- New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie sounds bitter. Did someone
take his state’s NBA franchise away or did someone take the last jelly doughnut
from the kitchen at the governor’s residence? Both are likely to draw an angry
response from the cherubic Christie, but it’s the New Jersey Nets playing their
last home game ever in the state that has the governor chafing on this day. The
Nets played their last home game in Newark Monday night and prior to the game
Christie was asked if he planned to attend. I'm not going to the Nets game (Monday night) and my message to the
Nets is 'goodbye,'" he fumed. "They want to leave here and go to
Brooklyn? Good riddance." The reference to Brooklyn has to do with the brand-new
$1 billion Barclays Center the Nets will play in starting next season. By
Christie’s reasoning, if the Nets didn't want to stay in New Jersey, the state
didn't want them. His views are delusional when it comes to how great a place New
Jersey is to live and work and include the belief that Newark in one of the
country's most vibrant cities. "(The Prudential Center is) one of the most
beautiful arenas in America they have a chance to play in, it's in one of the
country's most vibrant cities, and they want to leave here and go to
Brooklyn?" Christie asked. "Good riddance, see you later.” Umm….has
he actually seen the state, city and arena he’s referring to? Might want to do
that before spouting off, C. Ironically, seeing the Nets leave isn't exactly
like losing an iconic franchise with a long track record of success. During
their 35 seasons in New Jersey, the Nets compiled an NBA record of 1,186-1,634,
reaching the postseason just 16 times and never winning a championship.
Fittingly, the final home game in Newark was a 107-85 loss for the Nets. Nets
coach Avery Johnson was more politically skillful than the governor in
responding to Christie’s remarks. "Everybody has an opinion. We're moving
on and hopefully we'll move on and be successful in Brooklyn," Johnson
said. Probably not with star guard Deron Williams set to opt out of his
contract and bolt the team, forward Gerald Wallace set to do the same and
forwards Kris Humphries and Gerald Green likely to leave as unrestricted free
agents……………
- This will teach people to do kind things for others. Deborah
Stevens was naïve enough to believe that her boss hiring her back after she
moved from New York to Florida and then back to New York was anything more than
a blatant attempt to steal a kidney. Stevens, a mother of two, was an employee at the Atlantic
Automotive Group for over a year before she decided to move to Florida. She resigned
and left on good terms and when she made a visit back to New York, she stopped
by to see her former boss, Jacqueline Brucia. Brucia explained that she was
having health problems and needed a new kidney, leading Stevens to offer to
donate one if the time came when surgery was necessary. A few months later,
Stevens moved back to New York and asked Brucia for her old job back. Clearly
seeing an opportunity to snag the kidney she badly needed, er, bring back a
valued employee, Brucia gave Stevens her job back and immediately reminded her
that she offered a kidney at one time. Not putting two and two together,
Stevens agreed to follow through on her promise. "My boss needed a
kidney," she said. Stevens went into surgery in August to have her left
kidney removed. Unfortunately, the procedure did not go exactly as expected and
she went through an extremely painful recovery process. Still in pain, she
returned to work on Sept. 6. Her pain was exacerbated when Brucia went full-on
dictator on her, finding fault in every aspect of Stevens’ job performance. "She
accused me of not doing my job, she'd yell at me every day. She made me feel
guilty about the pain I was in," Stevens explained. Stevens eventually
spoke to human resources, which confirmed receiving reports from other employees
that Brucia was harassing Stevens. Allegedly attempting to fix the problem,
they moved Stevens to another dealership fifty miles away…and abruptly fired
her. “I felt like my heart was ripped out," Stevens lamented. She is now
filing a complaint and lawsuit to the Division of Human Rights against Atlantic
Automotive and Brucia……….
- The nightmare continues. “American Karaoke” is going to be
around for at least two more years and the overly tanned, teeth-bleaching,
tip-frosting tool who hosts the reality karaoke show is staying in place as
well. Noted man-blouse wearer Ryan Seacrest has agreed to host two more seasons
of the karaoke disaster, extending a contract that was set to expire after this
season, the show’s 11th. His salary will reportedly be an astronomical $15
million per season, the same bloated figure he’s earned under his existing
contract. Seacrest is a busy man, serving as managing editor and lead anchor of
E! News, hosting the weekly syndicated radio program American Top 40 and
a morning drive-time show on Clear Channel’s KIIS-FM in Los Angeles and
producing a number of E! reality series, including “Keeping Up With the
Kardashians” and its various spinoffs. He is the very definition of not
confusing busyness and activity with quality production and accomplishment. Hosting
“American Karaoke” nullifies any good work he might actually do, even if he hasn’t
done any yet. For 11 seasons, he’s emceed the world’s biggest karaoke contest
and actually seems pretty happy with his efforts in that capacity. “For the
last 11 seasons, I’ve had the privilege to be a part of one of television’s
most iconic shows,” Seacrest said. “It’s been a wild ride, and I’m excited for
my journey to continue.” To add another duty to his to-do list, Seacrest will
also have a small role in NBC’s prime-time Summer Olympics coverage from
London. As for “American Karaoke,” its ratings are less than half of what they
were at their apex and hopefully that decline continues right into TV oblivion………….
- This should have a HUGE impact. Russian despot/president-elect
Vladimir Putin has secured an official return to power and reinforced his
stranglehold on the country’s political scene, so now he can sever his last
link with the ruling but increasingly unpopular party he formed a decade ago
and fly solo. Officially, Putin turned control of the party to his future
premier and the man who has served as Russia’s puppet president for the past
four years, Dmitry Medvedev. Putin has little need for the United Russia Party
now that he’s back in power, especially not with the party’s approval rating
plummeting and demonstrations in the streets an increasingly common occurrence.
Corruption complaints are also skyrocketing and United Russia is the prime
target, meaning Putin needs to distance himself from the group as quickly as
possible. Since he was never an actual card-carrying member of the group
despite chairing it while serving as Medvedev's prime minister and the country’s
actual political leader for the past four years, dissolving those ties isn't so
painful for him. Still, he and the party became synonymous for many Russians
and Medvedev’s charisma-free leadership seems to have little hope for reviving
its fortunes. Putin explained his decision as merely following tradition. "We
have developed a political tradition under which the president remains a
non-partisan figure," he explained. "The constitution does not bar
him from being a member of some party or other. But according to its spirit,
the president is really a consolidating figure for all political forces.”
Consolidation is exactly what Putin stands for, namely a forceful consolidation
of everyone behind his point of view. United Russia barely clung to a majority
in fraud-tainted December parliamentary elections and massive protests ensued. To
counter those negative perceptions, Medvedev attempted to put on a positive
front in an address played live across the nation in which he claimed United
Russia was going to be a force for good. "Democracy is no longer a swear
word," Medvedev said in the speech. It may not be a swear word, but it’s
also not a word that Russians have any concept of at all……….
- Will the whining never stop? Every year, when the weather
warms up (this week’s freak Northeast snowstorm notwithstanding), women around
the United States – and perhaps even the world – face the daunting reality that
months (or years) of not exercising, not eating well and packing on the pounds
are about to come back and bite them in their upsized backside. Trying on
bathing suits to sport during warmer weather months becomes a harrowing experience
and according to researcher Marika
Tiggemann, a psychologist at Flinders University in Australia, trying on
bathing suits is a psychologically traumatic experience for ladies. According
to the study, imagining wearing a swimsuit also increases feelings of
self-objectification, a practice in which an individual takes an outsider's
view of their body, reducing themselves to objects to be evaluated. "Self-objectification
has a variety of negative consequences,” Tiggerman said. “It leads to always
worrying about how you look, shame about the body, and [it] is linked to eating
disorders and depression.” For those looking to excuses their excuse-making, self-objectification
is a personality trait, meaning that some women are more likely to objectify
themselves in general than others. Apparently those woes are compounded by the
mental strain of trying on a bathing suit. "We wear and choose clothes
every day," Tiggemann said. "Clothes are controllable aspects of our
appearance, in a way that body size and shape are not." She and her
colleagues wanted to determine what impact clothing had on those issues, so
they wrote four theoretical scenarios to test the impact of clothing on
self-objectification. Three of the scenarios had women imaging themselves
trying on different types of clothing in a dress room: a bathing suit in one
scenario, jeans in another and a sweater in the third. Four the fourth
scenario, they were asked to imagine themselves wearing a swimsuit while walking
down a beach. All 102 female undergraduates who participated in the study read
all four scenarios in random order and then participated in the imagination
exercise. After each scenario, they filled out questionnaires designed to
measure their mood and feelings about the body and self-objectification.
Predictably, imagining wearing a swimsuit made women feel worse about their
bodies than picturing themselves trying on jeans. But oddly enough, it was imagining
wearing a swimsuit in a dressing room that made women most likely to
self-objectify, not the thought of walking down the beach with others watching
them. "The physical presence of observers is clearly not necessary,"
researchers wrote. The dressing room contains a number of potentially
objectifying features: mirrors, bright lighting and the virtual demand that
women engage in close evaluation of their body." From their research,
Tiggerman and their colleagues theorized that self-objectification is not easy
to prevent. They offered up some absurd suggestions, such as avoiding mirrors
and comparisons with others, and focusing on activities that emphasize the
function, not the appearance, of the body, such as yoga or sailing. Or women
could not eat fast food or desserts, work out and see where that takes them.
Read more about this riveting research in the May edition of the journal Sex
Roles…………
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