- Welcome back meth! You’ve been on a decided downturn for several years, but like I always say, you can’t keep a good, potentially deadly and very illegal stimulant down. Like me, I’m sure you’ve watched the past few years as our old friend meth took a dramatic decline and shook your head in disgust. But fear not, because in 2008, the availability of methamphetamine began to creep up. That trend, reported by the National Drug Intelligence Center (NDIC), may concern law enforcement agencies, but not me. I look at the more than 17,000 methamphetamine labs that were discovered in 2004, inside homes, barns, and vehicles and I see a solid year. Then I look at 2007, two years after Congress passed restrictions on ephedrine and pseudoephedrine, two key ingredients used in meth production and found in cold and allergy medicines, and see that agents found just 5,910 labs. In other words, within three years, there was a 65 percent reduction in the number of meth labs discovered, which would seem to indicate that the meth industry was in serious trouble. Yes, you might avoid some of the drug’s more dangerous byproducts - toxic waste and explosions - but you’re missing out on a stimulant that brings so much joy to say many. Plus, you had Mexico jumping into the fray and looking to make life tougher for meth producers by banning all imports containing either ephedrine or pseudoephedrine in an attempt to curb exports by large-scale traffickers. That maneuver had the effect of creating methamphetamine shortages in many parts of the U.S. during 2007 and the first part of 2008, but that’s where the can-do attitude of the American spirit kicked in. See, domestic production has stepped up to fill the void, with the little guy coming through big. According to authorities, more small-time cooks are finding ways around federal regulations to obtain what they need to manufacture the drug. The result of those efforts was that other “little guys,” you average meth user on a budget, benefited from a 30 percent fall in the per-gram price of pure methamphetamine, from $267.74 to $184.09, between the last quarter of 2007 and the third quarter of this year. Unfortunately, with more people looking to produce meth, you’re inevitably going to get more idiots involved. It’s just basic logic, with so many morons in the world, when you involve more people in any activity of any kind, you’re going to end up with more than a few tools. That majority of those tools seem to reside in Michigan, where 127 sites were raided between January and July of 2008. In case you’re looking to get in on the action and start your own meth lab, maybe get a few friends together and go in together, the restrictions I referred to earlier place daily and monthly limits on how many grams of ephedrine-based products may be purchased. Businesses are required to check customers' identification and log the amounts into a store or chain-wide database to ensure compliance. However, a technique called "smurfing" has become popular for those looking to circumvent these rules. Smurfing involves small groups who know two or three cooks traveling from store to store, buying the maximum allowable amount of ingredients and later trading medications for finished methamphetamine or cash. Add it all up and you have an impressive comeback for meth after a few years going the wrong direction, financially speaking……..
- America, you do know that making a terrible movie the top earner at the box office two weekends in a row doesn’t somehow transform it into a good movie, right? You also know that it says nothing good about you or America as a nation that for two straight weekends, a clunker like "Paul Blart: Mall Cop" was the highest-grossing film in your country, right? Maybe not, because otherwise this steaming, stinking turd of a movie wouldn’t have made $21.5 million to secure the No. 1 slot for the second week in a row. An overweight mall security guard trying to protect the mall where he works from criminals just doesn’t pass for good cinema in my corner of the world. That being said, the film has now grossed $64.8 million in its two weeks of release and appears to be a near-lock to surpass $100 million. Coming in second place was "Underworld: Rise of the Lycans," which is a prequel examining the roots of a feud between vampires and werewolves but is actually the third installment of the "Underworld" series. The movie opened well, scoring a pay day of $20.7 million. That’s slightly less than its two predecessors — "Underworld" and "Underworld: Evolution" — which earned $21.7 million and $26.8 million, respectively, in their opening weekends. Another sci-fi/fantasy flick wasn’t as successful in its opening weekend, as the fantasy adventure "Inkheart" earned a mere $7.7 million in its debut. Yes, I know it’s shocking that a movie starring an acting legend and master thespian like Brendan Fraser would struggle so badly, but it’s true. Some films that had been out for a little while received a boost from being nominated for Academy Awards, as well as being expanded into wider release. That includes "Slumdog Millionaire," the drama about a game-show contestant from the slums of Mumbai, which earned $10.6 million this weekend as it was shown in more than 1,400 theaters. The top 10 shakes out this way, from top to bottom: 1) "Paul Blart: Mall Cop," $21.5 million, 2) "Underworld: Rise of the Lycans," $20.7 million, 3) "Gran Torino," $16 million, 4) "Hotel for Dogs," $12.4 million, 5) "Slumdog Millionaire," $10.6 million, 6) "My Bloody Valentine 3-D," $10.1 million, 7) "Inkheart," $7.7 million, 8) "Bride Wars," $7 million, 9) "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," $6 million, 10) "Notorious," $5.7 million. Some pretty solid movies in there, what with Gran Torino and Notorious, but a lot of crap, especially near the top of the list. You can do better than that, America……
- Every nationality on the face of the Earth likes to think that its women are the most beautiful and desirable. That’s true whether you’re in Europe, Africa, Asia, North or South America, even Australia. Thinking your chicas are hotter than those residing in every other country in the world is one thing, but implying that your women are so beautiful they need military escorts to avoid being raped, quite another. Leave it to Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi to do just that, suggesting that Italy's women were in need of those military escorts in order to avoid getting raped. His comments came in response to questions about his proposal to deploy 300,000 soldiers in the streets to fight crime. That decision was precipitated by a series of violent attacks, including a rape in Rome on New Year's Eve and another outside the capital this week, which have led to a public outcry for the government to step in and address the issue. "We would have to have so many soldiers because our women are so beautiful," he declared. Opposition leaders didn’t seem to take those words with a sense of humor, definitely not Giovanna Melandri of the opposition Democratic Party, said Berlusconi's comments were "profoundly offensive." Melandri’s argument is that the pain of rape could never be joked about, which I have to agree with. Berlusconi attempted to double back and explain what he really meant by saying that he was complimenting Italian women "because there are only about 100,000 people in law enforcement, while there are millions of beautiful women." He went on to make the PR play of stressing that rape was a serious and "disgraceful" crime, but then proceeded to submarine his efforts by adding that people should never forget a sense of "levity and good humor" whenever his comments are concerned. Hey Silvio, you may or may not know this, but being a billionaire media-mogul-turned politician with a history of being an ass and sticking his foot in his mouth doesn’t give you carte blanche to say whatever the heck you feel like saying. There’s no “Manny being Manny” principle in play here, where you can do something bizarre, moronic or offensive and chalk it up to “Silvio being Silvio.” You have to be responsible for what you say, whether it’s comparing a German politician to a Nazi camp guard, saying shortly after 9/11 that Western civilization was superior to Islam or this rape comment. Stop saying everything that pops into your mind, exercise a little discretion or go away and stay away, your choice……
- Hopefully you tuned in this past weekend to catch all or part of Winter X 13, the 13th installment of the winter version of the X Games. Whether it was snowboarding, skiing or snowmobiles, the action was flat out awesome, right up to the signature event of the Games, the men’s Snowboard Superpipe Sunday night. The event featured a showdown between two of the biggest rivals in extreme sports, Shaun White (a.k.a. the Flying Tomato) and Kevin Pearce, two riders with decidedly different approaches to the sport. Pearce is a guy who has made a point of saying that the most important part of his career is being able to share it with his friends and enjoy the ride, while White has subjected himself to a rugged training and competition schedule in order to be successful both in the Summer and Winter X-Games sports. He’s a snowboarder in the winter, a skateboarder in the summer and a spokesman for numerous products all year round. He’s the most public face of extreme sports right now and has the medals to back that rep up. Pearce and White have been dueling it out at competitions all over the world the past couple of years, with Pearce one of the few riders to beat White on nights when the Flying Tomato was at his best. Last night, White wasn’t at his best for his first two runs of the Superpipe, which was a problem because the finals of the event are a best-of-three runs, with eight finalists getting three runs and taking their best individual run score. White fell on his first two runs, as did several other riders on a slick pipe that was also subjected to snowfall and pretty solid winds midway through the final round. Pearce was able to throw up a 90.66 on his second run to take the lead and it stood until the final run of the final round, when White was awarded a score of 91.66 that didn’t seem nearly as impressive or technically sound as Pearce’s run. Pearce got up higher on his tricks and it certainly seemed that the judges had to be giving White a little too much credit based on his reputation and not basing his score enough on his actual performance. The win gave White his tenth X-Games gold medal, putting him higher up on the list of X legends that includes names like Tony Hawk and Travis Pastrana. Regardless of your take on the final result, it was a thrilling capper for another awesome installment of the X Games, which don’t get nearly the credit or attention they and their competitors deserve…….
- What’s up, Frenchies? I thought you all were supposed to be the world’s greatest lovers, bar none. If that’s true, why is French President Nicolas Sarkozy having to subject himself to an intense exercise regimen in the past 10 months under the direction of personal trainer Julie Imperiali in order to shed nine pounds, two pants sizes and of course, make him better in bed? Yes, that’s what Imperiali said in a recent interview, that the French head of state has also reaped benefits from his workout routine in the form of improved sex, thanks to her Tectonic method of exercise that targets muscles in the pelvic floor. While I’m perfectly content going the rest of my life without ever hearing or writing the phrase pelvic floor again, you have to admit it’s funny to hear this. For one thing, don’t the French pride themselves on being great lovers, regardless of their physical conditioning? Second…..duh. Who doesn’t know that being in better condition would make you better in the sack? Only makes sense that if you’re stronger, more flexible and have better endurance, that’s going to be the case. Hard to have too good of a time between the sheets if your partner is so out of shape that he or she is winded two minutes in or seems on the brink of a heart attack at the most minimal level of exertion. Either way, consider this the first and last time you’ll ever see me writing about the sex life of a foreign leader for any reason…….
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