- Only in the United States of America could we turn another country’s social, cultural and royal event of the decade and turn it into another way to eat unhealthy food and make ourselves even FAT-ter than we already are. And no, I’m not referring to the Fulham football (soccer) club erecting a creepy, life-size statue of Jack-O outside its stadium, although that certainly was an event. No, I’m referring to the impending nuptials between Prince William and Kate Middleton, a British royal wedding that has so inspired TLC that the network is going with an entire week of royal wedding-oriented programming leading up to the big day. But leave it to American junk food purveyors Dunkin’ Donuts and Baskin Robbins to turn an event with no meaning or relevance whatsoever and turn it into another excuse to a) turn a profit and b) make Americans even more obese in the process. For starters, “The Royal Wedding has turned into a really significant event as it has for, I think, a lot of folks around the world,” said Dunkin’ Donuts and Baskin Robbins executive chef Stan Frankenthaler. Whatever you say, Stanley. Maybe you’re asking what a Royal Wedding Donut looks like and Dunkin’ Donuts has your answer. It is a heart shaped donut filled with jelly and topped with vanilla icing and a chocolate drizzle. Other than the heart, I have no damn idea what jelly, icing and chocolate have to do with Prince William, Kate Middleton or the wedding itself, but never let reality get in the way of a good piece of fried dough made even more unhealthy by piling more sugary goodness on top of it. The doughnut will debut for the week leading up to the wedding and it would seem to give Dunkin’ Donuts a chokehold on the wedding-themed junk food market……until you learn that Dunkin' Donuts' sister brand, Baskin-Robbins, is introducing a commemorative Royal Wedding ice cream cake topped with white and blue roses. According to Baskin Robbins, the cake’s design is intended to be reminiscent of an English garden. Perhaps the only connection either of this calorie-laden offerings have to the wedding at all is the fact that Dunkin’ Donuts and Baskin-Robbins are international companies and so technically, it won’t be just Americans who are getting FAT eating garbage honoring an event that has nothing to do with them, but it seems fair to say that they will likely consume more royal wedding doughnuts and cakes than any other country. You don’t become the world’s most obese nation by allowing anyone to out-eat you……….
- Whoever had the idea to offer portly Kirstie Alley a spot on ABC’s crap-tacular reality ballroom dancing show Dancing With the (D-List) Stars, I hope you’re happy with yourself. Sure, the unintentional comedy in the form of an overweight, 60-year-old actress attempting to do moves she may not have been able to execute 10 years and 120 pounds ago was guaranteed to be high, but it’s simply bad karma to purposefully set up laughs at that persons’ expense. Whoever made the offer did get exactly what he or she wanted last week when Alley stumbled, fell and nearly crushed partner Maksim Chmerkovskiy when he made the mistake of attempting to catch her as she tumbled to the ground. Aside from probable damage to the dancefloor and the damage to Alley’s pride (if she has any remaining), some were questioning a) if the fall would cause her to quit and b) if it would damage the show’s reputation. Answering the second question first, no. The show has no credibility and being a reality show, there is no chance its reputation will get any worse. As for quitting, Alley is on the record as saying she will not do so. “Kirstie has been practicing so hard that she pulled a muscle,” a source stated. “It isn’t a major injury, but it has taught her how important it is to listen to her body and not push herself too hard. Kirstie has the most to prove. She’s 60, not in the best shape, but what she has that no one else has is the desire to win. I have never seen anyone in the history of the show work as hard as she does. By nature she’s very competitive, but what’s motivating her is to prove everyone wrong. Anyone who has ever made a fat joke, look at her now. She’s in this to win it.” Not in the best shape? Couch potatoes across America are tuning into DWTDLS just to feel better about their own flabby physiques. As for challenging “anyone who’s ever made a FAT joke” to “look at her now,” let’s just say we’d rather not. It’s not a pretty picture and what is she proving? That she’s old, out of shape and can’t dance? Great. What stuns me most in this is the tweet Alley herself fired off after the fall. “I didn’t eat all day. I pulled a muscle and I wasn’t as good as I want to be. Sooooo I acted like a bitch,” she tweeted. Wow….Kirstie Alley didn’t eat all day? Excuse me if I have a hard time believing that. Perhaps if she had more days where she “didn’t eat anything,” she wouldn’t be carrying around those extra 120 pounds or so and could dance better. According to show sources, she decided to do this season of DWTDLS because she wanted to do it before it’s “too late.” I hate to be the dream killer and ruin someone’s day, but judging by that earth-shaking tumble last week, it already is too late………
- How often have all of us asked ourselves, “Is there really a difference between my heroin addiction and my addiction to unhealthy grub?” Anyone who says they’ve never had that internal debate is lying and needs to take a good, hard look in the mirror. That question may actually have an answer and it’s courtesy of the smart folks at Yale, who have conducted research showing that the same problem at the core of a person’s addiction to drugs like cocaine and heroin could be at the center of their dependence on tasty treats such as cake, milkshakes, pizza and doughnuts. Yale researchers used an fMRI, or functional magnetic resonance imaging system, to study the brain activity in a variety of women that were offered a high-calorie chocolate or milkshake or an option that was relatively tasteless. They found that seeing the milkshake triggered brain activity in the anterior cingulated cortex and the medial orbitofrontal cortex, brain areas that have been proven to also respond similarly in addicted drug users when they see their drug of choice. "If certain foods are addictive, this may partially explain the difficulty people experience in achieving sustainable weight loss. These findings support the theory that compulsive food consumption may be driven in part by an enhanced anticipation of the rewarding properties of food," said lead researcher Ashley Gearhardt. If that is the case, then it would go a long way toward explaining one of the key reasons obese people struggle so mightily with giving up unhealthy foods even though they realize that consuming those foods is making their condition worse. Additionally, the study suggests that advertising might also play a role in the nation's obesity problem (stunning) and advocates future studies on the subject of whether food ads trigger the same sort of brain activity. "Ubiquitous food advertising and the availability of inexpensive palatable foods may make it extremely difficult to adhere to healthier food choices because the omnipresent food cues trigger the reward system," researchers wrote. On the advertising front, researchers pointed to commercials, especially commercials aimed at kids, and commercial jingles designed to implant the product’s image in the mind of the consumer. By altering visual cues and advertising of tempting foods, it would then theoretically be possible to control the physical, psychological and behavioral changes addicted individuals have when exposed to their substance of abuse. Of course, all of this could merely be another crutch for FAT people and their enablers to explain away an unwillingness to exercise and eat a healthier diet by exercising willpower and common sense, so maybe we should all forget what we just read…….and back on the treadmill, obese people of the world…………
- We did it, citizens of Ivory Coast! And by “we,” I mean the same thing that annoying leach in your office says when they tell you that “we” need to finish that report or get working on that big project, namely that you did all the work and they merely wanted to jump in at the end and grab some of the credit. But as an avowed lover of riots and uprisings the whole world ‘round, I don’t feel guilty about celebrating as if I were right their rioting and forcing the ouster of incumbent leader Laurent Gbagbo. The piece de resistance in the uprising came Wednesday as forces loyal to Ivory Coast presidential claimant Alassane Ouattara stormed Gbagbo’s residence and forces loyal to Gbagbo laid down their weapons. Sources on the ground confirmed the infiltration of the residence and locals around the presidential palace in Abidjan's Cocody neighborhood reported hearing heavy gunfire and loud explosions coming from the direction of the palace. "I have seen from my building the FRCI fighters (Ouattara forces) in pickups and 4x4 jeeps rushing toward Gbagbo's residence, weapons in their hands," said Alfred Kouassi, who lives near Gbagbo's residence in Cocody. Gbagbo representative Toussaint Alain, speaking from a safe distance - in Paris - claimed that was also being bombarded by the French army, a claim the French military denied. "France will be held responsible for the death of President Gbagbo, his wife and family members and all those who are inside the residence, which is being bombarded by the French army," Alain said. French military spokesman Thierry Burkhard denied any such effort and insisted French or U.N. operation was underway. To be fair, the French did make themselves an easy mark by daring to have its helicopters patrolling Abidjan, helping guide ground forces and rescue people trapped in dangerous areas. Despite clear signs that his power was slipping through his fingers, Gbagbo has entrenched himself in a Hitler-like bunker, encircled on all sides by soldiers loyal to Ouattara. Outside the bunker, his army is disintegrating in rapid-fire fashion and his regime is in tatters. The task of removing him from the bunker has proven difficult in part because forces backing Ouattara have received strict instructions to take him unharmed. Ouattara's private TV station seized on the Hitler connection in its Tuesday evening newscast, showing scenes from the movie "Downfall," which depicts the last days of Adolf Hitler inside a bunker in Berlin. Negotiations between the French military and Gbagbo continued throughout the night, but as of Wednesday morning, no deal was imminent. The prolonged drama is certainly no surprise, as Gbagbo has stubbornly refused to cede power since a U.N.-certified election in November showed he lost to Ouattara. France’s involvement in the conflict further antagonized Gbagbo’s administration, which continues to blame the French for supporting the north of the country in a 2002-03 civil war. But one way or another, Gbagbo’s reign of terror is about to come to an end and for that, Ivoirians and I will be celebrating…………
- Hiring a new head basketball coach should be a happy time for a college or university. The bitterness of firing an ineffective or controversial coach and replacing him or her with someone you believe will take your program to greater heights should be a cause for celebration. So why was North Carolina State athletic director Debbie Yow, fresh off firing men’s basketball coach Sidney Lowe following a disappointing 15-16 season, bitter and angry at North Carolina State's news conference introducing Mark Gottfried, hired Tuesday to replace Lowe? Oddly enough, Yow’s bitter act had nothing to do with Gottfried and everything to do with Maryland coach Gary Williams. Yow was formerly the AD at Maryland and Williams won the 2002 NCAA championship working under her, so one might think they would have a good relationship. Yet tensions between the two have been high for several years despite the fact that neither has acknowledged any animosity toward the other. Their mutual dislike came to light in 2008, a when D.C.-area AAU coach said, "This is from what I hear, not what I've seen, but people think they don't like each other." That dislike apparently stems from Williams' recruiting at Maryland, specifically in 2008, when the Terrapins lost two high-profile recruits -- Gus Gilchrist, who ended up at South Florida, and Tyree Evans, who went to Kent State. Both had checkered pasts and when they went elsewhere, Williams didn’t exactly own the decision not to bring them to Maryland. "It wasn't my fault that they're not here. That was somebody else's call," he told the media at the time, appearing to push blame toward Yow. Three years have passed since that exchange, but Yow does not seem to have forgotten Williams’ remarks nor any unknown hostilities that have occurred since. Thus, she took time out of Gottfried’s introductory press conference to fire a verbal canon blast at Williams and suggest that he interfered with the school’s coaching search. Yow took the opening when a reporter asked Gottfried a question about her reputation of being difficult to work with. "I don't have a reputation across all men's basketball of being difficult to work with," Yow shot back. "I have a reputation of not getting along with Gary Williams, who has tried to sabotage the search. Come on, we all know that. OK, so whatever. It's not a reputation. It's Gary Williams out there doing his thing. Whatever." A nice “whatever” blast, very classy and professional. Hilariously, Yow then pretended like she didn’t want to pile on when asked if she had specific examples of anything Williams had said or done and replied: "There'll be somebody else writing about that nationally. I don't need to be doing that. That's not my job." Of course, media members quickly ran Yow’s comments back to Williams in the hopes that he would say something even more incendiary and escalate the verbal war. He stayed above the fray - mostly - in responding. "I don't have any interest in the N.C. State search, since I'm coaching at Maryland and working hard to run our program," Williams said explained "Anyone who says I've had contact with a prospective coach or athletic director regarding this search isn't being truthful." Hmm, calling Yow a liar while not referring to her by name is good, but I think we were all hoping for a bit more. But there is nothing like turning what should be a celebration of a new coach and new chapter in your program’s proud history into a giant verbal skirmish with a coach you used to work with at another school, especially a rival school in your own conference. You stay classy, Debbie Yow…………
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