Alicia took the WIFI for an extra $40 a month but skipped the cable, figuring if there was ever anything on TV that she needed to see, she could find it on the internet and watch it on her laptop, and she was right. On the internet she found much more than mere cable could offer. She found companionship and a sense of community that only got deeper the more she never left the room. She had a major glitch, as did everyone in the House of Glitch, where those without glitches need not apply. The internet was Alicia's major glitch. She barely made it to the bathroom, holding it in for as long as she could before putting her online on hold and venturing out of her cozy room into the common hallway to the common bathroom where she might run into someone common with their own major glitch and have to strike up a conversation when really, OMG, she just wanted to pee, she really didn't want to actually talk to someone, not someone with a glitch, not without
spell-check, not without the ability to EDIT before SENDING. Speaking involved communication she couldn't take back so she preferred to not even try. Her only real friends were online.
Ed couldn't remember ever friending Alicia on Facebook but it was obviously a mistake. How could he have been so stupid.
At first, all his friends were his actual friends, people he knew, or people who knew people he knew, with an actual verified degree of separation between Ed and everyone on his friend list. Then strangers started showing up, people asking to be friended but with whom he didn't share a friend. He was a popular writer who decided to let in people who were clearly fans of his work and who didn't seem like serial killers, but it was with trepidation because he didn't actually KNOW them. Who knew how they would behave. Friending them meant letting their comments post to his page. He had suffered the horrors of friending two old friends, exes, who were horrified to find themselves back in contact with each other, but what was he to do when both requested to friend him? He had to say yes, which turned out to be a bad idea. Neither wanted each others comments to show up on the other's pages so they both unfriended Ed, who found himself with two
less Facebook friends. It hurt.
He had crafted his Facebook friend list to include his version of an intellectual elite, the very people he'd like to materialize into a dinner party at the Ritz where he was the host, introducing raconteurs and wits to each other, then sitting back in astonishment at the quality of the repartee.
One day, it happened, a casual comment had somehow turned into a miracle of banter, a dream conversation about a glitch where everyone got the joke and was riffing on it as if it were real, the ultimate back-and-forth repartee Facebook was meant for, and everyone was participating, even famous people on his friend list who never posted anything. He had gathered just the right combination of literates who ALL got the joke and immediately responded with flash and hilarity, like a New Yorker cartoon where a couple of scientists are convulsing with laughter over some formula that takes up the whole blackboard, in on a joke no one else would ever get but them.
Except for Alicia. She didn't get the joke. She thought it was a serious conversation. The ghost of Alicia's dead mother told her to "Go ahead and post, you're swimming with the big boys, you knew what they're talking about, you've got something intelligent to add to the discussion, I mean why not," nagged her mother, "maybe you'll meet someone nice." Alicia responded to Ed's Facebook page as though the conversation were serious and the entire concept being batted back and forth was actually possible instead of completely ridiculous figments of the imaginations of the hand selected group of VERY clever people who were Ed's Facebook friends.
Ed and his friends couldn't believe it. To them, Alicia was a cyber version of Penny, the ditzy next door neighbor of Sheldon and Leonard on The Big Bang Theory, a layman clearly incapable of following their BRILLIANT train of thought. All Ed's Facebook friends could do was make fun of her, and make fun of her they did, reply after reply, hilarious, scathing, wicked, entertaining to everyone but Alicia, who perceived herself as being the butt of all these jokes, not realizing being the butt of a joke can be a good thing if you just play along but she couldn't, she hadn't studied improv, she didn't know the "yes, and" rule, she was in too deep, she couldn't keep up, she had absolutely no idea what they were talking about, she tried to be cute about it, sent an emoticon that clearly represented "aw shucks," but they made fun of the emoticon, piling it on, when suddenly, there it was, in her status. Ed had unfriended her.
After Alicia was found catatonic by one of her glitchy neighbors and removed from the House of Glitch to a state mental institution, the neighbor stole her computer and logged onto her Facebook page, saw the unfriending, and sent Ed a message from his own Facebook page telling him what happened to Alicia. Ed felt so guilty he refriended her. "Unfriending someone is sort of harsh," he said. "I know how she felt, but it was the easiest way to remove her comments from my discussions. Blame Facebook."
JUSTIN LAHART: Secrets of the Economist's Trade: First, Purchase a Piggy Bank (wsj.com)
Academic economists gather in Atlanta this weekend for their annual meetings, always held the first weekend after New Year's Day. That's not only because it coincides with holidays at most universities. A post-holiday lull in business travel also puts hotel rates near the lowest point of the year. Economists are often cheapskates.
ROGER LOWENSTEIN: Walk Away From Your Mortgage! (nytimes.com)
Mortgage holders do sign a promissory note, which is a promise to pay. But the contract explicitly details the penalty for nonpayment - surrender of the property. The borrower isn't escaping the consequences; he is suffering them.
ARA PARKER-POPE: The 11 Best Foods You Aren't Eating (nytimes.com)
I asked Dr. Bowden, author of "The 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth," to update his list with some favorite foods that are easy to find but don't always find their way into our shopping carts. Here's his advice....
Dolphins have been declared the world's second most intelligent creatures after humans, with scientists suggesting they are so bright that they should be treated as "non-human persons"... The researchers argue that their work shows it is morally unacceptable to keep such intelligent animals in amusement parks or to kill them for food or by accident when fishing...
zEN mAN (observing 58 year old Irish Parliament member Iris Robinson...wife of Northern Ireland's government leader, caught fucking a 19 year old boy...too bad she came out against gays as being against christianity...WWJD)
Marian the teacher was first, and correct, with:
November 3, 1956
Alan J answered:
November 3, 1956
mj replied:
Sifting through defunct brain cells
I'm going with 1955. I'm pretty sure it was between 54 and 56, so I split the difference.
Jim from CA, retired to ID, wrote:
1959.....and just showed it to my 7 year old grandson for the first time....
Charlie responded:
November 3, 1956. I probably saw it that time, but I can't remember for sure.
Sally said:
"The Wizard of Oz" was first shown on US television in the late fall of 1956. I remember it well because it was the same year that I graduated from high school. I attended a daily boarding school, but that year I spent many weekends there (other years I only stayed over on the weekdays) in preparation for the difficult final scores that were needed for graduation.
I also remember that on the night the movie aired (in B&W on a 10" screen) the young novice chaperone (whom may have been younger than the graduate students since they went into the convent at age 14 back then) was more excited than were we, and we had a wondrous night watching that spectacular movie a way back then. Those were the days...
MAM wrote:
'The Wizard of Oz' was first shown on US television on November 3, 1956, a Saturday night, as the last of the Ford Star Jubilee. It was shown in color, although most people did not have color TV sets at the time and watched it in black and white. And I remember doing just that. It lost some of its magic without the color after Dorothy's house comes down in Oz. But at the time, it was a big event. There was an introduction, live, I think, with Bert Lahr reading from the book, with Judy Garland's daughters. Liza Minelli and Lorna Luft, as well as a boy, perched on his lap.
And for Sal, I haven't had many squirrels this winter. My cousin says it is because they have all gone to Florida, and sent this picture of one from her yard.
And, Joe S said:
The film was first shown on television November 3, 1956 on CBS, as the last installment of the Ford Star Jubilee. It was shown in color (posters still exist advertising the broadcast and they specifically say in color and black-and-white), but because most television sets then were not color sets, few members of the TV audience saw it that way.
At one hundred and fifty meters in height the Monument to African Renaissance looms over the Senegalese capital of Dakar like a giant, loomy thing. It was billed as a celebration of the continent's renaissance but has become something of a scandal in the economically distressed African republic.
Let's face it - there are some words that by misuse or overuse should simply be banned outright from civilized society - the one which begins this article notwithstanding. Without getting too Orwellian on you and with tongue (if nothing else) firmly in the cheek, here are a list of words that should really go the way of the dinosaur. Now.
CBS starts the night with '60 Minutes', followed by a RERUN'NCIS: The 2nd One', then a FRESH'Cold Case', followed by a RERUN'Criminal Minds'.
NBC opens the night with a 2-hour 'Dateline', followed by a FRESH'Chuck', then another FRESH'Chuck'.
ABC begins the night with a FRESH'America's So-Called Funniest Home Videos', followed by a FRESH'Extreme Makeover: Home Edition', then a FRESH'Desperate Housewives', followed by a FRESH'Brothers & Sisters'.
The CW fills the night with the movie 'The Terminator'.
Faux has a RERUN'Cleveland Show', followed by another RERUN'Cleveland Show', then a FRESH'Simpsons' (the 450th show), followed by the FRESH'The Simpsons 20th Anniversary Documentary Special: In 3D! On Ice!', then a FRESH'Cleveland Show'.
MY recycles an old 'House', followed by another old 'House'.
A&E has 'CSI: The 2nd One', 'Criminal Minds', another 'Criminal Minds', followed by a FRESH'The Jacksons: A Family Dynasty'.
AMC offers the movie 'The Fugitive', followed by the movie 'Spy Game', then the movie 'Spy Game', again.
BBC -
[12:00 PM] Last Restaurant Standing - Episode 1
[1:00 PM] Top Gear - Episode 9
[2:00 PM] Top Gear - Episode 8
[5:00 PM] Doctor Who: The End of Time
[8:00 PM] Psycho
[10:30 PM] Psycho
[1:00 AM] Psycho
[3:30 AM] Demons - Episode 2
[4:30 AM] How Clean Is Your House? - Episode 1
[5:00 AM] BBC World News
[6:00 AM] BBC World News (ALL TIMES EST)
Bravo has all 'Law & Order: Criminal Intent' all night.
Comedy Central has the movie'Scary Movie 2', 'Kevin Hart: I'm A Grown Little Man', 'Chris Rock: Kill The Messenger', and 'Chris Rock: Kill The Messenger', again.
FX has the movie 'Man On Fire', followed by the movie 'Live Free Or Die Hard'.
History has 'Ax Men', 'Pawn Stars', another 'Pawn Stars', followed by a FRESH'Ax Men', then a FRESH'The Madhouse'.
IFC -
[7:15 AM] Stay
[9:00 AM] Death of a Cyclist
[10:30 AM] Separate Lies
[12:00 PM] The IT Crowd
[12:30 PM] The IT Crowd
[1:00 PM] The IT Crowd
[1:30 PM] The IT Crowd
[2:00 PM] The IT Crowd
[2:30 PM] Stay
[4:15 PM] Separate Lies
[5:50 PM] Monty Python's Flying Circus
[6:25 PM] The Full Monty
[8:00 PM] Annie Hall
[9:35 PM] Dinner With the Band
[10:00 PM] Arrested Development
[10:30 PM] Arrested Development
[11:00 PM] Platoon
[1:00 AM] The Full Monty
[2:35 AM] Trout
[2:50 AM] Annie Hall
[4:30 AM] Separate Lies (ALL TIMES EST)
Sundance -
[05:30 AM] Fierce People
[07:30 AM] Day Night Day Night
[09:15 AM] At Night
[10:00 AM] Is Your House Killing You?: Is Your House Killing You?: Episode 3
[10:30 AM] Eco Documentaries - Season 2: Garbage Warrior
[12:00 PM] Gay Muslims
[01:00 PM] Iconoclasts - Season 1: Iconoclasts: Season 1 - Tom Ford on Jeff Koons
[02:00 PM] Man Shops Globe: Man Shops Globe: Season 1, Episode 6 - UK
[02:30 PM] Marvelous
[04:05 PM] Pol Pot's Birthday
[04:15 PM] Gay Muslims
[05:15 PM] Bob Le Flambeur
[07:00 PM] Spectacle: Elvis Costello With... Elvis Costello
[08:00 PM] Wristcutters: A Love Story
[09:30 PM] Advantage
[09:45 PM] Next Floor
[10:00 PM] A Prairie Home Companion
[12:00 AM] Intacto
[02:00 AM] Cavite
[03:30 AM] Wristcutters: A Love Story
[05:00 AM] A Prairie Home Companion (ALL TIMES EST)
SyFy has the movie'Serenity', followed by the movie 'Battlestar Galactica: The Plan', then the movie 'Battlestar Galactica: The Plan', again.
Comedian Paul Provenza, right, speaks and actress Sandra Bernhard looks on at a presentation for the new show 'The Green Room With Paul Provenza' at the CBS Showtime CW Winter Press Tour in Pasadena, Calif. on Saturday, Jan. 9, 2010.
Photo by Dan Steinberg
Around 150 people gathered outside British Prime Minister Gordon Brown's Downing Street office in London on Saturday, drumming loudly and calling for peace in Sudan.
The group, waving placards with messages such as "Protect The Civilians In Darfur" and "UK Don't Forget Sudan", was campaigning as part of Sudan 365, organised by groups including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.
The initiative brings together drummers from some of the biggest bands in pop music, including Phil Selway of Radiohead and Pink Floyd's Nick Mason, in a bid to create a "beat for peace" in Sudan.
Many of those involved in Saturday's noisy protest were beating empty plastic water containers and chanting pro-peace slogans.
Actress Ashley Judd kisses the Kentucky mascot as she is carried during a time out in the second half of Kentucky's 76-68 win over Georgia in an NCAA college basketball game at Rupp Arena in Lexington, Ky., on Saturday, Jan. 9, 2010.
Photo by James Crisp
Could 2010 be the last year the Primetime Emmy Awards are aired on broadcast TV?
The newly re-elected head of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, the group that organizes TV's highest honors, certainly hopes not.
Still, John Shaffner faces a tough challenge preventing the low-rated event from slipping into oblivion.
The Primetime Emmy Awards are in their final year under the current deal with the Big Four broadcast networks. The license fee for the Emmys is a key source of financing for the TV academy and its programs, but with broadcast ratings downtrending, convincing the networks to shell out a large sum for the Emmys may prove a tough sell.
US fans of the show 'Lost' can breathe a sigh of relief Friday after the White House pledged a key speech by President Barack Obama won't displace the premiere episode of the show's final season.
"I don't foresee a scenario in which the millions of people that hope to finally get some conclusion in "Lost" are preempted by the president," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs reassured the viewing public at a White House press briefing.
US television station ABC has set aside a three-hour block on the evening of February 2 to show the first episode of the wildly popular show's last season.
But fans feared that President Barack Obama might choose to give his first State of the Union address, which is traditionally delivered on the last Tuesday of January, on the same day.
Chuck Lorre, executive producer/co-creator of "Two and a Half Men" and "The Big Bang Theory", participates in the CBS Comedy Showrunner Q&A during the CBS, Showtime and The CW schedule at the Television Critics Association winter press tour in Pasadena, California January 9, 2010.
Photo by Phil McCarten
Actress Angelina Jolie, the former face of U.S. luxury knitwear maker St. John, "overshadowed the brand", the label's chief told an industry publication on Friday as the company unveiled its new look.
St.John this week launched a new spring 2010 print advertising campaign starring British model Karen Elson, 30, a redhead who is married to White Stripes singer Jack White.
Jolie's departure had been announced in June 2008.
St. John chief executive Glenn McMahon told Women's Wear Daily she "overshadowed the brand. We wanted to make a clean break from actresses and steer away from blondes and cleanse the palette."
A former UCLA School of Medicine researcher pleaded guilty to reading confidential medical records of celebrities, high-profile patients and his co-workers in federal court on Friday.
Los Angeles resident Huping Zhou, 38, entered a conditional guilty plea to four counts of violating federal medical privacy laws in a hearing before U.S. Magistrate Judge Andrew J. Wistrich.
Zhou, who was dismissed from UCLA for job performance issues on Nov. 14, 2003, wrongly viewed UCLA patient records 323 times between Oct. 29 and Nov. 19 that year, said Thom Mrozek, spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office.
Most of the records breaches involved well-recognized celebrities, Mrozek said. To protect their privacy, patients were not named in the plea agreement but identified by the initials M.D. (aka M.K.); J.F. (aka D.S) and D.C.
This image provided by Heritage Auctions shows a rare 1913-dated U.S. Liberty Head nickel that was prominently featured in a 1973 episode of the TV series, 'Hawaii Five-O,' was purchased for $3,737,500 in a public auction conducted in Orlando, Florida by Heritage Auctions Thursday night, Jan. 7, 2010. Only five such coins are known of that specific date and design.
About 300 inmates have been transferred out of a prison in the Gulf coast state of Veracruz to make room for a film that Mel Gibson reportedly plans to make there.
Ignacio Allende prison director Gerardo Duran says the inmates were being bused to at least four other jails.
About 1,200 prisoners remain at the facility in the city of Veracruz.
About 60 inmates' relatives protested Saturday's transfer, saying they will have to travel farther to pay visits. They scuffled briefly with police.
Bookmaker Ladbrokes is refusing to pay out more than 7 million pounds ($11 million) to a man who gambled on a white Christmas across the UK, as the bet was accepted by mistake.
Cliff Bryant, 52, had placed two 5-pound accumulator bets that snow would fall on 24 towns and cities across the north of England on Christmas Day.
"We have apologized to the customer for any confusion and for mistakenly accepting an accumulator bet when our own rules state that only single bets are available on a market of this nature," said a Ladbrokes spokesman.
"We are happy to void the bets and to pay the customer his winnings on the relevant singles."
They however amount to just 31.78 pounds, rather than the 7.1 million Bryant was expecting.
A model wears a design from the Printing collection at the Fashion Rio Fall Winter 2010 event in Rio de Janeiro, Saturday, Jan. 9, 2010.
Photo by Felipe Dana
Dieters can't believe everything they read: The food at many popular chain restaurants and in the freezer section of the supermarket may contain a lot more calories than advertised.
A study of 10 chain restaurants, including Wendy's and Ruby Tuesday, found that the number of calories in 29 meals or other menu items was an average of 18 percent higher than listed.
And frozen supermarket meals from Lean Cuisine, Weight Watchers, Healthy Choice and South Beach Living had 8 percent more calories than the labels said, according to the study, published in this month's Journal of the American Dietetic Association.
The researchers and other experts aren't accusing restaurants and food companies of trying to deceive customers. They said most of the discrepancies can be explained by variations in ingredients, portion sizes and testing methods. For example, the teenager behind the counter might have put too much mayonnaise on one sandwich.
Blue-skinned aliens are helping Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. see green.
The runaway global success of James Cameron's 3-D spectacle, "Avatar" - his first feature film since the record-breaking "Titanic" in 1997 - has prompted analysts to lift earnings estimates for News Corp., the owner of movie studio 20th Century Fox.
It's fairly rare that a media conglomerate's bottom line is affected by a single movie, but with more than $1.1 billion at box offices worldwide, partly boosted by higher 3-D ticket prices, "Avatar" has the potential to be the biggest of all time.
As a result, investors are now more focused on the fact that the movie didn't bomb than on how much profit it will make. News Corp.'s stock started climbing since positive reviews came out of sneak peak showings Dec. 10, and it's now up about 12 percent since then.
Art Clokey, the creator of the iconic cartoonish clay figure Gumby, died in his sleep on Friday at his home in Los Osos, California, at age 88, after battling repeated bladder infections, his son said.
Clokey, 88, invented the whimsical green clay character Gumby in the early 1950s that debuted on the "The Howdy Doody Show" and went on to become the star of his own successful television show, "The Adventures of Gumby."
Bendable creation Gumby and Pokey, his horse friend, became popular figures in the 1960s, and still remain favorites among many kids, adults and collectors around the world.
Clokey was born Arthur Farrington in Detroit in October 1921 and grew up making mud figures on his grandparents' Michigan farm, the Los Angeles Times said, citing his son Joseph. "He always had this in him," Joseph told the Times.
Gumby was the outcome of an 1953 experimental clay animation film by Clokey called "Gumbasia." Clokey also created and produced the Christian TV series "Davey and Goliath" in the 1960s.
Clokey has said he based Gumby's sloping head and hair on a picture of his father, who died in a car accident when the filmmaker was 8 years old.
Clokey was later adopted by music teacher and composer Joseph W. Clokey, who taught him the arts and took his new son on adventures in Mexico and Canada.
Joseph Clokey told the Times that those journeys and Clokey's love of fossil hunting helped inspire Gumby's own adventures.
The lovable character saw renewed popularity in the 1980s after comedian Eddie Murphy mimicked Gumby as a gruff cigar-smoking character for "Saturday Night Live."
You have reached the Home page of BartCop Entertainment.
Make yourself home, take your shoes off...
Go ahead, scratch it if it itches.
The idea is to have fun.
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?
Just plain vile, filthy rumors?
This is your place.
wrote:
