I've been watching hours and hours of the Food Network, which has to be something only an American would do. We have such abundance and crave more than the old-fashioned 'some-dude-in-an-apron-makes-some-casserole' segments which used to air on local noon news programs. So there are a few shows on the network' [...]
While it certainly appears too, too easy to find some politico in today's America to ridicule (see previous post) it is absolutely not easy to play Christmas music on a theremin.
And I cannot tell you exactly why I like Christmas music on a theremin. I just do. [...]
The names and faces of some folks with astonishing influence which tumble past this Decade In Memoriam piece made me pretty sad.
Richard Pryor, George Carlin, Kurt Vonnegut, Johnny Carson, Cap'n Kangaroo, Mr. Rogers, George Harrison, Gregory Peck, Paul Newman, Barry White, Ray Charles, Marlon Brando, James Brown,' [...]
Arlington, TN Mayor Russell Wiseman issued a non-apology apology for his idiotic and strange comments about President Obama on Monday, comments which nabbed national attention for Wiseman and for the town of Arlington. My original post on Mayor Wiseman's clueless rant is here.
Alarms and worries are rising over the proposed takeover of NBC Universal by cable giant Comcast, a deal which Comcast promises will be pro-consumer and which most industry insiders view as the beginning of a "mergeapocalypse".
"The combined crazy quotient was enough to nearly cause a rift in the space-time continuum."
It's easy to dip into a set of projected statistics in Washington DC and emerge with some kind of shocking OMG!! slab of information, coat it with tongues of lies and sell it as [...]
I know every state in the nation has some lackluster, bone-dumb and ignorant clucks who somehow skeez the public into accepting the idea the person is some kind of politician, and soon become an elected official of varying offices whose skills are chiefly being perhaps [...]
The FTC invited speakers to talk about journalism in the online age and got an earful. One of the speakers was Arianna Huffington, creator of the online Huffington Post, and she tore into old media kingpins like Rupert Murdoch and others who squall about the evil of online writing [...]
Pretty sickening the way the media has salivated all over Tiger Woods and an apparent affair he had. I've always noticed how the media sneered and despised at his image of success and work - pretty much biz as usual for Fame - they hoist you up so you make' [...]
Christie's will auction an Olivetti Lettera 32 portable typewriter on Friday - the very typewriter which writer Cormac McCarthy bought in Knoxville at a pawn shop in the early 1960s, the one McCarthy has used ever since, pouring his thoughts and words through the device' [...]
I gave up the Twitter account I had started a few years back. If I am pondering on some words to stab into place on the Internet, the place for them is here, and I prefer a bit of narrative rather than 140 characters to convey a thought. For a [...]
City officials have been trying hard to duck and cover from massive waste and abuse in taxing and spending and there seems to be no end in sight - taxpayers will likely be slammed again with ever higher taxes during a crushing recession and double-digit unemployment. Worse, elected officials [...]
City officials have been trying hard to duck and cover from massive waste and abuse in taxing and spending and there seems to be no end in sight - taxpayers will likely be slammed again with ever higher taxes during a crushing recession and double-digit unemployment. Worse, elected officials [...]
I think there's a strong link between the popularity of the "Twilight" vampire novels and movies and Alaska's Sarah Palin.
I can't completely nail it down for you - it's this weird mixture of fantasy, immortality, sexuality, power and powerlessness. And heaps of plain old-fashioned shlock. It's about not' [...]
Congressional debate on most legislation is often mingled with information provided by lobbyists - hardly a news flash to folks who follow politics. Still, a few recent examples show the members of Congress from both parties make sure that the info they include in the record of their debate shine [...]
A comedy show is often the thorn which punctures the party balloons which masquerade as "news". Jon Stewart this week popped the delusional -- scratch that - the lies - dumped onto the airwaves via Sean Hannity's show on FoxNews for faking it when describing the rally -- scratch' [...]
A report in the USA Today - which is often to newspapers what Highlights magazine is to homework - has a story tracking the ever expanding salaries for athletic programs at the expense of academics. One of the schools mentioned is the University of Tennessee --
As a few thousand folks lined up to hear the Republican congressmen (most of whom were absent from actual committee votes on public policy) last week, some of those anti-healthcare bill protesters needed some emergency medical help from - gasp!! - government operated medicine providers.
I've been most fortunate living here in East TN to have made so many good friends with folks who are also talented artists. It might seem odd to some, but there has always been this very strong and powerful community of artists in our area and it's my pleasure to [...]
Creating a satire on your own culture is a doubled-bladed dagger. Satirists seldom become lionized or praised for their efforts as pointing out failures and dangers and the ridiculous presence of deluded emperors wearing invisible clothes tends to invoke more embarrassment than wisdom or appreciation.
Former congressional leaders who turn into lobbyists and organizers for "grassroots" organizations usually become lackluster seekers for untold riches and to hell with the policies being debated.
The model for this tacky and dubious enterprise is former House Leader Dick Armey of Texas and the Dallas News published[...]
The Celebrity Tea Party wing of the GOP is trying hard to make one congressional race in New York mean something, anything and as always the CTP whirls a wildly distorted spin as they yearn for a single victory in the political landscape. They hope a single election victory will [...]
The British film company Hammer Films, which gave us the timeless performances of Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing as well as a vast army of horror films is back in business.
The company is back with several new projects, and late in September of this year their huge archive [...]
A publicity stunt last Thursday by Kentucky Fried Chicken worked a little too well as a United Nations security guard allowed an actor dressed as Col. Sanders into some "secure" areas of the U.N. The fellow got so far as approaching a host of U.N. [...]
I noticed this weekend that for readers who use Internet Explorer, this page is not loading correctly and all the sidebar items -- the right-hand side of the layout -- don't work and end up sliding down to the bottom of the page.
That's the quote from a Charlotte Observer story on a massive rock slide which is so big, it will take about 3 months or more to clear both lanes of I-40 for safe traveling.
The way it's being going this year, I'd expect the Haunted House attractions for Halloween 2009 would be a place populated with doctors and health insurance companies. Oh and of course the Super Spooky Liberal Democrat. Or are the Right Wing fringe-folk more fear-inducing this year?
"The question is not whether there will be Republican rule, but rather what kind. One-party leadership doesn't mean there aren't any bold and important fights'" [...]
The endless hours of television and internet coverage of young Falcon Heene who was not inside a big helium balloon flying over Colorado yesterday is surely one of the oddest things of 2009. His father, Richard, is also a co-host on a video [...]
It is very good news that the U.S. Senate voted to end forced arbitration of Defense contract employees who are raped by their co-workers. (as I noted earlier this week). But the bad news is how the Tennessee media has ignored the votes cast by Senators Lamar Alexander and [...]
The annual survey among Tennesseans from MTSU reveals strong opposition to allowing guns in parks, eateries and especially bars -- but much ambivalence remains on many other topics. Some highlights from their survey:
Tennessee Senators Alexander and Corker decided to vote against a proposal to allow victims of rape to have a day in court - along with 28 other Republican senators this week. I'd bet that vote will not be mentioned in their campaign fliers and stump speeches for re-election. Tennessee voters' [...]
The Boston Globe has some amazing pictures of part of the ongoing celebration of the fall of the Berlin Wall, part of a massive photo essay. The story being enacted is performed by the French street theater company, Royal de Luxe. It tells a story of a young girl and [...]
A website which parodies the witless and base tactics employed by radio and TV talker Glenn Beck does not seem amuse Beck, so he's trying to shut it down. The satiric website has the grim name of Did Glenn Beck Rape and Murder A Young Girl In 1990?
Here's a political announcement that's one-of-a-kind. (thanks to Brittney for pointing this one out, and like she says, just watch it through to the end, it is worth it):
Yes, I'm working as a Director again and also I'm in this play in a small role as a dentist who is afraid of bears and afraid of his fiancee's father, Norman. You can get your tickets to the show online right now at LakewayTickets.com. More information available at' [...]
It might be called the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest and National Park, but the digital world has penetrated it as part of an effort to raise awareness for the fading population of mountain gorillas in Uganda.
Launched Saturday, the "Friend A Gorilla" campaign is using Twitter and Facebook and [...]
Sunshine Review is a website tracking transparency in government and it also compiles state by state reviews on how much information is available to the public via local and state government websites. Tennessee has a token presence online but more than one-third of the counties don't even have a' [...]
The bizarre anti-Obama madness about his birth certificate took a new twist this week as a 28-minute infomercial hit the airwaves in seven Southern states, including Chattanooga, TN. The pitch for this slab of strangeness comes from one Gary Kreep .... yes, Kreep is his name. He claims for a [...]
I'm still a bit down and out from the Ham flu or the nasty cold or whatever illness has my head in the swamp. Here's a taste of the web-walking I've been doing of late and I hope to be back to a more fortified writing very soon.
It was inevitable, I suppose, given the time of year and the large number of un-well folks I have been around lately that I would contract my own version of a cold or flu or something. Seems like everyone has been exposed to colds and wheezing and breathing woes.
Congressional Republicans - like Tennessee's Marsha Blackburn and Lamar Alexander - are working very hard to halt any useful duties their jobs require and instead they hold press conferences to promote the witless rantings of talk radio hosts like Limbaugh and Malkin.
I noticed this story yesterday via Enclave and again today at Silence Isn't Golden -- insurance companies in 8 states refuse to provide health insurance to victims of Domestic Violence, regarding such victims of spousal abuse as suffering from a pre-existing condition.
Tennessee Senator Lamar Alexander has - as a friend of mine says, "Had the cheese fall off his cracker".
Sen. Alexander and a handful of other senators who seems to take all their marching orders from FOX news (see video below) sent a letter to President Obama wailing that [...]
"For two centuries, the South has feared a takeover by blacks or the feds. In Obama, they have both.
The state that fired the first shot of the Civil War has now given us this: Senator Jim DeMint exhorted conservatives to “break” the president by upending his health" [...]
--- Anti-Obama folks, like Michelle Malkin - depend on making you feel angry and weak if you agree with her. One way she does that is by plain-old South Carolina style lying:
"I suppose it's one of the benefits of occupying a parallel universe like the'" [...]
Oh Health Care Debate, is there anything you can't do? You stir up patriotic and religious fervor, you help the public and the elected communicate and/or curse each other face to face, you show off how brilliant and how dim we can be, you shape the nation's economic and physical' [...]
Plenty of publicity surrounds the release today of a new music-based video game and a new digital remastering of all the Beatles albums, and publicity (and lots of it) has been a constant for the Band Heard 'Round the World since they launched their careers.
I noticed another truck here in East Tennessee this past weekend with the bumper sticker which reads "TN is for Jesus Not Obama". Funny thing though - that's never been a choice anyone I know (or don't know) has ever been given. Ever.
Journalist and Health Care Advocate Maggie Mahar has a new book and documentary out titled "Money-Driven Medicine: The Real Reason Health Care Costs So Much" and the documentary is starting to shake up some of the current debate about Health Care in America.
For a woman named Beth, a single mother of two, the so-called Health Care debate is not about politics of the Right or the Left, or the endless chatter on talk radio and television. For her, it is a matter of life and death.
Here's a brief round-up of new and blog reports which stand out to me - some are stories which should get more attention, and perhaps some should grab your attention with some intensity:
Separating fact from fiction when it comes to political debate is far more of a massive dredging operation than, say, merely sifting one from the other.
Enormous planet-sized heaps of information and dis-information blend so seamlessly together - and all is repeated and repeated via hard-core entertainer/rodeo clowns on [...]
While it might seem odd to some to follow-up this weekend's movie post about revisionist history with a story about our real political world -- they share a startling amount of fantasy and danger, but which is which and just what do these policies really cost our country?
As Lt. Aldo Raine, Brad Pitt southern-drawls his commands, telling his squad he ain't very happy he had to leave his home in the Smoky Mountains to fight these dirty Nazis - and when directly questioned about where his home is , he proudly declares' [...]
You still have time to enter to win a set of six great new movie posters from classic Hollywood courtesy of Turner Classic Movies -- I have two sets of the six posters to give away, and to win all you have to do is enter your name [...]
Just when I thought I had all I could stomach from the deeply ill-informed lunacy from folks who think changing the way health insurance operates is Eeeeeevil Incarnate --- I finally found something that made me laugh out loud.
Just when I thought I had all I could stomach from the deeply ill-informed lunacy from folks who think changing the way health insurance operates is Eeeeeevil Incarnate --- I finally found something that made me laugh out loud.
"Opening an Atlantic front in their summer campaign of lies, conservative opponents of health-care reform have targeted the British National Health Service as a care-denying, euthanizing, broken-down caricature of "socialized medicine"—a portrait that bears no resemblance to reality or" [...]
Please read through the two following blog posts on the debate (or lack of it via Our Modern Media, which instead aims their cameras at train wrecks rather than dig into the facts and figures of a handful of proposed bills -- and recall that None Yet Have Been Voted [...]
Elvis Presley, John Wayne, Gene Hackman, Sidney Poitier, Peter Sellers, Frank Sinatra, Bette Davis, Audrey Hepburn are all working together for the first time to thank you, dear readers, for having that Cup of Joe here on the internet.
As a part of the celebration of this blog's 4th [...]
Since this tasty, fresh, piping-hot and aromatically stimulating Cup of Joe just had it's Blog Birthday, turning into a humble-but-lovable 4-year-old -- I am giving presents to YOU this year.
Tune in tomorrow to find out how you can get this special present.
I was glad to see that former Gov. Sarah Palin was forced to choke on her own words thanks to a major blast of reality from folks like my blogging friend Southern Beale.
Palin's idiotic "government death panels" are fantasy, but the reality is insurance companies DO have [...]
It's getting ugly out there -- rabid, illogical and often just plain old-fashioned lying -- as efforts are made to change the way insurance and health care work.
Really ugly -- but not really surprising, given that the voices from the Right are led by the small-minded self-aggrandizers like [...]
When it is a hot summer August night, like this one, and tomorrow looks to be even hotter, I often spend far too many hours searching for music to enjoy and to post here on this humble but lovable blog.
In the past few days, I've been listening a' [...]
I was talking just this week with a friend about writer/director John Hughes, who died suddenly on Thursday at age 59. Hughes made some of the most-loved movies through the 1980s, capturing the lives and loves and comic errors of American teens (and the idiocy [...]
MediaMatters reports today that the jabbering madness of Glenn Beck is losing major advertisers.
"Three companies who run ads during Glenn Beck -- NexisLexis-owned Lawyers.com, Proctor & Gamble and Progressive Insurance -- today distanced themselves from Beck. LexisNexis has pulled its advertising from Beck and says it has" [...]
Several citizens groups have formed to halt the plan to construct a Norfolk-Southern rail and truck facility, though the reporting via today's Knoxville News Sentinel pretty much implies the residents are out of luck and their county's landscape will be forever changed.
After many Summer months working with some fantastic actors, this weekend saw the first and last appearance of "James and the Giant Peach" - a live stage show for Rose Center's Summer Players. I confess some sadness to see The Peach fade into memory - but what fine memories for [...]
After many Summer months working with some fantastic actors, this weekend saw the first and last appearance of "James and the Giant Peach" - a live stage show for Rose Center's Summer Players. I confess some sadness to see The Peach fade into memory - but what fine memories for [...]
The final performance of "James and the Giant Peach" at Rose Center in Morristown is today with curtain time at 2 pm -- come early, tickets are going fast and will be available at the door!!
Directing this show for the Rose Center Summer Players has been one of [...]
This weekend is the ONLY chance to see the 18th annual theatrical production from the Rose Center Summer Players program, with "James and the Giant Peach" at Rose Center in Morristown starting Friday. The cast of young actors and their parents and the RC [...]
From the very creation of the coal ash containment site in Kingston through decades of warnings about increasing risks of catastrophic failure and even through the days following the massive toxic flood of coal ash into the rivers and land in Kingston, TVA failed and support those failures with more [...]
The figures for months have shown a steady march upward on unemployment here in East Tennessee, and June's report shows Morristown near 20% and Hamblen County above 13%.
The numbers:
The state's four most populous combined statistical areas (CSAs) in May reported:
Filmmakers and fans and media reps from all corners have been busy at the Annual San Diego Comic-Con this week. When first held in 1970, a few hundred fans and comic creators attended and the event was barely noticed - except among fans and [...]
State Senator Paul Stanley and one of his interns, McKensie Morrison, are at the center of a sex scandal and an alleged blackmail plot, a story burning up the state blogging world. Kleinheider at PostPolitics has been reporting quite a bit on the sordid tale and has a [...]
The newspaper business has - since it's earliest days - used a business model where readers are never really charged for the content the newspaper provides.
A very critical report on TVA's operations at their coal-fired plants, prompted by the disastrous spill of coal ash in December of last year, says TVA failed in key areas:
"The consultants said the "necessary systems, controls and culture were not in place" to properly manage the coal ash" [...]
Science!! is always striving to improve our lives and last week two new developments pushed forward some ideas which science and business are beginning to embrace.
Despite what I and many others thought on July 20, 1969, so far only 12 people have walked on the surface of the moon. The first two - Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin - literally flew in on sheer will-power and some dicey technology.
Thanks to the short-sighted, political goofballery of the Tennessee State Legislature, any community in the state which has a public park has been forced to formulate a policy on whether or not folks can tote their guns with them when they head out to the park. It's the great Opt-Out [...]
The aftermath and current struggle of residents living in the midst of a full-blow disaster, the giant 1.1 billion gallon coal ash spill from TVA's coal plant in Kingston, gets a medical report from CNN.
"People think they're going to die before they'll see results."
I'm not sure what the best blog in Tennessee might be, but it seemed a catchy headline to note that yes I have been most active in the non-online world this week so please pardon my absence and let me get you all caught up.' [...]
Cultivating his supporters for a run for Governor of Tennessee, Sen. Ron Ramsey spoke with a passion at a "tea party" rally in the Tri-Cities this weekend, but he (or the Johnson City Press typesetters and/or their reporter) failed to realize just when the Declaration of Independence was created. [...]
According to the OpenPen blog, 1st District Congressman Dr. Phil Roe (aka Dr No) had some fiery words to stir the crowd -- but just what was he calling on the crowd to do?
(Rep. Roe also made time to attend a few other "tea party" events, along with [...]
"Later this month, cash-strapped Virginia plans to barricade entrances and switch off the plumbing and electricity at nearly half its highway rest areas. Other states also are lowering budgetary axes on the public pit stops that have lined the interstate highway system since" [...]
Details about the Big Run Away From Blogging Bullies and Evil Media, aka Gov. Palin resigns, are mighty strange given the rambling speech the broadcast by soon-to-exit governor. (Full rambling text here.)