'Best of TBH Politoons'
Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Annalee Newitz: Hooker Science (sfbg.com)
Are we still so Victorian that we think it's bad to pay large amounts for a few hours of skin-time?
Jim Hightower: GETTING TO THE MEAT OF THE PROBLEM (jimhightower.com)
It's ironic that people who hate government - corporate interests and right-wing ideologues -are now in charge of running it. Not surprisingly, they do a sorry job of it - either because they're incompetent or they just don't want government to work. Putting them in charge, however, is more than ironic - it is downright dangerous for the larger public that counts on a vigorous government.
CONNIE TUTTLE: Tucson needs to stop making plans for growth and start making plans to survive (tucsonweekly.com)
... James Lovelock, the crusty scientist responsible for the Gaia hypothesis and who has been issuing dire environmental warnings for decades, recently told The Guardian that extreme weather would be the norm by 2020. That's in 12 years. By 2040, London will be underwater and much of Europe a desert, he says.
What gives us pause when considering these seemingly outlandish forecasts is Lovelock's consistent record of accuracy in predicting future events.
CHRIS ROBÉ: Gleaning the Dispossessed (popmatters.com)
It is the two divides -- between the rich and the poor, between publicity and the practices of everyday life -- that most concerns Agnés Varda.
Mark Morford: Thou shalt not kid thyself (sfgate.com)
The Vatican unveils fresh new sins, as the world just rolls its eyes. Is your name on the list?
Nicolas Alvarado: Ghost Writers (csindy.com)
Sad story lurks behind search for GLBT anthology contributions.
Donna Fish: I Have an Easier Time Talking with My Kids about Sex than Food (Huffington Post; Posted on alternet.org)
There is a way to educate kids on how to take better care of their bodies.
Lynn Carey: Suri's 'Shiva' a bold second step toward a Hindu god trilogy (Contra Costa Times; Posted on popmatters.com)
Manil Suri was determined to write about the love between a mother and a son. So, when it came time to write his second novel, he turned to the gods for inspiration. He'd had good success with one Hindu god in his first book, "The Death of Vishnu." The logical next step was another god in the Hindu trinity, Shiva.
Arthur C Clarke dies at 90 (books.guardian.co.uk)
Arthur C Clarke, the pioneering science fiction author and technological visionary best known for the novel and film 2001: A Space Odyssey, has died at his home in Sri Lanka, aged 90.
Joker in the pack (film.guardian.co.uk)
Katherine Heigl said her last film, Knocked Up, was 'sexist'. Her new one, 27 Dresses, is 'fluff'. And yet her love of the movie business seems undiminished. Emine Saner investigates.
JENNIFER KELLY: "Pretty Much a Rock Band: An Interview with Kinski" (popmatters.com)
Kinski guitarist Chris Martin says he'll never be nervous again after the summer's last-minute, arena-sized tour with Tool. His Seattle four-piece may be the only band ever to open for Tool and record a split with Acid Mothers Temple.
Len Righi: Tilly and the Wall building another bridge to indie-pop success (The Morning Call; Posted on popmatters.com)
Go ahead, just try and find someone who has uttered a discouraging word about Tilly and the Wall, an indie-pop band from Omaha, Neb., that often uses a tap dancer in place of a drummer. Comb through review after review - nothing.
Tom Gregory: They're Not Just Sure -- They're HIV Positive! (huffingtonpost.com)
Great comedy helps us to see ourselves, and our world - differently. Last week South Park kicked America in the teeth when it did battle with AIDS.
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Still sunny and near summer-like.
Came home from picking up the kid & visiting CostCo to find a couple of police cars, motors running & lights flashing blocking the driveway.
They appeared to be arresting a shirtless guy,
who was sitting on the curb with his hands behind his back, but had been driving a black Accura that was being loaded onto a flat-bed truck.
Don't know what happened, don't want to know what happened.
Just another day in the big city. Sigh.
5 Years Later
Hans Blix
Hans Blix, the former chief UN weapons inspector, slammed the Iraq war as a "tragedy" and blamed it on leaders ignoring the facts, in a comment piece published Thursday.
Writing in The Guardian on the five-year anniversary of the US-led invasion of Iraq, Blix, who clashed with Washington in the run-up to the Iraq war, described the war as "a tragedy -- for Iraq, for the US, for the UN, for truth and human dignity."
In the sub-headline to the comment piece, Blix, who headed the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, wrote that responsibility for the war "must lie with those who ignored the facts five years ago".
At the time of the Iraq war, Blix accused the US and Britain of exaggerating the threat from Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's alleged "weapons of mass destruction" -- traces of which have never been found.
Hans Blix
Today's The Day
The YouTubes Awards
And the nominees include: an obsessed Britney Spears fan, the Obama Girl, Chocolate Rain and the "don't tase me, bro" guy.
The event? The second annual YouTube Video Awards. YouTube will announce the 12 winners in the video-sharing site's awards on Friday, recognizing the top-user created videos of 2007. There were six nominees for each category: music, sports, comedy, instructional, short film, inspirational, commentary, creative, politics, series, eyewitness and "adorable."
YouTube spokesman Aaron Ferstman said the winners, voted on by users, will score "notoriety" and a trophy he described as "very heavy with a metal base" supporting a "big glass 'play' button."
"The nominees were viewed nearly a quarter-billion times," said Ferstman, who noted the site considered the "watercooler effect" when selecting this year's finalists.
The YouTubes Awards
Honorary Doctorate
Quincy Jones
Quincy Jones will receive an honorary doctorate at the University of Washington commencement, where the musician-composer-producer-arranger will speak on June 14.
The university's regents voted to award the degree at their meeting Thursday.
The 75-year-old Jones moved to Bremerton, Wash., with his family at age 10 and began playing the trumpet in junior high school. He also sang in a gospel quartet before moving to Seattle.
Quincy Jones
New York Post Shuts Site
PageSix.com
An online gossip site owned by Ruperts News Corp.'s New York Post newspaper shut down on Thursday, just three months after it launched.
PageSix.com started in December as an addition to the print and online versions of Page Six, the New York Post's highly influential gossip column.
Eighteen editorial and support staffers of the site were laid off and three will be reassigned within the New York Post, newspaper spokeswoman Suzanne Halpin said in a statement.
PageSix.com
Skipping CD Format
Elvis Costello
Elvis Costello's next solo studio album, curiously dubbed "Momofuku," will arrive April 22, and plans are for the set to be released only on vinyl, with a digital download code included in the package.
No other details are available about the Lost Highway release, which follows 2004's "The Delivery Man," Costello's debut on the label with his band the Imposters.
Since then, Costello recorded "The River in Reverse" with pianist Allen Toussaint and supervised the first wave of his back-catalog reissues through Universal. The most recent of those, "This Year's Model," arrived March 4.
Elvis Costello
Name Change
History Channel
The History Channel is now history.
Make that History. The cable network quietly dropped "the" and "channel" from its name recently, claiming History for itself.
"Our brand is, in the media landscape, synonymous with the genre of history so I don't think it's presumptuous of us to call ourselves History," said Nancy Dubuc, the network's executive vice president.
Once dubbed "The Hitler Channel" for all of its World War II documentaries, History has switched to a more "immersive" "revisionist" style that tries to show spin rather than tell, she said. Adventure-seeking is in. Sitting in an armchair telling war stories is out.
History Channel
U.S. Denies Author Entry
Sebastian Horsley
U.S. immigration officials denied British author Sebastian Horsley entrance to the United States on Wednesday on the grounds of "moral turpitude," Horsley told Reuters on Thursday.
Tired from his return trip to London and eight hours of detention with U.S. customs officials, the 45-year-old artist and author of the lurid autobiography of drug addiction and sex "Dandy in the Underworld," admitted that his flamboyant dress and top hat may have caught the attention of U.S. officials.
"I was wearing my dandy uniform, but the customs officials were wearing uniforms too and I didn't object to them," he said.
Horsley was stopped by immigration officials at New York's Newark airport after flying in from London to promote his book, which the author calls a "moral book."
Sebastian Horsley
Testifies In Pellicano Trial
Brad Grey
The head of Paramount Pictures testified on Thursday he was unaware of any illegal acts by Hollywood's so-called private eye to the stars who worked on his behalf in two bitter movie industry lawsuits.
Brad Grey, CEO of Paramount Pictures and one of the most powerful players in Hollywood, is a prosecution witness in the U.S. government's bribery and wiretapping case against private investigator Anthony Pellicano.
Grey said Pellicano was hired by veteran lawyer Bert Fields, who was handling two lawsuits in 1999 and 2000 brought against Grey by comedian Garry Shandling and screenwriter Vincent "Bo" Zenga.
Grey, a Hollywood talent manager at the time, said he was not involved in the details of either case. "Lawsuits were left to our attorneys," he told a Los Angeles jury.
Brad Grey
TV Producer Charged
Drew Levin
An Emmy Award-winning television producer was charged with inflating the revenue and stock price of his publicly traded production company as part of a multimillion dollar stock fraud scheme.
Drew Levin, 54, the founder of Team Communications Group, Inc., was indicted by a federal grand jury on 13 counts, including conspiracy, falsifying his company's books and records, making false statements in annual and quarterly reports and lying to the company's auditors, the U.S. attorney's office said.
Prosecutors said Levin orchestrated a scheme to overstate Team Communications' annual and quarterly revenue to make the company appear profitable, when it was actually losing money. As a result, they said, customers ended up paying inflated distribution fees and Levin profited from the scheme.
Levin's credits include "The Matthew Shepard Story" and "Total Recall 2070."
Drew Levin
Selling Two Stations
NBC
NBC Universal is putting two TV stations, WTMJ in Miami and WVIT in Hartford, Connecticut, on the block.
The move comes amid major changes in the TV-station business and the shedding of smaller markets by big media companies like Fox and CBS. In an e-mail to station group employees Wednesday, NBC Local Media president John Wallace said that the company was focusing on its stations in the top 10 markets and its digital business.
WTVJ has been owned by NBC since 1987; WVIT was purchased by NBC in the 1950s. There are no details on the possible sale yet although the other half of NBC's duopoly in Miami, a Telemundo station, would not be affected.
When the sale is completed, it will leave eight stations owned by NBC Local Media. Seven of them will be in major markets like New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco, and the eighth is a joint venture in San Diego.
NBC
Seattle Historical Landmark
Denny's
There's no question the graffiti-strewn, rain-rotted, boarded-up old Denny's is a landmark in the most basic sense: People refer to it when giving directions, as in, "Turn left at the Denny's."
But is the 44-year-old eyesore, with its swooping roof line, worthy of historical designation? Seattle's Landmarks Preservation Board thought so, saving the eatery from demolition and blocking construction of yet another condo complex.
The board's vote last month boggled many Seattleites, who consider the building tacky at best and don't buy the argument that it shares some architectural DNA with Seattle's most famous landmark, the Space Needle.
Though the Space Needle is a prime example, few people here had heard of "Googie" architecture, a subcategory of Modernism named for a Los Angeles coffee shop, before the Denny's debate. The style, popular for roadside attractions such as gas stations and drive-ins in the 1950s and early '60s, evokes "Jetsons" cartoons, characterized by soaring roof lines, boomerang-shaped elements and bright colors.
Denny's
No Bid Electrocutions
KBR
A U.S. House committee chairman has begun an investigation into the electrocutions of at least 12 service members in Iraq, including that of a Pittsburgh soldier killed in January by a jolt of electricity while showering.
Rep. Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, said Wednesday he has asked Defense Secretary Robert Gates to hand over documents relating to the management of electrical systems at facilities in Iraq.
Staff Sgt. Ryan Maseth, 24, died Jan. 2 of cardiac arrest after being electrocuted while showering at his barracks in Baghdad.
Also Wednesday, Maseth's parents filed a wrongful death lawsuit in Allegheny County Court against KBR Inc., the Houston-based contractor responsible for maintaining Maseth's barracks.
KBR
King Of Politically Incorrect
Don Imus
"Nappy-headed hos," the phrase that cost U.S. radio shock jock Don Imus his job and triggered a debate on how far free speech can go, was named on Thursday as the most egregious politically incorrect turn of phrase in 2007.
Trailing behind that phrase in the annual survey by Global Language Monitor, a word usage group, were "Ho-Ho-Ho" and "Carbon Footprint Stomping," said the group's president Paul JJ Payack.
"Ho-Ho-Ho" made the list after a staffing company in Sydney, Australia suggested to prospective Santas they drop their traditional greeting in favour of "Ha-Ha-Ha" so as not to invoke images of the derogatory U.S. slang term for women.
"It is no surprise that 'Nappy-headed hos' was selected as the top politically incorrect word or phrase for 2007," said Payack. "A year later that phrase is still ricocheting about the Internet, even affecting Christmas-season Santas in Australia "
Don Imus
In Memory
Paul Scofield
Paul Scofield, a commanding stage and screen actor indelibly stamped on filmgoers' minds as the doomed philosopher-statesman Sir Thomas More in "A Man For All Seasons," has died at age 86.
Scofield won an Academy Award and international fame for the 1966 film "A Man For All Seasons," in which he played the Tudor statesman and author of "Utopia" executed for treason in 1535 after clashing with King Henry VIII.
Scofield's infrequent films included Edward Albee's "A Delicate Balance"; "Henry V," in which he played the king of France; "Quiz Show," Robert Redford's film about a 1950s TV scandal; and the 1996 adaptation of Arthur Miller's play "The Crucible."
"Quiz Show" brought Scofield a second Oscar nomination, this time as best supporting actor. He played Mark Van Doren, the famed author and poet whose son, Charles, was the key figure in the scandal.
Scofield was an unusual star - a family man who lived almost his whole life within a few miles of his birthplace in southern England and hurried home after work to his wife and children. He didn't seek the spotlight, gave interviews sparingly and, at times, seemed to need coaxing to venture out even onto the stage he loved.
David Paul Scofield was born Jan. 21, 1922, son of the village schoolmaster in Hurstpierpoint, eight miles from the southern coast of England. When he married actress Joy Parker in 1943, they settled only 10 miles to the north, in the village of Balcombe.
He is survived by his wife and children.
Paul Scofield
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