nancynall.com » Mo’ money, Michael.
«
»

Mo’ money, Michael.

One thing you have to admit about the Amer­i­can pop-culture bar­rel: It really has no bot­tom. You think the Jackass/Bruno/Borat oeu­vre was the last word in vul­gar­ity? You have yet to meet Tucker Max. You think the long, sor­did story of Michael Jackson’s corpse ended when his molder­ing bones were finally planted in For­est Lawn? You would be wrong.

I watched the trailer for “This Is It,” which is appar­ently a Michael Jack­son con­cert movie, only there was no con­cert, so it’s been repack­aged as a “rare, behind-the-scenes look” at the rehearsals, at least what­ever sort of rehearsals could be held while Jack­son was med­icated into tem­po­rary upright­ness. (I just Googled the phrase “rare, behind-the-scenes look.” Results: 133,000. Not so rare, I guess.) You have to mar­vel, really, at the unmit­i­gated gall of the Jack­son fam­ily and the cast of human cat­tle egrets who fol­low their herd, eat­ing the blood-engorged ticks on LaToya’s back. The film will be in the­aters for two weeks only; tick­ets will go on sale a month in advance. I sup­pose this will build buzz among the peo­ple included in the open­ing phrases that appear onscreen — the “bil­lions reached” by his music (an uncom­fort­able echo of McDonald’s there, eh?), the “world inspired” by his “dreams,” etc.

Let me just pause for a moment and con­sider the brief flash shots of peo­ple dri­ven to near-hysteria by the pres­ence of their idol. A few years back, one of my col­leagues won one of those Rotary Club schol­ar­ships to spend a few months over­seas, being a Rotary ambas­sador. He went to Chile, where he dis­tin­guished him­self as an ambas­sador of pop music; his first duty upon return­ing was to make mix tapes from his vast record col­lec­tion and send them to South Amer­ica, where his new friends were absolutely starved to hear any­thing other than what­ever crap was car­ried on local radio. ABBA had played a series of shows in San­ti­ago while he was there, and it was an event that nearly brought the city to a stand­still. When I hear peo­ple talk about Michael Jack­son and what his music meant to them, all I can fig­ure is, they must have recently moved here from Chile.

As a cynic, I’ve been cheered to see the reac­tion to the moun­tain of evi­dence in the case, which is pretty much exactly as I pre­dicted when the corpse was still warm: Jack­son died of a drug over­dose, and was an abuser at a level you could only call baroque; the most ossi­fied Detroit junkie must stand mute in the shade of a man who had a pri­vate physi­cian turn his bed­room into an oper­at­ing the­ater every night, lit­er­ally anes­thetiz­ing him into uncon­scious­ness. And was I right about the other thing I pre­dicted? Ahem:

“He was just care­ful about what he ate; he just tried to be healthy,” said Kevin McLin, a friend of the fam­ily and Jackson’s for­mer pub­li­cist. “He ate turkey burg­ers, Chi­nese food, a lot of veg­eta­bles. He always tried to eat healthy stuff. … He tried to stay away from red meat.”

So what is the offi­cial reac­tion to this news? Charg­ing Jackson’s doc­tor with homi­cide. He killed our hero, that bad man! All the patient wanted was a good night’s sleep, even if it had to be aided by the drug they use to keep you quiet while a sur­geon is saw­ing your ster­num in two, and what did the quack doc­tor do? Gave him too much, depriv­ing the world of his music and inspir­ing dreams! And we know he was a won­der­ful, won­der­ful per­son, on the brink of a come­back, because his daugh­ter said so at the funeral, right after Aun­tie Janet made sure she was speak­ing directly into the microphone.

Dur­ing the crack wars, when the homi­cide rate in places like Fort Wayne was climb­ing through the roof, the edi­tors at my news­pa­per would send a reporter to chat with the fam­ily of the mur­der vic­tim, even when it was clear the vic­tim was a sleaze­bag banger with a tar­get on his back. The griev­ing mother always pro­vided the same nar­ra­tive: Sure, her boy had been bad, but he was turn­ing his life around. The recent birth of his lat­est child had changed his heart, and he was plan­ning to get his G.E.D., enroll in col­lege and per­haps found a soft­ware empire, or maybe enter the min­istry and help oth­ers. How tragic he was taken from us when his poten­tial was so, so great.

It’s good to see the nar­ra­tive hasn’t changed. It’s also good to see there were enough frag­ments of rehearsal footage, and mil­lions of suck­ers, for the Jack­son fam­ily. They have a lot of egrets to feed.

OK, then. I’m work­ing extra hours this week, extra late hours, which have left me sleep-deprived and even crankier than nor­mal. Not so much blog­gage, but what I have is pretty good:

The Detroit City Coun­cil is rat­tling its saber about a strip-club crack­down. In a nor­mal city, this would bring out the church peo­ple to say, hear hear. In Detroit, it brings out the strip­pers to say back the fuck off of my liveli­hood. (And, to be sure, a few church peo­ple.) Click through to note the fine booty on the woman speak­ing at the podium, and for this quote:

“I take care of my fam­ily,” said Omni Jenk­ins, 21, a dancer at a local club. “By cut­ting us off and mak­ing up all these rules, it’s going to cause crime rates to go up. It affects not only the enter­tain­ment com­mu­nity, but Detroit as a whole.”

Even lame-duck Martha Reeves gets off a good one. You can find it on your own. I gotta hit the shower. And the cof­fee pot.

Posted on Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009 at 10:18 am
in Movies, Popculch.

Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.

51 responses to
“Mo’ money, Michael.”

  1. Lynn said on September 23rd, 2009 at 10:39 am

    About the energy boost at 10pm I sug­gest B12. Or the amino acid pheny­la­nineDL which clears the mind with­out any buzz. If you can han­dle the caffine that late — maybe green tea is eas­ier on your stomach?

  2. moe99 said on September 23rd, 2009 at 10:57 am

    This is a rather amaz­ing piece from “Ukraine’s got Tal­ent” on You Tube. Since you are our res­i­dent Russ­ian expert, Nance, per­haps you could trans­late the words for us at the end:

    http://​www​.youtube​.com/​w​a​t​c​h​?​v​=​5​1​8​X​P​8​p​r​w​Z​o​&​a​m​p​;​f​e​a​t​u​r​e​=​p​l​a​y​e​r​_​e​m​b​e​d​d​e​d#t=71

  3. LAMary said on September 23rd, 2009 at 11:07 am

    Every­thing I’ve seen that has any­thing to do with Michael Jackson’s demise has been about money grub­bing unless it’s about pre­tend­ing that Michael Jack­son was some­how not respon­si­ble for being a hard core drug addict. The doc­tor surely has a lot to account for, but he didn’t put him­self on the payroll.

  4. del said on September 23rd, 2009 at 11:09 am

    That youtube clip was incred­i­ble Moe.

  5. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on September 23rd, 2009 at 11:19 am

    Porche? Isn’t that a for­eign import? In Detroit?

    Gad­hafi is weirdly com­pelling right now, in a train wreck/snake & rab­bit sort of way. This isn’t going to help Obama get his mes­sage out on non-proliferation, unless peo­ple put the 2 and 2 together and real­ize “this guy is nuts.”

    Actu­ally, why do they let ANY heads of state address the UN? Can’t wait to hear Ahmadinny take the podium and tell us who else they have none of in Iran.

  6. brian stouder said on September 23rd, 2009 at 11:20 am

    The doc­tor surely has a lot to account for, but he didn’t put him­self on the payroll.

    Mary — I agree that MJ doesn’t get to be the martyr.

    But the doc­tor is (pre­sume­ably) highly edu­cated, and (not inci­dently) duty-bound to not harm a patient. If MJ bought the same drugs from a guy who wasn’t a doc­tor, then that seller would go to prison. A med­ical doc­tor should be held even MORE respon­si­ble than some chuck­le­head work­ing the cor­ner, I think.

  7. coozledad said on September 23rd, 2009 at 11:38 am

    Sounds like Michael was a surgery addict in more ways than one. I like to think if I had his money I could at least work in some travel with the drugs. Maybe read a cou­ple of books.

  8. mark said on September 23rd, 2009 at 11:45 am

    Really well done post, Nancy. A plea­sure to read.

  9. Sue said on September 23rd, 2009 at 11:59 am

    Since I only read snarky sar­cas­tic polit­i­cal blogs and watch Keith Olber­mann and the Daily Show for my news, can any­one give me a clear expla­na­tion on how it came to be that (appar­ently) the anti-Acorn bill that just passed is about to bring about the fall of our entire military-industrial com­plex?
    And speak­ing of the Daily Show, did any­one watch last night as Jon & Co., fresh off their Emmy win, man­aged to link the Val­ues Vot­ers Sum­mit with Tom Delay and a hilar­i­ously dis­re­spect­ful visual that would have crossed the line if there were any lines left to cross?

  10. coozledad said on September 23rd, 2009 at 12:08 pm

    Sue: It’s because you can’t tar­get a sin­gle orga­ni­za­tion that is a recip­i­ent of fed­eral funds for improper behav­ior with­out employ­ing the same stan­dard for them all. So all those pet Repub­li­can cash cows are about to watch their intestines spilling on the floor, espe­cially Xe and Hal­libur­ton.
    This is going to be the best thing that ever hap­pened for cam­paign finance reform.

  11. beb said on September 23rd, 2009 at 12:11 pm

    Sue, this is a beauty. The Anti ACORN bill sim­ply and broadly banned fur­ther con­tracts to any com­pany con­victed of fraud. It turns out that pretty much every com­pany in the military-Industrial com­plex has been caught cheat­ing the gov­ern­ment at one time or another. There­fore none of them will be per­mit­ted any fur­ther contracts.

    I like bills will clear, sim­ple lan­guage. Makes it easy to see what’s going on.

  12. beb said on September 23rd, 2009 at 12:14 pm

    Actully Coolz, the bill may be uncon­sti­tu­tional because by tar­get­ing one com­pany — ACORN — it becomes a Bill of Attainer, which is specif­i­cally banned. Will be inter­est­ing to see how this plays out. Per­son­ally, I would love a bill that bans com­pa­nies caught break­ing the law from fur­ther busi­ness with the government.

  13. Jeff Borden said on September 23rd, 2009 at 12:21 pm

    And I would add that I would like the com­pa­nies doing busi­ness with our gov­ern­ment to actu­ally have HQ’s in the U.S. This would pre­vent Hal­libur­ton, for exam­ple, from estab­lish­ing a tax dodge office in Dubai.

    Why Hal­libur­ton gets to pocket bil­lions and bil­lions –often by sup­ply­ing shoddy goods and ser­vices– and still gets to slough off the taxes on all that fed­eral booty is beyond me. Clos­ing a loop­hole like this would make me very, very happy.

  14. coozledad said on September 23rd, 2009 at 12:21 pm

    You’re right, Beb. it was just some more of that shiny object stage­craft, which is all the boobs have in their arse­nal any­more. Prob­a­bly time for a new flag burn­ing amend­ment, or to name some­thing else after Rongo.

  15. brian stouder said on September 23rd, 2009 at 12:22 pm

    What Jeff tmmo said about Khaddafi’s ram­bling UN screed! My good­ness — the news cov­er­age looks exactly like a Sat­ur­day Night Live skit, com­plete with an intr­pre­tor who is less-than-superb at his job!

    The Libyan leader looks a lot like Burt Convy, if you ask me.

    PS — nit­pick: bill of attainder

  16. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on September 23rd, 2009 at 12:28 pm

    Dang. Beb beat me to it. I haven’t got­ten to pull out the phrase “bills of attain­der” for years. (See Tom Jefferson’s dec­la­ra­tion for how the Framers felt about ‘em.)

    When i first heard about the “Acorn Bill” i couldn’t fig­ure out how it worked, espe­cially because i’d been read­ing a bit in the last few weeks about how it isn’t con­sti­tu­tion­ally pos­si­ble for the fed­eral gov­ern­ment to require some­thing and fine/tax/charge you for *not* doing some­thing. So it doesn’t make sense you could enjoin ACORN specifically.

    Any­how, trust me on this — just wait ’til they go through their next HUD pro­gram audit. They’ve got a whole lot of ’splainin to do, Lucy. That will pun­ish them more than ade­quately. But if the Con­gress has thumb-fingered their way into mash­ing up more cor­po­rate over­reach, then hoot mon, bash away.

    update — Brian, i can­not believe i’m still watch­ing this. But what a thought — the UN for three years in Yemen, three years in East Timor, then three years back in New York. They’ll beg to pay their park­ing tick­ets after six years in the other two (?) hemispheres.

    So, did inter­preter union rules require a break, or did they just real­ize this guy was a dis­as­ter? That was weird, either way … and i’m still watch­ing. The assem­bly crowd reac­tion shots make it worth it, even the Libyan del­e­ga­tion is dumb­struck, visibly.

  17. Cathy D. said on September 23rd, 2009 at 12:42 pm

    After read­ing your first graph I thought you were going to tell us about Macken­zie Phillips
    http://​www​.msnbc​.msn​.com/​i​d​/​3​2​9​7​6​3​9​1​/​n​s​/​e​n​t​e​r​t​a​i​n​m​e​n​t​-​c​e​l​e​b​r​ities/

  18. Sue said on September 23rd, 2009 at 12:43 pm

    So, how long before some­one uses this deba­cle to make the point that we must take lots and lots of time on health care reform legislation?

  19. Jeff Borden said on September 23rd, 2009 at 12:53 pm

    I see our Lady of Wasilla made her big speech in Hong Kong. Won­kette has a few excerpts from the WSJ, but says at the end of the post the news­pa­per has since taken them down. There are reports of a few peo­ple leav­ing a half-hour early and Tweets that sug­gest her speech was just about as vapid as most every­thing else she has said since John McCain foisted her on an inno­cent and unpre­pared nation.

    This, of course, after the press was barred from cov­er­ing her speech to make her “more comfortable.”

  20. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on September 23rd, 2009 at 1:11 pm

    http://​www​.nytimes​.com/​2​0​0​9​/​0​9​/​2​4​/​u​s​/​p​o​l​i​t​i​c​s​/​2​4​p​a​l​i​n.html

  21. coozledad said on September 23rd, 2009 at 1:14 pm

    Damn. I’ll never be able to lis­ten to the Mamas and the Papas again with­out visu­al­iz­ing that old bas­tard hump­ing his kid. I’ll bet he was wear­ing that stu­pid fur hat, too.

  22. ROgirl said on September 23rd, 2009 at 1:29 pm

    The Moam­mar Qaddafi/Gahdafi/Khadafi Story, starring…

    http://​media​.pho​to​bucket​.com/​i​m​a​g​e​/​g​a​d​h​a​f​i​/​v​e​t​t​e​1​4​/​G​a​d​h​a​fi.jpg

    http://​www​.mylife​time​.com/​f​i​l​e​s​/​i​m​a​g​e​c​a​c​h​e​/​p​h​o​t​o​_​g​a​l​l​e​r​y​_​f​e​a​t​u​r​e​d​/​f​i​l​e​s​/​i​m​a​g​e​s​/​e​-​g​a​l​l​-​j​i​m​m​y​s​m​i​t​s​-​3​9​5​x​2​98.jpg

  23. LAMary said on September 23rd, 2009 at 1:34 pm

    Is the stuff at the end of the youtube in Russ­ian or Ukrainian?

  24. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on September 23rd, 2009 at 1:37 pm

    Yeah, Smits could play him … if you hit Jimmy in the face with a shovel a few times, and used Gre­cian For­mula on his facial hair. Or shoepolish.

    Won­der what time Ahmadine­jad speaks?

    It’s Ukrain­ian; i can make out “Mir” but not the rest of it. They lost 1 in 4 cit­i­zens dur­ing WWII, and you can tell from the audi­ence reac­tion that between the Nazis and Stalin, they’re still feel­ing it (and yes, i know they were pretty eager to jump on the Shoah band­wagon on their own, but losses are losses, how­ever they got to that cliff).

  25. LAMary said on September 23rd, 2009 at 1:42 pm

    Khadafi looks like the aging dope dealer who used to visit his ex wife up the street from my home. She had to call the cops on him all the time.

  26. Julie Robinson said on September 23rd, 2009 at 1:48 pm

    Loved the sand artist, it reminded me of a con­cert we attended where an artist cre­ated a huge por­trait while the music was being played. It sounded schlocky ahead of time but it’s a mag­i­cal experience.

    Re Macken­zie Phillips: ick, ick, ick. But con­sen­sual? Not pos­si­ble. He’s her Dad and she wanted to please him.

  27. Dorothy said on September 23rd, 2009 at 1:48 pm

    One of the stu­dents I am host­ing at Kenyon is from the Ukraine. I’ll try to remem­ber to ask her when I take her shop­ping this week­end. Mike and I are refer­ring to the girls as our Kenyon daugh­ters. Darya, Pal­ista and I have a day trip to Polaris planned. Wheeeee!!!! Deca­dent Amer­i­can shop­ping — can’t get much bet­ter than that!

  28. Danny said on September 23rd, 2009 at 1:50 pm

    Crap, I’ll never be able to watch Amer­i­can Graf­fiti again with­out think­ing about that…

  29. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on September 23rd, 2009 at 2:04 pm

    What Julie said. It’s like sex­u­al­ity between a pas­tor and a con­gre­gant — it really isn’t eth­i­cal, no mat­ter how you poet­i­cally describe how you “met.” With a child … this is why peo­ple believe in Hell, i guess. It has its uses.

  30. Peter said on September 23rd, 2009 at 3:42 pm

    Thanks coo­zledad, it’s going to take a lot of liquor to get that image out of my head

  31. nancy said on September 23rd, 2009 at 4:14 pm

    As usual, this con­ver­sa­tion has gone in a thou­sand won­der­ful direc­tions, but it seems a while back I was asked a ques­tion about Russ­ian, and here’s the answer: They’re very sim­i­lar, but still dif­fer­ent lan­guages, and I’m barely able to find the bath­room in Moscow, so please don’t throw me into Kiev just yet. That said, I know the first and last words in that video’s title are “Ukraine” and “tal­ent.” The verb in the mid­dle is terra incognita.

    There are ten­sions between speak­ers of both tongues that obvi­ously date from the Evil Empire era. From off­hand ref­er­ences in my read­ing, I gather Rus­sians con­sider Ukrain­ian a tongue nigh onto Ebon­ics, and Ukes see clas­si­cal, cor­rect Russ­ian the way an Amer­i­can teenager would see British Eng­lish. At the end of the bus tour, they still under­stand one another.

  32. LAMary said on September 23rd, 2009 at 4:15 pm

    Babi Yar was in Ukraine.

  33. Dexter said on September 23rd, 2009 at 4:56 pm

    Was it Ms. Phillips’s 18th birth­day or was she still under­age when Mick Jag­ger had sex with her and told her “I’ve been wait­ing for this since you were ten.”?

    I heard a long dis­cus­sion ‚pro and con for incest, on satel­lite radio today.
    All I can say is it sure as hell seems twisted and wrong to me. It is out of my abil­ity range to even grasp the logic or rationalizing.

  34. LAMary said on September 23rd, 2009 at 5:02 pm

    I used to work in the imported food busi­ness. While I dealt with snazzy jams and choco­lates, we also sold eth­nic stuff to Pol­ish, Russ­ian, Hun­gar­ian, Aus­trian, Ger­man, Czech and Ukrain­ian stores. We had a kid work­ing in the ware­house who spoke Ukrain­ian, and he used to trans­late Pol­ish and Russ­ian for us.

  35. Dexter said on September 23rd, 2009 at 5:15 pm

    Again the witty Hud­sonette at Twit­ter posts:

    ” In the spirit of Sarah Palin’s Hong Kong speech about eco­nom­ics, I will be giv­ing a lec­ture dis­cussing neurosurgery.”

  36. Deborah said on September 23rd, 2009 at 7:10 pm

    That MacKen­zie Phillips news is the creepi­est thing I’ve heard in awhile. I’m throw­ing out any Mamas and Papas CDs I might still have. What is wrong with these peo­ple? Have they no scruples?

    Nancy, I don’t want to make this sound like a wowser, but your writ­ing just keeps get­ting bet­ter and bet­ter, and it was mighty good to begin with. On top of that you’re dash­ing these posts off before break­fast every morn­ing. You should be get­ting paid for this tal­ent. The cat­tle egret metaphor is a stunner.

  37. moe99 said on September 23rd, 2009 at 8:27 pm

    I think we can thank Michelle Bach­man and Glenn Beck for their indi­rect help in this:

    http://​www​.huff​in​g​ton​post​.com/​2​0​0​9​/​0​9​/​2​3​/​c​e​n​s​u​s​-​w​o​r​k​e​r​-​h​a​n​g​e​d​-​w​i​t​h​_​n​_​2​9​7​1​1​4.html

    ps. Deb­o­rah, your praise of Nancy’s cat­tle egret metaphor is spot on. I have a friend from col­lege who used to write for Rolling Stone, who in a cover story on the band Kiss, com­pared their fans to a species of African dung bee­tle, who would come run­ning when they heard the cows fart­ing. Vivid, vivid.

  38. Dexter said on September 23rd, 2009 at 9:32 pm

    Oh joy!! My day was made even brighter just now. Pee Wee Her­man is Tweet­ing @peeweeherman. He just informed us he’ll be on Leno tonight. I seri­ously am a big fan…never missed his old Sat­ur­day morn­ing shows.

    I have been blast­ing Bruce Spring­steen tunes on his sat-radio chan­nel all day…Bruce is about the best in-shape sex­a­ge­nar­ian ever, eh? Today Bruce turns 60.

  39. beb said on September 23rd, 2009 at 10:06 pm

    Let’s not for­get the strip­pers Nancy men­tioned in today’s post.…

    Every decade or so there’s a big push to clean-up 8 Mile
    Rd. The road divides Detroit to the south from its whiter sub­urbs to the north. One part of these pro­grams is always try­ing to elim­i­nate the strip clubs that run along the south side of the road. (By ‘line’ I mean 8 – 12 clubs along a 20 mile stretch.) If any­one were to drive along 8 Mile what they’ll real­ize is that strip clubs are the only solid busi­nesses on there. Like the pro­test­ers said at yesterday’s City Coun­cil meet­ing, why elim­i­nate one of the few prof­itable busi­nesses in the city.

  40. Dexter said on September 23rd, 2009 at 10:08 pm

    love birds:

    http://​latimes​blogs​.latimes​.com/​.​a​/​6​a​0​0​d​8​3​4​1​c​6​3​0​a​5​3​e​f​0​1​2​0​a​5​9​1​3​e​b​a​9​70b-pi

  41. alex said on September 23rd, 2009 at 10:23 pm

    Pee-Wee’s Big Adven­ture was on WGN tonight. Missed the Large Marge seg­ment, dammit. Was out­side hav­ing a smoke. Large Marge is my nick­name for a repressed les­bian neigh­bor and I was so look­ing for­ward to the day I’d see her special-effects spit­tin’ image again.

  42. joodyb said on September 23rd, 2009 at 10:23 pm

    in re: The Boss, here’s a more uplift­ing link (unless reminder’s of bruce’s land­mark birth­day bring you down):

    http://​www​.twinci​ties​.com/​c​i​_​1​3​4​0​3​6​6​3​?​n​c​l​i​c​k​_​c​heck=1

  43. Dexter said on September 23rd, 2009 at 11:18 pm

    Whoa! My com­puter was attacked and Nor­ton shut me down..this damn thing pre­sented itself as Nor­ton­Se­cu­rity and wanted me to turn con­trol of my com­puter over to it via a remote con­trol link! I see my post of 10:08, so it took just an hour for the real Nor­ton to take over and fix this mess…had to totally dis­able and unin­stall Nor­ton and install a new ver­sion of the prod­uct.
    Well…Norton takes a beat­ing from a lot of geeks, I know, but they keep me up and run­ning and they are good. My brother relies on IP McAf­fee only, and my friends use free AVG and love it, and I use Nor­ton and pay for it, and we are all happy as clams…to each his own!

    Pee Wee was not on Leno ( I had the sound on as I was being ser­viced by Nor­ton). I read that wrong , it appears.

  44. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on September 23rd, 2009 at 11:24 pm

    Dex­ter, you now owe me for the spat­ter on the key­board from my try­ing to claw out my eye­balls to erase hav­ing seen that. Good thing i can touch type.

  45. Dexter said on September 23rd, 2009 at 11:29 pm

    Yes, I made it a big deal at my house today, cel­e­brat­ing my all-time fave rock and rollin’ man, Bruce Spring­steen.
    Now I must give birth­day props to another, born on the same date,
    …John Coltrane
    Jazz Musi­cian
    23-Sep-1926 17-Jul-1967 Jazz soprano sax­o­phon­ist
    “My Favorite Things“
    http://​www​.youtube​.com/​w​a​t​c​h​?​v​=​I​_​n​-​g​R​S​_​w​d​I​&​a​m​p​;​f​e​a​t​u​r​e​=​r​elated

  46. Dexter said on September 23rd, 2009 at 11:32 pm

    Jeff…didn’t you real­ize I used to be a “reporter and pho­tog­ra­pher” for The Globe? (yuk yuk !)
    Hey…now you’re like another super­star who was also born on this date…yessir…RAY CHARLES was born on a Sep­tem­ber 23.

  47. MarkH said on September 24th, 2009 at 1:40 am

    Dex­ter, you got every­body won­der­ing what the com­plete list of 09/23 birth­days is (ok, maybe just me), so here you go:

    http://​www​.nndb​.com/​l​i​s​t​s​/​7​8​4​/​0​0​0​1​06466/

    Includ­ing everybody’s favorite farmhand:

    http://​www​.nndb​.com/​p​e​o​p​l​e​/​8​1​7​/​0​0​0​1​29430/

    Check the CV and the web­site link. BS in chemistry!

  48. alex said on September 24th, 2009 at 6:44 am

    Received an e-mail with the salu­ta­tion “salope,” so went to the Urban Dic­tio­nary web site. None too flat­ter­ing, that salope. But then I came across this:

    http://​www​.urban​dic​tionary​.com/​d​e​f​i​n​e​.​p​h​p​?​t​e​r​m​=​a​n​n​+​c​oulter

  49. ROgirl said on September 24th, 2009 at 6:57 am

    Brian Williams did a seg­ment on the NBC news about Springsteen’s birth­day and reminded view­ers that he’s the leader of “The heart-stopping, pants-dropping, house-rocking, earth-shaking, booty-quaking, Viagra-taking, love-making — Le-gen-dary E — Street — Band!”

  50. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on September 24th, 2009 at 8:10 am

    Wow. Richard Sten­gel on Morn­ingJoe is explain­ing how Time mag­a­zine is going to save jour­nal­ism and Detroit, both at the same time. How he’s going to pre­serve read­er­ship and ad rev­enue he does not talk about. All because “we’re stake­hold­ers now, we bought a house there.”

    News­flash, big guy; you can own a house and not be a stake­holder. We have lots of ‘em in the Mid­west. They’re called absen­tee own­ers on a good day, slum­lords more often. And we’re not con­vinced you won’t be as dam­ag­ing an indi­rect, glanc­ing blow to com­mu­nity as those Florida dwelling rent suck­ers are.

  51. LAMary said on September 24th, 2009 at 11:02 am

    Brian Williams and Bruce Spring­steen are both Jer­sey guys. As are Jon Stew­art and Bill Maher. And myself if I con­sider myself a guy.

«
»