Reviews Category
We don’t just report off-beat news, breaking news and digest the best and worst of the news media analysis and commentary. We give an original take on what happened and why. We add lols, satire, news photos and original content.
When Jayne Mansfield scored at Tottenham Hotspur
FLASHBACK photo of the Day. It’s October 10, 1959. The Press Association reports: “What more could Tottenham Hotspur fans want? And this is the pose that brought wolf whistles from the near-capacity crowd when Hollywood star Jayne Mansfield sat on the edge of the director’s box at halftime. Jayne was at the match to speak on Tottenham’s relay service to local hospitals. She was able to tell them that Spurs beat Wolves 5-1.”
Posted: 23rd, April 2012 | In: Flashback | Comments (5)
Kyron Horman: Why have the Oregonian’s Lynne Terry and Maxine Bernstein changed stories?
THE story of Kyron Horman is being changed online. Why are stories by the Oregonian’s Lynne Terry and Maxine Bernstein being altered well after their original publication? Why do the stories contain no notations made as to what they updated in the articles? There is no pointing out what was added or deleted.
The Oregonian seems to have become the police’s mouthpiece. Are press are embarked on a witch hunt to get Terri Horman, Kyron’s step-mother? The police sit back and watch the media tear into Terri Horman.
The Sheriff’s Office’s mouthpiece seems to be the Oregonian, in the person of Maxine Bernstein, who it appears, has rather exclusive access. She has been remarkably unequivocal in publishing whatever information she is given, without asking any particularly hard questions. Some of the articles and information published have been unquestionably ruinous to the reputations of Terri Horman andsome of her associates. Ms. Bernstein is conceivably comfortable doing this, based on First Amendment protections, and assurances that she has received solid information from the authorities.
A reader asks:
How in the hell can you report on a meeting that took place on Feb. 24, 2011 and 9 months later just add whatever or take out whatever with no notations of the updates? They are even deleting articles that were published that we read and all of sudden they no longer exist.
All good to update stories and correct errors. But in their updated copy the writers make no reference to the earlier published versions of these stories.
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Batman CAN ride an elephant
THE argument is settled: Batman CAN ride an elephant. Tough cheese to all those who answered ‘no. And Holy Trunks to those of you who said “yes”. And to the net question: Can The Riddler pilot a golden eagle…?
German bodybuilders, Flash Gordon and a Ming-a-ding-ding
BIG. Hard. Men. With. Big. Inflatable. Guns. This is entertainment. Our snapper’s been to Germany to see bodybuilders undress on stage at the FIBO Power in Essen. One of the men Mings a bell (surely rings – ed)… Is Flash Gordon alive?!
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Posted: 21st, April 2012 | In: Reviews | Comment (1)
Inflatbale Titanic stirs memories in Antrim
TO mark 100 years since hundreds of peoples died aboard the Titanic, Antrim Borough Council has provided mourners in Lough Shore park with a replica ship made of air and plastic. For added authenticity, the ship is “going dow” in “slide mode”.
Says the council: “Over the last three years during the spring and summer at Antrim Lough Shore Park, children’s activities have been provided by a private contractor. These include a miniature railway and various inflatables including a giant slide designed to replicate a ship. Last weekend the children’s activities were operating as normal. Neither the contractor nor the council intended this to cause offence to anyone.”
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When Chris Evert and Yvonne Goolagong met Don Robertson, the European Yo-Yo Champion
FLASHBACK photo of the Day: As the Press Association reports: “Seen at a pre-Wimbledon party at Simpsons tonight are Chris Evert (USA), right, and Yvonne Goolagong (Australia). Between them is Don Robertson, the European Yo-Yo Champion.” It’s June 21, 1972, and the yo-yo is the go-ahead sport for go-ahead kids.
Dania Suarez, Barack Obama and the underage Secret Service sex scandal
DANIA Suarez: Ahead of Barack Obama’s trip to Colombia this weekend a scandal has emerged. In checking the Hotel Caribe in Cartagena for bugs and nasties, Obama’s Secret Service goons have been paying for sex with prostitutes. The main player to emerge is one Dania Suarez, a Colombian prostitute who claims she was stiffed on her $800 fee for sex with a White House Secret Service member. She says he offered her only $30.
Was she overcharging the tourists?
Dania Suarez is the mother of a 9-year-old son. One imagines she is not in the skin game for the casual sex.
As she told the The New York Times:
“I tell him, “Baby, my cash money.”
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Kyron Horman: Police remain without a clue
KYRON Horman: Anorak’s look at the missing Oregon child in the news…
The investigation has gone nowhere. There is no case. Police have still to prove crime has befallen the child.
Oregon Live: “This weekend, for the second year in a row, the father of Kyron Horman will be at Portland’s Largest Garage Sales preading word about his missing son. “We’re trying to keep everyone up to date about what’s going on,” said Kaine Horman, who will staff a Kyron table at the show on Saturday.
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Are the NYPD about to find Etan Patz? Kyron Horman is missing
ETAN Patz was 6 when he disappeared on May 25, 1979.
President Ronald Reagan would name May 25 National Missing Children’s Day.
The New Yorker was last seen a block from his home in the city’s SoHo. He was last seen walking to a bus stop alone. He was on his way to school. It was the first time he had ever made the trip unaccompanied.
When he did not arrive home from school, Etan’s mother Julie Patz called the police. And so it began…
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The Titanic Michael Jackson tribute hits Liverpool (photos)
FOR added dignity, it was thought a good idea to mark the centenary of the day when hundreds of people died in the Titanic disaster with The Little Girl Giant, a giant marionette that looks a lot like the late King of Pop Michael Jackson. It’s been created by Royal De Luxe as part of Sea Odyssey, a love story based around the sinking of the Titanic. The event in Stanley Park Liverpool also features, for reasons obvious, a huge model of Ashley Young, a slippery-footed striker with Liverpool’s dread rivals Manchester United. It all being what the dead would have wanted…
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The Dickie Valentine Years
A READER wants to know the identity of the woman sat on the Brighton beach pebbles with a record on her head. Well it’s 1956 and the Press Association reports: “Suzanne Crowley is a ‘raving mad Dickie Valentine fan’ – his voice goes everywhere with her on the records she carries with a portable gramophone. She even made a hat for herself out of one of his records.”
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Posted: 20th, April 2012 | In: Flashback | Comment (1)
Pussy Riot ordeal shames Moscow and the West
PUSSY Riot, the best-named protest group since Hill’s Angels, are back in the news. Around 20 of the number have been arrested in Moscow – apparently, keeping score in riot of Pussies is hard (see Simon Cowell but no Frankie Cocozza).
This latest bout of arrests follows the Pussy Riot “punk prayer” in Moscow’s Christ the Saviour Cathedral which chucked barbs at Russia’s prime minister Vladimir Putin. The Pussy Riot Three are Nadya Tolokonnikova, Maria Alekhina and Yekaterina Samutsevich. They face seven years chjocky if the aggravated hooliganism charges can be made to stick. They will remain in jail until June 24. Bail has been denied.
Miss Tolokonnikova and Miss Alekhina each have a young child. The punishment is seen by many to be excessive.
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Posted: 20th, April 2012 | In: Reviews | Comment (1)
Bono went to Israel but he didn’t write a poem
U2 FRONTMAN Bono went on a surprise visit to Israel earlier this month. It was apparently a private family trip and he wanted to stay under the radar. But it’s hard to be inconspicuous when you go for an evening stroll in Jaffa wearing bright orange sunglasses.
Anyway, after visiting Tel Aviv and Jerusalem Bono signed off from the Holy Land with a poem about a “dog called Hope”, illustrated with a drawing of said dog. The poem was found in the guest book of Jerusalem’s King David Hotel, where Bono stayed with his family. It went:
“In Jerusalem, hope springs eternal. Hope is like a faithful dog, sometimes she runs ahead of me to check the future, to sniff it out and then I call to her: Hope, Hope, come here, and she comes to me. I pet her, she eats out of my hand and sometimes she stays behind, near some other hope maybe to sniff out whatever was. Then I call her my Despair. I call out to her. Here, my little Despair, come here and she comes and snuggles up, and again I call her Hope.”
He signed, “With great thanks for great room in great hotel in great city, Bono.”
The note, published on Buzzfeed, went viral, but even in Israel few paid attention to the words scribbled in small letters under Bono’s name: “Reading Amichai”.
The late Yehuda Amichai is Israel’s most famous modern poet. He once likened hope to “a faithful dog”. In fact, Bono’s note was a direct citation of one of Amichai’s poems from the book Open Closed Open.
The drawing, however, was an original.
Posted: 19th, April 2012 | In: Reviews | Comment (1)
Edric Kennedy-Macfoy v The Met – dial 999 for racism
EDRIC Kennedy-Macfoy is a 28-year-old fireman from north London. He was trained as a police officer. On 3:45am on September 4, 2011, Mr Kennedy-Macfoy was driving his white Audi through Harrow. Police had shut down a party. Missiles were being thrown at them. Mr Kennedy-Macfoy spotted a black man toss a rock at a police van.
He tried to tell the police what he has seen. He has a description of the thug. He said the copper told him:
“Fuck off you prick.”
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Flashback – Miss UK 1962
FLASHBACK to September 4, 1962: “A sudden shower forces Miss UK finalists to cover up with towels during the judging of the contest at Blackpool, Lancashire”…
Posted: 19th, April 2012 | In: Flashback | Comments (2)
What makes Megan Fox happiest? Go on, guess….
OK! magazine’s Question of the week is directed to Megan Fox
OK!: “What makes you happiest in life?”
MF: “A lot to things, but I feel unbelievably happy when my eight-year-old stepson tells me I’m beautiful”
More wisdom from the mouth of a babe – see the captions:
megan_fox_1
When you think about it, we actors are kind of prostitutes. We get paid to feign attraction and love. Other people are paying to watch us kissing someone, touching someone, doing things people in a normal monogamous relationship would never do with anyone who’s not their partner. It’s really kind of gross – GQ via Showbiz Spy. Image: Babble
Teacher Stacie Halas sacked for having legal consumable sex
STACIE Halas is looking at the situations vacant boards having been sacked from her teaching job at Richard B. Haydock Intermediate School, California. Students “discovered” Halas looked not a lot unlike Tiffany Six, an actress in hardcore porn films.
California is home to the world’s biggest porn industry centred on the San Fernando Valley. It;s legal. Halas broke no laws. But the woman who once worked in pornography is sacked because it offends morals.
The school’s letter to parents states:
“It has been alleged that one of our teachers is depicted in at least one pornographic video and possibly others on the Internet. We are asking teachers to discourage the children from searching for and/or visiting these inappropriate sites. We ask that you be particularly vigilant over the next few days with respect to the Internet content being accessed by your child on his or her telephone or other Internet-ready device.”
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Posted: 19th, April 2012 | In: Reviews | Comments (5)
Mildred (Cyclone) Burke defeats Leona (Babe) Gordon to become women’s wrestling championship of the world
FLASHBACK Photos of the Day. The AP reports: “Mildred (Cyclone) Burke of Kansas City, Missouri, claimant to the women’s wrestling championship of the world, and Leona (Babe) Gordon of Chicago gave each other a mud pack ‘treatment’ when they took part in a Hindu-style wrestling match in a mud-filled ring at Akron, Ohio. Picture shows: Mildred (Cyclone) Burke (on top) pinning her equally muddy opponent, Leona (Babe) Gordon, in the viscous mess as Ernie Maddock, the referee, moves closer to tap Miss Burke on the shoulder to declare her the winner. The referee seems to have collected as much mud as the combatants!” Date: 23/01/1938
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Holocaust Remembrance Day – A Hatikva of Hope in Bergen-Belsen
TODAY in Israel it’s Holocaust Remembrance Day. There is no escaping the Holocaust in Jewish history. It’s there. It’s always there. Can Jews move on? This is not a wish to deny it – only a conniving racist would side with the Nazis who make liars of the dead and the Islamists who think that it never happened but it would be good idea if it did. It’s a desire not to be defined by persecution and murder. Six million Jews died in the Holocaust. How can Jews move on? How can Jews not be defined by anti-Semitism?
A reader sends us this video of Hatikva at Bergen-Belsen. It’s April 20th 1945 in the death camp. Hope springs. Life endures…
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Posted: 19th, April 2012 | In: Reviews | Comment (1)
1966 and all that keyring craze in Paris
IT’S 1966. It’s Paris. And keyrings are a craze among the cool kids. Cue the holiday camp music and look at those cats go:
Spotter: Arbroath
LA Times exhibits double standards over suicide bomber photos
WHO is the victim here? The BBC reports on American soldiers and detonated suicide bombers – members of the 82nd Airborne Division were pictured posting with remains of suspected suicide bombers in Afghanistan:
The US government has condemned the conduct of several American soldiers shown apparently abusing the corpses of suspected Afghan insurgents in 2010. Defence Secretary Leon Panetta’s spokesman pledged that the perpetrators would be punished.
His comments came after the Los Angeles Times published pictures showing US soldiers posing with the mangled remains of suspected suicide bombers … “Anyone found responsible for this inhuman conduct will be held accountable in accordance with our military justice system,” the spokesman said, adding that a criminal investigation was under way.
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Miss World of the 1940s and 1950s – the changing face of beauty
FLASHBACK looks at contestants in the Miss World and Miss America beauty pageants from the 30s and 40s. The concept of beauty has altered with time.
Posted: 19th, April 2012 | In: Flashback, Key Posts | Comments (2)
Fiona Duff takes on Samantha Brick in misogynistic Daily Mail face off
TODAY the Daily Mail are attempting to repeat last week’s highly successful article ‘Why Do Women Hate Me For Being Beautiful’ by Samantha Brick by publishing a precisely the opposite piece this week – ‘Why Do Women Love Me For Being A Plain Jane’ by Fiona Duff.
Fiona Duff is in her early 50′s, a writer and publicist. She divorced her first husband, the late award-winning comedy writer Harry Thompson, in 1997 after five years of marriage. They had two children together. She chronicled her divorce in the Daily Mail. She has now remarried and lives in Edinburgh.
For maximum impact the Mail’s photographic deptartment have set about making Fiona look as ‘frumpy’ as ‘frumpy’ could ever look to an audience. In their picture (above) they’ve made poor Fiona look as plain as a stale loaf of Wonder bread. I found another picture (inset) where Fiona doesn’t look as plain Jane as the Mail would have you believe.
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Posted: 18th, April 2012 | In: Reviews | Comments (3)
Violet and Daisy Hilton – The World’s Only Strip-Teasing Siamese Twins
FLASHBACK Photo of The Day: October 6 1933 – Violet and Daisy Hilton, “Siamese Twins”, are pictured upon their arrival in New York aboard the Aquitania. Although they have been joined together since birth and cannot be separated, they say they are engaged and will figure in a double wedding within a year. Daisy claims to be engaged to Jack Lewis, an orchestra leader in Chicago and Violet reports that her fiancee is a prominent English boxer, but declined to reveal his name.
So reported the Associated Press.
The twins were born in Brighton to 21-year-old girl Kate Skinner in February 1908. Twin daughters Daisy and Violet were joined back-to-back at their lower spine.
In his book The Lives And Loves Of Daisy And Violet Hilton: A True Story of Conjoined Twins, Dean Jensen introduces Mary Hilton, a midwife in Brighton and landlady of the Queen’s Arms pub. She adopted the twins and set about making money from them.
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Children teach Nobody about global warming and dying polar bears
TO southern Ontario, where young scholars are helping polar bears by getting cold:
Four students from Kenollie Public School jumped into the frigid pond behind the Port Credit Yacht Club on Sunday to raise awareness about the plight of polar bears in the face of global warming.
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