'Best of TBH Politoons'
Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Froma Harrop: In Praise of Rich Liberals (creators.com)
Nancy Pelosi clearly enjoys the best in tailoring and dentistry. Rich liberals like having money as much as anyone else. They just don't need to have all of it. Go ahead and call Pelosi an elitist divorced from the lives of working people. Working people obviously didn't see it that way last November, and her legislative agenda for the first 100 hours should not change their minds.
Molly Ivins: Stand up against the surge (heraldtribune.com)
The purpose of this old-fashioned newspaper crusade to stop the war is not to make George W. Bush look like the dumbest president ever. People have done dumber things. What were they thinking when they bought into the Bay of Pigs fiasco? How dumb was the Egypt-Suez war? How massively stupid was the entire war in Vietnam?
Betsy Hart: Happiness may be closer than you think
Is happiness all in your head? (jewishworldreview.com)
Mary Hunt : What's in your wallet? (jewishworldreview.com)
You reach for your wallet or purse and find nothing. Gone! Your mind races to the last time you remember having it. You're frantic as you think of what might be in it: credit cards, debit card, ATM card, cash, Social Security card, driver's license. Your first response is to feel slightly nauseated, followed by shrieking, "What will I do?"
Sheerly Avni: Ten Ways to Make Hollywood Hate Your Cinematic Masterpiece (Truthdig; Posted on AlterNet.org)
How do you make the best movie of the year -- possibly the decade -- and still get pummeled at the box office by Ben Stiller and a CGI dinosaur? Hollywood's complete obsession with the box office is the answer.
Tristan Taormino: AVN Adult Entertainment Expo, Day 2 (villagevoice.com)
Meet the porn-industry buyer
Nicole Hollander: Cartoon: Sylvia (womensenews.org)
Hubert's Poetry Corner
PoRNOGRAPHER ExPLOITING EmAIL PoWERS
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Cold for these parts - even have a freeze warning here on the coast tonight.
Baron Dave's missive from last Sunday still hasn't shown up in my AOL mailbox.
Complete List Of Winners
Critics' Choice Awards
"Little Miss Sunshine," the heartwarming story about family dysfunction, and the musical "Dreamgirls," led winners at the 12th annual Critics' Choice Awards on Friday night.
The awards were presented by the Broadcast Film Critics Association at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium. Presenters included Penelope Cruz, Toni Collette, Steven Spielberg and Spike Lee.
The complete list of winners:
Picture: "The Departed"
Actor: Forest Whitaker, "The Last King of Scotland"
Actress: Helen Mirren, "The Queen"
Supporting Actor: Eddie Murphy, "Dreamgirls"
Supporting Actress: Jennifer Hudson, "Dreamgirls"
Acting Ensemble: "Little Miss Sunshine"
Director: Martin Scorsese, "The Departed"
Writer: Michael Arndt, "Little Miss Sunshine"
Animated Feature: "Cars"
Young Actor: Paul Dano, "Little Miss Sunshine"
Young Actress: Abigail Breslin, "Little Miss Sunshine"
Comedy: "Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan"
Family Film (live action): "Charlotte's Web"
Picture Made for Television: "Elizabeth I"
Foreign Language Film: "Letters from Iwo Jima"
Song: "Listen," Beyonce, from the film "Dreamgirls"
Soundtrack: "Dreamgirls"
Composer: Philip Glass, "The Illusionist"
Documentary Feature: "An Inconvenient Truth"
Critics' Choice Awards
PA Inaugural Concert
Bon Jovi
Bon Jovi will headline a slate of entertainers with strong Pennsylvania ties for Gov. Ed Rendell's inauguration, the Democrat's inaugural committee said Saturday.
Also scheduled to perform at Tuesday's $100-per-ticket concert are former teen idol Frankie Avalon and The Trammps of disco fame.
The concert will be held at the Pennsylvania Farm Show complex in Harrisburg after the Democrat is sworn in for his second four-year term.
Bon Jovi
Bravo Cancels
Queer Eye
Five seasons after kicking off a male grooming revolution-and spurring untold amounts of hair gel sales-Queer Eye's Fab Five are officially disbanding.
Bravo made the announcement Friday that this summer's 10-episode run will be the series' last.
Make-better engineers Kyan Douglas, Thom Filicia, Ted Allen, Carson Kressley and Jai Rodriguez made their prime-time debut on July 15, 2003, and quickly manscaped their way into the hearts of Middle America.
Queer Eye
Life Time Deal From PBS
Ken Burns
PBS essentially has given a lifetime contract to documentarian Ken Burns, whose upcoming 14-hour series on World War II was described by network chief Paula Kerger Saturday as his greatest work.
Burns, essentially the nation's highest-profile documentarian since his series "The Civil War" created a sensation, has agreed to air his work exclusively on PBS until 2022, the network said. Burns is 53 now.
Burns has projects in the works about the National Parks system and Prohibition, she said.
Ken Burns
Canadian TV Hit
'Little Mosque on the Prairie'
The creators of a new Canadian sitcom, "Little Mosque on the Prairie," are hoping the TV show will strike a chord beyond the country's borders as it portrays Muslims in a new light: funny.
The comedy, about a small Muslim community in the fictional Prairie town of Mercy, aired on Canadian television this week to mostly favorable reviews and spectacular ratings.
"Laughter is a universal language," said Zarqa Nawaz, the hijab-wearing creator of the show whose previous films include "BBQ Muslims" and "Real Terrorists Don't Belly Dance."
The program drew 2.1 million viewers in its debut, surpassing average CBC show viewership of 500,000 to 1 million, according to Kirstine Layfield, the CBC's executive director of network programming.
'Little Mosque on the Prairie'
NBC Universal (GE) Launching New Network
Chiller
Chiller, a new network devoted exclusively to horror movies and series, will crawl up from the crypt on March 1. The specialty network is being launched by NBC Universal Cable Entertainment.
The series "Friday the 13th," "Twin Peaks," "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" and "Tales from the Crypt" will be on the lineup at first. The network hasn't announced any original series.
The satellite service DirecTV is, so far, the only carrier to say it will carry Chiller. The network will also be presented as a triple-pack service, with separate high definition and on-demand channels.
Chiller
Another Catch 22
Justice Department
The Justice Department is fighting in court to keep secret a government report concluding that it leaked confidential and damaging information against a former prosecutor accused of bungling a high-profile terror trial.
Justice attorneys say they can't disclose all the contents of the December 2004 report by the department's inspector general without violating employees' privacy.
However, ex-Assistant U.S. Attorney Richard G. Convertino of Detroit said the Justice Department violated his own privacy rights by revealing to the media that he was the subject of an internal ethics inquiry after he criticized the Bush administration's counterterrorism strategy.
Two people who have seen the full report confirmed it rules out Convertino as a suspect in the leak case. Those people described the report's findings to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because it is sealed under a Justice Department protective order.
Justice Department
British Ballerina Tilts Right
Simone Clarke
Around 50 protesters shouting the slogan "Ballet not bigotry!" staged a noisy protest on Friday outside a London theater where a ballerina and member of a far-right British political party was performing.
The demonstration outside the Coliseum threatened to upset the genteel world of pirouettes and arabesques as Simone Clarke prepared to play the lead in the romantic classic "Giselle."
The English National Ballet's principal dancer was named in a newspaper last month as a member of the British National Party (BNP), a minority anti-immigration party.
Campaign group Unite Against Fascism called for Clarke, 36, to stand down, saying she has been used to "promote and prettify extreme right-wing politics."
Simone Clarke
Long Island Estate Finally Sells
Andy Warhol
Never mind 15 minutes of fame. It took a half-dozen years for Andy Warhol's Long Island estate to finally sell.
The pop art icon's 5.6-acre property in Montauk, at the fashionable eastern tip of Long Island, was bought by Millard Drexler, the chief executive of clothing retailer J. Crew, Newsday reported Saturday.
Along with a three-car garage and a stable for four horses, the main house - one of five - has seven bedrooms, 4.5 baths and four fireplaces. The property has 600 feet of oceanfront.
Andy Warhol
Real Court Room Drama
John Grisham
Best-selling author John Grisham and a couple he knows must answer allegations that they deliberately caused a woman's emotional problems by accusing her of sending them anonymous letters, the Virginia Supreme Court ruled Friday.
In a 6-1 ruling, the court reinstated Katharine Almy's lawsuit against Grisham, Alan Swanson - a teacher at a private school were Grisham served on the board of directors - and Swanson's wife, Donna.
A judge had dismissed the lawsuit after reviewing a deposition by a mental health professional who treated Almy. The justices, however, ruled Almy had stated allegations sufficient to hold a trial on her claim of intentional infliction of emotional distress.
Almy alleges the defendants persuaded authorities to send a police officer to Almy's home to confront her, which she says caused her severe emotional problems.
John Grisham
Hunt For Painting Resumes
Da Vinci
A real-life Da Vinci mystery, complete with tantalizing clues and sharp art sleuths, may soon be solved, as researchers resume the search for a lost Leonardo masterpiece believed to be hidden within a wall in a Florence palace.
Culture Minister Francesco Rutelli and officials in the Tuscan city announced this week they had given approval for renewed exploration in the Palazzo Vecchio, the seat of power for various Florence rulers, including the Medici family in the 16th century. There, some researchers believe, a cavity in a wall may have preserved Leonardo's unfinished painted mural of the "Battle of Anghiari" for more than four centuries.
The search for the Renaissance masterpiece began about 30 years ago, when the art researcher Maurizio Seracini noticed a cryptic message painted on one of the frescoes decorating the "Hall of the 500."
"Cerca, trova" - "seek and you shall find" - said the words on a tiny green flag in the "Battle of Marciano in the Chiana Valley," one of the military scenes painted by the 16th-century artist Giorgio Vasari.
Da Vinci
In Memory
Robert Anton Wilson
Robert Anton Wilson, co-author of the cult classic "The Illuminatus! Trilogy," a science-fiction series about a secret global society, has died. He was 74.
Wilson died peacefully of natural causes at his home Thursday in Capitola in Santa Cruz County, his daughter Christina Pearson said Saturday.
Post-polio syndrome had severely weakened Wilson's legs, leading to a fall seven months ago that left him bedridden until his death, Pearson said.
Wilson wrote 35 books on subjects such as extrasensory perception, mental telepathy, metaphysics, paranormal experiences, conspiracy theory, sex, drugs and what he called quantum psychology.
He wrote the "Illuminatus" trilogy with his friend Robert Shea in the late 1960s, when they were both editors at Playboy.
The books "The Eye in the Pyramid," "The Golden Apple" and "Leviathan" were all published in 1975. They never hit the best-seller lists, but have never gone out of print. Shea died in 1994.
After completing the trilogy, Mr. Wilson began writing nonfiction books.
Born in Brooklyn 1932, Wilson attended Brooklyn Polytechnical College and New York University. He worked as an engineering aide, a salesman and a copywriter, and was an associate editor at Playboy from 1965 to 1971.
Besides his daughter Christina, Wilson is survived by another daughter and a son. His wife of 39 years, Arlen Riley, died in 1999.
Robert Anton Wilson
Paul Krassner: Literary Loss
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