Friday, February 14, 2020 – Edition: #6634
Happy Valentine’s Day, For Sheet’s Sake!
BS SHOW BIZ BUZZ:
★ Jussie Smollett’s lawyer believes “politics” is to blame for the actor’s indictment on Tuesday. The former “Empire” star was indicted on charges of making a series of false reports to the Chicago Police Department regarding an alleged hate-crime attack last year. Tina Glandian has issued a statement saying: “After more than five months of investigation, the…Prosecutor has not found any evidence of wrongdoing whatsoever related to the dismissal of the charges against Mr. Smollett…The attempt to re-prosecute Mr. Smollett one year later on the eve of the Cook County State’s Attorney election is clearly all about politics, not justice.” Smollett is due in court on Feb. 24.
-LFPress
★ Mama June will be a primary focus of WE tv’s upcoming reality show, “Mama June From Not To Hot: Family Crisis,” but she won’t be cashing in. She won’t be an active participant in the series, and therefore she won’t be paid a single cent. Set to air in March, the show will reportedly focus on how Alana “Honey Boo Boo” Thompson, Lauryn “Pumpkin” Shannon and the rest of the family deal with June’s seemingly out-of-control life. June will be featured in the show, but that will be limited to news clips of from her court dates with boyfriend Geno Doak and her family’s well-documented attempts to get her help.
-MSN
★ Lori Loughlin and her husband Mossimo Giannulli knew nothing about their daughter’s falsified athletic resume that was released by federal prosecutors last week, according to a source. The resume appears to lie about the athletic achievements of Olivia Jade Giannulli, claiming she was an accomplished crew athlete, even though prosecutors say she never participated in a crew program. Loughlin and Giannulli are alleged to be part of the shocking college admissions scam, the investigation of which became known as “Operation Varsity Blues”. They face multiple charges, including federal programs bribery and money laundering conspiracy.
-MSN
★ Rick Moranis is returning to one of the franchises he helped build. He’ll appear in Disney’s upcoming reboot of “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids”, simply titled “Shrunk”. Josh Gad is attached to star as the son of Moranis’ character, Wayne Szalinski. Moranis starred in the 1989 original and two sequels as a scientist whose children stumble upon one of his experiments in their family’s home and end up shrinking themselves to the size of bugs.
-HollywoodReporter
TODAY’S SHOW BIZ SKED:
• “The Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon” (NBC/CTV): Steve Buscemi, Zoey Deutch, Justin Bieber featuring Quavo
• “Late Night with Seth Meyers” (NBC/CTV): Andy Samberg, Ilan Rubin (R)
• “The Late Late Show with James Corden” (CBS/CTV): Bradley Whitford, Brett Gelman, Camila Cabello (R)
• “The View” (ABC/CTV): Lucy Hale
• “The Talk” (CBS): Steve Harvey, Taylor Dayne, Dita Von Teese, Curtis Stone, Lindsay Price
• “Live with Kelly and Ryan” (ABC/CTV): Will Ferrell, Jerry O’Connell, Charlie Wilson
• “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” (NBC/CTV): Guest host John Legend
• “The Kelly Clarkson Show” (CHECK LOCAL LISTINGS): Jim Carrey, James Marsden, Ben Schwartz, Coyote Peterson
• “Be My Valentine, Charlie Brown” (ABC): The gang attends Valentine’s Day festivities at school; with the bonus cartoon “A Charlie Brown Valentine.”
SATURDAY-
• “The Secret Ingredient” (HALLMARK): A small-town baker reunites with her ex-fiancé after traveling to New York City to compete on a Valentine’s Day cooking show.
SUNDAY-
• “American Idol” (ABC): Season 18 premiere
• “2020 American Rescue Dog Show” (HALLMARK): Part 1. Rescue dogs compete in a variety of cute categories.
• “El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie” (AMC): Jesse Pinkman flees from the police and tries to escape his inner turmoil.
• “Good Girls” (NBC): Season 3 premiere
BS MUSIC NOTES:
• Taylor Swift — was so ‘in the zone’ while filming studio scenes for the documentary “Miss Americana” that she didn’t find the cameras intrusive. She penned the lyrics to ‘ME!’ while shooting the doc and says “I was really in my feelings…I disappear into my phone because my phone is where I keep my notes” while writing.”
• Joe Jonas – His wife Sophie Turner is reportedly pregnant. The couple are yet to confirm the news. They tied the knot in Las Vegas in May 2019, and hosted an official ceremony for family and friends the following month in France.
• John Legend – His song ‘All of Me’ is Spotify’s most played song on Valentine’s Day playlists, having been added to 29 million playlists. The rest of the top 5: Ed Sheeran’s ‘Thinking Out Loud’, Bruno Mars’ ‘Just the Way You Are’, ‘I Will Always Love You’ by Whitney Houston, and Elvis Presley’s ‘Can’t Help Falling in Love’
• Tupac Shakur — A new film claims that the rapper is actually alive and well, and living with a Native American tribe in New Mexico. The dramatized documentary “2Pac: The Great Escape from UMC” says he was informed about the planned hit on him in 1996, allowing him to plant a body double.
• Foo Fighters — Dave Grohl has confirmed that they’ve now completed their new album, the successor to 2017’s “Concrete and Gold”. He calls it a mixed bag of music that came together almost instantly and says that at least one riff has been kicking around as long as the band has.
• Sugarland – have announced their “There Goes the Neighborhood Tour 2020”, with Mary Chapin Carpenter and Tenille Townes, beginning June 4 in Toronto. Plus, they’ll release the new “Bigger, Louder, Live EP”, on Feb. 28.
• Blake Shelton — says his dog, Betty, prefers his sweetheart Gwen Stefani over him. Betty makes an appearance in the couple’s video for the duet ‘Nobody But You’.
• Thomas Rhett – He and his wife Lauren Akins have welcomed their third child. Lennon Love Atkins was born at 8:30AM on Monday, according to an Instagram post, which included a shot of her sisters Ada, two, and four-year-old Willa, who was adopted in 2017, meeting for the first time.
TODAY’S MOVIE OPENINGS:
• “Sonic the Hedgehog” (PG, Action/Comedy): After discovering a small, blue, fast hedgehog, a small-town police officer must help it defeat an evil genius who wants to do experiments on it. (Jim Carrey, James Marsden)
• “Fantasy Island” (PG-13, Science Fiction/Fantasy): The enigmatic Mr. Roarke makes the secret dreams of his lucky guests come true at a luxurious and remote tropical resort. But when the fantasies turn into nightmares, the guests must solve the island’s mystery in order to escape with their lives. (Lucy Hale, Michael Peña)
• “Downhill” (R-Rated, Comedy/Drama — Limited): Barely escaping an avalanche during a family ski vacation, a married couple is thrown into disarray as they are forced to reevaluate their lives and how they feel about each other. (Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Will Ferrell)
• “Ordinary Love” (R-Rated, Drama — Limited): A look at the lives of a middle-aged couple in the midst of the wife’s breast cancer diagnosis. (Liam Neeson, Lesley Manville)
VALENTINE’S DAY IS (ALSO) FOR EX-LOVERS:
(A few ways to have a vindictive Valentine’s Day…)
☞ Feed them to a wild beast: Many zoos and animal sanctuaries allow you to name a pest after your former partner and have it devoured as you watch on a livestream. The San Antonio Zoo’s “Cry Me a Cockroach” program will let you name either an insect ($5) or a rat ($25) and have it fed to a bird or snake.
☞ For just 1 British pound, the UK rescue-cat cafe Mog on the Tyne will let you write your ex’s name in the shop’s kitty litter pan and then have their resident beasts unceremoniously “do their thing” on them. Money raised will go toward the feline charity Cats Protection.
☞ The Seneca Bar & Restaurant in Ridgewood, Queens, will give you a free drink if you bring in a pic of your ex and send it through the paper shredder on the premises.
☞ Torchy’s Tacos in Austin, Texas, offered up a chance to set fire to an ex’s clothes during their ‘Salty Singles Party’ on Wednesday. (The relationship flamed out, why not your ex’s clothes?)
-NYPost
NEWS OF THE WEIRD:
➢ A group of instrument movers’ efforts to carry a Canadian virtuoso pianist’s $194,000 piano out of a recording studio in Berlin ended in a grand fail. Angela Hewitt, one of the world’s leading classical pianists, wrote on Facebook: “The piano movers came into the control room (where I was finishing up with my producer) to say they had dropped my precious Fazioli concert grand piano…It makes no sense, financially or artistically, to rebuild this piano…it’s kaput.” The handmade 1,300-pound instrument had been used in almost all of her recordings since 2003. (But can you imagine the sound it made??)
➢ Residents in an apartment building in India discovered free mixed drinks on tap in their kitchens earlier this week. A smelly combination of beer, brandy, and rum started coming out of the faucets on Monday. Apparently, about 6,000 liters of confiscated alcohol had been buried in a pit nearby and had seeped through the soil and into a well. Officials promised to clean up the well, but said it may take up to a month.
(In the meantime, they’ve made arrangements for members of parliament to live there…)
-FOX
THINGS ABOUT KISSING:
➢ The longest kiss ever: Over the course of three days in 2013, a Thai couple locked lips for 58 hours, 35 minutes, and 58 seconds, ending on Valentine’s Day.
➢ The longest on-screen kiss: A 3-minute-and-24-second liplock between two ladies in the 2010 movie “Elena Undone”. (I saw that…23 times!)
➢ Kissing Style: Two-thirds of people tilt to the right when they kiss. It is thought we do this because that’s the direction our heads tilt in the womb.
➢ Women have cleaner kisses: Women are more likely than their male counterparts to initiate an early morning kiss in bed, possibly because they floss more often, so they’re less worried about bad breath.
➢ Where the ‘X’ in ‘XO’ comes from: During Medieval times, many people didn’t know how to read or write, so when signing important documents, they would simply draw an ‘X,’ an abbreviation for the word “Christ”, which they would then kiss. Over time, the ‘X’ came to be associated with the act of kissing itself.
-Reader’sDigest, first published in BS in 2019
DID YOU KNOW?
The average parent hasn’t been on a romantic date in more than three years, according to new research. A poll of 2,000 parents of school-aged children (ages 5-18) found three in 10 don’t even remember the last romantic date they went on. But the large majority say it’s something they want to change, as 81% say that they need to step things up and have more frequent date nights.
-SWNS
BS CHRONOMETER 02.14.20
TODAY’S CELEBIRTHDAYS . . .
1942 [78] Michael Bloomberg, Boston MA, media mogul (Bloomberg News)/current candidate in the Democratic Party primaries/NYC mayor 2002-13/estimated net worth of $61.5 billion (2020)
1948 [72] (Raymond) Teller, Philadelphia PA, Las Vegas magician (the shorter, less obnoxious half of Penn & Teller)/TV personality (“Penn & Teller Fool Us” since 2011)
1970 [50] Simon Pegg (Beckingham), Brockworth UK, movie actor (“Shaun of the Dead”, “Hot Fuzz”)
1972 [48] Rob Thomas, Landstuhl Military Base Germany, pop/rock singer (‘Lonely No More’, Matchbox 20-‘Bent’, ‘3 AM’, w/Santana-‘Smooth’)
1978 [42] Danai Gurira, Grinnel IA, TV actress (‘Michonne’ on “The Walking Dead” since 2012)/movie actress (“Black Panther”)
1990 [30] Brett Dier, London ON, TV actor (‘Michael Cordero Jr’ on “Jane the Virgin” 2014-19)
1992 [28] Freddie Highmore, London UK, TV actor (“Bates Motel” 2013-2017. “The Good Doctor” since 2017)
SATURDAY- Jane Seymour (“Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman”) is 69; Matt Groening (“The Simpsons”) is 66; Alex Borstein (“Family Guy”) is 47; Omarosa Manigault (“The Apprentice”) is 46
SUNDAY- Ice T (“Law & Order: Special Victims Unit”) is 62; Tennis player John McEnroe is 61; Andy Taylor (Duran Duran) is 59; Mahershala Ali (“Hidden Figures”) is 46; Elizabeth Olsen (“Captain America: Civil War”) is 31; The Weeknd (‘Can’t Feel My Face’) is 23
TODAY’S BS REASONS TO PARTY . . .
• “Valentine’s Day”, the most widely celebrated unofficial holiday. A few fun facts …
➠ The Catholic Church recognizes at least 3 different saints named Valentine, all of whom were martyred, one for performing secret weddings for young lovers.
➠ Pope Gelasius declared February 14th “St Valentine’s Day” around 498 AD, in part to replace the ancient Roman fertility festival “Lupercalia”.
➠ It may come as no surprise that Valentine’s Day ranks number one in terms of the most fresh flowers sold and delivered.
➠ Almost half of all marriage proposals occur on Valentine’s Day.
• “Call In Single Day”, when those not celebrating Valentine’s are encouraged to take a day off work and set aside some time for themselves. Similarly, it’s “International Quirky Alone Day”, a reminder to value yourself, develop individuality, and celebrate the possibilities available to single people.
• “Donor Day”, encouraging us to fill out an organ & tissue donation card and to donate blood. You could save a life! How appropriate that it’s on the day when we give hearts.
• “Have-A-Heart Day”, when vegetarians encourage you to quit eating animals. (So go kill a carrot today!)
• “Ferris Wheel Day”, celebrating the 1860 birth of George Washington Gale Ferris, the Galesburg IL engineer who invented the ‘Ferris wheel’ for the 1893 “Chicago World’s Exposition”. The original wheel measured 250 feet in diameter and could hold 1,440 people.
• “Library Lovers Day”, an annual salute to the people who like to book it.
• “Pet Theft Awareness Day”, promoting awareness of the need for pet protection in public places. (Go ahead … just try and steal my Great Dane!)
SATURDAY-
• “Singles Awareness Day”, a day to provide single people with an alternative to Valentine’s Day festivities. Some consider Singles Awareness Day (sometimes shortened to S.A.D.) as the anti-Valentine’s Day for those who are unattached, and without a significant other. (But at least you can celebrate with half-price chocolate!)
• “Gumdrop Day”, honoring the popular, gelatin-based candy which has been a favorite for decades. Nowadays, ‘Gummi’ candies are the most popular incarnation of the gumdrop.
• “National Flag of Canada Day”, the 56th annual celebration of Canada’s maple leaf flag. It was first unveiled on Ottawa’s Parliament Hill in 1965, replacing the ‘Red Ensign’, but the day wasn’t made official until 1996.
• “Hippo Day”, celebrating the third largest mammal on Earth. Why not take some time to waddle in a mud bath, get angry with some tourists, and yawn a lot while opening your mouth really-really wide?
• “Susan B. Anthony Day”, honoring the 1820 birth of one of the first women’s rights advocates, and the face on the first US dollar-coin that bombed.
SUNDAY-
• “Almond Day”, saluting what’s believed to be one of the earliest cultivated foods. 80% of the world’s almonds are now grown in California.
• “Do a Grouch a Favor Day”, a day to perform an unexpected good deed to cheer up someone who’s sulky. NET: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2u2KSBq7y-o
THIS DAY IN SHOW BIZ . . .
2011 [09] TV game show “Jeopardy!” begins a series pitting human players Brad Rutter and Ken Jennings against an IBM computer named ‘Watson’, which eventually wins the first-place prize of $1 million
TODAY’S MUSIC EVENTS . . .
2015 [05] Lady Gaga becomes engaged to TV actor Taylor Kinney (“Chicago Fire”), but it fails to pass the test of time
2016 [04] Adele’s 3rd album, “25”, debuts at #1 and breaks first-week sales records in multiple countries
TODAY’S FIRST . . .
2005 [15] YouTube is launched by a group of college students, eventually becoming the largest video sharing website in the world and a main source for viral videos. The first video: HERE
TODAY’S RECORDS . . .
2013 [07] Bankrupt airline American Airlines and US Airways merge, forming the world’s largest air carrier under the name American Airlines
2014 [06] California’s Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System, the world’s largest solar energy plant, opens in the Mojave Desert
BULL’S BITS
BS WHACK VALENTINE’S FACTS:
✓ In addition to being the unofficial patron saint of love, St. Valentine also believed to be the patron of beekeepers.
✓ February 14th is the second biggest card-giving occasion, after Christmas.
✓ 27 percent of those who buy flowers on Valentine’s Day are women.
✓ The average person spends 2 weeks of his/her life kissing.
✓ The average person spends 2 years of their life making love.
✓ Every year, more than 11,000 Americans are injured while experimenting with bizarre sexual positions.
WhattheFFacts, TheHolidaySpot
BS THINGS YOU DON’T WANT TO HEAR ON VALENTINE’S DAY:
• “Wait, Valentines Day is in February this year?”
• “Todd, meet Aaron … he’s going to be joining us this evening.”
• “I gave you the wrong necklace, honey … that one’s for my girlfriend.”
• “OK, I’m in for the hanky, but there’ll be no panky!”
• “I picked out these flowers especially for you … at the cemetery.”
• “You’re not a cop, are you?”
• “Table for one?”
-Twitter
BS SIGNS YOU’RE ON A BAD VALENTINES DAY DATE:
✗ You go for a moonlit walk on the beach, and she’s using a metal detector.
✗ He takes you to some joint called Outbreak Steakhouse.
✗ She tells your cabbie she isn’t wearing any underwear. Then the maitre d’. Then the waiter.
✗ He’s hired 3 naked kids with little bows & arrows to ‘set the mood’.
✗ Her eyes say ‘Yes’ … but her probation officer says ‘No’.
✗ The fur coat he gives you is made entirely out of his own back hair.
✗ During dinner, he keeps using his toupée to wipe clam sauce off his chin.
✗ Her ponderous 3 words-per-minute sexting means you spend most of the night staring at your screen.
-First published in BS in 2013
BS WEB GOODIE:
Valentine’s Day advice: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUKvq3PwEoI
BS RANDOM JOKE:
I love you more than coffee . . . but please don’t make me prove it.
BS PHONE STARTER:
What’s the absolute worst Valentine gift you’ve ever received? (An online poll finds the worst for a woman would be roses with a card … addressed to someone else.)
BS WATER COOLER QUESTIONS:
Question: Women are twice as likely as men to do THIS for Valentines Day. What is it?
Answer: Book a motel room.
Question: At least 9 million people will buy THIS for Valentine’s Day. What is it?
Answer: A gift for their pet.
BS DEEP THOUGHT:
The heart has its reasons, of which reason knows nothing.
