David Olive: U.S. economy may dodge recession bullet (thestar.com)
You wonder some days if the Republican majority on the U.S. Supreme Court that installed George W. Bush in the White House in 2000 sought to restore Herbert Hoover's reputation. The hapless 31st U.S. president at least tried to soften the blow of the Great Depression, though his methods were not the radical prescription required to save capitalism from itself.
CHRIS HERRINGTON: James McMurtry sketches the lives of people trying - and often failing - to make it here (memphisflyer.com)
Best of the bunch is the single "Cheney's Toy," which some have suggested is aimed at Bush but which seems to me something bolder, tougher, and sadder. I think it's sung directly to troops fighting in Iraq, with McMurtry offering bitter, sarcastic advice ("Stay the course and make your mama proud") before dropping the gut-punch: "You're the man they're all afraid off, but you're only Cheney's toy."
Jonathan Yardley on 'Sing Me Home' (washingtonpost.com)
"Country profoundly understands what it's like to be trapped in a culture of alienation: by poverty, by a [lousy] job, by lust, by booze. . . . If you truly want to understand the whole United States of America in the twentieth century, you need to understand country music and the working people who lived their lives by it."
During his childhood as a vaudeville entertainer, he often appeared in states and cities with strict child labor laws. To get around these laws, he was billed as "The Dancing Midget", and conspiciously walked around backstage with a rubber cigar in his mouth and a woman on each arm. Who is/was this entertainer?
A: George Burns
B: Sammy Davis, Jr.
C: Chico Marx
D: Groucho Marx
E: Mickey Rooney
Burgess Meredith was the second choice for 'The Penguin' role on the TV series
Batman. Who was the first choice?
A: Jack Benny
B: Henry Fonda
C: Gene Kelly
D: James Stewart
E: Spencer Tracy
Source
Burgess Meredith was the second choice for "The Penguin" role in "Batman" (1966). Producers had originally wanted
Spencer Tracy in the role, but Tracy wouldn't sign unless his character was allowed to kill Batman.
Obviously, they did not want to kill the main character, so the role went to Meredith.
Source
Vic Tracy (AKA: Vic in AK) was first, and correct, writing:
Whoot Whoot!!! A Batman question that involves kin of mine!!! And the answer is my grandfather's cousin E: Spencer Tracy
As you may realize I share the Tracy penchant for acting and I also had the hots for "Kate" and would sport wood every time I went fishing near Old Saybrook.
Speaking of acting, I am about to finish editing episode TWO of my mildly popular public access teevee show The New Ghoul Review.
This weeks episode lampoons the classic horror movie "Werewolf in a Girls Dormitory" ...giggity giggity...oh yeah!!!
Solstice is this weekend and I plan to film in costume in the midnight light......damned light all the time fills me full of energy....sucks
Not to compete with Sally's awesome Keg party Pic but here's a pic of some of us Tracys
Notice the resemblance to uncle Spence???? and you'll never guess which one is me....go ahead...GUESS!!!
mj answered:
Only because he looked so good in tails and a top hat
My 7th grade English teacher's brother, C Gene Kelly.
Charlie responded:
E.: Spencer Tracy
Alan J replied:
Spencer Tracy
Buzzcook wrote:
Spencer Tracy was first choice for the Penguin.
And, Sally said:
Burgess Meredith was the second choice for 'The Penguin' role on the TV series Batman. Vic in Alaska was the first choice.
(Well, he coulda been a young , "Penguin...")
How about, Spencer Tracy?
Getting real, Tracy was offered the role of "The Penguin" in the TV series, "Batman" (1966) before Burgess Meredith. He said he would only accept the role if he was allowed to kill Batman.
Marian the Teacher responded:
Spencer Tracy
Chuck answered:
As a fan of the Batman show, the answer is E. Spencer Tracy.... He actually demanded his character "Penguin" to kill Batman. Not a good demand for a continuing series.
And, Joe S ("I am interested in the fleeting moment, the gesture, that action that can be found in the everyday. Moments that are often missed, that are nothing and at the same time part of a greater rhythm of our life on earth. In these there is something specific to the time and place, yet universal. These are the spaces in-between. These are the moments of action and reaction, of new beginnings, a complete story. Or they are just as they appear - a simple glance, a wave, a walk."
- Morgan Showalter-) wrote:
Well, The only likely Penguin I can see on the list is Spencer Tracy.
My son, Anthony (the one who just visited me in Jersey) is performing with 'his' band, paik at Terrastock 7
this weekend (19 - 22 June, 2008) in Louisville, Kentucky.
"Terrastock is not an indie-rock A&R feeding frenzy. Bands and artists are there at the personal invitation of the organisers because we love their music and they love the way we do things. It's simply about the music, and about the whole Terrastock spirit. If you've ever been to a Terrastock, you'll know what we mean..."
CBS opens the night with a RERUN'How I Met Your Mother', followed by a RERUN'Rules Of Engagement', then a RERUN'CSI: The Original One', followed by a FRESH'Swingtown'.
Scheduled on a FRESHDave are Jason Bateman, Teri Garr, and Keyshia Cole.
Scheduled on a FRESHCraig are Billy Bob Thornton and Lewis Black.
NBC begins the night with a RERUN'The Office', followed by a FRESH'Last Comic Standing', then a FRESH'Fear Itself'.
Scheduled on a FRESHLeno are Wanda Sykes, James McAvoy, and Duffy.
Scheduled on a FRESHConan are Anne Hathaway, Romany Malco, and My Morning Jacket.
Scheduled on a FRESHCarson 'The Scab' Daly are Adam Carolla, Gary Cannon, and Cloud Cult.
ABC starts the night with a RERUN'Ugly Betty', followed by a 2-hour RERUN'Grey's Anatomy'.
Scheduled on a FRESHJimmy Kimmel are Steve Carell and Jewel.
The CW a RERUN'Smallville', followed by a RERUN'Supernatural'.
Faux a FRESH'Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader?', followed by a FRESH'So You Think You Can Dance'.
MY fills the night with the movie 'Texas Rangers'.
A&E has 'CSI: The 2nd One', 'The First 48', another 'The First 48', and a FRESH'Crime 360'.
AMC offers the movie 'Open Range', followed by the movie 'Troy'.
BBC -
[12:00 PM] How Clean Is Your House? - Episode 11
[12:30 PM] How Clean Is Your House? - Episode 12
[1:00 PM] Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares - Ep 5 Sandgate
[2:00 PM] Cash in the Attic - Ep 19 Wickins
[3:00 PM] Bargain Hunt - Ep. 2 Harrogate 41
[3:30 PM] Bargain Hunt - Ep. 3 Kedleston 48
[4:00 PM] You Are What You Eat - Episode 13
[4:30 PM] You Are What You Eat - Episode 14
[5:00 PM] How Clean Is Your House? - Episode 1
[5:30 PM] How Clean Is Your House? - Episode 2
[6:00 PM] Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares - Ep. 4 Moore Place
[7:00 PM] BBC World News America
[8:00 PM] Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares - Ep 1 La Riviera
[9:00 PM] Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares - Ep 4 Morgan's
[10:00 PM] BBC World News America
[11:00 PM] Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares - Ep 1 La Riviera
[12:00 AM] Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares - Ep 4 Morgan's
[1:00 AM] Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares - Ep 1 La Riviera
[2:00 AM] Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares - Ep 4 Morgan's
[3:00 AM] Changing Rooms - Episode 16
[3:30 AM] Changing Rooms - Episode 17
[4:00 AM] Bargain Hunt - Ep. 2 Harrogate 41
[4:30 AM] Bargain Hunt - Ep. 3 Kedleston 48
[5:00 AM] Cash in the Attic - Episode 6
[5:30 AM] Cash in the Attic - Episode 7
[6:00 AM] BBC World News (ALL TIMES EDT)
Bravo has 'Top Chef', another 'Top Chef', 'Kathy Griffin: My Life On The D-List', followed by a FRESH'Kathy Griffin: My Life On The D-List'.
Comedy Central has 'Scrubs', another 'Scrubs', last night's 'Jon Stewart', last night's 'Colbert Report', 'Futurama', 'South Park', another 'South Park', and 'Reno 911!'.
Scheduled on a FRESHJon Stewart is Mike Myers.
Scheduled on a FRESHColbert Report is Bishop N.T. Wright.
FX has the movie 'Basic', followed by the movie 'Men Of Honor'.
History has 'Modern Marvels', another 'Modern Marvels', 'Gangland', and a FRESH'Tougher In Alaska'.
IFC -
[06:00 AM] Separate Lies
[07:35 AM] The Cars That Ate Paris
[09:05 AM] Elephant
[10:30 AM] IFC News Special: 2008 Elections
[11:00 AM] Separate Lies
[12:30 PM] The Cars That Ate Paris
[02:05 PM] Elephant
[03:35 PM] Separate Lies
[05:10 PM] IFC News: 2008, Uncut
[05:15 PM] The Cars That Ate Paris
[06:45 PM] Ravenous
[08:30 PM] Basilisk #23
[09:00 PM] StrangeLand
[10:30 PM] Dead Alive
[12:15 AM] The Fog
[01:50 AM] IFC In Theaters
[02:00 AM] StrangeLand
[03:30 AM] Dead Alive
[05:15 AM] The Fog (ALL TIMES EST)
SciFi has the movie 'SS Doomtrooper', followed by the movie 'Hulk'.
Sundance -
[05:00 AM] The Secret Life of Words
[07:00 AM] Live-In Maid
[08:30 AM] Mercy
[09:00 AM] Part 2
[10:00 AM] Crossing the Bridge: The Sound of Istanbul
[11:30 AM] Monsoon Wedding
[01:30 PM] Avenue Montaigne
[03:30 PM] Choking Man
[05:00 PM] Blind Flight
[07:00 PM] Clean
[09:00 PM] Episode 6
[10:00 PM] Mary J. Blige, Dashboard Confessional & James Blunt
[11:00 PM] Howard Schultz + Norman Lear
[12:00 AM] Episode 6
[01:00 AM] Part 2
[02:00 AM] Episode 6
[03:00 AM] Mike Myers + Deepak Chopra
[04:00 AM] Episode 2 - New York
[04:30 AM] Episode 3 - Chicago
[05:00 AM] Looking for Langston
[05:45 AM] Choking Man (ALL TIMES EST)
Students at a Staten Island, New York, elementary school for autistic children sure like the way Jennifer Lopez moves.
Teacher Kathy Amati and a paraprofessional showed the video for Lopez's "Let's Get Loud" to the students at P.S. 37. The children liked it so much, they wanted to watch it every day.
With their teacher's encouragement, they wrote to Lopez, hoping for pictures or an autograph. Instead, she asked to come to their graduation.
On Tuesday, the singer-actress performed "Let's Get Loud" for a group of eight 10- and 11-year-olds at their graduation ceremony.
Actress Meg Ryan (R) and Annette Bening attend the Women in Film 2008 Crystal and Lucy Awards in Beverly Hills, California June 17, 2008. The awards, presented by Women In Film, Los Angeles, honor outstanding women for their contribution to the entertainment industry.
Photo by Mario Anzuoni
Four months after winning an Oscar, Spanish actor Javier Bardem received a major award in his own country Wednesday for his contribution to Spanish cinema, the culture ministry announced.
Bardem received the 2008 National Cinematography Prize for "the professional goals he has achieved throughout his long career, particularly in 2007, for his defence of the acting profession and for his constant commitment to Spanish cinema, at home and abroad."
The prize, awarded by the Institute of Cinematography and Audiovisual Art and worth 30,000 euros (46,600 dollars), is aimed at "rewarding the most outstanding contribution to Spanish cinema" of the previous year.
Bardem, 39, comes from a family of actors. His mother is a television actress in Spain and his grandparents were also actors.
Don Cornelius has sold his "Soul Train" franchise to MadVision Entertainment, a multimedia company specializing in branded urban content and production.
The deal gives MadVision production rights to the weekly "Soul Train" series along with a catalog of more than 1,100 hours of archival footage from the show's 37-year run.
"Soul Train," which has featured artists from Aretha Franklin to Michael Jackson, airs in syndication. New episodes haven't been produced since 2006, but it's understood that MadVision is considering putting the show back into production at some point.
A first edition of the Nicolaus Copernicus book that puts forth the theory that the sun - not the earth - is at the center of the universe has fetched more than $2.2 million at an auction, nearly double the expected price.
The 1543 copy of Copernicus' "De revolutionibus orbium coelestium" (On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres) was among more than 300 books offered Tuesday at Christie's auction. It was expected to sell for up to $1.2 million.
The collection also included a New Haven, Conn., telephone book issued in 1878, two years after Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone.
Auctioneers had expected the phone book to fetch between $30,000 and $40,000, but the price skyrocketed to $170,500 in a bidding war among six collectors.
Steve Winwood opens for Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers during a stop on their summer tour at Madison Square Garden Tuesday, June 17, 2008 in New York.
Photo by Jason DeCrow
As a parodist, "Weird Al" Yankovic notes that "timing is off the essence." So the accordion-playing artist, who in the past has lampooned "Star Wars," Michael Jackson, Chamillionaire and Queen, is hoping to use viral tools to keep things even fresher.
"Certainly there is the possibility of me being a lot more topical," Yankovic told Billboard.com. "Before I would have to wait until I was getting ready to put an album out and hope I'd be able to latch onto something that was topical and timely -- and even then it would be a couple months before I'd be able to get an album in stores.
"Now, with iTunes and portals like that, ostensibly I could come up with an idea, record it and get it out in the marketplace within a week. That's exciting."
Yankovic said he's having "an ongoing discussion" with his label, the Zomba Music Group subsidiary Volcano, about ways to achieve that. "I don't have a deal in place with my record label right now where that would make sense," Yankovic acknowledged, "but the technology is obviously there, and that's a direction I could certainly see my career going if we could figure out how to make that particular paradigm work."
Celebrity "psychic" Uri Geller and two partners have lost a federal lawsuit claiming the former owners of Elvis Presley's pre-Graceland house breached an eBay contract to sell the Memphis home.
Geller, who gained fame in the 1970s for his alleged power to bend spoons and other objects with his mind, and his partners bid $905,100 for the ranch-style home in a 2006 auction by owners Cindy Hazen and Mike Freeman.
But the deal fell apart. Hazen said Geller's group altered terms of the real estate deal so that it was unacceptable. Geller said Hazen and Freeman reneged on the deal in order to sell it for more to Nashville record producer Mike Curb, who bought the house for $1 million.
On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Jon McCalla ruled that the eBay auction was more of an advertising vehicle than a binding sale.
Even if it was a contract, the judge said, Geller and his partners breached it when they altered the closing terms after the sale.
Tom Petty performs with The Heartbreakers during a stop on his summer tour at Madison Square Garden Tuesday, June 17, 2008 in New York.
Photo by Jason DeCrow
The dramatic proliferation of jellyfish in oceans around the world, driven by overfishing and climate change, is a sure sign of ecosystems out of kilter, warn experts.
"Jellyfish are an excellent bellwether for the environment," explains Jacqueline Goy, of the Oceanographic Institute of Paris. "The more jellyfish, the stronger the signal that something has changed."
Two centuries worth of data shows that jellyfish populations naturally swell every 12 years, remain stable four or six years, and then subside.
2008, however, will be the eighth consecutive year that medusae, as they are also known, will be present in massive numbers.
A newly discovered batch of well-preserved dinosaur bones, petrified trees and even freshwater clams in southeastern Utah could provide new clues about life in the region some 150 million years ago.
The Bureau of Land Management announced the find Monday, calling the quarry near Hanksville "a major dinosaur fossil discovery."
An excavation revealed at least four sauropods, which are long-necked, long-tailed plant-eating dinosaurs, and two carnivorous ones, according to the bureau. It may have also uncovered an herbivorous stegosaurus.
The fossilized dinosaurs are from the same late Jurassic period as those at Dinosaur National Monument, which straddles the Utah-Colorado state line, and the Cleveland-Lloyd quarry near Price.
A life jacket from the Titanic is seen in an undated handout photo released to Reuters on June 18, 2008. The unused life jacket from the doomed Titanic ship will go under the hammer later this month in New York, Christie's auction house said on Wednesday. The cork-filled life preserver -- still largely intact, but stained and torn in parts -- was thought to have been found by farmer John James Dunbar on the Halifax shoreline after the passenger ship sank off Newfoundland.
They haven't rechristened a ship the Irony, but federal researchers are canceling and cutting back on voyages aimed at studying climate change and ocean ecosystems so they can save money on boat fuel.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has scrapped at least four trips nationwide and is shortening others "because of the increase in petroleum prices," chief spokesman Anson Franklin said Wednesday.
In a June 10 e-mail to NOAA field offices and others, portions of which were obtained by The Associated Press, NOAA warned of an "approximate" $1.7 million budget shortfall due to fuel costs, and noted the agency has proposed cutting 231 ocean research days for the year.
One of a few remaining wooden roller-coasters still in working order, Vancouver's classic coaster celebrated its 50th anniversary Tuesday.
The old-fashioned scream machine reaches speeds of more than 70 kilometres per hour after dipping over its first hill, prompting shrill cries from riders as they plummet down the track and bounce around in their seats.
The ride - simply named The Coaster - was built in 1958, and now sees half a million riders each year.
The ride was designed by Carl Phare and built by Walker LeRoy. It's now the only standing roller-coaster built and designed by Phare and LeRoy, who are legendary in the coaster world.
In this photo provided by the San Diego Zoo, four red river hogs root around their home at the San Diego Zoo in San Diego on Wednesday, June 18, 2008. The piglets, born on April 27, get their striped and spotted look from a combination of dark skin beneath light hair. This coloring helps young red river hogs blend into their native rain forest habitat in central and western Africa. As these piglets mature, they will begin to look like their father, Legolas, with a red, shaggy coat, a raised, white mane that runs the length of the spine and black and white tassels on the tips of their leaf-shaped ears.
Photo by Ken Bohn
You have reached the Home page of BartCop Entertainment.
Make yourself home, take your shoes off...
Go ahead, scratch it if it itches.
The idea is to have fun.
Do you have something to say?
Anything that increased your blood pressure, or, even better,
amused or entertained?
Do you have a great album no one's heard?
How about a favorite TV show, movie, book, play, cartoon, or legal amusement?
A popular artist that just plain pisses you off?
A box set the whole world should own?
Vile, filthy rumors about Republican musicians?
Just plain vile, filthy rumors?
This is your place.
Vic Tracy (AKA: Vic in AK) was first, and correct, writing:
And, Sally said:
