- Chicago Cubs fans (and maybe Cleveland Indians and New York
Yankees fans too), it’s finally over. The tortured, perpetually disabled
list-bound career of star pitcher turned broken-down reliever Kerry Wood has
come to an end. Woods, who burst onto the scene with a 20-strikeout game during his rookie of the year campaign in 1998,
never lived up to the immense promise of that one-hitter against Houston in
which he hurled fastballs at 100 mph and uncorked an unhittable slider in an
overpowering display that the Astros helpless and flailing at the plate. In
spite of that auspicious start to his career, Wood never won more than 14 games
in a season, went just 86-75 in his career and was relegated to a relief role
last in the last of his 13 years in the majors. He wound his way through three
organizations, landing back in Chicago in 2011. He hasn’t started a game since
2006 and now he’ll never pitch or relieve again after retiring following the
Cubs’ 3-2 loss to the crosstown Chicago White Sox in an interleague game
Friday. Wood struck out the White Sox's Dayan Viciedo in the eighth inning and
promptly left the game. His son Justin ran out to hug him before he reached the
dugout and the Wrigley Field crowd, knowing what was happening, erupted and
gave him a standing ovation. "It's just time," Wood said after the
game. "It was time. We saw how things were going this year and just not
being able to recover and bounce back and do my job, essentially. You know it
was just time, time to give someone else a chance." Reports of his
retirement swirled throughout the week, but the plan apparently was to allow
him to end his career in front of his home fans and then ride off into the
baseball sunset. "One of those things you know it's the most difficult
thing you ever have to deal with," manager Dale Sveum said.
"Everybody has to do it." Fittingly, an injury-plagued career came to
a close in a season already fraught with health issues for Wood, who is 0-2
with a 8.64 ERA. Now Cubs fans can find someone else to pin their hopes of a
World Series on only to be let down…………
- Epic fail, SpaceX, epic fail. The California-based company aborted its
launch attempt for its privately built rocket at the very last second on
Saturday. It was a familiar sight for SpaceX, which has seen one setback after
another in its attempts to sprint to the forefront of the space race as private
companies take it over in the United States. SpaceX's unmanned Falcon 9 rocket
aborted its launch attempt just as the countdown reached T minus 0.5 seconds
and the rocket's nine main engines ignited. An unexpectedly high engine
pressure reading caused the shutdown and the rocket will now have to wait until
at least Tuesday for its next chance to take flight. Whenever it finally gets
airborne, SpaceX's first robotic Dragon space capsule flight will attempt to
travel to the International Space Station. Over the past few months, SpaceX has
repeatedly pushed back the launch in recent months to allow extra time to
review the rocket and work the bugs out of the Dragon capsule's flight software.
SpaceX and NASA officials insisted the delays were to make sure the rocket was
as ready to fly as possible, but clearly they still need more time. The Falcon
9 rocket has experienced troubles during engine tests atop the launch pad and
other persistent issues, none of which bode well for a company that has a $1.6
billion contract to provide 12 Dragon capsule cargo flights to the space
station for NASA. Proving the space capsule's capabilities is somewhat
difficult if the damn thing can’t even get off the ground. NASA's space shuttle
fleet has been retired and SpaceX and other commercial spaceship builders are supposed
to step into the void. "This mission is important, although I
wouldn't want to place too much emphasis on the success of this mission,
because it is a first time effort," SpaceX CEO and founder Elon Musk said
recently. Musk, a billionaire
entrepreneur and co-founder of the Internet payment service Paypal, can't be
happy about the delays. He founded SpaceX in 2002 with the intention of
developing a manned spacecraft capable of orbital and deep space flight. So
far, the pursuit has been an abject failure……….
- Riot Watch! Riot Watch! Bahrain has become a hotspot for
uprisings in recent months and that hotspot got that much hotter Friday as tens of thousands
of protesters chanting “Bahrain is not for sale” jammed a major highway to
denounce plans for closer unity between the Gulf kingdom and neighboring Saudi
Arabia. While there was a dearth of clashes with police, vehicles and dumpsters
being overturned and set on fire and storefronts being looted, the sheer size
and scale of the demonstration were inspiring. Demonstrators stretched for more
than three miles along a main highway and illustrated the serious backlash to
efforts by Bahrain’s rulers to integrate key policies such as defense and
foreign affairs with the Saudis. Those efforts have infuriated Bahrain’s
majority Shiites, who denounced the proposal as a sellout of the country’s
independence and an effort to give Saudi security forces an open door to join
in on the Bahrain’s brutal crackdowns on opposition groups. Both nations are members
of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council, which earlier this week delayed any
decisions on seeking greater unity among members. Still, crowds flocked to a
highway outside Bahrain’s capital Manama on Friday, chanting, “No unity, no
unity,” and “Bahrain is not for sale.” Such uprisings have been a regular sight
since the Shiite-led uprising began in February 2011 and opposition groups
continue to seek a greater Shiite political voice in the Sunni-ruled nation.
Sadly, there was not a single report of violence from Friday’s demonstration
and Bahrain’s leaders continue to blame Shiite power Iran for encouraging the
uprising. Hopefully, a Molotov cocktail or 50 will be involved in the next
demonstration…………
- Aye, laddie, it’s true. The acting-challenged Ryan
Reynolds is indeed the reported frontrunner to play the lead role in an unnecessary
rehashing of the 1980's fantasy movie “Highlander,” which has spawned a TV
series and plenty of other bad ideas based on its tale of an immortal Scottish
swordsman who must confront the last of his opponents, a murderous barbarian. Director
Juan Carlos Fresnadillo (“28 Weeks Later”) has already signed on to helm the
project, with Neal Moritz and Peter Davis producing. Reynolds, who is also weighing
up a series of other scripts, is reportedly at the top of the list for the lead
role and although few specific plot deals have been leaked, most expect the
film to stick close to the original film, which e starred Christopher Lambert
and spawned several sequels and also a television show. Could Reynolds
convincingly pull off the story of a Scottish swordsman who battles other
immortal warriors through the centuries? Probably not, but inconsequential
details like that rarely stop Hollywood these days. Reynolds’ last project,
Universal’s “Safe House,” grossed around $120 million domestically and he is
currently working on the animated movie “Turbo,” which is about a garden snail
who dreams of becoming the fastest snail in the world. Voicing snails alongside
Samuel L Jackson and Michelle Rodriguez sounds like an ideal fit for Reynolds’
thespian skills. The “Highlander” role would also give him a chance to break
out his sword-wielding skills, which he used in “X Men Origins: Wolverine.” But
sword skills always look better when kilts are involved, right…………..
- This is why a city having a budget surplus, even a small
one, is usually a negative thing. When a city has a budget surplus, city
officials must decide how to spend that budget surplus. On account of them
being wasteful, idiotic bureaucrats with little concept of how to properly run
a city, they will almost certainly find the most wasteful way to spend the
surplus and in the process, put their city right back in the red financially. Meet
New York City’s council members, who have been tasked with finding innovative ways to spend the
city’s extra cash. What ideas might they come up with? Tiny security cameras
attached to the backs of rats to reduce crime? Self-serve coffee machine on subway
cars to increase revenues? Nope, their big idea is better than either of those
half-baked concepts. Council members want to spend more than $2 million
educating cab drivers on how to spot, counsel or turn in hookers. Read that
last sentence again, we’ll wait…..and continue once you stop laughing. Given
that the extra money doesn’t exactly total in the tens of millions of dollars
and belt-tightening is a priority not only in NYC, but in most every city
across the country, hooker-counseling cabbies may be the single worst idea any
city council has ever had, anywhere in the world. “This is the worst of all
worlds--Big Brother and social workers combined in our cabbies and the city's
going to pay for it," Queens Councilman Dan Halloran proclaimed on the steps
of City Hall even as budget hearings took place inside. Where did this asinine
idea come from? Somehow, it sprung out of the recent arrest of a father-son team
for running a "brothel on wheels" that used livery drivers to get
hookers to johns. Some of the hookers even performed sex acts in the back
seats. The proposed bill would fine drivers $10,000 fine for their part in the
process, but Halloran clearly is not a fan. "Here we're gonna spend $2
million dollars and educate cabbies to be social workers and informants for the
police department. What are we thinking?" he asked. He suggested using the
money for after-school programs or to keep open the 20 firehouses the mayor is
slating to close. Both are solid proposals, but far too logical to be
adopted………..
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