Satirist Christopher Buckley on Tackling the Supreme Court, Competing With Actual Headlines

Speechwriter turned satirist Christopher Buckley has made a career of skewering Washington culture with novels � Thank You for Smoking, Boomsday, White House Mess � that wickedly lampoon the people and powers that make up American politics. His latest work, Supreme Courtship, out next week, imagines a well-intentioned, slightly dopey president who nominates a Judge Judy type to the nation�s highest court. Buckley spoke to Vulture from his vacation home in Maine about the genesis of the new book; the difficulties of mocking Bush, McCain, and Obama; and why he'd rather wield an ax than attend the conventions.

When your wife answered the phone, she said you were busy "being manly"?

I was being manly. I was chopping wood. It's my one time of the year I get to be manly.

Sorry to take you away from that! So, you're known for your satire, but at least one reviewer has said that this new book isn�t a satire; it's a farce.

I disagree. I think I know the difference between satire and farce at this point! It's what I do! Well, whatever it is, it retails for $24.99. And that's no satire.

I think they aforementioned that because the plotline seems pretty plausible.

I've ever said that the hardest part of writing irony or farce in America is that you're in competition with tomorrow's front line page of USA Today. It's very hard to improve on American reality.

So why did you decide to contain on the Supreme Court?

I live in Washington, and I've variety of stirred around the institutional checkerboard: the White House and Congress; a little Pentagon; a little CIA. I thought I'd give the Supreme Court a small jab. The sign that Truman had on his desk, "The Buck Stops Here," substantially, the dollar actually stops at the Supreme Court, which would be a less refined motto. It's the ultimately consequential origination, and I thought it would be worth a shot. And the just way I could digit out of getting in was this slightly idiotic but non altogether unimaginable way. Nothing is farfetched in America.

In the novel, you've got the president successfully nominating a TV judge to the Supreme Court.

You don't actually even have to be lawyer to sit on the Supreme Court, according to the Constitution. There have been a couple of justices world Health Organization were never judges, like Rehnquist. But it's credibly never sledding to occur. One of my front-runner characters is the president, dear erstwhile Donald Vanderdamp, who's truly kind of a sweetie. He's trying to do the right thing, and he merely wants to get home to Wapakoneta.

I feel like Bush believably feels the same way right now.

Yeah. I don't know around his future. He's young � 62. It's difficult right at present to conceive of him in the senior-statesman role. It's hard to imagine him writing long, thoughtful books. I ideate he'll be out of sight, a little out of mind.

As a satirist, has his administration been�

Satisfactory? Yes. If I wrote a scene in the book where the vice president shot a lawyer, wouldn't you say, "Oh, come up on"? If I wrote a novel that recapitulated in every factual detail the Lewinsky saga, you would in all probability say, "Oh, come on, you're overreaching." Bush was funny up until 9/11. One of my theories of wherefore people started to not like Bush was because after Sept. 11 you couldn't make playfulness of him.

What about McCain and Obama?

Well, as satirical material, Obama presents, as we used to say back in school, problems and opportunities. You have to be careful because he's black and certain things are off limits. But also, the mind of the son of a Kenyan goat johann Gottfried von Herder becoming president? McCain is easier to make fun of. I've always plant it easier to take fun of Republicans, because I'm i of them. I get shit almost it: "Why are you going after our possess people?" Well, someone has to.

Does any part of you wish you were at the convention?

Not one molecule. I'm sitting here with an ax in my hand, looking at blue herons, hummingbirds, and we've got an American eagle, ospreys, cormorants, and loons. To quote the Paul Simon song, "I get all the news I want on the weather reputation."

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Download Sun Electric

Artist: Sun Electric: mp3 download    Genre(s):  Rock Techno Dance     Discography:      Via Nostra    Year: 1998    Tracks: 12      Present    Year: 1996    Tracks: 13      30.7.94    Year: 1994    Tracks: 3      Kitchen    Year: 1993    Tracks: 12      O'locco    Year: 1990    Tracks: 7 As Sun Electric, Germans Max Loderbauer (the boy of a composer) and Tom Thiel (a studio applied scientist) splice dizzying Teutonic trance with chilled-out ambiance. They commencement met at the studio where Thiel worked, and the deuce later played as part of the isthmus Fisherman's Friend. Manager Thomas Fehlmann, a buy at Orb workfellow, encouraged the two to move to his native Berlin and var. a band. The deuce in agreement, and when their debut single "O Locco" appeared, it was picked up by the Orb's Alex Paterson for his Wau! Mr. Modo label. The yoke then signing to ZTT, wHO unfortunately wanted an electro-pop chemic group. After haggle out of the undertake, Sun Electric gestural to the Apollo sublabel of R&S and released their debut album, 1995's Kitchen. The following year brought a live album recorded at Berlin's Love Parade, piece Via Nostra appeared in 1998.

FDA Clears The Pathwork(R) Tissue Of Origin Test For Hard To Identify Tumors

�Pathwork Diagnostics, Inc.,
a molecular diagnostics company focussed on oncology, announced that
the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has cleared its Pathwork(R)
Tissue of Origin Test for use in determining the origin of uncertain
tumors. The test analyzes a tumor's factor expression approach pattern to assist
pinpoint the source of hard-to-identify tumors and is the low gear test of its
kind to receive FDA clearance. Up to an estimated 200,000 newly diagnosed
cancer patients annually in the U.S. may

Sacriversum

   
Artist: Sacriversum

   Genre(s): 
Metal: Gothic
   

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Discography:


   
 Soteria

   Year: 1998   
Tracks: 8

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Staying Young@Heart is easy for 83-year-old rocker

Patricia McTee Ervin missed being in the sleeper hit movie “Young@Heart” by a year. A relatively new member of Young@Heart, the 83-year-old Ervin joined Northampton’s rocking senior citizens’ choir, which regularly covers “Purple Haze” and “I Wanna Be Sedated,” right after the documentary about the group wrapped.
That’s fine with her. Ervin’s not chasing the choir’s newfound celebrity built around the film: Young@Heart’s Friday show at the Somerville Theatre sold out two weeks ago. She’s after the thrill of the performance.
A 50-year resident of Boston, Ervin moved back to her Austin, Texas, birthplace in 2006 looking to escape winter. She seemed settled, surrounded by old friends and living in a nice condo with a swimming pool. But when visiting her daughter in Northampton last year, she was discovered.



“(Choir administrator) Diana (Porcella) saw me struggling at a post office to get one of those mailing boxes sealed up,” Ervin said from her daughter’s house in Western Massachusetts. “She asked my daughter if she thought I needed help. ‘Oh, no,’ my daughter replied, ‘she’ll figure it out.’ ”
Something about Ervin’s tenacity enticed Porcella (Ervin thinks it might have been her cursing). Porcella brought Ervin to a Young@Heart rehearsal. After a rousing audition of “The Old Grey Mare,” choir director Bob Cilman told her to grab a seat. She was in.
Ervin’s spunk, charisma and tenacity are common to every member of the choir. It’s these characteristics - along with stirring covers of songs by James Brown, the Clash and Coldplay - that made the movie such a success.
First aired on the BBC in 2006 and brought to American theaters in April, the film captures a gaggle of elderly singers preparing for a big gig. What sounds like a filmed joke at the expense of the choir is anything but thanks to the group’s talent and Cilman’s loving-but-perfectionist approach.
“We put on professional pieces with no professionals,” Cilman said from his office at the Northampton Arts Council. “The film is excellent, but it made it look like, ‘Are they going to pull this off? Will it or won’t it work?’ That is never my worry. What was completely accurate in the film was the rehearsal process.”
As fantastic as it is, the film underplays the choir’s huge international following. Since 1996, Young@Heart has toured a dozen times, selling out concert halls in Europe, Australia and Canada.
“One thing the film has done is given us exposure in the United States,” Cilman said. “We played a sold-out show at the Wilshire Theatre in Los Angeles this year and did a performance with David Byrne in New York City.”
Now their celebrity is taking hold stateside. Not that Ervin cares.
“Going to Europe is wonderful,” she said. “But touring isn’t easy for us. But when we perform it’s a thrilling experience. To be surrounded by the voices and music, it’s very engergizing. After three hours of singing, I’m ready to climb Mount Tom.”
And she probably would if she had the time. With a tour to finish and a condo in Austin to sublet, Ervin’s future is full.

"Indiana Jones" illuminates dark Cannes film fest

CANNES (Hollywood Reporter) - The myriad makeshift signs said it all: "Me, Indi Jones tickets, please" as hundreds of fans amassed at the Cannes Film Festival Sunday in hopes of securing passage to the world premiere of the fourth installment of the Steven Spielberg franchise.


And if not to the movie, then at least a glimpse of the director, executive producer George Lucas, stars Harrison Ford and Shia LaBeouf and practically the entire (human) cast as they made their way to the chock-a-block press conference after the screening.


The film played to a packed house made up mostly of press at 1 p.m. There was the energy of anticipation in the room beforehand, and the applause at the end was polite, but then that's all the emotion journos tend to display no matter the movie.


Early word from exiting journalists was a general thumbs-up, though with a few strongly expressed cavils and qualifiers: "too long," "too many stunts," "too wooden," not enough time for any of the characters to catch their breath or interact. But such objections, however valid, will probably hardly matter in box office terms, judging from the general public enthusiasm that seemed to transform the mood of the Croisette.


Even among frazzled sleep-deprived festgoers, one could feel the shift: Enough of politically challenging, socially relevant competition pictures -- a la "Blindness," "Gomorra," "Linha de Passe" -- let's have some brightly lit fun to match the returning blue skies over the Mediterranean.


Spielberg, who hasn't been to the festival since he brought "ET" in 1982, put it best. He was the last among the creators to be convinced that Indy deserved to be brought back, and it took 17 years to free himself up enough from DreamWorks and his self-described "dark period" movies to tackle it.


"We did it as a celebration of the movies," he said at the news conference. "We wanted to reacquaint people with the pure joy of seeing something with others in a darkened room."


Interestingly, Spielberg also said that, yes, another Indiana Jones sequel was a possibility: "Only if you (the public) want it. We'll have our ear to the ground," meaning, presumably, attuned to the global wickets. 

US shows shelve Heath Ledger video

Plans to broadcast footage on US television of the late actor Heath Ledger allegedly at a drug-fuelled party in Hollywood have been pulled "out of respect for his family".
The footage is understood to have been shot two years ago following an awards ceremony in Los Angeles.
US celebrity programmes Entertainment Tonight and The Insider were due to broadcast the footage and had previously aired a promotional clip for the proposed screening.
Ledger is not shown taking drugs in the video.
In a statement Entertainment Tonight said: "Out of respect for Heath Ledger's family, Entertainment Tonight and The Insider have decided not to run the Heath Ledger video which has been circulating in the world media."