- Former Blink-182 member Tom DeLonge is making bold claims for a man
who hasn’t released any new music nearly a quarter of the way through the year.
Fresh off a bitter split with his former Blink bandmates, DeLonge is trying to
position himself for a prodigious finish to 2015 by vowing – on Twitter, no
less – to release a whopping four albums this year. "I am putting out four
albums in one year - this year," DeLonge tweeted, failing to follow up
with titles for three of the four albums. He has already confirmed the release
of “To The Stars,” an album of old solo material mudled with a few token new
songs, on April 21. The single “New World” is the first from the album and
while it sounds perfeclty fine, it hasn’t exactly set the musical world on
fire. Maybe the four albums are a response to Blink-182 drummer Travis Barker’s
public excoriating of DeLonge in the wake of the latter’s split from the band,
including claims that DeLonge never really liked punk rock and that it was “just
a phase” for him. Those words of hurt came after DeLonge allegedly refused to
enter the studio and record a new album with Barker and Mark Hoppus, but
DeLonge denied those claims. Blink-182 recently played their first gig without
their former leader singer, with Alkaline Trio singer Matt Skiba on the mic. It
doesn’t sound like they’ll be first in line to pre-order any of DeLonge’s four
new releases, but they may have a thing or two to say about them once they drop……….
- Be kind to the janitor. You never know when that small,
frail, quiet old man might be rocking a seven-figure net worth and a benevolent
streak like nobody’s business. That’s the tale of former Vermont resident Ronald Read, who died in June at the age of 92. The former gas
station employee and janitor was known as an infinitely frugal man who often held
his coat together with safety pins and had a habit of foraging for firewood and
parking extreme distances away from his attorney’s office in order to avoid
having to pay to park at meters, but it turns out he was also a stock-picking
savant. That lat tidbit became public after his death when he bequeathed $6
million to his local library and hospital. That wealth was amassed with an uncanny
ability to pick good stocks, investments that "grew substantially"
over the years, according his attorney Laurie Rowell. A man known for his
flannel shirt and baseball cap was walking around with millions of dollars to
his name, but never gave any indication of the $4.8 million he would eventually
leave to the Brattleboro Memorial Hospital and $1.2 million he would one day
bequeath to the town's Brooks Memorial Library. . "He was unbelievably
frugal," Rowell said. The gifts were the largest either institution has
ever received and Read made smaller gifts to other entities as well. He also
donated an antique Edison phonograph with dozens of recording drums to the
Dummerston Historical Society, Rowell said. Read lived in the area most of his
life, having been born in the small town of Dummerston in 1921. He became the first
in his family to graduate from high school, served in the military during World
War II and worked at a service station for 25 years and then 17 years as a
janitor at the local J.C. Penney. The only hint of his wealth was his regular
readership of the Wall Street Journal, but now the world knows the rest of the
story………
- That Floyd Mayweather Jr. has declined to agree to terms for a
penalty that would cost either man $5 million in the event of a failed drug
test before or after his May 2 megafight against Manny Pacquiao at the MGM
Grand in Las Vegas isn't noteworthy. These two will actually fight in about six
weeks, but they’ve never stopped fighting and bickering behind the scenes over
all manners of issues, details and minor disagreements. What is great about
Mayweather shooting down the proposed stipulation is the reaction of Leonard
Ellerbe, CEO of Mayweather Promotions and Mayweather's close adviser, to
Pacquiao adviser Michael Koncz announcing the decision. According to Konz, his
client requested that there would be a reciprocal fine of $5 million for a
failed drug test, but Mayweather attorney Jeremiah Reynolds sent a letter to
Pacquiao attorney David Moroso declining to enter into any agreements on such a
financial penalty. Ellerbe didn’t need to say much – if anything at all – in
response to the news, but that didn’t stop him from busting a cinder block over
Koncz’s head from behind and smashing him with a steel chair to the back for
good measure. "Michael Koncz is an idiot, and Manny Pacquiao should be
ashamed to have him as his representative in my opinion," Ellerbe said. "It's obvious he didn't read the
contract. Why would he have his fighter sign something he was not happy
with?” Ellerbe was just getting started and from there, he moved on to a solid
moron blast. "If this moron didn't convey his fighter's wishes when the
negotiation was going on that's their problem. This is a lame-ass attempt to
generate publicity," he added. Calling the guy a moron and labeling this a
lame-ass attempt to grab publicity? Nicely played, Lenny. Drug testing has been
a point of contention throughout the past few years as Mayweather and Pacquiao
have danced around this fight and back when the two camps first negotiated the
bout in late 2009 and early 2010, they had agreed to all aspects of the deal
except for the drug-testing protocol. This time around, Pacquiao agreed to
Mayweather's demand for USADA testing and they signed contracts with the agency
about three weeks ago. Ellerbe may not be Winston Churchill here, but he does
have a point and Koncz’s counter that Pacquiao didn't negotiate the fine into
the master fight agreement because he was concerned with getting the fight
signed at all just sounds weak and unintelligent……..
- Seeing sh*t set on fire is a pretty common thing in
Northern Ireland. Given the country’s combustible and combative history that
continues to this day, bombs and other pyrotechnics are as common as Irish stew
and Titanic references. But what will go down Saturday night in the city of
Londonderry is different than the normal Catholic v. Protestant wars and
political strife that have marked the nation’s history. At the center is a 72-foot-tall, hand-crafted
wooden tower designed by American sculptor David Best. The structure is reminiscent
of a Buddhist temple or an arabesque palace and has been carefully constructed
over a period of months. Best is well-known for building wooden temples that
are set ablaze during the Burning Man festival in Nevada, so public art
promoters invited him to Northern Ireland to create a monument that will be be
burned to the ground in front of 15,000 ticket-holders. The idea of building a
seven-story tower, setting it on fire and selling tickets seems silly because
anyone in the city is going to be able to see it, but the real purpose of the
big bonfire is contrasting this spectacle with the ones commonly lit in acts of
sectarian division. Each summer, the country’s British Protestant majority
burns hundreds of bonfires bedecked with anti-Irish symbols and the Catholic
minority seethes in not-so-silent hatred. Londonderry is divided into a mostly
Catholic west and Protestant east, yet Best's tower in a hilltop field on the
east side is attracting Catholics and Protestants alike with an open invitation
to decorate every visible inch of its nook-and-cranny-covered surface. They
have obliged with hand-written messages to their community and their loved ones,
embracing Best’s goal to make the structure "so beautiful that you give up
the thing that has been troubling you your whole life." It’s a lofty aim,
but the tower is a sight to behold with its intricate scrolling and interlacing
woodcut patterns into vivid relief. The only wet blankets amidst the fun have
been square, über-conservative religious leaders who believe the mass burning
of people's prayers could represent a dangerous flirtation with "the
occult or Satanism.” Nice try, buzzkills………
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