Kate Hudson

Kate Garry Hudson (born April 19, 1979) is an American film actress. She came to prominence in 2001 after bringing in several awards and nominations for her role in Almost Famous, and has since established herself as a Hollywood lead actress, starring in several films, including How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, The Skeleton Key, You, Me and Dupree, Fool's Gold, Raising Helen, My Best Friend's Girl, and Bride Wars.

Kate Hudson was born in Los Angeles, the daughter of Academy Award-winning actress Goldie Hawn and Bill Hudson, an actor, comedian, and musician. Kate Hudson's parents divorced eighteen months after her birth; she and her brother, actor Oliver Hudson, were raised in Colorado by her mother and her mother's long-time boyfriend, actor Kurt Russell. Kate Hudson has stated that her biological father "doesn't know me from a hole in the wall", and that she considers Kurt Russell to be her father. Hudson has described her mother as "the woman that I've learned the most from, and who I look up to, who has conducted her life in a way that I can look up to".

More Nat'l Lampoon hilarity...

This is actually words John Lennon had said at one time put to some Beatle-esque music...(not John singing them here, duh!)

National Lampoon - History of The Beatles

Healthcare reform?

Found this piece on another blog I follow.... Quite intelligent way of looking at it. Something the "right" doesn't ever comprehend...
From Chris Oliver - California

HOW RADICAL IS HEALTHCARE REFORM?

In the interest of healing the political divide in this country, perhaps we should spend a little more time talking about where we're coming from on each side of the debate. I know that one of the things that I'm having the hardest time with is understanding how anyone can look at the health care reform package currently being debated, and consider it to be some kind of extreme, radical socialist program. It is, from my perspective, right there in the middle of the road.

If we think about the healthcare debate as a 5-point spectrum, on the furthest point to the left you would have government-run healthcare. Doctors and nurses are employees of the government, hospitals are government-run institutions. This is the system they have in the UK. We also have it in America. It's called the VA system, and it's customers are generally happier with the results than customers of the private insurance agencies are. Nobody, not Obama nor Hillary nor John Edwards, ever even suggested we employ such a system in the U.S. I don't even think Dennis Kucinich went there.

A little to the right of that, we have single payer plans, where healthcare remains a private enterprise, but is entirely paid for by the government. This is the system they have in France, which is ranked the highest in the world by the World Health Organization. Maybe that ranking doesn't count for much, and I know there are plenty of problems with that system, but people living there seem to be generally happy with it. We also have a single payer plan in America. It's called Medicare, and it generally produces higher customer satisfaction than the private insurance industry. In the lead-up to this reform, President Obama refused to even consider a single payer system, incurring the wrath of many of his supporters on the left.

In the exact center of this spectrum, you have the plan that is being offered right now: a package of perfectly reasonable regulations on the health insurance industry, a government-administered pool to buy health insurance through (thus getting better deals for the consumer through collective bargaining, without having the government actually administer health insurance), and an OPTIONAL public insurance plan for those who want it. It's an inobtrusive way to fix the problems that actually exist, without imposing anything on people that are happy with their current insurance. It is, quite literally, the exact middle of the road. It's a compromise between left and right. It is not, by any measure, a radical, socialist takeover of the healthcare industry.

In the center right, I suppose you could have the same plan without the public option. Or, alternately, a few other fixes, like allowing interstate commerce in health insurance, or tort reform to ease up malpractice costs.* And to the far right, you would have the idea that there isn't really anything wrong with the system as it is, and we should just let the market work it's magic.

So here we have a moderate liberal president, starting off by offering the exact centrist plan for healthcare reform. Not only that, but he's even said that he'd sweeten the deal by throwing tort reform in there. And he's indicated that if he can't get this plan passed, he'll compromise further by passing it without the public option (I personally feel that this would make the plan essentially ineffective, but there it is). Does that sound like the megalomaniacal extremist that you hear described by the right? (And personally, I think it's the right plan for America. We're a different country from the UK or France or Sweden. Libertarianism is part of our national DNA.)

And yet, there's nothing gained from these compromises. Conservatives talk about this modest plan in EXACTLY the same language they would use to talk about literal socialized medicine. I don't know how the conservative mind works. To a conservative, is this the equivalent of Bush wanting credit for not invading Iran?

*The thing of being able to buy health insurance from different states seems perfectly reasonable to me, just as being able to buy drugs from Canada seems perfectly reasonable. I'm all for it, although I don't see where that alone is going to solve all our problems. I'm a bit less sure about tort reform--I'm suspicious of anything that limits consumers' rights to sue corporations--but hey, what the fuck, let's put it on the table. I'm all about compromising.

flac files?

I have recently discovered a BETTER way to listen to downloaded music - The flac file.... Now it's not an mp3 so it won't go into your precious (worthless) little ipod or whatever you use. It's for putting on a CD for quality listening.... Here, let Wikipedia explain...

"Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC) is a file format for lossless audio data compression. During compression, FLAC does not lose quality from the audio stream, as lossy compression formats such as MP3, AAC, and Vorbis do. Josh Coalson is the primary author of FLAC.


FLAC reduces bandwidth and storage requirements without sacrificing the integrity of the audio source. A digital audio recording (such as a CD track) encoded to FLAC can be decompressed into an identical copy of the audio data. Audio sources encoded to FLAC are typically reduced to 50–60% of their original size.

FLAC is suitable for everyday audio playback and archival, with support for tagging, cover art and fast seeking. FLAC's free and open source royalty-free nature makes it well-supported by many software applications. FLAC playback support in portable audio devices and dedicated audio systems is limited at this time compared to lossy formats like MP3., but FLAC is supported out of the box by more hardware devices than competing lossless formats like Wavpack."

Now, your computer probably won't recognize this file unless you download freeware like BURRRN. This program will recode the FLAC into audio able to be burned to disc. DO THIS! YOU WON'T REGRET IT!

Please Please Me and with the beatles

Original EMI/Parlophone releases from the UK. Great Condition!

Chipmunks sing the Beatles

Gotta have this one!

A True American Hero

By Shelly Palmer - MediaBytes
It's just a typical day, with a typical news cycle. We have a plethora of opinions shrouded as facts, dozens of stories based upon self-serving manipulated statistics and a healthy dose of FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) served up by ratings-starved news organizations.

The hottest trending topics this week included Joe Wilson's rude and inexcusable outburst, Kanye West's drunken, rude and inexcusable outburst, Serena Williams, self-defeating, rude and inexcusable outburst and several other virtually meaningless OMG moments that diverted us from things we really should be paying attention to. As I am writing this, the trending topics on Twitter include Jay-Z, Andy Richter and a bunch of TV shows like Survivor and Bones.

I was hoping that one other name or hashtag would become a trending topic today. It didn't. I checked everywhere Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, Google, YouTube, all the social bookmarking sites. It wasn't on the radar. Jim Miklaszewski covered it for NBC Nightly News, but Brian didn't mention it in the opening tease, or the first bumper. No promos, no hype, no setup, just a story you'd miss if you weren't paying attention. It did get a little coverage on some of the cable news networks, but it will be out of the news cycle completely by tomorrow, replaced by trending topics and new celebrity outbursts that divert us from things we really should be paying attention to.

I want to introduce you to
someone. His name was Staff Sergeant Jared C. Monti. On Thursday, September 17, 2009, The President of the United States posthumously presented him with The Medal of Honor, our nation's highest medal for valor in combat.

During his remarks, President Obama said, "Duty. Honor. Country. Service. Sacrifice. Heroism. These are words of weight. But as people — as a people and as a culture, we often invoke them lightly. We toss them around freely. But do we really grasp the meaning of these values? Do we truly understand the nature of these virtues? To serve, and to sacrifice. Jared Monti knew. The Monti family knows. And they know that the actions we honor today were not a passing moment of courage. They were the culmination of a life of character and commitment."

I would ask you to help remember, honor and fight for him as he remembered, honored and fought for us. I don't mean metaphorically. I mean, take action. Make him famous. Laud his heroism and hold him up as an example of what it means to be a man of admirable character and an enduring example of true American values.

We are the media, we (all of us) decide what is worthy of our attention. How is it possible that a drunken outburst from a rapper, a temper tantrum from a tennis player or even an emotional outburst from a congressman is more worthy of attention than a ceremony honoring a man who gave his life for "conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty?"

The question is obviously rhetorical and I know the answer as well as you do. But I'd like to think that as the media business transforms into a hybrid realtime network with atomized communities of interest, trusted brands, self-assembled trust circles and other social networking components, we (as a collective group) can strive for a higher level of discourse.

Although I never met SFC Monti, I am proud of him. I am in awe of his actions and I know you will be too. Together we will mourn his death.

Here is an excerpt from President Obama's remarks:

It was June 21st, 2006, in the remotest northeast of Afghanistan, near the border with Pakistan. Sergeant Monti was a team leader on a 16-man patrol. They'd been on the move for three days -- down dirt roads; sloshing through rivers; hiking up steep mountain trails, their heavy gear on their backs; moving at night and in the early morning to avoid the scorching 100-degree heat. Their mission: to keep watch on the valley down below in advance of an operation to clear the area of militants.

Those who were there remember that evening on the mountain -- a rocky ridge, not much bigger than this room. Some were standing guard, knowing they had been spotted by a man in the valley. Some were passing out MREs and water. There was talk of home and plans for leave. Jared was overheard remembering his time serving in Korea. Then, just before dark, there was a shuffle of feet in the woods. And that's when the treeline exploded in a wall of fire.

One member of the patrol said it was "like thousands of rifles crackling." Bullets and heavy machine gunfire ricocheting across the rocks. Rocket-propelled grenades raining down. Fire so intense that weapons were shot right out of their hands. Within minutes, one soldier was killed; another was wounded. Everyone dove for cover. Behind a tree. A rock. A stone wall. This patrol of 16 men was facing a force of some 50 fighters. Outnumbered, the risk was real. They might be overrun. They might not make it out alive.

That's when Jared Monti did what he was trained to do. With the enemy advancing -- so close they could hear their voices -- he got on his radio and started calling in artillery. When the enemy tried to flank them, he grabbed a gun and drove them back. And when they came back again, he tossed a grenade and drove them back again. And when these American soldiers saw one of their own -- wounded, lying in the open, some 20 yards away, exposed to the approaching enemy -- Jared Monti did something no amount of training can instill. His patrol leader said he'd go, but Jared said, "No, he is my soldier, I'm going to get him."

It was written long ago that "the bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them, glory and danger alike, and yet, notwithstanding, go out to meet it." Jared Monti saw the danger before him. And he went out to meet it.

He handed off his radio. He tightened his chin strap. And with his men providing cover, Jared rose and started to run. Into all those incoming bullets. Into all those rockets. Upon seeing Jared, the enemy in the woods unleashed a firestorm. He moved low and fast, yard after yard, then dove behind a stone wall.

A moment later, he rose again. And again they fired everything they had at him, forcing him back. Faced with overwhelming enemy fire, Jared could have stayed where he was, behind that wall. But that was not the kind of soldier Jared Monti was. He embodied that creed all soldiers strive to meet: "I will always place the mission first. I will never accept defeat. I will never quit. I will never leave a fallen comrade." And so, for a third time, he rose. For a third time, he ran toward his fallen comrade. Said his patrol leader, it "was the bravest thing I had ever seen a soldier do.

"They say it was a rocket-propelled grenade; that Jared made it within a few yards of his wounded soldier. They say that his final words, there on that ridge far from home, were of his faith and his family: "I've made peace with God. Tell my family that I love them."

http://www.iraqwarheroes.com/monti.htm

Jennifer Aniston

Jennifer Joanna Aniston (born February 11, 1969) is an American actress. She became famous in the 1990s for her role as Rachel Green in the US sitcom Friends, a role for which she won an Emmy Award, a Golden Globe Award, and a Screen Actors Guild Award.

I got the Pleurisy...

It sucks! Can't take a deep breath... feels like something's about to explode in my chest.... It's an inflammation of the lung lining that surrounds the lungs. Think, a balloon inside another balloon. It's viral at this point so I can do nothing but wait to see what happens... Either it just goes away or it gets worse and becomes pneumonia....

Jaclyn Smith

Still....an ageless beauty! Former Charlie's Angel, now fashionista with her own line of (get this!) AFFORDABLE women's clothing! Just stunning!

Current Jaclyn and in the 70's

Classic Album Cover Art

(courtesy of Robert Benson - www.collectingvinylrecords.blogspot.com)

Revolver is the seventh album by the Four Lads, released on August 5, 1966. The album showcased a number of new stylistic developments which would become more pronounced on later albums. Many of the tracks on Revolver are marked by an electric guitar-rock sound, in contrast with their previous, folk-rock inspired album “Rubber Soul.” It reached #1 on the UK chart for seven weeks and #1 on the US chart for six weeks.

Revolver was released before the Beatles' last tour in August 1966 however they did not perform songs from the album live. Their reasoning for this was that many of the tracks on the album, for example "Tomorrow Never Knows", were too complex to perform with live instruments. A key production technique that was utilized for the first time on this album was automatic double tracking (ADT). ADT was invented by EMI engineer Ken Townsend on April 6, 1966 and used two linked tape recorders to automatically create a doubled vocal track. The standard method was to double the vocal by singing the same piece twice onto a multitrack tape, a task Lennon deplored. The Beatles were reportedly delighted with the invention, and used it extensively on Revolver and ADT quickly became a standard pop production technique, and led to related developments, including the artificial chorus effect.

Arguably the first psychedelic rock album, Revolver was praised for its musical experimentation--the Indian sounds of "Love You To," the Motown-inspired "Got To Get You Into My Life," the backwards guitar in "I'm Only Sleeping." "Tomorrow Never Knows" was the most radical departure from previous Beatles' recordings for its skeletal bass/drums propulsion enhanced only with tape loops (contributed by all four Beatles and added in the mix-down process), more backwards guitar, and an eerie John Lennon vocal. Add in George Harrison’s bitter, yet catchy “Taxman,” McCartney’s ode to the lonely "Eleanor Rigby," the upbeat songs like "Good Day Sunshine" and "Yellow Submarine,” Lennon’s ode to his dealer “Doctor Robert” and the vocal prowess of cuts like "Here, There and Everywhere" "And Your Bird Can Sing" along with the other cuts and you have, arguably, one of the best albums of all time.

The cover illustration is the creation of German-born bassist and artist Klaus Voormann, who was one of the Beatles' oldest friends from their days at the Star Club in Hamburg. Voormann's illustration, part line drawing and part collage, included photographs by Robert Whitaker, who also took the back cover photographs and many other images of the group between 1964 and 1966, such as the infamous "butcher cover" for Yesterday and Today. Voormann's own photo as well as his name (Klaus O. W. Voormann) was worked into Harrison's hair on the right-hand side of the cover. Harrison's Revolver image was seen again on his single release of "When We Was Fab" along with an updated version of the same image.

The title "Revolver", like "Rubber Soul" before it, is a pun, referring both to a kind of handgun as well as the "revolving" motion of the record as it is played on a turntable. The Beatles had a difficult time coming up with this title. According to Barry Miles in his book Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now, the title that the four had originally wanted was Abracadabra, until they discovered that another band had already used it. After that, opinion split: Lennon wanted to call it Four Sides of the Eternal Triangle and Starr jokingly suggested After Geography, playing on The Rolling Stones' recently released Aftermath LP. Other suggestions included Magical Circles, Beatles on Safari, Pendulum, and, finally, Revolver, whose wordplay was the one that all four agreed upon. The title was chosen while the band were on tour in Japan in June–July 1966.

Revolver Notes:

In 1997, it was named the 3rd greatest album of all time in a Music of the Millennium poll conducted in the United Kingdom by HMV Group, Channel 4, The Guardian and Classic FM.

In 2006, Q magazine readers placed it at number 4, while in 2000 the same magazine placed it at number 1 in its list of the 100 Greatest British Albums Ever.

In 2001 the TV network VH1 named it the number 1 greatest album of all time, a position it also achieved in the Virgin All Time Top 1,000 Albums.

A PopMatters review described the album as "the individual members of the greatest band in the history of pop music peaking at the exact same time,” while Ink Blot magazine claims it "stands at the summit of western pop music."I

n 2002, the readers of Rolling Stone ranked the album the greatest of all time. In 2003, the album was ranked number 3 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. It placed behind only the Beatles' own Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and The Beach Boys' Pet Sounds.

"The biggest miracle of Revolver may be that the Beatles covered so much new stylistic ground and executed it perfectly on one record, or it may be that all of it holds together perfectly. Either way, its daring sonic adventures and consistently stunning songcraft set the standard for what pop/rock could achieve" ~ AllMusic.com

In 2006, the album was chosen by Time magazine as one of the 100 best albums of all time.In 1972, Lennon offered some context for the influence of drugs on the Beatles' creativity (quoted in The Beatles Anthology):“It's like saying, 'Did Dylan Thomas write Under Milk Wood on beer?' What does that have to do with it? The beer is to prevent the rest of the world from crowding in on you. The drugs are to prevent the rest of the world from crowding in on you. They don't make you write any better. I never wrote any better stuff because I was on acid or not on acid.

”I’ll have what he was having, to me, this album is one the Beatles’ best (right behind the White Album). "

Joyce DeWitt

From Three's Company.... Remember? The one that wasn't Jack and not Chrissy? C'mon.... You remember her, right?

Michael Jackson Finally Laid to Rest

(courtesy of rollingstone.com)

Seventy days after the death of Michael Jackson, the King of Pop was finally laid to rest last night, September 3rd, with a private ceremony Glendale, California’s Forest Lawn Cemetery. About 200 close friends and family members attended the evening funeral, which concluded with Jackson being entombed in Forest Lawn’s Great Mausoleum, the final resting place of Walt Disney, Clark Gable and other legendary talents.

Elizabeth Taylor, Berry Gordy, Quincy Jones, Jackson’s ex-wife Lisa Marie Presley and Macaulay Culkin attended the ceremony, along with Mila Kunis, This Is It director Kenny Ortega, Teddy Riley, Chris Tucker, Corey Feldman and Miko Brando. According to a statement from the Jackson family, Michael’s five brothers Tito, Jermaine, Randy, Marlon and Jackie all served as pallbearers.

Michael’s three children Prince Michael, Paris Michael and Prince Michael II placed a crown atop Jackson’s casket to signify his status as the King of Pop. The Jackson family had provided a live video feed to media prior to the ceremony when guests began arriving at the cemetery, however the feed ceased transmission the moment the Jackson brothers went to take Michael’s gold-plated casket out of the hearse.

After Pastor Lucius Smith read the opening prayer and a portion of Ecclesiastes 3:7, Gladys Knight sang the gospel hymn “His Eye Is on the Sparrow.” Songwriter Clifton Davis next sang the Jackson 5 tune he wrote for the group, “Never Can Say Goodbye.” Speakers then began to take the podium to pay tribute to the singer, including the Rev. Al Sharpton, Michael’s father Joe Jackson and other close friends and family members.

According to the New York Times, the media that congregated outside Forest Lawn outnumbered the number of fans, though one group of fans held a large white banner that read “Gone too soon.” Following the ceremony, according to the ceremony’s nine-page engraved invitation, family and friends of Jackson were encouraged to drive to an Italian restaurant in Pasadena, California, for “a time of celebration.”

The first page of the invitation also featured a quote from Michael’s 1992 book of essays and poems Dancing the Dream, “If you enter this world knowing you are loved and you leave this world knowing the same, then everything that happens in between can be dealt with.”

Album Cover of the Week

Hard Promises is the fourth album by Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers released in May, 1981. Its original working title was Benmont's Revenge. It features guest vocals from Stevie Nicks of Fleetwood Mac on the duet "Insider". They would also record the hit "Stop Draggin' My Heart Around" for Nicks' album Bella Donna.

This was the second Tom Petty album on the Backstreet Records label. The album's release was delayed while Petty and his distributor MCA Records argued about the list price. The album was slated to be the next MCA release with the new list price of $9.98, following Steely Dan's Gaucho and the Olivia Newton-John/Electric Light Orchestra Xanadu soundtrack. This so-called "superstar pricing" was $1.00 more than the usual list price of $8.98. Petty voiced his objections to the price hike in the press and the issue became a popular cause among music fans. Non-delivery of the album or naming it Eight Ninety-Eight were considered, but eventually MCA decided against the price increase.

The album's title comes from a line in the chorus of "Insider".

My dad's myspace

Includes music of his to listen to. He's playing on Labor Day in McCausland, IA from 1p-4p!
http://www.myspace.com/madcowia

Huge carp i just caught.
Shawn Schroeder

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