- The box office taught us a valuable lesson this weekend. A
movie need not be good or even watchable in order to top the earnings list for
a weekend and “The Other Woman” proved that point emphatically with its debut
victory. At $24.7 million, Fox’s absurd comedy that basically has appeal only
because dudes like watching Kate Upton bounce around in a bikini and/or have a
crush on Cameron Diaz led the way and toppled reigning box office champion “Captain
America: The Winter Soldier.” “Winter Soldier” slid to second place with $16.1
million and has amassed a whopping $224.9 million in domestic earnings through
four weeks in theaters. “Heaven is for Real” fell one spot to third and made
$13.8 million in its second weekend to creep up to $52 million in total domestic
take. Fourth place went to “Rio 2,” which scored $13.7 million to creep to the
brink of the $100 million barrier in overall earnings at $96.2 million in three
weeks of release. Paul Walker’s presence didn’t bring strong returns for “Brick
Mansions,” which debuted in fifth place and managed just $9.6 million in its
first weekend. “Transcendence” continued on its path to being the biggest bomb
of 2014, slotting sixth with a scant $4.1 million to gently lift its two-week
total to $18.5 million against a whopping $100 million budget. “The Quiet Ones”
slinked to seventh place with $4 million in its debut, living up/down to its
name in the process. “10 Bears” claimed eighth place with $3.7 million in its
second weekend, declining 24.5 percent by still increasing its domestic bank
roll to $11.2 million. “Divergent” finished seventh for the weekend and made $3.6
million for a six-week tally of $139.5 million. The last spot in the top 10
went to “A Haunted House 2,” which conjured up minimal laughs and minimal dollars
with a $3.3 million weekend. In two weeks, the ridiculous comedy has scored
just $14.2 million and counting. “Draft Day” (No. 12) and “Noah” (No. 14) both
fell out from last weekend’s top 10……….
- Columbus Day has always been a thorough ridiculous holiday. A wayward
explorer takes a wrong turn, wipes out an indigenous people and a government
that had no link to him honors him with a special day each year. It’s about
damn time someone recognized that Columbus Day should not exist and ranks
somewhere behind Arbor Day and National Doughnut Day on the list of reasons to
pause and remember what someone or something means to America. That someone –
or in this case, someones – are the members of the Minneapolis City Council.
These brave men and women have taken a stand on an issue that has been debated
for years, voting to change the name of Columbus Day to Indigenous People’s Day.
While Indigenous People’s Day sounds like the name of a trendy indie rock band,
it will now be the official way to refer to the holiday on all city communications.
“This has been a long time coming and people are going to feel really good
about how we’re moving forward and advancing a racial equity agenda that really
elevates the voice and contributions of American Indian people,” said council
member Alondra Cano, the author of the resolution. Columbus Day has been a
federal holiday since 1937, but several states do not observe it, including
Oregon, Hawaii, South Dakota and Alaska. Those states have long held that it is
wrong to credit Christopher Columbus with the discovery of America when Native
Americans were already living there, but
bureaucracy being what it is, there’s no way the federal
government will ever take any real stance on the subject……..
- Megatron won't back down. Detroit Lions star receiver Calvin Johnson is all but assured of
double-digit visits to the end zone every season for the foreseeable future and
that makes him one of the targets of a new NFL rule banning players from using
the goalposts as a part of any touchdown celebration, including Johnson’s
popular ploy of dunking the ball over the crossbar. A new rule passed earlier
this year deemed the goalpost to be a prop which cannot be used to celebrate a
touchdown. Johnson could simply fall in line and find another way to
commemorate each score, but he has a plan of his own. "I'm still going to
dunk," Johnson said. "I just won't touch the rim." In other
words, he’s going to do what Blake Griffin gets so much credit for on several
occasions each season by throwing down a ferocious faux-dunk in which his hand
never actually touches the rim. The 6-foot-5 Johnson should have no trouble
getting up and rising above the crossbar to throw one down and if he can match
the 84 catches for 1,492 yards and 12 touchdowns he posted last season, the league
office and officials working Lions games will have plenty of occasions to
decide whether Johnson’s attempt to circumvent their new rule is acceptable or
not. The supposed spirit of the rule is safety because dunking can tilt the
goalposts and could theoretically cause them to topple, so dunking without
touching the post should be just fine. Then again, before worrying about how to
mark his touchdowns, Johnson should probably focus on recovering fully from surgeries
on his knee and finger so he can be ready for the start of the season he plans
to fill with high-flying touchdown-celebrating dunks……….
- Here is another true stunner from science. Courtesy of
lead researcher Dr. Takehiro Sugiyama of the University of Tokyo, a new study has
emerged letting the world know that people who take the common
cholesterol-lowering drugs known as statins may feel a false sense of security
and eat a more. Yes, FAT people with poor eating habits that led to higher
cholestrol in the first place are likely to return to those crappy eating
habits if they take a medicine designed to mitigate one of their many health
problems – stunner. Sugiyama and his team surveyed American adults taking
statins in 1999-2000 and found them to be eating fewer calories than people not
taking the drugs, but eating about the same amount as non-users by 2009-2010. "We
believe that physicians need to reemphasize the importance of a healthy
lifestyle to statin-users," Sugiyama said. As stain users seem to not
know, wolfing down excess calories and fat would not only compromise the
cholesterol-lowering effect of statins, but would also increase a person's risk
of becoming obese and developing diabetes. Statins such as Lipitor, Zocor and
Crestor function by inhibiting the production of cholesterol, which is used to
build new cells and keep the body functioning. Too much of it and a person’s
blood vessels begin to narrow like Donald Sterling’s chances of ever being seen
as a human being with an actual soul. The latest recommendations from the
American Heart Association puts the number of U.S. adults eligible to take the
drugs north of 50 million, which is both disturbing and not the last bit
surprising. In this particular study, statin users were consuming about 2,000
calories per day in 1999-2000, which was nearly 200 fewer calories than
non-statin users. A decade later, that gap was gone. Calorie consumption among
statin users increased by about 10 percent during the decade and that number
does not seem destined to drop in the near future……….
- Silvio
Berlusconi can't stop, won't stop and literally does not seem physically
capable of stopping. The former Italian premier is born to offend and say
inappropriate things – as well as host his famous bunga bunga sex parties – and
even though he is awaiting sentencing on convictions for corruption charges and
his party has gotten its butt whipped in recent elections, Berlusconi is still
at it. His latest controversial comments came as he was presenting his
center-right Forza Italia party's candidates Saturday in Milan for May's
European Parliament elections. Rather than simply introduce each candidate and
explain why voters should support them, Berlusconi elected to go off script and
off the reservation by claiming that Germans deny that Nazi-run death camps
ever existed. Maybe it was meant as some misguided show of solidarity from one
nation on the wrong side of World War II to another, but Berlusconi clearly
could not have gone in a worse direction than mentioning a 2003 gaffe he made
comparing current Parliament president Martin Schulz to a concentration camp
guard. He then tried to explain what he meant by saying he didn't want to
offend Schulz, then added that, "the Germans, for them, concentration
camps never existed." German Families Minister Manuela Schwesig proved
that Twitter can be used for more than inserting the names of breakfast foods
into the monikers for popular bands, tweeting that Berlusconi's remarks were
"unspeakable" and urging a fight against right-wing
"populism." Those are the sorts of remarks once tends to expect from
someone who lost his Italian Senate seat and is banned from running in
elections because of a tax fraud conviction but still leads his party………..
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