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Longtime spokesman James Karen has died at 94.

This princess got fast food-shamed. A woman in Oklahoma recently went on a hilarious Facebook rant asking customers at a nearby McDonald’s to stop feeding her “gold diggin” dog because she’s not a stray. “If you see my dog @ the McDonald’s on shields, quit feeding her fat a– bc she don’t know how to act & be leaving the house all the time to go walking to McDonald’s at night,” Betsy Reyes wrote of her dog, Princess. “She’s not even a stray dog,” she continued. “She’s just a gold diggin a– b—h that be acting like she’s a stray so people will feel bad for her & feed her burgers.” Reyes caught the pooch in the act when she drove to the McDonald’s and Princess approached her car. But Princess backed off once she realized it was her owner in the driver’s seat. Reyesthen filmed Princess sauntering over to a different car, where she acquired a piece of the driver’s burger.

I actually meant sibs who were on different series; I've amended the title to reflect that. But you reminded me: The Sweetins

The Batemans The Cameron(-Bure)s The McKeons The Aurnesses The Gilberts The (Ayers-)Allens Others?

A couple plunged to their death from a popular proposal cliff at Yosemite National Park also captured last week in another pair’s viral engagement photo. Park rangers said the victims died Thursday when they fell from Taft Point, a scenic destination in the California park, news station KPIX reported. “A male and female visitor died in an apparent fall from Taft Point in Yosemite National Park. Yosemite National Park Rangers are recovering the bodies this morning,” officials said in a statement. “This incident is under investigation and no further details are available.” The accident comes a week after another couple’s wedding proposal at the picturesque cliff became an online sensation. Their romantic shot took off on social media as a freelance photographer, Matt Dippel, attempted to track down the couple, whose touching moment he inadvertently snapped. Dippel said he was waiting to take a landscape photo of his friend when one couple’s engagement caught his eye. “It’s a super-popular place in Yosemite. Really popular for engagements, proposals, weddings,” Dippel told CNN. “There were at least three or four different brides and grooms up there doing their post-wedding photos, so it’s definitely not an uncommon thing to see up there.” The photographer said he then tried to find the lovebirds at Yosemite but to no avail. “I ran over to that point after I took the photo to try to figure out who they were and I asked maybe 20 or 25 people and no one came forward,” Dippel said. Dippel ultimately reached out to social media for help, sharing the engagement photo in a tweet, which has received more than 164,000 retweets since Oct. 17. The newly-engaged couple, however, still have not been located more than a week after the viral photo.

http://news-releases.uiowa.edu/2011/june/images/061011Marigolds2.jpg

Jon James, a Canadian rapper, was killed during a music video shoot when a stunt atop an airplane wing went wrong. He was 34. During a music video shoot in Vernon, British Columbia, on Saturday, the rapper -- whose full name is Jon James McMurray -- was walking on the wing of a Cessna as it was in flight. He walked too far out on the wing and made the small aircraft go into a downward spiral, his management team said. "Jon held onto the wing until it was too late, and by the time he let go, he didn't have time to pull his chute. He impacted and died instantly," Ryan Desrochers with the management team told CNN in a statement. The pilot was able to control the plane and land safely. No one else was injured, reported CNN partner CBC. According to his management team, Jon James was an accredited professional skier, but left the snow for the music studio after multiple injuries, including a broken back and shattered heel. "He died filming for a project he had been working on for months. He had trained intensely for this stunt," his management team said in the statement. He is survived by his wife, parents and brother. "He filled everyone around him with positivity, and never spoke poorly about another person. He truly had a heart of gold," the statement said.

A researcher stationed at an Antarctica base was stabbed by a colleague earlier this month after the attacker suffered an apparent emotional breakdown, reports say. UPDATE BELOW Russia’s Pravda news agency reported that the victim of the Oct. 9 incident was flown to a hospital in Chile – the nearest country to the remote Bellingshausen station on King George Island. His co-worker, also a researcher, voluntarily surrendered to the station chief. According to reports, the incident was triggered by “tensions in a confined space.” A motive for the attack was not immediately clear. Sergei Savitsky stabbed his co-worker Oleg Beloguzov in the chest while they were in the base’s dining room, Pravda reported. Savitsky was flown to St. Petersburg and he was arrested at the airport. He was charged with attempted murder. On October 22, Savitsky was reportedly put on house arrest. The Bellingshausen Station, named after 19th-century Russian Antarctic explorer Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen, was founded by the Soviet Union in 1986.

The woman who created a Thanksgiving staple — the green bean casserole — has died at age 92. Dorcas Reilly died on Oct. 15 and her family will celebrate her life on Saturday in the town where she lived, Haddonfield, New Jersey. Reilly was a Campbell Soup kitchen supervisor in 1955 when she combined green beans and cream of mushroom soup, topped with crunchy fried onions, for an Associated Press feature. It is the most popular recipe ever to come out of the corporate kitchen at Campbell Soup. In a 2005 AP interview marking the recipe’s 50th anniversary, Reilly didn’t remember having a hand in it. She said the dish was among hundreds she helped create including tomato soup meatloaf, a tuna noodle casserole and Sloppy Joe-like “souperburgers.

Little girl mistakes bride for Cinderella, and the internet wants to send her to Disney World A photo of a little girl with a bride whom she mistook for Cinderellahas gone viral, and now the internet wants to send her to Disney World to meet other fairy-tale princesses. On Oct. 13, New York newlyweds Olivia and Caleb Spark visited Akron Falls Park between their wedding ceremony and reception to take photos. “Suddenly, this little girl ran up to Olivia shouting, ‘Cinderella, Cinderella!’” photographer Nicole Wickins tells Yahoo Lifestyle. “I wasn’t sure if I should take photos, but the girl’s mother was watching and seemed OK with it.” “When she sees a princess, she’s going to love them because she loves princesses,” Lester told Alabama news station WAFF. (The mother told Yahoo Lifestyle that she was not available for comment at the time of publication.) “Well, we’re going to go to the ball now,” Spark told Layla in a viral video of the meeting. “I was flattered,” Spark, who did not return Yahoo Lifestyle’s request for comment, told WAFF. “I was in tears that she thought I was a princess, and it just made my day absolutely more amazing than what it already was.”" data-reactid="32" style="margin-bottom: 1em;">“I was flattered,” Spark, who did not return Yahoo Lifestyle’s request for comment, told WAFF. “I was in tears that she thought I was a princess, and it just made my day absolutely more amazing than what it already was.” The following day, Spark’s mother-in-law shared the story on Facebook. “The little girl … told Olivia she was beautiful and wanted to touch her dress,” wrote Angela Spark. “My son and daughter in law and their wedding party were moved to tears by this little girl. Their photographer took photos of the little girl and they spent some time with her. Then Cinderella explained that they had to go because she had a ball to get to. Olivia and Caleb would like to find this mother and her daughter so that they can give her some photos from yesterday for this little girl to keep. Please share this with anyone you may know from Akron in hopes of finding her.” Attention from the post prompted a GoFundMe page called “Help Send Layla to Disney World,” which has raised more than $3,000 to date. On Oct. 16, Layla, her mother, and Spark reunited in the park, appropriately at a pumpkin structure that mimicked Cinderella’s carriage. “We weren’t sure if Layla would recognize Olivia without her gown, but as soon as she pulled up, she yelled, ‘Cinderella is here!’” Wickins tells Yahoo Lifestyle. The now-friends were overjoyed and even made plans to have lunch soon, according to Wickins. “Layla said, ‘OK, as long as there are cookies.’”

The principal of a Colorado middle school is apologizing for not warning parents before a drag queen spoke to their children during career day Friday. Some Rocky Top Middle School parents told KDVR they are furious that she was invited to speak, alongside a police officer and an architect. “I was pretty appalled. I was pretty surprised. It was a shock because no one was notified,” parent Jen Payer said. Ms. Jessica is a gay man, who was invited by one of her fans, a Rocky Top student, to come to career day. All of the guests talked about their jobs and their connection to literacy. “This person is an adult entertainer and is talking to 12-year-old students about something that’s adult [in] nature,” parent Heather Rogers said. KDVR reached out to the Rocky Top principal, Chelsea Behanna, who said this event reflected the diversity of the community. In a letter send home to parents on Monday, she wrote, “Jessica read a chapter from Horrible Harry and she used the text to illustrate the damage bullies can do, the need to always put kindness and acceptance at the forefront, and the shortsightedness of judging a book by its cover.” Ms. Jessica told KDVR she used career day to show kids it’s okay to be different. “I had a couple kids that were like, 'I’m gay in school and I get bullied every week and I don’t know what to do and just talking to you helped me realize that I can still be me and still be happy,'” Jessica said. “I got messages being like, 'thank you so much for coming to my class. I was having a really horrible week and you made my day.'” But some parents said they should have been notified so they could make the decision to have their child attend the career day or not. When asked if she would allow her daughter to attend, Payer said, “No. Not for that day.” Principal Behanna said in a letter to parents: “I take responsibility for not notifying families ahead of time and apologize for any stress this has caused you and your child. Moving forward, a prominent step in planning for next year will be to share the guest list for all families prior to the event. Should you feel like any of the sessions are not appropriate for your child, you’ll be welcome to notify us and we’ll make alternate arrangements for your child during that time.” Meanwhile Jessica says the negative feedback from some parents won’t stop her from speaking to kids, no matter the age. “I want to go to more elementary schools, because of this experience at Rocky Top, I’ve already reached out to a couple people about how to develop a Ted Talk,” Jessica said. Jessica uses the stage name “Jessica L’Whor.” She told KDVR she introduced herself as Ms. Jessica during career day because she did not think her last name was appropriate for a school setting. This is the letter that Principal Behanna sent out to parents: October 22nd, 2018 Good Afternoon Grizzly Families, Last Friday, Rocky Top hosted our 2nd Annual Rocky Top READS! event, and it was a great success because of so many people! We put out a call to our families and community members and received an overwhelming response. As a result, we welcomed more than 100 guest readers throughout the day on Friday! Our volunteer guest readers spent 20 minutes in different classrooms talking about their career and its connection to literacy, reading to the students and then answering questions. In addition to highlighting the connection between literacy and a successful career, this event reflected the diversity of our community. We had a broad range of careers represented--- emergency responders, elected officials, clergy, research assistants, tradespeople, journalists, professional athletes and even a drag queen! All families in our Grizzly community are receiving this letter because a handful of people have expressed concern over the presence of a drag queen in our middle school. Jessica, the drag queen, began her guest session with an explanation of her career--as did all other guests. She explained that she is a performer who, though a man, portrays a woman for her performances. She detailed her background in the performing arts throughout middle and high school, talked about her dream of being a teacher, then explained how she earned a business degree from Colorado State University. Jessica then read a great chapter from Horrible Harry in Room 2B by Suzy Kline. She used the text to illustrate the damage bullies can do, the need to always put kindness and acceptance at the forefront, and the shortsightedness of judging a book by its cover. Students were completely engaged and asked lots of great questions. I take responsibility for not notifying families ahead of time and apologize for any stress this has caused you and your child. This year we used the same process as last year, sharing the schedule of speakers with staff so they could prepare students and plan for questions, but realize we cannot make it the students’ responsibility to share that information at home. Moving forward, a prominent step in planning for next year will be to share the guest list for all families prior to the event. Should you feel like any of the sessions are not appropriate for your child, you’ll be welcome to notify us and we’ll make alternate arrangements for your child during that time. We’re thankful for the many volunteers who made this year’s Rocky Top READS! event a success. The focus of the event was a celebration of literacy and was reflected in the incredibly positive experiences of staff, students and guests throughout the day. Thank you for your continued support of Rocky Top, Chelsea

‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ is not the Freddie Mercury biopic we deserve By Johnny Oleksinski Can anybody find me a movie to love? The long-awaited biopic about Queen frontman Freddie Mercury, “Bohemian Rhapsody” has arrived after eight years of development, with changing stars and a director shake-up. What all that calamity has amounted to is a disservice to one of the greatest rock ’n’ roll singers of all time. “Rhapsody” has a shallow script, oversize performances and looks like it was shot in a sauna. We’re introduced to the future music star (Rami Malek) in 1970 when he was still Farrokh Bulsara, working in baggage at London’s Heathrow Airport. After watching an early small-time gig of a band called Smile featuring Brian May (Gwilym Lee), John Deacon (Joseph Mazzello) and Roger Taylor (Ben Hardy), Freddie convinces them to let him sing. And thus, Queen. Queen’s rise is portrayed as a series of contrived light-bulb moments in which the band members realize that rock is a lot like opera, or that audiences might love to stomp and clap. The wild-haired actors look the part, but they’re given sitcom-grade material. In one strange cameo, Mike Myers plays the head of EMI records, who has no faith in what would become Queen’s defining track, instead wanting their single to be “I’m In Love With My Car.” “That’s the kind of song teenagers can bang their heads to,” he says. “‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ is not that song.” The movie is filled with lame, self-aware lines like that. Instead of inhabiting Mercury’s dark emotional life, Malek gives us a little silhouetto of a man. It’s a surface-level performance — physically galvanizing, but with no substance. The rocker was known for his flamboyant style and calling everybody “darling,” but he wasn’t Liberace. Malek, like he did in “Papillon,” gets lost in eccentricity. Malek can’t be blamed, however, for not having Mercury’s extraordinary voice. Some reports have said the songs heard in the movie are a digital blend of Mercury, Malek and a Canadian singer, Mark Martel. To my ears, though, it sounds no different than the band’s album tracks. So, the poor actor must lip sync to music that looks awkward coming out of his mouth. Much has been made of how this movie would treat Mercury’s sexuality. He slept with men and eventually had a male partner, Jim Hutton, until he died of AIDS in 1991, but never spoke about it publicly. That leaves the movie to do a certain amount of guesswork; his relationship with Hutton is presented vaguely. In one scene during a tour, Freddie is on the phone with his then-fiancee Mary Austin (Lucy Boynton), and she says, “Say hi to the boys for me.” Making eyes at a man who indicates Freddie should follow him into the bathroom, he responds “I will.” It’s cheesy to the point of mockery. The best part of the movie is — shocker — hearing Queen’s timeless songs. They’re best showcased during a fabulous re-creation of the 1985 Live Aid concert, which was watched by 1.9 billion people worldwide. The film, directed by the fired Bryan Singer and then Dexter Fletcher, thrillingly stages more than half of that 25-minute legendary set. But the more thrilling, real performance is easily available on YouTube. What we ultimately wanted from “Bohemian Rhapsody” was not carbon-copied concerts, but behind-closed-doors insight into a deeply private, complicated, internationally beloved superstar.

At what point in her career (and for what reason) did Juliet Lewis tell her agents to only send her scripts with an annoying character to play?

NASA Finds Perfectly Rectangular Iceberg In Antarctica As If It Was Deliberately Cut NASA just shared a stunning image of a nearly perfect rectangular iceberg in Antarctica. The monolithic slab of ice, floating just off the Larsen C ice shelf appears quite unnatural given the 90-degree angles. NASA took the image as part of Operation IceBridge, a mission to image Earth's polar regions in order to understand how ice (thickness, location, accumulation, etc.) has been changing in recent years. While the iceberg is quite strange to look at, it is an entirely natural phenomenon. Most of us are used to seeing pictures of angular icebergs with just a small tip jutting out of the water. However, there is an entirely different type of iceberg called tabular icebergs. Tabular icebergs have steep, nearly vertical sides and a flat plateau top. Tabular icebergs typically break off of ice shelves, which are tabular bodies of thick ice. When there is a clean calve of the iceberg, the angles can be close to 90 degrees. In this case, the iceberg is likely not very old as wind, waves and sea spray will eventually winnow away the sharp edges of this iceberg and round it out, Kelly Brunt, a NASA scientist, told Live Science. As you may know, typically only 10 percent of an iceberg sits above the ocean surface when floating. However, it's unclear in this particular image whether the iceberg is fully floating or partially sitting on the ocean bottom. While this iceberg hasn't been measured, some tabular icebergs can be amazingly large. The world's largest recorded iceberg is Iceberg B-15, sitting at 183 miles long and 23 miles wide. The tabular iceberg, which was larger than the island of Jamaica, calved off the Ross Ice Shelf in 2000. To put the two icebergs locations into perspective, the map above highlights the location of the Larsen C Ice Shelf. Towards the bottom of the map, you will notice the Ross Ice Shelf, which produced the largest iceberg in history. Antarctic ice shelf diagram Ice shelves form where land meets the ocean. As ice flow from the continental land mass down to the ocean, it eventually spills out over the ocean, in some places floating and in other places partially supported by the ocean floor. The ice that sits over the ocean but is attached to the land is an ice shelf. A normal process for these ice shelves is calving, the breaking off of distal ice from the larger ice shelf. NASA intends to study this calving process through Operation IceBridge as a way of measuring melting due to global warming. As the planet warms, these ice shelves much more susceptible to calve off and melt as they float off into the ocean. This is a key variable in the continued sea level rise NASA has been measuring for decades.

Saw Donna at the Felt Forum (Madison Square Garden) on her Live & More tour with my sister & at the Forest Hills tennis stadium end of July 1979-- Hot Stuff & Bad Girls were # 1 & 3 on the Billboard chart-- with my sister, a 14 year old friend I took for her birthday who would be killed by a drunk driver 2 months later (I was 3 weeks shy of 17 at the time of the concert) and another friend who died of natural causes in his 30s. The make-up date in case of a rainout was during orientation week at Syracuse University, where I was going to start that fall. Thankfully it was sunny & dry, or I'd have had a hell of a fight with my parents about where I wanted to be. None of my friends knew I was already scheduled to come home the weekend after my friend was killed, because I had ABBA tickets with my sister. I have a vague recollection of seeing the Bee Gees at MSG, but I may be thinking of 1 of the 3 H&O concerts. I have vivid recollections of two other times, for non-musical reasons. I had tickets to see them at Jones Beach with my former roommate, who was a huge fan. She was in a terrible accident and was in the hospital recovering the night of the concert, so I went with a friend of hers and sat in the rain. They were great, though. A couple of years later I was in Detroit working and a radio station in NY was giving away tickets to a Bee Gees concert that was going to be in NJ, but tickets were only available as part of a contest. Everyone we knew tried and failed to win tickets for her to go. I finally called the station and explained why I wanted tickets and I got two. She picked me up at the airport and we went straight to the concert. (My work had ended at that point.) They were great again. Saw H&O with friends in Syracuse & at MSG, and alone in Florida when I was visiting my father. My whole neighborhood loved ELO & a lot of kids went to see them at MSG for their Out Of The Blue tour, but I was sick of ELO at the time & didn't go. Of course, everyone raved about them, and I felt left out. They toured again during my sophmore year in college, but didn't play Syracuse. I'd had my license suspended over the summer, but drove 50 miles to see them alone in Binghampton. It wasn't great. As for Aurora Greenway, I went to the discount ticket booth in Times Square with my mother, aunt, and sister to get tickets to a play, but mom & sis saw tickets available, & dragged me to see her. Of course, she was spectacular. *** interesting (sort of) observation in the NY Times review of Donna: Donna Summer was blessed by a fine New York summer evening for the first of her two sold‐out shows at the Forest Hills Tennis Stadium Friday night. And she made the most of the setting and the weather, with a solid, entertaining, vital show. Best of all, she suggested that her already demonstrated capacity for growth may not be exhausted yet, and that for all the pop pleasure she gives now, she may one day be able to become something deeper and more important. There are three forces contending for Miss Summer's artistic soul, to get cosmic about it. Sometimes it's tempting to think of those forces as two angels and a devil, but actually all three are capable of both good and bad. The three are disco, rock and middle of the road. For the most part, disco means her biggest hits (“I Feel Love,” “Last Dance”), full of energy and excitement in a vital, contemporary idiom. Rock means another, more traditional source of energy, drawing from rock‐and‐roll but also from rhythmand‐blues and gospel music (“Hot Stuff”). Middle of the road, on the other hand, usually means a sodden collapse into bathos, with wooden expositions of either tired hand‐me‐downs (“The Way We Were”) or her own schlock ballads. Not too long ago, Miss Summer wasn't doing much rock at all, and her ballads suffered from all the wrong kinds of formulaic, phony sentimentality. What was interesting about Friday's performance was the way in which she enlivened the uptempo numbers with a passion that, in vocal terms, she doesn't always quite attain on her records. More crucially, she sang much of the slower material with a heartfelt intensity that almost — not quite, yet, but almost — redeemed sentimentality into sentiment. It takes art to be a great ballad singer, and if Miss Summer isn't quite there yet, at least she suggests that the goal is in sight. The show had its glitzy moments, especially the opening 45 minutes by Brooklyn Dreams, a pop‐disco outfit with forced evocations of Dion and other early‐60's New York pop‐rock acts. The trio's singing wasn't very good, the songs were shallow and the general impression was superfluous. Miss Summer's act had its theatrics, too, with several costume changes, tacky set and the fabled miming with the microphone stand during “Love to Love You Baby” — an erotic image she professes now to dislike but which she did nothing on Friday to discourage. But the tackiness fit the concept of her recent “Bad Girls” album, and went hand in hand with the generally loose, exuberant, friendly mood Miss Summer projected. It was that mood more than anything else that lifted the evening out of the stiff self‐consciousness that seems to afflict so many black acts these days. The general pattern here is to attain one's early hits in dance music and then to scurry as fast as possible over to an artificial, Las Vegas‐oriented showbiz style. Miss Summer may yet fall into that trap, especially when her records stop ascending automatically to the No. spot. But what was heartening about her performance Friday was the hope it held out that perhaps she's bright and energetic and passionate enough both to enliven the old show tunes and modern ballads with the musicality they deserve, and to galvanize her act with the uptempo songs, both rock and disco, that she does now so wonderfully.