- Can the “Resurrection” last? Probably not, but the new ABC
drama debuted to impressive ratings Sunday night as the network brought back
its regular Sunday night programming for the first time post-Olympics. The
show, starring Omar Epps, Frances
Farmer, Kurtwood Smith, Devin Kelley and Landon Gimenez, drew in 13.3 million
viewers, the largest premiere audience for a midseason show in two years. Based
on the book “The Returned,” the show is centered on the story of people who
seem to have returned from the dead. Rather than dwell entirely on the how of
returning from the great beyond, the plot hinges largely on the response of
family and the community to the sudden reappearance of people who died three
decades earlier. Some have confused it with the French TV series “The
Returned,” which aired in the United States on Sundance, but the two shows are
not connected. Many new shows generate strong numbers in their debut based largely
on the curiosity factor, only to nose-dive in their second week and beyond to
the point that networks pull the plug after less than half of a season airs.
Week two is typically an excellent barometer for how much of a hold a show has
gained in its new fans, so next Sunday will be telling time for “Resurrection.”
It airs at 9 p.m., just ahead of the show whose time slot it took over,
“Revenge.” Of particular note for ABC is its new show’s high marks among the
coveted demographic of 18- to 49-year-olds. If those numbers come even remotely
close to holding up, the network could have the Sunday night hit it has
desperately been seeking since “Desperate Housewives” ended its run in 2012………
- Vermont is not the sort of place known for angry
uprisings. Let’s change that, shall we? Take a journey to Montpelier, Vt.,
where hundreds of angry citizens have taken to the streets to demand that old
reliable asset that all working men and women strive for: dignity in the work
place. For this particular band of complainers, that means mandatory sick days
for all workers, even part-time and temporary employees. Monday’s demonstration
was timed to coincide with International Women's Day because organizers say women make
up the majority of those who don't have access to paid time off. Event leader Heather
Getty inspired the masses by sharing her story of working multiple part-time
jobs without benefits in order to survive. “I've often had to go to work sick
because I couldn't afford to take the time off,” said Heather Getty, a therapeutic
case manager. “I believe both things should happen they are not mutually
exclusive. And it’s important that families are able to care for themselves,
care for their families, and pay their bills.” The march was small, numbering
around 150 people, and was more pathetic and weak than anything else. The
concept behind the event is not dissimilar to recent protests by fast food
workers demanding higher wages. Event organizers at the Vermont Workers Center
claim more than 60,000 workers in Vermont have no paid sick days and more than
90,000 earn less than a livable wage. They are asking state legislators to pass
House Bill 208, which would mandate that all employees earn a minimum number of
paid hours annually so they can take paid time off from work when they want to
flake out and take a Vegas run with their boys, er, they are really, really
sick. Right now the bill is in a House committee awaiting discussion……..
- There is a reason Bangkok was the setting for the comedic
absurdity of “The Hangover 2.” This is a key part of that reason. The ongoing
tragedy involving Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, including two passengers apparently on the flight
using fake passports, has highlighted the long-running problems with the
booming black market for fake identity documents in Thailand’s capital city. It
appears the two rogue passengers on the flight acquired such phony passports
and Thai Ministry of Foreign Affairs data shows that more than 60,000 passports
-- both Thai and foreign -- are reported missing or stolen each year. Buyers
get the illicit documents sold through syndicates to drug traffickers, while
other stolen passports are believed to have ended up in the hands of Islamist
militants. For police commander and Thailand's Interpol director Apichart
Suriboonya and his men, fake passports and identity fraud in general are
massive concerns. There are occasions when documents are sold by their owners
to cover travel costs, passed on to middlemen, Thai or foreign, and passed on
to criminal networks. Along the way, they are often altered with a new
photograph, but many times they are given to someone who vaguely resembles the
original owner in the hopes that lazy customs officials won't notice the
difference. The passenger manifest issued by Malaysia Airlines for the missing
flight included the names of two Europeans -- Austrian Christian Kozel and
Italian Luigi Maraldi -- who were not on the plane. Both men had their passports
stolen on the Thai holiday island of Phuket, although no evidence has been
found linking them to the plane’s disappearance. Whoever received their stolen
passports used the documents to buy tickets from travel agents in the resort
town of Pattaya, to Beijing and on to Europe. Police questioned those
individuals on Monday, but have not announced the results of those sessions. Here’s
hoping this does not end up as the plot of “The Hangover 4” in a couple years………
- America loves its bacon. How much? Enough to propel new,
bacon-themed gear from a minor league baseball team to startling heights. The Lehigh Valley IronPigs, the Triple-A
affiliate of the Philadelphia Phillies, smartly selected the salty meat product
as the unifying element in their new uniforms that they will wear beginning
this season and to say the pork-centric scheme has been a success would be a
vast understatement. The IronPigs don’t play their first game until next month,
but the hats, shirts and jerseys with their new bacon logo are already flying
off the shelves. The franchise has been a merchandise stalwart during its six
years of existence, ranking among the 10 best-selling minor league teams, but
numbers have risen even higher this year. On Feb. 24, the team announced its
players would wear uniforms for Saturday games featuring a strip of sizzling
bacon on the hats, jerseys and pants. Aside from possibly offending its
undetermined number of Jewish and Muslim fans, the team was confident the new
uniforms would be a hit and so far, they’ve been right to the tune of 3,300 bacon hats and 1,500 bacon-strip
scratch-and-sniff T-shirts that promise to smell through at least 10 trips in
the washing machine. "People clearly love bacon and baseball, and we just
hit a nerve by putting it together on our official gear," said Kurt
Landes, the team's president and general manager. "We had orders from all
50 states in the first 36 hours." Landes believes the hat sales are strong
enough that even if the team didn’t sell another one all season, it would be
tough for another minor league team to beat the number. As always, banking on
bacon – sales of which climbed 9.5 percent in the United States to an all-time
high of nearly $4 billion in 2013 – is a smart move. To keep the bacon
sensation going, the team will sell bacon-flavored cotton candy and offering
free bacon crumbles on all concession items it sells throughout the coming
season………..
- It’s time for the latest edition of “What’s America
peaking on these days?” This riveting game of intoxication, inebriation and
impairment zeroes in on the drug of choice in the United States for a given
period of time and in this case, that period is 2006-10. According to the White House's Office of National Drug
Policy, which is affiliated with the RAND
Drug Policy Research Center, the drug of choice for American addicts during
that time is none other than the new state plant of Washington and
Colorado…yes, marijuana. The study found that for the five-year period in
question, cocaine use in the U.S. dropped by half while marijuana use increased an
impressive 30 percent. Those two drugs may be heading in opposite directions,
which heroin use has remained relatively stable. The other drug on the decline,
it seems, is one that no one would expect. Methamphetamine use has been on the
decrease since seeing a huge spike at the beginning of the decade and given the
number of trailer park meth labs blowing up around the country on a weekly
basis, that number does not seem to jive with reality. The National Drug Policy office has the daunting
task each year of compiling the amounts Americans spend on cocaine, heroin,
marijuana and meth while also estimating the number of regular users. “Our analysis shows that Americans
likely spent more than one trillion dollars on cocaine, heroin, marijuana and
methamphetamine between 2000 and 2010,” said Beau Kilmer, the study's lead
author and co-director of the RAND Drug Police Research Center. So….$100
billion annually on those four drugs alone? Given how cheap meth is, that’s
impressive. That's an average of a whopping $100 billion a year and simply put,
America done done it again, y’all…….
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