'TBH Politoons'
Thanks, again, Tim!
HOT New Page!
from Michael Dare
Alex's Entertainment Report
Alex
''Alastair Gamble''
from Bill
I wrote this tune about the nine arabic linguists
booted out of the army for being
gay/lesbian. We recorded a version with
my band, The Go Betweens, and I have
attached the mp3. Alastair has heard it
and really liked it.
lyric:
'Alastair Gamble'
It's a heterosexual war they have to defend
Keep the priority straight again and again.
The war on terror doesn't seem to extend,
"No matter how you can help, we don't want men kissing men."
Alastair Gamble.
Alastair Gamble.
The army spokesman wouldn't give the details.
Said "It's a matter of privacy," the irony was off the scales.
Cause that could have come before the intrusion of
The unannounced inspections uncovering love.
Alastair Gamble.
Alastair Gamble.
The axis of evil, the chasm of culture is deep.
They sent away nine who were learning the language to speak.
Alistair Gamble's packed his bags, he's gone.
Extinguish the linguist, the new inquisition is on.
Alastair Gamble.
Alastair Gamble.
~~ Bill
Thanks, Bill!
(If you're interested in the MP3, drop me a note - addys below.)
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Another nice day. The rose bush is starting to bud.
The kid woke me breakfast in bed today. Don't know where he got the idea, but, it sure meets with my approval...LOL
ABC has been running promos giving Dick Wolfe credit for 'Dragnet' - shit, guess they never heard of a guy named Jack Webb. Sort of like what they did to Collodi's 'Pinocchio'....
Going to 'do lunch' at Long Beach Aquarium with the kid today to 'celebrate' the end of his Christmas vacation.
Tonight, Friday, CBS starts the night with '48 Hours', followed by a RERUN 'Hack', and then another '48 Hours'.
On a RERUN Dave (from 11/1/02), are Don Rickles and Jim Gaffigan.
On a RERUN Craiggers are Patricia Heaton, Joey McIntyre, and Daniel Bedingfield.
NNC starts the night with a 2-hour 'Dateline', and then follows with a RERUN 'Law & Order: Special Victims Unit'.
Scheduled on a fresh Jay are Ashton Kutcher and Joan Osbourne.
Scheduled on a fersh Conan are Sean Astin and Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players.
On a RERUN Carson Daly (from 10/11/02), are Donnie Wahlberg, Amy Poehler, Tom Papa, and Avril Lavigne.
ABC has the 'Fiesta Bowl', so the west coast will experience local programming in prime time.
The WB offers a RERUN 'What I Like About You', a RERUN 'Sabrina', a RERUN 'Reba', and then a fresh 'Greetings From Tucson'.
Faux has the movie 'The Nutty Professor' (the Eddie Murphy version).
UPN has the movie 'Gun Shy'.
Check local PBS listings for 'NOW With Bill Moyers'.
TCM celebrates Marlene Dietrich with 'Morocco', 'Rancho Notorious', and 'The Blue Angel'.
Anyone have any opinions?
Or reviews?
(See below for addresses)
Nepal
Snow Woman
Nepalese children residing in India make a snow woman near the India-Nepal border in Darjeeling in the eastern state of West Bengal, January 1, 2003. The area is witnessing
snow for the first time since 1997 and temperatures fell to a low of one degree Celsius (33 degrees Fahrenheit) on the border.
Photo by Rupak De Chowdhuri
Free Rolling Stones Concert In LA
Stop Global Warming
Remembered in Film
Lance Loud
Long before "The Osbournes'" brand of cartoonish cinema verite, the 12 no-nonsense episodes of "An American Family" chronicled much of 1971 as lived by Santa Barbara, Calif.,
couple Pat and Bill Loud and their five teenage children, including the oldest, 19-year-old Lance.
Premiering on public television 30 years ago this month, "An American Family" drew a weekly audience of 10 million, making good on the clan's surname by creating an uproar. One startling plot point:
Pat and Bill decided to divorce while the camera looked on.
But viewers were most intrigued by Lance. He was a free spirit, a showboat, a beautiful boy with Keith Partridge hair. Most notable: He was a homosexual — right there on TV, sharing the screen with his siblings and parents.
Lance Loud was the first gay person to come out on television. For that, the public loved him or scorned him — and always would, as "Lance Loud!" demonstrates.
This absorbing film airs on PBS Monday at 9 p.m. (check local listings). Then, at 10 p.m., Episode 2 of "An American Family" is re-broadcast. That episode tracks Pat's trip to New York to see
Lance, who is there on an extended visit, in May 1971.
Moments after arriving at his hotel (the Chelsea, of course), she meets his neighbor, Andy Warhol superstar Holly Woodlawn, and later accompanies her son to a transvestite variety show in Greenwich Village.
"Is there a message that I didn't get?" Pat asks him the next day. By the end of the episode, the message is clear. But Lance Loud was more than the gay man "An American Family" made famous.
He died Dec. 22, 2001 from liver failure caused by hepatitis C and HIV co-infection. He was 50 — the same age as his father circa "An American Family."
Documentarians Alan and Susan Raymond, who filmed the Louds way back when, now have made a touching, even entertaining film to remember Lance by. More than that, it is a portrait commissioned
by its subject as his dying wish.
For more details - Lance Loud
www.pbs.org/lanceloud
Alan and Susan Raymond's Web site
Wolong Giant Panda Research Center
Giant Panda Cub
A Chinese veterinarian plays with a giant panda cub at Wolong Giant Panda Research Center in China's southeastern province of Sichuan, January 1, 2003. With the natural bamboo forests disappearing rapidly due to economic development, giant pandas in China are facing a growing threat to their survival in the wild.
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USC Didn't Invite To Practice
O.J. Simpson
O.J. Simpson wasn't asked to attend a Southern California practice for the Orange Bowl, although the team knew was going to drop by.
"We didn't invite O.J. to anything," USC coach Pete Carroll said. "We haven't invited much of anybody. Our practices are open to former players and alums wherever we go. And that's where that stands."
Simpson was warmly received by USC's players when he showed up at Saturday's practice for the game against Iowa.
Simpson seemed in high spirits at the USC practice, pumping Carroll's hand and smiling.
He hugged many of the coaches and players, including this year's Heisman winner, quarterback Carson Palmer.
O.J. Simpson
Challenges ''1998 Sony Bono Copyright Extension Act''
Emily Somma
Peter Pan has flown into federal court in a copyright lawsuit over whether the rights to the legendary boy who vowed never to grow up have moved from Neverland to the public domain after more than a century.
Canadian writer Emily Somma has filed a preemptive lawsuit aimed at protecting her book, "After the Rain: A New Adventure for Peter Pan," her lawyer said on Thursday.
Somma filed suit in U.S. District Court in San Francisco on Dec. 20 in anticipation of legal action against her by London's Great Ormond Street Hospital. The hospital, which was awarded the copyright
to Peter Pan in 1929 by the character's creator, Sir James Barrie, has demanded Somma stop publishing her book, claiming its rights run until 2023.
Somma's book was published in September by Daisy Books, which is distributing it in Canada and the United States.
The suit was filed in San Francisco because her attorneys claim the case concerns U.S. copyright law therefore belongs in U.S. federal court. They also say the London hospital
has done business in California with the Peter Pan character.
The lawsuit argues that characters from Barrie's Peter Pan books can be used in "derivative works" since they passed into the public domain in 1987, 50 years after the author's death.
The 1998 Sony Bono Copyright Extension Act, extended the exclusive period that artists and corporations can control their creative works by 20 years, keeping rights to a wide
range of material including poems by Robert Frost and early Mickey Mouse movies in the hands of their owners.
At stake in the copyright dispute are billions of dollars of entertainment-industry revenues. Walt Disney Co., which made Peter Pan world famous with its 1953 animated film, is
one of the media companies that have argued for extended copyright protections.
Emily Somma
In The Kitchen With BartCop & Friends
Credit Card Causes Controversy
Robert Redford
He could have had a nice meal and free ski-lift passes. But a man who tried to get autographed memorabilia for finding Robert Redford's lost credit card got a visit from the cops instead.
Police in Orem, a city close to Redford's home and his Sundance resort, say the man found the card Saturday near a convenience store and called the resort to report the find. But after
being offered free ski-lift passes and dinner for two if he would bring the card to the resort, the man reportedly insisted on some signed Redford memorabilia.
When a resort representative responded that Redford "does not do that kind of thing," the man said Redford wouldn't get his card back and hung up, Orem Police Lt. Doug Edwards said.
Police then called the man, who refused to give his address and told an officer that he threw Redford's card in a trash bin.
Police traced the call and went to the man's apartment, where they recovered the card.
Robert Redford
London Zoo
Jackass Penguins
Zoo keeper Paul Kybett counts Jackass penguins at London Zoo during the annual animal stock take on January 2, 2003. The annual event provides an essential record of the
more than 600 species kept at the zoo, from invertebrates to mammals and fish.
Photo by Stephen Hird
Grand Ole Opry to Remember
Hank Williams
Legend has it that when Hank Williams took the Grand Ole Opry stage for the first time in 1949 he sang "Lovesick Blues" and was called back for an unheard-of six encores.
Williams would spend the next few years as an Opry regular. But his career at the premier country music program was cut short by erratic, self-destructive behavior, and soon after that his life was cut short as well.
"If you had to divide the history of the Opry into three or four major eras, Hank would be one of those," said Charles Wolfe, author of "A Good Natured Riot," a history of the Grand Ole Opry radio show.
The Opry plans to honor Williams this weekend when his son, daughter and grandson perform at the Ryman Auditorium. Daughter Jett Williams is to play Friday night, while Hank Williams Jr. and Hank
Williams III share the stage Saturday in a rare joint performance.
A wiry man with chiseled features and a cowboy hat, Williams played raw, honest songs such as "Cold Cold Heart," "I Can't Help It (If I'm Still In Love With You)" and "Your Cheating Heart."
"Up until that point, country music was mired in the values and rhetoric of earlier days," Wolfe said. "Hank wrote about things people were really concerned about — divorce,
loneliness, separation, drinking — real problems for real people."
But Williams' growing fame and his bouts with the bottle and pills began to take a toll. He found it harder to keep up with the Opry's vigorous schedule and missed shows.
For more, Hank Williams
Grand Ole Opry
Formerly 'The Vidiot'
Haunts Cold War Documents
Hamlet's Ghost
The British Foreign Office considered employing Shakespeare's Hamlet to defuse one of its worst Cold War spats with Moscow, documents show.
In September 1971, Britain stunned the world by expelling 105 Soviet diplomats and trade officials in one of its biggest purges of suspected spies. The Soviets responded by expelling 18 Britons the following month.
By February 1972, the British were looking for ways "to pick up the threads of Anglo-Soviet relations which were broken by the expulsions."
The Kremlin let the British know, via the French ambassador in Moscow, that "a British gesture is needed for restoring Anglo-Soviet relations."
Enter Joseph Alfred Dobbs, a British embassy official. He had seen a radical Russian production of Hamlet in Moscow and suggested the British invite the production company to London as a show of goodwill.
"The cast wear a kind of modern dress, the men for instance being clothed mostly in roll-necked sweaters and jeans," Dobbs writes in a two-page eulogy sent to the Foreign Office on February 10. He
enthuses about what he calls the production's most effective use of the hessian-like arras tapestry.
Finally, though, Dobbs' enthusiasm runs up against the harsh realities of the Soviet Communist Party.
For the rest,, Hamlet's Ghost
Thanks, Tim H!
Angels Camp, CA
Calaveras County Frog Jumping Jubilee
A commemorative plaque celebrating the first winner of the Calaveras County Frog Jumping Jubilee is embedded in the sidewalk on Main Street in Angels Camp, Calif., Thursday,
Dec. 26, 2002. A plaque for each winner of the contest since the frog Dan'l Webster made famous by Mark Twain lines the sidewalk.
Photo by Steve Yeater
Chinese Artist Defends Work
Zhu Yu
A Chinese artist embroiled in a heated controversy over a show in which he apparently eats a dead baby says he feels no need to defend himself.
Zhu Yu, seated in a Beijing apartment dotted with photographs of the act, said it was his "responsibility" as an artist to spark debate about morality and art.
"An artist does not give answers, but possibilities," he told Reuters on Thursday, hours before Channel 4 was to air a documentary in which the 32-year-old unmarried man shows
off photographs of himself washing a dead stillborn baby in a sink and putting its dismembered parts in his mouth.
Zhu began making waves at underground art shows in China in 2000 for grafting skin surgically removed from his belly onto the decaying body of dead pig.
Zhu, who claims to be a devout Protestant, said nowhere does the Bible explicitly forbid the consumption of human flesh.
Zhu Yu
In Memory
Kazimierz Dejmek
Polish stage director Kazimierz Dejmek, whose production of a play in 1968 sparked a student-led revolt after it was banned by communist authorities, has died, his family said Wednesday. He was 78.
Dejmek was admitted to a Warsaw hospital Monday, where he died the following day, his wife said. She declined to give further details.
Born May 17, 1924 in the then-Polish city of Kovle, now part of Ukraine, Dejmek was known for his provocative and often political productions, most notably the 1968 production of "Dziady," or "Forefathers," by Polish romantic poet and playwright Adam Mickiewicz.
Authorities said the production criticized Poland's allegiance to Moscow and banned it, provoking a student revolt that grew into broad criticism of the government and calls for greater freedoms. Communist leaders blamed Jewish party members for policy errors, fueling an atmosphere of hostility that saw thousands of Jews leave the country.
Following the March 1968 events, Dejmek quit the communist party and left Poland to direct abroad. He returned in 1971 after a change in the government.
After the fall of communism, Dejmek served as Polish culture minister in 1993 and from 1995-96. Dejmek "shaped Poland's theater as a means of dialogue with the nation, as a means of expressing who we are and what are our aspirations," Olgierd Lukaszewicz, head of Poland's Union of Stage Artists, told the state PAP news agency.
Before his death, he was working on a production of Shakespeare's "Hamlet" that was to open Jan. 30 at the New Theater, in the central city of Lodz, some 140 kilometers (90 miles) southwest of Warsaw. Dejmek founded the theater in 1946 and ran it for 20 years. The theater wants to go ahead with the performances as planned.
A funeral service is planned for Monday in Lodz. Dejmek is survived by his wife, a daughter and a son.
Kazimierz Dejmek
In Memory
Royce Applegate
Television and film actor Royce Applegate, who appeared in such movies as "Splash" and "The Rookie," died in a New Year's Day blaze that left two firefighters seriously burned, authorities said on Thursday.
Applegate, 63, was found dead in the bedroom of his Hollywood Hills home after the blaze was put out and firefighters entered the house Wednesday morning, according to a spokesman for the Los Angeles County Coroner's Office.
Applegate, who lived alone in the hillside dwelling, is believed to have succumbed to smoke inhalation, and an autopsy was being performed to confirm the cause of death, the spokesman said. Two firefighters sustained severe burns while
battling the blaze -- one who crashed through the burning roof of the home and another who grabbed his fallen colleague and helped pull him to safety, a city fire department spokesman said.
The cause of the fire remained under investigation, fire officials said.
Applegate appeared in numerous TV series during a screen career that began in the 1970s, including "Dallas," "CHiPs," "Twin Peaks" and "JAG."
The Oklahoma-born actor also was seen in various motion pictures over the years. In addition to small parts in
"Splash" and last year's
"The Rookie," Applegate's film credits included 1994's
"The Getaway" with Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger, the Coen Brothers' epic comedy
"O Brother, Where Art Thou?" and the upcoming Civil War drama
"Gods and Generals," due for release in February.
At least two other actors died in Los Angeles-area house fires in recent months. Character actor Dennis Patrick, a regular on "Dallas" and the daytime horror soap opera "Dark Shadows," perished
in a blaze at his Hollywood Hills home in October. Actress Teresa Graves, who starred as a sexy undercover cop in the 1970s TV series "Get Christie Love," died in a fire that swept her home days earlier.
Royce Applegate
In Memory
James McReynolds
Bluegrass music veteran James McReynolds, who with his mandolin-playing brother Jesse formed the legendary "Jim & Jesse" duo honored in the Country Music Hall of Fame, has died, funeral home officials said.
McReynolds, 75, had been suffering from cancer and died on Tuesday at the Sumner Regional Medical Center in Gallatin, Tennessee, and will be buried at his boyhood home of Coeburn, Virginia, Pete Davis of the Alexander Funeral Home said.
McReynolds' wife, Areta, died two weeks ago of a heart attack.
Backed by their band, "The Virginia Boys," their first single "The Flame of Love," backed by "Gosh I Miss You All the Time," spent weeks on the national charts. Other songs regarded as Jim & Jesse
classics are "Cotton Mill Man," "Diesel on My Tail," "Are You Missing Me" and "Paradise."
Jim's enhanced high tenor and guitar playing combined with Jesse's deep-voiced singing and unique mandolin style to produce their distinctive sound.
Jesse developed a cross-picking technique and "split-string" style few could duplicate.
The brothers' performing career was interrupted by service in both World War II and the Korean War.
They joined the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville in 1964, and their numerous honors included induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame's "Walkway of Stars" and the International Bluegrass Music Association's Hall of Honor.
James McReynolds
The world's smallest globe is shown in this undated handout photo next to a U.S. quarter coin. The globe was curved on a part of elephant tooth and then colored. Its height is 5.3 mm and its diameter is 2.9 mm. Chen Yupei, a miniature-sculptor in Shanghai, spent several hundred hours making it in 1987. China, chalking up entries in the Guinness Book of Records at a steady clip, has been given its own Guinness office, set up by the organization's London headquarters to screen potential applicants for future editions.
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'The Osbournes'
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