- Jerry Jones finally gets it…even though he still doesn’t
get it. The self-centered egomaniacal owner and general manager of the Dallas
Cowboys takes heat every season for fielding a mediocre team, yet insists that
his meddlesome ways and steadfast refusal to get out of the way and let an
actual general manager run his team is not the problem. However, Jones admitted
in a radio interview last week that he is to blame for the Cowboys not winning
a Super Bowl despite having a quality quarterback in Tony Romo for the past X
seasons. "We should have been
knocking on the door and we haven't and I have no excuses, it starts
here," Jones said. "But we have not. I know that to the extent that
we have a healthy Romo, our best chance to get back to the Super Bowl is a
healthy Romo." Taking blame is fine, even if Romo does share part of it
for faltering in big games, but Jones pointing the finger at himself is on
point. Sure, it means nothing if Jones isn't willing to address the problem he
just identified by hiring a general manager and relegating himself to signing
the checks, but at least he sort of understands the problem. Jones added that there
are some highly-priced contracts the team shouldn't have given out, then tried
to find a scapegoat by saying the franchise would have won more titles if not
for the current financial system in the NFL. No, you wouldn’t have, Jer. Your
team of high-profile disappointments has won just one playoff game with Romo as
quarterback, 2009, and missed the postseason the last four seasons. They have
choked away chances win the NFC East in the regular season finale each of the
past three seasons and there’s enough blame to go around for those meltdowns.
Yet Jones reassures himself by telling tales of several former or current NFL
personnel executives letting him know that from 2007 to 2010, the Cowboys had
some of the best talent in the league. Somehow, that means he’s doing a good
job, even if the results on the field aren’t there……..
- Next in Google’s quest for world domination: the restaurant
world. The tech giant announced this week that users can now locate and view various restaurant
menus in a “OneBox-style” response display at the top of the search results. It
is a direct and transparent attempt to compete with websites such as menus with
their reviews. Urbanspoon and Yelp, which have long offered menus with their
reviews. Google is clearly trying to expand its reach into the world of local
searches, operating under the theory that a massive, worldwide company can push
competitors its way by providing users with the information they are searching
for right on the results page. Google menu OneBox not only shows different
food options, but it also serves up different divisions of assorted categories
related to how each individual eatery organizes its menu. There are tabs for
different meals and usually information on prices as well, bringing a potential
diner as close to sitting at a table with a paper menu in hand as they can get
without actually leaving their home. However, tech experts who have tested the
new service have criticized it as incomplete and noted that Google’s
instructions direct users to type out “show me the menu for” followed by the
name of the specific eatery. So far, users are getting better results by typing
in the name of the restaurant first and the word “menu” second.
Additionally, the images provided are often confusing when one searches for
restaurants that organize their menus in a non-traditional fashion. Prices
are not included and there is not a large selection of restaurants with their
menus available through the service. Lastly, the new search engine accessory is
only presently available for dining establishments in the United States………
- Cuba is known for a few defining characteristics:
Communist Party rule, out-of-date-cars, being a forbidden destination for
Americans and being the home of some great cigars. The last of those four was
on display this week at Havana's annual marquee Cigar Festival, where more
than 450 stogie aficionados took part in an unusual contest. The point of the
battle was to see who could create the longest unbroken ash from a collection
of H. Upmann Sir Winstons - badass 7-inch Cuban cigars. In a smoke-filled, cavernous
room in Havana's Palace of Conventions, contestants exhaled clouds of smoke and
handled their cigars with as light a touch as possible in an attempt to keep
the gray ash intact as long as possible. They did their best to breathe in a
smoke-clogged room with a horrible stench choking everyone, with the
competition stretching on and on for the better part of an hour. Contestants
came from around the world to sit in luxurious leather chairs arranged around tables
holding dozens of ashtrays, lighters, chocolate-flavored hard candy and
snifters of aged Cuban rum. Most of the field lost their ashes before smoking
even halfway through, while others kept going until their cigars were little
more than tiny stubs. A lady led the way, as Cuban native Olivia Terri smoked
her Sir Winston down to a stub with an ash that grew to 6.6 inches before it
crumbled. As cigar aficionados know, the Sir Winston is a stout cigar with a
rich brown color and a hint of toasted gold, hand-rolled with a selection of
tobacco leaves from the western province of Pinar del Rio, the cradle of Cuba's
tobacco country. In a sense, the event was a giant promotional ploy to
advertise Cuba’s premium tobacco industry and it drew 1,500 smokers from 80
countries. Ruining your lungs is always a fun draw…….
- Adam McKay is going to need some convincing. The director
of both
2004's “Anchorman: The Legend Of Ron Burgundy and the recent sequel “Anchorman
2: The Legend Continues” has heard all of the talk about a third installment in
the series and despite the sequel blowing past the original in earnings and
eclipsing the $100 million mark in the United States, McKay says there will not
be another sequel. "It's done," McKay said. "I think that’s it.
It was great to do it and it was so fun to work with those guys again, but I
think that’s it for Ron Burgundy. That’s the last sequel we’re gonna do.
There's nothing more fun to me than new characters and a new world... No
Anchorman 3." The key phrase in those comments is “I think,” which loosely
translates to, “Tell me more about how great I am and throw even more money at
me for a new sequel, then we’ll talk.” McKay later took a more hard-line stance
on the subject, saying “definitely no” when pressed about the chance for a
third film. Previously, Will Ferrell took the opposite side in the debate,
albeit in the comedic fashion that Ferrell typically answers any question he’s
asked. "We gotta make 14,” Ferrell said last year. “Honestly, if the Mayor
Of Showbiz came and knocked on our doors and said, 'You guys, all you get to
work on for the next 20 years is 12 additional Anchorman movies', we probably
would all go, 'Okay.’" It’s tough to take any comment seriously when it
references the mythical Mayor of Showbiz, so odds are that McKay is the more
likely of the pair to take seriously when assessing the probability of another
“Anchorman” ever happening. Stay classy, Ron Burgundy fans……..
- If you’re going to pull out your gun and start shooting
people in a public place, you’d better have a damn good reason. Your tax refund
check being ready when your tax preparer said it would be there is not a good
reason. Someone should have told Detroit resident Angel Moore about this because
she was at the center of a potentially deadly scene Friday in the Motor City.
Moore reportedly showed up at a tax preparer’s office and was informed that her
refund check was not ready. Maybe the tax preparer should have known that in an
impoverished hellhole of a city like Detroit, delivering bad financial news is
a recipe for disaster. Perhaps the person who had to let Moore know that her
check would take a few more days should have rocked a Kevlar vest and huddled
behind some bulletproof glass, but none of those precautions were taken and according
to the store’s co-owner, Moore and two of her friends became belligerent when
asked to leave. At that point, a 19-year-old man with Moore allegedly pulled
out a gun and started firing. Four people were shot, including a security
guard and three other store employees. A witness told police that the shooter
did not wear a mask or attempt to conceal his identity in any way. The shooting
reportedly started inside the store, but eventually spilled out into the
street, where it conceivably could have been lost in the general cacophony of
gunfire ringing out across the city on a daily basis. A witness alerted police
to the situation and pointed out the suspected shooter, who was arrested
shortly after the shooting. Police are still looking for another woman who was
with Moore and her gun-toting companion. Officers recovered the gun reportedly
used in the shooting and all four shooting victims remain in the hospital in either
serious or critical condition………
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