- British rockers Status Quo aren't especially relevant. The
classic British rockers haven’t been a factor on the music scene for years and
what does a band do when no one cares about them or pays attention to them? Put
together a kooky new movie project, of course. That’s exactly what the members
of Status Quo have set out to do, crafting their very own James Bond-style action film.
The project, which is set to be titled Bula Quo!, will of course feature a
soundtrack of 12 classic Status Quo songs. If there are in fact 12 classic
Status Quo tracks to use, then this should be one heck of a ride. To add to the
awesomeness of it all, the band are working on the project in the always
arduous environment that is Fiji. Status Quo has already enlisted the talents
of comic Jon Lovitz, who will star alongside Craig Fairbrass, who has
previously starred in “Eastenders,” “Footballers' Wives” and “London's Burning.”
Stuart St. Paul will direct and the project is tentatively scheduled for
release next year. "The one thing Quo fans know is to expect the
unexpected,” said lead singer Francis Rossi. "This is an amazing chance
for us to do something new and we're all really excited," added guitarist
Rick Parfitt. Yes, it is an amazing chance to join the ranks of marginal
recording artists who have accumulated enough money to star in their own
feature film, artists like the Spice Girls and S Club 7. Status Quo have not
revealed whether they are playing themselves in the movie, but they do have the
challenge of writing and recording a new album on their hands as well, so
making such important decisions cannot be rushed. They plan to release a new single
titled “The Winner” later this month to coincide with the Olympic Games…………
- Arizona Diamondbacks Aaron Hill will never win an MVP award,
he won't be elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame once he retires and he may not
even crack the 200-home run barrier in his career. But he does share an
impressive distinction with just one other player in the modern era of baseball
after hitting for his second cycle of the season Friday night against the
Milwaukee Brewers. In so doing, he became just the second major league player
since 1900 to accomplish the feat twice in the same year. After recording a
single, double, triple and home run on June 18 against Seattle in an
interleague game, he doubled for his 1,000th career hit in the first and then
singled in the third. After crushing his 11th home run of the season, a two-run
shot in the fourth, he finished the cycle with a triple in the sixth off Livan
Hernandez. The only other player to match his feat was Babe Herman (not to be
confused with George “Babe” Herman Ruth, a.k.a. Babe Ruth), who had two cycles
in one season for the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1931. Hill can thank Brewers starter
Randy Wolf for serving up his first three hits of the night and the ageless
journeyman that is Livan Hernandez for helping him etch his name in the record
books. For a player with a career .269 batting average and 109 home runs in
eight major league seasons, the chance to set a record does not come along very
often and some day long after he’s gone, Hill can now be the answer to the
daily trivia question on a local sports talk show in rural Kansas………
- Waaaaaaaaait a minute. Suddenly, there is stunning news
that late North Korean despot/ megalomaniac/dictator/Oompa Looma reject Kim
Jong-Il may not have been a good guy AND that he in fact did want to nuke the
entire world to hell in one giant ball of fire. According to an internal
document obtained from Pyongyang, where K.J. Il was succeeded by his youngest
son Kim Jong Un, the elder Kim reportedly ordered his scientists to produce
"a massive amount" of bombs containing both uranium and plutonium. If
true, this document would directly contradict repeated lies, er, assurances
that the North wanted to enrich uranium solely for the purpose of power
generation. That was Pyongyang’s official position, but the leak of a document
believed to have been compiled in February this year for senior officials of
the for civilian industry suggests otherwise. "US and other hostile forces
were complaining we are trying to produce uranium to make nuclear
weapons," the document reportedly said. “US” is presumably a gramatically
stunted way of referring to the United States of America (perhaps a cost-saving
move because ink from printers isn't cheap) and not the word us. This gem of
governing wit continued: "To tell the truth ... [the late leader said] we
are not waiting for the uranium-enriching technology to develop so it can be
put to use by civilian industries such as power generation. From a military
point of view, it is a matter of course that we should use plutonium and
highly-enriched uranium for atomic bombs.” But bombs to generate energy to run
your Third World hell hole of a country, right? Not nuclear bombs to blow sh*t
up and assert your dominance over the rest of the globe. Unfortunately, K.J. Il
shuffled off to the great Communist haven in the sky in December before his
dream could come true……….
- Getting drunk isn't cheap, at least not as cheap as it
should be considering the depressing financial state in which America and most
of its citizens find themselves these days. Miller knows this and is launching a
different sort of summer tour to help at least one special group of Americans
get sauced. In nine cities across the United States this summer, anyone who has
the last name Miller (or who is willing to legally change their name to Miller
– which might prove to be a wash financially with the legal fees) or who can
score a cheap fake ID claiming their last name to be Miller can show up at a
designated location and assuming they are of legal drinking age, receive a $25
gift card from Miller. The first event, predictably, is taking place from 1-5
p.m. June 29 poolside
at The Palms in Las Vegas. From there, the tour will wind its way through
Charlotte, Milwaukee, Cincinnati, Chicago, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Phoenix
and Indianapolis. To receive their $25 booze card, individuals need only to
show up at the designated location and show their legal state ID with their
first, middle or last name of Miller. Sadly, gift cards are limited to one per
person and must be collected within the designated hours for the event. Other
than the Las Vegas stop, the other eight events last only three hours, meaning
there will be a line filled with thirsty Millers waiting for their chance at
free beer in some very hot, sweaty weather in cities across America. Hopefully
Killian’s, Busch, Pabst and Coors will follow suit………
- Most people have at least one whiny friend who is always
complaining about some type of ache or pain plaguing them. That whiny friend
may actually have an excuse, other than being a whiny wuss who can’t stomach the
pain and keep going, for their chronic complaining. A new study that is the
first to follow a group of people with the same new back injury over time
has revealed through brain scans of participants that those who go on to have
chronic back pain appear to show a different pattern in the region of their
brain that handles emotional responses. A team led by Vania Apakarian,
professor of physiology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine,
used fMRI scans to detect early brain changes and if they hold up, the findings
could help predict which patients are at higher risk for chronic pain and help
develop drugs to prevent it. Apakarian and his team are the first to prove that
when there is direct communication between two particular brain regions, there
is a higher chance of pain becoming chronic. When insula, which is active when
people have emotional responses to events, and the nucleus accumbens, which
plays a role in teaching the brain how to respond to changes in the
environment, communicate frequently, the odds of chronic pain rise
substantially. “For the first time we can explain why people who may have the
exact same initial pain either go on to recover or develop chronic pain. The
injury by itself is not enough to explain the ongoing pain. It has to do with
the injury combined with the state of the brain. This finding is the culmination of 10 years of our research," Apakarian said. Previous studies compared the brains of people
with chronic back pain to those of healthy people, but none of them focused on
identifying the factors that drive the pain's chronic nature. Following
participants over a prolonged period of time was necessary to determine which
drivers were responsible for escalating the pain to the point it could be classified
as chronic. Apkarian and his crew recruited 39 people with clinically diagnosed
sub-acute or moderate back pain that was persistent and had begun 1 to 4 months
earlier. All participants were assessed at the beginning of the study and three
additional times over the following year. Functional magnetic-resonance imaging
exams of their brains and surveys rating their level of pain were used to
assess their level of discomfort and at the end of the 12 months, 20 of the
participants had recovered, while the rest continued to experience pain. The
key difference between those whose back pain abated and those who qualified as
having chronic pain was the level of communication between the insula and the nucleus accumbens brain
regions in their brains. The elevated level of communication was present
throughout the study, suggesting it was a good predictor of chronic pain. Using
their new method, researchers saw 85 percent accuracy in predicting which participants would still be in
pain by the end of the 12 months. They
theorized that increased emotional response to pain leads to it becoming
chronic. In other words, weak people who stress and worry too much about minor
aches and pains have chronic pain. Thanks, science……….
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