- The
one of America’s four major professional sports leagues that most definitely
does not need to expand is happily forging ahead with the process of adding new
franchises because, well….capitalism. Las Vegas and Quebec City are the two
cities getting suckered into bidding for NHL expansion franchises, with groups
from each city announcing late last week that they are moving on to the second
of three phases in their bids to land teams. Bill Foley, who heads the Las
Vegas bid, issued a statement about the development on his group’s website,
while Montreal-based communications giant Quebecor announced on its Twitter
account that its Quebec City bid is moving forward. Quebec served as home to the NHL's Nordiques, who
relocated to Colorado to become the Avalanche in 1995, while Las Vegas has
never had a team. According to Foley, Phase 2 will feature bidders' providing the
NHL additional information regarding their respective markets and arena plans. Las
Vegas’ group has already secured more than 13,200 season-ticket deposits for a
potential team and a multipurpose arena is under construction near the Las
Vegas Strip set to open next spring. Meanwhile, the publicly funded,
18,259-seat Videotron Centre is set to open in Quebec City next month,
replacing the small and outdated Colisee Pepsi. Both bids still must be
approved by the NHL board of governors and expansion isn’t expected until 2017
at the earliest. In the meantime, the league will work on wrangling its proposed
expansion fee of $500 million from each bidder, with both groups already having
submitted a $10 million down payment, $2 million of which was nonrefundable.
Keep cashing ‘dem checks, Gary Bettman and crew………
- McDonald’s
is trying a lot of desperate tactics to reverse plummeting profits and regain
its dwindling market share. This might be the most explosive idea yet and at a
minimum, it’s generating plenty of publicity for one Maryland-based franchise
of the fast food titan’s empire. Life got interesting in a hurry ,in Thurmont, about 65 miles northwest of Baltimore, when an
active military-grade hand grenade was uncovered in the parking lot outside the
local McDonald's. A bomb technician with the Office of the State Marshal
secured and removed the active grenade, which is likely a relic of the military
base located in the area in several decades ago. Dale Ednock, a bomb technician
called to the scene, said the grenade found lodged about a foot under the
pavement was there for quite some time and it makes you wonder if the workers
who did the most recent paving job on the parking lot are now having
post-traumatic stress disorder over the realization that they did their work a
mere 12 inches from an incendiary device that could have sent them shuffling
off this mortal coil had they simply made one or two wrong moves while doing
their job. The grenade was found about 1 p.m. by a landscaping crew and its
discovery forced the immediate evacuation of both the zit-faced teenagers
making the greasy menu offerings and the obese folks powering down their Big
Macs and apple pies, as well as the closure of all roads in the immediate
vicinity. Given the declining profitability of most McDonald’s these days,
being shut down for a few hours may not have cost the restaurant all that
much……….
- Dear
every band in existence now and in the future: Keep the Beatles’ name out your
mouth. You may think that talking about yourself in the same vein as John,
Paul, Ringo and George is fine and even a tip of the cap to the rock icons, but
when you say that your new album will be on par with one of the most legendary
releases of all time, you’re only setting yourself up for disappointment. That
means you, Slipknot frontman Corey Taylor, and your
announcement that you and your band are talking about recording an ambitious
double album you’ve already doomed by proclaiming that it will be comparable to
similar works by The Beatles, Prince and Pink Floyd. Slipknot are an
awesome band who have produced dozens of great tracks and while they’ve had
plenty of time since they released their latest
album '.5 The Gray Chapter' in 2014 and embarked on what they said would be a
two-year break, claiming that what they produce next will be on par with The
Beatles’ “Let It Be” is such a reach that it’s almost laughable. Tagging it
with a feature film a la Prince's “Purple Rain” does add some gravitas to the
project, but making it a high concept effort guarantees nothing. "The idea
that we had was to kind of come up with the concept and then provide the soundtrack
for it," Taylor said. "But then I told them [band mates] the other
day… I was, like, 'Let's take it even further and let's make our 'Purple Rain',
let's make our 'The Wall'.' With a movie — not just the album, but do the
movie… like, do everything. And they were pretty into it.” Taylor added that
work on this ambitious endeavor is still many months off, but noted that by
laying the groundwork now, Slipknot will be ahead of the game when they return
to work……….
- Murdering
accused witches….it’s still a thing in 2015, somehow. You may have thought the
Salem Witch Trials were a thing of centuries gone by and in virtually every
corner of the civilized, non-socially stunted world, the paranoid, ignorant and
small-minded world views that produced these farces of justice are precisely
that. That is not the case in a village in India's
eastern state of Jharkhand, where police say five women accused of practicing
witchcraft have been beaten to death. Police official Arun Kumar Singh
confirmed that the ignorant, murderous fools of Kinjia village dragged the women
out of their homes early in the morning and beat the life out of them with
sticks and iron rods. According to Singh, the attackers blamed the women for
several accidents and misfortunes suffered by villagers, including the death of
an infant in Kinjia earlier in the week. Somehow, these unfounded beliefs made
sense in the minds of the angry mob and their IQ-deprived groupthink led to
five women who clearly did not commit to crimes of which they were accused
losing their lives. The simple fact is that such absurd, superstitious beliefs
persist in many parts of Jharkhand and have been behind similar attacks on
women in the state. Kinjia is about 25 miles west of the state capital, Ranchi
and at least a million miles outside the realm of common sense, common decency
or an IQ above 14. Congratulations to all involved for making your village a
global punch line because you remain stuck about seven or eight centuries in
the past……..
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