- Progress is being and equity achieved in the way our law enforcement personnel treat citizens. It used to be that police were harsher and less forgiving with poor, uneducated and lesser members of society and the rich and privileged among us were treated far more favorably. I’m proud to report that this is changing, that rich, white-collar citizens are also being subjected to the same type of abuse and beatdowns that were once reserved for the lower reaches of society. Four businessmen dining at an upscale city bar in Chicago were viciously beaten by three police officers in an attack that was caught on video. The three officers have been charged with crimes that include obstruction of justice, aggravated battery and official misconduct. Sgt. Jeffrey Planey, 33 hit the trifecta and was tagged with one count of each of the above-mentioned crimes while Officers Paul Powers, 25, and Gregory Barnes, 39, were only charged with aggravated battery. No one is immune now, it would seem, because both rich and poor, professional and blue-collar, black and white are finding themselves on the wrong end of good ol’ fashioned police brutality. Welcome to the 2007 version of the United States, where physical abuse and the violation of rights are becoming more and more colorblind.
- Buying a foreclosed home at an auction can be a dicey proposition, because you may not know exactly what you’re getting yourself into. The house might need repairs to the plumbing, roof, heating or electrical wiring that you just can't know about…….or you might be walking into a 21st century version of Psycho. That’s what a man who purchased a foreclosed home in the Spanish town of Roses found when he entered a house he had just purchased. A la Norman Bates’ mother in Alfred Hitchcock’s famous film, this man found the corpse of the home’s previous owner sitting on the couch in a mummified state. The body had mummified largely because of the salty seaside air in Roses, which is located in the Catalonia region of Spain. Officials in the town estimate that the body had been in that spot on the couch since 2001, when the now-deceased woman had stopped making house payments on her home. I feel bad for the new owner, because you can get rid of that couch, you can fumigate the room, spray it with 50 coats of industrial-strength disinfectant, paint that room, redo the flooring and bring in all new furniture and you’re still not getting rid of that creepy feeling you get every time you enter that particular room. Turn right around and sell that house, only this time make sure that all dead bodies have been removed from the premises so the new owners don’t have the same unpleasant experience of finding a mummified corpse in the living room.
- Another day, another network upfront, this time ABC. Admittedly I’m not the biggest ABC fan because after the network axed Alias a last year, there wasn’t a single show on ABC that I had any interest in watching. The network has leaned heavily toward pandering to the chick flick crowd, with a slate of programming that seems to make every effort to appeal to woman and repel men (Dancing with the D-List Stars, The Bachelor, Grey’s Anatomy, Desperate Housewives). With eight new shows being presented at the upfront, ABC has a slightly more promising fall lineup than NBC, whose new schedule looks like a big pile of monkey poop even when contrasted with a TV landscape quickly becoming devoid of great shows. Three of ABC’s new shows are automatically DQ’d in my rankings because they’re half-hour shows, which are basically a ginormous waste of time because there’s not enough time to develop anything worth following. Also, one of those half-hour shows is the moronic, idiotic, imbecilic comedy Cavemen, based on the caveman characters from the GEICO commercials. This premise is already tired and barely entertaining enough to carry a 30-second commercial, there is no way it’s going to work as a TV series. Other new offerings from ABC are Private Practice, the Grey’s spin-off (umm, I’ll pass, since the original incarnation of the show holds zero interest for me), Pushing Daisies, about a young man able to bring things back to life (hey, already seen that kind of stuff on shows like Heroes and Smallville, try coming up with a more original premise), Dirty Sexy Money, about an idealistic lawyer working for an extremely wealthy family (in spite of the fact that the whole lawyer-drama concept has been done to death, this actually sounds possibly watchable) and Big Shots, a series about four would-be CEO’s who are friends, which I might give a chance to if only to see how old favorite Michael Vartan of Alias fame is faring nowadays. Overall, not an inspiring slate of shows, but again, better than what NBC has to offer, which is something to hang your hat on, I guess………
- I’ve been tired of Brett Favre’s act for quite a while now, but it’s still nice to see the Green Bay Packers and their management joining me in my disdain for it. Favre already threw a hissy fit after the team failed to trade for talented and enigmatic wide receiver Randy Moss during the draft. Favre wanted Moss to supplement a shaky receiving corps, but instead New England swooped in and traded for him instead. Reports have Favre demanding a trade from Green Bay after that, but of course the two-faced, image-conscious golden boy came out denying that rumor, saying that while he was unhappy, he never demanded a trade. Sure, because Brett Favre would never, ever put his own welfare ahead of the team’s success, except for every season he’s strung them out, vacillating between retirement and playing another year and left the team in a bind, unable to move on because they don’t know what he’ll do. But Favre was allegedly backed off of the “trade me or else” ledge by coach Mike McCarthy and all seemed well……until word came that Favre was refusing to attend this week’s mandatory team mini-camp so he could stay in Mississippi and help plan his daughter’s graduation party and take part in all of the festivities associated with her graduation. He also alleges that due to his physical status (recovering from surgery) that the team wasn’t going to have him actively participate in camp anyhow. The team says otherwise, and they want Favre at camp because they have the idea that it is mandatory and not optional, as their quarterback seems to believe. Basically, Brett Favre is being a selfish jerk who will only play if everything is totally on his terms, the team be damned. He’s out for himself and his image, and if pursuing that goal helps the team win, all the better. It is sickening to see how much of the media, football fandom and sports fans in general kowtow to this guy and buy into his shtick. It’s time to see him for what he is: an over-the-hill, egotistical, self-centered glory hound who is no longer helping his team but is substantially harming it.
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