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There are few geek-favorite actors sure to cause more online discussion than Nathan Fillion (Firefly, Castle), so when reports surfaced that he would be appearing in James Gunn's Guardians of the Galaxy, speculation spun out of control. Would he be stepping into the role of Nova, or would his infamous space cowboy ride...
Since Fillion is both a close friend and regular cast member in both Joss Whedon and James Gunn's film projects, it was safe to assume that he would appear in Marvel's film universe at some point (especially given that he's already on Disney's payroll for ABC's Castle). The notion of the aging actor playing a Marvel he...
For those who wish to maintain the surprise of seeing how Fillion has been worked into the plot of Guardians, now is the time to stop reading, and be content with Gunn's confirmation that the actor would be appearing in a "fun" cameo. But those eager to know can read on.
“@STARS_TyranT: Are the rumours true that he has some part in the film?” @nathanfillion has a very small fun cameo he did as a favor to me.
It was Fillion himself who let it slip that his cameo may not be one that every moviegoer would recognize, claiming that viewers should "check the credits" to see where he had fit into the film's cast. And according to a high-level source of Schmoes Know, that's because the actor's performance is, indeed, a small one -...
The role in question is actually that of Cosmo, the telepathic Russian space dog who has proved invaluable to the Guardians throughout their comic book history. Once the subject of a Soviet-era Russian space program, Cosmo was launched into Earth's orbit only to drift off into the cosmos, eventually being mutated into ...
With so much inaccurate "news" about my involvement in GOTG, I'm actually losing faith in the internet. I'm not Cosmo.
Gunn essentially warned that the canine cosmonaut won't be playing a large part this time around, but the confirmation of Cosmo is something fans have been hoping for since the first signs of Rocket Raccoon (close friend and animal comrade of Cosmo) being done justice began to appear online. If the rumors are true, fan...
It seems more likely that Cosmo's ability to speak will be the showcase of the character in such a small cameo, as opposed to his ability to fire psionic blasts or control the minds of those around him. But given Gunn's unique brand of humor - and his decision to cast Fillion in the role, as opposed to a lesser-known s...
What do you think of this apparent reveal? Does Nathan Fillion putting on a Russian accent to play a psychic space dog seem like a role the actor was born to play, or would you rather have seen him appear in the flesh?
Are you convinced that the role is as small a cameo as Gunn has claimed, or would Marvel be wise to include Cosmo in future films (especially action sequences)? We would say that having fought alongside the likes of Adam Warlock and Silver Surfer have earned this pup some big screen attention, but we invite you to shar...
Guardians of the Galaxy hits theaters on August 1st, 2014.
Stephanie O’Brien (R) and Jessica Peters (L) are a real estate broker team specializing in Brooklyn properties.
Stephanie O’Brien keeps rows of “Thank You” notes from her clients pinned neatly on a board above her desk. O’Brien and her partner, Jessica Peters, have stopped prospecting for new real estate business—almost all of their clients return year after year and keep providing referrals.
“Almost everything we do is off referrals,” said O’Brien.
Peters and O’Brien are both brokers and principals of the Peters/OBrien Team at Douglas Elliman. The team works from a Williamsburg office and specializes in Brooklyn new developments, condos, residential resales and investment properties.
O’Brien lives in Brooklyn, at the intersection of Myrtle and Broadway. She calls it the trifecta, a place where “Bushwick meets Bed-Stuy meets East Williamsburg.” She came to love Brooklyn for its privacy and convenience, among other things.
“There’s more sky everywhere,” said O’Brien, who moved to Brooklyn from the Lower East Side.
O’Brien grew up between New York City and Austin, TX. She remembers swimming miles in the ocean on Coney Island with her grandmother, who was swimmer, and eating soft-serve ice cream and Nathan’s hot dogs.
Although O’Brien’s family is in real estate, she went the artistic route before joining the field. She attended the New School University to study film and went on to make humanitarian documentaries.
She found it hard to remain in the film industry without selling her integrity as an artist, so she moved to working on events.
“When I was working in events people would ask me to help them find a villa. The clientele that came to the events was very high quality,” said O’Brien.
She would help her clients find properties from Florida to Saint Tropez, but that work was just an added value.
O’Brien began real estate career in Manhattan in 2004. Her first sale came from one of her clients in the events field It was a two-bedroom apartment on East 11th Street between Ave. B and Ave. C that sold for $1.1 million.
O’Brien continued to work in Manhattan, but eventually began to convert some of her Manhattan clients to Brooklyn. She moved her sales entirely to Brooklyn in 2007.
Brooklyn has become very trendy since then, O’Brien said. GQ Magazine rated it “The Coolest City on the Planet” in 2007.
“I don’t even want to go to Manhattan anymore,” O’Brien said.
Peters and O’Brien said 7 out of 10 buyers they deal with are paying cash.
O’Brien said currently about half of her buyers are foreign, coming from countries like the United Kingdom, China, and Russia. Many of the purchases are investment properties and pied-à-terres.
Outside of her work in real estate, O’Brien is involved in activism and charity work. Most of her efforts revolve around children and poverty causes.
Can New York Benefit From Brexit?
Less than two months before the 2006 Olympics, Mao Asada of Japan became the first woman to land two triple-axel jumps in the same program.
And Asada wasn't a two-trick pony then.
She was, at age 15, the best women's figure skater in the world, winner of the 2006 Grand Prix Final, the one about whom everyone said: "Mao -- Wow!"
But she had to watch the last Olympics on television.
Asada had the bad luck of having been born 87 days too late to meet the International Skating Union's minimum age requirement - 15 years old by July 1 of the preceding year -- for the Winter Olympics.
As Asada makes her long-anticipated Olympic debut in the women's short program Tuesday night, the question is whether her time has come -- or gone.
Her recent struggles would suggest the latter. Asada has done so poorly in the short program at her three international competitions this season that her best score (58.96) ranks only 11th in the world, nearly 18 points behind the top score of odds-on favorite Kim Yuna of South Korea.
There are a host of theories for why Asada has gone from world-beater in 2006 -- and world champion in 2008 -- to fourth at worlds in 2009 to an utter also-ran on the Grand Prix circuit in the 2010 season.
One says she is ill-suited temperamentally or artistically to work with Tatiana Tarasova, the Russian coach with whom Asada began to work in June 2008.
Asada was accustomed to long practices full of jumping. Tarasova prefers shorter, less physically demanding practices.
Another theory says Asada has put too much emphasis on the 3 1/2 -revolution triple axel, using it as the first jump -- as part of a combination -- in both the short and long programs. She intends to do two triple axels in the Olympic long program.
That she has failed to land a clean triple axel in any international short program seems to support that idea. If the one big jump fails, programs tend to fall flat, as Asada clearly understands.
"The most important aspect would be to succeed in the short program," she said at a news conference here. "Of course, the jumps are very important, so when I succeed on jumps, the other elements will have better scores too."
Asada was a distant third behind Kim in the short program at her first Grand Prix event of the season, sixth in the short at her next Grand Prix event and then third again at the Four Continents Championship in late January.
Even the best of those three performances would probably leave her buried in the much deeper field at the Olympics.
"Short program tends to be my weakness," Asada said. "I am better at free skating [long program]. I will approach the day before the short program as if it is the day before the free skating."
Asada's international free skates have been generally solid this season, although she has struggled with at least one triple axel in each.
Ironically, although she gets props for being the only one among the 30 Olympic competitors planning to attempt the 3 1/2 -revolution triple axel, the jump may not get her enough points to be worth the risk.
For instance, Kim's planned triple lutz-triple toe loop combination has a base value of 10, while Asada's triple axel-double toe has a base of 9.7. Kim does a second triple lutz, worth a base of 6.0, compared with the 8.2 of Asada's second triple axel.
Each skater has chosen the most difficult jumps she feels able to handle. Failure for either would be heavily penalized on the score sheet, and Kim's big jumps have been more reliable than Asada's axel.
As was the case in the men's event, where Evan Lysacek of the United States won the title without a quadruple jump, far more than execution of one element will decide the outcome under the parameters of the sport's highly complex scoring system.
Japan's Miki Ando, the 2009 world bronze medalist and 2007 world champion, concedes Kim has a great advantage in a competition that has taken on geo-cultural dimensions because of the centuries-old animosity between Japan and South Korea.
"In the world, Kim Yuna is regarded as the strong favorite," Ando said, "I believe that she's a great skater. I think she has something I'm missing in terms of expression and also in the solid jumps."
And where do the two U.S. skaters, Rachael Flatt and Mirai Nagasu, figure in this?
Flatt, 17, who learned a week ago she had been accepted at Stanford, was fifth in the world last year, and her consistency makes her a threat to capitalize on mistakes by more talented rivals and grab a medal.
She had a nervous practice Monday, failing on the two major jumping passes of her short program run-through.
"Sometimes I try too hard," she said.
Nagasu appears ready to try anything. She has added a triple lutz-triple toe to her short program.
"She has absolutely nothing to lose," said Nagasu's coach, Frank Carroll. "This Olympics is a setup for the next one. She has Olympic champion potential in the way she moves."
Charlene Harven, a Randallstown resident, is volunteering at a Red Cross shelter for victims of California's Camp Fire.
Charlene Harven has faithfully kept a “thankfulness journal” for the last two years. Inside, she’ll scribble notes about the little things that remind her to be grateful.
As a Red Cross volunteer who often meets a person right after the worst day of their life, she says it’s easy to find reasons to count her blessings.
When the Randallstown resident boarded a plane heading to fire-ravaged California last week, she tucked that journal into her luggage. She knew she wanted to keep it close.
On Thursday, Harven celebrated Thanksgiving in a Red Cross shelter in Chico, Calif. She ate turkey and stuffing alongside people who, just weeks earlier, had lost their homes to the devastating Camp Fire as it incinerated the small town of Paradise.
Between the long hours working as a shelter nurse, she’s found time to fill her journal.
“I wrote that I’m thankful that I can volunteer for the Red Cross in Chico,” said Harven, 64. “I had both my knees replaced earlier this year and I'm thankful I can work without incident.
Patty Rough lost her Paradise home and most of her belongings in the Camp Fire, and she had no place to cook a family meal on Thanksgiving.
The Camp Fire’s death toll continues to grow — it had killed 83 people, as of Thanksgiving morning. Its flames have consumed nearly 14,000 residences and roughly 500 commercial buildings, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
She’s seen some of the devastation for herself. During the drive from the airport to the shelter, Harven looked out her window and saw endless burnt fields. State officials estimate the fire whipped through more than 150,000 acres, about 90 percent of which is now contained.
Whenever she goes out into the street, she has to wear a smoke mask to protect her lungs. She wrote “clean air” down in her thankfulness journal.
Her 10-day deployment hasn’t been all bleak. There have been joyful moments, like the day a missing woman rolled into the shelter in her wheelchair.
“Unfortunately, there are still several that haven’t been found,” Harven said. Hundreds of people remain unaccounted for. Some of their names and faces are posted on a bulletin board at the Chico shelter.
But on Thanksgiving Day, she said, the mood was celebratory. About 100 people — victims of the fire alongside volunteers and emergency management personnel — were expected to feast together. The shelter is located at a local junior high school, with the cafeteria perfectly suited for this kind of event.
More than 500 Red Cross disaster workers have been helping support those affected by the California wildfires. They’ve helped serve more than 60,000 meals and snacks and distributed more than 16,000 relief items. Harven has contributed to the more than 18,000 health, mental health and spiritual care contacts made.
For Harven, who has spent many years as a Red Cross volunteer, this deployment to Northern California feels especially personal.
Just days before she left, her cousin’s Baltimore home was destroyed in a fire in the middle of the night.
Published on December 12, 2011.
The Swiss hamlet of Obermutten, population 79, became a Facebook sensation after its fan page launched with a video of the mayor promising that anyone who "liked" it would have their profile picture posted on the town's (real, not virtual) message board. Obermutten now has more than 14,000 fans. Jung von Matt/Limmat cr...
After the Kraft Foods-owned brand Halls discontinued its green-grape flavor in Brazil late last year, cough-drop enthusiasts took to social media to demand its return. Kraft relented, then commissioned Agency Espalhe Guerrilha Marketing to hire artists to create busts of three fans out of 5,000 units of Uva Verde. The ...
Social media again played a central role in the second year of "Small Business Saturday " -- an American Express-led effort to drive shoppers to local retailers on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. Facebook offered a $100 ad credit to the first 10,000 businesses that registered. The page has more than 2.7 million fans, ...
HBO hyped the Season 4 premiere of "True Blood" by creating a Facebook app, "Immortalize Yourself," which enabled fans to produce videos of themselves with real characters and Facebook friends. The app pulled in data from users' profiles to generate the videos, which could feature random or specific Facebook friends. I...
Heinz partnered with the We Are Social agency for a U.K. campaign launched at the start of cold and flu season. It enabled Facebook fans to send sick friends cans of cream of tomato or chicken soup. For a $3 fee, a user could buy the can of soup, which was inscribed with the recipient's name and shipped, arriving at it...
Ultimat Vodka unveiled a Facebook app called the Social Life Audit that uses the site's facial recognition API to calculate how much fun users are having in their photos, and gender analysis to see if there's hookup potential. The app employs BlackBook's database of 2.5 million hot spots to cross-check against Facebook...
Netherlands residents could win a Citroën DS5 when the company sponsored a daylong "Twitter race," in which TV presenter Froukje de Both drove the car while a co-pilot read directions off Twitter. People urged de Both to come to their location by tweeting #ds5race. The winner was the first person to retweet the final m...
Volkswagen built an app on its Netherlands Facebook page asking fans to vote for their favorite classic car -- the T1 or Beetle -- for a chance at getting the "Fanwagen," which is the winning model tricked out with social features. The lucky owner can print out a Facebook news feed inside the Fanwagen and display relat...
Belgian fashion magazine Flair built a Facebook app, Fashion Tag, to help users find out where their friends discovered their best outfits. Created by Duval Guillaume, Brussels, the app lets users tag friends' clothing and accessories and then post on their walls to ask where they got the corresponding item. The answer...
Intel and Toshiba worked on "The Inside Experience," an interactive movie/social-media campaign starring Emmy Rossum as Christina Perasso, who's been abducted and can only transmit clues about her location via Facebook, Twitter and YouTube on the laptop she's been left with (also the subject of the promotion). Fans had...
Samsung has announced a global recall of its Galaxy Note 7 smartphone following reports that some of the devices were catching fire while being recharged, Fortune, The Wall Street Journal and various other media outlets confirmed in reports published early Friday morning.
The company halted sales of the new, waterproof entry in its flagship smartphone line earlier this week for additional quality control tests following online and social media reports that the device could randomly catch fire when charging the battery, the Journal explained in its report.
According to the Yonhap News Agency in South Korea, Koh Dong-jin, chief of the company’s mobile business division, apologized said that an internal investigation linked the problems to a faulty battery that affected just 24 out of every one million Galaxy Note 7 devices. Samsung has promised to replace all affected uni...
Samsung said that it would voluntarily replace the phones of those who had already purchased a Galaxy Note 7 and that it would take about two weeks to prepare replacement devices, according to Fortune. Details of the exchange program would be released in the near future, they added.
The move comes after multiple users posted online videos and images of devices which allegedly exploded or caught fire while charging (the authenticity of these photos and videos has not been independently verified by redOrbit). In one video, cited in a report by The Guardian, one Galaxy Note 7 owner showed a partially...
No injuries have been reported, and Koh said that Samsung would work alongside its suppliers “to identify battery products that have a chance of being defective. It will take about two weeks to secure parts and components and prepare new products.” He also promised that the exchange would “be carried out as fast as pos...
The family fun run raises money for the Helen Woodward Animal Center.
Make like a pony and jog on the actual track at Del Mar. Date? Thanksgiving morning. Beneficiary? The Helen Woodward Animal Center.
PHYSICAL ACTIVITY, THEN THE FOOD: Thanksgiving morning fun runs have become the Thing with a capital T over the last decade or so. They're never too long, distance- or time-wise -- people have to get home and check on the bird in the oven -- and there is typically a fundraising element, which lends the gratitude-filled...
THURSDAY, NOV. 27: Not just the very track, but participants line up at the starting gate, too, so consider this a fine chance to get a horse's eye view as to what they're seeing before their fleet-of-hoof races kick off. The run itself is one mile long, around the track, and lookie at this: Jockeys will also run the r...
STAY AND WATCH: Races -- the horsey kind -- start at 11 a.m. that day, and runners shall get free admission. That is, if you don't need to get home and check on the bird. Wherever you head out to Thanksgiving dinner, though, whether it be your own home or a pal's, you have to brag about running from the starting gate a...
'PI 171434' is a spring wheat germplasm originating from Afghanistan that was resistant to of stripe rust in a series of screenings carried out in Washington from 2004 to 2009. The type of resistance was all-stage, and it was effective to races accounting for all types of virulence in that period.

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