Month: August 2009

Posted on

Saturday News Dump

Here are a couple of quick stories from the UK I meant to post earlier this week:

– A pedophile in North Yorkshire was caught… after burglars broke into his house and stole his laptop! Once back at their “hideout”, they booted up the computer and  found child pornography on it. They then hid the laptop in a public location and called the police. It’s nice to know that even thieves have consciences, right? Read more here.

– Anyone familiar with marijuana culture probably knows about “herbal highs”, which are herbs and plants sold as “legal highs” in head shops across the US and UK. Years ago, such “herbal high” products contained real (but very weak) herbs that could, in fact, give you an ever so slight “high”… as “high” as one could get off rabbit tobacco. Over the years, the makers of these products have stepped up their game, and have figured out ways to make these “legal highs” more potent. Unfortunately this includes spraying the herbs with unknown and unregulated substances which often cause paranoia and panic attacks in users. This effectively makes them more dangerous than marijuana, the illegal drug they were attempting to mimic. So now there’s a plan to ban these substances in the UK… which leads to an amusing situation where production might go underground… and people will have to buy the stuff from the same drug dealers they thought they were bypassing by buying the once-legal herbs!

Posted on

George Michael arrested… again!

This guy gets arrested more often than a $10 whore! Is he in some kind of competition with Peter Doherty  or something?

George Michael was arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence of drink or drugs yesterday – only two months after getting his licence back.

The singer was breathalysed at the side of the road and taken into police custody after his £60,000 Range Rover crashed into the back of an articulated lorry.

He was held at the police station for almost five hours before being released without charge. Laurie Rowe, the driver of the lorry, said: ‘He seemed completely disorientated, like he had no idea what was going on.

via ‘Dazed’ George Michael held after crashing into a lorry.

Posted on

Gordon Ramsey: Broke?

Celebrity chef Gordon Ramsey came this close to declaring bankruptcy earlier this year. Apparently the global recession has caused business to collapse at his worldwide chain of over 20 restaurants – in fact, profits have fallen from £3 million (around $5 million) to just under £400,000 (around $665,000). Things were so dire for Ramsey that he could no longer afford to keep up payments on a £10.5 million ($17 million) loan, and he and his father-in-law were compelled to put in £5 million of their own money into the business. Times are so tough that Ramsey had to sell his Ferrari F430 (one of his most prized possessions) and he even considered selling his London home. Interestingly, Ramsey says that business on the weekend isn’t so bad, but the weekday trade at his various restaurants has nearly come to a complete stop. Read more.

In other news, Ramsey announced that he will start charging diners on his Hell’s Kitchen show in a bid to cut down on the number of aspiring actors and “wannabes” on the show. Ramsey was infuriated last year when his alleged mistress, Sarah Symonds, was allowed into the dining room without his knowledge. Read more.

Posted on

The Ghost Ship

A cargo ship last heard from on July 28th has apparently vanished. The Arctic Sea, known to be carrying £1 million worth of timber from Finland to Algeria, was last heard from by British authorities at Dover and the end of July, but since then… nothing. The ship is thought to have made it through the English Channel, but after rounding the tip of France, the fate of the ship is uncertain. Authorities are pretty sure that the ship didn’t sink, as there was neither a distress call nor has anyone spotted any of the lumber (or any other wreckage).

There are several theories as to what might have happened: that the ship was taken by pirates, a common occurrence off the coast of east Africa, but unknown in Northern European waters for two centuries; that there is some commercial or ownership dispute (the ship is “Latvian-owned, Maltese-flagged and operating from the Russian port of Arkhangelsk”); or possibly that the ship contained some type of undeclared and valuable cargo, and Russian gangsters have seized the ship. The mystery deepens when you consider that the crew complained about the ship being seized by Russian gangsters whilst in Swedish waters; the gangsters are said to have boarded the ship, tied up the crew, then spent 12 hours in the cargo hold looking for something.

Read more about it here.

Posted on

R.I.P. Les Paul

Sad news:

Acclaimed guitar player Les Paul died on Wednesday from complications of severe pneumonia at White Plains Hospital in New York. He was 94.

Born Lester William Polsfuss in Waukesha, Wisconsin on June 9, 1915, Paul was already performing publicly as a honky-tonk guitarist by the age of 13. He dropped out of high school at 17 to play in Sunny Joe Wolverton’s Radio Band in St. Louis. His first recordings were done in 1936, and in 1938, he moved to New York to begin his tenure on national radio with Fred Waring’s Pennsylvanians.

Paul began constructing his own electric guitar in the late 1930s, and eventually created his own guitar in the 1940s, which would become the template for Gibson’s best-selling electric, the Les Paul model, which was introduced in 1952.

via Guitartist Les Paul Dies at 94.

Posted on

The Boat That Rocked

I don’t write much about movies on this blog these days, mainly because I just don’t watch a lot of movies any more. The Internet has made geographic location irrelevant, and it’s now possible to watch TV shows from Canada, Australia and the UK minutes after they air in their home countries (not days or months like it used to be). And there’s just too much good TV out there to waste time on movies.

I did see one good movie the other day though – The Boat That Rocked. It’s the story of a pirate radio station broadcasting rock and roll into Britain from a boat in the North Sea in 1966. Although completely fictitious, much of the core of the story is based on (or influenced by) Radio Caroline, a real pirate station that played rock and roll all night and all day at a time when the BBC continued to stick to classical and jazz. Such pirate radio stations became immensely popular, with 20+ million Britons tuning in every week.

What makes this film is the cast: legendary British actor Bill Nighy plays Quentin, the owner of the station. Kenneth Branagh plays an uptight government official determined to get that “pornographic filth” off the airwaves. Jack Davenport (of Coupling and Swingtown) plays Branagh’s eager assistant. Philip Seymour Hoffman plays “The Count”, a bombastic American DJ. Nick Frost (of Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead), Rhys Darby (of Flight of the Conchords), Tom Wisdom (of Mile High), Ralph Brown (of Life On Mars), and Chris O’Dowd (of The IT Crowd and FM) round out the cast of misfit DJs (many of whom are loosely based on real DJs). There are also cameos by Emma Thompson and, most importantly, Mad Men’s January Jones:

January Jones - The Boat That RockedRawr!

It’s a good, but not great movie. It’s at least entertaining and something different. I didn’t care for the ending which, although somewhat based on actual events, is filled with enough triumphant orchestral music and fist pumping by the characters that you expect them to scream “O Captain, My Captain” at any moment.

As for availability, you can order the R2 DVD from Amazon UK here, or order the Blu-Ray disc from Amazon US (for $75.49!) here. It’s also “out there”, if you know where to look.

Posted on

More Boot Stamping

Britain continues her march towards INGSOC! The Liverpool City Council is planning to reclassify thousands of classic movies that feature smoking. Any film deemed to offend the sensibilities of Big Brother the council will be given an “18 certificate”, the equivalent of an NC-17 rating in the US (and previously reserved for explicitly violent or sexual films).

Although the rule is supposedly for new films only, there is nothing in the measure to prevent the Liverpool Council from banning older films as well. This could mean that no Liverpudlian under the age of 18 would be able to go to a cinema or rent or purchase almost any movie made before 1970, including such classics as Casablanca, The Maltese Falcon, Citizen Kane, On The Waterfront and even modern classics such as Titanic and Lord of the Rings. What’s more, several classic childrens films – such as 101 Dalmatians and Disney’s Peter Pan, The Little Mermaid and Pinocchio would become 18+ only.

The nannies on the council have graciously exempted any film in which a historical character was known to smoke (Winston Churchill, for example), and they have also exempted any film which “educates” the public on the “dangers” of smoking (“I love you, Big Brother!”)

Ingsoc

This is all made possible by a 2003 law with allows local governments to override the British Board of Film Classification, which normally handles such things.

Read more about it here.

Posted on

Random Wednesday Stuff

– If ever there was any doubt about the supremacy of the NFL in America’s hearts, look no further than last week’s Neilsen ratings, where a lowly pre-season game between two middling teams – the Tennessee Titans and the Buffalo Bills – trounced the competition from MLB, NASCAR and the PGA. The “Hall of Fame Game” (so-called because it takes place at the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio) averaged 7.9 million viewers, compared to 6.3 million viewers for the final round of the Bridgestone Invitational, 4.7 million for the Yankees-Red Sox game, and 2.5 million for NASCAR’s Sprint Cup Series. Let me emphasize – this was a pre-season game between two teams with small fan bases… and it beat out Tiger Woods, one of MLB’s classic rivalries, and a bunch of rednecks driving in circles! Read more here.

– Some nutty British scienticians have decided that Britain’s ideal pet would have the “ears of a rabbit, face of a cat, body of a golden retriever and tail of a horse”. Read more about it here.

– Like I lot of people, I occasionally walk past a dirty car and feel an overwhelming urge to write “Wash Me” on it. Texas artist Scott Wade is the same way, only he uses brushes and his fingers to create masterpieces on the windshields of cars:

Car Art

Read about his work and see more pictures here.

– And lastly, a bit of free advice for Apple: stop censoring so many iPhone apps! As you probably know, Apple’s iconic iPhone has an online store (called, imaginatively enough, the App Store) where users can download programs for their iPhones. The only problem is that Apple has complete control over what apps make it to the App Store, and sometimes the company likes to use a heavy hand when dealing with developers.

Apple pulled a Bittorrent app from the App Store because “it could be used for piracy” (which is pretty rich from a company that made billions selling iPods!). Apple then banned a Bittorrent viewing program because again “it could be used for piracy” (it’s crucial to note that this program simply connected to a desktop computer and checked the status of the BT app running on that computer; the rejected iPhone app couldn’t download anything by itself). Apple has also taken a caviler attitude with apps that complete with the iPhone’s existing apps (the recent Google Voice drama) or the bread and butter of its main iPhone partner, AT&T (the SlingPlayer drama). But last week might have been the last straw: Apple banned a dictionary app from the App Store… because the program contained “offensive words” (the app was later approved when all the “offensive” words were removed and a “17+” label was added to the app. I just wanted to say this: “Hey, Apple: the Justice Department can investigate companies other than Microsoft and Intel, ya know?”

Posted on

More on the Affidavit

In this post I talked about Angela Antonetti’s affidavit in the Ben Roethlisberger suit. I’d like to take a couple of minutes to follow-up on this.

First of all, you can download a PDF of the affidavit here.

Once you’ve downloaded it, check out paragraph 18:

In August 2008, Andrea asked me to travel with her to Pittsburg [sic] that fall to see a Pittsburg Steelers game and to try to “run into” Ben Roethlisberger. I told Andrea that she shouldn’t try to chase Mr. Roethlisberger. I believed that Andrea’s plan to travel to Pittsburg – uninvited – to attempt to see Mr Roethlisberger when he had not tried to contact her was not realistic. Based upon this discussion, I understood that Mr Roethlisberger had not tried to contact Andrea, although he could have easily reached her at Harrah’s.

And there’s the money shot right there. If this paragraph in particular is true, then I don’t believe a word of McNulty’s story.

Posted on

The Sacred Rules of Jersey Purchase

Behind the Steel Curtain has a great post about buying team jerseys. Although many casual fans (and wives and girlfriends) might think buying a jersey is as simple as picking a player then picking a jersey size, the fact is that it’s a complex process full of pitfalls:

I’ve gotta buy a new Steelers jersey. This has kept me up nights, and any die-hard fan in the same situation should treat this monumentous decision the same way.

See, there’s far more that goes into a fan’s jersey selection than most think. It’s a commentary of that fan’s ownership of the team. It’s a proud statement that shows the devotion and loyalty to America’s greatest team.

Is it your favorite player? Is it a tribute to the olden days of the team? Is it commemorating one of our two recent Super Bowls? These are all factors, but the “coolness” of that player or the uniqueness and rarity of that jersey is also very important. Longevity and likelihood of that player’s continued employment by the Pittsburgh Steelers.

Even if you’re not a Steelers fan, you should still read the article, as it has a lot of good “rules” for picking just the right jersey. After all, every fan should know about “The Oversaturation Rule” (Roethlisberger, Polamalu), “The Bandwagon Rule” (James Harrison, Santonio Holmes), “The Commitment Rule” (Alan Faneca), “The Throwback Rule” and more, and how they might apply to your team.

Although amusing, the post has good information that every fan should know.

via The Sacred Rules of Jersey Purchase.