'TBH Politoons'
Thanks, again, Tim!
Reader Reading Suggestions
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Sunny, breezy day.
Bought pencils last week at Target. Had never thought that much about pencils til this box where none could be sharpened because the 'lead' was broken all the way through every last one in the box. So, the kid & I ended up at Staples, stocking up on pencils &
index cards today.
Shoveled a fresh path through the house - getting ready for company.
Need to go put a basket together for the kid, but, I'm sitting here wondering where the hell did I hide the candy. Last Christmas found some I'd hidden in an ornament box.
Tonight, Sunday, CBS is supposed to open the evening, as usual, with '60 Minutes', followed by a FRESH 'Becker', then the
Season Finale of 'Becker', followed by a FRESH made-for-tv movie 'Ice Bound'.
NBC is supposed to start the night with a FRESH 2-hour Bob Hope retrospective - '100 Years of Hope & Humor', followed by a RERUN 'Law & Order: Criminal Intent', and then the
Season Finale of 'Boomtown'.
ABC is supposed to kill the whole night with a 4 hour, 45 minute version of 'The Ten Commandments'. The movies' TRT is 220 minutes (3 hours, 40 min), which means Disney expects you to sit through 65 minutes of commercials!
The WB offers the weekly RERUN 'Gilmore Girls', followed by a FRESH 'Charmed', and then a FRESH 'Black Sash'.
Faux opens the night with an informercial - 'X-Men 2 Preview', followed by a RERUN 'The Pitts', then a RERUN 'Simpsons', followed by a
FRESH 'Oliver Beene', then a FRESH 'Malcolm', and finally, a FRESH 'The Pitts'.
UPN has the traditional weekly RERUN 'Enterprise', and follows it with a RERUN 'Platinum', and then another RERUN 'Platinum'.
Anyone have any opinions?
Or reviews?
(See below for addresses)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
#2223 Star On The Walk O'Fame
Etta James
R&B singer Etta James had no reason to sing the blues Friday as Hollywood honored her with a star on the Walk of Fame.
James, 65, is perhaps best known for her 1960 version of "At last" and is considered an influence on such singers as Diana Ross, Janis Joplin and Bonnie Raitt.
This year she was among the recipients of lifetime achievement awards from the Grammy organization, and won an award for best jazz vocal performance in 1995 for the song "Mystery Lady," from a tribute album to the late Billie Holiday.
Nicknamed "Matriarch of the Blues," her other hit songs include "All I Could Do Was Cry," "My Dearest Darling," "Trust in Me" and "Tell Mama."
Born Jamesetta Hawkins, the singer was discovered in 1954 by bandleader Johnny Otis in San Francisco, who helped her become a teen singing star. Her song "Roll With Me Henry" from that year raised eyebrows with its saucy, sexy lyrics.
Her star was the 2,223 on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Etta James
The Information One-Stop
Moose & Squirrel
Lipton Commercial May Be Iced
Dixie Chicks
The Dixie Chicks endorsement deal with Lipton may be in jeopardy. According to the New York Post, a commercial that the Chicks shot for Lipton Brisk Iced Tea may never materialize.
The commercial was shot before lead singer Natalie Maines' told a London crowd back in March that she was ashamed President Bush was from her home state of Texas. Executives for Lipton's parent company, Pepsi, reportedly fear a Dixie Chicks endorsement right now, thinking it might actually hurt sales. They're debating whether or not to air the spot.
The Chicks' upcoming Top of The World tour is sponsored by Lipton.
Dixie Chicks
Marek Edelman, left, the lone surviving commander of the 1943 Warsaw ghetto uprising, and Jacek Kuron, right, a former longtime anti-communist opposition leader after laying flowers at a Jewish memorial to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the heroic revolt in Warsaw on Saturday, April 19, 2003. The monument to Heroes of the Warsaw Ghetto was erected in 1948.
Photo by Czarek Sokolowski
Raising Funds for Mississippi Theater
Morgan Freeman
Morgan Freeman planned to participate in a fund raiser for the historic Elkin Theatre.
The event Saturday was to include a showing of Freeman's 1989 film, "Driving Miss Daisy." Freeman was nominated for a best-actor Oscar for his role in the movie, which also starred Jessica Tandy and Dan Aykroyd.
Local residents are trying to save the Elkin. An all-volunteer group shows new releases so residents don't have to travel to Tupelo or Columbus to see a movie.
Money raised from the event will be used to help match a $72,000 Mississippi Arts Commission grant. The theater's board of directors needs to raise $48,000 to qualify for the funds.
Morgan Freeman
Set Until '04-'05
'Will & Grace'
The four stars of NBC's "Will & Grace" will keep up their zany sitcom antics through at least the 2004-05 season under a new salary pact that is close to being finalized at NBC Studios.
Debra Messing, Eric McCormack, Megan Mullally and Sean Hayes are due for hefty salary bumps under the deal that will carry them through the seventh season of the Emmy-winning Thursday night comedy. NBC declined comment on the matter, as did representatives for the four actors.
Sources said the new deal includes a retroactive component that will boost the paychecks of McCormack and Messing for the current season to $250,000-$275,000 per episode, while Mullally and Hayes are said to receive only slightly less than the two leads under their revised deals.
By the seventh season, sources said McCormack and Messing will pocket about $400,000 per episode, while the two co-stars will climb into nearly as high a tax bracket. All four actors are also said to have a small stake in the backend profits of the show, which bowed in syndication in the fall.
'Will & Grace'
Criticized For Nude Photo Shoot Plans
T.A.T.U.
T.A.T.U. singers Julia Volkova and Lena Katina received criticism from the National Society For The Prevention Of Cruelty To Children (NSPCC) after the Russian pop duo put out a call for young girls to join them in a naked photo shoot, according to the U.K. tabloid, The Sun.
The NSPCC called the move an "irresponsible publicity stunt" and it urged young women to ignore the request.
A spokesman for Volkova and Katina told the newspaper, "We are looking for the most beautiful, coolest, cleverest, and youngest girls."
T.A.T.U.
In The Kitchen With BartCop & Friends
Shuffling Dates
Music Awards
Look for the next Grammy Awards and the American Music Awards (AMAs) to move from their traditional annual calendar slots.
For 2004, the Grammys are switching from their usual late-February date to Sunday, Feb. 8, sources tell Billboard. The move is taking place to avoid a head-on collision with the Academy Awards, which will be moved next year from their usual late-March perch to late February. Additionally, the 2004 Grammys are expected to return to L.A. after this year's stint in New York.
Taking a bigger leap forward are the AMAs. That show is migrating from its usual early-January slot to Nov. 16, 2003, also a Sunday. According to sources, the move was in the works before the Grammys decided to shuffle forward.
In its usual January time, the AMAs also found itself competing with numerous other awards shows, as well as scrambling to hold a ceremony immediately after the holidays.
Music Awards
Employees stand next to the portrait of late French surrealist writer Andre Breton by Romanian born painter Victor Brauner being presented to bidders at Drouot Gallery in Paris Monday, April 14, 2003. The auction of the trinkets and treasures of Breton surpassed expectations, netting 50 percent more than expected for a total of $50 million, officials said.
Photo by Michel Euler
Snarky Gossip
Gene Kelly
A new book by Gene Kelly's first wife, Betsy Blair, charges that his widow robbed the Hollywood legend of his love for life and the love of his friends, and that she stole from his children Kerry, Tim and Bridget.
Blair skewers Los Angeles socialite Patricia Ward Kelly in the prologue of her just-released "The Memory of All That."
Calling Kelly's second wife Jeanne Coyne "a lovely woman," Blair notes she and all of his children were close to Kelly - until he married Patricia Ward a few years before his death in 1996.
Among the book's claims:
* Kelly's "new young wife was welcomed by his children . . . sadly, she betrayed him and them . . . She took a great deal away from him - first his pride and then his joie de vivre. And in the end, she had most of his fortune."
* "After his first stroke . . . Kerry and Tim left messages [at the hospital] of love and concern. They had the impression Gene didn't know about these calls.
* "At the time of his second stroke . . . he was cut off from everyone familiar: Lois, his secretary for fifty years, was no longer welcome in the house; the locks were changed; there was a new housekeeper. His doctor, his business manager and his lawyer were all fired and replaced . . .
Blair writes, "Gene was deprived of everything towards the end. I cannot forgive his widow, not because she got almost all of the children's inheritance, but because I don't think he had the happy ending he deserved."
When Kelly died, Blair says his children were not allowed to stay at their father's house for the funeral and "never got to say goodbye."
Gene Kelly
Chef Facing Charges in Ireland
Conrad Gallagher
Celebrity chef Conrad Gallagher is going home to his native Ireland in handcuffs.
U.S. marshals had arrested Gallagher, 32, on an Irish warrant in Manhattan, where he was running a pub called Traffic.
In Ireland, Gallagher cooked on television, wrote gourmet cookbooks and held court with pop stars at his fancy restaurants in Dublin and elsewhere.
Amid financial troubles, Gallagher was charged in 2001 with stealing three paintings — worth up to $50,000 — from a hotel that was home to one of his restaurants. He failed to show up for trial in October.
Gallagher allegedly fled to New York, where he opened his bar and landed a deal for another cookbook. He insisted he was the rightful owner of the paintings.
Conrad Gallagher
Formerly 'The Vidiot'
Marks 50th Year
'Shane'
Of the millions of tourists who visit this mountain resort each year for the granite peaks of Grand Teton National Park and bubbling geysers of Yellowstone, a few hundred come for something else.
They come to see where the Starrett's homestead cabin sat or where a wounded Shane rode off into the sunset.
"Shane," the cherished Western with Alan Ladd in the title role, premiered 50 years ago this week and still holds a special place in many film buffs' hearts.
It's been called the quintessential Western, although Alan Ladd Jr., son of the film's star, said it went against the grain of many Westerns up to that point — cowboys and soldiers were not fighting Indians, and the movie's hero was a disillusioned gunfighter.
And that initially made "Shane" a hard sell.
The movie also gave dozens of Teton Valley ranchers and other locals the chance to work on a movie set. They earned up to $50 a day as caterers, drivers and extras.
For more, 'Shane'
Shane
A couple and their friend walk around gigantic cubes with holographic panels on them, Saturday April 19, 2003 in Yokohama, west of Tokyo. The art objects were created by Hiro Yamagata. The cubes are part of the Art & Space exhibition.
Photo by Koji Sasahara
College Funds
Dolly Parton
Country singer Dolly Parton will award four high school seniors in her native Sevier County $15,000 college scholarships.
Parton, who graduated from Sevier County High School in 1964, started the Dolly Parton Scholarship in August 2000. With support from other sponsors and her Dollywood Foundation, scholarships have been added for students at Seymour High School, Pigeon Forge High School and Gatlinburg-Pittman High School.
"I'm inspired when I see kids from my hometown who try their hardest and reach for their dreams," Parton said in a statement Friday. "I wanted to try to do something through the Dollywood Foundation that might help them continue their education."
Dolly Parton
Dollywood Foundation
New All-Time Money Champion
Jeopardy!
Brian Weikle, a Target Stores exec from Minnesota, became the top-dollar guy this week - winning nearly $150,000 on "Jeopardy!" to set a record for the popular quiz show.
Weikle, 33, took home $149,200 in cash last Wednesday - oh yeah, and a brand-new Jaguar - to become the highest five-day winner in "Jeopardy!'s" 19-year history.
That puts Weikle's total winnings, combining cash and the Jag, to nearly $180,000.
Weikle, a Karoake fan who dabbles in computer games, broke the previous record set back in January 1990 - when Frank Spangenberg won $102,597.
"Jeopardy!" sticklers will be glad to know that the show points out that Weikle's historic win "comes after the 'Jeopardy!' dollar values on the gameboard were doubled in 2001."
Jeopardy!
Seizes Iraqi Art Believed Stolen
Jordan
Jordanian customs authorities have seized 42 paintings believed to have been looted from Iraq's National Museum, government officials said Saturday.
Border officials seized the paintings earlier this week from unidentified people entering Jordan from Iraq's western desert, officials familiar with the matter said, confirming a newspaper report. It wasn't clear what action had been taken against the alleged smugglers.
The artwork was sent to Jordan's main Customs Department in Amman, where it was being verified for authenticity, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity. Preliminary checks indicated it had been looted from Iraq, they said. No details were available.
Ad-Dustour, Jordan's second-largest daily newspaper, broke the news Saturday with a short article quoting Mahmoud Qteishat, director general of Jordan's Customs Department.
Qteishat said he has instructed customs officers to "take all necessary measures to confiscate any stolen items" from the Iraqi museum and library, which were looted last week.
Jordan
Language Barrier & Iraqis
Czechs
Czech Television reports from Baghdad before the fall of the Iraqi capital were filed virtually free of censorship because none of the Iraqi press officials understood Czech, the two-man crew just back from the war zone said Wednesday.
Correspondent Michal Kubal and cameraman Petr Klima, who spent 40 days in Baghdad before flying back to Prague on Tuesday to be replaced by a fresh crew, said that although they were assigned a Czech-speaking minder, he was Syrian and did little or nothing to prevent them from filing reports that "put the Saddam Hussein regime in a far worse light" than other crews filing in more widely used languages.
Kubal praised Czech speaker Hassan Hammid, their Syrian guide, for making use of his excellent contacts and local knowledge to give the crew access to stories that other journalists did not have.
Czechs
Unveils Spacecraft Program
Burt Rutan
Burt Rutan apparently wasn't satisfied with the development of an airplane that made the first nonstop, unrefueled flight around the world in 1986. The famed aircraft designer has now developed a rocket plane he says is capable of carrying three people on a suborbital flight to an altitude of 62.5 miles. Rutan set no date for the first attempt, which will come after tests.
He unveiled the rocket plane, dubbed SpaceShipOne, and the White Knight, an exotic jet designed to carry it aloft for a high-altitude air launch, at a hangar at the Mojave Airport on Friday. The private manned spaceflight program has been in secret development for two years, and was built by Rutan's Scaled Composites LLC.
Development costs were not disclosed. Rutan said the project is funded by an anonymous backer.
Success could bring him the $10 million X Prize pledged to the first privately funded manned space flight, but he suggested the money was secondary to the achievement.
Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin, tycoon Dennis Tito, who paid Russia for a ride to the International Space Station in 2001, and Erik Lindbergh, grandson of Charles Lindbergh, attended the unveiling.
Rutan's system more closely resembles the old X-15 program than the space shuttle. An X-15 would be carried aloft by a giant B-52, dropped and then boosted to high altitude by its own rocket.
For the rest, Burt Rutan
Freed From Sorcerer's Home
Giant Turtle
Ghana's navy returned an endangered giant turtle to the ocean after freeing it from weeks in a sorcerer's home, a wildlife official said on Wednesday.
"We received a tip-off that this herbalist or juju-man had a giant green turtle in his possession at Tema," Gerald Boakye of the Ghana Wildlife Society told Reuters.
"So we got the police involved and apprehended him and freed the animal back into the ocean," he said. Tema is Ghana's main port 11 miles west of the capital Accra.
Under Ghana's law it is forbidden to hunt, capture or eat giant sea turtles, which are threatened with extinction even though the country's sandy beaches on the Atlantic provide a favorite breeding turf for them.
Giant Turtle
In Memory
Earl King
Earl King, the prolific songwriter and guitarist responsible for some of the most enduring and idiosyncratic compositions in the history of R&B, died Thursday from diabetes-related complications, The Times-Picayune reported in Saturday's editions. He was 69.
Over his 50-year career, King wrote and recorded hundreds of songs.
His best-known compositions include the Mardi Gras standards "Big Chief" and "Street Parade"; the rollicking "Come On (Let the Good Times Roll)," which both Jimi Hendrix and Stevie Ray Vaughan recorded; and "Trick Bag," the quintessential New Orleans R&B story-song.
"'Come On (Let the Good Times Roll)' might be the one that people know, but I wish the world would hear more of his songs," said Mac "Dr. John" Rebennack, a longtime friend, fan and collaborator of King. "He approached songs from different angles, from different places in life."
In his prime, he was an explosive performer, tearing sinewy solos from his Stratocaster guitar and wearing his hair in an elaborate, upraised coif.
King's songwriting was informed by syncopated New Orleans beats and his interest in a broad range of subjects, from medieval history to the vagaries of the human heart and his own so-called "love syndromes."
"Most people say, 'Well, Earl, you sing the blues,' or however they want to categorize it," King said in a 1993 interview. "I just sing songs. I'm a writer, so whatever gymnastics jump through my head, I write about it."
Born Earl Silas Johnson IV, King described himself as a "nervous energy person" who constantly needed to be engaged in some creative pursuit.
He cut his first singles in the early 1950s, taking on the stage name "Earl King" at the suggestion of a record promoter.
Scenes and acquaintances from his life often found their way into his lyrics with little editing. A story King's grandmother told about his father, a blues pianist who died when King was a boy, inspired "Trick Bag."
In the song, the protagonist sings to his wayward significant other, "I saw you kissing Willie across the fence, I heard you telling Willie I don't have no sense/The way you been actin' is such a drag, you done put me in a trick bag."
Funeral arrangements had not been finalized late Friday evening.
Earl King
In Memory
Graham P. Jarvis
Graham P. Jarvis, a character actor perhaps best known as neighbor Charlie Haggers in the 1970s TV series "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman," died Wednesday. He was 72.
Jarvis, who made dozens of television, theater and movie appearances in a five-decade career, died of multiple myeloma.
He had a recurring role as Charles Jackson in more than a dozen episodes of the TV show "7th Heaven" and had appeared in series as diverse as "The Drew Carey Show" and "Six Feet Under."
His film appearances included roles in "Alice's Restaurant" and "Silkwood."
Jarvis, who was born in Toronto, began acting at 19 in a production of "The Seven Year Itch" with a small theater company in Virginia. He attended Williams College before moving to New York City in the early 1950s to pursue a career in theater.
Jarvis studied acting at the American Theater Wing and was an original member of the Lincoln Center Repertory Theater.
Graham P. Jarvis
More Graham Jarvis
Giant panda Mei Xiang snacks on an apple at the Washington National Zoo, April 15, 2003. In recent weeks, the Zoo's giant pandas exhibited several physical and behavioral signs indicating that they were entering their breeding season. The Giant Pandas Mei Xiang and Tian Tian are at the National Zoo on a 10-year loan from the China Wildlife Conservation Association.
Photo by Hyungwon Kang
'Ark of Darkness'
Chapter 1 - Kanda Feng
Part 2
'The Osbournes'
Recently updated! 'The Osbournes' ~ Page 4
'The Osbournes' ~ Page 3
'The Osbournes' ~ Page 2
'The Osbournes' ~ Page 1
