Friday, May 04, 2012

The death of a rivalry, running is good and cat c

- Very impressive, Fox. And by impressive, of course, assume that means, “Wow, you ass hats have found a way to plumb new depths with reality TV and come up with something more asinine than any concept before it.” For the network that began the reality karaoke show plague with “American Karaoke,” finding a new low is a big feat. Fox has done exactly that by combining the worst of two words: reality dating shows and the blind choice component of NBC’s reality karaoke series “The Voice” into the hack-tacularly bad “The Choice.” The basic concept of the show is to have celebrities (as prominent a celebrity as is willing to go on a reality dating show with some random losers) use spinning chairs as on “The Voice” and for a quartet of them pick dates blindly from a pool of contestants. Theoretically, that should make the physical appearance of potential dates irrelevant – or at least it would if there was a snowball in Death Valley’s chance that producers would pick a 5-foot-5, 275-pound chick with a moustache or a 375-pound, pasty guy with a unibrow to be on the show. Fox has yet to identify the pathetic D-list celebrities who will appear on the show, but Fox alternative series president Mike Darnell and producers A. Smith & Co. have hired Cat Deeley to host. She will also be hosting “So You Think You Can Dance” for a reality garbage-filled few months. Darnell is either a great liar or he’s throughly convinced that the show is a good idea. “There hasn’t been a new hit since The Bachelor, and there hasn’t been an in-studio one that’s worked since The Dating Game 30 years ago. I was thinking about how to do a blind-date show without using a wall or blindfolds, and the spinning chairs seemed like a great way to do it,” he said. “The Voice” will air six one-hour episodes this summer, debuting on Thursday, June 7 at 9 p.m. In a decidedly lopsided arrangement, five episodes will have male celebrities with female contestants; one will have female celebrities and male contestants. In the first round of each show, contestants will describe themselves. If a celebrity bachelor or bachelorette likes what he or she hears, that person will pull their ““love handle,” spinning their chair around to face the potential date. If multiple celebrities pull their love handle, they will battle for that person’s fake TV affections. Sounds like a truly terrible idea……..


- This just in: Running is good for you. In fact, some über-smart Danish researchers from the Copenhagen City Heart Study did their due exercise diligence and found that regular jogging adds years onto the life expectancies of both men and women. Better still, those who would like to extend their lifespan need only jog an optimal time of two-and-a-half hours per week, spread out between two or three jogging sessions, the researchers found. "The results of our research allow us to definitively answer the question of whether jogging is good for your health," said Peter Schnohr, chief cardiologist of the Copenhagen City Heart Study. "We can say with certainty that regular jogging increases longevity. The good news is that you don't actually need to do that much to reap the benefits." Hear that, lazy world? You don’t even need to do much to get the benefits. Schnohr and his team drew from data from the Copenhagen City Heart Study, which started in 1976 and includes data from 20,000 men and women ages 20 to 93. A total of 1,116 males and 762 females took part in the research, all of them joggers. They were compared with non-joggers and answered questions about their jogging intensity, pace and time spent running each week. Over a 35-year span, 10,158 non-joggers and 122 joggers died. Joggers saw an average of 6.2 years added to their lifespan for men  5.6 years onto the life expectancies for women. Schnohr presented the findings at the non-stop kegger disguised as a scientific conference that is EuroPRevent2012 meeting in Ireland………


- Europe launches plenty of trends that eventually become huge in the United States. This time, Europe is the one doing the imitating as an entrepreneur in Vienna, Austria has opened the first-ever European cat café. Owner Alexander Thuer admitted that the idea to combine coffee with cats comes from his Japanese wife, Takako Ishimitsu, who brought the concept over from Asia. There are five resident cats at the café and patrons can bring their feline as well, but dogs, which are welcome at most Viennese coffee houses, have to stay outside. Café Neko officially opened Thursday and provides a chance to mingle with the most aloof, distant house pets known to man while potentially ending up with a nice hairball in your coffee. When the cats are tired of being around humans (and when aren't cats tired of being around humans?), they can disappear into their own space or climb high above the tables, out of reach of the guests. A trip to Vienna just became that much more interesting, assuming that enjoying a latte alongside a clawed, ill-tempered lump of fur that treats you with utter contempt………


- Kentucky-Indiana is one of the best non-conference matchups in college basketball every season, but the longtime rivalry is dead for the foreseeable future because neither school could agree on where to play the series. That’s right, what essentially boils down to a pissing match over money and logististics is going to submarine and amazing and storied rivalry. Indiana had the gall to propose that the series continue in a home-and-home setup, while Kentucky wanted to move back to neutral-site games and offered to play the series at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis. Negotiations went back and forth for months until IU athletic director Fred Glass ended the debate. "In the final analysis, we want our student-athletes, our overall student body and our season-ticket holders to enjoy this series at Assembly Hall," Glass said. Kentucky athletic director Mitch Barnhart confirmed the decision Thursday and described Glass’ decision as a significant departure from previous discussions with Indiana officials. "I guess they're putting that out there as a final conversation, so we'll go on from there, do what we have to do," Barnhart said. "We've been playing the games since the early 1950s, somewhere in that range. It's been a while. It's disappointing for that not to continue. I hate it for the fans, especially with two top-five teams coming back next year. I guess they did not want to do that.” Barnhart’s reference to the defending national champion Wildcats and fast-rising Hoosiers likely to both be ranked in the top five nationally to start next season is no stretch. That matchup is now dead on arrival. A game that rotated between Freedom Hall in Louisville and the Hoosier/RCA Dome in Indianapolis from 1991 through 2005 and switched to campus sites in 2006 will not happen in 2012, 2013 or any time soon. Glass magnanimously suggested that he series could be revived if Kentucky is willing to play games on campus. With the Louisville series dead, Kentucky must find a new opponent to fill the open date it has for Lucas Oil Stadium. "We were willing to play them both in the state of Indiana and they said no to that,'' Kentucky coach John Calipari said. "That means they don't want to play us." Instead, Indiana’s premier nonconference game will now be a potential matchup against UCLA in the Legends Classic in Brooklyn, N.Y. Thanks for a whole lot of nothing, IU and UK officials……….


- One of the most-used black books in history will soon go on display at the Chicago History Museum for the world to see. Playboy founder Hugh Hefner’s little black book, along with one of those “While You Were Away” message notes found inside, will be a part of the museum’s “Unexpected Chicago” exhibit on Friday. A statement from the museum explained that Hefner used the book back in the 1950s “while his celebrity was on the rise, building a world empire of fantasy and desire where readers could escape their troubles by getting caught in the teasing gaze of the centerfold-of-the-month.” Hefner fled the Windy City for Los Angeles decades ago, but during his time in Chicago he used the book to record notes about women he met as he was beginning to build the Playboy empire. The skin mag magnate who turned 86 last month, founded Playboy in 1953, with Marilyn Monroe famously gracing the cover of the first issue. Odds are the numbers in the book are either out of service or just not something the average dude would have much use for. Still, trying to imagine how often a iPhone, BlackBerry and Droid-less Hefner went to that black book back in the day to jot down important details on the latest hottie he’d met……….

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