'TBH Politoons'
Thanks, again, Tim!
Reader Comment
Re: See-Through Clothes
If some folks are disappointed that Japan doesn't have see-through
clothing, why not buy from this
European clothing line?
~~ Mike P.
Thanks, Mike!
Chainsaw Carving Rendezvous 2003
Ridgway, PA
The 3 larger communities of Elk County are St. Marys (home of Straub Beer & the first Benedictine convent in the US),
Johnsonburg (where I grew up - the town with the paper mill), and Ridgway (the county seat).
28 Feb - 2 March is the Ridgway Chainsaw Carving Rendezvous 2003.
It's the largest gathering of chainsaw artists in the world, as well as a charitable event, with all artwork auctioned for the 'Make-A-Wish' Foundation.
So far, there are entrants from Japan, Germany, England, Sweden, Scotland, New Zealand, Canada, and 35 states!
Ridgway Chainsaw Carving Rendezvous 2003
Many thanks to Susita Luchs for sending the link!
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
The day started off rainy, but cleared to bright, breezy & sunny by mid-afternoon.
Seems that the kid 'forgot' to turn in his science project paperwork, so we had to go talk to the science teacher after school today. Thankfully, she handled it like a pro. It looks like we're going
to be growing sugar crystals in the oven this weekend (and probably next, too).
Talked to dear old Dad tonight. He has about 3' of snow on the ground, and he's still not a very happy camper.
Thursday night, ABC debuts a new show - 'Profiles From The Front Line', from Jerry Bruckheimer & Bertram van Munster.
It's really not my 'kind' of program, but, one of my pals, Lynne, a real Xmas Nutt, has a son who's story will be featured. His name is Chris.
The new head of LAPD thinks if the TV stations don't air the high speed chases, the chases will decrease. Current statistics show about 80% of the chases are for petty crimes, and that the actual number of chases have gone down since
they've been televised. Guess facts should never get in the way of a sound bite, and cameras to LAPD are like garlic to a vampire. As my old boss Chuck used to say 'perception is more important than the reality'.
Tonight, Thursday, CBS opens the night with a FRESH 'Survivor', followed by a
RERUN 'CSI: Crime Scene Investigation', and then a FRESH 'Without A Trace'.
Dave was supposed to be FRESH, but will be a RERUN (tomorrow night, too) - Dave's got an infected eye (see below).
Scheduled on a FRESH Craiggers are Skeet Ulrich and The Pretenders.
Both Dave & Craiggers are RERUNs all next week
NBC starts with a RERUN 'Friends', then a FRESH 'Scrubs', followed by a
RERUN 'Will & Grace', then a FRESH 'Good Morning, Miami', followed by a
RERUN 'Friends', and then a RERUN 'Will & Grace'.
Scheduled on a FRESH Jay are Ellen DeGeneres, George Foreman, and DMX.
Scheduled on a FRESH Conan are Chazz Palminteri, Ali G, and Kasey Chambers.
Scheduled on a FRESH Carson Daly are Luke Wilson and Ben Lee.
ABC has the Series Premiere of 'Profiles From The Front Line', then a FRESH
'Are You Hot?', and then a FRESH 'I'm A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here'.
Scheduled on a FRESH Jimmy Kimmel are Anna Nicole Smith, and this week's guest co-host Don King.
The WB begins the evening with a FRESH 'Sabrina', then a FRESH 'Family Affair',
and finally, a FRESH hour-long 'Jamie Kennedy'.
Faux RERUNs 'Joe Millionaire: The Aftermath', then the 'Pulse'
UPN offers 'WWE Smackdown!', with a battle of the the receding hair lines.
Anyone have any opinions?
Or reviews?
(See below for addresses)
Ninety-three-year-old activist Doris Haddock, left, of Dublin, N.H., speaks to Maggie Rawland, of Des Moines, Iowa, after giving a speech for the group Citizens for Community Improvement
on campaign finance reform in the rotunda of the Iowa State Capitol in Des Moines, Iowa, Wednesday, Feb. 26, 2003. Haddock has walked across the U.S. to demonstrate for campaign reform and
between 1999 and 2000, walked over 3,000 miles in protest.
Photo by Alex Dorgan-Ross
Drives Stake Through 'Buffy' Return
Sarah Michelle Gellar
Put a stake in her: Sarah Michelle Gellar's done with "Buffy the Vampire Slayer."
The actress has confirmed to producer Joss Whedon something most industry insiders have assumed for months -- namely, that this season will be her last with the UPN series, according to people connected to the show.
Her departure also likely means "Buffy," at least in its current incarnation, will wrap in May, something that's also not much of a shocker, given the show's apocalyptic storylines this season.
Still to be decided: whether the producers and UPN will proceed with a new "Buffy" spinoff, or whether the franchise will simply end. WB Entertainment president Jordan Levin said Tuesday he's hopeful
but not certain that "Angel," a "Buffy" spinoff launched in 1999, will be back next fall.
Sarah Michelle Gellar
Takes First Sick Day
Dave Letterman
David Letterman took a rare sick day on Wednesday, staying home from his "Late Show" because of an eye infection.
Actor Bruce Willis was an emergency replacement, called upon to interview Dan Rather about the CBS anchor's interview with Saddam Hussein.
Except for when he missed time following a heart bypass operation, it's the first time Letterman has called in sick in 20 years, a "Late Show" representative said.
"Late Show" will air reruns on Thursday and Friday. Next week is a planned "dark" week, when reruns will also air.
Dave Letterman
The Information One-Stop
Moose & Squirrel
Strikes Back at MSNBC
Phil Donahue
Phil Donahue struck back at MSNBC on Wednesday for his firing, suggesting the network was too quick to pull the trigger and that it might be trying to "out-fox Fox" with conservative voices.
Donahue's political talk show, a distant third in the cable news ratings in his time slot, was abruptly pulled from the air after Monday's show. The show premiered last July 15.
The legendary talk show host noted that "Donahue's" ratings were better than anything else in struggling MSNBC's prime-time lineup.
"It took almost three years for Fox (News Channel) to overtake CNN," Donahue said in a statement Wednesday. "We had six months."
He noted that the network recently hired conservative commentator
Mike Savage as host of a weekend show, and retired GOP politicians Dick Armey and
Joe Scarborough as contributors.
This suggests "a strategy to out-fox Fox," he said.
Meanwhile, the Web site www.allyourtv.com posted a commentary on Wednesday by Rick Ellis saying that he had been leaked an internal NBC study that described Donahue as "a tired, left-wing liberal out of touch with the current marketplace."
The report allegedly said Donahue presented a difficult face for NBC at a time of war, saying a nightmare scenario would be one in which his show becomes "a home for the liberal anti-war agenda at the same time our
competitors are waving the flag at every opportunity."
"Donahue," which is presenting reruns until the end of the week, will be replaced by an expanded version of MSNBC's war preparation news show "Countdown: Iraq."
Phil Donahue
Joe Scarborough - isn't there a dead intern attached to that name? (Lori Klausutis)
The world's oldest Asian elephant, 86-year-old Lin Wang, seen in this undated photograph, died of old age on Feb. 26, 2003, at the Taipei Zoo. The much-loved elephant was a World War II veteran that carried cannons for the Japanese army in Burma. He was awarded to Chinese troops as a war trophy after the defeat of the Japanese and moved to Taiwan with the Nationalist army in 1949.
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Lifetime Achievement Award
Nora Ephron
Screenwriter Nora Ephron is this year's recipient of a lifetime achievement award from the Writers Guild of America, East.
Ephron, who's received Oscar nominations for "Silkwood," "When Harry Met Sally ..." and "Sleepless in Seattle," will be honored during the 55th Annual Writers Guild Awards on March 8.
Ceremonies will take place simultaneously in New York and Los Angeles.
The Writers Guild of America, East, is the East Coast branch of the union representing professional writers in film, television and radio.
Nora Ephron
Writers Guild of America, East Web site
Claims She Was Framed
Dionne Warwick
Dionne Warwick, who was arrested at an airport last year after authorities found marijuana in her bag, is blaming someone else for putting it there.
"Apparently, somebody that didn't want to get caught thought it would be better off in somebody else's bag," the pop singer recently told The Associated Press.
The 62-year-old was arrested in May and charged with a misdemeanor after baggage screeners at Miami International Airport said they found marijuana joints inside an empty lipstick container in her bag.
Charges were dropped after Warwick agreed to a plea bargain deal, which included a drug treatment program.
Warwick says she's not a drug user. "Drugs of every sort, including aspirin, are not anything I even think about," she said.
Dionne Warwick
Pubic Hair Ad
Gucci
A Gucci advertisement featuring a woman with her pubic hair cropped in the shape of a letter "G" got the go-ahead from Britain's tough advertising watchdog on Wednesday.
Sixteen outraged members of the public had complained to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) that the Italian fashion house's advert was indecent.
But the ASA, which has a reputation for taking a harder line than its counterparts in other European countries, judged the advertisement was targeted at sophisticated, adult fashion magazine readers who would not be offended.
The advert, which is running in British fashion magazines, shows a woman wearing an open silk kimono and underwear which she has pulled part-way down to reveal the letter "G." A man kneels in front, staring at her pubic hair.
Gucci
In The Kitchen With BartCop & Friends
Toby Keith & Pam Anderson To Host
CMT Awards
Country singer Toby Keith and former "Baywatch" TV star Pamela Anderson will co-host Country Music Television's "Flameworthy 2003" music video awards show.
Keith, whose hits include "Who's Your Daddy?" and "Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry American)," also will perform on the show, scheduled to air at 8 p.m. EST April 7 on CMT.
Other performers include Shania Twain, Kenny Chesney, Faith Hill, Tim McGraw, Alan Jackson and Rascal Flatts.
Last year's "Flameworthy" awards, the station's first, drew 6.3 million viewers, according to CMT. Winners are chosen by the channel's viewers.
CMT Awards
CMT Web site
A Colombian peasant handles a bag of coca paste crude semi-refined cocaine in a makeshift drug lab in southern Colombian jungles, January 30, 2003. President Alvaro Uribe, a firm Washington ally,
has stepped up a U.S.-sponsored fumigation campaign to cripple the world's largest cocaine industry.
Photo by Daniel Munoz
Syndicated in U.S.
Grand Ole Opry
Highlights from the Grand Ole Opry will be recorded and distributed to radio stations across the nation in a syndication deal.
For nearly 78 years, the Opry has been broadcast exclusively on Friday and Saturday nights on WSM-AM radio. The station, which created the country music program, has a signal heard in about 38 states.
Beginning in April, "America's Grand Ole Opry Weekend," a two-hour weekly show distributed by the Westwood One radio network, will feature performances by country music stars recorded live from the Opry stage.
Country music recording executives on Tuesday cheered the decision by Opry owner Gaylord Entertainment to go nationwide.
The syndication announcement comes a little more than a year after Gaylord Entertainment raised an uproar among country stars like Vince Gill and George Jones by considering switching the format of WSM
from country music to sports. Speculation then was that Gaylord wanted to syndicate the Opry.
Grand Ole Opry
Grand Ole Opry
Denounces Protest Song
George Michael
Singer George Michael, who has spoken out against a U.S.-led war on Iraq, says most other pop acts are too lightweight to carry off a peace protest song.
The former Wham! frontman criticized plans by Lee Ryan of British boy band Blue to gather stars for a paean to peace.
Ryan said last week that he hoped to approach stars such as Justin Timberlake, Pink and Kylie Minogue for a song in the spirit of Band Aid, the 1984 record in aid of Ethiopian famine relief.
But Michael said the prospective participants were too young and politically naive to carry it off.
"I'm begging, I'm hoping that there will not be a Band Aid 2 because the reality is that very, very few people in the industry now, that you're hearing on the radio, make their money from their
own hearts and minds," said Michael, who performed on Band Aid's "Do They Know It's Christmas?" in 1984.
"They make their money from singing the words of others, and so therefore the weight of something called Band Aid 2 would be incredibly slight," he told the British Broadcasting Corp.'s "Hardtalk"
program in comments broadcast Wednesday.
George Michael
Formerly 'The Vidiot'
Lynyrd Skynyrd Guitarist Has Surgery
Gary Rossington
Lynyrd Skynyrd lead guitarist Gary Rossington, a founding member of the southern rock band, underwent successful heart bypass surgery this week and is expected to fully recover within two to three months.
Rossington, 51, underwent the quintuple bypass surgery Tuesday at an Atlanta area hospital, band spokesman Lathum Nelson said in Los Angeles.
Because of the surgery, the scheduled May 6 release of Lynyrd Skynyrd's new Sanctuary Records CD "Vicious Cycle," their first album in four years, has been delayed until late June, Nelson said Wednesday. Tour dates through May 25 are also being rescheduled.
Gary Rossington
www.lynyrdskynyrd.com
A Russian model with her body painted in nautical themes performs during a contest in St. Petersburg, February 24, 2003. The annual contest of hairdressers, nail art and body art designers started in St.Petersburg on Saturday.
Photo by Alexander Demianchuk
Author to Cast Spell Over 'Simpsons'
J.K. Rowling
The creator of Harry Potter, the world's most popular boy wizard, is set to cast a spell over cult U.S. cartoon show "The Simpsons," her spokeswoman said Wednesday.
J.K. Rowling will bring a touch of magic to the animated sitcom about the dysfunctional family by appearing as herself in an episode set in England.
In the episode, Rowling will meet beer-guzzling Homer Simpson and his family when they visit England to find a girl with whom Grandpa Simpson had a wartime fling.
"'The Simpsons' bump into J.K. Rowling outside a bookshop and they talk all about Harry Potter," Don Payne, executive producer of the cult cartoon told the Sun newspaper.
The episode will also feature "Lord of the Rings" star Sir Ian McKellen, the paper said.
The family go to see him perform the Shakespeare play "Macbeth," but bring him bad luck by saying the play's name aloud -- in defiance of a well-known theatrical superstition.
This leads to the actor being hit by scaffolding and then struck by lightning.
J.K. Rowling
Art Exhibit Showcases
Black Stereotypes
A white gown and hood spread on the museum's floor are the first unsettling images greeting visitors at an exhibit exposing historical stereotypes of blacks in American culture.
"The intended effect is to walk on this symbol of hatred," said Timothy Watkins about the Ku Klux Klan uniform. Watkins' personal collection of memorabilia helped create "Americana, Extremes Meet," on display
through May 30 at the Cecil Ferguson Gallery in Los Angeles.
The compilation shows how images that demean blacks are ingrained in American society.
For example, a 1930s print advertisement for Otis Elevators, hailing the advent of "finger tip control" buttons, depicts a black porter in an offensive caricature with oversized lips and bulging eyes. He is
leaning over to pick up bags for a white man in a trench coat.
The print copy appears to have a dual meaning, referring at once to the product and the porter: "Elevators that have that lazy uncertain way of getting up and down almost always respond admirably to a program of modernization."
Near the exhibit's entrance, a record album with a red KKK label is mounted on a wall. The record's title track is called "Daddy Swiped Our Last Clean Sheet and Joined the Ku Klux Klan." The album was produced by Columbia Recording Corp.
The exhibit showcases the memorabilia in an American-style living room, kitchen and children's bedroom.
"It's not meant just to shock. But it's meant to put in a part of history that is never taught," said curator Cecil Ferguson, 71.
Watkins, 49, said he has spent at least $250,000 collecting the memorabilia, including $2,000 spent for a book of sheet music titled, "Coon Songs." His instinct to collect was influenced by his
father, Ted Watkins, who escaped a lynch mob in his youth in Mississippi.
For more, Black Stereotypes
Legal Business
Bhang
Rajesh Vyas loves his job with a passion, always uses his own product -- and sincerely promises you will not turn into an orange or see pink elephants.
From a small wooden hut near the gate to the 850-year-old Golden Fort in Jaisalmer, one of India's most popular tourist draws, Vyas and his brothers sell marijuana. Legally.
Vyas' customers munch, slurp and smoke their way through about 30 kg (66 lb) of "bhang", as it is called, every month in yoghurt drinks and fruit juices, cookies and chocolate, cigarettes and sweets, tea and sandwiches.
"Do not anticipate or analyse, just enjoy," advises the menu. "You will not see pink elephants, jump off tall buildings or turn into an orange. You will remember most of your experiences in the morning."
Vyas insists bhang, also called vijaya (the winning stuff), is safer and better than alcohol and induces a mild euphoria and sense of wellbeing, eases pain and is not addictive.
"It's natural, it's not harmful to the body. In India, it's part of the culture," he says, weighing a 20-gram clump of green chocolate that will sell for about 400 rupees (5.70 pounds).
Indian "bhang" is made of dried and ground cannabis leaves and is far weaker than products made from the plant's buds and resin and is legal in parts of India, where it has a long tradition of use for key religious festivals.
Its use is widely tolerated during major celebrations such as Holi, the festival of colour, which celebrates the arrival of spring.
Vyas runs the only legal outlet in Jaisalmer, a tourism-dependent city of about 60,000, with two of his five brothers, a family of Hindu high-caste Brahmins.
Vyas's customers vary from locals whetting their appetite for dinner to foreign backpackers and Indian women tourists daring to try something different away from the strict rules of home.
The family has been running the shop for almost three decades since it was started by Vyas's bhang-loving father, who at 65 still takes some every day.
For even more, Bhang
In Memory
Tom Glazer
Tom Glazer, a folk singer best known for fanciful children's songs including one about a mountain of spaghetti, died Friday at his home in Philadelphia. He was 88.
A cause of death was not immediately given.
Glazer was one of a group of folk singers, including Leadbelly, Woody Guthrie, Josh White and Burl Ives, who helped popularize folk music in the 1940s.
Glazer's best-remembered song, though not his own favorite, was "On Top of Spaghetti," a 1963 hit sung to the tune of "On Top of Old Smoky." The song, featuring a wayward meatball, had a chorus of children singing lines like "On top of spaghetti, all covered with cheese."
Another in the loose coalition of musicians, Pete Seeger, remembered Glazer as a solid performer.
"He wasn't fancy," Seeger said Tuesday. "He was just straightforward. He had a good sense of humor."
Glazer was born in Philadelphia and hitchhiked to New York when he was 17. He later went to Washington, worked at the Library of Congress and befriended Alan Lomax, who established the library's Archive of American Folk Song.
In 1945, he started an ABC radio show, "Tom Glazer's Ballad Box." He was host of a weekly concert show for children in the 1960s on WQXR radio in New York.
Glazer also wrote books about music and composed songs recorded by Frank Sinatra, Perry Como and the Kingston Trio.
Tom Glazer
Two deer stand together as the sun sets in the Bitter Lakes National Wildlife Refuge near Roswell, New Mexico, Tuesday, Jan. 25, 2003.
Photo by Gregory M. Jones
'The Osbournes'
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