Mike Tyson’s Deserted ’80s Mansion
Between 1985, when he made his professional debut at age 18, to his retirement two decades later, Mike Tyson made up to $400 million, demanding $30 million for a single fight at his peak. He led a high-flying lifestyle, buying mansions, cars and Bengal tigers at the drop of a hat. In 2004, Tyson filed for bankruptcy. He was $23 million in debt, owing the U.S. and British governments $17 million in taxes, three-quarters of a million dollars to seven law firms and $300,000 for limo services. Tyson owned this 5-bedroom, 60 acre property with an indoor pool, basket ball court and on-site tiger cages. It was no doubt to some very wild parties. Tyson lost ownership of it in the late 1990s, when a shifty entrepreneur by the name of Paul Monea who produced workout tapes starring Billy Blanks. He never lived in the mansion and tried to resell it on eBay of all places in 2005.
“Roger Ebert dies at 70 after battle with cancer”
Roger Ebert loved movies.
Except for those he hated.
A list of the most significant historical events of the second half of the 20th Century, according to the major motion picture Forrest Gump:1
- Elvis Presley and the Birth of Rock ‘n’ Roll
- Bear Bryant’s Alabama Football Teams
- The Presidency of John F. Kennedy
- The Civil Rights Movement and Desegregation
- The Vietnam War
- The Explosion in Popularity of Ping-Pong
- The Anti-War Movement/Hippies
- Shrimping
- Watergate
- Disco, Cocaine, and Sadness2
- The Rise of Personal Computing
- The Invention Recreational Running
- The AIDS Epidemic
- The Birth of the “Shit Happens” Bumper Sticker
End Of A Year // Composite Character
To best enjoy this album, sit 4 to 8 feet away from quality speakers. Create a triangle with your head and those speakers. Do not turn down your mids. Clean your ears. Sit on something with back support. Wear loose fitting clothing. Avoid overhead lighting. Close your eyes. To best understand the material, work part time. Make less than $20,000 a year. Grow your hair out. Live under constant threat of eviction. Wait until your bills arrive in thick envelopes before paying them. Have a pregnancy scare. Have highly personal and easily misunderstood goals. Maintain a healthy body weight. Always have a scheme or a poorly thought out plan. Wake after nine but before noon. Have roommates regardless of your age. Be a success sexually but remember your failures. Understand the world wasn’t made for you. Understand your parents are just people and be nice based on merit. Understand sexual partners know you better than your friends and treat them warmly. Have definite opinions but understand the world does not care. Judge people on how they will feature in D&D campaign. Love animals. Do not treat retarded people like lepers. Really don’t treat lepers like lepers. Be kind to people. Listen to Renee and Angela. Do not be afraid of other people’s opinions. Understand art has a context and don’t dismiss things outright. Don’t resent people with money. Don’t be married. Do not have children. Avoid hard drugs, they make you talk too loud and that’s annoying. Understand people have the right to be tasteless. Approach doors with confidence and not fear. Attach yourself to people who are funny, distance yourself from uptight squares. Embrace the media. Try new things.
Don’t live your life by anyone else’s manifestos. Don’t be a terrible person. Always, always listen to Renee and Angela.
“Shady New Wendy’s Deal Offering Five Hamburgers For Free, No Questions Asked” from The Onion
Wallem and the writing staff began brainstorming ideas for the multi-camera version. One pitch placed a portal between the two worlds — the single-cam and multi-cam versions — that only baby Amy could see. Another idea put Wallem and her real-life partner, Etheridge, in front of the camera, perhaps with the action taking place in their living room.
Ultimately, a script was written in which Applegate, Arnett and Rudolph played actors portraying the characters Reagan, Chris and Ava on a fictional show called Up All Night. Off the show-within-a-show, Arnett’s character would live at home with his mother, and Applegate’s would be dating. Rudolph’s real-life pregnancy was being written into the storyline — and included a “who’s the daddy?” twist.
So, in order to save a show that had already lost its creator and most of its audience, NBC decided to imagine the first two seasons (which included a show-within-a-show) as being an Up All Night that took place within this new show that was replacing/becoming Up All Night, and that this new Up All Night starred the same actors from the original (now) show-within-a-show version of Up All Night.
Makes sense.
[via Maura]
Miami Vice, “Brother’s Keeper”
A good example of combining these three aspects is found in this episode when Crockett and Tubbs are in the Ferrari Daytona Spyder, driving through a damp, nighttime Miami downtown heading to a somber showdown with a sinister, murderous drug lord as “In the Air Tonight” by Phil Collins surrealistically plays along. As Lee H. Katzin, one of the series’ directors, once stated, “The show is written for an MTV audience, which is more interested in images, emotions and energy than plot and character and words.”
In Short: Whatever. Sometimes style and substance are the same thing. Sometimes things should just look awesome.
Look, I get that everything on the internet has to be lists. Like, say, “10 Screenwriting Lessons You Can Learn From The Avengers” over at ScriptShadow. But don’t read that. It’s simplistic and ScriptShadow is generally awful.
Instead, read this. Todd Alcott’s fourteen-thousand-word dissertation on The Avengers. Yes. Fourteen-thousand words on the script for a comic book movie.
It’s a kind-of-insane, extremely extensive breakdown of narrative, plot, how hard to was to get all those moving pieces to work together and how the hell Joss Whedon pulled it off.
Fourteen-thousand words worth. So, yeah, pretty much everything you wanted to know.
Modest Mouse // Paper Thin Walls
This is the biggest apartment building I’ve ever lived in. It’s only twelve units, so by no means gigantic. But it’s a lot when you can hear everything. Every shower, every raised voice, every action-movie explosion, nearly every coming and every going.
It’s not a big deal. At least not when I’m awake and conscious of what’s happening. It’s pretty easy to ignore. But when I’ve just fallen asleep, my dumb brain hasn’t figured this out yet. So every door slam or loud noise in the middle of the night is coming from inside the building. Someone is downstairs right now! And then a brief moment of panic jolts me awake, as if I’m going to defend myself with a Comcast remote and a book about Mötley Crüe.
And then I realize the door is locked. And then I remember that the window near the fire escape doesn’t lock. And then the insomnia kicks in, where my brain conjures up scenario after scenario of things coming through that unlocked window. Never people, mind you, because I don’t live in a dangerous neighborhood. That would be ridiculous. No these are things. Scenarios where I realize aliens wouldn’t even have to be that technologically advanced to gain entrance into my kitchen. Sure, they’d need to travel through space—and maybe time!—but they’d only have to be able to open a window to get at me.
And then I try and remember how high werewolves can jump, or if every vampire has to operate by the invitation-only rule, or which fictional beasts could even fit through that window. Wait. Which monsters have opposable thumbs?
And then it’s just shame for how long I’ve been awake thinking about these things. And then it’s staying awake for the rest of the night, insomnia fueled by self-loathing. In my partially locked apartment. One of twelve thinly-walled units.
