'Best of TBH Politoons'
PURPLE GENE'S WEIRD WORD OF THE WEEK
CRUCIVERBALIST
"CRUCIVERBALIST"
ON LINE DEFINITION: A compiler or solver of crossword puzzles.
ON THE STREET: A nerdy dude who sits crosslegged with a newspaper a puts letters in little square boxes.....for fun.
IN A SENTENCE: Will Shortz, Bill Clinton and John Stewart are not only extreme "Epeolatrists" but they are also committed "Cruciverbalists"
(Read BartCop Entertainment and learn a useless new word each Tuesday)
Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Jim Hightower: SHREDDING PARIS HILTON (jimhightower.com)
Finally, someone barfed over the "celebritization" of television news - and it wasn't a viewer, it was a television news reporter!
Bob Moser: Purple America, North Wilkesboro, North Carolina (thenation.com)
This is the first in a series of reports by Nation contributing writer Bob Moser, running through the 2008 elections, that will explore the evolving grassroots realities of so-called red-state politics in this time of political transition. --The Editors
Noam Chomsky: There Will Be a Cold War Between Iran and the U.S. (City Lights Books. Posted on AlterNet.org)
Despite the saber-rattling, it is unlikely that the Bush administration will attack Iran. A "cold war" of sorts between the two is likely to ensue.
Sasha Abramsky: Fear and Loathing in Middle America (The American Prospect . Posted on AlterNet.org)
Author Joe Bageant's "Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War" gets down and dirty with the hardship economics in Middle America.
Paul Harris: Is the US Heading for 'Developing Nations' Inequality Levels? (The Observer UK. Posted on AlterNet.org)
The American Dream of riches for all has turned into a nightmare of inequality: welcome to Richistan, USA.
Richard Roeper: Armed robbers take down 2 of NBA's biggest (suntimes.com)
Hefty bling is likely draw, hefty security is likely answer.
Beth Quinn: "Wanted: Families to give Puppies Behind Bars a taste of freedom" (recordonline.com)
It is a big day for Stetson. He's been in prison for only a couple of weeks, and on this day he's going to learn the ropes from some of the more seasoned inmates. "Sit, Stetson," Oscar Soto tells him. Stetson sits. "Shake, Stetson," Oscar says. Stetson shakes. "Kiss, Stetson," Oscar says. Stetson lays one on him, right on the lips. And then Stetson rolls over on his back for a belly rub.
Reader Suggestion
Brown Bears
Hi Marty, welcome back...really missed you...dang it.
Can you use some
bears in HD?
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Cooler and the humidity has come down, too.
Ball State Names Building
David Letterman
Ball State University plans to name its new communication building after David Letterman, a 1970 graduate. Letterman has often mentioned Ball State on his CBS "Late Show" talk show. The school has had a Letterman Scholarship in the Department of Telecommunications since 1985.
Ball State President Jo Ann Gora said the idea to name the facility for Letterman was first mentioned among trustees about a year ago but he was reluctant because he didn't want the attention.
Letterman's mother, Dorothy Mengering, attended Monday's announcement by the board of trustees in his hometown of Indianapolis.
"I'm so thrilled that David finally decided to let them do this for him," said Mengering, 86. "He's a very special young man, and I'm very proud of him."
David Letterman
Toasts Hunter S. Thompson With "Rum Diary"
Johnny Depp
Johnny Depp is moving closer to bringing Hunter S. Thompson's autobiographical novel "The Rum Diary" to the big screen, seven years after the project was first announced.
Oscar-winning producer Graham King, the Oscar-winning producer of "The Departed," has acquired all rights to the property, which King would produce with Depp for Warner Independent Pictures.
A spokesperson for King's GK Films banner said it was hoped that production would begin shortly after principal photography is completed on Depp's next film, Mira Nair's crime drama "Shantaram." No shooting dates have been set for either film.
Loosely based on the late author's experience working as a freelance journalist in Puerto Rico in the late '50s, the book was written in 1959 but not published until 1998. Depp would play a reporter who works alongside a motley crew of self-destructive staffers at a struggling San Juan newspaper, where an erotic love triangle emerges.
Johnny Depp
Series Finale Sunday
'Simple Life'
Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie are saying goodbye to "The Simple Life."
The series finale will air Sunday on E, the channel announced Monday. The program, which debuted on Fox in 2003, threw the privileged duo into everyday situations.
The high-living Hilton and Richie have routinely made headlines with their behaviour and the legal repercussions that followed.
'Simple Life'
Baby News
Story Elias Elfman
Bodhi and Jenna Elfman have welcomed their first child, a son named Story Elias.
The baby was born July 23 in Los Angeles. He weighed 7 pounds, 2 ounces, Elfman's publicist, Jenni Weinman, said Monday.
Story Elias Elfman
Pleads Guilty
Al Gore III
Al Gore's son pleaded guilty Monday to possessing marijuana and other drugs, but a judge said the plea could be withdrawn and the charges dropped if he successfully completes a drug diversion program.
Authorities have said they found drugs in Al Gore III's car after the 24-year-old was pulled over on July 4 for going 100 mph in his Toyota Prius.
He pleaded guilty Monday to two felony counts of drug possession, two misdemeanor counts of drug possession without a prescription, and one misdemeanor count of marijuana possession, the district attorney's office said.
Jaime Coulter, senior deputy district attorney, said Gore's sentencing will be continued until Feb. 7. If he has complied with all the conditions of the diversion program, the sentencing will be continued again for another year, with charges possibly being dropped in 2009.
Al Gore III
$chwarzenegger's Birthday
Ahnold
Austrians threw a party for one of their most famous sons, Arnold $chwarzenegger, celebrating his 60th birthday Monday with strudels, schnitzels and a gift - the original street number from the house where he was born.
"A Day for Arnold," proclaimed officials in the southern village of Thal Bei Graz, the California governor's birthplace. A brass band played, a priest celebrated a special birthday Mass and 59 people joined Mayor Peter Urdl onstage in a ceremony to wish $chwarzenegger well.
In an interview with Vienna newspaper Kronen Zeitung, $chwarzenegger said he had a simple birthday wish: that the United States, his adopted country, recovers its international prestige.
"My wish is that this great country once again gets the reputation it once had around the world," the daily, which interviewed $chwarzenegger in Sacramento, quoted him as saying.
Ahnold
Mel 'Sugar Tits' Gibson Sells Mansion
Melibu
It only has six bedrooms but it comes with a sterling view of the Pacific -- and so actor-producer Mel Gibson (R-Racist) has sold his Malibu beachside mansion for nearly 30 million dollars, local press reported Sunday.
Gibson, the star of scores of films including the Mad Max and Lethal Weapon movies and Braveheart, and producer- director of the controversial "The Passion of the Christ," cleared a cool six million dollars on the Mediterranean-styled home of 7,000 square feet (650 square meters) four years after he bought it for 24 million dollars, the Los Angeles Times said.
Built in 1981, it has only six bedrooms but 10 bathrooms, a gym, a pool and a wine cellar, and 155 feet (47 meters) of prime ocean beachfront in the exclusive colony for Hollywood's rich and famous.
Melibu
Gets Rights To O.J. Book
Goldman Family
Rights to O.J. Simpson's book "If I Did It," a hypothetical account of how he could have killed his ex-wife, on Monday passed to relatives of Ron Goldman, who was murdered along with Nicole Brown Simpson in 1994.
Under the settlement hammered out by lawyers earlier this month and approved by U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Jay Cristol on Monday, the Goldmans obtained all rights to the book, and to Simpson's name and likeness in connection with it.
Relatives of Simpson's ex-wife, who had not previously pursued a claim to his book, made an 11th-hour request for up to 40 percent of the proceeds but the judge denied their plea.
However Monday's agreement requires the Goldmans to give a court-appointed trustee 10 percent of the first $4 million in gross proceeds and a percentage of all proceeds beyond that. The Brown family will get most of that money.
Goldman Family
Violence Against Women
Congo
Extreme sexual violence against women is pervasive in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and local authorities do little to stop it or prosecute those responsible, a U.N. investigator said on Monday.
Rape and brutality against women and girls are "rampant and committed by non-state armed groups, the Armed Forces of the DRC, the National Congolese Police, and increasingly also by civilians," said Turkish lawyer Yakin Erturk.
"Violence against women seems to be perceived by large sectors of society to be normal," she added in a report after an 11-day trip to the strife-torn country.
Erturk, special rapporteur for the United Nations Human Rights Council on violence against women, said the situation in South Kivu province, where rebels from neighboring Rwanda operate, was the worst she had ever encountered.
Congo
Feds Raid Home
Ted Stevens
Agents from the FBI and Internal Revenue Service on Monday searched the home of U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Bridge To Nowhere), an official said.
Investigators arrived at the Republican senator's home in Girdwood shortly before 2:30 p.m. Alaska time, said Dave Heller, FBI assistant special agent.
The Justice Department has been looking into the seven-term senator's relationship with a wealthy contractor as part of a public corruption investigation.
Ted Stevens
Lightning Strikes Twice
Don Frick
Don Frick said he survived his second lightning strike Friday - 27 years to the day of his first - and emerged a bit shaken with only a burned zipper and a hole in the back of his jeans.
Frick was attending Hamlin's Ole Tyme Daz festival on Friday afternoon when a storm came up quickly. He and six others sought refuge in a shed shortly before lightning struck the ground nearby. The strike sent a shock through Frick and four others in the shed.
"It put me up against the wall," said Frick, 68. "When I came to and realized I was alive, the first thing that came to my mind was that I'm pretty lucky.
Twenty-seven years earlier, Frick was driving a tractor-trailer in Lenox, Pa., when the antenna was struck by lightning, he said. He said that his left side was injured in that strike and that he was laid up for 3 to 4 weeks.
Don Frick
In Memory
Ingmar Bergman
Master filmmaker Ingmar Bergman, one of the greatest artists in cinema history, died Monday at his home on an island off the coast of Sweden. He was 89.
His last work, of about 60, was "Saraband," a made-for-television movie that aired on Swedish public television in December 2003, the year he retired.
"Saraband" starred Liv Ullmann, the Norwegian actress and director who appeared in nine Bergman films and had a five-year affair, and a daughter, with the director.
The other actor most closely associated with Bergman was Max von Sydow, who appeared in 1957's "The Seventh Seal ("Det Sjunde inseglet")," an allegorical tale of the Black Plague years as a knight playing chess with the shrouded figure of Death, one of cinema's most famous scenes.
The son of a Lutheran clergyman and a housewife, Ernst Ingmar Bergman was born in Uppsala, Sweden on July 14, 1918, and grew up with a brother and sister in a household of severe discipline that he described in painful detail in the autobiography "The Magic Lantern."
In 1944, his first original screenplay was filmed by Alf Sjöberg, the dominant Swedish film director of the time. "Torment" won several awards including the Grand Prize of the 1946 Cannes Film Festival, and soon Bergman was directing an average of two films a year as well as working with stage production.
After the acclaimed "The Seventh Seal," he quickly came up with another success in "Wild Strawberries ("Smultronstället")," in which an elderly professor's car trip to pick up an award is interspersed with dreams.
The date of Bergman's funeral has not been set, but will be attended by a close group of friends and family, the TT news agency reported.
Ingmar Bergman
In Memory
Tom Snyder
Tom Snyder, who pioneered the late-late network TV talk show with a personal yet abrasive style and his robust, trademark laugh, has died from complications associated with leukemia. He was 71.
Prickly and ego-driven, Snyder conducted numerous memorable interviews as host of NBC's "Tomorrow," which followed Johnny Carson's "Tonight" show from 1973 to '82. A signature was the constant billowing of cigarette smoke around his head.
Snyder's style, his show's set and the show itself marked an abrupt change at 1 a.m. from Carson's program. Snyder might joke with the crew in the sparsely appointed studio, but he was more likely to joust with guests such as the irascible science fiction writer Harlan Ellison.
Snyder had John Lennon's final televised interview (April 1975) and U2's first U.S. television appearance in June 1981.
One of his most riveting interviews was with Charles Manson, who would go from a calm demeanor to acting like a wild-eyed, insanity-spouting mass murderer and back again.
Born in Milwaukee, Snyder began his career as a radio reporter in his home town in the 1960s, then moved into local television news, anchoring newscasts in Philadelphia, New York and Los Angeles before moving to late night.
His catch phrase: "Fire up a colortini, sit back, relax, and watch the pictures, now, as they fly through the air."
Snyder gained fame in his heyday when Dan Aykroyd spoofed him in the early days of "Saturday Night Live." His chain-smoking, black beetle brows (contrasting with his mostly gray hair), mercurial manner and self-indulgent, digressive way of asking questions as well as his clipped speech pattern made for a distinctive sendup.
Snyder is survived by his daughter and longtime girlfriend.
Tom Snyder
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