Overnight Briefing & General Reality Check - May 23, 2011

He's dead, Jim:

JOSEPH BROOKS, the guy who wrote "You Light Up My Life," which won him an Oscar and a Grammy and the everlasting love of DEBBIE BOONE.
CNN says Brooks was found dead at his Manhattan home with a plastic dry cleaning bag and a towel wrapped around his head with a tube connected to a helium tank. He left a suicide note. Joseph was 73. He was facing 82 charges of rape and on 11 women that he reportedly lured to his Manhattan apartment, promising parts in films. Debbie Boone's recording of "You Light Up My Life" was number one for 10 weeks in 1977 and is the best-selling song of the entire 1970's. (Marino)

Top talkables of the day:

As you may have guessed, the End of the World did not happen Saturday, so what happens to a doomsday cult when the world doesn't end?
Here's the short answer: Rapture passes; believers downcast; pastor silent.
Family Radio owner HAROLD CAMPING spent some $100 million --much of it donated-- and countless hours on his radio and TV show-- announcing May 21 as Judgment Day (see billboards around the world). The prediction began to unravel starting at 2am eastern Saturday morning --that'd be 6pm along the International Dateline. No quakes at the Pacific Ocean islands there, Tonga and Kiritiri. Nothing in New Zealand an hour later, or Australia an hour after that. And so on.
According to the U-S Geological Survey's up-to-the-minute tracker of worldwide earthquakes over magnitude 5.0, there was a 5.1 quake on Friday afternoon in the south Sandwich Islands region off South America.
An employer who processes mail for Family Radio told one reporter, "This hasn't come through in the news reports, but I'd say 85 to 90 percent of the staff doesn't believe what Camping says. We're coming to work next week."

Stupid people, stupid places:

In Kalamazoo, MI, a teen who jumped off a bridge to celebrate that the world didn't end, ended up drowning.
He was with a group of friends who warned him "to not go into the water because he said he couldn't swim well."
They were right; he couldn't swim and the river's strong undertow took him under. ANTHONY THOMPSON was 17. His body is still missing.
A witness told the Kalamazoo Gazette: "I pray they find him alive." (Maiman)

Broadcast, cable and video news:

Big numbers for the season finale of "Saturday Night Live," hosted by JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE with musical guest LADY GAGA. Overnight Nielsen ratings showed a 21 percent increase over last season's finale and the highest overnight rating for an SNL season closer since May of 2004, when the OLSEN TWINS hosted with musical guest J-KWON.

High school hijinks:

A group of high school kids in Colorado managed to close down the entire school for a week.
The NY Post says the 2011 senior class of Durango High thought it would be funny to spread thirty bales of hay all over the hallways. They did it as a end-of-the-year prank. But, officials say the hay caused "air-quality problems," causing severe allergic reactions among students and staff.
It turns out, the "harmless prank" will cost over 100-thousand dollars to clean up. (Still)

Guilty Pleasures:

No winner in Saturday night's drawing for the Powerball Lottery. That means Wednesday night's drawing is valued at $144 million ($74.7 million cash value). Powerball is played in 44 states, Washington DC and the U-S Virgin Islands. Chances of winning the grand prize (all five numbers plus the powerball) are 1 in 195.2 million.

Another volcano in Iceland:

Not the end of the World, but close: another big volcano in Iceland has started erupting. Grimsvotn (pronounced GRIMS-vot'n) is the most active volcano on the island, with nine eruptions between 1922 and 2004, the last time it blew. Scientists got a heads up last fall when they noticed a large river run caused by rapidly melting glacier ice.
And fortunately, it's located underneath a big 'ol glacier, so scientists believe there may not be the plume of ash that disrupted European air travel last April when a nearby volcano erupted.
The volcano that erupted last April, called Eyjafjallajokul (pronounced EYE-ya-fayalla-yokel), is southwest of Grimsvoetn.