July '08

Jazz Aces - card trick

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There goes the neighbourhood. Congratulations to Seon Hwa Lee (Ginn Tribute), Yani Tseng (McDonald's LPGA Championship), Eun-Hee Ji (Wegman's LPGA) and Inbee Park (LPGA Woman's US Open Championship), who swept all events on the LPGA in the month of June. Two of those events were majors.

More on woman's golf: check out this super-clutch putt by K-Rod. It's a thing of beauty. Bravo!

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In very sad news, hi-class runway, print and cosmetics model, Ruslana Korshunova, jumped to her death from the ninth floor of her Manhattan apartment building on June 28th. See her gallery.
Details about her death are still unclear. She had spent the night before with her boyfriend watching a DVD (Demi Moore in Ghost) and then he dropped her off at her apartment early that Saturday morning. Several hours later, about 2pm, she went to the roof of her building and jumped. She was 20 years old, a few days shy of turning 21. She had just returned from a modeling gig in Paris, and friends report that she was in good spirits. However, judging from some of her posts on social networking sites, it seems she was quite likely suffering from depression, w/extreme self-loathing problems.

In both sad and good news - news that I've kept quiet about - Kago has attempted suicide twice in the past 18 months and, thankfully, has failed on both attempts. The failing part is the good news. I'll have a recent picture of her here soon. She's looking great; she's lost some weight and is all grown up, but she's in the habit now of wearing long sleeve shirts to hide the scars on her arms.

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On a lighter note, Stephen Colbert, the funny-ass host of The Colbert Report, recently appeared on his show with a badly bruised forehead and has begun a new cause to fight the glamorization of "face violence". This comes on the heels of a campaign he took on a year ago to champion the struggle for "wrist awareness" after breaking his wrist while running around the set of his show. He pledged he would never again break a fall with his hands. Regarding the issue with his face, Colbert claims he wrecked it the day before while practicing with Cirque de Soleil and "overestimating the number of french Canadians" he could support on his forehead.

Barack Obama, the likely soon-to-be next President of the United States, recently spoke to a group of mostly black men, and spoke harshly about the efforts black men have made as fathers, saying, "Too many fathers are MIA, too many fathers are AWOL," and that "...its not enough to sit in the house watching Sports Center. So stop praising yourself for your mediocre accomplishments. Don't get carried away with that eighth-grade graduation of yours." He added, "You're supposed to graduate from eighth grade."

I've never thought of it like that... I was changing in the gym locker room at the 24Hour Fitness I go to and a group of black men were discussing how much money CEO's make. One commented that he'd heard about a CEO who was making "one hundred fiddy million a year." He went on to contrast this CEO's salary with Barry Bonds' salary, saying, "Bonds can only get 38 million a year, and the CEO is some guy walkin' around... you wouldn't even notice him. He's nuthin'. He a regular dude and he be makin' a hundred fiddy million?! He nuthin's but a chump!"

This is all true, btw. Everything you read here is true. I can't make this up! Here's more from last month. I was in line at AAA, the insurance company, waiting to pay my car insurance. I was third in line. At the front of the line was a middle-aged white woman. Behind her, and in front of me, was an extreme-looking Oriental woman, probably Vietnamese. A black clerk behind the counter said, "Next," and the white woman approached. The woman needed to make a change of address on her account. She handed over her AAA card and the clerk brought up her information on the computer. It had both the woman and her husband's information; they share the account. The clerk looked at the woman and asked, "Are you Beverly or Derek?"
Next up was the Vietnamese woman. She was being helped by an Hispanic clerk. Problem was, the clerk was speaking to the woman in rapid-fire Spanish. The asian woman waited for the clerk to take a breath, which you must do when speaking with Spanish people, and protested, "I don't speak Spanish."

I paid my bill and went to my gym across the street. I go there about 5 times a week. They should know me by now, but every time, without fail (today was no exception), they ask for a photo ID along with my gym membership card. On this day the clerk was a white guy whose name tag identified him as Dom. But that's not all that was on his name tag. Above his name it read, "Wut Up Wit Dat?" Wut is up wit dat? Wut up wit the wut up is dat on your name tag, chump? Who are you, Vanilla Ice? You gonna get chiggy wit it? Many of the members of 24Hour Fitness are paying as much as $500 a year and $70 bucks a month to belong to this gym. Do they really want to be met at the front desk by some guy with his pants falling down around his ass wearing a "Wut Up Wit Dat" name tag? (Thankfully I only have to pay $20 a year for the rest of my life and can go to any 24Hour Fitness anywhere in the world, because when I joined this gym, someone like Dom (wut up wit dat) was the sales rep, and I really don't think he knew how to use a calculator.

But that's not all. The next day I went to get tires put on my Volkswagen at the local Firestone. I was being helped by a young Spanish woman. She asked for the name of my car. I told her it was a Volkswagen Bug, which - if you don't know - is a cute term used for all those bubble cars they made in Germany. She began clicking through her computer searching for my car. The options brought up, 'Volkswagen Beetle', 'Volkswagen Ghia', etc. I could see the screen and I could see where this was going, and I just wanted more reason to play, so I just watched and let her struggle. Finally, getting frustrated, she said, "What's the name of your car again?" I said, "It's a 'bug'." And she said, "Can you spell that?"

Why does the world even bother rotating? That's a lot of work.

Speaking of all things Filipinos, have you seen the way they begin Deal or no Deal in the Philippines? I have to hand it them: Filipinos may be the dumbest people on earth, but those case girls really rock.. Check it out.

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