• Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce and their families once ate breakfast together while traveling on a train. Mr. Rathbone excused himself from the table, picked up the morning paper, then began to leave the dining car. Ever-mischievous Mr. Bruce asked Cynthia, Mr. Rathbone’s young daughter, “Darling, where’s Daddy going?” Cynthia’s answer filled the crowded dining car: “Daddy’s going to do after-breakfast plop-plops.”
• People frequently act strangely around celebrities. Humor writer H. Allen Smith tells a story about seeing Gary Cooper walk out of a men’s room. Mr. Smith then entered the restroom, where a man standing at a urinal looked at him, grinned, and said, “Right on top of Gary Cooper’s!”
Birthdays
• Victoria Horne Oakie, the wife of comedian Jack Oakie (who played the Mussolini character in Charlie Chaplin’s Great Dictator), had a wonderful idea for her husband’s 70th birthday. For the year leading up to the birthday, she contacted hundreds of people her husband had worked with during his long career and asked them to write a letter to Jack. So many letters poured in that she had to collect them in two volumes. It took Mr. Oakie two weeks to read all the letters after dinner.
• W.C. Fields used to lie about his birthday, giving several dates in various interviews. When asked why he did this, he replied that he wanted to get free drinks on those other days, too.
Books
• Children’s book author/illustrator Tomie dePaola eagerly looked forward to seeing the Walt Disney movie Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs when it came out in 1938, but he was surprised that the movie didn’t follow the true version — that is, the version he knew — of the fairy tale. In the movie, the Evil Queen gave Snow White the poisoned apple without first pulling Snow White’s laces so tight that she couldn’t breathe or giving her a poisoned comb — both times, the dwarfs rescued her. This was so upsetting to Tomie that he yelled at the movie screen, “Where are the laces? Where is the comb?” In addition, he was so upset at the end of the movie — it stopped before the true ending — that he yelled at the screen again, “The story’s not over yet. Where’s the wedding? Where’re the red-hot iron shoes that they put on the Evil Queen so that she dances herself to death?” His mother ran in from the lobby, where she had taken his younger brother when he became frightened during a scary scene, and dragged him out of the theater. Tomie saw the movie again with a little girl from the neighborhood, but he warned her in advance that Mr. Disney didn’t know the true story of Snow White.
• Believe it or not, producer Val Lewton’s film I Walked with a Zombie is based in part on Charlotte Bronte’s classic novel Jane Eyre — in the novel, Jane works for a man whose wife suffers from incurable insanity. Mr. Lewton’s film studio, RKO, gave him a small budget and worried that his film was too arty, relying more on atmosphere than on blood to frighten people. One of his bosses complained about I Walked with a Zombie that “sock-it-to-them was being sacrificed for ‘arty stuff.’”
Censorship
• French comedian Jacques Tati, the creative genius behind the M. Hulot films, detested censorship, especially of his own work. Mr. Tati’s film Traffic was to be shown in a movie theater at Champs-Elysées, but the management thought the film was too long, so they deleted a four-minute scene from it. However, when the film was shown, it included that scene because Mr. Tati had persuaded the projectionist to put the scene back in the film. Management again deleted the four-minute scene, but a few days later, the scene was back in the film because Mr. Tati had again persuaded the projectionist to put it back in the film.
In the British Royal Navy, "tapping the admiral" was slang for a method of imbibing alcohol. What device, besides a gimlet, is used to facilitate "tapping the admiral"?
Coffee milk is a drink made by mixing coffee syrup or coffee extract and milk together in a manner similar to chocolate milk. It is the official state drink in Rhode Island.
Coffee syrup is a sweetened coffee concentrate and key ingredient in coffee milk. The syrup is prepared by straining water and sugar through coffee grounds.
After having a competition between coffee milk and Del's Lemonade, the Rhode Island Legislature voted to change the state drink. On July 29, 1993, Rhode Island named coffee milk their official state drink.
Source
Yes, the trivia question was supposed to continue in the Henderson-vein, but we had some cat related activites while putting the page together, and I spaced.
Yes, the cat is fine, but what she dragged in, not so much.
Yes, it was a rodent, and I sure hope it was a mouse. A very big mouse.
The rodent (please, let it be a mouse) was taken on a grand tour of the house, and eventually displayed by the proud kitty on a bed.
OTOH, seems to me that coffee milk, while not quite as gross as filleted rodent served on clean sheets, it's damn close.
Mark. was first, and correct, with:
Coffee milk.
Billy in Cypress U.S.A. said:
Coffee milk
Randall wrote:
Coffee Milk
Alan J answered:
Coffee Milk.
Mac Mac responded:
coffee milk
Dave replied:
Coffee Milk. Previous to today I was blissfully unaware that any such drink existed. Sounds disgusting.
Jacqueline wrote:
Coffee milk is the official state drink since 1993.
Deborah, the Master Gardener replied:
I looked it up — it’s coffee milk, and sounds sweetly gross. I look forward to never drinking that.
It’s feeling more like spring than winter, clouds and all.
Jim from CA, retired to ID, said:
coffee milk
Barbara, of Peppy Tech fame replied:
The answer is coffee milk. I had no idea!
I was thinking that today there might be another trivia question for which the answer would be "Henderson," so I tracked down an image of Henderson tartan, just in case!
Joe S (We resisted, we voted, we won. Get over it) answered:
Milk coffee? What the heck is milk coffee? Never heard of it, heard of coffee though.
mj took the day off.
David of Moon Valley took the day off.
Dave in Tucson took the day off.
DJ Useo took the day off.
John I from Hawai`i took the day off.
Daniel in The City took the day off.
Leo in Boise took the day off.
Jon L took the day off.
Stephen F took the day off.
Rosemary in Columbus took the day off.
Michelle in AZ took the day off.
Roy, Still a Libtard Snowflake in Gohmertstan (Tyler), TX took the day off.
Bob from Mechanicsburg, Pa took the day off.
Tony DeN took the day off.
Ed K took the day off.
Doug in Albuquerque, New Mexico, took the day off.
Kevin K. in Washington DC, Where Republicans cannot see sedition clearly, even now, took the day off.
Gary K took the day off.
-pgw took the day off.
Kenn B took the day off.
Micki took the day off.
Angelo D took the day off.
Harry M. took the day off.
George M. took the day off.
Roy the (now retired) hoghead (aka 'hoghed') ( Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid. ~Frank Zappa ) took the day off.
Saskplanner took the day off.
Gateway Mike took the day off.
Steve in Wonderful Sacramento, CA, took the day off.
MarilynofTC took the day off.
Paul of Seattle took the day off.
Brian S. 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.
~~~~~
Album: O FUTURO DOS AUTORAMAS [THE FUTURE OF AUTORAMAS]
Artist: Autoramas
Artist Location: Rio De Janeiro, Brazil
Info:
“Formed in Rio de Janeiro in 1998, Autoramas mixes rock from the 60s, New Wave and Jovem Guarda. One of the most successful bands in the independent scene, it has abundant material and numerous international tours. Currently it is composed by Gabriel Thomaz, Érika Martins, Jairo Fajer and Fábio Lima.”
Gabriel Thomaz: Voz e Guitarra
Érika Martins: Voz, Guitarra, Teclados e Percussão
Melvin: Baixo e Vocal
Fred Castro: Bateria
“The Autoramas are a Brazilian surf/garage rock/garage punk/rockabilly band that started in the late 90s and continue playing to this day.” — Wikipedia
“Wipe Out” is not on this album.
Price: $1 (USD) for track; $8 (USD) for 12-track album
CBS opens the night with a RERUN'The Neighborhood', followed by a RERUN'Bob Hearts Abishola', then a RERUN'All Rise', followed by a RERUN'Bull'.
On a RERUNStephen Colbert (from 1/6/21) are Sen. Amy Klobuchar, Rep. Adam Kinzinger, and Jamila Woods.
On a RERUNJames Corden, OBE, (from 1/25/21) are Gillian Anderson, Kate Flannery, and Bartees Strange.
NBC begins the night with a FRESH'Ellen's Mean Game Of Games', followed by a FRESH'The Wall', then another FRESH'The Wall'.
On a RERUNJimmy Fallon (from 2/4/21) are Mike Myers, Dana Carvey, Camila Mendes, and Olivia Rodrigo.
On a RERUNSeth Meyers (from 11/11/20) are Max Greenfield, and Ashe & Niall Horan.
Scheduled on a FRESHLilly Singh is Chris Redd.
ABC starts the night with a FRESH'The Bachelor', followed by a FRESH'The Good Doctor'.
On a RERUNJimmy Kimmel (from 2/8/21) are Katy Perry, Bruce Arians, and Michael McDonald.
The CW offers a FRESH'All American', followed by a FRESH'Black Lightning'.
Faux has a FRESH'9-1-1', followed by a FRESH'9-1-1: Lone Star'.
MY recycles an old 'L&O: SVU', followed by another old 'L&O: SVU'.
AMC offers the movie 'The Bourne Supremacy', followed by the movie 'The Bourne Ultimatum', then a FRESH'The Salisbury Poisonings'.
BBC -
[6:00AM - 11:00AM] STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE
[12:00PM - 4:00PM] STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION
[5:00PM - 11:00PM] LAW & ORDER
[12:00AM] I AM NUMBER FOUR
[2:30AM] ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK
[4:30AM] DOCTOR WHO - THE WATERS OF MARS (ALL TIMES ET)
Bravo has 'Below Deck', followed by a FRESH'Below Deck', then another FRESH'Below Deck', followed by a FRESH'Watch What Happens: Live'.
FX has the movie 'The Revenant', followed by the movie 'The Martian'.
History has 'American Pickers', another 'American Pickers', followed by a FRESH'American Pickers'.
IFC -
[6:00am - 6:30pm] Two And A Half Men
[7:00pm - 12:30am] Scrubs
[1:00am - 2:30am] Three's Company
[3:00am - 5:20am] Community
[5:55am] The Three Stooges - Three Missing Links (ALL TIMES ET)
Sundance -
[6:00am - 3:00pm] hogan's heroes
[3:30pm] meatballs
[5:30pm] bad news bears
[8:00pm] jumanji
[10:30pm] jumanji
[1:00am] bad news bears
[3:30am] meatballs
[5:30am] gomer pyle, u.s.m.c. (ALL TIMES ET)
SyFy has the movie 'The Fifth Element', followed by the movie 'Death Wish'.
TBS:
On a RERUNConan (from 1/18/21) is Bob Newhart.
A major moment in music got underway this week, as Taylor Swift’s re-recording of her 2008 album Fearless made its debut. It’s now Fearless (Taylor’s Version) and it’s off to a promising start.
The complete album will be released in April, but the first single, Love Story, has been downloaded more than 10,000 times since its Friday bow, according to MRC Data. Just three songs sold more this week.
The release is the first volley in an ongoing war between Swift, who wants to get back her master recordings of the old material, and the current rights holders, Shamrock Capital. They acquired the rights from Ithaca Holdings, owned by artist manager and Swift’s arch-enemy, Scooter Braun.
Although olive branches have been extended by the rights holders, Swift is determined to control her material’s destiny.
Others have tried this trick via re-recording, including Def Leppard and Squeeze, all with middling success. And who can forget Prince’s ill-fated Crystal Ball in the late ’90s. The logistical nightmare of fulfilling direct mail orders for physical copies in the low bandwidth era sunk that project, although Prince claimed financial success from it.
But Swift is arguably the world’s top pop star. That’s hefty ammunition in an experiment that can blaze a trail for herself and potentially others.
A Vincent van Gogh drawing is expected to sell for up to $10 million (£7m) at an auction in New York next month, which could make it the most expensive drawing by the famed 19th century Dutch painter ever sold at auction.
La Mousmé, a reed-pen portrait of a local girl drawn in 1888 while the artist was staying in the southern French town of Arles, is estimated to fetch between $7 and $10 million.
Two van Gogh drawings have been sold for over $1 million, including Garden of Flowers, an ink image of summer fields sold for $8.36 million in 1990. His paintings, however, have fetched up to $80 million.
The Mousmé painting depicts a young, dark-haired girl wearing a striped bodice and a spotted skirt, holding a branch of oleander in her hand. Van Gogh then made a reed-pen drawing of the same name based on the initial painting, which is due to be sold in March by Christie's auction house.
La Mousmé was inspired by a popular novel at the time, Madame Chrysanthème by Pierre Loti, which tells the story of a naval officer who married a Japanese woman while stationed in the country. The title, mousmé, is a term for a young Japanese woman taken from the book.
DreamWorks Animation’s “The Croods: A New Age” topped an anemic domestic box office, grossing just over $2 million in its twelfth week of release. The family film has earned roughly $49 million since it opened last fall. It is eyeing a Presidents’ Day weekend gross of $2.7 million and is playing in 1,890 theaters.
That modest figure was enough to hold off a buzzy new release, “Judas and the Black Messiah.” The galvanic look at Black Panther leader Fred Hampton scored rave reviews and opened to $2 million from 1,888 locations. It is projected to gross $2.4 million and should end the weekend in second or third place. The Warner Bros. release is also debuting simultaneously on HBO Max, following in the footsteps of “Wonder Woman 1984” and “The Little Things,” a thriller with Denzel Washington. “Judas and the Black Messiah” is expected to be a major awards season player — it’s attracting Oscars attention for stars Daniel Kaluuya, Dominique Fishback and Lakeith Stanfield, as well as for director and co-writer Shaka King. If it snags a best picture nod, “Judas and the Black Messiah” will make history as the first film with an all Black producing team to get the top nomination. The studio is also pleased with the film’s A CinemaScore and the positive social media chatter surrounding the picture, believing it signals “Judas and the Black Messiah” could enjoy some box office longevity despite a slower start.
“The Little Things,” now in its third week of release, earned $2 million. It will end the holiday with another $2.4 million in the bank, which will mean it will fight for second or third place with “Judas and the Black Messiah.” The thriller, which also stars Jared Leto and Rami Malek, has grossed $10.6 million in three weeks of theatrical release. “Wonder Woman 1984” picked up $1.1 million, which should be enough to capture the fourth or fifth spot on the charts. The superhero sequel has earned since $41.8 million opening in theaters and on HBO Max over Christmas.
Open Road’s “The Marksmen” rounded out the top five, earning $1.1 million. It is expected to gross $1.3 million over the Presidents’ Day holiday and has earned $10.6 million in five weeks of release.
There were a number of prominent new releases entering the enfeebled marketplace. Focus Features’ “Land,” which marks the feature directorial debut of Robin Wright, netted $940,000 in its opening weekend from 1,231 theaters. It is expected to gross $1.1 million over the four-day holiday. The drama centers on a woman recovering from a near-death experience. It debuted at this year’s Sundance Film Festival to solid reviews.
Fox News fell into third place among US cable current affairs broadcasters for much of January, languishing behind CNN and MSNBC as conservative viewers deserted the channel in Donald Trump’s final month in the White House.
The first week of the new year saw a mob of enraged Trump supporters stage a failed insurrection at the US Capitol in protest at his election defeat, the president’s historic second impeachment by the House of Representatives, his departure from the Oval Office and Democrat Joe Biden being sworn-in as his successor.
But despite this dramatic sequence of events, Rupert Murdoch (R-Evil Incarnate)’s network suffered its worst month since April 2000, falling into third for total day viewers and overall viewers, according to the latest Nielsen ratings tracking the period between the riot and the Mr Biden's inauguration as his successor.
It also lost out to its centrist rivals in the primetime evening slot for the first time since July 1999, as the likes of Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham and Tucker Carlson failed to keep momentum under the president’s “stolen” election narrative when no evidence materialised to support that claim. And it struggled to find substantial attacks on the incoming Biden administration.
MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show was the most-watched programme in that time slot, averaging 4.2 million while Hannity fell to 3.1 million, a 19 per cent ratings decline on its January 2020 performance.
Lindsey Graham (R-Narnia) suggested Republicans will impeach Vice President Kamala Harris if the GOP takes control of the House of Representatives in 2022, after the South Carolina senator falsely claimed that she had paid bail for Black Lives Matter protesters who later “broke somebody’s head open”.
In an interview with Fox "News" on Sunday, Mr Graham called Donald Trump (R-Lock Him Up)’s impeachment trial “an affront to rule of law”, that had “opened Pandora’s Box to future presidents”.
He said: “And if you use this model, I don’t know how Kamala Harris doesn’t get impeached if the Republicans take over the House.”
The senator appeared to suggest that Republicans intended to retaliate against their perceived political enemies for impeaching Mr Trump.
American and Egyptian archaeologists have unearthed what could be the oldest known beer factory at one of the most prominent archaeological sites of ancient Egypt, a top antiquities official said Saturday.
Mostafa Waziri, secretary general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, said the factory was found in Abydos, an ancient burial ground located in the desert west of the Nile River, over 280 miles south of Cairo.
He said the factory apparently dates back to the region of King Narmer, who is widely known for his unification of ancient Egypt at the beginning of the First Dynastic Period (3150 B.C.- 2613 B.C.).
Archaeologists found eight huge units — each is about 65-feet long and 8-feet wide. Each unit includes some 40 pottery basins in two rows, which had been used to heat up a mixture of grains and water to produce beer, Waziri said.
With its vast cemeteries and temples from the earliest times of ancient Egypt, Abydos was known for monuments honoring Osiris, ancient Egypt’s god of underworld and the deity responsible for judging souls in the afterlife.
California's annual rainy season is getting underway about 27 days later now than it did in the 1960s, according to new research. Instead of starting in November, the onset of the rains is now delayed until December, and the rain, when it comes, is being concentrated during January and February.
Less rain is falling in the so-called shoulder seasons of autumn and spring, and more is falling during the core winter months.
The worst fires occur in the fall, rather than in the hottest summer months, because that's when vegetation is at its maximum dryness.
Researchers found that summer-like weather conditions were extending into October and November. The fall and winter seasons are also the time when strong, desiccating offshore winds develop in California.
In California's Mediterranean climate, winter rains typically taper off and end in the spring. Grass and brush that sprout with the early season moisture dry out over a long, hot, generally dry period that extends beyond the autumn equinox in September. By November, though, rain usually arrives and wets down the landscape, dampening the fire danger.
A sunny winter day in 2016 found marine biologist Yoshihiro Fujiwara anchored off the coast of central Japan, measuring pudgy cusk eels, when a hubbub suddenly erupted aboard ship. The crew of the Shonan Maru had just landed a big, bizarre-looking fish.
"Wow! We got a coelacanth!" they joked as they hauled up a specimen so large it evoked the legendary "living fossil" species found only in Africa and Indonesia.
Fujiwara, whose specialty is "whale fall" communities — the rich ecosystems that spring up around and feed off whale carcasses — was equal parts thrilled and skeptical.
Researchers have been building a taxonomy of specimens from Suruga, Japan's deepest bay, since the 19th century.
Fujiwara and his team decided to name the new species "yokozuna slickhead," after the top rank in sumo wrestling.
What astronomers believed to be the most distant object in the Solar System, “Farout,” has lost its title after just two years. That crown now goes to “Farfarout” (zero points for creativity, you guys), a planetoid that is more than 130 times farther from the Sun than Earth is.
As spotted by Inverse, after years of observations, astronomers have confirmed that the planetoid designated by the Minor Planet Center as 2018 AG37, nicknamed Farfarout, is the farthest known Solar System object at 132 astronomical units away from the Sun.
A single AU is the average distance from the Earth to the Sun, aka about 92 million miles or 148 million kilometers. (For reference, the previous titleholder Farout, officially designated 2018 VG18, is “just” 120 AU away.) That means Farfarout is roughly 12.3 billion miles or 19.7 billion kilometers away, or for context, about four times farther away from the Sun than Pluto. At that distance, the planetoid completes a single orbit around the Sun just once in a millennium.
“Because of this long orbital period, it moves very slowly across the sky, requiring several years of observations to precisely determine its trajectory,” said David Tholen, an astronomer at the University of Hawaii’s Institute of Astronomy and member of the team behind the discovery, said in a statement this week.
The team—Tholen, the Carnegie Institution for Science’s Scott Sheppard, and Northern Arizona University’s Chad Trujillo—originally spotted the planetoid in 2018 using the Subaru 8-meter telescope located atop the dormant volcano Mauna Kea in Hawaii. In the years since, they’ve used the Gemini North telescope, also located on Mauna Kea, and the Magellan telescope in Chile to determine Farfarout’s orbit and confirm its status as the farthest known object in our Solar System.
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U.S.A. said:
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
