I think I’ve mentioned my “thing” for men with an accent before…and Alan Rickman is no exception; brits are extaordinarily attractive, regardless as to what they’re saying.

I would say just about anyone with an accent is attractive; as long as it’s REAL and not put on - such as Scott Covington’s Inspector Clousseau-like FAKE french accent.

When Rickman whispers shakespeare…I get a thrill up my leg. LOL

And of course, he morphs into all different characters…and adds his particularly blend of charm to each one.

I particularly appreciated his portrayal of the character who was out to get Tom Selleck’s character Quigley in Quigley Down Under. He even stomped his feet as the spoiled brat villain who gets everything he wants…which made me want to repeatedly rewind the tape.

He was also very good in Robin Hood and a few others…he’s a very good character actor.

Long hair, short hair, blonde, brunette or greying…doesn’t matter, this guy has that special SOMETHING…
that makes any project he’s involved in a pleasure to watch.

Men who make us dream….

Now when it’s Shakespeare…it is swoonworthy. Listen to him pour his chocolatey smooth voice out on Shakespeare’s “When Love Speaks”, Sonnet 130.

An interview with Rickman

Previous here.

MTV:

The official cause of his death remained a mystery for nearly a month, but on Friday afternoon (February 8), the coroner’s office received the results of Renfro’s toxicology screening.

This is Osama Lufti and Britney. What is with her dark hair?

Her behavior seems to go back to this man who entered and took control of her life. While people made jokes about what a poor job her parents did with her and her recently-pregnant sister, details have come to light about what has been happening in Britney’s life, and they aren’t pretty. There is a reason that she’s been acting erratically, and also a reason it’s all been covered in pictures. This Osama Lufti fellow treats the paparazzi like his army and gives them orders. I can’t help but wonder by the name if this isn’t a muslim guy and if this isn’t just another example of how muslims treat women.

Lynne: Sam “Drugged,” Controlled Britney‘

Osama Lufti, the manager, has taken complete control of her life…calls her an unfit mother, a piece of trash and a whore, and feeds her drugs ground up in her food, hides her dog, cut the phone wires and hid all the cell phone chargers in addition to disabling all of her cars and sleeping in a car outside so she cannot leave.

The content in Lynn’s declaration-which-if I understand it correctly-was attached to the restraining order to keep Lufti away from Britney is absolutely frightening.

Halle Barry is hot. And she’s pregnant with her boyfriend of two years. She’s said she will never marry again…which…I don’t approve of, but whatever, good luck to the happy couple and I hope their relationship stays intact for the sake of the kid. I haven’t seen when she’s due, but it should be interesting to see how she manages to keep her beautiful figure.

all of the baldwin brothers are hunks, and i’ve always liked alec baldwin until i took a closer look at this mess. this thing has been dragging on for way too long, and both basinger and baldwin should shut the hell up. it’s so odd. kim basinger and alec baldwin are in this years long battle in the courts, and baldwin claims he’s the ‘victim’ of basinger…and leaves this message on his 11-year old daughter’s cell phone voice messaging system.

Sounds to me as though she either didn’t answer it when she saw it was him calling, or she didn’t have her phone on. Either way, does it seem to you that an 11-year old deserves this diatribe? It sounds to me as though Baldwin is alienating his own self from his daughter, without any help.

Apparently he’s blaming his behavior completely on Basinger and ‘parental alienation’.

“Parental alienation” is a catch phrase for behavior in which one parent seeks to turn the child against the other, often enrolling teachers, relatives and family friends in the drive against the “target” parent.

We’ve all seen it at one point or another; people who are so vindictive and hateful toward one another that they are insensitive enough to use their children as pawns to get to each other. This totally disregards what kind of potential impact it would have on the child or children involved, and in my opinion, it should be considered a form of emotional child abuse.

The bottom line is, you’re responsible for your behavior and if someone has found the buttons to push, it’s your fault if you’re responding like pavlov’s dog. It’s very similar to the bully/victim mindset. In schools, they often counsel the victim for responding to the bully when the bully shouldn’t be bullying to begin with.

In my opinion this is the case of two very narcissistic people who aren’t considering how their actions are impacting their child. They should both be ashamed of themselves.

“Everyone who knows me privately knows that certain people will go to any lengths to embarrass me and to disrupt my relationship with my daughter,” he wrote.

Neither one of them are role modeling adult behavior…I think they belong in individual counseling to learn about what they’re doing to that kid, and stop it immediately. But, that might get in the way of the book that Baldwin is writing about it.

Tip o’ me tam to Smokey

She gave birth recently to a daughter, whose paternity is still in question. Her 20-year old son died in the hospital room where his mother was resting after the birth of her daughter. And now, she has died. So tragic. I always thought her marriage to that old man was sick; her having been a topless dancer, and the fact that she didn’t even live with her ‘husband’, the obcenely rich old geezer- while he was slipping away from old age. Then there was that period when she was very heavy and had a reality show; watching that thing made me feel good about my life; she was so messed up and so were the people who surrounded her. The one episode with the weird guy who made her bedroom pink and then afterwards she hated it - I think he was a gay interior designer - was hilarious.

That show, and the show about Ozzie Osbourne’s family made me feel really NORMAL.

It’s still a shame, and I feel bad for her little daughter who now has no mother, and no legal daddy!

Reuters:

Smith, a platinum blonde who grew up idolizing screen legend Marilyn Monroe and first gained fame as a model for Guess? jeans, was pronounced dead at a Hollywood, Florida hospital at around 2:45 p.m. on Thursday.

She had been rushed to the hospital after a private nurse — who had apparently been alone with Smith in her room at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino — telephoned a hotel operator to ask for medical assistance was needed.

Police said the cause of death was unknown and scheduled an autopsy for Friday.

She was 39.

See this at OTB; the last pictures taken of her at the Hard Rock Cafe. It illustrates to me that there is more to the story than meets the eye.

James Brown passed away on Christmas morning. There is talk of his girlfriend and their 5-year old child being locked out of his estate, but I guess one of the issues in question is whether or not they were really married.

I really appreciated some of his music. Two of the better-known songs he’s famous for are featured here, God bless him, and God bless is girlfriend and I hope it all works out for her and his kid. I gather he is survived by four children, so let me say ‘kids’, then.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say he was to modern music as Bach was to classical music, though, which is what Al Sharpton said about him.

James Brown was 73.

Brown’s body lied in state at the Apollo Theater in NYC Thursday. A private service for Brown’s family and friends will be held Friday. On Saturday he will lie in state at the James Brown Arena in Augusta, Ga., prior to the public funeral service to be officiated by Rev. Al Sharpton. Brown will be buried in Augusta.

I have new respect for this man. Ms U doesn’t use youtube, she put this up at Ifilms, this is from her post here.

See Michael Smerconish’s page on Daniel Faulkner here.

Faulkner is the young police officer who died on the evening of December 9, 1981. He was a 25-year old police officer pulling the nightshift when he pulled over a VW going the wrong way on a one-way street. William Cook was the name of the VW driver. After sucker punching Faulkner in the face, his brother, a wannabe journalist and sometimes Black Panther activist decided to step in. Wesley Cook, was a taxicab driver across the street, watching. Wesley was carrying a firearm he’d legally purchased from a Philadelphia sporting goods store. Yanking his gun from its holster, Wesley ran across the street and fired his weapon into Officer Faulkner’s back. Faulkner shot back, hitting Wesley Cook in the stomach. Wesley Cook then stood over Faulkner and pumped five more shots into him, one to the brain. There were five witnesses to the shooting, and Cook even confessed to the crime when he was taken to the same hospital saying of his crime; “I shot the motherfucker, and I hope that motherfucker dies.” But this shouldn’t come as a surprise, as a Black Panther activist, Wesley Cook had glorified violence toward the police, he was just following through on on his activism.

Ed Asner and Mike Farrell, among a long list of Hollywood idiots have glorified the perp in this crime, who has since assumed the name of “Mumia Abu-Jamal”.

And so you see “Free Mumia” shirts and signs, as this criminal has become the focus of a fabricated tale of injustice and persecution that has attracted a crowd of Hollywood leftists.

From Danny’s widow’s lawyer:

The ways in which Mumia’s story has been spun out of control are as disgusting as they are numerous. Keep in mind that this is all AFTER he was convicted of murder: National Public Radio signed Mumia to do radio commentaries from behind bars. Addison Wesley publishing came out with a book of his writings, penned while on death row. Students at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington and Antioch, in Yellow Springs, Ohio, have hosted Mumia, via audiotape, as a commencement speaker. Thousands have marched in his honor in cities around the world. A full page ad ran in the New York Times embracing his cause and signed by the likes of Alec Baldwin, Roger Ebert, Spike Lee, Paul Newman, Tim Robbins, Susan Sarandon and Oliver Stone. Rage Against the Machine and Beastie Boys played before 16,000 in a Mumia Benefit in New Jersey. The City of San Francisco, named a day in his honor. The City of Oakland, birthplace of Ebonics, closed their City Schools for a day to teach children who can barely read and write about the “travesty” of Mumia’s conviction. Even as I write, in 2003, the City of Paris named him an Honorary Citizen. I wish I were kidding. But at home in the City of Philadelphia, people generally know what happened and are repelled by the attention the case has received for a quarter century.

I think it’s time people thought about Danny Faulkner himself, and the widow he left behind at the young age of 25. And stop glorifying criminals.

Wesley Cook’s two-week trial for First Degree murder in Philadelphia, was back in 1982. The strange thing about it is–he personally helped select the jury, which included people of color. Deliberations lasted just under six hours and returned a conviction. It was another two hours of deliberations by the same jury that returned his death sentence. Numerous appeals and years and years later, he’s lauded as practically a saint and is having streets named after him.

Hot Air has a great VENT on this here.

Update: Michelle Malkin shows us here how Faulkner’s widow spent this anniversary of her husband’s death.

Thanks to Jo’s Cafe

Madonna pictured with an orphan from Malawi

So many times my response to certain things is ‘we are the world’ or ‘give peace a chance’ or ‘I’d like to buy the world a coke’. So along those lines, there is a buzz out there about Madonna’s adopting a child from Malawi, despite objections from the child advocacy group “Eye of the Child”. I find this growing celebrity interest in starving children in Africa, or other countries, baffling. This is probably the first time I can recall when Madonna hasn’t been the first to do this. She has historically burst through all kinds of barriers, which is one of her trademarks…she’s on the cutting edge of trends, and is a trendsetter.

So how is it they think that raising poor black children in a rich white home is going to help someone who came these meager beginnings? Does this demonstrate a belief that it’s better to be white and rich than black and poor? Spiritually and otherwise, I don’t believe this is the case.

From CBC.ca

Child advocacy group Eye of the Child is filing a court injunction asking the Malawian government to halt the adoption, arguing the process was fast-tracked because of the couple’s celebrity status.

And I thought this statement was well-put from that article:

“You cannot buy a child as if you are buying a house,” said spokesperson Boniface Mandere. “This process is too short, applying on Tuesday, and yesterday the court gave the OK. I don’t think that the High Court has any information about how Madonna is when it comes to child-rearing.”

Malawi law says adoptive parents must be residents in the country to adopt. On Thursday, government officials said the regulations would be eased but did not elaborate.

So they bend the rules so that Madonna can feel good, but she’s also donated a substantial amount of money to help the poor and orphans in Malawi. Still, it doesn’t make me feel very good to see these white people behaving in this way. This doesn’t help them keep in touch with their roots, and I wonder how many of these individuals go back to their home country or stay in touch with relatives after the adoption has gone through.

We actually don’t know how good of a mother Madonna is, just like we don’t know how good of a mother Mia Farrow is, or if Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt are good parents, or if all of these people don’t just pawn off their parental duties on well-paid caretakers.

Granted, it’s much better to go to bed at night with a full stomach, but even Shania Twain grew up starving.

We have another example of this phenomenon; Mia Farrow. And another, Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt. We know they have money enough to care for the children with full-time nannies, but is this the kind of upbringing anyone from a third world country wants for its children? I think the needs for a third world country’s people boil down to having a roof over your head and a full stomach, free of diseases like malaria. But then “Silent Spring’ took care of that one; the bird population is more important than the lives of poor people, according to elitist environmentalists. At least that’s what they’d have you believe, because DDT hasn’t been actually proven to be detrimental to the environment or to the bird population; birds are like rats–they pop up very shortly after manmade disasters like oil spills and even events like the nuclear accident at Chernobyl.

Recently (give peace a chance)- Bono and Oprah launched a line of clothes and gadgets called “Red clothes” (I wonder why “Red”?) to help fight AIDS in Africa. I haven’t read how the clothing/gadgetry line is supposed to accomplish this, or precisely where the money goes to. It might, for all we know, be like Galloway’s charity, the “Miriam Appeal”.

I know celebrities do a lot of things to relieve themselves of the guilt of being rich, or to garner great publicity- thinking that they’re helping ‘mankind’ and ‘the world’, but to me for some reason these token acts of kindness ring somewhat shallow. All people who put money into the Salvation Army’s bucket want to do good; those who work in soup kitchens or donate to food pantries want to do good.

But do we have articles written about how we’ve done it? It almost seems like a PR ploy for the public to think well of them.

Unbelievable! Now after lots of speculation and jokes as to why Tom Cruise and the mother of his child Katie Holmes haven’t shown Suri Cruise since she was born 139 days ago and no one has seen her….

Annie Leibovitz exclusively for Vanity Fair, www.vanityfair.com

Just imagine. A designer baby whose first debut comes out in the form of pictures done by Annie Leibovitz.

Finally they’ve done a photoshoot
Screengrab courtesy the Age’s Michelle Johnson

for the world in Vanity Fair Magazine, Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame’s favorite mag for covert operatives. The beautiful tyke is featured in a spread in Vanity Fair Magazine. There were a lot of jokes about their carrying a doll in certain photographs, and ‘where is suri?” and “have you ever seen a couple who didn’t show off their baby once it was born” and that sort of thing, fueling rumors that something was wrong with the baby, or even more interestingly, after Tom Cruise’s recent apology to Brook Shields that perhaps Katie Holmes had her own experience with post partem depression, and that could have played a part. Regardless, the little dear is precious.

Meanwhile…a bronze sculpture of Suri’s first poop went on display…and if you think I’m kidding, read this, this and this.

The Capla Gallery insist the sculpture - which was also reportedly based on the popular children’s book ‘Everybody Poops’ - has great depth and is actually a social comment on the culture of celebrity.

Actually I think it’s a commentary as to the value of modern art in general. This thing actually exists and will be sold for auction on eBay.

Per Justin at Right on the Right–I kid you not, but the story is practically unbelievable.

Mr Irwin, 44, was killed by a stingray barb to the chest while he was filming an underwater documentary in Queensland’s Great Barrier Reef.

Read more at the BBC

Considering the whackie stuff I’ve seen him do, I couldn’t help but wonder how long he would stay alive considering the nasty animals he faced on camera.

He and his wife were adorable together…this is sad news, the guy was only 44.

I think it’s sad. It makes me feel old, though, because he died at 90. Not many people live that long. I loved seeing him in old westerns and other movies like Gilda.

Excuse me, but every once in a while something strikes me insanely funny. Some of the things that happened according to news reports when Mel Gibson was arrested for drunken driving and threatened the cops and called one of them “Sugar ****” (rhymes with ‘bits’)-and what he said during his drunken tirade where he blamed the evil joooos for all the wars in the world…

I saw this photograph and I just had to share it.

Did you know that another one of the gems that fell out of his mouth that night was that he would ruin the arresting officer because he ‘owns Malibu’?