Guess I know who Tove Lo is now

It wasn't so much the bikini pics of Tove Lo down in Rio that caught my attention:

It was this seemingly deliberate oopsey on stage at the Rock in Rio show that set her apart from the crowd:

Yeah, no other way to get that shoulder strap back in place. Had to Google her to figure out who she was. Here's a vid of one of her songs that I'm pretty much sure I've heard somewhere though I don't do Top 40 radio in my life. *Girl on girl kissing* alert necessary. And I'm kind of wondering with the implied drunken hook-up action between her and other girls in the video -- if this was on a college campus, would she now be walking around campus carrying a mattress, doing performance art, to protest her rape at the hands of these multiple offenders taking advantage of her?

Happy Memorial Day

Never forget why we celebrate this day.

Juan Pablo Montoya wins the Indy 500

Alternate title: Hey NASCAR, this is how the last 9 laps of a race should look.

First off, congrats to Juan Pablo for winning his second Indy 500. I've always been a fan of his. And wish he had had more success during his time in NASCAR. But he's back home in open wheel racing and getting it done big time. Today coming from 30th because of an incident during caution laps.

But to my alternate title thought. This season, IndyCar made some big changes to their aero package that had a dramatic effect on the racing today. The cars were able to draft successfully allowing for lots of lead changes and adding drama to the last handful of laps.

Goodyear, Cheever and Bestwick were nearly breathless talking about the strategy and repercussions of the last lap passes and marveling at Montoya's win-at-all-costs bravado at holding off challenges for the win. That's what racing is supposed to be. IndyCar has returned to that with this new design -- new aero, two chassis manufacturers . . . they've gotten away from the kit car mentality and it might just bring this long time fan back.

NASCAR should take note of this. Their premiere races are little more than 180mph traffic jams as the powers at be have decided that giant pack racing and the inherent wrecks are more exciting than daring passes and mad driving skills. Tony Stewart barked about NASCAR's new aero/hp package earlier this year and he was on point. Perhaps someone at NASCAR was watching Indy today and will take heed.

I hope so.

And congratulations once again to Juan Pablo Montoya for the exciting win!

Unpopular stance -- part 2

Alternate title: Ann Coulter gives a much needed de-pantsing to conservatives parroting liberal talking points.

In my post below, I complained about Megyn Kelly dropping a gotcha question at Jeb Bush about the U.S. entry into the Iraq War. I've said in previous posts, there has been some real memory loss about the facts in the run up to that war, and seemingly intentional blindness to why Iraq is a mess now. Though I've disagreed with Coulter on many things, she's spot on here.

I'm not pleased with the article's title, but I've got no complaints about the content.

Contrary to the fairy tale the left has told itself since Obama truculently gave away America’s victory in Iraq, our argument wasn’t that we had to invade Iraq because of Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction. And the left’s argument certainly was not: "He doesn’t have any WMDs!" Our argument was: There were lots of reasons to get rid of Saddam Hussein, and none to keep him.

Ann gives a number of reasons why we went to war in Iraq, chief among them -- Hussein was giving shelter to terrorists, he had tried to assassinate a U.S. President, he not only had WMD's (chemical/biological weapons) he had used them against his own people, and we needed to give someone in the Arab world a nose bloodying after 9/11 and Iraq's murderous dictator was the best choice.

It's a good article, filled with her trademark snark, and she name checks Megyn Kelly in it as well. So I'm hoping that leads to a little face-to-face on Kelly's show next week, though I doubt Kelly will back down on her populist stance of criticizing the war and Bush as well.

It's a worthy read, check it out for yourself.

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Also worth noting -- Elizabeth Marxs might be perfect looking:

Julianne Hough is noticeable

At a recent after party for something or other, Dancing with the Stars maven Julianne Hough gave everyone a bit of a show:

She didn't give folks the full Melissa Reeves there, but that's still a risky dress to wear when you're going to get your party on.

Boy, the romance has gone out of flying, hasn't it?

When I was a kid, growing up in the 60s and 70s, my idea of airline travel was something like Eastern's Wings of Man ride at Disneyworld. All glamour and grace, meals served on china with linen napkins, roomy planes, the Yankee Clipper (the plane not Joe DiMaggio), and so on. All those James Bond movies with him riding in those planes that looked like your living room with wings. *sigh*

Now it's more like a city bus with wings.

I flew out to California to visit my son and his family last week. Took Southwest Airlines for the round trip. They're a great company, very reasonable rates, nice friendly folks on staff. They managed to shoehorn me into another flight when my original got delayed out of Tampa. The operative word there being shoehorn. Out and back, 5-6 hours in those tiny seats on that 737. Man, that's tough ride on these old knees.

And there's the whole TSA security bit too, that keeps family and friends from watching your flight depart from the airside. I remember watching my mom go off on business trips. There was something magical about being able to watch the plane taxi out and take off. It gave you a sense of closure, if that's the right way to phrase it. Now you get a hug in the parking lot and that's about it.

I was lucky one of the times my son was flying out of here, because he's in the Army, he had to fly in uniform. The ticket gal printed up a bland boarding pass so I could accompany him to the gate. That was nice. But the average traveler doesn't get that kind of stuff. I wonder if it will ever calm down enough to have some civility in airline travel again.

I find the term bucket list to be a bit tedious and overused these days, but if I had one, I think one wish would be to travel somewhere on a plane in style. You know, where there's only two seats on each side of the aisle, and the seats are like Barcaloungers. Where you get a decent meal, not a packet of 13 - 17 salted peanuts. Where a glass of Coke is a glass of Coke, not a little plastic thing with 1.2 oz of soda and bunch of ice cubes.

Just one time, to see what it's like.

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And in the same vein, a little vintage Flight Attendant hotness:

Hypocrisy alert

Lightly talented Lena Dunham took time out of her busy schedule of telling women to celebrate Mother's Day by murdering their unborn children to tweet out this pic:

The text of the tweet had to do with letting her followers know that she was off to the gym to work out with renowned fitness guru to the stars Tracy Anderson.

Hold the phone. Why is Lena Dunham working out? I thought her body was perfect as it is. Isn't that what she's been hectoring us about for the last few years? Her body's perfect. It is we that are the problem because we can't appreciate her awesome hotness.

And besides, she just knows that guys have been jerking off to her, in all her doughy hotness, for all her years in New York. At least that's what she tweeted out recently.

I did a post a few years back, when Adele was all the rage. After pimping herself as the plus-sized woman done wrong/hear me roar, she found a new boyfriend. And viola, she's suddenly talking about her new diet and how she's slimming down for her new man, etc.

Well, which is it ladies? You're comfortable in your own bodies and love me like I am, or you're just pandering to an audience and telling them whatever will get you more fame/followers/money?

I have a young friend who was struggling with her weight. I asked her if she found someone she was interested in, would that serve as a motivation to exercise/slim down and so on. And she told me nope. Exactly the opposite. She said that when she was in a relationship, she just packed on the pounds because she was happy, had her man, and wasn't worried about anything else.

At least that was honest. I respect her for that.

I'm gonna take the unpopular stance on these two issues

First -- Jeb Bush

Last night during an interview on Megyn Kelly's eponymous show, she posed a "gotcha" question to the former Florida governor to the effect of whether, knowing what he/we know now, would he have gone to war in Iraq.

Jeb did exactly what we, as conservatives have been begging our candidates and politicians to do -- he didn't fall for the baited trap and instead turned the question to get out what was his position on the issue.

Paraphrasing, he stated that going on what the world's intelligence agencies knew at the time he would have done the same thing as his brother had done.

This has naturally touched off a firestorm of recriminations from both the left and the right, both of whom are conveniently forgetting what has gotten the mid-East into the mess it is in now. That is, the ill-advised withdrawal of US troops from Iraq. We should have kept a force there. We should have maintained an obvious presence there, and that is what pretty much every military leader interviewed has said.

I'm disappointed in Kelly, whom I generally like, for continuing to push this faulty narrative. Guests on her own show have brought out repeatedly that only the vacuum left by our premature withdrawal from the region has given rise to ISIS and a militant Iran, and not our decision to remove a genocidal dictator from the region.

She also tried to nail him on his support for Common Core. Now I'm with most folks who decry the indecent data mining and the bizarre teaching metrics associated with this. But Jeb's right about one thing -- we must reform our education system. And Jeb's got the track record here in Florida as Governor. He might need another path on this one, but his heart's in the right place.

Got to get him up to speed on the lie of man-made climate change tho.

All in all, sorry folks, I'm team Jeb on this one.

And in part two -- Kendall Jenner

Yes, the light-headed sibling of that bizarre clan made the world-ending mistake of wearing a Lynyrd Skynyrd vintage tour t-shirt to the gym the other day and compounded that by tweeting a picture of herself.

You see, the t-shirt had a small Confederate Flag in one corner of it, as pretty much every t-shirt put out by southern rock bands did back in the 70s. Well, righteous outrage has ensued as the effete gays and pouty lesbians that run the celeb blogs have lept at Jenner's stupidity/ignorance/heartlessness at daring to wear that symbol on her clothes.

Give me a f*cking break! It's a f*cking t-shirt for crying out loud! Ever look around you and see how much Nazi imagery is used in pop culture? Ever see this:

Yeah, that's the Iron Cross. It's everywhere from heavy metal to bikers to surfers. It's an award used by Hitler during WW II. Ever hear of that? 5 million Jews murdered? Yeah, that Hitler. Nazi and communist imagery is everywhere from music to Madison Avenue. Where's the outrageous outrage about that?

You know what offends me? Seeing those old time pictures of the signs hanging in bars that said "No dogs or Irish allowed" or the neverending portrayal of Irishmen as drunks or some crazed fill in the blank. Last positive portrayal of an Irishman I saw in a movie was The 13th Warrior. The fact that we've forgotten that the reason most cops are/were Irish back in the day was those were the worst jobs available. No one wanted them, so the Irish took them. All those miners that got black lung and died in cave-ins during the industrialized steel industry were Irish. Because they were deemed expendable, less worthy of life than anyone else.

The Civil War was an ugly period in our history. The South fought for secession based in large part because they needed slaves to work the fields. It was an ignorant position, a regrettable one, made by people less evolved than we are now. No one is suggesting we return to those days. Blacks have made the Confederate Flag a symbol of discrimination. That's their right. But to Southerners, it is simply a sign of defiance, independence, of a willingness to stand and fight for what you believe in.

And in case you've missed. There's been an overt push to declare the American Flag a symbol of oppression and racism on college campuses and even in primary schools. Are you going there now? Let's see just how far you pantiwaist liberals are willing to push this meme.

As to the Confederate Flag -- yeah, I'm white, so maybe I don't see it your or other's way. But like I said, It's just a f*cking tour shirt! When you start railing against every other tour shirt with questionable imagery on, I'll take you seriously. But right now -- get a grip!

Christina Hendricks looks nice

This is a nice look:

From L.A. Confidential magazine.

Usually she looks so over the top, trying so hard to play up her cleavage. This is nice look for her. I'm liking the longer hair too. Of course, it should be a nice look -- I added up the cost of the outfit - $4500! (not counting the shoes)   eesh!

But still, some subdued hotness . . . I like it.

Deflategate -- I don't have a dog in this fight, but ...

There's something a bit unsettling about the rush to judgement here.

I caught the Sports Reporters Sunday, and to listen to these guys, you'd think they caught Brady and the equipment guy on video sucking the air out of the balls and taking selfies of themselves.

There's an interesting story over at Breitbart Sports that does a pretty good job of showing what looks like a witch hunt was in place.

As writer Daniel J Flynn points out, it looks like the investigator took an approach similar to Climate Scientologists in the case -- that is, he had a forgone conclusion and interpreted evidence and innuendo in a way that made his case.

As Flynn points out, all of the game balls were underinflated at halftime. And the equipment guy, Jastremski, pointed out that the referees had a habit of over-inflating balls by as much as 2.5 psi before games.

All of the balls — Patriots balls and Colts balls — lost pressure by halftime. Significantly, the 11 Patriot balls showed greater decreases than the four Colt balls tested. More significantly, judging by what the scientists employed by Wells told him, eight of the 11 balls tested at halftime fell within the expected range of pressure drop based on the measurements of at least one of the two NFL officials who gauged the pigskins. This, more than anything else, invalidates the conclusions of the Wells Report. Though Ted Wells theorizes a conspiracy to depressurize balls, measurements by NFL referees on the majority of the Patriots balls read precisely where the scientific firm employed by the investigators said a ball inflated to 12.5 psi–the NFL minimum–would fall to (between 11.52 and 11.32) as a result of game-time conditions.

It is important to note here -- the final inflation figure of 11.5 - 11.3 is one pound under the minimum. I would defy anyone to recognize a one pound variation of inflation in a football. In fact, one of our local sports guys did just that on television and said he couldn't detect any difference.

The report is also filled with a lot of e-mails and communications between various figures around the supposed conspiracy that don't actually say or prove anything. Mostly they seem included to damage the image of the team and members of it. The fact that Brady wouldn't simply open up his cell phone or computer to the investigator is implied as a sign of guilt. It's a conviction based on innuendo and little actual evidence. I'm not even sure that this would qualify as circumstantial in a court of law.

Like I said, I don't have a dog in this fight. Frankly, I'm a Drew Bledsoe fan. I always thought he got short shrift from the organization and the fans who have forgotten how he almost literally carried a woeful team on his back for years -- over 44,000 yards passing, 251 tds, 77.1 qb rating. Only losing his job to injury to the current qb Tom Brady.

I think this is a witch hunt. The Patriots are the team everyone loves to hate. And I think destroying Tom Brady's legacy to satisfy this jealousy is wrong. Plain and simple.

Update:
News out this afternoon is that Brady got a four game suspension and the Pats were fined $1mil and two draft picks.

Hmmm . . .

Ray Rice is on video punching his wife, knocking her out cold and dragging her out of an elevator. He admitted to doing this and received a two game suspension. There's no evidence that Brady had anything to do with the deflated footballs other than using them in a game, and he receives a four game suspension.

Maybe he should have just beat the sh*t out of his wife instead, filmed it with his cell phone. That way he'd only miss two games. Plus his team wouldn't be financially penalized.

Seems a bit uneven in the discipline department in my opinion.

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And for no other reason than I have the picture, here's Scarlett Johansson's ass in spandex on the set of the new Avengers movie:

Melissa Reeves looks like a fun date -- part 2

Melissa Reeves had yet another quiet evening on the town:

That's Kayleigh Morris giving Ms. Reeves a helping hand there. The stains all over Melissa's dress there give the whole affair that refined, elegant look.

Season 2 of Penny Dreadful

Season 2 of Showtime's ambitious series has hit the ground running. I've waited two episodes in to write something about it. So here we go.

Following last season's ending, where the priest tells Miss Ives (Eva Green) that being touched by Satan is just like being touched by God, we find the smoldering beauty is being hunted by monsters. Actually they're witches, but like last season's vampires, these aren't your grandparent's witches. These beings are shape-shifting, bald, naked women whose bodies are covered with scars in the shapes of pentagrams. The leader of their coven is the supposedly fake psychic Evelyn Poole (Helen McCrory), who hates Miss Ives for some reason to be revealed later.

The creatures speak some form of verbis diablo which Miss Ives instinctively knows and is the clue the group from last season is working on.

After presenting Eva Green's character as a powerful force in the beginning of season one, the series has rendered her a tortured helpless damsel in distress for most of last season and the beginning of this one. This allows Eva to mull around looking dark and tormented, a look she pulls off well, but I'd like to see her be a more dominant character if the series continues.

After Ethan Chandler (Josh Hartnett) destroyed a waterfront bar and killed everyone in it while in werewolf form, we find a new investigator tracking him down. I don't think they've offered a name for him, but he's determined to find this "monster" roaming around London. Hartnett hasn't done much yet this season other than display a wry bit of humor, but I'm sure there's more to come.

Speaking of monsters, Frankenstein's monster still delivers the pathos for the series. Alternating pained longing and eloquent speeches with threats of violence, the creature (Rory Kinnear) seems to be the voice for the series. He has a new job at a wax museum that coincidentally is opening a series of exhibits on gruesome murders which just happen to be the ones committed by Ethan Chandler's werewolf.

Dr. Frankenstein has successfully resurrected Brona Croft (Billie Piper), now named Lily, with an ease that I find a bit disappointing and finds himself fatally attracted to her as she's supposed to be the bride of his monster. Of course Billie looks pretty fabulous for the risen dead -- a bit pale in the face, but a bangin' body marred only by the y-shaped scar of a post mortem. They've set up a nice situation where she's repelled by the monster, and Frankenstein (Harry Treadaway) looks to be trying to steal her away for himself.

We got a brief look at Dorian Grey (Reeve Carney) as he picked up a cross-dressing prostitute -- guess we have to have that hot man sex in everything these days *sigh* so I hope there's more to him this season. Sir Malcolm (Timothy Dalton) is being seduced via witchcraft by Lady Poole in part because she's trying to get at Miss Ives, but there may be another reason lurking underneath. We also know the witches are afraid of Ethan for some reason, but that hasn't been revealed as of yet.

As with last season, the show has wonderful set design, direction and performances. It has the occasionally unsettling scene (the vivisection of a baby in this week's) but it's supposed to be a horror show, so if you're not up for it -- beware. It is worth watching imho.

Here's a few screen grabs of Eva Green from her turn in the disappointing 300: Rise of an Empire, one from something else and a gif of Billie Piper from season one for your enjoyment:

"I'm not a scientist..."

Thus spake our President recently at a fund raiser, where he uttered perhaps the most accurate words of his administration.

Of course, he followed that up with the statement "I can understand science." Which I'm suspect of since he can't understand the Constitution, even though he's supposedly a Constitutional scholar.

Anyway, this whole bit is over the President trying to gin up the Climate Change scare (emphasis mine):

"And what the science says is that our planet is warming in such a way that it is going to increase drought, and it is going to increase wildfires, and it is going to displace millions of people around this planet, and increase the severity of floods and hurricanes, and it will cost lives and it will cost our way of life, and it could affect the incredible natural bounty that Oregon represents. And that’s not the kind of America I want to pass on to our kids and our grandkids."

That would be a keeper of a sound bite if any of it was true. Or even remotely true. Currently we are experiencing a flat-line temperature trend that has lasted over 18 years:

We're also in the longest period (I think over 3 years) of no Cat 3 hurricanes making landfall in the U.S. Also no increase in the number or severity of tornadoes, drought or wildfires, despite what's happening in California at the moment. And frankly, that has more to do with over population of an arid area and the forced introduction of water where it does not go normally, than anything the climate is doing. Which isn't much of anything, thankyouverymuch.

And despite historic levels of melting of Arctic and Antarctic ice, we still have historic levels of ice at both poles. So . . . the oceans aren't rising, seaside towns aren't under water, polar bears and penguins are living happy lives, and so on. You know, business as usual on planet Earth.

I also saw where even though NASA is crying wolf over high CO2 levels (still far below historic highs), the happy side effect is a greening of the planet. Because plants like CO2, you know? And when they process it, we get more oxygen. That's a good thing, right?

Maybe the Prez ought to stick to his Final 4 bracket and leave the science to actual scientists who aren't groveling for funding from the government.

Jessica Impiazzi parties like Melissa Reeves

British actress Jessica Impiazzi had a quiet night at the pubs recently:

I left out the pic of that dude pretending to mow that lawn while Jess was sprawled on the sidewalk laughing hysterically. But I think you get the general impression of the evening's events.

Btw, to view Jess not drunk but more naked, visit my post here.

Melissa Reeves looks like a fun date

Pretty young lady. You pick her up for your date looking like this:

And next thing you know, she's looking like this:

And then it's off to the races:

Could be because I'm just an old man, but I've never understood these gals going commando in those really short skirts. Sitting in clubs or bars or restaurants with your bare ass/girlie bits on a seat that may or may not have been wiped clean after the last patron. Ick.

Predictable, but in a good way

Because you knew if someone was going to pimp this whole May the 4th be with you shtick, it was going to be Maitland Ward:

And no, I don't know what that is on her leg there . . . shadow or something???

I'm still surprised she didn't jump all over the bikini car wash meme after Alicia Arden blew it up. Who knows, maybe it's still in the works.
I can wait   :-)

Daily Duffster

So, this whole "Hilary Duff's trolling for dates on Tinder" thing is for real, eh?

Celeb blogs went nuts earlier this week, when someone discovered a profile on social media site Tinder and ran with the erroneous story that the Duffster was desperately seeking Mr. Goodbar after her breakup with her husband.

Seems she was looking for a date, and found one, and had a film crew along as she plans on documenting her time as a new divorcee in a reality series.

Hmmm . . . perhaps she'd consider a broken down old mailman for one date. I eschew the social media, but if Alicia Arden can find my little blog here (see post below), then perhaps Hilary will stumble across this and give me a shout out. You've got to have comic relief in these shows right? I'm totally up for that if it means a date with the Duffster.

And it's not like I haven't been on television before (don't ask).