'Best of TBH Politoons'
Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Mark Morford:The woman vs. the black guy (sfgate.com)
Who's more terrifying to red states, smart Hillary or savvy Barack? The nation trembles
Jim Hightower: BUSH'S HEALTH CARE IDEOLOGY (jimhightower.com)
George W, a devout worshipper at the alter of corporate ideology, believes it is sinful for modest-income families to get health coverage through the government.
FROMA HARROP: Resort at the Top of the World (creators.com)
There was another Hillary in the news last week. It was Edmund Hillary, the mountaineer who in 1953 became the first human to reach the top of Mount Everest - alongside his Sherpa guide, Tenzing Norgay. The New Zealander had died at 88.
Felice Prager: Real Life 101 (irascibleprofessor.com)
Since June, every time my cell phone has rung and caller ID has told me it was my younger son, I have been answering with, "What broke now?" It is a joke, of course, and he knows I am kidding, but since he moved out of his dorm and into his own apartment, he has been plagued by real life's little inconveniences.
The comeback kid (guardian.co.uk)
Jason Bateman spent a decade making flop TV shows before turning in an award-winning lead performance in cult sitcom Arrested Development. Now he's back with a string of movies roles. Andrew Purcell meets him.
Walter Tunis: Rhonda Vincent knows she has a good thing going (McClatchy Newspapers; posted on popmatters.com)
In the waning weeks before Christmas, when the majority of America is stressing and fretting about holiday activities, Rhonda Vincent was kicking back. No snowy trip to the shopping malls for this bluegrass gal.
Nick Cristiano: "Soul revival: At 74, Garnet Mimms pops up again with a new album." (The Philadelphia Inquirer; posted on popmatters.com)
Garnet Mimms didn't see himself as a musical trailblazer when he cut the career-making "Cry Baby" in 1963.
Dominic Maxwell: The comic who won't mind his language (timesonline.co.uk)
He's Holland's most famous comedian, but from now on Hans Teeuwen will work only in English.
Dan MacIntosh: "Passing on Values: Interview with Phil Vischer of VeggieTales" (popmatters.com)
"You can't just create a story for kids and promote slacker-ism. So I had to reshape their characters entirely and come up with a motive for them. What did they really want? They want to be heroes, but they have no idea how."
Rallie McAllister: Lifestyle Changes Help Improve Memory at Any Age (creators.com)
Exercise is beneficial at any age, and it's never too late to start. The results of a study involving more than 2,200 men between the ages of 71 and 93 revealed that those who walked less than a quarter-mile per day were nearly twice as likely to develop dementia as men who walked two or more miles daily.
Chipshot was 2nd with:
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Sunny day, windy night.
Cambodia Says No Ceremony
Mia Farrow
The Cambodian government said Wednesday it will not allow Mia Farrow to hold a ceremony at a former Khmer Rouge prison as part of her efforts to draw attention to the crisis in Sudan.
The 62-year-old actress, working with the U.S.-based Dream for Darfur advocacy group, had planned to light an Olympic-style torch Sunday at the Khmer Rouge's infamous Tuol Sleng torture house to urge China to press Sudan to end abuses in Darfur.
China is one of Cambodia's major trading partners and was also the biggest backer of the Khmer Rouge's communist regime in the 1970s, which led to the deaths of an estimated 1.7 million Cambodians.
The torch has toured countries that have suffered genocide and has so far been lit at the Darfur-Chad border, Rwanda, Armenia, Germany and Bosnia-Herzegovina. Cambodia was to be the last stop before it heads to China.
Mia Farrow
Befuddles Kevin Martin
Diane Keaton
The nation's top TV regulator said it would be difficult for the Federal Communications Commission to take action against ABC stations that aired "Good Morning America" on Tuesday when actress Diane Keaton used the f-word.
Last year's court decision that threw out the FCC's policy on "fleeting references" complicates any action the commission might want to take against the stations or the network, chairman Kevin Martin (R - Rupert's Whore) told reporters.
On "Good Morning America" to promote her new film "Mad Money," Keaton told host Diane Sawyer that she admired her beauty, especially Sawyer's lips, saying that if she had lips like that she wouldn't have had to work on her "f---ing personality" and would be married by now.
ABC News senior vp Jeffrey Schneider said the network bleeped the word for the Central, Mountain and Pacific time zone feeds and regretted the incident.
Diane Keaton
Dethrones Oprah
Ellen
US comedian Ellen DeGeneres has dethroned chat-show icon and new political activist Oprah Winfrey as the television personality Americans love the most, a poll showed Tuesday.
"DeGeneres vaulted to the top spot in the Harris Poll's annual favorite television star list after five years in the bottom five ... and, after five years as number one, Winfrey drops to second place this year," Harris said in a statement.
Broken down by political affiliation, the two women tied for the top place among Democrats, with peak-hour conservative TV talk-show host Bill O'Reilly, who scored eighth overall, reaping the number one spot among Republicans.
Late-night talk show host Jay Leno climbed from sixth place last year to third, ahead of British actor Hugh Laurie in fourth, according to the online poll, which surveyed 1,171 Americans around the United States last month.
Ellen
Aboriginal Films From Around The World
Isuma.tv
Inuit filmmaker Zach Kunuk and his co-producer Norman Cohn grabbed worldwide attention for their film "Atanarjuat" when it won a medal at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival, but neither expected the accolades and attention to trickle down to others telling aboriginal stories.
That's why the two have started a new service allowing such filmmakers from around the world to share and show their work on a website that could become the YouTube of aboriginal cinema.
The duo's new website, called Isuma.tv, has already gathered 100 films and videos from four countries in the four weeks since it began.
The offerings, all free to watch online, range from complete versions of Kunuk's features "Atanarjuat" and "The Journals of Knud Rasmussen" to accounts of a Swedish Sami girl's efforts to learn her native language. There's also children's programming from Greenland as well as work from indigenous Mexico. The quality ranges from the polished to the distinctly amateur.
Isuma.tv
Early Live Recordings Targeted For Release
Beatles
An independent Miami label says it plans to release never-before-heard Beatles live recordings made in 1962 at the Star Club in Hamburg, Germany.
Fuego Entertainment has partnered with British producer/promoter Jeffrey Collins to put out his catalog holdings. They say those include a live Beatles performance of 15 songs at the club.
No release date has been set for the recordings, which the label claims are the first to feature drummer Ringo Starr as part of the group. Other Beatles recordings from the Star Club have been released, but Fuego says its collection includes previously unheard tracks, such as covers of Hank Williams' "Lovesick Blues" and Maurice Williams' "Do You Believe."
Other live Beatles tracks the label says it holds include "Twist and Shout," "I Saw Her Standing There," "Hippy Hippy Shake," "A Taste of Honey," "Money," and "Ask Me Why," which can be heard in other recorded Beatles performances at the Star Club.
Beatles
Hospital News
Zac Efron
"High School Musical" star Zac Efron underwent emergency surgery Tuesday to remove his appendix, his publicist said.
The 20-year-old actor had the operation at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, Gina Hoffman said.
He was hospitalized a day after Walt Disney Studios Motion Picture Productions announced that he and his five "High School Musical" co-stars had signed on to appear in the theatrical film "High School Musical 3: Senior Year."
Zac Efron
Psychology Board Investigates
Dr. Phil
TMZ has obtained a copy of a complaint (pdf) against Dr. Phil which was lodged with the California Board of Psychology, alleging the TV doc was illegally practicing without a license when he paid a visit to one Britney Spears.
We've learned the person who filed the complaint is a psychologist. Dr. Phil has never been licensed to practice in California, and he retired his Texas license in 2006.
The shrink believes when Dr. Phil visited Brit in the hospital earlier this month, he was practicing psychology. A "Dr. Phil" honcho told TMZ the visit was never meant to lure Britney onto the TV show -- and that there were never plans to put her on the air.
A Psychology Board rep told TMZ if the Board finds the complaint credible, it would be referred to the D.A. for review. Practicing without a license is a felony in California.
Dr. Phil
Takes Issue With SF Paper
Sean Penn
Sean Penn's days of writing for the San Francisco Chronicle may be over: The actor now calls the publication an "increasingly lamebrain paper."
Penn offered the critique in a letter published Tuesday, written in response to a tongue-in-cheek article that focused on celebrity interest in Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. It listed a number of potential matchups between celebrities and dictators or other authoritarian figures.
Penn objected to the characterization, saying Chavez is a democratically elected leader.
Chronicle Editor Phil Bronstein, the former Mr. Sharon Stone, took the criticism in stride, calling Penn, "a great actor and a great director."
Sean Penn
Corporate Media Rations
Leftovers
"Desperate Housewives" is done, the dust barely settled from a tornado that hit Wisteria Lane. "Grey's Anatomy" has no more episodes left, as does Thursday competitor "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation." No more laughs are coming from "Two and a Half Men," "30 Rock" and "The Office." "Heroes" is also done.
Several other shows are down to a precious few, the networks carefully rationing new material like a hiker lost in the desert with a half-empty canteen. One of the three remaining "House" episodes, for example, is set aside for maximum impact right after the Super Bowl.
Looking ahead, CBS' stockpile of original programming is the shortest. "CSI: Miami," "NCIS," "Criminal Minds," "Cold Case," "Shark" and "Numb3rs" are among the series down to only one fresh show apiece. Two series set for a midseason return, "The New Adventures of Old Christine" and "Jericho," have two months' worth of episodes.
Because they are animated and needed to be produced well in advance, Fox's popular Sunday night lineup with "The Simpsons" and "Family Guy" all have a season's worth of shows done. The midseason drama "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles" had the strongest debut of any new series this season.
CBS and NBC are also taking the unprecedented steps of rerunning drama series that were originally aired on sister cable stations - Showtime's "Dexter" on CBS and USA's "Monk" and "Psych" on NBC.
Leftovers
DEA Agents Sue Over
'American Gangster'
A group of retired federal drug enforcement agents sued NBC Universal on Wednesday, saying the movie "American Gangster" falsely portrayed them as villains in the story of a Harlem heroin trafficker.
The suit, filed in federal court in Manhattan, claims that the movie defamed hundreds of DEA agents and New York City police officers by claiming at the end that Frank Lucas' collaboration with prosecutors "led to the convictions of three-quarters of New York City's Drug Enforcement Agency."
Lucas, played by Denzel Washington in the film, became a government informant after his conviction in 1975, and his tips led to the prosecutions of several fellow drug dealers.
According to the lawsuit, no DEA agents or New York City police officers were ever convicted as a result of tips provided by Lucas.
'American Gangster'
Splitsville
Eddie Murphy
Comic actor Eddie Murphy and his new wife Tracey Edmonds have split up just two weeks after their romantic wedding in French Polynesia, People magazine reported on Wednesday.
The star of "Shrek" and "Dreamgirls" and Edmonds, a film producer, exchanged their vows on a private island off Bora Bora on Jan. 1.
Under U.S. law, the couple needed a ceremony on U.S. soil to make the marriage legal.
But Murphy, 46, and Edmonds, 40, told People in a statement they would not do that and had decided to remain friends.
Eddie Murphy
Japan Pauses Hunt
Whales
Protesters scored a victory in a high-seas campaign to disrupt Japan's whale hunt in the Antarctic, forcing the fleet to a standstill Wednesday while officials scrambled to unload two activists who used a rubber boat to get on board a harpoon vessel.
The faceoff was a rapid escalation of the annual contest between the fleet that carries out Japan's controversial whale hunt in southern waters and the environmentalist groups that try to stop it.
The founder of the Sea Shepherd anti-whaling group, Paul Watson, told The Associated Press by satellite phone that the Japanese are targeting vulnerable whale stocks and said his organization will keep harassing the fleet.
"We will chase them until they stop their hunt," Watson said from the bridge of the Steve Irwin, a Sea Shepherd vessel. "As long as we are chasing them, they aren't killing whales."
Whales
OD
Ike Turner
Rock 'n' roll pioneer Ike Turner's death last month at age 76 was caused by a cocaine overdose, the San Diego County Medical Examiner's office said Wednesday.
"We are listing that he abused cocaine, and that's what resulted in the cocaine toxicity," said Paul Parker, chief investigator at the medical examiner's office.
The medical examiner's office also listed hypertensive cardiovascular disease and pulmonary emphysema as "significant and contributing factors" to Turner's death, Parker said.
Ike Turner
Ending Broadway Run
'Rent'
"Rent," the acclaimed musical chronicle of counterculture life and death in Manhattan's East Village, will close in June after more than a dozen years on Broadway.
The rock-inflected reinterpretation of the Puccini opera "La Boheme" will be the seventh-longest-running Broadway show in history when it closes after its evening performance June 1, The New York Times reported.
The musical reeled in four Tony Awards and the Pulitzer Prize, grossed more than $280 million on Broadway and $330 million more in productions elsewhere, spun off a 2005 movie, and fostered the careers of actors including Taye Diggs and Jesse L. Martin.
'Rent'
Kaiser Permanente To Study
Morgellons
It sounds like a freakish ailment from a horror movie: Sores erupt on your skin, mysterious threads pop out of them, and you feel like tiny bugs are crawling all over you. Some experts believe it's a psychiatric phenomenon, yet hundreds of people say it's a true physical condition. It's called Morgellons, and now the government is about to begin its first medical study of it.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is paying California-based health care giant Kaiser Permanente $338,000 to test and interview patients suffering from Morgellons' bizarre symptoms. The one-year effort will attempt to define the condition and better determine how common it is.
The study will be done in northern California, the source of many of the reports of Morgellons (pronounced mor-GELL-uns). Researchers will begin screening for patients immediately, CDC officials said Wednesday. A Kaiser official expects about 150 to 500 study participants.
Morgellons
Unfavorable Studies Don't See Print
Big Pharma
Nearly a third of antidepressant drug studies are never published in the medical literature and nearly all happen to show that the drug being tested did not work, researchers reported on Wednesday.
And in some of the studies that are published, unfavorable results have been recast to make the medicine appear more effective than it really is, said the research team led by Erick Turner of the Oregon Health & Science University.
"Selective publication can lead doctors to make inappropriate prescribing decisions that may not be in the best interest of their patients and, thus, the public health," they wrote.
The Turner team was able to study the question because the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has a registry in which companies are supposed to log details of their drug tests before the experiments are begun.
Big Pharma
Want To Shut Down Scrabulous
Makers Of Scrabble
The companies that make Scrabble are trying to shut down Scrabulous, an online version of the game that is one of the most popular applications on the social networking site Facebook.
Hasbro Inc., which owns the rights to the crossword game in the U.S. and Canada, and El Segundo, Calif.-based Mattel Inc., which owns the rights elsewhere, believe the Facebook game infringes their copyrights and trademarks.
Scrabulous listed more than 600,000 daily active users on Facebook as of Wednesday and is one of the 10 most used applications on the site. People can also play at Scrabulous.com.
The companies jointly issued cease-and-desist notices to four parties involved in the development, hosting and marketing of Scrabulous, according to a letter Pawtucket-based Hasbro is sending consumers who have contacted them about Scrabulous.
Makers Of Scrabble
New Tree Species Found
Madagascar
A self-destructing palm tree that flowers once every 100 years and then dies has been discovered on the Indian Ocean island of Madagascar, botanists said Thursday.
The name of the giant palm and its remarkable life cycle will be detailed in a study by Kew Gardens scientists in the Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society published Thursday.
The palm tree, which grows to 66 feet in height and has about 16-foot leaves, is only found in an extremely remote region in the northwest of the country, some four days by road from the capital. Local villagers have known about it for years although none had seen it in flower until last year.
Madagascar
Cable Nielsens
Ratings
Rankings for the top 15 programs on cable networks as compiled by Nielsen Media Research for the week of Jan. 7-13. Day and start time (EST) are in parentheses.
1. "Monk" (Friday, 9 p.m.), USA, 3.87 million homes, 5.64 million viewers.
2. "Pysch" (Friday, 10 p.m.), USA, 3.26 million homes, 4.68 million viewers.
3. "WWE Raw" (Monday, 9 p.m.), USA, 3.12 million homes, 4.6 million viewers.
4. "WWE Raw" (Monday, 10 p.m.), USA, 3.09 million homes, 4.58 million viewers.
5. "Republican Presidential Debate" (Thursday, 9 p.m.), Fox News Channel, 2.85 million homes, 3.74 million viewers.
6. "Anderson Cooper 360" (Tuesday, 10 p.m.), CNN, 2.84 million homes, 3.54 million viewers.
7. "Hannah Montana" (Sunday, 8 p.m.), Disney, 2.82 million homes, 4.22 million viewers.
8. "SpongeBob SquarePants" (Saturday, 11:30 a.m.), Nickelodeon, 2.81 million homes, 3.91 million viewers.
9. Movie: "Herbie Fully Loaded" (Friday, 8 p.m.), Disney, 2.79 million homes, 4.11 million viewers.
10. "SpongeBob SquarePants" (Saturday, 12 noon), Nickelodeon, 2.74 million homes, 3.91 million viewers.
11. "New Hampshire Primary Coverage" (Tuesday, 9 p.m.), CNN, 2.73 million homes, 3.52 million viewers.
12. "New Hampshire Primary Coverage" (Tuesday, 9 p.m.), Fox News Channel, 2.64 million homes, 3.27 million viewers.
13. "New Hampshire Primary Coverage" (Tuesday, 7:55 p.m.), Fox News Channel, 2.63 million homes, 3.21 million viewers.
14. "House" (Friday, 11 p.m.), USA, 2.6 million homes, 3.42 million viewers.
15. "Wizards of Waverly Place" (Sunday, 8:30 p.m.), Disney, 2.59 million homes, 3.59 million viewers.
Ratings
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