Month: March 2005

Lots of birthdays today

HollyHunter.jpg
Holly Hunter is 47. It appears her face is much younger.

Carl Reiner is 83. From the Encyclopedia of Television:

Carl Reiner is one of the few true Renaissance persons of 20th-century mass media. Known primarily for his work as creator, writer and producer of The Dick Van Dyke Show–one of a handful of classic sitcoms by which others are measured–Reiner has also made his mark as a comedian, actor, novelist, and film director.

Barney Miller is 74. That’s Hal Linden.

Hockey hall-of-famer Bobby Orr is 57.

Miss Hunter’s love interest in Broadcast News, William Hurt, is 55.

The Fabulous Thunderbirds’ Jimmie Vaughan (Stevie Ray’s brother) is 54.

Shelton Lee is 48. His mother called him Spike.

If you once liked Lileks …

but soon grew weary of his blather about Target and Gnat, Gnatterings is just what you need. From the mind of TBogg.

Besides, it’s got the Best line of the day, so far:

“I took a hard look at Daddee and decided that genetics was not going to be my friend.”

Another victory for the small-minded people

The Roman Catholic bishop of San Diego has denied funeral rites to a man who owned a bar and a dance club popular with gays, saying his business activities clashed with church teaching. The owner, John McCusker, who was 31 and gay, died of congestive heart failure on Sunday, his family said. Arrangements had been made for services at his alma mater, the University of San Diego, until Bishop Robert H. Brom intervened. “The bishop concluded that to avoid public scandal Mr. McCusker cannot be granted a funeral in a Catholic church or chapel,” the diocese said. A church official said the decision was not related to Mr. McCusker’s sexual orientation.

AP via The New York Times

The revised Catechism:
Who made us? God made us.
Why did God make us? God made us to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this world and the next … unless you run a gay bar.

A New Screen Test for Imax: It’s the Bible vs. the Volcano

Another insidious victory for the smallest common denominator:

From a report in The New York Times:

The fight over evolution has reached the big, big screen.

Several Imax theaters, including some in science museums, are refusing to show movies that mention the subject – or the Big Bang or the geology of the earth – fearing protests from people who object to films that contradict biblical descriptions of the origin of Earth and its creatures.

The number of theaters rejecting such films is small, people in the industry say – perhaps a dozen or fewer, most in the South. But because only a few dozen Imax theaters routinely show science documentaries, the decisions of a few can have a big impact on a film’s bottom line – or a producer’s decision to make a documentary in the first place.

The mind boggles

Stereophonics’ singer Kelly Jones sparked an airport security alert last week when boarding a flight out of Londons Heathrow Airport for wearing a t-shirt with the print of a gun.

According to reports Kelly was about to board the flight when he found himself questioned after repeatedly setting off the metal detector, he was then hassled by a security guard for his t-shirt who claimed it would prevent him from flying at all.

“I beeped as I went through the metal detector”, Jones is quoted by website Contact Music as saying, “So they took my belt, watch and phone off.

“The guy takes me aside and says, ‘You know you’re not supposed to wear that.’ I said, ‘Not supposed to wear what?’ I honestly didn’t have a clue.”

A security man then pointed to the singer’s T-shirt – which featured a picture of a pistol with a flame coming out of the top.

“I was like, ‘What am I going to do with a gun on a T-shirt?'” Jones continued, “So he called his superior over. By this point I was like ‘You’re having a laugh, mate.’ He started asking me if it was embossed with anything, but it wasn’t.

“I thought he was going to ask me to strip down and change. I mean, it’s not as if my T-shirt was loaded.”

From Stereophonics News via Cosmic Iguana via Michael Froomkin.

Bancroft Prize

The authors of three acclaimed books, one on constitutional law, one on the intellectual history of the American South and one on the history of Israel Hill, a free black community built in Virginia, will be awarded the Bancroft Prize for 2005, Columbia University announced today.

The winners are Melvin Patrick Ely, “Israel on the Appomattox: A Southern Experiment in Black Freedom from the 1790s Through the Civil War” (Alfred A. Knopf); Michael J. Klarman, “From Jim Crow to Civil Rights: The Supreme Court and the Struggle for Racial Equality” (Oxford University Press); and Michael O’Brien, “Conjectures of Order: Intellectual Life and the American South, 1810-1860” (two volumes, The University of North Carolina Press).

One of the most coveted honors in the field of history, the Bancroft Prize is awarded annually by the Trustees of Columbia University to the authors of books of exceptional merit in the fields of American history, biography and diplomacy. The 2005 awards are for books published in 2004.

Via Yahoo — Columbia University Announces 2005 Bancroft Prize Winners

Here’s a list of previous winners (since 1948).

Thirty years later …

This debate has continued since Nixon left office more than 30 years ago. The first time it was presumed settled was in 1974.

From the report in The New York Times:

The director of Richard M. Nixon’s presidential library, under fire from historians for canceling a conference on the Vietnam War, has agreed to eventually make public hundreds of hours of tapes that have been kept secret because they involve Mr. Nixon’s political rather than governmental work.

The library director, John H. Taylor, also agreed that the Nixon estate would make public most of Mr. Nixon’s papers from before and after his presidency. He said the library would work with the National Archives to revise its exhibit on the Watergate scandal, which some historians have said minimized Mr. Nixon’s responsibility, and would help plan a new Vietnam conference.

Mr. Taylor made the promises in an exchange of letters this week with Allen Weinstein, head of the National Archives and Records Administration, who said in an interview yesterday that he would hold the Nixon Library to its word.

NewMexiKen was custodian of Mr. Nixon’s pre-presidential archives for many years (as an employee of the National Archives). Many of those papers were donated to the United States while Mr. Nixon was president. Nice to see that most will be made public soon.

More important law making

Elected representatives just have too damn much time on their hands. Why does this require legislation?

This from Wired News:

A Lone Star State lawmaker shocked by risqué cheerleading routines has filed legislation designed to end “sexually suggestive” performances at high school football games and other events. “It’s just too sexually oriented, you know, the way they’re shaking their behinds and going on,” said Texas state Rep. Al Edward of the cheerleaders’ blue moves. School districts that knowingly permit sexy cheerleading routines would face funding reductions. The owner of an Austin cheerleading school cheered the legislation. “Any coaches that are good won’t put that in their routines,” said J.M. Farias.

NCAA and CBS

The NCAA tournament is exclusive to CBS. Some games I believe can be watched through the internets, but if you’re a typical viewer you’re stuck with what CBS gives you.

What I don’t understand is why the people at Viacom/CBS aren’t clever enough to make money by showing all the games in full on their several channels. Viacom not only owns CBS, they also own UPN. UPN has coverage in 86% of the U.S. Why not show a second game on UPN?

Viacom also owns MTV, Nickelodeon, Black Entertainment Television, VH1, Spike TV, CMT, Showtime, The Movie Channel, Flix and some others. Ought to be room enough for every game.

Hey Viacom, by next year figure out how to make your profit and please the fans. We all have remotes — let us switch between games.

And no annoucers over 70.

Stuff

Bruce Willis is 50 today.

Congress approved Daylight Saving Time on this date in 1918. Word hasn’t reached Indiana and Arizona.

Bob Dylan’s first album was released on this date in 1962.

Wyatt Earp was born on this date in 1848. He died in 1929, age 80. Larry McMurtry has an essay on Wyatt, Back to the O.K. Corral, in the current New York Review of Books.

I am talking, of course, about the gunfight at the O.K. Corral, which, for starters, wasn’t fought in the O.K. Corral—the shooting occurred across the street in a vacant lot adjacent to the local photographer Camillus Fry’s rooming house. Some say the shooting only lasted fifteen seconds; others give it twenty seconds, or even thirty. Local estimate was that some thirty shots were fired, at close if not quite point blank range. Three men were killed and three wounded. The shoot-out at the O.K. Corral was neither more nor less violent than a number of shootings that had occurred in Tombstone or its environs in the few short years of the community’s existence. It solved nothing, proved nothing, meant nothing; and yet, 123 years later, the gunfight at the O.K. Corral is reenacted every day in Tombstone, Arizona, to paying customers—lots of paying customers.

The most recent O.K. Corral movie stars Kevin Costner as Wyatt; the next most recent, released a few months earlier, stars Kurt Russell as Wyatt, with Val Kilmer as Doc. There are so many gunfight-at-the O.K.-Corral movies that they constitute a kind of subgenre of the western. In the most lyrical version, John Ford’s My Darling Clementine (1946), Henry Fonda plays Wyatt Earp.

What I’m wondering is why, in this day and time, anyone should care about Wyatt Earp, or any Earp, or the gunfight at the O.K. Corral, either. The Battle of the Little Bighorn at least offers heroism, spectacle, and mass, whereas the gunfight at the O.K. Corral was merely a bungled arrest. Virgil Earp, not Wyatt, was the peace officer in charge that day. How do we get from a bungled arrest to Henry Fonda, Hugh O’Brian, Burt Lancaster, Kevin Costner, Kurt Russell, and all the other movie land Wyatts? I’d like to know.

It’ll cost you $3.00 to read the whole thing unless you subscribe, but it’s worth it. Of course, you can buy the whole issue in paper for $4.95.

Gentlemen, Ladies, start your engines

A whole new job — the designated starter.

From the report in The New Mexican:

All convicted drunken drivers would have to install ignition interlocks in their vehicles under legislation headed to Gov. Bill Richardson. …

The legislation mandates an ignition interlock for one year for a first-time drunken driver, two years for a second conviction, and three years for a third offense.

A fourth conviction would require lifetime use of the device, although an offender could appeal to a court to lift that after five years.

Ignition interlocks are available for rent and the state has a fund that can help pay the costs for people unable to afford them.

The devices prevent intoxicated drivers from starting their vehicles.

Grandstanding

Let’s subpoena a woman who’s been in a coma for 15 years. That would be a good one. That would show we are serious people.

From the report in The Washington Post:

Doctors removed the feeding tube of America’s most famous brain-damaged patient after a Florida judge rejected efforts by Republican leaders in Congress to stall the end of her feeding. Unless congressional Republicans can get the tube restored, medical experts said, Schiavo will die within two weeks.

The removal came after a dramatic sequence of legal feints that began Friday morning when the House Government Reform Committee issued subpoenas to Schiavo, a woman who has been unable to speak for 15 years; her husband, Michael Schiavo; and several doctors and employees of her hospice, ordering them to appear at a congressional hearing March 25. Then, the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee formally invited Michael and Terri Schiavo to testify on Monday. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist’s statement pointedly noted that it is a federal crime for anyone to interfere with a person’s testimony before Congress.

The maneuvering set off a power struggle pitting Congress’s top leaders against Pinellas County Circuit Judge George W. Greer, who ruled against them.

What kind of society allows people like this to drive?

News story from The Albuquerque Tribune:

A driver whose 2-year-old son died when she crashed as police attempted to stop her was in the Metropolitan Detention Center today, charged with child abuse resulting in death. …

Albuquerque police attempted late Thursday afternoon to stop an SUV that had been weaving through traffic near Girard Boulevard and Coal Avenue, Officer Trish Ahrensfield said.

Perez, the driver, stopped for police, but as they approached, she sped off and hit a truck, Ahrensfield said.

Perez then backed up, hit the police vehicle and then sped east, hitting a curb and a small passenger car, Ahrensfield said.

The SUV rolled onto its side and into a gas station parking lot at Coal and Washington Street, she said. The toddler was thrown from the vehicle at some point, Ahrensfield said, and died. …

Perez’s court records show a driving-while-intoxicated charge in 2000, under another name she used, Crucita Ramirez. The case was dismissed, because the arresting officer failed to appear in court, records show.

Other records under both names show a string of traffic offenses including speeding, driving without insurance and driving on an invalid license, shoplifting charges and one concealed identity conviction that resulted in a 90-day jail sentence.

[ ]

Get it? The headline. Brackets.

Anyway, no upsets in the Albuquerque region. The top eight seeds advanced.

Elsewhere three of the nine seeds beat eight seeds. This always happens. The nines are good picks. Pacific was the only eight seed to win.

A 14, a 13, a 12, an 11 and a 10 seed all won.

NewMexiKen picked New Mexico to defeat Villanova. I didn’t know the Lobos were going to phone-in the first half. The score at half time was 34-11. Eleven! Nice gutsy comeback in the second half though. UNM won the second half 36-21.

It’s the birthday

… of author John Updike. “[O]ne of the chief glories of postwar American literature” is 73.

… of Grammy award winner Charley Pride. He’s 67.

… of Wilson Pickett. The singer of “some of the most incendiary soul music of the Sixties” is 64.

… of Brad Dourif. Deadwood’s Doc Cochran is 55.

… of Jazz guitar great Bill Frisell. He’s 54.

… of the first African-American Miss America. Vanessa Williams is 42.

… of Oscar nominee — for best supporting actress in Chicago — Queen Latifah. She’s 35.

Grover Cleveland, the 22nd and 24th President of the United States, was born on this date in 1837.

Signs of the Apocalypse

Functional Ambivalent goes on a rant:

Somehow I missed this, but Farm Accident Digest saved the day:

Travellers arriving at Luton Airport are to be greeted with the lyrics of John Lennon’s “All You Need Is Love”.

The words of the Beatles’ hit are to be written on the walls of the arrivals walkway after being voted the greatest words of all time in an internet poll.

The greatest words of all time? They’re not even the greatest Beatles lyrics of all time. In fact, they’re barely the best lyrics on “Yellow Submarine,” and that album sucked. There’s nothing particularly poetic about “All You Need is Love,” and the sentiment itself is hippie treacle. Yuck.

All I need, right now, is three fingers of unambiguous bourbon.

Oh, and by the way: Beatles Discography is a great site.

Couple Sells Candles That Smell Like Jesus

From NBC10.com via Boing Boing:

You can find candles with just about every fragrance imaginable, from blueberry to ocean mist to hot apple pie.

Now there’s a candle that lets you experience the scent of Jesus, and they’ve been selling out by the case.

“We see it as a ministry, ” says Bob Tosterud, who together with his wife came up with the idea for the candle.

Light up the candle called “His Essence” and its makers say you’ll experience the fragrance of Christ.

Bob Tosterud and wife Karen say the formula is all spelled out in Psalm 45.

“It’s a Messianic Psalm referring to when Christ returns and his garments will have the scent of myrrh, aloe and cassia,” says Karen Tosterud.