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THE POLITICS OF POP CULTUREHoney Bees and Ice Cream - We Need BOTH
Posted April 28th, 2008 in All
Environmentalists involved in the fight to save Earth’s biodiversity have an unexpected ally this year; Haagen-Dazs, which means “sticks to the thighs” in Dutch or something, is joining the fight to save the American Honey Bee from extinction.
The makers of Haagen-Dazs ice cream, who rely on honey bees to pollinate natural ingredients like almonds, raspberries, cherries, and pears, have launched a campaign complete with flashy website and sizable donations to university entomology programs to raise awareness and help find a cause and cure for the alarming rate of honey bee extinction in the U.S. A large portion of the nation’s food crop relies on honey bees for pollination, but hives across the country have seen a massive drop in honey bee population over the last few years for reasons no one can seem to explain. Possible threats such as commercial pesticides, viruses, and lack of habitat may all be contributing factors.
The good news is that, for once, you can help! One of the major motives of the campaign is to encourage consumers to plant honey bee-friendly gardens including plants like lavender, glory bushes, jasmine, rosemary, violets, thyme, wisteria, bluebells, trumpet vines, cosmos, sunflowers, cone flowers, and coreopsis, whatever that is. So plant a few pots or a whole garden. The plants smell great, the bees will love you for it, and you can have a nice bowl of ice cream in your own personal bee-friendly habitat. Ain’t summer great?
Draft Day Is Here! And Deion is wearing normal clothes!
Posted April 26th, 2008 in All, Celebrities, Entertainment and Weekend FluffIn celebration of NFL draft day (and because we were bored), we held a little draft of our own. Since we don’t have millions of dollars to throw away on the next dog-fighting phenom, we had ourselves a movie draft with a twist. Here are the highlights:
Best Oscar Fashion Victim: Tie (ironically) - Bjork, Cher
Most Vicariously Embarrassing Moment In Oscar History:
Rob Lowe Serenades Snow White
Best Performance By A Male In Drag: Julie Andrews, Victor/Victoria
Runner Up: Jack Lemmon, Some Like It Hot. RIP Jackie.
Best Performance By A Non-Human: The Mustache, Tombstone
Runners Up: The Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, Ghostbusters; Wilson The Volleyball, Castaway
Think you can do better? Visit our message board to be a part of the next draft.
That’s How They Got Capone…
Posted April 24th, 2008 in All, Celebrities, Entertainment, Entertainment News, Legal and News You Cannot Use
Wesley Snipes is deeply ashamed of his crime.
Actor Wesley Snipes was sentenced today to three years in prison for tax evasion to the tune of over $15 million. Snipes, who publicly stated that he was being unfairly prosecuted because of his race, attempted to avoid prison time by offering to pay $5 million to the court upon hearing the verdict. Apparently he was under the impression that he was in some kind of negotiation. Court officials neglected to comment on whether the sentence was due to the tax evasion, or to the criminal stupidity of a high profile celebrity thinking he could get away without paying millions of dollars in taxes during a wartime economy. I mean he’s not Tom Cruise for chrissake.
New Orleans City Council Gets A Clue, Resists Nagin’s Charm
Posted April 23rd, 2008 in Activism, All, Inside New Orleans, Legal, News You Cannot Use and Politics
New Orleans residents continue to fight for fair housing after natural disasters such as hurricane Katrina and the re-election of Mayor Ray Nagin.
Those of you who have followed our series on New Orleans City Council’s wildly misguided war on homelessness will not be shocked to learn that the city’s illustrious leaders are now considering a proposal which would literally criminalize homelessness. Under the proposed measure, members of the homeless population would have a choice: go to whichever shelter the police sends you to, or go to jail. The measure would make refusal to enter a shelter an arrestable offense, provided that the shelters had space, which they don’t, so it’s all a bit premature at any rate.
Fortunately, however, recent activism on behalf of homeless residents may have made a dent in the the otherwise thick political skulls currently running New Orleans. After allowing HUD to demolish most of the city’s subsidized low-rent housing (at a tax cost of over $700 million), the city saw a spike in homeless encampments in public parks. City Council passed an ordinance outlawing camping in public parks, and an encampment grew in the Claiborne Avenue freeway area. Council members seem to be slowly coming to the realization that the act of simply shuffling ordinances is having no real effect on the homelessness situation, which was already dire due to spiking rent prices after the destruction of so much housing during hurricane Katrina.
Councilmember Stacey Head, who previously brought us such hits as What do you mean they’re not all crazy? handed the questions over to Councilmember Shelly Midura during the recent council meeting, who asked remarkably sane questions including “Who is going to want to hire someone who has a record of being homeless?” in reference to the notion of criminalizing homelessness. The Council could do better, like acknowledging that some of these potentially hardened criminals are the same people who will not consent to live in FEMA trailers on the silly little technicality that they seem to be poisonous. But the recognition that criminalizing homelessness will not solve the basic problem of a lack of affordable housing is an improvement in the Council’s process, no matter how small.
Not surprisingly, the criminalization measure was proposed by none other than our illustrious Mayor Ray Nagin, incidentally recently voted “The Basement’s First Choice For Darwin Award Recipient.”* Nagin would clearly be happier to simply continue shuffling the homelessness problem (and responsibility) from pillar to post, but council members insisted that a task force scrap the proposed criminalization measure and begin anew. Whether their brief foray into rationality will continue remains to be seen; residents recall that the council recently had the opportunity to refuse HUD’s demolitions but instead allowed the destruction of the city’s low-rent housing complexes without second thought. Residents can only hope that the council members have begun to see the larger issue underlying the rise in homelessness, and can shape a more reasonable and/or helpful policy, despite Mayor Nagin’s personal, lifelong commitment to corruption and stupidity.
*See Lazlo’s Basement message board for vote details
Congress Celebrates Professional Wrestler
Posted April 20th, 2008 in All, Celebrities, Entertainment, News You Cannot Use and PoliticsHow quickly they forget.
Just last year, the congressional witch hunt for steroids in professional sports whipped into a frenzied climax when professional wrestler Chris Benoit brutally murdered his wife and child before committing suicide in what was assumed to be a steroid-induced mania. This week, they celebrated the career of wrestling icon “Nature Boy” Ric Flair, who recently retired. I guess.
U.S. Rep. Sue Myrick, R-N.C., gave a brief speech on the floor of the House this week commending pro wrestler Ric Flair, who had his last match on March 30.
Many consider Flair the greatest wrestler of all time, and some of his finest moments came while he was working for Atlanta-based World Championship Wrestling.
The speech left wrestling fans asking several questions: Who is Sue Myrick? Why does she even know Ric Flair’s name? And why didn’t The Undertaker saunter out of some steamy congressional hallway to challenge her to a cage match?
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