- My, how the tune changes when you think someone can help make you some money, eh Dana White? For the past year, the president of Ultimate Fighting Championships has been bashing YouTube sensation and former rising mixed-martial arts star Kimbo Slice (a.k.a. Kevin Ferguson) as a no-talent chump who couldn’t fight his way out of a box made of wet toilet paper. White’s criticisms seemed somewhat accurate after second-tier MMA promotion Elite XC signed Slice as its banner star, set him up with a few tomato cans to beat down in his first two fights and then pinned the hopes of the entire company on Slice as he took part in the headline bout for an Elite XC event broadcast on CBS in October. Both Slice and Elite XC took a kill shot to the head when UFC reject Seth Petruzelli was picked as a last-second replacement to fight Slice when Ken Shamrock had to pull out due to an injury and subsequently knocked Slice out in 14 seconds. A pink-haired hack like Petruzelli demolishing its star ruined Elite XC and the company went out of business shortly thereafter. Kimbo Slice was left out in the cold and after having his lack of in-ring skills and experience exposed, the odds of him ever becoming a successful MMAer seemed very slim. UFC president Dana White had been critical of Slice before his loss to Petruzelli and after the loss, he lit Slice up with a fury. Yet here we are, less than a year after that humbling loss and there’s White signing Slice to be on the 10th season of The Ultimate Fighter. The show, with Quinton "Rampage" Jackson and Rashad Evans as the coaches, will once again pit aspiring MMA fighters against one another and award a UFC contract to the winner. I’ll be very interested to see if Slice does really have what it takes to be a successful fighter once his raw physical abilities are paired with coaching from successful fighters like Evans and Jackson. Also, how awesome would it be to see him win that contract and end up fighting for the very guy who has been lighting him up with prejudice for more than a year……..
- For those of you who have been taking part in an office pool centering on whether legendarily reclusive author J.D. Salinger is still alive, you now have your answer - I think. I assume that Salinger is still alive, otherwise his lawyers are just filing lawsuits on his behalf for the heck of it. Salinger, a man whom most of you probably cursed regularly throughout high school when you were forced to read his famous tome “The Catcher in the Rye,” has emerged, at least in the pages of court documents, to try to stop a novel that presents Holden Caulfield, the disaffected teen hero of his most famous work, as an old man. The author of this new book isn’t exactly a quality, stand-up dude, because if he were then he wouldn’t be hiding behind the pen name J.D. California and publishing his work through a Swedish company that advertises joke books and a "sexual dictionary" on its Web site. I can see where Salinger might be upset and why his lawyers would file suit in federal court this week to stop publication, sale and advertisement of "60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye.” Whoever J.D. California is, he’s neither clever nor original and he is blatantly looking to rip off a great literary work and clown it for his own personal gain. “The Sequel infringes Salinger's copyright rights in both his novel and the character Holden Caulfield, who is the narrator and essence of that novel,” said the suit, filed Monday in U.S. District Court in New York. Agreed and agreed. You don’t need to have read "The Catcher in the Rye," (published in 1951) to understand its significance. The book is still cited as an iconic take on teen alienation to this day and is regularly listed among the greatest English-language novels ever written. Salinger, 90, has been a near-total recluse in New Hampshire for most of the past half-century and has consistently rejected any offers to step back into the public eye. He went so far as to turn down an offer from director Steven Spielberg to make "Catcher" into a movie. He’s clearly not nostalgic or hung up on his book and the book’s primary character, Holden Caulfield. “There's no more to Holden Caulfield. Read the book again. It's all there," the court filing quotes Salinger as saying in 1980. "Holden Caulfield is only a frozen moment in time.” In the filing, Salinger’s attorneys don’t even dignify J.D. California by using his assumed name. Instead, the filing refers to the new book's author as "John Doe," saying that the name John David California probably is made up. According to John Doe/J.D. California’s bio on Amazon.com, he is the son of a Swedish mother and American father who was named after the state where he was born. This biography might actually be a better work of fiction than the book this hack has created, because it paints him as a former gravedigger and triathlete who found a copy of Salinger's novel "in an abandoned cabin in rural Cambodia" and that it helped him survive "the most maniacal of tropical fevers and chronic isolation.” Wow…..I’m not sure which is more blatantly fake: that lie of a biography or the name J.D. California. Whoever this loser is, his sorry excuse for a book is written from a first-person point of view and is based on a character, "Mr. C," who flees his nursing home and "embarks on a curious journey through the streets of New York.” Look for Salinger to win this case easily against Swedish publisher Nicotext; its offshoot, Windupbird Publishing Ltd.; and California-based SCB Distributors. In the meantime, just sit back and laugh at SCB, which calls "60 Years Later" a work of "social science fiction," and says it has every right to publish the book. A hearing in the case is expected Monday, at which Salinger's lawyers will ask a judge to freeze publication of the book until a final ruling is made. With “60 Years” not scheduled for release in the United States until September, there appears to be no rush. Regardless of how the case turns out, it’s at least nice to know that Salinger is (theoretically) alive and well………
- I have been and always will be of the opinion that if you go inside a strip club for any reason, you are a loser - well, unless you’re a cop making an arrest. Even if one of your buddies is at the strip (or as Pacman Jones would call it, scrip) club and is too drunk to drive home, you don’t go inside to get him. He can come out and meet you in the parking lot so you don’t have to set foot inside. Simply put, if you want to see a woman take her clothes off, you should have the game to make it happen without going some place where women are paid to undress. If you can't accomplish that, then you are in fact a loser. For that reason, I can't muster much sympathy for Michael Ireland of West Palm Beach, Fla. I’m also fairly sure that Ireland is a liar, which further lessons any potential tendencies toward sympathy. What isn’t being disputed is that Ireland went to the Cheetah Palm Beach club in West Palm Beach last year and had an altercation with dancer Sakeena Shageer while she was getting her skank on, grinding on that filthy brass pole and having greasy losers shove $1 bills down her g-string. What is up for debate is who initiated the physicality, with Ireland claiming that Shageer kicked him 'without warning' and the club claiming that Ireland slapped Shageer in the buttocks and she turned around and kicked him. That’s the story told by Rod Kimbrough, the bar’s manager. Ireland also claims that he attempted to resolve the lawsuit with the club's insurance carrier, but when those efforts failed he filed a lawsuit. Just be thankful I’m not the one hearing your case, loser. You’d lose before you even set foot in the courtroom by virtue of being a loser who goes to strip clubs. You deserve most anything you get when you set foot in one of those sleazy crap holes, with the possible exception of losing your life. Other than that, if you don’t want bad things to happen to you at a strip club, then don’t go to one. Lawsuit dismissed with prejudice, next…….
- I wish I could say I was surprised. Then again, how can you be surprised at anything done by two vapid, self-absorbed, narcissistic, IQ-deprived losers thrust into the spotlight by virtue of the menace that is reality television? As I always say, no two people have become better known while contributing less to the world than Heidi and Spencer of The Hills “fame,” so suffice it to say I wish both of them would fall into an active volcano and be obliterated. Instead, they are among the “celebrities” (I prefer the term cultural punchlines) appearing on NBC’s crap-tacular summer reality series I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here. If you had been presented with the chances these two have been given while knowing that you in no way deserved those opportunities, wouldn’t you at least try to act grateful? You or I might, be not these two ass clowns. Just one day into their adventure with nine other non-celebrity losers in the jungles of Costa Rica, Heidi and Spencer decided that they were just too good to be a part of the proceedings. The couple quit the show on Tuesday after having a diva moment, punctuated by Pratt telling his fellow contestants that he's "too rich and too famous" for the show. Too rich? Maybe, because even if he is a total tool, there’s no denying that dude and his family are wealthy. As for being too famous…..assuming that by “too famous” you mean arrogant, pompous, stupid, shallow and ignorant, then I agree that you are too famous to be on this or any other TV show. But as with all divas, Heidi and Spencer threw their diva fit without truly considering what they were doing. After having time to contemplate, they begged and pleaded via Twitter (of course) that they would be allowed to return to the show. "The devil fooled speidi in to making an awful decision and we are praying to Jesus to get NBC to give us another shot to redeem," Pratt wrote. Wow, where to begin. First, anyone who uses a celebrity couple name like Speidi or Bennifer is a Grade-A ass hat. Using a celebrity couple name of which you are a part is ass-hattery of the highest degree, multiplied by infinity. Second, ass clown, you and your troll wife were threatening to bail on the show Monday night in the very first episode and you both complained about the show's very un-Hollywood conditions. I know you’re both idiots, but didn’t you read (or have someone else read for you) the contract you signed for the show? You should have had some clue what it was about before you agreed to appear on it. If it were me making the call, Spencer and Heidi would be getting nowhere near the show ever again. However, NBC is apparently relenting and allowing them a second chance. In Wednesday night’s episode, the remaining contestants were given the chance to vote on whether Heidi and Spencer would be allowed to rejoin them in the jungle, with that decision to be announced on tonight’s show. Guess that call Spencer placed to NBC President Ben Silverman to complain about the conditions on the show was just a temporary moment of insanity…..from an idiot. I’m never a guy who likes to tell people, “I told you so,” but in regards to the dangers of making imbeciles like Heidi and Spencer famous when they clearly have done nothing to merit it, I told you so……..
- So maybe not everyone in Vassalboro, Maine is a big fan of the town’s topless coffee shop. When Donald Crabtree opened Grand View Coffee Shop in February, it received national attention because it combined two things - coffee and nudity - that you don’t normally associate with one another. Since opening, the coffee shop seems to have done well. I base assessment on the fact that at a Tuesday night planning board meeting, Crabtree talked about his expansion plans for the business as well as having dancing and longer operating hours. If he’s talking expansion, I’d say business is at least solid if not very good. Those expansion plans now appear very much dead, given the fact that the Grand View Coffee Shop is now a charred pile of rubble. An ambulance crew that was returning to town from a call saw the fire around 1 a.m. on May 27. They awakened owner Donald Crabtree and six other people who were asleep at the time, all of whom escaped the building without injury. Six days after the fire, the state fire marshal's office ruled that the three-alarm fire was caused by arson. Unfortunately, they don’t know much beyond that. There are no suspects at this point and the fire marshal is taking the always-discouraging step of asking for the public's help in the investigation. Any time the authorities can't solve a crime and have to turn to the public for help, it’s what you’d call a bad sign. So if you live in or around Vassalboro and saw anything suspicious in the area of the coffee shop around 1 a.m. Wednesday, give the fire marshal a call. Regardless of whether the culprit is caught or not, Donald Crabtree is in a bad spot. While the building housing the coffee shop was paid for, Crabtree inexplicably did not have insurance for it. In other words, he’s out a building and up in flames are his plans to open a strip club at the site. Color me cynical, but those plans for a strip club might have been what spurred the unidentified arsonist to action. I too hate strip clubs and believe that anyone who frequents them is a loser, but I can’t say as I advocate burning buildings that house or may house them in the future to be burned to the ground……..
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