The legendary La Scala opera house in Milan has commissioned a full-length work to be based on his book, An Inconvenient Truth, and the Oscar-winning documentary of the same title, to be shown in 2011.
The composer, Battistelli, said the opera will be told through characters and not a narrator and will feature a chorus but Gore will be a figure in the story. "It will be about the tragedy of our present situation. It is a great challenge, of course, to write an opera on such an unusual subject. It is certainly not the story of Romeo and Juliet."
from Ameriblog: Walking up to the Marriott, I kept waiting to encounter the huge protest. After all, the protest organizers were predicting a crowd of 10,000 (including the McCain and Huckabee crew), but it's much, much, much smaller than - couple hundred, maybe. Creepy things happened and Hillary's brother, drinking a pint, threatened to vote for Bob Barr. Hillary traveled on flatbed through Puerto Rico, shaking her hips while Obama, travelling in SD checked out turquoise jewelry. According to AP, after the decision to half the delegate values, one woman, wearing a blue “Team Hillary” shirt, shoved a man in a suit and tie wearing a small Obama button on his lapel. Another woman in a white Clinton shirt hung her head in her hands. “That was a crime!” a man shouted. “McCain in ’08! McCain in ’08!” a woman yelled from the back of the room. “No-bama! No-bama!” Watch for retribution by angry Hillary supporters who plan to engage in Swift Boating with their trumped-up allegations and fantasies.
I don't know how to interpret all the electoral patterns (last I saw Obama needed 41 delegates according to the current "magic number," which could change some after the DNC Rules Committee meets today.) I do he will likely make a big appearance Tuesday night in Minneapolis at the same venue where the Republicans will have their convention in the fall. He did make appearances in MT, SD and Puerto Rico but has focussed on states like CO, where McCain will compete. What's more, take a look at the various month-end fund-raising schemes.
Behind closed doors this week, George W. Bush quietly hosted a fundraiser for John McCain that raised $3.5 million from about 500 Republican donors. No cameras were allowed into the event, and the two were only captured on film together at the airport -- even then for just 27 seconds as they got into a car to be whisked to the exclusive event. A pattern is emerging. McCain is going to extraordinary lengths to conceal the fact that at the very foundation of his campaign -- its policy positions and now the money driving it -- is George W. Bush. (from Obama's mailer for donations, which has a picture of Bush & McCain together - but I like the composite one below even more)
Meanwhile, at the RNC site they are flashing: "Obama's Bad Week in Review" "Obama's Tall Tales" "Obama's Reversal on Iraq" and otherwise using him as a Bogeyman to get money. Hillary is not mentioned.
Obama's mailer counters:
This morning someone forwarded me an email sent by the arm of the Republican Party that raises money for their Senate candidates. The subject of the message was "Democrats Win Landslide Victory," and the writer, Republican former Senator Bill Frist, admits: "I have a real fear of waking up to this headline after the elections this fall." He goes on to explain fears among Washington power brokers about Barack Obama's grassroots support and voter registration efforts. He's right to be worried -- we're bringing new people into the process, and Obama supporters are organizing in communities across the country like never before.
DNC is all conflicted and has to use a graphic with both BO & HC - for now.
Then there are the comments of conservative media mogul Rupert Murdoch who once hosted a fundraiser for Hillary Clinton - about Barack Obama: "He is a rock star. It's fantastic." "I love what he is saying about education." "I don't think he will win Florida.....but he will win in Ohio and the election". "I am anxious to meet him." "I want to see if he will walk the walk."
About the Republican nominee, Murdoch said, "McCain is a friend of mine. He's a patriot. But he's unpredictable. Doesn't seem to know much about the economy. He has been in Congress a long time, and you have to make a lot of compromises. So what's he really stand for?... I think he has a lot of problems."
I love charts and Poblano charted attack press releases and plotted them. & Poblano turns out to be an expert on predicting baseball outcomes!
Over at InTrade Prediction Markets, where people bet for money - they are laying odds of 91.3 Obama, 8.5 Clinton, 39.0 McCain. (For example, 91.3 means there is a 91.3% chance Obama will be the nominee, according to betters, and a share costs $9.13, whereas a Clinton share can be had for 85 cents. $3.90 says McCain will win the general election.)
Hillary is so optimistic she is still having a t-shirt contest.
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Nan Tonge sent me photos and a link to ChrisJordan.com which was easily provocative enough for me to want to check out in more depth. I was blown away by his series relating to American consumptionism and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, to name a couple. His macrocosms and microcosms put me in the mind of Godfrey Reggio's Kooyanisquatsi: Life Out of Balance, a 1981 documentary that raised my consciousness about the environment and consumerism. Kooyanisquati is the Hopi term for "Life Out of Balance" and it's relevant as we approach "peak oil." (See the trailer below - this film was ahead of its time - prophetic. The soundtrack is by Philip Glass. It is part of a trilogy.) My son was born in the year it was made, and Nan is his friend. This art represents clearly their politics and they will go on living after we are gone.
The oil barrels and pallets are from the Seattle shipyards, and beneath them are cars, then cell phones and cell phone chargers! With the Barbies, he zooms out and shows such a large amount that they are no longer recognizable as Barbies, but he is showing the number of breast augmentation surgeries done in a year iin the US and the Barbies arranged in bas relief like breasts. The shot that looks like garbage is the remains of a Dollar Store devastated by Hurricane Katrina.
Slugbug
Running the Numbers looks at contemporary American culture through the austere lens of statistics. Each image portrays a specific quantity of something: fifteen million sheets of office paper (five minutes of paper use); 106,000 aluminum cans (thirty seconds of can consumption) and so on.His hope is that images representing these quantities might have a different effect than the raw numbers alone, such as we find daily in articles and books. Statistics can feel abstract and anesthetizing, making it difficult to connect with and make meaning of 3.6 million SUV sales in one year, for example, or 2.3 million Americans in prison, or 32,000 breast augmentation surgeries in the U.S. every month. (interview at the link)
In April, Chris traveled around the world with National Geographic as their international Eco-ambassador for Earth Day 2008. He exhibited his work, conducted workshops, and gave public lectures and media appearances in Taipei, Lisbon, and Rome.
"This is a tourist occasion," Hillary told reporters. "Why don't you go learn something about the monument?" (reported by CBS)
UPDATE
Democrat Barack Obama paid an unscheduled late-night visit to Mount Rushmore Friday, visiting the national memorial at closing time and joking that his ears were too big to ever be included in such a display. Two days after rival Hillary Rodham Clinton made a campaign stop here, Obama joined a group of reporters and staff members for an after-dark sightseeing visit to the national memorial, where the faces of four presidents are carved into the mountain.
Asked by a reporter if he ever envisioned himself carved into the mountain, he said, "I don't think my ears would fit. There's only so much rock up there."
Obama said it was his first visit to the landmark. He did express curiosity about the filming of a chase scene in "North by Northwest," Alfred Hitchcock's 1959 classic starring Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint that included a death-defying scramble over Rushmore's presidential faces.
"How did they get up there in the first place?" he asked ranger Wesley Jensen. "They didn't. It was a movie set," Jensen told him. "Pretty spiffy, isn't it," said the Illinois senator, summing up his overall impressions.
I'll admit I took this out of context from the newspaper but I used to live in South Dakota and am trying to visualize this in my mind.
Mrs. Clinton was accompanied by a skeleton crew of aides and a diminished press corps Wednesday as she continued to tour of some of the remotest parts of America. After a tourist stop at Mount Rushmore, she drove nearly three hours across the desolate Badlands to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation and made her electability argument to a somewhat bewildered crowd of about 250 people outside the Little Wound School.
Campaigning in South Dakota, Hillary Clinton evoked an aphorism she learned in Arkansas: "You can't tell how far a frog will jump until you punch him."
It all started with Rachael Ray. In case you don't know of her, she is a TV host for a cooking show or two. They say that Republicans and Democrats who don't even like to cook enjoy watching her in the kitchen. She is shown here in a photo in front of the oven and it looks hot. She shows great balance to be able to cook in those heels.
We all thought that Rachael Ray was an all-American woman. After all she was born in Glen Falls NY and her first job was working the candy counter in Macy's in NY City. But then she appeared in an ad for Dunkin' Donuts wearing a scarf that some thought resembled a keffiyeh, the headdress of Arab men. Yassar Arafat wore one. She is in the pic with the cherry blossoms blooming behind her).
The right wing blogesphere went viral. Dunkin donuts was accused of supporting terrorism. Michelle Malkin (shown in picture with donuts), a fan of the company for its tough stand on immigration, couldn't overlook this affront on her values. She and thousands of others like her took to the phones. They complained to Dunkin Donuts and threatened a boycott. Dunkin Donuts took notice and pulled the ad. America is safe once again.
Or are we? Someone noticed that John McCain's daughter, Meghan, was wearing a keffiyeh (shown with sunglasses resting on top of her head). And even Barbara Bush was noticed supporting the Palestinian cause! Put a flag pin on that woman!
Isn't it odd that Republicans would threaten to boycott Dunkin Donuts over a scarf picked out innocently by Rachael Ray's publicist for an ad but they think it's ok to push donkin donuts - aka "crack for kids" that is pure sugar and grease? Celebrity chef and author Anthony Bourdain believes it is.
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