Sunday, July 12, 2015

Rivers Cuomo's sitcom D.O.A., Cali beaches get smellier and Utah football felons

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- The rage was real this weekend in Serbia, where a massive commemoration of the slaughter of Bosnia Muslims at Srebrenica 20 years ago turned into a near-riot when anger stemming from the occasion led members of the crowd to pelt Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic with stones, water bottles and other objects. Hurling various heavy items at an elected official is always a solid use of your time and according to an aide, Vucic was hit in the face with a rock, breaking his glasses. Vucic's associate, Suzana Vasiljevic, said she was behind Vucic when "masses broke the fences and turned against us." Probably should have seen it comes, Suzy. Bring in tens of thousands of people to mark the 20th anniversary of Europe's worst massacre since the Holocaust — the slaughter of 8,000 Muslims from the eastern Bosnian town of Srebrenica — and intermingle them with foreign dignitaries urging the international community not to allow such atrocities to happen again and someone is bound to be offended. Vucic used to be an ultra-nationalist but tried to spin his appearance as a gesture of reconciliation and clearly miscalculated how that would go over. He fled the scene after coming under attack and Serbian Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic said that the attack on Vucic was an attack on Serbia. "By deciding to bow to the victims, Serbia's prime minister behaved like a statesman," Dacic said in a statement. "This is another negative consequence of politicizing this subject that has brought new divisions and hatreds instead of reconciliation." As if a man entering the cemetery to lay flowers and having thousands boo his presence and belt out angry whistles can’t bring a country together………..




- As always, if you’re going to get yourself charged with aggravated robbery and theft, at least have a damn good reason. Former University of Utah cornerback Dominique Hatfield knows what’s up and that’s why despite the fact that he was dismissed from the football team last week following his arrest, this guy is winning at life. One day, he’s a scholarship player for a Top 25 team and the next days, he’s kicked off the team because authorities have accused him of robbing a man at knifepoint who planned to buy an Xbox game console from him. Yes, the ol’ “Pull a knife on a dude who just wants to pick up a cheap used game console” trick, it works every time. Not only that, Whitfield is also accused of stealing and trying to sell cellphones. In other words, dude was apparently running a low-rent criminal enterprise while also playing football and possibly going to class from time to time. It’s impressive that he managed to keep it up for as long as he did, a streak that came to an end after Utah football coach Kyle Whittingham said in a statement that  there were further concerns about Hatfield's off-field behavior after he was suspended from the program Monday. The only one who seems optimistic here is Hatfield's attorney, Greg Skordas, who said the criminal case was headed in a positive direction and he was surprised by the dismissal. Skordas is clearly lying, but when your client is a junior from Los Angeles who started 10 games in 2014, you do whatever you can to keep him on the team………




- The beach is already a smelly place. It’s about to get its über-stank on at state beaches in California for the rest of the summer and possibly beyond, at the drought-stricken state has shut down outdoor showers at said beaches, forcing swimmers, sunbathers and surfers to get creative when it’s time to head home. Public rinse stations in all state-run beaches and parks will be shut down this Wednesday as the state battles a four-year dry spell as the latest step in a series of measures designed to keep California from drying up like a raisin. The severe drought has led Gov. Jerry Brown to order California communities to cut water use by 25 percent compared with 2013 levels and even state parks are not exempt. California State Parks said its 278 parks have successfully met the water reduction mandate, but some are located in areas with more water scarcity and will therefore have to further reduce consumption. Todd Lewis, acting superintendent for the department’s Orange Coast district, urged visitors to seek alternatives to the showers, such as using a broom to brush off their bodies or bringing their own water. Yes, because SoCal residents whose idea of slumming it is riding in a friend who has last year’s BMW 5 Series instead of the new model will carry a couple of extra gallon jugs of water with them or have a Dollar Store broom with them to brush off the sand. Shutting off public showers could save more than 18 million gallons of water annually, the department estimated, and California State Parks director Lisa Mangat said it is vital that “Californians conserve water at home, at work and even when recreating outdoors." Make sure to bring some air freshener for that ride home after a hella-good day of surfing, Cali bros and chicks………..




- A life in rock and roll mixed with a degree from Harvard apparently isn't enough to make one sitcom fodder these days. Weezer frontman Rivers Cuomo has done a lot and made a fair amount of money in his lifetime and that was supposed to earn him a 30-minute stint weekly on Fox in the form of a sitcom loosely based on his life, but that won't be happening now. The show, scripted by Steve Franks, has been passed over by the network and that means no gig for actors Peter Gallagher and Olivia Thirlby, who shot the pilot with British actor Ben Aldridge cast as Cuomo. The pilot laid out the groundwork for the story of a 30-something rock star who is worried about his success and walks away from the spotlight at the height of his career to rediscover the parts of his life he missed out on when he was becoming famous was filmed. That sounds an awful lot like what Cuomo did a few years back and while television has a funny way of taking such stories and turning them into bloated, barely recognizable versions of what they actually were, it would have been interesting to see how Cuomo’s tale of being a nerdy, overly self-aware rock star whose albums tend to be polarizing even to his own fans would have played out on the small screen. Given how many terrible shows actually make it to air and fail miserably within the first five episodes, it’s actually stunning that this one wasn’t picked up………

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