Commercial Roof Repair in Hollywood, SC

HOLLYWOOD, S.C. (WCBD) – A couple from Hollywood, South Carolina will celebrate 75 years of marriage this year. The special couple, both aged 96, still love, laugh, and sing their way through a lifelong marriage.

The price of gas was .23 a gallon 75 years ago. Jackie Robinson took to the field for the Brooklyn Dodgers, becoming the first African American to play in Major League Baseball – but Robinson was not the only one making moves.

Leroy Morrison was working on a home run of his own and focused on a different diamond.

“We went to a wedding one day. A friend had a wedding across the street. I see a girl, and she was dressed so pretty. I said I’m going to carry one of those girls home tonight, two sisters. I said one of y’all gotta go home with me,” he recalled.

“I said this is the girl, I’m gonna marry,” said Mr. Morrison. A feat that took nine months, and the ball was clearly in Ms. Wilhelmina’s court.

“I tell her she’s the one. She looked at me and she said, I don’t love you,” he remembered.

“I used to didn’t like him because he wore suspenders hanging behind him, untidy on him. I just didn’t like him, he wasn’t sharp enough for me. I was sharp. I had a wide-rim hat. I was sharp. I knew I was sharp,” said Mrs. Morrison.

Love triumphed over fashion woes, and on June 12, 1947, Leroy Morrison and Wilhelmina Roach became husband and wife.

“Marriage license was $5.00,” said Mr. Morrison. “My wedding dress cost me $16. I got off of King Street,” added Mrs. Morrison.

Both are now 96 years old with ten children and a long lineage that follows.

The Morrisons say the secret to a happy marriage for them: is faith, forgiveness, compromise, patience, and protecting peace.

“The secret is it’s just like a rubber band. You take the rubber band, the more you stretch it, the more it gives. Don’t stretch it too much, and it stays together,” said Mr. Morrison.

“I always tell people take it, whatever stress comes on, you have to take it to make it, and that’s the only way you can make it,” said Mrs. Morrison. “I didn’t have all good days, but I took the bad days and the good days the same, give and take. He is forgiving, and I was forgiving with him also, that’s what kept us together.”

They also say good meals helped as well. “She’s a good cook. She cooked the meals and baked the pies,” said Mr. Morrison.

Mr. Morrison, a retired shoe repairman and barber, and Mrs. Morrison a stay-at-home mom remain inseparable. “Never spent one night away. If he goes outside, and I don’t see him for five or ten minutes, I’m looking for him,” Mrs. Morrison said.

The Morrisons are considered community champions because they dedicated their lives to helping others, and often hosted neighborhood events to feed their Hollywood community.

Both now have health challenges and have 24-hour care from family members, but they continue to give back in whatever way they can.

Their message to young couples starting out: “I would tell them; every day is not going to be Sunday. Every day is not going to be good. Some days will be bad, but I think most of my days are good days, and go to church treat everybody right, all those people who treat you wrong, love them anyhow,” said Mr. Morrison.

After 75 years of marriage, Mrs. Morrison still sings her song of love for her groom mixed with a kiss, but with notes that render a cautionary tale.

“I love you, Roy. You better not let me catch you walking down lover’s lane with anyone else but me, because I love you. I love you. I love you, Roy,” she sang.

The family held a big celebration to mark the three-quarters of a century milestone in August.

Together, they have ten children, twenty-four grandchildren, sixty-five great-grands, twelve great great grands, and five bonus adopted children.

Happy 75th Anniversary Mr. and Mrs. Morrison!

Emma Thompson is right – more women are missing out on orgasms. Why?

Hollywood sex scenes tend to follow a predictable formula: hot, passionate and rarely anything short of euphoric. So the basis of Emma Thompson’s new film, Good Luck To You, Leo Grande, in which she plays a widowed teacher who hires a male escort in the hope of having her first orgasm late in life, is seen as truly boundary-pushing.

But while films do not tend to depict women looking tense, frustrated or simply a bit bored during sex, evidence suggests that in real-life many women share the experience of Thompson’s character. “Fifteen percent of women have never had an orgasm,” Thompson told ITV’s Lorraine Kelly, in a publicity interview this week, a figure that experts say is “plausible”.

“I’m thrilled that Emma Thompson is doing this movie because for many years the general public has been actively misinformed by Hollywood about how women have orgasm,” said Prof Elisabeth Lloyd, a biologist at Indiana University and author of The Case of the Female Orgasm. “That’s what makes this so special.”

Lloyd’s research has highlighted the “orgasm gap”, in which a far higher proportion of women do not orgasm than men – after extensive research she put the figure at about 10%. “I think that number represents a mishmash of women who haven’t had partners who wanted to pursue it, women who haven’t wanted to pursue it themselves and women who are physically unable to reach that state,” she said.

Dr Laura Jarvis, a sexual health doctor in Tayside, Scotland, said she saw patients with a range of reasons for not having an orgasm. “Most of these women don’t have a physical problem – nerve damage or something to do with their anatomy,” she said. “Most of the time it’s about their own relationship with their sexual self, about permitting themselves to having sexual pleasure.”

Some women, she said, had suffered from negative experiences ranging from sexual abuse to religious taboos around sex. “So many things can impact on you being able to relax and enjoy sexual pleasure for yourself,” she said. “All sorts of things stop women being able to do that.

“These women always tell me they feel as if they’re missing out,” she added. “Every Netflix drama, there’s people having orgasms in it. They feel as if they’re not normal and that perpetuates the stress.”

Many still feel “stigma and shame” when it comes to female masturbation. “We’re so comfortable with men doing that,” said Jarvis. “With women it’s still seen as a bit naughty. It’s really important to take that guilt away. Women need to learn how to pleasure themselves.”

Antidepressant drugs, particularly SSRIs, are linked to lower sexual arousal and lack of orgasm, while other factors may be more mundane. In a recent study, 20 married Iranian women referred to “lack of concentration on sex due to household and children problems, husband’s hurry, having a dispute and annoyance with spouse and lack of privacy”.

Unrealistic expectations, driven by films in which women seem to orgasm – often almost instantaneously – from unassisted intercourse may also play a role, Lloyd said. “That’s just not how women have an orgasm,” she said. “It’s a terrible way to have an orgasm.”

A study by Lloyd and colleagues involving 52,000 participants identified a combination of genital stimulation, deep kissing and oral sex as the “golden trio” for women for increasing the likelihood of reaching orgasm with a sexual partner. According to the research, only 35% of heterosexual women always or usually orgasm during vaginal sex alone, compared with 80% of heterosexual women and 91% of lesbians who said that always or usually have an orgasm with a combination of genital stimulation, deep kissing and oral sex – but without vaginal sex.

Unlike male sexual dysfunction, the basis of female sexual pleasure has remained a relatively neglected topic, probably because not having an orgasm does not affect female fertility, according to Prof Mihaela Pavli?ev, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Vienna. “The whole topic has been a bit weirdly discussed,” she said. “For a long time it wasn’t interesting to the medical community. All the focus has been on men with ejaculation problems.”

She added that Sigmund Freud, who opined that women who experience pleasure from the clitoris rather than the vagina are “infantile” or frigid, and who labelled female sexuality “the dark continent”, had stigmatised female orgasm for several generations. “We have Freud to thank for the idea that it’s the mental state of the woman that’s problematic,” she said. “That idea has persisted.”

Jarvis thinks there has been a social shift towards placing more value on sexual pleasure and that younger women tend to be more proactive in coming forward to seek help. And while exciting sex may not be a priority for everyone, there is also evidence that having orgasms has wider benefits.

“Orgasm is an effective way to release tension and stress,” said Lloyd. “The hormones involved make you feel good, they help your blood pressure and mood. They are good for you.”

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Forty years ago, boxing legend Al ‘Hollywood’ Meggett opened up his Charleston Boxing Gym by hanging just one punching bag in an old firehouse at 1099 King St.

He grew the club into a perennial powerhouse, taking his athletes across the country for fights and leading some of them to careers as professional boxers.

Even Muhammad Ali paid a visit.

Today, the enduring legacy of Charleston Boxing Club and the lessons it imparted on the city’s youth lives on. It dimmed briefly between 2014 and 2022 when the gym fell on hard times financially and closed while the building underwent renovations.

But Darren “Broadway” Whitaker, a coach and longtime friend of Meggett, never forgot what he learned there.

That’s why he and Meggett’s son, Allah, teamed up to reopen the club in May, about six months after Meggett’s death. Using a GoFundMe fundraiser and Allah’s business experience, the club opened its doors again with brand-new equipment. Memberships keep it going. They range from $50 per month for youth, $75 for teens and $125 for adults.

Whitaker serves as head coach and runs the gym’s day-to-day operations. Monday through Friday, a dozen or more boxers of all ages come to the club between 3:30 and 6 p.m. Often they linger on later than that.

“Sometimes it’s hard to get them to go home,” Whitaker said with a laugh.

The community rebuilt at the club comes from an open door policy. Some boxers come every weekday and others stop in when they can.

When a passerby peers in the window, Whitaker goes outside to greet them. He welcomes them to sign up on the spot. There is no set registration period. A QR code on the door leads to the online sign-up form as well. That way, the club can gain new members even while it’s closed.

Inside, young boxers start with the basics. They jump rope, practice wrapping their hands to prepare them for boxing gloves and perform exercises that build muscle and stamina. In the ring, older boxers spar in preparation for competition. Other boxers practice on the punching bags. Keeping all ages and skill levels together allows them to form bonds and learn from each other.

During the club’s original tenure, Meggett was insistent that his boxers learn life skills beyond boxing. They got a kind of structure and “tough love” that not all of them could get at home. Having a community to turn to kept them out of trouble. It’s what former Mayor Joe Riley called a “Human-building process,” when he awarded Meggett with a lifetime achievement award in 2015.

For assistant coach Chris Gordon, the lessons he learned from Meggett carried him through the years the gym was closed. During that time, he was a North Charleston firefighter. He attributes his firefighting career to the time he spent as both an amateur and professional boxer training out of Charleston Boxing Club.

He joined the gym at age 28. When he met Meggett, he told him he was just looking for a way to stay fit while working a job in security. Thinking he was showing up there to lose weight, he never considered what he could gain.

“I didn’t have any discipline. I didn’t have any guidance. I was just trying to figure things out,” he said.

Now, a coach at the reopened gym, he wants to be the same source of stability for his boxers that Hollywood and Whitaker were for him.

On a recent November afternoon, one of the high school-aged boxers came in visibly upset. Both Gordon and Whitaker took turns speaking with him outside. Without lacing up a glove once, he left the club in a better state than he was in when he walked through the door.

“If I can help these guys get what I got 10 years earlier, I’ll feel like I’ve done my job,” Gordon said.

Another member, 14-year-old Marvin Washington is already on that track. Washington has improved steadily since joining, Whitaker said. On that same November afternoon, he spent nearly 2½ hours practicing on the punching bag, only stopping when a bell in the club rang periodically to signal that the boxers had a brief break.

“It’s the will to keep going and keep fighting,” Washington said of lessons he’s learned since joining.

For now, the boxers only travel to matches sporadically. They’re not held as frequently in the Charleston area as they were in the 1980s and ’90s, Whitaker said. But as the members build up their skills, he said he’ll look for more opportunities for them to compete. A few of the boxers recently competed in Myrtle Beach and the coaches are eyeing a potential match in Wilmington, N.C. While 1099 King will always serve as the heart of the club, Whitaker said he’s willing to go as far as he can to give the boxers competitive experience.

“Once you have confidence in your work and competing in front of other people, it just transfers to everything else,” he said. “You’re just full of confidence.”

Brendan Fraser is officially on a comeback.

The Whale, a new Darren Aronofsky film in which Fraser stars, premiered at the Venice Film Festival Sunday night to a six-minute standing ovation.

Actors and longtime fans alike took to social media to share their own happiness at the recognition Fraser received with this latest role. As the applause continued for Fraser on Sunday, the actor and some audience members appeared to get choked up.

This comes years after Fraser was at the height of his career. So, why has this moment has brought so many people joy at the same time that others lament the fact that this film is Fraser's return to stardom?

Fraser was once a major star with hits such as George of the Jungle and The Mummy franchise. But after a sustained run as one of Hollywood's leading men, Fraser receded to the sidelines of TV and film in recent years.

Seeing Fraser who was so "universally loved" by the public for so long receive praise resonated with fans, according to film and media historian Chris Yogerst.

"It's almost like the public was just waiting for this moment," said Yogerst. "Everyone has missed him. Seeing him back on the screen, it was like an old friend was back."

Nostalgia certainly plays into the joy this moment brings to some people, Yogerst said.

"I mean, I'm still nostalgic about the silly remake of Bedazzled," a Fraser movie with Elizabeth Hurley that came out in 2000, Yogerst said.

Part of this collective happiness also stems from knowledge of Fraser's recent struggles, according to Nicholas Baer, an assistant professor of film studies at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands.

After Fraser was absent from any big Hollywood movie for several years, GQ published a profile in 2018 of the actor titled, "What ever happened to Brendan Fraser?"

In it, Fraser discussed years of suffering from injuries (sustained from performing stunts during filming of The Mummy franchise), subsequent surgeries, personal loss and a divorce. Most startling were details Fraser shared of being allegedly groped by Philip Berk, a former president of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. Berk told GQ that Fraser's account was "a total fabrication."

Fraser in the GQ article openly questioned whether he was actually blacklisted from Hollywood because he came forward about his experience.

"[The Whale] is offering us an opportunity to kind of recognize the virtue and the kind of fundamental decency of Brendan Fraser, who has been really wronged by the industry and has long suffered," Baer said.

The Whale is about a reclusive English teacher (Fraser) who weighs 600 pounds, and as he struggles with his health, tries to reconnect with his estranged daughter. A combination of prosthetics and CGI help Fraser as he portrays this character.

Fraser's return will likely be controversial for some, Baer noted.

"I think it's definitely going to be a point of contention in the discourse. I think it's a practice [the use of prosthetics or so-called fat suits] that has been relatively commonplace among major Hollywood actors for a long time and that's been increasingly criticized for being fat phobic and offensive," Baer said.

Indeed, critics have turned to social media to say that the movie's premise is inherently dehumanizing. There's a question of whether it should have been made at all.

Aubrey Gordon, an author and co-host of the Maintenance Phase, a podcast focused on debunking health fads, took to Twitter to call out the movie's aim.

"It's so telling that so many only see fat people as 'humanized' in media that shows us doing exactly what they expect: living short, small lives; 'eating ourselves to death'; feeling sad & regretful. All reminders of how tragic it is to be fat, and how superior it is to be thin," she wrote.

This kind of media just "reinforces viewers' anti-fat bias," she wrote.

Pia Glenn, a Broadway actress, also criticized the movie, lamenting the fact that this film is Fraser's comeback.

"Mr. Fraser's 'comeback' and personal journey as an actor and human are significant and I hate that I feel so negatively about the project that brought them about. I know I won't see it, so I've been reading reviews," she wrote on Twitter. "References to rolls and hanging flesh and Jabba the Hut (!) NO."

DETROIT - The worlds of Hollywood and science collide to help educate kids of all ages on how pop culture impacts modern technological breakthroughs. This is “POPnology,” a new exhibition which just opened at the Michigan Science Center in Detroit.

Running through August 11, “POPnology” features replicas and interactive animatronics of R2-D2, E.T., Hal 9000, H.R. Giger’s Alien, the DeLorean and more. The Science Center teamed up with Signal Restoration Services to bring this traveling exhibition to Michigan.

“Signal Restoration Services is thrilled to support MiSci with this incredibly exciting exhibit that is sure to captivate visitors all summer long,” said Chad Howard, President and COO of Signal Restoration Services. “We believe in giving back to our community and helping children and families grow from fun and engaging learning experiences such as POPnology.”

Along with plenty of photo ops, “POPnology” shows how fantasy and reality tie into each other with the likes of driverless cars, robots, drones and 3D printers. The exhibit shows visitors how technology has been influenced by movies, books, television, art and futurists, showing the progression from science fiction to science fact.

“We think this is a great way to connect people to science,” Dr. Christian Greer, President and CEO of the Michigan Science Center told MLive. “It’s kind of like if you think about Universal Studios, but if it was more on the learning side, that’s what we have going on here with “POPnology. Anyone who loves movies will fall in love with “POPnology.” So many of us at MiSci are movie and science-fiction geeks, so when we heard this coveted exhibit was available this summer, we jumped on it!”

“POPnology” also allows guests to interact with robots, explore Mars and play games, which include a virtual reality game by Oculus Rift.

“POPnology” is included with Michigan Science Center tickets which are $18 for adults, $14 for youth. Tickets can be purchased here. The Michigan Science Center is open from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Wednesdays through Sundays.

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