- With Guitar Hero a major hit, it was only a matter of time before video game makers gave hip-hop fans the chance to have a game to represent their style of music. It’s admittedly tough to play guitar riffs for songs that have no guitar parts in them and hip-hop beats instead, so DJ Hero will be the game to take things in that new direction. With heavy involvement from hip-hop heavyweights Jay-Z and Eminem, Activision and the Guitar Hero brand have finally unveiled the hardware that comes with the special -approved edition of DJ Hero. The "Renegade Edition" comes with an all-black turntable controller (the standard one has a grey turntable base with grey controls; the Renegade is solid black with gold dots and gold metal controls). The game also has a sweet utility feature in that the carrying case converts into a performance stand to put the controller on. Should you spring for the special edition, you’ll also get a 2-disc CD of exclusive Jay-Z and Eminem music, including unreleased tracks. The standard version of the game will include music from both artists, just not that 2-disc set. Included in the game will be Jay-Z’s Izzo (H.O.V.A.) and Dirt Off Your Shoulder, with tracks from his in-the-works Blueprint 3 album a possibility as well. "I have a ton of content, I just need the pipeline," Jay-Z says. "I love the freedom of (DJ Hero). I could wake up tomorrow morning with the idea for a song and call the guys at Activision and start working on getting it out. you actually get lost doing it," says Jay-Z, who has played the game. Although the game isn’t due for release until late October (no specific release date or price yet), Jay-Z and Eminem are already stumping for the game. One nice feature of the game is that it will be released for nearly all of the most popular game systems, including PlayStation 3, PS2, Xbox 360 and Wii. Regardless of your platform of choice, the basic concept of the game is the same: using the game's controller, including the rotating record platter, sampling buttons, an effects dial and a cross fader, to match streams of song tracks, create effects and add personal touches to score points. It will allow single-player action, teaming with a friend or competing against them. In addition to Jay-Z and Eminem, other artists whose music will appear in the game are 50 Cent, Beastie Boys, KRS-One, Blondie, N.E.R.D., Gorillaz and David Bowie. “You are going to get over 100 songs from 80 artists and 80 brand-new mixes that have never been heard before, including one with Eminem and Jay-Z (together)," says Guitar Hero president and CEO Dan Rosensweig. Sounds like a recipe for success, given hip-hop’s popularity combined with the success that Guitar Hero has achieved……..
- This isn’t going to end well. Bachelorette couple Jillian Harris and Ed Swiderski might have deluded themselves into thinking that it will, be trust me when I tell you they’re wrong. Reality television is about as conducive to finding lasting love matches as pit row at a NASCAR race is to taking a nice, relaxing nap. It’s a fake, phony and contrived environment engineered to draw in women 18 to 49 with no taste in entertainment so a network can milk as much advertising money as possible out of its prime time slots. Plus, reality TV draws in the freaks, losers, misfits and attention whores of this world who are there for a lot of things, none of them actual love. Well, I take that back. They certainly love themselves and they certainly love being on TV, but that’s about it. So maybe it’s the narcotic high of finishing a season of The Bachelorette and wanting so badly to think that what they’ve “found” is real, but Harris and Swiderski are mistakenly believing that they are going to be together and in love forever. Harris will move into Swiderski's Chicago apartment in September and they plan to wed within a year. The key word there is plan, because the reality is that they will break up in three months or less. "Why not? We are madly in love, we love being together, our relationship is easiest when we're together,” Harris said. "It's just the most simple answer: We're so excited to be together." Okay, okay…..two months or less. Look, it’s not that I’m rooting for these two to break up…..okay, so actually I am. Because of the type of people who appear on reality TV, I actively root for them to get exactly what they deserve: pain, suffering and disappointment. It’s what they bring to the rest of the human race, along with a healthy dose of shame, so it’s what they should get in return……..
- We don’t care where you’re from, because if you’re homeless and living in New York City, we want you the hell out. That’s the message for those without a place to live in NYC, where the Bloomberg administration is combating the problem of homelessness by paying for transients to leave town. Since 2007, the city has paid for more than 550 families to leave and return to their original homes in places as far away as Orlando, San Juan, Puerto Rico and Johannesburg, South Africa. The tickets are one-way rides out of town and while sending often-massive families back from whence they came might seem expensive, it’s a way of keeping them out of the expensive shelter system, which costs $36,000 a year per family. Also, the city isn’t just heartlessly shipping these people off into oblivion. Before giving them that ticket out of NYC, the city verifies that they have a relative elsewhere who has agreed to take the family in. Most of these families are longtime New Yorkers who have come upon hard times and eagerly accept the offer to leave once they land at the door of a shelter. There are also some who came to New York recently and found it to be nothing like what they expected. “I didn’t expect the city to be the way it is,” said Hector Correa, who was in a homeless shelter last week and flew home to Puerto Rico on Tuesday. “I was expecting something different, something better.” Correa, his lady friend Elisabeth Mojica, and their two young sons arrived in New York in May to live with his mother. Both parents failed to land jobs and after his mother could no longer afford to let them stay with her, she kicked them out. Broke and homeless, the family moved into the city intake center for homeless families in the Bronx. “The person I spoke to in the shelter informed me that if I have a person I could stay with in Puerto Rico, that I could get help to go,” said Correa. The process of shipping homeless families and individuals out of town doesn’t take as long as you might think. At the intake center, social workers ask families about their housing options in other places. If a family has relatives who might be willing to take them in, and social workers can confirm that fact, the family could be on a plane, bus or train within hours. Over the course of a year, the city spends $500,000 a year on the program, which is largely paid to local travel agency, Austin Travel, to book one-way tickets for domestic trips. Department of Homeless Services employees do all the planning for international travel. There are no limits on how far away a family can be sent and so far, the destinations have included 24 states and five continents (what, no one wants to go to Antarctica?). And I’m sure the city doesn’t mind not having dirty, oft-belligerent homeless people on its sidewalks and in its alleys to make the city less attractive to tourists……..
- I know that I can be pretty harsh on reality television and have gone on the record as saying that out of the hundreds of reality shows floating around out there, about three of them have any merit for viewing. That being said, I don’t know that there has ever been a more perfect marriage of reality TV and an individual having his or her own show than golfer John Daly and his upcoming show on the Golf Channel. JD is the perfect reality TV personality, period. He’s had multiple marriages, those marriages have featured bloody and violent altercations between JD and his wives, he has well-known battles with alcohol and gambling, he smokes like a chimney, he tools around the country in a tricked-out RV as he plays tournaments and he once gave an interview without a shirt on. Also, Daly has just returned to the PGA Tour after serving a six-month ban for numerous run-ins with the law, culminating in his spending a night in the drunk tank after an altercation outside of a Hooters restaurant in North Carolina. But JD is trying to turn his life around and to prove that he’s no longer the alcoholic troublemaker he once was, he wants you to join him for his new show and see for yourself. “I'm more laid-back," Daly said at Warwick Hills, the site of this week's Buick Open. "It won't have the hustle and bustle as the last show." Oh that’s right, I forgot to mention that Daly and the Golf Channel teamed up for a 13-part series, "The Daly Planet," in 2006. The new, yet-to-be-named reality show will air in early 2010 and so far eight episodes are on tap. "I think 'Out of the Rough' is the perfect title," Daly said. Whatever its name, the new show is allegedly going to follow around a much different John Daly than the last show. He’s trying to get his life in order, has aspirations of winning another major championship and is very much looking to cease being the sort of guy who twice agreed to sit out portions of PGA seasons to get his life in order. "I haven't had a drink in a while," Daly said. That’s definitely good to hear from a guy who has been to alcohol rehab twice, has been married three times and wrote an autobiography that was a ginormous homage to drinking, gambling and womanizing. Daly’s pal and Golf Channel senior producer Al Pollock has known JD for 15 years and vouches for the golfer’s claim that he hasn’t had so much as a sip of alcohol in a long time. “He's a different person," Pollock said. "This show will not be as crazy as the last show. But it's going to show a different side -- the real side -- of John Daly. He's lived through a lot of peaks and valleys. Now, he's got his stuff together.” There will also be a lot less of Daly to see, as he claims to have lost 81 pounds since February, when he ballooned to 286 pounds. Now if someone can just get to him and convince him to ditch those horrific pantaloons he’s been wearing at recent tournaments……….
- Look out, Colombia, Hugo is pissed! Okay, so Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez being angry and belligerent is nothing new, but that doesn’t mean it’s not fun to watch. The latest example of Hugo going Hugo came this week when the Venezuelan despot froze diplomatic relations with Colombia, citing verbal aggressions. The televised announcement came after a back-and-forth dispute that arose after the Colombian alleged that anti-tank weapons purchased by Venezuela ended up in the hands of the guerrilla Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as the FARC. Even though Venezuela received a shipment of Russian SA-24 Igla shoulder-fired missiles earlier this year and missiles eerily similar to those weapons were found at a FARC camp, Chavez won't have anyone implying that his government is funneling weapons to guerrilla groups. In retaliation, he recalled Venezuela's ambassador to Colombia, as well as most of the embassy's staff. "Leave only the lowest functionaries," he said. So does that make the janitor at the embassy the new ambassador and the receptionist the new assistant ambassador? But my boy Hugo wasn’t done, not by a long shot. He went on to threaten a takeover of Colombian companies operating in Venezuela if Colombia offends Venezuela one more time. Colombia's claims are "mistaken," Chavez declared before going on to call the country's leaders "irresponsible." I have no doubt that Colombia can handle its business, but I feel compelled to point out that Chavez is a raging, megalomaniacal psychopath who also inked a military agreement with Russia to buy enough BMP-3 armored fighting vehicles and T-72 tanks to double the nation's inventory the very same day he made the above comments about his country’s beef with Colombia. Those tanks will be used in Chavez’s “Western Shield Plan” on the border with Colombia. Colombian President Alvaro Uribe has also drawn ire from his Venezuelan counterpart for allowing the United States to open bases in Colombia, bases the U.S. says it needs the bases because Ecuador has ordered the closing of a U.S. installation there. His paranoid delusions have him believing that that U.S. is planning to attack Venezuela and is looking to set that up through the new bases in Colombia. So while his allegations and threats may not be based on fact, logic or reality, I maintain that Hugo Chavez is by far the most entertaining dictator/despot in the world today, bar none………
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