- A good life rule: If 50 Cent has a beef with you and wants to go to court, you’d best settle things up before the case gets ugly. I don’t care who is suing who or what the alleged wrong is, but when a dude has been shot nine times and lived to tell about it, go ahead and assume that he’s harder and tougher than you are and that pissing him off further is a bad idea. In this particular case, 50 has issues with a Bloomfield, Conn. engineering firm that he paid $14,000 to conduct an inspection prior to purchasing his Farmington mansion for $4.1 million from Mike Tyson in 2003. The lawsuit against BVH Integrated Services Inc. stated that 50 Cent, a.k.a. Curtis Jackson, hired the company to give an estimate on the cost of work needed at the home. Jackson's attorney, Michael Feldman, claimed the estimate the firm gave the rapper was more than $2 million off the mark. Now I’m not an expert in expensive celebrity homes and the repair costs on such properties, but even if the home costs several million dollars, being off by that much could definitely be construed as a problem. However, BVH's attorney, Michael Byrne, argued Thursday that the company was hired to give very preliminary estimates in a short period of time. In other words, they claim that Jackson didn’t want a firm, definite estimate and he didn’t give them very much time to do their work. He also explained that the inspection happened too early for true accuracy. "It's as helpful as it can be at that stage of the project," he said. If that were the case, I don’t see why BVH would agree to settle the lawsuit, do you? But yet there it was, court officials announcing Friday afternoon that a settlement has been reached in the lawsuit and that the suit has been withdrawn. Terms weren’t immediately made public, but let’s assume that Jackson a) will receive a substantial amount of money from BVH and b) he has agreed not to shoot or curb stomp anyone from the company. Okay, so the second half of that may not be totally true, but then again it might be…….
- This sounds like the sort of story you’d hear on MTV’s “High School Stories,” mostly because if you watch that show, you have seen it….multiple times. It goes a little something like this: computer-savvy students hacks into his or her school’s computerized grading system and changes grades of self and friends. Kids go from D’s and F’s to B’s. Inevitably, the student gets a little greedy and changes enough grades by enough of a margin that the school notices, investigates and brings the hammer down. Inevitably, one of the students whose grades were changed takes issue with the punishment they receive and the matter is settled in court. In this case, the setting is Jeffersonville, Indiana and the student is Kristen Reno. Reno sued the Greater Clark County School Board, asking Judge Jerry Jacobi to grant an injunction that would have allowed her to walk in the school's graduation ceremony. She was one of several students who had another student change their grades in the school's computer system and even admitted to her misdeed. The school found out about the changed grades, stripped Reno of her credit for the course in which her grade was changed and actually gave her the opportunity to retake the exam. Showing a healthy dose of senioritis, she refused because she had enough credits to graduate without the class. "Without that credit, I would still be able to graduate, but with that credit, I would have a higher diploma. I'd rather have a lower diploma and get to graduate than have that credit," Reno said. In other words, you didn’t want to put forth any extra effort, I get it. You’ve graduated, the difference from one diploma to the next isn’t going to be that big a deal in the long run, so screw it. That’s fine, but you can’t then expect the school to just allow you to go through the entire graduation process like all of the other non-cheating (or at least not caught cheating) seniors. The school called the graduation ceremony a privilege and not a right (gotta love it when authority figures break out that classic line) and decreed that the seniors caught cheating could not participate in the ceremony. They did allow Reno to participate in other senior activities, including the baccalaureate ceremony and senior picnic. That clearly was not enough for her, hence the lawsuit. Unfortunately for Reno, Judge Jacobi shot her down, denying Reno’s emergency injunction petition in Clark Superior Court Thursday. The student who changed the grades in the computer was expelled from the high school, so perhaps Reno should just be thankful that she didn’t get a far more severe punishment. Gotta love senioritis and the laziness that accompanies it………
- The 2007-08 University of Memphis men’s basketball team just might be the dumbest college athletic squad in a long time. We already knew that one-and-done guard Derrick Rose (allegedly) had someone else take his SAT so he could be eligible for his one season as a Memphis Tiger and also had someone alter his high school transcript to help in that endeavor. Rose clearly wasn’t (or isn’t) very intelligent (otherwise he would have taken that SAT himself), but apparently neither was teammate Robert Dozier. Dozier, who like Rose is no longer at Memphis, had his initial SAT score invalidated by the company that scores the exam, and when he took the test a second time, he scored 540 fewer points. Also, a person claiming to be a faculty member at his high school in Atlanta wrote an anonymous letter to the NCAA Initial-Eligibility Clearinghouse questioning his score on the admissions test. Those facts were enough to cause the University of Georgia, Dozier’s first choice of schools, to deny him admission. So where to go when your first choice turns you down for cheating on your SATs? Yup, the University of Memphis. Dozier landed at Memphis, where he helped lead the Tigers to the 2008 NCAA Final Four. Memphis claims it did its due diligence on his academic credentials and is satisfied that it is guilty of no wrongdoing in admitting him and allowing him to play basketball. As for Dozier's academic records, he took the SAT for the first time Dec. 6, 2003 and scored 1,260 of a possible 1,600 points (the highest possible score at the time) on the test. That’s a really good score…..for whoever actually took the test. I’m guessing it wasn’t Dozier, a guess that Georgia admissions officials seem to have concurred with. They were immediately were alarmed by Dozier's high score, which they said didn't correlate with his below-average academic performance at Lithonia (Ga.) High School or his score on the PSAT. What, you think dude didn’t just become miraculously smarter once it came time to get an SAT score high enough to play college hoops? The school's faculty admissions review committee, which evaluates the admission applications of prospective student-athletes, recommended a "strong deny" in Dozier's case. “Of greatest concern is the gross inconsistency in his testing record," the committee wrote in its report. "His [SAT verbal score of 590] would place him in the 76th percentile nationally, while his [SAT math score of 670] places him in the 89th percentile. This raises a serious red flag, since his PSAT from October 2000 places him in the 4th percentile nationally in both areas. Such a remarkable improvement in testing abilities in the span of nine months is highly improbable, particularly for a student with a C-minus record in average college prep courses in high school.” All of that put Dozier under suspicion, so when an anonymous letter alleging someone else took Dozier's SAT landed in the mailbox of the NCAA Initial-Eligibility Clearinghouse, which certifies prospects' academic credentials for NCAA initial eligibility, the biggest, brightest red flags possible went up. The author of the letter claimed to be a member of the faculty at Dozier’s school and wrote: "This score is completely out of line with anything Robert has done academically at our school. My suspicions were confirmed when a faculty member mentioned that he was told someone else took the test for Robert. Allegedly, a graduate of our school took the test for Robert at the North Atlanta High School test center.” Educational Testing Service, which administers and scores the SAT, opened an investigation of Dozier's test score in June 2004. The company compared handwriting samples from Dozier’s SAT test to those on his “registration form and external documents." Sadly, he appears to have been dumb enough to not have the person who was going to take the test for him also fill out those forms….so close. Dozier was then offered a chance to retake the test to prove his score and amazingly, he took the test in July 2004 and scored 720 -- 540 points less than his earlier score. Uh-oh! That prompted ETS officials to cancel his first score, an extremely rare action for the company to take. The 720 wasn’t nearly enough to make Dozier eligible, so he played the 2004-05 season at Laurinburg Institute, a prep school in Laurinburg, N.C., where he played with future Memphis teammates Antonio Anderson, Kareem Cooper, Roburt Sallie and Shawne Williams. While at Laurinburg, Dozier finally met the NCAA's initial eligibility requirements and signed to play for Memphis in November 2004. Of course, in 2007 the NCAA launched an investigation of Laurinburg Institute and two months ago decided to no longer accept grades and coursework from the school because of concerns about its academic programs and oversight. The question I have no is how many members of that 2007-08 Memphis team actually took their own SATs and were eligible when they stepped onto the court…………
- By virtue of being BrandsMart USA employees, the six would-be scam artists who attempted to rob their store of 188 televisions worth just under $100,000 had low odds for being a) smart and b) successful. I feel safe in saying that by and large, BrandsMart is not a place you’re going to find a lot of current or future Mensa members. So I’m not all that surprised that Henry County, Ga. police said they have arrested six of the store’s soon-to-be-former employees in connection with the theft. The police said they were contacted by the Atlanta regional protection manager for BrandsMart USA on May 11 regarding thefts from a store in Stockbridge. Detectives began investigating and discovered that some 188 televisions were missing from the store. Amazing that anyone noticed that nearly $100,000 of merchandise had gone AWOL, no? With a sophisticated criminal enterprise run by legendary criminal masterminds like Maurice Foster, 22, of Atlanta; Jonathan Chambers, 23, of Decatur; Roderick Adams, 19, of Morrow; Demario Norris, 20, of McDonough; Justin Sprueil, 20, of Jonesboro; and Dantelle Smith, 24, of Stockbridge, cracking the case didn’t take long. Within days, police figured out that numerous store employees conspired to commit the thefts and were working with several outside individuals. The six BrandsMart employees were charged with felony theft and criminal conspiracy to commit a felony. However, the investigation is still ongoing and more arrests are expected. Also, police have only located five of the stolen televisions and two computer monitors. So I suppose while the idiots responsible for the thefts didn’t have a great plan for getting away with their crimes, at least they managed to hide or sell the stolen goods in time to keep them away from the cops……..
- Oh, there is no arena quite like the world reality TV when hypocrisy is what you’re hunting for. Whether it’s confirmed ass hat Jon Gosselin claiming that his marriage is private business after signing a deal and being paid to put his private life on television or any of the other scores of examples I could conjure up, there is no doubting that hypocrites abound on reality series on every network that airs them. Still, I couldn’t help but take a moment to point out the sheer and total hypocrisy being displayed by both parties in the running feud between NBC and two of the biggest ass clowns in world history, Heidi and Spencer Pratt. After NBC made the decision to include them in the cast of quasi-celebrity rejects on its reality series I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here!, the Pratts did….well, just what you’d expect them to do. They acted like rich, spoiled, bratty Hollywood residents who wrongly think that showing up some third-tier MTV reality show makes them legit stars. From the start, Heidi and Spencer couldn’t handle actually being out in nature and not being pampered and in a plush L.A. apartment. They threatened to bail out and leave three separate times and finally did storm off the set. Yet they had barely left the jungle when they jumped on Twitter, professed a change of heart and begged to come back. The suits at NBC decided to allow them to attempt a return but placed their fate in the hands of the remaining cast members. In the meantime, at least one NBC executive isn’t hiding his feelings on the Pratts and their act. “They are everything that's wrong with America... they are insincere, lazy, entitled and they claim the devil has possessed them,” Executive Vice President of Alternative Programming Paul Telegdy fumed. “They are back and this time they are contrite... yeah, right. What they don't realize is that they are now going to be examined and their value system utterly deconstructed. They are going to spend the night somewhere in isolation and guarded with lots of surprises... but not traditional reality [stunts].” Wow…..just amazing. Not the anger Telegdy has, but that he can actually hold all of that steaming, stinking bulls**t inside his head. I agree with everything he says, it’s just that he and his network have no right to say any of it. There was no doubt on anyone’s mind as to what Heidi and Spencer were all about before they set foot on this show, so NBC knew exactly what sort of devils it was doing a deal with. Don’t tell me you thought that because the players were competing to raise money for charity that you thought they wouldn’t bring their rich, entitled, arrogant act to the set. So when you sign a contract with someone like that and allow them to appear on your network, you lose any right to complain about them. Do what you want - force Heidi and Spencer to sleep with actual spiders and other creepy crawlers, put their fate in the hands of their fellow cast members - just don’t act indignant and offended at the crap they pull. Not that I needed another reason to hate this crappy show, but thanks to NBC and Paul Telegdy for giving me one………
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