MikeHunt

found this little gem...on topic Cliches, to be honest with you, drive us mad Wed 24 March, 2004 12:02 LONDON (Reuters) - The fact of the matter is that at the end of the day there is nothing, like, value-added about using cliches 24/7 -- with all due respect it's not awesome, it's annoying. The Plain English Campaign said on Wednesday it had canvassed people in 70 countries to find the most irritating phrases of all. "When readers or listeners come across these tired expressions, they start tuning out and completely miss the message -- assuming there is one" said John Lister of the Plain English Campaign. People who busily "touch base" or talk about "ballpark figures" and "bottom lines" are not "singing from the same hymn sheet," they are quietly driving others to distraction. "Using these terms in daily business is about as professional as wearing a novelty tie or having a wacky ringtone on your phone", Lister said in a statement. A particular bugbear is the constant use of "like" as a form of punctuation. Lister said that they had expected geographical variations, but the same phrases appeared to be universally annoying around the world. "Gobbledegook jargon and cliches really are no respecter of international boundaries," he told Sky Television in a cliche-riddled interview. Other named-and-shamed cliches include: -- blue-sky thinking -- it's not rocket science -- crack troops -- between a rock and a hard place -- I hear what you're saying -- touch base -- bear with me -- to be honest with you :wha': :rotfl:

..is it too early for my return?

Janet Jackson has had enough...(and so have we)

For those so inclined...more Fab Four http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_pictures/3564057.stm :jammin:

Horror outed at gay film festival By Caroline Westbrook BBC News Online The 2004 London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival opened on Wednesday, shedding light on the homosexual influence in horror films. Gay themes and characters have played a large part in the horror genre over the last few decades, creating some groundbreaking cinema, according to festival programmer Jonathan Keane. Spine-chilling classics with seminal gay characters will be shown alongside new horror films by homosexual directors in the festival's Queer Gothic strand. I've always been very aware that there's a strong gay undercurrent in a lot of horror films Jonathan Keane "It was a personal interest really," says Mr Keane. "I've always been into horror myself and I've always been very aware that there's a strong gay undercurrent in a lot of horror films. "I wanted to put together a selection of films which, for the most part, showed when that kind of sexuality outed itself." It soon became clear that there were certain films that had strong or very obvious gay characters, he adds. One of these was 1963 chiller The Haunting, which is among the six films being screened. A cult favourite, it focuses on a group of people staying in a haunted house as part of a scientific experiment and is notable for the character of Theodora, played by Claire Bloom. She is thought to be one of the first openly lesbian characters in a horror film. Mr Keane describes it as a "60s film, very much about social change". "That was about as far back as I went in terms of films with a gay character, but I decided I wanted a mix of different types of film." That explains the inclusion of the 1971 film Dr Jekyll and Sister Hyde, a Hammer horror film in which Ralph Bates - as Dr Jekyll - stumbles upon a formula that turns him into a woman, played by Martine Beswick. "It's a very, very good film," Mr Keane explains. "At the time, it was quite radical, the idea of a man turning into a woman. Like The Haunting, it pushed the ideas of what could be seen on screen." The older films pushed the boundaries of what had been shown before Jonathan Keane Other films in the line-up include The Hunger, Tony Scott's 1983 vampire film starring David Bowie, Catherine Deneuve and Susan Sarandon. Meanwhile, two contemporary offerings from Europe show very different sides to the way in which gay film-makers approach horror movies. Ballroom, from France, is a supernatural thriller, while German shocker Beloved Sister takes its cue from Whatever Happened To Baby Jane, with shades of Misery and a ton of blood thrown in. 'Shifting' "It doesn't have the sexuality points in it, but with this kind of film I wanted to show what a director with a knowledge of a gay audience would do with this kind of thing," Mr Keane says. The diversity of the line-up, he points out, reflects just how the scene has changed over time. "There's a strange shifting in what happens when the genre outs itself to a certain extent," Mr Keane says. "The older films pushed the boundaries of what had been shown before, while the modern gay film-makers tend use the genre to talk about their own experiences." Story from BBC NEWS: http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/ente...ent/3561673.stm :change note:

.....a rock-n-roll love song. Adrian Belew Lyrics : Heartbeat I need to feel your heartbeat so close, it feels like mine all mine I remember the feeling, my hands in your hair I remember the feeling of the rhythm we made I need to land sometime right next to you and feel your heartbeat right next to me... :kissy face:

a good avatar as well

Next thing you know ...you won't be able to scratch yer balls either. :rotfl: :rotfl:

'AMERICAN IDOL' PRODUCERS DEBATE SIMON 'ONE FINGER SALUTE'; FOX EXECUTIVES QUESTION ON-AIR GESTURE The nation's top TV show is at the center of a fresh decency debate after AMERICAN IDOL judge Simon Cowell gestured a one finger salute during Tuesday night's broadcast from Hollywood. The obscene gesture came during a heated exchange with fellow judge Paula Abdul. Cowell held his middle finger to his cheek as Abdul railed against comments made about a contestant. The image came close to being cut, a top FOX executive tells the DRUDGE REPORT. "We were not sure he was doing what he was doing, quite frankly," the source explained. "It appeared he was simply resting his head on his middle finger, but I now think we made a mistake, the gesture should not have aired." The top FOX source says flipping the middle finger would not conform to the network's decency standards. IDOL producers have asked Cowell to refrain from using the provocative pose in the future. FOX airs IDOL with a slight broadcast delay live in eastern and central time zones.

shouldn't this be moved to the Politics forum?

Jazz legend Shearing in hospital Jazz pianist George Shearing was admitted to hospital on Monday after falling in his Manhattan home. The 84-year-old was placed under observation, a spokesman for his record label, Concord Records, said. There were no details of his injuries. Shearing was also forced to cancel forthcoming appearances in Los Angeles and Las Vegas. The British-born pianist, who has been blind since birth, enjoyed huge commercial success from the 1940s-60s. Hit records He is known for his unusual "locked hands" style of playing and was traditionally accompanied by guitar, bass, drums and vibraphone. Shearing, who settled in the USA in 1947, had a succession of hit records with his quintet before the advent of rock and roll including September in the Rain and his own composition Lullaby Of Birdland. He has collaborated with singers such as Peggy Lee, Ernestine Anderson and Carmen McRae, and an album made with singer Mel Torme won a Grammy Award in 1982. He was made an OBE in 1997 and received the lifetime achievement honour at the BBC Jazz Awards in 2003. Story from BBC NEWS: http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/ente...ent/3564967.stm :(

George Underwood, is another GREAT artist for album covers...as he has done many of the great ones..including T. Rex ..David Bowie ..Jethro Tull's Stand Up. his site is here: http://www.georgeunderwood.com/underwood.html

in my search for artwork ...I ran across this site ...for album artwork. http://tralfaz-archives.com/coverart/coverart.html here is the back cover from the It's a Beautiful Day (above)

and this one..

a simply great thread. I like the classics...

makes sense to me ...but if you have a better.... more plausible... theory on it ...please feel free to share it with us.

ha ...the flow...welcome :change note:

"I wasn't there?".... "I met with Suge Knight about doing a movie on Biggie and Tupak" DAIC...I'm confused hitwall

Fountains Of Wayne Singer To Write For Broadway (LAUNCH, 03/22/2004 6:00 PM) By LAUNCH Radio Networks Fountains of Wayne singer Adam Schlesinger is headed for Broadway. He's teaming up with lyricist David Javerbaum, a writer for John Stewart's The Daily Show, to compose songs for a new musical called Cry-Baby, due out in 2006. It will be based on the 1990 John Waters film of the same name, which starred Johnny Depp, Ricki Lake and Traci Lords. Cry-Baby takes place in 1954 Baltimore and centers around a good girl from a rich family who's attracted to a guy from the other side of the tracks. Schlesinger has written songs for TV and films, but this will be the first time he's delving into a musical. He's looking forward to creating music that will reflect the 1950s. He told Playbill, "What's exciting about the period is it's the birth of rock and roll, when rock was finding its feet. So the kind of stuff we're referencing is classic formative rock -- it can be innocent, suggestive and subversive." Schlesinger wrote the title track to the 1996 Tom Hanks film That Thing You Do, which was nominated for a Best Song Oscar. He also co-wrote the theme song for the movie Josie And the Pussycats, and has contributed to Crank Yankers, Saturday Night Live and There's Something About Mary. Meanwhile, Fountains of Wayne will kick off a U.S. tour on April 19 in Syracuse, New York. :groovin:

tellin' it like it is....

History a key to Islamic world's view of Western civilization Sunday, March 21, 2004 THE idea that what goes around comes around applies not only to individuals but to nations and whole civilizations. It was just a few centuries ago not long, as history is measured that China had the highest standard of living in the world and the Dutch were the world's largest exporters, while North Africans were enslaving a million Europeans. Nowhere have whole peoples seen their situation reversed more visibly or more painfully than the peoples of the Islamic world. In medieval times, Europe lagged far behind the Islamic world in science, mathematics, scholarship, and military power. Even such ancient European thinkers as Plato and Aristotle became known to Europeans of the Middle Ages only after their writings, which had been translated into Arabic, were translated back into European languages. Today that is all reversed. The number of books per person in Europe is more than ten times that in Africa and the Middle East. The number of books translated into Arabic over the past thousand years is about the same as the number translated into Spanish in one year. There are only 18 computers per thousand persons in the Arab world, compared to 78 per thousand persons worldwide. Fewer than 400 industrial patents were issued to people in the Arab countries during the last two decades of the 20th century, while 15,000 industrial patents were issued to South Koreans alone. Human beings do not always take reversals of fortune gracefully. Still less can those who were once on top quietly accept seeing others leaving them far behind economically, intellectually, and militarily. Those in the Islamic world have for centuries been taught to regard themselves as far superior to the "infidels' of the West, while everything they see with their own eyes now tells them otherwise. Worse yet, what the whole world sees with their own eyes tells them that the Middle East has made few contributions to human advancement in our times. Even Middle Eastern oil was largely discovered and processed by people from the West. After oil, the Middle East's most prominent export has been terrorism. Those who look at the world in rational terms may say that the Middle East can use some of its vast oil wealth to expand its own educated classes and move back to the forefront of human achievement. They did it once, why not do it again? All sorts of things can be done in the long run, but you have to live through the short run to get there. Moreover, even the short run, as history is measured, can be pretty long in terms of the human lifes pan. Even if the Islamic world set such goals and committed the material resources and individual efforts required, they could not expect to pull abreast of the West for generations, even if the West stood still. More realistically, it would take centuries, as it took the West centuries to catch up to them. What will happen in the meantime? Are millions of proud human beings supposed to quietly accept inferiority for themselves and their children, and perhaps their children's children? Or are they more likely to listen to demagogues, whether political or religious, who tell them that their lowly place in the world is due to the evils of others the West, the Americans, the Jews? If the peoples of the Islamic world disregarded such demagogues, they would be the exceptions, rather than the rule, among people who lag painfully far behind others. Even in the West, there have been powerful political movements based on the notion that the rich have gotten rich by keeping others poor and that things need to be set right "by all means necessary.' These means seldom include concentration on self- improvement, with 19th-century Japan being one of the rare exceptions. Lashing out at others is far more immediately satisfying and modern communications, transportation, and weaponry make it far easier to lash out destructively across great distances. Against this background, we may want to consider the question asked by hand-wringers in the West: Why do they hate us? Maybe it is because the alternative to hating us is to hate themselves. -- Thomas Sowell, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, can be reached through Creators Syndicate, 5777 W. Century Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90045, or through his Web site at www.tsowell.com . :read this:

Transvestites rescue Thai movies A number of films featuring transvestites and transsexuals as the central characters have been pulling crowds in to Thai cinemas - and are now looking to do so around the world. Two such films have just been premiered in Berlin, Beautiful Boxer and The Adventures Of Iron Pussy. Beautiful Boxer is the true story of Nong Toom, a Thai kickboxer seeking a sex-change operation. The film has the tagline "He fights like a man - so he can become a woman," and has been selected for the Panorama Section of the Berlin Film Festival. "As a Thai, I had always heard of Nong Toom, because she's such a colourful character," Beautiful Boxer's director Ekachai Uekrongtham told BBC World Service's The Ticket programme. "But I think that I recognise that perhaps in this character, I might be able to find an emotional anchor to tell a story that's... about a human being who tries to be courageous enough to be who he wants to be. Iron Ladies "I think it's an interesting character to me, because it's about someone who masters the most masculine - Thai kick boxing - in order to achieve total femininity," he said. He added this gave the film a lot of built-in conflict - "the basis for very good drama." The film that sparked off the Thai box office revival was smash hit comedy Iron Ladies. That was also a sporting true story - this time of a transvestite basketball team. The film won international recognition and became one of the biggest-grossing Thai films of all time. Beautiful Boxer and The Adventures Of Iron Pussy are just two of a spate of films have followed. The Bangkok Post estimates that of the around fifty Thai films released this year, five or six feature prominent transvestite characters. The Adventures Of Iron Pussy, for example, features a man who is a shop assistant by day, and a kick-boxing, high-heel-wearing superhero by night. The film is a spy parody, written and co-directed by its main star, Michael Shaowanasai. Shaowanasai said the character of Iron Pussy was drawn from three different sources. "The first one is my mother - I look exactly like my mother, who used to be a movie star, but she didn't make it because she had a career and children," he explained. "I thought it would be great, to provide closure, really, for that dream of hers." The other sources were Japanese TV series Playgirls and film star Diana Rigg, a Bond girl in On Her Majesty's Secret Service but best-known for the role of Miss Peel in The Avengers. Shaowanasai said Rigg was his "long-time heroine." "I love her. I saw her in The Avengers as a child, and I thought that this woman looks like an Asian woman - but she's not. "She's just so cool, she fights bad guys." Buddhist sympathy But Shaowanasai added that although the film is primarily a parody, it did have a serious point to make. "One thing about gay and lesbian films that come out of Thailand is that they portray gay characters as clowns and buffoons," he stressed. "I want to change that idea for the audience, so they say, 'hey, gay people can do something else as well - not just running around with makeup and doing funny stuff'." Beautiful boxer's director Ekachai he said he believed the reason transvestite films were so well-received in Thailand was partly due to the country's predominantly Buddhist religion. Buddhist beliefs hold that transvestites were born that way as a result of bad karma. Consequently there was much compassion towards them in the country. "We feel that it's not something they want to be born with," he highlighted. "So we do have more compassion and more tolerance." Story from BBC NEWS: http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/ente...ent/3558637.stm :dancin:

Tell me what'd I say? Ray Charles plays Starbucks Reuters, 03.23.04, 4:49 PM ET By Steve James NEW YORK, March 23 (Reuters) - Hey Momma, don't you treat me wrong, Ray Charles just landed the ultimate coffee house gig. The legendary pop, country, jazz and blues singer's next album -- a collection of duets with the likes of Elton John, Norah Jones and B.B. King -- is coming to a Starbucks near you. The Charles CD marks a new collaboration between jazz recording label Concord Records and Starbucks Corp. (nasdaq: SBUX - news - people) It also marks another step by Seattle-based Starbucks into the entertainment world a week after unveiling plans to offer its customers an opportunity to record five songs for $6.99, plus additional tracks at 99 cents apiece, while waiting for their cappuccino or latte orders. Starbucks is teaming up with Hewlett-Packard Co. (nyse: HPQ - news - people) for that project. "While discovering new music has been an important part of the Starbucks Experience, this recording marks the first time that Starbucks will be involved with the creation of music from such legendary icons," Don MacKinnon, Starbucks' vice president for music and entertainment, said of the Charles project. The recently completed CD, recorded at Charles' studio in Los Angeles, features the 73-year-old singer performing songs with such artists as Diana Krall, Michael McDonald, Johnny Mathis and Willie Nelson. Jo Foster, spokeswoman for Concord, said the idea grew out of last year's "Out of Sight" album by Latin jazz artist Poncho Sanchez, on which Charles sat in for a track. "The rapport between Charles and Concord grew and the idea went from there," said Foster. "Ray picked the songs and they are rather poignant for his time of life," she said, noting that his duet with John is the British singer's plaintive "Sorry (Seems to be the Hardest Word)" The Concord "Duets" CD is scheduled for an Aug. 31 release and is Charles' first new recording since 2001. Featured tracks include: "Here We Go Again" (Norah Jones); "Sinner's Prayer" (B.B. King); "Sweet Potato Pie" (James Taylor); "Hey Girl" (Michael McDonald); "(Do I Ever) Cross Your Mind" (Bonnie Raitt); and "It Was A Very Good Year" (Willie Nelson). Last year, Charles was forced to cancel most of a U.S. tour because of hip surgery and last month he canceled a show in New York as he continues to recuperate. Starbucks is not the only food or restaurant company getting into the music business. On Monday, the Los Angeles Times reported that Sony Corp. is working out a deal to promote the launch of its download music service through fast-food chain McDonald's Corp. (nyse: MCD - news - people). According to the newspaper, McDonald's is expected to commit about $30 million in advertising to the partnership in exchange for unspecified discounts to license some songs from Sony's new download service, Sony Connect. Those songs would then be offered to McDonald's patrons for free with the purchase of certain menu items, with customers receiving codes they can use online for the downloads. And last October, Apple Computer Inc. (nasdaq: AAPL - news - people) announced a marketing alliance with PepsiCo Inc. (nyse: PEP - news - people) to promote its iTunes service. Under that tie-in, Apple said it would offer 100 million free song downloads to consumers who find winning codes under the caps of their soft drinks.

The computer that can predict your vote There's a computer program which can predict how - and if - you'll vote, based on where you shop and which newspaper you buy. How does it work? Science fiction has become reality with a computer program whose makers claim it can predict the future with quite remarkable accuracy. According to the program, Paan - which stands for Political Advanced Analysis Network - Tony Blair has got the next general election in the bag - despite Iraq, tuition fees and suspicions that tax rises are on the way. Paan uses a mass of political and social information, including shopping habits, ethnic background and car ownership to produce predictions in every constituency. Despite its complexity, it can be operated from a PC. In 2002, for instance, it got the Welsh Assembly elections pretty much spot on, miscalling only one seat, despite complications such as three-way marginals and proportional representation. The system was devised by a whiz kid in his mid-20s who was inspired by the theories of Professor Stephen Hawking that technology would advance to such a point that the future could be predicted if computers were fed enough information. If Waitrose is coming to town and you're a Labour MP, worry Steve Morgan Paan's chairman, Steve Morgan, says the program is based on an analysis of human behaviour as well as polling information. Someone who buys veggie burgers and The Guardian is likely to have a very different outlook on the world than a Daily Mail reader who likes best British beef. "If Waitrose is coming to town and you're a Labour MP, worry," says Mr Morgan. "Only about 25 of its stores around the country are in Labour constituencies." Seeing the future Paan is so sophisticated that it is able to predict majorities and turn-out in individual seats, Mr Morgan says. It analyses thousands of pieces of socio-economic data, which is then cross-referenced against previous local and national election results. Another major factor is the local popularity of the candidate and their party. The program gives each contender and their party a rating based on the national prominence - or notoriety - of the candidate, the political make-up and actions of the local authority, and how much the sitting MP's party is perceived to be doing for the constituency. Perhaps most significantly, the system can tell candidates and parties what they need to do to improve their chances of success. Away from politics, Paan can also be used to help target the marketing of new products. And that could bring an end to a mailbox crammed with unwanted junk mail with no relevance to the householder's lifestyle. As such computer systems become more and more sophisticated, the predictions will become even more accurate. Who knows - perhaps at some future time we won't need to hold elections at all. But that's going too far. Isn't it? Story from BBC NEWS: http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/uk_n...ine/3560491.stm

THE LADYKILLERS THE COEN BROTHERS STUMBLE WITH THIS UNFUNNY MESS The Ladykillers is a horrible movie. When I saw the commercials that featured a hyper Tom Hanks made up to look like some bizarro Colonel Sanders on crack, it just looked bad. And when I saw that Marlon Wayans was in the cast mugging it up, it looked even worse. But after seeing that The Coen Brothers were behind it, the wonderful geniuses who’ve made O Brother Where Art Thou?, Fargo, The Big Lebowski, and other films that rank among my favorites, I had faith. They had never let me down before. Until now… There’s very little that works about this movie. As I suspected, Tom Hanks’ awkward jittery southern gentleman character makes the film damn near unwatchable. His ridiculous appearance serves no functional purpose, he has absolutely nothing funny to say, and his entire performance is best described as “hideously unwatchable.” Not since Bette Midler played the horribly bucktoothed lead witch in Hocus Pocus, was there a more unappealing character to taint the screen. He’s not even unappealing in a wonderfully sleazy way. Perhaps given to Billy Bob Thornton, the character would have worked well, but in the hands of Hanks, Professor G.H. Dorr is like some bad Saturday Night Live character in an unfunny skit that just wont end. As an ensemble piece it doesn’t work either. Of his fellow criminal accomplices, only Tzi Ma, as “The General” provides any laughs, and that’s only with some brief one liners and great physical humor. The casting of Marlon Wayans as Gawain McSam is a fiasco. His performance, the majority of which consists of making bug eyed faces and shouting, “What the fuck are you looking at?”, shows no more range than his role in the Scary Movie parody films. They may as well have put Carrot Top in the part. The plot is nothing to get excited about either. Professor Dorr rents a room from a kindly, slightly eccentric church-going widow named Irma Hall (played wonderfully by Marva Munson, the only worthwhile performance in the picture), in order to go down in to her root cellar. Would that have been a euphemism for something it may have been interesting, but he merely wants to dig a tunnel with his bumbling friends into the safe room of a neighboring casino boat to steal over a million dollars in cash. There’s nothing original or clever about this heist. The mediocre Woody Allen film Small Time Crooks used a similar robbery device to much better effect, and the glossy Ocean’s Eleven at least had some fun twists as the job unfolded to add some surprise and intrigue. No such luck here. Everything about this film feels rushed and empty. My hopes for an outstanding gospel filled soundtrack were dashed as well, as most of the selections served little more purpose than background noise. I haven’t seen a misstep from a director I loved since Spike Lee made Girl 6. All the original quirky fun and sharp performances you’d expect from a Coen Brothers film are nowhere to be found in The Ladykillers. As great of an actor that Tom Hanks is, he just doesn’t seem to fit in the Coen universe. Hopefully they’ll pull out Clooney, Turturro, Thornton, Robbins, or Buscemi for the next film to cleanse our palette of this disaster. retroCRUSH Rating: 1 OUT OF 5 MARTINI GLASSES -Robert Berry [email protected] :rotfl: