Tuesday, August 26, 2014

Bigfoot + the Civil War, Prince doubles the fun and Steelers stoner mania

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- If an NFL team is going to be without one or both of its top running backs when they open the regular season, it had damn well better be for a good reason. If and when Pittsburgh Steelers running backs Le'Veon Bell and LeGarrette Blount are suspended for their team’s opener against the visiting Cleveland Browns, their absence will most definitely not fall under that heading. Both players were arrested on marijuana possession charges Wednesday, shortly before the team flew to Philadelphia for a preseason game the following night. Bell famously told the arresting officer that he had smoked his chron several hours earlier and was totally not high at the time, which combined with being arrested for pot possession alongside a man named Blount made for the highest of high comedy. So far, neither player has been disciplined and both player in the game against the Eagles. Still, Steelers coach Mike Tomlin said the Steelers have not ruled out suspending Bell, who was also charged with driving under the influence, and Blount. "Everything's on the table," Tomlin said. Tomlin’s boss, Steelers president Art Rooney II, suggested that the team will take its time and allow the league to handle the matter before taking action. It makes sense because the team would love to not have to show any spine and let the NFL play the role of the heavy in the case, then nod its head and issue a strongly worded statement of support letting the world know that it does not tolerate such behavior from its players. Bell and Blount apologized Thursday night in the weakest possible manner for “causing a distraction,” but their apology has been far from the only weak aspect of this mess……….




- Bizarre real estate listings are quite the gold mine for the right realtor. For example, just imagine that you are the person hired to sell a gold mining ghost town surrounded by majestic snow-capped peaks in Canada’s westernmost province. You could view this as a hellaciously difficult assignment that is better left for someone else…or you could view it the way John Lovelace does. This is a man who is selling the abandoned 50-acre town of Bradian, one of many towns built during British Columbia’s gold mining heyday. The current asking price is a mere $907,000 and that modest sum will get you streets, vacant lots and 22 empty homes that were built 80 years ago. Toss in breathtaking views, nearby lakes and rivers and piles of snow in the winter and you have a truly idyllic setting….that is in a state of total disrepair. “If you expect to go up with a can of paint, forget it,” Lovelace said of Bradian. He initially set the price for the town at $1.3 million all the way back in 2010, but it has generated little serious interest and remains unsolved. “We have gotten quite a great response from as far away as Australia,” Lovelace lied. “If somebody went in there with some money and they got the services up to speed and created those (vacant) lots, they’d make a crap load of money. But that’s a five to 10-year process.” Bradian’s history is much sunnier than its present, as it cropped up in the 1930s as a small bedroom community for the neighboring Bralorne mine. For decades, the mine churned out a study supply of gold and Bradian produced 4 million ounces of gold over a 40-year stretch until the mine closed in 1971, when gold dropped to $35 an ounce and the mine’s operators could no longer turn a profit. The mine reopened on a drastically smaller scale in 2011, but the town itself has been own by Vancouver couple Tom and Katherine Gutenberg, senior flight attendants for Air Canada, since 1997. The Gutenbergs time in town and brought their two children to help with repairs to the homes there, but their children are grown and there is little reason to return to an abandoned town in the middle of a frozen tundra. Act now, folks……….




- Prince remains one of the most overrated artists in modern music. His supposed genius continues to be wildly overblown and his talents are far too hyped, but it’s still nice when an established artist goes above and beyond in delivering new music to his or her fans. The Bizarre One will do exactly that on Sept. 29, when he releases not one, but two new albums. He will drop his 37th album, “Art Official Age,” that day in coincidence with he and his new band 3rd Eye Girl releasing their very first album, “Plectrum Electrum.” The solo album will contain previously released tracks “Breakfast Can Wait” and “Breakdown” and feature psychedelic artwork that will thrill anyone who is stoned enough to buy two Prince albums in one day. The artwork is already viewable on the album’s official website and it represents Prince's return to Warner Bros. Records, the label with which he acrimoniously split 18 years ago. That spat led to the infamous changing of his stage name from Prince to simply a bizarre symbol in an attempt to sabotage his contract, but that didn’t stop Warner Bros. from loudly trumpeting his return like nothing ever happened. "Prince is one of just a handful of visionary artists who have truly reshaped and redefined modern music and culture,” said Warner Bros. Records Chairman and CEO Cameron Strang in a statement. “For the past 35 years, he has never stopped evolving, challenging himself, reinventing his sound, and pushing boundaries. In true Prince fashion, he has just given us not one, but two extraordinary albums that express the incredible range and depth of his talent." All might not be totally well in the relationship, as Prince ripped major labels as recently as May and suggested that executives of such companies were getting too rich off his immense musical talents………




- Kooks are everywhere. Some of them live near Civil War battefields and rather than telling the world they see the ghost of Robert E. Lee or Stonewall Jackson riding through their backyard, they insist on proclaiming that they are the latest to see the elusive and nonexistent creature known as Bigfoot. Meet David Childers, co-founder of the Delta Paranormal Project, who claims he was in the woods of an abandoned playground near downtown Vicksburg when he saw a living, breathing sasquatch strolling through the woods of an historic town. As Childers tells it, he was taking pictures last November looking for ghosts or paranormal activity when he was startled by an unknown beast. He kept tabs on the area and his theory received some totally worthless support on Aug. 12, when local resident Peyton Lassiter was strolling along nearby Wisconsin Avenue and spotted a giant footprint that he returned to make a mold of. Knowing Childers’ search for the bizarre, Lassiter reached out to Childers about his find. The two men linked up and returned to the woods to poke around. "I just happened to turn around real quick. I saw this creature. It was about six , seven foot tall, and it's hard to exactly get the correct height because of the distance away from me but it stood up and just jetted off and you know it happened so quick, but I know it was like a grayish brown color. I know for a fact it wasn't a bear or a deer," Childers said. Sadly, Childers never got a picture of Bigfoot because the sighting happened so quickly. If only his reactions were quicker or his brain bigger………

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