Things That Happened On Earth This Week (1/9/17)

This week Gabriela Brandao, a makeup artist from Brazil, noticed that her great grandma prays to a tiny figure of Saint Anthony every single day.

There's just one problem– the figure in question is not of Saint Anthony, but rather of Elrond, the elf-lord played by Hugo Weaving in The Lord Of The Rings and The Hobbit movies. Whoops!

Eh, something tells me Granny gets about the same results praying to Elrond as she would Saint Anthony.

This week poor George Lucas revealed he's struggling to find a city to host his proposed Lucas Museum Of Narrative Art.

According to Lucas, hes willing to foot the entire bill to construct the $1.5 BILLION dollar museum (which he can do after selling Star Wars to Disney for $4 billion a few years ago), and it won't cost the target city a single dime.

Did you get that? HE WANTS TO GIVE AWAY A $1.5 BILLION DOLLAR MUSEUM!!!

So far he's approached Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles as the site of the museum, but they've all balked at his generous offer. Chicago supposedly rejected the proposed museum because Lucas wanted to build it in a location that's currently a parking lot where football fans gather for tailgate parties. Well, I can certainly see how something as important as that would outweigh a free museum! Other cities felt a museum celebrating popular art "wasn't a worthwhile endeavor."

The museum.actually sounds pretty cool, as it would feature samples celebrating the history of film, comics, illustration, storyboards, set design, props and other forms of narrative art, from Lucas' own collection as well as other sources. Unfortunately we may never get to see and enjoy these many pieces from his collection.

Hey, George, forget those stuffy old big cities. I know a place that'd probably love to have a free $1.5 billion dollar museum– my home town of Evansville, Indiana! We've even got a giant empty field right next to the highway where the city knocked down the old civic center and was supposed to build a new park. Give me a call, OK?

This week Terry Thornton, a spokeswoman for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitations (in other words, a secretary at the prison) announced that notorious cult leader Charles Manson "cannot be described as a model prisoner."

There's only one comment one can make regarding this story– "No sh*t, lady!" Can anyone possibly be surprised by this startling revelation?

Thornton says that Manson, now eighty two, has been cited for over one hundred violations during his more than four decades in prison, including possession of a numerous weapons, threatening staff, assault and owning a cellphone. 

According to retired LA County prosecutor Stephen Kay, Manson often spends his days making voodoo dolls of guards and other inmates and sticks needles in them (um... where's he getting the needles?). Manson is reportedly particularly nasty to female guards, as he has absolutely zero respect for women, seeing them only as things to be used.

My favorite part of this story– in 1982, prison guards found a nylon rope and a hot air balloon catalog in Manson's cell. Apparently he planned to order a gigantic balloon and escape by floating over the prison walls. Isn't that how Lex Luthor escaped in Superman II?

This week the Washington Post's Express newspaper magazine ran a cover featuring a story on an upcoming womens' rally. The cover featured a crowd of tiny women forming a large gender icon.

Overall it's not a bad cover design. There's just one problem. That's the MALE symbol, not the female.

The Post hastily issued a tweet, apologizing profusely for the mix up.

Honestly, they needn't have bothered. I don't think they should have said anything. I've been seeing those symbols my entire life, and I couldn't tell you which was which if my life depended on it. I know damned good and well that no one else knows which is which either. I'm betting if the Post had just kept its mouth shut, no one would have ever noticed, and life would have gone on just fine.

For the record, here's what the cover should have looked like.

This actually happened last month, but I busy then, and it's worth a mention.

On December 13, 2016, singer Dolly Parton hosted a telethon called Smoky Mountains Rise: A Benefit For The My People Fund. It was a charity event to raise money for the Gatlinburg area, which was ravaged by wildfires in late November.

The telethon was broadcast on GAC, AXS-TV and RFD, whatever those are, along with the Heartland Network. Dozens of celebrities performed in the telethon, including Kenny Rogers, Hank Williams Jr., Reba, Taylor Swift, Kenny Chesney, Cyndi Lauper (?) and Paul Simon.

Amazingly, Dolly and her pals managed to raise over $9 MILLION dollars for the Gatlinburg relief fund! NINE MILLION DOLLARS! And the telethon only lasted three hours! If my math's right, that's three million an hour! 

Just think how much she could have raised if it was a twenty four hour telethon! She could have rebuilt Gatlinburg and shaved a good chunk off the national debt!