Thursday, April 02, 2015

A new MLB era dawns, stealing bikes from wounded vets and The Cribs are conspiracy theorists

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- Bitter much, British indie rockers The Cribs? You’ve done fairly well for yourself over the past decade by indie standards, carving out a loyal following and garnering plenty of respect within your genre of choice, but it’s the band’s failure to crack the mainstream would that seems to have the biggest effect on Ryan Jarman and his crew. Jarman is of the opinion that The Cribs haven’t gotten bigger because of the United Kingdom’s musical "old school dinosaurs" with a "grudge" against the trio, claiming "if we make a misstep, we'll be crucified.” Jarman ranted on, saying that there is some sort of conspiracy against his band. "We're one of those bands who have seeped into public consciousness just by being around such a long time. There are still some old school dinosaurs in the U.K. who just have a grudge against us,” Jarman said. “They just don't give us a chance to get bigger or actively block it…so we just have to put out another record that's better than the last one." Actively blocking your attempts to climb the musical ladder? Paranoid much, Ry? But points for positioning yourself as the plucky indie underdog bravely fighting the establishment for your rightful place in the sun. Conveniently, The Cribs just released their sixth album “For All My Sisters,” last week on Sony Red following the end of their relationship with independent label Wichita Recordings. It’s their first release since 2012’s “In The Belly of The Brazen Bull” and comes amidst rumors of internal tension within the band. Two of the three brothers have since relocated to the United States and Ryan Jarman admitted he went through a three-year period of suffering with bulimia and anxiety beginning in 2010.........




- Here’s hoping karma is real and that it’s not too busy hunting down those associated with murdering good music through reality karaoke shows to hunt down the special brand of d-bags responsible for thieiving 16 custom-made bikes from a group of wounded veterans. The adaptive bikes owned by the non-profit Ride 2 Recover were stolen from a storage unit at the Naval Medical Center San Diego and while it’s not quite the same as stealing them out of the hands of these brave men and women, the wounded warriors and their organization are hurting nonetheless. The bikes are worth over $10,000 and stealing them makes fiscal sense – assuming you’re willing to put a price on reserving your spot in the inner ring of hell. “It may seem like a bicycle to most, but it’s not to us. It’s our way of life,” retired Marine Corps Sgt. Jamie Rihn said. Rihn is the Ride 2 Recovery program director and he knows the true value of these bikes. “They can just be down in the dumps when they get on the bike. But when they’re done riding, even if it’s just 10 minutes, you can see the smiles on their faces, there’s just life back in their hearts,” Rihn said. The anger in his voice is apparent as he heaps cries of “Shame!” on those responsible for the theft and everyone at the Vets2Trails therapeutic mountain biking program that supports the PTSD program at Naval Medical Center San Diego is outraged by this. Each bike is worth more than $2,000 and while the worthiness of this cause makes it likely that many will rise up to donate to replace the bikes, the importance of seeing the thieves brought to justice is still of great importance here………




- This is a new world we’re living in, y’all, as a new Major League Baseball season dawns. A team that hasn't won the World Series since 1908 and has become the epitome of losing and fan misery in baseball and which was one of baseball’s worst teams just six months ago is apparently the cool team to lay down money on as this year’s Series champ. As the opening week of baseball season nears, more money has been bet on the Chicago Cubs to win the World Series than any other team at two of Nevada's largest sportsbooks. Given their offseason upgrades, adding both manager Joe Maddon and ace starter Jon Lester, the Cubs are 6-1 to win the World Series at the MGM. An actual playoff team from one year ago, the Washington Nationals at 5-1, are the only team with better odds. The number of bets on the Cubs more than doubles any other team in the MGM's World Series futures pool and a lot of it has to do with the rave reviews team president Theo Epstein has done rebuilding the team the past couple years. "Every year, they bet the Cubs," Jeff Stoneback, assistant manager at MGM race and sports. "I could be their ace and you could be their No. 2 starter, and they'd still bet them." Back in October, William Hill opened the Cubs at 40-1 and yet, the bets flowed in to the point that the book now has them at 10-1 odds to win the title. A whopping 10 percent of the total money wagered at William Hill on the World Series odds is on Chicago, putting them ahead of annual contenders like the Los Angeles Dodgers and St. Louis Cardinals. Most sports books still have the Cardinals as the favorites to win the National League Central over the Cubs, but the amount of people who seem to have confidence in the Cubs – or at least like their odds of doing the impossible – appears to be larger than ever……..




- So if you’re going to go on trial at the U.N. war crimes tribunal and defy order to return to The Hague because you don’t like how things are going, you may as well go big – as in a big, meaty, flaming middle finger to the entire court and your opponents in this legal skirmish. No one needs to tell that to far-right leader Vojislav Seselj, who definitively went big in burning a Croatian flag while defying orders to return to the tribunal, prompting Serbian prosecutors to file charges against him beyond the accusations of recruiting paramilitary forces during the 1990s wars in Croatia and Bosnia. Those proceedings seem to have sufficiently pissed him off, enough to show up with a flag, accelerant and a lighter when he appeared as a witness in the trial of an associate who has been charged with torching an American flag three years ago. The eff-you mentality needed to go pyromaniac in the face of the court while you’re on provisional release from the court in order to seek medical treatment and knowing you’re out on condition that you would return to the tribunal if summoned is strong and it didn’t take long for appeals judges at the tribunal in The Netherlands to rule that Seselj has breached conditions of his provisional release in November. For the record, this rebel with an allegedly criminal cause has said he wouldn't return voluntarily and so in a show of defiance of those hounding both he and his friend, he set a Croatian flag on fire at a Belgrade court where he either thought the U.N. tribunal wouldn’t notice or simply forgot that this is 2015, where everything even remotely interesting goes viral around the world within minutes thanks to social media and cable news. Still, points for style………

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