In His Defense...

...I really can't imagine anything more entertaining!!:

From Radar:

Tom Cruise's best friend, Scientology leader David Miscavige, used secret videotapes of the actor's "confessionals" to entertain his friends, according to the man who made those videos.

Marty Rathbun, a once-powerful member of Scientology, was entrusted with the job of "auditing" Tom Cruise, RadarOnline.com has learned.

The Scientology defector writes in his widely-followed blog that the highly sensitive sessions took place in 2001 as Cruise was going through his split from Nicole Kidman.

"By order of Miscavige many of those sessions were secretly recorded by a well-concealed video camera and voice recorder system built into the VIP auditing room at Celebrity Center International," Rathbun writes.

" I was also required by Miscavige to write reports on the content of every session I delivered during that period and send them directly to Miscavige. I was told by him that he needed to know because recovering Tom to Scientology was the most important mission possible."

Rathbun says he stopped the videotaping in February, 2002, because he found it to be "unethical" and of no legitimate purpose.

Now he writes, he knows why the videos were ordered. According to Rathbun, a trusted source has told him that Miscavige used the Cruise tapes to entertain his pals.

"DM regularly held court with others in his personal lounge...while sipping scotch whiskey at the end of the night," Rathbun says. " Miscavige would read Tom's overts and withholds from my reports to others, joking and laughing about the content of Tom's confessionals."

Rathbun's allegations are the latest in a series of attacks against Scientology by former members, many of them high-powered, high-profile figures like Rathbun.

Tom Cruise has remained quiet through the recent onslaught of attacks against his church.

Delicious Mac & Cheese

This is a great mac & cheese recipe that I've tasted three times now--once when Jason's co-worker made it, and twice when I made it (after I asked her for the recipe).

It's classic enough that it fulfills all your basic comfort food needs, but it's a little more gourmet and complex than the usual recipe. The secret is the garlic and shallots, which give the flavors more depth.

Susan's recipe insists that the cheese used must be "Tillamook Extra Sharp Vintage White Cheddar" but since that's made here in Washington, I don't know if it's available nationally or not. Anyway, I think the important parts are "extra sharp" and "white" so just look for a cheddar that fits that bill (if you can't find Tillamook).

I used 2 sizes of Cuisinart--a big one to grate the cheese, and a small one for the garlic. This isn't necessary, it just really cuts down on the work of chopping and grating. If you do have access to a food processor, be sure to put the cheddar in the freezer at least 20 minutes beforehand, as this helps it to run through the Cuisinart without sticking.

This is not a low-calorie recipe! But it's a great once-in-a-while treat.

For 4 large servings:

2 tablespoons butter
6-8 cloves garlic, chopped
1 whole shallot bulb (both halves), chopped
2 tablespoons flour
2 cups liquid (whole milk, half & half, or some combination of both)
4 ounces cream cheese (1/2 of one 8 ounce box)
2-3 cups shredded Tillamook Extra Sharp Vintage White cheddar
1/2 cup good blue or gorgonzola cheese, crumbled
2 cups macaroni

Preheat oven to 350. Butter a 7x11 baking dish.

Boil pasta until almost done, drain, and set aside. In a large saucepan, melt butter over medium heat and add garlic and shallot, salt and pepper. Saute until soft and translucent. Add flour, stir to form thick paste and cook for 1 minute. Whisk in liquid. When mixture begins to gently steam, add cream cheese and whisk until combined. Add all shredded cheese and simmer until mixture is totally combined and coats the back of a spoon. Mix and combine with pasta, add to baking dish. Sprinkle blue or gorgonzola cheese over the top and bake uncovered for about 30 minutes or until bubbling and lightly browned. Let sit for 15-20 minutes. C'est fini!

Art credit: "Cheese Party" from Canyon of Cheese.

Happy Friday!

"The Fame is about how anyone can feel famous. Pop culture is art. It doesn't make you cool to hate pop culture, so I embraced it and you hear it all over The Fame. But, it's a sharable fame. I want to invite you all to the party. I want people to feel a part of this lifestyle."

World's Biggest Beaver Dam Discovered

Until very recently (when Guy visited it), I sort of had this vague notion that the Hoover Dam was somehow a giant beaver dam. I know, I know. I would like to think that if I had ever bothered to examine this belief, I would have realized on my own how preposterous it was. Anyway, because this was on my mind, the timing of this story was funny to me (it's from today):

OTTAWA (AFP) – A Canadian ecologist has discovered the world's largest beaver dam in a remote area of northern Alberta, an animal-made structure so large it is visible from space.
Researcher Jean Thie said Wednesday he used satellite imagery and Google Earth software to locate the dam, which is about 850 metres (2,800 feet) long on the southern edge of Wood Buffalo National Park.

Average beaver dams in Canada are 10 to 100 metres long, and only rarely do they reach 500 metres.

First discovered in October 2007, the gigantic dam is located in a virtually inaccessible part of the park south of Lac Claire, about 190 kilometres (120 miles) northeast of Fort McMurray.

Construction of the dam likely started in the mid-1970s, said Thie, who made his discovery quite by accident while tracking melting permafrost in Canada's far north.

"Several generations of beavers worked on it and it's still growing," he told AFP in Ottawa.

Mike Keizer, spokesman for the park, said rangers flew over the heavily forested marshlands last year to try to "have a look." They found significant vegetation growing on the dam itself, suggesting it's very old, he said.

"A new dam would have a lot of fresh sticks," Keizer explained. "This one has grasses growing on it and it's very green."

Part of the dam may have been created by naturally felled trees, and the beavers "opportunistically filled in the gaps."

Thie said he recently identified two smaller dams sprouting at either side of the main dam. In 10 years, all three structures could merge into a mega-dam measuring just short of a kilometer in length, he said.

The region is flat, so the beavers would have had to build a massive structure to stem wetland water flows, Thie said, noting that the dam was visible in NASA satellite imagery from the 1990s.
"It's a unique phenomenon," he said. "Beaver dams are among the few animal-made structures visible from space."

North American beavers build dams to create deep, still pools of water to protect against predators, and to float food and building materials.

A 652-meter structure in Three Forks in the US state of Montana previously held the record for world's largest beaver dam.

Thie said he also found evidence that beavers were repopulating old habitats after being hunted extensively for pelts in past centuries.

"They're invading their old territories in a remarkable way in Canada," he said. "I found huge dams throughout Canada, and beaver colonies with up to 100 of them in a square kilometer."
"They're re-engineering the landscape," he said.

Don't Mess With Captain Jack

"Johnny Depp has reportedly saved his friend from a mugger.

"Depp had just left a recording studio in Los Angeles when his friend, Babybird star Stephen Jones, was threatened by a man with a broken bottle, The Sun reports.

""It was an extremely scary moment," a source said. "This guy looked off his head. Johnny looked him straight in the eyes and told him to back off."

"However, the mugger allegedly backed down after Depp intervened.

""The guy was OK," the insider continued. "He looked at Johnny and said, 'I ain't stealing from Captain Jack' and put the bottle down. Johnny gave him a few bucks and told him to straighten up his life."

"Depp had reportedly been recording a guitar solo for a new Babybird song before leaving the studio."

Nashville Is Flooded

Poor old Nashville. This would be a rough time to be in Music City, USA:

NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Nashville braced for more deaths Monday as the flooded Cumberland River continued to swell, sending muddy water rushing through neighborhoods and into parts of the historic heart of Music City after a destructive line of weekend storms killed 22 people in Tennessee, Mississippi and Kentucky.

The flash floods caught the city off-guard, and thousands of residents and tourists were forced to flee homes and hotels as the river rapidly spilled over its banks. Using motor boats, jet skis and canoes, authorities and volunteers rescued residents trapped in flooded homes on Monday, some which looked like islands surround by dark brown river water. Eleven of the 12 people killed in Tennessee drowned, including six in Nashville.

Country music's landmark, The Grand Ole Opry House, was flooded with several feet of water, forcing managers to seek alternate space for upcoming shows. It wasn't clear how much water was in the concert hall, which is part of the large Gaylord Opryland Hotel complex along the river northeast of downtown, but at least 10 feet of water flooded the nearby hotel.

The downtown — home of a historic warehouse district that dates back to the 1800s and is now occupied by bars and restaurants — was nearly deserted after authorities evacuated the area. Floodwater spilled into some streets near the riverfront, and restaurants and bars in the warehouse district were closed.

Water seeped into a mechanical room in the basement of the Country Music Hall of Fame, though it was not immediately clear if there was any damage. Two blocks away, the historic Ryman Auditorium, longtime former home of the Grand Ole Opry, was in no immediate danger nor were many of the country music recording studios, located about a mile west of downtown.
On the east side of the river at LP Field, where the Tennessee Titans play, water covered the field and surrounding parking lot.

"It's shocking to see it this way, but it was an incredible storm," Mayor Karl Dean said as he surveyed the downtown flooding. The Cumberland River was expected to crest Monday afternoon at more than 11 feet above flood stage, and officials worried they may find more bodies in the rising floodwaters.

Thousands of people took refuge overnight in emergency shelters, including about 1,500 guests at the Gaylord Opryland Hotel who spent the night at a high school to escape the flooding.
The resort's hotel, located northeast of downtown along the river, had "significant water" inside and would remain closed indefinitely, said hotel spokeswoman Kim Keelor. A life-sized Elvis statue, missing his guitar, was laying on its back in the parking lot of the Wax Museum of the Stars near Opryland Hotel.

German tourists Gerdi and Kurt Bauerle, both 70, said resort staff suddenly started rushing people out of the area Sunday night.

"We had just finished eating and suddenly they said: 'Go! Go! Go!'" said Gerdi Bauerle, who was visiting from Munich. "And we said 'Wait, we haven't even paid.'"

Lucy Owens, 46, said she had followed directions to stay inside with her 21-year-old son at their home near Opryland when she heard her neighborhood was being evacuated Sunday night. She and her son tried to escape in her truck, but she couldn't even drive to her mailbox because the water was so high.

She said she screamed for help and a police officer came and took her and son to a point where a boat could rescue them. By then, water was up to her ribcage.

"I got no notice. No one said nothing about evacuating. I did what they said and stayed put. I didn't get out. I didn't drive. Then it just all happened so fast," she said.

Floodwaters swallowed up hundreds of homes including 45-year-old Lisa Blackmon's in the suburb of Bellevue on the west side of Nashville. Water was up to her knees inside her house when a neighbor rushed her out Sunday. Blackmon said she feared she had nothing left in her home. She said she had no flood insurance and lost her job at a trucking company last December.

"I know God doesn't give us more than we can take," she said. "But I'm at my breaking point."
The Cumberland flooded quickly after the weekend's storms dumped more than 13 inches of rain in Nashville over two days. That nearly doubled the previous record of 6.68 inches of rain that fell in the wake of Hurricane Fredrick in 1979.

The storms, which also spawned deadly tornadoes, killed at least 12 people in Tennessee — including one person killed by a tornado in the western part of the state — six in Mississippi and four in Kentucky.

Three of the people killed in Mississippi died when high winds believed to be tornados hit their homes; the other three were killed in weather-related traffic accidents. Four weather-related deaths were also reported in Kentucky, including one man whose truck ran off the road and into a flooded creek.
Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen got a bird's eye view of the flooding damage during a helicopter tour of the area on Monday. As he crossed the Tennessee River and neared the hard-hit area of Madison County, flood waters were so deep that the tops of trees made the land looked like islands.

The Cumberland River already reached record levels since an early 1960s flood control project was put in place. With so much water inundating its tributaries, it was difficult to gauge whether the river would stop at 50 feet deep, or 11 feet above flood stage.

Much of the damage from flooding was done in outlying areas of Nashville and across the middle and western parts of Tennessee. Rescues turned dramatic over the weekend with homeowners plucked off roofs and pregnant women airlifted off a waterlogged interstate.

The rain ended Monday but there will likely be weeks of cleanup. Though there was no official estimate, it was clear thousands of homes had been damaged or destroyed by flooding and tornados. Emily Petro, with the Red Cross in Nashville, said the agency was sheltering about 2,000 people across Tennessee — more than half in Nashville.

Most schools in middle Tennessee were closed Monday and many universities in the Nashville area postponed final exams.

In Nashville, even the state's own emergency operations center wasn't immune. It took up to a foot of water below a false floor, forcing officials to relocate to an auxiliary command center.

"I've never seen it this high," said emergency official Donnie Smith, who's lived in Nashville 45 years. "I'm sure that it's rained this hard at one time, but never for this much of an extended period."

The Better Marriage Blanket

This is one of the most creative euphemisms I've seen in a while. I love their suggestion that you could give it as an anniversary present.