Monday May 4, 205
I Am Big Bird Premieres This Week
I Am Big Bird: The Carroll Spinney Story is a documentary on the man who plays both the Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch characters on Sesame Street. Much of the footage in the film is from Spinney’s personal collection of home videos and has never been shown to the public before. I Am Big Bird was largely financed by a Kickstarter campaign in 2012 that raised $124,114. The film has received glowing reviews on the festival circuit.
Caroll Spinney, 81, has been doing interviews with various media outlets promoting the film’s May 5 release. Listen to Spinney’s interview with NPR. One detail revealed in the documentary is that Spinney and Big Bird were originally supposed to be on the doomed Challenger space shuttle in 1986. The idea was to promote interest in space among the country’s children. The Big Bird costume wouldn’t fit in the shuttle so Spinney was replaced by Christa McAuliffe, who would die along with six other crew members when the shuttle exploded 73 seconds after taking off. Spinney also told Vinnie Mancuso in an interview about his relationship with Waylon Jennings, who he met while filming Follow That Bird.
I Am Big Bird: The Caroll Spinney Story will be available on iTunes May 5 and will be shown in select theaters across the country beginning on May 6.
St. Louis Cardinals Sweep Pittsburgh Pirates In Exciting Fashion
The Pittsburgh Pirates came to Busch Stadium over the weekend and the result was three wins for the St. Louis Cardinals. The Cardinals outscored the Pirates 7-4 in the three-game series, which lasted a combined 25 innings. Matt Adams singled in Jon Jay in the 10th on Friday night to give the Cardinals a 2-1 win. Pete Kozma scored in the bottom of the 11th on a Matt Carpenter sacrifice fly to give the local nine the win on Saturday. Yesterday, Kolten Wong homered in the 14th to give the Cardinals a 3-2 win and an 18-6 record on the season.
The St. Louis Cardinals are averaging 42,583 fans per game at Busch Stadium this season after 13 games. That average ranks second in Major League Baseball behind the Los Angeles Dodgers and their 47,618 fans per game. The Cardinals also rank second in the league with Busch Stadium being 96.8 percent filled on average. San Francisco is filling AT&T Park at a 99.1 percent clip this season. While the Dodgers rank first in terms of fans per game, Dodger Stadium is only 85 percent filled on average.
Britney Spears & Iggy Azalea Release “Pretty Girls”
Britney Spears and Iggy Azalea have released their new song, “Pretty Girls” after it was leaked online over the weekend. “Pretty Girls” will be on Britney’s upcoming album.
Below you’ll find the audio for “Pretty Girls” Spears and Azalea filmed a music video for the song in Studio City but that has not been released yet.
Royal Baby Named Charlotte
Avengers: Age of Ultron Opens To $188 Million
Avengers: Age of Ultron fell short marvel’s The Avengers record opening weekend, but still brought in an estimated $187.7 million over the weekend. The Avengers opened to $207.4 million back in 2012. As of this writing Age of Ultron has brought in $626.7 million worldwide with less than 30 percent of that coming domestically. The movie has yet to open in China, where it’s scheduled for a May 12 opening. 2012’s Avengers made $84 million in China. Last year’s Transformers: Age of Extinction made $300 million there.
Other movies were also being shown this weekend in movie theaters. The Age of Adaline brought in $6.2 million in its second weekend of release and Furious 7 brought in another $6.1 million in its fifth.
I’ll have more on the weekend box office numbers on Thursday in the Weekend Movie Guide. I’ll also take a look at Hot Pursuit, starring Sofia Vergara and Reese Witherspooon and opening this weekend.
John Oliver Takes On Standardized Testing
John Oliver’s topic this week on Last Week Tonight with John Oliver was standardized testing in schools.
John Oliver Takes On Bud Light And Floyd Mayweather, Jr
John Oliver also took on Bud Light and their ridiculous “take no out of your vocabulary for the night” marketing fail. He goes on to suggest a new commercial for Anheuser-Busch InBev in their Bud Light Up For Whatever campaign.
Man Rescued From Basketball Hoop In Seattle
A man got stuck in a basketball hoop over the weekend in Seattle. He was shirtless and apparently threatening people with a hammer. Two Seattle firefighters eventually brought out a ladder to get the man free. The Seattle Police Department made sure the public was aware the man had been freed via their Twitter account.
Shirtless man removed from Cal Anderson basketball hoop. He may be arrested for property destruction, or at least goal-tending. #MayDaySea
— Seattle Police Dept. (@SeattlePD) May 2, 2015
The Seattle Police Department then had real problems to deal with as May Day demonstrations that had been peaceful turned very violent. Sixteen people were arrested and three officers were injured and taken to the hospital.
Mayweather-Pacquiao Delayed Then Dissapoints
The highly anticipated Mayweather-Pacquiao fight on Saturday night was delayed almost an hour due to widespread issues with the pay-per-view. Time Warner, Charter, AT&T and DirecTV were among the many companies that people were having problems with. Charter has announced they will be offering refunds to some of those affected. The hacker group Lizard Squad claimed responsibility for the pay-per-view problems. Many people were disappointed in the actual fight, even though is was a pretty typical Mayweather fight. Manny Pacquaio claimed after the fight that he fought with an injured shoulder. He says he wanted to get an anti-inflammatory shot before the fight but his request was denied.
If you didn’t see the fight, it basically went like this.
Carly Fiorina Announces She’s Running For President
Carly Fiorina, the former CEO of Hewlett-Packard, announced that she wants to be the Republican nominee for President. Yes, that would be the role of President of the United States that she is seeking. Fiorina did a terrible job as the CEO of HP and was fired in 2005. As far as her political career, she may be best known for “the demon sheep ad”. Fiorina told reporters on a conference call that Hillary and Bill Clinton can’t connect with hard-working Americans. I’ll agree that the Clintons aren’t in touch with average Americans, but this is a woman who oversaw 30,000 people being laid off at HP and got a severance package of $21 million when she got fired. Carly Fdiorina’s camp neglected to register CarlyFiorina.org and now the site just features a message reminding people about those layoffs at HP.
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