Monday, June 23, 2008

Weekend box office news, reasons to be a Chris Baker fan and bad news for ravers

- I have to admit, I’m a huge Chris Baker fan. You may know Baker as a mediocre second-string tight end with the New York Jets, a decent player who is a solid pass catcher but has never amassed more than 500 receiving yards in a season. I, on the other hand, know (and love) him as the player currently embroiled in a bitter contract dispute with the Jets who decided to take things to the next level recently. He had already missed mandatory team workouts and treatment sessions for his injured ankle, but Baker clearly felt those actions weren’t sending the message loudly enough. In order to step it up a notch, Baker parked his red Bentley in the parking spot belonging to team president Mike Tannenbaum at the team’s practice facility. He parked in the spot and team officials had to confront him in the locker room and ask him to move his car. Personally I hope he keeps parking there and when they ask him to move it, he gives them the double middle finger. It’s so awesome to do what he’s doing because this is the kind of in-your-face, rebellious and juvenile crap that everyone talks about doing to their boss when that boss treats them poorly. Everyone talks about it, but next to no one does it. Not Chris Baker, no sir. He followed through and shoved it right in the team’s face. Heck, I think he deserves a new contract on that basis alone, even though his stats don’t warrant it. Good work, Chris, you should be very proud of yourself.

- Police often overstep their bounds, believe it or not. It’s hard to imagine (Rodney King beating) that police could (Amadou Diallo shooting in Brooklyn) ever become excessive in their use of force or their authority, but it’s true. Just such an instance happened recently in Lakeville, Minn., where two officers barged into Troy Molde’s home at 3 a.m. to inform him that his garage door was open, the keys to his truck were in the ignition and the door to his house was ajar. The officers were acting as part of a public service campaign to remind residents to secure their homes to prevent thefts, but the protocol is generally to leave notices on homeowners’ doors. On this occasion, they entered the home and proceeded to move through the living room, where four children under the age of 7 were having a sleepover, then proceeding upstairs to Molde’s bedroom. The police claim their actions were justified because their initial knocks on the door were not answered (at 3 a.m., no one answered? No way.) Molde says he feels “violated” by the incident and I’d have to agree. The cops have no right to enter your home under those circumstances and waking up to find the cops standing over your bed would definitely stick with a person. Keep your doughnut-fueled asses out of citizens homes, Lakeville police officers.

- Most schools don’t have a Get Knocked Up club. A drama club? Yes. Environmental club? Sure. But I quite frankly feel cheated because my school never had a secret club where large numbers of girls got together and made a pact to get knocked up and raise their children together. In fact, Gloucester High School in Gloucester, Mass. is the first school I’ve ever heard of with such a club. According to reports this week, a group of girls at the school actually got together and pledged to become pregnant and then raise their children together. Principal Joseph Sullivan confirmed the allegations, saying the school launched an investigation after 17 of its students, all under the age of 16, turned up pregnant. The school averages four girls a year having babies, but when that number reached 17 the school became curious and their investigation found that nearly half of the pregnant teens were part of this secret club. These girls went to the school nurse multiple times for pregnancy tests and suspiciously, several of them seemed more upset when the test showed they were not pregnant than they were when they learned that they were with child. Some of them actually reacted by dishing out high fives and making plans for baby showers when they got the big news. They were apparently so desperate to get knocked up that one girl got with a 24-year-old homeless man in order to conceive. That’s just pathetic, that you’re so desperate to have a kid that you’ll get after it with a homeless dude. Get ahold of yourself, girls. I get that you might not want to have a child with someone you know and who would feel obligated to help raise and support the child, but a homeless guy? I look forward to you looking back in a few years and realizing that you wrecked your life by deliberately getting pregnant in high school when you could have waited a few years and had a much better experience. Well done, ladies…..

- The inexplicable attack on the products needed to make the world’s most popular illegal drugs continues. After news that a U.S.-backed effort to stamp out coca production in Colombia in 2007 failed miserably, this week we learned that authorities working with Australian police destroyed a ginormous stockpile of 33 tons of safrole-rich oil this week, an oil instrumental in the production of the popular rave drug Ecstasy. According to the authorities, the oil could have been used to produce as many as 245 million tablets of X, with a street value of $7.3 billion. Now where are bounce-pit-loving, glow-stick-wearing, techno-music-dancing ravers going to get their X? How are they going to find tablets of this highly dangerous, often-deadly drug to ingest if your keep confiscating their supplies? Putting on a quality rave isn’t cheap, jerks. Finding the right abandoned warehouse, a DJ able to spin crappy techno dance music that all sounds the same, a giant bounce pit and a million glow sticks isn’t easy even when there is affordable X on hand. Now that a major blow has been struck to the supply line, no one is going to be able to throw a good rave. Thanks for nothing, Australian anti-drug authorities…..

- Promotion cannot save a bad movie, as it turns out. After a promotional onslaught rivaling any we’ve seen for a summer movie this year, Mike Myers’ new comedy “The Love Guru” flopped at the box office, bringing in a measly $14 million and finishing fourth for the weekend in the earnings race. From the aspect of it being a lame movie that isn’t nearly as funny as it aspires to be, I can totally get how this happened. However, bad movies often make a lot of money because of a variety of reasons – star power, name power of a movie franchise, etc. The weekend’s top-earning movie rode the name power of its predecessor, the franchise it was remaking, to the top spot. Steve Carrell, Anne Hathaway and The Rock gave “Get Smart” a great start with $39.2 million in earnings to lead the pack. Coming in second and still going strong was Jack Black’s animated “Kung Fu Panda” with $21.7 million, very narrowly edging out the shameless ripoff, copycat “The Incredible Hulk” with earnings of $21.6 million. Overall, the weekend’s top 12 movies brought in $136.9 million, a 10 percent increase from the same weekend last year. Not a stellar weekend at the movies, but at least “Wall-E” is coming out this next weekend, so that should be a good laugh for one and all and a fun movie.

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