'Best of TBH Politoons'
Today
Erin Hart
Please join Erin as she fills in for Mario Solis-Marich on AM760 Progressive Talk in Denver today, from 3 pm to 6 pm PDT.
Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Barbara Ehrenreich: Body Fat Holds The Key to Energy Independence (Barbaraehrenreich.com; posted on AlterNet.org)
Obese America is literally sitting on vast energy reserves -- all we need to do is extract it.
Jon Stewart's Greatest Lesbian Moments (afterellen.com)
When it comes to lesbians, "The Daily Show" has been inclusive and funny.
John Nichols: George Carlin, American Radical (TheNation.com; posted on AlterNet.org)
No one, not Obama, not Hillary Clinton and certainly not John McCain, caught the zeitgeist of the vanishing American dream so well as Carlin. "The owners of this country know the truth: It's called the American dream because you have to be asleep to believe it."
Bill Gibron: "Words of Wisdom: George Carlin (1937 - 2008)" (popmatters.com)
For our generation, George Carlin and his comedy album Class Clown were like God (or maybe Moses) and his Bible (or at the very least, the Ten Commandments). Surrounded by prophets and other daring disciples like Cheech and Chong, the members of Monty Python, Richard Pryor, and other masters of the LP format, his irreverent observational takes on everything from baseball to language defined an entire legion of adolescent humor.
Glenn Gamboa: Chairwoman of the board: Patti LaBelle does it her way (Newsday)
Patti LaBelle may be sitting on the top floor of Sony's midtown headquarters, meticulously dressed in a Michael Boris suit with Christian Louboutin pumps, looking out on the magnificent view, but she says there is always something to remind her of her roots.
Job Brother: The Godfather of Electro-pop (advocate.com)
Former Depeche Mode and Erasure member Vince Clarke reunites with bandmate Alison Moyet this summer for a Yaz reunion tour. The straight man to some pretty gay acts tells us why he stopped singing, what broke Yazoo up, and why the future of electro-pop music may be monkey brains.
Jon Bream: Jazz giant Chick Corea tours with his classic fusion group for the first time in 25 years (Star Tribune)
Why has it taken, um, forever, for jazz-rock fusion masters Return to Forever to reunite?
CHRIS CATANIA: "'The Real is Just as Magical as the Fictitious': An Intimate Talk with Saul Williams" (popmatters.com)
Few people would give their new album away for free online. Fewer would stop a prison brawl by reciting a poem. Fewer still do all this while making a powerful statement about the issue of race in our country today. Saul Williams does all these things.
Will Harris: A Chat with Mick Hucknall (bullz-eye.com)
"I'm not expecting pop chart success (for "Tribute to Bobby"), but we'll just have to see. Funny things can happen. Obviously, we want a certain levelwe actually require a certain levelof commercial success to enable us to go on and make another record, but, y'know, it's quite clear that we're not aiming to go to #1 in the pop charts with this."
Mike Ragogna: The Business Of Music (huffingtonpost.com)
Do you have any friends in the music business? If so, right about now would be a good time to check in on them. Stress is high, physical sales are low, downsizing is imminent.
Ed Morales: Esperanza Spalding's debut picks up where jazz fusion of the 1970s left off (Newsday)
Esperanza Spalding, a 23-year-old bassist, vocalist and composer from Portland, Ore., is so wildly talented that when her publicity material announces that she "might well be the hope for the future of jazz and instrumental music," it seems like a reasonable proposition. But Spalding, whose new album, "Esperanza," is a sprawling collage of jazz fusion, Brazilian and even a touch of hip-hop, doesn't want to be categorized just yet.
David Bruce: Wise Up! Children (athensnews.com)
After the Nazis occupied Denmark in World War II, King Christian X continued to ride his horse in public. Seeing the king ride his horse alone, a Nazi soldier asked a young Danish boy, "Where is his bodyguard?" The boy replied, "All of Denmark is his bodyguard."
Free Downloads: Discussion Guides for Nancy Garden's "Annie on My Mind," Lloyd Alexander's "Book of Three," and Jerry Spinelli's "Maniac Magee," all by Bruce.
Obesity Graph By Country (nationmaster.com)
"Sylvia" by Nicole Hollander
Commentary: MIchelle Obama
Ah, one of the many things about living in the NYC area is knowing your cheese...
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Sunny and pleasant.
Ran up to the Valley and it appears that gas, at $4.69/gal, has had serious impact on traffic.
Left Long Beach around 7pm, taking the 710 to the 5 to the 134 to the 101 and only had to slow for offramps. Took about half an hour. Holy shit!
I've been making this run about once a month for nearly 18 years - last month traffic seemed greatly reduced, but I figured it was a fluke.
The Next Strike
Star Wars
Movie stars accustomed to polite rivalry for coveted film roles and Oscar glory are taking sides in an increasingly bitter labor dispute between Hollywood's two actors unions.
The larger and more militant Screen Actors Guild this week enlisted such high-profile members as Jack Nicholson, Ben Stiller and Nick Nolte in its campaign to scuttle a contract negotiated by the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists.
Other A-list performers, including Tom Hanks, Kevin Spacey, Alec Baldwin and Sally Field, who won an Oscar for her role as a sweatshop union organizer in "Norma Rae," sided last week with AFTRA in publicly urging that union's 70,000 members to ratify the labor pact.
The dispute is ratcheting up tensions in Hollywood over the possibility of actors walking off the job this summer, just as the film and TV industry is still recovering from a 14-week writers strike that ended in February.
Star Wars
Launch
Myanmar Burma Ad CampaignNot On Our Watch
Hollywood stars George Clooney and Brad Pitt joined forces with Asian political figures Wednesday in an advertising campaign calling on the region to push Myanmar's junta to allow in more cyclone aid.
A full page advertisement in Indonesian English language daily The Jakarta Post by US-based pressure group Not On Our Watch said Asia must pressure the reclusive regime to fully open its doors to foreign aid after Cyclone Nargis.
Signatories included former Philippine president Corazon Aquino, East Timorese President Jose Ramos-Horta, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Nobel peace laureate Shirin Ebadi and former Czech president Vaclav Havel.
Local donors including volunteers and Buddhist monks have stepped in to try to fill the gap, and have managed to deliver aid to many remote villages of the Irrawaddy despite complaining of regular impediment by the military.
Not On Our Watch
Donate $1 Million
Jolie-Pitt Foundation
Actors Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie have donated $1 million for educational aid to children impacted by the Iraq war in that country and in the United States, a charitable organization said on Wednesday.
The Jolie-Pitt Foundation has given $500,000 to three groups in the war-torn country which will provide aid for some 5,700 children, said the Education Partnership for Children of Conflict, which is co-chaired by Jolie.
Money will pay for basic necessities, including books and supplies to help send Iraqi children to school. Aid will also go to refugee kids, and to school rehabilitation programs.
The foundation also gave $500,000 to help children in the United States who have a military parent killed in Iraq, or who are separated from a parent stationed in the country.
Jolie-Pitt Foundation
Wins Spanish Literary Award
Margaret Atwood
Canadian author Margaret Atwood has won Spain's Prince of Asturias literary prize.
The jury praised the 68-year-old writer for work that covers several genres "with sharpness and irony."
It says in a statement Wednesday that Atwood "defends the dignity of women and denounces situations of social injustice."
Atwood has published more than 25 volumes of poetry, fiction and nonfiction and won prestigious awards including Britain's Booker Prize in 2000 for "The Blind Assassin."
Margaret Atwood
Coalition for the Homeless
Alec Baldwin
Alec Baldwin is lending his voice to critics of New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's homelessness policies.
The "30 Rock" actor narrates a public service announcement released by the Coalition for the Homeless, a charity blasting Bloomberg's follow-through on a 2004 pledge to slash the number of homeless New Yorkers.
The city Department of Homeless Services says the number of homeless people on Manhattan streets and in shelters is shrinking, which the coalition disputes.
Baldwin's representatives didn't immediately return phone calls Wednesday. The 50-year-old actor is an enthusiastic Democrat who often speaks out on political matters.
Alec Baldwin
Wardrobe Auction
'The Sopranos'
Tough North Jersey mob boss Tony Soprano from hit TV series "The Sopranos" whacked buyers' bank accounts at Christie's on Wednesday when his wardrobe sold for $187,750 -- four times the auction house's forecast.
James Gandolfini, who played Soprano for six seasons over 8 1/2 years, sold his personal costume wardrobe in 25 lots at Christie's pop culture auction, with all proceeds going to Wounded Warrier, a charity that helps wounded U.S. troops.
The top lot was a bloody outfit worn when Soprano was shot at the beginning of season six by Uncle Junior in a fit of dementia, which sold for $43,750, nearly 12 times Christie's pre-sale estimate for the outfit.
Gandolfini was at the auction to see Soprano's signature white tank top, light blue striped boxer shorts, striped short robe and leather scuffs went under the hammer for $21,250, again soaring above the pre-sale estimate of $1,500.
'The Sopranos'
Queen Confers Knighthood
Salman Rushdie
Queen Elizabeth II conferred a knighthood on "The Satanic Verses" author Salman Rushdie on Wednesday, a year after the announcement of the knighthood provoked protests from the Muslim world.
Some Muslims accused Rushdie him of blasphemy in the book and Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini pronounced a death sentence on him in 1989.
"I really have no regrets about any of my work," Rushdie told reporters after being asked about "The Satanic Verses."
"It's been a long time - my first novel was published 33 years ago but I think the thing you hope to do as a writer is leave behind a shelf of interesting books and it's great just to have that work recognized," Rushdie told reporters.
Salman Rushdie
Urges Russians To Save Sakharov Museum
Garry Kasparov
Chess legend turned Kremlin critic Garry Kasparov called Wednesday on Russians to save a museum devoted to the memory of Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov.
"People are afraid to help the museum," Kasparov, a leader of the Other Russia opposition movement and an outspoken critic of former president Vladimir Putin, told a press conference.
He said Russians must save the museum -- dedicated to the life and memory of the nuclear scientist and Nobel Peace Prize winner -- which had been the venue of opposition meetings.
The museum opened in central Moscow in 1996 and manages most of Sakharov's archives as well as funds to keep alive the memory of Soviet camps and political repression under the communists.
Garry Kasparov
Faces Foreclosure in Seattle
Ernestine Anderson
Jazz vocalist Ernestine Anderson is facing foreclosure on her home in Seattle in yet another sign that the mortgage loan crisis is hitting traditional working-class neighborhoods hard.
Anderson, who once sang with the likes of Quincy Jones and Ray Charles, is more than $30,000 in arrears in payments and penalties, public records show.
Friends and family have started a last-ditch effort to save her Central District home by pleading for donations. They hope to raise $45,000 for the 79-year-old in less than a week to cover the back payments and taxes, said Carmen Gayton, a friend of Anderson's family.
After 30 albums and four Grammy nominations, Anderson is one of Seattle's most respected names in music, part of a jazz scene the flourished in the city well before grunge and alternative rock took the stage.
Ernestine Anderson
Loses Idaho Construction Dispute
Tom Hanks
A Blaine County judge has rejected Tom Hanks' second request for arbitration over what the actor says was $2.5 million in faulty workmanship by the construction company that built his sprawling compound north of this central Idaho resort town.
Following the decision, a lawyer for the construction company said it will seek monetary damages from Hanks and his wife, Rita Wilson, for what it alleges was "abuse of process" for filing the second arbitration request.
Fifth District Court Judge Robert Elgee ruled late last week that the dispute between Hanks and Storey Construction Inc. had already been decided in 2004 when the American Arbitration Association ruled in favor of Storey and awarded the company $1.85 million in unpaid contract balance, interest and legal fees.
In November, Hanks and Wilson filed the second arbitration request, alleging "latent" construction defects had been discovered. Elgee rejected that request.
Tom Hanks
Harassed In Nashville
Cher
A Nashville man has been charged with disorderly conduct and public intoxication after he repeatedly harassed Cher at the famed honky-tonk Tootsies Orchid Lounge.
Police say 36-year-old Calvin Hutton Houghland tried to make contact with Cher early Wednesday morning and was asked to leave the club. He complied, police said, but returned a short time later and grabbed Cher by the waist as the singer-actress sat in a roped-off area of the lounge.
Houghland was escorted from the bar, but returned again. When security blocked his attempts to approach the singer, Houghland called police to say he'd been assaulted.
Police say Cher declined to prosecute but Houghland asked to be arrested.
Cher
Goodwill Painting Fetches $40,000
Edouard-Leon Cortes
An old painting dropped off at a rural Maryland Goodwill store turned out to be a work by a French Impressionist. And now, thanks to the sharp eye of a store employee, the charitable organization is $40,000 richer.
The Parisian street scene, left at the store in March along with daily donations of pots, pans, old clock radios and other items, turned out to be a work by Edouard-Leon Cortes, probably from the early 20th century.
The painting - called "Marche aux fleurs" or "Flower Market" - was sold for $40,600 at a Sotheby's auction a few weeks ago.
Store manager Terri Tonelli said employees asked her to look at the donated painting because they suspected it was valuable. She found the artist's name on Google and discovered that Cortes was a notable French Impressionist whose work had sold at auction for prices near $60,000.
Edouard-Leon Cortes
Seizing Laptops and Cameras
Without Cause
Returning from a brief vacation to Germany in February, Bill Hogan was selected for additional screening by customs officials at Dulles International Airport outside Washington, D.C. Agents searched Hogan's luggage and then popped an unexpected question: Was he carrying any digital media cards or drives in his pockets? "Then they told me that they were impounding my laptop," says Hogan, a freelance investigative reporter whose recent stories have ranged from the origins of the Iraq war to the impact of money in presidential politics.
Shaken by the encounter, Hogan says he left the airport and examined his bags, finding that the agents had also removed and inspected the memory card from his digital camera. "It was fortunate that I didn't use that machine for work or I would have had to call up all my sources and tell them that the government had just seized their information," he said. When customs offered to return the machine nearly two weeks later, Hogan told them to ship it to his lawyer.
The extent of the program to confiscate electronics at customs points is unclear. A hearing Wednesday before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary's Subcommittee on the Constitution hopes to learn more about the extent of the program and safeguards to traveler's privacy. Lawsuits have also been filed, challenging how the program selects travelers for inspection. Citing those lawsuits, Customs and Border Protection, a division of the Department of Homeland Security, refuses to say exactly how common the practice is, how many computers, portable storage drives, and BlackBerries have been inspected and confiscated, or what happens to the devices once they are seized. Congressional investigators and plaintiffs involved in lawsuits believe that digital copies?so-called "mirror images" of drives?are sometimes made of materials after they are seized by customs.
Without Cause
Outsourcing To India
OC Register
An Indian company will take over copy editing duties for some stories published in The Orange County Register and will handle page layout for a community newspaper at the company that owns the Pulitzer Prize-winning daily, the newspaper confirmed Tuesday.
Orange County Register Communications Inc. will begin a one-month trial with Mindworks Global Media at the end of June, said John Fabris, a deputy editor at the Register.
Mindworks' Web site says the company is based outside New Delhi and provides "high-quality editorial and design services to global media firms ... using top-end journalistic and design talent in India."
Other newspapers also have outsourced some work to India. Mindworks began copyediting and design of a weekly community news section and other special advertising sections at The Miami Herald in January. A month earlier, the Sacramento Bee, also owned by the McClatchy Co., said it would outsource some of its advertising production work to India.
OC Register
'Predator' Lawsuit Settlement
Dateline NBC
NBC Universal has settled a $105 million lawsuit brought by a woman who claimed a televised sex sting by "Dateline NBC: To Catch A Predator" drove her brother to kill himself.
"The matter has been amicably resolved to the satisfaction of both parties," said a statement released by both sides. Terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
In February, a federal judge issued a scathing ruling in the case, saying a jury might conclude the network "crossed the line from responsible journalism to irresponsible and reckless intrusion into law enforcement."
U.S. District Judge Denny Chin said the lawsuit contained sufficient facts to make it plausible that the suicide was foreseeable, that police had a duty to protect Conradt from killing himself and that the officers and NBC acted with deliberate indifference.
Dateline NBC
In Memory
Kermit Love
Kermit Love, the costume designer who helped puppeteer Jim Henson create Big Bird and other "Sesame Street" characters, has died. He was 91.
Love died from congestive heart failure Saturday in Poughkeepsie, near his home in Stanfordville, Love's longtime partner, Christopher Lyall, told The New York Times.
In addition to his work with Henson, Love was a designer for some of ballet's most prominent choreographers, including Twyla Tharp, Agnes de Mille, Jerome Robbins and George Balanchine.
Love also designed costumes and puppets for film and advertising, including the Snuggle bear from the fabric softener commercials.
"Sesame Street," public television's groundbreaking effort to use TV to teach preschoolers, premiered in 1969. Henson designed the original sketches of Big Bird, and Love then built the 8-foot, 2-inch yellow-feathered costume.
It was Love's idea to add a few feathers designed to fall off, to create a more realistic feel.
Love also helped design costumes and puppets for Mr. Snuffleupagus, Oscar the Grouch and Cookie Monster, among other characters. He even appeared on the show himself as Willy, the fantasy neighborhood's resident hot dog vendor.
Born in 1916, Love began making puppets for a federal Works Progress Administration theater in 1935. He also designed costumes for Orson Welles' Mercury Theater. From there he began working with the New York City Ballet's costumer.
Kermit Love
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