Debbie Gibson was before my time, but apparently she was some kind of sensation in the 1980’s. But Gibson recently talked to Fox News about how at just 16 the “Foolish Beat” singer was exposed to what Fox calls, “the very sinister side of showbiz”:
“It is very disheartening that there are so many older men that prey on young performers,” Gibson told Tarts in an exclusive interview. “The younger you are, the more innocent you are, the more wholesome your image is, the weirder the fans become in terms of older men wanting to corrupt little girls. Even the way the paparazzi stalk the younger artists is very different from following around adults – I find that very disturbing.”
But what is even more disturbing than dirty male “fans” was the fact that Gibson’s own peeps were often the ones on the prey.
“There would be older male record executives trying to take me to parties by myself but my mom always be like ‘she’s a sixteen year old girl, she’s not going into an atmosphere with over 21-year-olds and alcohol!’ I hadn’t had enough life experience for those situations,” Gibson admitted.
At no time in the article does Gibson mention pedophilia, which is sexual attraction toward pre-pubescent children.
Sexual attraction toward post-pubescent teenagers is called “being male” and pursuing a sexual relationship with a post pubescent teenager under 18 is called “being a sleaze”. Neither however are examples of “pedophilia”, and Gibson doesn’t seem to be responsible for the inaccurate word usage.
The term appears to be an editorial insertion by FoxNews.com column author Hollie McKay.
Random video to put the “who the eff is Debbie Gibson?” question into context for this story:
There’s no buzzkill quite like getting a friend request on Facebook from Mommy and Daddy dearest. Not to mention the philosophical quandaries that result: Do I accept? If I accept, do they go on limited profile? If they’re on limited profile, what do they get to see? Will they bug me and my friends? For many, the easier solution is just to bail on Facebook entirely.
Across the country, Facebook users are contemplating similar questions when they log onto their accounts. More and more moms and dads are signing onto Facebook to keep up with their offspring. Not only are they friending (or attempting to friend) their sons and daughters, they’re friending their sons’ and daughters’ friends.
Some, like Matt, take the requests in stride. He ultimately friended his dad. Others are less sanguine, voicing their dismay via online groups that decry parental intrusion and offer tips on how to screen out mom and dad. (“Just go onto their computers and delete their accounts.” “Just don’t add them as a friend or any1 that is a co-worker with ur parents duh.”) Even parenting experts are getting involved, offering their own tips on proper Facebook etiquette.
In September 2005, Facebook opened its doors to high-schoolers, then in September 2006, to all comers — and coming they are.
That month, about 75,000 active users on the site were 35 or older, accounting for fewer than 1% of all active users, according to data provided by Facebook. By August 2007, the number shot up 4,700% to 3.6 million active users 35 and older. That accounts for about 9% of active users.
Living in the world without the usual social barriers between generations is causing a little discomfort for some and downright angst for others.
“Think about what it would be like if your mom or dad enrolled in your high school class,” says Steve Jones, communications professor at the University of Illinois, Chicago. “They don’t belong there. That’s the same feeling (children) have: ‘This is ours. This belongs to me. This is not for parents.’ ”
The generation that grew up with the Internet has “this sense of ‘This is not something you’ll ever get. You won’t understand what we’re doing. You’re going to ruin it. We’ll never be ourselves if there is an adult around here.’ “
At Facebook.com, I eyed the home page (“Everyone can join”) with suspicion. I doubted Facebook’s sincerity. What could a site created by a student who was born three years after I started mispronouncing “Henri Cartier-Bresson” want with me?
Realizing that these were cynical, mocking thoughts cheered me — I felt edgier already — and gave me the courage to join.
After I got my Profile page, the first thing I did was to search for other members — my daughter and her friends — to ask them to be my friends.
Shockingly, quite a few of them — the friends, not the daughter — accepted my invitation and gave me access to their Profiles, including their interests, hobbies, school affiliations and in some cases, physical whereabouts.
Pretty soon, Facebook and I really opened up. I needed it constantly. I started to check the site as much as my e-mail. I shared my cell phone, address, gory details about my incompetence in the kitchen and every photo in which I don’t look supremely unattractive (my friends’ appearances notwithstanding). Browsing my friends’ profiles became a habit. Facebook is my drug. My hub. My swirling vortex of social chaos. It lets me stay in touch on my own time, on my own terms. I sail its pristine blue and white pages with the wind at my back and a clear view of my social landscape. What was life before Facebook? Did I ever actually keep a real live photo album? Call friends at home — on land lines? Send letters?
Forget e-mail and the Internet. Without Facebook, I’d feel … shipwrecked.
First Ed McMahon cashed his final check, then God turned the Fawcett off and shortly afterward the same day, Michael Jacksons heart just beat it.
All media is a contest and thus every event has a winner and a loser.
WINNER: Ed McMahon.
He had the good sense to die when there wasn’t really any important news going on like a revolution in the middle east or whatever, so he soaked up his fair share of the obit spotlight. Where as poor Farrah got totally upstaged by the Jack attack, the lesser culturally significant McMahon received lots of replays of old footage montaged under fond memories.
LOSER: Governor Mark Sanford.
If only he had waited just one day to confess to the world that he wasn’t really hiking on an Appalachian trail, but was really digging an Argentinean hole (by which I mean “), he would have slipped under the radar in the news cycle. In fact, if he had waited that one day, his press conference where he confessed to banging a girl in south america would have literally been cut-off by all the channels covering it live and the reporters there in front of him would have all scrambled away to go cover the more important story of Jacksons passing and just ask the Governor to release a statement to be put on page C9 later on.
“I’m ready (to die), but I’m going to wait for the movie” – 10 year old girl with cancer too sick to see UP. Pixar flies a DVD to her home. She dies 7 hours later.
When Colby Curtin saw the Dream Works 3-D movie “Monsters Vs. Aliens” she was impressed by the previews for “Up.” “It was from then on, she said, ‘I have to see that movie. It is so cool,’” a family friend told the OC Register:
Two days later Colby’s health began to worsen. On June 4 her mother asked a hospice company to bring a wheelchair for Colby so she could visit a theater to see “Up.” However, the weekend went by and the wheelchair was not delivered, Lisa Curtin said.
By June 9, Colby could no longer be transported to a theater and her family feared she would die without having seen the movie.
At that point, Orum, who desperately wanted Colby to get her last wish, began to cold-call Pixar and Disney to see if someone could help.
Pixar has an automated telephone answering system, Orum said, and unless she had a name of a specific person she wanted to speak to, she could not get through. Orum guessed a name and the computer system transferred her to someone who could help, she said.
Pixar officials listened to Colby’s story and agreed to send someone to Colby’s house the next day with a DVD of “Up,” Orum recalled.
She immediately called Lisa Curtin, who told Colby.
“Do you think you can hang on?” Colby’s mother said.
“I’m ready (to die), but I’m going to wait for the movie,” the girl replied.
And she did…
“When I watched it, I had really no idea about the content of the theme of the movie,” said Curtin, 46. “I just know that word ‘Up’ and all of the balloons and I swear to you, for me it meant that (Colby) was going to go up. Up to heaven.”
Pixar officials declined to comment on the story or name the employees involved.
The content and theme of the movie, consequently is about death, loneliness, unfulfilled dreams and drive to complete long time ambition before your life is over.
Brief synopsis of this item in the first few seconds of this clip from the Register:
THE MOVIE
At about 12:30 p.m. the Pixar employee came to the Curtins’ home with the DVD.
He had a bag of stuffed animals of characters in the movie and a movie poster. He shared some quirky background details of the movie and the group settled in to watch Up.
Colby couldn’t see the screen because the pain kept her eyes closed so her mother gave her a play-by-play of the film.
At the end of the film, the mother asked if her daughter enjoyed the movie and Colby nodded yes, Lisa Curtin said.
The employee left after the movie, taking the DVD with him, Lynch said.
“He couldn’t have been nicer,” said Lynch who watched the movie with the family. “His eyes were just welled up.”
After the movie, Colby’s dad, Michael Curtin, who is divorced from Lisa Curtin, came to visit.
Colby died with her mom and dad nearby at 9:20 p.m.
Among the Up memorabilia the employee gave Colby was an “adventure book” – a scrap book the main character’s wife used to chronicle her journeys.
“I’ll have to fill those adventures in for her,” Lisa Curtin said.
In UP, 78 year old Carl Fredrickson buys a plane ticket for his wife and himself to visit South America like they always promised each other they would some day, but she dies shortly after the purchase.
UP is the story of Carl going to extreme lengths to fulfill his promise to his late wife after finding her “Adventure Book” from their childhood, so he may fill in the blank pages with the adventures in South America they never got to have…
And FOX could option them since they own the rights and allowed the cable deal, but WHO CARES – bottom line is FUTURAMA IS RETURNING TO TV NEXT YEAR!
Not a day after I finished my marathon of all 72 episodes of the Futurama series followed by the 4 direct to internet pirating DVD movies do I go to youtube for an embed code to blog about and see a commenter claim that the series is coming BACK. and what’s this? the comment is only minutes old?
Sure enough, the claim is true. The NY Times reports: Past Emmy winner “Futurama” got axed by Fox network in 2003 after five seasons, but it’s developed such a strong cult following since then on DVD and TV reruns that Comedy Central has picked up the show.” – I immediately called my source at Viacom (parent company of Comedy Central) to ask about this and they said that Cartoon Network tried to grab it but lost a bidding war and also it is not out of the question that FOX, who owns the rights to the show, could air these new episodes on the Fox Network first before sending them to Comedy cable.
“A spokesperson for 20th Century Fox Television confirms that the cable net has ordered 26 new episodes of Matt Groening and David X. Cohen’s late, great animated series to air beginning in 2010,” reports Mike Ausiello at EW.com
Shocker: Mediocrely (not a word, but you can figure it out) animated movie with ugly characters voiced by C list actors in an unfamiliar storyline and a title that sounds like “Dildo”, not a box office hit.
While the scrappy determination that led independent animation house Fathom Studios to bring an animated feature to the big screen is admirable, the box-office results were not so commendable. It turns out that Delgo bares the distinction of having the worst wide opening in box-office history. Over the weekend, it earned just $511,920 in 2,150 theaters for a dismal per-theater average of $237. The record was previously held by last year’s parking-garage thriller P2, which bowed to $2.1 million in 2,131 venues.
Several factors play into Delgo’s poor theatrical performance. The film was essentially self-distributed through Freestyle Releasing, a for-hire distributor, a costly endeavor which apparently left little money for marketing as the film slipped into theaters with a whisper. The producers made good use of free publicity by stringing out their casting announcements with a series of press releases a few years ago, but there was little ink for the movie in the days leading up to the release. Reviews were largely unkind, and it didn’t help that it had to compete with big-studio animated releases Bolt from Disney and Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa from DreamWorks Animation, which are still drawing in family audiences.
Hot on the trail of the story of a 30-year-old pedophile who posed as a 12-year-old boy and got away with the deception for two years in a local Arizona public school system comes THIS one about 33 year old mom posing as her 15 year old daughter so she could be a cheerleader.
Oh ya. and it’s my friend Lauren. I think.
I’m still looking into the science of this, but it appears as though Lauren’s future self (she’s 22 currently), realizing she’s wasted her life in a downward spiral of alcoholism, drugs and a shotgun marriage, tried to regain her youth any way she could and somehow through her experiments, accidentally exited her own time zone and entered ours. Disappointed at the mistake in her effort to turn back the clock, she did the next best thing and tried to relive her youth from when she was a cheerleader at our highschool and I was the dude that graduated 2 years ago but still comes to the football games so he can score with her.
Left: 33 year old “Wendy Brown” (future-Lauren). Right: 22 year old “Lauren” (present day Lauren)
More:
A 33-year-old woman who enrolled at Ashwaubenon High School posing as her 15-year-old daughter and practiced with the cheerleading squad told police she was trying to relive her high school years. Wendy Brown was charged Friday in Brown County Court with identity theft, a felony, after using her daughter’s documentation to become a student at the school. Officials said the woman stopped attending school after the first day, prompting a truancy investigation and leading to the discovery of the woman’s true identity. Brown enrolled using her daughter’s official transcript, Social Security card, birth certificate and other personal identification, according to court documents. School officials and teachers said the student appeared older but had a teenage-like demeanor. Brown had told teachers and some school officials that she and her mother had to leave Nevada to get away from her father. “In school you see a lot of children who look older and dress older,” said Don Penza, liaison officer. “At what point do you say, ‘You’re lying’?”
Read More at DailyGut cuz that’s where I saw the picture
Time mag has this interesting photo essay that covers college campuseses (campi?) from the cinder block 30’s where the male dorm would communicate with the segregate chicks through light flashing morse code to the campus of today that features Coldstone Creameries, 7/11’s and rock climbing…
Here are the 3 best from the 15 picture slideshow:
The 1950s and 60s saw a surge in political and civil rights debates in America, with the college campus taking center stage in the debate over equality. In 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson outlined his plans for affirmative action during a graduation speech at the historically all-black Howard University, above. Meanwhile, massive state and federal spending sparked a boom in dorm construction, as minorities and disadvantaged students began flocking to campuses nationwide. In 1958, the University of California’s nine campuses could house only 2,900 students; by 1970, they had residential space for nearly 20,000.
Though La Vista del Campo Norte seems at first glance more like a hotel than a dorm, Bill Bayless, CEO of American Campus Communities, says these buildings aren’t just real estate opportunities: “Our properties are not Animal House. There are no kegs out by the pool.” Nowadays, students demand privacy, technology and the same amenities they grew up with, he says. “It’s what the student expects when they leave Mom and Dad’s.”
Not everyone agrees with the luxury-dorm fad. At Berea College in Kentucky, school administrators have adopted a unique approach to the problem of strangled budgets and coddled kids: Dorms are furnished by the college crafts workshops, cafeteria food is provided by the school’s farm, and students are required to work 10 hours a week in various campus jobs. “It’s about identity and the culture you want to develop,” says Gus Gerassimides, the college’s assistant vice president for student life. “Ultimately every community has choices to make. It’s who you choose to be.”
AOL Food lays the slamdangle down on McDonald’s Third Pounder Angus Mushroom and Swiss today.
Grade: F
Our food editor’s husband proclaimed that he’d just had the worst burger in all the land, so naturally, we had no choice but to sample for ourselves. Turns out he was wrong. It was in fact the absolute, most extremely, terribly, awfully horrible burger in the known universe.
The industrial mushrooms had the flavor and mouth appeal of a sneaker insole, while earwaxen Swiss cheese and globbed-on mayo formed a thick slick which was, truth be told, necessary in order to moisten the throat sufficiently to swallow the spongy gray mass that was being hawked as an Angus patty.
Bad things happen when McD’s tries to get schmancy, and they beefed this one badly.
I don’t eat no mushrooms on no burgers and swiss doesn’t go on meat (or, eh, anything), so I’ve never tried it, but dang…
How stupid do they think we are? How is it possible to simultaneously wean ourselves from oil and the carbon dioxide emissions that stems from it, keep oil cheap and abundant, drill for oil absolutely nowhere, and sue oil companies without hurting consumers? Oh, and don’t forget to slap a “windfall profits” tax on the oil companies just for good measure.
It’s not possible to have all these “good” things together. Instead, we are seeing the consequences of following the anti-oil policies being pushed in Congress. Gas prices have gone through the roof, oil supplies for the future are threatened, and if the lawsuits against “big oil” go through exploration for future supplies will dry up leaving the world with little option but to get poorer over the next few years.
And the unpleasant fact is that a poorer world will be dirtier and less healthy for human beings, and not so great for nature either. Unless we want to concede that the earth would be better off completely without human beings—and just who would judge it so anyway?—then it is time to recognize that both human beings and the earth will be better off the wealthier we become. And for the foreseeable future, that wealthier future will depend upon drilling for oil.
Congress has been standing in the way of that better, wealthier future. By restricting prospecting for and drilling for oil within the United States, Congress has been keeping oil prices higher than they otherwise would be. And while high oil prices will help wean America off of oil eventually, our current experience shows that in the short run they just hurt consumers and help push our economy into a 1970’s-like tailspin that will make Americans less, rather than more environmentally conscious.
Oil prices will only drop if oil supplies can increase, and oil supplies can increase only if oil companies are allowed to drill for oil and be handsomely compensated for extracting and selling it.
Congress should be opening up the continental shelf and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for oil extraction instead of raking oil company executives over the coals for not selling their product below world market price.
Consumers will benefit only if oil companies can extract, sell, and handsomely profit from the sale of oil that is currently under ground. No amount of complaining by Congressmen can change the laws of economics that makes that so.
Debbie Gibson was before my time, but apparently she was some kind of sensation in the 1980’s. But Gibson recently talked to Fox News about how at just 16 the “Foolish Beat” singer was exposed to what Fox calls, “the very sinister side of showbiz”: 
At no time in the article does Gibson mention pedophilia, which is sexual attraction toward pre-pubescent children.
