- That’s how you get people talking about your third-rate
soccer league, Tim Howard. Howard, who has posted some memorable performances
for the U.S. men’s national team and playing in top European leagues, is now
slumming it in the twilight of his career as the keeper for the Colorado Rapids
of Major League Soccer irrelevance. He won't be doing the whole goalkeeping
part of his gig for the team’s next three games, as he’s been suspended for
three games by the league and fined an undisclosed amount for separate
incidents involving fans in Kansas City. His actions may cost him money and playing
time, but as the NBA and NHL playoffs fire up, at least people are talking
about soccer for a moment or two. The incidents took place during an after the
Rapids' 3-1 loss at Sporting Kansas City, after which Howard showed up in a
video posted to social media exchanging expletives with some in SKC's home
crowd late in the match. His rage did not abate after the game, as he also
grabbed an SKC supporter by the arm as players were leaving the field. The
league announced that the veteran goalie disciplined "for foul language
directed toward a fan during the Rapids' match against Sporting Kansas City and
for an altercation with a fan following the game." Mix in a heated
conversation with SKC forward Dom Dwyer after the final whistle and you have a
big-name player who definitely didn’t abide by the league’s 'Don't Cross the
Line' campaign, which is dedicated to supporting the communities where its
teams play. Howard just stepped across that line and spit on the first person
he saw on the other side of it……..
- Is there a country anywhere in the world that a) has held
an election in the past few months and b) doesn’t have angry segment of its
populace disputing its results and alleging fraud? The latest nation grappling
with claims of rigged elections and electoral misconduct by the government is
Ecuador, where election officials have agreed to recount 1.3 million votes as
opposition leader Guillermo Lasso continues to allege fraud in the presidential
election. That concession came from the National Electoral Council, which
announced that it would review all the disputed voting acts in a recount to be
held next week in capital city of Quito. The election took place April 2, with
results showing former banker Lasso losing the election by less than 3
percentage points to Lenin Moreno, President Rafael Correa's handpicked
successor. South American nations have had their share of handpicked successors
who turn into horrendous leaders making their country markedly worse by the day
- oh, hey there, Venezuelan despot Nicolas Maduro! - and whether Moreno would
be that kin of leader or not, he should still be elected fairly. To that end,
Lasso filed a complaint demanding a recount of all ballots cast in the
election. He has little support from the Organization of American States, which
claims its monitoring work at 480 voting centers nationwide found no
discrepancies between the tallies and official results, but that isn't stopping
him from pressing on……..
- No Doubt Without Gwen Stefani was already taken as a band
name? It must be, because the remaining members of No Doubt and AFI frontman
Davey Havok have formed what could be called a supergroup - as long as we’ve
significantly lowered the standards for what it takes to qualify as a
supergroup - named DREAMCAR, The group consist of Havok, Tom Dumont, Tony Kanal
and Adrian Young and their merry band of misfits recently announced their
self-titled debut album and have been sharing tracks from the LP ahead of its
release. The most recent song to drop is “All of the Dead Girls,” with the
whole album to be released next month. On one hand, this is sort of like
reviving a truly terrible and forgettable quasi-rock band and replacing the
lead singer, which is unfortunate because we’ve been rid of No Doubt since the
band’s original line-up, including Stefani, reformed to play a series of live
shows in 2015. It’s been even longer when it comes to being subjected to the
horrors of new No Doubt music, as the group’s most recent album, “Push and
Shove,” dropped in 2012. Since then, Stefani has done her own thing as a solo
pop act and focused a lot on her fashion career, which is fine because the more
she worries about clothing and accessories, the less time she has to make that
terrible brand of music of which she’s already given so much to the world……..
- Normally, having someone else in your kitchen cooking up a
delicious meal would be a welcome sight. That’s presuming, of course, that the
person in the kitchen is someone you know and invited into your home, as
opposed to a drunken stranger who broke in while you were gone and was getting
their inner Mario Battali on when you happened upon them. Welcome to sunny
central Florida, where Samantha O'Neal came home at the end of a long day with her
sister and a friend in tow and met uninvited sous chef Ronald Wesly, standing
over her stove. "I walked in to him standing here with this pot of oil,
where he was frying chicken. The strainer right here, this chicken in freezer
that got cut open, frying chicken," O'Neal said. According to O’Neal,
Wesly took both chicken and sausage from her refrigerator and appeared to be
drunk off of her sister's liquor and once she recovered her wits, she did
whatever she could to drive the intruder from her home. "I was scared. My sister was more
scared," she added. "I just
wanted him off the property, so I picked him up and threw him out the
gate." While the actual throwing part may be a bit of an exaggeration, the
drunken Wesly was soon located wandering nearby and Alachua County Sheriff's
deputies arrested him. Though O’Neal described Wesly as an acquaintance, she
insisted that she did not allow him inside her home or at any point give him
permission to be there. Maybe it’s time to replace that welcome mat at the front
door with something a bit less hospitable and more in the spirit of telling
people to stay the hell out……..
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