- Soccer is awesome. Well, as long as you consider a running drama involving racism and bigotry to be awesome, anyhow. The ongoing drama involving Liverpool striker Luis Suarez and Manchester United has underscored an already simmering hatred between the two clubs even if no rivalry really needs an infusion of racism to make it interesting. The two teams faced off Saturday in a Premier League game at Old Trafford, their first meeting since Suarez was banned for eight matches for racially abusing Manchester United defender Patrice Evra in October. Suarez, a national player for Uruguay, probably should have viewed the game as a chance to move past his ugly remarks and mend some fences, but instead he heaped more gas on the fire by refusing to shake hands with Evra on Saturday. Liverpool manager Kenny Dalglish, who initially defended Suarez during a post-match television interview, and the club's American owners both took plenty of heat for backing their player and Suarez finally caved and apologized for his actions - again. He acknowledged that "made a mistake and I regret what happened." Hmm, ya think? "I have spoken with the manager since the game at Old Trafford and I realize I got things wrong," Suarez said in a statement released on Liverpool's official website. "I've not only let him down, but also the club and what it stands for and I'm sorry." Dalglish also apologized, saying he was wrong to take a confrontational tone with reporters and insist critics were "bang out of order" for blaming Suarez for the contentious nature of a tense game between England's two most successful clubs. The tension included a clash between players from both teams reportedly outside the dressing room at halftime -- requiring police intervention -- and Evra stirring up home fans with exuberant post-match celebrations, in front of Suarez. Both Dalglish and Liverpool managing director Ian Ayre said Suarez misled club officials about his intention to shake hands with Evra prior to the game. "I was shocked to hear that the player had not shaken hands having been told earlier in the week that he would," Dalglish said. In a his own statement, Ayre said the team is "extremely disappointed" and made it "absolutely clear" Suarez's behavior "was not acceptable." United issued a statement accepting both apologies and expressing a desire to move on from the drama, which began Oct. 15 when Suarez repeatedly racially abused Evra during a league match at Anfield. Along with several other racially charged incidents in the Premier League this season, Suarez’s actions have many critics clamoring for league and national soccer officials to do more to address the issue……….
- Of the many economic indicators so-called experts use to measure how well or how poorly a given nation’s economy is doing, it’s safe to say that none is more reliable than how many people are getting their face carved, their tummy tucked or their love handles liposuction-ed off. Sure, one could look at whether people are buying homes or new cars, maybe monitor whether families are taking vacations or not, but are any of those categories really going to tell you anything of worth about a nation’s economic fate? No, but looking at how many people are getting Botoxed certainly will and if the statistics from 2011 are any indication, the Obama administration may actually be in the process of turning the U.S. around. According to an annual report from the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, Americans got about 1.6 million cosmetic surgeries in 2011, the second year of increase after a big drop in 2009. The group’s president has a simple explanation about the link between more plastic surgery procedures and the improved economy. “Consumer confidence was up, auto sales rose 10 percent, so it is not surprising that we would also see increased demand for plastic surgery procedures," the group's president, Malcolm Z. Roth, said in a statement. The most popular procedures and surgeries in 2011 were: Botox injections (5.7 million), soft tissue fillers (1.9 million), chemical peels (1.1 million), laser hair removal (1.1 million), microdermabrasion (900,000), breast augmentation (307,000), nose reshaping (244,000), liposuction (205,000), eyelid surgery (196,000) and
facelift (119,000). Despite those numbers, Americans got fewer nose jobs, facelifts and other big-ticket surgeries than in 2005, when they peaked at 2.1 million. In other words, the economy is rebounding but it is happening gradually. Maybe the (relative) success of past-their-prime stars like Madonna and Joan Rivers getting carved and looking younger is encouraging the trend. Either that or America is even more superficial than it has ever been………
- Former House speaker Nancy Pelosi has a message and she knows how to get it out. No, not by doing interviews or holding press conferences because most Americans view her with equal parts disbelief, indifference and outright contempt in the same way they view every politician. But Pelosi wants people to listen to her message about the so-called DISCLOSE Act, which House Democrats are reintroducing Thursday. The DISCLOSE act would, among other things, require more transparency by the super PACs that have attracted so much criticism and scrutiny during the Republican presidential campaign in terms of who their donors are. Knowing no one will listen to her blabbering into a microphone, Pelosi decided to engage someone with a voice American will actually listen to: Comedy Central host and comedian Stephen Colbert. Colbert, who formed a very real super PAC in order to make a mockery of the super PAC process and lax laws governing them, raised more than a million dollars with his super PAC, temporarily “turned over” control of the group to fellow Comedy Central host Jon Stewart in order to stage a faux run for president during the South Carolina primaries and retook control of the super PAC afterward. Pelosi released a video late last week tongue-in-cheekedly attacking Colbert for his super PAC, with black-and-white pictures of the TV funny man scrolling by while Pelosi narrates, “(He) used to be my friend. I even signed the poor baby's cast." She then criticizes Colbert for being "out of control" for taking money from special interests for his super PAC. Pointing to Colbert satirizing a picture of Pelosi on a couch with Newt Gingrich, Pelosi says Colbert "even used his super PAC to attack my friend Newt Gingrich." Her hope, according to Democrats, is that Colbert will take the bait and respond to the video on his show, “The Colbert Report.” Colbert and Congress have a history together, as in September 2010 a House committee called Colbert to testify on the plight of immigrant workers and he aired several humorous pieces on his show in which he tried his hand at farm work before showing up to testify before the committee. Critics lamented the supposed disrespect of inviting a comedian to such a serious setting, forgetting that Congress is already a joke to many Americans……….
- Uh-oh. What is Adele going to write about now? The winner of Grammys for Record Of The Year, Song Of The Year, Best Pop Solo Performance, Best Pop Vocal Album and Best Short Form Music Video took home the hardware Sunday night, but will she be able to have the same success now that she has vowed to be "done being a bitter witch" and promised that she will never write another album inspired by a break-up? After all, she has sold over 11 million copies of her second album “21” and that’s how she shot to the top of the charts, so what subject matter will fuel her subsequent albums? Truly great music must be about something, not just a celebration of partying, excess and wealth. Also, the best art is said to come from pain, so what is going to inspire Adele now? She doesn’t seem like the type to write an entire album about clubbing or how many Bentleys and Maybachs she owns or how much bling she rocks. Songs like “Rolling in the Deep” and “Someone Like You” are based on deep emotions and pain. True, there are other types of pain in the world besides breakups, but are any of those hurts painful enough to inspire award-winning track after award-winning track. Heck, Adele’s producer Paul Epworth was also named Producer Of The Year for his work on “21.” Maybe Adele’s next album will be all sunny, happy anthems of love to uplift and bring joy to the entire world. She could also write about her frightening throat surgery and what it was like to see her career possibly hanging in the balance……….
- So…..über-terrorist Osama bin Laden wanted to blow up everyone and everything in the West because it was all fundamentally evil, but he wanted his younger children to go to college in the West and live in peace rather than embrace terrorism? That sounds dubious at best. The deceased madman’s brother-in-law, Zakaria al Sadah, wants the world to believe that there was a good bone or too in Osama bin Laden’s body and that he adamant that his children "should not follow him down the road to jihad." Two of bin Laden's sons, three-year-old Hussain and five-year-old Zainab, lived in his compound in the Pakistan city of Abbottabad where he was killed by a U.S. Navy SEAL team last May, with seven other children. Sadah said in an interview that despite bin Laden’s unrelenting campaign against the West, he wanted his offspring to immerse themselves in the West. "He told his own children and grandchildren, 'Go to Europe and America and get a good education,'" Sadah said. If the claims are true, they could rise from bin Laden’s brothers attending Harvard Law School, the University of Southern California and Tufts University. While he himself studied at King Abdulaziz University in Jeddah, bin Laden supposedly wanted a peaceful existence for his children. “You have to study, live in peace and don't do what I am doing or what I have done," Sadah recalled his brother-in-law saying to his progeny. According to Sadah, bin Laden's three wives and nine children, who lived with him in the Abbottabad compound, are currently being held in a three-room flat in Islamabad, which is under guard by Pakistan's ISI intelligence service. Any of the nine children’s chance for a normal existence is pretty much on par with the chances of your average Hollywood child star who is thrown into a world of excess, wealth and drugs when they’re eight years old………..
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