Wednesday, October 29, 2014

NBA owner bigotry, logic v. Halloween and "Better Call Saul" goes dramatic


- Keep it up, jailed Venezuelan opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez. Lopez is fighting a tyrannical, fascist regime that refuses to give any oxygen to dissenting voices and has kept him in jail for his role in the street demonstrations that shook the socialist Latin American nation this winter and spring. The government seized upon Lopez’s willingness to speak out against its heinous and corrupt means of governance as a chance to charge him with inciting violence. The charge incensed the right-thinking free world and the United Nations has used its total lack of power and influence to request Lopez’s freedom. The case was supposed to move forward Tuesday, but Lopez boldly refused to appear in court in an attempt to pressure the government to respond to the U.N. request. Instead of a scheduled court sham, er, appearance, Lopez refused to leave the military prison where he is being held, citing the court's refusal to respond to U.N. demands for his freedom. The U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detentions totally sounds like a made-up entity in an Austin Powers movie, but it appears to be a real group and it has called on Venezuela to immediately release Lopez and other jailed government opponents. Last week, the U.N.'s top human rights official joined the chorus against Nicolas Maduro’s regime and its stance on the issue, but the government has continued to ignore logic, common sense, fairness, justice and the toothless U.N. by keeping Lopez and his fellow dissenters right where they are……


- The particulars of the “Breaking Bad” spin-off “Better Call Saul” are coming into focus courtesy of Bob Odenkirk and Vince Gilligan and despite previous intimations that the show would be full of laughs, the actor and show creator are suggesting that it will skew in a different direction. Odenkirk will reprise his role as Saul Goodman in the new series, which is expected to launch in 2015 and said the show will be more dramatic than most fans suggest. The expectations of laughs came largely from the way he played Saul on “Breaking Bad,” but it seems Saul has different gears to his personality. Gilligan furthered than notion and said fans should keep an open mind. “It's total drama, man. It's 85 percent drama, 15 percent comedy," Gilligan said. Believe it or not, Odenkirk is actually looking forward to this character shift and believes it will be fun to delve deep into the mind of Saul. "One of the cool things about playing Saul now is that I get to have those moments [of depth]," Odenkirk said. "I've certainly gotten a chance to dig deep in Better Call Saul." Comedy or drama, the show will explore the origins of “Breaking Bad” protagonist Walter White’s lawyer Saul Goodman and when the new show debuts, Sail will be going by the name James McGill and doing legal work with fixer Mike Ehrmantraut. The show will be set in 2002, a full six years before Saul and Walt fictionally met. The first season will hit the air in February with 10 episodes, to be followed by an already-commissioned second season of 13 episodes……….


- Boom and boom.  Riverside, Calif. was a town in need of someone to step up and shut down a display that was ruining Halloween for so many and thankfully, the powers that be took care of the problem. For the second time this decade, a gaudy and oversized homage to a fake holiday has been shut down, leaving its creators and some neighbors crushed and everyone else not-so-secretly pumping their fists in joy. Kevin Judd said police officers told him that the show at the home on Deercreek Drive violated a noise ordinance and  given how loud and obnoxious that sh*t was, they were right. “They sat and watched for a while and then they waited until it was over,” Judd said. “And then they came over, told us pretty much we were done.” His wife Amber claimed the display was “just purely to bring happiness and cohesiveness to the families and friends,” seeming to ignore the fact that wasting electricity and putting up tacky decorations is the surest way to bring down anyone who has to look at it. The over-the-top coordination of lights and music was a collaboration between two families, so blame can be spread equally between the Judd family and their neighbor across the street, Mark Betty. Betty allowed the Judds to use his home, which is across from a park, as a space for families to gather an enjoy the lights. “The crowd was sitting in the grass area. We weren’t blocking traffic or leaving trash or anything,” Kevin Judd said. Oh, and this arrangement was a blatant attempt to circumvent the law because two years ago, the Judds had a similar display and were told to shut it down. Maybe this time the message will get through………


- Memo to all NBA owners and executives: If you have any thoughts, remarks or observations that may be considered racist, bigoted or otherwise may stereotype a specific group of people in any way, go ahead and run them by someone much smarter than you before putting them in a memo, email, fax, letter or text message. Men and women smart enough to make the amount of money it takes to own an NBA should probably know better, but after Golden State Warriors co-owner Peter Guber wrote to team employees to say that he regrets if anybody was offended by his unintentional use of "hoodish" in an email, it’s worth pointing out. Guber joined soon-to-be-former Atlanta Hawks owner Bruce Levenson, who announced last month that he would sell his controlling interest in the and apologized for expressing racially offensive views in an email in August 2012. Levenson said the Hawks struggle with attendance because "the black crowd scared away the whites and there are simply not enough affluent black fans to build a significant season ticket base." Guber likewise went full-on idiot when he listed "hoodish" as one of the languages he planned to learn as he replied to a team email praising the franchise for having five international players on this season's roster. He tried to cover up his mistake by saying as a Jewish man, he intended to type Yiddish. The message came after Warriors vice president of communications Raymond Ridder forwarded a news release from the league to team employees letting them know that the league's 30 teams will have a record 101 international players from 37 countries and territories. Guber responded to the email: "I'm taking rosetta stone to learn Hungarian Serbian Australian swahili and hoodish This year. But it's nice." Nice try, P. Autocorrect snipers a lot of people and maybe it really did happen here, but if hoodish isn't a real word, then why would your phone or computer be trying to change whatever you typed to it………..

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