as jury foreman for a civil suit in Suffolk County Court. The case relates to a traffic accident that occurred in 2000.
World’s Ugliest Dog
No doubt you have heard that Sam, the world’s ugliest dog, died last week at the age of 14. And as you can see, he was indeed a very ugly dog.
Sam, a tiny hairless crooked-toothed Chinese pedigree, was the three-time winner of the World’s Ugliest Dog competition. Apparently, he had a very pleasant disposition.
You can read MSNBC’s story here. But if you are looking for a more intimate portrait, or if the story has intrigued or touched you, then you may be interested in the blog of Sam’s owner, which can be found here.
“Rent Belongs In the Pantheon Of Immortal Musicals…”
Well, you can’t get a much better review than that.
Here’s the full NYT review, and here’s some select snippets from the review:
Approaching Chris Columbus’s film adaptation, which reunites most of the original Broadway cast to belt out Mr. Larson’s lung-stretching songs about love, art, real estate and AIDS, I was inclined toward the latter category. Two hours later, I was pleased (and somewhat surprised) to find myself an us, for once, instead of a them. Some aesthetic objections still stand – on screen as onstage, "Rent" is often dramatically jumbled and musically muddled – but every time the film seemed ready to tip into awfulness, the sneer on my lips was trumped by the lump in my throat.
***
In telling their entwined stories, Mr. Columbus has managed a feat similar to the one he pulled off with the first two "Harry Potter" movies; he has taken a source that is fiercely and jealously loved by its core fans and refrained from messing it up.
"Rent" is nothing if not earnest – a full-throated, breathless defense of naïve idealism and unapologetic joie de vivre in the face of death – and the slightest whisper of knowingness or cynicism would spoil it. But a cameo from the smarty-pants shock comedian Sarah Silverman notwithstanding, Mr. Columbus’s movie believes in itself utterly, and affirms that Mr. Larson’s creation belongs with "Hair" and "Fame" in the pantheon of immortal musicals with one-word titles celebrating the self-dramatizing, unembarrassable and resilient spirit of youth.
In other words, "Rent" is occasionally silly, often melodramatic and never subtle.
***
Yes, Bohemia is dead. Its funeral rites are pronounced by Mr. Larson’s best song ("La Vie Boheme," quoted earlier), a wondrously nonsensical catalog of tastes, ideas and attitudes ranging from microbrewed beers to Kurosawa movies, with a toast along the way to "Sontag and to Sondheim and to everything taboo." But the passage of time, which has left almost nothing taboo, has also inoculated "Rent" against the disdain of hipsters who might find it woefully unsophisticated. Its idea of Bohemia is not realistic, but romantic, even utopian. Openhearted to a fault, it stakes its integrity on the faith that even in millennial New York, some things – friendship, compassion, grief, pleasure, beauty – are more important than money or real estate.
Personal note to Cheryl: Give Rosario Dawson (pictured above) a chance, will ya’?
Bush Kept Intelligence From Congress — The List Grows
From The National Journal:
Ten days after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, President Bush was told in a highly classified briefing that the U.S. intelligence community had no evidence linking the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein to the attacks and that there was scant credible evidence that Iraq had any significant collaborative ties with Al Qaeda, according to government records and current and former officials with firsthand knowledge of the matter.
The information was provided to Bush on September 21, 2001 during the "President’s Daily Brief," a 30- to 45-minute early-morning national security briefing. Information for PDBs has routinely been derived from electronic intercepts, human agents, and reports from foreign intelligence services, as well as more mundane sources such as news reports and public statements by foreign leaders.
One of the more intriguing things that Bush was told during the briefing was that the few credible reports of contacts between Iraq and Al Qaeda involved attempts by Saddam Hussein to monitor the terrorist group. Saddam viewed Al Qaeda as well as other theocratic radical Islamist organizations as a potential threat to his secular regime. At one point, analysts believed, Saddam considered infiltrating the ranks of Al Qaeda with Iraqi nationals or even Iraqi intelligence operatives to learn more about its inner workings, according to records and sources.
The September 21, 2001, briefing was prepared at the request of the president, who was eager in the days following the terrorist attacks to learn all that he could about any possible connection between Iraq and Al Qaeda.
Much of the contents of the September 21 PDB were later incorporated, albeit in a slightly different form, into a lengthier CIA analysis examining not only Al Qaeda’s contacts with Iraq, but also Iraq’s support for international terrorism. Although the CIA found scant evidence of collaboration between Iraq and Al Qaeda, the agency reported that it had long since established that Iraq had previously supported the notorious Abu Nidal terrorist organization, and had provided tens of millions of dollars and logistical support to Palestinian groups, including payments to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers.
The highly classified CIA assessment was distributed to President Bush, Vice President Cheney, the president’s national security adviser and deputy national security adviser, the secretaries and undersecretaries of State and Defense, and various other senior Bush administration policy makers, according to government records.
The Senate Intelligence Committee has asked the White House for the CIA assessment, the PDB of September 21, 2001, and dozens of other PDBs as part of the committee’s ongoing investigation into whether the Bush administration misrepresented intelligence information in the run-up to war with Iraq. The Bush administration has refused to turn over these documents.
Indeed, the existence of the September 21 PDB was not disclosed to the Intelligence Committee until the summer of 2004, according to congressional sources. Both Republicans and Democrats requested then that it be turned over. The administration has refused to provide it, even on a classified basis, and won’t say anything more about it other than to acknowledge that it exists.
***
The conclusions drawn in the lengthier CIA assessment-which has also been denied to the committee-were strikingly similar to those provided to President Bush in the September 21 PDB, according to records and sources. In the four years since Bush received the briefing, according to highly placed government officials, little evidence has come to light to contradict the CIA’s original conclusion that no collaborative relationship existed between Iraq and Al Qaeda.
"What the President was told on September 21," said one former high-level official, "was consistent with everything he has been told since-that the evidence was just not there."
Trip down memory lane time. Even though the CIA was telling Bush there was no collaborative relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda, we still got these lies from the Administration:
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There are many more quotes in which the Administration made the Saddam-al Qaeda connection, even though (we now know) the Administration received intelligence doubting that connection, and that intelligence was not shared with Congress. In fact, it’s STILL not being shared with Congress!!
University of Kansas To Offer Course on Intelligent Design
I guess the University of Kansas has had enough of local school board in Kansas trying to wedge creationism into the public school curriculum:
LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP) – Creationism and intelligent design are going to be studied at the University of Kansas, but not in the way advocated by opponents of the theory of evolution.
A course being offered next semester by the university religious studies department is titled "Special Topics in Religion: Intelligent Design, Creationism and other Religious Mythologies.”
"The KU faculty has had enough,” said Paul Mirecki, department chairman.
"Creationism is mythology,” Mirecki said. "Intelligent design is mythology. It’s not science. They try to make it sound like science. It clearly is not.”
Easongate
Back in February, CNN executive Eason Jordon made comments to the effect that the U.S. military targeted journalists. The rightwing blogosphere went ballistic, decrying Jordon’s comments as absurd and unsubstantiated. The whole thing was dubbed "Easongate", and within days, Eason Jordon resigned.
Turns out Eason Jordon wasn’t far off the mark:
US President George W. Bush planned to bomb pan-Arab television broadcaster al-Jazeera, British newspaper the Daily Mirror said, citing a Downing Street memo marked "Top Secret".
The five-page transcript of a conversation between Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair reveals that Blair talked Bush out of launching a military strike on the station, unnamed sources told the daily which is against the war in Iraq.
The transcript of the pair’s talks during Blair’s April 16, 2004 visit to Washington allegedly shows Bush wanted to attack the satellite channel’s headquarters.
Blair allegedly feared such a strike, in the business district of Doha, the capital of Qatar, a key western ally in the Persian Gulf, would spark revenge attacks.
It should be noted that journalists are civilians, even journalists who (arguably) are sympathetic to our enemies. They are not combatents or soldiers. And attacking civilians is, in a word, terrorism.
Besides, I don’t know how you win the hearts and minds of the Arab nations by blowing up journalists.
Have A Whiny Christmas
Looks like the family values folks are going to make this yuletide holiday miserable for everyone.
First, there’s Jerry Falwell, who has a team of 750 lawyers ready to litigate the pants off of anybody who expresses secular thoughts during Christmas. ("What would Jesus do?" Subpoena your ass!!!)
Then there’s the boycott-crazy American Family Association, choosing now to boycott Target for, among other things, NOT saying "Merry Christmas" (but saying instead "Happy Holidays" or "Season’s Greetings" or something like that). Aside from the fact that Target has no such policy, the AFA is destined to fail in its boycott, as it usually does:
As a rule, the AFA boycotts are counterproductive. A few months ago, for example, the group announced it was ending its nine-year boycott of Disney. A grand total of zero of the AFA’s demands had been met and the company enjoyed a surge in profits after the boycott began (though the two were no doubt unrelated). A few months later, the group went after Ford Motor Company, which didn’t seem particularly concerned.
This followed similar recent efforts by the AFA against Crest toothpaste, Volkswagen, Tide detergent, Clorox bleach, Pampers, MTV, Abercrombie & Fitch, K-Mart, Burger King, American Airlines and S.C. Johnson & Son, makers of Windex, Ziploc, Pledge, Glade, and Edge. Late last year, the AFA also went after the movie "Shark Tale," because the group believed the movie was designed to brainwash children into accepting gay rights. Not a single AFA target has ever caved to the group’s demands.
Still, whether Falwell and the AFA are successful or not is hardly the issue. I find such overt politicization of Christmas/Kwanzaa/Hanukkah to be embarrassing and insulting. Good will toward all men? Not according to those zealots, who keep playing the "victim" because businesses won’t run up to the pulpit and engage in proselytizing.
Steve Benen is exactly right:
[T]he right’s perceived "war against Christmas" is getting pretty tiresome. Fox News’ John Gibson has a bizarre book out, while and Bill O’Reilly, Charles Krauthammer, and the truly silly Committee to Save Merry Christmas will probably enjoy the holiday season by whining a lot.And what’s truly annoying is to hear complainers lose sight of those who really suffer. Last year, armed police broke up a Christmas Mass at an underground Catholic church in eastern China, arresting the priest, demolishing a makeshift pulpit and scattering two thousand worshippers. Around the same time, some seasonal temp at the mall wished Bill O’Reilly a generic "Happy Holidays" and he felt like a victim.
A little perspective, people.
Stupid.com
A town in Idaho has decided to change its name to "SecretSanta.Com" in order to hype an online gift exchange management service. I kid you not.
Surprisingly, this is not the first time this has happened. Just ask the folks in Half.com, Oregon. [Half.com is an e-Bay-like online audition site].
Did You Know This?
You may be aware that the death toll for Katrina officially stands at roughly 1,300 (and still rising slowly), but were you aware that 6,644 people are still unaccounted for?
A Spit-Take Moment
John O’Neill, head of the "Swift Boat Veterans For Truth" (the group that circulated unfounded rumors about Kerry’s Vietnam service) is back at it, engaging in more historical rewrites.
Just read this sentence from O’Neill’s op-ed in The New York Sun (subscription required):
Are the politicians like Mr. Kerry who led the campaign to send our kids to war (when it was popular) now to withdraw support while they are locked in combat and apparently succeeding because the task is difficult or unpopular?
That’s right. John Kerry "led the campaign" for the Iraq invasion.
Now, Kerry can be faulted for many things, and chief among them is his vote which gave Bush the authorization to go to war, if needed. But casting that vote is not the same thing as endorsing the invasion. Kerry himself explained this over a year ago:
Two years ago, Congress was right to give the President the authority to use force to hold Saddam Hussein accountable. This President. any President. would have needed the threat of force to act effectively. This President misused that authority.
The power entrusted to the President gave him a strong hand to play in the international community. The idea was simple. We would get the weapons inspectors back in to verify whether or not Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. And we would convince the world to speak with one voice to Saddam: disarm or be disarmed.
A month before the war, President Bush told the nation: "If we have to act, we will take every precaution that is possible. We will plan carefully. We will act with the full power of the United States military. We will act with allies at our side and we will prevail." He said that military action wasn’t "unavoidable."
Instead, the President rushed to war without letting the weapons inspectors finish their work. He went without a broad and deep coalition of allies. He acted without making sure our troops had enough body armor. And he plunged ahead without understanding or preparing for the consequences of the post-war. None of which I would have done.
Yet today, President Bush tells us that he would do everything all over again, the same way. How can he possibly be serious? Is he really saying that if we knew there were no imminent threat, no weapons of mass destruction, no ties to Al Qaeda, the United States should have invaded Iraq? My answer is no – because a Commander-in-Chief’s first responsibility is to make a wise and responsible decision to keep America safe.
So we see that once again, O’Neill is lying. Or, to use the slang he unwittingly helped to popularize, he’s "swiftboating". Again.
Rent: A Review
Well, I read my first review of the movie I have been waiting to see for a long time — "Rent". It looks like I won’t be disappointed. Here are excerpts from The Hollywood Reporter:
"Rent" is one of the best film musicals in years — exuberant, sexy and life affirming in equal measure. Jonathan Larson’s 1996 Tony- and Pulitzer Prize-winning rock musical, based upon Puccini’s opera "La Boheme," makes an electrifying move to the screen as director Chris Columbus and choreographer Keith Young push the singing and dancing out into New York streets and subways.
Stylized action in real locations doesn’t always work in movies, but it does here perhaps because six of the eight actor-performers from the original Broadway show return for the movie version. These actors know their roles down to the grit in their fingernails, so the film feels loose and real, unfettered by a proscenium and opened up in an almost spiritual way.
"Chicago" proved that American audiences can still, on occasion, embrace a genre that has largely gone out of style. But what will mainstream audiences make of a musical about AIDS, drug addiction, homelessness and drag queens? "Rent" will be strong in major markets but needs crackerjack marketing to draw a broad young audience to the film.
"Rent," which Larson, its author and composer, did not live to see became a worldwide success, focuses on a group of impoverished young artists and musicians, struggling to survive in New York’s East Village neighborhood in the 1980s under the shadow of AIDS. "Rent" shares with "La Boheme" an affirmation of the bohemian lifestyle, of creativity and art over anything as mundane as earning a living or paying the rent.
The reason, of course, is these lives might be short. Drugs and HIV inflict several characters. Each feels a pressing need to create a legacy, one in which whom you love is at least important as what you create. You live your art — and life — with a metaphorical gun to your head.
*** [Plot synopsis omitted] ***The film spills out of the cold-water lofts into nearby streets, bars, restaurants, performance spaces and churches in a celebration of the bohemian life. Stephen Goldblatt’s camera is constantly in motion, and Young’s dances have a athletic dynamism that energizes the screen. Some dialogue has been added in Steve Chbosky’s adaptation, but like the stage show the story is told in musical numbers that flow smoothly one into another. Meanwhile, Larson’s music honors a host of traditions, ranging from rock and blues to gospel, soul and even tango.
Columbus managed the complicated logistics of the first two "Harry Potter" movies but never put his own stamp on those huge productions. Something in "Rent," though, hooked him emotionally for the movie represents his best work — confident of the material inherited from Larson, true to that legacy yet willing to make changes and expand the possibilities for the screen.
Nearly every big movie has its set pieces around which the film develops, but "Rent" is all set pieces. Each requires ingenuity and sweat to get the best out of a super-talented cast. That each succeeds on its own terms yet flows together so easily is a tribute to Columbus’ passion for the material.
Howard Cummings’ interior sets, the location work, Aggie Guerard Rodgers’ vibrant costumes, the terrific dances and adventurous cinematography all add up to pure pleasure.
And Now, The Iraqis Weigh In
From Bloomberg:
Iraqi leaders, meeting at a reconciliation conference in Cairo, urged an end to violence in the country and demanded a timetable for the withdrawal of coalition troops from Iraq.
In a final statement, read by Arab League chief Amre Moussa, host of the three-day summit, they called for "the withdrawal of foreign troops according to a timetable, through putting in place an immediate national program to rebuild the armed forces.” No date was specified.
So let’s check the toteboard:
WHO WANTS THE U.S. TO WITHDRAW FROM IRAQ
(1) Most Democrat leaders
(2) The majority of the American public
(3) The U.S. military brass
(4) The Iraqi people, and now…
(5) The Iraqi leaders
It’s only the Republican leadership who wants our troops to stay there with no end in sight.
Broadway May Be Hitting A New Low
From Playbill:
Britney Spears, the international pop star who became a mother this past summer, and recent Sweet Charity audience member, may be Broadway bound.
"The Insider" has reported that the 23-year-old performer is in talks to replace Christina Applegate in the revival of Sweet Charity at the Al Hirschfeld Theatre. The television gossip program also reported that Spears’ husband, Kevin Federline, may join the revival of the Neil Simon-Cy Coleman-Dorothy Fields musical as well.
Kill me baby one more time.
Mildly Depressed People Are More Perceptive
This is one of those scientific studies where I go "Duh", but apparently the scientists at Queens College (in Canada) were astounded:
Surprisingly, people with mild depression are actually more tuned into the feelings of others than those who aren’t depressed, a team of Queen’s psychologists has discovered.
“This was quite unexpected because we tend to think that the opposite is true,” says lead researcher Kate Harkness. “For example, people with depression are more likely to have problems in a number of social areas.”
The researchers were so taken aback by the findings, they decided to replicate the study with another group of participants. The second study produced the same results: People with mild symptoms of depression pay more attention to details of their social environment than those who are not depressed.
Why is this so surprising? I suspect that obese people are more cognizant of the thin people around them than, say, the thin people themselves.
Not Again
A statue of the Virgin Mary in some church in the Sacramento area is crying tears of blood.
Can I just say something before we all get carried away?
When I take a shower in my bathroom, and forget to turn on the fan or open a window, the walls (which are painted yellow), "bleed" red. Not a lot, just a little. This is not a cosmic message. This is the product of paint and condensation.
And this is being generous. There are, quite likely, other reasonable explanations.