Issue #6
Disinfotainment Today
By Michael Dare
From 'TBH Politoons'
Great Site!
Thanks, again, Tim!
Reader Recommendation
'Down To The Bone'
By Warren G
On Bartcop Entertainment you asked for great albums that no one has heard of.
Here's one I just got last week you ought to check out: "Crazy Vibes And Things" by Down To The Bone. It's available through Amazon.com.
This is jazz with a beat and a groove that will get you moving. It's DTTB's 4th CD, and was just released May 21st.
I saw DTTB live in Orlando last summer and just can't say enough about how great these UK jazz musicians are. They really rocked the house!
If you like jazz, check it out. I don't think you'll be disappointed.
Sincerely
~~ Warren G
Thanks, Warren! Sounds tasty. Will have to check it out.
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Few weeks back, a new stray cat entered the neighborhood. Turns out she was in a family way, and closer than her size would lead one to believe.
Then, she disappeared. Found her over the weekend, with her 2 new kittens. One is an orange stripe, with a white bandit mask over the eyes. The other,
horror of horrors, is a calico! Any suggestions for kitten names?
Tomorrow is the last full-day of school for the kid. 2 part days, and he's done for this year! 4th grade, ahoy.
Gotta learn not to answer the phone when it rings late at night - seldom good news.
Tonight, Tuesday, CBS has a 3-hours 'special' 'AFI's 100 Years ... 100 Passions'.
Scheduled on a fresh Dave are Sarah Michelle Gellar and John McEnroe.
Scheduled on a fresh Craiggers is Lisa Rinna.
NBC opens with 2 fresh episodes of 'Spy TV', then reruns of 'Frasier' and 'Scrubs'. 'Dateline' rounds out the night.
Scheduled on a fresh Jay are Nicholas Cage, Mary-Kate & Ashley Olsen and Paul Westerberg.
Scheduled on a fresh Conan are
Scheduled on a fresh Carson Daly are Tom Tolbert and Wyclef Jean.
ABC reruns the hour-long 'Spin City' where Michael J. Fox visits. Then, an episode of 'The Mole II: The Next Betrayal'. A fresh 'Boston 24/7' follows.
Scheduled on a fresh Bill Maher are Tim Stack (actor), Peter Stormare (actor), Tom Fitton ( Judicial Watch pres.), and a TBA.
The WB has reruns of 'Gilmore Girls' and 'Smallville'.
Faux starts the night with a rerun of 'That 70's Show', and then has a fresh series premiere, 'American Idol: The Search For A Superstar'.
UPN reruns 'Buffy', 'Girlfriends', and 'The Hughleys'.
Anyone have any opinions?
Or reviews?
(See below for addresses)
In Stores Today
Osbournes Family Album
The Osbournes Family Album is set for release on Tuesday (June 11), and in support of the album the Osbournes-- Ozzy, Sharon, Kelly, and Jack--will appear and meet fans at the
Virgin Megastore in Times Square in New York City.
The songs on the album were all hand-picked by members of the Osbournes family, including Ozzy, who explained the reasons behind his choices.
"First of all I chose 'Papa Don't Preach' because it's like I'm handing the torch on to my daughter, who I'm really proud of," he said. "She did such a wonderful job on the
Madonna song 'Papa Don't Preach.' And the song, 'You Really Got Me' by the Kinks was, in my opinion, the first-ever heavy metal riff I ever heard. I bought that record as a
young guy and I played it to death. 'Imagine' by John Lennon of course it speaks for itself. It's one of the all-time greatest songs written. I think it's fantastic."
Other tunes Ozzy picked were the Cars' "Drive" and Eric Clapton's "Wonderful Tonight."
Osbournes Family Album
Dream Role - Playing Pryor
Eddie Griffin
Eddie Griffin, whose "Undercover Brother" just hit theaters, is ready for his dream role playing comic genius Richard Pryor. "We're putting together a script right now," Griffin tells says, "but it has to be great.
I could never disrespect Richard. Pryor started it all" …
Eddie Griffin
Big Dog Watch Continues
Bill Clinton In Estonia
Seen on stage and on a giant video screen in background, former U.S. President Bill Clinton speaks during a local economic conference in Tallinn, Estonia, Monday, June 10, 2002. Clinton strongly backed
the inclusion of the three former Soviet Baltic republics in NATO, saying Monday that it would solve the historically vulnerable region's security concerns.
Photo by Mindaugas Kulbis
He's Not Back with Jennifer Lopez
P. Diddy Says
Rap mogul Sean "P. Diddy" Combs quashed rumors on Monday that he and his former girlfriend Jennifer Lopez were back together after the bombshell actress-singer's
much-publicized split with her husband, Cris Judd.
"Contrary to reports, Mr. Combs and Ms. Lopez are not together. However, he wishes her well during this difficult time," said Nathalie Moar a spokesman for Combs, formerly known as "Puff Daddy" or "Puffy."
P. Diddy Says
Shaggy's A What?
Scooby Doo-bie?
Could there really be any doubt that he inhaled? It's no mystery to anyone who grew up watching "Scooby-Doo" that Shaggy was a stoner - no matter how much Hanna-Barbera may deny it.
Consider the evidence:
The disheveled, goateed member of the youth sleuths constantly had the midnight munchies ("Scooby snacks," anyone?), scarfing down six-foot subs like finger sandwiches.
He talked to a dog - who talked back.
He blissfully inhaled smoke wafting from open doorways, then literally floated toward the source (OK, it was smoke from cooking).
And how many non-stoners travel around in vans with psychedelic paint jobs?
In one of three distinct marijuana jokes, smoke teems from the locked Mystery Machine van as reggae music blasts.
But that's simply because Shaggy and Scooby are barbecuing inside.
When a friendly female introduces herself as Mary Jane, Shaggy gushes, "Like, that is my favorite name!"
And when a demon unleashes the same green breath on Shaggy that proved nearly toxic to the rest of the gang, Mr. Shagadelic simply inhales and smiles.
Scooby Doo-bie?
To Debut New Talk Lineup
MSNBC
MSNBC will debut its new prime-time talk lineup, with Phil Donahue, Chris Matthews, Jerry Nachman and Ashleigh Banfield, on the network's sixth anniversary, July 15.
The struggling cable news outfit is emulating Fox News Channel, which swept to the top of the cable news ratings with a shouting heads format in the evenings.
Nachman, the former New York Post editor hired as MSNBC's No. 2 executive, will have his own show at 7 p.m. ET, right before Donahue.
Matthews' "Hardball" will air at 9 p.m., followed by correspondent Banfield's "On Location," a news analysis show, at 10 p.m.
Left out is Alan Keyes, the former presidential candidate whose low-rated talk show began earlier this year. MSNBC may move Keyes to the late afternoon, a spokeswoman said.
MSNBC - New Primetime Line Up
Happy With Film
Navajo Code Talkers
When the president placed Congressional Gold Medals around the necks of four Navajo men last summer, it thrust the World War II veterans into the limelight after 56 years of relative silence.
Those four, and one too ill to make the trip to Washington, are the only survivors of an elite group of 29 communications specialists — the Navajo Code Talkers — to whom many credit
the Allied victory over Japan in 1945. The men developed an uncrackable code based on the Navajo language.
Now, Hollywood is trying to deliver their tale in a big-budget film to audiences worldwide.
"Windtalkers," an MGM movie starring Nicolas Cage and directed by John Woo, opens Friday. Cast members include Adam Beach, a Saulteaux Indian from Manitoba, Canada, and Roger Willie,
a Navajo, as well as 50 Navajo extras and a cameo appearance by Albert Smith, a veteran code talker.
Smith was one of the original 29 code talkers recruited by the Marine Corps in 1942. Eventually, about 300 Navajo Marines were trained to use the code.
Few people outside the Navajo Reservation had even heard the language, and the Japanese never broke the code, which used Navajo words to represent letters or words in English. For example,
the Navajo word for hummingbird — pronounced Da-he-tih-hi — referred to a fighter plane. The code word for America translated to "our mother," or Ne-he-mah.
During the Battle of Iwo Jima alone, the code talkers transmitted more than 800 error-free messages in 48 hours.
Their accomplishments have been largely absent from history books because the code was classified until 1968.
For the rest of this informative article, Navajo Code Talkers
Windtalkers
Navajo Code Talkers dictionary
And for a bit more, see BartCop Entertainment, Sunday, 25 November, 2001.
Hits Stores June 24
Golden Jubilee Album
A recording of the Golden Jubilee rock concert, held last week at Buckingham Palace to celebrate Queen Elizabeth II's 50 years on the throne,
will go on sale later this month to raise money for charity.
The British Broadcasting Corp. said "The Party at the Palace" album, featuring such artists as Brian May, Rod Stewart and Paul McCartney, would be available from June 24.
The BBC will produce and sell the 21-track album with record giant EMI, with proceeds going to charities nominated by Queen Elizabeth II.
Golden Jubilee Album
Set for July Bow in New York
Restored 'Metropolis'
A digitally restored 35mm print of Fritz Lang's 1927 expressionist classic "Metropolis" will premiere on July 12 at the Film Forum in New York, expanding nationally shortly thereafter.
The digital restoration was based on positive prints, duplicate negatives and camera originals assembled from around the world. It premiered as a work-in-progress at the 2001 Berlin Film Festival with the final reel of footage still unrestored.
The new version, which will be released in North America by New York-based indie distributor Kino Intl., is significantly longer than any previous theatrical or video release of the film. Gottfried Huppertz's original score for the
silent picture was re-recorded by a 65-piece orchestra and, for the first time since the film's opening, it will accompany the picture on the soundtrack.
Set in the year 2026, Lang's picture is a monumental fable of class struggle, occultism and science in a towering city of the future, inspired by his first look at the Manhattan skyline on a visit in 1924.
Restored 'Metropolis'
In The Kitchen With BartCop & Friends
Record Label Folds
Gold Circle Entertainment
Fledgling record label Gold Circle Entertainment, whose roster includes singer-songwriter Meredith Brooks and '80s pop-rocker John Waite, said Friday that it will close its doors and lay off its 25 staffers.
The bulk of the company's staff, including the promotion, sales and advertising departments, will leave the building at the end of June. A few execs -- including Dillman -- will stay on longer to try
to find a home for Gold Circle's acts. The boutique label was started by Gateway Computer co-founder Norm Waitt Jr.
Gold Circle Entertainment
Debuts New Magazine
Gene Simmons
Musician Gene Simmons of the rock group Kiss displays his tongue and the new magazine "Tongue" as he arrives at the world premiere of the film Scooby Doo June 8, 2002 in Hollywood, California.
Photo by Robert Galbraith
gene-simmons_tongue_060802
Film Back On Track
Brad Pitt
The Brad Pitt sci-fi epic "The Fountain" (aka "The Last Man"), is back on track after a change of co-financiers.
Fox-based New Regency, which recently released the Diane Lane hit "Unfaithful," has joined the Warner Bros. production, replacing Australia's Village Roadshow Pictures.
The companies are currently trying to determine a start date for the production, budgeted north of $70 million.
Darren Aronofsky ("Requiem for a Dream," "Pi") will direct from a script he co-wrote with Ari Handel. Plot details have been kept tightly under wraps.
Aronofsky's road toward production on this picture has been a rocky one. Village Roadshow came aboard last year, when the film was targeted for a fall 2001 start and a
fall 2002 release. The company then pushed its production target to this summer, however, to accommodate Warners' budget concerns, as well as co-star Cate Blanchett's pregnancy.
Brad Pitt
Raises Money for Idaho Theater
Matt Damon
Actor Matt Damon came into town to promote his latest film and to try and boost a local theater.
A fleet of cameras outside the Fulton Street Theater descended on Damon while the Hollywood star made an appearance to raise money for the Boise Contemporary Theater.
Damon talked with reporters, greeted fans and charmed about 450 people at the benefit reception Saturday night.
Damon introduced an advanced screening of his latest movie, "The Bourne Identity." He is on a whirlwind tour to promote the spy thriller, and his fund-raiser also
generated about $30,000 for the Idaho theater's operating budget.
Matt Damon
BartCop TV!
CBS Greenlights Miniseries
'Young Hitler'
It's primetime for Hitler, as CBS has greenlit a four-hour miniseries based on the early years of the man who would one day rise to Fuhrer.
"Hitler," based on historian Ian Kershaw's biography "Hitler: 1889-1936 Hubris," will air during one of next year's sweeps periods.
"I'd be lying if I said we aren't a bit nervous about attempting to examine one of history's most heinous characters, but in this age of megalomaniacal terrorism, we feel
it is all the more important and relevant," said Ed Gernon, who will executive produce with Peter Sussman.
Indeed, past Hitler projects have dealt less with the man and more with the world around him. But CBS is said to be high on the new miniseries, which is being produced by Alliance Atlantis.
'Young Hitler'
New State Parks Commissioner
Clint Eastwood
Clint Eastwood was sworn in as a state parks commissioner at the beginning of the 100-year birthday celebration for Big Basin Redwood State Park, California's oldest state park.
"You're all under arrest," he told the crowd as he held up his new parks commissioner badge.
At his swearing in Saturday, the actor and Carmel businessman said his biggest priority was maintenance. Eastwood also encouraged conservationists to "put your money where your mouth is."
There are now 265 parks in the state parks system, and Eastwood urged people to use them.
Clint Eastwood
Writers Cite Studio Wrongs
'Words Into Pictures'
Hollywood's top scribes spent the weekend biting the hand that feeds them.
Panels at the three-day "Words Into Pictures" conference at the Universal Hilton provoked extensive grousing from A-listers over the headaches caused by
studio executives' interference, such as the allegedly useless notes on scripts.
About 1,000 people attended the conference, which was organized by the Writers Guild Foundation. It was inaugurated in 1997 and had not been held since 1999.
The confab had originally been scheduled for 2001 but was delayed due to last spring's down-to-the-wire contract negotiations between the Writers Guild
of America and the studios and networks.
Sunday's showcase panel, "The Writer as Subversive," carried similar warnings from top scribes to recognize the bottom-line nature of Hollywood.
Despite their collective successes, the writers also cautioned attendees that executives are under increasing pressure to interfere with all but the safest scripts.
And they urged fellow scribes not to obsess over Hollywood's inherent unfairness. "NYPD Blue" alumnus David Milch recounted that he once worked
for a year on a show that went nowhere because it became "a pawn of corporate infighting."
Aaron Sorkin ("The West Wing") cautioned against agenda-driven writing.
'Words Into Pictures'
How To Get Out The Vote?
Using Booze and Breasts
Czech voters are having to make some hard election choices -- should they support the party offering free alcohol or the one using topless women in its campaign?
With the Christian Democrats handing out free shots of plum brandy in the Moravian town of Valasske Mezirici during a weekend election rally, the Communist party had to
quickly change its strategy for a meeting in the same town square.
Soon the party had five topless women handing out campaign literature, forcing people to decide between a free shot and a free peek.
The centrist Christian Democrats have teamed up with the center-right Freedom Union to form the Coalition in the June 14-15 general election. They are currently polling at around 15 percent.
The communists are slightly ahead of the Coalition in the polls, running at around 18 percent.
Using Booze and Breasts
Fires Accountant, Restates Results
Adelphia
Troubled cable operator Adelphia Communications Corp. on Monday revised its 2000 and 2001 results downward, citing errors in its previous reports, and fired Deloitte & Touche as its accountant.
The Coudersport, Pennsylvania, company is the target of a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission accounting investigation and two federal grand jury probes into multibillion-dollar
off-balance sheet loans to its founding Rigas family.
Adelphia revised its 2001 revenues to $3.51 billion, down 2 percent from $3.58 billion as reported in March. It cut its cash flow for the year by 15 percent to $1.2 billion from its earlier total of $1.41 billion.
For 2000, the company lowered its revenue figure by 2 percent to $2.55 billion from $2.61 billion and cut the cash flow number by 13 percent to $1.04 billion from $1.2 billion.
Adelphia said in an SEC filing that it cut its 2001 basic subscriber total by about 47,000 to 5.76 million from 5.81 million, citing "inaccuracies in previously reported data."
Adelphia
In Memory
Robbin Crosby
Guitarist for Rock Band Ratt Dead From AIDS
Rock guitarist Robbin Crosby, a founding member of the 1980s heavy-metal "hair" band Ratt, has died after an eight-year battle with AIDS, according to the group's official Web site. He was 42.
Crosby, who went public with his illness in a radio interview last July, saying he had contracted the disease through heroin use, died on Thursday.
The band's Web site ( www.therattpack.com ) carried a photograph of the guitarist performing in concert beneath the words, "In Memory of Robbin Crosby." The site's "forum" section posted dozens of messages of condolences from grieving fans.
Crosby co-founded Ratt in 1983 with vocalist Stephen Pearcy, and after adding guitarist Warren DeMartini, bassist Juan Croucier and drummer Bobby Blotzer, the Los Angeles-based group became one of the most popular rock acts of the mid-1980s.
The band released its self-titled debut independently in 1983, leading to a major-label recording contract with Atlantic Records, which issued the band's breakthrough LP, "Out of the Cellar," in 1984. The album featured the huge radio and MTV hit "Round and Round," which like many of Ratt's songs was co-written by Crosby.
Three more platinum-selling albums followed, starting with "Invasion of Your Privacy" in 1985, but the band's popularity waned after the 1990 release of "Detonator" as the alternative rock movement took hold, and the band broke up in 1992.
In keeping with the band's raucous, free-wheeling image, Crosby's indulgence in drugs took its toll as the musician's lavish lifestyle dissolved into a maelstrom of addiction.
"Robbin had everything kids dream of growing up," his brother-in-law, Bill Decker, told the San Diego Tribune. "He was married for a while to a Playboy Playmate, he had a Ferrari, a Laurel Canyon house with a pool that overlooked L.A., a personal assistant. ... But then he started getting heavily into drugs, and his marriage started to fall apart. He lost his way."
In July 2001, Crosby disclosed in an interview with the Los Angeles radio station KNAC that he had full-blown AIDS, a disease he said he believed he contracted when he began using heroin in the mid-'80s as a member of Ratt.
"Basically, it's killing me," he said at the time. "I've been in the hospital for eight straight months, and in and out for over seven years."
Ratt reunited without Crosby in 1997 to release another two albums. Last year, Blotzer and DeMartini launched a tour with several new members, and are due to play this summer's Rock Fest tour with other 1980s glam-metal acts.
Robbin Crosby
By Aaron McGruder
The Boondocks
Still Seeking Volunteers
'The Osbournes'
Very freshly updated - 'The Osbournes' ~ Page 2 !
'The Osbournes' ~ Page 1
C'mon....send your thoughts, your impressions, your views, your favorite quotes...
Scroll down for lots of addys to pick from (or 'from which to pick', for the truly anal retentive).
