- Isn’t New York City supposed to be the coolest, trendiest
city around? Don’t answer that question because it appears some square-tastic Battery Park City
already have. These losers are up in arms over plans for a massive beer garden
and event space in their ‘hood. Developers are planning to convert
the historic Pier A, a space that has sat empty for more than two decades,
into a dining and drinking establishment that can bring together more than
1,000 lushes looking to channel their inner German and get their drink on like
they’re hanging in Bavaria instead of hopping a train home to the Bronx. The
new beer garden is scheduled to open this summer and according to plans, it
will be a multi-level entertainment spot larger than any nightclub in
Las Vegas and could open as early as 7 a.m. The idea of people with nothing to
do and nowhere to go during the day trudging down to the south end of Manhattan
and spending their days getting sloshed on overpriced beer is not appealing to
locals, some of whom have children who attend a public elementary school, P.S.
276, located two blocks away from the proposed beer garden. Rather than embrace
a slice of world culture coming to their borough, these alarmist mothers and
fathers are warning of the evils of around-the-clock partying in what is
now a family friendly neighborhood. None of these suckers are recognizing
the very real possibility that this new business will bring more foot traffic
to an area that doesn’t already have a lot of bars and restaurants and therefore
would boost the local business community. “Anything that brings additional foot
traffic — that gives people a reason to linger, to experience the restaurants,
the shopping, of course the culture down here — is a good thing,” said Betsy
Aldredge, a spokeswoman for the nearby Museum of Jewish Heritage. The
developers for the project are working to allay concerns and the entire problem
can certainly be hashed out Monday at a meeting of the state Liquor Authority
in Manhattan………
- Riot Watch! Riot Watch! The World Cup is coming to Brazil
this summer and with the biggest event in international soccer less than two
months away, let’s just say that one of the world’s most party-loving nations
is not exactly in a state of peaceful unity in which to welcome the world. In
fact, residents
of one Rio de Janeiro slum that saw deadly clashes with police earlier this
week are giving off the distinct impression that they are not going to calm
down any time soon. Just days after the über-violent uprising, the residents of
the Copacabana beach neighborhood staged a protest to further drive their point
home. The protest was spurred by the burial of a young man, Douglas Pereira,
whose shooting death sparked clashes Tuesday night between police and residents
of the Pavao-Pavaozinho "favela" slum. At first glance, an outsider
might ask why people who have beachfront property in a beautiful land like
Brazil are angry in the first place, but expand the scope of your narrow world
view a bit and you’ll see that this particular slum is sandwiched between two
of Rio's highest-rent neighborhoods and just a few hundred meters from a key
venue for the 2016 Olympics. The government has ignored, minimized and trampled
upon these folks routinely while tending to more important people so it was that
sh*t got real earlier this week. Following Pereira’s funeral, several hundred
people took to the street on the slum’s main thoroughfare and sadly, an early
scuffle between protestors and police failed to materialize into anything more significant.
The demonstration remained largely peaceful, which is obviously no way to run a
proper revolution…….
- Herschel Walker
has always been a physical freak. He was an incredibly physical specimen in a
league full of them while playing in the NFL from 1986 to 1997 and even before
that, when he won the 1982 Heisman Trophy while balling at the University of
Georgia. He did all of that while maintaining a grueling training regimen in
which he famously never worked out with any weights, claiming that the only
weight he ever used was that of his own body in a variety of sit-ups, push-ups
and other exercises. Even after he retired from the NFL after the 1997 season,
he remained in amazing physical condition and later took up mixed martial arts,
winning both of his fights, the last coming in January 2011. He is still
known for being the centerpiece of the most lopsided trade in NFL history, when
he was dealt in 1989 from the Dallas Cowboys to the Minnesota Vikings for five
players and six draft picks. If you ask Walker, now 52 years old, he could
still bring a little something-something to the gridiron. "I can play in
the NFL today," Walker said in a recent interview. "I couldn't take
every snap. But running backs nowadays don't play every down. Now they send in
the choir section. Physically, I can still do it." Don’t mistake this as
some bitter old-timer looking at today’s players and dismissively declaring
that they aren't in his class because he want to come back and re-live his
glory days…..but only because Walker is busy with several business ventures and
isn't thinking of a comeback. Such an effort would make him the oldest running
back to play in an NFL game, surpassing the mark of 40 years old set by Pro
Football Hall of Famer Jim Thorpe in 1928. The idea of a 52-year-old
Walker putting on the pads one more time and bringing backfield depth to the
downtrodden Cleveland Browns or Oakland Raiders might be appealing, but sadly
it isn't going to happen….yet…….
- The end of net
neutrality may finally have arrived. Sure, the U.S. Federal Communications
Commission may say otherwise and pretend that taking public comments before
moving forward with a new set of that sparked controversy the instant they were
leaked earlier this week makes it all OK, but it simply isn't so. The FCC will
soon release a proposal to tweak net neutrality rules that would allow
broadband providers to negotiate with content providers for preferential
treatment, the agency confirmed. That proclamation led digital rights groups to
denounce the move as the death of net neutrality. For the technologically
ignorant, net neutrality is the basic principle that all Internet service
providers and governments should treat all Internet data the same, without
discriminating or charging differentially by user, content, site, platform, or
modes of communication. The possible change will be up for a vote at an
upcoming meeting and the plan has not yet been finalized. Under the proposal, broadband
providers would be required to offer a baseline level of service to their subscribers,
but could also enter into individual negotiations with content providers. In
other words, the poor folks would get a bare minimum level of service
guaranteed and like so many other parts of society, the wealthy would be able
to buy better service. Yes, all of this will be subject to FCC review and the
agency will seek public input on “exactly what the baseline level of service
would be, the construction of a ‘commercially reasonable’ standard, and the
manner in which disputes would be resolved,” but no one with a working
knowledge of how government works believes any of this is going to be fair or
unbiased. Net neutrality is based on the principle of nondiscrimination and all
of this openly invites discrimination. Broadband providers would be able to charge
higher traffic management prices to Web services that they see as competitors.
This situation is a direct result of after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the
District of Columbia Circuit’s January decision striking down the FCC’s net
neutrality regulations, but it seems to be a gross and off-point overreaction
that will do plenty of harm to the lesser players in the game while limiting
its good to those who can afford its steep price tag………..
- It’s time to
play a rollicking game of “Who are man-banders ripping off and shamelessly
passing off the bastardized work of as their own today?” and our contestants
are British man-banders One Direction. The lads of 1-D have been
accused of plagiarism over the video for their new single “You & I.” After
the group revealed the video for the single, the latest to be taken from their
“Midnight Memories” album, on April 18, it took Australian production company
Oh Yeah Wow all of five seconds to accuse the band and director Ben Winston of
"regurgitating" a video they shot with Clubfeet for their song “Everything You Wanted” in January 2013.
Proving that horny teenage girls have far too much free time and far too little
in the way of good musical taste, the One Direction video already has over 13
million views. In attacking the British popsters, Oh Yeah Wow wrote in a blog
post that the third act of One Direction's video copies the video they
produced, specifically a technique in which members of the group jump into
freeze frame shots of themselves. This is far from a new or original video
concept, but Oh Yeah Wow contends that they are angry because One Direction are
"some affluent young bucks, and a director devoid of creativity, (who)
decide to effectively steal (and subsequently dilute) our idea.” That is a
terrible thing to say…. because clearly, no one should be that nice to a bunch
of man-band hacks. What Oh Yeah Wow misses here is that all pop groups and
specifically man bands do is rip off other people’s works. Seriously…..One
Direction have been accused of plagiarism on multiple occasions. Last year, The
Who's Pete Townshend complained about strong similarities because his band’s
iconic track “Baba O’Riley” and One Direction’s “Best Song Ever.” Before that
Def Leppard briefly contemplated legal action against the group after Def Lep
members Phil Collen and Vivian Campbell complained that the One Direction song
“Midnight Memories” was "very similar in structure" to their own
“Pour Some Sugar On Me.” It might be quicker to figure out which – if any – One
Direction songs haven’t been blatantly thieved from someone much more
talented……….
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