Newscoma

I watched The Big Lebowski again last night.

Dude really makes life better.

Because, my friends, sometimes one must wonder about these sorts of things. Is a Country Hooters better than a regular Hooters? What kind of babes work at this Country Hooters? What kind of brew do they have on tap? Who lives in the trailer behind the sign?

So many questions run through my mind about Country Hooters.

From Picalicious via find by Random.

And color me happy. I always liked Aaron Brown when he was at ABC in the mornings and I thought he was fine at night until that sexy Anderson Cooper got everyone’s dander up. Don’t get me wrong, I like AC too but there is just something steady and dare I say it, intelligent about our guy Aaron.

He is going to be working on Wide Angle. I also love me some PBS. This is good news.

Anchoring “Wide Angle,” a weekly public affairs series with a global focus, offers the chance “to work in an environment where people just think about making good TV and good journalism,” Brown said.

“By the end (of an episode), you understand the world you live in and how it’s connected to you,” he said Saturday.

Brown, 59, who left CNN in November 2005 during a shake-up that gave his time slot to rising star Anderson Cooper, said he was contractually barred from working in TV until last June. He’s been teaching at Arizona State University as its first Walter Cronkite Professor of Journalism.

“Wide Angle” begins its seventh season July 1. PBS planned to announce Brown’s hiring on Monday.

Brown has distinguished himself as an anchor by avoiding a “booming voice-of-God” approach and instead delivering news as a storyteller, said Stephen Segaller, director of national production at Thirteen/WNET, the New York station that produces “Wide Angle.”

Besides his distinctive on-camera demeanor, Brown has “a good sense of what international stories will mean to American audiences and how the stories will play,” Segaller said.

Brown contrasted the work he expects to do at PBS with how cable television operated at times during his tenure.

“I don’t want to get into the business of indicting cable TV, but some of what went on was just television, not journalism,” he said. Expanding on his comments, he said that cable TV is a tough business that can be pushed into focusing on sensational, “tabloidy stories.”

Welcome back, Mr. Brown.

I tell you with a heavy heart this morning that Gary Coleman’s marriage didn’t survive and he’s getting a divorce on, you guessed it, “Divorce Court.”

Ahh, remember Coleman’s fine acting career which included, well, I can’t remember (wait, I looked it up. It was Diff’rent Strokes) but none of the kids he acted with had a run of good luck.

I deem this show cursed.

Coleman has also run for governor (The Terminator was who he ran against), he’s assaulted the paparazzi and now he’s getting a divorce in a marriage he says was never consummated.

On a serious note, I need to remind myself that my nieces should never be in a sitcom or reality television.

I want to be snarky, but it makes me all sad.

Sad and snarky. I wonder if the Pharmacy companies make a pill for that particular anxiety.

The Squirrel Queen and I went to Nashville for a whirlwind trip. It’s always difficult heading to mid-state as I never have enough time to do what I want to do.

I wish I could teleport everywhere I want to go because that just makes things easier. Especially if I could not be one of the guys in the red shirts that traveled with Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock because those always got killed by the residents of the planet they were visiting. It’s common knowledge you didn’t want to be wearing a red shirt because you knew that guy/girl was a goner.

With that said, it was a weekend that I needed although I have been so tired and a bit depressed lately. Most people who know me know that I haven’t been myself for about a month so getting out of the situation in Hoots that has been pressing down on me was a very good thing indeed.

As we were headed home yesterday, I-40 came to a standstill. For more than an hour, we knew something terrible had happened on the road ahead of us but we weren’t sure. Squirrel Queen and I didn’t get too antsy about it, although there is always that driver that takes to the median because apparently their time is more important than knowing that whatever brings interstate traffic to a halt doesn’t matter. What SQ and I knew is that someone was having a really bad day so we sat in the car and just waited, ate beef jerky and shared a Baby Ruth with the knowledge that we’d be on the road soon enough.

The road was oddly quiet other than the sounds of traffic headed east across the median. Tons of people were on their cell phones in other vehicles. Lots of people would shrug as we sat still looking at us with either exasperation at being off schedule or with this eerie acceptance on their faces that there was nothing to be done. I felt like we were in a Stephen King-penned movie as traffic lined up for miles and at my brain started thinking maybe I should have better prepared for the zombie apocalypse. This was seriously surreal.

One never knows when the zombies are going to show up.

By the time we got to the scene of the accident, an ambulance had sped by us headed the other way and we saw what looked like a truck that had pulled to the side of the road (there were those little triangles set up but were smashed to pieces.) The side of a huge 18-wheeler was demolished and packs of maxi-pads and diapers littered the highway. As it was raining, I had no doubt that clean-up crews were also going to have a bad day.

When you are stuck on the interstate, the best thing you can do is take the next exit, which to no one’s surprise was where I had the Elvis issue back last August.

At the convenience store where a bathroom was much needed, the wreck was the talk of travelers who had been stuck on the interstate with us. It was a moment among strangers who had seen a vehicular disaster that sent someone to the hospital. (We took video. SQ should have it up later of the road littered with the mess.)

As I was waiting at the truck for SQ’s turn in a very busy ladies’ restroom, I head a woman holler “This is a dry county?!? Don’t they sell beer here in Tennessee on Sunday?” I didn’t respond. She looked madder than hell. What I wanted to say is “Go up the road, I’m sure there is a Coors Light with your name on it in the next county” but I didn’t.

A very attractive and kind looking man on a Harley Davidson who appeared to be Italian shook his head as the woman kept bitching and looked at me with a question gaze. I just smiled. A few moment before he and I had been inside the story and he had asked the clerk for chocolate in a voice that screamed romance and European sexy. The clerk didn’t understand him so I said “He’d like a chocolate bar.” He smiled and looked a bit relieved as he had asked the clerk before and she had said “Sugar?”

As the beer-screaming woman kept bitching about no beer and sitting on the Interstate outside in the cramped little parking lot, the Italian bike-rider unwrapped his candy bar and was looking at the sign at Loretta Lynn’s restaurant.

He grinned and made a gesture that looked like he was playing an air guitar and pointed to the sign. I nodded.

He shook his head again a threw me a kiss with the palm of his hand. I laughed and he got on his bike.

Then Squirrel Queen came out of the store and we all went on our way because life is filled with moments and just keeps on going.

Just got home … Saw an accident with a truck carrying maxi-pads.

If this isn’t an eye-opener, I don’t know what is.

So, thanks to R. Neal you have some juicy goodness here:

I never have enough time when I’m in Nashville …

Sage advice indeed.

H/T My Confined Space

I’m in Nashville for a couple of days and have been revisiting my past. Once I wrap my brain about it, I might ramble for hours. Too little time, too much to do and my hiney hurts from riding around for the last two days.

After seeing some of the changes around the places I have lived, I have determined that I’m older than dirt, but quite fabulous.

If only I could calm Zombie Elvis down, who it appears Ginger has caught on film drinking again stealing Christian Grantham’s beer.

Yeah, not much different than the old Elvis but we love him nonetheless.

Zombie Elvis love all around.

UPDATE: John took this from last night. Great soundtrack my friend.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMSsv2IC3dM]

Good advice.

From My Confined Space

Lots happened on Lost last night. I don’t know where to start but I think I’m starting to understand why Michael Emerson was signed for two episodes and the Powers That Be kept him around.

Spoilers about “The Shape of Things To Come” after the jump.

(more…)

She’s lost it.

Or maybe not.

You must remember she is the queen of the squrrels.

Yeah. life is about all this stuff.

Xanax wouldn’t even help. It’s a good groovy thing built on something that I can’t process.

Squirrels are nifty.

I’m not lying.

I also did not know this was a problem.

Police in Congo have arrested 13 suspected sorcerers accused of using black magic to steal or shrink men’s penises after a wave of panic and attempted lynchings triggered by the alleged witchcraft.

Reports of so-called penis snatching are not uncommon in West Africa, where belief in traditional religions and witchcraft remains widespread, and where ritual killings to obtain blood or body parts still occur.

Rumors of penis theft began circulating last week in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo’s sprawling capital of some 8 million inhabitants. They quickly dominated radio call-in shows, with listeners advised to beware of fellow passengers in communal taxis wearing gold rings.

Purported victims, 14 of whom were also detained by police, claimed that sorcerers simply touched them to make their genitals shrink or disappear, in what some residents said was an attempt to extort cash with the promise of a cure.

Well, what does one actually say about a story like this? I’m not sure.

Of course, not to be confused with this kind of theft.

Just saying.