- At
least Vlad Putin was right about one aspect of the massive doping and cover-up scandal
currently hanging over Russian athletics. Putin, whose country and government
allegedly were part of trying to obscure or bury failed drug tests by their
athletes, said in trying to run some misdirection in the wake of the scandal
that doping was not merely a Russian problem. It was the most obvious and
un-insightful statement possible given the overall filthiness of sports such as
track and field, swimming, cycling, power lifting and the like, but damned if
the Russian despot didn’t have a point. Look no further than the Italian Olympic Committee requesting two-year doping
bans for 26 track and field athletes -- several of whom are slated to compete
at next year's Rio de Janeiro Games. On that list are Fabrizio Donato, the
bronze medalist in triple jump at the 2012 London Olympics, and Andrew Howe,
the silver medalist in long jump at the 2007 world championships; distance
runner Daniele Meucci; and sprinter Simone Collion. This double baker’s dozen
of d-bags are accused of evading doping tests and their feeble defense is that there
was an administrative error. All will face trials at CONI's anti-doping court,
with decisions expected sometime next year. "What I've been accused of is
not a doping case but rather problems of availability for the Whereabouts system,"
hammer thrower Silvia Salis said. "The only thing I can say is that the
system had technical flaws." Notice that ol’ Silvia didn’t say she was
clean and had never doped, but that there were flaws in what the system
required of her. No word on whether the others, about 10 of whom have
conveniently retired, are going with the same lame-ass defense. The fact that
the IOC is throwing up the white flag and asking for those two-year bans
indicates that they’re not extremely confident in their athletes’ innocence
either……..
- Alfred
Schaffer is the embodiment of one of the worst, ugliest and more regrettable clichés
imaginable. Schaffer, a Florida fire rescue chief,
has admitted to stealing tens of thousands of dollars from a charity that -
prepare to feel your hands involuntarily ball up into fists of fury - houses
and educates abused and abandoned children. Tampa Fire Rescue Capt. Alfred
Schaffer, a man for whom contempt isn't a strong enough emotion, owned up to
charges in federal court that he stole $187,284 from Hope Children's Home over
five years. Hope Children's Home serves nearly 5,000 orphans and - prepare to
become further enraged - had long held onto plans to expand its cottages to
accommodate more children. It was a dream the organization could never quite
reach, always just beyond its grasp, and now it’s clear why. Schaffer, the
orphanage's business manager and financial officer — and son of the charity's
founder was secretly siphoning tens of thousands of dollars from the
church-based charity, meaning dude stole from both God and orphans. Worse
still, Mike Higgins, the charity's executive director, claimed that Schaffer
actually stole more money than the $187,284 that federal authorities allege in
court records, perhaps as much as double the alleged amount, but prosecutors
weren’t sure how much they could prove in court. "The money that Al
Schaffer took, we could have had those cottages," Higgins said. "But
we had to turn children away." Yes, Al Schaffer is a special brand of
scumbag who should find a slot in the prison hierarchy just above sexual
assaulters and child molesters, but below nearly everyone else………
- Was
the second “Anchorman” film not bad enough, sullying the legacy of a truly
great comedy that introduced dozens of quotable catch phrases into pop culture?
“Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy” was a smash hit in 2004, but “Anchorman 2: The Legend
Continues” was a huge disappointment in 2013, failing to live up to lofty
expectations and delivering only a fraction of the laughs that the original
yielded. Despite copious celebrity cameos and a lot of buzz, the tale of Ron
Burgundy working at a 24-hour news channel
in 1980s New York simply fell flat and based on that lack of punch, it seemed
logical that the franchise would end right there. There seemed to be no more
story to tell for star Will Ferrell and creative partner Adam McKay, so the
world kept on moving and figured it would simply have to enjoy Ferrell playing
some other goofy character for the rest of his career. Oh, how wrong we all
were. McKay has suggested that a third installment of the franchise could
happen, centering around Burgundy trying to find his place in the new media
world and dealing with the perils of being a public figure in the social media
age. "We talked about doing one that was about the rise of the new media,”
McKay said. “I think [the next step for Ron is] the Internet. The only thing is
by then Burgundy would be getting pretty old. So maybe it’s a movie we make in
10 years, when Will’s aged up and it actually makes sense that you can set it
in 1997 or ’98." Right, because plausibility has always been a huge focal
point for this franchise. McKay also revealed that another “Anchorman”
installment almost went in an entirely different direction. “I also thought
it’d be cool to have Ron Burgundy get embedded in the Iraq War,” McKay added. “We
kicked around that idea. But we’ve never got that serious about it.” Ironically,
nothing about the franchise has ever been all that serious……….
- Seventy
years later and the world is still trying to right all the wrong sh*t the Nazis
did. Specifically, trying to return all of the valuable art and artifacts the
Third Reich pilfered and restore them to their original owners - or their
descendants - has proven to be a real b*tch, a small-step-by-small-step process
that took another tiny move forward this week when a task
force examining the art trove accumulated by the late German collector
Cornelius Gurlitt said that a drawing by Adolph von Menzel was sold by its
owner as a result of Nazi persecution -- making it the fifth work identified as
having been looted under Nazi rule. Menzel's "Church in Hofgastein"
-- drawn in 1874 -- was formerly the property of Hamburg collector Albert Martin Wolffson and
was sold by his daughter Elsa Cohen, one of his heirs, to Gurlitt's father at
the end of 1938. Dear old dad, Hildebrand Gurlitt, was an art dealer who traded
in works confiscated by the Nazis. What raised red flags is the fact that the
sale price for the work, recorded in Hildebrand Gurlitt's ledgers, doesn't
appear to match the value at the time of a Menzel drawing. Therefore, the task
force concluded that it was a forced sale resulting from the Cohen family's
persecution, and the money was meant to help finance their subsequent flight to
the United States. Cohen’s son fled in January 1939 and Cohen herself followed
in August 1941 and no one is sure if she ever received the proceeds of the
sale, the task force said. The fate of the Menzel work is unclear and Gurlitt
died in May 2014, a few months after it emerged that authorities had seized
some 1,400 items at his Munich apartment while investigating a tax case in
2012. The first two of several hundred works suspected of being seized from
their Jewish owners by the Nazis were handed over to their rightful owners'
heirs in May, but this process is a long way from finished………..
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