What I Heard This Week! Jan. 4, 2018
They ordered their pizza 5 minutes before the New Year and when it arrived they firmly stated, “Wait, we ordered this pizza a year ago.” 😊
Reliable, smart, compassionate Hoda Kobt has officially replaced Matt Lauer on “Today” and the former (fired) newsman sent her a congratulations text. Whoopee. I don’t know why it would make the news. That was nice, but I don’t think that too many people really cares what he thinks.
Magnolia Market owners, Joanna and Chip Gaines, are expecting their 5th child and we are told that it is the result of a romantic Johnny Swim concert last October. We all wish the Gaines lived next door.
“New Year’s Day now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual.” Mark Twain
A couple were on their first date. He is a well-known Houston attorney. She is…hmm, a “well-known” date. He claims she was drunk, he called an Uber to pick her up, but she refused to leave. She did stick around and destroy $1-million worth of artwork which included several oil paintings (two Andy Warhol valued at $500,000 each) and two sculptures, then poured wine on three paintings and tore a Renoir and a Monet off the wall. Ouch. The young lady was released on $30,000 bond. That’s exactly why I stick with posters. They’re easier to replace when the drunks tear them off the walls.
In February, the first DNA genetic-based dating app, Pheramor, will be launched. It will combine genetic information with data from social media posts to create user profiles. The Houston-based mobile dating app will use cheek swabs to analyze users’ pheromones, which research suggests could predict who is attracted to whom. According to Wikipedia, a pheromone is a secreted or excreted chemical factor that triggers a social response in members of the same species …that affect behavior or physiology. The word was first proposed in 1959 with researchers reporting the identification of the first pheromone in silk moths.
Dating apps are big business these days. According to eHarmony.com, 53 percent of people lie on dating profiles. See above.
They have been best friends for 60 years…since sixth grade; diving, and playing first-string HS football together. In Hawaii, two men have just discovered that they have the same biological mother, so they are not only best friends, but brothers. Both are retired, plan to do some traveling together and said it was the best Christmas present ever. Thanks, Ancestry.com.
Learn to park with manners, I’m not a sardine.
In Moscow, a 65-year-old woman was blown off a 4th floor balcony in heavy winds, broke her arm and three ribs landing in a snowdrift, was then taken to the hospital in the bucket of a construction truck because the ambulance couldn’t reach her in the snow. I like to close my eyes sometimes and picture these stories I tell you. This one made me laugh.
In Rome, police arrested a topless protestor after she tried to remove the baby Jesus from the Vatican’s nativity scene…with the statue of the mother of Jesus looking on, in what I picture would be silent amazement. My eyes are closed on this one too. Oh, my.
RECENT BIRTHDAYS: Mouseketeer Tommy Cole is 76. He is an Emmy winning makeup artist as well as former actor. Musician Walter “Wolfman” Washington is 74. Singer Jimmy Buffett is 71. Country singer Barbara Mandrell is 69. Actress Sissy Spacek is 68. Carrie. Academy award for Best Actress for her portrayal of Loretta Lynn in Coal Miner’s Daughter. And she has been married to the same guy since 1974. Singer Annie Lennox is 63. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is 46. News correspondent Cokie Roberts is 74. Humorist David Sedrais is 61. Rock musician Lars Ulrich is 54. Metallica. Actor Jared Leto is 46. Actor Kit Harington is 31. Game of Thrones.
Actress Susan Lucci is 71. All My Children. Rock singer Eddie Vedder is 53. Pearl Jam. Actor Mike Lookinland is 57. He was the youngest brother Bobby Brady on The Brady Bunch. Actress Jennifer Beals is 54. Flashdance. Model Tyson Beckford is 47. He was named the greatest male model of all time by Vogue Magazine in 2014. Host John Walsh is 72. Criminal investigator, human rights & victim rights advocate, and host/creator, of America’s Most Wanted. Walsh is known for his anti-crime activism, with which he became involved following the murder of his son, Adam, in 1981; in 2008, the late serial killer Ottis Toole was named as the killer of Walsh’s son.
Author Mary Higgins Clark is 90. I love her books. Considered to be The Queen of Suspense. Designer Kate Spade is 55. Singer Ricky Martin is 46. Author Stephenie Meyer is 44. Twilight. Best-selling author of 2008 (29 million) and 2009 (26.5 million.) That’s a lot of vampires. Actor-director Woody Allen is 82. Actress-singer Bette Midler is 72. Actor Treat Williams is 66. Hair. Musician-actor John Densmore is 73. The Doors.
Bruce McCandless, the first NASA astronaut to float untethered in space, died at 80. He said, “I wanted to say something similar to Neil Armstrong when he landed on the moon, so I said, ‘It may have been a small step for Neil, but it’s a heck of a big leap for me.’ That loosened the tension a bit.” He logged more than 312 hours in space.
January is a very special “moon” month. This month’s first full Moon, the full Wolf Moon, was rising on January 1. What a great way to start the year. A second full Moon, the Blue Moon rises on the 31st and brings the year’s only eclipse for North America just before dawn. Its total phase can be seen from west of the Mississippi and in western Canada. Both of January’s full Moons are Super Moons.
Moon Folklore: A bright first Moon promises rain and a bountiful harvest; a red-tinted Moon means a dry year. A growing Moon and a flowing tide are lucky times to marry. A halo around the Moon predicts wet or stormy weather.
At the end of the day faith is a funny thing. It turns up when you don’t really expect it. It’s like one day you realize that the fairy tale may be slightly different than you dreamed. The castle, well, it may not be a castle. And it’s not so important, happy ever after, just that its happy right now. See, once in a while, once in a blue moon, people will surprise you and once in a while people may even take your breath away. – Meredith Grey
According to BabyCenter, the most popular baby girl names of 2017 were: #1 Sophia aka Sofia, Olivia, Emma, Ava, Isabella, Mia, Aria, Riley, Zoe, Amelia, Layla, Charlotte, Aubrey, Lily, Chloe, Harper, Evelyn, Adalyn, Emily and #20, Abigail. And the most popular baby boy names of 2017 were: #1 Jackson aka Jaxon, Liam, Noah, Aiden, Lucas, Caden, Grayson, Mason, Elijah, Logan, Oliver, Ethan, Jayden, Muhammad, Carter, Michael, Sebastian, Alexander, Jacob and #20 Benjamin.
What happens in the Artic doesn’t stay in the Artic, it affects the rest of the planet. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, permafrost in the Artic is thawing faster than ever, water is warming, and sea ice is melting at the fastest pace seen in 1,500 years. Because of the many buildings, roads and pipelines that are built on frozen land, thawing could make them vulnerable when the ground melts and shifts.
Per-ma-frost (noun) 1. A thick subsurface layer of soil that remains frozen throughout the year, occurring mainly in polar regions.
Iceland’s parliament has presented a bill that would require public and private businesses with 25 or more employees to prove through audits and certification that equal pay for men and women is provided or they will face fines, in what will be the first such requirement in the world.
The oldest tree on the White House lawn is a magnolia that is now too old and badly damaged to remain in place. According to specialists from the National Arboretum, a large portion of the tree was removed last week. According to folklore, Andrew Jackson brought the seedling to Washington because a magnolia was a favorite tree of his wife who died just days after he was elected. Hoover held Cabinet meetings there, Roosevelt spoke to Winston Churchill in its shade, Nixon walked past the tree as he left the White House for the last time and for decades, the magnolia was featured on the back of the $20 bill. Wood from the magnolia will be preserved and hopefully, a seedling will be available for replanting in the same area.
Think Prince, David Bowie, Jimi Hendrix, Jan Gaston (my best friend in HS who had a purple car and a purple bedroom) and Connie Rhodes (the sweet smiling face that you meet when you walk in the front door of The Source Weekly.) What do they all have in common? They love the color, purple. Pantone just announced its 2018 Color of the Year is Pantone 18-3838, also known at Ultra Violet.
We are in danger of destroying ourselves by our greed and stupidity. We cannot remain looking inwards at ourselves on a small and increasingly polluted and overcrowded planet. – Stephen Hawking
As an iPhone owner, I wasn’t happy to find out that Apple issued software updates that deliberately “slowed down older-model phones so aging batteries lasted longer.” Huh? I don’t believe the aging part. But, I dropped my phone so many times, it turned black and blue so there was no real need for a new battery. If you have a slow problem, install Battery Life, a free app that tells you how much capacity your battery still has or for more detail, try Lirum Info app (free or $2.99.)
The Paris-Texas Bakery on 288-B is quite a treat. Anne-Elisabeth and I met there for breakfast this morning. On my first visit I had feasted on the avocado toast and a chocolate-almond croissant. Both were big winners. Today, we both ordered the sausage & cheddar quiche (it’s a huge slice with the most delicious smoke flavor) and the almond croissant (no chocolate.) There was nothing left on our plates. We drank our coffee and watched them roll out and cut cinnamon rolls, all while making the most of the Christmas break. Life is good.
A stay-at-home mother of five boys, opened her electric bill to find she was being charged over $284-billion. That’s dollars. She knew that her outside Christmas lights or Christmas tree wouldn’t have made that much difference. As it turned out, it was just a mistake from the electric company.
A New Year’s resolution is something that goes in one year and out the other – Anonymous
– Lisa
