STAND BY ME WORLD PRODUCTION [via Nadine Saubers]

"Stand by Me" performed by musicians around the world from SKAT on Vimeo.

Susan Boyle - Cry Me A River - 1999 Recording (From The Scottish Daily Record Newspaper)

Susan Boyle - Cry Me a River MP3 (Right-click and Save Target As…)

A recording made ten years ago by the unlikely Britain’s Got Talent sensation Susan Boyle has been uncovered.

The sudden singing star’s spokeswoman confirmed this morning that an emotional recording of Cry Me A River which hit YouTube late last night is the 48-year-old Scot.

She reportedly covered the blues ballad for a charity album in 1999, partly funded by the tiny Whitburn Community Council in West Lothian, where she lives. Only 1,000 copies of the CD were pressed.

The surprisingly seductive recording for The Millennium Celebration compilation album drew another flood of tributes this morning, as Susan Boyle Mania continued a week after she was discovered on ITV’s Saturday-night talent show.

The frumpy but talented unemployed singer, who confessed last weekend that she had never been kissed, has become a world-wide media darling since her Britain’s Got Talent performance of the Les Miserables song I Dreamed A Dream became an internet hit.
Oprah Winfrey is apparently lining up an interview with the singer, who was complimented by Broadway icon Patti LuPone during an interview with the US programme The Early Show this morning.

LuPone, whose I Dreamed A Dream is widely considered the definitive version, told Boyle in a satellite-cross that she had “pluck”, as a raft of other US broadcasters and newspapers lined up to interview her.

Earlier this week, Hollywood actress Demi Moore confessed she had been reduced to tears by Boyle’s appearance on Britain’s Got Talent, telling fans about it on her Twitter blog.

Boyle was quickly written off by the talent show's live audience on Saturday night when she arrived on stage, drably dressed, and stumbled over her words as she talked to the judges.

Her admission that she would like to emulate the West End star Elaine Paige was met with scorn, but when she began to sing, the crowd turned. Many rose to their feet, along with judge Amanda Holden, as she delivered the bold and moving performance.

Boyle has since said she hopes that the way she surprised the Britain's Got Talent audience will serve as a lesson to society.

"Modern society is too quick to judge people on their appearances,” she said.

“There is not much you can do about it; it is the way they think; it is the way they are. But maybe this could teach them a lesson, or set an example.”

Her sudden rise to fame has surpassed even that of of previous Britain’s Got Talent winner Paul Potts, who went from plain mobile phone salesman to successful recording artist.

The show's judge and music mogul Simon Cowell is reportedly working on a record deal for Boyle.

STEWART VS LIMBAUGH GET THE ‘F—K’ OUT OF NEW YORK! [via Nina Reznick]

by David Edwards and Ron Brynaert

Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh, who has been treated like a GOP leader since Obama's election, didn't mince words when it came to pontificating on a new New York tax plan which aims at the state's highest earners.

Limbaugh entitled his rant 'El Rushbo to New York: Drop Dead,' and said on his radio show Monday, "I'm going to get out of there totally, 'cause this is just absurd, and it's ridiculous."

But Limbaugh isn't the only one who doesn't mince words.

"Finally!" Jon Stewart shouted in relief on Wednesday's edition of Comedy Central's Daily Show before "revealing" the long-running conspiracy aimed at getting the conservative to leave the city.

"For years, for years, for years, New Yorkers have done everything in our power to get this guy to leave town," Stewart joked. "We passed laws making it tougher for hot dog vendors to sell along the streets. We hold gay pride parades and there are barely any gay people in the city so we shipped them in."

Stewart added, "We knew he was into drugs so we cleaned up Times Square."

Finally, the comic host offered Limbaugh directions along with his EZ pass then shouted out, "Get the f*ck out of here!"

This video is from Comedy Central's The Daily Show, broadcast Apr. 1, 2009

WHAT IS A NANO-SECOND? [via Vicki Hake]

Find out here

MARRIED GAY APOLOGY [via Lauren Schumacher Atchity]

TALES OF MANHATTAN [via Nina Resnick]

Shouts & Murmurs
Tails of Manhattan
by Woody Allen March 30, 2009

Two weeks ago, Abe Moscowitz dropped dead of a heart attack and was reincarnated as a lobster. Trapped off the coast of Maine, he was shipped to Manhattan and dumped into a tank at a posh Upper East Side seafood restaurant. In the tank there were several other lobsters, one of whom recognized him. “Abe, is that you?” the creature asked, his antennae perking up.

“Who’s that? Who’s talking to me?” Moscowitz said, still dazed by the mystical slam-bang postmortem that had transmogrified him into a crustacean.

“It’s me, Moe Silverman,” the other lobster said.

“O.M.G.!” Moscowitz piped, recognizing the voice of an old gin-rummy colleague. “What’s going on?”

“We’re reborn,” Moe explained. “As a couple of two-pounders.”

“Lobsters? This is how I wind up after leading a just life? In a tank on Third Avenue?”

“The Lord works in strange ways,” Moe Silverman explained. “Take Phil Pinchuck. The man keeled over with an aneurysm, he’s now a hamster. All day, running at the stupid wheel. For years he was a Yale professor. My point is he’s gotten to like the wheel. He pedals and pedals, running nowhere, but he smiles.”

Moscowitz did not like his new condition at all. Why should a decent citizen like himself, a dentist, a mensch who deserved to relive life as a soaring eagle or ensconced in the lap of some sexy socialite getting his fur stroked, come back ignominiously as an entrée on a menu? It was his cruel fate to be delicious, to turn up as Today’s Special, along with a baked potato and dessert. This led to a discussion by the two lobsters of the mysteries of existence, of religion, and how capricious the universe was, when someone like Sol Drazin, a schlemiel they knew from the catering business, came back after a fatal stroke as a stud horse impregnating cute little thoroughbred fillies for high fees. Feeling sorry for himself and angry, Moscowitz swam about, unable to buy into Silverman’s Buddha-like resignation over the prospect of being served thermidor.

At that moment, who walked into the restaurant and sits down at a nearby table but Bernie Madoff. If Moscowitz had been bitter and agitated before, now he gasped as his tail started churning the water like an Evinrude.

“I don’t believe this,” he said, pressing his little black peepers to the glass walls. “That goniff who should be doing time, chopping rocks, making license plates, somehow slipped out of his apartment confinement and he’s treating himself to a shore dinner.”

“Clock the ice on his immortal beloved,” Moe observed, scanning Mrs. M.’s rings and bracelets.

Moscowitz fought back his acid reflux, a condition that had followed him from his former life. “He’s the reason I’m here,” he said, riled to a fever pitch.

“Tell me about it,” Moe Silverman said. “I played golf with the man in Florida, which incidentally he’ll move the ball with his foot if you’re not watching.”

“Each month I got a statement from him,” Moscowitz ranted. “I knew such numbers looked too good to be kosher, and when I joked to him how it sounded like a Ponzi scheme he choked on his kugel. I had to do the Heimlich maneuver. Finally, after all that high living, it comes out he was a fraud and my net worth was bupkes. P.S., I had a myocardial infarction that registered at the oceanography lab in Tokyo.”

“With me he played it coy,” Silverman said, instinctively frisking his carapace for a Xanax. “He told me at first he had no room for another investor. The more he put me off, the more I wanted in. I had him to dinner, and because he liked Rosalee’s blintzes he promised me the next opening would be mine. The day I found out he could handle my account I was so thrilled I cut my wife’s head out of our wedding photo and put his in. When I learned I was broke, I committed suicide by jumping off the roof of our golf club in Palm Beach. I had to wait half an hour to jump, I was twelfth in line.”

At this moment, the captain escorted Madoff to the lobster tank, where the unctuous sharpie analyzed the assorted saltwater candidates for potential succulence and pointed to Moscowitz and Silverman. An obliging smile played on the captain’s face as he summoned a waiter to extract the pair from the tank.

“This is the last straw!” Moscowitz cried, bracing himself for the consummate outrage. “To swindle me out of my life’s savings and then to nosh me in butter sauce! What kind of universe is this?”

Moscowitz and Silverman, their ire reaching cosmic dimensions, rocked the tank to and fro until it toppled off its table, smashing its glass walls and flooding the hexagonal-tile floor. Heads turned as the alarmed captain looked on in stunned disbelief. Bent on vengeance, the two lobsters scuttled swiftly after Madoff. They reached his table in an instant, and Silverman went for his ankle. Moscowitz, summoning the strength of a madman, leaped from the floor and with one giant pincer took firm hold of Madoff’s nose. Screaming with pain, the gray-haired con artist hopped from the chair as Silverman strangled his instep with both claws. Patrons could not believe their eyes as they recognized Madoff, and began to cheer the lobsters.

“This is for the widows and charities!” yelled Moscowitz. “Thanks to you, Hatikvah Hospital is now a skating rink!”

LAUREN ATCHITY SCHUMACHER WEB EXPERT ON 'AMERICAN IDOL' [via Vincent Atchity]

Michael Sarver talks about his Idol exit

By Lauren Schumacher

The oil rig worker was eliminated from American Idol last night, but he isn't going back to Texas Gold just yet.

Michael Sarver, the latest contestant to get the ol' heave ho from American Idol fans this week and one of the classiest contestants on American Idol since Sanjaya (that's a joke, people), talked to us in a conference call Friday about his priorities, his future music career, and the warm and fuzzy feelings he surprisingly still has for the judges.

Sarver, the married father of two and a former oil rig worker, doesn't plan on going back to being a roughneck (surprise, surprise). Instead, Sarver said he plans on taking some time off to spend with his family before the rocktastic American Idol tour this summer.

"I have learned just how much I love my family through this experience because I have never been away from them this long. They are my number one priority," he said.

A seemingly unlikely contestant, Sarver brought his Texas charm and politeness to the stage, a striking contrast to the likes of Simon Cowell. But, Sarver said he was never insulted by the judge's comments or their most recent childish antics during deliberation (Simon drawing a mustache on Paula's face is an example... they have to give us something to laugh about ever since Ryan Seacrest got rid of his highlights).

"Personally, I enjoy that. What people need to understand is that this is supposed to be fun. Overall, the fun that they're having is making everybody smile," he said. "America listens to what the judges have to say. They are in those four seats for a reason. They are smart. They don't get it all right but they do get some things right."

Phew. Finally a contestant with some perspective.

But, despite the judge's critique's, Sarver said he plans on hitting the music scene on his own after the summer tour is over.

"I believe in myself and what I'd like to offer to the music world," he said. "Something people don't know is that I have written over 890 songs since I was 14. There are a lot of stories from a good lived life, a lot of stories and I want to share them."

Ah, the wisdom of a 27-year old.

Who will be voted off next week? How many more innocent songs will Megan Joy butcher before she gets the guillotine?

Aubade By Vincent Atchity

Youth was my sprightly joy,
all that I could and would be,
my kingdom on its way.

At forty-three, while cashiers
still require proof before
selling me their ten dollar wines,
I find myself in the
quickened interstices,
letting go of could and would.

Here is our companionable
morning coffee, later I'll pause
for a sight of the bridge at the
rim of the mountain-held bay.
I'll ride my bike alongside bobbing
coots and mirror-winged crows
edges flashing white with light.
The bulk of the day will be a service
to humility, absorbed in a crotchety
machinery of function. All this inner
music silenced to a hum.

Five o'clock will whistle me back to you.
I'll fly downhill into the setting sun
toward the shoreline. The light on the water
will be an orange silver shimmering,
a defiance of representation, an evocation
of the painters who've taken the best measure of time
and tried to keep it.

We'll have our wine and we'll toast the antioxidant properties.
We'll inhabit the evening as fully as moons
before our faces ever wane.
You'll push up against me on the sofa.
I'll feel your warmth here
in my kingdom come.

BRINGING HOME THE BACON IN A SQUEEZE BOTTLE [via Vincent Atchity]

Everything is better with BACON!

(click the bottle)

Product Features

• Each tube contains 21oz (595g) of Squeez Bacon®
• 16 servings - equivalent to 64 slices of bacon!
• Bottled in Sweden, made from U.S. bred swine.
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• Jätte gott!
  

More on Susan Boyle

The Scot Heard Round the World

Watch her YouTube Video

Unknown and Underestimated, Contestant Wows on TV and Web

By Mary Jordan
Washington Post Foreign Service

Thursday, April 16, 2009

LONDON, April 15 -- Before YouTube, Twitter and Simon Cowell, Susan Boyle's angelic voice might never have been heard outside of parties and church services in her tiny Scottish village.

But now, thanks to a digital flash flood in the media age, the 47-year-old unemployed woman who claims to have never been kissed is suddenly a global sensation.

Last weekend, the frizzy-haired, squarely built Boyle walked onto the stage of "Britain's Got Talent" to barely suppressed snickers from the audience and skeptical eye rolls from Cowell, the unfailingly caustic judge on both "American Idol" and the British TV show.

The audience laughed mercilessly as Boyle did a saucy hip wiggle and said she'd like a chance to prove she could be as good as Elaine Paige, a legendary singer often called the first lady of British musical theater.

Those present were clearly prepared to howl.

Then Boyle opened her mouth. And within the first few bars of "I Dreamed a Dream," from the hit musical "Les Miserables," the audience was standing and applauding. The judges pronounced themselves shocked and impressed with Boyle's soaring vocals, and millions watching knew they had just seen a rare gem of a moment on live television.

"Without a doubt this is the biggest surprise in three years of this show," said one judge, Piers Morgan.

"Everyone was laughing at you -- no one is laughing now. Susan Boyle is not just a good singer, she's a fantastic singer. Someone whose stunning range, tone and delivery is worthy of comparison to anyone," Morgan said.

Somewhere out there in the couch-potato universe, American actress Demi Moore and her husband, Ashton Kutcher, were watching. And they, naturally, Twitter.

Within minutes Kutcher flagged the performance in a tweet, saying, "This just made my night." Moore told the couple's huge digital following that Boyle's voice "made me teary."

Between the huge television audience and the endorsement of the Hollywood Twitterati, Boyle went viral on YouTube. More than 9 million people have watched her on the site.

Bookmakers say she is now favored to win the popular TV talent contest and perform at a Royal Command Performance attended by members of the British royal family.

As Boyle left the stage after knocking the world's socks off, Cowell told her she could return to her village "with your head held high."

She has indeed gone back to Blackburn, her home about 20 miles from Edinburgh in West Lothian, Scotland, where children are now clapping as she walks into stores and television crews from around the world have begun rolling into town.

As details of her life emerge, Boyle's story only becomes more unlikely. The youngest of nine children, she lives alone with her cat, Pebbles. She spent years taking care of her mother, who recently died, and she lives in a government-subsidized home.

She always wanted to sing in front of a large audience, but mostly she just sings in church.

On Easter Sunday, the day after her television debut, Boyle -- dubbed "The Woman Who Shut Up Simon Cowell" in one headline -- received a standing ovation when she went to Mass.

"We let out a wee bit of a cheer for her. We are quite proud of her," Boyle's parish priest, the Rev. Ryszard Holuka, said in a telephone interview.

He added that Boyle is a "quiet soul."

"At gatherings and anniversary parties, she'd stand up and give a song," he said. "She never flaunted her voice; this is the first time it's been publicly recognized."

Charles Earley, a neighbor who has known Boyle for 20 years, said it's a stunning turnaround for a "shy, solitary person who is suddenly somebody."

In a news release Tuesday titled "Susan Boyle Goes Global," Tom Kerr, a civic leader in West Lothian, said "tributes from across the globe are flooding in" to Blackburn, a village of 5,000 that is now "firmly on the map."

All the adulation has come with a tinge of guilt. On Internet sites where Boyle's story has been endlessly churned over, much of the discussion centers on how people initially expected nothing from Boyle because of her decidedly unglamorous looks.

Many have said it was a poor reflection on both the live audience and others watching that they were surprised when a "frumpy woman" turned out to have the "voice of an angel."

Boyle herself has noted the issue but seems to be unfazed.

In a British newspaper interview, she said she entered the contest at the behest of her late mother, who urged her to "take the risk."

She said it was "a bit of a shock" to see herself on television, and she thought she looked too fat -- "like a garage."

"Modern society is too quick to judge people on their appearances," she said. "There is not much you can do about it; it is the way they think; it is the way they are. But maybe this could teach them a lesson, or set an example."

Special correspondent Karla Adam contributed to this report.

Black Dog Yoga supports microfinance

On Saturday April 11th, the Sherman Oaks yoga community banded together for a yoga fundraiser held at Black Dog Yoga
benefiting Yoga Gives Back, a Los Angeles organization that raises money and awareness of micro loans in India, the birthplace of yoga.

Micro loans are small amounts of money, sometimes as little as $25, and are invested in people, mostly women, who suffer from extreme poverty. Kicking off the workshop/fundraiser, Joel Bender, one of the founders of Yoga Gives Back, explained how Yoga Gives Back started and how the loans, about the cost of two yoga classes, make an enormous impact on peoples’ lives by helping them start, sustain and grow their small businesses.

In 2006 Dr. Muhammad Yunus, a Bangladeshi economics professor, won the Nobel Peace Prize
for his revolutionary work in microfinance through the Grameen Bank, a bank he founded to administer the loans. Yunus is changing the face of the poor by making them credit worthy. Generally, it takes money to make money. In order to get a loan, one has to put up collateral. Impoverished people usually don’t have any collateral, thereby increasing poverty’s vicious cycle.

If a woman wants to invest in a rickshaw her husband drives, or invest in a sewing machine, or parts for the sewing machine, they might need $20 or $40. When a bank doesn’t entertain their business needs they will go to a lender of last resorts. Micro loans through the Grameen Bank
eliminate the security risks involved with these transactions. As the loan recipients repay the loans, they begin to take their first steps out of poverty.

Yoga Gives Back co-founder, Kayoko Mitsumatsu, a documentary filmmaker traveled in India and has interviewed Dr. Muhammad Yunus on various occasions. Seeing the immense poverty after a beautiful yoga practice, Kayoko said she “felt a strong obligation to give back to the country that has given her the love of yoga.” She hopes that the Western yoga community will donate their time, money and passion to help the Yoga Gives Back cause.

Black Dog Yoga owner, Peter Barnett, who helped organize the event, galvanized not only an incredible group of teachers but also the yoga community for a workshop filled with asana,
amazing Indian music, sweat and laughter. Over 30 students donated their time and money to support this cause. A talented group of 10 teachers taught the three-hour yoga fundraiser in fifteen-minute increments, each volunteering their time and their own perspective into how with yoga we can effectuate change. The event wrapped up with a raffle of yoga gear and good food.

To hear about more upcoming workshop fundraisers visit yogagivesback.com.

THE MORAL OF THE STORY: GO FOR THE YES’S THE NO’S DON’T MATTER [via Nina Reznick]

Love these little triumphs over expectations
Click to view

NIGHT FALLS ON HONG KONG [via Vicki Hake]

Place your cursor at the top of the photo. You will notice it is *6:10 PM. Bring the mouse down slowly over the photo *without* pressing the button on the mouse. Do *not* right or left click. Night time appears, the lights come on, and at 7:40 PM, it's dark! Photo Technology at its best!
Click to go to Hong Kong

IF THIS IS WHAT HUMANS ARE LIKE WHAT WILL BOOKS BE LIKE? [via Nina Resnick]

INDIAN HARLEY [via Vicki Hake]

Click Here to view

You'll need to have powerpoint or powerpoint viewer installed on your computer.

HOW THEY DO IT! [via Vicki Hake]

Bit of Insight

“Chaos is the foreplay of success.”—Nik Halik, The Thrillionaire

Italian Way of Telling Time [via David Angsten]