Friday, October 31, 2014

Tuesday, October 28, 2014

Caitlin O'Connor is selling something

Bottled water doesn't seem like such an overpriced commodity to me now. Not sure why:

Caitlin

Taking a cue from her Free the Nipple campaign support stylings, Caitlin's helping the bottlers of 138 water sell a few more liters with some clever product placement:

Caitlin O'Connor 138 water see thru
Caitlin O'Connor nipple 138 water

Capitalism -- it's a beautiful thing   :-)

Monday, October 27, 2014

Daily Duffster

Uber cutie Hilary Duff was spotted out and about today and . . . HOLY HELL! Get a load of them shorts!

Hilary duff ripped shorts

Yowzers! This is a look I can totally get with for my Duffster :-)

Hilary duff ripped shorts
Hilary duff ripped shorts
Hilary duff ripped shorts

I'm getting a kick out of her futile attempt to hide the shreddiness of those shorts from the pap. Sorry cutie, but there ain't enough shirt to pull down there. Not sure why she's so worried, you actually can't see anything. And it's not like she's in her backyard or something, she's out in public, so . . . not gettin' it. But definitely enjoyin' the look :-)

Saturday, October 25, 2014

I read the news today, oh boy

I picked up this morning's paper and saw the front page headline that Rays manager Joe Maddon had left the team.

Wow!

When Exec. VP Andrew Friedman left the team to go the Dodgers, Times' sports writers went into overdrive to assure local fans that Maddon wouldn't be following him. Daily quotes in the paper about how Maddon loved it here, called it the best of all places in baseball to work, how Friedman said he was happy with Don Mattingly through 2015, etc.

But in the end, theoretically, it came down to money. The Rays were offering around $3mil per year and Maddon thought he deserved to be paid around $5mil like other top managers. After several rounds of counter-offers, the sides were pretty far apart. Maddon asked about checking his value with other teams, the Rays said -- not a chance.

So Maddon invoked an undisclosed opt-out his agent, Alan Nero (who will be getting more clients after this sucker punch) slipped into the last contract negotiation. Maddon had a two week window in which to decide to opt out of his contract if either Friedman, head of baseball ops Matt Silverman or principal owner Stu Sternberg left the team. In other words, Nero realized that if any of these guys left, it meant the team would most likely go into low budget free fall and didn't want his client damaging his worth on the open market by being tied to a sinking ship.

Like I said -- dude's gonna be getting a lot of new clients after this one.

So Joe's shopping himself around now. I personally think he's going to take a year off, do some color commentary for ESPN or someone, then slide into the Dodgers job. That way the Rays can't scream TAMPERING like they are already threatening to do if he gets hired anywhere they deem suspicious.

And in the Does this clown even read what he writes? department, local sports tool Tom Jones manages to make Debbie Wasserman Shultz look clear headed.

In his Don't Panic article today, Jones writes that we (the fans) will miss Maddon but "...but I'm not all that sure that the team itself -- the actual Rays on the field -- will." Ouch. He goes on to call Maddon "best skipper in the game" but then says all he did was make out line-up cards and call for pitching changes and bunts. Ouch again.

Make up your mind dude. Either he has value to the team or he doesn't. F*ck!

I'd be willing to take this ass clown's opinion for meaningful, but this is the same idiot who thought the race cars in NASCAR had air conditioning, roll down windows, and doors that opened. Yeah, I know, he's only a sports writer, why should he actually know anything about sports? Duhr.

Jones also manages to throw Joe Torre under the bus by mentioning that Torre never won a Series outside of his time with the Yankees. As Jones says -- "...it's all about the players." He then talks about how the Rays are loaded with talent. Yeah. Talent that ended up in next to last place this year. Build a team around disappointing Evan Longoria and disappearing Will Myers? And all that pitching? Where's James Shields now? Oh yeah, playing in the series for another team. Where's David Price? Playing on another team. Where do you think these young studly pitchers will be when their contracts come up on a team that doesn't have any money? Yep. Playing for other teams.

I never liked that Maddon inculcated the Rays with this perpetually aggrieved attitude. I didn't like the head games or his air of intellectual superiority. But he was a good tactician. He played a lot of crazy stunts that worked often enough to give him some validity. Jones says that no one had heard of Maddon before the Rays hired him. But that isn't true. Maddon was on the short list for Boston's head coaching vacancy before Theo decided on Terry Francona. So people in the know, knew of Maddon, just not ignorant morons like Jones.

So Joe's gone. And the Rays are currently looking at a group of bench coaches and water boys to helm the team. If that was a viable approach, teams wouldn't be paying these managers $5mil to just fill out line up cards.

And Larry Rothschild would still be coaching the team.

Tuesday, October 21, 2014

Maitland Ward is new here

Maitland Ward turned up at the Alfonso Sanchez fashion show wearing this demure little number:


The modesty panels are just barely getting the job done in the front, but in the back . . . it's all access baby!


Cheeky   :-) A wardrobe change later was basically the same thing, you just had to look a little harder to realize she was going commando:


I had no idea who this chick was, had to Google her . . . it seems she played Rachel McGuire on the old Boy meets World tv series. Her wiki page shows she hasn't done anything since 2007, so now I understand why she's turning up everywhere half naked. Got to get back in the game somehow. AmIright?

Oh yeah, and talk about being community conscious . . . here she is at a charity bowling fund raiser to help victims of child abuse:


Wow. Way to keep it classy, baby. Of course, watching her bowl in that top probably brought in a lot of donations, so . . .

Monday, October 20, 2014

Daily Duffster

I'm getting a stern look of rebuke from Hilary Duff here for neglecting my Duffster posts again:


But her cuteness makes it all worth it. Plus that booty . . . nice :-)


And if you're in the mood for some compare & contrast here's the anti-Duffster begging the question: When you've got the Hourglass figure by Dali™ going on, where the hell do you buy jeans that fit:



And as a bonus, here's the Hilary doing ripped jeans right:

Please step away from the casting table -- part 2

As mentioned in the post below, a couple bits of movie news caught my eye yesterday, this would be the second of them.

If you've read any of my posts on George R.R. Martin's epic Song of Fire and Ice books and the HBO series spawned by them Game of Thrones, you know I haven't been shy about taking the series to task for straying from the source material. And bitching about Martin's perverse penchant for torturing his loyal readers with the relentless dispatching of sympathetic characters.

Martin, who borders on morbid obesity, has been the subject of numerous online conversations about whether he is healthy enough to churn out the final books in the series (personally I think there needs to be 2 more to tie everything up). And I'm not the only one complaining about the trials and tribulations of his book's characters. Martin has responded to these concerns with an enthusiastic F*ck you, literally, when interviewed on the subject. Saying at one point that he does read the blog postings on his work and has noticed that some writers have picked up on his clues and accurately guessed who he plans to put on the Iron Throne as the book's finale.

As one of my favorite celeb bloggers would say -- there aren't enough bitch please's in the world to fully convey my response to that. If anyone has guessed the finale in the books it is strictly a numbers game. With thousands of bloggers writing about the books and only a limited number of characters, it is a mathematical given that someone would stumble upon the right answer to book's endgame.

With all that in place, news comes out that the producers/writers of the HBO series have decided to create a character out of whole cloth and insert him into the series.

Yep.

With all the divergence from the source material, with all the wonderful characters left out or changed in one way or another, the writers (with Martin's blessing as he is a consultant on the series) have decided we need someone who isn't even part of the books to do . . . something. Who knows what. The character of Malko will be played by the wonderful Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, who I last saw in the cable series Hunted:


I like Akinnuoye_Agbaje as an actor, but couldn't they have found a character from the book for him to portray? I'm just not getting this. There is also news that this next season will contain a lot of flashbacks. Not sure what that's all about except that maybe we're in season five of the series (has it been that many already?) and there are only 5 books. So I'm guessing they need something to fill out this season and stretch book 5 into the next one as the series is contracted through season six. And Martin isn't in a rush to churn out any more. In fact, there is a new book coming out this month, but it's a prequel, nothing but background on the families and maps of Westeros and such. Basically, Martin just put his writing notes in book form and is sitting back and waiting for the money to roll in.

f*cker!

Guess I'll just sit here like the rest of the books/series' fans and wait for what comes next. But I've got to tell you, this is one of the most frustrating literary/cinematic adventures in my lifetime.

lena headey topless
Emilia Clarke topless
esme bianco nude

Sunday, October 19, 2014

Please step away from the casting table -- part 1

As I try to get caught up on some of the fun stuff I've missed over the past week, a little bit of movie making news caught my eye.

A few years ago, I joked with my son about how, if I was skilled enough at Photoshop, I'd get a pic of the MARVEL universe of characters and 'shop Ryan Reynolds face onto every character. Because it seemed that he was attached to every freakin' movie that was being talked about. It was ridiculous.

Also, I have several, what I refer to as my essential dvd collections of either actors, creators, or movie themes. I've got my essential John Carpenter set, my essential horror set, etc. I also have my essential anime set which includes the groundbreaking Akira and the first three Ghost in the Shell movies.

The first Ghost movie is the one I used to introduce my son to anime -- the amazing detail and beauty of hand-drawn animation in the Japanese anime style. It's as beautiful as the old 7-panel Disney stuff of the golden era of animation in this country.

With that being said, I saw that there is a live-action version of Ghost in the Shell in the planning stages. And being talked about for portrayal of the main character, Major Motoko Kusanagi is . . . wait for it . . . Scarlett Johanssen. Of course. Because apparently once you've cast ScarJo in a bodysuit/action/superhero role, she's pretty much the go to actress for every other role that comes up.


scarlett johanssen nude

Look, I've got no beef with Johanssen, I like her unconventional beauty, but let's face it, she's a bit stumpy looking. Not at all like the lithe Maj. Kusanagi of the Ghost anime. And you can die anyone's hair black and give them that asymmetrical bob cut. Scarlett's got the boobs for the role and that's about it imho.

Some years back, movie producers took a deserved amount of heat for casting Joel Grey as Chun in the Remo Williams movie. They had to put about 10 pounds of make-up on Grey to make him appear sort of Korean, and he did a decent job with the character giving it his own touches. How would it have been with an actual Asian actor? Who can say. But I find it hard to believe that casting directors couldn't find an Asian actor for the role and ended up settling on Grey.

In the case of Kusanagi, there is a wealth of young, talented actresses available who could bring some authentic ethnicity to the role. Not even a remotely exhaustive list, but here's the first four that came to mind when I decided to write about this:

Devon Aoki

devon aoki nude

Jaime Chung


Maggie Q


Ziyi Zhang


And that doesn't even include others like Summer Glau who could add a different look to the Major's character if producers wanted to go another way. Point is, come on guys . . . give someone else a chance to work. How about it?

Dadgummit, Miley forgot her brawr agin

miely cyrus topless

As I sit here listening to the peaceful serenity of a quiet Sunday morning being shattered by my insensitive neighbors having their lawn mowed by some illegal immigrant -- can't get that done during the week when everyone's at work, right? I'm perusing the celeb sites and see that silly ole Miley decided to go sunbathing topless on a balcony whilst in Sydney this week:

miley cyrus topless

This would have been a bit more scandalous a year or two ago, but at this point, it's more of a scandal when Miley's not showing off her boobs:

miley cyrus topless
miley cyrus topless
miley cyrus topless
miley cyrus topless

But is her music any good? That's what I'm wondering. Or does that even matter anymore?

Saturday, October 18, 2014

So how's that new season of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. going?


Glad you asked.

Much like last season, the first couple episodes took off at a breakneck pace. I'm not sure why they're doing that again, maybe they just think they have too much narrative to cover or something. But whatevs, it's a good thing I have the dvr set, 'cause I have to go back and review sometimes to see what I've missed.

S.H.I.E.L.D. is now the little engine that could and Hydra is the big dog with endless resources and such. The team has added a few new characters, sadly the highly anticipated (by me at least) addition of Lucy Lawless ended in the first episode as her character got killed off. sheesh

Added to the good guys are a mercenary named Lance Hunter played by Nick Blood (yeah, that's what I thought too) and a sort of techy guy "Mac" MacKenzie played by Henry Simmons, who ends up befriending Fitz in a big brother kind of way.

Fitz is brain damaged from the cliffhanger peril he and Simmons were in at the end of season one. So he talks to a mirage of Simmons, can't complete a sentence and is struggling to be a functioning part of the team. Simmons has gone off to work undercover at Hydra and Fitz thinks she's abandoned him, adding to his smothering despair.

Oh yeah, in my port mortem on last season, I said it didn't make any sense to me to develop a character like Ward and then kill him off. Well they didn't. He's in some secure holding cell where Coulson is using Skye to extract info from him about Hydra. Ward seems, on the surface, to be reformed after his capture and failed suicide attempts, but underneath, he appears to be focused on delivering Skye to her father, who we still don't know exactly who/what her father is.

They've continued the trend of upping the action quotient that started towards the end of last season. This week we had a nice fight between a lingerie-clad Agent May and an imposter of herself wearing a low cut/high slit cocktail dress. Yummy. Must see tv. heh

Also in the harder edged department, May is mentoring Skye in an attempt to make her a more functional field agent. Skye wears a heart monitor on her wrist to ensure she's remaining calm, even when acting as a sniper and killing a mutant threatening the team.

There's been some humor as well. My favorite was when Skye was trying to be dismissive of Hunter and she called him "trainspotting." Hunter gives her this look and remarks that he's not Scottish. heh They could use a bit more snark like that imho.

The regrettable Patton Oswalt is still around and there's a general named Talbot chasing the team. Adrian Pasdar, as General Talbot, looks like he's channeling Sam Elliot as General Ross from 2003's Hulk movie. Not bad, but a bit over the top, again imho.

All in all, it's still a good show. It's going to suffer from not being blockbuster movie-ish, but it's some nice small ball. I'd like to see the occasional cameo from the movies -- I've seen where Jeremy Renner has said he'd be okay with it. And with the introduction of his comic book girlfriend (Barbara Morse aka Mockingbird) portrayed by Adrianne Palicki in next week's episode, we might get that.

So I'm good with this so far :-)