Monday, April 06, 2015

Movie news, international parking pissing matches and NBA groin blasts


- Drug smuggling and dealing are all about capitalizing on opportunity. If the holiday season for a particular special day affords you the chance to use what would normally be considered a children’s toy as a means of smuggling your illicit product across county or state lines, you had best cash in on that golden chance. Take the case of the stuffed Easter Bunny who pulled double duty as arguably the most peculiar drug mule police in Oklahoma have encountered in a long time. Tahlequah City police intercepted the rabbit stuffed with a pound of meth, street value around $30,000, when a police dog in Tulsa County sniffed out the methamphetamine before the package was to be delivered to the home of Carolyn Ross in Tahlequah. “We’ve intercepted narcotics in the mail before,” Police Chief Nate King told. “The Easter Bunny I thought was a strange touch.” Once police knew about the package and its contents, they set up a sting operation to take down whoever was involved with trying to pervert the symbol of the commercialized version of Easter. An officer posed as a delivery man and went to Ross’ home to give her the package and when she signed for the drug bunny and took possession of the white trash drug of choice, she was arrested. Ross allegedly confessed to knowing about the meth and is being held on $75,000 bond. Police didn’t provide any details on who sent the package, but given the low level of sophistication here, it shouldn’t take a tremendous amount of time to unravel this yarn of criminality………


- Protect the assets, NBA players. That’s the lesson from the past week thanks to a pair of groin-punching points guards who decided that going below the belt on 7-footers was the way to even the score. First, Los Angeles Clippers point guard Chris Paul delivered a questionable low blow to Portland center Chris Kaman in a Thursday night game, prompting Kaman to retaliate by knocking Paul out of bounds on the next trip up the court and Paul getting up looking like he was ready for a fight despite the 12-inch height differential. But the more contentious of the two incident came when Golden State Warriors guard Shaun Livingston attacked the manhood of Dallas Mavericks star Dirk Nowitzki two days later, when the German icon was posting up the 6-foot-7 Livingston late in the third quarter and Livingston reached between Nowitzki's legs and struck him in the groin. Nowitzki doubled over in pain and let out a few choice words before turning around and briefly confronting Livingston, who insisted he did not mean to hit Nowitzki in the nether regions. Nowitzki said he'd give "the benefit of the doubt" to Livingston despite the guard being hit with a flagrant foul 1. "Well, I give him the benefit of the doubt because he's really not that type of player," Nowitzki said. "He hasn't been his entire career. I'm not really sure what he was trying to do there, if he was trying to get to the ball through my legs or anything. But like I said, he's not a dirty player. He's actually a really, really good dude.” Mavs owner Mark Cuban and coach Rick Carlisle weren't so magnanimous, with Cuban stopping Warriors coach Steve Kerr after the game for a chat about the incident. Maybe it’s time for NBA big men to either start wearing cups or start dishing out some old-school justice to put an end to this nonsense……….


- Some beefs are universal and some fights are liable to happen around the world despite cultural differences simply because there are a-holes in the world and they need to be dealt with. Enter South American neighbors Guyana and Suriname, two countries now in a diplomatic pissing match on account of what else, parking problems. Brawls over parking spaces and who has a right to them are a near-universal reason to go and this one has caused a minor diplomatic row between two countries that aren't exactly world powers who might be tempted to go nuclear on each other’s asses should this whole mess kick up a notch in the days ahead. Guyana's government is accusing two Surinamese policemen of assaulting and trying to arrest Ambassador Keith George over an incident than began when a drunk driver blocked the entrance to the embassy in Suriname's capital and began arguing with a security guard after refusing to remove his car. Drunken morons are another universal aggravation and dealing with them is enough to piss off even the most sagacious among us, so it’s no surprise that George and other officials intervened and called police. What is odd is how the situation unfolded from there. According to Guyanese officials, the officers who responded to the incident scuffled with George and entered the embassy to try to arrest him. In the resulting chaos, and this is truly tear-jerking, embassy staffers were allegedly traumatized by the actions of Surinamese police. Yes, being protected embassy employees who have to witness local police attempting to arrest your boss is a harrowing experience and if nothing else, Suriname needs to pony up enough money for some psychological counseling to these poor, fragile, traumatized souls………..


- Sentimentality and lots of testosterone fueled the opening run of “Furious 7,” which easily outpaced the box office field for the win with $143.6 million in opening-weekend domestic earnings. Needless to say, the rest of the movies in theaters didn’t earn as much combined as the fast-driving drama, with “Home” dropping from the top spot one week ago to second and banking another $27.4 million to up its overall domestic haul to $95.6 million in two weeks. The inexplicable success of “Get Hard” continued for another week as Will Ferrell and Kevin Hart powered the comedy to $12.9 million for a two-week tally of $57 million. “Cinderella” held onto fourth place with $10.3 million in it fourth weekend and has raked in $167.3 million in one month of work. “The Divergent Series: Insurgent” stepped down two spots to fifth with a $10 million weekend, allowing the dystopian drama to break through the $100 million mark in just three weeks at $103.4 million. “It Follows” followed in sixth place at a scant $2.5 million and in four weeks of limited release, it has managed just $8.5 million. The second newcomer of the top 10 was Helen Mirren’s “Woman in Gold” in seventh place with $2 million in an underwhelming debut. “Kingsman: The Secret Service” claimed the eighth slot with a meager $1.7 million to make its two-month domestic total a solid $122.3 million. “Do You Believe?” found enough faith for $1.5 million and a three-week bank roll of $9.8 million. That left the final top 10 spot for “The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel,” which brought in just $1 million this time around and $30 million overall. “Run All Night” (No. 12) and “The Gunman” (No. 16) both tumbled out of the top 10 from one week ago………

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