Archive for December, 2011


Even Movie Income Down

Filed Under: Television/Movies by Wayne Hall — Leave a comment
December 13, 2011

Usually in a bad economy like we’ve been experiencing the past couple of years, people turn to the movie theater to get away from it all.

Well, looks like things are so bad that people can’t even do that!

Here’s the story from the AP:

>>LOS ANGELES (AP) — Hollywood’s holidays are off to a dreadful start: Fewer people went to the movies the last two weekends than during the box-office hush that followed the Sept. 11 attacks 10 years ago.

Domestic revenues tumbled to a 2011 low of about $77 million this weekend, when the star-filled, holiday-themed romance New Year’s Eve debuted at No. 1 with a weak $13.7 million, according to studio estimates Sunday.

It’s the worst weekend in more than three years, since the weekend after Labor Day in 2008, when revenues amounted to $67.6 million, according to box-office tracker Hollywood.com. And it comes after an $81 million total a week earlier that had been this year’s previous low.

“It’s unbelievable how bad it is,” said Hollywood.com analyst Paul Dergarabedian.

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Thieves Turn To Stealing Tubas

Filed Under: Stupid Criminals by Wayne Hall — Leave a comment
December 12, 2011

I’d heard of people stealing copper to sell, but tubas?

Here’s the story from the CBS website in Los Angeles:

>>LOS ANGELES (CBS) — Officials say a rash of recent burglaries has left them searching for tuba thieves.

South Gate High School music teacher Ruben Gonzalez Jr. told the Los Angeles Times that thieves broke into his band room and took only tubas. Losses included an upright concert tuba and a silver sousaphone — or marching-band tuba — worth a combined $13,000.

Several weeks earlier, thieves stole eight sousaphones from Compton’s Centennial High School.

Last week, someone stole Huntington Park High School’s only tuba. The other instrument was stolen earlier in the year.

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The Second Holiday Music Weekend Of December!

Filed Under: Christmas/The Holiday Season, Music by Wayne Hall — Leave a comment
December 10, 2011

Time for more great holiday music from the playlists on my iPod Classic!

First up this weekend is Mariah Carey‘s “One Child” from her second seasonal CD. I like this live version a lot:

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Don’t Breathe Too Loudly Here!

Filed Under: Beliefs by Wayne Hall — Leave a comment
December 9, 2011

I continue to think that stress is building more and more in our lives.

This story from a Los Angeles CBS station seems to back that perception up:

>>NORTHRIDGE (CBS) — A video of CSUN student behaving erratically in the university’s library has gone viral after another student posted it on Facebook.

Monroe Ashley claims the young woman in the video melted down because she thought other students in the library were breathing too loudly as they studied for finals.

“Okay this isn’t a scary movie, you need to calm your dramatic a** down,” someone can be heard telling the upset student at the beginning of the video, which was first picked up by Gawker.

The woman, who was walking back to her study area, then turns around and spits out,” “Don’t you tell me that. It’s rude and disrespectful, okay? It’s finals right now. Please, respect!”

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Voters Leaving Both Major Political Parties

Filed Under: Beliefs by Wayne Hall — Leave a comment
December 8, 2011

With the country going down the tubes economically and neither political party doing anything about it, it’s easy to understand why voters would want to stop being either a Democrat or a Republican.

Here’s the story from the WMAL website:

>>(WASHINGTON) — President Obama’s uphill battle to re-election is getting steeper.

A report released Wednesday by the centrist think-tank Third Way showed that more than 825,000 voters in eight key battleground states have fled the Democratic Party since Obama won election in 2008.

“The numbers show that Democrats’ path to victory just got harder,” said Lanae Erickson, the report’s co-author.  “We are seeing both an increase in independents and a decrease in Democrats and that means the coalition they have to assemble is going to rely even more on independents in 2012 than it did in 2008.”

Amid frustrating partisan gridlock and unprecedentedly low party-approval ratings, the number of voters registering under a major party is falling fast, but it is also falling disproportionately.

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Vandals Hit Home’s Christmas Decorations

Filed Under: Christmas/The Holiday Season, Unusual News Stories by Wayne Hall — Leave a comment
December 6, 2011

Talk about your holiday Scrooge!

Check out the story from the website for the Sacramento CBS station:

>>SACRAMENTO (CBS13) — A family who lives in the Land Park neighborhood of Sacramento has a message for the people vandalized their Christmas decorations, and it’s written right on their front lawn.

“You can steal our decorations, but not our holiday spirit.”

It was a cold dose of reality for Kenneth Cook-McKnight’s 4-year-old son after a real-life Grinch destroyed their Christmas display.

“He said to me that ‘robbers came and took our Santa,’” Cook-McKnight said. “That’s a tough lesson to learn at 4 years old.”

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The First Holiday Music Weekend Of December!

Filed Under: Christmas/The Holiday Season, Music by Wayne Hall — Leave a comment
December 3, 2011

I’m a BIG fan of holiday music, so I’ve been assembling my playlists for a while now. I plan on sharing some of my favorite seasonal songs here each weekend until we hit 2012!

First up is Alan Jackson singing one of his best holiday songs, “Let It Be Christmas:”

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Was This A ‘Real’ Stimulus Package?

Filed Under: Batman, Unusual News Stories by Wayne Hall — Leave a comment
December 2, 2011

“I’m giving away free money!” shouted Jack Nicholson‘s Joker in the first Batman movie with Michael Keaton starring as the Dark Knight. People often want to get something for nothing, and it happened recently in a town in Pennsylvania.

Here’s that intriguing story at the Pittsburgh Post Gazette website:

>>Thousands of dollars went missing this afternoon after the doors of a bank courier van opened, causing bags of money to spill out onto the road and people to gather in a frenzy.

Upper St. Clair police Lt. James Englert said people had pulled alongside the road and were trying to collect money when police arrived on Route 19 near Boyce Road to help a driver from Fidelity Courier Services in Sharon, Pa., collect the cash at about 1 p.m.

The courier driver stopped after another driver flagged him down and told him cash was flying out of his car. Police suspect all of the cash, which came in various denominations, was lost in that intersection.

Police recovered about $400, but Lt. Englert said several bags containing “well into six figures” remained missing Wednesday night.

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Man Shot By Dog

Filed Under: Unusual News Stories by Wayne Hall — Leave a comment
December 1, 2011

There’s an old axiom in the news business that goes something like this: If a dog bites a man, that’s pretty common. But if a man bites a dog, that’s news!

Well, something along these lines happened when a hunter’s dog actually shot him! Here’s the story from KSL.com in Utah:

>>BRIGHAM CITY — It wasn’t his dog’s bark or bite that had a Brigham City man concerned, it was his aim.

A man was recovering Wednesday after being shot over the weekend by his dog.

A 46-year-old Brigham City man and a friend were duck hunting Sunday about 8:30 a.m. on the north end of the Great Salt Lake near the bird refuge, about 10 miles west of Brigham City.

The two had their canoe-like boat in a shallow marsh area when the man got out of the boat to either set up or collect decoys. He laid his 12-gauge shotgun across the bow of the boat, said Box Elder County Sheriff’s Chief Deputy Kevin Potter.

After the man got out of the boat, a dog inside the vessel jumped up on the bow and stepped on the gun. The gun fired and shot the man in the buttocks.

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