John Ratzenberger Named 2014 Lehigh Valley Commencement Speaker
CENTER VALLEY, Pa. – John Ratzenberger, Emmy-nominated actor, entrepreneur and philanthropist, will be the featured speaker at Penn State Lehigh Valley’s 2014 commencement ceremony to be held at 11 a.m. May 10 at Stabler Arena in Bethlehem. Ratzenberger produced and hosted “Made in America,” a show for the Travel Channel, which established a television precedent and led the way for a new series of shows including “Dirty Jobs,” “Deadliest Catch,” “Ice Road Truckers” and others. These shows celebrate the work ethic that built America. He co-authored “We’ve Got It Made in America: A Common Man’s Salute to an Uncommon Country.” John Ratzenberger is currently in pre-production on a new documentary, the purpose of which is to awaken Americans to the shortage of skilled workers that threatens our country as a whole. Click here to read the full announcement on Penn State News online....
Simon Cowell adopts two puppies, asks Twitter followers for name suggestions
Simon Cowell has revealed he’s adopted two puppies to add to his ever-growing family.
Meet John Ratzenberger
During more than three decades of movie making and theatre, John Ratzenberger has enjoyed success as a screenwriter, director, producer and multi Emmy-nominated actor. He is also an accomplished entrepreneur and philanthropist. John’s career began in earnest in the early 1970s, when he formed the improvisational theatre duo “Sal’s Meat Market,” which performed to standing-room-only crowds throughout Europe for 634 straight performances. To help pay the bills, John also worked as a house framer, archery instructor and deck hand on a fishing boat. Learning a few trades allowed him to pursue his dream of acting. In 1982, John accepted a writing assignment for CBS in Los Angeles. On the day he was scheduled to return to London, he auditioned for a role on the upcoming Cheers. At the time of his audition, the character of the postman did not exist. As he walked out of the room, he turned and asked the creators “Do you have a bar know-it-all?” They didn’t know what that was, so John gave them five minutes of improv, demonstrating exactly what it meant with the perfect Boston accent. They loved what they saw and Cliff Clavin was born. In the history of television, only a handful of series have achieved the worldwide success of Cheers, on which John portrayed Cliff for the show’s entire 11-year run. To this day, thanks to daily syndication, Cliff continues as one of America’s most beloved characters. John is better known to a younger generation as the only actor to voice a character in every Pixar film including: the witty Hamm the piggy bank in Toy Story 1 (1995), Toy Story 2 (1999), Toy Story 3 (2010) and Toy Story 4 (2019); P.T. Flea, the circus ringmaster in Bug’s Life (1998); the lovable snow monster Yeti in Monsters, Inc.(2002) and Monsters University (2013); the ever-changing school of Moonfish in Finding Nemo (2003); the philosophical character The Underminer in The Incredibles (2004) and The Incredibles 2 (2018); a Mac-truck in Cars (2006), Cars 2 (2011) and Cars 3 (2017); Mustafa, the head waiter in Ratatouille (2007); as John, a human in WALL-E (2008), the construction worker in Up! (2009); Gordon the guard in Brave (2012); Harland in Planes (2013), Fritz in Inside Out (2015); Earl in The Good Dinosaur (2015); Bill the Crab in Finding Dory (2016); and Juan Ortodoncia in Coco (2017). Pixar artists always find a way to include John’s recognizable eyebrows and mustache. Pixar’s creators call John their “good luck charm.” John’s latest project is a partnership with actor and director Kevin Sorbo in the upcoming film East Texas Miracle – a...
Let’s Bring Back Shop Class to Educate and Inspire
Millennials are the first American generation who have not been taught how to use tools — wrenches, screws, saws, etc. — and that could have a negative effect on the country’s trade industries. Skilled labor is in increasingly high demand as manufacturing jobs trickle back into the country, but as shop class has steadily disappeared from the high school curriculum, there are not always enough skilled laborers to fill the positions, according to the Foundation for America, a nonprofit that invests in creating a skilled labor force. The foundation is run by John Ratzenberger, an actor who has done many voiceovers for Pixar, including Hamm in the Toy Story series. He began his career as Cliff Clavin, the affable postman on the television show Cheers. To demonstrate his commitment to teaching tool use, and the joys of working with one’s hands, Ratzenberger has donated $1 million to the state of Georgia to begin the National Education Initiative. Ratzenberger said in a recent interview that teaching tool skills is about making young people more well-rounded individuals: “It makes you a more well-rounded human being, more capable and self-reliant if you can fix your own screen door. … There are a lot of jobs in manufacturing right now, a lot of jobs in construction, and there’s nobody to fill them because we neglected to teach our children how to use tools and we’ve denigrated the image of manufacturing.” Read the full article at...
NY Daily News Honors Cheers by Reposting 1993 Story
This article was posted on nydailynews.com. Click to read the full story. (Originally published by the Daily News on May 16, 1993. This story was written by David Bianculli.) Here are two quick anecdotes, spaced a decade apart, attesting to the excellence of NBC’s “Cheers,” which ends its 11 season run Thursday night. After the 1982-83 TV season, the Television Critics Association (TCA) polled its members to nominate and acknowledge, for the first time, the best new series on TV. Although the competition that year included much-appreciated “St. Elsewhere,” the runaway winner was a then-little-known sitcom named “Cheers.” Ten years later, in an interview with Kurt Vonnegut that I was conducting a book called “Teleliteracy: Taking Television Seriously,” Vonnegut made this appreciative comment about his favorite sitcom: “I would say that television has produced one comic masterpiece, which is ‘Cheers,’” Vonnegut said. “I wish I’d written that instead of everything I HAD written. Every time anybody opens his or her mouth on-that show, it’s significant. It’s FUNNY.” Continue reading this article on...