Sex files: David Duchovny in rehab

WHY DOES THIS MAKE ME SO HAPPY?
By Guy Adams in Los Angeles
Friday, 29 August 2008
In a move that Hank Moody, the writer whose mid-life crisis he chronicles in Californication, should have taken years ago, David Duchovny has checked himself into rehab to seek treatment for sex addiction.

The actor today confirmed that he'd been admitted to a clinic near the Malibu home he shares with his wife of eleven years, the actress Tea Leoni, and their two children.

“I have voluntarily entered a facility for the treatment of sex addiction,” read a statement released by his lawyer, Stanton “Larry” Stein. “I ask for respect and privacy for my wife and children as we deal with this situation as a family.”

Little is known about what triggered Duchovny's decision to seek professional help. However the irony of his difficulties will not be lost on fans of the Golden Globe winning Californication, which is currently nominated for two Emmy Awards and next month returns to American TV screens for its second series.

The hit show follows Moody's romantic adventures in Los Angeles, where he has moved after separating from his wife Karen, played by Natasha McElhone. Most of its humour revolves around the difficulties prompted by his obsession with compulsive - and frequently dangerous - sexual liaisons.

When the first series of Californication was launched last year, religious groups were upset by a “dream” sequence in the very first episode, in which Duchovny's character fantasises about receiving oral sex from a nun. Several advertisers pulled-out of the show, labelling it “porn.”

Duchovny, who first achieved fame playing the conspiracy theorist Mulder in The X-Files, has for years claimed to suffer from sex addiction.

At the height of the show's success, during the mid 1990s, he gave a series of interviews admitting that he was seeking treatment after it cost him a long-term relationship, saying it was: “out of control and ruining my life.”

“You have no idea how good it feels to be so popular,” he recalled, in an interview with the TV Times. “I lost my virginity at 14, and I've loved women ever since. The way a woman smells - it's the ultimate aphrodisiac.” Apropros of rehab, he added: “either these meetings will help me, deal with my addiction, or I'll meet lots of women. Either way I can't lose!”

More recently, Duchovny claimed it had been cured, and that although he often wondered what it might be like to cheat on his partner, he had remained faithful throughout his marriage to Leoni. “I still like sex,” he said. “But only with my wife.”

At present, Ms Leoni is said to be remaining supportive of her errant husband, though both Stein and the couple's publicist, Flo Grace, have declined to comment further on the state of their marriage.

Duchovny's admission will further raise the profile of sex addiction, which has become a scourge of fashionable celebrities such as Michael Douglas, Charlie Sheen and Russell Brand.

Although critics claim the “illness” is frequently used to as an excuse for bad behaviour, victims say it can be every bit as damaging as a drug or alcohol addiction.

Some cynics have also wondered about the timing of today's announcement by Duchovny, whose recent X-Files film flopped at the box office, noting that the publicity it has generated comes at a useful time for Californication, which returns next month for its second series.

Their suspicions will have been raised by the fact that Showtime, the TV network responsible for the show, broke with his publicist's decision to make no further comment on the matter by releasing a statement expressing sympathy for Duchovny and his family “at this very private time.”

This is what I bought at the SHINE GALLERY

Ear To The Ground Conceived and Performed by David Van Tieghem

found here

SHINE GALLERY my new favorite store!

On top of it selling my favorite kind of ephemera, It's located in one of my fave LA spots- the Farmers Market at Fairfax & 3rd!!!!
You can also buy all their stuff on line at their website SHINEGALLERY.COM I got so excited I took a bunch of pix

World's Largest Record Collection

THROW THE BOOK AT HER!

20-year-old Heidi Dalibor of Grafton, Wisconsin was arrested earlier this month over a couple of library books. No, she didn't stick them in her cooter in the middle of the library. She just forgot to turn them in before their due date.

Two cops came to Heidi's door and arrested her for not paying her overdue library fees, ignoring numerous phone calls and not showing up to court. They handcuffed her, took her down to the station and then fingerprinted and photographed her.

Isn't it a lovely mug shot? She looks so happy! She's probably thinking, "I better try and look cheer for this shit, because I know this is going to end up on The Smoking Gun."

Heidi's mother had to pay $172 to get her out of jail. Heidi also had to pay $30 for the two overdue paperbacks.

So what two books did Heidi go to jail for? Heidi checked out Janet Finch's "White Oleander" and Dan Brown's "Angels & Demons." Embarrassing! 

How Cool Does This Place LOOK?

141-4194b, originally uploaded by Society In Decline.

Brooklyn Sign Painter in Action!

I've loved this guys ever-changing sign on Nevin's and Atlantic for years. Great to see him in action. 

Jack A. Weil, the Cowboy’s Dresser, Dies at 107

Jack A. Weil, a garter salesman, breezed into Denver in 1928 in a new Chrysler Roadster to start a new life. He exceeded his hopes and became a king of cowboy couture — almost certainly the first to put snaps on Western shirts (17 on a shirt), and most likely the first to produce bolo ties commercially.


Rockmount Ranch Wear Mfg. Co.
A style that became a classic.
His Rockmount Ranch Wear Mfg. Company has sold millions of shirts, including at least one shipment to Antarctica, since it started in 1946. Clark Gable wore one in “The Misfits” with Marilyn Monroe, and Heath Ledger’s shirt in “Brokeback Mountain” — plaid fabric, diamond snaps and saw-tooth pockets — was Style No. 69-39.

Until Wednesday, when he died at 107 in Denver, Mr. Weil was still chief executive of the company he founded and, until just before his death, came to work daily. He was regularly called the oldest chief executive still working.

Known as Papa Jack, Mr. Weil said he owed his longevity to quitting smoking at 60 (after starting at 40), drinking at 90 and eating red meat at 100. He did have a medicinal shot of Jack Daniels twice a week .

In announcing the death, his grandson, Steve Weil, Rockmount’s president, said Mr. Weil was to Western shirts what Henry Ford was to cars, and, indeed, the global spread of cowboy style owes much to him.

The shirt — tailored close to the body, with “yokes” that seem to broaden the shoulders of cowpokes and city slickers alike and often with distinctive “smile” pockets — offers more than snaps. But snaps matter, not least to cowboys who are not handy at sewing. They break loose easily if the shirt is caught on a hostile horn. (They also offer a dramatic way to bare one’s chest, but that might be another story.)

Jack Arnold Weil was born on March 28, 1901, in Evansville, Ind., where his father, Abraham, had come to avoid being impressed into the Prussian army in the Franco-Prussian War.

Jack and his brother, Edgar, delivered newspapers, outdoing other youths by using a horse and buggy, not bicycles. In World War I, young Jack inspected dungarees for shipment to the Navy.

Mr. Weil took a job selling garters and suspenders, first in the Midwest, then in a territory sprawling from El Paso to Canada. He fell instantly in love with the Rocky Mountains and moved to Denver, where he put up a new-fangled neon sign that flashed “Garters.”

He joined Phillip Miller in a company that later became Miller Stockman, another celebrated brand of Western clothes. It was called the Stockman Farmer Supply Company.

“The first thing I did was get rid of the farmer,” Mr. Weil told Denver Westward in 2001. For the rest of his life, he sold the romance of the cowboy. Mr. Weil was a crafty promoter. In Cheyenne, Wyo., he persuaded the Chamber of Commerce that it would be a great idea for everybody to dress Western for the Frontier Days rodeo; fines for failing to do so went to charity. Of course, Mr. Weil gave a deal on the clothes.

In 1946, Mr. Weil formed Rockmount, an abbreviation of Rocky Mountains. With the metal shortages of World War II over, he made diamond-shaped metal snaps, often with mother-of-pearl covers, the basis for his new business. Before long, Rockmount was selling Western fashion from belts to blouses.

Various accounts say Mr. Weil either invented the modern bolo tie (a necktie made of cord with a decorative slide), or named it. Both assertions are questionable. But Rockmount’s claims to have been the leader in mass-producing them seem widely accepted.

Mr. Weil still had his shirts made in America long after his competitors moved overseas; he also refused to favor big chains like Wal-Mart over his traditional customers.

“I never wanted to be the richest man in the cemetery,” he said.

His wife of 64 years, the former Beatrice Baum, died in 1990, and their son, Jack B., died this January. Mr. Weil is survived by his daughter, Jane Romberg, of Steamboat Springs, Colo.; five grandchildren; and 10 great-grandchildren.

Mr. Weil was a creature of habit, driving an old Dodge. But he could not understand why people would collect old Western shirts. He was aghast when his grandson Steve excitedly called to say he had found an original Rockmount shirt and that the dealer had accepted two new shirts for it.

“What?” Jack exclaimed. “You traded two perfectly good new shirts for an old one we sold for three dollars 40 years ago?”

raffle ticket phone

raffle ticket phone, originally uploaded by jek in the box.

Behold: Pictures of Neil Diamond in concert, snapped through the hole of a mini-bagel...

find out more here!

A lesson in Sign Language on East 23rd Street NYC

A sign for the School for the Deaf on East 23rd Street between Second and Third avenues offers the passerby a lesson in American Sign Language. I went to this school for kindergarten. We lived right near by, in Peter Cooper Village and they had a program that mixed hearing kids with deaf kids.

Don Helms, 81, Who Put the Twang in the Hank Williams Songbook, Is Dead

Don Helms, 81, Who Put the Twang in the Hank Williams Songbook, Is Dead

Don Helms, whose piercing, forceful steel guitar helped define the sound of nearly all of Hank Williams’s hits, and who performed and recorded with a long list of other country greats, died Monday in Nashville. He was 81 and lived in Hendersonville, Tenn.
The cause was complications of heart surgery and diabetes, said Marty Stuart, a friend and fellow performer.
Mr. Helms played on more than 100 Hank Williams songs and on 10 of his 11 No. 1 country hits. He provided the dirgelike, weeping notes in songs like “I Can’t Help It (If I’m Still in Love With You)” and “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” and added a catchy, propulsive twang to up-tempo numbers like “Jambalaya (On the Bayou)” and “Hey, Good Lookin.’ ”
“After the great tunes and Hank’s mournful voice, the next thing you think about in those songs is the steel guitar,” said Bill Lloyd, the curator of stringed instruments at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. “It is the quintessential honky-tonk steel sound — tuneful, aggressive, full of attitude.”
After Williams died in 1953, Mr. Helms embarked on a long career as a performer and songwriter. His guitar can be heard on the Patsy Cline hit “Walking After Midnight,” Stonewall Jackson’s “Waterloo,” the Louvin Brothers’ “Cash on the Barrelhead,” Lefty Frizzell’s “Long Black Veil” and Loretta Lynn’s “Blue Kentucky Girl.”
Donald Hugh Helms was born in New Brockton, Ala., and grew up on the family farm. As a boy, he listened to the Texas swing music of Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys, whose steel guitar player, Leon McAuliffe, was a big influence, as was a local player, Neal McCormick.
At 15, he got his first steel guitar, a Sears Silvertone that was held flat on the lap, unlike the table-style steel guitars he would later play. Since the farmhouse had no electricity, he played the instrument over a washtub to make it resonate.
While still a teenager, Mr. Helms became a member of the Drifting Cowboys, the backup band for Williams, then a local radio star who performed in small clubs and roadhouses. Mr. Helms enlisted in the Army in 1945 and by the time he was discharged two years later, Williams had signed a record contract and was on his way to perform as a regular on “Louisiana Hayride,” a Shreveport, La., radio show broadcast all over the South.
Mr. Helms stayed put in Alabama, where he had steady performing work, but after Williams joined the Grand Ole Opry in 1949 and created a sensation with his first No. 1 hit, “Lovesick Blues,” he became part of the new edition of the Drifting Cowboys that Williams put together in Nashville.
He was the last surviving member of that ensemble.
In 1945, he married Hazel Cullifer, who survives him, as do his two sons, Frank and Marc; two brothers, Glenn and Ted; three grandchildren; and five great-grandchildren.
Initially, Mr. Helms played a Fender eight-string double-necked guitar, but in 1950 he acquired the Gibson Console Grand that most listeners associate with Williams’s hits. Later he would play a pedal steel guitar, but he kept the Gibson under his bed, pulling it out for special occasions.
The rough-hewn sound of the pre-pedal steel guitar suited Williams’s bluesy vocals. At the suggestion of the record producer Fred Rose, Mr. Helms favored the treble strings and played high on the neck, producing a penetrating sound that could cut through the background noise of the bars, honky-tonks and roadhouses where Williams’s records were most often heard
The Helms sound, said Mr. Lloyd of the Country Music Hall of Fame, helped move country music away from the hillbilly string-band accompaniment popular in the 1930s and toward the more modern electric style that took over in the 1940s.
“His tuning, and the way the tuning made the tone high-pitched, matched Hank Williams’s style just perfectly,” said DeWitt Scott, the founder of the Steel Guitar Hall of Fame, which inducted Mr. Helms in 1984.
Mr. Helms played on Williams’s last recording session, in Sept. 1952, which generated “Kaw-Liga,” “Take These Chains From My Heart,” and “Your Cheatin’ Heart,” released after Williams’s death in January 1953.
“I played him an intro, and we sang the song through one time,” Mr. Helms said about the recording of “Your Cheatin’ Heart.” After that, he said, “I never saw him alive again.” His account of those years, dictated to Dale Vinicur, was published in 2005 in “Settin’ the Woods on Fire.”
After recording an instrumental record with the Drifting Cowboys, Mr. Helms and several of his fellow musicians worked with Ray Price, who renamed them the Cherokee Cowboys. Mr. Helms went on to record with a host of country music stars, including Jim Reeves, Webb Pierce and Ferlin Husky. He also played on Johnny Cash’s early albums for Columbia Records.
In 1957 he joined the Nashville Tennesseans, the backup band for the Wilburn Brothers, touring with them for years and performing on their syndicated television show. After performing with Hank Williams Jr. and Ernest Tubb in the late 1960s and ’70s, Mr. Helms reunited with the Drifting Cowboys in 1977. In 1989 he began touring with Jett Williams, Hank Williams’s daughter.
In his later years, he did recording sessions with younger musicians like Rascal Flatts, Bon Jovi and Kid Rock. At the time of his death he was working with Vince Gill on an album of uncompleted Hank Williams songs.
“He remained an active musician until the day he died,” said Mr. Stuart.
Mr. Helms was a regular performer at steel guitar conventions and concerts, where he could galvanize listeners with a few signature chords from country’s music’s most cherished hits. “Don would look out over the audience as the lights dimmed,” said Paul Hemphill, the author of “Lovesick Blues,” a biography of Hank Williams. “Then he’d say, ‘Now, close your eyes and think of Hank.’ ”

FOX News: Ernest Borgnine's Secret To Long Life

ELVIS PRESLEY 1935-1977

I can't believe he was only 42 when he died 31 years ago today. I remember where I was when I heard the news. Having a cheesy slice of pizza at Ray's on 6th ave. in NYC. Where were you?

news of Marilyn Monroe's death august 1962

Wanda Jackson Documentary

Weird Food-Related Album Covers

from serious eats

Spectacular Lightning Last Night!

Los Angeles, California 1937. A Street of Memory, Olvera St

We're not watching...

BUY IT HERE! $22 (the camera decal, that is)

John Lennon's killer denied parole for 5th time

Jean Michel Basquiat 12/22/60 - 8/12/88

                                                    20 Years?!?! 

RIP Isaac Hayes

"THE EXILES" I really want to see this!

read more about it here

HAPPY 08/08/08 !!

Ernest Borgnine tonight!

FILM: The Aero Theatre’s holding an Ernest Borgnine double feature tonight, and the man behind McHale’s Navy himself will be there to introduce the second film. Up first at 7:30 tonight is Marty with Borgnine as a “blue-collar Bronx butcher who finds love late in life with schoolteacher Betsy Blair.” The film’s followed by the 1956 film The Catered Affair, where he plays a middle-aged New York cabbie scraping for years to save for his own cab. When daughter (Debbie Reynolds) announces that she’ll get married in a simple ceremony, her mother, played by Bette Davis (red flags here!), insists on having a wedding to impress their friends and family. (Now for the curious, IMDB says he's 91.)

Elvis' peacock jumpsuit sells for $300K

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: August 7, 2008
Filed at 3:33 p.m. ET

NEW YORK (AP) -- Elvis Presley's favorite performance costume, the peacock jumpsuit, sold for $300,000 Thursday, making it the most expensive piece of Elvis memorabilia sold at auction.

The online sale by auctioneer Gotta Have It! ended at 3 a.m. The pre-sale estimate was $275,000 to $325,000.

The white outfit with a plunging V-neck and high collar features a blue-and-gold peacock design hand-embroidered on the front and back and along the pant legs.

It is cinched at the waist by a wide belt decorated in gold medallions in a design resembling the eye of a peacock feather.

The auctioneer described the seller as ''a big Elvis collector'' and declined to say who bought it.

Presley paid $10,000 to have the outfit made by Los Angeles designer Bill Belew, who created all of The King's stage wardrobe between 1968-1977. It captured the rock 'n' roll legend's fascination with peacocks as a good luck symbol and the auction house said it was among his favorite Belew designs.

Elvis first wore the costume at the Forum in Los Angeles on May 11, 1974, and later for the cover of his album ''Promised Land.''

The previous record for an Elvis collectible is $295,000 for his 1956 Lincoln Continental Mark II.

The most ever paid previously for one of his stage costumes, the so-called aloha cape, which was worn during one of his last television shows, was $105,250. Both were sold at a 1999 auction at Graceland in Memphis, Tenn., run by Guernsey's.

munch's breakfast

munch's breakfast, originally uploaded by julie wilson world.

What you see here is the best breakfast I have had in a long time. Those grits were stupendous and so was the bacon & biscuit. I want it now! At Munch's restaurant & sundries in browntown St. Petersburg, Florida.

Coney Island, New York, 1944 home movie

Coney Island, New York, 1944 home movie, originally uploaded by bobster1985.

TWISTER BED SHEET!

Freshy Soda Can, 1970's

Freshy Soda Can, 1970's, originally uploaded by Roadsidepictures.

FEH!

The Hidden Persuaders

The Hidden Persuaders, originally uploaded by Miss Retro Modern.

NBC Logo

NBC Logo, originally uploaded by Citizen Tommy.

China City restaurant St. Petersburg, Florida

Totonno's, New York's Best Pizza thus the U.S.

JFK KOSHER-MATIC

FROM NEW YORK POST
August 4, 2008 --
What passes for food at Kennedy Airport may sometimes seem criminal, but only observant Jews were actually at risk of breaking the law - dietary law, that is - by grabbing a bite at one of the terminals.

But all that has changed, thanks to the mess-hall messiah that's arrived in the form of kosher vending machines.

In a matter of seconds, the "Hot Nosh 24/6" machines cook up hot dogs, knishes, pizzas, onion rings and a slew of other offerings that have been satisfying Jews and gentiles alike since they were installed in April at the food court in Terminal 4.

"I didn't bring my own food, since I am coming from camp, so I was very surprised and happy to see these machines," said Sean Zaghi, 14, an Orthodox Jew who was awaiting a flight to California.

"I thought I was going to have to have pretzels or something, but now I can get a pizza instead."

The machines have turned heads at the airport, and some folks even stop to pose for pictures in front of them, before grabbing a $4.50 hot dog.

"This is wonderful," said Susan Berger, who snapped a photo of the machine on her way back to Florida. "We really could use these back home."

Despite the "24/6" name, the machines are not programmed to shut off Fridays after sundown in observance of the Jewish Sabbath.

"That's because you don't have to be Jewish to want a kosher hot dog," said Ruby Azrak, of Kosher Vending Industries.

One hundred of the machines - which take credit cards - have already been installed in hospitals, a Wal-Mart and even Boston's Fenway Park - all places where there are usually no kosher options, said Azrak.

"We are also talking to schools and prisons," partner Alan Cohnen said.

While it may not sound kosher to eat a hot dog from a vending machine, the company's patented technology can grill a perfect frank.

It takes about 90 seconds from Genesis to Exodus.

jeremy.olshan@nypost.com

Rat house of the Palisades

Crazy, unbelievable story in this weeks LA weekly.

Excellent piece by Max Taves in the LA Weekly on elderly identical twin sisters in Pacific Palisades who "had spent years fanatically feeding the Palisades’ rat population. Although the full dimensions of the environmental and health damage done by the peculiar pair are unknown, experts contacted by L.A. Weekly estimate that the ladies’ actions may have added tens of thousands, even 500,000, new rats to L.A.’s Westside." Now that's leaving a legacy. The story is a little bit about the Palisades itself, a little bit about rats, and a lot about the neighbors' inability to get anybody to do anything about what seems to have been an obvious bad situation on Fiske Street for years. Excerpts:

For Tom Hofer, who grew up one house away during the 1960s and ’70s, the house holds a special, scary place in his childhood memories. “That was the house that you just didn’t walk up to on Halloween,” he says.
Siegrid Hofer — Tom’s mother, still lives there and is used to holding her nose as she walks past the stench. “At one time,” Siegrid tells the Weekly, “they had dozens of dogs and cats in their house. Now, they consider rats pets.

[skip]

After a neighbor, George Kunz, continually complained about their owning at least 10 cats and five dogs, the sisters moved away from the Palisades in 1983 to a 20-acre parcel in Santa Ynez. Marjorie became a full-time steward of their new “wildlife sanctuary” while Margaret kept teaching, supporting her sister and the menagerie at Santa Ynez. But in 2002, the two sisters returned to the Palisades, and feeding feral animals, including rats, became an obsession.
The neighbors who finally got this all moved into court came unhinged when, "the morning after Halloween, the Denhams’ maid caught six rats eating leftover crumbs — in their 4-month-old’s stroller."

Personal privilege: Has anyone seen the older women who appear to be twin sisters who walk around the Santa Monica Airport/West L.A. area dressed alike?

read the LA weekly article here