Thursday, May 14, 2015

Atlanta v. street performers, killing off "CSI" and combat sports fun


- Faces are still going to get caved in and the world will be a better place for it. Yes, the World Combat Games will go ahead next year despite the withdrawal of several sports in protest over the chief organizer's one-man crusade against the corrupt scumbags of the International Olympic Committee. Marius Vizer, head of the umbrella body SportAccord that runs the multisport event, is the man at the center of this sh*t storm. It all stems from his speech at the SportAccord convention in Sochi last month, a speech in which he lit up the IOC and its president, Thomas Bach. He’s not the first to rip the dishonest, bribe-taking suits of the IOC, but his harsh words led the international wrestling and taekwondo federations to cut ties with SportAccord, including participation in next year's games in Lima, Peru. Their decision to hit the eject button prompted Vizer to issue a statement saying his organization "would like to confirm the commitment to the World Combat Games and the unity of the combat sports family." It’s clear he was feeling a bit threatened after boxing pulled out of the World Combat Games last week and given that boxing, taekwondo and wrestling were three of the six Olympic sports scheduled to be on the combat games program, along with fencing, judo and weightlifting, even a non-math major can break down the number and figure out that the WCG just lost 50 percent of their agenda. Here’s hoping that there’s room now for mixed martial arts, street fighting and bar room brawling on the schedule with these last-minute openings……….


- Kim Jong Un has officially become that dictator, the one that Hollywood parodies in its Mike Myers-led comedies because his alleged actions are just so absurd and over the top that they defy all things sane and logical. The North Korean despot is equal parts megalomaniac, paranoid kook, rage-filled ruler and fat guy with an attitude, but if the latest allegation against him is true, it’s the stuff of cinematic comedic legend. Word on the street is that K.J. Un executed his defense chief for falling asleep during a meeting and talking back to the dictator. Sources claim that officials from the National Intelligence Service told a closed-door parliamentary committee that People's Armed Forces Minister Hyon Yong Chol was killed by anti-aircraft gunfire with hundreds watching at a shooting range at Pyongyang's Kang Kon Military Academy, which would prove that K.J. Un doesn’t just off people who piss him off, he OFFS them. The NIS didn't tell lawmakers how it got the information and the spy agency has proven off-point in the past, so this one may not be true. Any story from North Korea is difficult to confirm, but this one is so awesome that you find yourself hoping it’s legit. Doubters note that there are questions about Hyon's execution because the minister still frequently appears in state TV footage and North Korea a typically removes executed and purged officials from TV documentaries. Hyon has made multiple appearances in TV documentaries on live fire drills between April 30 and May 11, so either they found a convincing look-alike, the footage isn’t really live or this dude hasn’t been killed – yet. Still, the idea of anti-aircraft gunfire being used to mow down a guy whose crime was nodding off in a meeting – been there – and talking back to his boss is almost too good to be false………


- Speaking of what you can kill and what you can't…..CBS done done it, y’all. It seemed impossible, but the network has finally worked up the courage to bust a burning slug into its longest-running, most prolific spin-off-spawning series. Yes, “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation” will end this fall after a 15-season run on the Eye. The long-running crime drama series won't shuffle off the air this spring with other shows set to end soon, but instead it will bid farewell with a two-hour TV movie on September 27, CBS announced. Original stars William Petersen and Marg Helgenberger will return for the two-hour special and interestingly enough, current leading man Ted Danson will move to spin-off series “CSI: Cyber,” which stars Patricia Arquette, James Van Der Beek and Peter MacNicol and debuted on CBS in March. The mere idea of killing off the original “CSI” is jarring, as it debuted on CBS in 2000 and has gone on to become the seventh longest-running scripted series in American television history. Along the way, it spawned a full decade of not one, but two different spin-offs. “CSI: Miami” ran from 2002 to 2012 and “CSI: NY” ran from 2004 to 2013, meaning that from 2004 to 2012, there were three freaking CSI shows on the air. For those who don’t know, the original show set the format of crime scene investigators collecting physical evidence in a bid to solve murders for their local police department, meaning Las Vegas for the first in the series. According to the network, CBS chose not to order a 16th season of “CSI “because the network felt it could not exist in addition to “CSI: Cyber” on its new schedule. The CBS airwaves are going to feel a little different this fall……..


- Don’t encourage the freaks, Atlanta. Much like feeding one bird in the park means every damn pigeon within shooting distance of a good rifle will come a-flockin’ to your feet, if you offer a well-known Atlanta street performer $20,000 to settle a lawsuit in which he says police violated his rights to free speech, then every gold-painted tool and feet-painting ass hat is going to stick their hand out and demand that you put some cash in their grubby hands too. The freak in question here is 62-year-old Bob Jamerson, commonly known as "Baton Bob," who claims that police violated his rights when he was arrested in Atlanta nearly two years ago. He’s known for dancing on city sidewalks in costume, but his biggest and most profitable show came in June 2013, when he donned a white wedding dress and staged a performance he says celebrated the Supreme Court's decision to end the federal gay marriage ban. Jamerson says officers asked him to leave the area and they claimed he refused to leave and instead went footloose, kicking the officers. They arrested him for simple assault but later dismissed the charges. The case has dragged on since then and now it has reached its unjustly productive conclusion for a man whose life work is wearing hideously loud clothing and doing whatever he can to draw attention to himself in the hope that people will drop a few coins or – big payday, yo – maybe even some paper money in his old guitar case on the sidewalk. The settlement still needs to be approved by the full Atlanta City Council and if the council is smart, it will say no and not give street performers the idea that they can extort it for a handout………

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