PETA calls to end Groundhog Day tradition, replace Punxsutawney Phil with 'vegan weather reveal cake'
The animal rights nonprofit organization is seeking to replace the Groundhog Day tradition with a vegan "weather reveal" cake. PETA announced the proposal in a news release on Jan. 20.
"PETA will deliver a delicious 'Weather Reveal' vegan cake each Groundhog Day in perpetuity if [the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club] agrees to let Punxsutawney Phil and his family retire to a reputable sanctuary, a move that will earn the outfit kudos from wildlife fans," the press release stated.
PETA also published pun-filled letter to the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club, arguing that the groundhog's annual duties were "no piece of cake" for him.
"Groundhogs are shy prey animals who, when allowed, actively avoid humans," the letter detailed. "Yet, year after year, Phil is transported to Gobler's Knob, whisked on stage, and subjected to a noisy announcer, screaming crowds, and flashing lights against all his natural instincts."
"If approached in his natural habitat, he would run away in fear, not volunteer to live year-round in captivity, unable to do anything that's natural and important to him like hibernate or burrow – just to be a town's once-a-year fake meteorologist."
In a statement, PETA president Ingrid Newkirk also called for Groundhog Day officials to "sprinkle some happiness" into Phil's life by letting him retire.
"When allowed to be themselves, groundhogs avoid humans, create intricate networks of underground burrows, communicate with one another, and even climb trees, but poor Phil is denied all of that for a tired old gimmick," Newkirk argued.
PETA told Fox News Digital that it has not received a response from the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club, and called for the organization to develop "kinder, innovative" traditions that make animals happy.
"Our letter suggests the groundhog club demonstrate true respect for Phil and set a wonderful example for how everyone can move beyond 'Groundhog' Day by replacing him with a delicious vegan 'Weather Reveal' cake that revelers can enjoy as an alternative to exploiting wild animals," a spokesperson explained. "The time is long overdue."
PETA has called for Groundhog Day alternatives in the past, including offering to send a giant gold coin to replace the animal in 2024.
Groundhog Day has been celebrated in the U.S. since 1887. Thousands of observers flock to Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, every year on Feb. 2 to see Phil predict the weather.
Tradition dictates that if Phil sees his shadow at daybreak and runs away, six more weeks of winter will follow. However, if he has no shadow, spring will arrive sooner.
In 2024, Phil announced that he did not see his shadow, marking a rare prediction for an early spring.
Fox News Digital reached out to PETA and the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club for comment.
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Los Angeles Times
31 minutes ago
- Los Angeles Times
Honoring Robert Altman's centennial, plus the week's best movies in L.A.
Hello! I'm Mark Olsen. Welcome to another edition of your regular field guide to a world of Only Good Movies. This week, The Times published a series of articles looking at possible different futures for Los Angeles. Greg Braxton wrote two pieces, including one about Hollywood's long-standing fascination with depicting the destruction of the city, including 'Escape From L.A.' to 'Blade Runner,' 'This Is the End' and many more. Braxton noted, 'In 'Los Angeles Plays Itself,' [Thom Andersen's] 2003 documentary chronicling the portrayal of the city through cinema history, Andersen aims his own wrecking ball. The film's narrator quotes the late Mike Davis, a noted historian and urbanist, when he says that Hollywood 'takes a special pleasure in destroying Los Angeles — a guilty pleasure shared by most of its audience.'' He also specifically examined 'Miracle Mile,' Steve De Jarnatt's 1988 apocalyptic romantic adventure drama featuring the stretch of Wilshire Boulevard from La Brea to Fairfax. The UCLA Film and Television Archive is in the midst of 'Robert Altman's America: A Centennial Review,' a look at the monumental filmmaker's wildly unpredictable body of work to mark 100 years since his birth. The designated home of Altman's personal print collection, the archive will show many of the films in 35mm. Writing when Altman was to receive an honorary Oscar (an occasion that turned out to be just a few months before his death in 2006), Peter Rainer called him 'perhaps the most American of directors. But his Americanness is of a special sort and doesn't really connect up to any tradition except his own.' Comparing Altman to such filmmakers as John Ford, John Huston, Frank Capra, Sam Peckinpah, Howard Hawks and Preston Sturges, Rainer added, 'Altman, who has ranged as widely as any of these directors across the American panorama, is a more mysterious and allusive artist. He is renowned for the buzzing expansiveness of his stories, the crisscrossed plots and people, but what strikes home most of all in this sprawl is a terrible sense of aloneness. … If being an American means being rooted to the land, to a tradition, a community, then it also means being forever in fear of dispossession. Altman understands this better than any other filmmaker. It's what gives even his rowdiest comic escapades their bite of woe.' The series began last week with 'Nashville,' a movie that celebrates its 50th anniversary this year and which this column has recently discussed. This Saturday there will be a fantastic double-bill of 1977's '3 Women' starring Shelley Duvall and Sissy Spacek with 1982's 'Come Back to the 5 & Dime Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean,' starring Sandy Dennis, Karen Black and Cher. Other pairings include 'M*A*S*H' and 'Brewster McCloud,' 'The Long Goodbye' and 'California Split,' 'Thieves Like Us' and 'Kansas City,' plus 'McCabe & Mrs. Miller' and 'Popeye.' The series concludes with separate screenings of 'The Player' and 'Short Cuts,' which reestablished Altman's vitality in the 1990s. As Times critic Charles Champlin once wrote, 'When Altman's movies are good, they are very, very good, and when they are bad they are infuriating because there is something so arrogantly self-destructive about them.' In a 2000 interview with Susan King for a retrospective at LACMA that included a 25th anniversary screening of 'Nashville,' the often-irascible Altman had this to say about his career. 'There isn't any filmmaker who ever lived who has had a better shake than I did,' he said. 'I have never been out of work and the only thing I haven't made are these big, popular films. I have never wanted to and I never will. I would fail at it. I would be late for work.' The American Cinematheque is premiering a newly-created 70mm print of the director's cut of Steven Spielberg's 1977 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind.' The film will play at the Egyptian on Friday, Saturday and Sunday and then at the Aero on Aug. 29 and Aug. 31. 'Close Encounters' was nominated for eight Academy Awards, including Spielberg's first for directing. It won for Vilmos Zsigmond's cinematography as well as a special achievement award for its special effects. The story, of course, revolves around a series of sightings of UFOs around the world that leads to a spacecraft being studied in Wyoming and interactions with extraterrestrial beings. The cast includes Richard Dreyfuss, Melinda Dillon, Teri Garr, Bob Balaban and François Truffaut. In his original review of the film, Charles Champlin wrote, 'The special effects conceived by Spielberg and executed by Douglas Trumbull and a staff that seems to number in the hundreds are dazzling and wondrous. That's not surprising: The surprise is that 'Close Encounters' is so well leavened with humor. … 'Close Encounters' stays light on its legs, mystical and reverential but not solemn. It is a warm celebration, positive and pleasurable. The humor is folksy and slapstick rather than cerebral, as if to confirm that our encounter is with a populist vehicle.' Jean-Luc Godard, Anna Karina and 'Vivre sa vie' in 35mm Anyone looking to prepare for the upcoming release of Richard Linklater's 'Nouvelle Vague,' about the making of Jean-Luc Godard's 'Breathless' and a snapshot of Paris at the moment of the French New Wave, might well want to check out Sunday's 35mm screening of Godard's 1962 'Vivre sa vie' at the Los Feliz Theatre. Starring Anna Karina, then in the midst of a tempestuous marriage to Godard, the film features what may be her greatest performance as Nana, an aspiring actress who finds herself drawn into the world of prostitution. The film stretches from the manic joy of her dancing around a pool table to the quiet devastation of seeing her tear-stained face as she watches a movie. There's also an utterly heart-wrenching conclusion. In an appreciation of Karina after her death in 2019 at age 79, Justin Chang wrote, 'We often speak admiringly of a performer's screen presence or charisma. Karina possessed something more: flinty intelligence and deadpan wit, dark feline eyes that could project playfulness and melancholy without her saying a word. She incarnated both a matter-of-fact toughness and an expressive glamour worthy of a silent screen star.' 'Dealing: Or the Berkeley-to-Boston Forty-Brick Lost-Bag Blues' The Aero Theatre will have a rare screening of 1972's 'Dealing: Or the Berkeley-to-Boston Forty-Brick Lost-Bag Blues' in 35mm on Sunday afternoon. Director Paul Williams and actors Barbara Hershey and John Lithgow will be on hand for a Q&A moderated by screenwriter Larry Karaszewski, who recently declared it 'the best 1970s movie you've never heard of.' Adapted from a novel by brothers Michael Crichton and Douglas Crichton (credited as 'Michael Douglas'), the story involves a Harvard student (Robert F. Lyons) who takes a job from his best friend (Lithgow, in his film debut) delivering marijuana across the country. Along the way he meets a woman (Hershey) and after she gets busted by a corrupt cop (Charles Durning), he tries to set things straight. 'Romy and Michele's High School Reunion' and 'Grosse Pointe Blank' On Saturday and Sunday, the New Beverly Cinema will have a double-bill of two comedies from 1997: David Mirkin's 'Romy and Michele's High School Reunion' and George Armitage's 'Grosse Pointe Blank.' With a screenplay by Robin Schiff adapting her own play, 'Romy and Michele' is about two friends (Lisa Kudrow and Mira Sorvino) who concoct a plan to impress everyone at their 10-year high school reunion by lying about how successful they are. The film also features clothes by 'Clueless' costume designer Mona May. In his original review, Jack Matthews wrote, 'The dead-pan performances of Sorvino and Kudrow, who played Michelle in the original play, are perfect. Romy and Michelle are cartoon characters, but the actresses make them both real and enormously sympathetic. … Beneath the endless silliness of the movie beats a real heart, and its theme of loyal friendship keeps propping it up every time the thin walls of the story seem about to collapse. Though 'Romy and Michelle' doing Tucson doesn't take us much further than Beavis and Butt-head doing America, the ride, and the company, are a lot more fun.' From a screenplay by Tom Jankiewicz, D.V. DeVincentis, Steve Pink and star John Cusack, 'Grosse Pointe Blank' features Cusack as a succeful hit man attempting to attend his 10-year high school reunion and rewin the heart of an old girlfriend (Minnie Driver). That is, until a cadre of competing assassins and federal agents all show up as well. In his original review, Kenneth Turan drew comparisons to Armitage's earlier caper comedy 'Miami Blues,' writing, 'A wild at heart, anarchic comedy that believes in living dangerously … Clever enough to make jokes about Greco-Roman wrestling and make them funny, 'Grosse Pointe Blank's' greatest success is the way it maintains its comic attitude. Working with a smart script and actors who get the joke, director Armitage pulls off a number of wacky action set pieces. Even if you think you've heard actors say, 'I love you, we can make this relationship work,' in every conceivable situation, this film has a few surprises in store.' U.S. premiere of 'Onda Nova' in 4K Also on Sunday, Mezzanine will have the U.S. premiere of a 4K restoration of the 1983 Brazilian film 'Onda Nova,' which translates as 'New Wave.' Directed by Ícaro Martins and José Antonio Garcia, the film was withheld by the Brazilian dictatorship and only released there after a lengthy legal battle. It is thought to have never before screened in the U.S. Women's soccer was banned in Brazil until 1979, and women were only allowed to start teams in 1983, the year 'Onda Nova' was produced. The film brings a defiantly queer and anarchically rebellious attitude to the story of a group of women on a newly formed soccer team and features special appearances by figures involved in Brazil's struggle for freedom, including musician Caetano Veloso, journalist Osmar Santos and well-known male athletes Casagrande and Wladimir.
Atlantic
2 hours ago
- Atlantic
What Muriel Spark Knew About Childhood
This is an edition of the Books Briefing, our editors' weekly guide to the best in books. Sign up for it here. The most recent issue of The Atlantic taught me that the Scottish author Muriel Spark had, according to Judith Shulevitz, 'a steely command of omniscience,' and frequently played with 'selective disclosure, irony, and other narrative devices.' I knew that Spark was funny, and that her work was highly recommended by people whose taste I respect. But I quickly realized I had very few other facts at my disposal. Most important, I'd never read her writing. So before I'd even finished Shulevitz's review of a new biography of the novelist, I downloaded The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie —Spark's best-known work—from my local library. First, here are four new stories from The Atlantic 's Books section: How not to fix American democracy 'Surface Support,' a poem by Michael D. Snediker Literature's enduring obsession with strange sisters Why so many MIT students are writing poetry The novella's title character works at an Edinburgh school for girls in the 1930s; she's an outré teacher who has marked a special group of pupils as 'hers.' She cares very little for teaching the approved curriculum. Instead, she takes her students to the theater; she walks them through Edinburgh's Old Town; she regales them with tales of her former loves; she praises the fascist regimes of Mussolini and Hitler. Her girls, she notes, will benefit far more from the artistic education provided by Brodie 'in her prime'—unmarried and pushing 40, she is entirely aware of her sexual and intellectual power, which are both at their peak. But the story, while named for Brodie, is not actually about her; it is primarily told through the recollections of the girls, and one in particular: Sandy, who in her adulthood has become a nun. The book's main question is not what will become of Brodie—we know from the early pages that she will be fired from the school, 'betrayed' by one of her chosen girls. Instead, it investigates the heady, hormonal days of adolescence, and the moral education of the students. That last theme is where Spark's 'central concern,' as Shulevitz puts it, becomes clear. The author was a Catholic convert, and her writing is full of characters searching for, asking about, and turning to God. For the girls, whom Brodie begins shaping when they're barely tweens, their teacher is something like a deity: at times hard to understand, often capricious, but ultimately fascinating, beautiful, and never wrong. As they grow up, most of the kids simply become who they were always going to be, shaking off Brodie's rules and stipulations and following their own whims. But Sandy feels her teacher's authority for the rest of her life. Her entanglement with Brodie, which continues into her late teens, leads her down a winding path that culminates in her own conversion to Catholicism. Her act of submission to the Church, which requires her to shed her individuality, is actually her final moment of separation from her former mentor: She has allowed God to dethrone her teacher. But even though Sandy's conversion mirrors Spark's own, I was surprised and pleased to see that the author doesn't make Sandy a perfect nun, devoted solely to the Church, free of Brodie's shadow. Instead, Spark is realistic about the effect a particularly magnetic figure can have on a young, impressionable person. Many years later, when Sandy is asked who or what most influenced her, it's Brodie's name on her lips. Similarly, Spark's is on mine. I've now got Memento Mori and Loitering With Intent, two of her other novels, waiting for me on my e-reader. The Judgments of Muriel Spark By Judith Shulevitz The novelist liked playing God—a very capricious one. What to Read The Backyard Bird Chronicles, by Amy Tan Tan coped with the political tumult of 2016 by returning to two of her childhood refuges: nature and art. Drawing was an early hobby of hers, but she'd felt discouraged from taking it seriously. At 65, she took 'nature journaling' lessons to learn how to depict and interpret the world around her—most notably the inter-avian dramas of the birds behind her Bay Area home. The Backyard Bird Chronicles is a disarming account of one year of Tan's domestic bird-watching, a book 'filled with sketches and handwritten notes of naive observations,' she writes. That naivete is endearing: The accomplished novelist becomes a novice, trying to improve through eager dedication. Over the course of this engaging book, her illustrations grow more sophisticated, more assured—leaving readers with a portrait of the hobbyist as an emerging artist. — Sophia Stewart Out Next Week 📚 Baldwin: A Love Story, by Nicholas Boggs 📚 Where Are You Really From, by Elaine Hsieh Chou 📚 Dominion, by Addie E. Citchens Your Weekend Read The Logic of the '9 to 5' Is Creeping Into the Rest of the Day By Julie Beck Over the past couple of years, the vloggers of social media have taken to documenting their routines from 5 to 9 p.m. Some creators also make a morning version, the '5 to 9 before the 9 to 5,' starting at 5 a.m. These routines are highly edited, almost hypnotic, with quick cuts, each mini-scene overlaid with a time stamp. Hours pass in just a couple of minutes, and the compressed time highlights a sense of efficiency. The videos have big to-do-list energy; the satisfaction they offer is that of vicariously checking boxes.
San Francisco Chronicle
4 hours ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
Richard Thomas dons wig and mustache to play icon Mark Twain in one-man play touring the US
NEW YORK (AP) — Richard Thomas has not one but two big shoes to fill when he goes out on the road this summer in a celebrated one-man show. The Emmy Award winner and Tony Award nominee is portraying the great American writer Mark Twain in a play written and performed for decades by the late Hal Holbrook. Thomas immediately accepted the offer to star in the 90-minute 'Mark Twain Tonight!' that tours more than a dozen states this summer and fall before wondering what he'd gotten himself into. 'I walked down to the street and I said, 'Are you crazy? What are you out of your mind?'' he says, laughing. 'I had to grapple with who's the bigger fool — the man who says, 'Yes, I'll do it' or the man that says, 'No, I won't'?' Holbrook portrayed the popular novelist and humorist for more than a half century starting in 1954, making over 2,300 performances to a collective audience of more than 2 million. He and Thomas were fond of each other and would see each other's work. The show mixes Twain's speeches and passages from his books and letters to offer a multidimensional look at an American icon, who toured the U.S. with appearances. 'I'm going to feel very much like I'm not only following in Hal's footsteps, but in Twain's as well,' says Thomas, who began his career as John-Boy Walton on TV's 'The Waltons' and became a Broadway mainstay. Thomas jokes that Holbrook had 50 years to settle into the role and he has only a year or so. 'I have the advantage on him that he started when he was 30 and he was pretending to be an old man. I'm 74 so I'm right there. That's the one area where I'm up on him.' 'It's time for Twain' The new tour kicks off this week in Hartford, Connecticut — appropriately enough, one of the places Twain lived — and then goes to Maryland, Iowa, Arkansas, North Carolina, Kansas, Tennessee, New York, New Jersey, Utah, California, Arizona, Alabama, Utah and Florida by Christmastime. Then in 2026 — the 60th anniversary of the Broadway premiere — it goes to Texas, Colorado, Wisconsin and Ohio. 'It's time for Twain, you know? I mean, it's always time for Twain, always. He's always relevant because he's utterly and completely us, with warts and all,' says Thomas. The actor will travel with a stage manager and a trunk with his costumes, but all the other elements will be sourced locally by the venues — like desks and chairs, giving each show local touches. 'There's something about doing a show for people in their own community, in their theater that they support, that they raise money for. They're not coming to you as tourists. You're coming to them.' Thomas has done a one-man show before — 'A Distant Country Called Youth' using Tennessee Williams letters — but that allowed him to read from the script on stage. Here he has no such help. 'One of the keys is to balance the light and the shadow, how funny, how outrageous, the polemic and the darkness and the light. You want that balanced beautifully,' he says. Twain represents America Other actors — notably Val Kilmer and Jerry Hardin — have devised one-man shows about the creator of Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer, who still manages to fascinate. A new biography of Twain by Ron Chernow came out this year, which Thomas is churning through. Thomas sees Twain as representing America perfectly: 'He just lets it all hang out there. He's mean-spirited; he's generous. He's bigoted; he is progressive. He hates money; he wants to be the richest man in America. All of these fabulous contradictions are on display.' Thomas has lately become a road rat, touring in 'Twelve Angry Men' from 2006-08, 'The Humans' in 2018 and starring as Atticus Finch in Aaron Sorkin's adaptation of 'To Kill a Mockingbird' from 2022-24. Orin Wolf, CEO of tour producer NETworks Presentations, got to watch Thomas on the road in 'To Kill a Mockingbird' and says having him step into Twain will strengthen the theater community across the country 'It's so rare nowadays to have a true star of the road,' Wolf says, calling Thomas 'a breed of actor and artist that they rarely make anymore.' 'I'm delighted to be supporting him and delighted that he's chosen to do this because I think this is something he could also take on for hopefully many years,' he adds. After Twain, Thomas will next be seen on Broadway this spring opposite Renée Elise Goldsberry and Marylouise Burke in David Lindsay-Abaire's new comedy, 'The Balusters.' But first there's the eloquence and wry humor in a show about Twain that reveals he was often a frustrated optimist when it came to America. 'I think it reflects right now a lot of our frustration with how things are going,' says Thomas. 'Will things ever be better and can things ever better? Or are we just doomed to just be this species that is going to constantly eat its own tail and are we ever going to move forward?'
