'Best of TBH Politoons'
Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Arianna Huffington: Democrats Can't Wait Around for GOP Defectors to End the War (HuffingtonPost.com. Posted on AlterNet.org)
No matter how many Republicans abandon the president on Iraq, it is Democrats who must seize this moment and take the lead in bringing our troops home.
The Doctor Will See You-In Three Months (businessweek.com)
In reality, both data and anecdotes show that the American people are already waiting as long or longer than patients living with universal health-care systems.
Joel Stein: Man up, you doves (latimes.com)
STOP BLAMING George Bush. "He lied to us." "He tricked us." Suddenly everyone - Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, all of my friends - is claiming to have been a dove who was bamboozled by the cleverness of our president. When "American Idol" drops to a 30% approval rating, I predict you all also will claim that Paula Abdul outsmarted you into watching two hours of karaoke each week.
Jim Hightower: BLACK-ROBED CORPORATISTS (jimhightower.com)
Do you feel as sorry for corporate executives as I do? These poor babies feel put upon by their own shareholders, customers, and workers who have sued them to stop their fraud, monopoly pricing, discrimination, and other illegal acts. The corporate royalty is mightily offended that such commoners have been allowed to interfere in its brutish pursuit of riches, and the royalists have been crying louder than Paris Hilton about the unfairness of having to answer to the law.
Joel Stein: Paris fans are so Paris (latimes.com)
WHO ARE Paris Hilton fans? I understand the desire to read about her. The chick is fascinating: rich, pretty, mean, self-obsessed and, yet, somehow, despite all that, not at all bad in bed. But to actually root for her, to write her letters of support while she's in jail, to stand outside her house and scream, "I love you!" - what causes a person to do that? What kind of kid puts up a poster of a villain? What little girl says, "Sure the puppies are cute, but those pelts make Cruella De Vil look totally hot"?
Annalee Newitz: Transformers Is More Than Just a Cheap Truck Commercial (alternet.org)
Maybe the movie succeeded in pulling off some social commentary after all: welcome to the United States -- ignore the Middle East stuff, but stay for the masturbation jokes and cool special effects.
Richard Schickel: How Hollywood reads (latimes.com)
They messed with 'Double Indemnity' and 'Moby-Dick,' They won't mess with Harry.
Nick Claussen: Student performance artists use Athens area as their canvas (athensnews.com)
If you ever wondered what it would sound like to dump 2,400 ping-pong balls down a brick-lined street on a hill, you should have been on Smith Street in Athens [Ohio] Sunday afternoon.
David Bruce: Wise Up! Mishaps (athensnews.com)
The Ramones worked hard at their concerts, touring constantly and playing even when they were ill. In their early days, bass player Dee Dee Ramone was making $125 a week but had a $100-a-day drug habit. Still, he showed up for concerts -- for one thing, Johnny Ramone fined band members $25 for showing up late. One concert, because of the drugs, Dee Dee was ill, so he made his way to the side of the stage and vomited -- but he kept on playing!
Reader Comment
Bethel Woods
Marty,
A few months ago you mentioned Bethel Woods on your blog and I thought I would tell you that I went there Saturday night to hear the NY Philharmonic. It is only 25 miles from my home. It is a spectacular venue. I am indeed fortunate to live so close.
It was the last concert for one of the french horn players. I thought it was funny that, after a 30 year career, one of his final performances was Purple Haze by Jimi Hendrix. Everyone, including the NY Philharmonic, honors the original event.
Willow
Thanks, Willow!
Hope we can get together on our big trip to PA - could even search for purds. ; )
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Pleasant on the coast, hot inland.
PhD Thesis After 30 Years
Brian May
After more than 30 years which he spent as a member of one of the world's most successful bands, Queen guitarist Brian May has finally finished his PhD thesis which he began as a student in the 1970s, The Times reported on Thursday.
May, 59, earned a degree in physics at Imperial College London but after years of studying interplanetary dust, he abandoned work towards his doctorate when Queen took off.
His interest in the subject was reignited when he co-authored "Bang! The Complete History of the Universe", which tells the story of the universe from the big bang through its subsequent evolution, and was released last year.
"For the last nine months, I've done nothing except slave over my PhD, which is now written up, thank God," May reportedly told students at a ceremony at Exeter University in southwest Britain when he received an honorary doctorate.
Brian May
Cheese Fan
Catherine Zeta-Jones
In a revelation that will warm the hearts of tongue-tied lotharios everywhere, Welsh actress Catherine Zeta-Jones has revealed the chat up line that actor Michael Douglas used to snare her.
In an interview with US magazine Parade due out this Sunday, Zeta-Jones, routinely voted one of the world's sexiest women, relates how Douglas wooed her with the some would say cheesy line, "I want to father your children."
"But there was one thing I had to be sure of. I turned to him and said, 'Do you really want children?' And I thought, for that one minute, he was going to say, 'I already have a son, Cameron,' and I would have to say goodbye.
"I remember saying defiantly, 'I cannot live without having children.' And he went, 'Me too.'" Zeta-Jones, who at 37 is exactly 25 years younger than her husband, 62, married Douglas in 2000. The couple now have two children.
Catherine Zeta-Jones
Working On Memoir
Paul Shaffer
David Letterman's longtime sidekick, Paul Shaffer, is stepping into the spotlight with a memoir about his show business career.
"These anecdotes have been accumulating in my mind for the past three-plus decades; it's been a nutty ride, and I felt it imperative to finally commit my reflections to the page ... at least Volume One," Shaffer, 57, said in a statement issued Wednesday by Flying Dolphin Press, an imprint of Random House, Inc.'s Doubleday Broadway Publishing Group.
The book, currently untitled, is scheduled to come out in 2009. Shaffer will work on it with David Ritz, who has collaborated on memoirs by Marvin Gaye and Ray Charles among others.
Paul Shaffer
Benefits Breast Cancer Fight
DVD Sale
20th Century Fox and MGM are teaming up on a giant DVD sale to raise money for the fight against breast cancer.
On September 18 the two studios will re-release a dozen DVD titles chosen to appeal to women, including "Thelma and Louise" and "Never Been Kissed," in distinct pink packaging. Fifty cents from each DVD sold (the list price is $14.98) will go to Susan G. Komen for the Cure, a leading research organization in the fight against the disease.
The studios have pledged a minimum donation of $250,000 in what's being billed as "DVDs for the Cure."
Other titles in the promotion include "An Affair to Remember," "A Walk in the Clouds," "Entrapment," "Ever After," "In Her Shoes," "Legally Blonde," "Mermaids," "Moulin Rouge," "Say Anything" and "There's Something About Mary."
DVD Sale
Sidelined By Back Injury
Phyllis Diller
Phyllis Diller had to cancel a "Tonight Show" appearance celebrating her 90th birthday because she fractured her back - but the comedian still plans to celebrate.
Diller "twisted the wrong way" and caused "a minor injury, some kind of a fracture which is extremely painful," her manager, Milt Suchin, said Wednesday.
The injury also forced Diller to cancel an appearance this week before the Television Critics Association.
"It's very disappointing," Suchin said. "She was going to do a standup bit but she really can't stand up properly."
Phyllis Diller
Court TV Changing Name
truTV
Court TV is adjourning in favor of truTV.
The network on Wednesday announced its name would change, effective Jan. 1, 2008, to better reflect an emphasis on nonfiction programming.
TruTV will still offer court coverage from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. each day, and on its Web site. But the focus shifts at 3 p.m., when a new talk show with Star Jones as host airs.
Nonfiction series like "Forensic Files" and "Haunting Evidence" will continue, the network said. But the network is also developing series on female bounty hunters in Miami, con artists and life-or-death rescues.
truTV
Back In Orlando
Lou Pearlman
The creator of the Backstreet Boys and 'N Sync is back in Florida to face charges of defrauding a bank out of $20 million.
Lou Pearlman, 53, was escorted by federal marshals from Los Angeles to Orlando on Tuesday. He was being held in Orange County jail and was scheduled to have his first appearance before a judge Wednesday afternoon, Deputy U.S. Marshal Jimmy Disbrow said.
Disbrow said he believed Pearlman was being represented by a public defender. A telephone message left for the public defender's office by The Associated Press wasn't immediately returned Tuesday night.
Lou Pearlman
West Try To Settle Lawsuit
Evel Knievel & Kanye West
Ionic motorcycle daredevil Evel Knievel and 29-year-old rapper Kanye West notified a federal judge Tuesday they will use a mediator to try to settle a lawsuit Knievel filed over the use of his trademarked image in a popular West video.
Knievel, who lives in Clearwater, sued West in December. He took issue with a 2006 music video for the song "Touch the Sky," in which the rapper takes on the persona of "Evel Kanyevel" and tries to jump a rocket-powered motorcycle over a canyon.
In the video, West dons the familiar Knievel star-studded jumpsuit and jumps a canyon in a vehicle "visually indistinguishable" from the one Knievel used in his attempt to jump the Snake River Canyon in Idaho in 1974, the lawsuit said.
The 68-year-old Knievel claimed infringement on his trademarked name and likeness. He also claimed the "vulgar and offensive" images depicted in the video damage his reputation.
Evel Knievel & Kanye West
Under New Management
Nixon Library
The privately operated Richard M. Nixon Library and Birthplace is now under federal control and researchers can pour over documents and tapes detailing "the good, the bad and the ugly."
After a simple opening ceremony Wednesday, library officials and docents shared champagne and cake before moving to the research room to view 78,000 newly released Nixon papers and 11 1/2 hours of audio tape.
For nearly 20 years, library visitors were told the Watergate scandal was really a "coup" by Nixon's rivals and the investigative reporting team of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein offered bribes for their nation-shaking scoops.
The new library director is taking some of the whitewash off the scandal resulting from the break-in at Democratic headquarters in the Watergate complex in Washington and the subsequent White House cover-up. The revised account is a precondition for receiving 42 million pages of the former president's papers and nearly 4,000 hours of tapes from the National Archives.
Nixon Library
Porn Star Borrows Name
Lara Madden
A Houston woman is suing a former high school classmate who took her name and starred in pornographic movies.
Kristen Syvette Wimberly, 25, is asking that Lara Madden and film distributor Vivid Entertainment Group stop using or publicizing her name, which Madden took as a stage name.
The two met in ninth grade at Kingwood High School. According to the lawsuit, they "were friends but eventually that friendship ended due to conflict."
Madden, 25, began her adult-film career in 2004 and has appeared in about a dozen adult films using the name Syvette Wimberly.
Lara Madden
New Questions Raised
Jim Morrison
The official story goes like this: On the last night of Jim Morrison's life, the rocker went to a movie in Paris, listened to records, fell ill and died of heart failure in his bathtub at the age of 27.
But rumors have always swirled around the death of The Doors frontman and, 36 years later, a former Paris nightclub manager is telling a different story. In a new book, Sam Bernett says that Morrison died in a toilet stall of his club after what he believes was a heroin overdose.
He writes of his shock on finding Morrison's body: "The flamboyant singer of 'The Doors,' the beautiful California boy, had become an inert lump crumpled in the toilet of a nightclub." Bernett, whose French-language book is called "The End: Jim Morrison," says he believes two drug dealers brought Morrison's body back to his apartment.
Bernett, who was in his early 20s when Morrison died in 1971, went on to become a prominent radio personality, rock biographer and a vice president of Disneyland Paris. Though he was pestered for years by reporters investigating Morrison's death, he kept his story quiet until his wife suggested writing a book last year.
Jim Morrison
Found In Florida Preserve
Ghost Orchid
A rare ghost orchid has been found growing high in an old cypress tree in a southwest Florida nature preserve.
Two visitors looking for owls on Saturday spotted the endangered orchid growing about 45 feet off the ground in a tree at Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary in Naples. The orchid, featured in the nonfiction book "The Orchid Thief" and the fictional movie spinoff "Adaptation," is about 150 feet from the sanctuary's boardwalk and can be seen only with binoculars and good lighting.
The orchid, which blooms for about two weeks, has nine flowers, triple the usual number. It is not clear how long this ghost orchid has been blooming.
Ghost Orchid
Nielsen Cable
Ratings
Rankings for the top 15 programs on cable networks as compiled by Nielsen Media Research for the week of July 2-8. Day and start time (EDT) are in parentheses.
1. "The Closer" (Monday, 9 p.m.), TNT, 5.14 million homes, 7.18 million viewers.
2. Auto Racing: Nextel Cup/Daytona (Saturday, 8:06 p.m.), TNT, 4.24 million homes, 6.26 million viewers.
3. "WWE Raw" (Monday, 10 p.m.), USA, 3.58 million homes, 5.01 million viewers.
4. "WWE Raw" (Monday, 9 p.m.), USA, 3.4 million homes, 4.89 million viewers.
5. Movie: "The Bourne Supremacy" (Sunday, 8 p.m.), TNT, 3.12 million homes, 4.12 million viewers.
6. "Cory in the House" (Sunday, 8:30 p.m.), Disney, 3.05 million homes, 4.04 million viewers.
7. "Army Wives" (Sunday, 10 p.m.), Lifetime, 2.92 million homes, 3.54 million viewers.
8. "Burn Notice" (Thursday, 10 p.m.), USA, 2.87 million homes, 3.94 million viewers.
9. "Hannah Montana" (Thursday, 4:30 p.m.), Disney, 2.794 million homes, 3.57 million viewers.
10. "The Suite Life of Zack & Cody" (Sunday, 8 p.m.), Disney, 2.790 million homes, 3.7 million viewers.
11. "SpongeBob SquarePants" (Wednesday, 9:30 a.m.), Nickelodeon, 2.76 million homes, 3.4 million viewers.
12. "FOP Movie Channel Chasers" (Sunday, 10 a.m.), Nickelodeon, 2.68 million homes, 3.45 million viewers.
13. "SpongeBob SquarePants" (Wednesday, 9 a.m.), Nickelodeon, 2.66 million homes, 3.29 million viewers.
14. "Heartland" (Monday, 10 p.m.), TNT, 2.63 million homes, 3.44 million viewers.
15. "Family Guy" (Sunday, 11 p.m.), Cartoon, 2.58 million homes, 3.42 million viewers.
Ratings
In Memory
Claudia Alta 'Lady Bird' Johnson
Lady Bird Johnson, the former first lady who championed conservation and worked tenaciously for the political career of her husband, Lyndon B. Johnson, died Wednesday, a family spokeswoman said. She was 94.
The daughter of a Texas rancher, she spent 34 years in Washington, as the wife of a congressional secretary, U.S. representative, senator, vice president and president. The couple had two daughters, Lynda Bird, born in 1944, and Luci Baines, born in 1947. The couple returned to Texas after the presidency, and Lady Bird Johnson lived for more than 30 years in and near Austin.
As first lady, she was perhaps best known as the determined environmentalist who wanted roadside billboards and junkyards replaced with trees and wildflowers. She raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to beautify Washington. The $320 million Highway Beautification Bill, passed in 1965, was known as "The Lady Bird Bill," and she made speeches and lobbied Congress to win its passage.
She had a cool head for business, turning a modest sum of money into a multimillion-dollar radio corporation in Austin that flourished under family ownership for more than a half-century. With a $17,500 inheritance from her mother, she purchased a small, faltering radio station in 1942 in Austin. The family business later expanded into television and banking.
She and her daughters remained active in her wildflower advocacy and with the LBJ Library in Austin after the former president's death in 1973. Into her 90s, Lady Bird Johnson made occasional public appearances at the library and at civic and political events, always getting a rousing reception.
She was born Claudia Alta Taylor on Dec. 22, 1912, in the small East Texas town of Karnack. Her father was Thomas Jefferson Taylor, a wealthy rancher and merchant. Her mother was the former Minnie Lee Patillo of Alabama, who loved books and music.
Lady Bird Johnson received her nickname in infancy from a caretaker nurse who said she was as "pretty as a lady bird." It was the name by which the world would come to know her. She disliked it, but said later, "I made my peace with it."
She graduated from Marshall High School at age 15 and prepared for college at St. Mary's Episcopal School for Girls in Dallas. At the University of Texas in Austin she studied journalism and took enough education courses to qualify as a public school teacher. She received a bachelor of arts degree in 1933 and a bachelor of journalism in 1934.
In December 1972, the Johnsons gave the LBJ Ranch house and surrounding property to the United States as a National Historic Site, retaining a life estate for themselves. The property is to transfer to the federal park service after her death.
In addition to her two daughters, survivors include seven grandchildren, a step-grandchild, and several great-grandchildren.
Claudia Alta 'Lady Bird' Johnson
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