- Like me, I’m sure you often wonder just what the Costa Rican economy is founded upon. What industries drive the economic success of such a pivotal country in this world? As it turns out, the answer, at least in part, is the selling of babies. Yes, in Costa Rica you can find baby-selling rings where new mothers are paid for their infants. Just this week Costa Rican police detained 14 people, including a family court judge and a lawyer, on suspicion of taking part in an operation in which mothers received payments in order to give up their babies. Police estimate that adopting couples paid an average of $10,000 to purchase a child, possibly less if they had a coupon or went for a 2-for-1 special. Ok, so I’m kidding about the coupons and discount pricing, but the rest of it is true. With a corrupt judge and lawyer in the fold, this scheme was apparently a pretty well concocted one. Of course, when you have that kind of money regularly changing hands and oh yeah, newborns are with their birth parents one day and gone the next, replaced by a nice new car or maybe some new living room furniture, people may get a tad suspicious. But nice try, Costs Rican baby retailers, you really are something….something despicable, but still something…..
- If UCLA is going to get this kind of help in the NCAA Tournament, you may as well just hand them the national championship trophy right now. Earlier this week, the Bruins got a phantom foul call in a pivotal game against Stanford that gave UCLA a shot at two game-tying free throws when trailing Stanford by two points with less than three seconds left in the game. The home victory allowed UCLA to clinch the Pac-10 regular-season title, but the men in stripes weren’t doing giving the Bruins extra help to pull out “miraculous” wins. Today, as the Cal Golden Bears were about to knock off UCLA, another contest that took place on UCLA’s home court at Pauley Pavilion, the zebras intervened. After UCLA freshman sensation Kevin Love hit a contested three-point shot with about 17 second left in the game to bring UCLA within one point at 80-79, Cal was inbounding the ball in the far corner of the backcourt. Two UCLA players trapped the Cal ball handler and hacked him severely, forcing the ball loose and out of bounds. The problems here are twofold: 1) both UCLA players fouled on the play, and 2) even without a foul call, the ball looked to go out of bounds off of a UCLA player. Of course, those two facts didn’t stop the refs from refusing to call a foul and then giving the ball to the Bruins. After that, divine intervention seemed to take over, because with less than two seconds left, UCLA’s Josh Shipp drove the right baseline, threw up a garbage layup attempt that actually left his hand from behind the backboard, floated upwards over the top corner of the glass and dropped through the hoop. Game, set, match. Thanks to the zebras, UCLA escaped with a win it didn’t deserve for the second time in a week. Let’s just hope that come March Madness, this kind of help isn’t available to them….
- One quick TV note for you…..with a lot of shows either already done for the season thanks to the %^$^$%^$! writers’ strike (including great shows like Prison Break and Heroes, damn you writers!) and others featuring only hit-and-miss, once-in-a-while new episodes (yeah, I’m looking at you, Smallville), the return of a promising newcomer from last year is a bright spot on the bleak TV landscape. Greek, the college-centric drama on ABC Family that got off to a great start in 2007 will return on March 24 with 10 new episodes. To refresh your memory in case you can’t think all the way back to last September when Greek wrapped up its first season, the show left off with the campus of fictitious Cyprus Rhodes University (located in Ohio) embroiled in controversy when Jen K., girlfriend of one of the show’s main characters, loveable dork Rusty, exposed the campus’s Greek system as corrupt and shady after spending a semester pretending to be a pledge at a sorority while actually doing an undercover piece for the campus paper. Rusty broke things off because he felt betrayed and every frat and sorority on campus was up in arms, including Zeta Beta, the sorority led by Rusty’s sister Casey. She also had her own personal drama, torn between blue-blooded boyfriend Evan Chambers and her former flame, the goofy, charming, man of a thousand majors, Cappie. So this new season will pick up around that point, and as with any show returning for a new season, I’m sure there’ll be a few new characters to get to know. So mark it down, Monday, March 24, 8 p.m………..
- Ding, ding, ding. We have a winner! For the past few months, the near-publication of a parenting book by America’s worst mother, Lynne Spears - mother of train wreck Britney and knocked-up 16-year-old Jamie Lynn - has held the top spot as both the most ironic and most moronic idea ever conceived. It’s held that dual distinction without much of a challenge, other than new reality shows like My Dad Is Better Than Your Dad. Now, Lynne Spears and her now-dead book have been bumped from the top spot in both polls by none other than Dina Lohan, gravy-training mother of America’s favorite lush, Lindsey. Dina isn’t happy with just creating an enabling the debacle that is her posing-nude, drug-and-booze-addicted, club-hopping eldest daughter. She’s looking to capitalize on Lindsey’s fame by inking a deal with the E! network for her own reality show, Living Lohan, all about Dina’s attempts to wreck the life of her youngest daughter Ali. Well, Dina claims she’s trying to make Ali a star, but we all know how this one ends. The Spears family laid out a pattern for us: older daughter shoots to stardom, acts and dresses like a skank, puts out crappy music, goes to rehab, followed by Mom trying to gravy train off Daughter A and propel Daughter B to her own success. We’ve seen where that’s taken the Spears family; Brit losing custody of her kids to K-Dirt and forgetting how to wear underwear, younger sister knocked up before she could even get her driver’s license. Now, Dina Lohan wants to take her youngest daughter down this path even as her eldest child is well on her way to becoming every bit the spectacle and object of ridicule that Brit has become. If you’re someone who likes to gawk at disasters and revel in their horror, you’ll be able to see this train come off the tracks this summer, only on E! and only if you have nothing better to do than watch a teen girl have her life ruined by her overly ambitious, horrible mother.
- Clearly, there are two things the Afghani people can’t stand - people who are intolerant of other people’s cultures….and the Dutch (a little Austin Powers in Goldmember humor for you). Actually, the Dutch aren’t the only people that Afghans are currently pissed at. The Danes are also feeling the wrath of Afghanistan, with hundreds of angry protestors (one of the more beautiful phrases in any language, angry protestors) burning both the Dutch and Danish flags late this week as part of a demonstration demanding that troops from both nations leave Afghanistan immediately. Burning another country’s flag, always a strong play during a riot. It says, “We despise you enough to torch the symbol representing your entire country, but not enough to kill anyone or cause actual physical harm to someone from your country,” striking just the right balance of anger, indignation and yet moderation. The stimuli for the protest were the reprinting of a cartoon negatively depicting the prophet Muhammad in Denmark and an upcoming Dutch film criticizing the Quran. With Afghanistan being a predominately Muslim country, those things are bound to play poorly. On the bright side, at least there was a riot/protest on foreign soil and no one was pissed at the United States, which doesn’t happen very often nowadays…..
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