"Little Shop Of Horrors" - DMTC Summer Show
Left: Seymour (Joshua Smith) and not quite the Family Dentist I remember from childhood (Darryl Strohl).
The post-9/11 airline watch list that is supposed to keep terrorists off of airplanes has swelled to more than 1 million names, including at least one investigative reporter who had been critical of the Transportation Security Agency, which maintains the watch list.
CNN's Drew Griffin reported on the bloating of the watch list, which an ACLU count pegged at 1,001,308 names Wednesday afternoon. Griffin's is one of those names, he says.
"Coincidentally, this all began in May, shortly after I began a series of investigative reports critical of the TSA. Eleven flights now since May 19. On different airlines, my name pops up forcing me to go to the counter, show my identification, sometimes the agent has to make a call before I get my ticket," Griffin reported.
Part of the secret of the group's allure is ABBA's startlingly spiritual foundation. Says Matt Barton, curator of recorded sound at the Library of Congress, "Here and there, there's something that's so much like a hymn." In fact, notes Barton, ABBA organist Benny Andersson has gone on to record his interpretation of a Swedish hymn. Anyone who has ever gathered to sing up to the heavens has a little ABBA in his or her cultural DNA. No wonder the group has been known to provoke near Pentecostal fervor.
But it's not the gospel-choir-like charm of the music, or even the elaborate way it comes together, that makes ABBA enduring. No, it's the potent cocktail of the subliminally spiritual mixed with the flat-out libidinous. Listening to ABBA again lately, I've become increasingly aware of something I'd only vaguely perceived at all those "Does Your Mother Know?"-tinged wedding receptions and ironically themed gay bars -- this music is actually pretty damn sexy.
There's something undeniably, urgently compelling about a song like "Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!" a greedy love call for satisfaction (no wonder Madonna sampled its hook for "Hung Up"). It's there in the brazen sexual equanimity of "Voulez-Vous," with its shivery ah-has, and the kittenish oooohs of "Dancing Queen." The lyrics may not be quite Shakespeare or even Holland-Dozier-Holland, even if you grant extra slack for not having English as a first language. But oversaturated orchestration, the way the women's voices could soar through the changes in an "SOS" or "Knowing Me, Knowing You" -- they're forces too potent and insistent to be mere disco-era pastiche.
Oklahoma Electoral Eccentricity ZooWe have a HUGE announcement to make this Sunday...check back then!(the tension is killing me....)
News From The Health FrontIn what hospital officials say is a financial decision but union members chalk up to spite, St. Luke’s Cornwall Hospital has stopped accepting its own employees’ health insurance.
The hospital stopped taking SEIU 1199’s National Benefit Fund health insurance just before the hospital’s 800 or so service and tech employees were scheduled to switch to it, even though the change had been negotiated into the 2004 contract, union officials said.
“It’s insulting to work at a hospital you can’t get sick in,” said environmental services associate Brandon Weygant.
Many of the workers have had to find new doctors, since their previous physicians are affiliated with St. Luke’s and would not be able to treat them in the hospital, union members said.
“It was a 10 to 15 minute ride to the hospital. Now it’s 45 minutes,” said inventory control worker David Principato. “That could be somebody’s life.”
Hospital officials said spite has nothing to do with it.
The hospital stopped accepting the plan, accessed through Group Health Inc., because payments are chronically late and service is poor, said hospital spokesperson Judi Stokes.
Rep. John Peterson (R-Pa.) said Wednesday that the nation’s energy problem “is more important and threatening to America’s future than terrorism.”
During an interview on C-SPAN, Peterson stressed the need for Congress to act now to address the nation’s energy crisis.
Amid the partisan bickering on Capitol Hill, Peterson and Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D-Hawaii) are leading a bipartisan group of lawmakers seeking consensus on energy legislation.
On Wednesday, the lawmakers said that their plan will not call for drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR).
Abercrombie said ANWR has “psychological and political baggage” and Peterson pointed out the group wants to pass a bill this year.
“We can’t do everything,” Peterson said, but stressed that the scope of their package will be broad.
Drilling in parts of the United States, however, is expected to be a key part of their plan. Peterson has indicated that provisions on natural gas and shale oil in the West will likely be included in the bipartisan bill.
Patrick Creighton, Peterson’s spokesman, stressed that nothing is completely in, or completely out, of the package, but noted that ANWR legislation has never been passed in the Senate.
The two lawmakers recently said they would be announcing the members of their group this week, but have reconsidered.
Abercrombie said the members of the group are “evolving” and would be announced at a later date, suggesting that releasing the list now could subject certain members to political problems. Last week, Peterson and Abercrombie said the group would be composed of 10 Democrats and 10 Republicans.
Peterson and Abercrombie have been frustrated with the leaders of their respective parties and, despite long odds, believe their bill will be acted upon in 2008.
Peterson, who is not seeking reelection, said, “Public pressure is building.” He added that anti-drilling members of Congress were strongly criticized by their constituents during the July 4 recess.
Abercrombie said, “You can’t stand in front of a wave.”
House Democratic and Republican leaders have repeatedly relied on slogans during this election year in attempting to drive home their arguments on energy. A top slogan for Democrats has been “Use it or lose it,” while Republicans have cited the “Pelosi premium.”
Abercrombie said, “Slogans are not going to change the fundamentals of energy.”
He claimed the public is tired of the political games politicians are playing on gas prices.
“We’re legislators. We’re not theologians,” Abercrombie said, bemoaning the “sacred texts” of political rhetoric on gas prices.
Thomas Hickman drove through New Mexico, police say, until his Jeep Grand Cherokee Laredo ran out of gas. Then the 55-year-old North Richland Hills man walked into a field, tied helium balloons to a gun, covered his mouth with duct tape, and shot himself in the back of the head, according to New Mexico State Police.
That determination is a far leap from what authorities first suspected when Mr. Hickman's body was discovered March 15 near Santa Rosa, N.M., about 100 miles east of Albuquerque. Authorities initially thought the Red Lobster executive had been kidnapped and slain.
But investigators came to the conclusion that Mr. Hickman committed suicide. The first clue was the bundle of white helium balloons, with the gun still attached, found snagged on bushes and cactus near Mr. Hickman's body.
The grip of the Smith & Wesson Airweight had been removed and the trigger guard ground down, said Lt. Rick Anglada of New Mexico State Police.
"He took as much weight off as he could to make it light as possible," Lt. Anglada said. The plan apparently was to have the gun float far away after being fired, but that didn't happen.
The gun and balloons led police from that field back to Mr. Hickman's house in North Richland Hills.
"This was apparently an elaborate attempt to make it look like he was murdered," Lt. Anglada said. "Investigators were able to show that he purchased the balloons and purchased the gun. We also found shavings from the gun in his garage."
Partway through the investigation, one of the investigators recalled seeing a television show in which balloons were used in a suicide.
The investigator obtained a copy of an October 2003 episode of the television drama CSI: Crime Scene Investigation and noticed that there were several similarities between that show and Mr. Hickman's case. But Lt. Anglada said New Mexico authorities are not sure if Mr. Hickman ever saw the program.
Detectives would not speculate about the motive for his suicide, the lieutenant said.
...As the West Texas director of operations for Red Lobster, Mr. Hickman regularly traveled through the region where he died. He was last seen at a meeting in Abilene on March 13. The next day, he missed a meeting in Lubbock. On March 15, two motorists discovered his body in the field.
Who can forget the silver suits, boots, flares and big hair that defined the ABBA years? Apparently Bjorn Ulvaeus has. As a new generation of fans discovers ABBA thanks to the hit film Mamma Mia!, Ulvaeus has revealed he is suffering from memory loss and cannot even remember winning the Eurovision song contest in 1974 with one of their best-known songs, Waterloo.
It was the victory at the contest in Brighton, England, that propelled the Swedish group to international stardom.
"It is like I was not even there," said the 58-year-old father of four.
Ulvaeus composed the music for the Mamma Mia! stage musical with fellow ABBA star Benny Andersson and makes a brief uncredited appearance in the film, which stars Meryl Streep, Pierce Brosnan and Colin Firth.
The movie sparked an ABBA revival, but Ulvaeus says he can't remember chunks of his life, even turning to hypnosis to find a cure.
The songwriter, who divorced ABBA's blonde singer Agnetha Faltskog in 1980, studied old photos and video to try to remember his life.
The McCain campaign is taking their effort to distance their candidate from the unpopular President Bush to a whole new level: McCain's advisers are now openly attacking Bush on Iraq -- and not only that, they're also saying that Barack Obama is the one who is like Bush on the war!
On a conference call just now with reporters, McCain foreign policy adviser Randy Scheunemann compared Barack Obama's insistence on a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq to Bush's insistence that we were winning even as things went badly for years.
"I think the American people have had enough of inflexibility and stubbornness in national security policy," Scheunemann said. When asked later by the Huffington Post's Sam Stein whether the campaign was disparaging President Bush, Scheunemann dug in: "We cannot afford to replace one administration that refused for too long to acknowledge failure in Iraq with a candidate that refuses to acknowledge success in Iraq."
"Little Shop Of Horrors" - Tuesday Night Rehearsal
Left: Seymour (Joshua Smith) and Orin Scrivello (Darryl Strohl).
Left: Audrey (Lauren Miller) and Seymour (Joshua Smith).
Left: Audrey (Lauren Miller)
Left: Ronette (Caitlin Humphreys), Crystal (Casey Ellis), Chiffon (Sarah Duvall), and Seymour (Joshua Smith).
Left: Mr. Mushnik (Dustin White), Seymour (Joshua Smith) and Audrey (Lauren Miller).
Left: Ronette (Caitlin Humphreys), Crystal (Casey Ellis), Chiffon (Sarah Duvall), and Seymour (Joshua Smith).
Left: Seymour (Joshua Smith), and one of Darryl Strohl many permutations.
Left: Seymour (Joshua Smith), and "Two-ey".
Left: "Don't Feed The Plant" - Dustin White, Darryl Strohl, Lauren Miller, and Joshua Smith. (Plant Operator - Scott Griffith: Plant Voice -Michael McElroy).
Martinsa-Fadesa SA was the largest Spanish developer to seek protection from creditors since the decade-long real estate boom ended last year and won't be the last, according to Credito y Caucion, a Spanish credit insurer.From Las Vegas:
...Martinsa-Fadesa was created by the acquisition of Fadesa Inmobiliaria SA by Grupo Martinsa for 4 billion euros last year. Chairman Fernando Martin owns 60 percent of the stock and the stake's value has plummeted to 408 million euros from 1.1 billion euros in four months.
``The secret is to buy low and sell high,'' said Jose Carlos Diez, chief economist at Intermoney SA. ``He did the opposite.''
The recession is a "self-cleaning of the economy" that will sift out developers who came to the party late, said Avi Ruimi, principal of Woodland Hills, Calif.-based Blue Marble Development. He bought the land for Paxton Walk before the runup in prices.From Minnesota:
"They all had good intentions. I feel bad for them," Ruimi said. "Each of them made a different mistake. I can analyze those mistakes in retrospect. At the time they made the decision, they were right. It's very difficult to predict a market like Vegas. It's not a market that gives you a sign before the bubble bursts in your face."
Bendel, the mortgage trade group president, views problems with home mortgage defaults and write-offs as part of a larger pattern of concern over consumer credit.
"America is kind of living check to check," Bendel said. "It doesn't matter where you make $50 grand or $250 grand, you don't have a lot of money left over to weather a storm. When a storm comes, the boat sinks."
Reaction To The New Yorker Cover Cartoon
Then there's the reality-based stuff, like this.
