Monday, August 20, 2012

Invisible Swedish bike helmets, ninajs run amok in Vegas and Mexican police corruption

-  The whole “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas” catch phrase has long since jumped the shark. It’s been hijacked by every other city more than two tourists has ever visited and been overused to the point of museum, maybe even to the point where it has been concealing something as awesome as…..wait for it…. ninjas in Las Vegas. What other explanation could there be for a clerk at a Las Vegas Dairy Queen shooting and killing a sword-wielding, masked man who tried to rob the restaurant. Yes, a kook with a sword that was at least three-feet long charged into a Dairy Queen looking to hold up a fast food chain and was gunned down by an employee. There are so many unbelievable angles on this one, from wondering how a person wielding a 36-inch sword is wandering the streets to why a Dairy Queen employee is coming to work and serving Blizzards and soft-serve ice cream cones while packing heat. According to detectives, suspect was shot twice and was lying just outside the doors when officers arrived around 12:15 p.m. Sunday and died at a hospital. Police Lt. Les Lane said the shooting appears to have been in self-defense but that detectives were investigating whether the gun used was properly registered. At the time of the shooting, which OCCURRED IN THE MIDDLE OF THE FREAKING DAY, there were only two employees and no customers in the restaurant. Hopefully the incident was captured on security cameras because that is one showdown that should not be missed……..


- Police in Mexico are not exactly known for being the most honest, upright law enforcement professionals.  While it’s tough to completely condemn a low-paid officer who has the choice of accepting a bribe from a cartel and keeping their mouth closed or seeing their wife and children kidnapped and murdered in brutal fashion, the rampant corruption across the country can be difficult to stomach. The unhappiness with their performance reached new heights over the weekend as Mexico's federal police replaced all 348 officers assigned to security details at the Mexico City International Airport in the wake of the June 25 shooting deaths of three federal policemen killed by fellow officers believed to be involved in trafficking drugs through the terminal. Federal Police regional security chief Luis Cardenas Palomino announced the overhaul and said the airport agents have been reassigned to different states, where theoretically they won't be in a position to help a cartel smuggle cocaine and marijuana out of the country. So far, only one of the three officers sought in the shooting has been captured. There is a reward of 3.4 million pesos, or $259,000, for information leading to their arrest on charges of not only murder, but participation in a trafficking ring that flew in cocaine from Peru. In their place at the airport will be federal police who have passed double vetting and background checks. The countdown until the first of those officers being corrupted and joining the dark side is already on…………


- In a celebrity pairing so logical and likely that it’s stunning it took so long to happen, the man who became a child star decades ago for playing wholesome, All-American good kid Richie Cunningham will finally work with the man whose best-known song states, “I got 99 problems but a b*tch ain’t one.” Yes, “The Da Vinci Code” director Ron Howard is teaming up with Jay-Z at the rapper’s two-day Made In America festival for a new documentary. Howard will roll tape on the build-up to the festival, the event itself and its aftermath. He will be working with creative partner Brian Grazer, with whom he founded Imagine Entertainment in 1986, to tell the story of the festival, which has a diverse lineup featuring Drake, Pearl Jam, Run-DMC, Skrillex and Jay-Z himself.
 It will be a definite musical step up for Grazer, who produced the “Katy Perry: Part Of Me” cinematic horror-fest of bad music and a colossal waste of two hours on every screen on which is played. The festival takes place Sept. 1-2 and Grazer explained the reason it is worth its own documentary. "The festival showcases 20 pre-eminent artists that speak to the new generation. I am producing the film with Steve Stoute and Jay. Ron is directing. It is going to be born through Jay-Z's perspective, how he puts the event together," Grazer said. "Jay stayed the king for a very long time...I can't even begin to explain how he is capable of remaining relevant. He is a phenom, like a musical Michael Jordan.” A musical Michael Jordan…..interesting parallel and on some level, it works, except Jay-Z never showed up for a terrible attempt at minor-league baseball during his time away from the rap game. As for Howard, once he wraps up the festival project, he will make his return to acting by appearing in the upcoming fourth season of “Arrested Development” as the show makes its much-awaited return………


- Sweden has given much to the world, culturally and otherwise. Some of it has been great, some of it has been comedic fodder, but it is usually memorable. From ABBA to the Hives, Elin Nordegren to the Swedish Chef of “Sesame Street” fame, the fair-haired people from the western reaches of Scandinavia have been a valuable part of the world. Whether their latest offering continues that legacy….will take some time to determine. The Hövding is an inflatable "invisible helmet" that slips around a person’s neck when deflated and contains accelerometers and gyroscopes that can detect when a uses is in the process of falling off their bike, rapidly filling a nylon bag with helium. Its purpose is to cushion a person’s head from potentially brain-damaging impacts. The Hövding takes one-tenth of a second to inflate and it is fitting that the invention comes from the Swedes, who made wearing bike helmets compulsory 15 years ago. "To people like us, who wouldn't be seen dead in a polystyrene helmet, the thought that we might be forced to wear one by law was cause for concern," Hövding creators Anna Haupt and Terese Alstin explained. "Producing a bicycle helmet that people would be happy to put on looked like a much better way to go than legislation forcing people to wear one or else." Anyone who has seen a picture of the Hövding may dispute the part about being happy to put it on, but Haupt and Alstin deserve respect for working diligently on the idea since 2005, pouring $10 million into the project. Oh, and anyone dumb enough to pay $600 for a helmet that only works once deserves contempt, not respect…………


- The New York Giants are the defending Super Bowl champions and being the champ requires carrying oneself with a certain amount of swagger. An idiot punter rolling tape on his iPhone as a 270-pound defensive end picks up a second-year defensive back, tosses him over his shoulder like a sack of flour and dumps him head-first into a cold tub in the locker room doesn’t qualify as swagger. It qualifies as outright stupidity and Steve Weatherford and Jason Pierre-Paul are the chief idiots on this one. Their hazing stunt is receiving attention because Weatherford was clueless enough to film as Pierre-Paul dumps Prince Amukamara into an ice tub in what appeared to be a prank that Amukamara didn’t find too funny. Weatherford then posted the video on YouTube and tweeted the link out to his followers. The video contains harsh language and features being dumped into the tub, which appeared to be made of plastic or rubber. Although he didn’t put up a struggle while on Pierre-Paul's shoulder, Amukamara is visibly upset as he emerges from the tub. Pierre-Paul goes NSFW by cursing and using insensitive language before high-fiving a teammate as he makes it sound as if he was putting Amukamara in his place. Head coach Tom Coughlin, who has to know that his players are hazing their younger teammates like in any other locker room in the NFL, sounded pissed to be dealing with totally unnecessary drama with the season just a few weeks away. "I'm learning about that today," Coughlin said in a conference call with the media. "I really didn't have any information about that until maybe an hour before this conference call. I am going to look into it and talk to the parties involved. There may have ... as I'm understanding it, there were some parts of it that were inappropriate. In no way is anything that occurs within this family or within our group should that be a part of any social media aspect.” In other words, don’t tweet it out, morons. Weatherford realized his mistake and tweeted out an apology Sunday. "I want to apologize to the fans... The video I posted was distasteful," Weatherford wrote. "Our team is a family, and we love each other. I am sorry to the fans." The victim of the prank expressed befuddlement and dismay over the incident. "Yeah, um, well, I mean, I just don't get it. I don't understand the rules," Amukamara said. "I'm not a rookie anymore, so I don't know why I'm getting thrown in the tub.” That makes at least two of us, Prince…………

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