Loud music v. Edinburgh, booze at nursing homes and Brazilian corruption

- Corruption rang in the year and it’s only fitting that as 2014 comes to a close, there is another story of scum-baggery and deceit hitting the planet. This one comes from Brazil, where the says it's temporarily suspending the country's biggest builders and engineering firms from bidding on contracts while it investigates a colossal corruption scandal. The oil firm Petrobras announced the c*ck-blockage of  23 companies from bidding on projects while an internal probe and an investigation by prosecutors roll on in search of evidence of alleged kickbacks and money laundering. Among the companies accused of shady operating practices and earning a ban from bidding are top builders Odebrecht, Camargo Correa and Andrade Gutierrez. The good news, because this is capitalism and it is democracy – and therefore, the wealthy have chances to get what they want regardless of the situation and regardless of whether they’re wrong or hideously wrong - the banned companies have the right to protest and appeal. As part of the case, federal prosecutors are seeking the repayment of some $380 million from companies in connection with their investigation and that’s just the start. They have vowed to expand the probe further and those dollar amounts could rise in a hurry based on their findings and how good the affected companies are at buying off federal prosecutors. A total of 39 individuals, including many top executives, could face a range of criminal charges based on the results of the investigation……….

- Hey America….you won't give a damn about soccer for nearly four more years, but when you do, just know that your national team will have a bit more talent than when you last paid attention to it. The U.S. men’s national team that exited the 2014 World Cup in an offense-deprived loss to Belgium still isn't one of the best soccer squads in the world, but it received a boost this week when Arsenal youth star Gedion Zelalem not only snagged U.S. citizenship, but also proclaimed his intention to suit up for the U.S. U.S. Soccer Federation president Sunil Gulati confirmed the news that the 17-year-old was joining the ranks of other dual nationals who have pledged their international soccer futures to the U.S. like Julian Green, Aron Johannsson and John Brooks. Those three played for the U.S. at the World Cup and they’ll eventually be joined by Zelalem, who acquired his citizenship courtesy of the Child Citizenship Act, which allows the minor children of naturalized U.S. citizens to obtain citizenship themselves. His father, Zelalem Wolydes, recently became a U.S. citizen. Zelalem represented Germany at the youth level but can make a one-time flip-flop to become eligible to play for the U.S. national team. He traveled to Washington, D.C. earlier this week to complete the naturalization process, ending a flirtation with U.S. Soccer that included speaking to coach Jurgen Klinsmann "on the phone a few times" about his chances with the USMNT. What’s great about all of this is that Americans will happily cheer for a guy born in Germany to Ethiopian parents for a couple weeks as long as he helps them win games, then go back to ignoring soccer once the U.S. is eliminated from the World Cup………..

- Do it, Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick. Give your state’s elderly and infirmed the chance to legally get their drink on without a family member having to drive them to the nearest watering hole and take them out into the big, fast, scary world. Patrick is currently weighing a law allowing senior living facilities to serve alcohol. The bill has widespread support on account of the people who live in such facilities being very close to shuffling off this mortal coil and therefore being entitled to booze it up if they want. Critics have pointed out that there could be problems mixing people with questionable self-awareness and mental capacity with multiple medications. Oh, and there is also the matter of entrusting facilities that regularly lose track of elderly people who move at a snail’s pace and have trouble maintaining basic levels of sanitation and care with the right to serve up Michelob, Rolling Rock, Jack Daniels and Grey Goose. Sure, alcohol would provide another avenue for care facilities to gouge their patients and families of patients for cash, but is that really a headache they want to deal with? The new bill would also affect local businesses and restaurants, many of which already serve liquor to residents of nearby senior centers. Those establishments are currently the go-to place for people visiting a patient and needing a drink, unless one counts the industrious souls who smartly sneak a flask or bottle of the good stuff into the care facility so they can enjoy a drink with grandma or grandpa………

- Music can change the world. Young Fathers are hoping it can also change the city of Edinburgh’s restrictive noise laws and curfews that are choking the life out of its live music scene. The hip-hop trio have offered to hold talks with council chiefs in their home city in an effort to boost their careers/improve the region’s live music scene. Young Fathers met at Edinburgh under-18 club night Bongo’s Lick Shot and began their climb from there and claim that they want to negotiate "a better deal" for local promoters. Their proclamation follows a November meeting between local promoters and council chiefs at Edinburgh venue Usher Hall to address complaints that the council were “too draconian” over local laws and noise restrictions. “Edinburgh is a vibrant, beautiful city. It’d be great if it had a thriving live music scene,” Young Fathers member Alloysius Massaquoi said. “It’s so frustrating and I think a lot more could be done. It’s obviously not good at the moment. We’ve been trying to do events for years, and it’s pretty bad when someone from the council turns up with a noise meter, saying ‘You can’t go any higher than this.’” He’s right because there is no bigger buzzkill than a tool with a noise meter ruining everyone’s fun at the show, especially when the performer is the 2014 Barclaycard Mercury Prize winner. “The council has been aware of the problem for years, so it’s positive that they’re now taking the initiative on it,” Massaquoi added. “I don’t see why we couldn’t speak to them about the issues. It’d be good to get an explanation from them to understand how and why it is.” Council promised to get in touch with the group and issued a bullsh*t statement about being eager to Young Fathers’ views on the issues……..

College football sideline attacks, The Killers' holiday singing ways and Venezuela's murder rate on the rise

- Texas A&M student assistant Michael Richardson must have been watching his Woody Hayes “How to officially kill any life left in your football coaching career” instructional video before the AutoZone Liberty Bowl on Monday. Richardson, who suited up as a linebacker as a true freshman for Texas A&M before suffering a career-ending neck injury in a Nov. 17, 2012, win over Sam Houston State, wasn’t exactly the star staff member for head coach Kevin Sumlin during the Aggies’ 45-37 win over West Virginia. In fact, he did the most for the team in the second half, when Sumlin ordered him to remain in the locker room for shoving two West Virginia players on the sideline during the first half. Unlike the ridiculous moment when Hayes punched a Clemson player during the 1978 Gator Bowl, Richardson had to know there would be cameras that caught him striking West Virginia players who ended up out of bounds during the first half on two separate occasions. His first contact was a WWE-worthy elbow to the back of the head of WVU cornerback Daryl Worley, but this tool wasn’t nearly done. He showed his two-way versatility by attacking an offensive player later in the half, shoving running back Andrew Buie. Someone alerted Sumlin to Richardson’s hijinks at halftime and in a one-point bowl game, that’s exactly the sort of important matter a coach wants to deal with. School officials confirmed that Richardson was not allowed to return to the sideline for the second half and while the end of his playing career was sad because it involved serious neck injury beyond his control, the end of his student coaching career, not so sad……….

- What the hell, Americans who like a disgustingly large smorgasbord of high-calorie food options jammed into a large, circular setting with watch and cell phone kiosks off in the distance? The food courts of America’s malls are supposed to be a sacred place where unhealthy people with disposable cash gather between stops at Old Navy and FYE and throw away $25 on a lunch consisting of $4 slices of Sbarro pizza, $6 (and 2,000-calore) Cinnabons and $3.50 Pepsis out of waxy paper cups with cheap straws. They are not supposed to be the site of full-scale holiday riots that see malls placed on lockdown and police storming the Hot Dog on a Stick seating area with batons drawn and pepper spray at the ready. Yet that is precisely what happened not once, but twice over the weekend. First, the food court of Opry Mills Mall in Nashville went ape-sh*t when a fight involving three juveniles sparked a much bigger battle that saw mall security try its Paul Blart best to get the situation under wraps before police arrived to quell the unrest. Officers eventually had to force hundreds of people out of the mall, including one teenager who was punched but ran off before medics could check on him. The other two juveniles were taken into custody on unrelated outstanding warrants and if this had been the only food court melee of the weekend, it might have slipped under the radar. But less than 24 hours later the Chicago Ridge mall in Illinois witnessed a melee for the ages, as the entire facility was cleared amidst chaos that may have included shots being fired. Witness reported police hurrying them out of the building and cell phone video from the scene shows a teenager being detained by police. "Everyone was ducking around, running everywhere," said witness Mohammed Abed. "I tried to go into Victoria's Secret. The people who work there closed the gates so no one could get in, so we were all ducking.” Well, at least we all gained something valuable from this, namely the most original excuse yet for a dude trying to sneak into Victoria’s Secret………..

- The Killers frontman Brandon Flowers and his bandmates have donned hideous holiday attire and belted out charity Christmas singles for nearly a decade, but the story behind the tradition wasn’t known until now. According to Flowers, the habit of cranking out a Christmas ditty for a good cause began innocently enough when his inherent rock star cool led him to turn down an offer from U2 frontman Bono to do a song for a Gap commercial. "It really started from being asked to do the Red campaign," Flowers said, alluding to the AIDS charity that the tracks raise money for each year. "Bono asked if I wanted to do a Gap ad. And at the time I was feeling too cool to do a Gap ad, I guess. I'd probably do the ad now. December 1 was Aids Day, so I said, 'Instead of doing the Gap ad, why don't we give you a Christmas song?' And it's become a tradition now." The first Christmas single was “A Great Big Sled” back in 2006 and a different, quirky new one has dropped every year since then. This year’s included an hilarious performance of “Joel the Lump of Coal,” written with help from late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel. The Killers initially sought to get Kimmel to "connect [them]" with Huey Lewis after watching the Lewis-scored movie “Back to the Future.” Instead, Kimmel responded with an offer of his own. e. "Jimmy came back and said, 'How about we write a song together?' and somehow along the way, Huey lost his involvement,” Flowers added. The result was good, even if it won't help a frustrated Flowers motivate his bandmates toward his goal of being a bigger rock band. "It is frustrating. People actually talk about how they don't feel like they're adequate, and it's a big band. I don't feel like that,” Flowers said. “I feel like I can do it.” Dream big, Brandon, dream big……..

- Congrats, Venezuela. You may be ruled by the governmental bastard offspring of late despot Hugo Chavez and have little chance of ridding yourselves of Nicolas Maduro any time soon, but at least you’re making a name for your nation on the world stage. According to a non-governmental group that tracks crime in Venezuela, the South American nation’s homicide rate rose again in 2014, making the House that Hugo Built the definitive No. 2 in the world homicide rankings. The Venezuelan Violence Observatory estimates that 24,980 killings occurred this year, boosting Venezuela’s numbers to an impressive and mildly terrifying 82 per 100,000 inhabitants. The only real regret here is that Venezuela didn’t do more to end the reign of Honduras, which continues to lead the way even though everyone knows its numbers are skewed due to a weak strength of schedule and its small size compared to other nations that simply have too many people to efficiently murder in truly senseless fashion. An optimist will argue that Venezuela improved its killing proficiency from  79 killings per 100,000 people last year and has more than quadrupled that rate since a slacker-tastic 1998 that saw its citizens commit a mere 19 homicides per 100,000 people. As would be expected, Venezuelan authorities generally dispute the group's findings and claim crime is on the decline. That’s much easier to say when most crime can be confined in poorer neighborhoods, but the truth is that everyone is going to need to pitch in if Venezuela is going to overtake Honduras next year………

The Golden State Nice Guys, movie news and blind Supreme Court judges

- Why does one go to a ski resort in the French Alps? It’s not a rhetorical question. The simple truth is that a person who is wealthy enough to book a weekend at a ski resort in an exclusive locale like the French Alps does so because he or she wants to lounge by the fire sipping some sort of stiff beverage after hitting the slopes in insanely expensive cold-weather gear and zipping down the mountain while surrounded by other rich folks who are escaping the travails and stress of the world around them. Snow is a necessary ingredient in this mix, right behind piles of money and a general disdain for the common man. So why is snow causing mass chaos in said French Alps? Probably because snow on the slopes is good, but piles of snow on the roads in a country that generally doesn’t deal well with mass invasions of any kind – weather or German – is a recipe for disaster. Thus, a lot of snow and ice in the French Alps have stranded thousands of vehicles, fouling up holiday traffic to and from ski resorts in the region. According to authorities in the Savoy region, as many as 15,000 people spent Saturday night in emergency accommodation and hundreds more were stranded at an airport in Chambery with some reporting a lack of facilities. The wave of winter weather has also waylaid transportation in the United Kingdom and Germany, but France has been hit hardest. Even with improving conditions as the weekend wound down, it took until late Sunday for French forecasters to lift an orange weather alert - France's second highest - of ice and snow. . The French government earlier urged drivers to "exercise the utmost caution" and avoid travel if possible. Efforts are underway to stage emergency flights to help bring home hundreds of holidaymakers stuck at Chambery Airport, in the Savoy region, with stranded travelers taking up temporary residence at local gyms and community halls. Even the famed gardens of Versailles were closed to the public because of the weather, making it a tough weekend all around for France……..

- Five armies were enough to hold the top spot at the box office for another weekend. “The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies” won the race to the top of the money mountain with $41.4 million, upping its two-week domestic earnings to a robust $168.5 million. Newcomer and currently target of wild promotional overkill “Unbroken” used an unrelenting torrent of TV commercials to sprint to a $31.7 million opening weekend, placing second in the process. Fellow newcomer “Into the Woods” slotted third in its debut with $31 million for the weekend, a respectable start given its competition. That was more than enough to push past “Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb,” which dipped two spots in its second weekend by accrued another $20.6 million for a disappointing domestic total of $55.3 million against its bloated $127 million budget that looks worse by the day. The numbers weren't much better for “Annie,” which also fell two spots with $16.6 million and isn't yet to the break-even point with $45.8 million in earnings through two weeks in theaters. “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1” in on the other end of the continuum, with $10 million in its sixth weekend and a whopping $306.6 million and counting domestically against a $125 million budget. Finding the weekend’s biggest disappointment meant looking no further than seventh place, where Mark Wahlberg’s “The Gambler” scored just $9.3 million in an uninspired effort that makes it a little tougher to watch the “Good Vibrations” music video – but still fun. “The Imitation Game” made a massive jump in limited release, earning $7.9 million as it placed eighth and went from 34 theaters to 747 and saw its earning soar 823 percent for an overall total of $14.6 million. “Exodus: Gods and Kings” was ninth with $6.8 million and $52.5 million total, while “Wild” capped the top 10 with $5.4 million for a four-week total of $16.3 million. “Big Hero 6” (No. 11), “Top Five” (No. 12), “Penguins of Madagascar” (No. 13) and “P.K. UTV” (No. 17) all fell out of the top 10, while the controversial “The Interview” landed in 16th……….

- Justice is supposed to be blind. Justices typically aren't. Richard Bernstein is officially changing that trend as he joins the Michigan Supreme Court after working off the clock since November, preparing for 10 cases by memorizing the key points of every brief read to him by an aide. Bernstein, has been blind since birth, but won election earlier this year and quickly formulated a plan for an assistant at his family's Detroit-area law firm to read briefs to him for mid-January arguments, including a medical marijuana case and a labor dispute covering thousands of state employees. "It would be much easier if I could read and write like everyone else, but that's not how I was created," Bernstein said. "No question, it requires a lot more work, but the flip side is it requires you to operate at the highest level of preparedness. ... This is what I've done my entire life. This goes all the way back to grade school for me." One could argue that this arrangement is putting a lot of trust in the integrity of the person reading to Bernstein to not lie, distort or manipulate information in any way, but the arrangement appears to have worked well so far. Other states have had blind judges on their highest court’s bench, but not Michigan. Serving in his new post won't be as demanding physically as Bernstein’s efforts to complete the Ironman triathlon, which saw him bike 112 miles, run 26.2 miles and swim 2.4 miles with the help of guides. He’s also been a fixture in southeastern Michigan because his family's personal-injury law firm regularly advertises on TV and also because he’s freaking rich, having spent $1.8 million of his own money to campaign on the self-efficacy-based slogan of, "Blind Justice." Bernstein will be sworn in on New Year's Day and will lean heavily on his law clerks to ensure that he continues to be as informed as possible about cases coming before the court in the days and weeks………

- The Golden State Warriors need more assholes. So says forward Draymond Green, who wasn’t happy about a 100-86 loss to the Clippers on Christmas night and chided his team because they "were too nice" in defeat. "I don't know what the cause of it was, maybe everybody was a little too jolly, Christmas spirit," Green said. "But it was too nice. It was boring." Given the two teams' intense rivalry of late, that’s surprising to hear. Green has been one of the most improved players in the NBA over the past two seasons and had 10 points and 10 rebounds in 34 minutes, but it wasn’t enough to prevent Golden State's second straight loss. In actuality, their previous loss to the über-terrible Los Angeles Lakers was more embarrassing than dropping a game to the Clippers, but Green is concerned about the poor shooting night and lack of aggression his team has shown in recent action. “Although we missed shots, I don't think we went at them,” he said. Green’s expectations for how the game would go stemmed largely from the teams’ rivalry based on a history of on-court altercations and a seven-game playoff series last season that the Warriors lost. "I mean, it's no secret we don't like them, and it's no secret they don't like us," Green added. "So I don't know why the game was that nice, trying to act like we like each other and we don't. Boring game." He admitted that there are members of the Clippers he doesn’t respect, but did not name any names. In his world view, the Clippers are better at a game played in such a friendly fashion and therefore, the Warriors need to stop being nice and start getting real. It seems like that should be the tag line for a long-running reality series on MTV or something………

Colorado's stoner malaise, N.E.R.D. rises again and Kobe Bryant ages out

- Are you tired of Pharrell Williams, America? His insipid pop anthem “Happy” has finally begun to fade from our collective pop consciousness, so it only makes sense that the singer/producer would be working on his next round of unimaginative mainstream pop masquerading as kinda, sorta being hip-hop. He’s reaching back to the past, back to a forgettable era in his career before he was wearing ridiculous hats and producing every artists who falls squarely under the Top 40 heading. That means reviving N.E.R.D., which features Williams, Shay Haley and Chad Hugo. The group unveiled their first new song in four years, entitled ‘Squeeze Me,” and it should truly enhance the three members’ musical reputation given its status as as part of the soundtrack for the forthcoming SpongeBob SquarePants film, set for release on Jan. 28. N.E.R.D hasn’t released an album since 2010’s “Nothing,” which was appropriately titled because that is precisely what it contributed to the music world. The debut of “Squeeze Me” just happened, but N.E.R.D. has the hyperbole machine in high gear. Hugo compared the track to The Beatles’ classic, LSD-trippy “Yellow Submarine,” which was the title track of an animated film of the same name. “We’re trying not to think too much in a cartoon sense, but more just like a psychedelic, otherworldly type of thing,” Hugo said. “If you want to draw a parallel, maybe think of what the Beatles did with ‘Yellow Submarine.’” Hey Chad, how about you keep John, Paul, George and Ringo’s names out your mouth? Take your quasi-hits like “She Wants to Move” and keep on moving briskly in the other direction………

- Isn't China just the helpful Communist power looking to do nice things for all of its neighbors that it would like to crush, conqeur and make part of its human rights-tramping empire? Right now, the tiny nation directly in China’s path of ulterior motive-laden assistance is Nepal, for which China has issued an offer to help develop the impoverished nation’s power industry to alleviate severe electricity outages that can last up to 12 hours a day. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said his country will provide funding and human resources to train Nepalese professionals in the hydropower sector, although he neglected to specify how much time those men and women must spend being indoctrinated with Chinese Communist Party principles before they will receive their actual hydropower training. One has to imagine that it’s like that time share community in the greater Orlando area that offers free Disney World tickets, but only after you spend three hours touring their property you cannot afford and being bludgeoned with the least subtle sales pitch known to man. Nepal brought some of this on itself, as its government is trying to coax investment dollars from its larger neighbors in China and India. Wang’s promise was issued during his three-day visit to Nepal and combined with India’s offer of billions of dollars in both investments and development grants, Nepal has two good sugar daddy candidates lines up. China's state-backed Three Gorges International Corp. is negotiating with Nepal over construction of a $1.6 billion power plant over the Seti River in western Nepal that can generate 750 megawatts of electricity, so the process is already rolling on at least one front. It’s amazing how many friends you have when you just reach out and beg for billions and billions of dollars in investments………

- When the San Antonio Spurs sat future Hall of Fame forward Tim Duncan a couple seasons ago with the stat sheet designation “DNP – Old,” it was a funny slant on the reality that the Big Fundamental was gradually losing the battle to time. There really isn't anything fun or amusing about the sad process playing out as Los Angeles Lakers star Kobe Bryant fights that same battle. Bryant, who just passed Michael Jordan for third place on the NBA’s all-time scoring list, sat out his third straight game Friday night to rest his aging body and cited old age for needing another night off. Bryant has said his knees, feet, back and Achilles tendons are all sore and missed the Lakers’ games against NBA-leading Golden State and a Christmas night contest at Chicago. Sitting out such high-profile games underscores just how beaten-up Bryant is even if head coach Byron Scott said his star "feels pretty good about going" Sunday night against Phoenix. "If he had felt good he would have gone last night and tonight as well," Scott said before the Lakers faced the Mavericks on Friday. Even when Bryant does return, it’s likely that his team-high 35.5 minutes will decrease significantly. He’s still third in the league in scoring at 24.6 points per game but is shooting a career-low 37.2 percent to get those points while jacking up more than 22 shots a night. Passing Jordan for third place on the career scoring list Dec. 14 at Minnesota has been one of the few highlights for a team with the fifth-worst record in the Association to this point. Posting a bad enough record to keep their top-five-protected draft pick rather than having to ship it to Phoenix as part of a previous trade might be the next possible highlight for the team………

- What the hell is wrong with you, Colorado? Do you have no motivation and no pride? Don’t answer that because after legalizing pot in 2012, the answer to those questions is clear and it doesn’t require any effort on your part to answer them. A study by the National Survey on Drug Use and Health found that the Centennial State is now the second-biggest stoner state in America, trailing – amazingly enough – Rhode Island. The study found that 1 out of 8 Colorado residents older than 12 had used marijuana in the past month, the second-highest percentage of regular marijuana use from sea to shining sea. For the study, NSDUH researchers averaged state-specific data over two-year periods and discovered that 10.4 percent of Colorado residents 12 and older said they had used pot in the month before being surveyed in a period spanning 2011-12. One year later, that number jumped to 12.7 percent, meaning that about 530,000 people in Colorado use marijuana at least once a month. That is well above the national average of 7.4 percent and for Colorado, it’s an increase of 4 percent in one year. There was a similar ganja usage increase in Washington, the other state to recently legalize the use of marijuana for recreational purposes. Washington saw a rise of about 20 percent to 12.3 percent of people 12 and older who get baked regularly. There haven't been nearly enough studies quantifying pot use in Colorado since late 2012, when voters approved legal pot use and possession for those over 21, so this research is especially beneficial. Its findings may be a bit outdated already, as it did not analyze data from 2014, when recreational marijuana shops opened. That means it fails to adequately show the effect of commercial sales on marijuana use. In addition to perfectly healthy people who like to get high for the hell of it, the number of medical marijuana patients in Colorado also rose over the same time period. Going back and doing this same study a year from now should be intriguing, as it will provide a better picture of Colorado with recreational pot shops in play. Maybe then the state can live up to its immense potential as America’s foremost stoner utopia, second to none and able to stand above all – if it had the energy or motivation to get off the couch, brush the Cheetoh dust from its dirty T-shirt and stand for a few seconds………

Wale + Festivus, Femen's topless ladies v. the Vatican and UFC vs. monopoly status

- It was a dangerous week for baby Jesus in nativity scenes. Exhibit A comes to us from Haverhill, Massachusetts, where local police said the theft of a Jesus and replacing it with a severed pig's head may be treated as a hate crime. According to the big-city law enforcement professionals of the HPD, a Jesus statue was stolen from a Nativity scene in front of Sacred Hearts Church on South Main Street and replaced with a real pig's head. As disturbing as that thought is and as offensive as such a gesture is to those who hold Jesus in reverence, there is a degree of disturbing boldness and even respect that should be afforded to whoever was sociopathic or hateful enough to go to the trouble of obtaining said severed swine head, transporting it to the church and swapping it out for cute little baby Jesus. Police held a news conference in which they sought public for help in finding whomever is responsible for the vandalism.  "We're also asking for the assistance of any local farms, any butcher shops if they have sold any whole pigs," detective Robert Pistone said. According to Pistone, the head appeared to have been chopped off recently and was also covered in hair, which is typically not the way a severed pig’s head would emerge from the processing stages at a butcher shop. "If our investigation leads us to think this person was motivated by prejudice towards a religion, it will be treated as a hate crime," Pistone said. Following the incident, church leaders announced plans for a prayer service to be held to bless the creche that was vandalized. One might also surmise that church members won't have much of an appetite for bacon at any of their pancake breakfasts in the near future……….

- Not everyone is a big fan of the biggest mixed martial arts outfit around. As the year winds down and a new one is about to start, a group of current and former mixed martial arts fighters is suing the company that owns the Ultimate Fighting Championship in the first step of what could become a class-action antitrust lawsuit involving hundreds of fighters. After months of speculation about potential legal action, the suit was filed against Zuffa LLC, the parent company of the UFC, in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. The suit is spearheaded by three named plaintiffs: current UFC middleweight Cung Le and former UFC fighters Jon Fitch and Nathan Quarry. The trio accuses UFC of being a monopoly that forces out rival promotions and limits fighter earnings. They are represented by Phoenix-based attorney Rob Maysey, who has opposed the UFC for years and claims he has attempted for years to warn the world's largest promoter of MMA competitions about the prospect of an antitrust case. "I called [the UFC] in 2006 and said, 'You have a choice.' I said, 'You guys are going to recognize a fighters' association or you're going to face an antitrust case," Maysey said. He argued that UFC has forced out smaller promotions and thereby limited the clout and earnings potential of fighters. According to the lawsuit, UFC maintains its stranglehold on the mixed martial arts world by preventing fighters from working with other promoters, profiting from individual marketing deals and signing with outside sponsors. These practices suppress fighters' incomes, according to the lawsuit. "They [the UFC] control our likeness," said Le, the only current UFC fighter who is also listed as a plaintiff in the lawsuit. This probably isn't what Dana White was hoping to end his year with……..

- Femen has quite a brass pair…for an activist group comprised entirely of people without any. The all-female group of femi-Nazis whose primary means of expressing their discontent with the state of the world around them is taking off their tops an exposing their assets to the world shows up in places people would rather they not be, but nowhere would their chest-baring presence be less welcome than in a nation-state established solely as a place for one of the world’s most prominent religions to have its base of operations. Enter the not-shy Ukrainian activist Yana Zhdanova, who was arrested by Vatican police on Christmas Day for baring her chest and snatching the statue of Baby Jesus in the life-size Nativity scene in the center of St. Peter's Square. It’s not the sort of crime a person commits with the hope or expectation of getting away and indeed, in announcing the arrest Vatican officials noted that the incident was aimed to "intentionally offend the religious feelings" of numerous people. Maybe, but a topless European blonde jumping into the middle of a nativity scene is perhaps less offensive and more appealing to a certain segment of the world’s population – i.e. men. Vatican spokesman Rev. Father Federico Lombardi said Zhdanova was being held for questioning on possible charges of carrying out obscene acts in public, insults and theft. Those charges may or may not happen, but anyone in the square on Christmas will never, ever forget the sight of Zhdanova grabbing the Baby Jesus statue about an hour after the pope offered his Christmas blessing and a Vatican guard rushing to cover her exposed rack with his cape while she held tight to baby Jesus and shouted "God is woman." Hey Yana….God is also a fan of proper grammar, you kook……….

- The odd couple of rapper Wale and old-school Jewish comedian Jerry Seinfeld rides again. Wale famously enlisted Seinfeld to feature on one of the rapper’s albums, releasing his debut Seinfeld-themed effort, “Mixtape About Nothing,” in 2008. The title was a direct reference to the inherent joke that Seinfeld’s self-titled 1990s sitcom was a “show about nothing” and that theme even inspired a second Wale album, “More About Nothing,” in 2010. But perhaps the greatest Seinfeldian feat of Wale’s career happened this week as he honored the fake-turned-real holiday inspired by a single episode of the sitcom with an album known simply as “Festivus.” Festivus, of course, is the faux-holiday created by Jerry Stiller’s character on the show when he felt the commercialized nature of Christmas had gotten out of hand. Built around the infamous Airing of Grievances, Feats of Strength and the decoration of an aluminum pole instead of a Christmas tree, Festivus has become a pop culture phenomenon celebrated by thousands. It now has a hip-hop soundtrack thanks to Wale, who debuted his creation on SoundCloud, with guest sports from Chance The Rapper, Pusha T, Ab-Soul, A$AP Ferg and more. With producer A-Trak at the helm, Wale continues his well-known admiration for his favorite show and it’s an all-timer in so many ways. The release is likewise a proud moment for Rick Ross' Maybach Music Group, of which Wale became a member a few years ago. It’s truly a Festivus for the rest of us………..

Geno Smith dreams big, losers abound and German weirdos swim icy waters

- Christmas is for kooks too. The weirdos don’t simply stay inside and mercifully deprive the world of their company on one of the biggest holidays of the year, meaning there are scenes like the one that took place Thursday in Berlin, where Christmas is still a time to sing holiday songs, don ridiculously ugly garb and drink a whole lot of damn good beer. It is all of those things, but it’s also time for the German version of your local Polar Bear Club to find a frigid body of water and do what comes so naturally to their freaky selves. Dozens of swimmers from the Berlin Seals club flocked to the German capital's Oranke Lake for their annual Christmas dip, clad in their full Christmas outfits topped by bright red Christmas hats. This year’s swim was much milder than normal, with temperatures clocking in at an unseasonable 41 degrees Fahrenheit. That made it a bit easier to dive into the still-chilly water, but not before participants warmed up their lungs and spirits by singing Christmas carols prior to getting wet. Ask these weirdos why they do what they do and their answers are predictably nutty and positive, just as you’d expect from someone who can jump into a body of water that’s almost cold enough to freeze and come out doing anything other than cursing robustly and looking for someone to punch in the face. "The best is the feeling afterward. There is prickling all over the body -- it's like a sauna but backward,” swimmer Beate Korehnke said. Glad you enjoyed it, B………

- There is nothing that screams Christmas spirit quite like a rapper dropping a holiday album while he’s incarcerated on a federal gun charge. Allow your holiday to be jolly-fied by Gucci Mane, who is behind bars but refuses to have his yuletide spirit locked up. Instead, he has released a new Christmas mixtape, “East Atlanta Santa.” Mane shared the album online, offering up its 15 tracks to bring some swag to the season. He’s been a busy man in 2014, releasing a host of mix tapes including “Trap House 4,” “The Return of Mr. Perfect” and “The Oddfather.” Four albums in a single year, including a Christmas album, is a pretty prodigious 12 months, but Mane reportedly has a fifth project, titled “Trap House 5,” that he is expected to release soon. Multiple releases in 12 months is part of a strategy Mane laid out for his fans in an open letter he penned earlier this year. "My idea is to take my career to the next level. I am planning to take my music to a higher level and use the attention and influence to sell movies, books, clothing and be a living testimony to all people showing that you can start from humble beginnings and transcend to something greater," he wrote. "It feels great to see my plan take root and begin to blossom even though I’m physically incarcerated but spiritually and mentally I’m free as ever.” Having a famous prison pen pal who also churns out more music in one year than a lot of major artists produce in five is a nice thing to have, even if the only way to hear a Gucci Mane show these days is to commit a federal crime and hope you’re assigned to the same cell block…….

- Losers abound, world. At  least one of them lives in Hillsboro, Oregon. Her name is Jeanie Ganz and the proof of her loser-dom is plentiful and made of wood and plastic. Ganz is the (unjustifiably) proud owner of some 700 nutcrackers, a collection she began more than 20 years ago. "I'd say I have about 700. It started out with one, then two and I don't know what happened," Ganz said. Exactly. When one amasses such an inexplicable mass of pointless objects to the extent that they can safely be called part of the lunatic fringe, they don’t follow any sort of logical path that can be laid out in a reasonable fashion. "I bought one on sale. and then I went back and they reduced them, and so I bought another. And they reduced them again until I ended up with eight of them,” Ganz said. According to German folklore, nutcrackers bring protection and good luck. In Ganz’s case, they ought to bring scorn and ridicule. Her late husband built an attic just to house the collection and since his passing, it has grown to fill Ganz’s stairwell and every hallway in the house.  Some of the nutcrackers are massive, reaching well over six feet. Each comes with a story that proves her loser-dom to an even deeper degree. Some were made in Russia by a man who was later murdered, while others have happier tales behind them. Ganz claims that much like the children who are undoubtedly horrified to visit her and always ask her to come over to their houses instead, she doesn’t have a favorite nutcracker and loves them all. “If you pick one up and look at it, each one has its own personality,” she said, further proving her delusionality………

- Geno Smith is a terrible NFL quarterback. He’s ranked 31st of 32 starting quarterbacks in the league for Total Quarterback Rating, he lost his job for three games and has thrown an interception in 10 of 12 starts and has a 2-10 record under center, but all of that hasn’t convinced him that he doesn’t have what it takes to get it done as a signal caller in the league. In fact, Smith believes he can still shepherd the wayward Jets back to the land of competitive football. "I see myself being the quarterback here for a long time," Smith said. "I see myself helping this team turn things around. Obviously, I'm part of the reason why we're in this position, so I'd love to be part of the solution." Ironically, he is almost certainly part of the solution – the part that the Jets trade or release this offseason to make way for a quarterback who doesn’t suck. Admitting that you’re a big part of the reason a team is 3-12 is fine, but nothing Smith has shown on the field suggests that he has any future starting in New York – or anywhere else, for that matter. Both general manager John Idzik and head coach Rex Ryan are expected to be gone after the season ends Sunday and a new coach and GM with no allegiance to Smith aren't likely to break down game tape from the past two seasons and find some hidden gems of promise that everyone else missed. The Jets will have a top-6 pick and are very likely to select a quarterback with that pick or their second-round selection. "I know that it takes hard work and not everyone is going to see the same things, but within this locker room, within this group of guys, we all see the potential we have as a team," Smith added. "Obviously, that's not saying much with the record we have right now, but we believe we can turn things around." Those words would have more weight if Jacksonville Jaguars rookie Blake Bortles wasn’t the only quarterback with a lower QBR score than Smith, but give him points for hope and optimism, even if those qualities have zero bearing on his ability to put points on the scoreboard………..

Getting Andre Rison-ed, Massachusetts high-speed trains and Chinese smog lies

- Keep painting that rosy, more breathable picture of reality, Chinese government. Break out your best communist brush and portray the mess that is your toxic environmental situation in the most positive light possible, but know that you aren't fooling anyone other than yourselves. The latest web of lies comes from official government media outlets reporting that the country's environmental regulators have nearly doubled the number of cases they've referred to police involving suspected polluters over the first three-quarters of this year compared to all of last year. That sounds superb, except when you consider that reporting twice as many cases simply means there is a slightly smaller mountain of outstanding cases that have yet to be reported. The government also claimed that environmental agencies have also penalized about 190,000 enterprises for violating environmental laws over the past two years, which again would be swell if not for the fact that the air hanging over virtually every major Chinese city is unbreathable on its best day. So high-five yourself all you want over the fact that environment regulators transferred 1,232 cases involved suspected environmental crimes to police over the first three-quarters of this year, compared to 706 all of last year. The pressure to curb severe environmental problems across the country is real, but the notion that the problem is actually under control is not. President Xi Jinping has also pledged to stop the growth of the country's carbon emissions by 2030, which is as much of a pie-in-the-sky goal as there could be in such a dire and difficult situation. Dream big, China……..

- Tweeted words hurt. Future Islands frontman Samuel T. Herring is direct proof of this harsh reality and Herring admitted that the reaction to his performance of song “Seasons (Waiting On You)” on the Late Show With David Letterman wounded him to his very core. It was his band’s debut television performance in the aftermath of the effort, in which Herring infamous danced across the stage with his T-shirt tucked into his jeans and beat his chest repeatedly, the haters were quick to rip him for his look and his band for the performance they turned in. The song, which Herring said is about a combustible two-and-a-half year relationship that went sour, "is putting forth this idea that we need to live by our own rules to get what we want out of life.” That message failed to resonate with viewers, many of who were unrelenting in their criticism. “It doesn't matter if it's a joke as long as it's not a joke to everybody,” Herring sniveled. “And you know what? There's kind of a, 'F*ck you' in that too." His complaints might hold more merit if he hadn't also admitted that the song was written in about an hour and a half. Great songs can be written in a short amount of time if the right elements come together at the right time, but bands on the rise don’t usually have the cachet to make that happen. I was trying to get her to change so that she would love me the way I wanted to be loved. And I tried to change too, until I realized that you can't do that," Herring said of the woman who inspired the song. Sam, there is something else you can't do and that something is whine publicly about how mean fans hurt your feelings with what they said on social media………

- The Christmas week also marked the beginning of a new era in transportation for western Massachusetts. Given the history of the company at the heart of this new era, there is an excellent chance this era features carnage, fireballs and major head injuries. Step up and claim your glory, Amtrak, for it is your high-speed Vermonter trains that made their first run through the Pioneer Valley. High-speed is a relative term, as the trains travel only at speeds of up to 80 miles per hour, but a country that lags significantly behind much of the world in terms of train travel must take what it can get. The high-speed rail project brings rail service to Holyoke, Northampton, and Greenfield, as well as Springfield, which was already served by the Vermonter. The addition of the new line means the termination of the Vermonter’s current route, which runs east from Springfield to Palmer before its final stops at Amherst and Brattleboro. As one would expect for the first run of an historic route, there was plenty of blowhard politicians on hand for the first trip. Congressmen Richard Neal and James McGovern, as well as Governor Deval Patrick, all joined in the photo op fun, along with federal officials who took part in the afternoon ride through the “Knowledge Corridor” line. The ride showed off improvements to the rail line, which also include quieter train travel. Neal credited the controversial American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 for making the day possible. “This is the result of the stimulus money vote we took in a highly controversial and charged atmosphere about six years ago,” Neal said. High-speed service for the common people will begin Dec. 29, so buy those tickets now for your chance to be part of the highest-speed derailment in Amtrak history………

- Did Rolando McClain just get Andre Rison-ed? It certainly looks like it, according to the Tuscaloosa County Sheriff's Office. A suspicious fire gutted a mansion owned by the Dallas Cowboys linebacker, razing a six-bedroom, five-bath brick house that was listed for sale on real estate websites at $1.5 million. No one was home and no one was hurt, but the house is a total loss, unlike McClain’s revived NFL career. The native of Decatur, Alabama, is making an NFL comeback with the Cowboys personal struggles and legal issues led him to walk away from football at the age of 23. He’s been a key cog in a vastly improved Dallas  defense that has helped propel the Cowboys to an 11-4 record and playoff spot, but his dream season went up in flames Monday night. Lt. Andy Norris said a witness reported seeing a car speeding away from the exclusive neighborhood where the house was located, but investigators are still working to determine whether the blaze was accidental or set. His situation includes a September court filing in which McClain accused his ex-wife of failing to give him adequate visitation time with their 3½-year-old daughter. That doesn’t mean she or someone she knows had anything to do with the possible arson of the house that sat on four acres of land beside Lake Tuscaloosa, about 14 miles north of Tuscaloosa, but it would mirror the saga of Rison, the former NFL receiver whose girlfriend, the late Lisa “Left Eye” Lopez of the pop group TLC, famously burned his house to the ground due to a domestic dispute. "Any time you have a vacant house go up, particularly one of that value, you have to consider it suspicious," Norris said. "Every house in that neighborhood is probably over $1 million." McClain is in Dallas preparing for the Cowboys’ final regular-season game, but tweeted his reaction to the news. “It can't be real! To much of my 'history' in that house for it to be gone,” he wrote. It is real, R., even the loss of the three-car garage and boat house on the shore………

German pigeon theft, Dave Grohl has another new band and gun-toting Delta baggage handlers

- The pool of candidates was deep and their abilities immense, so it’s fortunate for new Wisconsin Badgers football coach Paul Chryst that he was able to elbow past the pack and get this chance. Sure, he was the mildly successful head coach for another Division I program and had a past history with Wisconsin, but beating out the luminaries against whom he was competing…that ain't easy. Take, for example, the likes of Jarrad Dann, Arturo Bonomie and Greg Miller. Hardcore college football fans might take a long look at those names and ask, “Who the hell are these guys?” It’s good that you asked. Dann is the icon who glossed himself "The Man, The Myth, The Legend," on his application for the job and the native of Chandler, Arizona also claimed that being "ridiculously good" at NCAA football for XBOX 360 qualified him to be the man best qualified to lead the Badgers into a new era. Somehow, that made him qualified to replace Gary Andersen, who surprisingly left the Badgers to become the head coach at Oregon State. Yet when Wisconsin athletic director Barry Alvarez stacked Dann up against local product Miller, a Racine, Wisconsin, resident who cited his skills in Madden '92, Bill Walsh '93, and NCAA Football '96 and '97 as the primary reason his candidacy was valid. My man, why don’t you master a video game that was released this century before you angle for a gig walking the sidelines for a Big Ten program? That $2.3 million annual salary demands better, perhaps even the services of Bonomie, who noted that his wife who "makes a mean Gatorade." Among the 46 applicants, salary requests ranged from "maybe an autograph?" to $10 million, with the $10 million demand coming from Wisconsin native Justin Dodge, who listed looking great in sideline attire, believing in #karma and superb yeller among his qualifications for the job. It’s amazing Chryst was able to fight through that minefield to earn the job………

- When traveling, many people feel like they are under the gun. Delays, missed connections and baggage issues put immense pressure on vacationers and business travelers alike, but rarely is an actual gun involved – unless there’s the occasional absent-minded idiot who forgets they left their loaded pistol in their carry-on. Toss all of that out the window – not the ones on the side of the plane that don’t actually open – with now-former Delta Air Lines baggage handler Eugene Harvey, who toiled for the airline at Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport. According to authorities, Harvey moved much more than baggage, helping to smuggle various firearms and weapons through the airport. One of his suspected accomplices managed to board a flight with 18 guns and ammunition in his carry-on bag, an affidavit states, with the help of his inside helper. Harvey is now charged with trafficking firearms and entering an airport area in violation of security requirements. The affidavit states that Harvey used his security clearance to help provide guns to a passenger named Mark Quentin Henry after Henry cleared security and that Henry allegedly brought the firearms in his carry-on luggage on at least five flights from Atlanta to New York between May 1 and December 10. In that span, the duo moved a total of 129 handguns and two assault rifles to co-conspirators in New York, with their plan unraveling when one of those co-conspirators ended up selling the firearms to an undercover New York police officer. Henry flew his final gun-toting mission on December 10, when he landed at JFK International with 18 handguns in his bag -- seven of which were loaded, the affidavit says. "During the post-arrest interview, Henry informed the investigating agents that he had flown from Atlanta to New York with the 18 firearms and associated ammunition in his carry-on bag," FBI task force agent George Taylor wrote. Quite a criminal crew, these two………..

- Seriously, Dave Grohl? The busiest man in rock and roll, he of the Foo Fighters frontman gig, Nirvana legacy, documentary films, dozens of producer credits, guest drummer for up-and-coming acts he stumbles across and too many other endeavors to name, is adding another entry on his ledger. Grohl and Slipknot's Corey Taylor are members of a new super group called Teenage Time Killer. TTK have signed to Rise Records and will release an album in 2015 and given the prodigious nature of the band’s lineup, it’s safe to imagine that their built-in fan base and name recognition will give them a chance to sell a lot of music in their first go at it as a unit. Along with Grohl and Taylor, TTK also includes ex-Queen's Of The Stone Age bassis Nick Oliveri and Lamb Of God's Randy Blythe among its large list of members and collaborators. The new band has a direct tie to Grohl’s past projects, including his documentary about Sound City Studios, as they recorded their album at Grohl's 606 Studio in California using the Sound City mixing board. Mullin noted that when they first formed, Teenage Time Killer was intended to be a smaller project, but it kept growing and growing as more people wanted in on the effort. "We had all these other folks that want to participate. It’s a very good mixture of old hardcore punk, punk and metal stuff,” Mullin said. “People are going to be pleasantly surprised. It’s pretty cool." The album itself won't be conventional, as Dead Kennedys vocalist Jello Biafra will sing comedian John Cleese's poem “Ode to Hannity” and other famous punk faces like Black Flag's Keith Morris, Max Cavalera of Soulfly, Neil Fallon, members of The Misfits, Municipal Waste, Red Fang, Goatsnake, Brujeria, My Ruin and Prong also participate in various ways. At the center of it all will be Grohl, playing with yet another band and proving that dude really likes making music and has a tough time meeting rockers with whom he doesn’t want to collaborate………

- Serious crimes occur daily in countries around the globe. This is not one of them.  Instead, police in Germany are looking for a missing pigeon and there is a $12,250 reward dangling out there for anyone who can provide information or assistance in the bird’s safe return home. According to police in Dusseldorf, the 6-year-old male homing pigeon, named AS 969, was stolen at some point on Saturday night from a locked aviary in the city's suburbs. Why anyone would break in and steal one damn pigeon is unclear, but what’s ever more stunning is that police say the light gray bird is valued by its owner at $184,000. Read that again. One freaking hundred, eighty freaking four thousand dollars. There has never been a bird in the history of the world worth that much, but in light of that number, how is the owner offering less than 6 percent of the bird’s worth as a reward? Anyone who can afford nearly a fifth of a million dollars in feathers and beak can certainly afford to be more generous with their reward money, perhaps pushing the total up near $25,000 or so. Because of the specific nature of the theft, investigators suspect the thief or thieves were "connoisseurs" as this particular bird was the most valuable in an aviary full of other homing pigeons. That kind of theft right in the middle of the holiday season is a truly douchey endeavor, not to mention a really despicable way to get a Christmas gift for someone without having to pay for it……….

Jack Bauer's questionable future, NBA buyer's remorse and Florida bear hunting lotteries

- Bleeding hearts foolish enough to treat animals as if they were human beings – it’s no longer just an American thing. The phenomenon is alive and well in Argentina too, as evidenced by the fact that an Argentine court has ruled that an orangutan that has lived 20 years at the Buenos Aires zoo is entitled to some legal rights enjoyed by humans. Yes, an ape gets the same rights as a human being even though it is not in fact a human being. How did this come to be? Did the orangutan file a lawsuit? Did her hirsute self read a few legal books, decide her rights were not being properly protected and seek legal counsel to rectify those years and years of wrong perpetrated as the zoo made mountains of money charging people to visit and see her without chipping her off a singe cent – just bunch after bunch of those damn bananas? Sort of. See, the kook of a local animal rights group filed a habeas corpus writ in favor of "Sandra,” fighting for rights that don’t actually exist for apes. They found attorneys willing to shred their remaining supply of personal dignity, er, fight the good fight, and those lawyers said following the ruling that the 29-year-old orangutan is expected to be transferred to a sanctuary soon to enjoy more freedom. The court’s decision came to light when it was published by the official judicial news agency and it reads in part that “a Great Ape has rights, including freedom and avoiding suffering from being in captivity." The court also decreed that the beast should enjoy a more adequate habitat, a decision that left attorney Andres Gil Dominguez fist-pumping and calling the ruling unprecedented. That’s probably because it’s asinine and wrong……….

- There will be no rephrasing, repackaging or blatant thievery of a classic Jack Bauer quote here. Why? Because we are not running out of time, there is no need to jam a gun in anyone’s face and there will be no torture using waterboarding or souped-up car batteries and electrical nodes to achieve the necessary aims here. Sure, “24” star and executive producer Kiefer Sutherland is on the record as saying that he is not interested in bringing Bauer back to life for another run, but read between the lines and there is more to the message. Of course, the eight-season run of the iconic espionage/terrorism drama left fans hanging and Fox obliged by bringing it back for a 12-episode run earlier this year. “24: Live Another Day” brought Bauer to London to stop a terrorist who had an override device she planned to use to hijack American drones and use them to carry about attacks on civilian targets, with Bauer emerging from the rock under which he’d been living to foil the plot despite being disavowed by his own government and sold out by the president’s chief of staff. The 12-episode arc came to an end with Bauer surrendering himself into Russian custody to bring peace to a tense situation, leaving a cliffhanger than begs to be answered. Still, Sutherland is claiming he doesn’t want to go back. “Me, I don't see going back to it," Sutherland said. "We had set out to do 12 episodes [of Live Another Day] to end the show and deal with some of the past history of the show. It was also an irresistible opportunity to go shoot in England. So for all of those reasons it made sense to do that last season." That sounds an awful lot like an A-lister angling for more money, one who will come back for the right price. Make it happen, Fox……….

- Stephanie Powers is a hero. The Seminole County woman wants what all good citizens of the world should want, nothing more. She sees a real and pressing danger to the world around her and she wants a solution that will put she, her family and friends at ease. In other words, she wants Florida wildlife officials to permit seasonal bear hunting, claiming the animals are wreaking havoc on her property, killing her fish and chicken and even going after her exotic birds. She woke up one recent morning and discovered that she had six fewer koi fish than she’d had the night before, a development punctuated by the afact that one of her neighbors snapped a picture of a black bear in the area the same night. As Powers tells it, the bear is both eating her fish and destroying several section of her fence. "I found several dead chickens during the day," Powers said. "I'm going to have an encounter, and I'm going to be too scared to shoot the gun (and) then I'll turn around, and then that'll be the end of me." This woman’s courageous stand is made all the more inspiring by the fact that a) she is scared of bears and b) there have been at least two women mauled by bears in her area since April. Because of this, she totes a gun and has repeatedly contacted the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission to launch her campaign to declare open season on bears. Instead, she has gotten a worthless supply of advice and pamphlets. No bears have been trapped or relocated, Powers said, but she’s not giving up. She’s advocating the same approach as wildlife officials use with alligators: a lottery for hunting permits. "I mean, they should have open season like the alligators," Powers said. "That's how we're keeping the alligators in control now. So, they only give out so many licenses, like a lottery." Brilliant idea, S. Done and done………..

- Buyer’s remorse is nothing new in professional sports, where eight-figure contracts are doled out daily and teams quickly realize that the player they’ve committed $50 million to is going to give them the same production they could get for a journeyman veteran making the league minimum. Even in this world, it’s über-rare that a franchise does a complete 180 as quickly as the Detroit Pistons did in the past few days as they decided to sever ties with veteran forward Josh Smith, who still had two years and at least $26 million remaining on his contract after this season. Smith, who averaged 13.1 points, 7.2 rebounds and 4.7 assists per game for Detroit this season, inked a four-year, $54 million deal before last season. He’s been an ill-fitting piece in a dysfunctional puzzle, a puzzle currently sporting a 5-23 record. After shooting just 42 percent from the field in 2013-14, Smith has continued to jack long jump shots he can't make and routinely inspire opposing teams to say after games that they literally wanted him to keep shooting so he could shoot the Pistons right out of the game. "Our team has not performed the way we had expected throughout the first third of the season and adjustments need to be made in terms of our focus and direction," coach and team president Stan Van Gundy said in a statement. "We are shifting priorities to aggressively develop our younger players while also expanding the roles of other players in the current rotation to improve performance and build for our future.” In other words, we suck, we’re going to suck and we might as well give playing time to young guys who will facilitate our sucking for a better draft pick rather than devoting extended minutes to a 6-foot-9 jumping jack of a forward who thinks he’s a silky shooting guard with a deft outside touch. “We have full respect for Josh as a player and a person,” Van Gundy added. Uh huh, sure. Smith now goes on waivers and assuming no one jumps on him, he will have the right to go elsewhere as a free agent. The line forms here, title contenders………..

Nicaraguan rage, movie news and Colorado stoners under attack

- The torch has been passed. The New York Yankees took the unheard-of step a couple years back of stopping their longstanding habit of throwing insane amounts of money at everything that moved and could swing a bat in the hopes of buying a championship, but it wasn’t until now that their heir apparent emerged. Yes, the Los Angeles Dodgers have ended the Yankees' 15-year streak as Major League Baseball's biggest spenders and the $26.6 in luxury tax money they owe is the proof. The Dodgers earned that distinction by finishing with a record payroll of $257,283,410, according to final calculations made by Major League Baseball. That figure puts them more than $20 million above the previous high, set by the Yankees last year. The Yankees have paid the most luxury tax money every year since the current system began in 2003 and for teams like the Bronx Bombers and Dodgers, the tax is failing miserably to slow spending by high-revenue teams. Both have blown right by the $189 million threshold and the $26.6 million L.A. owes is based on a $277.7 million payroll for purposes of the tax includes average annual salary and benefits for players on the 40-man roster. Those numbers might be palatable if the Dodgers hadn't flamed out of this year's playoffs in the division round and failed to get anywhere close to the franchise’s first World Series title since 1988, but they’re a massive disappointment and will see their tax rate increase to 40 percent if they go over in 2015, which is likely. Meanwhile, the Yankees sliced their payroll and owe a scant $18.3 million in tax, which they must chip off to the commissioner’s officer by Jan. 21. That money will then be used to fund player benefits and MLB's Industry Growth Fund. Ironically, the cheapskates across town – the Mets – had a meager payroll of $92.9 million, proving that the line of demarcation between the haves and have-not’s in New York extends into baseball as well……..

- Duuuude, the squares in Oklahoma and Nebraska need to chill and take a hit off the dutchie. The two states’ western neighbor is about to celebrate the one-year anniversary of legal marijuana and rather than enjoy the lifestyle and modest financial benefits brought to Colorado by allowing the recreational use of chron, Oklahoma and Nebraska are instead getting litigious with it and whining about what they claim are negative ramifications from the change. Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt announced that his state was teaming up with Nebraska to petition the Supreme Court to declare legal marijuana in Colorado "unconstitutional,” which seems ridiculous on the surface because how the hell can one state ask that a law pertaining only to another state be declared unconstitutional? According to Pruitt and his whiny loser friends, Oklahoma and states surrounding Colorado are being impacted by Colorado’s decision to legalize and promote the commercialization of marijuana. Chief among their keef complaints is that pot from Colorado is filtering across their borders and because ganja for recreational use is still illegal at the federal level, that’s a reason to start filing lawsuits and other motions. Colorado Attorney General John Suthers rightly denounced the initiative as  "without merit" and promised his state would fight the suit in the Supreme Court. Colorado will have the support of the Marijuana Policy Project, which helped fuel Colorado's legalization effort in 2012. Most legal experts give the joint challenge (pun intended) of Nebraska and Oklahoma little chance in court, but it does have a great chance to bolster the existing stereotypes of both states as behind-the-times, uptight simpletons who need to move into the modern era………

- Massive CGI effects, angry dwarves and the battle for control of a gold-filled mountain were too tough to beat at the box office this weekend. “The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies” snagged $56.2 million in its opening weekend and has amassed a total of $90.6 million domestically so far. That was more than enough to triple the earnings of fellow newcomer “Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb,” which ranked second with $17.3 million. The third new movie at the top of the earnings list was “Annie,” owner of $16.3 million for its first weekend and third place as a result. That left last weekend’s top film, “Exodus: Gods and Kings,” in fourth place with a massive (and ironic, given the film’s biblical basis) 66.6-percent drop in earnings and $8 million for its second weekend of domestic release. At $38.9 million thus far against a $140 million budget, it’s well on its way to qualifying as a massive flop. Fifth place went to “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1,” which also slid three spots and banked $7.7 million for a five-week haul of $289.2 million. “Wild” rose four spots to sixth place after adding 945 theaters to its repertoire, taking in $4.2 million as it remained in limited release after three weeks in theaters. Chris Rock’s “Top Five” secured seventh place with $3.6 million in limited release and has been less than overwhelming in two weeks in theaters with just $12.4 million and counting. That was just enough to outdo “Big Hero 6” in all of its animated glory, as the family flick earned $3.5 million and has stacked $190.4 million in earnings through seven weeks of work. It was a six-spot fall for “Penguins of Madagascar,” all the way down to ninth place with its $3.3 million in earnings and $64.1 million domestically in the four weeks since it hit theaters. The fourth new film of the top 10 was the relatively anonymous “P.K. UTV,” which rode its wave of mystery to the last spot in the top 10 and $3.4 million in weekend money. That left four members of last weekend’s top 10, “Interstellar” (No. 11), “Horrible Bosses 2” (No. 12), “The Theory of Everything” (No. 13) and “Dumb and Dumber To” (No. 17) on the outside looking in this time around………

- Get angry as hell, Nicaragua. Your government is looking to jam a massive canal expected to rival that of Panama down your throats and you don’t have to take it. The plan is for a $50 billion transoceanic waterway set to break ground on Monday and that’s only part of the problem for the average man. A bigger concern is the fact that such projects don’t happen without lots of land and to get that land, the government is getting its inner eminent domain on. That means hijacking private property on the banks of Nicaragua's Rio Grande even though Nicaraguan officials will start building access roads on state-owned land as the first step the process. Supporters of the canal say it will directly employ 50,000 people and dramatically boost the country's GDP, but soon-to-be-displaced farmers are vowing to fight like hell to protect their land. The government is resolute in its intention to forge ahead, dollar signs dancing in their eyes with the prospect of a massive waterway over what is now the town of Rio Grande, a community of 2,000 people with only a dirt road and a landscape filled by corn, bananas and beans. President Daniel Ortega is behind the plan and many believe it is a pipe dream in which the president has given up too many concessions to HKND, the Hong Kong-based company set to develop and operate it. Land owners are fearful of having their land ripped without fair compensation, while environmental groups have complained that the government is ignoring important issues and regulations to make the canal happen. The rage has grown steadily, with villagers in Obrajuelo, a sleepy fishing town on the banks of Lake Nicaragua, hurling rocks at an SUV carrying a Chinese team that showed up to survey the land earlier this month. A tire fire the next day continued the festivities and showed the sort of anti-government rage rarely seen in a place where Ortega's Sandinista party dominates all branches of government. The canal would span some 173 miles between the Caribbean and the Pacific and represents the fulfillment of a dream that has been dreamt in various forms since the early 1800s,  but it’s clear not everyone is on board………

Strippers' holiday spirit, Riot Watch! Spain and the Clippers get technical with it

- Riot Watch! Riot Watch! It was all but guaranteed when Spain’s legislature moronically and offensively passed a new law that sets hefty fines for offenses such as burning the national flag and demonstrating outside parliament buildings or strategic installations and so it happened Saturday that thousands of livid Spaniards protested in Spanish cities to attack the new Public Security Law. The law was approved last week by parliament and even before its passage, it was ripped by opposition parties and human rights groups as an attempt by the conservative government to muzzle protests over its handling of Spain's financial crisis. Those groups are right, of course, and that is precisely the reason for massive uprisings in cities such as Barcelona, Bilbao and Madrid, with smaller gatherings in secondary cities like Almeria, Granada and Valencia. Protestors donned tape covering their mouths and carried placards calling the measures a "gagging law,” which only seems like something that would happen in a Third World country run by a despot living in luxury with gold bathroom fixtures while his people suffer in abject poverty. But those are the breaks when you pass a new law allowing for fines of up to 30,000 euros ($37,000) for disseminating photographs of police officers that are deemed to endanger them or their operations. Those bold enough to rise up and speak out in demonstrations outside parliament buildings or key installations could be fined up to 600,000 euros ($745,000), if they are considered to breach the peace. Even insulting a police officer is deemed worthy of a fine of up to 600 euros ($745). Tied with the photography fine for biggest possible penalty is burning a national flag (30,000 euros). These protests were particularly fun because they were juxtaposed against Christmas shoppers passing by. Sadly, all of the demonstrations ended relatively peacefully………

- The Los Angeles Clippers are both a talented team and one guaranteed to deliver plenty of headlines. Those headlines, however, aren’t always the ones for which Los Angeles’ new favorite NBA team would like to be known. Take, for example, Friday night’s game in Denver. Not only did the Clippers lose to an inferior team on the road, but they did so by three points while giving away a sh*t load of charity tosses courtesy of the seven technical fouls for which they were called. The technicals weren't the result of any fights or ejection-worthy offenses, but they came nonetheless and after dropping a game they could ill afford to lose in the ultra-competitive Western Conference, they let the world know their displeasure. “It’s crazy,” said All-Star point guard Chris Paul, who was tagged with a technical foul in the second quarter for complaining. “I’ve never seen anything like it. Never. As someone who has been in this league for awhile, you’re supposed to be able to react, then calm down.” Teammate DeAndre Jordan claimed he only told an official that he was struck in the head and that was enough to earn him his technical foul. Head coach Doc Rivers received one of his own for arguing Jordan’s tech, but he didn’t bother arguing after Clippers reserve Hedo Turkoglu picked up a third technical from the bench for mildly lamenting a foul call. Three of the techs came in a single fourth-quarter sequence after Denver forward Kenneth Faried flagrantly fouled Jordan by hitting him in the head under the basket. Of course, once a team gets a reputation for being a group of troublemaking complainers, stopping the flow of technicals is even tougher, so lots of luck to the Clippers on this one………

- Score one for the skanks this holiday season. In Federal Heights, Colorado, the glorified hookers of the local strip club have the Christmas spirit in their hearts – located directly beneath the sequined bikini tops they’re about to remove – and that spirit earned them first place for the best holiday lighting display by a business. “It shows the pride we take in the community,” club owner Scott Reisch said. The city awarded Platinum 84 a $100 prize for placing first in the contest, although in an inexplicable oversight, the prize money was not stuffed into the G-strings of the strippers in $1 increments. The club actually made a smart public relations ploy by donating its winnings to a local food bank supported by the city and chipped off another $500 to bolster its donation. Accepting money from a strip club and doing so without rubber glovers and a gallon jug of hand sanitizer can be dicey, but Mayor Joyce Thomas chose to focus on the effort and decorating pinache displayed by the coke-addled stripping skanks rather than the other aspects of the situation. “Look at ‘em. They’re nice lights. They’ve been good neighbors. I’m sure the lighting brightens up the area. It really looks nice,” Thomas said. Oh, and because Federal Way isn't exactly Manhattan and doesn’t boast a thriving, big-city business community with tons of enthusiastic participants for its lighting contest, there were but three entries in the lighting category for businesses. Platinum 84 took part for the first time and while the mayor knows some might raise an eyebrow at the idea of Federal Heights awarding top holiday lighting honors to a strip club, she doesn’t give a damn. “I don’t have a problem with it,” Thomas stated succinctly………

- Well this shouldn’t be remotely inflammatory or offensive, which is kind of the point. An upcoming episode of Adult Swim cartoon “Black Dynamite” seems solely by its name to be incendiary in some sense, but adding the likes of Tyler, The Creator and Erykah Badu for appearances in an hour-long special focused on the subject of police brutality is both designed and guaranteed to ruffle many feathers. The episode is titled “The Wizard of Watts,” a direct reference to an always-dangerous section of Los Angeles. Its content will center on police brutality in the wake of civil unrest in the United States and one of the co-writers for the show explained the motivation behind it. "As a comedy writer, I feel it’s my job to make people laugh while using constructive social criticism to evoke thought and inspire dialogue," director and co-writer Carl Jones. It’s a lofty aim for an adult cartoon, as the world of adult cartoons is typically not the foremost forum for furthering important social debates for the masses. Along with Odd Future frontman Tyler, The Creator and Badum the episode will also include appearances from  'Curb Your Enthusiasm' actor J.B. Smoove and Tim Blake Nelson. Given the overly sensitive way in which Americans are reacting to anything even remotely Ferguson-scented these days, expect a swift and vitriolic reaction to this one and plenty of offensive remarks to be offered up by both fans and haters in the aftermath………