Category: News

Without question, LeVar Burton’s work on Reading Rainbow has made him a beloved figure to millions of people thanks to his 26-year run on the PBS series dedicated to promoting childhood literacy. The show became a staple for teachers who made it the most watched PBS program in classrooms, outpacing even Sesame Street. Now, Reading Rainbow is getting the full documentary treatment thanks to XTR Studios, which calls this “milestone in television history” more important than ever in “our current era of distance learning.”

Titled Butterfly in the Sky, the Reading Rainbow documentary will be directed by Bradford Thomason and Brett Whitcomb, according to The Hollywood Reporter:

The film will feature archival footage and interviews with Reading Rainbow host LeVar Burton along with the major broadcasters, educators, and filmmakers involved in the show that encouraged a love of books and reading among children.

News of the documentary arrives as Burton comes off a guest hosting stint on Jeopardy! that was the direct byproduct of an overwhelming fan campaign calling on Sony Pictures Television to make him Alex Trebek’s successor. His fans argued that Burton educational work on Reading Rainbow made him the perfect candidate to host the once-revered quiz show.

While Burton ultimately didn’t get the top Jeopardy! job thanks to an increasingly frustrating situation involving Mike Richards, who was recently fired as executive producer after attempting to make himself the new host, Burton handled the situation with humility and graciously thanked everyone for the outpouring of love.

Although, he may have had a little cheeky fun when Richards was forced to step down. The man’s only human.

(Via The Hollywood Reporter)

This article originally appeared on 05.12.15

In this hilarious and enlightening new animated video from Blue Seat Studios, consensual sex is explained in a way that everyone can understand. By replacing sex with a cup of tea, this crudely drawn short offers a clear picture of what “saying yes” looks like.

The script for this video came from blogger Rockstar Dinosaur Pirate Princess, previously reported here.

This article originally appeared on 03.04.15

In this video from the Ad Council, they brilliantly use an X-ray screen to show couples as skeletons in love, but it’s when they reveal the true identities of the people that they really pull at the old heartstrings. Apparently love really is blind, and it only takes a few creepy bone people to prove it.

Watch:

Love Has No Labels | Diversity & Inclusion | Ad Council

youtu.be

This article originally appeared on 08.16.18

Lately, art history majors have become something of a pop culture punching bag. Not only has the phrase become short-hand for “unemployable in today’s economy,” they’ve also been ridiculed by President Barack Obama on national television. But will the gentle art of aesthetic study finally get the last laugh?

Middle Earth Organics is known for their organic pasta sauces, each label featuring a famous Italian painting. While this would normally be an NBD, the painting they chose for their tomato and porcini mushroom sauce has been stirring up controversy online.

The woman in the painting above is not staring with intense concentration at a pot of delicious, simmering sugo.

The image is “Judith Beheading Holofernes,” a painting by Caravaggio. Judith, seen above, is not making an al dente delight. Judith is cutting off some dude’s head.

As 11points.com noted, “That unfortunate painting selection could’ve been avoided if they’d just hired an art history major.” You heard it here folks. Pasta sauce companies: the future of global arts employment.

This article originally appeared on 09.12.17

High school is tough enough for the average 17-year-old girl. Anyone who stands out is a target for whispers and hushed laughter in the in hallways or, at worst, public ridicule. That’s why Maddie Cable, 17, from Charlotte, North Carolina, was less than enthusiastic after being told she needed to wear a large plastic brace to school for at least six weeks.

Cable was in a car accident with her mother in November, and she fractured her T12 vertebra. After doctors stabilized it with rods and pins, Maddie was fitted with the massive brace.

Via Facebook

“At first, I felt very self-conscious about the brace,” Cable said. Then her friend Sarah Chako had the brilliant idea of turning the bland-looking brace into a badass steampunk armor corset using metallic spray paint, gear-shaped stencils, acrylic paint, and metal framing trim. Steampunk is a sci-fi/retro style that combines futuristic steam-powered designs and American “Wild West” aesthetics.

Via Facebook

“I enjoy wearing it now,” Cable said. “It makes me feel more confident.” Her mother is pleased, too. “People are initiating conversation instead of just staring,” Cable’s mom, Linda, told HuffPost. “She feels like they see her, and not just her injury.”

Cable’s story is a great example of what you can do with some creative thinking, good friends, and steampunk power. She turned a depressing situation into an opportunity to express herself.

This article originally appeared on 08.14.18

When Bobby Wesson posted a love letter to his wife on Facebook under a beautiful photo of her sleeping next to their son, he must have known she would love it. What he couldn’t have known was that it would go completely viral, and now more than 680,000 other people love it, too.

In Wesson’s touching letter, he applauds his wife’s dedication to her work as a nurse and all the love and sacrifice she puts into that difficult job every day. His final line perfectly sums up his feelings: “My wife is a nurse. My wife is a hero.”

Check out the beautiful photo and complete letter below.

This is my wife taking a nap. In an hour she will wake up, put on her scrubs and get ready for work.

The tools and items she needs to perform her job will be gathered and checked meticulously—her hair and makeup will be done quickly. She will complain that she looks awful. I will disagree, emphatically, and get her a cup of coffee.

She will sit on the couch with her legs crossed under her and try to drink it while happily playing with the toddler that’s crawling all over her.

She will occasionally stare off blankly as we talk; silently steeling herself for the coming shift. She thinks I don’t notice.

She will kiss the baby, she will kiss me and she will leave to go take care of people that are having the worst day of their entire lives. Car wrecks, gunshot wounds, explosions, burns and breaks – professionals, poor, pastors, addicts and prostitutes—mothers, fathers, sons, daughters and families—it doesn’t matter who you are or what happened to you.

She will take care of you.

She will come home 14 hours later and remove shoes that have walked through blood, bile, tears and fire from aching feet and leave them outside.

Sometimes she will not want to talk about it. Sometimes she can’t wait to talk about it. Sometimes she will laugh until she cries and sometimes she will just cry – but regardless of those sometimes she will be on time for her next shift.

My wife is a nurse. My wife is a hero.

Conservative commentator Candace Owens is usually feuding with pop stars, including Harry Styles, Demi Lovato, and Cardi B (who infamously once said, “I gave that bitch 2 million followers”), but lately, her ire has been directed elsewhere: the coronavirus.

She proudly tweeted that she’s unvaccinated while referring to herself as a “scientific marvel,” frequently rails against mask mandates, and labeled the vaccine “pure evil.” But Owens is apparently worried enough about catching COVID (which she called a “communist attempt to kill the middle class” and “the greatest political scam in the history of the world”) that she went to get tested — and got denied.

Owens tweeted that she “just received an e-mail from a Covid testing facility that they are REFUSING to administer a test to me because they don’t like my politics.” The email, which the Daily Beast identifies as being from Colorado-based lab owner Suzanna Lee, reads, “I’ve just learned of this testing request and as the owner of this business am going to refuse this booking and deny service. We cannot support anyone who has pro-actively worked to make this pandemic worse by spreading misinformation, politicizing, and DISCOURAGING the wearing of masks and actively dissuading people from receiving life-saving vaccinations.” It continues:

“My team and myself have worked overtime, to exhaustion, unpaid and underpaid this past year, spending our own capital to ensure that our community remains protected. It would be unfair to them and to the sacrifices we have all made this year to serve you”

Here’s the full message:

If Owens was hoping to garner sympathy, her plan backfired:

(Via the Daily Beast)

Electronic producer Jon Hopkins has announced a new album, Music For Psychedelic Therapy, arriving November 12 via Domino. Today, he shares a deeply meditative lead single, “Sit Around The Fire,” which features the voice of the late guru Ram Dass. “It felt like time for a reset, to wait for music to appear from a different place,” Hopkins said of Music For Psychedelic Therapy, which follows 2018’s Singularity and was inspired by the artist’s time in the Tayos Caves of Ecuador.

Here’s what Hopkins had to say about his new single, which you can listen to above.

“‘Sit Around The Fire’ exists from one of the deep synchronicities that ushered this thing (Music For Psychedelic Therapy) into being. I was contacted by East Forest, who had spent some time with Ram Dass in Hawaii before he passed. He was given access to several lesser-heard talks from the 70s, and asked to set them to music. He sent me some starting points, including the beautiful choral vocals he recorded which open the piece. I put my headphones on and with Ram Dass’ voice inside my head, I sat at the piano and improvised. What you hear is the first thing that came out — it just appeared in response to the words.”

Hopkins added about the album:

“Music For Psychedelic Therapy is not ambient, classical or drone but has elements of all three. For me it’s a place as much as it is a sound. It works for the sober mind, but takes on a new dimension entirely when brought into a psychedelic ceremony. In my own psychedelic explorations testing this music, I found a quote I had read would keep coming to mind. ‘Music is liquid architecture, architecture is frozen music.’ I love this idea of music as something you inhabit, something that works on you energetically. In fact, it was while in that state that the title appeared to me. Psychedelic-assisted therapies are moving into legality across the world, and yet it feels like no one is talking about the music; the music is as important as the medicine.”

Check out the album’s tracklist:

1. “Welcome”
2. “Tayos Caves, Ecuador i”
3. “Tayos Caves, Ecuador ii”
4. “Tayos Caves, Ecuador iii”
5. “Love Flows Over Us In Prismatic Waves”
6. “Deep In The Glowing Heart”
7. “Ascending, Dawn Sky”
8. “Arriving”
9. “Sit Around The Fire” (with Ram Dass, East Forest)

Music For Psychedelic Therapy arrives 11/12 via Domino. Pre-order it here.

Matthew McConaughey is a lot of things: Oscar-winning actor, potential gubernatorial candidate, celebrity with possibly the most beach photos on Getty. But what if he’s also immortal? That’s how he felt after he became a father, anyway, as he revealed when he popped up on future Jeopardy! spin-off host Mayim Bialik’s mental health podcast Breakdown.

The two wound up discussing parenthood and how that re-shapes one’s world. That’s how McConaughey felt when his first child (of three so far) was born in 2008.

“First child born — that was a biggie for me,” he told Bialik. “I remember [thinking] to myself, I was like, I just became immortal. Biologically so, but even more than that, this is it. This is what I’ve dreamed of being all my life — not immortal, but a father.”

He, of course, didn’t mean he was literally going to live forever — just that a part of him would. “I don’t know how it is for the mother, but for the father, a man’s never more masculine than that time when he has his first child,” he explained. “Again, for me, I was like, ‘I’m immortal.’ Literally, biologically. I am now immediately, inherently, instinctually living for the future, where yesterday I wasn’t… My decisions are based on consideration for them too., and their future.”

He also said he and his wife Camila Alves are at least somewhat traditional. “We are a pretty disciplined family. I like the manners and graces that my parents taught me — I like sirs and ma’ams and please and thank you.” And that goes both ways. “I even call my kids mister and missus just to get them in the lingo of going back and forth.”

But he’s also trying new things. “One of the kids doesn’t listen to the rules: OK. I’m going to walk around and ignore you for the day,” he said. “Why? Because you ignored me. It’s a quiet but good one. ‘Why didn’t I get a plate set?’ ‘Oh! Didn’t know you were here eating.’”

This is clearly who should be Texas governor, especially considering who’s in charge now.

You can watch Wooderson’s full podcast appearance below.

(Via Yahoo! Life)

The Brooklyn Nets’ busy offseason continued on Thursday, as the team added frontcourt reinforcements and positioned themselves to add some more. According to Paul Millsap’s agent, the veteran big man decided to end his time on the free agent market and put pen to paper on a deal with the favorites to win the 2021-22 NBA championship.

Beyond Millsap, Charania reports that the Nets are in pole position to bring back someone who was on their team last season before he was forced to medically retire. LaMarcus Aldridge, who abruptly called it a career in April due to an irregular heartbeat, had been mulling a comeback, and Charania reports that the various tests he needed to clear have all been passed.

As such, per Charania, things appear to be pointing towards a reunion between Aldridge and the Nets.

Brooklyn had something of a patchwork frontcourt during the postseason last year, particularly after Jeff Green suffered a strained plantar fascia. Bruce Brown, Nick Claxton, and Kevin Durant played a ton of minutes at the 5, with only Claxton being viewed as a center. It nearly worked, as the team pushed the Milwaukee Bucks to a Game 7 in the Eastern Conference Semifinals and coming awfully close to winning.

Now, the team adds a pair of steady veteran hands in an offseason where that’s appeared to be a priority. Both James Johnson and Patty Mills have made the jump to Brooklyn, and now, Millsap and potentially Aldridge should help fortify their frontcourt and their bench.