- This would be one of those stories that makes you incredibly nauseous whether you’re a parent or not. You don’t need to be a parent to be repulsed upon hearing that a series of raids by federal law enforcement authorities resulted in the removal of 21 juveniles from sex-selling rings. Those figures were announced by the FBI announced Wednesday, along with other tallies from sweeps conducted in 16 cities nationwide over the past five days. “Our top priority in these cases has always been to identify children victims and move swiftly to remove them from these dangerous environments,” FBI Director Robert Mueller said. Amen to that. You find a perv who has anything to do with child prostitution, go ahead and bust them. Arrest first, ask question after you’ve attached electrodes to the most sensitive parts of their body and cranked up the voltage. According to Mueller, this week’s sweeps bring to 433 the number of child victims recovered in the five years since the FBI began its “Innocence Lost” initiative. The program was designed to combat the epidemic underage prostitution. What is truly disgusting about in cases like this, boys as young as 11 and girls as young as 12 are often targeted by prostitution rings. Among the cities where raids were carried out this week are Los Angeles, Sacramento, Oakland, Las Vegas, Reno Phoenix, Houston, Dallas, Texas, Detroit, Boston, Atlanta, Miami and Tampa. My sympathies if you live in one of those cities and have been sharing it with these pervs, that sucks. Some crimes you can defend, some crimes are not a big deal….those statements don’t apply here. I sincerely hope that if the people arrested in these stings involving juveniles are in fact guilty that they are thrown into prison with the most vicious, sodomizing inmates we have in our prison system.
- New York Jets tight end Chris Baker recently parked in the designated parking spot of team president Mike Tannenbaum to show his unhappiness with his contract situation and how the team was handling it. On Seinfeld, George Costanza had sex on his desk with the cleaning lady at one of his many jobs and when fired for the indiscretion, asked “Was that wrong?” Never did I think that I would look at those two as model employees…not until I heard the story of Houston Astros pitcher Shawn Chacon. Chacon is a mediocre veteran pitcher for a bad team, a guy who is a No. 3 starter at best. He hasn’t had a great season, going 2-3 with a 5.04 ERA in 15 starts. In light of that performance, the team demoted him from the starting rotation to the bullpen. Chacon didn’t take kindly to the demotion and earlier this week, he got into an altercation with GM Ed Wade in the dining room at a team meal. According to Chacon, Wade was verbally attacking him and cursing him, the message being to “look in the mirror”. Chacon’s response? Grabbing Wade by the neck and throwing him to the floor, of course. For whatever reason, the team didn’t appreciate having the 19th or 20th best player on a 25-man roster assaulting its top executive and the team has suspended Chacon indefinitely. Wade says the suspension will last until the Astros make a final determination on Chacon’s status on the roster (see here outright release). If that’s me, I’m going to go ahead and accept the demotion to the bullpen. At worst, I’m going right back at the GM when he’s cussing me out and I’m firing verbal salvos back at him. That would get you into trouble, just not as much trouble as felony assault. Trust me, I’ve worked for some real a-holes and choking them would have been a very welcome alternative many times, but it was simply never on the table as I tend to reject criminal activity as means to satisfy that sort of dispute. Good thinking, Shawn, I’m sure other teams will be lining up to sign you and your 5.04 ERA once the Astros cut you loose….
- Kanye West, the most arrogant, egotistical man in music, is at it again. Fresh off a disastrous, über-late performance at the Bonnaroo Music Festival, West has been ripped for taking the stage nearly two hours late and inciting fans to pelt the stage with garbage and glow sticks and spray paint derogatory messages about him on the back of portable toilets at the festival site. He basically lived up to a line from his most recent hit “Stronger” which says in part, “you should be honored by my lateness.” In other words, be grateful that I ever bother to show up at all, mo-fo, that’s how great I am. Bonnaroo attendees didn’t agree, nor do the many critics who are ripping West for his act at the festival. For his part, K. West is acting like a spoiled brat, saying on his blog that the flak he's taken has left him “the most offended I've ever been.” Sorry K., but when your performance at a festival was scheduled for 2:45 a.m. and you didn't take the stage until 4:25 a.m. due to circumstances that can be mostly attributed to you, you deserve to be ripped. The delay was caused by problems setting up West's elaborate stage set, which included an interplanetary landscape of a wavy black platform and a video screen above. To be fair, part of the delay can be traced to rockers Pearl Jam, who had performed on the main stage earlier that evening, and went an hour over their scheduled time. Still, if West could just perform without a freaking circus of lights, video screen and props, he could have been on stage much earlier. When you walk into a place like the Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival, which traditionally has favored jam bands, you need to realize that you’re not exactly the kind of act people want to see. Thus, your pompous, self-aggrandizing stage act might lead to “Kanye sucks” chants and criticism from fellow musicians like pedal steel guitarist Robert Randolph, who played later the same day. West didn’t help matters by complaining that he was “dealing with ... idiots who didn't really have the capacity to really put on this show properly.” Good job, K., that’ll win people over. Call them idiots, see if that helps. If you had just performed when originally scheduled (8:15 p.m. the night of June 14), and not demanded that your set be moved later in the evening so it was sufficiently dark for your “glow-in-the-dark” performance. To be fair, I like some of Kanye’s music and he’s one of the few hip-hop artists in my iPod. That being said, I would have been pissed and looking for something to throw at him if I had to wait two hours for his set as well. Take your butt-ugly fly’s eyes sunglasses and get lost, K. West. See if you can’t take a trip to a place where you can acquire a little humility, jerk.
- Fear not, fans of 24 who have waited two years for a new season and were alarmed when cast member and Scotsman Robert Carlyle stated that the two hours covered by this November's 24 prequel movie will count toward Season 7's episode count. “This is two hours in real time,” he said, “and there'll then be 22 episodes.” Proving that you shouldn’t believe the statements of someone who doesn’t know what they’re talking about, Fox confirmed that Day 7 indeed will be the usual 24 episodes/hours and that the TV movie won't count toward that time. Something else Carlyle said was that the final moments of the prequel will feed right into the opening scenes of Season 7, but once again, he appears to be off base. The prequel itself picks up four years after the events of Day 6, which ended with Jack staring off a cliff outside of James and Audrey Heller’s house in Malibu, looking out to the Pacific below. This effectively places Jack Bauer in the year 2017, if you do the math. He’ll then advance another few on-screen months between the movie's sure-to-be-thrilling climax and Jack's appearance before Congress. At the start of Season 7. In other TV news, the rectangle has become a triangle on One Tree Hill. As last season ended, Lucas (Chad Michael Murray) was on the phone inviting an unidentified female companion to elope to Las Vegas with him. One of the potential leading ladies was supposed to be Lindsey, played by Michaela McManus. Since McManus is now joining the cast of NBC's Law & Order: Special Victims Unit as the new assistant district attorney, effective with this fall’s Season 10, let’s go ahead and assume she wasn’t the one on the other end of that phone call. Kinda takes a lot of suspense out of the OTH plot, but then again, can’t imagine that a lot of people were spending their summer debating that cliffhanger anyhow….
- I have to admit, I am excitedly looking forward to the reported May 2011 release date for Spider-Man 4. By “excitedly looking forward” I of course mean that I’m hoping it doesn’t totally blow as much as Spider-Man 3 did. Let’s face it, this is a franchise that has gotten steadily worse as it went from a fantastic first movie to a good second one to subpar third installment. Now the fourth incarnation of Spidey is a go and being eyed for that May 2011 release date, which should give Sam Raimi and Co. time to analyze the many, many things they did wrong in the last film. (Hint: Too many villains, too many storylines and too much going on that detracted from the main plot. One of the franchise’s staple characters, J.K. Simmons (aka J. Jonah Jameson), had this to say. “Nobody’s signed anything on any dotted lines and I don't think there's an actual script yet, but as we all know [that’s "just" a detail]," Simmons told tvguide.com. “In films, they work backwards. They announce that Spider-Man 4 will open on, say, Memorial Day 2011, they start the marketing campaign from there, and at some point they’ll write and cast the movie.” Aside from making sure that Tobey Maguire is on board and ensuring that Raimi signs on to direct one more time, the unresolved question everyone is buzzing about is who will be the villain in No. 4. Will it be Lizard (Dylan Baker has played Dr. Curt Connor twice, in Parts 2 and 3), could it be Vulture or might it be Kraven? Honestly, unless the script and plot improve dramatically from Spider-Man 3, it doesn’t freaking matter who the villain is, so let’s focus on that first, k?
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