NEWS ITEM: Donald Trump says he’s going to swing a sweet deal for his idol from growing up–Ed McMahon–and keep the former talk show sidekick from losing his $4.5-million mansion.
MESSAGE TO THE DONALD: I owe less than 10 percent of that on my suburban, one-family home. Care to come to my rescue before I lose the place in January?
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I got a kick out of the newpaper report that the Lakers had resigned guard (whom does he ever guard, by the way?) Sasha Vujacic, better known as Sasha Vujachoke, for three years at $$15 million.
The report noted that the Lakers had offered Vujachoke one year at $2.6 million and waited while the guard (a misnomer, as I noted) "generated little interest from other NBA teams" (who were wise enough to know a rummy when they see one).
Then–blare of trujpets, lights beaming into the night sky as if calling for Batman!–European teams started offering the Slovenian slacker so-called big bucks.
Oh, yeah, sure. No doubt, Vujachoke made a few phone calls and got some friends to plant bogus stories in the overseas press, and the Lakers fell for it hook, line and missed hoop.
If the public can rightfully say of Laker forward Lamar Odom that he disappears in big games, it can more easily be said of Vujachoke that he doesn’t show up at any game–unless the other teams put no defender on hiim.
I could do that for $5M a year.
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Without my giving away any plot details, The Dark Knight, which I saw yesterday in Imax, accomplishes a few wonderful and even great things without ever becoming a great movie. First, it poses some serious questions about the nature of the human beast, and even presents a nice little dilemma at the end to test the hypothesis of The Joker, played by the late Heath Ledger.
Which brings up the one great thing in the movie–Heath Ledger’s acting. Ledger takes his character of The Joker to such depths of evil that all other evil figures in film history pale in comparison. The great genius here, with both the writing and the acting, is that The Joker is a rational evil-doer who is presented as being less selfish and self-centered, so to speak, than those who oppose him.
Quite an accomplishment.
Other than that, the movie is overly long and a dark night indeed.
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NEWS ITEM:
LAUSANNE, Switzerland, June 30, 2008–Floyd Landis loses his legal appeal on being stripped of his 2006 Tour de France bicycling championship for doping.
QUESTION: What does this teach us about athletes who deny using steroids and performing-enhancing substances after being exposed?
ANSWER: They come in all shapes, sizes and personalities, but one truth fits all–they’re liars to the bone.
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General Motors, seeking a crossover vehicle to span both the U.S. and (growing) Chinese markets, introduced a remodeled Buick Invicta (last built in the 1960s) at the Beijing Auto Show in April. It’s a beaut (pictured).
I say build it now. It’s modern and irresistible. However, I think Buick plans to incorporate parts of its design into upcoming LaCrosse models. They’ll probably just use the tailight, given the GM track record for boldness.
When you get something this good looking, why not just go for it?
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What cannot be undone?
One’s life, of course.
This was brought to mind when someone forwarded me a copy of a publication that was, for reasons not important here, republishing photos of me taken, within groups of others, from the 1980s.
Of course, I immediately longed for my slender, younger, youthfully more optimistic (and more naive) version, but then a memory from the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam flashed into memory.
It was a passage about "the moving hand," I thought, but I looked it up and here it is:
"The Moving Finger writes: and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it."
As my Irish forebear would attest over pints at a pub, "Just so."
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Responding to a radio ad for an event called "Wine & Cars Under the Stars," I raced over Saturday night to the Fairplex Pomona (Calif.) and Wally Post’s NHRA Museum.
My coverage of the event itself is on my other blog at Le Food News, but here I just want to focus on some American nostalgia.
Wine & Cars, obviously, featured automobiles along with food and drink. The NHRA Museum was fascinating with its array of speed-setting vehicles, but out back where the food and alcohol were being served, Roadsters Los Angeles and other clubs had their babies on display, many custom, some meticulously restored–repristinated as the late Bill Buckley would say.
I fell in love with the 1947 Cadillac convertible pictured here. I was dying to learn more about it, so I ventured back until I found the owner with the car.
Unfortunately, the jerk was so arrogant that I kept thinking, "No wonder al Qaeda has us in their crosshairs." (The lady pictured is just a wine server, not the owner.)
Therefore, no picture of said jerk, nor mention of his name. I bothered getting neither, just walked away with a distaste in my mouth. I quickly recovered with a nice Mount Gay Rum and ginger ale, just the drink for a warm spring night under the stars and alongside the cars.
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Maybe the genre hasn’t kept up with the times, or perhaps Steven Spielberg is himself out of style–or maybe I’m just older–but Indiana Jones and the Kindgom of the Silver Skull seemed really hokey to me when I saw it yesterday.
I kept thinking that Spielberg et al. had designed everything to become a ride at Disneyland as I watched the putative action (which in truth wasn’t the least bit exciting but seemed contrived and unreal) unfurl. Plus, they seemed to regurgitate every trick from past Indiana Jones adventures and even throw in some plot devices from Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
It’s pretty much a drudge. Even when they tried to wax nostalgic, it seemed ridiculous and, again, contrived.
I remember back in the 1980s when every new segment of either Star Wars or Indiana Jones opened, I’d go to the 7 a.m. screening on opening day and wait in a huge line to sit in a packed theater amid screaming fans.
This time, there was no 7 a.m. screening of Kingdom. The earliest was 9:30 a.m., and there were about 12 of us in the audience. None was younger than 50.
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Commentators blame it on the cold weather, but the start of the 2007 baseball season was even worse, with several games snowed out and others shifted to different ballparks to avoid inclement weather.
But this year, the sluggers can’t slug because it’s cold. Just listen to the sports talk shows…continuing the Bud Selig-led cover-up of the steroids era.
Let’s see. The mighty Eric Gagne admits he can’t close games, confirming what we all already realized: He can’t close games when he’s not on the juice. Plain and simple.
So if sluggers suddenly can’t slug, it’s the weather?
Yeah, right.
At least, we can make one positive conclusion: Baseball’s drug testing policy is working.
Boston’s Mike Lowell, on the Jim Rome radio show, came closest to admitting as much. When he was asked if the weather had anything to do with hitting and slugging being down this year, he replied, "Yeah, that and other things."
Amen.
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Aren’t we all sick of baseball stars who apologize for causing "distractions" or for making unspecified "mistakes"?
Why can’t they just say, "Okay, I admit that I took steroids and HGH and cheated on my wife everytime I was on the road"?
In the case of Roger Clements, the answer is that he’s Biff from Back to the Future, a bully who thinks he can intiminate his way into the Hall of Fame. I agree with Michael Wilbon’s assessment that Clements is nothing but a "fraud and a bully."
The only hall you’re going into, Roger, is the Hall of Shame–or maybe a slammer?
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