- Don’t
you love it when a mid-major college football program does something to make
itself seem like it belongs with the big boys? The Akron Zips took some big
steps forward last season, winning their most games (eight) since becoming a
Division I program three decades ago, but what went down earlier this week
should do just as much to lift their profile as that 8-5 record and win in the
Famous Idaho Potato Bowl. What happened? How about one player accidentally
blasting a hole in a teammate, nearly killing said teammate before emergency
crews and doctors were able to stabilize him? Enter Andrew
Pratt, a wide receiver who participated in Akron's pro day earlier this week, showing
up at the apartment of neighbor and Zips offensive tackle Scott Boyett
unannounced around 3 a.m. in the morning. Boyett, it seems, is a registered gun
owner and when he heard someone moving around in his apartment in the middle of
the night, he decided to grab his gun and protect his house. The result was
Pratt being shot in the stomach by his teammate, although no charges will be filed
because both players involved agreed that the shooting was an accident. Pratt
is expected to recover and was rushed to the emergency room at a local hospital
by the very man who just shot him. Akron athletic director Larry Williams said
the department was looking into the incident and would “wait to learn more from
the Akron Police Department about what occurred.” What happened was the sort of
recklessness, idiocy and shady behavior that there is so much of at the highest
levels of college football, but not nearly enough of at a place like Akron………
- Who’s
looking to rewrite history….or at least maintain a firm group on what parts of
it are told and how? That would be Poland's
governing party, a.k.a. the conservative Law and Justice party, which is intent
on shaping the country's future by controlling perceptions of the past. This
revisionist outfit’s strategy for telling it like (they want everyone to think)
it is by using museums, film, public television and other tools to promote
certain episodes in Poland's history, like the anti-communist resistance after
World War II. Those are the less-objectionable parts of the plan and they pale
in comparison to attempts to suppress discussion and research into painful
topics, primarily Polish violence against Jews during the Nazi occupation. The
party is feeling pretty good about itself given that in the last year it has
wielded more power than any party in post-communist times, hence its efforts to
edit history in its favor. President Andrzej Duda is leading the charge on
this, labeling it the nation's new "historical policy offensive."
Duda said the offensive offensive aims to create a new generation of patriots
and "to build up the country's position in the international space." Opponents
of the initiative see all of this as historical revisionism that will produce
little beyond national self-righteousness and will prevent honestly facing the
country's wartime history — an extremely complex story full of both heroism and
murder and betrayal by Poles of defenseless Jews. "They want to narrow our
view of the past," said Pawel Spiewak, director of the Jewish Historical
Institute in Warsaw. "They want to use the state apparatus to force their
new view of political history, and this is very dangerous." Well said,
P-Dog………
- Why,
Margot Robbie, why? You’re über-hot, you’re Australian with a badass accent and
by virtue of your amazing looks and smile of gold, you could get most any part
in any movie you might want. So why the hell would you volunteer to play one of
the biggest train wrecks in the history of organized sports, a woman known for
being so admittedly inferior to her chief rival that she resorted to having her
goon of a husband and a few of his goon friends consort to jump that rival in a
back hallway of an ice rink and whack her on the knee with a lead pipe to put
her out of commission? Robbie has performed well in “Suicide Squad,”
“The Wolf Of Wall Street” and several
other films that have been or will soon be released, yet here she is openly
admitting that she wants to star and make a movie about former Olympic
skater turned domestic violence participant turned failed celebrity boxer. Robbie
has teamed up with screenwriter Steven Rogers to write a script but must now
find a script for “I, Tonya,” which will tell the story of the 1990s scandal
between Harding and Nancy Kerrigan, who was a much better skater and person
than Harding. The movie will likely focus on Harding’s rise from a rough,
poverty-stricken childhood in Portland to become one of the top figure skaters
in the world, but the reason she’s worth talking about at all isn’t because she
was e the first woman to complete the triple axel jump in big competitions and
won the 1991 U.S. Figure Skating Championships, but because she conspired with
her then-husband Jeff Gillooly to attack and incapacitate Kerrigan during the
qualifying rounds at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships in Detroit. Kerrigan
still won a place on the Olympic team and won a silver medal, while Harding did
what scumbags with no souls should do, flaming out and finishing eighth at the
Games……..
- Uber incites
a lot of anger from certain people. Typically, though, those people are taxi
drivers and their unions, whose business is being slowly usurped by a bunch of
day traders and half-stoned college students making a few extra bucks driving
around their 1997 Honda Accord in between Starbucks runs and picking up a new
lamp from Walmart. Rare is the instance in which a man, perhaps from Madison,
Wisconsin, is arrested after he punched an Uber
vehicle. The car attacker is Masase Manamba, whom police found causing a scene
when Madison police officers responded to Chaser's Bar in the 300 block of West
Gorham Street shortly after 11:30 p.m. There was a report of a man who was
allegedly upset and pacing back and forth with clenched fists. According to Madison
police spokesman Howard Payne, officers took Manamba into custody,
"fearing that he may be capable of other things." What he was capable
of, allegedly, is punching and damaging an Uber taxi, attempting to strike
random bar patrons with what were described as "wild punches,"
yelling obscenities and pushing a female to the ground. The beatdown on an Uber
car is arguably the least offensive of his alleged crimes on the night and stunningly,
Payne said alcohol was a factor in Manamba's behavior and "his actions
were well outside of what anyone else fathomed was reasonable." Yes, but
thousands of taxi drivers around the country are silenly pumping their fists in
support even though Manamba was eventually taken to the Dane County Jail on
suspicion of disorderly conduct and criminal damage to property……..
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