'TBH Politoons'
Thanks, again, Tim!
'Least Favorite Christmas Carols'
from Ray & Sharon
Least Favorite Christmas Carols
A few days ago, an absolutely horrid Christmas song line came to me -- "Do you smell what I smell?" -- It needs absolutely no elaboration. The more general I leave the concept, the funnier it gets. I finally realized that in the spirit of a Dave Letterman Top Ten List, it suggests a whole series of "Least Favorite Christmas Carols". So I went down the index of a book of carols, and let my twisted little mind roam freely, coming up with:
Our Top Twenty-Two Least Favorite Christmas Carols
Ray's:
Do You Smell What I Smell?
A-Car-Jacking We Go
Away in a Motel Six
Bring some TP, Jeanette, Isabella
Ignite the Hall
Good King Hussein
I Heard the Sirens on Christmas Day
I Saw Mommy Kissing the UPS Guy
Let it Burn! Let it Burn! Let it Burn!
Randolph, the Inebriated Reindeer
I'm Dreamin' of a Solvent Christmas
"Freeze!", the Herald Angels Sing
Subpoenas Roasting on an Open Fire
Silver Cuffs
Ashcroft Claus is Watchin' You
It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Ramadan
Sharon adds:
I'm gettin Nuttin' for Christmas - Cuz I had Enron Stock
Exculpatory Evidence Roasting on an Open Fire
O Come All Ye Homies
Frosty the Ex-wife
Rudolph, the Coke Snortin' Reindeer
The Holly and the Poison Ivy and the Benadryl
Feel free to add your own!
Ray McLain & Sharon Gray
Thanks, Ray & Sharon
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Day was overcast with scattered sun. Not bad, considering.
Watching 'It's A Wonderful Life', and admiring how well Capra defined Mr. Potter (who looks & sounds remarkably like someone who lives in the Gore's old house), and grateful there is no redemption for him at the end. Potter is a bastard and a crook - he not only keeps the money
Uncle Billy forgets, but also calls in the bank examiner to nail George's ass (knowing that the missing money is more than can be covered). Sadly, it currently looks like the Potter's have won, and there's a whole party of them running Congress.
Tonight, Sunday, as is tradition, CBS opens the evening with '60 Minutes' (with a fresh segment on Nicole Kidman), then a fresh 'Becker' followed by a RERUN 'King Of Queens', then a fresh 'Hallmark Hall O'Fame' tv-movie 'The Locket'.
NBC starts the night with a 'special' - a whittled-down pre-taped parade (from last weekend), the 'Hollywood Christmas Parade', followed by 'Dateline', then a RERUN 'Law & Order: Criminal Intent', then a fresh 'Boomtown'.
ABC begins the night with a fresh 'special' - 'Christmas In Aspen', then rolls out 'Charlie Brown Christmas', followed by a fresh 'Alias' and a fresh 'The Practice'.
The WB has the weekly RERUN 'Gilmore Girls' then a RERUN 'Charmed' followed by a RERUN 'Angel'.
Faux starts the night with a fresh 'Futurama', then a RERUN 'King Of The Hill' followed by a RERUN 'Simpsons' (this year's Halloween special - 'Treehouse of Horror XIII'), then a fresh 'King Of The Hill', followed by a RERUN
'Malcolm', then a fresh 'Andy Richter'.
Nothing fresh on UPN - 'Buffy', 'Enterprise', and 'Stargate SG-1'.
TNT has a fresh tv-movie - 'Miss Lettie & Me' with Mary Tyler Moore & Burt Reynolds.
On Discovery is 'James Cameron's Expedition: Bismarck'.
And, HBO has the season ender of 'The Sopranos'. It's scheduled to run (at least) 75 minutes, not the usual 60. New season starts in September.
Anyone have any opinions?
Or reviews?
(See below for addresses)
Big Dog Watch Continues
Bill Clinton In Liverpool
Former U.S. President Bill Clinton, right, speaks with Britain's Duke of York at the start of the National Society to Prevent Cruelty to Children's winter ball in Liverpool,
England, Saturday night, Dec. 7, 2002.
Photo by Phil Noble
The 'New' Bob Hope?
Robin Williams
For the younger generation of military fighters overseas, comic actor Robin Williams may be the 21st century's Bob Hope.
"They love him. He's all they talk about," Hollywood ambassador Johnny Grant said Friday after completing a 10-day USO trip to Afghanistan and Pakistan to visit U.S. service personnel fighting the war on terrorism.
Grant never goes overseas without conducting his ritual poll asking military personnel to name the celebrities they would most like to meet.
"Robin Williams is the big thing," said Grant, who arrived in Afghanistan three weeks after Williams visited them. "The young GIs now have their own Bob Hope and it's Robin Williams. They were all
talking about him. I think they really appreciated him coming home and calling big names and asking them to go over there."
Other favorites requested were Adam Sandler, Janet Jackson, Britney Spears, George Clooney, Denzel Washington and Josh Hartnett. Athletes are also very big - "Charles Barkley would be a huge hit," Grant said.
Robin Williams
Globetrotting Hobbits
'Lord of the Rings'
If it's Sunday, this must be Paris -- that is the exhausted cry from the globetrotting stars of "The Lord of the Rings."
From New York to London, from Copenhagen to Sydney, they are criss-crossing the world for a string of glittering premieres for the mammoth epic.
The "Lord of the Rings" stars, including Christopher Lee and Liv Tyler, face an exhausting schedule of first nights that started in New York. Now it's the turn of
Paris to stage the next big premiere on December 10.
But first the stars have a two day-long ordeal by media on Sunday and Monday -- the world's press are queuing up for soundbites to launch their coverage of one of
the most eagerly awaited movies of the year.
The stars will also be taking in Copenhagen, Los Angeles, Wellington and Sydney to ensure the film gets a publicity blast-off before it hits the silver screens.
For more, 'Lord of the Rings'
And The Other Judd Sister
Bono
Irish rocker Bono, lead singer for U2, talks to the media about the Debt, AIDS, Trade for Africa organization during a news conference while country music singer,
Wynonna Judd watches in Louisville, Ky., Saturday, Dec. 7, 2002. The Heart of America tour is to help raise American awareness of the epidemic of AIDS in Africa.
Photo by Patti Longmire
Donates Portrait to Town
Katharine Hepburn
Katharine Hepburn has given a gift to her town — a portrait of her that had hung over the fireplace in her New York City apartment.
The portrait, which shows Hepburn dressed casually in khakis, a black turtleneck and sneakers, was painted by her old friend Myfanwy Pavelic. Pavelic, a well-known portrait artist
from British Columbia, did the painting about 30 years ago.
The 95-year-old actress is in frail health and lives in seclusion in her house in Fenwick. The home was a summer enclave she first began visiting with her family in 1913.
Katharine Hepburn
Latest No-Show Sparks Melee
Guns N' Roses
Fans at a sold-out rock show became unruly after the group Guns N' Roses failed to appear, and police were called to the concert arena, officials said.
Witnesses at the First Union Center on Friday night reported angry fans yelling and cursing, some throwing bottles and chairs, and ripping up plants, but a spokesman for the arena
operator denied the accounts. Several fights were reported.
A spokesman for the arena operator said officials were called shortly after 11 p.m. Friday and told one member of Guns N' Roses was ill, and that the band would not be able to perform.
He said he did not know which member was sick.
The sold-out concert drew an estimated 14,000 fans.
Guns N' Roses
In The Kitchen With BartCop & Friends
30th Anniversary Of Apollo 17
Astronauts
Thirty years have passed, but no amount of time could dim the vivid memory Eugene Cernan has of being the last person to leave footprints on the moon.
"It's like you would want to freeze that moment and take it home with you. But you can't," Cernan recalled Friday night as he got together with fellow Apollo 17
astronaut Harrison Schmitt and other aviation pioneers to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the last manned mission to the moon.
Other astronauts gathered Friday at the mountaintop estate of entrepreneur and space enthusiast Robert H. Lorsch included Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin (Apollo 11),
T.R. Mattingly (Apollo 16) and James Lovell (Apollo 13).
The elegant dinner was a benefit for the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation, which supports advanced education for college students of science and technology.
For a lot more, Astronauts
Two Masterpieces Stolen From Museum
Van Gogh
Two Vincent Van Gogh oil paintings worth millions of dollars were snatched by thieves on Saturday in a daring robbery at an Amsterdam museum dedicated to the tortured 19th century Dutch artist.
Thieves scrambled on to the roof of the Van Gogh Museum using a ladder and ropes, broke in, descended to the first floor of the three story building and disappeared with
the renowned paintings about two hours before the museum opened, police said.
The thieves, who triggered the burglar alarm, fled with the oil paintings "Congregation Leaving the Reformed Church in Nuenen" and "View of the Sea at Scheveningen"
from a museum with the largest Van Gogh collection in the world.
The stolen paintings date from the early period of his work. "Congregation Leaving the Reformed Church in Nuenen," an oil painting on a small canvas, was completed
in early 1884 for Van Gogh's mother and father.
The church in the picture is the one where his father was a pastor. The painting features a congregation outside a church on a dark autumn day.
"View of the Sea at Scheveningen," painted in 1882, is a view of the North Sea at a beach resort near The Hague set against a dark thundery sky.
Van Gogh
Newest Universal Theme Park
Shanghai
Entertainment giant Vivendi Universal SA signed an agreement Saturday to build a Universal Studios theme park in booming Shanghai, beating much-fancied Walt Disney Co to the punch.
Glenn Gumpel, president of international business affairs at Universal Parks and Resorts, told a packed news conference the U.S. firm's share of the project could be about 25 percent in a deal
potentially costing hundreds of millions of dollars.
Shanghai city officials said the Universal project, China's first world-class theme park, had effectively stolen a march on Disney's ambitions for the mainland.
"He who comes first will gain the most," Hu Wei, deputy secretary general of the Shanghai government, told the news conference, estimating the park would create 10,000 jobs.
The park, to be built with Shanghai city-owned Waigaoqiao Group Co and Shanghai Jinjiang (Group) Holding Co, would be a larger version of Universal's $1.0 billion park in Osaka, Japan, Universal executives said.
Shanghai
Formerly 'The Vidiot'
Kennedy Center Receives $100M Gift
Catherine B. Reynolds Foundation
A $100 million gift to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the largest in its history, will help build an education center and a new eight-acre plaza to improve access to the center from downtown Washington.
The plaza, to be built over several freeways that now cut the Kennedy Center off from downtown, also will contain a new museum of performing arts. The project is expected to be completed over the next decade.
The gift from the Catherine B. Reynolds Foundation is the first major donation to go toward the $650 million project.
A businesswoman, Reynolds started a financial services company, then sold it to a bank and set up a charitable foundation valued at $500 million.
Catherine B. Reynolds Foundation
John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
The New 'Miss World'
Azra Akin
Turkish beauty Azra Akin won Miss World on Saturday in a contest hurriedly moved to Britain from Nigeria after deadly Muslim-Christian riots sparked by controversy over the pageant.
Akin, a 21-year-old model, took the crown and 100,000 pounds ($157,000) ahead of Miss Colombia, Natalia Peralta, in second and Miss Peru, Marina Mora Montero, in third place.
Miss World was founded in 1951 by British impresario Eric Morley, who was seeking publicity for the Festival of Britain. In a long tradition of polemics, enraged feminists stormed the stage
in the 1970s and pelted the host, comedian Bob Hope, with flour bombs.
Azra Akin
Building Movie Complex In Wales
Richard Attenborough
Local officials have given the final go-ahead to Richard Attenborough's plans to build a $470 million movie studio complex in a deprived area of south Wales.
The development control committee of the Rhondda Cynon Taff County Council, which has long supported the idea of building a "Welsh Hollywood," formally approved it Thursday.
Attenborough is backing a consortium that plans to build the ultramodern complex on 350 acres at Llanilid in south Wales, creating up to 2,000 jobs. It also will include an international film
academy and movie-based leisure attractions similar to those at Universal Studios in California.
The complex, to be called Dragon International Studios, will have the latest facilities for making feature films, TV productions and commercials with full editing and post-production facilities.
Richard Attenborough
Oasis Returns to Tour
Liam Gallagher
British rock band Oasis is to return to the stage in Wales on Sunday to finish a European tour after a brawl in a Munich bar forced two shows to be canceled.
Wildman vocalist Liam Gallagher, 30, lost two teeth in the fight on December 1, leaving him unable to sing in two scheduled German shows.
But a band spokesman said on Saturday dentists had repaired the damage and the final, British leg of the two-month tour would go ahead.
Older brother Noel seemed unimpressed with Liam's behavior.
"Liam's got his teeth back for Christmas and we're back in business," he told Sunday's News of the World newspaper, which carried a picture of Liam showing off his new teeth.
Liam Gallagher
Comment Draws Prison Term
'Burning Bush'
A man who made a remark about a "burning Bush" during the president's March 2001 trip to Sioux Falls was sentenced Friday to 37 months in prison.
Richard Humphreys of Portland, Oregon was convicted in September of threatening to kill or harm the president and said he plans to appeal. He has said the
comment was a prophecy protected under his right to free speech.
Humphreys said he got into a barroom discussion in nearby Watertown with a truck driver. A bartender who overheard the conversation realized the president
was to visit Sioux Falls the next day and told police Humphreys talked about a "burning Bush" and the possibility of someone pouring a flammable liquid on Bush and lighting it.
'Burning Bush'
from ~~ that mad cat, JD, who observed ''THE LAST PEOPLE WHO
LISTENED TO A BUSH SPENT FORTY YEARS WANDERING IN THE DESERT.''
Thanks, JD
Thanks, Ray!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Who's The Bigger Problem?
Canadians
Well over a third of Canadians think U.S. President George W. Bush poses a bigger threat to peace than Iraq's Saddam Hussein, although far more worry about Saddam,
according to an opinion poll published on Saturday.
The poll of 1,205 adult Canadians showed that 38 percent of Canadians thought Bush was a greater threat to world peace than Saddam, and 56 percent thought Saddam was the bigger risk.
The survey, by the EKOS polling group, was published in the Toronto Star newspaper and in La Presse in Montreal.
More than half those surveyed thought that relations between Canada and the United States had soured in the last year and 65 percent thought Washington had no
business telling Canada to boost defense spending.
A Chretien aide caused a storm last month when she referred to Bush as a "a moron" in what she thought was a private conversation. She quit in embarrassment
after the media picked up the tale, and Chretien, who had initially sought to defend her, insisted that he did not think Bush was "a moron" at all.
According to Canadian media reports, White House officials privately refer to the 68-year-old Chretien as "dino," short for dinosaur.
For all the details, Canadians
In Memory
Glenn Quinn
Glenn Quinn, best known for his recurring role on the sitcom "Roseanne" and a former co-star on "Angel," has died. He was 32.
Quinn was found dead of a possible drug overdose Dec. 3, authorities said Friday. An official cause of death was pending an autopsy and toxicology reports.
Born in Dublin, Quinn joined the cast of "Roseanne" in its third season, playing Becky Connor's boyfriend and later husband, Mark Healy.
He later co-starred as the half-demon Doyle on "Angel," a spinoff of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" that debuted in 1999.
Although most of his roles required him to hide his Irish accent, "Angel" was his first performance in which he could speak naturally.
"When you get to speak Irish, you become more at one with yourself, you kind of have a spark when you use it, and I think it's a great dialect," he said at the time.
Born in 1970, Quinn moved to the United States in 1988 with his mother and two sisters.
He made his feature film debut with a supporting role as a drummer in the 1991 John Travolta movie "Shout," in which he shared an on-screen kiss with Gwyneth Paltrow. He went on to appear in the films "Dr. Giggles," "Live Nude Girls" and "Campfire Tales."
He also appeared in the TV movies "Call Me Anna" and "Silhouette" and co-starred in "Covington Cross," a short-lived, historical-fantasy series, which aired in the United Kingdom and on ABC in 1992. Most recently, he co-starred in "At Any Cost," a 2000 VH1 movie.
He is survived by his mother, Bernadette, and two sisters, Sonya and Louisa.
Glenn Quinn
In Memory
Philip Berrigan
Philip Berrigan, the former Roman Catholic priest who with his Jesuit brother Daniel led a generation of religious opposition to the Vietnam War and the nuclear arms race, died of cancer at the age of 79, his family said on Saturday.
Berrigan died late on Friday at Jonah House, his communal living facility for pacifists in West Baltimore, after being diagnosed with liver and kidney cancer in October. He stopped chemotherapy after one treatment and received last rites at a Nov. 30 ceremony officiated by the Rev. Daniel Berrigan.
"These are hair-trigger times, with well-manicured barbarians at the wheel and our nuclear strike force poised and ready," he said in a statement to friends and supporters issued earlier this week.
"The American people will prevail. So will all thoughtful and decent people throughout the world," added the message, sent to well-wishers on a Jonah House card.
Berrigan, who spent at least 11 of the past 35 years behind bars for acts of civil disobedience, was ordained a Josephite priest in 1955 and assigned to teach black children in Louisiana, where the Civil Rights movement inspired him to a lifelong commitment to peace and social justice.
He and Daniel Berrigan became national figures of the anti-war movement during the Catonsville Nine protest on May 17, 1968, when they and fellow activists poured homemade napalm onto hundreds of Selective Service cards outside a draft board at a Knights of Columbus hall in Catonsville, Maryland.
"I die with the conviction, held since 1968 and Catonsville, that nuclear weapons are the scourge of the earth; to mine for them, manufacture them, deploy them, use them, is a curse against God, the human family, and the Earth itself," Berrigan said in a statement given to his wife, the former nun Elizabeth McAlister, during the weekend before Thanksgiving.
Howard Zinn, Boston University historian and Berrigan friend, credited the brothers with forging a path of religious civil disobedience for U.S. Catholics from the Vietnam War to conflicts in Latin America and the Persian Gulf.
In a statement to Reuters, Zinn described Philip Berrigan as "one of the heroes of our time, a man of immense courage and commitment" whose devotion to peace "stands in such stark contrast to the war-makers who hold power in Washington.
Philip Berrigan, a World War II veteran, helped found the Plowshares peace movement against the modern arms race in 1980, on the Biblical ethic of beating swords into plowshares. The group's first act was to break into a General Electric defense plant near Philadelphia, smash the nose cones of Mark 12A warheads and douse blueprints with blood.
In his final clash in December 1999, he and three other Plowshare activists broke into an Air National Guard base near Baltimore and attacked two A-10 warplanes with blood and hammers to protest the military's use of depleted uranium in armor-piercing shells.
He was imprisoned for the act and remained behind bars until Dec. 14, 2001.
"There are times when I'd like to just sit back in my rocking chair, but I'm going to fight all the way and hopefully die with my boots on," Berrigan told Reuters in a May 2001 interview at a federal prison in Ohio.
His public appearances against violence and militarism continued into this autumn, though he needed a walker to get around.
In his 1996 autobiography, "Fighting the Lamb's War," Berrigan described Jesus as a revolutionary committed to social justice and Washington as a plantation where minorities live in shoddy housing and work at lousy jobs or wait to be herded into prison as members of a neglected surplus populace.
"I see no point in working within an evil system. Christ was never a reformer. He didn't advocate voting for one corrupt politician over another," Berrigan wrote. "He preached that we should dismantle, not attempt to patch, the state."
Born Oct. 5, 1923, in Two Harbors, Minnesota, Philip Francis Berrigan is survived by his wife, two daughters, a son and four brothers.
Philip Berrigan
Samara'a, Iraq
Malwiyeh
Iraqis climb the Malwiyeh (spiral) in the historic city of Samara'a, December 6, 2002. Thousands of Iraqi visitors from across the country were at the site on the second
day of the Muslim festival of Eid al-Fitr, which marks the end of the holy fasting month of Ramadan.
Photo by Suhaib Salem
'The Osbournes'
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