Pageant Of The Masters
It’s The Sake
Land Of Kamikaze Shocked At Mass Suicide Sensation
Japan gripped by suicide epidemic
Japanese professionals in their thirties are killing themselves at unprecedented rates, as the nation struggles with a runaway suicide epidemic.
Newly published figures show that 30,093 people took their own lives in 2007 — a 2.9 per cent increase in a year — leaving the country as the most suicide-prone anywhere in the developed world and rendering government efforts to combat the problem a failure.
Suicide rates remained highest among men — at 71 per cent of the total — and very high among Japan’s rising population of over-60s. Geographically, most suicides took place in the prefecture of Yamanashi, where the forested foothills of Mount Fuji continue to attract the suicidal from around Japan.
Government analysis of the figures, for the tenth year consecutive in which suicides have remained above 30,000 mark, has exposed a series of new and troubling trends: people in their thirties are the most likely to kill themselves, and work-related depression is emerging as a prime motive.
Psychologists, sociologists and other close observers of Japanese society believe that the country is in the grip of a full-blown crisis among its young working population. Experts say that high suicide rates and the recent spate of random stabbings in public places are symptoms of a malaise that the country has ignored for too long.
Mika Tsutsumi, an economist and social analyst, said that the recent stabbings in Akihabara were worryingly predictable: the killing spree for which Tomohiro Kato was allegedly responsible was, she says, driven by a sense of hopelessness in the workplace. Underneath Japanese society is concealed “an invisible reserve army of Katos”, she said.
Even more disturbing than the raw suicide figures, said police, was the astounding recent surge in people who have taken their lives by generating highly poisonous hydrogen sulphide gas from a combination of standard household products.
Unlike more traditional methods such as hanging or drugs overdoses, the production of hydrogen sulphide endangers people in the same building and turns what used to be private despair into a public event.
Twenty-nine people used that method to end their lives last year, but after the formula for the gas was circulated widely on various “suicide websites”, it has taken on a sinister appeal to the desperate and lonely.
Since February this year, 517 people have killed themselves using the gas, about half of them in their twenties, and its macabre popularity as a method of self-destruction shows no sign of waning.
The crisis of despair gripping young working Japanese has triggered plenty of official and media hand-wringing, though little in the way of change in corporate Japan. Wages remain low, and hierarchies rigid.
“We live in an uncomfortable and restrictive society where trivial matters are important,” said Professor Kiyohiko Ikeda, a veteran social commentator at Waseda University. “The young feel a sense of deadlock; society does not accept minor mistakes.”
The City Of Pictures In Pictures
‘This Side of Paradise’ at the Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens
The Huntington
AN EDEN?: In November 1953, dancers with the Hollywood Negro Ballet pose for a publicity photograph for Ebony magazine.
The newly refurbished Huntington mounts ‘This Side of Paradise,’ billed as the most comprehensive exhibition of photographs of Los Angeles, the city that grew up in the camera’s eye.
A 1991 photograph by John Humble shows Selma Avenue at Vine Street as a jumbled, architecturally constructed Hollywood landscape of office buildings, stores, asphalt and advertising billboards. Dominating the center is Angelyne, the cosmetically manufactured “human Barbie doll,” who adorns one enormous sign.
Radio host Rick Dees, then an eternally adolescent 41-year-old, graces a KIIS sign just above her bleached-blond head. Neutered Ken to Angelyne’s pneumatic Barbie, he’s the benign Adam to her wicked Eve in Hollywood’s media-made Garden of Eden.
Humble’s deceptively simple image — documentary in the most profound sense of that slippery term — hangs at the entry wall to a large new exhibition at the Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens. Hot on 
the heels of opening its beautifully refurbished, exquisitely reinstalled mansion, so rich in 18th century European and other art, the Huntington has mounted what is being billed as the most comprehensive show of L.A. photographs ever assembled. It spans the 1860s to the present.
Those dates correspond with two epochal narratives: the history of Los Angeles, incorporated in 1850, and the modern development of the camera, invented almost simultaneously in France and England a scant decade before.
The title is borrowed from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s first novel, whose despairing protagonist laments, “I know myself, but that is all.” The alchemy of the still camera in fabricating perceptions of people and places is an inspired subject for examination. Humble’s picture is emblematic.
The show, like Fitzgerald’s book, is novelistic — less an art exhibition than a pictorial essay about L.A. as a mediated environment. Its whopping 284 photographs stand in for words.
Classic Rodeo Photos
Jeff Collins, a bareback rider from Redfield, Kan., finishes his ride at the National Finals Rodeo
Are You Talkin’ To Me, Mr. Commissioner?
De Niro Defends Hotel Design
Serge Thomann/WireImage.com
Robert De Niro has a message for New York officials: Analyze this!
The raging bull turned up Tuesday at a hearing for the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission to plead for approval of a luxurious penthouse atop his newly opened $43 million Greenwich Hotel in TriBeCa. The new construction has come under fire because it didn’t match the original design.
Because of its prime location in the historic district, the seven-story, 88-room boutique hotel faced a rigorous vetting process when it was built in 2004 to ensure its handmade brick architecture meshed well with the neighborhood’s cobblestone character.
However, after opening April 1, commission members discovered that the two-bedroom posh rooftop suite was larger by about 1,300 more feet and also had a steeper roof than the 64-year-old actor and his partners proposed.
De Niro told the board the project was a “labor of love.”
“We’ve really worked quite hard on it, and so anything that would be offensive would be offensive to me,” the two-time Oscar winner said.
De Niro apologized for the inconsistencies, and urged the Fockers, um, the folks on the preservation 
board to retroactively approve the penthouse changes without forcing developers to tear it down and start from scratch—an endeavor estimated to cost $1.5 million.
“If there are any minor little mistakes, my apologies for it,” De Niro said, “because in any creation there are those things, and we hope that they’re not in any way misconstrued as being wrong or that we can do it because we want to do it. We want to do what’s right for the neighborhood.”
De Niro’s got street cred. The goodfella helped revitalize Lower Manhattan after 9/11 by founding the Tribeca Film Festival.
He also has his share of defenders in the neighborhood, most notably fellow star Ed Burns, who has a residence across the street from the hotel with a view overlooking the rooftop and who testified on De Niro’s behalf.
The One Profession That’s Never Had A Glass Ceiling (tho it would be worth an extra $100/hr. if it did)
Ho-time: Cable Channel Hard-Sells Belle du Bore
Everybody’s simply fascinated with young, sexy prostitutes! But a new series imported from Britain makes the job seem … rather humdrum
When news broke that Eliot Spitzer had been patronizing a high-class prostitute, one thing everyone seemed to want to know was what, exactly, he’d asked his call girl to do. It was “unsafe,” in the words of “Kristen,” a.k.a. Ashley Alexandra Dupre—but could that have been an excuse she fabricated in hopes of unloading an undesirable client? Speculation was all over the map, from unprotected sex to anal to dangerous S&M to wearing socks in bed (not unsafe, sure, but certainly annoying). For a few days there, as we marveled over the amount of money earned by the girls at Emperors Club VIP and wondered over their wealthy clients and envied Ms. Dupre’s Flatiron apartment, hookers were on the brain. Are their lives better or worse than ours? At the top end, at least, their jobs actually sounded more like dating than whoring.
And here’s the problem with Showtime’s auspiciously timed new series, Secret Diary of a Call Girl. As it follows Belle, a high-class London hooker who professes to “love sex” and therefore love her job, the show sanitizes hooking so much that a young woman might wonder why she even bothers trying to have another career. For Belle, whose real name is Hannah, being a prostitute means having tons of free time; a fabulous flat; a salary over 100,000 pounds (!!!); and entree to the luscious clubs and bars of London reserved only for the fabulously wealthy. Sure, she is required to have sex with her clients, or at least come close to it (more on that shortly), but please: This is 2008. Sleeping together on the first date? Not so scandalous. Belle is a professional fake-dater more than she is a whore.
The Man Who Put Man In His Place
Science books fetch astronomical prices
Copernicus first-edition book sells for $2.2 million, auctioneers report
MSNBC staff and news service reports
updated 8:28 a.m. MT, Wed., June. 18, 2008
NEW YORK – A copy of astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus’ masterwork, printed in 1543, went for the out-of-this-world price of $2.2 million on Tuesday at a sale of more than 300 books of scientific significance, according to the Christie’s auction house.
The rare first edition of “De revolutionibus orbium coelestium” (On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres) went for well more than the expected price of $1.2 million, Christie’s reported after the sale. The book put forth Copernicus’ theory that the sun, not the earth, was at the center of the universe.
In all, the total take from Tuesday’s auction at Christie’s New York came to more than $11 million — compared with a pre-sale estimate of $6 million. That tally includes the auction house’s commission, known as the buyer’s premium, Christie’s said.
“The results far exceeded expectations,” Thomas Lecky, department head of books and manuscripts at Christie’s, told msnbc.com in an e-mail. “Overall, the sale doubled pre-sale estimates, and many things brought many multiples of their estimates.”
The book collection was sold by Richard Green, a retired physician and amateur astronomer from Long Island. Among the six centuries of scientific treatises represented in the collection are rare works by Albert Einstein, Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, Sir Isaac Newton and Johannes Kepler.
The sale also included a phone book for New Haven, Conn., that was issued in 1878, two years after Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone. Auctioneers had expected the phone book to fetch between $30,000 and $40,000, but the price skyrocketed to $170,500 in a bidding war among six collectors.
The 20-page, pamphlet-size book, published by the Connecticut District Telephone Co., contains the names and numbers of 391 New Haven-area subscribers. It also provides some helpful hints to callers: “Should you wish to speak to another subscriber you should commence the conversation by saying ‘Hulloa!'”
Christie’s initially billed the directory as the first multipage phone book in the country. A historian contested that claim, saying that earlier ones were printed in San Francisco and Chicago. Lecky said the bidding war occurred after additional research showed that the Chicago directory was a reproduction and that the San Francisco one, though earlier, was less comprehensive than New Haven’s.
The sale offered Einstein’s own set of reference copies, including key papers on the theories of special and general relativity, quantum theory and unified theory. A treatise by Galileo was sold for $506,500, and a 1545 map book from Spain that is said to contain the first printed representation of the Atlantic Ocean and the coasts of the Americas went for $578,500.
On the other end of the spectrum, a report from the British Information Services about flying bombs sold for a mere $63.
Christie’s did not disclose the buyers’ identities.
This report includes information from msnbc.com and The Associated Press.
© 2008 MSNBC Interactive
Let Them Eat Cake
Students’ laxative-spiked cake sends Brooklyn teachers to hospital
Wednesday, June 18th 2008, 12:40 AM
Teachers were thrilled when students at a Brooklyn high school sweetly offered them slices of homemade cake last week.
But the innocent-looking treat contained a nasty surprise – it was laced with laxatives that sent two educators to the hospital and sickened three other staffers.
Now, three seniors at the Brooklyn School for Global Studies in Cobble Hill have been suspended for the prank and barred from graduation – and were under arrest last night.
The students – Tiara Peoples, Kenny Ramirez and Quashon Burton, all 17 – were taken to the 76th Precinct stationhouse in Brooklyn. Assault charges were pending, sources said.
“What they did was wrong and they need to be punished,” said a school social worker who was sickened by the cake.
“On the other hand, I was very close to these students and I’m very sad,” she told The News, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “It’s very hard when you give so much of your heart and soul to your kids and someone hurts you like that.”
The students behind Thursday’s stunt weren’t seen as troublemakers – one was a straight-A cheerleader. So no one was suspicious when they doled out the chocolate-iced Bundt cake.
People who were offered the cake assumed the red chunks inside the yellow filling were candy, but school officials say they were actually Dulcolax tablets.
“One of the kids said it was baked by his mom. ‘Go ahead, it’s free,'” said Danilo Dungca, 54, who left a job at the Federal Reserve three years ago to teach in the public schools.
“I’m very close with the kids, so I didn’t think anything of it.”
As soon as he and Mancuso took a bite, they knew something was wrong.
“It tasted like someone sprayed hairspray in my mouth. I spit it out,” Mancuso said. “That’s when my lips and my tongue went numb.”
“It had red chunks that looked like cherries, but they were bitter,” Dungca added, “I spit it out….My mouth was numb. I got sick. I went to the bathroom.”
Dungca went right to the emergency room. Mancuso left early, then headed to the hospital when he had breathing problems.
Doctors told him his symptoms were consistent with insecticide poisoning, and there was buzz among students the cake had been sprayed with Raid, he said.
Some students at the school were blasé about the cake caper.
“Nobody’s died from a laxative,” said Shanell James, 17, a senior and friend of Ramirez. “He thought it was funny. I thought it was funny, too.”
For [Tom] Mancuso, the episode capped a difficult year in which he battled the Epstein-Barr virus.
“Ironically,” he said, “this is the icing on the cake.”
With Alison Gendar, Barry Paddock, Rich Schapiro and Carrie Melago
Carchitecture
Carchitecture
Images of cool-looking frames, finders, and fins of classic cars can be found in ‘Carchitecture,’ a new book by Fredric Winkowski and Frank D. Sullivan, and published by Glitterati Incorporated. The image above is a BMW 328, 1936.
Credits: Fredric Winkowski
“Beautiful Dynamite” Gone
Cyd Charisse, last great Hollywood dancer, dead at 87
LOS ANGELES (AFP) – Dancer and actress Cyd Charisse, whose legs were insured for a million dollars in the heyday of the Hollywood musical, died at her home in Los Angeles on Tuesday, her agent said. She was 87.
Scott Stander said Charisse, a regular partner of legends Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire, suffered a heart attack at her home and “never recovered.” She died at 12.15 am (0715 GMT).
“We’re all just heartbroken,” said Stander, describing Charisse as “one of the classiest ladies you would have ever met.”
Charisse rose to fame as the big studio musical was fading from view, playing the vamp who entices Kelly in “Singin’ in the Rain.”
A brief role without a word of dialogue, Charisse made an unforgettable entrance by dangling Kelly’s straw hat on the toe of her high heel as he — and the camera — admired her fully-extended leg.
She got to play Kelly’s leading lady in Vincente Minnelli’s “Brigadoon” and partnered with Fred Astaire in “The Band Wagon” and “Silk Stockings” before the studios pulled the plug on big budget musicals.
Charisse left her home in Amarillo, Texas as a young girl for the better dance studios in Los Angeles and was hired at 14 by the legendary Ballet Russe.
Charisse toured Europe, changing her name several times to better fit into the program, until the troupe disbanded when the war broke out in 1939.
Astaire, who called her “beautiful dynamite,” said somewhat enigmatically, “When you dance with Cyd Charisse, you’ve been danced with.”
Art For More Than Art’s Sake
from the San Jose Mercury News
Fisher: The art of therapy
It seemed like a typical art show opening. Happy people mingling and snacking on cheese and strawberries, scrutinizing each painting and piece of sculpture. Proud artists interpreting their work and explaining their creative processes to admiring family and friends.
But the Spring Art Gallery show at the Children’s Health Council in Palo Alto is special. The young artists all struggle with emotional or social disabilities. The nearly 200 paintings, photographs and sculptures were created in art therapy sessions at the Health Council’s Esther B. Clark School, where children ages 8-16 who have trouble coping in public schools receive intensive help from teachers and therapists.
In the 1950s, when pediatrician Esther Clark founded CHC, disabled children were often taken from their families and treated behind the walls of institutions. The stigma of 
mental illness and the lack of nearby treatment left distraught parents little choice. Clark wanted to create a setting where kids could live at home and parents could participate in the therapy.
Over the years, the school has worked wonders for children battling conditions from social anxiety to autism and bipolar disorder, teaching them to cope well enough to return to public school and be successful.
CHC has always protected the privacy of children and their families, which is why I was surprised when Anne Moses, the new executive director, invited me to the opening of the art show. We agreed to print only the students’ first names, but I still expected the kids and their folks to be shy with me.
Not a bit.
Twombly At The Tate
His scattered dreams
Scribbles and smears, hearts and hieroglyphs – what are Cy Twombly’s paintings trying to tell us? Adrian Searle traces the evolution of a great American artist at the Tate’s new show
In pictures: Twombly at Tate Modern
Tuesday June 17, 2008
The Guardian
Ferragosto III, 1960, by Cy Twombly.
A pencil skitters over the prepared white canvas, which in places has been sloppily covered with a matt, chalky house paint. The pencil runs into a wet patch and ploughs through. When it is all dry, the pencil has another go at it. Just as images arise, they are subsumed. The line draws the layers together, and slices them apart. Everything is anxious in Cy Twombly’s early paintings, always being made and unmade. Their resolution is always provisional.
This is a painter who talks about Poussin, about the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke and Mallarmé. But also about De Sade and Alain Robbe-Grillet, writers whose subtlety and delicacy underline their violences.
Your eyes get lost in all this, among the love hearts, the nipples and cocks and pea-pods that might be vaginas, the jagged seismic judders, the tremors that have gone off the dial. “APOLLO,” one painting announces, and “I have known the NAKEDNESS of my scattered dreams” another. Words and phrases in Twombly’s art grin through, indelibly: names and exhortations, snatches of poetry, numbers, diagrams, all of them written with a convincing urgency. It is as though their author were swatting away a swarm of bees gathered in his brain. The words are always with us, however much some may think art is a sort of wordless communication.
In the 1950s, Twombly’s paintings evolved as a language of contrary touches, stray thoughts and inimitable gestures. There was atavism there, as well as consummate knowingness, the result of a conscious de-skilling of his innate talents. Like Willem de Kooning, Twombly forced himself to draw and write with his left hand, or with his eyes closed. (De Kooning drew while averting his eyes from the paper, and while watching TV.) Making his own touch unfamiliar, Twombly presented himself as other to himself. I think he wanted to catch himself off guard.
Twombly is now 80, and his nervous, supremely elegant and often very beautiful art is not as well known as it might be. Cycles and Seasons, Tate Modern’s retrospective, is likely to change that. It is not the first major Twombly show to be held in Britain, but it is the largest and most thorough. It begins brilliantly, with work completed when Twombly was the student of Robert Motherwell and the educator, draughtsman and painter Ben Shahn.
Of the same generation as Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg, Twombly luckily escaped the fate of being a second-generation abstract expressionist. His art belongs mostly to itself, while retaining passing affinities to many different and contrary directions in art since 1945. An American who married well and moved to Rome at the beginning of his career, Twombly suffered the mistrust of his US contemporaries for many years, but this left him largely free to pursue his art as he wanted.
Why Guns Can Be Good
from the San Jose Mercury News
This is one of the most horrific stories in a long time. It’s frankly unfathomable. The world is fuct. This account is beautifully, and I suspect painfully, written – thank to you the authors. -Editor
Father who beat tot to death is identified
DETAILS EMERGE OF HORROR ON ROAD
Article Launched: 06/17/2008 01:30:21 AM PDT
TURLOCK – Six and a half minutes.
Six and a half minutes for two men to try to stop a father from beating “the demons” out of his 2-year-old son in the middle of a dark country road. Six and a half minutes for a young woman to crouch in her car and watch in helpless shock. Six and a half minutes for a police officer to land in a helicopter, run across a cow pasture, and shoot the man squarely in the forehead.
Six and a half minutes of horror.
“It seemed like forever,” said Lisa Mota, 23, who was driving to her parents’ house when she came upon the scene after 10 p.m. Saturday. “I need to get this out of my head, and I don’t think it will be for the rest of my life.”
On Monday, all that’s left of the violence is blood seeping into the cracks of West Bradbury Road, just outside the Central Valley town of Turlock. Parents and children came and went all day, placing ceramic angels and stuffed animals along the barbed wire fence. One white teddy bear held a heart that said, “Besos y Abrazos.” It means kisses and hugs.
“The terrible man got to die in an instant, but his baby had to suffer endlessly,” said Joel Arana, 36, a father of a toddler who stopped by to pay his respects. “It’s not right. But God will take care of it.”
The man has been identified by police as Sergio Casian Aguiar, 27, of Turlock. He and his wife had been separated. In an interview with detectives Monday, Frances Liliana Casian, a kindergarten teacher, said she didn’t know why Aguiar would do such a thing. He had no police record and she didn’t know of any mental illness, said Deputy Royjindar Singh, a spokesman for the Stanislaus County Sheriff’s Department. A toxicology test for drugs and alcohol is under way.
As news of the roadside beating spread across the country, letters of support and thanks poured in for the pilot who landed the helicopter in the dark cow pasture and the Modesto police officer who shot Aguiar.
“That baby needed help and I knew we had to do something,” the pilot, Sheriff’s Deputy Rob Latapie, said in a statement.
“I have never seen anything like that before and I hope I never have to again,” said Officer Jerry Ramar, who fired the fatal shot.
Three cars stopped on the darkened lane that night. Three 911 calls were placed. And two men who happened upon this scene defied their fears of what this man was capable of, what weapons he might have, and tried to save a child.
It wasn’t enough.
Dan Robinson, chief of the Crows Landing volunteer fire department, was driving home Saturday night with his wife and two grown children when their headlights shone on a man standing behind a parked pickup truck, which was in the next lane, facing oncoming traffic. At first, they thought maybe it was a hunter with a dead animal.
“As they slowed down, someone noticed it was an infant,” Singh said. “He stopped, backed up and the dad got out.”
It’s unclear when the beating began, but the first 911 call arrived at just after 10:13 p.m. It was from someone named Mike, who may be Robinson’s son, Singh said. He gave just a brief description before the cell phone went dead.
By then, Robinson had confronted Aguiar and “was trying to get him to stop, trying to pull him off, or away from the baby,” Singh said. “The suspect just pushed him away and continued doing what he was doing.”
A minute later, at 10:14 p.m., a pickup truck with three people in their 20s pulled up, facing Aguiar’s truck. One of them called 911. A young man, who Singh hasn’t identified, jumped out and ran to help Robinson.
“It was the shock of seeing what was going on, seeing this person with hands bloodied,” said Singh, who was on the scene as the witnesses were interviewed. “At first they weren’t sure how to react. You walk upon that scene and you see it and it’s like, ‘What are you doing?’ It’s like, “What the heck are you doing?’ “
The two men wrestled with Aguiar, trying to get him to stop, trying to pull him away from the baby. But Aguiar, with the child in his arm, kept attacking the toddler, “punching, slapping, shaking,” Singh said.
Robinson told reporters that “there was a total hollowness in his eyes,” and Aguiar said he was beating “the demons” out of the boy.
At 10:17, Mike called 911 again.
At 10:19, the sheriff’s helicopter that had been patrolling the area shone its spotlight on the scene, then landed in the cow pasture.
Officer Ramar jumped out, Singh said, and ran about 30 yards to the electrified fence that keeps the cows in and ordered the man to stop. By this time, Aguiar had the child on the ground and was stomping on him.
“Put your hands up. Step away from the baby,” Ramar called out, according to Singh.
Instead, Singh said, Aguiar raised his middle finger and began to kick the toddler lying on the roadway.
At 10:20, Ramar aimed his gun and fired. Aguiar died at the scene. Two deputies rushed to the child and performed CPR, but the boy remained limp. He was pronounced dead at the local hospital.
At 10:30, Singh arrived. The night was cool and clear. The only lights came from the headlights of the cars that had stopped to help and the flashing reds and blues of police vehicles. It was still so dark, Singh couldn’t even see the helicopter in the pasture.
But he saw the deputies who tried to revive the child, the police officer who shot the man, and the witnesses who tried to help. They all were consoling each other, he said.
“I know how they were feeling,” he said. “It’s like you wish you could have done more.”
‘The best gay hip hop opera about contemporary sociopolitics that you’ll see…’
Stan Winston Gone
Effects master Stan Winston dies
Work included ‘Jurassic Park,’ ‘Terminator’
By DAVID S. COHEN
Stan Winston, Oscar-winning special effects master who designed the dinosaurs for“Jurassic Park” and the look of “The Terminator,” died Sunday evening at his Malibu home. He was 62.
The Oscar and Emmy-winning f/x and makeup designer died after a seven-year struggle with multiple myeloma, according to a representative from Stan Winston Studio.
Winston, who set the industry standard for robotic/animatronic creatures and prosthetic makeup, won four Oscars: a visual effects Oscar for 1986’s “Aliens,” visual effects and makeup Oscars for 1992’s “Terminator 2: Judgment Day” and a visual effects Oscar for 1993’s “Jurassic Park,” for which he created animatronic dinosaurs that complemented the film’s digitally animated creatures.
The conference room at Winston’s Van Nuys studio was long one of the most effective sales tools any effects company could hope for. It was a combination museum and resume, with many of the most memorable movie creatures of recent decades — including the queen alien from “Aliens,” 
the Predator and even Arnold Schwarzenegger as the Terminator — lunging toward the conference table on all sides.
Steven Spielberg, who worked with Winston on several films, said in a statement: “Stan was a fearless and courageous artist/inventor, and for many projects, I rode his cutting edge from teddy bears to aliens to dinosaurs. My world would not have been the same without Stan. What I will miss most is his easy laugh every time he said to me, ‘Nothing is impossible.’ “
Winston refused to discuss his illness outside his intimate circle, and many were surprised at news of his death.
He is survived by his wife, Karen; son Matt, an actor; daughter Debbie; a brother and four grandchildren.
When Gary Called The Phone Sex Girl
One Must Always Drive Slowly Through Residential Areas
BRIGHT SHINY MORNING Contest Winners Announced
Thanks to all who answered the riddle for the contest to win a signed copy of BRIGHT SHINY MORNING.
Since many entries were quite creative and fun to read, we decided not only to pick a randomly drawn winner, but also to reward the most creative response.
Thus and sans further ado – the winner of the random drawing is…
DENISE COLE (of the Rainbow)
And winner for Most Creative Entry is…
BRIAN STILLMAN (whose submission appears below)
Denise and Brian, we will be contacting you shortly via email to arrange to get your books out to you. Thanks again to all for entering, and have a bright shiny day.
————————————
A woman shoots her husband. Then she holds him under water for over five minutes. Finally, she hangs him. But five minutes later they both go out together and enjoy a wonderful dinner together. How can this be?
The news warned everyone to stay indoors. She didn’t want to believe the news. Then the station turned to snow. It turned out all of them were blizzards by then.
Not long after that the wife went out to find her missing husband.
She walked the two miles and found him at the park and ride exactly where she’d last seen him yesterday afternoon. He’d said not to worry and told her to take the car, but she’d said she needed the exercise.
Some of his face was gone. He looked like the news said they’d look. The news anchor – the one that laughed like he wasn’t quite right anymore just before the signal died – had been right. After the change the victims looked just like something from a Romero movie.
The husband lurched toward the wife. She produced the pistol they kept upstairs. The just in case pistol. He didn’t recognize his name. His hands were dry but they were the same color as those parts of his face she didn’t want to look at. He didn’t recognize his name or the word stop and he didn’t notice a single one of the shots that punched through his torso. The shirt was already bloody, not that he was noticing that either.
She walked ahead of his shambling, walked back toward their home. She didn’t have to run. He’d always had that bad knee.
Their street was quiet, quiet as when she’d set out in the morning. She noticed things, noticed there were tire tracks on one lawn. Someone’s chimes rung. She stopped up at sight of the kiddie pool.
Little neon colored ducks wound around the side of the pool. Blades of grass and dropped snack time cheese doodles floated on the pool surface. The tiny pool goers had waved at them as they drove by on Sunday. Sunday. A very long time ago.
The wife walked away from the pool and sat down on the house’s porch step. She sat half folded over, top half sunk into her thighs and she shook like a mechanism had caught and the right quiver would set it off and then she’d finish folding over and start folding inside out.
Her husband walked towards her. Shambled. Shambling, he stepped up against the kiddie pool and fell forward into the water.
The wife watched the struggle. He couldn’t quite figure out how to get up. Water leaked out as he threw what looked like a fake, laughter seeking fit. If she were anyone else maybe a week ago she might’ve laughed.
She wiped her face and wiped her hands on her pants. She stood, walked to the pool, knelt and pushed down on her husband’s head for what felt like hours. No one complained about her screaming once she started.
When the moon came up, the husband remained face down in the pool, but no longer thrashed. Occasionally a bubble would emerge from the lunar illuminated depths and bloop apart upon the pool surface.
Sometime before dawn the wife rolled the husband out of the pool, pushed him up to a sitting position, shoved a towel in his moaning face, worked the towel briskly, snipped a swathe of duct tape off the roll she’d brought from the garage, and swatted away his dumb intrigued hands long enough to press the duct tape over his mouth.
She helped him to his feet. She swatted his hands away long enough to pluck a blade of grass from off his wet sop of hair. She left the roll of duct tape and the scissors on the lawn and she led him home.
The noose hung off the beam in the room reserved for their occasional guests. The noose hung directly over a chair slid over from the desk set under the window. The second chair she’d dragged in from the study.
The husband watched from the doorway, reserving judgment. He was always slow to warm to something new.
The wife stepped up onto the desk chair, the top of her head brushing the noose, and then stepped over onto the chair from the study, nudged flush against its neighbor. She coaxed the husband forward. He grunted, sounding reluctant behind the duct tape. He kept tugging at the duct tape, but couldn’t manage to pinch hold of the creased over ends. He grunted like maybe the tape adhesive hurt the way he’d sometimes groan when she’d cut his hair.
She had to step up onto the chairs repeatedly. A dozen times. A thousand. She was screaming at him towards the end. That’s why she didn’t want kids. Her patience had limits. Enough for him, 
but no one else. Finally though, he followed her up and when he made it up she helped steady him. The door was behind him and he faced the back wall, but it didn’t matter where he looked, not for the task at hand.
Soon as the loop was in place and the slack in the rope had been taken up, she jumped down and shoved the desk chair toward the window. Shoved it just as far as needed.
She walked past her husband, walked under the beam, and walked toward the hall. She moved stiffly like someone trying to finish a chore before peeing their pants. On exiting she reached for the guest room doorknob, but missed. She didn’t bother a second attempt.
Every so often as she sat on the edge of their bed, hugging herself, rocking, she could hear sound from the guest room – the beam or was it the rope adjusting to the weight.
This was no longer a life where the wife would find time or find it convenient to adjust. She knew her job was not going to take her mind off of losing her spouse. Job. She didn’t have a job. Who had jobs now? With her husband, the new status quo would be rough, but it might eventually become bearable. Without him…Well she already was without him now wasn’t she?
When she walked back into the guest room her husband swung in soggy orbit just to the side and above the chair from the study.
He was still trying to tug the duct tape off his mouth.
After she hacked all the way through the rope, but before they found their way downstairs and outside onto the street together, she kissed him on the mouth, over the duct tape, and she said she loved him very much. She said his name, most of it, before the sob broke the second syllable apart. Then she tore the duct tape off and kissed him and herself goodbye.
– by Brian Stillman
Bono et al To Sell Stellar Basquiat
U2 Selling Off Basquiat Painting in London
A Sotheby’s assistant stands holding Untitled (Pecho/Oreja) by Jean-Michel Basquiat.
Getty Images
An interesting tidbit from The New York Times: U2 is selling a Jean-Michel Basquiat painting that its bassist, Adam Clayton, bought at a New York gallery in 1989. According to Bloomberg, the band is expected to fetch as much as 6 million pounds (that’s $11.7 million) at a Sotheby’s Contemporary Art auction in London on July 1. The auction record for a Basquiat work is $14.6 million.
The painting, a 6-foot-square acrylic, oil stick and collage canvas, was completed in 1982 (some reports say 1983) when the artist was 22 years old. He died of a drug overdose in 1988.
“It seems especially appropriate that a work by Basquiat should end up in a music studio, since so much has been said about the relationship between his art and music,” Oliver Barker, of Sotheby’s Contemporary Art department, told the BBC. The painting had been hanging in U2’s studio until now.
No word on whether Bono plans to do something philanthropic with the money.
James Frey Interviews / Q&A at BordersMedia
Click below to check a series of exceptionally produced interview clips done by Borders Bookstore for their Live at O1 series.
I’m Looking Over My Swept Dog Rover
Swept Up, Killed By NYC Street Sweeper
Driver Said To Be Driving Fast, Wearing Headphones
NEW YORK (CBS) ― A Bronx man is devastated after his dog was swept up and killed by a city street sweeper Thursday morning.
The incident occurred at Randall and St. Lawrence avenues in the Soundview section of the borough. Witnesses say the sweeper came speeding down the street, swerving to avoid a speed bump, before yanking the dog, a Boston terrier named Ginger, right out of its leash.
“The animal was like a family member in my house,” said Robert Machin, the dog’s owner. Machin is completely torn over losing Ginger, and he can’t believe how it happened. “Just being dragged into that machinery and killed in that fashion,” said Machin.
Ginger and her mate, Buster, were both on leashes on the side of the street when the sweeper approached. Witnesses say the vehicle was moving at about 30 or 40 mph, must faster than the 10 mph it’s supposed to go, and that the driver was listening to headphones.
“He came so close to the car that he sucked the dog off the leash,” said Isamar Maldonado, who saw the horrifying incident. “He was not paying attention, and while you’re on duty you’re not supposed to [have headphones] on.”
Witnesses say they chased the truck for blocks, but when he finally stopped they say he refused to shut down the mechanical broom.
“We couldn’t believe that man could be driving that fast and sweep up the little dog like he was a piece of garbage or something, and then don’t even say ‘I’m sorry,'” said Maldonado.
The driver of the sweeper continues to sweep streets in that neighborhood while the investigation is ongoing.
Sexy Women In The City Swapping Lox and Schmear for Vodka and Vermouth
Toe Jam So Tasty You Can Spread It
David Byrne and FatBoy Slim like naked people.
Fake Lesbians Sued For Identity Theft
Islanders from Lesbos sue gay group over use of term ‘Lesbian’
Wednesday, June 11th 2008, 1:48 AM
ATHENS, Greece – Three islanders from Lesbos told a court Tuesday that gay women insult their home’s identity by calling themselves lesbians.
The plaintiffs — two women and a man — are seeking to ban a Greek gay rights group from using the word “lesbian” in its name.
Also known as Mytilini, Lesbos was the home of the ancient poet Sappho, who praised love among women. It is a major travel destination for gay women.
The Homosexual and Lesbian Community of Greece “causes confusion by using a geographic term in connection with (the group’s) special character and social action,” said Dimitris Papadelis, a lawyer representing the plaintiffs.
A spokeswoman for the group accused the plaintiffs of homophobia.
“I believe … the other party’s intentions were purely racist,” Evangelia Vlami said. “They showed that what bothers them is a specific sexual orientation.”
“What will they do next, sue the United Nations? They, too, use the term lesbian,” Vlami said.
Plaintiff Dimitris Lambrou has insisted the lawsuit “is not an aggressive act against gay women.”
Lawyers from both sides are to submit written arguments on Wednesday, and the court is expected to issue its decision in the next six months.
Frankenchrist’s Father Lives!
from the San Jose Mercury News
Dead Kennedys co-founder fiercer than ever at 50
Article Launched: 06/12/2008 01:35:47 AM PDT
Although his spoken-word engagements can extend beyond the four-hour mark, Jello Biafra has to watch what he says. 
He insists that all of his press interviews be recorded so he won’t be misquoted. And he refrains from answering certain questions so statements can’t be taken out of context for use against him.
But who can blame the guy? Biafra faced the prospect of jail time after being taken to court for distributing obscenity in 1986 in connection with the record “Frankenchrist.” He beat the rap and, turning 50, he’s fiercer than ever.
“As long as Americans go out of their way to make fools of themselves, I will never run out of material,” he says.
In 1978, Biafra co-founded the seminal punk-rock band the Dead Kennedys. A few years later, he co-founded a long-running independent record label, Alternative Tentacles, and has released eight spoken-word albums dealing with everything from censorship to crashing the Democratic convention to lousy band names.
Now, to celebrate the big 5-0 and the 30th anniversary of the Dead Kennedys, Biafra will do a pair of shows Tuesday and Wednesday at San Francisco’s Great American Music Hall.
“When I saw Iggy Pop and the Stooges on Iggy’s 60th birthday, they were so awesome,” Biafra says about his inspiration 
for the upcoming shows. “I made a vow to myself that I better do something on my birthday. If it’s just a tenth as good as Iggy, I’ll feel triumphant.”
Biafra will perform with the Melvins, as well as a new band that features members of Victim’s Family, Faith No More and Sharkbait.
Now that he’s into middle age, you might think he feels like taking things easy. But no.
“I’m not one of these people who are going to suddenly declare myself a mature adult artist in order to make excuses for wimpy, empty music,” he snarls. “There are tons of songs I’ve never recorded. I figure it’s time I got rocking again.”
Even though he’s known for rapidly jumping in and out of bands, 
Biafra argues there is a certain continuity in his albums.
“Everything I’ve done, from the Dead Kennedys to Lard to the Melvins and even my spoken-word – it’s all one big body of work. I try to keep expanding the base of the pyramid, and add some cool frosting on top. It’s going to have a sharp set of teeth.”
By “teeth,” Biafra means sarcastic wit and outspoken opinions.
Indulgence Of The Day
Just turn off the goddamn phone!
from Parrot.com via MediaBistro
This video is part of a marketing strategy for a company called Parrot.com to raise the awareness of the new laws in California, as well as, to raise the brand awareness of their hands-free mobile devices in the US. Parrot funded the production of the video.
The video is not scripted. The company installed hidden cameras in the car and hired “John” to test the limits of these driving instructors using his cell phone.
Your Honor, may I approach the udder (and hey, let’s trade pix after trial)
Alex Kozinski suspends L.A. obscenity trial after conceding his website had sexual images
The 9th Circuit chief judge admits he posted some of the explicit content. He says he didn’t think the public could see the site, which is now blocked.
By Scott Glover
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
June 12, 2008
A closely watched obscenity trial in Los Angeles federal court was suspended Wednesday after the judge acknowledged maintaining his own publicly accessible website featuring sexually explicit photos and videos.
Alex Kozinski, chief judge of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, granted a 48-hour stay in the obscenity trial of a Hollywood adult filmmaker after the prosecutor requested time to explore “a potential conflict of interest concerning the court having a . . . sexually explicit website with similar material to what is on trial here.”
In an interview Tuesday with The Times, Kozinski acknowledged posting sexual content on his website. Among the images on the site were a photo of naked women on all fours painted to look like cows and a video of a half-dressed man cavorting with a sexually aroused farm animal. He defended some of the adult content as “funny” but conceded that other postings were inappropriate.
Kozinski, 57, said that he thought the site was for his private storage and that he was not aware the images could be seen by the public, although he also said he had shared some material on the site with friends. After the interview Tuesday evening, he blocked public access to the site.
The judge said it was strictly by chance that he wound up presiding over the trial of filmmaker Ira Isaacs in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles. Isaacs is on trial for distributing sexual fetish videos, featuring acts of bestiality and defecation. The material is considerably more vulgar than the content posted on Kozinski’s website.
The judge said he didn’t think any of the material on his site would qualify as obscene. “Is it prurient? I don’t know what to tell you,” he said. “I think it’s odd and interesting. It’s part of life.”
Before the site was taken down, visitors to http://alex.kozinski.com were greeted with the message: “Ain’t nothin’ here. Y’all best be movin’ on, compadre.”
The sexually explicit material on the site was extensive, including images of masturbation, public sex and contortionist sex. There was a slide show striptease featuring a transsexual, and a folder that contained a series of photos of women’s crotches in snug-fitting clothing or underwear.
Kozinski told The Times that he began saving the sexually explicit materials and other items of interest on his website years ago. “People send me stuff like this all the time,” he said. In turn, he said, he occasionally passes on items he finds interesting or funny to others.
Among the sexually explicit material on his site that he defended as humorous were two photos. In one, a young man is bent over in a chair and performing fellatio on himself. In the other, two women are sitting in what appears to be a cafe with their skirts hiked up to reveal their pubic hair and genitalia. Behind them is a sign reading “Bush for President.”
“That is a funny joke,” Kozinski said.
The judge said he planned to delete some of the most objectionable material from his site, including the photo depicting women as cows, which he said was “degrading . . . and just gross.” He also said he planned to get rid of a graphic step-by-step pictorial in which a woman is seen shaving her pubic hair.
Before suggesting that his son might have been responsible for posting some of the content, Kozinski told The Times that he, the judge, must have accidentally uploaded the cow and shaving images to his server while intending to upload something else. “I would not keep those files intentionally,” he said. He offered to give a reporter a demonstration of how the error probably occurred.
