samhexum

BTW, he hated ALF, and as soon as the taping of the last episode was completed, he just walked off the set and left without any goodbyes. From Wikipedia: Max Wright stated that he despised supporting a technically demanding inanimate object that received most of the good lines of dialogue. He admitted to being "hugely eager to have ALF over with." Artie Lange told of a time when Wright had become "crazed" and attacked ALF, causing producers to have to pull Wright off the puppet. Anne Shedeen added that on the last night of taping, "there was one take and Max walked off the set, went to his dressing room, got his bags, went to his car and disappeared... There were no goodbyes." Schedeen herself said "there was no joy on the set...it was a technical nightmare – extremely slow, hot and tedious... A 30-minute show took 20, 25 hours to shoot." While fond of her on-screen children, Schedeen said some adults had "difficult personalities. The whole thing was a big dysfunctional family." Schedeen added, "It's astonishing that ALF really was wonderful and that word never got out what a mess our set really was." Andrea Elson, who suffered from bulimia during the second season of shooting, stated, "If ALF had gone one more year, everybody would have lost it." Wright did later concede, though, that "It doesn't matter what I felt or what the days were like, ALF brought people a lot of joy."

Sam is sorry you had such a bad day.

Willie Tanner was 75.

She worked her G-stringed butt off to make it a success, but in the end, “The Cher Show” just wasn’t strong enough to make it. Despite non-stop promo appearances on “The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon,” “Today,” “The View” and more, the critically acclaimed musical inspired by pop music icon Cher will close on Aug. 18. The production opened Dec. 3 on Broadway, and will have played 34 previews and 296 regular performances by its final curtain call at the Neil Simon Theatre. “Telling Cher’s life story on Broadway has been a joy,” says Flody Suarez, who produced the show with four-time Tony winner Jeffrey Seller (“Hamilton”). But audiences don’t have to turn back time to see the show: A national tour is set to launch in October 2020 with a premiere in Rochester, NY. “Watching audiences relive her empowering story through six decades worth of iconic songs, movies, costumes and relationships has been incredible,” Suarez says. “We look forward to taking this inspiring message on the road next year. We are incredibly thankful to this brilliant cast and crew.” Stage vet Stephanie J. Block — in a fab change of pace from less glam roles in “Falsettos” and “The Mystery of Edwin Drood” — won the Tony and Drama Desk Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role in a Musical. Bob Mackie, Cher’s longtime costume designer, also took home a Tony for his bedazzling work. “The Cher Show” revolves around the storied life of Cher, with three different singer-actresses fleshing out different periods of her career: Micaela Diamond as Babe, Teal Wicks as Lady and Block as Star. It features a crowd-pleasing batch of Cher’s most-loved songs, from “I Got You Babe” and “Gypsies, Tramps, and Thieves” to “If I Could Turn Back Time” and “Believe.” Tickets are still available at TheCherShowBroadway.com.

DEAR ABBY: I have a wonderful mother-in-law whom I love very much. She frequently stays overnight in my home. I also have two young sons. My mother-in-law recently mentioned to me that she doesn't wear underwear to bed and never has, including while staying at my house. I'm troubled by this because she wears nightgowns to bed, and I'm afraid my sons might accidentally see her lady parts. Also, she sleeps on my furniture like this, and I feel it is disrespectful and unladylike. I don't know how to say to her that, for the sake of my furniture and my sanity, I need her to wear underwear to bed when she stays at my house. Do I broach this subject, or am I being unreasonable? -- PROPER IN OHIO DEAR PROPER: What your mother-in-law wears to bed is her business, not yours. Unless your little boys are playing peek-a-boo underneath her nightie, they won't notice -- or care. How long is that garment anyway? If it reaches below her knees or to her ankles, there should be no "bootie contact" with your sofa. In the interest of family harmony, I recommend you take a chill pill and leave the subject alone. MORON... DEAR ABBY: I'm in love with a man who doesn't want us to be described as anything more than friends. We are together every day, and he knows I love him. We have sex, and I sleep over whenever possible. He wants me there all the time but with no status. Am I wrong for wanting more? Will there ever be more? -- NAMELESS IN PENNSYLVANIA DEAR NAMELESS: The answers to your questions are no and no. Your "friend" wants the benefits of being a lover and none of the responsibility. Have you talked with him about this and how it makes you feel? You are not "wrong" for wanting more, but you are mistaken if you think that being at his beck and call is the way to get the commitment he seems to be so unwilling to make. You might have better results if you quit being so available. MORON... DEAR ABBY: I'm recently married to my second wife. We have a great relationship, but I feel like she has a better relationship with my two daughters than I do. They do everything together, and my daughters don't want to do anything that includes me. Part of me is grateful they have such a great relationship, but I'm also jealous that my relationship with them is not as good as hers. Should I say something? I don't want to ruin what they have, but I feel neglected. Am I being selfish? Should I just ignore it and get a hobby or something? -- ENVIOUS IN THE EAST DEAR ENVIOUS: I wish you had mentioned how old your daughters are. I see nothing to be gained by not discussing this with your wife. Parenting is not supposed to be a contest. Your daughters may not mean to exclude you, but may assume you wouldn't be interested in the things they are doing or discussing. (I'm thinking of things females like to do together.) If you let them know you're sincerely interested in joining in some of their activities, you may be surprised at how quickly they include you. Also, set a standing (monthly) breakfast or lunch date -- just you and your daughters -- so you can spend some quality time together. MORON...

Isn't this about her third final tour already? Who does she think she is, Cher?

A massive freshwater reservoir was discovered beneath the Atlantic Ocean — stretching from Massachusetts to New Jersey, according to researchers. The rare find was reported by experts at Columbia University last week following a multi-year, sub-seafloor study. “We knew there was fresh water down there in isolated places, but we did not know the extent or geometry,” explained lead researcher Chloe Gustafson, a Ph.D. candidate at Columbia’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. “It could turn out to be an important resource in other parts of the world,” she said in a statement. Using electromagnetic waves, Gustafson’s team was able to map the underwater “aquifer” — which stretches out about 50 miles to the edge of the continental shelf. “If found on the surface, it would create a lake covering some 15,000 square miles,” her team wrote in its report. “The study suggests that such aquifers probably lie off many other coasts worldwide, and could provide desperately needed water for arid areas that are now in danger of running out.” According to researchers, the first signs of the Northeast underwater reservoir came in the 1970s when companies were drilling for oil. The workers would sometimes hit fresh water, thus causing many to believe that something was down there. “Analyses indicated that the deposits are not scattered; they are more or less continuous, starting at the shoreline and extending far out within the shallow continental shelf — in some cases, as far as 75 miles,” the researchers said. “For the most part, they begin at around 600 feet below the ocean floor, and bottom out at about 1,200 feet.” Gustafson’s team, which published their findings in the journal Scientific Reports, believes the reservoir’s water “probably got under the seabed in one of two different ways.” “Some 15,000 to 20,000 years ago, toward the end of the last glacial age, much of the world’s water was locked up in mile-deep ice; in North America, it extended through what is now northern New Jersey, Long Island and the New England coast,” the researchers explained. “Sea levels were much lower, exposing much of what is now the underwater US continental shelf. When the ice melted, sediments formed huge river deltas on top of the shelf, and fresh water got trapped there in scattered pockets. Later, sea levels rose.” In order to one day use the water for consumption, scientists would have to desalinate it. “We probably don’t need to do that in this region,” said study co-author and geophysicist Kerry Key. “But if we can show there are large aquifers in other regions, that might potentially represent a resource.”

HOW DO YOU PRONOUNCE ANTETOKOUNMPO? EM-VEE-PEA

Miss Hooters Tennessee finalist arrested for smashing up her boyfriend’s house hours after he broke up with her A finalist in the Miss Hooters Tennessee pageant has been arrested for allegedly vandalizing her boyfriend’s apartment just hours after he pulled the plug on their relationship. Madison Rogers, 21, was booked into the Nashville jail earlier this month on charges of aggravated burglary and vandalism. According to police, Rogers, who placed in the top 5 of the local beauty contest organized by Hooters, was caught on security video smashing up her ex-boyfriend’s home on May 31. Rogers has been accused of trashing her boyfriend’s Nashville home two hours after their breakup on May 31 On that day, police were called to the residence for a report of a home invasion, as Scoop Nashville reported. The victim, who has not been named, told investigators that he had split up with Rogers earlier that day after two years of dating. When he returned home later that the day, Rogers showed up at his house, kicked in the door and began assaulting him, according to police. The man told officers he restrained the 21-year-old blonde to stop her from hitting him, carried her outside and called 911. While waiting for police to arrive, Rogers reportedly yelled at her ex-boyfriend if he ‘liked he upstairs,’ referring to the second floor at his home. By the time police arrived on the scene, Rogers had run away. The victim then went upstairs and found his bedroom, bathroom and closet in shambles. Rogers was reportedly caught on security video entering her ex’s home through the back door while he was away after their split When he reviewed security video from inside his home, it allegedly showed Rogers entering through the back door while he was away. Rogers was arrested on June 7 on outstanding warrants charging her with vandalism and burglary. She has since been released on $5,000 bond. Hooters, the sports bar and grill restaurant chain known for hot wings served by scantily clad waitresses pandering to the disgusting fantasies and urges of heterosexual men, every year hosts an international pageant that features 80 so-called ‘Hooters Girls’ from around the world, selected from a pool of more than 18,000 waitresses 36,000 boobies. The 23rd Annual Miss Hooters International was held on Sunday in Nevada, where Florida Hooters Girl Briana Smith won the top prize talent competition by reciting the alphabet.

Stefani Carroll-Kirchoff always checks the washer and dryer to make sure none of her three cats have climbed inside. Well, almost always. Last week, after fetching more clothes for a load of laundry, she shut the door without thinking. She set the machine to express wash -- warm water, cold rinse -- and walked away. Thirty-five minutes later, when the cycle was done, she noticed the clothes were still dripping wet. She was just about to shut the door again when she saw a single white paw sticking out from the wet laundry. Somehow, her 1-year-old cat Felix had found his way into the machine. She quickly took him out and called her father, who raced them to the Animal Emergency and Referral Center of Minnesota. Although Felix had lost his vision and had pneumonia from the amount of water in his lungs, he survived and is doing better now -- he can see and has started eating. He's still on oxygen. Though the vets told her it's just a matter of time until Felix fully recovers, Carroll-Kirchoff said she'll never forgive herself. "I've been in shock the last few days," she said. "I mean, this is going to haunt me for the rest of my life." The costs are going up, too. Carroll-Kirchoff's daughter began a GoFundMe appeal for Felix to help offset the rising medical bills, which she said are already up to $7,000. She said it's the least they could do after Felix fought to stay alive. "After this has happened, I'm going to find a way to give back," she said. Carroll-Kirchoff works at a pet grooming salon and has been a cat owner for 11 years. She also volunteers at a wildlife rehabilitation center in her free time. "It's given me a reason to fight harder for animals and their well-being," she said.

[continued] The female great whites assess the male sharks, specifically their fins and muscle tone, and the males show off their strength and stamina with “bounce dives,” descending to depths of up to 15,000 feet below the surface. There’s no unique food resource that would keep the sharks coming back to this area. The only reasonable explanation, McKeever says, is that it’s become a “Burning Man for Sharks.” He also learned that many sharks, despite their reputations as lone hunters, can be social creatures. Though great whites and tigers rarely travel in packs, smaller species like lemon sharks stick together, especially younger males. “If you’re a young male lemon shark, you’ll hang out with other young males,” McKeever says. Some of it’s about survival. “They’ll hide together to escape predators like barracuda,” he says. “But it’s also a social thing. They become like buddies.” McKeever’s mission, he says, is to help people stop wasting psychic energy worrying about sharks. “That should be the last thing on your mind,” he says. “If anything, you should be thinking about what’s going to happen on the car ride home from the beach. What you’re going to face on the roads is far more dangerous than what’s in the ocean.” Lytton, for one, agrees. Despite nearly losing a limb to a shark, he’s ready to get back into the ocean this summer. “I tried getting in just the other day, but my wife said, ‘Oh, no you don’t!’ ” Lytton laughs. “She wouldn’t let me!” Sooner or later, he’ll be swimming again. Just maybe not at the same Truro beach where he was attacked last year. “If I got bit again in the same place, that’d be really embarrassing,” he says. SHARK SHOCKERS! Amazing facts about the ‘Emperors of the Deep’ You’re 10 times more likely to be bitten by a New Yorker than a shark. Sharks lose and regrow from 30,000 to 50,000 teeth in a lifetime. Ninety-three percent of all documented shark attacks since the 16th century have been on boys and men. According to a 2017 study, sharks become less aggressive and more inquisitive when listening to songs by the band AC/DC — specifically, “If You Want Blood (You’ve Got It).” Baby sharks are born with a full set of teeth, so they’re never fed by their mothers. They come out ready to hunt and sometimes eat their siblings in the womb. Sharks are attracted to the low-frequency sound of a dying fish, otherwise known as a “yummy hum.” The world’s biggest shark, the now extinct megalodon, was 65 feet long — about the size of a semi-trailer truck. Strangest things found in sharks’ stomachs: bottle of wine, cannonball, an entire chicken coop, birth-control pills, a dog leash, a bag of money, a fur coat, a porcupine.

Why sharks aren’t as bad as ‘Jaws’ makes them out to be William Lytton, a 62-year-old neurologist from Scarsdale, vividly remembers the moment a great white shark bit down hard on his left thigh. “It hurt pretty bad,” he tells The Post. “I didn’t realize at first what was happening. But then I looked down and saw all the blood and thought, ‘Oh, geez, this isn’t good. I’m in dire straits here.'” It happened last August, just 10 feet off the shore of a small beach in Truro, Massachusetts. Lytton had gone out for a quick swim in the Atlantic, as he often does during the summer, when the great white attacked him. “It wasn’t as dramatic as it seems in the movies,” he says. “I didn’t hear the ‘Jaws’ theme or anything.” But it was terrifying, and he punched frantically at the shark’s gills to free himself. Lytton managed to escape, but the power of the shark’s jaws ripped apart the tendons in his thigh. “It didn’t hit a main artery, which is probably why it didn’t kill me,” he says. He swam to the shore without losing consciousness and after being airlifted to Boston, was placed in a medically induced coma for two days while undergoing a dozen surgeries. “I was mostly worried that I might lose the leg,” Lytton recalls. “I was grateful to be alive, especially given what happened to the other guy.” The “other guy” was Arthur Medici, a 26-year-old surfer from Brazil who died after a great white attacked him off a Cape Cod beach just weeks later. It was the first fatal shark attack in Massachusetts in more than 80 years. Stories like this might make some New Yorkers uneasy about getting back into the water again this summer, especially with recent shark activity that’s gotten a little too close for comfort. Just days before Memorial Day weekend, a great white shark named Cabot — he’s been tagged with an electronic tracker and has around 12,000 followers on Twitter — was spotted swimming around Long Island. He wasn’t the first great white to venture this close to the area, but he was one of the biggest. At 533 pounds and 9-foot-8-inches long, Cabot wasn’t quite as big as the great white in Steven Spielberg’s 1975 movie “Jaws” — he was roughly half the size of that fictional shark — but was still massive enough to rattle beachgoers. Yet Gavin Naylor, the director of the Florida Museum of Natural History’s shark-research program, says the danger isn’t quite as imminent as it may seem. “Great whites have long been entering Long Island Sound,” he tells The Post. We just haven’t been aware of them because most sharks aren’t tagged. “I wouldn’t worry about it,” he says. The odds are in our favor. In the US, there’s a 1 in 265 million chance of being killed by a shark. The risk is even lower if you live in New York state. Since 1837, there have been just 12 unprovoked shark attacks, plus 15 attacks in New Jersey. But the real reason we shouldn’t be fearful of sharks isn’t the fact that they attack so infrequently. It’s that their reputation as the so-called killers of the sea might be undeserved. Peter Benchley, the author of both the 1974 novel and original screenplay adaptation of “Jaws,” noted during a lecture at the Smithsonian during the ’90s that, if he was writing the same story today, he wouldn’t be able to “portray the shark as a villain, especially not as a mindless omnivore that attacks boats and humans with reckless abandon.” Instead, he said, the shark “would have to be written as the victim.” This peculiar idea is what prompted William McKeever, an author and conservationist, to take a closer look at the ocean’s most misunderstood creature. In his new book, “Emperors of the Deep” (HarperOne), out Tuesday, he explores how sharks have more to fear from us than we do of them. “And unlike our fear of them,” he writes, “their fear is justified.” Sharks, he argues, are less intent on making a meal of us than we’ve led ourselves to believe. “They’re not interested in us,” McKeever told The Post. “We’re not on the menu.” We don’t have the nutrients they need. “Sharks eat mammals that provide lots of blubber, like seals and sea lions.” That blubber fuels a shark’s liver, and our scrawny human bodies just don’t have enough of that vital blubber to make us worth a meal. So why do shark attacks on humans happen at all? Because sometimes mistakes happen, McKeever says. A shark biting into a human is like a human accidentally biting down on a birthday candle when eating a piece of cake. “They’re not happy about it,” he says. “There’s no actual nourishment there.” A bigger issue, according to McKeever, is the brutality inflicted on sharks at the hands of humans. “While sharks kill an average of four humans a year, humans kill 100 million sharks each year,” he writes. (This is according to a 2013 study by the peer-reviewed journal Marine Policy.) They’re killed by accident (as a byproduct of the $40 billion tuna industry) and intentionally — sharks are regularly harvested for their meat, skin, fins, liver and cartilage — as well as for sport. McKeever visited a shark-hunting tournament in Montauk and saw crowds of onlookers line up “like spectators in the Roman Colosseum to catch a glimpse of a shark’s bloody, mangled body.” He even saw one fisherman carve the heart out of a dying shark and bring the still-beating heart over for the crowd to see. He went out on a hunt with a Montauk shark fisherman named Stan, a heavyset man in his 50s who was never without a cigarette or a cup filled with liquor, and watched him battle with a mako shark, pulling it onto the boat and severing the shark’s spinal cord with a harpoon. “Blood oozed out of the incision, and the shark twitched,” McKeever writes, “its life slowly ebbing away.” McKeever admits that he grew up, like many of us did, with fears about man-eating sharks. “Every book I picked up portrayed them as killers,” he writes. “A character would go swimming in a movie, and a shark would come along and take his leg off.” Our cultural anxiety about sharks dates back to 1916, when five people were attacked by a shark on the Jersey Shore and only one survived. It made national headlines, spawning the beginning of coast-to-coast shark paranoia and federal aid to “drive away all the ferocious man-eating sharks which have been making prey of bathers,” according to a story in The Philadelphia Inquirer. Ever since, many Americans don’t feel comfortable even wading in an ocean without scanning the surface for signs of a dorsal fin. While doing research for “Emperors of the Deep,” McKeever decided to face his fears head-on. With the help of marine scientists and professional shark divers, he ventured into the natural habitats of four shark species — mako, tiger, hammerhead and great white. “When you’re in the water with them, you start to realize that sharks are basically just big dogs,” McKeever says of his experiences. “They’re like a German shepherd or a husky. You just have to be careful.” He also discovered that they have personalities with more depth and nuance than just mindless eating machines. He learned of a secret spot in the Pacific, halfway between the Baja Peninsula and Hawaii, which has earned the nickname the White Shark Café. “The visibility of the water out there is some of the best on the planet,” McKeever says. “One theory for why they migrate there is that it’s an opportunity for them to check each other out.”

Being on “House Hunters” was so nice, Elizabeth and Jeff Newcamp did it twice. The filming process was riddled with exaggerations, posturing and phony recreations, as Elizabeth wrote in a Slate piece published Thursday with the headline, “What It’s Actually Like to Be on House Hunters.” The Navarre, Fla.-based couple, who have three sons, first appeared on the HGTV cult-favorite show’s international edition in January 2017, when they were expatriates in the Netherlands’ canal-filled town of Delft. Meanwhile, the search for their Florida home airs on Thursday. Elizabeth detailed how much they got paid ($1,500 for “House Hunters International,” $500 for “House Hunters”), how producers encouraged the couple to play up their arguing and how, both times, they had already bought the homes they ultimately “chose” on television. In the Netherlands episode, they’d been living in the house they picked for a year. In the Florida one, they’d already closed on the chosen house. Even as Elizabeth lifted the curtain to take viewers behind the scenes of the popular show, she and her husband Jeff enjoyed the experience and still love the show. “I really can’t stress enough how fun ‘House Hunters’ is,” she wrote in an email to The Post. “Who doesn’t love seeing inside homes around the world!” An HGTV rep issued the following statement on Thursday: “HGTV has brought viewers enjoyment with ‘House Hunters’ for 20 years and we hope they will continue to enjoy the series, not only for the entertainment value, but also for the practical home buying and selling knowledge that they gain from the viewing experience. ‘House Hunters’ is about the journey to find a perfect home. The people you see in the series are real people who have searched for, negotiated and paid for a home with their own money. They move in and make it their own. We simply shorten a very lengthy process for television.” “You should absolutely enjoy House Hunters. I still do,” Elizabeth writes. “Don’t worry about how these people with these jobs afford these houses. Enjoy the real estate and enjoy the fake arguments. But like everything you see on TV, you shouldn’t take it at face value.” Here are all of the little secrets behind production of the Newcamps’ “House Hunters” episodes revealed in Elizabeth’s article: The selection process for “House Hunters International” consisted of a written application, emailed iPhone footage and a Skype interview with the casting director “focusing on how we might be in conflict while looking for a house.” Even after the Newcamps had been chosen to be on air, it took months before the 5-day-long shoot was scheduled. The filming was arranged by location, not chronology, so the crew had to constantly remind them what verb tense to use as if the house-hunting process were unfolding in real time. Elizabeth writes: “One day we would film seeing the town of Delft ‘for the first time,’ and the next day we were all moved into our house as though we had lived there for a few months.” (They had, in fact, lived there for a year already.) Producers really played up the couple’s preferences, especially when they conflicted. “In ‘House Hunters International’ I mentioned that I wanted a bathtub, something that is nearly impossible to find in the Netherlands. At the producers’ urging, I soon became all about the bathtub,” Elizabeth writes. “I hopped into available tubs to try them out and lamented through entire house tours about how I would live, with three kids no less, without a bathtub. I was pregnant, after all, and that tub was a necessity.” Jeff, for his part, enjoyed Delft’s quaint canals, and the show ended up emphasizing his preference to live near or on one. The edited version of the episode that ran, in fact, so focused on these wish-list items that Elizabeth was endearingly identified as “Crazy Bathtub Lady” by a viewer she met in an airport and Jeff was vilified on Twitter for not being more accommodating to his pregnant wife. Jeff and Elizabeth were allowed to listen to each others’ interviews, but only in spots where the person being filmed couldn’t see. “This helped us recognize how the other was going to be portrayed, and to lean in to it all,” she writes. “At each house you film the ‘throw your partner under the bus’ interview. This is where you act like your partner is crazypants. Again, a good sense of humor is key here. Everything I said in my interviews was based on a grain of truth, but in a real house hunting situation I would never phrase it that way.” Hilariously, the Delft real estate agent in their episode was a fake. “I was surprised how even the littlest details could be fictionalized,” Elizabeth writes. “When they couldn’t find a local real estate agent, the ‘House Hunters International’ producers needed a Dutch person who was willing to be on camera for $500 as our ‘relocation expert.’ Our neighbor and friend Michael, who actually works in IT, was happy to oblige. In the episode, I hinted at the absurdity of the whole situation when Michael mentioned that he lived near a house we were looking at. ‘Oh, so we could be neighbors,’ I exclaimed, while biking to tour our actual house, down the street from his … where my children were playing with his daughter, under the supervision of his wife.” The other two houses the Newcamps toured with their fake “relocation agent” were not even on the market, just listed for rent on Airbnb. The third house is the one they already owned and had been living in for months. To shoot the house they “chose,” a company had to temporarily move out their possessions. “We woke up early one morning and watched all our belongings from any room that would be filmed for the show get loaded into a moving truck,” she writes. “The truck was then driven around for a few hours while we shot the segments in which we toured the house.” Elizabeth also borrowed bedding to differentiate the bedrooms. Sometimes, producers had to deal with an item that couldn’t be relocated. “The play set in the backyard was too big to move, so the cameraperson stood in front of it and shot us, in a different part of the yard, speculating about how much our kids would love playing on the lawn,” Elizabeth writes. “That afternoon … we changed clothes, moved over to the play set, and played with our children while the cameraperson filmed the ‘after’ shots.” Even non-house-hunting scenes were staged. “In one of my favorite shots, we pretended to purchase a heavy bakfiets cargo bicycle for the first time, and I rode off, over a bridge, pregnant, with the children nicely tucked in,” Elizabeth writes. “In reality, my first terrifying ride had been a year before, crisscrossing the road to stay up and stalling halfway up the bridge. My ‘first ride’ on TV, though, was effortless.” The former attorney kept a blog about her family’s relocation to Delft, and wrote a post with more behind-the-scenes insights and photos after the episode — “Cuckoo for Canals in Delft,” — aired in January 2017. The Newcamps didn’t care about the moments that were exaggerated or posed. After all, it was a fun experience. So when they moved back to the US, the Newcamps applied to be on domestic “House Hunters” “We loved getting a little peek at the world of entertainment,” Elizabeth writes. “Plus, we walked away with a video snapshot of this one moment of our lives.” Off-camera, Jeff looked at 60 homes in Florida while Elizabeth camped out at her parents’ place in Atlanta with the kids. After they closed on a house, the crew immediately arrived to shoot. “Hurricane Michael hit during the search. We found a house after the evacuation order was lifted. We signed papers and got the keys to our new home on a Friday,” she writes. “That Monday, the film crew filmed us touring our brand-new empty house. We also shot some footage of the family at our hotel on Navarre Beach, pretending we had been living there through the extensive house search.” Unlike in the “International” episode, the Newcamps’ actual realtor was on air (for free), and the houses they toured for the show (after they had already closed on the one they picked) were actually on the market for sale. Just like in the “International” episode, the producers played up the couple’s conflicts. In Florida, it was Jeff “not being satisfied with any house and all the little home-repair problems he finds” versus Elizabeth advocating “to just find a house, any house!” She also ramped up her insistence on “indoor and outdoor play space” for the kids. “Again these reflect real discussions we had,” she writes, “but conducted in extremes for the benefit of the show.” The Newcamps’ episode, “Nitpicking in Navarre, Florida” airs Thursday at 8:30 p.m. on HGTV.

How to get reservations at Taco Bell’s insane Palm Springs resort Checking in! Reservations will soon be available for the vacation spot of your dreams (or nightmares). Taco Bell’s “The Bell Hotel and Resort,” a themed attraction where you can get taco-inspired nail art and rest your head on hot sauce packet pillows, will open up reservations at 1 p.m. Thursday, June 27, on the hotel’s website. The Bell — located in ritzy Palm Springs, Calif. — will open for a limited time. First check-in begins Aug. 8, with final check-out Aug. 12. There is no minimum night stay, according to a company reps. This fast-food fever dream comes at a price though, and not just on your arteries. Rooms start at $169 per night. Space is limited and rooms will be available to Taco Bell super-fans on a first-come, first-served basis — and only for those 18 and up. The California-based company drew on the chain’s “vibrant palette” for the hotel’s “flavor-filled” aesthetic, says Taco Bell’s Senior Director of Retail Engagement and Experience, Jennifer Arnoldt in a statement. “We’re excited to give a peek into Taco Bell’s first hotel that is truly Taco Bell luxury at a value as we evolve how fans can celebrate with the brand this summer and beyond.” Activities include musical performances, dive-in movies and a “Freeze Lounge,” bar where you can get all the Mountain Dew Baja Blasts your little heart desires.There will of course be plenty of food, enjoyed poolside of course, where you can also float away into a fast food coma on their hot sauce packet pool floats.

How to get reservations at Taco Bell’s insane Palm Springs resort Checking in! Reservations will soon be available for the vacation spot of your dreams (or nightmares). Taco Bell’s “The Bell Hotel and Resort,” a themed attraction where you can get taco-inspired nail art and rest your head on hot sauce packet pillows, will open up reservations at 1 p.m. Thursday, June 27, on the hotel’s website. The Bell — located in ritzy Palm Springs, Calif. — will open for a limited time. First check-in begins Aug. 8, with final check-out Aug. 12. There is no minimum night stay, according to a company reps. This fast-food fever dream comes at a price though, and not just on your arteries. Rooms start at $169 per night. Space is limited and rooms will be available to Taco Bell super-fans on a first-come, first-served basis — and only for those 18 and up. The California-based company drew on the chain’s “vibrant palette” for the hotel’s “flavor-filled” aesthetic, says Taco Bell’s Senior Director of Retail Engagement and Experience, Jennifer Arnoldt in a statement. “We’re excited to give a peek into Taco Bell’s first hotel that is truly Taco Bell luxury at a value as we evolve how fans can celebrate with the brand this summer and beyond.” Activities include musical performances, dive-in movies and a “Freeze Lounge,” bar where you can get all the Mountain Dew Baja Blasts your little heart desires.There will of course be plenty of food, enjoyed poolside of course, where you can also float away into a fast food coma on their hot sauce packet pool floats.

Woman named Marijuana Pepsi refused to change her name — now she’s a doctor That’s Doctor Marijuana Pepsi to you. A Wisconsin woman with the real given name Marijuana Pepsi Vandyck earned a doctorate last month, according to a report published Tuesday. Throughout her life, Vandyck, 46, said she’s been teased by everyone from classmates to teachers and bosses — but she turned all that around when she handed in her dissertation, titled: “Black names in white classrooms: Teacher behaviors and student perceptions.” As part of her PhD in higher education leadership from Cardinal Stritch University, Vandyck interviewed students who had experiences similar to hers in the classroom, where teachers harped on their names, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reported. “Regardless of what they do, say or what they’re trying to put in place, you still have to move forward and succeed,” Vandyck told the paper. Some people Vandyck encountered flat-out refused to call her by her name or insisted on calling her “Mary” — which she rejected. When she worked as a real estate agent, she did use the initials “MP” so stoners wouldn’t steal her signs, she said. “People make such a big deal out of it, I couldn’t get away from it,” she said. Despite her name, Vandyck — who works full-time at Beloit College — said she’s never smoked grass and doesn’t drink soda. Her mother, Maggie Johnson, picked out the unusual moniker — proclaiming it would take her daughter gallivanting around the world. Vandyck left an unstable home when she was 15 and said she spent her life trying to prove herself, even as people wrinkled their brows when they heard her name. She vowed to earn her PhD, insisting: “I’m going to be called Dr. Marijuana Pepsi.” Even though she credits her mom with making her a strong, balanced, entrepreneurial woman, Vandyck advises against naming kids after weed. Her sisters have comparatively tame names, Kimberly and Robin. “I’ve grown into my name because I am a strong woman. I’ve had to be,” she’s said.

They are protesting the wrong streamer. More than 20,000 concerned Christians have signed a petition demanding Netflix cancel the “satanic” series “Good Omens.” The only problem is, the show is actually produced and streamed by Amazon Prime. “To: Netflix,” the petition on Christian website Return to Order reads, “I protest against your series ‘Good Omens’ which portrays God as a tyrant and Devils as being good.” The cancellation campaign goes on to declare the show a “mockery of God’s order and religion,” which, “destroys the barriers of horror that society still has for the devil.” Other problems with the show, protestors say, include the fact that God is voiced by a woman (Frances McDormand), the Antichrist is portrayed as “a normal kid,” and, overall, the show represents “a denial of Good and Evil.” “Good Omens” premiered on Amazon at the end of May. The six-part series stars Michael Sheen and David Tennant as an angel-demon pair searching for the Antichrist and is based on the eponymous 1990 novel by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. Jon Hamm co-stars as the Archangel Gabriel. Compared to other new shows which have jumped on the devilish trend of late, “Good Omens” is actually quite tame. Its least family-friendly content, Gaiman told the Guardian, is “two bottoms, one of them Eve’s; three swear words — and a lot of maggots coming out of a telephone.” “I love that they are going to write Netflix to try and get #GoodOmens canceled,” Neil Gaiman Tweeted, “Says it all really.”

An American billionaire has given Oxford University 150 million pounds ($188.6 million) for a new institute that will study the ethical implications of artificial intelligence and computing technologies. The donation from Stephen Schwarzman, CEO of the private equity firm Blackstone, will also fund a center to house all of the university’s humanities subjects in a single space to encourage collaborative study. “AI is going to be the fourth revolution and it is going to impact jobs, excellence, efficiency,” Schwarzman told the BBC. “It is a force for amazing good and also a potential force for not good.” Schwarzman compared the rise of AI to the rise of the internet, which was launched by computer scientists who thought it was “cool.” “And parts of it were cool — interconnectedness, globally the ability to communicate, it is pretty amazing,” he said. “What they forgot were all the negatives, this inability to control cyberbullying, lack of freedom of speech — all kinds of negative things.” He says ethics and AI is “one of the major issues of our age.” Oxford’s vice chancellor, Louise Richardson, says the gift is “a significant endorsement of the value of the humanities in the 21st century.” Schwarzman co-founded Blackstone, which has some $512 billion assets under management, making it a major investment firm. In recent years, he has made other sizeable donations to educational institutions. Last October, he gave $350 million to establish the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing, which will also address the challenges of AI. In 2015, Mr. Schwarzman donated $150 million to alma mater Yale University and gave $40 million to the Inner-City Scholarship Fund, which provides tuition assistance to underprivileged children attending Catholic schools in New York. In 2013, he founded an international scholarship program, “Schwarzman Scholars,” at Tsinghua University in Beijing — a $575 million program is modeled on the Rhodes Scholarship.

50 one-minute plays by LGBTQ+ playwrights to be performed at the Queens Museum on June 22 Their voices need to be heard. And the LGBTQ+ community, which is as colorful and diverse as the borough itself, has a lot to say. Sharing their personal stories through 50 heartfelt one-minute plays, 50 LGBTQIA+ playwrights will be making sure their voices are heard – in remembrance of the Stonewall Riots 50th anniversary – this Saturday at 2 p.m., at the Queens Museum. Thanks to a joint project between Queens Theatre, the One-Minute Play Festival, and the Museum, this special happening is now part of an official city-wide Stonewall 50 celebration of the uprising that took place back in 1969. It all started on a June night in a bar on Christopher Street where LGBTQ patrons liked to gather. Laws and attitudes were very different back then and when the police started rounding people up for a crime they didn’t commit, the bar’s clientele fought back, and a revolution was sparked. “These particular works written by this group of playwrights are all drawn from the LGBTQ+ experience. They are all incredibly specific and deeply personal,” Stonewall 50 Plays curator and director Nathaniel P. Claridad said. He added: “This one-time only event is singular and is rare: Fifty different queer voices given space and time, with a cast that reflects the community that we are looking to lift up. It is an event for those seeking community and for those seeking to commune.” As part of a day-long celebration at the Museum, these staged readings – which commemorate the riots that pushed the LGBTQ+ Rights Movement to the forefront – highlight what this day of activism, reflection, community conversation and art really means. “The audience will see a spectrum of voices, bodies, generations, ideas, experiences, perspectives, and history that speaks to the queer continuum and this contemporary moment,“ Queens Theatre’s Director of Community Engagement and founder of the One-Minute Play Festival, Dominic D’Andrea said. The Stonewall 50 Plays are staged by 5 directors and performed by a company of over 50 professional actors and at-large community members, who all identify as Queer. Playwrights represent international, national, New York City, and Queens-based voices, which include local creatives Jonathan Alexandros and J. Julian Christopher. Every June, LGBTQ+ communities worldwide celebrate the anniversary with Pride parades and festivals. It provides community members an opportunity to meditate on where they have come from and where they still need to go, according to Claridad who said, “What’s poignant about The Stonewall 50 Plays is that we are making space for these mediations to be clearly heard. This is work made by our community for our community.” According to D’Andrea, the project stems from attempting to figure out how Queens Theatre could mark the 50th anniversary of Stonewall in a meaningful way. “During these past 50 years, so much has changed, and yet so much hasn’t. This was the perfect moment to hold space for LGBTQIA+ artists and invite them to share their essence, ideas, and their work with the wider community,” he said. “We’ve made this work in the spirit of celebration, remembrance, reflection, and asking some big questions: Considering these past 50 years, how do we begin to design the future we want to live in? What does intersectionality look like? What are the contemporary queer narratives and conversations that are important to spotlight? What is this moment in Queens? In NYC? Around the world?” All events are free, but a ticket will be required to attend 2 p.m. reading of The Stonewall 50 Plays. Reservations can be made through a link on Queens Theatre’s website www.queenstheatre.org.

Cara Delevingne said she was speaking publicly and proudly about her queerness for the first time at the TrevorLIVE gala, where she received the Trevor Project’s Hero Award for the awareness and support for the LGBTQ+ community. The evening also honored Kelly Ripa and husband Mark Consuelos with the 20/20 Visionary Award. They accepted the Champions Award from friend and actor Jonathan Tucker. After hilariously playing off of each other and humbly accepting the honor, Kelly and mark surprised Sam Brinton (they/them) by calling them up to the stage to share the award. “We are so honored but we have to admit we are a little uneasy accepting this award. I mean, we’re two cisgendered heteros married for 23 years,” Ripa said. “What could we possibly know about alienation from community or fear of having our rights taken away?” “Well, you are a woman,” Consuelos responded. “That’s true. And you are Mexican,” Ripa said. Ripa and Consuelos dedicated their award to Trevor Project’s head of advocacy and government affairs Sam Brinton. Delevingne donated $50,000 to the Trevor Project and also took the moment from the stage to thank “a very special woman,” her girlfriend Ashley Benson. “She’s one of the people that helped me love myself when I needed it most and I really needed it,” Delevingne said. “She showed me all her love and she showed me how to accept it which I was a lot harder than I thought. I love you sprinkles.”