15-minute countdown: Levi Johnston’s steamy video goes public

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In an attempt to hold onto whatever fame he’s acquired in the last 14 1/2 minutes, Levi Johnston is relishing his role in a steamy music video released today by R&B singer Brittani Senser (umm, who?). The video, which was cited by Bristol Palin as the straw that broke their impending nuptial’s back, features a mother trying to break up the relationship between the aforementioned Senser and Johnston’s character. Also, it suggests a not-so-cozy mother-daughter relationship.

Is it too close to Johnston’s real-life drama? Is he mocking the Palin family, as Bristol Palin stated? You be the judge.

Categories: General

Mile-high dance party: Flight attendants perform Lady Gaga

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Lady Gaga and Katy Perry have inspired a unique airline safety demo. (Getty Images)

Lady Gaga and Katy Perry have joined the mile-high club.

But not in the way you might think.

Passengers aboard a Cebu Pacific Airlines flight were treated to a unique safety demonstration as the cabin crew taught them how to use seat belts and life jackets to the tune of Lady Gaga’s “Just Dance” and Katy Perry’s “California Gurls,” the Telegraph reports.

Cebu Pacific Airlines, the largest airline in the Philippines, is known for its low-cost fares and gimmicks that have in the past include in-flight games and giveaways.

Watch the performance here:

In a statement to the Telegraph, Cebu’s Vice President of Marketing Candic Iyog said, “Cebu Pacific has always been known as a fun airline, we wanted to get the message across to our customers that flight safety doesn’t have to be boring.

“This was an experiment that we hope to repeat and also a chance to showcase the talent of some of our cabin crew staff.”

According to the Telegraph, the crew gave a normal safety demonstration before takeoff, and the plane was airborne during the Lady Gaga performance.

Categories: General, Video, Viral

Congress breaks up with Stephen Colbert

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Most of the Jon Stewart/Stephen Colbert chatter these days is about a proposed “Rally to Restore Sanity” in Washington D.C. next month — President Obama even seemed to support it yesterday.

But not everybody is jumping on the bandwagon as Politico reports on a growing uneasiness in Washington with the Comedy Central show.

POLITICO:

“Generally, our advice is always to focus on the local media requests,” said Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee spokesman Ryan Rudominer. “The only thing we would advise candidates against is inviting comedians to testify in character before their committee when they become members,” added National Republican Congressional Committee spokesman Andy Sere. (read more)

The comedian’s recent appearance — in character — before a House judiciary subcommittee rubbed many the wrong way:

The reaction to Colbert’s appearance has been largely negative—just as it was when he spoke to the White House Correspondents’ dinner. Washington does not like this character who captures the city so well—at least not in person. (American Progress)

But it’s not just that his act hits a little too close to home, one former Capitol Hill staffer goes a little further in an interview with Politico:

“My experience with that show is like herpes. It never goes away, and it itches and sometimes flares up,” said a former aide to Rep. Lynn Westmoreland, after his boss appeared on the show in 2006.

The conservative Georgia Republican, co-sponsor of a bill requiring that the Ten Commandments be displayed in Congress, was skewered by Colbert in a segment of “Better Know a District” for appearing to be able to name only three of the commandments.

So yeah, that nagging itchiness? It might be Stephen Colbert. But don’t say he didn’t warn you.

Categories: General

The Flintstones’ 50th anniversary: It’s not just the Stone Age that’s over

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Want to explain to younger people what American culture was like before all the changes of the ’60s came along? You couldn’t do much better than sit them in front of a screen to watch an early episode of “The Flintstones.”

The Flintstones celebrate Christmas in this 1993 special. Who wants to wait 10,000 years for the birth of Jesus?

The Flintstones turn 50 today, or 12,010 if you consider they’re supposed to have lived around 10,000 B.C. The first episode, “Flintstone Flyer,” appeared on ABC in prime-time on Sept. 30, 1960. Google is celebrating with a doodle (Google “Flintstones” to see it).

The show was hardly ground-breaking– it was a barely disguised ripoff of “The Honeymooners” from the early 1950s that Jackie Gleason decided not to sue over.

Most of its appeal came from the clever ways modern inventions were duplicated in mock Stone Age terms– Barney makes a a helicopter that resembles a foot-powered eggbeater, monkeys use their tails to reset bowling pins. Polaroids were all the rage, so when Fred clicked the shutter of an instant camera, a bird inside used his bill to carve the image on a stone tablet.

Watching the first episode today, spousal relations a half-century ago seem almost as far away as the Stone Age. Wilma waits for Fred at home with a dinner on a tray so he can eat in front of the TV, Fred and Barney pull a fast one to get out of the opera with their wives so they can go bowling.

Then there’s the Winston commercial and billboard that lighted up Bedrock at night. Beyond the dismay that the network thought it perfectly acceptable for a cigarette maker to sponsor a cartoon (the sponsorship apparently ended when Wilma became pregnant), the stereotyped concept of the lazy husband who won’t even the lawn…well, maybe it’s not so out of date.

Categories: General

Monkey patrols, snake lookouts ease fears at Commonwealth Games

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Langur monkey, Commonwealth Games, New Delhi

Keep it moving, people. Nothing to see here

It looks like New Delhi has finally got the kinks out of its much-maligned Commonwealth Games.

Since the Games hired a goon squad of langur monkeys to maintain order over bands of smaller monkeys, there have been no reports of simian rampages on tourists or athletes. (Langurs, the jackbooted stormtroopers of the monkey world, are very effective in keeping lesser primates from taking up residence in their territory.)

Meanwhile snake charmers remain posted throughout the Games venues should any more deadly cobras appear from plumbing fixtures. One was found slithering down a drain last week at the tennis center. Games officials downplayed the incident. What, you never heard of snaking a drain?!

No pedestrian bridges have collapsed this week.

Commonwealth Games cobra, snake charmers

Look what we found in the drain.

Those fears about a mosquito-borne dengue fever epidemic in the athletes quarters? Overblown, say officials. No infections have been reported. They add that most doctors and paramedics assigned to the Games are accredited.

But there is one ugly development that seems destined to cast a pall on the Commonwealth Games. What’s worse is that Games officials are complicit.

“There is a lot of demand for the vuvuzela,” Suresh Kumar, chairman of the Indian company in charge of merchandising for the event, told the U.K.’s Telegraph. “We have sold more than 12,000 pieces.”

A total of 50,000 vuvuzelas were imported from China for sale. Indian Sports Minister M.S. Gill even blew one at the athlete’s village Wednesday.

The organizing committee is hoping the low price of each horn (about $5) “will enable everybody to own a piece of the Games.”

Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Trained monkeys guard athletes at Commonwealth Games Telegraph

No dengue case reported so far in Games Village Hindustan Times

Earplugs at the ready for the return of the vuvuzela Telelgraph

Categories: General

Parents behaving badly

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Football’s a rough-and-tumble contact sport, even at the pee-wee level, but it’s the players who are supposed to mix it up, not the parents.

Someone tell that to the father-coaches in this KHOU-TV news report, shown brawling on home video during a pee-wee football game recently in Pearland, Texas, a suburb of Houston.

The video is full of non-sportmanslike behavior among the parents, including a vicious sucker punch in which one dad pops another on the back of the head. In this CBS Early Morning report, we also see the kids trying to do the right thing, with one young boy trying to get two adults to act like, well, adults.

What the video doesn’t show is how the melee started, which is even more appalling. After a rough tackle, two of the players began scuffling, and one of the coaches grabbed the opposing player by the shoulder pads and tossed him.

For now, the two teams  have been barred from postseason play, which seems like a case of the kids suffering because the grown-ups couldn’t control themselves. At least some of the coaches were suspended from the league, two for life.

The executive board of the Bay Area Football League meets tonight, and we may find out for sure if the kids will get to participate in post-season play.

Categories: Sports

Barack Obama, Lil Wayne’s newest fan?

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Photo illustration/Chris Preovolos

Lil Wayne has been busy.

Besides dropping a new album and promoting the new Def Jam Rapstar video game — all while in lock-up at Rikers Island — he’s managed to infiltrate the president’s iPod.

Obama has recently become a fan of the New Orleans rapper, according to a lengthy interview in an upcoming Rolling Stone.

The presidential play list runs mostly old school — Stevie Wonder, Dylan, Miles — but his tastes in hip-hop are changing:

Jay-Z used to be sort of what predominated, but now I’ve got a little Nas and a little Lil Wayne and some other stuff, but I would not claim to be an expert. Malia and Sasha are now getting old enough to where they start hipping me to things.

No word yet on the possibility of a presidential pardon.

Categories: General

Pardon her French: Politician didn’t mean to say ‘fellatio’

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Rachida Dati

Fellatio is not really ‘nonexistent’ in France.

Former French Justice Minister Rachida Dati, often referred to as “Rachida Barbie” because of her lightweight understanding of complicated issues, made a trip of the tongue worthy of Yogi Berra on live TV.

Dati, being interviewed Sunday for the French show “Canal Plus,” was responding to a question about overseas investment funds profiteering in an unsettled economy, when she said:

“I see some of them looking for returns of 20 or 25 percent, at a time of when fellatio is almost nonexistent.”

Explains the Daily Mail: “In French, the word for ‘fellatio’ is ‘fellation,’ which sounds like inflation, which is the same word in both French and English.”

Dati laughed off the malapropism by saying, “I just spoke too quickly.”

Probably happens to Ben Bernanke all the time.

Ooh la la! Embarrassing faux pas for French MEP Rachida Dati as she confuses oral sex with inflation Daily Mail

French MEP Rachida Dati makes oral sex slip-up BBC

Categories: General