- This should be fun. Any time any of the original members
of Guns N'
Roses get together on stage or tour together, there is a chance for the entire
affair to end in a ginormous ball of fire. Here’s hoping that happens later
this month when former bassist Duff
McKagan rejoins GNR for five gigs in South America. McKagan famously
exited the band in 1997, kicking off a long thread of band members exiting
because they could no longer work with the ever-expanding waistline and ego of
frontman Axl Rose. McKagan has been away for nearly 17 years and that time
apart from Rose may have dulled his memories of how insufferable Fastel can
be….even more than years of copious drug use have already dulled the mental
capability of every member of the band. The first hint of a possible return for
McKagan came a earlier this week when he tweeted out a picture holding a
setlist filled with a number of Guns N' Roses songs. Current GNR bassist Tommy
Stinson confirmed that McKagan will "cover his ass" while he is
unavailable to tour. Ironically, Stinson will be missing in action because he
too is reuniting with his old band, ’80s punk rock icons The Replacements. The
Mats are set to play reunion shows at the upcoming Coachella festival in
California. o"I had those Replacement shows come up the same time the
[Guns N' Roses] tour came up, and it got to be a scheduling issue right out of
the gate," Stinson said. "I didn't want to f*ck anyone up in Guns by
saying, 'Hey, I can't do this tour,' or anything like that. Luckily someone was
able to reach out to Duff and he was amenable to the idea and was into doing
it. So I'm like, 'Thanks dude, for covering my ass on this one.'" The
returning McKagan will perform with Guns N' Roses from April 6 until April 17,
rocking out at gigs in Brazil with a show at the Centro de Eventos de
Fortaleza. He last played with GNR at London's O2 Arena in 2010……..
- Wisconsin is still thawing out from its eight months of
winter, so we should give the good folks of Kaukauna for their recent election
clusterf*ck. When one has spent two-thirds of the year in such a deep freeze
that an hour in an actual deep freezer is like a trip to the sauna, one’s brain
tends not to work as well. That has to be the explanation for the 130 erroneous
ballots handed out to voters Tuesday morning at Kaukauna City Hall. The bogus
ballots affected two Outagamie County supervisor races and the city’s clerk
explained that the screw-up stems from the fact that – like so many über-tiny
communities – everyone votes in the same place. Electoral ddistrcts are then
divided up into smaller wards and that is where the proceedings came off the
rails. Some voters were given ballots meant for a different ward than their own
and that messed up the balloting for District 13, which….let’s be honest, no
one gives a sh*t about anyway. Who can be bothered to care about candidates
Leroy Van Asten or Jason Fischer? It’s much more interesting to cast ballots
for the District 10 race between Kevin Behnke and Josh Karl and that’s what
District 13 voters did. The fact that no one noticed they were voting for the
wrong race should tell town offiicials everything they need to known about Van
Asten and Fischer. Fischer said he caught the mistake when he voted at 10:30
a.m. while waiting to vote. “I was next in line and they handed me my ballot
and my own name wasn’t on it,” Fischer said. “So I’m like, ‘Well, this is not
right.’” The Government Accountability Board, the state agency that oversees
elections, decreed that the mistake cannot be fixed until after the votes have
been canvassed. At that point, the candidates can ask for a recount and if they
aren't satisfied (likely), they can ask a court to overturn it or ask for a new
election. Just make sure someone else handles the ballots for that one……
- Tired of being FAT? Science has a simple answer for you. No,
not working out and eating less junk food, although those are still great ideas
for people with actual willpower and self-respect. No, this new batch of advice
boils down to one simple truth: Wake up early and go outside. According to a new
study by researchers at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine
in Chicago, folks who gorged on light exposure at the beginning of the day were
most likely to have a lower body mass index. This connection between morning
light and BMI existed independently of how many calories the study participants
consumed. The possibility that people who wake up early and go outside might be
doing so to exercise seems to have escape science on this one. Circadian rhythm
plays an important role in regulating metabolism and previous studies have
found that morning light can influence body fat and the hormones that regulate
appetite. One such study showed that sleep-deprived subjects whose levels of
the hormones leptin and ghrelin were out of whack saw those levels improve
after being exposed to light for two hours after waking up. The Northwestern
team recruited 54 participants who wore a wrist monitor that measured their
light exposure (including its timing and intensity) as well as their sleep
patterns. Each of them kept a detailed log of everything they ate and drank
during a seven-day period and those who tended to be night owls – going to bed at
1:26 a.m. and waking up at 8:49 a.m. – were thinner than most Americans.
Fifty-eight percent of these people reported a body mass index of 24 or lower.
Upon further study, the researchers determined that the key to thinness was to
soak up light of at least 500 lux and to do so as early in the day as possible.
For each extra hour of snoozing in the dark, BMI rose by 1.28 points. In the
end, the research team was unable to determine what makes morning light so damn
special compared to daylight at other times, but bank on another expensive
study to further explore that……….
- Venezuela's organization of Catholic bishops clearly does not
value its collective freedom….or the lives of its members. If they did, they
would not be accusing their oppressive, overbearing government of seeking
totalitarian-style rule. The accusations are fair, mind you, but that doesn’t
mean a government wholly intolerant of free speech or opposition of any type is
going to let such inflammatory remarks go unchecked. The comments could also
have the side effect of complicating the Vatican's offer to facilitate talks
between the socialist government and its opposition. The Conference of Venezuelan
Bishops demanded that President/dictator Nicolas Maduro to halt his crackdown
on critics who have been protesting in the streets for seven weeks and
counting. Bishop Diego Padron, the president of the conference, delivered an
address in Caracas in which he accused Maduro of attempting to criminalize
dissent. Amazingly, neither police nor government troops stormed the building
and silenced this fool before hauling him off to prison. As the words came out
of the bishop’s mouth, it was in fact possible to hear hands slapping foreheads
in disbelief at the Vatican, where the papal powers that be said earlier this
week that they were willing to facilitate talks between the two sides. Maduro
magnanimously indicated he would accept such talks, but the various factions
that comprise the opposition have yet to unify themselves enough to make a
statement about their willingness to participate in such talks. This isn’t the
first time the bishops association has criticized the Venezuelan government,
but it is the most inconvenient in terms of timing……..
- Scum has come back to college basketball. Yes, that stench
you smell wafting from the Lone Star State means what you think it means;
Kelvin Sampson is once again walking the sidelines for a Division I team.
Sampson, who has spent the past five seasons in the NBA as an assistant coach
for the Milwaukee Bucks and Houston Rockets, has agreed to a five-year contract
with the University of Houston to replace
former coach James Dickey. Sampson officially took over as Cougars coach
following the Rockets' game at Toronto on Wednesday night and is a college
head coach for the first time since 2008, when he was fired by Indiana. Why?
Because he committed multiple recruiting and rules violations while with the Hoosiers
and those misdeeds came on the heels of even more NCAA violations while at his
previous stop, the University of Oklahoma. In short, Sampson treated NCAA
recruiting rules like they were the “Walk/Don’t Walk” signs on a street corner
in New York City. When he was caught, he threw his top assistant under the bus
and fled the scene. The NCAA hit him with a five-year show cause penalty and he
burned through those five years in the Association, where he didn’t have any
recruiting rules to break. The sad part of all of this is that Sampson is a
good coach, having led Washington State to the NCAA tournament in 1994 and gone
to 11 NCAA tournaments in 12 seasons at Oklahoma (including a Final Four in
2002). His willingness to lie, cheat and connive his way through his job and
ignore all professional standards in order to weasel his way into recruits’
hearts were even more impressive. Had no college given him another chance, it
would have made sense because people who are that much of a scumbag rarely
reform themselves completely. Houston chose to take a chance after Dickey
resigned following a 17-16 season and a 64-62 record in his four years at the
helm. Houston fans will undoubtedly celebrate this hire and pretend it means a
return to the relevance their program enjoyed three decades ago and it
might……until the next round of Sampson-caused NCAA violations come to
light………..
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