Thursday, June 12, 2014

Baby's Got Back at the orchestra, SEC football felons and Venezuelan assassination plots


- Scott Love is a loser. This may seem like a sweeping generalization to make without actually meeting or even speaking to a person and crueler still when it is applied to a man whose surname is Love, but just roll with it because that generalization is about to have the sh*t verified right out of it. Love had a day off this weekend, like many Americans. Unlike every other American, he decided to spend his free time combining the dork-tastic loser-dom of a Comic-Con attendee with the annoying lurking tendencies of the creeps who stand on sidewalks twirling signs and wearing sandwich boards advertising mattress sales and tax preparations services. That’s right, Love dressed up as a comic book character and grabbed a homemade sign so he could spend an entire day out at the intersection of Northampton Boulevard and Baker Road in Virginia Beach, Va. protesting against the plethora of potholes lining the city’s streets. He dressed as Spider-Man in the name of pothole prevention and sported a pair of signs that he alternated as a way to annoy the hell out of passing motorists with the actual intent of getting them to speak up and demand accountability from the city in fixing up its roads. . One read, “Good beaches, great food, awesome potholes.” Another said, “Say no to potholes” with a number to call the city pothole line. Love has been waging his war against caverns carved in asphalt by winter weather for months and said he has called the pothole line and spoken to various city employees for months, but to no avail. Obviously, dressing like a superhero and making a fool of himself in public will get the job done where other tactics have failed………


- It must be spring if Southeastern Conference football players are lighting up the police scanners of law enforcement agencies in the southeastern United States. Sure enough, the calendar affirms this fact and so does the misogynistic case of LSU starting safety Jalen Mills, who has been suspended indefinitely by the team after he was arrested early Wednesday on a second-degree battery charge for allegedly punching a woman in the mouth. Yes, the ol’ “I went Floyd Mayweather on a woman’s face because she made me mad and because I can” line of logic is in play here, according to a probable cause documents stating that a woman says Mills punched her in the mouth on May 4 in his apartment. According to the woman, she tumbled to the ground following the jab to the jaw and was briefly knocked unconscious. Police contacted Mills on May 29 – reporting alleged domestic assaults can take time, yo – and he told them he was in Houston and would return to Baton Rouge on June 9, the first day of summer school and football workouts. Because it is clearly possible to dictate the pace of justice in Baton Rouge, a June 10 appointment was set for Mills to meet with the police. Amazingly, given his obvious state of responsibility and good citizenship, Mills did not show up for the meeting and police were unable to reach him by phone. Thus, a warrant for his arrest was issued. Mills was finally apprehended and was held on a $7,000 bond. He was also prohibited from contacting the victim, much like he has been prohibited from making contact with the playing field at LSU for the time being. Mills had three interceptions last season as a sophomore and was third on the team with 67 tackles. Past crimes by SEC players would suggest that Mills will suffer a truly painful suspension costing him two quarters of the team’s first game against a wholly overmatched non-league foe, then return to the field as if nothing happened……….


- Venezuela might be looking to prosecute and possibly execute a trio of dissidents wanted for questioning in an alleged plot to assassinate President Nicolas Maduro, but the rest of the world should be taking a different stance on the situation. Venezuela's attorney general has ordered the arrests of these three brave difference-makers, claiming that they and other such groups are seeking to destabilize Venezuela's socialist government and have formed "violent political plans" against Maduro and other high-ranking officials. Such allegations appear to be complete bullsh*t fabricated by The Man to facilitate a continued campaign of oppression and silencing those who dare to disagree, which is why the rest of the world should seize the opportunity in front of it. Where Venezuela sees arrest warrants for Diego Arria, a former presidential candidate and United Nations ambassador; Pedro Burelli, former external director of the state oil company Petroleos de Venezuela; and Ricardo Koesling, a lawyer who has been a strong critic of the Maduro administration, the rest of te world should see a chance to enable the clearly present undercurrent of opposition that is willing to (allegedly) go to deadly lengths to rid its country of a heinous and repressive leader who is the handpicked successor of deceased despot Hugo Chavez. That’s not to say a state-sponsored assassination of a foreign president should happen because that sort of allegation could launch a world war under the wrong circumstances. It’s merely to say that if a giant suitcase of some random foreign currency were to fall off a banana truck in Venezuela shortly after some extremist nut job happened to do away with Maduro, that would be one hell of a coincidence……….


- Sir Mix-a-Lot likes big woodwind instruments and he cannot lie; you other brothers can’t deny that when a big, round bass cello shows up on stage you get….never mind. The point is that the man behind the iconic ‘80s song “Baby’s Got Back,” an amazing ode to the power of women’s posteriors, has finally made it to a place it should have arrived long ago. Sir Mix-a-Lot, a.k.a. Anthony Ray, made his debut with the Seattle Symphony and conducted a version of his lone hit. He turned the performance into a giant onstage party as dozens of women from the audience took him up on his offer to be a part of a new orchestral arrangement of "Baby's Got Back." "Something you really should not do, but since tonight is orchestral movements from the hood night, I'm going to leave some of this open if a couple of ladies would like to get up on the stage," Ray told the crowd. His appearance at Benaroya Hall came about as part of the Seattle Symphony's Sonic Evolution series, which commissions new orchestral work inspired by Seattle's music icons. One would guess that Macklemore is on the to-get list for the series and an orchestral version of “Thrift Shop” could be fairly compelling under the right circumstances. Gabriel Prokofiev, a London-based composer, DJ and producer orchestrated "Baby Got Back" as well as the 1988 track "Posse on Broadway." "My aim with this new Sir-Mix-A-Lot inspired Orchestral work was to really get inside the musical mind of Sir Mix-A-Lot; to understand how his rhythms, textures, sounds and harmonies worked, and to create a contemporary orchestral composition that was true to the music of Sir-Mix-A-Lot," Prokofiev wrote in a blog post about the performance. The conductor went to great lengths to recreate Sir Mix-a-Lot's electronic arrangements using an orchestra, including "an acoustic 'Scratcher' (made by scratching a credit card against a metal guiro), a 'jackdaw' (a friction drum that creates a frog like noise), bunches of bamboo cracking against the sides of drums and various drums laden with chains and cymbals to create distorted drum and clap effects." The orchestra may never be the same……….


- Lame analogies about not needing to buy the cow when the milk is free aside, there apparently is truth to the idea that men and women cohabitating before marrying is a bad idea for one half of the relationship. According to a new study from the U.S. National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), dudes who either stay single or get married rather than move in with a lady they aren't married to gain significant health benefits from their decision. Researchers found that men who are single or married are more likely to visit their doctor on a regular basis than those men who are living with a partner, but not married. This may not make sense on the surface, but stick with it. The benefits didn’t carry over to women, so like many other aspects of relationships, this appears to be a one-way street. The research team studied people from all three groups - married, single and cohabiting – and found that men who are living unwed with their partner are the least likely to have had preventative medicine screenings in the past year such as blood or cholesterol tests. That suggests live-in girlfriends tend not to give a damn about their partner’s health, and these findings apply to both older and younger men. “Cohabiting men are a group particularly at risk of not receiving clinical preventive services recommended by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force,” study author Stephen Blumberg wrote in his findings. Blumberg admitted that the results came as a surprise and added that he and his fellow researchers aren’t sure of the reasons for them. He did point out that the findings indicate those who are living with a man out-of-wedlock may need to take a more active role in helping their partner make health care decisions, which seems obvious but is clearly anything but………

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