Everyone’s a critic.
The BBC reports that the actor Jim Caviezel, playing Jesus in Mel Gibson’s “The Passion Of Christ”, has been struck by lightning for a second time. Grief man, take a hint!
Describing the second lightning strike, McEveety told VLife, a supplement of the trade paper Variety: “I’m about a hundred feet away from them when I glance over and see smoke coming out of Caviezel’s ears.”
Sadly only literal pretend messiahs get thunderbolted. Which neatly links us to Oz as:
The Great KerfuffleTM continues!
George W Bush has addressed the Australian Federal Parliament. His speech, once it got past the Howard love-in, and George showing his aptitude for foreign languages, “You might remember that I called him a man of steel. That’s Texan for fair dinkum.”, was a standard-issue denunciation of Saddam, and all evil-doers.
During the speech, Ahmed Habib, the son of one of the two Australians being held at Guantanamo, was in the public gallery as a guest of Green MP Bob Brown.
“What about my father’s rights?” he called out before security guards escorted him from Parliament, making him the only person removed during the address.
The complete speech, courtesy of the Sydney Morning Herald, is watchable on the web. Worth it for the rare occasion of Bush being heckled. (Actually, it looks like the only part of the speech cut is the heckling. Garrr! They cunningly split it into three parts, with the heckling in the bits between the parts.)
Luckily the BBC has a little film story about the event, and even shows some protestors. Heavens forbid!
Brown interjected on the President: “Mr Bush, this is Australia. Respect our nation’s laws. Return our Australian citizens from Guantanamo Bay. If you respect the world’s laws the world will respect you.”
The Speaker ordered him from the chamber, but he did not move. Shortly afterwards Kerry Nettle also piped up, was likewise ordered out, and stayed put. Now they will be barred from the address today by Chinese President Hu, where they planned to protest about human rights violations.
But they managed to draw the one unscripted line in Bush’s address. “I love freedom of speech,” he said after Nettle’s outburst.
Anyhows, Bush stayed less than 24 hours in Oz, and by now should be safe and sound back in the land of the free and the hope of the brave. So that is the end of W’s Oriental Adventure.
Grieve not, adventure lovers! George will be coming to England soon, and we’re getting a real nice welcome ready for him.