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More Craziness in Boston
No, this picture is not of the Boston Terrorists/Clowns. But, hey, it’s what I post around here.
As Twitter, Reddit and other forms of social media continue to pwn the joke that is CNN and the rest of the cable news jokiverse, we here at HCwDB want to do our part.
Since J_tsar is the real twitter account of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, I thought we’d (dis)honor some of his actual tweets.
The day after the bombing:
@J_tsar 16 Apr: I’m a stress free kind of guy
Two days before the bombing:
@J_tsar 13 Apr: Got me a haircut, I don’t usually do those
And my personal fave:
@J_tsar 11 Apr: Now we aint come here to start no drama, we just looking for our future baby mamas
Or the fact this dude was into Rent.
Well, I can’t do much else here at HCwDB except mock a Fratbag in these clowns dishonor.
Loading ...Boston Thoughts
I’mma take today and post a few thoughts on Boston. It’s going through a tough time right now, not the least of which is because Boston is a fairly reserved, conservative city, despite its politics. It is a place and a people with a loooooong memory. Hundreds of years. Events like this are not taken lightly.
It is a great city. But also a cold city. A troubled city. And a proud city. A torrid mixture of provincial pride, residual racism and puritan-era repression, yes. But mixed with a community of intelligence, historical reverence, and a philosophical understanding of the complexities of time.
Other American cities, cities with much shorter histories, can’t understand that yet.
That’s what makes Boston unique among American cities.
It is European but not European. American, but not noveau-American, like so many strip-mall suburban nightmares west of the Mississippi.
It is a city of paradoxes.
When I announced my plans to move to New York to attend NYU to my fellow co-workers on my summer food cart job, I was met with a mixture of indignation and rage. I was accused of betraying my people.
That kind of pride.
I’ll post a few more specific memories later today, but lets take a day to honor this strange, complex, and gloriously unique American city. You’re welcome to add to my thoughts in the comments thread.
Boston, and the whole state of Massachusetts, deserves it.
Loading ...Patriots Day in Boston
Hard to fully express just how important Patriots Day is in Boston. Having grown up in Brookline, my memories of the marathon were like an annual marker of seasonal change. A time when the whole city gussies itself up and prepares to look good for our much bigger neighbors. Like when you’re forced to wear that tux in the back of your closet every year for a family event.
The city takes off the work boots and baseball caps and puts on its proverbial tux. The eyes of the world all shift to the city that birthed the modern marathon.
This is why Patriots Day is a distinctly New England form of transformative marker. It signifies the unofficial start of spring, yes, but also the end of the six months of ass-freezing shite that defines life as a Bostonian. When the running shoes and short shorts are careening down Boylston Street by the thousands, the snowy-ass assitude of life as a Boston denizen is finally taking a turn for the better.
Those ass-chafing winters have finally given up the frozen ghost. Forced to release their icicle grip on our collective nethers.
Sex lives put in storage for six months finally begin to heat up. The crisp air is just starting to turn warm. Flower scented. The collegiate boobie hotties tentatively bust out their mini-dresses for the first time.
It is renewal.
Baseball has started up again.
The Charles River no longer has ice floes on it.
College kids all over Cambridge, Boston and Brookline are finishing up their classes and preparing to search for summer jobs scooping ice cream or maybe that dream job at Newbury Comics will finally come through.
And there’s the marathon to usher in the change.
Boston will recover.
But it still feels like a rending of something sacred.
I was in the East Village on 9/11 and saw the second plane hit from my rooftop. So I’ve been up close with this sort of thing before.
It is awful. But it is not permanent. Recovery and healing will come.
Loading ...Thoughts and Prayers with the People of my Hometown of Boston
Too depressed to mock douchebags right now. Thoughts and prayers that this isn’t as horrific as it appears right now.
Loading ...Breaking: High Schools Axe Bodyspray
We’re… winning?
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High school wants kids to cut back on body spray after student hospitalized for exposure to Axe
From ASSOCIATED PRESS
Last Updated: 11:03 AM, March 20, 2013
Posted: 11:02 AM, March 20, 2013
BETHLEHEM, Pa. — A Pennsylvania high school wants its students to cut back on the body spray.
Freedom High School in Bethlehem says one of its students was recently hospitalized for exposure to Axe Body Spray. Now, officials are asking students to stop using it as a cologne or fragrance while attending the school.
In a statement posted on the school website Tuesday, officials say the affected student is severely allergic to the spray and recently had to be taken to the hospital by ambulance after being exposed to it.
It wasn’t immediately clear what type of reaction the student had, or what chemical in the spray may have caused the problem.
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And from Gawker, Axe Bodyspray has same effect as nerve gas.
Loading ...Twinkies Lives!!!
Call of the DB1′s suicide watch!! The greatest fuel to ever fuel self-hatred, rug sitting, and navel gazing, will continue to be artificially sweetened and processed.
Life is good.
Twinkies lives, kids. Twinkies lives.
Although I’m not sure what to make of the fact that PBR is one of the owners. This cannot be good. Twinkies will never be herpster!! I will fight this possibility to the death!!
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Hostess Sells Twinkies Brand to Investment Firms
BY MICHAEL J. DE LA MERCED AND PETER LATTMAN
Twinkies and Ding Dongs are back from the dead.
Hostess Brands, the now bankrupt owner of the cream-filled confections, agreed on Tuesday to sell the snacks — along with Ho Hos, Sno Balls and Dolly Madison Zingers — to two investment firms with a shared history of corporate turnarounds.
The deal, worth $410 million, was struck nearly four months after the last Twinkie rolled off the baking lines.
When Hostess, unable to reach a deal with its bakers’ union, announced in November that it would wind down operations, it set off waves of nostalgia for a symbol of American junk food. As recently as Tuesday, sellers on eBay were seeking to fetch as much as $250,000 for two boxes of Twinkies.
The sale will mean that Twinkies, born more than 83 years ago in an Illinois industrial kitchen, will live on, having survived wars, recessions and the South Beach and Dukan diets.
The new owners will be Apollo Global Management and Metropoulos & Company, which owns Pabst Blue Ribbon and Vlasic pickles. C. Dean Metropoulos, the food industry veteran who leads the firm that bears his name, is expected to become the chief executive of the snack business.
The deal includes five Hostess factories, which the buyers hope to restart so to begin restocking shore shelves by the summer. And the new company will almost certainly feature the Hostess name.
“There’s a great consumer fan base that hasn’t declined,” Daren Metropoulos, one of Mr. Metropoulos’ sons and an executive at the family firm, said in an interview. “We saw a real opportunity to revitalize these brands, just with some T.L.C.”
That may come in the form of what the younger Mr. Metropoulos deemed “guerrilla marketing,” much as his firm has done with Pabst Blue Ribbon. Social media like Twitter are expected to play a big role going forward, he said, and comedian friends like Zach Galifianakis may be drafted as spokesmen. (Will Ferrell, for instance, has starred in commercials for Old Milwaukee beer, part of the Pabst family.)
The business’ new owners also hinted that Twinkies might find a home in a broader array of stores, including discount retailers like Dollar General. Healthier options, like 100-calorie snack packs, are also expected to make an appearance.
Yet the buyers are unlikely to rely as heavily on a unionized work force as the old Hostess did.
“We look forward to discussing opportunities for our members with new ownership, and add value to the revival of these products,” David Durkee, the president of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union, said in a statement.
Apollo and Metropoulos emerged from what at one point seemed like a crowded field of bankruptcy bidders for the brands. At one point, more than 100 parties had expressed interest in Twinkies, a group that included international food giants and private equity firms.
But by 5 p.m. Monday, the deadline for bids, the only qualified offer came from Apollo and Metropoulos. Advisers to Hostess canceled an auction scheduled for Wednesday morning and declared the two the winner.
“It’s not that we lacked interest,” Gregory F. Rayburn, the Hostess chief executive, said in an interview. “Other bidders felt that they could not top the price.”
The new owners bring significant food industry expertise to the deal.
C. Dean Metropoulos has worked side-by-side with private equity firms on his deals in the past. He oversaw several food transactions for the Dallas private equity firm Hicks Muse Tate & Furst, including International Home Foods, the parent of Bumble Bee Tuna and Chef Boyardee.
Mr. Metropoulos, who has a net worth of $1.2 billion, according to Forbes magazine, made a splash in 2010, when he acquired Pabst Blue Ribbon for $250 million. Pabst — known as P.B.R. among the beer-drinking crowd — has experienced a renaissance in recent years. Mr. Metropoulous’s sons, Evan and Daren, work alongside their father at the firm, based in Greenwich, Conn.
Still, reviving Twinkies and Ring Dings could be their highest profile turnaround.
As for Apollo, the private equity firm has deep experience with food-related investments, having previously owned stakes in the grocery-store chains Ralphs and Dominick’s.
Apollo currently holds a controlling stake in Sprouts, a large natural food store chain in the Western United States that, presumably, will not be selling Twinkies and Ding Dongs.
The sale is not done yet. It requires the approval of the federal bankruptcy judge overseeing Hostess’ Chapter 11 case. A hearing has been tentatively scheduled for March 19.
Hostess is still selling its other remaining brands, including Drake’s snack cakes. Those auctions are expected to conclude by early next month.
Mr. Rayburn said that at some point, Hostess executives will celebrate by popping open a bottle of Champagne.
For his part, Daren Metropoulos said that he and his family would sample some new batches of Hostess product — “and probably crack open a cold P.B.R.”
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Loading ...Breaking: The Porn Industry is Just HCwDB With More Nudity (and the Lip Herp)
Loading ...Breaking: Seal Team Six Insists That “Zero Dark Thirty” Inaccurately Portrays Them as Douchebags
The Duffelblog breaks the story:
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VIRGINIA BEACH, VA- An anonymous Public Affairs Officer (PAO) for Seal Team Six says the movie “Zero Dark Thirty” is factually inaccurate, portraying Seal Team Six members like the douchebags from Seal Team Two.
“At one point Joel Edgarton’s character wears a polo shirt with a popped collar,” the PAO said. “Team Six doesn’t do that. We’re the baddest motherf@#kers on the planet. We don’t wear shit like Tapout shirts, Ed Hardy jeans, or fedoras. That’s Team Two.”
The members of Seal Team Two, who the rest of the Special Warfare community calls “very special operators,” gained their reputation in the last decade as the Navy’s demand for SEALs skyrocketed. Not enough sailors were passing Basic Underwater Demolition/Seal (BUD/S) training, so SEAL Team Two began recruiting civilians from local tanning salons and UFC parties. Actual SEALs in Team Two were transferred to other units, including the illustrious Team 11.
“Team Two is a joke,” the PAO from SEAL Team Six said. “Their PT uniform is a sleeveless t-shirt with slits down the side so people can check out their rib tats. On their last deployment they petitioned the White House to open a Hooters in Afghanistan. A few years ago they spent their entire training budget to make a calendar,” the PAO paused. “What’s up with that guy second from the right?”
Captain David Witten, Commanding Officer of Seal Team Two, said he was too busy to be interviewed because he was at the gym “getting swoll” but told The Duffel Blog he could bench three hundred and twenty five pounds.
He said he would be willing to do an interview afterwards but it would have to be quick because he was going to “pound brewskis with his bros.”
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Loading ...Reader Mail: Ed Hardy Heading to the Trash heap of History
Ed Hardy Har Har! writes in with a report from the front:
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Subject: Hardy Trash Heap!
My offices are located in the warehouse part of downtown Vegas (i.e. where all the strip clubs are). Story was the adjacent warehouse was rented by the fine folks from Christian Audigier.
Not too much went on there, except once a month or so, you’d hear the sound of a large mosquito or a small lawnmower outside the warehouse and some piece of crap Honda would pull up and a Circus AssClown Car would pull up and unload a DoucheSquad who would rustle around and then take off a few minutes later.
Then on New Year’s Eve, a helluva racket out in the parking lot. Looked out and the DoucheGaggle were throwing mannequins and “Hardly” paraphenelia across the parking lot in the general direction of the garbage can.
When there was finally silence, I went out to investigate. I knew I had to capture the scene for HCwDB. I’m pretty sure that picture #2 is a still life destined for the Guggenheim.
Best moment? When the local homeless guy who pushes his shopping cart around the neighborhood trash pickin’ rolled up, and says “What is this stuff?” And leaves without taking ANYTHING!
Ed Hardy Har Har
——
We are winning.
Loading ...Breaking: Billionaire Asspimple Thrown Out Of Sushi Restaurant for Being a Douchebag
From Forbes comes yet another reminder why we need an asspimple tax in this country:
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Stewart Rahr, a New York pharmacy billionaire, just got banned from the celebrity sushi chain, Nobu.
Why? Well, apparently for a number of reasons. The fight started when billionaire Rahr (who sold Kinray to Cardinal Health for for $1.3 billion in 2010) made a scene at Nobu on 57th street when he found a group sitting at what he considered his table. The New York Post says Rahr called the Nobu manager some very nasty names. The Daily Mail claims he threatened to kill her.
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An asspimple says what?
Asspimple.
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