Dave Letterman’s (girlfriend) is having a baby. You’d think he’d have figured out how to avoid that by now.

Democrats have been hounding Howard Dean about his remarks during a Democratic presidential debate. During the debate “Dean said an ‘enormous number’ of Israeli settlements must go to make progress in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict“ and Lieberman (who certainly can’t claim impartiality) blew a gasket “saying he was abandoning more than 50 years of bipartisan U.S. policy offering unconditional support to Israel“.

Fox News (you know, the “Fair and Balanced” guys) decided to stoke the flame a little bit by releasing a quote taken out of context. More on that at the end of this rant.

Further proof that foreigners are just not right.

This ain’t no Carrot Top. (Thank God!) Here’a Japanese TV website featuring highlights from a prop-oriented skit show. You may have seen the Matrix Pong video or the little girl with the red rubber ball before.

(requires Windows Media Palyer…I think.)

Here’s a story in the Daily Utah Chronicle (of the University of Utah) of a Ute fan who attended Yell rally previous to the TAMU v Utah game last weekend.

Then it got weird. A group of young men, wearing matching overalls, took center stage down on the sidelines as the raucous crowd suddenly hushed. The men began leading these Aggie faithful in chants, cheers and the reading of Masonic verses.

I have been a fan of Johnny Cash since I was old enough to put my dad’s 8-track tape of Orange Blossom Special in the player. I remember it was encased in orange plastic. It’s not a subtle way to get a toddler’s attention merging the color and the word and backing it up with some of the best coutry music of all time.

I always listened to the Man In Black, but in 1998 I became enamored with the music of a travelling musician who did an excellent cover of Folsom Prison Blues. Ed Hamell plays the first line of the song and brings the show to a dead stop. He does a spoken word piece about the power of this song on Johnny Cash’s live album. I can’t reproduce Ed’s schtick, but close your eyes for a moment and imagine that you are Johnny Cash, it’s the peak of your career (financially and musically speaking) and you’ve convinced your band to play live at a prison. In front of about 2000 mostly petty criminals you sing “I shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die” and the entire place goes wild.

Needless to say, Ed had me out buying Johnny Cash Live at Folsom Prison the next day.

p.s. It’s especially interesting to note that Live at Folsom was released about the same time as John Wesley Harding from Bob Dylan. 1968 was a great year for music.

Yesterday, Salon ran an interview with up-and-coming horror movie director Eli Roth about his new (to wide release, anyway) flick, “Cabin Fever.” He comes off as a total jerk, but his movie is actually really good, a “must see” if you’re into that sort of thing.

I actually saw his movie last year at the All-Night-Horror-Thon that the Alamo Draft House hosted (a true WDYLIA event — a total blast!) and it really did kick ass. (And in another WDYLIA side note, I sat next to him at last year’s Butt-Numb-A-Thon. He brought his girlfriend, Jasmine, who wore leather to an event where you sit on your ass for 24 hours, but whatever.)

I’m not what you would call a horror movie “fan,” but this movie has all of the elements of the great ones — gore, stupid teenagers, rampant sexuality, and plenty of creepy tension. For you men in the audience, both of the female leads — the sexy slut brunette AND the girl next door blond — get naked. (A fact which Eli Roth himself is awfully proud of.)

Note from Becky: If you’re on the BeckysBookClub mailing list, this is going to look awfully familiar. I think it’s probably bad form to post something 2 places, but I’m so curious about this new book that I had to get the word out. Sorry!

Just read a review on Salon for Jonathan Lethem’s new novel, “The Fortress of Solitude.” Apparently, he’s been the next big thing for a while and I totally missed the boat.

He’s written sci-fi, mysteries, westerns, and seems to have moved into a world more traditionally “literary” with this new one. Here’s the line that blew me away…

“It was entirely possible that one song could destroy your life. Yes, musical doom could fall on a lone human form and crush it like a bug. That song, that song, was sent from somewhere else to find you, to pick the scab of your whole existence. The song was your personal shitty fate, manifest as a throb of pop floating out of radios everywhere.”

I’m convinced I’m too old to feel that way about music anymore, but man.

Has anyone read any of his stuff? I’ll definetly be picking this one up.

Johnny Cash and John Ritter are dead.