samhexum

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.

Washington may become the first state to legalize human composting — which would give families a third option in addition to burial or cremation after their relatives die. In the process — also called “recomposition,” — bodies are placed in a vessel which speeds up decomposition and turned into a soil which can be returned to families. (Would you really want to eat those tomatoes, or whatever else you'd grow there? You could plant an apple tree & give a whole new meaning to Granny's Apple Pie.) “We really only have two easily accessible options in the U.S. — cremation and burial,” said Katrina Spade, a 41-year-old Seattle-based designer and architect. “And the question is: Why do we only have two options, and what would it look like if we had a dozen?” Democratic Sen. Jamie Pedersen is sponsoring a bill that would expand options for disposing human remains. If the bill is passed, it would take place May 1, 2020.

Spoiler Alert: This story is a preview of “The Last Days of August,” a new “Serial”-style podcast from journalist Jon Ronson which will be released on Audible on January 3. On December 5, 2017, the body of 23-year-old porn superstar August Ames was found in a park near Los Angeles. The cause of death was asphyxiation from hanging. A brutally simple narrative quickly formed around her suicide. Cyberbullies, the story went, drove Ames to kill herself after she tweeted about not wanting to work with “crossover” male porn stars who also made gay porn. “The Last Days of August” rewrites the story of Ames’ death. Ronson’s broader version of events shifts the blame away from cyberbullies and instead places the tweetstorm and Ames’ death within a longer timeline of disturbing events. At the same time, it contextualizes porn stars Jessica Drake and Jaxton Wheeler, two of the major villains from the original narrative, while discovering new actors and events which helped push Ames over the edge. In one particularly harrowing portion of the seven-episode podcast series, Ronson and his producer Lena Misitzis dissect Ames’ final porn scene which was shot weeks before the flurry of tweets and has never been released to the public. They make the argument that her last scene was the real trigger for her suicide. “When you think about it what we were watching in that moment was the moment that she decided to die. That’s what we were watching and it’s awful,” Ronson told The Post. “That was the truth of it, that was the moment when she reached the point of no return. The Twitter bullying may have been the icing on the cake as some people described it.” Ronson and Misitzis felt comfortable coming to this conclusion because they were able to get access to text messages Ames sent to a friend about the scene. The podcasters also took a deep dive into Ames’ (real name Mercedes Grabowski) troubled childhood, cross-examined her husband, porn producer Kevin Moore, and broke down the decline in Ames’ mental health during the final days of her life. Before any of that, however, Ronson and Misitzis establish their bonafides by taking an ax to two of the main pillars of the cyberbullying storyline. That story, which was pushed by Ames’ husband Moore, began on December 3 when Ames tweeted: “Whichever (lady) performer is replacing me tomorrow for @EroticaXNews, you’re shooting with a guy who has shot gay porn, just to let cha know. BS is all I can say… Do agents really not care about who they’re representing?… I do my homework for my body.” Trying to clarify her position she later added: “NOT homophobic. Most girls don’t shoot with guys who have shot gay porn, for safety. That’s just how it is with me. I’m not putting my body at risk, i don’t know what they do in their private lives.” The following day Jessica Drake, a longtime and respected porn star who has accused Donald Trump of sexual misconduct, took to Twitter to offer a rebuke of Ames’ position. “Performers, by all means, f–k who you want to f–k…but if you’re eliminating folks based on the fact they they (sic) may have done gay or crossover work, your logic is seriously flawed. reality is, WE DON’T KNOW who does what with whom when there are no cameras.” In a manifesto published on Ames’ website six days after her death, Moore explicitly blamed his wife’s death on Drake and gay porn star Jaxton Wheeler who, on December 5, tweeted: “@AugustAmesxxx the world is awaiting your apology or for you to swallow a cyanide pill. Either or we’ll take it.” At the Adult Video News Awards — porn’s version of the Oscars — which were held on January 27, 2018, Moore stood before the entire industry and declared, “Who you work with is up to you. It’s your body, it’s your choice. No agent, no producer, no company, and certainly not social media, decides what you do with your body.” The audience thunderously applauded Moore for his speech and some of the assembled porn stars wore t-shirts in memory of Ames. Awkwardly, Drake attended the AVNs and was in the audience when Moore made his speech. Ronson, who wrote a book called “So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed,” on the early days of cyberbullying, dissects Moore’s version of events with the precision of a surgeon. For example, Ronson points out that a close reading of Drake’s tweet reveals it to be relatively benign. Drake doesn’t condemn Ames or even call her out by name. Drake simply gives an alternative point of view on Ames’ health concerns. Ronson also highlights the fact that Drake was not acting with ill-intent and could not have known the effect her words may or may not have had on Ames. Drake issued a heartfelt apology nonetheless, three days after Ames’ death, and in a rare interview tearfully revealed to Ronson that she, ironically, was now the subject of intense internet bullying. Ronson’s reframing of Wheeler’s indefensible tweet is even simpler. Wheeler sent his appalling message telling Ames’ to “swallow a cyanide pill” in the early hours of December 5. Ames’ final tweet, a simple “f–k y’all,” was sent on August 4 and her body wasn’t found till December 5. Wheeler’s tweet, Ronson figured out, was sent after Ames’ had already taken her own life. “The Last Days of August” is full of details like these that Ronson and Misitzis dug up, which create a portrait of Ames that is harrowing, heartbreaking and inspiring all at the same time. Despite surviving childhood sexual traumas, Ames moved to Los Angeles by herself and for all intents and purposes conquered porn. In her five-year career, she shot nearly 300 scenes and was nominated for Female Performer of the Year three times at the AVNs. She was also a fan favorite not only because of her pure natural beauty but also because of her bubbly onscreen personality and exuberant sexuality. She was quite simply a joy to watch. At the end of the podcast series, Ronson and Misitzis laser-in on the Ames’ final scene because it was so clearly outside her upbeat comfort zone. Performing with 30-year-old Russian porn star Markus Dupree, who is known for his domineering style, Ames was pushed to her sexual limits and possibly beyond. In text messages to a friend, Ronson and Misitzis found Ames described Dupree going “full on War Machine.” This is a reference to Jon “War Machine” Koppenhaver a professional fighter turned porn star who is serving a life sentence for beating his ex-girlfriend, porn star Christy Mack, within an inch of her life. Both Ronson and Misitzis told The Post that watching the scene was one of the hardest parts of the entire project and in listening to Misitzis’ description of its contents, it is easy to understand why. “On more than one occasion in the footage, Marcus forcefully repositions August which visibly startles her,” Misitzis says in the final episode of the podcast. “She says ‘whoa s–t!’ and at one point Marcus picks up her pink thong, stretches it around her head, jerks her around by it, and then shoves it in her mouth.” “At the end of her scene, August is interviewed by a crewmember to establish consent for legal purposes. She’s staring straight into the camera, holding up her check for the day’s work, her makeup’s gone and her hair is pulled back, she looks resigned and emotional and hollow all at once. ‘Were you treated OK?’ she’s asked. And flatly, and quietly she says, ‘yes.’ For the first time in this footage, all the camera is focused on is August’s face and she seems like she’s verging on tears.” Six weeks later, Ames killed herself. Around the same time, four other female porn stars lost their lives to drug overdoses or under mysterious circumstances. Moore tried to provide a wake-up call for the industry at the 2018 AVNs. At the same award show, Dupree won Male Performer of the Year. In the past 12 months, he has shot well over 200 scenes and picked up nine nominations for this year’s AVNs. Once again, he is nominated for Male Performer of the Year. The porn machine stops for no one. Consumers, Ronson told the Post, don’t care about the industry’s problems “because of their own shame about watching porn and not wanting to think about the life of the people in the porn business.” “You don’t want to think of those people as a human but it’s for your own reason not there’s.” The more people learn about the porn industry the less sexy it becomes.

He’s in deep doo-doo now. An upstate man is accused of swiping plumbing fixtures from eight Queens fast-food joints — including one in Flushing — last month, according to District Attorney Richard Brown. Alleged plumbing plunderer Richard Mirabile, 44, waltzed into the greasy spoons and went straight for the john, where he used a wrench and screwdriver to pry off automatic flushing mechanisms worth roughly $250 each before hauling them out in a black bag, Brown’s office charges. “The defendant in this case stopped into various restaurants in Queens County — not for food, but for toilet-flush fixtures,” Brown said in a statement. “Bypassing the counter to order a quick meal, the defendant allegedly made a beeline for the restrooms and exited minutes later with toilet flush fixtures stuffed in a bag.” The accused thief hit eight eateries dating back to Nov. 23, and was eventually busted on Dec. 28, after an Astoria Burger King employee caught him in the act and piped up, according to a criminal complaint. Mirabile tried to cover his rear — he showed up to each alleged hit in his beat-up, silver Dodge caravan with a mismatched black quarter panel and a plastic bag covering the jalopy’s rear hatch window, the complaint states. The brazen burglar was visibly drunk or high and spent an hour or more clanging away inside a Ridgewood Wendy’s restroom during one heist, a manager claimed. “I told him, ‘Hey get out of the bathroom, because a lot of people want to use the bathroom and you have been there for like an hour’ and he was like, ‘I’m not stealing anything. I’m just using the bathroom,’ ” said Lolita Javier, 48, a manager at the Wendy’s on Fresh Pond Road. “I think he was really high on drugs. He was screaming at us,” she said. The criminal complaint accuses Mirabile of hitting Javier’s Wendy’s outpost on Nov. 23 and Nov. 26. Mirabile’s arrest record is flush with 13 prior arrests — including three for alleged drug possession in October. He was also collared on Nov. 30 for carrying burglars’ tools, on Dec. 4 for grand larceny, and on Dec. 27 — the day before he was caught in the alleged crapper caper — for driving without a license, records show. His lawyer did not return calls for comment. How sick is it that just from the pic above I recognized which Wendys the story would mention? The wall next door is what gave it away. I’ve rarely been inside, but have used the drive through on occasion. Midas, Meineke, & Pep Boys are all within 2 blocks, so whenever I need my car serviced, I’m in that area. It’s also directly across the street from the Subway I go to occasionally, so if I’m in the mood for a frosty, I drive through.