'Best of TBH Politoons'
Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Jim Hightower: $2.4 TRILLION- AND COUNTING (jimhightower.com)
Shall we check the numbers again on George W's misbegotten war? For today, lets leave aside such depressing counts as the ever-rising numbers of dead and mangled, and just focus on the dollars he's dumping into his foreign hostilities.
GEORGE REISCH AND RANDALL AUXIER: "POP GOES PHILOSOPHY: Don't Keep Your Philosophy Under Your (Mr.) Hat" (popmatters.com)
The point of philosophy going pop is not to exalt the ivory tower and herd people inside; it's to give philosophers a chance to leave.
Linda Winer: Playwright Edward Albee celebrates his 80th year (Newsday; Posted on [Popmatters.com)
Over his shoulder, on a slope overlooking the sea, a friend digs a tiny grave for the afternoon funeral of Snow, 23, his cat. "She is now residing in the freezer in the downstairs icebox," he says with an unflinching directness that must never be mistaken for a lack of emotion. "She had several cancer operations and they kept saying she won't survive this one, but she did. I put her in plastic and forgot to tell the cleaning ladies. One of them went in there, saw a dead cat and, well ..."
Daniel Bubbeo: Paging the breakout new face from '30 Rock,' Jack McBrayer (Newsday; Posted on Popmatters.com)
Some stars spend Sundays lounging by the pool. For Jack McBrayer, who plays naive page Kenneth Parcell on the NBC sitcom "30 Rock," Sunday means grabbing a bottle of Tide and heading to the laundry room. And maybe later a shopping trip to Best Buy.
Jim Harrington: Pop 'dinosaur' Billy Joel is still in big demand (The Oakland Tribune; Posted on Popmatters.com)
Billy Joel's stats are impressive. He's sold some 80 million records in the United States, which makes him the sixth bestselling artist in the country, right behind the Eagles and a notch above Pink Floyd.
Brian Miller: Meet Jayne Ann Krentz, Seattle's Best-Selling Author (seattleweekly.com)
Apart from her obvious productivity, her sales also derive from a willingness to change and adapt old romance genres, which she sees as key to the industry's resurgence.
Art Carey: Murder most patient: Crime-novel success at 60 and up (The Philadelphia Inquirer; Posted on Popmatters.com)
To all of you with late-life literary ambitions, to all of you who've collected enough rejection slips to paper a room, we bring today tidings of great joy in the person of Robin Hathaway.
Hathaway, who splits her days between Philadelphia and New York, didn't begin writing until she was 50. For 10 years, everything she wrote was rejected. Her first novel was accepted and published when she was 60.
Maria Gracia: The 7 Habits of Very Organized People (getorganizednow.com)
Have you ever wondered how some people could be so very organized, when you're struggling on a daily basis just to get your home looking halfway presentable and to get at least a few items checked off of your To Do list? Most organized people follow a few simple rules. Here are the 7 habits of very organized people.
David Usborne: Now Doctors Say It's Good to be Overweight (The Independent UK; Posted on AlterNet.org)
After years of anti-obesity public health advice, a major new study causes an outcry by concluding that the moderately overweight live longer.
Free Download: Lulu Creators #5 - Promotional Comic, by Lulu Comic Subversives
Lulu's Spring 2006 anthology of independently published comic creators has a little bit of everything.
Free Download: Promotional Comic - Spring 2005, by Lulu Comic Subversives
Perfect-bound promotional comic for the Lulu Comics Subversives, Number 3.
Free Download: Promotional Comic - Lulu Creators #4 (Summer 05), by Lulu Comic Subversives
Lulu Creators is a promotional comic anthology featuring some of the great comic creators that use Lulu to independently publish their books.
Reader Comment
Black Friday
Marty, the Black Friday Ads are out on The Internets..
Just do a search on The Google..."Black Friday Ads"
What Kinda Crap are Americans willing to get Trampled for this Year?
Take Care,
KevKev in Apache Junction
Thanks, KevKev!
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Still sunny and too warm for the season.
$2M To USC Film School
Hugh Hefner
Hugh Hefner has donated $2 million to the University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts.
The money will fund a central exhibition space in the new headquarters of the school and an archival repository for student films and historic documents, the university said.
The existing repository, which bears Hefner's name, holds more than eight decades of student films, including some by George Lucas.
The 81-year-old Playboy founder has contributed millions of dollars to preserve films and fund cinema schools over the years. Hefner gave $100,000 to USC in 1992 to create a course, Censorship in Cinema, and in 1995 he donated $1.5 million to endow the Hugh M. Hefner Chair for the Study of American Film.
Returning To TV
Walter Cronkite
Walter Cronkite, the TV news icon often described as "the most trusted man in America," is returning to television, signing on as a regular contributor to the startup cable network Retirement Living TV.
Beginning November 20, the former CBS Evening News anchor will contribute weekly editorial commentaries during the channel's two-hour noontime program, Daily Cafe. Each of Cronkite's videotaped messages will run between seven and 10 minutes in length.
The "Cronkite's Commentaries" segments will provide the veteran newsman a platform from which to offer his take on a host of issues, ranging from politics to the environment.
Walter Cronkite
Two Tickets Go For $170,000 In Charity Auction
Led Zeppelin
A man from Glasgow paid 83,000 pounds ($170,000) for a pair of tickets to a one-off Led Zeppelin reunion gig in London on December 10, according to the BBC which organized the charity auction.
Kenneth Donell was the winner of Thursday's sale held by radio host Terry Wogan for the Children in Need charity. Over the last four days, the auction has raised 894,000 pounds, the BBC added.
In addition to watching the concert, Donell will also be allowed to watch Led Zeppelin rehearse the day before and take home a signed memento from the 1970s rockers.
Led Zeppelin
Tops In Public's Heart
Kurt Vonnegut
Within the past year, three of the most famous authors to emerge after World War II have died: Norman Mailer, Kurt Vonnegut and William Styron. Their deaths all resulted in front-page stories, lengthy appreciations and ongoing discussions about their place in American letters.
No writer was more competitive, or ambitious, than Mailer, author of such epics as "The Naked and the Dead" and "The Executioner's Song," and critics would likely hand him the prize for his generation. But if sales are the measure of the public's mind, then honors clearly belong to Vonnegut.
According to Nielsen BookScan, which tracks about 70 percent of industry sales, Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse-Five" has sold about 280,000 copies since 2006, more than four times the combined pace of six of the most talked about books of the past 60 years: Mailer's "The Naked and the Dead," "The Armies of the Night" and "The Executioner's Song," and Styron's "The Confessions of Nat Turner," "Sophie's Choice" and "Darkness Visible."
While Vonnegut's passing last April led to a significant jump in sales for his books, the change was far smaller for the works of Mailer and Styron, both of whom, unlike Vonnegut, won Pulitzer Prizes. Books by all three writers are still used in classrooms, but Vonnegut's are read more both on and off campus.
Kurt Vonnegut
Named To Stem Cell Board
Leeza Gibbons
Leeza Gibbons, whose mother has Alzheimer's disease, has been named to the board that oversees California's stem cell research agency.
The former "Entertainment Tonight" host will fill the Alzheimer's advocate seat on the 29-member panel that oversees the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, which doles out $300 million annually in research grants. She was appointed by Gov. Arnold $chwarzenegger.
"Leeza's personal experience as a caregiver and advocate makes her uniquely qualified for this position," $chwarzenegger spokeswoman Gena Grebitus said in an e-mailed statement Wednesday.
Leeza Gibbons
Judge Fed Up With No-Show
Kid Rock
A judge is fed up with Kid Rock for failing to show up for a court-ordered deposition.
Oakland County Circuit Court Judge Shalina Kumar on Wednesday threw out a lawsuit the 36-year-old rocker filed this year against Kelly Ann Kozlowski, a Novi woman he said embarrassed and defamed him in a police report.
"What's special about him? Why does he get to violate a court's order?" Kumar asked Kid Rock's attorney, William Horton, after learning Kid Rock failed to show up for a deposition that she had ordered to take place by the end of October.
The judge also entered a default against Kid Rock in Kozlowski's complaint, which seeks more than $25,000 in damages. The ruling means Kid Rock will be unable to contest Kozlowski's lawsuit at a Feb. 5 trial.
Kid Rock
Spends 84 Minutes In Jail
Lindsay Lohan
Actress Lindsay Lohan checked in and out of jail on Thursday, spending just 84 minutes behind bars for a drunken driving and cocaine-possession conviction, Los Angeles police said.
Lohan, 21, had been sentenced in August to one day in jail after admitting guilt to drink and drug charges and was told by the court to serve her time before January.
The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department Web site showed that Lohan checked into jail at 10:30 a.m. on Thursday and was released at 11:54 a.m.
The charges stemmed from a July car chase and an arrest in May after she wrecked her car in Beverly Hills. After her July arrest, the star of the hit movie "Freaky Friday" checked into a rehabilitation center in Utah and spent more than two months there.
Lindsay Lohan
Hits TV Production In Canada
Hollywood Strike
NBC's Vancouver-shot TV series "Bionic Woman" shut down, local publicist Bill Vigars said Thursday, well ahead of its scheduled December 12 close.
And local media reports indicate that the fourth season of Sci Fi Channel's "Battlestar Galactica," which was set to shoot through mid-March, will wrap Friday because it, too, has burned through available scripts.
Ken Ferguson, president of Toronto Film Studios, said that any current lull in Hollywood North also was due to the impact of a strong Canadian dollar on foreign location shooting budgets.
The loonie hit CAN$1.10 in value compared with the greenback last week before retreating to a CAN$1.04 range this week. The sudden rise in the value of the loonie follows two decades in which U.S. producers enjoyed huge cost savings when they shot here on the strength of a once-strong greenback.
Hollywood Strike
Auctioning Off Props
NBC
Looking for clues to the fate of the "Heroes?" Three original paintings featured in NBC's hit series that foretell the characters' fates are part of an online auction of studio props to be launched Monday by NBC Universal.
The auction, will also feature collectibles from such shows as "The Office," "30 Rock," "Las Vegas" and "Friday Night Lights."
The first batch, on the block through December 3, will include Michael Scott's (Steve Carell) Timex watch and Hawaiian "Convention" shirt from "The Office"; a poker set used by the main cast of "30 Rock"; Tim Riggins' (Taylor Kitsch) jersey, a signed football by three cast members and a megaphone signed by Minka Kelly from "Friday Night Lights"; and Danny's (Josh Duhamel) signed Letterman jacket from "Las Vegas."
Each auction will last two weeks, with a new group of items becoming available about every three weeks, said Kim Niemi, senior vp at NBC Universal Video, Music & Product Development.
NBC
Sanctimonious Circle Jerk
Hollywood Prayer Network
Britney Spears who has been struggling to get custody of her kids while launching a comeback, is the top prayer-getter at the Hollywood Prayer Network, a group of more than 5,000 Christians that prays for stars instead of writing them off as lost causes.
The network recently passed a Bible to socialite Paris Hilton and plans to pass one to Spears later this month. It also picks up-and-coming child stars for its monthly Kids Prayer Calendar and pairs hundreds of mentors with struggling actors - the kind more likely to take your order in a restaurant than appear on your television.
The group, which is co-hosting a 700-person prayer breakfast in Beverly Hills on Friday, is part of a larger movement among Christians who feel that Hollywood may be the best vehicle for reaching the uninitiated, said Robert Johnston, a professor of theology and culture at Fuller Seminary in Pasadena.
"The prayer network is the equivalent, and perhaps more important, than praying for our president," Johnston said. "Just as churches have traditionally prayed for leaders, now we recognize that one of our primary sources of leadership is the entertainment industry."
Hollywood Prayer Network
Russia Sect Holes Up In cave
Doomsday Cult
At least 30 members of a Russian doomsday cult have barricaded themselves in a remote cave to await the end of the world and are threatening to commit suicide if police intervene, officials and media said on Thursday.
The cult members, who include 29 adults and four children, are hidden inside a snow-covered hillside in the Penza region of central Russia. A Penza police spokeswoman said they had moved into the dug-out on November 7.
After decades of state-enforced atheism under Soviet rule, many Russians and other ex-Soviet nationals have come under the influence of home-grown and foreign sects.
Izvestia newspaper said the leader of the cult, Pyotr Kuznetsov, had been detained by police. It said he was a 43-year-old who had been diagnosed with schizophrenia and that in the last few months he had been sleeping in a coffin.
Doomsday Cult
Electric Guitar Tunes Itself
Les Paul Robot Guitar
Help is at hand from what is described as the world's first robot guitar -- an electric guitar that not only keeps itself in tune even after string changes but also allows players to access six non-standard tunings at the push of a button.
After 15 years of research, Gibson Guitar is launching a limited edition Les Paul Robot Guitar next month that has set players abuzz with both enthusiasm and scepticism.
The six non-standard preset tunings were used on hits ranging from "Honky Tonk Women" by The Rolling Stones and Hendrix's "Voodoo Child" to Led Zeppelin's "Going to California" and Joni Mitchell's "The Circle Game."
Gibson says the robot guitar is aimed at amateurs who have a hard time keeping their guitars in tune, as well as professionals who now use technicians during concerts to keep about 100 guitars tuned to different keys.
Les Paul Robot Guitar
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