Garrison Keillor: An elaboration on the sufficiency of the muffin
There was a cranky grandma in front of the supermarket on Friday, yelling at a baby in a stroller, "Don't ask for another muffin when you have one in your hand! Eat that one before you ask for more!" and telling a little boy beside her, "Stop walking back and forth like that. Stand still, for God's sake. And stop your whining." The poor kid was a little restless and Grandma was at the end of her rope. He started to cry. "Shut up," she said.
Andrew Tobias: Better Than Recycling
I have a July 4th party with a lot of red Solo cups. I don't recycle them; I rinse and reuse all summer, and the next. No one has died yet. Don't recycle: reuse. Fresh Direct used to deliver groceries in nine million recyclable cardboard boxes a year. Last year they switched to these reusable bags. Don't recycle: reuse. (Better still, of course: don't use at all. I.e.: Don't buy what you don't need.)
This young lad was featured in a TV commercial holding a fishing rod and a sandwich while singing that his bologna had a first name. What is the bologna's name?
First recorded in French by Greek singer Vicky Leandros, she also performed it in German (as "Blau wie das Meer") and Dutch ("Liefde is zacht"). An instrumental version of this song by a Frech orchestra became the only number-one hit by a French lead artist to top the Billboard Hot 100 in America. What is the song's title in English?
"L'amour est bleu" (English title: "Love Is Blue") is a song whose music was composed by André Popp, and whose lyrics were written by Pierre Cour, in 1967. Bryan Blackburn later wrote English-language lyrics for it. First performed in French by Greek singer Vicky Leandros (appearing as Vicky) as the Luxembourgish entry in the Eurovision Song Contest 1967, it has since been recorded by many other musicians, most notably French orchestra leader Paul Mauriat, whose familiar instrumental version (recorded in late 1967) became the only number-one hit by a French lead artist to top the Billboard Hot 100 in America.
Greek-born Leandros recorded the song both in French and English, and had a modest hit in Europe with it, but in Japan and Canada she had a big hit with this song. She also recorded it in German (as "Blau wie das Meer"), Italian ("L'amore č blu") and Dutch ("Liefde is zacht") .
Source
Dave wrote:
Love is Blue. Composed by André Popp, the song was recorded by Le Grand Orchestre de Paul Mauriat and released in the United States by the Philips label in January 1968. "Love is Blue" had a 5 week run at the #1 spot during February and March, which is the longest #1 run for any instrumental song in Billboard chart history. "Love is Blue" was the #2 Billboard song of 1968, trailing only the Beatles' monster single "Hey Jude," (with "Revolution" on the B side) which topped the charts for a record tying 9 week run.
Cal in Vermont said:
Paul Mauriat's "Love is Blue". Didn't have to be look it up or nothing. As the French would say, sans Google. Check Google for how French persons say blue. I think it is funny. YMMV.
zorch responded:
Love is Blue recorded by Paul Mariat.
Kevin K. in Washington, DC, replied:
"Love is Blue".
Deborah wrote:
Was it that instrumental from the mid to late 60s called "Love is Blue?" I can actually recall most of that music; don't ask me what I had for lunch 5 days ago, however.
Overcast and very cool. Even if the predicted rain doesn't appear, this change in weather is quite pleasant.
Joe S , who reminds us that it's 'Talk Like A Pirate Day', wrote:
I give up. I don't know. Is this a trick question?
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BttbBob has returned to semi-retired status.
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• Arturo Toscanini occasionally burst into fits of great rage during rehearsals. One such fit occurred when he was rehearsing the NBC Symphony Orchestra in Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. The rehearsal went along normally until the scherzo, but Toscanini became furious and accused the celli of playing without life, without bite. He accused the celli of taking it easy and insulting both him and Beethoven. He broke his baton, he ripped his score to shreds, and he pushed the conductor's stand off the stage. Then he pulled out his watch and threw it to the floor, shattering the watch and sending its parts in many directions. He swore that he would never conduct such jack*sses again, and then he stomped off to his dressing room, shouting insults all the way. The next day at rehearsal - yes, he did show up - he showed the members of the orchestra a cheap watch that he had brought - it bore the inscription "For Rehearsals Only." The rehearsal went exceedingly well. Samuel Antek, a violinist in the NBC Symphony Orchestra, wrote, "Toscanini's rage, somehow, always achieved a musical purpose. Childish, petulant, unreasoning as it was, we somehow respected and admired his capacity to be so moved and aroused by his feeling for his work." Toscanini really did feel that strongly about music. In Atlanta, Georgia, during a tour, the NBC Symphony entered a huge auditorium that smelled of horses and their manure because a horse show had recently been held there. A boxing ring was in the center of the auditorium because of a prizefight that would be held that night. The NBC Symphony Orchestra would rehearse now, and then play the following night. One workman who was wearing a hat walked by Toscanini, who knocked off the hat and said, "Ignorante! Take off the hat! Is a church here!" The workman was dumbfounded, so Toscanini explained, "Where is music is a church!"
• Italian is rich in invective, and conductor Arturo Toscanini made rich use of it when he wanted to criticize a musician or a singer. Once, he was heaping Italian invective upon a musician when he realized that the musician did not understand Italian and so did not understand what he was saying. Because his knowledge of English was limited, Mr. Toscanini was forced to tell the musician, "You bad, bad man."
Language
• Leonard Bernstein and his family spoke a language that he helped to create with a childhood friend named Eddie Ryback. They named the language with an amalgamation of their names: Ryback plus Bernstein equals Rybernian. Nina, Mr. Bernstein's daughter, explains, "It's basically a way of mispronouncing things - Yiddish words as well as people who just talk funny." A London Times article explains that "I love you" becomes "Mu-la-du," and the appropriate response is "Mu-la-dumus" ("I love you more"). Sometimes, Mr. Bernstein would put on what his children considered to be airs, and they would tell him in Rybernian, "La-lutt" ("Shut up"). Nina says, "[T]hat would bring him right down to earth."
• Jazz banjo player Eddie Condon was witty. He once remarked about the 1940s bebop musicians, "They flat their fifths; we drink ours." And he once said about French writers who criticized American jazz, "We don't tell them how to stomp on grapes…."
• In the early 1970s, saxophonist Pat Patrick asked Thelonious Monk, "What's happening?" Mr. Monk replied, "Everything is happening all the time - every googleplexth of a second!"
Letters
• Richard Barthelemy, the voice coach and accompanist of Enrico Caruso, was French, and the French have a reputation for having a certain regard for a good turn of praise. A high-society woman once sent opera singer Enrico Caruso a very nice gift, which pleased him. Mr. Caruso sent back a souvenir, and he asked Mr. Barthelemy to compose a nice letter to accompany the gift. Mr. Barthelemy did compose the letter, and soon afterward the high-society woman invited him to lunch and said to him, "I have a favor to ask you, for which I desire secrecy. I am going to have you read an extremely charming letter from Monsieur Caruso in which he begs me to accept the lovely souvenir here. I want to thank him, and I've thought of you for that. Would you do me the pleasure of composing an answer to his letter which would have a true French turn to it? I'll recopy it and send it to Monsieur Caruso." Mr. Barthelemy composed the letter.
Friend Janet shared the below story about Christine Blasey Ford's f'ing father-not only not supporting her but APOLOGIZING to Penis Face's father on the GD golf course, of course!
As many problems as he had, my father was never a dick like this! As I told Janet, if I were in Christine's place, I would cut my father's genitalia off and force the MF'er to eat every bit of his disgusting penis and balls. What a sorry excuse of a man!
My fingers are almost done peeling and I can make a fist again.
Tonight, Thursday:
CBS opens the night with a RERUN'Young Sheldon', followed by another RERUN'Young Sheldon', then a FRESH'Big Brother', followed by a RERUN'FBI'.
Scheduled on a FRESHStephen Colbert are Taraji P. Henson and Aasif Mandvi.
Scheduled on a FRESHJames Corden, OBE, are Michelle Dockery and Max Greenfield.
NBC begins the night with the FRESH'Return To Dowtown Abbey', followed by the FRESH'The Paley Center Salutes The Good Place', then a RERUN'L&O: SVU'.
Scheduled on a FRESHJimmy Fallon are Sylvester Stallone, Cedric the Entertainer, and Mark Normand.
Scheduled on a FRESHSeth Meyers are Glenn Howerton, Andrew Yang, Margaret Atwood, and Yesod Williams.
Scheduled on a FRESHLilly Singh is Chelsea Handler.
ABC starts the night with a RERUN'Celebrity Family Feud', followed by the FRESH'The Last Days Of Phil Hartman'.
Scheduled on a FRESHJimmy Kimmel are Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Hugh Bonneville, and Maren Morris.
The CW offers a FRESH'The Outpost', followed by a FRESH'Two Sentence Horror Stories'.
Faux fills the night with LIVE'MLB Baseball', then pads the left coast with local crap.
MY reycles an old 'The Good Wife', followed by another old 'The Good Wife'.
A&E has all old 'Live PD Presents: PD Cam' all night.
AMC offers the movie 'Twister', followed by the movie 'Twister', again.
BBC -
[6:00AM] STAR TREK: VOYAGER - SEASON 7 - EPISODE 17-Workforce, Pt. 2
[7:00AM] STAR TREK: VOYAGER - SEASON 7 - EPISODE 18-Human Error
[8:00AM] STAR TREK: VOYAGER - SEASON 7 - EPISODE 19-Q2
[9:00AM] STAR TREK: VOYAGER - SEASON 7 - EPISODE 20-Author, Author
[10:00AM] STAR TREK: VOYAGER - SEASON 7 - EPISODE 21-Friendship One
[11:00AM] STAR TREK: VOYAGER - SEASON 7 - EPISODE 22-Natural Law
[12:00PM] STAR TREK: VOYAGER - SEASON 7 - EPISODE 23-Homestead
[1:00PM] STAR TREK: VOYAGER - SEASON 7 - EPISODE 24-Renaissance Man
[2:00PM] STAR TREK: VOYAGER - SEASON 7 - EPISODE 25-Endgame, Pt. 1
[3:00PM] STAR TREK: VOYAGER - SEASON 7 - EPISODE 26-Endgame, Pt. 2
[4:00PM] STAR TREK: VOYAGER - SEASON 1 - EPISODE 1-Caretaker, Pt. 1
[5:00PM] STAR TREK: VOYAGER - SEASON 1 - EPISODE 2-Caretaker, Pt. 2
[6:00PM] STAR TREK: VOYAGER - SEASON 1 - EPISODE 3-Parallax
[7:00PM] STAR TREK: VOYAGER - SEASON 1 - EPISODE 4-Time and Again
[8:00PM] DIE HARD (1988)
[11:00PM] DIE HARD (1988)
[2:00AM] STAR TREK: VOYAGER - SEASON 1 - EPISODE 1-Caretaker, Pt. 1
[3:00AM] STAR TREK: VOYAGER - SEASON 1 - EPISODE 2-Caretaker, Pt. 2
[4:00AM] STAR TREK: VOYAGER - SEASON 1 - EPISODE 3-Parallax
[5:00AM] STAR TREK: VOYAGER - SEASON 1 - EPISODE 4-Time and Again (ALL TIMES EDT)
Bravo has 'Million Dollar Listing NY', another 'Million Dollar Listing NY', followed by a (F) 'Million Dollar Listing NY', another 'Million Dollar Listing NY', then a FRESH'Watch What Happens Live'.
FX has the movie 'Spider-Man: Homecoming', followed by a FRESH'Mr. Inbetween', and another 'Mr. Inbetween'.
History has 'Forged In Fire', followed by a FRESH'Forged In Fire: Cutting Deeper', then a FRESH'Knife Or Death'.
IFC -
[6:00A] The Three Stooges - Booby Dupes
[6:15A] The Three Stooges - You Natzy Spy!
[6:40A] The Three Stooges - Baby Sitters' Jitters
[7:05A] The Three Stooges - Bedlam in Paradise
[7:30A] A Night at the Roxbury
[9:30A] The Incredible Burt Wonderstone
[11:45A] The Pink Panther 2
[1:45P] The Pink Panther
[3:45P] Police Academy
[6:00P] Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment
[8:00P] Tommy Boy
[10:15P] Tommy Boy
[12:30A] National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation
[2:45A] The Pink Panther
[4:45A] The Pink Panther 2 (ALL TIMES EDT)
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
[8:15am] The Andy Griffith Show
[8:45am] The Andy Griffith Show
[9:15am] The Andy Griffith Show
[9:45am] The Andy Griffith Show
[10:15am] Carrie
[12:30pm] The Shining
[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] This Close - Frog of Truth
[12:44am] This Close - Games People Play
[1:20am] Law & Order
[2:20am] Law & Order
[3:20am] Hap and Leonard: The Two-Bear Mambo - Senorita Mambo
[4:20am] Hap and Leonard: The Two-Bear Mambo - Mambo No. 5
[5:20am] Hap and Leonard: The Two-Bear Mambo - Monsoon Mambo (ALL TIMES EDT)
SyFy has the movie 'xXx: Return Of Xander Cage', followed by the movie 'The Last Witch Hunter'.
HBO Max has given a two-season, 24-episode order to a reimagening of the animated series The Boondocks, from creator Aaron McGruder and Sony Pictures Animation. The new Boondocks will launch in fall 2020 with a 50-minute special. All 55 episodes of the original The Boondocks series will also be available on WarnerMedia direct-to-consumer platform at launch.
The Boondocks revival was taken out to the marketplace in late spring and was confirmed by Sony Pictures Animation at the Annecy festival in June. HBO Max immediately emerged as the most likely home for the new series because of WarnerMedia's history with the franchise. The original Boondocks animated series, based on the comic strip created by McGruder, aired on the company's Adult Swim, a large part of whose programming will be available on HBO Max. The series earned McGruder a Peabody Award.
The new Boondocks follows the adventures of self-proclaimed "Civil Rights Legend" Robert "Granddad" Freeman, and his two rambunctious grandsons Huey and Riley. The family has recently moved to an idyllic community in suburban Maryland only to see it taken over by the tyrannical Uncle Ruckus and his bizarre neo-fascist regime. Life under Ruckus turns out to be an everyday struggle to survive.
"There's a unique opportunity to revisit the world of The Boondocks and do it over again for today," said McGruder, "It's crazy how different the times we live in are now - both politically and culturally - more than a decade past the original series and two decades past the original newspaper comic. There's a lot to say and it should be fun."
McGruder returns as showrunner and will serve as executive producer along with Norm Aladjem for Mainstay Entertainment as well as Seung Kim and Meghann Collins Robertson. Sony Pictures Animation will produce the series in partnership with Sony Pictures Television.
Merriam-Webster has added another definition for the word "they" that can be used to refer to a single person whose gender identity is nonbinary, or someone who expresses a gender identity that is neither entirely male or entirely female.
The reference book company used the word as an example in this sentence: "They had adopted their gender-neutral name a few years ago, when they began to consciously identify as nonbinary."
In a post on its website, the company acknowledged that "they" has been used to refer to a single person since the 13th century and that the development of the singular use mirrors the development of the singular use of "you" from the plural "you."
Merriam-Webster noted that, while some may say the use of "they" in a singular form is ungrammatical, people have used it to describe someone whose gender is unknown for a "long time," although the nonbinary use of the word is "relatively new."
Merriam-Webster also announced the addition of 530 new words on Tuesday, including deep state, dad joke and escape room.
A handful of wayward dolphins are safely back where they belong thanks to a team of rescuers who weren't afraid to get wet.
On Sunday, wildlife officials became aware of four dolphins in a canal in St. Petersburg, Florida. The animals-two mothers and their calves-appeared frightened of swimming back under the bridge to reach the open waters of Tampa Bay. Too much time spent in brackish water is unhealthy for dolphins, so when they were still in the canal on Tuesday, officials knew it was time to act.
Thanks to a coordinated effort between Clearwater Marine Aquarium, NOAA, and the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, 14 marine experts formed a "human chain" to create a visual barrier to gently encourage the dolphins under the bridges. Moving slowly and splashing their hands in the water, eventually the plan worked.
"We take time to plan; we think about it a little bit. We give them time to leave, give them a few tide cycles and see if whatever is keeping them in there if they decided to leave," Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission biologist Andy Garrett explained to Bay News 9. "They didn't do that."
State wildlife officials added that it's not unheard of for dolphins to make their way into canals, but it is pretty rare.
New Zealand will be home again to hairy feet and pointed-ear Hobbits after Amazon Studios confirmed the Pacific country will be the location for its new "The Lord of the Rings" series, a TV show widely tipped to be the most expensive ever made.
The Amazon.com Inc unit said the multi-series adaptation will explore new storylines preceding author J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Fellowship of the Ring", the first instalment in the famed fantasy trilogy set in the fictional land of "Middle-earth".
Amazon bought the TV rights to Tolkien's literary classic two years ago when screens were ruled by HBO's blockbuster fantasy series, "Game of Thrones". Unlike HBO and others such as Netflix Inc, a hit for Amazon could not only draw in viewers but also shoppers to its Prime subscription service.
Three movies made of The Lord of the Rings trilogy in the early 2000s were filmed in New Zealand by director Peter Jackson. They garnered nearly $3 billion at the box office and 17 Academy Awards.
Pre-production for the series has started, and production on the series will begin in Auckland, New Zealand's biggest city, in the coming months, the statement showed.
Gun violence hits America's youth and rural states the hardest and has reached the highest levels in decades, a report released Wednesday by Democrats on Congress' Joint Economic Committee has found.
U.S. teens and young adults, ages 15-24, are 50 times more likely to die by gun violence than they are in other economically advanced countries, according to the 50-state breakdown.
In 2017 - the year of a mass shooting in Las Vegas that killed 58 and injured hundreds - nearly 40,000 people died from gun-related injuries, including 2,500 school children, the report said, noting that six in 10 gun deaths in the U.S. are suicides.
That year marked the first time firearms killed more people than motor vehicle accidents, the report said.
Rural states, meanwhile, have the highest rates of gun deaths and bear the largest costs as a share of their economies. Nationally, the cost of gun violence in the U.S. runs $229 billion a year, or 1.4 percent of the gross domestic product, the report said.
Climate change will make our lives worse in the years to come, but a new report out this week highlights the stark costs people are already paying in the U.S. In 2012 alone, it found 10 major climate-related events likely led to nearly 1,000 extra deaths, almost 21,000 hospitalizations, and an added $10 billion in healthcare costs.
Researchers from Columbia University, the University of California Los Angeles, and the nonprofit environmental advocacy group Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) looked at the fallout of extreme weather events strongly linked to a warmer climate that took place in 2012. These included extreme heat days in Wisconsin, outbreaks of tick-borne Lyme disease in Michigan and the mosquito-borne West Nile virus in Texas, wildfires in Colorado and Washington, and the landfall of Hurricane Sandy in New York and New Jersey. Using various sources of data, including medical records and earlier studies, they then came up with their estimates.
Overall, they found that these events directly contributed to 917 deaths, 20,568 hospitalizations, and 17,857 emergency department visits. In 2018 dollars, they also estimated the financial costs of these medical cases amounted to $10 billion, though the costs could have ranged from $2.7 billion to as high as $24.6 billion. The single most impactful event was Hurricane Sandy, which led to nearly 300 deaths and $3.1 billion in medical-related losses, though the overall costs created by wildfires were slightly higher. These costs are on top of the billion in damages and lost property caused by the storms and wildfires the researchers looked at.
Echoing other research elsewhere, they also found that the more vulnerable segments of the country were most affected by climate. Two-thirds of the costs related to illness were paid by Medicare and Medicaid, the government-ran health care programs that predominantly cover the elderly and poor.
"There is a real cost in terms of human health," study author Wendy Max, a professor of Health Economics and co-director of the Institute for Health & Aging at UCSF, said at a press conference held Wednesday. "Our study is the first to put a price tag on these costs, [but] this is just the tip of the iceberg-we know this is an underestimate."
There has been an explosion at one of the only two facilities that house the last smallpox samples left in the world.
Smallpox, the ancient disease caused by the variola virus, was officially declared eradicated by the World Health Organization in 1979 after a global vaccination program proved successful.
The last person to die of smallpox, which killed an estimated 300 million people in the 20th century alone, occurred in the summer of 1978. Janet Parker, a medical photographer, became smallpox's final victim after coming into contact with a sample of the disease in a smallpox laboratory at Birmingham Medical School, England. Whilst she and her close family were quarantined, the world's media descended on Birmingham to wait and see whether the deadly disease would emerge once more. It did, and Parker died.
Professor Henry Bedson, who headed the smallpox lab, died by suicide before Parker's death was confirmed, horrified that he may have released the disease he'd been working hard to eradicate into the world once more.
Only one other person, Parker's mother, was infected, mildly, and she was soon free of the infection. A year after the incident, smallpox was declared eradicated entirely.
The last migrant child to be held at the Homestead facility for unaccompanied minors left on August 3 - but, since then, the U.S. government has likely spent more than $33 million to staff the massive, empty space.
The spending was revealed Wednesday during congressional testimony with Jonathan Hayes, director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement.
Hayes said Homestead remains staffed to support up to 1,200 children. "I think it's about $600" per day, Hayes estimated - a total of roughly $720,000 per day, or more than $33 million in the nearly seven weeks since it stopped sheltering children.
"So $600 a day for 1,200 invisible, imaginary, nonexistent human beings at Homestead right now?" asked Wisconsin Democratic Representative Mark Pocan.
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, who reminds us that it's 'Talk Like A Pirate Day', wrote:
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
