You all know how much I love me some America's Next Top Model. And you know that I, and about the entire viewing audience this season loathed Jade. Or J'Hayde. Or Darth Jader. Whatever.

Imagine my delight this morning when I opened Savage Chickens. Click it and howl.

Item one was sent from my cousin whose son is about to become a yeshiva boy. I love saying that. I love that this is what he wants to do. How cool is that? A baby rabbi in the family. But I digress.

Item One
Apparently there is a Dylan bio-pic in the works with an assortment of actors lined up to play The Bob. Cate Blanchett has signed on to portray him during his "androgynous phase." He had one? News to me. How did I miss that? Masked, yes. White-face, check. Cowboy, ditto. Uni-Bomber, good with that one. But femme? When?

And didn't we go over this once before on this site? The only person who should play the young and pretty Bob is none other than the pretty Johnny Depp.

Item Two
The Bob is now a DJ on XM Radio, which I knew. What I didn't know is that he does a theme show. Yesterday, in honor of his own birthday, he did a show on Baseball. BASEBALL!!! Is there any more proof needed that this man and I are lost soul mates? Huh? Is there?

Here's the story from AP about his show:
Bob Dylan to Be Satellite Radio DJ

May 23, 6:08 PM (ET)

By DAVID BAUDER

NEW YORK (AP) - Coming from the radio speakers, Bob Dylan sounds as craggy and weather-beaten as he looks - and quite playful, too.

As he reaches his 65th birthday Wednesday, the rock 'n' roll poet is carving out a new role as a part-time radio disc jockey. His weekly "Theme Time Radio Hour" airs 10 a.m. EDT Wednesdays on XM Satellite Radio, with Dylan as both curator and narrator. (It's available eight times throughout the week.)

Much like his concerts, Dylan's radio shows are a journey through 20th century musical Americana, the sort of thing he would have heard growing up in Minnesota with a transistor radio hidden under his pillow when he went to bed.

So far, about the only thing missing is Bob Dylan music, unless you count the off-key verse of "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" that he croaked at the beginning of this week's show on baseball.

Each week Dylan builds his show around a theme, like the weather and drinking songs. For Mother's Day, he celebrated moms with an hour that mixed Buck Owens'"I'll Go to Church With Mama," Ruth Brown's "Mama He Treats Your Daughter Mean" and LL Cool J's "Mama Said Knock You Out."
The majority of the music Dylan plays predates his own heyday.

"I think it's more akin to the way radio sounded in 1952 than it does in 2006," said Lee Abrams, XM Satellite Radio's chief creative officer.

Dylan's entertaining baseball show also mixed in calls from classic baseball games, like Curt Gowdy announcing Ted Williams' home run in his final at-bat with the Boston Red Sox.

He refreshingly avoids the obvious: Dylan spins Billy Bragg and Wilco's "Joe DiMaggio Done it Again" and not Simon & Garfunkel's "Mrs. Robinson" ("where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio ..."). He plays Buddy Johnson's "Did You See Jackie Robinson Hit That Ball" and ignores John Fogerty's overexposed "Centerfield."

"If diamonds are a girl's best friend, why do so many girls get mad when you want to go to the ballpark?" Dylan says during this week's show. "You tell me."

That sort of absurdist humor is what may most surprise listeners. Dylan told mother-in-law jokes a la Henny Youngman during one show ("I just came back from a pleasure trip - took my mother-in-law to the airport"). He discussed - seriously, we think - watching the old country-flavored musical/variety TV series "Hee Haw."

His intro to "Mama Said Knock You Out" became an old white man's rap.

"Here's LL Cool J," he said. "Don't call it a comeback. He's been here for years, rockin' his peers, puttin"em in fear, makin' tears rain down like a monsoon, explosions overpowerin' the competition. LL Cool J is towerin'."

And catch this opening to that show on mothers:

"Going to pay tribute to that bountiful breast we all spring from, mother dearest," he said. "'M's' for the many things she gave me. 'O' is for the other things she gave me. 'T' is for the things she gave me. 'H' is for her things, which she gave me. 'E' is for everything she gave me. 'R' is for the rest of the things she gave me. Let's talk about mothers."

Bob Dylan is secretly silly. Who knew? (Miz Shoes here: who knew? Anybody who ever really listened to the man. DUH.)

Although you can occasionally hear the shuffling of papers as he talks, Dylan sounds like a natural on the radio.

"I was completely surprised" by his radio show, said Jonathan Cott, who edited an anthology of Dylan interviews that was released to coincide with the 65th birthday. "I was surprised when he wrote his 'Chronicles' book. I'm surprised by him all the time. I didn't think he'd ever be a disc jockey."

Abrams said Dylan topped his "wish list" of celebrity DJs when he started working for XM. It took him two years just to find the right person to get a message through to Dylan.

When he finally did, he learned Dylan was a fan of XM and a subscriber. After growing up listening to those old 50,000-watt radio stations from miles away across the Plains, Dylan had secretly fancied himself as a DJ. Much to XM's delight, he said yes, and they worked out a schedule that wouldn't be too disruptive to Dylan's regular life on the road.

The singer still maintains an aura of mystery. He's not involved in XM's weekly call about the show with a producer. He doesn't record it at one of XM's studios; in fact, Abrams has no idea where Dylan records it.

"They deliver the show to us every week," he said. "It's a big surprise when we open the package and listen to it."

Today is Bob Dylan's birthday. He's 65 years old. That means if he had a real job, the powers that be would make him retire. Instead, he's still rocking.



He's made a couple of concessions to age and a bad back, I hear. Instead of standing around wanging on his guitar, he now hunkers over his keyboard. Frankly, since I play neither, I don't see that there's much difference in the backstrain between the two.

He's still my idol, OK? I skipped this last tour for a couple of reasons:

1. I read the reviews and he was only doing a 14 song set.
2. Tickets started at $65 for the bleacher seats.
3. That made it $4.65 a song, and I don't know about that. I can buy them for 99 cents each on i-tunes.
4. I really, really, really felt I could live my life without seeing Merle Haggard live.
5. Nobody, and I mean NO-FUCKING-BODY will go with me to see The Bob anymore. I've used up all the rock and roll goodwill I ever had with any of my friends and loved ones.
6. It was at a casino... I'm just not ready to start seeing my favorite performers in a casino lounge.

Anyway, this year I actually sent an invitation to dinner to his official Sony web site. I explained that I'm just an old lady myself, and not a stalker (really) but that since the guy's been on tour for what amounts to his whole freakin' life, I thought, just maybe, that he'd like a home-cooked meal once in a while and I'd be happy to provide it.

A little brisket, a little kugel... he's a Nice Jewish Boy, right?

The webmaster didn't have the decency to even answer me. I wasn't kidding, OK? Sheesh.

So, once more, Happy Birthday, Bob, and many, many, many more. And if you're passin' back this way, I'm not that hard to find. You can look me up, if you've got the time.

Leave your answer in the comments section, please, because I'm at work and don't have time to research the code for a real poll.

Do you have in your closet (or attic, or where ever) a pair of shoes which you no longer wear, for what ever reason, but which you absolutely cannot part with?

I have several, myself, including a pair of 80's post-modern pop, magenta suede pumps. Photo will come later.

As opposed as I am to public grooming, I wouldn't have objected if it had been a brush in one hand. I've seen her on the train often. She always looks vaguely peeved, and never, ever has brushed her hair. She always has an air of having just rolled out of bed, walked through the shower and put on whatever was in the front of the closet, clean or not.

And yet, look at her. Not one, but TWO cellphones and talking on both simultaneously. She is obviously too important to bother with such inconsequential things as brushing her hair, or ironing her clothes. Or hiring someone else to do it for her.

There's a poll up today on Excite, about the proposals to fence off the US border. The options in this poll are that one supports the House proposal (700 miles of fence), the Senate proposal (370 miles of fence) no fence, or all 2,000 milles of the US/Mexico border (which, just to be clear, is not a proposal on anyone's table). The results of the poll?

63% of the respondants (almost 5,000 people as I write this) think that the whole fucking border should be fenced off.
Once more forcing me to ask: What the fuck is WRONG with you people?

Yeah. Because building a wall worked so well in China. Or in Germany.

The problem with a wall, as I see it, is that it works both ways. "They" can't get in, but WE can't get out. Maybe it's some weird genetic memory or something, what with the fact that whole branches of my family met their ends in box cars and showers, but the idea of a sealed border just scares the beejeesus out of me.

Next, we'll all need papers to cross state borders. Oh, wait. The national ID card idea is already gaining momentum in Washington.

Papers? We don' need no steenkin' papers. Or do we?

I don't want to be an alarmist here (oh, who are we kidding? I most certainly DO want to be an alarmist: WAKE THE FUCK UP, PEOPLE!!!) but, it is looking more an more like a totalitarian government to me.

But let me just shift this rant a little over to something else: fairness across the board when it comes to illegal immigrants. See, here in Florida, we have the wet foot/dry foot policy regarding Cubans, who, as we all know, have a special immigrant status, unlike, say, oh, just randomly searching for another ethnic group, Haitians.

Cubans, you see, can stay in this country if they make it all the way to land (dry foot). If they are intercepted at sea, or even 20 feet off shore, they have to go back to Cuba and try again. Haitians, on the other hand (who, PS, tend to vote Democratic when they become citizens, and who, by and large, are Very Poor and Very Black) have to go back to Haiti even if they have two dry feet and an adoring family waiting to take them in and support them.

We already have special status for one immigrant group. And that immigrant group has a history of being given amnesty. Over and over and over and over again. But, well, Cubans are special. They vote for Republicans no matter what. No matter that every administration that arranged boat lifts, air lifts, amnesty and every other damn thing for them was a Democratic administration, to Cubans, Democrat = Communist. End of fucking story.

On the other hand, most other Hispanic groups tend to vote Democratic. Thus, a fence, and no amnesty and the clowns like Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez (whose own family came in illegally). This is a prime case of there being truer no believer than the converted sinner. Kind of like that a-hole Clarence Thomas and his stand on equal opportunity.

I just gave myself a headache.