[colored_box color=”red”]A-Rod has to go. No. 13’s luck ran out long ago, and it’s time to hang up his pinstripes for good. It’s not our fault the Yankees raided the Boss’s vault and handed Alex Rodriguez a 10-year, $275 million contract. That’s capitalism. But demand and supply has finally caught up with the slugger. Now he’s been accused—yet again—of getting performance-enhancing drugs, this time from a “biochemist” named Anthony Bosch, who runs an “anti-aging” clinic in Florida. A-Rod can deny it all he wants, but the Yanks would be better off without his distraction. There’s a reason Joe Torre revealed in his book that the clubhouse nickname for Rodriguez was “A-Fraud.” See ya!
Beyoncé blew people’s minds when she belted out the National Anthem at President Barack Obama’s second inauguration—and blew it big time when it turned out that she had lip-synched her vocal track. The lady can sing, she’s got an amazing set of pipes, but that historic moment on the Capitol steps called for her to be genuine, not canned. She might as well have phoned it in from her limo. Okay, so she says that she’s a perfectionist, and the cold weather that January day in D.C. wasn’t copacetic for her vocal cords (unlike the warm confines of the New Orleans’ Superdome). But the nation deserved the real thing, not a faker, on Inaugural Day. Oh, we may forgive her someday soon (it’s not like she’s going out with that abusive nut-job Chris Brown), but for now, we intend to give her the slip.
First she loves Manti Te’o to death, then she dies, and then she doesn’t even exist. We don’t expect lessons in existentialism from our collegiate athletes unless they’re doing a term paper—or maybe, in this Notre Dame student’s case having someone else do it for them—but the revelation that his alleged girlfriend, Lennay Kekua, never was real, never really dated the top-rated linebacker, never fought a losing battle with leukemia, and never passed away on the same day as his 72-year-old grandmother is just too hard to take. Oh, the coincidence! Oh, the stupidity! This Heisman trophy finalist told Sports Illustrated he would call this virtual woman’s hospital room and stay on the line with her even while he slept. Somebody should have woken this numbskull up a while back with a slap upside his helmet. Shame on him.
Monica Christopher was busted by Nassau County police for allegedly running a dog-fighting ring inside her garage in New Cassel. When the cops showed up to investigate her neighbors’ noise complaints, 15 to 20 people reportedly ran off. But not the dogs; they were penned in. Inside the garage, police found two pit bulls in “bloody, wounded conditions” and other dogs with “wounds to the face, nose and body,” according to reports. North Hempstead’s animal control department took 18 “malnourished” pit bulls to the shelter, hospitalized five and euthanized three of them immediately because of their broken bones and lacerations. We don’t begrudge people betting on foolish things—it’s not our money—but we don’t dig dog fighting.
One hundred and three years behind bars may not be enough for Nechemya Weberman, the predatory Hasidic counselor convicted in Brooklyn Supreme Court for sexually molesting a young woman for six years, starting when she was only 12. The Daily News reported that Weberman may have violated at least 10 other women but only this teenager came forward. Had she not risked the ire of her insular Satmar Hasidic community, where prosecutors said “she was treated like a piece of dirt” for daring to go public with her accusations, then this despicable 54-year-old human being would never have been put away. With no chance at parole. Good riddance.
German clothing designer Philipp Plein has a killer sense of style. Plein’s 2013 fall collection in Milan featured a half-naked tattooed male model with the words “Only kill for real love” on his torso in red and semi-automatic assault weapons in each hand as he marched down the runway. Another model paraded with a ski-mask hiding his face like a terrorist. What kind of fashion statement is that? In the words of Heidi Klum, who said it best: “You’re out!”
Ira Isaacs earned four years in prison last month for distributing films that a federal jury in California found criminally obscene. We don’t mind shocking people out of their complacency with artistic expression that elevates, but the 61-year-old South Bronx self-proclaimed “shock artist” deliberately defecates with his coprophilous cinema (too high-brow a word for his smutty crap) that portrays women fornicating with him while they eat his excrement. He also sold movies from Japan that showed bestiality. It’s hard to swallow his defense that “if an artist can offend so many people that he has to go to prison to protect society, that’s really saying something.” He’s just a bullshit artist with a sick scam who finally got busted. Perhaps in prison Isaacs should be forced to watch uninterrupted episodes of “Barney the Dinosaur” until his eyes bleed. That might shock some sense into him.
Lance Armstrong should be given a Pink Slip for so many reasons it’s hard to cycle through them in one sitting. From lying about his doping to dumping Sheryl Crow to threatening to heap calumny on any one in his entourage who dared to defy him, the guy goes on Oprah to beg for sympathy when all he deserves is obloquy. And the next time you use a postage stamp, remember that he was the star of the United States Postal Service Pro Cycling Team, which stupidly spent $40 million on him and his cycling underlings between 1996 and 2004 when they should have been focused on our mail. Armstrong won seven times in France but never delivered the truth until he’d gone beyond forgiveness. Somebody should stamp the word “cancel” across his forehead and return him to sender.
Moktar Belmoktar is the terrorist leader of the Masked Brigade, the militant group with al-Qaida ties who attacked the Algerian natural gas plant in the Sahara desert and killed more than 80 people after holding the place hostage for four days. Nicknamed “Mr. Marlboro” because of his role in smuggling cigarettes, Belmoktar claimed responsibility for the deadly debacle in a video posted online. According to government authorities, his group had hoped to blow up the refinery and hurt the Algerian economy which depends on its oil exports. The brigade sought to punish Algeria for supporting France in its fight to rid neighboring Mali of al-Qaida extremists who were destroying Timbuktu. This Marlboro Man should go up in smoke—so long as no one else gets hurt.
It should have been a no-brainer: never drive a cement mixer while taking Valium without a prescription and talking on the cell phone. But Raymond Ragen apparently didn’t get the message in time, according to police—nor did he have a valid driver’s license, something his Westbury cement company should have thought about before he got behind the wheel—and so he took “a wrong turn” with his truck and allegedly plowed into a school bus in Locust Valley, killing the driver and injuring four kids and a bus attendant last summer. Now on trial, he’s charged with vehicular homicide and faces up to 25 years in prison.
Elissandro Spohr and Mauro Hoffman are the co-owners of Kiss, a nightclub in Brazil that was packed with 2,000 club-goers—more than triple its legal capacity—on Jan. 29 when the band Gurizada Fandangueria used fireworks on stage meant only for outdoor use and Kiss became an inferno killing 235 club-goers. The band had reportedly bought these flares because they were much cheaper than the safer ones. Besides the owners, the cops also busted Marcelo de Jesus dos Santos, the band’s lead singer, and Luciano Bonilha, the show’s producer. We’d set their hair on fire, if we had our way, but it wouldn’t bring all those young revelers back from the dead, nor ease the suffering of those who survived with bad burns and seared lungs. Still, for Kiss to have fake fire extinguishers, no smoke detector, an expired permit and only one exit—down a dark, narrow hallway which quickly turned into a deadly bottleneck— is absolutely inexcusable. All the idiots who let this happen should burn in hell.
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