Music Pop Culture Smoakhouse Forum Music Pop Culture http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php Fri, 20 Nov 2009 19:25:40 -0500 60 Music Pop Culture http://www.smoaky.com/images/utility/smoakyrss.gif http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php easter egg http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=103374 http://movies.yahoo.com/feature/buzz-log-r...-star-trek.html]]> Wed, 18 Nov 2009 17:13:46 -0500 http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=103374 Edward Woodward R. I. P. http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=103357 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries...d-Woodward.html]]> Wed, 18 Nov 2009 10:22:41 -0500 http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=103357 B-Movie King Roger Corman to Receive Honorary Oscar http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=103149


LOS ANGELES (AP)- Roger Corman, memorably dubbed "the Orson Welles of the Z-Movie" and "the Pope of Pop Cinema," never expected the words "Academy Award recipient" would accompany his name.

The man, whose 350 movie credits include such low-budget fare as "The Masque of the Red Death" and "X: The Man With the X-Ray Eyes," is receiving an honorary Oscar for a lifetime of achievement that includes mentoring such filmmakers as Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, James Cameron and Ron Howard.

Corman, 83, said he was aware the board of governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was considering him for the honor. He felt certain he would not make the cut, though.

"I predicted that I would not win because I make low-budget films, and I felt the academy would not give an award to someone who made low-budget films. I was truly surprised when I got the call," Corman said in an interview at the offices of his production and distribution outfit, New Horizons Pictures.

Corman does not just make low-budget movies. He's a maestro at it, creating plenty of schlock with titles such as "Night Call Nurses" and "Galaxy of Terror" but also cult hits with staying power. Among his productions are "Death Race 2000" and "The Little Shop of Horrors," shot in just over two days for $30,000, featuring a young Jack Nicholson and a creepy, campy story line that later spawned a stage show and Hollywood musical remake.

Along with Nicholson, those who got acting breaks from Corman include Robert De Niro (1970's "Bloody Mama"), Charles Bronson (1958's "Machine-Gun Kelly") and Sylvester Stallone (1975's "Capone" and "Death Race 2000").

Corman is receiving his award at a ceremony Saturday along with fellow honorary Oscar recipients Lauren Bacall and cinematographer Gordon Willis.

Keeping budgets tiny and shooting quickly, Corman has made a profitable career defying the Hollywood maxim that you never put your own money into a movie. He still finances his own films so he can make them his way, without interference from studio backers.

His memoir is titled "How I Made a Hundred Movies in Hollywood and Never Lost a Dime" -- though the book's title is wrong on both counts, Corman said. He's made far more movies, and he acknowledges a few have lost money.

Sex and violence sells many of Corman's movies, but he also has peddled social commentary -- racism with 1962's "The Intruder" starring William Shatner, and mental illness with 1977's "I Never Promised You a Rose Garden."

From his initial success in the late 1950s and early '60s, Corman set out to nurture young talent.

"I'd made a little bit of money, and I felt I should invest this money, and I don't really know anything about real estate or the stock market," Corman said. "But as a young filmmaker around town, I socialized with and knew other young filmmakers, and I thought, 'I think I know the ones who are the most-talented and who haven't had their chance yet."'

So he invested his profits in people. Corman gave early directing shots to Coppola (1963's "Dementia 13"), Scorsese (1972's "Boxcar Bertha"), Howard (1977's "Grand Theft Auto"), Jonathan Demme (1974's "Caged Heat") and Joe Dante (1978's "Piranha").

Cameron did effects work on early 1980s Corman productions such as "Battle Beyond the Stars," while others who got a start in Corman's stable include John Sayles and Peter Bogdanovich.

Corman said he's never envied his proteges for the acclaim and box-office success they achieved later.

"I've admired them and actually, I take pride in what they have done," Corman said. "I know that they all would have achieved the same level if they had never met me, but I think what I was able to do was to give them a start and help them a little bit in their careers, and I take great pride in that."

Corman himself has a distinctive awards history. His office is wall filled with Oscar nominations for foreign-language classics he distributed in the United States. Corman's former company, New World Pictures, was a U.S. home for films by Ingmar Bergman, Federico Fellini, Francois Truffaut and Akira Kurosawa.

Though he has had films at prestigious festivals such as Cannes and Venice, Corman jokes about the acclaim he's earned from lesser events.

"I'm the great winner of awards at minor film festivals," Corman said. "I've got a shelf at home filled with awards from festivals you never heard of."

Where will he put his Oscar?

"It'll go in front," Corman said.
]]> Fri, 13 Nov 2009 23:53:57 -0500 http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=103149 The Warrior Song http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=103078 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTs6a0ORdQU...player_embedded]]> Thu, 12 Nov 2009 21:45:25 -0500 http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=103078 Check this one out http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=103019 Sound quality not that great but good musie.....http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLWE-R0nL_E Wed, 11 Nov 2009 22:14:17 -0500 http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=103019 musical memories http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=103007
rascal flatts "im movin on" & "these days"- the girl that got away.

deanna carter "strawberry wine" - the first slow dance in 7th grade with that girl.

hank williams sr " hey good lookin"- hanging out with my grandpa.]]> Wed, 11 Nov 2009 16:45:14 -0500 http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=103007 the greatest toys ever http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=102964 http://www.museumofplay.org/nthof/inductees.php

what was your favorite?]]> Tue, 10 Nov 2009 17:48:39 -0500 http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=102964 just for kicks http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=102906
Verse 1
I met her at the mercado, she's buyin' avacados
And man, she really turned me on.
She reached for my pepper, I grabbed her tomatoes
I knew, it wouldn't be very long.

Verse 2
She walked to the mesa, I got my cerveza,
I picked up the onions and their bones.
And the way she looked at me, man I could clearly see,
That it, wouldn't be very long.

Chorus
Guacamole, GUACAMOLE, Guacamole, GUACAMOLE
We'd be makin' guacamole all night long.
Guacamole, GUACAMOLE, Guacamole, GUACAMOLE
We'd be makin' guacamole all night long.

Accordion and Guitar Solos

Verse 3
She headed for the line, and I fell in right behind,
Man, she sure looked good to me.
She reached for her money, I said "Wait a minute, honey,
I believe, this one is on me."

Verse 4
We got in my pickup, we started to back up,
We headed on down the road.
We went to mi casa, tortillas de masa,
We made guacamole all night long.

Chorus
Guacamole, GUACAMOLE, Guacamole, GUACAMOLE
We'd be makin' guacamole all night long.
Guacamole, GUACAMOLE, Guacamole, GUACAMOLE
We'd be makin' guacamole all night long.
]]> Mon, 09 Nov 2009 17:19:16 -0500 http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=102906 anybody heard this? http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=102861 heard a rumour on a local tv station that steven tyler was being kicked out of aerosmith. it all related supposedly to his alcohol problems. steven said he was only going to concentrate on solo stuff from now on. Mon, 09 Nov 2009 07:24:36 -0500 http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=102861 Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=102629 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=429l13dS6kQ
...
notworthy.gif]]> Thu, 05 Nov 2009 23:49:56 -0500 http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=102629 What is your favorite Robert Duvall role ? http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=102593 Lt. Col. Kilgore slightly ahead of Tom Hagen...


CHARLIE DON'T SURF!


]]> Thu, 05 Nov 2009 07:35:06 -0500 http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=102593 V: The Series http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=102546 Tue, 03 Nov 2009 20:14:43 -0500 http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=102546 mountain or molehill? http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=102245 have you noticed all the beatles music being played in commercials lately? michael jackson owned their music right? he died. now all of a sudden the fab four are all over the place. they have to pay michael or his lawyers to use the music right? i dont know just kinda bugs me. Thu, 29 Oct 2009 16:27:21 -0400 http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=102245 Comedian Soupy Sales Dies at 83 http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=101867
Sales died at Thursday night at Calvary Hospice in the Bronx, New York, said his former manager and longtime friend, Dave Usher. Sales had many health problems and entered the hospice last week, Usher said.

At the peak of his fame in the 1950s and '60s, Sales was one of the best-known faces in the nation, Usher said.

"If President Eisenhower would have walked down the street, no one would have recognized him as much as Soupy," said Usher.

At the same time, Sales retained an openness to fans that turned every restaurant meal into an endless autograph-signing session, Usher said.

"He was just good to people," Usher said.

Sales began his TV career in Detroit, where he drew a large audience on WXYZ-TV. He moved to Los Angeles in 1961.

The comic's pie-throwing schtick became his trademark, and celebrities lined up to take one on the chin alongside Sales. During the early 1960s, stars such as Frank Sinatra, Tony Curtis and Shirley MacLaine received their just desserts side-by-side with the comedian on his television show.

"I'll probably be remembered for the pies, and that's all right," Sales said in a 1985 interview.

Sales was born Milton Supman on Jan. 8, 1926, in North Carolina and grew up in Huntington, W.Va.

His greatest success came in New York with "The Soupy Sales Show" -- an ostensible children's show that had little to do with Captain Kangaroo and other kiddie fare. Sales' manic, improvisational style also attracted an older audience that responded to his envelope-pushing antics.

Sales, who was typically clad in a black sweater and oversized bow-tie, was once suspended for a week after telling his legion of tiny listeners to empty their mothers' purse and mail him all the pieces of green paper bearing pictures of the presidents.

The cast of "Saturday Night Live" later paid homage by asking their audience to send in their joints. His influence was also obvious in the Pee-Wee Herman character created by Paul Reubens.

Sales is survived by his wife, Trudy, and two sons, Hunt and Tony, a pair of musicians who backed David Bowie in the band Tin Machine.

]]> Fri, 23 Oct 2009 08:35:58 -0400 http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=101867 FOOTBALL! http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=101846

Not to come off the subject but I just got done watching this movie and I thought it was incredible. If you have seen this any thoughts on it? If not then please go see it, it's a football movie.]]> Wed, 21 Oct 2009 22:55:11 -0400 http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=101846 Garth Brooks http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=101531 Story on CMT.com]]> Thu, 15 Oct 2009 17:22:40 -0400 http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=101531 Alice In Chains http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=101363 Mon, 12 Oct 2009 11:07:51 -0400 http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=101363 <![CDATA[Attention Mojo Nixon & Skid Roper fans:]]> http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=101358

I have no idea why, but amazon.com is offering FREE downloads of every Mojo Nixon & Skid Roper LP (and virtually all of Mojo's solo material) ... ROOT HOG OR DIE!



http://www.amazon.com/s/qid=1255353117/ref...ds=mojo%20nixon
]]> Mon, 12 Oct 2009 09:08:50 -0400 http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=101358 RIP Rusty Wier http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=101153 we lost one of the original texas singer-songwriters today. Fri, 09 Oct 2009 17:58:28 -0400 http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=101153 happy birthday john lennon http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=101151 would have been 69. died way too soon. Fri, 09 Oct 2009 17:18:20 -0400 http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=101151 best place in east texas to see live music http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=101143 Fri, 09 Oct 2009 15:01:18 -0400 http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=101143 music that blew your mind http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=101103 grew up on country. hearing the beatles, zepplin, heck pretty much everybody from england, metallica, southern rock just blew my mind on what i thought was music. Thu, 08 Oct 2009 17:46:51 -0400 http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=101103 <![CDATA[What's your favorite movie fight scene?]]> http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=101102 Thu, 08 Oct 2009 17:44:10 -0400 http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=101102 I love her! http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=101035 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16F5fdORzSo


and yes that's the femme fatale from the transporter movies]]> Tue, 06 Oct 2009 21:43:22 -0400 http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=101035 Flashforward http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=101026 Tue, 06 Oct 2009 16:33:52 -0400 http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=101026 Zombieland... http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=100946 I thought it was great!
Language wasn't forced at all, and some very cool violent scenes.
Also, Is there some thread where new movies can be talked about or something?

]]> Sun, 04 Oct 2009 23:06:44 -0400 http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=100946 Favorite movie speeches! http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=100830 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrOkYkXOZoY


but there are so many others.]]> Fri, 02 Oct 2009 17:33:39 -0400 http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=100830 <![CDATA["lucy in the sky" Lucy Vodden passes away at 46]]> http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=100697 http://www.reuters.com/article/entertainme...E58R4RS20090928


crank up sgt. peppers lonely hearts club band.]]> Tue, 29 Sep 2009 08:23:03 -0400 http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=100697 Roman Polanski seized in Switzerland http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=100645 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMlTEStfQG8


Fugitive filmmaker Roman Polanski is seized in Switzerland

The Oscar-winning director, accused of sexually assaulting a 13-year-old girl in L. A. in 1977, fled the country before his sentencing. His arrest could trigger his extradition to L.A. County.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-po...2372,full.story

(by Harriet Ryan | Los Angeles Times)

Roman Polanski's decision to attend Zurich's film festival this weekend was a major win for a minor event, but it turned into a bigger coup for Los Angeles County authorities who seized the opportunity to arrange the arrest -- three decades in the making -- of a Hollywood fugitive.

When the 76-year-old Academy Award-winning director of films such as "Chinatown," "Rosemary's Baby" and "The Pianist" arrived at the Zurich, Switzerland, airport Saturday night for a well-publicized appearance, Swiss officials armed with a U.S. arrest warrant took him into custody. The arrest touches off extradition proceedings that could return the filmmaker to the United States to face the child sex case he fled in 1978.

The Los Angeles County district attorney's office, which prosecuted Polanski 32 years ago for the sexual assault of a 13-year-old girl and has battled the director in the last year over his attempts to have the controversial case dismissed, initiated the arrest last week when it learned of his travel plans to Zurich.

"It wasn't any secret. It was on the Internet. They were selling tickets to it," said Sandi Gibbons, a spokeswoman for the district attorney's office. She said prosecutors prepared a provisional warrant and sent it to U.S. Justice Department officials, who presented it to Swiss authorities.

The arrest stunned Polanski, who has long lived in Paris where his French citizenship protects him from extradition. His attorneys in the U.S. and France said that despite his fugitive status in the United States, the director routinely travels throughout Europe. He owns a chalet in the Swiss ski resort of Gstaad, and festival organizers said they never considered his U.S. legal problems when recruiting him to headline their event by accepting a lifetime achievement award.

"There were no concerns whatsoever," festival spokeswoman Nikki Parker said.

The length and outcome of Polanski's stay in Switzerland remained uncertain Sunday.

"If he agrees with an extradition, he could be sent to the U.S. in the next days," said Guido Ballmer, a spokesman for the Swiss Federal Department of Justice and Police.

But statements by his French attorney suggested there was little chance that Polanski would return without a fight. Herve Temime told the French newspaper Le Figaro that he planned to fly to Switzerland with Polanski's wife, actress Emmanuelle Seigner, to seek the director's release.

"We are going to argue a defense based on the extradition procedure," he said.

The U.S. Justice Department has 60 days to file a written request for Polanski's transfer to Los Angeles. If Polanski opposes extradition, the Swiss legal process can be lengthy because multiple levels of appeals are available, Ballmer said.

Polanski's detention was condemned by officials in France and Poland, where he spent part of his childhood. Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski told the Polish news agency PAP that the countries would make a joint appeal to Switzerland and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to release the filmmaker.

In Paris, Culture Minister Frederic Mitterrand said he was "dumbfounded" by the arrest and had talked with French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

The arrest is the latest twist in a legal saga that has captivated and outraged the public since Jimmy Carter was president. In 1977, Polanski -- a household name both for his movies and for the Manson family murder of his then-wife, Sharon Tate -- was arrested at a Beverly Hills hotel and charged with raping and sodomizing a 13-year-old aspiring model. The girl told police the director had plied her with champagne and a piece of a quaalude during a photo shoot at actor Jack Nicholson's Mulholland Drive home. He then forced himself on her as she begged him to stop.

Polanski reached a deal with prosecutors in which he pleaded guilty to a count of unlawful sex with a minor and prosecutors agreed not to pursue rape, sodomy and other charges. A judge ordered Polanski to spend 42 days in state prison for pre-sentencing "diagnostic testing." Polanski served the time and was released. But on the eve of his sentencing in 1978, he boarded a plane for Europe, never to return to the U.S.

The court issued an arrest warrant that has remained in effect since.

From his home in Paris, Polanski settled a civil suit by the victim, Samantha Geimer, for an unspecified amount, and she publicly forgave him. He continued to direct films in Europe and married Seigner, with whom he has two children.

In 1997, Polanski tried to work out a deal with the district attorney's office to return to L.A.: Authorities would arrest him at the airport and bring him straight to court, where he would be sentenced to time served and immediately released.

That deal fell apart, with Polanski's side saying that he objected to television coverage in the courtroom.

For the next decade, Polanski made no public attempts to resolve the case. He won the Academy Award for best director for 2002's "The Pianist," but was not at the ceremony despite Geimer's call for authorities to permit him to attend.

But after the broadcast last year of the HBO documentary "Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired," the director showed renewed interest in his case. The documentary portrayed the original handling of the matter as corrupted by a double-talking, media-hungry judge who had had inappropriate conversations with a prosecutor.

Polanski fled the United States, according to interviews in the documentary, because Superior Court Judge Lawrence Rittenband, now deceased, reneged on a promise to sentence the director to no additional prison time after having a backroom chat with a deputy district attorney who was not assigned to the case.

Polanski did not participate in the documentary. But after it aired, his attorneys filed a request for a dismissal of the entire 1977 case based on revelations in the film. The district attorney's office vigorously fought the motion, filing hundreds of pages of grand jury testimony that described the assault allegations in detail and calling Polanski, in the words of one prosecutor, a man who "drugged and raped a 13-year-old child" and was now asking for help "from the comforts of France."

Geimer filed papers on behalf of Polanski, saying that she wanted the case dropped and blamed the prosecution for reviving the ugly details of her assault.

In February a judge handling the dismissal request found that "there was substantial . . . misconduct that occurred" during the original case. But he said Polanski had to return to the United States before the court could consider dismissing the charges. An appeal by Polanski's attorneys is pending before the state appellate court.

As the legal wrangling played out, the filmmaker traveled widely in continental Europe, according to news reports. He filmed a political thriller in Germany this year, attended the opening night of a musical in Vienna on Wednesday, and was expected to pick up an award in Cologne, Germany, next week.

Polanski's lawyers complained Sunday that the arrest was out of line with decades of disinterest by U.S. authorities in apprehending the director. A Los Angeles lawyer for Polanski, Chad Hummel, said that in a conversation last year, a deputy district attorney told him "he was not aware of any efforts by his office to enforce the warrant."

Gibbons, the district attorney's office spokeswoman, declined to respond to Hummel's comments. But she said there had been at least two prior occasions when authorities learned that Polanski planned to visit a country with an extradition treaty and began arranging for his arrest.

"But in the end, he apparently found out about it and didn't go," she said.

Another Los Angeles source familiar with the case but not authorized to talk about the ongoing investigation said there were at least half a dozen "near misses" over the decades, with the majority in the last two years.

In Zurich, film festival organizers said the arrest left them with "great consternation and shock."

Polanski was to walk a red carpet Sunday night and pick up his award. The tribute went forward without the guest of honor.

harriet.ryan@latimes.com

Contributing to this report were Times staff writers Andrew Blankstein, Henry Chu, Scott Glover and special correspondent Devorah Lauter.]]> Mon, 28 Sep 2009 08:47:07 -0400 http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=100645 Did you know? http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=100642
In an interview he was talking about growing up as a Jehovah's witness then he rebelled for a few years and actually got into black magic and spell casting for a while. It was a hard road for him to get back to Christ because of all the demonic forces he had surrounded himself with but now he is at peace and has come to know Christ.

most of megadeth's music is pretty political stuff. I always liked it. some good songs in the early 90's. new album coming out soon as well. its getting lots of praise from critics.]]> Mon, 28 Sep 2009 01:51:09 -0400 http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=100642 <![CDATA[Whose music ruled the 70's?]]> http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=100158 I saw this question on another site and thought it would make for some interesting discussions. Thu, 17 Sep 2009 18:37:40 -0400 http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=100158 R.I.P. Mary Travers http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=100135 Mary Travers of Peter, Paul and Mary dead at 72

DANBURY, Conn. (AP)— Mary Travers, one-third of the hugely popular 1960s folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary, has died.

The band's publicist, Heather Lylis, says Travers died at Danbury Hospital in Connecticut on Wednesday (September 16, 2009). She was 72 and had battled leukemia for several years.

Travers joined forces with Peter Yarrow and Noel Paul Stookey in the early 1960s.

The trio mingled their music with liberal politics, both onstage and off. Their version of "If I Had a Hammer" became an anthem for racial equality. Other hits included "Lemon Tree," "Leaving on a Jet Plane" and "Puff (The Magic Dragon.)"

They were early champions of Bob Dylan and performed his "Blowin' in the Wind" at the August 1963 March on Washington.

And they were vehement in their opposition to the Vietnam War, managing to stay true to their liberal beliefs while creating music that resonated in the American mainstream.

The group collected five Grammy Awards for their three-part harmony on enduring songs like "Leaving on a Jet Plane," "Puff (The Magic Dragon)" and "Blowin' in the Wind."

At one point in 1963, three of their albums were in the top six Billboard best-selling LPs as they became the biggest stars of the folk revival movement.

It was heady stuff for a trio that had formed in the early 1960s in Greenwich Village, running through simple tunes like "Mary Had a Little Lamb."

They debuted at the Bitter End in 1961, and their beatnik look — a tall blonde flanked by a pair of goateed guitarists — was a part of their initial appeal. As The New York Times critic Robert Shelton put it not long afterward, "Sex appeal as a keystone for a folk-song group was the idea of the group's manager, Albert B. Grossman, who searched for months for `the girl' until he decided on Miss Travers."

Their debut album came out in 1962, and immediately scored a pair of hits with their versions of "If I Had a Hammer" and "Lemon Tree." The former won them Grammys for best folk recording, and best performance by a vocal group.

"Moving" was the follow-up, including the hit tale of innocence lost, "Puff (The Magic Dragon)" — which reached No. 2 on the charts, and generated since-discounted reports that it was an ode to marijuana.

Album No. 3, "In the Wind," featured three songs by the 22-year-old Dylan. "Don't Think Twice, It's Alright" and "Blowin' in the Wind" both reached the top 10, bringing Dylan's material to a massive audience; the latter shipped 300,000 copies during one two-week period.

"Blowin' In the Wind" became an another civil rights anthem, and Peter, Paul and Mary fully embraced the cause. They marched with King in Selma, Ala., and performed with him in Washington.

In a 1966 New York Times interview, Travers said the three worked well together because they respected one another. "There has to be a certain amount of love just in order for you to survive together," she said. "I think a lot of groups have gone down the tubes because they were not able to relate to one another."

With the advent of the Beatles and Dylan's switch to electric guitar, the folk boom disappeared. Travers expressed disdain for folk-rock, telling the Chicago Daily News in 1966 that "it's so badly written. ... When the fad changed from folk to rock, they didn't take along any good writers."

But the trio continued their success, scoring with the tongue-in-cheek single "I Dig Rock and Roll Music," a gentle parody of the Mamas and the Papas, in 1967 and the John Denver-penned "Leaving on a Jet Plane" two years later.

They also continued as boosters for young songwriters, recording numbers written by then-little-known Gordon Lightfoot and Laura Nyro.

In 1969, the group earned their final Grammy for "Peter, Paul and Mommy," which won for best children's album. They disbanded in 1971, launching solo careers — Travers released five albums — that never achieved the heights of their collaborations.

Over the years they enjoyed several reunions, including a performance at a 1978 anti-nuclear benefit organized by Yarrow and a 35th anniversary album, "Lifelines," with fellow folkies Ramblin' Jack Elliott, Dave Van Ronk and Seeger. A boxed set of their music was released in 2004.

They remained politically active as well, performing at the 1995 anniversary of the Kent State shootings and performing for California strawberry pickers.

Travers had undergone a successful bone marrow transplant to treat her leukemia and was able to return to performing after that.

"It was like a miracle," Travers told The Associated Press in 2006. "I'm just feeling fabulous. What's incredible is someone has given your life back. I'm out in the garden today. This time last year I was looking out a window at a hospital." She also said she told the marrow donor "how incredibly grateful I was."

But by mid-2009, Yarrow told WTOP radio in Washington that her condition had worsened again and he thought she would no longer be able to perform.

Mary Allin Travers was born on Nov. 9, 1936 in Louisville, Ky., the daughter of journalists who moved the family to Manhattan's bohemian Greenwich Village. She quickly became enamored with folk performers like the Weavers, and was soon performing with Seeger, a founding member of the Weavers who lived in the same building as the Travers family.

With a group called the Song Swappers, Travers backed Seeger on one album and two shows at Carnegie Hall. She also appeared (as one of a group of folk singers) in a short-lived 1958 Broadway show called "The Next President," starring comedian Mort Sahl.

It wasn't until she met up with Yarrow and Stookey that Travers would taste success on her own. Yarrow was managed by Grossman, who later worked in the same capacity for Dylan.

In the book "Positively 4th Street" by David Hajdu, Travers recalled that Grossman's strategy was to "find a nobody that he could nurture and make famous."

The budding trio, boosted by the arrangements of Milt Okun, spent seven months rehearsing in her Greenwich Village apartment before their 1961 public debut.

Travers lived for many years in Redding, Conn.
]]> Thu, 17 Sep 2009 07:57:33 -0400 http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=100135 R.I.P. Henry Gibson http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=100134


Laugh-In actor Henry Gibson dies at 73

(by DERRIK J. LANG | The Associated Press)

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Henry Gibson, the veteran comic character actor best known for his role reciting offbeat poetry on Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, has died. He was 73.

Gibson's son, James, said Gibson died Monday at his home in Malibu after a brief battle with cancer.

After serving in the Air Force and studying at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, Gibson — born James Bateman in Germantown, Pa., in 1935 — created his Henry Gibson comic persona, a pun on playwright Henrik Ibsen's name, while working as a theater actor in New York. For three seasons on Laugh-In, he delivered satirical poems while gripping a giant flower.

After Laugh-In, Gibson went on to appear in several films, including The Long Goodbye and Nashville, which earned him a Golden Globe nomination. His most memorable roles included playing the menacing neighbor opposite Tom Hanks in The 'Burbs, the befuddled priest in Wedding Crashers and voicing Wilbur the Pig in the animated Charlotte's Web.

His recent work included playing cantankerous Judge Clarence Brown on ABC's Boston Legal for five seasons and providing the voice of sardonic, eye-patched reporter Bob Jenkins on Fox's King of the Hill. In 2001, Gibson returned to the stage in New York in the Encores! New York City Center production of Rodgers and Hart's A Connecticut Yankee.

Gibson is survived by three sons and two grandchildren.]]> Thu, 17 Sep 2009 07:40:46 -0400 http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=100134 Cool wall posters from your day http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=100090 So, who remembers this one? It was very popular in the 70's.]]> Wed, 16 Sep 2009 10:48:31 -0400 http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=100090 Patrick Swayze Dies At Age 57 http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=100032
"Patrick Swayze passed away peacefully today with family at his side after facing the challenges of his illness for the last 20 months," said a statement released Monday evening by his publicist, Annett Wolf. No other details were given.

Fans of the actor were saddened to learn in March 2008 that Swayze was suffering from a particularly deadly form of cancer.

He had kept working despite the diagnosis, putting together a memoir with his wife and shooting "The Beast," an A&E drama series for which he had already made the pilot. It drew a respectable 1.3 million viewers when the 13 episodes ran in 2009, but A&E said it had reluctantly decided not to renew it for a second season.

PHOTOS: Click here to see photos of Patrick Swayze

Swayze said he opted not to use painkilling drugs while making "The Beast" because they would have taken the edge off his performance. He acknowledged that time might be running out given the grim nature of the disease.

When he first went public with the illness, some reports gave him only weeks to live, but his doctor said his situation was "considerably more optimistic" than that.

"I'd say five years is pretty wishful thinking," Swayze told ABC's Barbara Walters in early 2009. "Two years seems likely if you're going to believe statistics. I want to last until they find a cure, which means I'd better get a fire under it."

A three-time Golden Globe nominee, Swayze became a star with his performance as the misunderstood bad-boy Johnny Castle in "Dirty Dancing." As the son of a choreographer who began his career in musical theater, he seemed a natural to play the role.

A coming-of-age romance starring Jennifer Grey as an idealistic young woman on vacation with her family and Swayze as the Catskills resort's sexy (and much older) dance instructor, the film made great use of both his grace on his feet and his muscular physique.


It became an international phenomenon in the summer of 1987, spawning albums, an Oscar-winning hit song in "(I've Had) the Time of My Life," stage productions and a sequel, 2004's "Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights," in which he made a cameo.

Swayze performed and co-wrote a song on the soundtrack, the ballad "She's Like the Wind," inspired by his wife, Lisa Niemi. The film also gave him the chance to utter the now-classic line, "Nobody puts Baby in a corner."

And it allowed him to poke fun at himself on a "Saturday Night Live" episode, in which he played a wannabe Chippendales dancer alongside the corpulent -- and frighteningly shirtless -- Chris Farley.

A major crowdpleaser, the film drew only mixed reviews from critics, though Vincent Canby wrote in The New York Times, "Given the limitations of his role, that of a poor but handsome sex-object abused by the rich women at Kellerman's Mountain House, Mr. Swayze is also good. ... He's at his best -- as is the movie -- when he's dancing."

Swayze followed that up with the 1989 action flick "Road House," in which he played a bouncer at a rowdy bar. But it was his performance in 1990's "Ghost" that showed his vulnerable, sensitive side. He starred as a murdered man trying to communicate with his fiancee (Demi Moore) -- with great frustration and longing -- through a psychic played by Whoopi Goldberg.

Swayze said at the time that he fought for the role of Sam Wheat (director Jerry Zucker wanted Kevin Kline) but once he went in for an audition and read six scenes, he got it.

Why did he want the part so badly? "It made me cry four or five times," he said of Bruce Joel Rubin's Oscar-winning script in an AP interview.

"Ghost" provided yet another indelible musical moment: Swayze and Moore sensually molding pottery together to the strains of the Righteous Brothers' "Unchained Melody." It also earned a best-picture nomination and a supporting-actress Oscar for Goldberg, who said she wouldn't have won if it weren't for Swayze.

"When I won my Academy Award, the only person I really thanked was Patrick," Goldberg said in March 2008 on the ABC daytime talk show "The View."

Swayze himself earned three Golden Globe nominations, for "Dirty Dancing," "Ghost" and 1995's "To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar," which further allowed him to toy with his masculine image. The role called for him to play a drag queen on a cross-country road trip alongside Wesley Snipes and John Leguizamo.

His heartthrob status almost kept him from being considered for the role of Vida Boheme.

"I couldn't get seen on it because everyone viewed me as terminally heterosexually masculine-macho," he told the AP then. But he transformed himself so completely that when his screen test was sent to Steven Spielberg, whose Amblin pictures produced "To Wong Foo," Spielberg didn't recognize him.

Among his earlier films, Swayze was part of the star-studded lineup of up-and-comers in Francis Ford Coppola's 1983 adaptation of S.E. Hinton's novel "The Outsiders," alongside Rob Lowe, Tom Cruise, Matt Dillon, Ralph Macchio, Emilio Estevez and Diane Lane. Swayze played Darrel "Dary" Curtis, the oldest of three wayward brothers -- and essentially the father figure -- in a poor family in small-town Oklahoma.

Other '80s films included "Red Dawn," "Grandview U.S.A." (for which he also provided choreography) and "Youngblood," once more with Lowe, as Canadian hockey teammates.

In the '90s, he made such eclectic films as "Point Break" (1991), in which he played the leader of a band of bank-robbing surfers, and the family Western "Tall Tale" (1995), in which he starred as Pecos Bill. He appeared on the cover of People magazine as its "Sexiest Man Alive" in 1991, but his career tapered off toward the end of the 1990s, when he also had stay in rehab for alcohol abuse. In 2001, he appeared in the cult favorite "Donnie Darko," and in 2003 he returned to the New York stage with "Chicago"; 2006 found him in the musical "Guys and Dolls" in London.

Swayze was born in 1952 in Houston, the son of Jesse Swayze and choreographer Patsy Swayze, whose films include "Urban Cowboy."

He played football but also was drawn to dance and theater, performing with the Feld, Joffrey and Harkness Ballets and appearing on Broadway as Danny Zuko in "Grease." But he turned to acting in 1978 after a series of injuries.

Within a couple years of moving to Los Angeles, he made his debut in the roller-disco movie "Skatetown, U.S.A." The eclectic cast included Scott Baio, Flip Wilson, Maureen McCormack and Billy Barty.

Swayze had a couple of movies in the works when his diagnosis was announced, including the drama "Powder Blue," starring Jessica Biel, Forest Whitaker and his younger brother, Don, which was scheduled for release this year.

Off-screen, he was an avid conservationist who was moved by his time in Africa to shine a light on "man's greed and absolute unwillingness to operate according to Mother Nature's laws," he told the AP in 2004.

Swayze was married since 1975 to Niemi, a fellow dancer who took lessons with his mother; they met when he was 19 and she was 15. A licensed pilot, Niemi would fly her husband from Los Angeles to Northern California for treatment at Stanford University Medical Center, People magazine reported in a cover story.]]> Mon, 14 Sep 2009 20:59:59 -0400 http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=100032 goodbye king of the hill http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=99993 at least hank & bobby have something in common now.]]> Mon, 14 Sep 2009 09:06:31 -0400 http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=99993 ESPN http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=99807 ]]> Fri, 11 Sep 2009 08:22:13 -0400 http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=99807 if you like ...., try .... http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=99779 george strait- aaron watson
brad paisley- charlie robison, robert earl keen, chris knight
mongomery gentry- cross canadian ragweed]]> Thu, 10 Sep 2009 12:18:24 -0400 http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=99779 kevin fowler/ whiskey myers sat. in tyler http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=99755 http://www.festivalonthesquare.com/


hope to see y'all there! rock.gif]]> Wed, 09 Sep 2009 17:38:46 -0400 http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=99755 It Might Get Loud http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=99413
Has anybody seen it? I know I can't wait just to see the jam sessions.


Here is a trailer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rl9iS2egnC0]]> Wed, 02 Sep 2009 14:17:41 -0400 http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=99413 Whitney Houston on GMA http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=99402 Did anyone catch the performance of Whitney Houston on good morning America? Performance my behind. In my opinion it was a spasm of lip singing, blowing kisses and hopping around & freaking out, I can't believe that was live. At the end she ran right back up the runway off the stage and out the back and gone. Diane Sawyer & Robin Roberts were ready to talk to her, but she went right on by them and off the stage, they and her band just looked at each other. I am a big fan of Whitney's but what the heck?]]> Wed, 02 Sep 2009 10:12:23 -0400 http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=99402 musical children http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=99396
jakob dylan/ bob dylan
holly williams/ hank williams jr]]> Wed, 02 Sep 2009 09:28:51 -0400 http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=99396 Do you relate to the Beatles ? http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=99390 http://www.spinner.com/2009/09/01/which-be...atle-are-you%2F

The Beatles were a very special musical group to me. I can relate to their music. I can relate to each individual that were a member of the band. I realize that there are certain aspects of each band member that I don't really care for, but to each their own.

Perhaps some of you would like to take this frivolous test as well. With the questions that I answered, I was a mix of George and Ringo.]]> Wed, 02 Sep 2009 00:45:54 -0400 http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=99390 What is your favorite Favorite Quentin Tarantino-directed movie? http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=99323 Death Proof
2. Jackie Brown
3. Pulp Fiction
4. Inglourious B_______
5. Kill Bill, Vol. 1]]> Mon, 31 Aug 2009 08:06:08 -0400 http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=99323 Favorite Commercials http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=99195 http://theloop.kltv.com/vmix_hosted_apps/p...5&sort=NULL

]]> Fri, 28 Aug 2009 23:40:11 -0400 http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=99195 sound alike songs http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=99035 Tue, 25 Aug 2009 16:58:13 -0400 http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=99035 School House Rock http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=99006
like a lot of my generation we learned Grammar, the finer points of math and U.S. History.

i've watched them with him several times and i've realized they can't ever be aired again. they're not politically correct enough for todays PC crowd. it's a shame though..they're goodies.

here's a sample of what i grew up with for those who've never seen them...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxmKRyLdBho]]> Tue, 25 Aug 2009 00:03:25 -0400 http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=99006 What are some of your all-time favorite album covers? http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=98989 Kiss-"Destroyer"
Dio-"Holy Diver"
Van Halen-"1984"
Foreignor-"Records"]]> Mon, 24 Aug 2009 15:35:32 -0400 http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=98989 mistaken lyrics or song meanings http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=98862 Fri, 21 Aug 2009 15:03:57 -0400 http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=98862 have you heard this song? http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=98800 Thu, 20 Aug 2009 15:34:13 -0400 http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=98800 happy birthday robert plant http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=98773 one of the greatest lead singers of all time turns 61 today. crank up the led zepplin. Thu, 20 Aug 2009 06:55:41 -0400 http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=98773 the perfect movie for cheaptrick77? http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=98682 bandslam. the girl from high school musical learns "i want you to want me" and other cheap trick classics for her emo band. laugh.gif]]> Mon, 17 Aug 2009 14:34:48 -0400 http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=98682 My two favorite Woodstock performances http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=98589 JIMI HENDRIX -- "The Star-Spangled Banner"

TEN YEARS AFTER -- "I'm Going Home"


DAILY PERFORMERS:

Friday, August 15, 1969
Richie Havens
Swami Satchidananda (gave invocation for the festival)
Sweetwater
The Incredible String Band
Bert Sommer
Tim Hardin
Ravi Shankar
Melanie
Arlo Guthrie
Joan Baez

Saturday, August 16, 2009
Quill
Keef Hartley Band
Country Joe McDonald
John Sebastian
Santana
Canned Heat
Mountain
Grateful Dead
Creedence Clearwater Revival
Janis Joplin with The Kozmic Blues Band
Sly And The Family Stone
The Who
Jefferson Airplane

Sunday, August 17 to Monday, August 18, 1969
The Grease Band
Joe Cocker
Country Joe and the Fish (GIVE ME AN "F" !!!)
Ten Years After
The Band
Blood, Sweat & Tears
Johnny Winter (featuring his brother, Edgar Winter)
Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
Neil Young
Paul Butterfield Blues Band
Sha-Na-Na w00t.gif
Jimi Hendrix



...and, PLEASE, don't forget:
The brown acid that is circulating around us is not specifically too good ... it's suggested that you do stay away from that, 'course it's your own trip, so be my guest, but please be advised that there is a warning on that one. OK ?]]> Sat, 15 Aug 2009 02:21:15 -0400 http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=98589 <![CDATA[George Strait's new album : TWANG]]> http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=98549
I really like the song Out of Sight Out of Mind.

Anyone else picked it up yet? Thoughts?]]> Thu, 13 Aug 2009 20:29:46 -0400 http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=98549 Hollywood Destroys The World: http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=98547

[/size][size="5"]Hollywood Destroys The World: New Wave Of Movies Focuses On The Apocalypse
http://online.wsj.com/

A few days ago, my three oldest sons and I saw a trailer for ‘2012,’ the new apocalyptic film starring Jon Cusack that envisions a Mayan prophecy coming true involving the end of the world occurring in less than three years. The trailer began: “How would the governments of our planet prepare six billion people for the end of the world?”

A moment later came the words….”They wouldn’t.”

The trailer triggered a conversation with my boys about how all over the world people are becoming more and more worried about coming cataclysmic events, and how Hollywood has been increasingly focused on making blockbuster disaster films about the end of the earth and the end of mankind.

A new poll finds 64% of Israelis believe the time has come to build the Third Temple, prophesied as happening in the “last days” of history. The Radical Muslim leaders of Iran say the end of the world is at hand, and are seeking nuclear weapons to bring it about. The Radical environmentalists say doomsday is coming quickly due to global warming. The History Channel kicked off 2009 with a week of documentaries about End Times prophecies, and dubbed the series, “Armageddon Week.” Evangelical Christians, like me, believe global events are lining up just as Jesus Christ and the Biblical prophets said they would in the “last days.” Books about the End Times repeatedly hit the New York Times best-sellers lists, and prophecy conferences are increasingly sold out.

Picking up a thread of this trend is an intriguing story in this week's Wall Street Journal headlined, “Hollywood Destroys The World”. The article explains how Hollywood is increasingly consumed with making “end of the world” films, in part because film-makers themselves fear actual disasters are just over the horizon:

Director Roland Emmerich has nearly destroyed the world three times already. This time, he means to finish the job.

In his next movie, “2012,” which comes out in November, the earth will rip apart, fulfilling an ancient prophecy. The director previously leveled civilization with an alien attack in the 1996 movie “Independence Day,” unleashed Godzilla a couple years later and orchestrated a climate disaster in 2004’s “The Day After Tomorrow.” His new film, he says, reflects a darker world view. “I’m really very pessimistic these days,” he says.

A flood of postapocalyptic stories is now headed toward movie theaters and TV screens: Expect to see characters fending off cannibals, picking up day-to-day survival techniques and struggling to maintain their humanity amid the ruins. Previous waves of pop-culture disaster, from the Atomic Age paranoia of “War of the Worlds” to Watergate-era flicks such as “The Towering Inferno,” have depicted calamity in stunning detail. Many of the new projects, however, actually skip the spectacle of doomsday. Instead, they’re more fixed on what goes down in the aftermath.

In “The Book of Eli,” a movie scheduled for January, Denzel Washington plays the fierce protector of a book that holds the key to mankind’s redemption in an American wasteland created by a war 30 years earlier. “Day One,” a series coming to NBC in March, follows a handful of neighbors trying to survive and understand a calamity that erased the world’s infrastructure. “The Colony,” now airing on Discovery Channel, is a reality show set in an imagined end-times period in which contestants hunt for food, water and shelter after a presumed disaster.

No humans at all survive in the blighted world of “9,” an animated film produced by Tim Burton in which mechanical dolls learn from the mistakes of their extinct creators (release date: 09/09/2009). Strong buzz has been building since last year for “The Road,” this October’s film adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s best-selling novel, about a boy and his father trudging through the scorched remnants of an unspecified cataclysm.

Most of the storytellers say they are reacting to anxiety over real threats in uncertain times: the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, two U.S. wars abroad, multiple pandemics, a global financial crisis and new attention to environmental perils. “The Road” even weaves in footage shot during recent disasters, such as Hurricane Katrina, into its scenes of destruction.

“For me, I feel like I live in an apocalyptic world with global warfare, a recession, and resource scarcity,” says Jesse Alexander, writer and executive producer of NBC’s “Day One.”

Studios have scored with the formula before. In 1981, when fear of nuclear war predominated, the post-holocaust action movie “The Road Warrior” became a hit and made Mel Gibson a star. The run-up to the millennium saw a boomlet of effects-driven disaster epics, including “Armageddon” and “Deep Impact.” “Independence Day” was the highest-grossing movie of 1996, taking in $300 million in the U.S.

The escapism factor, always a driver at the box office, plays a role in the latest post-disaster trend, says Rob Kutner, a writer for “The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien” and author of the satirical “Apocalypse How: Turn the End-Times into the Best of Times!” published last year. “People are less concerned about their house being foreclosed when it’s being taken over by mutant appliances.”

Some are taking a lighter approach to calamity. Seth Rogen, star of “The 40-Year-Old Virgin” and “Knocked Up,” is developing a feature film based on a parody trailer he co-starred in entitled “Jay and Seth vs. the Apocalypse.” In the short, two roommates bicker about whether to venture into the wasteland outside their ruined bachelor pad. In “Zombieland,” a movie opening in October, actor Woody Harrelson plays a zombie killer named Tallahassee, one of the last survivors in a future overrun by the undead.

“Zombieland” director Ruben Fleischer says there’s room for everyone’s view of society’s afterlife: “Roland [Emmerich] can have the megadisaster. ‘The Road’ can be the most brutal. And ours is fun times in the post apocalypse. Let’s look for Twinkies and shoot zombies!”

The storyline of what happens after an inevitable disaster permeates nearly all the new projects, in contrast to movies like “Armageddon,” which showed humanity warding off an impending threat. The Lionsgate film studio recently acquired rights to “The Hunger Games,” a young-adult novel set in a ruined America.

The flash-forward motif launched a surprise best seller two years ago in Alan Weisman’s book “The World Without Us,” which took a scientific approach to explaining how the framework of civilization would decompose as nature took back its turf after humans disappeared. The book is in development as both a fictional feature from Twentieth Century Fox and a documentary film. In the book, Mr. Weisman presented an optimistic view of what a world without humans would look like. “Maybe we’re in danger, but the world itself is not in danger,” he says. “In fact the world itself recovers rather beautifully.”

In the film version of “The Road,” as in the novel, the apocalypse that blackened the landscape and set the narrative in motion isn’t described. Director John Hillcoat says he pressed author Cormac McCarthy for an answer about what happened. Mr. McCarthy “said it didn’t matter whether it was nuclear war or mini volcanoes or a comet,” Mr. Hillcoat says. What mattered was the backdrop for the intimate relationship between a father and son.

Though the calamity remained ambiguous, the filmmakers used real disaster footage to render their setting. A panoramic scene in the movie includes the improbable sight of ships marooned on a highway. The image was shot in New Orleans in the days after Hurricane Katrina hit, captured on 70mm IMAX film by a crew that had been in the area to shoot a documentary about the bayou.

Rather than use computers to create massive smoke plumes, the filmmakers patched in news footage of the billows that erupted from the World Trade Center as it burned. Other images came from Mount St. Helens and volcanic devastation in the Philippines. The collage technique was both allegorical and practical (and helped keep the budget to a lean $20 million), despite the fact that most viewers won’t recognize the source material. “Our logic is if you’re within that place, whether it’s Katrina or the Twin Towers, it would be the same as a global apocalypse to you,” Mr. Hillcoat says.

Much of the acting (by Viggo Mortensen as the father and 13-year-old Kodi Smit-McPhee as his son) was shot in the Pittsburgh area in winter, when trees were bare and skies dark. Location scouts targeted remnants of the region’s faded industries, including terrain scarred by coal mining and an eight-mile length of highway that had been closed since 1969.

To see how life after the apocalypse might actually play out, the Discovery Channel decided to launch a human experiment. “The Colony” was filmed over 10 weeks in an abandoned Los Angeles warehouse with 10 participants with a variety of backgrounds attempting to emulate a life without electricity, running water or communication with the outside world. They must create their own power generators and fend off marauders who try to steal their supplies. Unlike other reality shows, there are no prize money, contests or votes for which contestants can stay.

Discovery recruited experts like Adam Montella, a private homeland security adviser who’s worked on disaster sites after Hurricane Hugo and the Oklahoma City bombings. “Most of the country didn’t experience Katrina or 9/11, but they did virtually on television,” Mr. Montella says. “There’s nothing different about the disaster that caused the colony to come together and another incident which most people can’t fathom.”

For his animated film “9,” Shane Acker imagined a postapocalyptic landscape of grotesque beauty, marked by a burning cathedral, swaying dead grasses and drifting ashes that resemble snow. “The sunsets in this toxic environment are gorgeous,” Mr. Acker says.

He embarked on the film in 2005 as the Iraq conflict was dominating the news. “I was constantly being bombarded with images of the war and questions about our motivation for being there,” Mr. Acker says.

In the story, which he expanded from his Oscar-nominated short film, nine doll-like characters fight sentient machines that were invented to wage war but eventually turned on humans. A scientist modeled on J. Robert Oppenheimer set loose the machines, but also sparked life in the numbered doll heroes (including 9, voiced by Elijah Wood).

Even when they tackle serious issues, most of the new disaster movies and TV shows take pains to avoid moralizing, which can be toxic at the box office. Issue-oriented films, such as “In the Valley of Elah,” starring Tommy Lee Jones, and Tom Cruise’s “Lions For Lambs,” have tended to fare poorly with audiences. “2012” may be an outlet for Mr. Emmerich’s own pessimism about the state of the world, but the director also calls it a “popcorn movie.”

The arms race in digital effects has contributed to the ratcheting up of apocalyptic scenarios. Roger Smith, an executive editor at the research firm Global Media Intelligence and a former film executive who oversaw “Terminator 2,” calls this competition “the film version of the Cuban Missile Crisis—we have to get the edge of extinction each time.”

]]> Thu, 13 Aug 2009 19:36:39 -0400 http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=98547 Les Paul RIP http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=98539 CNN (CNN) -- Les Paul, whose innovations with the electric guitar and studio technology made him one of the most important figures in recorded music, has died, according to a statement from his publicists. Paul was 94.

Les Paul, whose innovations helped give rise to modern pop music, played guitar into his 90s.

Paul died in White Plains, New York, from complications of severe pneumonia, according to the statement.

Paul was a guitar and electronics mastermind whose creations -- such as multitrack recording, tape delay and the solid-body guitar that bears his name, the Gibson Les Paul -- helped give rise to modern popular music, including rock 'n' roll. No slouch on the guitar himself, he continued playing at clubs into his 90s despite being hampered by arthritis.

"If you only have two fingers [to work with], you have to think, how will you play that chord?" he told CNN.com in a 2002 phone interview. "So you think of how to replace that chord with several notes, and it gives the illusion of sounding like a chord."

Lester William Polfuss was born in Waukesha, Wisconsin, on June 9, 1915. Even as a child he showed an aptitude for tinkering, taking apart electric appliances to see what made them tick.

"I had to build it, make it and perfect it," Paul said in 2002. He was nicknamed the "Wizard of Waukesha."

In the 1930s and '40s, he played with several big band singers, including Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra and the Andrews Sisters, as well as with his own Les Paul Trio. In the early 1950s, he had a handful of huge hits with his then-wife, Mary Ford, such as "How High the Moon" and "Vaya Con Dios."

His guitar style, heavily influenced by jazzman Django Reinhardt, featured lightning-quick runs and double-time rhythms. In 1948, after being involved in a severe car accident, he asked the doctor to set his arm permanently in a guitar-playing position.

Paul also credited Crosby for teaching him about timing, phrasing and preparation.

Crosby "didn't say it, he did it -- one time only. Unless he blew the lyrics, he did one take."

Paul never stopped tinkering with electronics, and after Crosby gave him an early audiotape recorder, Paul went to work changing it. It eventually led to multitrack recording; on Paul and Ford's hits, he plays many of the guitar parts, and Ford harmonizes with herself. Multitrack recording is now the industry standard.

But Paul likely will be best remembered for the Gibson Les Paul, a variation on the solid-body guitar he built in the late 1930s and offered to the guitar company.

"For 10 years, I was a laugh," he told CNN in an interview. "[But] kept pounding at them and pounding at them saying hey, here's where it's at. Here's where tomorrow, this is it. You can drown out anybody with it. And you can make all these different sounds that you can't do with a regular guitar."

Gibson, spurred by rival Fender, finally took Paul up on his offer and introduced the model in 1952. It has since become the go-to guitar for such performers as Eric Clapton.

Paul is enshrined in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the Inventors Hall of Fame and the Songwriters Hall of Fame.

He admired the places guitarists and engineers took his inventions, but he said there was nothing to replace good, old-fashioned elbow grease and soul.

"I learned a long time ago that one note can go a long way if it's the right one," he said in 2002, "and it will probably whip the guy with 20 notes."

]]> Thu, 13 Aug 2009 12:40:59 -0400 http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=98539 athens mda rodeo augsut 20-22 http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=98514 http://www.ssrodeo.com/]]> Wed, 12 Aug 2009 16:43:15 -0400 http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=98514 hannah montana http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=98512 right in front of her parents!does anybody not let there daughters look up to her?]]> Wed, 12 Aug 2009 14:34:38 -0400 http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=98512 <![CDATA[brooks & dunn calls it quits?]]> http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=98502 To Our Fans:

After 20 years of making music and riding this trail together, we have
agreed as a duo that it's time to call it a day. This ride has been
everything and more than we could ever have dreamed.... We owe it all
to you, the fans. If you hear rumors, don't believe them, it's just
time.

We will release our #1's and then some" on September 8th and bid
you farewell one last time in 2010, with The Last Rodeo Tour...(dates to be
announced).

Brooks & Dunn
]]> Wed, 12 Aug 2009 08:21:49 -0400 http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=98502 2009 yamboree barn dance @ trinity street gym http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=98501 bart crow band
no justice

$15 advance tickets. $ 20 at the door.]]> Wed, 12 Aug 2009 07:20:23 -0400 http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=98501 <![CDATA[John Hughes, director of The Breakfast Club and Ferris Bueller's Day Off, dies at 59]]> http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=98337
QUOTE
John Hughes, prolific director of such culturally significant films such as The Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Planes, Trains and Automobiles and Home Alone has died suddenly of a heart attack while taking a morning walk during a trip to Manhattan to visit family.

John Wilden Hughes, Jr., born on February 18th, 1950 in Michigan, was a self-made man whose career began as an advertising copywriter in Chicago. His films helped launch countless careers and revealed to a global audience the humor, sensitivity and nuances of everyday people in the suburbs of Chicago. In the last decade, he stepped back from the legacy he created to enjoy time with his family, maintain a functioning farm in northern Illinois and support independent arts. He is survived by his wife of 39 years, Nancy, two sons, John and James, and four grandchildren
.

RIP to a great film director. I'm going to have to watch The Breakfast Club tonight in remembrance.]]> Thu, 06 Aug 2009 17:14:43 -0400 http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=98337 Steven Tyler falls from stage at Sturgis Motorcycle Rally http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=98325 Associated Press)

RAPID CITY, S.D. (AP)— Aerosmith frontman Steven Tyler was airlifted to a hospital after falling from stage during a concert at the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in western South Dakota.

Tyler, 61, fell while entertaining the crowd by dancing around after the sound system failed during the song "Love In an Elevator," said Mike Sanborn, spokesman for the Buffalo Chip Campground, which hosted the outdoor concert.

Tyler was on the stage's catwalk when he fell backward onto a couple of fans in the middle of what was a record crowd, Sanborn said. Security rushed to help him and the crowd cheered when Tyler got back up.

"He was good natured about it," Sanborn said. "He was in good spirits when he got in the helicopter. He was talking and joking with the physician."

"It was an unfortunate end to an extraordinary evening."

Tyler suffered minor head and neck injuries and a shoulder injury, but it wasn't immediately clear how serious that was, he said.

Tyler was taken backstage and around 12:15 a.m., Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry came out to tell the audience Tyler was being taken to the hospital and that the show would not go on.

It happened about halfway through the performance, Sanborn said.

"He does a lot of dancing on the stage and he does a lot of stuff with his mike stand. He put his stand down and twirled around and stepped backwards off the stage," he said.

Sanborn said Tyler was attended to on site by a physician and flown to Rapid City Regional Hospital, the only major hospital in the region.

Jennifer Horton, the hospital's vice president of public relations and marketing, said early Thursday that Tyler wasn't in the hospital directory. Under the privacy laws, that means the person is either not there or chose not to be included in the directory, according to the hospital's Web site.

Tyler attended Sturgis last year to promote his Dirico Motorcycles line and was back this year to do that again and play at the Buffalo Chip.

Fans were disappointed the concert was cut short but hoped Tyler was OK.

Lance Yellow Robe, who said he was 8 eight feet from the stage when Tyler fell off, told the Rapid City Journal "you could kind of see it coming because he was dancing all over the stage.

"I hope he's OK," Yellow Robe said. "I could care less about the concert being canceled."

On the Net:
http://www.buffalochip.com/

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------


GOOOOINNNGGG DOOOOOWWNNN !!

^ sorry, I could not resist rofl.gif]]> Thu, 06 Aug 2009 08:10:12 -0400 http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=98325 <![CDATA[20 "chick flicks" that even a guy can enjoy]]> http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=98301 Orange County Register)

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dw...n1.4ba7cb6.html


It's not easy being a man right now.

The action movies have come and gone, and there are not one, but two, chick flicks in theaters. One, (500) Days of Summer, is better than the other, The Ugly Truth, but there is a good chance that your significant other will want to see both. And if that's not enough, the queen of chick flicks – writer-director Nora Ephron – has a movie opening Friday (Julie & Julia).

Yes, these are difficult times for men.

But I want to suggest to you guys that chick flicks don't have to be as painful as you think. They're not all Steel Magnolias and The English Patient.

Some of them actually are not horrible for men.

Here are some examples of chick flicks that are enjoyable for men who are in touch with their feminine side without losing touch of their beer-can-crushing-against-their- forehead masculine side.

The Devil Wears Prada (2006): OK, it was about the fashion industry, but you have to admit that Meryl Streep played a character so tough that she could have been played by The Rock.

Pretty Woman (1990): It sounds girly, but it has hot cars and hookers.

Jerry Maguire (1996): Football completes us.

Notting Hill (1999): Who among us has not imagined that if we could just meet a movie star or supermodel, we would sweep them off their feet?

The Bodyguard (1992): Elbows to the nose, gun battles and arm slings. It's hard to believe women liked this movie.

Love Actually (2003): Hugh Grant's silly dance at 10 Downing Street made us all feel better about our manhood.

Miss Congeniality (2000): Sandra Bullock played a klutzy FBI agent so well that it looked like one of us trying to pass at a beauty pageant.

My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002): Good food scenes and a crazy father with a bottle of Windex.

As Good as It Gets (1997): Two words: Jack and Nicholson. He doesn't even belong in a chick flick.

When Harry Met Sally (1989): Although director Rob Reiner ripped off Woody Allen, the orgasm scene in the deli makes it worthwhile.

Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994): Hugh Grant was pretty unknown to American audiences, and British romantic comedies had not inundated our theaters yet.

Muriel's Wedding (1994): Lots of ABBA and spandex. Sounds bad, but works for guys, too.

My Best Friend's Wedding (1997): Julia Roberts showing her true colors.

You've Got Mail (1998): A cautionary tale for guys who think it's a good idea to write love notes over the Internet.

Sleepless in Seattle (1993): This film usually is at the top of any list of favorite chick flicks, and we're not going to lie to you, guys: This is to women what The Godfather is to guys.

Mamma Mia! (2008): See Muriel's Wedding (above).

Legally Blonde (2001): Well, there is a sorority house scene.

Titanic (1997): Some clever marketing guys promoted this as a chick flick, but we knew better.

The Notebook (2004): This is a tough one. Good acting performances and a good twist probably isn't enough, so grin and bear it.

Sex And The City: The Movie (2008): This one has a naked dude, so it's hard to sell as a man-friendly flick. Go to the concession stand during the offending scene and think about Samantha.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


I only agree with two of the movies listed: Muriel's Wedding and When Harry Met Sally .......... the other 18 = sleeping.gif


...and I want to see (500) Days of Summer.

]]> Wed, 05 Aug 2009 09:53:58 -0400 http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=98301 the blind side/ new movie http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=98280 football movie about michael oher from ole miss. looks like a good movie. he was adopted. tim mcgraw and sandra bullock are his parents. Tue, 04 Aug 2009 14:12:38 -0400 http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=98280 big brother on cbs http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=98267 anybody else watching this year? jesse, natalie, and ronnie need to go. Mon, 03 Aug 2009 12:31:50 -0400 http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=98267 Not for Youngsters! http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=98252 Wont ever be the same Youngsters, I knew you would look............ so be sure to scroll down to comments and see the yellow thing obama has for you]]> Sun, 02 Aug 2009 21:04:23 -0400 http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=98252 Songs you still jam to http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=98219 2. Hey Jude-The Beatles
3. Paradise By The Dashboard Light-Meat Loaf
4. Crazy Train-Ozzy Osbourne
5. More Than a Feeling-Boston]]> Sat, 01 Aug 2009 11:56:33 -0400 http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=98219 Tron: Legacy http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=98216 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1dHhktFLPs

...
No words.
Except how that is pretty much the most brutal looking movie ever.
My all-time favorite movie is getting a sequel!
An epic-looking one at that!
Daft Punk is doing the entire Musical Score.
Apparently, Disney went all out at Comic Con,
And Went bootleg and passed out maps to a Real-Life Flynn's Arcade.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHIRCjr1DM8...feature=related
Jeff Bridges, as well as Bruce Boxleitner are returing.
It will Also feature John Hurt,
and Olivia Wilde. w00t.gif
And now, the wait.

]]> Sat, 01 Aug 2009 03:53:26 -0400 http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=98216 NGR http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=98182 Always loved these guys. check um out..http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2s4UztLuTo Thu, 30 Jul 2009 23:24:25 -0400 http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=98182 The Academy Makes Three Major Changes to the Oscars http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=98041 Oscars fine-tuning may hit a sour note

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?.../DDSH18EM13.DTL

(by David Germain | Associated Press)

No Oscar will be presented for best song at next year's ceremony if none of the tunes is considered good enough, Academy Awards organizers say.

Rules for the 82nd Oscar show in March will require that at least one song must achieve a minimum score of 8.25 on a scale of 6 to 10 in voting by members of the academy's music branch.

"We're trying to improve the quality," said composer Bruce Broughton, who heads the music branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. "There's been a lot of talk about the songs in films, the lack of memorability compared to songs in the past, the almost forgettability of some of them. ... This is an attempt to really make the songs as good as possible."

In another significant change for next year's show, the academy is moving its honorary Oscars out of the Academy Awards ceremony itself and presenting them at a separate event.

The two changes come days after the academy made its most drastic Oscar change in decades, doubling the number of best-picture nominees to 10.

The music branch has about 230 members, who rate songs after hearing them in a marathon screening or on a DVD compilation of the tunes as they appear in the films.

If no song achieves the minimum score, there will be no best-song Oscar awarded. If only one song scores that well, then it and the tune with the next-highest score will be the category's two nominees. The number of nominees in the category can range from two to five depending on how many hit the minimum score.

While the change sets minimum standards that songs must meet, Broughton doubted that there would be a year when the category would be scrapped because no tunes rated highly enough.

Starting this awards season, honorary Oscars for career achievement will be presented at a black-tie dinner in November, along with the academy's Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award and Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award.

Academy overseers said that will allow more time to pay proper tribute to recipients without crowding those awards into the Oscar ceremony, often criticized for a running time that has topped four hours some years.

Sid Ganis, academy president, said creating a separate event will ensure "that each honoree will be given his or her full due."

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/...3494,full.story

If Oscar had nominated 10 best pictures in past years...

(by Susan King | Los Angeles Times)

With the recent announcement that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was returning to 10 best picture nominations -- something it hasn't done since 1943 -- fans and pundits have been discussing the pros and cons of the decision. Are there even enough good films these days to find five decent best picture nominees, let alone 10?

But over the decades, numerous quality films and box office hits have been shut out of the best picture race. Just this year, such critical and commercial favorites as "The Dark Knight" and "Wall-E" didn't make the cut. Consider this personal selection of randomly picked years of five nominees over the last eight decades of the awards.

The personal selections don't include foreign-language films.

1927-28: Oscar's first year saw "The Racket," "7th Heaven," and "Wings" garnering best picture nominations, with "Wings" taking home the award. The premiere year also featured the category "Unique and Artistic Picture" -- with "Chang," "The Crowd" and "Sunrise" earning nominations, and "Sunrise" winning the award. The academy did away with the category after that year.

Among the films absent from the best picture nominations that year were Buster Keaton's greatest work, "The General"; Cecil B. DeMille's lavish telling of the life and death of Jesus Christ, "The King of Kings"; Josef von Sternberg's seminal gangster thriller, "Underworld"; the Harold Lloyd comedy " The Kid Brother"; and Tod Browning's wonderfully creepy "The Unknown," starring Lon Chaney and a young Joan Crawford.

1930-31: The academy entered its first full decade with these best picture nominees: "Cimarron," which won, "East Lynne," "The Front Page," "Skippy" and "Trader Horn."

If there had been 10 nominations that year, among the leading contenders could have been the Marx Brothers' wild and crazy "Animal Crackers"; the witty Ernst Lubitsch musical "Monte Carlo"; the gangster film "Little Caesar"; the World War I drama "The Dawn Patrol"; and the spoof of the Barrymores, "The Royal Family of Broadway."

1944: The first year since the 1930-31 Oscars that the academy had just five nominees, "Going My Way" won the best picture Oscar, beating fellow nominees "Double Indemnity," "Gaslight," "Since You Went Away" and "Wilson."

But the notable films that didn't get nominated include the Technicolor musical "Cover Girl," the quintessential film noir "Laura," Preston Sturges' romp "The Miracle of Morgan's Creek," Alfred Hitchcock's thriller "Lifeboat" and Vincente Minnelli's enchanting Technicolor musical "Meet Me in St. Louis," starring Judy Garland.

1955: The low-budget drama "Marty" won the best picture Oscar, beating out its more high-profile nominees: "Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing," "Mister Roberts," "Picnic" and "The Rose Tattoo."

But with an extra five nominees, actor James Dean's influential dramas "East of Eden" and "Rebel Without a Cause" could have been included as well as John Sturges' thriller "Bad Day at Black Rock," with Spencer Tracy; Charles Laughton's masterful Gothic thriller "The Night of the Hunter," starring Robert Mitchum; and the Ruth Etting biopic "Love Me or Leave Me," with Doris Day and James Cagney.

1960: Billy Wilder's "The Apartment" won the award for best film with "The Alamo," "Elmer Gantry," "Sons and Lovers" and "The Sundowners" rounding out the roster.

But with an extra five nominations, one of such classics as Stanley Kubrick's epic "Spartacus," starring Kirk Douglas; Hitchcock's legendary "Psycho," with Anthony Perkins; Otto Preminger's historical epic "Exodus," starring Paul Newman; Stanley Kramer's historical drama "Inherit the Wind"; and Sturges' western "The Magnificent Seven," with Yul Brynner and Steve McQueen, could have received Oscar recognition.

1972: A great year for movies saw "The Godfather" earning the best picture Oscar, though fellow nominee "Cabaret" ended up winning eight Academy Awards. Rounding out the nominees were "Deliverance," the Swedish import "The Emigrants" and "Sounder."

But there were numerous classic films that failed to earn best picture nominations, including the disaster favorite "The Poseidon Adventure; the western "Jeremiah Johnson," with Robert Redford; the political satire "The Candidate," with Redford; the mystery thriller "Sleuth," with Michael Caine and Laurence Olivier; and the Woody Allen comedy "Play It Again, Sam."

1984: "Amadeus" was the big winner with "The Killing Fields," "A Passage to India," "Places in the Heart" and "A Soldier's Story" fleshing out the nomination list.

But with five more nominations Woody Allen's "Broadway Danny Rose"; Rob Reiner's mockumentary "This Is Spinal Tap"; Ron Howard's romantic comedy "Splash"; the baseball fable "The Natural"; and James Cameron's sci-fi masterwork, "The Terminator," starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, might have had a shot at best picture.

1997: "Titanic" sunk the competition, winning 11 Oscars, including best picture. Competing with "Titanic" were "The Full Monty," "Good Will Hunting," "As Good as It Gets" and "L.A. Confidential."

But the race could have been more intriguing with five more nominees -- Steven Spielberg's historical drama " Amistad"; Wolfgang Petersen's thriller "Air Force One"; Ang Lee's relationship drama "The Ice Storm"; the sci-fi comedy "Men in Black"; and "My Best Friend's Wedding" with Julia Roberts.

2006: Martin Scorsese's gangster flick "The Departed" won the best picture Oscar, leaving nominees "Babel," "Letters From Iwo Jima," "Little Miss Sunshine" and "The Queen" in the proverbial dust.

Yet there were plenty of other best picture candidates including the updated James Bond thriller, "Casino Royale"; the musical "Dreamgirls"; "Thank You For Smoking"; "Children of Men" and the animated blockbuster "Cars."]]> Sat, 25 Jul 2009 23:20:58 -0400 http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=98041 Most Popular http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=98034 Whats the most popular music today? Pop, rock, gospel or country? Which has the largest listening audience? Sat, 25 Jul 2009 19:20:56 -0400 http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=98034 favorite sad songs http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=97996 shouldv'e learned by now- roger creager
one more day with you- diamond rio
the randall knife- guy clark]]> Fri, 24 Jul 2009 16:38:44 -0400 http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=97996 a true icon has died http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=97931 http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/32085116?GT1=43001]]> Wed, 22 Jul 2009 12:47:01 -0400 http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=97931 <![CDATA[Figured it'd show up sooner or later]]> http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=97871 http://www.asylum.com/2009/07/17/michael-j...ed-on-car-hood/]]> Sun, 19 Jul 2009 20:46:13 -0400 http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=97871 For the guitarists of sdc http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=97747 Wed, 15 Jul 2009 18:57:00 -0400 http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=97747 It was 45 years ago today... http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=97729 JULY 15, 1964

Close your eyes and i'll kiss you
Tomorrow i'll miss you
Remember i'll always be true


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSKOEApd9Ks

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYX-M8mEuI4


BTW -- Sir Paul McCartney will return to the Ed Sullivan Theater tonight on The Late Show With David Letterman to commemorate the event...]]> Wed, 15 Jul 2009 09:15:24 -0400 http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=97729 Terrorist Leader Threatens to Sue Bruno Movie http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=97662

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=103797]]> Sun, 12 Jul 2009 21:45:48 -0400 http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=97662 Paul McCartney coming to Dallas http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=97638 August 19. Sir Paul McCartney is going to preform live in concert at the new dallas cowboy stadium. tickets go on sale July 20th...i can promise you i will be going to witness the greatest living artist Sat, 11 Jul 2009 16:51:54 -0400 http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=97638 <![CDATA[Why are there so many tragedies among celebrities?"]]> http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=97622 Question: "Why are there so many tragedies among celebrities?"

Answer: Suicides, drug overdoses (whether illicit or prescription), divorces, alcoholism, financial disasters – why are tragedies like these seemingly common among celebrities? Why do many celebrities, some of whom are relatively intelligent and good people, make such complete disasters of their lives? There is no single answer that definitively applies to each and every celebrity tragedy, but if there is an explicit biblical answer, it is one word – pride.

The most powerful biblical example of a “fall from grace” is Satan. Listen to Ezekiel’s description of Satan before his fall: “You were the model of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. You were in Eden, the garden of God; every precious stone adorned you…your settings and mountings were made of gold” (Ezekiel 28:12-13). What happened to Satan? “Your heart became proud on account of your beauty, and you corrupted your wisdom because of your splendor” (Ezekiel 28:17). Isaiah expands on the cause of Satan’s fall: “You said in your heart, ‘I will ascend to heaven; I will raise my throne above the stars of God; I will sit enthroned on the mount of assembly, on the utmost heights of the sacred mountain. I will ascend above the tops of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High’” (Isaiah 14:13-14). Rather than honoring and worshipping the God who created him and gave him beauty, Satan became proud, essentially worshipping himself.

What is the end result? “All the nations who knew you are appalled at you; you have come to a horrible end and will be no more” (Ezekiel 28:19). “But you are brought down to the grave, to the depths of the pit. Those who see you stare at you, they ponder your fate” (Isaiah 14:15-16). The messages of Isaiah and Ezekiel regarding the fate of Satan sound remarkably similar to some of the tragedies that have occurred among celebrities in recent years.

Why is pride such a problem? Proverbs 16:18 declares, “Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall.” Pride causes people to forget God (Hosea 13:6). Pride causes some celebrities to forget that God was the one who gave them the talents and skills they possess. Pride causes celebrities to have too high a view of themselves, to think they are worthy of all the adulation they receive. Arrogant pride results in celebrities thinking they cannot be deceived and therefore putting trust in very untrustworthy people. Too high a view of self leads to some celebrities believing they are beyond the possibility of failure and thereby making extremely foolish decisions with their lives, careers, relationships, marriages, finances, etc.

Ultimately, the issue is this – human beings are not spiritually, emotionally, or psychologically designed to receive worship. Only God is worthy of worship, and only God can receive worship without it perverting His “psyche.” When celebrities worship themselves or allow others to worship them, it results in arrogant pride and self-centeredness, which leads to disaster and tragedy.

What is the cure? The cure is to give God the glory He alone deserves. The fix is to have a biblical self-image, recognizing that we are valuable because we are created in God’s image and likeness (Genesis 1:26-27), not because of anything we have accomplished “on our own.” The solution is to refuse to be worshipped, as the holy angels do (Revelation 19:10; 22:9), and instead to deflect any and all worship and adulation to God, who alone is worthy. The key is recognizing that we are who Romans 3:10-23 says we are and praising God for being the merciful, gracious, and loving God that He is.]]> Fri, 10 Jul 2009 18:09:49 -0400 http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=97622 The Hangover http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=97584
What's the scoop from SDC nation?

]]> Thu, 09 Jul 2009 12:36:37 -0400 http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=97584 <![CDATA[Happy 82nd Birthday to the "King Of The Carson Clips"]]> http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=97578 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSUQ3qnwCFU]]> Thu, 09 Jul 2009 06:38:50 -0400 http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=97578 Warehouse 13 http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=97541
By the way, when did Sci-Fi become Syfy????]]> Tue, 07 Jul 2009 21:15:20 -0400 http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=97541 TAKING CHANCE http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=97453 thumbsup.gif]]> Sat, 04 Jul 2009 19:40:03 -0400 http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=97453 Three Dog Night @ the 2009 East Texas State Fair http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=97447 pollstar.com, Three Dog Night will perform at the 2009 East Texas Fair on October 3.

‘looks like the current lineup includes four original members: Danny Hutton, Cory Wells, Mike Allsup & Jimmy Greenspoon.

I am not sure how well Hutton’s and Wells’ voices have held up over the years or how they sound without Chuck Negron contributing to them "coming down in three-part harmony", but this may be worth checking out...]]> Sat, 04 Jul 2009 07:46:19 -0400 http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=97447 R.I.P. Karl Malden http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=97394 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...9070102889.html

Oscar, Emmy-Winning Actor Karl Malden Dies at 97

(by Adam Bernstein | Washington Post Staff Writer)

Karl Malden, 97, an Academy Award-winning actor who excelled in plainspoken, working-class roles and was memorable as the shy suitor in "A Streetcar Named Desire" and as a brave priest in "On the Waterfront," died July 1 at his home in Los Angeles. No cause of death was reported.

With his bulbous nose and thinning hair, Mr. Malden was one of the most recognizable sights in movies and on television for five decades. In the 1970s, he became known to millions of viewers as a veteran police detective who partners with a young inspector, played by Michael Douglas, in the ABC drama series "The Streets of San Francisco."

The show led to Mr. Malden's 21-year role as the trench coat-wearing pitchman for American Express who urged customers not to leave home without traveler's checks. He joked that this became his best-known part, although he appeared in more than 70 feature films and television movies and achieved a reputation as one of Hollywood's most versatile actors.

Mr. Malden was a steelworker before winning important stage roles on Broadway. He made his greatest mark in Hollywood in the early 1950s as part of a group of New York theater stars -- headed by actor Marlon Brando and director Elia Kazan -- who were trying to bring an unpredictable, realistic style of acting to audiences.

"I hadn't met anyone that non-actorish before, non-theater-like," Kazan once said of Mr. Malden. "The minute I saw him, I knew he came from something. It turned out to be the steel mills, and it was a thing that was very important for a director, because you feel, 'Here's a person who can play difficult parts, rough parts, physical parts, who doesn't get frightened easily, who's all there when I need him.' "

Kazan said Mr. Malden was a great player to have opposite Brando because Mr. Malden could tell Brando to "go to hell" without being intimidated.

Kazan directed Mr. Malden and Brando in Tennessee Williams's "A Streetcar Named Desire" on Broadway in 1947 and in the 1951 film version. Mr. Malden won an Oscar for his supporting role as Mitch, who romances an emotionally fragile Southern belle, the sister-in-law of Brando's character, the brutish Stanley Kowalski. Jessica Tandy played the woman onstage, and Vivien Leigh was in the film version.

Mr. Malden wrote in a memoir that casting Leigh in the film made it possible for Kazan to use the lesser-known actors from the stage play. "If Jessica had played it, I wouldn't have been in the movie, and neither would Kim Hunter [as Brando's stage wife]. Because Jessica was no star and neither was Brando. But Vivien, who after 'Gone With the Wind' was the biggest thing you ever saw -- she could carry us all."

Again working under Kazan, Mr. Malden played the dockside priest who rallies a punched-out prizefighter (Brando) to stand against a corrupt union in "On the Waterfront" (1954). Mr. Malden received another Oscar nomination for his performance. He also brought actress Eva Marie Saint, whom he had known at an acting workshop in New York, to Kazan's attention for what would be her movie debut and Oscar-winning role as Brando's love interest in "On the Waterfront."

Perhaps none of Mr. Malden's films received as much publicity as "Baby Doll" (1956), based on two short plays by Tennessee Williams. The film, again with Kazan directing, gave Mr. Malden a rare chance for a leading role. He played a devious Southern cotton gin operator desperate to consummate his marriage to a teenage bride (Carroll Baker). Eli Wallach plays his young rival in business and love, who ultimately cuckolds Mr. Malden's character.

The film's plot and provocative advertising -- Baker was shown sucking her thumb and sleeping in a crib -- provoked outrage among Catholic groups. Cardinal Francis J. Spellman said ticket buyers were courting sin.

Mr. Malden pointed out that because the marriage between "Baby Doll" and her husband was not consummated "it was the lack of sex that got the picture banned by the Catholic Church."

Mr. Malden directed one film, "Time Limit" (1957), about a Korean War court-martial and starring his friend Richard Widmark. The movie received positive reviews, but Mr. Malden said he disliked the office politics required of a director and happily returned to a busy schedule of character roles, including the 1962 musical "Gypsy" and the 1964 John Ford western "Cheyenne Autumn."

Mladen George Sekulovich, the son of Serbian immigrant laborers, was born March 22, 1912, in Chicago and raised in Gary, Ind. He changed his name in the late 1930s at Kazan's urging, but Mr. Malden said he felt so guilty that he tried to insert the name Sekulovich wherever possible on film, whether on an office nameplate or shouted out to a fellow TV detective in "The Streets of San Francisco."

Mr. Malden excelled in drama and athletics in high school. He twice broke his nose playing basketball, and he was resigned to never playing a romantic leading man.

"God knows I didn't have a pretty face to help me get parts, so in order to stay in this profession, I realized early on that I'd better know my business," he wrote in a 1997 memoir, "When Do I Start?" "I strived to be number one in the number two parts I was destined to get."

He saved up $300 quickly by accepting the most dangerous jobs at steel mills and then talked his way into a scholarship at Chicago's Goodman Theatre Dramatic School in 1934.

He came to New York in 1937 and won a tryout with the Group Theater, then casting Clifford Odets's drama "Golden Boy." It was through the show, in which he played a boxing manager, that Mr. Malden met Kazan.


Mr. Malden spent the next decade working steadily onstage. During World War II, he was assigned by the Army to entertain troops in the Moss Hart show "Winged Victory." He won wide acclaim after the war in Kazan's 1947 staging of Arthur Miller's "All My Sons," playing a man seeking revenge against a war profiteer.

Then came "Streetcar," which propelled him to the front rank of character actors and led to his long Hollywood career. In Hollywood, Mr. Malden was cast as policemen in many of his early films, including Kazan's "Boomerang!" (1947) and Alfred Hitchcock's "I Confess" (1953).

He was particularly memorable as the cruel father of baseball player Jim Piersall (played by Anthony Perkins) in "Fear Strikes Out" (1957); the fire-and-brimstone minister in Disney's "Pollyanna" (1960); a sheriff who whips outlaw Brando in "One-Eyed Jacks" (1961); and an inflexible warden in "The Birdman of Alcatraz" (1962), with Burt Lancaster as his famous prisoner.

In "Patton" (1970), Mr. Malden played Gen. Omar Bradley to George C. Scott's glory-seeking Gen. George S. Patton Jr.

Mr. Malden said he wanted to "really let go" at Scott in one scene where Patton overstepped his authority, but he was told by Bradley, the film's technical adviser, to play the scene calmly.

Why would you react calmly, Mr. Malden asked Bradley.

"Because I've got one more star on my shoulder than he has," Bradley said.

One of Mr. Malden's favorite parts was in "Hotel," a 1967 film based on an Arthur Hailey novel. In playing a hotel thief named Keycase, Mr. Malden said he relished the challenge of making "something with no dialogue come to life."

He was nominated four times for an Emmy in "The Streets of San Francisco," and he won for outstanding supporting actor in a limited series or a special for "Fatal Vision" (1984), in which he played the father-in-law of a murderer. He continued to take occasional film and television parts, among them Barbra Streisand's father in "Nuts" (1987) and a priest in an episode of "The West Wing."

From 1989 to 1992, he was president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and helped raise millions of dollars to build a library and film research center. In 2004, he received a Screen Actors Guild award for a lifetime of achievement.

Survivors include his wife of 70 years, former actress Mona Graham; two daughters, Mila and Carla; three granddaughters; and four great-grandchildren.]]> Wed, 01 Jul 2009 19:39:13 -0400 http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=97394 Old School Pop Culture http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=97379 So, from the corner of the world, here are some really funny tombstone quotes.
***

To free me from domestic strife,
Death call'd at my house, but he spoke with my wife.
Susan, wife of David Pattison, lies buried here.
Oct. 19, 1706
Stop reader, and if not in a hurry, shed a tear.
Susan Pattison, Suffolk, England

Well, one rather gets the feeling that Mr. Pattison isn't going to shed a tear, doesn't one?

Here's a tombstone quote that is priceless:

Here lies a virgin,
with her babe
resting in her arms.
Snow Camp, North Carolina

Sacred to the memory of
Nathaniel Godbold, Esq.
Inventor & Proprietor of
That excellent medicine
THE VEGETABLE BALSAM
Reknowned for the cure of Consumption
And Asthma
Died Dec. 17, 1799
Died of fevers and asthma.
Godalming, England

Underneath this pile of stone,
Lies all that's left of Sally Jones.
Her name was Lord, it was not Jones,
But Jones was used to rhyme with stones.
Sally Lord, Skaneteles, New York

In Memory of Captain Underwood
Who was drowned
Here lies free from blood and slaughter
Once Underwood -- now underwater.
Captain Underwood, Sussex, England

This tombstone quote makes it sound like the poor chap had a pretty inglorious trip home!

Here in this urn
From Malaber
The ashes lie
of Jonathan Barr
He sought a higher life
Afar
And traveled home
In a jar
Jonathan Barr, Nantucket, Rhode Island

1891
shot in the back
by a dirty rat
Charles Thompson Nainaimo
British Columbia, Canada

She always said her feet were killing
Her but nobody believed her.
Margaret Daniels, Hollywood Cemetery,
Richmond, Virginia

Here lies Ezekiel Aikle
Aged 102
The good
Die young
Ezekiel Aikle, East Dalhousie Cemetery,
Nova Scotia

Norton I
Emperor of the United States
And Protector of Mexico
Joshua Norton, The Masonic Cemetery, Colma, California, 1880
(Old Norton was a San Francisco eccentric who declared himself Emperor. San Francisco humors its eccentrics -- even The Emperor)

The brevity of these tombstone quotes is indeed remarkable:

Once I wasn't
Then I was
Now I ain't again.
Arthur C. Homans, Cleveland, Ohio

Been Here:
Now gone:
Had a good time
1916
Dr. J.J. Subers, Rose Hill Cemetery
Macon, Georgia

]]> Tue, 30 Jun 2009 22:58:03 -0400 http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=97379 favorite movie scenes http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=97369 full metal jacket - " is that you john wayne?"
tommy boy - " housekeeping?"
dazed and confused - " i get older.."
remember the titans - " gary's car crash"
mcclintock - "the mine fight"
porky's - " the "holey" shower scene"
fast time at ridgemont high - " phoebe cates pool fantasy"
]]> Tue, 30 Jun 2009 15:01:00 -0400 http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=97369 The OTHER musician who died Thursday: Sky Saxon http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=97363


http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/music_blog...sky-saxon-.html

(by Todd Martens | Los Angeles Times)

Sky Saxon, leader of Los Angeles 1960s garage-rock band the Seeds, died early Thursday morning (June 25, 2009) in Austin, Texas. Born Richard Marsh, Saxon was hospitalized on Monday. His death was made public via a Facebook status update from his wife, Sabrina Saxon, and confirmed later in the day by his publicist. His exact age is unknown, but he is believed to be in his mid-‘60s.

Saxon’s wife has been keeping fans updated on Saxon’s status via various social networking sites. He was hospitalized earlier this week for an undetermined internal infection and was reported to be in critical condition. A statement released last night revealed that Saxon ultimately died of heart and kidney failure due to the infection.

Saxon had recently moved east to Austin, where he had continued to be an active musician. Saxon had performed just last Saturday at the Austin club Antone’s, where he appeared with local garage-rock band Shapes Have Fangs, and was planning to tour this summer with surviving members of Love and the Electric Prunes. The tour is expected to go on.

The Seeds came together in the mid-'60s garage-rock boom, had a Top 40 hit in 1966 with “Pushing Too Hard,” marked by Saxon’s aggressive vocals and its dandified electric organ line. The Seeds came close to hitting the Top 40 again in 1967 with “Can’t Seem to Make You Mine,” which highlighted Saxon’s mewing scratch over a more traditional early rock ‘n’ roll groove, albeit one scorched with acid.

Like many bands of the era, the Seeds took its sloppy blues rock cues from the Rolling Stones. Yet the Seeds were equally influenced by the flower-power generation, and the 1967 album Future saw the Seeds retreating into more psychedelic cult status.

Saxon had been in the studio last year with the Smashing Pumpkins’ Billy Corgan, and was said to be working on a documentary on the Seeds.]]> Tue, 30 Jun 2009 03:21:34 -0400 http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=97363 Fred Travalena dies at 66; master impressionist and singer http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=97348 10:04 AM PDT, June 29, 2009

Fred Travalena, the master impressionist and singer whose broad repertoire of voices ranged from Jack Nicholson to Sammy Davis Jr. to Bugs Bunny, has died. He was 66.

Travalena, who began being treated for an aggressive form of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in 2002 and saw the disease return last July after going into remission in 2003, died Sunday at his home in Encino, according to his publicist, Roger Neal. Travalena also was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2003 but had been in complete remission since then.

Over the next three decades, he was a headliner in Las Vegas, Reno and Atlantic City, performed in concerts around the country, appeared on "The Tonight Show" and other talk shows and starred in his own specials, such as "The Many Faces of Fred Travalena" and "Comedy in the Oval Office."

The boyish-faced entertainer is said to have had a repertoire of more than 360 celebrity, political and cartoon-character voices, including Clint Eastwood, Dr. Ruth Westheimer, Joe Pesci, Robert De Niro, Henry Kissinger, Donald Rumsfeld, Johnny Mathis, Bruce Springsteen and Luciano Pavarotti.

"I've known impressionists who have reached a wall where they can't do any more [voices]," Travalena told the Omaha World Herald in 1996. "I don't have that problem, thank God."

In one part of his act, Travalena physically and vocally "morphed" into all of the U.S. presidents, from John F. Kennedy up to George W. Bush.

He also was known to sing "Have I Told You Lately" in various voices, including Kermit the Frog ("Have I told you lately that I love you"), Katharine Hepburn ("Have I told you there's no one else above you") and Frank Sinatra ("You fill my heart with gladness . . . ")

The imaginative entertainer even did Sinatra imitating Boy George.

Of Italian and Irish heritage, Travalena was born Oct. 6, 1942, in the Bronx, N.Y., and grew up on Long Island.

When it came to impressions, he had an early role model: his father, a onetime entertainer who sang and performed comedy and impressions.

"He got me doing church shows when I was just a little kid," Travalena recalled in a 1998 interview on "The Crier Report" on Fox News Network. "I used to do an impression of [singer] Johnny Ray."

In school, he said, he learned to deal with bullies by imitating a Martian voice or Porky Pig. And he found he could deflect a teacher's question of why he didn't do his homework by making her laugh with his impression of Crazy Guggenheim, the goofy character played on TV by Frank Fontaine during Jackie Gleason's "Joe the Bartender" sketches.

During a stint in the Army's Special Services, Travalena won the All-Army Entertainment Award for best singer and once impersonated President Lyndon Johnson's voice on the base theater's answering machine to announce the movies and show times.

Although he told the New York Times in 1989 that he was "headed for the commercial art field," Travalena said: "That wasn't getting me up in the morning, and I couldn't get show business out of my mind."

At one point after launching his career as a singer, he and his singer wife, Lois, were performing together at Andrews Air Force Base near Washington, D.C.

As recounted in a 1989 New York Times story, Lois surprised her husband by spontaneously asking the audience, "How'd you like to hear Fred do impressions?"

He went on to impersonate Dean Martin, Paul Lynde, Jim Nabors and Presidents Kennedy and Johnson.

"People liked it," he later said.

Travalena reportedly was performing at a resort hotel in the Catskills when impressionist Rich Little was in the audience. After the show, Little congratulated Travalena and later recommended him for a spot in British celebrity journalist David Frost's show at the Riviera in Las Vegas.

Travalena joined Little, Frank Gorshin and other impressionists as a regular on the "ABC Comedy Hour," the 1972 comedy-variety show, which was known in reruns as the "ABC Comedy Hour Presents the Kopycats."

In 1974, he opened for Shirley MacLaine at the old MGM Grand and later opened for other Vegas performers such as Mathis, Davis, Wayne Newton and Andy Williams.

Travalena's talent for vocal mimicry led to a side career dubbing offensive dialogue in feature films bound for airing on television -- including Pesci in "Casino," De Niro in "Brazil" and Sean Connery in "Just Cause."

Travalena made occasional guest appearances on TV series such as "The Love Boat" and "Murphy Brown," as well as on "Hollywood Squares" and other game shows. He also did voices on a number of TV cartoon series and appeared in the 1978 movie "The Buddy Holly Story."

In more recent years, he turned to songwriting and singing and released CDs including "We All Need Love Today" and "The Spirit of America."

For a man of so many voices, re-finding his own voice as a singer was something of a challenge.

"That really scared me for awhile," he told the Reno Gazette-Journal in 1999. "I'd wanted to expand into singing, and two years ago I told my drummer to book a studio. The night before the session, I was ready to cancel.

"I asked myself, 'Who is Fred Travalena? Where is that 19-year-old kid who was a singer? What is my sound?' I just had to get used to it."

Travalena received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2005.

He is survived by his wife of 39 years, Lois; sons Fred IV and Corey; and a granddaughter, Sophia.

Funeral services will be private
]]> Mon, 29 Jun 2009 14:05:19 -0400 http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=97348 Transformers revenge of the fallen http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=97321 Who has seen this movie,and what are your opinions?

I watched it today. It was sold out at Hollywood theaters in Longview for the showing I went to , and the next one as well. Iliked the movie a lot The theme song "New Divide" by Linkin Park rocks! Just my opinion. My daughter thinks Iam too old to like Linkin Park. Great movie worth watching.]]> Sat, 27 Jun 2009 21:24:01 -0400 http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=97321 Rest in peace, King of Pop. Michael Jackson dead at 50. http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=97286
QUOTE
We've just learned Michael Jackson has died. He was 50.

Michael suffered a cardiac arrest earlier this afternoon and paramedics were unable to revive him. We're told when paramedics arrived Jackson had no pulse and they never got a pulse back.

Michael is survived by three children: Michael Joseph Jackson, Jr., Paris Michael Katherine Jackson and Prince "Blanket" Michael Jackson II.

Jackson had 13 number one hits during his solo career.


Jackson was always off in the head and did some strange and wrong things, but he was definitely one of the great musical talents this world has ever seen.

Such a terrible, terrible tragedy. Farah Fawcett and Michael Jackson in the same day. Wow.]]> Thu, 25 Jun 2009 17:50:03 -0400 http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=97286 Farrah Fawcett dies at 62 http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=97280
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090625/ap_en_tv/us_obit_fawcett

FILE - In this Aug. 13, 2006 file photo, actress Farrah Fawcett poses for AP – FILE - In this Aug. 13, 2006 file photo, actress Farrah Fawcett poses for photographers on the red carpet …
By BOB THOMAS, Associated Press Writer Bob Thomas, Associated Press Writer – 2 mins ago

LOS ANGELES – Farrah Fawcett, whose luxurious tresses and blinding smile helped redefine sex appeal in the 1970s as one of TV's "Charlie's Angels," died Thursday after battling cancer. She was 62.

The pop icon, who in the 1980s set aside the fantasy girl image to tackle serious roles, died Thursday shortly before 9:30 a.m. PDT in a Santa Monica hospital, spokesman Paul Bloch said.

She burst on the scene in 1976 as one-third of the crime-fighting trio in TV's "Charlie's Angels." A poster of her in a clingy swimsuit sold in the millions.

She left the show after one season but had a flop on the big screen with "Somebody Killed Her Husband." She turned to more serious roles in the 1980s and 1990s, winning praise playing an abused wife in "The Burning Bed."

She had been diagnosed with anal cancer in 2006. As she underwent treatment, she enlisted the help of actor Ryan O'Neal, who had been her longtime companion and was the father of her son, Redmond, born in 1985.

This month, O'Neal said he asked Fawcett to marry him and she agreed. They would wed "as soon as she can say yes," he said.

Her struggle with painful treatments and dispiriting setbacks was recorded in the television documentary "Farrah's Story." Fawcett sought cures in Germany as well as the United States, battling the disease with iron determination even as her body weakened.

"Her big message to people is don't give up, no matter what they say to you, keep fighting," her friend Alana Stewart said. NBC estimated the May 15, 2009, broadcast drew nearly 9 million viewers.

In the documentary, Fawcett was seen shaving off most of her trademark locks before chemotherapy could claim them. Toward the end, she's seen huddled in bed, barely responding to a visit from her son.

Fawcett, Kate Jackson and Jaclyn Smith comprised the original "Angels," the sexy, police-trained trio of martial arts experts who took their assignments from a rich, mysterious boss named Charlie (John Forsythe, who was never seen on camera but whose distinctive voice was heard on speaker phone.)

The program debuted in September 1976, the height of what some critics derisively referred to as television's "jiggle show" era, and it gave each of the actresses ample opportunity to show off their figures as they disguised themselves in bathing suits and as hookers and strippers to solve crimes.

Backed by a clever publicity campaign, Fawcett — then billed as Farrah Fawcett-Majors because of her marriage to "Six Million Dollar Man" star Lee Majors — quickly became the most popular Angel of all.

Her face helped sell T-shirts, lunch boxes, shampoo, wigs and even a novelty plumbing device called Farrah's faucet. Her flowing blond hair, pearly white smile and trim, shapely body made her a favorite with male viewers in particular.

A poster of her in a dampened red swimsuit sold millions of copies and became a ubiquitous wall decoration in teenagers' rooms.

Thus the public and the show's producer, Spelling-Goldberg, were shocked when she announced after the series' first season that she was leaving television's No. 5-rated series to star in feature films. (Cheryl Ladd became the new "Angel" on the series.)

But the movies turned out to be a platform where Fawcett was never able to duplicate her TV success. Her first star vehicle, the comedy-mystery "Somebody Killed Her Husband," flopped and Hollywood cynics cracked that it should have been titled "Somebody Killed Her Career."

The actress had also been in line to star in "Foul Play" for Columbia Pictures. But the studio opted for Goldie Hawn instead. "Spelling-Goldberg warned all the studios that that they would be sued for damages if they employed me," Fawcett told The Associated Press in 1979. "The studios wouldn't touch me."

She finally reached an agreement to appear in three episodes of "Charlie's Angels" a season, an experience she called "painful."

She returned to making movies, including the futuristic thriller "Logan's Run," the comedy-thriller "Sunburn" and the strange sci-fi tale "Saturn 3," but none clicked with the public.

Fawcett fared better with television movies such as "Murder in Texas," "Poor Little Rich Girl" and especially as an abused wife in 1984's "The Burning Bed." The last earned her an Emmy nomination and the long-denied admission from critics that she really could act.

As further proof of her acting credentials, Fawcett appeared off-Broadway in "Extremities" as a woman who is raped in her own home. She repeated the role in the 1986 film version.

Not content to continue playing victims, she switched type. She played a murderous mother in the 1989 true-crime story "Small Sacrifices" and a tough lawyer on the trail of a thief in 1992's "Criminal Behavior."

She also starred in biographies of Nazi-hunter Beate Klarsfeld and photographer Margaret Bourke-White.

"I felt that I was doing a disservice to ourselves by portraying only women as victims," she commented in a 1992 interview.

In 1995, at age 50, Fawcett posed partly nude for Playboy magazine. The following year, she starred in a Playboy video, "All of Me," in which she was equally unclothed while she sculpted and painted.

She told an interviewer she considered the experience "a renaissance," adding, "I no longer feel ... restrictions emotionally, artistically, creatively or in my everyday life. I don't feel those borders anymore."

Fawcett's most unfortunate career moment may have been a 1997 appearance on David Letterman's show, when her disjointed, rambling answers led many to speculate that she was on drugs. She denied that, blaming her strange behavior on questionable advice from her mother to be playful and have a good time.

In September 2006, Fawcett, who at 59 still maintained a strict regimen of tennis and paddleball, began to feel strangely exhausted. She underwent two weeks of tests and was told the devastating news: She had anal cancer.

O'Neal, with whom she had a 17-year relationship, again became her constant companion, escorting her to the hospital for chemotherapy.

"She's so strong," the actor told a reporter. "I love her. I love her all over again."

She struggled to maintain her privacy, but a UCLA Medical Center employee pleaded guilty in late 2008 to violating federal medical privacy law for commercial purposes for selling records of Fawcett and other celebrities to the National Enquirer.

"It's much easier to go through something and deal with it without being under a microscope," she told the Los Angeles Times in an interview in which she also revealed that she helped set up a sting that led to the hospital worker's arrest.

Her decision to tell her own story through the NBC documentary was meant as an inspiration to others, friends said. The segments showing her cancer treatment, including a trip to Germany for procedures there, were originally shot for a personal, family record, they said. And although weak, she continued to show flashes of grit and good humor in the documentary.

"I do not want to die of this disease. So I say to God, `It is seriously time for a miracle,'" she said at one point.

Born Feb. 2, 1947, in Corpus Christi, Texas, she was named Mary Farrah Leni Fawcett by her mother, who said she added the Farrah because it sounded good with Fawcett. She was less than a month old when she underwent surgery to remove a digestive tract tumor with which she was born.

After attending Roman Catholic grade school and W.B. Ray High School, Fawcett enrolled at the University of Texas at Austin. Fellow students voted her one of the 10 most beautiful people on the campus and her photos were eventually spotted by movie publicist David Mirisch, who suggested she pursue a film career. After overcoming her parents' objections, she agreed.

Soon she was appearing in such TV shows as "That Girl," "The Flying Nun," "I Dream of Jeannie" and "The Partridge Family."

Majors became both her boyfriend and her adviser on career matters, and they married in 1973. She dropped his last name from hers after they divorced in 1982.

By then she had already begun her long relationship with O'Neal. The couple never married. Both Redmond and Ryan O'Neal have grappled with drug and legal problems in recent years.]]> Thu, 25 Jun 2009 13:14:02 -0400 http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=97280 <![CDATA[Cheap Trick finds fountain of youth on `Latest' CD]]> http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=97246

(by WAYNE PARRY | Associated Press Writer)


http://www.sacbee.com/977/story/1970726.html


Maybe it's Red Bull, or maybe they just took a dip in that pool from the movie Cocoon, but Cheap Trick has got its youthful energy and exuberance back again.

That's no small feat for the Rockford rockers, whose biggest success came while Jimmy Carter was in office, and who haven't hit it this hard since 1982's One On One album.

The song "Sick Man Of Europe," named after a solo project bassist Tom Petersson launched during a 1980s break from the band, sounds like a bunch of amped-up 20-year olds gleefully bashing away in a garage for nothing more than the sheer joy of plugging in, turning it up all the way and rocking out. Petersson's nasty distorted bass dominates cool.gif as Rick Nielsen's slashing guitars add to the mayhem.

Other hard rockers include "Every Day You Make Me Crazy," "California Girl" and "Alive."

Longtime faithful disciples of The Beatles, Cheap Trick continues the reverence on the Lennon-like "Miracle," which even lifts the riff from "Mind Games" and blends it with chord progressions from CT's own "World's Greatest Lover," itself a loving Beatles ode.

CHECK THIS TRACK OUT: "When The Lights Are Out" will doubtless sound familiar to Cheap Trick fans: It grafts the drumbeat and guitar riff from "'Elo Kiddies" onto the lyrics of the song originally done by Slade. It's an old track, recorded in 1976 and included here with no changes.
________________________________________________________________


WRONG! biggrin.gif "When The Lights Are Out" was recorded in 1974 by Slade...







]]> Wed, 24 Jun 2009 19:38:44 -0400 http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=97246 Behind the scenes http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=97206
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IuxhYWyaz3Y]]> Tue, 23 Jun 2009 17:20:46 -0400 http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=97206 R.I.P. Ed McMahon http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=97193

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QC-25xPmX7o



http://www.channel3000.com/entertainment/1...236/detail.html

LOS ANGELES -- NBC News reports that Ed McMahon, the longtime sidekick of Johnny Carson on the Tonight Show, has died after long battle with cancer.

The network home of the Tonight Show confirmed the television icon's death with McMahon's publicist, Howard Bragman.

He was 86.

McMahon was recently hospitalized at the UCLA Ronald Reagan Hospital in Los Angeles for a bout of pneumonia.

The entertainer was made famous for his role on the Tonight Show alongside Carson for 30 years, beginning in 1962. He also hosted the talent show Star Search and co-hosted TV Bloopers And Practical Jokes with Dick Clark.

On the Tonight Show, McMahon became famous for creating the catchphrase "Heeeeeeere's Johnny!"

He later became a mainstay on commercials as the presenter of giant checks for the American Family Publishers sweepstakes.

McMahon's bankruptcy proceedings brought the aging Californian back into the limelight.]]> Tue, 23 Jun 2009 08:34:18 -0400 http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=97193 Best of the West http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=97138 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwDoLYrMRIw&feature=email]]> Fri, 19 Jun 2009 15:22:52 -0400 http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=97138 pandora.com http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=97042 http://www.pandora.com is a website in which you pick a song or an artist and it automatically creates a radio station of bands that are similar to the style of that song or artist. You can add more than one artist to a station and create more variety and after a while you'll get stations where you never feel like you hear a song you don't like.

Check it out and tell me how you like it]]> Tue, 16 Jun 2009 15:13:36 -0400 http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=97042 Land of the Lost http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=97021 Worst movie I've seen in 10 years......Save your money or see something else.....]]> Mon, 15 Jun 2009 19:05:59 -0400 http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=97021 tv/ movie remakes http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=97018 if you could remake a show or movie what would it be and who would be in it? Mon, 15 Jun 2009 17:44:27 -0400 http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=97018 Your worst collaborations of all time http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=96891 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvJVQYLlj2A
2. Elton John and Eminem : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCST1i7tiAU...feature=related
3. Def Leppard and Taylor Swift : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gh6WKvQaCK4
4. Peter Cetera & Amy Grant : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NRsl9sTOr4...=PL&index=1
5. 5ive and Queen : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lLUuO-coB0
6. Jimmy Page and P whoever : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvA26p6wMYc
7. David Bowie & Mick Jagger : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaZCZnmdmbA
8. Paul McCartney & Michael Jackson : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gWvBXS2t4A
9. Eddie Van Halen & Michael Jackson : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uqxo1SKB0z8
10. Frank Sinatra & Bono : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqbzbXZsajU
]]> Wed, 10 Jun 2009 23:20:38 -0400 http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=96891