samhexum

The Biebs had the best game of his life today, a 5 hit shutout with 15 strikeouts and no walks, although it was against the Orioles, so take it with a grain of salt.

Koala bears have been declared “functionally extinct,” the Australian Koala Foundation reports. The fluffy marsupial is down to just 80,000 wild species members, meaning there aren’t enough breeding adults left to support another generation of the pouched mammals. The tree-dwelling species has been ravaged by the effects of rising temperatures and heatwaves, which have caused widespread deforestation and fatal dehydration in koalas, according to the AKF. Only 41 of the koala’s 128 known habitats in federal environments have any of the animals left. If a new disease or genetic pathogen of any kind is introduced, surviving koalas will die off rapidly. Activists are begging local pols to step in. “I know the Australian public are concerned for the safety of koalas and are tired of seeing dead koalas on our roads,” says AKF chairman Deborah Tabart. “I am calling on the new prime minister after the May election to enact the Koala Protection Act (KPA) which has been written and ready to go since 2016.” There is hope: The Koala Protection Act is based on the US’s Bald Eagle Act, which was successful in rescuing America’s national symbol from the threatened species list. “The Bald Eagle Act was successful because there was political motive to ensure their icon did not go extinct,” says Tabart. “It is time for the koala to be afforded the same respect.”

And if you were a fan of Air Supply:

(After being turned down for a job as a consumer reporter's assistant because of her age) Rose Nylund: You can't write me off just because I'm not 30-something. I AM the battered consumer, I drive a Gremlin for God's sake.

http://d3lp4xedbqa8a5.cloudfront.net/imagegen/p/1200/630/s3/digital-cougar-assets/tradeuniquecars/2016/11/09/133072/plymouth-barracuda-2.jpg

I'd be more impressed if you said it was a Transformer.

The long-awaited climax is tonight.

Marcus D'Amico (born 4 December 1965) is a film, television and stage actor. D'Amico was born in Germany to an American father and a British mother, and was brought up in the United Kingdom. D'Amico has stated a preference for stage acting and did not reprise the role of Michael "Mouse" Tolliver in the 1998 sequel, More Tales of the City. The role was recast with Paul Hopkins (who also appeared in the third installment, Further Tales of the City in 2001). According to the series' author, Armistead Maupin: "Despite the rumors, it is not true that Marcus D'Amico wasn't invited back because of issues surrounding his sexuality. The production team met Marcus and he expressed 'ambivalence' about returning to the role of Mouse. The director felt it was important to find someone who would enthusiastically embrace the role." However, he has referred to his past work on the Tales of the City miniseries as "Exhausting, enlightening and challenging". When asked about fears of typecasting after appearing in the stageplay Angels in America and in the Tales of the City TV series, D'Amico stated in 2003, "I did get typecast in gay roles but it now no longer worries me."

Noah Wylie's performance is Emmy-worthy A simple trip to a grocery store sets in motion a chain of tragic events in “The Red Line,” a limited series Sundays on CBS. Noah Wyle (“ER”) stars as Daniel Calder, a teacher whose husband, Harrison (Corey Reynolds), an African American doctor, is picking up milk after a long shift at the Chicago hospital where he works when a holdup takes place. After the thief leaves, Harrison steps forward to minister to the owner’s head wounds. A lone white cop, responding to a 911 call, enters the store and shoots Harrison twice in the back, mistaking him for the thief. Six months later, Calder is trying to function at his job teaching AP history at a local high school while raising his adopted teenage daughter, Jira (Aliyah Royale), also African American. He’s doing a bad job of holding it together. “This is thrust upon Daniel and he’s not ready,” says Wyle, 47. “He has to put on a brave face but internally he’s crumbling. His grief has to take second place. He has to figure out a way to reach somebody and admits he has lost control. And he’s selfish and not above hurting people That’s the part I like. He’s not a perpetual victim. At the same time he’s an antagonist.” First developed as a play by executive producers Caitlin Parrish and Erica Weiss, “The Red Line” — so named after the Chicago metro line — shows how one family’s grief reverberates through Chicago’s shaky sociopolitical structure. Calder wants Paul Evans (Noel Fisher), the cop who killed his partner, to lose his badge and hires an attorney. Feeling she can’t express what she’s going through as a black child who has lost her black father, Jira reaches out to her birth mother, Tia Young (Emayatzy Corinealdi), who’s risen far above the circumstances that found her pregnant at age 15: She’s running for public office and has her own family. For Wyle, it’s his Regina King moment: a mature, robust role that reminds your peers how good you really are. “I was incredibly moved by it. The scripts avoided clichés and went for a deeper sense of inclusion,” he says. “I looked at the project more like a personal odyssey than the next big career decision. I know they went through a few actors before they came to me.” Aware that we live in an age where art must serve politics, Parrish and Weiss admit they first offered the part to the nation’s most public gay actors. “Noah knows that. He knows we did our due diligence,” Weiss says. Availability was the problem. “Most of the actors were in [the 2018 Broadway production] of ‘The Boys in the Band,’ ” Parrish adds. The matter seemed settled once the cast gathered at the first table read and Wyle left the writers in tears. That’s when Weiss said to herself, “Oh, it was always supposed to be him.” If there’s any controversy in “The Red Line” it will be the series’ negative portrayal of the white cops in the Chicago police department, which is in line with other Hollywood portrayals of law enforcement personnel. But Parrish defends her characterization of the policemen in “The Red Line.” “It was very important to not portray the cops as just one thing,” says Parrish. “It was important that Paul not be a sociopath blindly executing people. Or a perfectly good person making a mistake. The truth lies in the ambiguous middle.” “It’s really easy forget how many dedicated men and women risk their lives every day,” Wyle says. “I think Erica and Caitlin did a good job of showing the diversity of the police department. I think it’s honest.” ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A real-life event had a profound effect on the premise of the CBS limited series “The Red Line.” The eight-episode series picks up almost immediately after the fictional police shooting death of a gay black doctor, Harrison Brennan (Corey Reynolds) and follows three storylines: his husband Daniel (Noah Wyle) and their adopted daughter Jira (Aliyah Royale); Officer Paul Evans (Noel Fisher), his brother (Michael Patrick Thornton) and his partner Vic (Elizabeth Laidlaw); and Chicago alderman candidate Tia Young, Jira’s birth mother (Emayatzy Corinealdi). The program pulls from the headlines, a combination of similar cases across the country. The aftermath of the actual shooting death of a black teenager by a Chicago cop changed history, and changed the script. In 2014, Laquan McDonald was fatally shot by Officer Jason Van Dyke. Initially, Van Dyke was not charged because he claimed McDonald, who was 17, had been behaving erratically, had a small knife and was a threat to the officer. There was dashcam video of the shooting, but it took a judge’s order 13 months later to get the city to release it. The video showed McDonald veering away from officers, contradicting Van Dyke’s account that he had lunged at him with a knife. In October 2018, a jury found Van Dyke guilty of second-degree murder and 16 counts of aggravated battery with a firearm — one count for each bullet fired at McDonald. He became the first Chicago cop in decades to be convicted of murder for an on-duty shooting. McDonald was convicted during the filming for “The Red Line”; his sentencing didn’t change the story or the idea that officers are held to a different standard, but it meant precedence for their fictional officer to face repercussions for his actions. Showrunners Caitlin Parrish and Erica Weiss, who have worked together for more than 15 years, created the series from their 2011 play “A Twist of Water,” which debuted at a Chicago theater before moving to off-Broadway. “We returned to those characters and that story that we loved so much,” Weiss told the Daily News. “The cultural conversation and sociopolitical conversation was different between 2011 and 2015 when we wrote the pilot and even more in 2019.” Parrish and Weiss, both white, built diversity into the writers’ room and crew. “From moment one, we made it a priority to listen,” Parrish told The News. “We care more about getting the show right than either of us being right.” In the first two episodes provided to critics, “The Red Line” is a heartbreaking reminder that a story doesn’t end when an Emergency Room doctor declares time of death or a trial ends. Family members are left reeling; police officers struggle to move on. “I was so moved by the immensity of the tragedy,” Wyle, returning to network TV for the first time since “ER,” told The News. “I’m really attracted to characters who go along almost on autopilot and everything that defines them…is stripped away. Where does that leave them?” “The Red Line” looks at what happens next. Wyle’s character Daniel grapples with his emotions while dealing with his daughter’s new reality, while Jira (Royale), who grew up with two fathers in a mixed-race household, is looking for something to hold onto. She picks her birth mother. “She’s trying so hard to get Daniel to understand,” Royale, a relative newcomer to TV, told The News. “She knows her upbringing and she’s thankful for it, but clearly there’s this whole universe she never knew about. She needs someone who looks like her, a woman who looks like her, to get a a better understanding of herself, a better comprehension of what happened to Harrison.” And for Paul Evans, the white officer who shot and killed the innocent black man, a young cop searches for the truth of that night: colleagues, including his partner, have repeatedly told him he did everything right. But that’s not what happened. “It exists in the gray,” Fisher, known best for his role on “Shameless,” told The News. “From the moment that he understands what happens, he’s utterly devastated and questioning himself from that point on.” “The Red Line” is more questions than answers, more doubt than faith. The show doesn’t want you to pick a side or a villain, to blame the white cop for shooting or the black man for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. “It’s so easy to ascribe a value judgement to something that you’re hearing the top level detail to,” Wyle told The News. “What we do and why we do things is infinitely more than that.”

SCHMICO overcame some recent struggles and endures! At the start, then at 4:02 (the final minute and a half was a scene from the spin-off, STATION 19): Starting at 3:02: 1:25 (note Nico’s weird facial expressions when he talks) and 3:10: