Tag Archives: face
Titus Young pleads not guilty on eight counts, could face over seven years in prison
The saga of former Detroit Lions receiver Titus Young rolls unmerrily along. Young, who participated in several criminal acts over the last few days, is currently on medical hold at the Central Men’s Jail in Santa Ana, Calif., pleaded not guilty to a total of eight criminal charges at a video arraignment on Tuesday. On May 5, Young was arrested for a DUI, and was arrested again later that day for trying to steal his car from the impound lot. And on May 10, he was charged with burglary, assaulting a police officer, and resisting arrest after he tried to break into a San Clemente, Calif. home and fought with police during a chase.
In addition, the Detroit Free Press reports, Young is being charged with two additional felonies for a May 4 incident in which he stole candy, bottled water, and cigars from a Chevron station in Orange County. Farrah Emami, a spokesperson for the Orange County prosecutor’s office, said that Young first stole the candy and water, then returned to pilfer the cigars. He was not arrested at the time, but was identified at the scene. Emani said that each entrance into the store carries its own charge because he entered a commercial property with the intent to steal.
According to the Free Press, Young faces a possible sentence of 7 1/2 years in prison, or more, if he is convicted of all charges. He could still face additional counts of DUI and felony burglary for the May 5 incidents. Recently, his bail was reduced from $ 75,000 to $ 25,000, and according to USA Today, Young’s family is considering whether to put up that money.
Based on Young’s recent past, he might be better off in jail — it’s perfectly clear at this point that he has no ability to take care of himself. On Monday, Young’s father Richard told the Free Press that he’s seen his son spiral downward quickly, and that football-related concussions may be part of the reason. After a concussion Young allegedly suffered in 2012, Richard Young said, his son was concerned about his own mental well-being.
“He said, ‘I don’t feel good.’ He just started crying,” Mr. Young said his son told him. “He said, ‘I just don’t feel good. I’m not myself, I don’t feel good, Dad. I don’t know what’s happening to me.’”
Recently, according to his father, Young sought help at different facilities in California and Texas, and has been taking the anti-psychotic drug Seroquel, though not according to doctor’s orders.
“Ain’t nothing we can do, man, but pray,” Mr. Young concluded. “We just want Titus to get well, that’s all we’re doing right now … We ain’t thinking about football, we’re thinking about our son now, because I don’t know what’s going on with him.”
Not just another pretty face: Apple’s iPhone 5S to see big internal overhaul
Peyton Manning sets up pie in the face for tackle Orlando Franklin at Colorado Rockies game
It seemed like one of those perfectly innocent and happy off-season team-building exercises. A bunch of Denver Broncos players went to watch the Colorado Rockies take on the New York Yankees at Coors Field in Denver on Tuesday night. They were relaxing in the owner’s suite, eating hot dogs and ice cream provided by Broncos quarterback Peyton Manning, and right tackle Orlando Franklin was speaking to a local media person about his hopes for the 2013 season.
And then, it all went to heck. As you can see about a minute into the video above, receiver Eric Decker came careening out of nowhere, and nailed Franklin with a goopy plate full of whipped cream. The old standard pie in the face — a staple of baseball celebrations for decades — had come to the Denver Broncos. It was easy to see that it was a setup; many Broncos players on the other side of the suite had their phone cameras rolling before Decker did the dirty deed.
And it was Manning, the inveterate prankster, who was behind it all.
“I was just standing there and all of a sudden I saw Decker run by with a plate full of whipped cream,” tight end Joel Dreessen recalled on Thursday. “Obviously, I saw Orlando getting interviewed and then I saw what was going on. I kind of stood up on a chair to get a better view of things. I don’t know whose idea it was but it worked out.”
Franklin had no doubt as to the identity of the ringleader.
“I feel like Peyton and Decker, they got me real well last night,” he said. “I’m definitely looking forward to revenge at this point … I think a lot of guys are going to jump at that opportunity. So we’ve just got to plan something out real well for him and get him when it counts.”
Franklin, the second-round pick in John Elway’s first Broncos draft of 2011 out of Miami, has started all possible games since he came into the league. He’s going to be around for a while — especially if the team continues to struggle with a new long-term contract for star left tackle Ryan Clady — and that gave him solace regarding his potential for revenge.
But Dreessen, who’s already been on the receiving end of one of Manning’s pranks, said that it’s not always easy to trick the future Hall of Fame quarterback. After Manning tried to change the language on Dreessen’s cel phone to Chinese, Dreessen planned his own plot that eventually went awry.
He was charging his iPad at my locker so I set a dog barking alarm to go off at like 2:00 in the morning,” Dreessen recalled. “[I thought] for sure—he’s a study maniac—he’s going to take his iPad home but he leaves it at my locker overnight. I got home that night and I was like, ‘Man, he’s got twin babies and I don’t want to wake his wife up.’ So I totally chickened out and I texted him that night, ‘Hey, I set your iPad to go off at 2:00 in the morning. Turn it off.’ He’s like, ‘Actually, I didn’t bring it home.’ So he shoves it in my stomach the next day: ‘Hey, take this alarm off of there.’ So I turned it off. I chickened out though. I regret that; I should have left it on.”
Franklin was attending his first baseball game (“Definitely a bad experience,” he later said with a laugh), and this isn’t the first problem he’s had with a teammate this offseason. When the Broncos signed former San Diego Chargers guard Louis Vasquez to reinforce their offensive line, Vasquez asked Franklin if he could stay at Franklin’s house until he got his own housing situation sorted out.
“No,” Franklin said, when asked if Vasquez was a good roommate. “He came in one night, the first night he got there, he ate my meals. He woke up, ate my meals. I had to talk to him about that. Just a bad houseguest, I think. No, I’m playing. He was actually a good roommate. But he did eat my meals, and I wasn’t happy about that.”
Vasquez should know better — you NEVER take food out of the mouth of a lineman. As for Manning, he’d better watch his back — it would appear that he’s got most of his offensive teammates plotting against him … in a relatively harmless way, of course.
Glasses and Glass: How Google Glass changed my face
(Credit: Sarah Tew/CNET)
I had two transformative yet very minor optical experiences last week, both kicking off in the space of 2 hours: I got contact lenses, and I began experimenting with Google Glass.
The two are interlinked, because I couldn’t use Google’s bleeding-edge wearable tech with my comfy Ray-Ban eyeglasses.
If I was going to use Glass, I’d need contacts.
(Credit: Sarah Tew/CNET)
Glassism I have very bad vision: -9.5 or thereabouts. I’ve had glasses since I was 6. I also have astigmatism. I last had contacts in 1991, when I was still in high school. That was more than 20 years ago, and the technology’s clearly changed. LensCrafters, who I have newfound appreciation for, took me from an eye doctor appointment all the way to walking out the door with a trial set of disposable contact lenses — to address astigmatism and proper cornea curvature — in a little over an hour. From there, it was a straight cab to Google’s offices in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood, where I was meeting my fellow Glass inductee, Bridget Carey.
I had a bunch of very mixed feelings, hustling to get contacts just to try Glass. It felt like the beginning of some subtle body modification. I identify with myself through my glasses. Also, glasses just feel a lot different… [Read more]
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Apple and Google won’t face a trial for no-poaching agreement — for now
BGR
Creepiest app ever lets you wear another’s face
(Credit: Screenshot by Michelle Starr/CNET Australia)
Face Stealer has to be one of the creepiest apps we’ve seen, and we may or may not be including Girls Around Me in that statement.
“Do you ever want to look like celebrities?” the free iOS app’s description asks. “Face Stealer will turn your face into someone else in real time.”
Well, it sort of does do that. There’s a selection of faces preinstalled that you can try on for size, including the Mona Lisa, Barack Obama, Nefertiti, and Albert Einstein.
Read more of “Creepiest app ever lets you wear someone else’s face” at CNET Australia. [Read more]
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Review: The North Face Surge II Charged Daypack
This new backpack can simultaneously protect and charge USB-powered hardware, thanks to a built-in battery pack.
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Nick Saban would face a serious perception problem in returning to the NFL
With the successes of San Francisco’s Jim Harbaugh, Seattle’s Pete Carroll, and Tampa Bay’s Greg Schiano, it would seem that there’s been a shift in the perception that most college football coaches, no matter how well they’ve done at the NCAA level, would be better off staying put as opposed to making the jump to the NFL. Of course, the future NFL prospects of Alabama head coach Nick Saban, who worked under Bill Belichick in Cleveland in the 1990s and was the Miami Dolphins’ head coach in 2005 and 2006, have been discussed more recently as a combined result of this new influx of college coaches, and Saban’s impressive success at Alabama.
Greg Bedard of the Boston Globe recently spoke with two NFL sources who said that if the Cleveland Browns wanted Saban to be their next head coach, and went after former personnel executive and current NFL Network analyst Michael Lombardi (who worked with Belichick and Saban in Cleveland ) to be their general manager, it might actually happen.
Former Philadelphia Eagles quarterback and current ESPN analyst Ron Jaworski, asked his week how he would feel if Saban replaced Andy Reid as the Eagles’ head coach, threw fire at the idea.
“I’m not a Saban guy, because I don’t like liars, and I think he lied,” Jaworski said. “I think he lied to the Miami Dolphins, and to the fans of Miami, and he left. And it’s pretty simple, I think integrity is very important, if you don’t have integrity, I don’t know how you can be successful. Yeah, I know he’s great at Alabama, and he’ll probably win another national championship, but I just don’t like people that don’t have integrity, so it’s pretty easy for me to say I don’t want Nick Saban in town.
“Go ask some players on that team — go ask some coaches on that team. The Bobby Petrinos of the world — I have a hard time backing those guys. You don’t have integrity, man … I don’t want to be around you.”
Jaworski isn’t the only one covering the league who would far prefer that Saban stay right where he is — providing a pipeline of draft prospects to the league, as opposed to darkening the NFL’s door ever again.
As Yahoo’s own Mike Silver described him in the NFL Network’s “Top 10 NFL Coaches Who Belonged in College” show, “Nick Saban — the absolute tightest-wound human being ever to coach an NFL game. Utterly joyless, humorless, and lacking the Bill Belichick touch to get away with it. The ultimate liar and contract-breaker. I’m glad he’s out of the pros, because he’s pretty much reviled.”
“He was such a dictator, people would walk the other way in the hall because they didn’t want to cross his path,” remembered long time sportswriter Howard Balzer in that same show. “That’s why they called him the Nicktator. Saban thought it was going to be easy to come to the NFL and do things the way he wanted, but it just doesn’t work that way.”
Former Dolphins tight end and broadcaster Jim Mandich put it more succinctly: “If Nick Saban walked through that door right now, I’d say, ‘Let’s go — let’s start throwing down.’ The biggest two-bit phony fraud I’ve ever known in my life. He was a miserable failure as a head coach in professional football.”
Saban had a real problem with the truth, and that’s what people remember of him in the NFL. He swore up and down that he didn’t want the Dolphins job when he was at LSU, and he swore up and down that he didn’t want the Alabama job when he was at Miami, though he was already negotiating with the Crimson Tide in the second year of his Dolphins tenure. He should probably avoid any more swearing up and down in future.
If Saban were ever to make a success of it in the NFL, he would have to do some serious self-assessment beforehand. I asked Carroll at the end of the 2010 season, his first back in the NFL after unsuccessful stints with the New York Jets and New England Patriots in the 1990s, what he had to adjust about himself.
“I’m way different now,” Carroll said. “I’m the same person, but I know more what’s important to me, and what’s important to teach. To represent what’s important to me as the head coach. That’s truly been the change. And it took a lot of years in coaching before I kicked myself in the butt, and got my act together, and figured it out. I thought I knew, but I really didn’t, and I didn’t figure it out until the year between New England and when I went to USC. That was the time when things changes, and I haven’t been the same since. I’ve been more clearly focused on that the issues are and what the philosophy is. The end result is that these guys I work with have a much better sense of how we’re doing things. They have a much clearer picture of what we’re trying to create and the team we’re trying to become. I figured it out better so that I could teach it better, and explain it better, and stand for it more consistently.”
Carroll learned it from the school of hard knocks. Harbaugh learned it through his 15 seasons as an NFL quarterback. Schiano seems to have an innate understanding of it so far, though we’ll see what time tells us. However that knowledge is gleaned, those who know what it really takes to succeed as an NFL coach will tell you that it’s about so much more than putting together an interesting game plan. If Nick Saban wants to return to the NFL, his first challenge will be to re-pave the roads he tore up on his way out.
