Dances with Republicans: Tucker Carlson strutted his stuff on Dancing With The Stars and showed off how he couldn’t dance a whit. Tucker got the boot, which didn’t surprise anyone. Jay Leno showed clips of the guy who danced with two right feet (Not left feet, because, you know, he’s a rightist Conservative - Hey, that’s Leno’s joke, not mine… So in the middle of the monologue out pops Tucker showing off that he’s a good sport about all the ribbing he’s been given over his quick and merciful boot from the dancing show.

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Loneygirl15, the star of YouTube and the main actress in the largest online hoax to date also appeared on the Leno show after the first commercial break. True enough, she confessed that she wasn’t Bree online, but was actually named Jessica. She wasn’t 16 years old, but 19. And, she confessed, she wasn’t from California, but a native New Zealander. Finally, she confessed after her online videos, she wasn’t so “Lonely” anymore. Yes, she said, she has a new boyfriend. “Who is it?” asked Jay.

From backstage comes Tucker Carlson, her new “beau”, and the two of them danced around a bit together in a weird way (he still can’t dance) before they both left. Hey, I thought it was cute!

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Survivor’s first ep: On a show where they divided up by race, the first person booted off because of gender issues.

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Long live the internet tubes! I’m doing a bit of a happy dance because Clear Channel is suffering. I never cared about Clear Channel until they started buying up every radio station they could in my local market, and most likely your local market, too. One of their tricks was to buy up both competeing AM talk radio stations, virtually eliminating competition.

Here’s a NYTimes article describing how Clear Channel has lost their audience because too many people gave up on radio for their Ipod.

Essentially, drivetime still has listeners, but past that, forget radio as a source of entertainment. Over the last ten years, radio’s audience has shrunken by 14 percent, and:

Over the last three years, the stocks of the five largest publicly traded radio companies are down between 30 percent and 60 percent as investors wonder when the industry will bottom out.

Clear Channel is apparently considering selling a portion of their 1,200 radio stations.

I couldn’t be happier.

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Here in Texas, there’s four-way race for Governor. (Not including the Libertarian Party)

This means only one thing: One hell of a lot of political commercials. While the Democrat is keeping his political powder dry, the other three have come out swinging. These early commercials are all great brochures, so to date there’s been no active mud slinging. Yet.

Kinky Friedman wants to legalize pot. Oh, I love this campaign already!

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J.K.Rowling’s handwritten manuscript was nearly confiscated as a security threat when she tried to fly home to London recently.

Apparently, wizards can work magic from the pages of a fictional book.

In other news, loose paper can somehow be fashioned into a lethal weapon.

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I decided not to post this yesterday, thinking it wasn’t confirmed, but since then everyone else has run with it.

Tom Cruise played slap and tickle with a gay prostitute. [Book chapter and MSNBC News]

I think most of us saw this (revelation) coming. Thing is Tom’s lawyers have known about this allegation for a while now. (Read the chapter to learn how) There’s more involved in this, so I’ll just mention this for now and probably pick back up on it later.

In other news, the fake Suri Cruise golden poop was purchased by that online casino that buys up all of Britney Spears’ used chewing gum and that grilled cheese sandwhich with the image of some Christian deity on one side. With the addition of Suri Cruise’s golden poop, they now have the biggest collection of shit I know…

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The “third person” in the room where Anna Nicole Smith’s son died in has been identified. It was Anna Nicole’s lawyer. No wonder he wasn’t identified for a few days. Lawyers. You can’t see their reflections in mirrors, ya know.

Anna Nicole was so devastated by her son’s death, she suffered a temporary memory loss allowing her to conveniently forget exactly what was going on around her. So, pretty much exactly her life to date.

So, if it wasn’t the lawyer, (because, you know, lawyers are innocent of everything) and it wasn’t Anna Nicole, I now blame the death on Anna Nicole’s baby. I don’t know how that little infant did it, but I figure it has something to do infant formula spiked with high levels of Trimspa.

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NPR has a piece about the director of the French Connection, William Friedkin. Much of the audio interview has to do with the operas (yes, operas) he’s directing now, but the car chase scene in the French Connection - officials in New York City wouldn’t let him do the chase scene. Friedkin wanted his chase scene be different from Bullit where a car chased another car on the streets of San Francisco, streets that were empty of people. As you know, the car chases an elevated subway train, and there’s people on the street. Do you know what it took to convince officials to okay shooting that chase?

It’s called bribery. [NPR with link to the audio]

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POP Candy interviews Lukas, the survivor of Rockstar: SuperNOTva. Prolly the least interesting interview you’ll ever not bother reading. (No offense, Whitney!)

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The debate about presenting a Photo ID when you vote does seem to be raging, as pointed out by commenter Ted. Being in Texas for every election since I was 18, I had no idea you could vote in other states without proving who you are.

Here’s one example of one side of the argument from Arizona:

The official, Leonard Gorman, said many Navajo who devote their lives to herding sheep in remote areas cannot fulfill the new requirements because they do not drive, do not have mailboxes or even electricity or plumbing to generate utility bills that are accepted as alternative forms of identification under the new state law.

“This is very burdensome to the elders,” he told U.S. District Court Judge Roslyn Silver.

I’m sorry. If you’re an old coot who lives off the grid, why get on the grid just to vote? Tell you what: have someone with an ID vouch for the codger, and stick his pinky in purple ink… I don’t know, it just doesn’t make sense to allow anyone to vote anywhere they please. This isn’t just about presidential elections, it’s about local elections too. I’ve clerked a few elections, and there are ways of dealing with people who’ve moved.

I’ve got no punchline on this. I’m just saying this isn’t a conservative viewpoint. If I wanted someone on a local water board elected, I could just round up a few busloads of college age students and bus them over to a district they don’t live in and have ‘em vote without presenting IDs. You could win any local election by fraud quite easily… and if I can come up with that idea, others probably already have.

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Daily Lit will email you a (public domain) book, piece by piece. If you ever wanted Moby Dick in your inbox, now’s your chance!

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And finally — little Bindi,
Steve Irwin’s eight year old daughter, has vowed to carry on in her father’s footsteps. She’s going to finish filming “Jungle Girl” featuring herself because, you know, that’s what Dad would have wanted.

Hell, my kid’s 21 and I’m just now getting around to taking the plastic plugs out of the wall sockets.

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Have a great weekend!