'TBH Politoons'
Thanks, again, Tim!
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Sunny & unseasonally warm.
Got fresh crickets for Jo (the remaining) lizard. Room sounds damn near rustic, and I like it.
Shelob, the tarantula, had her Christmas cricket today.
The new 'Globe' (with Oprah on the cover, dated 7 January, 2003), takes 'Dr.' Laura to task, and provides some truly gruesome descriptions.
Tonight, Saturday, there's nothing fresh on CBS - RERUN 'Touched By An Angle', RERUN 'The District', and a RERUN 'The Agency'.
Big surprise, nothing fresh on NBC, either. RERUN 'Fear Factor', then a RERUN of a RERUN 'Saturday Night Live Christmas 2002'. Of course, the 'Saturday Night Live' at the regularly scheduled time is also
a RERUN with Robert DeNiro & Norah Jones.
ABC has the movie 'Mrs. Doubtfire'.
The WB is pre-empted here with basketball - Warriors visiting the Clippers.
Faux has a RERUN 'Cops', followed by another RERUN 'Cops', and then 'America's Most Wanted'.
UPN has the movie 'Desperately Seeking Susan'.
RERUN
Anyone have any opinions?
Or reviews?
(See below for addresses)
Times Square
New Year's Eve Ball
Felix Ortega, left and Nick Bonavita install Waterford crystal triangles on the Times Square New Year's Eve ball Friday, Dec. 27, 2002 in New York. The ball will
be covered with over 500 crystal triangles.
Photo by Frank Franklin II
Useful Link
from Michelle
To Sing At Granholm Inauguration
Aretha Franklin
The Queen of Soul will be on hand as Michigan's first woman governor is sworn in next week.
Aretha Franklin is scheduled to sing the national anthem during the inaugural festivities Jan. 1, Gov.-elect Jennifer Granholm said Thursday.
"Aretha is a true Michigan treasure," Granholm said in a news release. "My entire family is honored that she has agreed to lend her voice to this ceremony's song."
Franklin will perform during the inaugural program at the Lansing Center. The program follows a swearing-in ceremony at the Capitol.
Granholm also announced that her swearing-in will be simulcast on video screens at the Lansing Center for those who wish to view the inauguration indoors.
Aretha Franklin
San Diego Wild Animal Park
Indian Rhinos
A baby Indian rhino, less than one week old and already weighing more than 180 lbs., explores his environment at the San Diego Wild Animal Park on Friday, Dec. 27, 2002, in San Diego. A female Indian rhinoceros gave birth to the calf Dec. 23 following a 16-month gestation period. The birth of the calf marks the 39th birth of this species at the Wild Animal Park, which is home to 15 of 55 Indian rhinos in the United States. The Indian rhino is considered to be an endangered species with only about 2,000left in the wild.
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The 'New' Professor Albus Dumbledore
Sir Ian McKellen
Sir Ian McKellen will replace the late Richard Harris as Professor Albus Dumbledore in the third Harry Potter movie. The 63-year-old star, who also plays wizard Gandalf in the Lord Of The Rings Trilogy, is set to
appear in the third installments of both rival films - after signing to take on the role of the Hogwarts headmaster in Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban. McKellen takes over the role from Harris - who died
of cancer in October. Movie bosses had hoped to cast Harris in the new film - which is due to begin filming in February - by using computer animation and film footage. But they found they did not have the required
film available. Fellow Brit Christopher Lee - another Lord Of The Rings star - was among those tipped to replace Harris.
A source on the Warner Bros movie set says, "Everyone has been sworn to secrecy about Ian
McKellen getting the role of Dumbledore. One of the production staff let it slip and now it is spreading like wild fire. He got the part just before Christmas but Warner's won't announce it until the New Year.
Bosses thought he was the perfect replacement for Harris and, as we all know, he is capable of playing the part of a wizard. They are not worried about people getting The Lord Of The Rings and Harry Potter confused. They are two very different films."
Sir Ian McKellen
NYC Broadcast
Yule Log
A TV broadcast of logs burning in Gracie Mansion's fireplace to a Christmas carol soundtrack — burned up the ratings this year.
The uninterrupted two-hour Christmas morning broadcast of the "Yule Log Christmas Special," a holiday tradition for fireplace-less New Yorkers, returned to the air in 2001 after a 12-year hiatus.
The rather bizarre Christmas tradition also burned up the airwaves every year from 1966 to 1989.
During the Yule Log's absence, WPIX, the local affiliate of the WB, was bombarded with letters and calls from viewers asking for the broadcast to be brought back.
For its triumphant return, the Yule Log tape was digitally remastered, but the soundtrack, including "Joy to the World" and "Winter Wonderland," was left unchanged.
Yule Log
See the Yule Log
Madison Avenue Spin
'Storytelling'
The U.S. State Dept. is rushing to put its spin on world events, enlisting its own cadre of creative types.
Earlier this month, the State Dept.'s International Information Programs put out a pamphlet featuring essays written by 15 well-known authors, including Pulitzer Prize winner Richard Ford.
The "Writers on America" publication won't be seen at bookstores in this country, since federal law forbids the dissemination of government-sponsored information domestically. The law was enacted in the late 1940s to shield Americans from U.S. propaganda.
At a press briefing Dec. 18, State Dept. public diplomacy chief Charlotte Beers announced that her division has asked author Ken Pollack to interrupt a book tour and travel overseas to talk about his book "The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq."
Turns out the State Dept. also has been courting foreign journalists over the past year.
A former Madison Ave. executive, Beers extolled the importance of "storytelling" in convincing overseas audiences that the U.S. is only trying to do good.
Hence, the State Dept. has just published the book "Iraq: From Fear to Freedom."
Beers made sure to point out a passage by resident Bush: "I hope the good people of Iraq will remember our history. America has never sought to dominate, never sought to conquer. We have, in fact, sought to liberate and free. Our desire is to help Iraqi citizens find
the blessings of liberty within their own culture and their own traditions."
'Storytelling'
In The Kitchen With BartCop & Friends
'Sex in the Itty Bitty City'
MTV
MTV, known for "The Real World" series, is ready to turn its cameras on small town, U.S.A.
Producers of a new reality series, tentatively titled "Sex in the Itty Bitty City," will hold auditions in Columbus, Miss., on Jan. 7; Hope, Ark., on Jan. 9; and Opelousas on Jan. 11.
The documentary-style show will feature women 18 to 30 years old who are looking for a husband. It is scheduled to air in late April.
"We want young women who are outgoing, women with lots of personality with nothing to hide," producer Craig D'Entrone said this week. "We want women who don't mind telling their whole
story, and don't mind having it videotaped."
MTV
The Christmas Elefant
Num Choke
Rüssel statt Rute: Der sechs Jahre alte Elefant namens Num Choke hat zu Weihnachten das entsprechende Kostüm angelegt und verteilt Spielzeug an Schulkinder in der
thailändischen Provinz Ayutthaya, rund 80 km von Bangkok entfernt. Der Besitzer des Elefantencamps, zu dem Num Choke gehört, will so in dem überwiegend buddhistischen
Land das christliche Fest populär machen.
Photo by Sukree Sukplang
Judge Blocks Deportation
Ricky "Slick Rick" Walters
A federal judge blocked the deportation of rapper Ricky "Slick Rick" Walters Friday, giving him fresh hope of winning his battle to stay in the United States.
Judge Kimba Wood's decision allows Walters, 37, to fight a deportation order stemming from his attempted murder conviction for shooting a cousin, the cousin's pregnant girlfriend and a bystander.
The shooting occurred in 1990, a year after Walters' solo debut album, "The Great Adventures of Slick Rick," went platinum. He pleaded guilty and spent five years in a New York prison.
Under Wood's order, Walters will remain in the custody of the Immigration and Naturalization Service in Bradenton, Fla. The rapper has lived in the United States since he was 11,
but had been prepared to move to England, his birthplace.
In June, he was arrested by INS agents enforcing a U.S. law requiring deportation of foreigners convicted of violent felonies. He has been jailed ever since.
Ricky "Slick Rick" Walters
New Spin
Soundtracks
It was the dead of night when Luke Eddins high-tailed it to a production studio after receiving a frantic call needing a Smashing Pumpkins-like song for DreamWorks' hit film "The Ring."
"I'm a last-minute unsigned-song bounty hunter," said Eddins, a "song placer" and musician who started Luke Hits, a firm that matches unknown bands with film music supervisors.
"I rescue music supervisors by sifting through literally thousands of underdog bands. I mostly find tracks that sound almost identical to a song by a high-profile artist," he said. Due to Eddins'
late night call, fledgling band Wide Awake, from Austin, Texas, landed their song in "The Ring," which went on to top the box office when it opened in October.
Eddins' song placements have taken off recently amid a depressed soundtrack market and as makers of film, television and video games increasingly search for music in more imaginative and cost-effective ways.
Obtaining the green-light to license a song from a high-profile artist for a film is often like pulling teeth and after finally getting the recording label, publisher, managers, attorneys and the artist to
commit, a 30-second clip of a song can cost the film in the neighborhood of $100,000.
For the rest, Soundtracks
Wedding News
Nelson & O'Neal
Los Angeles Lakers superstar Shaquille O'Neal married his longtime girlfriend Shaunie Nelson at a hush-hush ceremony at the Beverly Hills Hotel on Thursday, keeping the wedding
secret from even his teammates until the last moment.
The 7-foot tall, 330-pound Lakers center -- one of America's highest paid basketball stars -- wed the mother of his two children in the hotel's ballroom. The pair are now expecting a third child.
Security guards and bomb-sniffing dogs kept reporters and photographers at bay from the hotel as the couple had reportedly sold the picture rights to a magazine.
Nelson & O'Neal
Mysterious Underwater Noise Identified
Minke Whale
An underwater noise that has long confounded Navy sonar operators turned out to be a call of the minke whale.
Scientists at the Southwest Fisheries Science Center in San Diego made the discovery this fall when they heard the noise during a research expedition and saw a minke whale surfacing.
"The military was very interested in learning what the sound was, even though they knew it was not a threat," said scientist Jay Barlow.
For decades, sonar operators in the North Pacific had heard the mechanical twang, similar to the sound of an electric razor.
Scientists aboard the David Starr Jordan, a research vessel from San Diego, picked up the noise during a 4 1/2-month expedition to the Hawaiian Islands.
On two occasions when the sound was heard, observers on the deck saw a minke whale surfacing, Barlow said.
By identifying the source of the noise, researchers found a previously unknown breeding area of the North Pacific minke whale, a relatively small species
of whale found throughout the world's oceans.
Minke Whale
Recording of minke whale call
Southwest Fisheries
Formerly 'The Vidiot'
Denounces Arrest
Marion "Suge" Knight
Rap mogul Marion "Suge" Knight charged his arrest for alleged parole violations was a misguided effort by police to salvage their investigation of a string of homicides.
Knight, 37, was taken into custody Monday after meeting with his parole officer. The violations involve his alleged association with reputed gang members and could bring
him another year in prison, authorities said. He remains in jail without bail.
Sheriff's investigators raided Knight's Malibu home and the Beverly Hills office of his Tha Row records Nov. 14 in connection with a pair
of unsolved homicides. They have said Knight is not a suspect in the killings.
During the raid, law enforcement found photos in which Knight and gang members were making gang signs with their hands, sources told the Times. Knight said the
picture was from a music video rehearsal for one of Knight's acts, Crooked I.
"They think anything with fingers up in the air is a gang sign," Knight said.
Marion "Suge" Knight
Kuala Lumpur
Lion Dance
An lion dance team from Indonesia performs in a competition in the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur on December 27, 2002. The lion dance, performed by ethnic Chinese wherever the diaspora
has taken them, is common during the lead up to and celebrations during the Chinese New Year because it is believed to bring good luck. Ethnic Chinese will usher in the new lunar year on February 1, 2003.
Photo by Bazuki Muhammad
Rael & the Raelians
Claude Vorilhon
Nearly three decades ago, Claude Vorilhon, a sportswriter and race car driver, stood at the top of a volcano and began a movement that now lies behind a stunning scientific breakthrough -- or a staggering hoax.
Vorilhon, a Frenchman who calls himself Rael, claims to have held six meetings with space travellers at the volcano, after which he founded a religion based on the belief that aliens created humankind through cloning 25,000 years ago.
Now, a research company with close ties to his sect, called the Raelians, says it has followed suit: cloning a baby girl called Eve from cells provided by a 31-year-old woman.
Clonaid, the company, offered no proof of its success when it announced what it claims is the first human cloning on Friday. But it said independent tests backing its claims would be finished in about a week.
"You could still go back to your office and treat me as a fraud," Brigitte Boisselier, the company's director and a "Raelian Bishop," said at a news conference. "You have one week to do that."
The Raelians, who are based in Canada and estimate they have about 55,000 members, have said cloning is a chance to combine science and religious beliefs, largely based on teachings by aliens.
Rael's movement started on the morning of December 13, 1973 in France. While commuting to his job as a sportswriter, he decided to drive past the office and stop
at a nearby volcano in Auvergne, according to a review of his writing by The Religious Movements Homepage at the University of Virginia.
During his stop, Rael saw the flashing red light of a space ship, which opened its hatch to reveal a green alien with longish dark hair. Once aboard the
spaceship, Rael has said he was entertained by voluptuous female robots and learned that the first human beings were created by aliens called Elohim, who cloned themselves.
The aliens, who spoke fluent French, also instructed Rael to begin the religious movement during their meetings.
Claude Vorilhon
To Offer Site In English
Al-Jazeera
Al-Jazeera, the Arab satellite television channel known to broadcast statements from Osama bin Laden, will reach out to the West starting in February with an English-language Web site.
"It will be original news in English tailored to a Western audience. We are very conscious of our pole position in world media terms at the moment," Joanne Tucker, managing editor of al-Jazeera's English-language Web site, said on Friday.
Al-Jazeera -- based in the tiny Gulf Arab state of Qatar -- began broadcasting in 1996, bringing scrutiny to governments in the Middle East where many of the region's news outlets are under some form of official control.
It started an Arabic Web site, http:/www.aljazeera.net, in January 2001 that offers news, analysis, video clips and programming from the channel. Some 39 percent of the Arabic site's visitors come from
North America and Europe, according to the Web site.
For a bit more, Al-Jazeera
To Play June Concerts
Twisted Sister
The '80s glam-metal band Twisted Sister, best known for "We're Not Gonna Take It" and "I Wanna Rock," will reunite for at least two shows next summer.
The New York-based quintet is confirmed for the Sweden Rock festival on June 8 and the Bang Your Head festival in Germany on June 28. Guitarist Jay Jay French says the band hopes to announce additional dates soon.
The concerts will be Twisted Sister's first in Europe since 1986; they last toured the United States in 1987.
Twisted Sister will go out in makeup and costumes — though no one yet knows exactly what they'll look like — and the stage set will incorporate the neon-pink barbed wire fence from the 1984-85 "Stay Hungry" tour.
Twisted Sister
Twisted Sister Web site
Information Based On Political Agenda
Revising Science
The National Cancer Institute, which used to say on its Web site that the best studies showed "no association between abortion and breast cancer," now says the evidence is inconclusive.
A Web page of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention used to say studies showed that education about condom use did not lead to earlier or increased sexual activity. That statement,
which contradicts the view of "abstinence only" advocates, is omitted from a revised version of the page.
Critics say those changes, far below the political radar screen, illustrate how the Bush administration can satisfy conservative constituents with relatively little exposure to the kind of
attack that a legislative proposal or a White House statement would invite.
The new statements were posted in the last month, after news reports that the government had removed their predecessors from the Web. Those reports quoted administration officials as saying
the earlier material had been removed so that it could be rewritten with newer scientific information. The latest statements are the revisions.
Those statements have drawn some criticism, as did the removal, though like the issue itself it has gone largely unnoticed. Fourteen House Democrats, including Henry A. Waxman of California,
senior minority member of the House Government Reform Committee, have written to Tommy G. Thompson, secretary of health and human services, charging that the new versions "distort and suppress scientific information for ideological purposes."
The letter to Secretary Thompson from House Democrats said that by alteration and deletion, the disease control agency "is now censoring the scientific information about condoms it makes
available to the public" in order to suit abstinence-only advocates. And it said the breast cancer document amounted to nothing more than "the political creation of scientific uncertainty."
For the rest (and it's a good one), Revising Science
Released After Treatment For Lead Poisoning
Adult Condor No. 8
One of the last wild-reared condors was released in Los Padres National Forest after spending more than six weeks in a zoo hospital recovering from lead poisoning.
The vulture had ingested lead fragments, probably from ammunition in a carcass she ate, and had to be force-fed while medication removed the toxin from her body.
Adult Condor No. 8, or AC8, was released Monday by experts with the California Condor Recovery Program. The federal and state governments, along with private groups, have spent nearly $40 million on saving the condor species from extinction.
In 1984, the number of condors in the wild had dropped to just 15, due in large part to lead poisoning, and the federal government decided to bring AC8 and the other wild condors into captivity to breed.
By 1992, their numbers had grown to 63, and the condor program began releasing young birds into the wild. There are now nearly 200 California condors, more than 70 of them in the wild in Arizona, California and Baja California.
Adult Condor No. 8
In Memory
George Roy Hill
George Roy Hill, the independent-minded former Marine pilot who directed Paul Newman and Robert Redford in both
"Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" (1969) and
"The Sting" (1973), died Friday. He was 81.
Hill died at his Manhattan apartment of complications from Parkinson's disease, said Hill's son, George Roy Hill III.
The Redford-Newman films brought Hill awards — "The Sting" won the Oscar for best picture and director — as well as the distinction of being the only director to have two films among the all-time top-10 moneymakers at that time.
His ability to communicate the sense of what he wanted to do was unique," said Edwin S. Brown, his business manager for 35 years. "He took all of the world seriously except himself."
"Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" (1969) instilled new life to the fading western genre and added a fresh twist on the familiar Hole in the Wall Gang saga.
Instead of playing Butch (Newman) and Sundance (Redford) as tough outlaws, Hill and screenwriter William Goldman made them free spirits for whom robbing banks was a lark. The film received Academy nominations for best picture and best director, and it won four awards, including best song, "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head" by Burt Bacharach and Hal David.
"The Sting" (1973) reunited Newman and Redford as con men who devise a complicated plot to fleece a vicious gangster (Robert Shaw). The film was highly stylized, especially with the ragtime piano of Scott Joplin, as interpreted by Marvin Hamlisch. The nearly forgotten Joplin was restored to national prominence.
Hill later commented that he sought "a Saturday Evening Post style ... so I put in chapter headings with the pages turning, and Saturday Evening Post graphics. ... The other thing was I consciously tried to imitate was the flat camera style they used in the old Warner Bros. gangster movies. They shot very flat, and there was very little camera movement."
"The Sting" was nominated for 10 Academy awards and won seven, including best picture, director, original screenplay by David S. Ward, and score. In accepting the Oscar, Hill gave his fellow directors advice: Hire the same people who worked with him on "The Sting."
"It helps, believe me," he said.
The two films were not universally liked. Critic Pauline Kael panned him for emphasizing the male relationship between Newman and Redford. "What am I supposed to do?" he responded. "Stop the action in an action picture just to drag some women in?"
Born Dec. 20, 1921, into a well-off Minneapolis newspaper family, the young George Roy Hill loved both classical music and adventure. He haunted the Cedar Airport outside Minneapolis, watching and listening to the barnstorming aviators, many of them veterans of World War I. At 16 he became a full-fledged pilot.
After graduating from Blake, a Hopkins, Minn., prep school, Hill studied music at Yale University, partly under the famed composer Paul Hindesmith. He sang for the glee club and the Whiffenpoofs, and headed a drama group. Upon graduating in 1943, he enlisted in the Marines and served as a transport pilot in the South Pacific.
After a stint as a reporter at a Texas newspaper, he used the G.I. Bill to attend Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, earning a bachelor's degree in literature in 1949.
Back in the United States, he earned good reviews in an off-Broadway play, Strindberg's "The Creditors," with Beatrice Arthur. He then toured as an actor with Margaret Webster's Shakespeare repertory company.
A role in a radio soap opera was interrupted by the Korean War. Hill was recalled to Marine duty, and he served for 18 months at a training center in North Carolina, emerging as a major. He used the experience as the basis for a TV drama, "My Brother's Keeper," which appeared on Kraft Television Theater, with him in the cast.
Hill became a leading figure in live television, earning Emmys for writing and directing a Titanic story, "A Night to Remember." Among his other achievements: "Billy Budd," "The Helen Morgan Story" and "Judgment at Nuremberg" (before the film version). In 1957, Hill shifted Broadway, and he directed the Pulitzer Prize winner "Look Homeward, Angel," as well as "The Gang's All Here," "Greenwillow" and Tennessee Williams'
"A Period of Adjustment" (1962), which provided Hill's shift to Hollywood. He directed the film version, which gave Jane Fonda her first major role.
During his career in films, Hill became noted for defying studio control and tackling challenging material. His movies included Lillian Hellman's play, "Toys in the Attic" (1965), James Michener's sprawling
"Hawaii" (1966), and three complex novels - Kurt Vonnegut's
"Slaughterhouse-Five" (1972), John Irving's
"The World According to Garp" (1982), and John Le Carre's "The Little Drummer Girl" (1984).
Close to Hill's heart was "The Great Waldo Pepper" (1975), a story of a barnstorming pilot. Despite the star power of Robert Redford, it was not a success. Nor was
"Slap Shot" (1977), a coruscating view of minor league ice hockey starring Paul Newman. Swearing on the screen was new, and audiences and critics were turned off by the abundance of locker-room language.
Hill's career as a director ended quietly in 1988 with a mild Chevy Chase comedy, "Funny Farm." He quit Hollywood to teach at Yale.
Hill and Louisa Horton met while they were touring in Shakespearian repertory and married April 7, 1951. They later divorced. Hill is survived by two sons, two daughters and 12 grandchildren.
Hill's pastimes included piloting his open-cockpit Waco, playing piano and reading. "Just as I play nothing but Bach for pleasure," he remarked, "so do I read nothing but history."
George Roy Hill
A young Sikh brandishes his sword, while holding a painting showing the two young martyred sons of the tenth Sikh guru standing beside their
grandmother, during a religious procession in Fatehgarh Sahib in the northern Indian state of Punjab, December 27, 2002. The procession was
held to remember the two young sons of the tenth Sikh guru, who were buried alive in a wall in 1704 at the orders of the country's then
Islamic rulers for refusing to convert to Islam.
Photo by Dipak Kumar
'The Osbournes'
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