samhexum

Cracked up at Adrienne's story yesterday. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmMbBMFQbjc:928

UGH! He'll be back on the next SVU episode (1/7?) only this time Barba will be the defense attorney.

DEAR ABBY: My fiancee, "Diane," and her two sons live in a nice home. I also have a nice home, newly constructed. It's located 1,200 miles away, near my parents, my son and my job. Diane currently has no job nor family within 500 miles of her town. Her boys' father (whom she shares custody with) lives within 50 miles of me. My job and the custody arrangement for my son preclude me from living where Diane does. Together, she and I would have three sons. The spacious five-bedroom house I own is more than adequate. Diane has made clear that if I sell my home and buy my neighbor's, which is a larger seven-bedroom manor, she will be on the next flight. If not, she won't leave. We could buy the manor with cash if I sell my home and she sold hers and put her savings into the purchase, but she doesn't want to use her savings. Diane is my everything, but it feels like I may just be chasing a dream. I worry that if I'm not enough, will I be enough when I own a manor? -- IT'S COMPLICATED DEAR IT'S COMPLICATED: I'm proud of you. You are seeing things clearly, which is unusual when emotions are involved. It appears your dream girl, the fair Diane, is attempting to blackmail you. If she can't be the "lady of the manor," she's not interested in uprooting her life. If you give in to her now, do not do it without an ironclad prenuptial agreement. Please stay strong, because if you don't, you may regret it for a long time. Dump the gold-digger and run for the hills!

This is the best I could do: Rose: How could you do this to me, Blanche? You knew I wanted to spend tonight alone. Blanche: Rose, nobody who says they want to be alone on New Year's Eve ever really means it. Rose: I did. Blanche: Well, you're a freak. Besides, it's bad luck if you don't get kissed at midnight. Why, my New Year's Eve kiss is the most important one of the whole year. It sets the tone for the next 365 days. One year, I didn't get kissed at midnight on New Year's Eve, I didn't get lucky till after the Orange Bowl.

Wasn't that from an earlier show? Wanna buy Adrienne's house? https://nypost.com/2020/12/09/the-real-host-lists-calabasas-home-months-after-buying-it/

Does anyone actually call it Target? ?

There was a lot of obvious real affection, like when Tam said she missed hugging Loni (or should I call her Yolanda?) even though Loni didn't like hugging her and Loni nodded in agreement... with a smile, and earlier in the episode when Loni said something and Jeannie laughed and said "You're so stupid!"

I thought Tamera looked beautiful. Loved her hair like that & her blouse was nice, too.

Widowed otters move in together after meeting on dating app After Asian short-clawed otter Harris, 10, lost his longtime best friend and romantic partner Apricot, who died at 16, he became a lonely bachelor otter, and his caretakers grew worried. In an effort to find him a new mate, those charged with his well-being at the Cornish Seal Sanctuary in Cornwall, England, configured an otters-only dating app called Fishing for Love, where he soon met Pumpkin, a lady otter from Yorkshire’s Sea Life Scarborough Sanctuary who was also seeking a new mate after losing her longtime lover. Now, the two are doing swimmingly — recently, they even took the big relationship step of moving in together. “Sea Life Scarborough otter has found love in time for Christmas,” the sanctuary wrote in a press release announcing the good news. Pumpkin’s carers answered an ad on the otter dating site after her elderly partner, Eric, passed away. “After searching the entire lonely-hearts section, and a few bad swipes later,” they discovered Harris’ profile and determined him to be a worthy “significant otter” for their beloved Pumpkin. “[it’s] best to introduce a new male into a female’s territory so that the male more easily submits to the female on first meeting,” the release explained. Following the pair’s initial meeting and romance at Sea Life, they’re officially shacking up there. “After an extremely sad period for both Pumpkin and the animal care team here at Scarborough, we are delighted to report that not only is Pumpkin happy once again, but Harris has settled in extremely well,” said Sea Life curator Todd German in the release, adding he sees no reason the lovers should not continue to exist in harmony and live happily otter after. Many male otters are not so lucky, however: A disturbing study published last month found that river otters’ penis bones are weakened by pollution and that toxic chemicals from Canada’s oil industry are causing the critters’ members to become less dense and more breakable.

What is it with crazy Californians (or is that redundant?) and cookies? Man pays for bizarre ‘Cookie Monster’ mural on building — that he doesn’t own An Illinois artist was left baffled after a man paid him to paint a mural of “Sesame Street’s” Cookie Monster on the side of a building — that he didn’t actually own. Joshua Hawkins said he recently got an angry phone call from the actual owner of the Peoria building, “asking why the hell I painted this ‘crazy sh-t’ on his building.” “Evidently the guy that hired me to paint the mural was NOT really the owner of the building!,” Hawkins wrote on Facebook. The artist said a man he knew only as “Nate” called him the day after Thanksgiving and asked him to paint a mural of the beloved puppet with a caption in Russian that roughly translates to “World, Peace, Cookies” on the side of his vacant building. Though he was hesitant to take the job because of the tight deadline, Hawkins said it was “one of the best paying commissions” he ever got — so he recruited some pals to help him finish the artwork in time. Hawkins was given half of the “good amount” of money up front in cash, and “Nate” paid him the rest upon completion two days later, he told the Peoria Journal Star. That was the last time Hawkins ever saw the mystery arts patron. Meanwhile, the real owner of the building, Nate Comte, was fuming when he got back from Thanksgiving vacation and spotted the massive mural on his property. “He threatened to call the police on me,” Hawkins said. “After that, it started to click.” Hawkins explained the backstory — but Comte didn’t believe him, telling the Journal Star that: “I don’t think anyone is that stupid.” While he believes the work to be graffiti, Comte said he won’t press vandalism charges. “I don’t hate art,” he said. “But don’t know what the hell that was.” He’s since painted over the mural. Looking back, the artist said he probably should have gotten more information from the person who commissioned the work. “It was definitely a weird situation from the beginning, and we should have asked more questions,” Hawkins said. His phone calls and text messages to the enigmatic “Nate” have gone unanswered. “I’m still trying to wrap my head around it. THIS IS INSANE,” Hawkins wrote on Facebook. “I do apologize to the owner of the building, and while this is stressful and confusing– the fact remains that we were paid by someone!?”

That's what they get for not wearing masks... Four lions test coronavirus-positive in Barcelona Zoo, third worldwide instance since Bronx Four lions have tested positive for coronavirus at a Barcelona zoo, most likely infected by an asymptomatic staffer, zoo officials said.

https://www.companyofmen.org/threads/the-biggest-one-ive-ever-seen.161748/

'Massive' goldfish weighing 9 pounds found in South Carolina lake A goldfish weighing nine pounds came under the spotlight Monday after being discovered during a fish population survey at a lake in South Carolina, park officials said. Ty Houck, an official with Greenville County Parks, said the “massive” fish was found swimming on Nov. 16 in a 12-acre body of water in Oak Grove Lake Park in the county of Greenville. Greenville Rec, which oversees the park where the fish was discovered, posted a photo of the golden spectacle on Facebook on Monday. “Anyone missing their goldfish? This 9lb goldfish was found in Oak Grove Lake during some recent testing at our lakes,” the organization wrote in a post. “The work included electrofishing, a method of measuring the health of the fish population.” Wildlife officials were conducting a fish population survey analogous to a “fish sticking its finger, or fin, in a socket,” Houck said. “A weak electrical current is run through the water and stuns them for a few minutes.” Houck said he believes the giant goldfish is the only one swimming in the lake because park officials did not encounter any others in their survey. He added that while the goldfish is non-native to South Carolina, it was not considered an invasive species to the lake. The average lifespan of goldfish is between six to seven years, while those found in the wild can live up to 30 years, according to the United States Geological Survey. According to the agency, goldfish can grow upwards of six pounds — far below the weight of the nine pound pond fish found in South Carolina. As for the goldfish's current whereabouts, Houck said he placed the fish back in the water after snapping a photo of the large creature. “At the advice of professionals we decided to leave the bachelor, or bachelorette, back where we found it,” Houck said. “Obviously, they’re really happy here.”

Artist sues museum and city of L.A. after his work is accidentally thrown away But is it art? That’s the question at the center of a dispute between a Los Angeles museum and an artist who showed there. Artist David Lew, who goes by the name Shark Toof, has sued the Chinese American Museum and the city of Los Angeles, among other defendants, for throwing his work in the trash after displaying it. Lew, who splits his time between L.A. and Detroit, was one of nine graffiti artists and muralists featured in the 2018 exhibition “Don’t Believe the Hype: L.A. Asian Americans in Hip-Hop,” which was on view at the Chinese American Museum from May to December. Lew said he contributed a site-specific installation called “Shayu De Yi Nian Lai See (Year of the Shark Red Packet)” for the museum’s courtyard. Eighty-eight empty canvas sacks were adorned with hand-applied gold leaf paint and suspended on burlap twine with wooden clothespins. It was meant to evoke the history of Chinese immigrants in the laundry business. The number eight symbolizes prosperity and good fortune in Chinese culture. How the individual bags weathered the natural elements — the canvas fraying or the paint fading and cracking in the sun — was part of an artwork about longevity, Lew said. The bags were meant to develop individual character over time, as people do. The museum is part of El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument, a department of the city, and is located downtown in the historic Garnier Building, the last surviving structure from L.A.’s original Chinatown. The building is owned and maintained by the city, and the museum is a city entity. Around Dec. 7, according to the lawsuit, days before the exhibition was to end, a city maintenance crew took down the canvas bags and threw them out. According to the lawsuit, no one from the museum or El Pueblo management was there to supervise the removal of the bags. The crew may not have known the intent behind the bags and instead saw them as deteriorating objects to be discarded. “Not being able to see these things after eight months, at the location, was gut-wrenching,” Lew said in an interview. “It’s like you’re watching the Super Bowl and they say, ‘We’re not gonna call a winner, we’ll just end it in the third quarter.’ There’s no resolution.” Fourteen of the 88 bags were not thrown out. They had fallen down during the run of the show, Lew said, but were never reinstalled or returned to him. The lawsuit presumes the bags to be destroyed, but in response to The Times’ query, the museum said the bags were put in storage. The museum said it had not been informed by the city or El Pueblo that Lew’s pieces would be removed that day but, perhaps more important, the museum said it did not see the bags as art in the first place. Several of the bags had been promised to Lew’s collectors after the show, and others were to be sold at the museum for $88 each. The museum said the bags were merchandise hanging outdoors — courtyard decor as opposed to an official art exhibit. A vendor agreement provided to The Times by Melvin N.A. Avanzado — the attorney representing Friends of the Chinese American Museum, the nonprofit that operates the museum — specified that his client would receive 20% of the sale revenue, not unlike a consignment arrangement. The museum’s executive director, Michael Truong, declined to comment and referred all inquiries to Avanzado. “We are still reviewing the allegations,” Avanzado said in an email to The Times. “However, the Friends of the Chinese American Museum did nothing wrong with respect to the tote bags that decorated the courtyard outside the museum. I look forward to proving that the claims against my client have no merit.” Exhibition cocurator Justin Charles Hoover — who had a one-year contract at the Chinese American Museum that ended in December 2018 — said he did view the installation as art. “We always saw David as an artist, and we saw this as an outdoor art installation,” Hoover said. “The work was always meant to weather and fade outdoors. It was meant to fall apart and be sold. Whoever took it down thought, because it was weathered, it was garbage. But I assume it was a completely innocent mistake.” The lawsuit, filed by Les Weinstein and the law firm One llp, names the city, El Pueblo, the museum and Friends of the Chinese American Museum as defendants. El Pueblo general manager Arturo Chavez declined to comment. Rob Wilcox, a representative from the office of City Attorney Mike Feuer, said staff would review the complaint and had no further comment. Lew said he was not consulted about deinstallation of his work and found out the bags had been tossed when he received an email from cocurator Hoover on Dec. 12. “We have a major issue with the bags,” Hoover wrote in the email. “The team that was tasked to bring the bags down from their lines thought they were to be disposed of. Like thrown out.” Hoover added: “Obviously we are horrified by this.” Lew said he was speechless. “It took months to develop the concept and measurements and diagrams and logistics,” he said. “It was like a break-up or a death: You knew this one thing, and then it leaves your life in an instant, and you’re left to pick up the pieces and grieve.” Lew, who has other work in the museum’s permanent collection, showed a large painting of a shark, titled “Qinru (Trespass),” as part of the same exhibition. It was returned to him after the show, undamaged. Other artists in “Don’t Believe the Hype” included Gajin Fujita, Hueman, Kenny Kong, Defer and Erin Yoshi. Ninochka McTaggart cocurated the exhibition. Lew declined to give a monetary value for “Shayu De Yi Nian Lai See” but said it was “priceless” to him “because it’s part of a body of work that I can’t ever, in a future retrospective setting, revisit.” The work also has familial value, he said. Lew’s great-grandparents worked in the laundry services business after immigrating to L.A. from China in the early 1920s. He said it offended him that the bags were discarded. Lew did not specify how much he was suing for in the lawsuit. Under the Visual Arts Rights Act, better known as VARA, the court allows for damages ranging from $750 to $30,000 per item, unless the court finds that the defendant’s action was intentional. Then damages can go up to $150,000 per item. In addition to suing for damages, attorney’s fees and other costs related to the case, Lew is asking the court to issue an injunction preventing the city and museums under city control, such as the Italian American Museum, from taking down an exhibit without advising an artist first. Lew’s attorney, Weinstein, represented artist Kent Twitchell, who sued the federal government and the YWCA of Greater Los Angeles, among other defendants, when his 1987 mural of artist Ed Ruscha — on a Hill Street building for nearly two decades — was whitewashed in 2006 without his permission. In 2008, Twitchell won a $1.1-million settlement. Lew said he hopes his case draws attention to perceptions about what constitutes art, what’s worth saving and what’s disposable. “Most people’s understanding of high art is Michelangelo,” he said. “If these were American flags, how carefully would they have been placed in a pile? But these look like something we’d eat fried rice off of — this can’t be from a master. And sadly, the bags were thrown away like dirty laundry.”

Top US cybersecurity firm FireEye falls victim to foreign hackers Hackers turned the tables on one of the country’s biggest cybersecurity firms on Tuesday, making off with a suite of powerful hacking tools. FireEye said that its security system was breached, possibly by hackers working on behalf of a foreign government, with the cyber criminals pilfering software that the firm uses to test its clients’ defenses. The hackers were also interested in information FireEye had on its government clients, though the company said it did not believe the hackers were able to get their hands on any of it. The company disclosed the hack in a blog post written by CEO Kevin Mandia, who said FireEye went public about the hack in hopes of helping another company avoid falling victim to the same attackers. “I’ve concluded we are witnessing an attack by a nation with top-tier offensive capabilities,” Mandia wrote. “The attackers tailored their world-class capabilities specifically to target and attack FireEye.” FireEye has business contracts across the national security space in the US and with its allies. There is no evidence yet that FireEye’s hacking tools have been used. The FBI is investigating the hack, and FireEye has also accepted help from Microsoft to identify the culprits. “This incident demonstrates why the security industry must work together to defend against and respond to threats posed by well-funded adversaries using novel and sophisticated attack techniques,” a Microsoft spokesperson said.

By Johnny Oleksinski December 8, 2020 REVIEW Running time: 100 minutes. Rated PG (thematic elements and some language.) On Disney+ Dec. 25. The studio’s early features were silly movies about plastic cowboys (“Toy Story”) and insects (“A Bug’s Life”), and now, like a grad student with a bong, skew toward metaphysical explorations of human emotions (“Inside Out”) and the afterlife (“Coco”). Their lovable latest, “Soul,” tackles our personalities. And, maaaaan, have they mastered the formula to sell their far-out films: Take complex psychological concepts and let adorable animated blobs simplify them. No one has ever raged against cute-splaining. You gotta be evil not to like these characters. Our sweet little guides this time around are pale-blue souls, who occupy the so-called Great Before, a training camp for babies-to-be. Your kids will want a stuffed version. Joe (voiced by Jamie 'Hung Like A Horse' Foxx), a New York music teacher, first meets them after he falls into a ditch in the street and floats up to heaven, or the Great Beyond. Not ready to die, he hops off the escalator and lands instead with the tiny future humans. But Joe is desperate to get back to NYC ASAP because the day he fell, the musician was set to finally make his big break playing piano in a Greenwich Village basement jazz club. For years, Joe had been a talented — but unsatisfied — part-time middle-school band teacher and felt his life lacked purpose. Tonight is his one shot. How can he game the system and reclaim his body? By mentoring a soul, an unmotivated slacker named 22 (Tina Fey), and snatching her Earth pass once she finds her “spark.” Not so fast. They screw up that plan, and a multi-species “Freaky Friday” commences in Manhattan. Director Pete Docter (with co-director Kemp Powers) returns for the first time since 2015’s “Inside Out,” a film I found rather smug and annoying. His “Soul,” on the other hand, is smart without being condescending or self-important, and Fey’s performance is spirited, funny and doesn’t OD on Red Bull. The script — by Docter, Powers and Mike Jones — is a parade of quirk. There’s none of the double entendre that can grow so tiresome in animated movies, but plenty of lightning-fast jokes about Carl Jung and Mother Teresa. Then there’s the counselors of the Great Before, Picasso-like line drawings who are mostly named Jerry. The best of them is the desert-dry British comic Richard Ayoade. Another crazy counselor named Terry (Rachel House) obsessively tracks all the souls with an abacus. As a mentor, Joe learns, his job is to help 22 find her spark, or a reason for living. All other aspects of a soul’s personality are predetermined. “I’m an agreeable skeptic who’s cautious yet flamboyant!,” says one. Another goes: “I’m a manipulative megalomaniac who’s intensely opportunistic!” I sound like a broken AirPod praising Pixar’s animation over and over again, but the studio keeps outdoing itself. In “Soul,” downtown New York in the fall is meticulously re-created. Joe plays at a club called the Half Note (the real one is gone), and its red awning and green front is a dead ringer for the Village Vanguard. And there’s a chase through the West Fourth Street train station. But “Soul” amounts to more than technical wizardry and intelligent dialogue. Why artists keep pounding the pavement despite never finding commercial success is a meaty topic. So is a reluctant teacher coming to realize that encouraging talent is his natural gift — one that few people have. Many adults will surely contemplate their own lives — and choices — as they watch from the couch. And, for the littlest viewers, there are fun, happy blobs.

Not my first concert, but I saw them at Radio City Music Hall w/ my sister in Sept. 1979 when I was 17. Came home from freshman year at Syracuse University to go. Saw her twice (Donna Summer, not the fun-killing nun) at the Felt Forum at Madison Square Garden & at the Forest Hills Tennis Stadium the week Hot Stuff & Bad Girls were both in the top-3 on the Billboard chart.

Taylor Swift’s cat pussy-themed Xmas card is a thing to behold Louisville public radio DJ Kyle Meredith released a snap of Taylor Swift’s Christmas card this year — no, we didn’t get one; and yes, we are shattered — and not only does it reference her most recent album, July’s “Folklore,” but it stars her cats Meredith Grey On no! her cat is suffering from covid!, Olivia Benson No Elliot Stabler? and Benjamin Button Will he be a kitten by next year?. “Wishing you a season of moments so wonderful, they become folklore,” the card reads. “Love, Taylor Swift and everyone at 13 Management.” The cats are suitably decked out in holiday gear that includes a Santa hat, scarf and glass of presumably festive spirits.

Nigella Lawson’s odd pronunciation of ‘microwave’ drives internet wild British chef Nigella Lawson’s lush accent is an attention-grabber on this side of the pond, but her affectation may have gotten a little extreme. In a clip from her BBC series “Nigella’s Cook, Eat, Repeat,” the celebrity chef and “Domestic Goddess” is seen preparing a dish that she proclaims needs “a bit of milk, full fat, which I’ve warmed in the microwave.” But in the video, posted on Twitter, she weirdly pronounces the kitchen appliance as “meek-ro-wah-vay,” seemingly rhyming it with the title of one-hit-wonder Gerardo’s 1990 dance song “Rico Suave.” “Eternally grateful to Nigella Lawson for letting us know we’ve all been mispronouncing microwave for the last 50 (or so) years,” wrote one tweeter of her playful pronunciation, as befuddled feedback boiled over on social media. “I feel embarrassed,” agreed one commenter, adding, “been pronouncing it wrong this whole time,” while another said they would “vow to never say it correctly ever again,” adding in a trio of crying-laughing emojis. One commenter simply confessed, “Why did I know she’d pronounce it this way? I do it for s–ts and giggles.” A fan offered that Lawson was “mucking about” and “mispronouncing words” on purpose and offered that they do it, too, saying, “In my world things can be hilariable and this is a large animal called a hippopoterous.” Another respondent also appreciated the way it sounded, writing, “I love this, we deliberately mispronounce words in our house all the time. Such fun” — to which Lawson herself replied, “We do, too. Exactly that.” Whether the cookbook author was just having some half-baked fun or did indeed have a verbal faux pas, it was hardly the biggest scandal that Lawson, 60, has stirred up. Just last month she offered fans a hilarious, two-step process for making buttered toast that would be “lovely and hot.” Things were even hotter in 2013 when she was forced to testify about her admitted drug use during the trial of two former aides accused of stealing from her and her ex-husband, Charles Saatchi.

A 19-year-old British apprentice fatally bludgeoned a 15-year-old schoolboy with a wrench after paying nearly $2,700 to stop him from reporting their “intimate” relationship to cops, prosecutors allege. Matthew Mason, an apprentice mechanic, allegedly lured Alex Rodda to a remote wooded area under the guise of meeting up for sex last December and then struck him at least 15 times with a long wrench, the Manchester Evening News reported. Rodda’s partially clothed body was found near the village of Ashley in Cheshire, England, on Dec. 13. Prosecutors said the boy had been involved in an ongoing intimate relationship with Mason, then 18, at the time of his death, the newspaper reported. Prosecutor Ian Unsworth told a judge Monday that Mason led Rodda to the woods “on the pretense of sexual activity” before murdering the boy in “cold blood,” BBC News reported. Weeks earlier, Rodda had reached out to Mason’s girlfriend and told her he had received “flirty” messages from her boyfriend, including an explicit video and photo, Unsworth said. Mason, who denies killing Rodda, also shot down allegations that he sent the boy explicit material, but the aspiring mechanic allegedly started making deposits in Rodda’s bank account, ultimately paying him $2,696, according to prosecutors. Rodda also told a friend Mason had been paying him for sex and threatened to go to cops if he stopped, which the teen’s pal said was wrong and amounted to “blackmail,” Unsworth said. Mason later allegedly complained in messages recovered by investigators that the payments were “cleaning him out,” the Chester Chronicle reported. Unsworth said the pair had sex on at least five occasions after connecting on Instagram, the Manchester Evening News reported. At one point, Rodda’s mother allegedly returned home and found her son “flustered” with Mason inside, according to the newspaper. “You may well think that Matthew Mason didn’t want Alex to tell anyone about their relationship,” Unsworth said in court Tuesday. “He manifestly made sure that Alex never could.” Mason’s trial, which adjourned for the day Tuesday, is expected to last several weeks. Admin Note: We do not permit posting images of minors on this site.

Brian O’Nora, an MLB umpire since 1999, was arrested over the weekend as part of a sex-sting operation in Ohio. O’Nora was one of 14 men arrested by a human trafficking task force in Liberty Township after allegedly soliciting a prostitute online. When reached by NJ Advance Media, a spokesperson for the Ohio attorney general said it was his “understanding” that the Brian O’Nora arrested was indeed the MLB umpire, who has been a part of three All-Stars games and the 2012 World Series. Here are the details on the arrest from the Ohio attorney general’s office: When Yahoo Sports reached out to MLB for comment on the story, a league official said, “We are aware of it and we have no comment.”