- Anyone watching the Dallas Mavericks’ 112-108 overtime loss Sunday to the Los Angeles Lakers could see it coming. Vociferous Mavericks owner Mark Cuban was lurking in the expensive seats near his team’s bench, rubbing elbows with the Hollywood elite and visibly perturbed when calls went against the Mavs. One call in particular rankled the eccentric owner, when Lakers forward Matt Barnes appeared to touch a Pau Gasol 3-point attempt from the corner as it neared the cylinder with 3:49 to go in overtime. Barnes' hands then came down on the rim and in the surest sign that a player has done something he shouldn’t have, he and Gasol both threw their arms in the air to suggest that Barnes did not make contact. The referees ruled the basket good and it gave the Lakers a 103-101 lead. It took Cuban about two minutes after the game ended to begin lobbying the league to immediately begin making basket interference situations in the final two minutes of regulation and overtime reviewable. “Any potential basket interference in the last two minutes of a game or overtime should be reviewed," Cuban said he wrote in his email to the league. "I didn't bring up that play up at all. You've got to make that reviewable. You have to ask them to change the rule.” Under the current rules, such plays cannot be reviewed. Further raising Cuban’s ire, he claimed that Barnes acknowledged to him on the court that he did touch the ball. Mavs coach Rick Carlisle supported his owner’s point of view. "He touched the ball, it's clear on video," Carlisle said. "It's a missed offensive interference call and we should have maintained a one-point lead at that point." The two teams traded the lead after the disputed play before the Lakers took control and earned a four-game regular-season sweep of the team that swept them out of the playoffs last year. Cuban realizes any rule change is unlikely to happen this season and has his sights set on the offseason. "They could (change it now)," Cuban said. "They won't, but they'll probably change it this summer." It’s good to know that there are places in the world where even billionaires can’t immediately buy the justice they seek…………
- Verizon deserves a lot of credit. The cell service provider has found another way to extort money from its customers and for that, the suits at Verizon deserve credit. Beginning on April 22, Verizon will institute a $30 upgrade fee for existing customers who purchase new phones with a two-year contract. Any Verizon customer signing up for a new two-year plan and receiving a discounted device will have to pay the fee, although early upgraders who pay the full price of a new phone would not be impacted. How does Verizon justify the fee? "This fee will help us continue to provide customers with the level of service and support they have come to expect," said Brenda Raney, spokeswoman for Verizon. In other words, the cost of everything is going up, we’re damn sure not going to cut salaries or expenses on our end and so of course the customers are going to be the ones to pay. In Verizon’s defense, the always-popular “everyone else is doing it” defense works because all of the other major national carriers charge an upgrade fee. T-Mobile charges $18 for upgrades, while Sprint and AT&T recently doubled their fees to $36. All carriers are feeling the pinch from significant smartphone subsidies, particularly from Apple's iPhone. Mix in the decline of voice minutes in favor of texts and average revenue per smartphone user has declined $10 in the past two years. Customers are more likely to change providers and according to a recent survey, switch carriers an average of every four years. At the same time, smartphone customers are using more and more data, meaning carriers must spend tens of billions of dollars each year building out new network infrastructure to handle the growing traffic load. That leaves carriers scrambling frantically to find new methods to keep profits rising and thus, customers are going to pay through the nose. To make sure that happens, AT&T, Verizon and Sprint have doubled their early termination over the past two years and AT&T canceled its lower-tier texting plans in August. Simply put, business as usual…………..
- Constitutional monarchies are awesome. Spain's King Juan Carlos I may not feel that way at the moment, but a hybrid between the sort of citizen involvement in a democracy while maintaining the regal fun of a king or queen is always nice. Life isn't so stellar for Juan Carlos at the moment on account of the Spanish media excoriating him for hunting elephants in Botswana while his country is being sucked back into the eurozone's financial crisis. The cost of his trip is the issue, not the supposed cruelty to animals that becomes an issue with the kooks of PETA and time someone tries to shoot a precious little animal. Media members have also criticized the lack of transparency of the Royal Household because it has not followed through on a promise made three months ago to disclose its income following a corruption probe linked to the king's son-in-law. For some reason, the king taking a secret trip that only came to light because the king tripped on a step, fractured his hip and had to be flown back urgently to Madrid to undergo hip replacement surgery on Saturday morning. That seemed inherently contradictory to his Christmas message in which he called on Spanish leaders to set a good example. More recently, he claimed to regularly have difficulty sleeping because of concern about Spain's youth unemployment problem. With such pressing economic issues, canceling his regular weekly meeting with prime minister Mariano Rajoy because he was already out of the country and en route to Botswana seemed to many a bit irresponsible. Media outlets blasted away with a picture of the king in front of a dead elephant, taken on a similar trip to Botswana in 2006. The anger toward politicians in Spain has risen sharply in recent months and Rajoy is extremely unpopular after his government announced deep spending cuts and health and education reforms to fight the sovereign debt crisis. Maybe a quality elephant kill by the king would boost the national spirit……….
- Are exploding buses a problem? For the drivers of Ride-On buses in Montgomery County, Md., they are an issue and the union representing those drivers they are THE issue at the moment. The union is threatening to sue the county to get what it considers dangerous and unsafe buses off the road after six of the vehicles have caught fire in the county in recent years. While relatively small at less than 30 feet long and a front that looks like the front of a truck instead of the flat front seen on larger buses, these magical incinerating buses are much like a party bus. They are also a threat to burst into a giant ball of flame and that has the union worried about workplace safety. "Our biggest concern is the safety of the passengers and the driver. In a fire like this, they go up very quickly,” union official Frank Beckham explained. “If we have a wheelchair passenger on the bus at the time of a fire, it takes about three to five minutes to load and unload a wheelchair passenger and we're afraid that, if the driver can't get him off, he may lose the passenger and his own life trying to save someone of the public. Drivers have also expressed trepidation about the buses and driver Nelvin Ransome recalled a tale told to him by one of the drivers whose bus had gone up in flames. "I talked to one of the (bus drivers) of the last vehicle that we had burn. He told me that he had stepped off the vehicle, called his supervisor, told him that the bus is on fire, to dispatch 911, and he said there was so much smoke and flame that he couldn't even get back in the bus to grab a fire extinguisher to fight the fire,” Ransome said. In a development that should make the union feel better, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has begun an investigation of the bus fires. Montgomery County officials have not commented publicly on the issue yet…………
- Bad news, “Twilight” fans. You may have to wait a little while longer for your first look at your favorite hunky teen vampires. “Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 2 director” Bill Condon admitted over the weekend that the cast and crew of the final installment of the cheesy, poorly acted franchise that has teenage girls around the world swooning will reconvene in Vancouver in the coming weeks to re-shoot vital scenes. Condon broke the news on the movie's official Facebook page, writing, “A film is a lot like a puzzle, with each piece - each shot, no matter how brief - needing to fit exactly with the ones around it. Our Part Two puzzle is finally coming into full view, and in a few weeks we'll be heading back north to pick up some additional shots - the last tiny missing pieces.” Hmm…..cryptic, mysterious and striking just the right note. Condon never explained exactly what will be re-shot, but did say that the cast and crew won't be shooting any new scenes or dialogue. However, the re-shoots won't be a total mystery. Lord knows it can’t be to fix the terrible acting because the odds of Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart picking up any actual skills in that department in the time since the original scenes were shot are somewhere near the odds of Carrot Top hosting the Oscars next year. Condon also directed the first half of “Breaking Dawn” and encouraged the delusional, dignity-free kooks who live and die with every new detail about the franchise to look for a new trailer soon, to be followed soon thereafter by the first official poster for the movie. “Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 2” is scheduled to drop worldwide on Nov. 16 and it is sure to a) make hundreds of millions of dollars and b) feautre some truly terrible acting………….
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