Kennedy Center Honours

Caroline Kennedy hosted the 31st Annual Kennedy Center Honors, which taped Dec. 7, before she made headlines by announcing her political ambitions.

The six honorees this year are Ms. Streisand, actor Morgan Freeman, Texas singer George Jones, choreographer Twyla Tharp and rockers Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey of the Who.

None of the honorees did much but wave, but there where a number of big name salutes:

Actor and director Clint Eastwood paid tribute to Freeman calling him "a great good luck charm".
In a video message, Queen Latifah said Streisand "threw out the rule book" to chart her own career. "She took to the stage like butter on a bagel," she added.
Broadway star Idina Menzel sang Don't Rain on My Parade from Streisand's 1964 musical Funny Girl, Beyonce sang The Way We Were and R&B singer Ne-Yo grooved to Streisand's 1965 hit Lover, Come Back to Me.

Another set of stars paid tribute to The Who in front of a neon-lit Union Jack, including rock singer Rob Thomas who sang Baba O'Riley.
Country stars Garth Brooks, Randy Travis, Alan Jackson and Shelby Lynne gave Jones a tip of the hat with performances of the star's work.

For Tharp's presentation, actress Lily Tomlin said Tharp saw dance everywhere she looked: "This is a woman who saw the Beach Boys and made a ballet."

First Lady Laura Bush took the stage to salute George Jones, saying "there's no getting tired of a singer like him". The First Dude sat in the audience.

Banned Words

This was fun and interesting. We had a small discussion yesterday, with a friend of mine, about banned words and phrases on TV and radio. As so often happen, when there nowadays is a discussion about anything, someone pick up the old laptop and start playing around with a nonmentionable search engine.

This time however, every hit that came up showed a 404 or page not found error. Reaaally strrange, said us fellows with spooky voices, had another beer and forgot all about it.

So this morning (late afternoon) when I woke up, I decided to do some serious research. Here's some results from my huge efforts:

Lake Superior State University's 2009 list of banished words and phrases:

-green
-carbon footprint or carbon offsetting
-maverick
-first dude
-bailout
-Wall Street/Main Street
-monkey
-icon or iconic
-game changer
-staycation
-desperate search
-not so much
-winner of five nominations
-it's that time of year again

The school in Michigan's Upper Peninsula selected those 15 entries from about 5,000 nominations.

So I guess; After a desperate search on a green search-engine, I found not so much as a list worth a monkey or the first dude.