Hasta La Gadget!

The Puerto Rico you knew was a tropical destination. White sandy beaches and vibrant blue hues from the sky were the picturesque scene you’d expect. Pastel colored houses and people chattering about in the cobblestone streets of Viejo San Juan were just the norm.

The Puerto Rico I experienced two months ago was true to the new stigma of debt, poverty, and disparity. Everyone knows the U.S. territory is suffering with a debt toll of $70 billion. From years of mismanagement by the government, the people of Puerto Rico are left with this tiresome burden.

What news reports do not show is just how desolate Condado, Piñones, and Isla Verde have become. Granted I stayed mainly in the country’s capitol, where one would expect it to be populous and buzzing during the vacation season. Surprisingly, I saw nothing but vacant bars, restaurants, and rooftops during “happy hour”. Taxi drivers were nothing short of desperate for their next customer. It was apparent Puerto Rico had become deserted. Even as a first timer I knew something was off. It wasn’t until my friend said, “Last time I came here there were so many people. I’ve never seen the streets so empty” that I came to terms with how bad the island was suffering.

The debt crisis in Puerto Rico has not only crippled the country but it has crippled the tourism industry tenfold. Abandoned hotels and apartment complexes stood high while overlooking the North Atlantic Ocean. Endless “For Sale” signs displayed without a consumer base financially able to buy. The most shocking part was the actual absence of tourists. Puerto Rico is no longer the quick Caribbean getaway it once was. While close in proximity to the United States it is apparent we aren’t going there. Not only have the Puerto Rican government and its people given up but Big Brother America has closed its doors as well.

Puerto Rico cannot sustain a tourism industry when their own flee to the United States to seek refuge for the centuries old notion of the “American Dream”. Puerto Rico is in crisis and they need help.

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A University of Washington student accused of killing three people and injuring a fourth in a shooting at a house party had recently broken up with one of the victims, according to news reports.

Allen Ivanov, 19, was arrested shortly after the Saturday morning attack in Mukilteo, just outside Everett, Washington, KOMO News reported. He is being held at the Snohomish County Jail on two murder charges and one charge of aggravated murder, according to online records.

Family and friends of the deceased identified them at a vigil as Anna Bui, Jake Long and Jordan Ebner. A fourth victim, Will Kramer, was hospitalized in serious condition, the Seattle Times reported. 

Kiley McReynolds, a friend of Bui’s through the school choir, told the Times that Bui and Ivanov dated for more than a year.

According to the Daily Mail, which spoke with an unnamed friend of Ivanov’s, Ivanov called the friend about two hours after the 12:30 a.m. attack, saying “I just killed my ex-girlfriend.” The person claimed that Ivanov had been depressed over his recent breakup with Bui and bought an AR-15 rifle only last week.

A woman who said she was Ivanov’s mother was sobbing when reached by the Times. “I am sorry,” she told the paper, declining further comment.

Susan Gemmer told the Times that her 18-year-old granddaughter, Alexis, was at the party and at one point called her while hiding in a closet.

“We were texting back and forth, telling her to stay quiet, stay calm, we’re on our way. She kept saying, ‘They’re dead, they’re dead, I saw them, I was right there and I saw them,’” Gemmer said.

Gemmer said her granddaughter saw Ivanov enter the party of about 15 to 20 friends and walk through the house and to a fire pit out back. Once there, he shot two people. He then made his way to the roof, where others were gathered.

When Alexis tried to escape through the garage with a young man who lived at the house, Gemmer said the shooter began shooting at the man from the roof. That’s when she hid in a closet and called her grandmother.

In a chilling premonition to the attack, an Instagram photo posted to an account named @allenivanov Monday shows a rifle and three bullets.

Two days before the shooting, two cryptic posts appeared on a Twitter account bearing Ivanov’s name and photo.

“First and last tweet. I’ve been through it all,” one tweet read.

A second read: “What’s Ruger gonna think?” It’s not clear if the tweet was referencing the firearm company Sturm, Ruger & Co., which is commonly known as Ruger.

A LinkedIn page appearing to belong to Ivanov lists him as a computer science and engineering student and software engineer for a startup laser tag system called Skirmos. He described it as “your favorite first-person shooter video game in real life.”

In a Facebook post, Skirmos said they are “shocked and disturbed” by the events and voiced support for tighter gun control.

“Allen Ivanov has worked with us and been our friend and colleague for a number of years,” they said. “That said, this event is another example of our need for gun reform in this country. No person should have the opportunity to possess a firearm that can discharge a weapon 20 times in short succession.”

Mukilteo police could not immediately be reached for comment.

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AMD said that the Radeon RX 480 would be followed up by lower-cost models this summer, and it’s acting on that promise in a timely fashion. Both the RX 470 and RX 460 (not pictured above) are now slated to arrive on August 4th and August 8th respect…

Even though it’s unfair to use ethnicity or economic demographics as the basis for assessing the virtues of a particular sport, we can’t deny that doing so offers its own set of rewards, one of which is the opportunity to pass judgment on a whole range of stuff.

You have your regular, everyday snobbery (pride in belonging) and your meta-snobbery (pride in forbidding others to belong), and then you have your anti-snobbery (pride in NOT belonging). Holding “country club” sports like swimming, golf and tennis in contempt is a prime example of anti-snobbery–the diametrical opposite of snobbery. Makes sense, if you think about it.

Consider: When we look at the spectator gallery of a major golf tournament, what do we see? Answer: No matter what state we’re located in (or what country for that matter), we see an ocean of white faces. And why wouldn’t we? Isn’t golf, along with swimming and tennis, the domain of white people?

How actually “white” are these sports? Well, if we throw out Eldrick (“Tiger”) Woods, Arthur Ashe, and the phenomenal Williams sisters, they tend to be pretty much ALL white. Seriously. Besides the aforementioned athletes, are there any notable people of color? And is it not unreasonable to suggest that Serena and Venus were the best tennis players of all-time, and that Tiger was the greatest golfer? Just askin’.

Which brings us poolside. Has there ever been a world-class black swimmer? Of course there hasn’t. That’s because African Americans don’t generally belong to country clubs, and because black parents don’t generally sign up their kids for expensive private swim lessons while they’re still toddlers.

Not to take anything away from Michael Phelps (World’s Fastest Caucasian Swimmer), but shouldn’t his gold medal victories have had little asterisks attached to them–little asterisks signifying that, impressive as those victories were, they were won exclusively against white men?

And in no way is this observation meant to be solely sociological or legalistic. It isn’t about fairness or equal opportunity or the U.S Constitution. It’s about performance. Competitive excellence. Basically, we’re posing the question: Why should we pay attention to a sport that’s more or less “restricted” to white people? After all, don’t we want to see the very best athletes compete?

Take baseball for example. What if the major leagues were still segregated? What if Jackie Robinson, Willie Mays, Bob Gibson, Henry Aaron, Barry Bonds, Reggie Jackson, et al, hadn’t been allowed to play? Now that we know how talented these men were, and what contributions they made to the game, think how diminished baseball would be without them.

This thought–about achieving excellence in competition–should dominate our viewing of the swim events in the upcoming Olympic Games. Instead of gushing over Michael Phelps, we should take a moment to consider the dozens of young black men living in Harlem or South Central Los Angeles who, had they taken up swimming, would be kicking ass.

Again, this is nothing against Michael Phelps. After all, it’s not his fault that swimming is a privileged kid’s sport, a white kid’s sport–just so long as Phelps is humble enough to realize that there’s some black kid out there capable of leaving him in his wake. Just as Henry Aaron was “capable” of breaking Babe Ruth’s home run record.

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In the first episode of HBO’s new comedy Divorce, Sarah Jessica Parker’s Frances tells her best girlfriend how good the sex has been with her illicit boyfriend.

Fans of Sex and The City, Parker’s last HBO series, might want to mark that moment, because thas naughty little confidence is as close as Frances gets to Carrie Bradshaw.

“From the moment I read the pilot, I thought Frances was her own person,” Parker told TV critics in Beverly Hills Saturday. “She was so distinct from not only Carrie, but any other character I have ever played.”

In Divorce, which premieres Oct. 9 at 10 p.m. ET, Frances is a suburban wife and mother who realizes she has fallen out of love with her husband Robert (Thomas Haden-Church).

She launches the affair, then tells Robert she wants a a divorce. She tells him she doesn’t love him any more. She tells her friends she simply finds nothing interesting about him. She wants to break free and live her life, she explains, while she still cares about it.

Not something Carrie would ever have said.

Frances finds, however, that a clean, easy divorce is about as likely as disengaging the peanut butter from the jelly in your 8-year-old’s sandwich.

For starters, she and Robert have two children, Lila (Sterling Jerins) and Tom (Charlie Kilgore), who were in full adolescent sullen mode even before it became clear Mom and Dad were falling apart.

“The reason that I was so interested in this landscape,” Parker said, “is because there’s so much to say about this period in a life, this attempt at divorce.

“There are things that are hilarious and devastating and disappointing, and people make bad choices and listen to bad counsel. They’re their own bad counsel.

“People are parasites on divorce. People live off it. They relish it. Friendships shift and change. Children are hurt, ruined. People behave in ways that are surprising and awful to themselves.”

While divorce is not an unknown topic on television, Parker said it has rarely been treated with this show’s blend of seriousness and humor, which in turn reflect the impact it would have on “a real family like this.”

A family whose world has no intersections with the world of Carrie Bradshaw.

“I don’t think we talked a lot about trying to make Frances different [from Carrie],” said Parker. “I was interested in the story of marriage, and by virtue of just that interest alone, the story was automatically different.

“Frances was so weary in ways that I had not seen or had a chance to play, and used language in a way I hadn’t ever, and had a relationship with a man and children in a way I’d never had a chance to do.”

Parker’s divorce from Carrie extends to the look and ambience of the show, she says, and even – gasp – what she wears.

“I really wanted the look of cinema in the ’70s,” she said. “And that aesthetic, whether it was production design or costume design or the stock of film and music.

“Pretty much everything Frances wears is used, whether it’s from Etsy Vintage or thrift shops along the Northeast Corridor.

“She has an aesthetic that will be revealed more during the season, but fashion doesn’t dictate. She has to dress. For the most part, it’s required by law that when you walk into your place of work, to be dressed. So everything is utilitarian.

“And I think you see it in everything, in Thomas’ character, in our children’s clothing. The family is sort of isolated in a period without it being a period piece.”

Manana to Manolo.

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