- Oklahoma City Thunder
big man Kendrick Perkins has been a liability on the court for several seasons.
He extremely limited offensively, he’s far too slow to defend well and outside
of being a strong veteran presence and good locker room leader, his tangible
contributions to OKC are minimal. But add quality entertainment value to the
mix courtesy of his exchange with the observant Rudy Gay, he of the Sacramento
Kings. "He might as well play with his face painted -- he's a clown to
me," Gay said earlier this season of Perkins. Ironically, the über-serious
Perkins is many things, but he’s not exactly clown-like. At the time, the Kings
were rolling at 5-1 and clearly feeling good about themselves. Even then, a
dismissive Perkins said "these motherf*ckers are still the Sacramento
Kings," and his words started the terse exchange in the first place. After
Gay’s clown blast, Perkins had no choice but to respond and respond he did. "I'd
rather be a clown than be a virus," Perkins said. "At least if I
paint my face, I can wash the paint off. A virus gets in your bloodstream. You
can't get rid of that." Wow….face painting smack and clown jokes….how very
grown up and professional of these two. For his part, Gay probably needs to
stop talking and start scoring because his Kings are 3-8 in their last 11
games, their best player is out with an illness and their head coach just got
fired. Perkins wants you to also remember that Gay has bounced around the
league the past few seasons and that each team he left played better once he
was gone. Gay is not alone in cracking Old Man Perkins, of whom Warriors
forward Marreese Speights said recently that the veteran center’s "game is
terrible.” If nothing else, Perkins’ talent for antagonizing opposing players
might make it worthwhile to keep him around……….
- It’s impossible to get or even stay pissed at the Aussies
and it’s sh*t like this that makes holding onto any anger extremely difficult.
Not only are they a walking party, not only to do they like to drink, dance,
fight and make any night 5,000 times better, but they are willing to step up in
the face of a tragic situation and do what they can to make life better.
Specifically, in
the wake of the siege of a café in Sydney in which hostages were taken by a
radical Islamic kook, the airwaves of Australian social media and even other
nations have become an extremely hostile place in which Muslims are the target
of so much outrage. In the face of those ugly sentiments from keyboard
warriors, Aussies have risen up and started their own social media campaign to
counteract the hate. A Twitter movement, #illridewithyou, is a simple way
for Aussies to reach out to people of the the Islamic faith and try to connect
with them through something as simple as offering to ride on buses and trains
with them or give them a ride to work or the store in order to help keep
Muslims safe from reactionary lunatics who would do them harm simply based on
their chosen faith. The grassroots campaign began with a tweet from user @sirtessa,
who wrote, “ If you reg take the #373 bus b/w Coogee/MartinPl, wear religious
attire, & don’t feel safe alone: I’ll ride with you. @ me for
schedule." The response was swift and strong, leading @sirtessa to toss
out the idea of the #illridewithyou hashtag.
The idea quickly took off and blossomed into a full-fledged grassroots campaign
to make an impact with small acts of kindness……….
- Johnny Depp’s movies aren’t getting any better, but his
rock star life keeps trending upward. He’s hung with numerous successful bands
and performed with a few of them, including Keith Richards and the Black Keys.
Now, he’s buddying around with indie veteran Ryan Adams and will play guitar on
Adams’ next single. Depp will strum his axe on “No Shadow” and “In My Head,”
both of which will appear on “No Shadow,” which drops on Jan. 7 as part of
Adams' Pax-Am singles series. As the name implies, the tracks were recorded at
Adam's own Pax-Am studio in Hollywood and when it came to Depp’s involvement,
the story was predictably cool and slightly random. "Johnny came rumbling
into [the studio] one night with this riff and an idea of what it was about - a
few hour later and one take on a 2 inch 24 track tape machine later we had No
Shadow… typed up on my manual typewriter and born and delivered from a simple
riff we found on his iPhone,” Adams said. “Johnny is a real songwriter and one
of the deepest guitar players out there. That’s us singing and playing and
playing all the parts ourselves with just our pal Marshal Vore on drums."
As Adams tells is, the B-side of the single came together on he and Depp’s
first night in the studio, when they spoke not a single word, but instead
played and jammed together. That story might be exaggerated, but the idea of a
rock star and an A-list actor wordlessly crafting a song is still the short of
cool sh*t that only happens in the lives of people like Adams and Depp. “True
rock and roll moments, as they should be, unfussy and delivered with all the
heart and soul we had that night,” Adams added. His friendship with Depp also
includes a two-night mini-residency on stage for the actor back in September,
when Adams played back-to-back nights at London's Shepherd's Bush Empire.……
- Look the hell out, America. With a rapidly growing culture
of anti-law enforcement sentiment threatening to rock the United States’ boat
in the wake of the Mike Brown and Eric Garner incidents, this one could put the
nation over the top. Because while racial tensions are rocking the U.S. to its
core, nothing puts a populace up in arms quite like the sight of a grandfather
getting his old, decrepit ass Tased by an overzealous small-town cop. That’s the
accusation being levied against Nathanial Robinson,
a 23-year-old Victoria, Texas police officer, by a 76-year-old
motorist. The driver has accused Robinson of using excessive force after he was
arrested, including two Taser blasts over the über-egregious offense of an
expired car inspection sticker. Robinson has been placed on administrative
duty pending the outcome of an internal investigation into his treatment of
Pete Vasquez, with much of the incident captured on the police cruiser's
dashboard camera. The officer initially stopped Vasquez after noticing the
expired sticker, but the police department later noted that because the car
displayed dealer tags, it was technically exempt from inspection. At the time,
Vasquez was returning the vehicle to an auto repair lot. When he was stopped,
he slowly exited the vehicle and pointed out the dealer tags to the
officer. At that point, the dashboard camera shows Robinson
suddenly grabbing the 76-year-old's arm and when Vasquez used his old man
strength to pull away, Robinson responded with vitriol and pushed the septuagenarian
against the hood of the car and wrestling him to the ground. That’s when the
Taser came out, with the video showing Robinson pointing the weapon at Vasquez
as he shouts for him to put his arms behind his back. "He just acted
like a pit bull, and that was it," Vasquez said. "For a while, I
thought he was going to pull his gun and shoot me." The question is how
long until armies of elderly folks with walkers, canes and hurling Metamucil
cocktails at police are marching in cities across America………
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