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Topic: Post your random news stories here
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Leo Enticknap
Film God
Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000
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posted 11-25-2016 08:22 PM
quote: Randy Stankey
It sounds fishy, to me, that a grown man driving a late model car didn't have any idea what to do when his engine races out of control.
He was driving in London, where I learned to drive, and I can't remember any training to deal with that sort of malfunction. We were taught to use engine braking to slow the car in case of brake failure, and to apply the handbrake whenever the car was stationary (e.g. at traffic lights) during a journey. But coping with as serious a malfunction as that is not something were taught about or tested on. Added to which, if you're faced with a situation like that in which you know your life is in immediate danger, you are likely to behave in unpredictable ways, including not remembering things that you can very easily under normal circumstances. But it is worrying that we'll probably never get a definitive answer as to what happened.
When I took the California test in 2013, the examiner told me not to apply the handbrake when stopped at traffic lights, commenting that "we don't do that here" (thankfully, she still passed me at the end of the test drive). When I asked her why, explaining that my British driving instructor back in the '90s had told me that if I was rear-ended while waiting at traffic lights, the handbrake would make it less likely that I'd be pushed forward into another vehicle, or even worse, into the intersection, she replied that the driver hitting me from behind would likely be more seriously injured from a harder impact. So I guess that, fundamentally, there's no right answer to that one.
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Frank Cox
Film God
Posts: 2234
From: Melville Saskatchewan Canada
Registered: Apr 2011
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posted 12-12-2016 06:49 PM
'I cried all the way home': Boy who asked for last wish dies in Santa's arms
quote:
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — Eric Schmitt-Matzen looks every bit the Santa Claus.
His 6-foot frame carries 310 pounds, leaving “just enough of a lap for the kids to sit on,” he says with a gentle Kringley chuckle right out of Central Casting.
No fake facial fuzz for this guy. Schmitt-Matzen’s snowy beard is the real thing, albeit regularly bleached to maintain its whiteness. His shag is so spectacular, in fact, it won first place in the “natural full beard, styled moustache” division of a 2016 national contest sponsored by the Just For Men hair products company.
He’s professionally trained. Custom-tailored in red. Was born on Dec. 6 (that’s Saint Nicholas Day — are you surprised?) Works approximately 80 gigs annually. Wife Sharon plays an authentic Mrs. Claus. His cellphone, with a Jingle Bells ringtone, continually counts down the days until Christmas. Even his civilian attire always includes Santa suspenders.
The whole shtick is designed to spread joy and have fun.
Which it does – except for the role he played several weeks ago at a local hospital.
“I cried all the way home,” Schmitt-Matzen told me. “I was crying so hard, I had a tough time seeing good enough to drive.
“My wife and I were scheduled to visit our grandchildren in Nashville the next day, but I told her to go by herself. I was a basket case for three days. It took me a week or two to stop thinking about it all the time. Actually, I thought I might crack up and never be able to play the part again.”
This is what happens when a terminally ill child dies in Santa’s arms.
“I’d just gotten home from work that day,” recalled Schmitt-Matzen, 60, a mechanical engineer and president of Packing Seals & Engineering in Jacksboro.
“The telephone rang. It was a nurse I know who works at the hospital. She said there was a very sick 5-year-old boy who wanted to see Santa Claus.
“I told her, ‘OK, just let me change into my outfit.’ She said, ‘There isn’t time for that. Your Santa suspenders are good enough. Come right now.’ ”
Schmitt-Matzen got to the hospital in 15 minutes. He met the lad’s mother and several family members.
“She’d bought a toy from (the TV show) PAW Patrol and wanted me to give it to him,” he said, voice growing husky. “I sized up the situation and told everyone, ‘If you think you’re going to lose it, please leave the room. If I see you crying, I’ll break down and can’t do my job.’ ”
Nobody entered with him. They watched, sobbing, from a hallway window in the Intensive Care Unit.
“When I walked in, he was laying there, so weak it looked like he was ready to fall asleep. I sat down on his bed and asked, ‘Say, what’s this I hear about you’re gonna miss Christmas? There’s no way you can miss Christmas! Why, you’re my Number One elf!
“He looked up and said, ‘I am?’
“I said, ‘Sure!’
“I gave him the present. He was so weak he could barely open the wrapping paper. When he saw what was inside, he flashed a big smile and laid his head back down.
‘“They say I’m gonna die,’ he told me. ‘How can I tell when I get to where I’m going?’
“I said, ‘Can you do me a big favor?’
“He said, ‘Sure!’
“When you get there, you tell ’em you’re Santa’s Number One elf, and I know they’ll let you in.
“He said, ‘They will?’
“I said, ‘Sure!’
“He kinda sat up and gave me a big hug and asked one more question: ‘Santa, can you help me?’
“I wrapped my arms around him. Before I could say anything, he died right there. I let him stay, just kept hugging and holding on to him.
“Everyone outside the room realized what happened. His mother ran in. She was screaming, ‘No, no, not yet!’ I handed her son back and left as fast as I could.
“I spent four years in the Army with the 75th Rangers, and I’ve seen my share of (stuff). But I ran by the nurses’ station bawling my head off. I know nurses and doctors see things like that every day, but I don’t know how they can take it.’”
In despair, Schmitt-Matzen was ready to hang up his suit. “I’m just not cut out for this,” he reasoned.
But he mustered the strength to work one more show.
“When I saw all those children laughing, it brought me back into the fold. It made me realize the role I have to play.
“For them and for me.”
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Timothy Eiler
Expert Film Handler
Posts: 126
From: Litchfield , Minnesota, USA
Registered: Mar 2000
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posted 12-19-2016 01:16 PM
Viral Story Of Boy Who Died In Santa’s Arms Begins To Unravel
By Emanuella Grinberg and Tom Kludt
PHILADELPHIA (CBS/CNN) — It was a story many wanted to believe: A terminally ill child gets his last wish to see Santa and dies in his arms.
But the Tennessee newspaper that ran it first now says it can no longer stand by the account and now there’s conflicting reports as to whether this happened.
The Knoxville News Sentinel story quickly went viral after it was published Sunday. USA Today republished the column, which was written by News Sentinel columnist Sam Venable. A host of national news outlets gave it additional coverage, including CNN, who spoke to Santa actor Eric Schmitt-Matzen about his interaction with the boy in his final moments.
“When you get to those pearly gates, you tell ’em you’re Santa’s No. 1 elf, and I know they’ll let you in,” Schmitt-Matzen recalled telling the boy.
But in a note published online Wednesday, Venable and News Sentinel editor Jack McElroy said they were unable to verify the account after it was published because Schmitt-Matzen refused to provide the identities of the child’s family or the nurse who purportedly called him to the hospital, which is not named in the story.
“The News Sentinel cannot establish that Schmitt-Matzen’s account is inaccurate, but more importantly, ongoing reporting cannot establish that it is accurate,” McElroy and Venable wrote.
“Therefore, because the story does not meet the newspaper’s standards of verification, we are no longer standing by the veracity of Schmitt-Matzen’s account.”
CNN called all the major hospitals in the Knoxville area that treat children and none could confirm his account. The coroner’s office was unable to provide information without a name. A search of obituaries in Tennessee newspapers from the beginning of 2016 for 5-year-old boys did not yield conclusive proof confirming or refuting the account.
Too good to be true?
Schmitt-Matzen did not respond to multiple calls seeking comment. When reached by phone this afternoon, a man claiming to be his spokesman told CNN he was working on a response. Schmitt-Matzen told the Washington Post he stands by his account. He would not name the nurse or boy.
“If some people want to call me a liar … I can handle that better than I can handle a child in my arms dying,” he said. “It’s sticks and stones.”
In an email to CNNMoney, Venable said the newspaper’s statement “speaks for itself.”
The announcement by the News Sentinel forced the dozens of news outlets that picked up the story to address the change.
USA Today added an editor’s note to the top of its version of the story, saying it had also removed a video interview with Schmitt-Matzen that accompanied the post. BuzzFeed rewrote the story at the same URL where the original story was published.
Story begins to unravel
The story nailed the emotional richness of the holiday season in a time when Americans could use some heartwarming news, even if it provoked a few tears.
Schmitt-Matzen, a known Santa in the area thanks to his jolly frame and impeccably groomed white beard, told the News Sentinel a nurse called him and told him a sick 5-year-old boy wanted to see Santa Claus. He said he arrived at the hospital in 15 minutes and took the child in his arms, warning people who might cry to leave the room.
He repeated the heart-wrenching exchange nearly word for word in subsequent interviews, with the same impact.
“I’ve gotten a big response to this,” Venable told CNN. “People have told me that they were crying when they read it, and I tell them that I was crying when I wrote it.”
Pennsylvania’s Favorite Holiday Cookie, According To Google
The story began to unravel on Tuesday, when Snopes ran a piece scrutinizing Schmitt-Matzen’s account.
“The story kept spreading but with no second sourcing,” Arturo Garcia, the Snopes reporter who wrote the follow-up, told CNNMoney. “I think part of the issue here is that a lot of outlets don’t give their reporters time to vet these things.”
The-CNN-Wire ™ & © 2016 Cable News Network, Inc., a Time Warner Company. All rights reserved.
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Frank Cox
Film God
Posts: 2234
From: Melville Saskatchewan Canada
Registered: Apr 2011
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posted 12-20-2016 02:32 PM
Family of Ontario man brain damaged after choking on popcorn can picket theatre, judge rule
quote:
The family of a young man who nearly choked to death on popcorn during the The Hangover movie in 2009, leaving him semi-comatose for six months, will be free to protest in front of the Kitchener, Ont., theatre, after a judge declined Cineplex’s emergency request for a restraining order.
A civil trial on the matter is scheduled to begin in March. Cineplex Odeon Corporation will defend itself on the grounds that Chadrick John Veenhof, then aged about 20, was on “illegal substances” at the time of his catastrophic brain injuries, caused by lack of oxygen.
For six months after the incident, Chad was only partly responsive. His parents were preparing to move him into a nursing home permanently, but then his recovery began in earnest. Three years later, he was able to walk into a visit with one of the doctors who saved his life. Now he lives with assistance, but can get outside, and is working toward independence, according to a 2012 profile in the Waterloo Region Record.
Last month, according to court records, his father Frederick told the manager of the Kitchener Cineplex he was seeking rehabilitation costs for Chad, and if the company did not reply within a week, as many as 80 people would protest and hand out pamphlets claiming that, when Chad started choking a short way into the movie, the theatre did not turn on the lights, stop the movie, call 911, ask if anyone could help, or follow emergency instructions when a customer called.
“They refused to allow a trained lifeguard to assist,” the pamphlets read.
On Dec. 6, Frederick Veenhof picketed the theatre with a sign saying “YOU ARE NOT SAFE IN THIS THEATRE TONIGHT.” Police were called but declined to intervene. He also made Facebook posts saying, “Cineplex just does not care about your health and welfare.”
Fearing the damage to its business, Cineplex asked a judge last week to ban Veenhof’s friends, family and associates, including Frederick, from picketing or protesting any Cineplex theatre in Ontario, and from “publishing statements which defame Cineplex, including but not limited to defamatory statements posted on social medial networks, and defamatory statements distributed via printed literature or common consumer products.”
In a rushed new ruling, with brief reasons, Superior Court Judge Donald J. Gordon rejected Cineplex’s motion on the legal grounds that a restraining order in this case would, in effect, be permanent.
When it filed a defence to the Veenhof family’s lawsuit, Cineplex did not make any counterclaim, or seek any injunction against them, such as a ban on protesting. If they had, the merits of that injunction would eventually be resolved at trial. But by making this request on its own, there is no legal way to link it to the trial. A restraining order here would be a legal orphan. And if it were granted, it could not be temporary, as Cineplex wanted. It would basically have to be permanent, identical in status to an order made at the conclusion of a trial. For this procedural flaw, the judge declined Cineplex’s request.
Granting the restraining order would affect the Veenhof family “in a profound manner yet there would never be a trial on the merits of that claim. The interlocutory order, in essence, becomes a final order,” the judge wrote.
He was, however, skeptical of some of Frederick Veenhof’s claims, especially that a main goal of his protest was to locate witnesses, as well as raise money and awareness.
“Surely the plaintiff’s original counsel made inquiry in the usual manner to locate witnesses early in the case,” the judge wrote. “Rather, the impression is that the impugned conduct is for an improper purpose, perhaps defamatory, intended to cause financial injury to the defendant or to bring pressure on it to provide compensation to the plaintiff.”
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Mitchell Dvoskin
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1869
From: West Milford, NJ, USA
Registered: Jan 2001
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posted 12-22-2016 12:20 PM
Fluffy The Ticket Taker
quote: nj.com
MORRISTOWN -- Longtime Morristown AMC Headquarters Plaza movie ticket-taker Eric "Fluffy" Glover is reportedly out of a job and an online petition is seeking his rehiring.
A Change.org petition entitled, "Give Eric Glover his job back," stated, "He was fired for asking a group of teenagers to (calm) down because they were being a little bit too rowdy." It had 1,392 signatures as of Thursday morning.
Famed for his sound effects and enthusiastic greetings of customers, Glover told MorristownGreen.com last week he was let go following some disagreements with AMC Headquarters 10 management.
An AMC spokesman did not respond on Wednesday to a request for comment from NJ Advance Media. But AMC corporate spokesman Ryan Noonan acknowledged that Glover was fired, and that he was popular with customers. Noonan told MorristownGreen.com, "Eric repeatedly exhibited behaviors inconsistent with AMC's policies and standards."
His fans, after hearing the news about Fluffy being fired, have supported him online.
"I'm signing (the petition) because fluffy is the best thing that theatre has and without him it's boring," wrote Lorena Bussorelli of Morristown.
"I lived in Morristown for eight years and went to the movies frequently," Douglas Goodale of Morristown wrote on the petition. "Eric is not just a fixture at AMC; he also helps out at Neighborhood house and is a kind citizen seen around town often smiling and greeting others."
Glover had worked for the theater since 1987 and was hired on a part-time basis in 2013 after AMC took it over from Clearview. He has been such a customer favorite, his fans started a fan page for him on facebook.
Just last winter, his fans came to his rescue, as well. Glover received an outpouring of support after customers learned that for 10 months Glover had been living either out of his car or in a shelter.
Online fundraising efforts, aimed at helping Glover secure a permanent residence, raised $64,000 in a week.
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Leo Enticknap
Film God
Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000
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posted 12-30-2016 10:39 PM
quote: Daily Mail
Carrie Fisher's death will trigger biggest EVER personal accident insurance claim after Disney took out $50MILLION policy in case she couldn't finish Star Wars films
Disney is set to receive £41million over Star Wars actress Carrie Fisher’s untimely death after taking out insurance to cover her failing to fulfil a three-film contract, it was claimed last night.
Fisher died on December 27, aged 60, having suffered a heart attack on a flight from London to Los Angeles.
The actress, who rose to prominence playing Princess Leia in George Lucas’ original 1970s Star Wars trilogy, had reprised her role in last year’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
And she is set to have major role in Star Wars Episode VIII, which will be released next year, with filming completed before her death.
However, Fisher was also due to have a starring part in Star Wars Episode XI – scheduled for release in 2019 – which is now expected to be substantially re-written in the wake of the actress’ death.
Disney are yet to comment on how the planned plot will be affected.
The ensuing insurance payout is thought to be the market’s biggest-ever single personal accident insurance claim, according to trade publication The Insurance Insider.
Sources spoken to by the website say Lloyds of London will make the payout after Disney took out $50million of ‘contract protection cover’, in the event Fisher was unable to appear in any of the new Star Wars films.
Fisher, who found worldwide fame at the age of just 19 in the 1977 original, led a turbulent life punctuated by battles with substance abuse and bipolar disorder, which is thought to have led to the surprising policy.
It is said to be underwritten by US-based company Exceptional Risk Advisors, who describe themselves as ‘experts in insuring complex human capital risks for highly successful individuals.’
Fisher’s tragic death led to an outpouring of grief from moviegoers worldwide.
She had recently completed a publicity tour of the UK, but suffered a heart attack on a flight back to America and died four days later.
Her mother, the Hollywood actress Debbie Reynolds, died one day later, aged 84.
Disney and Lloyds of London did not immediately respond to requests for comment last night.
Apologies if this sounds a little unkind, but given Ms. Fisher's medical history, the premium can't have been cheap.
I wonder if this is regular practice - studios taking out life insurance on principal talent to cover the period between signing and the end of the shoot. After all, even a star aged 25 and in perfect health could go down in a plane crash.
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Leo Enticknap
Film God
Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000
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posted 01-05-2017 01:07 AM
Sorry, but I'm a sucker for "pet wild animal stories," and this one's a classic.
quote: Daily Mail (my italics)
Bengal tiger is seized after a family had been keeping it as a pet and walking it with a LEASH like a dog
A four-month-old tiger has been seized after residents in the colony of El Pipila in Tijuana complained the wild animal was being walked around with a leash.
Mexican environmental authorities caught a man with the tiger outside of his home in Baja California and found the animal had been living with a family like a pet.
The tiger was soon removed after it was determined to be a risk to the lives of the children.
The family gave authorities what appeared to be a receipt for the purchase of the male tiger, which was born on 25th August 2015.
They had bought the cub on December 20th, from a shop called Planet Exotico which sells exotic animals such as serpents, tarantulas, and scorpions.
Vets found the jungle cat was in good health, with proper up-to-date vaccination, and had been declawed. It had even been micro-chipped like a cat.
The family said they had just bought the animal and planned to build a cage for it.
Authorities also confirmed that the tiger was also allowed to walk through the streets restrained only by a dog collar and that there was a risk of it escaping and harming locals.
They also confirmed that the family did not have permission to keep this class of animal and therefore they decided to seize it and send it to a local zoo.
The scary thing about this story is that the tiger and his owner showed up at some veterinarian's office, where they were quite happy to give the creature his shots and a microchip, take his owner's money and send them on their way, without it seems, questioning the wisdom of the tiger being kept as a family pet.
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Randy Stankey
Film God
Posts: 6539
From: Erie, Pennsylvania
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 01-05-2017 02:49 AM
quote: Leo Enticknap
I wonder if this is regular practice - studios taking out life insurance on principal talent to cover the period between signing and the end of the shoot. After all, even a star aged 25 and in perfect health could go down in a plane crash.
quote: Martin McCaffery
I have no doubt it is a standard practice on all big budget films. The stars are assets. Their contracts are used to finance the film. It would be fiscally irresponsible not to insure the assets.
It's a common thing even when it's not the movie business.
Many companies take out life insurance on their employees (usually managers, etc.) and they often don't even tell the person.
When I worked at Mercyhurst, they had $100,000 worth of life insurance on me. If I died or was substantially injured while I was employed there, I (or my heirs) would have gotten half. There was a double indemnity clause if I died or was injured at work or while traveling to or from work. There was also an extra $10,000 in it for me if I had a car accident and if I was wearing a seat belt at the time of the accident. (Which is a brilliant idea, IMO!)
Mercyhurst paid all of the premiums for any of their employees above a certain level. It was a blanket policy. All they did was put the eligible employee's names on a list, somewhere. All I had to do was to sign a paper that acknowledged it.
I also had the option to get up to another $100,000 worth of life insurance, payable to me or my heirs, at a discount if I paid for it. It would have cost something like $50 per year.
I am not surprised at all to hear that Sony had insurance on Carrie Fisher. The amount is pretty remarkable but still not surprising.
I wonder whether Fisher's estate gets any of that insurance payout.
All things considered, it's only fair. Right?
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