Free Republic

A sassy classic Ralphie, the lamp, the BB gun and why we love them Every year at this time we get to unwrap a gift package filled with red cabbage, BBs and fishnet stockings. It's the movie "A Christmas Story," arguably America's favorite holiday film. The 90-minute picture celebrates its 21st anniversary this year, happily planted in the middle of our pop traditions. In 2003, more than 38.4 million viewers tuned into the 24-hour "A Christmas Story" TV marathon, said the film's director, Bob Clark, by phone as he sat next to a special lamp in his Los Angeles office....

HANOI, Oct 7 (AFP) - French President Jacques Chirac warned Thursday of a "catastrophe" for global diversity if the United States' cultural hegemony goes unchallenged. Speaking at a French cultural centre in Hanoi ahead of Friday's opening of a summit of European and Asian leaders, Chirac said France was right to stand up for cultural and linguistic diversity. The outspoken French president warned that the world's different cultures could be "choked" by US values. This, he said, would lead to a "general world sub-culture" based around the English language, which would be "a real ecological catastrophe". Citing Hollywood's stranglehold over...

CNN is reporting that Lance Armstrong may be stripped of his 6th Tour de France title. In a random check for banned substances, 3 were found in Armstrong's hotel room. The 3 substances banned by the French that were found in his hotel room were as follows: (1) Toothpaste (2) Deodorant (3) Soap The French officials also found several other items which they had never seen before including a testicle and a backbone...

Japanese marriages falling victim to 'Yongfluenza' This year is likely to be remembered for the boom set off by "Winter Sonata," the weepy South Korean melodrama broadcast by NHK. The "Fuyu-Sona" series not only achieved a high audience rating during its initial showing; it also generated spinoffs in the form of 330,000 DVDs and 1.22 million copies of the story in book form — generating an estimated 3.5 billion yen in revenues for the network. "My wife spent over 30,000 yen on a set of DVDs," a 50-year-old trading firm employee grumbles. "To watch them, I had to buy a...

Seize the good stuff. A couple of months ago, a friend bought me a bottle of pink champagne to celebrate a job I'd landed and we talked about popping it open on the spot. But we'd gotten together for an early pizza dinner on a school night and it would have wrecked us for the rest of the evening and how could we manage laundry, bills, and loose ends — all the things we'd squeeze in later after the kids were in bed. Now my friend is undergoing chemotherapy for breast cancer and we can't share the wine. No alcohol...

The age-old remedy for a foul mouth makes a comeback following John "F" Kerry's recent remarks. Candidate-tested, mother-approved! ; )

Guards stand watch as Nigerian inmates play Japan Nigeria's Super Eagles may well have gone home early from the World Cup but a group of former countrymen are keeping the dream alive in the Far East. The Nigerian inmates at Thailand's notorious Klong Prem prison beat Japan 5-1 as the "Bangkok Hilton" kicked off its own World Cup. "We've been training once a day for a month. It's great. It relieves the stress of prison life," said 35-year old Prince Juvenal, a Nigerian doing time for drugs trafficking at Thailand's notorious prison. I feel like a representative, I have...