For those have not seen these great Bud Light ads (god I can't believe I just plugged a Light Beer.. what is happening to me), actually they are quite funny. And he is going to the Super Bowl and they are filming the road trip there, so hopefully a new ad will appear at the big game. Anyways go to this site and check them out. Thank to Sunny for finding the site.
Arghhhhh.... Nothing I hate worse than when two thuings you want to do happen to fall on the same date.. and time even. For the past several years I have been going to the WCHA Final Five at the Xcel energy center to root for the Gophers. Every year is great fun, even when they didn't win last year. It's my sister Kat and my brother-in-law Chris, and our friend Gooch that are going again this year. We have great seats on the so called bar-rail on the top row on one of the ends, right by the snack bar. (BTW the 'Wild Dogs' could be the best arena hot dog ever!) The event is one game thursday night, 2 games friday, and 2 on saturday March 16-18. So no St. Patricks day celebration this year, which is fine. All was great, and I was excited.. until this week....
I just got an email last week from my favorite band, Dream Theater, for who's first album this blog is named after. Guess when that are coming to town.. that's right Friday March 17th.. (insert profanity of choice here). The problem is is that the Gophers will be playing friday night, always will here. Drat, if they could have been coming thursday night instead, that game I could deal with missing. Well, at least the last date of this tour for them they are recording and also putting out a dvd of as it is there 20th anniversary tour. So I guess I shall be able to see what the tour was like. But man.. I wish I could seperate into two different people and then rejoin up saturday morning so I would get both experiences... oh well....
The trailer is now online for this movie based on a DC/Vertigo Comic. Looks cool:
Also some cool interviews with cast/producers etc. on the site.
V
By IRA PODELL, AP Sports Writer
NEW YORK - The NHL and the players' association reached an agreement in principle Wednesday on a six-year labor deal, ending a lockout that wiped out last season.
The sides met for 24 hours starting Tuesday afternoon to hammer out the collective bargaining agreement that will return the NHL to the ice on time in the fall. In February, commissioner Gary Bettman canceled the season, making the NHL the first North American sports league to lose a year because of a labor dispute.
"It's a new day," Philadelphia Flyers coach Ken Hitchcock told The Associated Press. "It's pretty exciting."
Both sides still need to ratify the deal, a pact that is expected to contain a salary cap - something players' union executive director Bob Goodenow never wanted. That process is expected to be completed next week, the league and the union said in a joint news release.
"To be totally honest, I really don't care what the deal is anymore. All I care about is getting the game back on the ice," Flyers star Jeremy Roenick said in a telephone interview during a celebrity golf event in Nevada.
"I think the deal is not great for the players. It is definitely an owner-friendly deal. For the last 10 years, the players have made a lot of money and now we are in a position where everybody is going to make money," he said. "Unfortunately, it had to take a whole year to get to a point where we could have been last year."
While the NHL seems to have gotten what it wanted, there is no way to measure the damage done to a sport that already was the least popular of the four major leagues in the United States.
"That's going to be our next big step - winning back the fans," said Nashville Predators forward Jim McKenzie, a 15-year NHL veteran. "We'll have our work cut out for us."
If all goes according to plan, a scaled-down draft is expected to be held later this month and training camps will open from Vancouver to Miami in September. Real NHL games will be back on the schedule come October.
"It'll be a great thing to get the game back up," Columbus Blue Jackets coach Gerard Gallant said.
Selling the sport might take a while longer.
During the lockout, disgruntled Buffalo fan Doug Sitler sold more than 15,000 magnetic car ribbons that read: "I need my hockey fix(ed)."
"I think it's going to take a little bit of time for people to get back in the swing of things," he said. "But sports fans are pretty fickle. They have short memories. They really do."
It took all night and then some for the final round of negotiations to produce an agreement.
The sides met for 10 straight days in New York, and it became clear Wednesday morning - the 301st day of the lockout - that they weren't going to leave the room without an agreement in hand.
The expected salary cap will likely have a ceiling approaching $40 million and a minimum somewhere between $20 million and $25 million.
Player salaries will not exceed 54 percent of league-wide revenues.
Bettman warned in February that the offers the union passed up were better than any it would see once a year of hockey was lost.
Just days before the season was wiped out, the players' association said for the first time it would accept a salary cap if the league dropped its desire to link player costs to revenues.
That started a wild week that included the cancellation of the season on Feb. 16 and a false hope three days later that it would be saved. Even Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux - superstars turned executives - couldn't resurrect it during an emergency bargaining session in New York.
Negotiations resumed in mid-March.
Bettman promised "cost certainty" in the form of a hard salary cap to the owners and he has gotten it.
The landscape of the NHL will be quite different than it was back in June 2004 when the Tampa Bay Lightning skated off with the Stanley Cup in the league's last game before the lockout. For the first time since a flu epidemic in 1919, there was no Stanley Cup champion in 2005.
Now when the league relaunches in the fall, it will do so with a brand new salary structure that keeps high-spending teams such as Toronto, Philadelphia and the New York Rangers in line.
The first order of business after the deal is ratified will be to get a majority of the players signed. The belief is that last season's contracts will be wiped from the books, leaving many players without deals.
Those who are still under contract will have their salaries reduced by 24 percent, a concept first proposed by the union last December. Some expensive players will also be on the market as teams pare payrolls to get down to the cap.
There will also be several rules changes that could run the gamut from the size of goaltender equipment to the installation of a shootout to eliminate tie games.
"Our focus right now, from the coaches standpoint, is we're waiting to see what our roster is going to look like and what the playing rules are going to look like," Hitchcock said in a phone interview.
The draft was supposed to be held last month in Ottawa, but the Canadian capital might get to host the event soon.
Canadian phenom Sidney Crosby is the consensus choice to be the No. 1 pick. Where he goes will be determined by a draft lottery that will give each team an opportunity to snag him.
He will certainly be part of the NHL's campaign to win back fans that were disenchanted by the lockout.
The deal finally came down during sport's biggest lull of the year - the baseball All-Star break.
The NHL probably won't hold such an event until 2007 as next year's All-Star game is expected to be replaced by an Olympic break, allowing for players to represent their countries in Turin, Italy.
JOE SOUCHERAY
(ST. Paul Pioneer Press)
The Supreme Court went nuts the other day. The heat got to them. There is no other way to look at it. Forget about gay marriage and prayer in the schools and God's mention in the Pledge of Allegiance. Those are minor affairs compared to the results of the complete breakdown of the land's highest court.
They made a ruling that says cities can take your property and turn it over to private developers. This is the so-called issue of eminent domain. In the old days, when we were getting goods to market with an ox cart or poling a barge along a canal, the "taking clause'' meant that a community had to come together once in a while and decide to sacrifice the south 40 acres of Old Man Jesperson's farm so that a road could be built for all to use, while also fairly compensating Jesperson.
That's the word the Fifth Amendment features: use.
So what did the Supreme Court justices rule by a 5-4 margin? Well, they decided that a city or government entity's ability to increase revenue is a public use. In other words, if a developer can sweet talk the City Council or county commissioners into the belief that the Acme Resort Corporation can generate more taxes than that row of Craftsman bungalows on Fifth Street, then by all means, have at it. Knock those people out of their homes. Bulldoze those houses and put up the new development.
Oh, and pay them just compensation? You can't come up with a figure. There is no amount of money to accommodate the new belief that the sanctity of the government is now elevated above the sanctity of your home.
I defy anybody reading this to tell me I have misinterpreted the Supreme Court's most progressive thinkers, Justices John Paul Stevens, Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Anthony Kennedy and David Souter. I mean progressive in the most ominous way.
The state's ability to generate revenue is now considered a public use under the court's newest interpretation of the Fifth Amendment.
Dissenting were Sandra Day O'Connor, Clarence Thomas, Antonin Scalia and Chief Justice William Rehnquist.
I don't know about you, but I took a walk around my property after I read this ruling and I felt a pit in my stomach. Nothing is safe.
Nothing.
And if your attitude on this one is, "Oh, well, it will never affect me,'' or, "Oh, well, life will go on,'' then you could be the next Wilhemina Dery.
Dery was among a group of homeowners in New London, Conn., who were faced with losing property after the Pfizer pharmaceutical company began discussing with the city plans for a $300 million waterfront research facility. The plans also include a hotel and a health club. Dery and her neighbors do not live in a blighted neighborhood, but rather an antiquated one of Victorian-style homes and shops.
The neighbors sued and the case landed at the Supreme Court, where the majority essentially erased the concept of private property, which is a bedrock of this republic.
O'Connor, writing for the minority, argued that the decision will disproportionately benefit people with influence and power in the political process. She is absolutely correct.
Here is the important thing to understand, especially if you are of a "progressive'' mind and have counted on the government to pave over life's bumps and ruts. You are going to get paved over in the new process.
O'Connor warned that rich people would buy up the property of poor people and create developments that only rich people could possibly use.
And what makes this horrible prospect possible is the unbelievably flawed ruling that a city's ability to make money is more important than your right to your home.
If you are out in your back yard today and you hear a chattering over your rooftop, look up. It might be the arrival of the black helicopter — the black helicopter of myth and conspiracy.
Or, worse, it might be a developer with big plans.
The party bus we were on tried to turn the wrong way down a one way street. And it so happened to do so right in front of a cop. Who of course signalled us to pull over. Yes that is us.(click on the pic for a bigger view); Mike D (blocked by the cop), Jake, Gooch, Me, Mary, Will, Andy, Kevin, Jim, Jason, Joe, and Chris. And that is the Limo Bus driver standing there.
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Actually, but unbeleivable coincidence, we did turn the wrong way down Summit Ave, right into Rob Zink, the only St. Paul Police Officer that most of us know. It was crazy. When Jake had the driver roll down the window so he could see it was us, he shook his head and pointed for us to pull over. Picture taking oppourtunities ensued. Kat and Chris getting into the squad car, getting handcuffed, and a couple of line up shots like the one above. Just crazy! Needless to say we had a great time, and no one will ever forget that. You should have seen the faces on the people driving by. Priceless.
Source: Variety May 13, 2005
The Jim Henson Company is planning to make a sequel to its 1982 fantasy classic The Dark Crystal, reports Variety.
Titled The Power of the Dark Crystal, the new movie is written by David Odell (The Dark Crystal, The Muppet Show) and Annette Duffy. No director is yet attached to the film which starts shooting this fall for a 2007 release. It will combine live-action animatronic characters with CG animation.
The story is set many years after the original, which was helmed by Frank Oz and Jim Henson. Original heroes Jen and Kira are now king and queen, and must fight to save their kingdom when the crystal is once again split.
Check out this vid to see some of the amazing features of this machine. And if thats not enough, here is a screenshot of a game! It looks very freekin' real!
