Have you noticed how important the red carpet has become?
It's a stage, a gauntlet, a promised land.
The red carpet is a test of celebrity.
You haven't made it unless you can claim a red carpet pedigree.
I recently watched a documentary on Vh1 about the most stressful red moments in (recent) celebrity history.
What could be stressful about walking on a red carpet?
In some cases, the couples that were seen together there were unhappy with one another and about to break up. For them, the red carpet was like a broken heart.
Ouch.
Then there were the celebrities who arrived on the red carpet so drunk or so stoned they made fools of themselves.
Some celebrities were seen on the red carpet wearing clothing they thought was cool and sexy, but was really just goofy and stupid.
Or they had really bad haircuts.
Part of being on the red carpet is having your picture taken by hundreds of photographers, the papparazzi, who then sell those pictures to the media. There's a lot of flashing lightbulbs and yelling.
It's like the general who fought the Battle of Waterloo. Years later, when he was asked what it was like, he answered: "The noise...and the people!"
Well, he might have been describing how hard the papparazzi make life on the red carpet for our favorite celebrities.
Those guys can be mean!
But that's part of the excitement.
Some people complain that all the hooplah surrounding red carpet moments reduces celebrities to little more than fancy meat.
But a rare steak is the most festive meal of all.

Ripped from the pages of the Indianapolis Star...

Dec 28, 3:09 PM EST

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. (AP) -- Chris Klein says he won't be sending ex-fiancee Katie Holmes a gift or a congratulatory card after her baby is born.

"No, I don't think so," the 26-year-old actor told AP Radio in a recent interview.

"Her and my relationship is a time in the past. And it's a time that I'll always look back with in fondness, but her and I have moved on, and she has a separate life and I have a separate life. And it's better that we keep it that way."

Note the reference to Indianapolis in paragraph 3 of this article from the New York Times...as Nixon discovered, nothing contributes to celebrity like an enemies list!

After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, John Ashcroft, who was then attorney general, loosened restrictions on the F.B.I.'s investigative powers, giving the bureau greater ability to visit and monitor Web sites, mosques and other public entities in developing terrorism leads. The bureau has used that authority to investigate not only groups with suspected ties to foreign terrorists, but also protest groups suspected of having links to violent or disruptive activities.

But the documents, coming after the Bush administration's confirmation that President Bush had authorized some spying without warrants in fighting terrorism, prompted charges from civil rights advocates that the government had improperly blurred the line between terrorism and acts of civil disobedience and lawful protest.

One F.B.I. document indicates that agents in Indianapolis planned to conduct surveillance as part of a "Vegan Community Project." Another document talks of the Catholic Workers group's "semi-communistic ideology." A third indicates the bureau's interest in determining the location of a protest over llama fur planned by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

The documents, provided to The New York Times over the past week, came as part of a series of Freedom of Information Act lawsuits brought by the American Civil Liberties Union. For more than a year, the A.C.L.U. has been seeking access to information in F.B.I. files on about 150 protest and social groups that it says may have been improperly monitored.

The F.B.I. had previously turned over a small number of documents on antiwar groups, showing the agency's interest in investigating possible anarchist or violent links in connection with antiwar protests and demonstrations in advance of the 2004 political conventions. And earlier this month, the A.C.L.U.'s Colorado chapter released similar documents involving, among other things, people protesting logging practices at a lumber industry gathering in 2002.

The latest batch of documents, parts of which the A.C.L.U. plans to release publicly on Tuesday, totals more than 2,300 pages and centers on references in internal files to a handful of groups, including PETA, the environmental group Greenpeace and the Catholic Workers group, which promotes antipoverty efforts and social causes.

Many of the investigative documents turned over by the bureau are heavily edited, making it difficult or impossible to determine the full context of the references and why the F.B.I. may have been discussing events like a PETA protest. F.B.I. officials say many of the references may be much more benign than they seem to civil rights advocates, adding that the documents offer an incomplete and sometimes misleading snapshot of the bureau's activities.

"Just being referenced in an F.B.I. file is not tantamount to being the subject of an investigation," said John Miller, a spokesman for the bureau.

"The F.B.I. does not target individuals or organizations for investigation based on their political beliefs," Mr. Miller said. "Everything we do is carefully promulgated by federal law, Justice Department guidelines and the F.B.I.'s own rules."

A.C.L.U officials said the latest batch of documents released by the F.B.I. indicated the agency's interest in a broader array of activist and protest groups than they had previously thought. In light of other recent disclosures about domestic surveillance activities by the National Security Agency and military intelligence units, the A.C.L.U. said the documents reflected a pattern of overreaching by the Bush administration.

"It's clear that this administration has engaged every possible agency, from the Pentagon to N.S.A. to the F.B.I., to engage in spying on Americans," said Ann Beeson, associate legal director for the A.C.L.U.

"You look at these documents," Ms. Beeson said, "and you think, wow, we have really returned to the days of J. Edgar Hoover, when you see in F.B.I. files that they're talking about a group like the Catholic Workers league as having a communist ideology."

The documents indicate that in some cases, the F.B.I. has used employees, interns and other confidential informants within groups like PETA and Greenpeace to develop leads on potential criminal activity and has downloaded material from the groups' Web sites, in addition to monitoring their protests.

In the case of Greenpeace, which is known for highly publicized acts of civil disobedience like the boarding of cargo ships to unfurl protest banners, the files indicate that the F.B.I. investigated possible financial ties between its members and militant groups like the Earth Liberation Front and the Animal Liberation Front.

These networks, which have no declared leaders and are only loosely organized, have been described by the F.B.I. in Congressional testimony as "extremist special interest groups" whose cells engage in violent or other illegal acts, making them "a serious domestic terrorist threat."

In testimony last year, John E. Lewis, deputy assistant director of the counterterrorism division, said the F.B.I. estimated that in the past 10 years such groups had engaged in more than 1,000 criminal acts causing more than $100 million in damage.

When the F.B.I. investigates evidence of possible violence or criminal disruptions at protests and other events, those investigations are routinely handled by agents within the bureau's counterterrorism division.

But the groups mentioned in the newly disclosed F.B.I. files questioned both the propriety of characterizing such investigations as related to "terrorism" and the necessity of diverting counterterrorism personnel from more pressing investigations.

"The fact that we're even mentioned in the F.B.I. files in connection with terrorism is really troubling," said Tom Wetterer, general counsel for Greenpeace. "There's no property damage or physical injury caused in our activities, and under any definition of terrorism, we'd take issue with that."

Jeff Kerr, general counsel for PETA, rejected the suggestion in some F.B.I. files that the animal rights group had financial ties to militant groups, and said he, too, was troubled by his group's inclusion in the files.

"It's shocking and it's outrageous," Mr. Kerr said. "And to me, it's an abuse of power by the F.B.I. when groups like Greenpeace and PETA are basically being punished for their social activism."

Executives in charge of the Indianapolis BioCrossroads initiative have announced a new strategy they believe will put the high tech venture on the map.
"Forget about cures for cancer and alternative energy sources," giggled BioCrossroads spokesman Barry Muff, "we know what Indianapolis really needs: celebrities."
Engineers will clone celebrities so that Indianapolis can claim its own crop of famous faces. "Of course," said Muff, "that's all they will be -- famous faces, I mean -- but we believe that in a celebrity culture like ours, that's more than half the battle."
Dubbed the Glittering Prizes Project (GPP) by the BioCrossroads board, the program aims to clone at least a half dozen celebrities in the next year, all of whom will take up residence in Indianapolis. At yesterday's press conference, clones of Morgan Fairchild and George Hamilton were introduced to reporters. Both clones appeared to be appropriately self-absorbed and self-deprecating.
Once they left the stage, though, spokesman Muff was confronted with a barrage of questions regarding how it was that researchers had come to select those particular celebrities as prototypes.
"Is it the intention of BioCrossroads to turn Indianapolis into an Old Navy commercial?" asked one correspondent.
"Where are the artists?" asked another. "You know, like Peter Jackson. Or Bono."
Muff conceded that the BioCrossroads team may have betrayed too narrow a view of celebrity as they pursued their work. This, he said, would be corrected. In the next few weeks, the Mayor's office will be using its One Book, One City selection process a a model for soliciting the names of celebrities to be cloned. "We're confident that in this way Indianapolis will be able to take its place among the glittering cities of the world," said Muff.

So Saddam likes Kit Kat candybars, eh?

From ABC News:

Sources tell ABC that the CIA's secret prisons have existed since March 2002 when one was established in Thailand to house the first important al Qaeda target captured. Sources tell ABC that the approval for another secret prison was granted last year by a North African nation.

Sources tell ABC News that the CIA has a related system of secretly returning other prisoners to their home country when they have outlived their usefulness to the United States.

These same sources also tell ABC News that U.S. intelligence also ships some "unlawful combatants" to countries that use interrogation techniques harsher than any authorized for use by U.S. intelligence officers. They say that Jordan, Syria, Morocco and Egypt were among the nations used in order to extract confessions quickly using techniques harsher than those authorized for use by U.S. intelligence officers. These prisoners were not necessarily citizens of those nations.

According to sources directly involved in setting up the CIA secret prison system, it began with the capture of Abu Zabayda in Pakistan. After treatment there for gunshot wounds, he was whisked by the CIA to Thailand where he was housed in a small disused warehouse on an active airbase. There, his cell was kept under 24-hour closed circuit TV surveillance and his life-threatening wounds were tended to by a CIA doctor especially sent from Langley headquarters to assure Abu Zubaydah was given proper care, sources said. Once healthy, he was slapped, grabbed, made to stand long hours in a cold cell and finally handcuffed and strapped feet up to a water board until after .31 seconds he begged for mercy and began to cooperate.

While in the secret facilities in Eastern Europe, Abu Zubaydah and his fellow captives were fed breakfasts that included yogurt and fruit, lunches that included steamed vegetables and beans, and dinners that included meat or chicken and more vegetables and rice, sources say. In exchange for cooperation, prisoners were sometimes given hard candies, deserts and chocolates. Abu Zubaydah was partial to Kit Kats, the same treat Saddam Hussein fancied in his captivity.

"One of the difficult issues in this new kind of conflict is what to do with captured individuals who we know or believe to be terrorists," Rice said. "The individuals come from many countries and are often captured far from their original homes. Among them are those who are effectively stateless, owing allegiance only to the extremist cause of transnational terrorism. Many are extremely dangerous. And some have information that may save lives, perhaps even thousands of lives."

Sources tell ABC News that Jordanians, Egyptians, Moroccans, Tunisians, Algerians, Saudis, Pakistanis, Uzbekistanis and Chinese citizens have been returned to their nations' intelligence services after initial debriefing by U.S. intelligence officers. Rice said renditions such as these are vital to the war on terror. "Rendition is a vital tool in combating transnational terrorism," she said.

Of the 12 high value targets housed by the CIA, only one did not require water boarding before he talked. Ramzi bin al-Shibh broke down in tears after he was walked past the cell of Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the operational planner for Sept. 11. Visibly shaken, he started to cry and became as cooperative as if he had been tied down to a water board, sources said.

--     By Brian Ross and Richard Esposito
    ABC News

Monday 05 December 2005

Tookie Williams found himself on the wrong side of a celebrity mismatch yesterday. Now Tookie, alleged to have been one of the founders of the notorious street gang, the Crips, is taking the Big Sleep.
But that's what happens when a C-list actor goes up against a megawatt, if fading, star.
Whoever thought of sending Mike Farrell up against Arnold "The Terminator" Schwarzenegger did not have Tookie Williams' best interests at heart. I mean, really: the last time I saw Mike Farrell was at 1:00 am on the Oxygen Channel. Sheesh.
Tookie needed more air than that.

There's a poem here, I think:

Gary Glitter found in bed with girl,
11 year-old girl, that is
in Vung Tau, a town in Vietnam
where Glitter has been living
(after being kicked out of Thailand)
and has applied for citizenship,
apparently before learning that in Vietnam
the penalty for raping a minor
is death by firing squad;
No wonder he claims
the girl told him she was afraid
of ghosts

Ideas* That Stick! is a book that consists of 222 (not 221 or 223) "ingenious, creative, practical and simply preposterous ways of using Post-It notes."
So people stick Post-It notes on the plants in their gardens, in their closets, on their furniture and, for all I know, their body parts.
But I don't know this for sure -- you see I haven't "read" Ideas That Stick!
How can I?
Jessica and Nick are on-again.
Or are they?

Have you thought about which celebrities would make your holiday season perfect this year? Who would you like to find under your tree?
The spawn of Ben and Jen?
Or maybe Bill Clinton, fortified with a fresh pack of anti-depressants from his friendly pharamcist.
Terrel Owens will have time on his hands.
A world this rich with personalities is practically paralyzing!

Note to self: ponder over weekend: Who IS the bigger celebrity? David Letterman or Oprah Winfrey?

We're worried about Jennifer Aniston. What was she thinking?! Joy riding with Vince Vaughn in Arizona -- Vaughn pulled over by the cops after showing signs of erratic behavior. So he passed the drunk test. So what? Earth to Jennifer: you're on the rebound. Be careful. Move to Indianapolis.