- NBC’s hit comedy "The Office" hasn’t exactly soared to new heights with Steve Carrell and his beloved Michael Scott character gone, but the show is soldiering on for the time being. James Spader joined the cast to somewhat fill the void and the Andy Bernard (Ed Helms) character was promoted on the show to take over as the boss at the Scanton, Pa. branch of the company formerly known as Dunder Mifflin. Spader’s Robert California character landed in an executive role with the company, leaving Rainn Wilson's Dwight Schrute on the outside looking in. Wilson’s cantankerous character is a favorite for many fans because of his bizarre mannerisms and haphazard schemes and there are rumors swirling that NBC is considering a spinoff concept for Schrute, who hasn't been too pleased at the "Office" since Michael Scott departed and Bernard took over. Wilson and show executive Paul Lieberstein are reportedly working on the project, which would find Schrute back home at his family's beet farm and bed-and-breakfast. Sources say the concept will be planted in an upcoming episode of "The Office" set at Schrute Farms, which has been a setting in previous episodes of the show. “Paul [Lieberstein] and Rainn have been joking for years about Dwight's life on the farm, his family and how well-suited he is to run a B&B," a source said. Lieberstein and Wilson began work on the idea, NBA was amenable to it and the concept has reportedly grown and expanded from there. Because the project is still in the development stages, there is no agreement or deadline. Wilson addressed the rumored spinoff in a tweet, writing, "Don't believe everything you read in the press, OK?" Sounds exactly like something Dwight Schrute would say……….
- Arrrrghhh! Gather your wenches and swig some rum, mateys, because the biggest pirate freak fest in the United States is back and legions of would-be swashbucklers will descend on Tampa, Fla. this weekend for the annual Gasparilla Pirate Festival. The festival is staged by Ye Mystic Krewe of Gasparilla and has taken place every year since 1904. For this year’s incarnation, more than 300,000 pirates and wenches are expected to attend, parading up and down Bayshore Boulevard and pillaging downtown Tampa. YMKG historian Bill Carson explains that the festival came to be when a group of about 50 people decided to amp up the volume on the city’s existing May Day celebration. The group sent letters to the local newspaper warning that the pirates were about to invade, playing upon the legend of the aristocrat-turned-pirate Jose Gaspar. Gaspar allegedly plundered 36 ships along Florida's West Coast during the end of the 18th century and early 19th century. YMKG picked up his legend, ran with it and “invaded” the May Day celebration on horseback, truly befitting pirates of course. Either willfully ignorant of what a pirate was or just too drunk to care, the good people of Tampa loved the sight and the idea grew from there. A boat was added to the party in 1937 and the festival grew from a smaller gathering rooted in the downtown area. Other pirate “crews” joined along the way and the event has become more commercialized with each successive year. There’s even a children’s parade, which doesn’t seem all that compatible with the general debauchery associated with quality pirating. In a nod to Mardi Gras, the festival has bead tossing to wenches who flash their assets and a local craft store called Bead Barn estimates it has e sold more than 40 million strands of beads so far this year. The festival begins Saturday at 11:30 a.m. with the Gasparilla Invasion as “Jose Gasparilla” sails from south end of Hillsborough Bay toward the docks at the Tampa Convention Center, continues with the very un-piratey Gasparilla Invasion Brunch at the Tampa Convention Center (pirates are not well-known brunchers), moves on with the Gasparilla Parade of Pirates and ends with the Gasparilla Invasion celebration at Curtis Hixon Waterfront Park. Hopefully someone is pillaged and plundered at some point during the day………..
- Twitter is walking a fine line of censorship with its newly established capability to block tweets that run afoul of certain countries' restrictions on speech and free speech advocates are already turning their rings around and looking for a fight over the issue. The popular micro-blogging site announced Thursday that it can censor tweets depending on national laws and users quickly speculated that it will lead to repressive regimes bullying Twitter into taking down posts those regimes disagree with. Twitter tried to justify its actions by using France and Germany as examples because both nations ban pro-Nazi speech. However, it’s difficult not to imagine what effects the decision could have in places like the Middle East, where social networks like Twitter and Facebook played a key role as organizational tools during last year's Arab Spring uprisings. The term #TwitterCensored became a trending topic shortly after the announcement and some users have pledged not to use Twitter on Saturday, Jan. 28 in protest of the move. Angry Twitter users ironically turned to the very site they were pledging to boycott and declared that the site would have blood on its hands by silencing opposition voices. Reporters Without Borders released an open letter to Twitter executive chairman Jack Dorsey, pleading with him to abandon the idea. “We urge you to reverse this decision, which restricts freedom of expression and runs counter to the movements opposed to censorship that have been linked to the Arab Spring, in which Twitter served as a sounding board," RWB director Olivier Basille wrote. "By finally choosing to align itself with the censors, Twitter is depriving cyberdissidents in repressive countries of a crucial tool for information and organization." Some conspiracy theorists suggested that the move had something to do with Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Tala's $300 million investment in Twitter. That is only a 3 percent stake on the company, but it’s good fodder for conspiracy lovers. Twitter insisted “we strongly believe that the open and free exchange of information has a positive global impact." Mmm hmm, sure thing…………
- Communist oppression lives in Russia! Prime Minister/I Never Stopped Being President and Dictator Vladimir Putin is marching back to officially being in power and angling to quash an uprising against his United Russia party while steamrolling toward a March 4 presidential election. Putin is using all of the old tricks to crush the competition and executed a page straight from the dictator’s playbook this week when he, er, Russia's official electoral commission announced that veteran liberal politician Grigory Yavlinsky, who's been a presidential candidate three times before, will not be allowed to run against Putin in the upcoming presidential polls. The decision will not only prevent Yavlinsky from campaigning or addressing the electorate over the next five weeks, but it will bar his party, Yabloko, from fielding election observers to monitor the voting. Yabloko’s voice has been effectively silenced, although opposition groups are already decrying the ruling and slamming it as proof that the Putin system of "managed democracy" is alive and well. That system seeks to rip the power from any groups with a legitimate opportunity to wrest control from Putin while theoretically allowing voters a “choice” on who they select. Critics believe Putin’s plan is to win the election decisively in the first round and crush the spirit of opposition that has fueled riots and protests across Russia since parliamentary elections late last year that were almost certainly rigged. Political observers believe Yavlinsky would draw a significant percentage of votes on the strength of the mass demonstrations in December and could be an acceptable protest candidate for millions of people who are tired of Putin. But according to election official Nikolai Konkin, Yavlinsky’s exclusion is merely a matter of technical propriety. In a supremely clichéd move by a group in power seeking to invalidate the status of a rival group, Putin’s regime deemed about a quarter of the two million signatures collected on petitions to put Yavlinsky on the ballot to be invalid. A likely story, Nicky. Yabloko's press spokesperson, Igor Yakovlev,was spot-on when he suggested that, "The decision not to register Yavlinsky is purely political, and we believe it was taken by Putin himself.” As always, thanks for giving the world something it can count on, commies………
- Being a world champion in any sport definitely does not suck. Walking around knowing there is no one better than you and enjoying the associated perks and benefits has to be a nice existence and even if boxing doesn’t carry the prestige it once did, having a title belt from any of the sport’s myriad governing bodies still has a nice ring to it. Former world middleweight champion Oscar De La Hoya knows this well and according to a lawsuit filed in state Supreme Court in Manhattan, so does Playboy and Maxim model Angelica Cecora. Cecora, who admits to having sex with De La Hoya in a Manhattan luxury hotel room, is nonetheless suing the Golden Boy for dressing in women's underwear while trying to force her to engage in "disgusting" sexual acts in March 2011. While she admits the sex was consensual, De La Hoya's increasingly strange behavior and sexual requests afterward were against her will, Cecora said. "Once 12 o'clock hit that night, he just started doing more and more drugs and wanted me to do more and more things," she said. According to the lawsuit, she feared she would die while trapped in that hotel room with the former Olympic gold medalist and world champion of multiple weight divisions. Cecora spoke to reporters outside a hearing for the case, but De La Hoya did not attend. During the hearing, his lawyers asked to dismiss the lawsuit, which seeks $5 million for emotional distress, false imprisonment, assault and battery. Attorney Judd Burstein dismissed the suit’s claims as “offensive and frivolous.” The suit details the sequence of events during the night, beginning with De La Hoya inviting Cecora to meet for dinner at his hotel, then taking her up to his room. She claims she had no idea that he was married at the time and said De La Hoya used his fame to manipulate her, promising to use her as a ringside girl in his boxing promotion ventures. At some point during the after-dinner festivities, the two had sex and Cecora claims that De La Hoya put on her underwear and walked around the room at the Ritz Carlton Hotel. He then allegedly picked up a phone and ordered around $300 worth of cocaine and marijuana to be delivered to his room. Hmm……pot, blow, cross-dressing, sex with a Playboy skank.....maybe boxing does still have a lot of its status and power. De La Hoya is now retired and according to Burstein, he is a changed man who has gone through rehab and is clean. "His life was spiraling out of control," Burstein said. "He's a changed person now." Changed but unable to outrun his past………
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