'Walk the Line' Re-write Features Bi-Curious Johnny Cash; Earns 9 Oscar Nominations

Once snubbed biopic now a "Tour-de-Force," claims New York Times.



Cross the Line, now a musical, is expected to make back much of the money lost on the 2005 hetero-centric flop, Walk the Line. Critics railed against the tedious and close-minded nature of Johnny Cash's relationship with June Carter present throughout much of the film.

"All we had to do was hire the cast of Brokeback Mountain and give Joaquin Phoenix a rainbow guitar strap and heck, we were halfway there," says a relieved producer.

The strap:


Director James Mangold apologized for making the Cash biography so exclusive originally. "This rewrite has helped me to recognize the precarious nature of my heterosexuality. I mean, we're all just one night in a pup tent with a friend away from going gay. It's magical."

"Mangold has taken a tired, anemic 'love story' and performed alchemy with this fresh, groundbreaking triumph," proclaimed Times film critic Clarke Needleman today before a pre-screening of the re-written movie.

"I'm sure I'll love it," he added.

Yet Another Added to the "Army of Davids"

Check out Understanding Left and Right...and Right and Wrong. This new blog entry is penned by a friend and fellow Conservative, MT, who has finally had enough of the newspeak and is now sticking it to the man. And, he can quote any line from any Chevy Chase film ever made.

FYI, An Army of Davids is the title of Glenn Reynolds' (Instapundit) new book due out next month and it's already #78 on Amazon.

Fight the Power.

Huxley, Lewis on Evolution and Design

"I wanted to believe the Darwinian idea. I chose to believe it not because I think that there was enormous evidence for it, nor because I believed it had the full authority to give interpretation to my origins. I chose to believe it because it delivered me from trying to find meaning and freed me to my own erotic passions."

- Aldous Huxley

"If the solar system was brought about by an accidental collision, then the appearance of organic life on this planet was also an accident, and the whole evolution of Man was an accident too. If so, then all our present thoughts are mere accidents - the accidental by-product of the movement of atoms. And this holds for the thoughts of the materialists and astronomers as well as for anyone else's.

But if their thoughts - i.e., of Materialism and Astronomy - are merely accidental by-products, why should we believe them to be true? I see no reason for believing that one accident should be able to give me a correct account of all the other accidents. It's like expecting that the accidental shape taken by the splash when you upset a milk-jug should give you a correct account of how the jug was made and why it was upset."

- C.S. Lewis

Al Qaeda Threatens to Unleash Firestorm of Video Taped Messages

FBI worries Al-Zawahiri may escalate attacks to include Microsoft Powerpoint presentations, spamming, and pop-up ads.



WASHINGTON, DC - Reuters

"Americans must realize that we're no longer safe from poorly produced videos such as these," said Homeland Security Chief, Michael Chertoff in response to Al Qaeda's latest VHS offering. Outside the Pentagon, a visibly angry Donald Rumsfeld asked the assembled media and his staff, "What's next from these monsters? Spyware?"

"This Little Light of Mine..."

"WHICH I INVENTED...MUHUUU HA HA HA HAHAA...!"

Add your caption to this magic moment featuring our former Vice President. Hat tip to frequent commenter and sniping nemesis Ray B. for finding this image on Wonkette.

Arrogant Bush Inexplicably Snubs Hapless & Charming Helen Thomas Again

Mystified pundits are confounded by the President's brash and unwarranted act of unsolicited cruelty.



Via Drudge:
Thu Jan 26 2006 15:42:32 2006

President Bush today again avoided taking a question from White House doyenne Helen Thomas during his 45-minute press conference, even though he took questions from every reporter around her front-row, center seat.

"He's a coward," Thomas said afterward. "He's supposed to be this macho guy. He'll take on Osama bin Laden, but he won't take me on."

What Media Bias?

War Critics: 20 Questions Conservatives Should be Asking Them

Even if our President won't...

• If Bush lied about Iraq having WMDs, wouldn't he have lied about finding them?
• How do you protect the world's oil supply from a man who was writing a romance novel even as U.S. tanks were within miles of Baghdad?
• Why do only 2 Democracies exist (Israel and Iraq) among 22 dictatorships in the Middle East?
• Why are women considered property in over half of these countries?
• Why are homosexuals executed in over half of these countries?
• What responsibility do we have, if any, to those suffering under these regimes?
• Would we let what's happened in the Middle East happen in Europe?
• Was Iraq more or less serious than the humanitarian problem in Bosnia 12 years ago?
• Should we decide whom to save from genocide based upon expediency of military victory?
• How would you guarantee that Sadamm's WMD raw materials and WMD programs don't become actual WMDs once sanctions ended?
• Why was Europe pushing for an end to U.N. sanctions?
• Was the "Oil for Food" program working?
• Did its revenues reach those who needed it most?
• How many more sanctions should have been discussed/passed by U.N.?
• Does the passing of resolutions no one intends to enforce damage U.N. credibility?
• Does this damage to U.N. credibility make the world safer?
• How was pre-war Iraq "peaceful?"
• How do you define "peace"?
• Do the oligarchs who govern the countries of the Middle East benefit from rampant illiteracy?
• What did Israel destroy in 1981 inside Iraq?

"The Unique Distinction" of Training Our Own Destroyers

The Left and their proud legacy.

"So the final conclusion would seem to be that whereas other civilizations had been brought down by attacks of barbarians from without, ours had the unique distinction of training its own destroyers at its own educational institutions and providing them with facilities for propagating their destructive ideology far and wide, all at the public expense.



Thus did Western man decide to abolish himself, creating his own boredom out of his own affluence, his own vulnerability out of his own strength, his own impotence out of his own erotomania; himself blowing the trumpet that brought the walls of his own city tumbling down.

And having convinced himself that he was too numerous, labored with pill and scalpel and syringe to make himself fewer, until at last, having educated himself into imbecility and polluted and drugged himself into stupefaction, he keeled over, a weary, battered old brontosaurus, and became extinct."

--Malcolm Muggeridge

Back At It

After a much needed respite, I return holding my nose and ready to re-enter the port-a-pottie of media bias, post-modern popular culture, and the parallel universe inhabited by our friends on the political Left.

Cover me - I'm goin' in!

U.S. Department of Hyperbole Warns of Dwindling Supplies of Exaggeration

Shortages expected to hit major media outlets and Democratic Party hardest



(I'm on vacation until Monday. Until then, enjoy a re-post from the archives)

Reuters January 5 2006

WASHINGTON - Citing increased demand, sources within the department responsible for monitoring inventories of overstated emphasis warn of ever dwindling supplies of words misused by many Americans every day.

Department Secretary William Browning appealed for calm today, but made clear that if Americans do not begin to describe people, places, and things with proportionately descriptive rhetoric, mandatory rationing could begin for some words currently on the endangered list.

Browning cited "Nazi", "Liar", "Gulag", "Torture", and "Outrage" as the words most in danger of extinction. "We simply no longer have the luxury of throwing out 'Gulag' anymore to describe confinement conditions not luxurious.

The term 'Nazi' must be reserved to describe followers of Hitler's National Socialist Party -- certainly not your parents or the President. And, an 'outrage' should be in some form or fashion, well, literally outrageous."



Following a Rose Garden reception for South Korean Prime Minister Lee Hae-Chan, President Bush reinforced the Secretary's message:

"History books need these important words to warn future generations of Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Hussein, and others who have filled gas chambers and mass graves with the innocent. I urge every American to say what they mean and mean what they say."

Echoing Mr. Bush's comments, Vice-President Cheney added that creative works of fiction could also be affected, "It's worth noting that Pinocchio could not be written today due to the shortage of the word "Liar."

Democratic National Committee Chair Howard Dean dismissed the President's comments as "The latest outrage by white Christians who want nothing more than to silence women and return minorities into slavery. The entire Bush Administration has been one lie and one atrocity after another."

Mr. Dean was suddenly interrupted and surrounded by Federal agents and notified he would be placed under arrest for violation of the Endangered Language Act of 2005. The diminutive Dean proved difficult for agents of average height to apprehend running through the legs of 3 officers and careening off a reporter before finally being taken down by tazer.

Onlookers casually dispersed as agents drew night sticks and began furiously pummeling a semi-conscious Dean.

Richmond Remembers the Harvey Family

Well known Virginia family of four murdered on New Year's Day

Two memorial events are planned this week:

Tuesday, Jan. 3, at 5:30 p.m. at the First Unitarian Church on Blanton Avenue.
Wednesday, Jan. 4, at 7 p.m. in front of the family's home in Woodland Heights, 812 W. 31st St.



Family of four found slain in home
By the Associated Press
January 2 2006 - RICHMOND, Va.

Police on Monday continued searching for clues in the murder of a prominent local family, whose bodies were discovered in their home.

Firefighters responding to a report of a blaze at the house found the bodies of Bryan and Kathryn Harvey and their two young daughters, Stella and Ruby, Sunday afternoon.

Police would not comment on the condition of the bodies, but the Richmond Times-Dispatch, citing police sources, reported the family was discovered bound in the basement with their throats cut.

All four were pronounced dead at the scene, said police spokeswoman Cynthia Price. The bodies were sent to the medical examiner's office for autopsies. Police are investigating the case as a homicide and arson, Price said.

Investigators said the Harveys had invited friends to the house for a New Year's Day chili party. A family friend who arrived with his daughter walked inside and was immediately engulfed in smoke. "I yelled out, and no one answered, so I figured they all must be on a walk or something," Johnny Hott said. He then shouted for a neighbor to call 911.

According to the Times-Dispatch, a family friend said 39-year-old Kathryn Harvey was the half-sister of Steven Culp, who played Rex Van De Kamp on "Desperate Housewives." Bryan Harvey, 49, was a member of the popular local band, NrG Krysys, and was a former guitarist and singer for the critically acclaimed House of Freaks, which released five albums on three labels between 1987 and 1995.

Harvey and his band had played at a local hotel New Year's Eve and returned home at 2 a.m., friends and family said. His 9-year-old daughter Stella spent the night at a friend's house and returned home at 10 a.m. Sunday, where she was greeted at the door by her mother, friends and neighbors said.

Police on Monday were trying to determine when the family was killed and what started the fire. They had not named any suspects and did not know of a possible motive for the crime, Price said.

Investigators were also trying to determine whether anything was stolen from the house. "The detectives are working the case very hard," Price said. "They've been canvassing the neighborhood, talking to associates of the family and trying to find any possible leads."

The crime frightened members of the middle-class neighborhood, which hasn't logged a homicide since 1987, when serial killer Timothy Spencer murdered Dr. Susan Hellams. Spencer, better known as the South Side Strangler, was executed in 1994.

A crisis team was being organized to assist students at the elementary school where Stella was a third-grader, said Daniela Jacobs, principal of Fox Elementary School. "She was a wonderful little girl," Jacobs said of Stella. "She was a happy little girl." Stella's 4-year-old sister, Ruby, was a preschooler at Second Presbyterian Church's child-care center. Her mother was the co-owner of a retro gift shop.

"They were just wonderful people," said Chuck Wrenn, a longtime friend of the family's. "They contributed a great deal to the community. ... I just couldn't imagine what could have happened."

=====================================

If you lived in the city of Richmond, this couple was hard to miss. Their deaths have sent shock waves through Central Virginia as friends and family members try to make sense of it all. Police are releasing few details as of yet.

I knew them, but not well. Many friends of mine were very close to them and are in a state of shock this week. If you lived in downtown Richmond for any length of time you knew them - or their faces at least.

Bryan was "a pillar of the Richmond music scene," as described by longtime friend Chuck Wrenn. To me, he will always be remembered as the singer for The Dads in the 80's and later on as the critics favorite House of Freaks. I am posting my favorite song of theirs -- "Sun Goes Down" from their Tantilla album.

Kathryn owned World of Mirth in Richmond's Carytown retail district. If you needed a cool toy for your hipster friends or their kids, you went here. Kathryn's interest in campy retro toys and collectibles made this store a Richmond must see.

I pray for their families and for justice to be served. Richmond has lost some of its eclectic character this week.

More information can be found through Technorati.

Dean on wiretapping: "Bush is fighting terrorism the way we demanded during the 9/11 Commission. It's an outrage."

DNC Chair stands on phone book, screams.



Democrats continue to hammer home their message for 2006:



Kerry: "Doesn't this President understand we need more troops in Iraq unless we actually need less? I've said this from the beginning."