Category: Defies a category!

SEXY SIDE OF FINANCE
Closed captions for ABC’s World News Tonight mistakenly reporting that Alan Greenspan was being treated “for an enlarged prostitute.” The Federal Reserve Chairman is in the hospital for an enlarged prostate.

O.J. Simpson Makes Pass for Reality Show
MIAMI (Hollywood Reporter) – O.J. Simpson is preparing for his debut as the star of his own “Osbournes”-esque reality show.
Fort Worth, Texas-based Urban America Television Network said it will distribute a 13-week series about the former football great — who was acquitted of the murders of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ronald Goldman in 1995 — to its 75 independent broadcast TV station affiliates starting in June.
The series will chronicle Simpson’s daily life in Miami using footage collected over several months of filming in 2001 and 2002.

…actsofgord.com

BACK TO SCHOOL
Whitney Houston to guest star as herself on the May 12 season finale of Boston Public as one lucky kid’s prom date.
No word yet on whether she supplied the “party favours.”

John Lennon’s Widow May Sue Kelloggs Over ‘Strawberry Fields’
The widow of John Lennon, Yoko Ono, may take legal action against a new breakfast cereal called “Strawberry Fields,” which she believes is too close in name to Lennon’s famous Beatles song, “Strawberry Fields Forever.” Ono has no appetite for the product marketed by Kashi, an organic-food company owned by Kelloggs, and has asked her lawyers to look into the matter.
In a bit of breakfast cereal irony, Lennon once admitted he wrote the song “Good Morning, Good Morning” on the Beatle’s Sgt. Pepper album after hearing the phrase on a TV commercial for Kelloggs’ brand of corn flakes.
“Strawberry Fields Forever” was inspired by a Salvation Army orphanage in Liverpool, England, known as Strawberry Field. It was a large Victorian building located on Beaconsfield Road, in the community of Woolton, about a five minute walk from Lennon’s home on Menlove Avenue. Young John used to play in the trees there and attended events with his Aunt Mimi.
There were two different versions of “Strawberry Fields Forever,” recorded in entirely different tempos and keys. Beatles’ producer George Martin edited both together, adjusted tape speeds and came up with the final version, which appeared on the Beatles 1967 album, Magical Mystery Tour, and on two-sided hit single, with the song “Penny Lane” on the other side.

Oh My Gawd, Nooooooooooooooooo!
Hollywood couple J.Lo and Ben Affleck have secured a deal to remake the classic movie Casablanca, according to reports.
The pair are said to be delighted with the multi-million pound deal and are now in talks with American producers.
The original film was a hit in 1942 starring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman and J.Lo and Affleck want to repeat the success.
Affleck will take the romantic lead as Rick, the Daily Star reports.
Lopez will play the former lover who had jilted him but comes back into his later life – married to a French resistance leader.
Actor Ben is reportedly a big fan of old movies and the project will give him a chance to indulge his passion.
It will not be the first time the two have appeared on screen together – they recently starred in the hit romance Jersey Girl.
A friend said: “They are overjoyed at the propspect of being in Casablanca together.
“It is the chance for them to show how much they love each other through their on-screen chemistry.”

BARING ALL
Former Idol finalist Vanessa Olivarez to pose in the buff on Wednesday for a PETA campaign titled “I’d Rather Go Naked Than Wear Fur.”

War leads Madonna to cancel video debut
Madonna has decided not to release her controversial American Life video out of respect for armed forces in Iraq.
The clip, which was completed before the war started, depicts Madonna as a heroine in military garb alongside camouflage-clad dancers on a fashion runway. Trapped in a bathroom stall, she uses a knife to carve “protect me” on the wall. Scenes are intercut with images of war, and the video ends with Madonna lobbing a grenade that changes into a cigarette lighter.
In a statement prepared Monday night, Madonna says it’s inappropriate to air the video because of the state of the world and out of sensitivity and respect for the troops. She says she doesn’t want to risk offending those who might misinterpret the video.
The video for the title track from an album due April 22 was scheduled to premiere Friday on VH1. Director Jonas Akerlund shot American Life in Los Angeles in early February. When details of the shoot stirred controversy and rumors of an anti-American stance, Madonna issued a statement declaring herself pro-peace, not anti-Bush or pro-Iraq.
What does she stand for?
“I’ll tell you what I’m against,” she said in an interview Monday afternoon. “I’m against widows and orphans.”
American Life, she points out, is not anti-war. It addresses materialism and the illusion of the American dream. Sample lyrics:
“I tried to stay ahead, I tried to stay on top/I tried to play the part, but somehow I forgot/Just what I did it for and why I wanted more.”
Before she decided to pull the video Monday afternoon, Madonna told USA TODAY she had it edited for length, removing expletives and jarring interruptions in the music.
“Jonas was trying to tell a story, and he put so many stops in the song,” she says. “It was about 10 minutes long. It was just too long.”
American Life isn’t Madonna’s first controversial video. She also raised eyebrows with 1990’s erotic Justify My Love, which was banned by MTV, and the burning crosses in 1989’s Like a Prayer, which prompted Pepsi to drop her ads and its sponsorship of her tour.
Just like those situations, this is all being done by a person universally renowned as a marketing genius. She creates these situations in order to get press and publicity for her new releases.
Well, you’ve succeeded Madonna, but at what cost?

Gas in car to go to groomers- $4.50
Cat car carrier- $32.99
Grooming fee- $80.00
Getting The Look from one seriously ticked-off cat- Priceless!

TV Networks Jump in as War in Iraq Starts
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – U.S. cable and broadcast television networks jumped in on Wednesday night as the long-awaited war against Iraq began, with CBS News anchor Dan Rather declaring “Good morning Baghdad” as the bombing started.
The networks, which have been primed for weeks for the start of a conflict, went to a mix of footage of Baghdad and reports from correspondents embedded with military units in the field.
“We know the president is going to come on at 10:15 (p.m. EST), so the war effectively is underway,” Tom Brokaw, anchoring NBC’s covering on both the main broadcast network and cable channel MSNBC, said.
And indeed, in a four minute speech to the nation, the president declared that the war had begun.
“On my orders, coalition forces have begun striking selected targets of military importance … A campaign on the harsh terrain of a nation as large as California could be longer and more difficult than some predict,” Bush told the American people in a televised address from the White House Oval Office.
CNN was early in reporting, through its reporter Nic Robertson in Baghdad, that anti-aircraft fire could be seen streaming into the sky, though in the first minutes of the war Robertson said no explosions had been seen or felt in the city.
Newspapers also worked to quickly get out news of the war. The Web sites of papers like the New York Times and the Washington Post immediately began posting stories from wire services on the progress of the early campaign.
TV pictures showed a darkened Baghdad cityscape lit by street lights, with occasional flashes in the sky from antiaircraft fire, and sounds of antiaircraft bursts could be heard.
‘TARGET OF OPPORTUNITY’
CBS’s veteran anchor Dan Rather said the first attack was only a couple of minutes in duration, right at sunrise. Baghdad is 8 hours ahead of the east coast of the United States, and so the war coverage began just as the west coast was settling in to the evening news.
“We’re being told that there will be a rather heavy air-based and sea-based bombardment,” CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, live in Kuwait, said. The network was also reporting that the first attacks were with cruise missiles and were aimed at “targets of opportunity.”
CNN Pentagon reporter Jamie McIntiresaid that the initial bombardment on what the Pentagon called a “target of opportunity” was a leadership target of some sort.
NBC’s Tom Brokaw made the point early in the coverage that the United States was expected, after the initial stages of the war, to take a long-term restructuring role in Iraq.
“One of the things we don’t want to do is destroy the infrastructure in Iraq because in a few days we’re going to own that country,” Brokaw said.
ABC’s Peter Jennings came live on air about 15 minutes after the White House said the war had officially begun. He, like Rather and Brokaw, has been a long-time network news presenter and anchored the network’s coverage of the last Gulf War.
Rather said the first attacks seemed to be meant to “give Saddam the willies, to spook him a little bit.”
ABC is a unit of Walt Disney Co., NBC and MSNBC are units of General Electric Co, CBS is a unit of Viacom Inc., CNN is a unit of AOL Time Warner and Fox News Channel is a unit of News Corp. Ltd.