Here! Kitty! Kitty!!

Sometimes you just have to whine about something for miracles to happen.
Katherine Harris is back!

She is a featured speaker at the Family Impact Summit. If said impact is too hard, her fabulously inflated breasts serve as life-saving air bags, I bet!

I hope we get some good pictures of her and Ann Heche's crazy mother.

To Kitty, I dedicate this version of Elton John's "The Bitch is Back" as performed by the Gay Man's Chorus of LA.

Sorry, kids, no embedding of that clip.

Pastor Meth Wants your Money!

There are so many great causes you can support if you have a little extra cash. You could feed the hungry. You could help keep Wuppertal's AIDS charity afloat in difficult times. You could help two really talented artists with disabilities publish their comic book. You could finance research into dozens of diseases or save the rain forest.

Or you could throw some money at Ted "Pastor Meth" Haggard, so he can continue to feed his cravings for rent-boy schlong and crystal meth. He says he needs your money to feed his family, of course, but why can't he do that when he:

received a salary of $115,000 for the 10 months he worked in 2006 and an $85,000 anniversary bonus before the scandal broke, according to church officials. The church’s board of trustees gave him a severance package that included a year’s salary ($138,000). He also collects royalties on his many book titles.

Haggard owns a home in Colorado Springs that has been for sale. It has a market value of $715,051, according to records from the El Paso County assessor.

How about it? Brothers, can you spend a dime?

I dedicate this clip by my hero, Curtis Mayfield, to all those who don't wanna be junkies.

Now a warning

NOW a warning??

Sorry, Meryl Streep moment.

We all thought he was gone for good, sent to the slammer, sharing a cell with somebody who actually knows the meaning of the expression "reacharound." But it looks like Rick Olney is back.

So here is a warning by Tony Isabella, also known as "America's Most Beloved ComicBook Writer and Columnist"

For a while there, it looked as if the vile Rick Olney had somehow
acquired at least enough sense to stay offline. That was clearly
foolish optimism on my part as he has once again surfaced to mock
those to whom he owes money; to insult and threaten those victims
and the good people who have championed the cause of his victims;
and to proclaim conventions and publications that have no basis in
reality. So, again, here is my...

WARNING ABOUT RICK OLNEY

A message to all my friends and readers...

If you are approached by an individual named Rick Olney or any
representative of the man, if you are approached by Olney or anyone
else representing entities known as The Mighty Mini-Con, TightLip
Entertainment, ORCA, Mohawk Valley Newsletter, or any commercial
entity or enterprise associated with any of the above, including
online vendors, I strongly urge you to run in the other direction.
You can find some details here:

http://www.unscrewedcomic.com/

You can find many more horrifying details on Olney and his business
practices by doing a search on his name and the other names listed
above. Really. Go look. It will amaze you.

If you trust me, do not attempt to do business with Olney. In fact,
feel free to pass along this warning to any comics professionals,
aspiring comics professionals, retailers, exhibitors, media guests,
and fans you know.

Olney is not someone you want to do business with.

It has been estimated he owes freelancers anywhere between $40,000
and $100,000. The courts have already ruled against him in several
cases where freelancers sued him for non-payment. Though Olney has
yet to make good on these court-mandated judgments, auctions run by
Unscrewed have raised several thousand dollars to help freelancers
who were put into dire straits by Olney’s refusal to pay them for
work they had completed.

He is being investigated for charity fraud. Other investigations
of a different nature are ongoing at this time.

The list goes on and on.

Although I had hoped not to involve myself in this further, recent
Olney actions, such as advertising a convention that seems to have
happened only in his own mind, claiming that he is still planning
to publish comic books, targeting foreign artists he hopes have not
heard of him, and attempting to recruit naive American artists, the
greater good demands I and my fellows continue to speak out in this
manner.

Check out the UNSCREWED website for the impressive list of creators
who have signed a version of this warning. Feel free to re-post
this warning, which has been translated into several languages, to
any forum you like.

Anything Olney is involved with should always be consider suspect.

Olney continues to troll - trolling as in a pimp hanging out at the
old bus station - MySpace and message boards and Yahoo groups
looking for fresh meat to exploit, for naive young artists foolish
enough to believe that he's going to give them their big break.
Before they work for him, they should really talk to the many
writers and artists who he hasn't paid for past work. They can find
many of "Olney's Orphans" at the Unscrewed website.

This last bit isn't an update, but bears repeating.

Despite threatening to sue me and many others, Olney has yet to
institute any legal action against anybody. Indeed, as mentioned
above he has been on the receiving end of several lawsuits and has
already had several judgments against him...with more certain to
follow.

You've been warned.

To repeat, feel free to pass this warning around or post it
wherever you like. Oh, sure, I'm setting myself up for another
impotent threat from Olney, but that's a chance I'm more than
willing to take if I can prevent even one fan or pro from getting
involved with this blight on comicdom.

Tony Isabella

Go get 'em, Tiger!

For more info, go to http://www.unscrewedcomic.com/

Performances that suck, and a small emergency

Captain Dan the Demon Dwarf is not a Southern Baptist priest, surprisingly, but a performer with a so called Circus of Horrors.
Little Dan had to be hospitalized when he accidentally glued even littler Dan to a vacuum cleaner. Pulling said household appliance across the stage with said private part is Dan's act.

“I just wished the ground could swallow me up. Luckily, they saw me quickly so the embarrassment was short lived.”

He said short lived. OK, it's funnier when I'm the one with the puns.

The Scotsman reports that it took nurses hours to remove the hoover from little Dan's little Dan. They sure had a tall tale to tell when they got home.

I dedicate this song to Dan the Demon Dwarf. Get well soon!

Cut from a Different Cloth

Those kuh-razy, wacky Southern Baptist priests are at it again.

The Reverend Wiley S. Drake (yes, baptist priests have the greatest names) of the First Southern Baptist Church of Buena Park, California, forgot that endorsing political candidate can cost a church its tax-exempt status when he endorsed Mike "I lost weight, vote for me" Huckabee.

When members of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State pointed out his transgressions, what did the Reverend do? Did he confess his sins? Did he turn the other cheek?

No!

He prayed for them to be punished with death. For starters. (insert Darth Vader breathing)

Drake said the Bible calls for "imprecatory prayer" when someone "attacks the church." He gave as examples of such prayer:

"Persecute them. ... Let them be put to shame and perish."

"Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow."

"Let his children be continually vagabonds, and beg."

If this were one of my beloved comic books, "Wiley Drake" would probably turn out to be a demon posing as a priest, but in the real world, he's just another man of the cloth who completely misunderstood the assignment.

I mean, wouldn't it be easier to just pray for Huckabee to win?

My Judgment of Paris

Some American friends are traveling to Paris and asked me what else there is to do than the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre and spotting President Sarkozy's mistresses.

I started writing down things off the top of my head, and since that stopped me from writing a blog entry, I'm just copying and pasting it here for your informative information informating.



High things to get on other than the Eiffel Tower
► Ferris wheel in the jardin des tuileries
► Tour Montparnasse (a very tall very ugly building - nice thing about this view is that you cannot see the Tour Montparnasse when you're on it)

Slightly creepy but still marvelous things
Père Lachaise cemetery - some of these tombs are hundreds of years old in this veritable necropolis. Plus, you can visit the graves of Oscar Wilde, Edith Piaf, Jim Morrison and French kings and poets and philosophers. Look for the fabulous black and white marble tomb of a 1920s flapper girl socialite with a hand-written note on a framed autographed picture on the marble coffin reading "Death does not become me, does it?"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pere_Lachaise


The Catacombs
In the late 1700s, these old Roman tunnels were turned into a mass burial sites to clean up unsanitary churchyard cemeteries. The result is spooky and filled with more history than you can shake a thigh bone at. Decorative arrangements of skulls and bones on the walls, an underground chapel and tales of the French resistance using the tunnels during WW II.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_catacombs

The old "Muséum national d'histoire naturelle"
(natural history museum) is situated in the gorgeous botanical garden (Jardins des Plantes) and is a breath-taking old building filled with dinosaur bones and two-headed mutant lizards in pickle jars. It's like a journey through time to when museums were still cool.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mus%C3%A9um_National_d%27Histoire_Naturelle

Shopping
La Rue Mouffetard
Very lively, long and winding street with an open market, traditional Parisian bistros and cafés and small shops. Buy some jujubes from the open market to nibble on. Try on some shoes. Have a chocolat chaud.

The Bouquinistes on the banks of the Seine
At several stretches along the river Seine, you find these little used book stalls that have been around forever. Some of them sell ancient books, some sell used comic books from last year, some sell 60s magazines. How about getting a 1960s issue of Elle with Twiggy on the cover as a unique souvenir?

Flee market at Saint Ouen
Only on weekends, and not for you if you hate crowds! Everything from cheap knock-off clothes to antiques and arts and crafts. And thousands of people.
http://www.parispuces.com/en/Default.asp

At the other end of the spectrum: Avenue Montaigne
Christian Dior, Chanel, Pierre Cardin, Christian Lacroix... For the material girls in you.

You should also check out the Galeries Lafayette on the Boulevard Lafayette, one of the fanciest department stores in the world.

Gayish things
Le Marais
Several gay stores and gay owned restaurants on and around the street Rue Ste. Croix de la Bretonnerie. You'll also find the Picasso museum and the beautiful Place des Vosges here, so bring some time and comfortable shoes.


Et bon voyage!

Random disturbing political photo combined with an Irving Berlin song

If you're blue and you don't know

where to go to why don't you go

where fashion sits...




Putin on the 'roids!

Reasons Rove Really Resigned

Lots of people still trying to figure it out. Why now? Why him?

Maybe as the ultimate insider, he knew things that we don't that would make him leave, like:

Bush is dying of colon cancer, and Rove didn't wanna work for president Cheney.

Cheney is dying of heart failure, and Rove didn't wanna work for president Bush.

Laura switched from Xanax to meth and is making everybody's life in the White House a living hell.

Jeff Guckert is writing a book on how his affair with Rove got him in and out the White House without Secret Service logs showing it.

Barney the dog is writing a book on his affair with Rove.

...or maybe he just wants to spend more time with his family. His new family at DefJam Records?

MC Karl Rove - Rapping It Up
Hochgeladen von blackdesperadoo

Thought of the day

Wouldn't it be funny if Karl Rove had left his job at the White House to work for John McCain's campaign?

What, you were expecting compassion?

Cecil Howard Sinclair spent many years in the service of his country, but there will be no service in his memory at the "High Point" mega church in Arlington, Texas because the Navy Veteran who served in Desert Storm was also gay. As MSNBC and the Houston Chronicle report, "High Point" reached a moral low point when they first agreed to do the service, then embarrassed and spat in the face of Sinclair's grieving family, all the while claiming "It's not that we didn't love the family." They just can't be seen to show compassion to a man who had a loving relationship to another man, nor to his family. The shameful pastor in question is Gary Simons, brother in law of Joel Osteen, of the enormous Lakewood Church in Houston, America's largest church.

I am no Christian, but it seems to be quite clear that you can't be much further removed from the teachings of Jesus Christ than some of those mega churches. Somebody call Prince, there're Thieves in the Temple tonight.

Patti Austin Is Still All There

Even though she literally lost half her weight after gastric bypass surgery, Patti Austin proves that she is still all there, both on her puntastically titled latest CD, Avant Gershwin, and in a truly fabulous interview she granted the Bay Area Reporter. Please go and read the whole thing, it'll do more for your brains than checking up on what Britney's been doing wrong again.

Patti discusses the lack of great song writers that I blogged about a few days ago.

Every generation gets the music it deserves. This generation is getting the music it deserves, unfortunately, because our generation did not fight for this generation to be educated musically. As a result, the music is exactly what you get when you don't know anything about music!

That's an interesting point I didn't consider - music education was already considered quite unimportant when I was in highschool in the 80s, and programs have been cut a lot more since then. And while not every songwriter had a great theoretical knowledge of music, I agree that it can't hurt.

Patti has never shied away from the odd jocular comment about other singers and their vocal abilities and affectations, and this interview is no exception:

Quite a few years later, [Rosemary Clooney] backed me into a corner and said, "I don't want you to ever stop singing the Great American Songbook. You must continue to sing it, because you are the heir apparent." I said, "Well, I'll take that. Can I get it in writing maybe?" She said, "You don't need it in writing, you are it." I said, "What about Natalie Cole?" And she used a very bad word with Natalie's name in reference to it. I said, "You're talking about genetic perfection here, Nat King Cole's daughter! She's no fricking slouch." She said, "Well, you'll be Ella and Sarah. The bottom line is, I'm calling you the heir apparent. Go get it, and don't stop singing this music."

Now go read the damn thing. Or if you need to be convinced that laying off the pork chops did not make Patti lose her vocal chops, compare these two clips from before and after the weight loss:

Before







After:



Oh, and it's Patti's 59th birthday tomorrow!

Nevada's Governor: Strong on Security. Not.

The good people of Nevada must have been fully aware they elected a moron to office when they picked Jim Gibbons. After all, he thought it was a good idea to get drunk with a cocktail waitress in public while his campaign was in full swing. And then to accompany her to her car and let her drive home drunk.

And now this boy genius proved that he is a security mastermind, posting his own Outlook password on the Internets.

Good to see that politics can still be entertaining even in the absence of Kitty Harris.

Sigh.

I miss Kitty.




So I checked her Wikipedia entry, but all I found was this:

Post-legislative career

Harris was photographed passing out business cards prior to the 2007 State of the Union Address.

And that's it! A woman who once worked so hard none of her staffers could put up, I mean, keep up with her, reduced to sitting at home torturing large rodents?

Will somebody get that woman a reality TV show already? Bravo? Spike? Anyone? It could be called "Hello Kitty!"

Lee Hazlewood passes away

The man who helped Nancy Sinatra be more than just "Frank's daughter" is gone.

Here is a wonderful ditty he and Nancy recorded together.

Is Tommy "Testes" Tester Out on Bail Already?

"Not fully clothed" man jumps White House fence

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A 22-year-old man who was "not fully clothed" jumped the north fence into the White House grounds on Sunday and was immediately apprehended, the U.S. Secret Service said.

Hmm... No wait, that guy was only 22. I guess Tommy is still safely in his cell, sharing quality time with his cell mate Bruno, the hermaphrodite hooker with a heart of gold.