'Best of TBH Politoons'
Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Alex Roth: Local women join war protester: They say they'll await Bush meeting (SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE)
The idea of making a spontaneous trip to President Bush's vacation ranch was born when Julie Decker read a newspaper article a couple of days ago and immediately called her good friend Tiffany Strause.
Mike Ferner: 'What one mom has to say to George Bush' (smirkingchimp.com)
"My son was killed in 2004. I am not paying my taxes for 2004. You killed my son, George Bush, and I don't owe you a penny...you give my son back and I'll pay my taxes. Come after me (for back taxes) and we'll put this war on trial."
Paul Hackett shames Rush Limbaugh
Paul Hackett: That's typical for that fatass drug addict to come up with something like that.
Arianna Huffington: The Lessons of Iraq Hit Home (AlterNet)
From Italy to Brook Park, Ohio, the war is taking a deep toll.
Annalee Newitz: Shut Up (AlterNet)
Smart geeks are being harassed or bribed into silence by major corporations all the time.
Kevin Hoffman: The Trikilis brothers created the world's best-selling poster. It almost destroyed them. (clevescene.com)
It may be the most famous pinup poster of all time. Farrah Fawcett's smile is a row of impossibly white teeth so perfectly aligned they look machine-made, her hair a windblown blond tangle that swallows her slender hand.
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Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Still sunny, still summer.
The kid picked some sunflower seeds out of the bird feeder & planted them in Dixie cups.
So far, 9 of 12 have sprouted.
Adds Eight 'Bonus' Episodes
'The Sopranos'
When "The Sopranos" finally arrives next year for its sixth season, fans of the HBO mob drama will get more than they expected.
Eight "bonus" episodes are planned in addition to the 12 previously announced for the series, set to return in March 2006 after nearly two years without a first-run episode, HBO said Thursday.
There will be a break between the first set of episodes and the arrival of the extra eight hours in January 2007 but production on them will be continuous, HBO said.
The premium cable channel avoided tagging the newly announced episodes as part of a seventh season and also declined to label them the final ones.
'The Sopranos'
Dating For Dollar$
$chwarzenegger
California governor Arnold $chwarzenegger wil be seeking to cash in on a Rolling Stones concert later this month, the governor's office confirmed.
Anyone willing to deposit $100,000 in the former film action hero's political war chest will get to join $chwarzenegger at a Rolling Stones performance in Boston on August 21, according to fund raisers.
The big money donors will have seats with $chwarzenegger in a luxury box at Fenway Park where the concert is being held.
A Rolling Stones spokesman said the band was not involved in the fund-raising bid.
$chwarzenegger
London Debut
'Lost'
The castaway television thriller "Lost" debuted on Wednesday night as the most watched U.S. import on television since soap opera "Dallas" captivated fans more than 20 years ago.
An average of 6.1 million viewers, or about 26.8 percent of everybody watching TV at the time, tuned in to Channel 4 to see the first episode of the Emmy-nominated drama about plane-crash survivors marooned on a tropical island.
In a very different television era, the first episode of "Dallas," which portrayed the backstabbing ways of oil magnate J.R. Ewing and his family, lured 12.2 million viewers to the BBC in 1982. The market share was not available.
'Lost'
Tops List of Dead Celebs
Lucille Ball
Lucille Ball is America's most beloved dead star. The company that developed the "Q score" that broadcasters and advertisers quietly consult to measure a personality's popularity has done a survey that tests the reputation of performers who have gone on to that big soundstage in the sky.
The redheaded sitcom star of the 1950s and '60s, who died in 1989, has topped past "Dead Q" lists as her comedies seemingly live forever on television, said Steve Levitt, president of Marketing Evaluations, Inc., which conducts the tests.
Bob Hope, John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart and Red Skelton follow her on the popularity list.
For 41 years, Levitt's company has given consumers a list of names and asked if they know the people and to rate how much they like them. From their responses they calculate the Q score, a measure of both familiarity and likability.
Lucille Ball
'Untold Story' Coming To Theaters
Emmett Till
ThinkFilm, the indie distributor of acclaimed documentaries "Murderball" and "The Aristocrats," said Wednesday it will release "The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till," which sheds new light on the 1955 murder of the black teenager.
Director Keith Beauchamp uncovered new information about the tragedy, in which Till was tortured, beaten and thrown into the Tallahatchie River for allegedly whistling at a white woman in public.
Beauchamp has reconstructed the case and, according to ThinkFilm, has found that responsibility for the murder extends beyond the two white men who were acquitted by an all-white jury. The film features testimony from Till's mother and various eyewitnesses. Beauchamp's 10-year effort led the Department of Justice to reopen the case in May 2004.
Emmett Till
Cambodian Citizen
Angelina Jolie
King Norodom Sihamoni has signed a special decree giving movie star Angelina Jolie Cambodian citizenship in recognition of her environmental work in the country, a senior official said on Thursday.
The Oscar-winning actress, who adopted a Cambodian son, Maddox, has agreed to spend $5 million over the next 15 years to set up a wildlife sanctuary in a former Khmer Rouge stronghold in the northwestern province of Battambang.
Angelina Jolie
Wedding News
White - Evans
Robert Evans has married for the seventh time.
The 75-year-old former Paramount production chief wed Lady Victoria White in Mexico last weekend, Evans' spokesman, Michael Levine, said Wednesday.
It was the third marriage for the 42-year-old White, who has three children. She and Evans had been dating for about three months, Levine said.
Evans divorced his sixth wife, former Versace model Leslie Ann Woodward, last July, after seven months of marriage. His ex-wives also include "Love Story" star Ali MacGraw, former Miss America Phyllis George and "Dynasty" co-star Catherine Oxenberg.
White - Evans
Can't Be Evicted
CBGB
A civil court judge ruled Wednesday that the landmark punk club CBGB's can't be evicted from its Bowery location, saying it shouldn't be punished for not noticing it owed its landlord money.
The ruling was a victory for the club where groups like the Ramones and Blondie defined the punk scene in the 1970s, but CBGB's future is still uncertain.
Its lease with the Bowery Residents' Committee expires on Aug. 31, and a renewal remains up in the air.
CBGB
Copped Plea, Fined $100
Oliver Stone
Oscar winning-director Oliver Stone has pleaded no contest to a charge of marijuana possession and was fined $100, officials said on Thursday.
Stone's lawyers entered the plea on his behalf at a Beverly Hills court hearing on July 29 -- two weeks ahead of the scheduled hearing date, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles District Attorney's office said.
Stone, 58, who won best director Oscars for the Vietnam War-themed movies "Platoon" and "Born of the Fourth of July," was charged after being stopped at a routine traffic checkpoint in May.
Oliver Stone
Fans Pay for Access
Rick Springfield
They had traveled 1,400 miles and waited two decades for this night - three beautiful women from Long Island, wearing little black dresses to a concert by the pop star they'd drooled over when Reagan was president and hair was feathered. The Heidelberger sisters, together again, had flown all the way to North Dakota - to see Rick Springfield.
As they strode down the aisle of the concert hall in the Pavilion Knights Casino, this trio of blondes straight out of a Robert Palmer video, the unthinkable happened: The Grammy winner himself was calling to them, beckoning them onto the stage through his mike: "Legs at 11 o'clock."
In 1982, it would have been a teenage girl's fan-club dream - dancing with Springfield as he sang "Jessie's Girl." In 2004, it was simply an unexpected fringe benefit of the "Gold Package," purchased from the comfort of home at RickSpringfield.com. It had cost them $1,000.
The "Gold Package" offered them not just tickets to a show and its sound check, but also an autographed guitar and a few moments of one-on-one conversation with the man who once played Dr. Noah Drake on "General Hospital."
Rick Springfield
Vigilance on Rise?
Fake News
With its official-looking BBC News banner, the Web site looked real enough, but the sick tale it told seemed too preposterous to be true.
The page was a hoax, but it exploded across the Internet. Soon it was being repeated by bloggers, radio show hosts and a few newspapers. The New York Post published the yarn in its "Weird but True" column on May 20.
The episode was another in a string of fabrications and manipulations that may be causing people to think twice about what they read, hear or see on TV.
The Pentagon was embarrassed after a military public relations office issued a press release containing a quote from an unidentified Iraqi civilian that appeared to have been fabricated. Journalists questioned its veracity after noticing that the quote had appeared in a previous military press release.
There are signs that these fiascos - and past fabrication scandals involving USA Today reporter Jack Kelley, The New York Times' Jayson Blair, and Stephen Glass of The New Republic - have led to a more skeptical public.
Fake News
Reportedly Fails Drug Test
Courtney Love
Courtney Love has been ordered to appear in court later this month to face an allegation that she violated her probation in an assault case by being under the influence of a controlled substance.
Superior Court Judge Rand S. Rubin issued a bench warrant for Love's arrest, but agreed to hold it pending the Aug. 19 hearing. During that hearing, a date will be set for another hearing to decide whether Love, 41, violated probation.
Prosecutors said the alleged violation involved a narcotic, but didn't identify it.
Courtney Love
Five Siblings Sue Show
'Extreme Makeover'
Five orphaned siblings who received gifts and a new dream home on the hit ABC television show "Extreme Makeover, Home Edition" are suing the network, the company that built the house and the couple who took them in after their parents died.
The lawsuit is rooted in a falling out between the children - who range in age from 15 to 22 - and the couple, Phil and Loki Leomiti. The children ultimately moved out of the Leomitis' home in Santa Fe Springs, a small city southeast of Los Angeles, and are living separately with friends, said Charles Higgins II, the eldest sibling.
The parents of the Higgins children died 10 weeks apart in the spring of 2004 - the mother of breast cancer and the father of heart failure. The Leomitis, who knew the children from church, took them in to their home in July 2004, according to the lawsuit.
'Extreme Makeover'
Possible Pattern Found
Khipu
While the Incan empire left nothing that would be considered writing by today's standards, it did produce knotted strings in various colors and arrangements that have long puzzled historians and anthropologists.
Many of these strings have turned out to be a type of accounting system, but interpreting them has been complex.
Now, Gary Urton and Carrie J. Brezine of Harvard University say they have found a three-knot pattern in some of the strings, called khipu, that they believe identifies them as coming from the city of Puruchuco, about seven miles north of modern Lima, Peru.
They used computers to analyze 21 khipu found at Puruchuco and divided them into three groups based on the knot patterns. Their findings are reported in Friday's issue of the journal Science.
Khipu
Run Out Of World's Best Beer
Monks
Monks at a Belgian abbey have been forced to stop selling their famous beer after it was voted the best in the world and was promptly sold out.
The abbey of Saint Sixtus of Westvleteren in western Belgium is home to some 30 Cistercian and Trappist monks who lead a life of seclusion, prayer, manual labor -- and beer-brewing.
A survey of thousands of beer enthusiasts from 65 countries on the RateBeer Web site in June rated the Westvleteren 12 beer as the world's best.
But the abbey only has a limited brewing capacity, and was not able to cope with the beer's sudden popularity.
Monks
No More Hand-Drawn Animation
Disney
In the 1960s, Walt Disney joked that one day he'd replace his elite corps of animators, known as the "Nine Old Men," and their slow, expensive way of making hand-drawn movies, with Audio-Animatronic figures.
At the end of last month, Walt's joke came true. The studio bearing his name announced that, due to a "changing creative climate and economic environment," it will be shutting DisneyToon Studios Australia next year. The studio, which turned out sequels (such as "Tarzan II," "The Lion King II" and "Bambi II") was the company's last remaining facility creating hand-drawn (or 2-D) traditional animation. To compete in the 3-D computer-generated imagery (or CGI) arena, the house that a hand-drawn mouse built will become a pixels, rather than a paper-and-pencils, place.
Of course, future Disney features will not be made by robots but by skilled human animators working with a different kind of tool. But the demise of hand-drawn animation at Disney is a sad and significant cultural watershed that deserves a proper mourning rather than a brief P.R. notice.
For a lot more, Disney
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