- Oh, Iceland. You’re so kooky and crazy. Your land of
glaciers and ice bars is a magical place few dare to visit, but those who do
rave about its beauty and natural wonders. Speaking of wonders…..right now,
many people are wondering how the hell your curious belief in elves is f’ing up
important road construction projects. Yes, elf advocates (they do exist) have joined
forces with environmentalists to urge the Icelandic Road and Coastal Commission
and local authorities to abandon a highway project building a direct route from
the Alftanes peninsula, where the president has a home, to the Reykjavik suburb
of Gardabaer. These kooks fear disturbing elf habitats and claim the area is
particularly important because it contains an elf church. In a most
amazing twist, the Supreme Court of Iceland will actually rule on this case, brought
by a group known as Friends of Lava. The group’s lawsuit cites both the
environmental and the cultural impact — including the impact on elves — of the
road project. In their quest to stop the project, the group has enlisted the
help of hundreds of human shields. It’s all in the defense of "Huldufolk,"
Icelandic for "hidden folk.” These cases spring up so often that the road
and coastal administration has come up with a stock media response for elf
inquiries, which states that "issues have been settled by delaying the
construction project at a certain point while the elves living there have
supposedly moved on." Countries such as Norway, Denmark and Sweden have
abandoned their belief in elves, but Iceland doggedly holds to them. A 2007
survey found that 62 percent of the 1,000 respondents thought it was at least
possible that elves exist. But hey, some people find insanity to be extremely
charming……..
- Let’s go ahead and score this one as a win, world. Any
movie in which the über-limited thespian that is Vin Diesel doesn’t have to
actually appear on camera and try ferociously to show the one emotion he is
capable of portraying is a positive thing. Diesel and his low-pitch, gravelly
monotone won't be physically on screen in the movie adaptation of “Guardians of the Galaxy” from Marvel, but he will be a part of the
project. Diesel will play the role of Groot, the tree-like cosmic hero who
fights to save the universe. Marvel studios confirmed the casting and it will
be extremely interesting to see where the film goes from here. Unlike its
Marvel predecessors, “Guardians” is a franchise that does not have a strong fan
following. It is wholly separate from the mega-successful “Avengers” franchise,
so any success the Guardians have will be independent of what came before them
and thus, this should be an excellent test of just how much the world has truly
fallen in love with the superhero movie concept. James Gunn will direct the
movie and you know it will be good because his last name has two n’s in it,
which makes him badass. The film has a scheduled release date of Aug. 1 and
after news of Diesel’s casting broke, Gunn took to Instagram to voice his
enthusiasm over the development. He might be considerably less excited if he
needed Diesel to play something other than an animated robot, but there are
roles suited for virtually every actor and V. Diesel just may have found his
perfect match…….
- Shazam is stepping its game up. The popular interactive
app has updated its iPhone incarnation to
tag songs, TV shows and more on its own, no longer requiring users to open the
app and tap a button whenever they want to tag something. Known as Auto Shazam
the feature is turned off by default, but users can turn it on by switching a
toggle once they've downloaded the latest update. Even when it is turned on, Auto
Shazam will remain on in the background and listen for audio that it can tag
while users go about their day doing other things. It’s a creepy way of having
a digital friend always listening and monitoring everything around you, which
could be cool….maybe. "Shazam is already known as fast and easy, but we
want to become effortless," Shazam chief product officer Daniel Danker
said. "The only thing easier than pressing a button is not having to press
one at all." When the app independently tags a song or show with Auto
Shazam, it will send users a notification with the name of the audio that it
has identified. It will be set to turn itself off if a user doesn’t interact
with it for two hours so as to avoid draining the always-low iPhone battery. The
upgrade comes with a recommendation that users fire it up at bars and coffee
shops where music constantly plays and also while watching TV. To assuage
privacy concerns, Shazam explained that the feature does not record audio and
merely creates digital fingerprints that are sent back to Shazam's servers and
matched with fingerprints that are stored there. The digital footprints cannot
be converted back into audio, so Shazam Auto is never actually recording. This
process also prevents the app from chewing up users’ monthly data allowance. This
is the first time Auto Shazam has been made available for a smartphone………
- Signed at last, signed at last….thank God Almighty,
Charles Ramsey is signed to a book deal at last. Ramsey became an instant
Internet celebrity in May, when he famously told his tale of breaking Amanda
Berry out of the home of kidnapper Ariel Castro, where she had been held
captive for years along with two other women, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight,
and her six-year-old daughter. Ramsey explained to a borderline terrified local
TV news reporter than he knew something was wrong when Berry – a white woman –
ran directly into the arms of a black man. His quirky character vaulted him to
his 15 minutes of fame and although those 15 minutes seemingly came to an end
months ago, Ramsey is still here and he’s still doing things to make the world
a better place. The Cleveland dishwasher and amateur lady saver has signed a
deal to write his memoirs and it’s about freaking time. All three women who
survived the ordeal have announced plans to publish books in the next two years
and sure, they suffered unimaginable trauma and should be able to profit from
it if they so choose, but don’t try to pretend that any of them have the “it”
factor that Ramsey has. Since Castro pleaded guilty to 937 counts and
then went über-coward by hanging himself in his cell rather than facing his punishment,
there is an opening for another person involved in the saga to tell his story. Ramsey
has already cashed in on his random fame by securing free hamburgers for life from McDonald's,
but now he has a book deal with Cleveland publishing company Gray & Company.
Thankfully, he will have a co-author and one would assume that Randy Nyerges,
who served as a staff speechwriter in the U.S. Senate, would do most of the
actual writing. The pair have been working together since early December and
according to Gray & Company, Ramsey will “describe living next door to
kidnapper Ariel Castro while unaware that the women were being held captive in
his neighbor's house,” which should be riveting………
- The Brooklyn Nets are an unmitigated disaster…that
currently sits two games out of first place in the NBA’s worst division. Their
season has been a nonstop dumpster fire of injuries to key players, on-court
hijinks by their rookie head coach and absurd proclamations of greatness by
their billionaire Russian playboy owner. At 9-17, they have won barely
one-third of their games and yet, they are two games out of first place in the
Atlantic Division. They suffered another blow over the weekend when news broke
that All-Star center was broken –
specifically, the fifth metatarsal of his surgically repaired right foot. Lopez
suffered the injury late in the fourth quarter of Friday night's 121-120
overtime loss to the Philadelphia 76ers and with one of their few good players
done for the year and their record in the tank, the obvious logic is that they
would start exploring trade options to unload salary and tank for a better
draft pick. Shockingly, general manager Billy King says it ain't so. King said
the News plan to replace Lopez internally and that any trade will be to improve
the team, which could obviously mean making it temporarily worse in order to
follow the reigning NBA blueprint for getting better by adding an elite player
through the draft. "If there's a deal out there that we feel is going to
make us a better team, we'll do it regardless of tax or the future, but we're
not going to panic and do a move just to make a move because we feel we have
to," King said. "I still believe in this group.” At this point, King
is either lying or he’s proud to be the one fool who still believes in a ship
that is 97 percent submerged beneath the waves. At this point, the Nets’ best
hope is that their application to the NBA for a disabled player exception will
be approved, allowing them to acquire one player via free agency or trade to
replace Lopez. The odds of them finding someone even close to equal for the points
(20.7), field-goal percentage (56.3) and free-throw percentage (81.7) Lopez
brought to the court? Not so much………
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