July 18, 2013

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Thursday, July 18, 2013        Edition: #5027

Sheet Happens!

BS SHOW BIZ BUZZ:
✳ This morning at 5:35 am PDT nominations for the 65th Primetime Emmys are announced live from the Leonard H Goldenson Theatre in Hollywood. For the first time online shows – that is, programming specifically produced for online distribution – might upstage traditional broadcast shows. Netflix-distributed shows “Arrested Development” and “House of Cards” are thought to be leading contenders for ‘Best Actor’ and ‘Best Program’ nominations. Regardless of whether they have any chance of winning, the mere fact they’re being considered portends a major shift in the future of TV. (Nominees here: http://www.emmys.tv; the awards are September 22nd.)
– NYTimes.com
✳ It’s been revealed that Julia Roberts’ actress-niece Emma was arrested in Montréal last week after allegedly attacking her boyfriend. The 22-year-old was taken into custody after police responded to reports of a fight between her and actor-beau Evan Peters in a hotel and found him with a bloodied nose. Roberts was released hours later because her 26-year-old boyfriend did not want to press charges. The couple has not split and are continuing to work together on the TV drama “American Horror Story”. (Maybe they were just rehearsing?)
– TMZ.com.
✳ Johnny Depp has stepped up his romance with Amber Heard by taking her on a promo trip to Japan with his kids. He began dating his “Rum Diary” co-star following the breakdown of his 14-year relationship with Vanessa Paradis last Summer. The very private couple has tried to keep their romance under wraps, but Heard was spotted looking after his kids Lily Rose and Jack as they arrived at Narita International Airport outside Tokyo. Depp is in the country to promote his new film “The Lone Ranger”. (Perhaps the Japanese will find it entertaining.)
– WENN.com
✳ They may be show biz royalty but Brad Pitt & Angelina Jolie are said to be total slobs. An inside source says: “They live like a couple of hobos, with pizza boxes around them, food left out to spoil, and toothpaste and crayon marks on the walls.” Brad is described as a hoarder who’s collected an overwhelming number of books and magazines, so many that things just get stashed anywhere he can find. When it comes to housekeeping for Brangelina, the source contends, “It’s actually pretty disgusting.” (If Brad’s personal hygiene is any indication, this all sounds quite believable.)
– “Star Magazine”

TODAY’S SHOW BIZ SKED:
• “Chelsea Lately” (E!) – Snoop Lion (“Reincarnated”).
• Comic-Con International (San Diego CA) – The massive annual 4-day celebration of comic books and the films they inspire. Movies being previewed include “The Amazing Spider-Man 2”,  “Captain America: The Winter Soldier”, “RoboCop”, and “Thor: The Dark World”. As usual, there’ll likely be several surprises. Stars making appearances include Andrew Garfield, Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth, Jamie Foxx, Natalie Portman, and Scarlett Johansson.
NET: http://www.comic-con.org
• Country Thunder (Twin Lakes WI) – The list of country music acts for this 4-day Wisconsin fest includes Brad Paisley, Chris Young, Dierks Bentley, Jake Owen, Hunter Hayes, Keith Urban, and Little Big Town.
NET: http://wisconsin.countrythunder.com
• “Ellen DeGeneres Show” (syndicated/CTV2) – Cee Lo Green (“Girl Power”). Rerun.
• “Jimmy Kimmel Live” (ABC/CityTV) – Rhye (“Woman”). Rerun.
• “Last Call With Carson Daly” (NBC) – Big Black Delta (“Big Black Delta”); The Indecent (“Control”). Rerun.
• “Late Night With Jimmy Fallon” (NBC/CTV2) – Fall Out Boy (“Save Rock & Roll”).
• “Late Show With David Letterman” (CBS/NTV/Omni1) – Cold War Kids (“Dear Miss Lonelyhearts”).
• “Live With Kelly & Michael” (ABC/CTV) – Marc Anthony (“3.0”).
• “Luther” (BBC Canada) – Idris Elba returns as the troubled yet brilliant English police detective in the North American debut of Season 3. Elba has recently been pushing for a bigscreen adaptation of the series.
• “Tonight Show With Jay Leno” (NBC/CTV2) – Robert Randolph & The Family Band (“Lickety Split”).
• “The View” (ABC/CTV) – Court Yard Hounds (“Amelita”).

BS MUSIC NOTES:
• Justin Bieber – A Columbus OH man claims the pop star spit in his face. It allegedly came after Bieber’s security repeatedly requested he quit taking photos of the Biebs in a local club. The unidentified man, who’s since been tested for hepatitis, is planning to file charges.
• Justin Timberlake / Macklemore & Ryan Lewis – They lead nominations for this year’s MTV Video Music Awards with 6 apiece. The hardware is handed out at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn NY on August 25th.
• Kanye West – He attempted to launch himself as a TV star back in 2008 when he shot a pilot episode for a proposed HBO comedy. The untitled series was soon shelved and the pilot was never aired, but scenes have now been uploaded to YouTube by his co-star, Alison Quinn.
• Nas – The Hip Hop Archive at Harvard University’s DuBois Institute has announced the new ‘Nasir Jones Hip Hop Fellowship’, to give artists demonstrating exceptional creative abilities the opportunity to discover that education is real power.
• Oasis – Former frontman Liam Gallagher has already sicced his lawyers on the “NY Post” over a story it ran yesterday alleging he fathered a love child last year. The paper suggested he is the unnamed respondent in a case listed only as ‘Anonymous v Anonymous’ in which a woman is suing a man she claims fathered her child for $3 million.
• Taylor Swift – She tells “Rolling Stone” the ‘floodgates have just opened’ and she’s busy writing new material for her next album, even though she’s still touring in support of “Red”. Next stop on the “Red” trek is tomorrow and Saturday in Philadelphia PA.
• Stevie Wonder – During a concert in Québec City, he’s announced he will never play in Florida again until the so-called ‘stand your ground law’ is abolished. It’s the statute that was used to justify the controversial not guilty verdict in the recent George Zimmerman trial.
• Tina Turner – The 73-year-old “What’s Love Got to Do with It “ hitmaker is a married woman (again) after quietly exchanging vows with her longtime partner, 57-year-old German record executive Erwin Bach, in Switzerland. The discreet civil ceremony reportedly took place on the banks of Lake Zurich a few days ago. The reception is this Sunday at their Swiss estate.

COMING ATTRACTIONS:
A BS selection of movies in the making …
• “Alice In Wonderland” – Johnny Depp is set to reprise his role as ‘Mad Hatter’ in a sequel to the Lewis Carroll adaptation, but he’ll return without longtime collaborator Tim Burton. He’ll be replaced by “The Muppets” director James Bobin. The original film broke the $1 billion box office mark in 2010. It is not yet known if Mia Wasikowska will return in the lead role as ‘Alice’.
• “Chappie” – “Slumdog Millionaire” actor Dev Patel is in early talks for the lead human role in director Neill Blomkamp’s new sci-fi thriller. It’s thought the futuristic movie, which is based on a short film Blomkamp made in 2004, will take place in the slums of South Africa, where robotic police officers patrol the area.
• “Inferno” – 57-year-old Tom Hanks was expected to return as Harvard University symbologist ‘Robert Langdon’ in an adaptation of “The Lost Symbol”, the 3rd novel in Dan Brown’s thriller series that began with “The Da Vinci Code”. But a decision has been made by director Ron Howard to skip book #3 and jump straight to the 4th. The film hits screens December 18, 2015.
• “Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom” – Actor Idris Elba has had to axe plans to discuss this new bio-pic with Nelson Mandela because the civil rights icon is too ill to meet him. The Brit actor plays the former South African leader in the new movie, based on his 1994 memoirs. The film, which co-stars Naomie Harris as Mandela’s ex-wife Winnie, is due for release in January.
• “Wish I Was Here” – Ashley Greene has replaced her “Twilight” co-star Anna Kendrick in Zach Braff’s sequel to his 2004 movie “Garden State”. Kendrick had to pull out due to scheduling conflicts. The rest of the cast includes Jim Parsons, Kate Hudson, and Mandy Patinkin. Braff used crowd-funding website Kickstarter to raise $3.1 million to make the film, due next year.

SIZING THINGS UP:
[Discretion] According to a new Indiana University study published in the “Journal of Sexual Medicine”, the length of the average male’s penis is 14.15 cm (5.6 inches) when erect and the average girth is 12.23 cm (4.8 inches). Those dimensions are consistent with previous research. The smallest size in the study was 3 cm (1.5 inches); the largest 26 cm (10.2 inches). Like previous studies, this latest has found no connection between penis size and race, ethnicity, or sexual orientation. (Wonder who had the enjoyable job of collecting these stats?)
– QMI Agency

BUG KRYPTONITE:
There’s a much easier way to avoid mosquito bites than bathing yourself in bug spray. A small electric fan will work as an efficient low-tech mosquito deterrent. That’s because the simulated wind provided by the fan is effective at both discouraging insect flight and dissipating the mosquito-attracting odors that humans emit. (People in hot countries have known this for years … it’s a secondary reason for the prevalence of ceiling fans.)
– “New York Times”

CROWD-FUNDED LIFE:
It was bound to happen. Parents are turning to the Internet to bankroll babies. Using crowd-funding websites which typically raise money for start-ups, clever couples are now amassing funds from family, friends, and strangers online for their fertility treatments or adoption costs. One site, GoFundMe, has raised a total of $1 million for hopeful parents. The niche site AdoptTogether has helped some 300 adoptive families. Future trivia: A little girl named Landon Haley was the world’s first ‘crowd-funded baby’. With the help of 130 people, her parents raised more than $8,000 for fertility treatments. (That’s a lot of virtual godparents!)
– Adapted from CNN Money

THINGS YOU DIDN’T KNOW ABOUT DAYDREAMING:
Whether it’s worrying or fantasizing, we all daydream. A few discoveries from a new computer model at the Washington University School of Medicine that simulates these periods of mental wandering …
• You daydream less as you get older. That may be because a lot of daydreaming is about anticipating the future, and the future shrinks as you age.
• Daydreaming makes you forget what you were doing. And the more out of context the daydream is with what your were doing, the bigger the forgetting effect.
• Daydreaming turns parts of the brain on and off as your mind naturally cycles through different modes of thinking.
• Daydreaming makes you more creative. That’s because the daydreaming mind may make an association between bits of information that you’d never considered in that particular way.
– NationalGeographic.com

BE THE BOVINE:
Researcher Jeremy Bailenson at Stanford University’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab is transforming people into … cows. Participants in the immersive virtual reality program not only see themselves as bovines in a virtual mirror, but also get virtually poked with cattle prods and are eventually dragged off to the virtual slaughterhouse. Bailenson hopes that by spending a few moments in a cow’s hooves, his subjects will gain a sense of empathy about what farm animals experience and eat less meat, which in turn translates into less energy consumption. So his purpose is more about climate change than veganism. (It’s a new mooooovement.)
– Motherboard.com

DID YOU KNOW?
The average person has 110 ‘bad mood days’ per year. (An average of 1 in every 3.3 days.)
– “Harper’s Index”

BS CHRONOMETER 07.18.13


TODAY’S CELEBIRTHDAYS . . .
1950 [63] Richard Branson, London UK, wealthy entrepreneur (CEO of Virgin Group since 1966)/founder of Virgin Atlantic Airways, Virgin Galactic, Virgin Mobile, Virgin Records, etc/UK’s 4th-richest with £3 billion ($4.6 billion)

1967 [46] Vin Diesel (Mark Vincent), NYC, movie actor (“Fast & Furious” films, “The Chronicles of Riddick”)

1975 [38] Daron Malakian, Glendale CA, rock singer-guitarist (System Of a Down-“Hypnotize”, “BYOB”)

1980 [33] Kristen Bell, Huntington Woods MI, movie actress (“Scream 4”, “Forgetting Sarah Marshall”)/TV actress (“House of Lies” since 2012, “Veronica Mars” 2004-07)  BS FACTOID: She’s now filming the crowd-funded movie version of “Veronica Mars”, due in 2014.

1985 [28] Chace Crawford, Lubbock TX, TV actor (“Gossip Girl” 2007-12)/movie actor (“What to Expect When You’re Expecting”)

BS REASONS TO PARTY . . .
• “Caviar Day”, saluting the mega-expensive roe (eggs) of the sturgeon fish, proving that we’ll eat just about anything if it is given an attractive name and costs a lot of money.

• “Mandela Day”, the 4th annual international day in honor of civil rights leader and former South African president Nelson Mandela, celebrated on his birthday (July 18, 1918). The day was initiated by the United Nations in 2009. As he turns 95, he’s clinging to life in hospital on life support in the form of mechanical ventilation.

• “World Listening Day”, to celebrate the practice of listening as it relates to the world around us, environmental awareness, and acoustic ecology. It’s an observance initiated by the World Soundscape Project, World Listening Project, and World Forum for Acoustic Ecology.

THIS DAY IN SHOW BIZ . . .
2008 [05] ‘Batman’ sequel “The Dark Knight” opens in movie theaters, setting a record of $158 million with its opening weekend domestic box office (eventually wins Heath Ledger a posthumous Oscar for his portrayal of ‘The Joker’)

TODAY’S MUSIC EVENT . . .
1953 [60] 18-year-old truck driver Elvis Presley visits the Memphis Recording Service (later known as Sun Studios) and records his first 2 songs (“My Happiness”/”That’s When Your Heartaches Begin”) in order to, quote, ‘see what I sounded like’

TODAY’S FIRST . . .
1994 [19] Crayola announces the introduction of ‘Magic Scents Crayons’ (but as the yummy aromas of Cherry, Chocolate, Blueberry, etc cause children to eat them, food scents are later retired in favor of non-food scents, ie: Lumber, New Car, Shampoo)

AND REMEMBER . . .
[Fri] “The Conjuring”; “RIPD”; “RED 2” open in movie theaters
[Fri] Capital Ex begins (Edmonton AB)
[Sat] Celebration Of the Horse Day
[Mon] Full ‘Buck’ Moon
[Mon] “Springsteen & I” screens in movie theaters
This Week Is … Independent Retailers Week
This Month Is … Blueberries Month

BULL’S BITS


MORE BS QUESTIONS PLAGUING HUMANITY:
● What are they planting to grow a seedless watermelon?
● When your pet bird sees you reading the newspaper, does it wonder why you’re sitting there staring at carpeting?
● How do you know when its time to tune your bagpipes?
● What is the point of a helmet when you’re skydiving?
● Why isn’t there mouse-flavored cat food?
● Why do they report power outages on TV?
● At what age do old people decide they are not even going to look when they back out of the driveway?
● Can a woman who’s plucked all her eyebrows really be surprised?

BS RANDOM JOKE:
I’ve put my foot in my mouth so many times, I can actually tie my shoelaces with my tongue.

BS PHONE STARTER:
☎ Can “Glee” come back after Cory Monteith’s heroin/booze-fueled death or should it just quietly disappear from TV?

BS WATER COOLER QUESTION:
Question: It may be tough to believe but THIS can be hard on your heart, according to a University of Maryland study.
Answer: Listening to music you don’t like.

BS DEEP THOUGHT:
By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.

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