GOOGLE made a BOO-BOO... bad Google...

It was a human error and I forgive you. Besides that, I had more important jobs to do like shampooing my beige rug. So, I was dusting and moving furniture at the time in question, Your Honor. I had absolutely nothing to do with it and suffered no harm from the misdeed in question. (Now, there is a question of how this will affect your upper management bonuses in the new fiscal year. Can we stimulate your package?)

From: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/

"This site may harm your computer" on every search result?!?!

WTF???

1/31/2009 09:02:00 AM

If you did a Google search between 6:30 a.m. PST and 7:25 a.m. PST this morning, you likely saw that the message "This site may harm your computer" accompanied each and every search result. This was clearly an error, and we are very sorry for the inconvenience caused to our users.

What happened? Very simply, human error. Google flags search results with the message "This site may harm your computer" if the site is known to install malicious software in the background or otherwise surreptitiously. We do this to protect our users against visiting sites that could harm their computers. We maintain a list of such sites through both manual and automated methods. We work with a non-profit called StopBadware.org to come up with criteria for maintaining this list, and to provide simple processes for webmasters to remove their site from the list.

We periodically update that list and released one such update to the site this morning. Unfortunately (and here's the human error), the URL of '/' was mistakenly checked in as a value to the file and '/' expands to all URLs. Fortunately, our on-call site reliability team found the problem quickly and reverted the file. Since we push these updates in a staggered and rolling fashion, the errors began appearing between 6:27 a.m. and 6:40 a.m. and began disappearing between 7:10 and 7:25 a.m., so the duration of the problem for any particular user was approximately 40 minutes.

Thanks to our team for their quick work in finding this. And again, our apologies to any of you who were inconvenienced this morning, and to site owners whose pages were incorrectly labelled. We will carefully investigate this incident and put more robust file checks in place to prevent it from happening again.

Thanks for your understanding.

Marissa M.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

You're welcome.

LUVYA GOOGLE -- especially the Martin Luther Day image! Excellent!

Have you seen Clint Eastwood's performance in "Gran Torino"?

My husband and I were vacationing in Palm Springs, California from Dec. 13 to Jan. 3, so we missed many film previews. We did manage to see Milk, Doubt, Slumdog Millionaire, and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. But this is an interesting piece I'm happy to pass along. EK

======================================================

The Curious Case of Gran Torino

By S. JAMES SNYDER / NEW YORK 1/26/2009



Settling a score with himself, Clint Eastwood in Gran Torino.

This year's Oscar storylines have already been etched in stone — Mickey Rourke as the comeback kid, Slumdog Millionaire as the art house wunderkind, Milk as the timely social commentary (released three weeks after Proposition 8 passed in California). Yet while the critics have been fussing over wrestlers and Mumbai quiz shows, audiences have been flocking to Gran Torino — an Oscar outcast that's been doing laps around the competition at the box office. At some point this week, the Clint Eastwood drama will pass the $100 million mark, easily surpassing the box office receipts brought in by not only some of the Oscar front-runners (Slumdog Millionaire now totals $56 million, Milk $21 million) but also by Eastwood's last Oscar winner, Million Dollar Baby.

"It's an amazing story that no one's really talking about," says Paul Dergarabedian, box office analyst with Hollywood.com. "For a movie starring a 78-year-old to have a $29 million opening weekend in wide release, and in the process to beat out the likes of Anne Hathaway in Bride Wars, I don't know if I've seen that before ... it's a testament to how people still feel about Clint Eastwood."

Originally released Dec. 12 in only six theaters, and hyped by Warner Brothers as a major awards contender, the film won Eastwood early recognition by the National Board of Review as Best Actor, but that's been the exception to the rule. At the glitzy Golden Globes, Gran Torino was mentioned in only one category: original song. When the Oscar nominees were unveiled last week, Gran Torino was shut out of the competition completely.

It is certainly one of the least likely blockbusters in some time. Starring Eastwood as a crotchety widower living in Detroit's Highland Park neighborhood — a veteran of the Korean War who eyes his Hmong neighbors suspiciously and launches into racist tirades when provoked — Gran Torino was filmed on location in only five weeks, on a slim budget of $35 million. The majority of its Hmong characters were played by non-professionals. In addressing such tumultuous issues as racial strife, gang warfare and urban blight, it can hardly be categorized as escapist entertainment.

"The film confronts issues that are very timely, from racial violence to economic struggles. It's a working-class world that we may not see all that often in blockbusters, but it's something a good many people can relate to," says Karie Bible, an analyst with Exhibitor Relations. Surely Eastwood could not have predicted, when he first set out to make the film, that Detroit's economic woes would be making national headlines by the time Gran Torino arrived in theaters (his character is a retired Ford assembly plant worker), nor that the movie would be launching into wide release the same day the U.S. government released the darkest unemployment report in 16 years.

Audiences, though, have embraced the film's realism. Bible's firm projects the title will soar north of $150 million before it leaves theaters — making Gran Torino the biggest haul for an Eastwood film ever. By then, it may well pass the box office totals posted last year by such summer tent poles as Mamma Mia!, The Incredible Hulk and Sex and the City. "Slumdog and The Wrestler are these Cinderella stories that have overshadowed Gran Torino, and yet here is another Cinderella story all its own," Dergarabedian says. "You look at Eastwood, and here he is, directing Changeling which got Angelina Jolie her Oscar nomination, and starring in this blockbuster where he proves again that he's one of the biggest box office stars. To become a leading man again at 78, I think it's a story that's unparalleled in cinema."

Eastwood has been quoted as saying that this could mark his last outing as an actor. If that's true, he will be going out on top.

(Publicity and promotion by Ellen Kimball, Accessible Media Services, Portland, Oregon, through her blog and other review sites. )
January 30, 2009

Finally, here are four 1972 articles about Larry King and me

Many of you know that I dated Larry King in the 1950s when we were both young broadcasters in Florida. Decades later, while divorced with two toddlers in 1971 and struggling to survive, I heard his plea for doughnuts and coffee, and dropped in on him at the studio. He didn't remember me, but he was funny and the guests were interesting. I found myself captivated by the music, comedy, and guests in a during a very difficult time of my life. Larry made me laugh, and I came to while away the hours as his unpaid "screener" -- the person who talks to the callers before they go on the air to get their names and suggested topics.

Then, it was a December night in 1971 when Larry was arrested for a failed financial deal. If you are curious, here's the link with his photo that day:

http://www.mugshots.com/Celebrity/Larry+King.htm

Larry's marital and financial dealings are well documented on the Internet at Wikipedia. I have added some of my own knowledge, as have others. It took Larry years to reestablish his career, and I never saw or heard from him again.

Meanwhile, I was chosen to substitute for Larry while the WIOD program manager, Elliot "Biggie" Nevins, searched for a male replacement.

From the archives of the Miami newspapers in 1972, I have assembled more information to back up my story for the sake of accuracy. I wish it had been otherwise, but Larry King's misfortunes were responsible for me becoming one of the first female radio talk show hosts with a full-time daily show, working first in Miami, and then in Boston, Massachusetts on WEEI and WMEX.




Questions anyone?

Brief explanation for the name differences. I was born Ellen Kimball. At UCLA in 1959, I met this handsome dark-haired stranger from New York City (via the Free State of Danzig, now Poland). His name was Peter R. We were both enrolled in the Theater Arts Department. I was attracted to him because he was cute, but then he tried to cheat off my Hamlet exam! (Absolutely true.) I had a bicycle and lived at an all-girl dormitory, Twin Pines, on Hilgard Avenue. Peter seduced me with his off-campus boys'- only apartment, an older car, a deep baritone voice and the cute way he rolled up his pack of cigarettes in his T-shirt sleeve.

I left UCLA under difficult circumstances after a year, and Peter was inducted into the Army. He kept writing to me during a most troubling time of my life. I still have all the letters. After his stint in Korea as a SP-4 in communications, we met up again in New York City's Time Square, right under the Bond sign. We dated and decided to marry in December 1963.

Now, his legal name was just two letters shy of the word RAINBOW. We had a loving relationship (not perfect... whose is?)and some good jobs in media. Along the way, we raised a cute Cocker Spaniel "Buffy" and two beautiful children.

In 1970, Peter decided to alter his life course and it no longer included me. (From August 1970, the quote still burns in my ears. "I don't love you any more.")

Our divorce was final on his birthday in March 1971. A few weeks later, he remarried an attractive divorced Jewish lady with mental and musical gifts, a fellow New Yorker, fabulous cook, all among her many other positive attributes. Peter helped her raise her two children and they both retrained as psychological counselors. I also met and married my current husband in 1973, and took on his three older children whose mother had died suddenly of cancer at age 34.

Later, when I became too ill physically and mentally to carry on as a full-time mother, my ex-husband and his wife took on the responsibility of the two children until each one graduated from high school. I was the non-custodial parent, and we paid child support during this time. I was one of the first women in the Framingham (Middlesex County), Massachusetts, to do so.

Regrettably, Peter R. passed away from cancer in December 2006. I loved him for the better part of eleven years and still mourn his death today from those deadly cigarettes.

So, one night, when I was screening calls for Larry, some Floridian said, "Ellen RAinBOW, what a lovely name!"

Later, when I was hired as the first female talk show host with a daily call in program in Boston, the general manager thought RAINBOW was too hippie and requested that I go back to my thoroughly English maiden name, Kimball, chosen by my Russian born grandfather a few years after he arrived at Ellis Island...

January 29, 2009

A blessing! A daughter who forgives her father for his actions...

Alec Baldwin with his beautiful teenaged daughter, Ireland, at the Screen Actors Guild ceremony 1/25/09

I watched the SAG Awards last night while doing housework, the bane of all our existences. Ah, the exciting life of an ex-starlet wanna-be in her twilight years!

My husband and grandson were in another room, watching a crisp, bright DVD of "The Music Man," the 1962 Oscar winner starring Robert Preston, Shirley Jones, and Buddy Hackett. Great film, if you've never seen it. Little Winthrop is played by actor and director Ron Howard, who went on to even greater film fame!

This is always a great time of the year for me. I've been involved in TV, radio and film for 51 years. I've reviewed movies on the radio and in print since the early 1970s. My former husband wanted to be a film director, but a career crisis caused him to take another path -- with another wife -- into the world of psychological counseling. My "current" husband loves movies and is a retired software engineer.

Bravo for "Slumdog Millionaire" and the entire cast. It's a wonderful film with a lot of gumption -- and it COULD walk off with the Oscar for "Best Movie of 2008" -- without a "Doubt"! Or it could be "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" or "Frost/Nixon" or ?

One of the nicest moments came when Alec Baldwin appeared with his 13-year-old daughter, Ireland. Baldwin is divorced from actress Kim Basinger, and you may recall that there has been a bitter custody fight (are there any other kinds?) and Baldwin left angry words in a telephone message which the child managed to hear. A clear error, of course.

But estrangements are made of things like that between parent and child, particularly in divorced or stepfamily situations. Some family rifts get repaired, and others last a lifetime. That is so very sad.

I wrote about our family situation years ago, and got a lot of conversation going from others at the Democratic Underground. You can read about it here in an archived thread.

Here's the public apology to all of our five children: I am so sorry for any of my failings as a mother and stepmother. Life doesn't give you any "do-overs" and I have forgiven you for not being able to forgive me. Apart from being a wonderful grandmother to the five grandkids who know us, we do not wish to grieve about it any more.

One of the best books on this subject -- "Family Estrangements" -- is the work of a woman writer, a former lawyer and judge named Barbara LeBey. I had the pleasure of interviewing her a few years ago. She does a great job with this book, as well as her second book, "Remarried With Children." Barbara is a wonderful writer and perhaps someday we will meet.

PS: Oh, guess what! she's writing a NEW book about older single women falling in love with younger men. I had a brief four-month crush on one delightful man who was five years younger than me, and a different religion. But that's another story for another time.

January 26, 2009

Hello New Visitors! It's 2009!

This is an OPEN FORUM UNTIL FRIDAY, JANUARY 9th. Do you have any questions about me or my favorite subjects? Or topics you'd like to discuss in the future?

If you are new here, you might want to know more about me... or leave a comment about yourself. I am reaching out to those of you who frequent the Internet using through Goggle's NEXT BLOG feature.

Several of you have come over from FEEDJIT and probably know nothing about my history and escapades! Kindly visit the archive below. It contains some of my on-line history at the Democratic Underground, where I had a journal posted for almost four years.

Radio_Lady: Archive from the Democratic Underground (Also, searches on Google for Radio_Lady will reveal a great deal about me (maybe even more than you want to know)!

Here is the archive link.

I welcome your posts, but warn that I do moderate comments here. Thanks for your understanding.

Ellen

Hello New Readers! You might want to know more about me...

Several of you have come over from FEEDJIT and probably know nothing about my escapades. Kindly visit the archive below. It contains some of my on-line history at the Democratic Underground, where I had a journal posted for almost four years.

Radio_Lady: Archive from the Democratic Underground
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/?az=archives&j=418&page=1

Thanks.

Ellen

California, here we come... for hearty holiday happenings!

Thanks for visiting my website! We're touring southern California's "Inland Empire" -- Palm Desert, Cathedral City, and Escondido. My husband and I send our best wishes to you, your family and friends for the holidays.

Back at you in 2009!

Ellen

UPDATE: We've run into record rains for December in the California desert -- 2.25 inches of rain in two days, the largest amount recorded here since 1940. Meanwhile, at our home in the suburbs of Portland, Oregon area, our neighbors tell us there are ten inches of snow. This is only one of two Christmases that will be "white" since they began keeping records!

Movie Review: “I Can’t Think Straight” – a sexy romance with a dash of political bite

Two gorgeous women from different religious and ethnic backgrounds find each other in this sensitive and beautiful film. I think the cinematography, set design, and music are excellent, and the evolving relationship quite believable. Be aware there are discreet woman-to-woman love scenes which are all handled deftly and with great tact.

The double-meaning of this foreign film’s title came to me a little late. I’m acquainted with several same-sex women (and men) who are married to each other or living in long-term relationships. However, the focus of this movie is somewhat unusual for general audiences.

There are also added political themes about Middle Eastern ethnic and religious divisions. These positions are expressed usually through the musings of an older female character. As an active senior woman, who accepts her own two children who practice different religions from me, I do feel somewhat chagrined. This is stereotyping -- because older women do not necessarily fit into these circumscribed cubbyholes. Even the juxtapositioning of world problems within a very personal romantic film is a bit jarring, but ultimately, I accept it.

I’m giving this movie a “B” on Ellen’s Entertainment Report Card. The movie has received an MPAA rating of PG-13. The trailer and other information is here: http://www.icantthinkstraight-themovie.com/

The movie opens on Friday, December 12, 2008 at Portland’s Hollywood Theater (Oregon) and is scheduled to play through Tuesday, December 23, 2008. Check out the map for a street location, as well as the film schedule of this historic Oregon theater. There's more information at this website.

Distribution is limited nationwide. Kindly check your local independent theaters for other bookings of the film “I Can’t Think Straight.”

Movie Synopsis:

Tala, a London-based Jordanian of Palestinian origin, prepares for an elaborate wedding with her Jordanian fiancé, when she encounters a timid Leyla, a young British Indian woman who is dating her best friend Ali.

Tala comes from a spirited Christian family, but Leyla’s strong Muslim upbringing could not be more different from each other but the attraction is immediate between both girls. Tala’s feisty nature provokes Leyla out of her shell and soon both women reveal their feelings for each other.

However, Tala is not ready to accept the implications of the choice her heart has made and escapes back to Jordan where her chain-smoking, high-brow mother finishes preparations for her ostentatious wedding. As family members descend and the wedding day approaches, simmering family tensions come to boiling point and the pressure mounts for Tala to be true to herself and she breaks off the wedding.

Meanwhile a heartbroken Leyla relishes her newly found sense of identity and self-respect and moves on with her new life – much to the shock of her parents.

Single again, Tala flies back to London – but it will take more than just a date set up by Ali and Leyla’s sister Zina to win Leyla back.

The international cast headed by Canadian actress Lisa Ray (Deepa Mehta’s Water – which garnered a Best Foreign Picture Academy Award® nomination in 2007). Her performance in Water also earned her the Best Actress Award from the Vancouver Film Critics Circle.

Other cast includes: Sheetal Sheth (Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World), comedic actress Nina Wadia (Bend it Like Beckham, Eastenders, Goodness Gracious Me) and Antonia Frering and Rez Kempton (The Mystic Masseur).

What would YOU save if our world was ending? "The Day the Earth Stood Still" Opens December 12

"The Day the Earth Stood Still" (1951), directed by Robert Wise, with Michael Rennie and Patricia Neal, is still one of my favorite movies of the science fiction genre.

Like other great movies, TDTESS (2008) has been revamped. If you want to see the 2008 trailer or be part of the social networking conceived by the movie studio -- asking what's vital to you and what would you save? -- click on the title to the the address link.

Do you remember this film?





"KLAATU BARADA NIKTO..."

Update: We decided to skip the 2008 preview... Maybe we will see it later.

by Radio_Lady
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The original movie is screening on AMC. It will be repeated on Friday, Dec. 12, 2008 around 3 PM Pacific Time. Comcast carries AMC on Channel 71, but check your local listings. If you miss these screenings, please try to get a copy of the original film from 1951. It is an amazing movie!

Michael Rennie was so handsome. His son, Judge David Rennie, an English judge in Sussex, looks a little bit like him. Another son used his mother's name in Britain so he would not be accused of nepotism.

Regrettably, Michael Rennie died of a heart attack due to emphysema when he was only 62. He was a heavy smoker.

I never like to get in the middle of these discussions, but the original films always seem to outlast the re-makes.

Cinematical.com: Weekend Box Office: A December Lull

Photo montage by davidskakk

Weekend Box Office: A December Lull as Openers Bust
by Eugene Novikov Dec 8th 2008 // 10:35AM

Holdovers ruled the box office as no one much cared about any of the movies that opened in wide release this weekend. Lexi Alexander's Punisher turned out to be a huge mistake, opening to a fraction of what the original Jonathan Hensleigh/Thomas Jane version did four and a half years ago. $4 million is painful, though not terribly surprising -- the film was marketed as a totally generic action movie, with no stars and no draw except the Punisher trademark. (The most recognizable name in the cast is probably Wayne Knight.)

Even worse off was the Alan Rickman-starring caper comedy Nobel Son. Tossed into 900 screens by indie Freestyle Releasing, the movie grossed all of $371,000, or $415 per screen -- a foregone conclusion. I'm not sure why Freestyle shelled out the money for such a relatively wide release, or what they were hoping for. Maybe a pre-Christmas miracle.

The "winner" among the weekend's new wide releases would have to be Cadillac Records, which managed a respectable $3.5 million on under 700 screens. That was enough for 9th place, just behind Punisher (on 2500 screens).

Leading the holdovers was Four Christmases, which took first place for a second straight weekend; it will have a tough time breaking $100 million, but should squeak to around $95. Twilight bummed around second place, and should be at $150 million by next week. Bolt finally took a hit after its excellent second weekend over Thanksgiving, and should top out around $95 million as well.

More at link: http://www.cinematical.com/