'Best of TBH Politoons'
But Untrue
Strangely Believable
The Knoxville Ledger reports that Senate Majority Leader Dr. Bill Frist recently opened a shelter for stray cats in the
~Jeff Crook
Jeff Crook is the Ceci Connolly of the Left. ~ J. Howard Tuft
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Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Jesse Jackon and Greg Palast: Jim Crow returns to the voting booth. Does America have apartheid vote-counting system? (Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Working for Change)
The ballots left uncounted, and that will never be counted, are so-called spoiled or rejected ballots -- votes cast by citizens but never tallied. This is the dark little secret of U.S. democracy: Nationwide, in our presidential elections, about 2 million votes are cast and never counted, most spoiled because they cannot be read by the tallying machines. Not everyone's vote spoils equally. Cleveland State University Professor Mark Salling analyzed ballots thrown into Ohio's electoral garbage can. Salling found that, "overwhelmingly," the voided votes come from African American precincts. This racial bend in vote spoilage is not unique to Ohio.
Alan Fram: White House: Deficit Will Hit Record $427B (Associated Press)
WASHINGTON - The White House will project that this year's federal deficit will hit $427 billion, a senior administration official said Tuesday, a record amount partly driven by wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Critics overstate Social Security ills (Denver Post)
Sen. Wayne Allard told a town meeting in Greeley that the Social Security system could face a $28 trillion debt. Congressional reports don't concur.
Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman: The 10 Worst Corporations of 2004 (AlterNet)
The year's most egregious price gougers, polluters, union-busters, dictator-coddlers, fraudsters, poisoners, deceivers and general miscreants.
Bruce Kluger: Cartoon Madness
Christian conservatives classically over-reached when they launched their amphibious assault on SpongeBob SquarePants - and harpooned themselves squarely in the foot.
Susan Clark Armstrong: Lesbian Student Shut Out of Tradition
Kelli Davis is an 18-year-old senior at Fleming Island High School. She's an obedient daughter in an upper-middle class family. She's intelligent (her senior grade point average is 4.0), responsible (she's held a part-time job since she was 15) and attractive. But to Kyle, a boy in several of her classes, she's a "dumb f*cking dyke."
Editorial: Social Security/Blacks get more, not less, from it (Minneapolis Star Tribune)
The system is not in crisis; it has money to last for about the next half century, and even then, if nothing is done the required benefit cuts would still leave retirees better off than those getting benefits today. Pay close attention to this debate, and don't get snookered. The crisis in Social Security is no more real than the "crisis" that led the United States to war in Iraq.
Andrew Scutro: Health & Fitness: Born to Run (Monterey County Weekly)
I used to work with a guy who was a real serious runner. He was one of those former nerds who found a sport where he could dominate, where he could get revenge over the jocks who got chicks, pass them fast in a race and come out ahead. So that's what he did. And he got away with it. He zoomed around town in one of those motorboat-sized Cadillac convertibles from the '70s. It was gold. With a bike rack.
Gary Marshal: Beggars' Belief
Today's beggars have evolved. They don't need money for food - they're setting up sites and asking you to pay their credit card bills instead. Gary Marshal introduces you to the new breed.
Patrick Goldstein: This Year, the Safe Bets Are Off (LA Times)
It's a funny thing, but today's movie studios are no longer in the Oscar business. If there's one common thread among this year's five best picture nominees, it's that they were largely financed by outside investors. The most money any studio put into one of the nominees was the $21 million that Miramax anted up for "Finding Neverland." The other nominated films were orphans - ignored, unloved and turned down flat by most of the same studios that eagerly remake dozens of old TV series (aren't you looking forward to a bigger, dumber version of "The Dukes of Hazzard"?) or bankroll hundreds of sequels, including a follow-up to "Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo," a film that was sadly overlooked at Oscar time because apparently nobody had the foresight to invent a category for Best Running Penis Joke Delivered by a Third-Rate Comic.
ROGER EBERT: Sundance #3: Of heart and humor
PARK CITY, Utah -- I knew you needed leather balls to play rugby, but I didn't know you could also use steel ball bearings. "Murderball," probably the most talked-about documentary at Sundance this year, is about the extreme sport of wheelchair rugby, played in reinforced and armored chairs by quadriplegics with various degrees of disability. It is a full-contact sport.
Roger Ebert: 'Aviator' leads Oscar nominations
"The Aviator" leads with 11 nominations. Jamie Foxx was nominated in two categories. A little film named "Sideways" won five nominations, but one of them was not for its star, Paul Giamatti. "Finding Neverland" was the dark horse, in a tie with "Million Dollar Baby" with seven nominations apiece. "Hotel Rwanda," which started slow and built mighty word of mouth, won nominations for its stars, Don Cheadle and Sophie Okonedo. Katharine Hepburn, nominated 12 times, made it 13, in a sense, when Cate Blanchett was nominated for playing Hepburn in "The Aviator." And "The Polar Express" was snowed out in the animated category by "Shark Tale," which was just plain wrong.
Game: Play Stylist to the Stars
(Click on a button in the "'Aviator' leads Oscar nominations" box.)
Reader Suggestion
Re: Pale Male
Purple Gene Reviews
'Wings of Desire'
Purple Genes' review of the movie "Wings of Desire" ('Der Himmel uber Berlin') (1987) Directed by Wim Wenders ("Red Hot and Blue" - "Buena Vista Social Club" - "The Million Dollar Hotel"):
I'm SO sick of Born Again Christians proselytizing and praying and promoting the end of the world as we know it…….THAT everytime I hear the word god or heaven or angels…I cringe! I got a chance to RE -SEE the great movie "Wings of Desire" and I did cringe a little because it IS about two "Guardian Angels" floating around post-war Berlin protecting humans….actually "Witnessing" and watching over the world with ancient eyes…..from the beginning of time. But you don't have to believe in heaven or the great hereafter to embrace the beautiful humanity of this movie…..and the scenery and the shadows and the music and the art and the angsty sub-titled dialogue!
Daniel (Bruno Ganz) and Cassiel (Otto Sander) are Witnesses (guardian Angels) and have been watching over humans forever……aloof observers, they do not participate in any activity….maybe a whisper here or there and perhaps a small subtle persuasion can affect…..We open the movie in the great public library in Berlin and these angels are surreptitiously situated all around the place on pediments and long stairways,,,,behind bookshelves and in lines…listening. Slowly we see how they operate and we notice their constant concern in their conversations. Daniel is having a little trouble with detachment and things start heating up for him when he encounters Marion (Solveig Dommartin) the beautiful trapeze artist and aerielist. She is worrying to herself that since it is the full moon…she might fall……well Daniel starts to fall and it's not from the high wire…..He wants to become human and hurt and be happy….touch and taste….and meet Marion.
One of the greatest Cameos of all time occurs when Peter Falk ("Columbo" - "Murder by Death" - "Princess Bride" - "Shark Tale") playing Peter Falk runs into Daniel. Falk can't see Daniel, but he knows he's there and starts talking to him. Daniel wants to know what it feels like to be human. Falk says "To have coffee and a cigarette at the same time…that's fantastic". But he also warns him that if he takes the "Plunge" he will experience time, disease, love, pain and death!.
Daniel is so smitten with Marion…and believe me - the scenes of her performing on a rope are truly supremely sensuous and spectacular - that he goes for it….He wakes up "human" on a gritty back street with no money and no smarts…but he innocently works his way toward love……and Marion….He finally finds her in an underground nightclub and we have Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds onstage spewing gothic Neanderthal punk venom…..to a backbeat of romance between Daniel and Marion…….This movie is a masterpiece of pacing and cinema….and, of course our two humans fall in love but they don't expect to live happily ever after…and as Daniel is holding the rope Marion performs perfect and poetic passion of movement and we see his image in the shadows on the wall…..wonderful !!!!
Of course Hollywood had to do a remake of this masterpiece called "City of Angels" (Directed by Brad Siberling) starring Nicolas Cage and Meg Ryan……and managed to make obvious and overt all the superb subtleties of "Wings of Desire"!
Purple Gene gives "Wings of Desire" 100 halos out 100 for reassuring my cynical sick psyche that beauty does exist in humankind.
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
It only looked like rain.
The 'Food Ladies' at CostCo were passing out an amazing variety of samples today - the kid was most pleased.
Team for Documentary
Jerry Seinfeld & Chris Rock
Jerry Seinfeld and Chris Rock are joining forces with HBO to produce a multi-episode documentary on the history of standup, Daily Variety reports.
Seinfeld and Rock, old pals from back in their days working the comedy club circuit, had bandied about the idea for years, but it wasn't until recently--after the funeral for Rodney Dangerfield --that they decided to pitch it to HBO chairman and CEO Chris Albrecht.
According to Variety, the cable network chief sparked to the project and initiated talks with documentarian Ric Burns to direct. Burns' credits include PBS' epic documentary series on New York and the Civil War, the latter of which he collaborated with brother Ken Burns.
The Seinfeld-Rock comedy doc will cull material from HBO's voluminous archive of standup specials from the last three decades, including turns by Dangerfield, Seinfeld, Rock and such tart-tongued joke slingers as George Carlin, Eddie Murphy, Richard Pryor, Whoopi Goldberg, Robin Williams, Robert Klein, Roseanne and Steven Wright. There's also plenty of footage to be had from the cable network's series of Comic Relief benefits in the 1980s, which featured a who's-who of wisecrackers.
Jerry Seinfeld & Chris Rock
Developing Superhero Based On Ringo Starr
Stan Lee
Former Beatle Ringo Starr and comic book mogul Stan Lee announced a partnership Wednesday to launch an original entertainment franchise of an animated persona based on and voiced by Starr.
"Ringo is beloved worldwide for his commitment to people and his singular wit," said Lee, the man responsible for the likes of Spider-Man, The Hulk and the X-men. "Our Ringo Superhero character will combine these qualities, along with Ringo's secret powers which people generally didn't know about because he has kept them secret - until now."
Starr's alter ego is described as an "evil-battling, Earth-saving - though reluctant - superhero with a great sense of rhythm."
Production on the series will begin this year, with a DVD planned for release in the beginning of 2006.
Stan Lee
New Stamp Honors Singer
Marian Anderson
Marian Anderson returned to DAR Constitution Hall for one more triumph on Thursday. Famed for her contralto voice, Anderson was honored on a U.S. postage stamp with first-day-of-issue ceremonies at the Washington venue where the singer was once denied a chance to perform because of her skin color.
The initial snub in 1939 caused first lady Eleanor Roosevelt to resign from the Daughters of the American Revolution and to arrange for Anderson to perform before thousands at the Lincoln Memorial.
In later years Anderson did perform at Constitution Hall, including a 1942 concert to aid World War II relief efforts, and she began her farewell tour there in 1964.
Marian Anderson
Aquires Rare Early Period Drawing
Van Gogh Museum
The Van Gogh Museum has acquired an important drawing from Vincent van Gogh's early period, an 1882 portrayal of a Hague street vendor called Portrait of Jozef Blok.
The work, in pencil and watercolour, was acquired from a private collector for an undisclosed sum, museum spokeswoman Marion Wolff said Thursday.
Van Gogh mentioned the drawing in a letter to his brother Theo in November 1882: "Do you know who I drew this morning? Blok the Jewish bookseller." He said he had bought a set of magazines from Blok and was "very well pleased" with him.
Van Gogh Museum
Performing for Tsunami Aid
Yusuf Islam (Cat Stevens)
The singer formerly known as Cat Stevens will headline a concert in Indonesia for victims of the Asian tsunami, said a statement posted on his Web site Thursday.
Yusuf Islam also plans to open an Indonesian branch of his charity, Small Kindness.
He will have top billing at the concert of local artists in Jakarta on Jan. 31 that will raise money for tsunami victims from Indonesia's Aceh province, according to a statement available on his Web site Thursday.
Yusuf Islam (Cat Stevens)
Unknown Piece To Premiere In Rotterdam
Beethoven
The adagio of a previously unknown piano concerto by Beethoven, discovered at the British Museum, will get its world premiere on February 1 in Rotterdam, one of the organisers of the concert said.
The 1789 piece found in the museum was no more than a rough outline of the themes but Dutch musicologist Cees Nieuwenhuizen, a Beethoven expert, formed it into a eight minute piece.
British pianist Ronald Brautigam will play the piece in the performance in Rotterdam.
Beethoven
'Stop Government Propaganda Act'
Kennedy & Lautenberg
In response to continued revelations of government-funded "journalism" -- ranging from the purported video news releases put out by the drug czar's office and the Department of Health and Human Services to the recently uncovered payments to columnists Armstrong Williams and Maggie Gallagher,who flacked administration programs -- Sens. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Frank R. Lautenberg (D-N.J.) will introduce a bill, The Stop Government Propaganda Act, in the Senate next week.
The Stop Government Propaganda Act states, "Funds appropriated to an Executive branch agency may not be used for publicity or propaganda purposes within the United States unless authorized by law."
"It's time for Congress to shut down the Administration's propaganda mill," Lautenberg said in a statement. "It has no place in the United States Government." The bill is co-sponsored by Sens. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) and Jon Corzine (D-N.J.).
Kennedy & Lautenberg
Headlining Roskilde Fest
Ozzy Osbourne
Ozzy Osbourne and heavy metal pioneers Black Sabbath will be among the headliners at this year's Roskilde Festival, one of Europe's largest music events.
Osbourne, who grew up in Birmingham, central England, rose to stardom with Black Sabbath in the 1970s before launching a solo career. It will be the band's sole summer festival appearance, organizers said Wednesday.
This year's festival, which also will include performances by Green Day and The Dears, will be June 30-July 3.
Ozzy Osbourne
Unveiling Revamped Channel at Halftime
MTV
This year, the only thing MTV is exposing during the Super Bowl halftime is a revamped network.
After producing the infamous Janet Jackson halftime show last year, MTV will launch a new look to its sister station, MTV2, during the Feb. 6 game break. MTV and MTV2 will both air a preview special of MTV2, featuring a combination of music, shows and random content aimed at young males.
MTV2, a network showing mostly videos since 1996, will launch a new format at midnight on Feb. 7. The new MTV2 is composed of music videos, new shows, graphics and random clips "that have been scoured from the Internet, old B-movies and the public service dustbin."
MTV
Charges Dropped
Anthony Anderson
State prosecutors will not pursue rape charges against "Barbershop" and "Kangaroo Jack" actor Anthony Anderson and a film director, who had charges against them dismissed by a judge last fall.
Anderson, 34, and Wayne Witherspoon, 43, were accused of attacking an extra last summer on the set of the film "Hustle & Flow." But a judge threw out the case, saying testimony by the accuser was some of the most suspicious he had heard in 20 years.
Prosecutor District Attorney General Bill Gibbons said Wednesday his office had reviewed the case and decided not to seek a grand jury criminal indictment against Anderson and Witherspoon, an assistant director of the film.
Anthony Anderson
Louvre Buys Bust for Record $4.8 Million
'Ill-Humored Man'
The Louvre Museum in Paris bought a bust by Franz Xaver Messerschmidt on Thursday for a record-setting $4.8 million, roughly 10 times the expected sale price, Sotheby's said.
The piece, "Ill-Humored Man," fetched $4.83 million and set an auction record for the 18th century artist and for sculpture of the period, according to the auction house.
It is one of only 43 known busts from the Austrian artist's series of uncommissioned character-heads created in the 1770s.
He began working on the character-heads around 1770 to 1772, a time when he began to suffer hallucinations and paranoia. The character-heads are frequently studied in the field of Austrian baroque sculpture.
'Ill-Humored Man'
Super Bowl Bound
Cialis
Impotence treatment Cialis is returning for a second round of advertising on this year's Super Bowl, the most-watched U.S. television event, with a 60-second commercial showing flirtatious moments between middle-aged and elderly couples.
Cialis in particular drew criticism last year for its ad by citing an erection lasting more than four hours as a possible side effect during a televised event popular with adults and children alike. A spokeswoman for ICOS said the same warning would appear during the commercial this year.
Cialis
In Memory
Robert Dwan
Robert Dwan, who directed Groucho Marx during the 14 years the legendary comic was host of the popular and often outrageously funny quiz show "You Bet Your Life," died last Friday. He was 89.
He joined "You Bet Your Life" when it debuted on radio in 1947 and moved with it to television in 1950. There, it quickly became one of the new medium's most popular shows, remaining on the air until 1961.
The show included a series of guests who competed for small cash prizes but mainly served as comic foils for Marx's quick-witted, ad-libbing sense of humor.
As a result, Dwan explained in his 2000 memoir, "As Long As They're Laughing," he never directed the comedian in any traditional way.
Instead, he let him go on in front of the cameras for as long as he wanted and say anything he wanted. Then he set about editing Marx's exchanges with guests into a format that would fit the show's 30-minute time slot and not offend the network's censors.
Robert Dwan
