- Riot Watch! Riot Watch! Romania continues to be a box full
of dynamite with the fuse quickly burning down towards a giant boom and the
flame kept burning late last week as tens of thousands of protesters again took
to the streets of Bucharest and other Romanian cities, toting giant national
flags, blowing whistle and jeering at the sight of giant puppets of politicians
they hold responsible for a decree to dilute the country's anti-corruption fight.
The uprising included people of all ages, even children, for a fourth straight
night of protests fueled by rage against the government, mixed with optimism
that change is possible. Some in the crowd carried banners reading, "I
came for my future." The fourth night of riots was arguably the angriest
after two key government allies claimed that the emergency government decree
passed without input from parliament was unconstitutional. The Romanian
Orthodox Church also weighed in against the measure, joining a chorus of
critics who claim it will allow corrupt politicians to escape punishment. General
prosecutor Augustin Lazar asked the Bucharest Court of Appeal to suspend and
cancel the government decree "in an emergency regime" before it
formally becomes law on Feb. 9, while ombudsman Victor Ciorbea, who previously
backed the government's ordinance, flipped his position and announced that he
would tell the Constitutional Court that the decree to decriminalize official
misconduct under a certain dollar amount was "not justified." Even a
parliamentary party that formally supports the government, the Union of
Democratic Hungarians, came out against the new measure, adding momentum to the
push against unilateral lawmaking by the current regime………
- Wait…Morgan Freeman isn't contractually obligated to play
God in any movie depicting the almighty in any form? Apparently not, as the
world is now getting its first chance to go online and witness Mac DeMarco’s
cameo in the short independent movie “My Last Film.” The project debuted at the
53rd New York Film Festival in 2015, but it’s been tough to track down since
then for those who aren't hardwired into the indie film scene. It’s directed by
filmmaker Zia Anger – who has previously shot music videos for the likes of
Angel Olsen and Jenny Hval – and stars Lola Kirke (“Gone Girl”), Kelly Rohrbach
and Rosanna Arquette, but it also features DeMarco as God in a decision that
put the musician in a place usually reserved for the golden voice of Freeman in
movies. “I thought the most God-like person [for her characters] would either
be a casting agent or Mac. Mac and I are good friends and he was a good sport,
so I cast him as God,” Anger said. Appropriately enough given the director’s
last name, the nine-minute film features a hell of a lot of violence in a very
short amount of cinematic space, all with the aim, according to its director,
of exploring the concept of “the never ending cycle of stereotypical
Williamsburg white girl replacing a stereotypical Williamsburg white girl.” Ah,
the hipster life. DeMarco’s cameo is extremely short and he has no lines in the
project, but when you’re the omnipotent being who formed the world and all
inside it, you don’t always need to speak a lot………
- Squatters had themselves quite a week last week. First, a
large group of them was evicted from a London mansion owned by a wealthy
Russian businssman, drawing plenty of attention to their cause of housing
issues in the city. The moties for a smaller group of illegal dwellers in Las
Vegas resident Debbie Marks, who is attempting to sell her home in order to pay
for a much-needed kidney surgery for her husband. Marks would love to polish up
her home, make it nice and sell it for top dollar after she moved out of it
back in June. The problem came last month when squatters saw the vacant home
not as a piece of property owned by a woman who needs the value it represents
to procure crucial medical care for her spouse, but rather as a vacant space
where they could live for free. After learning of the hostile home takeover,
Marks filed a complaint against a woman named Betina Merkson on Jan. 15, then
an eviction notice on Jan. 25. Amazingly, her squatters proved that being poor
and not paying for your own place to live doesn’t mean you can't scrounge together
enough cash to pay a lawyer and filed their own motion to stay in the home. Marks
decided to take direct action and went to the home, where she found a broken window
she covered with cardboard, a trashed bedroom that once belonged to her son and
now has a hung blanket serving as a door and blankets stacked on top of the
furniture left in the home. The piece de resistance for her attempted retaking
of her home was to offer the squatters $1,000 to leave. For now, the fight
continues for the modest house on
Burnham Avenue and the woman trying to sell it in order to get the $20,000 she
needs to pay for her husband's kidney surgery………
- Conor’s gonna Conor. Conor McGregor is out of action for a
few months to spend time with his girlfriend as she prepares to give birth to
their first child, but that doesn’t mean he’s not picking fights and
antagonizing adversaries despite being outside the octagon. When he’s not busy
making noise about a possible super fight with retired boxing champion Floyd
Mayweather Jr., McGregor still finds targets for his jabs and during a live
video chat with his fans, the reigning UFC men's lightweight champion turned
his focus back to a familiar target: Nate Diaz. The two men fought twice last
year, with McGregor losing the first in a stunner before rallying to defeat
Diaz by decision late in the year. Yet Diaz joined forces with Mayweather to
have a laugh at McGregor's expense in December and on hiatus or not, McGregor
wasn’t about to let that one slide. "Nate's a b*tch. Nate's a f*cking
b*tch, and let me tell you why," McGregor said. "I had the biggest
respect for Nate – and I still have big respect for Nick, he's out doing his
thing – but when [Nate] took that phone call or that video call from Floyd
Mayweather, and was like, 'Hello Floyd's fans,' he was Floyd's b*tch that
night. I was like, you f*cking p*ssy.” McGregor joked that Diaz should have
told Mayweather to shut up or else he’d choke him out the way he did McGregor in
their first bout, but since he elected not to do that, the Dublin-born smack
talker took him to task. “He was Floyd's b*tch that night. He was Floyd's
employee that night,” McGregor said. “So look, f*ck Nate. F*ck Nick. F*ck the
Diaz brothers. And if you want to be down with the Diaz brothers, then f*ck you
too." That just about says it all……..
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