- Gotta hand it to those wacky Belgian fishermen, because no way would I have come up with what they came up with as a means of protest and social dissidence. These forward-thinking fishermen handed out a ton of free fish during a protest against a rise in fuel prices at Belgium’s main fishing port. “This could continue,” said Emiel Brouckaert, a spokesman for the fishermen, “The costs of running a boat are no longer covered by our earnings. A lot of fishermen are in the red.” So you’re giving fish away and that’s going to make things better how? But far be it from me to shoot down any act of protest, no matter how economically flawed it may be. However, the disruptive punch of this particular action was magnified when French fishermen simultaneously disrupted maritime traffic and blocked an oil refinery, involved 300 to 400 people and the whole protest occurred peacefully over about two hours, a police spokeswoman said. Again with the French as a part of social activism and protest, I like this trend. The Belgian fishermen, who gathered together after a call from several unions, aren’t done either. They cautioned that more action may come if their demands were not taken into account. The movement’s genesis came in France began on May 10 in Atlantic ports near La Rochelle and quickly spread to northern France and the Mediterranean after diesel prices soared to 75 cents a liter, compared with 40 cents in November. The actions of the fishermen in Belgium look to be inspiring others as well, which is always a hugely positive consequence of any protest. Portuguese fishermen plan to follow their French counterparts by staging a national strike in protest at the high price of fuel, union and industry officials said. The strike would begin on Friday, May 30. So while the price of seafood in Europe might be taking a hit because of this, I’m not a big fan of seafood nor am I currently residing in Europe, so it’s cool with me. Besides, it’s social dissidence, it’s striking out against perceived inactivity and unresponsiveness of government, so dam straight I’m down with it. Make The Man pay for what he’s doing (or not doing, as the case may be), that’s one of the rules I live my life by…..
- God bless the Boston Celtics and Los Angeles Lakers. With the NBA on the verge of a nightmare Finals matchup between two teams that everyone outside of their respective cities are tired of and who have matched up in forgettable finals before in the Detroit Pistons and San Antonio Spurs, the Celtics and Lakers have both grabbed big wins early on in series against the Pistons and Spurs, respectively, and appear to be well on the way to preventing that atrocious Pistons-Spurs series. After the Celtics and Pistons split the first two games of their series in Boston, they traveled to Detroit where all the idiotic “experts” in the media were sure that Boston couldn’t win because they were 0-6 on the road in the playoffs. By their reasoning, the Pistons were the team to beat and there was nothing Boston could do about it. Well, nothing other than a 14-point bitch-slapping of the Pistons in Detroit in Game 3. In spite of the Pistons coming back to win Game 4 and tie the series at 2-2, you have to like Boston’s chances with two of the series’ final three games, including Game 7 if necessary, are in Boston. The Lakers-Spurs series has gotten off to a great start as well for those of us wanting neither the Pistons nor the Spurs in the Finals. In Game 1 in L.A., San Antonio jumped out to a 20-point third-quarter lead before the Lakers surged back and ripped the game by an 89-85 margin. That was followed by a 101-71 beatdown in Game 2 that left the Spurs in a 2-0 hole. Now we get to hear all of those tired, inaccurate clichés about how you have to knock out the defending champ (which the Spurs are) in order to be the champ. Allow me a moment to debunk that moronic myth, if you will. In sports, being the defending chap doesn’t mean sh*t the next season. Winning last year’s title doesn’t give you a 20-point head start in games the next year, nor does it give you an automatic one-game lead in a playoff series the next season. You win the title in 2007, the relevance of that title ends once the 2008 season begins. So it means absolutely nothing tangible that the Spurs won last year’s NBA title. That’s doubly true in pro sports, where rosters see such extensive turnover from season to season. The team that won last year’s championship isn't the same team that’s playing this year. Even if most of the same players are there, all of them are a year older and have changed to some extent. Other teams aren’t the same either, so the landscape around a defending champion has changed as well. But back to my previous point, the point being that until the Spurs are eliminated, analysts and pundits will ply those same lame clichés about needing to defeat them to prove that you are the real champ. Thankfully the Lakers hold a 2-1 lead in the series and have the best player in the NBA in Kobe Bryant, so it’s only a matter of time before they win the series anyhow. So thanks to the Lakers and Celtics for helping us avoid the total abortion of a Finals that Spurs-Pistons would have been.
- Greek continued a great sophomore season last night, providing another fun episode that has me thinking that of all the shows I’ve watched this season, I think I just might have the most fun and laughs with this one. Not saying it’s the best show on TV, but it’s consistently fun and delivers a lot of laughs. This week, the laughs came as the Omega Chi’s and Kappa Tau’s raced to throw the first big party on campus since the administration lifted the burdensome restrictions on the campus Greek system. The Omega Chi’s had a distinct advantage because they actually planned their party out and had money to spend on booze, two luxuries the KT’s didn’t have. While the Omega Chi’s invited the six best frats and sororities on campus to their parties, the KT’s were left to scrounge up a few dollars for three kegs and alcohol-free Jell-O shots, which led to a predictable lame party. Cappie won't settle for his party to flop, so he leads his small band of KT brothers and partygoers to the Omega Chi house where they proceed to steal a crap load of alcohol and haul it back to the KT house to jumpstart their own party. The Omega Chi-Kappa Tau party showdown also divides the sisters at the Zeta Beta house, where president Casey accepts the Omega Chi’s invitation while her little sis Rebecca and a few of the pledges want to attend the KT party thrown by Rebecca’s boyfriend Cappie. To solve the dispute, Casey assigns Rebecca and her pal Mandy to be the sober sisters for the night, theoretically restricting them to a night at the ZBZ house alone. Rebecca, being the spoiled, disagreeable rich girl she is, won't stand for that and leads a pledge revolt by going to the KT party with Mandy and several other pledges. Casey realizes what they’ve done when Betsy, one of the ZBZ sisters, gets hammered at the Omega Chi party and no one answers her calls to the ZBZ house for a sober sister to come get her. This continues a series of interruptions for Casey’s fun at the party even on a night when she and BFF Ashleigh agree to talk to as many cute guys as possible. Ashleigh succeeds on her mission but Casey finds her new strategy of sending out positive energy and having guys come to her to be a bad idea. She is constantly interrupted by Calvin, who Evan Chambers has tasked to keep her from talking to other guys so he can try to get back together with her. When the one guy at the party Casey really wants to talk to, Ryan, does approach her, she’s busy talking to him when Betsy stumbles up to them and Casey has to deal with her drunk sister. She takes Betsy to the KT party and tries to leave her with Rebecca, who refuses and starts a big argument with Casey. Meanwhile, Betsy pukes all over the floor at the KT house and Casey ends up walking her home anyhow. During the walk, she’s met by Ryan, the guy she spent most of the Omega Chi party talking to. She’s thrilled when he kisses her but repulsed when he then tries to basically eat her face and shove his tongue halfway down he throat on the second kiss. Casey’s little brother Rusty was busy with a problem of his own throughout the episode, that problem being his “fun” buddy Tina. Once Rusty realizes Tina wants him for little more than sex, he gets cold feet and decides that he can’t be a part of that kind of arrangement. Instead of the usual setup where a guy wants just sex and the girl wants more, the tables were flipped and after a deluge of phone calls throughout the episode and advice from Cappie, Beaver and two random strangers at each of the parties, Rusty gets help from two frat brothers who send Tina a text message from Rusty’s phone to break things off with Tina. In return, she informs him that she has crabs, meaning he’s getting a not-so-nice parting gift from their little fling. Rusty’s pal Calvin is having romantic trouble of his own, trying to have a date with his new pal Michael at the Omega Chi party while also running interference for Evan, trying to keep guys from talking to Casey. At night’s end, despite Michael not being the least bit comfortable at the party, he and Calvin share a kiss and appear to be finally getting their relationship going. Blessedly absent from this episode is the wet-blanket, one-note, one-dimensional downer that is Dale. That meant a nice lack of religious clichés, anti-fun sentiment and the outright prudishness that is all the character depth the show’s writers and producers seem to want to give to the character. Next week’s episode will be the last one before the season finale and it will feature Rusty getting into a fine mess thanks to a fake ID he uses at a local bar that ends up with a case of mistaken identity and him at a wedding singing. Should be a blast, so until then….
- Never before have I attempted a three-pronged Albums to Avoid feature, so give me a little room as I try it here. This week, three albums you’ll want to steer clear of for three very different reasons are out. One is in a genre that is easily in the running for worst genre in the history of music, country, right up along with disco, polka, mainstream pop and techno. The second one you’ll want to avoid because it’s basically your typical train wreck, vanity project album by a bored actor/actress who has always harbored a desire to record an album and now feels validated to do so because they are rich and famous. Lastly, there’s an album that manages to suck despite being in a good genre because it is the lowest level of the particular genre. Let’s start with the easy one here, the country album. It’s the one I told you about just a few days ago, the effort by Dancing With the (D-List) Stars professional dancer Julianne Hough. Her country-pop effort is every bit as bad as I feared it would be, probably worse. It contains songs about bad country music clichés like alcoholism and mostly sounds like its theme is a rip-off of a bad, chick-flick made-for-TV movie on the Lifetime network. Hough’s vocals are mediocre at best and even though she hired a songwriter who penned many songs for former American Karaoke-er Carrie Underwood (yeah, that’s a great formula for a winning album) and brought in a lot of guest vocalists, this album blows with a capital “B”. The vanity project that’s an Album to Avoid comes from Scarlett Johannson, who proves that having a nice rack and being a decent actress don’t help you when making an album. Johannson attempts to cover for her lack of musical ability by enlisting help from David Bowie, TV on the Radio’s David Sitek and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ Nick Zinner, but those assists only underscore how bad Johannson is musically. The songs are all over the map stylistically and there is no discernable style or coherence. Whether it’s a terrible tune like No One Knows I’m Gone (and no one would care if your album was gone or never existed in the first place, Scarlett) or the whiny, wistful I Wish I Was in New Orleans (why don’t you go there and take your album with you, maybe sink it to the bottom of the nearest bayou), this is one of the worst albums ever in a genre where no shortage of crap-tacular records have been made. The third Album to Avoid is a rock album, so you maybe be surprised that I, of all people, am ripping it. But then again, it is a classic example of arena rock at its worst from Three Doors Down, a band that typifies all that is wrong with arena rock as a genre. Their polished, slick rock sound, radio-friendly lyrics and lack of actual texture and individuality to their lyrics put them in a category where, even though they’re a step above crappy mainstream pop music, they’re still all but unlistenable. They’re the band that mainstream pop fans listen to when they’re trying to pretend that they have an edge and are cool. When you hear songs like Train and It’s the Only One You’ve Got typify this problem, sounding like they were written more to be played on radio and in commercials than to actually be good music. Already It’s Not My Time is a mainstream radio favorite, its poppy riff and sappy chorus perfect fits for faux rock fans everywhere. So there you have it folks, three Albums to Avoid in one single paragraph, you’re very welcome.
- Ah, the sweet scent of the political process at its best, a country sitting on the verge of a runoff election to determine who will be its leader and shape the direction of the nation for the next few years….and of course the opposition candidate delaying his return to the country because of an alleged military execution plot against him while his supporters beaten and killed by the party currently in power as they look to continue their reign of terror. Such is life in Zimbabwe, where opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai finally made it back to his home country late last week, a week after he was originally scheduled to come back because his party believed him to be the target of an assassination plot by the country’s military, under the leader of the country’s dictatorial current president, the loathsome Robert Mugabe. The 84-year-old Mugabe has led Zimbabwe since the country gained its independence from Britain in 1980, but he and Tsvangirai are set now set for a June 27 runoff election to determine the future of Zimbabwe. Furthermore, good ol’ Bob Mugabe doesn’t appear willing to leave the decision in the hands of actual voters - unless those hands are chopped from their dead, lifeless bodies and dragged to the polls where they are used to write his name on the ballot. Tsvangirai is breaking out the heavy artillery in a linguistic sense, saying that, “Mugabe once led our people to freedom. He can even now set his people free from poverty, hunger and fear” by stepping down. Could? Absolutely. Will and have the integrity and testicular fortitude to? No. Mugabe is not interested in what’s really best for Zimbabwe, he’s interested first and foremost in retaining his power and then maybe getting around to doing what he and only he believes is in the best interest of Zimbabwe. He already lost this election once and proceeded to wreck the election results to the point that this second election was necessary. Fortunately for Zimbabweans, this time the rest of the world will be watching…..
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