- Maurice
Jones-Drew must be a big fan of Hyde Park, warm beer and fish and chips. If
not, the Oakland Raiders’ new running back would not be throwing his weight
behind arguably the worst expansion idea the NFL has had in some time. The
rumors of an NFL team moving to London full-time have been floating around for
some time, ever since the league started playing the occasional regular season
game in Wembley Stadium in 2007. Since then, the NFL has played at least one
game in the city each year and of late, talk of flipping a team with subpar
attendance across the Atlantic Ocean and creating a logistical nightmare with
regular eight-hour flights for three-hour games has amped up. Jones-Drew, who
played his first game at Wembley Stadium in 2013 as a member of the
Jacksonville Jaguars and will return there in 2014 as a member of the Oakland
Raiders, is oddly in support of the idea. "You know what? I think they
deserve one. It's just the toll it takes on the body because it's so hard to
fly across the pond. I think the fans deserve it and London deserves it because
it is a great city," Jones-Drew said. "My only worry is the toll it
would take for a team to go back and forth and how would you get that done?
There are some things they would have to work on -- they might have to bring
the Concorde back and cut that time in half. But you never know.” He’s right,
unfortunately, because anything that will increase the 11-figure annual
earnings figure the NFL will soon attain is on the table for the owners and
commissioner Roger Goodell. That NFL games are something of a novelty for Brits
and a full-time team would rank far behind the the United Kingdom’s many
professional soccer club is one of the many solid arguments against such a
move, but cash always trumps all……….
- Duuuuuuude….this is soooo not cool. Spokane, Wash.
resident Mike Boyer was totally stoked to be a pioneer, he accomplished his
goal and now, he’s suffering because of it. Boyer, like so many ganja-loving
denizens of the Evergreen State, was really stoked when Washington became one
of two stages to legalize recreational hippie lettuce use. He bided his time
until the law took effect and when it finally happened, he cashed in a perfect
plan to become the first Washingtonian to buy recreational marijuana in Spokane. Like a “Lord of the Rings” fan
camping out at the local multiplex for a week to get the best seat at the first
midnight showing of the latest film in the franchise, Boyer was at the front of
the line when the city’s first marijuana shop opened its doors. He thereby
garnered plenty of media attention for his notorious purchase and at the time,
that seemed pretty cool. It no longer seems cool, as confirmed by the fact that
Boyer posted his resume to Craigslist Wednesday afternoon, saying that he had
lost his security guard position at Kodiak Security after his high-profile
marijuana purchase at Spokane Green Leaf one day earlier. And yes, failed cops
who don’t carry an actual gun and work as glorified babysitters who watch
security monitors from a broom closet at the mall actually do have work
standards they must meet. Kodiak Security seems to have higher standards than
most given that it took the company less than 24 hours to dispatch Boyer. “I
lost my job due to the news coverage of me being the FIRST PERSON TO BUY
MARIJUANA LEGALLY IN SPOKANE! I regret nothing. But now im (sic) jobless and
have decided to post my resume here,” Boyer wrote in his Craigslist posting.
Maybe revisit that no regrets philosophy when you burn through your new stash
of the dank, bro…….
- There are certain concerts where one expects to see fights
break out in the crowd from start to finish. Rage Against the Machine, Slayer, Slipknot
and Drowning Pool all come to mind, but pop princess Ellie Goulding typically
does not make the list. Yet there was Goulding, headlining a show at the
Eden Project in Cornwall, England earlier this week when a scuffle in the crowd
interrupted her rendition of “Anything Can Happen.” If a fight was going to
break out at a show by an electro-pop artist, one might theorize that it would
be a chick fight and indeed it was. Two women in the audience started the brawl
and Goulding attempted to end it by stopping her set and addressing the
offending parties. "Girls, what's up? That song is meant to be happiness,
not fights," she said. "No drink throwing. It's not nice. It's really
annoying and it's bloody sticky." Throwing drinks in someone’s face is
usually a reason to fight and proving that she was more concerned with the
altercation at hand than enjoying the concert which she paid a fair amount of
British Pounds to attend, one of the brawlers got lippy with Goulding in
response to the singer’s rebuke. No one knows what she said because she’s an
irrelevant chick fighting at a pop concert and didn’t have a microphone, but Goulding
was having none of her snarky retort. “We've all got stories, doesn't mean you
have to tell them,” the singer shot back. “Stop boos. Booing isn't nice. "It's
quite a laddish crowd tonight, fights breaking out, drinks spilling.” Her peacemaking
efforts didn’t exactly qualify her for a post-music gig with the United Nations
and stopping a chick fight as opposed to a full-on, multi-man street fight
because tatted-up, head-banging maniacs at a Slipknot show isn't so tough, but
give Goulding credit for trying………
- The legislators of Poland do not seem to be a big fan of Prime
Minister Donald Tusk. Granted, everyone should be a big fan of a man rocking
the last name Tusk, but the Polish parliament doesn’t subscribe to that theory
and it’s probably why opposition leaders have held two votes of no confidence
already this month. Tusk’s center-right government survived its second such
vote of July this week after the parliament decided 236-155 in its favor. The
vote went down in the Sejm, or lower house of parliament. It came after the
opposition tried to seize on the leaked conversations of some leaders as a
reason why Tusk and his friends absolutely had to go. While the ruling party
can celebrate the result, it represents a significant setback for Jaroslaw
Kaczynski, head of the nationalist Law and Justice party, who called the vote.
However, don’t expect it to end the targeting of the prime minister for
eviction from a position of power. Kaczynski isn't backing down from his
accusations that Tusk is guilty of dragging Poland into a political crisis and of
general incompetence in guiding the nation of 38 million. The first vote of no
confidence, ironically, was requested by Tusk himself to strengthen his
position during talks at the European Union. If anyone else feels like calling
a third vote of no confidence, now would be the time………
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