- The good news just keeps flowin’ for Michael Vick. Not only is he facing a federal indictment on charges of building, financing and operating a dogfighting ring in which losing or non-compliant dogs were killed by beating, hanging and electrocution, Nike has decided to do the closest thing it can do to severing ties with Vick without actually severing ties with Vick - yet. Vick’s new signature shoe, the Air Zoom Vick 5, was scheduled to be released later this summer but has now been pulled by Nike. The company isn't going to pull other products with Vick’s name on them out of stores, but they aren't going to be producing any new products that would tie them to a dog-murdering, depraved freak job like M. Vick (allegedly). It looks suspiciously like Nike is doing the same thing the NFL and the Atlanta Falcons are doing, i.e. distancing themselves from Vick without totally abandoning, condemning or punishing him until the legal process plays out. Until he’s convicted of anything, none of these entities want to come out totally against him, lest he be exonerated (unlikely but possible) and it come back to bite them in the ass. However, the reality is that if Vick is convicted and ends up going to prison, all the issues with his team, the league and endorsers will be worked out. At that point, there’s no need for the Falcons or NFL to suspend him; he’s in prison, so clearly he can’t play. Also, companies whose products he endorses can than wash their hands of him and walk away without any fear of backlash. Bearing all of this information in mind, I’m stoked for the start of Falcons training camp on July 26, because I cannot wait to see the absolute circus this is going to be if Vick shows up.
- For all you Veronica Mars fans living in Denial-ville with me, our ride has come to an end. Up to this point in the summer, the CW has been rerunning episodes from this past season of Mars in the show’s normal 9 p.m. Tuesday time slot, but that has changed now that the network is bringing back another installment of the vapid, superficial, idiotic and uber-contrived “reality” series Beauty and the Geek. In other words, they want to take a bunch of nerdy guys, put them together with a bunch of “hot” girls who usually aren't all that hot and pretend that it’s a “social experiment” and that’s the kind of programming they want to hitch their fortunes to while running great shows like Veronica Mars off the air. For the first few weeks of the summer, the reruns of Mars were a nice diversion for fans like myself, a chance to pretend that the show hadn’t been canceled and that come fall, TV wouldn’t suck a little more because it was gone. Now I’ll have to wait for Season Three on DVD while sticking pins in my Dawn Ostroff voodoo doll. Actually, that doll is pretty much full of pins at this point and there’s nowhere left to stick new ones, so I’ll have to move on to a new one, which will be number………let’s see……95. What? It is Dawn Ostroff, after all, the most incompetent, stupid network executive in the history of television, she deserves it.
- Hey, Hurricane Katrina victims are already suffering, so why not inflict a little more pain and discomfort on them, eh FEMA? Word has come out that lawyers for the Federal Emergency Management Agency actually had the chutzpah to discourage officials from pursuing reports of dangerous levels of formaldehyde in trailers housing thousands of hurricane victims. That revelation comes courtesy of documents subpoenaed by members of the House of Representatives and released to the public Thursday. In a House hearing on the matter, three families who believe their illnesses were caused by the tainted trailers, Republicans and Democrats alike criticized the inexcusable and sleazy handling of the problem by FEMA. The orders from the organizations lawyers meant limited testing and inspecting of trailers whose occupants reported respiratory problems. But there was FEMA administrator R. David Paulison (never trust someone who begins their name with a single letter like that), trying to put a smiley face on a giant pile of rat feces by apologizing to the trailer occupants and saying, presumably with a straight face, “This agency made the best decisions it could with the information it had.” No, R. David Paulison, you purposefully limited to information you had on hand to make those decisions because you knew that if you had all the facts, you’d have to do something about the unhealthy, dangerous conditions those hurricane refugees were living in. But hey, if they’ve survived a massive hurricane, the destruction of their home, the loss of their personal belongings, prolonged flooding, slow or non-existent federal aid and other indignities, what’s a little formaldehyde poisoning? Good work, FEMA, you’re one more example of the absolute farce that this current administration is.
- Had you been driving down the freeway in Sacramento early Thursday morning with a carload of nachos, it would have been your lucky day. That’s because a tractor-trailer carrying blocks and blocks of cheese erupted in flames, turning its cargo of provolone, cheddar, mozzarella, American and other cheeses into the ultimate serving of hot liquid cheese. The melty, tasty river o’ cheese clogged the burning remains of the truck and the surrounding freeway, but no injuries or accidents were reported as a result of the spill. In a related story, Rosie O’Donnell was spotted in an airport on Thursday morning, demanding the earliest possible flight to Sacramento and clutching several family size bags of Tostitos as carry-on items.
- We feared it might happen and alas, it appears we’ve totally lost Katie Holmes to the dark side. The dark side, of course, is that of manically insane, couch-jumping-on, raving-mad Scientologist Tom Cruise, who somehow Jedi mind-tricked Holmes into marrying him, having his child and allowing him and his Scientology cronies to basically run every part of her life, including approving and movie script sent to the former Joey Potter of Dawson’s Creek fame. The new issue of People magazine promises on the cover to explain why Holmes is “happier than ever.” It’s their quote, not mine, but I’m guessing mind-altering drugs of some kind or a partial lobotomy were involved. Not that Holmes was the second coming of great actresses like Lauren Graham or Meryl Streep, but it’s still sad to see her life and career so thoroughly co-opted by a guy who would be much more at home in a padded room than in the general population of this nation. Then again, if having Cruise and his Scientology hacks look over potential movie scripts sent to Holmes keeps us from seeing another First Daughter, then maybe some good can come out of this.
- Hoaxes are funny, right? Who doesn’t love a good April Fool’s Day prank? Oh right, that would be me. Hoaxes could be really funny but usually aren't because the people perpetrating them are ginormous tools, but from time to time a funny hoax is cooked up and executed by a smart, savvy or sarcastic person who gets over on decidedly less intelligent, less savvy and much more clueless individuals. This would not be one of those times. A reporter for a Beijing TV station apparently decided that he needed something to jump start his career and figured that creating a fake news story about street vendors using chemical-soaked cardboard to fill meat buns was the way to do it. The report was presented as a hidden-camera expose on the illegal, unsanitary practice by food vendors on the streets of China’s capital city but turned out to be nothing more than the misguided ambitions of a struggling TV reporter who will now get to do a firsthand expose on life in a Chinese prison.
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