Tyson Homosexual ran 100 meters in a wind-aided 9.68 seconds at the U.S. Olympic trials today, in what would have been world record time. I mean, Tyson Gay.
Leftie People For the American Way’s Right Wing Watch blog reports that,
In addition to blocking traffic from websites they don’t like, it looks like the web-geniuses behind the American Family Association’s OneNewsNow site have a few other tricks up their sleeves, such as automatically replacing any use of the word “gay” with the word “homosexual” in any of the AP stories they run … leading to instances in which proper names are reformatted to meet their ridiculous standard, such as this article about sprinter Tyson Gay winning the 100 meters at the U.S. Olympic track and field trials in which he is renamed “Tyson Homosexual”
As Steve Benen observes, “auto-replace is not your friend.”
I checked and, apparently, someone tipped off OneNewsNow and they have rendered Gay’s name as Gay in updated stories such as “Gay runs 100 in windy 9.68 to make US Olympic team.” Which, in this context, is still a pretty funny headline.
God Bless America. The U.S. version of the reality show got down and dirty with a slut parade. The Big Brother women started the night with a strip tease that was X-rated and involved the blurring out of body parts. Then the whipped cream came out. After microwaving a tub of Cool Whip, Natalie got on the floor to roll around while some tool played the bongos with spoons and a cucumber.
Along with lap dances and skinny dipping….a hot tub orgy followed. The girls were kissing the other girls and the Cheri Oteri doppelganger did some sort of weird naked yoga. I have never watched the show, but I am pretty sure that all the men are homosexuals.
The spit-swapping commenced almost immediately. Everybody was kissing everybody. Natalie kissing Matt and then Alex and then James and even Adam. Natalie kissing Chelsia. Chelsia kissing Alex and then Matt and then James and then Josh. Natalie and Chelsia kissing Josh together. Sharon kissing Matt and then Alex. Speaking of Sharon, her and Alex are sure to get it on eventually in the house. You could feel the fireworks through the screen during each one of their make out sessions.
This is what happens when you give unattractive people booze and bongos. I am surprised Matthew Mcconaughey wasn’t hiding behind the couch.
John Travolta is more gay than all the Village People put together, L.A. Rag reports. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
There’s a junkie Korean spa in Koreatown called Century Spa that no one knows about so it’s cheap and fantastic. It’s also a place that’s been overrun by a slew of gay men cruising for dick in the steam room and clay room.
When we went to get Lynn a body scrub and massage the two Korean women behind the counter were unusually giddy.
“You will never believe who here!”
“Who?” We asked eyes raised.
“Mr. John Travolta!” They exclaimed, exploding into giggles.
Now, why in the name of Liberace, would John Travolta be miles from his home in Korea Town at a men’s spa. For their amazing service? The gorgeous showers with broken tiles?
Once we saw John we instantly ran to our locker to try and take a picture of him, but it didn’t work so we have no proof. But we are telling you straight up our experience, we saw him there, and he was checking out Alex’s Middle Eastern feast in the showers.
This was the wrong thing to do, and we realize that now. We should have flirted with him until he laid his hands on us and we could’ve said, “Dude, I liked you in Hairspray and all, but I’m not like that!”
That would’ve been more hilarious than him in a fat suit.
John, look, no one goes to a Korean Spa unless they WANT to get caught. Stories about you cruising in the steam room have surfaced before so it’s not a surprise.If you come out as gay, then that just makes you that much better of an actor. You fooled the American public for years, and usually you have to be the president to do that.
That’s not exactly overwhelming evidence, is it? Some woman at some bath house saying she saw Travolta?
Still, people seem to believe it. One of the commenters says, “I hate to tell you but everyone has known Travolta was gay since like 2000. He’s like fucking Jodie Foster gay. He’s gayer than Tom Cruise. GAYGAYGAYGAY.” Now, you have to admit, that’s gay.
Defamer is playing coy: “What to make of this beyond the fact that Century offers some of the best spa services in the city at the most reasonable prices? Why, we’re certain we have no idea!”
Glitterati Gossip calls the rumor “totally unsubstantiated” but points out “If he were gay, there’s every reason to believe he’d try to hide it, though. Scientology has moderated its stance on gays in recent years, but for many years classified homosexuality as a disease.”
Queer Verve suggests: “Maybe Travolta was on a mission from Xenu to spread Gonorrhea Scientology to queers in dire need of a body scrub.”
Seriously, though, the man’s married to a beautiful woman and they have kids together. Does that mean he’s not gay? Not at all. Still, he should probably get the benefit of the doubt when he says he’s not.
Anna Nicole Smith boy toys Larry Birkhead and Howard K. Stern yesterday branded a woman who claimed they’re gay lovers a liar and a “loser” with a grudge against them.
The assertion by aspiring singer/actress Jackie Hatten that Smith’s guys made homosexual whoopee comes in a sensational tell-all book by TV journalist Rita Cosby.
If it isn’t cut from “Blonde Ambition” before it hits the stands, Birkhead and Stern vow to sue the former MSNBC reporter.
Hatten says she watched Birkhead and Stern go at it, but a furious Birkhead told the Daily News: “Jackie Hatten has never met me and she hasn’t even seen Anna since 2001.
“She isn’t a credible source,” Birkhead said. “Hatten tried to come to the Bahamas to see Anna last year and Anna wouldn’t let her. And Jackie’s brother went to jail for stalking Anna. This book is coming from the losers club because they all have axes to grind.”
Mark Hatten is in a California prison for threatening Smith. During the paternity battle over Smith’s daughter, Dannielynn, he also claimed to be the baby’s father.
Jackie Hatten, a former pro volleyball player, previously has accused Stern of feeding Smith drugs that contributed to her demise.
“I’ve witnessed Howard give her Vicodin, Valium, morphine, Demerol. … Shall I go on? I mean it’s too much for someone to take over a period of time,” she told CNN’s Larry King in February.
She also claimed Birkhead and Smith were “madly in love” after meeting on a blind date. “They were trying to have babies the first day they met in my bed, okay? I have pictures of them in my bed together.”
Stern’s lawyer Lin Wood sent a blistering letter to Cosby over the weekend warning, “Hatten is not a credible or reliable source.”
Wood later told The News: “The coverage of the tragic deaths of Anna Nicole Smith and her son, Daniel, has been permeated by false, sensationalized accusations. Ms. Cosby’s book … has taken the coverage to a disgusting new low for which she will be held legally accountable.”
Dlisted says, “I want to know who has this damn videotape?! Rita needs to give us the goods. As frightening as it probably is, I want to see it! If there’s a shot to the face involved, I think I would die.”
Hollywood Offender says, “Honestly, I don’t know what to make of this. I mean, I can kinda see them being into each other, afterall, Anna lived a crazy life and was known to be into some kinky stuff.”
In an ironic twist, “Grey’s Anatomy” has won an award for its positive portrayal of homosexuals.
“Grey’s Anatomy,” the ABC hit show whose lead actor was criticized for using an anti-gay slur, was awarded outstanding individual episode Saturday by an organization that monitors depictions of gays and lesbians in the media. The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation awarded “Grey’s Anatomy” for the episode “Where the Boys Are.”
The show got unwanted attention last year when actor Isaiah Washington used a slur to talk about a castmate in an on-set dustup. He later apologized and sought counseling.
“Little Miss Sunshine” won outstanding film in the wide release category, while “Ugly Betty” won for outstanding television comedy series and “Brothers & Sisters” took home the outstanding drama series award.
La Opinion newspaper was awarded outstanding Spanish-language newspaper for overall coverage. The Vanguard Award went to actress Jennifer Aniston for her efforts to increase visibility and understanding of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community. Tennis great Martina Navratilova was given the Stephen F. Kolzak Award, in honor of the late casting director who fought homophobia in the entertainment industry.
The 18th annual GLAAD Media Awards — consisting of 42 categories — are split into four ceremonies, held in Los Angeles, New York, Miami and San Francisco in March, April and May. The awards “recognize and honor mainstream media for their fair, accurate and inclusive representations of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender … community and the issues that affect their lives.”
Here’s a synopsis of “Where the Boys Are” from ABC’s official Episode Guide:
Derek decides to go camping, so he invites Burke and somehow all the men of Seattle Grace, except for Mark, tag along. When Richard doesn’t have a tent to camp in, he asks Joe and his friend Walter, if he can sleep in their tent but the realizes that Joe and Walter are a couple.
While fishing, Joe tells Richard they’re thinking about having children and Richard says he and Adele never did because she didn’t want raise them alone since he was always at the hospital Joe says Walter says the same thing, since he’s always at the bar, but that he’ll do whatever it takes to keep Walter.
Walter (Jack Yang) and Joe (Steven W. Bailey) are pictured above. It was actually a pretty good episode. I wonder, though, whether the Isaiah Washington controversy wasn’t a major reason for selecting it. Certainly, there are no shortage of positive portrayals of gays, hermaphrodites, and even transgenders on television these days.
“Star Trek” star George Takei, who recently came out as gay, made this video for Jimmy Kimmel commenting on former NBA star Tim Hardaway’s anti-gay comments:
This has been going around for awhile, apparently, as my co-bloggers Alex Knapp and Chris Lawrence both had it on their personal sites some time back and Steven Taylor picked it up, too. Still, it’s pretty funny.
He is a keen guitar player whose admiration for the Rolling Stones stretched to modeling his character, the pirate Jack Sparrow, on the mannerisms of Keith Richards.
Now the Pirates of the Caribbean star, Johnny Depp, is being lined up to play a rock star for real in a biopic of the late Queen frontman, Freddie Mercury.
On a rather serious note, [heh]… this should be fairly interesting to see! You know Johnny will add his own quirky flair to the role.
Robert de Niro’s company, Tribeca Productions, is said to be behind the project, which Brian May, the Queen guitarist, confirmed was in development. “Discussions are at an early stage,” he said on his website.
May described Depp as “fantastic”. “He would be a worthy counterpart for Freddie on screen. I don’t think I can say any more right now,” he added.
De Niro has known Brian May and Queen’s drummer, Roger Taylor, since they met at the Venice Film Festival in 1996 and ploughed his own money into their hit stage musical, We Will Rock You. The musical was originally going to be about the band but the surviving members decided that would be too embarrassing for all involved.
“It would be too painful, too close, and a bit grand. It would be for somebody else to do, you can’t supervise your own history,” May said at the time.
Instead, Ben Elton, the comedy writer and novelist, devised a story that incorporated the band’s back catalogue of songs. When the show opened in London in 2002 after six years in development, De Niro attended the first night. “It’s an adventure. I’ve been involved in this for a long time. It went through a lot of stages and finally got to this stage - it’s going to be terrific,” he said.
The £7.5m production, which is still running, is set in a future where musical instruments have been banned but a group of rebels go in search of mythical electric guitars.
But the proposed biopic would tell the life story of Mercury, who was born in Zanzibar in 1946 and died from complications of Aids in 1991, the day after confirming he had the disease.
His real name was Farrokh Bulsara but he adopted the name he was best known by at school in India, where he grew up. His family settled in England when he was in his teens. He performed with several bands before co-founding Queen in 1971.
They signed to EMI a year later. His distinctive voice, which ranged across four octaves, was a key factor in their success on songs such as Bohemian Rhapsody. It lasted nearly six minutes and stayed at number one in the UK charts for nine weeks.
It has since been voted Britain’s best single of all time by music fans in a Guinness Book of British Hit Singles poll, defeating John Lennon’s Imagine and Hey Jude by the Beatles.
Although Mercury had a close friend, Mary Austin, with whom he lived for several years and who inherited his estate, he was fairly open about his homosexuality. He lived with Jim Hutton for the last six years of his life.
Trey Parker and Matt Stone have managed to make the news again, this time by making fun of the late Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin on South Park.
The creators of South Park have never been afraid to upset celebrities - and many of the show’s viewers. From jokes about religion and homosexuality to four-letter tirades, Trey Parker and Matt Stone have always mixed shock tactics with satire in the hit cartoon series. But they were accused of hitting a new low last night after lampooning the demise of Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin just weeks after his death.
The latest episode shows an animated Irwin in Hell with a stingray poking out of his bleeding chest. Irwin, 44, died in September after he was impaled by a stingray’s barb, while snorkelling near the Great Barrier Reef in Australia.
The South Park episode called Hell On Earth 2006, which was broadcast in the US this week, shows Satan preparing to host a Hallowe’en fancy dress party. Hundreds of dead celebrities are invited, including rapper Notorious B.I.G., Princess Diana and Hitler.
But at the party Satan receives complaints from his guests that someone is inappropriately dressed up as Irwin. Satan confronts Irwin but the Aussie environmentalist protests it is really him, not a guest in a costume. While characters have been killed off in the series before – spawning the show’s catchphrase “Oh my god, they killed Kenny!” – campaigners are particularly incensed about the stingray still being attached to Irwin’s bloodstained trademark khaki shirt.
[...]
British broadcasting watchdog Mediawatch condemned the episode as “grossly insensitive.” Its director, John Beyer, said: “I think this is in bad taste. Steve Irwin’s family are still grieving.” “To lampoon somebody’s death like that is unacceptable and so soon after the event is grossly insensitive. It is not what the family would want to see.”
I haven’t yet seen the episode but agree that mocking Irwin so soon after his death is rather tacky. Still, Irwin was a celebrity and that’s the path he chose. His death was big news, he was mourned in a giant state funeral, and he’s been mocked publicly.
Indeed, Norm McDonald made fun of the circumstances of Irwin’s death weeks ago on the Jon Stewart Show:
Take a look at some of the related posts below for more controversial topics on South Park.
In spite of a few “gentle” warnings from Barbara Walters, Rosie O’Donnell has managed to increase “The View’s” ratings by 30%! Not too shabby for the length of time she’s been on the struggling show.
From her new perch at the head of the glass table on “The View” Tuesday morning, Rosie O’Donnell was expressing skepticism about Oprah Winfrey’s recent declaration that she was not gay, suggesting that she just might be… “…a little bit gay“.
After showing the “View” audience a clip of Ms. Winfrey and her friend Gayle King struggling to pump gas while driving cross-country this summer, a “Thelma and Louise” excursion they had recorded for the fall premiere of Ms. Winfrey’s talk show, Ms. O’Donnell said, “I think that’s very typical of gay relationships — not saying they’re gay.”
“You might be a little bit gay,” said Ms. O’Donnell, hardly shy about her own homosexuality, as she spoke to Ms. Winfrey, whom she called “Opie,” as if she were there. “You’re just not doing it.”
Ms. O’Donnell appeared to be warming up for yet another rant — only a few days earlier, she had said that “radical Christianity is just as threatening as radical Islam” — when a voice suddenly materialized from the opposite end of the table to offer a subtle but firm transition: “Just to get away from that, because I’d like to get away from that.”
It was Barbara Walters, who is not only a co-host of “The View” and its co-executive producer, but also a co-owner of the show, with ABC. Five months after hatching the idea of hiring Ms. O’Donnell to replace Meredith Vieira as moderator of “The View” and then selling ABC on the notion, Ms. Walters’s gamble already appears to be paying off, though, as that “Oprah” moment made clear, she has been keeping a vigilant eye on her newest hire.
Midway through her third week on the job, Ms. O’Donnell has washed over the relatively placid set of “The View,” as it begins its 10th year, like a jolt of Red Bull. Thus far at least ratings are up over last year at this time, by 30 percent during her first week. New sponsors have also come on board, lured by the prospect of having Ms. O’Donnell plug their products in the body of the show, including Fisher-Price’s 10th-anniversary “Tickle Me Elmo” doll.
Last week Ms. O’Donnell managed to wangle free cookies for the 200-member “View” audience for a year by paying homage to a new sponsor, the Keebler brand, in a way Ms. Vieira never could have: she suddenly rose from her seat to sing Keebler’s praises alongside a costumed Keebler elf and a chorus line of male dancers in white tails.
And yet, Ms. Walters said in an interview after Tuesday’s show, for all the energy Ms. O’Donnell has transfused to “The View,” it has occasionally fallen to Ms. Walters and her co-executive producer, Bill Geddie, to rein in Ms. O’Donnell, both on camera and off. This has been especially true, Ms. Walters said, when Ms. O’Donnell has sought to hype a product they don’t like or book a guest they don’t want (they were too discreet to say which) — or, in the case of Ms. Winfrey, to poke fun at perhaps the biggest star in television.
“I have to be very careful,” Ms. Walters said Tuesday, speaking from her corner office on the 10th floor of an ABC office building overlooking Lincoln Center. “Rosie’s opinions are her own. They’re very strong. And I don’t mind opinions. But I don’t want us to be bashing anybody. We’ve talked about that, and Rosie is very conscious of it.” source
Cue the iconic theme music: Forty years ago, on September 8, 1966, “Star Trek” lifted off into TV and cultural history. Over the subsequent decades, the sci-fi adventure series has amassed millions of fans and emerged as a relentless entertainment empire.
Stars William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy sat down recently with the Associated Press and recalled “The Man Trap,” the episode that would kick off the show’s three-year prime-time run. “The first show that was on the air was a show with a creature that was a salt sucker,” recalled Nimoy. “It was somebody inside a weird-looking suit and it attacked humans because it needed the copper or the salt out of your body to survive or something like that.” “That was the first one?” asked Shatner. “Yes, that was the first one on the air,” Nimoy answered. “And it was because NBC decided that this series would be most successful if we had sort of a monster of the week to sell. What’s the monster this week? And so they put a monster show on the air the first episode, and I think it was a terrible mistake, because it was really not what we were about.”
To mark the anniversary, classic-TV network TV Land on Friday (8 p.m. EDT) will showcase four episodes from the original “Star Trek” series, including the premiere and the historic episode featuring TV’s first interracial kiss. “Star Trek” episodes will begin airing regularly on the channel on November 17. Episodes will also be available online at TVLand.com.
The biplay between Shatner and Nimoy in the rest of the article is fairly amusing. The show’s special effects and fealty to science are laughable by today’s Sci-Fi standards but, then, the original Trek’s magic was the interaction of the characters, not the great plots or encounters with “monsters.” The repartee between the ensemble cast, especially Shatner’s Captain Kirk, Nimoy’s Mr. (Commander) Spock, and the late DeForest Kelley’s Dr. Leonard “Bones” McCoy was unsurpassed.
The spin-offs, especially “Next Generation” and “Deep Space 9,” had bigger budgets, were much better science fiction and had more interesting plots, but they never quite had the chemistry of the original.
Brad Pitt, ever the social activist, says he won’t be marrying Angelina Jolie until the restrictions on who can marry whom are dropped. “Angie and I will consider tying the knot when everyone else in the country who wants to be married is legally able,” the 42-year-old actor reveals in Esquire magazine’s October issue, on newsstands Sept. 19.
He’ll likely be waiting a long time. The magazine has not yet arrived and the article is not on Esquire website (although the cover, thumbnailed left, is out) so all I have to go on is the AP summary. One presumes he is referring to homosexuals being barred from marrying others of the same sex in 49 of the 50 states, although taken literally he could be referring to bigamists, polygamists, animal lovers, or any number of others. Regardless, with Congress trying to amend the U.S. Constitution to “protect” heterosexual marriage and dozens of states having already done so, one imagines Shiloh will be in college and her parents still unmarried.
Though Shiloh, the world-famous daughter of Pitt and girlfriend/earth mother Angelina Jolie, hogged much attention upon her birth in May, Pitt says he “cannot imagine life” without adopted children, Maddox, 5, and Zahara, 1. “They’re as much of my blood as any natural born, and I’m theirs,” says Pitt. “That’s all I can say about it. I can’t live without them. So: Anyone considering (adoption), that’s my vote.”
Kevin Aviance, a singer of several dance hits, was attacked Saturday in what is being treated as an anti-gay hate crime.
A singer whose songs have topped the Billboard dance chart was attacked by a group yelling anti-gay slurs, and four people were arrested on hate-crime charges, police and his publicist said. Kevin Aviance, 38, underwent surgery for a broken jaw after the attack Saturday, said his publicist, Len Evans. Police said the singer, whose song “Alive” hit the top of the chart in 2002, was in stable condition. A group of six or seven men attacked Aviance early Saturday, and passers-by did not stop to help as they threw objects at him, Evans said.
Four people were arrested on charges of first-degree assault as a hate crime, police said. They were identified as Jarell Sears and Akino George, both 20; Gregory Archie, 18; and Gerard Johnson, 16.
Aviance performs in drag but was “dressed like a boy” when he was attacked, Evans said. He had planned to take part in next week’s Gay Pride parade and festivities, but will now be unable to perform, the publicist said.
Other popular songs by the singer have included “Give It Up,” released in 2004, and “Din Da Da,” which topped the Billboard dance chart in 1997.
Given their ages and Aviance’s sporadic success, it’s quite likely they had no idea who he was. Still, the idea of a bunch of punks beating up random people who demonstrate homosexual tendencies is quite bizarre.
Jeff Harrell points to the an image from Apple Computers’ new ad campaign:
He and I have the same immediate reaction: Two gay guys holding hands. He reads some age issues into it that wouldn’t otherwise have occured to me. His friend in the advertising industry thinks he’s reading too much into it.
I don’t much care, in that I’m not in the market for a new computer, let alone a Mac. I do, however, wonder why advertisers would employ gay themes when designing ads not specifically targetted to gay audiences.
For example, I subscribe to and read GQ and Esquire. I’m sure that they have some substantial gay and “metrosexual” readership but would presume that the vast majority consists of straight men. So why is Dolce & Gabbana placing ads like this?
Granting that the designers are themselves openly homosexual, why would they want to create that association with their brand? Wouldn’t “these clothes will make you attractive” (to which one could naturally fill in “hot chicks” or “other guys”) be a more effective marketing strategy than, well, whatever the hell their marketing strategy is?
LaMont Jones of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette suggests that this is just the natural evolution of the “sex sells” philosophy of advertising.
Then there is the homoeroticism of Dolce & Gabbana four-page ad series in recent issues of popular men’s magazine GQ. In February, men in suits stare at an apparently naked man lying on the floor while a fellow nearby fiddles with his pants zipper. In the March series, the clothes fade into the background as men pose bare-chested, pants down, hands inside underwear, hands on the crotch.
[...]
These images are bolder than similar but more subtle homoerotic images of female models in ads by Emporio Armani, BCBG Max Azria and Gucci. And they’re being noticed and talked about.
“Not even Freud could decipher this hallucination,” blogger David K. wrote about some of the Dolce & Gabbana ads, which he posted on nightcharm.com. Commenting on the image featuring the apparently nude guy, the blogger asked: “Is this what male fashion has come to?”
Evan J. Schapiro, a GQ spokesperson, acknowledged that the ads are “very provocative.” Supporters “appreciate the artistic value” while some criticized the ads as “over the line.” “We take notice of all the ads that appear in our magazine. In this particular instance, we decided that our readers could come to their own conclusions. We have received both positive and negative responses via mail from our readers. Advertisers advertise in GQ because we have a vocal and loyal readership.”
The difference between these and other sexually provocative ads, though, is that they do not seem to align with the sexual fantasies of the target audience. While the association of silicone-enhanced, scantily clad women and beer is exploitative, the implied message (”Chicks dig guys who drink Miller Lite!”) is at least one whose appeal nearly universal to the target demographic. “Wanna see my bulge?” Not so much.
Don Knotts, who kept generations of TV audiences laughing as bumbling Deputy Barney Fife on “The Andy Griffith Show” and would-be swinger landlord Ralph Furley on “Three’s Company,” has died. He was 81.
Knotts died Friday night of pulmonary and respiratory complications at a Los Angeles hospital, said Paul Ward, a spokesman for the cable network TV Land, which airs his two signature shows.
Griffith, who remained close friends with Knotts, said he had a brilliant comedic mind and wrote some of the show’s best scenes.
“Don was a small man … but everything else about him was large: his mind, his expressions,” Griffith told The Associated Press on Saturday. “Don was special. There’s nobody like him. “I loved him very much,” Griffith added. “We had a long and wonderful life together.”
[...]
The West Virginia-born actor’s half-century career included seven TV series and more than 25 films, but it was the Griffith show that brought him TV immortality and five Emmys.
The show ran from 1960-68, and was in the top 10 of the Nielsen ratings each season, including a No. 1 ranking its final year. It is one of only three series in TV history to bow out at the top: The others are “I Love Lucy” and “Seinfeld.” The 249 episodes have appeared frequently in reruns and have spawned a large, active network of fan clubs.
I have almost no recollection of The Andy Griffith Show, so Knotts to me will be remembered as the flamboyant would-be stud from Three’s Company. Mr. Furley’s leisure suits and jokes about Jack Tripper’s faux homosexuality were hilarious, and that show stands as an interesting snapshot of a strange era in American sociopolitical culture.
Update James Joyner: Sad news, indeed. I’m older than Stotch but even I didn’t watch Don Knotts play Barney Fife when the show was on. Indeed, he played the character from 1960-1965, before I was born. Still, I have probably seen every episode numerous times in the intervening years.
I have often said that “The Andy Griffith Show” was the best television show of any genre ever made. My wife, growing up as she did in New England, did not have the cultural advantages that I did and had never seen the show. We are currently rectifying that situation and watching every episode, in order, on DVD via Netflix.
Knotts won an Emmy as Best Supporting Actor each of the five years he played Barney Fife. If there was ever a better sitcom character over a sustained period, I haven’t seen it. Andy Griffith, already a well-established comedic actor and stand-up comic when the show began, quickly realized that Knotts was stealing the show. Rather than try to grab the best lines for himself, he became the straight man and let Knotts have even more camera time. The result is the best five year run of any sitcom, ever. The three subsequent seasons, all in color rather than the black and white of the Knotts era, were fine but nowhere near as good.
Here’s a much more recent photo of Griffith and Knotts, taken for the “TV Land Awards,” 7 March 2004:
After being a regular performer in the soap opera Search for Tomorrow from 1953 to 1955, he gained additional exposure in 1956 on Steve Allen’s variety show, appearing in Allen’s mock “Man in the Street” interviews, always as a man obviously very nervous about being on camera.
Knotts’s portrayal of Deputy Barney Fife on the American television sitcom The Andy Griffith Show earned him five Emmy Awards. After leaving the series in 1965, Knotts starred in a series of film comedies: The Incredible Mr. Limpet (1964), The Ghost and Mr. Chicken (1966), The Reluctant Astronaut (1967), The Shakiest Gun in the West (1968) and The Love God? (1969).
In the late 1960s and early ’70s, he served as the spokesman for Dodge trucks and was featured prominently in a series of print ads and dealer brochures.
In the 1970s, Knotts and Tim Conway starred together in a series of slapstick movies, including the 1975 Disney film The Apple Dumpling Gang, and its 1979 sequel, The Apple Dumpling Gang Rides Again.
Knotts returned to series television in the late 1970s, appearing as landlord Ralph Furley on Three’s Company, after Audra Lindley and Norman Fell left the show to star in a short-lived spinoff series (”The Ropers”). Knotts remained on the show from 1979 until it ended in 1984. In 1986, he reunited with Andy Griffith in the 1986 made for television movie Return to Mayberry, where he reprised his role as “Barney Fife”. From 1989 to 1992, Knotts again co-starred with Grittith, playing a recurring role as pesky neighbor Les Calhoun on Matlock.
In 1998, Knotts made a cameo as the mysterious TV repairman in Pleasantville, and seven years later performed as the voice of Mayor Turkey Lurkey in Chicken Little (2005) (his first Disney movie since 1979).
My understanding is that Griffith and Knotts met when they starred in the 1955 Broadway hit “No Time for Sergeants.” They reprised their roles in the 1958 film of the same name. If you haven’t seen it, you owe it to yourself to do so. Like most films about the military, the basic training (or, technically, in this case Air Force recruit induction center) sequence was much better than the rest of the picture. Still, when you see Griffith’s terrific comedic performance as Will Stockdale and then realize that Don Knotts stole his own show away from him two years later, you really appreciate Knotts’ unique talent.
I checked and, apparently, someone tipped off OneNewsNow and they have rendered Gay’s name as Gay in updated stories such as “Gay runs 100 in windy 9.68 to make US Olympic team.” Which, in this context, is still a pretty funny headline.
The spit-swapping commenced almost immediately. Everybody was kissing everybody. Natalie kissing Matt and then Alex and then James and even Adam. Natalie kissing Chelsia. Chelsia kissing Alex and then Matt and then James and then Josh. Natalie and Chelsia kissing Josh together. Sharon kissing Matt and then Alex. Speaking of Sharon, her and Alex are sure to get it on eventually in the house. You could feel the fireworks through the screen during each one of their make out sessions.
Anna Nicole Smith boy toys Larry Birkhead and Howard K. Stern yesterday branded a woman who claimed they’re gay lovers a liar and a “loser” with a grudge against them.
“Grey’s Anatomy,” the ABC hit show whose lead actor was criticized for using an anti-gay slur, was awarded outstanding individual episode Saturday by an organization that monitors depictions of gays and lesbians in the media. The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation awarded “Grey’s Anatomy” for the episode “Where the Boys Are.”
Update James Joyner: Sad news, indeed. I’m older than Stotch but even I didn’t watch Don Knotts play Barney Fife when the show was on. Indeed, he played the character from 1960-1965, before I was born. Still, I have probably seen every episode numerous times in the intervening years. 
