AdamSmith

Yes!!! I loved that show. I was about seven years old then, and just ate it up. Just found this episode guide: http://www.tvguide.com/detail/tv-show.aspx?tvobjectid=388919&more=ucepisodelist&episodeid=1053601

My favorite is usually the one I just saw, or the one I'm about to see.

Officials can also be plenty silly all on their own. Of course, to your point, those are the ones who get the promotions.

Weird, Unseen Images from the Making of 2001: A Space Odyssey Moon children, polka-dot aliens, suckling ape suits, and many more intergalactic wrong turns are chronicled in a new behind-the-scenes book.by Bruce Handy July 9, 2014 12:00 am Vanity Fair 1 / 11 Hey, space sailor: Keir Dullea posing on one of the Discovery sets. © Dmitri Kessel/Getty Images. © 2014 Turner Entertainment Co. >> open This has been a banner year for those of us who are as obsessed with Stanley Kubrick’s great film 2001: A Space Odyssey as the movie’s ape-men are obsessed with the big black monolith that shows up on their veldt. Several episodes of the recent half-season of Mad Men referenced the movie, sometimes obliquely, sometimes winkingly (both Kubrickian modes). Now, Taschen, the high-end, occasionally overwrought art-book publisher, is releasing what it brags is “the most exhaustive publication ever devoted” to the film. At four volumes and 1,386 pages, The Making of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey is indeed exhaustive. And exhausting. And expensive: the super-deluxe “art edition,” which comes with an exclusive lithograph and is signed by Kubrick’s widow, Christiane, sells for $1,500 and is limited to 500 copies. (The normal-deluxe “collector’s edition” of the book, unsigned by any Kubrick survivors, retails for a mere $750.) This not the place to delve into the meaning(s) of the film. Nor is this the place to question the need for a four-volume, 1,386-page “book” (a modest noun in this circumstance) devoted to 2001. You are either on the bus or you are not. Myself, I bought a ticket—destination: Nerdvana—without thinking, being the sort of person who has watched the movie 20 or so times since I first saw it at the age of 10, when it floored and fascinated and frightened me, short-circuiting whatever feeble assumptions I then held about movies and storytelling, and also leaving me with a lifelong fetish for white, over-lit interiors. At less than two-dozen viewings, however, I probably rate as a mere dabbler in this arena. But while I can’t claim to have read everything ever written about the film, I have read a lot, and much in the Taschen book was new to me, and will be new to most everyone else, since it is larded with previously unseen photos, documents, and production art taken from Kubrick’s archives. The four volumes break down like this: a collection of official production stills; a facsimile of an early draft of the film’s scenario, written by Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke; a facsimile of Kubrick’s production notes; and a well-illustrated history of the film’s making and reception, written by Piers Bizony, which is something like an expanded, director’s-cut version of his earlier 2001: Filming the Future. A fifth slim bonus volume reprints Mad magazine’s 1969 parody of the film, “201 Min. of a Space Idiocy.” Mad is actually a good adjective here. So is magnificent. But the magazine’s satirists were exaggerating: 2001’s running time was a mere 160 minutes at its premiere in April 1968, immediately after which Kubrick cut 19 minutes. The director stood by the shorter but still, for some, somnambulantly paced version, and as recounted by Bizony, the deleted scenes don’t sound like they added much. (Long thought lost, the excised footage was discovered several years ago in a storage vault in a Kansas salt mine, but has yet to be released in any form.) For me, the biggest surprise in Bizony’s sometimes disjointed but always scrupulous text is his account of the improvisatory way the film was put together—relative to most big-budget special-effects epics. Unlike, say, Steven Spielberg or James Cameron, Kubrick declined to storyboard most of the outer-space sequences, preferring to figure things out in the editing room (which made more work for his special-effects team). He also completed the bulk of live-action photography without having nailed down the film’s beginning and end. To a late date, he was experimenting with ways of depicting aliens for the final “Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite” freak-out. The notion for the famous cut between a bone tossed in the air and space ship orbiting the earth—human evolution summed up by arguably the most audacious edit in movie history—came to Kubrick only after he had shot the final scene from “The Dawn of Man” sequence. According to Clarke, “Stanley was walking back to his office, and he had a broomstick, and he was throwing it up in the air. I was quite worried it might come down on him. And I think that’s when he got the idea of this transition.” An idly tossed broom. An unexpected brainstorm. It’s almost as [if] a higher intelligence had intervened. . . . Can 2001 be read as allegory for the creative process? Never mind. I said this wasn’t the place. Here, instead, are some more production tidbits: [First conceived as a pyramid, then a large crystalline block,] the alien slab became a tall, black monolith crafted from wood and painted black. Harry Lange, [one of the film’s three production designers], remembered a graphite mix being added to the paint in order to lend a particularly smooth sheen. Touching the immaculate surface on set with greasy fingers was forbidden. Between scenes, the 12-foot-high monolith was swaddled in thick layers of plastic sheeting. According to [Tony Masters, another production designer], “Keeping it clean was a nightmare. For one reason or another, it attracted dust. You’d put it on stage, and— foomp! It would be covered in dust. You’d think, ‘Oh, Christ! I wonder if Stanley will see that?’ And if anyone put their hand on it—‘Stop the shooting! Back to the paint shop for a respray!’ It was unbelievable, what went on to protect that thing.” In fact, several monoliths were constructed, because the heat from the lights tended to warp the wood or blister the paint, ruining their supposed alien perfection…. Kubrick’s most peculiar request was that one of the man-ape suits, fashioned in the guise of a mother-ape, should feature functioning breasts capable of exuding real milk. He hoped that this would tempt a baby chimpanzee to suckle. The Chipperfield’s circus company loaned a couple of chimps, Johnny and Timmy, whose ears were painlessly augmented with prosthetics to make them seem more like ancestral prehumans. Mary Chipperfield assured [stuart Freeborn, who designed the man-ape make-up and costumes] that her youngest chimps were still at the milk-drinking stage of their lives, although she did warn him that they only knew how to drink from plastic cups. A tender sequence of mother feeding child was photographed with mixed and messy results. The suckling experiment was abandoned. The danger with this sort of kiss-and-tell is that it can reduce a work of art to a series of rivets. Happily, 2001 remains a sum greater and stranger than its parts. I will leave you with this quote from the critic Rock Hudson, who saw the movie at an early private screening and, according to Bizony, “rose from his seat in disgust as the lights came up. ‘Will somebody tell me what the hell that was all about?’ he said.” Twenty-odd viewings and 1,386 pages later, the film still holds mysteries—which is why you might be interested in this monolith of a book. http://www.vanityfair.com/vf-hollywood/unseen-images-2011-space-odyssey-making

A study shows that ninety per cent of men inflate the number of their sex partners, while the other ten per cent inflate their sex partners. Craig Kilborn Making love to a woman is like buying real estate: location, location, location. Carol Leifer Last night I asked my husband, Whats your favorite sexual position? and he said, Next door. Joan Rivers I believe that sex is a beautiful thing between two peoplebetween five, it's fantastic. Woody Allen A hooker once told me she had a headache. Rodney Dangerfield I have low self-esteem; when we were in bed together, I would fantasize that I was someone else. Richard Lewis Have you ever tried to put an oyster in a slot machine? Carl Reiner My best birth control now is just to leave the lights on. Joan Rivers When he tells you he wants to exchange ideas, what he really wants is to exchange fluids. Woody Allen I liked Amsterdam -- I spent $2,000 window-shopping. Rich Vos By the time my friend was eighteen she had sown enough wild oats to make a grain deal with Russia. Phyllis Diller

Being a Scotsman, I am naturally opposed to water in its undiluted state. Dr. Alister MacKenzie (1870 – 1934) British golf course architect I only drink to steady my nerves…sometimes I'm so steady I don't move for months. W.C. Fields I admit to spending a fortune on women, booze and gambling…the rest I spend foolishly.Charles 'Chic' Murray (1919 – 1985) Scottish comedian & actor I was so drunk last night I fell down and missed the floor.Dean Martin I used to jog but the ice cubes kept falling out of my glass.David Lee Roth I can’t think of anything worse after a night of drinking than waking up next to someone and not being able to remember their name, or how you met, or why they’re dead.Laura Kightlinger Reality is an illusion that occurs due to the lack of alcohol.W.C. Fields

Lacking a Music forum, this post lands here. Miscellany of Bach pieces performed by my favorite organist (of this type ), one Michel Chapuis...

Atkinson talks about Mr Bean. http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RCMCIv60_Rk

Blackadder: The Cavalier Years http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_SXf9-Z3jwk

The house that got egged had an extremely expensive exterior finish of tinted stucco or some such, and that figure was more or less the cost of repairing the damage to it caused by the eggs. If I recall. Maybe there was some punitive sum added as well.

Rowan Atkinson, 'Dirty Names'

You might be surprised. I know I have been, more than once.

Iss Chancellor Angela, you know.

No real reason for putting this in Politics forum, but here it is anyway.

You really think?!

ROFL Just one small giveaway that Mr Jessel could not possibly be me: He sees his girlfriend's p-e-n-i-s as a problem.

Pragmatic.

I don't believe I said that Usenet group diminished my enjoyment of anything.

Browsing through the old Usenet groups, I one time came across a group named 'asparagus'. Its theme was under-age boy nudie pics. Have never been able to look at the vegetable in quite the same way since.

Sex work is work: exploding the sex trafficking myth With the freedom to work, organise and fight, sex workers will end coercion in the trade. BY MARGARET CORVID PUBLISHED 7 JULY, 2014 - 16:45 New Statesman I am lucky to have taken up my work as a dominatrix amid a revolution in our thinking about sex work. Writers like Laura Agustín and Melissa Gira Grant have taken apart our sexualised, othered image, and sex workers and allies proclaim loudly that sex work is work. Banal on its surface, that statement is profound in its implications. We all work for a multitude of reasons, good and bad, mundane and heart-wrenching. It is society that frames those reasons differently, based on gender, race, class, and nationality. Like everyone, Ive seen the reports of people from foreign lands, brought to the west and forced to do sex work. They are called trafficked women, and are often depicted at the point of a police raid, with flashing cameras shoved in their faces. At best, theyre shown as victims; at worst, as nuisances and criminals. I write today to stand with Agustin, Grant, and Maggie McNeill, who have so powerfully argued that this portrayal, and the very concept of sex trafficking that underpins it, is a myth. To say this is not to sideline the coerced; in dismantling this pernicious myth, we put their lived experiences front and centre. Coercion, force, and violence in sex work are very real, but they pertain generally to life as a member of the oppressed, not just to sex work. They must be fought across the world, and the concept of sex trafficking does not help in that fight. Instead, it obscures the fact that many types of workers, from carers to builders, suffer force, violence and exploitation. Insidiously, the trafficking myth also deprives sex workers of agency and identity, as it sexualises and fetishises our lives and bodies. Our stories can look very different from sensationalised raid reports or racy tell-alls, even with familiar-sounding facts. Originally from Romania, Paula was sixteen when her boyfriend took her to London to work as a sex worker. It was not her idea, but she was in love, and as excited as any new immigrant. She was willing to give sex work, and England, a chance. Her boyfriend became an abusive drunk and addict, and after nearly a year, she was done. He grounded her by snatching her passport. I couldnt go anywhere. . . if you dont have papers, you dont exist, said Paula. She went back to work; when she befriended a pickpocket, he sent his confederates to recover her ID. Having freed herself, Paula dumped her boyfriend and set up as an independent sex worker, choosing her own working flat and making it comfortable and secure. By 2012, she was well on her way to success, taking an English course and saving up to study nursing. She was a part of the neighbourhood; she had applied for a national insurance number. Then, on 3 September, she was raided. When the police came in, they started accusing me of being a pickpocket and a beggar, just because I am a Romanian, she said. They barraged her with questions and upended her tidy flat in a search for drugs. Although she was entitled to be in the country as an EEA national, she was reported to immigration authorities, and ordered to present her proof at the police station. On the same day Paulas flat was raided, police stormed into a number of flats in Mayfair, tearing down notices and harassing sex workers, maids and receptionists. Women working legally were thrown out of their flats and threatened with arrest if they returned to work; no evidence of drugs, minors or trafficked sex workers was found. Paula operated for months under police suspicion, never knowing when police or immigration authorities would approach her even at her home, where she kept her job a secret. Eventually, she was cleared, but the experience changed her; today, Paula supports and organises alongside her fellow sex workers at the English Collective of Prostitutes. Her experience is typical. Weve always said that anti-trafficking legislation was aimed at stopping women crossing international borders, says ECP spokeswoman Niki Adams. Trafficking is used as an excuse and a justification for raids on premises and arrests of immigrant sex workers which are ultimately and actually just immigration raids. Its a way of enforcing immigration controls in a very repressive and heavy-handed way, but with the veneer of an anti-trafficking initiative and the idea that youre saving victims. Its just a con, she says. If sex work is work, then sex workers are workers. We face and fight all of the intersecting, systemic oppressions faced by workers everywhere. While law enforcement and a well-funded rescue industry contribute to a worldwide attack on our rights, sex workers have long been in the forefront of militancy and organisation. Like workers everywhere, sex workers are best situated to improve safety and working standards. Around the millennium, as women disappeared in a Vancouver neighbourhood, activist Jamie Lee Hamilton established Grandmas House, which provided food, condoms and safe rental rooms for sex workers. Women were still disappearing when Grandmas House was raided and closed in August 2000, and Hamilton was charged with running a bawdy house. Serial killer Robert Pickton was not caught until 2002, and was convicted for the murders of 26 women; he told an undercover officer in prison that he had killed 49. In the United States, authorities have recently closed and seized the assets of MyRedBook, an advertisement and forum site for sex workers and clients. Under the guise of fighting trafficking, prostitution and money laundering, they have shuttered a website with a long history of fostering sex worker solidarity. Its a huge loss from a community standpoint, said Melissa Gira Grant, interviewed for a report published Tuesday. She recalled that the site, which started in the early 2000s, had had forums that were more active than the advertisements section. Much of the site was free to use; with its closure, sex workers with limited funds, arguably the most vulnerable, have lost an essential community resource. Law enforcement also regularly infiltrate and shut down online screening tools, routinely used in America, where clients upload proof of identity and sex workers can verify thems; dissuaded from using these tools, sex workers are left vulnerable to harm and arrest. The raid on MyRedBook is part of a wider American crackdown on sex workers, whose result may, ironically, be more migration. Its almost like breast cancer awareness in its publicity right now, says Kelly Michaels, an American specialist in tantric sex. Michaels tours to work when her children are with their father. For her, arrest could mean exposure and the loss of her children; touring can keep authorities from picking up the scent, but could equally put her at risk, as she is continually meeting new clients. The main reason I tour is law enforcement. . .to keep myself a moving target. I would love to be able to book locally and not make myself vulnerable, she says. For her, todays media furore about trafficking has proved too much. After six years as a sex worker, and a bitter fight to wrest custody from a whore-shaming ex-husband, Michaels is retiring from sex work, and is making a documentary about her attempt to follow the advice of the rescue industry, supporting her family by other means. Victor Hugo said that a writer is a world trapped in a person. The same is true of any of us. There is more to Paulas story, or to Kellys, than a body and a job. Theirs are stories of personal success. Theyre about the hope and apprehension of a new venture, the universality of domestic violence, and the ingenuity displayed in surviving it. Theyre about the joy of building a business, and the fear of its destruction through causes outside of your control. Theyre stories about finding your voice. Most of all, they are each a part of the broad, human story of uncertainty, change, and the sometimes bumpy road to building a new life. We may enter sex work out of optimism or out of desperation, and we may love our jobs or hate them. For most of us, our reasons, and our sentiments, fall somewhere in between, but all of us can fall prey to the state and the rescue industry. Capturing and labelling us, they decide our fates; they become the coercers, and can shatter lives. Let our society set them aside, together with the trafficking myth; let sex workers take the lead in debates about our lives and work. We are coming out of the shadows, and demanding our freedom to work, organise, and fight. With that freedom, sex workers ourselves will end coercion in our trade, and we will take our rightful place in the struggle to end it everywhere. http://www.newstatesman.com/economics/2014/07/sex-work-work-exploding-sex-trafficking-myth