• When comic singer Anna Russell decided to sell her house in Australia and move back to the United States, she decided to get rid of many of her possessions. Many items were auctioned off, but an assortment of odds and ends were dumped into her living room, where she held a farewell party and rummage sale. Her maid looked at the stuff, then asked, “Why don’t you give the garbageman an extra $10 to cart it away?” Fortunately, Ms. Russell did not listen to the advice, because at the rummage sale she made over $900.
• Early in her career, stand-up comedian Judy Tenuta used to make money on the side insulting people at parties. For example, a woman would pay Ms. Tenuta to go to her house and insult her husband on his birthday. At the birthday party, Ms. Tenuta would say such things as, “Hi, it’s your birthday, pig. Come, let me play my accordion in your face.” A fringe benefit of these performances was free food. Ms. Tenuta would always ask that food be brought to her so she could eat as she insulted the guest of honor.
• The Marx Brothers flopped in London with a vaudeville skit called “On the Mezzanine.” During the skit, the Londoners began to throw pennies on the stage—a deadly insult. Groucho went to the front of the stage, raised his hand for silence, then said, “If you people are going to throw coins, I wish to hell you’d throw something more substantial—like shillings or guineas.” This joke was quoted throughout London, and the Marx Brothers became successful in London with a different skit titled “Home Again.”
• To gain experience as a comedian very early in his stand-up career, Jay Leno used to go into a bar and ask the manager if he could do his act. If the manager said, “Get out of here,” Mr. Leno would whip out a $50 bill and say, “Just let me tell some jokes, and if people leave or I embarrass the customers, you can keep the fifty.” All the managers returned his money to him, and a few invited him back to perform again—and next time they let him pass the hat.
• Comedian Richard Pryor grew angry at the low wages paid by Budd Friedman, owner of the Improv comedy club, so he confronted Mr. Friedman and accused him of paying him less because he was black. Mr. Friedman denied the charge, and later, he told his wife what Mr. Pryor had said. She replied, “You should have told him that you take advantage of all performers, regardless of race, color, or creed.” Despite the confrontation, the two men remained friends.
• Zero Mostel got involved in show business as a result of some gallery talks on art he gave at the Museum of Modern Art. Always a comedian, he spiced up his talks by making his audience roar with laughter. Because of the word-of-mouth reputation he received, he soon was asked to entertain at parties, where he received $3 or $5—he also asked for “all the pastrami sandwiches” he could eat.
• Very early in her career, Carol Burnett worked in the Catskill Mountains. A voice coach named Ken Welch heard her, was impressed, and wanted to teach her. Unfortunately, Ms. Burnett had very little money. Mr. Welch offered to teach her for free until she got a better-paying theater job, but Ms. Burnett gave him IOUs, which she paid off with quarters she earned as a hat-check girl.
• Stand-up comedian Judy Carter believes in rewarding the laughing members of her audience. Back when she performed in small clubs, if only a few members of the audience laughed at one of her jokes, she would take money out of her wallet, go over to the laughers, and hand them the money. This always got the audience’s attention and greatly encouraged laughter.
The chickadees are a group of North American birds in the tit family included in the genus Poecile. Species found in North America are referred to as chickadees, while other species in the genus are called tits. They are small-sized birds overall, usually having the crown of the head and throat patch distinctly darker than the body. They are at least 6 to 14 centimeters (2.4 to 5.5 inches) in size.
Their name reputedly comes from the fact that their calls make a distinctive "chick-a-dee-dee-dee", though their normal call is actually fee-bee, and the famous chick-a-dee-dee-dee is an alarm call. The number of "dees" depends on the predator.
The Chickadee (specifically the black-capped chickadee Poecile atricapillus, formerly Parus atricapillus) is the official bird for the state of Massachusetts. Maine has named the chickadee as the official state bird as well.
Source
Billy in Cypress was first, and correct, with:
Chickadees
Cal in Vermont wrote:
Gee, I hope it's the Great Tit...
Mark. said:
Chickadee.
Alan J answered:
The Black-Capped Chickadee.
Dave responded:
Black-capped chickadee. The chickadee is also common in Michigan, although our state bird is the migratory Robin, whose reappearance is taken as a sign of the coming spring. The chickadee isn’t scared of humans and will only retreat a few branches away when I fill the bird feeder. Most breeds of birds fly out of sight.
Jim from CA, retired to ID, replied:
Black-capped chickadee
Deborah, the Master Gardener wrote:
That’s the black-capped chickadee, which I didn’t know was in the tit family until today.
Speaking of birds, Cornell has a great bird camera on a feeder in upstate New York’s forests, and it’s a fun way to enjoy nature without sitting in the cold.
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~~~~~
“Another single from THE CRIME SCENE UNDERCOVER: THE QUARANTINO SESSIONS. This tune is Kerry Pastine’s tribute to one of the best television dramas of all-time, Mad Men. The song was featured in season 5, episode 1: A Little Kiss Part 1. The scene was a super groovy birthday party for Don Draper and his wife sings him the song as a birthday gift.
The song was recorded with everyone safely in quarantine and working remotely.
"Kerry Pastine & the Crime Scene's songs should be in Quentin Tarantino movies. There’s a fierceness in the band’s energetic live shows; the musicians clearly feed off of each other."
- Jon Solomon - Westword Feature Article
"The vintage tones swing and punch – like early ’60s Wanda Jackson possessing a young Joan Jett as backed by the Stray Cats."
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- Eric Shea - Pandora Pick of the Week
CBS opens the night with a RERUN'The Neighborhood', followed by a RERUN'Bob Hearts Abishola', then a RERUN'Let's Make A Deal', followed by a RERUN'Bull'.
On a RERUNStephen Colbert (from 12/16/20) are Tom Hanks and Leslie Odom Jr.
On a RERUNJames Corden, OBE, (from 11/25/20) are Chris Rock and Rauw Alejandro featuring J Balvin.
NBC begins the night with the RERUN'Dolly Parton's Christmas Of Many Colors: Circle Of Love', followed by a RERUN'Weakest Link'.
On a RERUNJimmy Fallon (from 12/10/20) are Bruce Springsteen, J Balvin, and Mandy Moore.
On a RERUNSeth Meyers (from 12/7/20) are Nick Kroll, Jeremy O. Harris, Sam Hunt, and Kaz Rodriguez.
On a RERUNLilly Singh (from 11/12/19) is Tyler Perry.
ABC fills the night with LIVE'Monday Night Football', then pads the left coast with local crap, and maybe an old '20/20'.
On a RERUNJimmy Kimmel (from 12/16/20) are Post Malone, Kawhi Leonard, and Lewis Capaldi.
The CW offers a RERUN'Whose Line Is It Anyway?', followed by another RERUN'Whose Line Is It Anyway?', then a RERUN'Penn & Teller: FU'.
Faux has a RERUN'9-1-1', followed by a FRESH'LA's Finest'.
MY recycles an old 'L&O: SVU', followed by another old 'L&O: SVU'.
AMC offers the movie 'Fred Claus', followed by the movie 'Elf', then the movie 'Four Christmases'.
BBC -
[6:00AM] DOCTOR WHO - UNDER THE LAKE
[7:00AM] DOCTOR WHO - BEFORE THE FLOOD
[8:00AM] DOCTOR WHO - THE GIRL WHO DIED
[9:05AM] DOCTOR WHO - THE WOMAN WHO LIVED
[10:10AM] DOCTOR WHO - THE ZYGON INVASION
[11:15AM] DOCTOR WHO - THE ZYGON INVERSION
[12:17PM] DOCTOR WHO - SLEEP NO MORE
[1:20PM] DOCTOR WHO - FACE THE RAVEN
[2:25PM] DOCTOR WHO - HEAVEN SENT
[3:40PM] DOCTOR WHO - HELL BENT
[5:05PM] DOCTOR WHO - THE PILOT
[6:15PM] DOCTOR WHO - SMILE
[7:20PM] DOCTOR WHO - THIN ICE
[8:20PM] DOCTOR WHO - KNOCK KNOCK
[9:20PM] DOCTOR WHO - OXYGEN
[10:20PM] DOCTOR WHO - EXTREMIS
[11:20PM] DOCTOR WHO - THE PYRAMID AT THE END OF THE WORLD
[12:25AM] DOCTOR WHO - THE LIE OF THE LAND
[1:25AM] DOCTOR WHO - EMPRESS OF MARS
[2:25AM] DOCTOR WHO - THE EATERS OF LIGHT
[3:25AM] DOCTOR WHO - WORLD ENOUGH AND TIME
[4:30AM] DOCTOR WHO - THE DOCTOR FALLS (ALL TIMES ET)
Bravo has 'Below Deck', followed by a FRESH'Below Deck', then another FRESH'Below Deck', followed by a FRESH'Bravo's Chat Room', and 'Below Deck'.
FX has the movie 'The Greatest Showman', followed by the movie 'Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again!', then the movie 'Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again!', again.
History has 'Pawn Stars', another 'Pawn Stars', followed by a FRESH'Pawn Stars', then another FRESH'Pawn Stars'.
IFC -
[6:00am - 9:30am] Parks And Recreation
[10:00am - 1:30pm] Community
[2:00pm - 5:30pm] Three's Company
[6:00pm - 12:30am] Two And A Half Men
[1:00am - 3:30am] Community
[4:00am - 5:30am] Parks And Recreation (ALL TIMES ET)
Sundance -
[6:00am] love lust - Heels
[6:15am - 1:45pm] hogan's heroes
[2:15pm] unforgiven
[5:15pm] pale rider
[8:00pm] the outlaw josey wales
[11:15pm] pale rider
[2:00am] unforgiven
[5:00am] gomer pyle, u.s.m.c.
[5:30am] gomer pyle, u.s.m.c. (ALL TIMES ET)
SyFy has the movie 'Speed', followed by the movie 'Maleificient', then the movie 'Maleficient', again.
TBS:
On a RERUNConan (from 11/9/20) is John C. Reilly.
Despite premiering simultaneously by streaming service, “Wonder Woman 1984” managed the best box office debut of the pandemic, opening with $16.7 million over the Christmas weekend, according to studio estimates Sunday.
That’s only a faint glimmer of typical business during the holiday season, when cinemas are usually packed and box-office receipts are among the best of the year. Last year, “Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker” exceeded $32 million on Christmas Day alone. According to data firm Comscore, 35% of North American theaters are currently open.
But Warner Bros. nevertheless celebrated the performance of “Wonder Woman 1984,” which landed in 2,150 theaters and bettered the approximately $10 million launch of Warner Bros.' “Tenet” in North America. (Universal Pictures’ “The Croods: A New Age” opened similarly in late November.) “Wonder Woman 1984” grossed an additional $19.4 million in international markets where it began playing a week earlier. The Patty Jenkins-directed sequel, starring Gal Gadot, has made $85 million globally to date.
“Wonder Woman 1984” wasn’t the only big movie that detoured into homes over Christmas. The Walt Disney Co. steered the latest Pixar release, “Soul,” to Disney+. It opened theatrically in some international markets, most notably in China where it earned $5.5 million.
Universal Pictures also released “News of the World,” a Western starring Tom Hanks and directed by Paul Greengrass, only in theaters. The Comcast-owned studio has pursued a different approach during the pandemic, cutting deals with exhibitors to radically shorten the exclusive theatrical window to as little as 17 days, before then moving movies to premium video-on-demand. “News of the World” grossed an estimated $2.4 million domestically
As Monica Harvey watched, crowds flocked to a Sam's Club in northern Arizona where she works, picking shelves clean of toilet paper and canned goods. Native American seniors couldn't move fast enough, and Harvey saw their faces fall when they reached empty shelves.
The Navajo woman wanted to help tribal elders get household staples without leaving their homes and risking exposure to COVID-19, so she started Defend Our Community, a group that delivers supplies.
Tribes across the nation are working to protect elder members who serve as honored links to customs passed from one generation to the next. The efforts to deliver protective gear, meals and vaccines are about more than saving lives. Tribal elders often possess unique knowledge of language and history that is all the more valuable because tribes commonly pass down their traditions orally. That means losing elders to the virus could wipe out irreplaceable pieces of culture.
Harvey remembers her own grandfather explaining the stories behind Navajo songs and teaching her Navajo words from the songs. She often listened to her grandparents speaking Navajo while she practiced the words under her breath.
In Oklahoma, the Cherokee Nation has increased food distributions to elders and offered financial aid to those who were struggling to pay rent or utilities. Concern for elders is also apparent in the tribe's COVID-19 vaccine-distribution plans. Participants and workers in the tribe's elder program are first in line for the shots, along with hospital workers and first responders. Next are those whose first language is Cherokee and others considered “tribal treasures," an honor given to members who keep Cherokee art, language and other culture alive through their work.
The teen is the son of trumpet player Keyon Harrold, who captured the incident of the erratic woman on video; The lost phone was later returned by an Uber driver
On Saturday, a white woman frantically accused a Black teen of stealing her iPhone at a New York City hotel, only to discover moments later that it was left behind in an Uber.
The teen is the son of Grammy-award winning trumpet player Keyon Harrold, who captured the incident of the woman lunging at him and his son on video.
In the video, posted on Harrold’s Instagram page, the unidentified woman is seen urgently telling the hotel manager that the 14-year-old had taken her phone. As the teenager said, “this is my phone,” Harrold intervened, telling him: “You don’t have to explain nothing to her.”
Harrold posted that her iPhone was finally found when an Uber driver came to return the phone to the woman soon after the incident ended.
When Joe Biden is sworn in as president on 20 January, cable news viewers may witness one of the most dramatic 180-degree turns in history.
After four years of slavishly promoting the president, Fox News is expected to pump on the brakes within seconds of the inauguration ceremony.
All of a sudden, the person in the White House is not a Republican. More than that, the network can no longer rely on the willingness of the president or his aides to call into Fox News any time of the day or night.
“Of course we can expect it to be relentlessly negative, but it’s a challenge on some levels, because he’s a 78-year-old white man, fairly moderate history,” said Heather Hendershot, a professor of film and media at MIT who studies conservative and rightwing media.
“In the past they attacked Hillary Clinton very hard not only because she was liberal, but obviously there was some underlying sexism and misogyny there – and obviously the fact that Barack Obama was African American was central to rightwing attacks on him, either implicitly or explicitly, including on Fox News.”
Most of the 74,222,957 Americans who voted to re-elect Donald Trump – 46.8%of the votes cast in the 2020 presidential election – don’t hold Trump accountable for what he’s done to America.
Their acceptance of Trump’s behavior will be his vilest legacy.
Nearly forty years ago, political scientist James Q Wilson and criminologist George Kelling observed that a broken window left unattended in a community signals that no one cares if windows are broken there. The broken window is thereby an invitation to throw more stones and break more windows.
The broken window theory has led to picayune and arbitrary law enforcement in poor communities. But America’s most privileged and powerful have been breaking big windows with impunity.
In 2008, Wall Street nearly destroyed the economy. The Street got bailed out while millions of Americans lost their jobs, savings, and homes. Yet not no major Wall Street executive ever went to jail.
Donald Trump (R-Compromised)'s staunch ally Devin Nunes (R-Moo) has had his defamation lawsuit against The Washington Post thrown out by a judge.
Mr Nunes, a representative for California, sued the newspaper in March after they published a story about a conversation he had with Mr Trump. He claimed that the paper had misinterpreted his conversation.
The article, titled “Senior intelligence official told lawmakers that Russia wants to see Trump re-elected,” claimed that intelligence official Shelby Pierson told members of the House Intelligence Committee that Russia had "developed a preference" for Mr Trump.
On Thursday a Washington DC judge, Amit Mehta, ruled that the newspaper did not act "with 'actual malice,' that is, with 'knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not.'"
A federal judge ruled in June that the congressman could not sue Twitter over parody accounts that post in character as Mr Nunes's cow and mother.
Recently, droves of people have hurled themselves headfirst into the rabbit hole of conspiracy theories. While some of the more outlandish theories make for a fun read, many take them completely seriously, declaring that they see a sinister underbelly to everyday life.
The already booming anti-vax community has latched onto the new vaccines for COVID-19. They make spurious claims that the vaccine has been rushed, contains harmful substances, or can rewrite your genetic code. Despite being debunked by experts, these views still persist. Some conspiracy theorists cite the virus itself as a hoax, with some even claiming that it is caused by 5G – showing a shaky grasp of both biology and physics. These views have real-world consequences, resulting in arson attacks on 5G towers and assaults on workers. Belief in 5G conspiracies has even backfired on believers, with some wasting money on contraptions to block Wi-Fi from their own routers to “protect” themselves.
Somehow, these are not even the most fantastical conspiracy theories out there. Conspiracy theorists claim that the vapor trails behind airplanes are “chemtrails”, containing harmful substances being deliberately sprayed on us for some reason. Proponents of this idea have even mistaken normal airplanes for UFOs checking the chemtrails out. Some people even believe that the Vatican is covering up the existence of giants. So why, in a world already full of chaos, are people so enthusiastic about whipping up more?
Neuroscientist Shannon Odell explains why in this video from Inverse.
“The human brain is wired to see patterns to help us survive,” Odell explains. “Sensing patterns can save your life. Pattern processing became increasingly sophisticated with expansion of the cerebral cortex, particularly the prefrontal cortex and regions involved in image processing.” However, this survival mechanism can end up running wild. “As we evolved, the brain got so good at finding patterns that it sometimes sees a pattern in completely unconnected data.”
Odell goes on to examine why some people are more susceptible to these theories than others, saying that “People who believe in conspiracy theories have brains that are more prone to illusory pattern perception: aka finding connections when there are none.” The culprit behind this could be dopamine. “People with genetically higher levels of free dopamine are more likely to believe in one or more conspiracy theories.” After these beliefs take root, confirmation bias strengthens them.
When Pamela Caddell died of COVID-19 last month, there was no funeral — her family knew that, as a former nurse, she wouldn't want anyone else to be exposed to the disease.
But there was still something her husband, Richard, wanted to say — needed to say — so he sat down in his empty house to write her obituary.
"Pam died of Covid-19," Richard wrote. "It was her fervent wish that everyone take this horrible disease seriously. This was her last wish to all people."
Richard may not have known it, but the obituary for his wife belongs to a growing genre that dates to the summer. At the time, President Trump and his Republican allies were pushing to keep businesses open and downplaying the possibility of a deadly second wave of infections.
Now with a third wave overwhelming hospitals across the country, Americans are increasingly turning their private grief into public calls for action as the COVID-19 death toll grows by thousands each day.
You probably haven't heard of L'Inconnue de la Seine (the Unknown Woman of the Seine) but there's a good chance you've kissed her directly on the mouth, in a manner of speaking.
In the late 1880s, the body of a young woman was discovered drowned in the River Seine in Paris. Nobody knows what happened to her, though at the time it was speculated to be suicide. More importantly, nobody at the time knew who she was either.
Unlike today, when a face might make the papers or be posted on the Internet, in 1881 France, as a way of hopefully getting an identification, officials would often take a corpse and place it in the window of a chilled room for people to gawp at like an item in the window of Trader Joe's.
However, nobody claimed the unknown girl, thought to be about 16 years old. She was placed in a pauper's grave, but not before one last slightly creepy person took something from her that would endure for centuries after death: her face.
It's not known why the pathologist at the mortuary decided to make a death mask of her, though the popular story goes that he was so entranced by her beauty that he couldn't help himself, which is a good indicator that he probably shouldn't have been working in a mortuary.
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