- Threat disposed of and chron utopia protected. Check and
check Uruguay. Thanks to the electoral savvy of a majority of Uruguayan voters,
the
biggest threat to the country’s new legal marijuana market has lost his party's
presidential primary. Sen. Jorge Larranaga seemed like a strong candidate to represent
the National Party this year, but clearly the many stoner voters around the
country learned of his strong opposition to the new ganja law, which puts the
ruling Broad Front government at the center of a regulated marijuana industry,
and acted accordingly. Really, this is all on Larranaga for opposing a logical
measure that aims to defeat organized crime by producing cheaper, better, legal
dank and selling it in pharmacies to registered adults – who then pass it along
to anyone with spare cash. "We are going to overturn this law that
legalized marijuana growing. Nobody plant anything! Don't plant anything because
we're going to knock it down," Larranaga proclaimed ahead of Sunday's
primary. Don’t plant anything? Dude, why are you so angry and why are you
screaming? You know what you could smoke that would help you calm down?
Thankfully, the other leading candidates to succeed President Jose Mujica in
October are on the record favoring the legal cultivation and purchase of marijuana
for personal use. Larranaga’s loss was congressman Luis Lacalle Pou’s gain and
Pou is smart enough to support home-grown marijuana and keeping much of the law
as is. Analysts believe the vote is a sign that voters are slanting in favor of
the government’s pot program and the favorite for October’s main election is former
President Tabare Vazquez, who won the center-left Broad Front's primary Sunday
and supports the new law. Either way, it looks like legalize hippie lettuce is
on solid footing in a forward-thinking South American nation……..
- Oscar winner Lupita Nyong'o is
on a roll. She snagged her coveted Academy Award for her role in “12 Years A Slave” and now, that success has
taken her to a galaxy far, far away. Yes, Nyong'o has scored a role in “Star Wars: Episode VII,” which recently
began shooting at London's Pinewood studios ahead of a December 2015
release. Nyong'o joins fellow newcomer Gwendoline
Christie, best know for her role as Brienne of Tarth in Game of Thrones.” "I
could not be more excited about Lupita and Gwendoline joining the cast of
Episode VII," says Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy in a statement. “It's
thrilling to see this extraordinarily talented ensemble taking shape." The
ensemble cast to which Kennedy referred includes several returnees from the
first three films in the Star Wars franchise, including original stars Harrison
Ford, Carrie Fisher and Mark Hamill. In addition to Nyong'o and Christie, other additions to the outer space family include Adam
Driver, Andy Serkis and Oscar Isaac. In addition to winning an Oscar and being
selected as the next pretty face to be permanently emblazoned in the minds –
and on posters pinned to the walls of – basement-dwelling dorks around the
globe, Nyong'o was also named People
magazine’s most beautiful person in the world, which might not be the sort of
esteemed honor a respect actor is looking for, but a framed cover of the
magazine alongside an Oscar and a signed contract to become a member of the
Star Wars universe makes for a fearsome trio………
- He didn’t know….seriously. New York Knicks president Phil Jackson is new to the job and he’s
never been a team executive in the NBA before, so the league really needs to
lighten up on the man often known as the Zen Master. Jackson might not be so Zen
right now, not after he was fined $25,000 by the NBA for tampering with Oklahoma
City Thunder guard Derek Fisher. Since taking over the Knicks and firing their
entire coaching staff following a terrible 2013-14 season well short of the
playoffs, Jackson has been on the hunt for a new head coach. He has flirted
with, talked about or even inquired about virtually every human being who a)
played for him when he coached, b) still has a pulse and c) isn't currently
incarcerated or committed to an insane asylum. His top candidate, Steve Kerr,
turned him down to take the same position with the Golden State Warriors. That
left Jackson with a hole to fill and very few candidates who meet his desired
qualities of knowing the system (the triangle) he likes to run and having been
tied to Jackson during his career. One possible choice is the reason Jackson is
digging loose change from the storage big on his Harley and chipping off
$25,000 to a charitable organization. Fisher played this season (as long as you
have a very loose definition of playing) for the Thunder and delivered little
in terms of pushing the team forward. If anything, he was über-slow and clearly
a year or two past when he should have stopped playing. His basketball IQ is
high and he is widely viewed as a guy who could walk off the court as a player
and right into a head coaching job, a la Brooklyn Nets coach Jason Kidd.
However, talking about a player under contract with another team for any reason
is enough for the NBA to administer a modest fine and thus, Jackson was dinged
for $25,000 for statements he made at a news conference last week about
possibly hiring Fisher as Knicks coach. The league said in a statement that the
fine was assessed to reinforce its annual reminders to teams of the league's
anti-tampering rules, which prohibit teams from direct or indirect expressions
of interest in other teams' impending free agents. Jackson could feign
ignorance, but one suspects he’ll treat the fine with the same utter contempt
and condescension with which he treats most situations where someone tries to
check him…….
- Wait….MySpace still exists? This is allegedly true and it
reportedly could come back to haunt anyone unfortunate enough to have past ties
to the long-forgotten social media site. An email sent over the weekend to thousands
of former MySpace users featured the terrifying headline, “Your Photos are
Back!" According to MySpace, it still possesses 15 billion pictures,
amongst which users can find "the good, the rad and the what were you
thinking.” Anyone who wasn’t alive and old enough to use a computer in the mid-‘90s
may not remember that MySpace was once popular, but it quickly faded once
Facebook debuted and claimed the social media throne for a time. Purchases by
former man-bander Justin Timberlake, it rebooted in 2013 as a site that focused
on music and artists with streaming services, industry news and ways for fans
to connect. That overhaul has failed to turn the site into anything more than
the forgotten technological relic of the past that it has become and in
October, MySpace claimed it had 31 million monthly users, ranking it light
years behind Facebook's 1.28 billion infant photo-oversharing parents and
grandparents. If someone is lame enough to log on to their old MySpace account,
they can indeed find all of those old photos, but any comments and private
messages they once received are long gone. According to a company spokesman,
the site is reaching out to past users and attempting to “re-engage them
through a personalized experience." Sadly, this personalized
experience hasn’t generated much public juice for MySpace and the $35 million
Timberlake invested to buy the site is looking like his worst investment choice
since the money spent to man-perm his hair back in his N-Sync days……….
- Give it up for the old timers. Specifically, make noise
for 91-year-old
Harriette Thompson, who kicked all kinds of ass and dominated the course Sunday
at the Rock ‘N’ Roll San Diego Marathon. Thompson not only laced up her kicks and took to the
course with thousands of other runners, but she also elbowed her way past the
crowd and made her way into the record books by completing her 26.2 miles in
7:17:14. That time may not have earned her the big prize money handed out to
the elite runners, but it did make Thompson the oldest person to complete the
marathon and set a world record for the fastest marathon time for her age
group. But wait….there’s more. Not only did this woman do at the age of 91 what
many people one-quarter her age are too lazy and not dedicated enough to do,
she made her comeback in a race she has run before after missing the event last
year due to being diagnosed with skin cancer. That’s right, she is 91 years
old, a skin cancer survivor who is still receiving treatment and yet she is
tough enough and committed enough to train for and complete a full marathon –
that she flew across the United States from North Carolina to California to
take part in. In light of her own cancer diagnosis, Thompson has raised $90,000
for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. “I think the fact that I have so many
friends and family and if I can help at all by raising funds, then it’s
worth it and also its beneficial to me health wise,” Thompson said. To help
keep herself in shape and in a good state of mind, this grandmother of 10 is
also a yoga enthusiast and quite frankly, the most badass grandma around……..
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