- There are just some mug shots that are infinitely better
than others - here’s looking at you, Nick Nolte. But even Nolte may not be able
to contend with Craig Buckner, a Washington County, Oregon man who made his
presence felt this week with a court appearance and mug shot for the ages. According
to Washington County Court clerks, Buckner was at the courthouse to surrender
to authorities for violating a release order and believed he would receive
leniency for willingly turning himself in. He figured that made it OK to show
up for court with his trusty pet parrot in tow and in a move that might sound
wildly insane to the average man but perfectly reasonable to a wannabe
modern-day pirate, Buckner instructed his parrot to wait for him out in a tree
in the courtyard of the courthouse while he had his day in court. The judge in
his case didn’t exactly follow Buckner’s expected script and instead ordered
him to be taken into custody. At that point, a visibly concerned Buckner
wondered what would happen to his bird. Washington County Court Security Dep.
Shoana McKelvey took Buckner into custody and said he started talking about his
parrot right away. The deputy kindly offered to go outside and check on the
bird, which she saw to be in distress with several crows circling it.
"This was Mr. Buckner's pet. He has had this bird since it has been
hatched. I could just tell how concerned he was when he went into custody, this
bird was so special to him," McKelvey said. She then brought Buckner
outside so he could get the bird out of the tree and to safety. With Buckner
headed to jail, a friend will take custody of the bird until its owner is a
free man again……..
- She’s a Barbie girl, in a Barbie world….life in a Sony
Pictures feature film, it’s fantastic. Amy Schumer may not be the first name
that comes to mind when one thinks of a studio cranking out a wholly ridiculous
and unnecessary live-action movie about the world’s most famous plastic,
proportionally ridiculous doll, but she’s precisely the one being tabbed to
front Sony’s take on Barbie coming to life. Barbie has long been about wholly
unnatural and anatomically impossible measurements as a bogus ideal for female
beauty, while Schumer has rightly railed against critics who have tried to body
shame her even though she’s a normal and even slightly better-than-average
clothing size for a woman. But maybe that irony is what makes her the right fit
to play Barbie and Sony has reportedly chosen from three separate scripts it ordered
for the project and picked one penned by Hilary Winston that it believes
provides a contemporary spin on beauty, feminism, and identity. Apparently in
Winston’s vision of Barbie’s world, Schumer is living in a land of other
Barbie’s, but is booted from that world and into our actual world. The project
doesn’t yet have a director, but it’s expected that Schumer will rewrite the
script with her sister, Kim Caramele. Sources close to the project believe it
will be similar to projects such as “Big” and “Splash” and with Schumer
involved, humor is bound to be a central value in Barbie’s new world…….
- One story after breaking down a would-be pirate in Oregon,
let’s shift the focus to self-named pirates looking to loot, sack, pillage and
plunder…the capital building in Iceland? Yes, the anti-authoritarian Pirate
Party isn't going away and is sailing its Jolly Roger into uncharted waters
after the country’s president has asked the party to try to form a government,
after two earlier rounds of coalition talks failed. These pirates, sadly sans
peg legs, planks walked, barrels of rum and canons, actually seek direct
democracy and digital freedom, a plankform, er, platform they rode all the way
to a third-place finish in Iceland's Oct. 29 election. The problem stems from
the fact that no party won an outright majority, prompting President Gudni
Johannesson to the first-placed Independence Party and then the second-placed
Left-Greens to try to assemble a coalition. Both of them failed miserably and
may now have to walk the plank…of cooperating with the third-place finisher in
the election. Johannesson asked senior Pirate lawmaker Birgitta Jonsdottir to
try to assemble a government with other parties, presumably without any
swashbuckling involved. It will be interesting to see how a party founded by an
assortment of hackers, political activists and internet freedom advocates and
which holds just 10 seats in Iceland's 63-seat parliament will go about forming
a working coalition, but given the public’s ongoing outrage over the prime
minister's offshore holdings, which were revealed in the Panama Papers leak,
someone had best get a working government in place and soon…….
- Congratulations on being fired without getting officially
fired, now-former Indiana University head football coach Kevin Wilson. Wilson
was allowed to “resign” from his post due to "philosophical differences,"
the school announced. Rumors have swirled for weeks that at least five current
IU players were interviewed about Wilson's treatment of players and all were
questioned by athletic department officials and university lawyers during the
past two weeks. Stories of players being mistreated, rushed back too soon from
concussions and other misdeeds circulated during recent weeks and it’s ironic
because athletic director Fred Glass handed Wilson a contract extension in
January, a move he now claims because he was assured following an outside
review from legal counsel that no players' medical issues were compromised
under Wilson. He believed those issues were resolved, but shock of all shocks,
a coach who (allegedly) mistreated players on a disturbing level didn’t
immediately or permanently change his ways overnight and last month, Glass
said, "it came to my attention that some things I thought we'd put behind
us had bubbled up again." The AD insisted there was no one incident that
led directly to the firing, but painted it as an accumulation of infractions
over time while also wrapping his allegations in a bullsh*t statement in which
he praised “Coach Wilson's many positive contributions to our football
program.” Yes, nothing says appreciation quite like firing, er, allowing a
coach to resign in a flurry of ugly allegations. In the wake of Wilson’s
firing/resignation, defensive coordinator Tom Allen was immediately given a
six-year deal to take over the full-time job…….
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