Tuesday, August 09, 2016

Fox wants more "X," Hungarian yoga protests and Yasiel Puig makes baseball fun again...for himself


- There’s nothing to welcome a teenage girl to adulthood quite like spicing up her 15th birthday party with the wacky unpredictability of edible marijuana goods, eh? Someone in San Francisco knows how to put the kush in quinceañera and because of this adventuresome soul, the city's Department of Public Health is trying to figure out just how it was that edible marijuana offered at this party sickened 19 people in San Francisco's Mission District. The initial findings came after preliminary lab tests showed that gummy ring candy from the party contained THC, the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana. "Anyone who attended the quinceañera and may have taken home some of the gummy rings is urged to discard them immediately," said Dr. Tomas Aragon, health officer for the city and county of San Francisco. All 19 people were taken to the hospital with symptoms ranging from a rapid heart rate and dilated pupils to nausea, lethargy and confusion, which is amazing because it suggests that none of these people had ever gotten high before and in a wide-open city like San Francisco, what are the odds of finding 19 people gathered in any one place, all without any stoner habits? But none of the hospitalizations were too severe, as all were soon released, leaving health officials to investigate the origin of the candy, including the catering company, which is from Oakland. "The question remains, where did the candies come from?" Aragon asked. "A situation like this, where they were consumed by unsuspecting people, and many children, is greatly concerning.” Wait….dosing unsuspecting children with uncertain quantities of ganja is a bad idea? Maybe this crew just has a different view of how to celebrate a girl's 15th birthday in Latin American cultures………


- Yasiel Puig: Making baseball fun again, even if it’s just for himself. The embattled outfielder was demoted to Triple-A Oklahoma City by the Los Angeles Dodgers earlier this month after the team failed to trade him at the deadline and decided it was tired of his behavioral antics, at which point he took his sweet time going to Oklahoma City. Now that he’s there and is expected to work on his issues in order to get back to the majors, he’s going to take this sh*t seriously…right? Or not. The team is now promising to internally handle  Puig's activity on social media following a loss this week. Puig posted videos to his Snapchat account of him partying with his new Oklahoma City teammates after a 3-2 loss at the Iowa Cubs, beginning with a video of him shirtless in the team's locker room, smiling and saying: "It's so funny. We lose today, and everybody's happy." He chasd that with other videos showing he and his teammates dancing, singing and chanting, often using profanity. A banner on one of the videos reads, "I Love this Team." Probably not what Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman and his crew wanted to see two days after Puig indicated through a translator that he was using his demotion to get his act together in order to get back to the majors. But hell, the guy went 2-for-4 in his first game with Oklahoma City on Sunday and 0-for-3 the next day, so clearly his game is right where he wants it to be. And it’s not as if the Dodgers inked him to a $42 million, seven-year contract in June 2012 and expect more big returns on that investment…….


- Ah, the truest and most violent of uprisings, built on a foundation of warrior pose and downward facing dog. Yes, all great revolutions start with stretchy pants, rolled-up rubber mats and finding your inner self. Organizers of protests this week in Hungary know this truth and that’s why these yoga instructors held classes for over 600 practitioners on Budapest's Freedom Bridge. Sure, they’ll tell you the gathering was mostly an effort to popularize the discipline and practice it in a unique location, but the truth is that this is an effort to reclaim the span after the bridge was temporarily closed for traffic due to renovations in June. But maybe this trendy yoga hangout has become a little too trendy, as a dozen instructors held simultaneous classes there earlier this week, with their sweaty devotees laying their mats on the tram tracks on the bridge that crosses the Danube River. According to one of the instructors, Judit Varga, she and her crew chose Freedom Bridge for their activities "because a special location has a special vibe. Since its closure, the bridge has become a community center, a place to make connections." Participants noted that the views of Budapest from the bridge gave the classes an added attraction, along with the middle finger extended to those who took the bridge away from would-be visitors in order to renovate it. Here’s hoping this starts a trend of yoga practitioners in Budapest taking their mats to random places and looking to become calm and centered as the world goes about its business around them……..


- When you bring back a dormant TV show, you may as well go all-in, eh Fox? Now that the network has brought “The X-Files” back from the dead and invested more time and money into the sci-fi franchise, Fox Entertainment President David Madden said his company is now "in significant talks with the three principals" for another batch of episodes. Those so-called three principals - stars Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny and show creator Chris Carter - probably won't mind a big payday after they reunited for a six-episode event series on Fox earlier this year. While the new episodes, the show's first in nearly 15 years, were ripped by many critics and fans, the ultimately pulled big ratings and in the end, that’s all that matters to a network as it tries to do its principal job of selling advertising time for as much money as possible. "The show was off the air for a very long time," Fox's co-President Dana Walden said in response to criticism of the recent episodes. "They had the challenge of filling in the mythology. ... Going forward there won't be the same obligation to reset the series. I think that there was some very strong work throughout the season, and we look forward to more.” In other words, we had some groundwork to lay and that’s why the episodes felt laborious and dragged at times, but we promise, it will be better from here on out. Before any more episodes are filmed, it’s probably good to tackle the fact that Anderson was initially offered half of Duchovny's fee to re-join “The X-Files” for this year's event series, only to wrangle an equal salary to her co-star. Don’t lowball her this time around, Fox, and you might have yourself a revived hit………

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