- The state that became famous as the fictional home of Cliff, Diane, Sam and the gang on Cheers may soon get its happy hour back. Massachusetts is making something of a happy hour comeback after its state senate passed an amendment in the casino debate Tuesday to equalize the battle between casinos and outside businesses in what could be a major step in the return of happy hour specials. Sponsored by Democratic State Senator James Timilty, Republican Senator Robert Hedlund, and President of the Restaurant and Business Alliance Dave Andelman, “The Restaurant Equality Amendment” is designed to ensure no restaurant is given an advantage over another, and to protect smaller businesses that are not part of casinos. Presently, state law restricts daily or hourly discounts on alcoholic drinks in Massachusetts. However, a casino plan passed in the state’s house of representatives allows casinos to serve free alcohol. While losing hundreds or thousands of dollars gambling in exchange for free drinks isn't a good business arrangement for patrons, but it’s a great deal for casinos. The senate bill would offset that arrangement, which is ironic because the senate approved a similar measure to allow casinos to serve free alcohol. But the senate tagged its casino bill with the Restaurant Equality Amendment to give other restaurants outside of casinos the same rights. Given that Sen. Hedlund is a restaurant owner himself, perhaps the PEA isn't all that surprising. Hedlund stated that the PEA’s goal is “to level the playing field for the existing businesses we have in Massachusetts and the casinos that come to Massachusetts.” He went on to state, “This is going to change the landscape dramatically in terms of that level of competition. This just simply allows restaurants the same promotions casinos will be offering.” Sadly, the bill has its naysayers in the form of wet blankets like Sen. Susan Fargo, who wants to ruin everyone’s fun by insisting the original law restricting drink deals was passed for a reason. “Quite a few years ago, following many accidents attributed to drunk driving, we outlawed happy hour and discounted drinks. And that policy has been a good one providing for public safety,” she said. “I think we would see a sharp increase in driving fatalities and injuries. There’s no point to do it.” Whatever you say, Sen. Buzzkill………
- Want to know what the jumping-off point is for the conference jumping in Division I college athletics to go from shameless cash grab to all-out debacle? Allow TCU, the Mountain West/Big East/Big 12 power to illustrate. See, the Horned Frogs went 13-0 last season and won the Rose Bowl after going undefeated in the 2009 regular season and not receiving a BCS championship game shot in either year because they did not play in a major conference. Faced with this reality, TCU decided to accept an offer to join one of those major conferences and pad its own bank account in the process. The Big East offered, TCU accepted and off they went into a conference that made no geographical sense………until the Big 12 knocked on TCU’s door. Having lost at least three teams (maybe four) to other conferences in the past two years, the Big 12 poached TCU and the Horned Frogs officially accepted the invitation Monday night even though they had yet to actually move to the Big East or play a single game there in any sport. Paying a $5 million exit fee from a conference they had never actually competed in clearly did not faze the school’s board of trustees or Chancellor Victor Boschini Jr. Athletic director Chris Del Conte also put on quite a show, shedding some absurd tears back as he recalled receiving the phone call from the Horned Frogs' new conference last week. "This is living proof that dreams do come true," he said. Yes, dreams of ginormous dollar signs dancing in your eyes, C. Del Conte refused to confirm the cost of the exit fee from the Big East, but some rich booster or alum will undoubtedly scratch a check to take care of that little problem and it will be onward and upward for the Horned Frogs…………
- Look at you Serbia, moving up in the world. Well, technically “moving up” means being granted candidate status Wednesday by the European Union, but small steps everyone, small steps. The EU refused to set a date to begin formal accession talks into the 27-nation bloc until Serbia and neighboring Kosovo improve relations, which have been combustible in recent months to say the least. Serbia had been hoping to get a date for the start of the negotiations after the arrest earlier this year of war crimes fugitive Ratko Mladic and his extradition to the international war crimes court, but the EU had a higher standard in mind. "We recommend that accession negotiations be opened as soon as Serbia achieves further progress in the one key priority ... the negotiations with Kosovo," EU Enlargement Commissioner Stefan Fule said Wednesday. Serbian President Boris Tadic said in a speech from the capital city of Belgrade that was proud that the EU had recognized the advances Serbia has made in terms of democratization and other reforms and did his best to gloss over the bad news in the announcement. Easing tensions with Kosovo won’t be easy. The former southern province of Serbia came under international control after a 1999 war in which NATO forces ejected Serbian troops and since declaring independence in 2008, Kosovo had been in a standoff with Serbia, which recognize it because it considers Kosovo the cradle of its statehood and religion. Kosovo also applauded Wednesday's announcement, saying it condemns Serbia's two-pronged policy of seeking EU membership while keeping its claim over Kosovo alive. "It's natural and logical," Kosovo's European Integration Minister Vlora Citaku stated. "There cannot be two Serbias: one European toward Brussels and one anti-European, toward Kosovo." Most world powers have recognized Kosovo's independence, but five EU members — Cyprus, Greece, Spain, Slovakia and Romania — have not. Handing over Mladic was a stumbling block for Serbia for years and his delivery to the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands was still a major step forward. In order to complete the process of getting its EU candidacy in order, Serbia must also a establish "good-neighborly relations" with its former province, according to EU officials. Turkey, Montenegro, Albania and Iceland are also pressing for EU membership, but all are relative longshots……..
- Hearing that someone wanted to sue after seeing a Ryan Gosling film is nothing new. Sorry ladies who will forever adore Gosling for his role in The Notebook (actually a decent film), but Mr. Gosling isn't going to be confused with Matt Damon or Leonardo DiCaprio any time soon - or ever. Having said that, it isn't subpar acting that led one especially wacked-out Michigan women to file a lawsuit against the distributors of the film Drive. Sarah Deming is angry because she said the trailer for the film misled her into buying a ticket and that when she finally saw the movie, it wasn’t what she was expecting. Forget for one minute that if every moviegoer who sued because a trailer gave them a false idea of what a film was like that the entire legal system would need to run 24/7/365 to adjudicate all of the cases; take a look at what Demling is livid about. First, she claims that Drive was promoted as very similar to Fast and Furious, when in actuality, it wasn’t. She may be the only one making that claim and perhaps she’s just too big a fan of another terrible actor, Vin Diesel, but that’s her story and she’s sticking with it. Secondly, Demling’s lawsuit claims that, “Drive bore very little similarity to a chase, or race action film, for reasons including but not limited to Drive having very little driving in the motion picture.” Lastly, she got racist with it by alleging that the film contained “extreme gratuitous defamatory dehumanizing racism directed against members of the Jewish faith.” The defendant, FilmDistrict Distributiont, declined to comment on the pending litigation but has to be both amused over the lawsuit and pissed that they have to waste any of their attorneys’ time on this frivolous lawsuit. The major question in all of this is what exactly Demling is after. Does she want punitive damages for suffering through the movie? Nope. All she wants is the cost of her ticket refunded because the misleading ads are in violation of the Michigan Consumer Protection Act and a notice to the public regarding the “extreme gratuitous defamatory racism, and promotion of violence, directed against members of the Jewish faith.” Left unsaid is what races are acceptable target for excessive (fake) cinematic violence…………
- This is not going to help BlackBerry in its ongoing fight against the iPhone and Droid to keep a majority portion of the smartphone market. For a third straight day, outages have plagued millions of users in Europe and Asia persisted and spread to the U.S. and Canada. In reaching across the Atlantic, the outages snipered email, messaging and browsing services. Research in Motion confirmed the issue in a statement and didn’t seem to be rife with answers. "BlackBerry subscribers in the Americas may be experiencing intermittent service delays this [Wednesday] morning. We are working to resolve the situation as quickly as possible and we apologize to our customers for any inconvenience. We will provide a further update as soon as more information is available," the statement said. The outages first hit BlackBerry users in Europe, the Middle East and Africa on Monday before spreading quickly on Wednesday. No official word was offered about when the outages would be resolved but Bell Canada said RIM, which makes the phones and routes BlackBerry traffic, had told the carrier it expected service to be back up later Wednesday. Angry U.S. BlackBerry users spent much of the day reporting missed emails and unavailability of BlackBerry messenger and Internet browsing. Mark Langton, a spokesman for Bell Canada, confirmed that the service problems started Tuesday night but was adamant that they affected a "minority" of its customers. RIM’s best attempt at explaining the initial outages in Europe and Asia was "a core switch failure" within RIM's infrastructure. "We apologize for any inconvenience and we will continue to keep you informed," the company said in its statement Tuesday. With BlackBerry sales sagging this year thanks to head-to-head competition with rivals like the iPhone and Droid, any outages or issues at all are compounded into much bigger headaches for RIM. Now is not the time to be slipping, guys……….
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