- France already had a major ‘tude. Giving the Frenchies a
pair of Nobel Prizes is just asking for their omnipresent arrogance to grow by
leaps and bounds and it didn’t take long for that reality to materialize. Minutes after French economist Jean Tirole won the Nobel prize
for economics Monday — following French author Patrick Modiano's win in
literature last week — the French took to social media sites to blast anyone
who actually dared to believe those jingoistic ignoramuses at Time magazine who
seven years ago declared French culture to be dead. Prime Minister Manuel Valls
hit the world with the hashtag "FiersdelaFrance (Proud of France)” and he
was not alone in letting the rest of the world know just how the land that
wine, cheese and supreme condescension from lowly café waiters built felt about
the situation. After Patrick Modiano, another Frenchman among the stars:
congratulations to Jean Tirole! What a thumb in the eye to french
bashing!" Valls tweeted to his 90,500 followers. President Francois Hollande
said the prize "puts a spotlight on the quality of research in our
country" and Economy Minister Emmanuel Macron said Tirole "makes our
country and the French economics school proud, with the line of those waiting
to pat the country on the back for accomplishments they had nothing to do with
stretching on for days. That it was the first Noble economics prize since 1999
without an American winner made France’s big win even sweeter and yet, it’s
ironic because France hasn't balanced a budget in decades, its economy is
stagnant, joblessness is mounting and its deficit is rising. Oh, and Hollande
is the most unpopular president in modern French history, so there’s a good
chance he’s looking to hijack this moment to distract from his own piss-poor
performance and/or score positive PR points………..
- Courtney Love has found her next actual rock star to glom onto and use
to extend the 15 minutes of fame her talent-less ass has dragged out for far
too long. She’s extracted 20-plus years of mileage out of her marriage to Kurt
Cobain, but even the lingering fascination with Cobain’s death among fans and
conspiracy theorists will wane at some point. So Love, being the leech she is,
needs to latch onto someone else’s star to keep her own from fading away. That next
target has been chosen and it is Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan, with
whom love had an on-again, off-again relationship many years ago, before she
married Cobain. According to Love’s delusional world view, she is the subject
of several of Smashing Pumpkins songs and after she exited Corgan’s life and he
stopped writing songs about her, his band "stopped making hits.” Love
claims that much of Smashing Pumpkins' 1993 album “Siamese Dream” is actually
about her and when pressed about which of the Pumpkins’ many songs is her
favorite, her inflated ego grabbed the mic and refused to let go or shut up. "Yeah,
loads, because there are so many of them that are about me. 'Siamese Dream',
'Bodies', 'Today'... He stopped writing about me and then he stopped making
hits,” Love said. "There's one on 'Siamese Dream' called 'Spaceboy' –
that's about his brother, but the rest are all pretty much about me.” Right,
because a musically mediocre shrew with a massive self-worth and delusions of
grandeur always inspires so many opuses about her. Hopefully Corgan doesn’t
take the bait on this one and keeps on moving with his band, which just so
happens to be much better than Hole or anything Love has ever released as a
solo act………
- This is the sh*t rich people do. They decide to spend six
figures on something that weird teenager down the street with a laptop and
spiky purple hair could have done for $50 and they feel damn good about
themselves for doing so. Hilton Head is the refuge of the rich and spoiled and
when they want to draw more people to their wildly overpriced tourist trap of a
hometown, they don’t launch a glitzy new advertising campaign highlighted by
television spots and YouTube videos starring local luminaries. No, Hilton Head
throws money at its problems and the end result is a new app that will
supposedly help tourists navigate the town and find the best places to visit,
the best deals to enjoy and the top spots to dine. The app is expected to
launch next spring and it comes with a $100,000 price tag. The town is spending
the money with the plan to build an
app that will list events, restaurants, hotels, stores, and many other things
relevant to those who visit the town. The Hilton Head Island-Bluffton Chamber
of Commerce Visitor and Convention Bureau will spend that money willingly, with
the end goal of the app becoming a digital welcoming center for tourists.
Arguably the funniest part of the entire transaction is that the company Hilton
Head officials have hired to design the app for those who visit their
beach-centric, warm, Southern charm-laden destination is based in the decidedly
non-tropical, unappealing tundra of Nova Scotia, Canada. If Canadians can't
lure people to a vacation paradise and convince them of the merits of escaping
the frozen hell hole from whence they are trying to escape, then no one can. If
the app fails, of course, then someone else will have to clean out the change
tray in their car to finance the next great idea to boost tourism, but rich
people can always move on to their next yacht ride and toast themselves with
Cristal either way……….
- The New York
Knicks will not be a good basketball team this season. As such, they will need
a lot of serenity throughout the course of the 82-game slate awaiting them. Thankfully,
their new team president is a teepee-living, peyote-smoking,
vision-quest-taking hippie who specializes in all things mystical and kooky.
Phil Jackson is earning eight figures to transform the perpetually
disappointing Knickerbockers and from the sounds of it, his makeover is
starting upstairs. Jackson revealed at the New Yorker Festival in Manhattan
that he has hired someone to put the team through "mindfulness
training" this season. "This is one of the things that they have to
go through if they're going to be part of the Knick organization," Jackson
said. Yes, because they will suck, they will lose a lot of basketball games and
they must always be mindful of how terrible they are while earning millions of
dollars. Jackson may rock the moniker "Zen Master,” but there is nothing
in Eastern philosophy that is engineered for helping a team of wildly overpaid
professional athletes who have yet to grasp the basic concepts of defense
suddenly become a title contender. Props to Jackson for bringing in an
instructor who has been teaching the team about mindfulness, a form of
meditation that stresses the importance of staying in the moment. "There's
a mindfulness training program that's very logical and very calm, quiet, and
we've started the process with this team, and [first-year head coach] Derek
[Fisher is] all for it. He's a proponent of it," Jackson said. "We're
about action; we're about this intense activity that we've got to get after.
And this mindfulness is about sitting still and being quiet and controlling
your breath and allowing you to be in the moment, and yet it's so vital for a
team to have this skill or players to have this skill.” In truth, it’s Knicks fans who need
mindfulness training to calm themselves down because after a few weeks of
watching the defense-free ball jacks who populate their roster, calming down
ain't gonna be easy……..
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