Legally Blonde: The Musical To Air On MTV?

Ken AshfordPopular CultureLeave a Comment

Heather has the news:

Lb_logo_newOmigod! MTV to Broadcast Legally Blonde in its Entirety Along with Backstage Special
via Broadway.Com Headlines on Sep 04, 2007

In an historic move, MTV has announced plans to film the Broadway musical Legally Blonde and air it in its entirety multiple times on the popular cable network. The first broadcast of the MTV special Legally Blonde – The Musical, which includes a backstage look at the hit show, is scheduled for Saturday, September 29 at 1PM.

This was posted on Playbill:

"Omigod You Guys": MTV May Broadcast Legally Blonde: The Musical
By Andrew Gans
05 Sep 2007

MTV will likely broadcast a performance of the new musical Legally Blonde, which is based on the hit film of the same name, the New York Post reports.

The cable network, the Post says, will film a performance of the musical at the Palace Theatre this month. No air date has been officially announced.

A Sept. 5 statement issued by the show’s producers says, "The report in today’s edition of The New York Post on Legally Blonde — The Musical ("I ‘Blonde’ My MTV") is premature. If an agreement is reached between the producers of the Broadway production and MTV to air a behind-the-scenes special and the production in its entirety, a detailed press release will be issued. There is no confirmed news to be reported at this time."

This would be a rare, if not unprecedented step, for a Broadway musical to air in its entirety during its run. Several productions — including the original casts of Into the Woods and Sunday in the Park with George — were taped during their runs, but were broadcast after closing. A concert version of Les Misérables was aired during the run of that international hit musical, but it was not a fully staged production. More recent shows that have been filmed for broadcast include Smokey Joe’s Cafe and Jekyll & Hyde. The recent revival of Company was also filmed for future broadcast.

Our Crying President

Ken AshfordBush & Co.Leave a Comment

BushcryingGeorge Bush, to author Paul Draper for his book Dead Certain:

"I’ve got God’s shoulder to cry on. And I cry a lot … I do a lot of crying in this job. I’ll bet I’ve shed more tears than you can count, as president. I’ll shed some tomorrow."

I’m with Paul Begala on this one:

[F]orgive me if I don’t join in his pity party. The tears he shed are nothing compared to the tears of the moms and the dads and the wives of — of the men and women who have been killed in combat because of this god-awful war that I believe and most Americans believe that he lied us into. It’s a really unseemly thing for him to be whining about how hard he’s got it.

Rude Pundit too:

It’s such a manipulative, bullshit thing for Bush to say, too. Like a white guy who says, "Nigger" and then talks about how he’s got black friends. How are we supposed to react, huh? "Oh, shit, he’s not so bad ’cause he cries? How can anyone hate a grown man who admits that he weeps on the invisible shoulder of a magical sky wizard?" Not that he’d give a happy monkey fuck how we react, ’cause, see, Bush says repeatedly to Draper, he doesn’t listen to polls: "I understand you can’t let polls tell you what to think."

I think that’s the difference between Clinton and Bush.  Clinton felt our pain; Bush wants us to understand his pain.

Owen Wilson Is Not Alone

Ken AshfordHealth CareLeave a Comment

Lots of celebrity suicide attempts (or alleged one) listed here.  A few surprises for me include:

Donna Summer – tried to leap from an 11-story window at a New York hotel at the peak of her career in 1976, but was discovered by a housekeeper.

Tai Babilonia – attempted suicide after she became addicted to alcohol and amphetamines following her Olympic skating disappointment in 1980.

Drew Carey – after a rough childhood that included sexual molestation by an unknown party and his father’s death, the lovable Price is Right host attempted suicide twice in his teen years.

Mike Wallace – in a 2006 retrospective honoring his retirement as a 60 Minutes correspondent, Wallace revealed a suicide attempt twenty years prior.

Fred “Rerun” Berry – the What’s Happening!! star said he tried to kill himself three times prior to finding religion in 1984.

Nadia Comaneci – while she denied it for years, the gymnastics legend was so stressed out (due to several factors, including her parents’ divorce) that she tried to end her life by drinking bleach just two years after her 1976 Olympics success.

Micky Dolenz – performed a suicide scene in The Monkees’ 1968 film Head, then tried it for real a few years later after the band had broken up by walking into traffic and sitting down in the roadway.

Billy Joel – after the failure of his band Attila, attempted suicide in late 1970 by drinking furniture polish. “It looked tastier than bleach,” he later revealed.

Marie Osmond – The National Enquirer reported that the singer’s hospitalization in the summer of 2006 was due to an attempted suicide, but she and her publicists wrote it off to a reaction to medication.

Online Shorthand

Ken AshfordScience & TechnologyLeave a Comment

Okay, we all know LOL (laughing out loud) and BRB (be right back).

David Pogue, the technology editor of the New York Times suggests that we develop the next generation of online abbreviations.  Some of them are actually kinds good:

* GI — Google it

* MOP — Mac or PC?

* FCAO — five conversations at once

* IIOYT — is it on YouTube?

* DYFH — did you Facebook him/her?

* BIOI — buy it on iTunes

* CMOS — call me on Skype

* GGNUDP — gotta go, no unlimited data plan

* WLF — with the lady friend

* JUOC — jacked up on caffeine

* 12OF — twelve-o’clock flasher (refers to someone less than competent with technology, to the extent that every appliance in the house flashes "12:00")

* SML — send me the link

* RHB — read his/her blog

* MBLO — much better-looking online

* KYST — knew you’d say that

* NBL — no battery left

* CTTC — can’t talk, teacher’s coming

* TWD — typing while driving

* CMT (CMF, CMM, CMB) — check my Twitter (Facebook, Myspace, blog)

* CYE (CYF, CYM, CYB)–check your email (Facebook, Myspace, blog)

He’s also got some suggestions for us 30-or–40-somethings:

* WIWYA — when I was your age

* YKT – you kids today

* CRRE — conversation required; remove earbuds

* WDO? — what are you doing online?

* NIWYM — no idea what you mean

* NCK — not a chance, kid

* B2W — back to work

* AYD? — are you drunk?

* LODH — log off, do homework

* DYMK? — does your mother know?

* IGAT — I’ve got abbreviations, too

O.K.  Start usting them. folks.

Fifteen Minutes Of Fame Ridicule Not Enough For Craig

Ken AshfordSex ScandalsLeave a Comment

The guy’s a glutton for punishment, I guess:

Sen. Larry Craig is reconsidering his decision to resign after his arrest in a Minnesota airport sex sting and may still fight for his Senate seat, his spokesman said Tuesday evening.

Republicans are apoplectic:

Top Republican strategists were neither delighted nor amused by the senator’s decision to rethink retirement after pleading guilty to disorderly conduct following his arrest in a Minnesota airport men’s bathroom.

***

A senior GOP Senate strategist said Republican leaders want him gone now and will press for him to keep his promise to resign. The strategist warned Craig is "losing any goodwill built up among his colleagues," adding, "He is simply a fish out of water, floundering right now to get his last gasp of political air."

"It simply defies reality," said a Senate GOP aide. "You can’t make this up even if you are heavily medicated. The American people heard from Larry Craig that he would resign, and using the word ‘intent’ as a back door doesn’t work with them."

Feel Safe Yet?

Ken AshfordWar on Terrorism/TortureLeave a Comment

Our Air Force misplaced five nuclear warheads.

Mistakes by U.S. Air Force personnel left five nuclear warheads unaccounted for during a three-hour period on Aug. 30, according to Army Times.

The paper, a fellow Gannett publication, cites anonymous sources who say that five Advanced Cruise Missiles were mistakenly loaded on a B-52 bomber that flew from a base in North Dakota to one in Louisiana. The missiles, set to be decommissioned, should have been removed from the plane. Instead, they were mounted on the bomber’s wings.

Microwave Popcorn Is The Harbinger Of Death

Ken AshfordHealth Care1 Comment

PopcornCigarettes?  Nah.  Lung cancer is caused by microwaving popcorn:

Consumers, not just factory workers, may be in danger from fumes from buttery flavoring in microwave popcorn, according to a warning letter to federal regulators from a doctor at a leading lung research hospital.

A pulmonary specialist at Denver’s National Jewish Medical and Research Center has written to federal agencies to say doctors there believe they have the first case of a consumer who developed lung disease from the fumes of microwaving popcorn several times a day for years.

"We cannot be sure that this patient’s exposure to butter flavored microwave popcorn from daily heavy preparation has caused his lung disease," cautioned Dr. Cecile Rose. "However, we have no other plausible explanation."

Oh come now!  One guy gets lung cancer and you blame it on popcorn??  And you issue a nationwide alert?

Panic much?

Woman Looks Inside Her Heart

Ken AshfordHealth CareLeave a Comment

Fo rizzle:

_44095568_jennifer203A woman has seen her own heart on display at a medical exhibition.

Jennifer Sutton, 23, from Ringwood, Hampshire, successfully underwent an operation to replace her heart earlier this year.

She had developed a life-threatening condition called restrictive cardiomyopathy in her teens.

Now the original heart, which nearly killed her, has been put on temporary display by the Wellcome Collection in central London.

The exhibition explores the medical and cultural significance of the heart.

Jennifer decided to lend her heart to the Collection after undergoing surgery at Papworth Hospital, Cambridge, in June.

She hopes to help increase public awareness about organ donation – and the disease that could have ended her life.

Emotional experience

She said: "Seeing my heart for the first time is an emotional and surreal experience.

"It caused me so much pain and turmoil when it was inside me. Seeing it sitting here is extremely bizarre and very strange.

"Finally I can see this odd looking lump of muscle that has given me so much upset."

But while some women are interested in matters of the heart, most women — according to this new study — are just interested in the bling:

The key to falling in love: Men seek beauty, women seek cash

Being soul mates has often been considered the benchmark for any budding relationship.

In fact, looking for love is a much simpler process.

New scientific research has reached the conclusion which many of us have long suspected – that men are attracted by beauty while women focus on a partner’s wealth.

Data taken from a speed-dating study reveals that when it comes to the rules of attraction people behave like stereotypical Neanderthals.

It found that men would try to entice the most attractive woman they met, although they accepted they would make do with someone who falls somewhat short of their dream.

Meanwhile women will try and find a man whose wealth is on the same level as their own perceived attractiveness.

This is the conclusion of research published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by a group of scientist from different universities across the globe.

One those is Peter Todd, of Indiana University, who said the problem with earlier work that suggested that likes attract was that the scientists had simply asked people about preferences.

After the speeding dating sessions, during which each potential pair met briefly and recorded their interest in dating one another again, the researchers compared what they said they were looking for with what they actually did.

In their own assessments, subjects claimed their ideal mate would be similar to themselves. However, in the dating sessions involving 46 people in Munich, men went for looks while women went for money.

"We found that what men and women say they want is not the same as what they actually choose," Mr Todd said.

Harumph.  Golddiggers!

Conservative With A Conscience

Ken AshfordBush & Co., War on Terrorism/Torture, Wiretapping & SurveillanceLeave a Comment

Former Assistant Attorney General Jack Goldsmith was a Bush Administration insider, with a stack of conservative credentials.  As Glenn Greenwald notes, Goldsmith is “no hero.” He “is a hard-core right-wing ideologue who continues to support many of the administration’s most radical positions, including his view that Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions does not apply to terrorist suspects (the position rejected by Hamdan).”

But with the publication of his new book, we’re able to get some new insights into what Goldsmith saw, and it appears that even this staunch conxservative was disapproving of the White House’s tactics.

Exhibit A is FISA.  Like others in the Bush White House, Goldsmith was concerned that the FISA law would prevent wiretaps on international calls involving terrorists….

But Goldsmith deplored the way the White House tried to fix the problem, which was highly contemptuous of Congress and the courts. “We’re one bomb away from getting rid of that obnoxious [FISA] court,” Goldsmith recalls [David] Addington [Cheney’s legal counsel] telling him in February 2004.

Their debate over the Geneva Conventions was even more striking.

When Goldsmith presented his analysis of the Geneva Conventions at the White House, Addington, according to Goldsmith, became livid. “The president has already decided that terrorists do not receive Geneva Convention protections,” Addington replied angrily, according to Goldsmith. “You cannot question his decision.” (Addington declined to comment on this and other details concerning him in this article.)

Goldsmith then explained that he agreed with the president’s determination that detainees from Al Qaeda and the Taliban weren’t protected under the Third Geneva Convention, which concerns the treatment of prisoners of war, but that different protections were at issue with the Fourth Geneva Convention, which concerns civilians. Addington, Goldsmith says, was not persuaded.

Months later, when Goldsmith tried to question another presidential decision, Addington expressed his views even more pointedly. “If you rule that way,” Addington exclaimed in disgust, Goldsmith recalls, “the blood of the hundred thousand people who die in the next attack will be on your hands.”

So even in the White House, the rule of law got shoved in the backseat, and fear of the terrorists took control.

Exhibit B.  The infamous showdown in Ashcroft’s hospital room:

As he recalled it to me, Goldsmith received a call in the evening from his deputy, Philbin, telling him to go to the George Washington University Hospital immediately, since Gonzales and Card were on the way there. Goldsmith raced to the hospital, double-parked outside and walked into a dark room. Ashcroft lay with a bright light shining on him and tubes and wires coming out of his body.

Suddenly, Gonzales and Card came in the room and announced that they were there in connection with the classified program. “Ashcroft, who looked like he was near death, sort of puffed up his chest,” Goldsmith recalls. “All of a sudden, energy and color came into his face, and he said that he didn’t appreciate them coming to visit him under those circumstances, that he had concerns about the matter they were asking about and that, in any event, he wasn’t the attorney general at the moment; Jim Comey was. He actually gave a two-minute speech, and I was sure at the end of it he was going to die. It was the most amazing scene I’ve ever witnessed.”

But I love this part….

After a bit of silence, Goldsmith told me, Gonzales thanked Ashcroft, and he and Card walked out of the room. “At that moment,” Goldsmith recalled, “Mrs. Ashcroft, who obviously couldn’t believe what she saw happening to her sick husband, looked at Gonzales and Card as they walked out of the room and stuck her tongue out at them. She had no idea what we were discussing, but this sweet-looking woman sticking out her tongue was the ultimate expression of disapproval. It captured the feeling in the room perfectly.”

Exhibit C — the White House’s approach to law-breaking:

In his book, Goldsmith claims that Addington and other top officials treated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act the same way they handled other laws they objected to: “They blew through them in secret based on flimsy legal opinions that they guarded closely so no one could question the legal basis for the operations,” he writes. Goldsmith’s first experienced this extraordinary concealment, or “strict compartmentalization,” in late 2003 when, he recalls, Addington angrily denied a request by the N.S.A.’s inspector general to see a copy of the Office of Legal Counsel’s legal analysis supporting the secret surveillance program. “Before I arrived in O.L.C., not even N.S.A. lawyers were allowed to see the Justice Department’s legal analysis of what N.S.A. was doing,” Goldsmith writes.

It’s not surprising that Goldsmith was unable to bear the Bush Administration longer than he did.

More here:

Why did Dick Cheney’s lawyer David Addington get so upset over rescinding this or that Office of Legal Counsel memorandum? The purpose of the OLC’s review process is to collect legal guidance about courses of prospective policies an administration might want to pursue. Under the Bush administration, however, OLC review became a waiver of immunity for breaking the law. From Jeff Rosen’s profile of Jack Goldsmith:

[T]he office has two important powers: the power to put a brake on aggressive presidential action by saying no and, conversely, the power to dispense what Goldsmith calls “free get-out-of jail cards” by saying yes. Its opinions, he writes in his book, are the equivalent of “an advance pardon” for actions taken at the fuzzy edges of criminal laws.

Recall that after the news of the August 1, 2002 OLC torture memo broke, then-AG John Ashcroft testified to the Senate that “There is no presidential order immunizing torture.” Maybe not from the president. But according to Goldsmith’s account, immunization from prosecution is the elephant in the room when administration lawyers discussed in 2002 what CIA interrogators could lawfully do to al-Qaeda and Taliban detainees.

Bush V. Gore History

Ken AshfordSupreme CourtLeave a Comment

According to a new book on the Supreme Court by Jeffrey Toobin, Justice David Souter nearly resigned in the wake of Bush v. Gore because he was so distraught over the decision that effectively ended the Florida recount and installed Bush as president:

Toobin writes that while the other justices tried to put the case behind them, “David Souter alone was shattered,” at times weeping when he thought of the case.

Weeping?  He’s not the only one…

Another Kaye Grogan Treat

Ken AshfordRight Wing Punditry/IdiocyLeave a Comment

My favorite right-wing columnist has another rant up.  Yay!

Scandals and national security . . . don’t mix

That’s the title.  I like how she builds the suspense with the use of ellipses.  "Scandals and national security" . . . what?  Make strange bedfellows?  Live together in perfect harmony?  No, dear readers.  They "don’t mix".

What we desperately need in our leaders are "godly" men. Not just in name only, but in actions.

The "scare quotes" for "godly" suggest that they are godly in name only.  But Kaye is just getting started.

Every time you turn around, another scandal rocks Washington, sending the country into a vertigo type of condition with so many twists and turns.

I don’t suffer from vertigo, but I wasn’t aware that it had twists and turns.  Good to know.

The latest scandal involving Senator Larry Craig of Idaho produced another "I didn’t do anything wrong" abrupt press conference.

A press conference so abrupt that it made me dizzy with vertigo.

The Republicans can add another resignation to their ever growing list. Craig has since resigned amid allegations that he was charged with a misdemeanor for soliciting sex in a men’s bathroom two months ago.

Actually, they weren’t just allegations that he was charged with a misdemeanor.  It actually happened.  He was charged and he pled guilty.  For rizzle.  It’s all in the public record.

I find it odd it has been more than two months since the alleged incident happened, and the liberal news media just sat on the story. Hmm . . . makes one wonder why the hungry news hounds dropped the ball and failed to report such an important story.

Wait, wait.  Now the "liberal media" is bad because it’s not reporting this stuff fast enough?  And what about Fox?  Did they just not know about the story, or were they in on the conspiracy to sit on it for two months?

Apparently, the timing played a large part in outing the specifics of what happened in a Minneapolis airport’s bathroom concerning Craig.

I know that’s a sentence.  It has nouns and verbs and a period at the end.  I just don’t know what it means. 

It seems to me that the timing of the media reporting had NOTHING to do with the specifics of what happened in the airport.  See, the space-time continuum informs us that the media’s reporting (or lack thereof) happened AFTERWARD. 

If this type of conduct is happening in public bathrooms, this should be a lesson for parents to supervise their children when they go to the restroom.

Yeah.  We wouldn’t want our kids to be exposed to foot-tapping.  It would traumatize them.  Maybe even give them vertigo.

Next security guards will have to be hired to monitor the safety of people using public bathroom facilities.

That would actually be kind of creepy.  Maybe even creepier than people tapping their foot in stalls.

Since Senator Craig pleaded guilty to the charge — it seems a little odd that he held a short news conference stating that he hadn’t done anything wrong, and vehemently denied he was a homosexual.

Oh, I feel some Kaye Grogan metaphors coming….

Boy, talk about trying to get the water back over the bridge, and the dam patched up after it bursts, I would say this is a perfect example of the horse already out of the barn.

Wow!  A three-fer!!!  I don’t think the "water over the bridge" is the reverse of "water under the bridge", but that’s nit-picking.

One wonders why she didn’t use the "toothpaste back in the tube" metaphor.  I’ll bet she’s pissed she didn’t think of it.

Many people insist what a person does in their own personal lives should be private. I strongly disagree, because inappropriate behavior, especially by congressional members can be used to bribe a person into voting the way a person or special interest group wants them to vote — or risk being exposed.

Clearly that’s what happened with Craig.  Some gay rights group found out that he was homosexual, and blackmailed him into voting against gay marriage and stuff like that.

Just think what this could impose on national security if a person holding a powerful job were to be bribed into giving out sensitive information to foreign leaders — especially, to the enemies of the United States or suffer the consequences of being caught up in a damaging scandal.

Hey, here’s a thought.  Maybe if we lived in a world where nobody cared whether a politician was gay or not, then there would be nothing to blackmail our gay leaders over.

This type of conduct (if it actually happened) is unacceptable, and Senator Craig did the right thing by resigning. But the damage he has caused the Republican Party could be irreversible and could possibly aid in crippling the hopes and chances for a Republican to be the next president.

Well, I doubt the impact is that big, but hope springs eternal.

Right now the Republican presidential candidates are doing a good job (on their own) crippling themselves. Lord knows they don’t need any more unsolicited canes.

"Unsolicited canes"?  I guess that’s a reference to "crippling".  Like it is the canes that do the crippling.  In any event, I think "Unsolicited Canes" is a good band name.

And President Bush has failed the party by not doing anything constructive to help heal the party of the damage he is responsible for by pushing "amnesty" for millions of illegal immigrants.

It’s not pushing amnesty that was bad, it was failing to heal the party after he pushed the whole amnesty thing.  Oh, excuse me – "amnesty".

Furthermore, he is responsible (along with many others) for allowing hundreds of Mexican trucks to have free access to our roads, claiming this activity will help America’s economy.

"Mexican trucks"?  What are those?  Are they festooned with sombrero logos on the side?  Do they play mariachi music?

Presumably, Kaye is refering to trucks from Mexico being used to deliver goods into the United States.  And, as part of NAFTA, we get to send U.S. trucks into Mexico.  Sounds like both things will help America’s economy.

Instead of cracking down on the illegal entry problem in our beloved country, the Bush Administration is encouraging border violations. After promising the American citizens that he was going to do everything in his power to protect them from another terrorist attack — he has only managed to swing the doors open wider inviting another attack similar or perhaps worse than 9/11.

Come to think of it, Kaye is right.  Perhaps we should stop all foreign ships from coming to the United States, too.  And international flights.  Let’s just make the United States one big domed hermetically-sealed country.

Now it doesn’t take a very bright person to absorb how dangerous it is to allow trucks that could possibly be carrying weapons, drugs, and truckloads of more illegal immigrants — free access to our interstates.

But they check the trucks at the borders, don’t they?  Kaye?

Oh they claim the trucks will be under the highest surveillance, and required to undergo strenuous check points. But somehow that is not very comforting. If the borders can’t be controlled — do they really expect anyone to believe the foreign trucks on our highways are going to be controlled?

Well, perhaps that’ll be because all the national security people will be busy monitoring the restrooms so the little children won’t be exposed to foot-tapping.

And to make matters worse: the immigration authorities claim they don’t know where millions of illegal fugitives are hiding.

I guess that’s why they’re called "fugitives", Kaye.  Because they’re not out in the open.

Admitting to this type of vulnerability should show the world how capable our leaders and homeland security are in protecting their citizens.

Right.  We can be vulnerable; we just shouldn’t admit we’re vulnerable.

There are way too many foxes already lurking in the hen houses . . . to suit me.

Kaye’s favorite metaphor.  Seriously.  She’s obsessed with foxes and poultry.  And we’re treated to more suspense-building ellipses.

And that’s the bottom line!

Hey!  Kaye’s got a new tag line!  It used to be "And that’s just my opinion!"  She must have racked her brains for that one.  She’s still hoping one day to use "And that’s the rest of the story", but Paul Harvey has hogged that one. 

It’s good to have a tag line, because it allows Kaye to avoid the difficult task of tying the loose threads of her column into a coherent point.  She can engage in an alcoholic ramble about gays, the 2008 election, immigration, national security, etc. — flitting about in a random stream-of-consciousness rant — and then duck out the back door with a hearty "And that’s the bottom line", leaving the confused reader asking, "What the fuck did I just read?"