Saturday, January 10, 2015

Air waitresses v. The Man, Sean Lennon + Fat White Family and Rob Konrad goes badass


- Who are Fat White Family? They’re the guys trying to build some buzz for their second album by recording it with John Lennon's old Beatles equipment while working at his son Sean Lennon's recording studio in New York City, that’s who. The London-based band also has Sean Lennon at the helm as a co-producer after meeting him at a performance at SXSW last year. If it was only that for ties from the project to The Beatles, then it would probably be a positive. However, the walking (talent-deprived) freak show that is John Lennon’s widow Yoko Ono is also a part of this because work on the record is currently taking place at Lennon's state-of-the-art studio in a remote upstate mansion owned by Ono. "Almost everything we pick up, Sean'll be like, 'Oh that was my dad's'," guitarist Saul Adamczewski said. "We've been using this old mellotron of his – I don't know if it's the one on 'Strawberry Fields…', but for the sake of the story, let's just say it is." Interestingly, Adamczewski admitted that the band didn't know who Lennon was when they first met and were actually paying more attention to his girlfriend because she’s freaking hot. "She's in his band and she's stunning, so we were all staring at her going, 'Oh my god, who's that girl?'" he recalled. "Joe [Pancucci, bassist] kept trying to chat her up; he kept approaching her, and she kept moving away. It was our old drummer who approached Sean, kissing his arse, basically, so they hit it off and he took us all out for dinner. He's a cool bloke. A strange bloke.” So he’s “a strange bloke,” you say? Lennon had some interesting words of his own for Fat White Family, calling them "chaotic and out of control" with "very extreme personalities." It sounds like a wonderful working relationship and the recipe for an album that could be great or a total dumpster fire………..


- This might be the most adorable request for help ever. It comes from Australia, where there is an urgent need for donations of mittens for koalas whose paws have been burned in recent bushfires. The International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) is asking for people to either donate or make cotton mittens for the animals to help them in the recovery process. The fires have raged over the past week in South Australia, Victoria and New South Wales, and koalas, which (brace yourself for tear-jerking mental imagery) move very slowly and haven't been able to get their furry behinds moving fast enough to evade the flames. That has left many of them with severe burns and despite the best efforts of rescue workers, there are a lot of hurting koalas out there. "Just like any burn victim, koalas’ dressings need changing daily, meaning a constant supply of mittens is needed by wildlife carers," IFAW native wildlife campaigner Josey Sharrad said. The good news for anyone with a soul and a pair of eyes is that the sad scene unfolding thousands of miles away is one in which they can play a positive role. IFAW workers need mittens made from clean, 100-percent cotton and you don’t need a fashion degree or advanced sewing skills to participate. "These mittens are simple to make even if you’ve never sewn before," Sharrad said. The IFAW has a special page with a koala mittens template pattern and information on where to send the finished mittens as well. With an influx of mittens and care from firefighters and citizens in Victoria and South Australia, these koalas have a fighting chance and the world will be a better place because of it……….


- Either former Miami Dolphins fullback is a world-class badass or he’s a world-class liar, with no alternatives in between. The six-year NFL veteran, who played for the Dolphins from 1999 to 2004 and was released by Miami in March 2005, survived a boating accident in the Atlantic Ocean on Wednesday night by swimming nine miles to shore, according to the Coast Guard. The story Konrad told when he was found on the beach by the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office at 4:40 a.m. ET on Thursday morning after he contacted them is that he was fishing alone off the coast of South Florida when he fell from his 36-foot boat, which had been operating on autopilot. Petty Officer Mark Barney of U.S. Coast Guard said Konrad was believed to have been in the water for 10 to 12 hours while swimming to the beach. Friends first became concerned when he didn’t show up for dinner and contacted the Coast Guard, which later sent a helicopter to look for him. After a tense night of not knowing where Konrad was, he turned up on the beach in the early morning hours and was taken to a local hospital, where he was treated for hypothermia symptoms and released. Playing fullback in the NFL and smashing head-on into 250-pound linebackers for a living is tough, but being alone in the ocean in the middle of the night, trying to swim for shore and knowing that if you stop swimming you’re going to die, that’s a different endeavor entirely. Konrad, perhaps not surprisingly, declined to speak to local media about the event after his rescue. He is listed on a website for investment firm KT Capital as a principal and perhaps has better things to do with his time than spin tales of heroic swims/lies about what really happened out at sea. Athletes and fabricated stories of great accomplishments are nothing new, but here’s hoping this one is legit and that Konrad just went full-on badass when his life was on the line……….


- Some flight attendants just have a crappy attitude. They’re tyrants at 20,000 feet, domineering over their small sphere of influence in the world the way secretaries, stadium ushers and other little people often do. Others have a bizarrely positive outlook on the world given the steady slew of ass hats they deal with on a daily basis. Thirteen former United Airlines flight attendants are currently copping a major attitude with the company, but they may have a good reason for doing so. The baker’s dozen claim they were fired for refusing to work a commercial flight from San Francisco to Hong Kong after the airline discovered "threatening" words and "menacing" images drawn on the tail cone of the Boeing 747. While some loser getting inside the gate and onto the tarmac to paint the words "BYE BYE" in 6-inch-high letters above two faces, "one smiling and the other with a more troubling devilish expression" in oil from the aircraft's auxiliary engine is a bit weird, it’s hardly the sort of menacing message that ISIS is scrawling on a plane before trying to blow it up or crash it. Yet the spooked flight attendants became aware of the images on July 14, they say United Airlines ignored a "serious and credible threat to the security and safety of passengers by ordering them to fly in order to avoid cost and disruption to the airline's flight schedule and revenue.” Attorney David Marshall claimed that the flight attendants informed the airline they "uncomfortable flying unless United took steps to address this security threat, including deplaning 300-plus passengers and conducting a thorough security inspection of aircraft." They wanted the plane search for explosive devices and the airline claims the incident was investigated by its flight operations and safety teams. "There was no credible security threat," the airline said in a statement. "All of FAA's and United's own safety procedures were followed. The pilots were willing to fly, but the air waiters and waitresses were not, leading to their eventual firing. The federal complaint seeks the restoration of all 13 jobs, back pay and compensatory damages……….

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