'Best of TBH Politoons'
Baron Dave Romm
Baron Dave is on vacation.
Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Cut and Run, the Only Brave Thing to Do ...a letter from Michael Moore
We were able to defeat all of Nazi Germany, Mussolini, and the entire Japanese empire in LESS time than it's taken the world's only superpower to secure the road from the airport to downtown Baghdad. And we haven't even done THAT.
Peter Berger: Malaise. Guest commentary by Poor Elijah (irascibleprofessor.com)
Public schools have been staggering through their own crisis for more than a generation. Part of the blame rests directly on culprits we can see at school: bankrupt education theories and assorted follies like self-esteem, whole language, and enfeebled classroom discipline. The roots of the problem also extend to our homes and civic institutions and appear as children from single-parent families, drug use, and crime.
Robert Wilonsky: One Toke Wonder: Tenacious D gets the band back together, and . . . and . . . and? (villagevoice.com)
The first few minutes of Tenacious D in 'The Pick of Destiny' are something to behold: a four-minute rock opera cranked to 11. A doughy young boy with dirty-mop locks (Nacho Libre's Troy Gentile, once more playing li'l Jack Black) laments his tragic plight: He's stuck in Kickapoo with "a humble family, religious through and through," that just doesn't get his tasty jams.
Tristan Taormino: Sexual Guru (villagevoice.com)
Nina Hartley (nina.com) has had a lot of sex. At 47, she has been in the porn industry for 22 years and appeared in more than 600 movies. Her on- and offscreen fucking (she's also been an active swinger) has given her experience and insight beyond what most everyday women could achieve, and lucky for us, she likes to share.
Jack Lechner: Robert Altman-A Short Cut (villagevoice.com)
The only thing that doesn't sadden me about Robert Altman's death is the thought that it might inspire people to go back and watch his movies again. The man may be in the past tense now, but the movies are here in the present. They'll be around for the future, too.
Corey Scholibo: Member of the wedding (advocate.com)
When Advocate arts and entertainment editor Corey Scholibo goes home to Houston to take part in a friend's wedding, he discovers that his role in the ceremony befits his status-not best man, not bridesmaid, but an honored gay place of his own.
Shauna Swartz: Meet Judy (aka Jewdy) Gold (afterellen.com)
In college, she spent one summer as a toll collector on the New Jersey turnpike, filling in at exits nine through 13 depending on who was on vacation on any particular day. "It was the '80s, and people going to concerts at the Garden State Arts Center would give me joints," Gold recalls. "And there was one time I had 12 trucks in my lane because the guys would get on the CB and be like, 'Chick in lane four.'"
Interview by Dena Ross: Lou Holtz's Life Lessons (beliefnet.com)
The ESPN analyst and former Notre Dame football coach on what we can do to achieve our goals.
Commentoon: Family Plan Appointment (womensenews.org)
Hubert's Poetry Corner
NASCAR AND GEORGE W. BUSH IN IRAQ
AND WHERE IT STOPS - NOBODY KNOWS?
Reader Comment
'The Hobbit'
Marty:
So, Peter Jackson may not be doing 'The Hobbit.' Believe me, real fans of Tolkien's stories are heaving a huge sigh of relief.
Don't get me wrong - I've enjoyed some of Jackson's work. My favorite is his 1996 'The Frighteners,' but it's obvious from 'Lord Of The Rings' he didn't read the Trilogy.
Like many confronted by the twelve hundred pages, he scanned it, concentrating on the more exciting sections. Then he went horribly off story - making the movies at least an hour longer with weird complications never in the books. These additions only weakened the epic and made character interactions confusing at best.
I believe this is why nearly all of Tolkien's family distanced themselves from the project and why real fans are hoping whomever does 'The Hobbit' will stay on story.
John Ronald Reuel deserves at least that.
Agmar
Thanks, Agmar!
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Mostly overcast and cool.
Just tried to fire up the furnace, but it didn't work. Ack.
Rattle Business World
Documentary Films
Starbucks Corp. was one of the companies that turned down interview requests from Nick and Mark Francis when the brothers were shooting their documentary about rampant poverty among Ethiopian coffee growers.
But after "Black Gold" attracted attention at the Sundance Film Festival in January, the coffee giant invited the British brothers to its Seattle headquarters as it prepared for a barrage of bad publicity.
"Black Gold," now being screened at festivals and art houses, is the latest in a growing genre of documentary films shaking up the business world. They are taking critiques of corporate power that would once have been the province of newspapers and magazines to movie theaters and DVD shops, where they're finding an increasingly receptive audience.
The trend, which started with "Roger and Me" in 1989 and more recently featured "Super Size Me" and "Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room," is forcing some corporate targets to counterattack - and, some say, even change business practices - to dodge claims of unfair wages, unhealthy products or environmental degradation.
Documentary Films
Visit Vietnam Orphans
Pitt & Jolie
Hollywood superstars Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie called at an orphanage during their surprise visit to southern Vietnam, a state-run newspaper said on Saturday.
The couple gave candies and toys to children at Tam Binh orphanage in Ho Chi Minh City and had lunch there on Friday, Nguyen Van Trung, director of the charity facility told the Saigon Giai Phong (Liberation Saigon) daily.
Newspapers, which on Friday morning showed front-page photos of Pitt and Jolie riding a scooter in Ho Chi Minh City streets without helmets, said on Saturday their photographers had failed to capture any moment of the couple on their second day in town.
Pitt & Jolie
Residents Spar Over Peace Sign
Colorado
A homeowners association in southwestern Colorado has threatened to fine a resident $25 a day until she removes a Christmas wreath with a peace sign that some say is an anti- Iraq war protest or a symbol of Satan.
Some residents who have complained have children serving in Iraq, said Bob Kearns, president of the Loma Linda Homeowners Association in Pagosa Springs. He said some residents have also believed it was a symbol of Satan. Three or four residents complained, he said.
Lisa Jensen said she wasn't thinking of the war when she hung the wreath. She said, "Peace is way bigger than not being at war. This is a spiritual thing."
Kearns ordered the committee to require Jensen to remove the wreath, but members refused after concluding that it was merely a seasonal symbol that didn't say anything. Kearns fired all five committee members.
Colorado
Watershed Election
News Media
Election night 2006 will go into history books as a triumph for Democrats and rebuke to resident Bush. It was a watershed evening for the news media, too.
The first smoothly run election night of the Internet era left many news organizations unsure of where they stood and should prompt some rethinking in time for 2008, according to a detailed new report by the Project for Excellence in Journalism.
The journalism think tank monitored several forms of media that night and concluded the best place to follow the story was on Web sites run by television networks - as opposed to the networks themselves.
Because of the richly detailed Web sites, fed by both results and exit poll data gathered by the networks and The Associated Press, Internet browsers frequently were more up-to-date than the anchors and pundits on the air, said Tom Rosenstiel, the project's director.
News Media
Introducing Transgender Character
'All My Children'
In a story unusual even for a soap opera and believed to be a television first, ABC's "All My Children" this week will introduce a transgender character who is beginning to make the transition from a man into a woman.
The character, a flamboyant rock star known as Zarf, kisses the lesbian character Bianca and much drama ensues. The storyline begins with Thursday's episode of the daytime drama.
There have been a handful of post-surgical transgender characters in television shows, including a college professor in the 2001 prime-time CBS series "The Education of Max Bickford" and a model in the short-lived ABC soap opera "The City" in 1996, according to the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation. Showtime's "The L Word" currently features a character changing from a woman into a man.
'All My Children'
Likes His Casanova Image
Jack Nicholson
Actor Jack Nicholson is proud of his image as a die-hard Casanova, saying it had helped fuel his five-decade-long career, in an interview with a German women's magazine.
"This image was always very useful. I never had the feeling that anyone really condemned my behavior," the 69-year-old playboy told Fuer Sie magazine.
The three-time Oscar winner who has been linked with Hollywood beauties including Anjelica Huston and Lara Flynn Boyle said his colleagues saw him as someone who knew how to have a good time.
Jack Nicholson
Guest On 'Keep Hope Alive'
Michael Richards
Comedian Michael Richards said Sunday he did not consider himself a racist, and that he was "shattered" by the comments he made to two young black men during a tirade at a Los Angeles comedy club.
Richards appeared on the Rev. Jesse Jackson's nationally syndicated radio program, "Keep Hope Alive," as a part of a series of apologies for the incident. He said he knew his comments hurt the black community, and hoped to meet with the two men.
Richards told Jackson the tirade was fueled by anger, not bigotry. He said he wanted to hurt those who had hurt him.
Michael Richards
Retools Web Site In Recruitment Push
CIA
The CIA has scrapped its ho-hum test that steered job applicants toward mysterious careers and devised one that's cloaked in jest.
Invisibility or ESP? Jet pack or amphibious sports car? Walk the Great Wall of China or sip Champagne at a New York gala?
The results from the CIA's personality quiz are just a few clicks away, diagnosing test takers as daring thrill-seekers, thoughtful observers, curious adventurers, innovative pioneers or impressive masterminds.
The agency's online personality test is the equivalent of a help-wanted sign, posted on the closest thing the agency has to a front door - its Web site. The frivolous quiz is designed to encourage job applications while dispelling myths about the agency, some of them born of the James Bond stereotype.
CIA
Chinese Painting Fetches Record Price
Xu Beihong
A rare piece by renowned Chinese artist Xu Beihong has smashed the record for a Chinese oil painting, selling for HK$53.9 million (US$6.9 million) at a Christie's auction in Hong Kong on Sunday.
The work "Slave and Lion," far exceeded the pre-auction estimate of HK$32 million, underscoring the sustained feverish demand from buyers for top quality works by Chinese artists.
Xu Beihong's "Slave and Lion" dates from the artist's stay in Berlin in the early 1920's and depicts the story of the Roman slave Androclus who pulled a thorn from a lion's paw.
Xu Beihong
Outraged Thief Tips Police
Child Porn
A Red Deer man has been jailed after an outraged burglar spotted massive amounts of child pornography on his computer and called police.
William Mitchell, who pleaded guilty earlier this year in Red Deer provincial court, was charged in October 2005 after RCMP, acting on an anonymous tip, searched his home. An agreed statement says that someone had broken into Mitchell's residence and taken a video camera. The camera, the tipster said, had images of child pornography and would be left on the steps of a church.
Police retrieved the camera and soon realized the burglar had videotaped a computer monitor displaying images of child pornography.
Following the address printed on the burglar's note, police seized computer equipment containing 13,315 pornographic images.
Child Porn
Growing Their Own
Toronto
A Canadian police search for marijuana grow operations mushroomed as officers discovered 22 units in a Toronto high rise were being used to cultivate the illegal drug, four times more than expected.
Police found over 6,000 marijuana plants worth an estimated street value of over C$6.0 million ($5.31 million) scattered throughout the 22 apartments in the north Toronto building.
Media reports said police were originally alerted to the marijuana operations last April when a fire broke out in one of the units.
Armed with search warrants for just five apartments in the 13-storey high rise, police discovered they had just scratched the surface.
Toronto
Market Manipulation
Oil Companies
You'd think it was Texas. Dusty roads course the scrubland toward oil tanks and warehouses. Beefy men talk oil over burritos at lunch. Like grazing herds, oil wells dip nonstop amid the tumbleweed - or even into the asphalt of a parking lot.
That's why the rumor sounded so wrong here in California's lower San Joaquin Valley, where petroleum has gushed up more riches than the whole gold rush. Why would Shell Oil Co. simply close its Bakersfield refinery? Why scrap a profit maker?
The company says it could make more money on other projects. It denies it intended to squeeze the market, as its critics would claim, to drive up gasoline profits at its other refineries in the region.
Whatever the truth in Bakersfield, an Associated Press analysis suggests that big oil companies have been crimping supplies in subtler ways across the country for years. And tighter supplies tend to drive up prices.
Oil Companies
17-Day Journey From Israel To UK
Ziggy The Cat
Ziggy the cat used up at least one of his nine lives after surviving for 17 days without food on a 2,300 mile voyage that took him from northern Israel to England.
The skinny white cat named after Ziggy Stardust -- the character created by David Bowie in the 1970s, because like the rock star he has one green and one blue eye -- made his epic trip as a stowaway in a 40-foot container.
His journey began when he wandered into a consignment of plastic goods which were then sealed in Afula in Israel and shipped from Haifa on October 31.
It ended when he emerged, exhausted, starving and dehydrated, at a warehouse in Whitworth in Lancashire on Friday.
Ziggy The Cat
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