Saturday, May 28, 2011

Show Prep 111

Greetings and Salutations, people! 

Happy Birthday to:
Jerry West – 1938 (73)
Patch Adams – 1945 (66)
John Fogerty – 1945 (66)
Kirk Gibson – 1957 (54)

Tweet of the Week:
ShittingtonUK Sean Tejaratchi 
Thank god for the letter E because there's no way I'd eat a sandwich with two pieces of Brad.

Today on VSR – The Magnificent Seven will countdown our Top 7 scents, We have a new edition of Something to think about, the NHL is returning to Winnipeg, I have a new “Sharp Dressed Man”, We’ll discuss who we want to win the NHL and NBA Finals, We’ll do our part to try to reclaim a portion the English Language from the infidels, and some fun with Voice Mail in a new segment I’m calling ‘Karma and Craig’.

Give out the phone number - (646) 716-6831 OR 6-HOP-1-MOVE-1

To contact VSR via email:
Email address:
radio@verticallystripedsocks.com
Voice Mail – 720-CUB-1-ACE OR (720) 282-1223
Twitter: @socnorb777






Let’s get to the news… (Play News Music – Clip 03)

Tally this one for the humourless in America:
KENNEWICK, Wash. –A health board in Washington State has reversed itself and voted against endorsing a colon cancer awareness campaign that uses billboards saying, "What's up your butt?"
Wednesday's vote by the Benton Franklin Health District in Kennewick, Wash., was in response to complaints the ads are in poor taste.
The butt billboards were earlier displayed in Yakima to raise colorectal cancer awareness and encourage people to get screened for the disease.
So awareness for good cause is scuttled because people have no sense of humor. “What’s up their butt?” Hopefully colon cancer...

From the Mexican jails are maybe not as secure as their American counterparts file comes this story:
CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico (AFP) –Mexican police have dismantled a fully-stocked bar -- complete with two billiards tables -- that had been operating inside a jail.
Authorities announced late Tuesday that they had seized some 200 bottles of beer, 12 bottles of tequila and 20 bottles of vodka, as well as firearms, marijuana and heroin from what they said was a low-security prison.
Carlos Gonzales, a spokesman for the northern Chihuahua state where the raid took place, did not provide details as to how the prisoners had concealed the watering hole from authorities.
But he said at least one prison administrator had been fired over the incident and may face charges.

UNIONTOWN, Pa. – (Clip 38) What could be a happier thing than an ice cream truck in summer? Well, few things immediately spring to mind, but one thing is for certain...it’s NOT two ice cream trucks. Two Pennsylvania ice cream truck drivers are in danger of having their permits revoked if they can’t get along.
Police are hoping the threat of losing their permits will be enough to thaw the frosty relationship of the two ice cream truck drivers accused who are accused of getting into a fight that escalated into trying to run each other off the road.
Police told the rival vendors to chill out after a dispute Wednesday night.
The wife of one vendor told police the other man tried to run her husband off the road.
The implicated ice cream driver disputes the woman's account, saying it was her husband who tried to force him off the road. He also claimed the man had returned his good natured hello by shouting an expletive at him.
The city says both drivers may have their permits revoked if they can't find a way get along. No word in the story about what company they worked for, but for the sake of irony, I really hope they are both  “Good Humor” men.


I’m Craig, and that is the news… (Play News Music – Clip 03)

Bring on Face and The Whale:

Face:
Hockey returns to Winnipeg
Tampa Bay – Lame Duck uniforms…everything else has gone to the new logo. Which is pretty sweet.

The Whale:
The Whale’s Call (Clip 42)
TEXT TRANSCRIPTION - "Hey ... this is Noel calling ... staring at ... hello miss here at in year do you own tuition road fashionable Keith is for noon and I'm looking at the Gym here in less than 4 I would say yesterday at so at the earliest maybe even this morning on my gosh I was walking 6 you soon or here oh my gosh we check and anyway I Don't know if you're still looking to hear I need to speak to you soon okay talk to you I should be ... catch with you first test hey"

The new “F” word – Kobe and Noah both fined (100k and 50k respectively)

Joplin, Missouri – In case you think you have it bad.

Reclaiming English - Death to “I know, right?” (Clip 33)

Something to think About:
1. In baseball, a balk is a fake rule. It’s way too complicated to be real.
2. Pee here often?
3. Badly planned words: Monosyllabic has five syllables and Lisp has an S
4. All crime is directly attributable to the San Francisco Giants
5. Denise at Taco Bell is kind of stuck up
6. Yoda and Grover are the exact same voice
7. They say dog’s mouths are cleaner than humans, but I ain’t buying it.


Magnificent Seven:
Top 7 Scents

Honorable Mentions:
Crayons
Rubber Super Bounce Balls
Freshly mowed grass
Cedar
Tennis Balls
Cookies baking
Roses
Campfire
Oranges
New Car
Popcorn
Markers
Thanksgiving
Vanilla
A Newborn Baby’s head
Coffee Brewing

Top 7:
7. Bacon
6. The Mountains of Colorado (Pine Forest)
5. Gunpowder
4. Barbeque Grill (especially if it’s burning Mesquite Wood)
3. A Brand new book
2. Rain
1. Mr. Bubble Original Scent Bubble Bath

Vertically Striped Music Recommendation:
The Wilderness of Manitoba – Summer Fires (Clip 91)
(Available free right now on Amazon.com)

Shalom and Good Evening to you all!

Saturday, May 21, 2011

Show Prep 110

Greetings and Salutations, people!  It’s the radio show that takes days off in the same manner that the Ed retires, this is VSR. I am your host…

VSR and Fake Radio are brought to you by Amazon.com. (Clip 97)

Tweet of the Week:
imaudihere Rob 
Nobody ever asks about my interests or how my day went. It's always, "Tell us the story of how that alligator ate most of your torso again."

Today on VSR – An abbreviated show today, I’ve got the long promised dumb lawsuit roundup, It’s the end of the world as we know it, of course, and naturally I feel fine…I’ve got a great bit of audio regarding the end of the world and a Karaoke performance which may be a sign of the end of the world, I’ve got a little bit of news, and proof of what happens when I try to record a show open while I’m driving…Which was somewhat rambling, which is why I started over, of course, and naturally I’ve got a music recommendation.

Give out the phone number - (646) 716-6831 OR 6-HOP-1-MOVE-1

To contact VSR via email:
Email address:
radio@verticallystripedsocks.com
Voice Mail – 720-CUB-1-ACE
Twitter: @socnorb777




Let’s get to the news… (Play News Music – Clip 03)

 COLUMBUS, Ohio – Ohio Gov. John Kasich (KAY'-sik) isn't tickled by the pinkish color of the state's newer driver's licenses.
The governor said as an aside during a Tuesday speech in Dayton that he would eliminate what he called "the pink driver's license." The Columbus Dispatch reports his comment drew laughter.
Afterward, Kasich told reporters his remark was "sort of tongue in cheek," though he indicated others have complained about the color. He said he recently got his new license and went: "Whoa."
The American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators says about 20 states have adopted the color. Ohio started phasing in the salmon color in 2009. Joe Andrews of the Department of Public Safety says it's a tough color to reproduce on a phony license.

LINCOLN, Neb. – Police in Nebraska say they've nabbed a pair of suspected grease thieves, thanks in part to the smell of old french fries.
Christy Harris, of Everton, Mo., and Jesse Moore, of Springfield, Mo., are charged with larceny. They're suspected of siphoning used cooking oil from a bin outside a Lincoln restaurant. Police think they may be involved in several other grease thefts.
Some businesses buy used grease for biodiesel fuel.
Harris and Moore were arrested early Wednesday after police stopped a pickup truck hauling a big tank. Officers say the tank smelled like "old, stale french fries." Police say the truck also had no rear license tag.
Harris and Moore were taken to the Lancaster County jail, and later released. Officials had no information on whether they had an attorney.



WASHINGTON (AFP) – When judgment day comes -- which some US Christian fundamentalists insist will happen on Saturday -- have you thought about what you're going to do with the family dog and cat?
In 26 US states, you could have them rescued and adopted by enterprising atheists who have set up a business to care for the animal companions of any Christians who are selected to go to heaven when Jesus Christ comes back.
"You've committed your life to Jesus. You know you're saved. But when the Rapture comes, what's to become of your loving pets who are left behind?" Eternal Earth-Bound Pets says on its website, offering to "take that burden off your mind."
The post-doomsday pet rescue service already has 259 clients, who have paid $135 for the first pet and $20 for each additional pet at the same address, to ensure the faithful animal companions are looked after and loved even when their Christian owners have gone to the other side.
All the rescuers are sworn atheists, which means they will definitely be left behind on Earth, ready to rescue pets after the Rapture, which one US Christian fundamentalist group has penciled for Saturday.
When judgment day happens, Eternal Earth-Bound Pets co-founder Bart Centre "will notify all of our rescuers to go into action and they will drive to the homes of anyone who's signed a contract with us, pick up their pets and take them home and adopt them as their own, keeping them happy and healthy for the rest of their lives.
"This will happen only if and when the Rapture happens. So we do not expect to have to do anything on Saturday," Centre told AFP.
Contracts are good for 10 years, just in case the Mayan calendar prophesy, which predicts the world will end in December next year, comes true.


I’m Craig, and that is the news… (Play News Music – Clip 03)

Bring on Face and The Whale:


Dumb Lawsuit Roundup:

A Manhattan mom is suing a pricey preschool for dumping her "very smart" 4-year-old with tykes half her age and boring her with lessons about shapes and colors.
In court papers, Nicole Imprescia suggests York Avenue Preschool jeopardized little Lucia's chances of getting into an elite private school or, one day, the Ivy League.
She's demanding a refund of the $19,000 tuition and class-action status for other toddlers who weren't properly prepped for the standardized test that can mean the difference between Dalton and - gasp! - public school.

A Wheeling, Illinois woman claiming her new Adidas shoes were made of materials that stuck together, causing her to fall, filed a lawsuit Tuesday against the shoe company.
Anna Bourtseva claims she was injured during a June 12, 2010, fall because her new Adidas Midiru shoes stuck together, according to a suit filed in Cook County Circuit Court.
Bourtseva claims she purchased the shoes June 6, 2010, from an Adidas Outlet Store not knowing the shoe’s materials would cause them to stick together. The suit claims she fell forward and suffered serious internal and external injuries, including bruises, contusions and lacerations.
Bourtseva claims Adidas North America Inc. manufactured, assembled, constructed and designed shoes made of materials that had a tendency to stick together when they came into contact with each other. She also claims the shoes posed a tripping hazard that Adidas failed to warn her about.
The two-count suit seeks more than $50,000 plus the cost of the suit.


An Indiana woman is suing Carnival Cruise Lines after alleging a ship she was on was “going too fast.”  Doris Beard says the immense speed of the vessel caused her to become sick.
According to the court document, Beard said, quote, “due to the speed of the ship I became very sick, my body swayed terrible on the ship I had bleeding, which I had not has in three years. The ship was moving so fast everyone on board became sick, even the workers.”
She filed her claim in August 2009, but the amount she’s seeking was not specified.  It also wasn’t specified which ship she was on, but most of Carnival’s fleet max out at 25 to 28 miles per hour.
Carnival hasn’t commented on the case, except to request that the suit be filed in the state of Florida, where the company is based, instead of Indiana.  They also say the woman’s claim wasn’t filed within the one-year statute of limitations specified in the cruise contract.
This woman thinks she suffered?  Maybe she needs to watch Speed 2: Cruise Control.  THOSE people suffered.  Not the cruise passengers.  The people who went to see the movie.
Crestwood, MISSOURI - The Starbucks coffee shop here should have known it was inviting trouble by placing a tip jar on an open counter, according to a wrongful-death lawsuit filed by the estate of a customer who died defending it.
The suit, filed Monday in St. Louis County Circuit Court, seeks unspecified damages from the Starbucks Corp. on behalf of the estate of Roger Kreutz and his father, Edward Kreutz Sr.
Roger Kreutz, 54, of Crestwood, was a customer at the Starbucks, 9590 Watson Road, on March 3, 2008, when he saw a teenager snatch the jar. Kreutz gave chase on foot.
Rushing to escape, Aaron Poisson, then 19, struggled with his pursuer over a car door and backed his Ford out of a parking space, knocking Kreutz to the pavement. He died two days later of head injuries.
Poisson, of Cumming, Ga., drove off and was captured later in St. Louis. He eventually pleaded guilty of involuntary manslaughter and was sentenced to one year in jail.
The tip jar contained less than $5.
Poisson was a reluctant attendee at an unusual reunion at the store last year, in which two of Kreutz's brothers and other relatives rewarded Poisson with forgiveness, saying they knew he intended no harm. They hugged and cried together and planted a memorial tree.
Poisson was not named in the suit.
It alleges that Starbucks "did not employ security to prevent the perpetration of such crimes" and that it "invited the act of perpetration of said crime" by having a tip jar.
As a "direct and proximate" result of this, Kreutz was killed after he was hit by the car, the filing claims.
It says Starbucks had a duty to "exercise reasonable care" to protect Kreutz or give him adequate warning against harm.



An NBA referee has called a technical foul against an Associated Press writer.
Referee Bill Spooner has filed a lawsuit against AP writer Jon Krawczynski for posting a message on Twitter over an alleged conversation Spooner had with Minnesota Timberwolves head coach Kurt Rambis, according to the Minneapolis-St. Paul Business Journal.
The incident took place during a Jan. 24 game between the Timberwolves and the Houston Rockets.
The suit claims Rambis became upset over a called foul on one of his players. Spooner says he would look at the call at half time, while Rambis asked him how his team would get the points back.
The lawsuit claims the 22-year NBA referee didn't answer Rambis' question, but that's when the AP writer's Tweet happened.
"Ref Bill Spooner told Rambis he'd 'get it back' after a bad call. Then he made an even worse call on Rockets. That's NBA officiating folks," Krawczynski's Tweet said.
Spooner is seeking more than $75,000 in damages, saying the Tweet was a defamatory accusation of game fixing. He also wants the message to be unpublished and a retraction, according to the paper.
The Associated Press is standing by its writer.
"We believe all of the facts we reported from the game in question were accurate," Dave Tomlin, AP associate general counsel, said in a statement to the paper.
The organization has yet to receive the lawsuit that was filed Monday in Minneapolis' U.S. District Court.
The Rockets won the game 129-125.




Vertically Striped Music Recommendation:
Tokio Hotel – Final Day

Shalom and Good Evening to you all!

Saturday, May 14, 2011

Show Prep 109

Greetings and Salutations, people!  Happy Dance Like a Chicken Day

VSR and Fake Radio are brought to you by Amazon.com. (Clip 97)

Tweet of the Week:
kellyoxford kelly oxford 
Did Vanessa Williams ever get punched in the face for telling everyone "sometimes the sun goes around the moon”?


Today on VSR – Twitter is destroying celebrities, Dumb Lawsuits,

Give out the phone number - (646) 716-6831 OR 6-HOP-1-MOVE-1

To contact VSR via email:
Email address:
radio@verticallystripedsocks.com
Voice Mail – 720-CUB-1-ACE
Twitter: @socnorb777




Let’s get to the news… (Play News Music – Clip 03)

HARRISBURG, Pa. – School officials say the students at a Pennsylvania school are getting sandwiches for lunch for failing to appreciate the hot meals the district provides.
The Harrisburg Patriot-News reports the pre-kindergarten through eighth-grade
students at Camp Curtain School have received cold sandwiches this week as punishment for misbehavior, including failure to clean up after themselves.
An administrator tells the newspaper that behavior has improved. The official says the lunches still include fruit and vegetables.
Hot meal service will resume at the school on Monday.

 TRENTON, N.J. – A classic muscle car stolen from New Jersey's largest city nearly 36 years ago has been recovered on the other side of the country.
A Santa Maria, Calif., man bought the 1969 Chevy Camaro SS from a seller on eBay in February. But Keith Williams tells KSBY-TV he contacted the California Highway Patrol after certain features of the car didn't match the model.
Police discovered the vehicle was stolen from Newark, N.J., on July 8, 1975.
The original owner, Janice Maffucci, told the TV station the car was stolen from the post office where her father worked. She can't believe the vehicle was recovered.
Maffucci says she plans to sell the car.
Police are tracing the registration in hopes of finding the thief.

MELBOURNE (Reuters) – An Australian Rules footballer sporting a spiky mohawk was sent off for having a dangerous haircut in a minor league match near Melbourne last weekend.
Nathan Van Someren was shown a yellow card during the third quarter of his team Simpson's game against Otway Districts in the Colac and District Football League.
"Before the game the umpire said that I could not play with my hair like that. He told me it was dangerous," Van Someren told the Geelong Advertiser.
"We all thought that he was taking the mickey out of me. A few umpires have made jokes about my hair before, so I didn't think any more of it.
"I played a bit in the first and second quarters and then I was yellow carded."
Van Someren, 25, said he had no intention of changing his hairstyle and league officials later ruled he should not have been punished.
"The Colac umpires ... have acknowledged that it was an incorrect interpretation of the rule that really refers to prohibited items," Gerard Ryan, local umpiring chief, told the Warrnambool Standard.
"Nathan has been playing for a period of years with the hair as it was on the weekend and there has never been an issue in the past."


I’m Craig, and that is the news… (Play News Music – Clip 03)

Bring on Face and The Whale:

The Ed: Retirement? – Proving that it is possible to retire from a busy schedule of doing nothing.

NHL 94 Tourney?

Twitter is dangerous to celebrities’ careers:

LONDON (Reuters) – Celebrities who bombard fans with Twitter updates are likely to have shorter careers than those who maintain an aura of mystique, according to a survey.
Easy access to stars through social networking websites has made them less appealing and increases the likelihood of followers getting bored, music consumer research by publishers Bauer Media said.
"In this social media age, it's all too easy to follow your musical icons on a minute-by-minute basis. There's a consensus within the industry that this ease of access is leading to artists losing appeal more quickly," the Phoenix IV report said.
The music industry is starting to consider restricting access to certain types of artists in an attempt to boost their staying power in popular culture and lengthen their careers, it added.
Although younger fans surveyed said they were thrilled by the idea of 24-hour access to their favorite stars, older respondents said their interest was tempered by a hankering for the days when stars were "more special."
"Meeting bands isn't about waiting for 10 hours outside a gig these days -- you can buy a day out with your favorite band. But separation can be good -- knowing too much can kill off rock stars," said Nichola Browne, former editor of music magazine Kerrang!
Many celebrities have embraced Twitter as a way of communicating day-to-day musings as well promotional material with fans.
Tweets on singer Katy Perry's page include: "What does it mean when you see the number 33 all the time? For instance, I've seen it over 7 times today."
While actress Demi Moore, one of Twitter's most prolific celebrity users with over 3.5 million followers, wrote on Friday: "Kind of digging soft curls with a side part. A good change from straight with a middle part?"



Something to think about:
1. The Radio Shack Battery Club
2. Can someone please explain the 80’s to me? (Girls just want to have fun – Cyndi Lauper video at the mall.)
3. Childish vs. Childlike – Childish is Negative, Childlike is Positive, but they’re basically the same thing.
4. Frau Blucher does NOT mean glue (Clip 42)
5. Why does Comet look like Parmesan Cheese.
6. Peyton Hillis on the cover of Madden 12 – Broncos got Brady Quinn
7. Why does the clock start at 12?


Dumb Lawsuit Roundup:

A Manhattan mom is suing a pricey preschool for dumping her "very smart" 4-year-old with tykes half her age and boring her with lessons about shapes and colors.
In court papers, Nicole Imprescia suggests York Avenue Preschool jeopardized little Lucia's chances of getting into an elite private school or, one day, the Ivy League.
She's demanding a refund of the $19,000 tuition and class-action status for other toddlers who weren't properly prepped for the standardized test that can mean the difference between Dalton and - gasp! - public school.

A Wheeling, Illinois woman claiming her new Adidas shoes were made of materials that stuck together, causing her to fall, filed a lawsuit Tuesday against the shoe company.
Anna Bourtseva claims she was injured during a June 12, 2010, fall because her new Adidas Midiru shoes stuck together, according to a suit filed in Cook County Circuit Court.
Bourtseva claims she purchased the shoes June 6, 2010, from an Adidas Outlet Store not knowing the shoe’s materials would cause them to stick together. The suit claims she fell forward and suffered serious internal and external injuries, including bruises, contusions and lacerations.
Bourtseva claims Adidas North America Inc. manufactured, assembled, constructed and designed shoes made of materials that had a tendency to stick together when they came into contact with each other. She also claims the shoes posed a tripping hazard that Adidas failed to warn her about.
The two-count suit seeks more than $50,000 plus the cost of the suit.


An Indiana woman is suing Carnival Cruise Lines after alleging a ship she was on was “going too fast.”  Doris Beard says the immense speed of the vessel caused her to become sick.
According to the court document, Beard said, quote, “due to the speed of the ship I became very sick, my body swayed terrible on the ship I had bleeding, which I had not has in three years. The ship was moving so fast everyone on board became sick, even the workers.”
She filed her claim in August 2009, but the amount she’s seeking was not specified.  It also wasn’t specified which ship she was on, but most of Carnival’s fleet max out at 25 to 28 miles per hour.
Carnival hasn’t commented on the case, except to request that the suit be filed in the state of Florida, where the company is based, instead of Indiana.  They also say the woman’s claim wasn’t filed within the one-year statute of limitations specified in the cruise contract.
This woman thinks she suffered?  Maybe she needs to watch Speed 2: Cruise Control.  THOSE people suffered.  Not the cruise passengers.  The people who went to see the movie.
Crestwood, MISSOURI - The Starbucks coffee shop here should have known it was inviting trouble by placing a tip jar on an open counter, according to a wrongful-death lawsuit filed by the estate of a customer who died defending it.
The suit, filed Monday in St. Louis County Circuit Court, seeks unspecified damages from the Starbucks Corp. on behalf of the estate of Roger Kreutz and his father, Edward Kreutz Sr.
Roger Kreutz, 54, of Crestwood, was a customer at the Starbucks, 9590 Watson Road, on March 3, 2008, when he saw a teenager snatch the jar. Kreutz gave chase on foot.
Rushing to escape, Aaron Poisson, then 19, struggled with his pursuer over a car door and backed his Ford out of a parking space, knocking Kreutz to the pavement. He died two days later of head injuries.
Poisson, of Cumming, Ga., drove off and was captured later in St. Louis. He eventually pleaded guilty of involuntary manslaughter and was sentenced to one year in jail.
The tip jar contained less than $5.
Poisson was a reluctant attendee at an unusual reunion at the store last year, in which two of Kreutz's brothers and other relatives rewarded Poisson with forgiveness, saying they knew he intended no harm. They hugged and cried together and planted a memorial tree.
Poisson was not named in the suit.
It alleges that Starbucks "did not employ security to prevent the perpetration of such crimes" and that it "invited the act of perpetration of said crime" by having a tip jar.
As a "direct and proximate" result of this, Kreutz was killed after he was hit by the car, the filing claims.
It says Starbucks had a duty to "exercise reasonable care" to protect Kreutz or give him adequate warning against harm.



An NBA referee has called a technical foul against an Associated Press writer.
Referee Bill Spooner has filed a lawsuit against AP writer Jon Krawczynski for posting a message on Twitter over an alleged conversation Spooner had with Minnesota Timberwolves head coach Kurt Rambis, according to the Minneapolis-St. Paul Business Journal.
The incident took place during a Jan. 24 game between the Timberwolves and the Houston Rockets.
The suit claims Rambis became upset over a called foul on one of his players. Spooner says he would look at the call at half time, while Rambis asked him how his team would get the points back.
The lawsuit claims the 22-year NBA referee didn't answer Rambis' question, but that's when the AP writer's Tweet happened.
"Ref Bill Spooner told Rambis he'd 'get it back' after a bad call. Then he made an even worse call on Rockets. That's NBA officiating folks," Krawczynski's Tweet said.
Spooner is seeking more than $75,000 in damages, saying the Tweet was a defamatory accusation of game fixing. He also wants the message to be unpublished and a retraction, according to the paper.
The Associated Press is standing by its writer.
"We believe all of the facts we reported from the game in question were accurate," Dave Tomlin, AP associate general counsel, said in a statement to the paper.
The organization has yet to receive the lawsuit that was filed Monday in Minneapolis' U.S. District Court.
The Rockets won the game 129-125.




He-Man Movie Watchers Club:
The Damned United –
Based on the Novel by David Peace



Brian Clough Obituary from The Guardian newspaper:
A prolific but unlucky centre-forward, who became a triumphant but star-crossed manager, Brian Clough, who has died of stomach cancer aged 69, was, in some sense, the victim of his own public image. He was a mixture of arrogance and initiative, bombast and generosity, intransigence and self-doubt.
He scored 204 second division goals in 222 games for Middlesbrough, yet won only a couple of England caps, against Wales and Sweden in 1959. As a manager, he transformed Derby County into a championship-winning team, won the European Cup twice with Nottingham Forest, yet failed both at Brighton and Leeds, and never achieved the managership of England he so coveted.
Through almost the whole of Clough's career runs the theme of his collaboration with Peter Taylor. When Clough went back to his local club, Middlesbrough, after RAF service, he was scarcely a third choice centre-forward. It was Taylor, a reserve goalkeeper, who saw his potential, trumpeted his virtues, and promoted his career, with Clough's league debut coming against Barnsley in 1955.
When that career came to a bitter end on Boxing Day 1962, playing for Sunderland, for whom he had signed in 1961, it was with Taylor that Clough begin his remarkable career in management. He was only 27 when a collision with Bury's goalkeeper tore a cruciate ligament beyond repair.
When George Hardwick, another ex-Middlesbrough player and an ex-England captain, made him youth coach, Clough's misery was partly assuaged. But the directors would not have him. He was dismissed, drank heavily, despaired - only to find himself, in 1965, manager of nearby Hartlepool. Taylor agreed to leave his job as Burton Albion manager to assist him.
Between them, the two men breathed life into a club forever on the verge of extinction, and, in 1967, were appointed to run Derby County, then in the Second Division. Showing enormous flair in the transfer market - acquiring for small fees such future stars as Roy McFarland and Archie Gemmill - the two transformed Derby as well. In 1972, they won the championship. But the relationship steadily deteriorated across the years until, like some impossible marriage, it degenerated into implacable hostility, still unresolved at the time of Taylor's death in 1990.
Taylor was enraged when he found Clough had been given a £5,000 salary increase without telling him; and things would never be the same. In October 1973, after Clough had taken Derby to the semi-finals of the European Cup, he and a competitive chairman, Sam Longson, fell out irreparably, Clough and Taylor resigned, and, despite impassioned protest meetings in the town, would not find a way back. Taylor alone returned to the Baseball Ground in 1984 as manager, and clashed violently with Clough again when he signed Nottingham Forest's outside-left, John Robertson, without telling him.
The two of them revolutionised Forest as they had Derby. But not before they had utterly failed, from November 1973, to do the same for the Third Division club Brighton and Hove Albion, where Clough's attempt to bully limited players to perform like stars brought disastrous results. Surprisingly, in July 1974 he was engaged to manage Leeds United, whose players he had publicly condemned as cheats in the past, and who fully reciprocated his antagonism. Clough lasted only 44 days, and emerged from the ordeal a demoralised man.
However, in January 1975 he became manager of Derby's eternal rivals, Nottingham Forest, and in the summer of 1976, when Taylor resigned as mana- ger of Brighton, he joined Clough. Only then did things begin to move. Showing their old flair for signing players, they took Forest out of the Second Division in 1977, won the championship in 1978, and the European Cup in 1979 and 1980.
This was an astonishing achievement with a club that had won nothing of consequence since the FA Cup in 1959. That particular domestic trophy eluded Clough - Tottenham beat Forest in the 1991 final - but league cup victories came in 1978, 1979, 1989 and 1990.
Clough's methods were unique. He was essentially a dictator, and not always a benevolent one. "Have you ever been punched in the stomach, young man?" he once asked a centre-forward, Nigel Jenson, in the dressing room. When the answer was no, Clough suited the action to the word, remarking, "Well, now you have."
After Forest supporters invaded the pitch at the end of a tumultous league cup quarter-final victory over Queen's Park Rangers in February 1989, Clough took the field himself and struck several fans; he was fined £5,000 for bringing the game into disrepute, and banned from the touchline of all football league grounds for the rest of the season.
When Everton's players, disappointed by losing a league cup match to a very controversial goal, despoiled their dressing room, Clough, knowing they were due back in three days for a league match, told the cleaners to leave it as it was. Which was how Everton found it on the following Saturday.
After Derby had lost a European Cup semi-final game against Juventus in Turin in April 1973, Clough emerged from the dressing room and told the expectant Italian reporters, "No cheating bastards do I talk to. I will not talk to any cheating bastards." He shut the dressing-room door, re-emerged and instructed me to "Tell them what I said, Brian!"
Clough was born in Middlesbrough, the sixth of nine children, of whom the first, a girl, had died at the age of four. His father, Joe, wounded in the first world war, worked at various times for nearby ICI and in a sweet factory. His resilient mother, Sally, was extremely close to him, and was reportedly "fanatical" about football.
In later years, Clough would always be a professed socialist, once parking his Mercedes outside a church hall in Nottingham before giving an emotional speech supporting the Labour candidate in the 1979 election, Phillip Whitehead.
Clough married his wife, Barbara Glasgow, a close neighbour, while still playing for Middlesbrough. Of their three children, Simon, Nigel and Libby, it was Nigel who followed Brian into football. A boisterous child who developed into a quiet, calm young man, a gifted centre-forward in a far less robust, more inventive, style than his father's, long the fulcrum of the Forest attack, he later played with Liverpool and Manchester City.
Brian, not often to be found at the training pitch - but always influential when he was there - was given to late, inspirational appearances in pre-match dressing-rooms. On April 26 1993, 58 years old, in charge of Forest for the past 18 years, he finally retired. The team faced relegation, and he himself no longer had the same resilient hubris. But he had worked wonders at the City Ground.
In January 2003, his years of heavy drinking caught up with him and he was obliged to undergo a liver trans- plant in a 10-hour operation carried out in Newcastle. Doctors had told him that without it he had only a few months to live. Clough said he was persuaded to have the operation when his grandson Stephen begged him to stop drinking. "Drink," Clough admitted, "became more important to me than the anguish I was creating for those I loved most."
His wife and children survive him.
· Brian Clough, footballer and football manager, born March 21 1935; died September 20 2004

Vertically Striped Music Recommendation:
Dan Mangan - Robots

Shalom and Good Evening to you all!


Saturday, May 7, 2011

Show Prep 108

Greetings and Salutations, people!  Happy International Tuba Day!

VSR and Fake Radio are brought to you by Amazon.com. (Clip 97)

Tweet of the Week:
kellyoxford kelly oxford 
"WHOA THIS LADY RIGHT HERE IS FAT. A FAT FAT LADY. RIGHT HERE." - 2yr old daughter, to everyone in the food court today


Today on VSR – In celebration of International Tuba Day, we’ll play what very well may be the first Tuba Game Show in the history of earth…a little game I like to call, “It takes 2 to Tuba” or “Name that Tuba”…I can’t quite decide which name I like better. We’ll finally get to the newest round of “Would you rather?” We’ll discuss my least favorite Superhero Superman and his latest controversial move, I have a insane lawsuit roundup that we may get to if we have time, and we might even talk a bit about Benny Laden and his reported death, I’ve got a new 5 minutes with Luke, and depending on how I feel, I may even play the saddest clip ever heard in the history of Fake Radio. That’s far more than I can hope to get to today, but we’ll do our best to get to as much as we can.

Give out the phone number - (646) 716-6831 OR 6-HOP-1-MOVE-1

To contact VSR via email:
Email address:
radio@verticallystripedsocks.com
Voice Mail – 720-CUB-1-ACE
Twitter: @socnorb777




Let’s get to the news… (Play News Music – Clip 03)

LONDON – It's official: Smokey the cat has roared her way into Guinness World Records having achieved the loudest purr by a domestic cat.
Guinness says the gray-and-white tabby earned her place with record-setting 67.7 decibels. In a video on the cat's
website, the 12-year-old, ordinary-size feline purrs with a sound akin to the cooing of an angry dove, the decibel level is roughly equivalent to a vacuum cleaner running.
Smokey first rose to prominence in February, when her owner, Ruth Adams, ran a local competition for the most powerful purr. A community college recorded the purr and submitted it to Guinness, who accepted Smokey’s purr as a world Record. (Clip 28)


SPRINGFIELD, Ohio – An Ohio hotel has been fending off angry phone calls because a broken rope on its flagpole led some to think the business was mourning the death of Osama bin Laden.

The rope left the U.S. flag stuck at half-staff for several days this
week outside a Hampton Inn in Springfield in western Ohio.

Hotel Assistant general manager Connie Smith said the hotel "started getting calls left and right" from people assuming the management supported bin Laden.
Smith says one man threatened to cut down the flagpole.

She says the town is "obviously patriotic."

The newspaper reports the rope broke as the hotel was trying to be respectful of Old Glory by replacing a flag that had frayed.



CLAY, N.Y. – It was ALMOST the perfect crime, that is until an ill-timed, inadvertent 911 call led police to three larceny suspects who had just completed a theft and were planning their next caper. That was when one of the criminal’s cell phone’s “pocket dialed” 911. Without any of the men knowing, the 911 operator overheard the trio celebrating their heist and planning their next series of break-ins in upstate New York.

Onondaga County Sheriff Kevin Walsh says the police were already looking for a suspicious person in connection with a robbery of some tools from a business in the Syracuse suburb of Clay when they got the unlikely assist of the theif’s cell phone tattling on him.

As the dispatcher relayed the conversation to officers in the field, the men discussed their plans, described their surroundings and even commented, "there go the cops now."

Walsh says that was enough for a deputy to turn around and stop the Kia Sportage full of the just stolen tools. The dispatcher then heard the driver being asked for his license and registration.

I’m Craig, and that is the news… (Play News Music – Clip 03)

Bring on Face and The Whale:

Tuba Game Show– Name that tune – It takes 2 to Tuba
Would you Rather??? (Theme music – Clip 6)
-Go about your normal day naked or fall asleep for a year
-Be 3 feet tall or 8 feet tall?
-Give up your computer or your television forever.
-Always lose or never play?
-Would you rather live forever or live a normal life and die?
-Rich and ugly or poor and good looking?
-Be the most popular person alive or the smartest person alive?
-Forget who you are but remember who everyone else is or Forget who everyone else is and remember who you are?
-Only be able to whisper or only be able to shout
-Would you rather have to spend the next year repeating the fourth grade (at your current age), or spend a month in jail for a crime you did not commit?
-Would you rather date a girl who is a perfect 10, but 7’6 tall, or a 6 or a 7, but who was two inches shorter than you?


Superman is renouncing his citizenship:
Time to tweak that catchphrase "truth, justice and the American way"? Superman is renouncing his U.S. citizenship in DC's new "Action Comics #900."

In the new comic book, Superman is scolded by a member of the president's security staff for appearing at a protest in Iran, with the notion that Superman's actions reflect the positions of U.S. government as a whole.

The Man of Steel’s declaration, “I’m tired of having my actions construed as instruments of U.S. policy,” follows accusations that he caused an international incident in Tehran. Superman flew to the country during a huge protest, where he stood silent for one day, to show his support for the demonstrators. The 24 hours pass with a mix of appreciation (flowers and flags) and fear (hurled Molotov cocktails). But the government of Iran sees Superman as an agent of the United States and feels his action is an act of war. “Truth, justice and the American way – it’s not enough anymore,” Superman tells the president’s national security adviser. “The world’s too small. Too connected.” He then makes the decision to go before the United Nations and renounce his American citizenship.




Dumb Lawsuit Roundup:

A Manhattan mom is suing a pricey preschool for dumping her "very smart" 4-year-old with tykes half her age and boring her with lessons about shapes and colors.
In court papers, Nicole Imprescia suggests York Avenue Preschool jeopardized little Lucia's chances of getting into an elite private school or, one day, the Ivy League.
She's demanding a refund of the $19,000 tuition and class-action status for other toddlers who weren't properly prepped for the standardized test that can mean the difference between Dalton and - gasp! - public school.

A Wheeling, Illinois woman claiming her new Adidas shoes were made of materials that stuck together, causing her to fall, filed a lawsuit Tuesday against the shoe company.
Anna Bourtseva claims she was injured during a June 12, 2010, fall because her new Adidas Midiru shoes stuck together, according to a suit filed in Cook County Circuit Court.
Bourtseva claims she purchased the shoes June 6, 2010, from an Adidas Outlet Store not knowing the shoe’s materials would cause them to stick together. The suit claims she fell forward and suffered serious internal and external injuries, including bruises, contusions and lacerations.
Bourtseva claims Adidas North America Inc. manufactured, assembled, constructed and designed shoes made of materials that had a tendency to stick together when they came into contact with each other. She also claims the shoes posed a tripping hazard that Adidas failed to warn her about.
The two-count suit seeks more than $50,000 plus the cost of the suit.


An Indiana woman is suing Carnival Cruise Lines after alleging a ship she was on was “going too fast.”  Doris Beard says the immense speed of the vessel caused her to become sick.
According to the court document, Beard said, quote, “due to the speed of the ship I became very sick, my body swayed terrible on the ship I had bleeding, which I had not has in three years. The ship was moving so fast everyone on board became sick, even the workers.”
She filed her claim in August 2009, but the amount she’s seeking was not specified.  It also wasn’t specified which ship she was on, but most of Carnival’s fleet max out at 25 to 28 miles per hour.
Carnival hasn’t commented on the case, except to request that the suit be filed in the state of Florida, where the company is based, instead of Indiana.  They also say the woman’s claim wasn’t filed within the one-year statute of limitations specified in the cruise contract.
This woman thinks she suffered?  Maybe she needs to watch Speed 2: Cruise Control.  THOSE people suffered.  Not the cruise passengers.  The people who went to see the movie.
Crestwood, MISSOURI - The Starbucks coffee shop here should have known it was inviting trouble by placing a tip jar on an open counter, according to a wrongful-death lawsuit filed by the estate of a customer who died defending it.
The suit, filed Monday in St. Louis County Circuit Court, seeks unspecified damages from the Starbucks Corp. on behalf of the estate of Roger Kreutz and his father, Edward Kreutz Sr.
Roger Kreutz, 54, of Crestwood, was a customer at the Starbucks, 9590 Watson Road, on March 3, 2008, when he saw a teenager snatch the jar. Kreutz gave chase on foot.
Rushing to escape, Aaron Poisson, then 19, struggled with his pursuer over a car door and backed his Ford out of a parking space, knocking Kreutz to the pavement. He died two days later of head injuries.
Poisson, of Cumming, Ga., drove off and was captured later in St. Louis. He eventually pleaded guilty of involuntary manslaughter and was sentenced to one year in jail.
The tip jar contained less than $5.
Poisson was a reluctant attendee at an unusual reunion at the store last year, in which two of Kreutz's brothers and other relatives rewarded Poisson with forgiveness, saying they knew he intended no harm. They hugged and cried together and planted a memorial tree.
Poisson was not named in the suit.
It alleges that Starbucks "did not employ security to prevent the perpetration of such crimes" and that it "invited the act of perpetration of said crime" by having a tip jar.
As a "direct and proximate" result of this, Kreutz was killed after he was hit by the car, the filing claims.
It says Starbucks had a duty to "exercise reasonable care" to protect Kreutz or give him adequate warning against harm.



An NBA referee has called a technical foul against an Associated Press writer.
Referee Bill Spooner has filed a lawsuit against AP writer Jon Krawczynski for posting a message on Twitter over an alleged conversation Spooner had with Minnesota Timberwolves head coach Kurt Rambis, according to the Minneapolis-St. Paul Business Journal.
The incident took place during a Jan. 24 game between the Timberwolves and the Houston Rockets.
The suit claims Rambis became upset over a called foul on one of his players. Spooner says he would look at the call at half time, while Rambis asked him how his team would get the points back.
The lawsuit claims the 22-year NBA referee didn't answer Rambis' question, but that's when the AP writer's Tweet happened.
"Ref Bill Spooner told Rambis he'd 'get it back' after a bad call. Then he made an even worse call on Rockets. That's NBA officiating folks," Krawczynski's Tweet said.
Spooner is seeking more than $75,000 in damages, saying the Tweet was a defamatory accusation of game fixing. He also wants the message to be unpublished and a retraction, according to the paper.
The Associated Press is standing by its writer.
"We believe all of the facts we reported from the game in question were accurate," Dave Tomlin, AP associate general counsel, said in a statement to the paper.
The organization has yet to receive the lawsuit that was filed Monday in Minneapolis' U.S. District Court.
The Rockets won the game 129-125.


Closure – Ted Anthony
To surf American airwaves, to read American comments on the Internet by the thousands, to walk American streets on the day after Osama bin Laden's astonishing demise meant you'd almost certainly hear some variation of a single telling word: "closure."
As in ending. As in end of story — at least, the primary story arc of Osama bin Laden, which for most Americans began in the eastern United States on Sept. 11, 2001, and ended in Pakistan in the early moments of May 2, 2011, in one of the most dramatic undoings imaginable.
While Americans reveled in the demise of global terrorism's most public face, the prevailing mood was unsurprising for the culture that produced Hollywood: After so many years of uncertainty and mass aggravation over no resolution at all, here, finally, was some kind of coherent ending.
Listen to Republican Rep. Peter King, one of many whose satisfaction in the hours after bin Laden's death focused on resolution and wrap-up. Of the 9/11 victims' families, he said this: "Now they can finally have some sense of closure and some sense of justice."
Or Mike Low of Batesville, Ark., whose flight attendant daughter died aboard American Airlines Flight 11: "It certainly brings an ending to a major quest for all of us."
Or Lisa Ramaci, celebrating early Monday in New York's streets, where the champagne-and-goodbye-chants atmosphere at times resembled that of a major pro sports victory: "We had this 10 years of frustration just building and building, wanting this guy dead, and now he is."
Surely one man's eradication cannot offset survivors' years of pain. But the American hunger for definitive Hollywood endings is boundless — to the point where we grow deeply irritated if something seems too open-ended. The quick-cut, sound-bite culture so frustrating to politicians and other leaders produces an appetite for resolution that's hard to satisfy.
Add to that the enduring, horrific echoes of 9/11 and two protracted wars that have no discernible endpoints in sight, and you have a populace primed to applaud the end of a major chapter, even if it isn't unfettered victory.
Part of it is the nature of U.S. warfare in recent decades. Americans today are as likely to fight wars against amorphous enemies as they are nation-states. Because of that, conflicts tend to lack distinct endings or formal surrenders like a Yorktown or an Appomattox — events that say, "Hey, the war's over."
There was no Treaty of Versailles with Saddam Hussein, and certainly no one in America expects ever to have a V-E Day or V-J Day with al-Qaida. In modern U.S.-backed warfare, the big, solemn, identifiable ending is virtually obsolete. So a major milestone like bin Laden's death is, for the United States, a cause for buoyancy in a frustratingly unresolved conflict.
That's how Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer cast it. "The war on terror is not over," he said Monday on MSNBC, "but maybe this was the Saratoga or the Gettysburg where things turned."
But there's something else at play, too. Bin Laden himself was the closest thing the modern world had to a James Bond-style supervillain — someone who, to hundreds of millions of Westerners, was truly, monochromatically dastardly.
Owen Gleiberman, writing on Entertainment Weekly's website, identified it immediately in a piece called "Say Goodnight to the Bad Guy."
"That perception of 9/11 as big-screen-action-disaster-gone-real, widespread though it was, seemed rather indefensible at the time because to say it, or even to think it, risked trivializing the devastation," Gleiberman wrote.
"Yet 9/11, there's almost no denying it, did live in our minds like a giant motion picture," he wrote, "and part of what made it so wasn't simply the vastness, the sheer terrifying spectacle, of the tragedy. It was that behind it lay a villain of nearly mythological proportion."
And now we get to the heart of the matter. Could it be that, for a worried and weary nation, such a soul-wrenching event as 9/11 required an appropriately cataclysmic resolution for the man who masterminded it? Would a bomb from the air — or, worse, a revelation years later that he had died — have been as satisfying?
Would a less sharply defined bin Laden death have allowed for the jubilant summoning of American resoluteness that was being bandied about so freely Monday from the White House to the streets of New York City and Washington?
When you take in the words that people in America used Monday — "emotionally held hostage," "finally," "a symbol," "an important milestone" — you realize what the ending of bin Laden means right here, right now: It gives Americans something to pin their feelings on, to carry with us when we say, "What has all this meant?"
It means, for now, that one of the key demands of a story — that something actually happens that means something — has just unfolded before our eyes. The fact that the manner of bin Laden's death might have fit perfectly into a pre-governor Arnold Schwarzenegger movie is not incidental.
For the moment, Americans have our resolution — something to pin our feelings on. We have all-important closure, even though — in the real, messier, non-cinematic world — the country of big endings still must wake up tomorrow and fight another day.


Vertically Striped Music Recommendation:
Colin Hay – Waiting for my real life to begin (Clip 81)

Shalom and Good Evening to you all!