- Mariah Carey isn't exactly looking to tread new musical
ground these days, is she? She’s about to take up residency at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, the place where has-been pop stars
go to rake in eight-figure annual salaries to perform a few shows a week for
drunk, gambling-staggered tourists who need a break from losing all their money
at the blackjack table. She’s also coming home to Epic Records 15
years after leaving the record label and when she gets there, she’s going to
recycle the ultimate in regurgitated music products, her greatest hits album.
She’s in the process of making an album featuring updates and duet versions of
her biggest songs, which is certainly a departure of the typical greatest hits formula
of trotting out 15 or so old song and two new, hastily assembled and thoroughly
crappy “new” songs in an effort to Jedi mind-trick fans into buying the whole
thing. Carey’s comeback to Epic will find her back together with Doug Morris,
who inked her to the label back in 2003. Morris is now CEO of Sony Music, Epic’s parent
company, so the aging songstress’ new multi-album deal will be overseen by L.A.
Reid, the producer who helmed Carey’s multi-platinum album “The Emancipation Of Mimi” in 2005.Carey’s
most recent album, the unimaginatively and boringly titled “Me. I Am Mariah,” dropped in 2014 and featured collaborations with
Nas, Miguel, Wale and Fabolous. It moved a mere 117,000 copies in the United States,
the lowest-selling of Carey’s career, which is precisely why you grab a
big-money deal to become a Vegas lounge act and go to work on a recycled
greatest hits effort……….
- Verrrrrry disappointing, three Danish women
arrested at an airport at the Kenyan coast for allegedly attempting to smuggle 134
pounds of the mild stimulant khat from Africa back to their home country. If
youre going to travel to a foreign country and attempt to jam a human being’s
worth of illegal drugs into your luggage for the return flight, then you had
damn well better make that drug something of immense value and potency. Instead,
this trio of small-time rooks was taken into custody by police at the Moi
International Airport in Mombasa after their khat was disocvered packed inside
four suitcases. Richard Okweya, a police official, said two of the women were
charged at the Mombasa law court with exporting undeclared goods, because khat
is not illegal in Kenya. It is illegal in Denmark, meaning if these three women
had not been apprehended before takeoff, they very likely would have ended up
in three pairs of the silver bracelets once they landed back in Copenhagen. Khat
has been illegal in Denmark since 1993, but this case is now based in Kenya,
not Scandinavia. Charges against the third suspect were dropped because she was
not travelling with the consignment, so she was released, leaving her two
co-conspirators to plead guilty to the charges, which come with a $550 fine for
each or a jail term of six months. Next time, maybe these brilliant ladies will
come up with a better plan for acquiring, smuggling and selling illegal
substances from abroad…or they’ll just be like normal adventurers and travel
without needing to traffic drugs in the process……..
- New York Yankees first baseman Mark Teixeira is right when he says that
Major League Soccer at Yankee Stadium is “going to suck,” even if his reasoning
is a bit off. Teixeira is against the newly minted NYCFC MLS team playing at
the famed baseball venue because he believes that soccer is going to cause
major damage to the grass. "It's going to suck, but you have to deal with
it. It's going to tear up the infield, but there's nothing we can do about it,
so we'll deal with it,” Teixeira said. The Yankees' front office agrees to
disagree with the first baseman and believes the Yankee Stadium field will be
fine for NYCFC to share it with the baseball team. "The field will be fine
for both sports," Yankees president Randy Levine said, adding that the the
team has studied the issue. He’s confident that with a period of three days
between the NYCFC game and the Yankees' next game prior to all but one series,
there is plenty of time to tend to the turf. "We spent a lot of time with
a lot of people, including our stadium operations and grounds crew, who we
think are best in the world," Levine said. "Man City, who are soccer
experts, and their crew also advised us on how to keep the field in good
shape." Of course, damaging the turf isn't the reason NYCFC at Yankee
Stadium is going to suck. No, it will suck because it is still soccer, namely a
second-rate soccer league that is still an afterthought on the international
scene. MLS is where aged-out international stars go to die and adding more
teams to a league that remains a second-class citizen behind the major American
professional sports leagues isn't exactly a way to strengthen the product………..
- What is the price of being a U.S. Army pimp? For newly-demoted Sgt. 1st Class Gregory McQueen, it’s a steep one. He’s
been sentenced to two years in prison and a dishonorable discharge for
organizing a prostitution ring at Fort Hood while leading a sexual abuse
prevention program, which is easily the shadiest example of abuse of power and
crimes of opportunity in recent military history. The Army sergeant took
advantage of his position at the sprawling Central Texas post and got away with
it for a while, but eventually his crimes were exposed and two soldiers
testified last year that McQueen recruited them and other cash-strapped female
soldiers to join the prostitution ring. He pleaded guilty to 15 counts that
included charges of pandering and conspiracy to solicit prostitution as his
court-martial was about to open at Fort Hood, McQueen, avoiding having the case
drag out further but setting in motion a chain of events as Lt. Col. Rebecca
Connally busted him down to private, the lowest rank and pay grade in the U.S.
Army. Because of the dishonorable discharge, McQueen is also ineligible for veterans'
benefits, proving that even among the brave and courageous men and women who
serve so selflessly around the world as part of the U.S. military, there are
scumbags despicable enough to make a person feel ashamed to call themselves an
American………
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