- Have you ever dreamt of paying ridiculous sums of money to live in an apartment in the middle of a desert-laden nation inside of a building that moves and changes shapes? I thought maybe you had, so that’s why I’m happy to let you in on the Dynamic Tower, a skyscraper to be built in Dubai by New York-based architect David Fisher of the Dynamic Group. Plans for the skyscraper were announced this week, with the 420-foot tower to be completed by 2010. It will be shape-shifting structure, 80 stories of prefabricated floors that will each be able to lift independently thanks to wind turbines under each floor. It’s the first skyscraper Fisher has designed, which is leading many in the architecture world to doubt his ability to make this happen. If he does, the building will rip would-be tenants off to the tune of $3,000 per square foot, equating to apartments costing between $4 million and $40 million. Why anyone would pay that much to live in a building that can change shape at any time and is located in the middle of a freaking desert, I don’t know. However, if you are both incredibly rich and incredibly stupid and might need a place to live in a couple of years, this is something you may want to look into….
- The Supreme Court has been busy handing down bad decisions and bad news for the past couple weeks, supporting gun enthusiasts, inept, mentally handicapped presidents and the like. That being said, their decision to spare convicted child rapists from the death penalty might be their worst one yet this week. The court determined in the case of Patrick Kennedy, a man convicted of raping his own stepdaughter, that the death penalty can only be applied in murder cases. By a 5-4 vote, the court overturned the death sentence Kennedy had received in 2003 from a lower court. Judge Anthony Kennedy (no relation, although judging by the idiocy of this decision by the court, you have to wonder) wrote in the majority opinion that “evolving standards of decency” in the United States forbid the death penalty being given to non-murderers. He also wrote that doing so would violate the Eighth Amendment, which forbids cruel and unusual punishment. Sorry Supreme Court justices, but I have to agree with the many irate state attorneys general around the country who are ripping your ruling and the various legislators who are vowing to continue passing legislation allowing for death sentences for convicted child rapists. Anyone who does anything that vile to a child deserves severe, severe punishment….
- College baseball isn't one of the premier college sports, so good stories like what the Fresno State baseball team accomplished this season often go unnoticed by all but the most hardcore seamheads. The Bulldogs barely made the NCAA Tournament, having to win their conference tournament to guarantee a bid. They were the fourth seed in their regional out of four teams, meaning that they should expect to be headed home after one weekend. Instead, they spent the next four weeks ripping through nationally ranked teams like San Diego, Arizona State, Rice, North Carolina and Georgia on their way to their first-ever national championship in a men’s sport. They lost 31 games this season, the most ever for an NCAA baseball champion. Six times, they played elimination games that would have ended their season if they had lost. Six times they won, always against “superior” competition. They had their star right fielder playing with torn tendons in his finger that were hampering him to the extent that his coach seriously considered benching him. Yet there was Steve Detweiler in the College World Series’ final game, belting a two-run home run to send his team on their way to the clinching victory. Their top pitcher was out with an arm injury as well and because they had to play so many big games both before and in the CWS, their pitching staff was supposed to be too jacked up to win the best-of-three championship series against the mighty Georgia Bulldogs, ranked eighth in the country. After Fresno State dropped the first game of the title series by surrendering a 6-3 eighth-inning lead, you thought that this might be the time when they had taken too big of a hit to recover from. When they fell behind 5-0 early in Game 2, that looked to be the case. Then they got off the mat, came back and crushed Georgia for a 19-10 win to force the decisive third game. They won that game 6-1, leaving no doubt by jumping out to an early lead and finishing in style. For a team that would be the equivalent of a 13-16 seed in the NCAA basketball tournament, it’s a freaking fairy tale story. Every team they played and beat for a month was ranked higher than they were and had more overall talent. Congrats to a team of scrappers, a roster full of players whose coach says they love adversity, love getting dirty, love running into walls and love people telling them they can’t. This is an awesome story and they are my favorite college sports champion in a long, long time in any sport.
- TLC needs to stop asking what I would do if Joey Fatone or the token black chick from the Spice Girls showed up at my office and asked me to sing. The network is premiering a new show this Sunday that combines the horrors of karaoke with the travesty that is a former man bander and a talentless bubble gum pop skank ambushing people to do karaoke, The Singing Office. The premise is getting groups of office workers to sing and dance against workers from another office, with Fatone coaching one office and the Spice Skank coaching the other one. Here’s my answer for you, TLC: If that tip-frosting, bib-overall wearing, dancing-in-unison-with-four-other-dudes poseur Fatone showed up at my office, I would summarily beat him down with my bare hands and possibly inject his face with every freaking staple I had handy, one for each painful instance when I was unwillingly subjected to the horr-a that he and his boys in N-Town Sync Degrees propagated when they lip-synced one of their crummy bubble-gum pop songs and it was played on the radio in a supermarket, dentist’s office, etc. that I was unfortunate enough to be in. I probably wouldn’t punch the Spice Skank like I would Fatone, but only because she’s a girl and not because the music her group of hacks put out was any better than Fatone’s. So I dare either of those two to show up any place I am and put a microphone in my face, because I guarantee I’ll find a new use for it - sticking it right up their a**………
- Well that was fast. My interested in watching Wimbledon came and went in a matter of a few days. Any desire I had to watch the tournament at tennis’ most historic venue vanished Thursday when my girl Maria Sharapova was eliminated in the tournament’s second round by unseeded Alla Kudryavtseva. Don’t get me wrong, tennis can be fun to watch and there are some other, um, physically gifted players in the women’s game, just none as smoking hot as Sharapova. Her never-ending legs, bitchin’ body and pretty smile can make even the most mundane match a must-see, but with her loss, I have no real reason to watch any more of Wimbledon this year. Maybe I tune in for the men’s final if it ends up being a Roger Federer-Rafael Nadal rematch just to see if Nadal can finally beat Federer on grass, but other than that no thanks. Is there any way we can institute a rule that Sharapova automatically wins at least three matches in every major tournament? That way we’re guaranteed to see her at least four times, which is always a positive. No offense to the Williams sisters, but those two are far too muscled, mannish and chiseled to be fun to watch. They scare the crap out of me and Serena Williams looks more like a linebacker than a tennis player. See you in 2009, Wimbledon, it was a short run this year….
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