'Best of TBH Politoons'
Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Dan Savage Comes Out As "Not Gay" (villagevoice.com)
Finally, part of the thrill of public sex is the delicious danger, the exquisite risk, the trouble you know you'll get into if you're caught. So it's hard to have much sympathy when someone who is aroused by the risk of discovery is discovered. It wouldn't be a career-destroying event for an out gay man today-like, say, a George Michael. It would, however, be career destroying for gay-bashing, straight-identified hypocrites like, say, Senator Craig.
Mark Morford: Just How Gay Is The GOP? (sfgate.com)
Sen. Larry 'Wide Stance' Craig, just another in a long daisy chain of happy homoevidence.
Roger Ebert: Shoot 'em up (R; 3 1/2 stars)
I don't need a lot of research to be confident in stating that never before have I seen a movie open with the hero delivering a baby during a gun battle, severing the umbilical cord with a gunshot, and then killing a villain by penetrating his brain with a raw carrot. Yes, a carrot will do that in this movie. It will do a lot of things.
Roger Ebert: 3:10 to Yuma (R; 4 stars)
James Mangold's "3:10 to Yuma" restores the wounded heart of the Western and rescues it from the morass of pointless violence. The Western in its glory days was often a morality play, a story about humanist values penetrating the lawless anarchy of the frontier. It still follows that tradition in films like Eastwood's "The Unforgiven," but the audience's appetite for morality plays and Westerns seems to be fading.
Cole Haddon: Russell Crowe and Christian Bale Discuss '3:10 to Yuma' (sacurrent.com)
The original 3:10 to Yuma, released in 1957, is one of those Westerns that, on a lazy Sunday afternoon, you might catch on AMC while flipping channels, get sucked into, and, at the end of it, wonder, "How the hell have I never heard of this movie before? It should be a classic like High Noon!"
GLENN SUMI: Laura Linney (nowtoronto.com)
Two-time Oscar nominee and indie scene fave turns in her most savage performance yet
Judith Lewis: Jodie Foster Discusses 'The Brave One' (laweekly.com)
There was a time in Foster's life when she was on the verge of giving up acting. She no longer found it rewarding, this business of saying someone else's lines as if they were her own; she found herself wishing for a profession that would challenge her and make use of her considerable analytical gifts.
Mike Ives: Missing Moment (sevendaysvt.com)
A young writer remembers writer Grace Paley.
"Sylvia," by Nicole Hollander (womensenews.org)
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Feels like fall.
Gala At Oprah's
Obama
Oprah Winfrey was rolling out the red carpet Saturday for Barack Obama and the high-wattage stars invited to a gala "celebration" expected to raise $3 million for the Democratic presidential hopeful.
The most powerful woman in show business was set to celebrate her favourite candidate at her palatial estate in this coastal enclave south of Santa Barbara. Tickets to the sold-out private event went for $2,300 apiece, keeping them within campaign finance limits. Stevie Wonder was scheduled to perform for the guests, who were expected to include actors Will Smith, Jamie Foxx and Halle Berry.
Obama already enjoys the support of Hollywood moguls like David Geffen and Jeffrey Katzenberg, and Winfrey's fundraiser is another chance for him to tap California, which was his top donor state from April through June with a total take of $4.2 million.
Obama
Ang Lee Wins Top Prize
Venice Film Festival
Taiwan-born Ang Lee's erotic spy thriller "Lust, Caution" won the Venice Film Festival's top award Saturday, two years after he captured the same prize here with "Brokeback Mountain."
Brian De Palma won the 11-day-long festival's award for best direction for his film "Redacted" about the Iraq war.
Cate Blanchett won the festival's award for best actress for her role in "I'm Not There," a movie about singer-songwriter Bob Dylan. Blanchett played the role of Dylan during his folk-rock incarnation.
Brad Pitt won best actor for playing the legendary outlaw in "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford."
Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci was honored with a special award for his career's work, which includes "Last Tango in Paris," "The Conformist" and "The Last Emperor" - his 1987 film about the life of China's last emperor which won nine Oscars, including best director.
Venice Film Festival
Three Stooges Museum
The Stoogeum
Posing for a picture with life-size replicas of the Three Stooges, Gary Lassin smiled but didn't say "cheese."
"Woob-woob-woob-woob-woob!" he trilled in a Curly-like falsetto before breaking into a grin.
The statues of Larry, Moe and Curly are near the entrance to the Stoogeum, home of Lassin's large and priceless collection of Stooges memorabilia.
Lassin, 52, opened the Stoogeum three years ago in a renovated architect's office that looks like a large house. It's a gold mine for fans of the old-time knucklehead movie and TV trio, but its off-the-beaten-path location in Spring House - about 25 miles (40 kilometers) north of Philadelphia - has made it a fairly well-kept secret.
The Stoogeum
Showtime Orders More
'Californication'
Showtime has given a second-season pickup to its freshman comedy series "Californication."
The premium network has ordered 12 new episodes of the half-hour series, starring David Duchovny as a novelist who moves to Los Angeles and develops a case of writer's block. Natascha McElhone co-stars as the mother of his preteen daughter (Madeleine Martin). Evan Handler and Madeline Zima round out the cast.
"Californication," which airs at 10:30 p.m. Mondays after "Weeds," debuted August 13. The most recent three first-run episodes are averaging 18% more viewers than the series premiere, which drew 550,000 total viewers, according to Nielsen Media Research. The series also is holding on to 90% of its "Weeds" lead-in audience on Monday nights and is appealing almost equally to men and women (51% vs. 49%).
'Californication'
Coalition Aims To Expose
Shakespeare
Some of Britain's most distinguished Shakespearean actors have reopened the debate over whether William Shakespeare, a 16th century commoner raised in an illiterate household in Stratford-upon-Avon, wrote the plays that bear his name.
Acclaimed actor Derek Jacobi and Mark Rylance, the former artistic director of Shakespeare's Globe Theater in London, unveiled a "Declaration of Reasonable Doubt" on the authorship of Shakespeare's work Saturday, following the final matinee of "I am Shakespeare," a play investigating the bard's identity, in Chichester, southern England.
A small academic industry has developed around the effort to prove that Shakespeare, a provincial lad, could not have written the much-loved plays, with their expertise on law, ancient and modern history and mathematics.
The "real" author has been identified by various writers in the past as Christopher Marlowe, Francis Bacon, or the Earl of Oxford, Edward de Vere.
Shakespeare
Republican Family Values In Action
Evans - Schelske
Country star Sara Evans' husband is asking the singer in a court filing whether she was romantically involved with nearly a dozen people, including Kenny Chesney, Richard Marx and former "Dancing With The Stars" partner Tony Dovolani.
The 118-page document was filed in Williamson Country chancery court as part of Evans' divorce from Craig Schelske, according to The Tennessean newspaper.
It asks Evans to state under oath and penalty of perjury whether or not she admits to "an affair/sexual relationship/romantic involvement" with Chesney, Marx, Dovolani or any member of her band. It also seeks to find out if there was any relationship with Brad Arnold, Matt Roberts, Todd Harrell or Chris Henderson - all members of the group 3 Doors Down.
Evans filed for divorce the day after a blowup between the couple in a Los Angeles restaurant, after which police were called to the scene.
In previous court filings, Schelske alleged that he had learned of his wife's "intimate relationship" during the dinner.
Evans - Schelske
Dress Code
Southwest Airline
A 23-year-old woman who boarded a Southwest Airlines plane in a short skirt for a flight to Arizona says she was led off the plane for wearing an outfit that was considered too skimpy.
Kyla Ebbert said a Southwest employee asked her to leave her seat while the plane was preparing to leave San Diego's Lindbergh Field on July 3.
"You're dressed inappropriately. This is a family airline. You're too provocative to fly on this plane," she quoted the employee as saying.
Ebbert was eventually allowed back on the plane after offering to adjust her sweater but said she was humiliated and embarrassed.
Southwest Airline
Tommy Thompson's Tumors
Chip Implants
When the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved implanting microchips in humans, the manufacturer said it would save lives, letting doctors scan the tiny transponders to access patients' medical records almost instantly. The FDA found "reasonable assurance" the device was safe, and a sub-agency even called it one of 2005's top "innovative technologies."
But neither the company nor the regulators publicly mentioned this: A series of veterinary and toxicology studies, dating to the mid-1990s, stated that chip implants had "induced" malignant tumors in some lab mice and rats.
The FDA stands by its approval of the technology.
The FDA is overseen by the Department of Health and Human Services, which, at the time of VeriChip's approval, was headed by Tommy Thompson. Two weeks after the device's approval took effect on Jan. 10, 2005, Thompson left his Cabinet post, and within five months was a board member of VeriChip Corp. and Applied Digital Solutions. He was compensated in cash and stock options.
Chip Implants
Air Guitar Champion
Ochi Yosuke
A Japanese man out-"played" challengers to win the Air Guitar World Championship for the second consecutive year at a contest in northern Finland.
Ochi Yosuke received the highest score from a panel of judges in the final late Friday at the Teatria rock club in Oulu, near the Arctic Circle.
Apart from the glory, he received a custom-made Flying Finn electric guitar worth $3,400.
Ochi Yosuke
Yard Full Of Snapping Turtles
Betty Kratzke
Earlier this summer, Betty Kratzke noticed that something was disturbing the ground near the flowers that line her driveway. Solving the mystery this week proved to be a snap - when baby snapping turtles started crawling around her yard.
The turtles had recently hatched and were no bigger than a half dollar coin, said Darrell Perry, her brother-in-law.
Family members scooped up 44 turtles in all. They were put in a cardboard box and taken to the nearby James River.
Kratzke said she thought some sort of animal was disturbing her flowers. "But it was a long ways from being a muskrat or a raccoon," she said. "They are the cutest little things."
Betty Kratzke
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