Category: Defies a category!

Stolen Titian Masterpiece Found in Plastic Bag
A painting by Venetian master Titian, worth more than $7.6 million, has been found in a plastic bag seven years after it was stolen, British newspapers reported on Friday.
The “Rest on the Flight to Egypt” was snatched from Longleat House, the western England stately home of the Marquess of Bath, in 1995.
The masterpiece was recovered in London without a frame in a carrier bag by Charles Hill, a former policeman and now security adviser to the Historic Houses Association, the Guardian newspaper said.
Previous reports suggested a convicted art crook was used as a go-between. Details of the operation were not released.
One of Titian’s most famous works, “Rest on the Flight to Egypt” was bought by one of the Marquess of Bath’s ancestors in the 19th century.
“It has been a long and difficult process but we are all extremely pleased that the painting is finally safe,” Longleat’s general manager Tim Moore was quoted as saying.
“Mr Hill is the leading expert in his field and he has remained confident throughout that the picture would eventually turn up.”

Canadian Hookers Campaign Against Hollywood
Runaway production is clearly a problem: Now even Canadian hookers, beggars and druggies are upset.
For years, Hollywood guilds have bemoaned the fact production has emigrated to Canada, which offers cheaper costs. But now shooting in downtown Vancouver has created a Canuck conundrum as street workers are demanding compensation for the business they lose thanks to filming.
The Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users, which represents about 1,000 residents of the seedy Downtown Eastside, has sent a letter demanding compensation to 30 production firms. They include Club Six Prods., currently filming MGM’s “Agent Cody Banks” starring Frankie Muniz and Angie Harmon.
The letter states: “Sex trade workers must be compensated for displacement they experience at your hands in the same manner you would compensate a business if you were to use their locale during operating hours. The same must hold true for homeless people you push from beneath a bridge or doorway, and drug users you move from a park.”
It also wants financial compensation for all disrupted work, including panhandling; alternative accommodation for affected residents; and equal financial compensation for residents of buildings impacted by filming.
The Vancouver Sun is backing the campaign; it said in an editorial Tuesday “we see no reason why any unorthodox entrepreneur should be treated differently from other businesses when it comes to compensation.”
The newspaper suggests moviemakers could donate “a reasonable sum” to charities that serve residents of the area.
However, producers claim adequate payment is already made to organizations including the Downtown Eastside Residents’ Assn. for location fees, permits and liaison costs.
“Local shop owners are more than fairly compensated for their supposed loss of business, which detailed studies have shown to be more fiction than fact,” said Brent Karl Clackson, a Vancouver producer.
“I would ask these people to rethink their position and not become part of the greedy, foolish and short-sighted who continue to chip away at our industry, driving up costs and making us less competitive with Hollywood.”
A spokesman for the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users says it has consulted a lawyer and intends to pursue the matter in the courts.
It is also insisting that anyone interviewed or documented on film be treated respectfully and fairly and paid, “according to the rate requested by the individual subject.”
Committee spokesman Chris Livingston claims he was filmed last week as part of background by a crew shooting for the Canuck TV series “Da Vinci’s Inquest” but was not paid.
Chris Haddock, executive producer of “Inquest,” says it is not the show’s policy to film anyone without compensation, unless the person is unrecognizable and unidentifiable.

Go Ahead! Click On The Link!
This will make you laugh, cry and feel pity!

BIGGER, TRASHIER–AND IN SONG
Jerry Springer: The Opera, replete with expletives and a chorus line of dancing Klansmen, crack addicts, strippers and adulterers, selling out its daily performances at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and earning positive reviews. There are also rumors the production may move to London’s West End.

Want To Have A Kick Ass Party?
What it will cost to book Creed for your next party: $200,000. But for the bargain price of $5,000, you can have Vanilla Ice! This fascinating page from Clear Channel College Entertainment reveals how much money entertainers are requesting.

Hooters in the Air?

Will Vanguard Airlines, known for its low fares, and Hooters Girls, known for their high-cut shorts, soon be corporate cousins?
Hooters of America Inc. chairman Robert H. Brooks is thinking about buying Vanguard, the Kansas City-based discount carrier that filed for bankruptcy protection and grounded its fleet last month. On Wednesday, a bankruptcy judge told Brooks he can give Vanguard $50,000 per week for the next three weeks to pay a skeleton staff, while Brooks examines the company’s books and decides if he wants to buy.
A newly formed company called Hooters Air Inc. will make the payments.
So what kind airline would Hooters Air Inc. run? Vanguard spokeswoman Elizabeth Cattell said it’s too soon to know.
“If it’ll be ‘Hooters Girls’ flight attendants, it’s too early,” Cattell said.
But she didn’t dismiss the idea.
Cattell called said there’s more to Brooks than Hooters. Brooks, Cattell said, has built Hooters into a “fresh product” with 315 stores in the U.S. and overseas. To Vanguard, he would bring financial strength, “which is what we’ve needed all along,” she said.
Brooks’ Atlanta-based attorney, A.J. Block, said Brooks would decide in the next several weeks whether to buy Vanguard.
“Mr. Brooks is a pretty decisive guy,” Block said.
In the meantime, the handful of Vanguard employees at the company’s headquarters are working toward two goals: Vanguard’s possible return to flying, and liquidation, Cattell said.
Vanguard suspended flights, laid off 90 per cent of its employees and filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on July 30.
Vanguard attorney Dan Flanigan said Brooks’ interest came out of the blue.
“He came out of such an unusual place — no one would have predicted it would be him we would be talking to at this point,” Flanigan said.
If Brooks doesn’t buy Vanguard, it’s not immediately clear whether the airline is likely to find any other suitors.
Flanigan said he believed discussions are happening with other potential investors, although he said he did not know details of those discussions. Analysts have expressed doubts, however, about Vanguard’s prospects for getting financial help.
Vanguard served Myrtle Beach, S.C., where Brooks lives.
“So he is very much a supporter of Myrtle Beach, and the termination of Vanguard was disturbing to all of Myrtle Beach,” Block said. Brooks also has a strong interest in aviation and owns an airplane, although he doesn’t fly it himself, Block said.
Brooks founded Eastern Foods Inc. in 1966, which makes dressings and sauces. Hooters was founded in 1983, and Brooks and a group of Atlanta investors bought expansion and franchise rights for the chain in 1984. Brooks eventually bought majority control and became chairman.
Vanguard had never shown a yearly profit. But Sept. 11 made its problems worse, and it became one of three airlines to file for bankruptcy since the terrorist attacks. The others were US Airways, on Sunday, and Midway Airlines.

VISITING HOURS
Robert Blake’s lawyer confirming Friday that several celebrities have been visiting the encarcerated actor. Among the guests, Anthony Hopkins, Quincy Jones, Diane Sawyer and Barbara Walters. Blake remains in L.A.’s Men Central Jail on charges of murdering his wife. He has pleaded innocent.

Frisbee Pioneer Dies, Ashes to Be Made Into Discs
“Steady” Ed Headrick, the California inventor who figured out a way to make the Frisbee fly fast and straight, has died at the age of 78. His family said his ashes will be made into Frisbees.
Headrick died in his sleep early Monday at his home in La Selva Beach, California, his son Ken told the Santa Cruz Sentinel on Tuesday.
While no services are now planned, Headrick’s ashes will be molded into a limited number of “memorial flying discs” that will be distributed to family and friends, and sold to help fund a future Frisbee/disc golf history and memorabilia museum, his son, Ken Headrick, said.
The elder Headrick, who had high blood pressure, had suffered two strokes while attending the Professional Disc Golf Association Amateur World Championships in Miami last month and returned home to California after doctors determined that his condition was likely to deteriorate.
Hailed as the father of the modern Frisbee, Headrick helped to perfect the popular flying disc beloved by generations of college students while working at Emeryville, California-based toymaker Wham-O Inc. in 1964.
The Frisbee — said to be named after the Frisbie Pie Company of Bridgeport, Connecticut, whose round metal tins were used as toys by students at Yale University in the late 19th Century — took on new life with the advent of industrial plastics.
After World War II, an inventor named Walter Morrison worked on perfecting a plastic version of the toy and came up with the “Pluto Platter” prototype, a plastic mini-flying saucer.
But the platter still proved to be a wobbly throw. Headrick, who was then working on research and development at Wham-O, took a look at the design and added aerodynamic ridges on the top of the disc, making it more flight-worthy.
Awarded the patent for the first “professional” model Frisbee in 1966, Headrick went on to popularize a wide variety of Frisbee-related sports, founding the International Frisbee Association and later the Professional Disc Golf Association, which involves throwing a Frisbee at a metal cage.
“We all wished for a miracle that would have had him up and out of bed throwing discs and joking around once again. That miracle that was Ed will have to live on in our hearts and souls now,” the Disc Golf Association said in a release on Tuesday.
Headrick is survived by his wife as well several children and grandchildren.
In an interview with the Santa Cruz Sentinel last year, Headrick acknowledged the special power of the Frisbee — one of the simplest and most successful toys ever devised.
“I felt the Frisbee had some kind of a spirit involved. It’s not just like playing catch with a ball. It’s the beautiful flight,” Headrick said.
“We used to say that Frisbee is really a religion — ‘Frisbyterians,’ we’d call ourselves,” he said. “When we die, we don’t go to purgatory. We just land up on the roof and lay there.”

What Do You Think?

Is this an oxymoron or is it irony?

LET’S ALL GO TO THE LOBBY
Did you know that movie theater concessions account for $4.5 billion in worldwide revenue, providing 50 percent-100 percent of a theater’s profit and accounting for more revenue than ticket sales? It’s true! That’s according to a new report by Screen Digest.