TB: Which are you more likely to violate: the Third Law of Thermodynamics, or the Mann Act?
JG: I'm pretty sure it'd be Third Law of Thermodynamics. Too bad it wasn't which I'd prefer to violate. No, that'd probably still be the Third Law. Once I break free of that bastard, there'll be no stopping me.
You are most like Aragorn (Stryder) Son of Arathorn
Aragorn's decisions often seem against conventional wisdom, but he knows what to do and why it must be done, regardless of the cost.
You are good at making contingency plans and come up wiith efficient means to acheive clear-cut ends. You are highly independent, and continue on with your plans even in the face of data that might suggest to others that it's no longer feasible. Time alone is important and solitary activities refresh you. You have a tendency to introspection. In your desire for clarity in life, you may have the tendency of being remote or even "heartless". You try to schedule your life as much as possible. You tend to finish your work before resting.
As the foil to Aragorn, Sauron clearly embodies the evil side of this personality.
Traits: Pragmatic, autonomous, ingenious, resolute. On the dark side you could desire power and domination.
 | Eowyn If I were a character in The Lord of the Rings, I would be Eowyn, Woman of Rohan, niece of King Theoden and sister of Eomer. In the movie, I am played by Miranda Otto. Who would you be? |
Though say what you will about Cruise, one fact remains: He's no Steve Guttenberg. Or Mark Harmon. Or Brad Pitt. Or any other of the disposable, pretty-boy movie stars who have crowded the multiplex on and off for 20 years. Tom Cruise is the leading man of his day and, all things considered, he's probably better than this generation of moviegoers deserves. (Historical footnote: In 2035, when the Thalberg awards are handed out and all is said and done, George Clooney will be considered the star of his generation, but that's then and this is now.)I'm sorry, but he's sure as hell not what I deserve; I can't possibly have been that evil. He is the disposable pretty boy of his generation, which Guttenberg and Harmon are not (who the hell thinks they're "pretty"?) As for Pitt, I can name at least two movies in which his performance was tolerable ("Thelma and Louise" and the somewhat limp remake of "Ocean's 11"), which is two more notches than I can count on Cruise's coup stick.
If you tour Cruise's filmography, you'll see an actor doing competent work in movies that are better than they have to be.I see a performer giving exactly the same performance, without variation, in every stinkin' film he's ever been in. He is himself in every movie, in the worst possible sense; I can never get the sense that he's anyone but TOM FUCKING CRUISE every moment he's on screen.
For every "Days of Thunder" there's a "Color of Money";You say that as though there were a qualitative difference between the two.
for every "Mission Impossible: 2" there's a "Minority Report."That's a sore point with me; a potentially great premise ruined by bad casting. His performance in every movie is the same. Minority Report is Cocktail is Risky Business; only the props and costars change.
His popcorn films are often mediocre ("The Firm") and even his prestige movies can be terrible ("Born on the Fourth of July," "Far and Away," "Eyes Wide Shut"). But if you do the numbers, he bats about .600 and hits to all fields with power ("Rain Man," "Top Gun," "Magnolia").You could easily replace Cruise in "Rainman" with any reasonably competent actor, or even a mediocre actor of Cruise's own caliber, and it would be essentially the same. Dustin Hoffman did all the heavy lifting (not that I necessarily agree "Rainman" is a good example of a base hit; it's more like a seeing-eye single than a double to the wall. "Top Gun" is an execrable piece of crap and I found "Magnolia" unwatchable. So by my count he's more Rey Ordonez than Alex Rodriguez.)
And above all else, with Tom Cruise you always get the sense that at least he's trying.And that's exactly what I have against him. When I watch a movie I don't want to see the wheels turning. With Tom Cruise I always feel like I have to supply half the lead performance.
So I can tell you some facts. I know you haven't read any of what I am about to tell you in the newspaper, because newspapers literally don't report them. I can tell you that DDT is not a carcinogen and did not cause birds to die and should never have been banned. I can tell you that the people who banned it knew that it wasn't carcinogenic and banned it anyway. I can tell you that the DDT ban has caused the deaths of tens of millions of poor people, mostly children, whose deaths are directly attributable to a callous, technologically advanced western society that promoted the new cause of environmentalism by pushing a fantasy about a pesticide, and thus irrevocably harmed the third world. Banning DDT is one of the most disgraceful episodes in the twentieth century history of America. We knew better, and we did it anyway, and we let people around the world die and didn't give a damn.Rachel Carlson, you ignorant slut.
I can tell you that second hand smoke is not a health hazard to anyone and never was, and the EPA has always known it. I can tell you that the evidence for global warming is far weaker than its proponents would ever admit. I can tell you the percentage the US land area that is taken by urbanization, including cities and roads, is 5%. I can tell you that the Sahara desert is shrinking, and the total ice of Antarctica is increasing. I can tell you that a blue-ribbon panel in Science magazine concluded that there is no known technology that will enable us to halt the rise of carbon dioxide in the 21st century. Not wind, not solar, not even nuclear. The panel concluded a totally new technology-like nuclear fusion-was necessary, otherwise nothing could be done and in the meantime all efforts would be a waste of time. They said that when the UN IPCC reports stated alternative technologies existed that could control greenhouse gases, the UN was wrong.
I can, with a lot of time, give you the factual basis for these views, and I can cite the appropriate journal articles not in whacko magazines, but in the most prestigeous science journals, such as Science and Nature. But such references probably won't impact more than a handful of you, because the beliefs of a religion are not dependant on facts, but rather are matters of faith. Unshakeable belief.
"I'd be interested in doing it because I think it would give continuity to the overall chapter," he said.Arwen? ARWEN?? I realize Jackson's got a major boner for Liv Tyler, but given the fact that she is not going to be aging backward during the interim, just how the hell would Arwen fit into the prequel that occurs some sixty or so years before the action in the Ring cycle?
Many of the lead "Rings" characters do not appear in The Hobbit, but the wizard Gandalf, played by Ian McKellen, and Gollum, the cave dweller corrupted by the powerful ring, do and should make a comeback. Arwen, the elf princess played by Liv Tyler, could also feature again, Jackson said.
"I fought against this day for 10 years,” Smith said. “One week of bear hunting, nothing’s going to be solved. Come spring the bears will still be eating our garbage and still be walking through our back yards."Dead right, sister. So can I take it you're for extending bear season to a more reasonable length?
The key, I believe, to Iran, is pressure through the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union is supplying much of the equipment that Iran I believe mostly likely is using to set itself along the path of developing nuclear weapons. We need to use that leverage with the Soviet Union, and it may require us buying the equipment the Soviet Union was ultimately going to sell to Iran, to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons.I guess for Howie history's just something that happened to other people.
After 18 actors working on the Lord of the Rings trilogy threatened to write an open letter to Time Warner Chairman Richard Parsons complaining about the small size of their bonus payments, New Line Cinema agreed to create a "bonus pool," negotiated by "one of the actors everybody trusted," the London Daily Telegraph reported today (Tuesday). However, although a measure of peace has been restored between the actors and the studio, the group is nevertheless demanding an audit of the films' accounts, the newspaper said. The Telegraph observed that producers were originally able to negotiate low-paying deals with several actors (it specifically named Orlando Bloom, who plays the elf Legolas) because they were struggling unknowns at the time.
MLB may organize a World Cup to start in '05There is only one kind of "cup" in baseball, and it's not a championship series.
Looking at soccer's success at creating the world's most-watched tournament, major league baseball could give the go-ahead by the end of January to start a World Cup in March 2005.You start naming baseball tourneys after soccer championships and it can only lead to the collapse of the game as we have known it. I'm completely serious. Next thing you know we'll have a diamond full of guys in shiny pants yelling "GOOOOOOOAAAAALLL" every time they cross the plate, and I just can't reconcile myself to that prospect.
The tournament would include 8-to-16 national teams and be played in 4-to-8 U.S. ballparks,And then all the other countries will wonder why the fuck they have to do all the traveling when it's supposedly an international contest.
according to DuPuy and union head Donald Fehr. Talks with the union already have begun.Don Fehr, once again playing Beelzebub to Selig's Satan. Anything that'll kill the game, right guys? And what is it that's driving this sudden need to internationalize?
"That's a goal we share, and with a reasonable amount of luck, I think we will get there," Fehr said.
While the United States was eliminated from Olympic qualifying on Friday, that roster was stocked mostly with minor leaguers. Management and the union envision the World Cup teams having top stars.Yes, because MLB has its head up its collective ASS, the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA will not be represented in the Olympic contest in the event that represents its own national game. And yet, to the genii at MLB, the solution is not to review the rules on how the Olympic rosters are set, the solution is to make up an entirely new fake tournament to embrace the spirit of internationalism and so forth. I'm just waiting for the special rules for the world cup to be proposed, so that we won't be accused of discriminating against the way other countries play the game.
The Olympic qualifying loss shocked many major league baseball officials, who repeatedly have said they cannot stop the regular season to allow major leaguers to participate in the Olympics. Canada and Cuba will represent the Americas in Athens next year.
The commissioner's office and the union are working on several international events for the 2004 season. Talks are under way to start next season in Japan -- last season's opener between Oakland and Seattle in Tokyo was scrapped because of travel concerns prior to the U.S. war in Iraq.Ok, ENOUGH. It needs to be said: it's incredibly hard on the teams that start the season overseas and have to do all that fucking traveling at the start of the season. It has the potential to cost them games when they get back, and it deprives their US fans, who are the people who actually support the teams, of the chance to attend Opening Day without taking out a second goddamn mortgage. Here's an idea: stop fucking with the people who support you. Stop catering to the Japanese, who in most cases don't give two shits about seeing the American teams if they're not the Yankees. They've got their own teams, let them play the game their way, and if we must meet up, let it be at the Olympics. Jetting the teams halfway around the globe so you can pretend the sport has an international cachet is lame. Attempting to model the playoffs after soccer is the final straw.
The union is awaiting a management response to its latest proposal to move 22 Expos' games from Montreal to San Juan, Puerto Rico, or Monterrey, Mexico.
Spring training games will be played once again in Mexico City, and if the Expos don't play in Monterrey, that city could wind up with either exhibition or regular-season games involving other teams.
In July 2005, baseball hopes to play a regular-season series in Europe, according to Archey, possibly in Rome's Olympic Stadium.
Denmark to accept Norse god marriagesOk. We're sliding back into the Stygian darkness of paganism, but if the people are determined to worship a golden calf, that's their business. But then there's this:
By JAN M. OLSEN
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
COPENHAGEN, Denmark -- Home to the Vikings of yore, Denmark said Wednesday it will let a group that worships Thor, Odin and other Norse gods conduct legally-recognized marriages.
"To me, it would be wrong if the indigenous religion of this country wasn't recognized," Tove Fergo, the minister for Ecclesiastic Affairs and a Lutheran priest, told The Associated Press.So what you've got, in an apparent attempt to dodge a 1% tax, is a Lutheran Priest being forced to recognize a pagan religion as legitimate. There's a system crying out for the separation of church and state.
Under Danish law, the state Evangelical Lutheran Church has sole authority to recognize other religious communities.
The 240-member Forn Sidr, which worships Odin, Thor, Freya and the other members of the Norse pantheon, sought recognition in 1999, said Tissel Jacobsen, the group's president.
Last year, an Ecclesiastic Affairs panel of scholars recommended that Forn Sidr, whose name mean "Old Custom" in old Norse, be approved, but only if their rituals were clearly detailed in its bylaws.
"At a general assembly, we added and described our four annual heathen rituals - spring and fall equinoxes, and the summer and winter solstices, and our marriage ceremony," Jacobsen told the AP. "We then returned our application and the panel approved it."
Fergo said she would give her final approval "in a few days."
About 1,000 people worship the ancient gods in Denmark, Jacobsen said.
Since 1998, the panel of theology, law and history scholars have advised the government on which groups seeking to become religious communities, should be recognized.
"It was not up to me to evaluate whether they are telling the truth or the quality of their religion," Fergo said. "Based on the commission's evaluation and what I have read, I consider it a good religion."
Officially recognized religious communities can marry people and exempt their members from the 1 percent income tax that is imposed on members of the state church.
People born in Denmark are automatically made members of the state church, but can choose to leave it if they want. Members of other recognized religious communities, such Catholics, Muslims and Jews, are also exempt from the tax.
ABOUT A MONTH AGO Ralphs, Albertson's, and Vons--three large supermarket chains here in California--told the union they were taking back something they had already given, health care. They said they'd still pay for the bulk of it, but that costs were so high the workers would have to chip in part of the money, five dollars and change per week for a single employee, fifteen dollars and change per week for a family.A reasonable person might also ask if the price of healthcare has remained stable since the chains agreed to pay for said healthcare "years ago." In point of fact, a reasonable person would already know damn well it hasn't. But that's not important to Larry Miller, because there's something so much more important than the solvency of the chain at stake here:
I know, that doesn't sound unreasonable, does it? Costs are high for companies in general, millions of Americans have no insurance at all, and millions more have to pay inflated rates for their own coverage (and it usually stinks, too). In fact, one of the reasons costs keep going up is that companies have to make bulk deals for their workers like this one. All right, you may say, so the supermarket employees will have to chip in a couple of bucks themselves. So? What are they complaining about? It's just a gallon of milk and a carton of eggs a week (as management has said in a very clever newspaper ad).
This is how I see it: It's never, ever in a million years going to wind up being just five bucks a week. After the union caves in and the stores are full again, the company will quietly say, "Oh, you know what? Turns out it's thirty bucks a week and eighty for families." Three months after that it'll double, and so on, but it'll be too late. The world will have moved on, and no one will have a prayer.
Now, a reasonable person might ask, "Why should a company have to pay for health care in the first place?" That's a fair discussion, and I guess any issue is on the table during negotiations, but the main thing to me is that, in this case, it had already been settled. They had given it to them years ago, and they just want to take it away because they think they can. The company is doing very well, and it's not right for them to precipitate the whole thing by saying, "Um, you know that thing you already have? We want it back."
I've been in that Ralphs twice a week for the past ten years, and I know the people who work there. I knew when Mary got married and had her first kid. A nice guy with a mustache named Chris sometimes tells me a joke, and I laugh no matter what it is, and I forgot my wallet a couple of times and the manager smiled and said, "Oh, just bring it on your next visit." Audra recently got promoted. She exchanged some eggs for me once when they were cracked, and we've laughed many times about how easy it is to be forgetful at the end of the day. There's a cashier with the prettiest smile in the world, and I always look for her, and a slightly built lady who's a little disabled, and we chat every time as she bags, and she loves working there very, very much.Oddly enough, the plight of the MTA mechanics doesn't strike the same chord of noble suffering with ol' Lar':
The MTA mechanics went on strike at the same time (I disagree with that one) and took a lot of attention away from Ralphs.Odd. Just "I disagree with that one", no reason given. The MTA mechanics were likewise promised company-paid healthcare bennies in an earlier agreement; why the hell is their plight any different from that of the grocery workers? Is it possibly because Mr. Miller doesn't ride on public transportation, and his conscience rests easy on their behalf because he's never had a mechanic smile at him?
'I'd wanted to do a film with knights in armor,' Scott tells Variety, 'but thought why do some homogenous story when screenwriter William Monahan (who's currently working on the screenplay for Jurassic Park IV) came up with such rich history? He based this drama on accurate research, which he spent 19 months compiling and writing.'Oh, yes, certainly the guy who writes about dinosaurs jumping about and eating people has impeccable credentials as an historian. My, yes. I can certainly see why you'd think so. God, I wish you'd just done a homogenous story, whatever the hell that means. If there's an actual historical basis for a) a peasant becoming a knight or b) said Euro-peasant-knight thwarting the Crusaders, I will eat my hat. He'd goddamn well better be French, at the very least.
SCOTT GIVES BLOOM KEYS TO ‘KINGDOM’And here I thought he was tired of buckling swashes.
By Josh Spector, Hollywood Reporter, 10/29
Orlando Bloom, hot off his recent success in a trio of epic films, has signed on for the lead role in director Ridley Scott’s period epic “Kingdom of Heaven” for 20th Century Fox.
In the story set in 12th century Europe and the exotic Far East, Bloom will star as a young peasant who becomes a knight, saves a kingdom and falls in love with a princess.
The film was penned by William Monahan and is being produced by Scott through his Fox-based Scott Free production banner. Branko Lustig is executive producing the project, which has a January production start date planned and will shoot in Morocco.I love a good period epic. Of course, the last time I watched Scott take a stab at it (Gladiator) he completely bitched up Roman history and infuriated me to no end in the process, so I'm not entirely sure this bodes well, especially given the Cinema Confidential plot precis:
At Scott Free, the project is being overseen by Lisa Ellzey, while TCF topper Hutch Parker is overseeing for the studio.
The roles marks the latest epic undertaking for Bloom, who is coming off a trio of successes in the genre including the first two installments of the “Lord of the Rings” franchise and this past summer’s blockbuster hit “Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl.” Bloom can next be seen in the upcoming third installment of the “Rings” franchise due out Dec. 17, as well as starring opposite Brad Pitt in “Troy”.
The epic drama taking place during the Crusades is set in the 12th century, and tells the story of a young blacksmith who leads the people of Jerusalem in a fight against the Crusaders.O...k. Reading both descriptions between the lines and reconciling this with Scott's slapdash approach to history--without access to better info as yet--it looks like a peasant/blacksmith going to war as a Crusader and then siding with the Saracens against his fellow Europeans, "saving" Jerusalem. If so I hope it ends with Richard the Lionheart sticking his head on a bloody pike within sight of the walls of the city.
Back to the house. Get to work. Call up browser. Learn that Howard Dean temporarily called himself a “metrosexual.” Shudder. Do they have that on tape? Lee Atwater would have the commercial in production already: Split screen. On the right, Bush in flight suit, walking on the deck, waving, giving the thumbs up. On the left, Dean in a loop: “I’m a metrosexual. I’m a metrosexual. I’m a metrosexual.” Nothing more. Tagline: Bush. He doesn’t moisturize. He doesn’t tweeze. And he never had a pedicure.
Jurors in the corruption trial the former Tyco chairman [Dennis Kozlowski] on Tuesday watched PG-rated scenes of debauchery as prosecutors tried to sway them with video of his wife's birthday party on a Mediterranean island.After all, what's a $2.1M party without a sparkler-adorned titty cake and an ice sculpture of David pissing vodka? And the worst part isn't the waste of the money...it's the waste of it on stupid, vulgar things without a trace of subtlety or wit. I mean, **damn**, you blow $2.1 million dollars on a party in Sardinia and the best band you can book is Buffett?
New York prosecutors showed about 20 minutes of video footage from the 2001 party that cost $2.1 million -- about half paid by Tyco -- and featured singer Jimmy Buffett, gladiators, chariots and an ice sculpture of Michelangelo's David spewing vodka from his penis.
The footage, edited from four hours of film, was a welcome departure for jurors who have sat through three weeks of often tedious testimony. One juror on Monday nodded off in the courtroom. Money 2004.
But Judge Michael Obus ruled that jurors wouldn't see footage of the ice sculpture or a birthday cake in the shape of a woman's breasts with sparklers mounted on top.
One girl, who had just had her tongue pierced, writes: 'I've always been kind of quiet in school and very predictable…. I wanted to think of myself as original and creative, so I decided I wanted something pierced…How original. How creative.
'Now people don't think of me as shy and predictable, they respect me and the person I've become and call me crazily spontaneous.'Then again, one man's "crazily spontaneous" is another man's "dangerously unstable".
[M]any pieces are trivial or bizarre. A work by Christo marking the construction of the Berlin Wall consists of a pile of oil drums between the walls of a street. The wall text says the wall divided the world between the "egalitarian utopia of the communist regimes" and "the 'free world' of the capitalist societies." (Note the scare quotes around free world.)No surprises there. Last week I attended an exhibit of pop art at the Guggenheim in the Venetian in Vegas; the first room had a number of 'multimedia' pieces which consisted pretty much of apparently random groupings of crap you'd find in your garage, plus some nice Lichtensteins, some pretty good Warhols (4 soup cans, 2 Liz Taylors, and "Orange Disaster #5", with its interesting repeated images of an electric chair); though I admit I'm a bit skeptical about the artistic value of silk screening, the soup cans are nice), three Dines (mostly lame, particularly "shoe", seen here in a small black and white that really doesn't do justice to the nasty color and overall slapdash feel of the original), a really annoying Rauschenberg black-and-white silk screening of, again, seemingly random images ("Barge"), and my favorite, Rosenquist's "The Meteor Hits the Dreamer's Pillow" (with actual bedsprings!)
A video monitor showcases "Meat Joy," a 1964 film by Carolee Schneemann featuring nude performers writhing about in a sea of raw fish, uncooked chickens, paint, plastic and rope. (A PETA ad before its time?) Other pieces feature "celebrities" from Yoko Ono to Charles Manson and Ho Chi Minh. Ho is gone and Manson is behind bars, but last month, in Paris, Ms. Ono reprised "Cut Piece," a 1960s performance art effort in which audience members are invited to cut away her clothing one piece at a time.
He wore his red beret and suspenders in real life, and it was unclear whether he originally brought his own style to the character of Rerun or whether he was forever mimicking the character that made him famous.Damn, I hope it was the former.
Man: "Have you noticed how many of these paintings are French? It's like they're all Francophiles here or something."Off to the races. It's like they're all hippophiles there.
Woman: "That's because it's...a collection of French masters. From Russia."
Man, insistently: "No...it's the whole collection. They're all Francophiles here."
A California author and filmmaker who became famous for trekking to Alaska's remote Katmai coast to commune with brown bears has fallen victim to the teeth and claws of the wild animals he loved.Ok, stop right the hell there. The high-pitched chanting alone is enough to warrant a swift end; what the hell would make this idiot think they like that kind of thing? The cutsie-poo names show he failed to respect the essentially dangerous nature of the bears.
[...]
Treadwell's films of close-up encounters with giant bears brought him a bounty of national media attention. The fearless former drug addict from Malibu, Calif. -- who routinely eased up close to bears to chant "I love you'' in a high-pitched, sing-song voice -- was the subject of a show on the Discovery Channel and a report on "Dateline NBC." Blond, good-looking and charismatic, he appeared for interviews on David Letterman's show and "The Rosie O'Donnell Show" to talk about his bears. He even gave them names: Booble, Aunt Melissa, Mr. Chocolate, Freckles and Molly, among others.
A self-proclaimed eco-warrior, he attracted something of a cult following too. Chuck Bartlebaugh of "Be Bear Aware,'' a national bear awareness campaign, called Treadwell one of the leaders of a group of people engaged in "a trend to promote getting close to bears to show they were not dangerous.Except that they are! They're extremely fucking dangerous!
[...]Ah, yes. He knew them so well. If only the bears who ate him had been aware of how well he knew them.
Despite that, Treadwell refused to carry firearms or ring his campsites with an electric fence as do bear researchers in the area. And he stopped carrying bear spray for self-protection in recent years. Friends said he thought he knew the bears so well he didn't need it.
U.S. Geological Survey bear researcher Tom Smith; Sterling Miller, formerly the Alaska Department of Fish and Game's top bear authority; and others said they tried to warn the amateur naturalist that he was being far too cavalier around North America's largest and most powerful predator.Those are the people I really despise, the ones who view all of nature as a kind of petting zoo and themselves as gloriously in tune with same. Hopefully his demise will serve as an object lesson for the next would-be natureboy.
"He's the only one I've consistently had concern for,'' Smith said. "He had kind of a childlike attitude about him.''
"I told him to be much more cautious ... because every time a bear kills somebody, there is a big increase in bearanoia and bears get killed,'' Miller said.Damn you. Damn you for coining that word.
"I thought that would be a way of getting to him, and his response was 'I would be honored to end up in bear scat.' ''I hope he remembered that quote as the bears started to eat him.
"Mr. Baldwin's political views against President Bush and Republicans in general are well known and documented. I have no doubt that Texans will give the comments made by the star of 'Beetlejuice' all of the attention they are due."[Via the invaluable Charles Austin.]
However, since we're now at the beginning of a presidential campaign, it's reasonable to ask not only President Bush, but also each of the ten contenders for the Democratic nomination to state their attitude toward Brights (designated by whatever term they choose).Maybe because you're unorganized and relatively invisible.
We might also speculate about which of these candidates might be closet Brights? Which would evince anything like the free-thinking of Thomas Jefferson or Abraham Lincoln? Which would put forward a Bright Supreme Court nominee? Which would support self-avowed Brights in positions of authority over children?
Which of them would even include Brights in inclusive platitudes about Catholics, Protestants, Jews, and Muslims? Doing so might be good politics. Although unorganized and relatively invisible, Brights constitute a large group to whom politicians almost never appeal.
Moreover, it would be interesting to see and hear the squirming responses of the candidates to the above questions.(Interesting that the author gloms onto Jefferson and Lincoln as would-be Brights. It puts me in mind of a number of famous people who always claim to have been Cleopatra in a previous life. Funny how ditchdiggers and sewer workers don't ever seem to get reincarnated.)
"Actor Tony Randall has a fantasy: when he dies President Bush and Vice President Cheney show up to pay their respects but they're turned away--because his family knows he didn't like them," the Associated Press reports.My fantasy is that when I die, George Clooney will show up to pay his respects, and my family will ask him what the fuck he was thinking when he did Solaris.
The Dixie Chicks say they don't want to be a country music band any more.Fiddle player.
Violinist
Martie Maguire told SpiegelThe catalog people? Or is this, as I suspect, a German publication?
magazine: "We don't feel part of the country scene any longer, it can't be our home any more."Am I to infer the quivering lip and the misty eye, or should I rather assume the pout of an urchin whose hand has been smacked for reaching into the cookie jar five minutes before dinnertime?
She said she was disappointed other country singers didn't back up the Dixie Chicks in their criticism of George W Bush's politics on Iraq.Probably because the rest of the country music scene recognized that you couldn't have pulled a bigger faux pas if you had started lighting farts during a papal audience. You slipped the turd into the punchbowl; don't act so surprised nobody wanted a drink after that.
"A few weeks ago, Merle Haggard said a couple of nice words about us, but that was it," Maguire complained.
"The support we got came from others, like Bruce Springsteen."Yeah, Bruce is also eternally in search of his own authenticity. He apparently believes New Jersey borders Nebraska. The four of you should get on like gangbusters.
Going home empty-handed from the Country Awards ceremony also made them decide to break with the scene, Maguire said.Dingdingdingdingdingdingding!! "If you don't reward our brave dissent we're going to pack our toys and go home."
"Instead, we won three Grammys against much stronger competition."We don't want your stinky awards anyway." Way to burn that bridge, fiddlechick.
"So we now consider ourselves part of the big Rock 'n' Roll family."I'll alert Ozzy. Just remember not to invite Ted Nugent to your housewarming; I don't think he's quite ready to adopt you yet.
Holy Prime Directive, you're Robocop!The hell you say.
Well, you're neither colossal, nor technically a robot, but your arthritic lurching and dubious moralsWell, that part's true.
have found their way into the hearts of futuristic rebels and children everywhere. You walk through fire, catch bullets from the air, and you never, ever smile. Combine this with an abstract, almost random concept of duty and honour, and you have a police officer one cannot fail to adore.Whatever.
Thank you, Robocop.
You're Egypt!
Curator of ancient mystical secrets, your life on the surface is fairly typical these days, though you are in denial about more things than most people. Nevertheless, you're trying to convince people that you're safe despite your more volatile and unstable times that seem to be behind you. You like cats a whole lot. You'd probably really appreciate The Blue Pyramid.
Take the Country Quiz at the Blue Pyramid.
September 14, 2003 -- THEY have cell phones. They've got e-mail. They shop free at Old Navy, McDonald's and Virgin record stores. They have free access to acupuncture treatments, yoga classes and massage therapy.Cell phones and e-mail.
Welcome to the coddled lifestyles of New York's new "homeless" - young kids who, besides getting pampered by charities, rake in hundreds of dollars a week begging on the street.
Cell-phone toting Dawn, who like most interviewed for this story did not wish her full name revealed, is one of their number, and she's staked out a corner at Fifth Avenue and 14th Street as her begging spot.Then ditch the cellphone, stop asking strangers for money, and change your motherfucking sign, you lying bitch. You're neither hungry, nor broke, nor miserable, and the cynicism with which you are manipulating the good-hearted people who hand you money for your bullshit sobstory makes me hope someone steals your phone and beats you up. Repeatedly.
A sign at her feet reads, "Hungry, broke and miserable . . . All I want is a warm, safe place to stay until I . . . get back home . . . or back on my feet here."
Dawn told The Post she averages $40 a day panhandling - what the new homeless called "spanging" - but recently a stockbroker handed her $600 cash, saying he'd once been in similar straits.
"I don't spend my money on drugs, so I'm able to afford a cell phone, buy clothes and go to the movies once in a while," she said. "Part of the reason I'm living like this is to get away from the material life."
"I don't find joy in a 9-to-5 gig," Tom told The Post. "I'm kind of happy with the way things are now. And if it ever gets to the point where I'm not, I'll change my life."Fuck you, you goddamn parasite.
"some mutant shellacked Maria Shriver-like perma-saluting mannequin"That's just painful.
"all fake smiles and bleached teeth and Botoxed worry lines and pumped-up, silicone-enhanced flag-waving bravado"
"an entirely new, politically purified, blazingly conscious, peace-seeking vision"
"run roughshod over your id like an SUV crushes a bird's nest"
It all comes down to this: Can you, on the deepest and most acute levels possible, in a raw and divine way that does zero dishonor to the various tragedies of your world but instead injects them all with mandatory doses of perspective and divine drunkenness and hot screaming love, can you, with every fiber or your being, with the deepest breath you can possibly take, laugh at the cosmic carnival of it all? .No, I can't. Bite my ass, shitnugget.
The magazine quoted the actor as saying "America is ... like a dumb puppy that has big teeth that can bite and hurt you, aggressive." He was further quoted as saying he wanted his children to "see America as ... a broken toy" that they should explore, get the feel of, then "get out."America as a broken toy isn't anti-American?
Explaining his comments a day later, Depp he had been using a metaphor that was taken "radically out of context," adding, "There was no anti-American sentiment."
"What I was saying was that, compared to Europe, America is a very young country and we are still growing as a nation," he said. "My deepest apologies to those who were offended, affected, or hurt by this insanely twisted deformation of my words and intent."Is it me, or is 'taken out of context' this decade's 'just good friends'?
We are now confronted by a new world situation. We have passed from the confrontation of two blocs because the Russian federation has decided, under the guidance of Mr Putin, to be part of Europe and the West. That is a very big fact. I had the occasion to be president of the G8 in Genoa in 2001, and I was the host of the dinner, trying to bring everyone into the conversation, and I was making jokes as usual. I asked Schroeder about his experiences with women because he has been married four times, and I made him laugh. And I decided after a while just to push my chair back from the table and let them talk, and I saw Blair joking with Chirac, and Putin joking with Bush, and I was joking with everyone, and suddenly I thought, ‘Look, here I am, a man who has felt on his skin the second world war, since I was born in 1936. I saw my father dressed as a soldier, and I thought, ‘What a wonderful world.’I just can't help liking the guy.
"America is dumb, is something like a dumb puppy that has big teeth — that can bite and hurt you, aggressive," Depp was quoted as saying.I hope the painfully inept phrasing is due to some kind of problem with translation. If that's the original English, I'm embarrassed to say we were educated in the same state.
"I am someone who thinks he can influence things," he says. "France, as Karl Marx said, is the country of politics, of the revolution and of universalism. It's these factors that maximise the role of the intellectuel and which maybe explain why there is such a large place given to these bizarre personnages, intellectuals, who proclaim 'le vrai, le juste et le bien', and who see a great nobility in political causes. It contrasts with the empiricisim, pragmatism and intellectual modesty of the Anglo-Saxon world, where there's a caution when it comes to the universal. There is no mythology about politics as there is in France. In England, politics is not a noble calling. It's a normal social activity - perhaps it's better like this."This is precisely the kind of thought process that I find so perplexing in the French--is this really the best they can do? This is the best their educated elite can come up with? Hussars? And just what the hell are the values of 1789, apart from lopping the heads off the people who don't agree with you and dictating the price of bread?
In February 2002, his diplomatic role was made official when President Jacques Chirac and Lionel Jospin, his socialist prime minister, agreed - itself a rare enough event - to appoint him their special envoy in Afghanistan with a brief to advise them on the role French culture could play in a future aid programme. The idea of France sending a philosopher to a war zone was greeted with amusement internationally. At a time when the US was deploying combat aircraft, missiles and special forces to eradicate Taliban forces sheltering al Qaeda terrorists, Levy's arrival in Kabul captured the very essence of all the deep and longstanding differences in the way the world is viewed in Washington and in Paris.
But on Paris's Left Bank, where Levy and Dombasle maintain one of their sumptuous residences, his recommendations were received in deadly earnest. Le Monde, the pre-eminent newspaper of the French establishment, devoted more than 3,000 words to extracts from the 100-page report, which Levy submitted to the president and the prime minister in early April 2002. Its somewhat surreal proposals included training Afghan army officers at Saint-Cyr, the French military academy; the creation of an "Afghan ecole Nationale d'Administration" to imbue the civil service with Cartesian rationality ("We did it in Algeria, why not in Kabul?"); the establishment of a French cultural centre in Kabul; and the formation of a crack team of "hussars to spread the values of 1789" through the Afghan towns and villages.
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Sergei Prokofiev's musical fairy tale Peter and the Wolf is popular with children but not with wolf lovers, and two former world leaders -- Bill Clinton and Mikhail Gorbachev -- aim to put that right in a new recording.So now Peter's just going to abandon his erstwhile friend, the duck, and let the wolf eat him? What about the duck's struggle for existence?
They have teamed up in a new recording that couples the tale with a contemporary version featuring the same two protagonists but a very different ending.
Prokofiev's version ends with Peter capturing the wolf and leading a triumphant procession to the zoo, paining music-loving environmentalists with romantic visions of wolves in the wild.
In the new version, narrated by former U.S. president Clinton and called Wolf Tracks, Peter again captures the wolf, but this time repents of his act and releases the animal, who howls a grateful goodbye.
"Forgetting his triumph, Peter thought instead of fallen trees, parched meadows, choked streams, and of each and every wolf struggling for survival," Clinton narrates.
"The time has come to leave wolves in peace," he adds.
French composer Jean-Pascal Beintus wrote the score for the new wolf-friendly version while former Soviet leader Gorbachev provides an introduction and epilogue.Ok...so no Prokofiev, either. What about this piece is going to persuade me to buy it, if I don't agree with its obviously lupicentric appeasement politics?
"In Prokofiev's classic, man dominates, but Wolf Tracks expresses quite different values of balance and tolerance. All of us hope for a future where these values are lived every day," Gorbachev said.Oh, fuck you. It's still a wolf, and it's still going to eat the duck. Is that the future you're looking forward to, you swine?
The BBC’s credibility is floating in the Thames like a gangster’s corpse.Geez, Tim, tell us what you really think.
"I don't want Steve Trachsel or Al [Leiter] to suffer for my learning on the job," Piazza said in explaining why he is not playing first. Of course, Piazza never offered the same concerns about them suffering due to his clumsy receiving and woeful throwing as a catcher. It is just another lame excuse to avoid what should really be done. The Mets are only playing for the future now, and Piazza should be playing first base every other day to provide his organization clues about how to construct future rosters.Yeah, his catching skills are so clumsy Trachsel allowed one damn run and four hits in seven innings. I absolutely despise the way Sherman and Klapieceofshit and a number of other press pinheads in New York have taken the bit in their teeth about moving Piazza to first and will not relent, even when his performance proves them wrong.
I'm tired of hearing people whine about Enterprise. People criticize it without watching it. You say, "Yeah, I've watched it." No, you haven't. You looked at it but you didn't watch it.I viewed an episode. I wasn't aware that I had to commit to a full season before uttering a word of criticism.
And again, why can't people say "I don't like it." instead of "It sucks."?In my case, because I was disappointed by its lameness, and in my judgment, it sucked.
It's more true to the orignal series than any of the others. Space exploration without much support from home. No holodeck. No transporter to get them out of every little jam. And no reconfiguring the sensor array to emit a tachyon pulse every time something gets in their way. Archer is a "down to earth" (pardon the expression) Captain. He's not a tea-sipping Shakespeare quoter like Picard, a messiah wannabe like Sisco, or an "I've been a science offcier so I can solve any problem on my own, why do I need the rest of you" bore like Janeway. There are some bad shows out there, people. Some bad, bad, bad TV goin on. This ain't part of it. You know what "sucks"? Stargate SG-1. Don't have even see the eye makeup wearing black guy to know its faggot food.That's damning with faint praise, if the best you can say about "Enterprise" is that it's better than all other other horrifyingly bad series Berman's produced. Whether it's "faggot food" or not never crossed my mind.
Chicago sucks. Hate the town, hate the cast, hate musicals. Never saw it. Never gonna. Also faggot food.The fact that you're closed-minded about musicals as a genre, in combination with the fact that you haven't actually seen it, pretty much renders your judgment on whether Chicago sucks or not moot. That's like someone who hates westerns passing judgment on The Searchers (or Bob Klapieceofshit passing judgment on the Mets. But I digress.) I've watched Star Trek literally since infancy, and this show, in my estimation, was as painfully pointless and derivative as TNG. I concede it's possible I saw the worst single episode of the show, but it sure as hell didn't make me want to see any more.
The West Wing sucks. Painfully obvious liberal platform and cast. Where's Squeaky Fromm and John Hinkley when you need em?Well, yes, "West Wing" does suck.
And I'm tired of people complaining about the theme song to Enterprise. Sorry you don't got a new blaring orchestra piece to add to your dusty John Williams collection. Grow up, stand up and walk out of the comic book shop and into the sunlight.What the hell? I'll put my musical tastes up against yours any day of the week. Nor do I frequent comic book shops, not that it would be relevant if I did.
It was a Rod Stewart song. If you actually listened to it, and I know not one of you did, it fits the Star Trek ideal completely. If you don't like Rod Stewart, too bad. He didn't sing it for the series, Russel Watson did. It's the most innovative, appropriate opening I've seen for a series in a long time and it's wasted on you closed-minded, unimaginative people as is the show.I don't care who sang it, nor do I care about its pedigree. I physically cringed when I heard it, and that's where I draw the line. If Celine Dion suits your ideal of Star Trek, fine, but it doesn't suit mine.
