This comment was left today on the post about Glemie Dean Beasley, “The Paw Is Old School.“
Please click through and give the author, Lee Richards, a thumbs-up.
When I was a boy growing up in michigan on a farm Mr Beasley came out to hunt every year,my dad was a bit prejudice but Mr Beasleys warm sence of humor and politness soon won him over and he became a life long friend, we always looked forward to his arrival with his humor and tales of the city was always a real treat. He always seemed to make it around thanksgiving time,my brothers and I would hunt with him and have a blast . this past thanksgiving we went to my mothers and once again were blessed with a short visit from our ole friend mr beasley. I miss those days I left Michigan for the hills of Tennessee in 1978 and mr beasley has always had an open invitation to come and visit, hunt or jst another place to call home but has yet to take me up on the offer in his travels. If you ever get a chance to meet Mr Beasley and listen to his adventures of life by almeans do so he one in a millon. GOD bless you Glemie and look forward to a hunt with you soon. Your friend Lee.
There’s a new masterpiece on Youtube. It’s one of the greatest films I’ve seen all year.
But don’t take my word for it.
Damon Lindelof: “Your life is about to change. This is astounding film making. Watch ALL of it.”
What follows is a seven-part, 70 minute long review of George Lucas’ late-career blunder, “The Phantom Menace.”
Not only does it swiftly dissect why this movie is such an abomination, particularly by comparison to “The Empire Strikes Back,” but it does so with a maniacal, unreliable narrator.
This is the work of RedLetterMedia, and it is simply genius.
Part one: Nothing in “The Phantom Menace” makes any sense at all; protagonists; and describing the characters.
Part two: The story of “The Phantom Menace” is horrible. And a trip into the narrator’s basement.
Part three: Palpatine actively foils his own plan, inexplicably; the Jedi plotline contradicts their alleged wisdom.
Part four: “Everything everyone says in this movie makes no sense.” Plus, who is the main character and why should we care?
Part five: Qui-Gon Jinn is incredibly stupid or drunk, Jake Lloyd is terrible, and worst of all, this movie ruins the Force.
Part six: The light saber duels in “The Phantom Menace” are crap by comparison to those in the original trilogy.
Part seven: The Ending Multiplication Effect, and the Pizza Roll scene.
BONUS STAR WARS FUN
Check this out. Star Wars Weather.
Miami’s Fisher Island is an enclave of the super-wealthy, filled with luxury residences, sandy beaches and lush fairways.
It’s an exclusive community, and only residents, invited guests and the help are welcome. Famous names from Vanderbilt to Oprah have owned property within its elite confines.
Raul Quintana owned a $3 million condo on the island, with views of picturesque Biscayne Bay and fine furnishings. He’d rented it out on occasion, once to baseball All-Star Ivan Rodriguez, and once to Anna Kournikova’s peeps. It was only one of several properties Quintana had once owned on the island, before he sold several for a huge profit.
But when Quintana rented the condo out to a “modeling agency,” he soon found himself a hated outcast on Fisher Island.
It turned out that the “modeling agency” was actually the porn producers known as the Bangbros, and they used the condo to film a masterpiece called “Sexy Golfing Experience.”
Now Raul Quintana has been banished from the island as surely as if Jeff Probst read his name at the Tribal Council.
As the Miami New Times reported, “Quintana…is in trouble. His three remaining luxury units are now worth $5.6 million — almost $3 million less than their purchase prices. Banks might soon take them over. Fisher Island, he says, is his ‘Alcatraz.’
Then his voice breaks as he remarks, “Bang Bros really banged my life.”
This tragic tale came to our attention via Deadspin, which noted that you’d think golf/porn related controversies are the sole domain of Eldrick Woods, but in this case, you’d be wrong.
The New York Times ran an article a few years ago about labor strife on the island, and did a fine job of describing its unique and luxurious setting:
A 216-acre nub of land sliced from the tip of Miami in 1905 when the government dredged out a sea-lane from Biscayne Bay, Fisher Island was acquired in 1925 by William K. Vanderbilt II, scion of the robber-baron railroad clan, to build his winter mansion.
It epitomizes wealth to this day. The island is home at least part of the year to an assortment of magnates, like the investment guru Martin Zweig, the car dealership mogul Robert Potamkin and the financier Bennet S. LeBow, of tobacco fame. Celebrities like Oprah Winfrey and Mel Brooks have owned winter homes here.
According to the Census Bureau, Fisher Island was the richest enclave in America in 1999, with an average income per capita of about $236,000 — more than double the $91,000 average on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Residents say the real figures are actually far higher, partly because of the difficulty in gathering income data on part-time residents.
Indeed, from the imported Bahamian sand coating the beaches to the marble and mahogany-encrusted Vanderbilt mansion and the 186-foot, $250,000-a-week chartered yacht bobbing in the marina just outside, everything bespeaks luxury.
As the New Times article noted, Raul Quintana was once one of the island’s most notable residents: “In the early days, Quintana was among the top investors, buying 15 condos and spending $45 million, by his estimation. Back then, he was the flashy socialite who drove a Ferrari, sponsored polo matches at the Fisher Island Club, and always arrived by chopper.”
But Quintana fell on hard times after an acrimonious divorce. His ex took some of the property, and he sold some additional units to raise living expenses. Luckily for Quintana, though, he unloaded those properties at the top of the market.
Meanwhile, he’d begun the practice of renting out one condo for cash. He was obviously hard up for funds, because when the “modeling agency” offered him $600 for six hours, he had his assistant deliver the keys and didn’t even require a written contract. Tragically, he now says he thought a high-fashion photo spread might help him find future tenants.
Unfortunately, the temporary tenant wasn’t an MLB backstop or hot Russian tennis player.
It was the production crew for the Bang Bros…
You can’t help but love the evocative description of the porno flick that was penned by the New Times’ Gus Garcia-Roberts.
This prose is dripping with the contempt that can only be inspired by viewing the film, perhaps succumbing to its lure, and then letting a wave of self-loathing crash over you…
It turns out Quintana had rented his apartment to Bangbros.com, an online porn giant based in Miami. Its auteurs produced Sexy Golfing Experience, which sounds like an unauthorized Tiger Woods biography but is in fact a hard-core skin flick starring zeppelin-breasted actress Devon Lee.
The film is no innovation in cinema. In it, Tony, a ratty-looking dude with a thin beard and designer shades, commandeers a golf cart — clearly displaying Quintana’s apartment number — to rendezvous with Devon on a Fisher Island golf green. After the dirty-blond porn starlet does some butt-focused putting, the lovers drive to Quintana’s condo on a golf cart with a pudgy, bearded dolly grip riding on the rear.
Once in the apartment, they head to the balcony, where, in broad daylight and full view of any neighbor who might glance out a window, Tony applies baby oil to Devon’s buttocks for five minutes. They then go inside and run through the usual battery of positions, with only a thin white towel separating their carnal intermingling from Quintana’s brown suede couch and matching chaise lounge. Other scenes involve possible staining of one of the homeowner’s throw pillows and his carpet.
The “zeppelin-breasted” Devon Lee
It didn’t take long for word to get around about the first-ever Fisher Island porno, and for Quintana’s reputation to come crashing down.
Quintana didn’t find out about Sexy Golfing Experience until roughly three months after he rented out his apartment, he says, when a safari-helmeted security guard named Howard greeted him with: “Great film, Mr. Quintana!”
“The rumors always start with security,” says Fisher Island real estate agent and resident Claudia Campuzano. “Everybody on the island knows about Raul’s movie, and everybody’s watched it too.”
[...]
That earned him a new nickname: “The Porn King of Fisher Island.”
The Fisher Island Community Association found out about this and dropped the hammer on poor Mr. Quintana…
Citing non-specified bad behavior, they yanked privileges and laid out several restrictions:
- They banned him from renting out his condos, seriously cutting into a major source of income.
- He was forbidden to use the car lanes for residents on the ferry, and instead, he was banished to the employee lanes. Ouch.
- Furthermore, they made him get advance approval for any guest that he wished to bring onto the island in the future.
- When an irate Quintana stopped paying his association dues, the dispute turned into a legal battle over $250,000 in unpaid fees.
- Quintana was banned from the Fisher Island Club, and he couldn’t even visit as a guest of another resident. He was also accused of threatening Community Association officials.
Now Quintana’s life is falling down around him. The New Times quoted a sympathetic neighbor:
“Everybody loved Raul,” says Ty, a Fisher Island resident and business owner who asked that his last name not be used. “But he’s lost everything. He’s been outcasted.”
Let this be a lesson to you, property owners — when a “modeling agency” calls you up and wants to use your real estate for a shoot, make sure you know what you’re getting into.
You just might find your condo on “Ass Parade” and your community association irate, while your reputation becomes that of a common pornographer.
Not to mention the stains on the throw pillows.
Hippies everywhere are in agony: the skeptics of anthropogenic global warming have loaded their rhetorical quivers with stolen emails from the East Anglia Climate Research Unit.
Many are calling the email evidence “Climate-gate,” but I think people who affix “-gate” to every scandal are part of a scandalous confederacy of dunces that I like to call Watergate-was-not-a-scandal-involving-water-you-idiots!-gate.
The now-notorious emails don’t prove that anthropogenic (human-caused) global warming is a hoax, as some have asserted; but they are extremely bad publicity for the climate-change lobby on the eve of an epic summit in Copenhagen.
With the global economy in shambles, the appetite for a tax on carbon (don’t give me this “cap and trade is a free market” nonsense) has waned in the United States; meanwhile, rising powers like China and India are loath to arrest their growing fossil fuel consumption.
But one country stands to benefit not only from maintaining the global energy status quo, but potentially from global warming itself: Russia, a major purveyor of fossil fuels that would be able to unlock vast fuel deposits in the Arctic Circle if ice melting trends continue apace.
They wouldn’t mind if those notorious Russian winters eased up a little, either.
That’s why it’s really no surprise that the hackers who stole emails from the East Anglia CRU were very likely on the payroll of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB).
Guess who was the first director of the FSB, after it rose from the ashes of the KGB? The same guy who still pulls the strings there and everywhere else in Russia: Vladimir Freaking Putin.
Don’t you get it, people?! Putin masterminded the whole thing to derail the Copenhagen conference and increase his vast oil wealth! Hippies 0, Putin 1,000,000!
Is the climatology scandal really that big of a deal?
Scientifically: not really. Politically: possibly.
A revved-up James Fallows dissects Page One stories from the NY Times and Washington Post on the topic, noting that the NYT frames the issue in terms of “science vs. ignorance,” while the WaPo is fixated on the “-gate” style scandal and gives equal time to the skeptics.
Fallows thinks this is a case-study-level example of crappy journalism on the part of the WaPo. But as ROTI tipster C. Dave (who forwarded Fallows’ article along) points out, the NYT is addressing the issue to its global audience of intellectual citizens, while the WaPo is reporting from its position as the pre-eminent source for Washington political news.
This issue SHOULD be seen differently through those disparate lenses, because it impacts very differently in each sphere.
As ALWAYS, Jon Stewart and his Daily Show crew delivered one of the more incisive looks at the matter:
Anyone who takes a hard, serious look at the substance of the climate controversy [I don't want to belabor the issue since it's not exactly breaking news, but here is a good overview] can see that the hacked emails don’t debunk anthropogenic global warming. They merely reveal top climate scientists speaking frankly about their efforts to assert their arguments in the intellectual realm. There’s nothing wrong with that.
However, the stolen emails ARE news because they indirectly raise concerns about the anthropogenic global warming consensus that lies behind the Copenhagen conference, the Waxman-Markey cap and trade bill pending before the US Congress, and all other efforts to squelch carbon emissions worldwide.
Some scientists arguing that human-caused global warming presents a threat to human life and civilization have played fast and loose with the facts before. Take the notorious “hockey stick graph,” which received prominent play in the work of Al Gore and the UN International Panel on Climate Change’s influential reports:
The “hockey stick” appeared to show that temperatures were skyrocketing at an unprecedented pace. Unfortunately for the scientists and politicians that promoted it, it turned out to be based on cherry-picked data. Most notably, it denies the existence of the Medieval Warm Period, which is supported by significant evidence (but does not, it’s important to note, disprove anthropogenic warming either).
What I find most bothersome about the hockey stick graph, when taken in concert with the leaked emails, is that scientists who had questions about the graph were given a gigantic runaround by the researchers who promoted it.
Their concerns later turned out to be entirely legitimate.
The emails demonstrate efforts by the East Anglia scientists to not just disprove but effectively crush the opposition, by leading vocal protests against any peer-reviewed publications that dared run skeptical papers, and by elbowing those papers out of consideration in IPCC discussions.
Since the case for marshaling all of humanity’s resources to battle anthropogenic global warming is so often based on a supposedly rock-solid scientific consensus that only a creationist or nincompoop would question, it is somewhat disturbing to note an apparent pattern among some top climatologists to squelch dissenting voices and to refuse to share the data upon which their conclusions are based.
While there is clearly a strong scientific consensus that has coalesced around the argument that man’s carbon contributions to the atmosphere are accelerating a warming effect that threatens the environmental status quo, this is not the same thing as DEFINITIVE PROOF that carbon emissions will kill us all. In this context, treating skeptics as lunatics or charlatans is no way to conduct good science.
I firmly agree with Marc Ambinder’s take on the matter:
Climate change scientists aren’t blameless. The future of planet earth is at stake, and while the evidence is on their side, they’ve also conceived of and executed a public relations campaign to convince the public and policymakers of the urgency of the problem. In doing so, they’ve simplified conclusions, at times, or deliberately pointed to worst case scenarios when the middle of the bell curve would do just fine. The science has remained cumulative and solid, but the selling of this science hasn’t — and that, if anything else, fuels the critics.
Ultimately, the East Anglia email controversy is significant because it reveals that top climate scientists are not perfect, and that their arguments should not be accepted with unthinking obeisance.
More importantly, though, it has lit a fire under those who want to see the Copenhagen talks fail. That’s why the East Anglia computers were hacked, and that’s why certain emails were cherry-picked to cause a maximum firestorm.
Passing laws in the United States to combat global warming will not be an easy task…to say nothing of convincing still-developing superpowers like China and India to scale back their emissions. Scientific consensus does not equate with political consensus, even at a time when there is significant evidence for anthropogenic warming. The leaked emails go right for the soft spot of the political case.
Ambinder, again:
Domestically, it is going to be difficult for the administration to convince Congress to take another vote on climate change legislation in 2010. In mounting a campaign against the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill in the House, the business lobby was very successful in scaring the bejeezus out of moderate Democrats. Today, they argue that cap-and-trade legislation amounts to a “tax” and that India or China — which won’t have to curb its emissions by the same magnitude — will steal hundreds of thousands of U.S. jobs.
Dealing in probabilities here, is it preferable to accept a short-term anchor on economic growth in order to improve the health of the commons? Is this a political sustainable vote? It is not clear whether, in 2010, there are enough Democrats who will say yes. That’s one reason why Congress will probably wait until the economy improves.
If the leaked emails turn just a few “yes”es to “no”es, it’s a big win for the status quo.
This is what happens when the liberal West tries to take on Czar Vladimir and his army of digital ninjas...
The UN’s IPCC is obviously reeling from this PR firestorm at what they hoped to be their finest hour.
Putin’s cyber spies stuck it to them when they least expected it; Russia had supposedly taken a more accepting stance on global warming in recent months.
They have wasted no time fingering a suspect for the hacking mischief that has distracted the world from the effort to cut carbon emissions:
The computer hack, said a senior member of the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change, was not an amateur job, but a highly sophisticated, politically motivated operation. And others went further. The guiding hand behind the leaks, the allegation went, was that of the Russian secret services.
The leaked emails, which claimed to provide evidence that the unit’s head, Professor Phil Jones, colluded with colleagues to manipulate data and hide “unhelpful” research from critics of climate change science, were originally posted on a server in the Siberian city of Tomsk, at a firm called Tomcity, an internet security business.
The FSB security services, descendants of the KGB, are believed to invest significant resources in hackers, and the Tomsk office has a record of issuing statements congratulating local students on hacks aimed at anti-Russian voices, deeming them “an expression of their position as citizens, and one worthy of respect”. The Kremlin has also been accused of running co-ordinated cyber attacks against websites in neighbouring countries such as Estonia, with which the Kremlin has frosty relations, although the allegations were never proved.
“It’s very common for hackers in Russia to be paid for their services,” Professor Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, the vice chairman of the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change, said in Copenhagen at the weekend. “It’s a carefully made selection of emails and documents that’s not random. This is 13 years of data, and it’s not a job of amateurs.”
While the world warms, Russia hopes to reap the profits, both now and in the future.
Quoth Putin, “an increase of two or three degrees wouldn’t be so bad for a northern country like Russia. We could spend less on fur coats, and the grain harvest would go up.”
More importantly, he could unlock more black gold in the frozen tundra:
Much of Russia’s vast oil and gas reserves lie in difficult-to-access areas of the far North. One school of thought is that Russia, unlike most countries, would have little to fear from global warming, because these deposits would suddenly become much easier and cheaper to access.
It is this, goes the theory, that underlies the Kremlin’s ambivalent attitudes towards global warming; they remain lukewarm on the science underpinning climate change, knowing full well that if global warming does change the world’s climate, billions of dollars of natural resources will become accessible. Another motivating factor could be that Russia simply does not want to spend the vast sums of money that would be required to modernise and “greenify” Russia’s ageing factories.
Putin is a sly devil.
While we all drown in a horrific Waterworld dystopia, he will reap massive profits and build a giant yacht fueled by the tears of Chechens. He’ll sail the seas, listening to ABBA, cuddling with nubile models and occasionally nuking any interloper who comes near.
Global warming may destroy civilization, but rest assured, Putin will still triumph.
After the reality masterpiece that was Bravo’s Real Housewives of New Jersey, it was clear that the Italian-American communities of the Garden State were fertile ground for future documentary exploration.
In other words, New Jersey is filled with Neapolitan jackasses only too willing to demonstrate their idiocies in front of reality-TV cameras.
Now MTV has stepped up, bringing us “Jersey Shore,” the story of eight strangers…of Italian descent and questionable taste…picked to live in a house in Seaside Heights for the summer…and have their lives taped…to find out what happens when GUIDOS AND GUIDETTES GO WILD!!!
The two-hour premiere was last night, and it was simply tremendous.
While we may be in for a cold, snowy winter, there’s little doubt that the summertime exploits of the Jersey Shore crew should keep us toasty warm around our campfire of judgment and schadenfreude.
These unabashed guidos and guidettes (I’m not even insulting them, this is their self-professed identity) took the house by storm in their first few days down the shore…
It wasn’t long before girls were cheating on their boyfriends, guys were fighting over fly honeys, lightweights were puking all over the place, the T-shirt store guy who employs them was blowing a gasket at their lack of work ethic, and the girls in the house were angrily feuding with the “whores” that the guys lured in from the boardwalk.
When you bring together the most stereotypically ridiculous fools from the Tri-State area to a summit meeting of this magnitude, hilarity is the inevitable result.
Allow me to introduce you to the gentlemen and women who are sure to entertain us in the weeks to come:
Mike aka “The Situation” and DJ Pauly D
These two fellas are 100% reality gold.
I don’t think I personally know any man who puts as much care into his hairdo as DJ Pauly D. He likes to call himself “Your girlfriend’s favorite DJ,” and while he hails from faraway Rhode Island, he definitely represents the cream of the Jersey Shore guido crop. Watching him load armfuls of his favorite hair products into his car for the trip south was a joyous experience. After all, when you style your hair twice daily and “it always looks perfect,” you cannot be messing around.
Pauly keeps a tanning bed in his house for the optimal ultra-tanned look at all times. (Seriously, MTV, major props on your casting for this show.)
Then there’s Mike, or as he likes to be known, “the Situation.” Why? Because his abs are so awesome, they’re a Situation unto themselves.
Mike is a perfect cocktail of lady-loving braggadocio and complete crazed insecurity. He’s a smooth talker who projects a lot of confidence, epitomized by his first shift at the t-shirt shop. Mike is a boisterous salesman, and convinces droves of females to buy pink booty shorts with “I Love The Situation” embroidered on the rear.
Meanwhile, his salesmanship clearly impresses housemate Sammy, who looks on in admiration and awe. Not long afterwards, they lock lips at Club Bamboo…
However, Sammy is quickly tempted away by the muscular charms of housemate Ronnie, which sends the Situation into a manic, vengeful frenzy. He quickly blows any chance he might have had with Sammy by descending into a death spiral of butt-hurt accusations and bluster.
He’s so pissed off, he gets into a meaningless fight with another patron at the club, who he accuses of “looking at him.” Mike blows a kiss to this gentleman, which starts a scuffle. All of a sudden, DJ Pauly D comes out of nowhere and punches the offending-eyed varmint right in the kisser with a right cross!
That’s how boyz do, yo! Represent!
Good God, this is gonna make for an awesome season.
Jenny aka J-WOWW
This 23-year-old party girl from Franklin Square, Long Island shows up to the house with a boyfriend, but it doesn’t take long for her to be seduced by the charms of DJ Pauly D.
While out at the club in one of her many tittay-ball-exposing outfits, she starts humping up on Pauly and demanding that he look at no other girls but her. Later, she flees back to the house out of a desire to avoid cheating.
(A) Too late, J-WOWW…I think it qualified as cheating when you checked out Pauly’s pierced penis; and (B) I agree with Pauly’s assessment about the lifespan of that relationship…it’s not gonna be long before J-WOWW is back on the market again.
There was a particularly awesome moment in the Pauly-and-J-Woww-make-out scene where you could clearly see him thinking about grabbing her boob, before deciding to go for a face-caress instead. Nice move…she’s obviously the kind of girl who likes to take it slow.
Wait, no she isn’t!
With her ridiculous hair, skanky outfits, and evident promiscuity, Jenny is going to be a major asset to this television program.
Angelina
Every great reality TV show needs a raging bee-yotch on board, and Angelina from Staten Island fits the bill. Her backstory: she grew up on the crime side, the New York Times side, staying alive was no jive. At second hand, moms bounced on old man, so then they moved to Shaolin land…
Oh wait, that was Raekwon the Chef. My bad, I always get those two confused.
Angelina has a boyfriend at home, so she won’t be messing around with anyone down the shore…oh, except for some burly cro-mag who she fooled around with the first night, but she later claims that she was completely black out drunk and doesn’t remember a thing. Suuure. Meanwhile, her boyfriend is in business meetings and won’t take her calls. This is a surefire recipe for an outside-the-relationship rogering. Stay tuned on that front…
Angelina has obviously never worked a day in her life and is a serious liability down at the t-shirt stand. This raises the question, why does MTV always hire a cast of twits and then force them to do some kind of job that they don’t have the work ethic and qualifications to handle? Moreover, why does MTV think this makes for compelling television? Just supply these idiots with booze and let them do the rest. I really don’t care about the day job.
I adamantly refuse to refer to this girl as “Jolie,” but apparently that’s what the girls in the house are calling her…
Finally, Angelina spent most of the first episode on a mission to “cock block” (her words) all of her male housemates. Don’t even think of bringing a Jersey Shore skank up into Angie’s crib, she will put that ho on blast so quick it’ll make your head spin.
Sammy and Ronnie
(pictured with The Situation)
You have to love Sammy Sweetheart, the only true Jersey Girl on this program.
Although she fronts like a nice girl extraordinaire, it doesn’t take long for Sammy to cook up an epic love triangle to start the show off right. She’s vibing with The Situation right away, they have mad chemistry at work and they hold hands on the boardwalk. But after Situation skanks out with some boardwalk hoes, she starts playing hard to get.
When she hooks up with Ronnie, sparking the aforementioned Situational meltdown, Sammy justifiably rebukes the Situation…but we have to wonder what tricks will be up the Sweetheart’s sleeve in the future.
As for Ronnie, this dude is hilarious. He takes off his shirt every chance he gets and styles his hair into a ridiculous fauxhawk. Representing the Boogie Down Bronx, he loves to brawl.
Gawker has already accused him of gayface, but the MTV website intimates he’ll find love down the shore.
I, for one, intend to stay tuned and find out.
Vinnie and Oompa Loompa
Vinnie is the least interesting dude in this house, but he makes up for it with his fair share of shenanigans and ridiculous behavior. I would have loved to see more footage of him with his mom back on Staten Island (three cast members are from the Forgotten Borough)…he is clearly the ultimate mama’s boy, and we see his rotund mother serve him up some lasagna, lay a fat kiss on his cheek and weep as he departs for the Shore.
His trademark move is his maniacal fist pump…a montage of Vinnie in action has to be seen to be believed.
This amazing piece of work courtesy fourfour
He’s also the first (but assuredly not the last) housemate to contract a contagious disease: pinkeye. Whether it was from letting a chubby 40-year-old shake her junk in his face at the club or from carousing with panty-less hoes in the hot tub, Vinnie got some shit up in his eye and started his job off on the wrong foot, missing his first shift to go to the doctor for treatment.
But after slapping his ridiculous white shades on, he was soon back in action on the dance floor, fist pumping like there was no tomorrow.
This brings us to the eighth and final housemate…Nicole aka Snookie aka “Snickers or whatever.” Or as I like to call her, Oompa Loompa.
This hideous specimen considers herself the prototypical Guidette. Watching her act a fool down the shore was like watching an epic car crash. Just try to look away from the horror!
Oompa Loompa got wasted immediately, and then started smashing her fake-brown self against all the homies in the hot tub. They were understandably appalled and all tried to push her away. She passed out on the rooftop hammock, and when she woke up, all her housemates had left to go clubbin’.
Oompa, heartbroken, immediately made plans to go home, but her dad talked her out of it. Later, she heard Angelina denouncing some boardwalk girls that invaded her house and hot tubbed with the guys, and Oompa took it all personally. She started to pack her bags, but again, the housemates talked her out of it. Sammy Sweetheart offered to be her friend if she, like, REALLY needed one (I think this Sammy doth protest too much about her Sweetheart-dom. Secret bitch alert).
Oompa then rallied for her first night out. She got wicked pissah again and started humping her tiny humps on any dude that would give her the time of day. After trying and failing to steal a much hotter girl’s man, she finally found a victim…a weird Chris Kattan alike who was only too willing to accompany her back to the house.
Despite their protestations, the housemates all clearly hate Oompa and shied away from her and her weirdo boy toy. They went up on the roof to watch the sunrise, when he grew groggy and distant. Oompa was pissed because she thought she was gonna get some action.
She tried to rustle Kattan with her breastises, but this only caused him to boot all over the place. Epic!
Scenes from the Season was incredibly promising.
It looks like this posse will be all Eskimo brothers and sisters by the time the summer is over.
There are tons of fights and people punching each other. Somewhat disturbingly, some random dude will also punch Oompa Loompa in the face, which is really not called for, no matter how ugly she is.
Most of the guys are fast approaching 30, but act like overgrown teenagers; the girls are junior-college age, though something tells me they are not exactly cut out for academe. Yet somehow, the girls (with the obvious exception of Oompa) seem far more mature and self-possessed than their flexing, greasy-haired counterparts…
Some say this show is racist against Italians. I disagree, but I believe The Situation delivered the most stirring rebuttal possible, so allow me to yield the floor:
I just happen to be 100 percent Italian, I happen to be in very good shape and my hair happens to be spiky… It’s not necessarily a stereotype; it’s just how it is… I know I didn’t hold back and I’m not too worried about what people think. When I look in the mirror I feel good.
Amen, Situation. When I watch this show, I feel good. You will too.
Via Gene Weingarten: Kristen Wiig performs a stirring poetry reading in New York.
She reads from this noble volume:
For those of you beyond the reach of Youtube, here’s a transcription:
Sometimes when I’m sad and life is not what it seemed
And even sex
Is like a song I’ve heard too often
I remember my two week love
My underwear carefully selected
Nervous blotches on my neck, a choking voice full of cliches
And that stupid smile on my face.Until you open the door and I felt the magic
Despite your fumbling hands,
The nervous cough
Your perfectly creased, coordinated casuals
And that stupid smile on your face.We parried for a time, suggesting movies or a ride in the country
A study in awkwardness
Until someone made a move and we were making wild and crazy love
Before the ice had settled in our drinks.It was only two weeks
But we loved.
God, how we loved
Until you had to go back home
With gifts for the children.And though it’s hard to remember your name
And even your face
I remember it was really beautiful each time
And I remember to resurrect that love sometimes
When I’m sad.
Sometimes I wonder if there’s enough love to go around.
All the people I know grasp for it,
All the ladies whose husbands drift away
The men whose lives have forgotten to care.
The children standing on their heads to be noticed.
And, well, I might as well admit it, me.
What about me?
Sometimes I wonder if there’s enough love to go around
With all the pain and longing
But one thing is sure
If anyone has any extra love
Even a heartbeat or a touch or two
I wish they wouldn’t waste it on dogs.
I like the gentle quiet loneliness of being alone
Although I thought of a friend last night
And almost called but decided not to
Because my hair needed washing
And I don’t know him well enough to look like I really do.I like the gentle quiet loneliness of being alone.
Knowing that someday soon something will grow until everything’s right
Not dramatic glances across crowded rooms
(I’m nearsighted, anyway)
It’ll probably be the houseboy.
Knowing that I will see in a special way
And I will want somebody to be near.
Meanwhile, I like the gentle quiet loneliness of being alone
TV in bed, and dreams, and smiles
Because I know it will happen someday soon, when it’s right
It’ll probably be the houseboy.
Rumors on the Internets is an equal-opportunity critic and pest: we make an effort to out and shame anyone who acts a fool, regardless of whether we agree with them or not.
That’s why we can’t resist flaming the people who got all worked up about the death of census worker Bill Sparkman this past September.
Sparkman’s body was discovered on September 12, 2009 hanging from a tree, bound with duct tape and the word “FED” scrawled on his chest. He had been working for the US Census in rural Appalachia, an area that doesn’t cotton to Uncle Sam nosing around in their business.
Sparkman was a teacher, Scout leader and family man who was well regarded for his hard work, punctuality and other virtues. He was a cancer survivor as well. He’d been warned that census work in the hills of Kentucky could be dangerous, due to the presence of anti-government types as well as criminals who don’t want anyone inquiring into their doings.
A thoughtful instant-take by Richard M. Benjamin at the Huffington Post was typical of the reaction to the news of Sparkman’s death:
Is Bill Sparkman — the 51-year old US Census fieldworker found hanged in rural southeastern Kentucky with the word “Fed” scrawled across his chest — a victim of hate crime directed at Uncle Sam? Or the casualty of drug-related violence in a struggling pocket of America?
To date, nobody knows for certain. The FBI is intensely investigating whether Sparkman was murdered; if so, by whom (acquaintance? stranger?); and whether his death is an act of violence against the federal government.
A more heated missive from Allison Kilkenny at HuffPo noted that the death had not been officially classed a homicide, but nonetheless unleashed a rant about right-wing hysteria and the Right’s obvious complicity in the death of Bill Sparkman:
“Federal” means “Big Government,” and the word has taken on a derogatory meaning in right-wing circles where fear and paranoia reign supreme. I agree with Johnson that this seems like an apparent homicide, but it’s not “nothing else.” By utilizing the branding “Fed,” the killers were clearly trying to make a political statement, namely “Obama: Stay Out.”
The word definitely packs an ideological punch, but not only is it anti-government, it’s anti-Obama. Let’s remember that most of the fringe now screaming about the dangers of Big Brother never made a peep during eight years of Bush’s ballooning executive branch. Suddenly, big government is a big problem, and the “Feds” are to blame…Such paranoia and anger isn’t contained in the woods of Kentucky. The problem is systematic.
Rather than immediately condemn the killing, some right-wing commenters are now using the occasion of Sparkman’s death to chat about their various conspiracy theories all involving the “feds.”
A “lynching” meme began to spread throughout the mindbrain of the left, epitomized by this tweet from “Proudlib”:
As Allison Kilkenny concluded, there was clearly a causal link between the death of Bill Sparkman and the unhinged rhetoric of Fox News:
These kinds of transparent lies would be hilarious to dissect if so many people didn’t really believe them. Beck, Hannity, O’Reilly, and Limbaugh not only stoke the fear and anger in the hearts and minds of their listeners, but then they also suggest their audience should then direct that anger at the flavor of the months (gays, feminists, poor people, abortion providers, or the “Feds”). And then they act surprised when a sick person acts on their fear by lashing out violently.
The surprise and indignation from the right-wing is insincere. Violent rhetoric begets violence, and no one should act surprised when a Sparkman-like killing happens again.
And so it was decided…
Bill Sparkman’s death was clearly the fault of Glenn Beck. (Or at least, as Gawker allowed, either Beck or a bunch of hillbilly meth runners.)
Unfortunately for the triumphant shriekers of the left wing, eager to brandish this heinous crime in the face of their ideological adversaries, Bill Sparkman was not lynched.
He killed himself and staged it to look like a murder, so his family could cash in on some recently-purchased insurance policies:
A Kentucky census worker found naked, bound with duct tape and hanging from a tree with “fed” scrawled on his chest killed himself but staged his death to make it look like a homicide, authorities said Tuesday.
Bill Sparkman, 51, was found Sept. 12 near a cemetery in a heavily wooded area of southeastern Kentucky. A man who found the body in the Daniel Boone National Forest has said Sparkman also was gagged and had an identification badge taped to his neck.
Authorities said Sparkman alone manipulated the scene to conceal a suicide. Police said he had talked with others about ending his life, though authorities did not say specifically who in a news release.
Sparkman had recently taken out two life insurance policies that would not pay out for suicide, authorities said. If Sparkman had been killed on the job, his family also would have been be eligible for up to $10,000 in death gratuity payments from the government.
He was not eligible for a separate life insurance policy through the government because his census work was intermittent, Census Bureau spokesman Stephen Buckner has previously said.
While Glenn Beck has yet to satisfactorily respond to the allegations that he raped and murdered a young girl in 1990, I think we can safely declare him innocent in the Sparkman case.
It’s tragic that this man decided he had no other choice but to end his life in this way, but it was wrong for him to try and frame phantom Census-hating hillbillies for the deed, and to have his family have to suffer through the trauma of the circumstances in which his body was found.
Ultimately, the knit-hatted Sparkman is the bad guy here, not Lou Dobbs et al.
The furor over the case is understandable, because as Simon Rosenthal writes (HuffPo again, they went nuts over this story), the 2010 Census is shaping up to be a highly controversial and dramatic process.
The right-wing revulsion to the Census has to do with the fact that it does not distinguish between illegal and legal residents, and the fact that it’s set to count noncitizens in its 2010 count:
Because the census (since at least 1980) has not distinguished citizens and permanent, legal residents from individuals here illegally, the basis for apportionment of House seats has been skewed. According to the Census Bureau’s latest American Community Survey data (2007), states with a significant net gain in population by inclusion of noncitizens include Arizona, California, Florida, Illinois, Nevada, New Jersey, New York and Texas. (There are tiny net gains for Hawaii and Massachusetts.)
This makes a real difference. Here’s why:
According to the latest American Community Survey, California has 5,622,422 noncitizens in its population of 36,264,467. Based on our round-number projection of a decade-end population in that state of 37,000,000 (including 5,750,000 noncitizens), California would have 57 members in the newly reapportioned U.S. House of Representatives.
However, with noncitizens not included for purposes of reapportionment, California would have 48 House seats (based on an estimated 308 million total population in 2010 with 283 million citizens, or 650,000 citizens per House seat). Using a similar projection, Texas would have 38 House members with noncitizens included. With only citizens counted, it would be entitled to 34 members.
In my opinion, the whole legal/illegal brouhaha is merely symbolic of the larger issue that drives outrage at the potential 2010 Census results: the coming Whiteocalypse, when whites become a minority in America (some say as soon as 2042).
Meanwhile, immigrants’ groups are no happier about the coming census than nativists are; some are advocating a boycott of the census, arguing “Legalize us before you count us.”
Indeed, both sides have a point when it comes to the Census’ decision to punt on the legal/illegal issue and decline to inquire about the citizenship status of a person being surveyed: why should significant changes in Congressional apportionment be driven without regard to the legal status of those granted “representation”? What is the point of giving additional representation to people who cannot exercise the rights of citizenship in America?
Ultimately, the issue is whether the United States is going to grant citizenship under certain conditions to the tens of millions of people living here illegally: “amnesty” or “justice” depending on your point of view.
These are all fascinating issues that were crystallized by the death of Bill Sparkman…
Unfortunately, in the grip of the 24-hour news cycle, too much emphasis was placed on a “murder” that never took place, and a cavalcade of finger-pointing obscured the real issues that we ought to be wrestling with as a nation.
Next time, pundits — more thinky, less blamey.
Fred Smerlas is a legendary former NFL lineman. A five-time Pro Bowler best known for his work with the Buffalo Bills and Boston College Eagles, Smerlas is something of a legend in his hometown of Waltham, Mass.
Smerlas is well known in the Boston area for his mush-mouthed appearances on sports talk radio station WEEI, where he never hesitates to interrupt co-hosts, callers and any and all non-Smerlas entities (including Bill Belichick) with his ruminations on sports, being a tough guy and hatred of liberals.
However, Smerlas is beginning to gain notoriety for the company he runs, All Pro Productions. It’s not the good kind of notoriety, either.
Smerlas has run a number of disparate ventures under the All Pro banner. There’s the All Pro Celebrity Tailgate, which was once shut down by the Patriots for ticket reselling…
The All Pro fundraising arm for first responders, which ended up harassing thousands of citizens and was the target of a local news investigation…
Now Smerlas and his crew have moved on to staging All Pro fundraising basketball games where former NFL linemen maul teenage basketball players for fun and profit.
WCVB’s TheBostonChannel.com has been onto Smerlas’ shady game for some time now, and they were the first to break this tale of courtside shenanigans.
The Stow po-po are involved, and accusations of child abuse and expletive-laden trash talk are flying!
Stow police are investigating complaints against five former New England Patriots players who parents say roughed up several high school students during a charity basketball game on Saturday night.
The event, which was held at Nashoba Regional High School, was a fundraiser for the Stow Police Benevolent Association and was intended to be a contest between the former Pats players and a team of police officers and students…
During the course of the game, parents say, spectators leapt onto the court in anger and at least one student refused to continue playing because referees allowed the former Patriots players to muscle the students around the court.
Some of the highlights from this gruesome game of charity ball:
- None of the Stow police officers showed up, which left the high schoolers, their coach and a janitor to fend off the merciless Patriots alums all alone. Now, of course, they’re investigating how this horrendous breach of child protection laws could possibly have occurred. Hint: you guys forgot to show up.
- 6′4″ D-lineman Garin Veris took offense when a high schooler stripped him of the ball, and angrily threatened revenge. Mere moments later, Veris went flying into the same player and took him down to the ground. While Veris remorsefully claimed it was just an accident, the old “means, motive and opportunity” trifecta leave him looking mighty culpable.
- 6′4″ linebacker Matt Chatham put one of the kids in a remorseless headlock and threw him to the floor. He then refused to comment on the matter when contacted by the media. Guilty!
- The NFL veterans trash-talked, threatened and cursed the high schoolers, to the shock of the crowd. How profane!
- O-lineman Max Lane leapt upon the audience and broke a woman’s neck. (Back in the 1990s.) Nevertheless, Lane was there at the teen-pummel-athon, as were Smerlas’ usual sidekick Steve DeOssie, Ed Ellis, Vernon Crawford and Robert Perryman. While none of the five were implicated, I have it on good authority that Pete Sheppard put his cigar out in a small child’s eye.
WEEI personalities Steve DeOssie, Pete Sheppard, Glenn Ordway
and Fred Smerlas smoke celebratory cigars after beating
a middle-school soccer team to a pulp in the name of charity.
All Pro Productions CEO, the aptly named John Dumas, denies the charges leveled by Stow parents and WCVB.
“This notion of physical abuse is upsetting and sickening to me and I don’t agree that’s what happened,” said Dumas, who attended the game. “To those who were upset about how the game went, we do apologize. We’re not trying to be combative. It was a bit of a two-way street.”
Wait a minute, did he even deny the charges at all? That was more of an “eye of the beholder” defense.
As in, “While the NFL giant I hired did indeed hurl your child to the ground after he was offended that the kid tried to box him out, it’s in the eye of the beholder whether that constitutes abuse. Some would say he was merely giving him a tutorial in How To Be A Man 101.”
Dumas also said in a statement, “The high school students who played in the game played hard and wanted to win the game, just as the Patriots team did. Because of that the competitive nature came out on both teams throughout the game.”
Yup, just a couple of basketball teams battling it out on the court with the refs letting ‘em play. Except one team was composed of massive NFL veterans and the other was composed of wiry teens…
These kids were no match for gargantuan NFL linemen in a bball shove-fest.
And let’s not get it twisted – while it does many things in the name of charity, All Pro Productions is not itself a charity.
It’s a for-profit enterprise that has cleared up to 60% of its collected donations on past fundraising drives for its own purposes.
The most obvious and obnoxious of these efforts are the phone calls that All Pro telemarketers make on behalf of “police relief organizations.”
Callers are duped into believing that their help is needed to support the local police department, when actually, that’s part of the tax bill they already pay.
As WCVB (there’s that thorn in Smerlas’ side again) reported recently, the telemarketers’ aggressive tactics and constant bombardment of phone calls annoyed almost everyone in Massachusetts, including some of the policemen they’re ostensibly drumming up cash to support.
“I want to be sure that the public understands this. This is not the North Andover Police Department making these phone calls,” North Andover Police Department Chief Richard Stanley said.
We’ve all received the calls for cash, but it’s illegal for police officers to make them, so who is it on the other end of that line? Team 5 Investigates discovered they are professional telemarketers who work on commission. Some allege that they use high-pressure tactics.
In North Andover, the Police Relief Association recently hired All Pro Productions for a fundraising campaign.
“People think the police are on the other end of the phone,” Wornick said.
“Sometimes, it can be misunderstood. I have had people call me with the same kind of complaint,” said Sgt. Tim Crane, of the North Andover Police Relief Association.
There have been other troubling complaints to the chief’s office. Residents cited rude and insulting calls, verbal abuse and repeated calls. One resident wrote “many of the seniors do not want to report this because of a fear of not supporting the North Andover police.”
I’ve witnessed this first hand — these people are legit telemarketing assholes. In the age of the do-not-call registry, they set the standard for obnoxious cold calling.
The most mind-boggling detail drudged up by WCVB’s Susan Wornick was the fact that All Pro Productions doesn’t turn over the full donations to the charities it’s calling to support.
Instead, it pockets 60 percent of the donations and sends 40 cents on the dollar along.
Now, I’m sure All Pro incurs some overhead expenses in collecting donations for police…but 60 percent? This article on non-profit charity overhead indicates that most organizations spend less than 10 percent of donations on non-service-related expenses.
“The part that really breaks my heart is when I hear the story from an elderly person who I may bump into that I’ve known for years saying, ‘Chief, we helped you out. I want you to know that I sent you a check for $25,’” Stanley said.
Team 5 investigates reviewed the state’s most recent fundraising report and found startling numbers. More than $14 million was raised in 2005 in the name of police, firefighters and paramedics, but less than $4 million actually went to the groups. The rest — more than $10 million — went to the telemarketers.
The largest company, All Pro Productions, raised $5 million in 2005 and on average gave 37 percent to charity. The contract in North Andover was for 40 percent.
Lord knows how much Smerlas and Co. cleared on the teen beatdown in Stow.
So Massachusetts residents, if Fred Smerlas and his All Pro posse come to your town peddling their fundraising wares, tell them to head elsewhere.
If they invite your kid to play in a “charity” pickup game, grab his hand and run like you’re Viggo in “The Road.”
Smerlas, you and your homies ought to stick to picking on people your own size – like the time you clowned a Littleton firefighter in a flag football game:
Kansas University super fan White Owl once had it all.
The 60-year-old Vietnam Vet and eccentric campus presence — real name Jimmy Tucker — was known by everyone around Lawrence, KS for his love of KU sports and his wacky antics.
Thanks to senior-friendly policies, he could attend classes for free, and roamed the campus hollering out rally chants and dancing about.
White Owl even got some national notoriety, being featured as a “Fan of the Game” on Fox broadcasts, and became something of a YouTube sensation.
Then life got even better for White Owl…he won the heart of a 22-year-old Kansas undergrad, and they made plans to get married.
Unfortunately, things didn’t work out.
Now White Owl is behind bars for violating a restraining order, stealing books from the library and possessing the demon weed.
White Owl’s tragic fall from grace is depressing, but just weird enough to be worth exploring. So let’s make that happen.
In happier times, the University Daily Kansan wrote a profile of White Owl that explained what he was all about.
With a love of Kansas sports, a Carpe Diem attitude, wacky hippie garb and a powerful spirituality that could only come from Native American blood, White Owl was once the talk of the town (granted, in a pretty boring Midwestern town).
Usually surrounded by a group of friends, White Owl seems to be everywhere. From the steps of Hashinger Hall to the stands of Memorial Stadium, it is impossible to ignore his eccentric behavior. When walking on Jayhawk Boulevard, you can hear White Owl hooting out his usual Jayhawk propaganda or see his famous dance moves, which he says he learned from taking tap dance and ballet lessons as a child.
White Owl said he was not trying to receive attention but instead was trying to be an inspiration to students. If you can look past his bright outfits and booming laughter, he has a simple philosophy on life.
“We have to live today like it’s our last. That’s what I learned from Vietnam,” he said. “I live like it’s my last day because friends are not here. I live with a joy.”
White Owl, who is part Lakota Sioux, said his name was given to him by a Cherokee man.
That, or as Deadspin noted, he just adopted the name of a brand of blunt.
If you haven’t spotted White Owl on Jayhawk Boulevard, you might have seen him inside one of your lectures.
“If I’m not learning until I die, then I’m not living,” he said.
[...]Kansas City, Mo., senior Michael Enriquez…said he was not bothered by White Owl’s antics — until they interfered with his studies.
“I think that they are just rantings and ravings, and while I think it is fine for somebody to be here, sometimes the rantings and ravings get to be a little much,” Enriquez said.
White Owl might have just remained another crazed superfan — like a peace-pipe smoking version of that obnoxious Jets fireman guy — but his story became much more complex and empathic when he met the woman that he wanted to make his third wife.
The Kansan delivered this heartwarming story:
Sorry ladies, but one of Lawrence’s most famous bachelors will soon be off the market. Jimmy [Tucker] – otherwise known as “White Owl” – will be getting married to Julia Lee, 22-year-old Lawrence junior, at the end of the summer.
The 61-year-old White Owl said he came to Lawrence a year ago to do a research project on Agent Orange but soon became one of the faces of the University as his dancing and yelling at KU games got the attention of fans and television cameras. It wasn’t until recently, though, that White Owl said that he fell in love.
It was a storybook tale…White Owl was wandering the campus doing his usual hollering and yelping when he noticed a young woman standing alone.
He knew intuitively that her soul was aching, and he prayed that she would be sent to him…somehow.
The next day, White Owl “coincidentally” crashed the young lady’s American Studies class. He claims that he was a guest speaker, but I think he just busted in there and went into his usual spiel about peace, love and Jayhawks.
The young lady was moved:
White Owl talked to the class about believing in themselves and loving one another. After class, Julia told White Owl how much his message meant to her.
“You are the first person to tell me that,” White Owl remembered saying.
The two became inseparable after that, starting off as friends but began spending more and more time together. Julia began to feel that their relationship had more potential.
“After a little while I began to think. ‘I want to be with this guy in heaven.’ That is when we began to talk about marriage,” Julia said.
While the two decided to remain celibate until marriage, they celebrated their love in a lengthy photoshoot with the Kansan that has to be seen to be believed…
[Wipes tear] That’s so goddamn beautiful, you guys…
Huge, sweeping hat tip — nay, make it a hat doff — to Kansan photographer Mindy Ricketts for getting these shots and keeping a straight face the whole time.
While most everyone in Lawrence was thrilled for the betrothed pair, there were some that did not like the idea of White Owl and Julia Lee getting hitched.
Namely, all of Julia Lee’s family and friends.
In an interview with the Kansan, she revealed that everyone in her life was pretty much up in arms about the whole thing:
Kansan: How is your family responding to this?
Julia: They are still kind of struggling with this. My dad wants to meet with a third party so we can communicate about this. He wants to meet with me, my mom and a preacher to sort some of this stuff out. He wants this to end because he is not comfortable with this at all.
K: When was your last relationship?
J: Right before this one. We were engaged when I met White Owl. It was a bizarre relationship because it was long distance, and we didn’t really talk all that much. We had been together for three and a half years, but when I met White Owl, I started to remember the things I need in my life. I have to close doors and if I see an open door, I need to walk through it.
K: What was your former fiancé’s reaction when you told him the engagement was off?
J: He flew down here on the plane to patch things up, but I told him I couldn’t promise that we would be back together. So he flew in and it was weird because I didn’t even really recognize him.
K: What was White Owl’s reaction when you started talking about marriage?
J: I was at Target and he would come and visit me while I was working. One day after work I called my friend Laurel, and I told her ‘At the risk of sounding completely insane, I think I am supposed to marry this guy,’ and she told me that I was insane. I drove over to his place and we were talking. I knew he was feeling bad because I knew he didn’t want to push anything on me, but I knew how he felt about me. I told him my phone conversation with Laurel and he fell to the floor. It was really cool.
K: What are you planning to do for money?
J: He gets money for disability, and we are working on some Web sites in the future.
K: Any kids in the future?
J: Right after we get married.
Well…I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the love between White Owl and Julia was not to be.
While the details are still hazy, at some point Julia cut White Owl out of her life, going so far as to take out a restraining order against him.
But the love of a white owl flies free over a mere court protection and he couldn’t stay away from his one-time muse.
As a result, White Owl got tossed in the clink for violating the restraining order twice, along with a host of other misdemeanors he’s committed during his short time in Kansas.
Tucker, 62, of Lawrence, was arrested Thursday after a warrant was issued for his arrest. He is accused of violating a protection order on Sept. 8, with his 23-year-old ex-fiancee listed as a witness.
Court documents say Tucker failed to show up for court Oct. 30, ahead of a Nov. 4 jury trial scheduled in the case, which was subsequently canceled. Tucker now has a hearing scheduled for Tuesday morning.
A second violation of a protection order case was filed against Tucker Oct. 16…
In June 2008, Tucker was engaged to Julia Lee, a 2004 Lawrence High School graduate. Their plans for a public wedding were postponed a month after the engagement was announced and eventually were called off altogether.
Tucker was on diversion for a possession of marijuana charge at KU from September 2007, and is scheduled to be seen by a judge Jan. 28 regarding a violation of the terms, city prosecutors said.
He’s also scheduled on New Year’s Eve to appear in Lawrence Municipal Court for a theft case, in which he’s accused of stealing three books from KU’s Anschutz Library.
KU police said Tucker admitted to the $227 theft case, which reportedly occurred between February and August.
As blog KC Confidential reports, though, White Owl isn’t bitter about being spurned by his woman. He still thinks she’s the cat’s pajamas.
We will say one thing for Julia Lee, she painted some kick ass murals while they were still together: a testament to their short-lived love that shall never die.
The fairytale May/December romance between out-there University of Kansas basketball and football yell leader – sixty something Saul “White Owl” Tucker and 20-something Lawrence artist Julia Lee is on the rocks. The wedding is totally off as is pretty much any form of contact, White Owl says. Lee declined to elaborate or be interviewed.
“I can’t call her and I can’t text her or I go to jail,” White Owl says. “We’re going to court in December.”
The flip side of the pair’s media-fueled love affair gone terribly wrong: a pair of lifesize, mural-like paintings Lee did while the romance was still ablaze.
In the one of White Owl, he appears to be wearing some sort of loin cloth while bopping a sword with some kind of hammer thingie. The painting of Lee depicts her in austere brown peasant garb, sporting a detached, almost biblical expression.
“Yeah, they’re incredible,” White Owl says. “I would describe them as Medieval, right when the philistines were rocking. They’re separate but they go together. She’s standing in a field of wheat and so am I supposedly. And I’m pounding on a sword to turn it into a plowshare.”
Get it? Peace on earth.
Lee says the paintings are neither for sale or on display at this point. But White Owl speaks highly of Lee’s talent despite their current difficulties.
“She is going to be one of the world’s greatest painters currently alive,” he says.
Stay strong, White Owl…while you keep getting older, Kansas undergrads stay the same age. Surely another mystic love will come along soon.
Just try to stop stealing library books.
When a retinue of waiters hoisting champagne and sparklers parted the crowd at the Angel Ball after-party at 1Oak — and the deejay intoned, “23 bottles of Cristal for Lindsay Lohan’s 23rd birthday” — the starlet looked startled.
A half-hour later, 23 more bottles were paraded around. When someone congratulated her, Lohan laughed, “I don’t know why they are doing this. My birthday is July 2nd.”
It was unclear who sprang for the bubbly, but suspicion fell on the mysterious Malaysian who earlier at the ball bid $100,000 for Lorraine Schwartz diamond earrings and a Birkin bag.
This brief item in the New York Post a couple of weeks ago may not have elicited much attention, but it was the first ripple in the pond announcing the presence of a new clubland kingpin.
The Post dutifully followed up, sending two reporters to sleuth out the scoop on this Malaysian mystery man. Now the NYC gossip blogs have followed suit, and everyone in town is talking about the curious spending spree of heretofore-unknown Taek Jho Low.
Now J-Low’s legend is spreading fast.
He’s never without a bodyguard! Jamie Foxx gave him a red sports car for his birthday! He pays Megan Fox to hang out with him in Vegas! A fleet of Escalades are constantly idling outside his Manhattan apartment building!
For a guy who looks a lot like Hiro from Heroes, J-Low is outpimping everyone in sight.
Here is the introduction to the the follow-up Post story that put the question on everyone’s lips: “Who the hell is Taek Jho Low?”
A fleet of black Cadillac Escalades hums outside Chelsea hot spot Avenue — the A-list watering hole of such celebrities as Justin Timberlake and Lindsay Lohan.
As the car doors open, a dozen men emerge and a bouncer whisks them over the club’s threshold, past a group of shivering models behind the velvet rope.
“Who is it?” one of them wonders out loud. “Is it P. Diddy?”
But the man at the center of the entourage isn’t a celebrity. He isn’t even a mogul. He’s Taek Jho Low, a 20-something Wharton grad from Malaysia who has burned through hundreds of thousands of dollars at the city’s hottest nightspots in the last three months — and shows no signs of stopping.
The nightlife scene is abuzz with tales of this international man of mystery — who goes by the name Jho Low and whose chubby, bespectacled appearance hardly meets the image of a wealthy gadabout.
Here are some highlights from Jho Low’s rampage through the NYC party scene:
- He routinely blows $50,000 on nights out at Pink Elephant, and once took off with eight waitresses after closing time so they could party in Malaysia.
- He dwells in a $100,000/month pad in the Park Imperial, and also pays the tab for two other apartments for his security detail, totaling an additional $50,000/month.
- He recently spent $300,000 on six private club memberships in Midtown.
- He’s known to fork out cash just to get entertainment stars to party with him, like the time he flew Megan Fox to Vegas.
In a recap of the Post story on Gawker, Ravi Somaiya quipped, “The report said that no-one knows how Taek Jho Low, a 20-something Wharton grad, has so much money. Reliable sources say that despite his cuddly appearance, he is actually quite a dangerous character. More when I get it/do not fear death.”
Somaiya also made reference to supermarket magnate Ron Burkle supposedly shelling out cash to see Paris Hilton hit it with another lady, and implied that that’s the kind of thing that goes down when rich dudes start flying starlets around to “party.”
I can’t imagine Fox submitting herself to Jennifer-Connelly-in-Requiem-for-a-Dream treatment, but then again, maybe it’s just the next step down the dark alley that begins with washing Michael Bay’s Ferrari.
The Post ran another follow-up item today that described J-Low’s birthday party in Vegas.
It’s absolutely awesome:
Low just celebrated his 28th birthday in Las Vegas, a four-day affair that started out last Wednesday at Caesars Palace, where sources said the swimming pool was stocked with bikini-clad party girls and surrounded by caged lions and tigers.
The baby-faced, bespectacled Wharton Business School grad — who is often mistaken for Chance Yeh, a photographer who shoots for the Patrick McMullan Agency — was flown out by Caesars with his entourage on what was described as “a jumbo jet.”
The party continued at a nightclub where Low is said to have bought 120 bottles of Cristal. Among the celebs who partied with him were Paris Hilton, Usher and Jamie Foxx, who gifted the birthday boy with a red sports car.
Again, nobody has any idea where this guy came from, or where his money is coming from.
While he graduated from the prestigious Wharton School of Business, a “stock picks” article he published while studying there indicates he is less than a genius:
Stock Picks
Enron boasts top growth
Taek Jho Low, WH ‘04
Issue date: 11/6/00 Section: UndergraduateTraditionally considered a natural gas pipeline company, Enron’s core business is now the management of price risk in fast-growing and deregulating commodity markets. The risk merchant franchise accounts for 75 percent of operating income and is growing at a 30 percent–40 percent annual rate. The company has the No. 1 market share in the relatively mature $80 billion U.S. natural gas market, is No. 1 in the $235 billion U.S. electricity market, opened in 1996 and rapidly growing. And it is a leader in related energy commodities, such as coal, pollution emissions, and weather hedges. Enron also has first-mover advantage in the $270 billion European market, opened in February 1999, where it is already profitable and has seen volume grow tenfold. Enron grows by expanding into new geographies and new commodities. It also successfully uses new tools; for example, I expect Enron will solidify its market position using the Internet.
Deregulation of commodity markets creates price volatility, which must be managed. Enron has successfully done this in gas and now power on a global basis. Seventy-five percent of the growth opportunity is ahead of Enron — in energy alone, an $800 billion global market opportunity.
The value of the bandwidth commodity market will be determined in 2000/2001. The ultimate potential of this market, with significantly greater “top-line” growth than energy, could exceed the energy commodity market by 2005. Enron is a leader targeting the bandwidth commodity opportunity.
Enron is also a first mover into new commodities and geographies with its risk merchant strategy. As a result, it earns the highest margins, about three times those of its nearest competitor.
My 12-month price target of $100 projects an energy franchise value of $60 per share, coupled with $40 in share value for bandwidth.
In October of 2001, 11 months after J-Low proclaimed this prediction, Enron spiraled into bankruptcy disaster and the stock plummeted to less than $1 per share.
So I’m thinking we can rule out the “Jho Low is the Malaysian Warren Buffett with the spending appetites of Ron Burkle” theory.
According to the Post, though, NYC nightclub impresarios don’t give a good goddamn where J-Low gets his money from — they want him to spend it in their establishments, and they’ll gladly keep his secrets.
JHO Low — the mysterious Malaysian who likes to surround himself with long-legged models and run up six-figure tabs buying bottles of Cristal — is a golden goose for nightclub owners, who are fiercely protecting his privacy.
“A Jho Low comes around once in a lifetime,” marveled one industry veteran. It’s been open war as each club operator tries to get Low into his place and keep him out of his competitors.
For his part, Low’s spokesman vehemently denies the tabloid tales, even as the smoke from this story is noticeable enough to rally the Five Nations to the warpath.
Low did not respond to e-mails for comment, and his spokesman David Tan refused to reveal his boss’ birthday or background.
“Mr. Low is currently in the USA for holiday and has on several occasions stayed in New York City with his friend[s],” Tan said via e-mail. “He, however, has not rented any property or purchased any property in New York City. Mr. Low did not spend $160,000 at Avenue on one night during Fashion Week.”
That’s right, he spent $159,632! (pinky to mouth)
