Fare Thee Well, Davy Jones; Leap Day Couples Get the Best Stories
Every day The Atlantic Wire highlights the video clips that truly earn your five minutes (or less) of attention.
.We realize there's only so much time one can spend in a day watching new trailers, viral video clips, and shaky cell phone footage of people arguing on live television. This is why every day The Atlantic Wire highlights the videos that truly earn your five minutes (or less) of attention. Today: Davy Jones did his part for pop rock, Leap Day birthday types find ways to end up together, and Tiger Woods doesn't want to talk about the time he wanted to be a Navy SEAL.
Davy Jones died today at his home in Indiantown, Florida of an apparent heart attack. He was 66. Jones was the dreamily English lead singer for the Monkees and noted object of Marcia Brady's affection on The Brady Bunch, eventually appearing as himself the show's third season. People like to tease The Monkees for not writing most of the their own music and somehow managing to sell more records than The Beatles in 1967, but there's absolutely no shame in helping to bring "(I'm Not) Your Steppin' Stone" into the world. [dawnabrendan, mikeovbhe, bradybunchclips and kdion77]
Hank Haney, the only sort-of disgruntled former swing coach for Tiger Woods, claims in a new memoir that Woods was taken with the idea of leaving his PGA tour career behind and joining the Navy SEALs in 2004, even undergoing four days "training" at Fort Bragg that somehow left him with enough physical strength to continue hosting a golf clinic. Woods is a private person to begin with and his father was a career military man, so the fact he didn't try to qualify for the SEALs after thinking he could -- combined with the fact that in life he managed to destroy his family -- is not the kind of thing he's eager to talk about. He made that clear when Alex Miceli of GolfWeek brought it up during a press conference at the Honda Open today. With all the private details about Tiger Woods' life that have surfaced over the past three years, you'd think he'd be eager to laugh about his brief interest in becoming a Navy SEAL. But he can't, because he's still Tiger Woods. [The Big Lead]
Our sharpest memory of the J.J. Abrams Star Trek reboot happened on the way into the theater, when a small child with a giant blue Icee came tearing around a corner and the spilled the entire drink across our midsection. And because we were with a upright and true lady we wanted to impress, and not seem like one of those unadventurous and easily flustered modern fellas we've been reading about recently who would let a little thing like an Icee dousing get in the way of a summer evening at the movies. Now that we think about it, we also recall some unsatisfying CGI-shots of a space ship -- or possibly space ships -- flying off on a mission that was vague and confusing. Perhaps a mea culpa, and to show the world Star Trek 2 has so much more going for it than blue slush memories and faint recollections of a plot. It's going to have Benedict Cumberbatch -- the people's champ -- wailing on Zachary Quinto's Spock. Repeatedly! Why is Spock just letting Cumberbatch throw that right hook again and again? It's not like Benedict Cumberbatch has a glass jaw. Does anyone pay attention to the Middleweight fights anymore? [IFC]
Here's Bill and Doll, an elderly Australian couple that both turn 20 today. Because of the Leap Day! This Leap Day birthday stuff is fascinating and, we have to think, a genuine hassle when it comes to dealing with public utilities, setting up checking accounts, and trying to get in to an NC-17 movie before you reach retirement age. It also, incidentally, would be a great hook in a private detective novel or a Sherlock Holmes pastiche. Really, any kind of story where somebody is supposed to inherit something when they're 21 but some crusty old guardian won't give it to them because they were born on February 29. You can take it from there. [News 10 (Sacramento)]