- So….being a disheveled, homeless dude napping it out in the
comfort of a $2,500 presidential suite at the most upscale hotel in the city is
wrong? At Pittsburgh's prestigious Omni William Penn Hotel, such activity is
indeed verboten, as evidenced by the tale of one Jeffery Watson. Watson took a
restful siesta in a suite that has hosted movie stars, titans of industry, and
every U.S. president from Theodore Roosevelt to Barack Obama. Guests discovered
the 48-year-old homeless man last week inside the grand suite, sleeping on its
(probably 500-thread-count) sheets amongst the crystal chandeliers and a grand
piano. As rich people who don’t often have to deal with such riffraff would be
expected to do when presented with such a situation, the rightful inhabitants
of the suite called hotel security, who in turn called the police. Officers
escorted Watson to the Allegheny County Jail, where the decor is described in
the jail's website as "simple, sturdy and secure." For his short
stint in the presidential suite, Watson was jailed on $15,000 bond and charged
with theft of services and criminal trespassing. In a matter of hours, his accommodations
went from a plush penthouse suite to a narrow bunk with a thin nonflammable
mattress, a sink, toilet and a single slit window. Police spokeswoman Diane
Richard confirmed the arrest, adding that hotel security woke Watson from his
slumber on a couch and escorted him downstairs into police custody. Watson
informed police that he is from Los Angeles, but had been in Pittsburgh a few
months, sleeping wherever "he could rest his head,” as he tried to find
his way back home. It was unclear how long he had stayed in the suite, but Eric
DeStefano, the hotel's general manager, said officials believe that Watson
gained access to a parlor area used for receptions after a door was programmed
to stay unlocked for an event. In a wholly unnecessary gesture, Watson has also
been banned from the Penn…….
- In intra-marriage arguments, the husband admitting he’s
wrong whether he is or not is generally the most effective method of resolving
a dispute. According to a new joint study by researchers from the University of
California-Berkeley and Northwestern University, there is a more important
aspect of an argument when it comes to long-term
marital satisfaction. The researchers found that extended peace and happiness
in a relationship depends on wives, not husbands, regulating their own
emotions. Psychologist Robert Levenson of UC-Berkeley and his team found
that while husbands should not tell their wives to calm down or shut up during
a fight, the happiest marriages were those which wives were able to regain
their composure quickly during a dispute, both in the short- and long-term
sense. For their work, the researchers assessed recorded interactions of over
80 heterosexual couples middle-aged or older, focusing on disagreements and how
the couples recovered from them. The couples in the story were from a group of
156 such pairs Levenson has been following in the San Francisco Bay Area since
1989. "When wives discuss problems
and suggest solutions, it helps couples deal with conflicts," Levenson
said. "Ironically, this may not work so well for husbands, who wives often
criticize for leaping into problem-solving mode too quickly." In their
final thoughts, the research team noted that the ability of the wives to
control emotions and the link to marital satisfaction was strongest when women
used "constructive communication" to calm arguments……..
- No one would ever attempt to argue that Tom Cruise is
sane. However, Cruise and his attorneys are taking issue with the suggestion
that he is an absentee father who does little more than write checks and keep
his children in Prada and Dolce. The diminutive actor is suing In Touch magazine over a
cover story that claimed he "abandoned" Suri, his daughter with
ex-wife Katie Holmes, after Holmes filed for divorce in June 2012. Cruise is
seeking $50 million he does not need despite admitting in a deposition that he
did not see Suri for more than 100 days and that he only saw her 10 days
between June 2012 and Thanksgiving 2012. How can he make such a statement and yet still sue? It’s
simple: Being an actor is a brutal, unforgiving and inherently dangerous job
that is as hazardous as the life of a soldier fighting in a war in Afghanistan
and as rigorous as an Olympic sprinter training for the next Summer Games.
Cruise dropped that pearl of (wholly untrue) wisdom in a September deposition,
likening shooting
on location to serving a tour in Afghanistan. "That's what it feels like.
And certainly on this last movie, it was brutal. It was brutal,” he said,
presumably while doing a full-speed sprint toward the camera with a pained
expression on his face, as is his forte in every damn one of his films. "There
is difficult physical stamina and preparation. Sometimes I've spent months, a
year, and sometimes two years preparing for a single film. A sprinter for the
Olympics, they only have to run two races a day. When I'm shooting, I could
potentially have to run 30, 40 races a day, day after day." How good is
Cruise, breaking down the training and competition regimen of an Olympian when
he has no freaking idea what that life is like? But hey, if it will help him
win that $50 million libel lawsuit
against Bauer Publishing, then who the hell cares how offensive those comments
are to actual soldiers or real Olympians? "While I'm sure my daughter
misses me when I am not with her (as I miss her), she is a very happy child,
and we have a wonderful relationship and cheerful phone calls,” Cruise
concluded………
- Germans LOVE beer. Not just their beer, but beer in
general. How much? Enough for a top German health official to proudly inform the
world that a "bottle of warm beer" can sometimes be more effective
than psychotherapy. Josef Hecken, chairman of the body that decides which
treatments are offered by the country's statutory health system, recently made
the bold statement that he believes a nice, warm bottle of booze can heal
mild "occasional problems" such as sleep disorders. Hecken broke new
medical ground by saying that "a psychotherapist is not needed next to
every citizen" and that sometimes a beer "is enough." Suggesting
that a troubled person grab a six-pack and start chugging could be viewed as
irresponsible for someone in Hecken’s position, but he may have skated on the
remarks had they not been recorded in official notes taken during the meeting with
German health insurers. Predictably, there were a few whiny losers who were
offended by these courageous comments, namely Dieter Best, chairman of the
German Association of Psychotherapists. Herr Best decried Hecken's comments as
"unspeakable” and added that they had triggered a "protest
letter" being circulated among psychotherapists. "You trivialize and
ignore the needs of our patients with your bottle of beer metaphor, and subtly
stigmatize people with severe psychiatric disorders,” the letter read. Hecken
should have stood his ground against these ignoramuses, but instead he issued a
statement in which he called his remarks "unfortunate." "I ...
know and am aware, that there are significant interdependencies between alcohol
consumption and psychological diseases, which are documented in studies," Hecken
said in the statement. "That is why the last thing I want to do is to
trivialize psychological diseases or to even describe alcohol consumption as an
appropriate alternative for psychotherapeutic treatment." He wrapped up
with a favorite cliché of anyone who says something offensive and then is taken
aback by the resulting blowback, suggesting that his remarks were "capable
of being misunderstood." No need to apologize, Joe, but you will need to
apologize if you don’t pour a tall, frosty mug of that delicious pilsner…….
- No one is ever going to confuse the culture of an NBA
locker room with the frat-boy ways of its NFL counterpart, but the Association
isn’t taking any chances. In the wake of the Miami Dolphins' ongoing bullying scandal involving AWOL
lineman Jonathan Martin and a handful of his fellow linemen, the NBA sent out a
memo to all 30 of its teams late last week to remind them that no form of
bullying or hazing will be tolerated. League sources confirmed the sending of
the memo, which reportedly mentions the situation in Miami and directs NBA
players to report anything if they feel the need while also laying out specific
violations of the league's policies. The long list of violations, which no
player is likely to read in full, includes: any physical abuse or threats of
violence; verbal abuse focused based on an individual's race, nationality,
color, sexuality, gender, religion, etc.; destruction, defacement or theft of a
fellow player's personal property; engaging in any activity that intimidates or
threatens fellow players with ostracism or inflicts extreme mental stress,
embarrassment, humiliation or shame; and forcing an individual to perform any
task that violates federal, state or local law or NBA rules and regulations.
The memo also tackled the NFL-centric topic of forcing a player (usually a
rookie) to unreasonably pay for meals, travel, entertainment expenses, goods or
services that are being solely enjoyed by others as well as imposing physical
activities on a fellow player – i.e. binge drinking, locking them in a confined
space or taping them to a chair - that leads to unreasonable risk for the
individual or adversely affects their mental or physical health or safety. As
NBA “hazing” usually consists of forcing rookies to wear children’s backpacks
to games and practices, a reminder about hazing is more perfunctory than
anything else. It’s also a way for the NBA to cover its ass in the event
anything happens and put on a positive PR face so it can assure fans and media
that nothing untoward is going on behind its scenes……..
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