- What a ride the DeMarcus Cousins Experience has been
(and continues to be) for the Sacramento Kings. The über-talented power forward
is averaging a team-high 16.6 points and 9.5 rebounds to go with 2.1 assists
and 1.3 steals per game this season, but won't be available to his team for a
while after he was suspended indefinitely on Saturday for "unprofessional
behavior and conduct detrimental to the team." Cousins has been a head
case since entering the NBA in 2010, but his latest incident occurred on Friday
night in the locker room during halftime of Sacramento's 97-85 loss at the Los
Angeles Clippers. He and embattled Kings coach Keith Smart exchanged words and
Smart benched Cousins for the entire second half and ordered him to remain in
the locker room. After being grounded for the second half, Cousins was
suspended by the team a day later. It is his third suspension this year, with
his first coming after a loss at San Antonio on Nov. 9 when the league
suspended him two games without pay for confronting Spurs announcer Sean
Elliott in a "hostile manner." That was followed by a one-game
suspension without pay by the NBA for striking O.J. Mayo in the groin during a
loss at Dallas on Dec. 10. Smart explained that the suspension is designed to
be wake-up call for his talented, enigmatic big man. "We're trying to set
a standard here, and when guys move below that standard, things are going to
take place," Smart said. Banning a player you drafted fifth overall and
who exhibits the talent to be a perennial All-Star is a bitter pill for a team
to swallow, but at least Cousins accepted responsibility for the incident after
the game – even if he did thieve a bad tourism catch phrase from Las Vegas in
doing so. "What happens in the locker room stays in the locker room. But I
was wrong. I was wrong," Cousins said. "I'm a player that definitely
wants to win every night, and I'm an emotional player. That's never going to
change. But I shouldn't have responded back." He also clashed last season
with then- Kings coach Paul Westphal and after Cousins' workout over the summer
in Las Vegas with the U.S. select team, which helped Team USA prepare for the
London Olympics, USA Basketball chairman Jerry Colangelo said Cousins "has
some growing up to do." Some or a ton, one or the other……..
- The Bnei Menashe have an interesting decision in front of them. They
are people from a remote village in northeastern India who claim to be the
descendants of a lost biblical Jewish tribe. They say that their people are
descended from Jews banished from ancient Israel to India in the eighth century
B.C. and as such, they feel entitled to return to the Promised Land. Their
efforts received a boost when an Israeli chief rabbi recognized them as a lost
tribe in 2005, allowing 1,700 Bnei Menashe to move to Israel before the
government stopped giving them visas. Since then, life in Jerusalem has grown
more dangerous than ever and merely surviving on a daily basis is an
all-consuming task. Still, the Bnei Menashe remaining in India still want to
return to their homeland and Israel has officially reversed its policy of
denying them visas, agreeing to let the remaining 7,200 Bnei Menashe immigrate.
Staying in India and in a place that your people were not originally from may
be unpalatable, but jumping into the middle of the burning blaze that is
Israeli-Palestinian relations isn't the most appealing option either. Perpahs
the Bnei Menashe are simply bolder than most because 53 of them arrived in
Israel on Monday and according to Michael Freund, an Israel-based activist on
their behalf, nearly 300 others will arrive in the coming weeks. As they
arrive, the Bnei Menashe bring with them their families and their entire lives,
starting a new existence in a place they have never lived. Many have expressed
joy over the realization of an ambition their ancestors worked for over
thousands of years and as always, nothing says welcome back like a new round of
Israeli-Palestinian missile strikes and/or bombings………
- Much to the surprise of no one, The Rolling Stones
have no intention of hanging up their instruments any time soon. According to
newly married guitarist Ronnie Wood, the elderly rock legends plan to rock till
they drop.
Having just completed a string of 50-year anniversary concerts in
New Jersey last weekend and getting married
to his theatre producer girlfriend Sally Humphreys at London's
Dorchester Hotel on Friday in a civil ceremony, Wood made it clear that Mick
Jagger’s proclamation that one day the shows will end isn't an indication of
the band planning to retire. “I think of Howlin' Wolf plugging in to his kidney
machine, however old he was, 80 or something, and still playing. You just rock
till you drop,” Wood said. Maybe Wood figures that if he can continue to find
women to tolerate and marry him, then he, Jagger, Keith Richards and Co. can
continue to put up with one another in order to extend their time in the
musical spotlight while cashing huge paychecks for tours fueled by nostalgic,
aging fans who, like their rock heroes, cannot let the past go. Wood first
married Krissy Findlay in 1971 and their wedded bliss lasted for seven years,
followed by a seven-year marital hiatus followed by a 23-year union with Jo
Wood that ended in 2008 after an alleged affair with 21-year-old Ekaterina
Ivanova. Richards joked that he was "sick" of buying the guitarist
wedding gifts, but maybe the third time will stick for Wood. If the Stones
really do plan to continue rocking out for a while, they would be well-advised
to stop f*cking around by allowing pop hacks/publicity whores like Lady Gaga on
stage with them, something they did during the final show of their 50 And Counting tour last week at the
Prudential Center in Newark, N.J……….
- Nearly every technology company in existence seems to be
either already making its own tablet or working to get its first one on the
market, meaning competition in the tablet battle is more intense than ever. Bottom-tier
computer maker Acer is aiming to undercut everyone by launching the Iconia B1 Android tablet for just $99,
a major price cut compared to 7-inch tablets like the $159 Amazon Kindle Fire.
However, the company’s current plans reportedly call for the discounted tablet
to debut in emerging markets even though Acer has submitted the tablet to the
FCC. The Iconia B1 Android tablet is being positioned as a rival for Asus'
rumored low-price Android slate, which is supposedly also due next year.
Selling cheap tablets in countries where higher-end models are neither
affordable for most nor the status symbol they tend to be in wealthier nations
makes sense and with competitors like the Google Nexus 10 forcing price points
down for all tablet makers, smaller players on the scene like Acer have little
choice but to follow suit. Along with the Iconia B1 Android tablet, Acer is
reportedly also developing a new Intel-based Windows 8 tablet because its
current models are too expensive. Those models include the Iconia W510, which
is selling for an absurd $549 and up, and the Iconia W700, which starts at
$800. If Acer and the Iconia B1 Android tablet don’t break the $100 tablet
barrier in the United States, it shouldn’t be long before someone does, not
with the number of tablets on the market growing by the day……….
- Christmas just isn't Christmas without a little Nazi
fascism, right? One or more currently anonymous souls in Huntington Beach,
Calif. seem to believe so, or they just happen to be overly juvenile and not
mature enough to refrain from vandalizing Nativity scenes at a
Catholic church and a home in the Southern California city. Police in
Huntington Beach are searching for the person or people responsible for
scrawling “"Hail (sic) Hitler" and drawing a Hitler mustache on the
baby Jesus outside a home in Huntington Beach and inscribing a Nazi symbol on
one of the wise men with a black pen. Similar graffiti was found about three
blocks away on a Nativity scene at Saint Bonaventure Catholic Parish, leading
police to suspect that the same vandal or vandals may be responsible for both
crimes. Homeowner Richard Candlish reported the vandalism to police and then
set about cleaning up the scene he said he spent a month putting up. "It
probably took less than 15 minutes for someone just to deface all of it,"
he lamented. Parishioners at Saint Bonaventure reported the graffiti on their
Nativity scene to police and detectives are now investigating. While it
certainly could be the case that a neo-Nazi kook trying to bring Hitler’s
twisted philosophies to an upscale SoCal community was responsible for these
acts of blatant sutpidity, the odds are just as high that some bored, rich
teenagers with nothing better to do on their winter break decided, “Hey, let’s
draw a Hitler moustache on someone’s Nativity scene!” Lord knows there are
enough idiots in the world for that to be the case………
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