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A good week for ...
You wouldn't know it from reading this quality journal, but these are tough times for the newspaper industry - global recession, widespread internet use and a decline in fish 'n' chip consumption have combined to hit the newspaper trade hard.
So good
on the Tampa Tribune. The local rag in the town hosting Super Bowl XXXXIII helpfully ran a feature which lists the 43 strip clubs in the city, detailing cover charges and dress codes. It's innovative thinking like this which will keep the presses running through tough times.
As a unique service to SuperShorts' half-dozen readers, we dutifully point out that Fort St is over there [points out window], K Rd's that way [points out other window] and Flora's has closed down.
In Spain and Mexico, bullfighting runs in the cultural pages of the newspapers. Here in New Zealand, we don't have bullfighting and are a bit low on culture. So SuperShorts seems the appropriate place to salute 11-year-old Mexican Michel Lagravere who knocked off six young bulls just hours after a ban on the tiny torero was lifted.
"I am happy to achieve this great victory," said the 1.35m star. "I was born a bullfighter and will die one."
Hopefully not before he's a teenager.
Madden NFL'09, the benchmark of American football computer games, has correctly picked four of the last five Super Bowl winners when set up to automatically play a Super Bowl between the two relevant teams. This year, it likes the Steelers.
Rumours of Tommy Farrer's demise have been greatly exaggerated. English soccer club Bishop Auckland printed tributes to the former player, an England amateur international, and observed a minute's silence before a match only to learn the 86-year-old was still alive.
"Whoever it was who told people I had died obviously contacted the club and they decided to go the whole hog by arranging the silence," says Farrer. "I'm very moved they went to such trouble."
A bad week for ...
The most humid place on Earth? Nope, it's not Auckland's Southern Motorway at 5pm on a Friday. It's Rafa Nadal's undies. By all accounts the world No 1 is a hit with the ladies. But SuperShorts is reliably informed that the big-gunned Spaniard would be even more of a senorita slayer if he could curb his tendency to pull his gruts from his arse-crack after every crucial point.
AIG, the US insurance giant whose name graces the front of Manchester United's shirts, has tried to weasel its way out of the annual 19 million deal that ties it to the Red Devils. Guess it's hard to justify stumping up the cash for Cristiano Ronaldo to write-off Ferraris while your own finances are boosted by an US$85 billion US Government bailout.
The contract was watertight, meaning the sponsor cannot walk away before May next year. But if even the self-proclaimed world's biggest soccer club - and favoured team of Asia's burgeoning middle classes - makes an unattractive prospect for sponsorship bucks, then global sport is surely heading into seasons of gloom.
Think bureacracy has driven up motoring costs in New Zealand? Pity Lewis Hamilton. A hike in the cost of an FIA super licence, needed to drive F1, means the reigning champ will have to stump up nearly $283,000 to compete this year.
Reading's Leroy Lita was so miffed with his girlfriend for having a fling with Aston Villa's Nigel Reo-Coker that he took the ultimate step. Dumped her? No. He removed her from his Facebook friends.
Sailing is a tricky sport for TV to cover - it's complicated, slow and takes place miles from a decent vantage point. So good luck to the Louis Vuitton series, which will be watchable at home only on freeview channels and only via computer imagery. It's all a bit like watching two people playing Pro-Evolution Soccer on a PlayStation rather than watching the real World Cup Final.