'TBH Politoons'
Thanks, again, Tim!
Poetry Corner
'No Pain At The Top'
While investors have taken huge hits and unemployment lines have lengthened, compensation packages for CEOs have continued to grow. So what else is new?
No Pain At The Top
Profits may tumble and jobs disappear
Bankruptcies soar in a climate of fear
But somehow they thrive, those who know how to rig it
Finessing the levers and jiggling the spigot.
In good times and bad times
The games never stop
Pain sinks to the bottom
Cream stays at the top.
When times they are fat, Œmid great acclamation
The Corporate Elect take a huge extra ration
When times get much leaner they whine and they snivel
Their egos get bruised but their perks never shrivel.
In good times and bad times
The games never stop
Pain sinks to the bottom
Cream stays at the top.
Most folks who are pushed out the company door
Fear their standard of living will fall through the floor
But sev¹rance for those in a CEO role
Make execs who are severed most wonderfully whole.
In good times and bad times
The games never stop
Pain sinks to the bottom
Cream stays at the top.
It¹s a comfortable myth that we share the same boat
That we all work together so all stay afloat
In truth this great vessel¹s a multiple decker
And being the captain¹s a great hurt deflector.
In good times and bad times
The games never stop
Pain sinks to the bottom
Cream stays at the top.
©2003
**********
More Financial Verse
Political Verse
Back In The Grove!
The Worried Shrimp
Fun Site
DERMatrix?
By this time, most film fans have their own answer to the query: What is
The Matrix? But our question to those eagerly awaiting the further
cyber-adventures of Keanu and his futuristic cohorts is this:
What is the DERMatrix?
Don't call Morpheus, the Oracle, or your mother, either. Might it be
related to skin conditions seen in the series? Does Neo know Kung Fu?
Don't worry, skinema fans, the arrival of the DERMatrix is here at last...
From the gentle souls at Skinema.com
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Overcast morning, sunny afternoon. 'June Gloom' a little early, but always welcome.
Did the Farmer's Market/CostCo loop today. New stall at the market with Asian produce - had no idea what most of it was, but, they sure were busy.
The kid wants to go to Kingman, AZ, next weekend to celebrate the 50th anniversary of an 'alien' crash. Googled it, but it seems that nothing is planned - what the hell, I'm up for a road trip.
Tonight, Friday, CBS opens the night with a FRESH 'Star Search', followed by a RERUN 'CSI: Crime Scene Investigation', and then another
RERUN 'CSI: Crime Scene Investigation'.
Scheduled on a FRESH Dave are Nas and Alicia Keys.
Scheduled on a FRESH Craiggers are Cybill Shepherd and Foo Fighters.
NBC starts the evening with 'Dateline', follows with a RERUN 'Law & Order: Special Victims Unit', and then the
Season Finale of 'Law & Order: Special Victims Unit'.
Scheduled on a FRESH Jay are Andrew Firestone and Busta Rhymes.
Scheduled on a FRESH Conan are George Lopez, Dan Aykroyd, and Dropkick Murphys.
Scheduled on a FRESH Carson Daly are Eliza Dushku, The Pussycat Dolls featuring Carmen Electra, and Camp Freddy.
ABC fills the night with the '37th Annual Daytime Emmy Awards'.
Scheduled on a FRESH Jimmy Kimmel is Marilyn Manson with this week's guest co-host Monica Lewinsky.
The WB offers a FRESH 'The Celebrity Look-Alike Show', followed by 'The WB's Outrageous Outtakes'.
Faux has the movie 'Me, Myself & Irene'.
UPN offers the movie 'Interview With The Vampire'.
Check local PBS listings for 'NOW With Bill Moyers' - this week, with Molly Ivins.
This is the best program currently on TV - Watch It!
Anyone have any opinions?
Or reviews?
(See below for addresses)
Columbian coffee spokesman Juan Valdez, left, and actress Hilary Duff arrive at the premiere of 'Bruce Almighty,' Wednesday, May 14, 2003, in Los Angeles.
Photo by Chris Weeks
Fresh Michael Dare!
Barbara Walters Lands Interview
Hillary Clinton
ABC's Barbara Walters has landed the first extensive television interview with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton as she launches a tour to promote her highly anticipated memoir "Living History," the network said on Thursday.
Walters' interview with the New York Democrat, who made history by winning election to the Senate after her husband left office, will air as a one-hour ABC News special on Sunday, June 8, the night before the book is published.
Contents of the senator's book, offering the ultimate insider's account of the turbulent Clinton White House, have been the subject of intense speculation while being kept under close wraps by the publisher.
Hillary Clinton
The Information One-Stop
Moose & Squirrel
MTV & VH1 to Broadcast Concert Saturday
Norah Jones
Norah Jones fans who couldn't quite make it down to lower Manhattan to see the Grammy-winner perform during the Tribeca Film Festival can catch her in concert on MTV and VH1.
"100 Percent NYC: A Concert Celebrating the Tribeca Film Festival" is scheduled to air simultaneously on both cable music channels at 8 p.m. EDT Saturday.
The show took place in Battery Park during the second annual festival, which ran May 3-11. The Roots, Sean Paul, Robbie Williams and Jewel also performed, along with comedians Wanda Sykes, Denis Leary and Jimmy Fallon.
The hour-long broadcast will include behind-the-scenes footage from the free show, which drew 15,000 people on May 9.
Norah Jones
John Lithgow, who plays the part of Elephant, is lifted by from left, Kyle Froman, Antonio Carmena, Adam Hendrickson and Daniel Ulbricht during the premier of New York City Ballet's 'Carnival of the Animals,' Wednesday, May 14, 2003, in New York. The story follows the exploits of Oliver, a young boy who gets locked into New York's Museum of Natural History for a night.
Photo by Paul Kolnik
Top Album For First Time in 30 Years
Isley Brothers
It's enough to make the Isley Brothers want to shout!
The veteran R&B act returned to the top of the pop album charts for the first time in nearly three decades with their latest release, "Body Kiss," which sold 155,000 copies its first week in stores, Nielsen SoundScan reported on Wednesday.
The new album, from DreamWorks Records, is the Isleys' first to hit No. 1 on the main album chart since their 1975 release "The Heat is On," which spawned the smash hit "Fight the Power (Part I)," according to Billboard magazine.
The group, inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992, even boasts the distinction of having recruited a young Jimi Hendrix, who then went by the name of Jimmy James, to play guitar in their backing band for a 1964 tour.
Isley Brothers
Not Quite A Complete Diet
Guinness
Queston:
I have heard that it is possible to live on Guinness and milk alone. Is this true, or even partially true?
Answer:
This is not quite true. Guinness does contain many vitamins and minerals in small quantities, but is lacking vitamin C, as well as calcium and fat. So, to fulfil all of your daily nutritional requirements you would need to drink a glass of orange juice, two glasses of milk, and 47 pints of Guinness.
New Scientist: The Last Word Science Questions and Answers
Rock, Older Buyers Rule
Depressed Music Market
According to a survey by the Recording Industry Association of America, rock held steady as the most popular genre in 2002 while those over age 45 emerged as the steadiest music buyers in a depressed market.
The survey, released on Thursday, also found that 2002 was the first year that more CDs were sold at discount department stores and consumer electronics outlets than specialty record stores.
Purchases by fans 45 and up rose to 25.5 percent from 23.7 percent a year earlier, the survey said.
Rock reigned as the music purchased most, representing 24.7 percent of the market, the survey said, followed by rap or hip-hop and urban/R&B recordings.
Depressed Music Market
In The Kitchen With BartCop & Friends
May Join Ex-Guns N' Roses Crew
Scott Weiland
Scott Weiland appears to be the new Axl Rose.
Weiland, the former lead singer of Stone Temple Pilots, tells Rolling Stone he will be the singer for the band that features former Guns N' Roses alumni Slash, Duff McKagen and Matt Sorum. Weiland said, "Yeah, I'm in the band....We signed the contract." He says the name of the new band will be Reloaded.
As for the fate of Weiland and the new band, Sorum is being a bit more guarded about the whole thing. He says he needs to ask the whole band before he can say anything.
Scott Weiland
Gael Murphy, of Code Pink Women for Peace, holds a banner up during public meeting of the Federal Communication Commission in Washington, May 15, 2003. Murphy was protesting the anticipated loosening of ownership rules for media outlets.
Fall Schedule
Fox
Fox will bring back a new "Joe Millionaire" next season and start a junior version of "American Idol" as well as a new drama about the porn industry.
Beyond saying the butler will be back, Fox executives would reveal little about a second season of "Joe Millionaire." It leaves open the question of whether women can be fooled a second time into dating an average guy they think is rich. The show will compete with NBC's "Fear Factor" on Mondays at 8 p.m.
"American Juniors," spotlighting talented children, will run until "American Idol" is back in January. But don't expect Simon Cowell, or any other sharp-tongued judge.
"CSI: Crime Scene Investigation" producer Jerry Bruckheimer, one of the busiest creators on television, is behind the new Monday drama, "Skin." It focuses on two Los Angeles families — one led by the district attorney and another that makes its money on pornography.
On Thursdays, Fox will air two new teen-oriented dramas. "Tru Calling" features a young woman with the "Groundhog Day"-like ability to relive a day. "The O.C.," which stands for Orange County, has a poor youngster suddenly thrust into a wealthy home. "The O.C." will debut early this summer.
Fox moves "Boston Public" and "Wanda at Large" to Fridays, and introduces "Luis," a comedy with Luis Guzman as a doughnut shop owner in Spanish Harlem.
The increasingly popular drama starring Keifer Sutherland, "24," returns for a third season.
Fox has canceled "Firefly," "Fastlane," "John Doe" and "Andy Richter Controls the Universe."
Fox's other new series:
_"Arrested Development," a comedy about a rich family that heads to the poorhouse when the father, played by Jeffrey Tambor, is arrested for illegal accounting practices.
_"A Minute with Stan Hooper," stars comic Norm MacDonald as a newsmagazine reporter who moves to a small town in Wisconsin.
_"The Ortegas," based on a hit British series, is an improvisational show about a young man whose parents build him a television studio in the back yard for his own talk show.
Fox
Breaks Arm on Set of 'Gothika'
Halle Berry
Actress Halle Berry has broken her arm on the Montreal set of her upcoming film, "Gothika," but will be back on the job next week, a Warner Bros. spokesman said on Thursday.
Several of Berry's co-stars, who include Robert Downey Jr., Penelope Cruz, and "Lord of the Rings" actor Bernard Hill, were on set at the time but it's not clear who else was in the scene with her. "It wasn't a stunt scene, it was just one of the physical scenes in a movie," Everett said. "Her arm didn't go the way it was supposed to."
Berry, 32, was taken by ambulance to a Montreal hospital, where she was treated for a broken ulna -- the bone that extends from the elbow to the wrist -- and released, Everett said.
Halle Berry
New Exhibition
Titanic
The Titanic will come back to life Friday with a new exhibition in London about the supposedly unsinkable ship that features the personal belongings of several of the passengers.
"This is the human side of the tragedy of the Titanic. Many of these items have never been seen in public before," exhibition organizer Mark Lach told Reuters at a preview of the show that opens at London's Science Museum.
The atmospheric exhibition, scavenged from debris from the wreck lying 2.5 miles down off the coast of Newfoundland, leads the visitor through rooms recreating first and third class cabins as well as Captain Edward Smith's bridge.
Titanic
Formerly 'The Vidiot'
pissed
Painting Draws $16.4 Million
Mark Rothko
A 1958 painting by abstract expressionist Mark Rothko sold for $16.4 million a record for his work -- at a Christie's auction of postwar and contemporary art, the auction house said.
The painting, "No. 9 (White and Black on Wine)," gained the highest bid of the sale Wednesday night, Christie's said. The previous record for a Rothko work was $14.3 million, set in 2000.
In total, the auction fetched $69.8 million, although only 72 percent of the lots by artists such as Rothko, Yves Klein and Andy Warhol were sold.
A 1966 Warhol work, "Marlon," featuring a leather-clad Marlon Brando on his Triumph motorcycle, went for $5 million, while one of Warhol's iconic soup can paintings from 1962, "Campbell's Soup Can (Pepper Pot)," fetched $2.4 million.
Mark Rothko
A four-day-old baby buffalo faces off with it's parents as it frolics at the Cincinnati Zoo, Thursday, May 15, 2003, in Cincinnati. The calf, born on Mother's Day, weighs around 60 pounds. An adult buffalo can weigh between 1,100 and 2,500 pounds. It has been 11 years since the zoo exhibited buffalo. Zoo officials, not wanting to disturb the family, have not determined the sex of the as-yet unnamed calf.
Photo by Al Behrman
Makes Good on Checks
R&B Foundation
When the Dixie Cups learned that they would be receiving a Pioneer Award and a fat check from the Rhythm & Blues Foundation, they planned to return some of the money to help soul singers who have fallen on hard times.
They never got the chance.
After the Dixie Cups, The Supremes, Koko Taylor, George Clinton and others were honored at the foundation's annual dinner in February, they went home empty-handed. The foundation didn't have enough money to write any checks, traditionally $20,000 for groups and $15,000 for individuals.
The foundation is finally making amends.
Shortly after the February debacle, it mailed the honorees $2,500 checks and an apology. On May 28, organization founders Bonnie Raitt and Ruth Brown, along with Ray Benson, Jimmie Vaughan and others, will headline a benefit concert in Austin, Texas. Bruce Springsteen has already made an undisclosed donation, which Raitt termed "generous."
Tickets for the concert, which cost $35 to $250, have sold well. Cecilia Carter, the foundation's executive director, told The Associated Press on Wednesday that the organization was in the process of sending honorees their full payments.
Raitt and others formed the foundation in 1987 to preserve the legacy of the soul music and make a sort of reparations to artists who had been robbed of their royalties by a crooked industry. The foundation has "taken care of hospital bills and funerals and keep paying people's rent," said Brown.
For more, R&B Foundation
The R&B Foundation
Tickets for the benefit
Hit With 16 More Charges
Tom Sizemore
Actor Tom Sizemore, already facing trial over allegations of domestic violence and intimidating witnesses, was charged on Wednesday with 16 more criminal counts stemming from his relationship with onetime "Hollywood Madam" Heidi Fleiss.
Sizemore, who starred in the CBS drama "Robbery Homicide Division," was also ordered to stay away from Fleiss and surrender any weapons in his possession, City Attorney's spokesman Frank Mateljan said.
Sizemore was arrested last week for allegedly threatening Fleiss to keep her from testifying in his domestic violence trial. That case stems from allegations that he assaulted another ex-girlfriend in November.
The new charges against Sizemore, who played a gruff sergeant in "Saving Private Ryan," are misdemeanors that relate to his year-long relationship with Fleiss.
Tom Sizemore
Modern Art Pulls Big Crowds
'Matisse Picasso'
Some 350,000 art enthusiasts crossed the East River from Manhattan to the working-class neighborhood to see the blockbuster show "Matisse Picasso" at the Museum of Modern Art's temporary home, putting to rest any concerns that it wouldn't work outside midtown.
Housed in a converted staple factory, MoMA Queens decidedly lacks the cachet of the Tate Gallery of London or the Grand Palais in Paris, where the exhibit drew even larger crowds last year.
The acclaimed exhibit assembled from museum and private collections in Europe and the United States chronicles the nearly half-century rivalry between the two giants of modern art — pairing 133 works to show how Matisse and Picasso challenged and influenced each other over the course of their careers, until Matisse's death in 1954. Picasso died in 1973.
The $20 dollar tickets for specific entry times were some of the hottest in New York — so much so that 6,100 people became MoMA members just to get preferred entry and favorable viewing times.
'Matisse Picasso'
Museum of Modern Art
Bride Who Said 'No' to Dowry Demands
Nisha Sharma
India has a new heroine -- a gutsy bride who said "no" to the dowry demands of her fiance and called off their wedding hours before the ceremony.
Nisha Sharma was supposed to marry last weekend. The Hindu priest and 2,000 guests had assembled for the lavish festivities when she called police and demanded they arrest the groom who spent what should have been his wedding night in jail.
"He wanted material things -- not me," Sharma, a 21-year-old software engineering student, told Reuters, her hands and feet still painted with intricate henna designs, the traditional hallmark of an Indian bride.
Police booked the groom under the country's anti-dowry act -- passed more than four decades ago to combat the ancient practice in which a groom's family demands cash, consumer goods and gold as part of a marriage settlement -- but which is still widely flouted.
"My message to all girls is if they ask for dowry, don't give it and don't marry the man," she said in her living room surrounded by air conditioners, TV sets and other goods her family said had been demanded by her future in-laws.
"I want all girls to get inspiration from me saying 'no'."
For the rest, Nisha Sharma
In Memory
June Carter Cash
June Carter Cash, the Grammy-winning scion of one of country music's pioneering families and the wife of country giant Johnny Cash, died Thursday of complications from heart surgery. She was 73.
She died at a hospital with her husband of 35 years and family members at her bedside, manager Lou Robin said. She had been critically ill after May 7 surgery to replace a heart valve.
A singer, songwriter, musician, actress and author, June Carter Cash performed with her husband on record and on stage, doing songs like "Jackson" and "If I Were a Carpenter," which won Grammy awards in 1967 and 1970, respectively. Their duets included "It Ain't Me Babe" in 1964 and "If I Had a Hammer" in 1972.
She was co-writer of her husband's 1963 hit "Ring of Fire," which was about falling in love with Cash. In his 1997 autobiography, Johnny Cash described how his wife stuck with him through his years of amphetamine abuse.
"June said she knew me — knew the kernel of me, deep inside, beneath the drugs and deceit and despair and anger and selfishness, and knew my loneliness," he wrote. "She said she could help me. ... If she found my pills, she flushed them down the toilet. And find them she did; she searched for them, relentlessly."
June Carter was born June 23, 1929, in Maces Spring, Va. Her mother, Maybelle Carter, was in the Carter Family music act with her cousin Sara Carter and Sara's husband, A.P. Carter. In 1927, they made what are among the first country music recordings.
The family act broke up, but mother and daughters June, Helen and Anita continued on as Mother Maybelle & the Carter Sisters, with little June playing autoharp.
Starting in 1939, the sisters starred in a radio show on XERA in Del Rio, Texas, that could be heard as far away as Saskatchewan, Canada. The Carters went on to become staples of the Grand Ole Opry country music show in Nashville.
The Carters' harmony singing still inspires artists today and Maybelle's "Carter lick" on the guitar has become one of the most influential techniques in country music.
In the late 1950s, after her marriage to country singer Carl Smith broke up, June Carter moved to New York to study acting at the behest of director Elia Kazan, who had seen her perform while scouting Tennessee for movie locations.
In 1961, she turned down an offer to work on a variety show that had Woody Allen as one of the writers, agreeing instead to tour with Johnny Cash for $500 a week. They married in 1968 after he proposed to her on stage on London, Ontario.
In a 1987 Associated Press interview, June Carter Cash described her husband as "probably the most unusual, fine, unselfish person I've known."
In 1999, she released an acoustic album, "Press On," that amounted to a musical autobiography and won her another Grammy. The album, her first in a quarter-century, followed her career from its beginning through her then 31-year marriage and collaboration with Cash.
In 1979, she wrote an autobiography, "Among My Klediments," and released "From the Heart," a memoir, in 1987.
June Carter Cash did occasional acting roles, including the part of Robert Duvall's mother in the 1997 film "The Apostle." With her husband, she periodically performed at Billy Graham crusades.
Johnny and June Carter Cash had a son, John Carter Cash, in 1970. She was also the mother of country singer Carlene Carter, whose father was Smith, and singer Rosanne Cash is her stepdaughter.
Funeral arrangements were incomplete.
June Carter Cash
In Memory
Robert Stack
Robert Stack, whose granite-eyed stare and menacing baritone spelled trouble for television's fictional criminals in "The Untouchables" and real ones in "Unsolved Mysteries," died at his home. He was 84.
Stack's wife Rosemarie found him slumped over at about 5 p.m. Wednesday. He died of heart failure, she said. The actor had undergone radiation treatment for prostate cancer in October.
"He was feeling so good," she said Thursday. "He had a bout with a tumor but that was gone. It wasn't that, it was his heart. He was too weak. He wouldn't have lived through a bypass."
Although he had a lengthy film career beginning in 1939 with "First Love," Stack's greatest fame came with the 1959-63 TV drama "The Untouchables," in which he played Chicago crimebuster Eliot Ness and won a best actor Emmy.
That role, coupled with his job as host of the reality series "Unsolved Mysteries," created an enduring good-guy image.
If Stack tended to appear stiffly humorless on screen, in conversation he was relaxed and jovial, with deep Hollywood roots that gave him a wealth of star-studded anecdotes.
He recalled playing polo with mentor Spencer Tracy and receiving advice from Clark Gable.
"He brought a bottle of 21-year-old Scotch and put it between us," Stack told the AP. "'There's a rumor going around that you're gonna try to be an actor.'
"I thought I'd give it a shot," Stack said he replied.
"Clark said, 'You're gonna be one thing: A pro. Show up on time, know your lines. ... And if you ever become a thing called a celebrity — a word I hate — if you ever do, and you use that power to push people around, I'm gonna kick you right in the (expletive).' "
Stack was born into a performing arts family in Los Angeles. His great-great-grandfather opened one of the city's first theaters, and his grandparents, uncle and mother were opera singers.
His father, however, "was the only Irishman in County Kerry who couldn't sing, and that's whose singing voice I got," Stack said in 1998.
But the young man had a resonant speaking voice and rugged good looks, enough to catch the eye of producer Joe Pasternak when Stack ventured onto the Universal lot at age 20.
"He said 'How'd you like to be in pictures? We'll make a test with Helen Parrish, a little love scene.' Helen Parrish was a beautiful girl. 'Gee, that sounds keen,' I told him. I got the part," Stack recalled.
He gave popular young actress Deanna Durbin her much-publicized first screen kiss in "First Love," and played a series of youthful romantic leads before leaving Hollywood to serve with the Navy as an aerial gunnery instructor in World War II.
His postwar career climbed in the 1950s with meatier roles and better projects, including "The High and the Mighty" starring John Wayne in 1954.
In 1957, Stack was nominated for a best supporting Oscar for "Written on the Wind," a domestic melodrama starring Lauren Bacall and Rock Hudson. When he lost the trophy (to Red Buttons, "Sayonara"), Jimmy Stewart reassured him he'd win next time.
"But Jimmy, what if I never get another part like this?" Stack said.
"Well, that's just too damn bad," Stewart replied.
That story was told with a chuckle by Stack, a man who clearly didn't take himself or life in Hollywood too seriously. "It's all malarky; even the wonderful part is malarky," he said.
Stack made more than 40 films, including "The Iron Glove" (1954); "Good Morning Miss Dove" (1955) and "Is Paris Burning?" (1966). In later years he shifted to comedy, mocking his stalwart image in 1980's "Airplane!" and appearing in "1941" (1979), "Caddyshack II" (1988) and "Baseketball" (1998).
His role as Ness in "The Untouchables" brought him a best actor Emmy in 1960. The series, awash in Prohibition Era shoot-'em-ups between gangsters and federal agents, drew harsh criticism about its violence along with good ratings for ABC.
Stack found more series success with "The Name of the Game" (1968-71), "Most Wanted" (1976-77) and "Strike Force" (1981-82).
"Unsolved Mysteries," true stories of crime and mysterious disappearances, brought Stack back to TV in 1988, and the popular show continued through the late '90s.
His autobiography, "Straight Shooting," was published in 1979.
Stack and his wife wed in 1956 and had two children, Elizabeth and Charles, both of Los Angeles. Rosemarie Stack said both were with her at the home.
Robert Stack
Zeff, a 300 pound, 11 year old Amur tiger, moves in her new habitat, called Tiger Mountain, at the Bronx Zoo in New York, May 14, 2003. The three acre habitat holds eight tigers and brings zoo visitors face-to-face with the big cats, as they look through especially thick glass for their protection. Picture taken May 14, 2003.
Photo by Chip East
'Ark of Darkness'
"The Ark of Darkness", a Political/Science-Fiction work, in tidy, weekly installments (and updated every Friday).
Fresh Today
'The Osbournes'
'The Osbournes' ~ Page 4
'The Osbournes' ~ Page 3
'The Osbournes' ~ Page 2
'The Osbournes' ~ Page 1
