Tuesday, September 01, 2015

South American conspriacy theories, UFC domestic violence issues and Zac Efron's movie bomb


- Conspiracy theories are always awesome and the more ridiculous they are, the better. They go up a whole other level when the person espousing them is the leader of a developed nation who is making outrageous claims like saying he invented the question mark. Enter Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, who is accusing enemies in Colombia of trying to assassinate him as both countries prepare to spar at the Organization of American States over an increasingly tense border dispute. Turning an international event into a forum to promote your insane theories of espionage and assassination is totally a Venezuelan despot move and somewhere, Maduro’s mentor Hugo Chavez is looking down on all of this and smiling as a single happy tear drops from his eye. Maduro claimed during a visit to Vietnam that the conspiracy has the consent of Colombia's government and yes, you read that right, Vietnam is tangentially involved in all of this. Like so many conspiracy theory kooks, Maduro didn't present any evidence to back the claim but said he would soon. Take all of this with very little gravity, as Maduro and his Colombian counterpart Juan Manuel Santos have been trading verbal shots ever since last week's expulsion of more than 1,000 Colombians living illegally in Venezuela. In true Maduro fashion, the dictator accuses the migrants of being behind a wave of crime and smuggling along the border. The fact that diplomats from the two countries addressed representatives from 34 Western Hemisphere nations at an OAS emergency meeting Monday in Washington to discuss the border crisis felt like an afterthought given the show ol’ Hugo is putting on………..


- We can't tell if you abused your estranged wife or not, so come on back to work and get paid to beat the hell out of people. Give the Ultimate Fighting Championship credit for really cracking down on one of its fighters, Travis Brown, after his estranged wife, Jenna Renee Webb, posted a series of photos on Instagram showing multiple bruises to her arms, legs, neck and face. UFC smacked Brown with a very punitive temporary suspension, conducted an investigation into Brown’s estranged wife’s claims of domestic violence and found….“inconclusive evidence.”  UFC officials temporarily suspended Browne and launched that “independent investigation” after Webb posted her photos that she captioned, “Probably one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever made was walking away from this life and starting over. I’m still ashamed for saying as long as I did.” She tagged that with a broken heart emoticon followed by the hashtag #domesticviolenceawareness and while no one should ever belittle domestic violence in any way, you probably want to leave the emoticons out of the mix. UFC announced that Brown’s ban had been lifted following the investigation into the allegations, which was  conducted by a former FBI agent with more than 25 years of experience. It was a seven-week investigation that included interviews with multiple subjects associated with Browne and Webb, as well as interviews with Browne and Webb themselves. In the end, UFC and its retired FBI agent getting a big check from Dana White simply couldn’t reach a definitive conclusion into what happened, but the company promised that “if proven true with facts, it will result in swift action on our part.” Whatever you say, professional men and women of violence………..


- Is six months behind bars - likely to be shortened with good behavior because overcrowded prisons mean that even the worst of the worst don’t always serve their full sentence - a fair trade for literally taking a bite out of the dude who was plowing your wife behind your back? It’s a question to ask Virgil Bates III of Toledo, the man who skyrocketed the über-temporary fame when he bit off part of his wife's lover's ear after finding them in bed together. Given the circumstances, going Mike Tyson to his wife’s lover’s Evander Holyfield is a relatively mild reaction. For that reaction, Bates has been sentenced to six months in a correctional treatment center and in a sad twist, he must also pay the victim $5,600 and spend four months in a work-release program. A court ordering a man to give money to a man who was having an affair with his wife is just wrong no matter what. Bates pleaded guilty to aggravated assault this month and was sentenced this week. According to police, Bates confronted his wife and her lover in June, leading to a fight. He told the judge during his trial that the man bit his arm during the fight, prompting him to bite back. The judge didn’t seem to buy that tale and also seemed more swayed by the fact that the missing ear part couldn't be reattached. The best part of all of this is that Bates and his wife had been separated for two years, but have since reconciled. Apparently having a man willing to cannibalize her lover’s ear is the sort of thing that wins this woman’s heart………


- Hopefully Zac Efron cashed that check from Warner Bros. because right about now, the studio could put a stop payment on that b’otch if he hasn’t. That’s the natural reaction when you green light one of the worst movie ideas in ages and that movie suffers the worst opening weekend for a major film playing in more than 2,000 movie theatres. Let’s begin with the good news. “We Are Your Friends” had a budget of $6 million, so it’s not as if the studio invested “Avengers” money in the movie only to see it gross $1.8 million in its opening weekend. For those who don’t know, the movie is set in the electronic dance music (EDM) world and features Efron, who plays an aspiring DJ trying to make it in the EDM world. His fake DJ success attracts the attention of an older, more established DJ (Interstellar's Wes Bentley), who becomes his mentor. Oh, but the heart wants what the heart wants and Efron effs it all up by falling for his mentor's girlfriend (Emily Ratajkowski, who starred in Robin Thicke's 'Blurred Lines' video) and so he is forced to make some tough calls about his career and his love life. Only those in the EDM world likely know that the movie is named after Justice vs. Simian's 2006 dance hit 'We Are Your Friends' and those same tweakers were clearly too busy to go see the movie and its cameos from real-life EDM DJs Alesso, Dillon Francis, Nicky Romero and Them Jeans. "This was a passion project for Zac Efron, and we believe in him. Yes, the result was disappointing, but this was a small film,” Warner Bros. executive Jeff Goldstein said. Oh, all right then. A passion project? Right, because studios love investing in those……….

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