- Sell, sell, sell! Anyone who got in on the ground floor
of the first-ever stock offering for a professional athlete should be dumping
their shares of Houston Texans
running back Arian Foster in a hurry. Foster, who teamed with Fantex
Brokerage Services to allow fans to invest in stock related to the performance
of his brand, won't be doing anything on the field the rest of the 2013 season
to boost that brand. Instead, Foster has decided to have season-ending surgery
for a bulging disk in his back. He missed practice all of last week while
receiving opinions from doctors and ultimately decided to have the surgery now
after aggravating the disc during the Texans' 27-24 loss to the Indianapolis
Colts last Sunday night. Combined with a hamstring injury on Oct. 20 that kept
him from finishing the Texans' road game against the Kansas City Chiefs, Foster
decided he’d had enough and would be better off going under the knife and
trying to come back healthy in 2014. One can only imagine what this news will
do to Arian Foster stock. It won't hurt Foster’s bottom line, as Fantex is
paying him $10 million for a 20 percent stake in his future income, including
contracts, endorsements and other related business revenue. The company began
taking reservations last month with approval on actual stock from the
Securities and Exchange Commission still pending. Not being on the field will
harm Foster’s value to shareholders and could also have a significant impact on
the interest level of companies who might want him as an endorser. Foster’s
absence will also adversely impact his team, as the Texans are now 2-7 and
received a mere one touchdown from their franchise running back before his
season came to a premature end……..
- Seriously….who throws an egg? A Russian opposition group,
that’s who. A very intimidating group called the National Bolshevik party clearly a) does not
value its poultry products and b) cannot come up with anything more creative
than a tired egg toss when it comes to protesting the presence of unwanted
foreign dignitaries on its soil. Eduard Limonov, leader of the banned
opposition group, said two of its activists hurled tomatoes at Dutch King
Willem-Alexander and his wife, Queen Maxima, as they arrived for a concert in
Moscow on Saturday. According to Russia’s state security agency, the eggs
missed their targets and that reinforces the reality the the only action lamer
than throwing eggs at a visiting dignitary is throwing eggs at a visiting
dignitary and missing. According to Limonov, the action was intended to attract
public attention to what he called the Netherlands' failure to properly
investigate the death of the group's member, Alexander Dolmatov, who committed
suicide in January at a Dutch deportation center. Given that no one is talking
about Dolmatov’s death, there is no way the errant egg toss can hurt the level
of interest in the case, but the National Bolshevik party really shouldn’t expect
too much after a half-assed protest effort. The royals’ visit to Moscow was
intended to celebrate the two nations' historical ties, but with this stunt and
Russia's recent seizure of a Dutch-flagged Greenpeace ship, it’s going to take
more than showing up to a fancy concert hall in expensive clothing to smooth
over tensions between the nations. For other opposition groups that might want
to stage their own publicity stunt in the near future, leave the poultry
products and home and bring Molotov cocktails for a better impact………
- Not that anyone looking to buy the PlayStation 4 is going to be swayed by
its $399.99 price tag, but just in case, Sony is sweetening the pot for folks who
buy the next-gen console when it hits store shelves next week. As part of a
limited-time offer for PS4 buyers in the U.S. and Canada, Sony is offering a
bevy of freebies with the console, including a $10 Sony Entertainment Network
wallet credit for the PlayStation Store, a 30-day free PlayStation Plus
membership trial and a 30-day free Music Unlimited service trial. Those goodies
will be included in a special promotion voucher when buyers open their new PS4
box. "Out of the box, you can immediately experience everything
PlayStation Plus for PS4 has to offer and have access to millions and millions
of songs through Music Unlimited," Sony said in a statement. "The $10
credit can be used towards anything in the store including new PS4 launch
titles, such as Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, Battlefield 4, Call of Duty:
Ghosts, and Killzone Shadow Fall." In other words, use the $10
discount we’re giving you to buy even more of our products and spend more money
than you already have. Of all the perks and benefits, the most enticing will
likely be the
30-day PlayStation Plus membership, as e the service is required for
multi-player online gaming. Of course, once the 30-day free membership ends, PlayStation
Plus will set players back $49.99 annually or $9.99 for those who want to use
it on a monthly basis. Ahead of the PS4’s impending launch, Sony also announced
that 11 entertainment apps will be available on the PS4 when it launches on
Nov. 15, including Amazon Instant Video, Netflix, and Hulu Plus. Crackle,
Crunchyroll, Epix, NBA Game Time, NHL GameCenter LIVE, Redbox Instant by
Verizon, Vudu, and YuppTV are also on the menu, although for $400 and tax, they
had better be………
- The fight was not a fair one at the weekend box office and
the result was painfully predictable for all would be challengers to “Thor:
The Dark World.” The superhero epic banked $86.1 million in its debut to
curb-stomp the field. “Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa” was the closest
competitor at $11.3 million and through two weekends, it has grossed $78.7
million in domestic earnings. The animated “Free Birds” flew up one spot to
third place, banking $11.2 million to narrowly edge out “Last Vegas” and up its
overall earnings to $30.2 million
after two weeks. “Vegas” fell to fourth with $11.1 million and its so-so
two-week haul now stands at $33.5 million. “Ender’s Game” endured a precipitous
fall from first place last weekend to fifth this frame as its earnings
plummeted 62 percent to $10.3 million, leaving its overall domestic earnings at
$44 million. “Gravity” was next on the list, slotted sixth with $8.4 million in
earnings as the former No. 1 film padded its total tally to $231.1 million and
counting. “12 Years a Slave” remained in seventh place, bringing in $6.6
million for a four-week, limited-release total of $17.4 million. It finished
just ahead of “Captain Phillips,” which fell two spots, made $5.8 million and
has amassed $90.9 million in five weeks in theaters. One of the biggest risers
of the week was “About Time,” which added 1,025 theaters and a 380-percent
earnings uptick to its repertoire, finishing with $5.1 million for a two-week
total of $6.7 million. “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2” completed the top
10 with $2.8 million and $110 million in domestic earnings after seven weeks of
release. “Carrie” (No. 11) and the bomb-tastic “The Counselor” (No. 14) both
dropped out from last weekend’s top 10……….
- Sometimes, politics are awesome – really, they are. This
is one of those times, at least in the über-small town of Glenns Ferry, Idaho. Like
so many communities across America last week, the residents of Glenns Ferry
went to the polls to vote on a few issues affecting their community. Granted,
all of the voters in the town of 1,319 (as of the last census in 2010) could
have fit into one polling place and been done voting in less than two hours,
but voting still matters and it definitely mattered to the threw individuals
running for two vacant spots on the city council. When the ballots were cast
and counted, one man emerged as a clear choice for the first seat on the
council. That man was Larry Stevenson, who easily won the first seat with 176 votes. The
race for the second spot wasn’t so clear-cut and after the votes were counted,
Robert Janousek and Joyce Ashton were deadlocked with 130 votes each. Sadly,
even in a middle-of-nowhere, time-warp type of town like Glenns Ferry, candidates
are not mandated to meet in front of the town hall at noon with their dueling
pistols to settle election ties, so the powers that be went to the town charter
and followed the proper protocol for resolving the tie. That is how Janousek
and Ashton came to stand in the main room of the town hall on either side of a
person holding an ordinary U.S. quarter. Yes, a coin toss settled the election
and because Ashton has clearly never watched an NFL game and seen the mantra of
“Tails never fails” win many kickoff decision for a team, she called heads. The
coin landed on tails, giving the council seat to Janousek. The good news for
Glenns Falls residents is that government – both small-town and national – is
typically so ineffective that it rarely matters who is actually elected or
how………
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