Monday, July 18, 2016

Reviving Nickelodeon glory, elks v. idiots and why baseball needs mad managers


- Bad moonshine: It’s not just an American thing. Unsafe hooch is a problem in other parts of the world too and that reality hit home in a potent way over the weekend as at least 19 people died after drinking toxic bootleg liquor in northern India. Senior police officer Ajay Shankar Rai confirmed that 19 had died and another 50 people have fallen ill after consuming the home-brewed liquor. The ill are being treated in hospitals in Etah district in Uttar Pradesh state and among their number are six who have been blinded by the drink. The epicenter of the problem is a village shop where the victims purchased the bootleg liquor and not long afterward, they started falling ill. According to police, the shop owner has been arrested and depending on the fate of those who foolishly chugged his hastily crafted homemade brew, the charges against him could become even more plentiful and severe. Worse still, the reason his customers were buying such low-rate alcohol from an ass hat like this is that they are mostly poor farmers and laborers looking for a cheap means of intoxication. It’s a common problem in India, where the country’s poor often purchase cheap bootleg liquor made of syrups and medicines that are spiked with methyl alcohol and other industrial spirits to give them an extra boost. Compared to this, the bearded, overall-wearing, rusted-out-pickup-truck-driving rednecks of Appalachia don’t seem like such an amateurish outfit now, do they? Next time, just seek out some cheap opium for your fix, India………


- Major League Baseball wants everyone to just CHILL THE F*CK OUT, OK? Technically, MLB didn’t word its memo sent out late last week to managers, general managers and assistant general managers in exactly that fashion, but that was the underlying sentiment. "This highly inappropriate conduct is detrimental to the game and must stop immediately,” the memo informed its recipients. Specifially, it was a warning to managers to scale down their rage  on arguing balls and strikes and warning them not to rely on replay to bolster their beefs. MLB executive Joe Torre sent the memo out, but it doesn’t sound like its message is being taken too seriously. "I'm still going to react to what I see in front of me," Detroit Tigers manager Brad Ausmus said. Torre is a Hall of Fame manager and former NL MVP, so he knows how easy it is to get upset with what transpires on the field. He pointed out that managers are increasingly relying on technology from the clubhouse or video room to argue from the dugout and teams’ decision to monitor every pitch and play in case they want to challenge for a replay review is "an express violation of the Replay Regulations, which state that 'on-field personnel in the dugout may not discuss any issue with individuals in their video review room using the dugout phone other than whether to challenge a play subject to video replay review.'" In his memo, Torre pointed to a recent uptick in the number of managers being ejected for arguing balls and strikes, some without even leaving their dugout. You call it a problem, the rest of us call it a momentary burst of entertainment in a largely nondescript, three-hour game………


- So often, crimes happen because opportunity presents itself and a person has neither the willpower nor the character to pass on that chance. Such is the circumstance of Thad Bingham, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife employee who may not be in that capacity much longer after a photo of him posing with a trophy elk was brought to the attention of the Colorado Department of Parks and Wildlife. See, when the Fruita, Colorado native showed up on what is recognized as private land on the Roan Plateau near Rifle with a massive elk he’d just taken down, it looked an awful lot like a clear-cut case of poaching. With that photo as Exhibit A against him, Bingham has pleaded guilty to trespassing and illegal possession of wildlife, crimes for which he paid over $200 in court fines and was ordered to donate $5,000 to the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation under the terms of a plea agreement. “This is still half of that and this money goes to a really great cause,” Garfield County Deputy District Attorney Troy Hershey said. It was a pretty sweet deal for Bingham, who faced over $12,000 in fines for several charges, including a violation of the Samson Law, passed in the 1990s after a man from Lakewood poached a trophy elk on YMCA property in Estes Park. Samson was a massive elk that had no fear of humans, but his lasting legacy is a law that is intended to keep his elk brethren alive and prevent the sort of idiocy and selfishness of which Bingham is guilty. Apparently the law can’t fix everything……..


- At one point or another, pretty much every television show that has ever been made is the subject of rumors regarding a possible revival in some form. If no one’s ever talked about bringing your show back to the air, either for a one-off movie or a straight-up revival, then clearly your show did not matter to anyone. So don’t feel too good about yourselves, fans of former Nickelodeon show “Kenan & Kel.” Rumors of getting the gang back together have gathered steam as the 20th anniversary of its debut rolls around this year and those rumors got a boost when star Kenan Thompson expressed support for the idea. The show centered on the friendship between stars Thompson and Kel Mitchell and aired for four seasons from 1996 to 2000. Thompson recently waxed poetic about how much he misses all of the people he worked with on the series. "I miss and love those guys, it was awesome times," Thompson said. "I wish we could just pick up and do Kenan & Kel: The Grown-Up Years, getting everyone back working together. I feel like it would be an awesome moment for everybody." Yes, assuming no one has moved on to anything newer and better in the past 16 years and they’ve all been dreaming of reviving a show that ran for 62 episodes and had a forgettable TV movie as well. Granted, there was that badass theme song performed by Coolio, but you really can't bring a show back simply based on that. "I don’t think any of us knew how big that was going to be, even today I still get that,” Thompson said of the show. He noted that he still has fans approach him and quote the show’s catchphrase, “Who loves orange soda?”, and he and his wife get it repeated to them when they go out to eat. It’s a nice reminder of how some people remember completely pointless information, but it doesn’t really demand the renewal of a show………

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