Friday, September 11, 2015

Why "Bridget Jones 3" is a thing, Michigan's legislature is missing the point and Northern Ireland nears implosion


- There aren't many unconquered foes left for Ronda Rousey to destroy in the UFC octagon. Maybe the biggest star in women’s mixed martial arts will find more asses in need of kicking at the Double Deuce, where she will apparently step into the boots of one of the most iconic big-screen tough guys in cinematic history. Rousey, who has had minor roles in "Furious 7," "The Expendables 3" and "Entourage,” will take on arguably her biggest role to date when she stars in a remake of the 1989 cult classic movie "Road House," which starred Patrick Swayze as a bar bouncer with a philosophy degree who helps clean up a dirty bar and town in Missouri. “It is a great honor to play a part in celebrating the life of a man that inspired so many. I couldn’t be more grateful to have this opportunity to pay respect to the beloved Patrick Swayze,” Rousey tweeted. The undefeated UFC champion hasn’t yet signed a contract for the role, but she clearly has the star power to hold down the part that Swayze made famous as Dalton, the mulleted, self-described “cooler” who took down a drug-dealing local businessman who treated the Double Deuce as the perfect funnel for his illicit product. Rousey will soon be seen in the upcoming movie "Mile 22" with Mark Wahlberg and has committed to play herself after she optioned her autobiography "My Fight/Your Fight" to Paramount, but her toughest fight could be reimagining “Road House,” which banked a modest $30 million at the box office but has become a cult classic thanks to its constant presence as a basic cable TV movie………


- Don’t sleep on Northern Ireland. While the rest of the world is showing how captivating it can be to go to sh*t trying to destroy yourself from within - here’s looking at you, Middle East and northern Africa - many seem to forget that the small nation at the tip of the Emerald Isle has been doing it just as long and arguably better than many of those countries upon which we’re all fixated at the moment. Belfast has its moments where the drama goes quiet or at least off the radar, but Northern Ireland is always a threat to go nuclear and it appears to be headed that way now. The country’s current Catholic-Protestant power-sharing government is teetering on the precipice after several parties voted to reject a proposal to adjourn the government, drastically upping the likelihood that the government will collapse or be suspended because of the impasse. After the vote, First Minister Peter Robinson, the leader of the Democratic Unionists, said his ministers will resign unless adjournment or suspension is reached. The withdrawal of his ministers would topple the power-sharing government and that’s a problem for the historic 1998 Northern Ireland peace agreement. Allow that government to collapse and you could see the return of direct British rule from Westminster, a development that the loyalists who paint the curbs along their streets in Belfast red, white and blue, but a reason to go for those who have long advocated for a clean break from Britain and the sort of free reign that their neighbors in Ireland enjoy. Coloring all of this are police suggestions that Irish Republic Army dissidents were involved in a recent murder and you can see a powder keg with its fuse lit and a giant boom impending………


- How the hell is a third Bridget Jones movie a thing? Fourteen years after the adaptation of Helen Fielding's novel about an immature, quirky and emotionally troubled woman who could stand to lose 40 pounds became something is a surprise success at the box office and 11 years after a wholly unnecessary sequel that was decidedly less successful than its predecessor, somehow a third installment in the “it’s not a really a franchise, is it” franchise is lurching ahead and “Grey's Anatomy” actor Patrick Dempsey is reportedly "in final negotiations" to join the cast. Going from playing an impossible handsome fake doctor to whatever the hell Dempsey will do here may not be a great thespian feat, but the movie is clearly in need of some man candy with Hugh Grant not be returning to star alongside Renee Zellweger and Colin Firth. Zellweger and Firth are proving that their careers haven’t exactly gone into the stratosphere in the past decade, leaving them free to return to a known, boring commodity for a nice, fat payday. The film supposedly won't be based on
third novel in Fielding’s series, “Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy,” which was published last year and controversially killed off Firth's character Mark Darcy. Instead, the script is said to be based on several columns Fielding wrote and Fielding worked on the screenplay with “One Day” author David Nicholls. The third chapter of this story has been in the works since 2009, but it has stalled out for much of the past six years. It is now set to begin filming next month in the United Kingdom……….


- Stop trying to be something you’re not, Michigan state legislature. Namely, stop trying to act like some sort of principled moral arbiters throwing down decrees about how elected officials in flyover states should act. We’re here because a state House panel recommended that two Michigan lawmakers who admitted to misconduct in covering up their extramarital affair should be expelled from the legislature for doing what thousands of legislators in so many jurisdictions have done over and over and over again over the years. Tea Party Republicans Todd Courser and Cindy Gamrat could become just the fourth and fifth legislators expelled in Michigan history when their case goes before the full House, where a two-thirds vote is needed to remove the pair from office. The pair had an affair that Courser admittedly attempted to cover up by sending an "outlandish" phony email to GOP activists and others claiming he was caught with a male prostitute. That was s intended to make his affair with Gamrat appear less believable if it were exposed by an anonymous blackmailer who had demanded his resignation. The fact that no one here was underage, no one committed a crime of any sort and this was merely two married people who couldn’t exercise a modicum of self-control means it’s easily in the lower third of governmental scandals of the year, but don’t tell that to the hard liners on the panel that recommended expulsion. "This episode must be put behind us. Neither representative has in my mind convinced me that they will be able to regain the public trust, nor the trust of the members in the House," said Rep. Ed McBroom, a Republican from Vulcan in the Upper Peninsula who chaired the panel.  Hey Ed….no one gives a damn. Seriously. No one lost trust in the legislature over this because no one trusted the legislature in the first place. Whether Gamrat really did discuss the plot with Courser but did not know the email's sexually explicit content before it was sent or not is irrelevant because she was merely doing what elected officials do. They act like scumbags exempt from the rules and laws of society and pray they don’t get caught. All of this probably could have been avoided hard Courser not been such a lazy ass who tried to big-time his own cover-up by demanding that a staffer send the red herring email to "inoculate the herd” and then fire that staffer for refusing. Send your own email, own your lies and maybe your plan would have worked. Then again, this idiot doesn’t seem all that bright in any respect, so he would have found another way to eff this up……..

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