- Major League Baseball sees you, NFL and NBA, and it wants
a piece of the action. Both of those leagues already play regular-season games
in the United Kingdom and have locked in on London as their European target for
expanding their brand, so MLB commissioner Rob Manfred feels it’s only logical
to try to cram another sport Brits don’t actually give a damn about down their
throats for premium ticket prices. The commish said recently that his league is
looking to play its first regular-season games in London in 2017. "We are very interested in playing there,
and we're working hard on that one," Manfred said. "I don't think it
will be an opener because of the weather issues. It would be later in the
season." MLB has already played regular-season games in Japan, Mexico and
Puerto Rico, so going outside the continental United States is nothing new. Manfred,
who just marked his first anniversary as baseball commissioner, suggested that
while the league has been looking at the Olympic Stadium as a possible venue,
there haven’t been any in-depth talks about which teams to send across the
Atlantic Ocean. "We haven't really settled on teams, and I don't want to
speculate about that," he said. "Obviously, we want to make as good a
first impression in Europe as we possibly can." That would be a stark contrast
to the NFL, which has funneled subpar and just-plain-terrible teams like the
Jaguars, Bills and Lions into the British football market. Avoiding a
Mariners-Marlins series in London would be wise, but assuming that Brits will
fall in love with baseball is still a big leap………
- Does
anyone else get the impression that Maine Gov. Paul LePage is saying insane
sh*t just for the sake of saying insane sh*t? Last month, this crackpot went
full-on racist when he spoke about drug dealers in his state. "These are
guys with the name D-Money, Smoothie, Shifty," he said. "They come
from Connecticut and New York, they come up here, they sell their heroin, then
they go back home. Incidentally, half the time they impregnate a young, white
girl before they leave." LePage later claimed he meant to say Maine
instead of white, but that was the biggest lie of all. Yet after the resulting
firestorm, the governor didn’t study his mistake and come back smarter. No, he
decided to double down on dumbass-ery by suggesting that rather than being too
easy on drug crimes, Maine should bring back the guillotine for serious
offenders. The Republican governor made an appearance on a local radio station
and fielded a question about combating the drug epidemic in his state.
"What I think we ought to do is bring the guillotine back," he
replied. "We could have public executions and have, you know, we could
even have (guessing) which hole it falls in." Ah, guillotine humor, that’s
been sorely missing from American culture. LePage also blasted a recent
proposal to establish a minimum sentence of four years for drug traffickers as
too lenient and suggested injecting these people with the product they sell.
The hosts of the show tried to end the interview, but the governor would not be
silenced and zeroed in on his love of the guillotine for public executions,
joking that the idea was part of his French ancestry. "I like French
history," he said. If only you liked keeping your job and being respected
as well………
- Famous
people are just like the rest of us. Just as so many movie fans wish that
various franchises would stop when it’s clear there is no more story left to
tell and they are simply making more movies for the sake of banking more money.
Few franchises have embodied this reality better in recent years than “The
Hangover” trilogy, which went from raunchy, funny first film to barely passable
sequel to eye-rolling abomination of a third chapter. Virtually everyone knew
the first movie should have been the last one, but it’s still nice to hear star
Zach Galifianakis admit that he wishes “The Hangover” hadn't been expanded
into a trilogy. The first film was a surprise hit, earning more than $467
million at the global office - at the time a record for an R-rated comedy. It
even won a Golden Globe award for Best Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy and
helped Galifianakis and castmates Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms, Justin Long and Ken
Jeong attain greater heights in their individual careers and all of them returned
for 2011's “The Hangover Part II,”
which was clearly a worse movie but was somehow even more successful at the box
office, grossing over $586 million globally despite receiving mixed reviews.
Evidence of the fact that the third movie never should have happened - aside
from an asinine, hole-ridden plot and horrible writing - can be found in the
fact that it was the lowest-grossing of the trio, taking in $362 million at the
box office globally. "We're contracted up to 12 [films]. I feel a real
appetite out there for more," Galifianakis said jokingly. "Look, that was a good chunk of my life that I do
not regret at all but I wished we had just done one. I think leave well enough
alone sometimes." Slow cap, Zachary, slow clap……….
- Looking
to take that epic backpacking adventure through a borderless Europe, riding the
rails and crossing borders like they’re the “Do Not Cross” caution stripe at
the entrance to your favorite roller coaster? Act now, world, because passport-free travel and hassle-free business in Europe have
never been in more danger. As you may have seen, the continent has been
besieged by 1 million people streaming into the European Union hoping for
sanctuary or jobs and various countries have done everything from erect fences
to upping their troop presence and clamping down on border controls. The idea
of letting people flow freely from country to country isn’t sitting so well
with many leaders these days, it seems. "What
we have worked for, for so many years, we are seeing it crumbling now in front
of us," Roberta Metsola, a leading EU lawmaker on migration, said. In just
a few months, the true chaos will begin when the legal options for countries
like Germany, Austria and Sweden to impose ID checks on everyone who enters,
including Europeans, begin to run out. "Our citizens have a right to feel
safe," Metsola said. "If that means that we will need to keep stock
of who is crossing our borders for a specific amount of time, then we will have
to do it." The German government has made it clear that it doesn’t intend to ease border controls in May, when its
temporary border measures legally expire. If nothing changes before then, the
EU’s existing Schengen rule book could effectively be suspended, leaving
everyone to point the finger at Greece simply because some 850,000 people
arrived there last year, many to the Greek islands after a short, reacherous
sea journey in smugglers' boats from Turkey. With the capacity to shelter a
mere 10,000 people, Greece and its coastguard are totally overwhelmed. Due to
its economic crisis, most migrants don't want to stay in Greece and they
typically seek sanctuary in Germany or Sweden. If Greece won't step up, other
nations around those two nations will likely feel it falls on them and that
would make life much harder for anyone looking to enjoy an awesome Euro
adventure in the months ahead……….
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