Instead of five nominees for the Best Picture of the Year, there will now be ten. This is not new. In the 1930's and 1940's, the Academy often nominated 10 pictures. But then again, they had good reason to. Consider the Best Picture nominees from 1939: "Gone With the Wind," which won, "The Wizard of Oz," "Stagecoach," "Wuthering Heights," "Love … Read More
The Guy Who Wrote “You Light Up My Life” Is Finally Indicted
About time, too. That song, written in 1977, is a crime which has gone unpunished for too long. Wait, what? Oh. My mistake. He was indicted on sex charges. Date rape.
What Do You Think Of Autotune?
Autotuning is quite simple. It can also be used to turn regular speech into music (with Cher-like effects if desired), like the guys who routine autotune the news of the day: But more controversially, autotune involves the ability, through software, to correct one's singing pitch in real time. With a software program which runs only a couple hundred dollars, a performer's voice … Read More
Artists Running Wall Street?
That's one someone thinks. From the Community Arts Network: A Proposed Job Swap To Save American Capitalism By Liz Lerman Do Wall Street executives deserve big bonuses during hard times? Does increased arts funding have a place in an economic stimulus package? I’ll leave it to others to debate these controversies. Meanwhile I’d like to make a modest proposal to … Read More
You Want To Cry?
Then read this. Here, I'll start it for you: Pixar grants girl's dying wish to see 'Up' HUNTINGTON BEACH – Colby Curtin, a 10-year-old with a rare form of cancer, was staying alive for one thing – a movie. From the minute Colby saw the previews to the Disney-Pixar movie Up
The New Broadway
In case you haven't heard, Broadway is now a pedestrian mall from 47th to 42nd Sts. and from 35th to 33rd Sts. Which means Times Square looks like this now: And this: And this: Beach chairs are the big thing right now. NYC is going to decide at the end of the year whether to make it permanent. … Read More
Wikipedia Facts
When all of Wikipedia's "featured articles" are printed out, it looks like this: That, I repeat, is only the featured articles — the articles that the editors consider to be the best articles in terms of style, completeness, etc. There are 2,545 featured articles on Wikipedia, out of a total of 2,916,034 articles in all. Therefore, if you printed all the Wikipedia … Read More
Twitter Facts
From a Harvard Business School research study: (1) The median number of tweets over the course of a lifetime is…. ready for this?… one. This translates to over half of Twitter users tweeting less than once every 74 days. Yup. In fact, 25% of all Twitter uses don't tweet at all (they just follow). (2) 90% of all tweets come from only the top … Read More
Cop From “The Village People” Comes Out Of The Closet: “I’m Heterosexual”
Not a parody. His name is Victor Willis. He was the cop of The Village People. Not only does he say he is straight, but he adds that the lyrics to Village People song, YMCA, "were not meant to be innuendo about gay cruising but about hanging out with your straight buddies." I have to admit… when the song came … Read More
Whiny Les Miz Singing Lady Has Nervous Breakdown
Because she lost. Obviously, I'm being sarcastic. The whole thing is rather sad. But not entirely unpredictable. Fame is a hardship, and instantaneous worldwide fame destroys. Going from a quiet anonymous life to life-under-the-fishbowl must be extremely straining. Here's hoping she gets well. In fact, I hope Susan Boyle makes the decision to retire, thumbing her nose at the lucrative money she was sure … Read More
Jon & Kate and Child Labor Laws
First, a disclosure: I hate reality TV. And I never even heard of "Jon & Kate Plus 8", the popular TLC reality series, until a week ago. Apparently, it is a reality show about Jon and Kate Gosselin, a Pennsylvania husband and wife, as they raise their eight young children, including 8-year-old twins and sextuplets who just turned 5. An interesting legal … Read More
Laodicean
…meaning "indifferent or lukewarm especially in matters of religion". That was the winning word in last night's Scripps 82nd Annual National Spelling Bee: Thirteen-year-old Kavya Shivashankar of Olathe, Kansas, spelled "laodicean," Thursday night to take top honors in the 82nd annual Scripps National Spelling Bee. The eighth-grader won $40,000 in cash and prizes for nailing the final word. Pronounced lay-odd-uh-see-an, the … Read More
Oh Who Gives A Sh*t?
The New York Times covers the American Idol scandal: AT&T, one of the biggest corporate sponsors of “American Idol,” might have influenced the outcome of this year’s competition by providing phones for free text-messaging services and lessons in casting blocks of votes at parties organized by fans of Kris Allen, the Arkansas singer who was the winner of the show … Read More
100 Best Movies Lines
How many do you recognize?