Ukraine aero-b*tch-smacks Russia, blame for Limp Bizkit and Brazilian soccer + guns

- Brazil loves its soccer. One Brazilian soccer referee also appears to love his guns as if he were an honorary foreign member of the National Rifle Association. Meet Gabriel Murta, a referee for a lower-tier Brazilian league, a man who clearly laid down the law during a match over the weekend. It all began when Murta was kicked and slapped by players from lower-league Amantes de Bola. As if that weren't enough for a guy making a few measly bucks for a second job, the manager bum-rushed the pitch demanding a red card and Murta decided he’d had just about enough. He allegedly responded by sprinting to the locker room and coming back with a gun that he then pointed at his tormentors. It’s worth noting that this guy is a police officer in his day job, so he just might have a God complex or a penchant for macho behavior, but his macho act has now been ordered to undergo psychological testing before the Minas Gerais Football Federation decides on a punishment. Punishment? For making soccer interesting? Just imagine how much more watchable every match would be if the refree were packing heat and rather than issue a red card, he might send red blood flowing onto the field with his Glock. “The Minas Gerais Football Federation has already summonsed the referee and a psychologist to a meeting, and I'm going to talk with him,” said Giuliano Bozzano, president of the local referees association. “What's happened is obviously not a common occurrence, and I don't want to rush into anything. At the moment it happened, he's opted for getting his gun because in his view it was a question of controlling a situation.” Yes, because guns always bring calm to any situation………..

- Speaking of police officers who don’t act like zealous, hotheaded, super-macho a-holes….meet Roeland Park (Kansas) police officer Zack Stamper, who was doing his job when he was dispatched to investigate a report of a suspicious person in a park. What he found was Samuel Meixueiro a homeless man forced to walk several hours a day to his job as a liquor store cashier. Given the frequent links between homeless people and alcohol abuse, the idea of a homeless dude working at a liquor store might seem like a bad idea. Yet it seems to be working so far for Meixueiro. However, his new gig hasn’t yet gotten him fully back on his feet and that’s what landed him in that park. When Stamper saw his plight, he was touched and gave Meixueiro a bicycle to ride to work. But the officer didn’t stop there and threw in a duffel bag to replace Meixuero's suitcase, which had a broken zipper. It was a kind gesture that brought Meixueiro to tears, with the homeless man saying he's been staying in a church while trying to save money for an apartment. Credit Stamper for listening to Meixueiro when he explained his situation and for driving Meixueiro to his job the first day they met. From there, the officer retrieved a duffel bag from his basement and a bicycle from the department's assortment of surrendered or abandoned ones. He cleaned up the bike, inflated its tires and took both the bike and the bag to the liquor store to surprise his new friend. It was the sort of kindness that people have come to expect from the Midwest………

- Apology not accepted, Rage Against The Machine bass player Tim Commerford. You can apologize all you want for the fact that your band inadvertently led to the creation of Limp Bizkit, but you cannot uncook that Chocolate Starfish and the Hotdog Flavored Water. Limp Bizkit lead vocal hack Fred Durst has spoken in the past about the influence Rage Against The Machine have had on him and while a band cannot possibly control the people who listen to its music or what those people do with the influence you have on them. Limp Bizkit regularly cover 'Killing In The Name' in their live sets and while that’s something for which to be embarrassed, an apology doesn’t begin to cover it, not when at a 2014 live gig in New York, Durst praised Rage Against the Machine and dedicated a song "to the rap-rock band that started this shit." Commerford was asked about the connection and sounded contrite - just not contrite enough.  "I do apologize for Limp Bizkit," Commerford said. "I really do. I feel really bad that we inspired such bullshit." Ironically, Commerford might be better able to tolerate this Limp Bizkit connection because he seems to live under the mistaken impression that these hacks have split up. "They're gone, though. That's the beautiful thing. There's only one left, and that's Rage, and as far as I'm concerned, we're the only one that matters," Commerford added. if only that were true, bro. Sadly, Durst and his stupid red, backwards Yankees hat are still tormenting ears around the world………

- While Vlad Putin is away, Ukraine don’t play. With the Russian despot in New York for a weekend of United Nations keggers and toga parties, Ukraine banned Russian airlines from flying into the country in an effort to pressure Moscow over its backing of rebels in eastern Ukraine. The Ukrainian government b*tch-slapped the transportation industry when Cabinet ministers prohibited transit flights of Russian airlines via Ukraine, "if they contain military goods, dual use or Russian military manpower," according to a statement by the government. Who are the bold visionaries just begging for another Putin-led invasion? For one, Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk deserves credit. "Russian aircraft with Russian tricolor have nothing to do in Ukrainian airports," Yatsenyuk said at the meeting. This is no weak-ass ban, either; it will include Russia's largest carrier, Aeroflot, and is set to take effect October 25. Even with Putin sipping $25 vodka and tonics in Manhattan while giving death stares to Barack Obama across the room, Russia fired back quickly and Moscow called the ban an act of "lunacy." "Suspension of air service between Russia and Ukraine would be another act of insanity," Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov proclaimed. "Looking back at the past 20 months, we cannot deny a hypothetical possibility of such acts of lunacy on the part of Kiev." Look at our man D-Money, throwing around vague, multisyllabic terms like “hypothetical possibility” and glossing over the fact that nearly 8,000 people have lost their lives as a result of the fighting in eastern Ukraine - with Russia at the center of the insanity. Kiev and international monitors insist the ceasefire agreement between the military and separatists in the eastern part of the country is still holding, but Putin can fix that in a hurry once he gets home………..

Venezuela v. Colombia, another "Fast & Furious" trilogy and criminals are still morons

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- Sepp Blatter: delusional, defiant and corrupt to the end. His tenure as FIFA president has been baptized and bathed in corruption since its outset and after apparently dodging toe corruption charges brought by the United States against virtually every other official in his heinous outfit, Blatter agreed to step down…in a few months. That was this summer, but the year couldn’t even finish before Blatter’s reign of terror hit a new low in the form of the Swiss Attorney General opening criminal proceedings against him on "suspicion of criminal mismanagement." Calling what Blatter has (allegedly) done with FIFA is a bit like calling Charles Manson a slightly temperamental group leader. A statement released by the Office of the Attorney General (OAG) of Switzerland confirmed it was examining a contract signed by Blatter with the Caribbean Football Union and an alleged "disloyal payment" of $2 million to UEFA president Michel Platini, one of many times Blatter has been involved in shady dealings. With former senior FIFA official Jack Warner indicted in the wide-ranging bribery scandal, Platini and Blatter caught up in this mess and who knows what the hell else on the way, Blatter continues to insist that he won't step down early and will stay on until a new president can be eected next year. His lawyer, Richard Cullen, said that "no mismanagement occurred,” which is a massive pile of bullshit to shovel even for a high-priced criminal attorney. "We're confident that when the Swiss authorities have a chance to review the documents and the evidence they will see that the contract was properly prepared and negotiated by the appropriate staff members of FIFA,” Cullen said in a statement, presumably with the pants from his $5,000 suit bursting into flames. The OAG confirmed that it had conducted a search at FIFA headquarters with the help of the police -- including Blatter's office -- and seized data showing Blatter made “a disloyal payment of two million Swiss Francs to Michel Platini.” Stay classy, Sepp……….

- The world’s smartest people are still not in the business of committing crimes for a living. While the smarter folks are off doing legal ish, people like Ohio residents John Mogan and Ashely Duboe are committing crimes and then doing the police’s work by serving up evidence of their evil deeds hot and fresh on social media. Mogan, a recent parolee of Ohio’s fine correctional system, and Duboe, his girlfriend, are accused of robbing an Ohio bank last week and these two would-be Mensas apparently never thought that posting photos on Facebook of themselves with wads of cash in the days after the crime was a bad idea. Police say the photos helped them identify and locate their suspects and charge them with robbing the Savings Bank in Ashville, just outside of Columbus. According to the long arm of the law, Mogan made off with an undetermined amount of cash after he entered the bank wearing a black hoodie and handed the teller a note demanding cash. Based on the evidence we now have, he probably would have found another way to f*ck up and get himself caught even without his social media stupidity, but he posted a photo on his Facebook page that shows him with fans of cash in each hand as he embraces Duboe. As if that weren’t enough, he posted another photo several days later showing himself with a wad of bills in his mouth. “That's called a McStack,” he allegedly wrote. “I'm doing rrree=aaaaalll) good.” But wait, there’s more. Other photos posted to the Facebook page show Mogan pretending that the brick of cash is a phone as well as his lunch. Pickaway County Sheriff Robert Radcliff and his crew have never had an easier case to crack……..

- Anyone who thought the Fast & Furious franchise  might be done or at least ready to wrap up with the untimely death of Paul Walker and a nice, neat place at which to bring the seven-movie series to a close….nope. Vin Diesel has revealed that the franchise will indeed end….with "one last trilogy.” Earlier this year, “Furious 7” became the franchise's most successful installment yet, grossing over $1.512 billion at the box office. That number ranks fifth on the all-time list behind “Avatar,” “Titanic,” “Jurassic World” and “The Avengers.” Diesel also serves as a producer on the movies as well as starring in them and previously confirmed that the eighth film in the series will be released on April 14, 2017. "We're going to make the best movie you've ever seen!" was his promise in April. That was clearly a lie because no “Fast & Furious” movie is ever going to rank among the best in cinematic history, but the movie has lurched along since then and still doesn’t have a director. "My producing partner Neal [H.Moritz] would love for me to just sign off on a director, but this is too special a franchise, so these matters have to be very carefully handled. To be clear, NO ONE has been offered to helm Fast 8 yet... let alone seen a script,” Diesel wrote in a Facebook post. : "Universal has been so good to me and so trusting of the vision... they have been like family... I promised the studio I would deliver one last Trilogy to end the saga." The best Diesel has done so far is to claim that he, Moritz and Universal had been "mapping out the future of our saga" over the weekend, "including the announcement of it's (sic) respective directors." More action, less bluster, V. Fans will pay to see whatever you crank out, so just get on with it……….

- Look at Venezuela and Colombia, making nice. The South American neighbors and linchpins in the global drug trade have been at odds for a long time, but maybe they can be friends again now that Venezuela has agreed to let more than 1,500 Colombians return as legal residents after they were deported during an August crackdown on the border. According to the regional group UNASUR, Venezuelan President/despot Nicolas Maduro is willing to allow those Colombians to come back and normalize their legal status with the help of his government. The reversal comes on week after Maduro met with Colombia's president and they agreed to send back their ambassadors who were recalled amid the dispute that has paralyzed trade and movement along the border. Venezuela really kicked things up a notch, closing border crossings, deploying troops and deporting some Colombian nationals as part of what it calls an initiative to combat smuggling and crime. It’s funny because drugs exist in massive quantities in both countries, but it’s cute that either side thinks the other is the major problem here. Oh, and there’s also the issue of how many of the deported Colombians will want to return after being given the boot, but how could you not want to come back to a country that has treated you so warmly? Good times all around………

Duran Duran's draw, Andrew McCutchen's mistake and German airport/hors metaphors

- Some items are just asking to be stolen. For example, if you have a 100-pound pumpkin growing outside your home in some Podunk part of South Dakota and you don’t find a way to secure that gourd, then you may as well adorn it with a sign asking local pranksters and troublemakers to heist it. Matthew Murraine doesn’t seem to understand this truth and he’s extremely bitter that late last week, someone stole the plump pumpkin he had ben growing for months at his home in Spearfish, South Dakota. Murraine wants to know who swiped his large orange sphere in a crime he believes was carefully planned. "They backed right up to the house. That's pretty brazen," he said. "They brought a saw. You could see on the stem where they had cut.” The pumpkin was quite the spectacle, growing as 2 inches per day, which Murraine said was fascinating "in a nerdy pumpkin grower kind of way." To sum it up, you have a self-professed nerd with a gaudy, unnaturally large pumpkin for which he has no security and this guy is shocked that someone stole it? According to Murraine, the pumpkin still had a month of growing time left and would have reached about 120 pounds. "It dwarfed my daughter, and she is 3," he said.  "I want them to felt guilty about taking (it) from kids.” Yes, because your daughter’s world will never be the same without that pumpkin. It would definitely hurt after giving the gourd 20 gallons of water every four days and a gallon of milk each week for calcium, but losing its estimated value of $200 isn't the sort of loss that should shake anyone’s world to its foundation……….

- Andrew McCutchen is missing the point entirely. McCutchen, who made four All-Star teams and won a National League MVP award over his first six seasons in the majors, shaved off his trademark dreadlocks in March, eschewing the look that had been but one part of his awesome persona as a cornerstone of the Pittsburgh Pirates’ resurgence the past three seasons. He became so well-known for his dreadlocks that the social media reaction to his March haircut was disturbingly over-the-top. Sure, he donated the dreadlocks to charity, but being able to successfully rock dreadlocks is something not everyone can do. It was an epic look for an amazing all-around player, so clearly it was a one-time thing and the dreadlocks will soon return, right? Nope. "Never bringing them back," McCutchen said. "Never. All it was, for myself, was a haircut. I know for other people, it probably meant more because that was my trademark. But if my hair was my trademark, and that's the reason people know me, that means I suck at baseball." My man, you couldn’t be more wrong. People didn’t know you solely from your dreads, but they were patt of what made you awesome. Seeing a dude mash 425-foot home runs with his long locks whipping around behind him as he swang and jogged around the bases made for a great sight and getting rid of them was a bad call. Need more evidence? McCutchen batted just .194 in April this season and while he insisted his new ‘do had nothing to do with his slow start, McCutchen is deceiving himself. Sadly, he plans to continue getting it cut every time the Pirates' team barber visits the clubhouse and the world is a worse place for it………

- While the rest of Europe is dealing with one fiscal crisis after another, one of the most financially stable nations on the continent is so flush with cash that one of its leaders is literally advocating the abandonment of a troubled new airport project in favor of starting the project all over. Lawmaker Jens Koeppen, a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel's party, has seen just about enough of the river of euros poured into the Berlin Brandenburg Airport and with the new facility years behind schedule and billions of euros over budget, Koeppen has an explosive idea for dealing with the problem. He wants to tear down what exists of the new airport and start anew. The lawmaker said that in the effort to stop wasting money and start real progress toward a functional, modern airport  all options should be considered, including building an entirely new airport. "If there are problems that can't be solved, and that's clearly the case, then one needs to admit defeat and get off the dead horse," Koeppen said. Not exactly a clean execution of that metaphor, but perhaps something got lost in the translation. Beating a dead horse is what you were going for here, but riding a dead horse is also a rather fruitless endeavor. For now, the tear-down option doesn’t appear to be under consideration, as current plans to open the airport in the fall of 2017 are in doubt after authorities last week closed part of the site due to fears a roof could collapse. The government hasn’t officially revised that timeline in light of this new development, but the sight of having the whole structure torn down is something very few are likely to have the stomach for……..

- Every band needs to find a niche if it’s going to be successful long term. Whether it’s amazing live shows, outlandish antics, insightful lyrics or something else, a band needs to give fans a consistent, reliable reason to continue supporting them as the years go by. Duran Duran has been holding it down for more than two decades and despite being well past their prime, they continue to sell albums and draw fans to shows. How do they do it? According to Simon Le Bon, one of the big reasons for his band’s popularity is that women love Duran Duran and when you have a lot of attractive women showing up for your concerts, the dudes are bound to follow.  "The s. They might not have liked us when they walked in, but by the end of the concert they had a bit of affection for Duran Duran,” Le Bon said. “Some bands are really happy with being a band that people have to sit down and get stoned to. But, you know, I like to get people up and dancing. There's a lot to be said for being a party band. It's a hell of a lot of fun." Coincidentally, Duran Duran just released its 14th studio album earlier this month and serving up a great quote like, “Smart guys went to Duran Duran concerts because that's where the girls were,” is a great way to generate more attention for the project. It’s also a not-so-subtle humble brag that allows Le Bon to remind everyone that lots and lots of hot chicks are fans of his band and therefore, Duran Duran have had plenty of chances for some, um, free affection after shows around the world in the past few years. Enjoy the final few minutes of your time in the spotlight, S., because aged-out rockers have to fade away at some point……..

Anthony Bennett goes home, idiots + lighters + gas pumps and James Corden goes musical

- We’re surrounded by morons, world. Never forget it. Just when you think that you’ve got a lot of really smart folks out there when you drive on the highway or shop at the store, think of brain-dead, IQ-deprived ass hats like the man who stopped at a Michigan gas station and started a fire that could have made himself and everyone in the area go boom. The best way to appreciate this idiot’s sheer stupidity is to peruse surveillance video from the Center Line gas station, which shows flames quickly engulfing the man’s car and the gas pump when he….wait for it….tried to kill a spider with a cigarette lighter. Yes, this man was standing mere feet from hundreds of gallons of highly flammable and combustible material and he thought, “Hell, there’s a spider and I don’t like spiders, so rather than kill it with my foot, or smash it with a paper towel from the nearby gas station utility stand, or find a blunt object from inside his vehicle with which to obliterate this creepy crawler, I’ll try to torment the spider by burning it to death using an open flame! Brilliant!” This fool later told authorities he spotted a spider on his gas tank and pulled out his lighter to get rid of it, which doesn’t really make any of this any better. Fortunately, no one was hurt and the man was able to put out the flames with a fire extinguisher. The true shocker is that he didn’t try to fill an open container with gas and douse the fire to put it out……….

- In the late-night talk show wars, the race is on for three of the genre’s newest faces to make their mark. Jimmy Fallon has his gimmicks and original bits, Stephen Colbert has transitioned well into hosting “The Late Show” and the man who occupies the time slot after Colbert on CBS has….umm….he’s James Corden? Corden, side from being British, isn't all that distinctive and for that reason, maybe it’s good that when Disclosure makes a trip to Los Angeles this week to perform its brand of electronic/dance music, Corden will hold down production duties. The siblings are set to perform “Caracal”  and tabbing Corden to produce is a bit surprising since the new “Late Late Show”  host has a light musical background, including work on Rizzle Kicks 2011 video for 'Mama Do The Hump' and with Dizzee Rascal on 2010 track 'Shout.’ Corden is known much more for his television and theatre work and he’s actually won several awards in those fields.  "I'm excited to work with American Express and Disclosure to produce my first live music event. Howard and Guy are extremely talented individuals who have taken the world by storm with their music, and I am privileged to be able to create a memorable experience for their fans,” Corden said of his producing hold down the 12:35 a.m. time slot on CBS for the rest of his broadcasting life………

- Want to piss off an entire nation with one simple statement? Blame them for one of the biggest, bloodiest and most violent conflicts in the history of humanity and see how they react. The Russian ambassador to Poland decided that was a good approach to take a blowtorch to the collective pride of the nation in which he represents his home country by foisting a large chunk of the blame for World War II on Poland. Ties ‘twixt the two Slavic nations have worsened considerably in recent months and when Russian Ambassador Sergey Andreev said the Soviet Union's invasion of Poland in 1939 was not an aggression, it didn’t take long for the Poles to react. The Polish Foreign Ministry said Saturday that Andreev "undermined historical truth" and seemed to be trying to justify Stalinist crimes. Trying to defend Joseph Stalin is a notoriously losing proposition and given that World War II began after Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union sealed a pact in 1939 that included a secret provision to carve up Poland, blaming Poland for starting the war is a bit like blaming a homeowner whose house was just robbed and wrecked for their role in the crime because, you know, had they not built that house and lived in it, then there would have been no way for that robbery to occur. Germany and the Soviets did a tag-team invasion of Poland, with Germany rolling in from the west to start the festivities and a Soviet invasion from the east 16 days later. Millions of Poles were killed in the war and it remains an extremely painful time for a very prideful nation, so Andreev a) knew exactly what he was doing and b) clearly did it on purpose………

- Former No. 1 pick Anthony Bennett is the NBA’s version of the pack of Mentos and stick of beef jerky that the forgetful slacker in your friend group purchases on his way to your holiday white elephant gift exchange because he totally forgot about buying a gift. Bennett was the top pick of the 2013 draft by the Cleveland Cavaliers, but showed up for camp out of shape as a rookie and even after improving his fitness level somewhat, he was traded to Minnesota in the Kevin Love deal in the summer of 2014. Given a fresh start in an even more frigid wasteland than Cleveland, he struggled with injuries in his lone season with the Timberwolves and despite a slightly increased scoring average, he was placed on waivers this week. Shockingly, for a player once thought of highly enough to be picked above every other available player in the draft went unclaimed and all 30 NBA teams were notified at 5 p.m. ET on Friday that Bennett had cleared waivers. In light of that development, Bennett walked away from the Minnesota Timberwolves with a $3.65 million buyout and the word on the street is that he is expected to sign early this week with the Toronto Raptors. Toronto makes some sense for the native Canadian, but even being the lone NBA team in his home country isn't going to buy him much goodwill if he continues to disappoint on the court. Bennett did enjoy a strong summer with the Canadian national team and going home could be what he needs to kick-start his career after rough stints with the Cavaliers and Timberwolves, but when Minnesota attempted to deal prior to its release, it couldn’t find a single taker. That’s a precipitous fall in the span of two years and has sparked talk that Bennett could be the biggest NBA draft bust ever, which is not a label you want affixed to your name……….

Fake superheroes v. crime, reviving "The A-Team" and moveable private island insanity

- Look who just got himself a free weekend to hit up some parties and chill with friends in South Bend, Indiana. Notre Dame reserve defensive tackle Jay Hayes can look at his weekend off from the football team in one of two ways. Hayes, who hasn't played this season, didn’t travel with the team for Saturday's game against Massachusetts. The reason he was left behind was ripping  the coaching staff on Twitter earlier this week, suggesting that his coaches weren't really doing anything to help him get better. "When a coach stops coaching you..that's when you jus gotta move on," Hayes tweeted. "Gotta get this natty [national title] and I'm out." They were clearly the frustrated words of a college athlete who thinks he’s much better than he is on the field and predictably, Hayes deleted his tweets once they began to garner him unwanted attention, as if there is any way to actually erase tweets once you post them. Head coach Brian Kelly clearly saw them and slapped Hayes on the no-fly list for this weekend’s road game. "You have to think before you hit send, and what you have to do is knock on my door instead of hitting the send button," Kelly said. “If he has a job at Google and talks about his boss that way, he probably is not going to have a job the next day. You just tell them, 'Look, you need to make a better decision next time or it's going to impact you when you leave here.' He won't be on the travel roster this week for that mistake." Time to find a good frat party and enjoy a weekend of cheap beer, sleeping in and freedom, Jay……….

- Being rich is all about finding ways to elevate yourself above not only the peons beneath you on the socioeconomic ladder, but above your fellow rich people. Be it through valuable pieces of art, exclusive luxury cars, obscenely extravagant jewelry or jaw-dropping vacation homes, the über-wealthy need to remain a cut above. The latest over-the-top, wholly unnecessary object of opulence that the 1 percent of the 1 percent can target is Kokomo Ailand, a movable island created by the innovators at Austria-based Migaloo Private Submersible Yachts. Migaloo’s designers, with seemingly no connection to reality or sanity, are working on plans to create  the world’s first mobile private island. Ya know, because you wouldn’t want to do something truly crazy like take those spare hundreds of millions of dollars you have lying around and use them to feed the starving masses of the world or provide a place to live for the millions of homeless individuals on this spinning sphere of humanity. “Living on and with the sea will be a future mega-trend, and this island can be a first step to adapt to this new way of living,” said Christian Gumpold, managing director of Migaloo. “The response has been amazing. All of our clients love the idea.” Of course they love the idea, C., they’re rich, self-centered pricks who clearly don’t care about making the world a better place. But hell, then you have a private island that can move under its own power, boasts a 262-foot elevator, a penthouse with 360-degree views, a jungle deck with a waterfall, an al fresco dining area, beauty salons, a spa, a gym, a bar and a pool, you can always try to buy yourself the soul you most definitely do not possess………...

- Did no one learn a lesson from the utterly awful, star-studded, spectacular failure of a movie that was 2010’s “The A-Team” in all of its remade glory? The movie had Jessica Biel, Liam Neeson and Bradley Cooper, yet it was such an extreme flop that a planned sequel was cancelled - and we all now that cancelling a sequel makes Hollywood executives weep bitterly. So why are we now hearing that 20th Century Fox is working on a new TV series based on the classic '80s drama that spawned that awful 2010 movie. “The A-Team” famously featured an all-male team of US Army Special Forces operatives trying to clear their name after being framed for a crime they didn't commit, traveling the world helping plucky underdogs defeat dastardly bad guys. Every episode featured attractive women and adorable kids in need, with the A-Team’s four members inevitably captured, only to escape by building a war machine of some sort from spare parts foolishly stored in the space where they were being kept and scoring a decisive blow to the bad guys in the end. The remake will be helmed by “Fast & Furious” writer-producer Chris Morgan, who will work with Tawnia McKiernan, daughter of the original show's co-creator Stephen J. Cannells. The original show ran on NBC for five season between 1983 and 1987, but the remake won't be a carbon copy. It will reportedly bastardize the original format/score a totally unimportant blow for gender equality by featuring both male and female members of the team. Given the failure rate of new TV shows, the odds aren't in this one’s favor, but it should still be fun to throw lots of money and big names at it before it crashes and burns………

- Never mind the debut of “Heroes: Reborn” on NBC this week, a make-believe real life superhero continues to try to make a difference in the Emerald City. Ben Fodor, a self-styled hero using the name Phoenix Jones , first became known in 2011, when his vigilante-style crime-fighting ways began to be widely documented in his native Seattle. He began wearing a mask and patrolling the streets, on a mission to get himself killed because he thinks he’s straight out of a comic book. Eventually, Fodor’s affinity for fighting took him to the octagon as a mixed martial artist, where he lost his World Series of Fighting debut to Emmanuel Walo in April. In officiated combat, Fodor’s life has turned around since then and he recently submitted Roberto Young at WSOF 23 to run his professional record to 6-1. Winning a few dollars fighting hasn’t satiated his thirst for combat, though, and one day after defeating Young, Fodor claims that he stopped a possible murder on the streets of Seattle. The imaginary superhero allegedly noticed a man being pistol-whipped early in the morning and stepped in to help. He later told police officers he saw a man hitting another man in the head outside a music venue. “In the middle of the fight, I saw a man start striking overhand to another man’s face. At that point, I got closer and saw that he had a gun in his hand,” Jones said. “He was pistol-whipping a person. The man fell down and tried to get up, and two other people started stomping his face...He gets up, and the guy comes back with the gun. At that point, I came through, and I hit the suspect with the gun, and he went down, and the gun came out. I took off. My friend Nate took off with me.” Wait….a superhero who runs when he sees a gun? Sounds like someone needs to grow up and become a real hero, Fodor/Jones……..

Costco waffle brawls, why we hate mascots and Indonesia promises to clean up

- Is hate for Chris Brown still a thing? Yes, he pleaded guilty to assault charges in 2009 after attacking then-girlfriend Rihanna and doesn’t seem like he’s become a saint since then, plus his music is wildly overrated and there are dozens of pop/R&B artists who can replicate what he does musically. Still, everyone deserves a chance to move on with their life once they’ve paid the price for their crimes….or at least they do in places where kangaroos, koalas and walkabouts aren't staples of life. Aussies are some of the coolest people around and if you don’t like hanging out with them you clearly have a problem with yourself, but one thing Australian women aren't OK with is having Brown tour their country with his special brand of crap-tacular music. Enter Australian Minister for Women Michaelia Cash, who both has a job that sounds like a made-up femi-Nazi wet dream and is clearly not a fan of misogynists, suggested recently that Brown may not be allowed into the country for his upcoming tour dates. Her remarks came after women's rights group GetUp created an online petition calling for Brown to be denied a visa ahead of planned live gigs. This femi-Nazi manifesto said that failure to ban Brown would "send the message that if you brutally beat a woman, in a short amount of time you will be forgiven, or even celebrated." Hey GetUp, get over it. Yes, Brown seems like a d-bag and yes, he was convicted of a crime. But that doesn’t mean you can deny him the right to enter your country six years after being convicted. The legal system determined that he had been sufficiently punished and since the crime didn’t occur on your soil, you don’t really get a say. Then again, Cash said that she would push for Brown to be investigated before he is allowed into the country by immigration minister Peter Dutton. Score one for holding a grudge………

- Don’t step between a man and some free Nutella waffles - especially not when that man is a criminal with a long rap sheet and a short temper. That life lesson was delivered the hard way to a 78-year-old California shopper who got his face caved on by a fellow Costco customer when the old timer dared to challenge a man less than one-third his age over the young man’s abuse of a sample table offering free pieces of waffles smeared with Nutella. The elder man, who hasn’t been publicly identified, said he was reaching for a waffle at a sample table at the Costco in Burbank Derrick Gharabighi used his speed and quickness advantages to zip in and grab all of the remaining samples off the table. That’s when things became heated, with the old man having the gall to complain about the greed of his younger rival. It seems the old man pushed a button or two because the next thing he knew, Gharabighi was going Ronda Rousey on his face and he was on his way to the  hospital with a cut and swelling on the left side of his face. Burbank police charged Gharabighi with felony elder abuse and personal infliction of great bodily injury against a person over 70 years of age and amazingly, at his arraignment he pleased not guilty. Not surprisingly, Gharabighi has a criminal record and equally unsurprisingly, he’s getting a lot of heat on his Instagram page from people who feel like pummeling a guy 13 years past retirement age is unacceptable. In a video of the incident that surfaced online, two other shoppers expressed the same sentiments to Gharabighi, including one who told him, "Lay off the Nutella waffles dude." As always, at least all of this happened for a good reason……..

- Everyone hates mascots. Well, maybe not everyone. Children old enough not to be terrified by giant freaks in 10-foot-tall shark, bear or monster costumers and not yet old enough to realize how lame said freaks are tend to like them, but the other 99.9996 percent of the world’s population who know what mascots are hates them. The reasons aren't difficult to grasp, not when you learn about idiots like Sparky, the mascot for Arizona State University. Like other mascots, Sparky is tasked with creating hilarious mischief and fun at sporting events, namely by clowning for fans, throwing out free items and dancing like a fool. Oh, and don’t forget assaulting public officials and causing serious bodily harm with those wacky antics. Tempe City Councilman David Schapira was chilling on the sidelines, enjoying one of the perks of being an elected official by getting a close view of the action, when Sparky playfully jumped on Schapira’s back, which wouldn’t have been a problem except for the fact that the councilman is recovering from back surgery. Schapira said he laughed until he felt a pop, which turned out to be a torn back muscle. The university apologized for its mascot's "excessive exuberance" and offered to help pay medical expenses related to the injury, although getting rid of its stupid mascot would be a better solution. Even magnanimous, Schapira  said he’s not angry at Sparky and joked that he  might wear a warning sign next time he’s on the sidelines……..

- What you may not know abut Indonesia is that it’s the world's fourth largest country. You also may not realize that the relatively poor nation is among the worst polluters in the world, but Indonesia wants you to know that it is really, really sorry about that and it promises to clean up its act really, really soon - soon being a relative term. Specifically, Indonesia has pledged to strengthen the protection of its forests and boost the production of renewable energy in its target for a global climate pact. As part of its submission to the United Nations, Indonesia pledged to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 29 percent by 2030. That reduction is compared to a business-as-usual scenario without climate action and better still, Indonesia claimed in its report that it would  raise that target to 41 percent with international support, including access to finance and clean technology. How would the country accomplish these lofty goals once the world opens its collective pocketbook and doles out some free money? In large part through improved conservation of forests, as most  of Indonesia's emissions comes from peat and forest fires as land is cleared for farming, corporate development or oil palm plantations. As part of its new, enviro-friendly ways, Indonesia also plans to boost the share of renewable energy to at least 23 percent by 2025. Break out the solar panels and plastic recycling bins, all, the party is about to begin………

The fight for Catalonia, "John Wick 2" and MLB quitters

- The one thing a professional athlete never wants said about them is that they quit. Quitting on your team or even quitting as an individual sport athlete is one of the worst things you can say about any athlete because it means you don’t have the competitive fire or integrity it takes to succeed. With that in mind, lots of luck to Detroit Tigers closer Bruce Rondon in shaking the quitter rap now attached to his name after his last-place team sent him home for the final two weeks of the season because he stopped trying. Don’t believe it? Just as Tigers manager Brad Ausmus, who cited the reliever's "effort level" as the reason for giving him two weeks of paid vacation to wrap up the year. Ausmus refused to comment beyond that cryptic remark, but it came  after a bizarre appearance in Monday's game in which Rondon's fastball velocity was markedly lower than usual. When asked after Game 2 of Monday's doubleheader against the Chicago White Sox, he said only that Rondon was not injured. He was also asked if Rondon was trying to scale back his velocity to improve command and said the team was against the pitcher taking that approach. He was obviously going to get additional questions about the decision to rip a previously valuable piece from a bullpen that has been one of the premier areas of disappointment for one of baseball’s most underwhelming teams this season, but Ausmus was having none of it. "Other than saying that [general manager] Al Avila and myself completely agreed on it, there will be no other details or comment," Ausmus said. Maybe the quitter himself will have something to say about all of this in the near future………

 

- Score one for blatant overreaction, University of Delaware. No one wants their campus to be the scene of a hate crime, but the Wilmington-based school showed a healthy disdain for observation and rational thought this week when remnants of paper lanterns left over from a campus event were mistaken for nooses and set off a hate crime investigation. Interim university President Nancy Targett showed why she probably isn't a great choice to guide the university on a long-term basis when she went knee-jerk on the story and  called the appearance of the pieces of string with metal hangers at the end a "deplorable act" and "hateful display" when they were found by a student hanging in trees in front of a campus building. That hot take cooled off considerably hours later when Targett came back and said the investigation found that the items weren't instruments of a hate crime, but were left over from an event on The Green, a campus open space. How can none of you check the event schedule and see that there was a special event in that area, one that used paper lanterns to create a festive atmosphere. In trying to cover her own ass, Targett said the incident revealed the campus' sensitivity to the potential issue and shows a need for "continuing dialogue." Potential issue? For what? For someone to find the severed papier mâché head of a piñata horse and claim that it’s promoting violence against animals? That this story caused a minor social media stir wasn’t surprising, not when your overreacting interim president issuing statements in which she says she’s “saddened and disturbed that this deplorable act has taken place on our campus.” Nicely played, tools……….

- Duuuude, Keanu Reeves is about to kill some more suckers and he might not even need kung fu to do it. Sure, Reeves hasn’t pretended to be a kung fu expert for the vast majority of his roles, but his terrible acting has spanned roles from “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure” to “The Matrix” and more recently, the hitman action flick “John Wick.” The latter of those three movies was a huge success earlier this year, made on a $20 million budget and raking in $78 million worldwide. That sort of return on investment is definitely enough to earn a sequel and so it shall be. Reeves will start shooting “John Wick 2” this fall, studios Lionsgate and Thunder Road Pictures have announced. To keep continuity high, co-directors David Leitch and Chad Stahelski are returning for the sequel with Reeves back as a former hitman who comes out of retirement after a rich brat played by Alfie Allen kills the beagle puppy left to him by his late wife. Throw in writer Derek Kolstad also being back to pen the script and the gang it back together for what could be a solid action movie. “With such tremendous fan and critical support for John Wick, we knew that there was still so much more of this story to tell,” Lionsgate executive Jason Constantine said in a statement. “We are thrilled that Keanu, David and Chad have re-teamed with us and promise to bring audiences even more excitement the second time around." The rest of the cast is a work in progress, so the returns of John Leguizamo, Adrianne Palicki and Ian McShane are question marks at this point……..

- Voting is near and the threats are a-flyin’ in España. This weekend's local elections in the disputed region of Catalonia are important because they could result in the region declaring its long-awaited independence and breaking away from the rest of the country. Enter Spanish Foreign Minister Garcia Margallo, who wants those involved to know what’s on the line when they head to the polling station. He said Catalonia's 7.5 million residents would automatically lose their Spanish nationality if the regional government that emerges from this weekend decides to declare independence. As Margallo tells it, when one splits with a country, one loses the benefits of that country. It sounds really simple when you lay it out that way, but of course in the real world it’s not going to be anywhere close to that easy. The prime minister was having none of the claim that Catalans could maintain Spanish nationality after independence, shooting it down like a cheap clay pigeon. This may or may not have a lot to do with the fact that Catalonia is an economically powerful northeastern region that Spain really can't afford to lose given the country’s shaky economy. When Catalan voters elect regional lawmakers Sunday, they could well set the table for pro-secession parties saying they will establish independence within 18 months if they win a majority. The national government has ruled out any possibility of the region becoming independent, saying secession would be unconstitutional. Catalonia, whose capital is Barcelona, disagrees and wants to take its 18 percent of Spain's economic output and become a free agent………

"Jurassic World" sequel lies, where America is fattest and how to avoid the women's Asian Cup

- Ish just got real in South America. As one might suspect when there is the potential for a wholly unnecessary armed conflict on that particular continent, Venezuela is involved. This time, the president of Guyana is accusing Venezuela of deploying troops to a contested border region in what he calls a "dangerous" escalation of a long-running dispute between the two South American nations. President David Granger fanned the flames of dispute when he claimed to have received reports of what he called "extraordinary military deployments" along what Guyana considers its western border. In light of this egregious breach of boundaries, Granger said his defense officials were meeting to discuss a response. In a very civil move, Guyana has asked the U.N. to mediate the border dispute and Granger is expected to raise the issue at the upcoming General Assembly. Just don’t expect Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro to back down because that’s not really his thing, not when Venezuela has long claimed a resource-rich jungle territory known as the Essequibo that comprises about two-thirds of Guyana. In essence, Venezuela thinks it owns Guyana the way Russia thinks it owns anything shiny that catches Vlad Putin’s eye. Not only is it trying to take over Guyana, Venezuela has also recently sent troops to its border with Colombia in a crackdown on smuggling. The dictatorship that Hugo Chavez built is spreading itself a bit thin these days, but such is the price of doing business as a blatant dictatorship……….

- A lot of people would like to miss the upcoming women’s Asian Cup soccer tournament. As in, anyone not being paid to play for or work at the tournament - and probably even a few of those people - would like to avoid an international women’s soccer tournament. Ironically, one of the people who is supposed to play in the event won't be able to make it. That would be Iranian women's soccer captain Niloufar Ardalan, who will be absent from the competition due to what could generously be called a domestic dispute. Ardalan’s  husband, sports journalist Mahdi Toutounchi, has ripped his wife’s passport to keep her from leaving the country and missing their son's first day of school. If that seems unfair, that’s because it is. If it seems like it should be illegal, it’s not. Toutounchi is acting within the given legal parameters of Iranian law, which allows a husband to deny his wife the ability to travel beyond the country's borders if he chooses. Iran isn't known for behind ahead of the times socially, but even this is ridiculous. Iranians and supporters on social media have rallied around Ardalan, demanding that the law be changed in a country that doesn’t change laws for any reason other than it giving more power to its authoritarian government. Ardalan tried to minimize the situation in an Instagram post that was surprisingly militaristic for a woman who plays soccer for a living. "I am only a national soldier who fights to raise flag of our country," she wrote. "I wish a law would be approved that allows female soldiers to fight for raising the flag." Chill out, N. It’s only soccer; in real war, people who fall to the ground as if they were shot, it’s because they actually were…….

- America, it’s time to find out how FAT you are and which state is creating the heaviest burden on gravity’s shoulders these days. Not surprisingly, it’s the same people who were weighing this country down last year: Arkansas, West Virginia and Mississippi. According to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control, those were the states with the highest adult obesity rates. A state-by-state analysis showed that adult obesity rates remain steady in the United States, but they’re still disturbingly high. The Midwest had the greatest prevalence of obesity, narrowly edging out the South, which boasted seven of the states with the highest obesity rates in the nation. Obesity rates have soared since the 1990s, thanks in large part to Mississippi and West Virginia, which in 2013 were the first two states to ever report more than 35 percent of their adult population as obese. According to the CDC, more than a third of U.S. adults are obese and even worse, 17 percent of children are obese. The numbers are equally disturbing for several ethnic groups, as the study puts the obesity rate for African-American adults at 47.8 percent and Latino adults at 42.5 percent. White folks can feel only moderately ashamed of their fitness level, as the study pegs their obesity rate at a paltry 32.6 percent. Credit to Hawaii, the District of Columbia and Colorado for keeping the obesity rate from going even higher by rocking the lowest numbers in the study. The rest of America is veering toward obesity-related conditions like heart disease, stroke, and type 2 diabetes and contributing far too much to the $147 billion the U.S. spends annually on obesity-related issues. Given that the medical costs of those who are obese are about $1,500 a year more than someone of normal weight, now would be a great time to deal with this sh*t………..

- Hey world, get ready to be amazed….by how miserably “Jurassic World” director Colin Trevorrow fails to live up to his promise that the sequel to his bloated blockbuster will be a "different kind of film" than its predecessor. Trevorrow, who won't direct the next totally unnecessary sequel in the franchise, will serve as one of its executive producers and is co-writing its script. Universal announced over the summer that the “Jurassic World” follow-up will be released in June 2018 and as Trevorrow tells it, a movie that doesn’t need to reinvent anything to appease the legions of sci-fi sycophants who will pay $10 or more to see it is going to reinvent everything. "It will get to be a different kind of film. The audience has given us permission to a certain extent to take this to the next level, and I don't necessarily mean in scale,” Trevorrow said.  "I feel very strongly that it's not about more dinosaurs, or bigger and better dinosaurs. It's about using this as a starting point for a much larger story about our relationship with these animals and about animals in general and the dynamic created by bringing them back to life." Oh, but it will be on a bigger scale and there will be bigger, better dinosaurs because, well, Hollywood. Both Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard are reprising their roles for the sequel and will keep the storyline going after their characters “opened Pandora's Box in ‘Jurassic World,’” Trevorrow added. After banking $1.65 billion worldwide since its release and becoming the third highest-grossing film of all time, the real stunner is that the sequel isn't coming out by the end of this year……….

Livening up county commission meetings, Handsome v. Ignorant in college football and Swedish metal bands are just like you

- Any time you think rock stars are not like the rest of us, remember this story. Recall the tale of Joakim Brodén, the vocalist from Swedish metal band Sabaton, and how he ended up walking 320 miles to his band’s next gig. Like so many non-famous people who have never stepped behind a microphone or performed in front of hundreds of people who paid to see them, Brodén entered a drunken bet with his friends. In this case, his friends were his bandmates and they agreed that he loser would walk from the band’s hometown in Falun, Sweden to their next gig at Trondheim Metal Fest in Norway.  That walk is approximately 323 miles and will take an estimated 107 hours on foot, which both means Brodén is an incredibly slow walker and that he has a lot of time to think about new song lyrics in the next few days. "I will not go into details on exactly what happened, but I can say that it was fun and a bit silly. It started out almost as a joke, but it evolved to be quite serious,” Brodén said.  "Now I will take a few days' rest. I have made contact with some fans via Facebook, who have provided me with food and shelter. The first day was the hardest. That's when I walked for 10 hours without proper shoes. It wasn't exactly ideal." After a rough first day, the lead singer now walks between four and eight hours a day. When he gets where he’s going, he will help the rest of Sabaton tour in support of their seventh album, “Heroes.” Having the lung capacity to hit all of the right notes and hold them shouldn’t be too tough for the now-fitter Brodén after all of this………

- It’s said that in a good negotiation, both sides end up a little unhappy and feeling as if they gave up something they wanted. That’s usually not the measure of a good court case, but it’s the result we have in the case of the Italian captain convicted earlier this year of the 2012 shipwreck of the Costa Concordia cruise liner off the Tuscan coast. The lazy, cowardly captain of that ship, Francesco Schettino, was convicted in February by an Italian court in the manslaughter deaths of 32 passengers and crew members, of causing the shipwreck by colliding with a reef near tiny Giglio island and of abandoning the capsized vessel with people still aboard. The infamous recording made in the aftermath of the ship capsizing featured the coast guard angrily chiding Schettino to get his despicable ass back to the ship and see what could be done to help those still aboard. Now, both sides in his case are asking the court to revisit its sentence and see what more (or less) can be done to this barnacle on the side of the cruise liner of humanity. Both the prosecution and defense are appealing the verdict, which resulted in Schettino being sentenced to 16 years in prison. Prosecutors wanted a nice, round 26 years, while defense lawyer Saverio Senese plans to argue that the court didn't correctly evaluate evidence in Schettino's favor. A Florence appeals court will decide on this one and let’s just say the odds aren't really with the captain………

- It’s Coach Handsome vs. The Ignoramus Who Wants College Football to Return to 1950. After the Texas Tech Red Raiders beat Arkansas 35-24 on Saturday night, it took the looks-rich Kliff Kingsbury two seconds to turn his postgame news conference into a verbal street fight with Arkansas coach Bret Bielema. Kingsbury looked to bury Bielema after the latter made offensive comments during a summer convention in front of Texas high school coaches, speaking ill of the pass-happy offensive style Tech and other schools favor. "[Bielema] stood up and said if you don't throw to the fullback, we'll kick your ass, and if you throw it 70 times a game, we'll kick your ass,'' Kingsbury said. "[Bielema] just got his ass kicked twice in a row and probably next week by [Texas] A&M as well. That did feel good.'' As the son of a Texas high school football coach and a noted proponent of the spread offense, he was clearly irked by Bielema trying to help his teams remain competitive by railing against the evils of that newfangled spread offense that Kingsbury says is run by "90 percent'' of Texas high schools. The portly, fashion-backwards Bielema really can't match his younger rival in terms of looks, fitness or wardrobe, but that hasn’t stopped him from trying. He cited a study earlier this year that "players in the no-huddle, hurry-up offense play the equivalent of five more games than those that don't," which leads to an increase in injuries. "We have an obligation to do what's right," Bielema said in March. "I can't understand how some guys can't see that." Nice try, B. Your style of having 350-pound offensive linemen smash into 325-pound defensive linemen every play with 230-pound running backs behind the line, waiting to crash into 250-pound linebackers isn't exactly great for players’ health. After losing to mid-major Toledo the previous week and now Tech, all Bielema could offer was a lame quip about Kingsbury being new as a head coach and having a .500 record. Weak sauce, bro. Weak sauce………..

- If only all county commission hearings were this interesting. Normally, they’re filed with procedural, bureaucratic bullsh*t like zoning ordinances, tax codes and utility disputes, but the most recent Washoe County Commission meeting was no ordinary hearing. It all started with a man who has complained about pesticides in Reno's drinking water getting up to address the commission. That would typically be a boring time featuring an out-of-touch kook ranting about something he’s only vaguely informed about, but thankfully Ross Tisevich of Fallon, Nevada brought a visual aid with him to help liven up his diatribe. That visual aid was a weed killer bottle he placed on the lectern in front of him and before the night was over, that cheap plastic bottle would cause a whole lot of drama for everyone in the room. Tisevich was rambling on and on when he spilled a green liquid from the bottle, setting off a panic as deputies tackled him and frantic room full of people were quarantined for about two hours before officials determined it was a water-and-sugar substance that posed no danger. One of the best parts of the whole scene was the mayors of Reno and Sparks being among those quarantined before Tisevich was jailed on charges including dispersing a hoax hazardous material and disrupting a public meeting. Hi cohort, Joseph Benedict of Reno, also spoke at the meeting and was arrested on the same charges. Credit to these two ass hats for calling plenty of attention to their point, whatever the hell their point was in the first place, that is………

Fat pony dinosaurs, college football life lessons and life risks of anti-Putin rallies

- It’s better to learn a harsh life lesson now than when you’re in the real world, eh Notre Dame sophomore safety Drue Tranquill? College is the time to experiment, f*ck up and do stupid sh*t you won't be able to do once you leave campus for good and Tranquill took that to painful extremes Saturday when he suffered a serious right knee injury doing something that a sadly high number of professional athletes have done in recent years. Tranquill, who tore the ACL in his left knee last November, was geeked after a crucial third-down pass breakup in the end zone late in the second quarter of his team’s 30-22 win over No. 14 Georgia Tech and decided to commemorate the moment by chest-bumping teammate Joe Schmidt. It was a maneuver the two players have likely done dozens of times and it was never a serious problem, but in one of hteir biggest games of the season, things came off the rails. Tranquill appeared to hurt his right knee and left the game with his team leading 13-7. The Fighting Irish held off a late Georgia Tech rally for the win, but the sight of Tranquill fighting back tears as he was helped off the field will be difficult to shake. At least now he knows that jubilant celebrations are a true workplace hazard for athletes and if he’s ever fortunate enough to make it to the NFL, he can apply that lesson and avoid a third major knee injury because he just has to party after knocking down a relatively meaningless pass less than halfway through an early-season game………

- Man, this cannot be what a dinosaur had in mind for its legacy when it roamed the earth thousands of years ago. Dinosaurs are revered, celebrated and exist as objects of mysterious admiration for so many, be it as carnivores, herbivores, massively tall, compact and powerful, horned or flying. They’re given prime places in museums and have TV shows and movies made about them. They’re not supposed to be described as “a fat pony with a big head and horns,” which is how the team that discovered what it has deemed an example of a brand-new species that has significant similarities with the triceratops but appeared on Earth about 9 million years earlier. The dinosaur, named “Ava,” was pieced together by a team of Colorado-based paleontologists working in Montana. Mike Triebold -- after consulting with four experts from other institutions -- led the team that found Ava and seems pretty psyched about finding what sounds like the chubby, ostracized dork of the dinosaur world. "A lot of times when you find a new species, it's just a scrap," Triebold said. "We actually have 85 percent of the entire body of this animal." Triebold and his team began focusing on an area  in Montana's Judith River formation in search of fossils and chose the name Ava for their find because they initially thought their find was an example of an avaceratops, an existing species. Additional fossils convinced them that they had stumbled upon a new species. The Ceratopsian dinosaur is believed to have lived in the late Cretaceous period. Its Montana home featured a flatter terrain than it now boasts with the Rocky Mountains at their full height and experts believe the climate was wet, warm and humid, producing plenty of lush vegetation. Ava has been measured at  11.5 feet long by 4.25 feet tall with a nose horn and two  other horns on the brow, which don’t sound like any pony we’ve ever known………..

- In the Remake/Sequel Era in which Hollywood unapologetically lives, it’s a true miracle that it took this long for someone to what Disney is finally getting around to. More than 50 years after one of the cheesiest, corniest and most ridiculous movie musicals ever created predictably became a fan favorite, the annoying and sing-songy Mary Poppins is set to make a return to the silver screen. Disney is developing a new live-action movie based off the 1964 classic starring Julie Andrews in the title role as a singing nanny with magical powers, alongside Dick Van Dyke. At least this one won't be a shameless remake of the original and instead, it will be set around 20 years after the first movie, hopefully with Poppins as an aged-out misanthrope who now hates children and screams at them to get off her lawn before she grabs them, flies high into the sky and drops them on their irritating little asses. That’s unlikely, but the story is expected to borrow heavily from the book series that P.L. Travers wrote. The original movie was based on the first book in the series, which published its last tome in 1988. Rob Marshall, who directed "Into the Woods" and "Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides" for Disney, will oversee the project with help from the songwriting duo of Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, who worked on "Hairspray" and "Smash.” Their original songs and musical score mean the film will also be a musical, which will likely have a better relationship with the legacy of Travers than the original movie. Travers famously hated the way Disney handled the film, but the studio is working with her estate on the new movie………

- Big ups to Russia's beleaguered opposition and all of those who very literally put their lives and freedom on the line by attending a protest rally in an outlying Moscow neighborhood to decry the tyrannical 15-year rule of President/dictator Vladimir Putin. Showing up for an anti-Putin rally is the right move inasmuch as he’s a horrible despot who has bent and broken the rules to remain in power and plunge Russia deeper and deeper into the throes of communism, but it’s also a risky one because opposing Putin means you’re almost certainly going to end up on the government’s sh*t list and that means your future will include some time in subhuman secret prisons, torture, forced labor and possibly a one-way ticket to Siberia. Living in the moment, it’s great to see protestors denounce the Kremlin-controlled political system that allows Putin to stay in power and prevents the opposition from running in elections while decrying political repression and official corruption. Opposition leader Alexei Navalny boldly demanded that Russians not give up hope of changing their corrupt, unjust system and said the opposition's mission was "to work with those who don't believe" that anything can be changed. The rally took place despite lingering memories of a violent government crackdown on the opposition after anti-Putin protests drew huge crowds in the winter of 2011-2012 and hopefully it will be remembered fondly by all those who attended when they’re farming rocks in Siberia in a year………..

MLB pre-playoff hate, North Korea's gulag fun and GOP presidential staffer bar brawls

- It’s too bad Republican presidential contenders Rand Paul and Marco Rubio won't be in the race much longer. Neither has a Donald-Trump’s-hair-soul-versus-common-decency chance of winning the GOP nomination or even cracking the top five in the polls, but based on the (alleged) actions of two of their campaign staffers, it’s worth keeping these two hacks around awhile longer. Enter John Yob, a Paul aide, and Rubio deputy campaign manager Rich Beeson. Yob claimed - in that bastion of judicial magnitude known as Facebook of all places - that Beeson slugged him at a bar on Mackinac Island, where a number of Republican candidates have gathered for the weekend. Police are now investigating those allegations of a bar fight between these two pencil-necked political dorks, including a video Yob claimed to have of Beeson assaulting him. He later provided that video to media outlets rather than Mackinac Island Police Chief Brett Riccinto, who probably would have liked to see the video before CNN. "Any time you're at a bar past midnight things seem to get misconstrued as to what happened," Riccinto said. Really? You mix beer, liquor, people who are up way too late and plenty of testosterone and bad sh*t happens? The video is extremely grainy - damn bars failing to invest in proper stage lighting so videos shot in their confines have better quality - but it does appear to show a physical confrontation. It does little to affirm Yob’s claim that  the man who hit him in the video is Beeson and both campaigns have done their best to burrow inside their spokesman-formed shells and issue no comment whatsoever on the matter, although Yob did say will press charges against Beeson. Screw the next 25-man GOP blowhard debate; put these two ass hats in the octagon together, slap some fight gloves on them and let’s see them settle this UFC style……….

- Ice Cube’s edge continues to be dulled past the point of recognition and at this juncture, there really isn't any going back. Sure, the recent NWA biopic was merely another step in the commercialization of the career of a man who long ago abandoned the hard life he once espoused, but if he truly is going to play Scrooge in  a modern retelling of Charles Dickens' festive classic “A Christmas Carol,” then things just went from bad to really disturbing. Cube has taken on many, many family-friendly roles over the years and his days of gangsta rap are far behind him, so the idea of becoming a holiday movie actor is merely the next step in a sad devolution. The movie will be titled “Humbug” and it was snapped up by Universal following a four-studio battle for the rights. Should Ice Cube sign on, the project could reunite him with director Tim Story, with whom he worked on the cop flick “Ride Along.” The Scrooge role would see him play a miserly real estate agent, a part that has been played by scores of actors and voiced as an animated character by many others over the years. The word on the street is that Cube could make as much as $10 million for playing Scrooge, a sum that would feel mighty nice in his bank account and help dull some of the sting a person should feel when they used to be part of one of the baddest rap collectives on the planet and are now nothing more than a common, kid-friendly thespian……..

- And so the dance continues. North Korea continues to claim that it doesn’t have any hard labor camps to punish anyone with enough temerity to refuse to mindlessly go along with what its communist regime decrees and the outside world claims that the situation is only getting worse. Pointing the finger this time is the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea (CHRNK), which has issued a new report claiming that the Notorious Kim Jong-Un’s crew has been expanding space for women in its notorious prison labor camps to accommodate the number of Koreans forcibly returned from China. These women had the audacity to flee the impoverished nation on the north end of the Korean Peninsula to seek the economic means to survive in China, only to be expelled from their adopted country for a life of forced labor, savage beatings, starvation, episodic executions and other crimes against humanity. It’s not the sort of trade most people want to make, but it’s fully detailed in The Hidden Gulag IV, an update of the Committee’s decade-long examination of the North Korean system, published on Friday. North Korea’s remote and extensive secret prison network is the stuff of nightmarish legend and it’s laid out with the help of separate analysis of satellite photographs and interviews with inmates who endured stays in the horrific system and subsequently escaped to South Korea after their release. K.J. Un’s atrocities were previously laid out last year, when a U.N. appointed commission issued its own report on North Korean widespread and savage repression of its own citizenry. The U.N. Security Council for the first time debated whether to refer the Kim regime’s human rights atrocities to the International Criminal Court as crimes against humanity, a discussion that not surprisingly remains in progress……….

- They’re two of Major League Baseball’s biggest rivals, their fans despise each other with relentless fervor and they’re division rivals who have a high chance of meeting in the playoffs next month. But why not add some extra heat to the rivalry as the season winds down? Enter the theatrics at Wrigley Field during the Cubs’ 8-3 win Friday in the opener of a three-game series. The fun began early in the game when Cubs first baseman Anthony Rizzo was hit by a pitch, but life really got interesting in the fifth inning when St. Louis outfielder Matt Holliday being hit by a pitch on the helmet courtesy of Cubs starter Dan Haren. Haren immediately showed regret for the pitch, as did Cubs catcher Miguel Montero, but St. Louis either wasn’t buying their contrition or didn’t care because two innings later, Cardinals reliever Matt Belisle intentionally threw at Rizzo in retaliation. Belisle dotted Rizzo on the leg and was ejected along with Cardinals manager Mike Matheny, but that didn’t placate the rage of Cubs manager and all-around quirky guy Joe Maddon. "I'm really disappointed in what the Cardinals did right there," Maddon said after the game. "We did not hit their guy on purpose. That was an absolute mistake. To become this vigilante group that wants to get their own pound of flesh, that's absolutely insane, ridiculous and wrong. We don't start stuff, but we will stop stuff." Look at Maddon, issuing thinly veiled threats and tough-guy proclamations. Belisle weakly attempted to claim that hitting Rizzo was unintentional, which is helped by the fact that Rizzo has been hit a major league-leading 29 times overall this season. After Cubs outfielder Chris Coghlan ended the season of Pittsburgh Pirates shortstop Jung Ho Kang the previous day with a vicious slide into second base, dealing a blow to another possible playoff foe for the Cubs, Chicago is setting up what should be one hell of a postseason for itself……..