'TBH Politoons'
Baron Dave Romm
Wallace and Gromit
By Baron Dave Romm
Shockwave Radio Theater Podcast now up and running! All podcasts also on the Shockwave Radio audio page.
A short one this week. More music reviews as I listen to CDs.
Wallace & Grommit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit is hysterically funny, especially if you can read very fast.
If you at all liked the three half-hour Wallace and Gromit animated shorts, you will love Were-Rabbit, the world's first Vegetarian Horror film. Kids will like the cute stop-motion bunnies and huge vegetables. Adults will like the great puns and visual gags that zip by quickly. Everyone will like the brilliant but hapless inventor Wallace and his silent but super-competent dog Gromit. I don't think it's necessary to delve into the plot of the movie: It's silly and complicated and carries the action along at a fast clip. I highly recommend the three W&G shorts, and Were-Rabbit is even better. I suspect the DVD will sell extrememly well, as many of the signs and jokes litterally zoom past. Despite its universal appeal, I'm going to knock a few points off for those humor-deprived who won't get it. On The Shockwave rating system of 9-23 where 23 is the highest, I give Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were Rabbit about a 21. *whew* I'm glad I won't have to type all that in again for a while...
Were-Rabbit packs a lot in a small time, running only 85 min. (Yes, you should stay for the whole credits. There's a small bit at the very end.) The movie comes with a cartoon, featuring the Penguins from Madagascar (a movie I haven't seen). Short, but also fun.
The new tv season is disappointing. Despite three new science fiction shows (one of which with Brent Spiner), the only new show that seems okay is Bones. A forensic anthropoligist with Kung-Fu grip and an FBI agent desperately try to make you forget all about Crossing Jordan and usually succeed. The season is young, and there are episodes of Everyone Hates Chris still on my VCR, but so far I'm relying on Medium and House (on hiatus until baseball is done) to carry me through.
The local Mpls newspaper, The Star Tribune, has undergone a major redesign in the past week. I've tried to give it some time, but it really looks awful and is far less useful than the old fonts and organization. It's still a tool of the far right: Buried on page B2 in the Mpls Star Tribune is the announcement that the Minnesota Republican Party has launched an attack web site trying to smear Attorney General Mike Hatch even before he announces his intention to run for any office. It's official: "Minnesota Nice" has been replaced by the GOP Slime Machine. The Viking's woes don't help. Dunno how national the Love Boat sex scandal is, where Vikings football players were lewd and worse on a lake cruise during their bye week, but sportswriter Jim Souhan summed it up well: "Last week, we missed only Randy Moss' talent. Today, we miss him as a role model. Oh, for the days when our biggest problems were end zone end-wiggling."
An hour ago (as I type), the two Chinese astronaughts landed safely after five days in orbit. This is the second manned mission to space for the Chinese. While many countries have a space program, only three countries have successfully launched men into space: The US, USSR and China. China inherited much of the old Soviet space program, and like the Russians they launch from and land deep inside central Asia. The capsule is a three-person module similar to our Apollo capsule, though only two were sent up. Like our space program, they leave a lot of junk in orbit. Unlike ours, they've attached solar panels to the leftover command module and it will be gathering data for a while.
Baron Dave Romm is a conceptual artist and a noble of Ladonia with a radio show, a Live Journal demi-blog, a very weird CD collection and an ever growing list of political links. Dave Romm reviews things at random for obscure web sites. You can read all his music recommendations from Bartcop-E , and you can hear the last two Shockwave broadcasts in Real Audio (scroll down to Shockwave). Thanks to everyone who has sent me music to play on the air.
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Informative Link
'Hear Us Now'
Check out "The Tower
," a funny animated music video that
Consumers Union just released late Friday about the media.
Also, after it is over a petition pops up on the screen - asking the FCC to
hold public hearing before they go back and rewrite the media ownership
rules (which they are planning to do in the near future).
Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Patrick Guerriero, president of the Log Cabin Republicans: Calling on conservatives to come out (advocate.com)
During this challenging time in the gay rights movement, the fight for equality demands that closeted gay conservatives come out and stand up for their rights
Charles Karel Bouley II: Just say no to Uncle Sam (advocate.com)
No, it is not progress when the military turns a blind eye in order to send openly gay soldiers to die in Iraq. Quite the opposite. In fact, maybe all gays and lesbians should boycott serving our country until our country serves us
Michael Feingold: Giving Us Pause (villagevoice.com)
Nobel laureate Harold Pinter: The silences demarcate the warring lines on the battlefield of words.
Kim Cattrall (out.com)
Q: Samantha's life was truly a banquet. Did playing her affect your own sex life?
A: She was a huge part of my sexual revolution, which came late in my 40s, which I'm more than making up for. I learned to make life more of a sensual experience, not just in the act of sex. I am a fuller, more realized person. Samantha lives in me.
Christopher Stone: Raymond Burr: TV Icon's Life Blends Fact and Illusion (afterelton.com)
With people (John Roberts, Harriet Miers) and things (abortion, gay marriage) judicial on our minds, and more law shows on TV today than anyone can possibly watch, the time is ripe to revisit Raymond Burr, the gay actor whose television persona, Perry Mason, was synonymous with American jurisprudence for so many years.
Rabbi David Aaron: From Fasting to Feasting (beliefnet.com)
After cleansing our souls on Yom Kippur, Jews celebrate wholeness and spontaneity during the festival of Sukkot.
Sukkot and Simchat Torah Primer (beliefnet.com)
So you made it through Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur--now what about those other autumn holidays? An overview of Sukkot and Simchat Torah
Hubert's Poetry Corner
HE WEARS A YELLOW STRIPE
STILL SORDID AFTER ALL THESE YEARS!
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Overcast morning, rainy afternoon. Lots of thunder & lightning tonight.
Thanks to everyone who has stopped by My Guest Map
Added 2 new visitor flags today:
Broadway Theater Renamed
August Wilson
With cheers, applause, a few stories and song, Broadway's August Wilson Theatre was dedicated Sunday, two weeks after the playwright died of liver cancer.
Constanza Romero, Wilson's widow, and his younger daughter, Azula, held a giant pair of scissors that snipped a red ribbon and lit up the marquee of the West 52nd Street theater that previously had been known as the Virginia.
Before the lighting, during a brief program inside the theater, Wilson's older daughter, Sakina Ansari, read Wilson's thoughts on hearing a Broadway theater would be named for him.
The 60-year-old Wilson died Oct. 2, only months after completing his monumental 10-play cycle chronicling the black experience in 20th-century America - one play for each decade.
August Wilson
Long Way From Heyday
Saturday Night TV
Saturday has become the forgotten night for broadcasters, who aren't entirely sure what to do there anymore. They just know it's not worth spending much to seek an audience that clearly has other plans.
Viewers with long memories know it wasn't always this way. "Gunsmoke," "Perry Mason," "Mission: Impossible," "Love Boat," "Fantasy Island," "Golden Girls" and "Touched By an Angel" are among the classic series shown on Saturdays.
You could make a strong argument that during the early 1970s, CBS on Saturday night had the single best night of prime-time TV ever: "All in the Family," "M-A-S-H," "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," "The Bob Newhart Show" and "The Carol Burnett Show."
Since 2000, Saturday night network TV viewership has dropped 39 percent, compared to 16 percent for the seven nights in total, according to Nielsen Media Research.
Saturday Night TV
4,900-Mile Walk Across US
Marcia and Ken Powers
A husband-and-wife team reached the Pacific Ocean on Saturday after a 4,900-mile cross-country hike, becoming the first to backpack the transcontinental American Discovery Trail in one continuous trek.
Marcia and Ken Powers started Feb. 27 at Cape Henlopen in Delaware. Nearly eight months later, they looked out over the Pacific Ocean at Point Reyes.
The couple from Pleasanton, Calif., traversed cities, desert, mountains and farmland as they crossed 13 states.
The transcontinental trail starts in Delaware, meandering through Washington, D.C., Cincinnati, St. Louis and other cities, 14 national parks and 16 national forests before hitting the Pacific at Point Reyes.
Marcia and Ken Powers
Honors South's Best Ice Cream
Vanna White
Vanna White stopped by her hometown Saturday to honor a local ice cream parlor for all the sweet treats dished out there.
White gave Original Painter's Homemade Ice Cream an award from the Turner South cable network program "Blue Ribbon," whose viewers voted Painter's the best ice cream in the South.
It didn't take much to get the "Wheel of Fortune" star back. She loves the ice cream, especially the maple nut, and Painter's dubs one of its concoctions the "Vanna Banana" sundae.
Vanna White
Researcher Takes Aim at Alien Abductions
Susan Clancy
Susan Clancy is sick of space aliens. The Harvard psychologist figures she has read every book and seen every movie ever made about extraterrestrials, and she has interviewed roughly 50 people who claim to have been abducted by aliens.
All in the name of scientific truth, not science fiction.
Clancy is bracing for a fresh round of hate mail once her book, "Abducted: How People Come To Believe They Were Kidnapped By Aliens," is published by Harvard University Press later this month.
Those who believe aliens are among us haven't taken kindly to her theory that abductees have created "false memories" out of, she writes, a "blend of fantasy-proneness, memory distortion, culturally available scripts, sleep hallucinations, and scientific illiteracy."
For a lot more, Susan Clancy
Leaving NYU
Mary-Kate Olsen
What would Bob Saget say about this? Mary-Kate Olsen, who shared the role of Michelle Tanner with her twin sister, Ashley, on the '80s comedy "Full House," has left college - at least for now - early in her sophomore year.
"Mary-Kate Olsen has not dropped out, she has simply taken an approved leave of absence to devote more of her time and energy to her business," Olsen's publicist, Michael Pagnotta, told The Associated Press.
Mary-Kate wants "to focus on her increasing responsibilities as co-president of Dualstar Entertainment Group and to pursue personal interests," the magazine quoted Pagnotta as saying.
Mary-Kate Olsen
World's Oldest Found In China
Noodles
Italians are known for them and theories suggest they may have originated in the Middle East but scientists said Wednesday the world's oldest known noodles, dating back 4,000 years, were made in China.
Houyuan Lu, of the Chinese Academy of Science in Beijing and his colleagues found the ancient noodles preserved in an overturned, sealed bowl at an archaeological site near the Yellow River in northwestern China.
Until the discovery, reported in the science journal Nature, the oldest written account of noodles was in a book written during the East Han Dynasty in China sometime between 25 and 220.
Noodles
Wife of TV Legal Analyst Found Slain
Daniel Horowitz
The wife of prominent defense attorney and TV legal analyst Daniel Horowitz was found slain in the couple's San Francisco-area home, police said.
Horowitz, currently leading the defense in a sensational murder trial in Martinez, called 911 Saturday evening to report that the body of his wife, 52-year-old Pamela Vitale, was in the entryway of their home, police said.
Horowitz is a regular television legal commentator who appears frequently on CNN, MSNBC and Fox News. He frequently gave commentary during the Laci Peterson murder trial.
Daniel Horowitz
Painting To Auction
Picasso
One of Pablo Picasso's early paintings, "Guitar and Score on a Pedestal Table" from 1920, will go under the hammer in Sweden in November, a Stockholm auction house said.
Bidding will start at two million kronor (254,700 dollars, 212,600 euros).
It will be sold as part of the Modern Art and Works of Art auction at Auktionsverk, the world's oldest auction house, on November 2-4.
Picasso
Salmon River Cave Man
Dugout Dick
An 89-year-old retired construction worker this month began advertising cave stays in east-central Idaho for $5 per night, or $25 a month.
Richard Zimmerman, also known as "Dugout Dick," said his dwellings can double as bomb shelters and serve as mining sites for people who bring their own picks.
Zimmerman, himself a cave resident, has spent decades carving out a dozen quarters from a hillside overlooking the Salmon River rapids.
Dugout Dick
Drawing To Be Auctioned
Michelangelo
One of only a handful of Michelangelo drawings still in private hands will be auctioned in New York in January, with experts estimating a purchase price of around four million dollars.
The sale will be handled by Christie's which heralded the event Friday as "an extremely rare opportunity" to own a work by such an icon of Western Art.
The black chalk depiction of a naked torso was last put on the market in 1976, when it was bought by the current owner, a private collector, for 178,200 pounds sterling, setting what was then a new world auction record for an Old Master Drawing.
Michelangelo
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