Man is buried in '72 Pontiac

By Preston Sparks | South Carolina Bureau Chief

Lonnie Holloway apparently didn't subscribe to the notion that you can't take it with you.

On Tuesday, the 90-year-old Saluda, S.C., man was buried in his favorite car -- a classic green 1972 Pontiac Catalina.

"It was unusual," his caretaker, Rosa Anderson, said in a telephone interview after the funeral, but "it was what he wanted."

"That was his favorite car, and he decided he wanted to be buried in it."

She said Mr. Holloway was placed in the vehicle, buckled into the driver's seat with his hand placed on the steering wheel.

Family and friends who gathered at Rock Hill Baptist Church were snapping photos as the car was lowered into an extra large plot, she said.

Mr. Holloway, who worked for the U.S. Department of Commerce for 32 years, died Sept. 2 of prostate cancer.

The car, which friends said Mr. Holloway had bought new, was not the only thing accompanying Mr. Holloway into posterity. Several rifles and six handguns were also buried with him, said Ms. Anderson, who called Tuesday's burial unique.
"No one had ever seen that before," she said.

The Web Mistress Approves

TiP's new symbol of approval. It is akin to the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval but, with fur. Look for it!

Johnny Cash does Elvis

British matador Frank Evans steps back into the ring at 67

Timesonline

Graham Keeley

In just under a fortnight a 67-year-old British man will defy his rickety knees and fragile heart to make one of sport’s more unlikely comebacks. At an age when most people are looking forward to the quiet life, Frank Evans will walk into a bullring in southern Spain to face 500lb of angry beef.

Mr Evans — or El Ingles, as he is known in matador circles — will don the traje de luz, or suit of lights, for the first time since 2005 for a fight in Benalmadena, near Malaga, on August 30.

The former butcher from Salford, who used to practise his sword thrusts in the park on a supermarket trolley full of hay, is undaunted by a knee operation, a quadruple heart bypass and fears about his age.

“The bull doesn’t ask to see my birth certificate,” he said.

“My age doesn’t make any difference. I can do sprints and you are as old as you feel inside,” he told The Times. “It is not about age in this game, it is about wits. The matador has to outwit the bull, who has all the power.”

Mr Evans cuts a novel figure in the Latin world of los toros, dominated by young, glamorous matadors who enjoy rock-star status. But he says that his nationality has won him respect among Spanish bullfighting aficionados.

A knee injury picked up in a game of rugby four years ago forced him to hang up his cape; his comeback coincides with the publication of his autobiography, The Last British Matador, this month.

“I wanted to tell the funny stories that happened to me along the way, not how many bulls I killed,” he said.

“Like when my friends and I had to steal back half a million pesetas because a manager would not pay me for my fights. Or when a friend stuffed loads of newspapers down my crotch to make me look better at a fight and we got caught.”

Mr Evans, who has been gored six times, caught his fever for the bulls during a trip to Spain in 1963. He was inspired to try it for himself after reading the story of Vincent Hitchcock, the first British bullfighter, who fought in the 1950s.

After spending two years at a bullfighting school in Valencia he notched up his first kill at Montpellier, in France,in 1966.

However, a shortage of money and equipment forced him into early retirement. He returned to Salford and a kitchen business.

But he could not shake off his passion for the bulls and took every chance to return to Spain to fight.

Finally, in 1991, at the age of 49, he came face-to-face with a mature bull as a fully fledged matador. At a point in his life when most bullfighters call it a day, Mr Evans was fighting in Spain, France and Mexico; in 2003 he achieved a career-high ranking of 63.

Two years later doctors ordered him to give up after the operation on his knee. He managed to recover, however, and the ring beckoned once more. “I could not resist it. I am physically fit enough despite the operation so I was offered another professional fight.”

He rejects criticism he gets in his home country for participating in bullfighting. “I don’t accept it is cruel,” he said. “The way animals are kept before they are slaughtered is worse.

“But I do think we should try to stop incompetent bullfighters who fail to kill bulls with one sword thrust.”

The National Anthem

Sound of Music | Central Station Antwerp (Belgium)

This video was made in the Antwerp, Belgium Central (Train) Station on March 23, 2009, with no warning to the passengers passing through the station.

At 8:00 am a recording of Julie Andrews singing 'Do, Re, Mi' begins to play on the public address system.

As the bemused passengers watch in amazement, some 200 dancers begin to appear from the crowd and station entrances.

Post it Love

"Lightning" Amazing Street Performance

A segment from the amazing street performance "Glissendo" at a French art festival: "Lightning" by Philip Glass. Concept and technical design by Ulik (the mechanical clown).

Truth in Advertising

Animated Short

Furry Happy Monsters

Hello...

Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus trailer

Them!

An interesting movie. It is available in it's entirety on the Internet.

Barack Obama

© Callie Shell / Aurora for Time
A Mother's Grief: This woman had lost her son in Iraq. She wanted people to know that it was not unpatriotic to be against the war and for Obama. Cedar Rapids, Iowa, 2/11/2007.

Ex-Sex Pistol Lydon turns to butter

UKPress

Former Sex Pistols singer John Lydon is now advertising butter - in stark contrast to his punk rock days when he proclaimed: "I am an antichrist, I am an anarchist."

Decked out in an English gentleman-style tweed outfit, Lydon - whose used the stage name Johnny Rotten - features in adverts for Country Life butter which will hit screens in October.

As part of his first television advertising campaign, Lydon gallivants around various British locations as he tries to decide why he thinks Country Life butter is his favourite brand.

The advert concludes, "It's not about Great Britain, it's about great butter", and will first be screened during the ITV Pride of Britain Awards next month.
Lydon and the Sex Pistols gained acclaim for their aggressive and nihilistic attitude on and off stage.

In 1977, they released God Save the Queen during the week of Queen Elizabeth II's Silver Jubilee.

The song was a hit but caused so much controversy for its criticism of the monarch that Lydon was once attacked by an angry mob in the streets.

The origins of his stage name are not definite.

One explanation, given in a Daily Telegraph feature interview with Lydon last year, was "he was given the name in the mid '70s, when his neglect of oral hygiene saw his teeth turning green."

Paul Newman Dies at 83

He will be missed.

Space shuttle moved to launch pad as rescue ship

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) -- In an unprecedented step, a space shuttle was moved to the launch pad Friday for a trip NASA hopes it will never make - a rescue mission. The shuttle Endeavour is on standby in case the seven astronauts who go up on Atlantis next month need a safer ride home.

Atlantis and its crew are headed into space for one last repair job on the 18-year-old Hubble Space Telescope. It's a venture that was canceled when first proposed a few years ago because it was considered too dangerous.

The risk is this: If Atlantis suffers serious damage during launch or in flight, the astronauts will not be at the international space station, where they could take refuge for weeks while awaiting a ride home. They would be stranded on their spacecraft at the Hubble, where NASA estimates they could stay alive for 25 days. Air would be the first to go.

Endeavour and four more astronauts would need to blast off on a rescue flight as soon as NASA determined Atlantis was too damaged to fly home.

On Friday, Endeavour was parked at its launch pad just a mile from where Atlantis is tentatively set to lift off on Oct. 10.

It is the first time since 2001 - when flights were more closely spaced - that both of NASA's shuttle pads have been occupied. And it will probably be the last.

The Atlantis astronauts say there's a slim chance any rescue will be needed, and they say they would fly to Hubble even if there were no such backup plan.

Scott Altman, Atlantis' commander, said it may seem like overkill, but having a rescue ship on the pad is the right thing to do.

"It's kind of a belt-and-suspenders approach. But if you need the belt after your suspenders fail, you would be glad you had it," said Altman, a retired Navy captain and former fighter pilot.

On top of the usual launch and landing dangers, the Atlantis crew faces an estimated 1-in-185 chance that a piece of space junk or a micrometeoroid will cause catastrophic damage to their ship. Those are greater odds than for a typical shuttle flight because of Hubble's extremely high and debris-littered orbit.

Before reaching Hubble and again after leaving it, the Atlantis astronauts will inspect their spacecraft for signs of damage, just as crews always do while in orbit.

Ever since space shuttles resumed flying following the 2003 Columbia tragedy that killed seven astronauts, NASA has had a rescue plan in case of irreparable damage. But all those missions have been to the space station, where astronauts could camp out for two months.

The Hubble mission offers no such safe haven. That's why the Hubble repair mission was canceled in 2004; NASA's boss at the time deemed it too dangerous.

A new NASA regime reversed that decision, once space shuttles were flying safely again and repair methods became available to orbiting astronauts. The caveat was that another shuttle be on the launch pad, all prepped and ready to fly - something never before attempted.

NASA took similar steps in 1973 during its first space station program, Skylab. But a rescue was never needed.

Once Atlantis is aloft, "if it even begins to smell" like a rescue might be needed, final preparations for Endeavour will begin, said launch director Mike Leinbach. He said Endeavour could lift off within six days.

The rescue craft would fly to Atlantis and use a 50-foot robot arm to grab the damaged shuttle. The Atlantis astronauts would put on spacesuits and float, a few at a time, to Endeavour over the course of three spacewalks. Endeavour would return home with all 11 astronauts.

The toughest call, officials say, would be deciding that Atlantis indeed had serious enough damage that a rescue should be tried.

"This will be an emotional thing," Leinbach said.

Such a rescue would put four more astronauts at risk and would mean the end of Atlantis, and undoubtedly the space shuttle program, which is set to be phased out in 2010. Atlantis would be sent into the Pacific once its astronauts were aboard Endeavour.

It would rank right up there with the drama of Apollo 13, said Ed Mango, Atlantis' launch director. For Leinbach, who would head up the rescue launch, it would be the most important thing NASA has ever done, period.

Altman realizes that if pressed into service, Endeavour might not get off in time. Storms or a last-second engine shutdown could keep it grounded.

"There's no guarantee it would get there," Altman said in an interview with The Associated Press. "On the other hand, you look at how many things would have to go wrong to make it not possible to pull off. ...

"There's a scenario out there that doesn't have a happy ending, and I think we all have to come to grips with that before launch."

Tattoo removal on the rise in Germany

TheLocal

Tribal style lower-back tattoos known as Arschgeweih, or “ass antlers” in Germany, were popular in the 1990s. But now a herd of Germans are stampeding to get them removed as they and other tattoos go out of fashion.

“The number of laser removals for tattoos has almost doubled in the last five years,” Heinz Bull, president of Germany's GÄCD plastic surgery association, told news agency DPA on Thursday. “Now young people who got tattoos on the spur of the moment want to have them removed.”

It's important for people looking to shed their inky antlers search for qualified doctors, because different ink tones require different lasers, Bull stressed.

Dermatologist Walter Trettel has laser clinics in Hamburg, Kiel and Preetz that each remove the names of old lovers and other unwanted markings for some 20 patients per week. “This costs about three to four times more than the original tattoo,” he said, adding that is also more painful than getting a tattoo. Removing “ass antlers” requires between six and ten sessions, which can cost between €100 and €300.

But today's laser removal is still gentler and more effective as earlier methods, Trettel said. “When I first began at the Kiel university clinic we would cut tattoos out or grind them down,” he said, adding that this often left large scars behind.

Fredric J. Baur -designer of Pringles container

COLLEGE HILL - Dr. Fredric J. Baur was so proud of having designed the container for Pringles potato crisps that he asked his family to bury him in one.

His children honored his request. Part of his remains was buried in a Pringles can - along with a regular urn containing the rest - in his grave at Arlington Memorial Gardens in Springfield Township.

Dr. Baur, a retired organic chemist and food storage technician who specialized in research and development and quality control for Procter & Gamble, died May 4 at Vitas Hospice. The College Hill resident was 89.

He developed many products, including frying oils and a freeze-dried ice cream, for P&G. The ice cream was patented and marketed, but didn't catch on. "Basically, what you did, you added milk to it, put it in the freezer and you had ice cream," said his son Lawrence J. Baur of Stevensville, Mich. "That was another one he was proud of but just never went anywhere."

Later in his career, Dr. Baur became a compliance specialist for P&G. "He had a worldwide reputation in plant sanitation and traveled all over the world inspecting plants," said his daughter, Linda L. Baur, of Diamondhead, Miss. He also lectured, edited books, and wrote several publications and articles.

But the Pringles can - a tube-shaped container designed to hold the salty, stackable, saddle-shaped chip - was his proudest accomplishment, his daughter said. He received a patent for the package as well as the method of packaging Pringles in 1970.

Born in Toledo on July 14, 1918, Dr. Baur received a bachelor's degree from the University of Toledo and both a master's degree and a Ph.D. in organic chemistry from Ohio State University.

A Slurry Tale

ceruleanst.livejournal.com

ACT I SCENE 2. A road, morning. Enter JULES and VINCENT, murderers.

V: And know'st thou what the French name cottage pie?
J: Say they not cottage pie, in their own tongue?
V: But nay, their tongues, for speech and taste alike
Are strange to ours, with their own history:
Gaul knoweth not a cottage from a house.
J: What say they then, pray?
V: Hachis Parmentier.
J: Hachis Parmentier! What name they cream?
V: Cream is but cream, only they say la crème.
J: What do they name black pudding?
V: I know not;
I visited no inn it could be bought.

from ACT I SCENE 4

J: Your pardon; did I break thy concentration?
Continue! Ah, but now thy tongue is still.
Allow me then to offer a response.
Describe Marsellus Wallace to me, pray.
B: What?
J: What country dost thou hail from?
B: What?
J: Thou sayest thou dost hail from distant What?
I know but naught of thy fair country What.
What language speak they in the land of What?
B: What?
J: English, base knave, dost thou speak it?
B: Aye!
J: Then hearken to my words and answer them!
Describe to me Marsellus Wallace!
B: What?
JULES presses his knife to BRETT's throat
J: Speak 'What' again! Thou cur, cry 'What' again!
I dare thee utter 'What' again but once!
I dare thee twice and spit upon thy name!
Now, paint for me a portraiture in words,
If thou hast any in thy head but 'What',
Of Marsellus Wallace!
B: He is dark.
J: Aye, and what more?
B: His head is shaven bald.
J: Hath he the semblance of a harlot?
B: What?
JULES strikes and BRETT cries out
J: Hath he the semblance of a harlot?
B: Nay!
J: Then why didst thou attempt to bed him thus?
B: I did not!
J: Aye, thou didst! O, aye, thou didst!
Thou sought to rape him like a chattel whore!
And sooth, Lord Wallace is displeased to bed
With aught but Lady Wallace, whom he wed.

Rhinebeck Art Opening: Sohpia Tarassov

Thorninpaw friend Sophia Tarassov opens at the Hammertown Gallery in Rhinebeck, New York this Saturday, April 19th 5:30. Dig it!

Pavarotti mimed at final performance

· Millions watched tenor's opening of Olympics
· Star's conductor Leone Magiera reveals secret

The Guardian
Tom Kington

On a freezing February night in 2006, an ailing Luciano Pavarotti rose from his wheelchair at the opening of the Turin Winter Olympics to give a resounding rendition of the aria Nessun Dorma, his final public performance before he died of cancer last September.

Details have emerged of how the opera singer was unsure of his weakening voice and faked the live appearance in front of a TV audience of millions, using video trickery, careful lipsynching and a compliant orchestra that pre-recorded its backing days earlier.

"Pavarotti's great career therefore ended with a virtual performance, something sad but inevitable," said Leone Magiera, the star's longtime pianist and conductor, who has revealed the ploy in a book. "It would have been too dangerous for him, because of his physical condition, to risk a live performance before a global audience."
Magiera said that the trick took days to set up. "First I recorded a number of versions of the orchestra playing the aria, then [I] took the tapes to the small studio at Pavarotti's house in Modena," he said.

"He selected the right version before I directed him alone as he sang along, while being recorded."

In the book, Pavarotti Visto da Vicino, or Pavarotti Seen from up Close, Magiera says: "He found the force to repeat it until he was completely satisfied. Then he collapsed on his wheelchair and closed his eyes, exhausted."

Less than a week later, just before the Olympics ceremony, Pavarotti was filmed on stage miming to the recordings as the orchestra pretended to play behind him.

On the big night, that video was played for TV audiences along with the pre-recorded music, while crowds in the stadium heard the music and saw conductor, singer and orchestra faking it for a second time.

"The orchestra pretended to play for the audience, I pretended to conduct and Luciano pretended to sing. The effect was wonderful," Magiera wrote in the book.

The effect was good enough for one fan who wrote on YouTube after watching the video: "Knowing when to cut off that final high note to match a tape would be next to impossible ... It's live, it's him."

Looking back, Magiera said he preferred to recall another performance given by Pavarotti in the 1990s, this time to a deserted opera house in the Amazon jungle. Built in 1896 for rubber barons, the opulent Amazon Theatre featured in the film Fitzcarraldo.

"He was determined to sing at the old opera house in Manaus, where he was convinced Caruso had once sung," he said.

"We went up there by boat, located a piano but found the theatre out of use. Nevertheless, we went in and he sang two arias from Tosca, E lucevan le stelle and Recondita armonia to an audience of about five."

Magiera's memoir details Pavarotti's struggle to work, even as he succumbed to pancreatic cancer. While giving lessons to young singers, he would drift off, whereupon his Peruvian assistant would ring him on his mobile phone. Jerked awake, Pavarotti "would immediately make a more or less relevant observation about the performance he had only partly listened to".

At the end, even his legendary appetite deserted him, Magiera writes. When he could not eat the plate of rigatoni he had asked for, "he looked at me with a sad smile and said 'That's a bad sign for me if I prefer mashed potato to macheroni'."

50 Years Old Today

By Paul Farhi
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, April 4, 2008

The peace symbol -- three simple lines within a circle -- turns 50 today. It's had a colorful and often turbulent life, which is odd considering that it's supposed to symbolize, you know, peace.

Unveiled at a British ban-the-bomb rally on April 4, 1958, the peace symbol's peak of potency was in the 1960s, when it was the emblem of the anti-Vietnam War movement and all things groovily counterculture. (Said its late creator, British graphic designer Gerald Holtom: "I drew myself . . . a man in despair . . . put a circle around it to represent the world.") The symbol has marched in service of many causes over the years: civil rights, women's rights, environmentalism, gay rights, anti-apartheid, the nuclear-freeze movement and the latter-day antiwar crowd.

Conservatives once denounced it as a lefty tool ("footprint of the American chicken," etc.), but not all the peace symbol's politics have been so easily classified. During the Soviet era, it was a ubiquitous totem of resistance in such cities as Prague and Berlin.

In its spare time, the peace symbol has done plenty of commercial work, much of which it probably isn't very proud of. Suffice to say, most anything that can been manufactured or marketed has at some point come with a peace symbol. Ben & Jerry's ("Peace Pops") turned it into an ice cream novelty. In 1999 the U.S. Postal Service put it on a stamp.

At least it has always been more serious and thoughtful than its frivolous cousin, the smiley face.

The peace symbol became a hieroglyphic superstar because of its simplicity and adaptability, says Ken Kolsbun, co-author of the new book "Peace: The Biography of a Symbol." The symbol can be rendered in a few strokes, even by the least artistically gifted, he points out. What's more, the symbol has never been trademarked (although a shoe company once tried), which means that anyone who wants a piece of peace can have at it.

Peace never goes out of style, but at the half-century mark, Holtom's creation has grown so recognizable, so often replicated and so drearily commercialized that it raises the kind of question they used to ask all the time in the '60s: Has the peace symbol sold out, or is it indeed still "relevant," man?

Star Wars comes to Holyhead

Darth Vader strikes back in Jedi's back garden

By Tom Chivers
telegraph.co.uk

A Star Wars fan got closer to his idols than he would perhaps have liked when he was attacked in his garden by Darth Vader.

Jedi Master Jonba Hehol - known to family and friends as Barney Jones, 36, of Holyhead - was giving a TV interview in his back garden for a documentary when a man, dressed in a black bin-bag and wearing Darth Vader's trademark shiny black helmet, leapt over his garden fence.

Wielding a metal crutch - his lightsaber presumably being in for repairs - the Sith Lord proceeded to lay about his opponent, whose Jedi powers proved inadequate for the task of defending himself.

After besting Master Hehol in single combat, Vader, who The Sun reports was under the influence of alcohol, went on to assault the camera crew and a hairdresser.

Master Hehol, a hairdresser, who founded the first-ever British Jedi Church in loving homage to the world-famous science fiction franchise with his brother Daniel, was unimpressed by the revenge of the Sith.

"This wasn't a joke. This was serious," he said.

Police are investigating a claim of assault.

The Jedi "religion" was born as a joke in the 2001 census, when almost 400,000 people claimed to believe in the Jedi faith.

Based on the teachings of Yoda, the crinkly green dwarf of the films, the "church" has a branch in Florida and plans to open another in the Philippines.

Hair of the dog

The animal lovers who turned their dead pets' coats into woolly jumpers

The Daily Mail

Their beloved dogs may have gone to the great kennel in the sky, but for Beth and Brian Willis they will always be close.
Because the couple have had his and hers jumpers knitted out of the hair moulted by the pedigree pets and spun into yarn.

And they insist the bizarre garments keep them warm and dry no matter how bad the winter weather gets.

The idea to use the hair, which would otherwise have been vacuumed up and thrown out with the rubbish, came after dog breeders told the couple of the unusual use it could have.

The first jumper was knitted by 71-year-old Mrs Willis from hair from Kara, the couple's white Samoyed, a Russian breed.

Mrs Willis said: "It is not actually a hair but a wool, which is why it is so good for clothes.

"It would just fall off the dogs and I would run a wet hand over the carpet and pick it up.

"We found out from the breeders we got the pups from that it was possible to use their coat for clothes.

"Apparently it is quite popular with lots of the people who breed long-haired dogs."

That first jumper was made in 1990, while Kara was still alive.

Although she died 12 years ago, the jumper made from her hair is still going strong.

The Samoyed breed is native to northern Russia, where they were used to keep children warm. Its fur is almost waterproof and softer than alpaca.

By the time the Newcastle couple's next dog, a Swedish Lapphund called Penny, died six years ago, Mrs Willis was already working on a new garment.

And the retired St John ambulance telephonist says that she even has enough left over to make another sweater.

Mr Willis, 73, who worked for a removals firm for 27 years, wears his doggy jumper every Saturday into town to do the weekly shop.

He said: "They are extremely warm and pretty much waterproof. Unless it is banging it down, it is fine.

"I've always got a sweat on by the time I get from the bus to the shops."

Mr and Mrs Willis send the hair to be spun by Malise Mcguire at her home in Derby.

Mrs Mcguire, 60, has been spinning dog wool since 1977.

She said: "It takes about 30oz to make a jumper, but you would need 40oz at the start as you lose some in the spinning.

"Brian and Beth have had more than 5lb spun, wrapped, pre-shrunk and ready to be knitted."

Mr and Mrs Willis celebrated their golden wedding anniversary last year and have three children, six grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

But Mrs Willis said her next dog fur creation will have to wait.

She is too busy knitting jumpers for the youngsters - using wool.

Change

Fur Flies at Beauty Pageant

(But It's Not What You Think)

In Eastern Shore's Muskrat Country, Contestants Keep Two Traditions Alive

By David A. Fahrenthold
Washington Post Staff Writer

GOLDEN HILL, Md. -- Contestant No. 1 sashayed down the catwalk, her hair bouncing in blonde curls, and smiled a radiant beauty-queen smile. She picked up a furry dead rodent about the size of a football.

Then she took out a very sharp four-inch blade and stuck the point in just above the animal's tail.

"Then," she said, narrating the incision as sweetly as a Miss America contestant talking about world peace, "you're going to want to take your knife . . . "

This was the "talent" portion of the 2008 Miss Outdoors pageant, part of an improbable Eastern Shore festival that combines the worlds of beauty contests and competitive muskrat skinning.

(Muskrat Lovely-Film Website
Get tips on how to skin a rat and and win a beauty contest on the filmmaker's companion Web site. Read production notes on the making of the film, learn about the crew and read film reviews.)

For years here, young women have paraded in glittery evening gowns, and then -- on the same stage -- skinners in camouflage hats have separated small animals from their pelts.

This year, two girls chose to do both.

Their story played out less than 60 miles from Washington, in a place where time is slowly eroding a culture built around the Chesapeake Bay's boot-sucking marshes. These teenagers were afraid that, without their participation, both the pageant and the skinning races might decline even further.

So they sought to take on a hybrid role, one foot in their world and one in their grandparents'. In one weekend, they would be both modern princesses and old-time, blood-covered 'rat-skinners.

" . . . You want to take your knuckles," 17-year-old Samantha Phillips, Contestant No. 1, was saying. One of the pageant judges squinched up her face in shock. "And separate the meat from the hide, just like this."

"Oh my God!" a boy in the audience yelled, at the sight of a woman in perfect makeup with her hand inside a muskrat.

Then, from another part of the crowd: an older woman's voice: "She's good."

The pageant and the skinning contest were part of the 63rd annual National Outdoor Show, held last weekend in the town of Golden Hill. To get there, drivers turn off the highway to Ocean City and wind more than 15 miles through marshes to a rural crossroads. There is little evidence of town or hill.

"This is really the end of the world, back up five feet," one contestant's mother said.

The festival began with the muskrats -- bucktoothed marsh critters whose pelts are sold to the fur trade. Over the decades, friendly rivalries among local skinners gave birth to the World Championship Muskrat Skinning Contest, which now draws crowds of more than 1,000.

Its rules are simple: "Fastest time, clean 'rat," locals say, meaning that the hides can't be nicked or torn as they're removed. The pelts are usually taken home and sold by the skinners; the carcasses are sometimes stewed with liberal amounts of sage and eaten. Scientists do not believe the event presents a threat to the local muskrat population.

For 54 years, the skinning contest has also been accompanied by a beauty contest.

No one here thinks that's odd.

"It's not like, 'Oh my God, it's a beauty pageant!' 'Oh my God, they're skinning muskrats!' " said Tiffany Brittingham, 22, a sixth-grade science teacher. "It's just a norm."

Still, for decades, it wasn't the norm for women to do both. They were pageant people or skinning people. Then came Brittingham in 2003.

"She skinned a muskrat in full makeup and sparkly earrings," said Amy Nicholson, a New York-based filmmaker who shot a documentary, "Muskrat Lovely," during the 2004 pageant, when Brittingham did the same thing. "You kind of can't believe it's actually happening."

In 2005, when she walked out for the talent portion of the pageant with a muskrat thrown over her shoulder, a man in the audience yelled above the cheers, "I want to marry you!"

On that third try, Brittingham won.

This year, both Phillips and Dakota Abbott, 16, entered both the beauty contest and the skinning competition. Phillips also chose to skin during the pageant's talent portion.

"I'll be honest," she said. "I can't sing, I can't dance and I don't play any musical instruments." So it had to be muskrats.

But both said they were also motivated by something deeper: a strong attachment to a fast-changing place and the fear that someday people here might not care about beauty queens or know the smell of muskrat guts.

"Ten years ago . . . there was, what, probably 15 people in Miss Outdoors. We have five people this year," Abbott said. The skinning events also have fewer participants than they did decades ago. "If we don't keep it going, then it's not going to go anywhere."

The changes here stem from the decline of the Chesapeake's crab and oyster harvests and the faltering market for muskrat pelts. Dorchester County's traditional jobs, the ones that inspired the Outdoor Show's muskrat skinning and oyster-shucking contests, have begun to dry up. Phillips's father, for instance, sold his waterman's boat and now works in an office.

At the same time, some local young people have absorbed a bit more of popular culture, which places little value on small-town pageants -- and zero on muskrat skinning.

For instance, Rhonda Aaron, a repeat women's skinning champion, recently had a female protege stop skinning. She thinks she knows why.

"Look at this," said Aaron, 54, holding up red hands after a recent evening of practice in her garage. "I have to go in and soak my hands in bleach every night to get the blood out of my fingernails."

But, if other people want out, Phillips and Abbott want in. Phillips is headed to Villa Julie College near Baltimore next year, and Abbott, a junior, is also thinking about schools outside the Eastern Shore. Phillips will study nursing; Abbott is thinking about marine biology. There's no guarantee they will be able to find jobs back here.

So while they still had time, the two wanted to dive as deep as possible into the traditions of Chesapeake marsh country -- a place where beauty queens can get their hands bloody.

"It's not weird," Phillips said. "You can be graceful and beautiful and well-poised and skin a muskrat."

To prepare, Phillips and Abbott had to practice skinning, repeating the series of cuts and yanks necessary to take off a muskrat's hide. And then they had to practice other skills that seemed to belong to a different world.

"Then you do this: Sweet. Talking. Sugar. Coated. Candy. Man . . . and then the shimmy," said pageant choreographer April Reid, leading the five contestants through a dance to Christina Aguilera's racy song, "Candyman." She was showing them a flirty gesture to punctuate every word. Then, again: "Bum, bum, bum, bum-bum. Shake a little butt," Reid said.

Finally, on Feb. 22, it was time.

"I'm a little scared," Phillips said. She was in a locker room at South Dorchester School, a few minutes before the pageant, with curlers in her hair and a dead muskrat in a plastic bag. The animal had been caught in a spring-loaded trap in a nearby marsh that morning. Now, it looked awfully fluffy.

"I did blow-dry it," Phillips said.

The competition started with the dance number, then an onstage interview of each contestant. Then it was time for talent. Phillips changed out of the beige suit she'd worn for the interview and came out in hip waders, a plaid shirt and jeans. Trapper's clothes.

"I'm going to show you how to get a muskrat from his house to yours," she said. The crowd, estimated at more than 700 people, buzzed. The judges recoiled. She set the muskrat down on a sheet of cardboard, cut into its skin, peeled the hide back, and then, after a few cuts around the head, wiggled the pelt free.

"There's the, the fur," she said, "and there's the meat." Screams and applause. The carcass was taken offstage, Phillips went to scrub her hands and the next contestant came out to play Beethoven's "F¿r Elise" on the piano.

Abbott went a more conventional route: She belted out a song by pop-country star and "American Idol" alum Kellie Pickler. When she came offstage, a close family friend was literally leaping for joy in the hallway: "Yougotit, yougotit, yougotit!"

She was right. A few minutes later, the enormous sparkling crown of Miss Outdoors was set on Abbott's head. She had become the queen that she had envied so much as a child.

"It's cool, because everybody gets to look at you," she said afterward. "And all the little girls are like, 'I wanna be like her.' "

And from there, it only got better for her. On Saturday, the day of the skinning championships, Abbott was first introduced to the crowd in her crown and gown. "There's Dakota Abbott," one boy said to another at the back of the school gymnasium. "Hotssss." Then she put on ratty jeans and skinned two muskrats in 1 minute, 42 seconds to win the women's junior world championship. No Miss Outdoors in recent memory had ever won a skinning championship.

Phillips won a trophy in the skinning competition -- unsurprisingly, since she was the only one competing in her beginner's division. And in the pageant the night before, as everybody waited to hear the top finishers, emcee Buddy Foxwell had called her name.

"Your first runner-up, 2008 . . . Samantha Phillips!" he said. She had already won the award for the top talent. "Take a walk, Sam."

Phillips took her turn on the catwalk, waving to the crowd in a glamorous, shimmering black evening gown.

There was still a little muskrat blood under her nails.

Behind the scenes at Bootypop

By Kate M. Jackson
Globe Correspondent / January 31, 2008

We all think, at one time or another, of changing careers. Not everyone imagines going into the underwear business.

Susan Bloomstone did, however. Bloomstone, a former television producer for PBS, got an idea for a business venture after reading a New York Times story in 2006 on the dramatic increase in buttock augmentation surgery.

"I read how more and more women were walking into their plastic surgeon's office and asking for a [rear end] like Beyoncé's," said Bloomstone, who lives in Newton. "The butt used to be something you hid, but now it's something you show off."

Of course it's not just the pop diva who's got the look. Pre-pregnancy, Jennifer Lopez always flaunted her hourglass shape, and actress Jessica Biel - Esquire's 2005 sexiest woman alive - is nothing but curves.

Suddenly, everywhere Bloomstone looked she saw women striving for, yep, a bigger booty. Celebrities were showcasing their perfectly shaped behinds on the red carpet instead of the usual cleavage. Director Pedro Almodóvar had Penélope Cruz beef up her posterior with a prosthetic rump in the film "Volver." On the ABC show "Brothers & Sisters," Calista Flockhart's character padded her bony behind to become more "bootylicious" to potential suitors.

Bloomstone saw a business opportunity. Her product? Bootypop, a line of padded underwear designed to help women look a bit more . . . voluptuous. Think of it as a padded bra, she says, for your backside.

Indeed, Bloomstone says the padded garments offer a desirable way to showcase your assets - one not nearly as pricey or risky (or permanent) as surgery.

"There's something fun about being able to change your silhouette the way you change your clothing," she said. "Women will be able to choose from a wider array of clothing styles, ones they may have stayed away from previously because of their body shapes."

It may not only be about trying different clothing. Choosing to change one's shape, temporarily or not, is about changing identities. "A lot of this has to do with the search for the exotic 'other,' the coveting of a body shape you don't have or couldn't possibly have," said Sharlene Nagy Hesse-Biber, director of the women studies program at Boston College and author of "Am I Thin Enough Yet?"

"Today, we're able to use the body as a fashion tool," she continued. "Body shapes, like clothing, can be trendy and driven by celebrity culture. Looks and body shapes come in and out of style."

Bloomstone officially launches Bootypop at celebrity fashion mecca Kitson in Los Angeles tomorrow. She says the padded undies, in colors with names like Cotton Candy, Sour Apple Candy, and Black Licorice, will eventually be sold at retail stores here, too.

The Illustrated President

W.H.D. Koerner, “A Charge to Keep” (1916)

Scott Horton
Harpers Magazine

George W. Bush is famous for his attachment to a painting which he acquired after becoming a “born again Christian.” It’s by W.H.D. Koerner and is entitled “A Charge to Keep.” Bush was so taken by it, that he took the painting’s name for his own official autobiography. And here’s what he says about it:

I thought I would share with you a recent bit of Texas history which epitomizes our mission. When you come into my office, please take a look at the beautiful painting of a horseman determinedly charging up what appears to be a steep and rough trail. This is us. What adds complete life to the painting for me is the message of Charles Wesley that we serve One greater than ourselves.

So in Bush’s view (or perhaps I should say, faith) the key figure, with whom he personally identifies, is a missionary spreading the word of the Methodist Christianity in the American West in the late nineteenth century.

Wilhelm Heinrich Dethlef Körner (you see why he used initials, though he later Anglicized this as William Henry Dethlef Koerner) was born in Germany and immigrated to a small town in Iowa as a young tot. He made his way over time to Chicago and worked as an illustrator for the Chicago Tribune. He married Lillian Lusk, a well-know graphic artist in her own right, and moved to Battle Creek, Michigan, where he worked for Pilgrim Magazine. He and his wife scrimped and saved to finance a move to New York City. They were after more formal art training and to establish a position as artists in the heart of the publishing industry. They made it to New York in 1907, and they were very successful.

In fact, Koerner’s principal employer through the core of his career was Harper’s Magazine. Koerner published 55 feature illustrations in Harper’s, the first in 1910 and the last in 1925. Koerner was not exclusive to Harper’s, however, he also did important works for the Saturday Evening Post, McCall’s and Collier’s among other publications, and he did a brisk business for the book trade, again very heavily for Harpers Brothers, and he pioneered commercial illustration (Koerner did the first box artwork for C.W. Post’s Grapenuts, for instance). His serious work after 1907 focused heavily on the American West, and he clearly was one of the key “Golden Age” illustrators. His work is famous for dramatic images which for me are consonant with the age of Teddy Roosevelt—they suggest ruggedness, love for the outdoors, a strong sense of adventure and risk-taking. His paintings are packed with motion, and at times rather dramatic motion. I was not able to find much about Koerner and his sense of religion, through it is very clear that he did not engage in public displays of religious fervor and religious themes are absent entirely from his work.

So Bush’s description of “A Charge to Keep” struck me as very strange. In fact, I’d say highly improbable. Now, however, Jacob Weisberg has solved the mystery. He invested the time to track down the commission behind the art work and he gives us the full story in his forthcoming book on Bush, The Bush Tragedy:

[Bush] came to believe that the picture depicted the circuit-riders who spread Methodism across the Alleghenies in the nineteenth century. In other words, the cowboy who looked like Bush was a missionary of his own denomination.

Only that is not the title, message, or meaning of the painting. The artist, W.H.D. Koerner, executed it to illustrate a Western short story entitled “The Slipper Tongue,” published in The Saturday Evening Post in 1916. The story is about a smooth-talking horse thief who is caught, and then escapes a lynch mob in the Sand Hills of Nebraska. The illustration depicts the thief fleeing his captors. In the magazine, the illustration bears the caption: “Had His Start Been Fifteen Minutes Longer He Would Not Have Been Caught.”

So Bush’s inspiring, prosyletizing Methodist is in fact a silver-tongued horse thief fleeing from a lynch mob. It seems a fitting marker for the Bush presidency. Bush has consistently exhibited what psychologists call the “Tolstoy syndrome.” That is, he is completely convinced he knows what things are, so he shuts down all avenues of inquiry about them and disregards the information that is offered to him. This is the hallmark of a tragically bad executive. But in this case, it couldn’t be more precious. The president of the United States has identified closely with a man he sees as a mythic, heroic figure. But in fact he’s a wily criminal one step out in front of justice. It perfectly reflects Bush the man. . . and Bush the president.

Daniel Day Lewis gives blood, sweat and tears

It's the acclaimed actor's fourth film in 10 years. And Paul Thomas Anderson’s making-of-America epic is set for Oscar gold

Christopher Goodwin

When I walk in, Daniel Day-Lewis and Paul Thomas Anderson are out on the balcony of the hotel room, sharing a joke and quick hits off a cigarette. The affinity between the 50-year-old British actor and the 37-year-old American director is unlikely but palpable. They’re picking up where they left off when they finished shooting

There Will Be Blood more than a year ago. They haven’t seen much of each other since – Day-Lewis lives in rural Ireland, Anderson in Los Angeles – but you sense their shared exhilaration after almost rapturous previews of the film. At the screening I’d seen the night before at the Writers Guild of America, the industry audience had given the film a standing ovation, a rare occurrence. One person said: “It feels like the first great American film of the 21st century. It tackles all the big themes about America: blood, oil, religion.”

It’s a harrowing, visceral, epic drama about the early years of the oil boom in California, and some drew comparisons to Giant, starring James Dean, which was shot at the same location, Marfa, in the southern Texas desert; others alluded to Citizen Kane, because of its focus on the corrosive effects of the pursuit of wealth. As the audience poured into the lobby, the talk was not of whether the film would be in the running for Oscars, but of how many nominations – including certain nods for Day-Lewis as best actor and Anderson as best director – it would get.

Loosely based on Upton Sinclair’s 1927 novel Oil!, There Will Be Blood is about the forces that created the wealth and power of industrial America, and those destroyed by it. But it is told as the microscopically intimate character study of one man: Daniel Plainview, a miner and oil prospector, played by Day-Lewis. His obsessive pursuit of wealth devours those closest to him and whatever there once was of his own soul. Like much of Anderson’s work, it is also about the relationships between sons and fathers. Here, he explores those Shakespearian themes through Plainview’s heartbreaking relationship with his own young son,played by a newcomer, Dillon Freasier, but also through his relationship with his young nemesis, a small-town preacher, wonderfully played by Paul Dano, last seen as the awkward brother in Little Miss Sunshine. The feverishly unsettling score, by Jonny Greenwood from Radiohead, also plays like a character in the film, clawing into your bones.

The savage power of the film, however, really derives from Day-Lewis. He plays the brutal, ruthless oil prospector with such ferocious intensity and demonic relish that, as the reviewer for Variety wrote: “It’s difficult to imagine him emerging between takes as just an actor playing a part.” According to people on the film – adding to Day-Lewis lore – the actor remained in character throughout the three-month shoot, on and off the set. Which, once you’ve spent 160 minutes in Plainview’s company, is a truly scary notion.

Luckily, as we talk today, Day-Lewis is back in his own skin. The actor, son of the late British poet laureate Cecil Day-Lewis, is tall and sinewy, always slightly pitched forward, his broken nose pulling to the left, ear lobes hung with thick gold hoops, lank hair now spotted with grey under a pork-pie hat. He has circular tattoos running down his forearm, and the tattooed handprints of his children on his upper arm. In person, he is a gracious, courtly and attentive man, quick to laugh. It’s hard to see where his reputation for dark moods might have come from.

Anderson, sitting nearby, is more tentative, almost boyish, his brown hair cut close to the sides of his head. Their closeness seems surprising. Where Day-Lewis’s conversation has an instinctually rich and poetic lilt, Anderson’s more awkward phrasing betrays his upbringing in the very different world of the San Fernando valley of Los Angeles, where most of his films have been set. Yet, as well as a taste for illicit nicotine, the two men share a seriousness of purpose, which is why they both work sparingly. Anderson has made only two films since he burst onto the scene 10 years ago with Boogie Nights, which was set in the crazed world of the valley’s porn industry: the sprawling Magnolia (1999), which starred Tom Cruise; and Punch-Drunk Love (2002), a comedy with Adam Sandler.

The first stirrings of There Will Be Blood came when Anderson bought a copy of Oil! in London because he was feeling homesick and liked the cover illustration of a California oilfield. “I was frustrated by the things I was writing, and had gotten sick of my own voice, and would sort of transcribe the book to see how it looked,” says Anderson, twice Oscar-nominated for best original screenplay, for Boogie Nights and Magnolia. “The book’s genesis was that Sinclair’s wife owned a plot of land in Signal Hill [just south of LA], where they found oil, and he got to witness this explosion, how the town fell apart.”

“Paul wrote it with Daniel in mind,” says JoAnne Sellar, the British producer behind all of Anderson’s films since Boogie Nights, “and we approached him when the script was about three-quarters done.” Day-Lewis, usually reticent about taking on new film projects, quickly agreed to come on board. Since 1997, the actor had made only three films: The Boxer; Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York, in which he played Bill “The Butcher”; and, in 2005, The Ballad of Jack and Rose, which was written and directed by his wife, Rebecca Miller. Day-Lewis and Miller married in 1996 and have two sons, aged nine and five. They met when he starred in the film version of The Crucible, by Miller’s father, the late playwright Arthur Miller.

Asked what spoke to him in the script, Day-Lewis says: “Paul, in the voice of Daniel Plainview... I know when I feel irrevocably drawn to something. Sometimes I take a step backward to try to assess whether I genuinely can be useful in telling that story – and sometimes I really feel I can’t be. But, once drawn in, I have no option but to follow that path, and I really don’t question why it is I need that at that particular moment, or why it needs me.” He admits that one of the reasons he doesn’t work more is that he needs “to believe in the inevitability of the piece of work that you cannot avoid doing” to be prised from home. “For me, from beginning to end, it was about 3½ years of my life invested in telling this story, so it had to be something I felt a pretty compelling need to be involved in.”

It’s also true, however, that, more than any other screen actor, he needs to inhabit his characters so completely that the prospect of such immersion must be daunting. “The intention is always the same,” he says of the way he works. “To try to discover life in its entirety, or at least create for yourself the illusion that you have, which might give you some chance of convincing other people of it. It’s the same thing each time, but it requires totally different work in the process of achieving that. You are set on a path that’s strewn with obstacles, but getting over them is the joy of the work. So it’s impossible to think in terms of difficulty: it all seems utterly impossible, but the pleasure is in trying to forge ahead anyway.”

As a man who nearly became a cabinetmaker rather than an actor, and has intermittently been apprenticed as a cobbler, Day-Lewis’s craftsman-like preparation is celebrated. Playing Christy Brown, who suffered from cerebral palsy but became a painter and writer, in the 1989 film My Left Foot (for which he won a best actor Oscar), Day-Lewis spent two months with cerebral-palsy sufferers, and remained in his wheelchair even in pubs and restaurants at night. For The Last of the Mohicans (1992), he learnt how to hunt animals and build a canoe. For Bill “The Butcher”, he worked cutting meat at a butcher’s shop and spent months learning how to throw the knives his character used to kill people. The director Martin Scorsese understands his need for immersion: “He’d rather not be distracted from his focus.”

For Daniel Plainview, as he does for most of his characters, Day-Lewis started with the voice. He asked Anderson to send him recordings of voices from the era: the huge canvas of the film stretches from the late 19th century to 1927. “I have a little old-fashioned recorder I use when I’m working,” he says. “I talk to myself a lot; I live in a rural place, and there’s not much else to do during the winter. So I would send Paul sample tapes of me talking to myself.” Anderson had also sent Day-Lewis a copy of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, directed by John Huston, an important influence on the film, and documentaries on Huston, whose rich voice seeps into the character-isation, as if Plainview were a prototype for the sociopath Huston played in Polanski’s Chinatown.

When they started shooting, Anderson admits: “Daniel’s attack on the role was quite intimidating at first. But it became clear to me that it wasn’t anything outlandish or strange. He’s still in there, to the point where we can communicate. The misconception would be that it makes it harder to work with him, as a director, but it’s actually much, much easier. You always think, ‘My God, it would be great if that person could leap off the page and be right there and I could talk to him’ – and then you have it.”

There Will Be Blood differs from Anderson’s earlier films in that it’s an adaptation, it’s not set in the familiar world of the San Fernando valley, and it doesn’t include his usual troupe of actors. In addition, it took a long time to set up, because, Sellar says, it was hard to finance. “We did it on an incredibly small amount of money, though it was more than the average for an art film. The studios didn’t think it had the scope of a major picture.” That meant Anderson and Day-Lewis were working together for a long time before shooting started, so it became a far more collaborative process than Anderson was used to. As the film nears release, he feels uncomfortable about comparisons to Citizen Kane, but he’s pleased people feel it has the same tragic intensity. “One of the great things about Citizen Kane is that it just goes downhill,” he says. “There’s such satisfaction in watching that.”

Day-Lewis tries to brush aside suggestions that the film should primarily be read as a critique of America and American values, although that’s clearly part of its thrust. He prefers to see it in more personal terms: “What it takes to get power, as you sacrifice yourself, little by little, in pursuit of the thing you thought you needed, or felt you couldn’t live without, and then you only understand too late that you can’t retrieve your soul – it’s gone, it’s torn.

“I suppose, if I had anything in common with Plainview, it would be ‘the fever’ he has. With me, it just happens to be for my work – which is a kind of mining work, dark and sometimes unrewarding, but absolutely compelling.”

Desperados

The Eagles team up with Wal-Mart. How dare they.

Sunday, November 25, 2007 12:01 a.m. EST

One of the most popular rock bands of all time has finally managed to offend--not for its songs, but for how it sells them. There's a lesson here in technology, new business models, and hidebound "progressives."

The first new album from the Eagles in over a decade, "Long Road Out of Eden," has already sold more than a million copies, hitting Billboard's #1 in its first week. It's the kind of blockbuster that used to pay Christmas bonuses at the big record companies, only this album wasn't produced by a big record company. The Eagles released it themselves and are selling it exclusively through Wal-Mart.

This isn't going down well in certain elite precincts. Music blogs accused the group of selling out, while a review in Rolling Stone opined that there is an "inevitable contradiction in buying a record that attacks corporate greed . . . from a superchain with a bleak record on employee rights and health care." A piece in the Boston Herald noted that "The deal will make the Eagles richer. But it could cost them cool points (if the aging rockers have any left)."

So how can Don Henley, an environmentalist who wrote a song mocking Ronald Reagan, embrace a middle-American retail colossus out of favor with enlightened opinion? How can the #1 album not be available in New York City, where politicians have blocked Wal-Mart from opening even a single store? "You would have thought we did a deal with the devil," Mr. Henley says. "People have been crying out for a new paradigm. So we did something new."

That something turns out to be good business. In cutting out the record company, the band cut itself in for a bigger share of the per-album profits. While it might have expected fewer sales from restricted availability, that doesn't seem to be happening. Wal-Mart's retail price of under $12 for the two-disc album has allowed smaller retailers to stock up on the album at Wal-Mart and then resell them with a markup.

The Eagles aren't the first to try new ways to sell a record. Garth Brooks signed an exclusive deal in 2005 with Wal-Mart and has sold millions of records. Beyonce has released an exclusive DVD through the store. Joni Mitchell and Paul McCartney are selling their music through a href="http://www.starbucks.com/">Starbucks. Billy Joel's daughter, Alexa Ray, is trying to establish her own music career by doing an exclusive with Target.

These and others are evidence that Napster and its filesharing successors weren't the death of the music business but a smart bomb that forced the creation of new delivery models. Apple's iTunes is the most famous. But the Web has allowed thousands of bands to find new audiences, and even create global niche brands. Thanks to the Internet, a Norwegian metal band named Enslaved has been able to fill small town bars and auditoriums in the U.S.

Alas, some rockers sound like old fogies complaining that nothing is as good as it used to be. KISS's Gene Simmons says he can't be bothered to go into the studio anymore because the business model that made him rich no longer works. As he told Reuters recently, he blames filesharing: "Every little college kid, every freshly-scrubbed little kid's face should have been sued off the face of the earth. They should have taken their houses and cars and nipped it right there."

We believe in property rights as much as anyone, but when technology is changing, businesses have to change too--and that includes the business of music. So let's applaud Mr. Henley, Glenn Frey, Joe Walsh and the other Eagles for some creative capitalism, however politically incorrect.

King Tut exhibit returns to U.S. in 2008

DALLAS - A popular exhibit including objects buried with Egypt's King Tutankhamun will return to the United States next year with three stops, beginning in Dallas.

The exhibit opening Oct. 3 at the Dallas Museum of Art will be followed by stops at two yet-to-be-name museums.

"Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs" drew nearly 4 million visitors during its two-year, four-city tour that wrapped up this fall after stops in Los Angeles, Fort Lauderdale, Chicago and Philadelphia. When the exhibit opened in 2005, it was the first time in more than 25 years that treasures from King Tut's tomb were shown in the U.S.

"I want everyone in Texas to know that the boy king is coming to town, and I personally invite everyone to see this great exhibition so that a new generation of people will experience the history and magic of the boy king," said Zahi Hawass, secretary general of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, said in a news release from the Dallas Museum of Art on Monday.

Next year's exhibit will include artifacts that are new to the show and haven't been seen before outside of Egypt.

With artifacts between 3,300 and 3,500 years old, the exhibit gives a glimpse into the life of Tutankhamun and other royals. Tutankhamun died under mysterious circumstances around age 18 or 19, in the ninth year of his reign.

Raw look at Iraq war sobers Venice film fest

A US film laying bare the ugly reality of the Iraq war seared the big screen at the Venice film festival on Friday, with director Brian De Palma saying he hoped it would help end America's military occupation.
"The pictures are what will stop the war," De Palma told a news conference after the press screening of the movie, "Redacted".

Centering on the actual March 2006 rape and murder of a 14-year-old Iraqi schoolgirl by US soldiers who also slaughtered three family members, the film is a response to what De Palma sees as sanitised media accounts of the war seen in the United States.

"All the images we have of our war are completely constructed -- whitewashed, redacted," said De Palma, who is best known for such violent fictions as "Carrie" and "Scarface".

"One only hopes that these images will get the public incensed enough to get their congressmen to vote against the war," he added.

"Redacted" hits hard with its dramatic reenactment of the conditions, attitudes and stresses that led up to the real-life crime.

Private First Class Jesse Spielman was sentenced in early August to 110 years in prison for his role in the rape and killings.

Shown through the imaginary video lens of one of the soldiers involved in the raid on the girl's home in Mahmudiya, south of Baghdad, De Palma's dramatisation is interlaced with actual news clips, documentary footage and stills from the war.

The decision to use the device of the videocam arose from De Palma's research on the Internet. "The blogs, the use of language, it's all there," he said.

De Palma said he was "forced to fictionalise things" to get the movie made because of the legal obstacles to showing real people and events.

"Redacted" will initially be distributed nationwide by Magnolia Pictures as a "classic art film," its producer Jason Kliot said. "If the response is strong one hopes the distribution will grow the film in a big way."

A second film on the Iraq war, about a soldier who goes AWOL, is on the programme for Saturday: "In the Valley of Elah" directed by Canadian Paul Haggis.

Friday's lineup also saw George Clooney inject some Hollywood star power with his latest flick, the corporate thriller "Michael Clayton", in which he plays a "fixer" for an enormous New York law firm.

Tasked with sorting out embarrassments behind the scenes for its megaclients, he finds himself in a moral dilemma -- and in mortal danger -- while trying to help the firm protect a client with a toxic product.

Also Friday was Italy's first offering to the festival, "Nessuna Qualita agli Eroi" (Fallen Heroes), which grabbed its own share of the spotlight by showing rising star Elio Germano's erection during a salacious sex scene.

Director Paolo Franchi said he hoped the scene wouldn't distract from the movie's existential drama about a man who cannot father children and is indebted to a ruthless usurer whose demented son befriends him.

Sex is the unabashed central theme of another of Friday's films, "The Story of Richard O," competing in the festival's Horizons section. "Of course the central theme is sex, but sex intertwined with the burlesque and with poetry," says French director Damien Odoul.

On Saturday, British director Ken Loach unveils "It's a Free World," about a young woman who gets sacked from an employment agency and decides to go in with her flatmate to start a recruitment service for foreign workers from their kitchen table.

NFL to revamp shield with redesigned logo

By Michael McCarthy, USA TODAY

NEW YORK — The National Football League is launching a makeover of its red, white and blue "NFL Shield" logo that adorns everything from player jerseys to fan T-shirts and hats.
The league is creating a leaner, meaner version of the iconic logo that will debut at the NFL draft in April, 2008. The revamped shield will be slightly taller and thinner, with a new football, fewer stars and darker colors, says Lisa Baird, the NFL's senior vice president of marketing. The redesign marks the first changes to the shield since 1980.

At the NFL's annual meeting this spring, commissioner Roger Goodell talked about the NFL Shield as the "envy of the sports world." The league has been careful to make an "evolutionary, not a radical change," says Baird.

•The new shield features eight stars (representing the eight AFC and NFC divisions) vs. 25 on the current logo. Why 25? It's a mystery. After researching the shield's origins, the designers could find no reason for 25 stars, says Jaime Weston, director of brand and creative operations. The shield logo was first used around 1940, two decades after the NFL's founding in 1920.

• The football at the center has been redesigned to resemble the ball atop the Vince Lombardi championship trophy, says Baird. It replaces the old-fashioned pigskin nicknamed the "Hamburger" inside league offices.

•NFL vendors will probably thank the league for switching to fewer stars. Some vendors, without permission, have used fewer stars rather than shoehorning 25 tiny stars into smaller shields on hats and T-shirts.

Tinkering with one of the country's most powerful and ubiquitous sports brands will be a risky and expensive business. NFL sponsors such as Reebok, Riddell, Wilson and EA Sports will have to switch shields on everything from uniforms (players wear three logos at the neck and waistlines and on the helmet) and licensed merchandise to the official "Duke" game ball and Madden video game. Even groundskeepers will have to adopt the new shield at NFL stadiums.

But Baird believes the cleaner, more modern symbol will "pop" better during TV telecasts. The less-busy logo will also show up better on "third screens" increasingly used by sports fans: cellphones, laptops, iPods and PDAs.

Artist sets sail in life-size paper boat

The Daily Mail

By ALICIA BULLER

Artist Frank Boelter set sails in his lifesize paper boat as he leaves a shipyard in Lauenburg, Germany.

He constructed the 9-metre vessel from 'Tetrapack' and fearlessly sailed it up the Elbe, despite the fact the light material is more commonly used for packaging milk.

The 37-year-old artist came up with the idea one breakfast time, while he was sitting at his kitchen table fiddling with an empty milk carton, which he cut up and made into a scaled-down model.

The £110 boat is 30 feet long, weighs 55 pounds, uses a 170-square-metre piece of Tetrapack paper, and took only two hours to construct.

Boelter said it will survive forty days before it disintegrates into a wet, sinking mass.

It is part of the artist's exhibition named 'Bis ans Ende der Welt' (Until the end of the world).

It's aqua-origami, all right, but is it art?

A little Duderonomy of 'The Big Lebowski'

February 16, 2007

BY CATHLEEN FALSANI Religion Writer
Abide. It means to wait for something, patiently. Or "to endure without yielding, to accept without objection," according to the official word-definers at Merriam-Webster.
Abiding is no easy feat, especially not in a culture that is success-driven, instant-gratification-oriented, and pathologically impatient.

True abiding is a spiritual gift, mastered only, it would seem, by the more fully evolved among us.

Perhaps that's what makes the Dude so dang appealing. Jeff "The Dude" Lebowski is the central character of the 1998 Coen brothers' masterpiece "The Big Lebowski," and apart from spawning a cult following rivaled only by the "Rocky Horror Picture Show" and "This Is Spinal Tap," the Dude is the catalyst for a new religion: Dudeism.

Maybe religion isn't really the correct word. Like-minded followers of the way of the Dude might be more appropriate. Or, as the creator of Dudeism.com puts it, "The Church of the Latter-day Dude," complete with Dudeist priests. (I got ordained as a Dudeist online earlier this week in less than a minute. Now I can preside at Dudeist weddings, which is a nice fallback if this journalism thing doesn't work out.)

"Life is short and complicated and nobody knows what to do about it. So don't do anything about it," the explanation of Dudeist theology -- I suppose you could call it its creed -- says on Dudeism.com. "Just take it easy, man. Stop worrying so much whether you'll make it into the finals. Kick back with some friends and some oat soda and whether you roll strikes or gutters, do your best to be true to yourself and others -- that is to say, abide."

In "The Big Lebowski," the Dude, played by Jeff Bridges, is a bathrobe-wearing, White Russian-drinking, mellow, lie-about, aging hippie philosopher/bowler/toker. He endures physical assaults -- including a swirly in his own toilet and a marmot tossed into the water during an otherwise serene bubble bath -- theft, kidnapping and general disrespect from all quarters.

A pacifist and an idealist

But the Dude, ya see, abides. He doesn't answer violence with violence, or ill will with the same. He is kind and mellow, lazy but not lackadaisical.
Oliver Benjamin, the clever author of Dudeism.com who could not be reached for comment (apparently he lives part of each year in Southeast Asia), claims the Chinese Taoist philosopher Lao Tzu was the original Dude because, in part, he taught the idea of wei wu wei, or "non-doing doing."

That's the Dude in a nutshell.

"The Dude is a very genuine person, and he is always the same person no matter what situation he's in or who he's dealing with," said Will Russell, self-described "co-founding dude" of Lebowski Fest, annual events in Louisville, Ky., and other cities that have been drawing thousands of Lebowski fans since 2002.

"As far as abiding goes, he takes things as they come. He keeps rolling with the punches. They pee on his rug and he goes and gets another rug," Russell said, referring to one of the more unforgettable scenes in the film. "He's just content to go bowling. . . . The Dude defines his own happiness. He endures the world around him and the world around is going at a different pace. He's in the middle, just hanging out."

The Dude is a pacifist.

The Dude is an idealist.

He's also something of an avatar of simplicity for the information age whose abiding appeal is essentially spiritual.

"It strikes me that it has something to do with the kind of ironic appeal of this simultaneously shallow and deep attention to being," said Jeffrey Mahan, professor of media and culture at the Iliff School of Theology in Denver.

"One of the things that the Dude embodies is this possibility that we really could do this, that it's not some unattainable being, someone who is hugely smarter than us, or somebody who has the kind of spiritual presence of the Dalai Lama who could have this attention to being, but that it really is a matter of choice and will. We could choose to do this and don't."

The Stranger comes calling

To that end, on his Web site Benjamin provides a few tips for the would-be faithful in a "Dudeo-Coen" version of what he calls "Duderonomy." There are 38 laws, including:
• • Thou shalt always use fresh creamer when preparing the sacrificial beverage.

• • Respect everyone's point of view. It's just, like, their opinion, man.

• • Never go to a tournament with a negative attitude.

At the end of the film, The Stranger (Sam Elliott), seated at the bar of the bowling alley, offers his condolences to the Dude on the untimely death of his friend and asks how he's doing.

His answer? "Well, ya know, the Dude abides."

Doesn't he, though?

"I don't know about you, but I take comfort in that," the Stranger says. "It's good knowin' he's out there, the Dude, takin' her easy for all us sinners."

I second that emotion.

Dark Crystal 2: it's official!

http://www.sfx.co.uk

A week ago we thought it had been scrapped. Earlier this week we heard it may not have been. So to end the rumours and confusion, SFX went straight to the source on this and have obtained an official statement from The Henson Company about The Power of the Dark Crystal. And it's good news: it's definitely on!

This morning we received the following statement from Lisa Henson, the company's co-CEO and producer of the film:

"The Jim Henson Company remains committed to producing Power of the Dark Crystal. The film has not been 'cancelled' or 'put on hiatus' or any of the other rumored status changes that have been floating around. This film is an ambitious undertaking for us and it continues to move forward as we work to secure the financing and distribution that a project of this scope requires; and yes, these are factors that will most likely have an impact the production timeline. We are grateful to the fans who support Power of the Dark Crystal and we are excited to make this new chapter in the Dark Crystal story a reality."

Brand Hell

Pal sent us this comic which is all too real........yeesh.

Wynn accidentally damages Picasso

Reviewjournal.com

Pablo Picasso's "dream" painting has turned into a $139 million nightmare for Steve Wynn.

In an accident witnessed by a group that included Barbara Walters and screenwriters Nora Ephron and Nicholas Pileggi, Wynn accidentally poked a hole in Picasso's 74-year-old painting, "Le Reve," French for "The Dream."

A day earlier, Wynn had finalized a record $139 million deal for the painting of Picasso's mistress, Wynn told The New Yorker magazine

The accident occurred as a gesturing Wynn, who suffers from retinitis pigmentosa, an eye disease that affects peripheral vision, struck the painting with his right elbow, leaving a hole the size of a silver dollar in the left forearm of Marie-Theresa Walter, Picasso's 21-year-old mistress.

"Oh shit, look what I've done," Wynn said, according to Ephron, who gave her account in a blog published on Monday.

Wynn paid $48.4 million for the Picasso in 1997 and had agreed to sell it to art collector Steven Cohen. The $139 million would have been $4 million higher than the previous high for a work of art, according to The New Yorker.

Cosmetics magnate Ronald Lauder paid $135 million in July for Gustav Klimt's 1907 portrait "Adele Bloch-Bauer I."

Wynn plans to restore "Le Reve" and keep it.

Beauty Is Only Feather Deep

Was the bald eagle really the best choice of national symbol? A closer look at the habits and evolutionary lineage of this American icon casts doubt

Catherine L. Raven

At first, all I saw were a couple dozen people shuffling around, most fumbling with binoculars, a few already staring up at the sky. I generally avoid crowds, especially tour groups, when I'm out pursuing wildlife. But these people, varying in age, size and couture, were clearly disorganized. Convinced of their harmlessness and curious about the object of their attention, I parked next to them (at the Lamar River pullout in Yellowstone National Park), perched on a boulder about four meters away and quickly discovered the nature of their confusion. Although it was midday, a tiny white star seemed to be flashing in the cloudless, sapphire sky. After focusing their binoculars, the onlookers realized the star was a bald eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus), and a symphony of "oooos" and "aaaahs" began. Then, within a few minutes, a raven appeared. A protracted fight ensued during which time the relatively small raven demonstrated agility, tenacity, and bravery (a judgment that any bird expert would confirm as unbiased, my surname notwithstanding). The bald eagle demonstrated the better part of valor and fled.

"Yessss!" I shouted spontaneously, thrusting my right fist forward to salute the raven's coup, at which point the entire crowd turned toward me and stared as if I were a devil worshipper. Sure, I've received worse looks, but never by so many people simultaneously. I would have avoided those malevolent expressions had I shown up 200 years earlier, when the only people in the valley were Indians. In those days, a person could choose to raise a hand to honor either the raven's skillfulness or the bald eagle's beauty. But the most revered bird in this area would likely have been the golden eagle (Aquila chrysaetos). Countless natives probably rode through this valley with golden eagles painted on their horses. Today, tourists ride through with bald eagles painted on their motorcycles.

The transfer of allegiances began with Thomas Jefferson, who appointed the bald eagle to serve as the national emblem for the new American nation. It was a classic example of the outdated practice of physiognomy. Now considered a pseudoscience and an excuse for racism, advocates of physiognomy held that a person or animal's true nature was revealed by its outward appearance. Because of its white head and yellow eyes, physiognomists concluded that the bald eagle was fierce and noble. To his credit, Benjamin Franklin, the scientist, rejected this false logic, recognizing that the baldie was, in fact, a pirate and worse still, a "rank coward, commonly fleeing birds the size of sparrows." Franklin suggested that the turkey, a bird of many virtues, be used for the emblem instead. But Franklin's arguments didn't prevail: It seems our young nation was more concerned with symbolism than natural history, and the turkey had less charisma than the eagle.

Jefferson's ignorance of the bald eagle's feeding habits is difficult to justify. The eagle's lifestyle was accurately described in 1754 by the well-respected English naturalist Mark Catesby. In Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands, Catesby identified the bald eagle as a scavenger whose favorite fishing hole was inside the nest of an osprey (Pandion haliaetus). Donating food to the bald eagle may be only a minor inconvenience for the osprey, an adept hunter, according to Catesby, that "seldom rises without a fish."

It's not surprising that baldies steal more than they hunt: They are not, in fact, true eagles. You can't be a member of that elite group (genus Aquila) with partially feathered legs and dubious feeding habits. The bare-ankled bald eagles are a type of sea eagle that diverged from the African vulture lineage only a few million years ago. Although they may at times hunt, they retain the vulture's ability to survive an entire lifetime on rancid, decaying flesh. They are obligated by neither physiology nor instinct to take live prey. By contrast, the golden eagle and osprey are both obligate hunters.

If by chance Jefferson understood this much natural history, he certainly didn't enlighten his buddy Meriwether Lewis before festooning him with bald-eagle insignia and sending him west to court the various Indian nations. Convincing potential allies that your intentions are honorable can be difficult when your totem is a bird who makes its living dispossessing property. Maybe Jefferson, prescient of future U.S.–Indian relations, enjoyed a little black humor. In any case, halfway through the expedition, Lewis became suspicious of the bird's purported nobility. In one of his journal's few sarcastic entries, he derides the baldie as both a thief and a scavenger. "We continue to see a great number of bald Eagles. I presume they must feed on the carcasses of dead animals, for I see no fishing hawks [osprey] to supply them with their favorite food."

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Sailor . . .

For the bald eagle, ospreys are a reliable source of nourishment; for me, they're a reliable source of entertainment. Seeking such enjoyment, I sometimes slip down to the Yellowstone River near my home, one of many places where there is always an osprey. The last time I tried this, I didn't have to wait long before one shot like an arrow through the fall poplars. Skimming the water, black racing stripe flashing across its cheek, the bird plunged head first into the river, rose, banked elegantly and circled around to make another dive, this time rising with a trout. Not a trivial accomplishment.

For birds, aquatic predation is a difficult skill to master. Of the various species of large flesh-eating birds in North America, only two are aquatic: the bald eagle and the osprey. Nature clearly gave the latter better equipment. The osprey's barbed feet easily grab fish; its oily feathers resist wetting; sealing nostrils prevent water inhalation; translucent eyelids facilitate underwater vision; and black eye stripes minimize water glare. More significant, the osprey's talons turn backward, so that after it strikes a fish broadside and lifts it out of the water, the bird can turn the catch to face forward, making the load more aerodynamic. No other raptor uses this trick. Bald eagles are far less adept fishers overall, which is perhaps why they favor salmon runs where dead red fish, floating or beached, provide an effortless meal.

So baldies can't match the osprey in an aquatic habitat. Put them on land, and they'll fare even worse against the golden eagle. Not surprisingly, Lewis ended his honeymoon with the bald eagle when he began an affair with the "most beautiful of all eagles in America," the golden, America's only true eagle, whose feathers adorned the headdress of almost every Plains Indian chief. Baldies may successfully steal from the much smaller osprey, but never from the golden, a bird of equal size. Whether bringing down their own prey or feeding on dead or wounded animals, golden eagles rule. Lewis, for one, noted that on the golden eagle's approach "all leave the carcass instantly on which they were feeding." Interested in confirming Lewis's observations, I've hung out near carcasses. It's good enough entertainment that I'm willing to wake up before dawn and return to a scene repeatedly for several days watching until the play is over. Lewis was right: The two eagles enjoy strikingly different roles—the golden one feeds, the bald one cowers.

Saved by Reputation

Americans who don't live among eagles and haven't read Lewis's journals can find enlightenment in Arthur Cleveland Bent's 1937 classic, Life Histories of North American Birds of Prey. "A fine-looking bird," Bent writes of the bald eagle, but "hardly worthy of the distinction [of being the national emblem]. Its carrion-feeding habit, its timid and cowardly behavior, and its predatory attacks on the smaller and weaker osprey hardly inspire respect." Bent's baldies-behaving-badly exposé also reveals that our nation's icon relishes vulture vomit. It's not that they find the vomit lying around; rather, they seek out vultures and force them to vomit. Then they eat the regurgitate. "Our national bird may still be admired," Bent suggests, "by those who are not familiar with its habits."

A few decades after Bent wrote those words, the time came when the bald eagle truly needed the public admiration it had so unfairly enjoyed. In the 1970s, DDT poisoning peaked, bald-eagle populations crashed, and organizations to save the bird rose up like earthworms after a rain. The tradition that Jefferson initiated was embraced by those well-meaning conservationists, who didn't believe Americans could love the bald eagle unconditionally. These activists saved the species but cemented a longstanding misunderstanding about the bald eagle's true nature. The three raptors I've discussed here might appear similar if given only a cursory glance. But ospreys are skilled fishers, golden eagles are keen hunters, and bald eagles are, well, mostly vultures. Bald eagles decorate the sky largely because they are vultures. Their white head feathers contrast with a brown body and suggest their naked-headed ancestry. And their soaring flight, though neither purposeful nor aggressive, is a vulture trait as well. Hunting birds spend more time flying low over the land, systematically searching for prey, a behavior known as quartering.

Floating over gorgeous places and enjoying the view, bald eagles seem to eschew responsibility. People might accuse me of that attitude, too, given that I spend so many hours leisurely watching birds. As a wildlife specialist, I am, technically, working during these times. Yet like the bald eagle, I adhere to routines that look more like loafing than real work. For me, it's a conscious lifestyle choice. I wouldn't deny that the turkey is the more appropriate symbol for Thomas Jefferson's concept of the nation, but for my idea of America, where the Constitution guarantees the right to pursue happiness, the bald eagle will do. After all, this is mostly how we spend our time, the bald one and I, diligently pursuing happiness.

Razzle dazzle at shrine of Basil

September 19, 2006 - 8:24AM

The Gleneagles Hotel staged a gala reopening, boasting of its reputation as Fawlty Towers, England's most frightful hotel.

"We decided Hotel Gleneagles is always going to be famous for inspiring 'Fawlty Towers' so, rather than being embarrassed about what has happened, we have chosen to capitalise on it," said Brian Shone, co-owner of the hotel in Torquay, a sedate resort in the southwestern county of Devon.

"You cannot get rid of the spirit of Basil, so you have got to embrace him," said Shone, who admitted he could become a bit like the John Cleese character "when provoked".

The Gleneagles is not the building seen in the title shots - that's the Woodburn Grange country club near London which burned down in 1991.

Cleese has said the series was inspired by the Monty Python troupe's stay at the Gleneagles in 1971. He described the then-owner, the late Donald Sinclair, as "the most wonderfully rude man I have ever met".

Sinclair's widow, Beatrice, has called that completely unfair, and blamed any trouble on the Pythons.

"They didn't fit into a family hotel... they kept annoying my husband and were quite insulting," she has said.

Cleese didn't attend today's reopening but Prunella Scales, who played Sybil Fawlty, was guest of honour.

Scales, who had never visited the hotel before, arrived in a replica of the bright red Austin 1100 which Basil thrashed with a tree branch in one episode of the series.

Teacher won't shave until bin Laden caught

EPHRATA, Washington (AP) -- After the September 11 terrorist attacks, Gary Weddle followed the news so closely he forgot to shave. After a week he decided not to shave until Osama bin Laden was caught or killed.

Nor has Weddle, 46, who expected the al Qaeda leader to be caught within a month or so, trimmed his facial hair in the succeeding five years as he went from substitute teacher to science instructor at Ephrata Middle School.

At the start of each school year he gives students a brief explanation of his beard, which stretches more than a foot and has started turning gray.

"I still get emotional over the families who lost loved ones. I just don't feel there's any closure on this until they get that guy," Weddle told The Wenatchee World for an article published Monday. "I don't have to know anyone personally who lost family in 9/11 to understand the devastation that he's responsible for."

His wife, Donita, hates the beard, but their three daughters, who attend high school in East Wenatchee, don't mind and "mostly their boyfriends think it's cool," Weddle said.

He said he would keep the beard, untrimmed, as long as bin Laden remains at large -- "even if I get buried with it."

Rap superstar to pay £100,000

· Sean Combs loses out in battle for rights to 'Diddy'
· Rebranding expected to be extremely costly

Riazat Butt
Saturday September 9, 2006
The Guardian

Sean Combs, the rapper, actor and entertainment mogul who has also been known as Puff Daddy and Puffy during his career, has lost the right to use his shorter nickname of Diddy in the UK after agreeing to an out-of-court settlement.

His defeat came at the hands of a rather less well-known Diddy, the London-based music producer Richard Dearlove, who has been trading under the name since 1992. Mr Dearlove, 40, sued Combs, 36, for passing off after learning that the rapper had dropped the P from his name and had decided to relaunch himself solely as Diddy. The law of passing off is designed to deal with unfair competition, in particular with businesses that suffer when another one adopts the same name.

While accepting he does not quite have Sean Combs's global reach, "Diddy" Dearlove said yesterday there had been some confusion with "Diddy" Combs.
"I suffered from a head injury in 2001, when Sean Combs changed his name to P Diddy. I lost my sight for three years and couldn't work," Mr Dearlove told the Guardian.

"I was all ready to go last year, then, in August, he changed his name to Diddy. I was gutted. I started getting emails from Puerto Rican girls asking if they could be in my video and people were asking me to look at their clothing line." Among his many business interests, Combs also has his own range of clothes.

"My lawyers and I were trying to convince the court there was confusion caused by two people trading under the same name," said Mr Dearlove.

"It doesn't matter how big people become. This is my name. I've been successful too. I'm not a global megastar, but what I do is valid. I'm really happy and relieved. I didn't want to go to court. It was me versus something enormous and I had a year of stress with legal proceedings hanging over me."

The action had been listed for a high court hearing on October 23.

Mr Dearlove's solicitor, Chris Woods, said his client had been "concerned" about taking on such a high-profile figure but he was very committed to correcting what he saw as an injustice.

"It's a point of principle and protecting his commercial interests," said Mr Woods. "He didn't want to be perceived as chasing money, it's not about getting a pay-off.

Combs's personal fortune is estimated at $364m (£195m), but Mr Woods said that wasn't an issue, "although I imagine the rebranding won't be cheap".

As part of the settlement, which was sealed earlier this week in the high court, Combs agreed to pay £10,000 damages and more than £100,000 legal costs, although the final figure will be decided by the court.

To comply with the terms of the order, Combs will have to embark on a costly rebrand of his commercial activities in the UK.

Controversy and legal skirmishes have dogged Combs for more than a decade, including another naming issue with the Japanese pop duo Puffy AmiYumi.

Combs and Notorious BIG were rivals to Tupac Shakur and Suge Knight, trading insults in songs and interviews during the mid 1990s. Shakur was murdered in 1996 and, six months later, Notorious BIG was killed weeks before the release of his album, Life After Death.

In 1999, Combs and his then girlfriend, Jennifer Lopez, were caught in the crossfire at a Manhattan nightclub. A police investigation led to Combs's arrest for gun possession and bribery but he was acquitted of all charges. He split up with Lopez during the trial.

Several years later Combs settled a $3m lawsuit filed by his driver who said he suffered emotional damage after the club shooting. He was also accused of assault by a music manager and a television host and has been arrested for driving on a suspended licence.

In 2002 he settled a custody case over his three-year-old son Christian after failing to show up for the hearing on nine previous occasions.

Despite the negative publicity, Combs has driven hip-hop into the mainstream and boasts a media empire that includes Bad Boy Records, two clothing lines, a perfume, a restaurant chain and a reality TV show.

Last year he came 20th in the Forbes list of the most powerful celebrities and he regularly appears at the top of hip-hop rich lists, beating the likes of Jay Z, Damon Dash and 50 Cent.

Combs's solicitor, Nigel Calvert, would only confirm that the action had been settled, but refused to comment further.

Mr Woods said it was not likely that there would be further actions by Mr Dearlove against other Diddys. "We are aware of Ken Dodd and the Diddy Men but they do not operate in the same spheres as my client," he said.

Those Diddy's in full

P Diddy hip-hop superstar, fashion designer and former boyfriend of Jennifer Lopez

Richard 'Diddy' Dearlove clubland producer responsible for remixes of Blondie's Atomic and Heart of Glass

The Diddy Men creation of Liverpool comedian Ken Dodd, they work in the Jam Butty mines of Knotty Ash

'Diddy' David Hamilton Ken Dodd's former straightman who went on to work as a radio DJ

Diddy Kong animated monkey from the Nintendo Donkey Kong game

C-Diddy 2003 US and world air guitar champion, real name David Jung

Burning Man Turns 20

Weird desert hippie festival is actually as American as apple pie.

By Brian Doherty, BRIAN DOHERTY is a senior editor at Reason magazine and author of "This Is Burning Man" (BenBella Books).
August 28, 2006

TWENTY YEARS AGO, a pair of San Francisco bohemians, Larry Harvey and Jerry James, burned a handmade wooden effigy on San Francisco's Baker Beach. That simple gesture, through word of mouth, attracted more participants in following years, and by 1990 the crowds pushed it off the beach and out to the Nevada desert. It developed into a seasonal settlement of 40,000 or so, known as Black Rock City. For one week each year, Burning Man becomes the most quintessentially American city in America.

The city, dedicated loosely to art, community and general post-Merry Prankster high jinks, gets built, lived in, and then disappears the week before Labor Day in the Black Rock Desert playa, a dry lake bed 100 miles from the nearest "real" city, Reno. The week of fun ends each year with a giant bonfire of an elaborate, 40-foot-tall wooden man, in a ceremony that means whatever you want it to.

Over its two decades, the festival has earned a matching set of devotees and detractors. For the latter, saying you enjoy Burning Man is like admitting you still like pigging out at Chuck E. Cheese — it's a confession of childish self-indulgence, with annoying pretension to boot.

This hostility arises largely because it's hard to describe what actually goes on there (I spent a whole book trying). Burning Man is like a theme park, but where the customers build the rides. It's like an arts festival, but with no plaques telling you what anything is or who built it. It's like a giant party, but held in a godforsaken wasteland no rational person would ever otherwise choose to be.

There's no water, no vegetation, hundreds of square miles around you of high-desert desolation, prone to unpredictable, powerful windstorms that can destroy any shelter and turn the world into a phantasmagoric, dust-filled haze where you can't see three inches in front of you. It can be a scorching 100 degrees in the day and near-freezing at night.

In sum, it's a pretty ridiculous place for a camp-out, or an arts festival, or a party. The communal self-awareness of this ridiculousness, and the shared struggle for comfort and survival that the desert requires, make the experience unique and create powerful bonds.

Burning Man pushes people to strange experiential edges, creating beauty and a stage for re-fashioning civilization on the fly in an anything-goes atmosphere. That makes people want to talk about it, a lot, which undoubtedly exasperates the naysayers who think — after hearing Burners rave about all the wonderful things we saw and did — that we have been sucked into a cult.

But because Burning Man demands no belief other than you want to live through it, that characterization is not quite right. The best way to understand it is as a city with an expiration date, built for the sheer fun/hell of it — with emphasis on both "fun" and "hell."

It has grown over the years because the ability to act out the human impulse to create is not widely available in day-to-day American life. It's sweet and refreshing to live in a world, even temporarily, where the presumed social norm is that we're all in something strange and difficult together — and that any way we want to express that, however silly or personal, is OK.

If that sounds too hippie, tell it to one of the wild-eyed gearheads who have built some insane device shooting jets of fire hundreds of yards into the air.

What Burning Man really is, is American. Burners went off the beaten path seeking liberty and a new way of life, a place for eccentrics to be themselves. It's capitalist at heart — the festival is a ticketed event, and people can afford to live in its "gift economy" only because of the wealth accumulated in the commerce-filled outside world — but it's also uneasy about that capitalism. It demands rugged individualism because you have to bring everything you need to survive, yet it pulls together a very social community.

Burners can justly say to those who sneer at our temporary homeland that they hate us for our freedoms. We can and do use our freedom in ways that might strike others as distasteful, self-indulgent or wasteful. But like America at its best, it's a place to forge your own identity, be reliant on yourself and your community, all without worrying too much about what others think.

Porn parade Down Under

Auckland officials fail to stop publicity stunt

AUCKLAND, New Zealand (AP) -- Two dozen bare-breasted porn stars paraded on motorcycles and military vehicles down the main street of New Zealand's biggest city on Wednesday after beating efforts by Auckland officials to prevent the promotional stunt.

Thousands of people, many of them clicking away with cell phone cameras, lined the street for the parade by male and female porn actors, most semi-clad in black leather, to publicize an erotica show which opens in Auckland later this week.

The crowd -- four deep in some places -- was reportedly bigger than that for the city's annual Santa Parade at Christmas time.

Organizer Steve Crow, a local multimillionaire porn movie distributor and producer, earlier had won approval for the parade from the city council, infuriating the conservative mayor and several councilors.

Mayor Dick Hubbard said he would review local bylaws in a bid to prevent any more topless parades in Auckland.

"We do want a vibrant city (but) I think the parade does our image harm rather than good," Hubbard said.

Bacon Wallet

http://www.perpetualkid.com

Put some meat into your pocket with one of these intriguing bacon wallets! You thought people looked at you weird before? Wait until you see the looks you get from pulling a wad of bacon out of your jeans. Each 4-1/4" x 3-3/4" faux leather wallet has plenty of pockets for your cold hard cash and credit cards.

Pulitzer Prize winner Joe Rosenthal dies

SAN FRANCISCO - Photographer Joe Rosenthal, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his immortal image of six World War II servicemen raising an American flag over battle-scarred Iwo Jima, died Sunday. He was 94.

Rosenthal died of natural causes at an assisted living facility in the San Francisco suburb of Novato, said his daughter, Anne Rosenthal.

"He was a good and honest man, he had real integrity," Anne Rosenthal said.

His photo, taken for The Associated Press on Feb. 23, 1945, became the model for the Iwo Jima Memorial near Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. The memorial, dedicated in 1954 and known officially as the Marine Corps War Memorial, commemorates the Marines who died taking the Pacific island in World War II.

The photo was listed in 1999 at No. 68 on a New York University survey of 100 examples of the best journalism of the century.

The photo actually shows the second raising of the flag that day on Mount Suribachi on the Japanese island. The first flag had been deemed too small.

"What I see behind the photo is what it took to get up to those heights — the kind of devotion to their country that those young men had, and the sacrifices they made," Rosenthal once said. "I take some gratification in being a little part of what the U.S. stands for."

He liked to call himself "a guy who was up in the big leagues for a cup of coffee at one time."

The picture was an inspiration for Thomas E. Franklin of The Record of Bergen County, N.J., who took the photo of three firefighters raising a flag amid the ruins of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. Franklin said he instantly saw the similarities with the Iwo Jima photo as he looked through his lens. Franklin's photo, distributed worldwide by the AP, was a finalist in 2002 for the Pulitzer Prize in breaking news photography.

The small island of Iwo Jima was a strategic piece of land 750 miles south of Tokyo, and the United States wanted it to support long-range B-29 bombers and a possible invasion of Japan.

On Feb. 19, 1945, 30,000 Marines landed on the southeast coast. Mount Suribachi, at 546 feet the highest point on the island, took four days for the troops to scale. In all, more than 6,800 U.S. servicemen died in the five-week battle for the island, and the 21,000-man Japanese defense force was virtually wiped out.

Ten years after the flag-raising, Rosenthal wrote that he almost didn't go up to the summit when he learned a flag had already been raised. He decided to up anyway, and found servicemen preparing to put up the second, larger flag.

"Out of the corner of my eye, I had seen the men start the flag up. I swung my camera and shot the scene. That is how the picture was taken, and when you take a picture like that, you don't come away saying you got a great shot. You don't know."

"Millions of Americans saw this picture five or six days before I did, and when I first heard about it, I had no idea what picture was meant."

He recalled that days later, when a colleague congratulated him on the picture, he thought he meant another, posed shot he had taken later that day, of Marines waving and cheering at the base of the flag.

He added that if he had posed the flag-raising picture, as some skeptics have suggested over the years, "I would, of course, have ruined it" by choosing fewer men and making sure their faces could be seen.

Standing near Rosenthal was Marine Sgt. Bill Genaust, the motion picture cameraman who filmed the same flag-raising. He was killed in combat just days later. A frame of Genaust's film is nearly identical to the Rosenthal photo.

The AP photo quickly became the subject of posters, war-bond drives and a U.S. postage stamp.

Rosenthal left the AP later in 1945 to join the San Francisco Chronicle, where he worked as a photographer for 35 years before retiring.

"He was short in stature but that was about it. He had a lot of nerve," said John O'Hara, a retired photographer who worked with Rosenthal at the San Francisco Chronicle.

O'Hara said Rosenthal took special pride in a certificate naming him an honorary Marine and remained spry and alert well into his 90s.

Rosenthal's famous picture kept him busy for years, and he continued to get requests for prints decades after the shutter clicked. He said he was always flattered by the tumult surrounding the shot, but added, "I'd rather just lie down and listen to a ball game."

"He was the best photographer," said friend and fellow Pulitzer Prize winning photographer Nick Ut of The Associated Press, who said he spoke with Rosenthal last week. "His picture no one forgets. People know the photo very well."

Ut's 1972 image of a little girl, naked and screaming in agony as she flees a napalm bomb attack during the Vietnam War, stoked anti-war sentiment. But Rosenthal's iconic photo helped fuel patriotism in the United States.

"People say to me, yours is so sad. You see his picture and it shows how Americans won the war," Ut said.

Rosenthal was born in 1911 in Washington, D.C.

He took up photography as a hobby. As the Depression got under way, Rosenthal moved to San Francisco, living with a brother until he found a job with the Newspaper Enterprise Association in 1930.

In 1932, Rosenthal joined the old San Francisco News as a combination reporter and photographer.

"They just told me to take this big box and point the end with the glass toward the subject and press the shutter and `We'll tell you what you did wrong,'" he said.

After a short time with ACME Newspictures in San Francisco in 1936, Rosenthal became San Francisco bureau chief of The New York Times-Wide World Photos.

Rosenthal began working for the AP in San Francisco when the news cooperative bought Wide World Photos. After a stint in the Merchant Marine, he returned to the AP and was sent to cover battle areas in 1944.

His first assignment was in New Guinea, and he also covered the invasion of Guam before making his famous photo on Iwo Jima.

In addition to his daughter, Rosenthal is survived by his ex-wife Lee Rosenthal, his son Joseph J. Rosenthal Jr., and their families.

Breast implants save Israeli's life in rocket attack

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - An Israeli woman's breast implants saved her life when she was wounded in a Hizbollah rocket attack during Israel's war with the Lebanese group, a hospital spokesman said on Tuesday.

Doctors found shrapnel embedded in the silicone implants, just inches from the 24-year-old's heart.

"She was saved from death," said a spokesman for Nahariya Hospital in northern Israel. The woman has been released from hospital.

The Best of Photojournalism

http://bop.nppa.org

I found this site today and am just amazed at the photos. Do yourself a favor and click this link to see the story associated with the above photograph.

This category is designed to celebrate a meritorious body of work that has been documented, vetted and published for an audience in the classic journalistic tradition. The story should be compelling and relevant to the viewing and reading audience.
A series of pictures created for a publication with over 115,000 circulation. All stories created for Wire services, Agencies and Magazines are judged in this group.

Muppet creators go adult

By Paul Majendie

EDINBURGH (Reuters) - The creators of The Muppets and Sesame Street are staging a rude and lewd puppet show that is strictly for adults only.

Even Miss Piggy would blush over the antics of "Jim Henson's Puppet Improv" that is spearheading a renaissance of puppet shows for grown-ups.

At this year's Edinburgh Fringe arts festival, there are more puppet shows listed for adults than for children.

"That really pleases me," said the late Jim Henson's son Brian, director of the Muppet Christmas and Treasure Island movies now revelling in the freedom of performing for adults only.

Every afternoon at the Fringe, his anarchic troupe of puppeteers do an improvisational show for kids. Every evening the air turns blue for the show that takes off into surreal flights of fancy dictated by the audience.

"It is lovely to do a show where you can go wherever your brain takes you," said Henson, winding down after a show in which the audience asked the puppeteers to play half a dozen hot dog puppets auditioning to be Ricky Martin's backup singers.

But would father have approved?

"I think he would have loved it because of how outrageous I get. My Dad really believed in community and sweetness but the other side of him was incredibly naughty.

"He always said the only reason we did this was those moments where it is like laughing in church. It becomes so infectious you cannot stop laughing."

Henson, who first performed the improvisation show in Aspen and Hollywood, would like to develop it into a TV show. Two other projects he is working on are also just for adults.

"There is something really therapeutic for us about this adult improv," he said.

Henson hailed the renaissance of puppets for grown-ups, applauding the success on stage in New York and London of "Avenue Q" and the hit movie "Team America:World Police" which satirises President George W. Bush's "war on terror."

"Avenue Q was very, very clever. They are specifically parodying Sesame Street with an adult twist. Team America is a more unique choice as they decided to do it with marionettes."

Hyundai Puppet Theatre, South Korea's answer to Henson, has also won acclaim at the Edinburgh Fringe with its production of "Puppet City."

So does Henson feel puppeteers around the world are trying to redress the balance so adults get a look in?

"Yes, absolutely," he said.

"The Americans are more action-oriented. They want to see the puppets beating each other up. British audiences are more intellectual. They like to see it sick and twisted but in an intellectual way."

The Darwin Awards-The Movie!

They say, "Adding insult to any injury" I suppose it will be a good movie, they certainly have an impressive cast. Check out the original Darwin Awards site if you are not familiar.

Raising Hell-Sam Peckinpah at BAM

“Since I cannot rouse Heaven, I intend to raise Hell.”–The Reverend Sloan, from The Ballad of Cable Hogue

Remembered more for his ultra-violent shootouts than for the muscular displays of filmmaking talent that preceded them, Peckinpah has a reputation as a master stylist that continues to grow. From his early days as a writer on Gunsmoke, through his revitalization of the Western genre, and final days as a crime thriller stylist, “Bloody Sam” put man’s morality under a microscope and found it wanting. His films explore the brutal nature of violence and serve as elegies for a simpler time, while also functioning as crackerjack entertainment along the way. All films directed by Sam Peckinpah.

I reccomend going Monday, August 7.

Chuck Norris leads vote for Budapest bridge name

BUDAPEST (Reuters) - A new bridge in Hungary could be named after Hollywood action movie actor Chuck Norris unless the trend turns in an Internet vote organised by the Economy Ministry.

Votes for the "Chuck Norris Bridge" had attracted 8,725 votes or 11 percent by Tuesday morning, just ahead of those cast in favour of naming it after Hungarian humorist Geza Hofi and three times more than for Szent Istvan, founder of the state.

Votes can be cast until September 8 on the www.m0hid.gov.hu Web site, where people have put forward more than 500 nominations including Bud Spencer and Bob Marley, as well as names referring to construction delays such as "It Will Never Happen Bridge".

A government committee will review the three winning names, as well as other proposals put forward by local governments, cartographers, linguists and other experts. The bridge over the Danube north of Budapest is due to open in 2008.

Bianchi Launches Location05.com

Sleek, clean, this photo location company has a new look of white-on-white in keeping with the exceptional light in each NYC space. View the full site at location05.com

Flash sites of this kind are fairly inexpensive to build these days. For more information or a consultation email Christa Bianchi

Loyal customer wears Pizza Shuttle tattoo proudly

Julie Lawerence-On Milwaukee

East Side resident Pat Lean has been eating at Pizza Shuttle since it opened in 1985. Although she's dined there at least once a week for 20 years and is recognized by the Shuttle's owners and staff, Lean wanted to make her loyalty and patronage a little more permanent.

In the summer of 2005 Lean had a six-inch drawing of the Pizza Shuttle logo tattooed onto her left forearm. It is a logo, she says, that she wears with pride.

"It's my favorite pizza in Milwaukee, for sure," says Leon, who is known for ordering her usual 14-inch thin crust pizza with grilled chicken, mushrooms and double garlic and a Miller Lite.

Lean says the idea for the tattoo came to her as she was sitting in Pizza Shuttle's dining room. She was looking at the sign outside and thought, "That would make a great tattoo."

Pizza Shuttle co-owner Mark Gold says that Lean approached him with the idea that day. "I thought it was a cool idea, and I told her that if she really wanted it I would pay for it."

Shortly after, Lean went to Brady Street's Bodyworks tattoo shop and got the $150 logo rendition permanently drawn on her arm.

Although it is far from her first tattoo -- being a sports fan, she also dons an NFL logo, a Green Bay Packers logo, among others -- she says this is the first ink job she's gotten for free.

"It worked out really well and I think it looks great," says Gold. "I was very touched that a customer felt so strongly about Pizza Shuttle that she wanted to get the tattoo."

To show his appreciation for her support, Gold gave Lean a year's worth of free Pizza Shuttle pizza.

Lean is an apartment manager who has lived on the East Side for the last 34 years. She says she remembers when Pizza Shuttle opened in 1985 in a little storefront space across the street from where it is now.

"There was nowhere to sit down and eat in the original location, but I could see them tossing the dough through the window. A couple years later they moved across the street and I started coming all the time."

A Milwaukee lover, Lean says that she now also sports a Harley Davidson logo tattoo and is considering getting a Miller Brewing Company one, as well.

Socialist Fashions

Evo Morlales - President-elect of Bolivia

Bolivia's new president runs foul of fashion police

LA PAZ, Bolivia (Reuters) - In his diplomatic debut in Europe this week, leftist Bolivian President-elect Evo Morales has made waves fashionably as well as politically.

Morales, the first Indian elected president in Bolivia, unsettled many at home and abroad by breaking protocol and visiting Spanish King Juan Carlos wearing a striped, multicoloured sweater, local media said on Friday.

"Evo's attire sparks international controversy" ran the headline of daily La Razon, before describing criticism of his informal look in the Spanish media.

Morales, who herded llamas as a youngster before becoming a coca farmer, has shunned suits and ties during his world tour, favouring short-sleeved shirts, leather jackets and casual sweaters to greet the likes of Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero and European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana.

Many Bolivians think the 46-year-old bachelor is only staying true to his humble roots.

"He is sending the message that he is a modest man who wants to stay close to his indigenous people," Bolivian designer Beatriz Canedo Patino told Reuters.

Morales, who takes office on January 22, visited Venezuela and Cuba before crossing the Atlantic for the European leg of a tour that will also include China, South Africa and Brazil.

On Friday he was in fashion hotbed Paris.

"We should respect his wish not to wear a tie, although it would maybe be nice to see him wear something a bit more elegant," Canedo Patino said.

James Bond's 'Goldfinger' Aston Martin on auction block

LOS ANGELES -AP- The Aston Martin spy car from the James Bond movies "Thunderball" and "Goldfinger" -- complete with machine guns and tire slashers -- is on the auction block.
The 1965 Aston Martin DB5 could fetch up to $2.5 million at RM Auctions' 7th Annual Vintage Motor Cars Auction Jan. 20 at the Arizona Biltmore Resort & Spa in Phoenix, Arizona.

"The James Bond Aston Martin DB5 is one of the most famous cars in the world. It's just amazing. This is by far and away the most popular car we have seen in our 26 years of hosting collector car auctions," RM Auctions co-founder Rob Myers said in a telephone interview Tuesday.

Formerly the property of Sir Anthony Bamford, the famed James Bond Aston Martin is one of several celebrity cars offered from the Tennessee museum where it has been on display since the late 1970s.

The Aston Martin is one of only four cars originally constructed and used for 1964's "Goldfinger" and 1965's "Thunderball" as well as promotional tour use. The auction car was primarily used for promotion.

Also on the auction block will be Al Capone's 1928 Cadillac, Hank Williams Jr.'s 1964 Pontiac and a stable of $1 million-plus vehicles. RM Auctions expects $40 million in sales during six hours of bidding.

Some of the special James Bond options on the Aston Martin include Browning machine guns, a wheel-mounted tire slasher, a retractable rear bulletproof screen, an oil slick ejector and a smoke screen system

Illegitimate dad of 'Kong'

One of the Depression's highest-grossing films was an outrageous fabrication, a scandalous and suggestive gorilla epic that set box office records.

By Andrew Erish, Special to The Times

A safari venturing into unexplored territory stumbles upon natives who sacrifice a woman to a large gorilla in order to spare the rest of their tribe.

It sounds like a scene from Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack's legendary "King Kong," but it's actually part of the climactic sequence from the film "Ingagi," released three years earlier. "Ingagi" is largely forgotten, but "Kong" might never have gotten made if not for the success of its scandalous predecessor.

"Ingagi" arrived in 1930 to satisfy a hunger for jungle pictures piqued by Theodore Roosevelt's African safari and fueled by the success of such nickelodeon hits as "Heart of Africa," documenting a 1915 Kenyan safari by Lady Grace Mackenzie, and "Hunting Big Game in Africa," a phony account of the Roosevelt trip filmed entirely in a Chicago studio by Col. William Selig, one of the most successful and innovative producers of the day.

As only a handful of zoos and circuses exhibited apes during the early 20th century, movies featuring all forms of monkeys emerged as a popular genre, and some filmmakers, such as William S. Campbell, seemed to specialize in monkey-themed films, with "Monkey Stuff" and "Jazz Monkey," in 1919, and "Prohibition Monkey" in 1920. Schoedsack warmed up for "King Kong" by directing "Chang" in 1927 (with Cooper) and "Rango" in 1931, both of which prominently featured monkeys in real jungle settings. The debate about evolution at the Scopes monkey trial of 1925 further spurred interest in primate pictures.

Capitalizing on the craze, Congo Pictures Ltd. released "Ingagi." All advertisements for the film explained that "ingagi" means "gorilla." And every ad and article stated that the movie documented an authentic, scientific two-year expedition in the Belgian Congo, produced by Sir Hubert Winstead of the Royal Geological Society, who appeared in the film along with American sportsman Capt. Daniel Swayne.

Congo Pictures, formed expressly to make the film, could afford only one print, and it arranged for a two-week run at a theater in San Diego, where it played to more than 40,000 people. But efforts to interest New York-based film distributors failed, and Congo had to book "Ingagi" theater by theater.

Congo rented Chicago's Garrick Theatre, advertising the film as "an authentic incontestable celluloid document showing the sacrifice of a living woman to mammoth gorillas!" The Motion Picture News credited "lurid lobby advertising depicting a gorilla fondling a near-nude native woman" for drawing crowds to the Garrick.

"Ingagi" was an unabashed exploitation film, almost immediately running afoul of the Hollywood code of ethics created by the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors Assn. (MPPDA), a consortium of the major motion picture studios popularly known as the Hays Office. A week after "Ingagi's" Chicago debut, the Hays Code was modified to state that: "Sex perversion or any inference of it is forbidden" and "Complete nudity is never permitted."

The lure of the forbidden

That was a plus for "Ingagi." Exploitation cinema during Hollywood's "Golden Age" deliberately dealt with subject matter that the Hays Office prohibited, luring customers to "forbidden spectacle." And "Ingagi" was loaded with it.

The movie follows white hunters Winstead and Swayne, accompanied by cameramen and black porters, into the Belgian Congo jungle in search of a tribe that engages in human sacrifice to a band of gorillas. Along the way they encounter a 65-foot python, shoot a baby rhino and observe animals at a watering hole. The party also discovers a new species of animal, the tortadillo.

A cameraman is killed by a wounded lion, and upon entering " 'Ingagi' Country," the hunters stumble upon a tribe of shy pygmies. There are glimpses of naked women foraging in a thicket, then native porters briefly capture a gorilla that overpowers them and escapes. Finally, the hunters watch as a bare-breasted woman is carried off by a gorilla, but Swayne saves her by shooting the beast dead.

The film moved from Chicago to San Francisco, where it opened April 5 at the Orpheum, which was owned by RKO. Variety reported that the movie had been offered to every theater along Market Street.

The Orpheum had been the crown jewel of western vaudeville until Joseph Kennedy secretly bought a controlling interest in the monopolistic Keith-Orpheum circuit, then turned around and sold the theaters at an enormous profit to David Sarnoff to help Sarnoff's RCA recording process become the standard used for talking pictures. The new company, Radio-Keith-Orpheum (RKO), soon killed off vaudeville and became one of the five major motion picture companies in Hollywood.

The advertising campaign remains striking for its innovation — and its success. Handbills offered a hyperbolic synopsis of the film. Ads in the Chronicle reiterated the film's prurient aspects, suggesting evidence of a missing link between humans and apes, and asked "Was Darwin Right?" Artwork depicted a topless African woman held by a gorilla.

Congo transformed the Orpheum's lobby and foyer with painted canvases of African scenes, stuffed zebras and hyenas, and a life-sized lion attacking a gazelle. A loudspeaker broadcast jungle-sound records from a hidden phonograph, stopping passersby in droves. The ticket booth became a straw hut. And the ushers wore puttees and pith helmets.

Despite ticket prices ranging from only 30 to 65 cents, the film earned almost $4,000 on its opening day and outgrossed the competition throughout its monthlong run.

The movie was so successful that RKO had additional prints made and booked the film into at least seven more of its theaters, including the Oakland and Los Angeles orpheums.

By May, "Ingagi" was in 14 cities, breaking box office records in every theater it played. Newspapers referred to it as "the gorilla 'sex' picture," and the movie was such a hit that a Tin Pan Alley songwriter published a tune titled "My Ingagi."

Most critics raved about the film, but some questioned its authenticity. Yet the San Francisco Chronicle continued printing "Ingagi" press releases. "By actual film record," one such story ran, "one man was killed and another seriously mauled in this exciting encounter." Booking theaters on its own as an independent production unaffiliated with the Hays Office, "Ingagi" was free to run anywhere it could gain approval from the censor board of a state or a Canadian province. According to Hays Office files at the Motion Picture Academy Library, the Ohio censor insisted that scenes of close dancing between native men and women be removed, that all nudity be edited out of the film, that narration and title cards implying that women were sacrificed in order to consort with gorillas be eliminated, and that all references and images of hairy children as offspring of the unions be deleted.

On May 21, Congo took out an ad in the trades listing receipts from 14 cities that totaled $642,300. But that same day the Hays Office ordered its members to cease from distributing or exhibiting "Ingagi." And oddly, it wasn't because of the insinuations of relations between the African women and gorillas, but because Congo Pictures had represented the film as authentic when in fact it wasn't.

The Hays Office revealed that "Ingagi" was a conglomeration of stock shots from older films, including a significant portion of Lady Mackenzie's "Heart of Africa," and the scenes of the women with the gorillas had been shot at the zoo William Selig had created for filming jungle movies.

The Hays ruling was prompted by an investigation by the national Better Business Bureau, which found that there was no such person as Sir Hubert Winstead. Nor was there a Capt. Daniel Swayne.

Its report also revealed that the American Society of Mammalogists deplored the film's "numerous fictitious features which are misleadingly mingled with genuine natural history records." One expert noted that the "tortadillo," proclaimed as a new discovery to science, was a "turtle with wings, scales and a long tail glued on to it."

The Los Angeles Examiner reported that "Central Avenue Negroes" were employed as African tribesmen, and that the pygmies "were Negro children from Los Angeles' black belt." It was also noted that Jackie, better known as the trademark MGM lion, and its trainer Mel Koontz staged the scene in which a lion attacked one of the expedition's cameramen.

It soon came to light that Nat Spitzer, the president of Congo Pictures Ltd., was the real producer of "Ingagi," and also the film's narrator. He claimed that the movie was 85% authentic and that the remaining shots were directed by William S. Campbell at the Selig zoo "for the purpose of obtaining suitable transition sequences to round out the picture."

When asked by the Better Business Bureau whether the scenes between the "Ingagi" and the "native" woman were authentic, he replied that they were "absolutely genuine."

The Hays decision to ban "Ingagi" led RKO to drop the film from its theaters, but Congo Pictures brokered even more lucrative deals with independent theaters, and those theaters did much better business than ever before. "Ingagi's" notoriety pulled in the crowds, setting box office records from Kansas City to Baltimore to the Dakotas, with audience response divided between those who found the whole thing hilarious and those who were repulsed.

Even after the "Ingagi" canards became public, the film was approved for showing in Illinois and Massachusetts, known for their notoriously tough censors. More startling was the reversal of the Ohio censor, who approved the film in its complete form, with the only stipulation being "that the advertising used must state that the picture is not authentic."

A policy takes shape

On June 22, an Advertising Code of Ethics was adopted by the Hays Office, in large part as a response to the "Ingagi" scandal. Congress was beginning to heed the protests of independent producers and theater owners who asserted that they were victims of unfair trade practices by the Hays Office. Realizing that an official ban of "Ingagi" would subject it to further charges of monopolistic practices, Hays soon backpedaled and declared there was no ban — it was up to the individual member theaters whether or not to show "Ingagi."

Congo followed up by placing a series of ads in newspapers and trade magazines around the country to argue its case before the public, declaring "THE BATTLE IS ON!" It boasted that after 13 weeks in release in 29 cities, "Ingagi" had grossed more than $1 million in box office receipts.

The battle was, indeed, on. At the end of July, Byron P. Mackenzie, African game hunter and son of "Lady" Mackenzie (who it turns out wasn't legitimately titled at all), sued Congo, charging unauthorized use of his mother's "Heart of Africa." Three months later, the court awarded Mackenzie a judgment of $150,000 against the company.

The Humane Society jumped on the anti-"Ingagi" bandwagon, threatening to lead a boycott in conjunction with various women's clubs and the Campfire Girls of America against all movies not approved by their organization. "Ingagi" was cited as one of the worst offenders for showing cruelty to animals, though ironically those scenes in which animals had been killed were lifted from films of years past.

Then in October, a detective working for the Hays Office finally prevailed upon Charles Gemora to sign an affidavit admitting that he had portrayed the principal gorilla in "Ingagi." Up to and including his work in "Ingagi," every role Gemora played was intended to fool the audience into thinking it was watching a real gorilla. He hinted to Motion Picture magazine that the threat of being blacklisted by the Hays Office if he didn't spill the beans about "Ingagi" was what led him to finally admit his role in the affair.

It took until 1933 for the Federal Trade Commission to issue a conditional "cease and desist" order against the showing of "Ingagi," by now long played out. Congo was to cease representing the film as a true and authentic record of an expedition in Africa, "or any other country," unless all the scenes of "Ingagi" were actually made in Africa.

The commission included in its report the old laundry list of canards, its only revelation being that "Ingagi" was a fictitious name for "gorilla," no such word having been found in any African language dictionary.

Beyond bad taste

Much of "Ingagi" is kitsch of the sort only bad, low-budget filmmaking can produce. The soundtrack consists solely of meandering organ music and narration that offers occasional flashes of wit amid the condescension. An extended shot of a tribe dancing is accompanied by: "The African native is very emotional. He dances, and how he dances. Such a dance must be seen to be fully appreciated…. Like something out of an opium smoker's dream."

The actors playing Winstead and Swayne in the Campbell-directed sequences wear fedoras and Bermuda shorts, but are intercut with genuine safari footage of hunters in pith helmets.

The movie purports that not only are tribal women sacrificed to the "Ingagi," but some otherwise barren women mate with the gorillas by choice in order to conceive. At the climax of the film, a naked woman emerges from the bush to mourn her dead gorilla lover. But "Ingagi's" most offensive moment shows a topless black woman cradling a baby adorned with patches of glued-on fur, described as "a strange-looking child, seemingly more ape than human."

There don't appear to have been any contemporary statements issued by the NAACP or leading African American newspapers regarding the inherent racism of "Ingagi." But it's undeniable that both filmmakers and audience helped exploit degrading attitudes toward blacks. While it's true that "Ingagi" contains many entertaining moments, they are overwhelmed by the suggestions of black women mating with gorillas, among the ugliest, most disturbing concepts in movie history.

Since it was produced and distributed independently, "Ingagi" isn't listed on any box office charts, which base their figures on those supplied by MPPDA-member companies. But it's likely that "Ingagi" earned about $4 million, making it one of the highest-grossing films of the Depression. Like many independent productions of the era, "Ingagi" has virtually disappeared since relatively few prints were made and none were properly maintained. In fact, only 1 1/2 prints are known to exist in American archives.

Although producer Merian C. Cooper never listed "Ingagi" among his influences for "King Kong," it's long been held that RKO green-lighted "Kong," despite the studio having fallen into receivership in the midst of the Depression, because of the bottom-line example of "Ingagi": Gorillas plus sexy women in peril equals enormous profits. And if that was indeed the case, there's no doubt that "King Kong" was by far the best thing to be spawned by "Ingagi."

Erish is a Los Angeles film historian and filmmaker.

The 2006 Bloggies are upon us

Do your duty and nominate Thorn in Paw for an award.

It's now the sixth year of the world's most established weblog awards, the Bloggies™. Personal Web publishing never stops growing, and that means this year the public will have more contenders than ever to select from when choosing the year's best weblogs. 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, and 2005 have their champions; now it's time for you to do your part for 2006. Read on.

Bee Gee Barry Gibb Buys Johnny Cash's Home

Another sign of the coming Apocalypse.

HENDERSONVILLE, Tenn. AP- The home of the late singer Johnny Cash has been purchased by another singer with a distinctive voice.

Barry Gibb of the Bee Gees and his wife, Linda, bought the house for an undisclosed amount, an attorney for the Cash family said Wednesday.

The Gibbs plan to restore the rustic retreat on Old Hickory Lake where Cash and his wife, June Carter Cash, lived during their entire marriage. Hendersonville is 13 miles northeast of downtown Nashville

"This place will always be the spiritual home for the Cashes," Barry Gibb said in a statement. "My wife, Linda, and I are determined to preserve it, to honor their memory. We fell in love with it; it's an incredible honor for us. We plan to use the home to write songs because of the musical inspiration."

The home was purchased by Balinda LLC, a Florida company owned by Gibb and his wife, according to Nashville attorney Robert L. Sullivan, who administers the Cash estate for the family.

The home, visited by everyone from U.S. presidents to ordinary fans, went on the market in June with an asking price of $2.9 million. The price was lowered this fall to $2.5 million.

The couple lived for 35 years at the 13,880-square-foot home and 4.6-acre property.

Cash died in 2003, soon after the death of his wife, June Carter Cash. His musical career began in the 1950s and spanned from rock 'n' roll to folk to country. His hits includes "Ring of Fire," "Folsom Prison Blues" and "I Walk the Line."

The Bee Gees are best known for their hits of the disco era in the late 1970s, such as "Night Fever" and "Jive Talkin'." Barry Gibb's brother Maurice died in 2003 when he suffered a heart attack before undergoing emergency surgery in Miami for an intestinal blockage.

'Futurama' may get new lease on life

Variety

"Futurama" may live to see the year 3000 after all.
Talks have begun at 20th Century Fox TV to revive the animated skein, which takes place in the next millennium, much in the same way "Family Guy" found new life after cancellation.

The studio is in early discussions to put "Futurama" back in production and create a limited number of episodes of the Emmy Award-winning skein -- although it's too soon to tell where those segs might end up. A rep for 20th Century Fox TV declined comment.

The final original episode of "Futurama" aired on Fox in August 2003. But since then, the skein has found new life -- and fans -- via DVD releases and repeatedly high-rated airings on the Cartoon Network.

"Futurama" remains popular enough that Comedy Central even stole away off-net rights to the show's repeats late last year; it will switch to the laffer cabler in 2008.

A similar resurgence in interest for "Family Guy" persuaded 20th Century Fox TV to revive that show, which has produced two seasons of new episodes and a DVD since coming back from the dead. "Family Guy" now resides as Fox's Sunday 9 p.m. tentpole.

"Futurama" scored three Emmys in its five-season run, including the 2002 award for animated series. But it lived an unusual existence on Fox, with short seasons, late launches and long gaps between airings. That allowed Fox to air five seasons of "Futurama," even though technically only four were produced.

"The Simpsons" creator Matt Groening and "Simpsons" vet David X. Cohen were behind "Futurama," which bowed on Fox in March 1999. The animated skein revolved around Fry, a pizza delivery boy who's accidentally frozen for 1,000 years. He wakes up in the year 3000 and befriends cyclops Leela and cranky robot Bender -- all of whom work for the intergalactic delivery service run by Fry's distantly descended nephew, Prof. Farnsworth.

Before "Futurama" comes back into being, however, 20th first must secure deals with the show's production team, as well as voice stars including Billy West (Fry), Katey Sagal (Leela) and John DiMaggio (Bender).

Meanwhile, even after the cancellation new "Futurama" stories have continued to be churned out via the "Futurama" comicbook, published by Groening's Bongo Comics imprint.

1959 Cadillac Cyclone Concept

Ultimatecarpage.com

Unlike the Firebirds, the Cadillac Cyclone was powered by a conventional internal combustion engine, but being a tweaked version of the marque's V8 engine, it still offered stellar performance. From the nose cones to the tail lights the design was clearly inspired by the latest aeroplane design. The nose cones were equipped with radar, which served as a crash avoidance system. Right behind the cones the next 'oddity' can be found; the exhaust system, which exits in front of the front wheels. The lights were not conventional either, and could be completely hidden above the grill.

Unlike the Firebirds, the Cyclone was powered by a conventional internal combustion engine, but being a tweaked version of the marque's V8 engine, it still offered stellar performance. From the nose cones to the tail lights the design was clearly inspired by the latest aeroplane design. The nose cones were equipped with radar, which served as a crash avoidance system. Right behind the cones the next 'oddity' can be found; the exhaust system, which exits in front of the front wheels. The lights were not conventional either, and could be completely hidden above the grill.

The interior was relatively standard, but it was covered by a one-piece plastic canopy. Currently this is replaced by a regular wind screen. To get in and out of the car, the Cadillac engineers developed the first ever sliding doors. Today these are very commonly used on minivans. Another interesting feature of the doors was a small panel in each one, which could be opened to pay for toll ways. The rear end is dominated by two large tail lights, which resembled jet exhausts. The design is rounded off by two relatively small wings, which were one of the few jet design cues that made it onto production cars.

The odd looking Cyclone Concept is still owned by General Motors, and is currently on display at the company's Heritage Center where it is pictured. From time to time it is taken out for public appearances where it continues to amaze the crowds, just as it did 45 years ago.

Isuzu Gemini

I found this 1980's style car ad video on the web today. It is a WMV file and it 17.8 Meg. The video is delightful and was done without CGI.
The direct connection to the file is here.

Honour goes to Apple gadget guru

BBC News-Jonathan Ive, the man behind Apple's iconic iPod and iMac, has become a CBE in the New Year Honours list.
He is widely seen as one of the key figures in Apple's resurrection.

Mr Ive started working for Apple in 1992 but exerted a big influence on its products only in 1997 when Steve Jobs returned to the company he co-founded.

Mr Ive's first design for Apple, the iMac, was hugely influential and has been followed by a series of other widely admired gadgets.

Apple said in a statement: "We are as proud as could be that Jony is receiving such a prestigous commendation."

The Queen's New Year Honours list is dominated by people who helped in the aftermath of the July 7 London bombings.

The list is also peppered with the usual crop of celebrities and sporting figures.

A Londoner by birth, Mr Ive studied industrial design at Newcastle Polytechnic. After graduating, he set up his own design studio called Tangerine.

He left Tangerine when one of his early clients, Apple, offered him a job at its offices in Cupertino, California.
Since the launch of the iMac in 1998, Mr Ive has driven the design of almost every piece of Apple hardware. Landmarks include the original iMac, iBook, Power Mac, PowerBook, Mac Mini and iPod.

Although many drool over the sleek look of Apple products, Mr Ive has always emphasised the need for a close union of form and function.

Famously private and rarely giving interviews, Mr Ive always seeks to stress the teamwork that goes into creating Apple's products.

The portable iPod music player has done the most to boost Apple's fortunes and in September 2005 it reported its best financial quarter for nine years. Sales of iPods were up 500% on the year before.

Elvis' limo joins lineup at Scottsdale car auction

Elias C. Arnold
The Arizona Republic
Dec. 28, 2005 12:00 AM
SCOTTSDALE - Elvis Presley fans and vintage-car enthusiasts are in for a treat in January when a vehicle custom-built for the "King" rolls onto the auction block at the annual Barrett-Jackson Collector Car Auction.

The late entry, announced Tuesday, could be one of the top five cars sold in a year when several vehicles have the potential to sell for multimillion-dollar prices, said Craig Jackson, president and CEO of the Scottsdale-based Barrett-Jackson Auction Co.

The car, a 1960 Lincoln Mark V limousine, is a "wild card" because it has only changed hands privately during the last 40 years, Jackson said.

"I think it's one of those cars you can't put a price on," he said.

Customized by the same company that built the limousine in which President Kennedy was assassinated, the car has only 33,000 miles, and there are documents and a photograph that trace it from construction until it was delivered to Elvis.

A copy of the bill of sale and the power of attorney authorizing the vehicle's purchase bears Elvis' signature, while the photo shows him standing with the car at Graceland, his mansion in Memphis, Tenn., soon after his return from military service in Germany.

"We are incredibly honored to be able to offer this Elvis car," Jackson said. "This is one of the most historically significant vehicles we have ever had the privilege of offering at one of our events."

Elvis purchased the car at the height of his career and used it regularly in both Hollywood and Memphis, said Steve Davis, executive vice president of Barrett-Jackson.

"With the exception of the legendary pink Cadillac Elvis gave his mother, this is as good as it gets," Davis said.

The car, along with about 1,100 others, will go up for auction Jan. 14-22 at Barrett-Jackson's 35th-annual "World's Greatest Collector Car Event" at WestWorld, northeast of Frank Lloyd Wright Boulevard and the Loop 101. More than 250,000 spectators and 5,000 bidders are expected to attend the televised event this year.

Did Arizona Resort inspire 'White Christmas'?

Angela Cara Pancrazio
The Arizona Republic
Dec. 24, 2005 12:00 AM
At Christmas, you want to believe.

In Santa Claus, in the goodness of your fellow man and that Irving Berlin wrote the Oscar-winning song White Christmas while sitting poolside at the Arizona Biltmore Resort & Spa in Phoenix.

That's what the resort's Web site says, and the claim has been oft repeated in many publications.

But did he or didn't he?

For years, the Biltmore has perpetuated the story that Berlin wrote the famed song about longing for snow at the resort. Its Web site says he "penned many tunes" there and then goes on to specifically mention White Christmas.

"It's just not true," said biographer Laurence Bergreen, author of As Thousands Cheer: The Life of Irving Berlin. "I have no information in all my research that agrees with that."

Bergreen believes Berlin wrote the famous song in the middle of the night in his New York townhouse, overlooking the East River.

Berlin was an insomniac and did much of his work at night, Bergreen said.

He also could not read or write music, so he would create songs at the piano and play them for his musical secretary, who would turn it into a musical score.

Berlin's musical secretary, Helmy Kresa, told Bergreen that after Berlin came up with White Christmas, he ran into his office in midtown Manhattan first thing on a Monday morning.

"He burst into his office and played it and sang and said to Helmy, 'Take down this song I wrote over the weekend. Not only is it the best song I ever wrote, it's the best song anybody ever wrote.' "

"He (Helmy) gave me this story from his own lips," Bergreen said.

That proves, Bergreen said, that Berlin did not write the song at the Biltmore. "He may have written another song there," he added.

Is it another Arizona myth down the drain?

It depends on whom you ask.

The legend was well-publicized before Heather Schader, the resort's de facto historian, started working there four years ago.

She said she began researching the song's origins when a general manager at their sister property in La Quinta, Calif., thought Berlin could have written the song, which starts out in Los Angeles, at the California resort. The manager rationalized that because so many celebrities had stayed there, it was possible.

But Schader said that she always had heard Berlin wrote White Christmas at the Biltmore.

She read five biographies trying to back up the storied history. But nothing turned up until she spotted the liner notes for White Christmas in an Irving Berlin songbook co-edited by his daughter, Linda Berlin Emmet.

According to the songbook, The Complete Lyrics of Irving Berlin, the song was "Written in 1938 or 1939 either in New York or possibly at the Arizona Biltmore Hotel in Phoenix or perhaps both places."

Schader also refers to an Arizona Republic article dated Jan. 27, 1939, that places Berlin at the resort writing new songs.

"Nowhere but in Phoenix," the article said of Berlin, "has he been able to work so swiftly, create songs so readily."

"When I'm working like this," Berlin told the newspaper, "the sunshine is vital to me."

The famous composer was described as "clad in swimming shorts, leaning back in a lounge chair beside the Arizona Biltmore Hotel pool, dark glasses shading eyes which had been busy till dawn."

"It's not unusual to have these legends, these hopeful legends," Bergreen said.

Like most myths, this one is focused on what Arizonans would like to believe rather than the whole truth, a truth that may never be fully known.

Wherever the sentimental ballad, which went on to become the biggest-selling single record of all time, was penned, no one disputes that the Catalina Pool at the Biltmore was Berlin's muse.

The pool in the desert.

CSA releases best holiday e-gift games ever

The Carbone Smolan Agency, or CSA, has released their annual Flash game to all their clients, and their pal at thorninpaw. You'll recognize the games inside these three boxes from the 70's and 80's, and you'll laugh yourself silly playing.

PLAY HERE

Born Again Bully

Bianchi Marden Launches The Discovery Engine

The team of Bianchi (Christa Bianchi) and Marden (Jeff Marden) have launched a revolutionary new service called Discovery Engine. The Engine is a client experience which develops creative strategy in a deliverable Bible of what your brand needs to do to succeed. The process involves conventional and non conventional data gathering techniques to create this blueprint of brand, ads, web sites, brochures - everything your target audiences need from you, and how to deploy it all.

We've presented the how and why to several companies, used the methods on others, and everyone is blown away.

Better, faster, and cheaper than any other strategy exercise from any firm, of any size. More powerful than an army of focus groups, Bianchi Marden's Discovery Engine is just an email away. Contact us for more information or an in-person presentation - no strings attached.

Shoes!

Walter Martin and Paloma Muñoz
7 1&Mac218;2 Female 9 1&Mac218;2 Male, 1994
Hydrostone, oil paint, gold leaf
Private Collection

Iraq war was 'blatant state terrorism': Nobel laureate Pinter

STOCKHOLM (AFP) - In a fierce critic ahead of the Nobel awards ceremony, literature laureate Harold Pinter branded the war on Iraq "an act of blatant state terrorism" and demanded the prosecutions of US President George W. Bush and Britain's Tony Blair.

"The invasion of Iraq was a bandit act, an act of blatant state terrorism, demonstrating absolute contempt for the concept of international law," Pinter said in a pre-recorded lecture broadcast by the Swedish Academy.

The Academy, which awards the Nobel Literature Prize, aired the interview, recorded Sunday in London, because Pinter is too sick to travel to Sweden for the lecture or pick up the award in person at Saturday's ceremony.

"How many people do you have to kill before you qualify to be described as a mass murderer and a war criminal?" Pinter asked.

"One hundred thousand? More than enough, I would have thought. Therefore it is just that Bush and Blair be arraigned before the International Criminal Court of Justice," he added.

The 75-year-old British playwright was diagnosed with oesophageal cancer in December 2002.

In the recording made in London, he is flanked by a bright blue background knee, looking in better shape than in many recent media photographs.

He used nearly all of his lecture of almost an hour to criticise the United States.

"The United States supported and in many cases engendered every right wing military dictatorship in the world after the end of the Second World War.

"I refer to Indonesia, Greece, Uruguay, Brazil, Paraguay, Haiti, Turkey, the Philippines, Guatemala, El Salvador, and, of course, Chile," he said.

"The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them.

"You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force of universal good. It's a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis."

Pinter's criticism of Washington is nothing new.

Although he won the 2005 Nobel Prize for his plays, which according to the Nobel jury uncover "the precipice under everyday prattle and forces entry into oppression's closed rooms," he has recently focused on political activism.

In his lecture, he emphasized the difference between the separate worlds of literature and political life.

In literature "a thing is not necessarily either true or false. It can be both true and false," he said, adding however that "as a citizen I must ask: What is true? What is false."

Politicians are not interested "in truth but in power and in the maintenance of that power", according to Pinter.

"The justification for the invasion of Iraq was that Saddam Hussein possessed a highly dangerous body of weapons of mass destruction ... It was not true.

"We were told that Iraq had a relationship with Al Quaeda and shared responsibility for the atrocity in New York of September 11, 2001 ... It was not true," he said.

Pinter, born the son of a Jewish dressmaker in Hackney, east London, began as an actor and made his playwriting debut in 1957, with "The Room".

That play was followed by one of his masterpieces "The Birthday Party" and his conclusive breakthrough came with "The Caretaker" in 1959, followed by "The Homecoming" in 1964.

The playwright's publisher, Stephen Page, will accept the 10 million kronor (1.1 million euros, 1.3 million dollars) prize money, a diploma and a medal on Pinter's behalf at the ceremony.

John Lennon 10/9/1940 - 12/8/1980

It is now 25 years since John Lennon died. Please tell us, dear reader, where were you when you heard the news?

Could Tom Cruise Sue "South Park" For Suggesting He is Gay?

Findlaw.com Julie Hilden

A recent episode of the television animated comedy "South Park" mocked Tom Cruise -- suggesting that he is homosexual, and lying to hide that fact. Could Cruise bring a defamation suit against the show?

In the past, Cruise has sued those who have made the very same claim. Indeed, when Cruise was married to Nicole Kidman, the couple made a point of doing so: In 1997, Kidman told Ladies' Home Journal that when reports claimed their marriage was a sham, "[W]e are going to sue over it. It gets to a point where you have to protect your children." Now that Cruise is set to marry Katie Holmes, who's pregnant with his child, it seems unlikely that he will take a different view.

Could Cruise successfully sue "South Park"? And more broadly, should he continue his campaign of directly combating the claim that he's homosexual, or rethink the ethics of bringing such lawsuits?

The South Park Episode: Treading the Boundary of Parody and Satire

The relevant "South Park" episode -- entitled "Trapped in the Closet" -- self-consciously skirts the outermost edges of the First Amendment's protection for parody. A court would probably deem it constitutionally protected, but only barely.

Defamation requires a "statement of fact" -- and for this reason, most parody, because of its fictional nature, falls outside defamation law by definition. But this is the rare parody that, fairly read, does make a statement of fact.

In the episode, the animated version of Cruise literally goes into a closet, and won't come out. Other characters beg him to "come out of the closet," including the animated version of his ex-wife, Nicole Kidman. The Kidman character promises Cruise that if he comes out of the closet, neither she nor "Katie" will judge him. But the Cruise character claims he isn't "in the closet," even though he plainly is.

No one could miss that the episode's creators are taking a stance and making a statement -- that the real Cruise is gay and hiding it. The use of the euphemism "in the closet" -- used to refer to someone who is homosexual but who has not admitted his or her homosexuality to friends, family, or the public -- is transparent.

Interestingly, the episode itself indicates that its creators know well that they may be defaming Cruise, and they know of his litigious history. The joke disclaimer preceding the episode announces that "All characters and events on this show -- even those based on real persons -- are entirely fictional." At the end of the episode, the Cruise character threatens to bring a suit (not on the gay issue, but in defense of Scientology) "in England" -- which lacks a formal equivalent of the First Amendment. And all the credits at the end use the pseudonyms "John Smith" and "Jane Smith."

Since the episode does indeed make a "statement of fact," the parody exception to defamation law won't save "South Park." Thus, the creators' only weapon against a possible suit by Cruise is a First Amendment defense. Fortunately for them, the Supreme Court has interpreted the defense very broadly.

The Broad First Amendment Protection for Parody and Satire

In Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music Inc., Justice Souter, writing for a unanimous Supreme Court, found that a 2 Live Crew song counted as parody. In so doing, Justice Souter quoted then-U.S. District Judge Pierre Leval as follows: "First Amendment protections do not apply only to those who speak clearly, whose jokes are funny, and whose parodies succeed."

On this logic, the First Amendment gives breathing room to creative works even when they fail in their goals. Thus, here, the "South Park" episode is protected even if its literalization of the "in the closet" metaphor won't make a single viewer chuckle.

The point is that it was at least trying to make people laugh. And probably, the very silliness of the literalization -- the fact that it was the least creative thing the creators possibly could have done -- did indeed amuse some viewers. "South Park's" appeal, after all, isn't its subtlety.

But does it make a different that Cruise's would be a defamation case? Judge Leval originally stated this principle in the trademark context. And when Justice Souter applied this principle in the Campbell case, he did so in the copyright context

Courts, I believe, would probably invoke the same rule in the defamation context, too, for in the end the principle is about creating a healthy margin of error for First Amendment-protected speakers and writers, and that concern is present in all these different areas of law. This is consistent with the principle the Supreme Court has frequently espoused that the First Amendment is in a "preferred position" in the legal hierarchy -- meaning that laws or government actions that infringe on free speech not likely to be upheld.

In the defamation context, though, the rule's application -- though correct, as a matter of constitutional law -- may be especially unfortunate for the plaintiff.

It's one thing to co-opt part of a song, or use a trademark, in a parody: Without using part of the original, the parody won't work at all; no one will know what its target is.

But it's another thing to embed what would otherwise be a defamatory statement in a work of fiction: This is defamation in satire's clothing, and it's only in order to protect true satire that that the Constitution has been held to also protect this lesser creature.

Generally, courts don't want to get into the business of picking out nuggets of fact from an otherwise fictional account.

The upshot, though -- and courts know this, and accept this cost in the service of free speech -- is that parody and satire inevitably may become a refuge for rogues who seek to defame without liability. That seems to me to be just what's happening with respect to the "South Park" episode.

Should Plaintiffs Argue that Simply Being Considered Gay Is Defamatory?

In sum, a Cruise-versus-"South Park" suit would almost certainly be dismissed on First Amendment grounds. Moreover, such a suit -- depending on the way it was framed -- might arguably be as ethically problematic, as it is legally problematic, at least for those who believe that bias against homosexuals is wrong.

Cruise has chosen, in the past, not only to challenge allegations that he cheated or lied to cover up his alleged homosexuality, but also to directly challenge allegations that he is gay. In 2001, Cruise's attorney Bert Fields was quoted saying to E! Online, that "[Cruise] is a great respecter of homosexual rights, but he's not gay, and he's ready to prove this in court. Tom is tired of it and it hurts his children. It's something that will be there forever. And damn it, he's going to stop it." (Emphasis added).

If Cruise is truly a great respecter of homosexual rights, then to comport with his own ethical beliefs, he should have been more careful in crafting his past suit.

Cruise already had a strong suit based on suggestions that he was an adulterer and a liar -- cheating on his wife and misrepresenting the character of their marriage to the public. Did he need to also directly take aim at the statement that he was gay?

Imagine a white person in the Jim Crow South suing to counter rumors that he was hiding African-American ancestry, and the problem with such a claim becomes plain: The purpose of the claim is to restore the plaintiff to a prior, undeserved position of societal privilege, so he can avoid the maltreatment, racism -- and if he is a racist himself, the shame -- that he would otherwise suffer. The claim itself, then, rests on a malicious societal hierarchy.

The same is arguably true of a claim by a straight person that he has been falsely labeled as gay: Such a claim takes advantage of the courts so that one person can escape bias that others unfairly suffer.

It also caters to societal bias by saying, in effect, "Stop thinking less of me; I'm not really gay." But imagine, again, the parallel claim: "Stop thinking less of me, I'm not really African-American."

Should Courts Stop Deeming Claims of Homosexuality Defamatory?

Of course, not all the responsibility can be put on plaintiffs who choose to sue to combat claims that they are gay. Some must also lie on courts that continue to deem allegations of homosexuality defamatory.

Currently, polling shows that a large percentage of the country favors gay civil unions -- as opposed to "gay marriage -- which would grant gay couples many of the same rights as married couples. Meanwhile, highly popular television shows feature positive gay themes -- such as "Will and Grace," "Dawson's Creek," "Sex and the City," and "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy." In this day and age, then, it's worth considering whether labeling people as gay really defames them, such that their reputations are truly damaged.

Perhaps a straight person's being falsely considered gay should remain an eye-opener, and cease to be a tort. (Employment discrimination based on perceived sexual orientation, whether the perception is false or true, is -- and should be -- separately illegal in some jurisdictions.)

In my view, a "straight-person's privilege" isn't the kind the courts should be protecting. Indeed, a friend of mine who's a practicing First Amendment lawyer believes this so strongly, he won't, as a matter of professional ethics, argue a case for libel-by-claim-of-homosexuality in court. He'd rather be on the right side of history, and decline.

While Tom Cruise won't be able to successfully sue South Park for its satire, he may have the option to sue others who claim he is gay in the future. When he does have this opportunity, he may want to think twice -- and, at a minimum, rephrase his suit to focus on false claims that he is a liar, not false claims that he is gay.

http://writ.news.findlaw.com/hilden/20051206.html

Marilyn Manson marries

Marilyn Manson married his longtime girlfriend on Dec. 3 in Ireland, People magazine reported on its Web site. Manson, whose real name is Brian Warner, married 33-year-old Heather Sweet in front of about 60 guests at Castle Gurteen, the home of a friend in Kilsheelan, County Tipperary, the magazine reported. Sweet is a burlesque dancer who uses the stage name Dita Von Teese. They have been dating for four years and Manson proposed at their Los Angeles home in March 2004, People reported. It is the first marriage for both.

Answering bell for 'Rocky Balboa'

By Adam Fifield

Inquirer Staff Writer

Yo, so you want to be in the movies?

Standing in lines stretching more than two blocks, bundled up against frigid cold and stinging winds, about 2,400 people attended an open casting call for Rocky Balboa - the sixth movie in the series about the beloved Philadelphia pugilist.

Heery Casting wants to find authentic Philadelphia faces for the new movie, which will begin filming here Jan. 9 and will be directed by the Rocky series' star, Sylvester Stallone. He will also play a 60-year-old Rocky, who comes out of retirement and takes up a challenge by the reigning champion.

The Hollywood heavyweight wants a "Philadelphia look," said the casting company's Jason Loftus. "And we're not talking City Line Avenue. We're talking South Philadelphia and Kensington."

Many of those who attended the casting call on Second Street in Old City were professional actors.

"It's a job," said Jason Jones, 37, an actor from West Philadelphia. "It's a paycheck."

But others were Rocky fans, eager at a chance to be part of their favorite underdog story.

"It's my favorite movie," Steve Schwinger, 20, a junior at Holy Family University in Northeast Philadelphia. "Even if I'm in the movie for a second, I could freeze the DVD and say, 'That's me.' "

The aspiring stars were herded inside about 30 at a time to drop off their head shots. Those lucky enough to be picked out of the crowd by casting director Diane Heery were taken to a small back room to read for a speaking part.

The Philadelphia casting company plans to fill 15 speaking parts and as many as 500 extra roles.

"We're going to be painting pictures with your faces," Heery told a group, adding that Stallone himself would be deciding who gets called back.

But the Italian Stallion did not make an appearance yesterday. Stallone was busy filming in Las Vegas, using the real-life weigh-in for Philadelphia fighter Bernard Hopkins' middleweight title bout to shoot a weigh-in scene with co-star (and current light-heavyweight champ) Antonio Tarver.

The casting company's Loftus warned that people should expect during filming to spend between 12 and 14 hours outside in frigid temperatures. The payoff in small roles could lead to bigger ones. "There's a good chance you could be upgraded on the set," he said.

Jackie Jones, 30, of West Oak Lane, said she had wanted to be an actress since she was a child. "I chase it wherever," said Jones, who has had roles in several television shows and movies. "I've been waiting for this all my life... . I'm waiting for my big break."

One of those picked for a reading, Lauren Kimmel, tried out for the part of a woman in a bar who spots the aging fighter.

"I guess they'll call if they're interested," said the 23-year-old waitress from Royersford. "If they're not interested, they probably won't."

Jessica Fooks, 23, of Pennsville, N.J., read for the same part.

Standing before a camera, she nodded as Heery, the casting director, urged her to act "a little bit skanky" in the bar scene.

Fooks delivered her lines with confidence, but later said she thought she could have done better. "I'm very self-critical," she said. She added: "Sometimes I go into an audition, and I'll think I'm terrible and then I'll get the part."

Amateur boxer Tony Penecale, 29, who sported a "Rocky" T-shirt and a gold earring in the shape of a boxing glove, read for a part in a bar.

"So you're a little drunk and a little pissed off," directed Heery. "Look at me, I'm Rocky."

"Yo! Why didn't you buy us a drink?" Penecale bellowed gruffly.

Penecale, who dressed up his dog as Apollo Creed for Halloween, said he would gladly accept any role, but hoped he could "appear in gym hitting the bags in the background."

Ron Brooks, 40, a double amputee with prosthetic legs who walks with two canes, came to the call yesterday hoping to be in the movie, in part, because Rocky had inspired him to overcome his hardships.

"Rocky basically gave me the will to live," said Brooks, of Manahawkin, N.J. "For me to be here today is a dream come true."

Allen hits 70 with neuroses intact

By Neil Smith
BBC News entertainment reporter

After a prolonged period of domestic and professional upheaval, Woody Allen turns 70 this week with his reputation restored and his neuroses intact

Although he is not known for being particularly celebratory, his birthday comes at what could be seen as a happy time for him.

His latest film was showered with critical acclaim and his jazz tours have proved a roaring success.

But the neurotic self-absorption on which he once based his stand-up comedy has now become an air of melancholic disquiet.

The irony is that Allen's reputation has rarely been more secure, with critics heralding the London-set Match Point as a return to form after years of disappointments.

At a screening of the film held earlier this week in New York, the director suggested its central conceit - that our lives are largely governed by luck and chance - applied equally to his prodigious output.

"Some come out good and some don't come out good - it's up in the air," he told reporters.

Mordant

"This picture I got lucky; next picture I could not get lucky. There is nothing you can do to make it happen."

In an interview in this month's Total Film magazine, Allen sounds a similarly mordant note.

"I really do feel that life is divided between the horrible and the miserable," he said, echoing a line spoken by the character he played in one of his biggest hits, 1977's Annie Hall.

"I've always seen the world through a very dark prism."

If the world looks grim now, one can only imagine how bleak it must have seemed in the early 1990s.

It was then that Mia Farrow, his partner of 12 years and star of 13 of his movies, discovered he was having an affair with her adopted daughter Soon-Yi.

A bitter and acrimonious custody battle ensued, with Allen accused by Farrow of sexually abusing his adopted daughter Dylan. He was cleared of the allegation.

The story was broadcast around the globe, putting every aspect of his private life up for scrutiny.

Discord

Although his films remained popular abroad, particularly in France, the director found it increasingly hard to find financing and distribution.

Further discord came in 2001 when Allen accused long-time business partner Jean Doumanian of withholding profits from eight of the films they had made together.

They settled out of court the following year.

Tellingly, however, A-list actors remained eager to be in his movies, often taking drastic salary cuts in order to work with him.
Allen's vocal contribution to the computer-animated feature Antz cannily introduced his persona to a whole new and younger audience.

And a surprise appearance at the 2002 Academy Awards - an event he traditionally shuns - saw him greeted and feted like a returning hero.

Despite the fact he has been vocal in his loathing of mainstream studio product, his latest film is now being touted in Hollywood as a potential Oscar contender.

Proof perhaps that, for all his protestations and statements to the contrary, the now septuagenarian Allen has finally been embraced by the very industry he appeared to reject.

Just don't expect him to be happy about it.

Happy Thanksgiving

New plan to 'lift' sinking Venice

By Mark Duff
BBC News, northern Italy

Italian experts are proposing a dramatic new solution to the watery threat facing the city of Venice.

Rather than battling to keep the sea out - they want to use it to help raise the sinking island-city.

The scheme would involve pumping huge quantities of sea water into the ground beneath Venice down 12 pipes each of which would be 700m (765 yards) long.

The sea water would make the sand beneath the city expand lifting Venice by 30cm (11.8 inches) in 10 years.

'Science fiction'

The northern Italian city is slowly drowning - sea levels in the Adriatic are rising, and high tides are becoming more frequent.

The Italian government is spending 4.5bn euro (£2.9bn) on a controversial project to build floodgates across the entrance to the lagoon in which the city stands in an effort to keep the sea at bay.

Now, a panel of engineers and geologists from the respected University of Padua have come up with the new scheme costing just a fraction of that - 100m euro (£68m).

It says the plan would help raise Venice by almost as much as it has sunk over the past three centuries.

The professor leading the project says it is not an alternative to the floodgates - but would work in tandem with them.

He now wants to carry out a trial to see if the theory would work in practice.

Not everyone is convinced. One expert - who helped stabilise the leaning Tower of Pisa - described the scheme as pure science fiction and warned it could damage the fragile structure of Venice.

But the city's mayor is interested. He says it is time to look again at how to raise the city - and is convinced that the technology exists to make it a reality.

All US Navy Ships to fly "First Navy Jack"

WASHINGTON -- The Secretary of the Navy, the Honorable Gordon R. England, has ordered all U.S. Navy ships to fly the First Navy Jack in place of the Union Jack for the duration of the global war on terrorism.

The First Navy Jack, which is commonly known as the "Don't Tread On Me" flag because of the motto which appears on it, consists of a moving rattlesnake on a field of 13 horizontal red and white stripes.

From 1975-76, the First Navy Jack was flown by all Navy ships in the fleet for only the second time since the American Revolution as a historical reminder of country's Bicentennial celebration. Then, in 1977, the Secretary directed that only the oldest active ship in commission would have the honor of flying the Jack. Today, that honor that belongs to USS Kitty Hawk (CV 63), which was commissioned April 29, 1961.

USS Kitty Hawk (CV 63) received the First Navy Jack during ceremonies 20 November 1998 in Yokosuka, Japan, making Hawk the oldest ship in the fleet. This distinction allows the 37-year-old aircraft carrier to display the First Navy Jack, flown from the oldest ship's jack staff, in place of the union jack flown aboard other Navy ships.

The First Navy Jack, a flag consisting of 13 horizontal, alternating red and white stripes and a rattlesnake moving across the center, bears the motto, 'Don't Tread On Me'. Conceived in 1775 by Commodore Esek Hopkins of the Continental Navy, the flag was first used as a signal between ships to engage the enemy.

In 1977, the Secretary of the Navy directed the ship with the longest total period of active service to display the First Navy Jack until decommissioned or transferred to the inactive reserve. At that time, the flag shall be passed to the next ship of the line with appropriate honors.

USS Kitty Hawk received the flag from the USS Independence (CV 62), following its decommissioning September 30, 1998, in Bremerton, Washington.

All Navy ships and craft authorized to fly the First Navy Jack will receive four flags each through a special distribution. For deployed ships, the flags have already been mailed to the appropriate Fleet Post Office address. Flags have been hand delivered by representatives of Navy Supply Systems Command's (NAVSUP) Logistics Support Centers to all other ships starting Aug. 30. Deliveries are expected to be completed by the second week of September.

To view SECNAVINST 10520.6 authorizing display of the First Navy Jack during the global war on terrorism, go to

A Generation of Swine

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0679722378/002-6002596-3743222?v=glanceGeneration of Swine: Tales of Shame and Degradation in the '80's

Brooklyn Lobster: "Integrity Up To It's Eyeballs"---New York Times

Thanks to everyone who has been so supportive!

BROOKLYN LOBSTER http://www.brooklynlobster.com beat out some of the major motion pictures this past week in Sheepshead Bay and the Village East. This dramedy (drama/comedy) also won critical acclaim from Newsday, The Daily News, Variety, New York Press and the New York Times said

“Integrity up to its eyeballs...”

....as a result, we go to

United Artists Lynbrook

321 Merrick Rd. Lynbrook, NY 11563 516.593.1050

Clearview Roslyn Theatre

21 Tower Place Roslyn, NY 11577 516.756.2589 #898

Clearview Cinema 100 Twin –White Plains

Greenburg Shopping Center 93 Knollwood Road White Plains, NY 10607 914.777.FILM #919

Cinemart Cinemas Forest Hills

106-03 Metropolitan Avenue Forest Hills, NY 11375 718.261.2244

FOR TICKETS AND SHOWTIMES, click here

Your support makes this the little-Indie-that-could!

Laura Censabella's "Last Call" at Avignon Festival

9pm this Saturday at the Lang Theater, Hunter College.

Laura Maria Cenabella has written a powerful, dark and sexy screen play about two lost souls on one fateful night.

The Avignon Film Festival has a fabulous lineup this year----in addition to Censabella's "LAST CALL" this Saturday Night, the festival will also honor....you guessed it.....Brooklyn Lobster ----TONIGHT.

E-mail your advance ticket orders to payavignonfest@aol.com

Brooklyn Lobster on Live TV

BROOKLYN LOBSTER did ganbusters at the Village East this weekend, beating out some of the big studio pictures for ticket sales. Thanks to everyone who went, we are going to be there another week or more, and we are opening in 4-6 more theaters on Long Island in the upcoming weeks.

This morning, at about 7:30am, Penny Marshal of Fox 5 Morning News visited the real-life lobster farm in Sheepshead Bay and interviewed the entire family about caring for and preparing- lobster.

In an astonishing series of events, there were lobster races, Penny ate lobster (for breakfast?) and Penny, who we are told is a real pisser, kissed one of the little darlings.

The business in real life is hanging on by a thread and seems to teeter closer to the edge as the buzz about the movie continues to pick up.

What will be the fate of this generations-old Brooklyn Biz? the answer may be in the box office by December.

If you haven't bought tickets yet, do so now!

In the meantime, this little indie-that-could is greatful to all who made it out....spread the word!

VILLAGE EAST SHOWTIMES:
Village East. 181 2nd Avenue New York, NY 10003 (212) 529-6998
Friday, Saturday and Sunday this weekend
11:20am | 1:25pm | 3:30pm | 5:40pm | 7:40pm | 10:00pm

FOR SHEEPSHEAD BAY United Artists Theater Call: (800) 326-3264
UA Sheepshead Bay. 3907 Shore Parkway Brooklyn, NY 11235
Directions: D at Kings Hwy. to B44 at Nostrand Ave.

Church looks to future as it celebrates 40 years

Carol Sowers
The Arizona Republic
Nov. 4, 2005 12:00 AM

SCOTTSDALE - Forty years ago, it was a novel idea - a drive-in church where people who didn't feel like putting on their Sunday best could pull up and listen to services from a speaker.

While drive-in movies and churches have faded, Glass and Garden Church is still very much part of the community despite its shrinking congregation and unwelcome publicity over a fired pastor accused of theft.

Sunday the church will celebrate its milestone in a way that harkens back to its opening: an old-fashioned pot luck.

ally Tournay is baking four dozen chocolate-chip peanut butter cookies and Mary Walsemann is tossing "a great big salad."

The Praise Band will play and the congregation will sing the 93-year-old hymn In the Garden.

In honor of the anniversary, church founder Floyd Goulooze, 76, is returning to the Glass and Garden pulpit for the first time since he retired in 1997.

Remembering the past

Goulooze's anniversary message will be "first a look at the past and present, then focus on the future."

The retired pastor has always reveled in the possibilities of the future.

Before coming to Scottsdale, he was preaching at a fast-growing church in Lakewood, Calif., in the early 1960s.

In what he calls "the whole new spirit of energy in the '60s," Goulooze was also on a committee looking for new church sites in California and Arizona. Goulooze came to Scottsdale in 1963 and bought 7 1/2 acres of cotton fields at 86th Street and McDonald Drive, just west of the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community.

"There were two farmhouses on either side of McDonald Drive," he said. "And if you looked north, you could see nothing."

Still, Goulooze thought it was a perfect location for a new crop of parishioners. He had seen plans for a Pima freeway, and there was talk - later abandoned - that non-Indians could lease tribal land and build homes.

It would be awhile before he knew "those things would not materialize," so Goulooze stuck to his plans for a 1,400-seat church, including a drive-in with speakers.

"I had talked to so many people who said they would like to go to church but were worried that they would be called upon to speak," he said. "For some people, the front door of a church is a barrier."

The church was designed by the late E. Logan Campbell, an architect who also worked on what would become the Phoenix Zoo. It took him 18 months to draw plans for the circular church with its impressive domed roof and indoor garden.

Campbell decided on a circular church because it "gave a better feeling of community," Goulooze said.

"I had talked to so many people who said they would rather be out in nature than in a church," Goulooze said. "So we brought the garden indoors."

Construction of the $350,000 church took three years.

Tournay, now a grandmother, watched the church go up.

She remembers being a wiry 10-year-old gymnast, the only kid in the neighborhood who could climb up on the church roof "just to look around."

More than 700 people streamed into the church when it opened on an April Palm Sunday in 1966.

A week later, nearly 4,000 people attended three Easter Sunday services and the drive-in was full.

Focusing on the future

Don Walsemann, a church official, said he realizes Glass and Garden won't turn 40 till next year.

"We're taking a little poetic license," he said.

The Rev. Patrick Shetler planned the anniversary celebration long before he came under investigation earlier this year. He is accused of stealing an estimated $100,000 from the church. Parishioners are awaiting word from the Maricopa County Attorney's Office on whether Shetler will be charged.

Despite the cloud over the church and a congregation that has dwindled to fewer than 200 people, Glass and Garden is not stuck in neutral.

Although it could take months, officials are searching for a new pastor, tightening control of their money to protect it from theft, and are optimistic that the congregation will grow.

The drive-in-speakers are long gone, but parishioners who dread dressing up for services can tune their car radios to 800 AM and still listen to the service.

The houses and freeway that Goulooze counted on pushed out the cotton fields years ago, but the other-worldly-looking Glass and Garden Church is still a landmark for the old neighborhood.

"It's good," Walsemann said. "That we can come together on the occasion of our 40th anniversary and prove our relationship to the community."

Brooklyn Lobster Needs Your Help

It did well at the Toronto and Hamptons film festivals, and now greets the public in NYC.

Brooklyn Lobster, a NY story about Jordan’s Lobster Farm in Sheepshead Bay, opens this FRIDAY ---a drama and a comedy, we are calling it a dramedy starring Danny Aiello and Jane Curtain. Written, directed and produced by the three son’s of Bill Jordan who created a thinly veiled version of what it is like to protect your family’s business from the government and not fall apart in the process.

You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll love it.

If enough people pack the theaters this weekend, this little Indie-that-could might get the chance of a lifetime to go national, and might save the lobster farm in real life! So GO GO GO GO GO!---and pass this on!

VILLAGE EAST SHOWTIMES:
Village East. 181 2nd Avenue New York, NY 10003 (212) 529-6998
Friday, Saturday and Sunday this weekend
11:20am | 1:25pm | 3:30pm | 5:40pm | 7:40pm | 10:00pm

FOR SHEEPSHEAD BAY United Artists Theater Call: (800) 326-3264
UA Sheepshead Bay. 3907 Shore Parkway Brooklyn, NY 11235
Directions: D at Kings Hwy. to B44 at Nostrand Ave.

Thank you all very much!!!!

Village East / Sheepshead Bay ; Brooklyn Lobster Opens Friday!

Long Awaited major screen opening this Friday at the Village East NYC and Sheepshead Bay Brooklyn

BROOKLYN LOBSTER opens after much audience enthusiams in Toronto, The Hamptons, and recently The Westchester Film Club which is the oldest film review board in the country. There were standing ovations in that White Plains preview on Sunday, and more sure to come as Kevin Jordan's heartfelt family story hits the public this weekend.

Anyone familiar with the hell which is creating an Indie film knows that the "per-screen-average" is tantamount on opening weekend to film studio funding. So if you like good movies and you are in Brooklyn or Manhattan this weekend, support the New York troops of this true New York Story.

FOR VILLAGE EAST SHOWTIMES:
Village East. 181 2nd Avenue New York, NY 10003 (212) 529-6998

FOR SHEEPSHEAD BAY:
UA Sheepshead Bay. 3907 Shore Parkway Brooklyn, NY 11235 (800) 326-3264

Montgomery Clift is burried in Prospect Park

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Montgomery Clift (October 17, 1920 - July 23, 1966) was an American actor. Born in Omaha, Nebraska, Clift appeared on Broadway at the age of thirteen. He achieved success on the stage and starred there for ten years before moving to Hollywood, debuting in 1948's Red River opposite John Wayne. Along with Marlon Brando and James Dean, Clift was considered one of the most influential actors of his generation. Clift was also famous for his good looks and intense, penetrating eyes.

Clift was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor that same year for The Search. He had a highly successful film career, performing in many Oscar-nominated roles and becoming a matinee idol for his good looks. His love scenes with Elizabeth Taylor in A Place In The Sun (1951) set the standard for romance in cinema. His signature roles were George Eastman in A Place in the Sun (1951) and Prewitt in From Here To Eternity (1953). Then he was off the screen for 4 years, until Raintree County in 1957. Amazingly, Clift was nominated for a best supporting actor Oscar for Judgment at Nuremberg in a role that only took up seven minutes of screen time. But his guilt over his hidden homosexuality led to alcoholism and drug use. In 1956, while filming Raintree County, he smashed his car into a tree, and only quick thinking by co-star Elizabeth Taylor, who pulled two teeth out of his throat to keep him from choking, saved his life. He needed reconstructive surgery on his face and returned to acting, although he could no longer play romantic leading roles.
He turned down the starring roles in East of Eden and Sunset Boulevard. However, he did appear in Wild River, a 1960 film listed in the United States National Film Registry.

Montgomery Clift died in 1966 at the age of 45 of a heart attack brought on by his severe drug and alcohol addictions. He was interred in the Quaker Cemetery, Brooklyn, New York.

The songs "Monty got a Raw Deal" by R.E.M. and "The Right Profile" by The Clash are about him, and even The Clash's live album was named for one of his films (From Here to Eternity). Clift is also brother-in-law to reputable Newsweek reporter Eleanor Clift.

Friends Cemetery

Near the park entrance at Prospect Park Southwest and 16th Street along Center Drive you will find a cemetery that was established by the Society of Friends before Prospect Park was built. The cemetery was originally loacted between 11th and 12th Avenue and 9th and 14th Streets, which were demapped in 1866; by agreement, the Society retained the southern two-fifths of the burial ground. Burials here date as far back as the 1820s. The park was simply built around the cemetery and no trace now remains of the cross streets that surrounded it.

Actor Montgomery Clift (1920-1966) is buried here. Clift’s simple gravestone at Quaker Cemetery was purportedly designed by John Benson, who designed John F. Kennedy’s at Arlington National Cemetery.

An Omaha native, Clift lived in a Manhattan brownstone (217 East 61st Street ) in the years before his death.
You will find Friends Cemetery locked behind a gate as a rule, and it is inconspicuous in a wooded area off Center Drive. There are no ostentatious stones or tombs per Quaker custom... just headstones.

Town pulls plug on millionaire 'Lotto Lout'

By Sarah Lyall
Swaffham, England

Neighbours won't let the 'King of Chavs' switch on his community Christmas lights.

EXCEPT possibly for Howard Carter, who discovered Tutankhamen's tomb in 1922 (and died a long time ago), Michael Carroll is, at 22, by far Swaffham's most famous resident.

Known across Britain by his tabloid nickname, the Lotto Lout, Mr Carroll won £9.7 million ($17.1 million) in the national lottery three years ago and showed up to collect his prize while wearing a police-issued electronic ankle bracelet.

The question now raging in Swaffham is whether he deserves to throw the switch at the town's annual Christmas lights display, as he was briefly invited to do.

"I personally have nothing against him," said Terry Drake, who owns a hardware store on the main street of this old market town. "But a convicted criminal shouldn't be in a position to do something that children are supposed to look up to."

After a huge public outcry, the town has rescinded the invitation and will probably have no holiday display at all this year. After all, Mr Carroll was going to pay for it.

If nothing else, Mr Carroll has proved since winning that he is not the sort of person to let money turn his head. He still has run-ins with the authorities, the only difference being that he now drives nicer cars to court.

"Before he won the lottery, he was a nuisance," said Charles Joyce, a local official. "He decided to carry on being a nuisance."

Mr Carroll has appeared in court more than 30 times in the past three years. He has spent three months in jail on drugs charges, paid thousands in fines for acts of vandalism, and been evicted from several hotels after, for instance, ripping a chandelier from the ceiling while trying to swing from it.

He was recently ordered to perform 240 hours of community service — later increased to 300 — after shooting ball-bearings through 32 car and shop windows with a catapult.

He has been issued with two antisocial behaviour orders, and has been ordered to stop raucous late-night parties and to stop holding demolition derbies on his land.

And he has been told to clean up the yard of his house, strewn as it is with tyres, beer cans, food wrappers, wrecked furniture and the hulks of smashed-up old cars.

Mr Carroll is an object of national fascination in part because of his apparently pathological criminality, and in part because he represents a kind of Briton known as a chav.

Chavs, rich or poor, tend to favour gaudy jewellery and expensive but tacky clothes with big logos, and to behave in a way that others find coarse or obnoxious. Male chavs wear tracksuits and baseball caps; female chavs pull their hair tightly back in buns or ponytails, a style known as a "council house facelift".

Mr Carroll has "King of Chavs" printed on his Mercedes, known in the newspapers as the Loutmobile (its licence plate reads L111 OUT).

His former girlfriend told The Sun that Mr Carroll believed that the trees in his front garden were actually people disguised as trees, and that he spent his nights prowling around the house looking for intruders.

http://www.theage.com.au/news/world/town-pulls-plug-on-millionaire-lotto-lout/2005/09/30/1127804661622.html?from=moreStories#

All Hallow's Eve Tour of Green-Wood Cemetery

Justins New York

"It is the ambition of the New Yorker to live upon the Fifth Avenue, to take his airings in the Park, and to sleep with his fathers in Green-Wood."
-Henry J. Raymond: founder, New York Times

Celebrate autumn in the wooded glens of Green-Wood Cemetery. The lush plantings, shimmering lakes, and rolling hills of Brooklyn's Green-Wood Cemetery inspired the creation of Central Park. As one of America's first garden cemeteries, Green-Wood, with its contemplative beauties, became New York's most scenic and choice location to spend eternity.

Impressive mausoleums, often adorned with stained glass windows, and exquisite sculptures and monuments celebrate the lives of little known as well as America's rich and famous. See works by such noted artists and designers as Stanford White, Daniel Chester French, Richard Upjohn, Warren & Wetmore and Augustus St. Gaudens. Among the many stops will be the final resting places of Louis Comfort Tiffany, Horace Greeley, Samuel F. B. Morse, and Leonard Bernstein.

Drivers: There is free parking at the entrance to Green-Wood Cemetery.

Date: Sunday October 30, 2005

Time: 1:00 PM to approximately 3:30 PM

Cost: $20, Payable on Site

Meet At: Main Entrance Gate 5th Avenue and 25th Street in Brooklyn.
Train: Take the R train to 25th Street in Brooklyn.
The train will leave you at 4th Avenue and 25th Street.
Walk UP the hill to "The Gates of Heaven" at 5th Avenue and 25th Street.

Tours operate rain or shine. Please dress appropriately. For more information or to confirm meeting locations please call (212) 758-7893. Please note that tours sometimes run late.

Guess it's only a paper boat

By Dominic Yeatman http://www.thisislocallondon.co.uk/news

THE man who broke what is believed to be the world's oldest record when he sailed down the River Thames in a paper boat, came to Fairlop Waters to show how he did it.

Tim Fitzhigham, who will be recounting his exploits at the Redbridge Drama Centre, sailed 160 miles from Oxford to Tower Bridge in his canoe made of paper, thereby breaking a record that had stood for 383 years.

His eight-day effort raised more than £10,000 for Comic Relief and Redbridge Mayor Charles Elliman went to the lake to congratulate him on his efforts.

Mr Fitzhigham dreamed up his scheme after reading about the exploits of a 17th century poet, John Taylor, who built a paper boat to demonstrate the quality of English paper.

He said: "He had extraordinary ideas on almost every subject and this was entirely in keeping with his own crazy outlook. I got a lot of sheets of A3 and A4 paper, laid them up in a canoe mould and nailed them together."

Once on the river, Mr Fitzhigham realised why the record had remained unbroken for so long, and as he struggled towards the finish line, it was touch and go whether his increasingly waterlogged boat would make it. The Thames was closed off to other river traffic and the Royal Navy sent an escort boat to accompany the intrepid voyager.

He said: "It went horribly wrong and was increasingly gaffer taped together. It was a real struggle to get it over the finish line, but it was an amazing sensation."

l The Redbridge Drama Centre in Churchfields, South Woodford, will be hosting Mr Fitzhigham for one evening on November 3 as he tells the tale of his odyssey and the man who inspired it. Tickets for the paper boat show cost £8 for adults and £5 concessions, and are available from the box office on 8504 5451.

'Jolly Green Giant' voice dead at 80

PALM SPRINGS, California (AP) -- Elmer "Len" Dresslar Jr., who extolled vegetables to generations of TV watchers as the booming voice of the Jolly Green Giant, has died. He was 80.

Dresslar died October 16 of cancer, according to daughter Teri Bennett.

Dresslar was an entertainer and singer for nearly six decades. But his voice rang through millions of households when he sang the simple refrain, "Ho, Ho, Ho," in an ad jingle for Green Giant foods.

Dresslar, a Kansas native, moved to Chicago with his wife in the early 1950s to study voice after touring with a production of "South Pacific." By the 1960s, the Navy veteran had carved out a career singing in clubs, on television and in advertising jingles.

He recorded 15 albums with The Singers Unlimited jazz group and appeared on the CBS television show "In Town Tonight" from 1955 to 1960.

Ad jingles were the most consistent part of his career, and he landed roles for Rice Krispies cereal, Marlboro cigarettes, Amoco oil and Dinty Moore canned beef stew.

He periodically re-recorded the "Ho, Ho, Ho" for Jolly Green Giant commercials, most recently about 10 years ago.

The Genuine 7-Foot Robby The Robot.

Available only from Hammacher Schlemmer, this is a special edition, life-size, fully animatronic remote-controlled version of Robby, the robot from the classic 1956 film Forbidden Planet. Standing seven feet tall, Robby is created from the same blueprints, molds, and templates used to create the original costume

http://www.hammacher.com/publish/10921.asp?source=NEWS2205&cm_ven=WC&cm_cat=20051021_News22&cm_pla=INQ&cm_ite=The#

Robby is made by renowned artist Fred Barton, the man commissioned to restore the original robot after its sale to a Southern California prop museum in 1970. Every mechanism is handmade of the finest materials, and this version is remote-controlled.

The robot is pre-programmed to deliver his famous lines from the original movie, and the remote control allows you to adjust the robot’s volume, track selection, and start and stop functions.

Robby can also be prompted to move his computer relay assembly, rotate his servo-controlled head, spin his planetary gyro stabilizers, and rotate his scanners while his various lights flash. The integral audio system produces CD-quality sound projected from a directional speaker system in the head and synchronized with the neon tube lights (the sound system can be connected to a home theater system), and you can project your own voice through Robby’s sound system with the wireless microphone (included).

Robby’s electronic brain incorporates advanced microprocessor-controlled technology, and the body is constructed of rugged Fiberglas which will not warp over time like thermoformed plastic. All metals in the robot are machine-grade br ass, titanium, and aluminum to ensure lasting durability and quality. Robby is signed by the artist and by designer Robert Kinoshita, and officially licensed by Turner Entertainment. Certificate of authenticity included. Plugs into AC.

*For Personalized Service on this item call 1-800-227-3528 between 8 a.m. and 12 p.m. Eastern time, and our Product Specialists will gladly answer all questions and provide additional service information about Robby the Robot. Please note that special conditions and guarantee limitations apply to this product. 84" H x 42" Diam. (100 lbs.) t ($500)

Item 10921 ................... $49,999.95
Please allow 4-6 weeks for delivery.

Brooklyn Lobster Wins Audience Award in the Hamptons

Brooklyn Lobster, in the beginnings of it's film festival circuit, has won the Audience Award at the Hamptons Film Festivalthanks to overwhemling enthusiam from the East End crowd. The astonishing part?.....there is no sex or violence in the film. Kevin Jordan, the director/writer has been interviewed by Newsday and Channel 4, and is looking like this season's Indie darling. But 'Indie' it's not. The story resounds with very down-to-earth themes of family, hard work, and loyalty not often found in Indie or Hollywood films.

The public screen run is gearing up, starting with a premier at The Village East in NYC this November 4th. The success of such a film is dependent upon their 'per-screen' average -of bodies in seats- there and at 5 other NYC, Westchester and Long Island theaters yet to be announced.

Thorninpaw advises that if you want to see a great holiday film this season, and you want to send a message to Hollywood about what you want to see in the movies, slap on your fall finery, tie up your lobster bib, and get to one of those shows!

P.S. Thorninpaw insiders tell us that there may be an upcomming Martha Stewart appearance for the Jordan brothers! When not making movies, they still help out at Dad's Lobster Dock in Sheepshead Bay- the location is the real-life setting for this not-so-lossely-based Brooklyn story. Brother/director/writer Kevin, and brother/producer Darren will regal us with Lobster cooking techniques for the Queen of Domestic Bliss on her Everyday Food!-Stay tuned.

'Little Rascals' Actor Gordon Lee Dies

Gordon Lee, the chubby child actor who played Spanky McFarland's little brother Porky in the "Little Rascals" comedies, has died. He was 71.

Lee died Sunday in a Minneapolis nursing home after battling lung and brain cancer, said Janice McClain, his partner of 13 years.

Lee played one of the younger members in the "Our Gang" shorts in the 1930s, appearing in more than 40 of them from 1935 to 1939. The comedies, produced by Hal Roach, became known as "The Little Rascals" when shown on TV in the 1950s.

Among the films Lee appeared in were "Bored of Education," which won the Oscar for best one-reel short subject in 1937; "Our Gang Follies of 1936"; "The Awful Tooth"; and "Roamin' Holiday."

In a 1998 interview with the Star Tribune of Minneapolis, the Texas-born Lee said he was 2 years old when his mother sent his picture to studio executives who were seeking an actor to play McFarland's brother.

"We were on the next train to L.A. and I had a contract within a few days," Lee said. "Fat kid got lucky."

"My memories are not about making movies. We played with our toys and the adults played with theirs (the cameras)," he said.

He and Billie "Buckwheat" Thomas teamed up against older boys Spanky and Alfalfa in many of the comedies. The Porky character is credited with originating the catchphrase "otay."

In the interview, Lee recalled a warm friendship with his black costar when they were kids and praised their interracial relationship on screen, saying, "Buckwheat played an absolute equal part in the Gang."

Lee told friends his career ended when a growth spurt made him thinner. "They wanted Porky to be a chunky fellow, so they looked for someone else," McClain said.

He was born Eugene Lee in Fort Worth, Texas, in 1933. His adoptive parents began calling him Gordon after Gordon Douglas, who directed many of the films Lee appeared in. He kept the first name as an adult.

Lee was a schoolteacher, living in Colorado for a time. He moved to Minnesota after he retired to be closer to his only son, Douglas, said a friend, Tracy Tolzmann. In recent years, Lee sold autographed photos of himself as Porky, Tolzmann and McClain said.

"Before that he felt like he was forgotten," McClain said. "It really made him feel good about himself."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051021/ap_en_mo/obit_lee&printer=1

Handmade Cildren's Accessories

"Kunstook: Hand Made in Brooklyn"--thorninpaw friend Elizabeth Amorose has a new small business selling hand made quilts and knitted items. The preliminary website is up and running. Check it out: www.kunstook.com

Pening the launch of more products, the plan is to make beautiful quality hand-made clothing/accessories/home items for children of all ages.

Right now you can order: Baby/Toddler quilts: Each measures about 34 x 42 inches. Custom orders specifying color palette and type of fabric pattern can be placed for these quilts at no additional charge. Priced at $70

Baby/Toddler sweaters: All different styles and colors. Children's bulky yarn sweaters are very popular right now! Price: $60 and up

Kunstook is also a portal for custom orders--any size/color/style/pattern desired for quilts, knits and murals--for children and adults alike.

Absolute-ly Crazy For Tokyo

Absolute Vodka, a brand with advertising dear to my heart, has created a Flash site full of Japanese urban creative rebellion, and it is gorgeous.

Check it out at absolute.com/metropolis

Jewish mystics to Madonna: Lay off our sage!

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Word that Madonna's upcoming album includes a paean to a 16th-century Jewish mystic has prompted the rabbis who guard his legacy to accuse the pop idol of sacrilege and hint at divine punishment.

The "Confessions on a Dance Floor" collection includes a song titled "Isaac" -- in reference, entertainment media say, to Rabbi Isaac Luria, founder of the Kabbalah school of mysticism which counts Madonna, 47, as one of its devotees.

"There is a prohibition in Jewish law against using the holy name of our master, the Sage Isaac, for profit," the seminary's director, Rabbi Rafael Cohen, told the Israeli newspaper Maariv Sunday.

"This is an inappropriate act, and one can feel only pity at the punishment that she (Madonna) will receive from Heaven. The Sage Isaac is holy and pure, and immodest people cannot sing about him," he said.

Catholic-born Madonna, famed for her racy lyrics and on-stage antics, has drawn frequent censure from ultra-Orthodox Jews who say her embrace of Kabbalah debases their religion.

Deemed especially provocative was Madonna's music video for "Die Another Day," in which she wove phylacteries around her arm, a custom usually reserved for Jewish men, before escaping from an electric chair on which Hebrew letters spelling out one of the 72 names of God appeared.

"This kind of woman wreaks an enormous sin upon the Kabbalah," said Rabbi Yisrael Deri, caretaker of Luria's tomb.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20051010/od_nm/madonna_rabbis_dc;_ylt=Ah3CxNP3aYw_n6zYcThgjs7tiBIF;_ylu=X3oDMTBjMHVqMTQ4BHNlYwN5bnN1YmNhdA--

Chainsaw Massacre voted cut above the rest

Alex Kumi
Monday October 10, 2005
The Guardian

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the low-budget cult classic based on the exploits of real-life killer Ed Gein, has been voted the greatest horror film ever.
The 1974 film, made for just $140,000, beat films such as The Shining, Dawn of the Dead and Hitchcock's Psycho in a poll by Total Film magazine. Halloween came second, Suspiria third.

The magazine said: "The only thing more terrifying than the opening 50 minutes of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is the last 30."

Six of the top 10 were made in the 1970s. Films such as The Exorcist and The Blair Witch Project failed to make the top 10.

http://film.guardian.co.uk/News_Story/Guardian/0,4029,1588443,00.html

Six of the top 10 were made in the 1970s. Films such as The Exorcist and The Blair Witch Project failed to make the top 10.

Shock Horror!
Total Film proudly hails the 50 Greatest Horror Movies Of All Time
10 Oct 2005 2:34pm

1 THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE 1974
Cutting deep: Tobe Hooper takes horror to the bleeding edge.

2 HALLOWEEN 1978
Hawks meets Hitchcock as the slasher cycle finds true Shape...

3 SUSPIRIA 1977
Sighs and whispers (and screams) in Argento’s baroque bloodletter.

4 DAWN OF THE DEAD 1978
George A Romero’s definitive document of the walking dead.

5 THE SHINING 1980
Loving family man tries to put an axe through his son’s head.

6 PSYCHO 1960
Come on up to the house. Oh, and don’t mind Mother...

7 THE WICKER MAN 1973
Creeping pagan terror on a remote Scottish island.

8 ROSEMARY’S BABY 1968
The horny Devil hits home and hearth...

9 DON’T LOOK NOW 1973
Nicolas Roeg’s clammy elegy to love and loss.

10 CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST 1980
Horror doesn’t get any harsher than this.

11 THE THING 1982
Snatched bodies and reheated Cold War paranoia.

12 CARRIE 1976
Memo to all bullies – Stop. Picking. On. The. Quiet. Ones.

13 THE EXORCIST 1973
The Devil rides into the mother of all religio-horrors.

14 THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT 1999
If you go down to the woods today... take a camcorder.

15 WITCHFINDER GENERAL 1968
Lyrical English landscapes are painted red with torture.

16 THE HAUNTING 1963
You are invited to a born-bad house. Bring your own ghosts.

17 THE EVIL DEAD 1981
Five go bloody in the woods in Raimi’s splatter-punk debut.

18 PEEPING TOM 1960
Cameraman fi lms as he kills. Such a nice young man...

19 ALIEN 1979
The ultimate hack’n’slash bad-boy monster.

20 BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN 1935
Karloff’s monster lumbers towards matrimony.

21 NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD 1968
A bunch of amateurs stake out a home in horror history.

22 CURSE OF THE CAT PEOPLE 1944
A haunting, shivery study of childhood loneliness.

23 SWITCHBLADE ROMANCE 2003
Modern horror grows some bloody big balls.

24 A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 1984
Horny teens get fingered by the son of a thousand maniacs.

25 AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON 1981
More than just a shaggy dog story.

26 NIGHT OF THE DEMON 1957
Cat People helmer brings that ol’ black magic to Blighty.

27 HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER 1986
String vests and death by screwdriver.

28 BAY OF BLOOD 1971
Everyone kills everyone else in once-banned video nasty.

29 AUDITION 1999
A woman’s revenge, served with relish by Takashi Miike.

30 SHIVERS 1975
Zombies run riot in an early slab of Cronenberg meat.

31 THE INNOCENTS 1961
Subtle scares in Henry James’ clammy ghost tale.

32 THE DEVIL RIDES OUT 1968
It’s Christopher Lee versus soul-stealing Satanists!

33 LES DIABOLIQUES 1955
Murderous schemes in a French boarding school.

34 DEAD RINGERS 1988
Love, addiction, separation. Nausea guaranteed.

35 INFERNO 1980
Blood and thunder in Argento’s frenzied trip of the brain.

36 MARTIN 1977
Growing pains for bloodsucking teen sociopath.

37 THE HOWLING 1981
A tongue-in-cheek werewolf pic that likes its meat rare.

38 VAMPYR 1932
Gather, darkness: a vampire film like no other.

39 CANDYMAN 1992
Dare you to look in the mirror and say his name five times! No? Thought not...

40 THE PLAGUE OF THE ZOMBIES 1966
City quack investigates dying country bumpkins.

41 SCREAM 1996
Wes Craven rewrites the slasher textbook.

42 TARGETS 1968
Trad horror confronts modern terror in Bogdanovich’s debut.

43 THE SECT 1991
Infernal pits, Devil-worship and the son of Satan!

44 THE DESCENT 2005
Six chicks with picks. Be afraid, be very afraid.

45 BRAINDEAD 1992
Quite possibly the bloodiest movie ever made.

46 HOUR OF THE WOLF 1968
Father Merrin must exorcise a few demons of his own.

47 ERASERHEAD 1977
David Lynch presents an argument for sterilisation.

48 NEKROMANTIK 1987
Dead and loving it in a truly sick flick.

49 THE BEYOND 1981
Director Lucio Fulci goes to Hell and back.

50 HELLRAISER 1987
Demonically kinky splatter-smut in Clive Barker’s deviant debut.

http://film.guardian.co.uk/News_Story/Guardian/0,4029,1588443,00.html

http://www.totalfilm.com/movie_news/the_50_greatest_horror_movies_of_all_time

The End of Elmo

Jebus (disambiguation)*

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Meanings of Jebus (????, Standard Hebrew Y?vus, Tiberian Hebrew Y??ûs):
Jebus fortress on the hill of Zion (see David).
Jebus was the home of the Jebusites before the Israelites captured it and renamed it Jerusalem.
Jebus is a name for Jesus used by Homer Simpson on the television program The Simpsons. It is also mentioned by a Catholic Cardinal on an episode of Family Guy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jebus_%28disambiguation%29

*For style guidelines, see Manual of Style (disambiguation pages)
Disambiguation in Wikipedia and Wikimedia is the process of resolving ambiguity—meaning the conflicts that occur when articles about two or more different topics have the same "natural" title. In other words, disambiguations are types of turnpikes that lead to different meanings of a related word.
Wikipedia thrives on the fact that making links is simple and automatic: as you're typing in an edit window, put brackets around Mercury (like this: [[Mercury]]) and you'll have a link. But were you intending to link to Mercury the element, the planet, the automobile brand, the record label, the NASA manned-spaceflight project, or the Roman god?
Disambiguation should not be confused with the merging of duplicate articles (articles with different titles, but regarding the very same topic, for example "Gas Turbine" and "Gas turbine", or "loo" and "restroom").

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jebus_%28disambiguation%29

Johnny Cash Musical Heads To Broadway

He topped Nashville charts, conquered New York publishing and is the subject of a new movie. Now the late Johnny Cash will reach Broadway in February with the opening of "Ring of Fire," a musical featuring the classic songs of the legend known as "The Man in Black."

Producers said the musical, which features 38 of Cash's songs, would begin performances in New York in February, directed by Richard Maltby, who won a Tony Award for conceiving and directing the Fats Waller musical "Ain't Misbehavin'."

The show follows a string of so-called "jukebox musicals" using an artist's song catalog, and comes within months of a biopic about the country legend, "Walk the Line," which was a hit at the Toronto Film Festival this month.

After a career that spanned five decades, Cash died in 2003, just a few months after the death of his wife, country singer June Carter Cash. He told his own story -- from his youth as the son of an Arkansas sharecropper, to touring with Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis and his descent into drug addiction -- in the book "Cash: The Autobiography," published in 1997.

The musical, which is playing a pre-Broadway engagement in Buffalo, N.Y., this month, features all the hits from "I Walk the Line" to "The Man in Black" and "Country Boy."

No single actor sings all Cash's songs or plays him. "The persona, the voice, are unduplicatable, and the very best we could achieve would be a poor imitation," Maltby said, explaining the decision not to present Cash himself on stage.

In the program notes for the Buffalo production, he said Cash, who had rejected several previous ideas for a musical, had given his approval for the project shortly before he died.

Maltby said that while it is not Cash's life story, what emerges is "an almost mythic American tale -- of growing up in simple, dirt-poor surroundings in the heartland of America, leaving home, traveling on wings of music, finding love, misadventure, success, faith, redemption and the love of a good woman."

http://www.billboard.com/bb/daily/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001218759

'Little Rascals' Actor Thomas Bond Dies

The Associated Press
Monday, September 26, 2005; 1:04 AM

LOS ANGELES -- Thomas Ross Bond, who played Butch the bully in the "Our Gang" and "The Little Rascals" serials of the 1930s, has died. He was 79.

Bond died Saturday of complications from heart disease at Northridge Hospital, said his manager, Frank Marks.

Bond played a member of the Gang named Tommy. After his first year he was dropped from the cast but returned later in the role of Butch, the archenemy of Alfalfa.

Bond appeared in dozens of "Our Gang" and "Little Rascals" features before outgrowing the role.

Born Sept. 16, 1926 in Dallas, Bond got his start at the age of 5 when a talent scout for Hal Roach studios approached him as he was leaving a movie theater with his mother.

The scout "asked him if he'd be interested in acting, (said) he had a great face and he could set up an appointment with Hal Roach in L.A.," Marks said.

His grandmother drove him in what, at the time, was a rugged journey: "It was all dirt roads from Dallas to L.A," Marks said.

In the 1940s, Bond played Jimmy Olsen in two Superman movies and appeared as Joey Pepper in several installments of the "Five Little Peppers" serial.

In 1951, Bond quit acting and went into television directing and production work before retiring in 1991.

Bond is survived by his wife, Pauline, son Thomas Ross Bond III and a grandson.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/25/AR2005092500132.html

Dave Woodman in NYC Monday Night

The superlative Dave Woodman, killer bass playing fool that he is, will be at Scenic this Monday night palying with Michele Shaprow.

Dave is now the go-to guy for bass in Philly and has just completed a tour of Japan, where he says he was not THE tallest person there, but close.

Few people on Earth, if any, play bass as well as Dave.

Hecho en Mexico: Tacky Velvet Art

Found at Flickr
http://www.flickr.com/groups/98705140@N00/

Brooklyn Lobster Strikes a Nerve

Thorninpaw attended the Toronto International Film Festival World Debut of director/writer Kevin Jordan's Brooklyn Lobster over the weekend amid a frenzy of media buzz, stars and flashbulbs. The messages in the movie, based loosely on the director's life, strike at the heart of blue-collar versus white, privilege versus work, delusion versus reality.

The Georgios, a slightly-disfunctional-family, face the challenge of saving the family business from the government. Originally drawn on the SLS scandals of the 80's, this little lobster farm in Sheepshead Bay is pinned up against the Katrina-like blindness and discrimination of government as the FDIC attempts to call the loan which the bank defaulted on, out of the heart of an operation with a half-finished restaurant and three generations of sacrfice. The wealthier characters circle the crisis like vultures, oblivious to the family plight or the approaching Christmas holiday spirit. Relationships are tested and lobsters jepordized as the drama unfolds, wrapped in the gift-packaging of well-studied familial bonds.

In a post-Enron world, this movie is a robust look at ourselves, the ones not powerful or greedy enough to get into Enron-sized-trouble, but hapless pawns in the games the empowered play, and how family can save and condemn us.

Mark your calendar, for tentative dates in early November for the NY release and be prepared to laugh and cry in this warm, funny, sensitive and human story. Not one sex scene, no violence, some very colorful language (rated R), beautiful cinematography and stellar performances by Danny Aiello, Jane Curtain, and Marisa Ryan are all pure pleasure. Most notably, Daniel Sauli delivers a very robust performance as Michael, the prodigal son returned reluctantly to the unfolding may lay. Special kudos to Danny's most memorable performance and Jane's stellar portrayal of a repressed but determined mom, smiling through the suppressed terror of her newly acquired independence and empty nest.

Rumors say that Sheepshead Bay Brooklyn, home of the real-life fish wholesale retailer, Jordan's Lobster Dock, will host the premier at their Loews Cineplex. Will keep you posted

Salvador Dali-Lobster Telephone 1936

National Gallery of Australia

Lobster telephone [Aphrodisiac telephone] 1936
painted plaster, telephone
18.0 (h) x 12.5 (w) x 30.5 (d) cm
not signed, not dated
Purchased 1994

Discussion of the work
Salvador Dalí produced two of the most hilarious objects spawned by the Surrealist movement, his Lobster telephone 1936 and Mae West lips sofa 1937. Both objects were commissioned from the artist by the English poet and collector Edward James (1907-1984), a wealthy and eccentric patron who had inherited a vast English estate and fortune at the age of five, and who has been aptly described as 'virtually a present-day adumbration of the mad Ludwig of Bavaria, capaciously rich and richly capricious, only a little less than Ludwig in wealth and eccentricity.' A leading supporter of the Surrealists, James financed the early issues of the great Surrealist magazine Minotaure, and was also an active patron of the Belgian artist René Magritte, whom he met through Dalí. James spent a small fortune on Dalí himself, and eventually owned between forty and fifty of his best works, all from the 1930s (his greatest period).

Inspired by Dalí, Edward James proceeded in the 1930s to turn his country manor into a fantasy palace filled with every kind of strange and exotic object. As well as placing three of Dalí's sofas in the shape of Mae West's lips into his living quarters, James asked Dalí to 'make-over' his telephones as well. Dali suggested that James fill his rooms with what he called 'The surrealist object - one that is absolutely useless from the practical and rational point of view, created wholly for the purpose of materialising in a fetishistic way, with the maximum of tangible reality, ideas and fantasies having a delirious character.' He then conceived a truly unforgettable object, his irresistibly playful lobster perched atop a phone, which was also called the Aphrodisiac telephone at the time, a title in keeping with Dalí's wicked sense of humour and desire to baffle his public completely.

Dalí's Lobster telephone was not 'absolutely useless', however, but was in fact a perfectly functioning telephone. Edward James purchased four Lobster telephones from Dalí, with which he replaced all the original phones in his country retreat. One of these (a partial reconstruction) is now in the collection of the Tate Gallery, London; the second is housed at the German Telephone Museum (Deutsches Postmuseum) in Frankfurt; the third is owned by the Edward James Foundation, London. The fourth original Lobster telephone (which is in the same perfect condition as it was in James' house) is now in the National Gallery of Australia.

http://www.nga.gov.au/international/catalogue/detail.cfm?irn=2607&siteid=2

Kevin and Danny Interviewed on AM Canada

Kevin Jordan and Danny Aeillo, Director/Writer and Star of Brooklyn Lobster were interviewed on Toronto's daily broadcast AM Canada early this moring. Other Film Festival guests included actress Clare Danes and Director Cameron Crow. However, Danny and Kevin stole the show with their schtick about lobsters, filmaking and life. The two clearly have a repore, although Aeillo made a point of saying that he doesn't eat "anything that swims", and for that matter, neither does Kevin.

Brooklyn Lobster Team Scouts Toronto Scene

In a flury of streategy, excitement, and frenzy, the Brooklyn Lobster film promotional team scouted Toronto for locations, meetings, entertainment....all the not-so-little-things one needs to consider when getting an indie-cum-major-movie noticed in a sea of talented hopefuls.

Yours truly tasted the wine at one joint and deemed it somewhat quaffable. Word has is Ebert is coming. Hope he likes beer.

Producer Darren Jordan has kept up the characteristic Jordan intensity, after all, Danny Aeillo is coming to town, so is Dad; it's got to be right.

'Fats' Domino Missing in New Orleans

Thursday, September 01, 2005
By Roger Friedman

One of the city’s most important legends, Antoine "Fats" Domino, has not been heard from since Monday afternoon. Domino’s rollicking boogie-woogie piano and deep soul voice are not only part of the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame but responsible for dozens of hits like “Blue Monday,” “Ain’t That a Shame,” “Blueberry Hill” and “I’m Walking (Yes, Indeed, I’m Talking).”

Domino, 76, lives with his wife Rosemary and daughter in a three-story pink-roofed house in New Orleans’ 9th ward, which is now under water.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,168122,00.html

Judy Garland's Famed Ruby Slippers Stolen

GRAND RAPIDS, Minn. -AP- A pair of ruby slippers worn by Judy Garland in "The Wizard of Oz" and insured for $1 million is missing from a Grand Rapids museum.

Police Chief Leigh Serfling said the slippers were stolen late Saturday or early Sunday. Someone entered the museum through a window and broke into the small display case holding the slippers.

"There's not a whole lot of evidence," Serfling said. "We're hoping that someone in the community has seen something."

Children's Discovery Museum director John Kelsch said the slippers belong to a Los Angeles man who loaned them to the museum for several weeks this summer.

The children's museum houses the Judy Garland museum, which displayed the same pair of slippers last year. Garland was born in Grand Rapids in 1922.

"The slippers are a major attraction at our museum," Kelsch said in a news release Monday. "It is our hope that the slippers can be recovered immediately."

Four pairs of ruby slippers worn by Garland in the movie are known to exist, including one pair on display at the Smithsonian Institution. Another pair sold at Christie's auction house in 2000 for $666,000.

All-Elvis radio? It's now or never

By Martin Miller, Times Staff Writer

There are those who say that pop-radio stations play the same set of songs over and over again and all sound alike — a statement that is both true and not true of Sirius Satellite Radio's Elvis Radio.

It's all Elvis Presley all the time, culled from a vast library of 2,700 songs but presented in a way listeners have never heard before — and one that may be a harbinger of radio's future.

Elvis Radio, one of more than 130 channels on Sirius, may be the first station to transform what is normally a short-lived publicity stunt into a full-time dial fixture. As such, the all-Elvis station is widely viewed as an early litmus test for the ultra-niching that may lie ahead in satellite and digital radio, which offers listeners hundreds of channel choices.

"When Sirius asked me if I wanted to program a channel committed solely to Elvis, it was a no-brainer," said Scott Lindy, a veteran of traditional radio and now Elvis Radio's programming director. "Everybody has an Elvis connection. I don't care who you are or where you're from, you know who Elvis is. This is no gimmick, we're not going away."

Broadcast daily from Presley's former home, the pop-culture mecca of Graceland, the one-note station celebrated its first anniversary earlier this month, timed to coincide with Elvis Week, the 28th annual commemoration of Presley's death.

In observance of the event, the station aired live interviews with the King's music and film collaborators, friends and con-fidants, and then finished off the week with a candlelight vigil and procession.

For the satellite radio industry, Elvis Radio is part of a marketing strategy to get paying customers inside the tent. Although there's no hard data available on ratings or how many subscribers Sirius has gained through niche programming, observers see it as a smart experiment.

"It's the same thing cable television faces when they've got 400 channels to program," said Dick Bartley, who has a syndicated oldies show for ABC Radio Networks. "It's a fringe idea. Everything can't be mass appeal, and you've got to fill it with something."

Sirius began its commitment to resurrecting the Presley sound by negotiating its way inside the gates of Graceland, building a brand-new studio there and signing up about half a dozen DJs consumed by the Elvis mystique or who knew the pop superstar personally. So if you want to know what Presley was thinking before he went on stage in Saginaw, Mich., in 1977, these are the guys to ask.

"I'm not bragging, but I'm an Elvis expert," said George Klein, one of the station's DJs. Presley was the best man at his wedding, and Klein served as a pallbearer at his friend's funeral. "I've got a world of information on Elvis."

The station's DJs are more than storytellers, they're stage performers too, said Lindy. Their studio's huge window looks out on Graceland's main plaza, where hundreds of Presley fans look inside the "fishbowl" to watch the spinning of songs including "Guitar Man" and "Kentucky Rain." In fact, a few of Graceland's 600,000 annual visitors are invited inside the studio to talk about their Presley moments and memories.

"We get people here from Japan, the Middle East, Europe and Africa who have made it a point in their travels to see the place that Elvis lived," said Lindy. "We recently had someone from Poland we put on the air and we had to find a translator."

Extensive playlist

The channel's regular playlist is between 800 and 900 songs, which by way of comparison is more than double, and maybe triple, the playlists of most top 40 stations. Many of Elvis' songs have multiple versions — live, studio, even rehearsal takes. For instance, the station has 15 different cuts of "Hound Dog."

But although the station is proud of its rare treasures, it makes sure the big hits are frequently played for the average fan.

"The worst thing in radio is you don't want to lose a listener," said Klein, who had a part in several Presley movies. "If they go down the dial, it's hard to get them back."

Since the 1970s, a number of AM and FM stations across the country have dabbled in one-artist, all-the-time schemes by riding the playlists of such rock icons as the Rolling Stones and the Beatles. But these solo efforts, which rarely lasted more than several weeks, were typically launched to draw atten-tion to a station as it prepared to switch from format A to for-mat B.

Satellite channels, of course, aren't under the same commercial constraints as a terrestrial station. They don't have to attract advertisers, just consumers willing to pay a monthly subscription fee of $10 to $13 for a variety of commercial-free music. And for that purpose, niche stations might just work.

Between Sirius and its main satellite competitor, XM Radio, the companies claim some 7 million subscribers. That figure is expected to rise considerably in the coming years as satellite technology improves and its receivers become common options in automobiles.

"If you put enough ultra-niche channels together, instead of just generic-sounding '70s music or '90s music, you'll attract passionate fans," said Tom Taylor, editor of the trade publication Inside Radio. "That's what satellite has got to do."

Ratings numbers are hard to come by with satellite radio, but Sirius has been happy enough with the launch of Elvis Radio to inspire thoughts of rolling out other one-artist stations. The names being bounced around? The Beatles, Frank Sinatra and the Rolling Stones. In fact, Sirius unveiled an all-Rolling Stones channel earlier this week that will play five decades of the rock band's hits for about five weeks. The move is largely seen as a mutually beneficial promotional vehicle for Sirius and the Stones' new tour and album "A Bigger Bang."

Sirius already has "Radio Margaritaville." Although not strictly a single-artist change, the station overflows with Jimmy Buffett songs. It also plays James Taylor, the Beach Boys and Harry Belafonte. Meanwhile, at XM Radio, "Frank's Place" showcases a wealth of Sinatra recordings, blending in the likes of Louis Armstrong, Tony Bennett and Ella Fitzgerald.

But in terms of one artist, one station, Presley is first out of the gate, ahead of the Stones and others. Observers attribute the King's triumph to his extraordinary merchandising power. You don't see many Stones fans with anything like the Elvis Jailhouse Rock Cotton Ball Holder for bathrooms available for $4.99 on www.shopelvis.com.

"There's just enough Elvis crazies to make it work," said Bartley, who has been doing his oldies show since the 1980s. "And I mean that in the nicest way."

But just because a channel works for Elvis doesn't mean there's going to be a stampede of imitators as, say, with his music career. There's a pretty short list of performers who have what it takes to sustain such an enterprise.

"You need depth and quality to support this kind of thing," said Bartley. "Who has it? Maybe the Beatles. Maybe the Stones. Maybe Elton [John]. I mean, that's about it."

Full-court Presley

Elvis Radio at a glance:

Location: Graceland in Memphis, Tenn.

Playlist: Usually between 800 or 900 songs, but there are more than 2,700 selections in the vault.

Regular programs:

"The Elvis Radio Vaults": Rarely heard songs, hard-to-find recordings and vintage tracks.

"Elvis Soundtrack Songs": The best of Elvis' movie music.

"Elvis IQ": Raise your E-quotient hourly as Elvis Radio DJs dish out interesting tidbits about the so-called King of Rock and Roll's life and times.

"Celebrity Hotline With George Klein": two-minute snippets from Klein's chats with celebrities, headline makers and Elvis experts.

http://www.calendarlive.com/tv/radio/cl-et-elvis29aug29,0,1942955.story?track=widget

Playwright August Wilson Has Liver Cancer

From Associated Press

SEATTLE -- Playwright August Wilson says he has inoperable liver cancer and is expected to live for only another three to five months.

"It's not like poker -- you can't throw your hand in," the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, which disclosed his illness today. "I've lived a blessed life. I'm ready."

The announcement came while Wilson reworked "Radio Golf," the last chapter in his epic 10-work play cycle about the black experience in 20th-century America.

"He completed another draft of the play in early July," his assistant, Dena Levitin, said in an interview from Seattle where the 60-year-old Wilson lives with his wife, costume designer Constanza Romero, and their daughter, Azula.

"Radio Golf," which continues to make its way across the country at regional theaters, had its world premiere in April at the Yale Repertory Theatre in New Haven, Conn., where many of the plays in Wilson's cycle -- "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom," "Fences," "Joe Turner's Come and Gone," "The Piano Lesson" and "Two Trains Running" -- had their first professional productions.

Wilson's latest work, directed by Kenny Leon, is on view through Sept. 18 at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles where it opened Aug. 11. Another production is planned for Baltimore's Center Stage, March 24-April 30, also directed by Leon. "Radio Golf" takes place in the 1990s and concerns a successful middle-class man's struggle with the past and present.

"We've been talking pretty regularly through all this," said Gordon Davidson, founding artistic director of Center Theater, which includes the Mark Taper, and a longtime champion of Wilson's work.

Wilson didn't come to Los Angeles from Seattle for rehearsals, but Davidson and Leon were in close contact with the playwright, and his dramaturge, Todd Kreidler, through fax and e-mail.

"August did a lot of good work on the play and it's changed a great deal from Yale," Davidson told The Associated Press today. "He knew what he wanted to do, and he was up to doing the work."

"We are close to being finished with (the changes)," Leon confirmed. "This time, though, it has been a different process. August wasn't in the room. So I flew back and forth to Seattle and LA. The only void has been not having August right there beside me, saying, 'Let's try this.'

"It's always been about the work and that's what's so amazing. For 22 years, he has carried the burden of producing these plays about African-American culture in America.

"The same energy and effort he gave to 'Jitney,' 'Fences' and 'Gem of the Ocean,' is here," Leon said. "In spite of his health issues, he's coming at it like a fighter, a soldier. I have been impressed and amazed."

Wilson's 10-play cycle, one for each decade, is an ambitious achievement, unique in American drama. Not even Eugene O'Neill, who authored the masterpiece "Long Day's Journey Into Night," accomplished such a monumental effort.

Nine of the plays are set in Pittsburgh's Hill District, where Wilson grew up. They were not written chronologically, but it is fitting that the last two to be completed -- "Gem of the Ocean" and "Radio Golf" -- span the century. "Gem of the Ocean" takes place in 1904 and "Radio Golf" nearly 100 years later.

Free i-Pod

Just cut and fold.

A la 'Matrix,' vocations recruitment poster shows priest as hero

By Chris Scaperlanda www.catholic.org/

7/22/2005

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- "Just as Keanu Reeves fought against the powers of evil, a priest comes to help people fight against sin. There is a battle out there," explained Father Jonathan Meyer, associate director of youth and young adult ministry for the Archdiocese of Indianapolis.

He made the comments in an interview with Catholic News Service about a new vocations recruitment poster being distributed by his archdiocese.

The poster, which is modeled after an advertisement for the movie "The Matrix," is the brainchild of Father Meyer. It features a priest in full cassock -- and the requisite Roman collar -- holding a cross in one hand and a rosary in the other. And he is wearing sunglasses.

That simple juxtaposition provides the mood Father Meyer said he was aiming for when creating the poster -- he wanted to say something about today's seminarian.

"Today's seminarian," he said, "is engaged with the world but is also committed to orthodoxy, like (Pope) John Paul II."

Father Meyer said the poster, on which he is featured as the "Matrix"-style priest, had its origins in a skit that he saw during his first year at the North American College, the U.S. seminary in Rome. The skit, put on by a group of older seminarians, was based on the film. In it, a group of priests fought Satan in a series of mock martial-arts confrontations.

The concept was really brought to life, however, in a meeting with the archdiocese's Youth Council. During the meeting, the concept of Father Meyer dressing up as Neo, Reeves' character in "The Matrix," was jokingly suggested by one of the students.

"It was one of those things where everyone laughs and then you move on to the next topic. Only after the meeting, I came back to this one," Father Meyer explained.

He then called Missy Scarlet, a friend and a graphic designer, who asked him to do a photo shoot. Within a week they had a working model of the poster.

After a few initial edits, the poster was given a trial run at Our Lady of the Greenwood, in Greenwood, where Father Meyer also serves as associate pastor.

Father Meyer said it got a huge response. "They were going like hotcakes. Young kids wanted them to hang in their bedrooms, high school students wanted them to hang in their lockers," he said. "That is invaluable. If we can get kids to hang a picture of a priest in their room, we've done something huge for vocations."

The response, though, seems to make sense to him. It appeals to people at a level that everyone appears to share. "People love heroes. The poster personifies the priest as a hero," he said.

And it speaks of a faith that meets people exactly where they are in their lives. The poster itself says, in a parody of the words which any watcher of videos knows by heart, "This faith has not been modified from its original version. Yet, it is formatted to fit your life."

Distribution for the poster has been widespread. Father Meyer said that since distribution began in November, 1,800 posters have been distributed around the Indianapolis Archdiocese. An order of 100 was recently sent to California and 300 more were shipped to the Diocese of Madison, Wis.

Father Donald Calloway, a member of the Congregation of Marians of the Immaculate Conception, presents the poster as a part of the talk he gives nationwide called "No Turning Back."

And the poster was featured at a recent Indianapolis archdiocesan high school rally. At the rally, 500 posters were distributed during a "big tae kwon do number" performed to music from the movie, Father Meyer noted.

http://www.catholic.org/cathcom/national_story.php?id=15786

Flickr

Flickr, the best way to store, search, sort and share your photos.

So they say. I found that they have interesting photos and now thay have a feature, "Flickr labs have been hard at work creating a way to show you some of the most awesome photos on Flickr.

We like to call it interestingness."

Stupid name but it is well worth a look.

Josh Davis and Star Dust TV

Josh Davis, one of my insane mentors-- (Yes, insane. Stark-raving, potty-mouthed, tattooed, obsessive, lovin calculus and Xbox, insane, -God love him.) --has a new project up on his site, joshuadavis.com, which is not for the timid, the terse, or the tentative.

I studied with him at SVA last fall, and we explored some little homebaked applications he referred to as 'drawing machines'. I see he has applied the theories quite beautifully here at StarDusttv.com

Josh is not afraid to make something a bit heavy, a bit tough to navigate. He makes a brand experience. He makes sites for those of us not focused on streaming as much information, valuable or not, into our already hectic days. He sees the medium as a place to have some fun and explore the infinate possibilities of imagination.

Cheese Steak: The Movie

Odiorne is a couple of Philly guys doing hysterical and impressive multi-media in the city of Brotherly Love. Their "Cheese Steak: The Movie trailer above gives a good chuckle.

If you have had a Philly CheeseSteak, you know it's good....good in that god-this-is-so-gross-but-I-love-how-guilty-I-feel good.

I think that White Castel and Pat's King of Steak should have a contest to see who 'slides' better.

Crash, the Movie

More About Crash at Yahoo

A friend of Thorninpaw writes:
Hi all,

Some of you know that I only write a movie recommendation when I believe a
film warrants a trip to the theatre, even if it has to be planned! "Crash"
caught me off guard, so to speak, and ranks as one of the most important and
brilliant American films of recent years.

Many say, "That's the one about race, right?" It isn't. It's about
anger--primitive, judgmental, complicated anger. The kind that can be
triggered without notice, as when two volatile chemicals accidentally mix.
Yes, race is the catalyst here. And yes, there are a few car wrecks, but
they pale compared to the human collisions. A few of the most
well-intentioned characters confront their own poisonous potential, grown
out of internal conflicts of what they know vs. what they've learned and
what they should do vs. what they want to do, and the cost of willful
indifference between the two. All is not for naught, however, as the film
invests equally in powerful transformations.

The acting is evenly outstanding across the board, even when against type.
For example, Sandra Bullock blisters through a ferocious tirade that leaves
the audience with their spines pressed into the seatbacks. Terrence Howard
and Thandie Newton mesmerize. Michael Pena is achingly vulnerable. Matt
Dillon terrorizes, and so on. The camera work is completely committed to the
story, using short angles, fast cuts, and slow zooms that compress a scene
into its own vehement intensity or opens it to a larger truth.

Of course, allow time afterwards for ample discussion. I think this film has
suffered a bit due to an ambiguous marketing campaign. But it's also very
densely textured with multiple layers, and requires full concentration,
virtues perhaps not suitable for mass marketing. The audience I saw it with
was more or less subdued into silence within the first 10 minutes, and
stayed that way, an achievement unto itself.

Feel free to let me know what you think...hope all's well with everyone.

George www.stilabower.com

Huge table gives food for thought

A table and chair the size of a house have been captivating visitors to north London's Hampstead Heath.
The 30ft (9m) sculpture, The Writer, will be on Parliament Hill for four months before returning to Italy.

The tribute to the loneliness of writing is meant to inspire visitors to the heath, which has associations with writers Keats and Coleridge.

Leslie Mare, from the Corporation of London which runs the heath, said: "People seem to love it or hate it".

Giancarlo Neri, who used to play soccer for New York Apollos in the seventies, chose the heath, one of London's most popular parks, after hearing of its artistic heritage.

The Naples-born artist used six tons of steel and 1,000lb of wood to create the giant sculpture.

He said he wants people to interact with it, using it as a picnic spot or using the legs as goal posts.

When it was on display in Rome two homeless people were said to have lived underneath it.

Ms Mare told BBC News: "People talk about it, look at it, some people have even graffiti'd on it but it's really engaged people.

"It's almost a reminder of the heath's hidden heroes, and hopefully will encourage new young budding artists and writers."

The sculpture will be officially unveiled at a party on the heath on Wednesday, during the first week of Art Fortnight London.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/england/london/4117974.stm

Paintings by Chimpanzee Outsell Warhol

LONDON - AP-Monkey business proved to be lucrative Monday when paintings by Congo the chimpanzee sold at auction for more than $25,000.

The three abstract, tempera paintings were auctioned at Bonhams in London alongside works by impressionist master Renoir and pop art provocateur Andy Warhol.

But while Warhol's and Renoir's work didn't sell, bidders lavished attention on Congo's paintings.

An American bidder named Howard Hong, who described himself as an "enthusiast of modern and contemporary painting," purchased the lot of paintings for $26,352, including a buyer's premium.

The sale price surpassed predictions that priced the paintings between $1,000-$1,500.

"We had no idea what these things were worth," said Howard Rutkowski, director of modern and contemporary art at Bonhams. "We just put them in for our own amusement."

Congo, born in 1954, produced about 400 drawings and paintings between ages 2 and 4. He died in 1964 of tuberculosis.

His artwork provoked reactions ranging from scorn to skepticism among critics of the time, but Pablo Picasso is reported to have hung a Congo painting on his studio wall after receiving it as a gift.

"There's no precedent for things like this having been sold before," Rutkowski said.

Film Review-"Pigs"

Available from Amazon.com

Editorial Reviews
Description
Lynn loved her daddy very much, but her love could not stop him from raping her and it couldn’t keep her from plunging a knife in to his back. Committed to an insane asylum for the criminally insane, Lynn persists in the delusion that her father is not only still alive, but wants her to come home. When Lynn’s sensuous nurse indulges in an illicit affair, Lynn steals her uniform and her keys, escaping in the nurses car. The story then shifts to Zambini, an old high-wire circus performer who was seriously injured in a fall. Thought dead, he awakened in the morgue and has been affected by the incident ever since. Zambini owns a rural café among the oil fields and is thought by his old lady neighbor to have murdered his young waitresses and fed their bodies to his pigs. Under the cover of darkness we see Zambini carry a corpse to his barn where, after apologizing to the cadaver, he feeds it to his squealing voracious pigs. The following morning, Lynn arrives and applies for a job in the café. Although Zambini senses she is hiding from someone, he feels sorry for her and gives her a job and a shabby room in which to sleep. What follows is a study in horror as the old man gradually learns Lynn’s story and tries to protect her from the law. A terrifying climax is topped by a chilling Hitchcockian twist.
Written, directed and starring Hollywood legend Marc Lawrence (From Dusk Till Dawn, The Big Easy), PIGS is the epic 70’s horror film that paved the way for films like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Last House on the Left!

DVD EXTRAS:

- Production Notes
- Introduction by Troma President and Creator of the Toxic Avenger Lloyd Kaufman!
- Coming Distractions and other Tromatic Goodies
- Peta2 GOLDFINGER music video – "Free Me"
- Peta2 PSA – "Chew on This"
- A lesson from the "Make Your Own Damn Movie" box set

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B0007WFUTC/ref=ase_theyrecomitog-20/104-2451093-8962321?v=glance&s=dvd

Pink Floyd reuniting for Live 8

LONDON, England (Reuters) -- Four members of seminal British rock band Pink Floyd will play together for the first time in 24 years at London's Live 8 charity concert for Africa on July 2, publicists for the event said on Sunday.

Guitarist David Gilmour, drummer Nick Mason and keyboard player Richard Wright will be on stage with bassist Roger Waters for their first public performance since they played at London's Earls Court in 198

The rock legends will join a star-studded line-up including Coldplay, Elton John and Paul McCartney at the Live 8 concert in Hyde Park, organized by activist rocker Bob Geldof to pressure rich nations to ease African poverty.

"Like most people I want to do everything I can to persuade the G8 leaders to make huge commitments to the relief of poverty and increased aid to the third world," said Gilmour.

"Any squabbles Roger and the band have had in the past are so petty in this context, and if reforming for this concert will help focus attention then it's got to be worthwhile."

The band released their first album "The Piper at the Gates of Dawn" in 1967 and broke records with 1973's "The Dark Side Of The Moon", which remained in the American album charts for more than a decade.

In the 1980s relations between Waters and the rest of the group soured, with Waters suing over the rights to the Pink Floyd name.

Gilmore, Mason and Wright continued to record and tour as Pink Floyd, releasing their last studio album "The Division Bell" in 1994.

Woo Hoo, "Simpsons" Movie Going

Get ready to toast your Flaming Moes to some excellent news.

The Simpsons movie is off the drawing board and in preproduction.

"You know what? We've just done the table read for The Simpsons movie, so although we've been promoting that we're going to do it, now we're actually doing it and are in production," Nancy Cartwright, who gives voice to Bart Simpson, told BBC Radio 1 this week.

Cartwright, in London doing publicity for her one-woman show, My Life as a Ten-Year-Old Boy, indicated that the movie is still in the preliminary script development stage and it will take at least two years before it's fully animated and ready for release.

"I don't know the name of it, and I can't go into details about it, and we'll just have to see how it goes, but I think it's going to be great and the fans are going to dig it," she added.

Producers had always indicated that the movie would likely debut after the TV show ran its course. But with the show continuing to perform well, averaging about 10 million viewers last season, the Simpsons brain trust decided to move forward now, according to a rep for 20th Century Fox, which will distribute the Simpsons film.

"They are working on hammering out a script, but there's no title or production date or release date," studio spokeswoman Antonia Coffman told E! Online Wednesday. "We always wanted the show to end first but it just keeps going. Now they've worked out a team to simultaneously do [both the film and show]."

Rumors of a Simpsons movie seem to surface every few years, usually sparked by the 'toon's mastermind, Matt Groening, which then sends long-time Homer honks into a frenzy of anticipation. But such talk turned out to be premature in the past as Groening and fellow executive producers James L. Brooks and Al Jean chose to wait for the show to wind down.

The closest The Simpsons has come to the big screen was a computer-generated Homer cameo for the 2000 IMAX 3-D flick, CyberWorld.

Coffman says that there are still many details to iron out before the feature kicks into high gear, including who's going to do the animation--Film Roman, which has done so since the TV series' inception, or another production house.

This fall will see The Simpsons embark on season 17. Fox and show producers foresee the cartoon cast fulfilling its current contract, which runs through a 19th season.

http://movies.yahoo.com/mv/news/eo/20050608/111827472000.html

Sherlock Holmes returns in new books

By Walker Simon
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Sherlock Holmes, the detective famed for his icy logic, is hot again, brought back to life by authors who believe the supremely rational character strikes a chord in this age of post-9/11 uncertainty.

Seventy-five years after the death of his creator, Arthur Conan Doyle, Holmes is popping up in historical locales from Hiroshima to Holocaust-haunted Europe in recent portrayals by literary-minded U.S. writers.

Caleb Carr's "The Italian Secretary," a novel commissioned by Conan Doyle's estate, hit book stores last month, following Mitch Cullin's "A Slight Trick of the Mind," featuring the sleuth amid the debris of the world's first atom bomb attack.

"I think that he just embodies the modern era's belief that through reason ... we can solve all our terrible difficulties," Carr told Reuters. "That's been challenged recently by the resurgence of fundamentalist religious thinking."

Pulitzer prize-winning writer Michael Chabon's "The Final Solution" puts Holmes in 1944 Britain hunting for a parrot of a German Jewish boy, who is muted by Holocaust horror. Laurie King, in a book due in June, has Holmes tapping repressed memories of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.

The authors have aged Holmes accordingly in the historical novels. Holmes is 89 in the Holocaust tale. The detective is 93 as he ponders the devastation of Hiroshima.

Cullin says the Holmes persona resonates differently today.

"The very idea that such a character could exist, could untangle the knots and problems complicating our lives, makes him more attractive now than, let's say, in the apathy years of the 1980s," says Cullin, who admits his Holmes is "fairly overwhelmed by the horrors and ambiguity of the modern world."

THE ORIGINAL HOLMES

Conan Doyle portrayed Holmes in four novels, including the "The Hound of the Baskervilles," and in 56 stories published between 1887 and 1927. The stories were wildly popular and inspired thousands of imitations and parodies over the years.

By the count of Holmes expert Leslie Klinger, there are probably over 4,000 imitative stories of Conan Doyle's work.

"Most are deservedly ignored; a few are by excellent writers. This year, Chabon, Cullin and Carr joined the list," said Klinger, who has compiled a 1,700-page annotated edition of Conan Doyle's Holmes works.

Carr teams Holmes up with his sidekick Dr. James Watson in his book that has the duo dealing with the specter of ghosts and spirits. Holmes goes solo in the other new entries.

Carr's novel grew out of a short story requested for the forthcoming anthology "Ghosts of Baker Street," commissioned by the Conan Doyle estate to portray encounters between Holmes and Watson with the supernatural.

The novel revolves around two murders in Edinburgh's Holyrood royal castle where a ghost is feared.

Chabon's Holmes is a solitary curmudgeon retired in 1944 in the English countryside. Piquing his interest is a 9-year-old German Jewish refugee whose parrot squawks an enigmatic sequence of German numbers -- suspected of being a Nazi code or a numbered Swiss bank account.

Cullin, 37, said he became interested in Holmes when as a boy he had access to a trove of books belonging to a collector living nearby in his hometown of Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Asked to house sit, he delved into the library which ranged from Holmes rare editions to Holmes-inspired pornography.

He said his new novel uses the sleuth as a vehicle to explore Japan's postwar identity crisis. It depicts an elderly Holmes regretting what science has brought as he gazes at Hiroshima, flattened by "unfathomable destruction."

ELEMENTARY, WATSON

Holmes' popularity among these serious-minded authors is not a mystery, says Carr, whose books include tomes of history, terrorism analysis and psychological thrillers.

"They used to just be, basically, fun gimmicky things, but now there's this feeling that there can be a much more serious literary undertaking," said Carr.

Carr suggested the reason is "elementary, my dear Watson," -- a famous phrase associated with Holmes, but which actually does not appear in Conan Doyle's books but was popularized in the 1929 film "The Return of Sherlock Holmes."

"I think that's because the whole emphasis on reason and on rationality is very threatened right now, and I think that people who still believe in the power of reason are taking Holmes much more seriously than before because of the threat to rational thinking in the post 9/11 world," said Carr.

"In that atmosphere, Holmes is going to shine like a real beacon, to a lot of people."

Dulce Et Decorum Est

Wilfred Owen (1893 - 1918)

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys! - An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime...
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, -
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Wilfred Edward Salter Owen, MC (March 18, 1893–November 4, 1918) was an English poet. Born at Plas Wilmot near Oswestry in Shropshire of mixed English and Welsh ancestry, he was educated at the Birkenhead Institute and at Shrewsbury Technical School. He worked as a pupil-teacher at Wyle Cop School while studying for the University of London entrance exams then, prior to the outbreak of World War I, as a private tutor at the Berlitz School in Bordeaux, France.

In 1915, he enlisted in the Artists' Rifles and in January 1917 was commissioned as a second lieutenant with The Manchester Regiment. After some traumatic experiences, Owen was diagnosed as suffering from shell shock and sent to Craiglockhart War Hospital in Edinburgh for treatment. There he met another poet, Siegfried Sassoon, who encouraged him and helped with stylistic problems.

Sassoon had a profound effect on Owen's poetic voice, and Owen's most famous poems (Dulce et Decorum Est and Anthem for Doomed Youth) show direct results of Sassoon's influence. Owen's poetry would eventually be more widely acclaimed than that of his mentor, which has led to the misconception that Owen was naturally the superior artist. While his use of pararhyme, with its heavy reliance on assonance, was both innovative and, in some of his works, quite brilliant, he was not the only poet at the time to utilise that particular technique. As for his poetry itself, its content was undeniably changed by his work with Sassoon: hitherto, there had been few if any poems which dealt with the war directly. Sassoon's emphasis on realism and 'writing from experience' was not exactly unheard of to Owen, but it was not a style which he had previously made use of. Enough cannot be said of the impact Sassoon made on Owen's work, and it is extremely regretful that Owen has 'superseded' his friend in the eyes of so many historians. Sassoon himself contributed to this by his strong promotion of Owen's poetry, both before and after Owen's death; and his own natural deference, which compelled him to slip into the background.

Owen, however, would have strongly disagreed with the assumption that he was superior. He held Sassoon in an esteem not far from hero-worship, remarking to his mother about Sassoon that he was... "not worthy to light his pipe". Several incidents in Owen's life, as well as some of his poems (i.e. "Who Is The God of Canongate?") and his circle of friends in London, have led to the conclusion that he was a closet homosexual, and that he was attracted to Sassoon as a man as well as a more experienced poet. Surviving letters show quite clearly that he was in love with Sassoon, but there is no evidence that Sassoon reciprocated his feelings, or that their relationship ever became sexual. He was devastated by Sassoon's decision to return to the front, though he left Craiglockhart before Sassoon did. He was stationed in Scarborough on home-duty for several months, during which time he associated with members of the artistic circle into which Sassoon had introduced him, including Robert Ross and Robert Graves.

In July of 1918, Owen returned to active service in France, though he might have stayed on home-duty indefinitely. His decision was almost wholly the result of Sassoon's being sent back to England. Sassoon, who had been shot in the head, was put on sick-leave for the duration of the war. Owen saw it as his poetic duty to take Sassoon's place at the front, that the horrific realities of the war might continue to be told. (Sassoon was violently opposed to the idea of Owen returning to the trenches, threatening to 'stab [him] in the leg' if he tried it. Aware of his attitude, Owen did not inform him of his action until he was once again in France). By a supreme irony, he was killed during the crossing of the Sambre-Oise Canal, only a week before the end of the war. His mother received the telegram informing her of his death on Armistice Day. Sassoon did not learn of it until the spring of 1919, and never fully accepted nor got over the fact.

Only three of Owen's poems had been published before his death. Sassoon, along with Edith Sitwell, later helped ensure that a larger collection was published.

His best known poems include "Anthem for Doomed Youth", "Dulce Et Decorum Est", "The Parable of the Old Man and the Young", and "Strange Meeting". Some of his poems feature in Benjamin Britten's War Requiem.
It should be noted that many of Owen's poems have never been published in popular form - those who wish to read Owen's full unexpurgated opus should consult the academic two-volume work The Complete Poems and Framents (1994) by Jon Stallworthy.

He is buried at Ors Communal Cemetery.

In Flanders Fields

by John McCrae, May 1915

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep,
though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Inspiration for the Poem

On 2 May, 1915, in the second week of fighting during the Second Battle of Ypres Lieutenant Alexis Helmer was killed by a German artillery shell. He was a friend of the Canadian military doctor Major John McCrae. It is believed that John began the draft for his famous poem 'In Flanders Fields' that evening.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

The Second Battle of Ypres was the first time Germany used chemical weapons on a large scale on the Western Front in World War I and the first time a colonial force (Canadians) forced back a major European power (Germans) on European soil.

The Second Battle of Ypres consisted of four separate battles:

The Battle of Gravenstafel - 22 to 23 April 1915
The Battle of St Julien - 24 April to 4 May 1915
The Battle of Frezenburg - 8 to 13 May 1915
The Battle of Bellewaarde - 24 to 25 May 1915

168 tons of chlorine gas were released on 22 April over a four mile front. Around 5,000 troops died within ten minutes by asphyxiation. The gas affected the lungs and the eyes causing respiration problems and blindness. Being denser than air it flowed downwards forcing the troops to climb out of trenches.
Initially French Colonial and Algerian troops were attacked with gas. They died there or abandoned their positions, leaving a 4 mile gap in the front line. However, the German High Command had not foreseen the effectiveness of their new weapon, and so had not sent any reinforcements to the area. German forces were unable to take advantage of this gap, and the 1st Canadian Division reinforced the gap and held that part of the line against further gas attacks until 3 May.

The winds were blowing in favour of the Germans; this meant that anything short of a full retreat would leave Allied forces in contaminated areas. The Canadians, initially held in reserve, realized the only place with fresh air would be near the German lines, as the winds would blow the gas away from there, (following the basic principles of gas warfare: infantry can only quickly occupy clean areas; therefore, the occupied areas would have to be uncontaminated.) The Canadians fought through using urine-soaked handkerchiefs as primitive gas masks, (for the ammonia in the urine would react with the chlorine, neutralizing it and allowing the soldiers to breathe.) Although the battle was considered a stalemate, the act of reestablishing the front lines in such harsh conditions earned the respective Canadian regiments some of the highest battle honors ever awarded.

We love sound of napalm in the movies

Poll on best film speeches puts Apocalypse Now, A Few Good Men and On the Waterfront at head of list with Britain's Trainspotting seventh

John Ezard
Thursday January 1, 2004
The Guardian

Robert Duvall's "I love the smell of napalm in the morning", Jack Nicholson's courtroom outburst and Marlon Brando's legendary "I could have been a contender" were yesterday voted the three best speeches in cinema history.
The films in which they were made were Apocalypse Now, A Few Good Men and On the Waterfront, all from the US. But the British film Trainspotting was rated seventh by 6,500 fans in one of a series of polls by the video store chain Blockbuster.

Trainspotting beat Braveheart, Gladiator, Saving Private Ryan and the American film classics To Kill a Mockingbird and Citizen Kane, thanks to the power of Irvine Welsh's writing and Ewan McGregor's acting at the climax of the story:

"Choose a job. Choose a career ... Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth ... Choose your future. Choose life.

"But why would I want to do a thing like that? I chose not to choose life: I chose something else. And the reasons? There are no reasons. Who needs reasons when you've got heroin?"

Another UK film, Withnail and I, brought Shakespeare a place in the ratings when it took ninth place for Richard E Grant's delivery of Hamlet's "What a piece of work is a man" soliloquy.

However, Blockbuster's marketing director, Sarah Baxter, asked: "Where are all the great speeches made by women? I think it's time for the world's great actresses to be given an equal chance."

The results, like those of previous polls, suggest that many fans forget films first screened more than 20 years ago if they are rarely shown on television.

But the sixth place given to the speech written by Paddy Chayevsky and spoken 28 years ago by Peter Finch in Network indicates that it has cut a deep groove in film watchers' imaginations:

"All I know is that first, you've got to get mad. You've gotta say, 'I'm a human being! My life has value!' So, I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go the window, open it, and stick your head out and yell, 'I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this any more!'"

Military men win the war over words

1 Apocalypse Now (1979) Robert Duvall
Sample: You smell that? Do you smell that? ... Napalm, son. Nothing else in the world smells like that. I love the smell of napalm in the morning. You know, one time we had a hill bombed, for twelve hours. When it was all over I walked up. We didn't find one of 'em, not one stinkin' dink body. The smell, you know that gasoline smell, the whole hill. Smelled like ... victory. Someday this war's gonna end ...

2 A Few Good Men (1992) Jack Nicholson
Sample: You can't handle the truth! ... Son, we live in a world that has walls, and those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. Who's gonna do it? You?

3 On the Waterfront (1954) Marlon Brando
Sample: You don't understand. I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender. I coulda been someone Charley, instead of a bum, which is what I am, let's face it. I'm a bum

4 Pulp Fiction (1994) Samuel L Jackson
Sample: And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who would attempt to poison and destroy my brother

5 Wall Street (1987) Michael Douglas
Sample: The point is ladies and gentlemen that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works

6 Network (1976) Peter Finch
Sample: I want you to go to the window, open it, stick your head out and yell: "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this any more!"

7 Trainspotting (1996) Ewan McGregor
Sample: Choose a future. Choose life ... But why would I want to do a thing like that? I chose not to choose life. I chose somethin' else. And the reasons? There are no reasons. Who needs reasons when you've got heroin?

8 Dirty Harry (1971) Clint Eastwood
Sample: Being as this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, and would blow your head clean off, you've got to ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya punk?

9 Withnail and I (1987) Richard E Grant
Recital of Hamlet in the last reel

10 Braveheart (1995) Mel Gibson
Sample: Aye, fight and you may die, run, and you'll live ... at least a while. And dying in your beds, many years from now, would you be willing to trade all of that from this day to that, for one chance, just one chance, to come back here and tell our enemies that they may take away our lives, but they'll never take our freedom!

Plus

11 Russell Crowe addresses his troops in Gladiator

12 Captain John Miller talks to unit in Saving Private Ryan

13 Kevin Spacey's opening speech in American Beauty

14 James Stewart addresses the loan board in It's a Wonderful Life

15 Dennis Hopper's Sicilian speech in True Romance

16 Gregory Peck delivers his closing argument in To Kill a Mockingbird

17 Orson Welles speaks to his executives in Citizen Kane

18 Gunnery Sgt. Hartman's speech to Private Pyle in Full Metal Jacket

19 Principal Joe Clark's speech in Lean on Me

20 Matt Damon's debate in the Harvard bar in Good Will Hunting

Bianchi Client Takes Off

In a flurry of creative strategy, branding, editorial, design, build and roll-out, a Bianchi client is making more money off his web site than his entire sales force combined. The combination of work, including SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and a CPC campaign (Cost-Per-Click ala Google), has made AT Conference a leader in Phone, Web and Operator Attended Business Conferencing services and solutions.

SEO is often seen as snake-oil hocus-pocus. But the fact is, if you work with a professional, you can get tons of traffic. In the AT case, they had a highly competitive playing field, so Bianchi had to play aggressive. The benefits are outweighing the costs in spite of phone conferencing competitors cheating their visibility. Google is developing new ways to catch and ban cheaters, but good site design will overcome.

The project has had such success in it's first two months up, that a custom application which will automate many of AT's internal processes is set for July.
For the designers, it means a new partnership. The project was the result of a collaberation of programmers, designers and specialists which now have an official partnership pending. The new company will be Bianchi Marden, and the sky is the limit.
For a peek into the interim site of Bianchi Marden, visit here, and see the full range of services and capabilities.

Lobster Farm Gets A Bright Day In The Sun

On Monday and Tuesday of this week, if you were anywhere near Canal and 6th Ave., you saw something, well....not Kosher for Passover, or any other event in April, except for the Tribeca Film Festival.

Barry O'Hanessian, erstwhile thorninpaw contributor, designed the balloon, which was built in CA for a few critical scenes in Kevin Jordan's "Lobster Farm"

The film screened by special invitation from Robert DiNero on Tuesday at 3pm after a scourge of people jammed the theater. The anxious folks waiting on line, some for hours, were slightly placated by the free shrimp cocktail handed out, courtesy of the film's major inspiration, Jordan's Lobster Dock in Sheepshead Bay Brooklyn.

"The buzz has been incredible"- one movie goer said. "I didn't see too many things on the roster which really looked worth waiting for...."

The viewers gave director/writer Jordan's 90 minute masterwork, based on his family's life story, a standing ovation.....the first of the festival.

Director/Writer Kevin Jordan greets fans at the "Lobster Farm" after-party at Bread Tribeca

The film's star, playing Jordan's father/character, Danny Aiello, waited during the screening in a nearby room. He entered during the exuberant applause to an eruption of cheers from the savvy film aficionados, students, press and tourists.

Thorninpaw finds it hard to fathom how a New York film, based on a New York Story, in a New York setting, with a New York writer and director, and New York actors couldn't be getting all the buzz and excitement that surrounds "Lobster Farm" .....giant elves and shellfish aside.

O'Hannessian vogues at the after-party

Lobster Farm star Daniel Sauli, who's gave a powerful performance as the loyal and conflicted son, chats up fans at the after-party.

In the following Q&A session, Jerry Stiller and his wife Anne Meara complimented Jordan on his directing in their own impromptu-comic style, leaving the crowd in stitches. As Jerry stood up to speak, Anne yelled, "Sit down Jerry, this isn't about you!". A QuickTime movie of the hillarious Q&A will be going up on thelobsterfarm.com. Word has it another screening is in the works for next week, partly on demand from the Tribeca Film Festival's powers-that-be. ---You talkin to the claw Bobby?

Martin Scorsese presents, "The Lobster Farm"

This cooked lobster riding Santa Claus was found near the corner of Sixth Avenue & Canal yesterday. The pair were there to help promote an interesting, independent film, "The Lobster Farm"

The film was screened as part of the Tribeca Film Festival and has some serious fans. I do not know when it will be shown again but one can watch the website and IMDB for additional information.

Art or Madness?

For more examples, see the Blue Bunny's web site and then decide.

Bacon Strips Bandages

Ouch! That smarts! Treat your minor cuts, scrapes and scratches with the incredible healing power of a designer bandage from Accoutrements. And if a fancy bandage isn't enough to dry up your tears, how about a FREE TOY! Each comes in a 3-3/4" tall metal pocket tin and contains a small plastic trinket to help make even the ouchiest owies feel all better in no time. The 3" x 1" Bacon Strips are cut to look like small slabs of bacon. Fifteen per tin.

Bacon Strips Bandages
item 11476
$4.95 ea.

Salvador Dali Atomicus Photo by Philippe Halsman

Salvador Dali Atomicus Photo by Philippe Halsman

(This could be the photograph which best sums up Thorn in Paw)

There was nothing ordinary about Salvador Dali . . . nothing ordinary about his life and nothing ordinary about his art.  So, it is not surprising that a photographic portrait of Salvador Dali should reflect the eccentric nature of his life and work. Perhaps most famous of the variety of unusual photographs made of Salvador Dali is the most unusual "Dali Atomicus" by Philippe Halsman.

How the Photograph was Made:

The photograph was made in the New York Studio of Philippe Halsman in 1948.  The photograph was taken with Halsman's 4 x 5 format twin lens reflex camera. In order to make the photograph, the easel, two Dali paintings, and the step stool were suspended from the ceiling by strings.  So these items were easy, since they were really held in the air by string.  Halsman's wife held the chair in the air.  Note that one leg of the chair is not in the picture.  His wife is holding the leg of the chair that is out of the picture.  So, all of these items while appearing to be part of the massive confusion and motion of the picture, are actually fixed in place. 

The parts that are moving, and that required the precise timing are the cats, water and Dali himself. Yes, the cats are in fact flying through the air as they appear to be in the picture.  The timing sequence was pretty simple.  Halsman began to count, and on three his assistants threw the cats, and the water, and then on four Dali jumped in the air, and then Halsman would take the picture. Of course to get the perfect picture took not only careful timing but good luck as well. After taking a picture, Halsman would immediately go to the dark room and develop it.  He would then come back and try again.  It took a number of tries to get the perfect timing and perfect picture. Halsman wrote that it took six hours and twenty-eight throws to get the picture that we now know as Dali's atomicus. Halsman indicated that the cats were not harmed in the making of the photograph.

Interpretation of the Photograph:
The photograph was immediately given a two-page spread in  a 1948 edition of LIFE magazine. The photograph went on to become one of the most famous and printed, copied and reproduced photographs of all time.  On its own, the photograph merits notice and attention, but what is truly unusual about the image is that it is eccentric art about an eccentric artist.  The fact that Dali and Dali's work are the subject of the unusual photograph makes it particularly worthy of attention and consideration.

While we have explained how the photograph was made, people often ask what it means, or what it is about. Both Dali and Halsman were intrigued by the concept of suspension.  They were both enamored with the photograph by Harold Edgerton known as the “Coronet” milk drop photo. This photograph was made in the 1930's and is presented above.  The photograph was taken the instant after a droplet of milk lands in a saucer of milk.  A crown or coronet is seen rising from the milk, and a tiny satellite droplet is seen suspended over the center of the coronet.  It is an exquisite photograph capturing a perfect instant in time.  It represents the beauty and perfection of physics which would have gone unnoticed if not for the perfect timing of the photographer.

At the same time, the world was just becoming aware of the nature of the atom. The concept of matter was of interest to Dali.  The knowledge that solid objects were make up of atomic particles, all in motion, and in perfect balance between repulsion and attraction.  Unimaginable complexity and confusion at the atomic level led to well behaved simple objects in the macro world in which we live. 

These concepts of suspension and atomic repulsion was being reflected in Dali's work. His famous painting of Leda Atomica presents a portrait of a woman and a number of everyday objects.  All the objects, however, are suspended relative to each other, as are atomic and subatomic particles.  The painting would be normal, except that none of the objects you would expect to be touching are touching.

It is interesting to note that the Atomicus photograph actually features Dali's Leda Atomica painting.  In the Dali Atomicus photograph, notice that the painting on the right side of the photograph is actually his Leda Atomica painting (which is presented here at your right).  The theme of suspension is carried even further in that Dali's Leda Atomica painting is suspended in the Atomicus photograph, as are the cats, and Dali himself.

IIT auctions off chance to smash glass

April 16, 2005 (CHICAGO) —AP- The Illinois Institute of Technology on Chicago's South Side is auctioning off a chance to smash a plate-glass window at its architectural masterpiece, Crown Hall.

The auction began yesterday and continues through April 22nd on e-Bay. It gives the winning bidder a chance to smash the first of 204 panes of glass that will be replaced this summer. The building is being restored and the next phase will renovate the building's steel frame.

The building was experimental at the time it was designed in the mid-1950s, and the architect, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe didn't put enough space between the steel rails in the window frames to account for the metal's expansion as it rusts.

The pressure on the panes led many windows to break over the years.

Secret Service probes anti-Bush artwork

By The Associated Press
04.13.05

CHICAGO —The Secret Service sent agents to investigate a college art gallery exhibit of mock postage stamps, one depicting President George W. Bush with a gun pointed at his head.

 The exhibit, "Axis of Evil: The Secret History of Sin," opened last week at Columbia College in Chicago. It features stamps designed by 47 artists addressing issues such as the Roman Catholic sex-abuse scandal, racism and the war in Iraq.

None of the artists is tied to the college.

Secret Service spokesman Tom Mazur would not say yesterday whether the inquiry had been completed or whom the Secret Service had interviewed, but he said no artwork had been confiscated.

The investigation began after authorities received a call from a Chicago resident.

"We need to ensure, as best we can, that this is nothing more than artwork with a political statement," Mazur said.

Two federal agents arrived at the exhibit's opening night on April 7, took photos of some of the works and asked for the artists' contact information, said CarolAnn Brown, director of the Glass Curtain Gallery.

Brown said the agents were most interested in Chicago artist Al Brandtner's work titled "Patriot Act," which depicted a sheet of mock 37-cent red, white and blue stamps showing a revolver pointed at Bush's head.

Brandtner did not return a call to his design studio yesterday.

The exhibit's curator, Michael Hernandez de Luna, said the inquiry "frightens" him.

"It starts questioning all rights, not only my rights or the artists' rights in this room, but questioning the rights of any artist who creates — any writer, any visual artist, any performance artist. It seems like we're being watched," he said.

Last spring, Secret Service agents in Washington state questioned a high school student about anti-war drawings he did for an art class, one of which depicted Bush's head on a stick.

One Size Does Not Fit All for New Pope

ROME (Reuters) - Cardinals start choosing a new pope next week, but the successor to John Paul will be all sewn up well before the secret conclave opens.

In a cobblestoned street behind Rome's Pantheon, tailor Filippo Gammarelli is adding the final stitches to an item that Monday's meeting will not start without -- the white vestments the new pope will wear when he first appears to the world.

Because Gammarelli has no clue who that pope will be, he is making three versions of the silk and wool outfit, in small, medium and large, to clothe the most lean or corpulent cardinal.

"We deliver the three sets to the Vatican before the conclave and that is the last we hear about it until the new pope appears on the balcony of St. Peter's," Gammarelli, the fifth-generation of this famous tailoring family, told Reuters.

"The nuns make any temporary alterations but we go back to the Vatican the day after to fit the vestments properly."

Gammarelli's is probably the world's most elite personal tailor. Its tiny door, set back on a cobblestone square, has never lowered itself to taking orders for an English earl's shooting tweeds or a tuxedo for a U.S. billionaire.

Since its founding in 1798, the tiny shop, piled high with damask silk bolts, has restricted its services to the highest echelons of the Roman Catholic Church. Its trade is chasubles and miters, stoles and lace surplices, Roman collars and cardinal red socks, packed thick into its dark wood cupboards.

"If we diversify too much we are simply not able to guarantee the quality to our customers," said the sprightly 63-year-old whose family has numbered five popes among its former clients, including John Paul.

An undelivered zucchetto, or skullcap, for the dead Polish Pontiff sits on a red silk stole in the window out of respect.

By the end of this week, it will be briefly replaced with the three sets of papal vestments, wide enough for Milan's papal pretender Dionigi Tettamanzi and narrow enough for his leaner rival Camillo Ruini.

"We would not even expand into nun's clothes, their requirements are completely different and, anyway, they are very handy with a needle themselves," Gammarelli said.

PRESTIGIOUS

Given its select appeal and the falling numbers of European clergy, Gammarelli's is usually quiet and its all-male staff are often left twiddling their thumb needles.

But the papal passing has brought not only the vestments commission but a crowd of cardinals and archbishops taking the opportunity of the funeral to do some shopping.

On a recent afternoon, Spain's Cardinal Antonio Maria Rouco Varela perused shelves of chasubles embroidered with vine leaves while young priests came in from the street to kiss his ring.

English bishops bought shoes, a newly-appointed U.S. archbishop came in for a fitting. A delegation from Gabon spent several thousand euros on chasubles in a rainbow of colors. A cardinal's red biretta hat alone costs 35 euros ($45).

"I cannot tell you whether it is the best as I would need to compare all the papal tailors, but it is the most prestigious," said Bishop Mathieu Madega Lebouankehan of Gabon's Port Gentil.

For Gammarelli, only one thing could sour the mood.

"If the new pope has his own tailor we would not be able to serve this pontificate. We pray that won't be," he said.

The Apotheosis of War

By Vasily Vereshchagin

Oil on canvas, 1871, at the Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow

n. pl. a·poth·e·o·ses (-sz)
Exaltation to divine rank or stature; deification.

Elevation to a preeminent or transcendent position; glorification:

Apotheosis means glorification, usually to a divine level, coming from the Greek word apotheoun, "to deify."

Apotheosis is most commonly used to refer to the Roman pagan process whereby an Emperor was made into or recognized as a deity. Some Roman emperors underwent apotheosis upon their deaths. The process involved the creation of a waxen image of the emperor sitting in state, adorned with rich raiments and jewelry for a period of days, after which it would be burnt.

The apotheosis of an Emperor was an essentially political act performed by the dead emperor's successor. The tradition began with the declaration by the Senate of Julius Caesar's deification after his assassination in 44 BC, an act that shocked the urbane opinion of the Roman elite. When Augustus died 58 years later, he received similar honors, thus setting the pattern for future emperors. The aims of the act were to reinforce the majesty of the imperial office, and, more immediately, to associate the current emperor with a well-regarded predecessor. For instance, when Septimius Severus overthrew Didius Julianus to gain power in AD 193, he arranged the apotheosis of Pertinax, who had ruled before Julianus. This allowed Severus to present himself as the heir and successor to Pertinax, though the two were not related.

Apotheosis was not an automatic process, at least in the early empire. Emperors who were not fondly remembered, or who were disliked by their succesors, were generally not deified. For instance, Caligula and Nero, who were both regarded by many contemporaries as tyrants and whose reigns ended violently, were not regarded as gods after their deaths.

Emperors who had been deified were referred to with the word 'divus' before their names. Thus, Claudius was called 'divus Claudius.' This word is often rendered as 'god' (i.e., "Claudius the god") but that is something of an overtranslation; a better translation might be 'divine' (i.e., "the divine Claudius"), a somewhat softer formulation that Roman intellectuals could comfortably understand as metaphorical. In the later empire, this honor became more and more automatically associated with dead emperors, to the extent that it might just as well be understood as meaning 'late' (i.e., "the late Claudius"). The fact that 'divus' had lost much of whatever truly religious meaning it had is made clear by the fact that it was used with names of early Christian emperors after their deaths (e.g., "divus Constantinus").

As apotheosis became a part of Roman political life in the late Republic and early Empire, it began to be treated in literary contexts: In the Aeneid, Vergil depicts Aeneas' deification, saying he will be taken up to the stars of Heaven, and mentions Caesar's apotheosis. Publius Ovidius Naso also describes Caesar's apotheosis in book XV of The Metamorphoses and looks forward to the glorification of Octavius.

The notion of apotheosis was parodied by Lucius Annaeus Seneca in his Apocolocyntosis of the Emperor Claudius (sometimes translated as The Pumpkinification of the Emperor Claudius), in which Claudius is transformed, not into a god, but into a pumpkin. This work not only pokes fun at the notion that the notoriously clumsy and ill-spoken Claudius might be a deity, but also reveals a certain irreverance towards the idea of ruler cult, at least among Rome's educated classes.

Later artists have used the concept for motives ranging from real respect for the deceased (Constantino Brumidi's fresco "The Apotheosis of George Washington" on the dome of the United States Capitol Building in Washington, D.C.), to artistic comment (Salvador Dalí's Apotheosis of Homer), to comedic effect.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Doctor Joel Evans Site Sketch

Doctor Joel Evans is a board certified OBGYN and board certified Holistic M.D. Some would call this a contradiction, Dr. Evans calls it good medicine. The western medical community is slowly catching up to the idea that some very solid research is now verifying the effectiveness of holistic remedies.

To Dr. Evans, it has been a personal journey to offer more options to his patients. His site launches April 15th, and his book goes on sale at amazon April 21st.

See my sketch here.

Ransom Note Generator

Hours of fun! See how the most innocent requests take on the demeanor of a serial killer! Type your note, choose from yellow or plain paper, and generate your ransom note......no more clipping, flipping, or messy gluing!

And best of all, you can generate your threats for FREE!

Damien Hirst admits he's had silly ideas

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The artist best known for pickling a shark and slicing up a cow admits he's had some pretty silly ideas over the years.

But Damien Hirst, the aging enfant terrible of the British art world, is optimistic that museums will still be showing at least some of his work in 200 years' time.

"You do turn round after a few years and look at your stuff and you think it's embarrassing," Hirst said in an interview at New York's Gagosian gallery, where his latest work is on show in an exhibition called "The Elusive Truth."

"Certainly everything you make is not a masterpiece."

"Certainly everything you make is not a masterpiece."

So what would he consider a mistake? "Some of my spin paintings I think are a bit silly," Hirst said, referring to a series of paintings made by dropping paint onto a canvas on a spinning table.

"The cut in half pig that moves like a bacon slicer I suppose I thought was a bit silly in retrospect," he added. "I think you want people to rub their chins instead of belly laugh if you want to get it in the museums in 200 years' time."

Not all his bad ideas have come to fruition. "I was toying with the idea of putting vibrators all over a pig and I was going to call it pork you pine," he said. "I didn't do it."

But he stands by his most famous work, a shark preserved in formaldehyde and titled "The Physical Impossibility of Death In The Mind Of Someone Living." The 1991 work was recently sold by collector Charles Saatchi to an American buyer for $13 million (7 million pounds).

"I think the shark's obviously an important piece," he said, brushing off reports that it is disintegrating. "I think it just needs a bit of love and attention," he said.

ARTIST OR CONMAN?

The new exhibition -- 29 photorealist oil paintings based on photographs of hospital scenes, drug addicts, suicide bombers and his own artwork -- has been fuel for the fire for those who question whether he is an artist or a conman.

The paintings, which have sold for $200,000 to $2 million each, were largely executed by assistants with Hirst stepping in only to add a touch of blood or do the eyes.

"I don't like the idea that it has to be done by the artist, I think it's quite an old fashioned thing," he said.

"Architects don't build their own houses," he said, adding that his assistants are better painters than him anyway. "You'd get an inferior painting if it's done by the artist."

He said he had thought of creating an office chair carved in marble but would never do that himself. "I'd have to go off and train for two years to be a marble carver and then I'd carve one chair and then I'd probably go back to painting."

He admits it's also a matter of impatience. "I want to do 1,000 paintings immediately and I can't do that on my own," he said, before returning to a back room at the Gagosian to sign prints of work in the show which sell for around $20,000.

Now aged 39 and a father of two, Hirst said he was getting a bit old for the label "enfant terrible," but he didn't take it too seriously. "Whatever you do they'll find a way to make a joke out of it," he said.

"People come up to me sometimes and say 'You're in a position where you could put a dog poo onto a lobster and call it art.' But why would I? Why would somebody do something stupid like that," he said.

Hype and controversy can only take an artist so far, he said. "You can buy drinks for all the collectors in the world and get your stuff in the (museums), but in 200 years' time if it's crap, it's not going to be there, is it?"

So does he think his work will be there in 200 years? "Some of it might be. You just have to keep working on it."

AT Conference Site Launch

Today, Bianchi Design launched a new brand identity and site at atconference.com. The process included a comprehensive creative strategy exercise, examining the keyword phrases being used by everyone online to find phone and web conferencing services to discover what kind of Search Engine Optimization should be employed, as well as an editorial research exercise to determine what kind of 'voice' would be optimal for this brand.


This concrete foundation lead us to a new company name, logo, information architecture, identity platform, editorial headlines, Cost-per-click campaign, web site, and series of online forms to attract and retain new clients.

Everything will ultimately square with a sophisticated Business Management System which will house a database of client information, control panels for clients and salespeople, and an intranet. Future database marketing and the Cost-per-Click campaign will be able to evolve with the changing face of the AT Conference client in real time.


Automated sequenced emails will be sent to opt-in clients, incentivizing them to use all services offered....each customized with their names and their salespersons names. Salespeople and operations people will manage their client relations through the new web-based interface, super-secure and seamlessly.


The project is the flagship of Bianchi Designs new comprehensive offerings. In the words of Christa Bianchi (um, me), 'there is nothing web we can't build'.

If you have a website which isn't getting significant traffic, a brand which needs focus and sophistication, a way to streamline internal operations, a creative marketing strategy, and/or you just feel you aren't reaping the benefits of online and print media, contact BIANCHI.

Shakespeare's Rose theatre to rise again after centuries under London silt

British acting's aristocracy unite to resurrect Bard's first stage, immortalised on film
The Independent
By Anthony Barnes, Arts and Media Correspondent
Published : 20 February 2005

The Rose, the Elizabethan theatre immortalised in the Oscar-winning film Shakespeare in Love, is to be recovered from the London silt after being buried for centuries, and opened to the public.

Leading figures from the British stage, including Sir Ian McKellen and Dame Judi Dench will next month launch a £5m plan to resurrect the historic building, which first staged Shakespeare's early plays, including Titus Andronicus and Henry VI Part I. Supports plan to reopen it in four years' time.

The remains of the venue were unearthed at Bankside in London in 1989 - close to where the reconstructed open-air Globe theatre is now sited - in what has been described as the most exciting find in British theatrical history.

A project director is to be named within the next few weeks to mastermind the scheme, which depends on securing £5m of Lottery funding.

The Rose was built in the bustling "anything goes" environment on the south side of the Thames in 1587, alongside brothels and bear-baiting arenas. A black flag would be flown to signify that a tragedy was playing, while white would herald a comedy.

Shakespeare, who also acted at the Rose, eventually moved to the theatre's larger rival, the Globe, and by 1606 the Rose was no longer a working theatre, simply disappearing from the map.

The remnants of walls, giving a skeletal outline of the venue, and a cache of artefacts were discovered on the site when the area was cleared to make way for offices. The exposed remains of the theatre have been preserved in a dark chamber beneath an office building used by the Health and Safety Commission.

Tony Toller, director of the Rose theatre trustees, said the appointment of a project director was a major step forward. "It's an enormously difficult post to fill. It requires the 'winner', if you like, to have expertise in so many different areas - to be experienced in making applications for Heritage Lottery Fund grants, in archaeology, history and in dealing with the various authorities.

"It's a mammoth undertaking and is a hugely important part of the next five years.

"When it was discovered in 1989 people talked about the Rose being a shrine to Shakespeare - it's one of the most exciting finds in theatre history in this country."

The Rose is unlikely to be used as a full-time theatre again, although fundraising performances such as sonnet readings have taken place occasionally, for audiences of up to 80 people. The next will be on Shakespeare's birthday, 23 April.

Mr Toller said: "We will have space for students, both adults and young, to come and have lectures and learn more about the Elizabethan theatre and the history of the theatre. Bankside was a wonderful place in the 1580s to early 1600s - a real sink of iniquity."

In the coming months Sir Ian will raise awareness of the project through a story-writing competition in which people will be asked to construct a tale about one of the items found during the 1989 dig, an inscribed gold ring that dates back 400 years. The winning entries will be read on radio by the actor.

Poker Dog Paintings Sell for $590K

Associated Press February 15, 2005 — A pair of paintings from the famed series depicting dogs playing poker fetched nearly $600,000 at auction Tuesday.

The two works _ "A Bold Bluff" and "Waterloo" _ were among 16 paintings that artist Cassius Marcellus Coolidge was commissioned to create for a Minnesota-based advertising company in 1903. Of the 16, nine are of dogs playing poker.

The two works that sold Tuesday for $590,400 capture moments in a poker game played by five dogs, among them a St. Bernard that ends up collecting the pot on a bluff.

The winning bid set a new auction record for Coolidge, whose previous top sale was $74,000, said Alan Fausel, director of paintings at Doyle New York, which handled Tuesday's sale.

The winning bidder was a private collector from New York.

Doyle had estimated that the two paintings would bring in between $30,000 and $50,000.

The sale was part of Doyle's annual "Dogs in Art" auction, which coincides with the Westminster Kennel Club dog show

http://abclocal.go.com/wpvi/news/021505_nw_pokerdogs.html

Salvador Dalí Exhibition in Philadelphia

Salvador Dalí
February 16 - May 15, 2005

Tickets available now!

The Philadelphia Museum of Art is privileged to be the only American venue that will host the major centennial retrospective exhibition devoted to Salvador Dalí (1904-1989). This exhibition, timed to coincide with the celebration of the 2004 centenary of the artist’s birth, will consider all aspects of the artist’s long and controversial career. On view will be a vast array of Dalí’s highly influential Surrealist paintings, as well as his early Cubist-inspired works and later experiments with optical illusions and perspective, as in Still Life - Fast Moving of 1956. This thorough reevaluation of Dalí’s remarkable contribution to modern and contemporary art will be augmented by examples of his work in other fields, including theater design, filmmaking, and literature. Over 200 works of art will be on view, many of which will be shown in the United States for the first time.

www.philamuseum.org

Artist plunges deep into toilet seat fixation

BY HOWARD WITT

Chicago Tribune

ALAMO HEIGHTS, Texas - (KRT) - Commodious it is not, but the world's only known Toilet Seat Art Museum is nevertheless an impressive sight. More than 720 decorated toilet seats line the walls and hang from the rafters of Barney Smith's garage in suburban San Antonio, a testament to one man's lifelong love affair with plumbing.

Flush with artistic inspiration, Smith, an 83-year-old retired master plumber, has created on toilet seats what a lesser artist might have merely committed to canvas, or at least velvet.

The facilities include toilet seats commemorating momentous world events (World War II; the fall of the Berlin Wall; the O.J. Simpson trial), famous personalities (Elvis Presley; Barbara Walters; Brad Pitt), each of the 50 states, most of the Canadian provinces and numerous Texas football teams. There is a toilet seat featuring $1 million in shredded U.S. currency, another with ashes from Mt. St. Helens and one mounted with a piece of insulation from the ill-fated Challenger space shuttle.

Privy to the most intimate medical details of his wife Louise's gallstone surgery, Smith even fashioned one toilet seat out of the syringes, IV bags and scalpels used in the operating room.

"I don't have the actual gallstone," Smith lamented. "She hid that from me."

Plunging into toilet seat art came naturally to Smith after a lifetime spent as a plumber. His first piece, fashioned 35 years ago, was a fortuitous accident: Smith was looking to mount some antlers from a small deer he had hunted but he didn't have any wood plaques, so he reached for an old toilet seat lid instead. (Technical note: Most of Smith's pieces are in fact made from toilet seat lids, rather than the seats themselves.)

For posterity, on its posterior, each of the toilet seats is numbered and engraved, and then photographed and catalogued. It can take Smith 20 hours to complete his more elaborate works, some of which feature blinking lights, mounted insects or dozens of dental instruments.

Plumbing the depths of human tragedy, Smith has dedicated toilet seat murals to the victims of Sept. 11, 2001, the Holocaust and the Unknown Soldier. Saddam Hussein is even represented - or at least a piece of a toilet from one of the toppled Iraqi leader's palaces, donated by a U.S. soldier who found it.

"Out of the house!" (or words to that effect) Smith said his wife exclaimed when he brought the Saddam toilet seat in to show her.

"There's nothing inappropriate about remembering the Holocaust on a toilet seat," Smith insisted, noting that many of his seats contain Bible verses and other religious icons. "I can testify to the goodness of the Lord on a toilet seat."

Ascending the throne as the world's sole Toilet Seat Artist was not difficult, especially since the only other contender for the title, a man named John Kostopoulus in Boron, Calif., died in 1996. Kostopoulus created about 400 toilet seat artworks, all of which were believed destroyed by unappreciative relatives after his demise.

American standards of high art might not recognize the toilet seat as a preferred medium for expression. But in the world of oddball folk art and attractions - including such rarities as the World's Largest Fire Hydrant, the World's Largest Cowboy Boots, the World's Largest Ball of Twine, the Cockroach Hall of Fame and the Pez Museum - Smith is already a legend.

A low flow of tourists - about 1,000 a year - make the pilgrimage to his museum, which is nestled anonymously in a sleepy neighborhood of old bungalows. Many ask to buy some of the works, but he refuses to sell his art for any price.

Clogging one wall of the museum are toilet seats dedicated to each of the many radio and television appearances Smith has made over the years, including most of the network morning shows and daytime talk shows. He has been on "Montel" and "The View."

But Oprah has yet to call.

---

© 2005, Chicago Tribune.

H.A. & Margret Rey

Both Hans and Margret Rey were born in Hamburg, Germany - Hans Augusto Reyersbach on September 16, 1898, and Margarete Elisabeth Waldstein on May 16, 1906. Hans received an old-style humanistic education and studied Latin, Greek, French, and English. Although art was not a part of his studies, he loved to draw and did so at a very young age

In the early 1920's, H. A. and Margret met at a party at her parent's house. He was dating her older sister at the time, and his first sight of Margret was of her sliding down the banister.

n 1924, due to the increasing inflation in Germany, H. A. moved to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to work as an accountant in his brother-in-law's import-export firm. Among other duties, he sold bathtubs and kitchen sinks up and down the Amazon River for 12 years.

Meanwhile, Margret was still in Germany, where she received formal art training at the Bauhaus in Dessau in 1927, when Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky were on the faculty. She also studied at the Dusseldorf Academy of Arts from 1928 to 1929 and held one-woman shows of her art in Berlin in the early 1930's. Margret worked for a British advertising agency in Berlin, where she wrote the lyrics to the first jingle for a Lever brothers advertisement in praise of margarine. She also worked as a professional photographer in Berlin and London before moving to Rio de Janeiro in 1935.

It was there that Hans published his first children's book, after a French publisher saw his newspaper cartoons of a giraffe and asked him to expand upon them. Raffy and the Nine Monkeys (Cecily G. and the Nine Monkeys in English) was the result, and it marked the debut of a mischievous monkey named Curious George.

After Raffy and the Nine Monkeys was published, the Reys decided that Curious George deserved a book of his own, so they began work on a manuscript that featured the lovable and exceedingly curious little monkey. But the late 1930's and early 40’s were a tumultuous time in Europe, and before the new manuscript could be published, the Reys—both German Jews—found themselves in a horrible situation. Hitler and his Nazi party were tearing through Europe, and they were poised to take control of the city. Knowing that they must escape before the Nazis took power, Hans cobbled together two bicycles out of spare parts. Early in the morning of June 14, 1940, the Reys set off on their bicycles. They brought very little with them on their pre-dawn flight . . . only warm coats, a bit of food, and five manuscripts, one of which was Curious George. The Nazis entered Paris just hours later, but the Reys were already on their way. They rode their makeshift bicycles for four long days until reaching the French-Spanish border, where they sold them for train fare to Lisbon. From there they made their way to Brazil and on to New York City, where they began a whole new life as children's book authors.

Curious George was published by Houghton Mifflin in 1941, and for sixty years these books have been capturing the hearts and minds of readers throughout the world. All the Curious George books, including the seven original stories by Margret and Hans, have sold over 25 million copies. So popular that his original story has never been out of print, George has become one of the most beloved and most recognizable characters from children's literature. His adventures have been translated into many languages, including Japanese, French, Afrikaans, Portuguese, Swedish, German, Chinese, Danish, and Norwegian.

Although both of the Reys have passed away—Hans in 1977 and Margret in 1996—George lives on in the Curious George Foundation. Established in 1989, this foundation funds programs for children that share Curious George's irresistible qualities—ingenuity, opportunity, determination, and curiosity in learning and exploring. Much consideration is given to programs that benefit animals, through preservation as well as the prevention of cruelty to animals. Another area of giving centers around community outreach that emphasizes the importance of family, from counseling to peer support groups that help strengthen ties to keep family units strong.

http://www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com/features/cgsite/abouthaandmargretrey.shtml

Merry Christmas

Themes from Roma. Have a Merry and a Happy.

Lisa Marie Presley Selling Elvis Estate

By WOODY BAIRD
The Associated Press
Friday, December 17, 2004;

MEMPHIS, Tenn. - Lisa Marie Presley is keeping Graceland but selling the bulk of the Elvis estate, including rights to her father's name and image, in a deal worth approximately $100 million.

Elvis Presley Enterprises Inc. announced an agreement Thursday to sell 85 percent of its assets to businessman Robert F.X. Sillerman, founder of music and sports promoter SFX Entertainment.

The Presley estate brought in almost $45 million last year. Sillerman said more aggressive marketing, supported by capital raised through a new publicly traded company, can make Elvis an even bigger earner.

Presley occupies a unique place in American pop culture, and "I don't think there's much likelihood his influence is going to wane anytime in my lifetime," Sillerman said by telephone from New York, where he runs the Sillerman Companies.

As Presley's only child, Lisa Marie is the sole heir to the estate, most of which is now to become part of a publicly traded company that will be called CKX Inc.

The agreement will pay her $53 million in cash and absolve her of $25 million in debts owed by the estate. She also is to get shares in the new company expected to be worth more than $20 million.

Lisa Marie will retain possession of her father's home, its more than 13 acres of land and many of her father's "personal effects," an announcement on the agreement said.

"For the past few years, I've been looking for someone to join forces with to expand the many facets of (Elvis Presley Enterprises), to take it to new levels internationally and to make it an even greater force in the entertainment industry," Ms. Presley, also a singer, said in a statement.

Tours of Graceland, which gets 650,000 visitors a year, will continue unchanged. The throngs of fans drawn to Memphis each August on the anniversary of Presley's 1977 death will notice little different, Sillerman said.

Although Elvis already ranks No. 1 on the Forbes magazine list of top-earning dead celebrities, Sillerman said new markets and business opportunities may be available, including abroad.

"Does it make sense to invest in Elvis Presley enterprises in Japan? Does it make sense in Germany? Are there things that can be done in other jurisdictions in the United States?" he said. "The answer to some of the questions is obviously yes, we just don't know which ones."

Sillerman said the staff at Graceland will remain in place.

Elvis Presley Enterprises was created in 1980 by Priscilla Presley, the singer's ex-wife and mother of Lisa Marie, who was still a child then. She is to remain as a consultant to the new owners.

Sillerman founded SFX Entertainment in 1977 and ran the company until it was bought by Clear Channel Communications in 2000. He said he expected the sale to wrap up within two months, pending standard regulatory approval.

Barnes Art Collection Moving Downtown

By DAVID B. CARUSO, Associated Press Writer

PHILADELPHIA - One of the nation's richest troves of Impressionist and Postimpressionist art is moving to downtown Philadelphia now that its trustees have won court permission to leave their hard-to-visit suburban gallery, a legacy of the collection's eccentric founder.

Trustees of the Barnes Foundation had argued for two years that they should be allowed to move the collection of Renoirs, Cezannes, Matisses and Picassos because decades of limited attendance and high costs in Lower Merion Township have nearly bankrupted the foundation.

On Monday, Montgomery County Judge Stanley Ott agreed, saying a new facility more accessible to tourists in the heart of Philadelphia might be the only way to save the foundation. Other possible solutions, including selling land and lesser art from the collection, wouldn't raise more than $20 million, he said.

"History and the evidence presented at these hearings showed this amount would not halt the foundation's downward financial spiral," he wrote.

The current gallery is loved for its intimacy, but is difficult to visit because of restrictions imposed by township officials and the will of the late Dr. Albert Barnes, who made a fortune in pharmaceuticals and medical supplies.

He opened his 23-room gallery in 1925 to display Impressionist masterpieces and thousands of other paintings, African carvings, Navajo textiles, Greek and Roman ceramics and other pieces.

When he died in a 1951 car crash, his will specified that the collection be kept forever in Lower Merion, paintings never be sold or moved, admission be strictly limited, and his endowment be invested only in conservative, low-yielding government securities.

The collection is open to the public only on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and no more than 400 people may visit each day. Tickets are available only by reservation and sell out months in advance. Onsite parking is limited and the township won't let visitors park on the street.

Traditionalists fought the move, saying it would destroy a unique setting and violate Barnes' wish that the collection be primarily used as a teaching tool for the foundation's art school.

Ott acknowledged that some would see the move to Philadelphia as "an outrageous violation of the donor's trust," but said archival materials convinced him that Barnes expected the collection to have greater exposure than it has received.

Three philanthropies promised to help raise $100 million for a new gallery near the Philadelphia Museum of Art plus $50 million to establish an endowment if the court approved the move.

Mayor John F. Street's office said a site should be picked by the end of the week.

On the Web at; http://www.barnesfoundation.org

Millau Viaduct

Bridges are often considered to belong to the engineer's realm rather than the architect's. But the architecture of infrastructure has a powerful impact on the environment. The Millau Viaduct, designed in collaboration with engineers, illustrates how the architect can play an integral role in bridge design.

Located in southern France, the bridge will connect the motorway from Paris to Barcelona at the point where it is interrupted by the River Tarn, which runs through a wide gorge between two plateaux. A reading of the topography suggested two possible approaches: to cross the river, the geological generator of the landscape; or there was the challenge of spanning the 2.5 kilometres from one plateau to the other in the most economical manner.

The structural solution follows from the latter philosophical standpoint. The bridge has the optimum span between cable-stayed columns. It is delicate, transparent, and uses the minimum material, which makes it less costly to construct. Each of its sections spans 350 metres and its columns range in height from 75 metres to 235 metres - higher than the Eiffel Tower - with the masts rising a further 90 metres above the road deck. To accommodate the expansion and contraction of the concrete deck, each column splits into two thinner, more flexible columns below the roadway, forming an A-frame above deck level. This structure creates a dramatic silhouette - and crucially it makes the minimum intervention in the landscape.

Appointment Date: 1993

Construction Date: 2001

Completion Date: 2005

Statistics: Length: 2.5 km

Height: 280 m

Client: Department of Transport and Public Works of France

Consultants:
Chapelet-Defol-Mousseigne
Ove Arup and Partners

http://www.fosterandpartners.com/internetsite/html/Project.asp?JobNo=0778#

Construction of World's Largest Tower to Begin

NewScientist.com news service

The construction of what will be the world's tallest building is set to begin in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. The building contract was awarded to a consortium led by the South Korean Samsung Corporation on Thursday.

The Burj Dubai tower will stand 800 metres tall - just 5 metres shy of half a mile - once completed in 2008. That will be a full 350 metres taller that the tallest floored in the world today, the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur.

The new tower’s unique, three-sided design will ascend in a series of stages, around a supportive central core and boast a total of 160 floors, accessible via a series of double-decker elevators. Its shape will be integral to its impressive size. The design is intended to reduce the impact of wind and to reduce the need for a stronger core - allowing for more space - as it ascends.

"It's almost like a series of buildings stuck together," says Mohsen Zikri, a director at UK engineering consultants Arup. "As you go up you need less and less lifts and less core."

A key challenge will be the logistics involved in construction, Zikri told New Scientist. "You need things to be delivered with military precision or you will have chaos on the ground."

A spokeswoman for Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, the Chicago-based architects firm behind the design in the US, says the shape should prevent wind vortices building up around the tower and causing it to move in the wind. "Wind is the primary thing at this height," she told New Scientist. "The engineers have focused on shaping the building to minimise this effect."

As wind whirls around a tall building it can build into powerful vortices that in turn generate powerful winds on the ground. But the wide base of the Burj Dubai should also prevent wind from causing these disturbances.

Besides beating the Petronas Towers, which stands at 452 metres tall, Burj Dubai will also be considerably taller than the CN tower in Toronto, Canada which at 553 metres is the tallest structure in the world without a multiple floor structure.

Foundation work was recently completed by Turner Construction International, based in New York, US. Above ground construction will now begin under the control of the Samsung Corporation. The contract was awarded by Emaar Properties in Dubai, after an 11-month bidding process.

The tower will be used for offices, residential apartments, hotels and shops and will be surrounded at its base by a man-made lake.

Stray cat's gravestone sells for fortune

LONDON (Reuters) - A medieval limestone slab which for years has been used as a gravestone for a dead cat called Winkle has fetched more than 200,000 pounds at auction.

The stone has a carved image of St Peter on it and dates from the early 10th century.

It was found in a salvage yard by a man who took it to his home in Somerset and put it at the bottom of his garden to mark the spot where Winkle was buried.

It was only when the stone was spotted by local potter and historian Chris Brewchorne that its value became apparent.

"I was walking past the house one day and saw it in the front garden and knew immediately I was looking at something special," Brewchorne told Reuters.

"I knocked on the front door, spoke to the owners and told them 'I think you've just won the lottery.'

"At first I thought it was Roman but I noticed the chap's head on the carving was tonsured, which suggested it was Saxon.

"I don't think it's an exaggeration to describe it as the finest mid-Saxon carving in the country."

The carving went under the hammer at auctioneers Sothebys on Friday. They had expected it to fetch between 40,000 and 60,000 pounds but a private collector bought it for 201,600 pounds.

The man who found it died last year before it could be sold but the money will go to his widow, a former farmer, who has asked not to be named.

As for Winkle, an adopted stray who, according to Brewchorne "spent most of her life hanging around the local cider mills," she will be getting a new headstone.

"I'll be making one for her," he said.

For a complete and amazing description, please see Sotheby's site;

http://search.sothebys.com/jsps/live/lot/LotDetail.jsp?lot_id=4C2LQ

Profane Brueghel Painting Sold for $7M

By Jeremy Lovell

LONDON (Reuters) - A riotously profane picture of a village fete by Pieter Brueghel the Younger that has not been seen in public for 70 years sold for over three and a half million pounds in London on Wednesday.

"The Kermesse of St. George," described by Sotheby's as the finest work by the 17th century Flemish artist still in private hands, was sold to an anonymous bidder for 3.7 million pounds ($7.15 million).

"All human life is here in this work," Sotheby's Old Master expert George Gordon told Reuters before the sale. "This is the pinnacle of his works."

The vividly colored picture, painted in 1628 just 10 years before Brueghel's death, has been in the hands of a Belgian family since 1930.

It shows inebriated villagers drinking, fighting, kissing, urinating, dancing, vomiting and defecating with complete abandon.

It is also one of the few works by the younger Brueghel that is not a copy of his famous father's paintings and has not been seen in public since 1935.

Gordon said there were only three known versions of the painting, of which the one auctioned was by far the most accomplished.

Also, because the younger Brueghel always composed his works as he painted them, there are no known studies for the picture.

Known as "Hell Brueghel" because of his fixation with the grotesque, he made his home in Antwerp where he became master of the guild in 1585 aged just 21.

His studio churned out copious copies of Pieter Brueghel the Elder's paintings -- a practice his own son Pieter Brueghel the third carried on, making it something of a cottage industry.

($1=.5174 Pound)

Duchamp's Urinal tops Art Survey

Story from BBC NEWS:

A white gentlemen's urinal has been named the most influential modern art work of all time.

Marcel Duchamp's Fountain came top of a poll of 500 art experts in the run-up to this year's Turner Prize which takes place on Monday.

Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907) was second, with Andy Warhol's Marilyn Diptych from 1962 coming third.

Duchamp shocked the art establishment when he took the urinal, signed it and put it on display in 1917.

"The choice of Duchamp's Fountain as the most influential work of modern art ahead of works by Picasso and Matisse comes as a bit of a shock," said art expert Simon Wilson.

Ahead of time

"But it reflects the dynamic nature of art today and the idea that the creative process that goes into a work of art is the most important thing - the work itself can be made of anything and can take any form."

Picasso's Spanish Civil War painting, Guernica, came fourth, while Matisse's The Red Studio was fifth.

Duchamp has influenced many contemporary artists, including Tracey Emin - her unmade bed was inspired by the French artist.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/entertainment/arts/4059997.stm

City Stories: Two Short Films

My cousin, Laura Censabella has written a new short film, "Last Call." (Invite above) It was directed by Robert Bailey and stars Jude Ciccolella (from the cast of 24 & a member of the Actors Studio). It will be shown with the short film "My Side of the Story" by Bryan Goluboff (Big Al, The Basketball Diaries), starring Larry Bryggman (Proof) in a beautiful screening room on the campus of New School University.

As of November 30, they are at capacity and can nop longer take reservations!
This is a hot ticket, congrats to those who I'll see there!

Laura has a long and illustrious career as a writer; film, prose, poetry, TV. Looking forward to her latest masterpiece!

Hard Corp Motors: The Skull

The new flames outside gave it away. There is a barren industrial stretch of road in the Bronx with a gear-heads paradise tucked off it. A recent re-visit to Hard Corp Motors revealed the progress on the skull, flames, and car bodies we'd seen a few weeks ago. The skull is a true work of art, articulate and well proportioned, Matt Weinberger makes poounding steel look easy.

The TV show, Monster Garage came by for an episode shooting last week and left the guys some cools tools.

To inquire about serious car work, repair, refinish and resurrection, Call 718-328-0102. 528 Drake, Bronx NY 10474.

Incredible Newsmap

An incredible newsmap, drawing on Google's open source news feeds, is a must-visit and now my primary source for news online. Essentially, big opaque headlines represent the headlines with the largest number of related information on the entire net, or literally, the biggest news. Colors organize the topics visually. The information can sorted by country----

To write such algorithms, the programmers eyes must have bled. Watch how things change when you organize the headlines by another country. Heal thy jingoistic self!

The desiger of this insanely complex borwser application describes it's functionality best: "The biggest news will always be on the top left corner inside each category, the smallest one on the bottom right. The placement of all categories and countries follow the same principle, when the sum of related articles for one story inside each country/category is the greatest, it will be shifted to the top left corner, the smallest ones shift to the bottom right.
Of course you can always switch to the standard layout by selecting so in the bottom right of the screen.
Use "permalink" to create your custom link for the view you selected."

You can visit his portpholio site at marumushi.com

Lobster Farm Gets Big Allies and Press

Scorsese goes trolling for 'Lobster'

Helmer to present Jordan's 'Farm'

By MICHAEL FLEMING


Martin Scorsese's eyes have been on the skies with "The Aviator," but he's briefly turned his gaze to the seas to endorse a low-budget pic on a Brooklyn lobster biz. The helmer watched Kevin Jordan's "Lobster Farm" and was impressed enough to put "Martin Scorsese presents" atop the credits. The film will be submitted for fest consideration and shopped for distribution. Jordan, who won the Discovery Award at the Toronto fest for his debut pic "Smiling Fish and Goat on Fire," based the his new film on his family's struggle to hold on to a lobster shop they've operated in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, for the past 65 years. The fictionalized feature stars Danny Aiello and Jane Curtin, and was shot on location at the Jordan family store. Scorsese has been something of a mentor to the young filmmaker. "When I was at NYU, I sent him a short film and he gave me a scholarship that helped pay for my senior year," Jordan says. "Then he invited me to observe when he shot 'Kundun.' " Jordan and his producers (brother Darren Jordan and Chris Valentino) will use profits to help save the lobster store Jordan's grandfather opened in the 1930s. It is scheduled to be auctioned. They made a 10-minute doc about the family's plight and invited Wall Street pals to view it. "Now we are hoping for a Frank Capra miracle," Jordan says.

Read the full article at:
http://www.variety.com/story.asp?l=story&a=VR1117913096&c=1019

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Posted by Christa at 07:49 AM | Comments (0)

Clinton Presidential Center prepares to open

It DOES look like a trailer!

By Suzi Parker
COX NEWS SERVICE

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — The buzz builds daily in Little Rock for the Clinton Presidential Center, opening Nov. 18.
From busboys to friends of Bill Clinton, everyone wants a ticket to an event during opening-week festivities. The grand opening of the center — which houses the Clinton Library — has attracted positive RSVPs from all of living former presidents and President Bush, as well as celebrities including Ben Affleck, Bono and Barbra Streisand, and foreign dignitaries.

Singer Aretha Franklin will perform Nov. 16.
"This will be a great, memorable event for Little Rock," said Skip Rutherford, president of the Clinton Presidential Foundation. "I think the world will see that Little Rock is a great tourist destination and that the presidential center will be an attraction the world wants to visit."
The complex will be the country's 12th presidential library site. It will be the most expensive in the National Archives' system, with the most material. Eight C-5 cargo planes brought the Clinton collection from Washington to Little Rock in 2001.
The 30-acre center is the largest and most expensive presidential library to date. The city of Little Rock bought the land — an old warehouse site — for $16 million to lure Mr. Clinton to select the spot in 1997. At $165 million, the library is the most costly private construction project undertaken in central Arkansas.
James Polshek, a New York architect, designed the building to resemble a glass bridge to the 21st century. Ralph Appelbaum, exhibit designer for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, designed the museum exhibits for the Clinton facility.
Because Mr. Clinton was the first president of the Internet age, tourists can expect a heavy use of technology. A replica of the White House Cabinet room will have interactive stations that tell visitors about Cabinet members from Mr. Clinton's eight years in office. An interactive timeline will highlight each day of Mr. Clinton's presidency.
The library is built near Interstate 30, one of the most traveled highways in Arkansas. It is within 10 minutes of the Little Rock National Airport. A highlight will be a replica of the Oval Office with the decor from Mr. Clinton's White House. Even the ivy plant that sat on the Oval Office mantel will be the same. When Mr. Clinton left office, the staff snipped the ivy and replanted it. That ivy has been growing since then.
The Clinton Foundation decided not to open a gift store on the library site. Instead, the Clinton museum store will open in the River Market district near the library.
The library also will house Cafe 42 — Mr. Clinton was the nation's 42nd president — a trendy restaurant that will feature Hillary Rodham Clinton's tollhouse cookies and recipes from the Clinton cookbook. It also will have a salad bar for the health conscious, Mr. Rutherford said.
"We want this restaurant not to compete with downtown business, but enhance it," said Tyler Denton, the foundation's director of marketing and special events. "We will have a chef and open for Sunday brunch. Customers who want to enjoy the cafe won't be charged for museum entry."
The Clinton Library has served as an anchor for more than $1 billion in investments in Little Rock's downtown. The revitalization of the River Market area has attracted new hotels, including the Peabody and Marriott, restaurants, bars and a light-rail system for the area.

For more information, please check out the Clinton Presidential Center

2005 Stamps to Feature Muppets

Putting the Muppets on US Postage stamps is a brilliant idea. I'll bet that these stamps sell as well as the Elvis stamps of a few years ago.

By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - It isn't easy being green. It isn't easy getting on a U.S. postage stamp either, but Kermit the Frog will manage it next year, along with his Muppet friends. New stamps also will recall the late President Ronald Reagan, singer Marian Anderson, actor Henry Fonda and songwriter Yip Harburg, notable scientists, famous Marines and sports cars, the U.S. Postal Service said Thursday

"U.S. commemorative stamps portray individuals, subjects and events that are instrumental to the American experience," said David Failor, executive director of stamp services for the Postal Service.

Thousands of suggestions are culled for a few dozen stamps to be issued each year.

If he had to pull strings to get on a stamp, Kermit did it effectively, with no less than 11 stamps honoring the Muppets and their creator, Jim Henson, scheduled for debut in March.

Among those appearing in the set are, of course, Miss Piggy,

as well as Statler and Waldorf, the Swedish Chef and Dr. Bunson Honeydew and his assistant Beaker.

Beloved as they are, Kermit and friends aren't the first puppets to make it on stamps, Charlie McCarthy managed the feat in 1991, along with his assistant Edgar Bergen.

On the more serious side, the stamp program will be recalling the Civil Rights Movement.

A 10-stamp set honors the courage and efforts of those who took part in that effort with stamps recalling President Truman's order integrating the military, the 1965 Selma to Montgomery march, sit-ins at "white only" lunch counters and the first black students to attend Central High School in Little Rock.

In addition to that set, singer Marian Anderson will be honored in the Black Heritage stamp series and tennis star and humanitarian Arthur Ashe will be recalled.

One of the great classic singers of the 20th century, Anderson was also active in the struggle for racial equality. When the Daughters of the American Revolution declined to allow her to perform at their Constitution Hall in 1939, Anderson gave an outdoor performance to 75,000 people at the Lincoln Memorial.

Hello Kitty Debit Card

Brand's Power Tapped to Reach Youth

By Caroline E. Mayer
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, October 3, 2004; Page A01

The popular Hello Kitty brand -- commonly found on stationery, purses, pajamas and other items for children -- will soon start appearing on a new platform: a MasterCard debit card.

"Freedom! You can use the Hello Kitty Debit MasterCard to shop 'til you drop," the card's Web site enthuses.

The prospective audience? The young women who grew up with the 30-year-old icon -- as well as much younger girls. "We think our target age group will be from 10 to 14, although it could certainly go younger," said Bruce Giuliano, senior vice president of licensing for Sanrio Inc., which owns the brand.

Since only parents (or at least anyone older than 18) can sign up for the card, Hello Kitty thinks it's a great way for adults to "help teach their children how to manage their finances," Giuliano said. Next up, he added, is a prepaid Hello Kitty cell phone.

The card, due out in a few weeks, is the latest example of how corporations aggressively court the $30 billion-a-year youth market. Until recently, financial institutions pretty much ignored this powerhouse of spenders. The Hello Kitty card shows those days are gone.

"Children are now open game, prey to many financial institutions in this country," said Joline Godfrey, author of "Raising Financially Fit Kids" and chief executive of Independent Means Inc., a California financial-education firm. "Financial institutions used to be pretty conservative members of the community, preaching balanced budgets, home ownership and savings. Over the course of time, they have become more partners with retailers teaching children how to spend and consume." As a result, she said, the cards become a "great educational tool . . . to say to kids, 'Spend, spend, spend, buy, buy, buy.' "

Officials at MasterCard and Visa, which introduced a prepaid debit card for teens called Visa Buxx in 2000, say the cards are an educational tool. "We think it's a good way to teach teens good money management early on," said Rhonda Bentz, spokeswoman for Visa USA.

Hello Kitty's lesson comes with a cost. The activation fee is $14.95 (and another $14.95 if you renew after a year). There is a $2.95 monthly maintenance fee, a $1.50 ATM-withdrawal fee and a $1-per-minute fee to talk to a customer service agent.

The fees are "probably the worst I've run across," said Robert McKinley, chief executive of CardWeb.com Inc., a Frederick firm that tracks the credit card industry.

Peter Klamka, president of Legend Credit Inc., which developed the Hello Kitty card, says his fees are smaller than a couple of branded cards. Because it is not a credit card, he added, the card cannot make money by charging interest.

The fees are helping drive the market for prepaid cards to young consumers, Godfrey said. "Up to now, banks ignored them because if they couldn't charge fees for checking accounts, they were too expensive to put into the business plan." But with fees, debit cards now "represent significant revenue dollars for financial institutions."

Travis Plunkett, legislative director of Consumer Federation, said: "It looks like the adolescents being targeted for this card will learn another unfortunate fact of life: More credit card companies are nickel and diming consumers with higher fees."

Hello Kitty is not the first plastic card aimed at children.

In fact, "teens' wallets are mostly full of plastic -- gift cards, store loyalty cards, phone cards," said Michael Wood, vice president of the Illinoismarketing firm, Teenage Research Unlimited. Wood said about one in six teenagers have debit cards. But now those cards are finding their way into the wallets of younger and younger children.

Last year, Visa issued a Hilary Duff gift card in five denominations from $25 to $200, to lure the preteen fans of the Disney star. Its promotions urged girls to "shop like a star."

Duff, in a press release announcing the card, said it was "the perfect way to shop for school and beyond. . . . Now I can easily buy stuff online without having to borrow my parents' credit card."

The Duff card was supposed to be for 13 to 17 year olds, but it turns out "parents bought it for very young consumers, 8 and 9," Klamka said. What makes the Hello Kitty card different is that it doesn't automatically expire when the amount on it is used up. Parents can reload the card anytime.

By contrast, the Duff card was a one-time card that couldn't be reloaded. And parents complained about that, Klamka said. "We had hundreds of parents calling every week saying they wanted to put more money on the card."

Parents of boys also called in, requesting a comparable product aimed at boys. "That's not as easy as you think; the market's very splintered on what influences boys," Klamka said. But he's working on it, and hopes to announce a new boy-oriented product "very soon."

The Visa Buxx card allows parents to put money on a child's account and then monitor his or her purchases, as they occur as well as at the end of each month. On Visa Buxx and Hello Kitty cards, teens can only spend the amount on the card; they cannot go into debt by going over their spending limit.

McKinley estimates there are about 100,000 Visa Buxx cardholders. Visa's Bentz wouldn't provide any numbers, but she said card users were increasing by 4 to 8 percent a month. Half the cardholders are ages 13 to 15; the rest are 16 or older, she said.

"It's no different than an allowance; just a safer way to manage an allowance because if you're a parent, you can find every place your daughter spent her money: how much, when and where," Klamka said. "You get a higher level of control than just giving your daughter $100 and say, 'Go to the mall.' "

Consumer advocates call the cards nothing more than "credit cards with training wheels," that teach the convenience of plastic without any of the consequences. "It's laying the groundwork for children to become credit card users as adults," said Plunkett, of the consumer federation.

Youth marketing executives predict more cards are on the horizon, particularly as the youngest generation uses the Internet to shop. "Up until now, the financial markets have been a little gun-shy about targeting kids directly, but I think that will change and a debit card is a vehicle that provides that opportunity," said Paul Kurnit, president of KidShop, a New York youth-marketing consulting firm.

The pleasures of plastic are not just being waved at 8- and 9-year-olds, as a visit to any toy store will demonstrate. There is Playskool's Eazy Scan Supermarket for 3-year-olds that comes with a swipeable credit card. Barbie's Shop with Me Cash Register takes the retail experience one step further with what it calls "realistic shopping accessories;" in this case it's a toy American Express card. The toy promises "hours of nonstop fun . . . to enhance social skills" while learning.

For slightly older girls, 9 and up, there is the Mall Madness board game by Milton Bradley, where the goal is to "find the steals and deals." The winner is the first shopper to make six purchases and get to the right destination. To do that, girls can swipe their cash card or get money at the ATM. As the blurb on the box says: "Hey girls! Don't miss the next big sale."

At last, Hamlet in the Original Klingon!

The curtain is up, the play has begun... and the work of the Klingon Shakespeare Restoration Project is now available to a wider audience, courtesy of Pocket Books. This trade paperback is an updated version of our earlier publication, a limited hardbound edition of 1,000 numbered copies, plus 26 numbered deluxe copies. Only a handful of those remain, but the new trade paperback can be found in major bookstores and also right here at the KLI's own merchant page.

The original edition of the book went through years of translation and several revisions, with translators Nick Nicholas and Andrew Strader aided by feedback and editorial assistance from Mark Shoulson, d'Armond Speers, and Will Martin. Translation by committee is a tricky thing, but Hamlet represents the largest piece of text in Klingon to date and we wanted to be as grammatically accurate as possible. That concern resulted in several hundred changes to the text when Pocket Books expressed an interest in publishing a trade paperback version. In the intervening years Klingon scholarship had revealed new insights into the language and we insisted on incorporating them into the new book. Nick Nicholas and Lawrence Schoen expanded the appendices for the new edition as well, giving further insight into the play and its context in the larger scope of Imperial and Federation politics.

You may think you've read Hamlet before, but you can't really appreciate it until you've read it in the original Klingon. Now's your chance. Enjoy!

http://www.kli.org/stuff/Hamlet.html

Mr. Wonderful Talking Doll

Product Description
The ball game really isn't that important. I'd rather spend time with you. Why don't we go to the mall?" "Let's talk about our relationship. He's the man of every woman's dreams—handsome, attentive, debonair, plus he always says precisely the right thing. Press his hand to hear 16 different phrases. A riotous bridal shower or girlfriend gift. Takes 2 AA batteries, included. 12H".

$14.99

Item Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Imported
• Ships in its original packaging.

Catalog #: 525329
ASIN: B0000DIC71

http://www.target.com/gp/detail.html/sr=2_1/qid=1096815218/ref=sr_2_1/602-3474389-9829456?%5Fencoding=UTF8&asin=B0000DIC71

The remote control farting teddy bear

He's cute, he's cuddly, and he's flatulent. There's nothing he likes more than to be in the arms of some poor, unsuspecting victim so he can let out a big, juicy one when you press the wireless remote control. Lil' Stinker as we call him, get's so embarrassed that his little cheeks glow blushing red whenever he passes gas.This guy is big, standing a full 17" tall. Our Price-$29.89

Buy 3 or more Remote Control Farting Teddy Bears and Save $ 5.00!

http://www.prankplace.com/fartbear.htm

Sherefkin & Co. Soft Launch

The brand for Sherefkin & Co., ( a professional kitchen design, installation and supplier in Brooklyn, NY), has taken first steps toward a full web site recently. The new contact page takes Sherefkin's corporate identity into electronic media, and establishes a brand-personality which will carry through anything the company wishes to do with its marketing efforts.


The brand goals include more exposure and a significant differentiation from the competitors. These should be easy to accomplish, as the exposure will be achieved through an aggressive web campaign, and the competition is....well...weak.



Visit at sherefkin.com

The Godfather Horse Head Pillow

I could not resist the temptation to share this gift idea with the loyal readers of TiP. They put it well on the web site,
"This is our little contribution to the Godfather legacy.  A custom severed horse head pillow that is actually quite comfortable to sleep on, albeit a tad on the south side of morbid.  A great conversation piece for the film buff who has everything and whose wife won't let them own a revolver.  Same effect without the mess.  Fans of the Godfather can now unite and rest comfortably, if not uneasily."

Send someone a message!  Here is one way you can threaten or spook someone in the nicest possible way, under the guise that you want them to get a better sleep...  A better sleep with the fishes that is.

It can be found at; http://www.kropserkel.com/godfather.htm

$70 US +($20 US shipping USA and Canada, $35 US other world destinations)

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