Richard Dreyfuss and Jack Nicholson
Russian family was cut off from all human contact for 40 years
From The Smithsonian: “In the summer of 1978. A helicopter was skimming the treeline a hundred or so miles from the Mongolian border when it dropped into a thickly wooded valley. Then the pilot saw something that should not have been there: a clearing, 6,000 feet up a mountainside, wedged between the pine and larch and scored with what looked like long, dark furrows. It was an astounding discovery. The mountain was more than 150 miles from the nearest settlement, and there were no records of anyone living in the district. The sight that greeted the geologists as they entered the cabin was like something from the middle ages. Jerry-built from whatever materials came to hand, the dwelling was not much more than a burrow, with a floor consisting of potato peel and pine-nut shells. It was cramped, musty and indescribably filthy, propped up by sagging joists—and, astonishingly, home to a family of five.”
Phantom of the Opera creator Andrew Lloyd Webber called priest to rid his house of a ghost
From The Telegraph: “He is probably best known for his hit musical The Phantom of the Opera, but Andrew Lloyd Webber has disclosed that, in real life, he shared his home with the poltergeist of Eaton Square. The composer has told The Telegraph that a mischievous spirit took up residence in his home in Belgravia, central London. He eventually called on the services of a priest to persuade it to leave the 19th-century property. Lord Lloyd Webber mentioned the poltergeist when asked by The Telegraph whether any of the theatres he owns are haunted. Lloyd Webber said he had never seen a ghost, but added: “I did have a house in Eaton Square which had a poltergeist. It would do things like take theatre scripts and put them in a neat pile in some obscure room. In the end we had to get a priest to come and bless the house, and then it left.”
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From the WSJ: “University of Florida officials went back and forth with documentary filmmaker Jo Franklin, an alumnus, over details for a planned gala in her honor at the Four Seasons Hotel in Washington. She had pledged $2 million to her alma mater, and her guest list included the entire staff of the PBS NewsHour. A day before the gala, officials learned her seven-figure check had bounced. They boarded a flight to Washington, hoping to straighten everything out. The next day, they found out Franklin hadn’t arrived at the Four Seasons, and the credit card number that she gave the hotel wasn’t working. They soon found out that the school’s esteemed graduate, once a well-known journalist and documentary filmmaker, was a troubled but gifted fabulist. The $2 million gift was an illusion, one in a yearslong string of fantasies concocted by Franklin, who tumbled from a life of apparent success to homelessness.”
Nick Offerman paddles a badass canoe he built down the Los Angeles river
From Outside: “In the 25 years I’ve called the city my home, I’ve done a great many things that I would categorize as fun. I have, of course, worked as an actor. But I’ve also been paid to build various decks and cabins as a carpenter, plus one exquisite post-and-beam yoga studio. I worked as a production assistant on a few music videos, trained by a tall, handsome, surfing porn actor who taught me to get up and stay up. I constructed an octagon-style wrestling cage for an episode of Friends. I’ve hiked hundreds of miles of trails in Los Angeles County, some while hallucinating, but mostly sober and high on the views from Griffith Park, the San Gabriels, and the Santa Monica Mountains. The point is, the one thing I never dreamed I would do is launch my beloved handmade cedar-strip canoe, Huckleberry, into the concrete-clad L.A. River, just a few miles north of the location of the drag-race scene in Grease.”
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