The Graffiti Gestapo in Green Bay, NFL Network analysts gone criminal and Facebook changes itself....again

- Better hope your property isn’t graffitied in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Not only will you have an unsightly blemish with some (probably) gang-related message on your wall, you could also find yourself the recipient of a hefty cleaning bill from the city if you don’t remove said graffiti within the accepted time frame. City officials have enacted a new ordinance making victims of graffiti responsible for cleaning up the mess. Under the new ordinance, property owners have seven days to clean up the graffiti or the city will have it done for them and send them the bill. The premise of this crap-tastic idea is that when graffiti is seen, it attracts even more vandalism. Police believe that cleaning the graffiti up sooner will alleviate the problem, which is of course a load of crap. Some business owners don’t have a big problem with the new rules because they already deal with vandalism as soon as possible. Shellee Cosgrove, who manages the Walnut Wine & Liquor and Walnut Shell in Green Bay, explained that she had been victimized by vandalism a few times but would not have any problems under the new ordinance. “We have this beautiful long white wall, and I don't have a lot of problems with it but I have been hit or tagged three times,” said Cosgrove. “I call my maintenance guy and he comes out and covers it up right away.” The city council clearly feels that Cosgrove’s fellow business owners do not always act as swiftly and so on Tuesday night, the council passed an ordinance to force their cooperation. “You'll get seven days to remove it, or the city will remove it for you and charge you,” said Ald. Chris Wery. How very munificent of you, Alderman. Look, I get that there was no law in place and you felt the need to get your inner litigator on and make one, but perhaps you should have taken a step back and consulted with someone who is, um, smarter than you and your colleagues clearly are. Yes, graffiti cases in the city have risen in the last several years from 73 in 2006 to 238 last year. Having said that, simply taking action on an issue does not automatically make your action the correct one. Just look at where the idea came from: police brought up the idea to council members. Have you taken a close look at some of the aspiring Mensas who populate a lot of police forces? The most intelligent people in any society aren’t volunteering for a low-paying job where they may be routinely shot at. “Because of the residual crime that we get from the graffiti being up. If the graffiti stays up one gang will come in and tag over the initial graffiti and it gets to be a territory thing,” said police officer Dave Schmitz. Nice try, Smitty. But I concur with local business owner said Louis Ferrari, who manages E-Z Auto Credit. “You're the one getting spray painted and yet if you don't have it cleaned up because these guys came here to spray paint our car lot, now I have to pay for it because I don't have it cleaned up when I'm not the one that did it,” Ferrari lamented. “I would say at least 14 days, and given the season we're in - it's winter - I think at least 14 to 30 days would be sufficient.” Better, even if it’s not an ideal solution. Who knows, maybe some business owners appreciate the artwork behind the graffiti and the color it adds to their property. Who is the council to tell them otherwise? As it relates to problems complying with the (moronic) new law, the city says it work with people who have difficulty with the timeline and the cost of removing graffiti. “If there's a problem that you have that you can't get it removed, you can appeal to the city and we'll work with you," Wery said. "It's not meant to be a hammer we're going to hit you over the head with. We'll work with you.” Property owners have 30 days to appeal to the city if they are slapped with a cleaning bill and I am openly rooting for the first case to go down…………

- Tonight’s Super Bowl was a great game with an awesome halftime show, but one former NFL player turned TV analyst wasn’t around to see it happen. Former NFLer Warren Sapp, an analyst for NFL Network, was not be part of the NFL Network's Super Bowl coverage today after being charged with domestic battery in South Florida. Sapp was charged with one count of misdemeanor domestic battery after an alleged allegation altercation against a female acquaintance took place at 6 a.m. ET Saturday at the Shore Club Hotel, where Sapp was staying. The domestic violence allegation was reported around noon Saturday and detectives interviewed Sapp later that day, leading to NFL Network to immediately yank Sapp from the air. "We have been made aware of the arrest of Warren Sapp by the Miami Beach Police Department. In light of these circumstances, Warren Sapp will not appear on NFL Network while we review the matter,” NFL Network spokesman Dennis Johnson said in a statement. As for Sapp, he appeared before a Miami-Dade County judge today after allegedly going berserk on a female acquaintance. She suffered a swollen knee and bruises on her neck in the attack, which took place after she was partying with Sapp and her friends at the hotel. The woman claimed in her affidavit that she asked for Sapp’s room key when she became tired and that he came to the room and woke her up a few hours later, at which point they argued and he allegedly began to choke her and pushed her down on a couch. As the woman told it, things escalated and Sapp grabbed her by her shirt and neck and threw her down again. Sapp’s version of the story is that he allowed the woman stay in his room but asked her to leave a few hours later and that the she fell on her leg when he tried to help her get off a couch. Oh, so that’s what we’re calling beating the crap out of a chick in an argument these days, “helping her get off a couch.” It was a second black eye in under a week for NFL Network after another analyst, hall of famer Michael Irvin, was hit with a civil lawsuit on allegations of sexual assault earlier in the week. For a network owned by the NFL itself, having a growing stable of misogynistic analysts can’t be good for ratings or public image…………

- Finally, someone toppled the über-overrated Avatar from the top of the weekend box office mountain….and it was a crappy romantic flick with writing and plot development on par with your average soap opera or old-school Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon. That would be the romantic drama Dear John, which snapped Avatar’s seven-week reign of terror by grossing an estimated $32.4 million. I have a solid theory as to why this is and you’ll have to agree that it’s genius. See, being Super Bowl weekend and all, a lot of guys out there were preparing for the big game and the requisite Super Bowl party. Either a) their wives, fiancées or girlfriends dragged them to see Dear John as a means of evening things out for taking over Sunday with their beer, brats, pizza and loud, annoying friends coming over for the game or b) those wives, fiancées and girlfriends were looking for any excuse to get out of the house and went to see a prototypical chick flick instead. Either way, it was enough to knock Avatar to second place with $23.6 million, meaning the James Cameron film has now out-grossed every movie in the history of cinema (as long as you don’t adjust for inflation) with a domestic take of $630 million. From those two films, it was a steep drop-off to third place, where From Paris With Love debuted in disappointing fashion with just $8.1 million. That’s not a good sign for John Travolta’s star power, as the R-rated action flick fell well below expectations. In fourth place was Mel Gibson’s Edge of Darkness, which took a steep fall this weekend, losing 59 percent from last weekend to finish with $7 million. Fifth place went to Tooth Fairy, which has received a boost from being only of the only kids’ movies in theaters right now. Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Co. held fairly strong with $6.5 million. The rest of the top 10 consisted of When in Rome (sixth with $5.5 million, The Book of Eli (seventh with $4.8 million), Crazy Heart (which added some 700 theaters to its release and landed in the top 10 for the first time following the predictable-yet-dumb Oscar bump and finished eighth with $3.6 million), Legion (ninth with $3.4 million) and Sherlock Holmes (which crossed the $200 million mark its seventh weekend in theaters with an $2.6 million. Overall, it was a record haul for a Super Bowl weekend, though the game itself had record ratings as well, so neither movies nor football were wanting for viewers…………

- Just as the New Orleans Saints won their first Super Bowl in their first attempt, it appears that the first female presidential candidate in Costa Rican history will emerge victorious. Laura Chinchilla (real last name – I think) held a two-to-one lead in the country's presidential election, as the second-place candidate, Otton Solis of the Citizen's Action Party, conceded defeat. Chinchilla is a member of the PLN -- the Spanish acronym for the ruling National Liberation Party party – and she would become the nation's first female president. There were three candidates for the election and early polls showed Chinchilla with 47.3 percent of the vote, with 24.9 percent of election sites reporting. Solis and Otto Guevara of the Libertarian Movement had 23.3 percent and 21.9 percent, respectively. All three candidates cast their votes live on local television Sunday morning, then sat back to await the results. Chinchilla must accrue at least 40 percent of the votes to win; if she fails to do so, a runoff election will be used to select the next president. It was part of a big voting day in Costa Rica, where citizens cast ballots for two vice presidents, 53 congressmen and 495 councilmen. In a nice change from recent elections around the globe, there were no allegations of fraud or vote-rigging, no violent showdowns between members of opposing parties and really no drama at all. Heck, the day’s events even included election sites where children could vote in a mock presidential vote. All told, some 2.8 million Costa Ricans are eligible to vote. Whomever is elected will replace outgoing President Oscar Arias -- a Nobel laureate who leaves office a popular, yet controversial figure. He has raised Costa Rica’s international profile, but his often-abrasive style has rubbed many the wrong way. After casting his own vote Sunday, he called the electoral process transparent and trustworthy. "I would like to thank the Costa Rican people for filling the streets with color," he said. So a big day for Costa Rica and for all the ladies out there with political aspirations. Just goes to show you that people will vote for a female presidential candidate……just as long as that candidate is not former Sen. and current Secretary of State Hank Clinton…………

- Facebook just can’t seem to help itself. No sooner than users adjust to changes to the social networking site and stop b*tching about it, the site goes and remakes itself again. The latest round of changes marks Facebook’s sixth birthday. Now with a population of 400 million people, the site unveiled the changes on Thursday and throughout the day Friday. "Facebook began six years ago today as a product that my roommates and I built to help people around us connect easily, share information and understand one another better," founder Mark Zuckerberg wrote on Thursday night. "We hoped Facebook would improve people's lives in important ways. So it's rewarding to see that as Facebook has grown, people around the world are using the service to share information about events big and small and to stay connected to everyone they care about." Over the past year, Facebook’s user base more than doubled and its current “population” would make it the third-largest country in the world, behind only China and India and ahead of the United States. The new layout jacks up the site’s home page again, makes signing out more difficult to figure out and seeks to combine many of the sites applications – messages, chat, event, pictures, etc. – into a single location. Also, Facebook's news feed is now divided into categories for "top news" and "most recent" posts from Facebook friends, a slight change from the previous arrangement, which also allowed users to sort posts by what's newest and what's most relevant to them. "For example, when you receive a Facebook notification about someone writing on your Wall or tagging you in a photo, you'll see a red bubble appear in the left-hand corner near the search bar," Facebook engineer Jing Chen wrote in a blog post on the site. "When you click on the icon, you'll see a drop-down menu with your most recent notifications." Facebook says it's going for a "simplified design." Oddly enough, these changes haven’t incited the same vitriolic response as previous changes, which is weird because in my book, there are every bit as annoying, pointless and hassling as any that have come before them. But like them or not, they are here and by the time the sun rose on Saturday morning, pretty much everyone on Facebook had to deal with the new look and make do with it……….