Saturday, October 15, 2016

Hitting on your air waitress, "Fantastic Beasts" goes five-part franchise and Israel v. the U.N.


- The numbers haven't been pretty for the Miami Dolphins this season. Their record is 1-4 against professional football teams and now, it’s 0-1 against the menace that is slippery bathroom floors. Enter Dolphins rookie guard Laremy Tunsil , who is trying to get back on the field after missing last week's game when he hurt himself coming out of the shower. Yes, the same Laremy Tunsil who dropped in this year’s draft when a leaked video of him doing a bong rip while wearing a gas mask, that guy had issued getting out of the showed without slipping and spraining his ankle mere hours before the start of Sunday's 30-17 loss to Tennessee. "I thought I twisted my ankle, the same one I dislocated in college. The one I had surgery on," Tunsil said. "It was pretty banged up. [I] thought something was wrong with it, went to the training room, had a little sprain.” Apparently that sprain was significant enough to keep him out of action but this time, it appears Tunsil committed his act of stupidity while clean and sober. He insists that his teammates weren’t upset because they knew it “was a freak accident.” Unfortunately, with Tunsil and left tackle Branden Albert sidelined, the Dolphins gave up six sacks against the Titans and totaled eight first downs. The end result was their fourth loss in five games, putting the team all but out of the playoff race five weeks into the season. Maybe for the rest of the year, life can take it easy on the Dolphins because clearly, dealing with competent NFL opponents is more than enough to keep this ragtag band of football misfits occupied and at times, overwhelmed……….


- Picking on the United Nations almost seems unfair. The U.N. lacks any real muscle behind its decrees and declarations and countries essentially do what they want regardless of what the U.N. thinks, so the fact that Israel is suspending cooperation with UNESCO a day after the U.N. cultural agency adopted a draft resolution that Israel says denies the deep historic Jewish connection to holy sites in Jerusalem should surprise no one. "I sincerely hope UNESCO will stop this fiasco and stop denying history," Minister Naftali Bennett said in denouncing UNESCO's draft resolution, sponsored by several Arab countries, which he believes diminishes Jewish ties to the Western Wall. The famed wall is remnant of the biblical temple compound and the holiest site where Jews can pray, and to the plaza that Jews revere as the Temple Mount. Israel is clearly looking to stem the tide of dissent ahead of the validated resolution, which is expected early next week, and could comprise changes in wording. For Israelis and many Jews around the world, the resolution is merely the latest slap in the face stemming from what they view as the latest example of an ingrained anti-Israel bias at the United Nations, where Israel and its allies are far outnumbered by Arab countries and their supporters. Of course, it’s also an extension of the centuries-old conflict between Jews and Arabs, who have been battling since the Old Testament days and probably won't patch things up and just get along any time soon……….


- Harry Potter may be dead in J.K. Rowling’s world, but her forthcoming Harry Potter spin off “Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them” is just getting started. According to Rowling, the “Fantastic Beasts” franchise will be made up of five films. This brave new world is set around 70 years before the Harry Potter saga begins and focuses on Newt Scamander, the author of one of Harry's Hogwarts textbooks. Unlike Potter and his crew, Scamander has his adventures in New York City. Eddie Redmayne will hold down the Scamander role in the film, but there will be plenty of star power with a cast that includes Colin Farrell, Katherine Waterston, Ezra Miller and Samantha Morton. All of this should add up to a nice payday or five for Rowling, who initially wrote Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them as a supplementary manual to accompany her Harry Potter franchise. She broke the news about the five-part franchise during a surprise appearance during a Facebook fan event streamed globally earlier this week. When asked what would come next for Redmayne's Newt Scamander, the Magizoologist at the center of the story, she dropped the big news. "We were doing some script sessions the other day, and I can tell you that we always knew it was going to be more than one movie," she said. "We said a trilogy as a kind of placeholder, but I've now done the plotting properly and we're pretty sure it's going to be five movies." And somewhere in the distance, Rowling’s agent and accountant rejoiced………


- We’ve all been there….aboard a flight, settling in and paying no attention when the air waitress at the front of the plane is delivering those all-important safety instructions we’ve heard many times. Truthfully, no one - not even the air waitress herself - expects you to listen intently to those instructions. However, it’s really not too much to ask that you not use that time to hit on the air waitress while she’s trying to do her job. But that’s exactly what happened earlier this week on an Alaska Airlines flight headed for Seattle. A flight attendant was rolling through the requisite lines about oxygen masks, seat cushions as flotation devices and finding the nearest emergency exit when a man seated in coach began catcalling her “Damn, you’re sexy!” the man yelled out. Rather than simply ignore the idiocy and keep going with her speech, the flight attendant stopped what she was doing, walked over to the man and told him to “knock it off.” Passengers on the flight marveled at how strongly and confidently the flight attendant handled the situation. Those seated near the offensive passenger smelled alcohol on his breath and he ahs apparently been drunk and disruptive on flights before. The flight attendant told other passengers that she was familiar with the drunken passenger and his antics and reportedly said, “Nobody needs to sit next to that guy for two hours.” Before the flight took off from Burbank, the liquored-up dumbass in the aisle seat was escorted off the plane and everyone else was able to continue their journey in relative peace. As always, if you feel like you need to be drunk off your ass in order to deal with the stress of flying, then maybe it’s time to buy a train ticket or rent a car for your journey instead……….

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