I mean, clearly a snarky link, but a pretty hilarious picture. And you know what? The dude just finished a nine-month marathon of baseball activities and was presumably hounded about his weight throughout. I hope he enjoyed the hell out of that sundae as like a just-this-once type thing before firing up his offseason regime.
A trip to a Taco Bell restaurant turned into Taco Hell for Jon Gosselin and his girlfriend Ellen Ross after the infamous reality star was recognized at a drive-thru. RadarOnline.com has the complaint filed regarding the incident.
The Jon And Kate Plus 8 star’s girlfriend was so outraged at their treatment at the drive-thru of the restaurant in Lemoyne, Pennsylvania, that she made an official complaint demanding that one of the employees concerned -– “the one with the wrap” around her head –- be fired.
On October 18, 2010, one of the servers tried to take a photograph of Gosselin on their cell phone, causing the seemingly publicity shy pair to become increasingly outraged about their treatment.
So get this: A reality TV “star” who bartered his family’s privacy for money and fame is now pissed that Taco Bell employees recognize him and want to take his photograph.
The Radar Online report includes the complaint, and it’s basically that — a bunch of employees recognized Gosselin and gathered at their side of the drive-thru window to look at him, and one tried to photograph him.
For that treatment, of course, Gosselin and his girlfriend are demanding that a presumably minimum-wage (or barely above) employee of the Taco Bell be fired.
Here I thought Jon Gosselin had more class!
Kudos to him for appreciating fine fast food, though.
Caryn at Metsgrrl has a nice writeup with a ton of details following a conference call with Mets VP Dave Howard. The list of “Amazin’ Perks” apparently includes a visit to the SNY studios, so if you get that, you should absolutely demand to meet me, and throw around phrases like “sandwich authority” and “hotshot GM candidate” and “transcendent genius.”
For $150 billion, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration could have sent astronauts back to the Moon. The Obama administration judged that too expensive, and in September, Congress agreed to cancel the program.
For a fraction of that — less than $200 million, along with about $250 million for a rocket — NASA engineers at the Johnson Space Center in Houston say they can safely send a humanoid robot to the Moon. And they say they could accomplish that in a thousand days…
Despite the sophistication of the project, the robot’s capabilities would be slight compared with what a human could do on the lunar surface. Project M was conceived as a technology demonstration, not a scientific mission.
One of the main tasks envisioned for the robot would be to simply pick up a rock and drop it, as part of an education program broadcast to schools. Students could do the same and compare the relative gravity of Earth.
I want to make this clear: I’m 100% on board with the idea of sending humanoid robots into space, especially if they look like C3PO, as the Times’ rendering does.
But it’s downright pathetic that we can’t get actual humans back to the moon at a less-than-prohibitive cost. We sent people to the moon in 1969! Before personal computers and CDs and the Internet and Segways.
I was told there’d be moon colonies by now; I thought that was what the Biosphere was about. Ridiculous.
Now we’re reduced to sending robots to the moon so they can pick up a rock and drop it. It’s embarrassing for us and it’s embarrassing for the robots. The Terminator would be humiliated if he lived to see this.
The Mets picked up Jose Reyes’ $11 million option yesterday, a no-brainer. Mike Lupica seems to think otherwise, as does at least one reader of this site. But Fangraphs valued Reyes at slightly over $11 million even last year, when he straight-up sucked for the better part of two months after returning from his thyroid issue.
People seem to think shortstops who can adequately field the position and hit a little bit grow on trees. They don’t. Even in 2010 — undoubtedly a down year statistically — Reyes ranked fifth among Major League shortstops in OPS and fourth in wOBA.
Reyes is worth $11 million even if he performs only as well as he did last season, and way, way more if he produces like he did from 2006 to 2008. Certainly there exists the risk of injury, and if Reyes is going to post a .322 on-base percentage he shouldn’t be hitting leadoff.
But the investment now buys the Mets time to determine how much they’re willing to offer on a long-term extension, plus it’s not like there are any better in-house options laying in wait.
The more interesting roster move, I think, is a minor one: The Mets added Minor League reliever Manuel Alvarez to the 40-man roster, presumably to protect him from the Rule 5 Draft.
That’s good. I mentioned Alvarez a couple times here while wading through the Mets’ bullpen issues. I can’t say I know a damn thing about the guy except that he absolutely dominated High-A and Double-A hitters in 2010.
For the season — including a six-inning stint at Triple-A — the 24-year-old Venezuelan posted a 2.17 ERA and struck out 84 batters in 78 2/3 innings while walking only 12. That’s a near Cliff-Leeian 7:1 K:BB ratio, the type of performance that suggests he could probably contribute to a Major League bullpen soon.
Alvarez did not pitch well at all in his first four Minor League seasons, but the stats suggest he made some sort of adjustment before his 2010 campaign. Toby Hyde described him as a four-pitch pitcher in a post in July, so I wonder if Alvarez added or improved one of those offerings in the offseason. Whatever it was, it worked.
Perhaps Alvarez succumbs to the same fate as Carlos Muniz, drifting between Triple-A and the Majors for a little bit before suffering the inevitable injury setbacks, but if the Mets are hoping to be more careful about letting valuable arms like Heath Bell slip away, protecting Alvarez is a nice first step. Bell’s Minor League peripherals — especially once he hit age 24 — were about as impressive as Alvarez’s, but, of course, he lacked Jon Adkins’ Major League pedigree.
As Craig Calcaterra points out, Chen’s looking for a multi-year deal and the Royals aren’t likely to give him one. That means it’s entirely possible Chen winds up on his 11th Major League team in 2011, pretty impressive considering he’s still only 34. For what it’s worth, Chen is 26 wins behind Mariano Rivera among Panamanian-born pitchers, and is by far the all-time leader in strikeouts by a Chinese-Panamanian pitcher.
According to El Nuevo Dia, via MLBTR, the Mets have invited Carlos Beltran to meet with Sandy Alderson. I don’t know why, I don’t have any inside information and I don’t know if or when they’ll actually meet. But if they do, I hope Alderson says something like this:
“Hey, Carlos: I know you might feel like you haven’t gotten an entirely fair shake here — from the team, the fans and the media. And I have no idea what happened last year with the miscommunication around your surgery, and frankly, I don’t care.
I know that you are a great player, and for us to compete in 2011 we’re going to need you healthy, happy and productive. I know it’s not much, but I will take every opportunity I can to stress your importance to this club.
And we feel you would be especially valuable to us if you could move to right field this season. I trust you’ve seen the way your friend Angel Pagan covers ground in center, and we think his presence gives us the luxury of moving you to the corner to take a little bit of strain off your knees.”
And then they share a bro-hug or something, and Beltran buys Alderson a beer for being such a straight shooter, and they all live happily ever after.
“Some of the Grimm’s fairy tales are quite grim. Are you going to ban them too?” the Justice asked. Justice Sonia Sotomayor later added the example of violent rap music to the list of media that are currently protected by the First Amendment.
Morazzini argued that the level of violence in videogames was particularly high compared to other media.
Scalia retorted, “That same argument could have been made when movies first came out. They could have said, oh, we’ve had violence in Grimm’s fairy tales, but we’ve never had it live on the screen. I mean, every time there’s a new technology, you can make that argument.”
This is an interesting topic but one I’m not really qualified to weigh in on, since they didn’t start putting age recommendations on video games until after I was over 18 and since I haven’t purchased a video game in at least five years. I don’t even know how they currently restrict children from purchasing violent video games, and to be honest, I can’t really figure it out from the Internet. Is it a store-by-store thing? Are there no restrictions at all, like with music with the old “Parental Advisory: Explicit Lyrics” label on it?
In any case, I’d generally say the onus should be on parents and guardians to police what video games their kids are playing and to make sure everyone involved understands that video games are not real and video-game actions should not be reenacted in real life.
I only bring it up here because of a comment from Julie in South Carolina on a post I made a couple of months ago, in which I said I didn’t have any moral or ethical issue with hunting but didn’t think I could ever actually bring myself to shoot an animal. She wrote:
While one would not expect to change your mind about hunting, you probably don’t think twice about playing a video game that involves killing people.
And here’s the thing: She’s absolutely right. I don’t think twice about playing a video game that involves killing people, because I recognize that it’s a video game, and killing a little video-game person is very different from killing a majestic buck in the forest.
In fact, I played a good hour’s worth of Grand Theft Auto this weekend, and I didn’t even bother playing the missions or whatever; I just plugged in the cheat code for all the weapons then blew up as much stuff as I could, over and over again. At no point did I confuse the virtual world with the real one. And when I left to go home, I felt no temptation to stop a passing motorist, kick his ass, shoot him, and take his car.
Just like American Psycho didn’t make me want to become a serial killer and Reservoir Dogs didn’t make me want to torture someone while listening to Stealers Wheel.
Of course I’m a grown-ass man now so I’m hardly the person these bans would target.
Good writeup on Chris Russo’s reaction to the Giants’ World Series win, following up on this amazing rant.
Tedquarters 