Another Special Bonus!
Disinfotainment Today Presents
Inspired by a back-stage conversation with an old woman in Birmingham, Alabama, this song tells a story that is not only true, but well-known throughout Europe. For some of the history behind the 1914 WWI Christmas Truce, click here.
My name is Francis Tolliver, I come from Liverpool,
Two years ago the war was waiting for me after school.
To Belgium and to Flanders to Germany to here
I fought for King and country I love dear.
'Twas Christmas in the trenches where the frost so bitter hung,
The frozen fields of France were still, no Christmas song was sung,
Our families back in England were toasting us that day,
Their brave and glorious lads so far away.
I was lying with my messmate on the cold and rocky ground
When across the lines of battle came a most peculiar sound
Says I, "Now listen up, me boys!" each soldier strained to hear
As one young German voice sang out so clear.
"He's singing bloody well, you know!" my partner says to me
Soon one by one each German voice joined in in harmony
The cannons rested silent, the gas clouds rolled no more
As Christmas brought us respite from the war.
As soon as they were finished and a reverent pause was spent
"God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" struck up some lads from Kent
The next they sang was "Stille Nacht," "Tis 'Silent Night'," says I
And in two tongues one song filled up that sky.
"There's someone coming towards us!" the front line sentry cried
All sights were fixed on one lone figure coming from their side
His truce flag, like a Christmas star, shone on that plain so bright
As he bravely strode unarmed into the night.
Soon one by one on either side walked into No Man's land
With neither gun nor bayonet we met there hand to hand
We shared some secret brandy and we wished each other well
And in a flare-lit soccer game we gave 'em hell.
We traded chocolates, cigarettes, and photographs from home
These sons and fathers far away from families of their own
Young Sanders played his squeeze box and they had a violin
This curious and unlikely band of men.
Soon daylight stole upon us and France was France once more
With sad farewells we each began to settle back to war
But the question haunted every heart that lived that wondrous night
"Whose family have I fixed within my sights?"
'Twas Christmas in the trenches, where the frost so bitter hung
The frozen fields of France were warmed as songs of peace were sung
For the walls they'd kept between us to exact the work of war
Had been crumbled and were gone for evermore.
My name is Francis Tolliver, in Liverpool I dwell
Each Christmas come since World War I I've learned its lessons well
That the ones who call the shots won't be among the dead and lame
And on each end of the rifle we're the same.
©1984 John McCutcheon/Appalsongs (ASCAP)
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'TBH Politoons'
Thanks, again, Tim!
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
from Mark
Another Bumpersticker
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
A rainy, blustery day.
Little today went as planned - that's life.
Took some of the kid's 'Pedia-Care' cough syrup - jeez - was hopping around the house like a speed-freak, but when it wore off, well, it wasn't pretty. Let's just say there's no more 'Pedia-Care' in my future.
Tonight, Friday, CBS opens the night with a RERUN 'Joan Of Arcadia', followed by a 'special' - '26th Annual Kennedy Center Honors: A Celebration of the Performing Arts' (taped 12/07/03).
On a RERUN Dave are Paul Newman, and Clay Aiken. (RERUNs all next week)
On a RERUN Craiggers are Howie Long, Elisha Cuthbert, and Dido. (RERUNs all next week)
NBC begins the night with 'Dateline', followed by the movie 'Ace Ventura: Pet Detective'.
Scheduled on FRESH Jay are William H. Macy, Wolfgang Puck, and Tommy Davidson.
On a RERUN Conan are Ian McKellen and the Stills.
On a RERUN Carson Daly are Ben Affleck, Bonnie Hunt, and David Banner. (RERUNs all next week)
ABC starts the evening with a RERUN 'George Lopez', followed by a RERUN 'Married To The Kellys', then a RERUN 'Hope & Faith', followed
by a RERUN 'Bonnie', then '20/20'.
On a RERUN Jimmy Kimmel (from10/30/03), are Wanda Sykes, Ludacris and with guest co-host David Alan Grier. (RERUNs all next week)
The WB offers a RERUN 'Reba', followed by a RERUN 'What I Like About You', then a RERUN 'Grounded For Life', followed by a
RERUN 'Like Family'.
Faux has 'Funniest Holiday Moments', followed by 'Greatest Christmas Moments Of All Time!'.
UPN has a RERUN 'Jake 2.0', followed by another RERUN 'Jake 2.0'.
Check local PBS listings for the best show on over-the-air-TV, 'NOW With Bill Moyers'.
A&E has a 'Murder She Wrote' marathon all day, then 'Biography' ('The Unknown Jesus'), followed by 'History Of God'.
AMC offers the movie 'The Searchers', followed by the movie 'The Day The Earth Stood Still', then the movie 'An American Werewolf In Paris'.
BBC -
[6pm] 'BBC World News';
[6:30pm] 'Cash in the Attic' - Farr;
[7pm] 'House Invaders' - Leyland, Lancashire;
[7:30pm] 'Changing Rooms' - Cardington;
[8pm] 'Fawlty Towers' - The Germans;
[8:40pm] 'Monty Python's Flying Circus' - Man's Crisis of Identity in the Latter Half of the Twentieth Century;
[9:20pm] 'The Office' - Episode 5;
[10pm] 'At Home With the Braithwaites - Episode 5;
[11pm] 'So Graham Norton' - Natalie Imbruglia, Simon Cowell;
[12am] 'Fawlty Towers' - The 6 Germans;
[12:40am] 'Monty Python's Flying Circus' - Man's Crisis of Identity in the Latter Half of the Twentieth Century;
[1:20am] 'The Office' - Episode 5;
[2am] 'At Home With the Braithwaites' - Episode 5;
[3am] 'Fawlty Towers' - The Germans;
[3:40am] 'Monty Python's Flying Circus' - Man's Crisis of Identity in the Latter Half of the Twentieth Century;
[4:20am] 'The Office' - Episode 5;
[5am] 'At Home With the Braithwaites' - Episode 5; and
[6am] 'BBC World News'. (ALL TIMES EST)
Bravo has a 'West Wing' marathon all day, then a RERUN 'Celebrity Poker' (game 2), then it's back to 'West Wing'.
Comedy Central once again is all 'Saturday Night Live' all day, followed by the movie 'Joe Dirt'.
History has 'Modern Marvels', 'Nostradamus: 500 Years Later', and 'Modern Marvels'.
SciFi has an all day marathon of 'Tremors: The Series', followed by the movie 'Tremors II: Aftershocks', then the movie 'Tremors 3: Perfection'.
TRAVEL has an all day & all night marathon of 'World Poker Tour'.
TCM:
[6am] 'Escapade In Japan' (1957);
[7:45am] 'My Man Godfrey' (1936);
[9:30am] 'Night And Day' (1946);
[12pm] 'Singin' In The Rain' (1952);
[2pm] 'Blossoms In The Dust' (1941);
[3:45pm] 'Sunday In New York' (1964);
[5:45pm] 'Bells Are Ringing' (1960);
[8pm] 'Sergeant York' (1941);
[10:30pm] 'Giant' (1956);
[2am] 'The Mirror' (1974) [AKA: 'Aaina'] ;
[4am] 'Operator 13' (1934);
[5:30am] 'MGM Parade Show #15' (1955). (ALL TIMES EST)
Visitors admire the ice lanterns on display during the 30th Harbin Ice Lantern Festival in Harbin, capital of the northeast China's Heilongjiang province.
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The Information One-Stop
Moose & Squirrel
Traditional dancers perform for Nelson Mandela during his annual childrens Christmas party near Mandela's home in Qunu village, December 25, 2003. About 10,000 youngsters attended the party in the country's impoverished Eastern Cape province, and were presented with gifts of food, toys and educational items donated to Mandela's Foundation.
Photo by Mike Hutchings
Showcases History of Pop Music
TV Museum
Al Green, James Brown, Britney Spears, Elvis Presley and the Monkees are among the artists who will be featured in the "American Pop" series presented by the Museum of Television and Radio in New York and Los Angeles.
The two-month series -- which begins Feb. 6 -- will focus on pop music's history on television.
The first theme in the series is "Soul Survivors" featuring Green and Brown. Other upcoming themes will be the music of Burt Bacharach; the evolution of teen-idol pop with artists ranging from Fabian, the Monkees and Spears; the first hour of MTV; and rare footage of the Teenage Awards Music International (T.A.M.I.) Show, an all-star concert filmed in 1964 and featuring the Rolling Stones, the Supremes, Marvin Gaye and the Beach Boys.
The museum will also have a Beatles TV and radio showcase commemorating the 40th anniversary of the Fab Four's first U.S. visit. Titled "It Was Forty Years Ago Today: The Beatles in America," the exhibit will also open Feb. 6.
TV Museum
In The Kitchen With BartCop & Friends
Two members of Berlin's ice swimming club 'Berliner Seehunde' (Berlin seals) take a dip in the frozen water of the Oranke lake (Orankesee) December 25, 2003. Several members of the swimming club met on Thursday for their traditional weekly ice swimming meeting.
Photo by Fabrizio Bensch
Celebrities Who Refused
British Honors
Some who refused British honors, according to a list published by The Sunday Times. CBE is Commander of the British Empire, OBE Officer of the Order of the British Empire.
Michael Frayn, writer, declined knighthood, 2003
John Cleese, comedian, declined CBE, 1996
Kenneth Branagh, actor, declined CBE, 1994
Geraldine McEwan, actress, declined damehood 2002, declined OBE 1986
Honor Blackman, actress, declined CBE, 2002
Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders, comedians, declined OBE, 2001
Albert Finney, actor, declined knighthood, 2000
David Bowie, singer, declined CBE, 2000
Alan Bennett, playwright, declined knighthood, 1996
Roald Dahl, author, declined OBE, 1986
Aldous Huxley, author, declined knighthood, 1959
Evelyn Waugh, author, declined CBE, 1959
___
Changed their minds:
Helen Mirren, actress, declined CBE 1996; accepted damehood 2003
Bridget Riley, artist, declined damehood 1994; accepted Companion of Honor 1999
David Hockney, artist, declined knighthood 1990; accepted Companion of Honor 1997
Alfred Hitchcock, film director, declined CBE 1962; accepted knighthood 1980
Vanessa Redgrave, actress, declined damehood, 1999; accepted CBE, 1967
Paul Scofield, actor, declined knighthood 1968, 1974, 1986; accepted CBE 1956, Companion of Honor 2001
Graham Greene, writer, declined OBE 1956; accepted Companion of Honor 1966, Order of Merit 1986
V.S. Naipaul, author, declined CBE, 1977; accepted knighthood, 1990
British Honors
Formerly 'The Vidiot'
New Sign Points Way
Cold Mountain
A sign that points travelers to the most accessible view of western North Carolina's Cold Mountain is back in place, in time for Thursday's opening of the movie of the same name.
Phil Noblitt, a spokesman for the Blue Ridge Parkway, said Tuesday that a redwood sign marking the parkway's Cold Mountain Overlook was re-erected Monday, after being removed temporarily for refurbishment.
The sign is in a parking area near mile marker 412 on the parkway. From there, travelers have a view to the west of 6,030-foot Cold Mountain.
The Cold Mountain Overlook is the only marked view of the mountain that is reachable by travelers during the winter months, when much of the Blue Ridge Parkway is closed due to snow and poor weather at higher elevations.
Cold Mountain
Iran's best known woman dancer Farzaneh Kaboli, performs rhythmical movements during a drama festival in this photo taken in Feb. 2003, in Tehran, Iran. Kaboli, and 24 of her students were detained Wednesday Dec. 24, 2003 on charges of dancing in public for an all female audience, her husband said Thursday. Kaboli was performing her second night of a planned two-week program at Tehran's prestigious Vahdat Hall when the police detained her and her students. She has not been charged yet. Her students have been released.
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Wages Guerrilla War Against Music Biz
Reville & Wilson
One shopping day left before Christmas. Whatever you do, don't buy your son or daughter a CD. It makes a lousy gift, according to a Web site that draws about 30,000 visitors a day.
The not-so-subtle message at http://www.WhatACrappyPresent.com is that kids are far better off downloading music for free off of the Internet than having their parents spend cash on prerecorded CDs.
Parents who don't heed the site's warning should prepare themselves for some rather harsh reactions from children who have just unwrapped a music CD, like: "The company that makes this sued my friend" or "I got that on the computer like two months ago."
The force behind this anti-Big Music site is familiar, or should be, to executives at the major labels and their lobbyists at the Recording Industry Assn. of America (RIAA). It's Nicholas Reville and Holmes Wilson, whose home base effort to tweak the industry is at http://www.DownhillBattle.org. They're also the duo behind http://www.StopRIAALawsuits.com, which aggregates about 190 different anti-RIAA Web sites.
At Web sites Reville and Wilson run and along with a partner site called http://www.RIAAradar.com, 4,000 people have obtained stickers reading, for example, "Warning! This record label pays radio stations to keep independent music off the air." Consumers are encouraged to sneak the stickers onto certain CDs on sale at music stores nationwide.
For the rest, Reville & Wilson
In Memory
Wally Hedrick
Wally Hedrick, an iconoclastic artist and leading member of San Francisco's Beat Generation, has died. He was 75.
Hedrick died of congestive heart failure at his home in Sonoma County on Dec. 17, his family said.
Hedrick was a prolific painter whose works shared gallery space with painters such as Jackson Pollock, Bruce Conner, Jay De Feo and Deborah Remington.
He founded The Six Gallery, a major hangout for artists and writers of the Beat Generation in the 1950s. It was there that Allen Ginsberg read his poem "Howl" for the first time.
Despite his renown as a painter, Hedrick tended to shun the art world and rarely made appearances even at his own exhibitions.
"He had a love-hate relationship with the art world, wanting to be part of it and not wanting to be part of it," said Catherine Conlin, his partner the past 13 years.
Drafted into the U.S. Army in 1951 against his will, Hedrick's works took on an anti-war stance after he was stationed in the Korean War. To protest the Vietnam War, Hedrick canceled classes at the San Francisco Art Institute where he taught.
"For two semesters, he put a big black sign saying 'Classes canceled until the end of the war,'" his son Max La Riviere-Hedrick said.
Hedrick was married to Jay De Feo, best known for her two-story, 2,300-pound painting, The Rose. The marriage ended in divorce.
Hedrick's works are a permanent part of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.
Hedrick is survived by his son and his sister Patty Hedrick.
Wally Hedrick
A chimpanzee (Pan troglodyte) enjoys a selection of cold fruit as a special treat on Christmas Day at Sydney's Taronga Zoo.
Photo by Torsten Blackwood
'The Osbournes'
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