samhexum

Liz Smith was probably the last one. Unless you count Cindy Adams. (Can I get a shout out for the late, great Rona Barrett?)

Style guru and TV personality Susie Coelho and her husband, Michael Peel, have listed their home at 455 W. 20th St. for $6.9 million. It was previously on the market for $8.25 million in 2016, and as a $29,500-a-month rental. Coelho, a former Ford model and actress, was married to the late Sonny Bono from 1981 to 1984 following his divorce from Cher. Peel, the former vice president of human resources and administration at Yale before his 2017 retirement, bought the fourth-floor unit for $5.75 million in 2013. Coelho and Peel married in Chelsea in 2017, Page Six reported at the time. The three-bedroom, three-bathroom unit is 2,500 square feet. It’s in the former General Theological Seminary — one of the oldest buildings in Chelsea, which is connected to a newer building by a glass atrium — and overlooks a private park. Special details include three woodburning fireplaces and a chef’s kitchen with a wine cooler and a fireplace framed by a 16th-century limestone mantel. There’s also a formal foyer and 17-foot vaulted ceilings, along with herringbone vintage oak floors. Building amenities include a doorman, a gym and bike storage. The listing brokers are James Morgan and Brandon Cohen of Compass.

Those two quotes came from THIS thread. Blame Unicorn & BabyBoomer.

These hips don’t lie. WWE legend The Rock claimed he was “bionic from the waist down” after posting a new hip thrust personal best of 460 pounds this month — and shared footage of the feat with his 126 million Instagram followers. But there’s bionic strength — and freakish power. NBA MVP contender Giannis Antetokounmpo claims to have added 50 pounds of pure muscle since he entered the league in 2014 and his muscles aren’t for show. The Greek Freak raised an eyebrow like The Rock used to during his professional wrestling heyday when he saw the now actor’s personal best hip thrust on Instagram. Alongside teammate Pat Connaughton, Antetokounmpo raised the bar and issued a challenge for The Rock to come and lift with him in the Milwaukee Bucks’ so-called Iron Paradise while thrusting 570 pounds. Antetokounmpo (24) is about half The Rock’s age (46) but that’s still an impressive mark. For comparison, NFL veteran and world famous gym junkie James Harrison has thrusted up to 675 pounds while some powerlifters have reached 800 pounds. The forward’s workouts are becoming the stuff of legend — and making him one of the most physically dominant players the league has seen. He’s getting as many dunks a game as anyone since Shaquille O’Neal while leading the Bucks to the NBA’s best record thus far. dribbles with the left hand, jams with the right: OH MY!

I read once (in some old time star's biography) that either Hedda Hopper or Louella Parsons, whichever one was in Hearst's pocket, always referred to her as 'the lovely Marion Davies'.

Toni's ex has bought the farm.

You can no longer do that. Toni's ex has bought the farm.

Gay porn magnate Michael Lucas has announced he plans to retire in 2020 — and threatens to expose celeb clients from his former escorting days. “Porn stars come and go, but the best ones stay in our memories [and] on our hard drives for a long time until they fade away,” Lucas’ rep told Page Six in a statement. “Successfully dominating the gay adult-film industry for 25 plus years and starring in over 300 films, Michael is planning to retire the devil between his legs in 2020 but still continue to direct and produce films.” Lucas founded his New York City-based company, Lucas Entertainment, in 1998. He has contributed to the Advocate and HuffPost as a columnist, and his rep says he’s writing a tell-all. “Michael is also in search of a co-author to publish a juicy autobiography that will include a steamy chapter about a few top Hollywood celebs who paid him to have sex with them when he was an escort in the late ’90s,” he said. The porn star is waiting for its release to dish names.

When I was in college, I had a job working for the NY Post. I dropped off the bundles for the paper boys to deliver, and I had a route of my own. One day, I had delivered to all the customers on one floor of an apartment building, and noticed a small package in front of a non-customer's door. I don't know why, but I took it (never did anything like that before or after). When I got home & opened it up, it was a copy of that video (THE BIGGER THE BETTER). That would have been 1983ish.

Summer: The Donna Summer Musical Ends Broadway Run December 30 The bio-musical about the life of the late disco icon closes after 289 performances

How an explorer’s obsession with crossing Antarctica solo led to his death Alone in the vast expanse of ice and snow, where temperatures drop to minus-30 degrees, dragging 300 pounds of supplies, feet blistered, body ravaged by fatigue — who would choose this? One man did. Henry Worsley is hailed today as “one of the greatest polar explorers of our time.” His perilous — and ultimately deadly — trek across Antarctica in 2015 is the subject of a pocket-sized book by New Yorker writer David Grann. “The White Darkness” has already been optioned for the big screen — and no wonder. Worsley’s story is almost too astounding to believe. On Nov. 13, 2015, 55-year-old Worsley, a retired British Army officer, embarked on coast-to-coast tour of Antarctica alone and without aid. There would be no food buried along his path, no outside assistance, no sled dogs — all for a distance of more than 1,000 miles over a period of 2¹/₂ months. No one else had ever even tried such a feat. “As is true of many adventurers, he seemed to be on an inward quest as much as an outward one — the journey was a way to subject himself to an ultimate test of character,” Grann writes. Worsley was in his teens when he first read a copy of “The Heart of the Antarctic,” written by British explorer Ernest Shackleton. When Worsley realized that his relative, Frank Worsley, was in Shackleton’s expedition party, he became obsessed. Then, in 2008, Alexandra Shackleton invited Worsley to retrace her grandfather’s doomed mission to the South Pole, a grueling 66-day trek. Though Shackleton and his expedition never made it that far, Worsley and his two-man crew completed the journey. Worsley was hooked. Five years later, he returned again, this time armed with a satellite phone and an iPod loaded with songs by David Bowie, Johnny Cash and Meat Loaf. His sled, weighing 325 pounds, was filled with the food he would eat on his journey — freeze-dried dinners and protein bars. He wore cross-country skis and held poles to propel himself across the ice cap more than 10 miles a day. He was entirely alone. “He pushed off and heard a familiar symphony: the poles crunching on the ice, the sled creaking over ridges, the skis swishing back and forth. When he paused, he was greeted by that silence which seemed unlike any other,” writes Grann. The threat of death was constant. “One misstep and he’d vanish into a hidden chasm,” writes Grann. Get wet and Worsley had four minutes, tops, to dry off before hypothermia did him in. He had left behind wife Joanna, 21-year-old son Max and 19-year-old daughter Alicia, who had scrawled this message on his skis: “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: It is the courage to continue that counts.” By his 10th day — Nov. 22 — things started to turn. Worsley hit a whiteout that trapped him in his tent for days. One brutal day followed the next. “It was a real physical battle with fatigue,” Worsley wrote in his journal. “I was stopping literally every minute or so to catch my breath or just get ready for the next exertion required.” By mid-January, Worsley had traveled more than 800 miles. He reached the South Pole on Jan. 2 and ignored the offers of help from well-wishers there. His goal was to get to the coast unaided, so he trucked on. By the time he reached the Titan Dome five days later, he had lost more than 40 pounds. “I felt pretty awful,” he said in his audio messages, which he had been routinely updating for people following his journey. “The weakest I felt in the entire expedition.” Wife Joanna recognized the fear and fatigue in her husband’s voice and tried to deploy a rescue team, but they insisted that Worsley be the one to make the call. “Virtually every part of him was in agony. His arms and legs throbbed. His back ached. His feet were blistered and his toenails discolored. His fingers started to become numb with frostbite,” wrote Grann. “One of his front teeth had broken off, and the wind whistled through the gap.” To keep his spirits up — by now his iPod had broken — he listed his favorite foods: “Fish pie, brown bread, double cream, steaks and chips, more chips . . . Ahhhhh!” During yet another whiteout, Worsley noted that his body “seemed to be eating itself” and called his son in the middle of the night to say: “I just want to hear your voice. I just want to hear your voice.” On Jan. 22, after 71 days and more than 900 miles, Worsley pushed his panic button and called for rescue. “My journey is at an end. I’ve run out of time, physical endurance and the simple sheer ability to slide one ski after the other to travel the distance required to reach my goal. My summit is just out of reach.” The rescue planes arrived, rushing Worsley to the city of Punta Arenas in southern Chile. But soon after he arrived, his liver and kidneys failed. Worsley was posthumously awarded the Polar Medal, which was also bestowed upon his hero Shackleton. In 2017, Worsley’s wife and two children flew to icy South Georgia Island to bury his ashes on a peak that overlooks the cemetery where Shackleton is buried. “He was always the invincible man — not physically but mentally — and I still expect him to come back,” Max told Grann. “If I’m even half the man Dad turned out to be, I’d be so pleased.”

Scientists in Antarctica got a unique gift this holiday season: access to a mysterious lake buried under more than 3,500 feet of ice. It took about two days of drilling to reach Mercer Subglacial Lake on Dec. 26, the Subglacial Antarctic Lakes Scientific Access (SALSA) announced in a blog post. A team of researchers — which includes 45 scientists, drillers and other staff members — with the organization were able to send an instrument down a borehole the next day, capturing rare footage of the body of water which is “twice the size of Manhattan,” according to the journal Nature. They will also lower a remotely operated vehicle down the hole to capture more footage and take more extensive measurements. The group plans to study the depth, temperature and cleanliness of the lake over the next few days. “We don’t know what we’ll find,” John Priscu, chief scientist for SALSA, told environmental news site Earther Monday. “We’re just learning, it’s only the second time that this has been done.” The SALSA team flew to Mercer Subglacial Lake on Dec. 19 and began drilling days later, on Dec. 23. “Part of the drilling process involves sampling the drill water to test its cleanliness. The water has been tested twice thus far, and both tests showed the water was ‘as clean as filtered water can get’, in the words of SALSA PI Brent Christner,” SALSA explained. “The drill water is run through filters that catch 99.9 percent of bacteria and particles.” The organization has scheduled at least eight days dedicated to sampling the lake’s water and sediment, a previous blog post states. Priscu told Earther researchers hope to gain more information about life that exists thousands of feet under ice, noting it will take years to study all the samples they collect. “We’re knee-deep right [now] sampling the deepest standing water body humans have ever accessed beneath Antarctica,” Matt Siegfried, a glaciologist and SALSA member, told Earther. “[so] it’ll take some time to process what the ‘most’ exciting part [is].” Mercer Subglacial Lake was first discovered via satellite more than a decade ago, according to Nature. There are reportedly around 400 lakes hiding beneath Antarctica’s ice sheets.

I'm enjoying it, but I'm wondering why they never show Deb at her Mensa meetings.

On Sunday's season premiere of THE ORVILLE, Lt. Commander Bortus took his yearly piss in front of friends and loved ones. It was quite moving.

Me, too. I'm using the old version. It's more aesthetically pleasing to me, and more familiar, so more comfortable.

With 35 games under the Milwaukee Bucks’ belts, the team’s superstar is not slowing down. At this point, the 2018-19 NBA Most Valuable Player award is Giannis Antetokounmpo’s to lose, even if he won’t admit it. If he finishes with his current stats, he’d be the only player in the history of the NBA to average at least 28 points, 13 rebounds, and 6 assists (per-36 minutes). He’s otherworldly. “Giannis appears in the top-20 leaderboards in the following categories: total points, total field goals attempted and made, total free throws attempted and made, total defensive (and overall) rebounds, total blocks, field goal percentage, true shooting percentage, effective field goal percentage, player efficiency rating, defensive rating, win shares (offensive, defensive, total, and per-48 minutes), box plus-minus (both offensive and defensive) and value over replacement player.”

93 years old. Yet another poor soul struck down before their prime! I wonder if Serge will make it to the funeral.