- Sometimes, great bands break up at the very worst possible
time, spontaneously combusting under the weight of egos, attention whore
tendencies and sheer greed right as they’re putting out their best music and
discovering who they truly are as a band. The Smiths are not such a band. Yes,
they are an iconic emo band that cranked out album after album of moody,
melancholy rock that served as a soundtrack for the tortured over the course of
two decades plus, but it turns out that their breakup in 1987 could not have
come at a better time. Sure, it came just months after an extremely
well-received release by the title of “Strangeways, Here We
Come,” but the successor to that gem was clearly not going to be a
winner if singer-songwriter
Johnny
Marr is to be believed. According to Marr, The Smiths were planning a disco
album before they split and seeing as disco remains the single darkest, ugliest
and most inherently awful musical era ever – narrowly edging out the man band
era – having a great band like The Smiths delve into disco years after the
genre was buried and thankfully never to be revived ever again would have been
a major black eye for everyone involved, even for Marr and Morrissey. Marr also
noted that his happiest moments with the band came when he woke up "in a
dark hotel room in Bayswater one winter's evening in 1984, to find I'd recorded
'How Soon Is Now?' through the previous night." That must have been a
wonderful occasion, but filtering it through the lens of having recorded a
disco album three years later is something no artist could ever come back from………
- Europe likes to think of itself as forward-looking
socially and environmentally and occasionally, its actions match up with its
perceived societal superiority. Today is one of those days because the European
Union has approved new rules that clamps down on the use of thin, feeble plastic
bags that are hazardous for the environment and a choking hazard for anyone
with an IQ below 35. Thanks to the EU’s 28 member nations putting their final
stamp of approval to new rules that will likely require consumers to use
sturdier, re-usable bags or face extra charges. Many countries already force
shoppers to pay for bags if they want one to carry their food home in, but
under the new policy, member states are required to reduce the use of such
plastic bags by 80 percent by 2025. In a kind and benevolent twist, all 28 of
them will get to determine how their populace is going to hit that target over
the next decade. Danish Green MEP Margrete Auken pushed the legislation through
parliament and was quick to pimp her accomplishment has "a historic
breakthrough in tackling the pervasive problem of plastic waste." Maybe ol’
Margrete has a point, given that this is the first time in the short history of
the union that there are EU-wide binding measures on the issue. Credit to
Europe for recognizing the sad reality that every EU citizen used an average of
198 such bags just five short years ago and deciding to band together and do
something about the problem……….
- If you’re a marginal NFL defensive back barely hanging on
to a roster spot, here’s one thing you don’t want to do with your offseason. Green Bay Packers veteran defensive back
Jarrett Bush is scheduled to become a free agent on March 10 and has actually
made most of his impact on special teams. He was even voted a special-teams
playoff captain by his teammates each of the past four seasons, but is by no
means a game-changing player. Well, unless you consider getting arrest early on
a Sunday for misdemeanor public intoxication following an incident at Evelyn's
Big Italian Restaurant in the downtown area of Vacaville, California to be a
game changer. Bush was eventually released with no charges being filed, but
that doesn’t mean it’s a good look for a professional athlete to be a part of
the mayhem when there’s a fight outside a restaurant and police roll up on the
scene to find that athlete liquored up and belligerent. According to the police
report, "refused to leave and continued to create a disturbance, and as a
result was taken into custody and charged with public intoxication." To Bush’s
credit, he seemed to sober up as the night went on and was cooperative with
officers after being detained. He got to spend some quality time in Solano
County Jail after being booked into the facility at 3:21 a.m. and he exited
with the distinction of being the second Packers player to be arrested this
offseason. The Packers are a long way from being the Cincinnati Bengals in
their heyday when it comes to offseason arrests, but drunk and disorderly
conduct and weapons charges and a charge of felony possession of marijuana like
those facing defensive tackle Letroy Guion in Florida aren't exactly good for a
team’s public image……….
- If your life has reached the point where you’re sneaking
around on your hands and knees videotaped naked girls and women in dressing
rooms at the mall and selling those videos to porn sites, your life clearly has
not gone the way you’d hoped. Such is the existence of Sean Moses, who was
arrested and charged with 86 counts of invasion of privacy and one count of
child pornography after surveillance video from the King of Prussia Mall
outside Philadelphia showed him reaching under doors to videotape women
changing in dressing rooms at stores including Forever 21 and Express.
According to police, Moses later posted the clips on pornography websites,
violating the privacy rights and dignity of ladies of varying ages in the most
vile way possible. He clearly has some serious deviancy issues, having also
sneaked up to suburban homes and videotaped nude or partially nude women and
filmed a 2013 swim meet at Villanova University despite an order from the
school to stay away after an unspecified 2002 campus incident. Detectives
characterized Moses’ situation as one of the largest invasion-of-privacy cases
they've seen in the area and added a new level of skeeviness to the case by
revealing that Moses kept a "jail bait" folder on his computer with
videos of girls who appeared to be under 18. Radnor Township police
Superintendent William Colarulo said his detectives found the videos posted on
porn sites and tracked them back to Moses, working to remove the videos from
the Internet along the way. "He had such a following on the Internet that
his fans would repost his videos as him,” Colarulo said. The investigation
began in September when two young women in Bryn Mawr reported seeing a light in
their window that turned out to be a camera. Detectives soon found a video
unimaginatively and helpfully named "Amazing Brunette and roommate who
noticed peep" and included as a description: "When you get caught out
of position you ruin what could have been an awesome semester in voyeurism
101." From there, it was just a matter of connecting the perverted
dots……….
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