- Fans
love seeing a professional athlete they’re in much better shape than getting it
done at the highest level. When (allegedly) 285-pound, 42-year-old, orca-fat
New York Mets pitcher Bartolo Colon blasted his first career home run over the
weekend, it was a moment celebrated by baseball fans all over the world as the
man who defies both time and his immense gravitational pull at well over 300
pounds (probably) took San Diego Padres pitcher James Shields deep at Petco
Park. It’s also a moment many of those same fans have elected to immortalize
courtesy of Topps Now, the card manufacturer's new on-demand printing business.
A photo of Colon’s big moment shattered sales records for Topps Now and the company
sold 8,826 cards of the 42-year-old pitcher hitting a home run. The card went
on sale at 11:30 a.m. ET on Sunday and stopped production exactly 24 hours
later, but that small window didn’t prevent many fans from jumping in on the
fun. "This moment was the perfect
storm," said Jeff Heckman, director of product development and e-commerce
for Topps. "It was the right player in the right market and it happened on
a weekend." Topps is turning a pretty penny off such magic moments, as each
of the cards sells for $9.99 though bulk orders are cheaper. Before the
offensive lineman-sized Colon’s magic moment, the cards that sold the most were
Jake Arrieta's no-hitter (1,808 cards). "Colon just has a cult following,”
Heckman added. “We could have never dreamed up something like this." No
one could have, J. These magic moments just happen and it’s best to sit back
and enjoy them………
- Panama,
welcome to the party. The part, of course, is the growing crowd of nations
around the world that are shutting down their borders because undesirables are
trying to come in and dilute the quality of life for those who already call
these countries home. The Central American non-power has
closed its border to Cuban immigrants trying to make their way north to the
United States and once again is flying Cubans who already made it to the
country to the Mexico-U.S. border. It’s a bizarre situation, but Panamanian
President Juan Carlos Varela says he agreed with his Mexican counterpart to fly
3,800 Cubans already stranded for weeks while trying to get to the U.S. But
don’t hate on this tortured leader because Varela wants you to know that this
was an extremely difficult, yet necessary decision because Nicaragua closed its
border to Cubans last year and impeded their journey north. In other words,
with Nicaragua making its wrong choice, Panama had no choice but to do the
same. Ironically, Cubans are admitted to the United States if they get to the
border and more Cubans are making a run for the border these days because they
fear warming relations between the two countries could end the exceptional
policy. According to Varela, these one-way flights to get the hell out of his
country could last two or three weeks. Take advantage of this exciting offer
while it lasts, Cubans out for a better life by way of Central America en route
to the U.S., because cheap flights are hard to come by………
- Spotify
is looking to flex its entertainment muscles and expand into the territory
currently occupied by the likes of Netflix and Hulu. The music streaming service,
which theoretically has Apple Music as its top rival, is looking for new
competition, having announced plans to launch its own original video programming
with 12 new series. The plan is for Spotify to introduce 15-minute long shows
that will be available for both free and paid subscribers in the U.S., U.K.,
Germany and Sweden and to make these new offerings as enticing as possible,
they will include participation by plenty of big names. One of them is actor
Tim Robbins, who will be producing a mockumentary-style series. Another series,
titled “Landmark,” will document significant moments in music history. There
will be episodes about The Beach Boys and Metallica, both of which have already
been produced. Music mogul and Def Jam co-founder Russell Simmons has also
signed up to produce the oddly titled “Rush Hour,” named after a pretty
forgettable Chris Tucker movie, and which will feature “two hip-hop acts driven to an
undisclosed location to conceive a musical collaboration that they must perform
before a crowd.” Sounds…umm, yeah. “Music will always be most important, but our audience
likes us and wants more from us. We have to figure out a second act, and I
think it will come out of video,” Spotify content partnerships chief Tom
Calderone said. “The idea is to make sure users know they can come here for
something other than playlists.” No, the idea is to make more money and being
honest about that is probably the best approach because most of the people who
use your service like free things and aren’t likely to automatically pony up
simply because of this new idea, not when they can find a way to pirate the
content for free……….
- As
always, at least there’s a good reason someone is dead from a gunshot wound. In
this case, a guy who hadn't even completed his third decade of life on this
big, blue, spinning sphere of ours was shot and killed by his own brother all
on account of a freaking cheeseburger. Meet
Benjamin A. Middendorf of St. Cloud, Florida, who (allegedly) murdered his own
brother following a dispute about a cheeseburger. What a memorable night it had
to be for police officers called to the
scene along Sixth Street, near Michigan Avenue, around 10 p.m., finding out
that Middendorf shot his brother in the chest with a 9 mm handgun after Nicholas Middendorf had been out drinking with
his mother. It’s unclear how the cheeseburger fight went down, but if a man
goes out to eat with his mother, comes back with a nice, juicy cheeseburger and
refuses to share it with his own brother, that can stoke plenty of rage. At
least this senseless shooting of one’s own flesh and blood wasn’t over a
hamburger with no dairy product on top and some nice, creamy American cheese
was a part of the equation. Benjamin Middendorf was arrested on suspicion of first-degree
murder and booked into the Osceola County Jail, where he will undoubtedly be
very popular, right above child molesters, rapists and abusers of women on the
prison totem pole. And hell, it’s not like he’ll live the rest of his life
trying to come to grips with the reality that the brother he grew up with and
theoretically cared about on some level is now dead because he refused to give
up or at least share his cheeseburger. Hope you got fries with that murder,
Benny, because the grub where you’re going isn't likely to be quite worth
killing over……….
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