Tom Danehy: These Are a Few of Tom's Favorite Things, 2019 Edition (Tucson Weekly)
Favorite TV Shows: There are simply too many good shows on TV. Half the shows nominated for awards these days I haven't even heard of, let alone had the time to watch. I really enjoyed the latest season of The Crown. I was disappointed in the series finales of Veep and Silicon Valley, but Friday Night Lights and Breaking Bad set that bar so freakin' high, it's hard to even come close.
Focusing Philanthropy
Focusing Philanthropy is a 501(c)3 nonpofit that believes donations should be made with the same level of strategic intent, information, and confidence as other investments. The organization targets serious human challenges that individual donors can successfully address, chooses tactics that are demonstrably effective, identifies confidence-inspiring implementing partners, conducts ongoing monitoring, and assures substantive reporting. These services are provided free to both donors and partners in an effort to scale interventions that work. Donations are fully tax deductible, and Focusing Philanthropy covers all administrative costs and replenishes credit card transaction fees so that 100% of funds contributed go to implementing partners.
The shmoo (plural: shmoos, also shmoon) is a fictional cartoon creature created by Al Capp (1909-1979); the character first appeared in the comic strip Li'l Abner on August 31, 1948. The popular character has gone on to influence pop culture, language, and even science.
A shmoo is shaped like a plump bowling pin with stubby legs. It has smooth skin, eyebrows, and sparse whiskers-but no arms, nose, or ears. Its feet are short and round, but dexterous, as the shmoo's comic book adventures make clear. It has a rich gamut of facial expressions and often expresses love by exuding hearts over its head.
They reproduce asexually and are incredibly prolific, multiplying faster than rabbits. They require no sustenance other than air.
Shmoos are delicious to eat, and are eager to be eaten. If a human looks at one hungrily, it will happily immolate itself-either by jumping into a frying pan, after which they taste like chicken, or into a broiling pan, after which they taste like steak. When roasted they taste like pork, and when baked they taste like catfish. Raw, they taste like oysters on the half-shell.
They also produce eggs (neatly packaged), milk (bottled, grade-A), and butter-no churning required. Their pelts make perfect bootleather or house timbers, depending on how thick one slices them.
They have no bones, so there's absolutely no waste. Their eyes make the best suspender buttons, and their whiskers make perfect toothpicks. In short, they are simply the perfect ideal of a subsistence agricultural herd animal.
The term "shmoo" has entered the English language, defining highly technical concepts in at least four separate fields of science.
Source
Randall was first, and correct, with:
Lil Abner
Mark. said:
Li'l Abner.
Alan J answered:
Li'l Abner.
mj wrote:
The all purpose food entitiy
Was a staple in Lil' Abner.
zorch responded:
You found a shmoo in Al Capp's 'Li'l Abner.'
Dave replied:
Li'l Abner. That's the comic that came to mind when I read the question, although I wasn't certain. Al Capp penned the strip. I didn't often see the Li'l Abner strip (wasn't in our local paper) and the short Shmoo period happened before I was born.
Sadie Hawkins dances, where the girl asks a boy to the dance, originated with the comic strip. Sadie Hawkins Day in Dogpatch Kentucky was an organized race where the single men were chased by the single women, and if the man was caught he had to marry his captor (as punishment?).
Mac Mac said:
Lil Abner
Jim from CA, retired to ID, wrote:
The shmoo is a fictional cartoon creature created by Al Capp; the character first appeared in the comic strip Li'l Abner on August 31, 1948
Ed K replied:
What a weird coincidence!
Not 24 hours ago I was thinking about Shmoos and Li'l Abner because I
saw a pattern in some wallpaper that looked kind of Smooish. Hadn't
thought about them in 50+ years.
John I from Hawai`i says,
Little Abner
Dave in Tucson wrote:
Shmoos were featured in the Lil' Abner comic strip.
Deborah said:
I think it's Li'l Abner. I read it as a kid, mostly to sound out the hillbilly speak. I don't remember a Shmoo, so I looked it up.
Our son and his friend from school were leaving to drive back to San Francisco last night, and the north wind started blowing, hard. Heading to yoga this morning at 7:30 the temperature had plummeted to 31*. Brrr!
DJ Useo answered:
That'd be "Lil' Abner". I recently watched the 1959 film of the musical. It was quite amusing.
I used to have TPB's of the comic strip. Did you know famous painter Frank Frazetta drew the strip for about 10 years? Hard to believe, but true.
Roy the Libtard Snowflake in Gohmertstan (Tyler), TX took the day off.
Cal in Vermont took the day off.
Stephen F took the day off.
Rosemary in Columbus took the day off.
Michelle in AZ took the day off.
Billy in Cypress U$A took the day off.
Jon L took the day off.
Micki took the day off.
Daniel in The City took the day off.
Barbara, of Peppy Tech fame took the day off.
Harry M. took the day off.
George M. took the day off.
Kevin K. in Washington, DC, took the day off.
David of Moon Valley took the day off.
Gateway Mike took the day off.
Leo in Boise took the day off.
- pgw @ nor cal. took the day off.
Paul of Seattle took the day off.
Saskplanner took the day off.
Gary took the day off.
Doug in Albuquerque took the day off.
Peter W took the day off.
MarilynofTC took the day off.
Brian S. took the day off.
Steve in Wonderful Sacramento, CA, took the day off.
Gene took the day off.
Tony K. took the day off.
Noel S. took the day off.
James of Alhambra took the day off.
BttbBob has returned to semi-retired status.
~~~~~
Song: "You Don't Love Me" on LOVER/YOU DON'T LOVE ME 7"
Artist: The Lad Mags
Artist Location: Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
Info: "Four women and a garbageman drummer, transmitting spooky garage soul harmonies, somehow pulled from an invented history where Motown begat psychedelia."
Price: $1 (CAN) for song; $4 (CAN) for two-song 7"
Early in Rudolf Nureyev's career, before he had been accepted into the Leningrad Ballet School, he danced in a sailor's costume in his folk-dance troupe. Because the trousers of his costume weren't ready, he borrowed trousers from another member of the troupe, and as he was dancing, the trousers fell down. By the way, near the end of his career, Mr. Nureyev was often asked the vexing question, "When do you plan to stop dancing?" In answering, he often used the same reply that Margot Fonteyn had used near the end of her career, "I'll stop when the audience no longer wants to see me."
Copenhagen's Royal Theater has a hole in the floor. The hole, which can be plugged up as necessary, is called a "hand-hole," and it is used to help with a quick costume change on stage. For example, a water nymph may need to be transformed back into an Italian woman before the audience's eyes. Smoke is made to swirl around the water nymph, a hand reaches up from the hand-hole, and the nymph costume is whisked away, revealing the Italian costume underneath.
Young ballet student Natalia Makarova saw the world-class ballerina Galina Ulanova dance the part of Juliet in Romeo and Juliet at the Kirov in the 1950s. Ms. Makarova remembers that at the curtain call Ms. Ulanova wore Juliet's cloak-and in stark contrast to the ethereal quality of Juliet, Ms. Ulanova was also wearing a pair of high-topped winter boots. Because Ms. Ulanova had to catch a train, she had put on her boots in the wings of the theater.
Rudolph Nureyev wanted to learn dancing at the Kirov. At his audition, the woman ballet teacher Costravitskaya watched him closely, then told him, "Young man, you'll either become a brilliant dancer-or a total failure. And most likely you'll be a failure!" By the way, when Mr. Nureyev danced the part of Albrecht in Giselle, he wore a wig that was so blond and curly that he called it his Marilyn Monroe wig.
Madame Manya was a costumer of genius. She made many costumes for ballerina Alicia Markova, and whenever she decorated a costume with pearls and jewels, she covered the costume with a very fine, almost unnoticeable net, so that no pearls or jewels ever fell to the floor during a Markova performance. Today, Madame Manya's costumes can be seen at the Theatre Museum in London-the inside of each costume is as finely made as the outside.
Vicky Tiel's granddaughter, Lucie Belle, may have inherited Vicky's love of fashion. When Lucie Belle got a baby brother, she announced that she was going to marry him and therefore needed a red dress that would match her red shoes. Lucie Belle's favorite shoes, of course, are red patent-leather Mary Janes. When the shoe salesman showed her a pair of brown Oxfords, she told him, politely, "I don't think so."
Ballet dancers go through ballet shoes quickly. In the 1980s, Briar Brownson, the "shoe lady" of the Sadler's Wells Royal Ballet, used to keep on hand 30 pairs of pointe shoes for each woman and six pairs of black and six pairs of white ballet slippers for each man in the company. Whenever her stock of shoes got any lower than that, she grew worried about running out.
As a young ballerina, Illaria Obidenna Ladrι wore the very short tunics that her teacher, Ms. Vaganova, wanted the students to wear. Later, as a dancer for Sergei Pavlovich Diaghilev, her short tunic shocked the wardrobe mistress, who remarked, "Any shorter, and you'd need lipstick!" (At the time, early in the 20th century, lipstick was worn mostly by prostitutes.)
James Abbott McNeill Whistler dressed eccentrically to attract attention. A fellow painter, Edgar Degas, once told him, "If you were not a genius, you would be the most ridiculous man in Paris."
Costumes in dance can be shocking. In 1907, Maude Allan danced her Vision of Salome in a costume consisting only of strings of pearls that formed a loincloth and bra.
CBS begins the night with a RERUN'Hawaii Five-0', followed by a RERUN'Magnum PU', then a RERUN'Blue Bloods'.
On a RERUNStephen Colbert (from 11/25/19) are Robert De Niro and J.J. Abrams.
On a RERUNJames Corden, OBE, (from 11/27/19) are Evan Rachel Wood, Melissa Benoist, Mike Birbiglia, and Bloc Party.
NBC starts the night with 'Dolly Parton's Christmas Of Many Colors: Circle Of Love', followed by 'Dateline'.
On a RERUNJimmy Fallon (from 12/11/19) are Jon Hamm, Keri Russell, and Gary Clark Jr.
On a RERUNSeth Meyers (from 12/18/19) are John Mulaney and Rodrigo Santoro.
On a RERUNLilly Singh (from 10/8/19) is Natalie Portman.
ABC opens the night with a RERUN'American Housewife', followed by a RERUN'Fresh Off The Boat', then '20/20'.
On a RERUNJimmy Kimmel (from 12/11/19) are Kevin Hart, Julia Fox, and Finneas.
The CW offers the FRESH'America Salutes You Presents Guitar Legends 3', followed by the FRESH'Popstar's Best Of 2019'.
Faux fills the night with a FRESH'WWE Friday Night SmackDown'.
MY recycles an old 'CSI: Miami', followed by another old 'CSI: Miami'.
A&E has 'Live PD', 'Live PD: Rewind', and 'Live PD'.
AMC offers the movie 'The Godfather', followed by the movie 'The Godfather: Part II'.
BBC -
[6:00AM] DOCTOR WHO: THE END OF TIME - Part 1 & 2.
[7:20AM] DOCTOR WHO - SEASON 4 - EPISODE 1-Partners in Crime
[8:25AM] DOCTOR WHO - SEASON 4 - EPISODE 3-Planet of the Ood
[9:30AM] DOCTOR WHO - SEASON 4 - EPISODE 4-The Sontaran Stratagem-Part 1.
[10:35AM] DOCTOR WHO - SEASON 4 - EPISODE 5-The Poison Sky-Part 2.
[11:40AM] DOCTOR WHO - SEASON 4 - EPISODE 6-The Doctor's Daughter
[12:45PM] DOCTOR WHO - SEASON 4 - EPISODE 7-The Unicorn and The Wasp
[1:45PM] DOCTOR WHO - SEASON 4 - EPISODE 8-Silence in the Library-Part 1.
[2:50PM] DOCTOR WHO - SEASON 4 - EPISODE 9-Forest of the Dead-Part 2
[3:55PM] DOCTOR WHO - SEASON 4 - EPISODE 10-Midnight
[4:55PM] DOCTOR WHO - SEASON 4 - EPISODE 11-Turn Left
[6:00PM] DOCTOR WHO - SEASON 4 - EPISODE 12-The Stolen Earth-Part 1.
[7:05PM] DOCTOR WHO - SEASON 4 - EPISODE 13-Journey's End-Part 2.
[8:10PM] DOCTOR WHO: THE END OF TIME - Part 1 & 2.
[9:35PM] DOCTOR WHO: THE END OF TIME - Part 1 & 2.
[11:00PM] THE GRAHAM NORTON SHOW - SEASON 26 - EPISODE 12
[12:00AM] DOCTOR WHO - SEASON 4 - EPISODE 12-The Stolen Earth-Part 1.
[1:00AM] DOCTOR WHO - SEASON 4 - EPISODE 13-Journey's End-Part 2.
[2:00AM] DOCTOR WHO - SEASON 5 - EPISODE 1-The Eleventh Hour
[3:00AM] DOCTOR WHO - SEASON 5 - EPISODE 2-The Beast Below
[4:00AM] DOCTOR WHO - SEASON 5 - EPISODE 3-Victory of the Daleks
[5:00AM] DOCTOR WHO - SEASON 5 - EPISODE 4-The Time of Angels-Part 1. (ALL TIMES EST)
Bravo has the movie 'It's Complicated', followed by the movie 'The Devil Wears Prada', then the movie 'The Devil Wears Prada', again.
Comedy Central has fills the night with old 'South Park' all night.
FX has the movie 'Taken 3', followed by the movie 'American Made', then the movie 'American Made', again.
IFC -
[6:00A] The Three Stooges - Up in Daisy's Penthouse
[6:15A] The Three Stooges - Gents Without Cents
[6:45A] A Dennis the Menace Christmas
[8:45A] The Way, Way Back
[11:00A] Snow Day
[1:00P] Christmas With the Kranks
[3:00P] That '70s Show
[3:30P] That '70s Show
[4:00P] That '70s Show
[4:30P] That '70s Show
[5:00P] That '70s Show
[5:30P] That '70s Show
[6:00P] Two and a Half Men
[6:30P] Two and a Half Men
[7:00P] Two and a Half Men
[7:30P] Two and a Half Men
[8:00P] Two and a Half Men
[8:30P] Two and a Half Men
[9:00P] Two and a Half Men
[9:30P] Two and a Half Men
[10:00P] Two and a Half Men
[10:30P] Two and a Half Men
[11:00P] Two and a Half Men
[11:30P] Two and a Half Men
[12:00A] Two and a Half Men
[12:30A] Two and a Half Men
[1:00A] That '70s Show
[1:30A] That '70s Show
[2:00A] That '70s Show
[2:30A] That '70s Show
[3:00A] That '70s Show
[3:30A] That '70s Show
[4:00A] South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut (ALL TIMES EST)
Sundance -
[6:00am] The Andy Griffith Show
[6:35am] The Andy Griffith Show
[7:10am] The Andy Griffith Show
[7:45am] The Andy Griffith Show
[8:20am] The Andy Griffith Show
[8:55am] The Andy Griffith Show
[9:30am] The Andy Griffith Show
[10:05am] The Andy Griffith Show
[10:40am] The Andy Griffith Show
[11:15am] The Andy Griffith Show
[11:50am] The Andy Griffith Show
[12:25pm] The Andy Griffith Show
[1:00pm] The Andy Griffith Show
[1:30pm] The Andy Griffith Show
[2:00pm] Law & Order
[3:00pm] Law & Order
[4:00pm] Law & Order
[5:00pm] Law & Order
[6:00pm] Law & Order
[7:00pm] Law & Order
[8:00pm] Law & Order
[9:00pm] Law & Order
[10:00pm] Law & Order
[11:00pm] Law & Order
[12:00am] Law & Order
[1:00am] Law & Order
[2:00am] Criminal Minds
[3:00am] Criminal Minds
[4:00am] Criminal Minds
[5:00am] Criminal Minds (ALL TIMES EST)
SyFy has the movie 'The Chronicles Of Riddick', followed by the movie 'Guardians Of The Galaxy'.
Burning Man organizers sued the U.S. Bureau of Land Management to recover millions of dollars they say the government has overcharged them in fees over the past seven years at the counter-culture celebration in the Nevada desert.
Black Rock City LLC, the nonprofit that produces the annual Burning Man event, filed the lawsuit Dec. 13 in U.S. District Court in Washington.
Organizers told the Reno Gazette Journal they're tired of waiting over the past four years for the bureau to provide justification for the nearly $3 million it charges annually for a permit to hold the 80,000-person event in the Black Rock Desert about 100 miles north of Reno.
"This case is our attempt to break this cycle," Burning Man spokeswoman Megan Miller said in an email to the newspaper.
The Burning Man organization is seeking "relief from defendants' ongoing, unlawful and prejudicial conduct towards (Black Rock City LLC) that threatens the viability of the iconic Burning Man event," the lawsuit said.
It was found along the side of a road in a remote Australian gold rush town. In the old days, Wedderburn was a hotspot for prospectors - it occasionally still is - but nobody there had ever seen a nugget quite like this one.
The Wedderburn meteorite, found just north-east of the town in 1951, was a small 210-gram chunk of strange-looking space rock that fell out of the sky. For decades, scientists have been trying to decipher its secrets, and researchers just decoded another.
In a study published in August this year, led by Caltech mineralogist Chi Ma, scientists analysed the Wedderburn meteorite and verified the first natural occurrence of what they call 'edscottite': a rare form of iron-carbide mineral that's never been found in nature.
Since the Wedderburn meteorite's spacey origins were first identified, the distinctive black-and-red rock has been examined by numerous research teams - to the extent that only about one-third of the original specimen still remains intact, held within the geological collection at Museums Victoria in Australia.
The edscottite discovery - named in honour of meteorite expert and cosmochemist Edward Scott from the University of Hawaii - is significant because never before have we confirmed that this distinct atomic formulation of iron carbide mineral occurs naturally.
Archeologists have discovered a large palace likely used by the Mayan elite more than 1,000 years ago in the ancient city of Kuluba, near the modern day tourist hot spot of Cancun in eastern Mexico, Mexican anthropology officials said.
The remains of the six-meter high building, 55 meters (180 feet) long and 15 meters wide, suggest the palace was inhabited for two long periods between 600-1050 A.D., the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) said in a statement.
The Mayan civilization reached its peak between 250 and 900 A.D., when it ruled large swaths of what is now southern Mexico, Guatemala, Belize and Honduras.
The palace was discovered in the east of the Kuluba archaeological zone, a key pre-Hispanic site in Mexico's Yucatan state.
Along with the palace, Mexican experts are exploring four other structures in the area known as "Group C" in Kuluba's central square, including an altar, remnants of two residential buildings and a round structure believed to be an oven.
Boeing's recently ousted CEO could walk away with a multi-million dollar golden parachute that is about 270 times what the company is paying out to family members who lost a loved one in the Max 737 crashes.
CEO Dennis Muilenburg was fired on Monday but may still walk away with $39 million in cash and stock options as part of his severance package, a source told ABC News. Some reports put that figure even higher.
Meanwhile, those who lost a family member in one of the two deadly 737 Max crashes earlier this year could receive approximately $144,500 from a company fund of $50 million that will divided pro-rata between the 346 victims' family members.
Michael Stumo, who lost his daughter, Samya Stumo, in the Ethiopian Airlines crash, called the deaths "preventable" in a statement reacting to news of Mulienburg's departure.
"Now that it's known what he and top Boeing officials knew, yet ignored, prior to the crashes, it has become clear how the company eroded in quality over the years," Michael Stumo said. "Their focus on financial engineering led to the preventable deaths of my daughter, Samya Rose Stumo, and 345 other people in two tragic crashes."
Public support for Donald Trump (R-Fake Hair)'s removal from office is the highest it has ever been, according to a new poll.
Fifty-five per cent of those asked said they were in favour of the US president's conviction by the Senate, a figure which has shot up from 48 per cent the week before.
Meanwhile, the number of people against Mr Trump's removal has dropped to an all-time low, according to the MSN poll.
On Christmas Day, 40 per cent were opposed to the Senate voting to convict the president, who has been impeached over his dealings with Ukraine and an alleged subsequent attempt to obstruct congress.
The gap between the two views has become much wider since last week, when there was little to divide them (48 per cent in favour of Mr Trump's removal, 47 per cent against).
A NASA intern has discovered a new type of aurora in 3-year-old video footage of the Arctic sky.
With the help of NASA scientists and a satellite, Jennifer Briggs, a physics student at Pepperdine University, connected the unusual aurora to a sudden retreat in Earth's magnetic field. It's the first time scientists have seen an aurora caused solely by a compression of Earth's magnetic field.
Usually, auroras dance across the sky when a lot of high-energy particles from the sun, called solar wind, flood over Earth. But in this case, the sun didn't show any unusual or heightened activity.
Researchers still aren't sure why the magnetic crunch happened, but they think the culprit may have been an unprecedented storm in the region where Earth's magnetic field meets particles from the sun. No one knows where the storm came from or why it caused Earth's magnetic field to shrink so suddenly and rapidly.
On the day of this particular aurora, a NASA satellite detected a huge compression in Earth's magnetosphere (the protective bubble that the magnetic field creates around the planet) at the moment the lights began spiraling.
Suspended from branches high above the ground, Nicolas Moulin looked through his binoculars over a seemingly endless sea of emerald green.
Somewhere beneath the forest canopy was the African giant swallowtail: the largest butterfly to appear by day on the African continent, virtually unrecorded in scientific annals but known to be venomous.
The species, known in Latin as Papilio antimachus, was discovered in 1782.
Its black-streaked orange-brown wings are extraordinary. They reach up to 25 centimetres (9.8 inches) across, making it one of the largest butterflies in the world.
But, just as remarkable, nobody has ever been able to study the creature in its state as caterpillar or chrysalis -- keys to understanding its life cycle and longevity.
You have reached the Home page of BartCop Entertainment.
Do you have something to say?
Anything that increased your blood pressure, or, even better, amused or entertained?
Do you have a great album no one's heard?
How about a favorite TV show, movie, book, play, cartoon, or legal amusement?
A popular artist that just plain pisses you off?
A box set the whole world should own?
Vile, filthy rumors about Republican hypocrites?
responded:
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
