Online Pretty News

Friday, November 4, 2016

Beyonc� and The Dixie Chicks Slay the CMAs

COUNTRY MUSIC AWARDS 2016 (CMA 50th) ILLUMINATI EXPOSED! (BEYONCE, DIXIE CHICKS)
When I heard the rumor that Beyonc would be performing at the Country Music Awards I was immediately blissful (and not just because Im needing consolation for the fact the Formation tour is officially over). But mostly, I knew that it would probably include the Dixie Chicks and was sure to be a super-special rendition of Daddy Lessons, which is surprisingly one of my favorite songs off Lemonade. Its melody is catchy as f**k, I love singing/dancing to it, and every time it comes on I hurt my palms from consistently clapping for five minutes.

Even though Bey is a Texas artist, and made a really great Texas-a*s song, the backlash from country music fans threatening to boycott the CMAs on Twitter was to be expected. While no one had anything negative to say when Justin Timberlake, a non-country artist sang his country-a*s Drink You Away with Chris Stapleton last year (another GREAT performance by the way), something about Beyoncs contribution just doesnt sit as well with a good chunk of country music fans. Hmm I wonder what it could possibly be?

Look, Im not a country music fan by any means (I loathe the vast majority of it), but I am a fan of GOOD music; I can recognize and appreciate a soulful, knee-slappin good tune in any genre! It"s called being open-minded. There are even a few country artists that Ive often allowed to sneak their way into my iTunes library: Carrie Underwood, Faith Hill, and Chris Stapleton on occasion, but most frequently the Dixie Chicks. Their "90s hits like Wide Open Spaces and Cowboy Take Me Away were among my favorite songs to sing back in the day. But when they released their fierce single Not Ready to Make Nice in 2006, my respect for them as artists shot to a whole new height. The song marked their new distancing (and rejection from) many mainstream country music outlets and fans after they condemned President Bush and the war in Iraq. Still, their truest, smartest fans continued to stand by them.

Earlier this year they added a gorgeous stripped-down cover of Beys Daddy Lessons to the setlist for their DCX MMXVI tour, after the song received criticism for not being Nashville enough. And the Dixie Chicks are not unfamiliar with that sentiment being slung at them either. While their return to the CMA stage may have momentarily signified them being welcomed back into the culture, now the Country Music Association have left very few traces of the joint performance on its social media channels even after heavily promoting the performance beforehand. Anti-Bey, anti-Dixie Chicks comments currently flood the CMA Facebook page on posts about other performances (not that Bey or the Dixie Chicks give a single s**t). "Beyonce and The Dixie Chicks for that matter should have stayed home. No business being there with the real COUNTRY TALENT that performed," said one user named Kevin. "Really CMA? Beyonce and the Dixie Chicks? Neither are country, and Beyonce could not be bothered to put some clothes on for the occasion. You could have done much better," said another named Tina. Um, the Queen need not wear clothes! One other user named Anitra (and surely a Trump supporter) even said: "Next time lets not invite artist who support racist organizations and are anti-police."

Despite these ignorant, vomit-worthy remarks, these four fabulous b*****s came to slay country-style for the rest of us who chose not to tune in, but instead watch/listen to the performance on our computer screens with glee. As you can see here, Bey and the chicks let their Texas twangs loose, packing the song with its original yee-haws, southern references, prominent harmonica, tambourine, fiddle and banjoan instrument that originated with Africans and was a central part of traditional black music before it became popularized in minstrel shows, BY THE WAY. Even though Bey did add a saxophone to the mix and found a way to subtly twerk in a stunning sheer lace gown if this music isnt country, then what the h**l is it? Come to think of it, I dont think Ive ever liked a country song this much. And I will NOT let yall take this away from me.

Queen Bey and The Dixie Chicks even provided what sounds like a dress rehearsal recording of their performance, which also sneaks in a riff from the Dixie Chicks song Long Time Gone. Enjoy.

Source: http://www.portlandmercury.com/blogtown/2016/11/03/18674494/beyonc-and-the-dixie-chicks-slay-the-cmas

Preds games available on FOX Sports GO

Review: Fox Sports Go - Fire TV App

Ever been frustrated when you purchase NHL Game Center, NHL Center Ice, NHL Game Ice, NHL Ice Center or whichever package you can think of, and you cant even stream your own teams games on any given night?

Yeah, thats frustrating. I should know, because Ive been there before and its fairly aggravating.

Thats all in the past, though, as the fine folks at FOX Sports have made it possible for folks in the Nashville viewing area to stream every Predators game this season on FOX Sports GO.

That is, unless you subscribe to Comcast, then youre in a bit of trouble.

Read up on the FAQ below for more information on this and exactly what you can and cant do, along with what you can expect from FOX Sports GO.

Source: http://www.ontheforecheck.com/2016/10/11/13249170/preds-games-available-on-fox-sports-go

Conor McGregor promises to retire Eddie Alvarez at UFC 205

Matéria Completa 03/11 | Tudo sobre Flamengo x Botafogo | Fox Sports Rádio

Conor McGregor isn"t just promising a win at UFC 205, he"s promising to put an end to Eddie Alvarez"s career.

The reigning featherweight champion erupted during a media conference call on Thursday while talking about Alvarez and how he sees this fight playing out.

Alvarez has been an incredibly durable fighter throughout his entire career, only succumbing to strikes one time in his entire career and that happened when he was still competing as a welterweight in his 11th professional fight.

McGregor is emphatically predicting that he"ll add another knockout loss to Alvarez"s resume when they finally step into the Octagon on Nov. 12 in New York.

"He"s claiming it"s an easier contest. I look forward to when the eyes shift, when the eyes roll, and the electric shock goes through his whole body and he goes to his knees and then he comes up and he"s in survival mode and that panic sets through his whole body, his whole face, that"s something that I look forward to. I will punish him for that, for those words that he"s saying. I"m going to retire him on this night," McGregor said.

"He"s been through a h**l of lot of wars. He"s been dropped continuously. I can see it in him. You can see the effects of war on his face and respect to him, he"s a fighter. Nothing but respect, but this will be it for you. You"re going to be badly, badly hurt Eddie, and I mean that. It"s over for you. You will not fight again after this. You"ll not look the same. You"ll not think the same and that"s it."

McGregor continuously prodded at Alvarez during the call, talking about all the different ways he"s going to hurt the current lightweight champion when they finally meet.

He even went as far as invoking Alvarez"s wife and children when speaking about the numerous ways he plans to mangle the Philadelphia native and send him packing back home with a long list of injuries and no title to comfort him when it"s over.

"I"m going to toy with this man and I"m going really, truly rearrange his facial structure. His wife and kids won"t ever recognize him. His friends, the people that he knows will know that he"s not the same after this contest. He"s going to be in a shock when he sees that," McGregor said.

I"m going to go out and paint many, many pictures in this contest, put on a showcase, toy with this man and end it all. End his whole career. Retire him. It"s over for him. He should be done anyway. He"s taken too much damage. This will be his last amount of damage that he"ll be able to take. You"re never, ever, ever going to be the same. Ever again in your life. Your kids after this fight are going to beg you "daddy, please don"t go again.""

When the fight was first announced and introduced at the UFC 205 press conference, McGregor predicted that he would finish Alvarez inside one round.

Considering the amount of damage he"s claiming to dish out when they actually fight, it might sound like McGregor is planning on this matchup going past the first five minutes, but that"s not the case.

McGregor doubled down on his earlier prediction and says that Alvarez will be lucky to survive the first round, but he"s ready for anything that may unfold.

"I believe first round. I know he"s durable, I don"t believe he"s been hit by anybody like me," McGregor said. "I don"t believe he will survive. If he does survive and be in that survival mode, then I"m going to toy with him, I"m going to rearrange his face for his words that he"s speaking right now. I still can"t see him lasting one round."

For his part, Alvarez"s response to McGregor saying that this will be his last fight was fairly simple and to the point.

"You"re so full of (expletive)," Alvarez said.

Source: http://www.foxsports.com/ufc/story/conor-mcgregor-promises-to-retire-eddie-alvarez-at-ufc-205-110316

Melania Trump, Cruz hit trail as surrogates for Donald

What was Melania Trump like in Slovenia? - BBC News

Melania Trump and Ted Cruz both made their post-convention debut as Donald Trump surrogates on the campaign trail Thursday -- though the Texas senator and former primary contender did so without mentioning the GOP nominee by name at his initial appearance.

Cruz joined Republican vice presidential nominee Mike Pence on the campaign trail in Prole, Iowa, a month and a half after he posted a tepid endorsement of Trump on Facebook.

This election has been one wild ride, but the stakes in this election have never been higher, Cruz told the audience. He noted that maintaining GOP control of Congress and putting a Republican in the White House amounted to the whole enchilada.

Standing at a podium with a Trump-Pence logo, Cruz praised several Iowa Republicans, including Rep. Steve King and Sen. Charles Grassley, but did not name Trump.

Cruz did mention Trump at a later stop in Michigan, telling the crowd in Portage, "You oughta vote for Donald Trump and Mike Pence and Republicans up and down the ticket."

In Iowa and Michigan, Cruz delivered his pitch to the base, while Melania Trump made her first solo appearance in suburban Philadelphia, where Donald Trump is trailing Clinton.

He knows how to make real change. Make America great again is not just a slogan, she said, adding that as first lady she would be an advocate for women and children.

Despite her husbands reputation for frank, sometimes crude talk, the native of Slovenia focused on family issues saying that the culture has gotten too mean and rough.

Prior to her address, the Pennsylvania state Democratic Party sent out a copy of an old Michelle Obama speech that was labeled as an advanced copy of Melanias speech, a reference to allegations of plagiarism that emerged after her Republican National Convention speech.

Cruz and Melania Trump are the latest in a growing pool of surrogates campaigning for Trump, as Hillary Clinton deploys influential Democrats ranging from President Obama to Bernie Sanders to the trail.

Surrogates can be very helpful in the final days of the campaign when it is far more important to energize and excite voters than to persuade them, Republican campaign strategist Chris Jankowski told FoxNews.com.

I think it would have been wiser to have heard more from Ivanka and Melania all throughout September and October. This speech may have some impact ... but I am doubtful that it will have enough of an impact, Sarah Lenti, a Colorado-based Republican consultant, added.

In battleground states where the margins are narrowing, the surrogates are making the biggest showing.

Michigan, which has not voted for a Republican candidate for president since President George H. W. Bush in 1988, is such a case.

A Fox2/Mitchellpoll released on Wednesday showed Clintons lead in the Great Lakes state has narrowed to 3 percent.

The week began with Trump rallying on Monday, while Donald Trump Jr. arrived mid-week to make stops at Michigan State University and Grand Valley State University. Ivanka Trump appealed to suburban women voters during a Michigan Women in Business Roundtable event.

Not new to the role of surrogate, Obama fired up a Florida crowd with a feisty speech that went off-script as much as Trump.

This is the guy who spent 70 years -- his whole life -- born with a silver spoon, showing no respect for working people. Hes spent a lot of time with celebrities, Obama told the audience in Miami.

But Trump, the president said, does not hang out with working people unless theyre cleaning his room or mowing the fairways.

Youre going to make this guy your champion if youre a working person? he asked the crowd.

FoxNews.com"s Jennifer Hickey and Dan Gallo contributed to this report.

Source: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/11/03/melania-trump-cruz-hit-trail-as-surrogates-for-donald.html

Does ex-wife of Jared Fogle have a case against Subway?

Ordering A Really Messy Subway Sandwich! MESSIEST EVER! Public Pranks

November 4, 2016, 7:38 AM| CBS News legal analyst Rikki Klieman joins "CBS This Morning" to discuss whether Katie McLaughlin, ex-wife of former Subway spokesman Jared Fogle, has a case against the sandwich chain. She alleges Subway was notified about Fogle"s sexual interest in children at least three times during his stint as company spokesman, but it failed to tell police.

Source: http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/does-ex-wife-of-jared-fogle-have-a-case-against-subway/

Javier Baez Is Conquered, This Time, in a Game Bursting With Pressure

SSK Javier Baez Q&A

A couple of hours before Fridays game, I watched Baez as he was escorted to a television interview. He was giggling into his sweatshirt. During batting practice, he could not stop laughing. Perhaps the moment was a parrot jabbering too fast in his ear. Before the game, his manager, Joe Maddon, a reluctant seer, acknowledged as much.

Javys tried to do too much, he said. The foots getting off the ground again, too high.

Sure enough, in the bottom of the ninth, in a game taut as a tarp, Baez ended up being a p**n when the Cubs needed a rook. On a 2-2 count, the final fastball of the game rode up between Baezs chin and his nose, which is to say it was a good foot out of the strike zone. As is true of so many of the young Cubs hitters, patience is not yet Baezs friend. He lifted his foot and unleashed that electric swing, trying to catch the pitch.

That was the definition of an impossibility.

Baez unpretzeled himself and walked to the dugout, and a stadium packed beyond capacity fell silent. The Indians pumped fists and exchanged leaping high-fives, celebrating a 1-0 win. To steal a Series game in an opposing stadium evokes the warmth that a pickpocket feels when he filches a wallet from a swell.

And the Indians have now done it twice, winning Game 4 on Saturday night by a 7-2 score that was as uncompetitive as the numbers suggest.

These Midwestern teams would seem to offer a striking contrast: the small-ball Indians, generally thriving with singles and doubles and running. And the Cubs, with their big-bopping kids, competing to muscle b***s into the jet stream over Chicago.

Francona, whose sore back gives him a penguins walk, is about happy pain. He talks of his anxiety and his penchant for second-guessing like a priest who has grown comfortable with his small sins. He noted that Series games in a National League park which thankfully come shorn of the designated hitter required more work of a manager. But he acquitted himself well in Games 3 and 4 even as he worried his strategy would blow up.

That was agonizing, he said after Game 3, describing how he had spent the last innings worrying the Cubs would tie the score and expose him. I always get nervous.

Before that game, Maddon blew into his news conference holding a steaming cup of coffee, Mr. Mellow Yellow in the flesh. He wanted to talk of his commute, the blue-clad Cubs fans with the names of old heroes on jerseys Banks, Santo, Williams who wandered into the street, oblivious to his car.

He dug the nuttiness of it all. The fact that people are flying in just to be at a bar, not even be at the ballpark thats pretty impressive, he said.

Maddon likes to stand on the top step of the dugout and peer into Wrigleys distant reaches. There is the last seat that I can see in the right-field corner, he said the other day. I love that that seat is filled every night. I think that is outstanding.

In the fifth inning of Fridays game, I set out to visit that seat. Decades back, I passed a few nights sleeping in the Calcutta train station; navigating the dark, intensely narrow, crowded and joyous aisles of Wrigley called that experience sharply to mind. If there was a fire safety inspector within four miles of Wrigley Field on Friday night, she must have willfully blinded herself.

I reached that chair, just beyond the foul pole in right, and told its inhabitant, a wiry steelworker named Mark, of Maddons observation. He shrugged. As if this surprised him?

How long has he been a Cub fan? Fifty-six years. How old? Sixty. Last name? He shook his head. I aint handing that out, he said.

I moved to another remote seat and found Donovan Arndt, 33. He was here with his older brother and father. His mother and his sister, for reasons not immediately clear, were sitting at the other end of the stadium. He pointed behind him, to old apartment buildings where fans pay premium prices to peer at maybe half the playing field.

Crazy, right? he said. Beers before the game, beers during the game, and beers after the game, and a Cubs World Series. Im living the dream.

I wound my way back to the crows nest that passes for Wrigleys press box. I got back in time to see an aging Indians journeyman with a delicious baseball name, Coco Crisp, drop a pinch-hit into right field to drive in the only run of the game. Two innings later, Baez stands in and then departs, despondent.

Maddon is riding a sometimes confounding horse. On a good night, his team can accumulate clumps of runs that make the score look like a football game. But his young sluggos can become too enraptured with slugging; they have been shut out twice in the first four games of the Series and have won only once.

Just check out these guys in a couple of years, Maddon told reporters.

His stab at playing Nostradamus could look smart in another year. In the 2016 Series, however, the Cub hitters, Baez in particular, swing mightily and most often take seats, where they watch slashing Indian hitters and crafty pitchers pile dirt on the Cubs grave.

Once Baez hooks a harness to his talents, he could well put up big numbers, but that may not happen during the rest of this Series. He spent Friday and Saturday evenings taking wild, futile, roundhouse swings, striking out and popping up.

Maddon had spoken after Fridays loss of the Cubs pressing need to shrink their strike zone. Its not really that complicated, he said.

After Saturdays loss, the Cubs predicament is not complicated, either. Their young would-be star Baez made the final out of the game, and with that the Cubs are one loss removed from deaths door.

Continue reading the main story

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/30/sports/baseball/javier-baez-chicago-cubs-game-3.html

#ImWithTur Still Trending After Donald Trump Taunts NBC Reporter Katy Tur Again

Morning Joe Confronts Conway Over Trump Calling Out NBC"s Katy Tur

Donald Trump had gotten to the Media Are Disgusting portion of the festivities at a campaign stop in Miami today, when he spied NBC News Katy Tur.

We have massive crowds. There is something happening. Theyre not reporting it, the GOP nominee bellowed, pointing to the cameras and media pen at his rally. Katy, youre not reporting it, Katy. But there is something happening, Katy. There is something happening, Katy.

Once again #ImWithTur began trending this morning, and still was trending hours later, as journalists and Trump nonfans tweeted in support of the reporter who has been embedded with the Trump campaign. Its not the first time the media has risen to Trumps bait when hes taken off after Tur; the hashtag reportedly was born in the summer after he repeatedly singled her out with his elementary school-style bullying.

Among Trumps taunts: He once told Tur to be quiet during a news conference; he told pals at Fox & Friends his campaign does not let people talk to Tur because shes not a very good reporter; and, during another of his well-received Media Are Scum spouts at a rally, he told enthusiastic supporters where they could find Little Katy, third-rate journalist.

On the bright side, Tur got a great Marie Claire piece out of Trumps taunts.

As Marie Claire noted after todays Trump tantrum:

Today, Turs colleagues seemed especially angry about Trumps taunts:

Of course, not everyone was tweeting in support: