- Homophobia has a new home and ironically enough, that home is Broadway. Noted bigot and big mouth T.R. Knight will be making a temporary departure from the small screen and heading to the Great White Way. Knight, who confirmed last month that he was leaving ABC’s Grey’s Anatomy (not sure if he was McDreamy, McSteamy or one of the other Mc’s), which came after a tumultuous run in which he managed to hurl an anti-gay slur at co-star Isaiah Washington and piss off many fellow cast members and fans in the process. Now, he will go to a place where he’ll likely encounter more homosexual individuals than he ever did on television, Broadway. He will be playing the role of Max in the upcoming Broadway revival of Lend Me a Tenor. Stanley Tucci will direct the production, which is scheduled to open in February 2010. The rest of the cast hasn’t yet been announced, but names should begin surfacing in the next few weeks. In the meantime, Knight will be able to polish his stage skills by headlining a production of Jason Robert Brown's Tony-winning Parade at Los Angeles' Mark Taper Forum. Not that I have ever had any interest in the theater/Broadway, nor do I expect to develop such an interest any time soon, but it should be interesting to see how Knight makes the transition and blends into a new place where there are bound to be quite a few people who weren’t all that thrilled with the anti-gay comments he made not that long ago. Keep your head down, work hard and avoid any bigoted utterances and you should be fine, T.R. I’m here if you need any further advice, though……
- DE-NIED. Sorry Kelvin Sampson….wait, no I’m not…you didn’t deserve any lessoning or lifting of the multitude of penalties you incurred from the NCAA for being a total and complete douche bag and thankfully, you didn’t get either. He’s basically on the NCAA’s sh*t list for the next five years because of penalties from the case against him during his time as the head men’s basketball coach at Indiana University, after which the NCAA touched him up for unethical conduct, failure to monitor his program and to promote an atmosphere of compliance after committing similar, excessive phone violations at two NCAA institutions in succession (Oklahoma and Indiana). He was fired at Indiana and were he to attempt to coach at any NCAA institution between now and 2013, the show-cause penalty applied the Sampson would force any institution that wants to hire Sampson must submit a report to the committee on infractions within 30 days of hiring him to see if any further penalties will be given. Why any school would want to hire him, I don’t know. As part of his punishment, Sampson is prohibited from engaging in any on- or off-campus recruiting or interaction with prospective student-athletes from Nov. 25, 2008, to Nov. 24, 2011. He can’t conduct any phone calls or any other electronic correspondence with recruits either, so he’s even more useless than normal at this point. I could not be happier to see the NCAA deny Sampson's appeal of the penalties and it could not happen to a more appropriate guy. After he was a completely sleazy and disreputable recruiter and coach at Oklahoma, he moved to Indiana with promises of being a changed man, only to pick right back up on the sort of dishonest, illegal behavior that ruined his career at OU. At present, Sampson is an assistant coach with the NBA's Milwaukee Bucks, which is a much better fit for him. In the NBA, he doesn’t have those restrictions on who he can call and how much of a douche bag he can be, more or less. I’m not sure if he thought that having the penalties lifted or lessened would make him appealing to any school, but he’s highly delusional if that’s what he believes. Dude is freaking radioactive at this point on the college level and no one in any position of authority would consider hiring Kelvin Sampson as their school’s head coach, now or ever……..
- So the state of Minnesota finally has its second U.S. senator. This is the kind of thing you don’t want to rush, so I for one am glad that Minnesota waited more than seven months to officially decide the winner of its second seat in the Senate. Other states may rush ahead and actually decide the victor in an election within days of the vote, but I applaud Minnesota for not being rushed or pressured. Now, at long last the Minnesota's Supreme Court has shot down former Sen. Norm Coleman's challenge to the state's November election results and declared Democratic challenger Al Franken the winner. In light of the court's unanimous, unsigned opinion, Coleman dropped his challenge and will accept the result. In its opinion, the court stated that Franken "received the highest number of votes legally cast" and is entitled "to receive the certificate of election as United States senator from the state of Minnesota.” The decision in Fraken’s favor comes as a major boost for the Senate Democratic caucus, giving the Dems 60 seats in the Senate, a filibuster-proof majority, at least on paper. While Franken might not be a legendary former professional athlete like Steve Largent from Oklahoma or Bill Bradley from New York, Minnesota can now say that it has a former "Saturday Night Live" writer and performer representing it in the Senate. This end a back-and-forth affair in which Coleman led Franken on election night by a razor-thin margin of 206 votes out of more than 2.9 million cast. However, that was a close enough to trigger an automatic recount and when the recount was finally completed in January, Franken had edged ahead by an equally narrow 225 votes. That led to Coleman’s attempted legal end-around, which will officially end once Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty signs Franken's election certificate and makes him the official winner. Nice of you to finally getting around to picking your second senator, Minnesota……….
- The beauty pageant community is quickly becoming even more unstable than I’ve always assumed it was. When Donald Trump isn’t firing various beauty queens for their many indiscretions and alleged contractual breaches, the pageant winners themselves are hitting the eject button on their reign. Pageant officials in Georgia thought they had their winner in Gwinnett County school teacher Kristina Higgins, who was named Miss Georgia Saturday night at the annual pageant in Columbus, but she didn’t even last a full day in the role. The next morning, Higgins relinquished the post, leaving the runner-up, Marietta law student Emily Cook, to take over as Miss Georgia. Higgins’ explanation for her decision was truly bizarre, as she claimed that her responsibilities as a middle school would not leave her time she would need to serve as Miss Georgia. That may well be, but you’re telling me you didn’t know that before you entered? Was it your intention all along to pull out if you won? Maybe Higgins felt that there was no way she would win and so taking part and enjoying the experience would do no harm. I’m no defender of beauty pageants or the sort of person who lectures others about wasting people’s time, but that’s exactly what Higgins did. Unless you intend to fulfill the obligations of the winner should you be chosen as such, don’t take part. I’m sure that Cook is thrilled to be chosen as the new Miss Georgia, but imagine how much more thrilled she would have been to win at the actual pageant and have the thrill of hearing her name called and receiving her crown on stage. Instead, Kristina Higgins ends up looking like the stereotypical ditzy, blond beauty queen who flaked out and couldn’t handle the pressure of winning. In other words, you’re not helping the bad image of beauty pageants, Kristina, you’re hurting it, and you shouldn’t be entering them and then bailing out once you win, man………
- The Man is attempting to put his iron fist down in China and now all companies making personal computers must decide whether to capitulate and allow The Man to hold them down or forego a shot at one of the world’s fastest-growing technology markets. After announcing that it would require all personal computers sold in the country to be accompanied by a controversial content-filtering application, China is temporarily backing off that stance, but likely not for long. On Tuesday, the Chinese government announced that it would postpone the deadline for the filter, which it claims is mostly a way for parents to protect children from pornography. Of course, everyone knows that’s a lie and that the government is really looking to impose censorship on its people to prevent them from viewing anything that might spark the slightest hint of independent thinking or revolutionary tendencies. Regardless, China's central government announced in May that the Green Dam software package must accompany all new computers in China. More than 20 technology groups and business associations including the Business Software Alliance and Consumer Electronics Association have lined up against the implementation of the software and sent a letter directly to Premier Wen Jiabao on June 26 to voice their opposition. Why is all of this such a huge issue? Well, with the world’s largest population, China also surpassed the United States in 2008 as the world's top user of the Web. PC makers must decide whether to kowtow to the Chinese government in order to gain access to a country that accounted for 14 percent of the world's PC sales last year, a figure that is expected to increase to almost 16 percent by 2012. However, giving in would make them appear to be accessories to censorship and restriction on freedom of speech. Critics of the application say it is capable of causing glitches when a PC user types or encounters "forbidden" political content - shocker. Furthermore, a study by researchers at the University of Michigan found that because of security vulnerabilities, "any Web site a Green Dam user visits can take control of the PC.” Perhaps the route to go for Chinese citizens is to follow suit with U.S. counterparts who don’t want a subpar computer and operating system and simply buy a Mac. After all, the Green Dam software is for Windows only. Look for a final decision on a date for the implementation of Green Dam to come sooner rather than later. Industry observers are nearly unanimous in stating that the decision to postpone the deadline will not lead to its complete elimination. In other words, Green Dam is coming to China, it’s just a matter of when……
No comments:
Post a Comment