Blergh

I guess I'm more shocked that this sort of alleged boorish and dangerous behavior seems to be tolerated instead of Mr. Knoxville's churlishness being ostracized by their peers, network,etc.

True that! It's main claim to fame has been being the birthplace of RL Carrie Ingalls -and I'm sure the folks in that community (which has always been tiny and rural) had a good laugh seeing it portrayed as a big bad metropolis in LHOTP! Maybe the 'lightbulbs' were for gaslights as opposed to electric lights. Yes, coal gas was a popular form of illumination for the mid- to late- 19th century city folks even inside their own homes, though of course one had to pay a utility for it.

Lily Tomlin has said on Twitter/X 'We just loved him' and the late Mr. Coleman said that he was thankful that his three colleagues (Miss Tomlin along with Miss Fonda and Miss Parton) made sure to include him in the movie's publicity,etc. It also needs to be mentioned that he and Miss Tomlin would play another unequal but somewhat less toxic boss/employee duo in Beverly Hillbillies (1993) when they played the Clampetts' Mr. Drysdale and Miss Jane Hathaway - the latter not only was motivated to not only save the protagonists from harm but also to protect Mr. Drysdale from being ruined (IOW, Mr. Coleman was playing a boss who may have been a bit unfair and mean yet still had earned the loyalty on the part of his employee). I guess what I'm trying to say that it appears that despite having played a mean and (in the earlier movie, toxic) boss onscreen, Mr. Coleman seems to have been a more likable person offcamera- especially considering that Miss Tomlin was approached and recruited to play Miss Jane in the latter movie rather having auditioned for it and she could have turned it down had she not been willing to work with Mr. Coleman again! RIP, Mr. Coleman.

Anyone around who still wants to hash over this series? IIRC, at least one of the last episodes in which the Ingallses were in Burr Oak, somehow they had a telephone in their apartment. Did I imagine this? How could they have afforded a telephone. .or for that matter Albert's intended medical school tuition?

As we celebrate Mother's Day in the US, it's important to know its origins. In 19th century, Great Britain as the land became more industrialized and even tiny children of struggling families were put to work in factories, mills and mines in often dangerous and chaotic conditions, there came to be something known as 'Mothering Sunday' in which these overburdened children would get to return home for at least part of a Sunday and have their mothers reunite with them and tend to them. As for the U.S., a West Virginia schoolteacher Anna Maria Jarvis (1864-1948) had taken care of her own mother in her mother's last years but was understandably inconsolable when the older woman left this world. To that end, she had a talk with her local minister and they agreed to have a special service honoring mothers both living and dead with carefully selected Scriptural verses and each attendee getting carnations (the late Mrs. Jarvis's favorite flower)- red for those with living mothers and white for those with deceased mothers. It was such a success in their community that Miss Jarvis started a literal one-woman campaign to make it a national holiday writing every Senator, Representative and state governor and, despite this being before women could vote in national elections, it was signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson in 1914! Alas, this victory did not bring Miss Jarvis lasting peace. For one thing, due to her having sworn to stay single after having been jilted, she gradually considered it a mockery of her marital status. But more seriously for her, Miss Jarvis believed that Mother's Day was supposed to be a strictly spiritual day with no chance of anyone profitting from it- including greeting card companies and florists. To that end, she engaged quite a few lawyers to attempt to halt the designated day's commercialization. Alas, the greeting card companies and florists, having far more resources for lawyers to protect their own interests defeated all of Miss Jarvis's attempts- and Miss Jarvis wound up losing her family home . Not surprisingly with the loss of her family home and the death of her blind sister whom she'd doted upon, this resulted in depression and she wound up institutionalized for some time during the last part of her life. However, nothing can take away from the fact that, despite the odds against her, she DID ensure that the US would have a day set aside specifically to honor mothers and that's something for all mothers and everyone wanting to honor/commemorate their mothers to take heart in. HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY to all posters who are mothers and all posters who want to honor/commemorate their own mothers as well as any and all mothers in their lives!

How about Hailee Stanfield in True Grit (2010)? She truly embodied the idea of this young girl determined to reap justice for her late father and keeping her logical 'law and order' logic in a time and setting where there was no real law and even less order. Despite the cost she paid, her character truly prevailed and stayed true to her ideals- even more than Alice did in Wonderland!

Sherlock Holmes (2009) was tough to watch with Robert Downey, Jr. chewing up the scenery via interpreting the title character as a psycho opium craving nut who just happened to have an uncanny ability to sniff out clues (and Jude Law seemed too out of place as Watson). However, it had ONE saving grace: a surprisingly gritty yet realistic depiction of 1890's London as the cosmopolitan metropolis that was the capital of the most far-flung Empire at the time AND the largest city in the world. I mean, too many movies set in that time seemed to depict London being nearly empty with only a few hoity toity types and a few Cockney servants and Jack the Ripper victims thrown in. This movie depicted that the streets were PACKED and often filthy thanks to horse traffic, coal furnaces,etc.. . and also that ,thanks to citizens from Great Britain's four nations to say nothing of its far flung colonies getting drawn to it for a variety of reasons, it was rather ethnically diverse! Oh, and I was glad to see, among other landmarks, the almost finished Tower Bridge in its glory! Now to find a way to edit all traces of the title character out of it and let it be shown as a tribute to London in a rather dynamic time of its history. ..

WOW! That's utterly fantastic and [as usual from you} AMAZING photos! I didn't know that auroras could be found that far south (and I've never seen them in my northernmost travels to Scotland or Canada. . . or even out plane window via transatlantic flights arching via Greenland,etc). I looked it up and it said that they've been seen as far south as Alabama (though I live north of there and no luck). ..and I saw one news service that claims that they might be seen as far south as. ..Florida this weekend. Of course, I live in a light-polluted city but I'm wondering if it might be worth driving far out of the city late at night in search of them. I usually like to already be home by nightfall. However. . Regardless of my own hemming and hawwing . .NOTHING can take away from you having had having had that experience- to say nothing of your wonderful gift of being able to create excellent photos that you've deigned to share with us! THANK YOU!!!

Veruca Salt in all her movie incarnations! I mean Augustus Gloop was gluttonous, Violet Beuregard liked chewing gum too much and Mike TeeVee liked TV watching too much. However, Veruca was totally entitled and downright mean to all the others- and getting sent down the Bad Egg Chute was perfect justice for her and her enabling dad!

One could almost say that he was Douglas Fairbanks,Sr. and W.C. Fields's love child. .

Excellent point but that should be told to children of BOTH genders and it also applies to those who try to spin teasing bullying as a sign of 'friendship'!

President Harry S Truman had grown up on a series of Missouri farms and was known for having a somewhat . ..earthy vocabulary at times. Anyway, the First Lady Bess was hosting a garden club at the White House and President Truman briefly greeted them- complimenting the members on their flowers' beauty- topping it off by saying that they must have used some good manure to accomplish that. After he left one of garden club members asked, "Doesn't the President know that the proper term is fertilizer?" Without missing a beat Mrs. Truman replied, "It took me 25 years to get him to say 'manure'"!

I looked at the episode on YouTube and it seemed everyone else besides Miss Wallace went with other parts of the anatomy (neck,nose,etc.). Oh well. I suppose they were trying to use them for euphemisms.

OK, on the old Match Game (1973-1979), one of the regulars Marcia Wallace (Carol from The Bob Newhart Show) got into some hot water. How? Well, there was a fill-in-the-[blank] phrase that went something like, "Bob said, 'On my new diet, I lost three inches. Unfortunately not from my waist but from my [blank].'" Naturally, this totally cracked up the studio audience, players and celebs. When it got to Miss Wallace's spot, all the TV audience got to see was her neighbor Richard Dawson say something like Miss Wallace had an interesting answer. .. then there was a quasi-cuckoo sound with a large video 'OOPS' superimposed over Miss Wallace's evidently too-racy-for-afternoon-television answer [which didn't match the contestant's] before the show awkwardly continued. Anyway, years later in her autobio, Miss Wallace revealed that the . ..er offending term she'd written was. ...genitalia. Yep, even though this word can be found in virtually every medical text and English language dictionary under the sun (and this was what every viewer over the age of twelve first thought of when they first heard the phrase - though more likely a specific slang derivative ) - this prompted the producers to make a beeline to her desk and read her the Riot Act spelling out that was NOT 'a Match Game word' and if she didn't agree to NEVER attempt to write that term again, she'd be permanently blacklisted as a panelist on the show! Of course, they edited out that whole Miss Wallace's nose-in-newspaper segment from the tape so all the viewers got so see was the 'OOPS!' then a junk cut before the show moved on. I'm no fan of lewd lingo but that anatomical term wasn't even vaguely close, IMO- and the original phrase that the show put forth was by no means in the best taste!

Yeah, Willie purloining the Mercantile's candy supply and occasionally echoing the maternal prejudices he heard annoyed Nels but he was much easier to raise than Albert wound up being for the Ingallses! Also, it was interesting to see Willie actually become a popular kid with both genders by the time of his teenhood and even become friends with Albert despite their elder sisters' warring history! Towards the end, one somehow wondered if he deliberately said/did things to get sent to the schoolhouse corner just for old times' sake instead of seeking to cause any trouble (although I wished he'd piped up about himself having vandalized Mr. Applewood's briefcase instead of letting Mr. Applewood be ready to use her as his literal whipping girl before Charles beat him out of it)!

I didn't say you weren't entitled to vent but one can't expect a condemnation of half the world's population to be universally applauded (and, yes, I would indeed say this if a male had condemned the world's females). It CAN be done because I've chosen to do it rather than let the acid I wanted to pour on others eat me up from the inside out!

Today May 5th is celebrated in Mexico (and Mexican restaurants outside that nation) as their National Holiday. However, it's the anniversary of the defeat Napoleon III's French forces at the Battle of Puebla in 1862 who were trying to establish a new Empire of Mexico [but in reality a puppet government of the French Empire]- and NOT their independence day since Mexico had been recognized as an independent nation instead of a colony by its former mother country of Spain in 1821. Of course, it wasn't the end of Napoleon III's attempts in Mexico and he would install the hapless Austrian Hapsburg Archduke Maximilian and his wife the former Princess Charlotte of Belgium ( a first cousin of Vic- and the SIL of Emperor Franz-Josef and his stunning wife Sisi) as the Emperor Maximilian and Empress Carlota in 1864 but between them spending their monies on beautifying their Chapultepec Palace AND installing Mexico City's first street lamps, they had too little left to pay their soldiers. This would result in Maximilian being overthrown and executed in 1867 and Carlota fleeing to try to persuade Napoleon III, then her in-laws and finally the Pope to try to rescue Maximilian before she mentally collapsed. . .but would survive many changes in the world surrounding her Belgian castle (especially around the First World War) before her 1927 death at age 86. She'd have to travel by moat from her castle each day and when crossing it, she'd often say to the end of her life , 'Today, we're sailing to Mexico!' Something to ponder over tequilas and guacamole quesadillas . . .

True- and as children, it was somewhat expected for our parents to do the worrying about the outside world FOR us. There was a good 'Peanuts' strip in which Charlie Brown explained to Peppermint Patty that,as kids, one had the luxury of getting to ride to and from long journeys in the backseat while one's parents did the worrying about the road,trip and life itself in the front seat but, then as we grow up, WE have to do said worrying and can never depend on others to do it for us again. All the above said, I can recall in the early 1970's my parents thinking that things were 'simpler' in the late 1940's while my grandparents thinking things were 'simpler' in the 1910's to 1920's but a fair-minded look at contemporary records from those times (and earlier) shows that there hasn't truly been a 'simpler time' as far back as recorded human history- and that while there have been changing things to worry about and deal with throughout the ages, there has never been a worry-free time or era for anyone!

I want to be sympathetic and try to help. However, can anyone imagine what the reactions would be if a poster wrote' being an incel is turning me into a mean/miserable person.. ..why are women so horrible? I want to be in love and be happy. Except all women suck.' I don't know what's happened or how you've been treated. I think everyone of both genders needs to keep in mind that 'being in love' with another person is by no means a need, birthright or an entitlement but, at best, a privilege if not a luxury in this world- and one CAN find contentment if not fulfillment in staying single and solo. I would suggest that you somehow make your peace with yourself and whatever may have happened in the recent and/or distant past before embarking on seeking out others for non-platonic and/or permanent bonds. And, yes, I realize that the any and all above is FAR easier said than done but that doesn't mean it CAN'T be done!

While many a child and minor performer has crashed and burned having no idea how to function as an adult much less how to manage monies, it might not hurt to consider the case of the Toronto-born Mary Pickford [born Gladys Louise Smith](1892-1979) who had been her family's support after her alcoholic father's death when she was eight. She had little if any formal education but had had to work on the stage almost straight away. Despite the fact that she often played helpless waifs (not in small part due to her five foot stature- and her first movie billing was as 'Little Mary'), she quickly educated herself on virtually every aspect of movie contracts and became a hardboiled negotiator- literally pricing herself out of the other studios before becoming one of the founders of United Artists. Alas, it was her younger sibs Lottie (1896-1936) and Jack (1898-1933) (who themselves attempted movie careers but were somewhat overshadowed by her) who wound up having somewhat dysfunctional lives that were cut short and dominated by substance abuse. After Mary divorced her 2nd husband Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. in 1933 , Mary became a reclusive alcoholic who wound up completely estranged from her grown adoptive children by her 3rd marriage to Charles' Buddy' Rogers ( 1904-1999) who seemed to have passively enabled her. However, Mary somehow DID hold onto her fortune and saw to it that her legendary mansion Pickfair stayed an mmaculate showpiece to the end of her life! I guess the point I'm making is that sometimes it's just the luck of the draw that gets some performers to swim early on and others to sink. Although Mary by no means was spared emotional misfortune and had poor coping skills, she DID somehow ensure that she and her immediate family would always be comfortable no matter what!

FWIW, While I actually agree that since Miss Spears IS a legal adult and managed to have that Conservatorship overturned, that means she sinks or swims with the rest of us legal adults re finances, traffic laws,etc. However, even with the above said, I do think she somewhat got hobbled from her early teens to very recently by the very same folks who exploited her and put her through the Conservatorship to force her to keep them on easy street. I'm going to try to be more optimistic that since she DID somehow corral the resources and legal eagles to get her OUT of said Conservatorship that she IS capable of learning to take care of her own finances,etc. I know it's a LOT easier said than done but that doesn't mean it's impossible for her to do.

Even a gilded cage was STILL a cage- and IMO she was kept in it not to heal or 'her own good' but to ensure that her kin would keep getting a steady dairy supply from their cash cow! Yes, it's sad that there's a good probability Miss Spears could go broker than broke in the near future but OTOH, at least it would be HER call to blow it on useless stuff than to revert to being compelled to perform/record JUST to keep the kin on easy street rather than have them attempt to earn their own ways in the world independent of her talents.

I tell the borrowers that if they don't return something ASAP after the time the time they'd initially agreed to, it will be the LAST thing beyond a cup of sugar that they'll get to borrow from me! It usually gets them to return it and/or never ask to borrow anything from me again (the latter's fine by me- although inexplicably sometimes the former borrowers think that they're somehow guilt tripping me via not asking to borrow stuff- nah!).

HA! Wait til you get past the 55 mark and see what comprises 'ancient'- and if you throw in having a parent past the 95 mark with faculties intact, you'll somewhat want to bat closer to Moses's if not Methuselah's ages!

Jack Bauer and those detectives had NOTHING on Olivia and Esther Walton. Those two managed to keep their household of eleven fed, clothed and cleaned without so much as a hair out of place or a smudge visible on either of them at the height of the Depression even when their husbands and offspring often would be in ragged, dirty and sweaty attire!