Some Friday Night Fun: via PRI’s The World And a Friday Night bonus – Paul McCartney’s best song. A love song that this old hippie can identify with and an ode to a great rock and roll love story. Ron can also be found at Newshoggers

As a native of Latin America and after having lived in Europe during my “formative years,” fútbol of course became my favorite team sport. But after many years of having been “brainwashed” in America—especially at Texas A&M when that great university was in its college football heyday in the 1960s—this other fútbol, “fútbol Americano,” became my favorite, except for every four years. That...

Rachel Maddow aired this clip on her show last night. I just found it at Talking Points Memo:

HA HA!

Quite a few websites now offer a bit of music at night for their readers/viewers. So, now, by popular request, we’re offering you some cutting edge music. This one is that I’m sure will have younger readers dancing and rapping — and features one of America’s most popular musical instruments: You can watch and listen to this in LIVING color: People all over the country are playing it...

Here’s Jon Stewart on the controversy surrounding Helen Thomas’ comments and her resignation. He also offers a bit of a critique for aspiring racists in a bit on South Carolina: The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c

The BBC reports that the Israeli government has apologized for a “spoof video” making fun of the Israeli assault on the Mavi Marmara:

A decade ago, who would have thought Hillary and Bill would still be together as Tipper and Al end their forty-year marriage? In announcing their breakup, the Gores requested “respect for our privacy,” but that hasn’t stopped speculation about what happened to the man who might have been president if Bill Clinton had kept his pants zipped. The Gore news comes right after the premiere of an...

SPOILER ALERT: if you have not seen the last episode of Lost, do not read further. It’s been just over a week since the two and a half hour series finale of Lost aired, but the blogosphere continues to dissect every nuance of the show’s final big reveal. I’ll readily admit I’ve been a Lost fan from the beginning – although “fan” would be a gross understatement. I’ve been positively possessed....

Editor’s Note: We are running this SPECIAL MEMORIAL DAY post after getting permission to run…a family heirloom. I found out about it via an email by Bruce Page about his uncle. It drives home the real meaning of Memorial Day — in more ways then one. It’s about a 24-year-old British artist who had just won his dream job of working for Walt Disney — and who quietly left a mark on...

In honor of Memorial Day, here’s a classic song from World War II — my late World War II veteran father’s generation. Here are The Andrews Sister in the original rendition of The Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy, as performed in They redid it as a special number to be shown to the troops as well:’ Some young Andrews Sisters’ impersonators did this version in 2008: Years later Bette Midler...

A brilliant, original, immensely creative, much admired actor and filmmaker. Physically, a very attractive man, even at the very end. And as a human being, not the easiest to get along with.

Happy Birthday Tina Carr by Martha Randolph Carr June 1st marks the birthday of two great ladies who were both born on this day in 1926. One was Marilyn Monroe who is permanently fixed in our collective consciousness as a thirty-something but would now be a senior citizen talking on a cell phone and going to see Shrek IV in 3D, maybe with a few grandchildren. It’s a nice image. The other is Tina Carr, my mother...

Gary Coleman 1968 - 2010 This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited. All rights reserved.

I’m a big fan of the original Sherlock Holmes stories by Arthur Conan Doyle and just finished re-reading the first Holmes novella, A Study in Scarlet, published in 1887. In it, Holmes, with his super-human powers of deduction, determines “whodunit,” yet two bumbling Scotland Yard inspectors, Gregson and Lestrade get the credit. This outrages Holmes’ friend, Dr. Watson, even though Holmes...

Actor Gary Coleman is dead at 42: Gary Coleman , the former child actor and star of the 1980s TV sitcom “Diff’rent Strokes,” has died after an intracranial hemorrhage suffered earlier this week left him unconscious and on life support at a Utah hospital. He was 42. “Child actor Gary Coleman died at approximately 12:05 p.m. Mountain Standard Time at Utah Valley Regional Medical Center,”...

Actor Gary Coleman, the “Different Strokes” child star who has been the latest in a long list of child actors who led troubled and often tragic lives as adults, is reportedly in critical condition after suffering a still-unexplained head injury. He is reportedly on life support with a brain hemorrhage. Here’s the Today Show’s good summary of the latest, Coleman’s career, and his...

“Ever since this world began, there’s nothing sadder than a one-man woman looking for the man that got away.”

Up to now, there was only Joe Lieberman doing his Uriah Heep act for cable news cameras, but now the Nutmeg State has its own tent for November’s national circus to rival such freak-show attractions as the Kentucky ophthalmologist with tunnel vision and flashbacks to an imaginary past. The Connecticut Democratic front-runner suddenly morphs from a buttoned-down bureaucrat to the character in “Arsenic...

I would like to think that I have something meaningful and profound to say about the end of the series 24. But that would presuppose there is something meaningful and profound that I haven’t said already. I tire of repeating myself, as you no doubt are weary of the themes I have hammered home about the show over these last 5 years – years I have spent watching, writing, thinking, and and immersing...

Is there some moral equivalency between Iran’s arrest of film director Jafar Panahi and America’s relentless pursuit of Roman Polanski? According to this article by Franck Nouchi of France’s Le Monde newspaper, the two cases have an important thing in common: both men have been ‘gagged’ because of their ‘art.’ For Le Monde, Franck Nouchi writes in part: In Iran and...

In case you missed it, Saturday was Pac-Man‘s 30th birthday. To celebrate, on Friday Google put up its first-ever playable Google doodle: Google doodler Ryan Germick and I made sure to include PAC-MAN’s original game logic, graphics and sounds, bring back ghosts’ individual personalities, and even recreate original bugs from this 1980’s masterpiece. We also added a little easter egg: if you throw...

The CEOs of Sony, Best Buy, Echostar, Adobe, and Logitech were on a panel moderated by Google CEO Eric Schmidt this afternoon to, as expected, introduce Google TV. Each discussed their plans for the product which, naturally, features a search bar on the home screen to find programs. That search will find both web and traditional television offerings (through your antenna, cable or satellite box) without scrolling...

There is a Marxist explanation for all this. Groucho, of course, not Karl. In Indiana, a Republican Congressman resigns after promoting but not practicing abstinence with a woman on his staff. In Connecticut, a Democratic Senate aspirant is revealed as a Vietnam draft evader after years of “misspeaking” himself into the role of a war veteran. In Pennsylvania, a Republican-turned-Democrat is turned...

The New York Times’ Paul Krugman raises an issue that’s old hat to readers of The Moderate Voice but his mentioning it shows how the issue is coming to the forefront: is it turning out that conservative talk radio — radio with hosts who have never seen anything they can’t turn into a partisan rant and ragefest — is the real power in today’s Republican Party? Power —...