- Rarely do the efforts of animal rights kooks produce
anything worthy of celebrating beyond the confines of their
faux-leather-upholstered-chair-filled meeting halls. This is the über-rare
exception and it circles back to a controversy hatched one year ago when Pope
Francis tossed a pair of doves from the window in St. Peter’s Square. Frank, in
the tradition position of being flanked by a pair of children at a window of
the papal studio overlooking the square, released a pair of doves on the last
Sunday in January. To the horror of ass hats who treat birds and their lives
like they’re actual human beings with a capacity for higher thought and
reasoning, a crow swept down and attacked the doves. It was the way of nature,
yet the bleeding hearts who cannot stomach the horr-a of any pain befalling an
animal for any reason decried it as an outdated practice that needed to be
revised. The Catholic Church, it seems, was listening and with the new
direction the pontiff has taken it in many respects since his appointment as
the man in charge, Sunday’s display at the Vatican was drastically different
than its predecessors. That’s because in lieu of letting a couple of lame-ass
birds fly free, the pope release – wait for it – FREAKING BALLOONS! That’s damn
right, balloons. Because everyone loves balloons and in no way are plastic or
mylar spheres attached to ribbons a possible choking hazard for animals or an
environmental hindrance. Well done, Vatican. Balloons bring joy to all who see
or hold them and their shiny, reflective awesomeness is a real treat for the
world. Here’s hoping everyone enjoyed the first of what will hopefully be many
scenes of the pope looking like an excited third grader in Missouri releasing a
helium balloon with his name and school address written on a card that is affixed
to a balloon that will float away and hopefully be mailed back by someone in
the next state over…………
- At this rate, it’s only a matter of time before Hollywood
gets to work on a sequel to a movie that technically doesn’t have any more
story to tell. “American Sniper” ended with the tragic death of legendary U.S.
Navy sniper Chris Kyle, but now that the film has earned first place at the box
office for a second straight weekend and banked $200.1 million domestically,
the idea of a sequel is all but guaranteed. This time around, the war flick
snagged $64.3 million, easily beating back a weak-ass challenge from the
ridiculous “The Boy Next Door.” Jennifer Lopez’s supposed-to-be-scary-movie
effort managed just $15 million in its debut, good for second place. Third
place went to kids’ movie “Paddington,” owner of $12.4 million in movie dollars
and a two-week haul of $40.1 million. “The Wedding Ringer” snagged fourth
place thanks to an $11.6 weekend, giving the Kevin Hart comedy $39.7 million in
two weeks of work. That was more than enough to hold off “Taken 3,” which took
one step back to fifth place with $7.6 million and has amassed just $76 million
in its first three weeks. The sixth slot on the list went to “The Imitation Game”
($7.6 million) and the seventh spot belonged to newcomer “Strange Magic,” which
banked $5.6 million in its debut. “Selma” slogged its way to eighth place with
$5.5 million, giving the civil rights biopic $39..2 million in five weeks and
proving that people would rather watch CGI-ed bears, people getting blown up in
Iraq and a past-her-prime reality karaoke judge/pop star than the tale of an
iconic civil rights icon. The unquestioned bomb of the weekend was “Mortdecai,”
which managed a mere $4.1 million in its debut amidst waves of critical hate. “Into
the Woods” completed the top 10 with $3.9 million, while “The Hobbit: The
Battle of the Five Armies” (No. 11), “Unbroken” and the wildly disappointing “Blackhat”
(No. 15 after just two weeks) fell out of the top 10……….
- What a year 2014 was at America’s 224 major airports. Specifically,
what a year for the ignorant and forgetful among us who showed up at their
local plane landing place with a weapon of some sort and tried to carry said
weapon on board along with their toothpaste, aspirin and laptop. According to a
new
Transportation Security Administration study on the just-concluded year, government
screeners at airport security checkpoints seized a record number of guns in
2014. Idiots and ignoramuses of all kinds tried to board planes while packing
heat, including a 94-year-old man at New York’s LaGuardia Airport who had a
loaded .38-caliber revolver clipped to his belt. Maybe this old-timer was
abiding by the “I’ve been here longer than you all and I’m going to die soon,
so I’ll do whatever the hell I want” principle that elderly folks often
subscribe to, but this codger was far from alone in his abuse of federal laws..
The study found a significant increase in the number of firearms seized in
carry-on bags, with a total of 2,212 firearms confiscated in 2014, compared to
1,813 in 2013. For that 22-percent increase, give yourself a big pat on the back,
America. Oh, and these weren't people who had an unloaded gun they simply
forgot was in their bag, because about 83 percent of the confiscated guns were
loaded. This past year is no exception, as the number of seized guns has been
on a steady uptick since 2005 and while 2,212 guns among some 650 million air
travelers and 1.7 billion carry-on bags last year seems like a small number,
clearly the figure should be much closer to zero if travelers were both smart
and paying attention to the world around them. The biggest trouble spots were Dallas/Fort
Worth (120), Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson (109), Phoenix Sky Harbor (78), Houston
George Bush (77) and Denver (70) and among those numbers were a grenade and a
loaded assault rifle with three loaded magazines. Well done, U.S.
Americans from coast to coast, sea to shining (bullet-strewn) sea………
- Can hockey find a way to be relevant on the wider
landscape of sports? The NHL is hoping so with its announcement of the newly resurrected World Cup of Hockey
-- an eight-team international tournament to be held in the fall of 2016. NHL
commissioner Gary Bettman broke the news about the event, which the league
hopes to use as a launching point for an upgraded international calendar that
will include an innovative Ryder Cup-style tournament pitting Europe’s best
players against their North American counterparts. The 2016 World Cup of
Hockey, the first edition of the tournament in 12 years, will be built around hockey
powers Canada, the United States, Russia, Sweden, Czech Republic and Finland,
with the field rounded out by a team of European All-Stars from countries not
represented in the competition and a team of North Americans 23 or younger. It
will be held exclusively in Toronto with exhibition games likely held in Europe
and possibly in an NHL city, with the title decided by a best-of-three finals.
Bettman and his lackeys are clearly hoping this tournament and other events
will help the sport improve its global profile and the prevailing theory is
that the four years between the 2016 Cup and the 2020 version will include a
drastic overhaul of the format that turns the event into a true global
tournament with teams such as Switzerland, Slovakia and Germany getting an
opportunity to qualify for the big tournament in a separate event. Players
could be allowed to play on teams based on heritage, etc., and not necessarily
place of birth. Along the way, the league is trying to drum up interest among broadcast
partners for the World Cup of Hockey to boost revenues and make the tournament
sustainable in the long term………..
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