'Best of TBH Politoons'
Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Poor Elijah (Peter Berger): Stakeholders (irascibleprofessor.com)
It may get crowded out by super-delegates and candidate gaffes, but public education still makes it into the news cycle once in awhile. Sometimes it's when test results are released. Other times it's when politicians announce that that they have a plan to save our schools.
Jim Hightower: SUPPORT OUR VETERANS (jimhightower.com)
Politicians should not be allowed to utter the phrase "Support Our Troops" - unless they actually do.
Jonathan Gottschall: Measure for Measure (Boston Globe)
Literary criticism could be one of our best tools for understanding the human condition. But first, it needs a radical change: embracing science
Graham Bensinger: The Price Of Fame (huffingtonpost.com)
I've spent time at Hollywood nightclubs, even witnessed the ubiquitous paparazzi following Paris and Britney, but attending the Nuggets-Lakers playoff game last week began to make me realize the extent of the craze.
Why are all the US candidates courting John Mellencamp? (guardian.co.uk)
Laura Barton on why the composer of hit songs like "R.O.C.K" is so valuable to presidential hopefuls.
NATE CUNNINGHAM: "The Plain Truth About Karen Dalton: An Interview with Joe Loop" (popmatters.com)
One-time coffeehouse proprietor Joe Loop shed light on the mysterious Karen Dalton with his notes to the Cotton-Eyed Joe recording and speaks to PopMatters about his memories of the '60s folk scene and his friend Karen.
Theon Weber: The Open-Mouthed Adulthood of Kate Nash (The Portland Mercury)
Nash's sudden leap from a teenager with a guitar and a MySpace account to a 20-year-old with a number-one album has cocked a few skeptical eyebrows.
Martin Bandyke: Q&A with country singer Trisha Yearwood (Detroit Free Press)
Already one of the best-selling vocalists in the history of country music, Trisha Yearwood is now a best-selling author as well.
Anthony Miller: Michael Chabon Fills in the Blank Spaces (Los Angeles CityBeat)
Maps and Legends, Chabon's first essay collection, unearths some of the author's source texts and offers his exuberant ruminations on the role of the writer as protector and defender of artistic ancestors.
Interview by Laura Barnett: "Portrait of the artist: Minnie Driver, actor and musician" (music.guardian.co.uk)
'Who would play me in a movie? Russell Brand - he has the hair for it.'
Luaine Lee: Lea Thompson stars in Hallmark Channel film 'Final Approach' (McClatchy-Tribune News Service)
Thanks to the three "Back to the Future" films, actress Lea Thompson was already a movie star in her 20s. That's enough to rattle some performers for the rest of their life. But not Thompson.
My favorite was The Seven Year Itch in 1955 (I was 5 years old, but I remember it well).
Sweet, but no Marilyn Monroe.
Reader Comment
Re: Phil Specter
Marty:
The obit on recording engineer Larry Levine featured in Wednesday's Bartcop E furthers the Phil-Spector-is-God myth that has surrounded this pathetic misfit's entire life, particularly as it relates to his mediocre "career" as a record producer.
I give due credit to Mr. Levine (may he rest in peace), but Phil Spector has made a too-long career off the hard work of other, more talented people. Spector's only discernable talent was in hiring good PR people. In that sense, he's more a modern-day Lee DeForest. (the self-named "Father of Radio" and another magnificent fraud who couldn't even explain his own "invention.")
Two facts to bear in mind: Phil Spector's famous "Wall of Sound" technique was for mono recordings, not stereo. And by all accounts, he butchered the Let it Be/Get Back mix, particularly "Across the Universe." His lame, syrupy, stringy arrangement of that and other perfectly good Beatles' songs should be grounds for his immediate execution. The only good thing I can say about him is that at least he kept Yoko Ono off the album.
His personal "life" is a matter of record and an indictment of our society that the little rug- and elevator shoes-wearing weasel escaped the gallows he so richly deserved for the cold-blooded if unintended murder of Lana Clarkson. Hmm, here's a guy with a history of pointing guns at people to intimidate them. Hmm, here's a woman "date" shot in the face at close range. How could he have done it?
You should change his name to "Phil Specter," sort of what you do with "Resident Bush."
EJ2E
Thanks, Ed!
Better check for snowballs in hell - we finally see eye-to-eye on something.
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
More sun and warmer temps.
Still trying to get caught up. Ack.
Carter, Connick & Habitat For Humanity
Upper 9th Ward
As former President Jimmy Carter nailed down the front porch of a home under construction Wednesday, singer Harry Connick Jr. gave an update on the progress being made in the Upper 9th Ward, an area slow to recover from Hurricane Katrina.
The two are supporters of Habitat for Humanity, and both expressed their excitement about the organization's construction of houses in this section of the city, where block after block of flooded-out homes still sit vacant on lots with overgrown grass.
Seven homes were being built on the street Wednesday by hundreds of volunteers through Habitat as part of a building blitz Carter is leading this week along the Gulf Coast. In all, more than 250 houses will be built - many through the end of the year - in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Texas.
The homes being built in New Orleans on Wednesday were just blocks from the core site of the Musicians Village, the cluster of homes Connick and fellow New Orleans musician Branford Marsalis built through Habitat after the storm. The village provides affordable housing for musicians and others who lost their homes in Katrina's flooding.
Upper 9th Ward
Pledges Aid For Burma
Not On Our Watch
Hollywood stars including George Clooney and Brad Pitt have pledged 500,000 dollars (324,000 euros, 258,000 pounds) to help children affected by Myanmar's cyclone Nargis, a British charity said Wednesday.
Not On Our Watch, a non-profit organization founded by actors including Pitt, Clooney, Don Cheadle and Matt Damon have given half that sum to Save the Children and pledged to match a further 250,000 dollars donated by the charity.
The British-based charity said it had already reached over 100,000 people since the cyclone struck last weekend. "This money will help us continue to reach as many people as possible," said Lovett.
Alex Wagner, head of Not On Our Watch, added: "Save the Children has proven itself as a strong partner...delivering aid and life-saving relief to millions of children and families affected by humanitarian crises around the globe."
Not On Our Watch
Cultural Treasures Announced
National Recording Registry
Twenty-five selections were added to the National Recording Registry on Wednesday, part of the Library of Congress's attempt to save America's aural history by archiving recordings deemed "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant."
The inductees range from Michael Jackson's 1982 all-time-bestseller "Thriller" and jazz artist Herbie Hancock's 1973 fusion smash "Headhunters" to the 1977 record of Earth sounds that flew aboard the spacecraft Voyager in the event alien life forms encountered the craft. Other recordings added to the registry include works by Roy Orbison, Charlie Parker, Duke Ellington, Kitty Wells and Smokey Robinson and the Miracles.
A collection of Navajo songs, Harry Truman's 1948 Democratic National Convention speech, radio broadcasts from Ronald Reagan before he became president, and the original cast recording of "My Fair Lady" also made the cut, as did broadcasts of New York Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia reading comics to children during a 1945 newspaper delivery strike.
The Library of Congress chooses 25 recordings each year to add to its registry and preserve. Nominations come from a Library of Congress preservation board and online suggestions from the public. The selections for 2007 bring the registry's total to 250.
National Recording Registry
Scores Career First With No. 1 Album
Neil Diamond
With "Home Before Dark," Neil Diamond has landed his first chart-topping album. The Columbia release, debuting at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, got a big plug when Diamond appeared recently on "American Idol," bolstering its 146,000 first-week U.S. sales, according to Nielsen SoundScan.
The Rick Rubin-produced "Home" is Diamond's biggest debut sales week since SoundScan began tracking in 1991. He first appeared on Billboard's charts in 1966 with "The Feel of Neil Diamond"; the closest he got to No. 1 was with the 1973 soundtrack to "Jonathan Livingston Seagull," which reached No. 2.
Totaling 8.12 million units, album sales this week are up 6.9 percent from the previous week's sum and down 4.6 percent from the comparable year-earlier week.
Neil Diamond
Howard Stern Upsets
Dolly Parton
Country music star Dolly Parton has hit back against Howard Stern's satellite radio show, which last week manipulated recordings from one of her audio books into seemingly racist and sexually graphic sound bites.
"I have never been so shocked, hurt and humiliated in all my life," Parton said in a statement on Wednesday. "I cannot believe what Howard Stern has done to me. In a blue million years, I would never have such vulgar things come out of my mouth. They have done editing or some sort of trickery to make this horrible, horrible thing. Please accept my apology for them and certainly know I had nothing to do with this."
She concluded: "If there was ever going to be a lawsuit, it's going to be over this. Just wanted you to know that I am completely devastated by this."
Dolly Parton
On-Air Gaffe
Sue Simmons
A longtime New York TV anchor apologized to viewers Monday night after swearing during a live news promo on the NBC owned-and-operated station.
Sue Simmons, who has been working at WNBC since 1980, uttered the expletive during a news tease at about 10:25 p.m. She had been doing a tease about the cost of groceries when, off camera, she yelled, "What the f--- are you doing?"
Simmons and her on-air partner, Chuck Scarborough, didn't immediately address the issue in the 11 p.m. newscast, but Simmons later apologized.
The target of and reason for the expletive was unclear.
Sue Simmons
Leads Cannes Revolt
Sean Penn
US actor and director Sean Penn lit up and led a minor revolt at the Cannes film festival against France's draconian new anti-smoking laws.
Penn, the head of the jury that will pick the best films, pulled out a cigarette and puffed on it at a press conference with fellow jury members, in defiance of laws in place since January that ban smoking in public enclosed spaces.
He only took a couple of drags before putting it aside and getting back to answering reporters' questions.
But jury member Marjane Satrapi, an Iranian director clearly inspired by her colleague's defiance, then asked to much laughter if anyone minded if she smoked "for medical reasons."
She then lit a cigarette, with Penn and French actress Jeanne Balibar quickly following suit.
Sean Penn
Ten Commandments Auction
Charlton Heston
A pair of faux granite tablets that Charlton Heston cradled in the 1956 biblical epic "The Ten Commandments" is expected to fetch as much as $60,000, said Marc Kruskol, a publicist for the auction Profiles in History. It is the fourth set of tablets that remains from the film that featured Heston as Moses.
The five-piece costume Heston wore in 1959's "Ben-Hur" - the film that won him a best actor Oscar - is also among the 1,000-plus pieces of Hollywood memorabilia the auction is selling this summer. The central piece is the dark green kaftan worn by Heston's Judah Ben-Hur in the scene when he hears Jesus give a sermon.
Heston died April 5 at his Beverly Hills, Calif., home at the age of 84.
Charlton Heston
Returns To A&E
Duane "Dog" Chapman
Bounty hunter Duane "Dog" Chapman's cable TV show will soon be back on the air.
Filming has begun on the fifth season, according to executives with A&E, the cable network that broadcast "Dog the Bounty Hunter. Reruns of the show will start June 25, with new episodes coming a few weeks later.
A&E spokesman Michael Feeney says Chapman isn't a racist, and that network executives felt he deserves a second chance after working on redeeming himself over the last few months.
Duane "Dog" Chapman
Not Bitter
John Cleese
John Cleese said his third divorce "will be worth every penny" after he was ordered to pay his ex-wife 75,000 a month in maintenance.
The Monty Python star separated from his psychotherapist wife Alyce Faye Eichelberger four months ago after 15 years of marriage.
A judge in California's Santa Barbara Superior Court ordered Cleese to pay 75,000 in a temporary arrangement until their divorce settlement is complete.
The 68-year-old comedian, who was brought into court in a wheelchair after undergoing a knee operation this week, also joked that he had sent his wife's divorce claims to his former Monty Python colleagues and suggested they could find enough humour in them for a reality television programme.
John Cleese
Electronics Loving
'Crazy Rasberry Ants'
In what sounds like a really low-budget horror film, voracious swarming ants that apparently arrived in Texas aboard a cargo ship are invading homes and yards across the Houston area, shorting out electrical boxes and messing up computers.
The hairy, reddish-brown creatures are known as "crazy rasberry ants" - crazy, because they wander erratically instead of marching in regimented lines, and "rasberry" after Tom Rasberry, an exterminator who did battle against them early on.
The ants - formally known as "paratrenicha species near pubens" - have spread to five Houston-area counties since they were first spotted in Texas in 2002.
They, like some other species of ants, are attracted to electrical equipment, for reasons that are not well understood by scientists.
'Crazy Rasberry Ants'
On Rare Display
Dead Sea Scroll
One of the most important Dead Sea scrolls is going on display in Jerusalem this week - more than four decades after it was last seen by the public. The 24-foot scroll with the text of the Bible's Book of Isaiah had been in a dark, temperature-controlled room at the Israel Museum since 1967. It went on display two years earlier, but curators replaced it with a facsimile after noticing new cracks in the calfskin parchment.
The museum decided to put the scroll back on show for three months as part of Israel's 60th anniversary celebrations.
The priceless manuscript, written by a Judean scribe around 120 B.C., was in a long glass case Tuesday, its neat rows of Hebrew letters distinct and legible. Resident Bush, visiting Israel this week for the anniversary celebration, will be one of the first to view it.
The Isaiah manuscript was the only complete biblical book discovered among the Dead Sea scrolls, one of the great archaeological finds of the 20th century. The ancient documents, which include fragments of the books of the Old Testament and treatises on communal living and apocalyptic war, have shed important light on Judaism and the origins of Christianity.
Dead Sea Scroll
Jet-Powered Wing
Yves Rossy
A Swiss pilot strapped on a jet-powered wing and leaped from a plane Wednesday for the first public demonstration of the homemade device, turning figure eights and soaring high above the Alps.
Yves Rossy's performance in front of the world press capped five years of training and many more years of dreaming.
Rossy, 48, had stepped out of the Swiss-built Pilatus Porter aircraft at 7,500 feet and unfolded the rigid eight-foot wings strapped to his back before jumping.
Passing from free fall to a gentle glide, Rossy then triggered four jet turbines and accelerated to 186 miles per hour, about 65 miles per hour faster than the typical falling skydiver. A plane that flew at some distance beside him measured his speed.
Yves Rossy
Divers Find Bust
Caesar
Divers trained in archaeology discovered a marble bust of an aging Caesar in the Rhone River that France's Culture Ministry said Tuesday could be the oldest known.
The life-sized bust showing the Roman ruler with wrinkles and hollows in his face is tentatively dated to 46 B.C. Divers uncovered the Caesar bust and a collection of other finds in the Rhone near the town of Arles - founded by Caesar.
Among other items in the treasure trove of ancient objects is a 5.9 foot marble statue of Neptune, dated to the first decade of the third century after Christ.
Two smaller statues, both in bronze and measuring 27.5 inches each also were found, one of them, a satyr with his hands tied behind his back, "doubtless" originated in Hellenic Greece, the ministry said.
Caesar
UK Opens Archives
UFOs
Aliens from outer space have been visiting Britain for years and UFO sightings doubled after the film Close Encounters was released in 1977, according to secret files collating reports by members of the public.
The alien craft come in all shapes, sizes and colours but their occupants are uniformly green, the Ministry of Defence files show.
The archives (www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ufos) are the first batch of a four-year release programme of all the ministry's UFO files from 1978 to the present day.
The ministry dismisses 90 percent of the reports as having mundane explanations and leave 10 percent with a question mark and the assurance they are no defence threat.
UFOs
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