Carnival in Venice

VENICE, Italy (AFP) - The streets of Venice filled with revellers who came from the four corners of the world for a taste of 18-century magic during the city's annual Carnival. Wrapped in dark robes and golden masks, cameras in hand, tourists and others braved the biting cold to converge on Saint Mark's square, the beating heart of the Carnival, where the first parades of the year were held late on Saturday.

The water-lapped city each year plunges back in time for the two-week festival, which was set to start officially Sunday at midday and to run until Mardi Gras on February 8. On the central Saint Mark's square, "Commedia dell'Arte" characters, Casanovas and courtesans, twirled gallantly before the cameras, as onlookers marveled at their powdered wigs and grotesque, beautiful masks.

Maria loses this time

Serena Williams beat Maria Sharapova this time, but it looks like there could be many more matches between these two top tennis players in the world.

"She's one of the best competitors out there," Sharapova said Thursday after her 2-6, 7-5, 8-6 loss to Williams in the Australian Open semifinals. "She's been in those situations when she was down in the third set, and out of nowhere she knows how to turn it around. That comes from experience; that comes from her fighting spirit."

The 17-year-old Sharapova, an upset winner over Williams last year in the Wimbledon final and season-ending WTA championship, served for the match at 5-4 in the second set and again at 5-4 in the third. "I played from my heart. I didn't take my chances. That's what this game is all about," Sharapova said. "The match could have gone either way. She took her chances when she had to and that's the difference. That's why she won."

Williams looked fitter in the deciding set as Sharapova, who had a tough, three-set win over compatriot and U.S. Open champion Svetlana Kuznetsova in the quarterfinals, struggled again in the heat. "There's nothing negative - I'm 17 years old and I've made it to the semifinals of the Australian Open," Sharapova said. "This is not a sprint, it's a marathon. Of course I'm sad, it's a tough one to lose. But I've got a long way ahead of me."

Maria vs. Serena II

Playing under a broiling sun that led tournament officials to close the roofs on the two show courts after their matches, fourth-seeded Maria Sharapova and No. 7 Serena Williams won Tuesday to set up a semifinal meeting at the Australian Open. It will be a rematch of last year's Wimbledon final, when the 17-year-old Sharapova won her first Grand Slam title.

Sharapova, whose renowned screeching increased with every shot, whipped a running forehand crosscourt winner to close out the match in 2 hours, 17 minutes. She dropped her racket, backed into the shade and flung both arms in the air. "I need a wheelchair right now," she said. "It was so hot. It was one of

Pats over the Eagles in the Superbowl

Ok, So I am picking the New England Patriots to repeat as Superbowl champions in a win over the Philadelphia Eagles. Yes, the Eagles finally make it to the Superbowl, but getting there may have been more important than winning it.

Audioscrobbler - Neat Way to Share Music

Audioscrobbler builds a profile of your musical taste using a plugin for your media player (Winamp, iTunes, XMMS etc..). Plugins send the name of every song you play to the Audioscrobbler server, which updates your musical profile with the new song. Every person with a plugin has their own page on this site which shows their listening statistics. The system automatically matches you to people with a similar music taste, and generates personalised recommendations. And its free!!! For more on Audioscrobbler and To Sign-up

WHFS - So long you old friend

WHFS: For Many, The Only Alternative
By Richard HarringtonWashington Post Staff Writer
Friday, January 14, 2005; Page C01

Wednesday's abrupt morphing of modern-rock radio stalwart WHFS-FM into El Zol, a Spanish-language pop station, caught many, including WHFS's on-air staff, by surprise and touched off considerable protest and sorrow. WHFS has taken a few steps down this road before. In 1983, the original WHFS (102.3), located atop Triangle Towers in Bethesda, was sold. Its new owners changed the call letters to WKTS and the format to easy listening. But that time WHFS was simply mum, not silenced for good. It emerged three months later in Annapolis, a little farther down the dial at 99.1. It displaced "mood music" WLOM, and according to a Washington Post account at the time, "the change was sudden, unannounced and greeted by more than a few hoots from regular WLOM listeners, one of whom called the new music 'garbage.' "

Similar reaction could be found in a washingtonpost.com chat room Wednesday and yesterday. Many younger listeners bemoaned the passing of WHFS's "modern rock" era, while older people recalled the good old progressive-rock days, when WHFS deejays chose their own music, disregarded format distinctions and deftly mixed rock, reggae, blues, R&B, folk and whatever, embracing new acts and encouraging homegrown music. Back then, they didn't rely on consultants and outside research in deciding what to play. Those glory years were the 1970s and early '80s, when WHFS's motto was "Feast Your Ears. " It was the last surviving free-form progressive station in the metropolitan area, and one of the last in the country.

But that was a long time, and several owners, ago. Over the last 15 years, WHFS was still regarded as a key alternative-rock station. But though it sustained several elements of the original WHFS -- a small but incredibly loyal audience, as well as a national reputation far outpacing its low ratings -- the station, owned since 1996 by Infinity Broadcasting, was perhaps better known for its annual stadium-rocking HFStival concerts than for its programming. (Indeed, WHFS's rival station, DC-101, is honoring "the legendary WHFS" through the weekend by featuring bands that performed at various HFStivals.) All that simply reflects how much radio has changed, and how much the stakes have risen, since WHFS first went on the air in 1961, its call letters standing for Washington High Fidelity Stereo. WHFS was the first stereo operation in Washington, as well as the first to go to 24-hour rock in 1969.

The station's first seven years found it looking for a format until deejay Frank Richards bought his own air time and brought rock music to WHFS in 1968. The following year, Spiritus Cheese, a trio of Bard College graduates, began to feature the music and politics of the emerging counterculture, also paying to have their show aired. They became full-time staff when Einstein finally took the station all-rock in late 1969 -- though two of the Cheeses, Mark Gorbulew and Sarah Vass, soon quit over advertiser resistance to having a female deejay. The other Cheese, Josh Brooks, stayed at WHFS for nine years, seven of them shared with Donald "Cerphe" Colwell, who now resides in afternoon drive time at WARW, playing as oldies many of the same tracks he once played as new. WARW is also now home to Jonathan "Weasel" Gilbert, whose weirdly distinctive voice and programming were legendary on the late-night shift from 1972 to 1979. He was at WHFS until 1999.

Today, there are lots of ways for people to hear new music and a wider representation of older music. Young rock fans are more likely to find new music on their video-game soundtracks than on most commercial rock stations. For more read here...

She's back!!!

 Elektra

Starring: Jennifer Garner, Terence Stamp, Will Yun Lee

Director: Rob Bowman

Synopsis: "Alias'" Jennifer Garner returns as Elektra, who after recovering from the mortal wounds she suffered in "Daredevil," becomes the world's most dangerous assassin. When she gets her latest assignment, Elektra makes a decision that can take her life in a new direction... or destroy her.
Release Date: Jan. 14

Have you done your 90 today?

Americans need to make a healthy body weight a top priority as they decide what to eat and should make time for 30 to 90 minutes of daily physical activity, the government said yesterday in the first revision of its recommended dietary guidelines in five years. The U.S. Dietary Guidelines, jointly issued by the departments of Health and Human Services and Agriculture, provide a recipe for healthful eating for the nation. By law, they must be applied to menu planning for school lunches, to supplemental nutrition programs for the poor and to set health policy objectives for the nation.

The guidelines are updated every five years by congressional mandate. The latest set offers 41 recommendations that direct Americans to eat more fruit, vegetables, whole grains, beans and low-fat or nonfat dairy products. That advice is far afield from the Atkins and other very low-carbohydrate diet programs that many Americans have flocked to in recent years.

The guidelines say that to reduce the risk of chronic disease, adults need to engage in "at least 30 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity," above what they do at work or home, on most days of the week. To lose weight or avoid the added pounds that creep on every year for most adults takes even more work -- about 60 minutes of moderate to vigorous intensity activity on most days of the week, the guidelines conclude. Those trying to sustain weight loss will probably need at least 60 to 90 minutes of moderate activity daily, the document adds.

Some experts worried that the guidelines set the bar too high for a largely sedentary U.S. population.

Boston Boink

 

Bared in Boston

By Libby Copeland Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, January 8, 2005; Page C01

Alecia Oleyourryk is a fast-talking, jumpy senior at Boston University. When she's really concentrating, like now, she picks at her cuticles with a thumbtack.

"Desperately grasping his damp skin," she says, picking away and reading aloud from a computer screen. She is editing her new campus sex magazine, called Boink, due out in February. The idea is to beat the Harvard students who last year published a campus sex magazine called H Bomb with references to Freud, French structuralism and Lacanian psychoanalysis, along with skin shots such as a naked guy in an Einstein wig.

Desperately grasping . . .

She doesn't like the "grasping."

"What would you use -- 'cling'?" asks Christopher Anderson, 38, her co-founder. He is not a BU student but he is a man fond of photographing young people who wear no clothes.

They're reading an account of sex in a Fenway Park bathroom during a Red Sox game. The piece is tentatively titled "Heading for Home" and includes the phrase "forcefully pushing me against the baby-changing station." It's supposed to be true, but it reminds you of those letters to the editor that start, "Dear Penthouse, I never thought this would happen to me, but . . ."

Oleyourryk and Anderson promise more nudity than Harvard delivered -- naughty bits and everything. Faces, too. (Many of the models in Harvard's magazine didn't want their faces shown. Something about wanting careers.) The Harvard editor says her magazine isn't porn, that it serves as "a rebellion against all of our porn-saturated popular culture." Boink has a different ethos.

"It is porn," Oleyourryk says. "There's nothing wrong with porn. Porn has such a negative connotation."

Oleyourryk is skinny but takes up a lot of space. She pulls her wavy blond hair into a messy ponytail. Her closet is a technicolor chaos of shoes, metallic blue pumps and metallic pink pumps with extremely high heels. What appears to be a red thong dangles from a pull on her bureau, and her bra lies on the couch in the living room of her off-campus apartment.

There have been sex magazines at Vassar, Oberlin and Swarthmore, a Sex Week panel at Yale and S&M parties at Bard. As far back as the '70s, University of Chicago students held a "lascivious costume ball," to which students showed up in various states of undress. But Boink is mostly focused on outdoing Harvard. Oleyourryk exhibits an intercollegiate competitiveness that most students reserve for football rankings and U.S. News & World Report scores.

Unlike H Bomb, she says, Boink will not have "artsy" sex, which is to say "sex that's okay." There will be fewer avant-garde photographs of girls covered in gold paint or slimy hair, or guys with their nether regions tastefully obscured by shadow. There will instead be a well-lit close-up of a guy's nether region, and a review of a sex toy called the BedBuddy, and photographs of guys kissing, and a heavily tattooed woman clothed only by a huge snake. While H Bomb has university approval and was given a $2,000 grant from the student government, Boink has been shunned by the BU administration and is beholden to no one.

"We can do whatever we want," Oleyourryk says.

Oleyourryk, 21, felt it would be hypocritical for her not to pose for Boink while asking others to, so she did two photo shoots with a 20-year-old student named Erica Blom. She and Blom didn't know each other before they started working on the magazine, but during the first photo shoot they got to know each other more via a kissing session. Oleyourryk says it felt weird and she tried to imagine Blom as a boy.

I've kissed my friends before but not passionately," she says. "Just like, 'Hey, we're drunk and betcha if we kiss, he'll give us a free beer.' "

The magazine's prospective cover came out of the women's second photo session, when they'd apparently gotten to know each other even better. In it, Oleyourryk is wearing only a pair of frilly red panties and her hand is wandering down Blom's torso.

Go BU! Beat Harvard.

For more read here...

What a Rack!!!

A white-tail buck deer named Goliath stands in the field of Rodney and Diane Miller's farm in Knox, Pa., Aug. 5, 2003. Goliath, a massive buck with a huge rack and worth perhaps hundreds of thousands of dollars, died, Dec. 6, 2004.

Pitts Split

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Hollywood power couple Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston have separated after 4 1/2 years of marriage but remain "committed and caring friends," the couple said on Friday. "We would like to announce that after seven years together we have decided to formally separate," Pitt and Aniston, who first met on a dinner date in 1998, said in a joint statement initially published by People magazine on its Web site. For more Read here...

Alias Returns!!!

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - For "Alias" fans, it has been a long summer and fall with no new adventures with Sydney Bristow and her covert cohorts. But they're all coming back in a big way at 9 p.m. Wednesday in the spy-fi drama's two-hour fourth-season premiere. The season opener is a costume-changing extravaganza for star Jennifer Garner, who finds herself running through the streets of Shanghai dolled up as a schoolgirl punkette and donning an itty-bitty negligee to distract a Russian scientist and thereby thwart the sale of some really dangerous nuclear materials to some really dangerous terrorists, among other situations.

The stakes are always high on "Alias," and this year, they're particularly high for the show offscreen too as it moves from Sunday to Wednesday. For the first time since the series debuted in fall 2001, "Alias" will have the support of a highly compatible, hugely popular show as its lead-in: "Lost," which also hails from "Alias" creator/executive producer J.J. Abrams.

The fact that "Alias" never popped big Nielsen numbers for ABC in the Sunday 9 p.m. slot has always been a head-scratcher. The show about a young woman's immersion in the undercover world of the CIA  has enjoyed a devoted cult following since Day 1, and Garner's star has shone ever brighter during the past few years.

For its first two seasons, "Alias" was undoubtedly handicapped by its incongruous lead-in, the family-friendly "Wonderful World of Disney" movie showcase slot. Last season, ABC shifted to an all-series lineup Sunday, but the short-lived cops-on-the-beat drama "10-8" didn't do "Alias" any favors as its lead-in. Now that ABC has wisely decided to make the Wednesday 8-10 p.m. block must-see TV for fans of Abrams' stylish-thriller milieu, the stars should align for "Alias." Of course, "Alias" already emerged as a shining example of a new breed of primetime drama series whose success has been measured less by its Nielsen numbers than by all the ancillary business it has drummed up for ABC and Touchstone Television.

Like Fox's "24," "Alias" has been among the first contemporary series to reap the rewards, promotional and otherwise, of DVD boxed set sales as well as video games, books, T-shirts and other strategically targeted "brand extensions." From a creative perspective, one of the strongest attributes of "Alias" has been how its writers have smartly mined the realpolitik of the post-Cold War era to keep the audience guessing as to who the enemy is -- this week. In the absence of rigid ideological lines of demarcation, i.e. capitalists vs. communists, it's a much more nebulous world of bad guys whose alliances and allegiances can turn on a dime (as evidenced by a major plot development in the season opener involving the malevolent Arvin Sloane character, played by Ron Rifkin).

Moreover, "Alias" premiered 19 days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, but Sydney was battling homegrown terrorist cells from the start in story lines that were conceived long before the twin towers fell. And at a time when the CIA is being turned inside out and upside down by post-Sept. 11 scrutiny of its operations, "Alias" fans can be forgiven for taking a bit of refuge in the fictional heroics of an all-American girl operative who can kick major butt and almost always gets her man, or woman. As Sydney puts it in the season premiere when she's drafted into yet another super-top-secret "black ops" CIA unit, "I'm ready to serve my country in the best way that I can."

Redskins end season with a big win

The Redskins (6-10) rallied to give a spirited finishing performance to Joe Gibbs' disappointing comeback season, his worst in 13 years with the Redskins. But the 21-18 win over a good Minnesota team should give reason to expect a much better record next year. The Hall of Fame coach plans to keep working nonstop to restore his legacy. ``I'm anxious to get started. The offseason will be a big time for us. I think it will be one of the most important six months of my coaching career, trying to help ourselves every way we can,'' Gibbs said. ``I think the most important thing is that our guys went and finished strong. I think they made a commitment there with nothing on the line but pride.''

Patrick Ramsey completed 17 of 26 passes for 216 yards with two touchdowns and one interception and looked like a capable quarterback for a Joe Gibbs offense. Ladell Betts ran 26 times for a career-high 118 yards subbing for injured back Clinton Portis.  Betts ran harder and looked every bit as good as Portis, which should make the Redskins think about who should be the starter next year. The Redskins scored more than two touchdowns for only the second time all season. ``Maybe they didn't think we had anything to play for,'' defensive end Renaldo Wynn said. ``They don't know this team.''

The defense rattled Minnesota quarterback Daunte Culpepper with four sacks and several times forced him to throw the ball away. Culpepper completed 27 of 44 passes for 299 yards and two touchdowns. His last pass was a 38-yard desperation touchdown to Marcus Robinson with 2 seconds remaining, as the Vikings drove 80 yards in the last two minutes of the game.

Assistant head coach Greg Williams, again did a masterful job with the defense, which was without several key starters. Minnesota which had the third best offense in the NFL and needing a win to guarantee making the playoffs, looked confused and out-manned most of the game. The Vikings last and desparate 80-yard drive dropped the Redskins to third in defense after being second in the league for most of the season. But so what. Their gutty performance Sunday proved what kind of defense they have and the future looks bright.

Top Albums of 2004

1. Killers - Hot Fuss 2. Maroon 5 - Songs About Jane 3. Interpol - Antics 4. Jason Moraz - Jason Moraz Live 5. Jimmy Eat World - Futures 6. Green Day - American Idiot 7. Keane - Hopes And Fears 8. Velvet Revolver - Contraband 9. Nellie McKay - Get Away From Me 10. Brian Wilson - Smile

Happy New Year 2005!!!

Happy New Year 2005!!!