While George Carlin will be remembered for the “Seven Words” sketch, his jokes from the 1972 album “FM and AM” are among my favorites (warning: mildly explicit language).
Update (6/24): Although I didn’t share Carlin’s cynicism on most issues, I’m agreement with his rant on environmentalism (NSFW). He was offensive to some, and philosophical to others. But to the bitter end, he made them mad, and he made them laugh.
(h/t: James Hudnall)
Though there were many imitators, there was only one Originator.
Technorati Tags: bo diddley, music, rockOne of the world’s greatest tenors has sung his final aria:
Luciano Pavarotti, whose vibrant high C’s and ebullient showmanship made him one the most beloved tenors, has died, his manager told The Associated Press. He was 71.
Pavarotti had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer last year and underwent further treatment in August 2007. His manager, Terri Robson, told the AP in an e-mail statement that Pavarotti died at his home in Modena, Italy, at 5 a.m. local time.
George Lopez Fuming over Cancellation of His Sitcom
George Lopez is losing his sitcom — and as a result, he says “TV just became really, really white again.”
ABC canceled “George Lopez” after five seasons. He says the network told him it would lose money if the show was renewed. But Lopez tells the Los Angeles Times that his show did better than some of the series that were renewed.
He’s especially peeved that a sitcom starring the cavemen from the Geico commercials was picked up. He asks why a “Chicano can’t be on TV, but a caveman can?”
Hey George! The agents for Sharpton & Jackson called. They’re demanding that you stop stealing from their act.
And I’m sure that a multitude of famous actors of Hispanic heritage (Mexican-Americans included) will be shocked to find out that TV is once again white as the wind-driven snow.
Give it a rest already. You still have a movie deal and an HBO special coming up; plus you’ll continue to make money on reruns of a show that started out funny and entertaining, but simply lost viewer interest. When your show gets poor ratings, it gets canceled. You move on to your next project. That’s Hollywood.
Damn. I really liked that show.
Michael “I Hate America” Moore thinks the health care services in Cuba are better than what’s offered here in the U.S. So he attempts to dupe 9/11 responders for his next waste of celluloid.
The trip was to be filmed as part of the controversial director’s latest documentary, “Sicko,” an attack on American drug companies and HMOs that Moore hopes to debut at the Cannes Film Festival next month.
Two years in the making, the flick also takes aim at the medical care being provided to people who worked on the toxic World Trade Center debris pile, according to several 9/11 workers approached by Moore’s producers.
But the sick sojourn, which some say uses ill 9/11 workers as pawns, has angered many in the responder community.
“He’s using people that are in a bad situation and that’s wrong, that’s morally wrong,” railed Jeff Endean, a former SWAT commander from Morris County, N.J., who spent a month at Ground Zero and suffers from respiratory problems.
There’s more. Keep your tempers in check before reading the rest.
Michael Moore is a sick, hypocritical bastard who only speaks truth to powdered donuts. Chances of him rushing off to see a Cuban doctor are slim, as he can comfortably afford the best medicine his gutter money can buy.
For a look at the “excellent” health care services that’s available for “free” to everyday Cuban citizens, pay a visit to The Real Cuba and Babalu Blog (Warning: Graphic images).
The British actor best known for his role as Mr. Humphries on the classic sitcom “Are You Being Served?” has died.
Proof that the “global warming” BS is nothing but feel-good hot air from the left, courtesy of the Tennesee Center for Policy Research:
Last night, Al Gore’s global-warming documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, collected an Oscar for best documentary feature, but the Tennessee Center for Policy Research has found that Gore deserves a gold statue for hypocrisy.
Gore’s mansion, located in the posh Belle Meade area of Nashville, consumes more electricity every month than the average American household uses in an entire year, according to the Nashville Electric Service (NES).
In his documentary, the former Vice President calls on Americans to conserve energy by reducing electricity consumption at home.
The average household in America consumes 10,656 kilowatt-hours (kWh) per year, according to the Department of Energy. In 2006, Gore devoured nearly 221,000 kWh—more than 20 times the national average.
Last August alone, Gore burned through 22,619 kWh—guzzling more than twice the electricity in one month than an average American family uses in an entire year. As a result of his energy consumption, Gore’s average monthly electric bill topped $1,359.
During his acceptance speech for the so-called documentary, director Davis Guggenheim said, “I made this movie for my children. We all did. And we did so because we were moved to act by this man… all of us were inspired by his fight for 30 years to tell his truth to all of us.”
The truth that Gore is a hypocrite?
We didn’t need a gratuitous Hollywood flick to tell us that.
And as for “the children”, talk radio commentator Jerry Doyle noted during his show today that nobody made mention of the children who are starving to death in totalitarian countries like Zimbabwe.
I guess it’s far easier for Hollywood to save the planet than actually doing something tangible to save suffering kids…
What happens when two TV shows from the ’60s join together for a three-part episode? Tune in and find out!
(via James Hudnall)
The new season is the most intense, realistic, nail-biting one yet.
In summary: Jack’s back. Islamist terrorists attack America at will. A CAIR-like agency is under investigation. Nukes are in play.
Just tuning in? Get up to speed at Blogs4Bauer.
Update: Radio commentator Larry Elder has a brief cameo in “9:00-10:00 am”. Watch it again to see.
Real time, redefined: Jim Rose notes:
A lot of people aren’t gonna like this, but expect to hear it from a lot of us pro-war types: This season’s 24 is an example of what could happen to this country if we pull out of Iraq and elect leaders that don’t have the nerve to fight the enemy. There, I said it. Yes, it’s a TV show, but…
I confess that I’m not into nu-metal, but I’m really diggin’ the stylings of Stuck Mojo.
Check out “Open Season” (and the slammin’ remix). And as for the overreacting PC-playa-haters, who “CAIRs” what they think?
(hat tip: LGF)
Related: CAIR dodges the tough questions (and reveals its anti-Israel bent) on CNN.
On Christmas morning, the music became a whole lot less funkier:
James Brown, the singer, songwriter, bandleader and dancer who indelibly transformed 20th-century music, died early yesterday in Atlanta. He was 73 and lived in Beech Island, S.C., across the Savannah River from Augusta, Ga.
Mr. Brown died of congestive heart failure after being hospitalized for pneumonia, said his agent, Frank Copsidas.
Mr. Brown sold millions of records in a career that lasted half a century. In the 1960s and 1970s he regularly topped the rhythm-and-blues charts, although he never had a No. 1 pop hit. Yet his music proved far more durable and influential than countless chart-toppers. His funk provides the sophisticated rhythms that are the basis of hip-hop and a wide swath of current pop. [...]
Through the years, Mr. Brown did not only call himself “the hardest working man in show business.” He also went by “Mr. Dynamite,” “Soul Brother No. 1,” “the Minister of Super Heavy Funk” and “the Godfather of Soul,” and he was all of those and more.
His music was sweaty and complex, disciplined and wild, lusty and socially conscious. Beyond his dozens of hits, Mr. Brown forged an entire musical idiom that is now a foundation of pop worldwide.
“I taught them everything they know, but not everything I know,” he wrote in an autobiography.
The funk Mr. Brown introduced in his 1965 hit “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag,” was both deeply rooted in Africa and thoroughly American. Songs like “I Got You (I Feel Good),” “Cold Sweat,” “Get Up (I Feel Like Being a) Sex Machine” and “Hot Pants” found the percussive side of every instrument and meshed sharply syncopated patterns into kinetic polyrhythms that made people dance.
Mr. Brown’s innovations reverberated through the soul and rhythm-and-blues of the 1970s and the hip-hop of the next three decades. The beat of a 1970 instrumental “Funky Drummer” may well be the most widely sampled rhythm in hip-hop.
Mr. Brown’s stage moves — the spins, the quick shuffles, the knee-drops, the splits — were imitated by performers who tried to match his stamina, from Mick Jagger to Michael Jackson, and were admired by the many more who could not. Mr. Brown was a political force, especially during the 1960s; his 1968 song “Say It Loud — I’m Black and I’m Proud” changed America’s racial vocabulary. He was never politically predictable; in 1972 he endorsed the re-election of Richard M. Nixon.
Mr. Brown led a turbulent life, and served prison time as both a teenager and an adult. He was a stern taskmaster who fined his band members for missed notes or imperfect shoeshines. He was an entrepreneur who, at the end of the 1960s, owned his own publishing company, three radio stations and a Learjet (which he would later sell to pay back taxes). And he performed constantly: as many as 51 weeks a year in his prime.
The man and his music made us dance, made us feel good, and made us all proud (skin color notwithstanding). Warts and all, he lived up to the titles bestowed upon him by generations of fans and funkateers.
Fare thee well and thank you, Mr. Brown.
A legendary animator whose cartoons entertained generations of audiences has passed away:
Joseph Barbera, an innovator of animation who teamed with William Hanna to give generations of young television viewers a pantheon of beloved characters, including Tom and Jerry, Yogi Bear, Huckleberry Hound and the Flintstones, died yesterday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 95.
A spokesman for Warner Brothers said he died of natural causes, The Associated Press reported.
Mr. Barbera and the studio he founded with Mr. Hanna, Hanna-Barbera Productions, became synonymous with television animation, yielding more than 100 cartoon series over four decades, including “Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?,” “Jonny Quest” and “The Smurfs.”
On signature televisions shows like “The Flintstones” and “The Jetsons,” the two men developed a cartoon style that combined colorful, simply drawn characters (often based on other recognizable pop-culture personalities) with the narrative structures and joke-telling techniques of traditional live-action sitcoms. They were television’s first animated comedy programs.
Before that, Mr. Barbera and Mr. Hanna had worked together on more than 120 hand-drawn cartoon shorts for MGM, dozens of which starred the archetypal cat-and-mouse team Tom and Jerry. The Hanna-Barbera collaboration lasted more than 60 years. The critic Leonard Maltin, in his book “Of Mice and Magic: A History of American Animated Cartoons,” wrote that Mr. Barbera’s strength was more in his drawing and gag writing while Mr. Hanna had a good sense of comic timing and giving characters warmth.
“I was never a good artist,” said Mr. Hanna, who died in 2001. But Mr. Barbera, he said, “has the ability to capture mood and expression in a quick sketch better than anyone I’ve ever known.”
Joe Barbera will be missed. Fortunately, Hanna-Barbera cartoons will continue to entertain everyone today and into the future.
Granted, I didn’t care much about it to tune in, though I heard that Chaka Khan gave an excellent performance.
A kiss is just a kiss–unless that kiss happens to be a full-on lip-wrasslin’ tournament in front of thousands of viewers at the BET Awards.
Everybody was still buzzing Wednesday over the kiss that Jamie Foxx and Fantasia stole on Tuesday night’s show in L.A. The steamy lip lock came during “DJ Play a Love Song.”
And what did Mr. Foxx have to say about it?
“I didn’t expect it to be that intense, but I didn’t mind it either,” Foxx joked to mtv.com backstage.
Speaking of lip-wrasslin’, I guess attendees didn’t mind another public display of intimate affection that took place backstage… (via Babalu Blog)
The Ditzy Twits Dixie Chicks still don’t get it as they continue to annoy country music fans and question the patriotism of their fellow Americans:
The Chicks can’t hide their disgust at the lack of support they received from other country performers. “A lot of artists cashed in on being against what we said or what we stood for because that was promoting their career, which was a horrible thing to do,” says [Emily] Robison.
“A lot of pandering started going on, and you’d see soldiers and the American flag in every video. It became a sickening display of ultra-patriotism.”
“The entire country may disagree with me, but I don’t understand the necessity for patriotism,” [Natalie] Maines resumes, through gritted teeth. “Why do you have to be a patriot? About what? This land is our land? Why? You can like where you live and like your life, but as for loving the whole country… I don’t see why people care about patriotism.”
Methinks the Chicks can pick a better country and leave if they hate America — and the people who love it here — so damned much. Let’s see how “ready” they are to “make nice” in another land where speaking ill of anything carries a criminal penalty (unlike that crazy, jingoistic U.S. of A., where freedom and tolerance for words we don’t like are actually guaranteed by some plain sheet of paper called the Bill of Rights!).
It’s one thing to bad-mouth the leader of your country on foreign soil and move on with the remnants of your career. The Chicks have a right to free speech just like every other American citizen. But with the right to free speech comes the responsibility to handle whatever criticism that may come as a result of that very same speech. The last time I checked, Maines, Robison, and Martie Maguire weren’t exceptions to the rule, as much as they would like to be.
However, it’s another thing to piss on the fans and musicians in your genre who helped pave the way for your success. While many “rebel” country musicians manage to speak their minds without alienating their fanbase in the process, the Chicks have become the judgmental elitists they claim to hate.
And the suggestion of switching over from country to rock will also lead to further disappointment for the Chicks, being that a lot of rock-n-roll rebels happen to be patriots too.
(link via Michelle Malkin & Sister Toldjah)
Update: Tammy Bruce explains to the Chicks (if they’re so inclined to read) why “we goofballs so love this country”. RTWT.
In Comments: An angry Chickista vents (ooh, I’m so scared! :-D). Being the “heartless S.O.B.” that I am, I thought I’d make mention of it…