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11 Dec 2011 21:11

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Culture: Box office has worst weekend in three years — so, what’s to blame?

  • $78 million the amount the entire box office made over the weekend, with the strongest movie being the objectively awful “New Year’s Eve”
  • $68 million the amount the entire box office made on Labor Day weekend 2008, the last time the box office dipped this low source
  • » A bad crop of films, or something else? With a bunch of also-rans in the theater and two weak films — a movie that scored 7 percent on Rotten Tomatoes in the lead and a Jonah Hill vehicle, “The Sitter,” right behind — to hold up the box office, it may not have been the best week for films … but December is a very strange time of year for the box office to struggle like this. One analyst blames a lack of male-oriented films. We blame a lack of exposure for Foozie Bear, who is by far the the best part of “The Muppets.”
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

09 Dec 2011 12:25

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Culture: Today in useless, obvious studies: Cereals are way too sugary

  • Call us when Cap’n Crunch calls a press conference about this. Thanks to a recent study from the Environmental Working Group, we now know how much sugar is in some cereals. The amount of sugar, by weight, is highest in Honey Smacks (55.6%) and Golden Crisp (51.9%). Did anyone still consider typical kids’ cereals to be healthy? Feed ’em some Total instead. (This message is not brought to you by General Mills.) (photo by Horia Varlan on Flickr) source
Posted by samimain • 0 Comments • Permalink

08 Dec 2011 11:55

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Culture: The Roots’ punishment for the Bachmann incident: Heavy bureaucracy

  • 3 NBC execs will now have to screen Questlove’s intro song choices source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

04 Dec 2011 21:01

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Culture: About time: Tiger Woods wins first tournament in over two years

The last time Tiger Woods won a tournament, he was still married and everyone thought the last thing that could happen to the golfer was a career-damaging scandal. Think about that. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

04 Dec 2011 09:13

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Culture: Chelsea Clinton’s slow reinvention: Now she’s embracing the spotlight

“For most of my life, I deliberately led a private life in the public eye,” Clinton notes. The former first daughter has worked out a different tactic in recent weeks — it involves being a journalist for NBC News. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

02 Dec 2011 21:14

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Culture: RIP Louis Silverstein, the guy who gave The New York Times its shine

  • An unsung journalistic hero: Before Louis Silverstein, newspaper design was a trade, not a profession. With the many changes he made as art director of the Times in the 1960s and 1970s, he helped change that. White space? More ambitious typefaces? Larger fonts? Abstract illustrations? Those were all his doing. Many of the conventions that modern newspapers now take advantage of came (in part) from Silverstein’s work. It took a lot of pushing, but Silverstein sold editors on these ideas. As a result, the Gray Lady is (and many other papers are) a lot less gray. And graphic design and news aren’t separate entities. Silverstein died Thursday at 92. (Also worth a read:The Society for News Design has a lot of anecdotes about an important figure in visual journalism.) source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

29 Nov 2011 14:28

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Culture: Michael Jackson death: Conrad Murray sentenced to four years in prison

  • Murray gets the max: Superior Court Judge Michael Pastor issued a sentence for Conrad Murray today, opting for the maximum imprisonment (four years) and coupling that choice with scathing denunciations of the disgraced former doctor: “Not only isn’t there any remorse, there is umbrage and outrage on the part of Dr. Murray against the decedent… Michael Jackson died not because of an isolated one-off occurrence or incident. He died because of a totality of circumstances which are directly attributable to Dr. Murray, not some mistake or some accident in the early morning hours of 2009.” During the trial, the prosecution argued that Murray delayed summoning paramedics to help Jackson after the singer suffered cardiac arrest, and lied to emergency responders when they arrived. (Left: Murray’s booking photo.) source
Posted by Chris Tognotti • 0 Comments • Permalink
 

23 Nov 2011 16:06

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Culture: Pat Robertson gaffe of the month: “Is mac & cheese a black thing?”

  • Happy Thanksgiving! We’re thankful that every couple of months, Pat Robertson drops another whopper on the world. This time? Robertson asks, in response to the fact that Condoleezza Rice plans to have macaroni and cheese at her Thanksgiving table, “Is mac & cheese a black thing?” It’s like he thinks he’s talking in a vacuum, except he’s not. For what it’s worth: We’ve been at Thanksgiving celebrations where the main dish is baked ziti. Your move, Robertson. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

22 Nov 2011 16:41

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Culture: Thanksgiving weekend homework: On Friday, thank a teacher.

  • Can you think of the one teacher that inspires you? On Thanksgiving this year, give thanks for your meal and how lucky you are to be with your family and all that jazz. On Friday, after you’ve convinced your dad that Chrome is the browser of the future, take part in The 2011 National Day of Listening, organized by the nonprofit StoryCorps, a group “dedicated to recording, preserving, and sharing the stories of Americans of all backgrounds and beliefs.” How can you help? Simple. Thank a teacher, and tell the world about it. Who inspired you to do your best work? Who encouraged you to try something you were afraid of doing? Who helped make you the person you are today? Take a couple days. Think about it. Then report back. On Friday, the ShortFormBlog staff will put up a couple anecdotes from our own teachers. And we’ll pick a couple from readers. Shoot us a message over here, or throw up a post; StoryCorps is also looking for Facebook posts and tweets with the hashtag #ThankATeacher. Can’t wait to hear what you have to say. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

22 Nov 2011 14:10

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Culture: How much would you pay for a Twilight wedding gown?

  • $799 price tag to buy a wedding dress from Twilight source
  • » Talk about high-end merchandising! To be clear, according to CostHelper, this wouldn’t fall into the upper range of wedding dress prices; $500-$1000 would be considered “mid-range.” The gown is being sold in sizes from women’s 0-30, which is nice, as not everybody who might want to dress like Kristen Stewart therefore inherits her svelte-ness. We admit a broad ignorance of weddings and romantic vampire-related fiction, so we’ll turn it over to you — anybody excited to wear a Twilight-inspired wedding dress? It is a nice looking dress, we’ll say that.
Posted by Chris Tognotti • 0 Comments • Permalink
 
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