• Early in his career as a stand-up comedian, Jay Leno worked in a lot of strip clubs. One club was the Teddy Bear Lounge in Boston. The strippers weren’t hookers; they were working-class women who worked hard to earn a good living. They also were very supportive of Mr. Leno, who was working in a place notoriously difficult to get laughs. One day, he was doing his act in front of two naked women taking bubble baths in tubs that looked like giant champagne glasses. The crowd was not interested in Mr. Leno’s act, and a man in the audience started heckling him. One of the women got out of her giant champagne glass, walked over to the heckler, grabbed him by his collar, and punched him in the face, giving him a bloody nose. Then she walked back to her bubble bath. Mr. Leno says today, “That was the first time in my life that a nude woman had to defend my honor.”
• Jimmy Durante was a very gregarious fellow. Wherever he had a hotel suite, it was constantly filled with his friends—and with his friends’ friends. One day, the telephone rang, and the hotel operator told Jimmy that Dave Rappaport from New Jersey wanted to see him. Jimmy didn’t know any Dave Rappaport from New Jersey, so he asked the numerous people in his suite if they knew a Dave Rappaport from New Jersey. It turned out that they didn’t know him, either. “So nobody ever hoid of him,” Jimmy said. “Ah, what the hell, tell him to come on up anyway.”
• While the members of Monty Python were filming their movie The Life of Brian, Ian Johnson made a documentary of the process, during which he asked the various Pythons to comment on each other. They got together in a group to watch the documentary, in which they had been open about each other, including criticisms of each other, but after seeing the documentary, a moment occurred during which they all looked at each other as if to say, “Yes, I know you. I know your good points, your bad points, but the hell with all that anyway, because—I like you.”
• After becoming famous as an entertainer, Will Rogers was occasionally seen doing his comedy act by people from back home. One person saw Mr. Rogers’ act, then he returned home where friends asked him what Mr. Rogers was doing to become so famous. He replied, “Oh, just acting the fool like he used to do around here.”
• Jack Benny used to fall down on the floor laughing at the witticisms of his friend George Burns. In his later years, whenever Mr. Benny saw Mr. Burns coming, he would say, “Wait, let me lie down on the floor. I’m too old to fall.”
Gays and Lesbians
• The homes of gay men tend to be cleaner (and better decorated) than the homes of many single straight men and lesbians. Lesbian humorist Ellen Orleans once visited the home of a gay friend of hers. While talking to her, his roommate, another gay man, moved a vase and saw a ring. He immediately got a bottle of Windex, sprayed the ring, and wiped it clean, all without stopping his conversation with her. Meanwhile, her friend prepared himself a bowl of oatmeal, spilled two flakes on the floor, and immediately got a Dustbuster and cleaned up the flakes. He noticed Ms. Orleans staring with disbelief at him and his roommate, and he said, “We can’t help it. We’re gay.”
• A talent manager—one of the top people in the field—told gay comedian Bob Smith early in his career that he could go far if only he would drop his gay material. Despite making only $3,000 a year from his comedy back then, Mr. Smith was not tempted to accept the advice.
• Lesbian humorist Ellen Orleans remembers her very first gay bumper sticker: “I’m One Too.” As she was driving on the highway, a car filled with women pulled up beside her. The women rolled their windows down and shouted, “So are we!”
A leap year (also known as an intercalary year or bissextile year) is a calendar year that contains an additional day (or, in the case of a lunisolar calendar, a month) added to keep the calendar year synchronized with the astronomical year or seasonal year. Because astronomical events and seasons do not repeat in a whole number of days, calendars that have the same number of days in each year drift over time with respect to the event that the year is supposed to track. By inserting (called intercalating in technical terminology) an additional day or month into the year, the drift can be corrected. A year that is not a leap year is a common year.
The Romans treated leap day as a second sixth day before the Kalends of March, in Latin ante diem bis sextum Kalendas Martias, This bis sextum was translated as 'bissextile': the 'bissextile day' is the leap day and a 'bissextile year' is a year which includes a leap day.
Source
Mark. was first, and correct, with:
Leap Year.
Billy in Cypress said:
Leap year
Alan J answered:
Leap Year.
Randall wrote:
Leap Year
Mac Mac replied:
Leap year
Dave responded:
Leap Year.
zorch said:
A year with an extra day added like February 29th or Munkipee 30th
Deborah, the Master Gardener wrote:
I think that’s a Leap Year.
Many years ago I began a tradition of baking cookies with my kids when “The Sound of Music” aired. It airs, usually, around Christmas, so we consider it a Christmas movie (but not in the same way that “Die Hard” is a Christmas movie). She and I haven’t spent a Christmas together in a few years now, but she still bakes cookies. She lives in Brooklyn so she gets a head-start on me. Even in a pandemic we celebrate and cherish our traditions. I hope all y’all enjoy your holiday traditions as well.
Joe replied:
I was trying to think of something funny but I'm too tired. It's Leap Year. I attend a Leap year ball every 4 years, except last year, I couldn't make it. Bob Dylan is invited each time, but he never shows up.
Cal in Vermont took the day off.
David of Moon Valley took the day off.
mj took the day off.
Kevin K. in Washington DC took the day off.
Michelle in AZ took the day off.
Dave in Tucson took the day off.
Leo in Boise took the day off.
Roy, Still Bright Blue, Still in Gohmertstan, TX took the day off.
Ed K took the day off.
Barbara, of Peppy Tech fame took the day off.
Jon L took the day off.
Doug in Albuquerque, New Mexico, took the day off.
Stephen F took the day off.
-pgw took the day off.
Kenn B took the day off.
Micki 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.
~~~~~
Minor rant: We’re going to celebrate alone, without any family members, including our son who lives 55 miles west of us, because of this…pandemic (that could have been contained), since 1981. No kids, no family, no friends, just the two of us and our dogs. My husband and I are going through the motions, and we can barely muster the energy and will to carry on with our decades’ worth of traditions. One thing that helped: Our daughter shared her super-secret Spotify Christmas music playlist that includes music I recorded from KPFT-FM radio in Houston, TX, when we lived in La Porte, TX, in 1985. Everything from the King’s Singers to Horselips to Steel Eye Span and beyond. I want to drink our homemade eggnog, spiked, of course, and listen to this fabulous music and forget the world. I’d hibernate from now until next Sunday if I could. I can’t hate 2020, despite its upsides (spending more time together; saving money not boarding the dogs while we ride our bikes in Italy, blahblahblah) more. My feelings won’t be hurt if you just share the link and not my feelings. Trying to pretend that we can soldier on without impact is futile. I’ve tried. You gotta feel your feels before you can move on.
Oh, and fog moved in Sunday, parted briefly Monday afternoon, and moved in again so that we can’t see Jupiter + Saturn. Jeez. Just pile it on, 2020.
CBS begins the night with a FRESH'The Price Is Right At Night', followed by a FRESH'Let's Make A Deal', then a RERUN'NCIS'.
On a RERUNStephen Colbert (from 12/9/20) are Rachel Maddow and Megan Thee Stallion.
On a RERUNJames Corden, OBE, (from 12/2/20) are Riz Ahmed and Bad Bunny.
NBC starts the night with a RERUN'The Voice', followed by a RERUN'SNL Christmas Special'.
On a RERUNJimmy Fallon (from 11/26/20) are Jerry Seinfeld and Bad Bunny.
On a RERUNSeth Meyers (from 11/10/20) are Demi Lovato, Edgar Ramírez, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and Carter McLean.
On a RERUNLilly Singh (from 9/18/19) are Tracee Ellis Ross.
ABC opens the night with a FRESH'The Bachelorette', followed by a FRESH'Supermarket Sweep'.
On a RERUNJimmy Kimmel (from 12/7/20) are Miley Cyrus and Tony Romo.
The CW offers a RERUN'Swamp Thing', followed by a RERUN'Tell Me A Story'.
Faux fills the night with a FRESH'NeXt'.
MY recycles an old 'Chicago PD', followed by another old 'Chicago PD'.
AMC offers the movie 'Love Actually', followed by the movie 'Four Christmases', then the movie 'Fred Claus'.
BBC -
[6:00AM] MONTY PYTHON'S FLYING CIRCUS - YOU'RE NO FUN ANYMORE
[6:15AM] MONTY PYTHON'S FLYING CIRCUS - FULL FRONTAL NUDITY
[6:30AM - 10:30AM] STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE
[11:30AM - 4:30PM] STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION
[5:30PM] HAPPY FEET
[8:00PM] THE POLAR EXPRESS
[10:02PM] THE POLAR EXPRESS (ALL TIMES ET)
Bravo has all old 'Chrisley Knows Best' all night.
Comedy Central has 2 hours of old 'The Office', followed by an hour of old 'Drunk History', then 'Jeff Dunham's Completely Unrehearsed Last-Minute Pandemic Holiday Special'.
The Daily Show is pre-empted.
FX has the movie 'Skyscraper', followed by the movie 'The Fate Of The Furious'.
History has 'The Curse Of Oak Island', followed by a FRESH'The Curse Of Oak Island: Digging Deeper', then a FRESH'The Curse Of Oak Island', followed by a FRESH'Beyond Oak Island'.
IFC -
[6:00am] Parks And Recreation
[6:30am] Parks And Recreation
[7:00am] Half Baked
[9:05am] 30 Minutes Or Less
[11:10am] Fight Club
[2:30pm] The Fugitive
[5:30pm] Taken 2
[7:30pm] John Wick
[9:45pm] John Wick
[12:00am] Two And A Half Men
[12:30am] Two And A Half Men
[1:00am] The Fugitive
[4:00am] Half Baked (ALL TIMES ET)
Sundance -
[6:15am - 9:45am] gomer pyle, u.s.m.c.
[10:15am - 12:45pm] hogan's heroes
[1:15pm] footloose
[3:45pm] caddyshack
[5:45pm] tommy boy
[8:00pm] national lampoon's vacation
[10:00pm] vegas vacation
[12:00am] national lampoon's european vacation
[2:00am] caddyshack
[4:00am] columbo (ALL TIMES ET)
SyFy has the movie 'Death Wish', followed by the movie 'Transformers: The Last Knight'.
TBS:
On a RERUNConan (from 11/4/20) is Al Franken.
Iggy Pop just dropped a song about Covid-19 titled “Dirty Little Virus” because he’s Iggy Pop and he can do what he wants.
“Covid-19 is on the scene,” Pop growls in his distinctive voice, “the boys and girls can’t stop their world/Grandfather’s dead/Got Trump instead.” The song was co-written with Leron Thomas, who also played trumpet on the track.
“I was moved to write a direct lyric, not something too emotional or deep — more like journalism,” Pop said in an accompanying video. “It was a stopper for me. It’s been the big thing happening in my life and everybody’s else’s, I reckon, for almost a year now. If there was still a Man of the Year, it would be the virus.”
Pop most recently recorded a French-language version of Elvis Costello’s “No Flag” off the singer-songwriter’s new album, Hey Clockface. The duo appeared in Rolling Stone‘s Musicians on Musicians issue, where they discussed their friendship and their careers. “When I heard your music, I felt like you were the only thing coming out of the U.K. that wasn’t going along with the I’m-a-monster-with a-guitar-riff thing,” Pop told Costello. “The whole guitar riffage was going up and up and up. You were either that or, no offense to her, you were Lulu.”
Country music singer Stella Parton, the sister of legendary musician Dolly Parton, has criticised “moldy” politicians for being among the first people to receive the coronavirus vaccine.
In a tweet over the weekend, Parton referenced her sister’s $1m (£756,285) donation to help fund Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine, which was approved for use in the US by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) last week.
“If a little Hillbilly singer like my big sister Dolly can invest in the vaccine then why the hell can’t some of you old moldy politicians pitch in a few million yourselves?” Parton tweeted on Saturday.
“I noticed you started getting vaccinated right away while people are starving and dying you Aholes,” the singer added.
At the time of writing, the tweet has garnered more than 380,000 likes and at least 60,000 retweets on Twitter.
Laurence Hyman, son of the late Shirley Jackson, has been on a quest for more than 20 years.
Jackson was just 48 when she died, in 1965, and left behind an extensive backlog of unreleased material. Her husband, the literary critic Stanley Edgar Hyman, made little effort to organize her papers beyond giving them to the Library of Congress, so Hyman and his sister, Sarah Hyman DeWitt, took on the job. They have made several trips to Washington, sorting through boxes and sometimes finding sections of a given work in different piles, a process especially time consuming because Shirley Jackson rarely dated her manuscripts.
Hyman, who manages his mother’s estate, has co-edited two posthumous collections of her stories and other writings and otherwise seen her reputation soar well beyond being the author of “The Lottery.” Two volumes of her fiction have been issued by the country’s unofficial canon maker, the Library of America, and Jackson was the subject of an award-winning biography by Ruth Franklin. Hyman says at least 10 film or television adaptations are in the works, along with stage productions, a multimedia project by composer Ryan Scott Oliver and a collection of her letters that is scheduled for 2021.
Meanwhile, an early story never published before, “Adventure On a Bad Night,” appears this week in the new issue of Strand Magazine. “Adventure On a Bad Night” was likely written during World War II or shortly after, Hyman says. It’s a brief sketch about a housewife named Vivien who takes a needed break to go out and buy cigarettes. She meets a heavily pregnant woman who seems to have an Italian accent and is being shunned by the store clerk as she attempts to send a telegram. Vivien helps out and the woman responds by paying for her cigarettes.
Strand managing editor Andrew Gulli says the story has “the Jackson trademark touch of imparting something touching and significant out of the mundane.
U2 lead singer Bono, Pharrell Williams and singer Halsey are joining the chorus of Sing 2, as they will voice lead roles in the Illumination/Universal sequel to the 2016 hit. Bobby Cannavale, Black Panther’s Letitia Wright, Eric Andre and Chelsea Peretti have also signed to star, joining reprising stars Matthew McConaughey, Reese Witherspoon, Scarlett Johannsson, Taron Egerton, Tori Kelly and Nick Kroll. Pic will be ready for theatrical holiday release a year from now.
While Bono and U2’s music has provided a backdrop to films from Mandela: Long Walk To Freedom to Gangs of New York, this will be his first time voicing a character and singing in an animated film. It reunited Williams with Illumination; his tune “Happy” was a soundtrack tune that helped draw blockbuster grosses for Despicable Me 2.
In Sing 2, Buster Moon (McConaughey) and his cast of underdogs push their talents beyond their local theater, hoping for a shot to perform at the most prestigious venue in the entertainment capital of the world: The Crystal Tower Theater. To do that, though, they’ll first have to impress the powerful and egotistical entertainment mogul—and likely gangster—wolf Jimmy Crystal (Cannavale) and prove that they are worthy of his stage. Crystal will let them perform, on condition Buster convince the world’s most reclusive rock legend, lion Clay Calloway (Bono) out of self-imposed seclusion after the death of his wife and persuade him to perform in the show. Williams plays Alfonso, an elephant ice-cream-truck owner who becomes the first crush of shy elephant Meena (Kelly). Halsey voices Jimmy Crystal’s teenage daughter, Porsche; Wright plays a streetwise feline dancer who helps earnest gorilla Johnny (Egerton) regain his confidence while learning his choreography; Andre plays a self-important yak; and Peretti voices Jimmy Crystal’s haughty canine assistant and talent scout. Witherspoon returns as harried mother pig, Rosita; Scarlett Johansson reprises as rocker porcupine Ash and Kroll returns as the pig artiste, Gunter.
Donald Trump (R-Loser) decreed on Monday that all new US federal buildings should be “beautiful”, in a long-expected executive order which excoriated architectural modernism but stopped short of demanding that all such projects should be in the classical style.
The Pulitzer prize-winning architectural critic Paul Goldberger said the order was “mostly symbolic” and “just a chance [for Trump] to lob another grenade on his way out the door”.
When a draft of the order first surfaced, in February, critics reacted with horror to its promise to “make federal buildings beautiful again” by mandating a return to “the classical architectural style”.
Both the American Institute of Architects and the National Trust for Historic Preservation objected, while Goldberger told the Guardian the problem was “not with classical architecture per se”, but that “the mandating of an official style is not fully compatible with 21st-century liberal democracy”.
Saying the GSA must seek public and staff input on designs, the order also establishes a “President’s Council on Improving Federal Civic Architecture”, meant to police if not forbid outright any federal project “that diverges from the preferred architecture set forth in … this order, including brutalist or deconstructivist architecture or any design derived from or related to these types of architecture”.
Donald Trump (R-Deluded)’s supporters, who continue to believe in the outgoing president’s claims of election fraud, have planned a “second inauguration” event for him online on the day Joe Biden is due to take his oath of office.
The event called “Donald J Trump 2nd presidential inauguration ceremony” planned on Facebook is supposed to be held on 20 January and already more than 325,000 people have shown interest in attending it. Out of those, more than 60,000 say they are definitely going, according to the Daily Dot.
One of the hosts of the event is Evi Kokalari, also known as Evi Kokalari-Angelakis, according to her Twitter profile, who was part of the Trump campaign in the 2020 elections and appears on right-leaning news networks, including One America News Network (OAN), a channel often promoted by Mr Trump as he turned hostile towards Fox News.
Ms Kokalari’s latest post on the event’s page points towards Facebook’s election information system that she deems as “fake” and says: Our voting rights are under attack! So is our freedom of speech! And FB’s disclaimer on this post, proves just that.”
The event page itself was marked by Facebook with the disclaimer: "Joe Biden is the President-elect. He will be inaugurated as the 46th US President on January 20, 2021."
It reads like a implausible plot twist in a comic spy-caper movie. But in a bizarre – and very real – turn of events in an already astonishing detective story, the Kremlin’s biggest domestic critic, Alexei Navalny, has duped one of his alleged poisoners into revealing key details about the operation to kill him. The ruse also revealed that the spy agency team tried to poison him by contaminating his clothes, including his underpants.
Posing as an official from the Kremlin, Mr Navalny made an audacious early morning call to Konstantin Kudryavtsev, an employee of Russia’s security agency, hours before a journalistic investigation last Monday outed him as one of eight suspects.
Mr Navalny asks the agent for details of the operation in order to prepare a two-page report for “you know who” in the Russian leadership.
Mr Kudryavtsev, who reveals he is self-isolating from the coronavirus, appears to understand he is being asked for sensitive information, but proceeds to give an astonishing account of the “failed” operation.
The operation had been planned well, he said, and would have ended as it should have done if only Mr Navalny’s plane from Tomsk to Moscow on 20 August “had flown a bit longer”. Confirming long-held suspicions, Mr Kudryavtsev says that only the quick thinking of the pilot, who diverted to nearby Omsk, and first responders – who administered an antidote on the runway – averted a lethal outcome.
An ancient wolf pup, perfectly preserved in permafrost, has been discovered in Yukon, scientists have revealed. T
The creature dates from the Ice Age and its remains were discovered by a gold miner in 2016 near to Dawson City in Yukon. It has been given the name Zhùr which means wolf in the local indigenous Han language.
It appears that the animal, confirmed as female, died suddenly when the den she was in collapsed.
The remains contain particularly exceptional details of muscle tissue and allow an insight into what life was like in Canada 2.6 million years ago. They also constitute the oldest ever recorded wolf and may help to shed light on the evolution of the animal.
A professor of anatomy at Des Moines University in Iowa, Julie Meachen, called the creature: “the most complete wolf mummy that’s ever been found.” Ms Meachen added that the wolf was “basically 100 per cent intact” saying that the only thing missing are her eyes.
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said:
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
