- Life needs to ease up on the Detroit Lions. Seriously, the
everyday humdrum of existence should cut the NFL team representing America’s
most downtrodden city a break because a 3-1 record isn't everything. Sure, the
Lions are tied for first place in the NFC North and they’ve looked damn good
through four weeks. But for the third time in the past year and a half, they
are dealing with an injury caused by something inane, moronic or just plain
ridiculous. This time, it’s tight end Joseph Fauria dealing with a sprained left ankle
that has him out of commission. For a few days, the mystery of how Fauria
rolled his ankle lingered because the last time the world saw him, he was doing
fine and had just survived another 60-minute game in which 300-pound men were looking
to squash him like a grape. So if the injury didn’t happen on the field, then
when did it occur and under what circumstances? Allow him to explain. See,
Fauria’s tale is that he missed two steps while chasing after his 3-month-old
Pomerian/Husky mix, Lil' Rufio, at his apartment last Wednesday night. As he
braced himself for the fall, he shifted all 265 of his pounds onto his left
foot and the force rolled his ankle. "He was about to pee and I was like,
'Come here you little ... nugget,'" Fauria said. "And I was chasing
him downstairs. I wasn't running but I was chasing him downstairs and I just
misstepped and I reached with my left foot and I just didn't end up well."
When a teammate and the team trainer didn’t answer his phone calls for help,
neighbors drove him to the hospital and he went to work on his injury story. He
could have lied and said he suffered the injury at a volleyball tournament he
attended earlier in the evening, but elected against it. Instead, he joined linebacker
Stephen Tulloch, out for this season after tearing his ACL while celebrating a
sack of Aaron Rodgers, and former Lions receiver Nate Burleson, who missed
seven games last season when he broke his left forearm trying to save a sliding
pizza box from the front seat of his car………
- Potato salad is disgusting. It’s that gooey stuff you
push to the back of the table at the family picnic because you know Aunt June
slapped it together with her usual low standards and it has the consistency of
spackle with slightly less taste. But it also has magical fundraising powers,
as proven in
early July, when Zack "Danger" Brown opened a Kickstarter campaign
requesting $10 in crowdfunding to make his very first batch of it. The joke
turned into a real-life case of people wasting money on sh*t they don’t need,
as an Internet crowd served up $55,492 in donations. Brown decided to use the
money on a public party in a city park in his hometown of Columbus, Ohio, to benefit
charity. He became a viral sensation who appeared on "Good Morning America,"
where he rocked shorts and sneakers with no socks with a cheap T-shirt with
homemade iron-on lettering that read, in all caps: "I JUST BACKED POTATO
SALAD." He has since admitted that the oddity of it all has surprised him.
"At Day One, we had $200. I thought that was way too much money," he said.
Still, he pressed on and offered prizes for various levels of donation: A bite
of the potato salad for those contributing $3. A hat for a contribution of $25.
A T-shirt for $35. Bigger incentives were dangled for those who gave more than
$35 and some went as high as $3,000. Amazingly, Brown’s Kickstarter page
registered more than 4 million views and currently ranks No. 4 on the website
for all-time visits, according to Kickstarter. It tracks ahead of LeVar
Burton's Reading Rainbow, which ranks eighth, and the Oculus Rift virtual reality
headset, which ranks 10th. Both of those causes have garnered more money, but
folks clearly like looking at a page about potato salad more………
- What was and what could never be….Led Zeppelin is the
answer to both. Iconic Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page has delivered the sad news that
there is zero chance of his legendary band ever playing together, but tagged it
with some good news – assuming a half-baked offshoot of Led Zep is your idea of
good news. Page was hosting a listening event for his remastered versions of “Led
Zeppelin IV” and “Houses of the Holy” at Olympic Studios in London when he was
asked if he had any interest in bringing the band back together. "I don't
think it looks as though that's a possibility or on the cards, so there's not
much more I can say about that. I'm not going to give a detail-by-detail
account of what one person says or another person says,” Page explained. “All I
can say is it doesn't look likely, does it? I've just said it doesn't look very
likely." Led Zeppelin last played together in 2007 for a one-off tribute
to Atlantic Records' Ahmet Ertegun at London's O2 Arena, but have engaged
in only childish hijinks between themselves since. Page did float the idea that
he wants to form his own band and play live material right across his whole
career, including his Zeppelin work, in the near future. "If I was to play
again it would be with musicians that would be… some of the names might be new
to you. I haven't put them together yet but I'm going to do that next year,” he
said. “I would play material that spanned everything from my recording career
right back to my very, very early days with The Yardbirds. There would
certainly be some new material in there as well." Oh, so Led Zeppelin Lite
with Robert Page and Four Other Random Dudes is going to deliver half-assed
versions of “Stairway to Heaven,” “Kashmir” and “Ramble On” for the masses?
Hooray……..
- We see what you’re doing, Italy, and we appreciate it a
hell of a lot. Everyone can appreciate an Italian lawmaker ripping the scab off
of a secret
arrangement in which intelligence agents paid imprisoned top Mafiosi for
information during several of the years when Silvio Berlusconi was premier.
Berlusconi, of course, is the deposed prime minister whose downfall was
hastened by fraud, misconduct and allegations of wild bunga bunga sex parties.
Know who’s still a little bitter about not getting a bunga bunga invite? Claudio
Fava, vice president of Parliament's anti-Mafia commission, who said Tuesday
that magistrates who investigate Italy's organized crime syndicates were kept
in the dark about the practice, which came to light in a written protocol
between the now-defunct intelligence agency Sisde and the national prison
administration agency. Premier Matteo Renzi declassified the document in July
and it was thrust into the spotlight at the appeals trial of a former Sisde
chief, Mario Mori, in Palermo, Sicily. The policy existed between 2003 and 2007
and this week, Fava’s commission will hold hearings in an attempt to determine if
information bought from bosses was useful. Fava said he suspects s the
information might have been used to derail investigations into whether
politicians had links with the Mafia. "We didn't know then" that the
arrangement was in place, and "we still don't know what information was
passed on from Mafiosi to intelligence agents," Fava said. In his view, the
intelligence agency was "managing top bosses held in tough prison
conditions for a period protracted in time." He made it clear that he
wants to know who was paid and how much and his crusade has a back story, as
Fava is the son of a journalist slain by the Mafia in 1984. Shady mob
business and Italy in the same sentence, though? Seems a bit far fetched……….
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