Underwood steals the show from Rihanna

  

Rihanna's much-hyped song at the Academy of Country Music Awards falls flat.

Rihanna Falls Flat, Underwood Steals Show At 46th Annual ACM Awards

Although the 46th annual Academy of Country Music Awards Sunday evening boasted an unusually rich list of interesting moments/personalities/collaborations, there were two performances that took up the majority of preshow chatter. One of these was non-country superstar Rihanna dueting with Sugarland frontwoman Jennifer Nettles. The other, Carrie Underwood with a tantalizingly unnamed "surprise" partner on stage.
Needless to say, only one performance lived up to the considerable hype.
I won't keep you in suspense. It wasn't Rihanna's. Unfortunately, the pop diva's duet with Nettles--a rendition of Rihanna's ballad "California King Bed"--felt leaden at worst, overwrought at best, leading mostly to a sense of wondering who on earth thought this would be a good idea.

Nettles has dueted out of her home genre before (most recently with artists as diverse as MC Lyte and Keri Hilson) to good effect. There's no apparent reason the broadly appealing Rihanna would not be able to match wits with a country artist or audience. The song wasn't even performed at the awards show proper; it was part of a new "fan jam" feature of which highlights were fed into the ACMs telecast.
And yet...thumbs down. Nothing much else to say except a shrug of the shoulders; likely the duet would have been better if they'd attempted Sugarland's bubbly "Stuck Like Glue"--a song that seems made for a pop artist to cavort with--instead.
What did work: Carrie Underwood's surprise, which consisted of her morphing into a pink-haired rock chick opposite none other than Steven Tyler. The pair wrangled it out, stamping their respective boots fiercely, on Underwood's "Undo It" and Aerosmith's "Walk This Way."

The result? The evening's unexpected and undisputed highest point. Underwood may have walked away empty-handed in terms of awards (after scoring big last year, winning the coveted Entertainer of the Year award)--but she hands-down stole the entire show anyway. 

Five industries fighting extinction

 

For most people, the days of shopping at a record store or making calls over a landline are long gone.

 

5 Industries on Life Support

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If you read the print edition of a newspaper, still make calls over a landline or plan to rent a tuxedo for an upcoming wedding, you are doing what many of your friends and neighbors gave up long ago.

Analysts at IBISWorld, a market research firm, recently compiled a list of 10 industries that may be on the "verge of extinction in the United States." Within its database of close to 700 industries, about 200 are in decline, with the ones selected having seen large and steady drops in revenue and number of establishments. From the beginning of 2011 to the end of 2016, these industries are likely to deteriorate further.
"People might think that we are coming out of recession and these industries have hit bottom, so therefore everyone should be going up," IBISWorld Senior Analyst Toon van Beeck says. "But that is definitely not the case. A lot of these revenues peaked in about 2000 and since then they have declined year over year."
He explains that while economic cycles, the ups and downs of bull and bear markets, often swing every eight to 10 years, "industry life cycles can be three to 50 years where they go from maturity into decline." The industries singled out by the firm "are really at the end of their decline phase or they are in rapid decline."

Nazis' spectacularly botched mission to U.S.

  

Once-secret files reveal how a plan to terrorize Americans spiraled into a bizarre farce.

 

British spy files shed light on Nazi saboteurs

LONDON – The four men wading ashore on a Florida beach wearing nothing but bathing trunks and German army hats looked like an unlikely invading force.
Declassified British intelligence files describe how the men were part of Nazi sabotage teams sent to the U.S. in June 1942 to undermine the American war effort.
They were trained in bomb-making, supplied with explosives and instructed in how to make timers from "easily obtainable commodities such as dried peas, lumps of sugar and razor blades."
Fortunately for the U.S., they were also spectacularly unsuccessful.
"It was not brilliantly planned," said Edward Hampshire, a historian at Britain's National Archives, which released the wartime intelligence documents Monday. "The Germans picked the leader for this very, very poorly. He immediately wanted to give himself up."

Rebels reject offer from Gadhafi's sons

 

Seif Gadhafi's rumored plan to remove his father from power rankles Libya's opposition.

Libya rebels reject transition under Kadhafi sons

BENGHAZI, Libya (AFP) – Libyan rebels insisted Monday that the whole Kadhafi family must leave before there can be any truce with regime forces amid reports that his sons are offering to oversee a transition.
Rebel troops made a new attempt to recapture Brega, advancing to the outskirts of the oil refinery town only to be forced back under artillery fire, as hundreds wounded in besieged third city Misrata were evacuated by a Turkish ship.

How to be a terrible restaurant customer

 

 Sending back food or snapping at your server will earn you a spot on the most annoying list.

When the Customer Is Wrong: Restaurants

It's one of the oldest adages of the retail world: "The customer is always right."
Of course, very often the customer is wrong. Every day customers behave in ways that make the lives of waiters, cashiers, customer service reps and other retail workers miserable. And in many cases, these customers don't even realize how annoying they're being.
To rectify this, we've decided to talk to the people on the other side of the cash register to find out what sort of customer behavior gets on their nerves. To kick things off, we got some veterans of the restaurant industry to dish on their secret pet peeves and give some advice to diners.
Great Expectations
Think about the last time you cooked dinner. How long did it take? Forty-five minutes? An hour? More?
We're guessing the answer wasn't "15 minutes." Yet that's about how long most restaurant patrons expect their dinner to take, and they get irked when it takes any longer. Sometimes diners need to tone down their expectations, says Michael Gordon, a restaurant industry veteran who has spent about a decade as a cook and waiter.
"A steak needs time to cook, and fish needs time to be brought up to temperature," says Gordon. "There's a lot of prep work."
And if you're in a big party, expect it to take even longer.
"The bigger the party, the longer it's going to take," he says. "I can't give one person a plate and not give everyone else theirs." In other words, the table will only be served once all the meals are finished, so if one dish takes 25 minutes to cook, that's how long it will take before anyone sees their food.

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Trust the Chef
Gordon says cooks don't mind people sending their food back if it isn't cooked as requested. But he estimates that nine times out of 10 the dish was cooked just fine -- the customer just doesn't know what constitutes "medium rare" or understand how a dish is supposed to be cooked.
"Everybody has a degree in something or other, but when they get to a restaurant, everyone thinks they have a doctorate in cooking," he says.
If you really think the people in the kitchen screwed up your steak, by all means send it back. But consider for a moment that the professionals know better than you do how to prepare a meal. (And if you're not sure whether you're on the same page with the kitchen, you might clarify beforehand how they define the varying degrees of doneness.)
This Isn't 'Top Chef'
Of course, just because they're professionals doesn't mean that cooks are capable of producing any dish on Earth. While some substitutions and special requests will be fine with the kitchen, you can only expect so much improvisation from a kitchen with limited time and ingredients.
"We get people walking into a restaurant and asking for a vegetarian or vegan plate, and unless we've specifically got a menu for that population, you're out of luck," says Steve Dublanica, author of the Waiter Rant blog. "You're asking the chef to make something they're not used to."
Dublanica, who's also authored two books based on his experience as a waiter, recounts the story of a woman who came into a Northern Italian restaurant and asked for sushi; when she was informed that the kitchen was incapable of producing sushi dishes, she retorted that it should be possible given that the restaurant had tuna on the menu.
There's nothing wrong with asking if the kitchen can make something that's not on the menu, but don't get all worked up when the answer is no.
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