As usual...
It's Sunday at Blogspot and the permalinks are uneasy....

Debbie Does Dallas ... the musical?
In NY, the Jane Street Theatre proudly presents the musical version of Debbie Does Dallas:

The folks who brought Urinetown to Broadway have mined the New York International Fringe Festival yet again, and this time they're bringing Debbie Does Dallas to the mainstream. This show was the hit of the 2001 FringeNYC (though not well-reviewed at all); the Araca Group has engaged Erica Schmidt to revise the script and restage the show and now we'll see what they've come up [with]. The show is a musical version of the famous porn film, in which ambitious Debbie will stop at nothing for a shot at a Dallas Cowboys cheerleading job.

But don't get too excited, Michael Criscuolo starts his review with:

Okay, let's get the important stuff out of the way first. The new Off-Broadway production of the porn classic Debbie Does Dallas does not contain any nudity or sex. Adapter/director Erica Schmidt and composer Andrew Sherman have put musical numbers in place of all the film's sex scenes.

My curiosity was insufficient for the task of investigating Urinetown.

Secret Handshake Alert!
Mary Landrieu is on Meet the Press this morning spouting her usual line of blather, but the interesting thing is that she is sporting the pin of the Democrat Sisters elite:



If you don't mind wearing something that looks like Rodan hatching an egg, you can now pick up the cheap version from Ann Hand for $100. Be there or be square!

Hmmm, I'm not sure it would look chic on my overalls.

Fly in the Smart Growth Ointment
The Berkeley Daily Planet reports that Californians want a single-family home:

For the second straight year, an overwhelming number of Californians told pollsters they prefer to drive alone to work and live in a single-family home, two desires that often confound lawmakers trying to steer growth back into cities.

While residents of the San Francisco Bay Area are the state’s most comfortable with a high-density urban lifestyle, 86 percent of 2,010 adults interviewed in a new growth survey by the Public Policy Institute of California said they want a house with a yard.
...
Advocates of more mixed development say Californians haven’t seen enough good examples of compact urban living that emphasizes walking over driving.
...
"When we talk to the policy makers and some of them try to move us in a different direction, my standard statement is when you’re in business to build a product and sell it, you really want to give people what they want. And that’s what they want," said Robert Rivinius, chief executive officer of the California Building Industry Association.

Such resounding opinion also counters the so-called "smart growth" favored by three wealthy California foundations that commissioned the survey. They’ve seeded the emerging, but often embattled, development trend with millions of dollars, emphasizing transit, townhouses and apartments above stores to slow suburban growth in a state that loses 50,000 acres of irrigated farmland every year to development.
..
"To me, it says there is going to be resistance to smart growth - and there is," said Baldassare, a longtime monitor of California’s public opinion. "I don’t think the public has been provided with a vision that makes them feel comfortable with doing things differently than we have in the past 50, 60 years."

But the Irvine foundation is not deterred, spokesman David Shaw said. "We still believe there’s an untapped market of people who are looking for alternatives, whether that’s a townhouse near transit or apartments in the suburbs."

Keep spinning fellas. We've seen your vision and aren't enthused.

How Terrible!
Newsday reports on a protest march in New York City in Post-9/11 Immigrant Treatment Protested:

About 200 people marched yesterday in lower Manhattan against the government's post-Sept. 11 treatment of immigrants, in a short-lived rally that quickly melted in the cold rain.

All the usual suspects were there, but the highlight of the show was:

But speakers - representing several ethnicities - said rights are consistently violated.

"I've been discriminated [against] a great deal," said Debbie Almontaser, a Brooklyn member of Justice for Detainees, who traces her lineage to Yemen. Before Sept. 11, Almontaser wore her hijab - head scarf - without problems. But now passersby "look at my face, and look at my head, and I can sense that people are thinking of things, and making connections of the fact that I'm Muslim, and that Islam has been connected to terrorism - so-called terrorism."

Kind of says it all doesn't it?

You Can't Make This Stuff Up!
The Memphis (Tennessee) Commercial Appeal astounds with Rename Civil War parks? It's time, says Bailey:

Many Memphians viewed last summer's heavyweight championship fight between Lennox Lewis and Mike Tyson as one of the city's crowning moments.

Sounds like "many Memphians" have a rather limited worldview.

But for County Commission chairman Walter Bailey, the event also highlighted a major civic embarrassment.

Bailey said Lewis's attorney and some HBO officials were driving through downtown and spotted a monument dedicated to Confederate president Jefferson Davis.

"They thought that was a bit unbecoming," Bailey recalled. "That was sort of an awakening call."

That uncomfortable experience has prompted Bailey to begin some informal discussions about changing the names of three city parks dedicated to the Civil War: Confederate Park, where the Davis monument is located, nearby Jefferson Davis Park and Forrest Park in the medical center area.

Memphis must really be in great shape otherwise, if a "major civic embarassment" is the names of the town parks. And it certainly is swell that Mr. Bailey's guides to local civic matters are some out-of-town boxing riffraff.

So far, Bailey said he's met only with a few city leaders to gauge support for the potentially controversial idea.

Bailey said a public discussion of park renaming is probably premature, so he talked about it only reluctantly.

He's afraid of being called an asshat.

But he said the goal would be to remove some symbols of an era many Memphians would rather forget.

"Changes would be consistent with our efforts to become a world-class city," Bailey said. "These monuments are offensive to some people."

Ah a "world-class" city - what a goal! Gosh, does being "world-class" mean you get more boxing matches? As for being "offensive to some people", Mr. Bailey undoubtedly offends more people when he breaks wind in a crowded elevator.

But here's a thought, have people and organizations pay to get their name on the parks. How about Mike Tyson Park? Or Sex and the City Park? Or maybe Bailey can cough up the cake himself for Shameless Political Whore Park.

More UK News!
Reuters reports that Thousands come forward to road test condoms

The winners will be required to perform what the firm called "rigorous pleasure tests" on its entire range and fill in a detailed questionnaire on their reactions.

"The response has been phenomenal," marketing manager Victoria Wells said on Friday. "It is quite surprising how much detail some people go into when answering intimate questions."

while Sky News reveals that down on the farm:

Posh, Camilla, Madonna and Kylie are popular new names for cows according to a new survey of farmers.

The National Farmers' Union study, found that rather than using traditional names, farmers are naming their herd after stars of pop, film, sports and royalty

The title was MOO-DONNA TOPS NAME LIST.

Fidel Home Videos Again
I previously mentioned that some of Fidel Castro's Funniest Home Videos were soon to hit the small screen. Well the FARKers have worked up their own versions of the Fidel Show.

Banned in Beijing!
Testing via Real-Time Testing of Internet Filtering in China reveals that:

Testing complete for http://countrystore.blogspot.com/. Result:
Reported as inaccessible in China

How did they know I was selling Wong Wei souvenir photos?

(Link via Glenn Frazier, via Cato the Youngest, via Blogs of War.)

Hey, no Peugeot jokes!
Kim Wisher in the Telegraph (UK) amuses with Peugeot 'space cake' causes a high in production:

Supervisors at a Peugeot car parts factory believed they were levitating, experienced uncontrollable urges to laugh and had to be taken to hospital after a junior employee brought a cake laced with cannabis to work, a court was told last week.

The man, named only as Bruno by a magistrates court in Vesoul, eastern France, was charged with possession, use of cannabis and causing "involuntary injury" to his colleagues, which included three of his shopfloor supervisors. He admitted possessing cannabis and adding it to the cake, but said he had taken it to work by mistake.

Bruno told the court that he had baked four chocolate cakes on the evening before his 24th birthday on January 8 this year. One was for his own consumption and he had added eight grams of finely grated cannabis resin to the ingredients. The amount was said to be enough to fill five joints a day for a week for a heavy cannabis smoker.

Bruno, to periodic eruptions of laughter from the public gallery, said that he had baked his so-called "space cake" on two or three previous occasions following a recipe he had found on the internet. "It [cannabis] enables me to escape, to think of other things," he said.

He told the court that on his birthday he rose at dawn to start the 6am shift on the production line at the Peugeot factory in Vesoul and he picked up the drugged cake by mistake.

He put the "space cake", along with a second "harmless" gâteau, on a table in the staff room to be shared during the morning break.

And hilarity ensued.

What did people do before the Internet? Wait - don't tell me!