WTF - Isn't This A Sign of the Impending Apocalypse???

Isn't it one of the signs of the Apocalypse when a demon of the Bush Administration finds itself in the company of... well... THE DEMON?!?

SOURCE: Yahoo News/The Associate Press

STOCKHOLM, Sweden - The Kiss Army has an enthusiastic new recruit: Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

Rice was in the Swedish capital Thursday for an international conference on Iraq. Kiss had a sold-out concert to play Friday.

"I was thrilled," Rice said of her late-night encounter with Kiss frontman Gene Simmons and bandmates Paul Stanley, Eric Singer and Tommy Thayer in the executive lounge of the Sheraton Hotel where they signed autographs and handed out backstage passes and T-shirts to her staff.

"It was really fun to meet Kiss and Gene Simmons," she told reporters, noting that they seemed well-informed about current events. The band had asked if she could stop by after she finished dinner with the Swedish foreign minister and Rice readily agreed, she said.

Rice, a classically trained pianist, said she has eclectic musical tastes ranging from Beethoven to Bruce Springsteen.

Hard rockers such as Kiss are included in the mix, and Rice said her favorite Kiss tune is "Rock and Roll All Nite."

But, Rice conceded, she has never seen the band in concert.

Editorial note: While FTANG! hopes Gene wasn't in his "total jag mode"... it's certainly not holding its breath.

Celebrity Death - Harvey Korman - May 29, 2008

Harvey Korman - May 29, 2008

Comedian, television star, film actor, Chicagoan, and Super-"C" grade Celebrity, Harvey Korman, has died after complications to the rupture of an abdominal aortic aneurysm he suffered four months ago. He was 81.

His most memorable film role was as the outlandish Hedy Hedley Lamarr in Mel Brooks' 1974 Western satire, "Blazing Saddles."

"A world without Harvey Korman -- it's a more serious world," Brooks said. "It was very dangerous for me to work with him because if our eyes met we'd crash to the floor in comic ecstasy. It was comedy heaven to make Harvey Korman laugh."

Brooks described Korman as a "dazzling" comic talent.

"You could get rock-solid comedy out of him. He could lift the material. He always made it real, always made it work, always believed in characters he was doing," he said.

"He fought until the very end. He didn't want to die. He fought for months and months," said Kate Korman, his daughter.

Rather than post any number of Blazing Saddle clips featuring Harvey's performance as Hedy Hedley Lamarr... here’s two brief minutes of Harvey as Count de Monet in "History of the World Part 1."

Don’t get saucy with me, Bernaise!

Celebrity Death - Luc Bourdon - May 29, 2008

Luc Bourdon - May 29, 2008

Luc Bourdon, a promising rookie defenseman with the Vancouver Canucks, was killed in a motorcycle crash near his hometown. He was 21. Police reports indicate that Bourdon lost control of his motorcycle before hitting a tractor-trailer.

Ian Fleming at 100

It's Ian Fleming's centenary today! He, of course, is the man who gave us the super-secret agent, 007, James Bond. He also gave us Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

Fleming died in 1964, at 56, of complications from pleurisy after playing a round of golf in Oxfordshire... although he did have a heavy cold. The real culprits were years of smoking up to 80 cigarettes a day, and a fondness for drinking. Because of the difficulty he found in resisting life’s indulgences, he adopted a strict writing routine in his last 12 years, the period in which he wrote more than a dozen Bond novels that spawned the multibillion-dollar film franchise.

Fleming saw 40 million copies of his books sold in his lifetime but died before the Bond franchise exploded onto film screens.

!!!THANK YOU IAN FOR ALL THE FUN!!!

Celebrity Death - Earle Hagen - May 26, 2008

Earle Hagen - May 26, 2008

Celebrity two-fer on Memorial Day. Earle Hagen, who composed memorable themes for "The Andy Griffith Show," "I Spy," "The Mod Squad" and other TV shows, died after having been in ill health for several months. He was 88. Hagen is the voice heard whistling the tune for "The Andy Griffith Show

Celebrity Death - Sydney Pollack - May 26, 2008

Sydney Pollack - May 26, 2008

Academy Award-winning director Sydney Pollack, who achieved commercial and critical success with the gender-bending comedy "Tootsie" and the period drama (as well as FTANG! fave) "Out of Africa, has died of cancer. He was 73.

HAPPY TOWEL DAY 2008!

TOWEL DAY – Friday May 25, 2008

From the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy:
A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have.

Partly it has great practical value - you can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a mini raft down the slow heavy river Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or to avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a mindboggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you - daft as a bush, but very, very ravenous); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.

More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitch hiker) discovers that a hitch hiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitch hiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitch hiker might accidentally have "lost". What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with.

Celebrity Death - Dick Martin - May 24, 2008

Dick Martin - May 24, 2008

Dick Martin, the zany half of the comedy team that created "Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In" has died of respiratory complications. He was 86.

FTANG! Musical Moment - Weezer - Pork and Beans

FTANG! - Musical Moment - I Wanna Be Sedated (Old School)

What with the economy being what it is... if FTANG! is ever fortunate enough to be even able to retire to an assisted living community, this is what it would be like!!