and as much as I needed to be with my family at that time, the guys in the locker room — your teammates — are also a part of your family, too,” he said. “So a big part of my healing was coming back and being with the guys in the locker room and obviously getting back to playing football because I know that's what she loved watching me do.”

Michaele Salahi abducted? No, just on a Journey

LOS ANGELES, California: Are they up to their old tricks again?

Tareq Salahi and his wife Michaele Salahi, reality TV stars who gained infamy as the so-called White House gate crashers, grabbed headlines on Wednesday when he reported his wife was abducted, and she later contacted law enforcement officials to say she was fine and didn’t want him to know her whereabouts.

A spokeswoman for the rock band Journey said Michaele and the group’s guitarist Neal Schon were together in Memphis for a concert. “Nobody kidnapped her,” said the spokeswoman.

The FBI and law enforcement officials are investigating.

The mixup, if that is what it was, began late Tuesday when Tareq Salahi contacted local authorities claiming Michaele was missing and had left their house without taking any belongings. He believed she was abducted, according to media reports.

But in a news conference outside the Salahi residence on Wednesday afternoon, a sheriff’s official from Warren County, Virginia said Michaele Salahi told their department she left with a good friend, was where she wanted to be and did not want her husband to know, according to Kris Van Cleave, a reporter for the local ABC TV station, who spoke to Reuters.

The sheriff’s official said they were working with the FBI to contact Michaele again in order to “assure her well-being,” and that officials were in touch with her family and friends.

A Los Angeles-based spokeswoman for Journey and Schon seemed to put an end to the story by late Wednesday, saying in a statement, “Scoop Marketing can confirm that nobody kidnapped her and that she and Neal are together, in Memphis, for Journey’s concert tonight at the Bridgestone Arena.”

This is not the first time the Salahis have created a media stir. The publicity-hungry couple famously snuck past White House security and into a state dinner in 2009. The exploit earned them headlines worldwide, and shortly thereafter she became a castmember on the “Real Housewives” reality TV show.

In a tearful interview with an NBC TV reporter in prior to the Warren County sheriff’s new conference, Salahi broke down and denied his wife’s disappearance was a publicity stunt.