'Best of TBH Politoons'
Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Jim Hightower: US CORPORATIONS SUPPORT CHINESE SUPPRESSION (jimhightower.com)
Yet, in China, U.S. high-tech corporations and investment bankers are enthusiastically exporting the very opposite of freedom: suppression. They are teaming up with the thuggish dictators in Beijing to establish an electronic police state there. U.S. firms are providing financing and surveillance technology to allow the regime to track, monitor, and tightly control the Chinese people - a "market" expected to top $43 billion.
Marisa Demarco: Alice Walker Opens Children's Eyes to Realities of War (alibi.com)
Kids and grownups everywhere are lucky Harper Collins was willing to print Why War is Never a Good Idea's thought-provoking eloquence.
Connie Tuttle: Breasts, stagnant water, desert destruction, voting machines: All offer hints our society's going insane (tucsonweekly.com)
In case you missed them, here is an assortment of news items--and observations about life in our post-housing-boom city--providing incontrovertible evidence we are all suffering from some as-yet-unnamed collective madness.
Tom Danehy: Got any job openings for a film-industry insider? (tucsonweekly.com)
There's a TV show on these days about really crappy jobs. I've never actually seen the show, but my son tells me that the host takes on a different dirty job each week. The show Alexander watched the other night had the guy building a compost heap consisting mainly of hay and ammonium nitrate, liberally lacing it with horse urine and then waiting until the internal temperature hit exactly 108 degrees, at which time mushroom seeds would be implanted. The mushrooms grow to full size in a matter of hours.,
Meghan Daum: Everyone's a 'genius' (latimes.com)
How is it that Albert Einstein is lumped into the same category as an NFL coach?
Patt Morrison: After 'yuck,' the farce of O.J. Simpson's book (latimes.com)
'If I Did It' reads like a self-absorbed counseling session.
Nobody's fool (guardian.co.uk)
Acting, writing, producing, directing - Armando Iannucci has done it all, and worked with some of the biggest names in British comedy. He talks to Tim Dowling about making The Thick of It, his love of blending the clever with the stupid, and how he almost became a civil servant.
'I head for the ditch' (guardian.co.uk)
In his 40-year career, Neil Young has always chosen the road less travelled. At 61, the journey continues. Burhan Wazir meets one of rock's true iconoclasts.
Gina Piccalo: 'Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull': A Primer (latimes.com)
Now that the veil of secrecy surrounding "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" has been breached - with hard drives and thousands of on-set photos missing and Lucasfilm lawyers swiftly squelching leaks - it's time to map the 13-year odyssey of the project - from hoax scripts and Atlantis plots to the rumors that continue to swirl around the production.
Carve Your Pumpkin (desmoinesregister.com)
Check the templates of the Presidential candidates.
School's back in session when the HBO comedy special ASSUME THE
POSITION WITH MR. WUHL comes to DVD on October 9th!
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Sunny and windy.
Addresses U.N.
Jim Carrey
Actor Jim Carrey urged the U.N. Security Council on Friday to ban all international arms shipments to Myanmar to pressure the country to end its brutal suppression of pro-democracy protesters and its detention of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
"This is a government that uses its weapons not in self defense, but against its own citizens," the actor/comedian told a news conference across the street from the United Nations.
"The time has come for the United Nations Security Council to start acting less like a group of corporations and more like united nations," he said, urging China and Russia -- Security Council members that have been resistant to sanctions -- as well as India to back the ban.
Jim Carrey
Stamps Honor
Distinguished Journalists
"These distinguished journalists risked their lives to report the events that shaped the modern world," said Postmaster General Jack Potter, who announced the stamp series at the Associated Press Managing Editors Meeting in Washington Friday. The stamps are due out next year.
-Martha Gellhorn, who covered the Spanish Civil War, World War II and the Vietnam War. Gellhorn found unusual ways to get the story. During World War II, she stowed away on a hospital ship in the D-Day fleet and went ashore as a stretcher bearer. She was married to writer Ernest Hemingway.
-John Hersey, whose most famous work "Hiroshima" described the effects of the atomic bomb dropped on that Japanese city on Aug. 6, 1945. What began as a New Yorker article was turned into a book.
-George Polk, a CBS radio reporter who covered civil war in Greece and whose murder in 1948 remains shrouded in mystery. Long Island University established the George Polk Awards a year later. The awards are among the most esteemed journalism honors.
-Ruben Salazar, a reporter and columnist for the Los Angeles Times and news director for the Spanish language television station KMEX in Los Angeles. He was killed by a tear gas projectile fired by a sheriff's deputy while covering anti-war rioting in 1970.
-Eric Sevareid, a newspaper reporter who later was recruited to CBS radio by Edward R. Murrow. Sevareid covered World War II, reporting on the fall of France to the Germans. He was an early critic of Sen. Joseph McCarthy's anti-communism campaign. In the 1960s and 70s, he was widely admired for his CBS television commentaries.
Distinguished Journalists
International Bluegrass Music Association Awards
Winners
Bluegrass Hall of Fame inductees
Carl Story and Howard Watts (Cedric Rainwater)
Entertainer of the year
The Grascals
Vocal group of the year
Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver
Instrumental group of the year
Michael Cleveland & Flamekeeper, featuring Audie Blaylock
Male vocalist of the year
Bradley Walker
Female vocalist of the year
Dale Ann Bradley
Song of the year
"Fork in the Road," The Infamous Stringdusters (artists), Chris Jones & John Pennell (songwriters)
Album of the year (tie)
Lefty's Old Guitar, J.D. Crowe & The New South (artists); Rounder Records; J.D. Crowe & The New South (producers)
Fork in the Road, The Infamous Stringdusters (artists), Sugar Hill Records, Tim Stafford & The Infamous Stringdusters (producers)
Recorded event of the year
Double Banjo Bluegrass Spectacular; Tony Trischka with Earl Scruggs, Kenny Ingram, Tom Adams, Bela Fleck, Noam Pikelny, Alison Brown, Scott Vestal, Steve Martin & Bill Emerson (artists); Rounder Records; Tony Trischka, Bela Fleck & Ronnie Freeland (producers)
Instrumental album of the year
Double Banjo Bluegrass Spectacular; Tony Trischka (artist); Rounder Records; Tony Trischka, Bela Fleck & Ronnie Freeland (producers)
For the rest - Winners
Thanks, JD!
Iconic Hong Kong Film Mogul
Run Run Shaw
One of Hong Kong cinema's defining and enigmatic figures, Run Run Shaw, popularized Chinese kung-fu films in the West and helped turn Hong Kong into a "Hollywood East" over an 80-year career.
Shaw, a Hong Kong film mogul who celebrates his 100th birthday this month -- built the prolific Shaw Brothers film empire and the TVB television and entertainment group.
He started out helping his elder brothers Runje, Runde and Renme set up a film studio in Shanghai in 1925. The brothers later moved into Hong Kong -- making and distributing films to its chain of around 100 cinemas spread across other Asian markets like Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand.
The Shaw studio produced up to a thousand titles including melodramas, historical epics and kung-fu classics like "The One-armed Swordsman" -- helping to redefine genres and lure new cinema-goers not only in Hong Kong and Asia, but in the West.
Run Run Shaw
Oprah's Next Book Club Pick
'Love in the Time of Cholera'
Oprah Winfrey has picked "Love in the Time of Cholera," the epic love story by Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez, as her next book club selection.
"Love in the Time of Cholera" tells of a love triangle that spans 50 years. A film version, directed by Mike Newell and starring Javier Bardem, is due out in November.
The Colombian-born Marquez won the Nobel prize for literature in 1982. His most famous work, "One Hundred Years of Solitude," was a previous selection for Winfrey's book club.
'Love in the Time of Cholera'
Original Painting Discovered
Utamaro Kitagawa
A rare original painting by Japanese woodblock print artist Utamaro Kitagawa has been found at the house of an elderly woman, whose husband bought it for less than 30 dollars decades ago.
The work by Utamaro (1753-1806), one of the greatest artists of traditional woodblock prints Ukiyo-e, was discovered while national network Japan Broadcasting Corporation (NHK) was working on a documentary on the artist, said Shugo Asano, who checked the painting's authenticity.
It had been kept by an elderly woman in rural Tochigi prefecture in central Japan. Only 30 of Utamaro's paintings are known to still be in existence, along with 2,000 woodblock prints, said Asano, head of the cultural section of the Chiba City Museum of Art.
Utamaro is best known for his portraits of female beauties often with erotic themes. His printed work is kept at various top venues including the British Museum, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.
Utamaro Kitagawa
Unrecorded Clock Egg
Faberge
A previously unrecorded egg by Russian jeweller Peter Carl Faberge containing a clock and animated cockerel goes on sale next month with a record price tag of up to nine million pounds.
The translucent pink egg has never been seen in public before and was not publicly documented when it was made in 1902 for the Rothschild family.
The Rothschild Faberge Egg, signed K. Faberge and dated 1902, was a gift from Beatrice Ephrussi -- a scion of the house of Rothschild -- to Germaine Halphen when she got engaged to Beatrice's younger brother Baron Edouard de Rothschild.
Faberge
Scandal Brewing
Oral Roberts U
Twenty years ago, televangelist Oral Roberts said he was reading a spy novel when God appeared to him and told him to raise $8 million for Roberts' university, or else he would be "called home."
Now, his son, Oral Roberts University President Richard Roberts, says God is speaking again, telling him to deny lurid allegations in a lawsuit that threatens to engulf this 44-year-old Bible Belt college in scandal.
Richard Roberts is accused of illegal involvement in a local political campaign and lavish spending at donors' expense, including numerous home remodeling projects, use of the university jet for his daughter's senior trip to the Bahamas, and a red Mercedes convertible and a Lexus SUV for his wife, Lindsay.
She is accused of dropping tens of thousands of dollars on clothes, awarding nonacademic scholarships to friends of her children and sending scores of text messages on university-issued cell phones to people described in the lawsuit as "underage males."
Oral Roberts U
Charged In `Indiana Jones' Theft
Roderick Eric Davis
A man arrested in connection with the theft of computers and photos from the upcoming "Indiana Jones" movie has been charged with receiving stolen property.
Roderick Eric Davis, 37, of Cerritos pleaded not guilty during his arraignment in Beverly Hills Superior Court on Thursday and was ordered held on $100,000 bail, a court clerk said.
Davis, who had prior convictions for burglary, grand theft and receiving stolen property, faces at least four years in prison if convicted in the latest case, prosecutors said.
The stolen items were "motion picture production budget and proofs" related to the fourth installment of the popular adventure series, prosecutors said.
Roderick Eric Davis
Slow Judge
Calvin Broadus
A judge hearing a lawsuit brought by Snoop Dogg against his former record label said Thursday she didn't realize it involved the famous rapper because court papers refer to him by his real name, Calvin Broadus.
"Now I realize who we're talking about here," Superior Court Judge Helen I. Bendix said on her first day hearing the case. "I didn't recognize the nonprofessional name, so to speak."
The judge recommended that the 35-year-old rapper and Priority Records put their contractual dispute before the court's case evaluation service. The service will give both sides a neutral idea of strengths and weaknesses of their case before it heads to trial, she said.
Calvin Broadus
Sues Bob Barker
Deborah Curling
A woman who worked on "The Price Is Right" for two decades has sued Bob Barker and the game show's producers, alleging they retaliated against her and forced her to quit after she testified against Barker.
Deborah Curling claimed she was in a "pleasant working environment" for many years screening contestants for the show, but that changed after she testified in a wrongful termination lawsuit brought against Barker by a former production assistant, according to her lawsuit filed Thursday in Superior Court.
Curling claimed she was demoted to working in an "intolerable" working environment in the back stage, forcing her to leave the show last fall.
Curling, who is black, also claimed a hostile work environment in which black employees and black contestants were discriminated against.
Deborah Curling
Fake Rolex Ordered Returned
O.J.
O.J. Simpson is getting his fake Rolex watch back. The timepiece, seized earlier this week by attorneys for Fred Goldman, was ordered returned to the former football star after it was determined to be a knockoff made in China.
Goldman has won a multimillion-dollar wrongful death judgment against Simpson, but the watch has so little value it falls under an exemption in the judgment excluding jewelry worth less than $6,075.
Goldman lawyer David Cook had hoped the watch might be worth as much as $22,000, but an appraisal from San Francisco jeweler Shreve & Co. concluded it was worth only about $100. Simpson had told his lawyer, Ronald Slates, he paid $125 for it.
O.J.
Quits Drugs (Again)
Tom Sizemore
Tom Sizemore says he's done with drugs. "I'm not trading my whole life for some powder," the actor said in a jailhouse interview published Friday.
Sizemore is currently serving time in Kern County for violating probation in a drug case after he was arrested in a Bakersfield hotel in May for methamphetamine found in his car. He'll be released in November.
The actor was charged with seven drug-related counts, but pleaded no contest to a charge of transporting drugs for personal use. He was sentenced Wednesday to treatment in a drug therapy program.
"God's trying to tell me he doesn't want me using drugs because every time I use them I get caught," Sizemore said.
Tom Sizemore
Won't Be Charged
Danny Bonaduce
Danny Bonaduce won't face charges for giving former "Survivor" contestant Johnny Fairplay a face-plant on stage at an awards show.
A charge evaluation document released by the district attorney's office Friday said there was "insufficient evidence" to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Bonaduce committed battery because Fairplay "initiated contact and acted offensively."
Fairplay, 33, said he underwent 2 1/2 hours of dental surgery after Bonaduce tossed him over his shoulders at the Fox Reality Channel's Really Awards on Tuesday.
Deputy District Attorney Jeffrey Boxer wrote that Bonaduce did not intentionally injure Fairplay and his "actions fell within the realm of self-defense."
Danny Bonaduce
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