Disappearance Fees might be better...

Appearance fees are what celebrities -- TV, movies, sports -- charge to show up at an event. In addition to the cash payment, all expenses are usually included for the celebrity and his or her entourage. That's right, a big chunk of what you gave at that charity event might end up in the Louis Vuitton purse of Paris Hilton.

Speaking of Paris, she was recently paid $225K and $1.1 million to show up at two different charity events. I've read that she charges $40,000 to attend a restaurant or club opening in LA.

Tiger Woods was reportedly paid a $2.5-million appearance fee to participate in the SAP Open in Heidelberg, Germany. His total appearance fees for a year are said to be above $10 million.

Britney Spears, party at a Las Vegas club, $400K.

Baltimore Ravens cheerleaders, $100 to $175 per cheerleader, per hour.

Well, you get the idea.

If you're interested in having a celebrity at your next backyard barbecue or birthday party, here's a site that has lots of B and C-List celebrities available -- or Rooty and I will show up for cab fare and free cake.

Just when you thought it could not get any wierder...

PUEBLO, Colorado -- Three people were arrested on charges of trading a 5-month-old baby boy for a used Dodge Intrepid and cash. Full story from CNN

Odd what you think of late at night....

There was a TV show called Two Guys and a Girl and a Pizza Place, which was eventually shortened to Two Guys and a Girl, that one of the cable channels used to show reruns of at night. This is my favorite quote from the show:

Ashley: What am I doing here?
Sharon: According to the Bible, to balance out "good."

We have been over this before...

Never let Ozzy Osbourne pick out your prom corsage!

And now for our David Beckham pixs of the week...

Getting ready for LA.

Manly man victory lap!

So many possibilities:
"Lose the t-shirt loser"
"You, me, Posh, how 'bout it?"
"I could explain metrosexual to you over dinner."

My keyring has gone completely out of control...

What are these things, A, B, C, and D?
Any guesses?
One is easy, one is hard.

Do they just not have Great Clips in England?

How about a drunken Irishman, me not care...

Giving into pressure from the NCAA, the University of Illinois retired Chief Illiniwek last night. The school's official mascot will no longer be the school's official mascot at sporting events and other activities.

In related news, the State of Indiana will henceforth be known as Bob,
Indianola, Iowa will be know as Bob, Iowa,
and paratroopers will yell Bob when they jump out of planes.

If Bob does not object, these changes will take effect immediately.

What is it?

It's in my house.
It's not an Indian attack.

So many possible puns

I was asked in an email why I had not commented on Daniel Radcliffe (17), aka boy-wizard Harry Potter, appearing naked on-stage in Equus. The late-night talk show hosts have done so many jokes there seemed to be little to add.

Dan does seem like a hairy lad for being only 17 (publicity photos showing everything but his winkie have been published by the producers -- they have only done two un-dressed rehearsals so no Photoshop-free nude pixs have circulated -- expect a flood of those when he turns 18 in a few weeks).

He also seems very short to me for the part (5' 5 1/2") -- I read that there are going to be real horses on stage, presumably not Clydesdales, but maybe he can act taller. In the original staging of the play in London and New York, actors played the horses (also see below). [In the original stage version, some of the audience sat on the stage. The actors also sat on the stage during scenes in which they did not appear. Which means that as an audience member you might have been sitting on-stage between a naked Peter Firth and a guy in a horse suit. This mix of audience and cast members is still how the play is usually staged.]

The movie version is very good, but very intense. Unless it has been edited out, there is probably about 10 minutes total of nudity. It's rated R.

Note: Equus was a shocker when first produced on stage and film because of the male nudity. It then fell into 30 years of disfavor -- it is a difficult play to stage and is very, very wordy. It has recently become a favorite of college theaters and east and west coast off-Broadway theaters -- often with a minor celebrity playing the naked boy. In most recent presentations, however, the horse suits are gone and what you usually have are six very muscular actors playing the horses with little or no costume. This has changed the play, in my opinion, from one about animal sexual-eroticism to one more purely about homosexual-ism (naked guy rides naked guys pretending to be horses). Therefore, in my opinion, the words being said no longer seem to make sense with what you see, and there are a lot of words.

One more of me favorite thing

Another music video courtesy of American soldiers.
Have a great President's Day weekend!

A bullet done dodged

In 1950, the FCC adopted the CBS color TV system as our national standard. It was a mechanical contraption with a big spinning color wheel -- beams directed through the color wheel produced a color image on the screen.

The production of color TV was postponed by the government, however, because of the Korean War. During that break, everyone realized that the RCA/NBC non-spinning-wheel color system was superior and that became the national standard.

Yep, that's about right...

The worst Valentine's date ever!

It's time for this bit of religious zeal again...

Some Russians observe The Epiphany by swimming in icy water -- this video is from St. Petersburg.

Perhaps we could sell advertising space on our $30 billion 700 mile-long fence

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Bank of America has begun offering credit cards to illegal immigrants, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday.

The new Bank of America card is open to people who lack both a Social Security number and a credit history, as long as they have held a checking account with the bank for three months without an overdraft, the Journal said.

In recent years, banks across the country have been offering checking accounts and even mortgages to the nation's fast-growing ranks of undocumented immigrants, most of whom are Hispanic, the paper said, adding these immigrants generally have not been able to get major credit cards.

Yet once again, I would like my school taxes refunded...

My guess is they mean confiscated, which is still pretty funny.

Please note: Blogger is not posting all of your comments, and most of my reply comments, but I am still receiving all of the email copies.

I'll copy and post all of the missing comments this week.

There may be many more but...

Pacific, Missouri, is the only city or town that I know of where the freeway exit number (257) is the same as the telephone exchange (257).

Random Mark Twain Quotes

Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.

Denial ain't just a river in Egypt.

Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example.

Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company.

In the first place, God made idiots. That was for practice. Then he made school boards.

Golf is a good walk spoiled.

It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native criminal class except Congress.

I admire him [Cecil Phodes], I frankly confess it; and when his time comes I shall buy a piece of the rope for a keepsake.

Awash in booze

The small town in Missouri that I grew up in was, at that time, very small and isolated. The bus that traveled daily to St. Louis was actually a foot wider than the highway lane that it traveled in to reach US 66.

There were 4,500 people then.

There were also public 17 bars that I can recall. Real bars, with a bar and a few tables or booths, populated by factory workers and the occasional farmer.

There were two bowling alleys, including one in the Catholic high school, each of which had a public bar (later cocktail areas).

There were, and still are, the VFW, the American Legion, the Knights of Columbus, the Elks, and the Hummingbird Club. Each had and still has a private bar.

There were two liquor stores plus one grocery store that sold hard liquor. That grocery story also sold beer, as did five other grocery stores.

There were two restaurants, one of which served mixed drinks. The other was too close to the Catholic Church to get a liquor license -- how's that for irony?

At least they got the date correct

I checked the local weather forecast at 2:30 AM this morning (Wednesday). The forecast was for two inches of snow.

And what was today's actual weather : 60 degrees and not a cloud in the sky.

Pick which scares you the most

(1) Carrot Top's father was a rocket scientist who trained astronauts for the Gemini and Apollo programs.

(2) Carrot Top took up serious bodybuilding in 2001. He'll be 42 this month.

This is so sad, and maybe just a little funny:

St. Louis, Monday, February 5, 2007

Four St. Louis firefighters were treated for smoke inhalation at a local hospital after their fire truck caught fire inside their fire house.

Since the all firefighting equipment was on the, you know, burning fire truck, the firefighters had to use fire extinguishers and a garden hose to put out the flames.

The four firemen suffered smoke inhalation because, you know, their breathing equipment was also on the burning truck.

The firehouse itself wasn't damaged and a replacement fire truck is on call.

Dun did no good

Moni suggested in a comment to a recent post that I should submit a picture of a pretty gazebo to the Lake Board.

The photo above is the same photo that was included with my original application to the Board (along with a site plan). It is the actual gazebo that I planned to have constructed since the photo is from the web page of the company from which I was going to order the pre-assembled kit.

Oddly enough, the setting is almost exactly the same since the gazebo would have been on my vacant lot, which has about the same arrangement of trees. The distance from the lake, and the height above the lake, are also almost exactly the same. The only difference is that the lake is wider than what appears in the photo to be a river.

That's what they turned down.

And, yes, I'm filing suit.

"The Day the Music Died"

Buddy Holly (Peggy Sue)
Ritchie Valens (La Bamba)
and
The Big Bopper (Chantilly Lace)
died in a plane crash on
February 3, 1959.

Have we just not seen this enoungh?

It comes in at least three or four emails a day, the very same picture. It's like the first Godfather movie, everyone on the planet has seen it two hundred times!

ps. If you have to take both Viagra and Cialis, perhaps your condition is not something mere pills can correct.

Thank haven!

I am so tired of the locals who don't keep their apples clean.