You have GOT to watch this:

OK, I know McCain has pulled out of Michigan, a key state, and Obama is ahead in the polls, but I'm having a panic attack that the GOP is going to win next month.

Obama's lead just isn't fat enough for me to sleep well. I fear the stupids are going to win, again.

Someone tell me something to reassure me.

..... Katrina slammed into New Orleans. Here's the warning the weather service in New Orleans issued the morning the storm hit:

Urgent Weather Message from NWS New Orleans

WWUS74 KLIX 281550NPWLIX URGENT - WEATHER MESSAGE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE NEW ORLEANS LA

1011 AM CDT SUN AUG 28 2005


DEVASTATING DAMAGE EXPECTED

HURRICANE KATRINA MOST POWERFUL HURRICANE WITH UNPRECEDENTED STRENGTH...RIVALING THE INTENSITY OF HURRICANE CAMILLE OF 1969. MOST OF THE AREA WILL BE UNINHABITABLE FOR WEEKS...PERHAPS LONGER. ATLEAST ONE HALF OF WELL CONSTRUCTED HOMES WILL HAVE ROOF AND WALL FAILURE. ALL GABLED ROOFS WILL FAIL...LEAVING THOSE HOMES SEVERELY DAMAGED OR DESTROYED. THE MAJORITY OF INDUSTRIAL BUILDINGS WILL BECOME NON FUNCTIONAL. PARTIAL TO COMPLETE WALL AND ROOF FAILURE IS EXPECTED. ALL WOOD FRAMED LOW RISING APARTMENT BUILDINGS WILL BE DESTROYED.


CONCRETE BLOCK LOW RISE APARTMENTS WILL SUSTAIN MAJOR DAMAGE...INCLUDING SOME WALL AND ROOF FAILURE. HIGH RISE OFFICE AND APARTMENT BUILDINGS WILL SWAY DANGEROUSLY...A FEW TO THE POINT OF TOTAL COLLAPSE. ALL WINDOWS WILL BLOW OUT. AIRBORNE DEBRIS WILL BE WIDESPREAD...AND MAY INCLUDE HEAVY ITEMS SUCH AS HOUSEHOLD APPLIANCES AND EVEN LIGHT VEHICLES. SPORT UTILITY VEHICLES AND LIGHT TRUCKS WILL BE MOVED. THE BLOWN DEBRIS WILL CREATE ADDITIONAL DESTRUCTION. PERSONS...PETS...


AND LIVESTOCK EXPOSED TO THE WINDS WILL FACE CERTAIN DEATH IF STRUCK. POWER OUTAGES WILL LAST FOR WEEKS...AS MOST POWER POLES WILL BE DOWN AND TRANSFORMERS DESTROYED. WATER SHORTAGES WILL MAKE HUMAN SUFFERING INCREDIBLE BY MODERN STANDARDS. THE VAST MAJORITY OF NATIVE TREES WILL BE SNAPPED OR UPROOTED. ONLY THE HEARTIEST WILL REMAIN STANDING...


BUT BE TOTALLY DEFOLIATED. FEW CROPS WILL REMAIN. LIVESTOCK LEFT EXPOSED TO THE WINDS WILL BEKILLED.AN INLAND HURRICANE WIND WARNING IS ISSUED WHEN SUSTAINED WINDS NEARHURRICANE FORCE...OR FREQUENT GUSTS AT OR ABOVE HURRICANE FORCE...ARE CERTAIN WITHIN THE NEXT 12 TO 24 HOURS. ONCE TROPICAL STORM AND HURRICANE FORCE WINDS ONSET...DO NOT VENTURE OUTSIDE!

LAZ038-040-050-056>070-282100-ASSUMPTION-LIVINGSTON-LOWER JEFFERSON-LOWER LAFOURCHE-LOWER PLAQUEMINES-LOWER ST. BERNARD-LOWER TERREBONNE-ORLEANS-ST. CHARLES-ST. JAMES-ST. JOHN THE BAPTIST-ST. TAMMANY-TANGIPAHOA-UPPER JEFFERSON-UPPER LAFOURCHE-UPPER PLAQUEMINES-UPPER ST. BERNARD-UPPER TERREBONNE-1011 AM CDT SUN AUG 28, 2005.


About 24 hours later, we watched the city drown. Wear a fleur de lis today in memory of New Orleans and the rest of the northern Gulf Coast, much of which remains in ruins and under tarps.

So I tried to go see the new Batman flick this weekend. No luck. It's sold out for the next 3 weeks at the local I-Max theater, and sold out for the next 5 days at the local 24-screen multiplex where it's playing 58 times a day. 

Holy summer blockbuster.  Entertainment Weekly is reporting The Dark Knight did $155.3 million this weekend, the biggest opening in box office history.

Christian Bale is making a repeat performance as Batman, and he is the best of all the move Batmen. But the Batman party belongs, of course, to the late and great Heath Ledger, who kicks bat butt as the Joker. You can see the deep dark brilliance of the performance even in the trailers.

This is the weekend the Cult of Heath Ledger was born.

And yeah, I'm back. My blog burnout has healed.

Forgive me blog readers, I have sinned. It's been more than a month since my last confession, er, blog entry.

Since my last blog entry, I've had about 30 days of the winter blahs. I slave for Scripps Networks Interactive all day, doing my part to make the shelter category online a better place for you and me. At night I lay in bed and watch "Law and Order" reruns. My TiVo spends the day recording them for me while I'm at work, because L&O airs on some cable channel, somewhere, every day. I try to guess the cast members before the opening credits. I only watch the ones with Jerry Orbach in them. Or young Chris Noth.  I delete the ones with Paul Sorvino. And I don't even record the L&O: Criminal Intents with Vincent d'Onofrio in them.

Yeah, it's a rut.

But I've been blogging somewhere for 7 years now. I'm due a break.

O.M.G. Sephora is opening a store in Knoxville this week!!!

For those of you with penises, Sephora is the most fab cosmetic store on the planet. They have brands like LORAC, Bobbie Brown, Urban Decay, Philosophy and Nars. Best of all, they encourage you to play in the makeup. It's all out in the customer's reach, with makeup applicators nearby.

Now if we can just get a Trader Joe's in Knoxville, the place will be officially part of the first world.

The Albuquerque Tribune published its last edition today. Here's a video piece from abqtrib.com about the paper's closing, featuring long time staffers (most of them my former coworkers and forever friends) talking about the Trib. I can't tell you how sad I am about the Trib's death. I worked at the PM newspaper from 1994 to 2000, and the place made me a better journalist and better person. The world is a dimmer place without it.

Well I changed my mind on Super Tuesday. The swing happened when I got into the voting booth in a failed patio store in deepest West Knoxville. The place had been a barn once --- Cows, horses, hay, animal manure. After barn came retail, and now it was empty except for the voting booth and the folding tables. The brick silo still stood just outside, across the parking lot from the Pizza Kitchen and the sushi joint. The pasture was now a parking lot filled with $40,000 cars and SUVs

Yes, I was about to cast my primary vote in a barn. Insert Tennessee joke here.

The strip mall surrounding the barn reminded me just how fast things change in this country. A few generations ago our ancestors were scratching substinence crops out of a craggy Tennessee field. Now I'm at the same spot sipping a $5 latte, trying to decide whether to vote for an African-American man or a woman for president.

It's a brave new world. The changes never stop, and most days I'm glad for it.

Change is a chance things might get better.

On that thought, I pulled the Obama lever.  Bring it, Barack.

 

Jake and Heath in a scene from
"Brokeback Mountain."

I'm stunned, stunned, I tell you, that Heath Ledger offed himself before Britney Spears.  No one with a bet in the Troubled Young Stars Death Pool saw this one coming. Is there still enough mirth remaining in the nation's withering newsrooms to run death pools? They were such wicked fun. I won the whole pot in the summer of 1999 for putting JFK Jr. at the top of my list of famous people most likely to die soon.

The autopsy results for Heath aren't back, but all the ingredients for suicide or accidental OD are there: naked on the bed, surrounded by sleeping pills. Discovered by the housekeeper. He never got the massage he'd ordered in, so he died with tension in his shoulders.  The same old sad Hollywood story, youthful talent and promise cut short by mood altering substances.  It'll take a few days to find out what mood-altering substances felled handsome Heath. What a waste. Heath had an Oscar ahead of him and a 2-year-old daughter to raise.

I keep thinking of that Lucinda Williams song "See What You Lost When You Left This World," the one where she gently chides a friend who has taken his own life, reminding him of all the little moments he'll never have again. 

          
 
Renfro in the 1992                        Renfro in a 2003 police mug shot
film "The Client."

You gottta feel bad for Brad Renfro, another, lesser known actor who died last week in Los Angeles of what appears to be an overdose. He was 25. He'll be completely eclipsed by the coverage of Heath Ledger's death. Heath was taller, blonder, better looking and had been nominated for an Oscar. Renfro became a child star at the age of 10 when he starred alongside Susan Sarandon and Tommy Lee Jones in "The Client", one of those John Grisham legal thrillers in the early 1990s. He did the child star thing and adolesced into a mood disordered man with a receding hairline, a drug problem and a propensity for making bad script choices. Renfro was buried this week in his hometown of Knoxville, Tenn., in a misty rain.

A pair of toxocology reports will tell the tale in coming weeks of Hollywood dreams gone bad.

Forget Led Zep's reunion. Let's talk about Robert Plant's hair. Holy Hairclub for Men! The guy is 59 years old and he still has a head of a hair a 28-year-old would envy. Yeah, I know he's bleaching his thick halo of ringlets to hide the gray, but he still has the thick halo of ringlets. Look at the photos. Below left, Bob Plant in 1972. Below right, Bob Plant last month.

              

Bob's hair hasn't thinned or crept back his forehead a single centimeter. It's still bouncy. Wow.

I'm not the only person to notice his eternally young mop. New York magazine asked some hair stylists to weigh in on Bob's locks. "Robert Plant definitely has a perm," stylist Rodolfo Valentin tells the magazine. "I call this the mucho-mousse-and-gel look."

All the stylists agree Bob isn't wearing extensions. It's his hair, and it's a little overprocessed. Stylist Carlos Vega says, "If only he used a curling iron—it would have been a lot prettier."