Kiss Alive IV: Kiss Symphony

Kiss’s live albums are a mixed bag, even if you are a Kiss fan as I am. Alive was one of the first successful live albums, and though it is rumored to have been heavily re-worked in the studio (a claim Gene Simmons denies in his Autobiography. Casablanca records did not have the money, he says) it stands as an auditory record of the early Kiss experience.

Alive II seems to be just a quick revisiting of earlier success, this time with some new songs, but with little real innovation. To me it is the least relevant of the four.

Alive III is from the non-Peter Criss/Ace Frehley era of the band, and stands out in my mind due to the inclusion of the wonderfully sappy “God Gave Rock and Roll To You.” I believe Bruce Kulick and Eric Singer play on it.

I think the best of the Kiss live albums is Kiss: Unplugged, which combines a bit of nostalgia with Ace and Peter’s return for a few songs, and the superior musicianship of Bruce Kulick on guitar and Eric Singer on Drums. They even cover a Rolling Stones song.

The newest incarnation Alive IV the ongoing effort of Gene Simmons to scrape every last penny out of his fans is a two disc affair with the band performing with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. Gene saw that Metallica made some scratch with the Rock-Symphony hybrid and had to cash in himself.

The songs on the album are a mix of old and new, a couple of which are almost never played live “Great Expectations” and “Let Me Go Rock and Roll.” Kiss starts the show alone for a short set, then brings in the Symphony’s Ensemble for five songs, and then on to the full crew for the second disc.

For the most part I think the power of the Symphony is wasted, merely adding filler sound and playing the string parts on tracks like “Beth.” I don’t think any of the bands that have tried this gimmick have caught on to the full potential of re-working some of their songs out of their original formats and letting the wider range of instruments have a crack at it. The songs sound like they do on their albums only with horn and string accompaniment. I just wish they’d worked in some type of overture with the Symphony playing a medley of the songs that would be played later in the night, then with perhaps some music in between songs, you know, like a symphony or something.

What’s here is pretty good though. The versions of “Beth” and “God of Thunder” worked especially well for me, as did one of my favorites “Goin’ Blind.”

Did I mention that Tommy Thayer is the Starchild on this album? He’s Kiss’s former convention manager and played in a Kiss tribute band, as well as Black and Blue, a band that Gene produced and managed. He does a good job of being Ace, and I think when he’s singing we get to hear what Ace would have sounded like had he stayed of the drugs and been able to sing in the first place.

All in all it’s what you would expect.

Pentagon's Futures Market Plan Condemned

Can anyone invest in this giant Death Pool? Who gets to decide who's worthy to be put on the list? If you invest in attacks or assasinations of US targets will that get you on a terrorist watch list?

What's to stop someone from say, betting heavy on some person being assasinated, then performing the deed and raking in the profits? This could be used as a tool to reward killing.

Just imagine, the US puts, say Yassir Arafat on the list, and then someone hedges the bets against him being killed waaaay up. Then somebody comes along and bets that he will be killed and says when, then goes and does it. Doesn't this just equate to more of a payment then? I guess you could just check the list of people saying he will be killed and have a good start on who did it, but then wouldn't it make people not want to invest in a possible killing?

Man, when the Dead Pool was simple and you only had to outwit Dirty Harry.

BWAHAHA!
It was easy to predict a rough reception for the rap-rock has-beens when a significant segment of the crowd booed a mention of the band by previous openers Linkin Park. When Limp Bizkit actually appeared around 7 o'clock, the boos intensified, and some fans pelted the stage with garbage.

The famously brainless Durst only fanned the flames, first encouraging the catcalls and flying trash, then swerving into a bizarre tirade against the crowd and city. Ranting that he'd fight anyone in earshot and spluttering explicit sexual putdowns, uncreative curses and ludicrous homophobic slurs, Durst simply self-destructed. Had the villain in "The Wizard of Oz" been a vile little boob like Durst rather than a snarly old lady in greenface, the movie's "I'm melting!" scene might have looked like this.


It's good that the "fans" let Fred know about it. The best part of his band was Wes Borland, and now that he's gone Fred has no rock cred, and no real rap cred either. He should re-name his band the Fred Durst Sucktastic Experience.

Why didn't someone tell me?

And here I thought I was alone in my penchant for nude motorcycle trips, and there is a group RIGHT HERE IN THE BORO.

Scientist Calls Global Warming a WMD

G.G. Liddy Says that Global Warming is Junk Science. Right, and Cigarettes don't contribute to cancer at all, and AIDS is just a myth.

Don't they always say that when we have a heat wave that it's the hottest summer since sometimes? Wouldn't it have to keep beeing hthe hottest summer ever every single year for global warming to exist?

Personally I like the fact that its so damn hot and there is ice melting at the poles. Don't you want everyone to be able to live in the tropics? Imagine, no one would have to go anywere to get somewhere warm, or to go to the beach, because everywhere would be a beach!

There probably wouldn't be any people, but the ones who might be left could build boats like in that Waterworld movie. They didn't look like they had it to bad. Kevin Costner even grew gills, wouldn't that be just the coolest?

You think you're so hot, but do you have a Talking Master P?

I was looking over on Fark, and there was a link to a guy wanting stories about experiences in Waffle House. That set me to thinking a bit.

Shortly after I began my current job I went to Waffle House on my lunch break (it being one of the few places open on 3rd shift, and close to work). I went in and sat at the bar and the cook was giving me this weird look the whole time.

He's standing there looking at me the whole time I make my order, and as I open up my book. He does it for a couple of more minutes, then he says, "When I seen you coming in I thought you was this guy I was in prison with. He always said when he got out he'd be coming for me, but I guess you're not him, are you?"

"Nope," I said.

"That's good."

Then he cooked me my grilled cheese sandwich and told me that he'd only been out a little while and he didnt' know when the other guy was getting out. I didn't inquire, and he didn't share why he was in prison, or what he'd done that the other guy should want to be coming for him.

Needless to say, I don't go to that Waffle House anymore. The really funny part was that he looked just like this snitch that I went to prison with that I promised that I'd take care of when I got out. But that's guy's name was Rob, the cook's wasn't.

How much caffeine is in soft drinks?

SOFT DRINK (12-oz. serving) CAFFEINE CONTENT (mg)
Jolt 72.0
Sugar-Free Mr. Pibb 58.8
Mountain Dew 54.0
Mello Yello 52.8
TAB 46.8
Coca-Cola 45.6
Diet Coke 45.6
Shasta Cola 44.4
Shasta Cherry Cola 44.4
Shasta Diet Cola 44.4
Shasta Diet Cherry Cola 44.4
Mr. PIBB 40.8
Dr. Pepper 39.6
Big Red 38.4
Sugar-Free Dr. Pepper 39.6
Pepsi-Cola 38.4
Aspen 36.0
Diet Pepsi 36.0
Pepsi Light 36.0
RC Cola 36.0
Diet Rite 36.0
Kick 31.2
Canada Dry Jamaica Cola 30.0
Canada Dry Diet Cola 1.2

[Data obtained from the National Soft Drink Association]
....

Sugar-Free Pibb coming in near the top? Where can I gets me some of that?

Phoenix sizzling in record heat

Overheated people 'have no tolerance for anything'

PHOENIX, Arizona (AP) -- It's so hot windshields are shattering or falling out, dogs are burning their paws on the pavement, and candles are melting indoors.
...
Terry Tapp, owner of an upholstery repair shop, said some windshields shatter when the heat causes them to expand. Others fall out when the glue holding them in place separates. The heat is also cracking and peeling dashboards.

"But the funniest thing you see with this heat is that you get the grumpiest people who come in that you have ever seen," Tapp said. "They have no tolerance for anything."


And I thought 85 was hot. I guess this means that I'm only cranky due to heat, but that doesn't explain it during winter.

I would imagine that there are some super high electric bills out there right now.

The Batman Fan Film that I higlighted earlier
I haven't downloaded it yet or seen it since I'm on dialup and it's like 48 megabytes.

If one of my most wonderful friends with Broadband access and a cd-burner wouldn't mind downloading it and burning me a copy I would be most appreciative.

The Dude Abides, from Fark

Warrior Retains ‘Foke’ Shares it With Young Conservatives

The Former WWF Champion and writer of horrible comic books Warrior was on C-Span 2 today. He was pontificating to a Young Conservative group. He definitely had his Foke.

He now has a goatee and shoulder length blonde hair. I was disappointed that he didn’t have it teased up in proper hair-band style.

He explained the basis of Conservativism. He thinks it means thinking over feeling. Liberals just want to feel everything.

I hate to tell him, but you could take the opposite tack that Liberals are the ones who are thinking and that Conservatives just follow what they are told and have been taught.

Every word he says is given in the shouting type of monotone that any 80’s wrestler or Monster Truck Pitchman would be proud of. No real inflection, just spitting the words out.

Apparently all of the people in the crowd believe as Warrior does that America is God’s Country. That’s not a bit zealotous is it?

Isn’t that what we don’t like about all those arab countries that are dominated by Islam? We don’t like that they think that they know what god wants and we’re just all idiots.

Some of his finer points: (paraphrased)

Liberals are evil.

Nothing good ever came from any liberal idea.

We are beings that pass judgment.

Liberals spit in the face of god.

Liberals don’t think, they just feel.

Conservatives must live to judge.

He misses the idea that you are not thinking if you just follow what has been done before. I assume that he would then be against women’s suffrage, emancipation and any other idea that has been brought forth since the writing of the original Holy US Constitution.

When you draw extremes like this Warrior, this is what you set yourself up for.

After the Supreme Court ruling that struck down anti-sodomy laws across the US, on the Steve Gill show on 99.7 WTN one of the talking heads on the show argued that the idea of privacy in the bedroom was not one that is valid because the idea of privacy is a relatively recent one. Just because an Idea is newer doesn’t mean that it is wrong.

To me, this is the fatal flaw of the super-conservative, the inability to change. If you draw a straight line down the center and say that you are divinely right and there is no room to have any discussion on the matter no progress will ever occur.

Warrior said that people would not continue to beat their heads against walls if there was no purpose to it, therefore whatever has worked for a long time must be the thing that is right.

Forgive me if I step a little high up on my soapbox here, but...

...does that mean that anything that has existed for a long time must be right? So the Chinese (Tibetan) system of government and society would obviously be the correct one, as it is the longest lasting continuous government on Earth. Granted they were knocked out of power by the Communists, but that’s not the point because Commies are just liberals after all.

I’m sure Warrior would disagree with this, because, after all, the USA is God’s Country and whatever the founding fathers put forth in the constitution is right and Holy, AMEN. (like blacks not being full people, or keeping women from the voting booth, or non-landowners)

Personally I don’t want the title of Liberal or Conservative (which of course makes me a liberal), I would prefer to look at an idea on its merits and decide from there. I prefer the term Pragnostic.

It would surprise me greatly if the Warrior does not enter the political arena at some point soon.

I'm a bit unimpressed with myself. I started the Read List to track how many books that I read in a year's time, and now, coming up on a year, I've only read about 55 books that I consider worthy of being listed (those being bound and of reasonable novel length, no comic trades, with the exception of Clumsy).

I would have thought I'dve read more by now. Sometimes I'm a good dork and set a good pace with one or two books a day, but then, other times it takes me two weeks.

Need more input!

Judge Uses Joe Pesci Movie To Issue Sentence
Found on Daily Rotten

At least the judge wasn't watching 8 Heads in a Duffel Bag. Actually there is no indication of the judge having watched the movie The Super, but it is the same plot as that movie.

Gunny, watch out, you could be sentenced to live in your own buildings.

What Religion Is Right For You?

Some people have too much time on their hands, and I commend them.

Found on Fark

New Batman Movie

If you're like Tommy, or you are Tommy, and you haven't seen the pictures from a new underground Batman short-film, then I'd advise you to scurry on over to Ain't-It-Cool-News where they've got you some Bat-Goodness.

Best part about it, nary a Joel Schumacher in sight.

Now I play Warren Ellis

"You not just hold donut! Give back!".

"The reason why England has one of the best languages in the world is that we were invaded by nearly everybody, so we developed a slave patois, which is what English is. English is like a pidgin language. We were invaded by the Romans, so as a result, we've got loads of Italian words to add to the Celtic words we had before. Then after the Romans, we had the Saxons coming in, so we got German words. After the Saxons are finished with us, we get the Normans so we get French added to the language. German, French, Italian, these are actually proper languages and have proper linguistic structures, something English does not have. Those languages have got order and you have to learn all these parts of speech and feminine nouns and masculine nouns, whereas with English it was, "Let's take the best bits of their language and not bother with all the fussy stuff because there's no point, and everyone knows what you mean." We got English, so as a result we've got eight different words that mean different shades of one thing. That is brilliant to a writer because they don't mean exactly the same thing. If there is a word from another language that we don't have, we just take that word."
--Alan Moore
Comic Book Artist Magazine #25 (p. 32) June 2003

That's why English is such a pain in the ass to learn for people coming from other languages (and much of America). There are bits and pieces of other languages and the structures of those languages. It's like designing a building out of various different styles of architecture. Sometimes it would work, and sometimes it wouldn't.

English has a structure, but it's a hodge-podge of rules from other languages.

What does all this have to do with anything? You be the judge.

O'Reilly Sucks.com. I think what we should all remember about Bill O'Reilly is that he has such high journalistic standards that he hosted Inside Edition. That's a bit like someone who wrote for the Enquirer trying to say that they are fair and balanced journalists.

Well, it seems that the Metallica litigation story is a hoax. They still must be stopped however. Lars is evil in a bad way.

It has also been brought to my attention that I left off Charlie's Angels 2 from my list of summer films that I've seen, so here is the newly updated list:

1. Pirates of the Carribean
2. Terminator 3
3. 28 Days Later
4. Matrix: Reloaded
5. X-Men 2
6. Hulk
7. The Italian Job
8. Charlie's Angels 2: Full Throttle
9. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

Charlie's Angels was better than LOEG, but it was not a good movie in any real sense of the word. It was fine for stupid action and flashy colors, but not much more than that.

Also, Tommy brought it to my attention that I didn't Include X-Men 2 in my movie list, it should be in there at Number 5 above Hulk. I just forgot all about seeing it.

Ladies and Gentlemen Lars Ulrich Must Be Stopped at all costs, and I propose that we form a team the likes of which has never been seen before. Truly a Band of Extraordinary Gentlemen to stop him.

On drums, we'll have Eric Singer, formerly of Kiss. On Bass, Jason Newstead, formerly of Metallica. On Electric Guitar, the Immortal Keith Richards...and on vocals and secondary bass, the only man more litigious than Lars....Gene Simmons.

Seriously though, suing over the continued use of two chords in sequence? Does that mean that we have to trace every blues riff back to the source and pay the person who first came up with them?

If I play an E, F sequence does that mean I'm copying Metallica? Even if I am, what of it? Can you point to where it is one particular song that they are mimicking? Copying of styles is what the music industry and all other artistic media are based on. You take bits of influences, add your own twists and there you go.

I think that if this goes through, Eddie Vedder should sue every singer that vaguely sounds like him. Look out Scott Weiland, Scott Sapp and all you other growly bastards, you better hope that a precedent isn't set here.

Does this mean that anyone who has ever copied an art style should have to pay royalties?

Ladies and Gentlemen he must be stopped.

The reviewers for Rolling Stone are smoking some crack since they gave Gore Verbinski's Pirates of the Carribean only two stars. It is, in fact, the best film that I've seen this summer. Here's a quick rundown of the films I've seen so far this summer and the way that I rank them:

1. Pirates of the Carribean--Great film with humor, action, romance, and a bit of grisly zombie action.
2. Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines--Much better than I expected. A good sci-fi action treat.
3. 28 Days Later--Great re-imagination of the Zombie genre, lifting the best parts of the Dead films and making something a bit new. Gives me more faith in Danny Boyle after the travesty that was The Beach
4. Matrix: Reloaded--I liked it, even if others didn't. I think there were quite a few cheesy parts in there (mostly that horrible rave). I'm looking forward to Revolutions.
5. Hulk--Hulk Smash. Still a good film, just not better than the others. I imagine the obvious sequel will have more of the titular Hulk smashing.
6. The Italian Job--Good caper film, but nothing really special.
7. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen--Will not get off the bottom of the list by the end of the summer, or ever. Quite possibly the worst comic book film outside of Batman and Robin. Joel didn't direct this one did he?

"If you need more plot, add diarrhea. Works every time."
--Trey Parker

League of Suck-Ass Gentlemen

If there's one thing that The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen comic by Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neil is not, it's pandering. It assumes some literacy on the part of the reader. It assumes for instance that you know who Mina Harker or Alan Quartermain, or Hawley Griffin are. It assumes you know some of their story. The movie that shares the name does not.

The movie is pandering and cutsey and assumes that it's audience are complete dolts (which may be the case, but I doubt anyone other than fans of the comic will be seing this film, and they will be sorely dissapointed). In the film each character gives a bit of a synopsis, as if to say, "Here's what happened in my book.

I'm not worrying about spoilers in this review, it's going to have them, but trust me, I'm not spoiling anything for you. Don't see this film. For once the critics are absolutely right. Avoid this film.

Here are some of my problems and things that are just damn dumb from the film to illustrate:

• Ok, the Nautilus is this big sub, right? It's established in the film early on from different shots that it's about the size of a battleship. Huge and whatnot. How then, does it fit into the tiny canals in Venice that they use Gondolas to navigate? How does it not bottom out? How does it turn once inside Venice?



• The movie shows when it shows the blueprints of Venice that it is made up of large buildings whose foundations rest underwater. Why then when they go under the city does it look like Venice is built on a giant pier with open space under the buildings?



• Speaking of those blueprints, if Nemo has a copy in a big book, why did the Fantom have to steal the originals in the beginning (Ignoring the question of why they were in the Bank of England and not in a museum or private collection to begin with).



• Why would blowing up a building in the sequence stop Venice from falling into the water? If there are multiple bombs as the movie says, wouldn't you have to blow up multiple buildings to get the same effect?



• For that matter, I really don't think that all the buildings in Venice are lined up like dominoes.



• Mina Harker is a vampire in the movie, right? How the hell is she out in the sunshine multiple times in the movie?



• How do you get inside Paris in a submarine? Apparantly Nemo knows how.



• When do these people have the time to get entirely new clothes every time a set gets ruined. In the first scene with Dorian Gray his clothes are shot up and then ripped down the front, but then in a later shot they are magically back to normal. Hyde rips his clothes Hulk style underwater (and gets them wet for that matter), but when Jekyll comes back up to the bridge, all smiles, his clothes are just like when he left.



• Speaking of smiles, why is Hyde always smiling? I believe that the only time he should ever smile is when he's done something nasty to someone. For goodness sakes in the comic (which this is supposed to be based) He buggers the invisilbe man and then kills him in a nasty way just for the crime of treating Mina badly.



• Why didn't they use Hawley Griffin, the original invisible man? Were they afraid that someone would confuse this with Kevin Bacon's The Invisible Man? I don't think that would really be a problem.



• Why does the invisible man's makeup keep going from allover his head to just the front to allover from shot to shot, except to save on effects budgeting. If they needed to save, just have the coat and hat imposed in.



• Wouldn't Tom Sawyer be at least 60 by the 1899?



• I got the impression Moriarty was building some kindof robots in his big-ass evil laboratory, they were just suits of armor with flamethrowers on the back?



• Wouldn't invisilble skin be hard to see? They had mounted invisible skin samples, but the invisible man was invisible all the way through, wasn't he? That would mean his skin is invisible on both sides.



• Nemo's science? All of Nemo's secrets of science fit in that one tiny little box.



• Why do they feel the need to explain everything? When Quartermain says that he didn't make as good a time as Phileas Fogg and then says "In 80 days?" The title of the book is not needed. It just makes it sound stupid.

I'm tired of griping about this movie. I'm guessing you get the point right?

The IMDB is wrong when it lists Richard Roxburgh as Mycroft Holms (M). He's not. He is M, but he is Professor Moriarty. The characters are not the same person. M is Mycroft Holmes in the book, but so is Moriarty. Two different people.

Don't see this movie. It's bad like Battlefield Earth bad. It should be buried and forgotten.

Marvel Scraps Plan for Comic Book Princess Di
NEW YORK (Reuters) - A U.S. comic book publisher has decided to let Princess Diana rest in peace, dropping plans to reincarnate her as a mutant comic superhero this fall, the company said on Thursday.

Marvel Enterprises Inc. said in a statement that "upon reflection" it will remove Diana and all references to the royal family in its upcoming "X-Statix" monthly comics.

The about-face follows a recent announcement by Marvel Comics that it planned to introduce Diana as one of a team of super-powered mutants in a five-series storyline called "Di Another Day."

Company spokespeople were not immediately available to elaborate on the decision.

Diana was to have been a character in a satirical look at fame and pop culture, Marvel said earlier this week.

Buckingham Palace called the idea "utterly appalling" and a "cheap attempt to cash in on Diana's fame and the tragic circumstances surrounding her death."

Marvel is a bunch of pussies. Their suits need to get out of the creative ends way. If I were Pete Milligan (I believe he is the writer of the story) I'd quit posthaste and return back into the folds of DC vertigo, or anywhere else that'd let me have some creative freedom.

Marvel will stand the storm of having an gay cowboy character when there is a big controversy, but when the royals complain they back down.

Since when have we really given two damns about what the royal's think? I think we stopped really caring about that around 1776 or so.

This story was to be satire. SATIRE. I know that's something that isn't really understood in our culture anymore, where everyone goes up in arms over something like South Park or whatever Michael Moore is saying or doing.

It's not like they were going to bring her back so she could have sex with goats or something like that. I wouldnt' think. It's not like Garth Ennis was writing the book.

Dracula II: Ascension
How do you make a sequel to a movie where the main character dies in the first film? The makers of Dracula II did it by not making a sequal at all.

Dracula 2000 was a reworking of the Dracula story for a modern setting, much like Baz Luhrman's Romeo and Juliet took the Shakespearean story and set it in modern times. Dracula II is a poor vampire story that has been shoehorned into being a sequal to another vampire movie. It doesn't matter if the vampire in the story is Dracula or not. The only narrative tie to the first film is a glimpse of the end of D2000 where Dracula is hung from a neon cross on the side of a building and left to burn in the sunlight. That and a smidgeon of expository dialogue are the ties to the first film.

Much like Vampires Los Muertos the only thing that seems to link the producer, this time Wes Craven, to the film is the name above the credits. I wouldn't be surprised if this film was already completed before they added the Dracula element to it, since the vampire really looks nothing like Dracula from Dracula 2000 at all. He looks more like an albino Billy Idol.

What's bad about this film you ask?

1. The writing.
2. The action
3. The direction
4. Craig Sheffer playing the crippled Proffesor Lowell by just curling up one arm and speaking deeper and slower than he normaly does.
5. oh, the writing.

There's more bad stuff here, but I'm not really paying that much attention to it anymore.

If all that's bad, what's good then you say? Well, Jason Scott Lee's Vamire Killing Priest Uffizi is pretty good. most of the scenes involving him are nice and tension filled, but they are few and far between. If the film had been more about him and his quest and less about the badly written greedy little medical students and their greedy teacher, then it might have worked.

I also think that the movie would be much better had the part of Uffizi been played by Jason Lee of the Jersey Films fame. Then with Jeremy London playing his part it would have had both T.S. Quint and Banky from Mallrats in this film.

The reviewer on IMDB that said this movie is much better than Dracula 2000 is full of crap. This movie is much worse, and it doesn't even have a brief glimpse of a topless Vitamin C to add some interest.

I also see that there is a sequel planned, why?

This film fails.

On a pseudo Spike Lee related note, that thing he's working on "Sucker-Free City" would be Dorsey's worst nightmare, outside of maybe Woodbury. There's plenty of suckers there to be suckerized, that is why Dorsey is their Mayor.

"It's disheartening to know that you live in a country that's just teaming with semi-literate, mediocre psychos. If they had better reading skills and laid off the Budweiser, I'd dig the psychosis. Now it just scares me...I'm just so sick of supplying high-quality art to deaf ears and blind eyes. Let 'em go have their fuckin' Armageddon movie, you know?"
--Hank Rollins
From The Onion'sThe Tenacity of the Cockroach

Man, and I like Armageddon, that scene where the big moon-tank shoots over that ravine, that is awesome man, AWESOME!!!!!(extra exclamation points for added emphasis!!!)

Spike Lee settles ‘Spike TV’ lawsuit
Terms not revealed, but Viacom can rename men’s network

NEW YORK, July 7 — Spike TV won’t be getting spiked after all. Filmmaker Spike Lee and Viacom settled a dispute Monday that allows the media giant to rebrand its TNN network as Spike TV, ending a lawsuit that contended the new moniker was a deliberate attempt to hijack Lee’s image.

The judge initially ordered Lee to post a $500,000 bond on June 13 after he issued a temporary injunction against Viacom’s plan to rename TNN. But after a hearing two weeks ago, the judge raised the bond to $2.5 million and gave Lee until Monday to post it.

The additional $2 million was never posted, and the judge vacated the injunction after both sides reached the agreement, said one of Lee’s lawyers, Terry Gross.

“We have settled the case with Viacom,” Gross said. “It’s obviously good when parties settle.”

While the case was pending, Lee was in Los Angeles filming “Sucker-Free City” for Showtime, a cable network owned by Viacom.

Here are the terms of the settlement (most likely)...Viacom will let Spike continue to work for them, they won't sue him into oblivion, and, in return, he won't bring any more stupid ass lawsuits against them. The end.

You know what is obviously good, even more than when the parties settle a lawsuit? When stupid lawsuits are never even filed.

Rest easy now, gentle readers, Spike Lee can now dissolve back into the oblivion of now irrelevant directors.

Children Avert Thine Eyes

found by way of Fark:

Hulk Doll's Monster Willy

SHOCKED six-year-old Leah Lowland checked out a mystery bulge on her Incredible Hulk doll — and uncovered a giant green WILLY.

Curious Leah noticed a lump after winning the monster, catchphrase “You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry,” at a seaside fair.

And when she peeled off the green comic-book character’s ripped purple shorts, she found the two-inch manhood beneath them



This is where I should make some type of self depreciating comment like "Since that's the same size as mine does that mean I'm a Willy with a monster Willy?"

But I'll spare you that.

I'm sure you'll thank me for it.

More from Dorsey:

"He throw a peanut butter and jelly in the back of my car. Know what I'm sayin? Know what I'm sayin?
We in the most nastyiest places down there. And here comes the preacher down here with a bag of--what's that restaurant on Broad Street? Right over there by the Jackson Hotel, Motel is at?"
Toots?
"Naw, naw. That restaurant, the burger place."
Checkers?
"Yeah, Checkers. He came up with maybe twenty bags of hamburgers, checkers. And here I'm thinking.."
Out of the dumpster?
"No, no, no. He bought it. And I said look. What was so bad is everybody on the street was running after the man, and I said 'look, I gotta get over on back to the Miami side, man, Okay?' So I get a uh I get up the next morning, I'm down at the place. I'm sitting there thinking 'I need me a job. So how am I gonna get me a job?' So here, here's what I did, I put the sucker routine into play. I used my own guilt and methods to fool people to make them think that I'm this person, that I didn't have money. Knowing that I had five hundred dollars in my pocket, know what I'm saying? The head man of the hotel bought me a big burger a large fry and a drink and he say 'You know what? You don't even have to pay me back.'

So the next day, the next man bought me a nacho dinner. Know what I'm saying? No problem.

It was easy, it was simple. It was so simple, you know what, even a woman came up there. She said 'you know what, I'm going to buy you a meal. I feel your pain.'

It was so good. It was so good. I was laughing, I was laughing all the way to the bank. Then I finally got me a job, know what I'm saying?

It was good.
--On scamming in Florida.