• Sometimes, practical jokers just can’t get a break. Bored while waiting to pay the toll on the Venetian Causeway in Miami, Calvin Godfrey, a writer for the Miami New Times, looked under his seat to see what he could see. Finding a can of shaving cream that had fallen out of a grocery bag long ago, he decided to see if he could make the tollbooth worker laugh. He bearded himself with the shaving cream, drove up to the tollbooth, and paid the toll. The tollbooth worker did not react — at all — to the shaving-cream beard. Other attempts to make the tollbooth worker laugh — such as driving with a live, loose chicken beside him and eating a messy lemon meringue pie without utensils — also failed to make the tollbooth worker laugh. Mr. Godfrey then did some investigating and interviewed Delfin Molins, the Miami-Dade County Public Works Department public information officer. Mr. Molins explained that tollbooth workers undergo training in not laughing at such antics.
• The founder and publisher of The New Yorker was Raoul Fleischmann, who was very proud of a set of Chinese dishes he and his wife owned and which they used at special dinners. Their friend Arthur H. Samuels had been to many dinners at their house and had heard them talk about the dishes many times. At one Fleischmann dinner, Mr. Samuels listened as Mr. Fleischmann began to talk about his dishes, then he rose and shouted, “If I have to hear about this goddamn china once more ….” Then he picked up his plate and threw into the fireplace, breaking it. After enjoying the look at the Fleischmanns’ face, he showed them their real, unbroken plate and explained that he had thrown and broken a cheap imitation he had purchased prior to the dinner.
• As you would expect, the staff of MAD magazine could be pretty wild and crazy. One of MAD publisher William M. Gaines’s practical jokes was to fill the water cooler with white wine. In addition, before he took his staff on a trip to Africa, he gave everybody what he called malaria pills and ordered them to swallow them right away. Then he pretended to get a telephone call from a doctor who told him about a mix-up at the pharmacy: “DON’T TAKE THE PILL! THEY’RE POISON!”
• John Steinbeck was a practical joker. One day, when he was a student at Stanford University, he rigged the bells so one morning they played the drinking song “How Dry I Am.”
Problem-Solving
• Reading an ancient manuscript can be difficult. The Archimedes Codex contains a copy of the work of this ancient scientist. The handwritten copy was made in the 10th century, more than 1,000 years after the time of Archimedes. A couple of hundred years after the copy was made, a scribe named John Myronas took the pages apart, erased the text, then wrote new text — that of a prayer book — over the erased text of Archimedes. Using modern technology, the text of Archimedes can be read. The modern technology allows both sets of text — Archimedes’ work and the prayer book — to appear on a computer screen. The words of the prayer book appear in one color, and the ancient Greek words of Archimedes appear in another color. Translation of the text is fascinating to scholars, who have discovered that Archimedes used the mathematical concept of infinity centuries before the concept became widely used in mathematics in the 17th century.
This American stand-up comedian, actress, author, musician and artist, was best known for her eccentric stage persona, self-deprecating humor, wild hair and clothes, and an exaggerated, cackling laugh. What is the name of Fang's wife?
"Don't Eat the Yellow Snow" is a suite by the American musician Frank Zappa, made up of the first four tracks of his 1974 album Apostrophe ('): "Don't Eat the Yellow Snow", "Nanook Rubs It", "St. Alfonzo's Pancake Breakfast", and "Father O'Blivion". Each song in the suite is loosely connected, although the songs are not all connected by one overall story/theme. The suite was only played in full from 1973 to 1974 and 1978 to 1980. "Saint Alfonzo's Pancake Breakfast" contains Zappa's percussionist Ruth Underwood on marimba who added a very distinct sound to many of his songs in the early 1970s.
In keeping with the arctic theme of the song, after the first lyric "Dreamed I was an Eskimo" there is a musical quotation from the 1947 jazz tune "Midnight Sun".
"Don't Eat the Yellow Snow" is a song about a man who dreams that he was an Eskimo named Nanook. His mother warns him "Watch out where the huskies go, and don't you eat that yellow snow." The song directly transitions into "Nanook Rubs It." The song is about Nanook encountering a fur trapper "strictly from commercial" who is whipping Nanook's "favorite baby seal" with a "lead-filled snow shoe." Eventually Nanook gets so mad he rubs husky "wee wee" into the fur trapper's eyes, blinding him. According to the lyrics, this scene is destined to take the place of "The Mud Shark" (a song from the live album Fillmore East – June 1971) in Zappa mythology. Zappa then sings in the fur trapper's perspective. The fur trapper then makes his way to the parish of St. Alfonzo, introducing the next song "St. Alfonzo's Pancake Breakfast."
Source
zorch responded:
“Yellow Snow.” “Watch out where the huskies go, don’t you eat that yellow snow.”
Roy, Socially distant Snowflake Libtard in Tyler, TX. replied:
I'm pretty old, so my parents warned me about this long before Frank Zappa did. While I never ate any of the stuff, I know quite a few fellas who had to experiment with making yellow snow. I do not know of anyone who ate it, though.
PS: Spell check needs an update! Certainly Libtard is popular enough to have been in competition with "pandemic." Right???
Kevin K. in Washington DC wrote:
I grew up in Syracuse NY so I learned long before Frank told us: “Don’t Eat the Yellow Snow”.
Cal in Vermont said:
Don't eat the yellow snow. Or broccoli.
Dave answered:
Yellow Snow. For some reason I knew Zappa released an album of that name even though I never bought any of his recordings. I started paying attention to him in 1985 when he was railing against Tipper Gore’s push to put a parent’s advisory on recordings with “pornographic” lyrics. One of Tipper’s examples was absurdly The Isley Brothers’ Twist & Shout. Zappa, Dee Snyder and John Denver strenuously objected to what he considered censorship (because it was censorship). I don’t remember how it turned out but Al Gore was mocked by the right wing/fascists for not beating the shit out of Zappa for insulting his wife. Because a real He-Man senator would totally have done that. Even back then Republicans were assholes.
Deborah, the Master Gardener responded:
As near as I recall the lyrics, “Watch out where the Huskies go/Do not eat the yellow snow.” Now I want to hear the entire album.
John I from Hawai`i says,
Yellow Snow
Jim from CA, retired to ID, replied:
Don't eat yellow snow
Rosemary in Columbus wrote:
yellow snow
Billy in Cypress said:
"Yellow snow" is my WAG.
Daniel in The City answered:
Yellow snow!
Joe ( -- Vote Blue, No Matter Who -- ) responded:
I don't know. Don't feel like looking it up. I do like Mull Of Kintyre though, and I don't like Winter. I am curious about Donny, can he run for president again if he's in prison?
David of Moon Valley took the day off.
Barbara, of Peppy Tech fame took the day off.
DJ Useo took the day off.
Doug in Albuquerque, New Mexico, took the day off.
Leo in Boise took the day off.
Dave in Tucson took the day off.
Michelle in AZ 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.
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.
~~~~~
I thought our article would be a nice addition because it's about a skill that usually gets passed up - survival fishing. It gives a complete overview of how you can catch fish in an emergency situation.
CBS opens the night with a FRESH'Young Sheldon', followed by a FRESH'B Positive', then a FRESH'Mom', followed by a FRESH'The Unicorn', then a FRESH'Star Trek: Discovery'.
Scheduled on a FRESHStephen Colbert are Christopher Krebs and Aubrey Plaza.
Scheduled on a FRESHJames Corden, OBE, are Bryan Cranston and Rufus Wainwright.
NBC begins the night with the FRESH'The Voice Holiday Celebration', followed by a (F) 'L&O: SVU', then 'Dateline'.
Scheduled on a FRESHJimmy Fallon are Jason Bateman and Carrie Underwood.
On a RERUNSeth Meyers (from 11/18/20) are Hugh Grant, Emily Spivey, and Valerie Franco.
On a RERUNLilly Singh (from 4/27/20) are Sara Foster and Erin Foster.
ABC starts the night with a FRESH'Station 19', followed by a FRESH'Grey's Anatomy', then a FRESH'A Million Little Things'.
Scheduled on a FRESHJimmy Kimmel are Zendaya, Diego Luna, and Paris Jackson.
The CW offers a FRESH'iHeartRadio Jingle Ball Greatest Moments', followed by a FRESH'Worlds Funniest Animals', and a RERUN'Worlds Funniest Animals'.
Faux fills the night with LIVE'2020 MLS Cup Playoffs', then pads the left coast with local crap.
MY recycles an old 'Dateline', followed by an old 'L&O: CI'.
A&E has 'The First 48', another 'The First 48', followed by a FRESH'The First 48', then a FRESH'Killer Cases'.
AMC offers the movie 'National Lampoon's Vacation', followed by the movie 'Elf'.
BBC -
[6:00AM] STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE - CIVIL DEFENSE
[7:00AM] STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE - MERIDIAN
[8:00AM] STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE - DEFIANT
[9:00AM] STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE - FASCINATION
[10:00AM] STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE - PAST TENSE
[11:00AM] STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE - PAST TENSE
[12:00PM] STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION - THE FIRST DUTY
[1:00PM] STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION - COST OF LIVING
[2:00PM] STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION - THE PERFECT MATE
[3:00PM] STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION - IMAGINARY FRIEND
[4:00PM] STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION - I, BORG
[5:00PM] STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION - THE NEXT PHASE
[6:00PM] JUDGE DREDD
[8:00PM] TAKEN 2
[10:00PM] HANSEL & GRETEL: WITCH HUNTERS
[12:00AM] TAKEN 2
[2:00AM] HANSEL & GRETEL: WITCH HUNTERS
[4:00AM] STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION - I, BORG
[5:00AM] STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION - THE NEXT PHASE (ALL TIMES ET)
Bravo has 'Southern Charm', another 'Southern Charm', followed by a FRESH'Southern Charm', then a FRESH'Watch What Happens: Live'.
FX has the movie 'Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising', followed by the movie 'Night School', then the movie 'Night School', again.
History has 'Swamp People: Serpent Invasion', another 'Swamp People: Serpent Invasion', followed by a FRESH'Swamp People: Serpent Invasion'.
IFC -
[6:00am - 9:30am] Community
[10:00am - 1:30pm] Parks And Recreation
[2:00pm - 5:30pm] Three's Company
[6:00pm - 12:30am] Two And A Half Men
[1:00am - 3:30am] Parks And Recreation
[4:00am - 5:30am] Community (ALL TIMES ET)
Sundance -
[6:20am - 10:00am] the andy griffith show
[10:30am] miracles from heaven
[1:00pm - 1:00am] law & order (ALL TIMES ET)
SyFy has the movie 'Casper', followed by the movie 'The Goonies'.
TBS:
On a RERUNConan (from 10/29/20) is Simon Pegg.
Several "The Lord of the Rings" actors, including Sir Ian McKellen, John Rhys-Davies and Martin Freeman, are joining forces in an effort to help purchase the former home of famed author J.R.R. Tolkien.
The goal, organized by Project Northmoor, is to buy Tolkien's old house and turn it into a literary center dedicated to his works. British author Julia Golding has secured a three-month window to purchase the house from its current owners before it will be put on the open market, the group said in a news release. The fundraising target for the project is £4.5 million, or $6 million, which the project said it will use to "promote Tolkien's work, allow a diverse range of fantasy writers and artists to come together to write, learn and create, and preserve the fascinating house for future generations to enjoy."
Project Northmoor, named for the street where the house is located, on Wednesday released a video featuring McKellen, who played Gandalf in "The Lord of the Rings" and "The Hobbit" films; Freeman, who took on the role of Bilbo Baggins in "The Hobbit" trilogy; Rhys-Davis and several Tolkien scholars to promote its fundraising efforts.
"Unbelievably, considering his importance, there is no center devoted to Tolkien anywhere in the world," said John Rhys-Davies, the actor who played the dwarf Gimli and voiced Treebeard the ent in Peter Jackson's film adaptations of the books, in a statement. "The vision is to make Tolkien's house into a literary hub that will inspire new generations of writers, artists and filmmakers for many years to come."
Dr Anthony Fauci was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award at the US Global Leadership Coalition's virtual tribute celebration for his work fighting the global HIV/AIDS crisis.
On Tuesday evening, Dr Fauci, 79, the nation’s top infectious disease expert and part of the White House coronavirus task force, was presented the award by singer Elton John, according to CNN.
The singer has helped fight the stigma of HIV/AIDS through his non-profit, the Elton John AIDS Foundation, since its formation in 1992.
At the event, which took place on World AIDS Day, John told attendees: “There are very few people on this planet who have dedicated themselves to a lifetime of service to save millions of lives like Dr Fauci.”
Dr Fauci, who has served as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1984, previously worked as the National Institutes of Health's (NIH) AIDS coordinator.
Just when you thought 2020 couldn’t get any weirder, comedian John Mulaney has explained that he was investigated by the U.S. Secret Service for a joke he told on Saturday Night Live.
Although Mulaney hosted the show on Oct. 31, just days before a presidential election that saw record turnout, it was something he said when he hosted on Feb. 29, 2020 that got him flagged.
“Leap Year began in the year 45 B.C. under Julius Caesar. This is true,” Mulaney said. “He started the Leap Year in order to correct the calendar and we still do it to this day. Another thing that happened under Julius Caesar was he was such a powerful maniac that all the senators grabbed knives and they stabbed him to death. That’d be an interesting thing if we brought that back now.”
“I guess they opened a file on me because of the joke, and I have to say, am I stoked there’s a file open on me? Absolutely. Did I enjoy it in the moment? Not so much,” Mulaney said. “But the person vetting me... was very understanding that the joke had nothing to do with Donald Trump. It was an elliptical reference to him. I didn’t say anything about him.”
A tiny number of Bob Dylan fans scored a valuable collectible on Sunday when a three-disc collection of songs cut in 1970, including the legendary George Harrison sessions, was quietly put on sale via the U.K. store Badlands.
This collection was released in response to a European law stipulating that recordings enter the public domain 50 years after their creation if they aren’t officially released by the copyright holder. To avoid legal Bob Dylan bootlegs from flooding the market, his camp has released yearly copyright protection releases going back to 2012 when the complete 1962 recordings came out.
Many of them contain take after take of the same song and would be of interest to nobody but the most devoted Dylan scholars, but they’re become extremely valuable due to their scarcity. They often sell on the resale market for upwards of $1,000 each.
This new one likely has a broader appeal than previous ones since it features Dylan and George Harrison’s complete May 1st, 1970 session where they casually jam on Dylan oldies like “One Too Many Mornings” and “It Ain’t Me Babe” along with the Beatles’ “Yesterday” and numerous tunes from the then-in-progress New Morning. It has circulated as a bootleg for years, but the sound quality on this is presumably a significant upgrade from anything heard before.
The collection sold out in seconds, but will likely be available soon to enterprising fans familiar with the world of BitTorrent. And stay vigilant in late 2021 when the complete sessions for Greatest Hits Volume 2 are likely to hit without notice. (Things will get real interesting in 2024 when they’ll have to release every recording in the vault from Dylan’s Before The Flood tour with the Band.)
With a fresh presidential pardon still warm, former national security advisor Michael Flynn (R-Asset) has called on Donald Trump to suspend the constitution and declare martial law for the military to run a new election.
The retired general tweeted out a full-page ad that ran in The Washington Times that claimed the extraordinary executive actions were necessary to avoid the alternative of an imminent "shooting civil war".
Captioning the tweet "Freedom never kneels except for God [pray emoji, US flag emoji]", Mr Flynn linked to ad from a TEA Party-affiliated group called We The People Convention.
The 1,500-word manifesto invokes Abraham Lincoln's extraordinary use of presidential authority to suspend habeas corpus as it compares the more widely-known civil war with Antifa and Black Lives Matter attacking major cities with their anti-American agenda.
President of the We the People Convention, Tom Zawistowski, said in a press release accompanying the newspaper ad that the group wanted to express its concerns that their rights had been infringed by the "massive" election fraud that stole the presidency for Joe Biden.
A gleaming monolith found deep in the Utah desert was striking, a mysterious beacon that immediately captured the attention of a world grappling with a punishing pandemic casting a pall over the holiday season.
Revealed publicly shortly before Thanksgiving, it drew hundreds of people to remote, red-rock country to see and touch the otherworldly edifice that evoked both science-fiction films and the state’s famous land-art works.
But the newcomers also flattened plants with their cars and left behind human waste in the bathroom-free backcountry. Now, two men known for extreme sports in Utah’s sweeping outdoor landscapes say it was that kind of damage that made them step in late at night and tear it down.
Sylvan Christensen and Andy Lewis have large online followings for their posts about skydiving-like BASE jumping and slacklining, which is like walking an outdoor tightrope. In videos posted on Instagram and YouTube, they said they were part of a group that pushed down the hollow stainless-steel structure and took it away in a wheelbarrow.
Christensen said in a statement provided to media outlets late Tuesday that the land wasn’t prepared for the influx and its federal managers couldn’t hope to keep up.
U.S. President Warren G. Harding’s remains will stay right where they have lain since 1927 after a judge rejected a request to exhume them.
The grandson of the nation’s 29th president and his lover, Nan Britton, went to court in an effort to get the Republican’s remains dug up from his presidential memorial in Marion, the Ohio city near where Harding was born in 1865.
James Blaesing said he was seeking Harding’s disinterment as a way “to establish with scientific certainty” that he is Harding’s blood relation.
A branch of the Harding family pushed back against the suit filed in May because they already don’t dispute Blaesing’s ancestry.
They said they already have accepted as fact DNA evidence that Blaesing’s mother, Elizabeth Ann Blaesing, was the daughter of Harding and Britton and that she is set to be acknowledged in the museum. Harding had no other children.
A mysterious object temporarily orbiting Earth is a 54-year-old rocket, not an asteroid after all, astronomers confirmed Wednesday.
Observations by a telescope in Hawaii clinched its identity, according to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
The object was classified as an asteroid after its discovery in September. But NASA’s top asteroid expert, Paul Chodas, quickly suspected it was the Centaur upper rocket stage from Surveyor 2, a failed 1966 moon-landing mission. Size estimates had put it in the range of the old Centaur, which was about 32 feet (10 meters) long and 10 feet (3 meters) in diameter.
Chodas was proven right after a team led by the University of Arizona’s Vishnu Reddy used an infrared telescope in Hawaii to observe not only the mystery object, but — just on Tuesday — a Centaur from 1971 still orbiting Earth. The data from the images matched.
The object formally known as 2020 SO entered a wide, lopsided orbit around Earth last month and, on Tuesday, made its closest approach at just over 31,000 miles (50,476 kilometers). It will depart the neighborhood in March, shooting back into its own orbit around the sun. Its next return: 2036.
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said:
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
