'Best of TBH Politoons'
Recommended Reading
from Bruce
PAUL CONSTANT: Courage Ain't Nothin' But A Six Figure Book Deal (thestranger.com)
In fact, McClellan is the worst kind of amoral snake-oil salesman, twisting with the shifting winds of public perception. If Bush's approval rating was above 50 percent, McClellan would still slither onto talk shows to praise the wisdom of the president's plan in the Middle East. He's the kind of idiot who actually says the word "irregardless" without any sense of irony.
George Lakoff: The Mind and the Obama Magic (huffingtonpost.com)
Barack Obama should not move, or even appear to be moving, toward right-wing views...
ANNE FLAHERTY: "Study: Military gays don't undermine unit cohesion" (Associated Press)
Congress should repeal the "don't ask, don't tell" law because the presence of gays in the military is unlikely to undermine the ability to fight and win, according to a new study released by a California-based research center. The study was conducted by four retired military officers, including the three-star Air Force lieutenant general who in early 1993 was tasked with implementing President Clinton's policy that the military stop questioning recruits on their sexual orientation.
Will Harris: A Chat with Adam Carolla (bullz-eye.com)
Whether it's a blessing or a curse, Adam Carolla's first leading-man role in a motion picture, "The Hammer," is in no way what the average Adam Carolla fan would've expected from their hero. On the surface, it looks like it's gonna be a boxing-themed comedy, but when you get right down to it, it's really - gasp! -- a romantic comedy.
David Wild: Suck My Hancock, The Hammer is What Hollywood Should be Erecting (huffingtonpost.com)
With a tiny budget, Adam Carolla and his collaborators made the sort of small, heartfelt, moving vehicle that should make him a movie star.
Luaine Lee: British TV's 'Robbie Coltrane: Incredible Britain' gets a U.S. release on DVD (McClatchy-Tribune News Service)
Scottish actor Robbie Coltrane ("Cracker" "Harry Potter") admits that he's a gypsy, and will probably never change. "When I started to be successful in the '80s I had a pretty good life, really, no responsibilities," he says.
David Patrick Stearns: In new memoir, Broadway composer Charles Strouse looks back on success, failure and tumult (The Philadelphia Inquirer)
NEW YORK - The tributes were predictably extravagant at the 80th-birthday party for Broadway composer Charles Strouse one recent evening at the posh 21 Club. "Melodies that touch the heart and lodge in the head," was how his longtime collaborator, "Bye Bye Birdie" lyricist Lee Adams, described the music Strouse has written for 30 shows over 50 years.
Glenn Gamboa: Alison Moyet had to say Yaz to reunion tour (Newsday)
Alison Moyet isn't one of those '80s stars stuck in the past.
Atkins, the most 'astonishingly lucky person' (entertainment.timesonline.co.uk)
She loves lewd limericks, hates sentimentality, and turned down Colin Farrell; Lucy Powell meets the feisty Eileen Atkins.
Interview by Laura Barnett: "Portrait of the artist: Gerald Scarfe, cartoonist" (arts.guardian.co.uk)
'At 16, I won a drawing competition in the Eagle. David Hockney was runner-up.'
David Bruce: Wise Up! Good Deeds (athensnews.com)
The last person to have a naturally occurring case of smallpox was Ali Maow Maalim, in 1977. He was a health worker in Marka, Somalia, his hometown, but he did not want to get a smallpox vaccination. He says, "I did not want to have an injection, so I rolled up my shirt, held a cotton ball over my upper arm, and strolled past the immunization team as though I'd already had the shot." Soon afterward, he got smallpox. Mr. Maalim has continued to work in the health field, and he immunizes children against polio. He is able to use his personal experience with smallpox to do the good deed of convincing children to be immunized against polio. He says, "Because I had the sad experience of defying the vaccine and suffering as a result, I now work as a polio vaccine agent with W.H.O." W.H.O. is the World Health Organization. He also says, "Somalia was the last country to have smallpox. I don't want it to be the last with polio."
Irene Rubaum-Keller: What Is Your Calorie Budget? (huffingtonpost.com)
Do you know how many calories you should be eating each day? Most people don't. Use this formula to find out.
A: Baseball
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Major marine layer kept things cloudy and cool til mid-afternoon.
Return To TV?
Michael J. Fox
Michael J. Fox is in talks to return to TV as a regular in hit firefighter drama Rescue Me.
The actor, who suffers from nervous disorder Parkinson's Disease, is slated to play Denis Leary's love rival on the show.
If negotiations go as planned, the Back To The Future star will appear in several episodes of the show's upcoming fifth season, according to America's Entertainment Weekly.
Michael J. Fox
Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy
Seth MacFarlane
When September rolls around, the most anticipated new program of the fall season will be on the Internet instead of television.
That's when "Family Guy" creator Seth MacFarlane will release exclusively via Google a series of 50 two-minute animated vignettes.
Given how outrageous "Family" is in the humor department, there's reason enough to watch MacFarlane's next creation. But if you think his ribald jokes are audacious, that's nothing compared to the distribution strategy for this program, titled "Seth MacFarlane's Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy."
The very fact that Google has a deal with MacFarlane at all seems strange considering that News Corp., which happens to own Google rival MySpace, announced a gargantuan $100 million deal with MacFarlane in May to keep him at 20th Century Fox, making him the richest series creator in television.
Seth MacFarlane
Ratifies Deal
AFTRA
The labor drama gripping Hollywood is now entering its final act after one actors group said its members ratified a new deal and the other prepared to turn down the major studios' final offer.
The American Federation of Television and Radio Artists said Tuesday that its members had ratified a three-year prime-time TV contract with studios with 62 percent of voting members supporting it, after fierce opposition from the larger Screen Actors Guild.
The deal goes into effect retroactive to July 1.
SAG, which said approval of the deal would undermine its own talks, responded by saying its bargaining was not yet done.
AFTRA
Joins BBC
Ted Koppel
Veteran U.S. television journalist Ted Koppel has been named as a contributing political analyst for the BBC's internationally broadcast "World News America" program.
Koppel's new relationship with the BBC adds to his growing list of journalistic ventures since leaving ABC News in November 2005 after 25 years as host of the network's venerable "Nightline" broadcast.
Koppel, 68, joined U.S. cable television's Discovery Channel in 2006 as a producer and host of in-depth documentary programs, including a four-part series debuting on Wednesday on the effects of capitalism in China.
Ted Koppel
Builder Discovers Postcard
J.R.R. Tolkien
A demolition man stripping a fireplace from the former home of "The Lord of the Rings" author J.R.R. Tolkien stumbled across a postcard to the writer dated 1968, and hopes to sell it for a small fortune.
Stephen Malton, who runs Prodem Demolition in Bournemouth on the south English coast, was working in the house in the nearby town of Poole before it was bulldozed to make way for a new construction project.
"One of the main features was a fireplace, and upon removing that we came across three postcards. The third one was a postcard dated 1968 and addressed to J.R.R. Tolkien."
Malton said research on the Internet suggested that the carved wooden fireplace with marble inlay, a feature of the house when Tolkien lived there from 1968 to 1972, was already worth up to $250,000.
J.R.R. Tolkien
American Cinematheque Benefit
`Clone Wars'
George Lucas is revisiting familiar space in the heart of Hollywood to unveil his new "Star Wars" adventure.
The animated tale "Star Wars: The Clone Wars" will have its world premiere at the Egyptian Theatre along Hollywood Boulevard on Aug. 10, five days before it opens in theaters. Lucasfilm announced the premiere Wednesday.
Proceeds from the premiere will benefit the American Cinematheque, a film organization based at the Egyptian, which opened in 1922. The Egyptian was one of two Los Angeles theaters where the first "Star Wars" sequel, "The Empire Strikes Back," played during its extended run in 1980.
Tickets for the 4 p.m. premiere will be on sale exclusively to American Cinematheque until July 23 and will then be available to the general public.
`Clone Wars'
7 Killed In Ambush
Darfur Peacekeepers
About 200 gunmen on horseback and in SUVs launched a brazen attack on international peacekeepers in Darfur, killing seven in the deadliest strike against the under-equipped and understaffed mission since it deployed, the U.N. said Wednesday.
Twenty-two members of the U.N.-African Union force were wounded in the fierce two-hour gunbattle Tuesday by militants who outnumbered them nearly three-to-one.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon's office said the joint military and police patrol was investigating the killing of civilians in North Darfur state when it was ambushed by militants driving vehicles armed with anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons.
Actress Mia Farrow, a leading activist for peace in Darfur, laid some of the blame for the attack on the international community for allowing the Sudanese government to block full deployment of U.N. peacekeepers in Darfur.
Darfur Peacekeepers
Ignores Court Judgement
Omar Sharif
Egyptian actor Omar Sharif will refuse to pay a 455,000-dollar civil judgement made against him stemming from a scuffle with a Beverly Hills valet, the Los Angeles Times reported on Wednesday.
Martin Singer, the lawyer who represented Sharif in the case told the Times that his former client had no intention of paying the settlement because he believed he was "being shaken down" on the basis of his celebrity.
Sharif, 76, pleaded no contest to misdemeanor battery and was sentenced to two years probation in the criminal case stemming from his skirmish with valet Juan Ochoa Anderson outside a steakhouse in 2005.
However Anderson will struggle to collect any of the judgement, the Times reported, saying that Sharif has no assets in the United States and that the judgement will not prevent him from traveling to the country.
Omar Sharif
Meet At Sun Valley
Media Moguls
The summer U.S. box office is sizzling due to hits like "Hancock" but Hollywood leaders focused on the chilling effects of industry change brought on by labor strife, fragmentation and new technology at the annual retreat of moguls this week.
"The whole industry is in transition," said Anne Sweeney, co-chairman of Walt Disney Co's Disney Media Networks and President of Disney-ABC Television, as she left the morning session of the annual Allen & Co media confab in Sun Valley.
While the U.S. box office is on pace to top last year's record summer revenues of over $4 billion, industry watchers note the overall pie is being divided differently than a year ago as big studios such as Viacom Inc's Paramount have sought to cut risks but also profits by serving only as distributors of big films like "Iron Man" and "Kung Fu Panda."
Media Moguls
Video Pulled
Nebraska Twister
The Associated Press and video services operated by CBS and NBC have pulled video allegedly taken of a tornado in Nebraska last weekend after questions were raised about its authenticity.
A tornado chaser has claimed that the video was a doctored version of pictures he had taken of a twister that touched down four years ago in Rock, Kan.
A person who asked that his name not be used contacted the AP and said the supposed Nebraska footage was really video he had taken four years ago. The image was "flipped" to make it seem the tornado was pointed in another direction, and the action sped up. The Nebraska images add power lines and subtracts trees that were in the Kansas pictures.
Nebraska Twister
Answer Questions
Fish Fossils
Some odd-looking fish fossils discovered in the bowels of several European museums may help solve a lingering question about evolutionary theory, U.S. researchers said on Wednesday.
The 50 million-year-old fossils -- which have one eye near the top of their heads -- help explain how flatfish such as flounder, sole and halibut developed the strange but useful trait of having both eyes on one side.
For flatfish, which lie on their sides at the bottom of the sea, this arrangement gives them the use of two watchful eyes.
But the trait has posed a problem for evolutionary biologists because no one had found any so-called transitional fossils -- fossils showing intermediate steps in the evolution of this trait.
Fish Fossils
Masterpiece Fetches Record
Jean-Antoine Watteau
A nearly 300-year-old masterpiece by French artist Jean-Antoine Watteau that had been presumed destroyed sold for a record price Tuesday, auction house Christie's said.
Flemish-born Watteau's "La Surprise," which was painted in around 1718 and last recorded to have been seen in 1848, sold for 12.4 million pounds (15.5 million euros or 24.4 million dollars), the highest price ever for a French Old Master painting sold at auction.
It also shattered the previous high for a Watteau, when "Conteur" sold for 2.4 million pounds in December 2000.
Jean-Antoine Watteau
Art Of Deception
Crystal Skulls
How about this for the next instalment of the Indy franchise: "Indiana Jones and the Dodgy Antiques Dealer"?
Less than three months after the Quai Branly Museum in Paris discovered that a crystal skull once proclaimed as a mystical Aztec masterpiece was a fake, it is now the turn of the British Museum and the Smithsonian Institution to find they were victims of skull-duggery.
Scientists from those two prestigious institutions on Wednesday said their crystal skulls were cut, honed and polished by tools of the industrial age, not by Mesoamerican craftsmen of yore.
Crystal Skulls
In Memory
Dorian Leigh
Dorian Leigh, an early supermodel who made Revlon's 1950s "Fire and Ice" cosmetics line famous, has died at age 91.
Leigh, who went on to run her own modelling agency and open a restaurant in France, died Monday at a nursing home in Falls Church, Va., according to her eldest son, T.L. Hawkins of McLean, Va.
Leigh brought her younger sister, Suzy Parker, into the industry. Parker went on to become a prominent supermodel.
Hawkins said Leigh had at least five husbands, the first of whom was his father, Marshall Hawkins. Leigh claimed to have married another man with whom she had a son, but Hawkins said it's unclear whether they actually tied the knot.
Leigh was born April 23, 1917, in San Antonio, Texas, the eldest of four daughters. Before modeling, she worked at a New Jersey company that did mechanical design for the military.
After divorcing her last husband, Leigh devoted herself to cooking. She attended the Le Cordon Bleu cooking school in Paris and opened a restaurant south of Paris. In the 1970s, she worked with Martha Stewart, developing recipes and publishing cookbooks, according to her son.
In late life, Leigh dabbled in another field: "She was a rabid Democrat, very much into the politics," Hawkins said. She joined a local Democratic group in the early 1990s, while living in a conservative enclave in Fredericksburg, Va.
A son and daughter predeceased Leigh. She is survived by Hawkins and two daughters, and three grandchildren.
Dorian Leigh
In Memory
Don S. Davis
Twin Peaks star Don S. Davis has died following a heart attack at his home in Canada. He was 65.
The actor, a former drama teacher in Vancouver, became a cult TV figure three times - as the mysterious Major Garland Briggs on Twin Peaks; as General George S Hammond in sci-fi series Stargate: SG-1 and as Agent Scully's father on The X-Files.
Davis also appeared in the baseball movie A League of Their Own and comedy Best in Show.
The actor began his career late after serving in Korea, where he became a US Army captain, and studying drama in Illinois, where he earned a master's degree in theatre.
He used the degree to embark on a teaching career and quit that to become a full-time actor in the late 1980s.
Don S. Davis
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