- Monopoly has aged out. Board games may as well be bored
games for those under the age of 50, but Monopoly is doing its best to remain
quasi-relevant outside of the time every couple of years when McDonald’s
revives its popular promotion centered on the game. Over the past 80-plus
years, the game has gone through various evolutions, such as the one in 2013
when Hasbro Inc. dropped one of the lamer pieces, the iron, from Monopoly. Now,
it’s time to say farewell to another long-standing piece and once again, it’s a
piece that no one should really miss. The thimble, which has been part of the
popular board game since 1935, is being phased out and going forward, it’s more
likely to see emojis and hashtags as options for your character in the game
because Hasbro is trying to update Monopoly to keep it from becoming a
has-been. The company is holding a worldwide contest to let people choose the
eight tokens to be included in the next generation of the property acquisition
game, trying to own the railroad, stage a hostile takeover of Atlantic
Boulevard and Park Place and find a way to get themselves out of jail and back
into the damn game THAT GOES ON FOREVER AND NEVER SEEMS TO END BECAUSE NO ONE
CAN ACTUALLY ACQUIRE EVERYTHING THEY NEED TO WIN. The new tokens will be
announced March 19 and they’ll be a part of a new version of the game slated to
hit store shelves this August, assuming Hasbro can get people to turn away from
their beloved smartphones long enough to remember that board games do still
exist…….
- More catwalk, less bass line, Pete Wentz. The Fall Out Boy
bassist channeled his inner runway model at New York Fashion Week earlier this
week, making his not-awaited debut on the catwalk during a show at the
self-important, hype-riddled fashion festival. Wentz, whose band currently
sucks and has always sucked, joined fellow musicians-turned-models Desiigner,
Young Thug and Fetty Wap on the catwalk for designer Philipp Plein’s marquee
event. There was nothing wrong with the fashion event itself, other than the ridiculous
degree of self-aggrandizement that most involved the fashion week bestow upon
themselves, so it was nice to see Wentz and his musical pals join forces for
event that Plein caustically termed as ‘Make New York Fashion Week Great Again’
– the umpteenth unimaginative, lame attempted recycling/repackaging of
Ass-Hat-In-Chief Donald Trump’s campaign slogan. It would be even nicer if
Wentz pulled a full-on Kanye West and decided to go all-in on the fashion
world, perhaps in the process leaving the bland, lame and uninspiring pop-punk
stylings of Fall Out Boy behind so the world would never again have to be
subjected to any more of their musical drivel. So if that small taste of
fashion fame tickled your fancy, Peter, feel free to devote your entire
professional life to pursuing it and completely forget that four-stringed
instrument thingy you used to pluck alongside those other dudes on stage……..
- Albania, THIS is how you promote your country as a tourist
hotspot that the world at large simply has to experience for itself. All that
drivel you were spouting a few days ago about amazing, world-class
archaeological finds beneath your waters, theoretically inspiring tourists to
book their tickets to your little corner of the world with haste…not sure how
to put this, but that has very limited appeal. However, hearing that Albanian
police have arrested a man who allegedly had 1.38 tons of dried cannabis hidden
under his house, that gives your small nation some curb appeal. Yes, that
particular collection of chron is no longer on the market, but its discovery
hints at the fact that some very good, very mellow times are to be had if
stoners want to take a trip to Eastern Europe and pay you a visit. According to
a police statement, the drugs were found packed in plastic bags and hidden in
underground tunnels that the man allegedly had dug under his house in a village
in Vlora district, 100 miles southwest of the Albanian capital, Tirana.
Authorities believe he drugs were going to be smuggled into Italy, but they
could have been useful at home in Albania, as police allegedly destroyed about
2.5 million marijuana plants last year, four times more than the year before.
Mix in seizing several metric tons of cannabis at border crossing points or
from boats bound for neighboring Italy and Greece and it’s becoming hard and
harder to get high in a country that could sorely use the dollars that come
with stoner tourism……..
- When an athlete wins a world title, that championship
success can imbue him or her with all sorts of dangerous hubris. Take Cleveland
Cavaliers guard Kyrie Irving, whose team is in the middle of an injury-ravaged
season in which one of its three All-Stars is out six weeks with a meniscus
tear in his knee and the Boston Celtics are breathing down their necks for the
top seed in the Eastern Conference. In other words, now is a time Irving should
be locked in even more than normal and instead, we’re greeted with the
über-ill-advised revelation that he’ll star in a movie that will turn his Pepsi
commercial character, Uncle Drew, into a full-length feature film protagonist.
"Pepsi and Kyrie Irving are looking forward to expanding the Uncle Drew
universe," said Lou Arbetter, general manager of Creators League Studio,
Pepsi's new in-house production company. There’s no release date, but
apparently the game plan is to incorporate lost of NBA stars into the movie,
presumably to mask the fact that it’s a terrible idea to take something that
works on a limited scale in a 30- or 60-second commercial or five-minute promo
video on YouTube and trying to extrude it out to a 90-minute (or more) feature
film. "I'm really proud of what we've been able to build with Pepsi,"
Irving said. “And even more excited for what's ahead." You might be, but
no one else is. Yes, the previous Uncle Drew videos draw plenty of eyes online,
but watching one online for free is much different than paying $15 to go see it
in a movie theater. Oh, and the star of the movie isn't even an actor and he’s
spending his time on screen dressed as an elderly man fooling people with the
basketball skills of an NBA star. What could possibly go wrong with that……..
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