- In every fight, there is a hero, the one person who rises above seemingly insurmountable odds and does what no one believed possible. In the fight against the musical plague known as Justin Bieber, the hero is a woman most Americans knew little or nothing of heading into last night’s Grammy Awards. Her name is Esperanza Spalding and she somehow managed to wrest the best new artist Grammy from the octopus-like clutches of the 8-year-old, female Canadian pop hack known as Bieber despite being a relative unknown. As the Grammy was announced, the outcry from Bieber’s legions of shrieking 13-year-old female fans went up across the digital world, with Twitter posts and Facebook statuses alike raging against this great injustice. There were also plenty of people searching for information about Spalding, who also beat out Drake, Florence + the Machine and Mumford and Sons for the award. For those not in the know, Spalding is a bassist, singer and composer from Portland, Oregon who has performed at the White House, taken the stage in a show at the Nobel Peace Prize concert in 2009, sang a tribute to Prince at the BET Awards last summer and appeared on "Late Show with David Letterman." Most of the attention she has received has been for playing the bass, but she is equally skilled with the violin and shared her story in an interview with Oprah Winfrey's magazine "O." In the piece, she shared how she spent 10 years with the Chamber Music Society of Oregon, becoming concertmaster at 15. Along the way and also at a stop at the Berklee School of Music, she acquired the skills she would one day need to take down one of the most overrated, 15-minutes-of-fame flashes in the pan that music would ever see for an award he probably would have won - if pre-teen girls voted for the Grammys. Instead, a woman so talented that she was hired on as a member of the Berklee faculty at the age of 20 snagged the trophy. Her victory keeps up a tradition of awarding the best new artist trophy to an artist who isn’t new at all and is only considered such because the musical establishment remains deaf, dumb and blind to unknown talents for years and years, then hails them as new after they have released a few albums. For Spalding, that includes her debut album "Junjo," 2008's "Esperanza" and her most recent release, "Chamber Music Society," which thrust her into the Grammy spotlight. Best of all, she said in a recent interview that she doesn’t want to limit herself to any one musical genre of categorization. "I don't want to be pigeonholed...My job is to do justice to the music that's speaking through me," she explained. Funny, but I don’t see Bieber or any of his fellow pop hacks doing justice to music or letting it speak through them or their marketing machines…………
- Maybe I’m approaching this from the wrong point of view, but spending 257 days in a locked, windowless steel capsule on a fake trip to fake outer space seems like a waste of time. And while normally the idea of an all-male crew of three Russians, a Frenchman, an Italian-Colombian and a Chinese piling into a network of modules at a Moscow space research center last June to imitate the 520-day flight and see how they coped with the constricted, isolating conditions of space travel would be amusing inasmuch as it didn’t involve any Americans wasting their time, this one still peeves me. Six dudes spending more than eight months in heavy space suits and then exiting their cramped quarters and hiking into a sand-covered room to plant flags on a simulated Red Planet is just too ridiculous to tolerate. Several participants donned 66-pound suits to perform Monday's mock landing in an adjacent capsule and planted the flags of Russia, China and the European Space Agency. They also took "samples" from the ground and conducted bogus scientific experiments. Yes, these kooks were really carrying out the charade to the fullest. "All systems have been working normally. The crew are feeling fine," said Vitaly Davydov, deputy head of the Russian space agency. Right, and you all just wasted everyone’s time, guys. Basically, these five were jobbed out of nearly a year of their lives and subjected to all the stresses of a space mission without any of the euphoria or dangers of actual space travel. While the Russians viewed the experiment as an important part of preparation for a flight to Mars and predicted that the real mission could take place in about 20 years with sufficient international cooperation, the whole exercise just seems like a farce. But don’t tell that to those involved; they’re pumped. Martin Zell, a European Space Agency official overseeing the experiment, called the mission a "really strong asset for future undertakings of mankind in space, for its ambition to fly finally to the Red Planet." Look…..if you can sell six well-educated men on spending 257 days in western Moscow in living compartments the size of a bus connected with several other modules for experiments and exercise, then you’re a better salesman than I am. "After a couple of weeks they were really a team, certainly with some temporary ups and downs of individual crewmembers," Zell proclaimed. "A big challenge is missing daylight, missing visual perceptions. They also have to live with the food which they have on board and with the air which they have on board." The crew consisted of Russians Alexey Sitev, Sukhrob Kamolov and Alexander Smoleyevsky, Frenchman Romain Charles, Italian-Colombian Diego Urbina and Wang Yue from China. For their eight-plus months of fake space travel, the men will each be paid a presumably real $97,000. Boy, fake space travel pays well these days……….
- Don’t f*ck with the senators from the great state of New York. That’s the message being sent to the weasels in the U.S. airline industry as they seek to weaken airline safety regulations put in place to protect the passengers they are so busy gouging for checked bag fees, flight change fees, seat upgrade fees and any other ridiculous fee they can scheme up. Those fees may not be something that the government can tackle, but Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (R-N.Y.) are hopping mad that the airline industry is seeking to water down flight safety rules that they argue place an undue and unbearable burden on their operations. Sen. Schumer spoke about the battle Monday and vowed to fight hard to make sure safety regulations stay in place. He is taking up the fight of the families of Flight 3407, which crashed in upstate New York two years ago and killed dozens of passengers. Families of those victims have fought vigorously to improve airline safety and Congress also passed new regulations last year. Unfortunately, airlines have chafed at mandates that including changing pilot schedules to make sure those operating the planes more alert. Right, because that’s a terrible idea. Who wants an awake, alert pilot when cruising at 37,000 feet and going a few hundred miles an hour? But if the airline industry hopes to change the rules, it will have to enact those changes over Schumer’s and Gillibrand’s dead bodies. “I will work vigorously to ensure that any attempts to weaken them by the industry or anyone else are blocked," Schumer proclaimed. His sentiments were echoed by the junior senator from his state. "We have to make sure that when someone is advocating for cutting funding, that their not cutting the oversight we just created. No family should suffer from what we suffered from here in the Buffalo region when the crash happened," Gillbrand stated. Predictably, there was no immediate response from the airline industry or further defense of their claim that the safety regulations are an burden to their industry. Burden this, you selfish a-holes: With all of the fees we pay to fly and all of the crap we put up with from your inept asses, the least you can do is make sure we have a well-rested pilot at the controls………..
- It’s about time someone got around to studying energy drinks. I don’t know if you realize this, but they’re kind of popular. In fact, some select groups of kids and even adults are picking up on this new fad and scientists have begun to wonder if maybe it’s not time to study the effects of those energy drinks. Thus, a new report warning that energy drinks are under-studied, overused and can be dangerous for children and teens. The potential dangers of these death drinks, caused mostly by too much caffeine or similar ingredients, include heart palpitations, seizures, strokes and even sudden death. To read more of this exciting prose, pick up the latest issue of the medical journal Pediatrics. For the study, researchers reviewed data from the government and interest groups, scientific literature, case reports and articles in popular and trade media. Spurring the study on are several recent cases of teens suffering serious illnesses and being hospitalized after consuming energy drinks. According to the report, some cans have four to five times more caffeine than soda and many teens consume multiple can per day. As part of their findings, researchers urge pediatricians to routinely ask patients and their parents about energy drink use and to advise against drinking them. "We would discourage the routine use" by children and teens, said study co-author Dr. Steven Lipshultz, pediatrics chairman at the University of Miami's medical school. Why? Just because those energy drinks often contain ingredients that can enhance the jittery effects of caffeine or that can have other side effects including nausea and diarrhea? Is that any reason to suggest that they should be regulated as stringently as tobacco, alcohol and prescription medicines? I say no, but the authors of this alarmist study believe otherwise. "For most children, adolescents, and young adults, safe levels of consumption have not been established," the report said. Well, energy drinks have only been around for 20 years or so and are only the fastest growing drinks U.S. beverage market with sales expected to top $9 billion this year, so there’s no rush. So what if this study found that about one-third of teens and young adults regularly consume energy drinks and we have precious few studies on the drinks’ effects? Don’t be swayed by the alarmist actions of the Food and Drug Administration, which recently sent warning letters to manufacturers and bans in several states because of alcohol overdoses. Of all the people who consume energy drinks, just 677 cases occurred from October through December from their consumption and only a quarter of the more than 300 energy drink poisonings this year involved kids younger than 6, so let’s not overreact. Yes, seizures, hallucinations, rapid heart rate, chest pain, high blood pressure and irritability are problems, but they are no reason to ban energy drinks. It is a sad, sad world we live in when teens and pre-teens cannot drink themselves to an early death just like mom and dad do with alcohol…………
- My, how times have changed for Tiger Woods. Not so many years ago, Woods was the top-ranked golfer in the world, dominating every tournament he entered, racking up mega-endorsement deals left and right and posting a Q-rating that no other athlete could rival. He did what he wanted when he wanted……and then he took a great fall, both personally and professionally, for……well, for doing what he wanted when he wanted and with whichever skank he wanted at a given time. His marriage is over, his personal life is in shambles and he’s lost nearly all of his endorsement deals. Worst of all, the dominant Tiger on the golf course is long gone and in his place is an unsure, unsteady under pressure nervous Nelly who can’t get it done in the clutch. A perfect example of this came after Woods flamed out with a 3-over par 75 on Sunday in the final round of the Dubai Desert Classic after he entered the round one shot off the lead. That collapse was expected because it has become his M.O. of late, but Tiger’s wuss-a-fication was driven home emphatically in the aftermath of his finish in a tie for 20th at the tournament. Seems that cameras caught woods spitting on the 12th green after missing a par putt on his way to that 3-over 75. Spitting is against the rules in the gentleman’s game of golf and the European Tour’s code of conduct states that when a player becomes a member he "voluntarily submits himself to standards of behavior and ethical conduct beyond those required of ordinary golfers and members of the public." That gave tour officials the right to fine Woods and fine him they did, an undisclosed amount that Woods meekly agreed to. The tour said in a statement that tournament director Mike Stewart reviewed the matter and "feels there has been a breach of the tour code of conduct." Tiger then took to Twitter to mildly wave the white flag. "The Euro Tour is right -- it was inconsiderate to spit like that and I know better," Woods said on Twitter. "Just wasn't thinking and want to say I'm sorry." Commentators also ripped his actions and Woods likewise said nothing in response. The old Tiger, the one who had some balls and swagger, would have told everyone involved to suck it and kept on moving. Had that Tiger paid the fine, he would have dropped a sock full of pennies on the European Tour’s front desk and sent the coins scattering all over the room, forcing some lackey to count them and roll them if they wanted the money…………
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