[Dir. by SCOTT COLAN] PREVIOUSLY: WHO WANTS TO KILL A MILLIONAIRE: Fatcats Continue To Lead ‘Life Of Riley’ On Taxpayer Dime
GAYDAR: A Family Of Strangers
BY AARON STELLA Welcome back happy campers to another edition of my so-called ‘you-wouldn’t-believe-it-if-I-told-you’ life story. Last time around, I mentioned that I was developing a relationship with a family with ulterior motives unbeknownst to me. I also mentioned that they would eventually become my family. Things get kind of wild from here on out folks, so hold on to your hats! The year is 2001. I’m a sophomore at the Catholic high school in Cullman, AL, practically friendless, and in thrall to a feeling of powerlessness among my peers and family members. Giovanni, the German exchange student that had […]
UPDATE: Satanic Santa Plot Thickens
ASSOCIATED PRESS: Bruce and Sylvia Pardo started the new year in 2006 with all signs pointing to a bright future — an upcoming marriage, a combined income of about $150,000, half-million-dollar home on a quiet cul-de-sac and a beloved dog, Saki. But things quickly turned sour and divorce documents paint a bitter picture of Bruce Pardo’s increasing desperation as he lost first his wife, then his job and finally the dog. By fall 2008, Pardo was asking a judge to have his ex-wife pay him support and cover his attorney’s fees. Pardo’s downward slide ended Christmas Eve, when the 45-year-old […]
CINEMA: The Good, The Bad & The Ugly
GRAN TORINO (2008, directed by Clint Eastwood, 116 minutes, U.S.) VALKYRIE (2008, directed by Bryan Singer, 120 minutes, U.S.) THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON (2008, directed by David Fincher, 167 minutes, U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK, FILM CRITIC Our country’s economic future may be starting to resemble a three-card monte game but those brave and handsome Captains of Industry are standing tall at multiplexes this Christmas. Uberstars Tom Cruise, Clint Eastwood and Brad Pitt are all front and center on big movie posters this Christmas, marketing heroes who are protecting the poor, thinking traitorous thoughts and getting hotter with every […]
SATAN CLAWS: Ten Dead In X-Mas Massacre
ASSOCIATED PRESS: Stinging from an acrimonious divorce, a man plotting revenge against his ex-wife dressed up like Santa, went to his former in-laws’ Christmas Eve party and slaughtered at least six people before killing himself hours later. Three people were listed as missing after Bruce Pardo’s rampage — his ex-wife and her parents — and it was feared their remains were among the ashes of the home, which Pardo set ablaze using a bizarre homemade device that sprayed flammable liquid. MORE [Photo by AXEL KOESTER for the New York Times] REUTERS: Survivors told police Pardo seemed to zero in on […]
DEATH OF PURRFECTION: Eartha Kitt RIP
NEW YORK TIMES: Ms. Kitt, who began performing as a dancer in New York in the late ’40s, went on to achieve success and acclaim in a variety of mediums long before other entertainment multitaskers like Julie Andrews, Barbra Streisand and Bette Midler. With her curvaceous frame and unabashed vocal come-ons, she was also, along with Lena Horne, among the first widely known African-American sex symbols. Orson Welles famously proclaimed her “the most exciting woman alive” in the early ’50s, apparently just after that excitement prompted him to bite her onstage during a performance of “Time Runs,” an adaptation of […]
HO HO HO: Seasons Greetings From Phawker
NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTION: This is the year Santa finally kicks that funny little Coke problem.
SCHOOL OF HARD KNOCKS: Whatever Happens In Room 315 Stays In Room 315, Part 7
PART VII BY JEFF DEENEY After lunch the students return to room 315 for a structured free period. On an average day the group spends structured free period playing board games like Battleship and Monopoly, but on a good day they might get to go to the computer lab. On a bad day the free period isn’t so structured and the behavioral health worker Mr. Thompson spends the hour breaking up shoving matches and trying to keep furniture from being thrown across the room. The school has a total of 6 aging Dell PCs for roughly 1500 students. Getting a reservation for the computer lab […]
THIS JUST IN: Michael Jackson On The Verge Of Death
STUFF: Jackson’s biographer Ian Halperin told US gossip magazine In Touch Jackson is suffering from a rare genetic illness called Alpha-1 Antitrypsin Deficiency, as well as emphysema and gastrointestinal bleeding. The 50-year-old former King of Pop is also reportedly 95 percent blind in his left eye and can barely speak. “He’s had it for years, but it’s gotten worse,” Halperin told In Touch. “He needs a lung transplant but may be too weak to go through with it.” Halperin said the gastrointestinal bleeding was Jackson’s most dangerous ailment: “It could kill him.” Jermaine Jackson has not denied reports of his […]
CONVICTED: Fort Dix 6 Guilty Of Conspiracy
INQUIRER: A federal jury today found the five foreign-born Muslim men guilty of conspiring to kill military personnel, but not guilty of attempted murder. The verdict ends one of the country’s most sensational cases of domestic terrorism, a case that garnered international headlines on May 7, 2007, when the defendants were arrested in coordinated raids. On that day, brothers Dritan and Shain Duka attempted to buy seven rifles from Mahmoud Omar, who was working as an FBI informant. A third Duka brother, Eljvir, also was arrested that day. Like all of the defendants, the brothers were born overseas, but raised […]
DIRECT ACTION: Democracy Needs Your Help
“Yesterday, a coalition of major city unions, clergymembers, library users, and community leaders stood together to announce a class action lawsuit to halt the shutdown. But to insure that the courts hear lawsuit effective, we need members of City Council join us as plaintiffs. So click here to ask your district and at-large city council members to join in the suit. Under a law that requires council approval for closing city-owned facilities, the Mayor’s unilateral action to close the libraries is illegal.So click here to tell your council members to stand up for their own rights, and for our libraries, […]
WORTH REPEATING: The Path Of The Righteous Man Is Beset On All Sides By The Tyranny Of Evil Men
NEW YORK TIMES: WHEN HE WAS 12 YEARS OLD, PHILIP SEYMOUR HOFFMAN saw a local production of “All My Sons” near his home in Rochester, and it was, for him, one of those rare, life-altering events where, at an impressionable age, you catch a glimpse of another reality, a world that you never imagined possible. “I literally thought, I can’t believe this exists,” Hoffman told me on a gray day in London early in the fall. He was sitting in the fifth row of the audience at Trafalgar Studios in the West End, where he was directing “Riflemind” (a play […]
WHO WANTS TO KILL A MILLIONAIRE: Fatcats Continue To Lead ‘Life Of Riley’ On Taxpayer Dime
ASSOCIATED PRESS: Banks that are getting taxpayer bailouts awarded their top executives nearly $1.6 billion in salaries, bonuses, and other benefits in 2007, an Associated Press analysis reveals. The rewards came even at banks where poor results last year foretold the economic crisis that sent them to Washington for a government rescue. Some trimmed their executive compensation due to lagging bank performance but still forked over multimillion-dollar executive pay packages. Benefits included cash bonuses, stock options, personal use of company jets and chauffeurs, home security, country club memberships and professional money management, the review of federal securities documents found.The total […]