Ted Rall: HECKUVA JOB, BARRY
Pro-Obama political cartoonists have drawn variations of the same cartoon: the president, in the role of badgered parent on a family trip, is driving a car labeled "The Economy." The American public, depicted as Uncle Sam or Joe Average, whines: "Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet?"
Garrison Keillor: Call of the highway (from a cell phone)
It's good to hear that the Federal Communications Commission is back in business, thinking about the Internet and wireless telecommunications and not so much about assessing huge fines to broadcasters who say "poop" on the air.
FRED KAPLAN: The Day Obscenity Became Art (nytimes.com)
[July 20 was] the 50th anniversary of the court ruling that overturned America's obscenity laws, setting off an explosion of free speech - and also, in retrospect, splashing cold water on the idea, much discussed during Sonia Sotomayor's Supreme Court confirmation hearings, that judges are "umpires" rather than agents of social change.
Joe Weider: A Salad a Day Keeps the Doctor Away (creators.com)
Tip of the Week: Eat a salad a day for longevity. I don't have any clinical science to back up this claim, but I believe my daily salad has helped me close in on my 89th year on this planet in pretty good health.
A. E. HOTCHNER: Don't Touch 'A Moveable Feast' (nytimes.com)
BOOKSTORES are getting shipments of a significantly changed edition of Ernest Hemingway's masterpiece, "A Moveable Feast," first published posthumously by Scribner in 1964. This new edition, also published by Scribner, has been extensively reworked by a grandson who doesn't like what the original said about his grandmother, Hemingway's second wife.
ERIC KONIGSBERG: The Storyteller Begat the Teacher Who Begat the Writer (nytimes.com)
His former students will tell you that Frank McCourt, who died Sunday, was too attuned to the false note ever to declare, once he had become a huge success as an author, that he missed teaching high school. Even so, he spent three decades as a teacher of English and creative writing in New York City's public schools. And he was the first to say that those years, while depriving him of the time actually to write, were what made a writer out of him. He had long been retired by 1996, when his first book, "Angela's Ashes," was published.
Newspapers are in major trouble. Some notable dailies such as The Rocky Mountain News, Cincinnati Post and Baltimore Examiner have folded completely. Others such as the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Detroit Free Press, Detroit News and my home town paper, The Bay City Times, among others, have adopted a hybrid on-line only and/or partial printing scheme trying to survive. All papers are losing money hand over fist, laying off workers and renegotiating labor contracts. (newspaperdeathwatch.com)
Everyone blames the Internet and 24/7 cable news availability.
Do you subscribe to or otherwise pay for and read hard copy newspapers?
mj was first, and correct, with:
Baba was the companion
Of Sheriff Quickdraw McGraw, a not too bright mustang. Baba always pronounced it Quickstraw. McGraw had a Zoro-like alter ego, El Kabong, who used to clobber people with a guitar, hence the onomatopoeic monicker.
Baron Dave ("It's hard not to take tv seriously. It's spent so much more time raising us than you have." -- Bart to Homer) responded:
An obvious reference to Desi Arnaz for adults, for the kids Baba Looey was merely the pigeon-English speaking sidekick of Quick Draw McGraw. I remember the series fondly, probably because of writer Michael Maltese more than the stupid exuberance of Zorro rip-off El Kabong. Baba Looey was the smarter of the pair, though such a caricature wouldn't be allowed on tv today.
Many of the old cartoons pop up on Boomerang or elsewhere, and don't really stand up. Oh well. On the other hand, I do remember Crusader Rabbit, which was dumb even for a five year old.
Speaking of hispanic, nearly-English speaking anthropomorphic characters, at the bottom of your " target="http://suprmchaos.com/bcEnt-Thu-072309.index.html">Thursday page is one of the others: Taco Bell ad star Gidget the Chihuahua dies at 15. Baba Looey, of course, will never have the honor of an obituary. Both an advantage and a disadvantage of being a cartoon character.
Sandra in Bangor replied:
quick draw mcgraw!!
Charlie said:
I'm thinnin' it was Queeksdraw McGraw (Quickdraw, that is).
BGRDDAD answered:
Quick Draw McGraw
Alan J answered:
Quick Draw McGraw
BadtotheboneBob replied:
Quick Draw McGraw aka El Kabong...
Harry responded:
Quickdraw McGraw
~ Tony In Philly wrote:
Quick Draw McGraw!!
Sally said:
Quick Draw McGraw cartoons were funny because Quick Draw is always getting into trouble when he is trying to bring in some desperadoes along with his sidekick, Baba Louie.
PS: I laughed out loud when I read about, "stitching together a couple of Sham-Wows!" Boy, I can relate to that with all the humidity we have here on the mid-Atlantic seacoast. Great idea, Marty. Do it, patent it, and write your page in relative wealth, because I am sure they world sell! :)
David W answered:
Quick Draw McGraw
or as Baba called 'heem' Queeks Draw
Colby in Frostproof replied:
That would be Quick Draw McGraw or as Baba Looey called him "Quicks Draw".
Marian the Teacher responded:
Quick Draw McGraw
Jim from CA said:
Quickdraw McGraw
Tom B replied:
"Oohhhhhh, Queeeks-Draw . . . ?"
Quickdraw McGraw, helping to perpetuate ethnic stereotyping across the country and beyond . . .
Stevie G in Somerdale, NJ noted:
Subject: Quick Draw McGraw
"Now hoooooold on thar, Baba Looey!
That would be Quick Draw McGraw
PURPLE GENE wrote:
WE'RE NOT TALKING ABOUT "BABA WAWA" (BARBARA WALTERS)
WE'RE NOT TALKING ABOUT "BABA BOOEY" (STERNS dELL' ABATE)
WE'RE NOT TALKING ABOUT "SAI BABA" (INDIAN GURU WITH AN AFRO)
NO....WERE TALKING ABOUT "BABA LOOEY" FROM "HANNA BARBERA'S
"QUICK DRAW MCGRAW"
MAM answered:
Baba Looey was Quick Draw McGraw's side-kick deputy.
And, Joe S replied:
Quickdraw McGraw, or as Baba Louie would say; Queeksdraw. I watched it, I admit it.
In today's mail:
RE: CRUSADER RABBIT
I USED TO WATCH CRUSADER RABBIT IN BERKELEY ON CHANNEL 2.
BUT EVERYONE FORGOT TO MENTION HIS SIDEKICK......RAGS THE TIGER.
PURPLE GENE
Do you hear a lot about the Ocelot? Hunted for its pelt for hundreds of years, the Ocelot was classified as a vulnerable endangered species until 1996. One look at this still rare animal and the attraction is undeniable but why is it no longer considered endangered?
Lonesome George - listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the rarest living creature on planet Earth may be about to become a father for the first time at the ripe old age of ninety four (that is an estimate, but it is believed he is between ninety years and a century in age). As the world holds it breath as the eggs are incubated, let's take a look at Lonesome George and his quest to reproduce.
A bit cooler, and the humidity has dropped to where I don't feel the need for gills after all.
Tonight, Friday:
CBS begins the night with a RERUN'Ghost Whisperer', followed by a RERUN'Flashpoint', then a RERUN'Numb3rs'.
Scheduled on a FRESHDave are Amy Poehler, Nick Griffin, and Judy Collins.
Scheduled on a FRESHCraig are Rashida Jones, Chef Jose Andres, and Dobie Maxwell.
NBC starts the night with a FRESH'Chopping Block', followed by 'Dateline'.
Scheduled on a FRESHConan are Seth Rogen, Rose Byrne, and Eric Hutchinson.
Scheduled on a FRESHJimmy Fallon are Bob Saget, Anthony Mackie, and John Mulaney.
On a RERUNCarson 'The Scab' Daly (from 4/3/09) are Spraugue Grayden and the Pains of Being Pure at Heart.
ABC opens the night with a FRESH'Surviving Suburbia', followed by a FRESH'The Goode Family', then a RERUN'Jim', followed by another RERUN'Jim', then some corporate propaganda passing as 'news' - 'Over A Barrel: The Truth About Oil'.
Scheduled on a FRESHJimmy Kimmel are Tom Arnold, "Trailer Park Boys" Rob Wells, John Paul Tremblay and Mike Smith.
The CW offers a RERUN'Privileged', followed by a RERUN'Everybody Hates Chris', then a RERUN'The Game'.
Faux has a FRESH'Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader?', followed by a FRESH'Mental'.
MY fills the night with a FRESH'WWE Friday Night Steroid SmackDown!'.
PLEASE check local PBS listings for a FRESH'Bill Moyers Journal', and a FRESH'NOW With Bill Moyers David Brancaccio'.
AMC offers the movie 'Rio Bravo', followed by the movie 'Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid', then the movie 'Blazing Saddles'.
BBC -
[12:00 PM] You Are What You Eat - Episode 4
[12:30 PM] You Are What You Eat - Episode 5
[1:00 PM] How Clean Is Your House? US - Episode 1
[1:30 PM] How Clean Is Your House? - Episode 4
[2:00 PM] Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares - Ep 3 Sebastian's
[3:00 PM] Gordon Ramsay's F Word - Episode 8
[4:00 PM] The Hotel Inspector - Episode 2
[5:00 PM] Gordon Ramsay's F Word - Episode 9
[6:00 PM] Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares - Ep 3 The Priory
[7:00 PM] BBC World News America
[8:00 PM] Torchwood: Children of Earth - Episode 4
[9:00 PM] Torchwood: Children of Earth - Episode 5
[10:15 PM] Torchwood: Inside Look - Episode 5
[10:30 PM] BBC World News America (30) - Episode 7
[11:00 PM] Torchwood: Children of Earth (60) - Episode 4
[12:00 AM] Torchwood: Children of Earth (75) - Episode 5
[1:15 AM] Torchwood: Inside Look - Episode 5
[1:30 AM] Torchwood: Children of Earth - Episode 4
[2:30 AM] Torchwood: Children of Earth - Episode 5
[3:45 AM] Torchwood: Inside Look - Episode 5
[4:00 AM] How Clean Is Your House? US - Episode 1
[4:30 AM] How Clean Is Your House? - Episode 4
[5:00 AM] How Clean Is Your House? US - Episode 2
[5:30 AM] How Clean Is Your House? - Episode 11
[6:00 AM] Cash in the Attic - Episode 10 (ALL TIMES EDT)
Bravo has the movie 'U.S. Marshals', followed by the movie 'GoldenEye', then the movie 'GoldenEye', again.
Comedy Central has 'Scrubs', another 'Scrubs', last night's 'Jon Stewart', last night's 'Colbert Report', 'Comedy Central Presents' (Billy Gardell), 'HBO Comedy Half Hour' (Dave Chappelle), and 'Dane Cook: Vicious Circle'.
HBO offers a FRESHReal Time with Bill Maher - scheduled guests
include
Rob Thomas, Susan Eisenhower, John Heilemann, Janet Napolitano, and Matt Taibbi.
FX has the movie 'Godzilla', followed by the movie 'The Marine'.
History has 'Modern Marvels', another 'Modern Marvels', and 'Stealing Lincoln's Body'.
IFC -
[7:05 AM] Peppermint Frappe
[8:45 AM] Separate Lies
[10:15 AM] Food Party
[10:30 AM] American Splendor
[12:15 PM] World Traveler
[2:05 PM] Tyger
[2:15 PM] Separate Lies
[3:45 PM] American Splendor
[5:30 PM] I Shot Andy Warhol
[7:15 PM] Lovely & Amazing
[8:55 PM] Wild at Heart
[11:00 PM] Ideal
[11:30 PM] The Whitest Kids U'Know
[12:00 AM] The Razor: The Snare
[1:30 AM] The Razor: Who's Got the Gold?
[3:00 AM] Lovely & Amazing
[4:40 AM] Separate Lies (ALL TIMES EDT)
SyFy has 'Star Trek: Enterprise', 'Eureka', followed by a FRESH'Eureka', and 'Warehouse 13'.
Sundance -
[06:00 AM] Lemon Sky
[07:40 AM] The Favor
[09:35 AM] Kippur
[12:35 PM] Choking Man
[02:00 PM] A Girl Cut In Two
[04:00 PM] Kippur
[06:00 PM] Tanghi Argentini
[06:15 PM] On the Road with Judas
[07:50 PM] Tragic Story With A Happy Ending
[08:00 PM] Shameless Season 2: Episode 7
[09:00 PM] Marvelous
[10:40 PM] Tanghi Argentini
[11:00 PM] Live From Abbey Road - Season 1: Kasabian, Josh Groban & The Good The Bad and The Queen
[12:00 AM] Kurt Cobain: About a Son
[01:45 AM] The Ghost of Mae Nek
[03:35 AM] One Take Only
[05:05 AM] On the Road with Judas (ALL TIMES EDT)
Director Tim Burton talks about his new movie 'Alice in Wonderland' at the Comic-Con International 2009 convention held in San Diego Thursday, July 23, 2009. The annual comic book and popular arts convention attracts over 100,000 people and runs through Sunday July 26.
Photo by Denis Poroy
At age 86, Stan Lee, the grand master of the comic-book world -- and the Marvel universe, in particular -- is still going strong, creating a fresh crop of mythic characters with outsize powers and troubled pasts. As he reflects on a landscape that has undergone a seismic shift in the past 30 years, Lee is far from out of ideas or ambition.
"People usually retire because they can finally stop working and they'll have the time to do what they really want to do," Lee says. "But I'm doing what I want to do! If anybody forced me to spend a day on the golf course, I'd feel I was being tortured!"
Famous for co-creating some of the most enduring comics heroes in history (Spider-Man, Incredible Hulk, Iron Man, the X-Men, the Fantastic Four), Lee is still innovating. He will unleash his latest creation -- a digital comic titled "Time Jumper" -- Thursday at Comic-Con, a conference he has attended since just after its launch in 1970.
Backed by Disney, the project is made up of serialized five-minute episodes with built-in cliffhangers that will be released every two weeks through December.
Director Robert Zemeckis talks about his new film 'A Christmas Carol' at the Comic-Con International 2009 convention held in San Diego Thursday, July 23, 2009. The annual comic book and popular arts convention attracts over 100,000 people and runs through Sunday July 26.
Photo by Denis Poroy
Actress Angelina Jolie has visited a settlement for displaced Iraqis in north-west Baghdad in her role as a goodwill ambassador for the UN Refugee Agency.
The Tomb Raider star met four families whose members said their children could not go to school and they could not afford to pay for medical treatment, UNHCR said.
Jolie said during her one-day trip that there is progress in returning Iraqis to their homes after years of war, but more needs to be done.
A Canadian billionaire who turned a passion for acrobatics and circus acts into a global entertainment empire will look for inspiration in space in September when he becomes the latest "space tourist."
Guy Laliberte, 49, founder of Montreal-based Cirque du Soleil, which operates fast-moving cultural-themed circus shows, told reporters on Thursday his foray outside the Earth's atmosphere would be a "poetic, social mission."
Laliberte is preparing for a September 30 launch aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft to become the seventh fare-paying tourist to the International Space Station. The cost of a 12-day trip is about $35 million. Most of the "tourists" who have gone before him were technology or business moguls.
The father of five children, aged 2 to 12, said he wanted to use his space flight to raise awareness of the critical role water plays in people's lives on Earth.
John Oates, the curly coifed half of the best-selling pop duo Hall & Oates, can remember the exact day and time that he removed his iconic facial hair.
"I did it in Tokyo after we did a John Lennon Tribute concert (20 years ago)," he told Billboard.com earlier this week. "I realized that if I was going to go on with my life and evolve in some way as a person, I just had to leave that guy behind. And so the shedding of the mustache is symbolic in a way and very important too."
But as it turns out, Oates' mustache didn't disappear down the drain -- it simply went into hibernation. Now the famous follicles have returned as the star of a new cartoon series, "J-stache," which made its public premiere on the comedy website funnyordie.com.
Independent publisher Primary Wave Music Publishing, which owns a majority stake in most of the biggest hits in the Hall & Oates catalog, is shopping a deal for "J-Stache" that further illustrates the dichotomy. As laid out in the online trailer, Oates is portrayed as a modern-day family man and finds himself enticed back to the rock star life by his mustache, which is voiced by comedian Dave Attell.
In this photo released by the Florida Keys News Bureau, past winners of the 'Papa' Ernest Hemingway Look-Alike contest judge this year's contestants Thursday, July 23, 2009, at Sloppy Joe's Bar in Key West, Fla. About 145 entrants are competing in two preliminary rounds Thursday and Friday, with the final round slated for Saturday, July 25. The competition is a facet of the island's annual Hemingway Days festival that honors the Nobel prize-winning author who lived and wrote in Key West during the 1930s.
Photo by Andy Newman
The International Mozarteum Foundation said Thursday it has discovered two more works composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
The previously unknown works are piano pieces composed by a young Mozart, the Salzburg-based foundation said in a brief e-mail statement.
The Web site of the organization said its department of research had identified the works, long in the foundation's possession, as Mozart compositions.
The foundation declined to provide more details Thursday, saying specifics would be made public during a presentation in Salzburg on Aug. 2.
Robert Capa's photograph of a falling Spanish Civil War militiaman became one of the most famous and enduring images of conflict in the 20th century. Now, Spanish researchers who have studied events surrounding the picture believe it may have been staged.
When first published in September 1936 by French magazine Vu, and later in Life magazine, the caption on the legendary photojournalist's "Falling Militiaman" said it depicted the moment a Republican rifleman was mortally wounded.
The location was given as Cerro Muriano on the Cordoba front, where forces backing Gen. Francisco Franco were engaged in fierce fighting with soldiers loyal to the elected Republican government.
Now Spanish researchers say that not only was the photograph not taken where Capa said it was, but that the militiaman was most likely not shot either.
A judge has ordered Nas to pay Kelis nearly $44,000 in monthly support for the near future, a day after the "Milkshake" singer gave birth to the divorcing couple's baby boy.
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Louis Meisinger issued the order at a Thursday hearing. Neither Nas, whose full name is Nasir Jones, nor Kelis, whose full name is Kelis Rogers, attended Thursday's hearing.
Rogers gave birth to the boy, named Knight, at a New York hospital Wednesday. The 29-year-old filed for divorce from the rapper in April. The couple was married in July 2003.
The judge also ordered Jones to pay $45,000 to pay Rogers' attorney fees and for a forensic accountant.
All sides agree on one thing in the case of a South Florida hospital that secretly repatriated a seriously brain injured patient back to Guatemala.
During the early hours of a steamy July 2003 morning, Martin Memorial Medical Center chartered a private plane and sent Luis Jimenez back to the Central American country without telling his relatives in the U.S. or Guatemala - even as his cousin and legal guardian, Montejo Gaspar, frantically sought to stop the move.
There, things get murky. Gaspar is suing the hospital for essentially deporting Jimenez, who was an illegal immigrant. The hospital, which spent more than $1.5 million on his care over three years, says Jimenez wanted to go home.
Like millions of others, Jimenez, now 37, came the U.S to work as a day laborer, sending money home to his wife and small children. In 2000, a drunk driver crashed into a van he was riding in, leaving the robust soccer player a paraplegic. For more than a year he lingered in a vegetative state before he began to recuperate, eventually reaching a fourth grade level in cognitive ability. The hospital sent him to a long-term care facility for a brief stint, but eventually he was returned to the hospital for care.
The descendants of an African chief who was hanged and decapitated by a Dutch general 171 years ago reluctantly accepted the return of his severed head Thursday, still angry even as the Dutch tried to right a historic wrong.
The head of King Badu Bonsu II was discovered last year in a jar of formaldehyde gathering dust in the anatomical collection of the Leiden University Medical Center. The Dutch government agreed to Ghanaian demands that the relic be returned.
On Thursday, members of the king's Ahanta tribe, dressed in dark robes and wearing red sashes, took part in the hand-over ceremony, honoring his spirit by toasting with Dutch gin and then sprinkling the drink over the floor at the Dutch Foreign Ministry.
Tribal elders said after the hand-over that they were also angry because they had been sent by their current chief only to identify the head, not retrieve it. Taking it back without first reporting to the chief would be a breach of protocol, they said.
Farmers in an eastern Indian state have asked their unmarried daughters to plow parched fields naked in a bid to embarrass the weather gods to bring some badly needed monsoon rain, officials said on Thursday.
Witnesses said the naked girls in Bihar state plowed the fields and chanted ancient hymns after sunset to invoke the gods. They said elderly village women helped the girls drag the plows.
"They (villagers) believe their acts would get the weather gods badly embarrassed, who in turn would ensure bumper crops by sending rains," Upendra Kumar, a village council official, said from Bihar's remote Banke Bazaar town.
India this year suffered its worst start to the vital monsoon rains in eight decades, causing drought in some states.
Umka, the 65-day-old Ussuri tiger cub, is seen in a zoo in the Uzbek capital of Tashkent, Wednesday, July 22, 2009. The Ussuri tiger is one of the local names for the rare Siberian tiger, also known as the Amur, Manchurian, Altaic, Korean and North China tiger.
Photo by Anvar Ilyasov
You have reached the Home page of BartCop Entertainment.
Make yourself home, take your shoes off...
Go ahead, scratch it if it itches.
The idea is to have fun.
Do you have something to say?
Anything that increased your blood pressure, or, even better,
amused or entertained?
Do you have a great album no one's heard?
How about a favorite TV show, movie, book, play, cartoon, or legal amusement?
A popular artist that just plain pisses you off?
A box set the whole world should own?
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Just plain vile, filthy rumors?
This is your place.
answered:
