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from WIRED

Wikipedia Founder Hit With Relationship Trouble, Allegations of Excessive Spending

By Megan McCarthy    March 03, 2008 Categories: People

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales didn’t have such a good weekend. First the blogosphere and then Wikipedia itself lit up with news of his messy breakup with controversial Canadian TV pundit Rachel Marsden. Now, accusations are flying that Wales has been living the high life on the expense account of the nonprofit foundation he created.
On Friday, reports surfaced that the married-but-divorcing Internet icon carried on a clandestine affair with Marsden. Evidence of the affair included lurid IM transcripts, which appeared on Silicon Valley gossip blog Valleywag. On Saturday, Wales posted a statement on the Wikipedia Foundations website (which he later moved to his personal site) denying that his actions went against Wikimedia Foundation’s policies, and stating that the affair had ended. Marsden responded by listing the clothes that he left at her house up for auction on eBay.

[ click to read full article at WIRED ]

from the LA Times

Laughing through the junta’s gag

Myanmar’s famous comedy troupe, unable to publicly stage its satirical routines, still pokes fun at the ruling generals nightly at home. “Joking shares the suffering,” says one member.

By Paul Watson, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
March 4, 2008

photo by Paul Watson / Los Angeles Times

MANDALAY, MYANMAR — The generals, to put it mildly, can’t take a joke.But the Moustache Brothers make their living mocking fools, including those who wear military uniforms. So they have drawn a battle line in this country’s long struggle for democracy with a small stage that cuts across their cramped living room, site of the three-man comedy troupe’s nightly performance.

The military regime silenced street protests last fall by arresting and, in some cases, shooting peaceful demonstrators. That has left dissidents such as comedians Lu Zaw, Lu Maw and the lead satirist of the family, Par Par Lay, to tend the embers of opposition by poking fun at the regime.

In the past, the junta that rules Myanmar — also known as Burma — has tried to shut them up too, hoping to intimidate them with prison terms, hard labor and torture. But the comedians are exploiting a loophole in a ban on their act by staying on the attack at home, in English, with biting humor that ridicules the junta as a bunch of bumbling thugs, thieves and spies.

The Moustache Brothers, one of Myanmar’s most famous comedic acts, are determined to get the last laugh.

“Joking shares the suffering,” said Lu Maw. “That’s what the government is afraid of because jokes are like wildfire. They want to hide deep problems under the covers, and jokes spread the word, mouth to mouth, door to door and outside the country. Then they are disgraced. They are ashamed.”

[ click to read full LA Times article ]

Weinsteins option Bob Marley biopic

Staff and agencies
Tuesday March 4, 2008
guardian.co.uk

Bob Marley on Hellshire beach, 1973. Photograph: Esther Anderson/Corbis

The first ever biopic of Bob Marley is in the works, after film producers Bob and Harvey Weinstein optioned the rights to the autobiography of the reggae star’s widow, Rita Marley.The movie will be based on the 2004 memoir No Woman No Cry: My Life with Bob Marley, which chronicles the couple’s tempestuous 15-year marriage until his death from cancer in 1981. The couple had four children together, survived several separations and affairs – Marley could have fathered as many as 22 children, and legally recognised ten – and an assassination attempt in 1976.

ita Marley will serve as executive producer on the project. “This is about a girl from the ghetto and a boy from the rural areas,” she told Variety. “It’s more than being a superstar – we have trod the rocky roads. It’s more than just a story, it’s a reality.”

“Every inch of me is in there,” she also told The Hollywood Reporter. “I don’t want a fairy tale or Cinderella story.”

Marley would like her husband’s daughter-in-law, singer-songwriter Lauryn Hill, to portray her. “Lauryn would be ideal [to play me],” Marley explained. “She sees my life as her life.” Hill is married to Rohan Marley, the son the reggae star had with Janet Hunt.

The as-yet-untitled project will be directed by Rudy Langlais, an executive producer on the 1999 Denzel Washington film The Hurricane. The film will be an “epic romance”, Langlais told The Hollywood Reporter. “It’s miraculous that Rita is still here after being shot in the head,” he added, referring to the assassination attempt on the couple.

Screenwriter Lizzie Borden is currently in Jamaica to finish the script. Filming is set to begin early next year with a view to release the biopic in cinemas in 2009. It’s expected the movie will partly be filmed in Jamaica.

It is as yet unclear who will portray the legendary musician. The film-makers are looking for two actors, one who would portray Marley aged 15 and the other one as an adult.

The project comes hot on the heels of another film about the reggae star. Martin Scorsese announced last week that he will direct a documentary about Bob Marley, co-produced by his son Ziggy. They are looking to release the film on February 6 2010, on what would have been the singer’s 65th birthday.

Nor is this the first attempt to bring Bob Marley’s life to the big screen. In 1999, Hollywood studio Warner Brothers planned to make a biopic based on Catch a Fire, a 1991 biography by Timothy White. Rohan Marley and Lauryn Hill were then considered to portray Bob and Rita Marley, but the project fell through after director Ron Shelton, and his replacement George Armitage, left the project.

[ click to read article at the Guardian UK ]

from the London Telegraph

Hells Angels plotted to kill Mick Jagger

By Richard Eden, Deputy Editor of Mandrake
Last Updated: 2:25am GMT 03/03/2008

Sir Mick Jagger has long been regarded as one of rock music’s greatest troupers, but, until now, he has been unaware of how much of a survivor he really is.

The Rolling Stones singer was the target of an assassination attempt which only failed because the boat the would-be killers were using was swamped in a storm.

Details of the plot have been revealed by an FBI agent as part of a BBC series on the American crime fighting agency.

The attempt to kill Sir Mick was made by a group of Hells Angels after the infamous Altamont Speedway Free Concert in 1969, which the Rolling Stones had organised and for which the motorcycle gang reportedly provided security.

Meredith Hunter, a black 18-year-old member of the audience, was stabbed and kicked to death by a group of Hells Angels, in an attack captured on film cameras. As a result, Sir Mick allegedly refused to use their services again.

According to Mark Young, a former special agent, interviewed in BBC radio series The FBI at 100, which begins tomorrow, a boat of Hells Angels set out to take revenge on the singer at his holiday home in the Hamptons, Long Island, New York.

“The Hells Angels were so angered by Jagger’s treatment of them that they decided to kill him,” said Tom Mangold, who presents the series. “A group of them took a boat and were all tooled up and planned to attack him from the sea.

“They planned the attack from the sea so they could enter his property from the garden and avoid security at the front. The boat was hit by a storm and all of the men were thrown overboard. All survived and there was not said to have been any further attempt on Jagger’s life.”

[ click to read rest of article telegraph.co.uk ]

By HOLLY M. SANDERS in the New York Post

February 26, 2008 — No one seems to know why Paul Tilley, the 40-year-old creative chief of ad agency DDB Chicago, jumped to his death from the window of the Fairmont Hotel in Chicago on Friday. But that hasn’t stopped a barrage of finger pointing on several advertising blogs at the center of a controversy about what role, if any, they played in Tilley’s suicide.

Most of the anger appears to be directed at two sites – Agency Spy and Adscam – that subjected Tilley to scrutiny leading up to his death. Both bloggers defended their coverage yesterday.

“I see in the comments of this post that many will point fingers at this blog for Mr. Tilley’s death. That is unacceptable,” Agency Spy wrote in a posting.

The defense was in response to readers who blamed the public scrutiny and “snarky” comments for driving Tilley over the edge or – at least – contributing to the pressure-cooker atmosphere in the ad industry.

One commentator wrote on AgencySpy: “Trust me… as someone who’s known Paul for over 20 years… he heard and felt all those comments and whispers.”

The controversy reached the upper echelons of the ad agency world, when Nina DiSesa, the chairman of McCann Erickson New York, jumped in to complain about the blogs.

“These hateful advertising blogs seem to be written by people who are bitter about the business,” DiSesa wrote on AgenCySpy.

Although AgencySpy doesn’t disclose its blogger, George Parker, a veteran ad executive, writes AdScam.

“I suggest anyone who still feels pissed off at me and Agency Spy should contact DDB Chicago,” Parker wrote on his blog yesterday. “They know why he committed suicide. And it didn’t have anything to do with what he read on a blog.”

[ click to read full article at the New York Post ]

holly.sanders@nypost.com

Classic clip of a clean-cut Lead Mother discussing censorship on CNN. Check about 7 minutes in when Zappa tells a Washington Times columnist who accuses him of glorifying satanism, incest and suicide to “Kiss my [bleep]”, and the columnist comes back with “Oh yeah, take your teeth out and we’ll talk about it”???

copped from Seth Abramovitch‘s FB feed (thanks)

Arguably the greatest special effects sequence in cinemadom, since it was made before SFX existed to any presently appreciable degree.

from the New York Times

February 29, 2008
By JENNIFER DUNNING

Judith Jamison, artistic director of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, announced on Thursday that she would retire in 2011. She plans to maintain her connection to the company, which she joined as a dancer in 1965, as artistic director emerita.

Judith Jamison working on stage with the dancer
Matthew Rushing at New York City Center in 2007. More Photos

The 30-member Ailey troupe now has a 42-week work year, with 9 weeks devoted to international touring in 2007-8 and 14 weeks touring in the United States, as well as seasons at City Center in Manhattan and the Brooklyn Academy of Music. The company’s school trains 3,000 students a year from 21 countries, independent of classes for the general public, and has a long-established junior troupe, Ailey II, and dance camps in seven American cities. Under Ms. Jamison, a bachelor of fine arts program for dancers was established with Fordham University.

Like Ailey, Ms. Jamison is an immensely private person with a warm, down-home public persona and an irrepressible sense of humor. Her long association with Ailey has enabled her to speak easily about his humanist take on the arts and their importance. Dance comes from the people, he said frequently, and it should always be delivered back to the people.

Ms. Jamison was a tall ballet-trained dancer from Philadelphia when Ailey spotted her in a disastrously unsuccessful audition with the choreographer Donald McKayle and invited her to join his company. She was his “gangly girl with no hair,” his beauty, Ailey would later say, and his classic piece “Cry,” created for her, summed up her qualities.

She became a star in her 15 years dancing with the Ailey company, which she left in 1980 to perform on Broadway in “Sophisticated Ladies.” With Ailey’s encouragement, she eventually created a modern-dance troupe of her own.

“Alvin took care of me, my artistic self and my human being self,” Ms. Jamison said. “He merged those two into what you saw onstage. That, to me, was his greatest gift. The choreography, yes, but understanding who I was as a person. And he did that for all of us.”

[ click to read full article in the NY Times ]

Editorial from the Washington Post

Leap Day No thanks to Julius Caesar.

Friday, February 29, 2008

THIS EXTRA day of February is part of the legacy bequeathed us by the Romans, along with their contributions in law, engineering, language, arts and letters, and the development of a numbering system that allows us to properly identify our Super Bowls. The institution of leap years was strictly a necessity, created by the failure of the 365-day year to match up with the astronomical year. The discrepancy is only about a quarter of a day, but just try to figure out where to put that six hours.

Julius Caesar, a man used to acting decisively on thorny problems, solved this one, somewhat, by adding a day to every fourth year, placing it, unfortunately, in the month of Februarius. He made the calendar change in 46 B.C. and was assassinated not too long after, possibly a coincidence. We have been stuck with this extraneous day ever since, an extension of a dreary and unpopular month and an occasion for obscure and quickly forgotten acts not suitable for anniversary remembrance. It is a day for senators to make speeches about the turnip tariff, for manufacturers to issue lint-filter recalls, for children to sullenly celebrate birthdays knowing that, unlike their peers, they will have only five or six such observances before they have to start paying rent. But keep this in mind: It’s only a day. Tomorrow it will be March, a better month for almost everyone, Julius Caesar excepted.