'Best of TBH Politoons'
Thanks, again, Tim!
Selected Sunday Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Sunny, clear & cool.
The last fish died. Services were held in the bathroom.
Have a lot of candy left over - the kid isn't complaining, but I don't want to end up buying the dentist a new BMW.
Tonight, Sunday, CBS starts the night with '60 Minutes', followed by the 3-hour 'CBS At 75'.
NBC begins the night with 'Dateline', followed by a FRESH 'American Dreams', then a
FRESH 'Law & Order: Criminal Intent', followed by whatever is replacing 'Lyon's Den'.
ABC opens the night with 'America's Funniest Home Videos', followed by a FRESH '10-8', then a
FRESH 'Alias', followed by a FRESH 'The Practice'.
The WB offers a RERUN 'Smallville', followed by a FRESH 'Charmed', then a
FRESH 'Tarzan'.
Faux has a RERUN 'King Of The Hill', followed by the Season Premiere of 'King Of The Hill',
then the Season Premiere 'Simpsons' (The Treehouse of Horror XIV), followed by a RERUN 'Simpsons', then
the Season Premiere of 'Malcolm', followed by the Series Premiere of 'Arrested Development'.
UPN has the traditional RERUN 'Enterprise', followed by 'Stargate SG-1'.
A&E has 'Columbo', a 2-hour 'Biography' (Harrison Ford), and 'Meet The Royals', hosted by Davy Jones.
AMC offers the movie 'The Untouchables', followed by the movie 'The Shawshank Redemption', then the movie 'The Shawshank Redemption', again.
BBC -
[6pm] 'Monarch of the Glen' - Episode 10;
[7pm] 'Changing Rooms' - West Hampstead;
[7:30pm] 'Changing Rooms' - Manchester;
[8pm] 'Faking It' - Painter Turns Conceptual Artist;
[9pm] 'The Office' - Episode 4;
[9:40pm] 'Coupling' - The Cupboard of Patrick's Love;
[10:20pm] 'The Office' - Episode 4;
[11pm] 'Faking It' - Painter Turns Conceptual Artist;
[12am] 'The Office' - Episode 4;
[12:40am] 'Coupling' - The Cupboard of Patrick's Love;
[1:20am] 'The Office' - Episode 4;
[2am] 'Changing Rooms' - West Hampstead;
[2:30am] 'Changing Rooms' - Manchester;
[3am] 'The Office' - Episode 4;
[3:40am] 'Coupling' - The Cupboard of Patrick's Love;
[4:20am] 'The Office' - Episode 4;
[5am] 'Faking It' - Painter Turns Conceptual Artist; and
[6am] 'BBC World News'. (ALL TIMES EST)
Bravo has a 2-hour 'Inside The Actor's Studio' (John Travolta), followed by a RERUN of a RERUN 'The Restaurant',
then another RERUN of a RERUN 'The Restaurant'.
History has the movie 'Dances With Wolves', 'Real JAG', 'Mail Call', and 'Extreme History'.
SciFi has 'Taken' (part 5 of 10), followed by 'Taken' (part 6 of 10).
TCM -
[6am] 'Andy Hardy's Double Life' (1942);
[8am] 'Kiss Me Kate' (1953);
[10am] 'Bathing Beauty' (1944);
[12pm] 'The Miracle Worker' (1962);
[2pm] 'Where Angels Go...Trouble Follows' (1968);
[4pm] 'From Here To Eternity' (1953);
[6pm] 'The Wild One' (1953);
[7:30pm] 'Hidden Values: The Movies of the '50s' (2001);
[8:30pm] 'Babes in Arms' (1939);
[10:15pm] 'The Pirate' (1948);
[12am] 'The Mark of Zorro' (1920) SILENT ;
[1:30am] 'Anne Of The Thousand Days' (1969); and
[4am] 'Young Bess' (1953). (ALL TIMES EST)
Former President Bill Clinton looks up toward the balcony as he leaves Woolsey Hall on the Yale University campus in New Haven, Conn., Friday, Oct. 31, 2003. Clinton had just finished speaking under the auspices of the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization.
Photo by Bob Child
The Information One-Stop
Moose & Squirrel
DJs Inciting Attacks
Clear Channel
Bicyclists are demanding that the nation's largest radio group be punished because disc jockeys at three stations made on-air comments they say encouraged drivers to throw bottles at bike riders or hit them with open car doors.
They say the morning show hosts at Clear Channel Communications stations in Cleveland, Houston and Raleigh, N.C., also suggested motorists blast horns at cyclists, and speed past them and slam on their brakes in front of them.
Clear Channel, based in San Antonio, owns roughly 1,200 radio stations in the United States.
The company won't release transcripts or tapes of the broadcasts, but the three stations apologized on the air and Clear Channel donated $10,000 and air time to promote bicycle safety.
Clear Channel
www.clearchannel.com
Couple of Days Late
Halloween Masks
Billionaire Halloween Masks -
Bill Gates,
Steve Jobs,
Oprah Winfrey,
Donald Trump,
or Larry Ellison
CEO Halloween Masks -
Richard Grasso,
Frank Quattrone,
Bernard J. Ebbers,
Kenny-Boy Lay,
L. Dennis Kozlowski,
Martha Stewart, or Samuel D. Waksal
Dead Celebrity Halloween Masks -
Elivis Presley,
J. R. R. Tolkien,
John Lennon,
Bob Marley, or Marilyn Monroe
A cotton candy vendor walks among gravestones at La Bermeja cemetary in San Salvador, El Salvador on Saturday Nov. 1, 2003 during the Day of the Dead celebrations.
Photo by Luis Romero
$1 Million Bail Extended Again
Phil Spector
Record producer Phil Spector's $1 million bail was extended a second time while the district attorney's office considers whether to charge him in the shooting death of a woman at his home in February.
Spector, 62, who is free on bail, has denied he killed Lana Clarkson. He suggested in an Esquire magazine interview that Clarkson, an actress and hostess at the House of Blues, may have shot herself.
The decision to extend Spector's bail to Jan. 9 was made between lawyers and the judge in Spector's case, Superior Court spokesman Allan Parachini said Friday. He said he did not know when the decision was made or who had requested the extension.
In a report submitted Sept. 16, sheriff's detectives concluded Spector shot Clarkson.
Phil Spector
So, the same DA (Steve Cooley) who went after Paula Poundstone & Winona Ryder with such vengeance is still debating whether to file charges?
When Cooley ran for the office he said he'd be tough on crime.
In spite of the coroner & sheriff's reports, there must not have been a crime committed.
Or not a serious crime like drunk driving or shop lifting.
The Simpsons vs. Fox News - Part 2
Matt Groening
Doh! "The Simpsons" creator Matt Groening may have crossed the line with his comment last week to National Public Radio's Terry Gross that Fox media empire almost sued itself.
The story goes that Fox News Channel execs were none too thrilled last year when the wildly popular cartoon, which is on Fox Broadcasting, featured a fake news ticker mocking the station's conservative rep. The headlines included gems such as: "Do Democrats Cause Cancer? . . . Study: 92 percent of Democrats are gay . . . JFK posthumously joins Republican Party . . ."
"Fox fought against it and said that they would sue the show," Groening told Gross. "And we called their bluff because we didn't think that Rupert Murdoch would pay for Fox to sue itself. So we got away with it," he said, proud of the accomplishment.
Fox News, however, denies reports that they ever threatened to sue. "We were all scratching our heads and thought it was hysterical," spokesman Rob Zimmerman told us yesterday. "It's not the first time we've been spoofed, you know."
Nonetheless "The Simpsons" (the show, not the characters) issued an apology yesterday: "Matt was being satirical and certainly there was never any issue between the show and Fox News. We regret any confusion."
Matt Groening
Says Schwarzenegger All Muscle
Fidel Castro
Cuban President Fidel Castro praised California Gov.-elect Arnold Schwarzenegger's muscles but wondered how much brain power the former Mr. Universe has.
"To judge from the photographs, he has a lot of muscle, but they have not tested him to see how much muscle he has in the brain," the bearded revolutionary quipped during a five-hour speech on Friday evening closing a Latin American social sciences conference.
"He may well have more force in the arms than in the brain," Castro, 77, said of the former Austrian body builder who went from B-movie actor to Hollywood star and governor of the richest U.S. state.
"At least he has the merit of having done a lot of exercise," added the Cuban leader, who played basketball and baseball when he was younger.
Fidel Castro
In The Kitchen With BartCop & Friends
Releases Last Album
Sinead O'Connor
Sinead O'Connor has released what she says will be the final album of her career on Hummingbird Records.
O'Connor, who is expecting her third child, says she is retiring to concentrate on her theological studies and pastoral healing.
The lengthy title of the two-CD set, "She Who Dwells in the Secret Place of the Most High Shall Abide Under the Shadow of the Almighty," is a quote from the Bible.
Sinead O'Connor
World Championships
Beard & Moustache
Sporting plunging Fu-Manchus, rapier-like Van Dykes and bushy belly-warming beards, more than 130 of the world's most hirsute men paraded down a catwalk in Carson City, NV, in the sixth World Beard and Moustache Championships.
Most had spent hours preening, waxing and blow-drying their beards, moustaches and sideburns to vie for honors in 16 different categories, ranging from graceful waxed "English" moustaches to full "Garibaldi" beard-and-moustache combinations and crazy-combination "freestyle" shapes.
"This is the Olympics of beards," said Kai Cofer, a Los Angeles television actor whose knee-length chin tresses were woven into small braids in the freestyle category.
This was the first time the 13-year-old contest had been held outside of Europe. It was launched in Hofen/Enz, Germany, in 1990.
World Beard & Moustache Championships
Carlos Santana, leader of the American Latin Rock band Santana plays the guitar during a concert in Hong Kong, on Saturday, Nov. 1, 2003. The performance was part of the Harbor Fest, a Hong Kong government-sponsored monthlong series of concerts aimed at rejuvenating the territory's image after the SARS syndrome killed 299 people here and sickened 1,755 between March and May.
Photo by Anat Givon
Baby News
Debra Messing
Debra Messing, star of the NBC comedy, is pregnant, spokeswoman Annette Wolf said Friday. The baby, due next summer, is the first for Messing and her husband, screenwriter Daniel Zelman.
NBC had no comment on whether Messing's pregnancy would be written into the series, a network spokeswoman said.
Debra Messing
Sprits High Despite Stroke
Luther Vandross
Despite his debilitating stroke, Luther Vandross has been able to keep up his spirits throughout his ordeal, says the singer's personal assistant.
"His sense of humor is definitely intact," Max Szadek told The Associated Press in an interview this week. "Anyone would be depressed going though this, but he does bring a certain levity to the table with it."
Vandross, 52, suffered a life-threatening stroke in April. After some setbacks, he was released from a hospital to a rehabilitation center this summer and has been making progress, Szadek said. He can sing, walk with assistance — and will even correct your grammar.
Yet, Szadek said, Vandross is a long way from being fully recovered.
Luther Vandross
Formerly 'The Vidiot'
Didn't Wander Far
Oetzi
The mysterious 5,200-year-old iceman found in an Alpine glacier was born in a valley in what is now northern Italy and didn't travel far from home, an international team of researchers has concluded.
Indeed, the iceman, known as Oetzi, probably spent his whole life within about 37 miles of the spot near the Italy-Austria border where he was found frozen, according to the team led by Wolfgang Mueller of the Australian National University in Canberra.
Mueller's team, which also includes researchers from the United States and Switzerland, studied the forms of different elements in Oetzi's teeth, bones and intestines and compared them with the types found in water and soil in the region.
Oetzi
Science
Isobel Varley,66, from Stevenage near London, Britain, left, laughs with a visitor of the 7th Annual International Tattoo Convention in Lausanne, Switzerland, Saturday, Nov. 1, 2003. According to the Guiness book of records Varley is the world's most tattooed senior woman.
Photo by Fabrice Coffrini
Need Special Status
War Reporters
Representatives of the world's leading broadcasters and newspapers will next week debate the vexed question of special legal protection for war reporters.
As 24-hour satellite news broadcasting channels have brought war to sitting rooms across the planet, journalists have found themselves thrust increasingly into front lines -- sometimes with fatal results.
"How do we hold the killers of journalists to account?," is a key question that will be discussed at the inaugural annual meeting of the International News Safety Institute (INSI) in Budapest on Wednesday.
The Paris-based World Association of Newspapers calculates that to date 16 journalists have been killed in Iraq since the U.S.-led overthrow of Saddam Hussein in March -- a higher figure in percentage terms than the number of soldiers killed.
But Iraq is just the latest in a history of wars ranging from insurrections to fully-fledged invasions that are estimated to have killed some 400 journalists in the past decade.
The Geneva Convention already gives journalists in war zones the same legal protection as civilians -- that they should not be deliberately targeted by combatants.
For a lot more, War Reporters
Acts Added
Johnny Cash Tribute Concert
Kid Rock and country duo Brooks & Dunn are the latest artists to be added to the Nov. 10 musical tribute to Johnny Cash at the Ryman Auditorium, organizers announced Friday.
Actor Tim Robbins will host the event, and John Mellencamp, Dwight Yoakam, George Jones, Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson, Sheryl Crow, Hank Williams Jr., Rodney Crowell, Marty Stuart, Jack Clement, Steve Earle, Larry Gatlin and Cash's daughter, Rosanne, are scheduled to perform.
Tickets for the tribute concert were free and distributed by lottery.
Johnny Cash Tribute Concert
www.johnnycash.com
An artist presents British Prince Charles' bust made of plaster of Paris to Prince Charles, left, at a reception given by the royal family of Jaipur in Jaipur, India, Saturday, Nov.1, 2003. Prince Charles is on nine days visit to India with an eye on business wildlife conservation and relation between India and Britain.
Photo by Manish Swarup
Killing Kit Sells
Vampire
Just in time for Halloween, a vampire-killing kit complete with a wooden stake and 10 silver bullets sold for $12,000 at auction Thursday.
The kit, a walnut box that also contained a crucifix, a pistol, a rosary and vessels for garlic powder and various serums, was bought by an anonymous phone bidder.
According to Sotheby's, some experts believe that such kits were commonly available to travelers in Eastern Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries, while others think the kits were made in the early 20th century, possibly to cash in on interest in vampires sparked by the 1897 publication of Bram Stoker's "Dracula."
Vampire
Gives Fix to Baby Boomers
Nostalgic Candy
Baby Boomers can't seem to grow up, at least when comes to their taste in candy. The Woodstock Candy company is doing a booming business, catering to the boomers' sweet-tooth.
"People are usually thrilled to know that a lot of candy from their childhood is still available," according to Bridget Sweeney-Bell of the Woodstock, N.Y., confections company.
What's big for Halloween for Baby Boomers? "Wax lips are very popular," says Sweeney-Bell, who also listed favorites including candy buttons on paper, Gold Mine Gum, candy cigarettes and Nik-L-Nips.
In the politically correct present, candy that looks like cigarettes often is marketed as "candy sticks," but some old-time favorites still provide a puff of sugar when you blow through a hole in the middle.
Nostalgic Candy
A man dressed as a nun dances during the Gay Pride parade in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Saturday, Nov.1,2003. More than five thousand people took part in Buenos Aires's 12th parade for gay,lesbian, bisexual and transgender civil rights.
Photo by Natacha Pisarenko
'The Osbournes'
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