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Overnight Briefing & General Reality Check - Aug 31, 2015
August 31, 2015
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Culture Shock:
The 20th annual Air Guitar World Championships are over, and have been won by... a Russian for the first time in history!
KAREEL "Your Daddy" BLUMENKRANTS beat MATT "Aristotle" BURNS from the USA to take first place in a field of 30 competitors, which was held in the Finnish city of Oulu over the weekend and won an electric guitar as the first prize (along with the title).
Third place went to another American, MICHAEL "Operation Rock a Pussy" LOVELY, and the reigning world champion, NANAMI "Seven Seas" NAGURA from Japan, finished fourth.
There are seven national champions who automatically qualify for the finals.
Tournament organizers said "The purpose of the Air Guitar World Championships is to promote world peace. According to the ideology of the Air Guitar, wars would end, climate change stop, and all bad things disappear if all the people in the world played the Air Guitar. This is why the whole universe is invited to play the Air Guitar for the world peace at the end of the competition."Big Money, Big Problems:
Think that having more money than you could ever spend is a dream come true? Think again! MARKUS PERSSON sold a fun game called Minecraft to a little company called Microsoft for a whopping two-point-five-billion-dollars, but is quickly discovering that life is lonely at the top. The poor guy has been Tweeting out sad messages that "the problem with getting everything is you run out of reasons to keep trying, and human interaction becomes impossible due to imbalance."
Meanwhile, he also admits to being able to "do whatever I want" and he's "never felt more isolated." (Lee)Bad luck:
A man's romantic seaside wedding proposal fell apart when he accidentally dropped the ring in the ocean.
MATTHEW PICA was standing on dock in Southport, North Carolina, with girlfriend KAYLA HARRITY on Saturday night. He got down on one knee, popped open a box containing the engagement ring, and promptly dropped it. Kayla says, "The ring fell out of the box and fell through the cracks on the deck and into the water... I was in total shock."
Luckily, several bystanders jumped into the water --with their clothes on-- and started searching for the ring. An hour and a half later, a man named KYLE BLUSHER found the ring and everyone started cheering. The proposal continued and Kayla said "yes." (Still)Major league baseball:
The LA Dodgers and VIN SCULLY --the voice of their franchise-- announced that 2016 will be the legendary broadcaster's last year in the booth. Scully, who's 87-years old, has manned the mike for 67-years. As ESPN Stats wrote, "When Vin Scully began broadcasting for the Dodgers (1950), gasoline cost 27 cents a gallon and a postage stamp cost three cents." (Lane)
One baseball event that everybody was talking about was not a pleasant one --at Saturday's game between the Atlanta Braves and New York Yankees, a fan fell from the upper deck into the lower-level stands, killing him.
GREG "Ace" MURRAY was apparently standing up in the front row of the upper deck and yelling at Yankees slugger ALEX RODRIGUEZ, who was pinch hitting for the Yanks when he fell head first. It's the third time a fan has died from that kind of fall at Turner Field.
The Braves flew the flag at half-staff, had a moment of silence and posted his name and photo on the scoreboard on Sunday, and said they were "deeply saddened" by Murray's death --"a valued and longtime season-ticket holder and an incredibly passionate Braves fan."Animal Stories:
The world now has a crustacean named after SIR ELTON JOHN. The Leucothoe eltoni is "a shrimp-like crustacean" newly-discovered in the remote coral reefs of Raja Ampat, Indonesia" Discovery News says the scientist who found the crustacean is JAMES THOMAS, a researcher at the Halmos College of Natural Sciences and Oceanography in Florida. He said he named the species after Elton John because he listens to Elton in the lab all the time. He said the crustacean has a "greatly enlarged appendage" that reminded Thomas of the oversized Doc Martens shoes the singer wore as the Pinball Wizard in the 1975 big-screen version of THE WHO's "Tommy." (Bartha)
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