tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-73405645096630693272024-02-08T11:25:48.423-05:00BUSTING CHOPSBerzinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13584575495763261088noreply@blogger.comBlogger321125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7340564509663069327.post-6119983910172936492019-07-16T13:01:00.000-04:002019-07-16T19:21:13.610-04:00How To Make a Cycling Comeback PT. IV...<br />
Here is the final piece of the puzzle, the bike itself. First, a list of relevant parts-<br />
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Frame-6/4 titanium from Lynskey. www.lynskeyperformace.com Chattanooga, Tennessee.<br />
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Paint by Ben Falcon at wwwHorsebrand.co Brooklyn, New York.<br />
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Gruppo-Shimano Dura Ace 7800 10-speed.<br />
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Zipp 404 Firecrest carbon clinchers w/Continental Grand Prix 5000 23mm tires.<br />
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Enve 2.0 fork.<br />
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3T Integra Ltd. stem w/integrated computer mount.<br />
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3T Aeronova handlebars.<br />
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3T Zero 25 seatpost.<br />
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3T water bottle cages.<br />
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Chris King headset.<br />
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Specialized Power Arc saddle.<br />
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Wahoo Elemnt computer.<br />
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Favero Assioma Duo power meter pedals.<br />
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Berzinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13584575495763261088noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7340564509663069327.post-22251700830553174502019-04-28T22:55:00.001-04:002019-04-29T18:02:35.688-04:00How to Make a Cycling Comeback Pt. III...<div style="text-align: justify;">
Getting back into the cycling game takes patience, perseverance and a will to control your own destiny. I was in the market for some cycling kit, so after a combination of asking around and doing my own research, I decided on Castelli clothing. They were the company that were going to help me re-establish myself as a premier ham-and-egger/poseur deluxe-I mean, inspire me to ride. </div>
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Castelli has an excellent reputation, second only to Assos in terms of quality but less expensive depending on where you make the purchase. The best prices that I've found were at Merlin Cycles in Great Britain. Added to their already low prices was the exclusion of the VAT (value added tax) that we Americans do not have to pay. That 20% savings, plus free shipping over a certain dollar amount purchased, adds up to more clothing and more savings. For anyone looking for a great deal, you can look these cats up on the internet. </div>
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Here is a list of all the stuff I bought during the winter-</div>
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1) Castelli Prologo V short-sleeve jersey (6)</div>
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2) Castelli Prologo V long-sleeve jersey (3)</div>
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3) Castelli Fondo jersey (1)</div>
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4) Castelli Puro jersey (1)</div>
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5) Castelli Mortirolo 4 jacket (2)</div>
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6) Castelli Endurance X2 bib shorts (2)</div>
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7) Castelli Free Aero Race bib shorts (2)</div>
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8) Castelli Omloop thermal bibshorts (2)</div>
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9) Castelli Thermoflex arm/leg/knee warmers (1 of each)<br />
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10) LAS helmet (white)</div>
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11) Sidi Genius 7 (white)</div>
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<i><b><span style="font-size: x-large;"><u>Castelli arm, leg, knee warmers and gloves</u>-</span></b></i></div>
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<i><b><span style="font-size: x-large;"><u>Castelli bag and LAS helmet</u>-</span></b></i><br />
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<i><b><span style="font-size: x-large;"><u>Castelli base layers</u>-</span></b></i><br />
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<i><b><span style="font-size: x-large;"><u>Castelli bibshorts</u>-</span></b></i><br />
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<i><b><span style="font-size: x-large;"><u>Sidi Genius 7 Cycling Shoes</u>-</span></b></i><br />
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If you're going to get back into the game, do it in style and have your kit organized. No jersey from one company and bib shorts from another. Also, don't let the hoi polloi shame you out of purchasing high quality clothing from another company-that's right, Rapha. Their videos are corny and sometimes a bore to watch, but again catch them when they put stuff on sale and you'll do alright. Though I must say Castelli has the most comprehensive list of cycling apparel, so there really is no reason to go anywhere else. </div>
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The last part of this series will focus on the completed bike. Stay tuned.</div>
Berzinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13584575495763261088noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7340564509663069327.post-54784824281949841932019-04-21T16:40:00.004-04:002019-04-22T01:19:30.626-04:00How to Make a Cycling Comeback Pt.II...Let's take a look at some gadgets that every 21st. century rider needs to look like a complete poseur-I mean, dedicated cyclist.<br />
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<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-8_NUupLWyUE/XLy0jjFrHJI/AAAAAAAAJi0/bYhKSwvtOvM_oVpOZ33dju8_wOEKv_T-gCLcBGAs/s1600/Gadgets%2B2.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1067" data-original-width="1600" height="426" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-8_NUupLWyUE/XLy0jjFrHJI/AAAAAAAAJi0/bYhKSwvtOvM_oVpOZ33dju8_wOEKv_T-gCLcBGAs/s640/Gadgets%2B2.JPG" width="640" /></a></div>
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First off, a cell phone is crucial to get the various cycling gadgets up and running and coordinated with one another. The Samsung Galaxy J7 Refine is inexpensive and does exactly what I need it to do. </div>
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The Wahoo Elemnt cycling computer and GPS is arguably a better product than anything Garmin has put out, and it communicates well with the Favero Assioma power meter pedals. Then you have the Wahoo Tickrx heart rate monitor that will send the info it collects right to the Wahoo Elemnt so you can monitor yourself as you blow the fuck up and are left for dead by the rest of the riders in your respective group. </div>
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The Wahoo Elemnt quarter turn mount adapter makes the computer/GPS compatible with the Garmin Edge stem mount that goes with the 3T Integra stem. It is necessary to mount the Wahoo on this particular stem, which is what the stem was made for.</div>
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Ray Long has published the most comprehensive set of yoga books currently on the market. The drawings are anatomically correct and meticulously done. It is also a step-by-step manual into the ways particular sets of muscles are stretched depending on pose. You're not going to find anything better than this series of books for yoga.</div>
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<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-bGq7uoDAL1c/XLy9SwJ9IYI/AAAAAAAAJjA/PqQ4mawusNAQZeOKuxSCx1m9smWX951bQCLcBGAs/s1600/DSC_0135.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1518" data-original-width="1600" height="606" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-bGq7uoDAL1c/XLy9SwJ9IYI/AAAAAAAAJjA/PqQ4mawusNAQZeOKuxSCx1m9smWX951bQCLcBGAs/s640/DSC_0135.JPG" width="640" /></a></div>
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Here are various gadgets to aid in your yoga/stretch/recovery sessions. The black box contains an ice pack from a company that makes excellent products-</div>
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This is where we get even more creative. In the photo below we have the Garmin Vivoactive 3 watch, which tells you everything you need to know, and it's great for tracking heart rate and total steps taken during the course of a particular activity or for the whole day. </div>
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Next we have the Perfect Ab Carver Pro which comes with detachable handles, and a portable back massager (the contraption with the blue balls) when your muscles get tight from riding in an aerodynamic position. The rest are various rollers for different parts of the body.<br />
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For more intense recovery, you could get the TimTam percussion massager ($199),the Hyperice Hypervolt (($349.99), the RXGun ($399.99) or the Theragun ($600),which is nothing but a Workx 20v jigsaw with 5 attachments. The other three are nothing but bootleg copies of the Workx, which retails for $69.99. You can get the attachments that are pictured on Ebay without having to retrofit any of the parts. Then you have the Ryobi car buffer, which can be used for deep tissue massage. The youtube videos will explain in detail why you should purchase these power tools to aid in recovery-</div>
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<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Y0PQhAFhSic/XLzHJ2UdorI/AAAAAAAAJjw/y8WG6D0AHvMCcZ8C9BX1iqBSZCD7BJOMQCLcBGAs/s1600/DSC_0140.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="875" data-original-width="1600" height="348" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Y0PQhAFhSic/XLzHJ2UdorI/AAAAAAAAJjw/y8WG6D0AHvMCcZ8C9BX1iqBSZCD7BJOMQCLcBGAs/s640/DSC_0140.JPG" width="640" /></a></div>
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<b><i><span style="font-size: large;"><u>This video shows the Ryobi car buffer in action. Also shown is a Ryobi jigsaw retrofitted for use as a deep tissue massager</u>.</span></i></b></div>
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Lm4aMMaKvg0/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Lm4aMMaKvg0?feature=player_embedded" width="320"></iframe></div>
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<b><i><span style="font-size: large;"><u>A better idea is to get the Workx jigsaw and get the attachemnts from Ebay that require absolutely no retrofitting. Just pop the attachment in question in and you're good to go</u>. </span></i></b></div>
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If all this is not enough, the next two contraptions are for the seriously dedicated/hardcore athlete-</div>
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1) Compex Wireless 2.0 Muscle Stimulator Kit w/TENS. This is both a muscle simulator and a muscle recovery tool. The eight individual pods are wireless, and believe me that makes a huge difference in terms of convenience. It has other features that makes this the best in it's class. Catch it when Compex has them on sale and you will not regret it. </div>
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2) The Air Relax compression system. If you're a cyclist you've seen these before. Or maybe you haven't. There are more expensive brands out there, but this one is the most inexpensive in relation to what you get. For less than a grand, you have the air compression unit, a pair of white foot massagers, right and left leg sleeves that have four chambers from feet to the upper thighs, and shorts that deliver dynamic compression covering the quads, hamstrings, glutes, hip flexors, lower back and abductors. The arm sleeve is self-explanatory. It's for the arms. You only get one because it's not a good idea to do both at the same time, though there will always be some fucking idiot out there who will purposely not follow the instructions and then sue the company if something goes wrong. </div>
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If you're in the market for an air compression system, this one is impossible to beat in terms of both price and quality. Don't think that if you spend more money you'll get a much better product. That is simply not true. You could always pay $3545 for the Normatec Pulse Pro 2.0 if you got it like that, but if you don't the Air Relax system is the move you need to make. </div>
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(I forgot to mention two invaluable peaces of equipment-a good, solid massage table and the Teeter FitSpine Inversion table. Spine decompression relieves back pain, especially for cyclists who spend the majority of their riding time hunched over the handlebars. Photos to follow.)<br />
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Part III will feature the type of clothing you'll need to avoid looking like a right wanker. If you are the one constantly getting dropped like an anchor as soon as the road tilts that slightest bit upwards, might as well get dropped in style.</div>
Berzinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13584575495763261088noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7340564509663069327.post-24228292413825762922019-04-17T20:44:00.000-04:002019-04-22T01:20:04.189-04:00How To Make a Cycling Comeback Pt I...<div style="text-align: justify;">
This is how you dooz it, boys and girls-</div>
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I've been off the bike for quite a number of years and felt the time was right to join the ranks of the deluded pack jelly motherfuckers who think they're Chris Froome just because they can beat you up a hill.. When the weather was nice, I thought of those long mountain passages of the Tour de France and the snow-covered peaks of the Giro D'Italia. Every time the weather was cloudy and cool, I thought of the Ardennes Classics with their short, sharp and steeps climbs. I thought of the racers, who are insanely fit. I thought of the cutting edge equipment they use and how much I enjoyed researching the newest technology. Slowly but surely I began the process of re-joining the peloton. Here is the journey.<br />
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<b><i><span style="font-size: large;"><u>The heads of state, 1993 Tour de France</u>-</span></i></b><br />
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I decided to purchase another road frame. Realistically I didn't need one. I just I said "Fuck It" and did so. I've found something to like about all of the frame materials (never rode steel), but there were limitations to consider. Today's carbon frames today are cost prohibitive. As for aluminum, I've always been annoyed at how North American frame builders don't bother to sand the welds. Those thick, industrial welds told me that the frame builder either couldn't be bothered or he figured no one cares so why go the extra mile. And they look absolutely hideous.</div>
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I have ridden titanium in the past, and felt if I could make a few changes to the geometry I would be happy. Aesthetically, no one did titanium road frames like Litespeed back in the day. They shaped all the tubes of the frame to the point where it looked like you were riding a rocket ship. Alas, the company split into two different entities (Litespeed and Lynskey) and Litespeed no longer offers custom frames. So I decided on a custom Lynskey R480.</div>
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With Lynskey, there were details like tube shaping, bottom bracket size and internal cable routing that were not possible. That was fine with me because those types of changes were superfluous to the quality of the frame. Why would I go through all this and not get exactly what I want? Well, no other titanium manufacturer come close in terms of quality and price. The bottom line is the price for the Lynskey was absolutely mind-blowing for what I was getting. So the trigger was pulled and the process started.<br />
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<b><i><span style="font-size: large;"><u>The infamous 1-2-3 finish of the Gewiss team at La Fleche Wallone, 1994</u>-</span></i></b><br />
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As for the geometry, here are the basic specs-</div>
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1) 54cm seat tube, 55cm top tube.<br />
2) 72.5 degree seat tube angle, 73 degree head tube angle.<br />
3) 4.3 mm fork rake.<br />
4) Seatstay length 41.5cm.</div>
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One can accuse me of being a retro grouch, as I firmly believe that the 1990's was the best time for cycling; both the racing and the technology. I do not like sloping top tubes, off the rack geometry or disc brakes. And the fragility of carbon doesn't interest me. One crack in the wrong place and you have to dismantle the frame, send it somewhere for repair, have it shipped back and build it back up. Not what I want to deal with unless I had another frame ready to go and would not miss any quality riding time. Even then it all sounds like a monumental pain in the ass. I'll do a carbon frame some other time.<br />
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I didn't care about the weight of the frame and never asked about it. It certainly wasn't going to compete with carbon, nor was it ever meant to be. I wanted a frame that fit my needs and was impervious to the latest fads; a frame that would not go out of style in three months. I looked into another aluminum frame from Cyfac, but alas communication issues rendered that moot.<br />
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The bare frame is pictured below. It is currently at Horse Cycles Paint Shop in Brooklyn, NY and will be back very soon if everything goes as planned. The only items missing is the seat and the handlebars. I took the measurements wrong and was sent a pair that were too big. Funny thing-I went to UPS, as they were the original shipper. The cost was $374 and loads of paperwork that I did not know tI had to fill out. I went to my local USPS and they charged me a little over $38 dollars. It may take a few weeks to get to Italy, but at least I didn't have to pay that much money (relatively speaking) to send it back. </div>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b><i><u>Here are a few pics of the Lynskey custom frame when it first arrived</u>*</i></b>-</span><br />
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<b><i>*<u>click on photos to enlarge</u></i></b></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b><i><u>Notice the buttery smoothness of the welds</u></i></b>-</span><br />
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This is not the finished product. I am waiting for the painter to do his thing, and then all I need to do is have a mechanic build it up. Next up will be the gadgets one needs to recover after a long, hard ride. </div>
Berzinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13584575495763261088noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7340564509663069327.post-91503999639825101782019-04-17T14:19:00.000-04:002019-04-17T14:19:52.406-04:00THE AAU Conundrum...<div style="text-align: justify;">
I've said it a million times-street basketball is dead, and the AAU circuit has effectively killed it. There is no longer room for cats like the recently departed Rodney Parker (of "Heaven is a Playground" fame) to roam the parks of NYC in the summertime, looking for that diamond-in-the-rough kid who, with a bit of polishing and some creative accounting with the high school transcript, can get a scholarship to a junior college in the middle of nowhere and hopefully get some semblance of an education before inevitably failing out and coming back home more of a loser than when he left. </div>
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As it is now, the AAU circuit has undermined the street hustlers and flesh peddlers that thrived in the shadows. That whole world has been replaced by shoe company reps, over-eager parents, and AAU coaches who control access to the kids they wish to make their fame on. The money is huge, and the pressure to get a piece of that cake is an immense incentive to cheat. The fiasco at Louisville and ex-coach Rick Pitino was just one example of the sordidness that accompanies the pressure to secure that one program-changing basketball prodigy. </div>
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The flip side of the Rick Pitino scandal-ridden coin is the despicable Lavar Ball, who has shamelessly pimped his two younger children out of any chance of making the NBA. "I Will Speak It Into Existence" is not a business model in a sport where even one wrong move by the most freakishly talented athletes can relegate them to has-been status faster than you can say Sebastian Telfair. Y'all remember him, don't you? He was the next coming of whomever, and now he is out of the league (having last played in 2015 after getting cut by the OKC Thunder) and is facing MAJOR prison time for being pulled over in Brooklyn by the cops with a carload of what is pictured below, a veritable caché of weapons and ammo. The corner of Atlantic and Classon is NOT where you want to be, especially when you have a carload of THIS-</div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Full Metal Jackass...</span></div>
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What this guy was thinking of doing with all this hardware I have no idea. Was he planning a school massacre? Was he looking to take on Negan and the Saviors from "The Waling Dead"? It's certainly clear that he and his younger cousin who was busted alongside him were riding hard on the Dylan Klebold tip. Recently his no-talent younger brother Ethan held a press conference that no one attended and announced that he ws forgoing his senior season at Bison Testicles State College to go to the NBA. He then retracted his statement when he realized there was NO interest.<br />
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Funny enough, Stephon Marbury has a brother who posted some youtube videos of his training sessions. He's another special-ed jackass thinking he has a shot at the league. He had the audacity to claim that he's better than Steph. After peeping the videos, it's fair to say that you don't have to be a talent scout to realize this guy needs to take a Boar's Head course in deli management and catering, because making sandwiches at some dusty bodega in Coney Island is going to be the height of his career trajectory.<br />
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Which begs the question-what the fuck is wrong with these retards? I remember Lincoln High Schools' then-athletic director Renan Ebeid telling the cameras for the reality show "City Hardwood", in reference to Sebastian's younger brother Ethan, that "it's tough being a Telfair, you know, when you come from money..." Money has nothing to do with how these particular people behave. The Telfairs and the Marburys come from a long line of underachieving on the basketball court and overachieving in self-destructive and typical ghetto-ass behavior. The money just made their collective dysfunction that much more glaring.<br />
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Here is the problem. The AAU circus has made flesh peddlers and pimps out of motherfuckers that should be coaching basketball at their respective levels. But because of the obscene amounts of money involved, these jackals forcibly become father figures and advisers to players who are easy prey if they come from broken homes where the father is nowhere to be found. They do this with one goal in mind-to get that money from sponsors by recruiting as many blue-chip prospects as possible to their AAU squads and selling them to whatever D-I school will have them. The competition is fierce, and this shit has trickled down to fucking middle school.<br />
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If you've seen some AAU tournaments on youtube, you'll see teams with names like "Future Phenoms" and "New World All-Stars". These teams have travel expenses and tournament fees paid by their sponsors, with the proviso that the spigot will be turned off if they don't win and if they don't feature top D-I potential talent. The games themselves are boring and pathetic, with the top players on each teasm hogging the limelight while everyone else watches. The coaches don't call plays, they just spend the whole game yelling at the refs and cursing at the players, and if the players aren't trying to dunk they are indiscriminately chucking three-pointers.<br />
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The players are bombarded with the type of attention usually reserved for professional athletes. It is not uncommon to see pro players in the stands checking out the latest gonna-be all-time great. And with the pros come the paparazzi and the hoochies. If a top-ranked player doesn't have a ready for youtube "mix tape", which consists of humiliating crossover dribbles where their opponent winds up on the floor, dunks, or any other type of flashy play, they are already late to the party. Let's watch former pro player Jason "White Chocolate" Williams' 10 year old son in a game with other kids his age while grown adults record the antics on their cellphones and ask for his autograph after the game. Real healthy for the kids' self-esteem.<br />
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People have a way of ruining EVERYTHING, and if this year's NCAA tournament is any indication, is that beneath all the flash of the AAU circuit, the product coming out the other end is absolute garbage. And young black males are getting fucked over. What happens when you don't make it and have to go out into the real world and find meaningful employment? They cannot go back for help from the assholes who exploited them, because they don't want to be associated with cats who didn't make it. They only find out their degrees (if they manage to graduate) are worth nothing when they are asked to fill out an employment application and the only thing they can put down that they did was play basketball.<br />
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Young black males are getting screwed over by a system where everyone gets paid except for the athletes. No one ever went to a basketball game to watch the coach, though I would say there was an exception made for Bobby Knight. He was definitely box office, but for all the wrong reasons.<br />
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Berzinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13584575495763261088noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7340564509663069327.post-75917961545239008112017-12-17T19:07:00.000-05:002017-12-18T00:42:18.090-05:00Film Recommendation of the Week...<span style="color: red; font-size: large;"><b><i><u>Night of the Living Dead</u> (Criterion Collection)</i></b></span><br />
<span style="color: red; font-size: large;"><b><i><u>Release Date</u>-February 13, 2018.</i></b></span><br />
<span style="color: red; font-size: large;"><b><i><u>Running Time</u>-One Hour and Thirty-Six Minutes.</i></b></span><br />
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<span style="text-align: justify;">Glad to be back, boys and girls. Despite the fact that 2017 was a terrible year for film and television, we're hitting the ground running with some excellent recommendations for all you film buffs. </span><br />
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Having been disappointed with the trajectory of both Walking Dead series (yet another letdown for the zombie genre), it is with great pleasure that I announce the release of the granddaddy of them all, "Night of the Living Dead". George A. Romero's 1968 psychotic masterpiece of paranoia, claustrophobia, and flesh-eating ghouls has gotten the restoration treatment it deserves from our good friends at Criterion. Romero played an active role in the restoration, and attended a screening of the finished product at NYC's Museum of Modern Art before he unfortunately passed away July of this year. </div>
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This version is a new 4K digital restoration that is sure to blow away all other public domain releases. Criterion doesn't mess around when it comes to stuff like this, so rest assured the blu-ray edition will be THEE version to have in one's collection. Included are all manner of special features, but those were included for people who really want to dig in to the history of how the film was made. It's importance and pop culture relevance cannot be understated, even as we collectively cringe as AMC mangles the genre into the stratosphere of sheer stupidity and ultimate irrelevance. Romero himself was quoted as saying "The Walking Dead" series is nothing but a soap opera with a few zombies kicked in, and he was right.<br />
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The new release won't be available for the next few months, but this will give some of you time to replenish some of the classic horror films that have been revamped for blu-ray release. They will definitely be worth purchasing. We will feature some of these titles later in the week. Now may also be the time to upgrade your flatscreen tv and DVD player, especially if you're one of those people who shopped for these items while sumo wrestling with illegal day laborers and overweight trailer park trash housewives at one of those Black Friday loser-thon sales events. Here at "Busting Chops", we offer readers the opportunity to upgrade with dignity. If you have no idea where to begin, do your research. Salespeople are absolutely clueless about audio/video equipment, especially the higher-end stuff, which is NOT sold at Walmart or Best Buy. Take your time and spend the money-it will be well worth it. Watching movies and listening to music should be an experience, not an excuse to tune out your ADD-afflicted crackhead children or for ignoring your overweight, battleaxe wife.<br />
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Berzinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13584575495763261088noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7340564509663069327.post-3750626588385424682016-10-15T22:26:00.000-04:002016-10-16T11:43:21.882-04:00Bad to the Bone...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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After the second presidential debate (if you can call how the candidates went at each other presidential), a new star arose onto the political horizon-All-American undecided voter Kevin Bone. Watching his porcine neckline struggle to contain itself in that ridiculous sweater (where the fuck did he get that cherry red monstrosity? And here I was thinking that Alexander's Department store closed in 1992. Is their surplus stock still circulating?) His Humpty Dumptian visage and porno moniker was plastered all over the news the very next day, having emerged as some kind of hero because he actually asked a question that was pertinent to the future of this beleaguered country. </div>
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The media are idiots, and they think the average viewer is too stupid to delve any further into any particular subject long enough for the development of nuanced thought. This is why we've been presented with this lardass, and it's why he's become a national folk hero-because he is indistinguishable from the so-called "average" American that politicians love pandering to. If you want to check these so-called average American motherfuckers out, you must go to their natural habitat. Take a bus or fly to Ohio, Wisconsin, or Iowa and stroll through a neighborhood mall on any given weekend. You will see these Kevin Bone-types with their grotesque, morbidly obese, pasty white, and equally sartorially challenged offspring looking for the two-for-one special at Arby's. They are also at the local supermarket, with their carts full of Cheez Wiz and Spam. It's enough to give you rectal spasms. These are the so-called "real" Americans that so desperately want to make America great again, and Kevin Bone is leading the charge. </div>
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<span style="color: red; font-size: large;"><i><b><u>Media darling Ken Bone making the rounds</u>-</b></i></span></div>
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<b><i><span style="color: red; font-size: large;"><u>Man of the fucking people</u>-</span></i></b></div>
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<span style="color: red; font-size: large;"><i><b>He's Everyfuckingwhere!!!</b></i></span></div>
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But like every fairy tale, reality is a bit more challenging to countenance, especially when it's staring at you in the mirror. It seems as if this lovable, inflatable media darling has some character flaws. Or, as we here at "Busting Chops" like to put it, the Ken Bone is apparently connected to the ass bone. He's made some totally ignorant remarks about the Trayvon Martin shooting, claiming that the shooting was justified. and made some remarks in the chat forum of a porn site featuring pregnant women having sex. Apparently he finds this particularly repulsive niche of the adult entertainment industry titillating, like any normal, well-adjusted American would (NOT). He also admitted to insurance fraud, a federal crime. This is the problem with making douchebags like Kevin Bone into heroes. They will always let you down. At least we can buy a t-shirt, just to show our friends we belong in "The Bone Zone"...Somewhere Ron Jeremy is kicking himself for not coming up with this marketing idea first. </div>
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Having forever been typecast, he can't even appear on television anywhere without having to wear that repulsive red sweater. I can see him now on the beach in Rio de Janeiro rockin' a pair of Speedos and a red sweater vest. Now that would be a fucking sight. There are now Halloween costumes paying homage to "Don Jueso", and one of the Jonas brothers (the gay one...hold it. Aren't they all gay?) wants to shag his fat, hairy ass. To quote detective Bunk from "The Wire", this whole thing"makes me sick how far we done fell". But we have further to fall, because on November 28th (according to Trump, who can't even get the day we vote for president correct) we get to elect one of the worst of two evil lessers to this land's highest office. How exciting. </div>
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In this corner, we have a careerist, polyester pant-suited political hack who, along with her husband, has one of the most despicable records of fucking shit up for poor people of color not only in the US but in places like Haiti, where his so-called foundation is nothing but a supply-side economic stimulus package for their political cronies. The list of grievances are too long to list, but it continued with Hillary as Secretary of State. This adult diaper-wearing asshole and her serial rapist husband have managed to enrich themselves through their political connections to the point where they could offer their own daughter a fucking $900,000 a year PART TIME JOB with their own foundation.<br />
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And in the next corner, we have an out-of-touch, elitist, misogynistic neanderthal orangutan who's managed to fail upwards for almost all his life and now campaigns as a man of the people. His belligerent, racist, sexist rants against the country that made it possible for him to succeed despite being a pea-brained, propped up, entitled jackass whose only talent is telling everyone how great he is, has resonated with the American people. These are our two choices.<br />
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Thank goodness we have Kevin Bone to cut through the clutter. Get your t-shirt and go out and vote. It'll make little to no difference in the long run due to the quality of both candidates, but if Trump wins you can at least say you did something top try and stop him. Then again, if elected he did promise that Blacks and Latinos will have "the time of their lives". That's something, at least. My peeps can look forward to getting deported to the sounds of salsa, merengue, and bachata blaring from the sound system of a defunct Trump Airlines plane, which he will lease to the federal government for dollars on the penny just so they can get rid of us and he can make a profit. </div>
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Let Freedom Ring!!!</div>
Berzinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13584575495763261088noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7340564509663069327.post-1132820303560919452016-10-11T10:49:00.001-04:002016-10-12T15:56:43.459-04:00NBA News and Notes...<div style="text-align: justify;">
The 2016-17 NBA season is upon us, and we will be subjected to more bad basketball. The reasons are twofold-the new money injected into the league from tv contracts, and all the free agency moves that have decimated the continuity of certain teams in question. </div>
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The influx of money from the upcoming television contracts have caused a rise in the salary cap. The way it works is that there's not only a ceiling, but a floor, so a team can actually face monetary penalties for NOT spending a minimum amount of money allotted to them. This means plenty of terrible contracts paid out to marginal players. Granted, this is all relative. As Jalen Rose continues to repeat, a player is only worth what he's able to negotiate. That is patently not true, because no one in their right mind will tell you that Matthew Dellavedova is worth a 4 year, $38 million dollar contract. As good a player as Al Horford is, he's never distinguished himself as a game-changing type of talent that is remotely worth 4 years at $113 million dollars. That's more than $28 million dollars a year for a player that, at the age of 30, has stopped improving a long time ago. How is all this fiscal madness going to affect play on the court?<br />
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We're seeing it already, and it doesn't look good. The LA Clippers haven't made any major moves because of their already high-priced roster, but last year they signed DeAndre Jordan to four years and a little over $87 million. What did the Clips get in return? The same player they had last year, and the year before. And that's the problem. He is limited offensively, is a liability on the free throw line, and can't defend anyone if they run the type of offense that Golden State does, with multiple undersized shooters passing the ball until the open man finds another open man. Neither he nor Blake Griffin can guard Kevin Durant, who at 6 feet 13 inches is the most versatile shooter/scorer this side of Wyatt Earp. The evidence of this was obvious during a preseason game in which the Warriors outscored the Clippers, who are supposed to be their rivals in the Western Conference, by 50 fucking points. FIFTY. This cannot be shrugged off as a "bad night". A bad night is someone taking Viagra and going home by themselves after spending $200 dollars on drinks on a whore who will fuck everyone in the neighborhood except for you. This was a statement, that the Clippers don't even belong on the same floor as Golden State. And barring injury to any of their key players, the Warriors are going to make mincemeat of the rest of the league. It's not even going to be entertaining.<br />
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As for the Knicks, there is nothing quite as nostalgic as an creaky, old buzzard whose time has come and gone telling the world his fucking triangle offense can work with the bums he's collected. Jaochim Noah, a terribly unathletic, spastic overachiever with absolutely no offensive game whatsoever (whose had the cartilage in his knees ground into dust by Tom Thibadeau in Chicago) teams up with Derrick Rose, a guy with even worse knees who happens to currently be on trial for taking part in some disgusting, ritualistic drug-and-gang-rape scenario that seems as egregious as it was unnecessary. What's the point of fame and wealth if you have to resort to drugging and raping women to get your rocks off? Good thing for him it's a civil suit, so he won't face jail time. He'll still be able to play until his next knee injury, which will come the second Stephan Curry comes to town and shakes him out of his sneakers. Kristaps Porzingis is waiting until his contract is up to head somewhere that has a management and ownership dedicated to winning, because New York ain't it. Phil Jackson has stated that the Knicks will only run the triangle in certain half court situations because today's players don't have the skills to run it, despite the fact that today's players are more athletic than ever. Maybe it's the coaching, Phil. Maybe it's the fact that his vaunted triangle is best left in the era in which it thrived. Maybe it's time he retires and leaves the game he no longer understands.<br />
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This same is true for the Los Angeles Lakers. The game has passed them by, and in today's globalized economy, where you can watch your favorite team from your cellphone, it's no longer a prerequisite for star players to play in big market cities. It never was. When you see how many great players played in places like Salt Lake City (Stockton and Malone thrived for years there and never complained) and Oklahoma City (Durant and Westbrook) you realize that players don't need to be in big markets to become globally recognizable. The lure of being in the media capitals of the world is no longer a selling point, more so for New York because of high taxes, unbearable management, and an unforgiving media spotlight that will look to tear a player down as quick as they build them up.<br />
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New York City hoops has been overrated for years. The street basketball used to be about ball players looking for the best competition. Now it's about brain-dead, arrogant assholes looking to do stupid tricks, over-dribbling, and just making a mockery of the game. That's why so many street ballers never leave their neighborhoods. So many of them let the little bit of reputation they develop go completely to their heads that they never develop their skills to get a college degree. And you can't tell these motherfuckers shit. They know it all. Far too many that do get a D-I scholarship wind up coming back home after one or two years with nothing to show for it. Some don't even last their first semester and are back home in the projects eating one of those Thanksgiving Day turkeys given out by local charities that taste like buzzard. The same goes for the Knicks. It's been almost 50 fucking years since they last won a championship, and it looks like another fifty will pass because this franchise is absolutely clueless and will continue to suck as long as James Dolan is the owner.<br />
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But neither Dolan nor the Buss family in LA will sell their teams. There's too much money at stake, and people will watch these losers even when they suck. And only in America can a marginal player hanging on to his position by the thinnest of threads get his own sneaker deal. Swaggy P has lost his woman, his playing time, and cannot be counted on to be a mentor for younger players because he's too irresponsible and immature. He can only be considered an elder statesman in an insane asylum, and that's what the Lakers are right now. And speaking of marginal players, J.R. Smith is still holding out for more cash. WTF is this world coming to. Here's another player who's lost most of his explosive athleticism, and can be counted on to shoot 3-19 more often than not, especially when you need him most. He's so fucking clueless that he showed up to almost every post-Cavaliers function without a shirt. I cannot tell you how fucking ghetto and low class that is, especially with all those disgusting tattoos he's got. </div>
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So what will we get as basketball fans with all the bloated contracts, watered-down teams, and entitled nobodies earning big bucks? We will get THIS. Enjoy the season!!!</div>
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Berzinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13584575495763261088noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7340564509663069327.post-76801873429345894132016-10-10T09:13:00.001-04:002017-12-17T18:53:11.589-05:00Film Recommendation of the Week...<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: red; font-size: x-large;"><b><i><u>Beasts of No Nation</u></i></b></span></div>
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<span style="color: red; font-size: x-large;"><b><i><u>Release Date</u>: September 3, 2015.</i></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b><i><span style="color: red;"><u>Running Time</u>: 2 Hours 17 Minutes.</span></i></b> </span></div>
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Idris Elba is absolutely unrelenting as the leader of a squad of child soldiers in an unnamed African country undergoing civil war. The type of brutality inherent in a man who can rip children from their families and train them to be mercenaries comes across the screen with a menace that has rarely been matched in modern-day cinema. Elba plays "The Commandant" with a glorious, sinister viciousness that literally explodes off the screen. This is an actor who has charisma to spare, and who has a proven track record of playing maniacs with a subtle intensity that has made his characters so memorable. </div>
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Kudos also go to the child actors who were recruited for this film. The main protagonists of this child army are Agu (Araham Atta)and his friend Strika (Abraham Nii Adom Quaye). Agu was kidnapped after his family was killed, and the transformation from little boy playing with his friends to ruthless child soldier is a sad, depressing, and chilling one. The Commandant has his own idealism and ambitions tossed aside as mere collateral damage during peace negotiations that have no room for someone like him. By the time the film ends, he is left alone, a warloard without a war, a Commandant without troops to command. Caught between the embattled forces, the politicians attempting to negotiate peace, and the UN Security Council, he was bound to be tossed aside. The power of Elba's performance is felt most when his world begins to collapse around him, when he realizes he was used just as his superiors ordered him to use the children under his command. Even though this is a work of fiction, the child soldier phenomenon has been a frequently recurring and disturbing trend. Here we are able to see it up close, and it is brutal. This film is a stunning achievement, both for the screenplay and for the marvelous acting. </div>
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*As an aside, Netflix is seriously hitting it out of the park with some of their own original feature presentations, this being one of their best. </div>
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<b><i><span style="color: red; font-size: large;">Child soldiers on patrol...</span></i></b><br />
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<b><i><span style="color: red; font-size: large;">"The Commandant" and Agu...</span></i></b><br />
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<br />Berzinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13584575495763261088noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7340564509663069327.post-23559405789851500232016-10-09T10:29:00.003-04:002016-10-13T05:16:40.833-04:00This Motherfucker AGAIN...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I hate to get on this guy again for the simple fact that he's a total and complete non-entity in the sport of cycling, but Lance Armstrong just wrapped up a contentious interview with Ger Gilroy of "Off The Ball", a sports talk radio show based in Dublin. Armstrong was interviewed in anticipation of some event he's doing in Ireland, and he got off to an auspicious start by being the total and complete dickhead he's always been. It seems that people like Armstrong do not know how to interact with others unless they are kissing his ass and telling him how great he is. Here's the link, and please remember to keep a bucket next to your chair so you won't have to vomit on the floor-</div>
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<a href="http://www.newstalk.com/podcasts/Off_The_Ball/Off_The_Ball_Highlights/160980/Lance_Armstrong_The_OTB_interview">http://www.newstalk.com/podcasts/Off_The_Ball/Off_The_Ball_Highlights/160980/Lance_Armstrong_The_OTB_interview</a></div>
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On one hand, he states that he'll answer any question. Then when confronted with the questions he's never once answered, like his relationship with the nefarious Dr. Ferrari and the actual DETAILS of his doping regimen-who were the doctors involved, where did his team procure the PED's, ect., Armstrong went on the defensive and became evasive. We had to listen to the worn-out excuse of "moving forward" that all athletes use when they are questioned about one of their fuck-ups. Armstrong bizarrely went into attack mode, accusing Gilroy of all manner of unprofessionalism which I found absolutely abhorrent. He then ends the interview by hanging up without saying good-bye. </div>
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I was watching a youtube video based on the American Mafia, and they included a police surveillance recording of some greaseball threatening some poor schlub who apparently owed him money. Towards the end of the conversation, the goon in question said he was going to fuck him up if homeboy didn't pay up every Friday as per their original agreement. He ends the telephone conversation like this-"I'm gonna break every bone in your body before I got to jail. You got that? OK, buh-bye". Even a ruthless gangster has the courtesy of saying good-bye to the person he's threatening, but our boy Lance isn't so magnanimous. </div>
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Gilroy asked Armstrong about "mechanical doping" (for the uninitiated, this is a motor that cannot be detected because it's hidden inside the frame of a bike), and he had the audacity to take umbrage, as if he would never stoop to such a level. There is something going on here that we've yet to ascertain, but rumor has it that there is going to be a story about Armstrong's use of this technology out very soon. The originator of this contraption, some clown from Hungary, said his device was available for use as early as 1999, when (coincidentally) Armstrong's reign of terror over the Tour de France began. Gilroy asked Armstrong that given the advantages of such technology, it would make sense that the creator would approach someone of his stature. That line of reasoning makes sense to you and I, but not to Lance. Armstrong was outraged. He was also flummoxed over the contention that, according to Gilroy's sources, his apology to Greg and Cathy Lemond went unaccepted, something Armstrong vehemently denies. He also denies having anything to do with Trek dropping Lemond as a brand. I wonder how the boys at Trek feel about that decision now, hindsight being 20-20 and all...</div>
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<b><i><span style="color: red; font-size: large;">Hi! I'm Lance Armstrong, and I'm STILL a DICK!!!</span></i></b></div>
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And now he's saying he doesn't recall the hospital incident where the doctor asked him what PED's he's ever taken. First, he called the Andreus liars when they testified against him. Then he said on his Oprah Winfrey interview "I'm not going to take that on. I'm laying down on that one". Now in this interview he says he doesn't remember the incident. Trying to pin him down on all of his lies is like trying to lasso a snake covered in Vaseline, and he still cannot stop lying.<br />
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This is going to get worse going forward. This asshole is trying desperately to find relevance in a world that no longer wants him. He wants to be fawned over like in the days of yore, but those days are never coming back. That's the problem with people with unaddressed mental disorders. Narcissistic egomaniacs always crave the adulation that made them feel important, and no amount of money or success can satisfy that empty void (see Donald Trump). I find it difficult to comprehend how someone like Armstrong, having cheated his way through life and living such an obnoxious life without a hint of self-reflection, can get so angry with the very people he duped for daring to ask for an explanation of his antics. This is because once you strip away the PED's, the non-compete clause with cycling's most infamous doping doctor, and the all-too-cushy relationship with the governing body of the sport (which basically guaranteed he would NEVER test positive despite his prodigious drug use), he becomes what any rational person thinks he is-a rider of marginal professional talent, propped up by every available means; a rider who couldn't have achieved half of what he accomplished without the cheating.<br />
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That realization is what he's afraid of the most, that in the end he excelled through cheating, and it was THE ONLY way he could have done it because he wasn't half the bike rider he and so many of his deluded, half-witted sycophants think he was. And to think he's still spending money on his defense against the Qui Tam case brought by Floyd Landis, a case he's guaranteed to lose. Enough of this idiot already. Do us all a favor, Lance-please go somewhere and never come back. No one wants to tune in to your podcasts. We've heard more than enough from you, and if you aren't going to spill the beans on Ferrari and Verbruggen, then go fuck yourself. And to think we lost Marco Pantani and have to put up with this motherfucker...there is no justice in this world.<br />
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<span style="color: red; font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">*<u>Breaking News</u>-</span>Istvan Varjas, the Hungarian inventor of the cycling motor, was interviewed on the same Irish podcast and says "very soon you will see a big story". What that means we don't know yet. The first prototype was completed at the end of 1998, originally for military use. Here is the podcast-<br />
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<a href="http://www.newstalk.com/podcasts/Off_The_Ball/Off_The_Ball_Highlights/161645/The_man_behind_hidden_bike_motors_speaks_to_OTB">http://www.newstalk.com/podcasts/Off_The_Ball/Off_The_Ball_Highlights/161645/The_man_behind_hidden_bike_motors_speaks_to_OTB</a><br />
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<b><i><span style="color: red; font-size: large;">The Two Pendejos, when the cheating was good-</span></i></b><br />
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Berzinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13584575495763261088noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7340564509663069327.post-40447869554968972972016-10-07T12:38:00.001-04:002016-10-07T12:39:25.989-04:00Babe of the Week for Friday, October 7, 2016...<div style="text-align: justify;">
<b><i><span style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">Antoijia Misura!!!</span></i></b></div>
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Back by popular demand, our weekly installment of "Babe of the Week". This young lady is a Croatian basketball player who looks are so mesmerizing that no one here at the home office really cares if she can play or not. There isn't one coach anywhere that would cut her from their team. She certainly didn't make it on "Babe of the Week" because of her talents on the court. Maybe pne day we'll get around to watching her play to see if she's any good, but she's here because "<b><i>she looooks mahvelous, dahling-absolutely mahvelous!!!"</i></b> And that's what counts. Some of you dusty-ass, physically and economically challenged losers who spend your 401k's chasing Eastern European mail-order brides take heed-if you're going to let yourselves get played by one of of those materialistic, conniving whores-in-sheeps's-clothing, at least bring one back that looks like this. They're out there, and if they want to marry you it's not because they love you, so cut the self-delusion and enjoy the approximately three months (tops, I'm being generous here with the timeline because it's Friday and I'm in a good mood) you'll have her by your side before she dumps you for a Russian mobster from Brighton Beach. Here's to you, Antoijia-you are one baaaaad looking mamsita!!! She was voted by the "bellacos" attending the 2012 Summer Olympics as the most beautiful female participant of the games-those assholes finally got one right for once. </div>
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Berzinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13584575495763261088noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7340564509663069327.post-66346833565898022252016-10-04T04:46:00.002-04:002016-11-03T05:56:23.521-04:00TV News and Notes...<b><i><span style="color: red; font-size: large;"><u>ESPN 30 for 30</u>-Phi Slama Jama</span></i></b><br />
<b><i><span style="color: red; font-size: large;"><u>Running Time</u>-1 Hour 30 Minutes.</span></i></b><br />
<b><i><span style="color: red; font-size: large;"><u>Release Date</u>:October 18, 2016.</span></i></b><br />
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It's finally here. I would like to personally take credit for this one. A couple of years ago, when ESPN began featuring their set of sports documentaries called "30 for 30", I sent then-director of the series Bill Simmons an email that he of course never replied to. After watching the Jim Valvano feature, which highlighted his only national championship with NC State and his battle with cancer, I immediately thought "how could they do this and not give the Cougars from the University of Houston an episode of their own?" Well, now they did. And one of college basketball's biggest mysteries has been solved. </div>
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There is a perspective here that very quickly gets lost among those with crackhead attention spans. Out of all the brother-oriented, run-and-gun college basketball teams that have come and gone over the years, the only one that managed a national championship was Jerry Tarkanian's Runnin' Rebels of UNLV in 1990. Those that came before and after have all fallen short. One of these much-heralded and over-hyped teams that fit this description, the "Fab Five" of the University of Michigan, developed an annoying pop culture tendency of over-inflating their own importance to make up for the shortcoming of never having won a title, as if bluster and bravado would make up for not winning despite the fact that they had the cards stacked in their favor talent-wise. </div>
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<b><i><span style="color: red; font-size: large;">Hakeem Olajuwon, Clyde Drexler, and coach Guy Lewis...</span></i></b><br />
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The University of Houston tread on different ground. It was an era when trash-talking was something done between players and wasn't someone's publicly announced persona. They inhabited a basketball landscape pre-Air Jordan, before the Nike branding juggernaut and Sonny Vaccaro turned street basketball into a cynical, buy-and-sell corporate commodity, And they were cool. Other-worldly cool, despite the high-riding shorts that were the fashion of the day. Things evolve over time, and no one can hold this stylistic malfeasance against them. Not too long ago cats used to play ball in regular pants, and I'm not just talking about the weekend warriors and the occasional working class yeoman slobs. </div>
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EVEN the playground legends rocked bell bottom jeans and dress pants. As long as they had sneakers they were out there. Their combination of tenacious defense and high-flying acrobatic dunks were the epitome of the street ball game, and put it into its proper perspective within the cultural landscape. If you weren't tall and could leap, you weren't allowed to even dream about it. All you could do is watch in amazement. To call them a dynasty without having won a championship is, again, an exercise in hyperbole that doesn't take into account the influence these cats had on the game. Not only were they fun to watch, they weren't a bunch of arrogant, chest-bumping assholes. </div>
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They have finally received their just due from the suits at ESPN who currently run the "30 for 30" series now that Simmons has been given the heave-fucking-ho. And surprise surprise, the filmmakers have finally solved the biggest mystery surrounding this team-whatever happened to Benny Anders? Tune in when the show airs to find out. My one hope is that Houston's 1983 NCAA tournament games are included in the DVD release. That run, all the way up until they lost to NC State, remains a post graduate treatise on how to kick ass on the basketball court, and is a must-see for any fan.<br />
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<b><i><span style="color: red; font-size: large;"><u>Hakeem Olajuon and Benny Anders at a press conference during their collegiate heyday</u>-</span></i></b></div>
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<b><i><span style="color: red; font-size: large;">Here is the original article on the University of Houston by Sports Illustrated, dated March 7, 1983-</span></i></b><br />
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The second season of "Fear The Walking Dead" ended with a two-part, 2-hour season finale that mercifully put an end to what has been the most dreadful piece of shit I've sat through since the series finale of "Seinfeld". I'm not going to bore anyone with a blow-by-blow synopsis. It's just too much of a fucking drag. What I will get into is the whole "Mexico" subplot. These Hollywood assholes are so typical when they write Latino characters that it's too tiring to get offended anymore. First of all, Latinos don't say something in one language and to repeat it in another when we are speaking to other Latinos. What, the producers were too cheap to put in subtitles?<br />
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During the last 10 minutes we are treated to what are hands down two of the most nauseating moments in television history. When Nick and the gang get to the border crossing, they are shot at with automatic rifles by, guess who? Fucking Border Patrol!!! I couldn't believe this shit. Is Donald Trump this show's version of Neagan? It's obvious he's survived the zombie apocalypse and has decided, in his demented, dildo brain, that the only way to "Make America Great Again" isn't to spend time working on a cure at the CDC, but by guarding the border from Mexicans, despite the fact that world has officially gone to hell. Did anyone bother to tell these assholes that there are no more borders anymore? That it's just the living and the dead? I can just hear his speech now-"Well, you know, Mexico isn't sending us their best zombies. We're getting their rapists, criminals, and cannibals. All they want to do is eat us and not pay the tab. I'm sure some of the walking dead are good people..."<br />
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The scene that came before this has to take the cake. When Nick leads his merry band of desperadoes out of whatever-the-fuck the place was called (gee, what would these helpless, hapless Mexicans do without Captain White Boy to lead them to safer ground?), Madison and Travis run into Guillermo, or Pablo, or whatever-the-fuck his name is, who is lying in a trashed school bus, semi-conscious, totally delirious, and about to die. As he's passing into the world of the unliving, he has enough energy to have that gloriously clichéed final deathbed confrontation with Madison. When he looks up through his barely open eyes, he sees Madison and declares, "Angel". For the peeps out there who can't translate this one, "Angel" is not Alejandro's landscaper son. It's Spanish for, you guessed it, an angel. Because what represents one's arrival at the pearly gates more than a blonde, blue-eyes, seeringly-pasty white Caucasian woman? My personal choice would have been the legendary Iris Chacón, the Puerto Rican singer/dancer/entertainer who showed J-Lo what ass is REALLY all about, but that's how these writers roll when they are attempting to play out Latino-oriented themes. They write about Latinos in such a patronizing, clueless manner, when all they have to do is hire a couple of writers who are, um, culturally in tune with the Mexican people and there!!! Problema solved. And if it's a budget issue, pay them like Mexican migrant workers, which is what the current batch of writers should be getting as a salary.<br />
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<b><i><span style="color: red; font-size: large;"><u>Heaven is a fat ass. Iris Chacón in action</u>-</span></i></b><br />
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Are the writers trying to be cute about the US's contentious relationship with Mexico over what is a non-problem and a non-issue in real life to anyone except the jolly Klansmen and redneck losers who are too stupid top realize their jobs are being taken from them by douchebags exactly like Trump? It shouldn't matter in the world of the walking dead, but somehow it's worked its' way into the plot in a major way, and I cannot tell you how I'm looking forward to racially ambiguous Travis being mistaken for Pancho Villa.<br />
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The show wants desperately to shove their idea of character development down our throats, to the detriment of the very reason why FTWD was allegedly conceived. We got absolutely nothing in terms of how the virus enveloped Los Angeles, what was being done about it by the powers-that-were, Now we have two of thew strongest character completely neutered (Strand and Salazar) while we get an absolutely unconvincing and tediously shot scene where Travis manhandles "The Bros" who he finds out shot his obnoxious, entitled son. Madison and Travis have the on-screen chemistry of a couple that's been married too long and are still together for the sake of the kids. And I hate to say it, the actor who plays Travis seems way too effeminate to suddenly morph into some type of post-apocalyptic bad-ass. His lack of physical charisma seriously hampers this transformation, and at best it feels forced, just like his relationship with Madison, who has settled for annoying full-on screen shots of her stupid face. This season should be screened at every film school in the country on how NOT to handle a television series. The premise has way too much promise for it to sink down the drain so fast and with such a vengeance. Either get a new screenwriting team or cancel this peace of shit. Real fans have had enough of this. </div>
Berzinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13584575495763261088noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7340564509663069327.post-7767373325572480292016-10-03T08:48:00.004-04:002016-10-03T09:22:33.242-04:00Mike Ditka...<div style="text-align: justify;">
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Football analyst and legendary fake tough-guy Mike Ditka went on a depressingly racist rant over Colin Kaepernick's protest of the rash of police shootings of African Americans. It is true that Kaepernick is not the quarterback he was was when he took the San Francisco 49'ers to the Superbowl a couple of years ago. He's had three surgical procedures during the off-season and reportedly lost about 20 pounds. He lost his starting job and may never play for the team again, barring an injury to current QB Blaine Gabbert, despite the fact that in four games Gabbert has 4 td's and 4 interceptions and their record stands at 1-3. Yes, Gabbert sucks, but Kaepernick was voted in some anonymous poll as the most hated player in the game, which says a lot given the number of reprobates that inhabit the insular and maniacally dysfunctional world of pro football. Kaepernick is reviled for daring to make a point about how African Americans are policed, and that has opened severe cultural wounds that the establishment will never forgive him for. </div>
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All manner of pundits took to the airwaves to make their feelings felt over this issue, but none did so with such boorish aplomb as Iron Mike. It was a hysterical, nonsensical tirade that went into so many deep-rooted tangents it was difficult to ascertain why a quarterback who isn't even playing could have inspired such Archie Bunker-esque vitriol. Dick-ka's response would be epic if it weren't so chock full of tired, racist cliches that have been repeated ad nauseum by others of his ilk. Dick-ka told Kaepernick in no uncertain terms that if he doesn't like it here in the United States he should go somewhere else, and make no mistake that by "somewhere else" he means back to Africa. He then threw in our current President, calling him the worst we've ever had for some insane reason, as if President Obama had anything to do with this.<br />
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And for the cherry topping, Dick-ka threw in the old racist white man's mantras of "hard work" and "personal responsibility". Well, let's get to the issue at hand-apparently he's has forgotten that if it weren't for all those lazy, uppity, entitled Negroes that constituted the overwhelming majority of players on the 1985 Bears team, he would not be wearing a Superbowl ring. And HE didn't win the </div>
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Superbowl, it was the Bears' defense that put a stranglehold on every single team they faced, courtesy of defensive coordinator Buddy Ryan. It's no wonder Ryan and Dick-ka hated each other. Ask Dick-ka's ex-players why he is so beloved (insert sarcastic smirk emogi HERE) and they'll tell you he was a colossal dickhead. He was never forgiven in many circles for not getting Walter Payton the ball so he could score at least one touchdown in his one and only Superbowl appearance. To his credit, Payton never publicly criticized his coach for that douchebag move, but it just goes to show you what a tone-deaf asshole Dick-ka is.<br />
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<b><i><span style="color: red; font-size: large;">By the way, Mike-who the fuck are "they"? Don't answer, we already know...</span></i></b><br />
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Thanks to Deadspin.com our staff at "Busting Chops" was able to compile a couple of touching moments in the life of coach Dick-ka that should put his personality into perspective. Here they are-</div>
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<span style="color: red;"><b><i><span style="font-size: large;"><u>BullDog</u>z:</span></i></b></span><br />
<b><i>True story-Ditka was doing a signing for some of his godawful smokes at a cigar shop in Western MA a few years back. He reeked of Jim Beam and Slim Jims, and half an hour in he decides he needs a break from signing autographs for the eleven people there to "drop sticks" (take a shit). Seventeen minutes later he's back and a waft of shit immediately filled the room. Evidently he flushed and didn't stick around to realize it had overflowed out onto the floor. The shop owner is doing damage control control, yelling to one of the staff to get it fixed ASAP, and there's Ditka yelling "don't look at me, I just took a goddamn piss!"...despite it being a one-person capacity bathroom that he just walked out of a second earlier!</i></b><br />
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<b><i><span style="color: red; font-size: large;"><u>Josh</u>:</span></i></b><br />
<b><i>I have eaten at Ditka's restaurant a few times. TWICE I have seen the bathroom attendant forced to take his lunch/dinner break meal in the bathroom. Yes, he was sitting there in the corner of the bathroom eating a burger while listening to and smelling an anus symphony. Gross. </i></b><br />
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<b><i><span style="color: red; font-size: large;"><u>Kevin</u>:</span></i></b><br />
<b><i>This past summer it was Mike Ditka Day at Arlington Race Track in Chicago. We were up inn the suites. I'm walking to the bathroom and I see my buddy and Ditka walking in the same direction. He asks my buddy where the 'Goddamn bathroom is', and he shows him. I walk in as he enters a stall. He painfully fumbles with the lock for about 15 seconds and then says 'Aww fuck it!' and goes into the next stall. He then proceeds to immediately fucking explode on the toilet. Giant, heavy vibration on an empty bowl. My buddy and I were shocked and extremely amused and ran out of the bathroom like two middle school kids.</i></b><br />
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<b><i><span style="color: red; font-size: large;">Where's the bathroom, motherfuckers? Time to blow it up!!!</span></i></b><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman";">In Dick-kas' defense, a relentless combination of cheap cigars and medium-rare steaks washed down with cheap booze and oxycodone pills is guaranteed to deliver a never-ending barrage of napalm-inspired ass-aults on any self-respecting toilet bowl, but such gastro-intestinal carpet bombing becomes epic emanating from the tired old donkey bowels of our boy Iron Mike. They have become so intense that the shit is overflowing from his ass straight out of his mouth. I'm surprised that not one sports pundit has called Dick-ka put on his bullshit. Where the fuck is blowhardius maximus Stephen A. Smith on this one? It seems that Dick-ka is so insulated from criticism by his reputation and the networks that employ him that he can say whatever he wants and get away with it. Or people are so scared about losing their jobs that they dare not speak out. Too bad. It would be a sorely needed breath of fresh air for someone to call Dick-ka out on his bullshit, which according to the sources above is approaching hazmat proportions.</span></div>
Berzinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13584575495763261088noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7340564509663069327.post-60786190587827731992016-09-22T04:35:00.001-04:002016-09-22T04:37:07.107-04:00Film Recommendation of the Week...<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: red; font-size: x-large;"><i><b>The Seven-Five</b></i></span></div>
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<span style="color: red; font-size: x-large;"><i><b><u>Director</u>-Tiller Russell</b></i></span></div>
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<span style="color: red; font-size: x-large;"><i><b><u>Release Date</u>-May 8, 2015.</b></i></span></div>
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<span style="color: red; font-size: x-large;"><i><b><u>Running Time</u>-1 Hour 45 Minutes. </b></i></span></div>
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There are many anti-social issues that must coalesce to create the type of dysfunction that is found in an out-of-control inner city neighborhood. It's not just the criminals that bear responsibility, but the police officers who have taken an oath to "protect and serve". When that last piece of the puzzle goes wrong, you get what happened in the 75th precinct in East New York, Brooklyn in the late 1980's to early 90's. The focus of the film is ex-police officer Michael Dowd, whose rampage over the neighborhood during the city's crack epidemic is one for the ages. His exploits were so outrageous he has been dubbed the most corrupt cop ever in the history of the NYC Police Department, and he minces no words when re-telling the tale. It's one thing to witness the type of entrenched corruption that was endemic in the department from a film like "Serpico". It's quite another thing to hear every gritty detail straight from the horse's mouth. </div>
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This is a one-of-a-kind documentary that is as harrowing as it is fascinating. What makes it so enthralling is twofold-</div>
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1) Most if not all the main actors are still alive and made themselves available to the director. What is more amazing is the main drug dealer who had two police officers on his payroll at a cost of $4,000 dollars a week EACH was found in the Dominican Republic after being deported when he concluded a long prison sentence. </div>
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2) The still photographs of East New York during this time really made for quite a jarring experience, especially since I vividly recall going there as a kid and still remember being shocked at what I saw. Block after block of decimated, abandoned buildings and all manner of shady-looking, poverty-stricken people walking around. So if anyone who doesn't know asks if East New York really looked like that, tell them "yes, indeed it did". But what gave this film an authenticity rarely felt in even the best documentaries are the shots of police surveillance film of the actual drug dealers that were under investigation who are featured in this film. </div>
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Though this is not meant to make this rogues' gallery of villains seem likable, they are indeed charismatic in their own twisted way. And if you know anyone who happens to be a successful criminal, you realize that charisma is an important component of their personalities. And Michael Dowd is a born storyteller. If he wasn't a compelling public speaker, no way this documentary winds up being as good as it is. All the other details are better left for the documentary itself. It's currently on cable television, but you can also purchase the documentary from wherever they still sell DVD's. The story of the 75th Precinct and corrupt ex-cop Michael Dowd is as crazy as it gets, and this documentary is one of the best I've seen. It is highly recommended. You will not be disappointed.</div>
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Berzinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13584575495763261088noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7340564509663069327.post-24548349509481418312016-09-20T18:19:00.002-04:002016-09-20T18:20:44.062-04:00So Long, Big Papi...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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When you retire from pro baseball, this is how you go out-in style. In direct juxtaposition to the Yankees making A-Rod walk the plank into oblivion before the season was over, David "Big Papi" Ortiz has managed the exact opposite. In his last season, he has had one of the best seasons a 40-year old has ever had. One could argue that he may be no different than Rodriguez because his name surfaced in the Mitchell Report, but let's put that into perspective-very few names were released, giving credence to a conspiracy theory that someone was out to make Ortiz look bad. Why not release all the names? Where is the validity and integrity to a system that was supposed to keep the list anonymous? The substance in question was never named, so we don't know WHAT it was. Doubters will always presume the worst, but one thing is for certain-at least he never dodged any questions and was up-front about it, even if he stated that he didn't know and could very well be lying. </div>
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There is credence to this. The nutritional supplement market is an unregulated Wild West-type of industry where manufacturers routinely put illegal crap in their products and are not liable nor responsible for listing the ingredients. How the fuck is anyone supposed to know what is in these products if they aren't listed? Quite a few athletes have fallen prey to this Kafka-esque dilemma, where an athletes tests positive, has the supplement tested, and when the supplement comes back positive, the athlete STILL receives a ban because he's responsible for what he puts into his body. That is utter and complete bullshit, but that's how it is. And if anyone deserves the benefit of the doubt, it's Ortiz. He started his career as a barrel-chested Dominican slugger and ended it that way, albeit with a few more pounds around the midsection. He never turned into the Incredible Hulk, even during the heyday of the steroid era. And his stats never exibited the type of jumps common with steroid abusers. If anything, he's been consistent ever since he was traded from Minnesota to Boston and got a chance to play every day. His Ruthian physique and engaging personality is what made him accessible to the common fan. I have been unable to come up with another ball player so beloved by everyone around the league, and his sendoff is a testament to not only his talent but his place in the game.</div>
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The baseball "purists" will argue that Ortiz shouldn't be in the Hall of Fame because he was a designated hitter and hardly ever played the field. The Hall of Fame is a museum, and the players people enjoy watching the most should be in regardless of whatever statistics these idiots love to pore over to either legitimize or disregard a players' hall-worthiness. Ortiz was an integral part of one of the biggest comebacks in playoff history, aided and abetted in breaking the curse of the Bambino, and has been more of a "Mr. October" than Reggie Jackson ever was. He recently passed Mickey Mantle on the all-time home run list, and is so beloved in Boston he could run for mayor on no platform and win by a landslide. He has transcended race, skin color, and nationality during a time in America where race relations have gotten worse. Just for all that he should be a first-ballot HoF'er. And the nickname is ubiquitous. You say "Big Papi" and EVERYONE knows who you're talking about. </div>
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I hope the Red Sox make it to the World Series. Another ring would be fantastic for what has been a career worth celebrating by all baseball fans regardless of team allegiance. And if they can beat the Chicago Cubs, that would be the existential icing-on-the-cake statement of all time, given that the Cubs are currently run by Theo Epstein, former general manager of Las Medias Rojas. </div>
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See you in Cooperstown, big guy, and thanks for all the wonderful memories. You deserve all the accolades you get. </div>
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Berzinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13584575495763261088noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7340564509663069327.post-23185957545730451902016-09-20T03:30:00.001-04:002016-09-20T13:54:17.517-04:00Good-Bye, Alex Rodriguez...<div style="text-align: justify;">
After an acrimonious, drawn-out negotiation with Yankees management, which started with "you're outta here" and ended with "you're outta here", Alex Rodriguez was let go on August with the proviso that he does not attempt to re-sign with another team. This was done because of the home run clauses in his contract. The Yankees would be obliged to pay him the bonus money they promised him if he reached any of the plateaus they had agreed upon, which totaled $30 million on top of his already bloated contract. Think of how ridiculous this is, a man who is three dingers shy of the mythical 700 Club not being allowed to go for it. That's really fucked up, but it's as it should be. It's exactly how a man who cheated the game, his fans, and ultimately himself needed to end his ignominious career.</div>
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He will collect the remaining loot on his contract and act as an "ambassador, instructor, and special adviser" to the team until next year. Then the affiliation will be over. The money is important, because according to baseball sources, the extra bonuses would have counted against the team's salary cap, and the Yanks weren't having any of that at a time where they are shedding payroll and getting rid of most if not all of their remaining dinosaurs to make room for some new blood. </div>
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After the retirement announcement, manager Joe Girardi sat A-Rod in Boston to make the final humiliation complete. He did play in his last scheduled game, but it was over way before then for this, one baseball's all-time leading pricks. His legacy will be argued over by baseball "purists" for years to come, but we here at "Busting Chops" prefer a different perspective.</div>
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Yuri Sucart, Rodriguez's long-time driver and international steroid bagman, received a seven-month prison sentence for his role in the Biogenesis scandal in June of 2015 after pleading to one count of conspiracy to distribute HgH. The story between Sucart and Rodriguez is a bit unsettling, but homeboy was no deer caught in the headlights of a famous professional athlete. While working for Biogenesis as a "buscon" (the word is spanish for "someone who procures"), he actively participated in the steroid distribution ring run by fake doctor Anthony Bosh, who tooted the place as a weight loss and rejuvenation clinic that sold PED's to professional and local high school athletes alike. If the case would have gone to court, Rodriguez would have had to testify. Luckily for him, Yuri didn't have the cash to pay for a lawyer and Rodriguez wasn't about to pay for one when his own legacy was on the line. Not that it matters, but saving even a little bit of face is better for a narcissistic egomaniac than having to tell the world his whole career was based almost exclusively on the use of performance enhancing drugs. </div>
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We then had to witness the the inevitable falling out between Yuri and A-Rod, and it wasn't pretty-</div>
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The story told by Yuri's wife is sordid and sad. Rodriguez allegedly came over to their house, threatened them, then pee'ed on a wall of their home. The story from the other side paints a different picture. Supposedly Yuri had attempted to blackmail A-Rod in exchange for keeping quiet. I guess all those years under the employment of one of baseball's richest players didn't pay off for him, because after all this Sucart is supposedly broke. Yuri became ill during this time and needed open-heart surgery. He is currently taking a cocktail of medications for various ailments. In other words, the whole experience with his cousin has left him humiliated (that's if people like this are capable of feeling shame), broke, and fucked up. Now in his early 50's, Yuri is looking at spending his golden years in a state of physical decline that no one would wish on anyone-</div>
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<b><i><span style="color: red; font-size: large;"><u>Oje, primo! E'toy jodi-oh! Que baina, mi loco</u>!!!</span></i></b></div>
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<b><i><u><span style="color: red; font-size: large;">Pobre mi...</span></u></i></b></div>
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<b><i><span style="color: red; font-size: large;"><u>A diesel Sucart chillin' like a villain in happier times</u>-</span></i></b></div>
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So now Alex Rodriguez gets to sail into the sunset, never having to come clean about a lifetime of steroid usage and his bank account intact. People in baseball land will forgive him. He'll be welcomed into the tv studios at ESPN with open arms, and if he decides being an analyst is what he wants to do, he will be handsomely compensated for it. Cats like Yuri Sucart, on the other hand, will end up flushed down the toilet of life faster than a turd coated in anal lube. This is what happens when you make a Faustian deal with the devil-the ones who need to wind up getting fucked, never ever do. </div>
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So here's to you, A-Rod, for a lifetime of PED-assisted faux entertainment. Here's to all the hypocritical, two-faced interviews you've ever done. Here's to you showing the world that being born talented, handsome, and charming just isn't enough for some people. You had to lie and cheat on top of that. Your disingenuous legacy is right here, alongside a cousin who will never regain his health and will (if he is indeed capable of such introspection) curse the remaining days of his life the moment he ever associated with you. </div>
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So while you, Alex Rodriguez, sit in Casa de Campo in the Dominican Republic with all the other jack-ass celebrities and fawning celebu-whores you so desperately look towards for validation, with a Cuban cigar sticking out of your mouth and a disgusting, sinewy, bleached blond, turtle-lipped bimbo whore at your side, think about how the Yankees were so disgusted with you that they never let you reach the milestone of 700 home runs-because you didn't deserve it. You know it, I know it, and the American people know it. Three shy and never to get there, because you were a dick and managed to find every conceivable manner to disgrace the game you so claim to love. Adios, motherfucker. You were great to make fun of. Your legacy will be that despite there being another asshole just like you right around the corner for us to tear to shreds (because there always is), none will ever do it quite like you.<br />
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Berzinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13584575495763261088noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7340564509663069327.post-76926982173333759242016-09-14T16:20:00.005-04:002016-09-15T22:53:10.439-04:00The sad state of pro cycling...<div style="text-align: justify;">
When I first became interested in cycling, I was enthralled by the 1989 Tour de France. The race had everything-compelling characters, plots, sub-plots, errors in judgement, and redemption. It was like a soap opera, albiet much better written to reflect the vagaries of everyday life amplified by it's more profound moments. As I was watching some of this year's edition of the Tour, it seemed as if the life has been sucked out of it. Chris Froome and the Sky team, rode the race as they always do-like accountants, never giving the fans moments of doubt, drama, or exhibiting the slightest hint of anything except the soul-crushing corporate model of success in modern day racing-purchase the best domestiques, race every pre-tour race in preparation for the Tour and not for the sake of "having a go", always with one eye on the power output to make sure one doesn't go over one's "limits". </div>
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<b><i><span style="color: red; font-size: large;"><u>A beaming Greg Lemond and a clearly dejected Laurent Fignon at the TdF podium, 1989</u>-</span></i></b></div>
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<b><i><span style="color: red; font-size: large;"><u>Lemond descending at the 1990 Tour</u>-</span></i></b></div>
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Chris Froome is as charismatic as spackling compound, and shares the same level of pigmentation. How someone who makes his living racing and training outdoors can maintain such a cadaverous countenance is beyond the laws of physiology. Forget about the motor he allegedly uses to help him in times of trouble in the mountains, or his alleged doping-the bigger question is how does he stay so damn white? Was he born in Transylvania? That to me is a bigger feat than him passing all his anti-doping tests while possibly juiced to the gills. A friend of mine was watching him and all he could say was, "man, what a honky". Another friend commented-"That guy isn't just white-he's Chernobyl white". I agree. </div>
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And he's just as exciting as his skin color. Froome has managed to surpass Spanish ex-pro Fernando Escartin as the cyclist with the absolute worst cycling form of all time. And I thought Sean Kelly was bad. I wonder how many more races King Kelly could have won if he were properly fitted to his bike. It certainly didn't help his climbing, riding with his knees practically scraping the tarmac. But this guy beats them all. While pedaling, Froome resembles a squid being pulled out of a septic tank-gangly and shitty. And that obnoxious "Sky Train" is just as unbearable to watch as the US Postal team, who invented the concept. As we all know, the formation of such a tactic, where one team manages to have all nine of its riders setting tempo up every fucking mountain, would not be possible without a team-orchestrated doping program, but Sky seem too smart to be caught out there at the present time. They certainly have the operating budget to pull it off, and team director Dave Brailsford seems to be tactically a bit more nuanced than his predecessor, the loathsome meathead Johan Bruyneel. </div>
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Froome's competitors must also be held accountable for the continuing lack of drama at this, the Superbowl equivalent of cycling and hands-down its biggest and most important event. Nairo Quintana has to be called out. I expected more from him. He wasn't injured and didn't suffer any debilitating illnesses during his run-up to the tour, yet he rode as if he had nothing in the tank and seemed content just to be somewhere near the front, riding a steady rhythm that exuded all the excitement of an EKG exam result from an exhumed corpse. The bullshit tactic of having two leaders for the same race needs to stop. Alejandro Valverde should not be given equal billing as Quintana at any grand tour. He's too old now and even during his doping heyday was never a serious contender for the Tour. So why have them ride as co-leaders?</div>
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<i><b><span style="color: red; font-size: large;"><u>1999 Vuelta a España, when being one of the heads of state meant riding like one</u>-</span></b></i></div>
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<span style="color: red; font-size: large;"><b><i><u>Evgeni Berzin and Tony Rominger duking it out for real at the 1995 Giro D'Italia</u>-</i></b></span></div>
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<b><i><span style="color: red; font-size: large;"><u>A REAL Mano a Mano fight, 1993 Tour de France</u>-</span></i></b><br />
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Because of his lackluster Tour performance, Quintana's victory at the Vuelta a España rings that much more hollow, seeing as his two main rivals weren't there to win. Chris Froome was out of gas from his efforts in July, and apparently his cycling motor didn't make it through customs. Alberto Contador is showing pronounced signs of a typical has-been grand tour rider, spending months preparing for races that are over for him before they even begin with crashes and injuries in early stages of races that were once easily avoidable. The fact that he lost two minutes to Froome in the last time trial of the Vuelta says it all. He NEVER lost anywhere near that kind of time in that particular discipline to any of his main rivals when he was at his peak. Now he is just a shadow of his former self. Let's hope for the sake of self-respect he does a victory lap next year and bows out with some semblance of dignity, not being dragged out of some cavernous ravine as the tour peloton leaves him mercilessly behind, a la Alexander Vinokourov when he was forced to call it a career at his last tour.<br />
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And let us not forget the disgraceful act by Nairo Quintana of hanging on for dear life to a Mavic neutral service motorbike on the Mont Ventoux, one of cycling's most iconic climbs. It's been a while since I've been so disgusted by such a spectacle. When I saw this and read his disingenuous excuse for doing so, I lost quite a bit of respect for him, which is another reason I wasn't impressed by his Vuelta win. Even if the television cameras are not in the vicinity, everyone has a cell phone with a camera. Why did he think he could possibly get away with this? The Tour organization made it worse by not fining him and not giving him a time penalty, which he richly deserved, but they did neither in hopes of him maybe making the race somewhat exiting by actually attacking, which he never did once the whole tour. He consoled himself by saying he's young and still has many years to contend the race. Sorry, but lack of effort in attacking your main rival and placidly exhibiting happiness with a podium spot makes me question his heart. I guess he'll wait until there is a weak field and put in a weak, uninspired attack a la Carlos Sastre in 2008.<br />
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Here's my point-I challenge any cycling fan to name the rider who won the road race at the Rio Olympics. I hate to say this because I'm no fan of doping, but the racing was much better back in the day when PED use was (more) rampant. Starting in 1990, when the Italians were the first to use EPO to maximum effect, dominating the majority of the entire cycling calendar with the exception of the Tour de France, not only was the racing better, but the riders were characters, the type that modern-day cycling sorely lack. They had personality and character that made every race worth watching, from the humblest Belgian mid-week semi-classic in February to the end of year slew of one-day races that culminate in the Giro D' Lombardia, the traditional closeout race of the year. If Italy is renown for its fashion and style, why are we getting bozos like Vincenzo Nibali? Where's the next Mauritzio Fondriest for fuck's sake? France had cats like Richard Virenque, Laurent Jalabert, and for a fleeting moment Luc Leblanc. Name one French rider who garners any interest today. Those cats rode with panache and had a style on the bike that we amateurs tried to emulate, some with more success than others because, let's face it-you can buy the bike and all the kit and STILL look pathetic. It was the pros who paved the way. Now we must look away in disgust. We now have dorks on poorly sized bike frames (someone explain to me why a rider who is 5'8" uses a 140 mm stem) whose uniforms are, for the sake of aerodynamics (marginal fucking gains!!!) form-fitting to an egregiously unflattering degree. </div>
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<i><b><span style="color: red; font-size: large;"><u>Raul Alcala. A more stylish rider you will not find</u>-</span></b></i></div>
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It's not just the cyclists. The industry as a whole has taken a turn for the worse. Not too long ago, Colnago's highest end frame, the carbon C-40, sold for $2400 or thereabouts. I remember purchasing the legendary Bianchi Ti-Megatube in the perennial celeste color for two grand, frame and fork. Try that now with a high end frame. You want a high end frame from any of the major players and you're looking at a cost north of 5 grand, with many competitively priced closer to 6 thousand balls, with a complete bke easily surpassing the 10 grand mark. The smaller, hand-crafted artisans are just as bad when it comes to pricing, and you have your choice of carbon, carbon, or carbon in three sizes-small, medium, and extra medium, with a sloping top tube as an added mandatory aesthetic monstrosity. Before we had Litsespeed for titanium, Cannondale for aluminum, and Cyfac of France for custom frames in ANY material. Companies like Colnago offered different frame materials at all price points, and the paint jobs were stylish. Thankfully, they are still going strong, but they have nowhere near the market share they once had. Because of all this, amateur/club cycling has become an exclusive yuppie club for middle-aged assholes with $12,000 complete bikes, $700 dollar GPS systems, SRM watt gauges, and complimentary testosterone patches from your friendly neighborhood anti-aging clinic. And don't forget the $300 bib shorts that last half a season before the material wears out and you're left with the excruciating visage of ass crack from the rider in front of you. </div>
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There's still hope on the cycling gear front for us Sunday posers, it's just going to cost more. As for pro races, forget it. When you have a pack of 40 riders contesting the last hill in Liege-Bastogne-Liege, when 260 kilometers is not enough to weed out the field on such a demanding course, you know parity is here to stay. And I hate to say it, but the biological passport and the draconian two-year ban for first-time doping offenders are to blame. Scrap the passport and go back to a more reasonable ban system-6 months for the first offense, a year for a second, and two years for a third. The battle against doping has only lead to more sophisticated and clandestine forms of doping, and it has leveled the playing field to the point where nobodies whom no one cares about are out there winning races. And re-calibrate the racing calendar so that the World Championships are held in August instead of fucking late September. Maybe then we'll see a more competitive field, with winners coming from the cream of the crop. Make the damn race worth watching with a challenging course and a hilltop finish every single year. A sprinter should be able to climb to win the once-prestigious rainbow jersey. Can anyone tell me who last year's road racing champion was? How about the previous year? I didn't think so, and that's the problem. </div>
Berzinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13584575495763261088noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7340564509663069327.post-4350232089755098922016-09-11T18:13:00.001-04:002016-09-16T10:05:26.300-04:00Cuba Dave...<div style="text-align: justify;">
Lots of things happened while "Busting Chops" was on hiatus, so it will take some time to catch up with the most egregious and ridiculous stories that have come across our desk. This one is an inter-office favorite, so let's get to it. Dave Strecker, better known as "Cuba Dave", was snagged by the authorities while attempting to leave Costa Rica and has been remanded to jail while awaiting trial. For those who don't know or are not familiar with the adult recreational activity known as whoremongering, Cuba Dave was once the lifestyle's internet Pied Piper, replete with a website chronicling his exploits and a Facebook page. He is also a published author, Hey, Adolf Hitler wrote a book, why not this dickhead? </div>
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Dave started out as a mild mannered and unassuming softball player and construction worker, who until his incarceration resided in Key West. Florida. He was honored in his former home state of Minnesota for his accomplishments on the field, and is rumored to have been inducted into softball's version of the Hall of Fame. I have no idea whether this was a local or national award. Regardless, here he is at some type of function held in his honor-<br />
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Halls of fame in any sport are usually a rogue's gallery of villains who have participated in all manner of nefarious skulduggery off the field, and Cuba Dave is no different. Whether he will have this honor stripped in absentia is yet to be determined, but his legal problems certainly are a black eye for the sport. Back to the predicament at hand. A while after his divorce, Dave began trolloping for whores in Cuba (so much for Americans not being able to travel freely in that country) and accumulated over 40 trips until he wore out his welcome. It's not inconceivable that someone from the Castro government had a word with him on his last outbound flight and was probably told nunca to come back. </div>
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He then took his talents to the North Coast of the Dominican Republic and began updating his various social media accounts, showering his adoring public with live, on-the-spot video reports that rankled the motherfuckers in charge of shit in the little whore town of Sosua. He even had the fucking audacity of having some sort of meet-and-greet, replete with a banner announcing his presence (refreshments served!!!), like some asshole doing a book tour. His easy-going demeanor earned him a hero's backlash that reverberated all throughout the whoremongering world. Adult entertainment establishments like PMP and Passion's, an institution in Sosua for over ten years, were shut down, never again to open. The owner of Passion's, German expat Peter Jensen, was charged with trafficking women for purposes of sexual exploitation and was, along with his wife, thrown in jail for three months pending charges of human trafficking and other illicit crap*.<br />
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*(It is worth noting that countries like the Dominican Republic follow the Napoleonic Code, Anyone arrested for anything is considered guilty until proven innocent, which is why three months detention in a third world shithole is par for the course for anyone unfortunate enough to get busted, and why anyone who lives there will tell you if you get into an automobile accident, even if it's not your fault, your best bet is to leave the scene, especially if you're a tourist or an expat. The other reason is that if you are arrested and there is any damage, YOU will be responsible for whatever got fucked up, and if you hurt someone you will owe the family money that MUST be paid or you will NOT be able to leave the country.)<br />
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<b><i><span style="color: red; font-size: large;"><u>Here is Cuba Dave frolicking with the chicas of Sosua, Dominican Republic</u>-</span></i></b><br />
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<b><i><span style="color: red; font-size: large;"><u>Cuba Dave, keeping it on the down-low (NOT!!!)</u>-</span></i></b><br />
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On his last trip to Sosua, Cuba Dave posted a cryptic video message that was difficult to analyze from the lack of details provided. From what we've gathered, he ran into a circumstance where he was extorted by one of his birdies who was in cahoots with the local police. He then left town (after paying quite a bit of cash to NOT go to jail) and never returned. He was duly blamed for causing the mayhem he left behind, and many business owners are still pissed at him for the job he did of blowing up their spots and putting Sosua on blastola. The town is currently undergoing changes which many business owners are not happy with, and the beginnings can be traced to Cuba Dave's internet antics. There are other political and financial forces at play as well, but Dave certainly did not help.<br />
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He was actually detained by the authorities when he flew back to Florida, and had all of his electronic equipment confiscated, which was later returned. This should have given him a hint that he was under surveillance, but again he did not heed to warning and continued on to Costa Rica to resume his pathetic shtick. Here is a photo of Cuba Dave's crap that was bagged and tagged by the US customs officers-<br />
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He used to give his hapless legion of loser fanboys "tips" from the comfort of his abode, a room in his apartment where the walls were covered with photos of his "conquests". Were these young women happy about this? Did he even get their permission? Thanks to Cuba Dave, it was now possible to visually sample the wares so cats making a trip would know who to look for, so in his mind he was doing these women a complete solid. The important thing about this lifestyle is discretion, which is what homeboy violated. Many young women do not want this type of information out there for all to see. They may not want their families knowing what they are doing. They usually tell their parents they are doing promotions for a club in a tourist area, or are working as a waitress in a bar or restaurant. Far too many have foreign boyfriends who send them money via Western Union. These men are derisively referred to around the home office as LDP's-Long Distance Pendejos. The women tell these guys they are home reading the bible when they are actually out on the strip looking for dates. They usually take umbrage at some moron trying to "big them up" on the internet if any of these scenarios are the case.<br />
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<b><i><span style="color: red; font-size: large;"><u>In the lair of the beast, with photos of all the girls he's "loved" before</u>-</span></i></b><br />
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So after he gets sent packing from the Dominican Republic, where to next for our hero? Why Costa Rica, of course. He began where he left off, with videos talking up the hotels that will let you take a prostitute into your room for free, and restaurants and bars catering to the scene, According to him, he was doing Costa Rica tourism a favor and claimed he was NOT promoting prostitution, which is illegal in Costa Rica due to a new law that was passed shortly before he started his shenanigans. On September 4, 2015, he was picked up at the airport while attempting to fly back home and was taken away in handcuffs by a squad of police officers that had been monitoring his online persona. He will be the first foreigner charged with violating this new law, and the whole case will be a template for similar cases going forward. Because Cuba Dave is an American citizen, he was held because he was a flight risk. For the sake of clarification, prostitution is LEGAL in Costa Rica. Promoting the country as a sex tourism destination is NOT, and this is what this law intends to address.</div>
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<b><i><span style="color: red; font-size: large;"><u>Cuba Dave being unceremoniously escorted to the Hoosegow in Costa Rica</u>-</span></i></b><br />
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While incarcerated, you'd figure this idiot would chill the fuck out. But nooooooooooo. Instead of exhibiting remorse and regret for offending the sovereign nation of Costa Rica in exchange for leniency, he had one of his friends put up a site called"freecubadave.com" in which he refers to himself as a "political prisoner". The writer rants about the rampant corruption of the Costa Rican judicial system, which I'm sure did not endear Dave to his captors, who I'm sure are still monitoring anything related to Cuba Dave on the internet. Note to anyone out there-next time you find myself in trouble in a foreign country and you do not have the requisite funds to pay your way out of prison, DO NOT take to the airwaves to insult the government of the country who is holding you as an involuntary guest. "Tragate la maldita lengua", show some contrition, and live to monger another day.<br />
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<b><i><span style="color: red; font-size: large;"><u>Inmate at San Sebastian</u>-</span></i></b><br />
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<b><i><span style="color: red; font-size: large;"><u>The five-star accommodations available at San Sebastian do not include wi-fi or coin-operated washing machines</u>- </span></i></b><br />
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Along with being a platform for his fucking too-stupid-to-be-believed diatribes against the Costa Rican judicial system, Cuba Dave is also using the site to solicit funds for his defense. He was initially held in San Sebastian prison, which incredibly, has been slated for closing due to poor conditions and overcrowding. Again, for a proper perspective, this prison must have been Dante's Inferno if it's considered so bad it's being shuttered, given the quality of typical Latin American slammers. After a few months he was placed in a facility for aging criminals, where life is not as harsh. Though no date has been announced, his trial is coming up very soon.<br />
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We have a few questions as to this whole mess, which no doubt will go unanswered, but hey, what are you gonna do...<br />
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1) Someone who has taken so many whoremongering trips MUST have some sort of disposable income, His story that he's nothing but a humble day laborer in the construction business simply does not make sense, not at his age and not with the amount of trips he's taken. At one point, he was taking a mongering trip once a fucking month. Working class dudes can't front that combination of free time and cash from paycheck to check. We here at "Busting Chops" have known our share of men who have dedicated their time and money to this so-called "hobby", and to a man they all have loot they do not admit having. Some mongers are your run-of-the-mill front artists and liars. That's the type of cat this particular game attracts. This hobby is all about having time and money to travel and spend on whores. You need plenty of both. No way Cuba Dave was living paycheck to paycheck. So why solicit money from the general public and claim you're broke with so much at stake?<br />
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A) Because he's mentally ill, miserly, and wants people to feel sorry for him.<br />
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B) He wants someone else to foot the bill for his problem so the money he DOES have stashed away he can spend on more mongering trips when he gets out.<br />
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C) He's an asshole with an egregious sense of entitlement who is also in denial*.<br />
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(*If you chose all three, you are correct.)<br />
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<b><i><span style="color: red; font-size: large;"><u>Cuba Dave in Key West, Florida</u>-</span></i></b><br />
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<b><i><span style="color: red; font-size: large;"><u>Cuba Dave on a construction site, working hard to save money for his next trip</u>-</span></i></b><br />
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Cuba Dave cuts a semi-athletic figure. Not bad for a geriatric schmuck in his golden years. He looks more robusto than you're average 65-year old man, despite the crocodilian skin tone. That's because for the last few years he's been taking a steady cocktail of steroids. This is what's given him the stamina to travel so much and bang so many prostitutes. From what I know about these drugs, his regimen would have had to include testosterone and HgH. I can only assume his supply was impossible to get while in jail, At his age, this would affect his endocrine system tremendously, leading to depression and a wholesale change in his physical appearance for the worse. Given the fact that a man his age has had to endure such harsh conditions while in jail, it could very well be that his mongering days are over. Sixty-five is not the age where someone can just pick up life where they left off if they were mongering hardcore like Cuba Dave and went through such a harrowing experience. Regardless of the outcome, he will no doubt be left scarred for the rest of his life.<br />
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Will he be able to continue working construction jobs, given that it's a young man's game? Highly doubtful. He'll have to settle for telling old war stories of his misadventures in some seedy Key West bar full of other septuagenarian has-beens and losers whose meaningless existence has added up to little or nothing of consequence. Some may dismay at what this delusional ass clown has decided to devote the very few remaining years of quality life left to him. Others see him as Captain America, a man falsely imprisoned who is fighting for his freedom from a corrupt third world banana republic that is hypocritically using him as a poster boy for a practice that is perfectly legal in their own country. I was told by someone who spoke with him in person that when in the Dominican Republic he was warned about keeping his stupid shit on the lowest of down-lows, but he didn't listen. He let his internet persona overtake the person, and the attention (such as it was) must have intoxicated him. Judging from his lack of tact in dealing with his situation post-arrest, he strikes me as an man caught up in his own persona, one he manufactured not to give other mongers pertinent information, but for shallow self-aggrandizement. I'm curious to see what happens at this kangaroo trial, where he will be the lead kangaroo. And the saddest part of all this is he did it to himself, with absolutely no encouragement or provocation from others.<br />
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Berzinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13584575495763261088noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7340564509663069327.post-79710876621889277172016-08-30T18:55:00.004-04:002016-08-31T00:01:06.112-04:00Television News and Notes...<div style="text-align: justify;">
Jennifer Lopez, she of the outsized ego, bloated donkey ass and "Jenny From the Block" persona (a cynically contrived ploy at disingenuously garnering ghetto street cred despite the fact that she grew up in a house with two working parents and attended catholic school, nowhere near the fucking South Bronx that she claims to "rep") is set to play Griselda Blanco in an upcoming HBO special. First of all, anyone familiar with the excellent documentary "Cocaine Cowboys" would understand that this lady's life story needs a multi-part series to cover, like Netflix did for Pablo Escobar in "Narcos". This woman was responsible for not only a large majority of the cocaine being trafficked into Miami during the late 70's-early 80's, she was also responsible for the majority of the depraved butchery that overran law enforcement in the greater Miami-Dade County. During her reign of terror, she employed the fiercest, most violently perverted gang of enforcers and hit men this side of the Nazi Einsatzgruppen. These motherfuckers were straight-up kamikazes, and it's a wonder she lasted so long and did relatively little time in jail given her criminal exploits. If there was ever a candidate for the electric chair, it was this depraved whore. </div>
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But J-Lo is a two-bit wanna-be prosthetic glamour queen. The real Griselda Blanco resembled a Latina version of Mrs. Manicotti from "The Honeymooners". She was short, dumpy, and not at all attractive. Lopez was quoted as saying she is fascinated by this woman's story. So are we here at "Busting Chops", but only as a gratuitous "look-at-that-train-wreck" type of spectacle. She's fascinating in a sort of Josef Mengele type of way. I believe in the right hands Griselda's story would be riveting. But in the hands of Lopez, whose production company is in charge of the project, it's going to be one prolonged narco-infomercial on the glamorous life of a drug queen as played by an aging, manufactured, "look-at-me", lip-syncing twat whose best days are behind her-literally, because her career has been all ass and nothing else. </div>
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<b><i><span style="color: red; font-size: x-large;"><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Yeah, the resemblance is fucking uncanny</span><span style="font-size: medium;">-</span></span></i></b></div>
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<b><i><u><span style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">Narcos Season 2</span></u></i></b><br />
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If you haven't caught Season 1, then watch it before you delve into Season 2 which starts September 2nd. 2016. Everything about this series is superb. The actors and the locations lend it an air of authenticity, The manner in which the story is told (part Spanish, part English, part narrated), keeps it alive and fresh. And the actor playing Pablo Escobar is amazing. Anyone into Brazilian cinema over the last 10-15 years will instantly recognize Wager Moura, who first came to our attention in the grand prison film "Carandiru". He learned Spanish specifically for this role, and even though the Colombian actor who played Pablo in the dynamic series "Pablo Escobar-El Patron del Mal" was a bit more convincing, Moura still manages to knock it out of the park with his performance. </div>
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This season is dedicated to the chase of Escobar once he escapes from the prison he built himself when it's found out that not only was he still conducting business from behind bars, he was assassinating co-workers from the drug trade, whoring, and coming and going as he pleased. From Season 1, we already have the major characters solidly in place for the final showdown. It is interesting also, and very well done by the writers, how every single cross and double-cross by every single entity involved in the drug trade and the Colombian government are seamlessly interwoven into a taught, fast-paced story line. THIS is how you write a fucking script for a televison series, damn it!!! All ten episodes will be available on Netflix when the first episode airs, so if you're one of those types who must binge watch, you can stay up all night and catch all remaining ten episodes all in a row without having to wait. </div>
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Berzinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13584575495763261088noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7340564509663069327.post-79055895970015037012016-08-29T12:50:00.004-04:002016-08-30T08:32:45.659-04:00Fear The Walking Dead Season 2...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Death Knows No Borders...Neither Does Boredom.</div>
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It's been two grueling seasons already, and enough is enough. There is so much wrong with this program that cancellation is its only hope for redemption. Unfortunately for all involved, there will be a season 3. </div>
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Let's start with the premise. Introducing..."The Douchebags!!!"-California's most boring, dysfunctional, and annoying family!!!<br />
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They have it all-broken home repair attempts by the all-too sensitive and henpecked Travis, an overbearing mother named after a street in Manhattan, and three useless, annoying teenagers, one a drug addict, another who wants to piss her parents off by dating a black guy, and a son who should have been dead way before the world collapsed. And just what the fuck is Travis, anyway? A swarthy high school English teacher of Mediterranean descent? A Mexican American who loves education? WTF? </div>
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Then there's mommy dearest, the white blonde matriarch (is there any other type, besides the Caucasian damsel in distress?) who totally sucks at keeping her family together, but still exudes a sense of authority she has neither earned nor is entitled to. Kim Dickens is a cutey in real life, but here she's just an idiot who should focus more on hooking her husband Travis up with some ass. But that's not possible, because between them they exude the sexual tension equivalent of a frog pithing experiment. </div>
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We the viewers were told this spin-off of "The Walking Dead" would fill in some pre-infection questions that were never asked or answered in the original series. In TWD, we got two depressing glimpses into the future-the CDC guy blowing himself up, and that cornball with the mullet who pretended to be a scientist with a cure so he could secure himself safe passage to Washington, DC for what turned out to be no good reason. This series saw the quick decline of civilization...and that was it. </div>
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Now we have the characters in Mexico, and it is clear the writers have no idea how to handle the way Mexicans deal with death in its new permeation of cadavers coming back to life to eat the living. The writers prefer a convoluted blend of Cinco de Mayo and Dia de los Muertos with a couple of shots of tequila thrown in for good measure. We also have former drug gangs who are still terrorizing the landscape, albeit on a much more subdued level. I'm waiting for Chapo Guzman to appear with an accompanying mariachi band singing the latest narco-corrido in homage to the walking dead. </div>
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The latest episode included a contrived, pseudo heart-wrenching, alcohol-fueled therapy session between Madison and Strand, whose character has taken a turn for the inconsequential. They wind up making enough noise to literally wake the dead, and what a surprise that they suddenly appear despite the fact that they've spent a couple of hours whopping it up and smashing glasses against a wall. They decide to barricade themselves behind the bar, and the last scene looks not like two desperate, drunk idiots making the wrong move, but a typical Saturday night at Señor Frog's. It made me want to order a drink-cyanide Kool Aid. </div>
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The tough, no-nonsense Latina with the bossy attitude is played by Cuban stunner Danay Garcia. The manner in which her character is written is so totally devoid of nuance and originality, it's as if the writers went directly to the Pancho Villa Handbook of Mexican/Latino Stereotypes and copied/pasted her into the story, which includes the inevitable love affair between her and pretty boy Nick. The only thing missing is a Mexican with a sombrero over his head sleeping against a cactus. The whole Mexican thing is so nonsensical, it can only be described as the manifestation of a writer's Latino fetish after spending a semester abroad. </div>
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Madison's obnoxious teenage children should, be chum for the horde of undead. They are not even worth reviewing for their egregious flaws. The worst that can be said about them is they are unnecessary distractions in a completely pointless story. </div>
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Having no plot to speak of, killing the most compelling character (Salazar) for absolutely no reason, and turning Strand from a calculating, Machiavellian poker player into a driveling, indecisive non-entity so that Madison can get more shine as the de facto leader of the group is bad enough. But this is a horror genre-where is the horror? Where is the creepiness of having to avoid dead cannibals who literally lurk around ever corner and can always be counted on to fuck everything up once the characters feel that one bit safe? Where is the claustrophobia of being trapped in a world that is coming down around the heads of the characters, who have no place to go and nowhere to run? </div>
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It's nowhere to be found, and it will be what ultimately kills the show, Two-bit family dramas are for soap operas, and we get enough of that already on daytime television. The ones who are walking dead aren't on screen, they are in the writing and directer's chairs. </div>
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<b><i><span style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">Fuck you, Travis. I hope it is.</span></i></b></div>
Berzinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13584575495763261088noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7340564509663069327.post-80162493888005841052016-08-28T08:48:00.010-04:002016-08-28T20:19:28.859-04:00The 2016 Rio Summer Olympics...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Now that the summer 2016 Summer Olympics are behind us, let's check out the highlights-</div>
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Nothing more fun than civil unrest right before the big games. Brazil is suffering the beginnings of what will go down as the worst economic recession in it's history, despite the fact that some are saying the worst is over. The international ratings service Standard and Poor's cut the country's sovereign status to 'junk". The neoliberal template for such catastrophes clearly states the bottom levels of any society must pay for the financial largess of the political and corporate elites. Austerity measures are already being implemented. Let's see how they are achieving this.<br />
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Brazil is in the midst of rewriting the constitution and the changes are as follows-</div>
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-Retirement age has been raised to 70 in a country where in at least three of its states, life expectancy is 65. Goodbye Golden Years, Hello casket. If you do live past 70, they might as well bury you alive. </div>
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-Constitutional changes will see an end to the current 44-hour work week in exchange for an 80-hour work week, with no more paid vacations, overtime pay, lunch breaks, or sick leave. </div>
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The poor and lower middle classes are always at fault when a country's economy tanks, so it's just as well they pay when things take a downward spiral. Ayn Rand must be doing a traditional Russian dance as she happily spins in her grave, watching from the depths of Hell where her spirit can finally rest at the spectacle of such economic comeuppance for Brazil's working class poor. </div>
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Nothing really put a damper on the games despite some fairly egregious shenanigans, like a decapitated corpse washing up right in front of the (almost) completed beach volleyball venue, the collapse of a cycling path that killed a couple of peeps, green algae in the diving pool, or the fact that the sailing and other maritime competitions were held in Guanabara Bay, where the untreated sewage of neighboring favelas finds its final resting place. To fully appreciate what the water in this bay is like, wait until you get sick with gut-wrenching diarrhea, use the toilet for three straight days, do not flush, and then stick your head in it with your mouth and eyes open. </div>
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<b style="font-size: x-large;"><i><span style="color: red; font-size: large;"><u>Nothing like swimming in the crystal clear waters of Guanabara Bay</u>-</span></i></b><br />
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<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-fUQdK0dLYkk/V8KrF74zbcI/AAAAAAAAI_s/H0CwZEV5vM82hr6FP_c3cXg7nuAz0Zg9wCLcB/s1600/_72207765_81cd5e2d-a4fc-4def-82d4-eb4fe1d8b763.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="227" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-fUQdK0dLYkk/V8KrF74zbcI/AAAAAAAAI_s/H0CwZEV5vM82hr6FP_c3cXg7nuAz0Zg9wCLcB/s400/_72207765_81cd5e2d-a4fc-4def-82d4-eb4fe1d8b763.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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There were the 150-pound rodents (yes, giant rats) strolling the golf greens without ever paying the requisite ticket fees. They are called capybaras, and they are monstrous. They definitely put the infamous NYC pizza rat into perspective-</div>
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<span style="color: red; font-size: small;"><u><span style="font-size: large;">Golfers Sergio Garcia of Spain and Bernd Wiesberger of Austria tasking photos of a capybara</span></u><span style="font-size: large;">-</span></span></i></b></span><br />
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Speaking of ticket fees, we also had an IOC official scalping tickets to events. Patrick Hickey, the 71 year-old president of Ireland's Olympic Council and member of the IOC's executive board, was arrested along with six other slugs for price gouging on tickets they were meant of the general public. Over 1,000 tickets were confiscated in the investigation, which is still ongoing. Hickey had to be hospitalized when Brazilian authorities came to arrest him, and he is currently in a Rio de Janeiro jail. The tickets were being funneled through a British hospitality company called THG Sports, and the executive of the parent company, Marcus Evans of Great Britain, is wanted in connection to this massive fraud scheme. </div>
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Headlines were made by Usain Bolt and his sexual trysts during the games, but so far no light has been shed on what IOC officials were up to. According to an undercover investigation by our Latin American Affairs correspondent, IOC officials imported prostitutes from Bogotá, Colombia and Buenos Aires, Argentina and put them up in Rio's finest hotels, showering these putas with free tickets to events, spending money, and gifts like Rolex watches, which IOC officials received free of charge from representatives of the Rolex company. </div>
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Nice, eh? These Five-star amenities are in stark contrast to the infamous favelas of Rio de Janeiro. I can only imagine what these prostitutes and their septuagenarian lovers would feel about the type of tone deaf decadence and grotesque use of IOC funds they enjoyed if they had any idea what it is like for the more unfortunate citizens of the city's poorer neighborhoods. In a twisted perspective of schadenfreude, some of the hookers who were conscripted to sleeping with these hideous, slithering, reptilian IOC mummies told their tales on social media of Viagra overdoses and heart attacks that were treated at a discrete private mobile hospital that was set up exclusively to cater to these embalmed zombies, away from the glare of the international media. </div>
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As for the events themselves, they were manned by unpaid volunteers and the venues completed by construction workers who averaged US $15 dollars a day, while IOC officials were provided with US $900 dollars a day per diem spending money. The Olympic team from India had to fly coach while their Olympic officials flew business class ON THE SAME FUCKING PLANE. And just check out what awaited them at the airport-</div>
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<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-svuKDlxL2NA/V8LLwagDfxI/AAAAAAAAJA4/U3cJAOU2hOEAcvxDlZE39ZxdYovXXtExACLcB/s1600/Rio%2BOlympics%2B2016.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-svuKDlxL2NA/V8LLwagDfxI/AAAAAAAAJA4/U3cJAOU2hOEAcvxDlZE39ZxdYovXXtExACLcB/s400/Rio%2BOlympics%2B2016.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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These are police officers and firefighters who have been working without pay for weeks, some even months, due to the lack of public money available that was siphoned off by politicians in order to pay for the ever-increasing costs of putting on the games. And they aren't the only ones. Teachers and other state employees have also gone months without paychecks, with the money nowhere in sight to pay them. Some estimates say that after all is said and done, the 2016 Summer Olympics will have cost Brazil US $12 billion dollars. So far the number is about US $9.7 billion. This is along with the US $25 billion Brazil spent on the 2014 World Cup, which the Brazilian national team, heavy favorites to win the tournament, duly fucked up in epic fashion, Here is a chart that describes the spending for these events in direct contrast to the money spent on the mosquito-borne viruses that have threatened the people of Brazil-dengue, zika, and chikungunya. It's always good to have one's priorities in order when you're a politician-</div>
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So what were these cops doing while on patrol with no pay? Shooting at practically any young black man who had the unfortunate circumstance of being caught out there during Rio's now-infamous and wholly ineffective Favela Pacification Program-</div>
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Yes, nothing like a paramilitary force armed to the teeth occupying your neighborhood while you attempt to make it through your day in one piece. My guess is these pacification programs, meant to establish the authority of the state and wrest it from the drug gangs will be a thing of the past. There is no money in the budget for these continuing actions, so the favlelas will be retaken by the drug dealers who didn't just disappear-they moved to other neighborhoods until the dust settles. </div>
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Here are a few books that will enlighten anyone interested in reading further on the subjects discussed herein-</div>
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No one here at "Busting Chops" witnessed one second of this debacle on television out of respect for the prevailing economic and social conditions of the people of Rio, and we were right in boycotting the event. It was yet another example of how the rich get richer while the poor and working classes pick up the tab. Besides, we tried to get a seat in front of the television, but the couch was taken-</div>
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We also did not need to see Carmelo Anthony of the New York Knicks and member of the US Olympic basketball team compare his neighborhood in Baltimore to any favela in Rio. His little slum porno tour was meant to pay homage to the stinking, pathetic conditions that any favela resident would do anything to leave behind, but there he was, calling the place "beautiful".<br />
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<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-fr0btps1Y0E/V8Lfj_AteFI/AAAAAAAAJCY/KVvktxgKcGAiIxVBEycjo1ueyxGXQofpQCLcB/s1600/carmelo-a-600.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-fr0btps1Y0E/V8Lfj_AteFI/AAAAAAAAJCY/KVvktxgKcGAiIxVBEycjo1ueyxGXQofpQCLcB/s400/carmelo-a-600.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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Newsflash-favelas are not representative of the "real" Rio de Janeiro any more than the projects of the South Bronx are a representative of the "real" New York City. Favelas are slums where there are little to no public services. They are places the government has chosen to abandon, leaving the administration of these areas to the drug gangs. Favelas are places where the playboys of Rio go to have their fun with underage prostitutes while consuming every drug known to man. Good thing the gangs were able to cash in on the marketing bonanza that was the Rio Olympics. Who would want to get left out? The logo below reads "do not use near children", a comforting thought when you're attending a baile funk in the City of God as you open a packet of cocaine while getting blown by a twelve year old hooker.</div>
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<span style="color: red;"><b><i><u><span style="font-size: large;">Drug traffickers with a social conscience</span></u>-</i></b></span></div>
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<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-PXD6_mnpwik/V8LaLwLqf9I/AAAAAAAAJB0/HMjhVyMdpWIz-4ghT3lXrwPsB3EoxHBMQCLcB/s1600/rio-drugs.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="230" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-PXD6_mnpwik/V8LaLwLqf9I/AAAAAAAAJB0/HMjhVyMdpWIz-4ghT3lXrwPsB3EoxHBMQCLcB/s400/rio-drugs.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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And what will happen now that there are no more intercontinental sporting events on the horizon, and the Brazilian public has to deal with the impeachment trial of it's president for corruption while facing an economic recession that has no end in sight? Stay tuned, because we will probably see more of the photo below before any sense of normalcy returns to the "Cuidad Maravillosa". </div>
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Berzinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13584575495763261088noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7340564509663069327.post-70430422471705857482015-11-26T09:03:00.003-05:002015-11-26T09:04:20.294-05:00Kim Davis, Christianity's New Foot Soldier...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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We here at "Busting Chops" try to steer clear of politics, religion, and race because these subjects are just too divisive, but this latest outrage has more to do with the galling levels of hypocrisy within the realm of public discourse, exemplified this time by the religious right. We have Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis, who had the audacity to take the law (Federal law, mind you) into her own hands and deny same-sex couples marriage licenses because it goes against her religious beliefs. We have Senator Ted Cruz on the campaign trail trying to convince America that Christians are being persecuted in this country, and that this is just another example of the attacks on wholesome middle American values. You know who he's talking about-the Americans that these presidential wanna-be douchebags pander to by anointing them the "REAL" Americans. The liberal media elites make their homes at the farther reaches of either shore NYC and California), but from sea to shining sea, these overall-wearing, ah-shucks rednecks are the red state constituency that is the cornerstone of conservative politics, the ones that eat shit like this up and take it as an opportunity to illustrate how the country is going to hell in a liberal handbasket. </div>
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What galls me is Mike Huckabee has taken the mantle and ran with it. This guy believes that Federal law, as upheld by the Supreme Court, does not supercede God's law. According to Huckabee, that includes excluding people he doesn't like from Federal protection accorded to all US citizens. Then we get thrusted into a cynically staged, mentally dulsional Fundamentalist county fair when Davis was released from jail. She took off with it like a Division I mid-major basketball team who just found out they got an at-large bid to the NIT. The only thing missing was her (latest) husband biting the head off a chicken and drowning some poor schmuck in a dusty, polluted river to complete the baptism of stupidity we were subjected to. </div>
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Davis pops out of the office wearing the latest in Puritan chic, replete with the one piece 17th Century homecoming gown with the sewn-on straps that made her look like Cotton Mather's estranged love partner. The only accessory she was missing was the black belt buckle shoes the Pilgrims wore to their first Thanksgiving. </div>
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Let's keep in mind that she a publicly appointed publc official, and MUST abide by Federal law, which supercedes the teachings of the bible where it says homos are an abomination to mankind and present an irreconcilable affront to traditional marriage between a man and a woman. And Davis should know, because she's been married four fucking times. We found a chart that illustrates her devotion to this sacred practice, which should sheds some light on why she deserves the ridicule she's getting-</div>
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I cannot fathom for the life of me how this woman was able to procure so many marriage proposals, but this is Kentucky we're talking about. Take a good look at this flat-assed, pasty white, bird-faced shrew. Can you imagine what sort of toxic waste gets dumped in the municipal drinking water in Kentucky when freaks like her are birthed? This is the same state that graced our planet with Ashley Judd, for cryin' out loud. How did this genetic malfeasance make it off the short bus to become a Federal county clerk? </div>
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Nepotism, that's how. Her mother held the same position for 30 or so years, and had hired her daughter to work in the same office until she retired. Then Kim took over when mommy left. And suddenly she's been thrust into the national spotlight thanks to her refusal to obey and carry out the law. She has become a hero to the conservative right-wing religious zealots who want to turn back the clock on human rights. Let me remind Huckabee that God's law, as written in the bible, is a bit problematic when taken literally. For example, if you see your neighbor working on Sunday, you re well within your rights to stone him/her to death. This is why we have Judicial law, with a separation of church and state as an important facet. But these media whores took the opportunity to photo-op the hell out of this illegal activity for their purposes-<br />
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Check out Mike Huckabee (above) and Ted Cruz (below) with Kim Davis and her goofball husband with the overalls. All he's missing is a corn cob pipe, a banjo, and a bottle of moonshine-<br />
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American politics have become irrational and irreconcilable to the realities confronting average Americans. This incident is a perfect example that our leaders have everything going for them except leadership qualities, and it has to stop. Let's see how long it takes the American people to wake up and say "enough is enough". </div>
Berzinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13584575495763261088noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7340564509663069327.post-68846924955701555752015-09-09T23:54:00.000-04:002015-09-11T06:33:34.476-04:00Advice for the incoming Latino Class of 2019, or however long it takes you to graduate...<div style="text-align: justify;">
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If you're a young Latino from the 'hood and are attending college for the first time, we here at "Busting Chops" have compiled a list of "Do's and Don'ts" that will make acclimating to your new environment easier, because-and trust me on this one-no one will break it down for you like us.</div>
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1) Make sure you've cleared up any outstanding warrants before your first day of class.</div>
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2) Don't show up on campus with all your possessions in garbage bags. You're going to school, not a homeless shelter. Even if the only people you know who travel are convicted felons doing time upstate, somebody close to you must have at least one fucking "maleta" they can let you borrow, even if the zipper's broken and you have to close it with duct tape. </div>
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3) Do not throw trash out of your dorm window. You are living on a college campus, not in some urine-soaked tenement building in the Bronx where it's a given that nobody gives a fuck.</div>
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4) If you stroll by someone's dorm room and the door is open and no one is there, this is NOT an invitation for you to walk in and steal something.</div>
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5) When an attractive white girl you don't know walks by and says "hello", that does not mean she's a nymphomaniac and wants to sleep with you. She is just being friendly. Regardless of what you've heard, keg parties do not turn white girls into sluts. If no pretty girl would voluntarily sleep with you back home, all the Bill Cosby date rape drugs in the world will not alter this reality once you're on campus.<br />
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6) Make every effort to do well your first semester. It will set a better tone for the rest of your academic career than getting three incompletes and a C minus in "Inroduction to Elementary Spanish I". A poor performance will only cement the fact that you are illiterate in TWO languages (English and Spanish), and are on campus simply to fill a racial quota. Don't do that to yourself. Have some fucking pride.</div>
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7) Despite what your toothless, heroin-addicted uncle Pedro says, you cannot apply for a Section-8 voucher to help pay for on-campus housing.</div>
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8) Take advantage of the fact that you can eat three meals a day without having to worry about your mother's food stamps running out before the end of the month.<br />
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9) Don't go around telling people your father is a world famous guitarist just because your last name happens to be "Santana". You will then have to explain why he's rich and you are living in the projects.</div>
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10) If you've made it as far as college, you are no thug, so don't start acting like one in an attempt to impress or intimidate your white, middle-class, suburban classmates. Spare us the ghetto ghost stories of gangs, pimps, hustlers, and gratuitous shoot-outs over drug turf-that's what rap albums are for. If you're a student, that's not your life and it never was. Cut the crap and focus on what you're in college for, to avoid rape charges while trying to graduate within a reasonable time frame.</div>
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<span style="color: red; font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;"><u>Editor's Note</u>-</span>To my fellow inner city Latino college-bound peeps out there, take very seriously this one and only opportunity you have to break the cycle of poverty. If you count on being the next Jay-Z or the next "Boy George" Rivera, then "Vaya con Dios" with that bullshit and read no further, because it won't do you any good. For all the rest who may give a damn and are truly concerned, here is the real scoop that no fucking guidance counselor will ever articulate to you-while in college, don't be the typical dickhead out every night partying, getting high and drunk, chasing pussy, and missing class if you're on scholarship. </div>
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If you fuck up, you won't be allowed to return until you pay all that money back, Nowadays one semester at even a state institution of higher learning will run into the tens of thousands of dollars, which means the dream for you will be over. I'm not joking about this. Schools will not release your transcripts until they are reimbursed for the money you wasted, which means you will not be allowed to attend even a community college until that debt is cleared. This includes student loans. Default on one of those and you'll never be allowed to apply for another one until you pay up. The rest of your better-off friends will be graduating while you are back livng in the ghetto wondering what the fuck happened, surrounded by losers who love nothing more than watching someone who had potential join them in their downward spiral towards the septic tank called Palookaville. </div>
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Being poor and Latino means walking a fine line that does not allow for any fuck-ups. Don't make it worse by ruining what is arguably the only chance you'll get to change your life for the better. Have a great semester, gentlemen. I know you can do it.</div>
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Berzinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13584575495763261088noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7340564509663069327.post-68313594320633833522015-09-04T00:45:00.000-04:002015-09-04T01:10:47.624-04:00The World's Most Expensive Adult Film...<div style="text-align: justify;">
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We are back with the ubiquitous Fifty Cent (aka "Fitty"), who counts himself nearly penniless these days due to an financially lascivious lifestyle that he claims was an exaggeration for the sake of selling albums and generating social media buzz for his music label. He's in the process of filing for bankruptcy just so he can get out of paying a settlement to one Lastonia Leviston, the baby mama of Miami rapper Rick Ross. How'd the involved parties get to this point? Fitty made a sex tape with this woman and then released it to the public. He did this to shame Rick Ross, the fat, serial blunt-smoking, grossly-tattooed entertainer who claims a life of crime before the rap game when in reality he had the un-gangsterish job as a guard at a correctional facility. The release of this tape was the result of one of those tired rap beefs that flare up whenever one or both parties are looking for even more publicity, but this one went a bit too far in the direction of stupid for our resident hardcore rapper from Queens, New York.<br />
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<span style="color: red; font-size: large;"><b><i> You mean this ain't real?</i></b></span><br />
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Fitty lost on two counts-the initial award was for $5 million, with another one tacked on for another $2 milion in punative damages. I can see this being applicable, because poor Ms. Leviston has a reputation to uphold when she goes to the corner bodega to purchase menthol cigarettes and a six-pack of Coor's Light with her EBT card. We can't have the guys at the loosey spot thinking she's a whore now, can we? The video was posted in 2009, and Fitty released it when his beef with Ross was heating up. Apparently he was saving it just for a moment like this, and it backfired tremendously on him. But that how idiots behave when they have a milion dollars and no sense.<br />
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<span style="color: red; font-size: large;"><i><b>Rick Ross, having the last laugh...</b></i></span><br />
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Two issues played against the defendant. One, the trial was held in NYC, a city that has a reputation for handing out large settlements in civil cases, especially in the outer boroughs of the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Queens. Two, Fifty Cent isn't exactly a hero to working class people or women. The manner in which he flaunts his wealth and his use of grotesque images of misogeny and violence to sell his warped ideal of the American Dream does not resonate with the average working class juror.</div>
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Let's get one thing straight-this Levinston twat is an absolute money-grubbing swine. She got with Rick Ross and had a child with him, and sued him for child support to support her ghetto bling-bling fantasies. She then got with Fitty as a revenge fuck against Ross and happily filmed an abhorrent sex tape where it is clear she was down with the program. She exibited the enthusiasm of an overweight suburban fuckface loser heading into a Subway sandwich shop to choke on a foot-long in the hopes that he'll lose weight just like Jared.<br />
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<b><i><span style="color: red; font-size: large;">Levinston </span></i></b><b><i><span style="color: red; font-size: large;">outside the courthouse </span></i></b><b><i><span style="color: red; font-size: large;">kissing and hugging the jurors who just made her rich- -</span></i></b><br />
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We here at "Busting Chops" pride ourselves on the integrity of our research, so for the sake of authenticity we sat down and watched the 13-minute video in question. It's absolutely vile. The beginning of the video shows Fitty in a costume trying out some half-baked comedy act. We don't remember his schtick because it wasn't funny. Then we see the offended party kneeling down and talking into the camera, making smiley faces and spreading her legs in gleeful joy. Nowhere in the hisotry of amateur adult cinema have I seen a whore so exstatic to express herself than on this video. She clearly knew she was being filmed and was happy to take part. The sex act itself has shitty production values, is badly choreographed, and shows Fitty looking like a bloated ex-athlete who had come down from a steroid cycle. Ms. Leviston is an absolute clydesdale, and I have no idea why a guy who has access to the most beautiful whores and hoochies this side of Hugh Hefner would stoop to having sex with this Malasian Hairy Backed Boar.</div>
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Levinson wanted revenge against her baby's father, and Fitty wanted to "stick it to him', as it were. It backfired for Fitty but morphed into a financial bonanza for the aggrieved party. The victim in all this is the child Ross had with this bitch. For the rest of her life she'll be inundated with taunts that her mother is a money-grubbing whore, and they would be correct in their ASS-essment. The poor child is going to suffer massive psychological trauma because of her mother, who doesn't care because that's how whores roll. But it's the financials that are of more interest, because Fifty Cent is crying that he's penniless for the purpose of not paying the judgements against him. He is also on the hook for $18 million to a headphone company when the deal fell through.</div>
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Meanwhile, all he did was brag about his $100 million dollar buy-out of his shares of the Vitamin Water company, and had purchased Mike Tyson's old pimp mansion back when Iron Mike was getting played like a lute by the queen of all pop culture gold digging tramps, Robin Givens. When asked in Federal court about his earnings selling warmed-over, bullshit, played-out gangster rap to idiotic suburban youth and even more stupid urban youth who consider this dickhead a hero, he stated he only made 10 cents an album. That doesn't like a deal a smart businessman would make, and it probably isn't true. But he surely had no problems flaunting his wealth on videos and on every single red carpet to every single moronic, meaningless awards show in Hollywood, so now he's going to be made accountable for every dime because eventually, he's going to have to pay these settlements, even if it's 50 cents at a time. And it couldn't have happened to bigger asshole.<br />
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<span style="color: red; font-size: large;"><b><i>Monopoly money, baby-</i></b></span><br />
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<br />Berzinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13584575495763261088noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7340564509663069327.post-18848481233135650272015-08-20T17:34:00.002-04:002015-09-04T01:17:10.838-04:00A Hero Ain't Nothin' but a Sandwich...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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This is the title of a book (and a film) that has nothing to do with the Subway fast food franchise, but it is apropos to the situation they find themselves in. For the last 17 years, they've dedicated the majority of their advertising muscle on the inprobable story of an anonymous midwestern dork who claimed he lost hundreds of pounds simply by exercising (walking was major part of his regimen because he was too fucking fat to run) and eating two Subway sandwiches a day. He had an innocuous, non-threatening, "I'm an everyday guy just like you" type of charisma, replete with perfectly aligned, phosphorescent white teeth and a sincere, ah shucks smile that was made for tv. People could identify with this schmuck because he was "one of us", an everyman-turned-media star by virtue of accomplishing something many Americans struggle with-weight loss.</div>
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Hence the advertising scheme came to life. Anyone can lose weight by eating our sandwiches!!! Just ask Jared!!! Give Subway props for being able to market this semi-androgynous doufus as a weight losing, marathon-running swashbuckler to frustrated lardasses everywhere in an attempt to sell under-meated, over-lettuced bullshit sandwiches to an unsuspecting public for the last 17 years. A hero ain't nuthin' but a sandwich, less so in this case.</div>
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<b><i><span style="font-size: large;"> <span style="color: red;">Too old for you, motherfucker? </span></span></i></b><br />
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The odd thing about this character was that no one seemed to tire of him. He cultivated the persona of the harmless, ageless spokesperson for weight loss despite the fact that he was shilling one of the worst gastonomical monstrosities this side of a rat salad. Fogle wrote an inspirational book, made public appearances all over the world, and was celebrated as "The Subway Guy". He lived in a very nice suburb in Indiana and had a net worth of around 17 million dollars. Not bad for someone who has no talent whatsoever.</div>
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But there always seems to be a "but" behind every American success story. Jared Fogle, despite raking in millions of dollars for basically playing himself on countless Subway commercials and print advertisements, has admitted to engaging in sexual acts with underage girls. The lasciviousness of his actions are recounted in court documents, where on one trip to NYC he asked a 17-year old if she had any friends, "the younger the better". He was also found with child pornography on his computer, supplied to him by Russell C. Taylor, the former executive director of his charity called "The Jared Foundation". Taylor attempted suicide while incarcarated for similar charges. Fogle has stated that he shocked-SHOCKED!!!-that the manager of his charity was dabbling in child pornography, when he was in on it with him the whole time.</div>
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<b><i><span style="color: red; font-size: large;">Hindsight being 20/20, this photo seems quite inappropriate-</span></i></b><br />
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One neighbor's response was, sadly, way too typical. When asked about the situation, the person feigned disbelief, and stated "I never thought something like this could happen HERE". By "here" he meant the lilly-white suburbs of Indiana. So much for wholessome midwestern values.</div>
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Money and fame do strange things to people. It also does strange things to strange people. I heard someone say "if you want to see someone's true character, give them some money and see how they act". Well, I think we've seen enough with this schlub. Looking back on it, it all makes sense. He had a certain creepiness to his demeaner, as if he were merely a puppet stuffed with lettuce and condiments like the average Subway sandwich. He seemed oddly calm and at peace with the world, wanting nothing more than to stroll over to his nearest Subway store for his daily foot-long piece of crap sandwich that no self-respecting connosoir would go near.</div>
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Subway did a great job marketing this guy, and now they will pay the price. Then again, their problems didn't start with this unfortunate choice of spokeperson, nor will it end with him. They sell terrible sandwiches. One of the active ingredients in their bread is a plastic-type filler that is used to manufacture yoga mats. There are twice as many Subway franchises as McDonald's, it's kissing cousin in the synthetic fast food meat wars. You can't make money by over-saturating the market with unadulterated garbage that can be found somewhere else except with more quality ingredients. They will have to scale down and cut their franchises by at least half if they want to sustain viability in a market where they are competing with the local deli. I know mine makes much better sandwiches, and I have a choice of about 15 in a three-block span. The only subway I go into is the one that takes me downtown, where I have to share a compartment with the resident welfare queens and Section-8 losers here in NYC.</div>
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Due to a plea deal, Fogle is facing a minimum of five years in prison, and has agreed to pay out $1.4 million dollars to a multitude of victims. His wife is divorcing him, so he can say good-bye to at least 50% of whatever net worth he had left, plus the house. When he gets out he'll has to register as a sex offender. The only place that will have him will be Compton, so he'd better familiarize himself with NWA's Greatest Hits so he can fit in.</div>
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The question is this-are there any heroes left in the world that aren't served with tomatoes, pickles, and a side order of Federal indictments? Hulk Hogan, the 1980's pro wrestling icon, who cajoled all his little Hulk-o-Maniacs to drink their milk, eat their veggies, and say their prayers every night, turned out to be a steroid-addled racist. Bill Cosby, once America's favorite dad, was a slimy, self-promoting huckster/rapist who ghoulishly drugged his victims to have sex with them when they were passed out. And now we have Jared Fogle. We are left with Donald Trump, douchebag extraordinaire, a man running for President of the United States who is so clearly out of touch with the American people that he appears in public with an albino beaver pelt on his head and wants everyone to think it's not a fucking wig that's been perma-drilled into his scalp by the same engineers who dug Chapo Guzman's escape tunnel.</div>
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What the fuck is this world coming to...</div>
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<b><i><span style="color: red; font-size: large;"><u>Editor's note</u>-</span></i></b>it seems as if the Subway fast food company was warned about Fogles' predilictions years earlier but chose to ignore them. The latest allegations are that he took vacations to Thailand to have sex with girls as young as 9. Just for this they should be closed down, but they of course deny it.</div>
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<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/subway-franchisee-says-subway-knew-about-jared-fogles-disturbing-behavior-2015-8">http://www.businessinsider.com/subway-franchisee-says-subway-knew-about-jared-fogles-disturbing-behavior-2015-8</a><br />
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Ah, but there's more. His charity, which was supposed to donate $2 million dollars yearly to childhood obesity programs all across the country, never handed out one freakin' dime to anyone. They did pay a hefty salary to Fogle's partner-in-porno-crime Russel C. Taylor, who Fogle is now suing because the house he lived in was paid by a loan from Fogle. Fogle is looking to claim the property because Russell hasn't made any payments on said loan due to the inconvenient fact that he's in jail. </div>
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All of this would be funny if it weren't so pathetic and sad. This guy was able to make a mint by advertising himself as the weight-loss champion of the United States, and all he had to do was keep eating those horrid sandwiches and doing personal appearances for the company, and yet that wasn't enough. Lusting after little children was what was eating at him (pun intended) the whole time he was smiling into the camera while cajoling all of us us to "eat fresh". When I think of this slogan, it never occured to me that he was talking about 9-year old Thai girls the whole time. Fuck you, Jared-I hope you rot in hell. </div>
Berzinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13584575495763261088noreply@blogger.com0