Sunday, February 22, 2015

Bitter rock and roll divorces, bitter NBA divorces and bitter Russian sycophants


- This is the reason intra-band dating is almost always a terrible idea. Even when the band in question has a long and successful run spanning the better part of three decades, it’s going to end badly and the resulting relational drama will play out in a very public setting. Such an ending is sad to see for one of punk rock’s true likeable couples, former Sonic Youth guitarist Kim Gordon and her ex-husband Thurston Moore, the band’s lead guitarist. Gordon is releasing a book detailing her life and experiences fronting a band that rode the rising wave of punk through the 1970s, 80s and 90s and right on into the new milennium and knowing she needs to put the most salacious details out there in order to drum up interest in the tome, she’s leading by firing unprovoked shots at her former flame. The scathing critique of Moore centers on the group's final show and in it, Gordon rips Moore's "rock star showboating," which is typically just known as being the lead guitarist for a rock band. “"We had exchanged maybe fifteen words all week. After 27 years of marriage, things had fallen apart between us,” Gordon wrote in the excerpt. “Thurston double-slapped our bass guitarist Mark Ibold on the shoulder and looked across the stage, followed by Lee Ranaldo our guitarist and Steve Shelley our drummer. I found that gesture so phony, so childish, and such a fantasy.” Gordon’s seemingly overblown ire is predicated upon the notion that Moore has “never been the shoulder slapping type.” She viewed it as his declaration of freedom and return to flying solo. Oversensitive much, K………


- Petty thieves are petty thieves because they lack the skills to a) contribute to society in a meaningful way or b) be the kind of high-end thief that steals items of great value instead of looking to rip off convenience stores and fast food eateries. Having said that, every now and then a low-end thief makes an effort so impressively stupid and ridiculous that he or she deserves credit for being willing to go to such awful extremes. That doesn’t make a smash-and-grab robber who made-off with more than $10,000 worth of scratch-off lottery tickets any less of a target for Orlando police, but the way this criminal went about his business showed a solid grasp of using what you have to gain that which you do not deserve. Surveillance video captured the hooded suspect in a crouch, using his head as a battering ram to force his way through the glass front door at the Sunshine Food Mart in Orlando. The suspect lunges forward as glass shatters around him onto the floor and once inside, he went directly for racks of Florida Lottery scratch-off tickets. Once he had grabbed all he could get, he exited the same door he had just broken down and theoretically spent a whole lot of time with a penny in hand, scratching off the stolen tickets and piling up mountains of that annoying silver powder that covers scratch-off ducats to obscure the text printed on them. Alas, his efforts were for naught, as lottery officials canceled the stolen tickets before they could be cashed-in by the suspect. Maybe next time, butthead……..


- Speaking of bitter divorces and snarky commentary, enter former Phoenix Suns point guard Goran Dragic and Suns management, neither of whom have been able to hide their disdain for one another since he was swapped to Miami prior to Thursday’s trade deadline. Dragic started the relational drama when he said he no longer trusted the franchise and wanted out and team president Lon Babby fired back, labeling those comments as "unfair and unwarranted." That probably would’ve been sufficient, but leave it to general manager Ryan McDonough to further excoriate Dragic in speaking about the deal in which the team sent Dragic and his brother Zoran to the Miami Heat and received guard Brandon Knight from the Milwaukee Bucks. "We feel like we got the best player in the trade [Brandon Knight], coming or going," McDonough said those things after a three-way trade that sent away a player who nearly led the surprising Suns to the playoffs last season. The problems arose last offseason when Phoenix added a third point guard, Isaiah Thomas, to go with Dragic and Eric Bledsoe. "Every move we make is with the goal of getting the Phoenix Suns to a championship level," McDonough said. "Sometimes, players view that as a good thing. I think they usually do. The good ones do. But, sometimes, players get a little selfish and are more worried about I, me and my than us, our and we." Verrry subtle, GM. Saying without saying that Dragic is a me-first prima donna who would rather be a star than a champion. Part of the GM’s snippy comments certainly stems from the heat the front office is taking for trading Dragic and also swapping Thomas to Boston despite sitting in ninth place in the Western Conference and having an outside chance at the playoffs. Getting defensive rarely produces happy results……….


- Riot Watch! Riot Watch! Sure, it’s a bunch of raging Communist flunkies gathering in downtown Moscow, but you take what you can get when it comes to large crowds of irate people uniting the rise up against something. This particular demonstration of direct outrage came when thousands of ticked-off Russians staged a demonstration against what they describe as a "fascist coup" one year ago in neighboring Ukraine. Those gathered also get credit for multitasking their rage, as many in the crowd used the occasion as a chance for some wholly unnecessary and unprovoked shots at Western nations. Many in the crowd toted hostile banners that said: "Die, America!" Yes, anti-Western sentiment in Russia is boiling over, but this should be about Ukraine and not your disdain for a nation not ruled by a fascist dictator who imprisons anyone who doesn’t meekly follow his every directive with a vodka-fueled smile. The demonstrators gathered near Red Square to protest events in Ukraine, where people who wanted the government to honor its previous pledges to strike a favorable trade deal that would have strengthened its ties with the European Union. The resulting uprising led to the ouster of the country's Russia-leaning president on Feb. 21 and since then, chaos has reigned and Russia has unabashedly invaded its neighbor and turned Ukraine into a Russian proxy state where freedom is but a dream. The Moscow protest included an eclectic group of extremists, with ultranationalist bikers, pensioners, war veterans, student organizations and other pro-government groups coming out to make their Putin-directed personal thoughts and ffeelings felt. Police pegged the number of attendees at 35,000, but those numbers, like everything else pro-Putin in Russia, are dubious and difficult to verify with anything the rest of the world would commonly call actual facts……..

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