- The Who guitarist Pete
Townshend is an arrogant f*ck. Never, ever forget that the man who christened
the slashing windmill as a great guitar-playing move is as pompous as they
come, even if he’s seven decades into his run on this planet of
ours. As he and his iconic rock band kick off a North American tour at the start of
May and chase it with two London shows at Hyde Park and the Royal Albert Hall
later in the summer, Townshend wants everyone to know how damn easy it is for
him to get up on stage and shred to classics like “Magic Bus,” “Who Are You”
and “Won't Get Fooled Again.” When it comes to playing gigs with Roger Daltrey
and the rest of the fellas, Townshend seems to think he could do it in his
sleep. "The shows? I don’t like them," Townshend said. "I don’t
find them fulfilling. But I’m brilliant at it. I find it incredibly easy. I
drift through it." Spoken like that smart, cocky asshole in your political
science class in college who doesn’t need to study or pay attention in class because
he’s just so much more intelligent than you. Many rock stars are arrogant and
some are even pompous enough – Kanye West! – to try and tell everyone that they
really are a genius, but Townshend still comes off poorly here. He sounds even
worse when he talks about people giving him dap for a good show. I get out the
other end and the next day, somebody comes up to me and says, 'You were fucking
amazing yesterday!' It’s like being able to make a pair of shoes and knowing
that you’ve got to a point that whenever you make a pair of shoes for somebody
they’re going to last them for life,” Townshend added. “I don’t get
particularly excited about it, but I do find it easy." Thanks for being a
prick, P……….
- Ready for some quality, possibly heavily redacted reading,
Albania? If declassified files of your country’s hated Sigurimi secret
police are you idea of a good bathroom read, then the news is stellar and the
future is bright. Albania has passed legislation that gives victims of the
country's former Communist regime access to the previously classified files, a
move that was approved with an 84-22 majority also stipulates that former
Sigurimi members will be excluded from the civil service and public office in
the future. That’s a rather sweeping bill, but it really should be when your isolationist
Communist regime governed from 1944 until 1990 and left a wave of abuse,
corruption and trampling of basic human rights in its wake. While pinning down
exact numbers is somewhat difficult because authoritarian regimes are
notoriously bad at record-keeping when it comes to how many lives they’ve
claimed and how many families they’ve shattered, it’s believed that the regime
executed some 7,000 political opponents and about 100,000 Albanians were
brought to forced labor or internment camps. The only people who will escape
the long arm of the law on this one are those currently holding such positions,
because they will get to keep their jobs. At least until people start reading
up on what they and their goons did while in power and find their tar and
pitchforks so they can drive these hatemongering power abusers out of office to
rid Albania of every last vestige of the ugliest era in its history………
- The Seattle suburb of Tukwila is that friendless loser who figures that
if he can build a cool enough man cave or treehouse, maybe the other kids will
come over and want to play with him and be his friend. Right now, the greater
Seattle area is a town without an NFL or NBA franchise after losing the NBA’s
SuperSonics in 2008. A memorandum of understanding is in place with investor
Chris Hansen, the city and King County for arena funding if Hansen is able to
secure an NBA franchise and he nearly succeeded in buying the Sacramento Kings
in 2013 before Vivek Ranadive ponied up to keep the Kings in California.
Spurned once, the region is making another run at it and Tukwila Mayor Jim
Haggerton has penned letters to NHL commissioner Gary Bettman and NBA
commissioner Adam Silver expressing his support for a proposed multipurpose
arena that could house franchises for both leagues. In response to public records
requests, the city released documents pertaining to the proposed arena plan, for
which Bettman and Silver expressed support. Haggerton wrote the city has
created a "special opportunity district" around a commuter rail
station in the area where the arena would be built "to facilitate greater
intensities and uses,” including rough sketches of where the arena would sit,
next to Interstate 405, with potential parking structures and a hotel on the
property. Bettman said recently that he is aware of Seattle’s interest, but
added that the fee for an expansion franchise could well exceed $500 and
tagging that with the notation that the lack of an arena remains the hurdle. "We
believe there are substantial people interested in owning a franchise there,
and I'm not surprised because I think it would be a great market for NHL
hockey," Bettman said. "But there's a threshold issue which relates
to the arena. ... Somebody's got to be in a position to execute.” In other
words, build me that shiny new treehouse, suckers………..
- Aren't all politics just one giant game of chance? That
makes what happened in the über-small South Dakota town of
Platte both fitting and totally irrelevant. Platte voters, like so many people
across these United States this spring, are being asked to make decisions about
which career civil servant will lead their municipality into the next few years
and continue the blathering bumble of bureaucratic bravado to which they have
become accustomed. In Platte, the voting process ended with a too-close-to-call
race between Steve Christensen and incumbent Mayor Rick Gustad. Christensen is
a former police chief and Gustad serves as Platte's fire chief, so both are
well-known commodities and they even have that policeman-fireman rivalry angle
going as well. The duo also ran against one another in 2013, with Gustad
winning by six votes, but this time the race was too close to call. So what’s
an anonymous South Dakota town to do when its voters split their loyalty between
two equally bland candidates? How’s about solving that deadlock with a good,
old-fashioned game of chance? Yes, an existing town statute says certain
elections can be determined by a high card draw or a roll of the dice. As the
incumbent, Gustad got to pick and he chose dice as the means of deciding the
election. He chose poorly. Christensen rolled a seven to become Platte's mayor
for the next two years after Gustad rolled a four, leaving Platte residents
with the satisfaction of knowing that their votes didn’t mean a damn thing………
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