What would Winston Churchill do?

Here’s an actual BBC video of Georgia President Saakashvili conferring with another world leader over Russia’s armed attacks on the small nation.

About Amy Winehouse

Oh dear.

We are being told, yet again, that Brit-trash singer (?) Amy Winehouse (that stunning beauty pictured over there) may be on the final spiral of her life-defying existence of drugs and denial.

Well, pardon me if, frankly, I don’t give a damn.

I am tired of being continually assaulted by TV, radio, blogs, fan mags — even daily newspapers that should know better — peddling stories about self-indulgent, self-destructive show biz and sports celebrities who have:

• Lived the wild life and lived to tell all about it. Endlessly.
• Found themselves in need of intervention to get out of their death spiral.
• Found themselves in need of a liver transplant because of alcoholism and drugs.
• Turned their lives around and apparently think they’re now supposed to be regarded by the media as role models.

The people I admire are the ones who succeed in their chosen field while maintaining some self-respect, some sense of responsibility to others, some … well, you get my point.

The end of (my patience with) ‘Battlestar Galactica’

Are you as confused as I am about what happened last night on ‘Battlestar Galactica’?

It was the mid-season finale, an episode that looked as if some parts had been sloppily cut out, causing some odd transitions, and it included an ending that was as dissatisfying as the finale of “The Sopranos.”

I exchanged befuddled glances with The Woman To Whom I Am Related By Marriage, then immediately began speaking badly about one of our favorite shows. It will resume its final season sometime after the Christmas holiday season, but will we still care?

Well, of course we will, but not nearly as much as we might have if BSG’s creators hadn’t diddled with our loyalties and enthusiasm. Sometimes TV show bosses can’t help but get so “creative” about wrapping up a project that their egos overtake their common sense.

By the way, the photo above — which I have named “Biker Chic(ks)” — is of two BSG characters you may never have seen out of costume. Tricia Helfer (left), who plays Cylon No. 6, and Katee Sackhoff, who plays fighter pilot Starbuck, both enjoy riding motorcycles in their spare time. Really. (Go here to see Ms. Helfer all dressed up in character.)

Anyway, to catch up on the action, or lack thereof, just click here to go to the Gawker site where Ian Spiegelman provides his usual hilarious weekly summary of the show.

Today’s celebri-quote

“It’s great for the sex life. It just makes you a lot more creative. So you have fun, and as a woman you’re just so round and full.”

– Angelina Jolie, speaking to Entertainment Weekly about her pregnancy

Great moments in monarchy

From the Copenhagen, Denmark, Post:

Queen Margrethe’s well-publicized nicotine habit nearly spelled the end of her son Prince Joachim’s wedding reception last weekend, according to the tabloid magazine Se og Hør.

One of the kitchen employees working on the newlywed royal pair’s reception dinner told the magazine that the queen and a few of her friends wanted to take a cigarette break in the confines of Schackenborg Palace. But the waitstaff refused to serve as long as there were smokers in the vicinity.

Prince Joachim allegedly spoke to his mother, who finally agreed that she and the others would, like the rest of her subjects, light up in the great outdoors.

Knocking ‘em back with Hillary

If Hillary Rodham Clinton makes it to the White House, we know one thing that will be on the daily agenda: The return of the cocktail hour.

The current top resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue doesn’t drink anymore, and there have been other teetotalers in the White House. But many of our presidents were known for their cocktail preferences. George Washington ran his own distillery. John Adams started his day with hard cider. Thomas Jefferson even introduced the presidential cocktail party.

In later years, Franklin D. Roosevelt quickly mixed up a martini — the real kind, with gin — to celebrate the repeal of Prohibition. John F. Kennedy regularly served daiquiris aboard the presidential yacht. Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon both enjoyed drinking Scotch.

Now we have Senators Barack Obama and John McCain, the likely contenders for the office in November, each of whom has the occasional drink. But Clinton makes no bones about enjoying her drinks more than they do, and likes them neat, as this photo — one of a series taken aboard her plane by the Associated Press and made available here in slideshow format — shows after a campaign stop in South Dakota this week.

Clinton also made news a few weeks ago when she had a shot of whiskey and a beer with some members of the public during a campaign stop in Indiana, but this is the first time she let her hair down with reporters. This time, she showed the good sense to avoid the Canadian whiskey she had in Indiana and enjoyed a shot of Maker’s Mark bourbon from Kentucky, US of A.

Here’s a video of her Indiana outing:

If we do, she’s in trouble

Houston Chronicle photographer Johnny Hanson must be credited with paying attention to the sign-carrying histrionics of this spelling-challenged individual who was at a rally pushing for deportation of people who can’t communicate in English.

I heartily agree with her.

Starbuck s in space

One of my (many) guilty pleasures is the Sci-Fi Channel’s “Battlestar Galactica.” Unfortunately, this dark, moody drama ends after this, its fourth, season, no doubt to pop up again in feature film format a la the “Star Trek” franchise. (BSG already has spawned one straight-to-cable flick.)

One of my other guilty pleasures is reading Ian Spiegelman’s weekly updates on the series for the delightfully snarky Gawker.com Web site. This week he focusses largely on the Starbuck character, that lovable flygirl-temporarily-turned-ship-captain.

The organ grinder

  New York magazine has one of its patented — well, copyrighted, anyway — inside-stories, this one on the man seen here who masterminded a ghoulish cadaver snatching ring that included the remains of such luminaries as Alistair Cooke.  

How detailed and fascinatingly creepy is the story? Consider this excerpt:

“They were just going to come and collect him and return the ashes in due course,” (Cooke’s daughter Susan) Kittredge recalls. But instead, there was a man waiting for Alistair Cooke, with a knife.

“He cared nothing for Cooke’s mind or manners. He had actually come for the body — that pale, wizened, cancer-ridden cadaver of a 95-year-old Englishman, stretched out now beneath the light in the embalming room.”

Brrr. Scary, boys and girls.

Today’s stupid celebri-quote

“American Idol” alum Kelly Clarkson on why she doesn’t care for underwear:

“Why’d  anyone want a little thing up their butt when they can go free?

May we suggest granny pants? Or, shutting up?

The ‘little old ladies’ of Makers Mark

Stereotypes are a funny thing. Sometimes they stem from reality. Other times they stem from … a detachment from reality?

Sonja Kassebaum, who writes the clever North Shore Distiller’s Journal for the distillery in Lake Bluff, IL, has some tips in the current issue on finding good offbeat buys at liquor stores. However, one item in particular sounded a sour note for me.

Here’s the item: 

Over-Dipped Wax:

“A bartender friend told us that every once in a great while the little old ladies who dip the Makers Mark bottles get to over-dip one of them, and sometimes they make it out of the warehouse. We saw one recently here in Chicago — unfortunately it wasn’t for sale.” 

Here’s what the “little old ladies” who work the Makers Mark assembly line really look like, courtesy of some photos I shot while touring the Kentucky distillery last fall: 

   

Another reason to love Craig Ferguson

Craig Ferguson is the best standup comic among late night TV talk show hosts, bar none.

His delivery, ad libs, funny faces and the like make audiences think everything he is about to utter is going to be hilarious.

Usually that’s the case. But he does draw the line at making too much fun of celebrities who are undergoing ridiculous situations. In case you didn’t have the opportunity to watch his declaration during one of his monologues, here it is. If this isn’t a reason to respect the guy, I don’t know what would be.

It’s a matter of ones and ooohs

OMG!

The first chip to pack more than 2 billion transistors has been launched by silicon giant Intel. Just to prove it, that’s a picture of it over there on the right.

According to the technology press, in this case a breathless BBC writer:

“The quad-core chip, known as Tukwila, is designed for high-end servers rather than personal computers. It operates at speeds of up to 2Ghz, the equivalent of a standard PC chip. It marks the latest milestone in chip technology; Intel released the first processor to contain more than one billion transistors in 2006.” 

I have no idea what that means, except that maybe early in 2010 Intel will announce a 3 billion zoomawatz chip.

Well, maybe I have a little bit of an idea what it means: more proof of the legitimacy of Moore’s Law.

Intel co-founder Gordon Moore said way back in ‘65 that the number of transistors it is possible to squeeze in to a chip for a fixed cost doubles every two years.

But there’s another scientific finding just announced that requires little explanation: that high heels may improve one’s sex life. Just to prove it, that’s a picture of high heels over there.

Now, that is a finding I can deal with.

in a letter to the publication European Urology, Dr. Maria Cerruto of Italy said her study of 66 women under age 50 found that those who held their foot at a 15-degree angle to the ground — the equivalent of a 2-inch heel — had as good posture as those who wore flat shoes, and crucially showed less electrical activity in their pelvic muscles.

As an appreciator of electrifying female pelvic muscles, this study seemed of very high importance.

Her study suggests the muscles were at an optimum position, which could well improve their strength and ability to contract. Thus, wearing higher heels, even if they aren’t stilettos, may improve a woman’s pelvic floor muscles and, therefore, her sex life.

His, too, one would assume. 

Giving England the (Gold)finger

“This isn’t the country I grew up in. No one speaks a word of English these days.”

No, this isn’t a reprise of Brit pop singer Morrissey’s screed against changes in the ethnic makeup of the United Kingdom reported last month. This time it’s the iconic singer Dame Shirley Bassey of “Goldfinger” theme song fame.

Bassey, shown here clad in a brilliant red gown, was interviewed for a fee by the UK paper The Daily Mail on the occasion of her 70th birthday attended by Joan Collins (standing next to her) and others. Dame Shirley lives most of the time these days in Monaco.

Why?

“This isn’t England any more, at least it is not the country I remember growing up in,” she told the newspaper. “You don’t hear English spoken here. You read about terrible things, not just drugs but all the killings.

“When you live in a safe place like Monte Carlo, you can walk home at any time of the night and you don’t have to worry. I don’t feel at risk there. If I drive myself, I can leave the car doors unlocked. I wouldn’t do that in London.”

Bassey, by the way, requested that the fee for being interviewed be donated to the War Widows’ Association.

Say, what??

We’re supposed to speak the same language as our cousins across The Pond, but sometimes I wonder.

This post was found on a blog written by a couple who took an early retirment and spend their days navigating England’s inland waterways in something known as a narrowboat:

I have noticed before when I have used the word ‘ginnel’, as I did a couple of blogs ago, that there are comments as to what I have said.. two comments this time which had me looking on google this evening..

From Martin..

When you say ginnel do you mean gitty?

and from Gail Mead..

Surely it’s a twitten !

Now that is very interesting.. Of course being from Hampshire I should have said alleyway, but my family on my mother’s side is from Wigan in Lancashire and my grandmother had a house which backed on to a ginnel.. and I fell in love with the word and have used it ever since!

A HOT TIME IN THE COLD TOWN TONIGHT

Inside a car en route somewhere or other:

“Put the window up, I’m cold.”

“But then I’ll be too hot.”

“Then turn on the air-conditioner.”

“You say it makes you freeze to death.”

“It wasn’t like this when we were dating.”

“It sure wasn’t!”

What is it about the male/female dynamic after about age 17 when she begins to catch a chill from anything less than 80 degrees and he can’t breath unless frost is forming on all indoor surfaces?

That thought kept bobbing around as I was headed home after a lunch with a group of friends with whom I held “The Great Hot and Cold Debate.” Everyone had her or his own opinion, made fresh by our recent weather that gives us temperatures in the 70s one day and 50s the next, thereby messing up everyone’s internal thermometer. The most emphatic was that even though women have an extra layer of fat, men are just fat and stupid, so it cancels out. However, we couldn’t come to a consensus. That drove me to the Great Oracle of the Web.

The Journal of Physiology, of course, had it down cold. Quoting a South African study: “Body temperature has a circadian rhythm, and in women with ovulatory cycles, also a menstrual rhythm. … We investigated sleep and 24-hour rectal temperatures in eight women with normal menstrual cycles in their mid-follicular and mid-luteal phases, and in eight young women taking a steady dose of oral progestin and ethinyl oestradiol (hormonal contraceptive), and compared their sleep and body temperatures with that of eight young men, sleeping in identical conditions. All subjects maintained their habitual daytime schedules.

“Rectal temperatures were elevated throughout 24 hours in the luteal phase compared with the follicular phase in the naturally cycling women, consistent with a raised thermoregulatory set-point. Rectal temperatures in the women taking hormonal contraceptives were similar to those of the naturally cycling women in the luteal phase. Gender influenced body temperature: the naturally cycling women and the women taking hormonal contraceptives attained their nocturnal minimum body temperatures earlier than the men, and the naturally cycling women had blunted nocturnal body temperature drops compared with the men.”

That should clear it up once and for all.

THE WAY THE BALL BOUNCES

Consider the polar opposite lives of Vinny and Vick, a pair of professional football players separated by a lot more than their ages.

Vinny Testaverde will turn 44 next month and Michael Vick turned 27 in June. Testaverde probably will be throwing passes for the Carolina Panthers on Sunday while Vick spends his time trying to figure out how to pay back $20 million in bonuses to the Atlanta Falcons while he’s on suspension for at least the remainder of the season following a disgusting felony conviction involving dog fighting.

Testaverde attended high school down on Long Island and went on to college football fame at the University of Miami before embarking on a spectacularly long pro career that has put him on the rosters of Tampa Bay, Cleveland, Baltimore, New York Jets, Dallas, New England and now Carolina.

Along the way, he has run the gamut from rookie apprentice quarterback to starter to record-breaking superstar to veteran backup to the guy-you-call-anytime-you-need-a-brainy-player-who-stays-in-shape. Thus, it is no shock that when the Panthers lost their starting quarterback to a season-ending injury and their No. 2 man got badly banged up, they opted to go for Vinny as so many other teams have despite him being more than a decade beyond what is considered prime playing age for quarterbacks.

Over the years, Vinny has made a pile of money and is a multi-millionaire both from his football salary and from some very smart investments (Outback Steakhouses and other such things). He lives in palatial homes, like the one shown above that he recently put up for sale for $7 million. Playing football has become more of a hobby because he has nothing to prove and nothing to lose.

On the other hand, Vick — who is awaiting sentencing on his conviction and faces additional charges as well — chose to invest his money in a Virginia farm on which he and an assortment of goons ran a dog fighting facility where they trained animals to shred each other and where he helped his cohorts execute dogs that didn’t live up to their standards of ferocity. He has lost his primary job, his multi-million-dollar endorsement deals, his respectability (his old high school in Virginia had his jersey removed from a display case because of his legal situation), his millions of dollars, and a secure future. His next residence probably will cost a lot more than Vinny’s, but it will be a jail.

Very interesting what happens when two different people are presented with the same opportunities and make such wildly different choices.

Onetime First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt was quoted as saying, “In the long run, we shape our lives, and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility.”

Nobel Prize-winning author Albert Camus put it more succinctly: “Life is a sum of all your choices.”

THE INFAMOUS MR. (& MRS.) ARNOLD

This week marked the 226th anniversary of Benedict Arnold’s betrayal of the American forces during the Revolutionary War. (Sept. 23, for those who are slaves to the calendar.)

Since from my hilltop abode I have a clear view across the Hudson River of Saratoga County, NY, the place of Arnold’s greatest military work before he turned traitor and switched to the British side, I’m regularly reminded of his odd place in American history.

But, what of Mrs. Arnold, or one of them, anyway? (Benny was married three times.)

Margaret “Peggy” Shippen was his longest-tenured wife. To do that, she had to put up with a vain, annoying, fiscally failing, morally equivocating anomaly of a man.

I’ve been interested in her since childhood for the simple reason my first hometown was the university town of Shippensburg, Pa., which Peggy’s father, the English-born Edward Shippen, founded in 1737. It was at the time the westernmost colonial settlement in the U.S. A stone house Shippen had built on the main street today houses the local historical society.

The Shippens were a wealthy and influential family in Colonial America, with homes in a variety of places, including Philadelphia where they spent most of their time. In fact, that’s where Benedict and Peggy met.

It’s probable that when Arnold got into a huff over not getting a much-deserved promotion by the Continental Army and decided to hand over the plans to West Point to the Brits, Peggy didn’t do much to talk him out of switching allegiances. After all, she came from a strictly pro-British upbringing and all indications are that she’d prefer we didn’t break away. (Her father, who avoided formally declaring to be either Patriot or Loyalist during the Revolution, eventually became Chief Justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.)

They say behind every great man is a great woman. The same must go for stinkers, too.

WHERE HAVE YOU GONE, JOE DiMAGGIO?

Jerry Falwell is dead. Tammy Faye Bakker’s cancer has her down to 65 pounds. Ted Haggard resigned in disgrace from the presidency of the National Association of Evangelicals after it was revealed he had an ongoing fling with a male prostitute. Jimmy Swaggert and Jim Bakker are remembered only as thieves or liars or, at best, phonies.

That doesn’t do much for America’s “Religious Right.” In fact, it may even be in a similar shape to what the civil rights movement has been since the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. way back in 1968.

What came after him has been a string of people who never captured the national spotlight for any amount of time (Julian Bond, Ralph Abernathy) or outright hypocrites whose major tools to accomplish their ends have been what some call corporate blackmail (see Jesse Jackson’s business-boycott strong arm tactics) or outright lies and smear campaigns (see Al Sharpton and the Tawana Brawley case, for one).

Not that I held any particular respect or feeling of support for Falwell and his posturing ilk. It’s just that you have to give the guy credit for coalescing a movement such as the Moral Majority that has had such widespread influence. You may not have agreed with him, but he did get people involved in the process of a nation.

There was a time when the average Joe or Jane could have a reasonable expectation that somewhere along the line a champion would rise up to plead his or her case, be it civil rights, religious tolerance, political impact, gender equality or whatever. Today, there seems to be a lack of that sort of leadership on the social, religious and business fronts as well as in politics where the people with the most money get to make rules as well as the decisions no matter what party they serve.

If that all sounds rather gloomy on such a beautiful spring day, sad to say it is. Tomorrow’s weather is supposed to be as nice as today’s, with a high in the low 70s, although with a chance for some more thunder showers. If nothing worse happens, I’ll regard that as the silver lining.

BY THE HAIR ON THEIR CHINNY CHIN CHINS

Pay no attention to the fact that it’s difficult to tell President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad from ex-Beatle Ringo Starr. His (M-Ahmad, that is) virulently anti-Western regime has issued a ban on “Western” hairstyles and fashions for young Iranian men.

Tehran newspapers report that barbers also have been told not to pluck customers’ eyebrows, and that more than 16,000 men and women have been warned by police in the past week about wearing clothing considered too Western. Iranian TV says the crackdown on un-Islamic clothing has entered its second phase, with mobile police units patrolling the capital city to look for those who not properly observing Islamic dress.

If this continues, we can look forward to a nation of hairy, tie-less people with gel-free grooming. Sort of like a local teen mall crowd multiplied by millions of people. Yechhh.