'Best of TBH Politoons'
Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Mike Miliard: Howard Zinn Never Figured He'd Be in a Comic Book (Boston Phoenix)
But there he is in the new A People's History of American Empire, in which artist Mike Konopacki and historian Paul Buhle commingle the scholarship of Zinn's A People's History of the United States with the personal recollections of his memoir, You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train.
Andrew Mueller: "America, Corrected: Typo Vigilantes Check Spelling Coast to Coast" (Comment is Free)
The Typo Eradication Advancement League is on a heroic mission to correct America's misspelled signs.
Annalee Newitz: Does the Microsoft-Yahoo! Merger Threaten Google?
Probably not. But users have a lot of bland, corporate offerings to look forward to.
Fighting for the Franchise (thenation.com)
National syndicated radio host, Tom Joyner, appeared before the House Administration Committee on Wednesday, testifying on continuing voting problems as documented by his 1-866-MY-VOTE-1 hotline during the primary season.
JAMES H. EWERT JR.: Adbusters' Ads Busted (inthesetimes.com)
Kalle Lasn is a fighter for the right to communicate. A privilege, says the founder of Adbusters magazine, that goes one step farther than the freedom of speech.
Jim Hightower: "THE OLYMPICS: LET THE SPYING BEGIN" (jimhightower.com)
It's another Olympic year - that quadrennial spectacular of athletic prowess, international goodwill and government spying on all who attend.
Erin O'Brien: "'Leaving Las Vegas': Rearview" (Cleveland Free Times)
A lifetime of struggle went into John O'Brien's most famous work.
DAN RAPER: "NOW HEAR THIS!: Alan Wilkis [Brooklyn, NY]" (popmatters.com)
Unlike many of his fellow Brooklynites, whose boundary-pushing is an aesthetic in and of itself, Alan Wilkis has no fear of pop. He marries strains of the mainstream past into a broad, genre-jumping whole that is quite unique.
Jordan Levin: Indie singer follows her passions from North Miami to Latin music success (McClatchy Newspapers)
MIAMI - When Rosanna Tavarez was a little girl in New York's Washington Heights, she'd have dance parties with her Dominican father on Friday nights, picking out the records and singing and dancing along with Earth, Wind and Fire and the Fania All-Stars.
Roger Moore: After taking on McDonald's, Morgan Spurlock went after Osama Bin Laden (The Orlando Sentinel)
It took 14 months to lose the 25 or so pounds he gained by living "large" for his first-person documentary, "Super Size Me." But for his latest movie trick, Morgan Spurlock tried something that could have killed him a lot faster than two all-beef patties.
Joseph Amodio: "Fast chat: Uma Thurman on 'The Life Before Her Eyes'" (Newsday)
Uma Thurman has always been a standout. Her name, the whole 6-foot-tall thing, those arresting, angular features, all guaranteed she'd get noticed.
Brian Villalobos: The Harold & Kumar Fellas Talk Politics and False Ladyparts (San Antonio Current)
Neil Patrick Harris included!
Adbusters
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Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Sunny and cooler.
More Surgery
Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert hopes to make it to his annual namesake film festival next week despite hip surgery. The 65-year-old film critic was recovering Friday at a Chicago hospital from minor hip surgery after a recent fall.
"The show must go on," Ebert said in a statement posted on his Web site. "I am doing fine and if the doctors clear me, I will be there to welcome our guests."
Scheduled guests at the 10th annual Roger Ebert Film Festival include Ang Lee, Richard Roeper, Richard Corliss and Christine Lahti.
The 2008 "Ebertfest" - sponsored by the critic's alma mater, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign - will be held April 23-27.
Roger Ebert
Do-Gooders Fail in Poll
Celebrities
Fifty-one percent of Americans say celebrities make little or no positive difference to the issues they promote while 45 percent say they have a large or some positive influence, according to a new survey.
Oprah Winfrey was seen as the best champion of causes with 49 percent of those surveyed in the Harris Poll saying she was very effective at raising awareness. The others in the top five were Bono (32 percent), Angelina Jolie (31 percent), Brad Pitt (23 percent) and George Clooney (22 percent).
Younger people were more likely than older people to believe celebrities make a positive difference, and Democrats (55 percent) more likely than Republicans (36 percent) to feel the same, Harris said in a statement.
Forty-seven percent said it was bad for celebrities to endorse political candidates.
Celebrities
Music Awards Derailed
Soul Train
It's the end of the line for the Soul Train Music Awards, which have largely been ignored by the African-American stars the event aims to honor.
A spokeswoman said the show would not go ahead with its 22nd annual installment this year, but a reason was not specified.
At last year's event in Pasadena, most of the winners did not show up, including such A-listers as Beyonce Knowles, Mary J. Blige, John Legend and Gnarls Barkley.
Soul Train
Canada's Best
Meow Records
Meow Records in Prince George, B.C., has picked up the title of Canada's Best Record Store.
The store was one of 47 entrants in a CBC Radio 3 online contest, which asked thousands of fans to vote for their favourite independent record store.
Thirty-year-old Bryndis Ogmundson opened the successful shop just 16 months ago, in spite of mounting evidence that CD sales were in sharp decline.
The contest, Searchlight, was part of Saturday's Record Store Day that will see dozens of music vendors across Canada hosting in-house performances.
Meow Records
Not Aztec
Crystal Skull
As Indiana Jones gets set to hit cinema screens with a new death-defying adventure in the "Kingdom of the Crystal Skull", a Paris museum acknowledged Friday that its own star exhibit crystal skull was not what it was cracked up to be.
One of only a dozen such skulls known to exist worldwide, the Quai Branly museum's piece was acquired in 1878 from an Indiana Jones-type explorer, Alphonse Pinart, as an Aztec masterpiece believed to be hundreds of years old, the remnant of an ancient and mysterious civilisation.
But in a statement Friday the museum admitted the skull, rather than dating from the Aztec period, was probably made in the 19th century.
Legend has it that the Paris skull represents the Aztecs' Mictlantecuhtli, who reigned over the land of the deceased, Mictlan. Reuniting all 12 existing skulls plus a supposed-to-exist 13th could prevent the earth from tipping over, according to fable.
Crystal Skull
CNN Reporter Arrested in Central Park
Richard Quest
A CNN reporter was arrested Friday in Central Park with a small amount of methamphetamine in his pocket, but he avoided jail time by agreeing to undergo drug counseling and therapy.
Richard Quest, 46, was arrested around 3:40 a.m. on a count of possession of a controlled substance - a misdemeanor that usually refers to a personal use amount of a drug. He was also charged with loitering; the park officially closes at 1 a.m.
When police saw and detained Quest, he told them, "I've got some meth in my pocket," according to the complaint filed in court. The complaint said he had a plastic sandwich bag containing methamphetamine in a jacket pocket.
Quest, who is British, is a correspondent for CNN International and is known for his reports on business travel. He hosts "CNN Business Traveler" and "Quest."
Richard Quest
Chimpy In Ratings Stunt
'Deal or No Deal'
A presidential thank-you is part of the deal for a contestant on NBC's game show, "Deal or No Deal," when resident Bush makes a surprise appearance.
The episode, airing Monday, features Capt. Joseph Kobes, as he attempts to win enough cash to pay off his parents' home. But the dealmaking is briefly halted for Kobes, a Purple Heart and Bronze Star recipient who has served in Iraq three times. Bush surprises him by appearing on a screen to express gratitude for his service and wish him luck in the game.
Bush's message was taped at the White House.
No details were released on how Kobes, an Army transportation officer from Sumner, Wash., fared in his quest for the jackpot.
'Deal or No Deal'
Freed From Prison
Foxy Brown
Foxy Brown was freed from a New York City prison on Friday after serving eight months of a one-year sentence stemming from an assault of two nail salon stylists over a $20 manicure.
Brown, 29, whose real name is Inga Marchand, was sentenced to three years' probation in October 2006 for assaulting the stylists. But in September 2007 a judge ruled she was not taking probation seriously and sent her prison for one year.
Inmates typically serve two-thirds of their sentence, said Stephen Morello, a Department of Corrections spokesman, adding that Brown had been released and driven from the Rikers Island prison by New York City Councilman Charles Barron.
He said this was a highly unusual move as inmates are usually taken from prison on a public bus and delivered to a city parking lot. But he said that as a public official, Barron had access to prison and had requested to pick up Brown.
Foxy Brown
Splits With Publisher Over Plagiarism Claims
Cassie Edwards
Romance writer Cassie Edwards and publisher Signet Books have decided to break up after allegations emerged in January that she lifted passages in several of her books from other sources.
"Signet has conducted an extensive review of all its Cassie Edwards novels and due to irreconcilable editorial differences, Ms. Edwards and Signet have mutually agreed to part ways," the publisher said in a statement Friday.
A romance novel Web site called Smart B------, Trashy Books posted excerpts in January from Edwards' novels and placed them alongside similar passages from reference books and magazines.
Cassie Edwards
Caught Fudging Reality
'Deadliest Catch'
Tuesday's fourth-season premiere of Discovery Channel's "Deadliest Catch" opens during a raging nighttime storm in the Bering Sea. Mammoth waves smash an Alaskan crab fishing boat called the Wizard, sending large swells crashing over its deck. Inside, alarmed crew members discover that their stateroom is flooding with incoming seawater.
But here's the not-so-deadliest catch:
The boat flooded in September.
The huge storm waves were from October.
'Deadliest Catch'
In Memory
Joseph Solman
Joseph Solman, an artist for the Works Progress Administration who painted vivid images of New York street scenes and along with Mark Rothko helped found an influential arts group in the 1930s, has died at age 99.
A master colorist, Solman could turn ordinary scenes of such things as ice cellars, gas stations and windows into objects of beauty.
He attended the Art Students League and the National Academy of Design, but said he learned more by sketching while riding the city's subways and buses. Among his best-known works are the "Subway Gouaches," images of people in different poses on the New York subways.
In the 1930s and 1940s, Solman worked for the WPA, where he met and worked with many established artists, including Jackson Pollock and Milton Avery.
He founded the art group Ten with Rothko and Adolph Gottlieb in the 1930s as a protest against the mainstream art of American scenic painters. At about the same time, Solman became editor-in-chief of Art Front magazine, introducing photography to its pages.
In the 1950s, with the art scene dominated by abstract expressionism, Solman joined with Edward Hopper and Jack Levine to found Reality, an art publication opposed to any one theory about how an artist should paint.
Joseph Solman
In Memory
Danny Federici
Danny Federici, the longtime keyboard player for Bruce Springsteen whose stylish work helped define the E Street Band's sound on hits from "Hungry Heart" through "The Risingpent," died Thursday. He was 58.
Federici was born in Flemington, N.J., a long car ride from the Jersey shore haunts where he first met kindred musical spirit Springsteen in the late 1960s. The pair often jammed at the Upstage Club in Asbury Park, N.J., a now-defunct after-hours club that hosted the best musicians in the state.
It was Federici, along with original E Street Band drummer Vini Lopez, who first invited Springsteen to join their band.
By 1969, the self-effacing Federici - often introduced in concert by Springsteen as "Phantom Dan" - was playing with the Boss in a band called Child. Over the years, Federici joined his friend in acclaimed shore bands Steel Mill, Dr. Zoom and the Sonic Boom and the Bruce Springsteen Band.
Federici became a stalwart in the E Street Band as Springsteen rocketed from the boardwalk to international stardom. Springsteen split from the E Streeters in the late '80s, but they reunited for a hugely successful tour in 1999.
Besides his work with Springsteen, Federici played on albums by an impressive roster of other artists: Van Zandt, Joan Armatrading, Graham Parker, Gary U.S. Bonds and Garland Jeffreys.
Danny Federici
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