Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 781
May 12, 2016
10 athletes’ outrageous excuses for failing drug tests
Melky Cabrera (Credit: Jeff Haynes/Reuters)
Drug testing, whether for performance-enhancing drugs or just plain recreational ones, is part of top-level athletic competition, both in professional leagues and international amateur competition. But too many athletes seem oblivious to that fact, as the constant stream of positive drug tests in sports attests.
Houston Texans offensive tackle Duane Brown got caught up in the drug testing trap last fall, when he was suspended for 10 games by the NFL for violating the league’s performance-enhancing drugs policy. But he beat the rap, getting the suspension overturned on appeal by claiming he ate too much meat on a trip to Mexico.
Yeah, right, Mexican meat made him test dirty. Well, actually, maybe it did. Brown had tested positive for the steroid-like substance clenbutrol, but won his appeal by presenting evidence that some meat produced in Mexico and China was contaminated with the substance. He produced receipts showing he ate at least 10 hamburgers and two steaks during his weeklong vacation there last fall.
Now, that was a good excuse. Other athletes have tried creative excuses for positive drug tests, but unlike Brown, they didn’t have any evidence to support their claims. Here are 10 world-class athletes with really whack excuses for testing dirty and no receipts to back them up.
1. Mark Bosnich. The goalkeeper for Chelsea’s soccer team was suspended for nine months in 2002 after testing positive for cocaine. He explained that, yes, he had used the drug, but only to teach his wife a lesson. “I told her that for every line of cocaine she took, I would take two, and that’s exactly what I did.” Years later, he admitted he had a bad cocaine habit.
2. Melky Cabrera. The San Francisco Giants outfielder tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs in 2012, was suspended for 50 games, and went to extraordinary lengths to explain it away. Cabrera paid someone $10,000 to create a fake website selling fake products, then claimed he accidentally ingested performance-enhancing drugs via a fictional product obtained on the website. Major League Baseball and the FBI managed to trace the website back to Cabrera.
3. Richard Gasquet. The French tennis player tested positive for cocaine in May 2009 and dropped out of a tournament because of the positive test. But that didn’t stop him from trying to claim he came up dirty because he made out with a woman who had snorted some at a local nightclub.
4. Ben Johnson. The Canadian sprinter won Olympic gold in 1988 only to see it stripped away after he tested positive for the steroid stanozolol. He claimed someone had spiked his energy drink. He was suspended for three years, during which time he admitted injecting steroids, and was later hit with a lifetime ban after failing a drug test again in 1993.
5. Tyler Hamilton. The U.S. cyclist was nailed for blood doping in 2004, but tried to blame the foreign blood on a “vanishing twin” he had absorbed into his own body before birth. Tyler tested positive for blood doping numerous times. The cycling teammate of Lance Armstrong eventually admitted to doping and wrote a book about its prevalence in the world of cycling.
6. Floyd Landis. Landis won the 2006 Tour de France, but was disqualified after testing revealed high levels of testosterone. First he blamed the test results on drinking too much whisky the night before, but when doctors said that was impossible, he went full brazen: “The levels that I’ve had during the tour and all my career are natural and produced by my own organism.” Landis later ‘fessed up to continual doping and also outed Lance Armstrong and other top riders as dopers.
7. LaShawn Merritt. Merritt won Olympic gold as a sprinter in 2008, but was suspended for two years after failing three drug tests in 2009 and 2010. He blamed a penis-enhancement medication called ExtenZe. “Any penalty I may receive for my actions will not overshadow the embarrassment and humiliation that I feel inside.” Indeed.
8. Dennis Mitchell. The American sprinter and 1992 Olympic gold medal winner as part of the 400-meter relay team tested positive for high levels of testosterone in 1998. His defense was that his maleness was up because he had five beers and had sex with his wife five times the night before. “It was her birthday. The lady deserved a treat,” he explained.
9. North Korea Women’s Soccer Team. At the 2011 World Cup, five members of the team tested positive for steroids. Their handlers’ explanation was that the players had been struck by lightning and had to resort to a traditional Chinese remedy involving deer musk glands to recover. The authorities weren’t buying it; the players were suspended and the team was banned from the 2015 World Cup.
10. Javier Sotomayor. The Cuban high jumper won the gold at the 1999 Pan American Games, but was stripped of his prize after testing positive for cocaine. Sotomayor suggested he was set up by someone trying to make Cuba look bad, and Cuban leader Fidel Castro seconded that notion, blaming the “Cuban-American mafia.” Sotomayor was suspended for a year, then tested positive for a performance-enhancing drug in 2001, effectively ending his career.
[This article first appeared on Alternet]
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Daryl Hall explains it all to Salon: “Record company executives are the most backward bunch of idiots I’ve ever seen”
Daryl Hall performs in Atlanta on September 19, 2015 (Credit: Robb D. Cohen/Invision/AP)
Daryl Hall is possibly the most interesting man in music. He and John Oates form the most successful musical duo of all time, and even though, their setlists during sold out shows around the world are full of instantly recognizable hits from the 1970s and ‘80s, they are not a nostalgia act. More than other performers in their age bracket, including The Rolling Stones and Bruce Springsteen, Daryl Hall and John Oates have constructed a coalition of baby boomers who remember where they were when “Rich Girl” or “Sara Smile” first hit the radio, and thirty and twenty-something fans who enjoy the smooth, soulful, and pop-infused style of “I Can’t Go For That” and “Out of Touch” as if those songs came out yesterday.
Hall owes much of his multigenerational admiration to his songwriting – clandestinely innovative and wildly varied – his voice – one of the best in the business – but also his early adaptation of the internet as an enhancement of art and entertainment, rather as a murderer of creativity, as many often call it. In 2007, Hall launched “Live From Daryl’s House” – an internet show depicting Hall and an invited guest jamming to a variety of songs within the confines of his home. The show still broadcasts from the internet, but also plays on the MTV Live network, and it is now filmed in Hall’s live music club, aptly named “Daryl’s House.”
Guests range from legends like Smokey Robinson, Cheap Trick, and The O’Jays (Cheap Trick was the guest for the debut episode of the current season) to rising stars such as Aloe Blaac, Amos Lee, and another guest of the current season, Wyclef Jean.
The show has a natural excitement. Hall’s band is in peak form – playing grooves so tight it is a wonder there is any oxygen in the room – and Daryl Hall’s voice soars whether he is singing blues based rock alongside Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top or he is shouting with soul to the music of Sharon Jones and The Dap Kings.
One of the elementary principles of evolutionary biology is environmental adaptation. Hall adapted early, and is now reaping the rewards. Proving himself the fittest of his generation in a war of attrition that often becomes survival of the fittest, Hall has created a program noteworthy for its postmodern synthesis of the past and future squarely in the present. It relies on present technology as a medium, giving projection into the future of music, but does so in service and celebration to the more organic, live, and human creativity of the music culture in which Hall first developed. Rather than an overly packaged, polished, and programmed product of committee creation, Live From Daryl’s House showcases talented people doing exactly what talented people do, without filter and without distortion.
I recently had a conversation with Hall, and learned that he is as passionate in his perspective as he is in his performance. Like a professor in the Department of Funk, Soul, and Pop Studies, he needs little provocation to provide “adult education” on everything from the state of music commerce to conflicts over cultural appropriation.
When you first started “Live From Daryl’s House,” what kind of ambition did you have for it, and did you envision that it would be such a success?
It has definitely evolved in a very natural way, and I look at the early shows and, even though we only had three cameras, and it was our friends holding the cameras, those shows were pretty damn good that way. So, really the challenge, over the years, is holding on to the looseness of it, and not getting into too formulaic of a situation, or not making it too solid. It needs to feel like it is still just an internet show – the way it was back in the day.
It does maintain that feeling. I just watched the Cheap Trick episode, and there is a passion that is palpable and infectious. Do you see “Live From Daryl’s House” as subversive, because so much of what now passes for television and music entertainment is “formulaic,” as you implied?
I look at everything I do as subversive, and this show in particular. My brain works that way. I’m an iconoclast. I don’t like the status quo. I used the word “solid” before, because I don’t like solidity. I don’t like formula. I don’t like any of those things that too often accompany music and entertainment in general. This show is the opposite. One of my ideas behind it was to turn everyone’s perception about music upside down: No audience, no pretensions, no script. Everyone just gets together, starts to have fun, and explores what they can do and create together.
Neil Young has an excellent lyric, “Ordinary people are bringing the good things back.” Do you believe a show like yours can help the cycle spin faster and accelerate a departure from all the artifice, and return to the organic quality of art and entertainment?
I would like to think so. If anything, it can provide an alternative to all of those things. I sense from the popularity of the show that there is a strong desire to get back to the real things, and the sooner everyone realizes that, the better off we will all be.
You’ve been inordinately successful throughout your career, but have challenges come with having a subversive attitude? It seems that our culture reacts poorly to anything that it cannot neatly categorize. Given that your music itself is a blend of soul, rock, and pop, has part of your career always been an uphill climb?
Yes, it always was. John (Oates) and I always had to do it ourselves. We never had the media wind at our sails. The critics were never behind us. So, we had to prove everything, and that is still happening. I had to prove that this show would work. When I first put the show on the internet, I did approach some networks, and I got the predictably stupid response. No one got it. No one understood why someone would want to watch what we’re doing with this show. It is frustrating, but in some ways, more fun this way.
There’s a big debate, and sometimes it is frustrating because it cuts out the nuances, but it is over the influence that the internet is having on music and the arts. As someone who has taken great advantage of the internet to enhance what you do, and enlarge your audience, where do you fall on this question?
If you work with what is real today instead of trying to fight it and resist it, it is a great time for making music. The real problem for young artists is that they don’t have any help or understanding from the record companies. Record company executives are the most backward bunch of idiots I’ve ever seen in my life. They are probably only surpassed by television executives. If I had a record company, I would know what to do, and how to promote new artists, and how to make money for myself, and for the artist. Now, all the artists are floundering, because all they can do is play live, and hope that they can gather a large enough tribe to support them. There is far too much ignorance right now and refusal to accept change.
Let me play devil’s advocate for a moment. You have an instantly recognizable name, and millions of people all over the world are familiar with your music. If you want to start an internet show, you have that advantage. A young artist, as you said, is just floundering. What is that you would do if you were in that position? Do you give advice to the young artists you have on your show?
Well, it is hard for me to give them advice, because they don’t have any help. My show is exposure for them, but yes, I have a name. So, I can do it. Now, if I was the head of Atlantic Records, and not to single them out, I would start an internet show, and I would pair my young artists with my older artists for every broadcast. They have a big enough name. They’re as big as me.
That’s a great idea. What’s the problem? Why don’t they do it?
They’re stupid. They think anything new is the enemy. They think my show is the enemy. They think streaming is the enemy. So many of them have thought that my show hurts their artists – that going on my show is hurtful to them.
How can they think that? There are many young artists I discovered from your show, and I now own their music.
One would think that anyone with a position of power would understand something that simple.
You’ve started a live music venue based on the show. You tour the show. Do you have any other aspirations for the show?
The show will evolve on its own. The bar has been raised to its highest point with this new season. I’m thinking about…Well, actually I don’t want to get into it, but the goal is to get back, more and more, to the freedom that the internet gave it. I do want to play more live shows with guests from the show, and I want to open more clubs in various places.
Onto another change you might have observed. Some critics claim that since R&B has become more hip hop influenced and dance-driven, it has lost some of the passion – some of the gospel-roots – of the soul that inspired you, and the soul that you still sing. What do you think about the future of soul music?
It depends on where you are looking for soul music. There has been a change, but the original, organic, old soul is still very much alive and well. It might not be alive on the pop charts, but it is still alive and well. I’ve had several soul singers on my show who are doing very well. Sharon Jones is one. That’s soul. I just had a guy named Anderson East on the show. He brings a country version of southern soul to the world. I’m making a record right now of old school soul. Obviously, I believe in the power of it, but it depends on where you are looking and listening.
You are making a new record. That’s exciting news. You want to say anything more about it?
It is a real soul record, as I said. It has a lot of heart, because a lot of things have happened to me, personally, and whenever that happens, I can use it as inspiration to make music that matters.
One of the current debates is over “cultural appropriation” – The idea that white people should not appropriate the culture of ethnic and racial minorities. I know that you don’t like the term “blue eyed soul.” Have you followed this conversation?
Are you trying to say that I don’t own the style of music that I grew up with and sing? I grew up with this music. It is not about being black or white. That is the most naïve attitude I’ve ever heard in my life. That is so far in the past, I hope, for everyone’s sake. It isn’t even an issue to discuss. The music that you listened to when you grew up is your music. It has nothing to do with “cultural appropriation.”
I agree with you entirely, because…
I’m glad that you do, because anyone who says that should shut the fuck up.
Well, this entire critique is coming back…
I’m sorry to hear it. Who is making these critiques? Who do they write for? What are their credentials to give an opinion like that? Who are they?
Much of it is academic.
Well, then they should go back to school. Academia? Now, there’s a hotbed of idiocy.
Anyone who knows about music, about culture in general, understands that everything is much more natural. Everything is a mixture.
We live in America. That’s our entire culture. Our culture is a blend. It isn’t split up into groups. Anyone who says otherwise is a fool – worse than a fool – a dangerous fool.
I also know that you don’t like the term “blue eyed soul”…
No, and it is for this very reason. There is no color to soul. Soul music comes from the heart. It was generated out of the church, and it became secular gospel.
Ray Charles made that same point. He said the only difference between gospel and soul is that in one genre he sings to God, and in another, he sings to a woman.
That’s right. That’s exactly it.
How do you feel about the resurgence in your popularity? To what do you attribute to it?
Much of it has to do with “Live From Daryl’s House.” The show isn’t a reinvention of what I do, but it changed people’s perceptions of what I do. Also, there is a generation shift, and in the interim is when the dip occurred in how many people listened to us, but now I have the same people I did when we started out, and a whole new generation has embraced what we do.
What quality in your music appeals to the younger generation of Americans when many artists and bands that had their biggest hits in the ‘80s or ‘70s failed to reach new audiences?
It goes back to what we were just saying. My music incorporates a lot of different things. It is at its heart, soul music, but it is soul in a different context: The context of my experiences, and the context of John’s experiences. Younger people are so used to that – The mix and match musical experience without a genre. They aren’t looking at it like these jackasses you mentioned before. They just look at it as music. They understand soul music, rock music, and pop music instinctively. So, it all works perfectly in their minds.
Hollywood liberalism at its lamest: “Money Monster,” George Clooney and Jodie Foster’s financial-crisis drama, misfires spectacularly
George Clooney in "Money Monster" (Credit: TriStar Pictures)
We could definitely use an old-fashioned, character-driven drama about the aftermath of the financial crisis right about now, something larger than life but close to the bone, a big-time movie with movie stars and a satirical edge and its heart on its sleeve in the spirit of “Network” or “The King of Comedy.” Instead we get “Money Monster,” with George Clooney as a loudmouth financial talk-show host taken hostage by a regular Joe who followed his advice. This movie, which marks Jodie Foster’s semi-awaited return to directing (depending on how you felt about her work with old pal Mel Gibson in “The Beaver”), yearns to be all those things and fails painfully. The pieces would seem to be in place, but in practice “Money Monster” is a stodgy, moribund plodder loaded with stock characters that wouldn’t have felt edgy in 1983 and has about the same contemporary urgency as your average late-night rerun of “CSI: NY.”
One could suggest that this formulaic dud offers yet more evidence how far behind the cultural curve Hollywood has fallen, especially relative to TV drama, and how clumsily Hollywood liberal behemoths like Clooney and Foster and Julia Roberts (who co-stars as Clooney’s director) have adapted. That’s not entirely fair when you consider that just a few months ago a major studio released “The Big Short,” one of the bravest, angriest and funniest mainstream films of recent years. Still, I can’t resist making this point, although it may not directly relate to why “Money Monster” is dreadful: Adam McKay, the comedy director who made “The Big Short,” is a genuine left-winger and a Bernie Sanders supporter; Clooney and Foster and Roberts belong to the core Democratic Party cadre in Hollywood that has funded Hillary Clinton’s career for many years.
Is it a coincidence that McKay’s film depicts the 2008 crash as the unavoidable result of systemic corruption and stupidity on a massive scale, whereas “Money Monster” (whose screenplay is credited to Jamie Linden, Alan DiFiore and Jim Kouf) is a “bad apple” story about one flawed company that makes hundreds of millions of dollars vanish? I report; you decide. That’s just one of the numerous ways in which “Money Monster” pulls its punches and avoids taking any controversial or provocative stance, as if trying to avoid offending some middle-ground moviegoing demographic that hasn’t existed for 25 years. Former Wall Street banker John Kasich would find this movie fair and balanced. Ted Cruz would hate it, for obscure and pedantic reasons (though he’d probably be right). Donald Trump would simply fall asleep; no hot babes and not enough action.
Clooney’s career as a filmmaker and star trying to walk the winding path between cultural relevance and adult-grade entertainment, meanwhile, continues to yield mysteriously diminishing returns. It all began so promisingly a decade ago with his genuinely excellent McCarthy-era drama “Good Night, and Good Luck” — and even before that with the underappreciated “Confessions of a Dangerous Mind,” Clooney’s first and best effort as a director. His choices have grown more cautious rather than less so as he finds himself on the north side of 50, and on some level I don’t get it: Does he really think he won’t get another chance if he loses some of Sony’s money? I mean, “The Ides of March” was solid political drama, a nifty two-hander for Clooney and Ryan Gosling, but not nearly as ruthless as it wanted to be. “The Monuments Men” was a cheerful period piece that wanted to win awards or make a lot of money but did neither. And those movies are pretty much the collected works of Frank Capra and Orson Welles compared to “Money Monster.”
Clooney didn’t direct this, likely because he plays the leading role and is in virtually every scene, but his fingerprints are all over it and not in a good way. He plays Lee Gates, host of the eponymous and obnoxious financial talk show on a fictional cable network. Lee is sorta supposed to be a soulless, misanthropic TV guy with a string of divorces behind him and a daughter somewhere he doesn’t even know. But he’s also sorta not, because he’s George Clooney and this movie defaults way too easily to the ritual Hollywood position known as “protecting the star,” which Clooney might once have resisted. In “Syriana” and “Michael Clayton” and “The Ides of March,” you didn’t have the feeling that Clooney was relentlessly laboring to persuade you that his character was fundamentally a great guy, or soon would be once he got in touch with his true inner Clooney-ness.
Let’s put it this way: Lee is never enough of a worthless creep to seem worth redeeming by way of a brush with death. He’s not a Money Monster; he’s barely even a Money Grumpus. It’s transparently obvious that he’ll be fine once the enraged UPS driver and/or Trump voter played by Jack O’Connell stops yelling and shooting out the TV monitors, and that a valuable lesson will have been learned by all. Whatever it may be. Lee is basically just boring and irritating, which goes for everybody else in the movie too. (If he’s halfway modeled on CNBC’s Jim Cramer, for instance — whose cheerleading for crap investments definitely lost lots of money for lots of people — the latter is both a more odious and a more compelling character.)
I’ve pretty much told you the whole plot of the movie already, so don’t sit there waiting for some ABC synopsis. O’Connell is a handsome young British actor of Irish parentage who was terrific in the claustrophobic Belfast war drama “’71” and the British TV series “Skins,” and I quite understand the theory that he’s cut out for movie stardom. But like most actors playing Noo Yawk guys from da nay-buh-hood, and especially like foreign actors doing it, he lathers on the outer-borough accent with a trowel. It’s as if he were trying to wake “Money Monster” from its coma by injecting it with emergency doses of “Mean Streets” or “Bad Lieutenant” or community-theater Clifford Odets. Except that O’Connell is playing a stupider and more literal-minded version of Robert De Niro’s Rupert Pupkin in “King of Comedy,” and there’s no escaping the comparison.
Foster and Clooney cannot be held entirely responsible for a script that has no point to make about the financial crisis or the nature of class and money in America or much of anything else, and struggles mightily not to make it. But they are responsible for pushing onward with the movie anyway because people who wrote large checks told them to, and then for flying over to Cannes and acting like it’s a big deal to unveil a formulaic hostage drama that resembles any number of other, better films and makes a few vague gestures in the direction of media satire.
In all seriousness, “Olympus Has Fallen” is a better movie than this, and it’s genuinely terrible. “The Taking of Pelham 123” is a better movie, or at least a less boring one. Spike Lee’s “Inside Man” is about 30 times better than this, as Jodie Foster should know, since she’s in it. Every film of the ‘90s in which Morgan Freeman plays a hostage negotiator is better, and that’s a number Stephen Hawking could not calculate. All those movies, in fact, have more to say about the world than this one does, whether or not they meant to. “Money Monster” will be mercifully forgotten, sooner rather than later. Whether Clooney and his talented and well-meaning collaborators can learn anything from this fiasco will take longer to play out.
12 more female superheroes who could have fixed “Captain America: Civil War”’s woman problem
Krysten Ritter in "Jessica Jones" (Credit: Netflix)
“Captain America: Civil War” is a great superhero movie—hell, a great movie full stop—by just about any standard. Heroes are in conflict for legitimate philosophical and personal reasons. The action is creative and at times sublime. Spider-Man and Black Panther are introduced effortlessly as fully formed, charismatic characters. Even the need to set up umpteen sequels is done gracefully.
But Marvel is still missing one piece of the puzzle when it comes to their ever-expanding superhero universe: there’s not nearly enough women. Given the premise of “Civil War”—with Cap and Iron Man both looking for reinforcements—Marvel blew a perfect opportunity to introduce some badass female characters.
Sure, there were two female heroes: the Black Widow and the Scarlet Witch. There’s also a brief appearance by Agent 13, a female spy. But there are eleventy-zillion super-bros, and there didn’t need to be. The following are just a few of the heroines Marvel could have chosen to include from others movies and TV shows or introduce from scratch. They’re all 1) awesome and 2) available to Marvel Studios, unlike X-Men such as Rogue and Storm, who are controlled by Fox. Let’s hope we see more of these heroes in the next Marvel super-brawl.
1. Captain Marvel
The lack of Captain Marvel is a bit baffling, since she’s in the same boat as the Black Panther and Spider-Man: due for a solo Marvel movie soon. In the comics, Carol Danvers is an Air Force pilot and former Ms. Marvel who gained powers thanks to the explosion of an alien device called a Psyche-Magnetron, because of course. As Ms. Marvel in the seventies, Danvers was one of the most overtly feminist superheroes. It’s a colossal bummer that she got left out of “Civil War” when two fellas got such stellar introductions.
2. Sif
Thor, Loki, and Odin get all the attention, but there’s a certain warrior goddess who could have filled absent Thor’s shoes capably in “Civil War.” Sif’s already pulled off a rare crossover, moving from Marvel movies to Marvel TV in “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” With her Asgardian badassery, Sif could have added a completely different energy to a testosterone-soaked movie.
3. Ms. Marvel
This Muslim teen is Marvel’s most significant new character in decades. I’m sure she’s going to make it to the movies eventually, but why wait? In comics, it took over 40 years for Bucky Barnes to get resurrected. In the movies, it took just three years, between “Captain America: The First Avenger” and “Captain America: The Winter Soldier.” Marvel Studios is hitting home runs with characters that you’d think would be silly (cough, Ant-Man, cough) or overexposed (Spider-Man), so they have no excuse for ignoring a character this appealing and important.
4. She-Hulk
Jennifer Walters, the cousin of the Hulk, is a far more interesting character despite her derivative name. Unlike her brutish namesake, Walters retains her brain when she goes green, making her a more effective superhero and less of a risk to everybody. Also, she’s a lawyer: imagine her take on the Sokovia Accords, the document (binding the Avengers to the U.N.) that caused all the fussin’ and fightin’ between Cap and Iron Man. With a super-lawyer around, maybe all that brawling wouldn’t even be necessary, or at least there’d be a better argument before the mega-brawl.
5. Medusa
The comic-book grapevine is continually buzzing that Marvel is determined to push the Inhumans as a substitute for the mutants whose movie rights are owned by rival studio Fox. So why not bring in the queen of the Inhumans to build interest? Bonus: Medusa has the most visually exciting hair in comics: her red locks, which can be used as tentacle-like weapons, have enlivened more classic comic-book covers than any other character’s coiffure.
6. Spider-Woman
Since Marvel is now sharing Spider-Man with Sony, presumably Spider-Woman is available too. She’s a character who’s been an Avenger more often than Spider-Man in the comics, and she’s extremely powerful, thanks to her venom blasts. She’s also recently been pregnant—a rare status for a superhero. I doubt that condition would make it to the big screen, but Jessica Drew should.
7. Jessica Jones
Speaking of Jessicas, though not exactly a superhero, this superpowered detective showed in her Netflix series that she can handle a supervillain/evil bastard: no Marvel villain has been as scary as Kilgrave, the mind-controlling psycho-stalker known in the comics as the Purple Man. Krysten Ritter’s deadpan wit could have added a lot to “Civil War.” Just imagine her interactions with Iron Man or the Vision.
8. The Wasp
I wish there were a better actress playing the Wasp, so I’m actually fine with the Marvel powers-that-be leaving the Wasp out of “Civil War.” Evangeline Lilly was the worst part of “Lost” and seems unable to emote beyond the passion required by a shampoo commercial. The Wasp was introduced in “Ant-Man,” which was a fun movie but by far Marvel’s worst offender as far as neglecting women. Lilly’s shortcomings aside, the part was horribly written, and no woman in the movie had anything to do of substance. Preposterously, Marvel gave greater attention and depth to Ant-Man’s ants.
9. Squirrel Girl
On paper, Squirrel Girl—who has the dubious power of communicating with, yep, squirrels—seems even more ridiculous than Aquaman, but her recent series has reminded everyone that there’s room for goofy fun on the comics shelf. If Marvel Studios can make Ant-Man work—Ant-Man, for the love of Odin—there’s no reason other than sexism that Squirrel Girl should be dismissed.
10. Kate Bishop
Of all the Avengers in Civil War, the one who has the least to do is Hawkeye: Jeremy Renner as Clint Barton is once again superfluous and kinda boring. Marvel could instantly make Hawkeye more interesting by replacing him with his female counterpart from the comics, Kate Bishop, who is just as skilled but 10 times as interesting. As a younger hero, she’s also very capable of filling the Peter Parker-type role.
11. Monica Rambeau
Marvel deserves credit for increasing the diversity of their heroes in terms of race: “Civil War” featured three black superheroes: the Black Panther, the Falcon, and War Machine. But they’re all men. Why not reach a little deeper into the comic bin for the story of Monica Rambeau? She possesses cosmic-level energy-manipulation powers and has held the title of Captain Marvel, Pulsar, and Spectrum. She’s also been an Avenger and is currently part of one of Marvel’s best (and most diverse) current series, “The Ultimates.”
12. Elektra
Granted, Elektra isn’t particularly a hero: she’s a morally questionable ninja assassin on a good day. But given that both Cap and Iron Man were treading on morally questionable ground, wouldn’t it make sense to seek some sketchy allies? Hell, in the comic book version of “Civil War,” Iron Man collaborates with supervillains, creates an evil clone of Thor, and sends heroes to a cosmic Guantanamo in the Negative Zone. I reckon Elektra—and maybe her new ninja buddies in the Hand—could’ve come in, well, handy.
5 times George Zimmerman proved he’s total human scum
Zimmerman is trending once again for something unbelievable. He put the gun that was used in the fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin for sale on GunBroker.com — with a starting bid of $5,000. The post was followed by a personal statement by Zimmerman which read, in part:
“Prospective bidders, I am honored and humbled to announce the sale of an American Firearm Icon. The firearm for sale is the firearm that was used to defend my life and end the brutal attack from Trayvon Martin on 2/26/2012. The gun is a Kel-Tec PF-9 9mm. It has recently been returned to me by the Department of Justice. The pistol currently has the case number written on it in silver permanent marker. Many have expressed interest in owning and displaying the firearm including The Smithsonian Museum in Washington D.C. This is a piece of American History.”
The auction page was terminated right before bidding was set to start. This is just the latest in the painful episode of a human scum striving to remain in the spotlight. From domestic violence 911 calls to road rage shooting incidents to selling artwork, we take a look back at Zimmerman’s most scum-worthy moments since he walked free from killing unarmed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin.
“Smashing” Sanders: Billy Corgan rips Bernie on Alex Jones’ radio show
Billy Corgan had strong words for Bernie Sanders when he appeared again on the radio show of noted conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. In an interview last month, the Smashing Pumpkins frontman spoke about “social justice warriors,” being similar to the KKK. This time his focus was on politics, as Pitchfork reported.
As a picture of Sanders photoshopped as KFC’s Colonel Sanders with a bucket of chicken emblazoned with the Soviet hammer and sickle played across the screen, Corgan said:
I can’t believe that we’re even having this discussion, if you can understand when I say that to you humbly. To be talking in America in 2016 about Mao is a good idea, and a socialist is running for president and that’s OK, and we’re going to go back to these kind of crazy tax rates where we’re going to completely disempower the innovators in the country because the new class, the new technocratic class wants to keep their position and they want to keep anybody else from coming in the game… I mean, it’s just crazy to me.
Corgan further expanded on his ideas about the current presidential race, including his feelings on protesters of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.
I have no respect for what these people are doing. I don’t. They’re shutting down free speech, they’re shutting down processes that… I just don’t get it. To me, it’s antithetical to the society that I believe in. As I said on Alex’s show, they’re eventually going to come after me. It’s just the way history works.
Corgan also spoke about the proliferation of drones, Facebook refusing to shut down pages advocating violence against Trump, George Orwell’s “1984” and “Animal Farm,” the importance of free speech, and more. He also emphasized that when he was talking about race and racism with regard to social justice movements, he was not targeting particular groups and that he outwardly condemns racism. Nevertheless, he expressed exasperation with the repercussions of saying a word that’s politically incorrect.
“I don’t care what your hashtag argument is. If you don’t stand for free speech, you do not stand for America,” Corgan said.
Watch the full segment below:
The science of Jerry and Elaine: The unsettling reasons why some exes keep each other close
Jerry Seinfeld as Jerry and Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Elaine in "Seinfeld" (Credit: Hulu)
We all have a relationship we look back on and wonder what we were blinded by. The rush of romance? The shock of a spark? A really good kisser. It’s easy to overlook potentially damaging (and dangerous) flaws when caught in the throes of love.
I used to think being friends with an ex was a decent idea, like it established a certain level of maturity between two former partners while also confirming the law of conservation of mass. The logic was that love could not be created or destroyed, but rechanneled into something — maybe even something good. Imagine my surprise as an unflinching optimist that this is usually never the case. Science has now found this could be for good reason.
A new study has found that those who stay friends with exes tend to exhibit higher degrees of dark personality traits, such as narcissism and psychopathy. Maybe there is some truth when people refer to a “psycho ex” wanting to hang out again.
For the study, researchers from Oakland University asked 860 participants to list and describe what motivates them to remain in contact with an ex. Later, participants were also given a survey to assess who of them exhibited dark personality traits, noting that past research suggests narcissists and psychopaths choose partners and friends for very strategic reasons. This tendency led researchers to believe maybe former lovers are kept around for specific purposes as well.
For many respondents, the choice to maintain some sort of civil relationship was because the person possessed desirable traits such as trustworthiness and reliability. Also, there’s comfort in the familiar.
The researchers also found “practical and sexual reasons” to keep exes around in people who had elevated measures of dark personality traits.
One reason could be control. It’s not fun to see a toy you used to like to play with picked up by someone else, even if you’ve long since decided to shelf the romance. Another reason is the person might like using the fragments of the relationship as a mirror to gaze at their own reflection, the shards glimmering from a time they were adored. It’s a powerful thing, to describe yourself in terms of someone whose life you helped shape, and potentially destroy.
I mean, let’s look think about it in terms of art. How many characters in literature are inspired by ex paramours? How many songs are written with such precision that you feel you’re actually within the song and the relationship?
Take “Seinfeld,” for instance. Jerry and Elaine stay friends despite a failed romance. He’s a stand-up comedian while she’s an editor, first in book publishing and later working on the famously flamboyant J. Peterman catalog. It seems the residual romantic energy fuels both their work and the dynamics of the friendship they maintain.
Carrie Bradshaw from “Sex and the City” made a name (and a ridiculously indulgent lifestyle) for herself by writing about her exes. Many of the topics of her columns in the HBO show centered on her relationship with Mr. Big. There were plenty of times in which she accused him of being a narcissist, and yet she continued to hold onto the relationship, as well as write about it weekly. What lies below the surface of these artistic character’s motivations to remain in the lives of their exes and allow their work to be influenced by it? Easy plotline? Relatable frustration? Imp of the perverse?
As it turns out, creative types might have higher levels of dark personality traits than others.
A three-part study examined the presence of dark personality traits first by measuring narcissism, machiavellianism and psychopathy in college-aged participants. Next, creative achievement within the domains of art, music, creative writing, acting, architecture, humor, inventiveness, scientific achievement and culinary skills were assessed.
Researchers found narcissism and psychopathy positively correlated with creative achievement. Both narcissists and psychopaths are extremely adept at reading people, a quality that lends itself to creating (and manipulating) relatable characters.
The second component of the study examined the links between creative achievement and psychopathic traits that include boldness, meanness and disinhibition. Boldness, or a reduced degree of stress and fear in potentially vulnerable situations, was found to be positively correlated with creative achievement.
The final part of the study looked at psychopathy in terms of divergent thinking, the ability to come up with innovative or unconventional methods to solve problems or use objects. Like writing a song about an ex-girlfriend if you want to reaffirm a position in her life and also make a living as a musician.
It’s not surprising that creative types tend to have measurably higher degrees of dark personality traits. It takes boldness to produce art in the face of so much rejection, and is a challenge to succeed to spite any number of people: fellow artists, exes and their new lovers.
It’s also not surprising that psychopaths and narcissists might choose to keep exes in their lives. It’s an exercise in both ego and control, an artifact from a time they were valued.
If you couple the two recent studies, it begins to make sense that people who make albums, books and other works of art about ended relationships tend to perpetuate the cycle for dark reasons in a roundelay of manipulation and self-regard. Attention and monetary gain are achieved on a creative project by scattering the ashes of a former flame for the masses to enjoy.
John Boehner unchained: “I did my best to bring our party together, but I don’t know what the knuckleheads want”
(Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin)
“Every day when I read the news I’m reminded of how happy I am that I’m not in the chaos,” retired House speaker John Boehner said at a business conference on Thursday.
While his ambitious successor, Paul Ryan, held the first meeting aimed at party unification with Republican presumptive presidential nominee Donald Trump, a relaxed Boehner spoke at the economics-focused SALT Conference at the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada.
“This is going to be a presidential campaign like we’ve never seen before,” Boehner told moderator Steven Rattner, adding that anyone who thinks Trump can’t win the White House should “just watch.”
The retired Ohio lawmaker said that while he doesn’t support Trump’s unconstitutional proposal to temporarily ban all Muslims from the United States and called Trump’s position on waterboarding “a bit harsh,” Boehner said that he has no qualms about voting for Trump even though he is “not quite my style.”
Boehner also went further with his scathing critique of failed presidential candidate Ted Cruz, after calling the Texas senator “Lucifer in the flesh” at an event at Stanford recently.
“Thank God that guy from Texas didn’t win,” Boehner said on Thursday. “I got criticized by some Satanic organization for giving Lucifer a bad name,” he told the crowd to laughter. Boehner called the 2013 government shutdown led by Cruz the “dumbest thing I ever saw.”
The candid former speaker also opened up about his contentious dealings with members of his own caucus.
“I did my best to bring our party together, but I don’t know what the knuckleheads want,” Boehner reportedly told the crowd, referring to the right-wing House Freedom Caucus that drove him out of Washington, D.C. with their demands for strict conservative orthodoxy without compromise. The ultra conservative group quickly launched a defense aimed at Boehner on Twitter:
.@johnboehner We want GOP to actually be party of ltd gov't, less spending; hold WH accountable for exec overreach. https://t.co/KPzwZKOZGK
— House Freedom Caucus (@freedomcaucus) May 12, 2016
“I felt like I was going to die”: Philly student alleges police assault over bathroom visit
Brian Burney, an 11th-grader at Philadelphia’s Benjamin Franklin High School, says that a school police officer punched him in the face simultaneously with both fists, and threw him to the ground in a chokehold after the two had an argument over using the restroom without a pass. Burney, who is asthmatic, says that, in the officer’s grip, he was scared for his life.
“I felt like Eric Garner because I couldn’t breathe,” says Burney, 18, referring to an incident that took place last Thursday. “And I felt like I was going to die that day.”
Burney says that he needed to use the restroom immediately, and grew frustrated when the officer, who the school police union and district have identified as Jeffrey Maciocha, blocked his way because he did not have a pass. “I really had to go bad,” says Burney who, according to his mother, has been hospitalized previously for asthma and has bladder problems. “We had words. I threw an orange at the wall out of frustration because I really had to go to the bathroom.” In a letter to parents, Principal Gregory Hailey put forward a somewhat a different account, saying that Burney “grew angry and threw an orange in the direction of the school police officer, causing the officer to restrain the student.”
The incident became public on Monday after the Philadelphia Student Union, a youth organizing group of which Burney is a member, posted a short video recorded by another student online. Neither the School Police Association of Philadelphia nor Maciocha could be reached for comment.
Much is disputed, and the video only captured a few seconds of the incident, after the officer already had Burney on the ground. What isn’t disputed is that Burney suffered a concussion. But the School District of Philadelphia suggested that he was to blame.
“What we know is that the student suffered a concussion from hitting his forehead on the floor,” said District spokesperson Fernando Gallard. “He admitted to the nurse that he voluntarily smacked his forehead on the floor.”
Burney says that he did bang his head on the ground but did so because “I felt like I was going to die.”
Gallard said that the principal witnessed the officer restraining Burney, and that it wasn’t a chokehold, though the principal did not witness the actual takedown.
As for Burney’s claim that he was punched, Gallard says that the nurse found no abrasions around Burney’s cheeks or eyes. But Burney’s mother, Joy Burney, says that her son’s face indeed showed signs of assault, and that the school nurse gave him ice for his face. She says that the inflammation was still clear enough two days later that doctors at the emergency room X-rayed his face to make sure there were no fractures.
“He’s a student and he was treated as though he was a criminal in the street,” says Joy Burney, “for committing the crime of wanting to use the bathroom.”
School officials’ behavior after the incident does not inspire confidence in their impartiality. The student witness to the incident who recorded the brief video says that a second school police officer deleted it from his phone shortly thereafter.
“I felt like they wanted to cover it up,” said the student, who spoke to Salon on the condition that their name not be used. It didn’t work. One of the student’s friends suggested that he check his Google backup. And there it was. The Philadelphia Student Union posted it online on Monday.
Gallard, the school district spokesperson, confirms that the officer deleted the video: The student punched “delete,” he emailed, and the officer hit the “confirm” button. The officer appears to have gone beyond what district policy allows.
“The SPO did ask the student to erase the video,” Gallard emailed. “We do not have a practice or policy regarding that. There is a policy in BFHS that prohibits the use of phone while in the school.”
It seems unclear from the very brief video whether Burney was placed in a chokehold. Gallard says that it clearly shows he was not, while the Student Union says that it shows that he was. Whatever the truth about the punches and the chokehold, however, the witness says that the takedown was excessive.
“Brian’s a smaller guy, and the officer’s really big,” said the student. “I feel like he could have used way less force and restrained him just as effectively.”
Or maybe, he could have not restrained him at all.
The School District says that an investigation is underway and that the officer has been transferred to a non-school site. But on Tuesday, Benjamin Franklin Principal Gregory Hailey sent a letter home to parents putting forward the school police officer’s perspective as “the facts.”
That struck Joy Burney as not exactly impartial.
“What was strange to me is it said these are ‘the facts’ and then at the end of it said it’s still under investigation, and that this officer was removed,” said Burney. “How are these facts if it’s still under investigation?”
On Wednesday, Pennsylvania Auditor General Eugene DePasquale released an audit highlighting the district’s ongoing financial crisis, and also found that nearly half of all school police in a sample they reviewed had not been subjected to a full criminal background check. Philadelphia public schools, long struggling, spun into crisis after the previous governor, Republican Tom Corbett, deeply slashed education funding.
Joy Burney is angry and wants justice for her child. She says that he is a good kid, and was in his ROTC uniform at the time he was assaulted. She wonders why they couldn’t have just let him use the bathroom, and then written him up for not having a pass.
“He’s not one of those children. This is something I want to stress. Because I don’t want it to look like this is just another black kid acting out…he has never been in trouble,” she says, sounding as though she is on the verge of tears. “I’m just irate. And I’m not sitting down on this one.”
It’s unclear what’s next for Brian. He works outside of school doing convention registration work for a temp company, and likely won’t be returning to school any time soon.
“I’m not going to school until I feel comfortable, until I feel safer,” says Burney. “If something happens to me they’re going to allow it to happen.”
Trump’s bigoted ex-butler: Obama should be “hung for treason” and is “a fraudulent piece of crap”
Donald Trump (Credit: AP/LM Otero)
Donald Trump’s longtime butler Anthony Senecal is an ardent backer of his former boss’s presidential bid. And as David Corn of Mother Jones first reported, Senecal’s Facebook page is full of the kind of violent, bigoted rhetoric associated with the worst kind of Trump supporter.
Senecal served as Trump’s butler for 17 years before resigning in 2009, and now holds the lofty title of in-house historian at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate. Senecal’s profile Senecal’s Facebook posts are only visible to friends, but Mother Jones collected some choice excerpts from his oeuvre:
On Obama: “This prick needs to be hung for treason!!!”
“[W]ith the last breath I draw I will help rid this America of the scum infested in its government–and if that means dragging that ball less dick head from the white mosque and hanging his scrawny ass from the portico–count me in !!!!!”
“Our current ‘president’ is a rotten filthy muzzie !!!!! Period !!!!!! He continues his war on Christians !!!!!!”
Obama “should have been taken out by our military and shot as an enemy agent in his first term !!!!!”
“there are to [sic] many fkn muzzies in America !!!!!”
“Stop the LYING BITCH OF BENGHAZI, NOW—killery clinton !!!!!! She should be in prison awaiting hanging !!!!!!!”
It’s not all doom and gloom, though. Senecal is confident that his former boss will clean up the mess in Washington: “Now comes Donald J Trump to put an end to the corruption in government !!!! The so called elite, who are nothing but common dog turds from your front lawn are shaking in their boots because there is a new Sheriff coming to town, and the end to their corruption of the American people (YOU) is at hand !!!!”
Aside from his fondness of exclamation points, Senecal’s posts reveal that he is a birther and thinks the “kenyan [sic] fraud” Obama “is leading the Muslim Brotherhood.”
Like many Trump supporters, Senecal’s frustration doesn’t end with the Democratic Party—he’s just as fed up with mainstream Republicans, calling John Boehner and Mitch McConnell “FKN CROOKS and should be run out of D.C, on a rail and covered in hot tar.”
In another post, he called for Americans to “revolt and hang all of the a-holes in Congress and the crooked government !!!!! Let’s get ‘er done !!!!!!” (If nothing else, Senecal deserves some credit for bringing more Larry the Cable Guy into our political discourse, which we can all agree is sorely needed.)
Senecal is unapologetic about the anti-Obama vitriol. “I cannot stand the bastard,” he told Corn. “I don’t believe he’s an American citizen. I think he’s a fraudulent piece of crap that was brought in by the Democrats.”
UPDATE: The Daily Beast’s Asawin Suebsaeng reports that the Secret Service will open an investigation into Senecal’s statements. The Secret Service routinely investigates individuals that make online threats against the president.
