Saturday, November 14, 2015

Sacramento's $1 million dog hotel, L.A.'s lame Olympic push and Portuguese political hijinks


- Being a weeping, bitter mess doesn’t suit an aspiring rock star. Tossing around conspiracy theories in the process isn't much better and Scottish songstress Sandi Thom should probably stop her complaining because it just looks back. Thom, who has a quasi-hit in 2006 with “I Wish I Was A Punk Rocker (With Flowers In My Hair),” hasn’t done much in the past decade, but there she was in a tearful video she posted this week  after finding out the news that her latest single 'Earthquake,’ which drops in two weeks, had been rejected by the BBC. An extremely emotional Thom said that she is "done with this industry" following the decision and claimed that BBC Radio 2 refused to playlist her new single because of anti-Scottish bias. Yes, there is apparently intra-United Kingdom racism and discrimination going on, maybe as lingering payback for Scotland’s referendum on independence last year. After taking heat for the video in which she told the BBC it could, “Shove it up your ass,” she claimed to be "speaking out for millions of indie artists.” As part of his conspiracy theory, Thom tried to illustrate just how poorly Scotland’s musicians are being treated. "This week on the Radio 2 playlist, there are no Scottish artists," she said. "This is not due to a lack of talent from Scotland or a lack of artists looking to be put on the playlist. I don't know if you think that's fair or not but I certainly don't." Unfortunately, she doesn’t back up her theory with an specific reasons why there is anti-Scottish musical bias, which could simply be because Scottish music sucks right now and there aren’t any artists releasing legitimately great music………..


- It’s wonderful to see a city revitalized by businesses investing in things that will better the lives of the people who live there. That has nothing to do with one of Sacramento’s well-known hotels undergoing a major new $1 million addition. This posh place of temporary residence is now complete with a pool with sparkling blue waters, a beach-themed entry way and a generally placid atmosphere of escape and calm. It’s a business brought to another level by seven figures’ worth of upgrades and yet, it’s not going to serve a single person. That’s because this hotel is a pet hotel, specifically the Animal Den, owned by Lisa Chafee. Chafee is, by all appearances, a hard-working entrepreneur who has put her whole life into her business and even opened a second facility next door to the first, with indoor dog rooms, outdoor dog runs for big and small dogs and a massive swimming pool. “It was about a two-year journey—18 months to acquire city permits, a very patient process,” she said. All of that money has turned the business into a popular place for ass has with no friends who dote on their dogs and treat Fido like a human being because they lack common sense and a decent perspective on life to drop off their dogs for a short stay. The hotel offers boarding, grooming or simply a day of laying by the pool, licking yourself and licking up your own vomit because you’re a f*cking dog and that’s the kind of thing you do as a member of the animal kingdom……….


- Los Angeles still doesn’t get it. The next great hope for America’s chance to host a sporting event that Americans actually want no part of is putting its ducks in a row and trying to make itself look presentable for the International Olympic Committee in the bidding process to lure the 2024 Olympic Games to Los Angeles. It’s a feeble effort to redeem the United States in the IOC’s eyes after Boston brilliantly balked at its chance to host the games because the city’s leaders correctly refused to foot the massive bill sure to come with cost overruns in putting on the Games. In its quest to impress, L.A. has named Hall of Famer and former Olympian Magic Johnson chairman of the group trying to lock down the 2024 Summer Olympics and the sports star turned business icon said in a statement that Los Angeles is "the best sports town in America." It’s a lie, of course, unless showing up a quarter of the way through a game and leaving three quarters of the way through it, being the biggest bunch of bandwagoners imaginable and caring more about the results of your latest Botox-ing than you do about what your team does at the trade deadline make a town a great sports city. Along with Johnson, the prominent labor leader Maria Elena Durazo is on board as vice chairwoman of the board and four-time Olympic gold medalist swimmer Janet Evans was named a vice chairwoman in September. It’s a little sad because these members have expertise in sports, business and labor relations, but no one in L.A. is going to give a damn if their bid doesn’t win. They’ll just go back to the beach or boutique, or hit up their cocaine dealer on their way to the organic food market while Paris, Rome, Hamburg, Germany or Budapest, Hungary perform hosting duties in nine years……….


- If life doesn’t turn out the way you want, just demand that your country alter its constitution in order to get the results you’re after. No one needs to tell outgoing Portuguese center-right Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho, who is desperately calling for changes to the constitution to allow an early general election on his way out the door. Believe it or not, Socialist leader Antonio Costa, the man who is strong-arming Passos out of power, is having none of it. Costa rejected the idea that a new ballot would remove any suspicion of misrepresentation in Passos’ dismissal from power by a leftist alliance of anti-austerity lawmakers led by the Socialist Party. This has been a tenuous alliance at best since it was formed after an Oct. 4 general election and that alliance used its parliamentary majority to unseat the government in a vote Tuesday. After that all went down, it fell to the Portuguese president to decide whether to invite to take power or install a caretaker government, but the bottom line here is that the constitution is what rules all and the Portuguese Constitution says a new ballot cannot be held for six months. It’s funny in a sense to see a panicked Passos trying to grasp at any straws around him when he has no power and no cards left to play, but give the guy credit for going down flailing rather than just going away quietly. As the alcoholic, depressed and iconic poet Dylan Thomas once wrote, “Do not go quiet into that dark night while your party gets bent over and f*cked by its opposition, rage, rage against the dying of the light by trying to rewriter your nation’s governing document even though it makes you look pathetic, weak and desperate.” Yes, that Dylan Thomas knew what he was talking about………

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