Tuesday, June 14, 2016

Top Gear's sagging ratings, Maine murder by machete and an MLB midsection tragedy


- Dudes everywhere are wincing, reflexively covering their own midsections from hundreds of miles away and averting their eyes from the televisions as replays of the awful scene involving Cleveland third baseman Juan Uribe  play over and over again. Uribe suffered an injury described in two words that should never be used together in a sentence, sentence fragment or utterance of any sort in any language for any reason at any time: testicular contusion. Uribe left the Indians' game against Los Angeles to end a three-game weekend series in the fourth inning when Mike Trout's scorching ground ball struck him squarely in the groin while he attempted to field it. In a feeling dudes everywhere know too well, Uribe was left flat on the ground in obvious, excruciating pain. The veteran utility man stayed down for several moments and had trouble standing before a cart arrived to take him off the field. Fittingly, that cart was emblazoned with the words “Anaheim Fire & Rescue.” Emergency services were definitely needed that day as Uribe was carted off and every guy in attendance silently cursed the unfairness of the world. Michael Martinez moved in from center field to replace Uribe at third and presumably made sure that he had the best, strongest cup in the team’s equipment room for the remainder of the game. Here’s hoping Uribe is resting, recovering and takes as much time as needed and then some before he even thinks about thinking about returning to action………


- Oh, the dirty, unsavory world that is Albanian politics. There’s just so much power and opportunity for world domination that you know folks are going to dig up every dirty trick they know to get control and keep it once they have it. That includes the mayor of an Albanian town whom prosecutors claim used forged documentation to hide past criminal convictions. Investigators alleged that Elvis Roshi, the mayor of Kavaja, 30 miles west of the capital, Tirana, provided false documentation that hides criminal convictions in Italy and Switzerland dating to the 1990s. He’s the first official to be arrested based on a six-month old anti-corruption law that requires the vetting of public officials and a statement from the prosecutor general's press office lays out the dastardly deeds Roshi allegedly committed so many years ago and tried to hide in order to rise to such a position of prominence in a random Albanian town that no one outside the borders of Albania knows even exists. It’s exactly the sort of plot that shakes the world to its foundations. Prosecutors noted that Roshi was convicted of rape in Italy but gave no other details, yet this case promises to get uglier as it goes on in light of a law law passed in December which is considered a key tool in fighting corruption, a major obstacle to Albania's ambitions to join the European Union. However, it might need to net a bigger fish than the mayor of Kavaja before the EU really stands up and takes notice……….


- It’s been revived with new hosts, given a shiny new promotional campaign and yet, “Top Gear” is not faring too well. The auto-centric series recently came back without original hosts Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May left after Clarkson was fired for punching producer Oisin Tymon in 2015 and with Chris Evans and Matt LeBlanc at the helm, its ratings have dropped again to what is believed to be a 13-year low. The show attracted an audience of 2.4 million to BBC2 for its third episode over the weekend and by most any metric, that represents the smallest overnight ratings since 2003. The trend is downward, as the first episode of the Evans-helmed “Top Gear” snared an overnight audience of 4.4 million, then saw that number decline to 2.8 million for its second episode before declining to 2.4 million over the weekend. Evans, sensing how bad all of that looks for he and LeBlanc, took to Twitter to make his case for the numbers not being what they seem to be. "Overnight viewing figures for Top Gear have never been less relevant. Obviously, some newspapers prefer to live in the past,” Evans tweeted. He has a slight point, as a total of 8.2 million watched the show across the week, including 1.8 million on BBC iPlayer. Strictly judging a show by how many people watch it when it airs on television for the first time is not a great measure of its success because of DVR, online streaming services and the like. Meanwhile, Clarkson, Hammond and May have signed a deal with Amazon Prime for three seasons of 12 hour-long episodes of a new car series, “The Grand Tour,” debuting this fall………


- It’s worth noting that as the trend of horrific gun violence incidents continues to spread like a disease across America, there are evil or just plain stupid, IQ-deprived people committing terrible acts of violence without the aid of guns. There are psychotic, unstable souls like Limington, Maine resident Bruce Akers, who is accused of using a machete to nearly decapitate a neighbor after a series of disagreements, including an accusation of stolen alcohol. Yup, you read that right. One man allegedly decided that having a few tiffs with his neighbor and possibly having that neighbor steal a six-pack of cheap beer is a reason to grab your machete, march over the property line and take a man’s life in one of the most brutal fashions imaginable. Police say Akers called them a day before the victim was reported missing to accuse him of stealing a six-pack of alcoholic beverages. When Douglas Flint went AWOL and his relatives reported him missing, investigators went searching for him and found his body under a pile of rotting deer carcasses. Nice move, Akers. Toss the body under a pile of deer blood, guts and bones and no one will notice that there’s a rotting, decomposing human body in that pile. According to an affidavit, there was a series of disagreements and unusual behavior by Akers, who allegedly trespassed and bathed in Flint's swimming pool. Those actions suggest some sort of mental issues on Akers, who was charged with murder after police questioned him and found the body in his deer carcass pile. Some cases of murder are extremely difficult to prove on account of circumstances and lack of evidence, possibly even due to great intelligence on the part of the accused. This does not appear to be one of those instances……….

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