- After a hard-fought college basketball game, most players just want to unwind, relax a bit and maybe rehash the great plays of a win or analyze what led to a tough loss. One thing they probably don’t factor into their post-game plans is three masked men showing up at their dorm room armed with weapons after the game and confronting them. That’s what happened to now-former Seton Hall basketball player Keon Lawrence, at least if you believe the tale his mother is telling. Lawrence and Jamel Jackson were dismissed from the team on Feb. 12 by coach Kevin Willard for a violation of team rules and "an ongoing pattern of conduct unbecoming of a representative of Seton Hall athletics," but details on exactly what happened remained sketchy at best, at least until a potential gun possession charge against Seton Hall point guard Jordan Theodore came to light. The charge is being reviewed by the Essex County prosecutor's office and prosecutor's office spokeswoman Katherine Carter confirmed a municipal judge in South Orange-Maplewood found probable cause on Tuesday that Theodore had unlawful possession of a weapon on school property. Multiple media outlets had reported that Theodore was being investigated for an incident after the Pirates' game against Villanova on Feb. 15. According to Darlene Epps, Theodore and two other masked men showed up at her son's dorm room and threatened him. Why would one teammate show up at another teammate’s dorm room with masked men and guns? According to reports, Theodore's mother, Carol, was attacked in the stands by Epps' partner because of the player's comments after Lawrence was kicked off the team. Epps claimed that her son called her after the men showed up and she rushed over to the school and confronted the three. She also told the judge at the probable cause hearing that Theodore jumped into his car and hit her in the hip. And if all of this sounds bizarre and ridiculous enough to be a low-rent comedy starring two or more of the Wayans brothers…….that’s a completely accurate assessment of the situation. In actuality, this sort of black eye is the last thing Seton Hall’s basketball program needs. Two seasons ago, the year ended with forward Herb Pope being ejected from an NIT game for hitting a Texas Tech player below the belt. Before last season started, Lawrence was involved in a traffic accident on the Garden State Parkway in which he was driving in the wrong direction, seriously injuring the driver of the other vehicle. Coach Bobby Gonzalez then threw forward Robert Mitchell off the team late in the season after Mitchell broke numerous team rules and was charged with entering a house in South Orange and robbing eight people at gunpoint. Gonzalez was fired after last season, but clearly his influence lives on in this year’s Pirates……….
- Too much Metallica? I didn’t know that was possible, although many certainly had their fill of the pompous Lars Ulrich and Co. when they were leading the whiny parade of musicians appearing before Congress to shut down Napster. But when it comes to the legendary metal band on stage, Metallica overload is a phenomenon that just should not exist. Yet it does, at least for Download Festival organizer Andy Copping. The U.K.-based festival is known for rocking hard and as such, Metallica would seem like a logical fit. Copping disagrees and does so for an unusual reason. "Metallica are a great band but if they went away for three or four years then came back then they'd be even bigger. When they keep coming back they become boring," he explained. "Metallica have toured extensively and have been here for seven of the last eight summers. For me that is definitely overdoing it." Overdoing it? Do you or do you not like rocking out, balls to the wall, good sir? Who could you possibly book in Metallica’s stead that would rock out as hard and fire up your festival’s crowd? How’s about Def Leppard? Umm, no. Given their blatant cash grab that passed as their most recent album and the fact that Def Lep haven’t been relevant in at least a decade, that is a terrible idea. Here again, however, Copping takes a different point of view. "I booked Def Leppard because they deserve it, because they are big enough to do it," he proclaimed. So to recap: Metallica brings their brand of awesome to the United Kingdom too often and for that, you have declared yourself the arbiter of whether or not they should rock the socks off the crowd at this year’s Download Festival? Worse still, Copping also ruled out Rammstein, Tool and Soundgarden as potential headliners for the festival and instead will offer Def Leppard, System Of A Down and Linkin Park as the top acts for the event……….
- Not you too, Saudi Arabia. The wave of paranoia making its way across the Middle East and Africa is infecting nearly every nation that hasn’t already been rocked by the awesome force of anti-government uprisings and causing the leaders of those nations to tighten their iron grip on their people lest a riot threaten their rule as well. Saudi Arabia has become the latest country to succumb to this sad trend, banning all protests and marches following recent anti-government protests in the kingdom’s east. State television first reported the ban, quoting the nation’s interior ministry as saying that security forces would use all measures to prevent any attempt to disrupt public order. To drive the point home that Saudis are not allowed to exercise their right of free speech and make their point of view on their government heard, the government chases its big announcement with a huge mobilization of Saudi troops in Shia-dominated provinces in order to quash any possible uprising. This mass mobilization contains 10,000 security personnel being sent to the region by road, clogging highways into Dammam and other cities. They will do their damndest to combat a Shia population that has staged a series of protests in the kingdom’s east in the past weeks. As with nearly every other protest in Africa or the Middle East over the past few months, the protests and riots have been to demand equal economic and employment opportunities, with a healthy dose of opposing detentions without trial mixed in for some flavor. Even as the crackdown began in earnest, small protests were held Saturday in the cities of Hofuf and Qatif. Granted, Saudi Arabia is an absolute monarchy without an elected parliament that has historically had little to no tolerance for any sort of public dissent, but this is overreactive and paranoid even by those standards. Saudi authorities have undoubtedly scanned the landscape around them, seen the power of the people on display and realized that they want no part of it. The great part of all this is that it was only last week that King Abdullah returned to Riyadh after a three-month medical absence and unveiled $37 billion in benefits for citizens in a shameless bid to protect the kingdom from protests. Guess that didn’t work…………
- Not that I want to tell NASA how to run its operation, but this may not be the best idea when the government is already slashing your funding and ripping your ability to shoot people into outer space. With the government looking over your shoulder and private companies like Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Air looking to take over the race to outer space, the sight of NASA's Glory atmospheric research mission satellite crashing into the southern Pacific Ocean early today after a protective nose cone fairing failed to separate during launch aboard an Orbital Sciences Corp. Taurus XL rocket has to be one of the worst things that could happen to the space agency. A $424 million failure is the very sort of black eye that has so many thinking that our tax dollars are better spent in other areas. Worse still, the failure was the second in a row for the Orbital Sciences booster following the 2009 loss of another environmental satellite due to a similar nose cone malfunction. "I think it's not an understatement to say tonight we're all pretty devastated," said Ronald Grabe, a former space shuttle commander who manages Orbital's Launch Systems Group. "But we will recover, the team will bounce back because they're all professionals. Orbital Sciences will bounce back with the Taurus vehicle." I really wish I could share in that optimism, but this mission seemed doomed from the start. The satellite’s launch was delayed by trouble with ground support equipment and launched a day late from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif. The first two stages of the slender four-stage solid-fuel booster ignited normally and the second stage was right on time, two minutes and 45 seconds after liftoff. From there, things went awry. The two halves of the clamshell nose cone fairing failed to separate properly due to problems with pistons driven by pressurized nitrogen. "We are at T+plus 300 seconds," Richard Haenke, the ascent commentator observed. "The vehicle speed error is indicating underperformance, which is expected due to a fairing not separating. We have a report the system did pressurize. However, we still have no indication of the fairing separating." Forced to carry that extra weight, the rocket was unable to reach its planned trajectory and a few moments later, NASA Launch Director Omar Baez declared a failure. "We have had a contingency on the Glory mission," he told the launch team at 2:15 a.m. PT. "Please enact the mission mishap preparedness and contingency plan. Begin with notification, data impoundment and mishap response tasks. Do not leave your stations until released by the NLM (NASA launch manager) or the ALM. Do not attempt to call out and release information to anyone or speculate on the cause of the contingency." At a post-launch news conference, a distraught Baez stated "It's a very difficult situation we're in here." Not to pile on during an already difficult time, but on the heels of losing another Taurus XL rocket, NASA's $273 million Orbiting Carbon Observatory, during launch Feb. 24, 2009, when it suffered a similar nose cone fairing failure, it’s insane to imagine anyone taking another risk with a similar rocket in the near future. The Glory launch was supposed to be different because Orbital Sciences redesigned the system in the wake of the first failure, but in the end, different day, same failure……….
- It’s everyone’s worst nightmare. Well, at least everyone in the United States or any other country that knows who the tools of Jersey Shore are. If you have seen one second of Pauly D, heard one sound bite from J-Woww or read one news story about the latest IQ-deprived exploits of Snooki or the Situation, then your worst fear is a place you live or hang out turning into a reasonable facsimile of the Jersey Shore world. You can recognize this world from the baked-on fake tans, heavily producted hair, fist pumping, blatant pandering to Italian-American stereotypes by people who aren’t actually Italian-Americans and a higher-than-normal chance that someone is going to leave your current location in either an ambulance or squad car. That feat has become reality for one upscale part of Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, where the locals are up in arms about a bar known as the Tiki barge because they believe has become Shore-ified. “The crowd, suddenly it’s ’ The Jersey Shore.’ I’m waiting for Snooki and JWoww to jump out and start doing cannonballs into the water,” one local resident who refused to give his name lamented. Others have echoed those sentiments and joined in the growing chorus urging the Baltimore Liquor Board to revoke the bar’s license, claiming there’s public urination, nudity, destruction of property and excessive noise. Dozens of residents have signed and circulated a petition with the liquor board and someone has also posted a video on YouTube showing a wild scene at the bar, with one patron guy mooning his friends. If the video had managed to capture the scene alleged in the petition, wherein one customer simulated sex on a palm tree outside the bar, perhaps the liquor board would have more to base its decision on. The complaints came as a stunner to Tiki Barge owner Bud Craven (yes, a bar owner has a name that, when listed alphabetically on any roster reads, “Craven, Bud”), who tried to place blame for the unruly behavior on passengers of boats cruising past the bar. “It was a boat outside our premises where someone exposed their breasts,” Craven said during a public hearing Thursday night. “I was shocked there was complaints. I was up at that pier that entire summer. At no given time did someone come to me and say ‘Hey we got a problem.’” Those words did little to dissuade the angry locals who not only want the bar’s liquor license revoked, but they don’t care that the Tiki Barge shares that license with two popular restaurants, Tabrizi’s and Sorso, that would also be affected. Rather than reach a quick verdict, members of the liquor review board have asked both sides to negotiate and try to come up with a solution while the board reviews the evidence presented at the hearing. A decision is expected within a few weeks, so if you plan on flashing your rack or simulating sex on a palm tree outside the bar, you may want to get it in now before it’s too late…………
No comments:
Post a Comment