- Have you been looking for the perfect gift for that favorite, hard-to-buy-for booze hound in your life? If you’ve already given them engraved flasks, beer mugs and shot glasses, you might be out of ideas. Fret no more, as the vodka maker Medea has just the thing for you. The company has unveiled a new product that’s just as much about the bottle its liquor comes in as it is about the vodka itself. Bottles of Medea will now come with programmable LED displays around the upper portion of the outside of the bottle. Information on how to program the bottles is available at the company’s Web site so you can lock in that special message for that special someone in your life…..assuming that they aren’t too drunk to read and understand it by the time they get around to drinking it. Just make sure that they don’t do a round of tequila shooters, Irish car bombs and screwdrivers first and you should be good, but be prepared to pay a little extra for the right to gift a tricked-out bottle. The specialty bottles are now available for purchase online at $39.99 a bottle, so it’s not cost prohibitive, although you could argue that anyone with an abiding love of vodka (outside of Russia, anyhow) probably isn’t going to care what’s on the outside of the bottle as much as they want to make sure that there is good stuff on the inside. Still, the holiday season is looming and if you can't be there to hand someone their Christmas gift in person, what better way to get your message across than programming it into an LCD display on the outside of a bottle of premium booze……..
- So much for the warm, fuzzy Michael Vick story. Okay, so perhaps using the word fuzzy for the most notorious dog fighter of all-time is a bad idea, but you get my point. Vick went from a guy who missed two seasons because of his dogfighting ring and attached gambling ring, lost his contract, endorsement deals and reputation and had to start from scratch after getting out of prison - as he should have. But he signed in Philadelphia, gradually worked the rust off his game and saw a major hurdle removed from his path when the Eagles traded starter Donovan McNabb to Washington in the offseason. The last hurdle between Vick and the starting gig was eliminated when newly minted starter Kevin Kolb left the Eagles’ opener against Green Bay with a concussion, paving the way for Vick to step in and show what he had left. As it turned out, Vick had a lot left: 750 yards passing, six touchdowns and no interceptions and 170 yards rushing and one score in 10 quarters of play, including wins in both games he started. The next chapter in the story was supposed to be written Sunday, when McNabb returned to Philly for the first time to take on the man he mentored and encouraged the Eagles to sign in the first place when no one else would give Vick a chance. McNabb has played well in Washington and the ‘Skins are a much better team for having him, but his play has been nowhere close to Vick’s so far this season. Yet when McNabb took the field Sunday, the crowd at Lincoln Financial Field gave him a standing ovation and he shared a warm hug with Vick. Then the game started, McNabb and the Redskins jumped out to a quick 14-0 lead (including a touchdown pass by McNabb) and Vick was trying to lead his team to their first score when he was flushed from the pocket by a strong pass rush and scrambled to the Washington 1-yard-line, where he dove for the end zone and was crushed on a sandwich hit by Redskins Kareem Moore and DeAngelo Hall. Vick remained on the ground for a moment, left the game with rib and chest injuries and did not return. He underwent X-rays in the locker room after the hit and even though the full extent of his injuries won't be known until Monday, early rumors suggested that the injury could be as severe as three broken ribs. So Vick could be out for several weeks and go from being named NFC offensive player of the month and having fans toting signs proclaiming Philadelphia to "Vickadelphia!" to sitting on the bench, watching the guy whose job he took due to injury take that same job back, also because of injury………
- No surprise here. The Social Network dominated the box office in its first weekend, raking in $23 million from 2,771 locations. The adaptation of author Ben Mezrich’s book documenting the creation and rise of Facebook may have been ripped by everyone even remotely associated with the social networking site, as the book was, but that controversy seemed to only strengthen the film and with positive reviews and (premature) Oscar buzz, the movie should have decent staying power. Zack Snyder’s Legend of the Guardians hung tough and locked down the No. 2 spot in its second weekend in theaters, dropping a mere 33 percent for a take of $10.9 million, raising its cumulative total to $30 million. Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps lost its mojo in its second weekend of release, or perhaps word of mouth about how crappy of a movie it is got out, but either way, the end result was a 47-percent decline. That worked out to a take of $10.1 million, bringing the film’s overall total for director Ollie “Bong Hit” Stone to at $35.9 million for its first ten days in release. Hot on Gordon Gecko’s heels was Ben Affleck and his bank robbery joint The Town, which continued a strong run with another $10 million to up its gross to $64.3 million and counting. Easy A found similar continuing success, declining 34 percent but making $7 million to up its overall tally to $42.4 million a healthy profit for a movie made on an $8 million budget. The rest of the top 10 was comprised of: You Again (following an abominable opening weekend by finishing at No. 6 with a decent haul of $5.6 million for a 10-day total of $16.4 million), Let the Right One In (No. 7 with $5.3 million for its opening weekend), Case 39 (starring Renee Zellweger and Bradley Cooper and finding its way off of Paramount’s shelf after months and months gathering dust, yet making just under $5.3 million for the No. 8 slot for its first weekend of release), M. Night Shymalan’s wretchedly awful horror movie Devil (No. 9 with $3.7 million and an embarrassing cumulative total of $27.4 million after three weekends in release) and the animated wolf-centric movie Alpha and Omega (No. 10 with $3 million). Some films did well in limited release even with no hope of cracking the top 10, as Davis Guggenheim’s Waiting for Superman expanded to 34 locations for a three-day box office of $407,000 and a total two-week gross of $600,000, Catfish (which takes documentary approach to the same subject matter as Social Network), which expanded to 136 theaters this weekend and grossed $607,000 for a cumulative haul of $1.6 million. Next weekend, we’ll all get the chance to see just how far short the Katherine Heigl, Josh Duhamel-led Life As We Know It falls short of its immense promotional push when that disaster opens alongside Diane Lane’s Secretariat. It should be…..um……underwhelming………
- Paranoid much, Iran? That’s how it looks when your intelligence minister announces that you have arrested a number of "nuclear spies" while rumors swirl about a dangerous new computer virus targeting certain mechanical components of nuclear power plants, a virus that many believe to be aimed at Iran. Intelligence Minister Heydar Moslehi announced the arrests Sunday without providing any details about who was arrested, when or where. Look, I can see how being the most likely target of the Stuxnet virus could put a nation’s officials on edge, especially if that nation were developing a burgeoning nuclear arsenal while trying to insist to the world that its nuclear ambitions were strictly for energy purposes. Security experts have pegged Stuxnet as an incredibly complex and sophisticated piece of malware, perhaps the most dangerous in the history of the computer age. Iran has made an emphatic point of saying that its nuclear program has not been compromised by the virus, but it was curious that Moslehi didn’t even mention Stuxnet in his statement. He said only that his ministry has "absolute control over the virtual networks and will foil all acts of sabotage." Perhaps there is something to the belief that spies and insiders are tied to the delivery of the virus, as most experts believe that it would take inside information and intelligence to successfully infect a system with Stuxnet. The virus is so sophisticated that it’s designed to attack a specific machine only when that machine meets specific conditions, i.e. a particular temperature or pressure. Due to the amount of financing and resources needed to develop the virus, many believe that one or more governments have to be responsible. It certainly does sound like the sort of black, covert op that the CIA or a similar organization would be responsible for……..in a cheesy, over-the-top Hollywood blockbuster………
- Have you noticed a much mellower, calmer and more Rastafarian-like tone to some of CBS Radio News’ recent broadcasts? If so, this could explain why. Seems that veteran CBS Radio News correspondent Howard Arenstein is a freaking stoner - check that, he’s a stoner and he also deals the hippie lettuce to his stoner friends. Arenstein, 60, was arrested early Saturday on drug charges after police searched his Northwest Washington home and found marijuana plants growing in his yard. Did you hear me? I said dude had the ganja growing IN HIS BACKYARD. I know more and more states are moving toward legalizing pot, but I’m fairly certain that our nation’s capital isn’t among them. Smoking tree is one thing and you can probably get away with rolling a fatty or doing bong rips every now and then if you do it in the privacy of your own home, but growing your own stash in your backyard to smoke and/or sell is taking a huge risk because invariably, you’re going to have some stick-in-the-mud, prude of a neighbor who tips off the cops and ruins the fun. That’s exactly what happened to Arenstein, whose two-story, off-white brick house was raided by police after a tip from an area resident/narc. Police obtained and executed a search warrant Saturday and found 11 full-grown marijuana plants and six 2-ounce bags of marijuana. Using their ridiculous system of measurement, authorities in the district consider each plant to equal a pound of marijuana. Arenstein and wife Orly Katz were both arrested at their home in the 3500 block of T Street and charged with possession with intent to distribute marijuana. Katz is an accomplished journalist in her own right, serving as a Washington correspondent for Yedioth Ahronoth, one of Israel's most widely circulated newspapers. So allow me to ask you a question, District of Columbia police: How the frak do you thing that Arenstein was able to so calmly and coolly cover such major Washington stories as the disputed 2000 presidential election, the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the war in Iraq? Dude was baked out of his mind and he was a better correspondent because of it. You going in and ripping his chronic isn’t helping CBS Radio News or Arenstein; it’s hurting both and America by association. Neighbors - the non-narcs, I surmise - said that the couple generally kept to themselves, which fits the profile of stoners. They lay low, they don’t bother anyone and if people would just leave them alone, the world would be a much better place for one and all. Sharing stories like this ruins my days and my weekend and to think all of this happened because some busybody neighbor couldn’t keep his or her mouth shut, jeez…………
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