'Best of TBH Politoons'
Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Molly Ivins: Immigration 101
Numero Two-o, should you actually want to stop Mexicans and OTMs (other than Mexicans) from coming to the United States, here is how to do it: Find an illegal worker at a large corporation. This is not difficult -- brooms and mops are big tip-offs. Then put the CEO of that corporation in prison for two or more years for violating the law against hiring illegal workers.
PAUL KRUGMAN: The Road to Dubai (The New York Times)
But I'm puzzled by the plan to create a permanent guest-worker program, one that would admit 400,000 more workers a year (and you know that business interests would immediately start lobbying for an increase in that number). Isn't institutionalizing a disenfranchised work force a big step away from democracy?
LAWRENCE BIEMILLER: White Suit, Gray Eminence (chronicle.com)
The exclamation points - how could I have forgotten the exclamation points? Two in the first two sentences, 10 on the third page, seven in a mere five lines on page 11.
Willing Davidson: Dave Chappelle's Problem (slate.com)
He can't escape white people.
RICHARD ROEPER: Hero tales: The good, the bad and the Barry (suntimes.com)
I'll never forget the time a colleague of mine met one of his idols at a social gathering. The living legend approached our table, shook a few hands, told a story with some off-color language, rambled on for a bit, uttered some more expletives, topped it off with a bigoted comment -- and downed the remainder of his drink before stumbling away.
Adam Sternbergh: Up With Grups* (newyorkmag.com)
He owns eleven pairs of sneakers, hasn't worn anything but jeans in a year, and won't shut up about the latest Death Cab for Cutie CD. But he is no kid. He is among the ascendant breed of grown-up who has redefined adulthood as we once knew it and killed off the generation gap.
Rachel Kramer Bussel: Meet the Boobiesexuals (villagevoice.com)
BOBexplains why breasts are beautiful: "It's absolutely not the physical characteristics. What makes a great pair of breasts is the person carrying them. You can buy a great pair, but you can't buy personality, charisma, or a sense of humor-the three sexiest things any man or woman with a pair of breasts can have."
Em & Lo: It's discreet, it's quick, and it's definitely dirty: Text messaging is the latest technology for hooking up (nymag.com)
Committed couples across the city are texting each other into a frenzy. "It's a great form of foreplay during the workday," says Molly, a 28-year-old yoga instructor. "Once my mom was staying with me, so I had no way to have actual phone sex with my girlfriend at the time, but we had text sex all night while my mom and I were watching Jay Leno. She had no clue."
The Online Library of Liberty
Update From Colby
Katherine Harris
Katherine Harris: More Rats to Jump Sinking Ship
Four or five more staffers are planning to leave Katherine's dying campaign. But at least her reason is new: It's the Media's fault!
Colby B.
in Frostproof
Thanks, Colby!
You know what it means if she's blaming the media - it'll be Bill Clinton's fault next.
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Mostly sunny afternoon.
There've been a lot of Ahnold commercials tonight. The tag line is 'his heart is in the right place.'
Is that the best they have to offer?
Of course his heart is in the right place - that's where the surgeon put it after he installed the cadaver parts.
Here's all the Juno Award nominations. Will work on getting a list of the winners.
No new flags.
Not Very High Times
Playboy Mansion
Sex and drugs were on everyone's minds at the Playboy Mansion on Thursday as a marijuana rights group held its annual fundraiser at the famed temple of hedonism.
Unfortunately, guests were warned in advance that anyone caught smoking pot on the premises would be thrown out. There wasn't much scope for sex either, as the mostly male crowd outnumbered the handful of Playboy hostesses who circulated under the watchful gaze of security guards.
The bash was organized by the Marijuana Policy Project, which lobbies against criminal penalties for marijuana use, and for medical marijuana. It handed an award to Playboy founder Hugh Hefner, a long-time advocate of drug liberalization (among other things). Performers included nine-time Grammy winner Ray Benson of country combo Asleep at the Wheel, who bemoaned the hard line against marijuana in his home state of Texas.
Playboy Mansion
ESPN Documentary To Go On As Planned
Barry Bonds
A documentary TV series chronicling Barry Bonds' upcoming 2006 baseball season will take an honest look at the steroid scandal surrounding the slugger, but his lawyers can review the episodes before they air, the producer said on Thursday.
The 10-part series "Bonds on Bonds," promising an inside glimpse at one of the most private and prickly figures in professional sports, premieres next Tuesday on ESPN2, with subsequent episodes telecast weekly on the main ESPN network.
The program was conceived as a documentary following the San Francisco Giants outfielder's week-to-week quest to surpass Babe Ruth's lifetime home-run tally of 714 home runs after missing most of last season with a knee injury.
Barry Bonds
Poster Boy
Chris Farley
Chris Farley, the funnyman who died more than eight years ago of a drug overdose, is making an appearance - on billboards that advertise treatment for drug and alcohol addiction.
The outdoor ads - the first major commercial use of his image approved by his family - feature a photo of the smiling, famously bloated comic with the slogan, "It wasn't all his fault." The ads tout a new addiction treatment from Hythiam Inc.
The first billboard will appear Monday near the Chateau Marmont on Sunset Boulevard, the hotel where Farley's idol, comedian John Belushi, died of a drug overdose in 1982.
Chris Farley
Former Home On eBay
Elvis Presley
Those eager for a piece of the Elvis Presley legacy might consider bidding on the first house he bought after striking musical gold.
Beginning April 14, the ranch-style Memphis house -- at 1034 Audubon Drive -- will be exclusively auctioned on eBay.
This was the house made possible by the runaway success of Presley's first No. 1 hit, "Heartbreak Hotel," in 1956. Though Presley lived there for only a little over a year (blame overexcited fans and pesky photographers), his home improvements -- including a pool and motorcycle garage -- remain intact. Bidding ends May 14.
Elvis Presley
Can't Reclaim Name
Elizabeth Emanuel
Elizabeth Emanuel, the designer of Princess Diana's wedding dress, does not have the automatic right to reclaim her name, which she sold off as a trademark to another firm, an EU court ruled Thursday.
Emanuel launched a bridal wear business on the back of the fairy tale silk, taffeta and tulle confection worn by Diana when she married Prince Charles, the heir to the British throne, in 1981.
Judges rejected the fashion designer's request that they award her the rights to trademark her name, saying she had specifically sold her trademark "together with the business making the goods to which the mark relates."
Elizabeth Emanuel
50 Years With 'As the World Turns'
Nancy Hughes
While actors young enough to be her grandchildren come and go on television, soap opera veteran Helen Wagner has earned a place in the Guinness World Records by playing one role for 50 years.
The 87-year-old actress says the secret to her longevity as matriarch Nancy Hughes on the CBS daytime drama "As the World Turns" is simple.
"They kept offering me a contract, so I kept doing it. And they kept writing things for me, so I kept saying them," Wagner recounted in a recent interview. "I didn't think about leaving or not leaving."
Years after James Arness of "Gunsmoke" and Kelsey Grammer of "Frasier" retired from their respective record-tying 20-year roles in prime time, Wagner still reigns supreme as the longest-running character on any TV show played by a single actor.
Nancy Hughes
Skips Hearing on Assets
Marion 'Suge' Knight
Rap-music mogul Marion "Suge" Knight skipped a court-ordered appearance at a hearing about his assets Saturday, setting the stage for courts to take control of his Death Row Records label.
Knight has missed several hearings in a legal battle since he lost a $107 million judgment last year to Lydia Harris, a former associate who claimed she helped start the rap record empire with her former husband, Michael Harris.
Michael Harris, an imprisoned drug dealer, says he put up $1.5 million to help start the record label - an assertion Knight has repeatedly denied.
A judge last month ordered the record company into receivership, which hinged on Knight's appearance at Saturday's hearing.
Marion 'Suge' Knight
Struggling on Radio
David Lee Roth
David Lee Roth says he won't jump from his gig as a morning radio host. Roth, who replaced shock jock Howard Stern on seven stations in January, has struggled in making the move from rock star to radio host. But during his Friday show, the former Van Halen frontman vowed to stick with it - although he acknowledged that problems continue.
Roth's show underwent drastic changes last week, with the removal of his three on-air sidekicks and the ditching of background music. According to Roth, he received four letters in five days from CBS Radio officials demanding "extensive changes" in his four-hour show.
The rocker complained that CBS executives had failed to offer him enough support when the show first made its debut.
David Lee Roth
Study Fails To Show Healing Power
Prayer
A study of more than 1,800 patients who underwent heart bypass surgery has failed to show that prayers specially organized for their recovery had any impact, researchers said on Thursday.
In fact, the study found some of the patients who knew they were being prayed for did worse than others who were only told they might be prayed for -- though those who did the study said they could not explain why.
The patients in the study at six U.S. hospitals included 604 who were actually prayed for after being told they might or might not be; another 597 patients who were not prayed for after being told they might or might not be; and a group of 601 who were prayed for and told they would be the subject of such prayer.
The praying was done by members of three Christian groups in monasteries and elsewhere -- two Catholic and one Protestant -- who were given written prayers and the first name and initial of the last name of the prayer subjects. The prayers started on the eve of or day of surgery and lasted for two weeks.
Prayer
The Secret History
Garden Gnomes
For more than a century now, the garden gnome has colonized Germany's gardens and windowsills. It's a symbol of German diligence and order, but also part of a comic and dark underworld.
The French blockbuster "Amelie," may have made him trendy abroad in recent years, but nanus hortorum vulgaris, has been a regular fixture in German culture for more than a century. Created in 1872 in the small town of Graefenroda in the German state of Thuringia, none of the kobolds, trolls and sprites that populate Teutonic mythology has endeared itself to Germans like the common garden gnome. Experts estimate that some 25 million of the glazed ceramic creatures now inhabit German living rooms and perfectly manicured flower beds.
But the common garden gnome has fallen on hard times in recent years, his reputation tarnished by campaigns led by mean-spirited elitist intellectuals and even perverts. To intellectuals and other touchy types, he's despised as the embodiment of kitsch and petit-bourgeois parochialism. Some outsiders have even sought to savage the image of the gnome by plunging him into a world of decadence, violence, and sex. There are pornographic gnomes, one-eared Van Gogh gnomes and "Scream" versions à la Edvard Munch.
Garden Gnomes
In Memory
Jackie McLean
Jazz saxophonist Jackie McLean, a performer and teacher who played with legendary musicians including Miles Davis and Sonny Rollins, died Friday. He was 73.
McLean was founder and artistic director of the Jackie McLean Institute of Jazz at the University of Hartford's Hartt School.
McLean, a native of Harlem in New York City, grew up in a musical family, his father playing guitar in Tiny Bradshaw's band. McLean took up the soprano saxophone as a teen and quickly switched to the alto saxophone, inspired by his godfather's performances in a church choir, he told WBGO-FM in Newark, N.J., in an interview in 2004.
McLean went on to play with his friend Rollins under the tutelage of pianist Bud Powell, and was 19 when he first recorded with Miles Davis.
He drew wide attention with his 1959 debut on Blue Note Records, "Jackie's Bag," one of dozens of albums he recorded in the hard-bop and free jazz styles.
After Blue Note terminated his recording contract in 1968, McLean began teaching at the University of Hartford. McLean taught jazz, African-American music, and African-American history and culture. He received an American Jazz Masters fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts in 2001, and toured the world as an educator and performer.
Jackie McLean
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