- Oh,
how America has influenced the world. The idea of erecting massive walls along
national borders to keep out undesirables has become the United States’ thing,
but it appears one of America’s top allies has been inspired by the idea that
just gives Donald Trump a hard-on and that ally is none other than Israel. Israel's Cabinet has approved funding for a fence to be
built along part of the country's eastern border with Jordan and interestingly
enough, the plan was coordinated with Jordanian authorities. Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu broke news of the big fence, which will run for nearly 19
miles from Israel's southern tip toward the site of a new airport that is under
construction. Netanyahu did not announce whether the fence comes pre-pained
with a sign warning, “Stay off my lawn, er, desert sand, you damn
kids/terrorists,” but it would only be fitting. Still, the prime minister
insisted the entire route of the fence will be on Israeli territory and will
not infringe upon Jordanian sovereignty. Jordan and Israel signed a peace deal
in 1994 and have maintained cordial relations since, which makes Jordan
extremely unique among nations in the Middle East. Israel has grown
increasingly fond of fences in recent years, constructing fortified barriers with
Egypt to stem the flow of African migrants and in the Golan Heights to prevent
infiltrations from Syria. The whole good fences making for good neighbors idea
seems to be catching on worldwide and maybe if we all build enough barricades,
we can totally isolate ourselves and finally avoid any outside influences
whatsoever……..
- When
your mother tells you to pick up your toys and you refuse, there are
consequences. Same goes for Major League Baseball umpire Tripp Gibson, who does
not tolerate insolence. If you believe Boston Red Sox first baseman
Mike Napoli, Gibson has zero tolerance for lazy, uncooperative players who are called
out on strikes in the second inning and refuse to pick up their bat because
they disagree with the call. Napoli claimed after the game that he disagreed
with the call and was walking back to the dugout when he was given the rest of
the game off by the umpire. He alleged that Gibson tossed him because he didn't
pick up his bat and carry it with him back to the dugout, but after the game
Napoli was still more concerned about the call itself. "First of all, it
was a ball,'' said Napoli, who took a 3-and-2 slider from Tampa Bay
Rays starter Chris Archer that he believed was outside. "I thought I
walked. That's why I dropped my bat. And I had a conversation with him, told
him I thought it was a ball. He said it was a good pitch, so I started taking
off my batting gloves and started walking back toward the dugout.'' Napoli had
literally only taken a couple of steps from the plate when the umpire stopped
him. "He told me I forgot my bat,'' Napoli said. "I stopped a little
bit, and [then] he told me to come back and pick up the bat. I pointed at the
bat boy, who picks up our bats, and he tossed me. So then, when he tossed me, I
told him how I felt.'' Napoli proceeded to go ape sh*t on Gibson, but one has
to wonder if this could all have been averted had the player remembered that
bat boy or not, it’s never polite to point at people……….
- In
case you were wondering, the world’s smartest people are still not pursuing
careers as common criminals. Enter Cristian Osorio,
a New York City man who decided that stealing cars and driving stolen cars
sounded like a good idea. Oddly, it can be a good idea, inasmuch as one is able
to evade police and use said stolen vehicle without arousing suspicion. Oh, and
as long as the thief understands that when he or she steals a car, they do not
steal an unlimited quantity of gas to keep their ill-gotten ride running. Osorio
didn’t seem to grasp that when driving the car he (allegedly) stole, do when he
took the wrong road and ended up lost and without gas in Pennsylvania, it was a
predictable end to a joy ride for a man who appears to be lacking the sufficient
quantity of IQ points needed to be a world-class thief. According to police,
this fool left Queens early Friday and was headed to Syracuse, New York when he
got lost and ended up on the side of Route 33 in Plainfield, Pennsylvania. In
one of the worst twists of kindness ever, a state trooper arrived to help and
discovered the car was stolen. The awkward interaction between these two before
the cop ran a check on the car and discovered it was stolen had to be awesome,
but not as great as Osorio trying to figure out what to do when he had a
suspicious cop checking out his story - and with a fueled-up vehicle to use -
and all this poor fool had was his own two feet and a clearly lacking supply of
wits with which to formulate a plan of escape from the mess in which he found
himself……..
- Well
that was certainly awkward. Back in the 1990s, East
17 were one of a litany of terrible man bands plaguing not only Great Britain,
but the whole world. They never achieved superstar status against the likes of
One Degrees Direction Town 98 Men, but they did manage to pop and lock well
enough to a few songs that someone else wrote for them to sell a few albums and
convince half of the group they used to be that years after the end of their
semi-relevance, it was time to reunite despite having not one, but two lead
singers leave. Lead singers Brian Harvey and Tony Mortimer left in 2010 and
2013 respectively, leaving a shell of a crappy man band in their wake. Original
members John Hendy and Terry Coldwell remained and in the new low point of
lives that have to have seen many of them, these two ass hats got together and
decided that they had nothing better to do than stage a reunion. So did they
call Harvey and Mortimer and plead with them to abandon whatever better thing they’d
found to do - shoe salesman, city bus driver, professional yodeler - and come
back to the fold? Of course not. Instead, they added a new lead singer and
tried to pass off their bastardized version of an awful group off as legit.
Enter a gig at The Academy in Dublin wherein a venue with a capacity of 800 for
shows was busting at the seams trying to contain the tens and tens of people
who abandoned all personal dignity and self-respect and attended the show.
That’s right, 30 people showed up for the gig and worse still, these losers
waited around even though the group delayed their performance for an hour
before finally taking to the stage. Maybe they were figuring that the
Irish are a notoriously late-arriving crowd and giving them a few extra minutes
would bump the crowd up from embarrassingly small to just pathetically tiny.
They were wrong and fans who showed up lamented the fact that Mortimer and Harvey, who sang all their big hits were gone and in
their place were a couple of dudes who were glorified backup dancers back in
the day. If only this were enough to stop all would-be man band reunions and
convince the world to unite in agreement to ignore that this, the
second-ugliest era in musical history, never actually happened……..
