- The leadership may have (allegedly) changed in Cuba, but the story of the country’s athletes traveling abroad and looking to defect remains the same. For years, Cuban athletes traveling to the United States or pretty much any other country that isn’t governed by a horrendous dictator have looked to defect in large numbers the instant they land in that foreign country. Now that Fidel Castro has theoretically stepped down as the dictator in Cuba, you may have wondered if that trend would change. The answer would be no. The day after five members of Cuba's under-23 national soccer team left their hotel with the intention of defecting, two more players disappeared Wednesday night. The team is in Tampa for Olympic qualifying tournament and the original five defectors -- Jose Manuel Miranda, Erlys Garcia Baro, Yenier Bermudez, Yordany Alvarez and Loanni Prieto -- left Tuesday after a 1-1 draw against the United States. Then, teammate Yendry Diaz told ESPN International on the phone that he and Eder Roldan also had left the Cuban team. According to Diaz, he and Roldan intend to join their fellow defector teammates in Lake Worth, Fla. “We're fine, calm, feeling hopeful about our new lives,” Bermudez stated in an interview. “Of course, we're nervous because we're young, have no family here, and we don't yet know the way of life here, but we hope the Cuban and American communities will help us get started.” Loosely translated, assume that statement means: “We wanted to get the hell out of Cuba and this was our best chance. We don’t care where we live, just as long as it’s not there.” These guys had barely made it back to the hotel when they got away and bought a cell phone, contacted a lawyer and then celebrated with a Cuban meal. If you have any doubt that they have what it takes to succeed here in America, check out this spin job by Bermudez in trying to smooth over he and his comrades’ defection from Cuba. “Of course, my heart will be in Cuba with my family, but I want to have the freedom to better my life, to play professional soccer, to be the best I can be, and for that we had to make this sacrifice," Bermudez said. “The key now is to get the legal paperwork out of the way as quickly as possible so we can get on with our plans.” Good one, Y. That sure sounds nice, but it’s not about where your heart is, it’s about where the rest of your body is, and that would be the U.S. You may miss your family back in Cuba and they may now get the screws put to them by the Cuban government, but clearly being with them was not as important as being free of Cuban oppression. Not saying I blame you, I just don’t believe your weepy sob story. But hey, things are looking up for you because Luiz Muzzi, general manager of United Soccer League club Miami FC, has already said that he plans on hosting a tryout for the seven defectors next week after being was contacted by a friend of the players’. “I watched their game against the U.S. on TV, and I thought the Cuban team played very well,” Muzzi said. “We were kind of scouting that game because anytime a Cuban team comes to the United States, there's a chance someone might defect.” Either “a chance” or a 99.9 percent chance, L. Welcome to America, Cuban soccer players. However, you should have done more research and defected to a country that actually gives a crap about the sport you play.
- Bureaucratic red tape is holding up Michael Vick’s state trial on dogfighting charges. Vick, who already plead guilty to federal charges of gambling and other activities related to, but not including, the dogfighting ring he and three friends ran, is currently in federal prison out in Leavenworth, Kan. State officials in Virginia are looking to extract their piece of Vick’s hide, but their quest has been put on hold. Vick was scheduled to stand trial on April 2, but the trial has been delayed because of the logistics of transporting the Vick and co-defendants Quanis Phillips and Purnell Peace back to Virginia, which is the responsibility of the local prosecutor's office. The Surry County Commonwealth Attorney's office says no new date has been set yet and that the official rescheduling of the trial will occur on March 25. Right now, Vick is serving a 23-month federal prison term in Leavenworth. His trial postponement came after officials had already delayed the state trials of Phillips and Peace. All three pleaded guilty to federal charges of conspiring to run an interstate dogfighting operation on land owned by Vick, but the state case will focus on different aspects of their operation. Color me sadistic, but I’m rooting for Vick, Peace and Phillips to get hit up for additional jail time at the state level. These three are despicable, low-life jerks who didn’t have the decency to treat animals in a humane fashion and don’t deserve any leniency from the justice system. Give them the max sentence allowable for their crime and keep them away from the rest of society as long as possible. Trust me, the rest of us will be better off for it.
- Every now and then, you hear about obscure, bizarre laws like people not being allowed to have lawn gnomes in their yard, being prohibited from having blinds on their windows or shopping for fish on Thursday because of an obscure local ordinance. Those laws are often outdated and forgotten, but on rare occasions you find an entire country having a legal faux paus that permits a horrible practice instead of prohibiting it. Such is the case in Britain, where authorities investigated more then 400 forced marriages last year and are trying to determine whether dozens of girls who vanished from school rosters were among those forced into wedded bliss/distress. They’re investigating, yes, but the fact is that in Britain, it is still legal to force someone into a marriage. There is no law forbidding the practice, which is as outdated and archaic a legal standard as I can possibly imagine. What century is this anyhow, the 21st or the 15th? Forced marriage is legal? Are you also beheading people convicted of serious crimes or having them put to death by a firing squad comprised of dudes with arrows? he only way the practice of forced marriage becomes cause for police involvement in Britain is when criminal practices such as abuse, assault, rape and murder are involved. You may want to shore up that part of your legal code, Brits, so you can join the rest of us in the year 2008.
- Don’t believe that skanky pop-tart singers are interchangeable, worthless parts? Then maybe you can explain how Saturday Night Live was able to trade one aging skank singer, the flu-ridden Janet Jackson, for another aging, skank singer in Mariah Carey and not miss a beat in preparing for tonight’s show. Jackson was supposed to perform one of the crappy songs from the absolute piece of garbage that is her new album Discipline, but she’s been ill lately and according to her publicist she “needs time to get better.” Funny, but I think the same can be said for anyone who had the misfortune of hearing even one minute of one song from that album. SNL used to be a relevant show and all, but having overrated tramps like Jackson on is not the way to make a comeback. Of course, SNL has never had high standards for its musical acts, even if they do manage to snag a good one every now and then. But it’s always nice to know that if one of your pop-tarts goes sick in the middle of the week, you can find another one to replace her without much trouble. After all, their music is pretty much the same homogenized, over-produced crap, so sliding one of them in to take the place of another should be easy.
- Dorks, losers and pale, pasty, basement-dwelling nerds rejoice! You all are the idiots dressing up in Harry Potter costumes and waiting outside of bookstores in inclement weather at midnight on days when new books in the fictional wizard series are released, so I’m sure each and every one of you is thrilled with news that the final book in the series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Swallows, will be made into not one, but two movies. Because the book was so long and expansive, producers decided that there was just too much content for one film, a la Quentin Tarantino and the Kill Bill movies. “It was born out of purely creative reasons,” explained producer David Heyman. “Unlike every other book, you cannot remove elements of this book.” The films are set for release in 2010 and 2011, respectively, which will give costumed losers everywhere not one, but two chances to get in their wizard gear despite the fact that they are 30, 40 or 50 years old and make punch lines of themselves by camping out at their local multiplex for days on end so they can be the first ones to see these films. Those scenes are 2-3 years away and already I feel sorry for these dorks. Oh well, at least I can take solace in knowing that this is the last book in the series, meaning this is the last time we’ll have to worry about this problem.
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