Just what it says, 10ZenMonkeys‘ list of the very worst video blogs of the year, which I think I stole from BoingBoing but I don’t remember because hey, it’s the holidays and I’m wasted on strong tea and cold medicine.
I’d have left Ze Frank off the list(see comments below), because I’m a big mean nasty snarker myself and I support and appreciate that, but to each his/her own. On some of these, we are as of one mind. I know Border Collies with four or five times the qualifications of Amanda Congdon. But the Dogs Barking in Cars vlog is amusing, although one example would more than suffice, ya’d think.
Amanda Congdon’s new show is the equivalent of deciding that Lite Beer isn’t bland enough, and asking for a LITE lite beer. Is it unfair to compare Amanda Congdon’s new video blog to footage of dogs barking in cars? No — because I hate it that much.
See below: this one is FIVE times as qualified as she is!
Not even Gerald Ford, the unhappy ex-president who pardoned Nixon and kept him out of prison, was immune to the evil fallout. Ford, who believes strongly in Heaven and Hell, has told more than one of his celebrity golf partners that “I know I will go to hell, because I pardoned Richard Nixon…”
Let us not pretend we didn’t see the end coming. We always knew Ford‘s death would be heralded by strange portents (thanks to Miss Cellania for portent-link) and wreathed in paradox and mystery.
By J.Y. Smith and Lou Cannon
Special to The Washington Post
Wednesday, December 27, 2006; 10:18 AM
Gerald Rudolph Ford Jr., 93, who became the 38th president of the United States as a result of some of the most extraordinary events in U.S. history and sought to restore the nation’s confidence in the basic institutions of government, has died. His wife, Betty, reported the death in a statement last night.
“My family joins me in sharing the difficult news that Gerald Ford, our beloved husband, father, grandfather and great grandfather has passed away at 93 years of age,” Betty Ford said in a brief statement issued from her husband’s office in Rancho Mirage, Calif. “His life was filled with love of God, his family and his country.”
Ford died at 6:45 p.m. Tuesday (PST) at his home in Rancho Mirage, about 130 miles east of Los Angeles, his office said. No cause of death was given. Ford had battled pneumonia in January and underwent two heart treatments — including an angioplasty — in August at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester…
J.Y. Smith, a former obituary editor of The Washington Post, died in January.
Talk about hardcore! James Brown, the legendary entertainer, addict, and hardest-working man in show business, has been dead for three days and he’s still touring. Not only is he Doin’ it to Death, he’s Doin’ it In Spite of Death. Lying in state at the James Brown arena in Augusta, Georgia (playing to a capacity crowd), touring New York City by horsedrawn carriage, or receiving the adoration of thousands at the historic Apollo Theatre in Harlem, Brown hasn’t been this popular since he was pulling stickups back in Augusta. And thanks to Defamer for the news that there’s a … er … um … livecam outside the theatre.
…by 1962 Brown was breaking box office records in major black venues throughout the US with a whirlwind revue of his own creation that synthesised all of his roots into a shockingly unique new persona. Live at the Apollo, the resulting LP recorded at the top New York venue, smashed him into the face of white recognition.
What followed did not go according to anybody’s plan. Brown formed his own independent company, Fair Deal Productions, and rebuilt his band into a sizeable orchestra with the intention of crossing the tracks at Tuxedo Junction. The prevailing social climate in the US, Brown‘s responses to the situation, and the fact that his new recruits were mostly restless young jazzers, sparked them all off into uncharted territory. It was Out of Sight, Papa Got a Brand New Bag. A Man’s World bathed in Cold Sweat. He Said it Loud, was Black and Proud and danced the Popcorn. In a New Day it was Funky Now. He was Super Bad, a Sex Machine with Soul Power. He had his Thang and Papa Didn’t Take No Mess, he demanded Payback. This litany of just a few of his more familiar titles does little justice to the underlying tour de force, involving three effectively different bands over 10 years, that changed the direction of black American music.
By 1975, James Brown was showing the first signs of insecurity since the 1950s. In the charts he was being outflanked by many of the younger acts he had inspired, he was on shaky ground with his record company, Polydor (a dispassionate international corporation, unlike the seat-of-the-pants operation with which he had grown strong), some of his leading musicians left him, and the Internal Revenue Service was on his case.
It was then that he apparently began smoking something rather more confusing than the occasional menthol…
To say the least. But, like Frosty the Snowman‘s very special hat, there must have been some magic or at the very least, preservatives, in the toxic miasma in which Brown marinaded his lungs, for when he keeled over from his penultimate heart attack, he didn’t cease to bop around. He hosted a Christmas toy giveaway the day the day he was admitted to the hospital, and has appeared before tens of thousands of people in the days since.
raincoaster 