This creation may have been inspired by the gown Carol Burnett wore in her "Gone With the Wind" skit

A model wears a creation by designer Sara Lage during her spring/summer 2009 show at the Cibeles Madrid Fashion Week September 19, 2008.
REUTERS/Juan Medina (SPAIN)

A Tribute to the Queen of Country Music: Kitty Wells

NASHVILLE -- Before Kitty Wells, men didn't just rule the roost in country music, they owned it.

It wasn't until her 1952 hit, "It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels," that a solo female country singer had a No. 1 record.

The song, written by a man, was a rebuttal to Hank Thompson's "The Wild Side of Life." It made Wells a star and dashed the notion that women couldn't be headliners.

Until then, most "girl singers," as they were called in country music, were either paired with men, such as Rachael Veach with Roy Acuff, or were members of a family group, such as sisters Sara and Maybelle Carter with the Carter Family.

Wells' success also encouraged Nashville songwriters to begin writing from a woman's perspective. Before then, women had a hard time finding material and often had to change the gender in the lyrics.

Wells, now 89 and the subject of a new exhibit at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, said she never considered the song political or daring and didn't think of herself as a feminist. To this day, she still doesn't know what the fuss was all about.

"I never really thought about being a pioneer. I loved doing what I was doing," she said recently.

Wells' song eclipsed Thompson's in popularity, reaching No. 1 in the summer of 1952 and staying there for six weeks.

"That really opened doors for other women," said exhibit curator Mick Buck. "Kitty set a new precedent."

Darwin gets no apology from the Vatican

The Vatican said on Tuesday that the theory of evolution was compatible with the Bible but planned no posthumous apology to Charles Darwin for the cold reception it gave him 150 years ago.

Archbishop Gianfranco Ravasi, the Vatican's culture minister, was speaking at the announcement of a Rome conference of scientists, theologians and philosophers to be held in March marking the 150th anniversary of the publication of Darwin's "The Origin of Species."

Christian churches were long hostile to Darwin because his theory conflicted with the literal biblical account of creation."Maybe we should abandon the idea of issuing apologies as if history was a court eternally in session," he said, adding that Darwin's theories were "never condemned by the Catholic Church nor was his book ever banned."

Navy shows off unmanned submarine-detecting craft

SAN DIEGO -- To the world it might be called a robot boat, but its proper name is the Unmanned Surface Vehicle, and the U.S. Navy expects it to be a major tool in countering what officials believe is a growing threat posed by quiet diesel-powered submarines owned by rogue nations.

In advance of the official roll-out today, reporters were allowed to see the boat on Thursday at Naval Base Point Loma before it took a trial run on San Diego Bay.

Curtain about to rise at Santa Monica College's new performing arts center

The Broad Stage -- named for donors Eli and Edythe Broad -- was designed with acoustics and intimacy in mind, giving each of the 499 seats a clear view of the stage. The smaller Edye Second Space is intended to serve as a laboratory for “mad talent and creative experiment.”

Simmons and Burke's 'You Can Live Forever in Paradise on Earth'

"You Can Live Forever in Paradise on Earth" -- or so say the titles of Case Simmons and Andrew Burke's extravagant sound and image collages at Kim Light/LightBox. But would you want to, if this is what it looked like and sounded like, if this is how it made you feel?

The four huge light-jet prints at the heart of the show are the kind of horrifying, magnificent spectacle on which your eyes cannot help but be hungrily, stubbornly fixed. They aren't images of car crashes or natural disasters. They are expressions of the digital present, hellish and heavenly, decadent and sophisticated, frightening and wondrous. This is what we wished for ???

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC'S BEST NATURE PHOTOGRAPHY AWARDS BRING US . . .

SPECTACULAR BEAUTY

AND STUNNING EXCITEMENT

"Let Me Be Your Sidetrack: The Influence of Jimmie Rodgers"

Bear Family Records' remarkable new release, "Let Me Be Your Sidetrack: The Influence of Jimmie Rodgers," makes a persuasive argument that Rodgers is one of the most important figures in the history of country music.

According to the liner notes for the six-disc boxed set released last week, 102 of the 109 songs Rodgers did in the late 1920s and early 1930s were later recorded by other artists -- a 94% "cover ratio" unmatched by any other country singer-songwriter, including Hank Williams.

As the set's more than 150 tracks demonstrate, Rodgers' mix of traditional "hillbilly" music and the blues was a major influence not only on his contemporaries in country music but also on such other genres as folk, rock, jazz and even pop orchestras. Among the dozens of performers whose versions of Rodgers' material are featured in the Bear Family compilation: Bob Dylan, Merle Haggard, Harry Belafonte, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, King Oliver and Pete Seeger.

HIGH RISING STAR FROM CHINA

MAD Studio in China makes a statement with a design for a mobile, self-contained city.


VENICE, ITALY -- WHILE THE Venice Architecture Biennale remains the most anticipated and ambitious design show in the world -- not to mention the only one featuring cocktail parties in canal-side palazzi -- every edition is marked by a curious split personality. There is a core exhibition, organized by a single curator and displaying work by the leading names of the profession, and along with it a scattered collection of national pavilions filled with designs by mostly anonymous younger architects. Because the pavilions vary so much in quality -- and theme -- they always knock the central exhibition at least a bit off message.

Rarely, though, has the gap in tone between the two sections been as wide as it is this year. The main show, organized by American-born Aaron Betsky, manages to be unsure of itself, divided against itself and pleased with itself at the same time. Its biggest gestures -- at the start of the exhibition, inside the cavernous old shipbuilding complex called the Arsenale -- come from a parade of celebrity architects, including Zaha Hadid, Elizabeth Diller + Ricardo Scofidio and Frank Gehry, nearly all of them playing down to the moment with overscaled, underwhelming work. A separate section on experimental architecture, which Betsky prepared with a young Italian curator, Emiliano Gandolfi, has the opposite problem. It is dense and unwieldy, a thicket of projects containing a handful of stirring moments but no clear theme.

El Capitan Theatre for sale

The historic El Capitan Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard, where "Citizen Kane" had its world premiere and a generation of children have watched actors dressed as Disney characters cavort onstage, is for sale.

The $31-million price tag includes the six-story, 1920s office building into which the theater is built. In its gilded splendor across Hollywood Boulevard from Grauman's Chinese Theatre and the Hollywood & Highland entertainment complex, the El Capitan is the picture of prosperity now, but it's had more comebacks than many an actor. Since its debut in 1926 as a live theater, many of Hollywood's best-known performers have appeared there.

Volt creating sparks

DETROIT -- Tuesday's unveiling of the Chevrolet Volt electric hybrid car was supposed to be a celebration of new technology, the birth of a new class of automobile. Instead, the crowd at General Motors Corp.'s Renaissance Center was buzzing over who was going to pay for it: GM or American taxpayers?

GM revealed the much-hyped vehicle at an event celebrating the automaker's centennial. Immediately afterward, company executives faced a barrage of questions about whether some of the $25 billion in low-interest loans the industry is urging Congress to fund would be used to subsidize the Volt's development and production.

At the same time, GM executives called for federal and local incentives to boost the Volt program.

Tesla to light up San Jose

Tesla Motors Inc., aiming to be the first high-volume maker of electric cars, plans to build a $250-million plant to produce sedans in San Jose and move its headquarters to the same facility.

The factory initially will employ about 1,000 people and be able to produce 15,000 cars a year when it opens in late 2010, Chief Executive Ze'ev Drori said Wednesday.

Construction costs will be more than $100 million. As part of an incentive package from the state, California will buy and lease to Tesla assembly machinery valued at about the same amount, he said.

"This is about bringing 1,000 clean tech jobs to San Jose to replace the loss of more traditional manufacturing jobs in our area," said Chuck Reed, the city's mayor. "We want to be a center of green-collar manufacturing jobs."

Tesla, which said that construction of the plant would start next year, is expanding to boost its lineup beyond the $100,000 Roadster, a rechargeable sports car powered by 900 pounds of lithium-ion batteries.


Since Elon Musk, Tesla's chairman and main investor, said in 2006 that the closely held company would be the first successful modern producer of electric cars, General Motors Corp., Toyota Motor Corp. and Nissan Motor Co. have announced plans for competing plug-ins.

"This is going to be a fully integrated facility that will include marketing, sales, planning and assembly," Drori said. "We're designing it with capacity to expand to 30,000 vehicles a year without increasing the structure."

The so-called Model S sedan that Tesla will build in San Jose is a five-passenger car intended to travel 240 miles on a charge, with a base price of $60,000, Drori said. Tesla's current headquarters is in the Bay Area city of San Carlos.

San Jose will lease 89 acres for the new facility, letting Tesla use it rent-free for 10 years, Reed said. To facilitate local use of Tesla models and other electric cars, the city will also build public charging stations into streetlights.

It won't rain on her parade

The bloom is back on the Tournament of Roses Parade for veteran television host Stephanie Edwards.

The red-haired personality said she is thrilled to be back in the KTLA-TV broadcast booth for this year's New Year's Day parade, especially after being demoted in 2005, then later dropped from the coverage team altogether, after more than 25 years. Edwards will be reunited with co-host Bob Eubanks at the annual Pasadena event, KTLA executives announced Tuesday.

"Hell has frozen over," said Edwards in a phone interview Wednesday. "It feels great, of course."

Her comeback brings a happy twist to the parade saga, which prompted an uproar from longtime fans when Edwards, then 61, was exiled from the booth in 2005 in favor of the much younger KTLA morning news co-anchor Michaela Pereira.

The furor was fueled by Edwards' assignment on a rainy day -- working the sidelines in the viewer grandstands where she became drenched. Soon after the soaking, she was fired. The station was later flooded with complaints from viewers who felt she had treated shabbily.

Although looking forward to her new beginning, Edwards admitted to some apprehension.

"I'm a little concerned about how true the saying 'You can't go home again' is. I'm not complacent about this at all," she said.

Brad Pitt puts up $$$ to fight Prop. 8

Brad Pitt announced Wednesday that he was donating $100,000 to fight California's Proposition 8, a November ballot initiative that would eliminate same-sex couples' right to marry.

"Because no one has the right to deny another their life even though they disagree with it, because everyone has the right to live the life they so desire if it doesn't harm another, and because discrimination has no place in America, my vote will be for equality and against Proposition 8," the actor said in a statement.

Political strategist Chad Griffin, who is helping coordinate efforts in the entertainment industry to defeat the controversial initiative, said he was hopeful that the move would prompt others to get involved. He added that Democratic billionaire Ron Burkle had agreed to host a large fundraiser at his home in October to rally the entertainment industry against Proposition 8, which opponents say will take away important benefits such as health insurance and complicate decision-making related to medical emergencies and other situations in domestic partnerships.

Tina Fey playing Sarah Palin

Master showman that he is, "Saturday Night Live" czar Lorne Michaels did take a calculated risk by getting Tina Fey to play Sarah Palin in the season opener of "Saturday Night Live" this weekend. If she became Palin, which she most assuredly did, then anyone else in this role would be a massive letdown -- a pale imitation of the imitator. Of all the candidates, Palin - with her guns, and self-described soccer mommish ways, and piled bun, and flat Midwestern accent -offers the richest comic possibilities. On Saturday, Fey just began to explore them, and explore them hilariously. Now we want more, more, more.

Amy Poehler played Hillary Rodham Clinton.

L.A. Opera's 'The Fly' is a monster mash

Two years ago, a bass-baritone covered in gook stalked the stage of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. That was the medieval monster in Elliot Goldenthal's "Grendel," commissioned by Los Angeles Opera. Sunday afternoon, a baritone covered in gook again stalked the Chandler stage. This time it was Brundle, the scientist hero transmogrified into a Musca domestica in Howard Shore's "The Fly," inspired by the 1986 David Cronenberg horror film -- the latest opera commissioned by the company

Beijing Opera to appear at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood

California Institute for Chinese Performing Arts presents the star-studded Mei Lanfang Company from the Beijing Opera House named after Peking Opera maestro Mei Lanfang. Featuring Master Mei Baojiu, the son of Mei Lanfang, and an array of world class performers, the company will come to Los Angeles for three performances.

October 10 at 7:30 PM - Heroines of Yang Family
October 11 at 2 PM - Legend of the White Snake
October 11 at 7:30 PM - Classics of Mei Langfang

"The Aura of Grand Cinema"

To Chinese, he is a legend, an ethereal grand master of Peking Opera whose movements embody the art form he spent his life perfecting and promoting. And as with all legends, his stories eventually find their way onto the silver screen.
Renowned Chinese director Chen Kaige's upcoming film Mei Lanfang began shooting in mid-July, shored up by investments from the mainland, Hong Kong and Taiwan. Boasting a budget of $15 million, the movie is set to be released in 2008 as part of the cultural offerings during the Beijing Olympics build-up. A biographical tale of the late Peking Opera star, it already has an aura of grand cinema about it. Chen said he wants to present the inner world and the powerful personality of the master performer, and not only his artistic achievements.

Chen's filmmaking skills are best known to Western audiences for his direction of Farewell My Concubine and The Promise.

"and the same to you"

Egypt's Hossam Eldin Mohamed Sewilam waits to start in the men's 200m T37 heats at the National Stadium, also known as the Bird's Nest, during the Beijing 2008 Paralympic Games September 15, 2008.
REUTERS/Jason Lee (CHINA)

Two-Mile High Ultima Tower May Be The Future Of Vertical Habitats

At a cost of nearly $150 billion, you’re not going to see an Ultima Tower grace the skies anytime soon. The two-mile high structure is the brainchild of some forward-thinking architects looking for some creative ways to solve the world’s future population crisis. With people living in denser concentrations — such a structure (which has a square-mile footprint and can hold one million people) might be needed many years from now. From the article,

“The shape of the building draws inspiration from the nests of termites, a 1-mile wide funnel shape with gently curved sides. A criss-crossing network of double-helix cables distributes tension across the outer covering in such a way as to allow the entire building to absorb stresses instead of single areas. The design is extremely aerodynamically efficient, and resistant to earthquake shock waves. The structure is cooled in a similar way to a termite nest - the lower levels are cooled by water flow (in this case, a series of ground-floor waterfalls) and the cool air rises through the building, taking heat energy with it, and exits at the upper floors into the atmosphere.

The entire 150 million square foot surface of the building is covered with photovoltaic cells and wind turbine energy generators - and the extreme height of the structure allows a new form of energy generation to occur, using the differential in air pressure between the ground floor and the 10,500-foot high tip to generate further electricity for the project.”

Pretty incredible — and each of the 120 levels would feature their own fully landscaped habitats with a “sky” 30 to 50 meters high and inbuilt lakes, streams, rivers, hills and ravines. Sunlight would be filtered from above by an intricate system of mirrors — very similar to how the Egyptians lit the inside of their massive structures.

So what do you think? Would you like to live inside the Ultima Tower?

(For more interesting articles from this unusual website click on the link below:)