A hot time in the Olde Countrie!
In the Evening Mail (Birmingham, UK), Marc Cowan shocks with It's the M6 doll road!:

A burning cargo of sex toys closed one of the country’s busiest sections of motorway and brought the Midlands to a standstill today.

Paraphernalia including whips, plastic breasts and dolls spilled from the wagon and onto the road as fire crews sought to make the lorry safe.
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The bizarre cargo brought much-needed light relief to those working at the scene as one of the blow-up dolls was rescued from the charred wreckage.

Click through for the photo.

Urkel TV was closer than I thought!
(Via Drudge) Will We See Gore TV?

The former Veep is assisting in an effort to create a liberal alternative to conservative talk radio, and is exploring a cable television venture
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One entertainment industry source who met with Gore and Hyatt earlier this year said that, at that time, part of what they envisioned was youth-oriented programming, "putting video cameras in the hands of kids." Another source close to Gore and Hyatt says the venture would not resemble a traditional cable news outlet, but would be "something totally different in concept and format."
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Gore has also been helpful to Chicago venture capitalists Sheldon and Anita Drobny, who announced in February that they planned to fund a liberal radio network to counterbalance such conservative commentators as Rush Limbaugh. Several sources said Gore has helped introduce the Drobnys to such Hollywood political forces as producer-director Rob Reiner. Comedian Al Franken, author of the book "Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot," is considering hosting a show on the Drobnys' network, and added that the couple has approached Gore to do regular essays.

Good news for insomnia sufferers.

But maybe they can have coverage of those events the evil capitalist press ignores like Activists Mark 1953 Rosenberg Execution:

On the 50th anniversary of the execution Thursday, Seeger, Susan Sarandon, Harry Belafonte and other show business activists will appear at a benefit for the Rosenberg Fund for Children, which assists children of people imprisoned, attacked or fired for taking a public stand.

You mean like spying for Stalin?

Too bad I had to go to the underground press to read these articles.

You gotta be kidding!
Just like the purported Buttafuoco/Simpson match, my view of the Spike Lee/Viacom dust-up over "Spike TV" is distaste for both parties. Predictably, sensitive ole Spike has his panties in a twist over Viacom's plan to create a "guy channel" called Spike TV:

Lee said he thought his reputation would suffer "irreparable injury" if Spike TV went on air, because it could lead the public into thinking he's involved with a station that will revolve around James Bond, wrestling and a Pamela Anderson-inspired cartoon.

"He claims . . . that it would cause irreparable injury to 'associate an acclaimed artist's name' with the 'demeaning, vapid and quasi-pornographic content of Spike TV,' " the network said its in filing.

Gee, I would have guessed the association would raise most people's opinion of Spike.

But the really weird part is:

In his decision last week, Tolub noted that TNN President Albie Hecht "has conceded that Spike Lee was one of the role models for the network name," and that, coupled with the network's marketing itself as "aggressive and irreverent," could mislead the public into thinking Lee was involved.

The rocket scientists at TNN thought that Spike Lee would be a "role model" for a guy channel? I'm surprised they didn't want to call it Urkel TV.

Looks like I missed the wankfest!
But David Carr at Samizdata was on the case - 90-minute Moanathon:

The BBC has a great, big monkey on it's back and that monkey is America. The nabobs who run that state broadcast organisation just don't understand how a country that (in their eyes) does everything wrong can end up so supremely dominant in terms of power, wealth and influence, while a country that does everything right (such as France) seethes and whines impotently about the unfairness of it all.

You can see the tension in their news reportage, torn as it is between a horrified revlusion of America and, at the same time, an unquenchable fascination. That was very much on display tonight in a 90-minute TV special run on BBC2 and called 'What the World Thinks of America'.
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In fact, it was rather dull, equivocal and not quite sure of itself. The underlying theme was largely one of self-pity and petty jealousy culminating it a morose admission that America was the unchallengable world superpower and there isn't much the likes of France can do about it except whine and bitch. They may as well have called it 'Inferiority Complex - The Movie'.

They also apparently have a forum where Americans can chime in. Thanks, but I'll pass. I'm afraid of monkeypox.

It's those wacky artists again!
Yesterday it was "poo on sticks", today it's Setting Ancient Nefertiti Bust on Bronze Nude Touches off a Tussle:

CAIRO, Egypt (AP) - They were together only a few hours. But that brief union of a celebrated, 3,000-year-old bust of the Egyptian queen Nefertiti with a modern bronze nude body touched off a furor.

Some Egyptians are calling the art project at Berlin's Egyptian Museum an insult to their culture and demanding the return of the ancient bust, charging it isn't safe in German hands.

The museum director, Dietrich Wildung, answers that his museum's most famous piece was never at risk and defends the videotaping of Nefertiti's head on a nude torso as a legitimate artistic experiment.

The tape is now part of an installation by two Hungarian artists at the Venice Biennale, one of the world's most prestigious contemporary art festivals.

Sorry to disappoint, but the only picture I can find is this, which is a real snoozer. As a substitute, try this.

Don't tick off the Big Guy!
Lightning strikes peeping Toms:

As if it was divine retribution, three men were struck by lightning while they peeped at a pair of passionate lovers having sex in a car in a hillside area in Taipei.

Hiding in a broken hut and each using a high-powered telescope, the three were so oblivious as they watched the lovers' act that they did not notice lightning flashing in the sky before a bolt hit the hut, police said yesterday.

"All three were hit at the same time, but survived as they appeared to have evenly shared the impact of the super-high voltage electric current when the lightning struck," a police spokesman said.

The officer said the three, who remained speechless for several hours, suffered minor burns in the skin of their hands and legs, while their hairs were all standing and their stares were fixed.

I'll bet their stares were fixed.

Will there be audience participation?
More must see TV in the Clash Of The Sleazeballs? Joey Buttafuoco Vs. O.J. Simpson

Celebrity sleazeballs Joey Buttafuoco and O.J. Simpson are both fighting to stay in the media spotlight -- and soon they will be battling each other.

Buttafuoco claims he's in talks to do a celebrity pay-per-view boxing match with Simpson and claims, "I want it. He wants it. And I'm taking it seriously."

To that end, Buttafuoco has been working out with a kickboxing trainer for the past two weeks and says he's "very focused" on the prize.

It may sound incredible and you won't get any argument from Buttafuoco. In his words, "The opportunities in this industry continue to amaze me."

Well, you got that right Joey. But watch out, OJ is in great shape from being on the golf course every day looking for the "real killers". He'll take your head off.

By the way, Buttafuoco's wife finally decided to divorce him. Paul Vitello in Newsday notes the similarities to Hillary Clinton.

Uh Oh!
Business Owner Chases, Runs Over Robbery Suspects In Hummer:

A business owner in Phoenix, Arizona took matters into his own hands after a group of men robbed his business, according to a Local 6 News report.

Police say three armed suspects walked into the Mr. Insurance building in Phoenix and demanded money. A fourth suspect was in the getaway car, according to the report.

Investigators said after the suspects left with the store's money, the co-owner jumped into his Hummer and chased after the suspects.

Police said that the man, identified only as Peter, followed the suspects through a neighborhood and eventually caught up with them. He then rolled his Hummer over their car.

Two of the suspects were taken to the hospital in critical condition.

The two other suspects managed to get away but police later caught them as well.

It is not known if Peter will face charges.

Follow the link for a picture.

This is great, but it sounds like the guy really needs a Raptor Mark III.

Violent Art Critics Alert!
There's nothing worse than a nasty art critic. Wait, most of them are nasty - I mean violent art critics. Cathy Marks reports from Australia in the Independent - Self-styled art vigilantes threaten to destroy public sculptures they detest:

Public artworks are often loathed by the public, but a sculpture in Sydney has aroused an unusual degree of antipathy. A group of self-styled art vigilantes is threatening to destroy the work unless the council dismantles it.

The group, which calls itself the Revolutionary Council for the Removal of Bad Art in Public Places, has set a three-month deadline for the offending sculpture to be whisked away. If the deadline is not met, it says, the work will be defaced or destroyed.

"We have blowtorches, angle grinders and bolt cutters, and we will use them if necessary," said a spokesman, Dave Jarvoo.

Whoa there hoss! What's the problem?

The work, Stones Against The Sky, is made up of seven steel poles crowned by large artificial stones. Sydneysiders call the work, in a plaza in front of an apartment block in King's Cross, the city's red-light district, "Poo on Sticks".

I couldn't find a snap of it, but here's another one from the same series. It's more like poo on chopsticks.

The group, formed two years ago, is believed to comprise teachers and students from two nearby art colleges. Mr Jarvoo said members had written letters of complaint to the local council and submitted a petition against the sculpture, but with no success. "We are being forced to consider taking matters into our own hands," he told The Australian newspaper.

That sounds like a rough bunch!

Mr Jarvoo said other works would be vandalised unless they were removed. "The mission of the council is to eradicate the disease and discomfort that bad art inflicts on the general psyche," he said.

Ken Unsworth, the artist paid about £14,000 for Stones Against the Sky, said he was unmoved by the group's threat.

Why do I get the feeling that the taxpayers have already suffered the ultimate discomfort - they paid for this stuff?

Jonah Goldberg swats that little whiner, Eric Alterman
Big Dumb Lie: Is anyone fooled by claims that the media aren't liberal?:

Mr. Alterman looks to the handful of conservative media outlets and ignores the horde of liberal ones. He fulminates about the influence of the "wild men" at The Wall Street Journal editorial page, for instance, but barely mentions New York Times editorialists. Indeed, at times it seems Mr. Alterman has never even heard that the Times exists, let alone that it is both extremely liberal and more influential than any other news organ.

Mr. Alterman rails against the conservative perfidy of Fox News, yet sees little to no evidence that ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN or MSNBC might be liberal. Time, Newsweek, The New Yorker, Harper's, NPR, etc. don't warrant much attention or worry. But he insists that the (vastly tinier) Weekly Standard has dangerous influence.

The Bradley, Olin and Scaife foundations are said to be wreaking havoc on the gullible masses. But the (hugely richer and highly liberal) Ford, Rockefeller and Pew foundations don't merit any mention at all. The American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation are claimed to pull the country to the right, but Harvard, Berkeley, etc. seem to have no gravitational mass at all in his eyes. It's as if Mr. Alterman scans the whole political landscape through the lenses of some novelty glasses which can only pick up conservatives.
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Keep in mind that Eric Alterman is media critic for The Nation--a hysterically left-wing magazine dedicated to the proposition that corporate America, U.S. foreign policy and the Republican Party are criminal, racist or both. The simple reality is that, for him, the Democratic Party is far too conservative.
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This raises one of Mr. Alterman's biggest problems. He simply dismisses the proven fact that the vast majority of journalists admit they are liberal. When nine out of 10 reporters state in a survey that they voted for Bill Clinton, Mr. Alterman counters that Mr. Clinton wasn't very liberal, and that if he had run for president in, say, Belgium or Germany he'd be considered conservative. That's a debatable point, but it doesn't change the fact that in America the press corps clusters almost entirely at one end of our political spectrum, consistently voting for the most liberal candidate available. If it keeps Mr. Alterman up at night to think that our liberals are to the right of liberal Swedes, let that be his white whale.

It's whacked out Capt. Eric at the helm of the Pequod. "Thar she blows!"