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Wayne County "Cream In My Jeans" 1978

Jayne County - I Fell In Love With A Russian Soldier

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The Ronny Horror Show 1980 Part One

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HAPPY FRIDAY the 13th!!!

Lesbian Gangs: A National Threat?

Lesbian Gangs: A National Threat?
Bill O'Reilly's homoerotic fantasies go nuclear
Violet Blue, Special to SF Gate
Thursday, July 12, 2007

I was chillin' in the hood, kickin' it under the rainbow flag with my homegirls, sippin' a 40 and working up to find some schoolkids to indoctrinate and go teach some straight people a few lessons, when it hit me. That square do-gooder O'Reilly had blown our cover. His recent Lesbian Gangs segment on Fox News, where he exposed a national network of lesbian and gay gangs, had the world's eyes spun in our direction like a chamber packed with one bullet, and all I could do now was spill a little Smirnoff Ice on the corner of Market and Castro for my fallen homos.
Actually, the segment was the funniest thing I'd watched all week, and I wondered how Fox News had managed to borrow the Daily Show's writers for some good 'ol news-as-fake-news comedy. In the Lesbian Gangs segment Bill O'Reilly reported on the epidemic of lesbian and gay gangs he assured us is sweeping the nation. Beginning with Dwayne Buckle ("attacked by a lesbian gang here in New York City last August."), then careening into a "lesbian gang" in Tennessee "called GTO: Gays Take Over" who are "raping young girls" and then to Philly, where " a gang called DTO "'Dykes Take Over'" are allegedly terrorizing people as well." This was lurid, exciting -- this was Weekly World News on airplane glue and Anal Eze.
But really, who will protect the straight people's children from lesbian rape? There's a new detective on that beat, and it's O'Reilly (finally proving there's a reason detectives wear trench coats). O'Reilly anchored his entire segment on the Dwayne Buckle / Lesbian Seven case, lest it be forgotten in the history of homosexual lawlessness. Left out of the Lesbian Gangs segment were the case's details: Buckle harassed seven women on the street in the East Village last August. According to written statements by a community organization (FIERCE) that has made a call to action to defend the four women, as well as verbal accounts from court observers and evidence from a surveillance camera, Buckle spat on them, followed them, flicked a lit cigarette at them, accosted one of the women and pulled out her hair and told them he'd "f-- them straight.".
It was all captured on video, video that, ironically, played in the background during O'Reilly's piece. Some of what happened after that is still up for debate; in the end Buckle was stabbed, and four women have been sentenced to prison.
But after the titillating intro, Bill brought in a beard -- I mean, "crime analyst" Rod Wheeler -- a member of Jericho City of Praise, a conservative Christian church in Landover, Md., whose leadership publicly advocates against equal rights for gays and lesbians. This Fox Crime Analyst is an O'Reilly favorite, whom Bill calls, "America's most recognized and trusted authority on crime analysis and law enforcement." He's also a White House darling, whose wWeb site boasted a quote from White House Press Secretary Tony Snow saying, "We turn to Rod Wheeler to help us better understand and solve some of these terrible crimes in America."
Southern Poverty Law Center tells us that Wheeler, when not talking about fantasy lesbian gang rape on Fox News, "spent seven years in professional law enforcement before going to work as a corporate security officer for McDonald's Corp., a job he has since left. These days, Wheeler is a 'food defense specialist' for the American Institute of Baking. Just this spring, he publicly warned that the Big Mac is vulnerable to bioterrorist attacks at '250 points' during production."
But the heart of this segment, let's not forget, is pure conservative porn. With some very creepy, dirty-uncle-Bill prodding ("when they recruit the kids are they indoctrinating them into homosexuality?") Wheeler tells us that, "(...) some of the kids have reported that they were forced into, you know, performing sex acts and doing sex acts with some of these people."
Now we're talking. This is the kind of sexual hysteria that conservatives can jack off to. And as a porn connoisseur, the combined conservative sexual hysteria and titillation affected me like a psychosexual can of Pringles -- you know it's bad, and will probably make your trips to the bathroom unpleasant, but irresistible in its junk-food nature. I ate -- I mean watched -- the whole thing twice without even realizing it.
I was deeply disappointed that they didn’t tell me what the lesbian gangs were wearing. I was hoping for schoolgirl outfits, nun's habits, or even cheerleader uniforms. No, Wheeler dryly cited numbers claiming, "We've actually counted just in the Washington, D.C., area alone. That's Washington, Maryland, and Virginia, well over 150 of these crews or gangs or networks or houses, whatever you want to call them."
But according to the SPL Center, "Gaithersburg, Md., Detective Patrick Word, president of the Mid-Atlantic Regional Gang Investigators Network, an intelligence-sharing organization of 400 criminal justice professionals in Maryland, Washington, D.C., and Virginia, said there is no evidence whatsoever of a lesbian gang epidemic in his region. 'Our membership reports only one lesbian gang,' Word told the Intelligence Report."
Sgt. Brett Parson, a member and former commander of the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department's Gay and Lesbian Liaison Unit, also questioned Wheeler's numbers. "We have 150 to 175 total gangs in the D.C. area, and out of those only nine where the predominance of members are female," he said. "You simply can't make the jump that they are lesbians. I think it is fair to talk about violence and female gangs. But to sensationalize or marginalize a community by making a statement like that seems irresponsible."
Confronted by the Intelligence Report, Wheeler was unable, in several phone and e-mail exchanges over a two-day period, to specify a single law enforcement agency or officer, police report, media account or any other source he relied upon for his D.C. area lesbian gangs claim. But he insisted that his report was accurate and that any law enforcement officer who disagrees is "out of touch."
Hey, I know that Fox News, like porn, is just entertainment, and should never be taken seriously. But I worry about the women and children that are being exploited to fund this billion-dollar-a-year industry. Fox and O'Reilly and Wheeler can make all these outrageous claims and prey on sexual panic because they believe that gays and lesbians are by nature discredited by their very existence. Hiding behind Fox's perceived authority, O'Reilly (and the Malkins, and others) can trample all the sexual minorities they want to.
Never mind that GLAAD has demanded Fox News apologize and retract itstheir unsubstantiated claims. Or that blogs are frothing about the whole thing. And never mind that the organization Pink Pistols, cited as a gang in the segment, is also demanding an apology. Or that the Southern Poverty Law Center delivered The Oh-Really Factor, a superlative point-by-point rebuttal, showing where the Fox News fact-checkers decided to stop reading the news and turn airtime into Showtime-after-midnight fantasies about gay rape, lesbian attackers and pink Glocks. Which, of course, I wish was the true part of all of it, because I really really want a pink Glock. Okay, and maybe I wish there were lesbian gangs, too. Hey, we all have fantasies. I just happen to have the outfits, that's all.

Violet Blue is author and editor of over a dozen sexual health books and erotica collections. She is a professional sex educator, lecturer, podcaster, video blogger, porn/erotica reviewer and machine artist.
Violet is also a fetish model, a member of Survival Research Labs, an author at Metroblogging San Francisco; girl friday contributor at Fleshbot, a San Francisco native, and a pro blogger.
For more information and links to Web sites discussed in Open Source Sex, go to Violet Blue's Web site, tinynibbles.com.

SHE SAYS, HE SAYS

The battle of the blab is a draw, psychologists say in new study -- findings contradict widespread belief that women talk more than men

Erin Allday, Chronicle Staff Writer

Friday, July 6, 2007

Forget Chatty Cathy -- let's talk about Chatty Charlie.

Men, it turns out, talk just as much as women.

Sure, maybe guys talk more about cars and sports and the new iPhone, and women talk about their feelings, but at the end of the day, each sex uses an average 16,000 words a day, say researchers who studied the conversational habits of 396 men and women for six years.

"I was a little surprised there wasn't any gender influence, because this stereotype of women talking more is such a powerful, popular idea," said Richard Slatcher, a doctoral candidate in psychology at the University of Texas and one of the authors of the study. "But we were able to directly test the notion, and it's totally unfounded."

The study, results of which were published today in the journal Science, debunks an age-old assumption that women aren't just the fairer sex, they're the chattier one, too. Tony Bennett sang about it in "Girl Talk" in the 1960s: "The weaker sex, the 'speaker' sex we mortal males behold, but though we joke, we wouldn't trade you for a ton of gold."

The stereotype is so pervasive that even scientists have long assumed that women talk more, and they incorporated that assumption in psychological gender profiles.

When UCSF psychiatrist Louann Brizendine published "The Female Brain" last year, one statistic in particular jumped off the pages and became the main talking point among radio-show hosts and Internet bloggers -- women, Brizendine wrote, use an average of 20,000 words a day; men use only 7,000.

Brizendine ended up taking out that detail after the first printing -- she's on the 13th now -- when she couldn't back it up, but the number has stuck with popular culture. Brizendine said she's happy to see it officially disproved.

"My book is really more about hormones, and that one line has been taken out of context. It's fascinating," she said. "Anytime you talk about sex differences, it's controversial. But the bottom line is, there are more similarities than differences between men and women."

The important question now, she said, is how the stereotype started in the first place.

Psychologists don't know exactly where the myth came from, but Brizendine speculates it probably took hold in the 1950s or so, when men worked the 9-to-5 jobs and women stayed home with the kids. At the end of the day, men would come home to wives who wanted to talk about the children, the house and finances -- basically, what felt like a lot of nagging, said Brizendine.

The stereotype has been perpetuated in modern days by the idea that women tend to be more open to talking about their feelings, which just makes men clam up during emotional discussions, said Matthias Mehl, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Arizona and one of the authors of the study.

"The woman wanting to talk about a problem suddenly becomes 'women always want to talk, and men never want to talk,' " Mehl said.

Or, to put a slightly different spin on it, "maybe the lack of male desire to listen to women is why the myth has persisted," Brizendine said. It might not just be men who are frustrated, she said.

Because conversations about relationships are often emotionally charged and intense, they take on more importance, as far as presumed word counts go, than they deserve, Mehl said.

"Because they feel so important, people overgeneralize from these conversations" and assume women are the ones doing the talking, Mehl said.

Mehl's study is not the first to analyze how much men and women talk, and previous studies have also suggested that there isn't much difference between the sexes. But earlier studies almost always recorded people in unnatural settings -- sitting in a lab having a conversation, for example, when everyone knew scientists were listening.

The new study used audio clips from university students who agreed to be recorded for several days sometime between 1998 and 2004. The recording equipment amounted to mini-recorders and lapel microphones designed for studies that require listening to natural language use. The devices would turn on automatically for 30 seconds every 12.5 minutes, and the subjects could not control -- and did not know -- when the equipment was turned on or off.

Researchers then transcribed the snippets of conversation, counted the words used and extrapolated from that number to get an idea of how many words each person used in a day.

There are some potential drawbacks to the study, namely that because it used only university students, it might not apply perfectly to men and women of all age groups and education levels. But Mehl said if there were important biological differences between men and women's verbosity, they would have registered at least somewhat in the study.

As it was, women spoke on average about 546 more words each day than men, but that number was found to be not statistically significant.

Based on the study results, some stereotypes about conversational habits seemed to hold true, Mehl said. Researchers didn't actually count the types of words people used, but he said men tended to talk more about sports and technology and women about their feelings.

Previous studies have noted that women use more emotionally expressive language and describe things in relational terms -- they use more pronouns, for example, said Slatcher. Men talk about more concrete things, he said.

Montira Warran of San Francisco said she's sure Slatcher's study is very scientific, but in her family, the women definitely out-talked the men. But, she added, she comes from a family of mostly women -- and the men didn't stand a chance.

"We had mostly headstrong women in my family who needed to get their point across, and the men would just say, 'OK,' " Warran said. "I think it's that women want to make sure they're heard."

San Francisco resident Doug Wilkins said he's read books and studies on gender conversational patterns, and he's noticed trends in the way men and women talk. Men, he said, are more likely to lecture, and to practice one-upmanship when they talk to other men. Women are more cooperative when they talk, he said.

And it's definitely true, he said, that men talk just as much as women.

"For every guy you know who only goes 'yep,' 'fine,' 'nope,' there's a guy who will walk up to strangers on the street and just start lecturing at them," Wilkins said.

"Case in point: my father in restaurants," he said. "The poor waiter says, 'How is everything?' and my dad will give a capsule review of every dish everyone at the table is eating. And the whole time the poor person is standing there, arms laden with dishes, shaking with fatigue. I tell my dad, 'The answer to that question is: Fine.' "

---

546

Average number of words a day women spoke more than men in study

16,215

Average words spoken a day by women

15,669

Average words spoken by men

E-mail Erin Allday at eallday@sfchronicle.com.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/07/06/MNGN7QS46F1.DTL

This article appeared on page A - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle

Celebrity Interview: Lee Jun Ki More Than Just A Pretty Face

06/07/2007 In: Celebrity Interviews

Lee Jun Ki receives an interview when he was shooting an MBC TV soap opera, "The Time of Dogs and Wolves", or "Gae-wa Neukdae-ui Shigan" in Korean (airing at 9:55 p.m. on Wednesdays and Thursdays), which will hit the airwaves on July 18. He seemed very tired of the extremely hot and humid weather and lit a cigarette when he spoke. "It is less hot and humid here than when I was shooting in Thailand. It is physically hard but I am more concerned about how I can become absorbed into my character". Lee Jun Ki in Korean drama 'The Time of Dogs and Wolves' In the TV drama, main character Lee Su-hyeon (played by Lee Jun-ki) becomes a secret agent to take revenge for his mother's death on the Thai criminal organization "Chungbang". He disguises himself as Kay, a gangster, and infiltrates into the organized crime ring. Lee said about Soo-hyun, "He is wild but very gentle in love. His personality is very similar to me as he is very insistent and unyielding". Lee added, "Su-hyeon can be sometimes sad, happy, vengeful, and loving. This is the most emotional and moodiest character I have ever played, so it is hard for me to become Su-hyeon". This new drama has many action scenes such as participating in a Muay Thai competition or fighting with gangsters. He looks completely opposite from Gong-gil, the pretty clown that he played in the movie ‘The King and the Clown’. He said, "I am very careful not to be too stylish nor put on much make-up". He cut his hair, which covered his entire neck before, as well. Lee said, "I had hard time last year because it seemed that I was trapped in a pretty boy image. People like that image. But it is up to me to break that image". Last year he tried to break the mold when he played Seung-seok, a fighter in the movie "Fly, Daddy, Fly" but the movie felt short of the expectations in terms of box office goals. Many movie fans were critical of his performance, calling it "awkward". Lee says he is not obsessed with statistics and that he wants to be known as real actor and a "cool wolf". He gained stardom with his looks so quickly, which led to people misunderstanding him as fastidious. He said, "I am down to earth, unlike my looks. I am uncomfortable with being called as a star. I don't like special treatment. I need to learn more until become a true actor respected by all". While having a meal at a harbor cafeteria with staff members, he joked, "The cook here must be a vegetarian. This meal contains no meat at all". The title, "the Time of Dogs and Wolves" comes from French expression: "L'heure entre chien et loup", which means the time of sunset between afternoon and night when it is hard to distinguish dogs from wolves. I asked Lee when is such a time for him. "It is when I feel rivalry toward an excellent actor whom I have a close relationship with and respect for. As recently as when Jeon Do-yeon received the Best Actress Award at Cannes, I thought I wanted to do better than her someday. I hope that the time of dogs and wolves comes to me many times so that I can become a fierce actor". Source: Hancinema Korean Actor Close Up: Lee Jun Ki Cool info on Lee Jun Ki, including pictures, videos, news, biography, photos, stats, and pics. Korean Name: 이준기 English Name: Lee Jun Ki (Gi) / (Lee Joon Ki (Gi) Profession: Actor, Model, and Singer Date of Birth: Apr 17, 1982 Birthplace: Busan, South Korea Height: 178cm Weight: 66kg Blood type: B Personal Blog: http://www.cyworld.com/start006 Dramas The Time of Dogs and Wolves (개와 늑대의 시간) (MBC, 2007) My Girl (SBS, 2005) Movies Virgin Snow (初雪の恋) (2007) Splendid Holidays Fly Daddy Fly (2006) The King and the Clown (2005)

Condom-maker asks for 200 testers

Condom-maker asks for 200 testers

Durex is one of the world's largest condom-makers

The Australian unit of condom-maker Durex is on the look out for 200 men and women to test its products.

Durex Australia said the chosen researchers would have to report back on the performance of its range.

While those selected will not be paid, they will get free packs of Durex products and be entered into a A$1,000 ($854; £425) prize draw.

Following a similar request for testers in the UK, Durex said it would welcome humorous application letters.

'Brag to mates'

"With this job on your CV, it really will be a chance to brag to your mates about the special skills you possess, not to mention that your new role will work wonders with the opposite sex," said Durex marketing manager Sam White.

Applicants have been asked to explain why they would be most suited to the role.

The chosen 200 will be urged to provide honest feedback.

Durex is owned by UK based SSL International.

Small amounts of dark chocolate lower blood pressure, study says

DAILY DOSE

Small amounts of dark chocolate lower blood pressure, study says

Erin Allday, Chronicle Staff Writer

Wednesday, July 4, 2007

More...

It's time for chocolate lovers everywhere to celebrate.

German scientists are reporting today that the confection really is good for you. In very, very small doses, anyway.

A study in the Journal of the American Medical Association shows that one bite, or less than a quarter of an ounce, of dark chocolate eaten once a day significantly lowered blood pressure in people who participated in an 18-week clinical trial.

It's the first time researchers have been able to say that a small dose of commercially available chocolate has direct health benefits. Previous chocolate studies have almost always used large doses of chocolate or samples created in labs to pack in extra cocoa flavanols -- the chemical in chocolate thought to relax blood vessels and lower blood pressure.

But the chocolate used in those studies wasn't practical for people to eat every day, because it either didn't taste very good or was heavy on the calories.

If people can get the health benefits of chocolate without the weight gain often associated with it, that's great news, said Seneca Klassen, who could be a little biased as co-owner of Bittersweet Chocolate Cafe in San Francisco.

"Everything should be in moderation, but, yes, clearly there are some health benefits to chocolate," Klassen said. "I have a couple of customers who buy the same bar of chocolate every time and spend a week or two eating it. A little bit can go a long way."

Some nutritionists go so far as to call chocolate a health food. But Bay Area cardiologists -- even those who confess to having a sweet tooth -- aren't quite ready to prescribe chocolate alongside blood pressure medication or daily doses of baby aspirin.

"Sure, you could add a piece of dark chocolate to your prescription. But there are going to be very few people who should rely on that alone," said Dr. Stanley Rockson, chief of consultative cardiology at Stanford University Medical Center.

Still, he said, most of the measures patients have to take to lower their blood pressure aren't fun -- exercising daily and skipping salty and fatty foods, for example -- so "comparable to some of the more draconian measures we make people go through, obviously telling them to eat chocolate is a little easier to comply with."

For more than a decade, scientists have studied the potential health benefits of chocolate, just as they've looked at wine, coffee and other treats that seem sinful to show that they might not be so bad.

The results have been mostly favorable. But when it comes to chocolate, only the dark stuff carries health benefits -- because it allows more flavanols to survive the processing of cocoa and doesn't have nearly as many fat and sugar calories as milk chocolate.

It is thought that chocolate lowers blood pressure when cocoa flavanols spur the release of nitric oxide, which dilates blood vessels and increases blood flow. Chocolate also has been linked to improved learning and memory, also due to improved circulation.

The German study was paid for by the University Hospital of Cologne in Germany, and is one of the first chocolate studies not funded by a chocolate manufacturer. It used a popular candy bar, Ritter Sport semisweet, that is 50 percent cacao. But most researchers say consumers should look for cacao percentages of 65 percent or higher for health benefits.

The study involved just 44 subjects, all of whom were in good health other than having slightly high blood pressure. The volunteers were divided into two groups, one of which ate semisweet chocolate and the other white chocolate -- which doesn't actually have any cocoa in it.

Each person in the semisweet group was asked to eat one square -- 6.3 grams and 30 calories -- just before bedtime every day for 18 weeks. Over that time, systolic blood pressure fell by 3 points and diastolic by 2 points for the semisweet chocolate eaters; blood pressure rates stayed the same for the white chocolate group.

That might not sound like much of a change in blood pressure, but cardiologists said it's a significant drop.

"We don't get a lot better results with most medications, not when we first start them. It's certainly equivalent to other lifestyle and medical approaches to blood pressure," said Dr. Rita Redberg, a UCSF cardiologist. "I'm not going to recommend chocolate, but this could be a good way to continue to lower your blood pressure in addition to already being physically active and eating fruits and vegetables."

Redberg said it's important to note that all of the study subjects were healthy individuals who were not overweight, exercised regularly and reported eating nutritious meals. What worked for them might not work for everyone, especially people who already have high blood pressure.

Plus, and perhaps most important, the people in the study were told to eat no more than the one square of chocolate every day. That, doctors said, might require too much willpower for most people.

Chocolate aficionados said Tuesday they were delighted by the results of the new study, even if they planned to conveniently ignore the part about small doses.

"I love chocolate, so knowing that it's healthy is sort of my excuse to eat it. I know it's not too harmful, anyway," said San Francisco resident Jennifer Lovaas, walking out of Cocoa Bella Chocolates at Westfield San Francisco Centre with a plastic bag of truffles.

Her husband was less enthusiastic. "Whatever good there is probably doesn't outweigh the bad. You can eat an apple and get antioxidants and all that good stuff."

He popped a piece of nutritionally valueless white chocolate in his mouth, and his wife laughed.

"Yeah, he's not even trying to fool himself," she said with a shrug. "We just like chocolate."

---

What can brown do for you?

The study: Subjects in a German study who ate 0.22 ounces of dark chocolate (actual size, above) every day -- the equivalent of 1 1/2 Hershey's kisses, seven M&Ms or one bite of a chocolate bar -- saw their blood pressure fall 2 to 3 points over 18 weeks.

The reason: Scientists think chocolate helps when flavanols -- a chemical in cocoa -- stimulate the release of nitric oxide in the body, which dilates and relaxes blood vessels and eases blood flow.

The catch: Health benefits are associated only with dark chocolate, not milk chocolate or white chocolate, which don't have enough cocoa flavanols.

---

What's in your chocolate?

Chocolate is made from cacao nibs, the part of the cacao bean that is fermented, dried, roasted and ground. Various other ingredients are added to make chocolate bars, truffles and other confections. But there's a whole world of terminology chocoholics use to describe their favorite food:

Chocolate liquor. This liquid results when the cacao nib is ground. It's made of cocoa solids (cocoa powder) and cocoa butter and, despite its name, is nonalcoholic.

Cocoa butter: The fat from the cacao bean. Extra cocoa butter may also be added to the chocolate.

Cocoa powder: The solids that remain once the cocoa butter has been pressed out of the chocolate liquor.

Flavors and additives: Sugar, vanilla and soy lecithin (an emulsifier) are the other ingredients added to make chocolate palatable. Many commercial chocolates also contain other types of fat (such as vegetable oil), sweeteners, flavors or ingredients.

Cacao percentage or content: The amount of chocolate from the cacao nib, plus naturally occurring or added cocoa butter. This is a measurement by weight and does not include sugar, vanilla or other additives. Chocolate with a higher percentage of cacao, to a point, is often considered to be higher quality, or more chocolate-y. Still, experts don't necessarily agree on the optimal percentage, although there are requirements for certain types of chocolate.

Unsweetened chocolate: Chocolate liquor that has been molded into blocks and is used for baking.

White chocolate: Must contain at least 20 percent cocoa butter, but no cocoa powder or chocolate liquor.

Milk chocolate: Must contain at least 10 percent chocolate liquor and 12 percent milk solids.

Semisweet or bittersweet chocolate: Must contain at least 35 percent chocolate liquor and less than 12 percent milk solids. Bittersweet often contains 50 percent chocolate liquor.

Dark chocolate: Definitions vary, but dark chocolate generally contains 45 to 85 percent cacao. Also can be called semisweet or bittersweet.

Couverture: Fine chocolate that contains a minimum of 32 percent cocoa butter. This is used by professional confectioners to get a thin, glossy chocolate coating.

Single-varietal chocolate: The latest trend in chocolate, similar to wine, where the chocolate comes from cacao beans from one specific growing area with unique characteristics.

Artisan chocolate: Uses couverture chocolate and emphasizes the source and quality of ingredients, such as organic or fair trade.

Source: Guittard, Ghirardelli

E-mail Erin Allday at eallday@sfchronicle.com.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/07/04/MNG42QQSUE1.DTL

This article appeared on page A - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle

The magic lily blooms

Music Videos

Janis Joplin - My Baby

Janis Joplin - Half Moon

Wayne County & the Electric Chairs - Trying To Get On The Radio

Jayne County - Man Enough To Be A Woman - Limelight NYC 1987

Buck-Tick - Mona Lisa (DIQ '03)

BUCK-TICK"Rendezvous"

Living Colour-Open Letter To A Landlord

T. REX CHILDREN OF THE REVOLUTION

David Bowie - Aladdin Sane(acoustic vers.)

Butthole Surfers - Who Was In My Room Last Night

Hi-STANDARD - California Dreamin'

Jimi La Lumia & The Psychotic Frogs featuring Jayne County fucked by the Devil

COBRA - 1990.05.13 #1

COBRA - 1990.05.13 #2

Ziggy Marley & The Melody Makers - Conscious Party (Live)

Marley Brothers at Earth Day 2007 in San Francisco

Lilies

This is a magic lily that fell in the pond. It was just a root now it has leaves & buds!!! picture 2 This is lily number (at least) 8 for this plant

Skloot today

hmmmmmmmmmmmmm?

Pond Drama!

Monday morning: Scared Bob out of the yard before I left for work.
Tuesday morning: No sign of Bob today.
Tuesday evening: found 16 dead fish in various forms of munchedness.
Wednesday morning: Scared Bob out of the yard before I left for work.
Wednesday evening: Found 5 dead fish in various forms of munchedness.
Thursday morning: Scared Bob out of the yard before I left for work.
Thursday evening: Found 3 dead fish in various forms of munchedness. Put Sparky out near the pond.
Friday morning: No sign of Bob.
Friday evening: No dead bodies.
Saturday morning: No sign of Bob.



Meet Sparky the croaking frog. Sparky has a movement sensor - when evil Bob the pesky egret plops down for munchies, Sparky will croak & scare Bob away.

Hollywood in need of Japanese

Seima Oki / Yomiuri Shimbun Staff Writer

Despite Hollywood's growing interest in Japan, as seen by recent movies such as "Letters from Iwo Jima" and "Babel," one thing often missing in these films is Japanese actors and actresses.

Films about the country often feature Chinese and South Korean actors playing Japanese characters because of a shortage of Japanese actors and those of Japanese descent in Hollywood. Such substitutes can cause cultural misunderstandings, so calls are growing for more Japanese actors to make their way into the U.S. film industry.

For example, "The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift," which was released last year, was shot in Tokyo, but many Japanese moviegoers were disappointed with the film because Chinese and South Korean actors played Japanese roles. Similarly, the 2005 film "Memoirs of a Geisha," which portrays the geisha world in Japan, starred leading Chinese movie star Zhang Ziyi. But her performance was panned in Japan as her dancing was more along the style of kabuki than geisha.

In the past four years, Hollywood made about 10 films about Japan. However, the U.S. Screen Actors Guild said it had 20 Chinese union members, but only 11 Japanese members, including those of Japanese descent.

China's movie industry is growing by leaps and bounds on the strength of the Hong Kong movie industry, whose international stars, such as Jackie Chan, have already become household names.

Japanese actors, on the other hand, have to start from scratch. Only a handful, such as Ken Watanabe and Yuki Kudo, have made their presence felt on the international scene.

As such, Chinese and South Korean actors and actresses who resemble Japanese are often used. But they cannot convey the true essence of Japan as they are not familiar with the culture.

Keisuke Kitano, a professor specializing in film theory at Ritsumeikan University's College of Image Arts and Science, said the Chinese and South Korean film industries have mapped out strategies to export their movies to overseas markets.

"The Japanese film industry isn't as eager," he said.

With demand for Japanese actors and actresses increasing, a company called Hollywood Comets was established to help give Japanese a better shot at passing auditions.

According to Hollywood Comets, in the past, most filmmakers simply sought out Asian actors and actresses, but there have recently been specific requests every week for Japanese actors and those of Japanese descent.

However, few Japanese actors and actresses have sought help from the company. Instead, Chinese and South Koreans have contacted them the most, a Hollywood Comets employee said.

Mika Kuroda, a San Francisco resident who hopes to star in Hollywood films, said she has seen Chinese and South Korean actors play Japanese roles in Hollywood movies. After passing an audition for "Memoirs of a Geisha," Kuroda played a dancer in the film.

She said many American directors think all Asian people have similar facial features "so they don't see any difference if Chinese and South Korean actors play Japanese in their films."

However, calls for Japanese actors to play Japanese roles in Hollywood movies are growing. Hollywood Comets President Tim Goldberg said many Japanese actors have great potential and could appear in more Hollywood films.

Hollywood Comets, located in Los Angeles, opened an office in Japan in 2005 to help aspiring actors and actresses find success on the big screen in Hollywood.

Goldberg said he hoped Japanese actors and actresses would make a splash as interest in Japan grows with the globalization of the economy and culture, just as Japanese automobile and appliance makers have.

(Jun. 29, 2007)

Videos

Wayne County & the Electric Chairs - Storm the Gates of Heaven

Gastunk - Geronimo (Live 1985)

A New Wave Theater showing of The Plugz-84'

The Stalin - Shugisha (ist)(Studio Live on TV)

The Stalin - Tempura (Live 2001)

Flipper - In Life My Friends

Flipper - Live at Target 1 - Falling

Jimi La Lumia & The Psychotic Frogs featuring Jayne County - CBGB

This morning

These were taken through a screen door.

Music Videos

?LIVE? Japanese 80s hardcore

Sex Pistols - "God Save The Queen" & "Anarchy in the U.K."

THE CRAMPS - THE PEPPERMINT LOUNGE '84

?LIVE? SCREAMING FAT RAT

Operation Ivy - "Knowledge" & "The Crowd" Live @ The River Theater Sacto, CA. 26 December 1988

Gauze - Fact And Criminal/Fuckhead Live in Japan

BAD BRAINS Quasi-misinformed clip from an old syndicated TV news magazine. Fun for shits and giggles!

CIRCLE JERKS - MAKING THE BOMBS & KILLIN FOR JESUS

Balzac - "Nowhere #13" Live in N.Y.C.

Black Flag "Six Pack" Live @ The Cuckoos Nest Costa Mesa, CA. 1981

Suicidal Tendencies - Institutionalized Live in New York 1989

?LIVE? HUSKING BEE - ANCHOR

Aaahhhhhh! smelly dead thing!!!

Mooch & Kobe

Kobe in his favorite cool spot.

Skloot & lily

Rock band the Donnas take control after stumble

Fri Jun 22, 2007 11:24PM EDT

NEW YORK (Billboard) - Female rock quartet the Donnas have returned to their indie roots after disappointing sales of their last album for Atlantic Records derailed their dreams of mainstream stardom.

The Bay Area group have formed their own label in a joint venture with Redeye Distribution, which will release their currently untitled next album in mid-September.

"Whatever formula we were in wasn't working for us, so now we're carving out a new formula," said singer Brett Anderson. "After 14 years and a few other deals, I guess this makes it the new-new-new-new formula!"

The split with Atlantic actually happened in early 2006, when it was clear that the Donnas were in a rut with the Warner Music Group-owned label. While their 2002 label debut, "Spend the Night," sold 424,000 copies, the 2004 follow-up "Gold Medal" moved only 87,000 copies.

"We thought we were going to have a massive hit, we expected it to be bigger" than "Spend the Night," said Kevin Weaver, Atlantic's senior VP of A&R.

From 2003 to 2004, Atlantic underwent a number of changes because of Time Warner's spinoff of Warner Music Group to a new group of investors. The band saw a new lineup of personnel by the time it was working on "Gold Medal."

"No matter who was working there, everyone was working their hardest for us. Still, though -- and I know everyone says this -- if you join a major, a few months later it'll be like a new company," said drummer Torry Castellano.

It wasn't supposed to be like this.

Anderson, Castellano and their bandmates -- bassist Maya Ford and guitarist Allison Robertson -- had been playing together since middle school and had become as notorious for their punk-rock attitude and raucous onstage presence as for their metal-tinged rock.

In 1997, straight out of high school, they signed to California-based Lookout Records, one-time home of Green Day. They released four records that, combined, sold more than 110,000 copies by the time they signed to Atlantic in mid-December 2001 -- shortly after they'd turned drinking age.

The Donnas were poised to break to the next level, and were in a stronger position than Green Day: the punk trio had sold only about 80,000 records for Lookout when they signed to Atlantic's corporate sibling, Reprise, in the early '90s.

"We wanted to be on the radio. We'd still love to," said Castellano. "We didn't expect MTV and radio to happen immediately, but we were ready for it."

Atlantic's deal "was the least Big Brothery," Anderson said. "They had one of the smallest advances, but that's because of how much control we knew we would be given. When we heard other labels' initial pitches, it was like, 'So, how about you drop your instruments and we'll come up with a choreographed dance for you to do?' Atlantic was like, 'Yes, of course you may headbang."'

"Take It Off," the sassy single from "Spend the Night," made some headway at radio, peaking at No. 17 on Billboard's Modern Rock chart. (It was later added to PlayStation 2's "Guitar Hero" repertoire.)

The band posed for magazine covers, performed on "Saturday Night Live" and "TRL" and "did everything right, press-wise," says former Atlantic/Donnas publicist Nick Stern. "The Donnas were a press dream. They wouldn't say no to anything unless it was something raunchy, like a Playboy spread or taking off their clothes for Maxim."

Initially hesitant to license their music lest it hurt their credibility with the fans, the Donnas came to realize that such deals were good for boosting their exposure.

Weaver spearheaded efforts to insert the Donnas' music into commercials (the 2006 Nissan Xterra), film ("Mean Girls"), videogames ("MVP Baseball 2003") and TV (theme song for the 2006 Winter Olympics U.S. Women's Snowboarding Team).

But they did not sell out completely.

"We want anybody of any age to listen to us," Anderson said. "And if I was a 13-year-old boy in middle school, I wouldn't go around telling people I listen to a band that did a tampon commercial."

The next album turned out to be optimistically titled.

"'Gold Medal' was a little more artistic, something a little different, and it just wasn't accepted in the way that we wanted it to be, from a commercial perspective," said Joey Minkes, the band's manager.

The lead single "Fall Behind Me" topping out at No. 29 on the Modern Rock chart. Despite a well-received run touring with Maroon 5 in early 2005, album sales increased only slightly on the road.

The band started on the next album, though Atlantic cut back the advance; ultimately, the Donnas never recouped on their Atlantic deal. In negotiations, Atlantic was willing to fund an album with a crossover hit, extending the amount of time required for the Donnas to write one. After writing three or four tunes without finding common ground, the band declined and the label passed.

"We had to go with our gut," Ford said. "We still could be with the label, but it wasn't right for anyone. We could've worked and worked for a pop single, but then it probably wouldn't have gotten played on the radio anyway."

More than a year later, the band sealed its deal with Haw River, N.C.-based Redeye earlier this month.

Whereas the band earned only royalties (16%, according to Minkes) at Atlantic, the Donnas' new Redeye deal guarantees a 50/50 split from sales, as well as co-ownership of the masters and a record-to-record contract. Redeye's deal is for North America, leaving the Donnas to choose international distributors.

The new album's sound isn't a major departure from what the band has played before. Produced by Jay Ruston (Jars of Clay, Meat Loaf, the Polyphonic Spree), the set is chock-full of big singalong choruses, fat '80s guitar licks and an upbeat pace.

With not a ballad to be found, it mixes glam-rock with punk and pop, inspired by the band's rekindled love for Def Leppard and Billy Idol, according to Ford.

Writing-wise, "I wouldn't say we did much of anything different after leaving Atlantic, though it helped that we had more time than we've ever had before to write it. It was very liberating not to have a deadline," she said.

The group has already begun streaming "Don't Wait Up for Me" via MySpace; the song appropriately opens with the sound of a stadium-sized crowd cheering as the crew encourages the object of its affections to "loosen up/drain a cup" as the electric guitars chug to the rhythm of clapping hands.

The band plans to court college radio, continue reaching out to fans through its message boards, MySpace blog and other online social networks, and to tour everywhere.

"That was our original love anyway," Castellano said. "We may have been in a lot of magazines and we pride ourselves on putting out good records, but we win over the most hearts at our live set."

Now the band is back in indie land, new deal in hand and with new sets of expectations.

"We've always been a wild card, being girls and being rock'n'roll," Anderson said. "But now, if people don't buy our record, we'll at least know we did what we wanted."

Reuters/Billboard

The Return

I scared an egret out of the back yard this morning when I opened the drapes. I went into my office to boot-up my computer & I was this on the roof across the street.

Live Music: The PUNK Started Here

Thursday, June 21, 2007

John Holmstrom's brought back his landmark magazine. We celebrate its rebirth with a June 21 show at Cafe Nine.

The New Haven Advocate Presents...PUNK Magazine Nite!
With John Holmstrom, Big Fat Combo and Larry Loud. June 21, 9:30 p.m. at Cafe Nine, 250 State St., New Haven. (203) 789-8281, cafenine.com.

PUNK Magazine may not have coined the word that gave it its title, but it sure gave it new meaning. Applying the basics of rock & roll and its accompanying lifestyles to the burgeoning New York band scene, which flitted between seedy joints like CBGB and Max's Kansas City in the mid-1970s, PUNK became not just a social register for the scene but one of the most accurate depictions of it. It was slobby not slobbish, raw not slick, more hyped on images than words.

It helped that its founder, John Holmstrom, was a cartoonist. It was his comical vision of the Ramones, especially on the band's third album, Rocket to Russia, that gave the band a whole new level of fans, those who wanted to see their violent and drug-addled lyrics as funny, not creepy.

PUNK was the house organ of the NYC punk scene, but neither Holmstrom nor another one of the best known names associated with PUNK, Legs McNeil, were New York natives. They both hailed from Cheshire, though they weren't pals then as some punk historians have assumed. "I didn't know Legs in high school. I knew his brother," Holmstrom clarified in a phone interview last week. Likewise, another Cheshire-born PUNK contributor—photographer Tom Hearn, whose band Big Fat Combo will be at Cafe Nine June 21 along with Holmstrom for a bit of PUNK nostalgia—was someone Holmstrom knew in his teens only because he'd dated Hearn's older sister. Holmstrom also has great memories of Ron's Place, the legendary New Haven club (now the site of the Indochine Pavilion restaurant), which booked many up-and-coming punk bands. Other Ron's regulars that joined the PUNK staff include the cartoonists Cliff Mott and Mort Todd.

Given its influence, it's surprising that PUNK published fewer than 20 issues. Like underground comix and self-released punk rock singles, it had a longer shelf life and a different audience than its mainstream counterparts. In any case, PUNK didn't follow the usual rules for how to put together, and especially how to distribute, a magazine. Even in its heyday, he says, PUNK "would be on the newsstands but nobody would buy it on the newsstands"—they'd get it at the punk record or clothing shops.

PUNK folded in 1979, with a cover touting The Clash. Holmstrom started Comical Funnies, an alternative comics magazine, partly to demonstrate to his friend Peter Bagge (whose own Hate Comics later became the official comio of the grunge era) how easy it was to self-publish. From 1975 to 1984 he got a regular paycheck from Bananas, the kids magazine published by Scholastic, and from 1976 until well into the 90s he worked at High Times, for whom he adapted his hand-drawn PUNK Top 99 feature.

Holmstrom says he tried to relaunch PUNK in 2001, but that effort was set back years by 9/11. Now that the magazine's up and running again, Holmstrom justifies covering many of the same clubs and bands he did 30 years ago because "nobody likes these pop-punk bands there are today except 15-year-old kids. Nerds have taken over what's left of the rock critic world." That original scene, he feels, still matters. No argument there.

At Thursday's Cafe Nine show, Holmstrom says he'll "show slides and talk." He'll have copies of the just-released PUNK #21, which marks the closing of CBGB last year with a typically PUNK mix of mythologizing (with historical photos of The Dead Boys, Blondie, The Cramps and Lester Bangs) and heckling (hysterical fake ads for the club, including one for its planned Las Vegas franchise that has Lou Reed and Phyllis Diller sharing the stage). He'll also have a few back issues to give away. Besides Big Fat Combo, Larry Loud, whose 70s band The Cadavers was widely considered to be the first punk band in Connecticut, will play a set.

carnott@newhavenadvocate.com

Music Videos

ADOLESCENTS - LIVE '82

Butthole Surfers "Suicide", "BBQ Pope", "Wooly Bully" Live @ The Underground Railroad West Virginia 1983

New Order - Ceremony (live 1984)

THE CRAMPS - I WAS A TEENAGE WEREWOLF

DEAD KENNEDYS "Forest Fire" - Belgian TV 1980 "California Uber Alles" - Finland 1980

Jayne County "Cherry Bomb"

CIRCLE JERKS - 5 HITS '81

Killing Joke - A new day

fIREHOSE W/Paul Leary (Butthole Surfers) and Johnny Rotten

MDC - "Selfish Shit" Live on The Broadway San Francisco, CA. 1984

Brothers doing it for themselves at the Japan Cherry Boy Association

The Japan Cherry Boy Association is facing a crisis after the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research revealed that almost one in four Japanese men aged 30 to 34 remains a virgin, according to Weekly Playboy (7/2).

"This is only the tip of the iceberg," Japan Cherry Boy Association founder and president Shin Watanabe (himself an unscathed 34-year-old) tells Weekly Playboy. "The real situation is much worse than this."

Watanabe argues that there are lots more Japanese men who are virgins than they are prepared to admit, saying that very few people surveyed about their virginity would be prepared to openly admit to not having broken their drought.

"There are 11 percent of people who gave an invalid answer to the survey and I bet you the vast majority of them would be virgins. And though there is also 65 percent who said they have had sex, that also includes the guys whose only experience is a single session at the brothel and nothing since, so there are a lot of virtual virgins in amongst them, too," Watanabe says.

The Japan Cherry Boy Association currently boasts of 517 members whose ages range from their teens to their 40s. Many join the association in the hopes that women will visit its website and try to pick them up. Some members, albeit only a few, actually succeed in "graduating" from the club by successfully experiencing sex.

"I'm the chairman of the association and I still can't get any sex, so I must admit I have mixed feelings when someone graduates," Watanabe says. "Guys who succeed change instantly, wanting to de-register immediately or patronizing other members by leaving them messages like 'You guys hurry up and get it over and done with, too.' I really hate it. I'd like guys who do succeed to stay around and offer advice to other members and tell them about their experience. But it seems once people have lost their virginity, they want to forget about ever having been a virgin in the first place."

Japan Cherry Boy Association members meet regularly for parties, where they frequently tell stories about how they cope with not having had sex, including this tale from a 32-year-old member.

"I've been going to yoga classes for ages and can finally get my body flexible enough to move however I want it to," he tells Weekly Playboy. "Just the other day, I finally achieved my dream of giving myself fellatio."

Cherry Boys Association members can't just be lumbered into the single lump of virgins, either. "Now, there are progressive virgins, who are striving to lose their virginity, and conservative virgins, who do everything they can to protect it," Watanabe says.

Conservative virgins argue that they've had enough of real women and would prefer two-dimensional types such as those found in manga and anime, who are also not going to lead them to the pain of rejection.

Some virgins, who call themselves liberated, go to ever further extremes.

"Most human worries stem from sex, right? Guys chat up women because they want to satisfy their sexual desire, which also motivates them to get a good job. You want to get along well with a woman, but you're filled with lust and thinking so much about sex it makes it hard to get along well with the woman anyhow," says a 30-year-old member who bought female hormones online to stifle his sexual urges. "Without lust, I'm doing much better with work and with women than I ever have."

Watanabe argues that Japan needs to do something about its excess of male virgins.

"We've got a declining birthrate, which means that the younger generations are going to have to look after the elderly. I can see a generation clash coming on. Why should young people who know nothing of sex have to look after old fogeys who can't get it up for sex any more?" he asks Weekly Playboy rhetorically. "To avoid that clash, those weak at love need to have love made smoother for them so they can enjoy it, get married and have children. I wonder if the media knows how much it hurts virgins and makes them feel isolated when it says that anybody at all is capable of love. We need a society kinder on virgins. We need to smile more at virgins." (By Ryann Connell)

June 20, 2007

'We shared a bed but never touched'

Ginou Richer lived with Edith Piaf for 15 tender - and often tyrannical - years. What does she think of the new biopic about the great French singer? Hannah Westley finds out

Wednesday June 20, 2007
The Guardian


Turbulent... Marion Cotillard stars as Piaf in La Vie en Rose


No one knew Edith Piaf like Ginou Richer. "I was only 16 when I met Edith," she says. "It was 1948, and she was already a big star. My boyfriend was part of a group called Les Compagnons de la Chanson who toured with Edith and, against her wishes, he smuggled me along. When my presence was discovered, the great lady came along to throw me out of the hotel - but we instantly hit it off."

Piaf is currently being rediscovered by a new generation in France. Richer's memoir of the 15 turbulent years she spent as a companion to the country's beloved "Sparrow" has just been published, and she also acted as script consultant on the new movie La Vie en Rose, a colourful and dramatic tribute to the life of the great singer and songwriter, best remembered for emotional renditions of songs such as Je Ne Regrette Rien, L'Hymne à l'Amour and the song that gave the film its title.

Out on Friday, the film portrays Piaf's brief life - she died in 1963 at the age of 47 - as an extraordinary kaleidoscope of rags to riches, passion and misfortune. And, according to Richer, the actress Marion Cotillard doesn't just play Piaf but becomes her: "Marion has it exactly, the way she walks, talks, her way of laughing. The hardest part for her was lip-synching the songs, but really, you'd say it was Edith singing." Richer, too, is portrayed in the film, as a devoted member of Piaf's entourage, but her memoir, Piaf, Mon Amie, recalls a friendship that was as intense and rewarding as any of Piaf's many love affairs. "I ended up becoming her companion. I did everything for her, her hair, clothes, makeup, but I never received a salary. We lived together as a couple. She always referred to 'our' house or 'our' car."

When Piaf and the Compagnons parted company, Richer chose to stay with Piaf. "There were nearly 20 years between us but it didn't make any difference," she says. "We exchanged roles - sometimes she'd mother me, sometimes I'd mother her. Most of the time, we were just children together. When we were on tour and there was no man in her life, I slept with her in the same bed; and when she had a lover, I slept elsewhere. But there was no ambiguity to our relationship - we never as much as touched toes. Edith loved men! We were soulmates: I was from the backstreets of Paris, like her."

The public loved Piaf for her vulnerability as much as for her ebullience; she often encouraged journalists to write fiction rather than fact, realising the power of her own mythology. In private, her love of life, her energy and strong character made her a demanding companion. "She could be tyrannical," says Richer. "She had such high expectations of herself that she expected the same of everyone. With me, she simply demanded that I was present all the time. She always liked to know where I was. When I went out without her, she'd give me her car and driver so she'd be able to keep track of me. But I accepted her tyranny - it was proof of her love.

"She was the same with everyone. I remember how she insisted that Charles [Aznavour] and I accompany her to A Streetcar Named Desire a dozen times because she'd fallen in love with Marlon Brando. When she decided to eat steak tartare every evening, she expected me to do the same."

But Piaf's tyranny was not always affectionate. Richer remembers how one weekend, Piaf locked her in her townhouse without food or company because Richer was too ill to accompany Piaf on a weekend jaunt to the countryside: "She punished me because she didn't believe I was ill, even though I'd just come out of hospital. She thought I wouldn't accompany her because I wanted to sneak off to see a boyfriend, and she was furious at being thwarted."

When it was Piaf's turn to be nursed, after one of her many car accidents, Richer soon encountered a mystery: when she kept vigil at Piaf's bed, the singer didn't sleep - yet when the night nurse was there, she slept like a baby. "I eventually found out that the nurse was increasing her dose of morphine rather than reducing it - just to ensure that she had a quiet night. For me, that was when Edith's dependency truly began."

Rumours of alcoholism and drug addiction clung to Piaf and if, in later life, the drugs became necessary to combat the pain of rheumatism and other ailments, their use was initially exacerbated by Piaf grappling with heartbreak. When her lover, the French world champion boxer Marcel Cerdan, died in a plane crash, the singer's grief was such that Richer says she never fully recovered. "When he won the title, Piaf and I had been to Lisieux to pray to St Thérèse for him. She was sure he would win because that night we smelt roses in her room [a symbol of that saint]. After he died, she tried to contact him through various mediums. It reached worrying heights."

On other occasions, Piaf's demands had graver consequences. After having a son by her first husband, Richer - on Piaf's advice - gave him to her parents to bring up. "I was very young," she says, "and it was as though somebody had handed me a toy, a beautiful baby to play with. Edith used to say that just because you became a parent didn't mean you'd be any good at it."

That was a lesson Piaf had learned the hard way. Abandoned by her parents, a street singer and an acrobat, she spent her early childhood in the care of her grandmother, who ran a brothel in Normandy. Afflicted by bouts of blindness in childhood, Piaf was reclaimed by her father to become his working companion on the streets of Paris, where she would probably have met with the same fate as her mother - drunken destitution - had she not been spotted by cabaret owner Louis Leplée (played with insalubrious charm by Gérard Depardieu in the film), who gave her her first break and her first stage name, La Môme Piaf, The Sparrow Kid.

Richer says her time with Piaf was like living in a gilded cage, but when she finally left to live with her second husband in Cannes, she didn't experience it as a liberation. "She taught me how to enjoy life, how to make the most of it. We spent so much time laughing. I didn't want to leave her, but I was pregnant with my second son. I felt she was in good hands. She was with her last husband [Theo Sarapo], who I felt loved her as I loved her and would take care of her."

Piaf spent her last years in a villa in the Midi. "I saw her almost every day," says Richer, "but I still couldn't accept that she was as ill as everybody said she was. With me, she never showed any sadness or despair. She was always bright and optimistic - because that was how we'd always been together."

· La Vie en Rose opens this Friday.

· Piaf, Mon Amie by Ginou Richer is published in France by Editions Denoël.

Quiz
What do you know about Edith Piaf?

Blog
A humdrum telling of Piaf's extraordinary life

Skinny Puppy

Among industrial music band's fans are Trent Reznor and Marilyn Manson, and once you're in, it's a lifelong commitment

Tony DuShane

Thursday, June 21, 2007

More than 25 years ago, Skinny Puppy formed with the goal of releasing one record, and that would be it. "Somehow it caught on," says Ogre, the lead singer, "and affected a lot of people."

[MP3: "PolitikiL," Skinny Puppy]

Included among those affected and influenced by Skinny Puppy are Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails and Marilyn Manson.

At the core of the band is Ogre and Cevin Key, who is responsible for the musical arrangements and sampling. In 1995, band member Dwayne Goettel died of a heroin overdose. Ogre says early Skinny Puppy was creatively fueled by drugs.

Ogre has given up using drugs, but says the creative process isn't that different. "You open those doors a couple of times," Ogre says, "and that's all you really need. It doesn't mean that once you stop doing drugs, you don't have the same accelerated, or decelerated, or twisted, unique perspective that you find yourself stumbling upon when you're using."

A live Skinny Puppy show includes a degree of performance art mixed with video projection, and the majority of the set list showcases selections from the group's latest release, "Mythmaker," which has a different sound from Skinny Puppy's earlier releases.

"We've always made records with a great deal of care and love and also always try to keep them very connected to what's really happening in our lives right now as opposed to going through some formula of making something to sell records based on demographics," Ogre says. "We've always moved on, but every album kind of feeds off of each other to a certain degree."

"Mythmaker" includes driving industrial rhythms, dark atmospheres and meticulous sampling from Key and Ogre's cynical lyrics. The first track, "Magnifis -- " tackles their take on our current political state: "I am the liar's nation/ Oh yeah/ I am the undisputed god/ Oh yeah/ I am the maggot's muscle, magnet missile ... master of it all."

In the last track, "UgLi,'' Ogre chants, "Jesus is ugly.''

"It's my normal disdain for the rise of the national imperialist empire in America, treatment of other humans in the world," Ogre says. "Not that I don't think there are good Christians, I think there are some very good Christians, but they need to clean their act up a bit."

Ogre refers to himself as a character for his live performances.

"This show's dealing more with a character that I found myself doing when I first started touring with Skinny Puppy," Ogre says. "It was coming from a place of real insecurity and being looked upon and really judged and I was a lot more introverted, so I create a playground for myself to operate in."

When someone becomes a Skinny Puppy fan, they're usually in for life.

"It's kind of like a Deadhead thing, isn't it? You either love it or you don't, and then people come along and they get it at certain times in their lives and they're like, 'Oh wow,' " Ogre says.

While Skinny Puppy has been influencing industrial music fans for more than a quarter-century, Ogre remains humble. He says people up come to him and express how the music of Skinny Puppy has really helped through difficult times in their lives. "That means a lot to me," he says.

Tony DuShane, 96Hours@sfchronicle.com

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/06/21/NSGQHP26IM1.DTL

This article appeared on page G - 4 of the San Francisco Chronicle

Did Hitler unleash the Holocaust because a Jewish prostitute gave him syphilis?

20/06/07 - News section

Did Hitler unleash the Holocaust because a Jewish prostitute gave him syphilis?
by JENNY HOPE

A brief encounter with a Jewish prostitute may have led to Hitler's genocidal Holocaust, claim psychiatrists.

They believe he may have caught the sexually transmitted disease syphilis which, if untreated, can eventually cause madness.

According to a report, mental and behavioural disturbances triggered by the advanced stages of the disease could have resulted in Hitler targeting Jews and the mentally retarded.

There is "ample circumstantial evidence" for the theory, according to a team headed by psychiatrist Dr Bassem Habeeb.

Dr Habeeb said that there had been speculation that Hitler had syphilis from diary entries made by his personal doctor, Theo Morrell.

Yet despite significant medical and political clues, the theory has never been rigorously examined, he told the Royal College of Psychiatrists' annual meeting in Edinburgh.

He said: "If Hitler's life is looked at through the lens of a syphilis diagnosis, one clue leads to another until a pattern of infection and progressive infection emerges, a disease that may have defined him from youth as an outsider and that progressively ravaged his body and mind."

The disease would have fuelled a "deadly logic and blueprint for the Holocaust" which focused on particular minorities, he said.

Hitler, who reportedly had sex with a Jewish prostitute in Vienna in 1908, put syphilis high on his political agenda, devoting 13 pages to the disease in his book Mein Kampf.

The job of "combating syphilis - the Jewish disease - should be the task of the entire German nation," he wrote.

"The health of the nation will be regained only by eliminating the Jews."

Dr Habeeb said: "Hitler's bizarre belief that syphilis was a hereditary disease that was originated and propagated by the Jews and resulted in insanity and mental retardation" could be the reason he attempted to eliminate the mentally retarded.

He said well-documented aspects of Hitler's behaviour and health such as mood swings, paranoid rages, rashes and stomach problems were typical of syphilis.

In his diary, Dr Morrell noted Hitler's severe gastric crises, skin lesions, Parkinson's disease and violent mood swings as evidence that he had syphilis, as well as "sudden criminal behaviour, paranoia, grandiosity and mania", all of which are characteristic of cases of the advanced stage, neuro-syphilis.

Dr Habeeb, who works at Hollins Park Hospital, Warrington, said that experts had previously explored the possibility that Hitler had syphilis, but had not put together the chain of secondary neuro-symptoms that meant the Holocaust became the focus of his psychotic behaviour.

Before antibiotic treatments were developed, syphilis was incurable and could cause madness after a latent stage lasting many years.

Dr Habeeb said: "This disease can send you mad and it could be a horrible explanation for the obsession that led to the Holocaust.

"It's very hard to say with certainty. There's ample circumstantial evidence, though no final proof, that he definitely had it.

"But many other historical figures in the 19th and early 20 th century suffered from syphilis without the murderous consequences wreaked by Hitler."

Some historians say Hitler was exempt from Army service because of early symptoms caused by syphilis, which then disappeared as it entered the latent stage.

Others have suggested that Hitler received iodide salts, a well-known treatment for advanced or tertiary stage syphilis.

Some historians have laid Hitler's health problems partly at Dr Morrell's door, claiming he may even deliberately poisoned his patient.

---

Find this story at http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=463391&in_page_id=1770
©2007 Associated New Media

Strange case of Piles

A prisoner has been caught with an entire mobile phone charger hidden up his bottom.

Suspicious officers noticed murderer Tony Pile's discomfort while searching his cell, reports The Sun.

He finally confessed and grimaced as he produced the cable and plug.

Two fist-sized blocks of cannabis and cocaine were also found hidden in the cell on D-wing at Swaleside Prison on the Isle of Sheppey, Kent.

Police action is now being considered against Pile, 22, from Ashford, who was jailed for beating a man to death in a race hate attack in 2005.

A Prison Service source said: "We've known for some time that prisoners hide phones up there but this is a first.

"Pile had somehow managed to secrete the entire charger where the sun doesn't shine.

"It just goes to show the lengths some inmates will go to stay in touch with the outside world while banged up."

Staff launched a series of searches at Swaleside in a crackdown on smuggling of drugs and phones.

Ugly fish is seen as aphrodisiac

By NOAKI SCHWARTZ, Associated Press WriterWed Jun 20, 4:17 PM ET

The hagfish is a bottom feeder so repulsive it had a cameo on TV's "Fear Factor." It slimes its enemies, has rows of teeth on its tongue, and feeds on the innards of rotting fish by penetrating any orifice. But cooked and served on a plate, it is considered an aphrodisiac in South Korea.

And the overseas appetite for the hagfish — also known as the slime eel — is creating a business opportunity for struggling West Coast fishermen confronted with tough restrictions on the catching of salmon and other fish.

California's annual catch jumped from practically nothing to 150,000 pounds over the past four years. Oregon and Washington state last year reported around 1 million pounds of hagfish caught.

The 14- to 18-inch hagfish looks like an eel. In fact, there is debate over whether it is really a fish. The 300 million-year-old creature has no jaws and one nostril. Essentially blind, it dwells in the dark more than 1,000 feet down.

"The average person would be disgusted just by looking at them," said Mark Crossland, a state Fish and Game warden. "The product is difficult to deal with and handle — it's a little eel that once it gets stressed it excretes this slime."

On NBC's "Fear Factor," two contestants sat in a vat of the creatures and had to push handfuls of them through holes. They described the experience as sticky, stinky and disgusting.

Hagfish has a modest following among older Korean men who savor it as an appetizer broiled in sesame oil, sprinkled with salt and accompanied by a shot of liquor.

Peter Chu, a seafood exporter in Eureka, Calif., said the fish sells for as much as $20 a pound in South Korea, which he estimates consumes 9 million pounds a year.

"There's a myth there that it's an aphrodisiac. It gives you energy like Viagra," Chu said. "It's like oysters here."

Fisherman Mark Tognazzini, who used to catch hagfish in the early 1990s, said it is relatively inexpensive to get into hagfishing. They are caught in five-gallon barrels fitted with trap doors and baited with rotting fish.

In April, California officials encountered a fishing boat near Morro Bay carrying more than 15,000 pounds — approximately 45,000 writhing hagfish — that were to be loaded on jumbo jets live and flown to South Korea. The Washington-based crew was cited for violations that included fishing without permits and having oversized traps as big as wine barrels.

The hagfish's predators include whales, seabirds and seals. There are no catch limits for hagfish, and the species is in no immediate danger. But some experts worry it could be threatened if the boom continues, because hagfish do not reproduce quickly.

Tognazzini said they are an important part of the marine ecosystem whose job is to clean up the ocean floor. "The thing is, they're not cute — they don't hit people's hearts," he said.

As if its looks weren't enough of a turnoff, hagfish, when agitated, vomit and secrete a protein that reacts with seawater to create a thick mucus.

A single animal can turn a five-gallon bucket of seawater into a pool of goo in a matter of moments, said Eddie Kisfaludy of the Scripps Institute of Oceanography. While the slime distracts predators, it also occasionally suffocates the hagfish.

"They're definitely more interesting than maggots, but then all these researchers who work on fruit flies will probably argue with me," Kisfaludy said.