- How long have I been saying that the sport of cricket needs something to spice it up? Outside of India, Pakistan, England and a few other nations, the sport isn’t even a blip on the sports radar. Perhaps that would change if we had more incidences of police arresting men accused of plotting to fix parts of a major international match between two of the sport’s titans, Pakistan and England. British police made the arrest in London last week, although the suspect was not immediately identified. The International Cricket Council, the sport's governing body, said that no players nor team officials have been arrested at this point, which is mildly disappointing. The reaction was swift, shocked and delivered via Twitter for those involved in the match, including Kevin Pietersen, who played for England in the series against Pakistan and Tweeted, "Wow.. Woken up to hear some interesting revelations on our test!! Today is gonna be interesting..." Others called it a dark day for the sport, which I wholeheartedly disagree with. See, for most sports, having allegations that a major match, series or game was rigged by gamblers would be a huge black eye. But when your sport is as irrelevant as cricket is on the global sports scene, the only way you’re making the leap is a transcendent story and this, my friends, is a transcendent story. Ehsan Mani, former president of the International Cricket Council called for the Pakistani cricket board and ICC act quickly and decisively. "There's absolutely no place for corruption in the game," he said, "and that will destroy the game we love so much. So it is absolutely essential that very decisive action is taken." Either destroy the game to take it to the next level, one or the other. Pakistan has more important things to worry about right now, what with one-fifth of its land under water from massive floods, an already impoverished population struggling to bear that burden and an economy on the verge of collapse. So lay off on the Pakistani team and if anything, thank them for thrusting cricket into a place it hasn’t been for a long time and probably won’t be again any time soon - the spotlight……….
- Who would it be, the criminals looking for their next big score or a freaky, demonic exorcism film at the weekend box office? In a race almost too close to call, the satanic side won out as The Last Exorcism won the earnings race, narrowly edging out the T.I.- and Paul Walker-led Takers. While both films easily outstripped expectations, it was Exorcism that carried the day with a $21.3 million haul to $21 million even, give or take a few dollars, for Takers. What makes the final result amazing is that audiences and critics generally panned Exorcism, but clearly enough people went to see it before word got out that it was the most successful film for the weekend. After the two newcomers at the top of the heap, it was a steady dose of holdovers in the middle portion of the top 10. Finishing third with another strong showing was The Expendables, which in its third week grossed $9.5 million, a 44-percent decline from last weekend, but still enough to push its cumulative total to $82 million. It was followed, as it has been every week since its release, by Eat Pray Love, which earned $7 million for a total gross of $60 million. The last slot in the top five went to The Other Guys, which has remained in the top five for more than a month now and has made $99.3 million thanks to a weekend take of $6.6 million. The latter half of the top 10 was led by Twilight parody Vampires Suck, which used a scant $5.3 million haul to secure the sixth spot for the frame. It was followed by the longest-tenured film in the top 10, Leonardo DiCaprio’s Inception, which appropriately enough finished seventh in its seventh weekend of release with $5.1 million to inch its overall total to $270 million. Family-friendly flick Nanny McPhee Returns grabbed eighth place with $4.7 million, a 44 percent drop-off from its opening weekend but enough to raise its cumulative take to $17 million. The last two spots in the top 10 were earned (I use that term loosely) by Jennifer Aniston’s The Switch, which lost 45 percent of its value for $4.6 million on the weekend, and Piranha 3-D, which grossed an estimated $4.3 million for a total two-week gross of $18.2 million (and yet it already has a sequel in the works). Word clearly got out about how utterly crap-tastic Lottery Ticket is, because that stink-fest plummeted out of the top 10, saw its earnings decline a whopping 65 percent and made just over $4 million. Prepare for another major bomb next weekend, when the sure-to-fail Justin Long-Drew Barrymore “comedy” Going the Distance opens opposite Machete. Should be…..um…..interesting…….
- Every town needs a good bridge, whether they have a river to bridge over or not. That’s my firm belief and because I don’t expect it to change any time soon, I’m firmly on the side of the residents of League City, Tex. in their battle against their own city. A group of locals have filed a lawsuit against the city over claims that it gave a bridge in the Glen Cove Park subdivision to a private contractor and thus massively inconvenienced the people of the area. The bridge has been a part of the community for some time and when residents had the chance to speak out about the structure, they were very vocal and extremely angry. "I still remember one special Mothers Day. My youngest son brought home the best present ever -- a bucket full of minnows that he had caught at the bridge," one resident told the city council. Oh, and there’s the matter of having to take a ginormously circuitous route to get home for many Glen Cove Park residents because they can no longer use the bridge. "As it is now, we have to go all the way around through a whole other neighborhood just to get to our neighborhood," Glen Cove Park HOA President Scott Freudenburg said. Freudenburg sounds like one of the locals who used the bridge in so many parts of their life, holding functions there, crossing from one part of town to the other and as a place to hang out and ponder life. Unfortunately, they can no longer use the bridge for those or any other purposes because the city gave it to a developer several years ago. The old bridge was torn down at the time courtesy of the Texas Department of Transportation, but in the minds of residents, the bridge remains and the land around it was not the city's to give away;. "When you know for a fact that something belongs to you and somebody comes and takes it away from you, it's the principal that we are trying to stand up for here," Freudenburg said. That would explain the angry outcry at the latest council meeting, which led to some progress in the form of the council rescinding the lease with the developer effective this week. So what’s the next move? "We are doing everything we can to make sure we come up with a resolution that everyone concerned -- the Glen Cove neighborhood, the developers, and the city -- everyone can agree because it's the best solution for us all," League City spokesperson Kristi Wyatt said. The ideal answer for the locals would be the construction of a new bridge, but methinks the issues in this case run deeper than a simple wooden or metal stanchion across a body of water………
- Facebook is getting mighty greedy these days….and arrogant. Already on the warpath against sites with the word "book" in their names and the subject of an upcoming movie about founder Mark Zuckerberg, the popular social networking site is also trying to trademark the word "face." According to recently filed court documents, Facebook wants to stake claim to the word face in the name of any Web site, which seems like a bit of a leap to make. The suit specifically targets Think Computer, the developer of a mobile payments app called FaceCash, and Think CEO Aaron Greenspan is the man in the crosshairs. Greenspan has asked for an extension in the case, although most legal scholars are doubtful that the court will side the Facebook in this case. Greenspan has actually filed for two extensions in the case, pushing back the deadline to oppose the "face" trademark attempt from June 23 to Sept. 22. "If you search the patent database, there are thousands of marks that contain the word 'face,'" Greenspan said. "I understand where Facebook is coming from, but this move has big implications for my company and for others." He added that he wanted the extra time to research his position because "tech is a very fast-paced industry. You never know what will develop during the additional time." Greenspan has quite a history of battling on trademark issues, so Facebook may have picked a fight with the wrong guy this time. Then again, when your user base dwarfs the population of most every country on Earth and profits are rising steadily, maybe you take a stab or two at expanding that empire to ridiculous lengths and even if you lose, at a minimum you’ve gained more attention and headline time for your company………..
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