• When gay author Michael Thomas Ford was invited to his high school reunion, he thought about how miserable his classmates had made him feel as the class queer, and he wrote back, “Michael Thomas Ford is very proud to announce that he is still queer, despite the best attempts of his schoolmates to convince him that it is an unacceptable lifestyle. He would also like to take this opportunity to tell everyone he went to school with that he is happier, more successful, and a great deal more attractive than they are.”
• Author Dory Previn used to drive around at night and look at houses with brightly lit windows. She always told herself about anyone who lived in one of these houses, “That person has found the secret to happiness.” One day, she got lost and she saw a house with a brightly lit window. Again, she told herself about the resident, “That person has found the secret to happiness.” When she got closer, she recognized the house — she lived in it.
Husbands and Wives
• C.S. Lewis’ wife, Joy, could be very plain spoken. For example, at an Oxford faculty lunch, Joy did not know where the ladies room was, so she asked, “Is there anywhere in this monastic establishment where a lady can relieve herself?” Another example: She died of cancer, and she once said that she had “so many cancers at work that I expect them to start organizing a union.” Her husband knew that he also had not much longer to live, and he asked her to meet him — if it were allowed — when he died. She replied, “Allowed? Heaven would have a job to hold me; and as for Hell, I’d break it into bits.” Before she died, she spoke comfortingly to her husband with her last words: “I am at peace with God. You have made me happy.”
• This anecdote is touching rather than funny. At one time, Brazilian novelist Paulo Coelho and his second wife were kidnapped and tortured. Once, he was in a bathroom at the torture building, and his wife, who was in the cubicle next to his and whom he could hear but not see, said, “If you’re Paulo, speak to me, please.” However, he was too terrified to speak. Today, Mr. Coelho tearfully says, “It was the most cowardly day of my life, which I’ll regret as long as I live.” When they got out of the torture building, his wife requested that he never again say her name. Today, when Mr. Coelho speaks of her, he calls her “my wife who shall be nameless.”
• Being the wife of someone famous can be difficult. Mr. and Mrs. John Steinbeck were at a party when movie actress Zsa Zsa Gabor swept in, recognized the famous author, came over to him, and said, “You are the one man I have wanted to meet for oh, so long!” She then proceeded to talk to Mr. Steinbeck and to ignore Mrs. Steinbeck. Finally, no longer able to stand it, Mrs. Steinbeck inserted herself into the space between Ms. Gabor and her husband, and she said, “I am Mrs. Steinbeck.” Ms. Gabor thereafter focused her attention on someone other than Mrs. Steinbeck’s husband.
• Novelist Walter Tevis (author of The Hustler, The Color of Money, and The Man Who Fell to Earth) occasionally fooled around with oil paints. One night, he created a painting on the kitchen wall of Mount Rushmore — but the faces on the mountain were of himself, his wife, and their two children. His wife told him, “This painting has got to go” — and she made him paint over it.
• H.L. Mencken once told a group of friends at a party, “When I was a youngster in Baltimore, the girls in the sporting houses used to call me Professor.” His host’s wife, Betty Compson, looked at him closely, then joked, “I thought your face was familiar.”
Four Thieves Vinegar (also called thieves’ oil, Marseilles vinegar, Marseilles remedy, and acetum quator furum) is a concoction of vinegar infused with herbs, spices or garlic that was believed to protect users from what misfortune?
Mr. Potato Head is an American toy consisting of a plastic model of a potato which can be decorated with a variety of plastic parts that can attach to the main body. These parts usually include ears, eyes, shoes, a hat, a nose, pants and a mouth. The toy was invented and developed by George Lerner in 1949 and first manufactured and distributed by Hasbro in 1952. Mr. Potato Head was the first toy advertised on television and has remained in production since its debut. The toy was originally produced as separate plastic parts with pushpins that could be stuck into a real potato or other vegetable. However, due to complaints regarding rotting vegetables and new government safety regulations, Hasbro began including a plastic potato body within the toy set in 1964.
Over the years, the original toy was joined by Mrs. Potato Head and supplemented with accessories such as a car and a boat trailer. The Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head characters appeared in the Toy Story franchise, voiced by Don Rickles and Estelle Harris. Additionally, in 1998, The Mr. Potato Head Show aired but was short-lived, with only one season being produced. As one of the prominent marks of Hasbro, a Mr. Potato Head balloon has also joined others in the annual Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Today, Mr. Potato Head can still be seen adorning hats, shirts, and ties. Toy Story Midway Mania!, in Disney California Adventure at the Disneyland Resort, also features a large talking Mr. Potato Head.
On April 30, 1952, Mr. Potato Head became the first toy advertised on television. The campaign was also the first to be aimed directly at children; before this, commercials were only targeted at adults, so toy advertisements had always been pitched to parents. This commercial revolutionized marketing, and caused an industrial boom. Over one million kits were sold in the first year. In 1953, Mrs. Potato Head was added, and soon after, Brother Spud and Sister Yam completed the Potato Head family with accessories reflecting the affluence of the 1950s that included a car, a boat trailer, a kitchen set, a stroller, and pets called Spud-ettes. Although originally produced as separate plastic parts to be stuck into a real potato or other vegetable, a plastic potato was added to the kit in 1964.
Source
Mark. was first, and correct, with:
Mr. Potato Head.
Alan J answered:
Mr. Potato Head.
Randall wrote:
Mr. Potato Head
Cal in Vermont said:
Mr. Potato Head.
Billy in Cypress replied:
Mr. Potato Head
Jim from CA, retired to ID, responded:
On April 30, 1952, Mr. Potato Head made history as the first toy advertised on television.
Deborah, the Master Gardener wrote:
A quick search indicates that Mr. Potato Head was the first toy advertised on U.S. tv. I was too young to know any better.
Dave said:
After placing the envelope to my head, I have divined the answer is “Mr. Potato Head.”
Adam answered:
Mr. Potatohead- back when you used real potatoes.
zorch responded:
Mister Potato Head.
Jacqueline replied:
Mr. Potato Head was the first toy advertised on tv. The date was April 30th 1952.
DJ Useo said:
I don't know the correct answer, but my guess is the "Slinky".
Joe ( -- Vote Blue, No Matter Who -- ) wrote:
I had no idea, no idea. I looked it up, it was Mr. Potato Head. I had one.
Mac Mac took the day off.
John I from Hawai`i took the day off.
Rosemary in Columbus took the day off.
Barbara, of Peppy Tech fame took the day off.
Daniel in The City took the day off.
mj took the day off.
Stephen F took the day off.
Dave in Tucson took the day off.
David of Moon Valley took the day off.
Leo in Boise took the day off.
Kevin in Washington DC, took the day off.
Michelle in AZ took the day off.
Jon L took the day off.
Roy, Lifelong member of Antifa, in Tyler, TX took the day off.
Doug in Albuquerque, New Mexico, took the day off.
-pgw took the day off.
Kenn B took the day off.
Micki took the day off.
Ed K took the day off.
Angelo D took the day off.
Harry M. took the day off.
George M. took the day off.
Gary K 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.
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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: “Duke’s Jetty” b?ound with “Zou Bisou Bisou”
Artist: Go Mod Go!
Record Company: Fandango Records
Record Company Location: Washington, D.C.
Info: “Go Mod Go! is a project of Jake Starr (Adam West, Jake Starr and The Delicious Fullness) and Tom Barrick (Adam West) featuring a 10-piece powerhouse band with horns, keyboards, and a dynamic woman vocalist. After the band recorded their debut album Alright!, they went into the studio to record a few new songs with original vocalist Jamie Boyd. Jamie soon left the band and was replaced by superstar vocalist Mundy, and the band started recording their upcoming second album. These two songs are the final recordings with Jamie and showcase the 60s garage side (‘Duke’s Jetty’) and the sultry French Yé-Yé side (‘Zou Bisou Bisou’) of the band. […] this is the perfect bridge between Go Mod Go! albums. Kiss kiss!”
Price: $2 (USA) for two-track single. Tracks cannot be purchases separately.
The shittens aren't pleased with the cooler weather.
Tonight, Sunday:
CBS starts the night, as usual, with '60 Minutes', followed by a FRESH'NCIS: The Expendable One', then a FRESH'NCIS: The 3rd One', followed by a RERUN'NCIS'.
NBC fills the night with LIVE'Sunday Night Football', then pads the left coast with local crap and maybe an old 'Dateline'.
ABC begins the night with a FRESH'America's So-Called Funniest Home Videos', followed by a FRESH'2020 American Music Awards'.
The CW offers a FRESH'Pandora', followed by a FRESH'The Outpost'.
Faux has a FRESH'The Simpsons', followed by a FRESH'Bless The Harts', then a FRESH'Bob's Burgers', followed by a FRESH'Family Guy'.
MY recycles an old 'Big Bang Theory', followed by another old 'Big Bang Theory', then still another old 'Big Bang Theory', followed by yet another old 'Big Bang Theory'.
A&E has the movie 'The Bourne Ultimatum', followed by the movei 'Jack Reacher: Never Go Back', then the movie 'The Magnificent Seven'.
AMC offers the movie 'John Wick', 'Fear The Walking Dead', followed by a FRESH'Fear The Walking Dead', then a FRESH'The Walking Dead: World Beyond', followed by a FRESH'Talking Dead'.
BBC -
[6:00AM] HIDDEN HABITATS - GALAPAGOS
[6:30AM - 8:30AM] WEIRD WONDERS
[9:30AM] BRAM STOKER'S DRACULA
[12:00PM] THE SHINING
[3:30PM] THE CONJURING
[6:00PM] THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS
[8:30PM] HANNIBAL
[11:30PM] THE CONJURING
[2:00AM] THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS
[4:30AM] DOCTOR WHO - DEEP BREATH (ALL TIMES ET)
Bravo has 'Real Housewives Of Potomac', followed by a FRESH'Real Housewives Of Potomac', then another FRESH'Real Housewives Of Potomac', followed by a FRESH'Watch What Happens: Live'.
Comedy Central has the movie 'Step Brothers', followed by the movie 'Grown Ups 2'.
FX has the movie 'Pitch Perfect 3', followed by the movie 'Night School', followed by a FRESH'Fargo'.
IFC -
[6:00am - 10:00am] Saved By The Bell
[10:30am] White House Down
[1:30pm] Transporter 2
[3:30pm] Bad Boys II
[6:30pm] Bad Boys
[9:00pm] Hancock
[11:00pm] Bad Boys
[1:30am] Bad Boys II
[4:30am] Sherman's Showcase - Black History Month Spectacular
[5:30am] The Three Stooges - If A Body Meets A Body (ALL TIMES ET)
Sundance -
[6:30am] monk - Mr. Monk And The Paperboy
[7:30am] monk - Mr. Monk And The Three Pies
[8:30am] monk - Mr. Monk And The TV Star
[9:30am] monk - Mr. Monk And The Missing Granny
[10:30am] the patriot
[2:00pm] heartbreak ridge
[5:00pm] the hunt for red october
[8:00pm] 2012
[11:30pm] deep impact
[2:00am] contact
[5:30am] hogan's heroes (ALL TIMES ET)
SyFy has the movie 'Harry Potter & The Goblet Of Fire', followed by the movie 'Harry Potter & The Order Of The Phoenix'.
A long-lost trove of Bob Dylan documents, including the singer-songwriter's musings about anti-Semitism and unpublished song lyrics, has sold at auction for $495,000.
Boston-based R.R. Auction said Friday the collection privately held by the late American blues artist Tony Glover, a longtime Dylan friend and confidante, was sold Thursday to a bidder whose identity was not made public.
The collection included transcripts of Glover's 1971 interviews with Dylan and letters the pair exchanged. The interviews reveal that Dylan had anti-Semitism on his mind when he changed his name from Robert Zimmerman, and that he wrote “Lay Lady Lay” for Barbra Streisand.
Dylan, 79, was close with Glover, who died last year. The two men broke into music in the same Minneapolis coffeehouse scene. Glover’s widow, Cynthia Nadler, put the documents up for auction online.
A federal judge has ruled against the head of the agency that runs the Voice of America and other U.S.-funded news outlets who was accused of trying to turn it into a propaganda vehicle to promote President Donald Trump (Grifter)’s agenda.
The ruling effectively bars U.S. Agency for Global Media CEO Michael Pack from making personnel decisions and interfering in editorial operations.
Pack, a conservative filmmaker, Trump ally and onetime associate of former Trump political adviser Steve Bannon, made no secret of his intent to shake up the agency after taking over in June.
He proceeded to purge the leadership at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia, Middle East Broadcasting Networks and the Open Technology Fund, which works to provide secure internet access to people around the world. The director and deputy director of VOA resigned just days before the firings. Pack also dismissed their governing boards.
His moves were criticized by both Democrats and Republicans in Congress who control the agency’s budget.
Jason Momoa was a real-life superhero on Wednesday when he FaceTimed a young fan. Seven-year-old Danny Sheehan had gone viral earlier in the week for his overjoyed response at receiving an "Aquaman" action figure as a present.
"I'm so excited," Sheehan can be heard saying during his video chat with Momoa, which the actor shared clips of on social media.
Sheehan, like other kids his age, enjoys superhero movies and "Aquaman" is his favorite. Sheehan's mom, Natalie Shaw Sheehan, shared the video of her son reacting to his gift on Sunday. It quickly went viral thanks to the boy's sweet, ecstatic response.
Momoa, who starred as Aquaman in the live-action 2018 movie about the underwater king of Atlantis, saw the sweet reaction video and decided to surprise his young superfan
Sheehan was diagnosed with pineoblastoma, a rare form of brain cancer, in early 2017 when he was 4 years old. According to the Mayo Clinic, this type of cancer affects the part of your brain that produces melatonin, the hormone that balances your sleep cycle, and affects younger children more than it does adults.
Skeletal remains of what are believed to have been a rich man and his male slave attempting to escape death from the eruption of Mount Vesuvius nearly 2,000 years ago have been discovered in Pompeii, officials at the archaeological park in Italy said Saturday.
Parts of the skulls and bones of the two men were found during excavation of the ruins from what was once an elegant villa with a panoramic view of the Mediterranean Sea on the outskirts of the ancient Roman city destroyed by the volcano eruption in 79 A.D. It’s the same area where a stable with the remains of three harnessed horses were excavated in 2017.
Pompeii officials said the men apparently escaped the initial fall of ash from Mount Vesuvius then succumbed to a powerful volcanic blast that took place the next morning. The later blast “apparently invaded the area from many points, surrounding and burying the victims in ash,” Pompeii officials said in a statement.
The remains of the two victims, lying next to each other on their backs, were found in a layer of gray ash at least 2 meters (6.5 feet) deep, they said.
Both skeletons were found in a side room along an underground corridor, or passageway, known in ancient Roman times as a cryptoporticus, which led to to the upper level of the villa.
Greenland is the largest island in the world and on it rests the largest ice mass in the Northern Hemisphere. If all that ice melted, the sea would rise by more than 7 metres.
But that's not going to happen, is it? Well, not any time soon, but understanding how much of the ice sheet might melt over the coming century is a critical and urgent question that scientists are trying to tackle using sophisticated numerical models of how the ice sheet interacts with the rest of the climate system.
The problem is that the models aren't that good at reproducing recent observations and are limited by our poor knowledge of the detailed topography of the subglacial terrain and fjords, which the ice flows over and in to.
One way around this problem is to see how the ice sheet responded to changes in climate in the past and compare that with model projections for the future for similar changes in temperature. That is exactly what colleagues and I did in a new study now published in the journal Nature Communications.
An American jailed in 1985 for spying for Israel was released from strict parole conditions Friday, allowing his move to Israel, the US Justice Department said.
Jonathan Pollard served 30 years for giving away classified US documents and had been confined by parole terms to the United States since his release in 2015, despite Israeli pressure to allow him to leave.
"After a review of Mr. Pollard's case, the US Parole Commission has found that there is no evidence to conclude that he is likely to violate the law," the Justice Department said.
Pollard, 66, was a US Navy intelligence analyst in the mid-1980s when he made contact with and Israeli colonel in New York and began sending US secrets to Israel in exchange for tens of thousands of dollars.
He had passed thousands of crucial US documents to Israel, straining relations between the two close allies.
After serving more than three decades in prison for nonviolent cannabis offenses, a 71-year-old man is hoping to spend Christmas this year with his family.
Richard DeLisi, who was sentenced in 1989 to 90 years in prison for conspiring to traffic more than 100 pounds of cannabis into the U.S. from Jamaica, could be released as early as Dec. 4 amid failing health and the worsening coronavirus pandemic, according to the Florida Department of Corrections.
He is described as the "longest-serving cannabis offender in the country" by the Last Prisoner Project, a nonprofit organization working towards criminal justice reform for marijuana-related crimes. Lawyers from the Last Prisoner Project have been working pro bono to help secure DeLisi’s release from South Bay Correctional Facility in Palm Beach County, where hundreds of inmates have tested positive for the coronavirus since March.
“It has been a lifetime of heartache and loss,” said DeLisi’s son, Rick DeLisi. “We look forward to making the memories that a family should be able to make. I can’t wait to know my father is a free man.”
Rick DeLisi was just 11 years old when his dad was sentenced to spend what amounted to the rest of his life behind bars. Relatives were initially hesitant to share the news with him, instead waiting several weeks before explaining why Richard DeLisi was unable to return his son’s phone calls.
Voters in communities across the country approved measures on Election Day toughening civilian oversight of law enforcement agencies, including some that took years to reach the ballot but grew in urgency after global protests over racial injustice and police brutality.
The measures take aim at a chronic sore point in many communities, particularly among Black residents: that police departments traditionally have little oversight outside their own internal review systems, which often clear officers of wrongdoing in fatal civilian shootings.
“Recent events opened up people’s eyes more to how much this type of oversight is needed,” said Monica Steppe, a San Diego councilwoman who championed a successful proposal predating the protests that will dissolve the city's current police review board and replace it with a more independent body with investigative powers.
In San Jose, California, voters approved an expansion of an independent police auditor’s powers, including the ability to undertake investigations even without a citizen’s complaint.
In Seattle, voters gave the King County Council the ability to specify the sheriff’s public safety powers. The goal was providing an alternative to some policing practices, such as expanding the use of social workers to respond to emergency calls of people in crisis. The referendum grew directly out of the reckoning that followed Floyd’s death, said Councilmember Girmay Zahilay.
When Rhonda Grayson was growing up in Oklahoma, summer visits to her grandparents' house in Wewoka meant time spent in the kitchen with her grandmother. Together they cooked peach cobbler and traditional Native foods like wild onions, poke salad and hominy, the corn used to make grits.
Cooking was just one way Grayson learned about the rich history and culture of the generations of Black Native Americans who came before her.
"I was always keenly aware of my African ancestry," said Grayson, 51. Part of her lineage was Native, too. "I always knew that we were Creek."'
One of those Black Creek ancestors was Grayson's great-grandmother America Cohee.
Cohee was an original enrollee in the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. For generations, Black Creeks like Cohee had been a part of the tribe, until one day they weren't.
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replied:
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
