7/4

April 21, 2006 Rituals In the Jaws of a Catfish By ETHAN TODRAS-WHITEHILL, NYTimes MISTY McFARLIN sat spread-legged on the muddy floor of the Arkansas River, head just above water, hands searching a small submerged cave for the giant catfish she knew was lurking within. Her father, Lee McFarlin, sat next to her, as he told the story the next day, blocking the rest of the five-foot-wide hole so the fish couldn't escape. Billy Curtis, a friend, manned another entrance, thrashing a stick back and forth to drive the fish to them. It was past midnight, five hours into the 24-hour window of the sixth annual Okie Noodling Tournament, and the McFarlins were noodling — fishing with their hands. Suddenly, the big catfish dashed toward Ms. McFarlin and seized her outstretched right hand in its jaws. Most teenage girls would jerk away when bitten by a giant fish, but Ms. McFarlin, who at 17 was already an experienced noodler, had been waiting for this. She grabbed the fish's jaw, jammed her left forearm up the gills and out the mouth, her right down the mouth and out the gills, and locked her arms. When Mr. McFarlin felt the size of the fish's head, he said, he knew they had caught a monster. Noodlers reach into submerged holes, often several feet underwater, and wrestle out catfish that can weigh up to 100 pounds, with no hooks, rods or nets involved. It's called noodling because the fisherman wiggles his fingers like wet spaghetti to entice the fish to bite. When it does, the noodler sticks his arm down its throat and grabs it by the gills. Mark Morgan, a professor of parks, recreation and tourism at the University of Missouri who has studied hand-fishermen and their habits, estimated that the sport has about 2,000 avid participants in his state of Missouri alone; there are no hard figures, but many thousands more noodle the waters in other states. They are getting ready now to flex their forearms for this year's season. The catfish spawn from May to August, and during those months, the fish burrow holes into the banks of streams and lakes. Females lay their eggs, and then males defend the nests. The noodler's job is to intrude. Misty McFarlin caught her big one in the 2005 Oklahoma tournament last June. This year's will take place on July 8. Mr. McFarlin expects a good season — "early, but good" — and is fired up. "The excitement of one of them big fish, there's no substitute for that," he said. After his daughter's big catch, he said, she wouldn't let anyone help her heft the fish — which was a third her size — out of the water and into a tank in the back of his Ford F-350 pickup truck. "She was so proud," he recalled fondly. Noodling, which is also known as hogging, dogging, tickling, grappling and grabbling, is concentrated in the South and Midwest. Noodlers tend to live in rural areas, and many make their living in tactile jobs like construction trades. During the season some go fishing a dozen times, three or four hours each trip. The sport's roots can be traced to American Indians, who would sometimes hold red cloths in their hands for fish to bite, Professor Morgan said. During the Depression, the technique was used as a way to put food on the table. It has passed down through the generations ever since. Hand-fishermen typically go out in groups of three or four (usually all men, despite Misty McFarlin's example), according to Professor Morgan's research, for safety reasons as well as social ones. Catfish are hardly the only creatures that burrow or inhabit holes in rivers or lakes. Beavers are common residents, as are snapping turtles and deadly cottonmouth snakes. Mr. McFarlin, 41, a plumber, likes to say that "the true deterrent to noodling is a vivid imagination" because he thinks no one in his right mind would stick his hand into a hole if he could picture what might live in it. Experienced noodlers claim that they can read holes right away: clean, sandy sides mean catfish, because when a catfish is on its nest, it churns the water with its tail, keeping sand off the eggs and algae out of the hole. Holes with slimy sides and muck mean "steer clear," because the hole is likely to be inhabited by a creature even a noodler doesn't want to confront. Catfish themselves pose significant dangers as well, not so much for their teeth, which are small and feel like rough sandpaper, but for their ability to hold a noodler underwater. TERRY IVEY, 39, a hunting preserve owner from Hinton, Okla., who attended the Okie Noodling Tournament last year, said he had the closest call of his 25 years of noodling two years ago, on the North Canadian River in Oklahoma. The hole was under a boulder, he said, six feet down from the surface of the water and six more back under the rock, so he checked it with the help of a friend, who dived down with him to hold his legs. After being underwater for more than a minute, Mr. Ivey found the catfish and grabbed for it, but the fish, which he later estimated at 80 pounds, clamped down on his wrist and tried to drag him back into the hole. His goal switched almost immediately from trophy acquisition to survival, but as he tried to pull away, the jersey glove he was wearing got caught in the fish's teeth. He kicked frantically, the signal for his friend to pull him out. "If my buddy didn't have my legs, I'd still be in that hole," Mr. Ivey said. Despite the dangers — or perhaps because of them — noodling is a growing sport. Noodlers at the Oklahoma tournament last year said that they used to be able to visit holes at their leisure but now get up at dawn to get to the river first. Noodling has evolved into a trophy sport, like hunting, and most recently into a macho sport, like auto racing, Professor Morgan said. As evidence, he cited the growing popularity of tournaments and the powerfully built young men he sees attending them. The Okie Noodling Tournament was the first in Oklahoma. It began as part of the making of a documentary, "Okie Noodling," by a filmmaker named Bradley Beesley. There are now competing tournaments. Some mainstream fishermen take a dim view of noodling, arguing that a fish makes a choice to bite a lure at the end of a line, while the noodlers deprive it of free will. Other observers think that distinction is immaterial. "The fish doesn't care how it dies," said Donald C. Jackson, a professor of fisheries management at Mississippi State University. He said he believes the tension between the two groups is cultural and points out that although some conservationists argue that noodling is more dangerous to a catfish population because it pulls the fish off the nest, he has not seen any evidence to support the claim in his own research. Nevertheless, many noodlers fish with chips on their shoulders, chafing under what they see as unfair limits: they are allowed to keep 3 flathead catfish a day in Oklahoma May 1 to Aug. 31, while hook-and-line fishermen are permitted 10; a 20-inch minimum is in effect year round. In the Oklahoma tournament, noodlers have 24 hours to try their luck anywhere in the state. As Misty McFarlin hauled her fish into the pickup at around 1 a.m. last June 25, 19 hours remained before all of the contestants would convene for the moment of truth, a weigh-in at Bob's Pig Shop, a venerable barbecue joint in Pauls Valley, Okla., an hour south of Oklahoma City. At the weigh-in, packs of strong-looking men, confirming Professor Morgan's observations, walked around bare-chested or wearing T-shirts with the slogan "No hooks, no bait, no fear." Small children gathered around large zinc-coated water troughs and pulled out the already weighed fish, which were by now weary and near death. Parents took mock-trophy shots as their children held up the whiskered monsters, dreaming of future noodling glory. As the 7:30 p.m. deadline approached, pickup trucks drove up with increasing frequency to bring in fresh catches, the really big fish drawing appreciative oohs and ahs and digital camera clicks from the crowd. Mr. McFarlin, easy to spot with his baked red hair and ruddy, freckled skin, paid close attention to the new arrivals, although he affected nonchalance with his wraparound sunglasses and ever-present cherry-flavored cigar and holder. The McFarlins' fish was the biggest when it weighed in, at 51 pounds, but the family had been in the same position in a previous year and lost to a late entry. (Mr. McFarlin claims a change in scales was the reason.) This time, the deadline came and went without incident, and their fish was declared the winner. After the prize ceremony, an informal hubbub that included Misty McFarlin's coronation as Okie Noodling Queen 2005 and netted her family $300, Mr. McFarlin said that he liked the recognition, but that it paled in comparison with the simple thrill of the catch. "Whenever you get in there and get hold of one of them fish, it's you, one-on-one against Mother Nature," he said, and if you prevail, "you beat Mother Nature. You have conquered it all."

And how does the cat stuck behind the wall tie into all this? I hear the cat already has a movie deal. Are we talking about Tom Cruise? A rape conviction might help his rep with some folks. We would all be better off if Tom Cruise was stuck in the wall of a deli on Hudson St., but the press coverage would be quite painful.

And how does the cat stuck behind the wall tie into all this? I hear the cat already has a movie deal.

At least back it up first!

I saw a documentry a few years ago. Looks like a church service to me.

Multiple Organissimos for you Aggie87!

Talk about derailing a thread!

Sweet! I was wondering how you would use it on a gig, now I know how you would kick bass.

Cool. I guess it's easier on the back?

A likely story. He says that now, after he finds out what the world thinks about this. Sick fuck.

Those darn wacky Scientologists. What will they do next?

Most of the time I avoid driving, because it's so crazy out there. I have a couple of crazy road stories, but no time to write about them. I gave up on flipping the bird, never tell anybody to calm down. I'm more likely to pull up to them at the next light and stare them down.

People talk about how driving in NYC is crazy, but it's insane here in NJ.

:rsly:

I was going to my parents, but it's looks like my Mom isn't feeling too well. Looks like I'll get some computer work (read day job) done and play some guitar. I will stop in and say hello.

April 14, 2006 Fibonacci Poems Multiply on the Web After Blog's Invitation By MOTOKO RICH, NYT Blogs spread gossip and rumor But how about a Rare, geeky form of poetry? THAT'S exactly what happened after Gregory K. Pincus, a screenwriter and aspiring children's book author in Los Angeles, wrote a post on his GottaBook blog (gottabook.blogspot.com) two weeks ago inviting readers to write "Fibs," six-line poems that used a mathematical progression known as the Fibonacci sequence to dictate the number of syllables in each line. Within a few days, Mr. Pincus, 41, had received about 30 responses, a large portion of them Fibonacci poems. Most of them were from friends or relatives or people who regularly read his blog, which focuses on children's literature. Then, last Friday, a subscriber to the popular Web site slashdot.org — which runs over a tagline that reads "News for nerds. Stuff that matters" — linked to Mr. Pincus's original post, and suddenly, it seemed, Fibs were sprouting all over the Internet. Mr. Pincus, who wrote in his original post that he conceived of the Fibonacci poems in part as a writing exercise, said in an interview that he figures more than 100 other Web sites have linked to his post and more than 1,000 Fibs have been written since the beginning of April, which just happens to be both National Poetry Month and Mathematics Awareness Month. "It tickles me that it can spread like that," said Mr. Pincus. "It's such a wonderful thing." Readers of the blockbuster best-selling "Da Vinci Code," of course, may recognize the Fibonacci sequence as the key to one of the first clues left for the novel's hero and heroine. It is also a staple of middle-school math classes. Though relatively rare in poetry, it shows up in the musical compositions of the early 20th-century composer Bartok and the progressive metal band Tool, the spiraling shape of the Nautilus shell and in knitting patterns. By and large, most of the people who have written Fibonacci poems over the past couple of weeks are not professional poets, but actors, comedians, video role-play enthusiasts, musicians, computer scientists, lawyers and schoolchildren. Casey Kelly Barton, a stay-at-home mother and home-schooler in Austin, Tex., who started a blog called Redneck Mother to chronicle her "dissatisfaction after Bush got re-elected," used the Fib form to write a rant against the president. Chat rooms linked to Web sites ranging from Actuarial Outpost, a forum for actuaries, to em411.com, a site for electronic musicians, have taken up Mr. Pincus's challenge and generated strings of the whimsical poems. Even a Hungarian technology site has linked to the Fibonacci post. The allure of the form is that it is simple, yet restricted. The number of syllables in each line must equal the sum of the syllables in the two previous lines. So, start with 0 and 1, add them together to get your next number, which is also 1, 2 comes next, then add 2 and 1 to get 3, and so on. Mr. Pincus structured the Fibs to top out at line six, with eight syllables. For many people, writing one of the poems is a little like solving a puzzle. Suresh Venkatasubramanian, a 32-year-old computer science researcher at AT&T Labs-Research in Florham Park, N.J., said he was attracted to the Fibonacci poetry because it reminded him of "what a computer scientist would call the 'resource constraints.' " On his blog, Geomblog, Mr. Venkatasubramanian added two more lines to Mr. Pincus's original prescription, while still keeping to the Fibonacci sequence: I like to blog. Frequently. Theory matters. Computer science (theory) is my home and geometric algorithms are sublime. Let P be a set of points in general position in the plane. Amen. The last line, said Mr. Venkatasubramanian, is an inside joke in geometry. Emily Galvin, a screenwriter and film production assistant who is writing a collection of poems and short plays in verse for Tupelo Press, has written one of her plays using the Fibonacci sequence. Instead of using the progression to dictate the number of syllables in a line, she let it regulate the number of words. Ms. Galvin, who said an ex-boyfriend once sent her love notes composed in the Fibonacci sequence, was delighted to learn of Mr. Pincus's success in spreading Fibs around the Internet. "How great that something mathematical could be bringing together all sorts of people who don't write professionally and giving them a form," she said. More professional poets may be attracted to the form, said Annie Finch, a poet who teaches at the University of Southern Maine. "Poets are very, very hungry for constraint right now," said Ms. Finch, who has written about formal poetry. "Poets are often poets because they love to play with words and love constraints that allow the self to step out of the picture a little bit. The form gives you something to dance with so it's not just you alone on the page." Even those who were not compelled by the idea of Fibonacci poetry could not resist the challenge. When asked for her insights, Judith Roitman, a poet and math professor at the University of Kansas, wrote in an e-mail message that she "found the phenomenon pretty uninteresting." But she then went on to write: So you no doubt will not find it interesting to talk to me about this stuff.

April 14, 2006 MOVIE REVIEW 'The Notorious Bettie Page,' Beyond the Va-Voom By MANOHLA DARGIS, NYT FOR a few blissfully underdressed years in the 1950's, Bettie Page was the pinup queen of the universe, or at least of lockers, garage walls and private stashes across the country. Blessed with a killer body and the perkiest smile this side of Sandra Dee, Ms. Page (she turns 83 this month) looked equally at ease wearing a homemade bikini or a fine mist of ocean spray. And while few people looked as happy naked as she did — the young actress Gretchen Mol, who plays her in Mary Harron's exuberant biographical film "The Notorious Bettie Page," comes charmingly close — in 1957 she buttoned her sweater for good, leaving the neon world of titillation and tease without a trace. For years, Bettie Page was a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside a web of expertly tied rope. Although she did her share of cheesecake, even gracing Playboy in nothing but a Santa hat and a rosy blush, she achieved her initial infamy as a bondage model. (Later, it was her disappearing act that fueled her notoriety.) In the early 1950's, she began working with the brother-and-sister team Irving and Paula Klaw (played by Chris Bauer and Lili Taylor), posing for untold numbers of photographs and 8- and 16-millimeter film loops with such self-evident titles as "Betty's Exotic Dance in High Heels." (Her first name was usually misspelled.) To satisfy the specialty market, the Klaws on occasion tied up their most popular model and stuck a ball gag in her mouth. In all likelihood it was these more outré images of Bettie crawling along a carpet in fetish heels or daintily spanking another seminude cutie that caught the government's censorious attention. (Now these fantasies seem almost quaint.) In 1955, Senator Estes Kefauver, a Tennessee Democrat and presidential hopeful who five years earlier had chased crime bosses like Frank Costello, turned his attention to pornography. (Around the same time, this same atomic-age Comstock helped put a muzzle on the comic-book industry in the name of preventing juvenile delinquency.) Ms. Harron and her screenwriting partner, Guinevere Turner, open their story with Bettie waiting to testify before Kefauver's subcommittee, shut out of the courtroom where a succession of men are lecturing one another on the evils of scantily clad women. Perhaps because Ms. Harron wrote about punk music in the 1970's (hers is one of the contributing voices in Legs McNeil's oral history of the scene, "Please Kill Me"), she comes across as the kind of enlightened chick who knows how to have a good time. Both of her previous features, "I Shot Andy Warhol," about the Pop artist's would-be assassin, Valerie Solanas, and "American Psycho," her excellent appropriation (and evisceration) of Bret Easton Ellis's novel, exhibit a shrewd, at times bitingly funny intelligence when it comes to what women want and why. In her work with Ms. Turner, in particular, who was also her screenwriting partner on "American Psycho" (Ms. Turner also helped write the lipstick-lesbian romance "Go Fish"), Ms. Harron manages to have her pleasure, visual and otherwise, and her politics, too. In this regard she receives terrific support from her obviously enthusiastic star. Until now, Ms. Mol has been best known for her premature designation several years ago as Hollywood's newest It Girl. The label seemed to plague her, and she all but faded from view despite promising turns in little-seen films. Maybe because she felt protected by her female director and female producers (six out of seven), or emboldened by the material, or maybe because she knows how beautiful her gently padded silhouette looks in the raw, Ms. Mol takes to this tricky role with the carefree expressivity you tend to see only in young children who have learned the joys of nudity, usually when their parents are throwing a dinner party. When she strips, Bettie soars. That's to the good of the film because while the pinup was mildly notorious, the fully dressed woman wasn't all that interesting. Born in Tennessee in 1923, she studied to be a teacher, veering into modeling after landing in New York. Initially, she posed for camera clubs, shutterbug groups that paid models for private sessions. (A year before she hung up her garters, The New York Times ran a classified advertisement for one such session: "Shoot model in glamorous clothes eves 8 PM, Sat 2 PM Bettie Page and others. Concord Camera Circle, 118 W 47th St.") Rather surprisingly, some of the clubs were racially integrated, and it was a black man, Jerry Tibbs (Kevin Carroll), who gave Bettie her trademark when he suggested bangs to obscure her prominent forehead. Ms. Harron moves fluidly through Bettie's early years, which included brutal abuse that might have had something to do with why she entered a profession that allowed her to create and control a sexualized image of herself. Even so, while Ms. Harron and Ms. Turner don't shy away from these dark episodes — and, notably, end Bettie's story before age and the really bad times intrude — they are too smart to draw a direct line between the traumas and the person who survived them. A self-made woman, Bettie Page created an enduringly resonant persona out of an arsenal of smiles and sneers, and her impressively pliant figure. Depending on the costume, the photographer (two of the finest were women, Paula Klaw and Bunny Yeager) and her own ingenuity, she was a dark angel, a harem girl, a naturist or a very naughty miss, but she was also always her own woman. If the inner Bettie remains somewhat out of focus here, even to the beatific finale, it's largely because what made her a sensation — both in the 1950's and the 1980's revival that made her into a modern cult figure — wasn't her acting aspirations or the religious convictions that might have pushed her to leave modeling, but that she was a genius of the body. It's a truism of art history that while men act, women appear, smiling demurely away from the gaze of the viewer. In many of her photographs, by contrast, Bettie looks straight into the camera with a grin that is by turns twinkling and devouring, and flips that old truism on its head by turning her appearance into a performance. She knows what you want; she wants it, too. In keeping with its subject, "The Notorious Bettie Page" is principally a work of gorgeous surfaces, shot mostly in silvery black-and-white film by the cinematographer Mott Hupfel, with an occasional splash of saturated color. Like the Klaws, Ms. Harron ties Bettie up and ties her down, puts her in towering boots and cinched corsets. Every so often, she complicates the story a little, as when she introduces John Willie (Jared Harris in top form), the bondage artist and publisher of Bizarre magazine, who devised some of Bettie's more outrageous poses. When he asks Bettie how she reconciles her love for God with her profession, she refers to Adam and Eve naked in the Garden of Eden. John Willie's idea of paradise wears more clothes, but he gets the picture, ball gag or no. "The Notorious Bettie Page" is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). It includes female nudity, kinky outfits, bondage and intimations of sadomasochism. The Notorious Bettie Page Opens today in Manhattan Directed by Mary Harron; written by Ms. Harron and Guinevere Turner, based partly on research from "The Real Bettie Page" by Richard Foster; director of photography, Mott Hupfel; edited by Tricia Cooke; music by Mark Suozzo; production designer, Gideon Ponte; produced by Pamela Koffler, Kathie Roumel and Christine Vachon; executive producers, John Wells, Ms. Harron and Ms. Turner; co-producer, Lori Keith Douglas; released by Picturehouse and HBO Films. Running time: 91 minutes. WITH: Gretchen Mol (Bettie Page), Chris Bauer (Irving Klaw), Jared Harris (John Willie), Sarah Paulson (Bunny Yeager), Cara Seymour (Maxie), David Strathairn (Estes Kefauver), Lili Taylor (Paula Klaw) and Kevin Carroll (Jerry Tibbs).

Mysterious Skin From porn to born again: Harron's reverent biopic contemplates its subject's essential innocence by J. Hoberman April 11th, 2006 12:15 PM The Notorious Bettie Page Directed by Mary Harron Picturehouse, opens April 14 Half a century after her apotheosis as America's most popular pinup queen and under-the-counter bondage babe, 25 years after her cult first manifested itself in comix and fanzines, '50s icon Bettie Page has her biopic. Can the star on Hollywood Boulevard be far behind? Actually, The Notorious Bettie Page, directed by Mary Harron from a script written with Guinevere Turner, isn't Bettie's first feature. There have been several documentaries and straight-to-video dramatizations of her career—not to mention Jennifer Connelly's turn as the Bettie-styled heroine in the 1991 adaptation of Bettie-smitten Dave Stevens's retro comic book The Rocketeer. What distinguishes Harron's project is its propriety; in its avoidance of schmutz, it might have been directed with the white gloves favored by Gretchen Mol's prim-when-not-posing Bettie. Like one recent DVD compilation of the peep show pageants Bettie made for special-interest photographer Irving Klaw, Harron's biopic opens with a peek at the innocent raunch of mid-'50s Times Square. Unlike the DVD, however, The Notorious Bettie Page shows a hapless fan being busted for the crime of buying the bondage stuff, then cuts to the juvenile delinquency hearings conducted by Senator Estes Kefauver (near look-alike David Strathairn). Klaw's "pornography" was blamed for a teenage boy's inadvertent death and he was called to testify—as was Bettie, introduced demurely sitting in the outside corridor. A movie more attuned to historical ragtime might have made something of the fact that Kefauver, then running for president, and Bettie were both native Tennesseans—and that, thanks to Walt Disney, that state's greatest son, Davy Crockett, was in the process of providing American juveniles with a new, wonderfully merchandizable role model. The Notorious Bettie Page is not all that far from Disneyland, but there is room for only one icon. Harron flashes back to establish Bettie's fundamentalist background and the miracle of her innate, if abused, trusting nature. Without ever losing her essential innocence, Bettie makes the transition from small-town sex object to big-city camera-club model and beyond. Mol's fetchingly bewigged Bettie is a simple country girl—God-fearing and teetotaling. Dreaming of a stage career and studying the Method, she's cheerfully game for any sort of dress-up (or down). Bettie can't act but she can pose—that's the source of her pleasure, and that pleasure is infectious. So too her good nature: Bettie's goodness transforms the world. She is impervious to exploitation. Even the Klaws are shown as an affable pair of trolls. Irving (Chris Bauer) offers his models "some beautiful sliced brisket" while sister Paula (Lili Taylor) teaches the lesson of erotic tolerance: "It takes all types." What type was Bettie? A beautiful brunette in the age of blonde bombshells, a superstar in the seedy sub-Hollywood of the Times Square peep show, she is often conceptualized as a Bizarro World version of her near contemporary Marilyn Monroe. Both women were natural exhibitionists who projected not cold self-involvement but friendly generosity. Marilyn, as Norman Mailer wrote, "suggested that sex might be difficult or dangerous with others, but ice cream with her." That was all the more true of Bettie, given her job as masturbation fodder and her starring roles in Klaw's bargain-basement s/m romps. The dankest dungeon would be warmed in the sunshine of Bettie's smile or crumble under the force of her wink. All is fun. Even more childlike in her enthusiasm than Marilyn, she never seems happier than when prancing around in her underwear and a pair of nine-inch heels. Hers was essentially a solo act—and Harron's movie doesn't violate that solitude. Bettie exists for the camera; she is to be looked at but never touched. Although their script assigns her several lovers, the closest the filmmakers come to placing their heroine in a sexual situation is signaling her father's abuse or dramatizing the (offscreen) gang rape that sends Bettie from the hell of Nashville to the heaven of Times Square. And a glorious place it is. As demonstrated in I Shot Andy Warhol, Harron has a tremendous feel for period detail. There's a hyper-real, if unavoidably airbrushed, quality to her loving reconstructions of Bettie's iconic poses and Klaw's tawdry scenarios. And as with Tim Burton's similarly reverent and even more fetishistic Ed Wood, there's a whiff of embalming fluid. Not just art but life must be fixed for eternity. Burton solved the problem of Wood's sordid career by granting the "world's worst director" a success he never actually enjoyed. Ever self-sufficient, Bettie took care of that herself. In the late '50s, she gave up modeling and found Jesus. Her soul was saved even as her image was preserved on film. Marilyn died for our sins. Bettie lived to grant us dispensation. ("We're laughing all the time while we're doing this," she explains to her wildly disapproving boyfriend—a serious actor—when he discovers the Klawful truth.) Indeed, the movie's most hilariously obvious scene has Bettie trussed up, crucifixion-style, taking advantage of a break in the filming to prompt the director to remove her ball gag so she can explain her belief that she's been blessed with a God-given talent for posing. Rather than cast Bettie as a sex martyr of the repressive '50s, Harron and Turner contemplate her born-again beatitude. (They don't, however, mention her years of work as a counselor for the Reverend Billy Graham—a photo op, surely, for the ages.) Last seen, Bettie is preaching in a Miami park, giving herself to the lost souls she finds with the same open joy as she had offered her image to the great unloved. Not for nothing is this movie opening on Good Friday. It can be as boring as church. There's no snake in Bettie's Eden and no narrative to Harron's movie. It's more of an altar piece: Our Lady of the Garter Belt, the Fastidious Bettie Page.

It ain't that bad: http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fusea...iendid=36828040 It's plenty bad (organissimo page aside of course ). The kid has totally screwed one of the computers up as a direct result of all the aggresive spyware and viruses that have been picked up from the shit going on there. Everytime we think we have it all cleared out, he hits something new. Not much we can do about it. I have a page with a sample of my music and I haven't noticed any spyware yet.

It ain't that bad: http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fusea...iendid=36828040