2009 in Movies
December 31, 2009
-
-
-
This video, along with some well placed titles, and a touching song by the band Chairlift, is so sweet it could give you cavities!
-
-
-
Daddy Wakes Baby
December 27, 2009
Sometimes parents get the rare opportunity to keep their children awake while they try and sleep! Payback is so precious
-
-
-
Father and son reunite
December 26, 2009
nbc.com
David and Sean Goldman smile for the camera on their Thursday plane ride from Brazil to Orlando.
An emotional David Goldman said he’s experiencing a true “Christmas miracle” spending the holidays with his son for the first time in five years.
“This is surreal,” the New Jersey dad said onboard a private jet late Thursday night. “Here we are, up in the heavens, it’s a Christmas miracle.”
The jet landed in Orlando, which was “exactly where David and Sean Goldman wanted to spend Christmas,” NBC News reported.
The long flight from Brazil to Florida was full of emotion. Video footage of the trip (SEE CLIP BELOW) released Friday by NBC shows David Goldman kissing his sleeping son on the head.
“I hope he doesn’t sleep the whole plane ride and then stay awake the whole night, because I’m exhausted,” Goldman said.
It’s unclear how long they will be in Orlando before heading to New Jersey, but a family friend told the Star Ledger they will likely spend several days there relaxing and getting to know each other.
“What 9-year-old wouldn’t want to be at Disney World?” Mark DeAngelis said. The family friend said Goldman called him from Florida and said they wanted to stay away from the “media frenzy” at home and enjoy the warm weather.
Goldman had seen his son just twice since 2004 – when the boy’s mother took him on a trip to Rio de Janeiro. Instead of returning to Tinton Falls, N.J., she divorced Goldman and married a lawyer.
The mother died in childbirth last year and his stepfather and grandparents took custody. Goldman stepped up efforts to get Sean after her death.
The Brazilian Supreme Court chief justice ruled this week that Sean had to be returned by 9:30 a.m. Thursday.
Hours after the handoff, father and son boarded a private jet chartered for an estimated $90,000 by NBC, which has wrapped up exclusive rights to the heartwarming story.
It is not clear how Sean Goldman’s family in Brazil spent Christmas. His maternal grandmother, Silvana Bianchi, said after the boy left Brazil that taking him on Christmas Eve was “a heinous crime.”
“My heart is empty and broken because our love is missing,” she said.
David Goldman told an NBC News reporter on the flight to Florida that he would allow Sean’s family in Brazil to visit the boy in New Jersey.
Wilder Runs Wild
December 22, 2009
We’ve been showing you a bunch of amazing high school football videos here at RivalsHigh this year, but this one – on the final weekend of the high school season – may top them all.
It’s a 42-yard TD run by James Wilder Jr., of Tampa (Fla.) Plant High.
Yes, Wilder is the son of former NFL star running back James Wilder. But no, we can’t recall Wilder – or any other NFL player – doing this. On the way to the end zone, Wilder knocks over three defenders simultaneously, as if they were bowling pins. He gets turned around, but that doesn’t matter, he spins out of it and works his way down the field for the score.
And let’s be clear, this was a top-notch defense from as good a high school football state as there is.
The play came last weekend in the Florida 5A state final against Manatee, the team that shut down the seemingly unstoppable and defending national champion St. Thomas Aquinas the week before.
Plant won, 21-14, and finished the year ranked No. 17 in the final Rivals High Top 100 rankings.
Wilder, who ran for 137 yards and a TD in the game, still hasn’t made a college choice. Of course, he has plenty of time. Amazingly, the 6-2, 223-pound Wilder is just a junior – and will be one of the top recruits for 2011.
Wilder’s dad ran for over 6,000 yards and 37 touchdowns in a ten-year NFL career spent almost entirely with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. His best season came in 1984, when his 2,229 combined yards were just 16 short of the then NFL record.
http://highschool.rivals.com/content.asp?CID=1031755
-
-
-
Smallest Apartment in New York
December 21, 2009
If they can make it there, they can make it anywhere.
Zaarath and Christopher Prokop — and their two cats — live in the smallest apartment in the city, a 175-square-foot “microstudio” in Morningside Heights the couple bought three months ago for $150,000.
At 14.9 feet long and 10 feet wide, it’s about as narrow as a subway car and as claustrophobic as a jail cell. But to the Prokops, it’s a castle.
“When you first see it, the first thing you say is, ‘Holy crap, this place is small,’ ” said Zaarath, 37, an accountant for liquor company Remy Martin. “But when I saw it, all I could think of is, I can do something with this. This is perfect for us. We love it.”
Zaarath and Christopher Prokop insist they’re living the life in this micro studio, just 10 feet wide! The bathroom is even smaller, barely spanning three feet.
Finding those who found her
December 19, 2009
Washington Post Staff Writer
Christopher Astle and Emily Yanich were teenage pals strolling back from a 7-Eleven that afternoon in late summer — two ordinary kids on an ordinary Wednesday after school — when they found the abandoned baby.
It was Sept. 6, 1989. They discovered the newborn wrapped in towels at the front door of a townhouse in their Fairfax County complex and took the infant to Emily’s, where her stepfather called police.
The whole thing was over pretty quickly. The authorities took the baby girl, who was later adopted. Chris and Emily, both 15, went on with their lives, although Emily often cried when she told people the story, and the two called each other every Sept. 6.
Twenty years passed.
Then, on Dec. 2, a college student named Mia Fleming sent them both a message via Facebook: Might they be the same Chris and Emily who had once found a baby left at a stranger’s door?
If so, she just wanted to say thanks.
After all these years, the little girl they had found had found them.
The story of Mia, Chris and Emily, recounted by the three over the past few days, is a nativity narrative for modern times. There were no heavenly hosts that warm afternoon in 1989, just the distant ambulance sirens after the call to 911. But the event seemed blessed all the same.
Chris and Emily, both now 35, stayed close friends as they grew up, moved and married, bound by their rescue of the baby.
Mia, once she learned her story, never forgot them, and after numerous tries over several years managed at last, through the power of the Internet, to track them down. “I didn’t know how they would feel,” she said.
Emily said: “It’s like a miracle. . . . My heart is filled now. There was always a little spot missing. ”
Chris said, “It’s the best Christmas present I have ever gotten.”
-
-
-
Iron Man 2
December 18, 2009
“Iron Man 2″ hits theaters May 7, 2010.
Robert Downey Jr. reprises his role as billionaire industrialist Tony Stark, aka the super hero Iron Man in this sequel to the 2008 blockbuster.
-
-
-
Coconut-carrying octopus
December 16, 2009
Veined Octopus, Amphioctopus marginatus, showing sophisticated tool use behaviour.
-
-
-
Mystery Couple Starts “Magical” Chain Reaction
December 15, 2009
For five hours, strangers bought each other meals at a Philly diner
By DANIELLE JOHNSON
It played like a scene from a holiday movie — a mystery couple, who didn’t leave their names or numbers, walked into a restaurant, finished their meal and then set-off a chain reaction of generosity that lasted for hours.
That’s just what employees at the Aramingo Diner in Port Richmond said a man and a woman did during their breakfast shift last Saturday morning.
“It was magical. I had tears in my eyes because it never happened before. I’ve been here for 10 years and I’ve never seen anything like that,” said Lynn Willard, a waitress.
Willard and other waitresses told NBC Philadelphia that the couple started the chain reaction by paying double: for their own meal and for the tab of another table of diners at the restaurant. There’s no evidence that one group of diners knew the others.
“I could not believe it … and it continued and continued, it was very nice,” said Willard. “They asked us not to say anything until they left, but we said ‘Merry Christmas, that person picked up your tab.’”
For the next five hours, dozens of patrons got into that same holiday spirit and paid the favor forward.
The diner’s manager said not one person was concerned about price of the check — which averaged between $12-$30.
“It was a surprise to all of us, the girls were even taken aback,” said Linda. “Those who took the check also tipped the waitress. So nobody had to do anything other than pass it on and that’s what they did. They just passed it forward.”
It’s a true holiday story that proves how a small gesture of kindness can create some magic.
http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local-beat/Mystery-Couple-Pay-It-Forward-79179347.html?yhp=1
-
-
-