Tuesday, November 12, 2013

Why dads should do coke, the Braves move to the suburbs and Bill Cosby's return to network TV


- Pass the Jell-O pudding pops and throw on your favorite ugly sweater, all because it’s about to be Cosby time in the television world. Yes, Bill Cosby is hoping to return to prime time and he has tabbed an old friend from his “The Cosby Show” days to make it happen. Cosby confirmed that he is teaming with producer Tom Werner to develop a family comedy that "would [satisfy] the people who have come to me in public places and said, 'Can't you put something on that I can watch?'" The obvious question to ask is whether the series would simply be a spin-off or recycling of “The Cosby Show,” but Cosby insisted that it would instead feature older children and their relationships with their parents. "I want to be able to deliver a wonderful show to [a] network," Cosby said, presumably while wearing an eight-color sweater that looks like a second grader’s art project gone horribly wrong. "Because there is a viewership out there that wants to see comedy, and warmth, and love, and surprise, and cleverness, without going into the party attitude.” This new project would be in addition to the reboot of Cosby’s animated series “Fat Albert,” which the aging comedian is currently working on. The remake will be called “Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids” and it is a joint effort between Cosby and writer and producer Tom Straw. "It's got to be animated, every bit of it. Maybe except for yours truly saying, 'I told you this is going to be funny, and if you pay attention, you just might learn something,'" Cosby said. On the surface, the idea of cranking out corny, family-friendly network fare might seem like the wistful yearnings of an elderly TV icon unable to accept that the world has moved forward without him in the past two decades, but Cosby has earned a shot to show what he can do……..


- It’s a Craigslist miracle! Someone bought an item on Craigslist and a) no one performed any sexual favors for anyone else, b) no drugs were involved AND c) no one got murdered. Oh, and the person who paid $200 for a desk on the ginormous online flea market of a website picked up their purchase and found thousands of dollars hidden inside. New Haven (Conn.) Rabbi Noah Muroff and his wife bought the desk, thinking they had found a solid buy that would be a good fit for their home office. Instead, they toted the desk back to their place of residence and found that is was a smidge too big to fit in the door. "The desk did not fit into this office by fraction of an inch," Muroff said. Like anyone who has ever bought a piece of furniture in a burst of excitement only to find that it won't fit where it was supposed to go, Muroff began taking the desk apart, including the accompanying file cabinets. While taking it apart, he and his wife discovered a plastic bag filled with wads and wads of cash. "Behind the drawers there is this plastic bag, like a shopping," Muroff said. "In the bag, I could already see through the bag, it looks like a one hundred dollar bill. We open it up and it's full of cash. And we counted up and there's $98,000 cash sitting in the bag." The couple were predictably stunned and being people of faith, they made the unfortunate decision that they could not keep the money. Yes, it could have been drug money or the remains of a bank heist from years gone by and therefore come back to haunt them, but odds are it was simply forgotten money they could have used for a nice addition to their home or a vacation to the Holy Land. Sadly, the Muroffs elected to call the original owner and return the money. They learned that the owner had stuffed her inheritance in the desk and forgot where she put the money. Fortunately for her, not everyone is so clueless or forgetful………


- Cambodia v. Thailand just kicked things up a notch after a U.N. court ruled in favor of Cambodia on Monday in a long-running dispute with its neighbor over jurisdiction of land around an ancient temple. The decision puts a new slant on the deepening political standoff in Bangkok, with the historic Preah Vihear Temple at the center. The temple sits atop an escarpment that forms the border between Thailand and Cambodia and according to a map drawn up when Cambodia was a French colony, the temple is Cambodian. That has done little to mitigate the animosity between the two sides over the structure since Cambodia's independence in the 1950s, including gunfire being exchanged around the temple on several occasions in recent years. In Thailand, two broad political factions have been batting for power for years and the temple has become a source of debate within that fight. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has weighed in on the issue and clarified a 1962 decision to award jurisdiction of the temple to Cambodia. The court ruled that part of the land around it was Cambodia's and Thailand must withdraw its forces from the area. That’s bad news for Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra, who is facing street protests against a government-backed amnesty bill being debated by the upper house Senate. Opposition groups claim the bill is solely to xpunge Shinawatrra’s self-exiled brother and former premier Thaksin Shinawatra's 2008 jail term for abuse of power while he was office so he can return to the country and run for office. Oh, and Thaksin Shinawatra promoted close ties with Cambodia when he was prime minister and his enemies have accused him of not defending Thai interests in connection with the border dispute, so there’s that as well. The land in question is a 1.8-square mile tract surrounding Preah Vihear. As per the court, the northern edge of the promontory, upon which Preah Vihear sits, is Cambodian under the terms of the 1906 treaty between Thailand, then called Siam, and French Cambodia. "The 1962 judgment required Thailand to withdraw from the whole territory of the promontory ... to Thai territory," judges said in clarifying the original ruling. In other words, everyone get your gun because it’s time to start shooting at each other again to decide who’s right………


- Time to find an eight ball of coke, a credit card and a mirror, all dads and dads-to-be, because science says that using the Colombian nose candy could actually help your sons. According to a scintillating study present this week at the Society for Neuroscience's annual meeting (a notorious all-week rager disguised as a conference) in San Diego, cocaine use could actually make a man’s son more resistant to addiction. In the study, the male offspring of rats that were allowed to self-administer cocaine for two months responded very differently under the influence of the drug when compared to the children of rats who got no cocaine. With repeated doses of the Bolivian marching powder, rats sired by drug-free fathers responded with an escalating frenzy of movement, which is a sign of incipient addiction on rats. Conversely, the male offspring of fathers who went on a two-month cocaine bender did not show the same increase in motor activity, suggesting they were more resistant to the drug's rewarding effects. When researchers examined the young rats’ brains, they found that the sons of non-junkie fathers had a nucleus accumbens - a region that is key to reward-seeking and addictive behaviors – that responded much differently to cocaine exposure. . A father rat’s cocaine-using history determined whether specialized neuroreceptors in the nucleus accumbens passed on an electrical current or did not, making addiction either more or less likely. Now, this might seem like an open invitation for human fathers-to-be to find a coke-addled stripper and snort a few lines of that hooker’s stomach, but the research team actually concluded that even when self-destructive behavior doesn't actually alter genetic material, it significantly influences the cerebral function of subsequent generations. So while the male offspring of cocaine-loving fathers may be more impervious to cocaine addiction, those children would likely have reduced reward-seeking drives and therefore be more prone to depression. But hey, you know what’s good to enjoy when you’re depressed? A nice, big pile of blow……….


- Their current home may not be even two decades old, but the Atlanta Braves are blowing this popsicle stand in search of a roomier pad with nicer surroundings. They will still be known as the Atlanta Braves, but beginning in 2017, they will play their home games in a new 42,000-seat, $672 million stadium about 10 miles from downtown Atlanta. Braves executives John Schuerholz, Mike Plant and Derek Schiller announced their intention not to seek another lease at 17-year-old Turner Field and are well into talks with the Cobb Marietta Coliseum and Exhibit Hall Authority. Plant, an executive vice president of business operations, said no deal has been reached with Cobb County but that he's "100 percent certain it will happen." The Braves’ initial 20-year lease at Turner Field ends in 2016 and with the NFL’s Atlanta Falcons finalizing plans for a $1.2 billion retractable-roof football stadium near downtown, the Braves wanted a shiny new sports palace of their own. Team officials didn’t immediately say how much the proposed ballpark will cost taxpayers, but Plant noted that the move is a long time in the making. "We started looking at our future way back in 2005," Plant said. "We recognized some of the challenges the current site held for us, and we recognized some of the opportunities that we were going to pursue to enhance those." Funding for the new park will come from the Braves and the Cobb County government, with the team responsible for cost overruns. In an era when most teams are moving closer to the center of their cities, the Braves are ditching such a venue in favor of a move outside city limits. They just moved into Turner Field in 1996 after the building was remodeled following its heavy use in the 1996 Summer Olympics. While the stadium is a mere 17 years old, Plant said Turner Field needs $150 million in routine improvements and that it would cost $200 million to truly enhance the fan experience. Among the beefs the team has with the facility are its lack of parking and relative inaccessibility via public transit. Of course, the proposed site of the new stadium isn't served by the city’s MARTA rapid-transit system would be located in an über-congested spot next to the interchange for two of Atlanta's busiest interstates, I-75 and I-285. This move reeks of “Build us a new stadium that will make us a lot of money or else,” but that’s nothing new………

No comments: