'Best of TBH Politoons'
Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Mark Morford: The great Barack Obama insurrection (sfgate.com)
Hillary was ready. Hillary was unstoppable. Hillary was, by all accounts, a lock. What the hell happened?
BOB THOMAS: Harvey Korman Dies At 81 (AP)
Harvey Korman, the tall, versatile comedian who won four Emmys for his outrageously funny contributions to "The Carol Burnett Show" and played a conniving politician to hilarious effect in "Blazing Saddles," died Thursday. He was 81.
Will Harris: The Many Talents of Penn Jillette (bullz-eye.com)
"Even though we were offered more money to play in Vegas than to be on the road, even though we had the possibility of normal relationships being in Vegas instead of being on the road, it was really a dislike for TSA that really cinched the deal."
EDWARD ROTHSTEIN: Antiquities, the World Is Your Homeland (nytimes.com)
To what culture does the concept of "cultural property" belong? Who owns this idea?
DREW FORTUNE: "Not Another Winter: An Interview With Mark Eitzel " (Popmatters.com)
American Music Club's Mark Eitzel discusses entropy, violence, and why touring sucks. Just don't call him a miserablist!
Rachel Campbell-Johnston: Fat lady sings for Beryl Cook, the painter who loved loud society (entertainment.timesonline.co.uk)
Who more accurately captures the essence of our English vulgarities? In future years, historians will be able to reconstruct a picture of our society from her works. And yet, the more you think about it, the more it starts to feel as if her pictures might not in fact find the right home in the Tate. Cook did not set out to probe passionate depths or explore urban dystopias or take spiritual flights.
Glenn Garvin: Barbara Walters' bumpy ride to the top of TV land (McClatchy Newspapers)
She left "The Today Show" where everybody loved her for an anchor chair on an evening newscast. After months of hype over her gender and her paycheck, half the country tuned in to watch the first night. But the viewers never came back. The show stayed in a distant third place, right where it was before the network spent all that money on her, and soon the critics began sniping about her delivery, her interviews and - as if it were some kind of sin against journalism - her salary. Soon it wasn't a question of whether the plug would be pulled on her show, but when.
Will Harris: A Chat with Julie Benz (bullz-eye.com)
"I spend most of ('Rambo') covered in dirt. I'm very thankful that they don't have Smell-O-Vision, because we were one stinky bunch by the end of the movie!"
I'll never forgive Mommie (film.guardian.co.uk)
In 1978 Christina Crawford exposed her filmstar mother Joan as a cruel, abusive alcoholic in the memoir "Mommie Dearest." On the book's reissue, she gives her first interview in a decade to Elizabeth Day.
Jonathan Flax: A Chat with John Cusack (bullz-eye.com)
Cusack called Bullz-Eye from London to talk politics, genre-deconstruction, Hillary Duff, and why this surreal political cartoon is actually very pro-American.
Roger Ebert: "In Memory: Sydney Pollack"
Sydney Pollack, who directed some of the best mainstream films of the last 40 years and acted in some of the others, is dead at 73. He died Monday of cancer at home, in Pacific Palisades, according to a friend.
Dave Weich: Philip Pullman Reaches the Garden (Powells.com; from 2000)
I read Pullman's "His Dark Materials" trilogy back-to-back-to-back in the weeks preceding this conversation. By the time I'd reached the middle of the first book, "The Golden Compass," I was content to exist half in my own world and half in Philip Pullman's. It seemed appropriate, if somewhat perplexing to casual acquaintances. Extending my arm in front of my body, holding an imaginary sharp instrument in my hand, I would show whomever would tolerate me how Will used the subtle knife to cut into other worlds.
Cut Back on Your Junk Mail
A: Gene Autry
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Sunny and pleasant.
Calls For China, G8 Action On Darfur
George Clooney
Actor George Clooney called Saturday for China and other major countries to raise the pressure on Sudan to end the bloodshed in Darfur.
Writing in a special Africa edition of Japan's Asahi Shimbun guest-edited by rock stars Bono and Bob Geldof, Clooney said the international community has failed to show resolve on Darfur.
China is Sudan's largest energy partner and last year helped persuade Sudan's President Omar al-Beshir to accept a joint United Nations-Africa Union peacekeeping force in Darfur.
He also called for action by Japan when it hosts the July 7-9 summit of the Group of Eight top industrial powers. Japan held talks with Beshir when he visited for a major Africa development summit that closed Friday in Yokohama.
George Clooney
Hollywood Walk O'Fame Star Unveiled
Holly Hunter
Actress Holly Hunter has been immortalized in concrete, receiving the 2, 363rd star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Director Steven Spielberg and tennis great Billie Jean King were among those on hand Friday as Hunter's star was unveiled on Hollywood Boulevard. Spielberg directed Hunter in the movie "Always" and the actress portrayed King in a 2001 TV movie.
She called it "an unbelievable honour" for her star to share the same boulevard with those of Spielberg, Marlon Brando and other movie greats.
Holly Hunter
Husband Is Shuttle Commander
Rep. Gabrielle Giffords
With her husband in command of space shuttle Discovery and on the verge of launching, Rep. Gabrielle Giffords wanted to set the record straight.
She wasn't at the NASA launch site as a member of Congress. She was there "strictly as the spouse" - the new wife of commander Mark Kelly - and just as excited and nervous as any of the other astronauts' family members.
This was her third shuttle launch in attendance: She was at Kelly's last liftoff, in 2006, and at her brother-in-law Scott Kelly's launch last August.
Mark and Scott Kelly, by the way, are identical twins. Both are shuttle commanders and Navy officers.
Rep. Gabrielle Giffords
Music's Healing Power
Oliver Sacks
Noted neurologist Oliver Sacks has found common ground with the pastor of Harlem's Abyssinian Baptist Church: Both men believe in the healing power of music.
Sacks, the best-selling author of "Awakenings" and "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat," was to share the church stage Saturday with the famed gospel choir as part of the inaugural World Science Festival, a five-day celebration of science taking place in New York this week.
Sacks' most recent book is "Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain," which examines the relationship between music and the brain, including its healing effect on people suffering from such diseases as Tourette's syndrome, Parkinson's, autism and Alzheimer's.
A Baptist church is an unusual venue for Sacks, a professor of clinical neurology and clinical psychiatry at Columbia University Medical Center who was brought up Jewish but is not a religious believer.
But the central role of music in church makes Abyssinian a good place to discuss the myriad ways that music affects the human brain, said Sacks, who was played by Robin Williams in the movie version of "Awakenings."
Oliver Sacks
Wedding News
Mueller - Sheen
Charlie Sheen tied the knot with fiancée Brooke Mueller Friday night, said publicist Stan Rosenfield, who declined to give more details.
The 42-year-old actor and Mueller, a real estate investor, have been engaged since last summer.
Mueller - Sheen
Home At Center Of Lawsuit Destroyed
50 Cent
A multimillion-dollar home at the center of a bitter dispute between 50 Cent and the mother of his son was destroyed by a suspicious fire early Friday.
Six people, including 50's ex-girlfriend Shaniqua Tompkins and their 10-year-old son, Marquise, were taken to a hospital after suffering smoke inhalation and later released. A firefighter also suffered a minor eye injury, officials said.
50, whose real name is Curtis Jackson, doesn't live in the home and wasn't there at the time.
Investigators from the Suffolk County arson squad were called to the scene after Dix Hills Fire Chief Larry Feld deemed the blaze suspicious. The fire was reported at 4:59 a.m. and was extinguished about 45 minutes later, Feld said. The arson squad had finished its work at the scene six hours after the blaze.
50 Cent
Argentina Shoot
Francis Ford Coppola
Francis Ford Coppola resumed shooting his latest film Thursday after a six-day hiatus prompted by a labor complaint from the actors' union, the organization's director said. But Coppola's spokeswoman, Kathleen Talbert, disputed the information, saying in an e-mail to The Associated Press that the production "was never shut down by the union and has shot every day that was scheduled."
Argentine Association of Actors spokesman Daniel Valenzuela told the AP last week that the five-time Oscar winner, who directed "Apocalypse Now" and "The Godfather" trilogy, was forced to suspend shooting "Tetro" May 22 because of complaints from the union. The association claimed that his production studio had not presented the necessary paperwork for Argentine actors involved in the movie.
"The problem is solved," Association head Norberto Gonzalo said Thursday. "The production company has presented all the required documents and begun shooting again."
"Tetro," which deals with the struggles of an Italian family in Argentina, is in its ninth week of shooting in Buenos Aires. It's scheduled for release in spring 2009.
Francis Ford Coppola
Turns TV Chat Show Host
Natascha Kampusch
Natascha Kampusch, the Austrian who spent eight years locked in a windowless cell after being abducted in Vienna, turns TV chat show host on Sunday when her debut program airs on national television.
In "Natascha Kampusch meets..." Kampusch, whose case returned to the spotlight after revelations that another Austrian woman spent 24 years locked in a cellar, interviews former Austrian motor racing star Niki Lauda, who comments they have both had extreme lives.
"Of course I have realized I will always be different, but what I have experienced hasn't affected me in the way people think," Kampusch tells Lauda in the pre-recorded show which was screened to journalists on Friday.
The first of six episodes of the monthly chat show is to be broadcast at prime time on the private PULS 4 channel.
Natascha Kampusch
Consults Astrologers
King Gyanendra
Nepal's ousted King Gyanendra is looking for a house and consulting astrologers to find out when to quit the palace after a special assembly abolished the monarchy, newspaper reports published on Saturday said.
A historic assembly vote on Wednesday turned Nepal into a republic and gave deposed King Gyanendra two weeks to leave the sprawling Narayanhity palace in the heart of the capital.
Gyanendra has not commented so far about the end of the 239-year-old monarchy, but state-run daily Gorkhapatra quoted a senior palace official as telling a government minister that the deposed monarch would "honour" the assembly vote.
The independent daily Naya Patrika said the 60-year-old Gyanendra did not want to leave the palace until early July when an astrological "dark" phase is due to end.
King Gyanendra
Reports "UFO" Explosion
Vietnam
An unidentified flying object exploded in mid-air over a southern Vietnamese island, state media said Wednesday, a day after Cambodia's air force retracted a report of a mysterious plane crash.
The Vietnam News Agency said residents of Phu Quoc island, 10 km (6 miles) off the coast of the Cambodian province of Kampot, found shards of grey metal, including one 1.5 meters (1.5 yards) long.
"The explosion happened at about 8 km (5 miles) above the ground, and perhaps it was a plane, but authorities could not identify whether it was a civil or military aircraft," VNA said in a report headlined "UFO explodes over Phu Quoc Island."
Soldiers were sent out to look for wreckage and survivors, and local authorities contacted airlines in Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand, but received no reports of missing aircraft, the official state news agency added.
Vietnam
| CURRENT MOON lunar phases |
