- The Buffalo Bills don’t always put up the best fight in
games. Their intra-squad rage, however, is in top form. Head coach Doug Marrone
may not appreciate it, but his team is boiling over with a fighting spirit and
it showed at practice this week. After an
intense fight near the end of Wednesday's practice, a few small scuffles broke
out early in the Bills' morning practice Thursday. The tension led to Marrone
demanding an end to the fighting and excoriating his players like a bunch of
second graders on the sideline. Defensive end Jerry Hughes decided that was a
great time to talk back to his coach and that led to Marrone asking Hughes if
he wanted to remain a member of the Buffalo Bills. In short order, the Bills
were running sprints in what looked suspiciously like disciplinary action. The
best part of it all is that Hughes wasn’t even involved in the fight that set
Marrone off. He still felt compelled to yell a few things from the sideline,
including: "Twenty-one days in pads and counting. I love it!" That
comment was laced with a hint of sarcasm. The fight that set it all off came Wednesday
when rookie defensive end Bryan Johnson ripped off the helmet of center Eric
Wood and then connected with several punches. Thursday’s fights were more
muted, but by that point, everyone was on edge. Marrone and Hughes later spoke
on their own after practice and the coach insisted his comments were directed
at the team and not Hughes. "That's directed at anyone who doesn't want to
be part of the team," Marrone said. "I told Jerry that I love the way
he practices and I love the way he plays special teams and how he goes about
it. And we've got to get some other guys who are starters to do that." Ah,
the old “love the passion” defense. The theories on the value of practice
fights are varied, but when it reaches the point that your practice becomes a
circus sideshow, maybe it’s time to dial it down………
- Singing greeting cards are amusing…for all of five
seconds. Arizona Republican District 23 state Senate candidate Jeff Schwartz should
keep this in mind the next time he has a great idea for his campaign. Rather
than send out a boring mailer that his would-be constituents would ignore and
toss in the trash, Schwartz ripped a page from Hallmark’s book and sent out a
singing campaign card featuring the voice of his opponent, longtime state
politician John Kavanagh. The audio was culled from a controversial roast for
Sheriff Joe Arpaio and the card was sent to many of the voters in Scottsdale
and Fountain Hills. "If you were in the Korean War, how come you aren't
rounding up Asians?" the voice inside the card asks, followed by raucous
laughter from the crowd. Kavanuagh insisted the card was ridiculous and not
what voters want, but Schwartz isn’t backing off. "This isn't an attack ad.
This is just a reminder of who Mr. Kavanagh is. Our team thought this would be
the best way to allow people to hear what Mr. Kavanagh had been saying,”
Schwartz said. What he won't do is say whether he has let voters know that the
sound bytes contained in the card are from a roast and not intended to be taken
seriously.
"It's real simple. When you offend the big power brokers ...
they can throw everything but the kitchen sink at you," Kavanagh said. The
two-term legislator has faced criticism for supporting several controversial
bills and one could argue that if a candidate is willing to plunk down a
ridiculous amount of money for lame singing cards that won't work anyhow, it’s
a nice way to liven up an otherwise uninteresting race………
- Joseph Gordon-Levitt wants to hit the next home run for adapting a comic
book to the big screen and with dollar signs and adoring fanboys dancing in his
mind, “The Dark Knight Rises” star says he has made significant progress on the
film adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s graphic novel “Sandman.” Levitt said the project
is still in the early stages of development, but seems enthused by his work
with Gaiman and “Batman Begins” scribe David S. Goyer. “Right now we’re working
on a script. It’s me and Goyer and the screenwriter and Neil Gaiman, as well as
the good folks at DC and Warner Bros," Gordon-Levitt said. "It’s a
really cool team of people. It’s a lot of the same people who worked on the Nolan
Batman movies. It’s really exciting." The process is slow in the early
going largely because unlike other literary tales that have made their way to
the silver screen, “Sandman” has existed solely in the realm of comic book
shops and plastic sleeves up ‘til this point. "There’s not a script yet, we’re
still kind of working it out because it’s such a complicated adaptation because
'Sandman' wasn’t written as novels. Sin
City was written as a novel. 'Sandman' is 75 episodic issues,” Levitt
said. “There’s a reason people have been trying and failing to adapt 'Sandman'
for the past 20 years.” It’s a fair point, but is also worth pointing out that
turning comic book characters into movie heroes is more lucrative now than it
has ever been and thus, a person such as Levitt has a ton of incentive to make
it happen. “Sandman” doesn’t have the long comic book history like Batman or
Superman, as it was first published by DC Comics in 1989 and ran until 1996.
The comic books told the story of Dream of the Endless, the ruler of the world
of dreams. With the alternate moniker Morpheus, the main character Dream is one
of the seven Endless also including Destiny, Death, Desire, Despair, Delirium
and Destruction. This saga has all the makings of a big-budget film that will
polarize audiences based on how true to the original it is perceived to be, so
it should be fun to watch it develop……..
- Everyone should visit their country’s undisputed leader
packing heat at one point in their life. An unidentified Filipino woman can
check that entry off her bucket list after she allegedly attempted to
enter the Philippine presidential palace with a pistol and demanded to see
President Benigno Aquino III. According to Commodore Raul Ubando, head of the
presidential guards, the woman was immediately disarmed Friday and turned over
to Manila police for investigation. Her plan was admittedly short-sighted and
overly simplistic, so its chances for success weren't great. Still, the
sprawling Malacanang palace has several entrances, so maybe she was hoping
there was that one entrance no one uses and everyone forgets to guard most of
the time. As is, she ended up going to a gate far from Aquino's office and
living quarters and never got anywhere close to the president. In spite of the
fact that she was armed and looking to see the president, this kook later
insisted had no intention of hurting anybody but wants Aquino to step down
because Filipinos were getting poorer under his administration. Nothing sends
the message that you don’t want to hurt someone quite like toting a gun to a
potential meeting with them, so kudos to this classy lady for her foolproof
plot. Ubando said no one was hurt and the Manila Police District would decide
whether to file charges after an investigation – and a mental competency
examination to determine if the woman has any psychological disorder………
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