Thursday, June 30, 2011
It’s official: Owners tell players there will be a lockout
This is a sad day for the NBA.
We all knew it was coming. Frankly, everyone has been expecting this for a couple of years now, you could see the storm clouds gathering for that long. It doesn’t make it feel any better.
And things are only going to get worse in the short term. Not better.
Owners informed the players during a bargaining session Thursday that they will lockout players starting at midnight, according to multiple reports.
No further bargaining sessions are scheduled. Here is what union director Billy Hunter told Ken Berger of CBSSports:
Now that there is a lockout (well, technically starting at midnight eastern), expect both sides to start playing a little hardball — the owners may well take back some of the concessions given up in recent bargaining sessions. The players also will dig their heels in.
The only question becomes will the sides be able to reach a deal before games are lost. That would mean, roughly, reaching a deal by Oct. 1 (there could be wiggle room there, but they need a month to have an abbreviated free agency and training camps).
That’s a long time away, but these two sides have been talking for two years and a lockout is where we are now.
Source
We all knew it was coming. Frankly, everyone has been expecting this for a couple of years now, you could see the storm clouds gathering for that long. It doesn’t make it feel any better.
And things are only going to get worse in the short term. Not better.
Owners informed the players during a bargaining session Thursday that they will lockout players starting at midnight, according to multiple reports.
No further bargaining sessions are scheduled. Here is what union director Billy Hunter told Ken Berger of CBSSports:
“I’ve been anticipating this lockout for the last two or three years, and now it’s here.”Hunter also said that the NBPA — the player’s union — does not plan to file to decertify, as the NFL players union did.
Now that there is a lockout (well, technically starting at midnight eastern), expect both sides to start playing a little hardball — the owners may well take back some of the concessions given up in recent bargaining sessions. The players also will dig their heels in.
The only question becomes will the sides be able to reach a deal before games are lost. That would mean, roughly, reaching a deal by Oct. 1 (there could be wiggle room there, but they need a month to have an abbreviated free agency and training camps).
That’s a long time away, but these two sides have been talking for two years and a lockout is where we are now.
Source
Star Relaunches "Start Snitchin'"
Radio personality Star of the "Star & Buckwild Show" is relaunching his “Start Snitching” campaign. "Start Snitching" hopes to reduce neighborhood violence in the Philadelphia tri-state area. Philly Mayor Michael A. Nutter and Richard J. Ross, Jr., the city's Deputy Commissioner of Police.
"The 'Start Snitching' campaign is more than just words being spoken on the microphone," Star told AllHipHop. "It's a commitment I’ve taken on personally."
Philadelphia has seen 156 murders in 2011.
The campaign initially launched in New York City in 2002, as a counterpoint to the controversial "Stop Snitchin'" movement among some hip hop artists.
Jay-Z & Kanye Album Reportedly Done
 According to G.O.O.D. Music's CyHi Da Prynce, the highly-anticipated Watch the Thronealbum is completed. The collaborative album by Jay-Z and Kanye West has been one of the most buzzed-about musical releases of the year, and CyHi says its done. "They are ready to go. Right now, all the music and everything is done,"said CyHi . "But you know my guy — we over here with [Kanye], so 'Ye is gonna add his last little pizzazz, and it's going to be ready for you guys soon." "Those are the bosses. You never know what they gonna do and how they gonna put it out. They might put it out yesterday," he added. |
Amber Rose Addresses Nude Pics
Amber Rose has broken her silence about the pictures of her nether regions that have leaked (no pun intended) all over the Internet. The beautiful model has had nude photos pop up online before, but never any as graphic as the ones that surfaced earlier this week. Rose says the images were--of course--stolen from her laptop and that the pics have hurt her career.
While she denied rumors earlier that she intentionally sent the pics to Nicki Minaj's boyfriend, here's Rose's 'official' statement:
"I was gonna wait until my radio show to address this but I want to say this now. I trusted someone that worked 4 me & allowed them to use my laptop a million times, I caught this person sending my pics to themselves and I fired this person immediately Wiz [Khalifa] & I & both of our families have known about this for 2 months now. We tried to prepare ourselves for this day. Those pictures r 2 1/2 years old just sitting in my computer. I'm really hurt & embarrassed because I have so many young girls that look up to me. I would never put those pics out of myself."
"I was gonna wait until my radio show to address this but I want to say this now. I trusted someone that worked 4 me & allowed them to use my laptop a million times, I caught this person sending my pics to themselves and I fired this person immediately Wiz [Khalifa] & I & both of our families have known about this for 2 months now. We tried to prepare ourselves for this day. Those pictures r 2 1/2 years old just sitting in my computer. I'm really hurt & embarrassed because I have so many young girls that look up to me. I would never put those pics out of myself."
"The company that I was working with no longer wants to work with me because of these pics and that prevents me from getting money to take care of my family. Its a messed up situation when someone so evil comes into ur life and tries to destroy it. I know I'm not the only girl in the world that has taken pics like that but they were very private. I'm sorry for letting my young Rosebuds down. Pls understand this was a result of trusting a person that didn't deserve my trust. I have cried for the past 2 days but I know this to shall pass. Thank u for all of ur support."
Game Seeks Fan Assistance
Rapper The Game is asking fans to help him ghostwrite a verse for his upcoming R.E.D. Album. He says the best contribution will be featured on the project and he will acknowledge the fan who contributed the verse in a video during the song's recording.
"Eh yo, look, I'm looking for another verse for my single 'Red Nation,'" Game said in a video. "I'm going to record my favorite verses on video and share it with the world. For the winner verses, your name and link will pop up during your lyrics so everyone knows your verse was pretty f*cking hot, man and I chose it and now you're the sh*t and your friends are talking about you in school. If you ain't in school, all the homies are talking about you in the hood and if you ain't a n*gga around the hood then all the girls are talking about you in the salon."
"So basically, man, this video will be seen by millions of people all around the world and I mean millions of people are going to see this sh*t," he explained further. "You'll be featured on my Facebook, Twitter, website and Interscope newsletter. Let me tell you about this Interscope newsletter. Lady Gaga be in that motherf*cker."
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
Transformers: Dark of the Moon
The colossally destructive, almost comically long final battle sequence of Michael Bay'sTransformers: Dark of the Moon (Paramount Pictures) culminates in at least a temporary vanquishing of the earth-invading Decepticons by the more human-friendly Autobots. But the entirety of the film stands as proof of robotic life's inevitable triumph over Homo sapiens. Faced with this quantity of hardware, this degree of technical sophistication, this goddamn many robots, organic life doesn't stand a chance. We might as well amuse ourselves with tales of the war between two fictional robot races, now that Michael Bay has taken over the world.It's been a slow colonization, with each of the three successiveTransformers films ratcheting up the onslaught. In the first, Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf), a high-school kid in love with his car, discovers that the black-and-yellow Chevy Camaro, Bumblebee, is really a giant sentient robot from the mechanical planet Cybertron. Sam gets drawn into the war between the planet's two exiled races, who eventually trash downtown L.A. in their struggle for intergalactic domination. In the second film—well, pretty much the same thing happens again, except that Sam is now a college kid who's definitively landed his dream girl (Megan Fox, who was fired from the franchise after jokingly comparing Bay to Hitler) and the monuments sacrificed to cosmic war are the Great Pyramids.
With Dark of the Moon, Bay takes the more-is-more aesthetic of the first two movies up another several notches. Forget about critic-proof; this movie is critic-obliterating. It's a tank that flattens everything that gets in its way, including the audience. There is something awe-inspiring about Bay's sheer commitment to scale—augmented now by that state-of-the-art anti-audience weapon, 3-D. But marveling at its grotesque gigantism doesn't make this two-and-a-half-hour-long movie any less dull.
The dullness kicks in almost immediately after the appealingly loopy cold open, which posits a paranoid alternate version of the moon landing. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin have secretly been sent to investigate an alien spacecraft that's crashed on the lunar surface. (The real Aldrin appears in a cameo later in the film, somewhat surprisingly given the astronaut's history of run-ins with moon-landing conspiracy theorists.) The craft's occupant is Sentinel Prime (voiced, pleasingly, by Leonard Nimoy), an aged Autobot leader thought dead in the war that destroyed their planet. The alien is brought back to Earth, where he eventually meets up with his successor Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen, who's been voicing this character ever since his early days as a TV-cartoon hero.). After some nattering about who should possess the Matrix of Leadership (which is not a managerial manual but a kind of airborne power-conferring crystal), the two Primes join forces to foil what has to be one of the worst-thought-through evil schemes in movie-villain history: something about towing the planet Cybertron close to Earth and enslaving the human population to rebuild it, as if it were an offshore oil rig?
Sam, now a recent college graduate, has been unable to find a job, so he's living off the ample salary (and other ample gifts) of his English girlfriend, Carly (Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, a Victoria's Secret model whose blank moue recalls Guess? Jeans model and onetime Mickey Rourke paramour Carré Otis). Carly works for a car-collecting billionaire (Patrick Dempsey) who may have even more nefarious plans afoot than just stealing Sam's girlfriend. John Malkovich, Ken Jeong, Josh Duhamel, John Turturro, and Frances McDormand also mill in and out as … people who react to the giant battling robots and, less often, to one anothers' lines.Call me carbon-based, but I can't for the life of me keep straight which of the warring vehicle-based automatons is which: Megatron, Starscream, Ironside, Ratchet, the millionaire, his wife. (Do female machines exist on the planet Cybertron? Never mind; don't answer that.) These massive machines duke it out in the foreground while tiny people—some in high-techwingsuits, some in high heels and tight jeans—scurry through the wreckage at their feet. The endless action climax includes a falling-skyscraper scene that casually plunders 9/11 for visual references (floating scraps of paper, falling office chairs) without paying the obligatory tax of pathos or political allegory such scenes usually demand. At one point, a character refers to downtown Chicago, where the alien battle is taking place, as "Ground Zero." Ten years after the fall of the Twin Towers, the attack, like the moon landing, has become a source of stock historical references.
Occasionally, a nifty action idea bobs to the surface, like some business involving the leads' slide down the outside of a sharply canted glass building. (In this movie, even a brief nod to the laws of physics counts as subtlety.) But everything is soon pounded to rubble under the Volkswagen-sized fists of Bay's mechanized heroes and villains. Somewhere deep into the perhaps 40-minute-long crescendo of action that ends this movie, I began to experience a dazed sense of submission, a cowed respect for our new CGI overlords. Other sci-fi franchises—the Terminator series most notably—pit vulnerable but canny humans against soulless time-traveling robots in a struggle for supremacy. Transformers takes the struggle to the next, posthuman level. On Earth as on Cybertron, and certainly at the box office, the robots have already won.
iNK Get Swanky With Cynthia Mejias On Fashion
Hello Ms Mejias i hope all is well.
Hi. I'm doing great! The weather is finally beautiful in New York. That means time to pull out the sandals!
How your day going so far?
First and foremost I would like to say that God and my family are my life. Fashion is not.
I see that fashion is your life. How did you become so focus and lock in to fashion?
Now I became focused and locked into fashion when I was 16 years old. But going back, in 5th grade I remember being super obsessed with a pair of purple jean shorts with leather pockets and in Middle School I absolutely loved my jelly heels. All throughout High School I would cut up my tops and jeans to make different outfits and experimented a lot with the arts & crafts store lol. But yeah, when I was 16 I put my first photo shoot together for what I thought would be my "model portfolio" haha. I cut out pages from several fashion magazines and used them as guides for poses as well as outfits. I laid out everything in my room the day of and got to work. Looking at the photos now, I simple shake my head. I tried. But ever since that day I have been fixated on fashion.
Where are you from and attend school at?
I was born and raised in Holyoke, MA but my parents are from Puerto Rico.
Did you go to a fashion school?
I did not go to a fashion school. I went to Lasell College, a private school in Newton, MA (right outside of Boston) to originally study Fashion Design but then later changed to Information Technology. I always considered myself to be a cool nerd. Loved technology and games just as much as fashion. But things went real sour my 2nd year and I roughed it out until I eventually just dropped out.
Where did you get your "Swank" from? Wait i know it's Swanky, but can i say swank?
You can call me Swank lol Some people call me Swank or Swankster, but it did begin with Swanky. It was actually given to me by a really cool guy, Dorian Missick. He always called me Swanky and it stuck. I started using Swanky Cyn instead of Caviar Cyn on Myspace, Facebook, and twitter and without ever asking anyone to call me that or introducing myself as that it picked up. It fit, I fell in love with it, and so I ran with it.
It seems like shoes are your main focus. What are your top 5 shoe designers?
My top 5 shoe designers are Gianmarco Lorenzi, YSL, Christian Louboutin, Jimmy Choo, and Gucci.
What's the importance in having on a Swanky shoe?
It's important to have a Swanky shoe because it can make you or break you. It can either ruin a great outfit or take a so-so ensemble a step up. One single swanky pair of shoes can boost your confidence and create several new outfit opportunities. Also, men are getting hip to footwear and they can see an attractive girl with awful shoes and completely pass on her.
How much power is it to have a shoe that completes your outfit you as a whole?
It's so much power in a shoe now more than ever. But not any kind of power--STAYING power, that is if you take good care of them. Bags had their time, and right now it's all about the shoe. Like I said before, a shoe can either ruin a great outfit or take a so-so ensemble a step up. It brings the whole look together and gives you that swanky factor. And aside from that it helps your posture, therefore walking with confidence and giving off an energy that everyone will be attracted to.
Fancy, posh, trendy, glamorous...Swanky. Like every color Giuseppes, your guilty pleasure is me
The Demonization Of LeBron James. PAY Attention!!!!!!! Says Maverick Carter
“If LeBron were an IPO, I’d buy it … At 21, I wasn’t remotely as mature as LeBron.” — Warren Buffett
Now that the NBA season is over, I have taken a moment to reflect. The lasting memory is not of the glorious success of the Mavs. It is of LeBron James and the season-long media/fan obsession with seeing him and the Heat fail. As one weary sportscaster put it, “We discuss LeBron as if he was our media Facebook status.”
It occurred to me that if all I knew about someone is that he announced a job move and staged it so that $2 million in cash would be donated to the Boys and Girls Club of America, my first reaction would probably be, “Now there’s a person with media savvy who is also a good person at heart.” Add the fact that the donated cash was virtually all the advertising revenue from that single event and I would feel reassured it was not just a ploy for disguised greed. If I further discovered that another $1 million in computers and Nike equipment was spread among eight Boys and Girls clubs – most notably Akron, and Cleveland, I would feel even better about the donor who gave back something significant – not just empty words and a wave – to the cities he was raised and was employed.
But if I knew nothing more, I would probably scratch my head about why the network that aired the announcement only made a minor footnote of the $3 million chartable aspect of the event. And I would scratch my head again if the donor is primarily blamed for the event, when the worst part about it was the publicity, controlled by the network. If I took a moment to reflect, I would say, “Wait a minute. ESPN controlled the sickening number of promotional ploys leading up to the decision. Only ESPN could create the hype because only ESPN controls the airspace.” Then I would say, “For all I know ‘The Decision’ was ESPN’s title.” Clearly, ESPN made the decision to announce the upcoming decision over and over again, day and night as if it was the second coming of Jesus Christ, instead of the second team for King James. Yet, the demon as crowned by the media was James, not the media itself. This was the beginning of the demonization of LeBron James.
So let’s add a few other facts. The City of Cleveland and the donor’s prior employer had the benefit of his services for seven years. During that time the employer’s product (a team) went from mediocre-at-best with a half empty arena to a team on the verge of being the best in the world with a frenzied sold-out arena. The owner made millions. The local economy grew by millions per year. Yet the employee who is leaving didn’t say anything bad about the City before he left. In fact, he said he loved them and he understood their frustration. His kind words came despite knowing they were burning his uniform in effigy and creating as much venom as their imagination could muster.
In response to the employee’s resignation, the employer’s principal owner called him a “coward”, who was “selfish” and one who committed an act of “betrayal” for exercising his lawful right to pick a new employer. Objectively, on those facts, I hope we would all conclude that if the employee gave up millions of dollars in pursuit of a championship, that kind of selfishness is not so bad. The reprehensible selfishness would have been demanding all the money he could get even if it hurt the teams salary cap – financial stability.
Lil Duval Lands MTV Show
Comedian Lil' Duval is prepping a new television show with MTV. The show focuses on the comedian's travels across the country. The as-yet-untitled program will give hip hop fans a look at the country as filtered through the eyes of one of their favorite comedians.
"We stay on the road trying to make the world laugh, the whole country, staying on the road doing what I do best,” Lil Duval told AllHipHop. “I shot a couple of films and I got the show with MTV that we just finished, hopefully that will be out by August. It’s a travel show and we go to places you don’t normally see ni**as. I get tired of people thinking that the only thing there is to do is go to the club, so I try to show another side to let people know there’s other stuff out there."
He also spoke a little about his incarcerated friend, rapper T.I.
“I think he ate breakfast this morning," Lil Duval said. "He’s in jail. He gets out this year, so when he gets out, he gonna do the damn thing. So it is what it is, sh*t…. what can he do?”
Beyonce's Baby Talk
Despite being the subject of constant false baby rumors, Beyonce doesn't duck the question of offspring when it's brought up. Discussing her personal life with talk show host Piers Morgan, Bey says that she could be birthing a little Jigga-yonce sooner than fans think.
"I always said I'd have a baby at 30," she said. "I'm 29. But I also said I was going to retire at 30. I'm not retiring...Only God knows [when]...I feel like 30 is the ideal age, because you're mature enough to know who you are and have your boundaries and your standards and not be afraid or too polite, but young enough to be a young woman. I'm so looking forward to it."
Amber Rose Denies Sending Nude Pics
Graphic nude pics of Amber Rose hit the web today (June 28) and while it is undeniably Rose in the images, the sexy vixen is denying reports that she sent the images to Nicki Minaj's boyfriend. She's not explaining where they came from, however.
"These blogs do nothing but try to ruin ppls lives I DID NOT send pics to anyones boyfriend pls stop with the lies. Its so ridiculous. smh," she tweeted. "Yall been doing this to me for 3 years now it shld be illegal to write fake stories about ppl the media never wants to see anyone happy."
Beanie Sigel Explains His Absence
Beanie Sigel knows that he's been away for awhile. Despite making constant waves with his apologies and non-apologies to former friend Jay-Z, Sigel hasn't released any music lately. But the Broad Street Bully explained his hiatus recently.
He just wanted to spend time with family.
"I think it's all timing with me. I just had to go back," Sigel said in an interview. "For me, running constantly since I was first came on the business, I never had a chance to sit still. I got kids and everything. I had a couple issues in my life that made me have to sit down, unwillingly, and when I came home, I had a little paper trail. So just that time for me to be with my kids, I was missing out on a lot of things. I just enjoyed that and got comfortable in that zone."
Sasha Pivovarova for Vogue Japan by H.Slimane ( styling )
Classic Slimane imagery that is clean, minimal and super sleek thanks to Christian McCulloch‘s glamorous makeup and Jimmy Paul‘s fashion forward hairstyles.
text
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http://models.com/feed/?p=22688
The photos on this blog are sourced in various sites from the internet (apart from the ones taken by me). Original source is always mentioned. If you feel your photorights have been violated or they have been presented in a negative way, please send me mail. I´ll remove them from my blog immediately.
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Gucci ultra luxe pre fall image ( styling )
Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott specialize in photography that plays with perception and their new campaign for Gucci pre-fall is no exception. An ultra luxe image of Sigrid Agren dominates the frame, but look closely and you’ll see that she’s a projection: one whose beauty is apparently blinding Lenz von Johnston, who is hiding in the background. Will the overlapping theme carry into the fall campaign, in which Miss Agren also stars – only time will tell.
text
from the source indicated below
The photos on this blog are sourced in various sites from the internet (apart from the ones taken by me). Original source is always mentioned. If you feel your photorights have been violated or they have been presented in a negative way, please send me mail. I´ll remove them from my blog immediately.
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Buckle Belt by Sebastian Errazuriz ( customising )
The photos on this blog are sourced in various sites from the internet (apart from the ones taken by me). Original source is always mentioned. If you feel your photorights have been violated or they have been presented in a negative way, please send me mail. I´ll remove them from my blog immediately.
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Zipper dress by Sebastian Errazuriz ( customising )
http://www.demilked.com/creative-product-ideas-by-sebastian-errazuriz/
The photos on this blog are sourced in various sites from the internet (apart from the ones taken by me). Original source is always mentioned. If you feel your photorights have been violated or they have been presented in a negative way, please send me mail. I´ll remove them from my blog immediately.
Thank you
Sebastian Errazuriz ( stylelife )
Sebastian Errazuriz, born in Santiago, Chile in 1977, and currently living in New York, is one of the most talented young artists today. By doing little alternations to everyday objects he creates the most unusual products and fashion pieces that provoke both thought and humor.
The artist says that he seeks to create works that can remind people of their mortality, invite them to look again at their lives and question their daily routines. His obsession with the dichotomies of life and death are present in his sculptures, public art works, consumer objects, furniture and even fashion.
Selected one of the top emerging designers by I.D magazine, Sebastian has also been chosen Chilean Designer of the Year, and received multiple awards by design competitions, and the international media. His unique pieces have been incorporated in over 40 exhibitions including Tokyo, New York, Paris and Barcelona.
Website: Meetsebastian.comtext
from the source indicated below
This umbrella was inspired by designer Sebastian Errazuriz’s rainy day golf outings. While living in Scotland, he and his friends often found themselves carrying golf clubs and umbrellas simultaneously, which struck inspiration in the young designer. Made of steel, fiberglass, polyester, and rubber. This product is an umbrella and should not be used as a golf club.
El Santo, or the “Saint chair” is a signed and numbered limited edition piece, hand crafted out of native Chilean wood, which is later dyed. The halo on top of the chair lights up to “illuminate” the innocent reader. The piece represents another exercise on his personal obsession with life and death and his consequent urge to playfully yet seriously invite people to look again.
The Bicycle bench was designed as a way to help recycle parts of the hundreds of old rusty damaged bicycles, left to die, chained to the lamp posts of New York City. By reutilizing and welding discarded tubes and saddles the old bike parts can be re-incorporated into the public realm as a simple useful urban furniture piece. The concept also wishes to constitute a sculptural exercise that reminds us of the importance of the bicycle as a valid and ecological mode of transportation even in a city as hectic and impatient as New York
Public art installation in front of a rehabilitation center for handicapped children. Both children with and without disabilities can choose which of the two swings they want to use. An early reminder of the parallel realities in life
The photos on this blog are sourced in various sites from the internet (apart from the ones taken by me). Original source is always mentioned. If you feel your photorights have been violated or they have been presented in a negative way, please send me mail. I´ll remove them from my blog immediately.
Thank you
Peter Ravn ( art now )
Peter Ravn is a danish painter. He holds a degree in architecture and design from the Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen. Before his debut as an artist, he was a central figure in the Danish field of design and music with his work on design and visual identity, as record cover and poster designer and as a director of music videos. He was behind a string of remarkable Danish record sleeves and a pioneer of the Scandinavian music video. Through the 80s and 90s he developed groundbreaking and visually experimenting work for many of the biggest names in Scandinavian rock and pop. In the 90s Ravn was the architect behind the fashion project DEMOCRATS characterised by T-shirts with conceptual graphic designs boasting philosophical, political and often controversial slogans. Around the millennium Ravn began to paint
text
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The photos on this blog are sourced in various sites from the internet (apart from the ones taken by me). Original source is always mentioned. If you feel your photorights have been violated or they have been presented in a negative way, please send me mail. I´ll remove them from my blog immediately.
Thank you
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