John Simon's new
film of Philip K. Dick'sRadio Free
Albemuth is proof positive that mind boggling science fiction can feature
battling human beings instead of battling robots.
"Reality is that which, when you stop
believing in it, doesn't go away."
- Philip K.
Dick
"I don't believe anybody. Even the
most knowledgeable person on any subject has only a small fraction of the big
picture. Whatever anyone says, you add it or subtract if from the big picture.
Multiplication and division are out. As soon as you start multiplying and
dividing the big picture by individual pieces that happen to fit together, you
end up with a sum that's far from a summation."
- Kilgore Trout
-
Philip K. Dick is such a
good writer you almost wish Hollywood had never discovered him, that he
could have remained the overlooked genius, the fanciful madman whose ideas were
so profound he could barely find the words to describe them, completely beyond
the realm of cinematic translation. There's an alternate universe where that
happened, but we live in the universe where this happened...
Ridley Scott
and Philip K. Dick (who died before Blade Runner came
out)
Why PKD isn't the subject of the same
adulation as Stephen King, with rows and rows in every book store and library of
everything he's ever written, remains a mystery. Search for Philip K. Dick in
the sci/fi section of any but a specialty shop and you're lucky to see two or
three, but it's not like fans are bereft of material. There are annual Philip K.
Dick awards, his wife has written a memoir called Searching for Philip K.
Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is now a highly-praised
graphic novel, Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said is supposedly being made
by the producers of Terminator, Nottingham Trent University has an annual
PKD Day celebration, The Adjustment Bureau is now Available on Blu ray
and DVD, and in an alternate universe, Amazon will give you one of them for free
just by mentioning my name, but that still doesn't explain why The Three
Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch isn't in every Borders. (There must be some
other reason.)
Just
to get it out of the way, from this point on I will continue to refer to Philip
K. Dick as PKD because I inadvertently wrote a headline that went something like
Radio Free Albemuth, a triumph of Dick, thus causing a cavalcade of
inappropriate dick jokes to echo through the shadowy hallways of my demented
brain, and which will be corralled into this paragraph and this paragraph alone.
One of the difficulties of writing about Dick is not in figuring out how many
people were influenced by his work but how to do so without creating inadvertent
dick jokes. If I were to mention Philip Jose Farmer or Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., if I
were to say Farmer this or Vonnegut that, you'd know to whom I was referring.
Obviously Vonnegut is Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., and Farmer isn't just some random
farmer who wandered into the proceedings unannounced. But if I refer to the cult
of Dick or how Dick always makes me laugh and how Dick changed my life
completely and how I own every book with the name Dick on it, or how Dick is
best enjoyed between two covers, and if I know your film involves Dick, I'm
going to run to my neighborhood theater to see how you handled my precious, the
reader could be excused for laughing behind my back. Philip K. Dick is harder to
write about than one would imagine. Try Googling Vonnegut. Now try Googling
Dick. See what I mean?
Now that we've
gotten the 300 lb. gorilla of dick jokes out of my system, it's time to point
out that fans of Kurt Vonnegut Jr. might think of PKD as Kilgore Trout, the
renegade lunatic science fiction writer who appears in a good half dozen of
Vonnegut's own profound novels. Vonnegut's descriptions of Kilgore Trout are
spot-on for the pre-Blade Runner PKD - Trout wrote over 117 novels
and over 2000 short
stories, and is usually described as
an unappreciated science fiction writer whose works are used only as filler
material in pornographic magazines. He has only two fans, Eliot Rosewater and Billy Pilgrim, both Vonnegut characters who have complete
collections of Trout's work.** Philip Jose Farmer's "Venus on the Half
shell by Kilgore Trout" reads a lot like a Philip K. Dick novel, too. Vonnegut
eventually admitted that Kilgore Trout was in fact based upon Theodore Sturgeon*
(Sturgeon/Trout, get it?**), but I will always think of Trout as half Sturgeon,
half Dick. (How did that dick joke get in here? Flee! Be gone to the previous
paragraph!)
"So
I ask, in my writing, What is real? Because unceasingly we are bombarded with
pseudo-realities manufactured by very sophisticated people using very
sophisticated electronic mechanisms. I do not distrust their motives; I
distrust their power. They have a lot of it. And it is an astonishing power:
that of creating whole universes, universes of the mind. I ought to know. I do
the same thing. It is my job to create universes, as the basis of one novel
after another. And I have to build them in such a way that they do not fall
apart two days later. Or at least that is what my editors hope. However, I
will reveal a secret to you: I like to build universes which do fall apart. I
like to see them come unglued, and I like to see how the characters in the
novels cope with this problem. I have a secret love of chaos. There should be
more of it. Do not believe -- and I am dead serious when I say this -- do not
assume that order and stability are always good, in a society or in a
universe. The old, the ossified, must always give way to new life and the
birth of new things. Before the new things can be born the old must perish.
This is a dangerous realization, because it tells us that we must eventually
part with much of what is familiar to us. And that hurts. But that is part of
the script of life. Unless we can psychologically accommodate change, we
ourselves begin to die, inwardly. What I am saying is that objects, customs,
habits, and ways of life must perish so that the authentic human being can
live. And it is the authentic human being who matters most, the viable,
elastic organism which can bounce back, absorb, and deal with the new."
-
Philip K. Dick: How to Build a Universe that Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later
-
One day, PKD woke up from a fever dream, as have we all, wrapped
up in an enigma, awaking from an alien thought pattern, surely not his own, a
message from somewhere else, entering his brain, sending him thoughts from
something he could only describe as a system that was vast, active, living, and
intelligent, outside himself, sending him messages he could only transcribe as
science fiction, making up fantastic worlds beyond imagination, but never giving
himself full credit, believing in his own personal vision, that his pineal gland
was crystallizing, bringing on what was once defined as senility, but which he
knew as a radio transmitter, deep in his brain, a self-generating crystal set
allowing him to tune into the cosmos, allowing the cosmos to contact him, a
wireless remote controlling his body from somewhere else, a cosmic radio
station, Radio Free Albemuth, transmitting the word of the VALIS,
the Vast Active Living Intelligent System that spoke through him, PKD, writer of
fanciful novels that lived in the vast underbelly of alternative universes we've
all grown so used to ignoring.
Specifically, Hugh Everett's
many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics states that every time the
universe has a choice between different realities, it literally splits into
every one, creating an eternity of alternate universes where every possible
thing that can happen, does happen. This theory, like the theory of gravity and
the theory of relativity, has yet to be disproven. How could one disapprove such
a thing? You can't. It's a theory that can't be disproven, which was proof
enough to PKD. He believed deeply in this
theory and his novels show it. In his novels, things happen that can only
possibly be explained by the alternate universe theory. PKD knew he wasn't making this shit up, that there
actually WAS an alternative universe in which the Axis won WWII, like in The
Man in the High Castle, Europe was given to Germany while Japan got the
Americas, and everyone was reading a book about another alternative universe,
ours, where the allies won the war. It was inevitable because everything that
can happen, does happen. The universe splits into another universe every
time something different can happen, which is infinitely, every second of your
reality, you've just chosen to follow the path you're on, but in another
universe, you didn't eat those little chocolate donuts.
It was a pink light, beaming
directly to his brain from somewhere in space, a satellite, an overwhelming
religious experience that shook him to the core. According to We'll always have VALIS, "Phil dedicated the rest of this life to
understanding these visions. He wrote constantly about them, producing a 8000
page exegesis," a massive raving about the nature of the universe that
was either genuine divine intervention, the ravings of a drug-addled lunatic
losing his grip on reality, or simply symptoms of the stroke that would kill him
months later. (To me, much of Exegesis, at least the parts one can read
online, the unreadable rants about Jesus, Spinoza, the trinity, the nature of
Karma and enlightenment, are products of a mind that has mysteriously lost its
humor. He takes himself so serious you just want him to snap out of it, thanks
for the profundity without entertainment value, so good luck finding a film in
it.)
Either way, there is irony in the fact that the mad
preposterous ravings of one science fiction writer, L. Ron Hubbard are accepted
as gospel by millions of Scientologists, whereas the comparatively rational
ravings of PKD, which match up pretty constantly with accepted parallel reality
theory, have to be treated as science fiction. One can just as easily imagine a
world, which must exist somewhere, where VALIS is a true religion with millions
of followers of the divine words of PKD, while the works of L. Ron Hubbard are
turned into bad John Travolta movies.
As the keeper of this monumental truth,
PKD found himself in a quandary. He found Scientology vile and refused to
do the same thing, even though he knew he was right, that he had found the one
true religion, that we were all radio receivers, using the crystals in our
pineal glands to get our orders from beyond, not god, not Yahweh, just a vast
active living intelligent system that we might as well call VALIS.
I'll leave it to writer/director
John Simon to explain the difference between PKD's novel VALIS and PKD's
novel Radio Free Albemuth, but let it be said that no other novel of his
is more personal or more paranoid. PKD took his own personal dealings
with VALIS, the fever dreams keeping him up at night, and gave them
to a fictional character named Nicholas Brady, while making himself Nick's best
friend Phil trying to figure out what the hell is going on. Is his friend
nuts or what? Who could believe such a thing?
In
the movie, as in the book, it's real, there's no need for a spoiler alert,
right away, we see the satellites sending their transmissions down to Nick, so
we know it's really happening. What's more mysterious is the world this takes
place in. Where are we? Yet another alternate reality, much like the one in
Terry Gilliam's Brazil, where everything is ALMOST right, a deliberately
incongruous mixture of technologies and politics, part 1984, part Richard
Nixon on steroids.
Radio Free Albemuth (written in
1976 and published posthumously in 1985*) is very much PKD's adaptation of
George Orwell's 1984. The original was published in 1948, Orwell just
switched the last two numbers to come up with a date 36 years in the future
where the world has gone through horrible unimaginable changes. In 1976, 1984
was just over the horizon, PKD could see it coming, only with Nixon in office it
wasn't so unimaginable. He could write a REAL 1984 by changing very little.
Radio Free Albemuth takes place in an alternate reality that's damn close
to the real America of the 80s.
Even if you've never read a word PKD has
written, even if you've only seen a few of the films based upon his novels, how
can anyone see Blade Runner, Total Recall, Minority Report, A Scanner Darkly,
Paycheck, Next, or The Adjustment Bureau and not ask themselves who
is the mind-blistering madman who made all this shit up.
Just as I will always picture Jack
Nicholson in Reds whenever I think of Eugene O'Neill, I will always
picture Shea Whigham in Radio Free Albemuth whenever I think of
PKD. It's a tricky performance to pull off since, in the context of what's
happening, he's the sane one, the rational science fiction writer with the
emphasis on fiction. What's happening to his friend Nicholas (Jonathan Scarfe)
simply cannot be happening in real life, even though he makes up even more
implausible stories every day. It's a restrained and fascinating performance,
but Simon gets great performances all
around, from Alanis Morrissette as a mysterious songstress with her own
relationship to VALIS, to Katheryn Winnick, who plays the traditional long
suffering wife who doesn't know if her husband is going crazy, with passion and
grace.
The lack of chase scenes and pumped-up
CGI lunacy is actually one of the charms of the film. It's low budget because
this is all it takes to tell the story, which is intellectual, political,
musical, and scientific, in fact, everything good science fiction should be. The
fact the SyFy channel has degenerated into one cheesy monster flick after
another, as though nothing has changed in the science fiction world since
Creature from the Black Lagoon, instead of featuring films like this that
stretch the human imagination, is just appalling. No wonder they changed their
name. They're to science fiction what Sunny Delight is to Orange
Juice.
Radio Free Albemuth
opens up the Pandora's Box of the VALIS trilogy. I hope Hollywood is smart
enough to let Simon explore it further. Mindfucks this massive deserve proper
care and treatment.
"The authentic human being is one of us who
instinctively knows what he should not do, and, in addition, he will balk at
doing it. He will refuse to do it, even if this brings down dread consequences
to him and to those whom he loves. This, to me, is the ultimately heroic trait
of ordinary people; they say no to the tyrant and they calmly take the
consequences of this resistance. Their deeds may be small, and almost always
unnoticed, unmarked by history. Their names are not remembered, nor did these
authentic humans expect their names to be remembered. I see their authenticity
in an odd way: not in their willingness to perform great heroic deeds but in
their quiet refusals. In essence, they cannot be compelled to be what they are
not."
-
Philip K. Dick: How to Build a Universe that Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later
-
The epitaph on Kilgore
Trout's tombstone reads, "Life is no way to treat an animal." Guess what
Philip K. Dick's tombstone reads?
He said it, I didn't.
MD
* correctly quoted from
Wikipedia
** deliberately misquoted from
Wikipedia
***actually remembered
****remembered from a dream state,
somewhere between a hallucination and consciousness, where the boundaries
between fact and fiction are non-existent and people who use footnotes aren't
automatically assumed to be ripping off David Foster Wallace.
If I've failed to mention any of
Simon's other projects like The Getaway and Wicker Man, or
Katheryn Winnick's brilliant performance on House MD, or Shea Whigham's
outstanding bit in Boardwalk Empire, it's only because I expect you to do
your own research. What am I, the fucking IMDB?
12 Celebrities Who Have Killed People (buzzfeed.com)
Adlai Stevenson: Former 2-time Presidential hopeful accidentally shot and killed a family friend at his childhood home when he was 12-years-old. He didn't realize that the gun was loaded. He was not charged.
Eddie Deezen: 11 Facts You May Not Know About Jerry Lewis (neatorama.com)
3. He never wears the same socks twice. Jerry never forgot his early years, his poverty, and the holes in his socks. Thumbing his nose at the past, Jerry will never wear the same pair of socks more than once. He just wears a pair and throws it out.
Paul Krugman: Broken Windows, Ozone, and Jobs (New York Times)
I've actually been avoiding thinking about the latest Obama cave-in, on ozone regulation; these repeated retreats are getting painful to watch. For what it's worth, I think it's bad politics.
Marc Dion: America's Heroes for a Week (Creators Syndicate)
Ten years after 9/11, for a week, you'll be heroes again. Until the newspapers move on and the civic wreaths wither and television shuts up and it's time to hit the third shift.
David Bruce has 42 Kindle books on Amazon.com with 250 anecdotes in each book. Each book is $1, so for $42 you can buy 10,500 anecdotes. Search for "Funniest People," "Coolest People, "Most Interesting People," "Kindest People," "Religious Anecdotes," "Maximum Cool," and "Resist Psychic Death."
Zig-Zag is a brand of rolling papers that originated in France.
Source
Marian was first, and correct, with:
France
Alan J said:
France
STEPHEN F wrote:
I am going to guess France.They were the 1st papers that I bought as a rambunctious teenager trying to master the 1 paper joint
Charlie responded:
France.
Gee, who could have guessed?
BttbB replied:
France, of course... I prefer the 'cut corners', myself...
Adam answered:
The Netherlands? France? France it turns out.
Sally said:
I went to a BBQ yesterday, and one guest was a gentleman from Albania. Some of the guests smoked (tobacco), and he was rolling his own. He provided much of the entertainment for the afternoon... It did bring back memories of my days of rolling in the grass, ya know??
IAC, Zig-Zag is a brand of rolling papers that originated in France, and they are the best...
Wink, wink
I just thought this was funny
Randy ("If you got time to breathe, you got time for music." Briscoe Darling) responded:
The answer to your question is.....uh.....um.....ah.......oh, wow, man. What was the question again?
Joy to thee and me, confusion to our enemies.
Jim from CA, retired to ID is enjoying a cruise.
MAM wrote:
France
And, Joe S answered:
France. It was France. France originated Zig-Zag rolling papers.
Marine layer in the morning, sunny afternoon, follwoed by a bit of very unseasonal rain.
Tonight, Monday:
CBS opens the night with a RERUN'How I Met Your Mother', follwoed by another RERUN'How I Met Your Mother', followed by a RERUN'2½ Men', then a RERUN'Mike & Molly', followed by a RERUN'Hawaii Five-0'.
On a RERUNDave (from 8/3/11) are Emma Stone, Alan Mulally, and Sallie Ford & the Sound Outside.
Scheduled on a FRESHCraig are Julie Chen and Annie Duke.
NBC begins the night with a RERUN'America's Got Talent', followed by the FRESH'Children Of 9/11'.
On a RERUNLeno (from 8/12/11) are Jane Fonda, Elizabeth Banks, and Mana.
On a RERUNJimmy Fallon (from 7/26/11) are Steve Carell, Marc Maron, and Matt & Kim.
On a RERUNCarson 'The Scab' Daly (from 5/5/11) are Dave Zirin, Dan Harmon, and Mini Mansions.
ABC starts the night with a FRESH'Bachelor Pad', followed by a (R) 'Castle'.
On a RERUNJimmy Kimmel (from 8/18/11) are Zoe Saldana, Anton Yelchin, and Amos Lee.
The CW offers a RERUN'Gossip Girl', followed by a RERUN'One Tree Hill'.
Faux has a RERUN'Hell's Kitchen', followed by a FRESH'Hell's Kitchen'.
MY recycles an old 'L&O: CI', followed by another old 'L&O: CI'.
A&E has 'Criminal Minds', another 'Criminal Minds', still another 'Criminal Minds', followed by a FRESH'The Glades'.
AMC offers the movie 'Swordfish', followed by the movie 'Bulletproof'.
BBC -
[6:00 AM] BBC World News
[7:00 AM] BBC World News
[8:00 AM] Top Gear - Episode 2
[9:00 AM] Top Gear - Episode 3
[10:00 AM] Top Gear - Episode 4
[11:00 AM] Top Gear - Episode 5
[12:00 PM] Top Gear - Episode 6
[1:00 PM] Top Gear - Episode 7
[2:00 PM] Top Gear - Episode 1
[3:00 PM] Top Gear - Episode 2
[4:00 PM] Top Gear - Episode 3
[5:00 PM] Top Gear - Episode 4
[6:00 PM] Top Gear - Episode 5
[7:00 PM] Top Gear - Episode 6
[8:00 PM] Top Gear - Episode 2
[9:00 PM] Top Gear - Episode 3
[10:20 PM] Top Gear - Top Gear Season 15 Special (80)
[11:40 PM] Top Gear - Episode 3
[1:00 AM] Top Gear - Episode 2
[2:00 AM] Top Gear - Episode 4
[3:00 AM] Top Gear - Episode 5
[4:00 AM] Top Gear - Episode 6
[5:00 AM] BBC World News (ALL TIMES EST)
Bravo has 'Real Housewives Of OC', another 'Real Housewives Of OC', followed by a FRESH'Real Housewives Of Beverly Hills', then a FRESH'Most Eligible Dallas'.
Comedy Central has the movie 'Beerfest', 'It's Always Sunny In Philly', another 'It's Always Sunny In Philly', still another 'It's Always Sunny In Philly', and yet another 'It's Always Sunny In Philly'.
On a RERUNJon Stewart (from 8/18/11) is Anne Hathaway.
On a RERUNColbert Report (from 8/17/11) is Jeff Bridges.
History has 'American Pickers', 'Pawn Stars', another 'Pawns Stars', followed by a FRESH'American Pickers', then a FRESH'Pawn Stars', followed by another FRESH'Pawn Stars'.
IFC -
[6:00AM] Maria Full of Grace
[8:15AM] Far Harbor
[10:30AM] Rhett & Link: Commercial Kings - Cats & Dogs
[11:00AM] Rhett & Link: Commercial Kings - American Dream
[11:30AM] Rhett & Link: Commercial Kings - Da Spot
[12:00PM] Rhett & Link: Commercial Kings - Taxidermy
[12:30PM] Rhett & Link: Commercial Kings - Pro Wrestling
[1:00PM] Rhett & Link: Commercial Kings - Healing
[1:30PM] Rhett & Link: Commercial Kings - Town of Tonopah
[2:00PM] Rhett & Link: Commercial Kings - Trashicorn; Bury Me Naturally
[2:30PM] Rhett & Link: Commercial Kings - Roller Kingdom
[3:00PM] Rhett & Link: Commercial Kings - Designated Drivers
[3:30PM] Whisker Wars - America's Beardsman
[4:00PM] Whisker Wars - The Beard Circuit
[4:30PM] Whisker Wars - West Coast Showdown
[5:00PM] Whisker Wars - Don't Mess With Texas
[5:30PM] Whisker Wars - America's Beardsman
[6:00PM] Freaks and Geeks - Discos and Dragons
[7:00PM] Young Broke and Beautiful - Memphis
[7:30PM] The Whitest Kids U'Know
[8:00PM] Beyond Re-Animator
[10:00PM] Layer Cake
[12:30AM] Derailed
[2:30AM] The Making Of: Transformation
[3:00AM] Beyond Re-Animator
[4AM - 5AM] Paid Programming
[5:00AM] Freaks and Geeks - Discos and Dragons (ALL TIMES EST)
Hollywood actor Josh Duhamel says he believes his North Dakota hometown will rebuild from a devastating flood, and on Saturday he shared that hopeful message with thousands of people attending a benefit concert he helped plan.
Images of flooded Minot neighborhoods appeared on large video screens as Duhamel, 38, spoke on stage about the city's recovery efforts in between performances from Minneapolis-based rockers Charlz Newman and headlining act The Black Eyed Peas. His wife, Fergie, is a Black Eyed Peas member.
The concert at the State Fairgrounds in Minot was sold out, with more than 12,000 tickets going for $100 each. Duhamel said money from the Minot Rising show and a recovery fund will help buy materials for people rebuilding their homes.
The 38-year-old Minot native, who stars in "Transformers: Dark of the Moon," thanked his mother, Bonny Kemper, for helping members of their family and others who were affected by this summer's flood.
Director and actor Al Pacino gives a thumbs-up as he leaves the hotel Cipriani for a news conference of his film "Wilde Salome" at the 68th Venice Film Festival September 4, 2011.
Photo by Alessandro Garofalo
The first national survey of Sri Lanka's wild elephants found more than had been estimated - a sign the endangered species has a healthy, growing population on the Indian Ocean island.
The count conducted last month in forests and wildlife parks found 5,879 wild elephants, of which 122 are tuskers and 1,107 calves, Wildlife Minister S.M. Chandrasena said Friday.
Previous counts did not cover the entire island, but the end of a quarter-century civil war in 2009 opened former war zones to wildlife workers.
The information gathered from the survey will be used to devise plans to protect the endangered species, Wildlife Department Director General H.D. Ratnayake said.
The previous population estimate was 5,350 elephants, he said.
Comedian Eddie Murphy is on an Oscar producer's shortlist to host the Academy Awards in February, showbusiness website Deadline reported.
A meeting is scheduled for this coming Tuesday between Oscar producer Brett Ratner and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, at which Ratner will offer president Tom Sherak the idea of having Murphy host the world's top film honors.
Deadline, citing unnamed sources, said in a report on Saturday night that having the "Shrek" movie star host the show was not a done deal, with many more steps to be completed before Murphy is agreed upon.
According to the report Ratner has focused solely on Murphy, star of such 1980s and 1990s hit comedies as "Beverly Hills Cop," "Trading Places" and "The Nutty Professor."
U.S actress Shirley MacLaine poses during a photocall at the 37th American Film Festival in Deauville, Normandy, France, Sunday Sept. 4, 2011.
Photo by Michel Spingler
A decision about whether Disney will proceed with its high-profile "The Lone Ranger" is expected next week, TheWrap has confirmed.
The project stars Johnny Depp -- perhaps Disney's most important actor -- as Tonto and Armie Hammer, one of Hollywood's brightest young stars, as the masked man. The behind-the-camera talent is as impressive: Gore Verbinski is to direct and Jerry Bruckheimer to produce.
But in August, the studio halted production on the film because of budget concerns. Since then, Disney has acknowledged that "all parties" have been in talks.
Since August, speculation has been that Disney didn't really want to scrap the movie, rather it wanted to cut costs. The cost of the movie has been estimated at well more than $250 million.
Comedian Katt Williams defended remarks he made to a Mexican member of his audience last week that were perceived as xenophobic, telling CNN on Saturday that while he apologizes to anyone who perceived them as hateful to the Mexican-American community, he would not apologize for the comments he made on stage.
"I meant what I said and I said what I meant," Williams said.
Williams stressed that as a comedian he cannot apologize for a performance, drawing a sharp line between what is said on stage and his true feelings.
Williams had initially apologized -- or so everyone thought. Instead, Williams said that was an apology written by his publicist, and not his own.
The controversy began when a video was posted online of Williams yelling at an audience member who Williams claims incited the argument by insulting the United States.
A man, wearing a mask of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, holds up a cob of corn at a roadside stall on the fourth day of the ten-day-long Ganesh Chaturthi festival in the southern Indian city of Chennai September 4, 2011. Ganesh idols are taken through the streets in a procession accompanied by dancing and singing and later immersed in a river or the sea symbolising a ritual seeing-off of his journey towards his abode, taking away with him the misfortunes of all mankind.
Photo by Babu
Susan Lucci is not letting "All My Children" go without a fight -- or at least a few choice words for ABC Daytime president Brian Frons.
Lucci, who has played Erica Kane on the soap opera for four decades, tears into Frons in a new epilogue that's being added to the paperback version of her autobiography, "All My Life: A Memoir," and has been obtained by the New York Post.
In the epilogue, Lucci slams Frons for "some very bad decisions" that, in the actress' estimation, led to the demise of the series. Among Frons' fatal blunders? Hiring a head writer in 2008 who allowed the show's scripts to sink to "subpar" status, and edging out series creator Agnes Nixon.
Overall, Lucci characterizes Frons' personality as a "fatal combination of ignorance and arrogance."
A man has vandalized a fountain in Rome's famed Piazza Navona, detaching two big chunks off a marble statue.
The damaged statue was a 19th-century copy. A Rome culture official, Umberto Broccoli, said the pieces were recovered and can be reattached to the Moor Fountain.
Security camera footage on Italian TV stations and websites Sunday shows a man climbing in the fountain and repeatedly attacking the statue - one of four large faces at the edge of the fountain - with a large rock. The man struck Saturday morning, when the favorite tourist spot was still relatively quiet, and left before police arrived at the scene. The whole attack lasted less than a minute, according to Italian news reports.
The copy of the original Moor Fountain by 16th-century artist Giacomo della Porta is on the square's south end. Bernini added the central figure in the 1600s.
Students perform a lion dance at an elementry school in Changhua, Taiwan on September 3. Thousands of Taiwanese school children have set a world record, simultaneously performing traditional lion dancing for more than five minutes, an official said
Rick Perry dived right in. The Texas governor, now a Republican presidential candidate, held a prayer rally for tens of thousands, read from the Bible, invoked Christ and broadcast the whole event on the Web. There was no symbolic nod to other American faiths, no rabbi or Roman Catholic priest among the evangelical speakers. It was a rare, full-on embrace of one religious tradition in the glare of a presidential contest.
Looks like another raucous season for religion and politics.
And yet, there was a time when all of this was simpler. Protestants were the majority, and candidates could show their piety just by attending church.
Now, politicians are navigating a landscape in which rifts over faith and policy have become chasms. An outlook that appeals to one group enrages another. Campaigns are desperate to find language generic enough for a broad constituency that also conveys an unshakable faith.
In 1960, John F. Kennedy could blunt Protestant fears about his Catholicism by calling his religion private. After four decades of culture wars and Christian right activism, the Kennedy strategy no longer works. Politicians are evaluated not only by what church they attend, but also by what their congregation teaches and what their pastor says on Sundays.
Messages of good health and positive self-esteem for girls aren't hard to come by in kid lit, so what's the deal with all the attention for a not-yet-published rhyming picture book about an obese, unhappy 14-year-old named Maggie?
The title, for starters: "Maggie Goes on a Diet."
For seconds, like-wildfire circulation of a blurb describing how the bullied girl is transformed through time, exercise and hard work into a popular, confident and average size soccer star. And cover art showing her wistfully holding up a Cinderella dress as she stares at her imagined, much slimmer self in a full-length mirror.
And an inside page, the only one most people have seen, that shows her hunched over the fridge during a two-fisted eating binge.
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?
Vile, filthy rumors about Republican hypocrites?
Just plain vile, filthy rumors?
This is your place.
In
the movie, as in the book, it's real, there's no need for a spoiler alert,
right away, we see the satellites sending their transmissions down to Nick, so
we know it's really happening. What's more mysterious is the world this takes
place in. Where are we? Yet another alternate reality, much like the one in
Terry Gilliam's Brazil, where everything is ALMOST right, a deliberately
incongruous mixture of technologies and politics, part 1984, part Richard
Nixon on steroids.
wrote:
answered:
