MJ with JB

Different Funerals and outfits,,,

Without James Brown, the Show Will Go On

James Brown's band will go on, just as he always wanted.

Bassist Fred Thomas, 61, said he expects to practice with his bandmates within days as they ready themselves to tour in 2007.

Brown's agent, Frank Copsidas, said it was more likely that the first date for the 11-member band would be sometime in February, perhaps in Los Angeles. He said there was significant interest in the band.

Brown, who died Christmas Day, had always told Copsidas the show must go on, even without him. As for the band members, Copsidas said that Brown told him: "Gotta take care of them. They're family. They're like my kids."

Meetings are planned for late next week to consider whether the band should bring in a new lead vocal or share the singing duties among the remaining band members, most of whom sing anyway.

"I told people to write down all their ideas," Copsidas said. "I love to get all the ideas and hear them."

Thomas said he thinks the remaining band members can put together an impressive show, even without the man who brought them fame.

Brown's death shocked the public because the singer still toured so regularly, even at 73, but Thomas said it was not so surprising to some like himself who had watched Brown's health deteriorate as he fought the effects of heart disease and diabetes.

In the past year, Thomas said, he had pleaded with Brown to pace himself on stage - to show flashes of his flamboyant dance style, but just enough to get the crowd excited.

"He'd say, 'You're right,'" Thomas said.

But then he'd go on stage and dance like he was 16 again, Thomas recalled with a chuckle. "To the last show to see how hard he worked was incredible," he said. "That was his heart. You couldn't stop him."

In the same way, he said, the band can't be stopped either. The group consists of three guitarists, two bass players, two drummers, three horns and a percussionist.

"We are the only true James Brown funk band in the world and the funk of this band is in demand," Thomas said.

No one knows that better than Thomas Hart, a Washington lawyer who sometimes represented Brown in business deals. He noted that trade publications said the value of the Ray Charles catalog grew 10 fold after his death.

Hart had no doubt that Brown's death had significantly boosted the value of his work and life story. But he said, "We would gladly trade the value for his presence for one more day."

Jonelle Procope, president of the Apollo Theater Foundation, said the famed music hall would be interested in staging a tribute to Brown and having his band perform there.

"Sure would, absolutely," she said in an interview at the conclusion of Thursday's public viewing of Brown's body on the Apollo stage where he debuted 50 years ago. "I would very much hope it would be at the Apollo."

She said other vocalists will emerge, allowing the band to go on.

"Funk is funk," she said. "It still would be infectious."

End of the Road...

Iraqis grieve beside the grave of the former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein in Ouja, 130 kilometers (80 miles) north of Baghdad, Iraq, Sunday, Dec. 31, 2006. Saddam was buried shortly before dawn Sunday inside a compound for religious ceremonies in the center of Ouja, the town of his birth.

Flying like a bird at 5,000ft

Man has dreamt of flight ever since our ancestors first saw birds soaring into the sky.

And even after the dream was realised, first with hot-air balloons and later with heavier-than-air aeroplanes, the dream remained unfulfilled.

Because being truly at one with the air, able to swoop and soar like a falcon or an albatross, remained an impossibility. And in legends where the dream became real, as in the myth of the Ancient Greek birdman Icarus, the price was a heavy one; an ignominious crashing to Earth.

But for one brave Swiss pioneer, a former military pilot called Yves Rossy, the dream has become reality.

For as these amazing pictures show, Rossy, 45, has managed to come as close as it is possible to get to the feeling of being truly like a bird.

Back in 2003 Rossy, now a commercial airliner captain, began his Flying Man project, when he strapped a pair of stubby wings to his back and leapt out of a plane, swooping eight miles in freefall for the loss of just 1000ft in altitude.

Strapping on the contraption, which is made of various metals, fibreglass, Kevlar and carbon fibre, Rossy climbs into the small aircraft which is to launch him into his flight.

At an altitude of some 7750ft, he leaps out, just like a skydiver. But unlike a skydiver, he does not plummet to the Alps below.

There is just enough lift generated by the 10ft aerofoil strapped to his back to negate the effects of gravity. At first, after the wings are unfolded electrically, he becomes a glider then, when the four kerosene-powered engines are turned on, he becomes a jetplane.

Thanks to the engines, each of which develops 22kg of thrust, he can not only maintain altitude but actually gain height, he says, at a rate of several hundred feet a minute - until the fuel runs out six minutes later. He lands with a conventional parachute.

"There have been no proper aerodynamic studies of how to simulate this sort of flying," he says. "All simulations involve a rigid aircraft. My wings are rigid, but of course I am not." He steers the contraption, he says, 'purely by intuition'.

Like a bird, he can adjust his 'trim' with incredible precision with the flick of a foot or by simply leaning his body one way or the other.

"It is like how a child would fly," he says. He says his ultimate goal is to take off and land just using his Jetwing without an aircraft to take him into the air.

Now he has gone one better, strapping four, small kerosene-fuelled turbojet engines (mini-versions of the engines used to power airliners designed to power model aircraft) to his wings to create what is effectively the first rocket-propelled hang-glider: the ultimate microlight, jet-powered flight at its most minimalist.

His passion to fly like a bird began at the age of 30 when he began learning how to do free-fall parachute jumping. He has completed 1,200 free-fall jumps.

He said: "I had tried sky-surfing, but that didn't last long enough either, so I decided to create my own wings to enable me to fly for longer."

Rossy's flights have taken place from the Yverdon airfield in western Switzerland. Last week, after opening the wings, he glided to 7750ft, ignited the engines and waited 30 seconds for them to be able to stabilize and began to open the throttle.

At 5000ft, he achieved horizontal flight for more than 4 minutes at 115 mph, faster than the small aircraft which took him into the air.

He steers simply by shifting the weight of his body, and lands with the aid of a parachute once the fuel is exhausted.

"It was an amazingly good feeling, like in a dream. When you are in an aircraft you have to steer by a stick. You have no contact with the elements," Rossy told the Daily Mail.

His extraordinary flight can be seen on Rossy’s website, www.jet-man.com.

Like the semi-mythical flying jet-backpack (which was actually tested by the US military in the 1960s) Rossy's £150,000 flying machine, which with engines, wings and fuel weighs only 110lbs, sounds like something out of science fiction.

"It would be a great device for James Bond so he can go behind enemy lines," he says. "I want to fly, not to steer."

"Up there in my invention, I am as free as a bird."

Best not let the health and safety brigade hear about this.

THE EXECUTION OF SADDAM HUSSEIN

See Video HERE.

See CELL Phone camera video footage HERE.

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Saddam Hussein struggled briefly after American military guards handed him over to Iraqi executioners. But as his final moments approached, he grew calm.

He clutched a Quran as he was led to the gallows, and in one final moment of defiance, refused to have a hood pulled over his head before facing the same fate he was accused of inflicting on countless thousands during a quarter-century of ruthless power.

A man whose testimony helped lead to Saddam's conviction and execution before sunrise said he was shown the body because "everybody wanted to make sure that he was really executed."

"Now, he is in the garbage of history," said Jawad Abdul-Aziz, who lost his father, three brothers and 22 cousins in the reprisal killings that followed a botched 1982 assassination attempt against Saddam in the Shiite town of Dujail.

Iraqi television showed what it said was Saddam's body, his head uncovered and the neck twisted at a sharp angle.

The footage showed the man identified as Saddam lying on a stretcher, covered in a white shroud. His neck and part of the shroud have what appear to be bloodstains. His eyes are closed.

In Baghdad's Shiite enclave of Sadr City, hundreds of people danced in the streets while others fired guns in the air to celebrate. The government did not impose a round-the-clock curfew as it did last month when Saddam was convicted to thwart any surge in retaliatory violence.

It was a grim end for the 69-year-old leader who had vexed three U.S. presidents. Despite his ouster, Washington, its allies and the new Iraqi leaders remain mired in a fight to quell a stubborn insurgency by Saddam loyalists and a vicious sectarian conflict.

The execution took place during the year's deadliest month for U.S. troops, with the toll reaching 108.

President Bush said in a statement issued from his ranch in Texas that bringing Saddam to justice "is an important milestone on Iraq's course to becoming a democracy that can govern, sustain and defend itself, and be an ally in the war on terror."

He said that the execution marks the "end of a difficult year for the Iraqi people and for our troops" and cautioned that Saddam's death will not halt the violence in Iraq.

Within hours of his death, at least 46 people died and more than 80 were wounded in two bombings - 31 in one attack south of the capital and 15 in a Baghdad blast.

Ali Hamza, a 30-year-old university professor, said he went outside to shoot his gun into the air after he learned of Saddam's death.

"Now all the victims' families will be happy because Saddam got his just sentence," said Hamza, who lives in Diwaniyah, a Shiite town 80 miles south of Baghdad.

But people in the Sunni-dominated city of Tikrit, once a power base of Saddam, lamented his death.

"The president, the leader Saddam Hussein is a martyr and God will put him along with other martyrs. Do not be sad nor complain because he has died the death of a holy warrior," said Sheik Yahya al-Attawi, a cleric at the Saddam Big Mosque.

Police blocked the entrances to Tikrit and said nobody was allowed to leave or enter the city for four days. Despite the security precaution, gunmen took to the streets of Tikrit, carrying pictures of Saddam, shooting into the air, and calling for vengeance.

Security forces also set up roadblocks at the entrance to another Sunni stronghold, Samarra, and a curfew was imposed after about 500 people took to the streets protesting the execution of Saddam.

A couple hundred people also protested the execution just outside the Anbar capital of Ramadi, and more than 2,000 people demonstrated in Adwar, the village south of Tikrit where Saddam was captured by U.S. troops hiding in an underground bunker.

In a statement, Saddam's lawyers said that in the aftermath of his death, "the world will know that Saddam Hussein lived honestly, died honestly, and maintained his principles."

"He did not lie when he declared his trial null," they said.

Saddam's half-brother Barzan Ibrahim and Awad Hamed al-Bandar, the former chief justice of the Revolutionary Court, were not hanged along with their former leader as originally planned. Officials wanted to reserve the occasion for Saddam alone.

"We wanted him to be executed on a special day," National Security adviser Mouwafak al-Rubaie told state-run al-Iraqiya television.

Sami al-Askari, the political adviser of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, told The Associated Press that Saddam initially resisted when he was taken by Iraqi guards but was composed in his final moments.

He said Saddam was clad in a black suit, hat and shoes, rather than prison garb. His hat was removed and his hands tied shortly before the noose was slipped around his neck.

Saddam repeated a prayer after a Sunni Muslim cleric who was present.

"Saddam later was taken to the gallows and refused to have his head covered with a hood," al-Askari said. "Before the rope was put around his neck, Saddam shouted: 'God is great. The nation will be victorious and Palestine is Arab.'"

Iraqi state television showed footage of guards in ski masks placing a noose around Saddam's neck. Saddam appeared calm as he stood on the metal framework of the gallows. The footage cuts off just before the execution.

Saddam was executed at a former military intelligence headquarters in Baghdad's Shiite neighborhood of Kazimiyah, al-Askari said. During his regime, Saddam had numerous dissidents executed in the facility, located in a neighborhood that is home to the Iraqi capital's most important Shiite shrine - the Imam Kazim shrine.

Al-Askari said the government had not decided what to do with Saddam's body.

The Iraqi prime minister's office released a statement that said Saddam's execution was a "strong lesson" to ruthless leaders who commit crimes against their own people.

"We strongly reject considering Saddam as a representative of any sect in Iraq because the tyrant only represented his evil soul," the statement said. "The door is still open for those whose hands are not tainted with the blood of innocent people to take part in the political process and work on rebuilding Iraq."

The execution came 56 days after a court convicted Saddam and sentenced him to death for his role in the killings of 148 Shiite Muslims from Dujail. Iraq's highest court rejected Saddam's appeal Monday and ordered him executed within 30 days.

A U.S. judge on Friday refused to stop Saddam's execution, rejecting a last-minute court challenge.

U.S. troops cheered as news of Saddam's execution appeared on television at the mess hall at Forward Operating Base Loyalty in eastern Baghdad. But some soldiers expressed doubt that Saddam's death would be a significant turning point for Iraq.

"First it was weapons of mass destruction. Then when there were none, it was that we had to find Saddam. We did that, but then it was that we had to put him on trial," said Spc. Thomas Sheck, 25, who is on his second tour in Iraq. "So now, what will be the next story they tell us to keep us over here?"

At his death, he was in the midst of a second trial, charged with genocide and other crimes for a 1987-88 military crackdown that killed an estimated 180,000 Kurds in northern Iraq. Experts said the trial of his co-defendants was likely to continue despite his execution.

Many people in Iraq's Shiite majority were eager to see the execution of a man whose Sunni Arab-dominated regime oppressed them and Kurds. Before the hanging, a mosque preacher in the Shiite holy city of Najaf on Friday called Saddam's execution "God's gift to Iraqis."

In a farewell message to Iraqis posted Wednesday on the Internet, Saddam said he was giving his life for his country as part of the struggle against the U.S. "Here, I offer my soul to God as a sacrifice, and if he wants, he will send it to heaven with the martyrs," he said.

One of Saddam's lawyers, Issam Ghazzawi, said the letter was written by Saddam on Nov. 5, the day he was convicted by an Iraqi tribunal in the Dujail killings.

Najeeb al-Nauimi, a member of Saddam's legal team, said U.S. authorities maintained physical custody of Saddam until the execution to prevent him being humiliated publicly or his corpse being mutilated, as has happened to previous Iraqi leaders deposed by force. He said they didn't want anything to happen to further inflame Sunni Arabs.

"This is the end of an era in Iraq," al-Nauimi said from Doha, Qatar. "The Baath regime ruled for 35 years. Saddam was vice president or president of Iraq during those years. For Iraqis, he will be very well remembered. Like a martyr, he died for the sake of his country."

Iraq's death penalty was suspended by the U.S. military after it toppled Saddam in 2003, but the new Iraqi government reinstated it two years later, saying executions would deter criminals.

Saddam's own regime used executions and extrajudicial killings as a tool of political repression, both to eliminate real or suspected political opponents and to maintain a reign of terror.

In the months after he seized power on July 16, 1979, he had hundreds of members of his own party and army officers slain. In 1996, he ordered the slaying of two sons-in-law who had defected to Jordan but returned to Baghdad after receiving guarantees of safety.

Saddam built Iraq into a one of the Arab world's most modern societies, but then plunged the country into an eight-year war with neighboring Iran that killed hundreds of thousands of people on both sides and wrecked Iraq's economy.

When the U.S. invaded in 2003, Iraqis had been transformed from among the region's most prosperous people to some of its most impoverished.

Al Iraqiya television footage

A combination photo of frames grabs taken from Al Iraqiya television shows masked executioners preparing to hang former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein in Baghdad December 30, 2006.

Typo takes tourist 13,000 km out of his way

BERLIN, Germany (Reuters) -- A 21-year-old German tourist who wanted to visit his girlfriend in the Australian metropolis Sydney landed 13,000 kilometers (8,077 miles) away near Sidney, Montana, after mistyping his destination on a flight booking Web site.

Dressed for the Australian summer in T-shirt and shorts, Tobi Gutt left Germany on Saturday for a four-week holiday.

Instead of arriving "down under", Gutt found himself on a different continent and bound for the chilly state of Montana.

"I did wonder but I didn't want to say anything," Gutt told the Bild newspaper. "I thought to myself, you can fly to Australia via the United States."

Gutt's airline ticket routed him via the U.S. city of Portland, Oregon, to Billings, Montana. Only as he was about to board a commuter flight to Sidney -- an oil town of about 5,000 people -- did he realize his mistake.

The hapless tourist, who had only a thin jacket to keep out the winter cold, spent three days in Billings airport before he was able to buy a new ticket to Australia with 600 euros in cash that his parents and friends sent over from Germany.

"I didn't notice the mistake as my son is usually good with computers," his mother, Sabine, told Reuters.

Katie Rees Ex-Miss Nevada

I forget, why isn't she qualified to be Miss Nevada USA?, oh wait, it wasn't the Miss USA "i'm a drunk whore" contest....whew...really had me puzzled for a minute....oh well...

I wonder what her solution for world peace is?....

Dead at the Apollo

Jobs stock options ‘not approved by board’

Steve Jobs, chief executive of Apple Computer, was handed 7.5m stock options in 2001 without the required authorization from the company’s board of directors, according to people familiar with the matter.

Records that purported to show a full board meeting had taken place to approve Mr Jobs’ remuneration, as required by Apple’s procedures, were later falsified. These are now among the pieces of evidence being weighed by the Securities and Exchange Commission as it decides whether to pursue a case against the company or any individuals over the affair, according to these people.

News of the irregularities, which is expected to be revealed in a regulatory filing by Apple before the end of this week, will add to pressure that has been growing on one of Silicon Valley’s most highly-regarded companies since the middle of 2005.

Apple is among more than 160 companies that have owned up to stock option backdating – handing options to executives and other employees at exercise prices that were set in hindsight at favourable levels – a scandal which has led to the departure of a number of chief executives.

The latest revelation is likely to add to questions about Apple’s disclosures about its internal investigation into the backdating issue. In October, the company largely exonerated Mr Jobs over the matter, saying that while he had been “aware” of the backdating “in a few instances”, he “did not receive or otherwise benefit from these grants and was unaware of the accounting implications”.

According to an Apple filing in 2002, the options under review were handed to Mr Jobs in October 2001, at an exercise price of $18.30 a share. However, the purported board authorisation was dated near the end of the year, suggesting that the benefits were both not properly authorised and were backdated. Mr Jobs later surrendered his options before they were exercised, implying that he did not gain any direct benefit from them. He was later given a grant of restricted stock by the company instead.

Apple’s lawyers have briefed people involved in the case on the findings of the company’s internal review of the matter, though it remains unclear how much detail will be included in the filing.

Under Apple’s rules, the chief executive’s remuneration must be set by a compensation committee of independent directors and later authorised by the full board.

An Apple spokesman refused to comment on the matter on Wednesday, but said the company had handed the findings of its internal enquiry to the SEC. The company said in October that it had found “no misconduct by any member of Apple’s current management team” but that its investigation “raised serious concerns regarding the actions of two former officers”. At the same time, it also announced the resignation from its board of Fred Andersen, a former chief financial officer. Mr Andersen had not been a director at the time of the 2001 options grant.

Screw Burning Man, Here's a FESTIVAL !!!

Fire the video up HERE.

Full Details HERE.

Fast forward this to 3 minutes and 17 seconds

Is it just me or...

The idea of Rev Al Sharpton driving in a van with the body of James Brown from Georgia to New York at what has to be ABOVE the speed limit because they couldn't get a plane flight....uh...well FRICKEN FUNNY....

Mom on the Farm

See it HERE.

Burning Love' songwriter dead

Songwriter Dennis Linde, who wrote Elvis Presley's last major hit, "Burning Love," has died. He was 63.

Linde died Friday of a rare lung disease, his daughter Lisa Marsden said Saturday.

"Burning Love" was a hit for Presley in 1972. He also wrote "Goodbye Earl," a hit by the Dixie Chicks in 1999 and "Callin' Baton Rouge," a Garth Brooks hit in 1993.

Linde was born in Abilene, Texas, and became hooked after his grandmother gave him a $14 guitar.

Friends remember him as a man with a quick wit who blended quirky lyrics with up-tempo melodies.

He was also a reclusive homebody who would rather spend time with family than appear at music industry functions, including those honoring him with awards.

"He was the quintessential mystery man of Nashville because he didn't go to all the functions," Scott Siman, an artist manager who had known Linde since the 1970s, told The Tennessean newspaper. "If you ever saw Dennis Linde it was amazing, because you didn't get that opportunity very often."

His other songs included "It Sure Is Monday," recorded by Mark Chesnutt, "Janie Baker's Love Slave" by Shenandoah, "John Deere Green" by Joe Diffie and "Queen of My Double Wide Trailer" by Sammy Kershaw.

He was elected to the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2001 and selected as BMI's Songwriter of the Year in 1994.

Funeral arrangements were incomplete, but the family said they planned a music celebration of Linde's life after New Year's

Former President Gerald Ford dies at 93

Former President Gerald R. Ford, who declared "Our long national nightmare is over" as he replaced Richard Nixon but may have doomed his own chances of election by pardoning his disgraced predecessor, has died. He was 93.

The nation's 38th president, and the only one neither elected to the office nor the vice presidency, died at his desert home at 6:45 p.m. Tuesday.

"His life was filled with love of God, his family and his country," his wife, Betty, said in a statement.

Ford was the longest living former president, surpassing Ronald Reagan, who died in June 2004, by more than a month.

Ford's office did not release the cause of death, which followed a year of medical problems. He was treated for pneumonia in January and had an angioplasty and pacemaker implant in August.

Funeral arrangements were to be announced Wednesday.

"President Ford was a great man who devoted the best years of his life in serving the United States," President Bush said in a brief statement to the nation Wednesday morning. "He was a true gentleman who reflected the best in America's character."

Former President Carter described him Wednesday as "one of the most admirable public servants and human beings I have ever known." Former President Clinton said, "all Americans should be grateful for his life of service."

Ford was an accidental president. A Michigan Republican elected to Congress 13 times before becoming the first appointed vice president in 1973 after Spiro Agnew left amid scandal, Ford was Nixon's hand-picked successor, a man of much political experience who had never run on a national ticket. He was as open and straightforward as Nixon was tightly controlled and conspiratorial.

Ford took office moments after Nixon resigned in disgrace over Watergate.

"My fellow Americans," Ford said, "our long national nightmare is over. Our Constitution works. Our great republic is a government of laws and not of men. Here the people rule."
And, true to his reputation as unassuming Jerry, he added: "I am acutely aware that you have not elected me as your president by your ballots. So I ask you to confirm me with your prayers."

He revived the debate over Watergate a month later by granting Nixon a pardon for all crimes he committed as president.

That single act, it was widely believed, contributed to Ford losing election to a term of his own in 1976. But it won praise in later years as a courageous act that allowed the nation to move on.
The Vietnam War ended in defeat for the U.S. during his presidency with the fall of Saigon in April 1975. In a speech as the end neared, Ford said: "Today, America can regain the sense of pride that existed before Vietnam. But it cannot be achieved by refighting a war that is finished as far as America is concerned." Evoking Abraham Lincoln, he said it was time to "look forward to an agenda for the future, to unify, to bind up the nation's wounds."

Ford was in the White House only 895 days, but changed it more than it changed him.

Even after two women tried separately to kill him, his presidency remained open and plain.
Not imperial. Not reclusive. And, of greatest satisfaction to a nation numbed by Watergate, not dishonest.

Even to millions of Americans who had voted two years earlier for Nixon, the transition to Ford's leadership was one of the most welcomed in the history of the democratic process — despite the fact that it occurred without an election.

After the Watergate ordeal, Americans liked their new president — and first lady Betty, whose candor charmed the country.

In a long congressional career in which he rose to be House Republican leader, Ford lit few fires. In the words of Congressional Quarterly, he "built a reputation for being solid, dependable and loyal — a man more comfortable carrying out the programs of others than in initiating things on his own."

When Agnew resigned in a bribery scandal in October 1973, Ford was one of four finalists to succeed him: Texan John Connally, New York's Nelson Rockefeller and California's Ronald Reagan.

"Personal factors enter into such a decision," Nixon recalled for a Ford biographer in 1991. "I knew all of the final four personally and had great respect for each one of them, but I had known Jerry Ford longer and better than any of the rest.

"We had served in Congress together. I had often campaigned for him in his district," Nixon continued. But Ford had something the others didn't: he would be easily confirmed by Congress, something that could not be said of Rockefeller, Reagan and Connally.

So Ford became the first vice president appointed under the 25th amendment to the Constitution.

On Aug. 9, 1974, after seeing Nixon off, Ford assumed the office. The next morning, he still made his own breakfast and padded to the front door in his pajamas to get the newspaper.
Said a ranking Democratic congressman: "Maybe he is a plodder, but right now the advantages of having a plodder in the presidency are enormous."

In 1976, he survived an intraparty challenge from Ronald Reagan only to lose to Democrat Jimmy Carter in November. In the campaign, he ignored Carter's record as governor of Georgia and concentrated on his own achievements as president.

Carter won 297 electoral votes to his 240. After Reagan came back to defeat Carter in 1980, the two former presidents became collaborators, working together on joint projects.

"His life-long dedication to helping others touched the lives of countless people," Carter said Wednesday. "He frequently rose above politics by emphasizing the need for bipartisanship and seeking common ground on issues critical to our nation."

At a joint session after becoming president, Ford addressed members of Congress as "my former colleagues" and promised "communication, conciliation, compromise and cooperation." But his relations with Congress did not always run smoothly.

He vetoed 66 bills in his barely two years as president. Congress overturned 12 Ford vetoes, more than for any president since Andrew Johnson.

In his memoir, "A Time to Heal," Ford wrote, "When I was in the Congress myself, I thought it fulfilled its constitutional obligations in a very responsible way, but after I became president, my perspective changed."

Some suggested the pardon was prearranged before Nixon resigned, but Ford, in an unusual appearance before a congressional committee in October 1974, said, "There was no deal, period, under no circumstances." The committee dropped its investigation.

Ford's standing in the polls dropped dramatically when he pardoned Nixon. But an ABC News poll taken in 2002 in connection with the 30th anniversary of the Watergate break-in found that six in 10 said the pardon was the right thing to do.

The late Democrat Clark Clifford spoke for many when he wrote in his memoirs, "The nation would not have benefited from having a former chief executive in the dock for years after his departure from office. His disgrace was enough."

The decision to pardon Nixon won Ford a John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award in 2001, and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (news, bio, voting record), acknowledging he had criticized Ford at the time, called the pardon "an extraordinary act of courage that historians recognize was truly in the national interest."

While Ford had not sought the job, he came to relish it. He had once told Congress that even if he succeeded Nixon he would not run for president in 1976. Within weeks of taking the oath, he changed his mind.

He was undaunted even after the two attempts on his life in September 1975. Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme, a 26-year-old follower of Charles Manson, was arrested after she aimed a semiautomatic pistol at Ford on Sept. 5 in Sacramento, Calif. A Secret Service agent grabbed her and Ford was unhurt.

Seventeen days later, Sara Jane Moore, a 45-year-old political activist, was arrested in San Francisco after she fired a gun at the president. Again, Ford was unhurt.

Both women are serving life terms in federal prison.

Asked at a news conference to recite his accomplishments, Ford replied: "We have restored public confidence in the White House and in the executive branch of government."
As to his failings, he responded, "I will leave that to my opponents. I don't think there have been many."

In office, Ford's living tastes were modest. When he became vice president, he chose to remain in the same Alexandria, Va., home — unpretentious except for a swimming pool — that he shared with his family as a congressman.

After leaving the White House, however, he took up residence in the desert resort of Rancho Mirage, picked up $1 million for his memoir and another $1 million in a five-year NBC television contract, and served on a number of corporate boards. By 1987, he was on eight such boards, at fees up to $30,000 a year, and was consulting for others, at fees up to $100,000. After criticism, he cut back on such activity.

Ford spent most of his boyhood in Grand Rapids, Mich.

He was born Leslie King on July 14, 1913, in Omaha, Neb. His parents were divorced when he was less than a year old, and his mother returned to her parents in Grand Rapids, where she later married Gerald R. Ford Sr. He adopted the boy and renamed him.

Ford was a high school senior when he met his biological father. He was working in a Greek restaurant, he recalled, when a man came in and stood watching.

"Finally, he walked over and said, 'I'm your father,'" Ford said. "Well, that was quite a shock." But he wrote in his memoir that he broke down and cried that night and he was left with the image of "a carefree, well-to-do man who didn't really give a damn about the hopes and dreams of his firstborn son."

Ford played center on the University of Michigan's 1932 and 1933 national champion football teams. He got professional offers from the Detroit Lions and the Green Bay Packers, but chose to study law at Yale, working his way through as an assistant varsity football coach and freshman boxing coach.

Ford got his first exposure to national politics at Yale, working as a volunteer in Wendell L. Willkie's 1940 Republican campaign for president. After World War II service with the Navy in the Pacific, he went back to practicing law in Grand Rapids and became active in Republican reform politics.

His stepfather was the local Republican chairman, and Michigan Sen. Arthur H. Vandenberg was looking for a fresh young internationalist to replace the area's isolationist congressman.

Ford got twice as many votes as Rep. Bartel Jonkman in the Republican primary and then went on to win the election with 60.5 percent of the vote, the lowest margin he ever got.

"To his great credit, he was the same hard-working, down-to-earth person the day he left the White House as he was when he first entered Congress almost 30 years earlier," Clinton said Wednesday.

Ford had three sons, Michael, John and Steven, and a daughter, Susan. He was the last surviving member of the Warren Commission, which investigated the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963 and concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone assassin.

After Ford's death, the U.S. flag over the White House was lowered to half-staff. The New York Stock Exchange held a moment of silence Wednesday in Ford's honor, while at Ford's presidential museum in Grand Rapids, a steady stream of visitors lit candles and lined up to sign condolence books about the former president.

Lohan Back on TRACK!

LINDSAY Lohan got down and dirty at Scores West for three hours early yesterday - jumping onstage to do a wild bump-and-grind, then ushering topless dancers into the bathroom to apologize for recently calling them all "whores."

"I love strippers," the 20-year-old actress gushed as she entered the famed mammary mecca at 12:30 a.m., and launched into a half-hour deejay shift during the club's "Turntable Tuesdays."

Next, "She got up on the stripper pole and began to dance with the Scores Girls with 400 customers cheering her on," said our source. "Then, she joined her entourage of 15 in the VIP area, and got lap dances from many of the girls, including a special double-dance from two strippers at once.

"It was hot. But while everybody was drinking, Lindsay was not. It was strictly Perrier for her."

Lohan - who plays a topless dancer in the upcoming film "I Know Who Killed Me" - enraged exotic dancers when Page Six reported this month how she e-mailed pals: "They're all whores, they're all whores . . . except for some, obviously." But yesterday she humbly apologized to several of the Scores girls - and they accepted her mea culpa with open arms.

Katia, a blond, 34D-25-33 knockout, told us, "She was big tipper, and I think that she is great."

Brooke, an impressive 34C-24-34, added, "She'll make a good stripper - she's a natural."

Lohan, who's taking stripper classes to prepare for her movie role, complained of bruises on her inner thighs a few weeks back. In an e-mail to friends intercepted by Page Six, she wrote, "I mean we're talkin' like, UPPER AND INNER THIGH ACTION -bruised . . . like a walking black-and-blue mark. I mean really though, really, I didn't know it was actually possible to have bruises in such areas of the body."

It was a long night of partying for Lohan, who was earlier seen at both at Bungalow 8 and Stereo, where she gave co-owner Mike Satsky some pointers on deejaying. Lohan's mouthpiece Leslie Sloane Zelnik had no comment.

JB's Body To Lie In State At The Apollo

It turns out the Godfather of Soul will take center stage in New York City one more time, and at a venue he helped revolutionize during his storied career. James Brown will lie in state at the Apollo Theater on Thursday where his faithful will be given an opportunity to say their goodbyes.

The viewing will take place from 1 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. at the theater, located on 253 W. 125th Street in Harlem.

Reverend Al Sharpton organized the public viewing and will give a celebratory sermon following the viewing to honor the legendary singer, who was originally scheduled to perform at B.B. King's Blues Club in the city on New Year's Eve.

Brown's body will then be brought back to Augusta, Ga. for a private service on Friday, before another public viewing and his burial on Saturday.

Brown died of heart failure in an Atlanta hospital on Monday at the age of 73 after being admitted for pneumonia days earlier. The statue of him in his native Augusta was draped in an American flag and a red scarf after news of his death became public.

It's Naked Calenders for Charity time AGAIN ...

Chandra Gates decided the Humane Society of Jefferson County was a worthy enough cause for her to bare it all -- well, some of it -- for a nude-calendar fundraiser.

"I'm shy about the picture but definitely proud of the cause," said 39-year-old Gates, an animal caregiver there. "I was big on the fact that the cat was tame and wouldn't be running off."
The Humane Society in the city of Jefferson, about 50 miles west of Milwaukee, is one of many nonprofit organizations from Australia to Wisconsin selling tastefully nude 2007 calendars, although one philanthropy expert says the practice is, er, overexposed.

A group of women ranging in age from mid 50s to early 70s in Yorkshire, England, pioneered the idea in 2000 when they sold a calendar of discreet nude photographs of themselves to raise money for cancer research. The women, whose story inspired the 2003 movie "Calendar Girls," raised $2.55 million through sales of 800,000 calendars as well as book and film royalties.
The women have released a 2007 calendar, the group's third, that has a photo of the women -- clothed -- with Prince Charles.

In Gates' black-and-white photo in the Humane Society calendar, she is pictured from the waist up, holding a cat against her bare chest as she stands in a snowy yard.

Humane Society executive director Lisa Patefield said the calendar's other pictures are equally artistic. Her group expects to raise $30,000 through the sale of 1,500 calendars.

"For nonprofits, it's getting tough to raise money," Patefield said. "In order to be competitive in fundraising, you have to come up with something new, something exciting."

But one philanthropy expert suggests calendars are only a short-term solution for charities looking to maintain long-term viability.

"From a fundraising point of view, it's probably more appropriate to look for people who care about the (charity's) mission -- people who can help financially or with time, with talent," said Peter Rea, a business professor at Baldwin-Wallace College in Berea, Ohio.

Some customers say they buy nude calendars to support a cause even though the calendar will sit in a drawer.

Bill Collar, the president of the Muehl library board in Seymour, Wis., bought a calendar last year featuring six local librarians au naturel but strategically covered by oversized books.
"We put it away as a keepsake. I'm not really comfortable with putting it up in the living room," said Collar, 63. "We purchased it for the purpose of supporting the library."

Rea said such an example shows that charities might be better off selling products their customers would actually want and use.

Some groups, including the Jefferson County Humane Society, said they don't plan to make calendars in subsequent years because the originality factor is gone. But the Calendar Girls in England are still getting strong demand for their latest run of calendars, said Clare Lipscombe, press manager for Leukaemia Research in London, the fundraiser's beneficiary.

"It might be difficult for other groups but we haven't found people losing interest," Lipscombe said. "Maybe because these girls were the original ones who started it all."

Humane Society of Jefferson County HERE.

Leukaemia Research calendar HERE.

James Brown's wife out on her "Hynie"

James Brown's lawyer said Tuesday that the late singer and his partner were not legally married and that she was locked out of his South Carolina home for estate legal reasons.
"It's not a reflection on her as an individual," lawyer Buddy Dallas told The Associated Press. "I have not even been in the house, nor will I until appropriate protocol is followed."

Brown's partner, backup singer Tomi Rae Hynie, was already married to a Texas man in 2001 when she married Brown, thus making her marriage to Brown null, Dallas said. He said Hynie later annulled the previous marriage, but she and Brown never remarried.

"I suppose it would mean she was, from time to time, a guest in Mr. Brown's home," Dallas said.
On Monday, after the 73-year-old "Godfather of Soul" died at an Atlanta hospital, Hynie, 36, found the gates to Brown's Beech Island, S.C., home padlocked and said she was denied access.
Hynie argued that she has a legal right to live in the home with the couple's 5-year-old son.
"This is my home," Hynie told a reporter outside the house. "I don't have any money. I don't have anywhere to go."

Dallas said legal formalities need to be followed now, adding that Brown's estate was left in trust for his children. He declined to elaborate on Brown's final instructions.

"It's not intended and I hope not interpreted to be an act of unkindness or an act of a lack of sympathy," Dallas said. "Ms. Hynie has a home a few blocks away from Mr. Brown's home where she resides periodically when she is not with Mr. Brown. She is not without housing or home."

Dallas said Brown and Hynie had not seen each other for several weeks before his death.
The couple had had a sometimes tumultuous relationship. Brown pleaded guilty in 2004 to a domestic violence charge stemming from an argument with Hynie and was let off with a $1,087 fine. He was accused of pushing Hynie to the floor at the home and threatening to kill her.
Hynie could not be reached Tuesday for further comment. A lawyer who has represented her in the past, Robert Rosen, was out of the country and could not be reached, according to a receptionist in his Charleston, S.C., office.

Brown, whose classic singles included "Papa's Got A Brand New Bag" and "I Got You (I Feel Good)," died of heart failure less than two days after he had been hospitalized with pneumonia, his agent said. Funeral details had not been set Tuesday morning.

Beyonce's hairy situation...

When it comes to glue, Beyonce seems to have trouble avoiding sticky situations.

Earlier this month, she appeared at the Dreamgirls premiere with a patch of oddly marked skin on her cleavage which seemed to be the result of overzealous application of sticky tape.

Now during a performance at a concert in Florida, she appeared onstage with bizarrely bunched up skin by her hairline, after glue had been applied too tightly to hold her hair in position.

The 25-year-old singer is believed to favour a special type of hair extension-where real human hair is woven and glued into her own locks.

But if the hair is fixed too tightly, this unsightly 'varicose vein' effect can result.

Although Beyonce's hair extensions have been badly fitted on this occasion, other celebrities have suffered far more in their quest for a long flowing mane.

Earlier this month for example, actress Kate Beckinsale was pictured with bald patches on the back of her head-an unfortunate hazard of hair extensions.

And celebrities including Victoria Beckham and Nancy Dell'Olio have also suffered baldness when their real hair was ripped out along with the extensions.

Commenting on the danger of this practice, expert Glen Lyons of the Philip Kingsley

Trichological Clinic in London said: "Although techniques have improved, the potential damage caused by traction- the pulling of the attachment from the glue-remains."

Beyonce performed a number of songs at the Florida concert earlier this month, which was televised for the World Christmas Day Parade and aired in the US yesterday.

Merry Christmas 2006

James Brown RIP 2006

So many shows, The Venetian Room at the Fairmont Hotel in SF with a Chinese Trade Delegation, Down front at the SF Civic celebrating your release from prison, But I'll never forget that night at the Saddle Rack in San Jose CA, James Brown playing in a Country Bar , while the local crowd looked on in shock....

Heres some video.

My Ebay Holiday Gift Idea

Gold Leather Biker Jacket and Jeans by Johnsons of the Kings Road London. Commissioned by me for cover of Face Magazine Sept 1986.

The Perfect Superstars outfit and assured of wild results believe me what fun Ive had in this.As an old punk/New Romantic I cant wear it any more and dont want to see it end up in a museum.I think it should go on and have a new lease of life with an electric superstar person.
Jacket is 38 Chest with Mex Tex for Johnsons Label,Jeans 29 Inch waist 31inch inside leg very tight cut with inside leg zips.

Have La Rocka Label.6inch fringe to yoke front and back and sleeves comes with studded gold belt which needs some attention.Two pkts to front.Quilted black lining to Jacket ,jeans lined to knee.

All buttons have unique skull and cross bones engraved design apart from Jeans waist which has been repaired.Jeans have 2 pkts to front and 2 zipped pkts to rear all zips in working order.Jeans also have own belt in gold leather.Jeans are well worn and the knees are sagging but can be saved by a soak and gentle iron also gold has worn on knees.

It's on EBAY, BID HERE

Holiday Gift # 762

The Cold War Unicorns play set can help you relive the good old days when the bad guys wore red, and the good guys wore red, white, and blue.

Recreate the cold war in your living room as the "commie" unicorn and the "freedom" unicorn battle each other for global domination.

Each superpower unicorn stands 3-3/4" tall.

Great gift for the politically nostalgic.

Get them HERE.

Exotic dancers bare bodies for toy drive

SAN FRANCISCO - In addition to the friendliness they normally extend to customers, some exotic dancers in San Francisco will be spreading a more traditional kind of holiday cheer this season, as they help put toys into the hands of underprivileged children.

As they have for more than nine years, approximately 700 dancers at 11 clubs citywide will donate approximately $15,000 from their tips to the San Francisco Firefighters’ Toy Program, a union charity that last year provided nearly 20,000 toys to 4,189 families.

If they choose to participate, dancers working at clubs such as Centerfolds, the Garden of Eden and the Hungry I perform one song for charity during their shifts between Thanksgiving and Christmas. They contribute their tips from that song — usually about $20 — to Toys for Tots.

In 1998, the union began recognizing the dancers’ efforts officially, and this year, the dancers’ donations to the program will have reached a total of $100,000, said Joe Carouba, president of BSE Management, which operates the clubs.

So far this year, the dancers have raised a little more than $10,000. “I’m going to guarantee that it’ll be at least $15,000, even if I have to kick in a little myself,” Carouba said Friday.

But the partnership between the dancers and the union has not always been smooth. Last year, Carouba said, some anonymous letters from department members criticized the union for accepting a donation of a van from the dancers, whom they said set a bad example by being objectified.

But the union is standing by its donors, regardless of what they wear to work.

“These artists are no different than the rest of San Francisco. When it comes time to understand that some people can’t have a toy at Christmas, these guys and gals, they understand it,” John Hanley, president of International Association of Firefighters local 798, said Friday. “I have not heard one child complain about it either.”

Debbie, a dancer at the Gold Club who asked to be referred to by her stage name, said many of the dancers have children of their own. “If you saw how hard the girls work and to know how they’re providing for their own child, they want other kids to be provided for as well,” she said.

The charity dances will end Wednesday with a party at the Gold Club, at which patrons can get their pictures taken with dancers in evening gowns, sitting in an overstuffed “Santa” chair on loan from the toy program. The dancers will present a check to the toy program Friday.

“We're grateful to have it,” Hanley said.

Dan DeCarlo is Spinning in his Grave

Am I the only one that can see the Spears/Lohan WHOREFEST coming to a theater near you in 2008?

Jesus Christ Action Figure Playset

Firm designs nasal spray to fight obesity

Dieters may find some welcome assistance from a new nasal spray that could help resist the appetizing aromas of cinnamon bun stands, pizza parlors or tempting bakeries.

Compellis Pharmaceuticals of Cambridge, Massachusetts said it will begin human trials next year of a nasal spray designed to fight obesity by blocking the senses of smell and taste. It won a patent for the product this month.

"The pleasurable effect of eating is all stimulated by smell and taste," Christopher Adams, the company's founder and chief executive, told Reuters on Tuesday.

"The premise is that olfactory activity that controls both smell and taste is a trigger and a feedback mechanism to eat. If you have some kind of reduced sense of smell or taste, you tend to eat less," he said.

The product, known as CP404, is among the latest devices and treatments under development in the multibillion-dollar fight against obesity.

An estimated 65 percent of adult Americans are overweight or obese, putting them at higher risk of heart disease, diabetes and other conditions that account for more than $100 billion of the country's $1.9 trillion annual healthcare bill.

Smokin with Fred and Barney

Indian Runner Fails Gender Test

An Indian runner who won a silver medal in the women's 800 meters in the Asian Games this month has failed a gender test and is expected to be stripped of the medal, according to reports Monday.

Santhi Soudarajan took the gender test in Doha, Qatar, after the victory.

The test reports sent to the Indian Olympic Association on Sunday said Soudarajan "does not possess the sexual characteristics of a woman," The Times of India reported. The test was administered by a medical commission set up by the games' organizers.

There are no compulsory gender tests during events sanctioned by the International Association of Athletics Federation, but athletes can be asked to take a gender test. The medical evaluation panel usually includes a gynecologist, endocrinologist, psychologist, and an internal medicine specialist.

Dr. Manmohan Singh, chairman of the medical commission of the Indian Olympic Association told the Indian Express newspaper that the Olympic Council of Asia had been informed of the results of Soudarajan's gender test.

Sports officials in the athlete's home state of Tamil Nadu said that they have no information on her whereabouts.

"If the reports are true, then it is very sad and extremely disappointing," her coach, P. Nagarajan, told the Indian Express.

Holiday gift wrapping options

Opie and Anthony at it again...

Mayor Thomas Menino is outraged over a WBCN [website] radio show set to air tomorrow - the day the Hub conducts its annual homeless census - in which homeless men were taken to a New Jersey mall and set loose on a shopping spree to shock the suburban crowds.
“Some of them might be recovering alcoholics coming back from addiction and recovery, and they’re doing this for ratings? For a cheap dollar?” Menino said.
Radio shock jocks Opie & Anthony taped the show yesterday at Short Hills Mall in New Jersey, and it will air in Boston today. This is the third year the radio duo has hosted the “Homeless Shopping Spree,” where they round up homeless people and bus them to a mall and arm them with gift cards.
Though the show does not take place in Boston, Menino said he’s nonetheless angry that it is aired here on the day that scores of volunteerstravel across the city to calculate the number of Hub homeless.
“That radio station and the personalities think this is good programming,” he said. “It’s bad programming. I don’t care if it’s in Timbukto. It shouldn’t be on the air.”
Phone calls to the Opie & Anthony Show programming director at his office were not returned.

See the video HERE.

Miss USA and Her Boobs Leave NYC

Miss USA Tara Conner has been stripped of her tiara and sent packing from the throne. Rumors of Conner's firing have recently been stirring, and the Donald finally confirmed what we were pretty sure of all along. She's allegedly a big-time party girl with a cocaine habit. And she's only 20.

Conner has been booted from her plush Trump Place apartment on the Upper West Side and has returned home to Kentucky. Her air connection options were good (several non-stops leave NYC for both Louisville and Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky daily), but with her record, they probably sent the girl back on the Greyhound bus

If you want to live like a disgraced beauty pageant queen, you should know that Trump Place apartments are actually available to travelers. In theory, at least. A company called A Hospitality Company owned and was renting apartments in the complex as late as this year, but they're now closed.

A Bootsy Collins Christmas

Hear it all right HERE.

Holiday Gift Idea #87

95% of Americans had premarital sex

More than nine out of 10 Americans, men and women alike, have had premarital sex, according to a new study. The high rates extend even to women born in the 1940s, challenging perceptions that people were more chaste in the past.

"This is reality-check research," said the study's author, Lawrence Finer. "Premarital sex is normal behavior for the vast majority of Americans, and has been for decades."

Finer is a research director at the Guttmacher Institute, a private New York-based think tank that studies sexual and reproductive issues and which disagrees with government-funded programs that rely primarily on abstinence-only teachings. The study, released Tuesday, appears in the new issue of Public Health Reports.

The study, examining how sexual behavior before marriage has changed over time, was based on interviews conducted with more than 38,000 people -- about 33,000 of them women -- in 1982, 1988, 1995 and 2002 for the federal National Survey of Family Growth. According to Finer's analysis, 99 percent of the respondents had had sex by age 44, and 95 percent had done so before marriage.

Even among a subgroup of those who abstained from sex until at least age 20, four-fifths had had premarital sex by age 44, the study found.

Finer said the likelihood of Americans having sex before marriage has remained stable since the 1950s, though people now wait longer to get married and thus are sexually active as singles for extensive periods.

The study found women virtually as likely as men to engage in premarital sex, even those born decades ago. Among women born between 1950 and 1978, at least 91 percent had had premarital sex by age 30, he said, while among those born in the 1940s, 88 percent had done so by age 44.

"The data clearly show that the majority of older teens and adults have already had sex before marriage, which calls into question the federal government's funding of abstinence-only-until-marriage programs for 12- to 29-year-olds," Finer said.

Under the Bush administration, such programs have received hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding.

"It would be more effective," Finer said, "to provide young people with the skills and information they need to be safe once they become sexually active -- which nearly everyone eventually will."

Wade Horn, assistant secretary for children and families at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, defended the abstinence-only approach for teenagers.

"One of its values is to help young people delay the onset of sexual activity," he said. "The longer one delays, the fewer lifetime sex partners they have, and the less the risk of contracting sexually transmitted disease."

He insisted there was no federal mission against premarital sex among adults.

"Absolutely not," Horn said. "The Bush administration does not believe the government should be regulating or stigmatizing the behavior of adults."

Horn said he found the high percentages of premarital sex cited in the study to be plausible, and expressed hope that society would not look askance at the small minority that chooses to remain abstinent before marriage.

However, Janice Crouse of Concerned Women for America, a conservative group which strongly supports abstinence-only education, said she was skeptical of the findings.

"Any time I see numbers that high, I'm a little suspicious," she said. "The numbers are too pat."

Worlds Fastest Sheep

Kramer : A Target Audience

Good Night Peter Boyle where ever you are...

Take a Christmas Film Quiz

Do it Here.

The Holiday Reindeer Classic: Unrated Version

See it HERE.

A Taco Bell Moment...

"You folks been to Taco Bell lately? They have a wonderful new menu item, it's the 'Taco Apocalypto.'" -- David Letterman

you know you have been drinking when...

Wisconsin Hunter Bags Deer With 7 Legs

FOND DU LAC, Wis. -- Rick Lisko hunts deer with a bow but got his most unusual one driving his truck down his mile-long driveway. The young buck had nub antlers -- and seven legs. Lisko said it also had both male and female reproductive organs. "It was definitely a freak of nature," Lisko said. "I guess it's a real rarity."

He said he slowed down as the buck and two does ran across the driveway Nov. 22, but the buck ran under the truck and got hit.

When he looked at the animal, he noticed three- to four-inch appendages growing from the rear legs. Later, he found a smaller appendage growing from one of the front legs.

"It's a pretty weird deer," he said, describing the extra legs as resembling "crab pinchers."

"It kind of gives you the creeps when you look at it," he said, but he thought he saw the appendages moving, as if they were functional, before the deer was hit.

Warden Doug Bilgo of the state Department of Natural Resources came to Lisko's property near Mud Lake in the town of Osceola to tag the deer.

"I have never seen anything like that in all the years that I've been working as a game warden and being a hunter myself," Bilgo said. "It wasn't anything grotesque or ugly or anything. It was just unusual that it would have those little appendages growing out like that."

Bilgo took photos and sent information on the animal to DNR wildlife managers.

John Hoffman of Eden Meat Market skinned the deer for Lisko, who wasn't going to waste the venison from the animal.

"And by the way, I did eat it," Lisko said. "It was tasty."

PS: He kept the legs see photos HERE.

Katie Couric Lashes Out at 'Vultures'

Katie Couric admits that her new gig as anchor of the CBS Evening News has been "a little harder than I thought it would be."

"Some people out there are rooting for me to fail," Couric, 49, tells Esquire in its January issue. "You have to be unwavering in your convictions that you're doing something good, because there are a lot of circling vultures that will eat you alive."

Couric points out that Esquire itself criticized her after her Sept. 5 debut. "You guys even take a shot at me," she tells the magazine. "You have something in the November issue, something about how since I've become an anchor, you don't know me anymore. You don't know me anymore? Bite me."

Not that there isn't an upside to the new gig. "I sleep a little later, but I'm busier than ever," Couric tells PEOPLE in its new issue. "I now get to make pancakes or scrambled eggs for my daughters (Ellie, 15, and Carrie, 10) in the morning, though some days I can't get it together and we have cold cereal."

Those Who Passed in 2006...

Here, a roll call of some of the notables in the arts and popular culture who died in 2006. (Cause of death cited for younger people if available.)


JANUARY:

Raul Davila, 74. Played Hector Santos on "All My Children" in the 1990s. Jan. 2.

Lou Rawls, 72. Velvet-voiced singer of such hits as "Love Is a Hurtin' Thing." Jan. 6.

Jack Mabley, 90. Longtime Chicago newspaperman; wrote thousands of columns. Jan. 7.

Don Stewart, 70. Actor ("Guiding Light.") Jan. 9.

Shelley Winters, 85. The forceful, outspoken star who won two Oscars ("The Diary of Anne Frank".") Jan. 14.

Wilson Pickett, 64. Fiery soul music pioneer ("Mustang Sally.") Jan. 19.

Anthony Franciosa, 77. Hollywood actor ("A Face in the Crowd.") Jan. 19.

Janette Carter, 82. Country performer; last surviving child of the Carter Family. Jan. 22.

Fayard Nicholas, 91. With brother Harold, he wowed the tap dancing world, inspiring dancers from Fred Astaire to Savion Glover. Jan. 24.

Chris Penn, 40. Actor ("Reservoir Dogs"); brother of Sean. Jan. 24. Enlarged heart; multiple medications.

Endesha Ida Mae Holland, 61. Her autobiographical play "From the Mississippi Delta" told how the civil rights movement inspired her. Jan. 25.

Gene McFadden, 56. R&B singer, songwriter ("Ain't No Stoppin' Us Now.") Jan. 27. Cancer.

Arthur Bloom, 63. TV news director who helped found "60 Minutes"; his stopwatch used for its ticking image. Jan. 28.

Nam June Paik, 74. Avant-garde artist credited with inventing video art, combining multiple TV screens with sculpture, music, live performers. Jan. 29.

Wendy Wasserstein, 55. Playwright who celebrated women's lives ("The Heidi Chronicles.") Jan. 30. Lymphoma.

Moira Shearer, 80. British ballerina and actress whose debut film, "The Red Shoes," created a sensation. Jan. 31.

FEBRUARY:

Al Lewis, 82. Grandpa on "The Munsters." Feb. 3.

Reuven Frank, 85. Former NBC News president; helped early newscasts adopt more visual approach. Feb. 5.

Franklin Cover, 77. Actor; played the white neighbor on "The Jeffersons." Feb. 5.

Peter Benchley, 65. His 1974 novel, "Jaws," made millions think twice about stepping into the water. Feb. 11.

Jockey Shabalala, 62. Member of Ladysmith Black Mambazo. Feb. 11.

Rickie Layne, 81. Ventriloquist whose dummy, Velvel, had a Yiddish accent. Feb. 11.

Andreas Katsulas, 59. Character actor; one-armed man in 1993 film "The Fugitive." Feb. 13. Lung cancer.

Shoshana Damari, 83. Israel's beloved "queen of Hebrew music." Feb. 14.

William Cowsill, 58. Lead singer of The Cowsills family singing group. Feb. 17.

Ray Barretto, 76. Grammy-winning Latin jazz percussionist. Feb. 17.

Richard Bright, 68. Enforcer Al Neri in "Godfather" movies. Feb. 18.

Curt Gowdy, 86. Sportscaster; called 13 World Series, 16 All-Star games, first Super Bowl. Feb. 20.

Bruce Hart, 68. Lyricist ("Sesame Street" theme.) Feb 21.

Anthony Burger, 44. Gospel music pianist. Feb. 22. Suspected heart attack.

Dennis Weaver, 81. Chester on "Gunsmoke"; the cop hero in "McCloud." Feb. 24.

Don Knotts, 81. Won five Emmys for "The Andy Griffith Show." Feb. 24.

Octavia E. Butler, 58. First black woman to gain prominence as science fiction writer ("Kindred.") Feb. 24.

Darren McGavin, 83. Tough-talking actor; grouchy dad in "A Christmas Story." Feb. 25.

Bill Cardoso, 68. Writer who coined "gonzo" to describe Hunter Thompson's journalism. Feb. 26.

Retired Brig. Gen. Robert L. Scott, 97. Wrote "God Is My Co-Pilot" about his war exploits. Feb. 27.

MARCH:

Jack Wild, 53. Oscar-nominated for "Oliver!"; hero of TV series "H.R. Pufnstuf." March 1. Cancer.

Dana Reeve, 44. Actress-singer; devoted herself to husband Christopher Reeve after he was paralyzed. March 6. Lung cancer.

Pedro Gonzalez Gonzalez, 80. Comic actor in John Wayne films. Feb. 6.

Akira Ifukube, 91. Japanese composer; added menacing music to Godzilla films. Feb. 8.

Phil Brown, 89. Luke Skywalker's loving, doomed Uncle Owen in "Star Wars." Feb. 9.

J Dilla, 32. Hip-hop producer for such artists as A Tribe Called Quest. Feb. 10. Complications of lupus.

Juan Soriano, 85. Mexican painter and sculptor. Feb. 10.

Ali Farka Toure, about 66. Famed African musician; two-time Grammy winner. March 7.

Gordon Parks, 93. Life photographer, then Hollywood's first major black director ("Shaft," "The Learning Tree.") March 7.

Anna Moffo, 73. Opera soprano hailed for her glamorous looks as much as her singing. March 10.

Peter Tomarken, 63. Host of 1980s game show "Press Your Luck." March 13.

Maureen Stapleton, 80. Oscar-winning actress who excelled on stage, screen, and television. March 13.

Ann Calvello, 76. "Roller Derby Queen" known for intimidating rivals, teammates. March 14.

David Blume, 74. Record producer, songwriter ("Turn Down Day.") March 15.

Narvin Kimball, 97. Last founding member of New Orleans' Preservation Hall Jazz Band. March 17.

Oleg Cassini, 92. His designs helped make Jacqueline Kennedy the most glamorous first lady in history. March 17.

Philip B. Kunhardt Jr., 78. Producer of television documentaries on freedom, American presidency. March 21.

Sarah Caldwell, 82. Hailed as first lady of opera for her adventurous productions. March 23.

Buck Owens, 76. Flashy rhinestone cowboy who shaped country music with hits like "Act Naturally." March 25.

Richard Fleischer, 89. Film director ("20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.") March 25.

Nikki Sudden, 49. British musician, a cult favorite. March 26.

Dan Curtis, 78. TV producer, director ("The Winds of War.") March 27.

Britt Lomond, 80. Played dastardly Capitan Monastario in 1950s TV series "Zorro." March 22.

Henry Farrell, 85. Wrote "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?", spurring a horror genre. March 29.

John McGahern, 71. Irish novelist ("That They May Face the Rising Sun.") March 30.

Gloria Monty, 84. Producer who turned "General Hospital" into a pop sensation. March 30.

Jackie McLean, 73. Jazz saxophonist ("Jackie's Bag.") March 31.

Gene Pitney, 66. Singer with a string of hits ("Town Without Pity.") April 5.

Allan Kaprow, 78. Artist who pioneered the unrehearsed form of theater called a "happening." April 5.

Vilgot Sjoman, 81. Swedish director; explicit films such as "I Am Curious (Yellow)" stirred controversy. April 9.

June Pointer, 52. Youngest of hitmaking Pointer Sisters ("I'm So Excited.") April 11. Cancer.

Raj Kumar, 77. One of India's most beloved movie stars. April 12.

Dame Muriel Spark, 88. British novelist ("The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.") April 13.

Morton Freedgood, 93. Best-selling author ("The Taking of Pelham One Two Three") under pen name John Godey. April 16.

Scott Brazil, 50. Emmy-winning producer-director ("Hill Street Blues.") April 17. Lou Gehrig's, Lyme disease complications.

Henderson Forsythe, 88. Won Tony for role as sheriff in "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas." April 17.

Ellen Kuzwayo, 91. South African author ("Call Me Woman.") April 19.

Elaine Young, 71. Real estate agent to Hollywood stars. April 20.

Alida Valli, 84. Italian actress; co-starred in 1949 classic "The Third Man." April 22.

William P. Gottlieb, 89. Took well-known photos of jazz greats. April 23.

Phil Walden, 66. Capricorn Records co-founder; launched careers of Otis Redding, Allman Brothers. April 23.

Jane Jacobs, 89. Author; greatly influenced urban planning. April 25.

"Pem" Farnsworth, 98. She helped husband Philo invent television. April 27.

Jay Bernstein, 69. Hollywood publicist, manager; helped turn Farrah Fawcett into household name. April 30.

Pramoedya Ananta Toer, 81. Indonesian author, democracy advocate. April 30.

MAY:

Jay Presson Allen, 84. Adapted "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" for stage, screen. May 1.

Johnny Paris, 65. Had hits ("Red River Rock") with Johnny & the Hurricanes. May 1.

Louis Rukeyser 73. Public TV host known for commonsense commentary on business. May 2.

Karel Appel, 85. A founder of influential COBRA art group. May 3.

Soraya, 37. Grammy-winning Colombian-American singer ("Solo Por Ti.") May 10. Breast cancer.

Val Guest, 94. British director, screenwriter ("The Quatermass Xperiment.") May 10.

Frankie Thomas, 85. Hero of 1950s TV show "Tom Corbett, Space Cadet." May 11.

Ted Berkman, 92. Author, screenwriter ("Bedtime for Bonzo.") May 12.

Johnnie Wilder Jr., 56. Soulful lead singer of R&B band Heatwave ("Always and Forever.") May 13.

Lew Anderson, 84. Gave "Howdy Doody Show" viewers a tearful goodbye as final Clarabell the Clown. May 14.

Stanley Kunitz, 100. Former U.S. poet laureate, Pulitzer winner. May 14.

Mary Ritts, 95. With husband, created the Ritts Puppets act seen on children's TV shows. May 14.

Cheikha Rimitti, 83. Algerian singer who works dealt boldly with sexuality and oppression; admired by fans of world music. May 15.

Dan Q. Kennis, 86. Producer of oddball films. ("I Spit on Your Corpse!") May 17.

Cy Feuer, 95. Co-producer of Broadway smashes ("Guys and Dolls.") May 17.

Freddie Garrity, 69. Lead singer of 1960s British band Freddie and the Dreamers ("I'm Telling You Now.") May 19.

Katherine Dunham, 96. Choreographer who brought African influences to U.S. dance. May 21.

Billy Walker, 77. Grand Ole Opry star ("Charlie's Shoes.") May 21.

Marshall Fishwick, 82. Pioneer in the study of popular culture. May 22.

Ian Copeland, 57. Rock entrepreneur who represented The Police, Go-Go's. May 23. Melanoma.

Robert Giaimo, 86. Connecticut congressman who helped create national endowment for the arts. May 24.

Henry Bumstead, 91. Oscar-winning production designer ("To Kill a Mockingbird.") May 24.

Desmond Dekker, 64. Brought Jamaican ska music to wide audience ("Israelites.") May 25.

Paul Gleason, 67. Actor; the bad guy in "Trading Places." May 27.

Alex Toth, 77. Comic and cartoon artist ("Space Ghost.") May 27.

Arthur Widmer, 92. Won Academy Award for developing technology for special effects. May 28.

Robert Sterling, 88. Actor; appeared in the ghostly 1950s comedy series "Topper." May 30.

Shohei Imamura, 79. Japanese director twice honored with the top prize at Cannes ("The Ballad of Narayama.") May 30.

Ralph Epperson, 85. North Carolina radio station owner who championed mountain music. May 31.

JUNE:

Rocio Jurado, 61. Powerful-voiced singer-actress; beloved figure in Spain and Latin America. June 1.

Vince Welnick, 55. Grateful Dead keyboard player in the 1990s; also with the Tubes ("White Punks on Dope.") June 2. Suicide.

Johnny Grande, 76. An original member of Bill Haley and His Comets ("Rock Around the Clock.") June 3.

Billy Preston, 59. Exuberant keyboardist and singer ("Nothing From Nothing"); played with the Beatles and Rolling Stones. June 6. Heart infection; kidney failure.

Arnold Newman, 88. Photographer who revealed the souls of artists and politicians. June 6.

Hilton Ruiz, 54. Jazz pianist, composer. June 6. Injured in a fall.

Ingo Preminger, 95. Producer of "M-A-S-H"; Otto's brother. June 7.

Barbara Epstein, 76. She edited the original U.S. version of "The Diary of Anne Frank." June 16.

Vincent Sherman, 99. Hollywood filmmaker ("The Adventures of Don Juan.") June 18.

Claydes Charles Smith, 57. Lead guitarist for Kool & the Gang ("Joanna," "Celebration.") June 20.

Aaron Spelling, 83. TV impresario whose stylish shows ("Beverly Hills 90210") were wildly popular. June 23.

Lyle Stuart, 83. Publisher of such oddities as "The Anarchist Cookbook." June 24.

Arif Mardin, 72. Grammy Award-winning producer; worked with Aretha Franklin. June 25.

Lennie Weinrib, 71. Actor, writer ("H.R. Pufnstuf.") June 28.

George Page, 71. Creator, host of PBS series "Nature." June 28.

Lloyd Richards, 87. Theater director ("A Raisin in the Sun"). June 29.

JULY:

Irving Green, 90. Co-founder of Mercury Records; promoted Sarah Vaughan, Dinah Washington. July 1.

Jan Murray, 89. Comic who tickled fans of 1950s game show "Treasure Hunt." July 2.

Benjamin Hendrickson, 55. Daytime Emmy winner for "As the World Turns." July 3. Suicide.

Hugh Stubbins Jr., 94. Architect; his skyscraper Citigroup Center is a New York icon. July 5.

Kasey Rogers, 80. Actress ("Strangers on a Train.") July 6.

Syd Barrett, 60. Co-founder of Pink Floyd ("The Piper at the Gates of Dawn.") July 7.

June Allyson, 88. Hollywood movies' "perfect wife." July 8.

Milan B. Williams, 58. One of the original members of the Commodores ("Three Times a Lady.") July 9. Cancer.

Bill Miller, 91. Frank Sinatra's longtime pianist. July 11.

Barnard Hughes, 90. Actor who won Tony for "Da." July 11.

Red Buttons, 87. Actor-comedian; won Oscar with a dramatic turn in "Sayonara." July 13.

Carrie Nye, 69. Stage actress ("Half a Sixpence.") July 14.

Harold R. Scott Jr., 70. Stage actor and director ("Paul Robeson.") July 16.

Mickey Spillane, 88. Macho mystery writer who wowed millions of readers. July 17.

Jack Warden, 85. Emmy-winning, Oscar-nominated actor who played gruff characters. ("Heaven Can Wait.") July 19.

Mako, 72. Japan-born actor nominated for Oscar ("The Sand Pebbles") and Tony ("Pacific Overtures.") July 21.

Jessie Mae Hemphill, 71. Blues musician; won several W.C. Handy Awards. July 22.

AUGUST

Bob Thaves, 81. Created quirky comic strip "Frank & Ernest." Aug. 1.

Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, 90. Soprano who won global acclaim. Aug. 3.

Arthur Lee, 61. Singer, songwriter for the 1960s band Love ("Forever Changes.") Aug. 3. Leukemia.

Mike Douglas, 81. Affable TV talk show host and singer ("The Men in My Little Girl's Life.") Aug. 11.

Mazisi Kunene, 76. First poet laureate of a democratic South Africa. Aug. 11.

Bruno Kirby, 57. Character actor ("When Harry Met Sally," "City Slickers.") Aug. 14.

Johnny Duncan, 67. Country singer ("She Can Put Her Shoes Under My Bed Anytime.") Aug. 14.

Walter Sullivan, 82. Novelist ("A Time to Dance"), authority on Southern literature. Aug. 15.

Walter E. Jagiello, 76. Singer known as "Lil' Wally the Polka King." Aug. 17.

Joseph Hill, 57. Vocalist, songwriter for reggae group Culture ("Natty Never Get Weary.") Aug. 19.

Joe Rosenthal, 94. Associated Press photojournalist who took picture of flag-raising on Iwo Jima. Aug. 20.

Bruce Gary, 55. Rock drummer with The Knack ("My Sharona"), session man. Aug. 22. Lymphoma.

Maynard Ferguson, 78. Jazz trumpeter known for his soaring high notes. Aug. 23.

Joseph Stefano, 84. Writer of "Psycho" screenplay. Aug. 25.

Ed Benedict, 94. Animator who put life into Fred Flintstone, Yogi Bear. Aug. 28.

Naguib Mahfouz, 94. First Arab writer to win Nobel Prize in literature; a symbol of liberalism in the face of Islamic extremism. Aug. 30.

Glenn Ford, 90. Actor who played strong, thoughtful protagonists ("The Blackboard Jungle," "Gilda.") Aug. 30.

SEPTEMBER:

Gyorgy Faludy, 95. Poet, translator considered one of Hungary's greatest literary figures. Sept. 1.

Willi Ninja, 45. Dancer immortalized in "Paris Is Burning." Sept. 2. AIDS complications.

John Conte, 90. Actor ("The Man With the Golden Arm.") Sept. 4.

Steve Irwin, 44. Television's irrepressible "Crocodile Hunter." Sept 4. Sting ray attack.

Robert Earl Jones, 96. Actor; father of James Earl Jones. Sept. 7.

Daniel Smith, 20. Anna Nicole Smith's son whose sudden passing made headlines worldwide. Sept 10. Lethal combination of drugs.

Bennie Smith, 72. St. Louis guitarist, played with stars like Chuck Berry. Sept. 10.

Pat Corley, 76. Actor; Phil the barkeep on "Murphy Brown." Sept. 11.

Joseph Hayes, 88. Author of the novel "The Desperate Hours," also wrote Tony-winning play, Hollywood screenplay based on it. Sept. 11.

Mickey Hargitay, 80. Actor, bodybuilder; husband of Jayne Mansfield, father of actress Mariska Hargitay. Sept 14.

Oriana Fallaci, 76. Italian journalist noted for probing interviews with powerful people. Sept. 15.

Patricia Kennedy Lawford, 84. Her marriage to Peter Lawford lent Hollywood glamour to the Kennedy dynasty. Sept. 17.

Danny Flores, 77. Played saxophone and shouted "tequila!" on 1950s hit "Tequila!" Sept. 19.

Joe Glazer, 88. Singer-songwriter who rallied union loyalists ("The Mills Weren't Made of Marble.") Sept. 19.

Elizabeth Allen, 77. Actress; nominated for Tony for "Do I Hear a Waltz?" Sept. 19.

Sven Nykvist, 83. Oscar-winning Swedish cinematographer; worked with Ingmar Bergman, Woody Allen. Sept. 20.

Edward Albert, 55. Actor ("Butterflies Are Free.") Sept. 22. Lung cancer.

Sir Malcolm Arnold, 84. British composer; won Oscar for "Bridge on the River Kwai." Sept. 23.

Etta Baker, 93. Influential blues guitarist; recorded with Taj Mahal. Sept. 23.

Maureen Daly, 85. Noted for 1942 coming-of-age novel "Seventeenth Summer." Sept. 25.

Ralph Story, 86. Host of 1950s quiz show "The $64,000 Challenge." Sept. 26.

"Uncle Josh" Graves, 79. His bluesy playing adorned hundreds of bluegrass, country records. Sept. 30.

Prentiss Barnes, 81. Singer with the Moonglows ("Ten Commandments of Love.") Sept. 30.

Isabel Bigley, 80. Won Tony for role in "Guys and Dolls." Sept. 30.

OCTOBER:

Tamara Dobson, 59. Actress; played Cleopatra Jones in two blaxploitation films. Oct. 2. Multiple sclerosis, pneumonia.

Heinz Sielmann, 89. Zoologist, documentary filmmaker ("Vanishing Wilderness.") Oct. 6.

Jerry Belson, 68. Emmy-winning comedy writer ("The Tracey Ullman Show.") Oct. 10.

Gillo Pontecorvo, 86. Directed "The Battle of Algiers," 1966 epic on Algerian uprising against the French. Oct. 12.

Freddy Fender, 69. Texas' "Bebop Kid"; sang the smash country ballad "Before the Next Teardrop Falls." Oct. 14.

Herbert B. Leonard, 84. TV producer ("Naked City.") Oct. 14.

Sid Davis, 90. Produced quirky educational films warning youngsters of the dangers of drugs, running with scissors. Oct. 16.

Lister Sinclair, 85. Broadcaster and playwright, considered one of Canada's renaissance men. Oct. 16.

Christopher Glenn, 68. CBS correspondent, announcer; voice of children's program "In the News." Oct. 17.

Miriam Engelberg, 48. Graphic author; found improbable humor in her fight with cancer ("Cancer Made Me a Shallower Person.") Oct. 17.

Spoony Singh, 83. His Hollywood Wax Museum gave tourists the next best thing to a real celebrity. Oct. 18.

Phyllis Kirk, 79. Actress who was stalked by Vincent Price in the horror film "House of Wax." Oct. 19.

Jane Wyatt, 96. Actress who for six years on "Father Knows Best" was one of TV's favorite moms. Oct. 20.

Sandy West, 47. Her drumming fueled the influential '70s rock band the Runaways ("Cherry Bomb.") Oct. 21. Lung cancer.

Arthur Hill, 84. Character actor; had title role in the early 1970s series "Owen Marshall, Counselor at Law." Oct. 22.

Lawrence W. Levine, 73. Cultural historian ("Black Culture and Black Consciousness.") Oct. 23.

Marijohn Wilkin, 86. Country songwriter ("The Long Black Veil.") Oct. 28.

NOVEMBER:

Buddy Killen, 73. Nashville songwriter ("I May Never Get to Heaven") and producer; helped launch Dolly Parton's career. Nov. 1.

William Styron, 81. Pulitzer-winning novelist ("The Confessions of Nat Turner.") Nov. 1.

Florence Klotz, 86. Tony-winning costume designer ("Follies.") Nov. 1.

Paul Mauriat, 81. Conductor whose "Love Is Blue" topped U.S. charts in 1968. Nov. 3.

Ernestine Gilbreth Carey, 98. Her memoir on life with 11 siblings, "Cheaper by the Dozen," inspired several films. Nov. 4.

Ed Bradley, 65. The TV journalist who created a distinctive, powerful body of work on "60 Minutes." Nov. 9.

Ellen Willis, 64. Feminist author; New Yorker's first rock critic. Nov. 9. Lung cancer.

Marian Marsh, 93. Doll-faced actress; the milkmaid mesmerized by John Barrymore in "Svengali." Nov. 9.

Jack Palance, 87. Hollywood heavy ("Shane") who turned successfully to comedy, winning Oscar for "City Slickers." Nov. 10.

Gerald Levert, 40. Fiery R&B singer ("Casanova"); son of O'Jays singer Eddie Levert. Nov. 10.

Ruth Brown, 78. Grammy and Tony-award-winning singer ("Teardrops in My Eyes.") Nov. 17.

Jeremy Slate, 80. Actor ("Hell's Angels '69." Nov. 19.

Robert Altman, 81. Caustic Hollywood director ("Nashville.") Nov. 20.

Robert Lockwood Jr., 91. Mississippi Delta blues guitarist ("I Got to Find Me a Woman.") Nov. 21.

Philippe Noiret, 76. French actor "Il Postino" ("The Postman"). Nov. 23.

Betty Comden, 89. Her collaboration with Adolph Green produced "On the Town," "Singin' in the Rain." Nov. 23.

Anita O'Day, 87. One of the most respected jazz vocalists of the 1940s. Nov. 23.

William Diehl, 81. Best-selling novelist ("Primal Fear.") Nov. 24.

Robert McFerrin Sr., 85. First black man to sing solo at the Metropolitan Opera; father of Bobby McFerrin. Nov. 24.

Dave Cockrum, 63. Comic book illustrator who in the 1970s overhauled the X-Men. Nov. 26.

Robert "H-Bomb" Ferguson, 77. A bluesman and pianist who urged listeners to "rock baby rock." Nov. 26.

Bebe Moore Campbell, 56. Best-selling author ("Brothers and Sisters.") Nov. 27. Brain cancer.

Don Butterfield, 83. Tuba player who performed with such stars as Dizzy Gillespie and Frank Sinatra. Nov. 27.

Leon Niemczyk, 82. Polish actor (Roman Polanski's "Knife in the Water.") Nov. 29.

Perry Henzell, 70. Filmmaker whose "The Harder They Come" introduced Jamaican pop culture to global audience. Nov. 30.

DECEMBER:

Claude Jade, 58. French actress. ("Topaz," "Stolen Kisses."). Dec. 1. Cancer.

Jay "Hootie" McShann, 90. Jazz pianist and bandleader who helped refine the blues-tinged Kansas City sound. Dec. 7.

Martha Tilton, 91. Big band singer ("And the Angels Sing," "I'll Walk Alone.") Dec. 8.

Georgia Gibbs, 87. Hitmaking 1950s singer ("Kiss of Fire," "Dance With Me, Henry.") Dec. 9.

Martin Nodell, 91. Created the comic book superhero Green Lantern. Dec. 9.

Peter Boyle, 71. The curmudgeonly father on "Everybody Loves Raymond." Dec. 12.

Redneck Christmas Lights

Great Girl Bands of the 1960's

Teacher in Crack Over Butt Art

To hear the students tell it, Stephen Murmer is a fun, popular art teacher who is always quick to crack a joke. But there is another side to Murmer. A side that has agitated school officials and resulted in his suspension. A side that focuses, almost entirely, on the crack in his backside.

Outside of class and under an alter ego, the self-proclaimed "butt-printing artist" creates floral and abstract art by plastering his posterior and genitals with paint and pressing them against canvas. His cheeky creations sell for hundreds of dollars.

This has not gone over well with Chesterfield County school officials, who placed Murmer on administrative leave from his job at Monacan High School.

Murmer contacted the American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia after he was suspended on Friday, ACLU legal director Rebecca Glenberg said. He told Glenberg that administrators had suspended him with pay for five days because of his work as a butt-print painter and that he also could face unpaid suspension pending an investigation.

Murmer has been instructed by the school administration not to speak with the media, Glenberg said. He did not return messages seeking comment Tuesday.

Chesterfield County schools spokeswoman Debra Marlow confirmed that a Monacan art teacher had been placed on administrative leave but declined to provide additional details because it is a personnel issue.

"In the school system, personnel regulations state that teachers are expected to set an example for students through their personal conduct," Marlow said. "Additionally, the Supreme Court has stated that schools must teach by example and that teachers, like parents, are role models."

Murmer went to great lengths to keep his work life separate from his activities as an artist, said ACLU executive director Kent Willis. As a butt-printing artist, he goes by the name "Stan Murmur," and appears in disguise in photographs and videos promoting his art.

"As a public employee, he has constitutional rights, and he certainly has the right to engage in private legal activities protected by the First Amendment of the Constitution," Willis said.

A nearly naked Murmer expressed concern about remaining incognito during a 2003 appearance on the now-canceled cable television talk show, "Unscrewed With Martin Sargent." In a clip from the show, available on YouTube.com, Murmer dons a fake nose and glasses, a towel on his head, a black thong — and nothing else.

"I'm certainly proud of the ass painting," Murmer said in response to questions about his disguise. "I do have a real job where I do have real clients and I don't think they'd be too understanding if I was also the guy who painted with my ass."

That video has made the rounds at Monacan High, where the mere mention of Murmer's name was enough to elicit grins from students Tuesday. Most appeared to be firmly behind their teacher, describing his suspension as "stupid,""ignorant" and "kinda retarded."

"Everyone has been talking about it," senior Heather Thompson said with a laugh as she and other students streamed out of school.

Thompson, who worked with Murmer in the school's art club, said many students have known about his paintings for a few years, but the YouTube clip recently got everyone buzzing. She and other students described Murmer as a funny, likable and popular teacher. There is little support among the student body for his suspension, she said.

"It was simply him expressing himself and his art, and it had nothing to do with school — he wasn't advertising," she said.

This is not the first time Murmer has faced potential problems because of his extracurricular activities. Three years ago, he contacted the ACLU after he was told school administrators were unhappy about his paintings, Willis said. The issue eventually blew over with no suspension issued, Willis said. It was unclear why administrators decided to take action now.

Owning a piece of Murmer's art doesn't come cheap. On his Web site, his creations run upward of $900. His most popular piece, "Tulip Butts," goes for $600.

So how does one become a butt-printing artist? On his Web site, Murmur said his journey began a few years ago when he was told to find an organic item to use as a stamp for a class painting assignment. He decided to use his posterior. His final product was a hit with the class and a butt painter was born.

He was, however, the only student not asked to hold up his organic stamp.

Butt Print Art Company HERE

See Video HERE.

Kiss MASS ?

Sasquatch finally captured on film

Superbra Woman

Man needed surgery after sex with hedgehog

A Serbian man needed emergency surgery after he had sex with a hedgehog on a witchdoctor's advice.

Zoran Nikolovic, 35, from Belgrade, says the witchdoctor told him it would cure his premature ejaculation.

But he ended up in an operating theatre after the hedgehog's needles left his penis severely lacerated.

A hospital spokesman said: "The animal was apparently unhurt and the patient came off much worse from the encounter. We have managed to repair the damage to his

Kawasaki Vulcan 1600 Mean Streak $11,000

Chances are, you won't be finding the Mean Streak wrapped, ribboned and waiting for you under the tree this year. But that doesn't mean you don't deserve this diabolically styled liquid-cooled power cruiser. It's built for long hauls, with a fuel-injected 1552cc V-twin engine that's rubber-mounted to reduce vibration. Kawasaki also loaded the Mean Streak with high-revving sportbike components, such as inverted forks for precision steering and four-piston calipers up front for better braking feedback.

Billy Idol Holidays

The video for WHITE CHRISTMAS HERE.

Ask the Fruitcake Lady

New Intelligence Chairman tested on al Qaeda

Forty years ago, Sgt. Silvestre Reyes was a helicopter crew chief flying dangerous combat missions in South Vietnam from the top of a soaring rocky outcrop near the sea called Marble Mountain.

After the war, it turned out that the communist Viet Cong had tunneled into the hill and built a combat hospital right beneath the skids of Reyes’ UH-1 Huey gunship.

Now the five-term Texas Democrat, 62, is facing similar unpleasant surprises about the enemy, this time as the incoming chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.

That’s because, like a number of his colleagues and top counterterrorism officials that I’ve interviewed over the past several months, Reyes can’t answer some fundamental questions about the powerful forces arrayed against us in the Middle East.

It begs the question, of course: How can the Intelligence Committee do effective oversight of U.S. spy agencies when its leaders don’t know basics about the battlefield?

To his credit, Reyes, a kindly, thoughtful man who also sits on the Armed Service Committee, does see the undertows drawing the region into chaos.

For example, he knows that the 1,400- year-old split in Islam between Sunnis and Shiites not only fuels the militias and death squads in Iraq, it drives the competition for supremacy across the Middle East between Shiite Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia.

That’s more than two key Republicans on the Intelligence Committee knew when I interviewed them last summer. Rep. Jo Ann Davis, R-Va., and Terry Everett, R-Ala., both back for another term, were flummoxed by such basic questions, as were several top counterterrorism officials at the FBI.

I thought it only right now to pose the same questions to a Democrat, especially one who will take charge of the Intelligence panel come January. The former border patrol agent also sits on the Armed Services Committee.

Reyes stumbled when I asked him a simple question about al Qaeda at the end of a 40-minute interview in his office last week. Members of the Intelligence Committee, mind you, are paid $165,200 a year to know more than basic facts about our foes in the Middle East.

We warmed up with a long discussion about intelligence issues and Iraq. And then we veered into terrorism’s major players.

To me, it’s like asking about Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland: Who’s on what side?

The dialogue went like this:

Al Qaeda is what, I asked, Sunni or Shia?

“Al Qaeda, they have both,” Reyes said. “You’re talking about predominately?”

“Sure,” I said, not knowing what else to say.

“Predominantly — probably Shiite,” he ventured.

He couldn’t have been more wrong.

Al Qaeda is profoundly Sunni. If a Shiite showed up at an al Qaeda club house, they’d slice off his head and use it for a soccer ball.

That’s because the extremist Sunnis who make up a l Qaeda consider all Shiites to be heretics.

Al Qaeda’s Sunni roots account for its very existence. Osama bin Laden and his followers believe the Saudi Royal family besmirched the true faith through their corruption and alliance with the United States, particularly allowing U.S. troops on Saudi soil.

It’s been five years since these Muslim extremists flew hijacked airliners into the World Trade Center.

Is it too much to ask that our intelligence overseers know who they are?

Civil War

And Hezbollah? I asked him. What are they?

“Hezbollah. Uh, Hezbollah...”

He laughed again, shifting in his seat.

“Why do you ask me these questions at five o’clock? Can I answer in Spanish? Do you speak Spanish?”

“Poquito,” I said—a little.

“Poquito?! “ He laughed again.

“Go ahead,” I said, talk to me about Sunnis and Shia in Spanish.

Reyes: “Well, I, uh....”

I apologized for putting him “on the spot a little.” But I reminded him that the people who have killed thousands of Americans on U.S. soil and in the Middle East have been front page news for a long time now.

It’s been 23 years since a Hezbollah suicide bomber killed over 200 U.S. military personnel in Beirut, mostly Marines.

Hezbollah, a creature of Iran, is close to taking over in Lebanon. Reports say they are helping train Iraqi Shiites to kill Sunnis in the spiralling civil war.

“Yeah,” Reyes said, rightly observing, “but . . . it’s not like the Hatfields and the McCoys. It’s a heck of a lot more complex.

“And I agree with you — we ought to expend some effort into understanding them. But speaking only for myself, it’s hard to keep things in perspective and in the categories.”

Reyes is not alone.

The best argument for needing to understand who’s what in the Middle East is probably the mistaken invasion itself, despite the preponderance of expert opinion that it was a terrible idea — including that of Bush’s father and his advisers. On the day in 2003 when Iraqi mobs toppled the statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad, Bush was said to be unaware of the possibility that a Sunni-Shia civil war could fill the power vacuum, according to a reliable source with good White House connections.

If President Bush and some of his closest associates, not to mention top counterterrorism officials, have demonstrated their own ignorance about who the players are in the Middle East, why should we expect the leaders of the House Intelligence Committee to get it right?

Trent Lott, the veteran Republican senator from Mississippi, said only last September that “It’s hard for Americans, all of us, including me, to understand what’s wrong with these people.”

“Why do they kill people of other religions because of religion?” wondered Lott, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, after a meeting with Bush.

“Why do they hate the Israelis and despise their right to exist? Why do they hate each other? Why do Sunnis kill Shiites? How do they tell the difference?

“They all look the same to me,” Lott said.

Haunting

The administration’s disinterest in the Arab world has rattled down the chain of command.

Only six people in the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad are fluent in Arabic, according to last week’s report of the Iraq Study Group. Only about two dozen of the embassy’s thousand employees have some familiarity with the language, the report said.

The Iraq Study Group was amazed to find that, despite spending $2 billion on Iraq in 2006, more wasn’t being done to try “to understand the people who fabricate, plant and explode roadside bombs.”

Rare is the military unit with an American soldier who can read a captured document or interrogate a prisoner, my own sources tell me.

It was that way in Vietnam, too, Reyes says, which “haunts us.”

“If you substitute Arabization for Vietnamization, if you substitute . . . our guys going in and taking over a place then leaving it and the bad guys come back in. . . .”

He trails off, despairing.

“I could draw many more analogies.”

Yet Reyes says he favors sending more troops there.

“If it’s going to target the militias and eliminate them, I think that’s a worthwhile investment,” he said.

It’s hard to find anybody in Iraq who thinks the U.S. can do that.

On “a temporary basis, I’m willing to ramp them up by twenty or thirty thousand . . . for, I don’t know, two months, four months, six months — but certainly that would be an exception,” Reyes said.

Meanwhile, the killing is going on below decks, too, within Sunni and Shiite groups and factions.

Anybody who pays serious attention to Iraq knows that.

Reyes says his first hearings come January will focus on how U.S. intelligence can do a better job helping the troops in Iraq.

It may be way too late for that.

“Stop giving me tests!” Reyes exclaimed, half kidding.

“I’m not going to talk to you any more!”

Border Fence Firm Hiring Illegal Workers

A fence-building company in Southern California agrees to pay nearly $5 million in fines for hiring illegal immigrants. Two executives from the company may also serve jail time. The Golden State Fence Company's work includes some of the border fence between San Diego and Mexico.

After an immigration check in 1999 found undocumented workers on its payroll, Golden State promised to clean house. But when followup checks were made in 2004 and 2005, some of those same illegal workers were still on the job. In fact, U-S Attorney Carol Lam says as many as a third of the company's 750 workers may have been in the country illegally.

Golden State Fence built millions of dollars' worth of fencing around homes, offices, and military bases. Its president and one of its Southern California managers will pay fines totaling $300,000. The government is also recommending jail time for Melvin Kay and Michael McLaughlin, probably about six months.

It is exceptionally rare for those who employ illegal immigrants to face any kind of criminal prosecution, let alone jail time. Earlier this week, for example, immigration raids on six meat-packing plants netted almost 1,300 suspected illegal workers. But no charges were leveled against the company that runs the plants: Swift.

Golden State Fence's attorney, Richard Hirsch, admits his client broke the law. But he says the case proves that construction companies need a guest-worker program.

Perfect Holiday Gift ...If your a GUY!!!

Christmas Tree Growers Battle Poachers

While many Christmas trees sparkle with tinsel and lights during the holiday season, some reek of fox urine or wear a splatter of pink stain.

A surge in Christmas tree poaching has forced growers and property owners to take action. Smelly, discolored trees are less likely to be cut and dragged off by thieves, they say.

At the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, for example, evergreens are sprayed with a fox urine mixture and tagged with a warning to discourage tree thieves.

"It is a strong odor, and it smells just like what it is," said Kirby Baird, a landscape manager at the school.

When the tree is out in the cold, the smell isn't noticeable, Baird said. But once the tree is inside and starts to warm up...

"It's nasty," he said.

Live Christmas trees have made a resurgence with consumers in the past three years, said Rick Dungey of the National Christmas Tree Association. While no one tracks the number of thefts, some believe the increased demand has fueled pine pilfering.

Tree poaching once was a problem at Washington State University, which has more than 150 evergreen, spruce and fir trees on campus.

"We did have a lot of trees cut for Christmas trees, either entire small trees or tops of large trees," said grounds supervisor Kappy Brun.

The poaching all but stopped after groundskeepers began to spray campus trees with the oily, odorous liquid produced by skunks.

While Nebraska and Washington fought tree poachers with odor, Cornell University made their trees less appealing as Christmas decorations.

Workers there painted trees with "ugly mix" - a solution of hydrated lime and red food coloring developed by one of Cornell's veteran gardeners. The result: fluorescent pink trees. The mix stays on trees for about a month before fading, and is credited with saving dozens of evergreens over the years.

"Ugly mix" received widespread publicity and eventually was used by New York's Department of Transportation.

"I have gotten calls from Christmas tree growers and from more homeowners and landscapers, and they want to know what do we do," said Donna Levy, plant health care coordinator at Cornell Plantation, who said the university isn't recommending the mix, just sharing its strategy.

Cornell isn't using the pink goop this year because it sometimes is slow to fade.

"We thought we would go a year and see what happens," Levy said.

Dave Velozo, who owns a nursery near Harrisburg, Pa., recently lost a rare blue Sierra redwood to a tree poacher.

A jagged three-foot stump is all that remains of a 13-foot tree, which Velozo said he had nurtured for the past 15 years.

"Somebody must have seen it over the years and decided, 'Hey, this will look good in my trailer,'" he said.

Green Lantern Creator Nodell Dies at 91

Martin Nodell, the creator of Green Lantern, the comic book superhero who uses his magical ring to help him fight crime, has died. He was 91.

Nodell died at his home in Muskego, Wis., on Saturday of natural causes, his son Spencer Nodell told The Associated Press on Tuesday. He previously lived in West Palm Beach.

Nodell was looking for a new idea for a comic book in 1940 when he was waiting for a New York subway and saw a train operator waving a lantern displaying a green light, said Maggie Thompson, senior editor of Comics Buyer's Guide.

Nodell imagined a young engineer, Alan Scott, a train crash survivor who discovers in the debris an ancient lantern forged from a green meteor. Scott constructs a ring from the lamp that gives him super powers, and becomes a crime fighter.

He brought his drawings and story lines to All-American Publications, which later became a part of National Periodical Publications, the company that was to become DC Comics, Thompson said.

The first Green Lantern appearance came in July 1940, an eight-page story in a comic book also featuring other characters. The character then got his own series, and Nodell drew it until 1947 under the name Mart Dellon.

After its cancellation, the series was reborn in 1959 with a revised story line, and it has been revived several times.

Meanwhile, Nodell left the comics field for an advertising career. In the 1960s, he was on a design team that helped develop the Pillsbury Doughboy.

In later years, Nodell traveled the comic book convention circuit with his wife, Caroline, who died in 2004.

"There were myriad of fans who would come up to my dad and would say `Green Lantern got me to read' or `Green Lantern got me to do something in my life,'" Spencer Nodell said.

Nodell was born in Philadelphia and studied at art schools in Chicago and New York. Besides Spencer Nodell, survivors include another son, six grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.

Infrared Fart

America after we lose in Iraq...

The Women of the Michigan Child Support System

The following are all replies that Detroit women have written on Child Support Agency forms in the section for listing "father's details".

These are genuine excerpts from the forms.


Regarding the identity of the father of my twins, child A was fathered by Jim Munson. I am unsure as to the identity of the father of child B, but I believe that he was conceived on the same night.


I am unsure, as to the identity of the father of my child as I was being sick out of a window when taken unexpectedly from behind.I can provide you with a list of names of men that I think were at the party if this helps.


I do not know the name of the father of my little girl. She was conceived at a party at 3600 East Grand Boulevard where I had unprotected sex with a man I met that night. I do remember that the sex was so good that I fainted. If you do manage to track down the father, can you send me his phone number? Thanks.


I don't know the identity of the father of my daughter. He drives a BMW that now has a hole made by my stiletto in one of the door panels. Perhaps you can contact BMW service stations in this area and see if he's had it replaced.


I have never had sex with a man.I am still a Virginian.I am awaiting a letter from the Pope confirming that my son's conception was ejaculate and that he is the Saver risen again.


I cannot tell you the name of child A's dad as he informs me that to do so would blow his cover and that would have cataclysmic implications for the economy. I am torn between doing right by you and right by the country.Please advise.


I do not know who the father of my child was as all look the same to me.

Peter Smith Is the father of child A. If you do catch up with him, can you ask him what he did with my AC/DC CDs? Child B who was also borned at the same time...well, I don't have clue.


From the dates it seems that my daughter was conceived at Disney World; maybe it really is the Magic Kingdom.


So much about that night is a blur. The only thing that I remember for sure is Delia Smith did a program about eggs earlier in the evening. If I had stayed in and watched more TV rather than going to the party at 8956 Miller Ave., mine might have remained unfertilized.

I am unsure as to the identity of the father of my baby, after all, like when you eat a can of beans you can't be sure which one made you fart.

2006 Cannabis Cup Winners

Puppy Gnawed Off Baby's Toes

A pit bull puppy chewed off four of a baby girl's toes while the child's parents slept, police here said Monday. The parents were booked on charges of child desertion and criminal negligence and were being held in the Bossier Parish Jail pending an initial court appearance.

Police said the parents were sleeping on a mattress in the living room of their residence and the month-old girl was in an infant seat beside them when the puppy began chewing on their baby's toes.

Mary Shannon Hansche, 22, and Christopher Wayne Hansche, 26, told police they woke up to the sound of the baby crying, found her mangled foot and took her to the hospital about 8:30 a.m. Sunday.

"They did not see the dog injuring the child," police spokesman Mark Natale said.

The girl underwent surgery Sunday at Sutton's Children's Hospital in Shreveport. There was no way to reattach the child's toes, Natale said Monday.

The puppy was 6 weeks old and had no record of receiving its shots and will be quarantined for 10 days to check for rabies. Natale said he did not know what the puppy's fate would be after that.

"The puppy itself was just several weeks old! I mean this was essentially a puppy," Natale said.

"This puppy might have been trying to nurse on the toes of this baby," veterinarian Michael Dale speculated. "I know that sounds a little far fetched, but that's the first thing that comes to my mind."

Teresa Miller, who sold the puppy to the Hansches, was skeptical the dog did it. "He didn't chew on anything while he was with me. Out of all of them (in the litter), he was the least chewy."

Another veterinarian, Dr. Valri Brown, said if the puppy chewed off the infant's toes, it would not have happened quickly. "It would have to be a period of time - maybe at least an hour," she said.

Meanwhile, the puppy's been quarantined at Bossier City's animal control office for the next 10 days to check for rabies. Natale said he did not know what the puppy's fate would be after that.

When she is released from the hospital, the child will be placed in a foster home until the case against her parents is settled, officials said

Holiday Gift Idea # 9

Peter Boyle dies

Peter Boyle, the tall, prematurely bald actor who was the tap-dancing monster in "Young Frankenstein" and the curmudgeonly father in the long-running sitcom "Everybody Loves Raymond," has died. He was 71.

Boyle died Tuesday evening at New York Presbyterian Hospital. He had been suffering from multiple myeloma and heart disease, said his publicist, Jennifer Plante.

A Christian Brothers monk who turned to acting, Boyle gained notice playing an angry workingman in the Vietnam-era hit "Joe." But he overcome typecasting when he took on the role of the hulking, lab-created monster in Mel Brooks' 1974 send-up of horror films.

The movie's defining moment came when Gene Wilder, as scientist Frederick Frankenstein, introduced his creation to an upscale audience. Boyle, decked out in tails, performed a song-and-dance routine to the Irving Berlin classic "Puttin' On the Ritz."

It showed another side of the Emmy-winning actor, one that would be exploited in countless other films and perhaps best in "Everybody Loves Raymond," in which he played incorrigible paterfamilias Frank Barone for 10 years.

"He's just obnoxious in a nice way, just for laughs," he said of the character in a 2001 interview. "It's a very sweet experience having this happen at a time when you basically go back over your life and see every mistake you ever made."

When Boyle tried out for the role opposite series star Ray Romano's Ray Barone, however, he was kept waiting for his audition -- and he was not happy.

"He came in all hot and angry," recalled the show's creator, Phil Rosenthal, "and I hired him because I was afraid of him."

But Rosenthal also noted: "I knew right away that he had a comic presence."
Impact of 'Joe'

Boyle first came to the public's attention more than a quarter century before. "Joe" was a sleeper hit in which he portrayed the title role, an angry, murderous bigot at odds with the era's emerging hippie youth culture.

Although critically acclaimed, he faced being categorized as someone who played tough, angry types. He broke free of that to some degree as Robert Redford's campaign manager in "The Candidate," and shed it entirely in "Young Frankenstein."

The latter film also led to the actor meeting his wife, Loraine Alterman, who visited the set as a reporter for Rolling Stone magazine. Boyle, still in his monster makeup, quickly asked her for a date.

He went on to appear in dozens of films and to star in "Joe Bash," an acclaimed but short-lived 1986 "dramedy" in which he played a lonely beat cop. He won an Emmy in 1996 for his guest-starring role in an episode of "The X Files," and he was nominated for "Everybody Loves Raymond" and for the 1977 TV film "Tail Gunner Joe," in which he played Sen. Joseph McCarthy.

In the 1976 film "Taxi Driver," he was the cabbie-philosopher Wizard, who counseled Robert DeNiro's violent Travis Bickle.

Other notable films included "T.R. Baskin," "F.I.S.T.," "Johnny Dangerously," "Conspiracy: Trial of the Chicago 8" (as activist David Dellinger), "The Dream Team," "The Santa Claus," "The Santa Claus 2," "While You Were Sleeping" (in a charming turn as Sandra Bullock's future father-in-law) and "Scooby Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed."
'The normal pull of the world'

Educated in Roman Catholic schools in Philadelphia, Boyle would spend three years in a monastery before abandoning his studies there. He later described the experience as similar to "living in the Middle Ages."

He explained his decision to leave in 1991: "I felt the call for awhile; then I felt the normal pull of the world and the flesh."

He traveled to New York to study with Uta Hagen, supporting himself for five years with various jobs, including postal worker, waiter, maitre d' and office temp. Finally, he was cast in a road company version of "The Odd Couple." When the play reached Chicago he quit to study with that city's famed improvisational troupe Second City.

Upon returning to New York, he began to land roles in TV commercials, off-Broadway plays and finally films.

Through Alterman, a friend of Yoko Ono, the actor became close friends with John Lennon.

"We were both seekers after a truth, looking for a quick way to enlightenment," Boyle once said of Lennon, who was best man at his wedding.

In 1990, Boyle suffered a stroke and couldn't talk for six months. In 1999, he had a heart attack on the set of "Everybody Loves Raymond." He soon regained his health, however, and returned to the series. (Read story)

Despite his work in "Everybody Loves Raymond" and other Hollywood productions, Boyle made New York City his home. He and his wife had two daughters, Lucy and Amy.

Copyright 2006 The Associated Press

Finding holiday light bulb extravaganzas

Anybody can have a Christmas tree and most neighborhoods have at least one house decorated with strings of lights. But if you really want to see a show, pack the kids and visiting relatives into the car and head for one of the many parks and zoos where holiday lighting has become a high-voltage art form.

Here are Web guides to just a few of the light bulb extravaganzas around the country this holiday season. Be sure to plan ahead; many are closed on December 24-25.

One of the bigger holiday illuminations is the Winter Festival of Lights -- http://www.oglebay-resort.com/fol.htmexternal link -- at Oglebay Resort in Wheeling, West Virginia. This fanciful display lights up a six-mile route through the park complex, including an animated Snowflake Tunnel you drive through and characters from the Peanuts comic strip. Scroll down the page for the link to the animated "Good Zoo" show and descriptions of the other attractions that make this a favorite of thousands of visitors. Go back up the top of the page and click on "About Us" to learn more about this complex an hour west of Pittsburgh; that's also where you access three small videos, one of which shows the Festival of Lights.

Go early to see the baby giraffe and other animals, then wait for sunset and the 10th anniversary Holiday Lights show at New York City's Bronx Zoo -- http://www.bronxzoo.com/external link -- which boasts more than a half-million lights and over 150 lighted animal and holiday sculptures. Look for the "sneak preview" video; it's brief but will give you an idea of what to expect. Click on "Plan Your Visit" and "About the Animals" for information about the zoo's 4,000-plus animals, a map of the complex and daily animal demonstrations.

Unlike the Bronx Zoo show, which costs $14 a head for grown-ups, admission is free for ZooLights -- http://www.lpzoo.org/events/zoolights06.htmlexternal link -- at Chicago's Lincoln Park Zoo. Look for the "Special Events" link at the Brookfield Zoo -- http://www.brookfieldzoo.org/external link -- 14 miles west of downtown Chicago, for details on their Holiday Magic light show, where they switch on more than 1 million bulbs.

On the West Coast, the 2006 LADWP Light Festival -- http://www.dwplightfestival.com/external link -- is under way at Los Angeles' Griffith Park, along a mile-long stretch of the park's Crystal Springs Drive. Click on "Display Guide" to get an idea of the exhibits in the show. And in a Southern California touch, you can park your gas-burner and ride an environmentally friendly electric shuttle bus through the show.

In the Northwest, the Oregon Zoo -- http://www.oregonzoo.org/external link -- is putting on its own ZooLights display, with almost as many lights as Brookfield. And unlike the brief video at the Bronx Zoo, the "ZooLights Preview" here goes on for two minutes, showcasing a lighted train that young children will love. To the north, in Washington state, the century-old Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium south of Seattle -- http://www.pdza.org/external link -- also has a Zoolights festival, with live entertainment.

Take in a holiday light extravaganza with a Southern flavor in Savannah, Georgia -- http://www.savannahvisit.com/external link -- where you need to look for the link to "Southern Lights" along the right side of the page. Here, the holiday lights adorn the city's trademark squares and elegant old mansions. Click on "Itinerary" to see some of the special events within the celebration.

If you plan to be in Texas, Trail of Lights 2006 -- http://www.ci.austin.tx.us/tol/external link -- in Austin promises 42 lighted scenes along a mile-long promenade. Unlike many of the others, this show is only for pedestrians, with a tram for people needing assistance. Click on "42 lighted scenes" for shots of some of the scenes.

Italian activist's TV suicide try foiled

An Italian fathers' rights activist says he tried unsuccessfully to self-immolate on live television to call attention to dads unable to see their kids.

The ANSA news service reported Saturday that Nicola De Martino, who was recently re-united with his son after a 12-year separation, tried to set himself on fire Thursday night while appearing as a guest on the current affairs show, "Dieci Minute," or "Ten Minutes" on state television station RAI. ANSA said that the show's host, along with the distraught man's 18-year-old son "looked on in horror" as De Martino doused himself with gasoline and then threatened to light a match.

Host Maurizio Martinelli and the studio crew frantically managed to wrest the lit match from De Martino's hands. He was then led away from the stage.

See it HERE.

ONE PUNK UNDER GOD...hahahahaha

He was born into the glare of televangelist parents Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker. Then the "Praise the Lord" empire collapsed in scandal. His father went to jail for fraud.

Jay Bakker spent his teens in the darkness, rebelling and bent on self-destruction from alcohol and drugs.

But now, with his 31st birthday next week, this tattooed, multi-pierced pilgrim is on a righteous path: preaching God's grace to a flock of young, downtrodden and disillusioned parishioners most any other church would turn away.

Jay is the focus of "One Punk Under God: The Prodigal Son of Jim & Tammy Faye," a reality series about the back-to-basics church he calls Revolution, which, notwithstanding his decade-long sobriety, holds services in an Atlanta bar.

Keeping the faith while keeping Revolution going will prove to be a challenge for Jay.

"I think Revolution is kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place," he muses in the first episode (airing Wednesday at 9 p.m. EST on Sundance Channel). "With some groups we're too Christian, and with the Christians we're not Christian enough."

But Jay has other concerns as the six-episode series unfolds.

His mom is gravely ill from cancer; Jay will be traveling to her North Carolina home for tender visits. His dad, now remarried and with a new TV ministry, is estranged from him -- a rift Jay will make great strides repairing. And after several years' devotion to his church, he will be uprooted when wife Amanda, a young woman with fluorescent red hair and a beatific smile, is accepted by New York University for its doctoral program in psychiatry.

In short, 2006 is eventful for Jay Bakker -- far more than he imagined when "One Punk Under God" began filming in February.

He was initially reluctant to sign on, and even camera shy, he insists during a recent interview.

"I feel like I'm just a guy who has a church with 15 people that meets in a bar," says Jay, who left the Atlanta church in another minister's care to start a new branch that meets in a Brooklyn pub.

He has no wish, he adds, to leverage his TV exposure into an ongoing video pulpit, as his parents had on such a grand scale with "The PTL Club," which at its peak reached some 13 million cable households.

"If anything, I'd like to write more books," Jay says.

Five years ago his first book, "Son of a Preacher Man: My Search for Grace in the Shadows," testified to his troubled past and deliverance from it.

Now "One Punk Under God" finds Jay continuing a mini-crusade for an alternative to the God he could never make peace with: a wrathful God who hated him for all the flaws he hated in himself.

"God loves us for who we are," contends Jay, explaining that it comes down to "grace": "God's love for all people, and his unconditional love.

"God isn't counting our sins against us. Yeah, we'll have to pay the consequences; life has consequences. But God isn't keeping a record. 'You better watch out, you better not cry' -- that's not God. That's Santa Claus!"

'Salvation is free. It's a gift'

In defiance of both his billing as "punk" and his calling as preacher, Jay is an affable, unassuming chap who happens to wear a stud in each ear as well as a lip ring. And tattoos: He got the first of many -- it praises Revolution -- at 19 while living in Phoenix, where he helped found the church. In the series' finale, he will get a tattoo in tribute to his mother.

Jay has tattoos because he likes them, simple as that. He never set out to be the punk anti-Bakker for a lost generation. Nor has he disavowed his parents, whose past disgrace could easily fuel skepticism about his own ministry.

"I don't have a strategy like, 'OK, I'm gonna distance myself from them, so I can build a church and be my own man,"' Jay says. "Me and my dad have a hard time getting along, and now, with my mom being as sick as she is, that's hard -- but I love them, and they did a lot of great things, as well as make mistakes."

A mistake of theirs he means to avoid: building a church so big and all-consuming that its own sustenance is its primary cause.

In episode two, Jay will make a tough decision that could threaten his church: Should he declare himself a gay-affirming minister? Over fast food outdoors on a bright Atlanta day, he discusses it with Amanda.

"So speaking out in behalf of the gay community and gay Christians is something I should do?" he asks her.

"Absolutely, without question," she agrees, even as she warns there'll be a backlash.

She's right. A conservative foundation wastes no time pulling thousands in funding.

That's OK. "Salvation is free. It's a gift," Jay tells me in New York months later.

"But if I start to compromise now, where am I gonna be in 20 years? I want to be able to encourage other people not to compromise about their passions, their feelings -- and not to be afraid that, if you share your convictions with the rest of us, you're in danger of being thrown out."

At the end of "One Punk Under God," Jay's life remains full of challenges: his mom's worsening condition; the new city for him and Amanda to navigate; a new congregation to forge. He even speaks hopefully of kicking cigarettes.

Then he shares with me his foolproof plan.

"You put one foot out in front of the other and you say, 'OK, this is what I believe, this is what I'm seeing in the Word.' " He smiles. "It's a struggle. But what have I got to lose?"

See it HERE.

Steal and be very ashamed

A young woman sentenced to walk a downtown sidewalk wearing a sandwich board announcing her crime as a condition of her probation for burglary said the experience was humbling and humiliating, but definitely better than serving jail time.

"I understand the judge's reasoning," said Breanna Klewitz, 23, of her two-hour walk on a sidewalk in front of the Dougherty County Courthouse, Georgia, wearing signs that read, "I am a thief" and "I stole what you worked for."

"If you do something wrong, you have to accept some responsibility," she said. "Sitting in a jail cell does provide anonymity. I wish the world didn't have to know me by face and by name. But I understand his reasoning.

Chief Superior Court Judge Loren Gray sentenced Klewitz to five-years probation as a first offender for her role in a June burglary at a local fast-food restaurant, where she worked as an assistant manager. Besides a $US1086 ($1376) fine, the judge ordered her to make signs with 8-inch letters, visible from at least 25 feet, and wear them while walking the block-long sidewalk along a busy downtown street.

One of her co-defendants, Jerry Brantley, 22, was sentenced to three years in prison, and another, Trever Moore, 19, received the same sentence as Klewitz. The date for Moore's walk of shame has not been announced.

Klewitz said she was amazed at the words of encouragement from passers-by during her two-hour walk on Wednesday.

"They said, 'Hang in there,' 'We're praying for you,'" she said. "The only thing I could think of is, rather this than jail. It's definitely made me a better judge of character and who I hang out with."

Gray said he wants people who steal to know that their crimes will be exposed. Sending defendants like Klewitz to jail for the weekend, allows them to escape public scrutiny and is a burden on taxpayers, he said.

"I used to do this rather regularly, particularly with shoplifters," the judge said. "Having to announce it to all the world in front of the courthouse is better to me than sending them to jail on weekends.

"This particular sentence imposes a brief period of shame, indignity, whatever you will," he said. "Rather than incarceration, this is a better way of molding attitudes and shaping mind-set."

Gray said he believes the sentence he gave Klewitz is probably most effective in smaller cities like Albany, where people are more likely to know each other.

"I know of a couple of other judges who have employed this," he said. "I think it probably works best in the smaller jurisdictions like ours. I don't think it would work well in Atlanta, where there's little chance of media coverage. In a small community, I think it's more damming than sending someone off to prison."

Judges in other parts of the country have also handed out sentences that included public humiliation.

In Springfield, Massachusetts, last year, a city employee who swindled the school system, had to wear a sign stating, "I stole $10,000 from the school department. This is a serious crime. This is part of my punishment."

A former softball coach in McCook, Nebraska, opted last year to repay money he was accused of stealing, rather stand outside a ballpark wearing a sign that said, "I stole from the McCook Rebels softball team."

Evel Knievel sues Kanye West

TAMPA, Fla. - Evel Knievel has sued Kanye West, taking issue with a music video in which the rapper takes on the persona of "Evel Kanyevel" and tries to jump a rocket-powered motorcycle over a canyon.

Knievel, whose real name is Robert Craig Knievel, filed a lawsuit in federal court in Tampa on Monday claiming infringement on his trademark name and likeness. He also claims the "vulgar and offensive" images depicted in the video damage his reputation.

"That video that Kanye West put out is the most worthless piece of crap I've ever seen in my life, and he uses my image to catapult himself on the public," the 68-year-old daredevil said Tuesday.

A spokesman for West said the 28-year-old rapper no comment. The lawsuit seeks damages and to halt distribution of the video.

In the video for "Touch the Sky," released earlier this year, West dons the familiar Knievel star-studded jumpsuit and jumps a canyon in a vehicle "visually indistinguishable" from the one used by Knievel in his failed attempt to jump the Snake River Canyon in Idaho in 1974, the lawsuit said.

The video, which features Pamela Anderson as West's girlfriend, contains "vulgar and offensive sexual images, language and conduct involving `Evel Kanyevel' and women apparently trying to gain his sexual interest," according to the lawsuit.

"The guy just went too far using me to promote his filth to the world," said Knievel, who lives in Clearwater and has been in poor health in recent years. "I'm not in any way that kind of a person."

The lawsuit also names Roc-A-Fella Records, video director Chris Milk and AOL for distributing it.

West was so disappointed at not winning best video for "Touch the Sky" at the MTV Europe Music Awards last month that he crashed the stage when it was presented to Justice and Simian for "We Are Your Friends."

In a tirade riddled with expletives, West said he should have won the prize because it "cost a million dollars, Pamela Anderson was in it. I was jumping across canyons."

Knievel failed spectacularly in the 1974 jump. He was secured inside the cockpit and the Sky-Cycle was fired up. But his parachute opened just as he cleared the ramp. After soaring about 1,000 feet, he wound up landing about 20 feet from the river on the rocky south bank. He sustained only scrapes and bruises.

In the video, West's vehicle crashes to the bottom of the canyon in flames.

Hitler's Grandson?

Mt Dew Can Tree

Materials: Approx 400 Mountain Dew cans
Time: 3 Months of soda drinking / 4 days of building

See it all HERE.

Infrared Iraq

Ho Ho Whore?

251 bottles of Diet Coke and 1,500 Mentos...

The guys from EepyBird are back, with 251 bottles of Diet Coke and over 1,500 Mentos mints. In Experiment #137, they did a mint-powered version of the Bellagio fountains. This time, it's one giant Coke Mentos chain reaction that has to be seen to be believed.

Tom Waits on Fernwood Tonight

Mom Faked Son’s Retardation

Prosecutors told a federal court Tuesday that a Washington mother collected disability benefits for her son for nearly 20 years by lying and saying he was retarded.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Norman Barossa told reporters that for nearly 20 years, Rose Marie Costello has collected disability benefits on behalf of her son, whom she claims is retarded. But prosecutors have a problem believing her, since they have a video of Pete Costello contesting a traffic ticket, and he appears to be far from retarded.

Pete and Rosie Marie Costello were indicted in September on charges of conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government and Social Security fraud, and the case was unsealed in federal court Tuesday. After the case was unsealed, the Costellos, who are from Vancouver, pleaded not guilty.

The indictment accuses Pete Costello of faking retardation since August 1997. Barbosa said that date was selected because that is the time period prosecutors have proof of, but the pair first received benefits 10 years before that, ever since Pete Costello was 8 years old. The benefits cited in the indictment total $111,000.

In meetings with Social Security officials and psychologists through the years, Pete Costello has appeared to be mentally retarded and unable to communicate. His mother repeated told officials that her son was unable to read, write, attend to personal hygiene, take care of himself, or drive a car. Yet prosecutors have a video of Costello contesting a traffic ticket—which not only proves that he was driving a car when he got the ticket, but also proves that he is not unable to read, write, or communicate. "He’s like any other person trying to get out of a traffic ticket," said Barbosa.

Barbosa says prosecutors have filed with the court two videos of Pete Costello that were taken within the past 12 months. In one video, which shows him in an interview with Social Security workers, Costello pretends to be retarded. In the other video, he is in court contesting a traffic ticket. Barbosa said the government doesn’t know whether or not Costello is retarded to some degree, but they have no doubt that he has been "exaggerating whatever he may have, if any."

Barbosa said that obviously Costello’s mother got him involved in this originally, "but he’s been an adult for many years." Instead of living with his mother, Costello lives with a girlfriend and two of her children, and works as an auto body repairman. "This person isn’t being honest with the government about his condition," Barbosa said. "It makes it impossible to sort out."

Court documents filed with the indictment indicate that prosecutors believe Costello’s mother carried out the same fraud with a daughter, whom officials have been unable to locate. The documents say that in all, Costello collected over $200,000 on their behalf.

Quote of the Day

"Some Dance to Remember, Some Dance to Forget"
-Glenn Frey 1974

77 Gifts under 77 Dollars

See them all HERE.

A Ramones Christmas

Santa 'shot Jesus out of saddle'

Crucified effigy makes a statement but some neighbours are protesting

Eyebrows have been raised and chins are wagging in Metchosin with controversial piece of 'art' by Jimmy Wright in Victoria BC Wednesday,December6,2006.

Bah Humbug! isn't good enough for Jimmy Wright.

The Metchosin artist, known for his paintings of stylized polar bears, has put an effigy of Santa Claus on a cross on his front lawn to make a statement about the orgy of consumption in the modern world.

Above Santa's head, Wright has inscribed the words 'Sumptum Fac Donec Consumptus Sis.' Roughly translated, Wright said, it means 'Shop till you drop.'

"Santa represents frivolous consumption," Wright said yesterday, standing at the foot of the cross beneath the outstretched red-suited figure. "That's all he is. He shot Jesus right out of the saddle. He's the focus of Christmas."

The idea for the work started brewing about eight months ago, said the artist. Wright started looking for wood. In early August, he bought a Santa costume. Then he called a friend who works with fabric and traded a painting for her help.

"But the final straw was looking at a report on CNN which said we will have effectively fished out the ocean. And I thought 'Oh Jesus. We're suffocating the goose that lays the natural egg. We have to stop the orgy of consumption."

Natural egg or not -- some of Wright's neighbours are deeply upset.

At the mailbox near his home, Jennifer Blair said she thought the 'statement' wasn't fair to children. Some of them catch a school bus on that corner.

"They think Santa's at the North Pole getting their toys ready, not on a pole in Metchosin," said Blair.

A family that doesn't want to spoil the magic of their seven-year-old daughter's Christmas dropped off a letter in which they called the work tasteless and gruesome.

"We drive by your house daily with our child and have been dreading the questions," wrote Dominique Lejour and Dave Harvey. "Please have some respect for others and remove your lawn ornament."

A neighbour complained to the municipality and but was told Metchosin couldn't do anything because the cross is on Wright's property.

Earlier in the afternoon, Wright had a visit from the pastor of St. Mary's Anglican Church.

"He said he had some parishioners who are concerned about it and don't know what to make of it."

Wright, who was raised a Catholic, said Christmas is very important to him, but he stopped buying presents years ago.

"I used to love Christmas, but when you think about it, I loved it for the wrong reason," laughed the 69-year-old artist. "But you learn with age."

Another thing he has learned is honesty.

"It's a funny feeling when I'm sitting in my hot tub, looking out this way, and I'm trying to make a statement to everybody to slow down on what they can consume, and I'm in a 6,400-square-foot home."

Ghostwruter haunts fringes of O.J. controversies

NEIGHBOR OF SIMPSON'S EX-WIFE WHO TESTIFIED AT '95 TRIAL IS REPUTED TO BE AUTHOR OF CANCELED `IF I DID IT' BOOK


Amid the fallout and finger-pointing surrounding O.J. Simpson's hypothetical confession ``If I Did It,'' there's one man who knows everything but has said nothing -- ghostwriter and longtime Los Angeles-based screenwriter Pablo Fenjves.

He was Nicole Brown Simpson's neighbor and a witness at the 1995 murder trial, the man who famously testified that he heard a dog's ``plaintive wail'' the night of her murder, a key plot point in the prosecution's case. Now he's at the center of the Simpson saga again, muzzled by a confidentiality agreement and hounded by the media and movie producers eager to tell his story.

It's a familiar, perhaps even nostalgic, place for Fenjves, a bookish sort who during the Simpson trial couldn't step outside his own apartment without being recognized by tourists or approached by reporters. But in the last 11 years, he drifted back into the periphery of fame, penning books for Bernie Mac; Amber Frey, the ex-girlfriend of convicted murderer Scott Peterson; Richard Pryor's daughter Rain Pryor; and model- turned-reality-show star Janice Dickinson, among others.

Fenjves never confirmed he was Simpson's ghostwriter to the National Enquirer, which six weeks ago named him in the story that broke the news of the ReganBooks/HarperCollins book. In the weeks since, his name has resurfaced in several New York newspapers, including the New York Post, which suggested he and Judith Regan (publisher of the Simpson book) were once romantic. The New York Daily News quoted him as saying only that ghost writers were ``contractually barred'' from talking about their projects. And in a New Yorker article that appeared online recently, he was quoted seemingly justifying having taken the job.

``I think you'd be hard pressed to find a reporter in this country who, given the opportunity to sit down and take a confession from O.J. Simpson, no matter how oblique, would have refused to do so,'' Fenjves told New Yorker writer Jeffrey Toobin.

Fenjves, who as a writer has toiled in anonymity for much of his career, is reaching an almost surreal career high with a work he cannot claim as his own. Though News Corp. canceled the publication last week -- and a Fox interview that was set to promote it -- several copies popped up on eBay two days later with one bid reaching $1 million. By Friday, however, all copies had been withdrawn from the site.

In another odd twist, Simpson seems to be blaming Fenjves for the fact that the public views ``If I Did It'' as a confession. In a radio interview, Simpson even suggested that the detail in the book about the night of the murders indicates that Fenjves himself could have committed the crimes.

``When I saw what he wrote, I said, `Maybe you did it, because they're saying the chapter contains things only the killer would know,' '' Simpson said on WTPS-AM in Miami. ``I don't know these things.''

So far, Fenjves hasn't taken the bait. He had no comment when reached by phone last week.

``I'm really sorry,'' he said. ``I can't talk to you. I can't even talk to the movie producers who have been calling.''

His comments about Simpson to the New York Times back in 1995 still resonate today. When asked where his sympathies lay, Fenjves responded: ``That's like asking me, `Do I think O.J. did it?' I have an opinion on that, but I don't think it would be wise to express it.''

Although Fenjves' role in the scuttled Simpson book remains mysterious, this much is known: He's an active part of Regan's stable of writers, with three titles at ReganBooks this year, and a player in the netherworld of gossip journalism and ghostwriting.

Mike Walker, a gossip columnist at the Enquirer, remembers him at the tabloid in the 1970s as a young, hardworking reporter with writing talent. Before news of ``If I Did It'' broke, Walker interviewed Fenjves on his KABC-AM radio show. Fenjves told him ghostwriting was the best of all worlds for a writer. It provided steady, lucrative pay and uncomplicated work.

For now, Fenjves remains holed up in his Brentwood home -- the same one he lived in when he was Nicole Brown Simpson's neighbor -- fending off reporters who are awaiting the conclusion to this latest chapter of the Simpson drama. Ironically, when he was interviewed recently on Los Angeles's KABC-AM, Fenjves said that one of the perks of his job was anonymity.

Christmas Lights and Music

Guns for All...

A tiny town in western Pennsylvania could ask all of its residents to own guns, if a proposal under consideration on Wednesday wins approval from local officials.

Under the proposed law, residents of Cherry Tree, Pennsylvania, would be asked to own guns and know how to use them. Cherry Tree, some 70 miles northeast of Pittsburgh, has about 400 residents.

The town council was scheduled to vote on the proposed "Civil Protection Ordinance" on Wednesday evening.

Introduced last month by resident Henry Statkowski, the measure recommends that "all heads of households maintain a firearm along with ammunition."

In written comments, Statkowski said homeowners have a right and a responsibility to defend against intruders rather than calling police and waiting for help to arrive.

The measure would send a message to "burglars, ne'er-do-wells and other criminal elements," Statkowski wrote.

The male head of the household has the responsibility to defend the family from intruders, he also wrote.

"I don't believe your wife would appreciate it very much if you said, 'Honey, I'll wait until the police arrive and have them defend your life,"' he wrote.

Statkowski could not be reached for comment.

Chad Ramsey, a spokesman for the national gun-control group the Brady Campaign, dismissed the proposal as "ridiculously silly."

The measure was unlikely to pass because state law prevents municipalities from making their own gun laws, Ramsey said. He said about 40 percent of Pennsylvania households own guns.

Aaron Fry, owner of the Cherry Tree Cafe, said he did not understand why the measure was necessary because guns are common. "Every house has a couple of guns," he said.

Holiday Gift Idea # 24

Get them HERE.

Officers keep record of beautiful women

Two Swedish border control officers risk disciplinary action for keeping a photo collection of "exceptionally beautiful" women that passed through their checkpoint, police officials said Tuesday.

The officers, who were working at a ferry terminal near Stockholm, made photocopies of the women's passport photos and placed them in a binder. They also noted the date of birth next to each entry, the Stockholm police department said.

The binder contained instructions on how to compile the collection, and orders to make backup copies in case the binder would go missing or be confiscated by "evil-minded bores," police said.

The instructions also stated that only "exceptionally beautiful" women belonged in the collection and that no personal data, aside from the date of birth, should be included.

The men's employer found the binder and reported them to police, but the matter was dismissed because the compilation was not considered illegal.

Stockholm police passed the matter to the national police's disciplinary board, which recommended the men get away with a warning.

David Terettes Christmas Classics

Chrsitmas Gift Idea # 73

Caskets for Barbie and GI Joe

You can purchase them HERE

Mother says teacher ‘exploited' child

MORGANTOWN -- The West Virginia Human Rights Commission is investigating charges that an elementary school teacher used a biracial kindergarten student as a prop to illustrate differences in skin color and ethnic backgrounds during a world cultures class.

Rhonda Bennett, a preschool teacher at Peterson Central Elementary School in Weston, is also accused of telling schoolmates that the child had been adopted -- a fact the family of the 5-year-old girl says she did not yet know.

Joseph Mace, superintendent of Lewis County schools, also has refused to return phone calls and e-mails from The Associated Press but acknowledged the incident to a local television station last week.

The Human Rights Commission supplied a copy of the family's complaint Wednesday after the AP filed a request under the state's Freedom of Information Act.

A copy had been shown to school board members two weeks ago, but it was retrieved from their possession after about five minutes, said board President Paul Derico.

Derico did not identify Bennett, whose name was in the complaint. However, he said the teacher involved once worked for him when he was a principal at a school in Jane Lew.

"This person is an excellent teacher," he said. "She just made a bad choice."

Derico said the school board has taken no action against the teacher because it is waiting for a recommendation from the superintendent.

The complaint, which does not name the girl or her family, says the incident occurred in mid-September, when a teacher's aide removed the girl from her regular classroom.

The child told her mother that evening that she had sat on Bennett's lap while the teacher and other students talked about her skin color.

In a written statement accompanying her complaint forms, the mother said she contacted the school and spoke with several people who confirmed her daughter's account but described the lesson as a good one.

Bennett allegedly told the mother she had taught the lesson before, and that the girl did not seem upset by it. The teacher said the lesson was intended "to show that we all are alike, but we have different skin, eyes, hair, nationalities, etc."

The principal also said the lesson "has been taught in this manner for years" and had his approval, the mother wrote. "He further stated the teacher had brought Chinese children up in front before, and nobody ever had any problems."

The 43-year-old mother, who is white, said race has never been discussed in her home, and she was never asked if her daughter could "be used for show-and-tell."

"It is not the lesson in dispute; it is the manner in which my child was ‘exploited.' This incident has led to questions from my child such as, ‘Why am I different? What is wrong with me? What color am I?' " she wrote.

The family has since explained that the girl was adopted, even though her parents had felt she was not mature enough to understand the concept.

"The issue is not whether the lesson is ‘good' or ‘bad,' but placing a young child in a position they do not understand," the mother wrote. "The system needs to see this from the child's point of view -- not through the eyes of an adult."

Holiday Moment 1

Man fined for tossing pig at hotel

WEST POINT, Miss. - When pigs fly, indeed. Kevin Pugh, 20, of Cedar Bluff, has been fined $279 for tossing a pig over the counter at the Holiday Inn Express in West Point on Nov. 12. Pugh pleaded guilty Tuesday in city court to a charge of disturbing the peace.

West Point Police Lt. Danny McCaskill has said Pugh didn't know the employees of the hotel. There was no evidence intoxication was a factor.

No one was hurt, including the pig, officers said.

"This was the silliest thing I've ever seen," McCaskill said. "Almost every officer we had was involved because the incidents kept happening at different hours."

McCaskill said Pugh was accused of walking into the hotel and throwing the 60-pound pig over the counter.

"He said it was a prank," McCaskill said. "It must be some redneck thing, because I haven't ever heard of anything like it."

McCaskill said there have been four late-night incidents involving animal-tossing at West Point businesses. Twice a pig was tossed and two of the incidents involved possums.

All four of the disturbances took place between 2 a.m. and 4 a.m., McCaskill said.

Pugh is accused in a second animal-throwing incident at a Hardee's restaurant. He has pleaded innocent to disturbing the peace in that case and will appear in city court on Dec. 19.

RS: Wild Horses Accoustic

Here's a real WINNER....FATHER MORON....

Dick Cheney’s Gay Daughter is Pregnant


There are few hotter issues than gay adoption, but I’ve found one: a high profile lesbian woman deciding to conceive a child with no apparent intention of involving the biological father in the child’s life.

Yesterday, the Washington Post reported the openly gay daughter of Vice President Dick Cheney is pregnant. The same published report says Mary, 37, and her partner of 15 years, Heather Poe, 45, are “ecstatic” about the baby, due in late spring.

Before commenting on the report, it is important to mention what we don’t know.

We don’t know how she got pregnant, and quite honestly, it’s none of our business.

What we do know is that two lesbian women can’t make babies, and as good as both women may be as caretakers, neither of them can be Dad. We also know there is a dad out there and this child will be deprived of his presence.

Because people have strong opinions about homosexuality, gay marriage and gay adoption, it is very difficult to embark on any single issue without the conversation bleeding into the others. Gay issue advocates have succeeded in linking all three together by arguing they each stem from the principle of equal rights.

This story, however, of Mary Cheney and her partner, allows us the rare opportunity to examine the consequences of redefining the family to include homosexual couples, without getting bogged down with arguments about the moral status of homosexual behaviour.

In an interview last year in People Magazine, Mary Cheney was asked if she and Heather “plan on having a family.” Here, we see a classic case of Hollywood-style linguistic manipulation. It sounds very nice and tolerant to speak as if two women can plan their family in the same way that a married heterosexual couple can. However, when it comes to the wellbeing and education of children, niceties aren’t enough. Mary’s response was characteristically kind and considerate, but equally dismissive of the seriousness of bringing a fatherless child into this world: “That’s one Heather and I are going to have to talk about before I can tell you.”

The movement to redefine the family threatens to subvert children’s rights. Mary thought the decision to get pregnant with the help of a third party was serious enough to merit a long talk with her girlfriend, but thinks her child should have no say in being born into a fatherless home.

Spokespersons for activist groups — in this case gay rights activists — are among the most blatant perpetrators of linguistic manipulation. Reacting to the news of Mary Cheney’s pregnancy, the director of Family Pride, Jennifer Chrisler, said this: "Unless they move to a handful of less restrictive states, Heather will never be able to have a legal relationship with her child."

Why does Jennifer assume it’s Heather’s child too?

Many single mothers make great moms, but the ones I know are the first to say that nature (God) got it right with the complementary nature of the sexes, for both human reproduction and parenthood.

Trading a father or a mother for a third party lover may seem to make sense for the couple, but it will never make sense for the child.

But what is done is done. We now should celebrate the marvel of new life, a beautiful gift in every circumstance. I can understand why they are “ecstatic.”

I wish Mary, Heather and Mary’s child the very best.

God bless, Father Jonathan

Christmas Fart Song

Dad Says Toy Taught Son F-Word

Man Wants Toys 'R' Us To Pull Toy From Shelves

JACKSONVILLE, N.C. -- A North Carolina father wants Toys "R" Us to take a popular police toy set off the shelves.

He said the toy given to his 6-year-old son utters a curse word. Toys "R" Us has gotten two complaints and had the chip re-recorded.

The toy is a police officer set called "Elite Operations Role Play Set: Police," that includes a nightstick and a utility belt. A recorded message that includes what sounds like a curse word plays when the nightstick is removed from the belt.

Philip Morton, 33, said he returned the toy to the toy store where he bought it and played it for store managers. He said they gave him a new set with a recording that didn't include the obscenity.

He kept the original set and played the recorded message, including the apparent curse word, over the phone for Associated Press reporters.

"We shelter our kids," said Morton. "We're very protective about everything they watch on TV and discourage cussing around our kids. Our TVs are on the Disney Channel 97 percent of the time."

Morton told The Daily News in Jacksonville, N.C., that when he heard his son, Jonathan, saying an obscene word to friends after his birthday party, he was incensed.

Morton said his son learned the word -- a term for sexual intercourse -- from his toy.

"He asked me if I wanted him to arrest me and I said no, (then) he asked me if I wanted to be cuffed and I said (maybe), and then he said, '(expletive) don’t make me use my nightstick,'" Morton told the paper. "Without even thinking I said, 'What did you say?’ So he said it again. To some people that might have been funny to hear a child say that, but I got very, very mad."

He said he's been apologizing to people for his son's cursing.

"I've had to explain to parents why my son is saying the f-word; it's horrible," Morton said. “It's really a cute little toy; but God forbid, it's not what I want my kid hearing."

A store spokeswoman said the problem may be a faulty chip.

Jerry Gibson of TekNek Toys International of Southlake, Texas, said Morton hasn't made the recording available, but that the recorded voice is supposed to say "stop."

"I understand they can’t check every toy on the shelf," Morton said. "But if one doesn’t say it and one does, maybe someone is playing a game and got in a hurry and forgot about it. Personally, I think they should be held liable."

TekNek Toys denied claims that the toy has a potty mouth. Michelle Perea, the products and marketing manager for TekNek, told the paper that the recorded voice actually does say “stop.”

Woman’s tail wind downs jetliner

NASHVILLE - In case of emergency . . . pull finger!

Flatulence brought down an American Airlines [AMR] flight early Monday. It is believed to be the first incident in which gastrointestinal gas has forced an emergency landing.

American Flight 1053 was enroute from Washington Reagan National Airport and bound for Dallas/Fort Worth, when alarmed passengers reported smelling struck matches, Lynne Lowrance, a spokeswoman for the Nashville International Airport Authority told the Tennesseean newspaper.

Despite the odoriferous menace, the plane landed safely. The FBI, Transportation Safety Administration and airport authority responded to the emergency, Lowrance said.

The passengers were taken off the plane with their luggage to go through security checks. Bomb-sniffing dogs found the matches. Astute FBI agents managed to identify and question a passenger who admitted she struck the matches to conceal a body odor issue caused by a medical condition. The flight took off again, but the woman was not allowed back on.

“American has banned her for a long time,” Lowrance said. It is unclear whether she intends to create a stink over the ban. She was not charged although it is illegal to strike a match in an airplane.

Paris Hilton: Exposed

Celebrities with Herpes

David Hasselhoff
Bill Clinton
Moby
Tony Bennett
Robin Williams
Justin Whalin
Jason Kidd
Fred Durst
Joshua Jackson
Billy Idol
Colin Farrell
Lauren Hutton
Sheryl Crow
Pamela Anderson
Lucie Arnaz
Janet Jackson
Tawny Kitaen
Britney Spears (uses Zovirax)
Alyssa Milano
Kristanna Loken
Joumana Kidd

Nasal spray treatment for obesity

Compellis Pharmaceuticals of Boston said it has been issued an initial patent for a nasal spray that aims to treat obesity by blocking the senses of smell and taste.

"It seems so simple - blocking the sense of smell and taste," company chief executive Chris Adams wrote in an e-mail. "But it has never been used to treat obesity, and it really does work. Our bodies do not crave what we cannot smell or taste."


Compellis said it has demonstrated the effectiveness of its treatment in tests with animals and hopes to begin testing on people next year.

The US Patent and Trademark Office has granted Compellis "the initial patent in a series of patent applications covering the platform technology" behind its treatment, the company said.

Compellis calls its potential product CP404 and describes it as a "calcium channel blocker used in a nasal formulation to block olefactory activity and reduce food intake."

Tale Of 3 Red Dresses

First Lady Fashion Faux Pas: Tale Of 3 Red Dresses

Laura Bush Can't Compete, Changes Outfit Mid-Party

WASHINGTON It's always one of the biggest nights in Washington for stars and for glamorous fashion, with guests in the spotlight at an exclusive White House holiday reception. The designer gowns are always scrutinized, and on this year's bash, there was plenty to talk about.

Three women donned the exact same $8,500 red Oscar de la Renta dress, a fashion faux pas in itself. But that's just the beginning of this debacle of ladies in red.

It just so happened that First Lady Laura Bush was wearing the very same dress too.

Letitia Baldridge, Jacqueline Kennedy's Chief of Staff and White House social secretary says the gown was beautiful, but triple the trouble was quite the mess.

"They all should have congratulated one another on their good taste and the fact that they could afford the dress," Baldridge says. "Jacqueline Kennedy, when she was first lady made sure, and her couturiers made sure that nobody else wore that dress that season. "

So the question arises: how could this have happened? More importantly, if you're going to break out the big bucks for the beauty, wouldn't you want to be confident you're the only one wearing it -- especially if you're the first lady?

The debacle led Mrs. Bush to make an executive decision.

"She went upstairs and changed, very easy for her to do. It was the right thing to do, take the heat off the other women," Baldridge says.

Mrs. Bush's office said the mid-course correction was a first and that both she and the president got a kick out of it.

As for the three ladies who didn't have the ability to change while they were there?

"Oh I would have laughed and laughed and I would have said, 'Listen I'm not going to stand next to her because I'm fatter than she is,'" Baldridge says. "But other than that I think it's a hoot."

Despite the fact that Mrs. Bush changed, the incident won't be forgotten any time soon. That's because she was still wearing the dress when she was photographed for this year's official presidential holiday photo.

Taco Bell Removes Onions After Outbreak

Taco Bell ordered scallions removed from its 5,800 U.S. restaurants Wednesday after tests suggested they may be responsible for the E. coli outbreak that has sickened at least three dozen people in three states.

The fast-food chain said preliminary testing by an independent lab found three samples of green onions appeared to have a dangerous strain of the bacterium.

"In an abundance of caution, we've decided to pull all green onions from our restaurants until we know conclusively whether they are the cause of the E. coli outbreak," said Greg Creed, president of Irvine, Calif.-based Taco Bell.

The company would not immediately identify the supplier of the scallions, so it was unclear whether contaminated green onions reached other restaurants or supermarkets.

Tainted green onions from Mexico were blamed for a 2003 outbreak of hepatitis A in western Pennsylvania that was also traced to a Mexican restaurant. Four people died and more than 600 people were sickened after eating the green onions at a Chi-Chi's.

California is the nation's largest supplier of green onions. But by December, as winter sets in, the vegetable is often imported from Mexico.

At least 46 confirmed cases of E. coli sickness linked to Taco Bell have been reported in New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania.

All 15 Taco Bell restaurants in Philadelphia voluntarily closed Wednesday following a recommendation by the city's Department of Public Health.

Two restaurants on New York's Long Island were also closed Wednesday for cleaning. The chain, a subsidiary of Yum Brands Inc., had reopened other restaurants there linked to the outbreak. A Taco Bell in New Jersey remained closed for cleanup. Two other Taco Bells in New Jersey that were implicated never closed.

In Trenton, Nidhi Trikha stopped by an unaffected Taco Bell for a quick lunch Wednesday that included a chicken quesadilla and a bean chalupa _ but no green onions. After hearing about the outbreak, she said she was sorry she ate.

"I know fast food is always unhealthy, but it's quick and cheap," she said. "God, I hope I'm OK."

McLane Co., which distributes food to the region's Taco Bells, said federal investigators planned to test green onions, regular onions, cilantro, tomatoes and lettuce from its southern New Jersey warehouse.

Authorities also planned to look at a nearby facility of a produce processor, Ready Pac Produce, which handles lettuce, tomatoes, onions and other ingredients for Taco Bell. A Ready Pac spokesman did not immediately return calls.

At least five people in the three states remained hospitalized, including an 11-year-old boy in stable condition with kidney damage. New Jersey's health commissioner has said the most recent case of E. coli was reported Nov. 29, so the danger of infection appears to have passed.

E. coli is found in the feces of humans and livestock. Most E. coli infections are associated with undercooked meat. The bacteria also can be found on sprouts or leafy vegetables such as spinach. The germs can be spread by people if they do not thoroughly wash their hands after using the bathroom.

E. coli, or Escherichia coli, is a common and ordinarily harmless bacteria, but certain strains can cause abdominal cramps, fever, bloody diarrhea, kidney failure, blindness, paralysis and death.

Earlier this year, three people died and more than 200 fell ill in an E. coli outbreak that was traced to packaged, fresh spinach grown in California.

RBC Capital Markets analyst Larry Miller said the outbreak could affect Taco Bell sales in the short term. "It will take time for consumers to get confidence back, but it will come back," he said.

Taco Bell established a telephone number, 1-800-TACO BELL, for those with concerns about the outbreak.

It's beginning to look alot like.....HITLER?

Miniature wooden Santa figures were removed from Rossmann stores, a German retail chain, after customers claimed they looked like they were giving the outlawed Hitler salute.

“We were astonished by the reaction,” Josef Lange, a spokesman for Rossmann said. “It looks like he’s just pointing up to the sky and we were surprised that anyone saw the so-called ‘Hitler salute’ in that. But we responded and had the entire inventory removed and destroyed.”

As you might’ve noticed from the picture, the only thing better than one offensive Santa is an army of them. Although they were all destroyed (I assume in an ironic petrol fire), I don’t think we’ve seen the last of this doll. Afterall, what better mascot to represent the consumerism of the holiday season than Nazi Santa? Now, if we could only get them to be made in China, for 2 cents a toy, rather than Germany.

State Employees: A Case Study

Drunk Driving Christmas Parade Float

COLUMBIA, S.C.- Authorities say a man driving a float in the Anderson Christmas parade has been charged with drunk driving after he passed another float then sped down Main Street.

When officers caught up to 42-year-old David Allen Rodgers, he had an open container of alcohol in the truck he used to haul the children and adults on the float for a dance studio.

Witnesses say Rodgers was driving in line in Sunday's parade when he pulled out to pass a tractor in the float.

Police say Rodgers sped down Main Street and ran a red light, while a witness on the float called 911 on a cell phone.

Rodgers, whose child was on the float, faces more than three dozen charges, including DUI, kidnapping and assaulting an officer. He will have a bond hearing on the kidnapping charge later this week.

Elevator Flirt

Report: Lance Bass, boyfriend split

Lance Bass and his boyfriend, Reichen Lehmkuhl, have called it quits, People magazine reported on its Web site Monday.

Bass' publicist, Ken Sunshine, didn't respond to a message from The Associated Press. The AP was trying to locate a representative for Lehmkuhl.

Bass, who was part of the boy band 'N Sync, revealed earlier this year that he is gay and was in a relationship with Lehmkuhl, a former Air Force captain and winner of season four of CBS' "Amazing Race."

The 27-year-old singer told People in July that he didn't earlier disclose his sexuality because he didn't want to affect 'N Sync's popularity.

"The thing is, I'm not ashamed -- that's the one thing I want to say," Bass told the magazine. "I don't think it's wrong, I'm not devastated going through this. I'm more liberated and happy than I've been my whole life."

'N Sync, known for a string of hits including "Bye Bye Bye" and "It's Gonna Be Me," went on hiatus in 2002. Bass has also made headlines for undertaking astronaut training and failing to raise money for a trip into space.

Lehmkuhl, 32, has said he admired Bass' decision to disclose his sexuality. Lehmkuhl has a new book, "Here's What We'll Say," which recounts his time keeping his sexual orientation a secret from Air Force colleagues.

George Clooney's pig Max dies at age 19

George Clooney's beloved potbelly pig Max has died, Clooney's publicist said. He was 19.

Max, who lived at Clooney's Hollywood Hills home, died "peacefully" of natural causes on Friday, Clooney's publicist, Stan Rosenfield, said by phone Monday.

"Max, like any pet, became a member of the family," Rosenfield said. "He was a big pig, as pigs go. I can't tell you how much he weighed."

The Oscar-winning actor, 45, who owned the hog for 18 years and reportedly once said the porker was his longest relationship, told USA Today, "I was really surprised, because he's been a big part of my life."

Another Clooney pet -- his bulldog Bud -- died earlier this year, Rosenfield said.

Clooney was out of town promoting his upcoming film "The Good German" when Max died, according to USA Today.

Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

BA passengers share first class cabin with dead traveller

First Class travellers on a British Airways transatlantic flight were horrified when they were forced to sit next to a dead body for three hours.

The elderly passenger had died of a heart attack just minutes earlier and was carried into their cabin to continue the journey to America.

It followed a mid air drama in which a doctor and crew lost a 35 minute battle to resuscitate the man after he suffered a cardiac arrest in business class where he was travelling with his wife.

Four stewards and a fellow passenger then struggled to carry the deceased American in his seventies into their exclusive area - where tickets cost up to £6,669 return.

They propped him up in a semi-reclined position in one of just 14 of the seats - which can recline totally into a lie-flat bed - and which are set into individual pod-bays which also contain a TVs and a 'buddy stool' for chatting to fellow passengers.

It meant the First Class passenger in the remaining seats shared their remaining journey of about three hours with the man whose body - though not his head - was covered by a blanket and strapped into the individual pod seat.

The tragedy happened on BA Boeing 777 Flight 213 which left Heathrow from Boston at 10.30am carrying more than 200 passengers but details have just emerged.

The deceased American had been travelling with his wife in the Club Word business class section when he suffered his heart attack about three hours into the six hour flight.

The crew made an announcement calling for a medical doctor, and the stricken passenger taken into the galley area between business and first class where attempts were made to resuscitate him. But after more than half an hour he was declared dead.

The tragic case highlights the dilemma facing crews on a packed long-distance plane of what to do with a dead passenger - while balancing the dignity of the deceased with the distress of their family and the concerns of other often squeamish passengers.

One First Class cabin eyewitness - a senior computer executive in her 30s - said: 'It was a very strange and unsettling thing to experience.

'We were about half way into the flight and getting my head down to sleep when I heard a commotion from behind the curtain in first class.

'Stewardesses were running up and down the aisle. There was no panic but there was a sense of urgency. The staff were very professional.

'There was a call over the loudspeakers for a medical doctor. From where I was sitting towards the back of First Class I was aware of them performing resuscitation techniques behind the curtains as I tried to watch the in-flight movie - Mission Impossible III.'

'I felt quite uneasy. But some passengers were being very British about it and simply not acknowledging there was anything wrong.

'One of the stewardesses then came to me and said there was some rather bad news. There had been a death on board.

'She asked would I mind awfully moving to the other side of the cabin because they needed to bring the body in. The first class section was about 80 per cent full.

'Four male stewards came I carrying the poor chap who was in his 60s or 70s and casually dressed. But he was a bit too big for them. Another passenger lent a hand as they propped him up

'They wrapped him in a blanket and strapped him in and semi-reclined the seat. But his head was exposed and leaning to one said, as if he were asleep. I could see the top of his head throughout the flight.'

She added:'The chap's wife came in an sat with him on the little buddy stool at the bottom of the bay in front of the seat. She was very distressed. We could hear her sobbing.

'It's not very enjoyable when this happens. But the staff were very good.'

A spokesman for British Airways confirmed: 'Sadly, an elderly male passenger died on board BA flight 213 from Heathrow to Boston on Tuesday November 28.

'Our cabin crew and a doctor who was on board the flight did absolutely all they could to save the man and treated him for more than 35 minutes with coronary pulmonary resuscitation (CPR). But unfortunately he passed away.'

The BA spokesman added:'Our thoughts and condolences are with the passengers, family and friends - especially his wife - who was travelling with him.'

BA said the dead man was taken into First Class because business class was full.

The plane had 14 first class seats (and was 80 per cent full), 48 seats in business class, 40 in premium economy (called 'World Traveller) and 122 in economy.

The airline said there were about a dozen deaths aboard its planes each year - out of a total of 36million passengers.

Bus shelters get cookie scent

Hoping to stir up thirst for milk, officials installed advertisements in several San Francisco bus shelters on Monday that give off the scent of freshly baked cookies.

The technology that creates the scent is very similar to that used in magazine ads. Scented adhesives are placed throughout the interior of the bus shelters, including under the benches.

"As long as they are not harmful chemicals, it's OK," one somewhat confused elderly woman said as she pondered the cookie smell in one of the shelters. "They are trying to sell milk? Is that it?"

The effort at five bus shelters is part of a campaign cooked up by the California Milk Processor Board, whose iconic "Got Milk?" campaign has adorned famous figures from around the world with milk mustaches for 13 years.

While olfactory marketing has long been a staple of perfume companies in magazines, Jeff Goodby, chairman of the San Francisco-based ad firm Goodby, Silverstein & Partners that created the campaign, said he knew of no other completely outdoor campaign.

PlayStation 3 related death

A teenager accused of robbing a student of two new Playstation 3s on the day the popular game consoles were introduced was shot to death by police sent to arrest him.

Peyton Strickland, 18, was killed Friday at a house he shared with three roommates, New Hanover County Sheriff Sid Causey said.

"If this boy would've come to the door, opened the door, we probably wouldn't be talking," the sheriff said Sunday.

Roommate Mike Rhoton said Strickland was unarmed, but may have been holding a video game controller when he went to the door as it was bashed in by officers.

Authorities promised Monday to fully investigate the fatal shooting. "No one is above the law and no one is beneath its protection," District Attorney Ben David said. He declined to discuss details of the case.

The State Bureau of Investigation is examining the case and three deputies on the team were placed on paid leave, normal practice whenever officers fire their weapons, Causey said.

Arrest warrants alleged that Strickland, a student at Cape Fear Community College, and a University of North Carolina-Wilmington student stole two PlayStation units from another UNC-Wilmington student that day.

The sheriff said the robbery victim had waited three days in line to buy two Playstation 3 units for $641 each at a Wal-Mart. He was unloading the units at his campus apartment when one man beat him to the ground while another took the PlayStations, Causey said.

The sheriff said Strickland was shot by members of a a special police unit who went to help university officers serve warrants. He would not say why the special team was assisting.

Strickland's dog, a German shepherd, also was shot to death.

The second man named in the warrants was arrested at another address and was released on bail on Saturday, authorities said.

The nationwide introduction of the Sony game system on Nov. 17 was marked by rowdy crowds and store stampedes. One buyer waiting in line at a Connecticut store was shot by armed robbers.

Rolling Stones and Muddy Waters

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THE FAKING IMAMS

The Now Notorious Flying Imams Claim Their Only Crime Was “Flying While Muslim,” But Our Reporting Reveals They Are Trying to Sweep Their Real Motives Under Their Prayer Rugs...

Area Muslims pray near the ticketing area of the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, Friday, Dec. 1.

SEE ALSO: The first public publication of the official police report on the incident including handwritten statements from witnesses. Download file — PDF 3.8 Mb

PLUS: The letter from US Airways passenger “Pauline” to U.S. Airways: Download file PDF 68K

The case of U.S. Airways flight 300 gets stranger by the minute. When six traveling Muslim clerics were asked to deplane last week, it looked like another civil rights controversy against post-9-11 airport security.

Now new information is emerging that suggests it was all a stunt designed to weaken security….

Yesterday I spoke with a passenger on that flight, who asked that she be only identified as “Pauline.” A copy of airport police report, which I also obtained, supports Pauline’s account - and includes shocking revelations of its own. In addition, U.S. Airways spokeswoman Andrea Rader also confirmed much of what Pauline revealed…..

The passenger, who asked that she only be identified as “Pauline,” said she is afraid to give her full name or hometown. She is spending the night at “another location” because she does not feel safe at home. She credits reports that one imam is apparently linked to Hamas. “It is scary because these men could be dangerous.”

Pauline said she never wanted media attention. She wrote an email to U.S. Airways and cc:ed her daughter, who unexpectedly emailed it to her friends. As the letter took on an internet life of its own, it made its way to the inbox of a retired CNN executive producer. Then, to her dismay, the feeding frenzy began.

Pauline revealed to Pajamas Media that the six imams were doing things far more suspicious than praying - an Arabic-speaking passenger heard them repeatedly invoke “bin Laden,” and “terrorism,” a gate attendant told the captain that she did not want to fly with them, and that bomb-sniffing dogs were brought aboard. Other Muslim passengers were left undisturbed and later joined in a round of applause for the U.S. Airways crew. “It wasn’t that they were Muslim. It was all of the suspicious things they did,” Pauline said.

Here is her story, along with corroborating quotes from the U.S. Airways spokeswoman Andrea Rader and the official report, another Pajamas Media exclusive.

Sitting in Minneapolis-St. Paul’s Airport Gate C9, she noticed one of the imams immediately. “He was pacing nervously, talking in Arabic,” she said.

She quickly noticed the others. “They didn’t look like holy men to me. They looked like guys heading out of town for a Vikings game.”

Pauline said she did not see or hear the imams pray at the gate (she was at dinner in a nearby airport eatery), but heard about the pre-flight prayers from other passengers hours later.

As the plane boarded, she said, no one refused to fly. The public prayers and Arabic phone call did not trigger any alarms - so much for the p.c. allegations that people were disturbed by Muslim prayers.

But a note from a passenger about suspicious movements of the imams got the crew’s attention. A copy of the passenger’s note appears in the police report.

To Pauline everything seemed normal. Then the captain - in classic laconic pilot-style - announced there had been a “mix up in our paperwork” and that the flight would be delayed.

In reality, the air crew was waiting for the FBI and local police to arrive.

Ninety minutes after the flight’s scheduled 5:15 p.m. departure, the captain announced yet another delay. Still, Pauline said, there was no sense of alarm.

Still, it seemed like just another annoying development, typical when flying the friendly skies.

The situation in cockpit was far more intense, according to a U.S. Airways spokeswoman and police reports.

Contrary to press accounts that a single note from a passenger triggered the imams’ removal, Captain John Howard Wood was weighing multiple factors - factors that have largely been ignored by the press.

Another passenger, not the note writer, was an Arabic speaker sitting near two of the imams in the plane’s tail. That passenger pulled a flight attendant aside, and in a whisper, translated what the men were saying. They were invoking “bin Laden” and condemning America for “killing Saddam,” according to police reports.

Meanwhile an imam seated in first class asked for a seat-belt extension, even though according to both an on-duty flight attendant and another deadheading flight attendant, he looked too thin to need one. Hours later, when the passengers were being evacuated, the seat-belt extension was found on the floor near the imam’s seat, police reports confirm. The U.S. Airways spokeswoman Andrea Rader said she did not dispute the report, but said the airline’s internal investigation cannot yet account for the seat-belt extension request or its subsequent use.

A seat-belt extension can easily be used as a weapon, by wrapping the open-end of the belt around your fist and swinging the heavy metal buckle.

Still, it seemed like just another annoying development, typical when flying the friendly skies. Days after the incident, the imam would claim that the steward helped him attach the device. Pauline said he is lying. Hours later, when the police was being evacuated, the steward asked Pauline to hand him the seat-belt extension, which the imam did not attach, but placed on the floor. “I know he is lying,” Pauline said, “I had it [seat belt extension] in my hand.”

A passenger in the third row of first class, Pauline said, told a member of the crew: “I don’t have a good feeling about this guy,” about the imam who wanted the seat-belt extension.

A married couple one row behind first-class, tried to strike up a conversation with the imam seated near them. He refused to talk or even look at the woman in the eye, according to Pauline. Instead, he stood up and moved to join the other imams in the back of the plane. Why would he leave the luxury end of the aircraft? Pauline wondered. The account of the married couple does not appear in the police report.

Finally, a gate attendant told the captain she thought the imams were acting suspiciously, according to police reports.

So the captain apparently made his decision to delay the flight based on many complaints, not one. And he consulted a federal air marshal, a U.S. Airways ground security coordinator and the airline’s security office in Phoenix. All thought the imams were acting suspiciously, Rader told me.

Other factors were also considered: All six imams had boarded together, with the first-class passengers - even though only one of them had a first-class ticket. Three had one-way tickets. Between the six men, only one had checked a bag.

And, Pauline said, they spread out just like the 9-11 hijackers. Two sat in first, two in the middle, and two back in the economy section. Pauline’s account is confirmed by the police report. The airline spokeswoman added that some seemed to be sitting in seats not assigned to them.

One thing that no one seemed to consider at the time, perhaps due to lack of familiarity with Islamic practice, is that the men prayed both at the gate and on the plane. Observant Muslims pray only once at sundown, not twice.

“It was almost as if they were intentionally trying to get kicked off the flight,” Pauline said.

A lone plain clothes FBI agent boarded the plane and briefly spoke to the imams. Later, uniformed police escorted them off.

Some press reports said the men were led off in handcuffs, which Pauline disputes. “I saw them. They were not handcuffed.”

Later, each imam was individually brought back on the aircraft to reclaim his belongings. They were still not handcuffed. They may have been handcuffed later.

At this point, the passengers became alarmed. “How do we know they got all their stuff off?” Pauline heard one man ask.

While the imams were soon released, Pauline is fuming: “We are the victims of these people. They need to be more sensitive to us. They were totally insensitive to us and then accused us of being insensitive to them. I mean, we were a lot more inconvenienced than them.”

The plane was delayed for some three and one-half hours.

Bomb-sniffing dogs were used to sweep the plane and every passenger was re-screened, the airline spokeswoman confirmed. Another detail omitted from press reports.

The reaction of the remaining passengers has also gone unreported. “We applauded and cheered for the crew,” she said.

“I think it was either a foiled attempt to take over the plane or it was a publicity stunt to accuse us of being insensitive,” Pauline said. “It had to be to intimidate U.S. Airways to ease up on security.”

So far, U.S. Airways refuses to be intimidated, even though the feds have launched an investigation. “We are absolutely backing this crew,” Rader said.

Tucked away in the police report is this little gem: one of the imams had complained to a passenger that some nations did not follow shariah law and his job in Bakersfield, Calif. was a cover for “representing Muslims here in the U.S.”

So what are the imams really up to? Something more than praying it seems.

Spray On Condom = Instant Lovin'

The renowned German engineering that brought the world the BMW, the Audi and the Porsche is proud to present the first ever spray on condom. The only thing funnier than the idea of a spray on condom is the Google translation of the product page:

Soon there is no more reason to rather make it without. The new condom comes from the spray can and adapts to each member optimally. Cap off and condom over the Penis spray: The Latexhaut sits perfectly and is operational in few seconds.

The advantages of the spray condom are obvious: it is easily and fast applicable, adapts to each Penisgrüsse and form individually and offers apart from stretcher comfort, optimal protection with the sexual intercourse. Damage by transport or sun exposure belongs then exactly the same to the past like the question of the disposal: The natural rubber product decomposes and becomes humus.

Still condom testers are looked for, which already gained experience in handling condoms. Prospective customers can announce themselves on this web page anonymous.

So is this the next step in the world's struggle against HIV or the newest arsenal in frat houses across the country? Please be sure to let us know if you decide to sign up as a beta tester for this product, but until then, feel free to check out the company's um . . . virtual condom advisor.

Redneck Flatscreen TV

Police Decry Web Site on Informants

Police and prosecutors are worried that a Web site claiming to identify more than 4,000 informants and undercover agents will cripple investigations and hang targets on witnesses.

The Web site, WhosaRat.com, first caught the attention of authorities after a Massachusetts man put it online and named a few dozen people as turncoats in 2004. Since then, it has grown into a clearinghouse for mug shots, court papers and rumors.

Federal prosecutors say the site was set up to encourage violence, and federal judges around the country were recently warned that witnesses in their courtrooms may be profiled online.

"My concern is making sure cooperators are adequately protected from retaliation," said Chief Judge Thomas Hogan, who alerted other judges in Washington's federal courthouse. He said he learned about the site from a federal judge in Maine.

The Web site is the latest unabashedly public effort to identify witnesses or discourage helping police. "Stop Snitching" T-shirts have been sold in cities around the country and popular hip-hop lyrics disparage or threaten people who help police.

In 2004, NBA star Carmelo Anthony appeared in an underground Baltimore DVD that warned people they could be killed for cooperating with police. Anthony has said he was not aware of the DVD's message.

Such threats hinder criminal investigations, said Ronald Teachman, police chief in New Bedford, Mass., where murder cases have been stymied by witness silence and "Stop Snitching" T-shirts were recently for sale.

"Every shooting we have to treat like homicide. The victim's alive but he's not cooperative," Teachman said. "These kids have the idea that the worst offense they can commit is to cooperate with the police."

Sean Bucci, a former Boston-area disc jockey, set up WhosaRat.com after federal prosecutors charged him with selling marijuana in bulk from his house. Bucci is under house arrest awaiting trial and could not be reached, but a WhosaRat spokesman identifying himself as Anthony Capone said the site is a resource for criminal defendants and does not condone violence.

"If people got hurt or killed, it's kind of on them. They knew the dangers of becoming an informant," Capone said. "We'd feel bad, don't get me wrong, but things happen to people. If they decide to become an informant, with or without the Web site, that's a possibility."

The site offers biographical information about people whom users identify as witnesses or undercover agents. Users can post court documents, comments and pictures.

Some of those listed are well known, such as former Connecticut Gov. John G. Rowland, who served 10 months in prison before testifying in a public corruption case. But many never made headlines and were identified as having helped investigators in drug cases.

For two years, anyone with an Internet connection could search the site. On Thursday, a day after it was discussed at a courthouse conference in Washington, the site became a subscription-only service. The site has also disabled the ability to post photos of undercover agents, Capone said, because administrators of the Web site do not want officers to be hurt.

Authorities disagree. In documents filed in Bucci's court case last month, federal prosecutors said they have information that Bucci set up the Web site to help intimidate and harm witnesses.

"Such information not only compromises pending or future government investigations, but places informants and undercover agents in potentially grave danger," Assistant U.S. Attorney Peter K. Levitt wrote.

While prosecutors haven't pointed to a case where a witness or officer was harmed because of the Web site, it has been used to shatter an undercover agent's anonymity. After Hawaiian doctor Kachun Yeung was charged with distributing narcotic painkillers this spring, a surveillance picture of an undercover Drug Enforcement Agent was posted on the site.

Federal prosecutors said they traced the posting to the University of Hawaii newspaper's photo department, where the doctor's son was a photo editor. The posting identified the names of three agents and described one as "a known liar and a dirty agent. He is an absolute disgrace to the American justice system."

Prosecutors in Boston have discussed whether WhosaRat is protected as free speech but have not moved to shut it down. In 2004, an Alabama federal judge ruled that a defendant had the right to run a Web site that included witness information in the form of "wanted" posters.

Earlier this month, federal judges from Minnesota and Utah urged their colleagues to be careful about how much information about witnesses is released in public files, noting that they could end up on WhosaRat.

Steve Bunnell, chief of the criminal division at the U.S. attorney's office in Washington, said the rules of evidence already require authorities to identity witnesses to the people most likely to harm them: the defendants. Most of the documents labeled "top secret" on the site are really public court records or information copied from other Web sites, he said.

His concern is that the site disparages the reputation of people who come forward to help solve crimes.

"We don't make those high-level gang and drug organization cases without somebody on the inside telling us what's going on," Bunnell said.

Suck's Less with Kevin Smith

A classic in the making see it HERE.