- “Mad Men” star Christina Hendricks knows that her
time working with Don Draper isn't going to carry her forever, so she’s moving
on and finding her next gig. That gig is an upcoming comedy series from “Almost Famous” and “Pearl Jam Twenty” director Cameron
Crowe, with top producer J.J. Abrams also attached to the project as an executive
producer. The show will feature roadies, following the day-to-day life of a
fictional hit rock tour through the eyes of its crew members, and Hendricks has
signed on to portray Shelli, the band’s hard-nosed and extremely buttoned-up production
manager. Her addition bolsters an already-stacked cast that includes Luke
Wilson, Rafe Spall (Black Mirror),
Peter Cambor (NCIS: Los Angeles)
and Keisha Castle-Hughes (The Walking
Dead) and while that sort of cast might suggest that sustaining the show
in the long run will be difficult, it should make for a promising start. Crowe
is working with Showtime on this one and is set to start shooting the pilot
episode early next year in the television production hot bed of Vancouver,
Canada. Showtime already has plenty of successful dramas and comedies, but
given the high turnover rate for such productions, discovering the next big
thing is a top priority at all times. Hendricks has plenty on her plate in the
meantime as she will have one final season portraying Joan Harris on “Mad Men”
when the show’s final season airs in the spring. The build-up for those
episodes should also serve as a nice platform to generate interest for
Hendricks’ next big endeavor on a new
network……….
- Riot Watch! Riot Watch! The natives – literally - are
restless down in Brazil, where 30 Indian maniacs armed with bows and arrows tried
to break into the chamber of deputies in the lower house of the Brazilian
Congress. Not enough angry citizens take up arms and attempt to storm their
legislature these days, let alone going old school with bows and arrows. A nice
slingshot or two and maybe even pitchfork or two would have added to the
atmosphere and they also might have helped the Indians attain their goal
instead of police and security personnel being able to hold them at bay with
pepper spray. Four police officers reportedly sustained light injuries during
the brief conflict and the Chamber of Deputies press office said a police
officer escaped injury when an arrow struck his boot. Normally when law
enforcement reports that shots are fired in a conflict, they’re referring to bullets,
but hearing that an arrowhead had snipered an officer’s boot is actually
comical on some level. So what had these Indians so irate? They were protesting
a bill that would give Congress the authority to demarcate indigenous territory,
usurping an authority which currently resides with the executive branch.
Indians and other opponents of the measure claim it would give more power to
large landowners and mining and lumber companies that operate in the Amazon
region where most of Brazil's indigenous population resides. In other words,
it’s the age-old tale of native people worrying that their land is about to be
ripped from them and taken by richer, more powerful people who don’t give a
damn about its value to them. Sound familiar, America? It should………
- Does anyone really need to hear what Robert Griffin III has to say at this
point? Dude is the quarterback of a 3-11 team that has been eliminated from
playoff contention, he’s only starting because the backup who ripped his gig
from him was injured and is out for the season and quite frankly, no NFL signal
caller has fallen further from where he was two seasons ago than the former No.
2 overall pick in the 2012 draft. So regardless of his motivation – which is
allegedly being tired of his words being twisted or taken differently than he
intended – Griffin’s decision to go radio silent on social media for the
remainder of the season is both the right call and totally irrelevant. He
hasn't tweeted or posted anything on Facebook since Thanksgiving. The only
thing he’s done on Twitter of late was to retweet a picture with a fan to help
raise awareness for ALS and even in news conferences, he’s going full-on cliché
in response to virtually every question, sounding like a younger, dreadlocked
version of Bill Belichick at times. "It just felt like, for me, anything I
was saying, whether it was positive or negative, whether it was a positive
retweet or anything, was getting twisted and turned against me and against this
team," Griffin said. "I feel I can be free up here and talk to you
guys, but sometimes things get twisted and turned and it creates a distraction
for the team. I didn't want that to happen." He added that he tries to
tune out the intense scrutiny he receives but admitted that doing so is
difficult. "I played a game and then I was out for seven weeks and there
was still a ton of noise," Griffin said. Once the season ends, he added,
he will return to being more communicative, but at that point, he’ll be better
off working on his horrible mechanics and figuring out where he’s going to be
playing next season…….
- What is the cost of injustice? About $2 million, if you
ask police in Boston and for the state of Massachusetts. In the wake of massive
demonstrations protesting the grand jury decisions in recent police killings involving
two unarmed black men elsewhere in the United States, law enforcement in the Bay
State are lamenting the financial fallout from their necessary responses to the
uprisings. State Public Safety Secretary Andrea Cabral said police have
increased security, but noted that there are many issues to consider and cope
with in such situations. “There’s a lot of critical thinking that goes into the
state police response to these protests and a lot of good balance between the
need to enforce the law and restraint, and respect to people’s rights,” Cabral
said. Because of the unrest, there has been a copious amounts of overtime and
those extra hours do not come cheap, especially for three separate
demonstrations taking place about a week apart. Cabral said police have
spent close to $2 million to keep protesters away from the highway and
oncoming traffic and those numbers have caught the attention of state political
leaders. “We have two critical issues. We have public safety and we have
freedom of speech and I don’t believe you could ever put a price on freedom of
speech,” said Sen. Minority Leader Bruce Tarr (R-Gloucester). Worse still,
those fiscal figures don’t account for smaller protests happening around the
state. Massachusetts residents are irate after grand juries decided not to
indict the police officers who killed Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri and
Eric Garner on Staten Island, New York. With other police shootings and
incidents already popping up since those two cases, this sh*t storm isn't going
away any time soon……..
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