Jack Brummet at age 2 /3? with Santa Claus a/k/a Dick Cheney working his way through college

Click to enlarge Jack and Santa Claus, 1955/56

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Film clip: Bob Dylan plays Love Minus Zero/No Limits

I don't know where this rather odd film clip comes from, but it does include Bob Dylan playing one of his masterwork songs. It may even be from the Pennebaker film.



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Google presents: An incredible motherlode of photos from Life Magazine, soon to include 10 million images

Just last month, Life Magazine opened up their treasure trove of photographs and they are available here on Google.

Charlie Parker - click to enlarge

Marilyn Monroe in Capris - click to enlarge

The official Google blog goes into great detail on these images: "We're excited to announce the availability of never-before-seen images from the LIFE photo archive. This effort to bring offline images online was inspired by our mission to organize all the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful."

This collection of newly-digitized images includes photos and etchings produced and owned by LIFE dating all the way back to the 1750s.Only a very small percentage of these images have ever been published. The rest have been sitting in dusty archives in the form of negatives, slides, glass plates, etchings, and prints. We're digitizing them so that everyone can easily experience these fascinating moments in time. Today about 20 percent of the collection is online; during the next few months, we will be adding the entire LIFE archive — about 10 million photos."

Jackie Kennedy - click to enlarge


Crosby Stills Nash & Young - click to enlarge
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A new list: My favorite Criterion movies.

These are my favorite (not the best. . .necessarily) movies from The Criterion Collection. Of course, they have hundreds of other great films too; I just haven't seen them (yet).

Grand Illusion - Jean Renoir (one of the great great movies...one notch under [or over] Citizen Kane)
Seven Samurai - Kurosawa (a three hour long epic film)
The 400 Blows - Francois Truffaut
This Is Spinal Tap - Rob Reiner (one of my top five knucklehead movies)
The Long Good Friday - John McKenzie
M - Fritz Lang - an awesome thriller
Nanook of the North - killer early documentary. Sorry, Frank Zappa didn't invent Nanook.
Time Bandits - Terry Gilliam (esp. if you're a Gilliam fan)
Henry V - Laurence Olivier (one of the best Shakespeare movies ever)
Fishing with John - John Lurie (a very funny and strange sort of travelogue, with Jim Jarmusch, Tom Waits, and Willem DaFoe)
Brazil - Terry Gilliam (This movie is one of a kind)
The Harder They Come - Perry Henzell (and dark, and very cool plunge into Shantytown, Reggae, and Rasta, with a great soundtrack)
The Blob - The classic spooky movie
Do the Right Thing - Spike Lee (his best movie, I think)
Playtime - Jacque Tati (I wonder if I would still like Tati movies?)
8 1/2 - Federico Fellini
Monterey Pop Festival (Hendrix, Joplin, Otis Redding and others broke out)
3 Women - Robert Altman
Slacker - Richard Linklater (an Austin movie--people seem to love it or hate it; the second time I saw it, everyone in the room fell asleep)
The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou - Wes Anderson (my favorite Wes movie)
Murmur of the heart - Louis Malle
Dazes and Confused - Richard Linklater
Stranger than paradise - jim jarmusch
Traffic - Jacques Tati
The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie - Luis Buñuel
Spartacus- Stanley Kubrick
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[see, also, A List of Lists on All This Is That]

Video: Johnny Cash sings Nasty Dan to Oscar The Grouch on Sesame Street

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Teen shoots parents who confiscated his Halo 3 videogame

Prosecutors at the murder trial of 17-year-old Daniel Petric say the teen shot both his parents because they wouldn't let him play Halo 3.

Petric, 16 at the time of the shooting, was forbidden to buy Halo 3 by his parents, Mark and Susan Petric. The teen snuck out to purchase the game anyway. When his parents discovered the game, they locked it up in a gun safe, along with the father's semiautomatic handgun.

According to the dad's testimony, Daniel walked into the room and said "Would you guys close your eyes? I have a surprise for you."

Petric then shot both parents in the head. The mother died immediately, but the father survived. In court, Daniel said: "Dad, I'm so sorry for what I did to Mom, to you and to the family. I'm so glad you are alive." "You're my son," Mark Petric responded. "You're my boy."

Prosecutors have not said whether or not they would file charges against the surviving parent for child abuse.
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Amazing video and story-->> Iraqi newspaperman hucks his shoes at President Bush's head: "It is the farewell kiss, you dog!"

An Iraqi journalist hucked his shoes and hurled the truth lobbed a dog-bomb told The President what most people were actually thinking and insulted President Bush at a press conference in Baghdad yesterday.



As the two leaders met in Nuri al-Maliki's private office, a journalist sitting in the third row jumped up, shouting: "It is the farewell kiss, you dog," and threw his shoes one after the other towards Bush.

Maliki made a protective gesture towards the US president, who ducked and was not hit. We never get to see this in the States--the President ducking as foreign objects hurtle toward his head. [Ed's note: If you can throw two shoes at the President, surrounded by the best security force in the world, we hope Obama limits his public appearances].

Soles of shoes are considered the ultimate insult in Arab culture. In Moslem countries you do not face your shoe bottoms toward anyone.

The journalist, Muntazer al-Zaidi from the Al-Baghdadia channel in Cairo, was taken from the room by security forces.

The President later said "I don't know what the guy's cause is... I didn't feel the least bit threatened by it."
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Our Lady of Guadalupe: Stark Naked!--> Playboy gets Mother Mary to pose naked for their cover

A smoldering version of The Virgin of Guadalupe appears on the cover of the Mexican version of Playboy that hit the stands last Thursday. Playboy Mexico’s editor Gabriel Bauducco decided to put a nude Virgin Mary on its cover, and the Mexican newspaper El Diario reported that the magazine has already sold over 80 thousand copies.

The magazine features a model--Maria Florencia Onori--naked except for a white cloth over her head. A banner , “Te adoramos, Maria,” (We adore you, Mary) appears on the cover, as well.

In one of the pictures, the model seems to be posing next to a church. Playboy sources said that photographer David Eisenberg’s intentions were not to make the model look like Virgin Mary. Nyuk, nyuk. On the other hand, the magazine was purposely timed to be released before the Virgin of Guadalupe Day, a Mexican holiday based upon the Virgin's appearance before a Mexican child on December 12, 1951. ---o0o---

Poem: Defense

photo courtesy of freephoto.com
under a creative commons 3.0 license


Defense

You can't stop the rain.
All you can do

Is build a roof
You hope won't leak,

Or, at the very least,
Leak on you, and yours.
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Love Hurts: Never say "no" to sex in the morning

According to a Ouachita Parish Sheriff's Office report, early last Saturday morning, Brittany Phillips, a 19-year-old Louisiana woman, was ready for sex. But her BF, Todd Stewart, 35, was not supplying it. He tried to push Phillips off him in the bedroom of their West Monroe, Louisana home.


click to enlarge the complaint

Phillips claims that Stewart became violent after he shut her down (and the physical evidence does not disagree). Stewart told an investigator that he left the bedroom to sleep on a living room couch, but that Phillips "would not leave him alone." At some point, he added, things got physical and he was stabbed in the lower lip with "a long metal object which appeared to be a knife."


Todd Stewart: not ready to go that morning

The sexually frustrated Phillips acknowledged to Deputy Shane Smith that she struck Stewart, but said she did it "to protect herself." Phillips, pictured in the mug shot above, was charged with aggravated battery, and the battered Stewart, was charged with simple battery. Phillips was also booked on a pair of outstanding warrants, for more (!!) simple battery and damage to property.


click to enlarge
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An Incredible Globe

click to enlarge the stereographic projection

This Wikipedia "featured picture" is a 360-degree spherical panorama of a beach in Marigot, Saint Martin, using nine images in a stereographic projection to create a globe. The assemblage shows the "little planet" effect, where the area close to the point opposite to the center of projection becomes significantly enlarged. A detailed explanation of how it is done can be found here.

The original image resides here on Flickr and was created in 2007 by Alexandre Duret-Lutz.
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Another One Bites The Dust: Demo Governor Blagojevich of Illinois arrested for trying to sell Obama's Senate Seat

By Pablo Fanque,
National Affairs Editor, All This Is That

Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich was arrested on corruption charges on Tuesday, including trying to sell the U.S. Senate seat vacated by fellow Democrat President-elect Barack Obama, federal prosecutors said.

While Obama has long distanced himself from the governor -- who has been under investigation on other issues for months -- many people are hoping he he has ALWAYS kept his distance.

The case reminds us once again of the political sewer from which Barack Obama emerged--Chicago machine politics--without necessarily being a part of those politics, but most likely, a reluctant observer and, at times, expedient friend.

"The corruption laid out in these charges is staggering," U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, the federal prosecutor, said in a statement. And that is an understatement. The amount of money Blagojevich (and his wife whom you hear so clearly giving instructions in audio tapes) were trying to shake down is stunning.

Possibly even spookier is his unmitigated audacity and the quite open demands he unapologetically imposes on supplicants. This makes the $90,000 found in fellow Democrat's Rep. William Jefferson's freezer last summer look like revenue from a Kool-Aid stand.

According to the complaint, Patricia Blagojevich was the voice in the background spewing an ugly suggestion to "just fire" some newspaper editors if the Tribune Co. hoped for state assistance to sell Wrigley Field, the storied home of the Chicago Cubs."

"Hold up that (expletive) Cubs (expletive)," she says as her husband is talking on the telephone. "(Expletive) them."

This shoddy episode has given great hope to right wing bloggers and talk show hosts, who seem convinced the Obama smoking gun tape will surface any day. And the story has struck fear in the hearts of more than a few leftists, all of whom are crossing their fingers.
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