Friday, December 18, 2015

Abby Wombach v. relevance, throwing away diamonds and warmer British Christmas traditions


- You’re welcome, United Kingdom. Global warming takes a lot of heat (pun intended) and a lot of hate around the world, but if not for rising temperatures threatening the future of the world, then would the British be enjoying an unusually balmy December that is turning the holiday season into an extension of the ever-mild summer season in the British Isles? With Christmas but a week away, unexpectedly mild temperatures are causing some daffodils to bloom and some ice rinks to suspend operations because it’s damn difficult to keep the rink from melting when weekend forecasts call for temperatures to approach 16 degrees (60 degrees Fahrenheit). A wise person would appreciate a scene in which Christmas lights and decorations are cast against a backdrop of balmy temperatures worthy of shorts and t-shirts, but not everyone is a fan of Met Office forecasters saying temperatures are expected to continue to be "exceptionally mild" in most of Britain. These haters point to the fact that the mild weather is causing problems for ski areas in Scotland and for the popular ice skating rinks in southern England and Wales including snotty British whiner and former competitive skater Alan Abretti, director of Cousins Entertainment, who’s really unhappy that the warm weather has put skating rinks on ice for now. "We've all been affected," Abretti said. "It doesn't feel like Christmas." And the problem with that is? Maybe what Christmas “feels” like needs to be reinvented and maybe drab, cloudy skies with 60-degree weather instead of drab, cloudy skies with 25-degree weather is how the holidays should be in Britain………


- Gangsta rappers are a lot less gangsta than they used to be. Gone are the days of drive-by shootings, gang-banging badasses and dudes who would (allegedly) dangle you over the edge of a hotel balcony because you pissed them off and we are now in the area where clamping down on someone’s boobs like you’re a hungry infant seeking his next meal passes for being tough. Step on up, Azealia Banks, and take your very limited amount of credit for being arrested in New York City for allegedly punching a female security guard outside a nightclub and "biting her in the boob.” According to police, Banks has been charged with a misdemeanor of third-degree assault following the incident in which she was reportedly screaming loudly and cursing at club security after getting the boot from an invitation-only party. In the melee, Banks is accused of spitting in a female bouncer's face and biting her on the breast to the point of almost biting through the shirt and  "causing swelling and redness.” Like a good public figure with an agent and a spokesperson and who is accused of a crime, Banks has not yet commented on the allegations, but it definitely fits her modus operandi. She is also under investigation by the Los Angeles Police Department over an alleged fight with nightclub security staff during October, an incident in which she is accused of trying to set off the fire alarm at the Break Room 86 club  after security asked her to vacate the premises due to what they deemed unruly behavior. If an A-list musician is getting kicked out of a club for acting a fool, then assume he or she is doing the sort of sh*t that would get most of us a lifetime ban from any establishment……….


- When we move, many of us end up losing items along the way because the boxes or containers they’re in are mislabeled, misplaced or simply disappear in the sort of freak occurrence that not even Neil de Grasse Tyson can explain? Ordinarily it’s not a problem, but most of the time it’s a mixing bowl or a plastic file tray that goes missing, not $5 million in diamonds. When a seven-figure diamond stash goes AWOL from a Midtown jewelry store in an average Manhattan fall day, that’s a horse of a different color. The situation cast a skeptical light on a lot of people who had opportunity to steal the stones, but the actual story of what happened was much less exciting and much more IQ-deprived. Carless workers at J. Birnbach Inc. who were helping their boss move to another floor turned out to be the primary culprits after they threw three weathered wooden boxes filled with diamonds in a heap of trash without bothering to look inside. Police found that the workers made the mistake, after which a building security guard patrolling the third floor allegedly did take a look inside the boxes and found an valuable job perk wating to be claimed. According to the long arm of the law, Wilfred Martinez sold some of the diamonds to a jeweler in the same building where he found them, but not the 17-carat diamond that was the $3.2 million crown jewel of the collection. Diamonds are supposed to be marked and trackable, right? How did Martinez and this other jeweler think this would turn out? Either both are extremely shady or simply very stupid, but the security guard eventually turned over the $3.2 million diamond, along with two smaller diamonds and $10,000 in cash………..


- On her last day of quasi-relevance, U.S. women's national team star Abby Wambach decided to use the last gasp of her limited fame as a top player in a sport the majority of Americans still don’t give a damn about to fire a shot across the bow of U.S. men’s national team Jurgen Klinsmann. Klinsmann, the embattled coach who achieved some initial success with the USMNT before seeing the team crash and burn in recent matches, has been under fire by many outside the team for losses to Jamaica, Mexico and the like, and it seems that Wambach - on the eve of her retirement from the women’s national team - agrees with the haters. She called for Klinsmann’s firing and lit up the German national for bringing in "a bunch of these foreign guys." Wambach is the top scorer regardless of gender in international soccer history and said that not only should U.S. soccer be much more jingoistic, but there are "too many egos in our men's program." Perhaps she was buoyed by leading the U.S. women to World Cup victory this past summer, perhaps it was the emotion of her final USWNT match in a friendly against China (a 1-0 loss, by the way) or maybe Wambach has friends on the men’s team who don’t like Klinsmann, but there doesn’t seem to be much to gain for her from taking a run at someone who doesn’t even coach her. Yes, she’s won two Olympic gold medals and the 2012 FIFA Women's Player of the Year, but why the hell is she trying to take food off anyone else’s table? "I would definitely fire Jurgen [Klinsmann]. Sorry Sunil [Gulati], sorry, U.S. soccer, but I don't think Jurgen and this litmus test on him has worked,” Wambach said. She singled out Jermaine Jones and Fabian Johnson as two examples of USMNT players who haven’t quite worked out on Klinsmann’s watch, but Gulati refused to comment on what Wambach had to say and went back to running one of the most mediocre men’s soccer programs in the world………

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