- Thursday was a good day for neither Tiger Woods nor the PGA Tour in general. Woods suffered the latest setback in a series of injuries and personal issues that has stretched from November 2009, when he was (allegedly) chased from his Orlando-area home by his then-wife Elin on Thanksgiving night and bounced his SUV off both a tree and fire hydrant, withdrawing after nine holes at The Players Championship event at TPC Sawgrass due to knee and Achilles injuries. Woods shot a 42 on the opening nine holes, clearly wasn’t right physically and hit the eject button. Suffering another injury five weeks before the U.S. Open could be disastrous for Woods if he is unable to rehab in time to get back on track for the Open at Congressional in Washington, D.C. Depending on the severity of the injury, Woods might be wise to shut himself down for the rest of the season. In light of his withdrawal, rumors began circulating that perhaps PGA commissioner Tim Finchem and the tour’s brass pressured Woods to return in order to bring eyeballs to the event. When asked about that theory, Finchem didn’t react favorably. "It's always important for Tiger to be part of the tour, because he's Tiger Woods. But the idea that we would pressure him to play is ludicrous," Finchem said. "We don't pressure any player to play the tournament. In this case the suggestion is somehow he was hurt and we got him to play anyway. Tiger doesn't [play] a tournament unless he thinks he can win. I was on the range with him Tuesday, I watched him hit balls. He practiced that day, he practiced Wednesday hard. And he tweaked it yesterday. So, non-issue." Okay, so it’s a non-issue……..or is it? Woods certainly did not show up to the event ready to win or even play well, but could he have simply been using the event to knock off the rust after not playing a competitive round of golf since the Masters in early April? Let’s hear from Woods. "The knee acted up and then the Achilles followed after that and then the calf started cramping up," he said Thursday. "Everything started getting tight, so it's just a whole chain reaction." Chain reaction it is……………
- Give it up for freaking Apa Sherpa, world. If you don’t know who Apa Sherpa is…..now you know and well you should, because Apa Sherpa is the man who reached the top of Mount Everest for the 21st time on Wednesday, breaking a record he set last year for the number of ascents of the world's tallest peak. A Nepalese tourism ministry official confirmed the feat, which has been in the making since. Sherpa first climbed Everest in 1990 while helping international expeditions climb the mountain. He has continued climbing over the years and since 2008, Sherpa has been climbing Everest annually as part of an expedition to highlight the effects of climate change and to collect trash on the mountains. His 21st trek to the top of the mountain ended after a final leg Sherpa started from Camp IV at an altitude of 7,950 meters with five other climbers on Tuesday night. The climbing party reached the top of the mountain on Wednesday morning, according to Asian Trekking, which organized the expedition. In a reasonably wise move, those involved made Sherpa the climbing leader of the expedition, which sought to collect trash such as oxygen cylinders, tent poles, tents and other mountaineering equipment from the mountain. For anyone who has ever dreamt of scaling Everest just once in their life, Sherpa’s feat is amazing beyond belief. Heck, it’s amazing for the lazy American couch potato whose biggest aspiration is being able to make a fudge bar run to the kitchen and back without gasping for air and needing an oxygen mask……………
- What exactly did iconic rocker Bob Dylan give up to perform a series of concerts in China earlier this year? Word on the street is Bobby D surrendered creative control to The Man, allowing the Chinese government final approval over his set list for the shows. Dylan isn't taking kindly to those rumors, striking back at suggestions that he gave in to censorship during the series of concerts in China. Numerous news stories have criticized him for omitting some of his 1960s-era protest songs from the shows, but Dylan offered a nondescript defense to those charges in a post on his website. In that post, he insisted he knew nothing of any censorship and stated that he and his band played all the songs they intended to. A cynic might argue that a man who rose to fame in the 1960s as an icon of the anti-war movement in the era of the Vietnam War would not willingly leave out legendary tunes such as “The Times They Are a-Changin'” and “Like a Rolling Stone,” but perhaps Dylan would counter with the reasoning that his catalogue of 34 studio albums leaves him more than enough to pick from even without songs which became synonymous with the counterculture of the 1960s. His famed, long tours - often known as the Never-Ending Tour - leave him playing as many as 100 times each year. Dylan is also well-known for ever-changing set lists that leave diehard fans infuriated because they show up wanting and expecting to hear specific songs from his early years. In response to criticism of the China leg of his current tour, Dylan wrote: "As far as censorship goes, the Chinese government had asked for the names of the songs that I would be playing. There's no logical answer to that, so we sent them the set lists from the previous three months. If there were any songs, verses or lines censored, nobody ever told me about it and we played all the songs that we intended to play." Perhaps criticism for his China shows is coming from those who resent him for visiting the communist nation in the first place. One of Dylan’s most vocal critics on the issue has been New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd. "The idea that the raspy troubadour of '60s freedom anthems would go to a dictatorship and not sing those anthems is a whole new kind of sellout," Dowd wrote before also ripping Dylan for not mentioning artist Ai Wei Wei, who was detained by Chinese authorities in the days before to his first show in China. "He sang his censored set, took his pile of Communist cash and left," Dowd penned. As for the shows themselves Dylan wrote that the crowd knew his material well and received him enthusiastically. "Regardless, they responded enthusiastically to the songs on my last 4 or 5 records. Ask anyone who was there. They were young and my feeling was that they wouldn't have known my early songs anyway," he wrote…………
- Oopsie! Sorry, thousands of would-be American immigrants who thought you had finally snagged that elusive green card. You may have believed your wait was over, but the State Department has other ideas. In fact, the State Department apologized Friday for a computer glitch that invalidated results for thousands who thought they were chosen in the most recent green card visa lottery. With just 50,000 permanent resident visas issued a year for millions of aspiring immigrants, the competition is intense and winning a green card is, in many ways, like winning an actual lottery for participants. The selection process is done randomly by computer, with would-be (legal) border crashers selected to undergo interviews, background checks and medical exams before visas can be issued. This time around, the computer f*cked up and as such, those who thought they had cleared the biggest hurdle to becoming a resident of these here United States are sh*t out of luck. "Due to a computer programming problem, the results of the 2012 diversity lottery that were previously posted on this website have been voided," the State Department said in a statement Friday. "We regret any inconvenience this might have caused." Oh no, no inconvenience at all. Just falsely raising the hopes and dreams of desperate people around the world. So what is this bizarre anomaly inside some State Department desktop unit? "They did not represent a fair random selection of the entrants, which is required by U.S. law," said David Donahue, a deputy assistant for the State Department. Umm…….okay? That doesn’t really tell us anything either, but Donahue did confirm the problem has been fixed and officials expect to do another selection in July, Donahue said. Until then, good luck sweeping up the remnants of your crushed dreams from the floor, aspiring Americans…………
- Louis Camilleri: freaking genius or ginormous ass hat? This writer’s vote goes for the latter after Camilleri, CEO of Philip Morris International, spoke out Wednesday during an annual shareholder meeting in New York with the revelation that smoking "is not that hard to quit." His comment came in response to a question from a cancer nurse and after initially appearing to stray on the side of politically correct corporate speak, he came off the rails. "We take our responsibility very seriously, and I don't think we get enough recognition for the efforts we make to ensure that there is effective worldwide regulation of a product that is harmful and that is addictive," Camilleri said. "Nevertheless, whilst it is addictive, it is not that hard to quit." Not hard to quit? My man, the billion-dollar industry that is smoking cessation (patches, drugs, etc.) begs to differ. What could possibly be going through the mind of the CEO of a major international corporation, telling someone in very public fashion something his own company has since come out and disputed? Camilleri wants anti-smoking groups to stay out of his business’ business, clearly. His outburst was directed at Elisabeth Gundersen, a nurse from San Francisco, who cited statistics that smoking causes nearly 5 million deaths annually worldwide. Since Camilleri's remarks, Philip Morris has directly contradicted its CEO by insisting "tobacco products are addictive and harmful.” The totals truly are staggering in the world smoking picture, with 1 billion losers, er, smokers globally, according to the World Health Organization. Just as a quick statistical reminder for those who have lost track of their alarming, sickening smoking figures of late, smoking accounts for one in five deaths in the U.S., --taking more lives than HIV, alcohol use, suicides, murders and illegal drug use combined. Furthermore, 45 percent of U.S. smokers try to quit each year, but only 4 to 7 percent are successful, according to the U.S. Public Health Service. Those numbers make it sound an awful lot like Camilleri is talking out his ass and/or lying through his teeth. But hey, Phillip Morris saw a 14-percent increase in profits last year despite falling demand for tobacco products and remains the largest non-government-regulated cigarette seller in the world, so life is good at PMI…………
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