Sunday Night TV
'Alias'
Sat through the 69 uninterrupted minutes of 'Alias'.
A 'gimmick' show, with the added gimmick of no commercials, and topped off with
a peculiar run-time gimmick, is usually is not a good sign.
However, the show was strong enough to have stood on it's own, with commercials,
even if re-cut to fit the standard 44 minutes to an hour format.
I was a baby-sitting teenager when 'The Prisoner' first aired on CBS as a summer-
replacement. It was my first introduction to non-linear storytelling, and, while
I'm normally not a fan, it worked there, and it works in 'Alias'.
The dental torture, while right out of 'Marathon Man', was quite affective. The
editing was straight from 'La Femme Nikita'. The sets looked like 'The Avengers',
before it became too-stylized.
The acting was quite good, and I think the show will at least last the season...
My only complaint is that almost everything about this show reminded me of another
program or movie. At least they 'borrowed' from some of the best available.
New TV Season In 2nd Week
Did anyone watch anything?
Any opinions?
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Season Premiere tonight of 'Becker' on CBS.
Fresh episodes of 'The King Of Queens', 'Yes, Dear', 'Everybody Loves
Raymond', and 'Family Law' on CBS;
and
'Weakest Link', 'Dateline NBC', and 'Crossing Jordan' (watch for
Mackenzie Phillips!) on NBC.
and
'MNF' and 'Who Wants To Be A Millionaire' on ABC.
Still looking for opinions on any (or all)!
(Hint, Hint!)
E-Mail Marty
And, Thanks! to all who have responded.
BartCop TV!
Visit the site at BC TV
The 'Vidiot' is now updating daily!
For an amazing variety of information on an astounding array of tv programs check out
BC TV!
J-Lo & Cris Judd
Nuptials
Jennifer Lopez finally said "I do" to her choreographer boyfriend Cris Judd in a
secret marriage ceremony yesterday in the Santa Monica Mountains of California.
The festivities took place at a secluded hilltop mansion in the ritzy Cold Creek
Estates development just outside Calabasas, Calif.
Lopez began dating Judd earlier this year after she ditched hip-hop bad boy
Sean "Puffy" Combs, whom she claimed tried to control her singing and acting career.
Soon after, Lopez - who met Judd when working on her single "Love Don't Cost a
Thing" - told The Post Judd was "very understanding" and "doesn't try to
order me around."
The lovebirds went public with their relationship in March, when they appeared
together at the Academy Awards.
After a honeymoon in Italy - where they are due to stop in at a Versace fashion
show in Milan - the lovebirds plan to get straight back to work, a source said.
J-Lo Judd
Over The Weekend
Leno In Vegas
Nearly three weeks after the air attacks that left the nation's tourist industry
in shambles, ``The Tonight Show'' host Jay Leno performed to a packed house
Saturday night in a Las Vegas show designed to draw tourists back to the
beleaguered city.
During his hourlong routine, Leno, a frequent Vegas headliner, made only a few
references to the attacks and subsequent travel crisis that left many casinos
30 percent and 40 percent empty over the last two weekends at a time when they
otherwise would have been nearly full.
Leno, a stand-up comic by trade, stuck to staple fare like family and fast food
for most of his routine.
One of the few reminders of the hijack attacks was an American flag pin on
Leno's jacket, and two American flags projected on opposite walls at the
EFX Theater in the MGM Grand, where Leno performed for free in front of a crowd
of about 1,700.
``I have a plan to get rid of this Osama bin Laden,'' he said, referring to the
prime suspect in the attacks. ``Send over (former Playboy pinup) Anna Nicole
Smith. She'll get his money. He'll be gone in a week.''
Next, Leno remarked how lately a lot more convenience store clerks have names
like Bob, Mark and Larry -- a reference to the popular belief that convenience
stores are often staffed by foreign-born people.
Then he remarked on the tightened state of security at the nation's airports:
``If your first name's Muhammad and your last name isn't Ali, you're going to be
there a while.''
Jay in Vegas
TV Movie No More
Back To Bahrain
The Bahraini princess who sneaked out of her country to elope with a U.S. Marine
in 1999 is returning home because of a marriage gone sour and family fears about
her safety, the Los Angeles Times reported on Saturday.
Meriam Al-Khalifa Johnson, who swept out of Bahrain hiding under a baseball cap
and flashing fake Marine identification, flew to Washington on Thursday to catch
a flight back home to the Middle East, the newspaper said.
The couple inspired a television movie, ``Romeo and Juliet set against Desert
Storm,'' and a foreign-relations tempest when the Bahraini government asked the
United States to send the princess back.
The two finally married in Las Vegas, but are now considering divorce,
Al-Khalifa Johnson told friends this week, the Times said.
The newspaper reported that Al-Khalifa Johnson, 19, told her husband, Jason
Johnson, 26, to get a job, while the ex-Marine, reduced in rank for forging the
fake identification that let her evade Bahraini security and who left the Marine
Corps early, wanted to attend college.
In addition, her family feared for her safety in the United States in the
aftermath of the Sept. 11 hijacking attacks that destroyed New York's World
Trade Center, damaged the Pentagon near Washington and provoked hate crimes
against people of Middle Eastern descent.
``I love my wife deeply,'' the Times quoted Jason Johnson as saying from his
mother's home about 50 miles northwest of Los Angeles.
``This was a surprise to us all,'' he said. ``We had some general aches and
pains in our marriage, but nothing bad, nothing like some of our friends. She
never complained. She never said anything.''
The Johnson's
Good Link
More Canary In A Coal Mine
www.helpafghanwomen.com
Disney News
More Bill Maher
In just one week, Bill Maher has magically transformed from annoying late-night
TV comic to a military-bashing terrorist sympathizer--and now to a flag-waving
First Amendment martyr.
And just when you thought it was over, White House spokesman Ari "If-My-Lips-Are-Moving-
I'm-Lying" Fleischer joined the exchange Wednesday, condemning controversial
comments made last week by Maher, in which the Politically Incorrect host
described recent U.S. military action as "cowardly."
Fleischer said Maher's comments, made on the ABC show last Monday, were
"unfortunate" and "a terrible thing to say." Although he hadn't actually seen
the broadcast, Fleischer said it was a reminder that Americans "need to watch
what they say, watch what they do, and this is not a time for remarks like that;
there never is."
Another guy who's reportedly not a big Maher fan: Disney chief Michael Eisner.
The Mouse House honcho recently told the Los Angeles Times that he disapproved
of Maher's comments. But reps for the Disney-owned network still insist
Huffington's Politically Incorrect cancellation talk is "just a rumor."
Not too surprisingly, the controversy has boosted Politically Incorrect to its
best ratings in more than six months. The show averaged 2.8 million viewers for
the week of September 17, up 20 percent from last year.
More Bill Maher
New!
In The Kitchen With BartCop & Friends
Don't worry about the HTML, just send text, or rich text, or a Word document, photos, video, whatever you have, and Michele will take care of the rest. Don't hesitate to write with any questions you may have and bring on the recipes!
To check out 'Train Station Chicken', and more (like 'Cranberry Autumn Tea'),
In The Kitchen With BartCop
"Q", The Autobiography
Quincy Jones
When it comes to teachers, Quincy Jones has learned from the best. Steven
Spielberg taught him filmmaking. Time-Warner founder Steve Ross taught him
business. Frank Sinatra? He gave him a crash course in race relations.
Back in 1964, Jones writes in his new memoir, "Q," it didn't matter that Quincy
and the rest of the black members of Count Basie's band were playing the main
room of Vegas' Sands hotel. They were expected to come in through the kitchen.
Sinatra, who Jones calls "a brother in disguise," hired a bodyguard for each
member of Basie's band. "Frank assembled the bodyguards backstage at the Sands
and told them, 'If anybody even looks funny at any member of this band, break
both of their f------ legs,'" writes Jones.
The marvelously orchestrated book, which features chapters by Ray Charles and
family members, swings with tales from Q's days playing, composing and producing
with Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitzgerald, Oprah
Winfrey and on and on.
His Doubleday book is out next month.
Quincy Jones
In The News
Ray Charles
Twelve-time Grammy Award winner Ray Charles on Sunday will introduce the first
slot machines that will be user-friendly for the blind. Charles helped design
the machines, which feature his music and new video and audio of the entertainer
prepared by Jay Silverman Prods. "We basically shot on green screen the history
of Ray's career," Silverman said. "It's all in the brain of the machines. You
hear Ray speaking about a song, then hear the song. You can sit at this machine
for 300 hours and never see and hear the same thing twice -- and it's very
patriotic stuff."
Charles will debut the three games -- America the Beautiful, What'd I Pay and
Ray Charles -- at a charity performance Sunday at the House of Blues at Mandalay
Bay in Las Vegas, coinciding with the Global Gaming Expo in that city starting Monday.
The machines feature audio-assist functions and a Braille button deck for the
visually impaired.
Ray Charles
New! Updated!
BartCop Astrology
Check it out at BC Astrology.
"Guitar Greats" has been set aside for now, and replaced with an astrological look at the
WTC Tragedy using various, relevant horoscopes, including charts for Manhattan and the US.
Very interesting reading!
International Newspapers Online
Internet Public Library
Internet Public Library
Cool Stuff
Satellite Photos
Looking for a good view of the capital of Uzbekistan? The Web has become a
gateway to an immense collection of satellite images of Earth, a place where you
can zoom in your favorite Central Asian city or your own backyard in a couple of
clicks of the mouse.
Easy access to images previously available only to the government is made
possible, in part, by the Ikonos satellite, launched by a Colorado-based company
two years ago.
The easiest way to see a sampling of Ikonos images is to go to the Web site of
the satellite's owner, Space Imaging. (www.spaceimaging.com).
There are also pictures of such eclectic images as the production camp for CBS's
hit reality series Survivor, the Indy 500 race, and Nikumaroro Island, where
Amelia Earhart's plane may have crashed on her attempt to fly around the world
in the 1930s.
In another section of the Space Imaging Web site called QuickLooks,
(www.spaceimaging.com/gallery/quicklook/default.asp) satellite
photographs can be found of virtually any county in any U.S. state, as well as
pictures of cities in any country from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe.
The Ikonos satellite, named for the Greek word for ``image'', orbits the
globe 14 times a day and can take a picture of the same spot on Earth once every
three days. Ikonos can render objects as small as one square meter, a capability
once had only by spy satellites.
TerraServer (www.terraserver.com) offers a combination of satellite images and
aerial pictures of Earth. While the highest level of detail is only available to
paid subscribers, interesting pictures can still be found, including a shot of
Baghdad, Iraq and another of the Pentagon.
Mapquest (www.mapquest.com), the popular driving directions and mapping site,
lets users see aerial pictures of neighborhoods around the country. Once you map
an address, click ``aerial photo'' to display the image.
The U.S. space agency NASA offers a tutorial in the field of remote sensing, the
process of using satellites to gain a new perspective over an area. The tutorial
(http://rst.gsfc.nasa.gov/starthere.html), is comprehensive. NASA's Web
site (www.nasa.gov) is bursting with Earth images, and its photo gallery, is a
good place to start to find a range of pictures, including declassified images
taken by spy satellites.
At Visible Earth (http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/), one can explore icebergs in
Antarctica, plumes of ash streaming from Mt. Etna in Sicily, and an infrared
image of the Grand Canyon.
At SPACE.com, a news and information site about outer space
(www.space.com/php/multimedia/imagegallery/archive.php), one can scan
through a series of images about hurricanes, Earth's meteor craters, and the
auroras that hang in the sky.
Satellite Photos
Science In The News
Teleportation Forerunner?
Physicists in Denmark have made two samples of trillions of atoms interact at a
distance in an experiment which may bring Star Trek-style teleportation and
rapid quantum computing closer to reality.
Eugene Polzik and his colleagues at the University of Aarhus are not about to
beam anyone up to the Starship Enterprise, but their research reported in the
science journal Nature on Wednesday makes the idea of instantly transporting an
object from one place to another less far fetched.
It involves quantum entanglement -- a mysterious concept of entwining two or
more particles without physical contact. Albert Einstein once described it
as ''spooky action at a distance.''
Entangled states are needed for quantum computing and teleportation. Scientists
have entangled states of a few atoms in earlier experiments but Polzik and his
team have done it with very large numbers and using laser light.
''It is the first result where two macroscopic material objects have been
entangled,'' Polzik explained in a telephone interview.
''This is the first time two different atomic samples have been entangled in
this way -- using light -- even though the samples are separated by some
distance,'' he said in a commentary in Nature.
Teleportation Forerunner?
First Person Diary
Ray Berry
Ray has temporarily (I hope), suspended 'Bush-Toons'. In its place, he has put
his daily diary of life in Manhattan since Tuesday.
Ray has great observational abilities, and a wonderful way with words.
To visit & read, www.bush-toons.com
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Still MISSING
Marc Chagall's "Study for 'Over Vitebsk'"
