'TBH Politoons'
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The Worried Shrimp
Purple Gene Reviews
'National Treasure'
Purple Genes' review of the new Jerry Bruckheimer - Blockbuster - "National Treasure":
Imagine "Indiana Jones" without the HUMOR or the HAT - but a map with clues!
Then remember that today is Thanksgiving............and what do we like on Thanksgiving? You said it..........Turkey! Don't get me wrong....I love Turkey on Thanksgiving.....tender white meat and mashed potatoes (No skins please) and gravy all over everything! Yum Yum Yam Yam...... That's why I drove all the way down to Jack London Square in Oakland to see "Nicolas Cage and the Temple of Doom"....OOPS - I think I got that wrong......."National Treasure" .....a movie that steals badly from Spielburg ("Raiders of the Lost Ark") and borrows ignobly from Dan Brown (Da Vinci Code).......but dare I say ......barely worth the price of admission and the popcorn!
Great movies, in my book, rely heavily on a the Screenplay (or at least they used to)....and "National Treasure" has one of the worst scripts EVER ....written by Cormac and Marianne Wibberly - it inspired a poem out ME!
Wibberly, Gibberly, Glib!
The Baby jumped out of the Crib!
It went Herky - Jerky
and turned into a TURKEY!
Wibberly, Gibberly, Glib!
Great Movies, in that same book, rely heavily (very heavily) on Direction (and they still do). John Turtletaub ("Cool Runnings" and "The Kid") did a dismal job of directing his old high school buddy (Nic Cage) in "National Treasure". This guy has Sean Bean, Jon Voight, Christopher Plummer and Harvey Keitel to employ in the plot - and they are just back ground characters! Diane Kruger (Helen in "Troy") as the Love Interest? But I guess a "Known" actress might have gotten in the way of Nicolas Cages' charismatic character!
Great Adventure movies, now a days, rely totally on the Producer! And I guess this is why Jerry Bruckheimer ("Pearl Harbor", "Kangaroo Jack" and "CSI - NY") makes "National Treasure" worth the popcorn! The scene in the arctic with the frozen ship, the footage shot around Washington DC and the Capitol, The Declaration of Independence and the Frickin' Liberty Bell ! The gadgetry involved in the break-in, The technicians' outfit stripped off to reveal NIC in a TUX (Eat your heart out James Bond) and the final chase with map and clues to the hidden vault with all the GOLD SHIT! Throw in some stuff blowing up, a little gunplay and a very very little chemistry between Cage and Kruger and you have a Thanksgiving TURKEY.....that's edible!
I'm not even gonna give you the plot.....go ahead and waste your money on this big ass bombastic re-make of the Temple of Doom.......without the HUMOR or the HAT!
Purple Gene gives "National Treasure" 6 secret code revealing lemons out of 10 for being barely bearable!
Purple Gene
Reader Suggestion
Jewish Humor
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Mostly sunny and a bit warmer.
Flood Aid Sells Out
Bruce Springsteen
It took less than an hour for Heinz Hall to sell out its 2,500 tickets to the Flood Aid concert featuring Bruce Springsteen.
The Boss' fans were lined up outside of the Pittsburgh concert hall when tickets went on sale Tuesday. Fans also inundated phone lines and Web sites.
The show scheduled for Dec. 2 will help raise money for victims of the devastating remnants of Hurricane Ivan on Sept. 17.
Bruce Springsteen
Performs Long-Awaited Concert
Tom Waits
Offbeat rocker-actor Tom Waits returned to the British stage Tuesday for the first time since 1987. The 3,000-capacity Carling Hammersmith Apollo sold out in 20 minutes when tickets went on sale for the only British date on his European tour promoting his new "cubist funk" album "Real Gone."
Making fun of his long absence from London and his own age, the 54-year-old singer said: "It's good to see you.
"OK, all right, yeah, 17 years ... but you look good. The three ages of man: youth, middle age and `you look good.'"
Tom Waits
Performing for Prince Charles
Ozzy Osbourne & Liza Minnelli
Ozzy Osbourne and Liza Minnelli will perform at the annual Royal Variety show in front of Prince Charles at London's Coliseum Theatre on Dec. 14, organizers said Wednesday.
It is the first time that Minnelli has appeared in a Royal Variety show.
Others on the bill include Cliff Richard, Elton John, Jamelia, Gwen Stefani and girl band, Girls Aloud. Nathan Lane and Lee Evans will perform a medley from the West End hit musical, "The Producers."
Ozzy Osbourne & Liza Minnelli
Worst U.S. TV Import
'Baywatch'
"Baywatch," the sun-bleached saga of Californian life guards, was voted the worst-ever U.S. television import in a British survey released Thursday.
Broadcast magazine's poll of about 20 program buyers from British terrestrial, cable and satellite channels acknowledged the appeal of a "series about a muscular lifeguard and his crew of pneumatic young helpers with raging hormones," but condemned "Baywatch" for scripts "of mind-numbing predictability: beachgoer is saved from drowning."
"Broadcast'"s 10 Worst U.S. Imports:
1. "Baywatch"
2. "The Anna Nicole Show"
3. "The Dukes of Hazzard"
4. "Wild Palms"
5. "Manimal"
6. "The Jerry Springer Show"
7. "Knots Landing"
8. "Falcon Crest"
9. "The Bold and the Beautiful"
10. "Extreme Makeover"
'Baywatch'
Mozart's Father
Leopold Mozart
It's a historian's equivalent of stumbling across a long-lost sonata - a fingerprint on an 18th-century letter that experts say may have been left by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's father.
The fingerprint was found on a letter dating to the mid-1700s that appeared to have been written by Leopold Mozart, Salzburg historian Christian Moser told Austrian media. He said it appeared to have been left by accident when the writer got ink on a finger by mistake.
Austria has designated 2006 as a year of Mozart celebrations to mark the 250th anniversary of the composer's birth. Scientists, meanwhile, are using DNA tests to determine whether a skull kept by the International Mozarteum Foundation in Salzburg is part of Mozart's remains.
Leopold Mozart
Fined For Attacking Hotel Owner
Prince Ernst August
Controversial German aristocrat Prince Ernst August of Hanover was fined 445,000 euros (590,000 dollars) by a court for an attack which left the owner of a hotel and disco in Kenya needing hospital treatment.
Judge Rainer Gundlach said Ernst August, the husband of Princess Caroline of Monaco, had been "gripped by temporary insanity" when he repeatedly struck the German man on the Kenyan island of Lamu in January 2000.
The prince was not in court to hear the verdict but his lawyer Jochen Heidemeier said his client had been drinking alcohol before the attack and regretted his actions.
The prince's lawyer said his client could not rule out that he had held an object in his hand during the attack.
Prince Ernst August
Math Whiz Sets Record
Gert Mittring
A German computer scientist has broken the world record in mental calculation, needing just 11.80 seconds to work out the 13th root of a 100-digit number, a German mathematics museum said Wednesday.
Gert Mittring, a 38-year old computer scientist, was faster working out the answer than several onlookers using calculators at an event in the western town of Giessen sponsored by the Museum of Mathematics.
A spokesman for the museum said Mittring's time broke a record set in 1988 by Alexis Lemaire of France, who completed a similar calculation in 13.55 seconds.
Gert Mittring
Ancient Code at British Manor
"D.O.U.O.S.V.A.V.V.M."
A centuries-old code carved at a British manor house, according to popular legend the key to finding the Holy Grail, is thought to be a cryptic message from an 18th century Christian sect, experts said.
The series of apparently random letters on a monument at the Shugborough Estate in Staffordshire, central England, have baffled readers since being inscribed in the mid-18th century.
In May, managers at Shugborough invited veterans from Britain's famous World War II Bletchley Park code-breaking centre, along with their modern counterparts, to tackle the puzzle.
The experts said Thursday that a US researcher had now come up with a likely explanation for the inscription on the Shepherd's Monument.
The marble tablet, commissioned in 1748, features a carved image adapted from a painting by French 17th-century artist Nicolas Poussin, with the letters "D.O.U.O.S.V.A.V.V.M." underneath.
For the rest, "D.O.U.O.S.V.A.V.V.M."
Returns To Antarctica
Edmund Hillary
Renowned New Zealand adventurer Sir Edmund Hillary, the first man to climb Mount Everest, returns to Antarctica Thursday for the inauguration of the new Hillary Field Centre half a century after he led the New Zealand expedition that established create Scott Base.
The 85-year-old explorer will also take part in memorials marking the 25th anniversary of the November 28, 1979 crash of an Air New Zealand DC10 which hit Mount Erebus, near Scott Base, killing all aboard.
Among the 257 dead was fellow explorer Peter Mulgrew. Hillary, who lost his first wife in a plane crash in Nepal in 1975, married Mulgrew's widow June in 1990.
Before boarding a plane in Christchurch, Hillary recalled his days supervising the building of Scott Base in 1957, and said he was looking forward to the trip.
Edmund Hillary
Museum's Future Questionable
Vocal Group Hall of Fame
The future of a museum dedicated to singers is unclear amid the removal of memorabilia and squabbling among present and past officials.
The Vocal Group Hall of Fame was founded in 1996 to recognize vocal groups and singers such as Hank Ballard and the Midnighters, Little Anthony and the Imperials, The Four Seasons, The Jackson 5, Peter, Paul and Mary and The Temptations.
Tony Butala, the museum's chairman and founder, accused James E. Winner Jr., from whom the museum was renting a building, of interfering and trying to profit from the nonprofit hall.
Winner, who along with Butala was most responsible for the hall's creation, said Wednesday that the hall had improperly removed property he and others owned. He withdrew from the hall in 2001 and has said it was being mismanaged.
Winner said he would pursue a case in either civil or criminal court.
Vocal Group Hall of Fame
www.vocalhalloffame.com
Back After Near Extinction
Catalina Foxes
A unique subspecies of fox that is about the size of a house cat is back from the brink of extinction on Santa Catalina Island and can survive on its own thanks to a captive breeding program, the head of a nonprofit group that manages most of the island said Tuesday.
With the release of the remaining foxes in the coming weeks, the program will come to an end, said Ann Muscat, president of the Catalina Island Conservancy.
The conservancy released nine foxes Tuesday, five pups and four adults. The animals quickly scampered into the scrub-covered hills on the eastern end of Catalina.
Catalina, about 25 miles off Los Angeles, is one of the eight Channel Islands. Six of the islands have a distinct subspecies of fox, four of which are listed as endangered.
Catalina Foxes
In Memory
Arthur Hailey
Arthur Hailey, the best-selling author who plucked characters from ordinary life and threw them into extraordinary ordeals, died in his home in the Bahamas, his wife said Thursday. He was 84.
Hailey died in his sleep Wednesday a few hours after having dinner with two of his six children at his home in Lyford Cay on New Providence island, his wife, Sheila, said. She said doctors believe he had a stroke.
The British-born writer's knack for turning the mundane into thrilling tales brought 11 books published in 40 countries and 38 languages, with 170 million copies in print.
Born April 5, 1920, in Luton, England, Hailey had to stop school at 14 because his parents couldn't afford to send him beyond England's free education system. He served as a pilot in the Royal Air Force during World War II, flying patrol fighters in the Middle East and transport planes in India.
Hailey and his wife settled in the Bahamas in 1969. In later years, he stopped writing for the mass market, though he still wrote as a hobby.
Sheila Hailey said her husband's memory began deteriorating after two heart surgeries in recent years and a stroke two months ago.
She said her husband's body would be cremated in a private ceremony in Nassau this weekend. She and her four sons and two daughters plan a party to celebrate his life in January, as was his wish.
Arthur Hailey
