The Sequel - News headlines from the year 2012 - PART II

Back by popular demand: the second part of the News headlines from the year 2012!

Again, let's activate the magic and powerful crystal ball, and see what the near future holds for us (see the video)

And on we go with PART II of the predictions...July to December, 2012.

July

- July 1, Euro 2012 (soccer), Greece makes it to the final but they had to withdraw from the game because the country is so broke, they couldn't afford to provide the players with soccer shoes and uniforms.

- July 6, NBA basketball player Greg Oden (Portland Trail Blazers and former Ohio State University) wins the award for the oldest looking 24 year old man in the world. "On the bright side, I might be able to get an Applebees restaurants Senior Discount Card". His body must be as old as he looks: he hasn't been able to play a complete season yet.

Greg Oden

- July 28, London 2012 Olympic games: Dang Yun, an alleged Chinese female gymnast, is not human. Olympic Officials conducted the appropriate tests and found out that Dang Yun was a cat. "Meow!!" responded Dang Yun to her disqualification. (Just for the record, "meow" is not a Chinese word but kitty cat language).

August

- August 16, Stunner: Google buys Greece at a very low price. Spokesman for Google said: "We wanted to rename the country Google but we had some static from the European Union. Then we settled for writing Greece with the Google fonts". Google Greek headquarters will be located right in the Parthenon. The lobby shall be decorated with a giant harp, a spiral tube slide and robots from the 50's and 60's. The hallways will be full of unicycles (knowing how to ride unicycles is a prerequisite to work there), Pacman and Asteroids arcades.

- August 24, Cirque du Soleil launches a new show in Las Vegas called "Lindsay!". It's a musical and theatrical production. The storyline is the biography of Lindsay Lohan, but played by clowns. The lead character, Low Ann (a.k.a. Lindsay Lohan), is a clumsy clown that tries to survive in Hollywood but has a tendency mess everything up. The stage is a specially built circus ring at the Circus Circus Casino. Clowns of the show perform stunts like DUI's, car accidents, road rages, trying to sing without talent and escaping from rehab centers. Mickey the Goofball clown (a.k.a. Michael Lohan, Lindsay's father) steals the show.

- August 26, Women's Equality Day, George Carlin came back from the dead and makes an HBO Special including this (see the video...mostly for the bit starting 8:15):

September

- September 1, Microsoft buys Italy at a very low price. Italy was having major financial difficulties. Bill Gates declared: "Google has it's own country. We wanted ours." Rumours are that the country will be renamed to Finestre (Windows in Italian).

- September 3, Labour Day, children of the United States continue to go to school after US Congress officially cancelled Summer and blamed Barack Obama for the decision (see my article News headlines from the year 2012 - PART I, posted last January 7, 2012). "If there are any survivors to the end of the world, we are planning on cancelling Christmas. And if Barack Obama is re-elected, we'll blame him for the decision too" confirmed an anonymous US Congressman that started too laugh out loud, just like Vincent Price used to do (see the video).

- September 9, my beloved New England Patriots win their first game of the season...smells like a Super Bowl year!!!!

- September 15, NCAA Football - BCS Championship: the National Championship game will be exclusively for SEC teams. President of the BCS, Jim Norton, announced that the BCS Bowl will always have two opponents from the SEC conference. "There is no point in letting teams from the other 10 conferences and waste everybody's time. And, coincidentally, that will solve the playoffs non-sense controversy" said Norton. From 2006 to this day, the National Championship game was exclusively won by SEC schools: Florida (2006), Louisiana State University (2007), Florida (2008), Alabama (2009), Auburn (2010) and Alabama (2011).

October

- October 11, Apple, Inc. refuses to follow Google and Microsoft. "We won't buy a country. We will build our own country. It shall be called iLand", said CEO Tim Cook. However, it won't be possible to visualize iLand with Flash Player.

- October 31, Halloween night, Bill O'Reilly, host of The O'Reilly Factor, on Fox News channel, tried to disguise himself as Mickey Mouse, scared some children, forced them to take his book The O'Reilly Factor for Kids: A Survival Guide for America's Families (a real book...Google it!) instead of candy, scared them some more, screamed at them and called them socialists, communists and liberal pinheads. "Get me out of this straight jacket" O'Reilly scream as he was escorted by policemen to an undisclosed mental health facility.

Bill O'Reilly Mouse

November

- November 6, The United States presidential election of 2012: the results were so close between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama that the recount of the votes may last until the end of  times...which conveniently is next month.

- November 12, Bravo! channel announces that a new innovative reality show will air next season. The show will be called Roommates: Ex-wives and mistresses. Each ex-wife of the show will have to cohabit for a year with the mistress(es) of her husband. Sharp objects, baseball bats, gasoline and other possible weapons will be available to all the participants. Spoiler alert: one wife and a mistress become a lesbian couple.

December

- December 14, Glenn Beck declares: "I'm not worried about the end of the world. I've been preparing for this all my life. After the apocalypse, my ratings should remain just about the same. And am I glad I invested in gold, Goldline International and foodinsurance.com." (see the video)

- December 20, National Ski Areas Association (NSAA) is furious: the end of the world, scheduled to occur on the first day of winter, will be disastrous for the ski industry. "The government has to compensate us." Others, like Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve, Santa's Little Workshop and major alcoholic beverages companies have already requested government financial aid.

- December 21, D-DAY, the day the world ends...(see video)

- December 22, Walmart announces its first annual Post-End of The World Sale. Always the low price. Always. Almost a month after Black Friday, that new special shopping day shall be called Doomsday. The rules: there are only a few items for sale and people have to fight to grab them.

- December 31, Time Square, New Year's Eve: lowest attendance ever.

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THE HODGEPODGE

This week’s lucky number: The Clue. The starring number of the following video (from 0:21):

Happy and Dandy Clowns of the Week: A Pennsylvania couple. Last week, they claimed, at Maryland Lottery Headquarters, their $128.8 million dollars Powerball prize. They chose to remain anonymous (good for them!!!). It was the second-largest jackpot ever won in Maryland (USA). The record for the largest jackpot prize in that state is $183 million dollars, won in 2003.

Sad Clown of the Week: Netherlands. The country's largest wooden clog, which is 4m in length and weighing almost 2 tons, disappeared without a trace (or should I say, leaving no foot steps!!!). The alleged theft of the clog is being investigated by the Dutch police...which confirms that Netherlands is a very calm and secure country, if the police force worries about the disappearance of a wooden clog. By the way, they should investigate Shaquille O'Neal (an ex-basketball player that wears size 23 (US) shoes).

The missing clog

Clever song lyrics: "Honesty is such a lonely word." - Song: Honesty - Artist: Billy Joel

Cheesy song lyrics: "Bitch niggaz (bitch niggaz)...Bitch niggaz (bitch niggaz)...Bitch-ass niggaz (beotch)..." Song: Bitch Ass Niggaz - Artist: Dr Dre (feat. Snoop Dogg, Hitman & Six-Two) (I can appreciate the fact that Dr Dre went out of his way to make a sharp difference between Bitch, Bitch-ass and beotch. As a true artist, Dr Dre didn't want us to confuse any of the three words. And now, the world is a better place).

Philosophical Quote of the week: "We lived on farms, then we lived in cities, and now we're going to live on the Internet!" Character: Sean Parker (played by Justin Timberlake) - Movie: The Social Network

God has a sense of humour...: Tim Tebow and the Denver Broncos won their Wild Card round game against the Pittsburgh Steelers.

But God has a plan: My beloved New England Patriots will eliminate Tim Tebow and the Denver Broncos tonight (Saturday night, January 14, 2012)...just kidding...He has nothing to do with the result of a football game.



Love letters, comments, opinions and complaints: reflectionsonamoderncircus@gmail.com

Giggling like a schoolgirl while cleaning brushes

I was waiting for a slow news week to post this. I wanted to write about humble and silent heroes that make our lives better. There are so few, and yet they are so important. I wonder why we take them so often for granted. Well, I wanted this to be a tribute to those unsung heroes that changed our lives just by reminding us to smell the flowers, even though we always find ways to forget it. That special brand of people that lives for the little things that life brings us. The little things that get us to appreciate life, the only path to true happiness. Silent heroes seem to relish in them while we just watch with one eye, find it cute, and quickly move on.

People around me, including my loved ones, don't know this...but I loved to watch The Joy of Painting with Bob Ross, on PBS, late 80's and early 90's (see video for a taste of the show).

I just loved watching Bob Ross paint. I was a teenager at the time, a sort of hard-nose rocker that found trouble easily. I don't know why I enjoyed it . It's very ironic because I don't even paint. I never was attracted to painting or drawing. Even my stickmen look awful! But there was something soothing and reassuring about Bob Ross in general. You know the "everything's gonna be alright" feeling. He lived for the little things and he surely appreciated life. It showed...as I secretly watched.

But you know, sometimes public figures on television are very different in really life. Sometimes they are quite the opposite of what they represent on T.V. Take O.J. Simpson, for example. As an American football fan, I just loved to watch him every Sunday as a broadcaster. He just sounded like a very sweet guy. We surely had another thing coming...

So, at one point, after the O.J. incident, before Bob Ross passed away in 1995 (at the age of 52), I wondered if Bob Ross could be a different person in real life than the soft spoken painter on T.V. I even imagined the worst scenarios: he would stop his show right in the middle, take a canvas and smash it on his head and scream at the top of his lungs "Fuck this shit...I'm gonna drive to California and drop acid. So long, fuckos!!"

But it never happened. Instead, he would simply giggle like a schoolgirl every time he cleaned his brush (see video...the "cleaning brushes festival" starts at 0:09).

And when he said "Maybe we'll get a little crazy today"...geez, the word "crazy" had a different meaning for me. For me it was partying. For him it was trying to paint something different. But, even then, I was totally digging his message.

And how about that: a white boy wearing an afro...In some parts of American cities, he could have been beaten up just for that reason. Hey! You have to respect the dude! That guy had to be the major dude! And not only he had cool hair, the guy acted cool too. He was soft spoken. Never raised his voice. He's been often compared to Mr. Rogers from Mr. Rogers' neighbourhood. In so many ways, his T.V. show was the adult version of Mr. Rogers' neighbourhood. Every week, he would take us on a new adventure. And even for adults, the adventure was magical.

I always pictured Bob Ross as a Vermonter. Can't you picture him making his own bread, drinking herbal tea, spying birds? Well the guy was born in Daytona Beach, Florida, and was raised in Orlando.  But I was stunned...no, not enough strong of a word here...I was floored when I learned that Bob Ross was enlisted in the U.S. Air Force and at some point was transferred to an Air Force base in Alaska. Ok. Maybe not Vermont...but Alaska is starting to make more sense.

I don't picture him for a second being a military. He doesn't look like a tough guy. But hey! It's just to say that you don't really know a man until you walk a mile in his shoes. In his case, his military boots. He had to do what he had to do at that period of his life. But that was surely not the true nature of our soft spoken white dude hippie with an afro. I'm pretty sure the first time he held a paint brush, he just knew that he had to leave the Air Force.

Of course, when you become such a public figure, people will start to imitate you or make fun of you (see the following two videos):

I'm sure he would have the sense of humor to appreciate such attention. In any case, one of his famous quotes was "There are no mistakes in your world. We don't make mistakes, we just have happy little accidents". He would say it very often on his show, sometimes with different words. I'm pretty sure he believed in that. If not, he fooled me...and he got me to believe in that too.

So any time I paint my home walls (I can't draw or paint a picture...but, I can apply paint on a wall!!), when I clean the brushes, I always think about him. I'm sure that if he's watching me, he's giggling, and telling me what he used to say on his show "just beat the devil out of it".

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I would like to take this opportunity to wish you and your loved ones a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays

I will post articles on December 24 and 31 (no rest for the wicked)...so stay tuned!!!

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THE HODGEPODGE

This week’s lucky number: The Clue. A movie starring Will Smith: _______ pounds.

Sad Clown of the Week: Lowe's. The U.S.-based chain of retail home improvement and appliance stores pulled all its ads from TLC's "All-American Muslim" reality show because Muslims were portrayed as "normal and ordinary" people (as opposed to portraying them as terrorists!!!). When you think people are getting away from racism...some stupid-fearful-weak-ignorant-narrow-minded hillbillies keep pulling you back in it!!

Happy and Dandy Clown of the Week: Russell Simmons. The co-founder of the Def Jam record label and creator of the clothing fashion line Phat Farm has offered to buy all of the advertising time dropped by Lowe's for TLC's "All-American Muslim" reality show. Good for him! (But he couldn't do it because all the advertisement slots were already filled by other companies).

Clever song lyrics: "All you need is love. And love is all you need." - Song: All you need is love - Artist: The Beatles

Cheesy song lyrics: "I wanna know what love is. I want you to show me." Song: I wanna know what love is - Artist: Foreigner (I don't know who's the girl he was talking to...but that's a lot of pressure: "showing" love???)

Philosophical Quote of the week: "Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room!" Character: President Merkin Muffley (wonderfully played by Peter Sellers) - Movie: Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

Sign the end of the world is near: Colorado Pastor Wayne Hanson said about Tim Tebow's (Denver Broncos' quarterback) recent success with his team: "It's not luck. Luck isn't winning 6 games in a row. It's favor. God's favor". Two things I have to say about that. Firstly, God does not give a rat's ass about football. Secondly, if God was a football fan, He'd be a New England Patriots' fan...and my Pats shall beat Tim and the Broncos tomorrow afternoon!!



Love letters, comments, opinions and complaints: reflectionsonamoderncircus@gmail.com