Wednesday, June 05, 2013

Strip club tax loopholes, Google Glass porn apps and Miguel's Billboard Awards leg drop


- Fittingly, “Seinfeld” comedy icon George Costanza once worked for the New York Yankees and his TV father, Frank, created a fictional holiday called Festivus, which included a ceremony of gathering loved ones around the dinner table and telling them ALL THE WAYS THEY HAD DISAPPOINTED YOU IN THE PAST YEAR. Those fake facts are fitting because Yankees owner Hal Steinbrenner had himself a sort of personal airing of grievances Tuesday at a press conference to announce Yankee Stadium's new long-term deal to host college football's Pinstripe Bowl. Speaking about injured third baseman and confirmed steroid cheater Alex Rodriguez, Steinbrenner responded to a question about GM Brian Cashman’s suggestion on Monday that Rodriguez "probably ... couldn't live up to" the 10-year contract extension the team gave him after he opted out of his original 10-year, $252 million contract following his 2007 MVP season. The owner admitted the Yankees have been "disappointed" with their $275 million third baseman but expressed hope that Rodriguez would contribute something to the team this season. "That may be true. It's a big contract," Steinbrenner said. "That's a philosophical argument, I guess. It's a big contract. We all hope he's going to act like a Yankee and do the best he can to live up to it. How about that?" Rodriguez is out until at least the All-Star break after undergoing a second hip surgery in January and while he waits, Major League Baseball is investigating him for his alleged involvement with the Biogenesis "anti-aging clinic" in Miami. Steinbrenner wasn’t even willing to say that A-Rod was acting like a Yankee, saying, "We'll see. We'll find out when he comes back.” However, his harshest comments came when pressed as to whether or not the team was disappointed in Rodriguez, has averaged 17 home runs and 60 RBIs over the past two seasons. "There have no doubt been times that we've been disappointed in him and we've conveyed that to him," Steinbrenner said. "He understands that.” So do the Yankees’ accountants and fans who have paid exorbitant ticket prices to see A-Rod play the past two seasons………


- Employing cats to run covert missions in and out of high-security prisons seems a bit risky, but the practice has been picking up some momentum of late. In fact, cat smugglers received a boost on Monday when prison guards in Russia's northern Republic of Komi have caught a cat with banned objects, namely cell phones and chargers, attached to its body. The brave cat’s capture was announced by the region's penitentiary service on its website after the felonious feline was caught while climbing the fence of the Penal Colony No. 1 near the republic's capital Syktyvkar. "Two packages were taped to the animal's back. When the packages were unwrapped, guards found objects prohibited in the penitentiary facility — two cell phones with batteries and chargers," the Republic of Komi penitentiary service department said in a statement posted on its website. As per a communist hellhole’s typical practices and habits, Russian officials did not release any information about the cat’s fate. It is the first such incident in the Komi prison, but cats have previously been used by Russian inmates to deliver drugs and have been employed by inmates at prisons in South and Central America as well. In fact, it was just last August when narcotics police in South Russia's Rostov region unearthed a scheme in which a cat was used to smuggle heroin into a penitentiary facility. Released inmates carried the heroin cat with them in a bag when they were let out and handed it over to drug dealers waiting outside the prison fence. The dealers quickly stuffed the feline's collar with heroin and released the animal, which sneaked back into the prison. Another heroin-smuggling cat was killed by a jail dog while trying to transport his payload to a convict in Russia's Volga Republic of Tatarstan. Drug-smuggling cats have been dying or getting captured at an increasing rate of late, including one in Brazil's northeastern Alagoas state that was caught while trying to slip through the prison gates with numerous tools taped to its body, including a saw and drills. Maybe these cats will wise up eventually and let another kind of animal do the dangerous work……..


- Google is really missing the point. No one who invents any Internet-connected product in 2013 should ever make a point of excluding porn from their device’s content stream because…..well, the Internet is porn and porn is the Internet. Nudity-centric cites comprise a majority of the World Wide Web and saying no to porn is saying no to all the pervs with curiously high amounts of disposable income that allow them to waste lots of cash getting their online freakiness fix. That makes it both head-scratching and illogical that Google has declared porn verboten for its new Google Glass device. No sooner than the first Google Glass porn app was announced, the tech giant announced that it violated the most recent additions to its developer policies for the futuristic eyewear, which ban sexually explicit material. "Our policies make it clear that Glass does not allow Glassware content that contains nudity, graphic sex acts, or sexually explicit material. Any Glassware that violates this policy will be blocked from appearing on Glass," a Google spokesperson said. The app in question was released by MiKandi, an adult app store that has a successful Android app store for adult apps. With the app, Google Glass wearers could look at photos and watch videos filmed using Google Glass. MiKandi wanted to expand from first-person point of view videos to one-on-one interactions between adults who both have Glass. In other words, virtual sex. Maybe MiKandi’s leaders should have reviewed the new section Google added to its developer policies for Google Glass late last week, a section banning apps from delivering sexually explicit content. Porn is now treated the same way on Google Glass as gratuitous violence, hate speech and gambling. The device’s headset features a tiny screen above the right eye that can display Internet content, but it is still in beta mode and is not expected to go on sale to the general public until late this year or early 2014. That a porn app sprang up so soon is not surprising and the real stunner is that it didn’t happen sooner. Prior to Google’s announcement, more than 10,000 people have visited the landing page for the porn app, and a dozen Glass owners have signed up with the app, MiKandi CEO Jesse Adams said. MiKandi will supposedly develop a neutered version of the app that somehow doesn't include any of the forbidden content. "Although the app is still live and people are using it, at this point we must make changes to the app in order to comply with the new policies. Expect to see changes to the application tomorrow," Adams added. A truly sad day for pervs everywhere………


- Speaking of pervs…..take center stage, California state Sen. Jerry Hill (D-San Mateo).  Sen. Hill doesn’t understand that freaks, losers and degenerates need a place – real or virtual – to get their freak on and for that very reason, he is using his position as an elected official to push for the termination of a long-running and extremely lucrative tax break for women who take their clothes off for money. The tax break applies to Deja Vu Showgirls and Gold Club Centerfolds, two clubs in Hill’s district that are part of a program from the 1980s to spur economic development in troubled areas. The idea was somehow to promote economic growth by allowing coke-addled strippers with daddy issues to keep more of the $1 bills lecherous losers shove into their G-strings. Hill terms the current law a loophole allowing a $37,000 tax break for each employee. “It was intended to do a good thing, but the problem is it has been gamed,” Hill said. He added that strip clubs are not the only businesses cashing in on the loophole. “A lot of this is going to Walmart, Fed-Ex—large corporations that move not because of tax credits, but because they want to go to that area,” he continued. Thankfully, someone is fighting back on behalf of Ginger, Bambi, Cinnamon and the other lovely ladies of Deja Vu Showgirls and Gold Club Centerfolds. The Association of Club Executives—the national group that oversees nightclubs— is arguing that these two clubs are being unfairly targeted. “The enterprise zones landed on these clubs that were already there,” said ACE spokesman Matt Gray. “A business is a business. It employs people legitimately, and I think the employees are more than happy to pay their rent and put food on the table like anyone else.” Hill is attempting to close the loophole, but it sounds like he may have a fight on his hands…….


- The only moment anyone is going to remember five years from now about from last month’s Billboard Music Awards has nothing to do with the deluge of crappy pop that plagued the broadcast from start to finish. Pop singer Miguel took to the stage to sing….umm….one of his crappy mainstream pop songs and mid-performance, he exited the stage by going airborne and proceeded to clobber two fans in the head with a Hulk Hogan-esque leg drop. In the aftermath of the incident, the singer claimed he simply got caught up in the moment and for lack of a better term, that “rock made him do it.” The fact that nothing about his hacky act even remotely resembles rock and roll must have been lost on him, but apparently so were the specific instructions he received from the show’s producers not to attempt the jump that morphed into a failed WWE finishing maneuver. Reports surfaced Tuesday that Miguel was ordered not to attempt his dangerous jump over the crowd because producers believed the potential for an accident was too high. Ever the artist (sans any actual talent that an artist might have), Miguel reportedly ignored the order, but only after approaching the producers before rehearsals and asking if he could try to jump over the crowd during his performance. They either doubted his athletic prowess or recognized him as a full-fledged moron (possibly both) and shot the idea down emphatically. When the show started, his crappy music was being piped through the auditorium and his pre-recorded vocals were cranking, Miguel blew right through the stop sign producers put up and the producers' fears were realized when he botched the jump and leg-dropped two female fans, slamming one fan’s head against the stage. For some odd reason, that fan has hired a lawyer and that lawyer claims his client may have suffered a brain injury and says a lawsuit could be imminent………

No comments: