'TBH Politoons'
Thanks, again, Tim!
Commentary
How Disney Gets To The Top
(a non-review of Finding Nemo)
I tried to go see The Italian Job last Saturday night,
but the lines for Finding Nemo were so long, I would
have missed the first half hour. You see, Finding
Nemo was only showing on one cell (out of nine) of the
multiplex where we live, so if the real movie you
wanted to see was playing within 15 minutes of the one
Disney was offering, you were SOL. Could this be how
Finding Nemo creamed all other movies by more than a
two to one margin this past weekend?
This is how it works:
1. Ration prints to one per theater (Disney saves big
$$$).
2. Send all ticket takers but one on break.
3. Schedule all movies to start at the same time.
Since the parents simply must come along with every
group of ankle-biters, the minimum number of tickets
sold per household is three. Guaranteed, because this
film has been relentlessly hyped on the Disney Channel
for the past year, you will sell out every show.
Meanwhile, anyone who wants to see ANYTHING ELSE is
hosed. Voila! Disney's latest merchandising vehicle
is number one at the box office.
Once inside the theater, you will be subjected to a
minimum of 20 minutes of trailers for every other
piece of utter crap Disney plans to release over the
next two years, including the one with Haley Joel
Osment (rapidly changing voice only, not the actual
actor) from two years ago when the project was
supposed to go direct-to-video and therefore not cause
undue harm to his career and reputation (bet he's
pretty steamed about The Jungle Book II). The actual
film will last no longer than 1 hour, 40 minutes. The
DVD will be released in November, just in time for
Christmas shopping season and a whole new round of
merchandising. By next spring, it will be on the
Disney channel, where you will see it for seven
minutes at a time while they show five minutes of
commercials, mostly trailers for the next Disney
merchandising vehicle...er...movie.
So anyway, we did actually get to see The Italian Job,
on Sunday afternoon (Nemo started an hour earlier),
and it kicked ass. It wasn't a great movie; it was a
really FUN movie. It had something Disney forgot
about before Walt's body was even cold - STYLE! If
you can get past the crowds for this year's big Disney
merchandising extravaganza, it's worth seeing at least twice.
=====
For commentary that makes sense...Way 2 Much Sense
New issue every Monday at noon.
Thanks, Jeff!
Way Cool Link
Re: Clear Channel
Hello all - I have put a database online of US radio stations owned
by Clear Channel, searchable by multiple criteria. Go to:
Reader Comment
Re: Crossfire
Paul Bagala is great! Here is a quote from today's Crossfire: (I'm not sure it's exact)
How can you tell when President Bush is misleading the American public?
His lips are moving.
With 36% of Americans (of course that's the lowest 36%) not benefiting from his latest tax cut, his changing reasons for entering Iraq, forgetting about Afghanistan, Al Queda, Saddam, Osama, claiming Iran now is a threat (like we can really believe him after the rest of the lies), and don't forget Syria and Saudi Arabia. But we hardly ever hear about North Korea. They really do have WMD's! But he's in Europe, kissing up. I hope they watch Crossfire over there.
Joanne H
Thanks, Joanne!
More Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
Updated
from Mark
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Sun never broke through til after 4pm.
Only 9 days of school left - not that anyone around here is keeping track.
Tonight, Tuesday, CBS opens the evening with a FRESH 3-hour 'special' - 'AFI's 100 Years ... 100 Heroes & Villains'.
Scheduled on a FRESH Dave are Alec Baldwin and Tom Dreesen.
Scheduled on a FRESH Craiggers are Natasha Henstridge and Paul Bettany.
NBC has a FRESH 'Dog Eat Dog', followed by the Donald Trump-owned 'Miss Universe Pageant'.
Scheduled on a FRESH Jay are Miss Dog Beauty Pagent Finalists, Paul Walker, and Jack Johnson.
Scheduled on a FRESH Conan is Roseanne Cash.
On a RERUN Carson Daly (from 3/13/03), is Jason Schwartzman and Killer Mike.
ABC begins the night with a RERUN '8 Simple Rules', followed by another RERUN '8 Simple Rules', then a
RERUN 'Jim', followed by a RERUN 'Less Than Perfect', and then a RERUN 'NYPD Blue'.
Scheduled on a FRESH Jimmy Kimmel are Henry Winkler, the Marijuanalogues, and Redman, with this week's guest co-host Method Man.
The WB offers a RERUN 'Gilmore Girls', followed by a RERUN 'Smallville'.
Faux has the Series Premiere of 'American Juniors', followed by the Series Premiere of 'Keen Eddie'.
UPN offers a RERUN 'Buffy', followed by a FRESH 'America's Next Top Model'.
A&E has 'Biography' (Jennifer Jones), then 'Cold Case File'.
AMC offers the movie 'American Werewolf in London', followed by the movie 'Halloween 5'.
Bravo the movie 'Brubaker', followed by the movie 'Lord of the Flies'.
Scheduled on a FRESH Jon Stewart is Eddie Izzard.
Scheduled on a FRESH Colin Quinn are Pete Correale, Pat Cooper, and Patrice Oneal.
SciFi goes 'Evil' for the evening.
TCM offers the movie
Yours, Mine and Ours (1968) (
Henry Fonda &
Lucille Ball do the 'Brady Bunch' one better), followed by the movie
Smokey and the Bandit (1977)
(with Burt Reynolds,
Sally Field,
Jerry Reed, and
Pat McCormick as 'Big Enos Burdette', and as 'Little Enos Burdette'
Paul Williams), and then one of the best American movies ever
made about the media -
'A Face In The Crowd' (1957).
Andy Griffith is amazing as
'Lonesome Rhodes', with
Patricia Neal as Marcia Jeffries,
directed by Elia Kazan, and written by
Budd Schulberg (from his story 'Arkansas Traveler') - one of my top 5 films.
Anyone have any opinions?
Or reviews?
(See below for addresses)
Federal Communications Chairman Michael Powell listens to fellow commissioner Kathleen Abernathy before a vote in Washington on media ownership rules June 2, 2003. Along party lines, the Republican-led FCC approved by a 3-2 vote sweeping new rules that will allow television broadcasters to expand their reach, despite fears about reducing the diversity of viewpoints.
Photo by Kevin Lamarque
Makes Cable Rating History
Willie Nelson
Willie Nelson's birthday special, Live & Kickin', which aired on the USA Network on Memorial Day (May 26), was the most watched concert special in the history of basic cable television. The previous ratings holder was 1999's VH1 Divas Live concert.
Live & Kickin' featured performances by Shania Twain, Aerosmith's Steven Tyler, Eric Clapton, ZZ Top, Kenny Chesney, Toby Keith, and Sheryl Crow, among others. A live album recorded at the show is due in stores on June 24.
Nelson's duet with Keith, called "Beer For My Horses," sits at Number Three on the R&R country singles chart.
Willie Nelson
The Information One-Stop
Moose & Squirrel
Worried About Indie TV Scarcity
Writers
How hard have independent producers been hit by the wave of media consolidation during the past decade? Pretty hard, according to the Writers Guild of America.
The WGA's survey found that for the upcoming season, only three out of 124 series on the networks' fall schedules could truly be considered independent productions. In 1992, there were 31 independently produced shows out of a total of 103, according to the guild filing.
Of the three series, one of them was World Wrestling Entertainment's "WWE Smackdown!" two-hour wrestling block on UPN. Carsey-Werner-Mandabach, the last sizable independent company active in primetime production, accounted for the other two: the Fox sitcom "That '70s Show" and the WB Network sitcom "Grounded for Life."
Writers
This undated photographic handout from the U.S. Postal Services shows five different Southeastern lighthouses that will be issued as new postage stamps June 13, 2003.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Version #1
Franken / O'Really
Tempers flared over the weekend in a face-to-face, TV showdown between Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly and political humorist Al Franken.
A visibly shaken O'Reilly appeared to have been caught off guard by a blistering attack by Franken in the midst of a usually sedate booksellers' luncheon in Los Angeles on Saturday.
Franken, author of the forthcoming book "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them," accused O'Reilly - at length - of puffing up his credentials as the former host of the TV news magazine "Inside Edition."
O'Reilly sat stone-faced during a detailed attack on his credibility - then exploded into a verbal free-for-all with Franken that was as surprising as it was intense.
"All he's got in six-and-a-half years is that I misspoke, that I labeled a Polk Award a Peabody," said O'Reilly, referring to evidence that he had claimed "Inside Edition" has won two Peabody Awards, TV journalism's equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize.
In fact, it was the slightly-less prestigious Polk the show had won.
When Franken tried to interrupt, O'Reilly went ballistic.
"Hey, shut up! You had your 35 minutes - shut up!" he shouted, visibly furious.
"We're supposed to be on here for 15 minutes - this idiot goes 35."
"This isn't your show, Bill," Franken shot back.
The subtitle of Franken's new book, due out this fall, is "A Fair and Balanced View of the Right" - an obvious dig at Fox News Channel's slogan.
The dustjacket of Franken's book features a photo of O'Reilly between the words "Lies" and "Lying."
According to co-panelist Molly Ivins, during a C-SPAN2 call-in show, "It was the first time [O'Reilly] had seen the cover and he was teed off to the max."
Franken / O'Really
Version #2
Franken / O'Really
Bill O'Reilly, the conservative talk show host, first decried political commentators who ''call people names.'' Then he called Al Franken, the liberal humorist, an ''idiot.''
Both were on a panel Saturday to discuss their new books at Book-Expo America, an annual convention for booksellers and publishers where authors are not known for shouting insults at each other.
But when the convention ended Sunday, the buzz was less about the hottest novels of the fall than the raucous debate between O'Reilly of Fox News, who has written Who's Looking Out for You?, and Franken, author of Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right.
Unlike Ernest Hemingway's encounter with poet Wallace Stevens, no punches were thrown, but both men walked away without a handshake after Franken questioned O'Reilly's veracity and O'Reilly dismissed Franken as a ''propagandist.'' During the shouting, the moderator, former congresswoman Pat Schroeder, asked whether anyone had a referee's whistle.
Franken's book cover pictures him in front of TV monitors showing resident Bush, Vice President Cheney, commentator Ann Coulter and O'Reilly.
Schroeder said that, backstage, O'Reilly said his photo was used without permission. Franken said it was in the public domain. Later, O'Reilly said, ''Fox lawyers will handle this.''
O'Reilly called Franken ''vicious'' and said he was ''blinded by ideology.'' The third member of the panel, Molly Ivins, author of Bushwacked, just shook her head.
''I can't bring people together,'' O'Reilly said. ''My job is to rattle the cages. It's to put the bad guys on alert.''
Franken said it's time for liberals ''to stop taking it'' and to call conservatives on their lack of civility.
That set off O'Reilly. ''You write a book called Liar, Liar and you talk about civility. Unbelievable.''
''That's not the title,'' Franken said, ''but it's close.''
As for calling Franken an idiot, O'Reilly told a reporter, ''If I said it, I misspoke.'' Then he said, ''I stand by my description.''
Franken / O'Really
Tour Money to AIDS Fund
Carlos Santana
Carlos Santana plans to put his music and his money up as weapons in the fight against AIDS.
Santana intends to donate the proceeds from this summer's United States portion of the 'Shaman' tour to benefit Artists for a New South Africa (ANSA).
The donations will be earmarked for grants and aid to South African groups working to fight AIDS, according to Santana's official Web site. The tour will also have information tables about AIDS at every stop, and at some concerts, speakers will address the audience during the show.
The tour kicks off June 13 in Raleigh, N.C.
Carlos Santana
In The Kitchen With BartCop & Friends
Court Allows Comic to Mutate Musicians
'Jonah Hex'
A comic book that illustrated mutant antiheroes inspired by albino blues musicians Johnny and Edgar Winter did not violate their rights, the California Supreme Court ruled on Monday in a seven-year-old lawsuit.
DC Comics, a division of AOL Time Warner, included half-worm, half-human brothers Johnny and Edgar Autumn in a series called "Jonah Hex: Riders of the Worm" in 1995.
The brothers sued in Los Angeles Superior Court the next year, alleging the comic likeness subjected them to contempt and ridicule.
The California Supreme Court acknowledged the comic brothers resembled the two musicians, and even took the unusual step of attaching a replica of a comic book cover to the decision.
Yet the court ruled the images were so fantastic and altered that they were permitted under First Amendment freedom of expression rights.
'Jonah Hex'
A woman from Myanmar sells photographs of Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi at the headquarters of the National League for Democracy (NLD) in Yangon on May 2, 2002. World leaders on June 2 urged the government of Myanmar to release pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi and condemned the Southeast Asian country's crackdown on dissent.
Photo by Sukree Sukplang
Just Won't Learn Their Place
Dixie Chicks
Just as the controversy appeared to be dying down after the Dixie Chicks' Natalie Maines mildly ridiculed resident Bush before the start of the Iraq war, country radio programmers are disappointed in the group once again.
This time, they take issue with the fact that Maines apparently chose to take a shot at fellow country musician Toby Keith during her May 21 performance at the Academy of Country Music Awards. Maines wore a sleeveless shirt with the letters F.U.T.K. on the front.
The spat between Maines and Keith goes back to his single "Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry American)," which Maines criticized in the media last year. Keith responded with public comments that Maines wasn't in his league as a songwriter. In his concerts, Keith has been showing on big screens behind the stage the doctored photo of Maines and Saddam Hussein that began circulating on the Internet a few months ago after Maines criticized Bush.
Dixie Chicks
Honored In Stockholm
Ingmar Bergman
Ingmar Bergman was honored Monday for his work in preserving and restoring aging color films.
The legendary Swedish director, whose "Fanny and Alexander" won the Oscar for best foreign language film in 1984, received the Film Preservation Award from the Brussels-based International Federation of Film Archives.
The ceremony took place at the Swedish Film Institute in the capital, Stockholm.
Bergman made some 60 films before retiring from the industry. He's still active in Sweden with stage productions and occasional television shows.
Ingmar Bergman
FIAF
Formerly 'The Vidiot'
Broadway's First Casualty
'Little Shop of Horrors'
The new Broadway season has suffered its first casualty — even before the show opened. "Little Shop of Horrors" has canceled its summer Broadway engagement.
An $8 million revival of what was one of off-Broadway's biggest hits had been scheduled to begin preview performances July 16 at the Virginia Theatre where the marquee for the musical already is up. An opening had been set for Aug. 14.
"Little Shop," based on the cult 1960 Roger Corman movie about a man-eating plant, ends an engagement June 15 in Coral Gables, Fla., where the show received qualified approval from the local critics.
The original off-Broadway "Little Shop of Horrors" opened in July 1982 and ran for more than five years at the Orpheum Theatre on the Lower East Side. It was directed by Howard Ashman and starred Ellen Greene and Lee Wilkof, who appears in the Florida production.
'Little Shop of Horrors'
Chanelle Kanani Kukona, 23, of Mililani, ends the day and week with a daily meditation at Queens Surf Beach near Waikiki in Honolulu, Hawaii, June 1, 2003. Kukona is a lomi-lomi practitioner (Hawaiian style massage) and says she likes to meditate daily preferably near the ocean. Picture taken June 1.
Photo by Lucy Pemoni
Pleads Innocent, Enters Rehab
Scott Weiland
Former Stone Temple Pilots frontman Scott Weiland pleaded innocent on Monday to drug charges in California, and said he would again enter a rehabilitation program to try to kick persistent heroin and cocaine habits, court officials said.
Weiland, 35, was arrested on suspicion of drug possession during a routine traffic stop on May 17 in Burbank, California, after police allegedly spotted drug paraphernalia inside the car he was riding in. He and the driver of the car, 29-year-old Jennifer Lynn Sires, were later charged with cocaine and heroin possession and released on $10,000 bail.
He was scheduled to return to court on July 11 so that a preliminary hearing can be set.
Scott Weiland
(The Fix Was In)
FCC Allows
U.S. regulators on Monday narrowly approved sweeping new rules that will allow television conglomerates to buy more stations, despite fears that diversity and consumer choice will erode.
The Republican-led Federal Communications Commission voted 3-2 to let networks own television stations anywhere in the country that collectively reach 45 percent of the national audience.
They also will permit local broadcasters to hold two stations in most markets, and will allow cross ownership of newspapers, television and radio stations in a market.
FCC Chairman Michael Powell said the updated rules were needed to reflect new sources of entertainment and news via cable and the Internet, while nay-sayers predicted that the new regulations would spark waves of mergers.
Under the new rules, a company can own two television stations in markets where there are at least five stations, as long as one is not among the top four. A company can own three stations in markets with 18 stations, such as Los Angeles.
In the crowded hearing room, gray-suited lobbyists rubbed elbows with pony-tailed activists and Code Pink, a women's peace group, tried to disrupt the FCC vote singing "Mass deregulation of the mass communication is the end of democracy." Police escorted them from the meeting room.
FCC Allows
Sure is a good thing the FCC changed the law - now a whole bunch of stations are finally running legal - not that they got in any trouble for being illegal for so long.
For example,
here in LA, CBS (channel 2) has had a duopoly since taking over KCAL (channel 9) [they call it a 'sister station' - well, only if your sister & aunt are the same person].
NBC (channel 4) has a triopoly (yeah, but their other 2 stations are in Spanish [channels 22 & 52] - oh, wait - how many Spanish-language stations are there here?).
Fox (channel 11) has a duopoly (channel 13) [but, channel 13's physical property is owned by CBS].
And, the Chicago Tribune can now legally own KTLA (channel 5) & the LA Times. Damn scofflaws.
The only missing vhf-station is channel 7, ABC/Disney.
The U.S. Board on Geographic Names
Jim Crow Lives
The two-lane concrete bridge over a creek on one of Florida's rural state roads has almost no distinguishing feature, except, that is, for its name.
Nigger Jim Hammock Bridge in Hendry County is just one of 144 places throughout the United States whose name or an official version of it includes the derogatory term for black people, a term seen as the ultimate, signature word for racism in America.
According to the United States Board of Geographic Names, 35 states have locations whose names include the derogatory word. California, the third-largest state by land area, has 26 such place names, followed by Nevada with 13.
Most of them label bodies of water -- streams, bays, reservoirs, creeks and lakes. Others are summits, valleys, trails or mines. Maryland has an island called Negro Island or Nigger Island in Wicomico County. Washington state has a Nigger Creek in Chelan County, according to the federal database.
In North Carolina, which has seven such sites, a bill which the Senate plans to take up would force counties to register new names with state officials who then will notify the U.S. geography board.
The U.S. Board on Geographic Names, responsible for maintaining uniform geographic name usage throughout the federal government, universally changed in its federal database all names using "nigger" to "negro" in 1963 as well as all names using "Jap" to "Japanese" in 1971, according to Roger Payne, the federal board's executive secretary.
But such derogatory names may still exist on state and local maps, resulting in the dually listed "negro" and "nigger" sites in the federal database.
For the rest, Jim Crow Lives
Visitor feeds milk to bears at an almost deserted Beijing Zoo, Tuesday May 27, 2003 in Beijing. Zoos and other tourism-dependent businesses have been devastated by official efforts to contain SARS virus by discouraging Chinese from traveling. The public also is anxious about pets and zoo animals after reports the disease might have originated in animals.
Photo by Eugene Hoshiko
'Ark of Darkness'
"The Ark of Darkness", a Political/Science-Fiction work, in tidy, weekly installments (and updated every Friday).
'The Osbournes'
'The Osbournes' ~ Page 4
'The Osbournes' ~ Page 3
'The Osbournes' ~ Page 2
'The Osbournes' ~ Page 1
