'Best of TBH Politoons'
Thanks, again, Tim!
New Music
The American Mood
It's been awhile since a husband & wife duo has made a mark
on the music scene, and it's been a long time coming - check out
Chanz & Paula at
The American Mood.
Reader Links
Humor
Here is a good shock therapy cartoon
And here is some good satire
Thanks, Bruce!
from Mark
Another Bumpersticker
Reader Humor
Nice Trade
President Bush gets out of his helicopter in front of the White House carrying a baby pig under each arm.
The Marine guard snaps to attention,salutes, and says: "Nice pigs, sir."
Bush replies: "These are not pigs, these are Texan razorback hogs. I got one for Vice-President Cheney, and I got one for Defence Secretary Rumsfeld."
The Marine again snaps to attention, salutes, and says, "Nice trade, sir."
Thanks, Bruce!
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Too hot + too humid = very cranky.
Had to buy the kid new shoes - his feet are now a size larger than mine.
Here's a link to the Complete List of Emmy Nominations - 2004
Singers perform on a giant floating stage, built up like a New York Skyline, in Lake Constance during a dress rehearsal of Leonard Bernsteinīs 'West Side Story' late evening July 16, 2003. The annual Bregenz Festival will open on July 21.
Photo by Miro Kuzmanovic
The Information One-Stop
Moose & Squirrel
Network Admits Lying About M. Night Shyamalan Bio
Sci Fi Channel
The Sci Fi Channel admitted Friday that it lied last month in claiming it was at odds with filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan and was making an unauthorized biography about his "buried secret."
The hoax was part of a "guerilla marketing campaign" that went too far, network president Bonnie Hammer said.
The network announced in December that the reclusive Shyamalan, maker of "The Sixth Sense" and "Signs," had agreed to participate in a documentary about his life to run in connection with this summer's release of his new movie, "The Village."
Sci Fi said last month, however, that Shyamalan had soured on the documentary when the questions got too personal. Documentarians Nathaniel Kahn and Callum Greene pressed on and made a three-hour film, "The Buried Secret of M. Night Shyamalan," without his cooperation, the network said.
The Associated Press wrote about the documentary last month, and other media also ran accounts. In an interview, Greene described how Shyamalan's "cooperation dried up." A network spokesman told the AP that Sci Fi was confident it had legal grounds to air the film and would probably never work with Shyamalan again.
In a news release, Sci Fi said Shyamalan had attempted to shut down production of the "disturbing expose."
It was all a lie, and there is no buried secret, Hammer said Friday.
Sci Fi Channel
40 Pa. GOPers See Free
'Fahrenheit 9/11'
Maurice Brubaker probably wouldn't have gone to see "Fahrenheit 9/11" on his own. After all, he's the chairman of the Bush/Cheney campaign team in Union County.
But Brubaker found the offer at the Campus Theatre too good to pass up.
Brubaker was one of 40 Republicans to take advantage of the theater's offer of free admission Saturday. One Republican insisted on buying his own ticket.
But even with admission free, the 500-seat theater looked empty with fewer than 50 seats filled. In addition to the 41 Republicans, eight other people went to the screening but did not show GOP identification and bought their own tickets.
'Fahrenheit 9/11'
A young Bulgarian graffiti artist sprays his design on a wall in central Sofia July 17, 2004. Several graffiti artists took part in the country's second National Graffiti Fest competition on Saturday.
Photo by Stoyan Nenov
Final Album to Be Released
Elliott Smith
Elliott Smith's final album, "from a basement on the hill," will be released Oct. 19, a year after his death, his estate has announced.
The album cover shows Smith sitting on a set of brick steps.
He died in his Los Angeles apartment on Oct. 21, 2003, at age 34 of knife wounds. Though it was widely speculated that he'd killed himself, tests were inconclusive in determining whether it was suicide or murder.
Elliott Smith
Psychic in Springsteen Song Returns
Madame Marie
Madame Marie, a figure of rock 'n' roll mythology thanks to Bruce Springsteen, is living the boardwalk life again.
Marie Castello, who told fortunes out of a shack she called the Temple of Knowledge for 65 years, has returned to the tiny Asbury Park landmark after a seven-year hiatus.
Marie became fixed in the imagination of Springsteen fans around the world in 1973 with a line in his song "4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)": "Did you hear, the cops finally busted Madame Marie for tellin' fortunes better than they do."
Marie re-emerged, appropriately enough, on July 4, and on Saturday she began offering regular weekend readings, ranging in price from $5 to $35. She plans to do so for a couple of hours in the early afternoon each Saturday and Sunday through the summer, said her son, Stephen Castello, who declined to reveal his mother's age. Other family members are working at other times.
Madame Marie
In The Kitchen With BartCop & Friends
Formerly Known As Bubba the Love Sponge
Bubba Clem
An out-of-work shock jock is seeking a new job: sheriff. Bubba the Love Sponge Clem, who was fired by radio giant Clear Channel Communications in February after it decided his raunchy radio show didn't fit its standards, will be the lone Democrat on the ballot for Pinellas County sheriff.
His name will appear on the ballot as "Bubba Clem." His given name was Todd Clem before it was legally changed to reflect his on-air moniker.
"For over a decade I've been the voice of the people," Clem said Friday at a news conference announcing his candidacy. "Now, I want to give the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office back to the people."
Bubba Clem
Paul English Azul's dragon balloon sails over Angel Fire, N.M., Saturday, July 17, 2004, during the Wings Over Angel Fire Balloon and Air Show.
Photo by Eric Gay
Punk Rock History to Go on Display
Sid and Nancy
Some of the blood-splattered history of punk rock's most infamous couple, Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen, is to be displayed for the first time at an art exhibition in London, the Independent on Sunday said.
Artifacts from the couple's room at New York's Chelsea Hotel, where Spungen died from a stab wound to the stomach in 1978, will be shown publicly for the first time at The Hospital gallery at a date yet to be announced.
They include a blood-flecked poster publicizing the Sex Pistols' only official album release "Never Mind The Bollocks.
The exhibition, which took 15 years to assemble, also includes original T-shirts, posters and hand-written lyrics, including some by Sid Vicious that were never recorded.
Sid and Nancy
Donates Equipment to U. of Hawaii
NBC
NBC, which is shooting its new police drama "Hawaii" on the islands, has donated more than $100,000 of new and used sound equipment to the University of Hawaii's film school.
Film school chairman Chris Lee said the list of equipment, much of which comes from "The Tonight Show With Jay Leno," fills 10 pages.
"I have to admit that I got giddy when I saw it," said Lee, a former president of production for TriStar Pictures and Columbia Pictures. NBC was paying to have the equipment shipped to Honolulu this week, Lee said.
NBC
Formerly 'The Vidiot'
Judge Postpones Sentencing
Courtney Love
A judge in Courtney Love's drug case ordered the rock star to appear in a Los Angeles court for sentencing within 24 hours after she is released from a New York City hospital.
Love's attorney, Michael Rosenstein, has said Love was hospitalized for a gynecological medical condition and will return to Los Angeles after being released.
A warrant was issued for her arrest after she failed to appear for her arraignment in Los Angeles on the assault charge. The warrant was issued last Friday - the same day she was hospitalized in New York.
Courtney Love
A couple stroll through sunflowers at a park outside Tokyo on Saturday July 17, 2004. About 10,000 sunflowers of eight diferent species are planted in the park, a park official said.
Photo by Katsumi Kasahara
Allows Annual Audits
Artists Rights
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Friday signed a law giving recording artists more flexibility to audit record companies' finances in search of potentially unpaid royalties.
The law, which goes into effect Jan. 1, allows artists to conduct annual audits and applies to any record companies doing business in California. The law holds down the cost of audits through means such as letting a single auditor work for several artists on the same label simultaneously.
"This is a significant step forward for artists' rights," said Sen. Kevin Murray, the Los Angeles Democrat and former music agent who sponsored the bill. "The ability to audit will keep record companies a little bit more honest."
Artists Rights
Casts First Stone
Laura Schlessinger
'Dr.' Laura Schlessinger has withdrawn her application to lease a Stearns Wharf office where she planned to broadcast her nationally syndicated radio talk show.
Schlessinger, who owns a sailboat in Santa Barbara Harbor, had expressed interest in leasing a 250-square-foot office space used by a city wharf maintenance supervisor.
However, city officials had debated whether that would be legal in an area that is zoned for businesses that are "ocean-oriented, visitor-serving and ocean-dependent and ocean-related uses."
The proposal also ignited a strong response from gay community activists because of her expressed opposition to same-sex couples adopting children.
They barraged City Council members with protest e-mails.
In her own e-mail to the Santa Barbara News-Press, Schlessinger urged tolerance from her critics.
"This and most other `liberals and liberal groups' need to take diversity and tolerance training," Schlessinger wrote. "They need to be able to accept that there are other points of view without lapsing into `search and destroy missions' - like this one."
Laura Schlessinger
Indianola, Mississippi
Club Ebony
The sounds of soulful music can be heard floating down Hanna Street on Sunday afternoons in this Mississippi Delta town surrounded by endless rows of cotton fields. Musicians strum their guitars, tickle piano keys and belt out songs of joy and sorrow every weekend at Club Ebony.
Greats such as Ray Charles, B.B. King, Ike Turner, James Brown, Howlin' Wolf, Bobby "Blue" Bland and Willie Clayton have played at the modest blues club, which has stood at the same spot since 1945.
It sits not too far from the railroad tracks that for decades were the dividing line between black and white communities. Today, race no longer dictates who comes to the club.
For the rest, Club Ebony
Iconic Guitar Turns 50
Fender Stratocaster
The Fender Stratocaster, now 50 years old, looms large in rock history. It was the guitar of choice at Bob Dylan's electric debut at the Newport Folk Festival, the Beatles' performance of "All You Need Is Love" on the first live global TV event and Jimi Hendrix's Monterey Pop and Woodstock festivals.
Despite an army of competitors and imitators, the Stratocaster remains one of the most revered and best-known instruments in the world. Like rock 'n' roll itself -- marking its 50th anniversary with Elvis Presley's recording of "That's All Right" -- its popularity remains, well, stratospheric.
An accurate record of the Stratocaster's origins is difficult to detail. It was the result of input from several people, including guitarists Bill Carson and Rex Gallion and Fender's George Fullerton, Freddie Tavares and Don Randall. But Clarence Leo Fender, known as Leo, was the primary force behind the icon's conception and refinement.
For a lot more, Fender Stratocaster
A bronze statue of Christ is lowered into the bay of San Fruttuoso, near Camogli, Genoa, Italy, Saturday, July 17, 2004. The statue, sculpted in 1955 by Guido Galletti was submerged 59.4 feet under the sea to be served by divers, or when the sea was calm, from a boat. It was pulled out of the water last year for restoration and then put on display in Genoa where a woman claimed she saw the face of popular Italian saint Padre Pio on the figure's chest.
Photo by Italo Banchero
He Predicts...
Chimpy
US resident George W. Bush predicted that he would win re-election and that five-time Tour de France winner and fellow Texan Lance Armstrong would pedal to a historic sixth victory.
"He's going to win, and I'm going to win. There's no need to worry about either race anymore," Bush told reporters after watching the famous race aboard his official Air Force One plane on his way here.
Chimpy
Austria to Release Schwarzenegger Stamp
Ahnold
California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is getting a birthday gift in his home country: a stamp in his honor.
The Austrian post office announced on its Web site that the $1.25 stamp will be released on the actor-turned-politician's birthday, July 30. Schwarzenegger, who will be 57, was born in the Austrian village of Thal near the southern city of Graz.
The stamp - which shows Schwarzenegger in a suit and tie with the American and Austrian flags in the background - is part of a collectors' series called "Austrians living abroad," the post office said.
Ahnold
In Memory
Bella Lewitzky
Bella Lewitzky, a renowned choreographer, master teacher and arts advocate who sued over a national anti-obscenity pledge and won, has died. She was 88.
Lewitzky died Friday at an assisted care home after suffering a stroke four days earlier, said her daughter, Nora Reynolds Daniel. Lewitzky's right leg had been amputated in 1999 because of an arterial disease.
Lewitzky's belief in freedom of expression led to more than one conflict with the federal government. In 1951, she was subpoenaed by the House Un-American Activities Committee to answer questions about possible communist activities in the art world.
"I'm a dancer, not a singer," she replied.
When the National Endowment for the Arts implemented a mandatory anti-obscenity pledge, Lewitzky's dance company filed a lawsuit and in 1991, the pledge was declared unconstitutional.
Although she had briefly studied ballet, Lewitzky's modern dance career started in 1934 when she enrolled in a class offered by Los Angeles choreographer Lester Horton.
Within three years, she was the leading dancer in the Horton Dance Group and in 1940, she married Newell Taylor Reynolds, an architect and fellow Horton dancer.
Lewitzky, who retired as a performer in 1978, received numerous accolades, including five honorary doctorates, a Guggenheim fellowship and the National Medal of Arts.
She is survived by her husband, daughter and two grandsons.
Bella Lewitzky
A one-horned Indian rhinoceros walks in Kaziranga National Park in the northeastern state of Assam, July 16, 2004. Nearly 80 percent of the 430 square kilometers national park is filled with floodwaters. The park, a World heritage Site, is the world largest refuge to the great Indian one-horned rhinoceros. There are around 1700 rhinoceros in the park.
Photo by Kamal Kishore
'The Osbournes'
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