- What’s the surest way to know that a professional athlete
is bothered about the subject of money? When that athlete is giving interviews
or releasing statements in which he or she insists that money is no worry at
all, that’s how you know. For example, when Washington Wizards star John Wall
posts a video to the Twitter feed of the LeBron James media platform "The
Uninterrupted” in which he replies to critics who have voiced concerns over how
he is "watching other people's pockets and I'm not worried about
basketball and getting better,” that’s a surefire sign that Wall has his mind
on his money and his money on his mind - or other people’s money, as in
teammate Bradley Beal’s dollars after Beal signed a five-year, $128 million max
contract this offseason. Wall remains in the middle of an $80 million deal that
runs through the 2018 season. However, Wall insists in the video that the
disparity between himself an a player he’s arguably better and more
accomplished than ain’t no thang. "I just wanted to clear the air for all
these people," Wall said in the video. "If I produce like I'm
supposed to on the basketball court and take care of myself and image, I'm
going to be fine with making money. That's not why I play the game of
basketball." Coincidentally, this video was posted just days after Wall
and Beal discussed their apparently conflicted relationship in interviews with
Comcast SportsNet Mid-Atlantic, with Wall declaring that “Beal [making] more
money, I'm not mad. I'm happy. He's my teammate.” Yes he is and right now, he’s
outshining you on payday……..
- Government corruption….in a mildly stable nation in
Eastern Europe? No freaking way. Romania, it’s your turn to take center stage
in the theater of unsavory political antics and boy, are you taking your chance
to shine. That will happen when six senior interior ministry officials are
indicted on suspicion of embezzlement and making false statements by Romanian
anti-corruption prosecutors. According to those prosecutors, they’ve indicted
Rares Vaduva, head of an intelligence agency subordinated to the Interior
Ministry, and five former senior officials from the same department for
allegedly abusing ministry funds, abusing their position and making false
statements. This six-pack of scumbags was questioned by prosecutors earlier
this week and according to the government’s official statement, the six took
money for themselves, claiming it was for work-related costs. In terms of level
of sophistication when it comes to a corruption scandal, this one ranks fairly
low on the totem pole and in that sense, it’s a bit of a disappointment.
According to Liviu Iolu, spokesman for Prime Minister Dacian Ciolos, Vaduva
would be suspended because of the indictment. The investigation remains ongoing
and others could be implicated in the days ahead, but what’s interesting about
all of this is that Romania has seven intelligence agencies, including the one
that is subordinated to the interior ministry. That’s a lot of intelligence
agencies stepping all over each other and a country that looks to be more hot
mess than well-oiled machine at this point……..
- There are certain critics whose words should be taken to
heart by a band because those critics are smart, well-educated and know what
they’re talking about when they break down music. Fox News talking head Greg
Gutfeld is not one of those critics. Greg Gutfeld, even on topics he knows
something about, is a blowhard ass hat. So when Gutfeld denounces Red Hot Chili
Peppers as “the worst band on the planet,” no one needs to take him seriously.
Appearing on the conserva-Nazi news network’s show “The Five” (possibly about
finding the five most ignorant viewpoints possible on any given subject and
cramming them all into one show?) Gutfeld spoke about Red Hot Chili Peppers
bassist Flea playing bass with a gorilla called Koko and wisecracked, "As
most musicians know, this is a vast improvement over Red Hot Chili Peppers, who
are the worst band on the planet." Of course, someone was going to run
that back to Flea and ask him his thoughts and when they did, he was locked and
loaded. "I remember seeing a poll recently that said people who watch Fox
News knew less about world affairs than people who watch no news at all. It's
clearly a funny program,” Flea said. “It doesn't faze me, not really. It's
funny. I don't care. They're all welcome to hate us. God bless 'em." He
then turned in a completely new direction, suggesting that playing some of the
band’s older hits makes him feel like his "c*ck's gonna fall off."
One has to imagine that Gutfeld knows what that feels like because he seems to
have been working without functioning man parts for years as an employee of Fox
News……….
- Art is designed to capture attention, to shock, inspire,
offend, provoke and spur people to thought and even action. Advertising for a
business is designed to generate attention where it otherwise would not exist.
The intersection of those two worlds is doing wonders for Christian Avanti,
owner of the Members Only barbershop in Oak Cliff, a neighborhood in the Dallas
area. Avanti owned a business whose name is synonymous with out-of-style jackets
people stopped wearing three decades ago, so he clearly needed some
talk-inducing advertising to get folks talking about his shop. He found that
something special in the form of a massive mural depicting one of the most
infamous criminals in American history. It’s a giant painting of Lee Harvey
Oswald, the man known for assassinating John F. Kennedy more than 50 years ago.
“It’s not to idolize him in any way.
It’s just a piece of art,” Avanti said. Yes, just a piece of art that is
generating a lot of talk, which is precisely what Avanti wanted when he put it
together. He claims that he thought the painting would be a good fit in the Oak
Cliff area because Oswald lived in the neighborhood, which is a bit like claiming
that a mural of John Wilkes Booth would be a good idea in his old ‘hood or that
depicting Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassin in living color would be a great
conversation piece for the area. “There are people that sell shirts, they have
tours, they even have a bar named Lee Harvey’s, and I don’t see them getting
the negative attention like this pictures getting," Avanti noted. Buses
pass by Oswald’s old home six times a day and there is a morbid curiosity about
the assassin in Oak Cliff and beyond, but pretending that this painting is
about anything other than generating business is just disingenuous……….
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