- At 28-36, the Cleveland Indians might want to reconsider their plan to address the “problem” of seagulls invading Progressive Field and affecting games. Sure, Shin-Soo Choo's single in the 10th inning Thursday night struck one of the gulls, allowing the winning run to score without a throw in a victory against the Kansas City Royals. The Royals weren’t happy with the birds affecting the outcome of the game and I get how the Indians need to put on a front of being concerned about the birds. I just hope that privately, the team’s deep thinkers are not seriously considering finding a way to get rid of the birds. "Our people are all over it right now and looking for solutions," team president Paul Dolan said. "I'm not sure it's going to go away." You’d better hope it doesn’t go away, P. Without those birds or the midges that helped the Indians in the 2007 playoffs, I don’t know that the 2009 Cleveland Indians are going to have a ton of success. With pitching that is among the worst in Major League Baseball and star center fielder Grady Sizemore on the disabled list, the Tribe is currently rocking a very impressive fourth-place standing in the American League Central. Having seagulls out on the field to distract opposing teams and interfere with games at key moments might help push that up to third place or even second place by season’s end. So go ahead and contact various wildlife and animal organizations to figure out what’s going on, just don’t do anything about it. The team allegedly found out from several of those organizations that increased nesting on flat rooftop buildings in Cleveland's Flats district has led to the ballpark's problems. What I don’t want to see is any more stunts like the one that occurred during Friday night’s game against the St. Louis Cardinals, when the team set off fireworks to scare the birds away and the flocks were noticeably smaller. “Gulls are riding the wind currents up the valley to the ballpark in search for food scraps to feed their young," Indians spokesman Bob DiBiasio said in a statement. "The Indians are continuing to research ways to control this issue under the guidance of gulls being federally protected.” Hear that, haters? Federally protected gulls! Aside from being a great potential name for an indie rock band, that means you can't just bust out guns and try to blast this problem away. I also get the impression that Indians players don’t fully appreciate what the gulls are trying to do for them, as evidenced by the ill-reasoned comments by one Ryan Garko, Cleveland first baseman/outfielder. “Something needs to be done,” Garko said. "There's got to be a way to get rid of them. It's kind of embarrassing. We look like a bunch of kids playing on an abandoned field. It's kind of funny, but kind of not funny.” Funny? No, but it helped you win a game, Garko, and at this point you should be thankful instead of complaining……..
- International pissing contests are always fun…..right up to the point that someone weaponizes all of its plutonium. At that point, the proceedings go from amusing to downright scary. Leave it to freaking North Korea to take it a step too far, lashing out at the international community and the U.N. Security Council in particular for the decision to tighten economic and political sanctions on the North because of its continued long-range missile testing. Now, North Korea is threatening to strengthen its nuclear capabilities by enriching uranium and weaponizing all plutonium. As you probably know, uranium enriched to a high degree can be used for weapons-grade material. With enriched plutonium, you can make yourself some handy atomic bombs. These threats come in response to Friday's U.N. resolution, which North Korea views as a blockade. “No matter how hard the U.S.-led hostile forces may try all sorts of isolation and blockade, the DPRK (Democratic People's Republic of Korea), a proud nuclear power, will not flinch from them," the country’s state-run news agency said. In other words, the United States is the bad guy and they are behind everything that’s going on. How very bigoted of you, North Korea. The U.S. makes its share of mistakes on the international scene, but calling you out for your increasingly hostile stance toward the world and insistence on developing extremely dangerous weapons isn’t one of them. The U.N. Security Council unanimously voted 15-0 on Friday to expand and tighten sanctions on your country, so everyone agreed and voted the way they wanted to. There is no one country to blame for imposing an embargo on the shipment of arms from your little communist regime and broadening a ban on the import of weapons. There just isn’t any other way to spin conducting a nuclear test, firing test rockets and threatening United States and South Korean ships near your territorial waters than to say it’s an outright hostile action designed to intimidate and provoke. I think it’s time for North Korea to stop pretending that it’s not trying to do what we all know it is trying to do - arm itself for the impending start of World War III. These actions have nothing to do with anyone threatening to invade or attack North Korea, they’re for the North to use when it finds the smallest, most opportunistic opening to cite provocation and fire them off. Normally I’m not for one nation or a group of nations telling another nation what it can or can’t do, but I’ll make an exception here. Big ups to the U.N. Security Council for deciding to "exercise vigilance" over the direct or indirect supply, sale or transfer to North Korea of small arms or light weapons. Requiring five days advance notice before selling arms to the North is a smart move, even if they’ll find a way to procure the weapons they want anyhow. Just give me a heads up when you plan on kicking off WWIII, N. Korea, because I’m currently in five different office pools guessing who will start the festivities and I have you over Iran in all of them………
- I am openly ashamed of U2. While the stigma of touring with those pop-punk hacks from No Doubt is still wearing off several years after the fact, Bono and the boys are doing everything possible to sully their legendary musical reputation once again. By comparison, touring with no doubt is touring with freaking Nirvana by comparison. For five shows in October, U2 will have……the freaking Hack Eyed Peas as an opening act. Yes, Fergie and those three hipster losers who rock ugly plaid pants and moronic hats will ply their abysmal music on stage with one of the world’s greatest rock bands. Prior to ruining those five U2 shows, the HEP will have a turn at headlining their own tour in support of their crap-tastic new album, "The E.N.D.” They’ll be terrorizing festivals in North America and Europe, then hitting the road to show off gawd-awful live version of their sh*tty songs from the new album. "It's going to be the biggest tour, production-wise, that we've ever done. We're actually planning for that now, which we've never done before -- actually plan for a tour,” Fergie explained. I suppose that’s good, because perhaps such extensive production can obscure the terrible music - but I doubt it. Fact is, being over-produced and synthesized is what makes groups like the HEP so terrible to begin with. All of their glitzy tour antics I expect because…..well, they’re the Hack Eyed Pears; it’s what they do and it’s who they are. That I understand, but what I don’t get is how in the world U2 is cool with sharing the same stage as these musical midgets. Is U2 so busy that they have never heard of the HEP and have no idea how bad they are or the type of sewage-quality pop music they “sing”? Now I can't even listen to songs from U2’s new album “No Line on the Horizon” without having horrific mental flashes of them following the HEP onto the stage. The only possible solace is that Fergie is branching out into acting and perhaps she’ll enjoy it so much that she stops making what she wrongly calls music altogether. She’ll be appearing this fall in "Nine," Academy Award-winning director Rob Marshall's film adaptation of the Tony Award-winning musical. It seems odd for me to say that I’m rooting for anything this chick does to succeed, but acting is one thing I can get behind as long as it means less and less of her music…….
- Riot Watch! Riot Watch! Let the riots begin in Iran, where Iran's Interior Minister announced Saturday that incumbent president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had won 63 percent of the vote in the nation's presidential poll. Before the announcement even came down, opposition groups and supporters of reformist challenger Mir-Hossein Mousavi were claiming vote rigging and fraud. Mousavi even held a press conference in which he declared that based on observations at polling locations by his campaign officials, he had won the election. He went on the explain that vote rigging was well underway and that unless the true will of the people - him winning the election - was honored, there would be massive riots. Now that is the kind of speech I like to hear from a political leader, promising riots. I’d vote for the guy myself if I could based solely on that. So few politicians have the chutzpah to promise riots these days. Sure enough, once the election results were announced and Ahmadinejad was declared the winner, the riots began. The Interior Ministry released early voting results on state television shortly after midnight and the requisite groups of Ahmadinejad sycophants . Small groups of Ahmadinejad supporters gathered in various spots around Tehran to celebrate with banners, posters and imbecilic chants of "Ahmadinejad is love.” The response from Mousavi’s supporters was much better. Many of them gathered at his campaign offices and at one locations, protestors faced off with police, who broke up a large crowd of supporters with batons and closed down the building. By the time the sun rose in Tehran Saturday morning, the overriding sentiment of the city in regards to Ahmadinejad’s re-election was: "It's not possible!" The day kicked off with hordes of angry protestors flocking to the city's squares and main streets, where police in riot gear were waiting. Protestors and police battled all day long, with police breaking out batons and pepper spray and severely beating protestors, including one instance in which witnesses say the police beat a young man to death north of Vanak Square. The images of protestors hurling rocks, setting things on fire and fighting with police are fantastic, to say the least. The Man is loathsome and hateable anywhere in the world, but perhaps nowhere more so than in countries ruled by tyrannical regimes like Iran. Seeing police on motorcycles and dressed in body armor charge into the crowds, toting billy clubs and followed by police on foot, with clubs and shields was enough to make the blood of any good social dissident boil. The Mousavi supporters were pushed onto side streets, where they regrouped and chanted, “Death to the Dictator" (beautiful words) and "Iran looks like Palestine" (an apparent reference to the scenes of heavily armored Israeli police battling Palestinian rock-throwers). Don’t expect these riots to cease any time soon, not with Mousavi still out in front, charging election fraud and inciting the protests. So riot on, Mousavi supporters, riot on. Keep throwing rocks, keep lighting dumpsters on fire and keep sticking it to The Man………
- How can a woman so hot be on anyone’s bad side, especially when she’s fighting to protect an endangered species? I guess that’s why people like me aren’t in charge of determining whether or not ladies like Jessica Alba are guilty of crimes. Alba is apologizing to the people of Oklahoma City for defacing parts of the city by reportedly plastering posters of great white sharks on electrical boxes, a bridge and a United Way billboard. The posters show a picture of a great white shark and are the propaganda of an activist group looking to raise public awareness of the species’ endangered status. “I got involved in something I should have had no part of," Alba said in a written statement. "I realize that I should have used better judgment, and I regret not thinking things through before I made a spontaneous and ill-advised decision to let myself get involved with the people behind this campaign. I sincerely apologize to the citizens of Oklahoma City and to the United Way for my involvement in this incident.” Why? Just because photos of you putting up the posters during the night and giving the “peace” sign with your fingers popped up on the Web site WhiteMike.com last week, that’s no reason to apologize for anything. I know you may not have extensive experience in the world of protests/riots, Ms. Alba, but take it from someone very much entrenched in that culture: apologies are for sellouts. You do what you need to do for your cause, you make your point and you don’t say “sorry” to anyone for anything. It just so happened that Alba was in the Oklahoma City area filming a new movie, "The Killer Inside Me," with Kate Hudson and Casey Affleck and had an opportunity to make a statement for a cause she clearly cares about. Besides, the movie is filming in Guthrie, Okla. and honestly, there can’t be that much to do in Guthrie. So what if Alba slipped away during the night, made the drive to Oklahoma City and put up some posters? She didn’t even destroy any property, deface anything or do any permanent damage. All the police need to do to “recover” from her so-called crime was take down the posters. So far, Alba hasn’t been arrested or charged with any crime. The city will now contact the owners of the property to see if they want to press charges. She could be hit with charges on any number of violations of city laws, anything vandalism to tagging, that prohibit the defacing of property. Again, this is a pretty flimsy example of defacing property, so hopefully the property owners who had posters put up on their property by Alba will realize how foolish that pressing charges against such an über-hot chick is…….
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