- Life has not gone well the past three years for recurring free-agent defensive tackle Kentwan Balmer. Balmer, a North Carolina product drafted in the first round of the 2008 draft by the San Francisco 49ers, has been like the proverbial unwanted holiday fruitcake this preseason and now finds himself without a team less than one week from the start of the regular season. His career up to this point definitely prepared him for the challenge; he lasted two disappointing years in San Francisco before being traded to Seattle for a sixth-round pick, spent one underwhelming season in Seattle before being released during the preseason and was picked up by the Carolina Panthers one week ago. His stint in Carolina proved to be his shortest yet, as the Panthers cut him Thursday after just a week. He was axed before playing in a single preseason game for his latest new team, which would suggest that a) he was not especially impressive in practices and workouts and b) he didn’t show a great deal of discipline, focus or enthusiasm for being a member of the Panthers during his seven days with them. Even by first-round draft pick bust standards, lasting a measly one week with a team is horrendous. While he is still a young, athletic defensive lineman with low mileage on his football odometer, there is a decent chance Balmer has arrived at the abrupt end of his NFL career. At a minimum, he now needs to use his time off to work not only on his conditioning and physique, but his mental approach and dedication to the game - assuming he actually wants to play football and doesn’t simply enjoy the nice paycheck every two weeks. Figuring out what has gone wrong at not one, not two, but three stops would be extremely helpful in preventing the same thing from happening again if any team is daring enough to take a gamble on Balmer in the future. Not every NFL player or professional athlete gets a second chance, let alone a third or a fourth. Still, it is impressive for a guy to blow three great chances to play professional football for millions of a dollars a season in a three-year span………….
- There is no way to spin the tale of Steve Powell and his missing daughter-in-law Susan Cox Powell other than creepy. Any time a person goes missing, imagining the agony of their family is a heartbreaking exercise even for those who have never met them. Yet in this case, at least one family member involved in the story isn't quite as sympathetic. Susan Powell has been missing for two years and police in Washington recently executed a search warrant on the home occupied by her husband and father-in-law after revelations about an alleged sexual relationship between Steve Powell and his daughter-in-law came to light. Steve Powell, it turns out, is an aspiring musician and songwriter who records under the pseudonym Steve Chantrey. Combining what were apparently two of his life’s passions, he allegedly spent a significant amount of time composing love songs about his son’s wife. On his (undoubtedly terrible), self-produced album "Light of Seattle," he claims several songs were written about Susan and that "You Were My First Love" is one of those songs, inspired by a photo of Susan with one of her newborn sons. "Your eyes were the first that I looked into filled with love in spite of what you'd been through," the über-creepy lyrics declare. There were rumors of a relationship between Steve Powell and his daughter-in-law before the search of his home this week, but evidence unearth during the search shed further light on those rumors. Even Powell himself conceded during a recent interview that his relationship with Susan was not what it should have been. “There were definitely some things that probably were inappropriate for a married woman and her father-inlaw," he said. "I acknowledge that." Other family members have vehemently denied any such sexual side of the relationship while looking to place blame on the person or persons they hold responsible for her disappearance. Her husband Josh has been the sole person-of-interest in the case, but continues to profess his innocence and insist that his wife ran off with another man. As for his old man, let’s just say Steve Powell - who yes, lives in the same house as the son whose wife he was supposedly getting after it with - doesn’t necessarily regret his alleged sexual relationship with his son’s bride. “I wasn't going to pass up an opportunity with a beautiful woman just because she was my son's wife," Steve Powell nauseatingly proclaimed in an interview. Hmm, and some Americans wonder why the world looks at our nation as one giant, contemptible immoral cesspool of depravity.………
- Just go ahead and place this one atop the nearest, most accessible mountain of evidence about the affect that unhealthy lifestyles and dietary habits are having on the United States. Weight issues and other related problems are piling up on America’s doorstep at an alarming rate and perhaps nothing should drive that home like a new study by researchers at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Researchers analyzed hospital data on up to eight million patients a year between 1995 and 2008 and discovered that stroke rates for those ages 5 to 44 rose by about a third in under 10 years. Younger people are having an significantly higher number of strokes and the study’s authors believe obesity, diabetes, poor diet and smoking are a big part of the reason why. After examining figures for ischemic stroke, due to blood clots, and haemorrhagic stroke, which is caused by bleeding on the brain, those links became clear. Higher blood pressure, diabetes and obesity were common in stroke patients and needless to say, America’s sedentary, fast-food culture doesn’t help matters. The only group in the study whose hemorrhagic stroke rate declined during the study’s time frame was 5- to 14-year olds, but that did not impress researchers, who wrote about that decrease juxtaposed against increases in all other age groups, “The increase in ischemic stroke far outweighs the decreases." That same group showed a 31-percent increase in the rate of ischemic stroke, along with increases of 30 percent for people ages 15 to 34 and 37 percent for patients between the ages of 35 and 44. The news was even worse for men, who increase in every age group was greater than women of the same age. The report cites the prevalence of hypertension, obesity and tobacco use in stroke patients and suggested some rather immediate changes to health policies and standards to address the problem. “Urgent public health initiatives are needed to reverse trends in modifiable risk factors associated with stroke in adolescents and young adults," the report states. Simply put, back away from the cancer sticks, hands off the triple cheeseburger with bacon, get off the couch and go for a bike ride, walk or run, Fatty McButterpants…………
- No one has ever accused the Coen brothers of selecting predcitable topics and subjects for their films, but their choice for their newest project is still a bit out of left field. Joel and Ethan Coen have been laying relatively low since “True Grit” was released late last year, but are reportedly hard at work on a truly unusual film called “Inside Llewyn Davis,” a movie loosely based on the story of Dave Van Ronk, a central figure in the Greenwich Village folk scene of the ‘60s.” Although the original screenplay will be heavily fictionalized to the point of changing Van Ronk’s name to Llewyn Davis - hence the name of the film - it will largely mirror Van Ronk’s struggles as a folk musician during the peak of the genre. No release date has been set for the film, but the Coen brothers will direct and produce the picture along with producer Scott Rudin and executive producer Robert Graf, with whom they collaborated on the Oscar-winning No Country for Old Men. Based on their prior films, it would be wise to expect that the film will not follow the “struggling musician on the rise” path laid out by “Walk the Line,” the 2005 Johnny Cash biopic starring Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon, or any other music-based film for that matter. Instead of selecting a famous face such as Cash or a well-known rock band like Judas Priest (in Rock Star, the 2001 film starring Mark Wahlberg), the star of this film - by a different name - will be an obscure folk singer from 50 years ago whose name will have absolutely no meaning to the film’s target demographic, unless of course the Coens are aiming for the select segment of moviegoers who are a) 65 years old and older and b) who resided in the greater Manhattan area while growing up…………
- Mmm hmm, sure thing, Mexican President Felipe Calderon. You’ve spent years fighting a losing battle against rampant corruption within local and national law enforcement in your cartel-controlled country, but in your remaining year-plus in office, you’re going to solve all of those problems. Sure you’re not, but the optimism is nice anyhow. Calderon has vowed to fight to the last day of his term to defeat the drug cartels that have taken over towns, police forces and institutions in parts of Mexico. Not only that, he also pledged to clean up corruption among police and federal attorneys by the time he leaves office in December 2012. Those bold remarks came Friday during his annual state-of-the-nation address, which he wisely chose not to give on the same night as the first game of the NFL season (take note, President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner). The speech was largely subdued from its typical fanfare out of respect for 52 civilians who died last week in a casino fire believed to be part of an extortion attack by Zetas cartel members in the northern city of Monterrey. That incident provided even more fuel for Calderon’s speech, as one police officer has already been arrested in conjunction with the attack. The Monterrey mayor's brother has been questioned regarding casino-related corruption, so cleaning up corruption definitely should rank at the top of Calderon’s to-do list in his time left in office. He would be wise to scale back his ambitions and be more realistic, but give the guy credit for dreaming…………
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