The world can be a harsh and unforgiving place, and life can sometimes seem to want to grind you into the dirt. That’s why people covet “comfort items” like an old sweater, comfy slippers, mac and cheese… or, ya know, Zooey Deschanel:
Succor
Random Celebrity Trivia!
This is mostly about celebrity relationships, but there are other things as well. Culled from sources all over the Internet:
– Actor Ken Jeong (The Hangover, Community) is a licensed medical doctor! Internal Medicine is his specialty. He was born in Detroit, but moved to Greensboro, NC when he was young (his father was a professor at North Carolina A&T State University for 35 years). Jeong got his undergrad degree from Duke and his MD from UNC in 1995.
– Melissa Gilbert, Jonathan Gilbert (Laura Ingalls and Willie Olesen from Little House on the Prairie) and Sara Gilbert (Darlene from Rosanne) are all legally (but not biologically) related. Melissa was adopted by actor Paul Gilbert and his wife, Barbara Crane. A couple of years later they adopted Jonathan. A couple of years after that the couple divorced. Barbara then married Harold Abeles, and they had Sara Rebecca Abeles in 1975. Sara changed her last name to Gilbert in 1985 when she started acting.
– Oh, and Paul Gilbert’s name at birth was Ed MacMahon!
– Believe it or not, George Clooney is one of the closest living relatives of Abraham Lincoln, being a direct descendant of Lincoln’s aunt. Tom Hanks (and, some say, Camille Hanks, Bill Cosby’s wife) are also members of this family.
– Speaking of politics, Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt, Douglas MacArthur and the George H.W. Bush family all descend from a 17th century Masachusetts farmer named Benjamin Barney.
– Charlie Chaplin’s father-in-law was the playwright Eugene O’Neill. Not that the connection did Chaplin any good: after Chaplin (then age 54) married Oona O’Neill (then age 18), O’Neill refused to speak to her.
Atlanta Peeps: Check In!
So, a couple of weeks ago, the missus and I went to The Thirsty Beaver, a Charlotte dive bar, for the first time. The bar shows Hee Haw re-reuns on the TV, and is jam-packed with 1970s kitsch, including a velvet Willie Nelson painting and ancient Schlitz signs. But my favorite thing was a BJ and The Bear poster tucked away in a corner.
Lisa had never heard of the show, so when we got home I went to YouTube and found the show’s intro, which I posted on her Facebook page. And, under the “related videos” section of the page, I saw the intro for season 2 of Lobo, the BJ and the Bear spin-off:
Dig that late 70s\early 80s Atlanta footage! I especially dug the bits filmed at the old Omni Complex, complete with a shot of the skating rink. That really takes me back to going to Hawks games with my dad as a kid, and the pizza place there at the Omni, which had the world’s best meatball subs!
I’d also forgotten that Nell Carter (billed as “Nell Ruth Carter”) was on the show! And whatever happened to Amy Botinwick? Man, she was hot!
Good times!
Website Update
Hi folks!
I have, ONCE AGAIN, disabled the AllConsuming widgets in the sidebar (the “I’m reading” and “I’m listening to” widgets). This is because AllConsuming is ONCE AGAIN having some kind of issue which causes the widgets not to load properly. This was not only greatly increasing page load times for my site, it was also causing other widgets not to load (especially the “Share This” widget, which allows you to easily share my posts on Facebook to Twitter). When (if) AllConsuming gets their act together, I’ll put them back.
In the meantime, does anyone know of a FAST and RELIABLE WordPress plug-in that allows me to post the books I’m reading and the music I’m listening to?
Thanks!
Jim
Twitter Weekly Updates for 2011-07-24
- Watching the Yankettes, eating pork rinds and Sriracha. What's hotter: Sriracha or Hope Solo? #
- Ah well. The Yankettes choked harder than Greg Norman. But at least BREAKING BAD returns tonight! Who else is excited about that? #
- That was SOOOO intense!! #breakingbad #
- Gus said like… six words tonight, right? And was absolutely TERRIFYING. #breakingbad #
- Hooray! I have a Spotify account! Listening now… #spotify #
- Best band… or best band ever? #asobiseksu #
- "Well? Get back to work." HOLY CRAP! As intense as today's World Cup… only BB was crammed into 43 minutes and involved a box cutter! #
- No pop song has ever been made better by the words "featuring Kanye West". #
- Aaaaannnddd the NotW casualties have started: http://t.co/DBlq7O1 #
- Wow… the new Facebook app for Android doesn't totally suck! #shouldhaveupgradedsooner #
- http://t.co/aMDsGsv Lykke Li – Jul '11 #
- @PBR_Charlotte Foo Fighters? No. #
- @1outside History of Rome podcast! SEXY :p God bless the history nerds! #
- Pretty impressed with #thehour last night. Anyone else watch? #
- "Smile, little lamb." #damages #
- Mmmmmm.. peanut butter, honey and banana sandwich! 🙂 #
- @1outside Actually Murdoch has been an American citizen since 1985. Not that I claim him or anything. #
- I love you, Ellen Parsons. #
- WOO-HOO!!! Owners approve new CBA! #
- Mexican prisoner raffled 'luxury cell' to other inmates at Cereso Hermosillo jail | Mail Online http://t.co/FcET5Cq #
- Chinese villagers mistake malnourished monkey for alien | Mail Online http://t.co/2kOcEng #
- Man dies two weeks after being bitten 19 times by black widow spider | Mail Online http://t.co/FfQFVGk #
- McDonald's Manager Accused Of Punching Customer – News Story – WSB Atlanta http://t.co/CwHFtjh #
- Neowin.net – Hunch.com: Infographic on Mac users versus PC users http://t.co/YZ6LbUN #
- mental_floss Blog » Now You Can Dial Your Own Telephone! (1954) http://t.co/QLKwhDK #
- For a TV show set in Long Island, NY, USA's #necessaryroughness sure makes me homesick! 😉 :p #
- @calman3000 Somebody's drunk tweeting! 🙂 #
- Just wasted an hour at this site: http://t.co/b9NoxHi #
- OMG! ASPLODES! RT @alisonbrie: Marion Cotillard – ooh la la! RT @nicosun5: Who is an actress that would turn you gay? #
- Here comes the glurge! RT @Charlottejobs4u: The Spirit of Jim Morrison Lives in Amy Winehouse: http://t.co/4n0fHpe #amywinehouse #RIP #
- Getting deep in to the G&Ts now… #
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Photo
Sigh. Sometimes I miss the 80s:
Madonna at the premiere of Amadeus, 1984.
Music News
A couple of quick music news items today:
– Man, the guys from New Order really hate each other, don’t they? In this piece from The Guardian, journalist Rob Fitzpatrick sits down with Peter Hook on one phone line and Gillian Gilbert, Stephen Morris and Bernard Sumner on the other to try and figure out what happened. There’s still something that happened on the band’s last tour of Brazil that no one will talk about, but it seems that the seeds of discontent were sown much earlier, and involved Haçienda, the famed nightclub built with New Order money. According to Hook, band manager Rob Gretton suggested to the band that they buy the rights to the Haçienda name, and so Hook gave him £5,000 to do that. According to the rest of the band, Hook “stole” the name for himself. Hook counters that he faithfully attended Haçienda business meetings for years, while Sumner and the others didn’t, and didn’t care about the club at all until 1994, until it became possible to make money off the club’s name. It’s all depressing and sad. Read more here.
– I was a fan of The Smiths for a few years back in the 80s and early 90s… but I’ve never been much of a fan of Morrissey’s solo work. It all seemed so… self-indulgent, in the same way that the rest of 10,000 Maniacs seemed to keep Natalie Merchant’s propensity for sad, mopey songs in check. Anyway, it looks like Moz is really starting to lose it. David Tseng, founder of Morrissey-Solo.com, one of the largest and oldest Moz fansites on the web, flew 5,000 miles from LA to Copenhagen to attend a Morrissey show. But he was thrown out (without a refund!) before the show began? Tseng’s crime against Moz? Allowing commenters on his website to say less then flattering things about Moz. So if you have your own music fansite, make sure to heavily edit what people post… or just don’t support such a whiney and needy “artist” in the first place. Read more here.
Best Local Commercial Ever!
OK, this commercial for the Surf and Turf Lodge in Bessemer City, North Carolina isn’t all that great. But it has one of the best opening lines ever:
“At Surf and Turf Lodge, we believe there’s a place for all God’s creatures… right between the hush puppies and the fries!”
Oh My: Romola Garai
So the new BBC show The Hour debuted this week. Although many early reviews called it “the British Mad Men“, it wasn’t quite that. The show does have a plotline that involves the media getting too close to the government… which makes me wonder if Kudos knew the News of the World scandal was going to break months ago, or if the whole thing is one gigantic coincidence.
Anyway, one the unexpected delights of the show was actress Romola Garai, who plays producer Bel “Moneypenny” Rowley. Born to British parents in Hong Kong in 1982, Garai can certainly act. And Good Lord – does this woman have an amazing body or what?
You can also see Garai in the films Atonement, Amazing Grace, Glorious 39 and in the lead role in the BBC’s 2009 adaptation of Jane Austin’s Emma, for which she was nominated for a Golden Globe.
Congratulations, Romola! You win the “RAWR of the Week” Award! Check out her Wiki page here and hit up Google Images for her here.
The Oddest Coincidence
Human beings have known about the uniqueness of fingerprints for a long time. Ancient Babylonians used fingerprints for signatures. The famous Code of Hammurabi (1700 BC) authorized authorities to record the fingerprints of those who were arrested. The ancient Egyptians, Minoans, Greeks and Chinese used fingerprints as a form of identification, usually on legal documents, but sometimes as a “maker’s mark” on pottery items. By 702 AD, the Japanese had adopted the Chinese fingerprint method to authenticate loans.
After the fall of the Roman Empire, Europe seemed to forget about fingerprints for a long time. It wasn’t until 1684 that English physician Nehemiah Grew published the first scientific paper about fingerprints. Just over a century later, in 1788, German anatomist Johann Christoph Andreas Mayer published a paper in which it was recognized that each fingerprint is unique.
Fingerprinting got a big boost in 1858. And that’s because of Sir William James Herschel, grandson of William Herschel, the German-born English astronomer who discovered Uranus, and son of John Herschel, who named seven moons of Saturn and four moons of Uranus.
William James Herschel was an officer in the Indian Civil Service in Bengal. Herschel became a big proponent of fingerprinting after becoming fed up with the rampant forging of contracts and legal papers that was going on in India at the time. Herschel’s decision to require fingerprints on most legal documents not only made forging them much more difficult, it almost eliminated fraud in pensions, in which family members continued to cash checks long after their relative had died. This was, of course, costing the English authorities a massive sum of money. Shortly thereafter, Herschel also began fingerprinting prisoners as soon as they were sentenced, as it was somewhat common for Indians to pay someone else to serve their prison sentences.
In 1880, Dr Henry Faulds, a Scottish surgeon who had been appointed by the Church of Scotland to open a mission in Japan, published a paper in the journal Nature on how fingerprints were unique and could be used for identification purposes. Faulds’ interest in fingerprints came about thanks to an archaeological expedition he went on with an American friend, Edward S. Morse. Faulds noticed that he could see ancient fingerprints in recovered pottery shards, and he began looking at his own fingerprints. Shortly thereafter, the hospital Faulds founded was broken into. A staff member was accused of the crime, but Faulds was certain the employee was innocent. He compared fingerprints found at the scene with those of the suspect and found that they were different. This convinced Japanese police to release the man.