- Do you know who former New York Giants safety Tyler Sash
is? Police in Oskaloosa, Iowa certainly do. They spent some quality time with
Sash a few days ago when they engaged in what might be the most ridiculous
low-speed pursuit since Ethel stole Edith’s Jazzy at the Beautiful Breezes
retirement community in Sarasota last winter. Sash, who played two seasons with
the Giants, was arrested early in the morning after leading police on a drunken
scooter chase and being shot with a Taser. That’s right, a drunken scooter chase.
A police report lays out the riveting, high-octane scene in which officers spotted
Sash at approximately 1:30 a.m. riding a motorized scooter with its lights off
and asked him to stop. Like any true scooter-riding badass, he reportedly refused
on multiple occasions and mashed the gas pedal to the floor before leading
police on a four-block chase. Presumably with officers strolling beside him on
food and asking him to give up the charade, Sash took the chase as far as it
could go before leaving the scooter and fleeing on foot. Even though that
likely doubled the actual speed of the chase, Sash could not avoid the long arm
of the law. He made one last valiant attempt to evade capture by stealthily
hiding behind a tree, but when officers somehow saw through his clever disguise
as a part of nature he refused to come out from behind the tree and was
subsequently hit with a Taser blast that ended the whole charade. Stunningly, Sash
declined a field sobriety test but admitted to drinking and was taken to
Mahaska County Jail. The former University of Iowa product appeared in 23 games with the Giants, but was suspended in
2012 for violating the NFL's policy on performance-enhancing substances and cut
by the Giants prior to last season………..
- What the hell is wrong with people? Seriously, can no one accept
a massive cash gift from the universe even if it means benefitting from the
mental slippage of a senior citizen not sharp enough to remember stashing
$41,000 under their couch cushions? The world’s scrutinizing eyes should be on
New York City hipsters/roommates Reese Werkhoven, Cally Guasti and Lara Russo, who could
have quintupled their collective net wealth if only they could have left their
sense of common decency at the door. This trio bought a used couch from a
nearby Salvation Army in New Paltz, N.Y. about two months ago and didn’t
think much of what might rest inside their piece of gently used living room
furniture. Shortly after buying their couch, they were watching a movie when
one of them notice crinkles in two side pillows built into their couch. When it
became clear that something more than cheap stuffing was inside, they opened up
the cushions and found three envelopes cushioned in bubble rap. “We were just
really freaked out by it,” Werkhoven said. “It had these bubble wrap envelopes,
just like two or three of them. We ripped them out and was just like
freaking out, like and inch and a half of hundred dollar bills.” Guasti
recalled screaming so loud her neighbors likely thought she had just won the
lottery and as the trio counted the cash and snapped pictures for Instagram, they
stacked enough paper to take them all the way to $41,000. They dreamed of
buying cars and boats and probably would have found 1,000 great ways to blow
the cash….but they found one envelope with a woman’s name on it. Werkhoven’s
mother helped the group find the owner and the trio called the woman and returned
the cash. The elderly woman told them she had stashed the money in the couch
for years and that family members who didn’t know had mistakenly donated
the couch. It was the life savings of a widow who definitely needed the cash
and that’s all well and good, but if a person is forgetful and sloppy enough to
lose $41,000 in couch cushions, then maybe the universe is trying to send them
a message by separating them from their cash………..
- How does a band know it’s time to call it quits and stop
riding a wave of success built on cheesy, mainstream pop/beach music? Ask the Beach Boys, because
they have obviously reached that point and blown right past it. The niche music
act that would not die despite not being relevant to anyone under the age of 60
are not only still chugging along, but they have announced a tour to mark the
50th anniversary of their 1964 single “Fun Fun Fun.” No, not the album on which
that single appeared – just the single itself. This sad charade of a tour will
begin May 25 in Louisville, Ky. before moving across the United States and
jumping across the Atlantic Ocean for sets at several European festivals,
including two shows at Hampton Court on June 24 and 25. After rocking the
Dockers off old-timers in Europe, they will return to North America for much of
the rest of the year. "Year after year, it's been a great source of
inspiration to see the happiness our music has brought to multiple generations
of Beach Boys fans in so many parts of the world,” member Mike Love said in a
statement. “This summer I'm particularly excited for the Jones Beach show,
which is such a terrific, iconic venue. It will be very special to share the
stage with some old friends and bandmates, Al Jardine and David Marks." At
this point, the Beach Boys should be excited just to be alive, so playing shows
will be extra exciting. The tour will also bring the addition of young gun and
singer/guitarist Jeffrey Foskett, who has worked regularly with the group since
1981. The 58-year-old Foskett will
become a permanent member of the Beach Boys touring band, replacing Love's son
Christian, who left the group to pursue a solo career. Returning to Europe will
be especially noteworthy, as it was during a tour of the United Kingdom in 2012
that Love issued a statement effectively firing founding members Brian Wilson
and Al Jardine. Maybe that should have been a sign that it was time for the
entire band to just quit, but old bands are like aging boxers: They never know
when it’s time to go………
- Canada, you’re not helping humanity, you’re hurting it and
you shouldn’t be upping your average life expectancy above 80 for both men and
women, you damn Canucks. The world is running out of habitable places to put
people and yet, there’s Canada, leading a list of nations where life expectancy
is soaring, according to a new report from the World Health Organization.
There is progress in low-income nations as well, but those poor folks just don’t
know any better when it comes to improving their projected life span. In
Canada, average life expectancy for males born in 2012 is 80 and for females it
is 84, according to the World Health Statistics 2014 report. That is an
increase of six years for men and three years for women in the past two decades
and WHO director general Dr. Margaret Chan said the worldwide improvement is
due in large part to fewer children dying before their fifth birthday. Note to
self, world: Find kind, yet firm ways to let the little ones know that their
longer life span is crowding the planet for the rest of us. Because of this
decline, 17,000 fewer children re dying every day in 2012 than in 1990. "Nevertheless,
nearly 18,000 children worldwide died every day in 2012, and the global speed
of decline in mortality rate remains insufficient to reach the target of a
two-thirds reduction in the 1990 levels of mortality by the year 2015,"
the report’s authors wrote. Although life expectancy is improving in Third
World countries, a wide gap remains between high-income countries and
low-income countries. At the top end of the scale are Iceland (81.2), Switzerland (80.7) and Australia (80.5). Women fare
best in Japan (87.1) and Spain (85.1), while life expectancy for both men and
women is still less than 55 years in nine sub-Saharan African countries —
Angola, Central African Republic, Chad, Ivory Coast, Mozambique, Nigeria and
Sierra Leone. Stop being so healthy, world, because there ain’t enough real
estate to go around………
- What do China and Norway have in common? Well, one is a
fixture among the annual rankings of the world’s happiest nations and stands as
a Scandinavian bastion of delicious seafood, wandering moose and wonderful
winter sweaters. The other is a communist hellhole in which no one is sure if
the people are actually happy because the government will shoot them or run
them over with tanks at the slightest suggestion that they aren't the most
pleased people on the planet. In other words, they have nothing in common….until
now. Chinese
real estate tycoon Huang Nubo wants to change that fact and unite the seemingly
polar opposite nations by throwing down a huge stack of cash to purchase a vast
swathe of land on Norway's Arctic archipelago. Nubo said during an interview on
Thursday that he wants to buy83 square miles on the island of Svalbard, 500
miles north of the mainland for "more than 24 million kroner ($4
million)." That is a lot of kroner klout in the name of building a holiday
village for wealthy travelers, but a quick scan of the map shows that there
could in fact be more to this story. Should Nubo be able to execute his
purchase, he would also gain a significant foothold along a potential Arctic
shipping route that could cut weeks off the current trade route from the Far
East to European and North American markets. Before Norway weighs this offer
fully, it needs to realize that it is merely Nubo’s sloppy second choice after
he made a similar offer nearly four years ago to Iceland, which rejected similar
plans to buy land on that island due to restrictions on the purchase of land by
foreigners. Norway is a similarly beautiful winter wonderland, but even
the Norwegians’ happy disposition may not be enough to facilitate this Chinese
pipe dream……..
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