At the age of 13, Zara Hartshorn already looks 50.
Hartshorn, who is from Rotherham, England, suffers from a rare genetic disease known as lipodystrophy. The disease causes layers of fatty tissue under the surface of the skin to disappear. Only around 2,000 people in the world are said to have the condition, and there is currently no known cure.
The effects of the disease have caused Hartshorn a great deal of hardship and discomfort.
“People call me ‘granny’ and ‘monkey,’ ” she told the New York Post. “Sometimes I’ll just go into the toilet and cry.”
It was more entertaining when Robin Williams did it =(
Late Night Lesson: Separating emotion from reality.
I hate guns. I feel like they’re dangerous killers and the fanatics who love them so much are creepy and awkward to me. I also know that that’s all emotion. I emote at a desire to have a large government apparatus to tightly restrict the use and sale of all firearms everywhere, but I’m not an animal – I’m more than just a sack of chemical causing emotions. Intellectually I have to observe reality and make an analysis from that, not my primal girly feelings, and that tells me that the 2nd Amendment makes a safer nation. More guns equal less crime. Which is one of the many blocks that pushed me into realizing more and more that I’m a Libertarian: I don’t ever want a gun, but I want everyone else on my block to have one… It’s not right for me to impose my illogical, baseless anti-gun emotion on others and that’s why it enraged me when Michael Moore’s Bowling For Columbine came out and I found out that it was a start-to-finish lie-fest. I saw the commercials for it on tv and thought “dude, this is AWESOME” and indeed it was – it was a very well crafted, interesting, emotional and most of all – persuasive film promoting a thesis I agreed with. So when I found out that nearly nothing in it was true (see BowlingForTruth.com for the library of staged scenes, factual misstatements, inaccurate statistics, gotcha interviews and truly despicable slander against Charlton Heston – from editing his speeches to editing the interview he was kind and open enough to grant Mr Moore). The point was that lying to your side is not only still wrong, but worse. because you are setting us up to be fools. Lying in service to push an agenda you feel is good is punishment in that it’s only a matter of time before those lies are exposed – and then what? you’ve done a disservice to both the cause AND it’s followers. You’ve hurt and embarrassed everyone for no damn reason.
This scenario is playing out again. and I hate it.
Here are the FACTS:
-Jay Leno was removed from the Tonight Show replaced by Conan O’Brien and moved to a new show at 10pm.
-Both the 10pm Jay Leno show and the 11:30pm Tonight Show suffered large ratings losses for NBC.
-In response, NBC asked Leno to cut his show in half, from an hour down to 30 minutes, and return to his own time slot, thus pushing Conan’s Tonight Show back a half hour.
-Jay accepted the change. Conan didn’t. as a result, Conan decided to leave NBC.
-Now left with a Tonight Show that has no host, NBC offered Leno his old position back. Leno accepted.
-Conan’s future in television has yet to be announced.
I watched the full hour of the Oprah edition with Jay where she asked him to appear (Conan got a separate invitation too, but he declined) and even went to him (the interview took place on the set of the Jay Leno Show in Burbank, not Oprah’s in Chicago).
He said everything right. Every. Single. Thing. Right.
Oprah, whom I’ve never seen so skilled and probing in an interview, tried to trip him up at every turn and nothing worked. Nothing. Jay won’t say anything bad about anyone. He said he was right to be fired from his 10pm show because he didn’t deliver for the network – a kind of responsibility acceptance you don’t often see in showbiz – but said he was heartbroken at being fired 5 years in advance from the Tonight show when he was #1 and remained #1 until his last show – and it’s a legitimate point.
None of the smears against Jay I’ve heard showed themselves as even being possible. The diabolical “he’s just painting himself as the victim so he can be the good guy” stuff makes no sense in context and the “he should have retired and stepped aside to let Conan in” is equally redonulous. The guy spends his vacation time doing stand-up comedy in Vegas. Why should he quit his one passion in life just because someone else wants his job? Answer: Because we like that other person better. Okay, fine – so support that other person. You don’t need to tear down the other guy with lies and tales of villainy to do it. Oprah’s only super lame moment was when she said Leno’s one joke about David Lettermans sex scandal with his employees was “beneath thim”. so… Sanford jokes and Clinton jokes and John Edwards jokes – but David Letterman is off limits? huh?
Stop lying about Jay Leno. There is no evidence that any of this debacle was his fault and just because you – like me – prefer the alternative, Conan Obrien, that doesn’t give you license to lie.
As Oprah noted in explaining why she thinks people are so anit-Leno: People don’t understand the way television works.
So stop it. You’re pissing me off. I’m sick of you lying to me.
Sean Hannity just played a clip from Obama’s speech where he talked about Bush and came back with the awesome come back of “will the Bush bashing ever stop!?”. ooooo! zing! LOL Sean! Good one! that is such an annihilating smackdown that it in no way illustrates what an untalented hack you are! who cares if Obama’s list of Bush foibles was accurate – YOU SURE TOLD HIM! lulz. Hannitee 4 Prezident LOL lulz roflma fml.
This part of the speech is what Hannity was referring to:
The worst part is that he could have actually made a point there if he weren’t such a knee-jerk Republican shill that thought non-hilarious one-liners like that were acceptable retorts to the opposition in power.
He could have, for instance, maybe brought up the fact that Obama is going to triple the national deficit this year and even the Whitehouse’s own estimates show they plan to put Bush’s spending to shame.
And it doesn’t stop there, Woody. This Buzz Lightyear is going to Infinity and Beyond:
Karl Rove gave an ACTUAL response to the Bush stuff (is it too late to give him Hannitys job?):
transcript from Karl Rove’s segment with Greta Van Susteren:
“I can find no administration in which there is such a frequent recourse to blame the previous administration…
They want to blame the Bush Administration for the debt. I happened to be last week in a debate with David Plouffe in which he blamed the Bush Administration for the deficit this year. And I said, “Wait a minute, what about your spending bill? It was your bill, President Obama’s $787 billion Stimulus Bill. What about the $33 billion SCHIP bill that he signed? What about the $410 billion Omnibus Bill?” In reflection didn’t Senator Obama support the rescue package the recovery package last fall, the $750 billion to help rescue the banks? $350 billion dollars of that was spent by the time he got into office. If he didn’t like that spending he could have said, “You know were not going to spend another dime of that $350 billion,” and yet he did…
I think this is wearing thin. This is causing the American people to say, “Wait a minute. This is all your spending. Why do you keep blaming the guy who came before you?”
Would have been more impressive a year ago. i would have bet everything i owned that there was no way in hell the Apple Tablet device would be called a freaking iPad. good thing i didnt. ifail. Being one vowel off from the company’s flagship product is an equally wtf-ish move.
The price is the the big news. Macworld:
$499 for 16GB is the base model.
For 32GB it’s $100 more, for another $100 you get 64GB of storage.
The 3G models cost an extra $130 to build in radios. $629, $729, $829.
These are the six models.
The most expensive model is just $829. Unbelievable price.
So what can you do with this giant iPod? everything the iPhone does (including all the apps) except make calls – BUT – since the screen is bigger, you can burn out your eyes by reading books on the large backlit screen… yeay…
i want one just cuz it’d be easier to surf web stuffs on a smaller hand held thing than my 17inch Macbook but bigger than the iphone. i, along with the human race, have no real use or need for one.
* No ability to play Adobe Flash animations, widely used on the Web.
* No camera, still or video
* No non-Internet phone function
* Unclear whether you can bundle your AT&T iPhone plan with an iPad data plan
* No removable battery for a device that can suck a lot of power
* No removable storage
Some of these are obvious, like the battery and storage being locked in – duh – Apple is even starting to do that with it’s laptops, so of course this thing wouldn’t have those. I don’t know why either is so great anyway. Removable storage would be nice, but not necessary.
No flash however is just frigging unacceptable. wtf is that shit about? no flash? I can’t watch Hulu videos on this thing? uhm… ya. now I’m not buying one. thanks for that necessary deal breaker. No camera? at all? not even a forward facing one like on the iphone? Why are you downgrading, Apple? your previous smaller device has a forward facing camera that takes pictures and video. You just put HD video capturing and editing on the otherwise useless ipod NANO for Christ sake and you cut it out of the iPad? what the hell? the iPad should have 2 cameras facing front and forward (or a single one on a hinge that you can flip to the opposite direction, though that would interrupt Apples one-piece sleekness it goes for in everything). Not having even one camera is a major fail.
Still can’t get over the name… It’s another “why are you making this harder than it needs to be?” moment. why IPad instead of the hundreds of better choices?
If you think the stupid name iPad sounds like a product for a bloody vagina, so did MadTV 5 years ago:
President Obama is set to give a rebuttal speech to Steve Job’s event later tonight.
UPDATE: the actress and writer of the sketch talk to CNN via…webcam for some reason…
An academic study has found that women with fair hair are more aggressive and confident than brunettes or redheads. This is because blondes attract more attention than other women as they are generally viewed by men as more attractive and so are used to getting their own way, the researchers claim.
The experts found that even those who dye their hair blonde take on natural blondes’ attributes – which might partly explain the longevity of Dolly Parton’s career too.
The country and western singer once said: ‘I’m not offended by all the dumb blonde jokes because I know I’m not dumb… and I also know that I’m not blonde.’
The study, which examined links between confidence and aggression, involved 156 female undergraduates in America.
(i have no idea what this is, but it had blonde hair so i posted it)
“Every comedian dreams of hosting the ‘Tonight Show’ and, for seven months, I got to,” O’Brien said near the end of his last show Friday night. “I did it my way, with people I love, and I do not regret a second.”
Viewers, however, may argue that what they saw was somehow different, at least up until the end, when all bets were off – and O’Brien’s ratings soared.
And his final show didn’t disappoint. It attracted more than 7 million viewers, according to preliminary numbers released by Nielsen, clobbering David Letterman’s 2.8 million viewers and Jimmy Kimmel’s 1.4 million.
Part of O’Brien’s exit talks with NBC centered on who gets the “intellectual property” rights to stuff he and his team created in his run there. One most often mentioned was the Masturbating Bear, a guy in a bear costume who, well, enough said.
The bear was a huge hit with O’Brien’s “Late Night” crowd, yet, wasn’t used on “Tonight” for the first time until Wednesday, when, frankly, it was too late.
The point is that while he’s losing the bear in the $45 million divorce with NBC, O’Brien has a chance to get something bigger back – his sense of humor.
“The networks never really counter-program in late-night,” Brad Adgate, a senior vice president at Horizon Media said of O’Brien’s options now that he left NBC. “I would offer his ‘Late Show’ [the next time]. To do something that’s exactly what Leno and Letterman are offering, I don’t know if that’s what viewers want.”
Fox officials have said they’re interested in O’Brien. And Fox, no doubt, can provide marketing muscle and reach. Anyone doubting that should look at the way Fox promotes “American Idol” to the point that you half-expect Simon Cowell to anchor the news alongside Ernie Anastos.
Farewell sweet prince… until the fall, when the parting agreement with NBC allows you back into our living rooms (or in my case: computer screen, several days after the original airing)…
O’Brien appropriately ended his last “Tonight Show” with an all-star rendition of “Freebird,” a song that includes the line, “Cause I’m as free as a bird now, and this bird you cannot change.”
“All I ask is one thing, and I’m asking this particularly of young people that watch. Please do not be cynical. I hate cynicism. For the record, it’s my least favorite quality. It doesn’t lead anywhere.
Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get.
But if you work really hard, and you’re kind, amazing things will happen. I’m telling you, amazing things will happen.”
As an entertainer, like most 15 to 30 year olds, I prefer the stylings of Conan O’Brien to that of the more formulaic Jay Leno, though I find both men funny and likable. However, while I’m naturally inclined to protest in the name of Team Coco, I can’t bring myself to it when it’s framed in the context of hating Jay Leno. During this whole controversy with the Late Night shuffling at NBC, I have never understood the hate directed at such a nice guy/possible evil genius like Leno. The dude is either a supervillian level manipulator who covers his tracks so well that he should be ruling a race of mutants somewhere or he’s the nice guy he appears to be and this isn’t his fault…
Watch this and tell me which you think is more likely…
In what scenario could Jay be the bad guy in all this? Clearly he has to be lying about something if he is so ruthless in his mad drive to boot all who dare oppose him so I’m really asking all you Leno haters: what do you think happened? and based on what? What makes you think that any events took place that were at all different than how Leno describes?
NBC booted Jay when he was at the top so they wouldn’t lose Conan, Conan failed to do nearly as well as Jay, Jays show goes on the air and also does poorly in the ratings, the affiliates complain and something has to be done. So what could have been done? Cut Leno loose from his NBC contract so he can go over to Fox opposite Conan and beat him in the ratings? that would be a blunder. Cut Conan from his NBC contract so he can go to Fox? that would be needlessly problematic too. So the suits came up with a plan to make the affiliates happy by killing the Jay Leno show, still keep Jay Leno at NBC by putting him back at his old time slot and still keep Conan both at NBC and at the Tonight Show and move it a half hour later. Sucky situation that NBC put itself into, but that was really their best option and there’s no way that can be pinned negatively on Leno, as just like he said: going from an hour show to a half hour is a demotion that he accepted because when you don’t perform well at a job, you need to be humbled a little.
The problem was that Conan gave a big “fuck that” to moving the Tonight show from 11:30pm to midnight, as it would then be “the Tomorrow Show”, and Conan is morally against that because of his Tonight Show idealism – or so he claims (more likely, it’s just that he would rather spill his white Irish blood with a rusty Italian fork before going back to the after-midnight wasteland he worked so hard to get OUT of for 17 years.
So now NBC is going to let Conan go and put Jay, the proven ratings winner, back at his old spot in the Tonight Show.
Seriously… what else should they have done? I’m really asking…
Seth Meyers explains it this way:
The 2nd question is that: if Leno isn’t the power hungry manipulator that he’s being falsely painted as, why would people who know better still dislike him so much? The answer is that he’s the Sean Hannity of late night: he’s a squeaky clean family man who is really nice both personally and professionally, he’s incredibly successful at what he does, and there are at least 3 others in his field who are viewed to have more talent and thus be more deserving of that success level. Nathan Rabin sums that sentiment up perfectly with the following:
He’s been married to the same woman for decades. He has amassed a vast fortune working nonstop yet never spends his money on anything other than his overflowing collection of sports cars. He seems devoid of angst.
He suffers from a terrible dearth of personal demons. Leno is so normal and functional that he’s practically a freak. That creeps out comedy writers who would rather have their heroes stagger into the gutter, penniless and filled with contempt for a world that has shunned them, than play yet another Indian casino to pay for that 32nd Maserati.
Bitterness is an almost universal trait among funny people. They hate it when their friends become successful. They grow positively apoplectic when success comes to someone they consider unworthy. The bigger the success, the bigger the resentment and Leno has attained a level of fame most comics can only dream about. Even more unforgivably, that success came at the expense of more worthy souls: first Letterman and now O’Brien.
As for Conans future, it’s pretty obvious Fox is his only option, and I think will be a good fit for him:
“In the end, Conan was appreciative of the steps NBC made to take care of his staff and crew, and decided to supplement the severance they were getting out of his own pocket,” his manager, Gavin Polone, told The Wall Street Journal. “Now he just wants to get back on the air as quickly as possible.”
O’Brien will be free to begin another TV job as soon as September, NBC said. There has been speculation on where he might go next. ABC (which airs “Nightline” and “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”) has said it wasn’t interested, while Fox, which lacks a network late-night show, expressed appreciation for his show — but nothing more.
This is so weird that I don’t even have a guess on how to explain it. Is Beck a closet liberal? Is he lying with this commentary because he knows that if he comes out against him then it will actually help Brown? Has he been lying about his ideology all this time and couldn’t hold back any more in this instance? None of these make any sense.
wtf? this is just creepy. It reeks of projection in a big bad way. I thought I was being cute by saying yesterday that he “pimped out his daughters” but Beck is being serious, which makes it retarded. Um, the dude wasn’t like “check out how fucking hot my daughters are! lol u guyz. who wants to tap this?? seriously. you can do it. i’ll let you. lol. can I watch tho?? lol, nah, jk. maybe! lol!!1”. Mark Levin, a conservative radio host who has criticize Beck before, kinda nails it here:
You know, the really ignorant thing about criticizing Brown is that in kidding around with his girls, it actually shows he is a good family man. Ask any guy who is a father of girls: doing something deliberately to provoke the “oh daddy!” squirm of embarrassment from the teenage daughters is something only a father with a good, comfortable relationship does (and he never misses a chance to do so).
If smearing Brown was a joke, I don’t think it was very funny. It’s very weird.
UPDATE: it gets even weirder… Beck responded to this with 4 minutes of saying “it was just a joke, you need to learn to take a joke, joke joke JOKE JOKE JUST A JOKE…. joke”. wtf? This is… not honest. Beck was making jokes… in service to the smearing of this Brown guy. No one was crying about making fun of a politician, as Glenn is responding to (he’s on some show where the host is named Jay, not that you’d know that from the uploaders logo being the only thing visible on this clip). The reason Becks rants about Brown being creepy and a person of poor judgment who can’t be trusted were weird and smears were not because Beck used colorful language like “this could end with a dead intern”, it was because Beck was serious about the criticisms behind the jokes and that is weird.
Even more on the “just a joke” brigade from Glenns own show (which reveals that this happened before the above clip and the show he was on was a local Boston radio show):
Tonights special election can be summed up in the following picture:
But if you want to hear the winners version, then here that is too:
“I go to Washington as the representative of no faction or interest, answering only to my conscience and to the people. I’ve got a lot to learn in the Senate, but I know who I am and I know who I serve.
“I’m Scott Brown,
“I’m from Wrentham,
“I drive a truck, and I am nobody’s senator but yours.”
The victory speech took place during MSNBC’s Countdown, where host Keith Olberman had just smeared Scott Brown as a bigot (based on nothing, of course) and all around baddie. Tears.
The clip is worth watching and skipping to the end (around the 8 minute mark) where the Senator elect pimps out his daughters on national tv. Yes, I’m serious, and yes it’s awesome. not only cuz it’s the ultimate “daaaad, ur embarrassing meeee” moment, but because they’re both doable. Announcing their availability was a pretty humorous move.
How the hell could a Republican win the seat held by Ted Kennedy, one of the most liberal Democrats ever over the span of 30 years? Well… See its not that the democrats are playing checkers and the republicans are playing chess. Its that the Republicans are playing chess and the democrats are in the nurses office because, once again, they’ve glued their balls to their thighs’
Does Jimmy Kimmel hate Jay Leno? and is Jay completely oblivious to it? It seems that way. and I have more evidence than just the recent appearance of Kimmel on the now canceled Jay Leno Show.
Lets step back to November 2008 when Jay Leno was kind enough to appear on Jimmy Kimmel Live. Normally, the rival late night show that came in 3rd place in the ratings having the 1st place ratings winner appear as a guest would be a really gracious thing. But… watch the clip and tell me if you don’t get the impression that Kimmel doesn’t like Jay very much. At first I thought it was Jimmy being Jimmy mixed with a little “I want the competition I’m losing to to quit for obvious reasons” humor, but under closer inspection… I’m thinking notsomuch.
Jay graces Kimmel with 2 off-the-cuff personal stories that are both well delivered and interesting to listen to. Kimmel repays these by first tweaking him on his childrens book being advertised by a 99 cent store and then asking why its not just a better idea to stay on the road all the time instead of being a television host.
Jump forward to 2010 during the turmoil going on at NBC’s late night hosts and Jimmy Kimmel takes advantage by doing his entire show as Jay Leno. Awesome idea, funny execution – but look closely… is it all fun and games? or is this less of a silly jab and more of a satirical attack because Kimmel really thinks Jay is an asshole?
If that left you with any doubt, there is exhibit C… Seemingly to show grace in response to Kimmels gag on Leno and express that there were no hard feelings between the two, Kimmel was invited on The Jay Leno Show for the 10 and 10 segment (the weakest bit in the shows box of tricks). It’s friggin brutal…
Some of the riffs are just that but then others reek of an insulting tone. Even Kimmels body language tips the viewer off that he thinks he’s talking to an asshole, but is being somewhat civil because they’re on tv. It’s very awkward in between the hilarity.
Are they low blows though? “The best prank I ever pulled was I told a guy that—five years from now—I’m gonna give you my show. And then when the five years came, I gave it to him, and then I took it back almost instantly.” is a funny line, but it’s not accurate. No one has reported that Leno demanded his show back or had such a clause in his contract or threw any fits or anything like that.
The resentment should be at NBC, who has both Leno and Conan under strict and specific contracts. It wasn’t Jay Leno that said “I’m bored with the Tonight Show – hey Conan, do you want it? – oh, actually, never mind, I want that shit back”; it was NBC who said “hey Leno, we don’t want to lose Conan so we’re kicking you out but not releasing you from your NBC contract. we’re gonna stick you in at 10pm and put Conan in your job – oh, actually, never mind, that failed. we’re putting you back at 11:30”.
So what’s the deal? Why is Kimmel hating on Jay? and why does Jay seem so oblivious to it? It seems so cruel. am I missing something?
The resentment should be at NBC, who has both Leno and Conan under strict and specific contracts. It wasn’t Jay Leno that said “I’m bored with the Tonight Show – hey Conan, do you want it? – oh, actually, never mind, I want that shit back”; it was NBC who said “hey Leno, we don’t want to lose Conan so we’re kicking you out but not releasing you from your NBC contract. we’re gonna stick you in at 10pm and put Conan in your job – oh, actually, never mind, that failed. we’re putting you back at 11:30”.