Sunday, November 16, 2014

Golfers can bleed, cannibals in Brazil and Old Navy v. fatties


- Prepare to be revolted. In fact, find a waste receptacle nearby because this story is going to turn your stomach in ways that you never thought possible. Once you’ve braced yourself, journey south of the equator to Brazil, where three people have been charged with killing at least two women, eating parts of their bodies and using their flesh in pastries. Yes, it’s “Sweeney Todd” come to life, except without good-looking people playing the central parts. Exit Johnny Depp, enter Jorge Beltrao Negromonte da Silveira, his wife, Isabel Cristina Pires, and his mistress, Bruna Cristina Oliveira da Silva. This entire story is just so twisted and sordid that it seems beyond belief. A dude convincing his wife and his mistress to work together on anything is far-fetched, but to have that plan involve going cannibal on two people just pushes it over the edge. The trio were arrested in April 2012 and allegedly confessed to luring women to their house by promising them a job as a nanny, but it was just this week that Jorge Beltrao Negromonte da Silveira was sentenced to 23 years in prison – hopefully in solitary confinement – and his two leading ladies each received 20-year terms. According to prosecutors, this collection of freaks kill their victims and stuffed their flesh into meat pies they sold to neighbors, schools and hospitals claiming they contained tuna or chicken. Unfortunately for these nut bags, they didn’t go Native American and use every part of their kill, do police found remains of two women in the backyard of the suspects’ house. The clincher, though, was when police found a 50-page book titled Revelations of a Schizophrenic that was written by de Silveria in which he claimed he heard voices and was obsessed with killing women. Yet at the start of his trial, he offered up a remarkably non-insane defense that didn’t do him much good. "I committed a horrible, monstrous mistake. It was a moment of extreme weakness and brutality that I regret,” he said. A moment? Here’s guessing it took more than a moment to carry out your sinister lot, you sick, sick freak……….


- Look who’s not so indie and obscure anymore, Ryan Adams. Adams, who has existed for two decades in an oft-ignored worm hole of indie rock success and built a loyal following among fans on the musical fringe, has gained more mainstream notoriety in recent years and he’s about to get even more thanks to a gig scoring a new Al Pacino movie. Adams will pen the songs for “Danny Collins,” a project starring Pacino and directed by Dan Fogelman. The film is set for release next year and will feature Pacino as an aging rock star determined to change his life after finding an old letter from John Lennon. Adams will team with Theodore Shapiro for the project and for anyone thinking the singer might be a bit dry on ideas after releasing his eponymous new album earlier this year, just know that Adams is famous for having scores of hoarded material in his musical reservoir and records much more than he’ll need for any new project, so the odds of him having a tough time coming up with satisfactory material for this one are slim. The real question is whether Pacino, who doesn’t exactly have a storied history of crooning convincingly on the silver screen, can convincingly pull off whatever songs Adams and Shapiro craft for him. Given Pacino’s trademark screaming of at least half his lines in every movie, perhaps screamo is the right genre choice for any and all songs on this one………


- Victoria’s Secret, you have company. The overweight out there are coming for the maker of overpriced undergarments, but they’re also gunning for the maker of affordable casual clothing for the masses, Old Navy. The retailer, owned by San Francisco-based The Gap Inc., was cruising along with its annoying ads when trouble came knocking digitally in the form of customer Renee Posey, who was surfing Old Navy’s website and noticed that plus-sized women’s jeans cost $12 to $15 more. She then scanned the site to check the prices for plus-sized men’s jeans and found that the price was the same as with regular-sized jeans. “I was fine paying the extra money as a plus-sized woman, because, you know, more fabric equals higher cost of manufacture,” Posey wrote on a petition on Change.org, which has drawn more than 23,500 signatures. “However, selling jeans to larger-sized men at the same cost as they sell to smaller men not only negates the cost of manufacture argument, but indicates that Old Navy is participating in both sexism and sizeism, directed only at women.” Ouch, R.P. Those are hurtful words. Posey’s petition demands that Old Navy “stop charging plus-sized women more for clothing than you do straight-sized women and men and ‘big’ sized men.” As one would expect, Old Navy has a damn good reason for the price discrepancy. “For women, styles are not just larger sizes of other women’s items, they are created by a team of designers who are experts in creating the most flattering and on-trend plus styles, which includes curve-enhancing and curve-flattering elements such as four-way stretch materials and contoured waistbands, which most men’s garments do not include,” the company said. In other words, women are more discerning about style, so you can’t give them drab gear like you can to fat dudes. In response, Posey denounced the explanation as spin. “Don’t your regular women’s clothes include figure-enhancing elements? Or do you only charge extra for them when they’re for big women?” she wrote. In a nation with an alarming 100 million plus-sized women and where the average now a size 14, this is a fight of note………


- Golfers bleed too. They may seem like out-of-shape slugs who swing a light club once, walk at a leisurely pace to where their ball lands and have a caddy carry their bag, but that doesn’t mean they don’t suffer on the course. French golfer Victor Dubuisson was proof of that fact during the second round of the $7 million Turkish Airlines Open on Friday. Dubuisson, the defending champion and a key contributor on the Europe Ryder Cup team that curb stomped the United States in Scotland in September, needed on-course assistance to treat a persistent nose bleed in Belek and was a bloody mess by the time he finished his round. The Frenchman, who suffers from allergies, was clearly struggling midway through his round. Blood fell from his nose onto his golf shirt and in very distinguished fashion, he crammed a Kleenex up his nose to stem the crimson flow. "It's not good and I didn't feel well at all," he said after his round at the Montgomerie Maxx Royal course. Sure, other athletes may get bloodied from on-field collisions or hard falls to the court, but that doesn’t make Dubuisson’s on-course bravery any less impressive. After firing a 5-over-par 77 on Thursday, he battled back to just two over par through 13 holes when a storm rolled in, forcing the suspension of play and providing a chance for much-needed medical attention for the man who vaulted onto the international stage 12 months ago with his first European Tour win at the same event he is now trying to survive……..

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