Friday, February 05, 2016

Fake goods and real Thai flea market rage, reviving "Cruel Intentions" and Nashville honky tonk drummer falls


- It’s funny…pretty much no one gives a damn about Home Run Derby at the Major League Baseball All-Stat Game, yet there’s a bit of drama surrounding the Caribbean Series' inaugural Home Run Derby. Many major leaguers play in the Series as well as play winter ball in Latin or South America, so there are plenty of big names on hand for this one, yet the Major League Baseball Players Association has forbid a trio of stars from participating in the derby. It was previously announced that David Ortiz, Robinson Cano and Miguel Cabrera would compete in the derby on the third day of the tournament as a way to enhance the show, but on the first day of the competition, the MLBPA put a stop to the trio's participation for fear of injury. "Unfortunately, the people in charge of the event didn't follow the necessary protocol to ensure that any major leaguers participating in an event like that one is protected from a possible injury," said Tony Clark, MLBPA's executive director. "As a result, in order to protect the rights and interests of the players invited to compete, we were forced to advise those players and their representatives that participating in the event was not in their best interests." The organizers of the 2016 Caribbean Series figured that fans would be fired up to see Ortiz, Cano and Cabrera participate in the event, but the organizing committee claimed the MLBPA said it would need a financial guarantee to allow Ortiz, Cano and Cabrera to participate and that didn’t happen. Instead, the derby went off at its planned time, but with lesser-known names and much less interest than it was originally scheduled to have………..


- When you get quality stage time at a downtown Nashville honky tonk, you don’t allow anything to keep you from delivering a great show and finishing what you start. No one needs to tell that to the drummer for the Don Kelley Band, which recently had a show at Robert’s Western World. As the show wore on, the band gave its best effort to make a lasting impression on the modest crowd and no one more so than drummer Stan Saxon, who went from hitting the high hats to reaching new lows when he fell through a window near the stage. “If you look at it, it comes right at the end of the song,” said Robert’s Western World employee Julie Rahimi  “It’s almost a stunt kind of thing, but it’s not.” Because everyone has a camera in their hand at all times with their omnipresent smartphone, the moment was caught on video and Saxon quickly garnered his 15 minutes of fame. Part of the video’s appeal is that Saxon responded to the embarrassing moment by lifting up his stick, shaking off a broken rib and heading back inside to finish the show. Not only that, this would-be rock star went to a bar across the street and played another gig that lasted until 3 a.m. As for the fall, he said he got caught in some cords that pulled him backwards, leading him to attempt to sit down. “It felt like somebody grabbed the back of my shirt and yanked me through the window and slammed me down on that concrete,” Saxon said. “Falling through a window has made me more popular than all the stages and countries I’ve been to.” Despite being one of the weird, paranoid types who doesn’t use social media or email much, Saxon said he has received texts and messages from many fans asking about the fall........

- Hey everyone, remember the cinematic classic that was the 1999 film “Cruel Intentions,” starring Ryan Phillippe and Reese Witherspoon? It was such an iconic film that, um, actually…no, it wasn’t. It was a mediocre and borderline forgettable movie that was a bit of a hit with the teenage world, but hardly a big-earning juggernaut that scored tons of awards. There really isn't any reason to remember it, but that doesn’t mean a television network desperate for content and anything that might have some name value won't try to pluck it from the dusty back corner of the shelf where it’s been sitting for more than a decade and attempt to squeeze some life out of it by turning it into a series. Step right up, NBC, with your episode for a pilot order of “Cruel Intentions” the TV series. The pilot will center on  Bash Casey, the son of the characters played by Phillippe and Witherspoon in the movie. It will also include Kathryn Merteuil, the character played by Sarah Michelle Gellar, and the official network synopsis for the pilot reads in part: “Cruel Intentions picks up over 15 years after the hit movie left off. It follows the beautiful and cunning Kathryn Merteuil as she vies for control of Valmont International as well as the soul of Bash Casey, the son of her brother, who was the late Sebastian Valmont, and Annette Hargrove. Upon discovering his late father’s legacy in a hidden journal, Bash is introduced to a world of sex, money, power and corruption he never could have imagined." In other words, exactly like dozens of other shows already on television, except with even less originality………


- The items may have been fake, but the rage was real this week when Thai police attempted to seize counterfeit goods at a famous border market.  The Department of Special Investigation put itself in the middle of a sh*t storm when its officers went to the Rong Kluea market on the border with Cambodia to seize items such as fake perfumes that violate intellectual property laws and that storm was a tempestuous, violent one as an enraged mob of vendors chased them away, injuring 12 officers in the process. According to a DSI statement, about 400 Cambodian laborers surrounded the police and began pelting them with rocks and bottles. Crude weapons are a great inclusion for any riot and so was the piece de resistance, the angry mob overturning a police truck in a show of brute force serious enough to inspire police to withdraw from the scene. John Q. Law tried to save face by claiming that the officers pulled back to ease tensions and if that makes them feel better about themselves, then it’s all good. Thailand is one of many Asian nation flooded with counterfeit products ranging from cosmetics to DVDs, which are one of the big draws at Rong Kluea, which also sells secondhand goods. Also involved in the raid were French Embassy observers, who now have a great story to tell their friends back home about that one time they tried to shut down the bootlegged goods section of a famous Thai market and nearly got themselves tarred, feathered and blasted with Molotov cocktails for their troubles……..

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