Don't Believe Everything You Hear (Neatorama)
When it comes to sound, skeuomorphs are a big deal: If a product doesn't sound right, it can be very tough to sell to consumers. Companies employee sound designers -not unlike the sound engineers who work on Hollywood movies- to ensure that every noise a product makes will be pleasing to the ears. Sometimes it's for nostalgia's sake; sometimes for safety …and sometimes for more nefarious reasons.
David Bruce: Wise Up! Animals (Athens News)
Michael Thomas Ford's Uncle Dick maintained a graveyard for family pets. For each dearly departed pet, he fashioned a tombstone, on which he wrote such epitaphs as, "MUFFIN 1960-1966: CATS HAVE NINE LIVES; HE GAVE UP AFTER SIX" and "AMY 1970-1984: A FAST DOG, BUT THE CAR WAS FASTER."
Where the Action Is was a music-based television variety show created by Dick Clark as a spin-off of American Bandstand. What group was the original house band?
William Alexander "Bud" Abbott (October 2, 1895 - April 24, 1974) was an American actor, producer and comedian. He is best remembered as the straight man of the comedy team of Abbott and Costello, with Lou Costello.
When Groucho Marx was asked about Abbott shortly after his death, his response was that Abbott was "the greatest straight man ever."
Source
Charlie was first, and correct, with:
Had to be Bud Abbott.
Alan J said:
Bud Abbott
Jim from CA, retired to ID, wrote:
Bud Abbott
Adam answered:
Bud Abbott.
Marian responded:
Bud Abbott
Lois Of The Lilies Of Oregon replied:
That would be Bub Abbott. As a young child watching their TV
show in the Fifties, I hated that man, and cried everytime
he slapped poor Lou in the face, not understanding the
subtleties of their humor. Never liked Laural and Hardy
either. All the slapping and crying...too much like home.
Sorry, small flash back. Anyway, here is a picture of Bud
Abbott being a very Straight Man, and the Mummy being not
straight at all.
Sally said:
Gee, I missed yesterday's question. "Ada Louise Huxtable." Wonder if she was related to the doctor and Claire...
As for today, Groucho Marx regarded Bud Abbott as, "The greatest straight man ever."
Whom do I detest as much as the 'Marx Brothers, and the 'Three Stooges?' Why it's 'Abbott and Costello,' that's who!!
PS: So, I wake up and it was OVER 50o this morning! I had a LAKE in my front yard from the snow melt; my kids had to run over the wet, icy grass to my front door, the driveway and walks were all deep in snow melt! By tomorrow morning, when the temps dip well below freezing, I should have a skating pond out there! The kids will love that...
Dale of Diamond Springs, Norcali responded:
George Fenneman, was Groucho's male Margaret Dumont. A great set-up guy for another one of my satirical guides. He was also in one of my favourite movies of all time, "The Thing from Another World". Look at James Arness!
DJ Useo answered:
Ya can't argue with Groucho concerning a matter like this. His belief that Bud Abbott of Abbott and Costello was the world's best 'straight man' is incontestable. Bud set up Lou to bring home the laughs like Lou Gehrig hit home runs.
One of my fave moments between them is from "ABBOTT & COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN". At one point, Bud thinks Lou has drowned, and he's inconsolable. Then, a soaking wet Lou appears and joins in the crying, and mourning. Bud's immediate response is to slap him! WTF! Lol!
MAM wrote:
Bud Abbott (1895 - 1974) ~ He is best remembered as the straight man of the comedy team of Abbott and Costello, with Lou
Costello. "Hey, Abboooooooott!" They're best known for their signature routine, "Baseball", in which Abbott attempts to tell Costello about a baseball team whose players have confusing nicknames like "Who" and "What". ("Who's on first?")
CBS begins the night with a FRESH'NCIS', followed by a FRESH'NCIS: The 2nd One', then a FRESH'Person Of Interest'.
Scheduled on a FRESHDave are Joel McHale and Marv Albert.
Scheduled on a FRESHCraig are Don Cheadle, Ivana Milicevic, and Jake Bugg.
NBC starts the night with a FRESH'Biggest Loser', followed by a FRESH'Chicago Fire'.
Scheduled on a FRESHLeno are Mark Wahlberg, Jeff Foxworthy, and Salaam Remi featuring Akon.
Scheduled on a FRESHJimmy Fallon are Ryan Seacrest, Gabrielle Union, and John Newman.
Scheduled on a FRESHCarson 'The Scab' Daly are Matt Piedmont, White Denim, and Matthew Broussard.
ABC opens the night with a FRESH'Marvel's Agents Of SHIELD', followed by a FRESH'The Goldbergs', then a FRESH'Trophy Wife', followed by a FRESH'Killer Women'.
Scheduled on a FRESHJimmy Kimmel are Amy Adams, Margot Robbie, and Xolie Morra & the Strange Kind.
The CW offers a RERUN'The Originals', followed by a RERUN'Supernatural'.
Scheduled on a FRESHArsenio Hall are MC Serch and Lil Duval.
Faux has a FRESH'Dads', followed by a FRESH'Brooklyn Nine-Nine', then a FRESH'New Girl', followed by a FRESH'The Mindy Project'.
MY recycles an old 'Bones', followed by another old 'Bones'.
A&E has 'Storage Wars', another 'Storage Wars', still another 'Storage Wars', yet another 'Storage Wars', followed by a FRESH'Storage Wars Texass', then another FRESH'Storage Wars Texass', followed by a FRESH'Shipping Wars', then another FRESH'Shipping Wars'.
AMC offers the movie 'Twister', followed by the movie 'Braveheart'.
BBC -
[6:00AM] BBC WORLD NEWS
[7:00AM] BBC WORLD NEWS
[8:00AM] DOCTOR WHO - Season 5 - Ep 1 - The Eleventh Hour
[9:00AM] TORCHWOOD: MIRACLE DAY - Season 4 - Ep 4 - Escape to L.A.
[10:00AM] STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION - Season 3 - Ep 26 - The Best of Both Worlds (Part 1)
[11:00AM] STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION - Season 4 - Ep 1 - The Best of Both Worlds (Part 2)
[12:00PM] STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION - Season 4 - Ep 2 - Family
[1:00PM] RAMSAY'S KITCHEN NIGHTMARES UK - Season 3 - Ep 1 - La Parra de Burriana
[2:00PM] RAMSAY'S KITCHEN NIGHTMARES US - Season 5 - Ep 13 - Cafe Hon
[3:00PM] RAMSAY'S KITCHEN NIGHTMARES UK - Season 2 - Ep 8 - La Gondola
[4:00PM] TOP GEAR - Season 14 - Episode 4
[5:00PM] TOP GEAR - Season 14 - Episode 5
[6:00PM] STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION - Season 5 - Ep 25 - The Inner Light
[7:00PM] STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION - Season 5 - Ep 26 - Time's Arrow - Part 1
[8:00PM] STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION - Season 6 - Ep 1 - Time's Arrow, Part 2
[9:00PM] STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION - Season 6 - Ep 2 - Realm of Fear
[10:00PM] STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION - Season 6 - Ep 3 - Man of the People
[11:00PM] ATLANTIS - Season 1 - Episode 7
[12:00AM] STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION - Season 6 - Ep 2 - Realm of Fear
[1:00AM] STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION - Season 6 - Ep 3 - Man of the People
[2:00AM] DOCTOR WHO - Season 2 - Ep 13 - Doomsday
[3:00AM] DOCTOR WHO: THE RUNAWAY BRIDE
[4:00AM] DOCTOR WHO - Season 3 - Ep 1 - Smith and Jones
[5:00AM] DOCTOR WHO - Season 3 - Ep 2 - The Shakespeare Code (ALL TIMES EST)
Bravo has 'Real Housewives Of BH', 'Real Housewives Of Atlanta', followed by a FRESH'Shahs Of Sunset', then the FRESH'100 Days Of Summer'.
Comedy Central has last night's 'Colbert Report', last night's 'Jon Stewart', 'Kroll Show', 'Tosh.0', another 'Tosh.0', still another 'Tosh.0', yet another 'Tosh.0', and 'Kroll Show'.
Scheduled on a FRESHJon Stewart is Steve Coogan.
Scheduled on a FRESHColbert Report is John Seigenthaler.
FX has the movie 'Transformers: Dark Of The Moon', followed by a FRESH'Justified'.
History has 'Counting Cars', another 'Counting Cars', still another 'Counting Cars', yet another 'Counting Cars', followed by a FRESH'Counting Cars', then another FRESH'Counting Cars', followed by a FRESH'American Restoration', then another FRESH'American Restoration'.
IFC -
[6:00AM] Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
[8:30AM] Close Encounters of the Third Kind
[11:30AM] Terror Train
[1:30PM] Close Encounters of the Third Kind
[4:30PM] Mulberry Street
[6:15PM] The Blair Witch Project
[8:00PM] The Shining
[11:00PM] A Clockwork Orange
[2:00AM] The Shining
[5:00AM] The Birthday Boys-Goofy Roofers
[5:30AM] The Birthday Boys-Catching up on Shows (ALL TIMES EST)
Sundance -
[6:00AM] Barney's Version
[9:00AM] The Big Kahuna
[11:00AM] Cassandra's Dream
[1:15PM] Donnie Darko
[3:45PM] Frozen River
[5:45PM] An Education
[8:00PM] Law & Order-The Serpent's Tooth
[9:00PM] A Few Good Men
[12:00AM] The Pelican Brief
[3:00AM] Unfaithful
[5:45AM] Lipsett Diaries (ALL TIMES EST)
SyFy has the movie 'Stargate', followed by the movie 'GI Joe: The Rise Of Cobra'.
TBS:
Scheduled on a FRESHConan are Kat Dennings, Beth Behrs, Harland Williams, and Kid Ink.
Dreamworks CEO Jeffrey "Sparky" Katzenburg, right, enjoys a moment with actor Eddie Murphy, center, and Murphy's girlfriend Paige Butcher during the first half of an NBA basketball game between the Los Angeles Lakers and Denver Nuggets Sunday, Jan. 5, 2014, in Los Angeles.
Photo by Alex Gallardo
"Saturday Night Live" has hired comedian Sasheer Zamata as a new cast member for the late-night comedy sketch show, a spokeswoman for network NBC said on Monday, months after the program was criticized for a lack of diversity among its female cast.
Zamata, who stars in her own internet comedy series "Pursuit of Sexiness," will be the first African-American female cast member since Maya Rudolph left "Saturday Night Live" in 2007.
"SNL" came under criticism in October for its lack of female diversity after cast member Kenan Thompson said he would no longer play black women such as Whoopi Goldberg and Maya Angelou.
Zamata, who has performed with the Upright Citizens Brigade improv comedy troupe, will make her debut on January 18.
Lira Arabuli, 74, performs during the "Super Grandmother and Super Grandfather" contest in Tbilisi, January 6, 2014. Twenty-one participants aged over 70 from all over Georgia competed in the annual contest organized by charity house Catharsis.
Photo by David Mdzinarishvili
Sandra Bullock shared the painful results of Googling herself, Meryl Streep shadowboxed on-stage and Tom Hanks braced for awards season's "celebrity mule train" at the year's first glitzy Hollywood gala.
Matthew McConaughey, Julia Roberts, Amy Adams and Bradley Cooper were among the stars who cracked jokes and praised one another Saturday night at the opening of the Palm Springs International Film Festival, a desert warm-up of sorts for more closely-watched industry events in coming months.
Honors were announced well in advance and the ceremony wasn't televised, lessening pressure on winners and allowing for self-effacing, sometimes lengthy acceptance speeches. The festival is celebrating its 25th year but it's only recently become a star-studded stop on the awards circuit.
U2's Bono spoke passionately about artist activism and the fight against AIDS. Bruce Dern reveled in industry praise for his "Nebraska" after a half-century career, saying: "A bunch of you seem to have gotten together and to have said, 'Bruce Dern can play.'" Presenters included Gary Oldman, Ewan McGregor, Idris Elba and Jane Fonda.
Bullock, also nominated for Screen Actors Guild and Golden Globe awards for her performance as an astronaut in "Gravity," delighted the crowd of over 2,000 by reading online comments about herself.
British pop duo Eurythmics will reunite in Los Angeles later this month for a performance celebrating the 50th anniversary of The Beatles' appearance on the "Ed Sullivan Show", organizers said on Monday.
The duo consisting of singer Annie Lennox and musician Dave Stewart, who last toured together in 2000, will play songs by The Beatles in the January 27 concert organized by the Recording Academy, which hands out the annual Grammy Awards.
They will also share the stage with R&B singers Alicia Keys and John Legend and pop-rock group Maroon 5 in the concert that will be broadcast on CBS television on February 9.
"The Night that Changed America: A Grammy Salute to The Beatles" pays homage to the Fab Four's February 1964 performances on the "Ed Sullivan Show," which is credited with launching rock music's so-called British Invasion.
A model presents a creation from the Bobby Abley MAN Autumn/Winter 2014 collection during "London Collections: Men" in London January 6, 2014. "London Collections: Men" is a three-day showcase of men's fashion scheduled a month before London Fashion week in London.
Photo by Suzanne Plunkett
"Downton Abbey" drew a record-breaking audience for Sunday's much-anticipated season premiere.
PBS and WGBH-TV announced Monday that the fourth-season debut of the lush British miniseries attracted 10.2 million viewers, according to Nielsen Fast National data.
This audience improves upon the viewership of the third-season premiere by 22 per cent. PBS says it's the highest-rated drama premiere in network history.
The two-hour episode picks up the action six months after the sudden death of Downton heir Matthew Crawley on last season's finale.
Researchers Find No Evidence On Internet, Twitter, Facebook
Time Travel
Time travellers, if they really exist, seem to be keeping their adventures to themselves.
Researchers with perhaps a bit too much time on their hands conducted an extensive Internet and social media search for evidence of time travellers going back in history and then bragging about it online.
And they came up empty. No real life Dr. Who or Marty McFly from the movie "Back to the Future" tweeting secrets a bit early.
Spurred by idle chat during Thursday poker games, an astrophysicist and his students at Michigan Technological University in Houghton, Michigan, searched for mentions of Pope Francis and Comet ISON before they popped into reality. Francis was elected pope last March and ISON was first detected in September 2012.
The idea: If someone mentions a Pope Francis in a 2011 tweet, Facebook post or blog item, then they must have come back from the future with special knowledge.
A man looks at toy guns displayed at the Hong Kong Toys and Games Fair January 6, 2014. Four trade fairs, including Asia's largest toy fair, opened on Monday in the territory, with more than 2,800 exhibitors featuring a wide range of toys, baby products and stationery, according to the official press release.
Photo by Bobby Yip
Mary Kay Letourneau, the former Seattle-area teacher who served seven years in prison for sleeping with a 12-year-old student, was briefly jailed on Monday after missing a court appearance in connection with her driving without a license, law enforcement officials said.
Letourneau was booked into King County Jail early on Monday morning and released at 1:05 p.m. after posting $5,000 bail, a jail official said.
The sixth-grade teacher gained notoriety in 1997 when it emerged that she was involved sexually with Vili Fualaau, then a student in her class.
Their affair, begun when Letourneau was 34 and Fualaau was 12, touched off a media frenzy coverage, including books and a television film.
Letourneau was released from prison in 2004. She and Fualaau married the following year.
Members of the Edo Firemanship Preservation Association display their balancing skills atop bamboo ladders during a New Year demonstration by the fire brigade in Tokyo January 6, 2014.
Photo by Yuya Shino
In 2011, to ensure that TV stations would air Katie Couric's pricey new syndicated chat show, ABC turned over to them a choice time period, 3 p.m. to 4 p.m. Now Katie is ending after only two seasons, but stations are keeping the hour -- opening prime slots for other syndicated shows jockeying for the best position on the fall schedule.
The biggest beneficiary could be Meredith Vieira, whose new daily show will premiere in September. Produced and distributed by NBCUniversal Domestic TV Distribution and anchored on NBC-owned stations in the biggest markets, Vieira's show quickly was sold in more than 60 percent of the U.S. But it still needs to find slots in smaller markets.
The jockeying comes at crunch time for TV syndicators looking to make deals before the annual NATPE market Jan. 27 to 29 in Miami. Besides Meredith, set for launch this fall are the Warner Bros.-produced multicultural talker The Real (after a summer test run on Fox stations) and Debmar-Mercury's Celebrity Name Game, hosted by Craig Ferguson, on Tribune stations. Among this season's freshman class, The Queen Latifah Show and The Arsenio Hall Show have shown enough ratings promise that they likely will return; and Bethenny, after a slow start, might be attracting enough females in the 25-to-54 demo to merit a second season.
Conspicuously missing in all the schedule maneuvering is Kris. The talk show hosted by Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner had a summer test run on Fox stations with mixed results. Now sources say Kris isn't likely to launch this fall -- if ever.
People watch and photograph enormous waves as they break, on Porthcawl harbour, South Wales, Monday Jan. 6, 2014. Residents along Britain's coasts are braced for more flooding as strong winds, rain and high tides lash the country. At least three people have died in a wave of stormy weather that has battered Britain since last week, including a man killed when his mobility scooter fell into a river in Oxford, southern England.
Photo by Ben Birchall
In at least four states that have nurtured the nation's energy boom, hundreds of complaints have been made about well-water contamination from oil or gas drilling, and pollution was confirmed in a number of them, according to a review that casts doubt on industry suggestions that such problems rarely happen.
The Associated Press requested data on drilling-related complaints in Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia and Texas and found major differences in how the states report such problems. Texas provided the most detail, while the other states provided only general outlines. And while the confirmed problems represent only a tiny portion of the thousands of oil and gas wells drilled each year in the U.S., the lack of detail in some state reports could help fuel public confusion and mistrust.
The AP found that Pennsylvania received 398 complaints in 2013 alleging that oil or natural gas drilling polluted or otherwise affected private water wells, compared with 499 in 2012. The Pennsylvania complaints can include allegations of short-term diminished water flow, as well as pollution from stray gas or other substances. More than 100 cases of pollution were confirmed over the past five years.
Some people who rely on well water near drilling operations have complained about pollution, but there's been considerable confusion over how widespread such problems are. For example, starting in 2011, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection aggressively fought efforts by the AP and other news organizations to obtain information about complaints related to drilling. The department has argued in court filings that it does not count how many contamination "determination letters" it issues or track where they are kept in its files.
Three men ride their wooden sledge during a traditional Bavarian horn sledge race in the Alpine resort of Garmisch-Partenkirchen January 6, 2014. The sledge race is an annual event to remember the traditional way of bringing hay, straw and wood down from the Alpine mountains to the valley.
Photo by Michael Dalder
A US team in Egypt has identified the tomb of pharaoh Sobekhotep I, believed to be the founder of the 13th dynasty 3,800 years ago, the antiquities minister said Monday.
The team from the University of Pennsylvania had discovered the quartzite sarcophagus of Sobekhotep I, which weighed about 60 tonnes, a year ago, but was unable to identify who it belonged to until last week, the ministry said.
Its identity was established after the team found fragments of a slab inscribed with the pharaoh's name and showed him sitting on a throne, Antiquities Minister Mohamed Ibrahim said in a statement.
The team also discovered the remnants of canopic vases traditionally used to preserve internal body organs, along with gold objects owned by the king.
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took the day off.
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took the day off.
