Los Angeles Free Press Preview Issue 1.02
Darenet
'Best of TBH Politoons'
M Is FOR MASHUP - September 26 2007
GHP's Worlds' Greatest Mashups
By DJ Useo
Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Paul Begala: Democrats Should Attack Bush, Not MoveOn (huffingtonpost.com)
Before a single Democrat condemns MoveOn's ad, they should insist that George W. Bush and the Republican Party repudiate the anti-military smears on war heroes that have been the hallmark of Mr. Bush's political career.
A picture of health? (guardian.co.uk)
Michael Moore's new film, Sicko, which is out next month, contrasts the US's privatised healthcare system with Britain's free NHS. ... For this special G2 report we took 16 NHS workers to an advance screening of Sicko and asked them: is the British way of medicine really that good?
Barbara Ehrenreich: Why Does Everyone Bow Down to the Health Insurance Industry? (Barbaraehrenreich.com; Posted on AlterNet.org)
After facing down the Third Reich, the Japanese Empire, the U.S.S.R., Saddam Hussein, the United States has met an enemy it dares not confront -- the American private health insurance industry.
Beth Quinn: Quitting smoking can be hazardous to your health (recordonline.com)
From time to time, I hear from readers who want to know, "Have you gone back to smoking yet?" There's an assumption of ultimate failure in that question, and for good reason: Quitting smoking is an expensive, filthy habit that can be hazardous to your health.
Scott Burns: Closet needn't be of epic proportions (dallasnews.com)
Do you suffer from "Closet Guilt"?
Edited by Matthew Miller: The Forbes 400 (forbes.com)
The price of admission to this, the 25th anniversary edition of the Forbes 400, is $1.3 billion, up $300 million from last year. The collective net worth of the nation's mightiest plutocrats rose $290 billion to $1.54 trillion.
Germaine Greer: Instead of spending a fortune getting rid of graffiti, why don't we just give it marks out of 10? (arts.guardian.co.uk)
Thirty-five years ago I bought a dilapidated house in North Kensington, London. One of the reasons I bought it was that it sported a magnificent graffito.
Jesse Smith: "Menckenmania: A birthday party for the writer reveals his strange place in the world of letters." (thesmartset.com)
"I never lecture, not because I am shy or a bad speaker, but simply because I detest the sort of people who go to lectures and don't want to meet them." - H.L. Mencken
Morgan Meis: "The Meaning and Meanness of Mencken" (thesmartset.com)
H.L. Mencken was a bastard. He had a core meanness that showed itself in his writing and in his personal life. Without that meanness, though, his writing might never have gotten so startlingly good. Lots of people need lots of things to do what they do. Mencken simply needed to be hard.
Randy Glasbergen: More Than 500 Diet, Fitness, Health and Medical Cartoons (glasbergen.com)
"What fits your busy schedule better, exercising an hour a day or being dead 24 hours a day?"
David Bruce: Wise Up! Good Deeds (athensnews.com)
During the Battle of the Somme in 1916 during World War I, casualties were heavy on both sides (over 1 million people were killed or wounded during the battle), but even during the heavy fighting, acts of mercy occurred.
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Sunny, and 10° cooler than back in PA.
Loofah Man, The Racist
Bill O'Really
After eating dinner at a famed Harlem restaurant recently, Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly told a radio audience he "couldn't get over the fact" that there was no difference between the black-run Sylvia's and other restaurants.
"It was like going into an Italian restaurant in an all-white suburb in the sense of people were sitting there, and they were ordering and having fun," he said. "And there wasn't any kind of craziness at all."
The comments were made during O'Reilly's nationally syndicated radio broadcast last week. The liberal media watchdog Media Matters for America called attention to them by distributing a transcript and audio clip on the Internet.
Bill O'Really
Koppel And Wallace Honored
News Emmys
Ted Koppel came up to New York Monday to accept a lifetime achievement award from the News & Documentary Emmys, but instead walked away with two prizes.
Koppel's Discovery Channel special "Iran: The Most Dangerous Nation" won as the year's outstanding longform informational propaganda program. Koppel, who quit ABC News in 2005 after a 42-year career, has won about 40 Emmys.
Another veteran was also honored for an Iranian report: "60 Minutes" correspondent emeritus Mike Wallace won in the interview category for his interview last summer with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, currently the talk of the town in New York.
PBS led all networks with 10 awards, including four for "Frontline." CBS News won five Emmys, including four for "60 Minutes." Discovery Channel and NBC News each won three awards and Cinemax won two awards.
News Emmys
Meets With Hugo Chavez
Kevin Spacey
Actor Kevin Spacey met privately Monday with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, one of Washington's most outspoken critics in Latin America.
Neither Spacey - who has won Academy Awards for roles in "The Usual Suspects" and "American Beauty" - nor Chavez spoke to the press after the nearly three-hour encounter in the presidential palace in Caracas. They shook hands warmly on the red carpet as Spacey left after a dinner with Chavez.
Hours earlier, the actor visited a $13 million film studio founded last year by the government to support Venezuelan filmmaking. Details were not released about the rest of Spacey's itinerary.
Kevin Spacey
"Help!" Remastered
Richard Lester
"We couldn't have shot a film about what the Beatles got up to at night as it would have been X-rated," US producer Richard Lester joked as he presented the remastered version of "Help!", starring the Beatles, at the San Sebastian Film Festival.
The 1965 work was a follow-up to "A Hard Day's Night" and thus marked the second big screen appearance of the "fab-four" from Liverpool.
Monday saw the remastered work shown in all its restored and digitised glory ahead of the November release of a two-disc DVD set including a documentary on the making of the film.
The remastered version is the same length as the original, coming in at 90 minutes, but does include a few minutes worth of bonus material.
Richard Lester
Unseen Letters To Be Displayed
Vincent van Gogh
A never-before-exhibited collection of letters from Vincent van Gogh to a colleague reveal the beliefs and mundane challenges of the artistic genius - from his beliefs about sex to keeping his easel steady in the wind.
Van Gogh wrote the letters to Emile Bernard over two years starting in 1887, shortly before the tortured artist committed suicide.
"You see the human being in a body - who gets exhausted, working at his easel, outdoors in the blazing sun, with no food on some days," said Jennifer Tonkovich, curator of "Painted With Words: Vincent van Gogh's Letters to Emile Bernard," on display at The Morgan Library & Museum.
The 20 letters - alternately frank, humorous and profound - relate to 22 paintings, drawings and watercolors in the exhibit that the two artists discussed or exchanged, including a portrait of a French soldier dressed in a bright uniform influenced by the Algerian background of the so-called Zouave regiment.
Vincent van Gogh
Baby News
Jake Kaiser
People magazine reports on its Web its site that the former "Family Ties" actress delivered Jake Kaiser this morning at an Orange County hospital.
It's the second child for Yothers and her husband, Robert Kaiser. Their daughter, Lilly, turns two in October.
Jake Kaiser
Awards 24 Grants
MacArthur Foundation
A woman who helps students go to college with their "posse," a psychiatrist who treats combat veterans and a museum director on Alaska's Kodiak Island are among the 24 winners of this year's MacArthur Foundation "genius grants."
The $500,000 fellowships were to be announced Tuesday by the Chicago-based John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Recipients can use the money however they wish.
Since 1981, the MacArthur Foundation has named 756 fellows, recommended to the foundation's board by a 12-member selection committee.
Other winners of this year's fellowships include a blues musician, a painter, a playwright, an inventor, a medieval historian, a forensic anthropologist who investigates human rights violations, a biomedical scientist studying how to temporarily reduce metabolism and a spider silk biologist researching new synthetic materials.
MacArthur Foundation
Another DUI
Kiefer Sutherland
Kiefer Sutherland had a bad 24 hours. The dashing star of the TV drama "24" was arrested for investigation of misdemeanor drunken driving early Tuesday while still on probation from a similar 2004 conviction.
Sutherland, 40, failed a field sobriety test after he was stopped for making an illegal U-turn in West Los Angeles shortly after 1 a.m., police Officer Kevin Maiberger said.
Not long before he was stopped, Sutherland was seen at a party at the trendy Area nightclub. The event, in the same neighborhood where the actor was pulled over, was a celebration of the new fall shows on Fox TV, the network that broadcasts "24."
Sutherland, who was born in London but went to high school in Canada, was receiving an award of excellence Tuesday afternoon from the Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists. After his arrest, the event at the official residence of the Canadian consul general was closed to the media.
Kiefer Sutherland
Pleads Not Guilty
The Game
The Game pleaded not guilty Tuesday to three felony charges filed after authorities said he pulled a gun during a pickup basketball game at a South Los Angeles school.
The rapper entered the plea in Superior Court to making criminal threats, possession of a firearm in a school zone and exhibiting a firearm on the grounds of a facility for minors.
The Game, whose real name is Jayceon Terrell Taylor, is free on $50,000 bail. He could face more than five years in prison if convicted.
The charges stem from a Feb. 24 basketball game at the Rita Walters Educational Learning Complex. Police said Taylor, 27, punched a player on the opposing team, then grabbed a gun from his red Cadillac Escalade and threatened to shoot him.
The Game
Discovery Edits Fake Show
'Man vs. Wild'
Discovery Channel on Monday aired re-edited versions of its reality series "Man vs. Wild," acknowledging that elements of one of its most popular show were faked.
While the series claims that "Wild" star Bear Grylls braves the great outdoors, it emerged during the summer that he sometimes spent nights in a motel when he was depicted sleeping outside, or received off-camera assistance in constructing rafts or bridges that he was shown crafting alone.
Facing a public relations nightmare, Discovery was forced to acknowledge that "some episodes were not natural to the environment."
On Monday, following an exhaustive internal investigation, Discovery aired four consecutive episodes from the first season, accompanied by a disclaimer. Other clarifications came in the form of new voice-overs from Grylls and excisions of dubious footage.
'Man vs. Wild'
Italy And Getty Sign Deal
Antiquities
Italian officials said they will drop a civil lawsuit in the trial of the J. Paul Getty Museum's former curator after the Los Angeles institution formally signed a deal Tuesday to return 40 contested artifacts.
State lawyers will withdraw the civil lawsuit when the two-year-old trial of Marion True resumes Wednesday. But officials said dropping of civil charges will not stop criminal proceedings against True, who is accused of knowingly acquiring ancient treasures that Italy maintains were stolen or unearthed illegally and smuggled out of the country.
Getty Director Michael Brand said he hopes the agreement, reached last month after a year of negotiations, will put an end to the trial which is part of a wider campaign by Italy to crack down on the illegal antiquities market. Already, Italy has struck deals with two U.S. museums for the return of ancient Greek, Roman and Etruscan artifacts.
All but one of the ancient treasures covered by the deal will be transferred to Italy by year's end. The last and most prized work, a 5th century B.C. statue of the goddess Aphrodite, will remain at the Getty until 2010.
Antiquities
Judge Tosses Hit-And-Run Charge
Pamela Bach
A misdemeanor hit-and-run charge against Pamela Bach, David Hasselhoff's ex-wife, was dropped Tuesday after she agreed to pay for what her attorney called minor damage.
A Superior Court judge granted a defense motion of a permanent stay of the charge - equivalent to a dismissal - after the woman whose car was struck withdrew her complaint.
"We presented an affidavit to the court that she was no longer desirous of prosecution," said Bach's attorney, Mark Geragos. He declined to identify the woman.
Geragos said he talked to the woman earlier in the week and she agreed to withdraw the case, while Bach agreed to pay for damages.
Pamela Bach
Estate $7M Short
James Brown
Special administrators appointed to look into the handling of James Brown's estate have told a judge that a former trustee may have misappropriated up to $7 million of the late soul singer's money.
The judge agreed that Brown's heirs could pursue those claims and ordered the ex-trustee to pay $370,000 back to the estate, on top of $350,000 the man repaid last month.
State Circuit Judge Jack Early gave David Cannon, who has resigned as co-executor of Brown's will, 10 days to repay the additional $370,000 and 20 days to pay $30,000 for attorney fees and to produce other documents.
James Brown
Devil's Bible Draws Crowds In Prague
Codex Gigas
Codex Gigas, also known as the Devil's Bible - a medieval manuscript said to have been written 800 years ago with the devil's help - has returned to Prague after an absence of 359 years.
The priceless piece, considered the biggest medieval book, was taken from the Prague Castle by Swedish troops at the end of the Thirty Years' War in 1648. It is in Prague on loan from Sweden's Royal Library in Stockholm. It was put on display last week under high security at the Czech National Library.
Only 60 people an hour can enter an air-conditioned room in the library's medieval complex for a 10-minutes look at the manuscript, which is inside a specially designed, unbreakable case.
According to myth, a Benedictine monk promised to write the book overnight to atone for his sins. When he realized the task was impossible, he asked the devil for help. The page with the illustration of the devil is the one visitors see.
Codex Gigas
L.A. Mayor's Girlfriend Demoted
Mirthala Salinas
The television anchor who covered stories on the mayor of Los Angeles -- without publicly revealing that she was the married mayor's girlfriend -- has been reassigned to a distant outpost after being suspended for two months without pay, the Los Angeles Times reported on Tuesday.
Mirthala Salinas, a former rising star at Spanish-language broadcaster Telemundo's KVEA, will return to work next Monday as a general assignment reporter in Riverside, a desert city 55 miles east of Los Angeles, the paper said.
Salinas lost her job as a substitute anchor on KVEA's evening news broadcast after her affair with Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa became public. Salinas had delivered the news in June that Villaraigosa and his wife, Corina, were separating after 20 years of marriage.
The newspaper said it was not clear if Salinas would accept the new role, noting that her contract expires in December.
Mirthala Salinas
Prime Time Nielsens
Ratings
Prime-time viewership numbers compiled by Nielsen Media Research for Sept. 17-23. Listings include the week's ranking, with viewership for the week and season-to-date rankings in parentheses. An "X" in parentheses denotes a one-time-only presentation.
1. (7) NFL Football: Dallas at Chicago, NBC, 19.05 million viewers.
2. (X) "Survivor: China," CBS, 15.35 million viewers.
3. (7) "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation," CBS, 14.07 million viewers.
4. (31) "Sunday Night NFL Pre-Kick," NBC, 13.86 million viewers.
5. (26) "Cold Case," CBS, 12.75 million viewers.
6. (13) "Deal Or No Deal" (Monday), NBC, 11.72 million viewers.
7. (26) "Shark," CBS, 11.42 million viewers.
8. (26) "60 Minutes," CBS, 11.37 million viewers.
9. (23) "Without a Trace," CBS, 11.28 million viewers.
10. (19) "Two And a Half Men," CBS, 10.84 million viewers.
11. (78) "Family Guy," Fox, 10.81 million viewers.
12. (56) "Football Night in America, Part 3," NBC, 10.29 million viewers.
13. (46) "Deal Or No Deal" (Wednesday), NBC, 9.86 million viewers.
14. (15) "CSI: Miami," CBS, 9.65 million viewers.
15. (78) "The Simpsons," Fox, 9.55 million viewers.
16. (23) "The OT," Fox, 9.5 million viewers.
17. (New) "Back to You," Fox, 9.48 million viewers.
18. (X) "Kid Nation - Special," CBS, 9.38 million viewers.
19. (21) "CSI: NY," CBS, 9.18 million viewers.
20. (18) "Desperate Housewives," ABC, 9.02 million viewers.
Ratings
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