samhexum

Michelle Forbes is always good. The marshall looks a little like Greg Kinnear. Horst is an interesting character, and the actor is practically unrecognizable compared to his role as the captain on MONK.

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‘Bachelor’ Star Colton Underwood Reveals He’s Gay in Emotional ‘GMA’ Interview Former “Bachelor” star Colton Underwood sat down with Robin Roberts on Wednesday morning for a deeply personal interview, revealing that he is gay. In the interview, Underwood, who is also a former pro football player, was very emotional revealing the truths he learned about himself during quarantine. “Obviously this year’s been a lot for a lot of people, and it’s probably made a lot of people look themselves in the mirror and figure out who they are and what they’ve been running from and putting off in their lives. For me, I’ve ran from myself for a long time and I’ve hated myself for a long time, and I’m gay. I came to terms with that that earlier this year and have been processing it,” Underwood told Roberts. “The next step in all of this is sort of letting people know. I’m still nervous, but it’s been a journey for sure.” “I’m emotional, but I’m emotional in such a good, happy, positive way,” he continued. “I’m like the happiest and healthiest I’ve ever been in my life. That means the world to me.” When Roberts asked what brought him the courage to come out, Underwood said, “I got into a place for me in my personal life that was dark and bad. I can list a bunch of different things but they’d all be excuses. I think overall the reason why now is because I got to a place where I didn’t think I was ever going to share this. I would rather have died than say I’m gay, and that was sort of my wake up call.” Roberts then asked if Underwood ever thought about hurting himself during this process. “There was a moment in L.A. that I woke up and I didn’t think I was going to wake up,” he said. “I didn’t have the intentions of waking up, and I did. And I think for me that was my wake up call, that, ‘This is your life. Take back control.’ I think looking back even beyond that is like even just suicidal thoughts and driving my car close to a cliff, like ‘Oh, if this goes off the cliff, it’s not that big of a deal.’ I don’t feel that anymore.” Underwood then addressed being on “The Bachelor” and confusion fans and the women he dated might feel about that season. “I thought a lot about this…Do I regret being ‘The Bachelor?’ And handling it the way that I did?” he said. “I do think I could have handled it better, I do say that. I just wish I wouldn’t have dragged people into my own mess of figuring out who I was. I genuinely mean that but I also at the same time I can say ‘I’m sorry’ to all of those women, I can also thank them, and without the ‘Bachelor’ franchise, I don’t know if this would have ever come out.” Underwood was first introduced to viewers in 2018, as a contestant on Becca Kufrin’s season of “The Bachelorette.” He then joined the cast of “Bachelor In Paradise” Season 5, before becoming “The Bachelor” in 2019 for its 23rd season. Underwood was heavily marketed as “The Virgin Bachelor,” and his virginity was a major storyline throughout his season — something that he later told Variety he believed was “overblown,” but not necessarily exploited. Ever since starring as “The Bachelor,” Underwood had continued to speak about his virginity and sexuality. In a media interview last year, he said that “The Bachelor” helped him realize that he was not gay, after struggling with his sexuality. And in a book he published in 2020, “The First Time: Finding Myself and Looking for Love on Reality TV,” he revealed that growing up, people would question whether he was gay, since he was a virgin and a football player. He spoke to Roberts about how getting cast on the show, combined with his religious background, further confused his journey. “I literally remember praying to God the morning I found out that I was ‘The Bachelor’ and thanking him for making me straight,” he said. “I remember that vividly, saying, ‘Finally, you’re letting me be straight. Finally, you’re giving me the wife, the fiancée, the kids, the house, and then I’m going to have all this. I’ve known I’ve been different since the age of six, and I couldn’t process it and put my finger on it until high school, freshman year, when I knew I was gay. And by that time I had already grown up in the Catholic church, I had been to Catholic grade school, I learned in the Bible that gay is a sin. I had made mistakes in my sports and in my athletic career, and when you make mistakes, gay was always affiliated with a connotation of negativity, and there’s a lot of things when I look back, like, ‘No wonder you held it in.'” Underwood was a tight end at Illinois State, was signed by the San Diego Chargers in 2014 as a free agent in 2014, and was on the practice squad of the Oakland Raiders and Philadelphia Eagles. In an interview with Variety last year, Underwood spoke about his struggle with his sexuality growing up, explaining, “It was challenging for me to be standing up for my values and my beliefs, and looking back now, growing up in sort of a hyper-masculine culture as football or a conservative family…I always felt like I was on the defense. It was one of those things when you hear it so often and so much, you start believing it or you start questioning things. It really did affect me and it really was a weird time in my life, and I internalized a lot of it because I had nobody to talk to and nobody to vent to about it.” In the years following his time on “The Bachelor,” Underwood has stayed in the headlines, not only for his commentary about his own sexuality, but also for personal legal matters between him and his ex-girlfriend, Cassie Randolph, the contestant he met on the reality TV show with whom he was in a relationship for a year-and-a-half. After breaking up in 2020, Randolph filed a restraining order, accusing Underwood of stalking and harassing her, and filed a police report with claims that he had put a tracking device on her car. Later, Randolph dismissed the restraining order against Underwood and requested to drop the police investigation. Underwood addressed the relationship in the interview. “I would like to say sorry for how things ended,” he said. “I messed up, I made a lot of bad choices.” Confirming to Roberts that he was indeed in love with Randolph, he continued, saying, “Yes, and that only made it harder and more confusing for me, if I’m being honest, I loved everything about her. And it’s hard for me to articulate exactly what my emotions were, and going through that relationship with her was, because I obviously had an internal fight going on. I would just say that I’m sorry from the bottom of my heart. I’m sorry for any pain and emotional stress I caused. I wish it wouldn’t have happened the way that it did. I wish I would have been courageous enough to fix myself before I broke anybody else.” Roberts, one of the most prominent broadcasters of all time, was a seamless fit to speak with Underwood. Like Underwood, Roberts is deeply familiar with the sports world, having joined “GMA” after a star-making career as a sports anchor and a long tenure at ESPN. She was inducted into the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame in 2012, and has been honored for her stature as a LGBTQ leader, ever since coming out in a 2013 Facebook post, where she acknowledged her longtime partner, Amber Laign. Prior to the interview airing, Roberts wrote on her Twitter that she “had the opportunity to spend time” with Underwood, who “has something very personal he wants to share.”

A Brooklyn Building Is Screeching, We Asked an Acoustician Why On an otherwise sleepy block in Brooklyn is a brand-new 15-story building that shrieks on windy days. Residents have likened the sound to a shrill whistling, a maddening screech, and — most colorfully — a screaming dinosaur standing on top of the building. Amanda Sue Nichols, from the Cobble Hill Association, says it’s more like that “metallic screeching sound you hear on the subway.” Whatever it is, it’s nails-on-a-chalkboard annoying. And neighbors of the property at 347 Henry Street, who can hear it day and night, are at their wits’ end. The building in question is part of the Long Island College Hospital redevelopment and is owned by Fortis Property Group. Nichols says residents first began picking up the screech in January, apparently after some scaffolding was taken down. After the Cobble Hill Association raised the issue, Fortis is consulting an acoustical engineer and believes it can remediate this bizarre problem with “an adjustment to the balcony railing.” So what exactly is making the building sing? Alan Fierstein, an acoustic consultant who owns a 45-year-old firm called Acoustilog, says it’s likely a few factors at play. Fierstein — who took pains to say that he has not performed tests at the building and was just offering an educated guess — pointed to the building’s scale. The tower is a 15-story project mostly flanked by brownstones and low-rise brick buildings. Since it’s one of the tallest in the area, there are no other structures to disrupt the wind around it. “So above that height, a streaming wind can act like the effect you get when you blow over the top of an empty soda bottle and create a pure tone,” he said. (These tones are especially annoying because they’re not natural sounds.) The proverbial bottle top here may be the series of balconies jutting out on the north corner of the building, which appear to have slatted rails. Since wind in New York typically flows from the southwest toward the northeast, “it would skim right past these triangular openings,” according to Fierstein. That could produce a whistle generated by each balcony, and when multiplied by several, is amplified to create a loud whistling tone. That’s one theory, anyway. There are other possible spots where the wind could be making a piece of the building vibrate, and the sound could even be coming from somewhere else entirely, since tones tend to bounce and can be tricky to locate. They can also sometimes form what are called standing waves, which can actually generate sound that gets louder further away from the source. These sorts of unexpected sounds are a tough thing to plan for and can’t be categorized as some sort of civil-engineering error, says Fierstein. But they can be fixed. If the balconies are the culprit — which can easily be confirmed through measurements and tests — one possible fix could be to put up a glass shield or another relatively simple structure that disrupts some of that airflow. “There’s all kinds of little tricks you can do to make things a little bit more irregular,” said Fierstein, including experiments with the placement of different structures on different balconies to see what manages to diminish the sound the most. For all the agita the sound has caused, the potential solution could be pretty basic. Fortis, for its part, says it’s moving “as expeditiously as possible to resolve it.” The neighbors, of course, just want that sound gone. “We just don’t want to be left with a screeching sound when the construction ends,” said Nichols.

The COVID pandemic killed the skinny jean trend, says denim expert There’s good news for Americans who packed on the pounds during the pandemic — skinny jeans are no longer in style. Levi Strauss & Co. CEO Chip Bergh says consumers are getting away from the hipster-inspired look of at least the past decade. “Cycles do come and go,” he told CNBC. “I think the pandemic definitely played a contributing role to consumers looking for a more comfortable, more relaxing denim.” According to Bergh, his denim-maker’s sales started last year were boosted by one new jean design that ballooned out at the bottom, and a second style that was loose fitting with a high-rise at the waist. “The last real denim cycle was driven by skinny jeans,” Bergh said to CNBC. “That cycle lasted about 10 years.” Bergh isn’t ready to bury the skinny jean look altogether, but he says there is now a “very strong demand” for looser fitting denim, from both male and female consumers. CNBC reports Levi’s sales were down overall in the first quarter of 2021, but believes the ongoing pandemic’s impact is depressing retail numbers. However, the company’s stock is up 25% on the year and the iconic brand expects sales to be back to 2019 standards in the final quarter of 2021.

“Big Sky” made headlines in its opening episode last fall by killing off ostensible series star Ryan Phillippe — shot in the head by psycho Montana State Trooper Rick Legarski (John Carroll Lynch), who eventually got his karmic comeuppance. The ABC drama continues its “shocking twist” tradition in its return Tuesday (April 13) at 9 p.m. with a two-hour episode that picks up where “Big Sky” left off in mid-February. “There are even more twists and turns than you think there will be — and I’m still shocked by the end of this season,” said Jesse James Keitel, aka Jerrie Kennedy, the sex worker held captive in an underground storage container for most of this season along with sisters Danielle and Grace Sullivan (Natalie Alyn Lind, Jade Pettyjohn). “Jerrie is still a working girl, but a different kind of working girl — she’s the newest employee of Dewell & Hoyt,” James said, referring to the new private investigation firm headed by Cassie Dewell and Jenny Hoyt (series stars Kylie Bunbury and Katheryn Winnick). “She’s never had a desk job but here she is,” James said of Jerrie. “She’s had quite the journey, from being an aspiring singer to a former truck-stop sex worker to now working in a private investigators’ office. “At the end of Episode 6, Jenny asked Jerrie to help and she said, ‘I’ll do whatever it takes.’ It’s really nice she’s able to help solve crimes,” Keitel said. “It kept coming up very early on that she’s very aspirational and has big dreams, and that’s allowed me the freedom to inject my own take on her. I think when you take into account what she’s had to do to survive, not just the sex work but … how does she survive, emotionally, when she probably doesn’t have any semblance of a queer community where she is. “It’s hard to navigating a scary world alone, especially when you’re a marginalized person. I would say Jerrie is arguably one of the toughest characters on ‘Big Sky.'” Tuesday night’s two-parter opens three months after Ronald’s escape, with Cassie and Jenny taking on new investigations, including a macabre domestic violence case. It also introduces some new characters — including a ranching family, whose patriarch, Horst Kleinsasser, is played by veteran actor Ted Levine (“The Alienist,” “Ray Donovan,” “Monk”). “They’re a messed-up Montana land-rich family full of a lot of problems and a traumatic past,” James said. “The eldest son is also Jenny’s ex, so there are some complicated storylines coming up. Jenny and Cassie, with the help of Denise (Dedee Pfeiffer) and Jerrie, try to help one of the Kleinsassers — and end up a little deeper than they intended to.” Ronald’s presence still hangs over the series, Keitel said. “He’s kind of disappeared for a bit but he resurfaces … he’s kind of keeping tabs on us, calling and breathing into the phone. It’s pretty chilling, to say the least.” Keitel, whose late grandfather, Jerome, was a cousin of actor Harvey Keitel, draws a parallel between Jerrie and her distant relative. “It’s kind of serendipitous. I don’t have a relationship with [Harvey] but he’s made a career out of playing these badass, tough, masculine men. In a lot of ways, I’m also playing a badass — but really subverting what that means in 2021.” Keitel broke new ground on “Big Sky” by becoming the first nonbinary series regular, in a lead role, on a primetime series. “I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t expecting to get a lot of hate. I started therapy before the show aired, mentally preparing myself to get ripped apart — and I couldn’t have been more wrong,” Keitel said. The amount of DMs, messages, tweets … even just family members telling me the things their relatives and friends have said. “I’ve gotten messages from 85-year-old women who are very firm in their beliefs and who have fallen in love with Jerrie, who changed their perception of, not just queer people, but trans people. It’s been kind of shocking to me in many ways. “I don’t know if I’m necessarily the most optimistic person, but it’s sparked a newfound optimism in me.”

How insulting... Whenever I'm conversing with anyone, I take it as a given that they are aware that at any moment I am likely to say something brilliant and life-changing, and that they are hanging on every word during the conversation and don't need verbal clues to listen intently.

When San Diego acquired Joe Musgrove from the Pirates over the winter, it was thought that the improved defense behind him might be a big help to him. He was strong in his first start, and will be carrying a no-hitter into the bottom of the 9th in Texas. He hasn't walked anyone; the only runner reached on a HBP. And San Diego, in existence since 1969, has never had a no-hitter before.

Ex-Manhattan Equinox gym manager sues over alleged sexual harassment A former Equinox gym manager says his male boss sexually harassed him — including by once telling him he had a “nice bulge,” according to new Manhattan court papers. Harold De Longchamp, an ex-general manager at a company gym on the Upper East Side, was fired in retaliation for complaining about mistreatment from Regional Manager Adam Gecht, says the Manhattan Supreme Court lawsuit. De Longchamp was hired at the company’s East 85th Street gym in March 2018 as an assistant general manager and a year later was promoted to GM at the location making a base salary of $93,000 a year, court documents say. Gecht, 45, told De Longchamp on Jan. 29, 2019, that he could only get a free facial from work if he shaves his mustache because he looks “like a child molester,” court papers claim. On May 9 2019, at a work function in Florida when they were poolside in bathing suits, Gecht whispered in De Longchamp’s ear “nice bulge” — which other close-by managers heard, to De Longchamp’s embarrassment, the suit alleges. On the same trip, Gecht invited De Longchamp to breakfast, where he said he admired that De Longchamp was gay because he could “be sexually promiscuous,” the documents claim. Gecht added taht he regretted being married with kids because he couldn’t “act on his urges like [De Longchamp] could, being gay,” the papers allege. Gecht also told De Longchamp “the closer we are with each other, the farther you’ll get in the company,” according to the documents. Gecht also once told De Longchamp on June, 18, 2019 “you have to be the gayest Equinox employee I know,” the court filing claims. Not only did Gecht sexually harass De Longchamp, the boss also once berated the employee for not dealing with a broken air conditioner fast enough, the suit claims. Another time, on Sept. 28, 2019, Gecht told De Longchamp, “I don’t f–king care about your personal life!” when De Longchamp explained why he couldn’t immediately make it into work when his shift was changed by Gecht last minute, the court papers allege. On two occasions, De Longchamp made complaints to the company’s Human Resources department, the suit says. The first time, on May 15, 2019, the HR director told him “that’s just Adam, no one takes him seriously,” the court papers allege. Despite these complaints, Gecht was promoted in December 2019. De Longchamp’s new boss told De Longchamp he was friends with Gecht and knew about De Longchamp’s prior complaints, asking “Are we going to have any problems?” the court documents claim. Soon after, on Jan. 29, 2020, De Longchamp was fired, with his bosses telling him “it was time to separate from the company, we don’t seem to see eye to eye on things any longer,” the court documents claim. “Defendants’ true reason for terminating plaintiff was solely due to discrimination on the basis of his sex/gender (male) and sexual orientation (gay), and for complaining of said discrimination,” the suit charges. De Longchamp of Brooklyn is suing Gecht and the company for unspecified damages. Reached by phone, Gecht declined to comment, deferring to Equinox’s legal department. Equinox rep Judy Taylor told The Post, “We do not comment on pending litigations.”

Awe & Order: Christopher Meloni’s ‘juicy’ booty causes Twitter stir Stabler is stacked, honey. Just days after Christopher Meloni’s 60th birthday, the “Law & Order” star’s sweet cake is being celebrated all over social media. Without the help of Photoshop or asset-accentuating Amazon leggings, Meloni’s magnificent gluteus maximus is going viral on Twitter, thanks to a picture snapped while he was filming “Law & Order: Organized Crime” in Brooklyn Wednesday. Meloni and his famous moneymaker made their highly anticipated return to the “Law & Order” franchise last week after a decade-long hiatus. And fanny fans are seriously fawning over that full-figured tail feather. “I don’t know [whose] birthday it is but [Meloni] is serving cake for dinner,” one booty buff tweeted. Them cakes are rated E for everyone. ? — Chaosbutterfly (@Khaosbutterfly) April 8, 2021 I just want to fall asleep while resting my head on Chris Meloni's juicy cakes. Is that too much to ask? — Bad Dad (@BaddestDaddest) April 7, 2021 How’s Meloni handling all this heinie heat? Well, it’s safe to say the apple-bottomed actor — best known for slaying the role of Detective Elliot Stabler on “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” for 12 seasons — is slaphappy about the round of applause his rump is receiving. Sure- big birthday(60), big boy(200 lbs), big cake https://t.co/lmkZ5JKFWe — Chris Meloni (@Chris_Meloni) April 8, 2021 He’s been on the business end of patootie praise before. Meloni’s cheeks went red from blushing while he read aloud the thirsty tweets that fans shared about his “thick” derrière in 2019. “I’d cut off my arm to touch Christopher Meloni’s butt. It’s that serious,” he recited from an admirer’s Twitter post. “Christopher Meloni is what I imagine when I say I want a [thick] daddy,” he read, quoting another complimentary commentator. He chuckled when he came across a tweet that said: “When I’m sad I just google Christopher Meloni’s butt until I’m not sad anymore.” His reprised Detective Stabler on the series premiere of “Law & Order: Organized Crime” last Thursday beckoned a staggering 8 million viewers. Meloni was taken aback by his warm re-welcome to prime-time television. “It was pretty overwhelming,” he told People of the positive fan reaction. “I was not prepared. It’s overwhelming and it’s wonderful and it’s very appreciated.”