- The good news for fans of the “Mission: Impossible”
franchise is that there will be a sequel to “Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol.” The bad news, at least for fans of that particular incarnation of the
series, is that “Ghost Protocol” director Brad Bird probably won’t be a part of it. Soon
after news broke that Paramount Pictures would be pursuing production of a
sequel, Bird made it clear he didn’t like the idea of revisiting the same
general concept and presiding over another blockbuster with a massive budget,
star-studded cast and colossal expectations. That leaves producers Tom Cruise
and J.J. Abrams to find a replacement, which shouldn’t be all that difficult
given the franchise’s bankable nature. "I think that one of the things that’s fun about the series is that
they always pull in a different director and try to get a different kind of
take on the premise. I’d probably be open to looking at it, but I think that
part of one of the successes of the franchises is that they’re always reassessing
it with a new director,” Bird explained. That was one of the things that
attracted me to it. It’s not a franchise where it was about dismissing your
style in order to get the style of the franchise. It was more about [having]
each director influence the franchise. Because whatever you think about the Mission:
Impossible films, they don’t look like they were made by the same person.”
Bird’s success with the film involved blending the super-cool vibe Ethan Hunt
and Co. always affect on screen, but made the characters seem a bit more real
by not having them act like invincible badasses after every nasty stunt or
walking away from explosions like they were a party popper going off in the
distance. Maybe Cruise and Abrams will find a suitable replacement and under Bird’s
theory, that’s exactly what they need…………
- Dammit, this if F*cking ridiculous. The postcard beautiful
village of Fucking, Austria is caving to the pressure and changing its name
because a few jokesters began making fun
of them with phone calls and joke postcards. The power of pranking compelled
villagers to vote on a switch and the likely outcome is a return to the 16th
century version of the name “Fugging.” The hope is that the name change will
end the prank phone calls, which Fucking residents have grown tired of. “The
phone calls are really the final straw,” Mayor Franz Meindl admitted. Meindl
also pointed out the regular theft of street signs even when extra measures
were used to affix them to the ground. Drivers have shared stories of naked
couples romping in front of the signs and local businesses have sought to cash
in by creating postcards, holiday cards and beer using the town’s name as their
chief selling point. The issue came up for a vote in 1996 and villagers smartly
decided to keep the name despite problems caused by American servicemen
bum-rushing the border from Germany to visit their town and have their picture
taken in front of its signs. The name change is just as disappointing as stadium officials in Bern,
Switzerland, who change their name from Wankdorf because performers were not
mature enough to play there and not raise objections. The venue’s name was changed
to Stade de Suisse after concert dates dried up. The best-known performer to
play the venue was Robbie Williams, who took the stage in front of 40,000 fans
and asked the crowd: “Is this place really called Wankdorf? What kind of name
is that?” Thankfully, the Wankdorf shopping centre next door to the stadium
kept its name and so did the Swiss village of Wank. Fucking residents don’t
appear to be as bold and their spineless mayor is leading the charge to
temerity. “I always wanted the name to stay but it's just got too much now. The
only problem is that we need all of the Fucking residents to agree to the name
change, everyone needs to agree for it to happen. As you can imagine there are
heated discussions about the name change.” And a fine f*cking mess that will
be…………
- Cloud computing should make the world a clear, greener
place……right? Not if you ask enviro-kooks Greenpeace, who released a report
Tuesday claiming that tech companies
are leaving a massive trail of pollution caused by dirty energy sources in
their race for digital storage dominance. The report accuses some of the
world's biggest tech companies of failing miserably in using clean energy for
their operations. For the tech-clueless, cloud computing lets users store and
access data, programs and more on remote servers, minimizing their need for
extra hard drives and computing power right in their hands. However, the
process necessitates massive data centers using ginormous quantities of energy
24 hours a day. Greenpeace placed blame on three of the biggest tech companies on
the market for their reckless energy practices. "Three of the largest IT
companies building their business around the cloud — Amazon, Apple and
Microsoft — are all rapidly expanding without adequate regard to source of
electricity, and rely heavily on dirty energy to power their clouds,"
wrote Gary Cook, senior IT policy analyst at Greenpeace International. Those
three companies (and others) were singled out in Greenpeace's report for using
coal and other fossil fuel energy for their data centers. Amazon received an "F"
in three categories: energy transparency, infrastructure siting, and renewables
and advocacy. Apple, which launched its iCloud service in October, received
three "D" grades and an "F" for infrastructure siting,
which is a fancy way of saying where companies choose to locate their data
centers. According to the report, Apple gets the highest percentage of its
energy from coal among 14 tech companies examined. Both Greenpeace and Apple
reportedly told Greenpeace that its numbers were wrong but refused to provide
their own data. On the flip side, Greenpeace praised Google, Yahoo and Facebook
for their enviro-friendly ways………..
- Want some mobile skank action in your life? The resident
of San Francisco’s North Beach neighborhood have been asked that question and
many of them have answered with a resounding, “No.” In arguably the most
liberal city in America, locals have balked at the presence of a truck with a
giant billboard promoting Larry Flynt's
Hustler Club. The truck, which doesn’t actually have any naked ladies in
it, has been parked in San Francisco's Outer Richmond District when its
driver wasn’t making his way around the city to promote the club’s (probably)
coke-addicted skanks taking their clothes off for $1 bills. Its presence not
far from a library and just up the street from a school drew the ire of Supervisor
Eric Mar, previously known for his crusade against the inclusion of toys in
Happy Meals because he believed they promoted unhealthy foods to impressionable
children. Mar’s new target is the mobile porn billboard/truck, which features photos
of scantily clad women and sports a plastic-covered cutout through which a
stripper pole is visible. The truck circulates around the city on Friday and
Saturday nights to lure people to the North Beach Hustler club. For the rest of
the week, it sits near the intersection 37th Avenue and Balboa Street because
the driver lives nearby. Mar responded by having the truck towed for expired
tags, but it soon returned. He followed up by placing calls to police and city
officials, pointing out there's an ordinance that prevents commercial vehicles
with advertisements from parking on city streets. His crusade seems to have
worked because Mar says he has received a promise from the Hustler Club to keep
it out of the neighborhood entirely. "We just want it out of our
neighborhood," Mar proclaimed. When asked about the truck, club officials
declined comment and to make sure there are no similar occurrences, Mar intends
to draft a new policy that would prevent such trucks from parking in suburban
neighborhoods. "Families were saying, 'What the hell is this thing?' It just
popped up ... It's almost like it belongs on the Las Vegas Strip as opposed to
a residential street," Mar said. How great is it that this guy is
defending families and children and depicting them as asking, “What the hell is
this thing?” Well done, Mar……….
- News flash: College students like to smoke pot. Bigger
news flash: College student-athletes are also huge fans of the ganja. For some
reason, a fact of life that has been present for decades is suddenly breaking
news in college football, where a report this week estimated 40 to 60 percent of the football team at the University of
Oregon smoke the hippie lettuce. The story, which is part of a larger report
examining the use of chron by college football players, is based on interviews
with 19 current or former Oregon players and officials. When confronted by the
story Oregon athletic director Rob Mullens said the school works diligently to
address possible illegal substance use by student-athletes and tests
student-athletes to the full extent possible under Oregon state law, which
prohibits random drug tests. University policy allows for testing only when
there is a "reasonable suspicion." The uproar over the issue is
hilarious on several levels, not the least of which is the amount of dorm rooms
and off-campus apartments stocked with bongs, dime bags and other marijuana
paraphernalia. "We continue to work diligently to educate our
student-athletes on the harmful impact of illegal substances. In addition, we
have articulated our illegal substances policy to our student-athletes and have
clearly defined sanctions for a positive test," Mullens said in a written
statement. Under the school’s policy, athletes receive counseling and education
following their first positive drug test. A second positive test precipitates a
"behavior modification contract" between the student and the coach
and in the event of a third failed test, an athlete is ineligible for half of a
season. Stoners who can’t cheat their way to a clean test and pop positive for
a fourth time will be dismissed from the team and lose their scholarship. In
other shocking news, water is wet and fire is hot………..
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