Cover Girl / NFL = PR Nightmare

The NFL's oafish response to the Ray Rice elevator tape has led to a national outcry against the league's leadership and the culture it has allowed to fester. It was only a matter of time, really, before this became a PR nightmare for its many sponsors and partners. The latest? Cover Girl, the "official beauty partner" of the NFL.

Last year, CoverGirl teamed up with the NFL to launch a line of nail art called "Fanicures." This year, they expanded that partnership by creating a series of "official team makeup looks," fantastical and bright colors applied inventively and advertised with the motto "Get Your Game Face On." The company pimped it on its Facebook page, on Instagram, on Twitter, and even made an entire board of NFL makeup looks on Pinterest. Every team.Including Ray Rice's team, the Baltimore Ravens. Fans excited about Girling the hell out while cheering on their team could find all of the looks on Cover Girl's special NFL Game Face website.

Except today, that website is nowhere to be found. Is the page that overloaded with gawking makeup fans, or is Cover Girl rethinking its partnership with the NFL?

The above image, taken from a Cover Girl ad and altered to be an anti-domestic violence message, went f*cking bananason Twitter this weekend. It's hard not to notice the unfortunate timing of a partnership between a makeup company and a sports league that has for years ignored its domestic violence problem. Makeup, after all, has been a long time go-to for survivors of domestic looking to cover up bruises and contusions.

The image was paired with the hashtag #GoodellMustGo, a reference to the NFL's bumbling meathead of a commissioner, who fucked up so royally at every juncture in dealing with the Ray Rice case (and other domestic violence cases involving currently active NFL players who abused their wives off-camera). #GoodellMustGo was also emblazoned across large banners and flown over multiple NFL stadiumsyesterday.

Still, as of four days ago, the campaign lurched on.

I don't envy Cover Girl's marketing department today.

Poisoned Sausages Being Given To Dogs In Baltimore

Dog owners in the Hampden neighborhood of Baltimore are on high alert since a resident discovered several pieces of poisoned sausage strewn about her backyard.

Hampden resident,Terri Galvan let her 4-year old pit bull, Maddie, out into the backyard Saturday night. After about 30 minutes, Galvan heard Maddie barking at something, then suddenly stop. When she went outside to check on her dog, she saw a man slowly walking up the alleyway behind her home. That’s when she discovered several slices of sausage stuffed with Tylenol in her backyard.

Tylenol’s active ingredient, acetaminophen, is highly toxic to both dogs and cats. Just a small amount of the medication ingested can cause irreparable liver damage, vomiting, jaundice, coma, or worse, death. The sausage slices found in Galvan’s yard contained upwards of 8 to 10 caplets of Tylenol each.

Thankfully, Galvan found and collected the sausages before Maddie ate any of them.

The man seen in the alley is described as a balding, heavy-set man in his late 50′s to 60′s. Galvan’s home is located on the 3400 block of Elm Avenue. The incident occurred around 11pm on Saturday.

Galvan told The Baltimore Sun she called 911 immediately, but that no officers arrived. She called again on Sunday, but again, no officers visited her home.

Tina Regester, a Maryland SPCA spokeswoman could not recall any confirmed animal poisoning cases in Hampden, but urges all pet parents to always supervise pets, even in their own backyards.

Recent accounts from around the country report similar incidents of poisoned treats and food being tossed in backyards, dog parks, or left along popular walking trails with the intention of harming pets.  Always keep an eye on your pet and carefully inspect your own yard before letting your dog outside.

Too poor for pop culture: Baltimore

Where I live in East Baltimore, everything looks like "The Wire" and nobody cares what a "selfie" is

Miss Sheryl, Dontay, Bucket-Head and I compiled our loose change for a fifth of vodka. I’m the only driver, so I went to get it. On the way back I laughed at the local radio stations going on and on and on, still buzzing about Obama taking a selfie at Nelson Mandela’s funeral. Who cares?

No really, who? Especially since the funeral was weeks ago.

* * *

I arrived, fifth of Black Watch clenched close to me like a newborn with three red cold-cups covering the top. We play spades over at Miss Sheryl’s place in Douglass Housing Projects every few weeks. (Actually, Miss Sheryl’s name isn’t really Miss Sheryl. But I changed some names here, because I’m not into embarrassing my friends.) Her court is semi-boarded up, third world and looks like an ad for “The Wire.” Even though her complex is disgustingly unfit, it’s still overpopulated with tilting dope fiends, barefoot children, pregnant smokers, grandmas with diabetes, tattoo-faced tenants and a diverse collection of Zimmermans made up of street dudes and housing police, looking itchy to shoot anyone young and black and in Nike.

 Two taps on the door, it opened and the gang was all there — four disenfranchised African-Americans posted up in a 9 x 11 prison-size tenement, one of those spots where you enter the front door, take a half-step and land in the yard. I call us disenfranchised, because Obama’s selfie with some random lady or the whole selfie movement in general is more important than us and the conditions where we dwell.

Surprisingly, as tight as Miss Sheryl’s unit may be, it’s still more than enough space for us to receive affordable joy from a box of 50-cent cards and a rail bottle.

“A yo, Michelle was gonna beat on Barack for taking dat selfie with dat chick at the Mandela wake! Whateva da fuk a selfie is! What’s a selfie, some type of bailout?” yelled Dontay from the kitchen, dumping Utz chips into a cracked flowery bowl. I was placing cubes into all of our cups and equally distributing the vodka like, “Some for you and some for you …”

“What the fuck is a selfie?” said Miss Sheryl.

“When a stupid person with a smartphone flicks themselves and looks at it,” I said to the room. She replied with a raised eyebrow, “Oh?”

It’s amazing how the news seems so instant to most from my generation with our iPhones, Wi-Fi, tablets and iPads, but actually it isn’t. The idea of information being class-based as well became evident to me when I watched my friends talk about a weeks-old story as if it happened yesterday.

More HERE Via Salon

Baltimore Tacotrashtastic : Snow Edition

DRIVER WITH 4 WHEEL DRIVE VEHICLE NEEDED FOR EMERGENCY TACO BELL RUN (BALTIMORE)

More here