HARARE, Zimbabwe (04-04) After 20 mental patients disappeared from his bus, a driver replaced them with sane citizens and delivered them to a mental hospital. The unidentified bus driver was transporting 20 mental patients from the capital city of Harare to Bulawayo Mental Hospital when he decided to stop for a few drinks at an illegal roadside liquor store. Upon his return he was shocked to discovered that all the mental patients had escaped. Desperate for a solution, the driver stopped at the next bus stop and offered free bus rides to several people. He then delivered them to the mental hospital, informing the staff they were easily excitable. It took the medical personnel three days to uncover the foul play. The real mental patients are still at large.
Chapter 1 The Inmates
It was a good night to be insane. Pitch black, rain pouring heavily, lightning striking again and again, perfect for lighting up the old wooden sign outside the crumbling gray stone walls of "The Gainesville Asylum for the Insane," with the word "insane" crossed off in crayon and the words "mentally handicapped" scrawled nearby, and the words "mentally handicapped" crossed off in chalk with the words "perfectly normal" scribbled next to them. There must have been an insane cackle breaking the momentum of the storm as lightning struck again and again, barely illuminating a skeleton key opening an old lock on a dirty door, heavy with age, squeaking open with a rusty creak. Another insane cackle. Yep, the insane like nights like this. It takes them outside themselves, forcing them to ponder the outside world as it really is, a random series of powerful illuminations, rather than the inside world, which varies splendidly in the sparkling synapses of the cerebral cortex of each individual, sane or not.
The Critics Agree
Looks like it might be "REALLY GOOD"
- Publisher's Discount Outlet
Not quite as "HILARIOUS" as I thought it was going to be
- New York Times
Falls far short of "THE GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL"
- Joyce Carol Oates
Tries very hard to be "THE FUNNIEST BOOK YOU'LL EVER READ"
- Norman Mailer
"I WISH I'D THOUGHT OF IT" because if it had been written by me it would have been much better
- Dave Barry
When I stopped reading and turned on The Family Guy, "I COULDN'T STOP LAUGHING"
- Carl Hiaasen
Almost achieves something "INCREDIBLY GREAT" but falls far short
- The Village Voice
The author obviously thinks he's a "GENIUS"
- Psychiatry Today
If you want something "ENORMOUSLY ENTERTAINING" look elsewhere
- Books in Print
"INSPIRED" me to write a better book
- P.J. O'Rourke
It starts out fairly RATIONAL, but about halfway through you're bound to tell yourself "this is NUTS." A second later, you will nod as another voice in your head says "PRECISELY."
- Sigmund Freud
Forced me to ponder the significance of my being while milk was coming out of my nose.
$10 for a PDF file directly to your mailbox, preferably with Paypal, or write me and tell me why you think you deserve a free copy.
"Art is like a border of flowers along the course of civilization." - Lincolm Steffens -
"Artists lie to tell the truth. Politicians lie to hide it."
- V for Vendetta -
How to Get Published in the L.A. Times
Several months ago I submitted by email a piece of 3,000+ words to West Magazine, the free glossy mag that comes with the Sunday LA Times.
Two months later, I got a rejection from the editor who apologized for taking so long. He said he liked it but didn't see anyplace for it to fit. The only place it would possibly work would be in a new column they had running called "The Rules of Hollywood" which was only 700 words long.
I noticed the rejection wasn't from some underling but the actual editor of the magazine. Now that I had his attention, I took advantage of it.
Ten minutes after receiving the rejection, I replied with a submission for "Rules of Hollywood" that was 700 words long. Not 699. Not 701. 700. Ten minutes later I received a reply saying he liked it but he didn't like the "rule" and he thought it should be more about the difference between horror and comedy.
Ten minutes later I resubmitted the piece with a new rule and a couple new paragraphs about the difference between horror and comedy, apologizing that the piece was now longer and I couldn't figure out what to take out.
Ten minutes later I received an acceptance. The longer version was already edited back down to 700 words, and I was asked for my address and social security number for my contract. Next Sunday, August 20th, pick up the Sunday LA Times, go to West Magazine, and check out "Get the Gig First, Then Unleash Your Genius," the latest example of The Rules of Hollywood, or see the PDF (90KB) here.
And the Rule for Journalists? "You can turn a rejection into an acceptance with persistence."
The Legacy of Timothy Leary by Paul Krassner
"There is one thing people should know about Tim Leary," says British writer John Higgs. "He was fucking funny!" Shortly before his death, Leary was asked about Richard Nixon calling him "the most dangerous man in America." "It's true," Leary replied. "I have America surrounded." Which is why Higgs titled his biography I Have America Surrounded: The Life of Timothy Leary. I asked him a couple of questions via e-mail. Q. How do you view the negative media depictions of Leary this year? A. I find them very revealing. Not in what they're saying, of course, but in what they are ignoring. Most of the mud that has been slung at Leary is perfectly true, but you can be factually accurate and wildly misleading at the same time. For instance, if someone asked me to describe Winston Churchill, I could say he was a mentally ill drunk who lost the 1945 UK General Election. And I'd be factually correct, but that wouldn't mean I was being fair, or that I'd nailed the essence of the man. With Leary, for everyone with a complaint against him, there are countless people who credit him with enriching their lives on a very profound level, and I don't understand the desire to ignore this. Ultimately, you can't hope to understand why he did what he did if you refuse to look at the ideas that drove him. Leary was too complicated a figure to dismiss as either a saint or a moron, as many people try to. He's probably the best example of the "trickster" archetype that the 20th Century produced, and his ambiguity is key to understanding him. The crux of his philosophy was the extent to which the reality that appears to be external to us is actually a model constructed by our own minds, a model that we are responsible for and which in certain circumstances can change. This is a frightening and unsettling idea, but it is also liberating. The implication is that if you hear someone describe Leary as a saint or as a moron, then they are not really telling you anything about Tim, but revealing something about themselves. Leary used to say, "You get the Timothy Leary you deserve." (He was being willfully antagonistic here, I think. It would perhaps be fairer to say that you get the Timothy Leary you want.) The upshot of all this, of course, is that it is only right and fitting that we hear so many wildly different opinions about him. Perversely, it validates his ideas. Q. How do you think history will remember him? A. With increasing interest. We all know that Leary was instrumental in millions of people deciding to take LSD in the '60s and '70s. The big question, however, is how deeply did the impact on this affect our current, 21st Century western culture? It's a huge question, and one we've hardly begun to answer. A lot has been written about the impact of psychedelics on music, for example, but very little on its impact on the rest of our society, on subjects as diverse as chaos mathematics, religion, molecular biology, postmodernism or politics. All these are big subjects that will need a lot of work to understand. Happily, people are now starting to look at these questions. John Markoff's recent book, What the Dormouse Said, which looks at the impact of '60s thought on the emergence of the PC industry, is a good example of this. As the years pass, I think we're going to slowly get a better perspective on the impact of this historically unprecedented mass psychedelic use, and with that a better appreciation of Leary's impact on us all. William Burroughs said that Leary's impact would not be fully understood for a hundred years. I can't bring myself to disagree with this, but it is no reason not to venture a few steps further down that road now.
"Think for yourself and question authority."
- Timothy Leary -
Paul Krassner edited Pot Stories For the Soul, available at paulkrassner.com.
I haven't celebrated my birthday in decades. Sure, when you're a kid it's exciting to add a year to your age, have your parents gather your friends, blow out the candles, and get presents, but today I turn 49 and the last thing on earth I feel like doing is celebrating, much less blowing out a fire. Nothing very special about November 10th other than it is the day that Stanley found Livingston. Okay, I wouldn't mind a present or two, but that's more a matter of actually needing stuff than thinking I deserve any sort of reward just for having survived another year. I've always felt it was a wee bit egomaniacal to throw yourself a big birthday party. Nothing wrong with celebrating others, but when it comes to celebrating yourself, it shouldn't be in public.
Fifteen years ago today it was also my birthday and, as normal, I was doing what I always do, what I still do, what I'm doing right now, writing at my computer, with absolutely no plans for the day. When you don't have a plan, there's nothing to deviate from. You can do whatever you want without fear of failure because how can you fail when you don't have any goal in mind? Whatever happens, happens, and it's good or bad on its own terms. The higher you get your hopes up, the further you have to fall, so I never count on anything. If something bad happens, too bad. If something good happens, it's a gift.
There was a knock at the door. I opened it and there was Timothy Leary who said "Hi, I'm your birthday present." He wouldn't explain how or why this came to be, or who in particular was bestowing him upon me. He was simply there, and he would hang out for at least an hour. All he would tell me was that he was told I was someone he should meet.
Whenever you meet someone famous in a personal situation, it's hard to know how to behave, particularly if they're enormous media stars. After all, you've spent hours gazing at them, thinking about them, perhaps days or weeks staring at their image. Imagine the hundreds of hours you've spent with certain stars broadcast regularly into your living room. They feel like a friend, like you actually know them. They're not and you don't, but it's a hard feeling to shake when they're standing right in front of you, coming into your house, sitting on your sofa, checking the place out while waiting for you to bring them a drink. No matter how many memories you have of them, they have none of you. To them, you are a total stranger. Treat them like a fan would and you risk becoming part of their teeming crowd of lookie loos. Treat them like you don't know who they are and they could get insulted. No way to make a friend. Friendships deserve an even playing field, so it's hard to think of yourself as the friend of a celebrity until they know as much about you as you know about them. Which is why celebrities are SO interested when you interrupt them somewhere in public and tell them about your uncle Sid's gall bladder operation.
I wanted to be friends with Timothy Leary so he had a hell of a lot of catching up to do because he knew nothing about me and I knew a lot about him, or at least I thought I did. I shifted into show-and-tell mode, whipping out a book of Polaroids for him to peruse. He enjoyed my madness immensely and I proceeded to tell him something I'm sure he heard a million times. My life was profoundly changed by his research into psychedelia, combined with reading Tom Wolfe's "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test," the Beatles, and meeting a guy named Mario in 1970 who claimed to be the husband of the actual Alice that Arlo Guthrie sang about but who supported his acting habit by selling acid at Lee Strasberg's studio where I happened to be studying at the time.
But I digress. The first and foremost influence that Timothy Leary had upon me was my art, which simply didn't exist. Before my first acid trip, I wasn't an artist. I had never played guitar, had certainly never created any impressionism, and hadn't written a single word other than school assignments. Maybe I would have discovered these talents on my own, but if my Polaroids remind you of acid flashbacks, welcome to the club. On acid, what I do to my Polaroids, you can do to reality. Move it around a little. Make big things look small, small things look big, marvel at the infinite depths you're capable of perceiving, as though reality were a 3D comic book and for the first time you were looking at it with the red-and-blue glasses.
Pre-acid, I was only interested in being an actor, moving to New York to study with Lee Strasberg, and getting in a Broadway play. On acid, I actually attempted to give a performance from Spoon River Anthology in front of the man himself, a performance he declared "interesting," a performance that convinced me that acting was a very strange profession. While personally communicating with the infinite miracles of the universe, I had a very hard time convincing myself that the most important thing I could be doing was pretending to be a fictional character while reciting dialogue written by a writer I'd never met. Post-acid I walked home from the Village to my boarding house at 39th and Park, picked up my roommate's guitar and started playing. It wasn't long before I was a better guitar player than actor, and I ended up composing music for several off-Broadway shows. Way off Broadway. The Company Theater at La Cienega and Pico in Los Angeles to be precise.
Other acid trips were less eventful and I stopped taking it, but not before playing with my first SX-70 Polaroid camera and discovering I didn't need acid to change reality to my own specifications.
We talked and talked. He wasn't a drug addled guru and I wasn't an acid burnout. He was extremely intelligent. My vision of Leary had been fogged by his media image, and I had forgotten that he was a Harvard professor. Luckily, some others forgot too and that's how he escaped from prison. The most amazing story he told me was this one...
When he was busted by the Feds for possession of one single joint of pot and sentenced to 20 years in a Federal penitentiary, the prison officials did what they always did with new prisoners, they gave him a psychological test to determine whether he would go to a minimum or maximum security prison. He passed the test with flying colors and was sent to minimum security where he promptly escaped. What the officials didn't know was that Leary himself wrote the psychological test for the Federal prison system when still at Harvard, so he knew exactly what answers to give.
After a couple hours, my birthday present had to leave, but in his new life as Hollywood gadfly I kept running into him over the years at video shows and art galleries. I'm glad he lived long enough to experience the Internet, and let's hope his site gets restored to its former glory.
Movie I Want To See
Amnesty: A governor goes insane and gives amnesty to absolutely every prisoner in the state.
Answer to Last Issue's Obviously Stupid Question
Know any logical fallacies or inconvenient lies?
Can you even connect 'logical fallacy' In the same sentence? I guess I just did You can even say 'fallacie logique' And sound vaguely intellectual Or French from the ages Mid Everything does and does not exist If you, and F. Scott Fitzgerald, Can hold that paradox in your head Important and unimportant simultaneously From Alpha to Omega to Prima to Zed And our puny minds can't bring into existence That which should rule over all; Intelligence, justice, honesty, Someone comely in our bed; And we can't just wish away That which shouldn't exist; Lies, treachery, neocons, morons, This stupid rhyming answer you just read; So we are doomed to be victims Of the false realities we endlessly create Out of something dumb or dead We saw or thought or felt Or smelt or heard or said. - RS Janes
Sir, I am Vromme Gunther, A dealer in propellers. I want to buy propellers for supply to my government. Please I will like you to give me you stock at hand and also prices list. Regards, - Vromme Gunther.
IF EVERYTHING DOES NOT EXIST THEN ELSE IS A FALLACY. IF EVERYTHING DOES NOT EXIST THEN LOGIC DOES NOT EXIST. EXISTENCE IN AND OF IT'S SELF BECOMES A LOGICAL FALLACY. REALITY BECOMES A MIASMA OF INTERDEPENDENT CONSTIPATION. THE LOGICAL FALLACY OF "I SHIT THEREFORE I AM" IS A COMMON RESULT OF THIS TYPE OF THINKING. - JD
IF Global Warming is a reality, and IF the Human Race is thus an endangered species as a direct result, THEN anyone that supports anything that ends a Single Human Life is killing off an endangered species, and must be stopped.
Of course, that would start at the White House, but would also run to Hospice Centers and Abortion Clinics, but there is this old saying about eggs and omelets....
Should that honk you off, then skip that and recall the brilliance of The Moody Blues:
I THINK. I THINK I AM. THEREFORE, I AM! ...I think...
- james and katherine allard
"When reason succumbs to passion, we act against our better judgment." - Benedictus de Spinoza -
Ironically, this "don't take my word for it" quote appeared in the same issue as the list of 20 logical fallacies and is itself the logical fallacy of a tautology. Reason is a better judgment because passion is unreasonable. - Jimmy McConnell
Opportunity for Mischief
Project Gutenberg is a massive online collection of books in the public domain. Distributed Proofreaders is where the public volunteers to proofread new texts for Project Gutenberg. If the phrase "baba-booey" were ever to mysteriously appear in something by Dickens, now's the time.
Not that I'm suggesting you actually DO such a thing, but the...
Stupid Question of the Week
...is if you WERE to leave your personal mark somewhere within classic fiction past, what would it be?
Satan Doesn't Want You to Know
Red River is just Mutiny on the Bounty on horses.
Don't Take My Word for It
"The clash we are witnessing around the world is not a clash of religions, or a clash of civilizations. It is a clash between two opposites, between two eras. It is a clash between a mentality that belongs to the Middle Ages and another mentality that belongs to the 21st century. It is a clash between civilization and backwardness, between the civilized and the primitive, between barbarity and rationality. It is a clash between freedom and oppression, between democracy and dictatorship. It is a clash between human rights, on the one hand, and the violation of these rights, on other hand. It is a clash between those who treat women like beasts, and those who treat them like human beings. What we see today is not a clash of civilizations. Civilizations do not clash, but compete...
"I am not a Christian, a Muslim, or a Jew. I am a secular human being. I do not believe in the supernatural, but I respect others' right to believe in it.
"Brother, you can believe in stones, as long as you don't throw them at me. You are free to worship whoever you want, but other people's beliefs are not your concern, whether they believe that the Messiah is God, son of Mary, or that Satan is God, son of Mary. Let people have their beliefs...
"The Jews have come from the tragedy (of the Holocaust), and forced the world to respect them, with their knowledge, not with their terror, with their work, not their crying and yelling. Humanity owes most of the discoveries and science of the 19th and 20th centuries to Jewish scientists. 15 million people, scattered throughout the world, united and won their rights through work and knowledge. We have not seen a single Jew blow himself up in a German restaurant. We have not seen a single Jew destroy a church. We have not seen a single Jew protest by killing people. The Muslims have turned three Buddha statues into rubble. We have not seen a single Buddhist burn down a Mosque, kill a Muslim, or burn down an embassy. Only the Muslims defend their beliefs by burning down churches, killing people, and destroying embassies. This path will not yield any results. The Muslims must ask themselves what they can do for humankind, before they demand that humankind respect them."
- Arab-American Psychiatrist Wafa Sultan from an interview aired on Al-Jazeera TV on February 21, 2006. See it here, read a transcript here, or see her death threats here. -
"It does not matter how small you are if you have faith and a plan of action."
- Fidel Castro -
"I have to say, watching George Bush talk about Israel the last week has reminded me of a feeling that I hadn't felt in so long I forgot what it felt like: the feeling of pride when your president says what you want your president to say, especially in a matter that chokes you up a bit. I surrender my credentials as Bush exposer - from the very beginning - to no man, but on Israel, I love it that a U.S. president doesn't pretend Arab-Israeli conflict is an even-steven proposition. Lots of ethnic peoples, probably most, have at one time or another lost some territory; nobody's ever completely happy with their borders; people move and get moved, which is why the 20th century saw the movement of tens if not hundreds of millions of refugees in countries around the world. There was no entity of Arabs called 'Palestine' before Israel made the desert bloom. If those 600,000 original Palestinian refugees had been handled with maturity by their Arab brethren, who had nothing but space to put them, they could have moved on -- the way Germans, Czechs, Poles, Chinese and everybody else has, including, of course, the Jews."
"Maybe I'm missing part of the story, but near as I can figure, two Israeli soldiers were kidnapped, hundreds of Lebanese were killed in retaliation, Hezbollah rockets began pouring over the border in retaliation for that. I don't see how this most recent heap o' violence falls under Israel 'defending its right to exist'."
- waxwings responding to Maher -
"Does every Jewish man have to see this as an Israeli. Hey, Bill. Aren't you an American? This stance of yours is as whacked as your position on Iraq. Since when is defending yourself means having the right to go all out nuts. Defend yourself by stopping the assaults. defend yourself by being a good neighbor. Defend yourself by being a part of a civilized community with rights and obligations to talk and if necessary, negotiate. Do we teach our children to defend themselves by going home and getting Daddy's guns and kill all the kids on the playground because one kid spit on them. Get a life. If your analogy held true, then Dillon Klebold was just defending himself in the Columbine shootings. After all. Dillon was mocked in the cafeteria. Proportionality is the key. Decency is the key. Geez...get a grip, Bill. Starting a holocaust is over the line. Even for Jews."
- alibe responding to Maher -
"A list from the Homeland Security Department that determines hundreds of millions of dollars in anti-terrorism grants showed that Indiana and Wisconsin each have more than twice as many terror targets as California and that one target is a petting zoo in Alabama.
"My immediate thought was: Of course, a petting zoo. This is the kind of 'think like a terrorist' strategy we need. Petting zoos are not only where our children are, it's where our animal children are. And if children are our future, then animal children are our animal future. Al Qaeda takes out our petting zoos, and our civilization is reduced to nothing but useless old creatures.
"Now that people know that Old MacDonald's Petting Zoo in Woodville, Ala., is in the cross hairs, I figured it would be emptied out. Sherry Lewis, who owns the zoo, has been busy trying to get people to risk their lives to pet her particularly vulnerable 'non-spitting llama,' but people are wary.
"'I've had three or four calls asking if it's safe to come and wanting to know when we got the bomb threat,' Lewis said. 'One lady in the post office thought my name was found on a list that a terrorist made up. I said, "No, it's our own state government saying we're a terrorist site."'"
"To get a better handle on the ethical objections to embryonic-stem-cell research, I've been listening with as much detachment as possible, given my twenty-nine-year-old daughter's ongoing slow death from juvenile (Type 1) diabetes, one of several diseases likely to be cured by this research. Bridget has already undergone a vitrectomyopen-eye surgery to remove vision-blocking blood clots and scar tissue from her vitreous humor - and several rounds of laser treatment to help keep her retinopathy in check. During these procedures, she needs to remain awake while a gonioscope is held against her eye and an ophthalmologic surgeon burns her pigment epithelium about eighteen hundred times with two hundred milliwatts of light. In each eye. Victims of juvenile diabetes can go blind because their elevated blood-sugar levels cause capillaries throughout their bodies, especially in their eyes and extremities, to leak and proliferate in unhealthy ways.
"But like I said, I'm trying to listen to every voice here, even that of Alfonso Gmez-Lobo, the dapper metaphysician from Georgetown who proclaimed half an hour ago in his lilting Chilean accent that "all of us were once a blastocyst." His point was that no blastocyst, cloned or otherwise, should ever be destroyed for its cells, however great the possible benefits. I wanted to say that we all were once an ovum as well, yet we don't hold a funeral every time a woman who's made love has her period. That being evolved from amphibians doesn't keep us from deep-frying frog legs and washing them down with Corona. That defenders of animal rights fervently believe that eating meat, even fish, is a sacrilege, but we don't let them dictate to Smith & Wollensky or cut off government subsidies to the beef industry..."
"A painter can say all he wants to with fruit or flowers or even clouds."
- Edouard Manet -
"I certainly hope to sell in the course of time, but I think I shall be able to influence it most effectively by working steadily on, and that at the present moment making desperate efforts to force the work I am doing now upon the public would be pretty useless."
- Vincent Van Gogh -
"One can cure oneself of the "not un-" formation by memorizing this sentence: A not unblack dog was chasing a not unsmall rabbit across a not ungreen field."
"Knowledge born of the finest discrimination takes us to the farthest shore. It is intuitive, omniscient, and beyond all divisions of time and space."
- The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, 3:54 -
"Rage is the only quality which has kept me, or anybody I have ever studied, writing columns for newspapers." - Jimmy Breslin -
"Just because your voice reaches halfway around the world doesn't mean you are wiser than when it reached only to the end of the bar." - Edward R. Murrow -
"In religion and politics, people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second hand, and without examination." - Mark Twain -
"The things we know best are the things we haven't been taught." - Marquis de Vauvenargues -
"There is a key for everything, and the key to Paradise is to love the poor."
- The Prophet Muhammad -
"Everything you can imagine is real." - Pablo Picasso -
"All human beings should try to learn before they die what they are running from, and to, and why." - James Thurber -
"Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd." - Voltaire -
"My theology, briefly, is that the universe was dictated but not signed." - Christopher Morley -
"They project this self-created world onto their ideas of past and future and the present moment. They try to crystallize reality into permanent shapes and categories. In this way they veil the path of insight, the spiritual path which reveals the innate clarity, freedom, and radiant transparency of What Is."
- Prajnaparamita -
"Works of art, in my opinion, are the only objects in the material universe to possess internal order, and that is why, though I don't believe that only art matters, I do believe in Art for Art's sake." - E. M. Forster -
"Hell, there are no rules here-- we're trying to accomplish something." - Thomas A. Edison -
"Our peace of mind increases in spite of suffering; we become braver and more enterprising; we understand more clearly the difference between what is everlasting and what is not; we learn how to distinguish between what is our duty and what is not. Our pride melts away and we become humble. Our worldly attachments diminish and, likewise, the evil within us diminishes from day to day."
- Mahatma Gandhi -
"I am prepared to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter." - Sir Winston Churchill -
"A fact is a simple statement that everyone believes. It is innocent, unless found guilty. A hypothesis is a novel suggestion that no one wants to believe. It is guilty, until found effective." - Edward Teller -
"The only winner in the War of 1812 was Tchaikovsky." - Solomon Short -
"The cost of living is going up and the chance of living is going down." - Flip Wilson -
dIsInFoTaInMeNt ToDaY is free and may be reproduced in any form, preferably parchment. It consists of information from dozens of sources, cut up, thrown in the air, and recycled randomly. It is sent all over the place, so I apologize if you're seeing the same thing twice. If you see a joke, graphic, or news item that came from or through you, thanks, send more, and please accept the fact that much of dIsInFoTaInMeNt ToDaY is unacknowledgeable, and if I sought permission from everyone whose bastardized material showed up here, I'd never get anything else done. Please note that I don't even put my own name on it. If you're still pissed off, hey, it's either satire or fair use.
Brian Doherty: The Vitiated Center: The successful failures of right and left intellectuals (reason.com)
Two new books detail, and sometimes lament, the recent history of liberal and conservative ideas in America: Eric Lott's The Disappearing Liberal Intellectual and Jeffrey Hart's The Making of the American Conservative Mind: National Review and Its Times. Together, they explore the perils and possibilities of radical ideologies in a centrist nation.
The last man they expected to have an SS secret (timesonline.co.uk)
It's enough to make an old man cry. Just days before publication of his long-awaited autobiography entitled Peeling the Onion, Günter Grass, bleeding heart icon of the German left, has confessed he was once a member of the Nazi SS.
Ariane Conrad: Ellen Page Interview (curvemag.com)
A smidgen over five feet and just 19 years old, Ellen Page nonetheless commands attention. Widely known in her native Canada for her TV roles, Page is fast gaining fans in the United States. Before her appearance as Kitty Pryde/ Shadowcat in X-Men: The Last Stand, her starring performance in Hard Candy branded her impish face onto our consciousness for eternity: how could we ever forget her coolly wielding a scalpel over those tender nuggets of manhood?
David Bruce: Wise up: Advertising (athensnews.com)
Bill Gates, one of the world's richest men, appeared in a commercial for Coca-Cola that aired once in August 1995. The commercial shows Mr. Gates working late, then going to a Coke machine, only to find that he doesn't have enough change to buy a Coke. The commercial ends with the billionaire walking down a hall and trying to borrow money, saying, "Anybody got some change for a Coke? I'll pay you back."
I was up late last night watching HBOW and there she was…."Emmanuelle in Space" !
Starring in a little ½ hour series called "Unscripted" being directed by her then boyfriend Gorgeous George Clooney (who was also working on directing another little movie called "Goodnight and Goodluck")
Man, did Krista Allen have a familiar face……so familiar !!!! I certainly remember her as "Emmanuelle 2: Queen of the Galaxy" (1994) but…..
And tonight she plays herself…. Krista Allen as an out of work actress with a 6 year old son living in LA…along with Bryan Greenberg and Jennifer Hall, they drop in and out of an actors studio led by Frank Langella. Krista is torn between the easy money of modeling and the "legitimate" money of acting……..
I just turned on the country music video station and saw Krista as the sexy chick in Toby Keith's latest video "A Little Too Late"!
Back to "Unscripted"…… I actually enjoyed the acting and editing and the simple cinema verite style of this show….Krista was convincing and cute……
Purple Gene give "Unscripted" 7 readings for another part in a movie out of 10 for capturing a taste of the up and down lives of actors who are still struggling!
CBS begins the night with a FRESH'Big Brother 7', followed by a FRESH'Rock Star: Supernova', then '48 Hours'.
Scheduled on a FRESHDave are Hilary Duff, Jason Randal, and Dirty Pretty Things.
Scheduled on a FRESHCraig are Matt Dillon, Padma Lakshmi, and Paula DeAnda featuring Baby Bash.
NBC starts the night with the FRESH'Miss Teen USA 2006', followed by a RERUN'Law & Order: Special Victims Unit'.
On a RERUNLeno (from 7/26/06) are John C. Reilly, Christina Milian, Pharrell.
On a RERUNConan (from 2/7/06) are Harrison Ford, Amy Adams, and K.T. Tunstall.
On a RERUNCarson Daly (from 6/14/06) are Sarah Wynter and Joe DeRosa.
ABC opens the night with a RERUN'Jim', followed by another RERUN'Jim', then still another RERUN'Jim', followed by yet another RERUN'Jim', then a RERUN'Boston Legal'.
Scheduled on a FRESHJimmy Kimmel are Jonathan Winters, Kenan Thompson, and Against Me!.
The WB offers a RERUN'Gilmore Girls', followed by another RERUN'Gilmore Girls'.
Faux has a RERUN'House', followed by another RERUN'House'.
UPN has a RERUN'Veronica Mars', followed by another RERUN'Veronica Mars'.
A&E has 'Crossing Jordan', then fills the rest of the night with 'Dog The Bounty Hunter'.
AMC offers the movie 'The Sting', followed by the movie 'The Cowboy Way', then the movie 'White Men Can't Jump'.
BBC -
[2:00 pm] As Time Goes By - Episode 9;
[2:40 pm] Are You Being Served - The Club;
[3:20 pm] Keeping Up Appearances - Episode 1;
[4:00 pm] The Avengers - The Living Dead;
[5:00 pm] Footballers Wives - Episode 7;
[6:00 pm] BBC World News;
[6:30 pm] Cash in the Attic - Episode 9;
[7:00 pm] The Benny Hill Show - Episode 28;
[8:00 pm] Whose Line Is It Anyway? - Episode 5;
[8:30 pm] Whose Line Is It Anyway? - Episode 6;
[9:00 pm] Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares;
[10:00 pm] Love Soup - Ep 3 The Reflecting Pool;
[11:00 pm] Whose Line Is It Anyway? - Episode 1;
[11:30 pm] Whose Line Is It Anyway? - Episode 7;
[12:00 am] The Benny Hill Show - Episode 29;
[1:00 am] Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares;
[2:00 am] Love Soup - Ep 3 The Reflecting Pool;
[3:00 am] Murder in Suburbia - Episode 2;
[4:00 am] The Night Detective - Episode 2;
[5:00 am] Murphy's Law - Episode 2;
[6:00 am] BBC World News. (ALL TIMES EDT)
Bravo has 'West Wing', 'Work Out', another 'Work Out', and 'Queer Eye'.
Comedy Central has 'Reno 911!', another 'Reno 911!', last night's 'Jon Stewart', last night's 'Coblert Report', 'Chappelle's Show', 'South Park', 'Chappelle's Show', and 'Reno 911!'.
Scheduled on a FRESHJon Stewart is Samuel L. Jackson.
Scheduled on a FRESHColbert Report is David Gergen.
FX has a FRESH'Rescue Me'.
History has 'More Doomsday Tech', 'Predicted 9/11', 'Mega Disasters: Climate', and 'Mega Movers'.
IFC -
[06:00 AM] Monster;
[08:00 AM] Shadowlands;
[10:15 AM] Home Movie;
[11:25 AM] IFC Short Film Showcase: August;
[12:25 PM] Three Tales;
[01:35 PM] Afraid of the Dark;
[03:15 PM] Dogfight;
[05:00 PM] Home Movie;
[06:10 PM] IFC Short Film Showcase: August;
[07:10 PM] Greg the Bunny: Blah!;
[07:25 PM] Afraid of the Dark;
[09:00 PM] Quitting;
[11:00 PM] The Wisdom of Crocodiles;
[12:45 AM] Rosewater;
[01:00 AM] Quitting;
[03:00 AM] The Wisdom of Crocodiles;
[04:40 AM] IFC Short Film Showcase: August;
[05:35 AM] Rocked With Gina Gershon #4. (ALL TIMES EDT)
SciFi has 'Dead Like Me', another 'Dead Like Me', followed by a FRESH'Eureka', then a FRESH'ECW'.
Sundance -
[06:00 AM] James' Journey to Jerusalem;
[07:30 AM] A Month by the Lake;
[09:15 AM] The Object Of Beauty;
[11:00 AM] Djangomania!;
[12:00 PM] Reach the Rock;
[01:45 PM] James' Journey to Jerusalem;
[03:15 PM] Arrowhead;
[03:45 PM] Return to Kandahar;
[05:00 PM] Admissions;
[06:30 PM] Kath & Kim - Season 2: The Moon;
[07:00 PM] The Object Of Beauty;
[08:45 PM] Afterschool Delight;
[09:00 PM] City of Men - Season 2: Episode 1: Saturday;
[09:35 PM] In Short: Festival 4;
[10:00 PM] I'm Losing You;
[11:45 PM] A Summer Dress;
[12:00 AM] Monkey Dust: Season 2: Episode 1;
[12:30 AM] Love + Hate;
[02:00 AM] Arrowhead;
[02:30 AM] City of Men - Season 2: Episode 1: Saturday;
[03:00 AM] In Short: Festival 4;
[03:30 AM] House of Boateng: Episode 8;
[04:00 AM] Heathers;
[05:45 AM] Reach the Rock. (ALL TIMES EDT)
Actors William Shatner, left, and Jason Alexander, right, pose for photographers on the red carpet before Comedy Central's 'Roast of William Shatner,' Sunday, Aug. 13, 2006, in Los Angeles, Calif.
Photo by Rene Macura
A pudgy young lawyer named Monty Sarhan had been giving life to the dreams of Internet entrepreneurs by helping them with finance deals when he caught the entrepreneurial bug himself. He decided to leave the legal profession and "go for the brass ring" by acquiring a media company.
He found that brass ring in the form of Cracked, the juvenile comics rag known for its bathroom humour that had always played second fiddle to Mad Magazine as the top time waster in the North American study halls. Even he wasn't convinced it was a good idea at first when a friend suggested he consider buying Cracked.
"I said 'Not interested. It's comics. It's for little kids,' " Sarhan recalls. But the seed had been planted and "for the first time I stopped thinking about Cracked for what it was and started thinking about Cracked for what it could be and what the potential was."
That potential will be revealed when the new Cracked hits newsstands on Tuesday after a two-year hiatus. It had a press run of 100,000 and has a cover price of $3.99 US. True to its heritage as a lampooner of pop culture, its debut cover features a doctored photo of Tom Cruise's head pasted onto the body of Steve Carell and asks if he is "The 44-Year-Old Virgin?"
Actress Nichelle Nichols poses for photographers on the red carpet before Comedy Central's 'Roast of William Shatner,' Sunday, Aug. 13, 2006, in Los Angeles.
Photo by Rene Macura
Tucker Carlson of MSGOP and talk-show host Jerry Springer will be among the celebrities competing on the third season of ABC's "Dancing With the Stars."
The new season of the show - which pairs 11 competitors of sometimes dubious celebrity and varying skill with professional dancer-partners - premieres Sept. 12 (8 p.m. EDT), the network announced Monday.
Also heading to the dance floor: Vivica A. Fox, Harry Hamlin, Joe Lawrence, Mario Lopez, Sara Evans, Willa Ford, Monique Coleman, former beauty queen Shanna Moakler and three-time Super Bowl champion Emmitt Smith. Hamlin's wife, Lisa Rinna, competed last season.
NASA has lost the original footage of man's first steps on the moon. Neil Armstrong's historic moment was seen by 600 million people in July 1969, but according to NASA the original tapes have been mislaid in their vast archive. They are now trying to track them down through paperwork dating back 35 years.
According to officials the footage could lay to rest the conspiracy theory that the landings were faked on a Hollywood sound stage.
A spokesman for the space agency said: "We're trying to track them down through the paperwork created at the time.
Academy Award winner Clint Eastwood received a special honor from the Motion Picture & Television Fund for his contributions to the Western genre.
Eastwood, an Oscar winner for directing "Unforgiven," was presented the Founder's Award during the group's 24th annual Golden Boot Awards held Saturday. The ceremony recognize actors, stunt people, producers and directors who have furthered the tradition of the Western in film and television.
Morgan Freeman, who co-starred in Eastwood's Oscar-winning film "Million Dollar Baby," presented the special award, which has been given only eight times since the ceremony began 24 years ago.
Also Saturday, Golden Boot Awards were handed out to actors Ann-Margret, Joan Leslie, Powers Boothe and Wes Studi, director Leslie H. Martinson and stunt coordinator Buddy Van Horn.
George Takei poses for photographers on the red carpet before Comedy Central's 'Roast of William Shatner,' Sunday, Aug. 13, 2006, in Los Angeles.
Photo by Rene Macura
Most of the 45 staff photographers working at the Eurodisney theme parks outside Paris have gone on strike to demand a pay rise, their union and the park's management said.
Eurodisney, which runs the Disneyland Paris and Walt Disney Studios' parks at the site, said it had "taken note of the demand" but added that the stoppage was not having any real effect on operations.
A union representative, Djamila Ouaz, said the photographers called the strike to protest what they considered low wages. She said some were being paid less than France's minimum wage of 8.27 euros per hour.
Three quarters of Americans can correctly identify two of Show White's seven dwarfs while only a quarter can name two Supreme Court Justices, according to a poll on pop culture released on Monday.
According to the poll by Zogby International, commissioned by the makers of a new game show on pop culture called "Gold Rush," 57 percent of Americans could identify J.K. Rowling's fictional boy wizard as Harry Potter, while only 50 percent could name the British prime minister, Tony Blair.
The pollsters spoke to 1,213 people across the United States. The results had a margin of error of 2.9 percentage points.
Respondents were far more familiar with the Three Stooges -- Larry, Curly and Moe -- than the three branches of the U.S. government -- judicial, executive and legislative. Seventy-four percent identified the former, 42 percent the latter.
People watch a fireworks display as they stand on a sandbar at low tide off Cape Cod's Sandy Neck, a coastal barrier beach in Barnstable, Massachusetts, August 13, 2006.
Photo by Mike Segar
German Nobel prize-winning author Günter Grass has lashed out at his critics after his stunning confession that he served in the Nazis' notorious Waffen SS elite force during World War II.
Grass, 78, said Monday he felt insulted by the at times virulent attacks he had endured since he made the revelation in a weekend newspaper interview ahead of the release of a new memoir in September in which he recounts his experiences.
Grass said he had been ashamed of his service in the Waffen SS, a paramilitary organization known for its extreme brutality against civilians in Nazi-occupied regions, but had attempted since then to lead an upstanding life.
"I sensed this stigma, and I saw it as a stigma, for 60 years and tried to draw the proper consequences," he said. "That shaped my later behavior as an author and a citizen."
A chinook salmon bearing an attached barcode is shown Aug. 4, 2006 on a cutting board at Fisherman Direct Seafoods in Gold Beach, Ore. The barcode was attached to the lower jaw by a commercial fisherman to keep track of genetic testing, to show the fish's home river, as well as where and when the fish was caught.
Photo by Jeff Barnard
A Fox News reporter, responding to accusations he misrepresented himself as a Vatican official to an east London mosque used by suspects in a foiled plot to blow up planes, said on Monday he had identified himself clearly.
Mohammed Shoyaib, imam of the Masjid-e-Umer mosque in Walthamstow, told Britain's Guardian newspaper that Father Jonathan Morris, a Fox News religion reporter, introduced himself as a Rome-based priest working for peace in the world.
"Only later he said he was from 'a sister network of Sky News' but never mentioned Fox," the imam said, according to the newspaper. "We would never have spoken to him if we had known," Shoyaib said. "We've been tricked."
Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. owns Fox News, and also about 37 percent of UK satellite operator BSkyB, which runs the Sky News channel.
Palestinian gunmen ambushed a car carrying a Fox News crew in Gaza City on Monday and kidnapped two of the journalists inside, according to witnesses and Fox. "We can confirm that two of our people were taken against their will in Gaza," Fox News said in a statement.
A Fox employee in Gaza, who declined to give his name because he was not authorized to release information about the incident, said the two kidnapped people were reporter Steve Centanni, a U.S. citizen, and a cameraman from New Zealand.
Major militant groups in Gaza denied having any connection to the abduction, and there was no immediate word of any demands made.
An artisan gives finishing touches to the idol of Hindu deity Lord Krishna in the northern Indian city of Chandigarh August 14, 2006.
Photo by Ajay Verma
With a city-issued broom in his hand, Boy George started his court-ordered community service early Monday, sweeping leaves and trash off the sidewalks of New York.
Boy George took to the streets of Manhattan as a Department of Sanitation worker wearing an orange vest, dark capri pants, shoes without socks, and without the wild makeup and androgynous style that made him so recognizable as the '80s icon who sang "Karma Chameleon" and "Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?"
O'Dowd, 45, initially envisioned a service project more in line with his status as an '80s icon.
He petitioned to spend the time helping teenagers make a public service announcement. Among his other proposals to the court: holding a fashion and makeup workshop, serving as a DJ at an HIV/AIDS benefit or doing telephone outreach.
A Central American spider monkey, or black-handed spider monkey, (Ateles Geoffroyi) 2 months old, rests at the Juigalpa zoo, some 140 kilometers (87 miles) east of Managua, Nicaragua, Sunday, Aug. 13, 2006.
Photo by Esteban Felix
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