- Ozzy Osbourne is an official and permanent resident of the Tyson Zone, a place reserved for athletes, celebrities and other public figures whose lives have been so bizarre up to the present that there is not a story that one could hear and think, “Nah, that’s too crazy, it can’t be true.” A man who has snorted ants off a popsicle stick and repeatedly bitten the heads off live bats on stage has to land in the Tyson Zone and that just takes the shock value and edge off of any Osbourne story - past or present - that surfaces going forward. Having said that, hearing his former Black Sabbath bandmate Tony Iommi talk about how the Prince of Darkness once trashed a hotel room with a dead shark is still odd. Iommi, who was a founding member of the band, told a story of a time when he had been rehearsing with the band ahead of a possible reunion and Osbourne dismembered a shark and soaked a hotel room with its blood. According to Iommi, he and the other members of the band were bored and tired of being stuck in hotel rooms during their down time. Taking drugs wasn’t enough to occupy them and while under the influence of those drugs, Osbourne somehow got his hands on a small shark and went berserk. “With drugs always you get bored, so you must do something to one another. Like Ozzy hauling a shark through a window, dismembering it and soaking our room in blood,” Iommi recalled. He added that he and Osbourne are still close and speak regularly, but cited the singer’s mercurial ways and added that “his attention span lasts three seconds." That will happen when a person has done just about every drug known to mankind - including reality TV - and lived to tell about it. Iommi’s shark story comes ahead of a “major” announcement to be made by the band on Friday, when all four original members of the band, Osbourne, Iommi, Geezer Butler and Bill Ward, will attend a press conference scheduled for 11:11 a.m. PST. When they announce another reunion, er, if they announce another reunion, it will be the latest in a long and winding road for the band. Osbourne was fired in 1979 because of his drug and alcohol addiction and replaced by the late Ronnie James Dio, but the original line-up reunited in 1997 to headline the Ozzfest festival and released the live album “Reunion” in 1998. Three years later they spent time in the studio with über-producer Rick Rubin in 2001, but the sessions came to a quick end and no material from them has been released. Ten years have passed and the band has remained dormant, but they appear poised to make another cash grab/reunion effort………….
- If Loveland, Colo. resident Jennifer Coll was listening to Peter Gabriel on the radio (and who isn't) on her way to work Friday, that would be the only way her story could be any more bizarre. Coll was motoring along a rural two-lane road, heading to work and spending a little quality time in prayer with the Almighty when she received a Gabriel-esque sledgehammer to the face - literally. While driving in the right lane and communing with the Lord, she spotted something twirling through the air toward her. "In slow motion, it's like a film," she recalled. That something was a two-pound that sledgehammer had had bounced off the back of a truck. The small hammer smashed through he windshield and struck Coll in the face. She was able to maintain control of her car and pull over to the side of the road, where she collected herself and after several tries, flagged down a passing motorist. "All I could think of is, 'I'm worse than Halloween,'" she joked. Fellow commuter Adrian Mosness, also of Loveland, pulled over to assist Coll and did his best to keep her awake and alert while they waited for the ambulance to arrive. Coll was transported to the hospital and treated for a bruised and cut face that required some stitches. The 60-year-old remembered the sound of the sledgehammer striking her windshield as “like an explosion and then excruciating pain." Had the sledgehammer been larger, the damage would likely have been much more substantial to both Coll and her car and she may not have survived the impact. She still cannot fully explain how she survived with relatively minor pain and injuries. "I'm astounded. I'm astounded," Coll stated. "It's not reasonable for me to still be here and to be able to talk. I can't figure out how that thing came through the window without wrecking my car and without wrecking me. It's a God thing. It's a miracle.” Police still haven't located the truck that lost the sledgehammer and at this point, the driver of that rig stepping forward doesn’t seem likely…………
- Voter turnout may not be all that great in Liberia’s upcoming presidential run-off. Potential voters tend to be hesitant to show up at the polls if there is a chance that doing so could result in them being fatally shot. That seems to be a distinct possibility after shots were reportedly fired during an opposition protest in Monrovia ahead of the vote, killing at least one person who suffered an apparent gunshot wound to the head. In addition to the violence, Congress for Democratic Change (CDC) candidate Winston Tubman has pulled out of Tuesday's vote, alleging fraud. Tubman believes he would not receive a fair chance against Nobel Peace laureate Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, Africa's Africa's first elected female head of state, who is running for another term. Sirleaf was first elected in Liberia's first post-war election in 2005. Tuesday’s vote will be the first elections organized by Liberians since the 14-year conflict ended. The 2005 vote and other elections during that time were run by a large UN peacekeeping mission. Sunday’s riots occurred after thousands of CDC supporters gathered outside party headquarters to urge voters to boycott Tuesday's poll. Police and UN forces reportedly blocked a road to prevent the CDC activists from marching through the city and at that point it was freaking on. Protestors began shouting at the assembled security forces, throwing rocks and even exchanging gunfire. Police retaliated with gunfire of their own and also used tear gas on the protestors. In addition to the one reported death, media members on the scene relayed sightings of three or four other injured people who appeared to have been shot. Tubman's running mate, former soccer star George Weah, condemned the shooting of "unarmed protesters" and called for the elections to be postponed while the matter is investigated. Police have lied, er, um, defended themselves by claiming they did not use live rounds. Dead people in the street with gunshot wounds to the head would suggest otherwise. Sirleaf won the first election in October but failed to reach the 50 percent threshold needed for outright victory. Tubman and his party have spent the interim alleging vote-rigging and arguing with both the election committee and Sirleaf’s supporters. Tubman’s decision to pull out of the run-off was condemned by the United States, European Union and African Union. "It's a bad signal... political leaders must be prepared to win or lose," said former Ugandan Vice-President and head of the African Union observer mission Speciosa Wadira Kazibwe. Win or lose, yes. Have the vote (allegedly) stolen from them……not so much…………
- If there is one activity at which mixed-martial artists are good at in life, it’s fighting. Giving them a chance to intervene in a situation in which fighting will help them succeed is generally a bad call. That memo seemingly did not reach an unidentified man who attempted to rob a Los Angeles motel at gunpoint on Friday night. The suspect robbed the motel clerk and was attempting to get away when the clerk boldly grabbed him and yelled for help. Normally a call for help would be met with indifference by those in the vicinity because most people don’t want to intervene in a dangerous situation for fear of being harmed or inconvenienced, but MMA-ers Brent Alvarez and Billy Denney of Oregon were in town for the World Jiu-Jitsue No-Gi Championship in Long Beach and were all too happy to step in. As the robber attempted to escape, Alvarez and Denney intercepted him. The two were able to restrain the robber and lock him into an MMA sleeper hold until police arrived. Alvarez, a former hip-hop club bouncer, said his 10 years of training in self-defense and experience in the octagon kicked in when he was presented with the difficult situation. He claimed the suspect wasn’t violent or confrontational, but kept insisting he did it for his daughter and begged Alvarez and Denney to let him go so he could kiss the daughter one last time. “He wasn’t trying to punch us. He just seemed like someone who had run out of options,” Alvarez said. “I think back now and wonder what the hell was I doing? I should of hit him and knocked him out.” Should have and every Tapout t-shirt-wearing, monster truck-driving, pitbull-owning, backne-sporting, ‘roided-up MMAer and MMA fan in the world thinks less of you for not doing so………..
- Welcome to the world of tablets, Barnes & Noble. The race is already full to the point of overflowing, but the book retail chain launched its widely expected tablet Monday with the hopes of doing battle with a similar offering from book-selling rival Amazon with a machine that has slightly better specs. "With the Nook Tablet we are delivering the best media device ever created in a portable form factor," said Barns & Noble CEO William Lynch at a launch event at the company's Union Square bookstore in New York. Lynch cited the tablet's screen resolution and battery life as its major advantages over Amazon’s tablet offerings and hailed his company’s tablet as an e-reader capable of streaming HD movies and music. Partnerships with Zulu and NetFlix to provide video content should make the Nook (bad name, but oh well) more appealing to consumers, who will be able to read magazines, interactive children's books, comic books and use apps from the Barnes & Noble Nook Store. The Nook’s display is a proprietary design called "VividView," which will supposedly have a clearer display and wider viewing angle than other tablets. A key selling point for any tablet is its battery life and Lynch promoted the Nook as having eight hours of movie-viewing power, either on disk or streaming. That amount of battery power - at least until the battery gets some mileage on it and the power supply dips to five or six hours - would allow a person to watch four full-length HD movies on a long flight or car trip. The Nook will be available "by the end of next week" at Barnes & Noble stores, other retailers and by mail, Lynch said. Users will be able to save their data on the Nook Cloud and access the Internet via the free Wi-Fi Barnes & Noble will offer through AT&T at its ever-shrinking number of stores. Before wrapping up the presentation, Lynch took a moment to fire a few shots at Amazon’s Kindle Fire. "The Kindle Fire is deficient for a media tablet," he said. The way Lynch sees the situation, the Kindle Fire's 512MB of RAM does not provide enough room to play a game app while reading a magazine or running another app and its 8G bytes of storage is not enough to hold media for those situations where the user is not connected to the Internet. "You're not always going to be connected to the cloud," Lynch said derisively. Of course, the Kindle Fire will be $50 cheaper than the Nook Tablet, which will cost $249. The Nook will have a 7-inch width, weigh in at 14.1 ounces and feature a 1024 x 600 touch screen. Internally, it will have 1 GB of RAM, 16GB of internal storage and a 32GB expandable SD card. Processor-wise, the unit will feature a 1GHz dual-core OMAP4 chip. Will all of this be enough to challenge the iPad’s stranglehold on the market? No, but it’s a nice try…………
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