- The Texas Rangers may not have won the World Series, but at the minimum they appear to have started what should be an epic rivalry with the New York Yankees and more specifically, Yankees fans. During the American League Championship series, won in six games by the Rangers, Kristin Lee, the wife of Rangers pitcher Cliff Lee, was allegedly spat upon, cursed at and targeted with thrown cups of beer during games at Yankee Stadium while her husband was pitching in Game 3. Those actions must have been a small part of what Yankee fan had in store for the visitors because Rangers CEO Chuck Greenberg absolutely laid the wood to them in a local radio show in Dallas on Monday, calling Yankees fans "violent," "apathetic" and "an embarrassment" for their behavior during the ALCS. "I think our fans have been great," Greenberg said. "I think particularly in Game 3 of the World Series they just blew away anything I've seen in any venue during the postseason. I thought Yankee fans, frankly, were awful. They were either violent or apathetic, neither of which is good. So I thought Yankee fans were by far the worst of any I've seen in the postseason. I thought they were an embarrassment." Quote, end of freaking quote. Wow…..you just do not hear executives with professional sports franchises blowing anyone up like that, let alone fans. To use a question that had nothing to do with Yankees fans and turn it into an excuse to blast them with a nuclear shot, you know Greenberg was looking for any chance at all to unload. He did praise Rangers fans for backing their team in Game 2 of the ALCS after their team blew a 5-0 lead and lost Game 1, but that was merely an obstacle to clear before getting to what he really wanted to say. Yankees president Randy Levine declined to comment on Greenberg’s words, hiding behind commissioner Bud Selig’s mandate that teams not playing in the World Series refrain from doing or saying anything that would detract from baseball’s biggest showcase. The Yankees did issue a statement through a spokesperson in which Levine was quoted as saying: "At this time, we are honoring the commissioner's policy regarding respecting and not distracting from the World Series." Trust me when I tell you that you haven’t heard the last of this………
- Germany, you’re freaking screwed. I say that having spent a week in Deutschland this summer, which is more than enough to know that beer is woven into every last piece of fabric in German culture. That makes the Germans extra-screwed if you believe the results of a new study conducted by a panel of so-called experts from the Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs. These kooks weighed the physical, psychological, and social problems caused by the drugs and determined that alcohol was the most harmful overall. In other words, alcohol does more damage than crack, heroin, crystal meth and ecstasy. It’s worse than marijuana and PCP, more harmful than LSD. According to this committee of fools, alcohol is the "most harmful" among a list of 20 drugs, beating out crack and heroin for the coveted top spot when assessed for its The Lancet on Sunday, used an (obviously flawed) new scale to evaluate harms to individual users and others. With this sketchy rubric, alcohol received a score of 72 on a scale of 1 to 100, the study claims. Researchers compared booze with 19 other drugs using 16 criteria: nine related to the adverse effects the drug has on an individual and seven on its harm against others. With its score of 72, alcohol was deemed to be nearly three times as harmful as cocaine or tobacco. The research’s flaws can be seen in the fact that crack and methamphetamine were the most harmful drugs - but only to individuals. Have any of these nerds ever hung around with crackheads for even five minutes? You hang with Joe Crackhead for an hour and I’ll hang with a lush at a bar for an hour and we’ll see who’s in more danger, Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs. Sure, you also reached the conclusion that alcohol, heroin and crack cocaine were the most harmful to others, but by this point I have zero faith in any of your work. Thankfully, this work was not done by American scientists and its focus seems to be on discrediting Britain's three-tiered drug classification system, which places drugs into different categories that determine criminal penalties for possession and dealing. Researchers determined that the system has "little relation to the evidence of harm" and that "aggressively targeting alcohol harms is a valid and necessary public health strategy." Should you want ammunition in discrediting the study and its results, look no further than co-author David Nutt, a professor and Britain's former chief drug adviser, who last year published an article saying ecstasy was not as dangerous as riding a horse. "So why are harmful sporting activities allowed, whereas relatively less harmful drugs are not?" Nutt wrote in the Journal of Psychopharmacology. "I believe this reflects a societal approach which does not adequately balance the relative risks of drugs against their harms." Thanks for that, quack……….
- Zombies on Halloween draw big ratings? Who ever could have guessed? AMC was banking on it and sure enough, the gamble paid off with big ratings as the network debuted its new zombie-centric series The Walking Dead on Halloween night and scored its highest premiere ratings in history Sunday, pulling in 5.3 million viewers. Walking Dead attracted 3.6 million adults 18-49, 3.1 million adults 25-54, and 2.1 million adults 18-34, all prime demographics for any show or TV movie. The record breaking didn’t stop with AMC’s own marks, either; Walking Dead achieved the highest debut for any 2010 cable series. “It’s a good day to be dead. We are so proud of this series, its depth of storytelling and the remarkable talent attached,” Charlie Collier, AMC’s president, said in a press release. “As the network dedicated to bringing viewers the best stories on television, we are so pleased to have the opportunity with ‘The Walking Dead’ to raise the bar within this popular genre and continue our commitment to being the home of premium television on basic cable.” All corporate bullsh*t aside, the ratings are impressive. Not nearly as impressive as they will be if the show can avoid the almost-inevitable second-episode ratings decline that virtually every new series experiences, but impressive nonetheless. For a network that has scored a few hits of late with Mad Men and new drama Rubicon, the news is welcome and shows that USA isn’t the only basic cable network that can succeed with original programming………
- Tech dorks, behold the BlackBerry Bold 9780. The latest offering from Research in Motion is gaining momentum with gadget fans as RIM bills it as essentially the antithesis of everything users have come to expect from its devices. Competing against the iPhone and Android isn’t easy, so a new approach seems prudent and when RIM officially unveiled the new Bold last week, it seemed logical that a new approach was in order leading up to the Bold 9780’s official release Nov. 17. On its corporate blog over the weekend, RIM posted an interactive demo of the phone's specs and on Monday, the phone was one of the most-searched terms on Google. In a press release promoting the Bold 9780, the company uses terms that would seem incongruous with its previous approach to selling smartphones - which is, I suppose, the point. "A premium and iconic design," the release boasts. "Elegantly styled and packed with advanced communications," it raves. "Compact and stylish," the effusive praise continues. Perhaps the biggest draw for the phone is RIM's new BlackBerry 6 operating system. Leaks about the device have been trickling out since the summer, steadily building buzz, a la Apple. Some of the Bold 9780’s functions include: a "Feeds" application will allowing users post to Facebook, Twitter, MySpace or other social networks, the BlackBerry 6 operating system with Web browsing that will allow users to access multiple sites at the same time with tabbed browsing, a 5-megapixel camera and a baseline Bold 9780 that will sell for $129 with a two-year T-Mobile contract. Coming in at $70 less than a 16-gigabyte iPhone 4 while also doubling the current Bold's internal memory to 512 megabytes is a huge plus and should help the new bold to succeed where the BlackBerry Torch failed in spectacular fashion after its release in August. Competing toe-to-toe with the iPhone is another matter, but within reach…………
- There are losers all around us and if you look closely or simply remain alive on any given day, you’ll see and hear them. Often, losers are incredibly visible like the Statue of Liberty rising out of the harbor in Manhattan. They draw attention to themselves through their sheer loser-ness, much like Karee Karnes and Richard Peterson did on Sunday. Who are these two losers, you ask? Well, they are a newly married couple who decided that the best way to wed was a) at a professional sporting event, b) on Halloween and c) in full-on Halloween costumes. That’s right, these two tools got married at Arrowhead Stadium on the Ultimate Tailgate stage in the parking lot before the Chiefs kicked off against the Buffalo Bills. “Anybody that knows me knows I'm the number one Kansas City Chiefs fan, which is my email address,” Karnes explained. “So you know, they're not surprised.” They might not be surprised, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t horrified and laughing at you, K. But it takes two to put on one of the most ridiculous weddings you’ll ever see, so let’s give some credit to the groom as well. “When the Chiefs schedule finally came out, I called her and was like, ‘The Bills are playing on Halloween, we gotta get married that day!’” Peterson exclaimed. So with these two steering the train, a wreck was sure to happen and it most definitely did. Their bridesmaids wore Mizzou Tiger gear, complete with tiger tails, and the groomsmen sported Chiefs gear that allowed them to go straight from the wedding to the game without changing. Both Karnes and Peterson were dressed in black floor-length capes with orange accents. “My mother, God love her,” Karnes stated. “I'm sure she didn't dream of planning a black wedding for her only daughter." Nor did she imagine her only daughter would be such a loser, but we all learn to adjust and cope with what life has given us. But who knows, maybe this unusual beginning will help Karnes’ third marriage and Peterson’s second one do what their previous marriages could not do - last. That’s right, she’s on her third marriage and he’s not far behind with his second. So Karnes’ mother already had two shots at an “ideal” ceremony for her daughter and if the past is any indication of what’s ahead, she might get a fourth or fifth shot. The wedding reception, in keeping with the loser-ific trend, is set for next week during the Chiefs game against the Raiders. Right, between who doesn’t want Raider fan at their wedding reception? For the record, the Chiefs beat the Bills 13-10 in overtime, making the game a perfect wedding present for two losers like Karnes and Peterson………
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