Matt of All Trades blog, like the title suggests, is by a Vermont author and offers offbeat musings on pop culture, media, journalism, humor, weirdness, stupid people, smart people, my life as a journalist, landscaper, photographer, married gay man, dog lover and weather geek and more. It's run by me, Matt Sutkoski, a native Vermonter living in St. Albans, Vt.
This Mercedes blocked an ambulance for an excruciatingly long two minutes, as seen in a viral video.
An ambulance driver in Slovakia encountered the world's worst douche.
According to the Daily Mirror, the incident in the viral video at the bottom of this post involved a Mercedes driven by Boris Zahumensky, a local entrpreneur who recently, unsuccessfully ran for elections to the local council.
Zahumensky later claimed he was trying to do the ambulance drive a "favor" by guiding the way to wherever the ambulance was going.
"I did not hesitate to risk my life and brand new car that I only had owned for two days to do this," he noted with a hero's humility. Or humidity, whatever
Of course the video contradicts our hero Zahumensky's account, as it shows him telling off the ambulance driver when it was finally able to come up alongside him.
Police revoked Zahumensky's driver's license and his weapons license has been suspsended.
Many people years ago were unable to pay debts, mostly medical payments. The statutes of limitations have long since expired on these debts, so generally those people would no longer be responsible for paying the debt
Except for some sleazy, sleazy businesses, that are made legal by corrupt state legislatures, or not made illegal by corrupt state legislatures.
"The sums themselves are "zombie debts" --- debts that have been long written off and generally don't have to be paid, which are bought up by collection firms that terrorize their victims and embroil them in difficult-to-navigate litigation that must execute perfectly, or the debts are resurrected and collected through paycheck confiscation."
These sleazy companies buy these debts for fractions of a penny on the dollar, then go after their victim. So you can see they can make a lot of money terrorizing people of modest means who are definitely not financial lawyers.
It's an outrage, and should be illegal, but some discrete campaign contributions to lawmakers probably helps keep these things going.
John Oliver recently had a brilliant segment on this outrage, in which he revealed how some state legislatures actually made it easier for these zombie debt collection agencies to terrorize former debtors, and how they remove the assumption of innocense in the proceedings against the people they're going after.
He also went to a debt collector's conference and captured video of people in the industry joking about bullying victims and ruining their lives.
Yeah, that's such a barrel of laughs. Awful people.
Then Oliver did something brilliant. He formed his own debt collection agency just like the sleazes who terrorize people.
He calls his new company Central Asset Recovery Professionals, whose acronym is CARP named for the bottom feeder fish.
Oliver was able to form this corporation, based in Mississippi with just a $50 fee. The company consists of just a web site that has the CARP logo and that's it.
"'With little more to go on than that website,' says Oliver, 'we were soon offered a portfolio of nearly $15 million of out-of-statue medical debt from Texas' The asking price was less than $60,000 for $14,922,261.76 in this zombie debt - ir around $0.004 for every dollar of debt owed. Purchasing the debt would CARP the names, current addresses, Social Security numbers, and amount owed (or previously owed, as the statute of limitations had expired) for nearly 9,000 individuals."
Says Oliver:
"So we bought it, which is absolutely terrifying....because it means if I wanted to, I could legally have CARP take possession of that list and have employees start calling people, turning their lives upside down over medical debt they no longer had to pay. There would be absolutely nothing wrong with that, except for the fact that absolutely everything is wrong with that."
Rather than calling people and houding them, Oliver took the money an organization called RIP Medical Debt, an organization of accountants and legal eagles that forgive the debts without tax repecussions for the would-be debtors.
Once RIP Medical Debt gets their hands on the zombie debts, they go away, never to rear their ugly heads again.
Since Oliver was able to spend just $60,000 to ditch $15 million in debt, I see a charitable opportunity here. Maybe some fairly rich philanthropists can form debt companies like Oliver did to funnel debts away from the sleazy debt collection agencies so they can't profit in such an evil way.
Here's John Oliver's segment.
It's amazing this a segment on medical debt that lasts 20 minutes and you can't stop watching it:
The "Just Pee" video from the cast of Kinky Boots,
Cindi Lauper and Harvey Fierstein is the perfect
antidote to the ridiculous "bathroom bills:
like the one in North Carolina.
Leave it to Harvey Fierstein,Cindi Lauperand the cast of the Broadway hit "Kinky Boots"to give us the best response yet to all those "bathroom bills" in which conservatives across the nation are panicking over the idea of transgendered people using public restrooms.
As Lauper says in the video below, "There's been a lot of crazy talk about using bathrooms for things other than proscribed by the Plumbers Union of America. All we're asking for is a little sanity. It's just pee."
With that, we get into the heart of the matter with a rousing showstopper from the Kinky Boots cast with lyrics such as, "I don't need ID to tell me who I am and where I ought to pee."
The video urges everyone using public restrooms to be proud of who they are, transgendered or not. The song urges us to "Go relieve yourself triumphantly."
The song "Just Pee" in this video is set to the music of the Kinky Boots finale. The words were written by Fierstein and Lauper. In Playbill,Fierstein said: "So you don't like transgender people? Have the balls to honestly say it. Today's bathroom controversy is fueled by the same bigots that sought to ban gay and lesbian teachers 40 years ago."
Fierstein said the bigots are hiding behind claims to "protect the children" but it's a lame cover.
Very true. But Fierstein also knows the way to handle bigots. Mock them and their attitudes with humor and celebration, and say the obvious to them as simply as possible.
This wonderful "Just Pee" is the perfect antidote to the idiots backing these bathroom laws.
One of the kids who squelched what could have been a dangerous fire with Super Soakers
The call to the West Fargo, North Dakota fire department seemed dire:
A blaze was starting to crawl up the siding and balcony support of an apartment building. Toward the apartment where a home bound, disabled man on oxygen lived. A man who couldn't escape or fight the fire on his own.
The fire was catching some decking on fire, too. A propane tank from a grill was just feet away from the flames.
The fire trucks raced to the scene, only to find no fire. Just the smoldering remains of a planter destroyed by flames, some melted, burned siding on the building and some charring on the deck support beam, and a deck that was partly scorched.
Oh, and some kids with Super Soakers.
The kids had been playing with the Super Soakers when the spotted the flames. They turned their guns on what had been a growing fire to keep it at bay until the firefighters arrived.
Devin Darnell had attacked the flames from below the deck with his Super Soaker, says television station WDAY. His friend, Katelyn Simon opened fire on the blaze from a neighboring deck. "I was squirting at it and there was sparks and stuff falling down," said Devon.
Another kid called the fire department and neighbors banged on doors, alerting residents.
West Fargo Fire Chief Dan Fuller said he was really surprised and pleased by the kids' firefighting efforts. "It got into the siding, it got into the decking. We were probably minutes away from having a real, real serious fire," Fuller said.
But the Super Soaker kids prevented that from happening.
After the excitement was over, the West Fargo Fire Department brought the kids to the fire station for a tour and a pizza party.
The meat-wielding idiots then attacked customers and staff, causing several minor injuries. The meatheads left before police arrived.
The meat dummies had apparently been around before, asking a nearby shopkeeper last month whether foreigners or members ofthe LGBT community often went to the cafe.
Because, as you know, gay people and foreigners who don't eat meat are fair game for attack by the far right. Right wing extremists hate everything. Except meat.
There probably were foreigners at the cafe at the time of the attack. When it hit, they were showing English language episodes ofRick and Morty, an animated sic-fi sitcom.
I mocked televangelist Jan Crouch for her, um, amazing hair and makeup, but to me she was also a tragic figure. She died recently at age 78.
The subject of what is so far, mystifyingly the most popular post in the history of this here blog thingy has died.
Jan Crouch was the subject of my February, 2012 post: "The Televangelist With The, Um, Amazing Hair,"in which I contemplated the remarkable structure, if you can call it that, of her hair and wigs.
We learned this morning that Crouch died of a massive stroke at the age of 78.
I guess it's a requirement that female televangelists have elaborate makeup and hair. Crouch's makeup, by the way, was as amazing as her hair.
Crouch was the co-founder of Trinity Broadcasting, which pushed what is to me a very scammy sort of televangelism. Basically: Give all your money to me, and God will then reward you with material riches.
Though I'm not a Bible expert, I don't think that's the gist of the Holy Book, but what do I know?
I know it's mean of me to kick round Jan Crouch when she's just passed away. It's true I didn't respect her.
However, I felt a bit sorry for her when I wrote that post about her hair in 2012 and I feel sorry for her now.
She seemed obsessed with gaudy, showy moneyed ickiness. I wonder if she was at all spiritual, and in her quest for money, did she miss out on what really matters in life.
Jan Crouch's wigs were certainly works of art, of sorts. The artful beauty of love and compassion and just experience life as a human being seemed to elude her.
Which makes this subject of my mockery also a tragic cautionary tale.
The 2016 summer season of "America's Got Talent" debuted last night, and right away I was suckered in as always.
The story lines are always cliched. They introduce you to an act, and try to set them up in a certain way, based on their looks, appearances, etc. and of course they are completely different in reality.
Such was the routine when they introduced a four-man group called Linkin Bridge. Four very tough-looking guys who sauntered out onto the stage, all cool, dressed in dark urban wear clothing, with tattoos and don't-mess-me-looks on their faces.
A rap act, is the expectation, of course. Which of course wasn't what Linkin Bridge was up to at all.
We ended up with a gorgeous acapella rendition of "Somewhere Over The Rainbow" from these guys, the must-watch video is below.
Yeah, the set up before they actually opened their mouths to sing is a bit much. It's summer network TV after all.
Linkin Bridge, from the Louisville, Kentucky area, uses this schtick a lot. This videoand this video, among others circulatingfrom last Christmas, shows the group, wearing clothes people associated with street gangs, menacingly confront people in wealthy, largely white suburbs and then break into carols.
Which is wonderful because they're breaking apart racial stereotypes.
Here's Linkin Bridge's America's Got Talent performance in case you missed it:
