Charlton Heston, RIP

A fine actor and a fine person will be missed.

And FYI — Soylent Green wasn’t people.  Soylent Green was all about Charlton Heston.

Naomi Campbell “Mugged” At Zeppelin Concert

According to the FoxNews.

Would it be an event if Naomi Campbell weren’t somehow at the center of things? While Led Zeppelin reunited in London to memorialize Atlantic Records’ Ahmet Ertegun, the supermodel was in a luxury box at the O2 Arena getting mugged.

As the show ended I ran into her coming out of the VIP exit. She was having a fight with one of the security men. As we passed, she announced to me, “Someone stole my handbag. It had two phones in it!”

Naomi, are you sure you just didn’t have your “weapons” confiscated by security?

It begs the joke.

David Copperfield is in trouble with the FBI because he’s using his show as a front for an active sex life.

He must be a great magician.  Spend 20 minutes with David Copperfield, ladies, and he’ll make your dignity disappear!

Randi Rhodes Assaulted by Rush Limbaugh!

My condolences go out to Air America talk show host Randi Rhodes who suffered a brutal beating at the hands of a mugger was brutally assaulted by gravity on Sunday. I hope she recovers quickly.

And I have to express disgust at her Air America cohort Jon Elliot:

Elliott was extremely agitated when he reported on the incident. He opened his show by saying “it is with sadness that tonight I inform you that my Air America colleague Randi Rhodes was assaulted last night while walking her dog near her New York City home.”

Pointing out that Rhodes was wearing a jogging suit and displayed no purse or jewelry, Elliott speculated that “this does not appear to me to be a standard grab the money and run mugging.”

“Is this an attempt by the right wing hate machine to silence one of our own,” he asked. “Are we threatening them. Are they afraid that we’re winning. Are they trying to silence intimidate us.”

The story, from Talking Radio, continues with some outrageous “parallels” on a shooting in Houston and a KKK bombing 35 years prior.

Or, it could just be a mugging total accident. We’ll see what the police say  So says the police and Rhodes’ lawyer.

If what Elliot says is right, that Rhodes was wearing a jogging suit, then it’s unlikely that she was recognized by a random conservative thug and attacked. It was one of either two things– a planned assault (if Randi had a jogging routine, it wouldn’t have been hard for someone to wait for the right time to attack) or a random assault by a deranged attacker.

Either way, this outlet for the Right Wing Hate Machine wishes Randi a speedy recovery and hopes she gets back on AA as soon as possible. We all know she’s the only one with talent there anymore.

UPDATE:  The Radio Equalizer has a roundup of comments from the left that are priceless.

Only the Most Important News

Of course it involves celebrities. Like Cate Blanchett building a home that recycles pee-pee into potable water. That must have been a fun sales meeting! “We have normal plumbing, and then there’s this filtration system that allows you to drink your filtered urine!” “Well, sign me up, Gordo!”

And O.J. is back in the news. Everyone’s producing tapes of Simpson before, during, and after the robbery, so you have to wonder just what the hell went down in Vegas. As for O.J., it looks like what golfs in Vegas, stays in the county jail.

And I’m saving the best for last. Madonna says she’s an “ambassador for Israel” as she arrived in the Holy Land for conference on Kabbalah. (Bear in mind she’s not Jewish.) So, without further ado, I present to the United Nations the new UN Ambassador from Israel, Esther Madonna Ritchie:
And don’t forget, you Orthodox Rabbis, she’s also an author. I hear she plans to send autographed copies of “Sex” bundled with this book to the leaders of Jordan, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Iran and Pakistan, just to help them understand just how well she represents Judaism.

Ridley Scott– The Internet Is Killing Me!

So says the director here. (Well, he said it’s killing the cinema, but hey, I can read between the lines.)

Coming off one of Hollywood’s best summers in recent memory, I can’t really see what he’s talking about. (Although, some think global warming is the cause of the increase in business. I kid you not.)

But, as usual, the internet gets the blame because some people have the time to BitTorrent a 2 GB file on their DSL.

What’s really killing movies? A lack of creativity.

Come on. The biggest movies this summer were a bunch of rehashed ideas:

• Transformers: based off a cartoon of the same name which originated in the 80s.
• The Bourne Ultimatum: From what I hear, a good movie. But a sequel.
• The Simpsons: Another cartoon, but this one is not live action.
• Evan Almighty: A sequel to Bruce Almighty.
• Ocean’s Thirteen. I’m looking forward to Ocean’s Forty-Seven. I hear Fourty-Six will be terrible, though.
• Fantastic Four. A sequel to a bomb that bombed.
• Pirates of the Carribean. Avast mateys! It be a sequel! yarrrr
• Shrek the Third. Already in pre-production for Shrek’s Forty-Seventh. Can’t wait.
• Spider Man 3.
• Harry Potter and the Invasion of the Cash Cow.
• Halloween. It’s a remake.

I just scanned the list of movies and I can only find two original titles in there that were a box-office smash (big opening weekend), and those are I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry, and Ratatouille.

Ridley, are you sure it’s the internet? Or is it Hollywood’s abandoning of originality that’s killing the industry?

Enjoy the silence

Ah, Depeche Mode.

I dedicate this song to the Day of Silence that was, um, yesterday, as many internet radio broadcasters went silent to represent what will happen to them if there’s not a reversal of the CRB’s new insane royalty rates.

If you haven’t already, contact your congressman and express that you need his support for H.R. 2060 or S. 1353. I’ve conveniently linked them to THOMAS here. And don’t forget to visit savenetradio.org for the latest information.

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In a similar vein, it seems that Sen. Inhofe was correct when he overheard Senators Clinton and Boxer talking about wanting to reinstate the Fairness Doctrine. (Clinton and Boxer still deny it, but come on, we know it happened.)

If you’re not familiar with the Fairness Doctrine, it demands that all radio broadcasters using the public airwaves must provide equal time to conservatives and democrats.

Now Sen. Durbin, Senate Majority Whip, is expressing his desire to see it revisited. And Sen. John Kerry is behind it, of course.

And television? Oh, hands off television. And bear in mind it’s the politicians who decide whether the content needs to be balanced or not. Rush Limbaugh? Needs a balance. Air America? No balance needed! Who’s going to decide if Dr. Laura needs a balance? What about Lou Dobbs? Glen Beck? Larry King? FOR GOD’S SAKE, WHAT ABOUT LARRY KING!?

Of course the radio stations won’t pick up Air America just so they can play Neal Bortz. One’s a loser and one’s a winner, but I don’t think Bortz gets enough listeners to justify a 12-4 timeslot for radio programming that’s as awful as AA’s was.

The Fairness Doctrine is inherently unfair to require a private broadcaster to follow rules that make him/her lose money just to make a political point. And let’s just say with sites like HotAir, Think Progress, Daily Kos, Instapundit, Drudge Report, The PuffingTons Host, and countless others, is there really a lack of information being disseminated to people in the information age that we have to legislate “fairness“?

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I dedicate this video to term limits.

The Chris Benoit Tragedy

I used to watch wrestling back when it was the WWF with my roommate from England. It was fun, and it beat watching Ally McBeal. And I remember Chris Benoit. He was a decent wrestler but didn’t really have the magnetism of a Mick Foley or Rick Flair.

To hear the news that Benoit killed his wife and 7-year old son in a murder-suicide is absolutely tragic.

But what’s worse is to air a “3-hour tribute” to Benoit as a wrestler.

The WWE canceled its live “Monday Night RAW” card in Corpus Christi, Texas, and USA Network aired a three-hour tribute to Benoit in place of the scheduled wrestling telecast.

I understand there’s money to be made, but the man just slaughtered his wife and his child before killing himself. That’s not something we should be offering a tribute to.

Video Games — The Next Heroin

I noticed a stream of stories about the AMA considering labeling video game addiction an actual disorder. I find this interesting, simply because comparing “World of Warcraft” to alcohol, sex, and drug addiction is much like comparing smallpox to the common cold.

As with any good story, it’s got a human connection.

Joyce Protopapas of Frisco, Texas, said her 17-year-old son, Michael, was a video addict. Over nearly two years, video and Internet games transformed him from an outgoing, academically gifted teen into a reclusive manipulator who flunked two 10th grade classes and spent several hours day and night playing a popular online video game called World of Warcraft.

Interesting. I wonder how many nights she slept at ease knowing her son was home and not out doing drugs or cow tipping. But once she wanted him to get out of the house, he rebelled and got angry at her. And when she threatened to take away his social network, he became belligerent.

I can understand the “addiction”, so to speak, but it’s not a classic addiction that’s linked to endorphin release. Instead, it’s a social addiction. Michael was having fun playing WoW. He was having more fun than going to high school and dealing with the cliques who mocked his intelligence and shot him down for dates. With WoW, he had a social network, could participate in group activities, chat and solve problems in a group-oriented dynamic.

Now, compare that to a heroin addict who shoots heroin into his veins. Or the crack addict who steals from people for the next hit.

Michael’s a teenager. He’s prone to rebellion, and he obviously doesn’t like the idea of his mother running his life. She shopped through a number of therapists until somebody agreed with her diagnosis while all the rest dismissed her outright.

Now, just to be clear, I played WoW. It is “addictive” because it’s “fun”. I did stop playing mainly because I wasn’t having as much “fun” as I used to. It’s the same reason I stopped smoking crack, shooting heroin, popping amphetamines, doing meth, drinking, and dropping acid. And once you see the ridiculousness of that statement, you’ll understand that we have far more problems with our teens than letting them indulge in a online roleplaying game.

I’d rather have my kids playing WoW than getting in with drug addicts. Ms. Protopapas’ problem is that she didn’t define parameters for her son’s game playing, nor does she really understand what her son is going through.

A Titanic Catastrophe!

James Cameron’s “Lost Tomb of–” zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz…..

*snort..* what? Oh, hey, you’re still there? Must’ve dozed off.

That’s right, I was talking about James Cameron’s “The Lost Tomb of Je–”…*snore*

Enough fun with it. I watched the whole thing. And I’ll never get those 5 hours of my life back. Yes, it was 2 hours long. But I fell asleep during it three times! No joke. Let me just say that the documentary was not shocking, not controversial, and most of all, not going to be taken as gospel truth anytime in the near future. And the archaeological world seems to be saying the same things.

Maybe that’s why Discovery isn’t touting the success it had with the doc?

But I’ll recommend it to anyone here who has trouble sleeping. Fifteen minutes of “the name is Joseph. There can’t have been that many Josephs’ running around Israel”. Boring!

But it’s nice to see Cameron has a Titanic success on his hands. One big splash, so to speak, before it sinks to the bottom of the sea, never to be mentioned again.