Latest news with #AirBud
Yahoo
22-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
George Wendt Was the Second 'Cheers' Actor to Die This Month
The entertainment industry lost one of its most beloved actors when Cheers star George Wendt — "NORM!" — passed away at age 76 earlier this week. Sadly, the fan-favorite character actor was actually the second Cheers star to die this month. News broke on Wednesday, May 21, that actor Michael Alaimo died on May 2 at age 86. The actor — who appeared in such iconic '90s films as Space Jam, The Sandlot, Air Bud and more — portrayed Vinnie Claussen on the 1985 Cheers episode "2 Good 2 Be 4 Real." The Season 4 episode features Alaimo's character attempting to woo Rhea Perlman's no-nonsense Carla Tortelli at the bar after sending her a letter in the mail. The ruse of the episode, however, is that the rest of the Cheers bartenders and bar patrons, feeling sorry for Carla's single status, create a fictional suitor for the blunt barmaid, causing her to turn down actual potential love interests like Vinnie. Alaimo's daughter, Gabriella Alaimo Thomas, confirmed her father's death in a statement to Variety on Wednesday. While she did not cite a cause of death for the actor, she told the outlet that her dad "passed away peacefully." The statement of Alaimo's death echoes that of Wendt's family's own announcement of his passing. Wendt — who starred in every episode of Cheers and earned six Emmy nominations for his portrayal of beloved barfly Norm Peterson — died peacefully in his sleep at home on Tuesday, May 20. 'George was a doting family man, a well-loved friend and confidant to all of those lucky enough to have known him. He will be missed forever," the actor's publicist said in a statement on Tuesday. "The family has requested privacy during this time." Wendt is survived by wife Bernadette Birkett, as well as their three children and his two stepchildren. He was also the uncle of fellow actor Jason Sudeikis. Wendt's longtime Cheers co-stars paid tribute to the iconic star following the announcement of his death — including Perlman, Ted Danson (who played bar owner Sam Malone), and John Ratzenberger, who portrayed Norm's best friend Cliff Claven on 11 seasons of the hit sitcom. Danson, 77, shared a particularly poignant statement about the passing of his longtime friend and co-star. 'I am devastated to hear that Georgie is no longer with us,' the Good Place alum told the New York Post in a statement via his rep. 'I am sending all my love to Bernadette and the children. It is going to take me a long time to get used to this. I love you, Georgie.'
Yahoo
02-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
26 Of The Funniest Posts About Cats And Dogs This Week (April 26-May 2)
Woof — it's been a long week. If you feel like you've been working like a dog, let us offer you the internet equivalent of a big pile of catnip: hilarious posts about pets. We Shih Tzu not. Each week at HuffPost, we scour Bluesky, Instagram and X, formerly Twitter, to find the funniest posts about our furballs being complete goofballs. They're sure to make you howl. (And if you want more, no need to beg ― you can check out last week's batch right here.) For years I've been telling 5yo to 'ask permission' before petting someone's dog, and I just found out that she now does this by going up and just saying 'Permission?' — Gena Gorlin (@Gena_I_Gorlin) April 26, 2025 cats when you blow on them: — maureen 🍎 (@butchfranksilva) April 27, 2025 "I got the wrong sized litter box" — Posts Of Cats (@PostsOfCats) May 2, 2025 one of them knows when you diethe other knows how you die — Mare (@Marebarrow1929) April 28, 2025 now it's meownalisa — Punch Cat (@PunchingCat) April 26, 2025 I can't really explain this but hinge feels like it's for dog people — sugarplum failure (@probablyalissa) April 30, 2025 ☺ — No Context Cats (@nocontextscats) May 1, 2025 This is Mazi. She brought one toy to bed for herself and one for each of her parents. This way, they all have a buddy to help them sleep safe and sound. 13/10 — WeRateDogs (@dog_rates) April 29, 2025 View this post on Instagram A post shared by Good Boys Of New York (@newyorkgoodboys) he's so me — Punch Cat (@PunchingCat) April 26, 2025 People not liking black cats is funny because they're the really the celebrities of cats. No other kind of cat comes close. They have so much aura that people had to make up superstitions about them. — Zito (@_Zeets) April 27, 2025 the great sphinx being fed — Punch Cat (@PunchingCat) April 27, 2025 she loves her bed so much 😍 — Punch Cat (@PunchingCat) April 29, 2025 They need to quit remaking good movies and start remaking bad movies. I wanna see Air Bud with a $900 million dollar budget, where he's coached by Daniel Day Lewis. — 𝑴𝒐 𝑴𝒐𝒉𝒍𝒆𝒓 (@MoMohler) April 29, 2025 his name is salad — Punch Cat (@PunchingCat) April 27, 2025 he looks like ( •᷄ ˍ •᷅ ) — Why you should have a cat (@ShouldHaveCat) April 26, 2025 My dog keeps abandoning me in my time of need. She doesn't like that I changed our routine by being sick and my coughing is startling her. Quite frankly, it's rather unbecoming of her — M.E⛲️ (@Emmys) April 27, 2025 Hello there — No Context Cats (@nocontextscats) April 29, 2025 Service dog loves the slide.. 😊 — Buitengebieden (@buitengebieden) May 1, 2025 View this post on Instagram A post shared by Animals Doing Things (@animalsdoingthings) When your dog wants to be close to you… — Playteaux (@Playteaux1) May 1, 2025 21 Of The Funniest Posts About Cats And Dogs This Week 24 Of The Funniest Posts About Cats And Dogs This Week 25 Of The Funniest Posts About Cats And Dogs This Week
New York Times
27-03-2025
- Sport
- New York Times
The best-case scenario for the 2025 San Francisco Giants
Some seasons require a lot of imagination to come up with a best-case scenario. Some seasons take more imagination than is humanly possible, and you catch yourself saying things like, 'First, let's assume that Air Bud is real and wants to join the Giants. Second, assume that Commissioner Manfred allows a dog to play in the majors. Third …' Advertisement This is not one of those seasons. You can talk yourself into a best-case scenario for the 2025 Giants just by sticking with reasonable potential outcomes. You don't have to dig deep and imagine ridiculous scenarios, like a 2024 draftee skipping the upper minors to win the MVP. It's not all going to depend on a 42-year-old pitcher setting a new career high in innings. It's about smaller individual victories, like Player X staying healthy, Player Y repeating his production and Player Z taking a little step forward. By stacking reasonable positive outcomes together, you don't just get a team that reaches the postseason. You get a team that convinces you they belong. The odds can turn quickly against an imperfect team. Imagine someone flipping a coin and getting three heads and four tails, in that order. You might have even done it once yourself without even noticing. That exact permutation has less than a 1-percent chance of happening, though. The odds are 50-50 for each event, but once you start stacking up the if-then scenarios, you get lost in the weeds of probability quickly. That's why success and parades and team reunions for the 2025 Giants every 10 years isn't their likeliest scenario. It'll take some high-percentile outcomes from at least a couple players on the roster just to make the postseason at all, and when you start multiplying the odds of several of the better outcomes together, it quickly moves from possible to unlikely. Just know that at least the 2025 Giants are flipping coins, metaphorically speaking, and that's not the worst place to be. They're not playing keno or rolling handfuls of 20-sided dice, with probabilities that don't take much to get into one-in-a-million territory. Pick any player from the Opening Day roster and look at them through a reasonably optimistic lens, and it starts making sense. Here are a couple players I picked at random, but you can play along with anyone you want: It's unreasonable to expect Casey Schmitt to have a .350 OBP and super-utility his way to 400 at-bats. It's entirely reasonable, however, to hope he can be a helpful player, someone worth a win or so over a full season. It's unreasonable to expect Christian Koss to be a latter-day Andres Torres, emerging from the transactional mists to become one of the biggest surprises in baseball. It's also entirely reasonable to hope he can be a useful utility player, someone who helps the team win. Those are just the players on the edges of the roster, though. When you do the exercise for the expected regulars, starting pitchers and high-leverage relievers, a reasonable best-case scenario comes into focus. It's unreasonable to expect LaMonte Wade Jr. to be one of the five-best first basemen in baseball, but it's entirely reasonable to hope he does what he did last year, just with more at-bats and better health. It's unreasonable to expect Robbie Ray to win his second Cy Young, but it's entirely reasonable to think he'll be a better starting pitcher than a lot of the ones the Giants will face. Advertisement This is not the same as asking yourself 'What if all of the bad and mediocre players are really good now?' If you want to do that for a team that's down and out, go for it. You have examples from just last season. The Tigers were so far removed from the postseason picture that they traded their second-best pitcher at the trade deadline, and then they played amazing baseball for the final two months. The Royals went from a 56-106 season in 2023 to the postseason in 2024, and they did it with a) one of the greatest single seasons from a shortstop in baseball history and b) four starting pitchers throwing at a high level and staying healthy all season. If someone wrote a best-case scenario for them before the 2024 season and suggested Michael Wacha and Seth Lugo would combined for 373 innings, 62 starts and a 3.14 ERA, they'd get roasted in the comments. And they would have deserved to. It was ludicrous until it actually happened. That's not what I'm asking you to do here. Which is good, because the Giants don't play in the 2024 AL Central, but the larger point stands. It's possible for the Giants to make the postseason — comfortably, even — without daydreaming about Justin Verlander throwing 200 innings or Willy Adames having a 40/40 season. Just stack up the potentially solid and productive seasons from players who are entirely capable of them. These kinds of parlays happen to teams every season. It's not enough to have success stories on the roster. The Giants will need to avoid the disappointments, too. It would have been unreasonable to expect Heliot Ramos and Tyler Fitzgerald to do what they did last season, but they did it, and if a time traveler had tipped you off, you would have taken out a second mortgage to bet on the Giants making the postseason. Except Thairo Estrada completely lost the strike zone, and Wilmer Flores was physically compromised and couldn't hit a lick. It took Jorge Soler and Blake Snell months to get going. There were plenty of other disappointments, and those seasons were the mirror images of what this exercise is calling for. It would take some unexpectedly positive outcomes for the 2025 Giants to play up to their best-case scenario, but it would also take a dearth of unexpectedly negative outcomes. Baseball isn't always that accommodating. Still, teams can go far with a quantity-of-quality approach. Giants fans don't need anyone to explain that to them. They've seen it. They remember teams like that fondly. It's true that the Giants don't have a Murderer's Row of classic sluggers, but they also don't have a lineup filled with players who shouldn't be in the majors. You won't find José Canseco in his prime, but you also won't find Ozzie Canseco in decline. Back in 2012, the Giants lost the first two games of the NLDS at home, which meant they had to win three straight in Cincinnati to avoid elimination. While the feelings were still raw, I tried to be optimistic and realistic at the same time. Advertisement I like to use the New York Times Yardstick of Perspective. That is, what would appear on the front page of the New York Times sports section? Maybe there's an 11-percent chance the Giants can win three straight games in Cincinnati, but it wouldn't make the front page of the New York Times. 'Good Team Beats Good Team Three Straight Times' isn't a catchy headline. The Giants beat the Reds three straight times and didn't stop there. Now, over a decade later, I can still use that same rubric, except things have changed. I actually work for the New York Times company now. I can call an editor in the middle of the night and say, 'Listen, the 2025 Giants made the postseason. You have to put it on The Athletic's home page and send out push notifications. This is important. Trust me. This is front page news. Above the fold.' The people in charge would ignore me. More than usual, even. It just wouldn't be a big enough story. Stuff like that happens every season. It wouldn't be a man-bites-dog story, and it wouldn't even be a dog-bites-man story. It would be a dog-licks-man-and-looks-sweetly-stupid-while-doing-it story. The best-case scenario for the 2025 Giants is that they make the postseason and get frisky once they're in there. It's not impossible! It's not the likeliest scenario, but it's not impossible. And on Opening Day, you're allowed to treat yourself to some optimism. Don't ever take Opening Day for granted. It's like 'The Purge,' but for happy thoughts. For one day, all happy thoughts are legal. The Giants don't have the best roster in baseball, and they might not even have the third-best roster in their division, but they have enough quality players on the roster to dream a bit when the mood strikes. Have fun with it, and keep reality at a distance until you can't anymore. (Top photo of Matt Chapman: Justin Berl / Getty Images)
