Whoa! Who Turned Out The Lights?

Rance seems to have turned off comments for now - yikes, maybe it's for the best. The current "guest blogger" post's comments count got up to almost 400.

Still anxiously awaiting the debut of my guest blog entry - I'm apparently next up, with Mrs Norman Maine.

Predictions II

The Ocean's Twelve cast attended the Grand Prix in Monaco and filmed some racing.

Maybe a racing reference will crop up on Rance, maybe not. At least one other comment-poster wants to know if "Rance" has ever seen an F1 race.

Holland: "Call Me Ishmael"

Yahoo! News - New Opera Based on 'Moby Dick' Debuts

Coincidence? Rance recently posted:

Friday, 28 May 2004
Postcard from the Indian Ocean
I’m posting from several hundred leagues south of nowhere. The whaling ship on which I’ve been serving as second mate was pulled over by police, who informed us that it’s illegal to whale. We anchored at a small island where I read an article about this blog, of all things, while turning to the local newspaper’s Help Wanteds in hope of finding another berth (How rumors started that I was an actor--and A-List no less--I have no idea; didn’t my parents tell you, before I went to sea, that I was a high school failure?). I’m posting now from a black and white computer powered by an old mule on a treadmill. Having checked the blog, I see that a good measure of hell’s broken loose while I’ve been away. I’ll address some of that hell in the Administrative Notes section at the end of this entry--unless the poor mule expires before I get there. But first, the text of the postcard I’d prepared for you...

Ocean's Twelve is filming in Holland (actually almost done now).

It's posssible, I suppose, that there is some faint link - whaling opera in Holland, main suspect is in Holland, "Rance" suddenly goes whaling? Maybe. Only if "Call Me Ishmael" got a lot of local press in English. Unlikely. Still, it's a funny happenstance.

So Much Freudian Oddness...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A handgun that Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) was clutching when
U.S. forces captured him in a hole in Iraq (news - web sites) last December is now kept by
President George W. Bush (news - web sites) at the White House, a spokesman has confirmed. Time
magazine, which first disclosed the gun's location, said on Sunday military
officials had it mounted after it was seized from Saddam near his hometown of
Tikrit last year, and soldiers involved in the capture gave it to Bush.

...so little time.

Buffyologists. Heh.

Yahoo! News - Scholars Lecture on 'Buffy' Show

bio

Hollywood.com Celebrity Biography - George Clooney

Twentieth Century Fox

"The film-making duo have already put their method into practice - they used the money from blockbuster OCEAN'S ELEVEN to pay for last year's (02) flop SOLARIS, and now they're set to do it again."

Solaris is a Twentieth Century Fox picture. An interesting, risky project, it was
not a big success and the studio didn't support it.

Who is Rance: My Predictions

I think Rance is someone who really is famous, and not a hairy patri-matrilocal
basement dweller (or an embittered, anti-depressant munching PA).

I think Rance is very intelligent, impatient
with studio yes-men, and willing to get in and do things
himself rather than leave it to someone else.

I think Rance is someone who has a quick wit and a temper to match.
Someone with a chronic health problem that requires a lot
of medication to control. Someone with writing and production
credits (hence the impatience with yes-men and studios in general).

I think Rance is someone who has had dealings with Fox, and not in a good
way. Someone who's had rumbles with gossip mavens and papparatchniks.
Someone who's politics are left of center, but who can't afford to be
identified with "the Hollywood Left," such as Babs and so on - not just be
cause they're liberals, but because some of them are rather silly. Rance is
more of a two-fisted populist with a well-developed sense of right, wrong, and outrage, politically speaking. Someone with a rep for being "difficult," but only fools think that, because this is someone who doesn't suffer fools gladly. However, it's someone who was raised right and has good manners and old-fashioned courtesy.
Someone with family ties to "Old Hollywood."

I think Rance is male. I think it's possible that his nick is is a pun on "rants" and Rance Howard, a journeyman actor (father of Clint and Ron). I don't think Rance is Clint or Ron, though. Too obvious, if my guess is right on the derivation of Rance's nick. But if I'm right, it's because Rance Howard is a "That Guy" kind of actor, who never achieved white-hot fame, but who has been working for a long time (50 years?), and our Rance admires and maybe envies that kind of career.

I think Rance has at least one pet project in development hell.
I think he has a lot of unexpressed anger, or is at least highly frustrated by the
way things are done "in this town." I think that's why he originally started his blog - to get his rants off - but he can't really talk about the things that piss him off most deeply, because they might be too easily connected to his real identity.

The heat is on - the various forms of media are in the hunt.

BoingBoing, tipped off by a Hollywood insider, wondered if he was Owen Wilson
Several magazines, including Woman's Day, recently published speculations.
And now it's hit the Reuters/Yahoo RSS feed (as of 27MAY)

Holy crap. This came out just as I was writing this entry up - I was going to add a bunch of links.

I think the game is almost over. I hope I'm wrong about that.

For what it's worth, I think Rance is George Clooney.

The New York Times | National | Conservative Group Amplifies Voice of Protestant Orthodoxy

"As Presbyterians prepare to gather for their General Assembly in Richmond, Va., next month, a band of determined conservatives is advancing a plan to split the church along liberal and orthodox lines. Another divorce proposal shook the United Methodist convention in Pittsburgh earlier this month, while conservative Episcopalians have already broken away to form a dissident network of their own.
Advertisement

In each denomination, the flashpoint is homosexuality, but there is another common denominator as well. In each case, the Institute on Religion and Democracy, a small organization based in Washington, has helped incubate traditionalist insurrections against the liberal politics of the denomination's leaders.
With financing from a handful of conservative donors, including the Scaife family foundations, the Bradley and Olin Foundations and Howard and Roberta Ahmanson's Fieldstead & Company, the 23-year-old institute is now playing a pivotal role in the biggest battle over the future of American Protestantism since churches split over slavery at the time of the Civil War." - The New York Times

Who are these people, and why do they think they're in the majority and think we should leave our churches?

Yahoo! News - Bush to Outline 'Clear Strategy' for Iraq Monday

President Bush (news - web sites) will outline
what the White House called a "clear strategy" for Iraq (news - web sites) on
Monday night in a speech aiming to convince Americans he is in
command of the situation.

Uh huh. Well. Just remember - on June 30th, "we're not at home to Mr Cockup."

Sheet Music Minus the Sheets

: "Mr. Garson was carrying his music in digital form, scanned into his MusicPad Pro Plus, a five-pound tablet computer made by a company called Freehand Systems. The $1,200 device, with a 12-inch liquid-crystal-display touchscreen, is the first of a class of computers that enable musicians to store music and edit it onscreen. Soon it will also allow them to communicate with one another over wireless networks. "

Whoa - this probably means that within a few years, music stands at concerts will be screens that... refresh at the proper time, thus there would be no quick "flip" to the next page at the end of the measure. And it might mean that arrangers and orchestrators jobs will be digitized. Interesting.

Rallying the Troops

"The US president has paid a rare visit to Congress for closed-door talks with Republicans to try allay concern over Iraq as US elections approach.

Many in the president's party have been rattled by the unrest and the rising number of US soldiers killed in Iraq. "

Um. And they applauded? Thumbs upped? Huh?

And the following stories are from just this week alone:

KEY STORIES
• Iraqis bury victims of US strike
• Troops raid Chalabi residence
• US denies bombing wedding party
• US soldier jailed for prison abuse

We don't look so good.

The Game Is A Foot

LONDON, May 18 (Reuters) - "A lost collection of more than 3,000 items belonging to Sherlock Holmes creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle will be auctioned in London on Wednesday.

The auction takes place against the backdrop of the bizarre death of a leading Holmes expert.

Richard Lancelyn Green, a former chairman of the Sherlock Holmes Society, was found garrotted with a shoelace in his London home almost two months ago. "

That last detail is going to bother me all day.

BBC NEWS | Middle East | US troops 'abused Iraq reporters'

"The Reuters news agency says three of its local staff were subjected to sexually degrading treatment after being detained in January."

That's weird - why didn't Reuters try to break this story then? Maybe the staffers were too ashamed to say anything to anyone?

Rocket Science is for Amateurs (Again)

The first unmanned amateur rocket in space launched today. The first manned private/amateur launch is expected in a few weeks.

Gentlemen, Tighten Your Belts

The nation's largest department store chain asked workers in a May 14 memo obtained by the Tribune to minimize travel, defer training, streamline projects, eliminate off-site meetings and refrain from hiring consultants.

If one major retailer is cutting back on travel... oh, boy. Not a good trend to spot.

Colin Powell: More Evidence He's Righteous

This is pretty unbelievable. Colin Powell's press aide attempted to put an early end to the interview by suddenly moving the camera away from Powell (right after Powell addresses the torture situation and right before Russert asks a hard-hitting question about the fake nigerian yellow cake WMD evidence he cited within his U.N. speech). Powell gets her out of the way somehow, manages to get the camera pointed in the right direction, and resumes the interview. You can hear him say "Emily, get out of the way."

...from On Lisa's Radar

The play by play is even funnier. Beware, bandwidth may be limited toview the video.

Wombless Woman Considered "As Good As Dead" in Somalia

BBC NEWS | Africa | Militiamen shut Somalia hospital: "The hospital workers say that they will carry on with their strike until the militiamen are withdrawn from the building.
But the woman's family are insisting that the militiamen will continue to occupy the hospital until they are compensated for the removal of her womb.

The family is demanding 50 camels, which is the traditional Somali compensation offered for the death of a woman.

The woman's family say she is as good as dead because she can no longer bear children."

Okay, I know this is another culture. But this really bothers me. The womb equals a person? No womb, and the person is dead? The worst part is no one else can get health care because of the bizarre standoff.

Someone Hand Rummy His Hat

"NEW YORK - Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld authorized the expansion of a secret program that encouraged physical coercion and sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners to obtain intelligence about the growing insurgency in Iraq (news - web sites), The New Yorker reported Saturday.

The Defense Department strongly denied the claims made in the report, which cited unnamed current and former intelligence officials and was published on the magazine's Web site. Pentagon (news - web sites) spokesman Lawrence Di Rita issued a statement calling the claims 'outlandish, conspiratorial, and filled with error and anonymous conjecture.'
The story, written by reporter Seymour Hersh, said Rumsfeld decided to expand the program last year, broadening a Pentagon operation from the hunt for al-Qaida in Afghanistan (news - web sites) to interrogation of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad. "

Also: NPR's coverage of the prisoner abuse story up to May 7, 2004

The Mojave Phone Booth And All Its Friends: Call Now, Operators Standing By

It started as an art project. Blue spiral notebook in hand, Mark Thomas spent afternoons walking the streets of Manhattan, compiling the numbers and locations of public pay phones. He posted them on his Web site in the hope that people would call them.

'There is real beauty in whimsical acts of contact between strangers,' he explained. Soon his list expanded to include public phones at the top of the Eiffel Tower, in the basement of the Vatican, in the middle of the Mojave Desert, and at about 450,000 other places around the world.

No Flo, please, we beg of you

Arenas said one of the main qualifications for being on the show is having a personality "a watchable personality. Boring is bad in reality television."
Contestants need to be 21 years of age, in good health and have a personality "someone who America loves to watch, a legend in their own mind; controversial, argumentative," he said, rattling through adjectives.

Payback's A Bitch

The Florida official who presided over the election which handed George W Bush his presidential victory in 2000 has had a ballot of her own rejected.
Republican Congresswoman Katherine Harris admitted she forgot to sign her absentee ballot form in a local election.

Just the links, ma'am

So - might this be a quicker way to blog links on the fly?

Hmmm, could be.