- Congrats to Jamaica’s Asafa Powell on breaking his own world record and establishing a new mark for the 100-meter dash with his 9.74 clocking at a meet in Rieti, Italy over the weekend, here’s hoping his story doesn’t end the way most stories involving world-class sprinters do nowadays. Powell had previously held the record with a time of 9.77 seconds, a mark he had reached three times. Now I’m hoping he can outrun the seemingly inevitable positive test for performance-enhancing drugs that far too many elite track athletes get hit with once they reach the top. Tim Montgomery had it happen to him and lost his title as the world’s fastest man. Back in 1988, Ben Johnson won Olympic gold in the 100 only to lose it and his career after testing positive for ‘roids. Shot putter C.J. Hunter had his career crashed after a positive test, with all three of these guys adding fuel to the argument that track is neck-and-neck with cycling for the title of the dirtiest sport around. I don’t have any reason to suspect that Powell is taking anything he shouldn’t be taking, well, other than the fact that he competes in track and field. But there are no allegations against him and to the best of my knowledge he’s never failed a test, so that’s good news. Still, I cant say I will be at all surprised if, a few months down the road, I read that he has been popped for using steroids, suspended from competition and stripped of his record, if for no other reason than the fact that a whole lot of athletes from every sport you can think of are being linked to steroids on an almost daily basis. Stay clean, Asafa, and give us all a pleasant surprise that all sports fans could really use at this point.
- I’m not a huge fan of Westerns, because they can be some of the cheesiest, most clichéd movies you’ll ever see. There have been a few good Westerns made, though not as many in recent years. Other than The Quick and the Dead, which is kinda recent but still dated, I cant remember the last good Western I saw…..until 3:10 to Yuma, a remake of an old Western that hit theaters this past weekend. The original version was made in 1957 and was based on a short story written in 1953 by Elmore Leonard, a legendary American crime fiction author. It’s a movie with plenty of violence and action, yet set on the beautiful frontier in bygone times. The story centers on rancher Dan Evans (Christian Bale), who will lose his land to the coming raileroad unless he pays off massive debts on the land with money he doesn’t have. To earn that money, he agrees to be part of a group escorting the outlaw Ben Wade (Russell Crowe) to Yuma to board a prison train. Wade has numerous chances to kill Evans but doesn’t because even though he’s an outlaw, he operates on a sort of honor code when it comes to who he kills. I won't spoil any more of the plot for you, but over all it’s a well done film that has a gritty, real quality to it that makes it thoroughly enjoyable. The film was the top box officer earner for the weekend, taking in a modest $14.1 million. (Side note: Superbad was third with $8 million, which was enough to put it over the $100 million mark.) Sadly, 3:10 seems doomed for a disappointing run, as most of its audience thus far has been in the 50+ age bracket, not the ideal demographic for an action movie. I think it’s because many of those people remember the original 3:10 to Yuma and thus wanted to see the remake, but I’m surprised that not a lot of people from younger age groups wanted to see a Russell Crowe flick. No, he’s not Heath Ledger, Orlando Bloom or Johnny Depp, but Crowe still knows how to drink, brawl and chase chicks like those guys and he’s a good actor, so I’d suggest you give this movie a chance, you won't be disappointed.
- Kudos to Britney Spears for living down to expectations with her performance at the MTV Video Music Awards last night. Thankfully I didn’t watch that debacle of an awards show (although with MTV’s re-air rate for awards shows, I’ll have another 1,455 chances between now and Halloween), but I did see a few still images of Spears’ performance and also a über-brief audio snippet of her act and…..wow. Feel free to mix in a salad and cut down from five or six breakfast burritos and sausage biscuits with gravy to one or two, Brit. And before you criticize me to mocking someone’s physical appearance, first I recommend that you take a look at the pictures yourself and then I remind you that when someone wears the kind of revealing, gawd-awful outfit that Spears sported last night, they are fair game for any sort of analysis on their appearance that anyone can come up with. This is a lot more than a girl simply filling out as she grows up, this is a case of packing on the pregnancy pounds for two kids, adding on to that and then attempting some haphazard effort to get into better shape while still eating like a high school wrestler trying to pack on the pounds and move up a weight class for the big meet. Brit, you need to realize that with the abominable crap-ola you call music coming out of your mouth, well, actually coming out of the speakers as you lip sync to it, you had better look really hot if you expect anyone to want to see you perform. If you show up looking like you do right now, you’re nothing more than an out-of-shape, talent-deprived loser who might actually be more musically offensive than an American Karaoke contestant. Shape up or get lost, Spears, because as long as you’re flabby you’ve got no real skills at all.
- If you live in the San Francisco Bay area, I have a strong recommendation for you on one handyman that you should never, ever, under any circumstances hire. His name is Percy Honnibal, and there’s a very simple yet powerful reason not to hire him. It seems Percy, a 51-year-old carpenter from Oakland, has a predilection for plying his craft, um, in the nude. He was recently acquitted by Alameda County Superior Court Judge Julie Conger on charges of indecent exposure after he was spotted building cabinets in the nude at a home where he had been hired to work. The judge ruled that he wasn’t guilty of a crime because he wasn’t acting lewdly or seeking sexual gratification, which of course makes the emotional scarring for anyone who had to see him in that state any less awful. Percy needs to take a cue from one particular episode of Seinfeld where Jerry’s girlfriend liked to hang out naked around the apartment, but when he tried to prove that it bothered him by doing carpentry (specifically, sanding the floor) in the nude, she explained to him that there’s good naked and bad naked, and doing home improvement work in the nude is bad naked. Same goes for you, Percy. And no, I don’t care that you think it’s ok because it’s more comfortable working that way and it keeps your clothes clean. Bro, you’re a carpenter, if you’re worried about clean clothes, you’ve chosen the wrong profession. Also, the great thing about clothes is that they can be washed and you can also put on some less expensive, older clothes that you don’t mind getting dirty if that’s a problem. Plus, I can’t imagine that you sit down and explain to homeowners that you’ll be working naked before you start a job, because if that were the case, the only place I can see you finding steady work is at nudist colonies as a handyman. If you did explain your little perversion to prospective customers, I suspect that your carpentry career would have ended the same day it began. At least put some pants on, because there are plenty of carpentry and construction workers who might take their shirt off from time to time. Just don’t let the fact that you were acquitted in this case give you the impression that what you’re doing is acceptable, because it’s really not.
- Normally in divorce proceedings where one spouse is looking to jam the other, that spouse will claim that their partner was unfaithful to them and had an affair with someone else. Occasionally a sleazeball husband r wife will have foold around with more than one person, maybe two or three. It’s rare that someone is such a slut that she’s suspected of having cheated on her husband with eleven different men, but such is the case with country singer and former Dancing With the (D-List) Stars contestant Sara Evans. Craig Schleske, Evans former husband, has asked in a court filing that Evans admit to having had affairs or romantic relationships with just shy of a dozen men, including members of her band, singer (I use that erm loosely) Kenny Chesney, Richard Marx, member of the band 3 Doors Down and her former DWTDLS partner Tony Dovolani. So basically, she’s being accused of 1) being a whore, 2) having crappy taste in music and 3) being a rock groupie. Not only is a Kenny Chesney and 3 Doors Down concert one I’d pay not to see, it’s apparently the ideal place for Evans to find her next hookup. Evans hasn’t responded to the filing yet, but honestly I don’t know how you do respond to that. It’s one thing to deny that you cheated with one person, but when the number is alleged to be two shy of a baker’s dozen, it’s hard to argue that your ex is just being crazy and jealous and making things up. I guess the silver lining here is that with Evans now single, she has 11 solid choices in the search for her next husband……
No comments:
Post a Comment