'Best of TBH Politoons'
Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Jim Hightower: STOP SUBSIDIZING BIG OIL (jimhightower.com)
In 2006, the CEO of Exxon Mobil exclaimed that, gosh, his corporation was rolling in so much profit that he simply didn't know how to spend it all.
Bill Maher: Credit Where Credit Is Due (huffingtonpost.com)
There's a seemingly dry headline this week that is a lot scarier than it looks: Bank of America's profit declined 77% this quarter. They're a big bank. They're a consumer-oriented bank. And it turns out their losses are not just coming from the subprime mortage crisis. They're coming from small business loans, construction loans, and simple credit card debt. Bottom line--people can't pay their bills.
JAMIE LEE CURTIS: "Topless on TV: The Miley Cyrus / Vanity Fair Saga" (huffingtonpost.com)
I woke up this morning concerned about the world food shortage and Korean defectors attempting self immolation in protest of Beijing and was astonished at the amount of attention a young woman named Miley Cyrus was getting for a topless, or shall I say backless, photograph in Vanity Fair.
Alex Remington: "Harold & Kumar 2: Best War on Terror Movie Ever (Though That's Not Saying Much)" (huffingtonpost.com)
George W. Bush: You guys are awesome.
Harold & Kumar: No, you're awesome!
George W. Bush: No, you guys are awesome!
--dialogue from the movie
PETER CLOTHIER: A Painter's Story (huffingtonpost.com)
There's a huge amount of interest in the art world, these days, in what's happening on the art scene in post-Cultural Revolution China.
Margaret Drabble: Poor Dorothy Wordsworth (entertainment.timesonline.co.uk)
The shadow story of the Wordsworths and "Wuthering Heights."
David Hiltbrand: Colin Hay is still a man at work, although in smaller venues (The Philadelphia Inquirer)
Growing up in Scotland, and after he moved to Australia with his family as a teenager, Colin Hay was always a keen observer and admirer of American culture.
Len Righi: Pioneering activist performer Gil Scott-Heron speaks up again (The Morning Call)
Give props to Gil Scott-Heron for the cutting-edge topicality of his best street poetry and jazz-inflected R&B over the last four decades and the activist performer will accept the compliment graciously, albeit with reservations.
Andy Mulkerin: 'New Yorker' Pop-music Critic Sasha Frere-Jones Chats (Pittsburgh City Paper)
On criticisms of his criticism, the blogosphere and quality vs. quantity.
Gus Garcia-Roberts: The Kickdrums May be Hip-hop's Next Big Beatmakers (clevescene.com)
And they work out of a closet in Avon, Ohio.
Perfect gent, pioneer of jazz and purveyor of the rudest jokes on air (guardian.co.uk)
Humphrey Lyttelton, who died on Friday, was a brilliant entertainer who saw himself first and foremost as a musician, remembers Melvyn Bragg.
Hubert's Poetry Corner
Terror at 3:00 A.M.
Reader Suggestion
Sheriff Joe
Check out this out:
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Sunny and cooler.
Celebrities Launch Video Campaign
Aung San Suu Kyi
About 30 Hollywood celebrities will kick off a campaign Thursday to seek the release of Myanmar's democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi and push for freedom in the military-ruled nation.
The 30-day campaign will see stars such as Will Ferrell, Ellen Page, Judd Apatow, Anjelica Huston, Jennifer Aniston and Rosanna Arquette appearing in video clips on the Internet highlighting human rights issues in Myanmar.
It is aimed at building a network of one million people to join the US Campaign for Burma, a group in the forefront of efforts to free 62-year-old Aung San Suu Kyi, the world's only imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize recipient who has spent more than 12 of the past 18 years under house arrest.
Aung San Suu Kyi
Found
Flying Pig
A giant helium-filled pig didn't drift off to hog heaven after it was released into the night sky during Roger Waters' performance at the Coachella music festival. It's been found - in pieces.
Two couples found tattered halves of the inflatable swine in their yards, a few miles from festival grounds in the Southern California desert.
As tall as a two-story house and as wide as two school buses, the pig was led from lines held on the ground Sunday as Waters played a version of Pink Floyd's "Pigs" from the 1977 anti-capitalist album "Animals."
Then it just floated away.
Flying Pig
Reunion For Charity Event
SCTV
For some, it was Catherine O'Hara's unhinged Lola Heatherton, for others it was Eugene Levy's impersonation of a near-comatose Perry Como, for still others it was Tex and Edna Boyle and their bizarre organ emporium.
Almost every Canadian has a favourite SCTV character, moment or routine - and so, too, do a litany of comics who have been paying tribute to the zany and groundbreaking troupe as some of its most famous members prepare to reunite next week in Toronto for two shows aimed at raising funds for struggling Second City alumni.
The shows - featuring Joe Flaherty, Catherine O'Hara, Eugene Levy, Andrea Martin, Martin Short and Harold Ramis - are aimed at raising funds for veteran artistic and support personnel from "SCTV" and the Second City theatre troupe who are facing health or financial hardships.
No media have been accredited to cover the shows, and they were conceived simply as low-key affairs meant to raise charity money.
SCTV
Fight Over Copyright
Yoko Ono
They are rare, intimate images of John Lennon just before the breakup of the Beatles: He's hunched over a piano writing songs, smoking pot, joking about putting LSD in President Nixon's tea.
Almost four decades after the footage was shot at Lennon's estate in England, his widow is in court, fighting to keep the images private.
World Wide Video LLC, a Lawrence, Mass.-based company, claims it owns the 10 hours of raw footage, but Yoko Ono claims she is the rightful owner. World Wide Video has filed a federal lawsuit against Ono, claiming Ono's attempts to stop the company from publicly showing the footage is a copyright infringement.
At preliminary hearing in the case Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Boston, arguments on Ono's motion to dismiss were scheduled for May 21. Both sides also agreed not to show the film while the case is working through the courts.
The footage, which has never been shown publicly in its entirety, was shot Feb. 8-10, 1970, by Anthony Cox, Ono's husband before her marriage to Lennon in 1969.
Yoko Ono
Opens June 2
Museum at Bethel Woods
A museum dedicated to the 1969 Woodstock music festival is scheduled to open on June 2 at a farm in upstate New York where the event was held, organizers said Tuesday.
The Museum at Bethel Woods is located on the grounds of the historic festival that boasted an unforgettable lineup that including guitar legend Jimi Hendrix, folk heroine Joan Baez, blues-rock singer Janis Joplin and The Grateful Dead rock group.
The museum features film and interactive displays as well as artifacts to describe the festival that drew nearly one million people, and explore its legacy.
Located 170 kilometers (105 miles) north of New York City, the museum is part of the Bethel Woods Center for the Arts, an open-air concert pavillion.
Museum at Bethel Woods
Nightclub Sold To Insurance Co.
Hollywood & Vine
Fire tore through a hip nightclub at the storied corner of Hollywood and Vine on Wednesday, covering the landmark-studded neighborhood with smoke and ash. No injuries were reported.
The one-story building, built in the 1920s or '30s, is now home to the Basque Nightclub & Restaurant, but it was not open at the time, firefighters said. Lindsay Lohan celebrated her 21st birthday at the club and Kanye West partied there just last week.
The building has been a Brown Derby restaurant, a Howard Johnson's restaurant, a nightclub called Deep, a music studio and other businesses through the years.
Four businesses were damaged - the nightclub, a tattoo parlor, a beauty supply company and a vacant shoe store, Battalion Chief Ronnie Villanueva said. The extent of the losses were not immediately available.
Hollywood & Vine
Back Taxes
Al Franken
Senate candidate Al Franken, dogged by accusations that he failed to file tax returns in California, said Tuesday he will pay about $70,000 in back income taxes in 17 states dating to 2003.
Most of the income at issue was from speeches and other paid appearances by the comedian-turned candidate, who said he got bad advice from his accountant but takes responsibility for the errors.
The Minnesota Democrat told The Associated Press that he and his wife, Franni, "paid taxes on every cent of income we ever had." He said that during the years in question, he followed the accountant's advice and paid his entire income tax bill to the city and state where he lived at the time. He lived in New York City from 2003-05 and Minnesota in 2006.
His communications director, Andy Barr, said none of the 17 states attempted to contact Franken or his accountant seeking the unpaid personal income taxes.
Al Franken
Plan to Raze Theater Questioned
Provincetown Playhouse
Preservationists are protesting a plan by New York University to tear down a theater where playwrights from Eugene O'Neill to David Mamet saw their works produced.
But NYU officials say the five-story building that houses the Provincetown Playhouse is not architecturally significant and can't be retrofitted into the office space they need.
Alicia Hurley, the university's vice president for government and community affairs, said the building's cultural significance will be honored by preserving and restoring the entrance to the theater on MacDougal Street in Greenwich Village, and the 170-seat theater will be replaced by a new theater.
The theater is named for the Provincetown Players, which was founded on Cape Cod and took up residence in Greenwich Village in 1916. Among the plays it presented in the early 1920s were O'Neill's "Emperor Jones" and "Hairy Ape." Plays by Mamet, Edward Albee and Samuel Beckett were produced there in later years.
Provincetown Playhouse
DNA Confirms Children
Czar Nicholas II
For nine decades after Bolshevik executioners gunned down Czar Nicholas II and his family, there were no traces of the remains of Crown Prince Alexei, the hemophiliac heir to Russia's throne.
Some said the delicate 13-year-old had somehow survived and escaped; others believed his bones were lost in Russia's vastness, buried in secret amid fear and chaos as the country lurched into civil war.
Now an official says DNA tests have solved the mystery by identifying bone shards found in a forest as those of Alexei and his sister, Grand Duchess Maria.
Researchers unearthed the bone shards last summer in a forest near Yekaterinburg, where the royal family was killed, and enlisted Russian and U.S. laboratories to conduct DNA tests.
Czar Nicholas II
Dozens Reside in Anchorage
Grizzlies
A study by state biologists has found parts of Anchorage are much more popular among grizzly bears than they previously thought.
At least three dozen grizzlies have been seen over the past three summers along Campbell Creek, which courses through industrial and residential areas and is home to a science center that is popular among families on warm summer days.
While biologists with the Department of Fish and Game knew the area was popular with bears, they were surprised to find out just how many were hanging out along the stream. It appears the bears are coming from several valleys in the Chugach Mountains above Anchorage.
Grizzlies
Words & Meanings
People of Lesbos
A Greek court has been asked to draw the line between the natives of the Aegean Sea island of Lesbos and the world's gay women.
Three islanders from Lesbos - home of the ancient poet Sappho, who praised love between women - have taken a gay rights group to court for using the word lesbian in its name.
One of the plaintiffs said Wednesday that the name of the association, Homosexual and Lesbian Community of Greece, "insults the identity" of the people of Lesbos, who are also known as Lesbians.
"My sister can't say she is a Lesbian," said Dimitris Lambrou. "Our geographical designation has been usurped by certain ladies who have no connection whatsoever with Lesbos," he said.
People of Lesbos
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