- Here’s a good sign that your tenure as head football coach at a college or university is in jeopardy (well, other than your school hiring an executive search firm to find your replacement): when two of your players are opening a hookah bar near campus. That’s a good sign your players don’t have too much respect for your authority, if they are throwing open the doors of a smokehouse in their spare time. Such is life at Syracuse University, where embattled head coach Greg Robinson has now been fired and where football players Niko Rechul and Mikhail Marinovich decided over the summer while sitting in a small bowling alley, that it would be cool to open a hookah bar on Marshall Street. Impressively, in a span of only three months, the two are preparing have opened Hollywood Hookah, their smokehouse brainchild. The lounge is located at 171 Marshall St., above a shoe store. It opened last Saturday with a soft opening during which more than 600 people stopped by. Marinovich, a 20-year-old freshman (hmm, either he’s not too smart or he took some time to “find himself” after high school) is a defensive end from California, who says he has been going to hookah bars since he was 16. “Since I've been to so many, I know what to do, what not to do, what's good hookah, what's bad hookah,” he said. “And between being on the football team, practicing every day, and then handling school, a lot people think, 'Oh, Mikhail, you don't have time to go out and have fun.' And then we took on this whole thing of opening a hookah lounge.” This isn’t just some run-down dive bar, either;
the 2,000-square-foot hookah bar boasts leather couches, wireless Internet and 42-inch flat-screen TVs - even ones for the bathrooms. It’s menu offers 32 tobacco flavors, including banana split, vanilla coke and apple pie - so far the fan favorite among customers - and the bar only serves Al Fakher Shisha brand tobacco because of its high quality. There are 12 people on staff, including servers, waiters and hosts. Its goal, according to Marinovich is to provide students under 21 with another type of entertainment. “When you're under 21, you don't have that many options,” he said. “Sure, you can go bowling - but that gets old. You can go to the movies - but how many movies can you see?” Hmm, agreed….that just doesn’t mean I want to smoke anything. But I appreciate the entrepreneurial spirit and the effort to start your own business, so thumbs up on the operation…..
- Somali pirates strike again, booyah! I’m telling you, you cannot hold these guys down! They are tenacious, they are feisty and they don’t take crap from any law enforcement groups. Arrest some of them, another group springs up to take their place, just like weeds. So let’s spin around the globe to an area of open sea off the coast of Kenya where pirates have hijacked a crude oil tanker and taken it to a Somali port. The Sirius Star -- a crude "super tanker" flagged in Liberia and owned by the Saudi Arabian-based Saudi Aramco company -- was attacked and seized Saturday more than 450 nautical miles southeast of Mombasa, Kenya.
The pirates took control of the crew of 25, including British, Croatian, Polish, Filipino and Saudi nationals, and so far haven’t harmed any of them. As a quick aside….the crews of these big ships are always so diverse and eclectic, like the freaking United Nations. According to U.S. Navy Fifth Fleet Cmdr. Jane Campbell, the super tanker weighs more than 300,000 metric tons and is more than three times the size of a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier. In other words, it’s freaking ginormous. According to oil industry insiders, a tanker like this can carry up to 2 million barrels of oil. After being hijacked (a word I love), the tanker is approached Eyl, Somalia, on the Indian Ocean coast. In hijackings, taking the hijacked ships to shore is standard operating procedue for pirates to take. They keep the vessel in port while they negotiate, hoping to get what they’re asking for while in a more secure locale. This particular crew of pirates pulled off this major seizure even as a multinational naval force including vessels from the U.S., the UK and Russia began patrolling the Indian Ocean waters seas near the Gulf of Aden following a sharp increase in pirate attacks in the region. One official involved in the operation marveled at the fact that “the pirates are now operating in an area of over 1.1 million square miles. This is a measure of the determination of the pirates and ... a measure of how lucrative piracy could become.” Damn straight, skippy. Eleven vessels are currently being held by pirates demanding ransoms for their captured ships, so you’d better recognize. These guys aren’t going away and they won't be shut down, so prepare yourselves for battles on the open seas……
- Is it just me, or is it hard to believe that Total Request Live is no more on MTV? Or maybe I’m stunned that the show lasted this long, I don’t know. Not that it’s had anything to do with good music or videos for a long time; boy bands and the hip-hop poseurs known as suburban teenagers wanting to pretend that they’re hardcore hip-hop fans did away with any chance of that long ago. Even so, it was still cool to see Carson Daly chatting with Eminem, Beyonce taking the stage and teenage girls still shrieking like - well, teenage girl - at the sight of Justin Timberlake as the show had its grand finale Sunday night. Literally hundreds of fans lined up outside in Times Square for one final glimpse at superstars inside the third-floor studio and to see those stars pop out for some “window love.” At least for a few hours, it seemed like old times at TRL. Still, the attention for the finale can’t erase the fact that MTV pulled the plug on its most well-known show because of years of declining ratings. “I feel like they're kinda tearin' down my home,” said Eminem, via phone with Daly. Also chiming in was the man of a million nicknames, Diddy. He was the show’s most frequent guest during its 10 years on air and labeled the finale as “ a bittersweet moment.” I have to agree, seeing a show that made its debut in 1998 come to an end after finding a unique way to combine a video countdown show in live form, mix in an audience full of enthusiastic kids and viewer feedback and boost the careers of so many musicians, even if a lot of them absolutely suck. A prime example would be Kid Rock, a total poseur hack who came to prominence as a raucous rap-rocker on "TRL" with his baudy hit "Bawitdaba" before recently morphing into some country-rock tool. Also on hand for the finale was former VJs Vanessa Minnillo, Hilarie Burton (now on "One Tree Hill"), Suzie Castillo, etc., Snoop Dogg, Nelly and Ludacris rapping some of their biggest hits in a hip-hop melody and Fall Out Boy performing in Times Square without lead man Pete Wentz. Thankfully, train wreck pop-tart Britney Spears was a no-show, so we didn’t have to watch her sad act on stage. Adios, TRL, sad to see you go…..
- Riot Watch! Riot Watch! Let’s spin over to the town of Srinagar, in the Indian-controlled region of Kashmir, where Indian police clashed with separatist groups as voters went to the polls on Monday. The inspired souls behind this particular act of social dissidence were Muslim separatist groups who blocked polling stations and shouted anti-election slogans as they protested Indian rule and alleged voter intimidation. And of course The Man couldn’t allow people to make their voice heard by disrupting an election, so police dispersed the angry demonstrators with batons, but sadly no tear gas or water canons. Oh well, I guess a traditional beatdown with clubs will have to suffice. All of this took place in North Kashmir's Bandipore district, one of the areas where the first phase of voting is taking place in this particular election. The elections began after months of violent protests, so it’s appropriate that they would continue once the voting began. Everyone has gotten in on the act - anti-Indian groups who fear that state elections will firm up Indian control of the Muslim majority state, Indian nationalists, fearful that separatist groups will gain control over the Himalayan state and everyone in between. Kashmir has long been a heavily disputed region, divided between India and Pakistan and claimed by both. The region has been beset by a bloody 18-year separatist campaign that has left at least 43,000 dead. And proving that the police crackdown was unnecessary, in spite of the protestor-police clashes, long lines of voters wrapped around polling stations in Bandipore early Monday morning. All told, 44 percent of Bandipore district residents voted Monday, so it’s not like people refused to come out and vote because of the violence. To give you an idea of the bigger picture here, Kashmir will have a seven-phase polling process leading to a newly elected government by the new year. In other words, expect another six rounds of protests and anti-establishment violence in the weeks ahead, good times…..
- Who doesn’t love a great college prank? And nothing is more tried and true than defacing a piece of property on the campus of your school’s most hated rival, especially a statue and especially the week of the rivalry game. Well, those things are doubly true in sunny Southern California, where UCLA fans struck first in their battle with archrival USC, taking advantage as thousands of USC students were away on their annual Bay Area pilgrimage (the football team played Stanford this past weekend), pranksters believed to be acting on behalf of UCLA doused USC's iconic Tommy Trojan in blue paint. Officially, the statue is known as the Trojan Shrine, and during its time on campus, the life-sized bronze statue has previously fallen victim to paint (and worse) during the week before the big UCLA-USC rivalry football game. To keep that from happening, an organization called Trojan Knights stands watch beginning several days before the game and also wraps Tommy in duct tape. But this time around, the pranksters/UCLA students struck early, before the Trojan Knights were on the scene. With no 24-hour guard this weekend. Tommy was hit with a dash of Bruin blue paint that covered most of his head and neck. Clearly the responsible parties didn’t come with more than one can, which is disappointing. Other than that, few details are known about the incident at this time. It seems to have occurred late Friday night or early Saturday morning, when most USC students were either heading up for the Stanford game, going home for the weekend or drunk off their asses from the nearest keg party. This should liven things up when USC plays UCLA in the Rose Bowl on Dec. 6, and livening up should be needed because the game itself should be a one-sided beatdown in favor of USC. Still, school officials rushed to have Tommy cleaned up on Saturday morning, but pictures of the blue-faced Trojan are still easy to find……
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