Category: News

Woman Gets a Year in Jail for Lying on Her Resume to Land $185,000 Job

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CNN – A woman who lied on her resume and faked “glowing” references to land a high-paying job with an Australian regional government has been sentenced to at least a year in prison.

Veronica Hilda Theriault, 46, was convicted Tuesday of deception, dishonesty, and abuse of public office, relating to her 2017 application for the chief information officer role, which came with an annual salary of 270,000 Australian dollars (US$185,000).

Theriault worked in the position with South Australia’s Department of the Premier and Cabinet for over a month and earned about 33,000 Australian dollars ($22,500) before being fired. She pleaded guilty to all charges and received a 25-month sentence with a non-parole period of a year.

The court heard that she submitted a fraudulent resume to the department with false information relating to her education and prior employment. After she was granted an interview, she also posed as a previous employer during a reference check, in which she “gave glowing feedback” about her own performance.

This is BULLSHIT. As someone who somehow stumbled into the position of hiring and firing actual adults, even I have to admit this is 100% on the company, not the woman. I don’t care if it was for a role as the Chief of Medicine at a hospital; it’s quite literally the company’s job to vett the candidate’s experience. If they sneak one past you to land a cushy six figure job, thats on you. Did they even bother sitting down with this woman to ya know, maybe ask her a few questions about the role?

I imagine her interview went something along the lines of Chuckie sitting in for Will Hunting.

RETAINERRRR

You wanna know why this is bullshit though? Because of things like this:

But the lies didn’t end there. In earlier submissions, the court heard that Theriault used a photo of supermodel Kate Upton as her LinkedIn profile photo, according to CNN affiliate 7 News.

And after starting the position in August, she was found to have hired her brother, despite him lacking the qualifications to perform the role.

So the hiring manager didn’t even bother to look at the LinkedIn profile of someone he was hiring? Well thats a bright, glowing, red flag right there. And then after hiring the woman they let her then hire her BROTHER without any qualifications?

If you think a little jail time is gonna scare some hustlers out of trying this again, you better think again. Pocketing $22k in a month like this woman did is more than worth the risk of going to the pokey for a lot of people.

Nice work, Australia.

 

Celebrity Jeopardy Was Inexplicably Missing on Saturday Night

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Welp, there was no Celebrity Jeopardy on SNL this weekend. Judging by Twitter reactions, I wasn’t the only one who was disappointed.

And this guy gets it exactly right.

At least we’ll see one of the greatest sketches of all time on the Thanksgiving special Wednesday night…

 

Celebrity Jeopardy Is a Must Play on SNL This Week

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I could be totally wrong, but it feel’s like tomorrow night’s episode of Saturday Night Live will be something special. It’s the Thanksgiving show, Will Ferrell will be back, and he’ll be joining the Five-Timers Club. That being said, they have to do Celebrity Jeopardy. Celebrity Jeopardy not appearing on SNL tomorrow night would be an act of comedic malpractice.

If you’re in your thirties Will Ferrell is the best SNL cast member from your prime SNL viewing days and Celebrity Jeopardy was your favorite sketch. I watched every week in high school rooting for Celebrity Jeopardy to make an appearance and it never disappointed.

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In addition to Ferrell being back in Studio 8H, Jeopardy is having a moment right now. As Alex Trebek bravely wages his battle against Pancreatic Cancer, Jeopardy James Holzhauer is doing his part to keep Jeopardy front-page news. Next month’s GOAT tournament will be the most anticipated game show event since Who Wants to Be a Millionaire made its first return in November of 1999. With Darrell Hammond in the house handling announcing duties, and Sean Connery pushing 90, why not trot out Trebek , Connery and the rest for (maybe, hopefully not) one last rodeo.

Come on, Lorne, America needs this.

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Taco Bell Has Gone Too Far

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CNN – For years, Thanksgiving feasts have featured bland roast turkeys, canned cranberry sauce and boxed stuffing mix. Thanks to Taco Bell, these painfully generic holiday dishes will plague American families no longer.

Instead, the food chain wants you to serve blended Taco Bell Rolled Chicken Tacos at your traditional holiday dinner…

Taco Bell has taken your mother’s beloved bisque recipe and turned it into its Rolled Chicken Tacos Bisque.

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I love Taco Bell as much as anybody and part of what I love about them is their self-awareness. Taco Bell is not fine dining. It’s not even fast casual. It’s for when you’ve got $18 left in your checking account or are on your way home from the bars (or possibly both). They know that. You know that. They know that you know that, and they’re cool with it. That’s why this news is so disappointing.

Taco Bell is not fancy food for fancy people. So why are they trying to play to the stuffy, basic Friendsgiving crowd? Imagine bringing Taco Bell to Friendsgiving. Melissa would shade you so fast on Instagram your phone would die. Why is Taco Bell trying to play to this crowd? Do they actually think putting their product in a blender to make it more resemble vomit will win that crowd over?

Taco Bell has a long history of innovations with a couple of misses (like the Bell Beefer) but way more grand slams (like the Crunchwrap Supreme). So while I love that they’re willing try something so outrageous here, I can’t help but be amazed by how far off-brand it is.

Sure, White Castle has a similar vibe to Taco Bell and has had lots of success with it’s Thanksgiving stuffing, but that’s totally different. White Castle sliders are 75% bread and stuffing IS MADE OF BREAD. Also, the White Castle stuffing recipe gets points for not requiring a goddamn blender.

Sorry Taco Bell. I won’t be serving your bisque at my house next week.

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Time to Text Our High School Girlfriends: The RAZR is Back!

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Yahoo! – Few phones were as iconic and as ubiquitous as the original Motorola RAZR. Celebs used them constantly, fashion houses cooked up designer mashups, and it wasn’t long before friends, family members and co-workers all started carrying them, too…..This new version, which will sell for $1,500 when it launches on Verizon next month, is Motorola’s first foldable smartphone, and unlike any other foldable we’ve played with this year. It doesn’t unfold into a small tablet. It doesn’t pack loads of cameras or flagship components. It is, by Motorola’s admission, a “design-first” kind of phone.

Be still my early-2000’s heart. What a headline for a slow, bleak late-fall week. The RAZR, the very phone you would text your girlfriend “7777-88-7 22-2-22-33?” on when you were 16 is making it’s triumphant return.

(Editor’s Note: We talked about this earlier in the year and the excitement has not waned.)

No phone had quite the following  of or was the subject of a craze such as that of the RAZR had. You can probably make a case for the Sidekick, the Nextel, and the first wave of Blackberries as well, but they weren’t RAZRs. The Motorola heavyweight champ was bought in droves and traded like currency. I had two over the course of my late-high school days and I bought neither straight from a T-Mobile (I paid for my own phone since day 1 shut the fuck up) store or otherwise reputed cell phone distributor. Both were lightly-used but in great condition and ready for me to install “Badfish” by Sublime as a kickass ringtone. My acquisition of one actually came within a hair of getting me kicked out of high school, true story (I truly did nothing wrong).

Smartphones ultimately doomed the RAZR as well as all the other cool flip phones of that era. I was actually one of the last adopters (2014-ish) and was sad to see the flips go. I guess I’m not too mad about it as I can do anything from play music (porn) to read (porn) to peruse IG (porn) on a smartphone. But thinking of the RAZR, it indeed bring me back to literally simpler times. You made a call or texted someone. That was it. Then, if you were cool enough, got berated by your parents for texting wayyyyyyyyyyy too much.

So I guess the question is what is the price of nostalgia? Because 15 hundo for a RAZR is a lotttt of cash for a phone I once traded a 20 bag for. But hey, the times are the times. Back then all I had was a 20 bag. Now I have an actual, full-time job – along with student debt, inflated housing costs, and questionable amounts of anxiety. Maybe the RAZR is all I need. Suddenly that price tag doesn’t sound so bad.

-Joey B.

On the Road Again? No Better Place to Be for Game 7

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As I’m sure you heard last night, this 2019 World Series was the first best-of-seven postseason series in the history of major North American sports where the road team won all seven games. Pretty remarkable. What’s also remarkable is how well road teams have fared in winner-take-all Game 7’s over the past decade. Not all that long ago you could bet your house on the home team in Game 7. Not any more.

When the Pittsburgh Penguins won Game 7 of the 2009 Stanley Cup Final they were the first team in any of the North American major men’s sports leagues to win a Game 7 of a championship round on the road since, fittingly, the Pittsburgh Pirates won Game 7 of the World Series on the road in 1979. For nearly 30 years, no road team won a championship round Game 7 on the road.

For the Penguins, they were the first NHL team to win a Stanley Cup Final Game 7 on the road since 1971. During the 38 years in between, road teams were 0-6 in Stanley Cup Final Game 7’s. Since 2009, road teams are 3-0 in Stanley Cup Final Game 7’s.

The San Francisco Giants got Major League Baseball road teams off the Game 7 schneid in 2014, when they defeated the Kansas City Royals in Game 7 of the World Series in Kansas City. In between the 1979 Pirates and 2014 Giants, road teams were 0-9 in World Series Game 7’s. Since 2014, road teams are 4-0 in Game 7 of the World Series.

More recently, the Cleveland Cavaliers got NBA teams of the Game 7 scheid when they defeated the Golden State Warriors in Game 7 of the 2016 NBA Finals. The last NBA team to win Game 7 of the Finals on the road had been the Washington Bullets in 1978. In the 38 years between, road teams went 0-6 in Game 7’s. The 2016 NBA Finals was the last NBA Finals to go seven games.

Across all three leagues (because the NFL, obviously, does not play series), no road team won a Game 7 in the 1980s (0-for-7) or the 1990s (0-for-4). Road teams were nearly blanked in the 2000s (1-for-8), too, until the 2009 Pittsburgh Penguins won the Cup in Detroit. That means road teams lost a mind boggling 18-straight winner-take-all Game 7’s. They’re 7-3 this decade, and have won the most recent Game 7’s in all three leagues. That includes the last NBA Finals Game 7, the last three Stanley Cup Final Game 7’s and the last four World Series Game 7’s.

After losing 18-straight Game 7’s from 1982-2006, road teams in all three leagues are 8-3 in championship round Game 7’s since.  So what changed? Some ideas:

  • Air travel is much easier today than it was in 1984 when the Lakers had to fly to Boston for a Game 7 in the (presumably 94°) Boston Garden (the NBA still followed a 2-2-1-1-1 format at that time). The Cleveland Cavaliers probably had a bit of an easier time flying to the Bay Area in 2016 when they defeated the Warriors on the road in Game 7.
  • With more players changing teams more frequently, there may be less of a home-field advantage.Justin Verlander didn’t pitch in Game 7 on the road in in 2017, but hear me out. He got traded from Detroit to Houston on August 31st that year. If he had pitched in Game 7 of the World Series in LA, would it have been much different for him than if he had pitched in a Game 7 in Houston? He was traded there less than two months earlier. I know that athletes don’t live like us, but his pad in Houston in October 2017 was probably more like Ryan Bingham’s condo than he would care to admit. He probably wasn’t rolling out of bed in a mansion in Houston at that time before he rolled up to the ballpark.

    Derek Jeter, on the other hand, had quite the home field advantage. In 80 career playoff games at home he hit .332 in with 12 home runs and 29 RBI in 322 at bats. In 78 road playoff games, he hit .284 with just 8 home runs and 27 RBI in 328 at bats. Playing for one team for 20 years gets you a really nice routine, I suppose.

  • It seems as if home teams have been awfully tight at home in Game 7’s recently. The Bruins at home against the Blues just four months ago seems like a pretty good example of that. I don’t know how/why the psychology of playing at home would change over the last decade, but maybe fans tweeting on their phones all game and taking selfies has changed the energy levels in these venues? That would certainly seem to hurt the home teams more than the road teams.
  • A combination of point #1 and #3. With air travel being easier (and cheaper) than ever, maybe more fans are following their teams on the road for Game 7? I bet the Boston Garden was 98% Celtics fans in 1984’s Game 7. What percentage of Minute Maid Park last night was Nationals fans? I’m not sure, but I bet it was substantially more than 2%. That could certainly change the vibe of a building, too.

Whatever the reason, one thing is certain. Boy am I glad I don’t bet on baseball.

 

Merry Allston Christmas

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It’s the unofficial last day of summer here at The 300s headquarters. We’re heading into Labor Day weekend, and with August 31st/September 1st falling on Saturday/Sunday, Boston is gearing up for a brutal eventful Allston Christmas.

In case you’re not from the area, or didn’t go to school in Boston, Allston Christmas is the time of year when tens of thousands of college students return to the city, Allston in particular. It’s also a moving day for a good number of the young professionals who rent apartments in God’s Country. I mean Allston.

This year, Harpoon has even introduced a new brew to celebrate the holiday.

We’re doing our part here at The 300s, too. As the poet laureate of The 300s, please allow me to present Have Yourself a Merry Allston Christmas.

Have yourself a merry Allston Christmas
Let your move be light
From now on our UHauls will be out of sight

Have yourself a merry Allston Christmas
Don’t get storrowed today
From now on our UHauls will be miles away

Here we are in our Allston days
Like our college days of yore
Craigslist friends who are dear to us
May their rent checks clear once more

Through this year we’ll always be together
In our two-bed split
Snag a brand new couch from the curb below
And have yourself a merry Allston Christmas now

Craigslist friends who are dear to us
May their rent checks clear once more

Through this year we’ll always be together
In our two-bed split
So snag a brand new couch from the curb below
And have yourself a merry Allston Christmas now

If we can get Michael Buble to record this, I really think it’ll take off.

Safe travels and move-ins this weekend everybody!

More Thoughts on the Retirement of Andrew Luck

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When I saw this tweet Saturday night, I checked it five times to make sure it wasn’t from Adarn Schefter. I was just as shocked as everyone else when I saw the news. I knew Andrew Luck had battled injuries for most of his professional career, but he was coming off one of his best seasons as a pro. After missing all of 2017, Luck threw for 39 touchdowns and almost 4600 yards in 2018. But now that I’ve had a day to process the news, here are a few of my thoughts on the matter.

  • Anyone who questions why Luck is retiring instead of trying to battle through his injuries is a jackass. Here’s just the most blatant example of jackassery:

    That lazy millennial jab won’t go over too well with most of the people on this site either.

    Andrew Luck should not sacrifice one bit of his post-football quality of life for our entertainment. The people out there who think he owes it to the fans or his teammates to take a beating again this year should tell us how much fun they have at work the next time their job makes them     piss blood.

  • There seems to be a stark difference between the reaction to Luck’s retirement and the reaction to Rob Gronkowski’s retirement, and I’m not sure why. Both guys decided to hang ’em up at age 29 to avoid further wear and tear on their bodies. A lot of the scorn directed at Luck is likely due to the sheer surprise of his announcement. With three Super Bowl rings, fans probably believe Gronk had less left to prove. Still, Luck doesn’t doesn’t deserve any of the grief he is getting. No one should question either player’s decision to retire, but especially not people who didn’t question Gronk’s decision.
  • Again, Luck doesn’t deserve any of the grief he is getting but I can’t get too mad at fans booing. Luck said hearing the boos hurt and I believe him, but as Reggie Jackson once said, fans don’t boo nobodies. The fans that booed had to sit through a full preseason football game and likely hadn’t heard most of the details yet. I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt on this one. Unless fans are booing a player getting carted off with an ACL injury, I try not to get too worked up over the appropriateness of booing.
  • Hindsight is 20/20, but do you think anyone in the Colts organization today regrets moving on from Peyton Manning when they did? Should they? Luck was supposed to be the future, the guy who would run the show for the next 13 years. Instead, they only got seven years and six seasons out of him. Peyton played four seasons in Denver, three at a very high level (including the best season of his career in 2013 at age 37), took the Broncos to two Super Bowls, and won them a Super Bowl in his final season at age 39. Imagine if the Patriots had decided to move on from Tom Brady after the season he missed due to injury. That of course seems laughable. Will people look back on the Colts decision to move on from the second-greatest quarterback of all time and find it almost as laughable?

Whatever’s next for you, Andrew…

New British Prime Minister Boris Johnson Has a 100 Trucking Rating

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I probably watch more cable news than any of the other writers here at The 300s but I don’t follow European politics too closely, so I don’t know much about this new British Prime Minister. All I know is that I am intrigued by a world leader whose Trucking Rating would be higher than most NFL running backs.

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The fact that the new Prime Minister of the United Kingdom isn’t afraid to bulldoze an elementary schooler in a pick-up game is impressive. World leaders take note: Boris plays to win the game. He’s an OG member of the not-messing-around crew.

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I respect the hell out of Boris’s hustle. I’m the guy who runs out ground balls in adult softball leagues. (Maybe that’s why my brother-in-law’s team didn’t invite me back?) As a guy who has younger brothers, and as someone who worked as a summer camp counselor back in the day, I don’t believe in letting little kids win. What does that teach them? Make them earn it!

I once Dikembe Mutombo’d a kid in a pick-up basketball game. He cried. I felt bad.  But then he learned a very valuable lesson. The next time I went for a rebound in the corner I jammed my pinkie finger so bad my hand hurt for three weeks.  The lesson learned? Karma.

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I never blocked a kid again, and that kid learned the value of the pump fake.

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Only time will tell how well Boris’s playground experience prepared him for the world stage.

Harry Potter Go Has Officially Launched. Also, Did You Know Pokemon Go Is Still A Thing? Did You Also Also Know I Haven’t Stopped Playing Since 2016?

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Pokémon Go creator Niantic Labs’ newest augmented reality game based on the Harry Potter universe is available now for both iOS and Android in the US, a day earlier than we anticipated it would launch in the region. The game, called Harry Potter: Wizards Unite, is similar in style to Pokémon Go, asking players to traverse a virtual map overlaid on the real world and collect magical artifacts.

Three years ago I was sitting in a hotel room in Burbank, California when I was reading an article that the creators of Pokemon teamed up with Niantic Labs, a software company from San Francisco, to launch Pokemon Go. The game brought a new angle to the franchise, giving the player the ability to physically go outside and catch Pokemon on a real map fed into the game via Google Maps. Naturally, I downloaded it and caught my first “real” Pokemon from bed, a Growlithe, just to give a middle finger to the system and the concept of “Go”.

After it’s release, I think we as a country were united for the first time since post 9/11. Every single person I knew was playing and having a blast while doing it. Kids were taking to the streets, finally getting off the couch and aimlessly walking with their head down in front of buses and into the middle of the street to catch endless Pikachus, Charmanders, and Squirtles. It was joyous. A few people even got stabbed because they were playing at 4 am in bad neighborhoods. What a rush.

Fast forward three years and I may be the only one still playing. Not only am I still playing, I have a complete Pokedex. I did exactly what the slogan said and I caught them all.

I even caught a Black Charizard, something I was not aware existed until I caught it.

Now how did I accomplish this amazing feat? By taking the “Go” out of the title and downloading a hacked version of the app that enabled a joystick and let me play from the comforts of my own living room. Sure, it kind of defeated the entire purpose. I could have just played the normal game. Alas, my OCD would not allow this.

So now we have Harry Potter Wizards Unite. I myself downloaded it moments ago and can say it’s already been deleted off my phone. Too confusing, don’t have the time. They did apparently pay Daniel Radcliffe to voice Harry Potter again though so that was neat. That’s about as much as I learned though.

So my hope is that in these trying times we collectively return to the streets and once again unite for the latest craze in mobile gaming. Fresh air, exercise, camaraderie. If you need me, i’ll be in bed playing Pokemon.