Communists taking over one NBA franchise, Nigerians are a tad too sensitive and the Greenpeace kooks arrive for the G-20 summit

- Few things piss me off more than groups acting all offended and put off by how their race, creed or ethnic group is depicted in a fictitious Hollywood movie. Studios are concerned with one thing and one thing only: making money. You acting like they set out to viciously malign the character of your people is both offensive and self-centered. So to Nigerians who are outraged by how they are portrayed in the summer sci-fi blockbuster District 9, I say this: Get over it. The images of people who happen to be Nigerian eating aliens and having sex with aliens aren’t real. I don’t recall any white American getting pissed when white guys were having sex with Natasha Henstridge in Species, although that may have had something to do with the fact that Natasha Henstridge was really hot. Fact is, if the movie hadn’t been set in Africa, it would have been set in another country and I’m guessing that people there wouldn’t be quite so oversensitive. Basically, District 9 is a story set in South Africa about an alien space ship that breaks down over Johannesburg -- leaving the stranded creatures in a fierce battle with humans. When the South Africans give the aliens the boot, the Nigerians are more than willing to take them in - and exploit them. A Nigerian gangster provides the aliens with a range of paid services including prostitutes, food and weapons. And because of this, Nigerians are outraged and creating Facebook groups to express said outrage (seriously, creating a Facebook group is about the laziest form of social dissidence ever invented)? Again, I say this to Nigerians: every movie has bad guys in it and those bad guys have to be from somewhere. Often, those bad guys are nothing like the real-life people in the country they are supposedly from, but typically people realize as much and don’t throw a hissy fit over the movie. Not you, Nigerians. No, officials in your country have banned the movie and are demanding an apology from Sony Pictures, the film's principle distributor. "Why do they want to denigrate Nigerians as criminals, cannibals and prostitutes who sleep with extra-terrestrial animals?" said Dora Akunyili, information minister. "We've had enough with the stereotypes they have branded us with ... we are not going to sit back and allow people to stigmatize us." Seriously? Grow a sense of humor and an understanding of the term creative license, you tool. Furthermore, Sony insists that Nigerian authorities cleared the film for release and it screened in that country for two weeks. It’s not as if the depiction of Nigerians in the movie comprises the bulk of the movie either; those scenes make up less than 10 minutes of the 113-minute film. Some idiots out there are actually suggesting that director Peter Jackson should have used a fictional country as the setting for his movie. Not really, morons. Just because you are hypersensitive and have a persecution complex doesn’t mean that the rest of us need to cater to your whims and insane demands………..

- There is no one who is less a fan of the police than me, but in the rare event that an officer is on the receiving end of shady treatment from those higher up his or her particular bureaucratic food chain, I feel compelled to speak out. Officer Thomas Strain, a white cop from Philadelphia’s 35th District, is in that very position all because of his hairstyle of choice. Dude was yanked off the street and kept on desk duty for two days all because he had the audacity to get cornrows. He wasn’t allowed to return to his normal post until he cut his braids off even though many black officers on the force wear cornrows regularly. Strain showed up for work Sept. 3 with his new hairstyle and within minutes, his superiors took issue with his mane. "They pulled him out of roll call and took him right up to the inspector's office," said an officer who asked to remain anonymous. It’s a bullsh*t move, but the one thing you can say for the police department is that they’re not lying about the real reason they treated Strain like crap. Strain's superior didn't feel his cornrows were "professional," explained police spokesman Lt. Frank Vanore said, Inspector Aaron Horne is the tool who made the decision to mistreat Strain. Horne, who oversees the Northwest Police Division, is the supervisor who directed Strain to banish the braids. "The policy's the policy, it doesn't matter what race you are," Vanore said. Police policy requires officers to have "clean, properly trimmed and combed hair" that doesn't prevent them from wearing their uniform hat "in a military-manner.” The policy also bans "unnatural" hair colors such as blue, purple or green but that doesn’t seem to have anything to do with cornrows. Unless the cornrows prevent Strain from wearing hit hat in the required military manner, there shouldn’t have been an issue. On top of all of this, the department has a complete double standard in regards to its hair policy, as the policy for female officers is more permissive than the policy for men. By all accounts, Strain is a well-respected officer who appears to have been the victim of a small-minded, backwards-thinking supervisor who needs to join the rest of us in the 21st century………….

- The Communists are taking over the NBA, the Communists are taking over the NBA! Okay, so maybe that’s a bit extreme, but it is true that Russia's richest man, Mikhail Prokhorov, has made a takeover bid for the New Jersey Nets. Prokhorov confirmed on his blog on Tuesday, much to the shock and horror of the capitalist world - okay, I made that up too. This is a guy who made his millions as a nickel mining baron and now he wants to become to first foreigner to control an NBA franchise. Under the terms of his proposals, sent to existing Nets shareholders over the weekend, Prokhorov’s Onexim group would provide a loan to build a substantial part of a new arena. That project has been waffling back and forth between disaster and survival for some time now, as current owner Bruce Ratner has switched designs and designers repeatedly in attempts to shave dollars off the cost of the arena. "For our Onexim group the realization of this very lucrative business project, whose participation was made possible by the world crisis [never in history have foreigners owned an NBA club], is another interesting sports development," Prokhorov wrote. Interesting or horrifying; I guess it depends on your perspective, eh comrade? To make this deal a reality, the money involved would have to be somewhere in the $700 million range. Maybe I’m the only one holding out hope for this, but current Nets minority owner Jay-Z is perhaps the man who could save the team from the Communists, right? I’m not sure how much money H.O.V.A. has, but with all the albums he’s sold, all the business deals and investments he’s made and all the sold-out shows he’s played, dude has to have $700 mil laying around, right? If not, his wife Beyonce could perhaps kick in a few bucks too. C’mon y’all, this is to fight the evils of Communism encroaching upon our very soil. Commissioner David Stern and the suits in the NBA league office need to step up too, because transfer of ownership requires background checks on a new owner as well as approval by 75 percent of the league's 30 owners, meaning this sinister plot could still be stopped. Let this red take the billions he made after cashing out of assets in 2008 before the global crisis caused commodity prices to crash and buy some foreign soccer team or league, but not an American pro sports franchise. Sure, Prokhorov’s estimated fortune of $9.5 billion is impressive, but do you really want one of the NBA’s franchises becoming a Communist regime? Do you want bread lines and rationed water in place of concession stands? Besides, Forbes magazine in December ranked the Nets as the 26th most valuable of the 30 NBA teams, with an estimated value of $295 million. That means damn near anyone (in the millionaire world anyhow) can afford them. Find a good, capitalist and most importantly, American buyer and tell Prokhorov to take his rubles elsewhere…………

- While women ages 18-45 everywhere may be breathlessly awaiting "New Moon" -- the second movie installment of the "Twilight" vampire series -- because of the movie itself, I’m actually more impressed with the soundtrack for the movie. That’s partially because I’ve never seen the first “Twilight” movie or read any of the books, but that doesn’t change the fact that the "New Moon" music supervisor Alex Patsavas has assembled a great lineup to provide the musical backdrop for the movie. Death Cab for Cutie scored the lead single for the "New Moon" soundtrack with "Meet Me on the Equinox," but the list of great indie rock acts doesn’t end there. The soundtrack will include, among others: Thom Yorke, "Hearing Damage," The Killers, "A White Demon Love Song," Muse, "I Belong to You (New Moon)," Bon Iver & St. Vincent, "Roslyn," (personal favorite) Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, "Done All Wrong," Sea Wolf, "The Violet Hour," Grizzly Bear, "Slow Life" and Editors, "No Sound but the Wind." The soundtrack is set for release on Oct. 20, exactly one month prior to the movie’s arrival in theaters. It will be a marked improvement from the name-heavy first "Twilight" soundtrack, which featured Paramore, Collective Soul and Linkin Park. That first soundtrack debuted on the (utterly meaningless and irrelevant) Billboard 200 at No.1 and has sold 2.2 million copies so far. Not saying I’m going to go out and buy the new soundtrack or see the movie, but I do salute Patsavas and his crew for assembling an impressive lineup for a soundtrack that should help make the movie better….just not good enough for me to want to see…………

- Nothing brings out the enviro-kooks quite like the G-20 economic summit, eh? And among the enviro-kooks, who is kookier than Greenpeace? No surprise at all that come this morning, four Greenpeace kooks were dangling off the West End Bridge in Pittsburgh, high over the Ohio River, with a large sign calling for change. The banner, which read "Climate Destruction Ahead" and "Reduce CO2 Emissions Now," was hung from the underside of the bridge just one day before political leaders from around the world were due to arrive for the summit at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center. You all know that normally I’m a huge fan or rioters and protestors, but hooking yourself up to a rope and hanging from a railing on a bridge isn't exactly Grade-A protest material. Besides, these tools only lasted for about two hours, after which they climbed up their ropes and returned safely to the bridge deck. They didn’t make any demands, they were mostly cooperative with police and their only goal, according to Pittsburgh Police Assistant Chief William Bochter, was to get their point across. The only person who did land in a pair of the silver bracelets was a man who was on the bridge deck during the protest. This guy explained that the protesters want President Barack Obama to deal with climate issues during the G-20 this week. This sad, underwhelming protest was organized by a man named Damon Moglen, who said that "Greenpeace is here to get a message out about climate change, and I think that people in Pittsburgh realize how important this issue is. This is a city that has a reputation for various green initiatives, and that's a terrific history that they're developing, so I think this is a message that people in Pittsburgh can really appreciate." So to summarize: nothing was burned, no property was destroyed, no one brawled with the police, there were no angry chants, the protest only lasted two hours and no injuries were reported. Let’s go ahead and chalk this one up as a protest failure. There were five other people wearing Greenpeace shirts who were arrested in Point State Park downtown and they had helmets, rappelling gear and duffel bags, but no one knows what their intentions were. You’re not off to a very good start here, Greenpeace, and I’ve got four words for you as it pertains to the rest of the G-20 summit: Step your game up………..