- What is it with professional sports leagues in America and their fear of insanely awesome gear? For whatever reason, leagues seem to be petrified of players wearing gloves, shoes or other uniform accounts that are über-cool. Two seasons ago, Major League Baseball forced quirky San Francisco Giants closer Brian Wilson to alter or stop wearing his all-orange cleats by using some ridiculous rationale like the shoes being potentially distracting for batters. But no league is more restrictive when it comes to sartorial freedom than the NFL, which literally has a league official at every game whose sole responsibility is making sure players’ uniforms are fully up to code. That includes the height of their socks, the exact length of the towel tucked into their waistband and just about everything else. Those rules also apply to shoes and are the reason Chicago Bears wide receiver Earl Bennett finds himself on the wrong side of the league. Bennett was fined $10,000 last week for wearing orange shoes, his second uniform violation this season for wearing the shoes. Bennett admitted early last week that he had heard the fine would continue to increase and "after that I've heard that they are going to call delay of game and maybe kick me out of the game." He didn’t indicate whether he planned to stop wearing the offending kicks, so the league decided to step in and make the decision for him. Bennett has been informed that he will not be allowed on the field if he wears the shoes again, a league source confirmed. Bennett, who has missed five games due to a chest injury he suffered against the New Orleans Saints in Week 2, has 14 catches for 196 yards and a touchdown on the season. His story is the perfect example of why the NFL is derisively called the No Fun League by many and its refusal to allow a guy to wear shoes simply because they are awesomely orange is asinine. Bennett is merely the latest in a line of uniform code offenders and another reason the NFL needs to remove that ginormous stick someone shoved up its……………
- Riot Watch! Riot Watch! Egypt is where it’s at, yo. I know what you’re thinking……..Egypt already had its riots, we enjoyed them and we moved on. It’s true that the riots in Egypt sparked other riots and uprisings around Africa and the Middle East, but that doesn’t mean we can’t revisit Egypt and enjoy the latest revolt there. Not content with overthrowing dictator Hosni Mubarak in February, Egyptians are not satisfied with their current government situation and thousands of them took to the streets of Cairo on Sunday for a second straight day of riots and clashes with riot police. Rock-throwing was the attack method of choice protesters demanding that the ruling military quickly announce a date to hand over power to an elected government. Police responded with a typical show of excessive force, using tear gas against several thousand protesters in and around central Cairo's Tahrir square. The square, of course, was the birthplace of the 18-day uprising that toppled Mubarak. This time around, rioters pelted police with rocks one day after they and other dissidents around the country rose up for demonstrations that left at least two people were killed and hundreds wounded. The weekend’s clashes were the worst between police and protesters in months and revived hope that the anti-establishment fireworks are not over. In nine days, Egypt is scheduled to hold its first post-Mubarak parliamentary elections and public anger over the slow speed of reforms combined with the obvious reluctance of Egypt's ruling generals to relinquish power to a future civilian government have created a powder keg of political and social tension. Along with Sunday’s impressive uprising in Cairo, protests were held Saturday in Alexandria and in the Red Sea port city of Suez. The confrontation in Cairo began when riot police dismantled a small tent camp set up to commemorate the hundreds of protesters killed in the uprising, according to witnesses, and then attacked around 200 peaceful demonstrators who had camped in the square overnight in an attempt to restart a long-term sit-in. "Violence breeds violence," said Sahar Abdel-Mohsen, an engineer who joined in the protest after a call went out on Twitter. "We are tired of this and we are not leaving the square." That prediction proved prescient as police fired rubber bullets, tear gas and beat protesters with batons. The clashes spilled out of the square and into surrounding side streets of downtown Cairo. Health Ministry official Mohammed el-Sherbeni confirmed that one protester died from a gunshot and at least 676 people were injured. Other inspiring scenes for the day included the requisite burning and property destruction in the form of an armored police truck that was rolled and set on fire by protestors, who later set tires ablaze in the street. "The people want to topple the regime," shouted enraged crowds, bringing back the chant from the early days of the uprising and adding, "Riot police are thugs and thieves" and "Down with the Marshal," referring to Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, Egypt's military ruler. The Interior Ministry, which runs the country's police forces, made the bogus accusation that the rioters were seeking to escalate tensions ahead of the parliamentary elections, which begin on Nov. 28 and will be held in stages continuing through March. Another attempt by The Man to hold the people down…………
- Technology is a great thing. It allows people share things they ordinarily would not be able to pass along to friends, family members and millions of total strangers around the world. It can also be a useful tool with which to warn the masses of the inherent dangers in the world around them, which is what the Florida Department of Transportation website is attempting to do with a graphic video posted on its website that shows pedestrians getting hit by vehicles in various settings. The footage includes a car slamming into a person in a crosswalk and another being clipped by an automobile and being flung into the air before crashing onto a windshield and then tumbling to the pavement, is actually fairly entertaining viewing. It is part of a traffic safety campaign, called See the Blind Spots. The purpose of the campaign is to reduce pedestrian and bicycle fatalities in Florida and especially in the Tampa Bay area, which is statistically one of the most dangerous metro areas in the nation for walkers. The video should be an unquestioned winner because it both entertains and informs, but that’s not how state Sen. Mike Fasano sees it. Fasano is livid over the video and says something that shows the aforementioned images and another of a police officer walking near a body bag should not be on a government website. "They were truly graphic and something that shouldn't be on a state website. I have great concerns, as well, with children having access to that website and going and watching those horrific and very sad videos," Fasano told the station. State officials are defending the video, saying they wanted to use images that would get people's attention. Mission accomplished, guys…………
- The whole world knew that The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn would make more money than every other movie in the weekend’s top 10 combined, but the real question was whether the hordes of shrieking teenage girls (and pathetic older females) flocking to the theater in droves to see the film would help it break the franchise’s previous record for an opening weekend. That didn’t happen, as Breaking Dawn finished just behind 2009's New Moon ($142.7 million). It did made $139.5 million to dwarf the competition, which began with newcomer Happy Feet 2. The kid-focused film struggled in its debut, making just $22 million in what had to be a colossal disappointment for Warner Bros. The hero flick Immortals landed in a distant third place with $12.2 million and has made a respectable $52.9 million in domestic earnings through two weeks. The latest un-funny Adam Sandler comedy, Jack and Jill, was fourth on the list with a take of $12 million for a two-week tally of $41 million. The last entry in the top five was its second family friendly movie, DreamWorks’ Puss in Boots. The feline-themed film added $10.7 million to its coffers despite a 56-percent decline from last weekend and has now earned $122.3 million through its first month in American theaters. The occupants of the latter half of the top 10 were: the bomb-tastic Tower Heist (No. 6 with $7 million and $53.4 million in three weeks’ work), the über-boring J. Edgar (No. 7 and not one of director Clint Eastwood’s better efforts, making $5.9 million and with a paltry $20.7 million through two weeks), A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas (No. 8 after a $2.9 million weekend and with just $28.3 million in cumulative earnings), Justin Timberlake’s latest In Time (No. 9 with a total of $1.7 million and a four-week haul of $33.4 million) and The Descendants (No. 10 in its debut weekend with $1.2 million in a limited nationwide opening). Movies dropping out of the top 10 from last weekend were Paranormal Activity 3 (No. 11), the crappy remake of Footloose (No. 12) and the “Rock ‘Em, Sock ‘Em Robots” movie, a.k.a. Real Steel (No. 13)………………
- Plastic surgery is generally one of those parts of the health and medical arena where a person wants to be sure the person doing their procedure or dispensing advice is well-qualified and certified. Some dingy, poorly lit office in some crack den-laden part of the city with a gap-toothed kook in a filthy white doctor’s coat doing your nose job or liposuction is not a place a sane person wants to be. Oh, and add a transgender fake doctor who uses car repair and construction products to do plastic surgery to that list. Yet that’s what an unidentified south Florida woman did in her quest for a bigger butt and curvier body. According to Sgt. Bill Bamford of the Miami Gardens Police Department, the woman received a series of toxic injections from Oneal Ron Morris. Morris, who was born a man but identifies as a woman, is accused of injecting cement, mineral oil and a sealant used to fix flat tires into another woman’s rear end in May 2010 to give his/her/its “patient” a bigger booty and more curvy physique. To Morris’ credit, and least he/she/it had performed this same procedure on his/hers/its own body before trying it on the woman in question. Police suspect Morris may have also done the procedure on others before the woman whose case they are investigating and may get those answers now that Morris is in custody. He/she/it was arrested Friday after a yearlong hunt and has been charged with practicing medicine without a license with serious bodily injury. Why? Just because dude/chick was trying to give someone more junk in their trunk by fixing a flat tire and/or paving a sidewalk with a touch of mineral oil thrown in? How could that mixture possibly fail or create complications? You go to someone who I’m guessing doesn’t have an actual doctor’s office or surgical room, who probably asked you to pay in cash and may have even been operating out of their basement or trunk of their car and expect it to go well? This should be an interesting yarn to unspool…………
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