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Movie Reviews - 2009 postsTuesday March 02, 2010
Review: "The White Ribbon" (2009)
I should've known.
I saw the trailer with its exquisite black-and-white photography, beautiful, rising choir music, and the faces of serious children saying, in German, "Forgive us, father," "Please forgive us," all of it interspersed with Palme D'or awards and quotes from critics ("It feels like a classic even as you're watching it for the first time." — Scott Foundas, LA WEEKLY), and I thought: "I gotta see this."
Last Friday I finally got the chance. Five minutes in, I realized, "Oh, wait. This is a Michael Haneke film, isn't it? Fuck."
The choir music may rise, in other words, but nothing is uplifting.
Haneke's films ("Cache," "La pianiste," "Le temps du loup," "Funny Games") don't really educate so much as remind. They remind us of two things in particular: "People are brutal" and "You don't know why."
Those who agree with that first sentiment often make exceptions. They'll say, "Well, people may be brutal but children aren't." They'll say, "People are brutal now, but in the past, in a simpler time, we were better."
To which Haneke replies, "Let them come to 'Das weisse Bande: Eine deutsche Kindergeschichte'" ("The White Ribbon: A German children's story").
The film is set in a German village in the year before the Great War. The villagers are known by their occupations (The Farmer) or their relationship to someone with that occupation (The Farmer's Wife). Only the children have names.
It's basically a crime mystery in which we guess the criminals at the outset, have that guess strengthened throughout, then leave the theater without an answer. It's wholly atmospheric, and the atmosphere is one of dread barely held in check. It's one of tight-assed propriety masking something monstrous.
Our narrator is the School Teacher, voiced as an old man (Ernst Jacobi) but viewed as a young one (Christian Friedel). "It all began, I think," he says, "with the Doctor's accident." He's still using the language of the village, since the "accident" occurs when the Doctor (Rainer Bock), returning from an afternoon horseride, is cut down by a wire strung across the gate at knee length. The horse is killed, the Doctor goes to the hospital, the wire goes missing.
Village life centers around the Baron (Ulrich Tukur), who owns more than 50 percent of the land and for whom many in the village work, but our village centers around the Pastor (Burghart Klaubner) and his family, particularly his children, particularly the eldest two: Klara (Maria-Victoria Dragas), an upright, handsome girl, with something like defiance in her seemingly respectful stance, and Martin (Leonard Proxauf), a striking boy with bags under his eyes and something like shame oozing from every pore. We first see them together the evening of the doctor's accident when they face their father's quiet wrath for being late for dinner. They ask for forgiveness, as in the trailer, and don't get it. "I don't know what's worse: your absence or your coming back," the Pastor says. He passes sentence—10 strokes of the cane the next evening—and they are made complicit in their punishment. "Do you agree?" the Pastor says. When the punishment comes, the boy is made to get the cane and the whipping occurs behind closed doors. This is a village where things occur behind closed doors.
As the summer progresses, things get worse. The Farmer's wife dies, a victim of an accident at the Baron's factory, and when we finally arrive we hear one man counsel another: "Careful, it's all rotten." What's all rotten? Our mind is filled with the worst possible images until Haneke, taking his sweet time, pans over to the rotten wooden floorboards that gave way and ended a life.
But it is all rotten. Things are whispered and people's minds are filled with the worst possible images. It's said that the Baron is to blame for the accident, and during harvest celebration one of the Farmer's sons takes revenge by destroying the Baron's cabbage patch. It's a clumsy, known event that shames the Farmer. Later that night, the Baron's curly-headed son, Sigi (Fion Mutert), goes missing, and is found at 2:30 a.m., hanging upside-down in the barn, whipped and in a state of shock. Later still the barn is burned. What undercurrent, whose undercurrent, is controlling events in this village?
The following year, the Steward's daughter confesses to the Teacher that she dreamed something horrible will happen to Karli, the mentally disabled son of the Midwife. Has she dreamed it? Or has she been told it? And why? Why would someone do such a thing to Karli? The Midwife, we know, has been having an affair with the Doctor—we see him schtupping her without pleasure upon his return from the hospital—but he ends their relationship brutally, telling her she's ugly, old, flabby, has bad breath, and when she doesn't get it, declares, "My God, why don't you just die?" Shortly after, his son, Gustav (Thibault Sérié), four or five years old, wakens one evening to find his older, teenaged sister, Anna (Roxane Duran), gone from their bedroom. He goes downstairs, scared, calling her name. He opens doors. Behind one of them he finds his father and sister. Her nightgown is pushed up, exposing her thighs. She's getting her ears pieced, she says. She doesn't seem scared. Haneke is putting us in the position of the villagers. We just get glimpses behind closed doors. Our minds are filled with the worst possible images.
Eventually something horrible does happen to Karli. He's tortured, blinded, tied to a tree, and a note is left behind quoting Biblical text about the sins of the parents being visited upon the children, even unto the third or fourth generation. One assumes the Pastor's children are responsible, as one assumed from the beginning, with Klara the ringleader and Martin the reluctant participant. But why the Midwife's son? Because of the Midwife's affair with the Doctor? Because of the rumors that she and the Doctor killed the Doctor's Wife five years earlier?
The Pastor keeps punishing his children by making them wear ribbons of white, the color of innocence, to remind them of the purity from which they came, but it hardly helps. We see Klara killing the Pastor's favorite bird and leaving the evidence on his desk. He knows she did it. Or: We suspect greatly that he suspects greatly that she did it. But when the School Teacher comes to him with accusations of their crimes, the Pastor protects what's his and threatens the School Teacher. By this point, the Archduke Ferdinand has been assassinated and the Great War begun. You could say we are unto the third or fourth generation still suffering from those 1914 sins.
Is there any innocence in Haneke's vision? Any beauty beyond the cinematography? The School Teacher begins a relationship with Eva (Leonie Benesch), who's working as a nanny, and they have a kind of halting, stammering sweetness together. But the relationship is mostly marked by its difficulties. This is a world where kindness is difficult, brutality easy and total.
Perhaps the most instructive scene occurs between Gustav and Anna at the breakfast nook after the death of the Farmer's wife. Earlier Gustav had worried about their father's absence and Anna had assured him he would return. Remember when you got sick last winter? Then you got better? It's like that. But now he asks about death. She tries to explain it. "Does everyone die?" he asks. Yes. "Everyone really? But not you, Anni?" Me, too. "But not Dad." Yes, Papa. Then he makes the big leap. "Me, too? It has to happen? ... And Mom? Is she dead, too?" Anna couches her answers with the comfort of time, which is actually the enemy. Mom died a long time ago, she says. He, Gustav, won't die for a long time. But Gustav is making the connection all of us make, and that may mark the true end of innocence and the true beginning of brutality: the knowledge, which we carry all of our lives, that everyone and everything, including us, dies. And he angrily sweeps the dishes onto the floor. It's a great scene.
If "The White Ribbon" sounds like an interesting film, it is. It's interesting to write about, interesting to talk about, but less interesting to watch. It's not that I disagree with Haneke's vision, I merely think it's devoid of light. He's incomplete. What he's missing is a glimmer of anything that makes life worth living. He's a child angrily sweeping the dishes onto the floor.
"Bitte verzeihen Sie."
Tags: Michael Haneke, German Films, Movie Reviews
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Review: "The Last Station" (2009)
It's odd scribbling critics' notes while watching Michael Hoffman's "The Last Station," which is based upon Jay Pirini's novel on the last days of Leo Tolstoy, since several characters on screen are also taking notes and it's not exactly positive. More like the scuttling of rats. You want to apologize to other audience members for doing what you're doing. I'm not a bad person; I'm just a critic.
I was never a Tolstoyan in believing exactly what he believed, or going through the crises he went through, but for a time, in my early twenties, I read him thoroughly and wholeheartedly. Not only was he one of the great 19th century writers but his writing gave birth to the better part of the 20th century: the non-violent movements of Gandhi and King. He's so identified with the 19th century, in fact, that it's startling to see the date at the beginning of the movie: 1910. Did Tolstoy really live that long? He did. Long enough to be filmed at Yasnaya Polyana, the estate where he was born, lived and was buried. He died elsewhere. But I'm getting ahead.
The movie opens with that most awful of 20th-century encounters: the job interview. Valentin Bulgakov (James McAvoy) is being interviewed by Vladimir Chertkov (a perhaps-too-smarmy Paul Giamatti) about becoming private secretary to Leo Tolstoy (Christopher Plummer). Valentin is a Tolstoyan through and through. He's both vegetarian and celibate, he says. He's read Tolstoy's philosophy and wants to live it completely—which is to say: narrowly. He's been shown the path and wants to stay on that path, and no other, and when he gets the job he tears up from joy, and afterwards continually breathes out from repressed joy, scarcely believing his luck, even though Chertkov makes it apparent that he's hiring not just a secretary but a spy. He warns Valentin that the Tolstoyan movement has many, many enemies and lists them off: the Russian Orthodox Church, the Tsar's police, and the Countess Sofya Tolstoy (Helen Mirren), Tolstoy's wife. This last one is key. He gives Valentin a diary. "Write. Everything. Down," he says.
Valentin has the peculiar (and dramatically facile) habit of sneezing whenever he's nervous, and at Yasnaya, which is divided between a commune of workers and the estate of the Tolstoys, he sneezes a lot. At the commune, where he sleeps, he meets a 20th century girl chopping wood, Masha (Kerry Condon), who stares at him boldly, amusedly, and not without interest, and encourages him to speak his mind, despite Sergeyenko (Patrick Kennedy), the tight-assed man running the place. "This is a place of freedom," Sergeyenko says after listing the rules. "We are all equals here," he says without joy.
At the estate, where Valentin works, he's greeted by another woman, yelling down at him from the second floor. "You!" she says. So much for equality. This is Tolstoy's daughter, Sasha (Ann-Marie Duff), who, after he apologizes and sneezes his way into an explanation for his being, tells him to wait in the library. Nothing, of course, could make him happier. Tolstoy's library! Tolstoy's books and papers! Then Tolstoy himself arrives, welcomes him, engages him, causes him to cry with happiness. "I am no one and you are Lev Tolstoy," Valentin says. "And you ask me about my work." As do all great men. It may be the definition of great men.
Yasnaya is not only divided between workers' estate and the Tolstoy's estate but between those who believe in the movement (and see Tolstoy as a prophet), and those who are less enamored of equality and fraternity (and see him as a man). The former group includes daughter Sasha; Dushan the doctor (John Sessions), forever scribbling in his notebook; and the initially absent Chertkov, under house arrest elsewhere. The latter group includes, well, the Countess. Tolstoy is caught between groups. Our man, our eyes, Valentin, intellectually sides with the movement but has an open heart. It's what saves him from the absolutism of the others.
Mirren, by the way, is amazing: annoying yet sympathetic, haughty yet fragile, comic yet tragic. She's afraid her husband will sign away the copyrights to his work (which he does); she's afraid that he's moving away from her (which he is), so she clings, cajoles, seduces. She upbraids him for dressing like a man who tends sheep, then calls herself "his little chicken" and calls him "her big cock" and gets him to crow happily in bed. She reminds him that she bore him 13 children and wrote out "War and Peace" six times and how could he betray her like this? With Valentin she's equally blunt, telling him he's "rather handsome in a sort of peculiar way.". She asks him, while they walk, if he's a virgin, and when he stutters and sneezes and begins to quote Tolstoy to her, she says breezily, "You know, when he was your age he was whoring in the Caucasus." Then she gives him a diary and tells him to write down what he sees. "What. You. See," she says.
Valentin goes for walks with Tolstoy, too, and when Tolstoy asks him the deep questions of life, Valentin quotes Tolstoy to Tolstoy, which is the last thing Tolstoy wants. "I know what I say," he says pleasantly, "but what do you say?" Valentin admits he doesn't know. Tolstoy replies, with a touch of helplessness, "Neither do I." It's a poignant scene.
Things come to a head (a headier head) when Chertkov is released from house arrest and arrives at Yasnaya. From outside he greets his nemesis, the Countess, who's on the second-floor balcony:
Chertkov: I'm happy to see you.
Countess: And I'm happy to make you happy.
Chertkov (wearing the tightest of smiles): Ha ha ha ha.
But the tighter she tries to hold onto Tolstoy the more he slips away from her. Meanwhile Valentin is the passive and nervous and then joyful recipient of the advances of Masha, who, like in an adolescent male fantasy, comes to his room at night, silently climbs atop him, and removes her gown. Basically she knocks him off his narrow path and widens his world. Condon, mousy in the HBO series "Rome," where she played Octavia, the innocent daughter of the villainess, Atia, is stunningly sexy here. Bravo for boldness. McAvoy is also a surprise. He was forgettable to me in "Last King" and "Atonement," for which he won raves (and BAFTA nominations), and unforgettable here, where every emotion reads visibly, humanly on his face. (Put it this way: He didn't need the sneeze—except for comic effect.) Yet no one's mentioning him and the awards season has already passed him by. So it goes.
"The Last Station" is straightforward, enjoyable storytelling, with great performances, that is, on a personal level, whollly evocative. I kept thinking of the last chapter of Philip Roth's near-perfect novella "The Ghost Writer," entitled Married to Tolstoy," on the difficulties of living with a writer. As Tolstoy gets more and more fed up with his wife, threatening to leave her and Yasnaya Polyana, I also flashed back to my college roommate, Brian M., reading about this incident and laughing uproariously at the image of Tolstoy basically running away from home at the age of 82. It's less funny here. He only makes it as far as Astopovo, the last station of the title. One feels, as the world gathers to hear of his death, that he's simply an old man being used.
All of this takes place exactly 100 years ago. As the 20th century progressed, Tolstoy's views, via Gandhi and King, became more and more important, even as his station in life, the writer's station, became less and less so. He was born the year after the French government patented the fountain pen, he was 45 years old when the first typewriter with a QWERTY keyboard became commercially successful, and by the time he died, well, he was one of the most famous men in the world. Writers mattered. As the century progressed it became easier to write, and easier to publish, and so more people did, and so it mattered less. And now we've got what we've got. The egalitarianism Tolstoy sought has played out in the craft he perfected—to the craft's detriment. We're all equals here.
Tags: Movie Reviews, Leo Tolstoy, Movies About Writers, James McAvoy, Christopher Plummer, Helen Mirren, Russia
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Review: "Crazy Heart" (2009)
Generally in stories about a down-on-his-luck artist attempting redemption through a woman and a comeback through his art, the work of art in question, which everyone in the movie says is great, stunning, worthy of turning a life around, is actually fairly ordinary. In "Crazy Heart," written and directed by Scott Cooper, the work of art is a country song, "The Weary Kind," written by Ryan Bingham and produced by T. Bone Burnett. Two things: 1) it's great, stunning, worthy of turning a life around, and 2) it only turns around the life of the artist, country singer Bad Blake (Jeff Bridges), so much. It indicates a direction but it doesn't necessarily get him home.
Blake, 58, is overweight and a drinker. As the movie begins, the country legend is driving the American Southwest in his '78 Suburban, Bessie, and playing in dives. Because the first place we see him play is a bowling alley, and he arrives long-haired, dissheveled, bearded and unbuttoned, ordering a drink at the bowling-alley bar, one can't help but think of Bridge's most famous character, the Dude from "The Big Lebowski"; but that's where the similarity ends. The Dude was happy in bowling alleys but Blake takes one look and says aloud to his absent manager, "Jack, you bastard." He doesn't get a bar tab (his reputation has preceded him), isn't interested in rehearsing with his star-struck back-up band (including Ryan Bingham as Tony), and near the end of his set flees the stage to throw up in a back-alley garbage can. That night he sleeps with an aging groupie, one of 20 or so fans who bothered to show up, then he sneaks out of Pueblo, New Mexico. The question for the viewer: Is this bottom?
We find out he hasn't written a song in three years. He also has a former partner, Tommy Sweet (Colin Farrell), who's a big star, but with whom Blake refuses to play anymore. One assumes bad blood and betrayal.
The next gig is a little better, a real bar, and he arrives mid-afternoon to hear a man playing the piano and playing it well. Blake gives him a nod of compliment and the man returns the favor and then asks for another. His niece is a reporter with the Santa Fe paper. Would he give her an interview?
The niece is Jean Craddock (Maggie Gyllenhaal), and they meet cute. For the interview she gives a quick rap on his motel room door and opens it... to find him sitting in a towel and watching chicas on his motel-room TV.
It's meeting cute but it's meeting false. Who barges into a stranger's motel room with hardly a knock? For a journalist, too, her questions are fairly generic, as if she'd done no research at all. Who were your influences? Did you ever want to be anything else? In today's world of artificial country music, who's real country? His answers are good, particularly on wanting to be a baseball player until someone threw him a curve ball ("Figured I'd stay with the guitar. Sonuvabitch stayed where it's supposed to"), but that doesn't excuse the questions. She also sleeps with her subject, which is a whole other matter.
She becomes, of course, the love interest, and one of the sources of Blake's redemption, but I was rarely interested in their relationship. It felt icky. Because of the age difference? Because I didn't quite get what she saw in him or he in her? Because her journalism is questionable? Because I knew he would let her down in some awful way?
His relationship with other people, meanwhile, always intrigued me. He finally lets his manager book him as the opening act for Tommy Sweet, who used to open for him, and one expects an egotistsical, grandstanding upstart. Instead Tommy's appreciative and admiring of his former mentor. All this time, the problem had been Blake and his pride, his old lion's pride, which is still on display when Tommy sneaks onstage, to squeals from the crowd, 12,000-strong, during Blake's opening number to sing a duet with the legend. There's a frozen disapproval in Blake's face and body language, and there are subtle tensions when the two talk backstage, and all of that is a joy to watch because it feels real; because it makes you wonder about both men. Hell, I liked the back-and-forth Blake has with the sound-man, Bear, during the sound check:
Blake: Bear, Bear, Bear! I need kick and snare, turn down the damn guitar, you're drowning out the lyrics.
Bear: Mix is good, man. You can't hear what I'm hearing out here.
Blake: Bear, I'm an old man, I get grumpy. Humor me.
Tommy wants a longer tour, and songs, from his former partner, and after Blake gets into a car accident and winds up recuperating at Jean's place, he begins to write the one that will become "The Weary Kind." In lesser films he'd realize what he has and keep it and record it for himself and become a star again (that, in fact, is the story the trailer implies). In this film, he realizes what he has and mails it off to Tommy anyway, who, down the road, will make it a hit, which will make Blake a little sum of money. There's a matter-of-factness to all this. It's how life is.
Pride, though, was only one thing holding Blake back. The other was drink. Artistically he may have hit bottom at that bowling alley in Pueblo, but alcoholics have deeper, harder bottoms. In Santa Fe, Blake takes Jean's four-year-old son, Buddy (Jack Nation), to the park for the day, and Jean returns to a darkened home. No Buddy. No Bad. She panics for five seconds until they walk in the door, Buddy with stories already spilling out of his mouth, Blake, looking a wreck, assuring her, "Nobody died." This prefigures a later scene in Houston when Blake loses Buddy in a mall. Blake had a son from a previous relationship, a grown man now and understandably uninterested in his father's attempts to reconnect with him, whom Blake last saw when he was four. The man has a bad habit of losing four-year-old boys.
Buddy's found in the mall but Jean is unforgiving and cuts things off with Blake for good. And that, after another bender, is Blake's bottom.
"Crazy Heart" could be subtitled "The Partial Redemption of a Country Legend." That's really all it is. Its appeal lies in the peformances—particularly Bridges, who is both monumental and as ordinary as any day in our lives—and in the details. I like the size of Bridge's mangled fingers next to Buddy's. I like how, saying good-bye in Santa Fe, Jean grimaces away from Blake's alcoholic breath. ("Mustard gas and roses," Kurt Vonnegut used to call it.) I like the small scene, after he sobers up and after Jean still rejects him, where he's cleaning his place and finds Buddy's Superman t-shirt under the bed. He picks up the phone. Then he pauses, sets the phone back down, folds the little boys' t-shirt in his lap. It's such a small shirt and that emblem is so big and says so much. Will he mail it back? Will he keep it? We don't know. We just know he won't use it as an excuse to inject himself into her life again. It wasn't easy being Bad, but it's even harder being decent.
The movie has some false notes but the music doesn't. The songs this country legend sings are actually good songs:
I used to be somebody
Now I am somebody else
Who I'll be tomorrow
Is anybody's guess
They're as matter-of-fact and down-to-earth as the movie, which almost didn't get distribution. Now it's out in a handful of theaters making a little sum of money. It's how life is.
Tags: Movie Reviews, Country Music, Musicals, Jeff Bridges, Maggie Gyllenhaal
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Review: "Fantastic Mr. Fox" (2009)
"Fantastic Mr. Fox" is a joy to watch because it's both a Wes Anderson movie and a George Clooney vehicle.
Its Wes Andersonness is obvious. It gives us deadpan humor, father-son conflict, characters associated with one absurd and outdated mode of dress. It tosses up chapter titles ("The Go-For-Broke Mission") and tosses in a tinkly soundtrack and bouncy-but-obscure, British-invasion-era music ("Let Her Dance" by Bobby Fuller Four). In 2007 I wrote the following about the essential Wes Anderson lesson: Exclusion isn't necessarily the problem but inclusion is almost always the solution. That's still true for his films—whether we're talking Fischers, Tenenbaums and Zissous or foxes, badgers and weasels.
Where "Fox" differs from a typical Wes Anderson movie is in its hero. Anderson's protagonists generally pretend to be something they're not: great playwrights, great oceanographers, caring patriarchs. Eventually their true nature is revealed and they're excluded from where they want to be. Only in returning, chastened and wiser, do they become the very thing they were pretending to be.
The movement for Mr. Fox (George Clooney) is the opposite. His persona is basically the George Clooney persona—the hyper-articulate, know-it-all whose charm resides in not always knowing it all but mustering through with grace and style anyway—and this persona, Mr. Fox's persona, hardly changes during the course of the movie. For a time he denies his true nature, but he does so for others, not himself, and it's a mere blip of screentime. It's not the Anderson cycle of pretense/exclusion/genuineness. It's the Clooney promise: Get on board, boys, we're going for a ride!
The reason Mr. Fox is forced to deny his true nature is the reason many of us are forced to deny our true natures: he starts a family. One moment he and his wife are stealing squabs from a nearby farm, the next they're trapped by a cage. Before they can escape, Mrs. Fox (Meryl Streep) announces she's pregnant, and elicits a promise from Mr. Fox that he'll settle down and never steal squabs and chickens and the like again.
Out of one trap and into another.
For two years (12 fox years, we're told), Mr. Fox works as a newspaperman and lives with Mrs. Fox and their son, Ash (Jason Schwartzman), in a comfortable hole, until one day he says he's tired of living in their comfortable hole. He's got his eye on a tree that they can't afford. Except he really wants the tree because of it overlooks Boggis, Bunce and Bean, three farms producing, in order, chickens, turkey and cider, and run by "three of the meanest, nastiest, ugliest farmers in the valley," according to Fox's lawyer, Badger (Bill Murray), who counsels against purchase. Fox ignores him. He tells himself he's after one last job, by which he means three last jobs, one for each farm. For the first two he drags along Kylie, the passive, not-bright, handyman opossum (Wallace Wolodarsky), who is essentially the Pagoda of this film, and both jobs go off, give or take an electric fence, without a hitch.
For the final job, at Bean's cider farm, Ash tries to tag along but is sent home; instead Fox relies on Ash's cousin and rival, Kristofferson Silverfox (Eric Anderson), a meditating, martial-arts-training natural athlete who is staying with the family. Again, give or take a rat guard (Willem Dafoe), and the appearance of the very masculine-looking Mrs. Bean (Helen McCrory), the job goes off without a hitch. The problem: of the three nasty farmers, Bean (Michael Gambon, brilliant here) is the nastiest of the bunch. Also the smartest. And he organizes Boggis and Bunce into bringing the fight to Mr. Fox.
Thus begins a war of escalation. First they attempt to shoot Mr. Fox but succeed only in blowing off his tail (which Bean wears as a tie); then they destroy the Fox's tree home with bulldozers (shades of "Avatar"!), but discover the Foxes have dug down to safety. When they try to dig them out, the Foxes simply dig deeper, and further, and eventually back into the Boggis, Bunce and Bean farms, from which they steal everything. By this time, other animals have been swept up in the war, and they all gather at a large underground dining table to celebrate. But just as Mr. Fox is delivering his toast of triumph, a rumble is heard. The rumble of cider. They're being flooded out of their homes and into a sewer, from which there appears no escape.
But there is an escape. Earlier, when Mrs. Fox learned of her husband's treachery, we got the following dialogue:
Mrs. Fox: Why did you lie to me?
Mr. Fox: Because I'm a wild animal.
Meanwhile, Ash, who likes to wear a cape, and who doesn't even have a proper bandit mask but uses a reconstituted tube sock, is dealing with others' perceptions, and his own perception, of his difference.
And that's their salvation. They're all wild animals and they're all different. Mr. Fox, calling everyone by their Latin names (Oryctolagus Cuniculus! Talpa Europea!), uses the talents of each species for their final plan of attack, their final salvation. Exclusion isn't necessarily the problem but inclusion is almost always the solution.
"Fantastic Mr. Fox" is delightful on many levels—it's funny, quirky, tender, adventurous—but it resonates long after you leave the theater for the following reason. The convention of children's stories is to have wild animals talk, wear clothes, and engage in human professions, and "Mr. Fox" certainly adopts those conventions. Then it upends them by having the wild animals realize the absurdity of not being what they are: wild animals. Wes Anderson, in other words, dresses up his animals as people so the people watching can realize that they, all the lawyers and high school coaches and newspapermen in the audience, are animals. All of us, in small ways, in the clothes we wear or the jobs we have, are denying our true natures. The joy of "Mr. Fox" is that Vulpes Volpes gets to reveal his true nature. The bittersweetness of Homo Sapiens is that, generally, we don't.
Tags: Movie Reviews, Animated Movies, Wes Anderson, George Clooney, Meryl Streep, Jason Schwartzman, Fathers and Sons
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Review: "Precious" (2009)
"Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire" is set in Harlem in the 1980s, a hopeless period for both race relations and social progress in America. If the 1960s was the two steps forward, the 1980s was the one step back. One image from the period, and the film, is particularly weighted with hopelessness to me. With all of the crime in the streets, with all of the crime in the homes, there in the classroom is a poster of McGruff the Crime Dog, a cartoon hound in a trenchcoat, urging kids to "Take a bite out of crime." How exactly? By speaking up? By getting an adult? And if the adult is the crime? McGruff is a harbinger of the very thing he fights. He shows up only where crime is rampant and offers nothing. He's a symbol of impotence.
He's also a symbol of one of the three universes of "Precious." All of them are depressing.
The first and worst universe is the brutal, everyday world that Claireece Precious Jones (Gabourey Sidibe) lives in. She's 16, fat, black, illiterate. Sexually abused by her absentee father since age 3, she's now pregnant with his second child. The first child, who has developmental problems, is being raised by her grandmother, while her mother, Mary (Mo'Nique), lives off welfare, watches TV all day, and is emotionally and physically abusive to Precious. She tears down Precious every day with a stream of verbal abuse; if Precious is unresponsive she resorts to the physical kind. Precious is also attacked in the streets and ignored in the schools. There is nowhere she is safe.
Except in the second universe, her fantasy universe, where she often goes after being physically abused. Here she wears feather boas and is photographed on red carpets. She's on BET and magazine covers. She's beautiful, important, and loved by a light-skinned boyfriend, but the universe is depressing for being so distant from her reality, and for being a slightly more glamorous version of the empty, cheesy shows her mother watches. Who would even want to live in this universe? Only someone whose reality is the first universe.
The third universe is the solution. When administrators at her public high school discover she's pregnant with her second child, most likely sexually and physically abused, and virtually illiterate, they release her to a special program in an alternative school, "Each One, Teach One," which is run out of the 11th floor of the Hotel Theresa. Her intro there is inauspicious. The receptionist puts personal phone calls ahead of administrative duties, doesn't even expect Precious (though there's hardly a clog of humanity at the place), and needs copies of a phone bill and her mother's budget to complete the bureaucratic process. Precious' second day begins even worse. She needs money for food but her mother is masturbating in bed and ignores her. So Precious steals a bucket of fried chicken and eats most of it on the way to school, before throwing it back up in a school garbage can beneath a sign reading: "Try for a better future." There are such self-esteem signs all over the school. One reads: "Determination." In another, the following words form a circle: "feeling good about yourself will lead to more reasons for" and back to the first word. Plus there's McGruff. That harbinger of good times.
When Precious finally enters the classroom (via white light?), the feeling-good-about-yourself times continue. The students, five or six girls, are asked by their teacher, who goes by the name Blu Rain (Paula Patton), to talk about something they're good at. After the movie, walking down Broadway on Capitol Hill, my girlfriend Patricia commented with amazement on how "all of those girls were so different." One's a tough Chicana, one's a lesbian, one's from Jamaica, etc. "That's the point," I replied flatly. "I know," she responded, "But..." She liked it. She was caught up in it. I wasn't. I also wondered about casting. If the classroom was supposed to be feel-good, how did Paula Patton wind up as Ms. Rain? She's pretty enough to make Halle Berry feel like something the cat dragged in.
And so our first and third universes battle for the soul of Precious. The caring teacher vs. the uncaring mother. One props up, one drags down. "You're special, Precious." "You think you're special, Precious?" Ms. Rain has the students write every day, and the book, "Push," by Sapphire, is in the first-person, so you get a sense of the progress Precious makes through the writing itself. That might be interesting. On the other hand, it is reminiscent of "The Color Purple," which was a best-seller, and then a hit movie, a few years before the time "Precious" is set in. Aspects of "Precious" also reminded me of "The Bluest Eye," Toni Morrison's first novel, which was published in 1970, and which I read around the time Precious was first walking into that classroom, when Sapphire herself was a remedial reading teacher in Harlem and dealing with girls like Precious every day. I guess every generation needs their version of this story; I guess it's why it felt old to me.
No, it's worse. Parts of it feel like a lie. Even as Ms. Rain tells Precious it's OK to be fat and black (but not illiterate), the good people in the film—Ms. Rain, Nurse John (Lenny Kravitz), and, to a lesser extent, Ms. Weiss (Mariah Carey)—are thin, good-looking, light-skinned. That's what good is in this universe. "But you're still beautiful, Precious."
The movie's villain, meanwhile, is fat and black. Mary allows her child to be sexually abused and then blames the child for taking away her man. She's also an argument against welfare—wasting her life in a small cluttered apartment and watching the worst TV has to offer. There are few cinematic moments more depressing than Mary doing a bump-and-grind while smoking and watching Florence Henderson give clues on "$100,000 Pyramid." The horror of our culture is in that moment. The waste... The waste...
Mo'Nique is smart enough to play Mary as the victim—that's how she sees herself. It's a great performance and Mo'Nique deserves her accolades. Put it this way: I believed Mary. I believed Ms. Weiss, too. She's fighting the good fight but she also has the tired, thousand-yard stare of the career bureaucrat. With the world the way it is, you can only care so much. After her appointment with Precious, she has one with, say, Angela, and another with Bettina, and Clarice, and on and on until five o'clock, at which point she gets to punch out and grab a drink, and then do it all again tomorrow. Five days a week, 52 weeks a year. With that schedule, how much emotion do you put into your 10:15? Carey plays her right. But Ms. Rain? She cares. Deeply. Particularly about Precious. Because Precious is precious? No, because we're watching Precious' story rather than Rita's story, or Rhonda's or Jermaine's or Joann's or Consuelo's. Ms. Rain has to care more about her because we care more about her. "Your baby loves you," she tells Precious. "I love you." In a gritty, horrific story, Ms. Rain is wish-fulfillment. That's why I didn't believe her. Or the movie.
Tags: Movie Reviews, Paula Patton
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PULASKI — Gregory R. Wireman has been charged with impersonation of a public servant, a Class D felony, following an incident reported to the Starke County Sheriff's Department on Feb. 15. Due to Wireman's involvement in Starke County, Pulaski County Prosecuting Attorney Stacey Mrak was appointed special prosecutor, and filed the charges in Starke Circuit Court May 31.
On June 5, Starke Circuit Court Judge Kim Hall recused himself, and Pulaski County Superior Court Judge Patrick Blankenship accepted jurisdiction in the case. On June 13, the Court found that probable cause did exist, and Wireman was summoned to appear for an initial hearing on July 22 in Pulaski Superior Court.
The charges stemmed from an incident involving three vacuum cleaner sales representatives in the North Judson area. One of the residents, who questioned the legitimacy of the sales persons, requested Wireman's assistance. All three sales persons filed official complaints at the Starke County Sheriff's office alleging that Wireman identified himself as a police officer, asked for identification and made them get out of the van. They also allege that Wireman was accompanied by a man holding a club, and that another vehicle blocked them so they could not leave the premises. One of the sales people asked to see Wireman's badge, and when he didn't provide it, she told him it was illegal to hold them. After further discussion, the licenses were returned and they were allowed to leave.
The complainants spoke with two Starke County officers near where the incident occurred before filing the complaints.
Wireman said he is confident he will be exonerated of the charge.
"I am denying the charges and will be found not guilty. I am looking forward to a quick and speedy resolution and I am confident that will happen," he said.
The Committee to Elect Greg Wireman Sheriff filed with the State Election Board on Dec. 12 to pursue the position in the 2014 election. At the present time, Wireman is opposed in the Republican Primary by Billy Bope.

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Dharma Talk
Contact Info:
(505) 986-8518
Ticket Info
Admission: Free
Dana to Teacher is appreciated!
Upaya's Wednesday Night Dharma Talk is given this week by Brad Warner on the topic "There Is No God And He Is Always With You."
Brad is author of "Hardcore Zen," "Sit Down and Shut Up!" and "Zen Wrapped in Karma Dipped in Chocolate" and was a one-man band with "Dimentia 13."
The evening begins with a 15-minute silent meditation. Please arrive by 5:20 pm.
Address: 1404 Cerro Gordo Road
Phone: 505-986-8518


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Steve Smith Responds To His Locker Room Comments About Rams' Jenoris Jenkins
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Routing the St. Louis Rams 30-15, the Carolina Panthers had a great Sunday afternoon beating another NFC team and getting their record to a pivotal .500 spot. But the game was an emotional and angry game for one legendary Panther player.
Wide Receiver Steve Smith called in to "The Drive" with Taylor Zarzour and Marc James to set the record straight about his locker room comments, his record setting 800th career reception, and furthering his record with a 3-3 Panthers team.
For those who missed the story earlier in the week, Smith said that's why he spent extra time celebrating in the end zone after his TD due to comments made from Janoris Jenkins concerning Smith's wife. Smith even pointed at Janoris Jenkins after beating him for a 19-yard touchdown reception.
"When you embarrass people you rub it in their face," Smith said. The wide receiver went further using profanity.
"I don't play them games. And if I see him on the street, I'm going to bust him in the mouth," he said with an expletive.
After listening back to his comments from the locker room, Steve Smith seemed that the St. Louis Rams comments on the field went a little to far.
"When I go against an opponent i talk…but I'm not going to Google a guy's wife's name and try to find out little things…and it wasn't just him…To go to that extent, for me…I talk mess, but I would never walk up to a guy that I wouldn't know besides watching him on video…and call her out in the name of sportsmanship or gamesmanship…I think that is clear disrespect."
"He sounds like he needs to wear some condoms," says Smith who doesn't even feel like Jenkins is even a good cornerback in the NFL.
After winning two straight games in a row against the Minnesota Vikings and Rams, Smith says that the team has found an identity and "they're taking care of games." But going against critics who said they've beaten not so great teams, he says that "you take the wins how you take them."
The Carolina Panthers are heading to Tampa Bay this week for the Thursday Night game on October 24th at 8:30 PM EST.
Listen to the full interview with Steve Smith as he talks about the Panthers identity and breaking down the upcoming Buccaneers game.
(TM and © Copyright 2011 CBS Radio Inc. and its relevant subsidiaries. CBS RADIO and EYE Logo TM and Copyright 2011 CBS Broadcasting Inc. Used under license. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)


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The Urbanist will be away until late October or early November (expecting to be back in time for start of Vic election campaign).READ MORE
Can (traditional) Kings Cross be saved?
The traditional role of Sydney's Kings Cross as a place to walk on the wild side is under threat. But if the forces that created it no longer apply, it's unlikely the "old" Cross can be savedREAD MORE
Is Melbourne's East West Link dead in the water?
Much of the public focus is on what Labor will do about the East West Link if it wins the election, but the key responsibility lies with the Napthine government; it shouldn't sign any contractREAD MORE
Would a cable car help Sydney's cyclists and pedestrians?
The Sydney Business Chamber's proposal for a cable car is supposed to address congestion on Pyrmont Bridge. But a new pedestrian bridge seems like a simpler solution to that problemREAD MORE
What's better: a train that's late or one that doesn't get there at all?
There's real value in hard performance targets for business and government, but there are also dangers. Sometimes a single-minded focus on targets leads to negative outcomes elsewhereREAD MORE
Labor's promise on level crossings: what are the issues?
Labor in Victoria is promising to remove 50 of Melbourne's 180 level crossings if it wins the State election on 29 November. Sounds like a "no brainer", but what are the key issues?READ MORE
Do barriers reduce the number of suicides?
It's often argued that anti-suicide barriers at jumping sites are a waste of time: those intent on killing themselves go elsewhere. However a recent study says barriers really do save livesREAD MORE
Did modernist architecture fail this public housing project?
St Louis' Pruett-Igoe public housing project is infamous for being demolished after just 22 years due in large part to the failures of modernist architecture; but is that narrative right?READ MORE
Is the proposed development of Federation Square East a con?
Victoria's Napthine Government is inviting proposals for the development of Federation Square East. Sounds like a wonderful civic enhancement, but in an election year it's all about politicsREAD MORE
Are cars the way to address outer suburban transport disadvantage?
Progressives should embrace the idea that the best way of improving the mobility of most very low income outer suburban residents is by assisting them with the high costs of drivingREAD MORE


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Square Enix has popped out a number of screenshots from Crystal Dynamics' upcoming Tomb Raider reboot. As detailed earlier, the game will show the origins of Lara Croft's tomb raiding ways and portrays her at the young age of 21, marooned on an island, as players get to shape her into a hardened survivor. The [...]
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Square Enix has announced that Tomb Raider, a reboot of the beloved franchise starring Lara Croft, has hit retail today. Darrell Gallagher, Head of Studio at developer Crystal Dynamics, expressed some heartfelt words … Read Post
Lara Croft's origin story is to be told by Crystal Dynamics in a reboot of the sacrilegious action-adventure series, publisher Square Enix today announced, which sounds awfully like the Tomb Raider game concept leaked in July 2009. ... Read Post
Lara Croft is getting yet another face lift. The next game in the multimedia Tomb Raider franchise will be a new origins story, developer Crystal Dynamics said Monday. Aptly titled Tomb Raider, the game will feature "a young and ine... Read Post


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Born in Vibo Valentia in 1979, Fortunato Gatto has lived on the coast of North Ayrshire in Scotland since 2007, where he worked in the IT industry for IBM. His portfolio is rich with the wonderful scenery of the Scottish moors with its varying weather, seasonal changes and fascination with the light and drama of the landscape.
His passion for the Scottish landscape extends to the naming of his children Skye and Harris after the islands he loves best.
Beyond his adopted home, he has explored and shot on location in Portugal, Switzerland, Italy, Ireland, Canada and Iceland.
Gatto has received international awards and exhibited in major galleries worldwide including the Burke Museum Seattle, the National Theatre and the Natural History Museum in London.
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After being cut down to size, our team carefully finish any stray edges, check measurements and prepare the prints for mounting and framing.
We have a team of master framers who work with high-quality, responsibly-sourced wood to create our vast range of framing combinations - each frame is bespoke and made to order for every print.
Our selection of hand-finished frames are painted or stained by hand in a variety of colours, and finished with a layer of wax - the end result is a uniquely crafted, beautiful frame that is made to last.
In this workshop everything comes together - the print, the frame and the glass - in a seamless and stream-lined process.
The artwork is carefully mounted in preparation for framing.
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The Best & Worst Dressed at the 2012 Kids' Choice Awards
From bare-midriffs to sequins, check out the star style on Nickelodeon's orange carpet.
The Smiths
You can always count on Jada and the kids to inject some fun into a red carpet soiree. Sometimes too much fun. For this year's Kids Choice Awards, Willow Smith was surprisingly the tamest of the bunch with no shoe-pants to be seen.
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Posts by Electro Boy
28 posts • joined 13 Jun 2007
Ah yes, Loudon County.....
As someone who lives not too far from Loudon County, Believe me, the place is riddled with puritanical nutbags. Who can forget this recent gem from last year......
Virginia is a scary place.
Back-to-college 15in Notebooks
Bad Apples?
Given how popular Apple laptops are with students these days, it might have been wise to include one in the test.
iPhone customers lay into Apple after iOS 4.0.1 update fails to install
Worked fine for me too.
Updated last night. No problems at all.
US cyber-combat Top Gun training details emerge
Screaming Fist??
Awesome.......but I hope the Russian EMP weapons are kinder to them than they were to Colonel Corto.
Missed flight woman goes absolutely mental
Lucky she didn't do it in US/UK
They tend to Taser/pepper spray first and ask questions later. She got off lightly.
BBC: Top Gear Tesla didn't run out of juice
Me thinks the lady doth protest too much....
Tesla appear to not be able to take any criticism at all. It's a shame. Nice car, touchy company.
Apple forced to pull misleading UK iPhone ad
There's an opinion piece in the Guardian today where the author owns up to making the complaint as an act of revenge....
Ten of the Best... Bluetooth Stereo Headphones
Motorola MotoRokr S9 - Not sweatproof
I have gone through 2 pairs of these headphones and I have lost count of the number of people on various internet discussion forums who have had similar issues (read the comments here for an example - http://blog.treonauts.com/2007/05/treo_a2dp_stere.html).
These headphones should not be used for any activity that generates sweat. They are not sweatproof!! The buttons that are used to adjust volume and track number will stop working within 1-2 workouts from new and will not recover.
They are a nice design, but they are not good for an "active lifestyle".....especially if that lifestyle causes you to sweat.
Ten of the Best... Bluetooth Headsets
Have been using the original model for a year. Works very well and the noise reduction technology is amazing. I have never had a single issue with this headset, which I can't say for the other headsets I have tried over the years.
9/11 an inside job, says Irish pop folkster
Corr blimey!!
Maybe he should "runaway".
How BA handles lost luggage complaints: Shock picture
Nothing good EVER comes from letting pirates into your terminal. Everyone knows that.
Ton-up electric Reliant Robin offered for '09
Not going to happen
It will not happen. ZAP have a history of talking loud, but not delivering.
Dengue fever threatens continental US
A lot of infectious diseases are seen as a third world problem.....ie poor governments who will not pay for expensive drugs. As a result of this, a lot of the bigger drug companies steer clear of working on these areas. They can make a lot more money selling cancer treatments to the first world instead.
Thankfully, some companies do appear forward thinking. For example, Novartis has set up an infectious disease research facility in Singapore (http://www.nitd.novartis.com/) that plans to offer drugs against a few infectious diseases at cost. Whether they actually succeed is another matter, but they appear to be sinking a fair amount of time and resources into the venture. Maybe some of the other large companies will follow suit. Dengue spreading to the first world should help focus their minds a little. If they think they can make a healthy profit by selling treatments in the west, then they will work on it. Their shareholders will insist.
Talk to the Singaporeans. They had a rough time with dengue last year, having gotten it under control a few years ago. At this stage, given the lack of good treatments for dengue fever, prevention is the key. Empty out those water-filled plant pots and get some nets for your bed at night.
Nokia develops eco phone concept
Yyyyaaaaawwwwnnnnnnnnn.......zzzzzzzzzzzzz.......and other similar sentiments!!
Beeb coughs to Panorama WiFi-scare travesty
Bad bad beeb
What's going on at the Beeb these days? Are they all this dodgy?
US woman fingered for Porky Pig drugs outrage
If the computer says so, then it MUST be true. Computers don't lie, right?
Tasers can be instrument of torture, says UN
Speaking of made up ailments.....
Excited delirium.....what about people with Restless Leg Syndrome??
Are THEY safe?
SkypeIn goes out
Skype sucks
Skype lost it around a year ago. The call quality seemed to drop really fast within a short period of time. Shame really, it was a great service.
VoIP says hello to the iPhone
It's a runner
"Whether Truphone turns it into a commercial product will depend on what proportion of iPhone users decide to unlock their phones for application installation."
Given how easy it is to jailbreak an iPhone, I suspect this one will have no problems attracting potential users. AT&T, T-Mobile and others will watch this one very closely. I suspect they are already crafting threatening letters as I write.
Bank holiday transport farrago
Dark ages indeed
If myspace goes down too, does that mean it's all over for modern mankind?
Naomi Campbell piles into Vogue
I have absolutely no idea why people do not want to hire this woman. Sure she's famously easy to work with. It's quite obviously the black thing that's frightening people away!
Apple takes flak as AT&T drops iPhone bomb
Overanalysis, lack of firm data
Apple apparently sold closer to 270,000 iPhones over the part of the opening weekend that was counted in the quarterly results (totalling something like 30 hours from initial sales to the end of the quarter). As for the discrepancy with the AT&T figure.......their activation process was far from smooth, leaving a lot of people without the ability to activate their phones.
I was kinda surprised at the fall in Apple share price, given that the figures released do not include any information beyond the 30 hour limit. Selling 270,000 phones in 30 hours is not too shabby. It'll be more interesting to see what the total comes to when the next quarterly results are published.
Jesus Phone needs an exorcist
Computer in security flaw shocker
We're getting all hot and bothered over this??
Christ.....how many security flaws do they find in Windows each month, and we're getting our knickers in a twist over a single one in the iPhone. Has our sense of perspective gone on holiday? It's a computer. It's gonna have security flaws.
Enraged reader savages iPhone fanboys
Surely Apple is the Alessi of the computer world? It's certainly no Breville.
Hacker stalked Linkin Park frontman
Wired Article
Wired had an in depth article about the entire episode a couple of issues ago.....
Sony apologies over virtual cathedral firefight
Gun crime?
"....Sony had shown a particular lack of sensitivity by setting this part of the game in a city troubled with gun crime....."
Jaysus....talk about hamming it up. It's Manchester were talking about here, not Beirut.
Macs are more secure: official
How DARE they base an ad campaign on "facts". This is outrageous.
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Pilots will soon be allowed to fly if they are taking antidepressant medications under new a U.S. government policy that takes effect Monday.
The Federal Aviation Administration said on Friday it was lifting a ban on antidepressants for pilots with mild to moderate depression. To be cleared to fly, pilots who take the drugs must pass screening tests to show they have been successfully treated for at least a year.
Officials said they believed the ban had caused pilots to forego treatment or hide the fact they were taking medication to treat depression. The FAA is offering a six-month grace period for pilots to come forward without penalty if they are currently suffering from depression or are under treatment.
"We need to change the culture and remove the stigma associated with depression. Pilots should be able to get the medical treatment they need so they can safely perform their duties," FAA Administrator Randy Babbitt said.
Officials said they did not know how many pilots would be affected but noted that about 10 percent of the population suffers from depression.
Pilots who take antidepressants will be monitored for the length of their careers, the FAA said.
The policy applies to four antidepressants -- Eli Lilly and Co's Prozac, Pfizer Inc's Zoloft, and Celexa and Lexapro from Forest Laboratories Inc.
Dr. Fred Tilton, the FAA's federal air surgeon, said other medications may be allowed if pilots are being effectively treated with them.
Tilton said antidepressants were originally banned because older medications carried risks such as sedation that were considered unacceptable in the cockpit. Newer medications have side effects that can be manageable, he said.
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Lindsay Lohan: One Day, Three Awful Fashion Movesby Free Britney at . Comments
Wow. It takes serious talent for someone with money and fame to wear three different horrendous outfits in a single day. Lindsay Lohan, everybody!
A brief rundown of the three fashion disasters in question:
- Making her exit from girlfriend Samantha Ronson's house, the train wreck wears a bra-free shirt. Sadly, her style day went downhill from here.
- Needing a mid-day pick-me-up, Lindsay eschewed the usual crack and opted for Starbucks, sporting a heinous, midriff-baring top, circa 1982.
- Not to be outdone by her own ineptness, the supposed actress headed out to the airport with l'il sis Ali Lohan while trying to "hide from the cameras." By looking like a hobo in desperate need of food and shelter.
Click to enlarge the corresponding images below, if you dare ...
Lindsay Lohan's style goes from bad to worse. [Photos: Fame]
Perhaps she stood stick to getting naked. Seriously, clothing fads come and go, but Lindsay Lohan nude never goes out of style. It's also free, which is critical when you can't hold down a job, and it's conveniently low-maintenance!
in the first picture i thought she looked like a mongoose in the second one she looked like a stuffed chicken and in the last one she looked liked an Arabian ratbat.
Lindsay can keep track of her wardrobe by using MyClothingCalendar (www.myclothingcalendar.com), a FREE online clothing journal. Record what you wore, who saw you in each outfit and what event you attended.
Ugly losers continue to be jealous of lovely Lindsay and beautiful Ali
who may even be prettier than her gorgeous sister.
Must be her new fashion line.
she was busy running errands and had to catch a flight-not dress for Runway! Leave her alone


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November 28, 2014
The Dallas Mavericks came to Boston knowing they wouldn't have to face Kevin Garnett. And when Rasheed Wallace went to the bench with foul trouble, Dirk Nowitzki took advantage.
He scored 37 points to lead Dallas to a 99-90 victory over the
Boston Celtics, scoring nine in a row during a third-quarter run
that gave the Mavericks the lead for good. Nowitzki scored 15 of 19
Dallas points after Wallace committed his fourth foul and went to
the bench with 3:56 left in the third quarter.
Jason Kidd scored 13 points and added 17 assists for the
Mavericks, who had lost three of their previous four games,
including a 22-point loss at Toronto on Sunday.
Paul Pierce scored 24 points and Ray Allen scored 21 for Boston,
which has lost three straight at home. The Celtics have lost four
of their last six overall, and they are 4-7 since beating the
defending Eastern Conference champion Magic in Orlando on Christmas
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Pets on Wheels is participating in the current 2014-15 United Way Campaigns just beginning at various government workplaces throughout our region. Please advise your family and friends who are government employees that if they wish to support Pets on Wheels they can designate their payroll contributions to our great organization.
Pets on Wheels' code designations for completing their United Way forms are:
Combined Federal Campaign
(Federal Government Employees and Retirees) Code # 90148
Maryland Charity Campaign
(Maryland State Government Employees and Retirees) Code#1311
Combined Charity Campaign
(Baltimore City Government Employees and Retirees) Code #7722
Over 30% of the overall funding for our organization is being donated through United Way and is critical to our continuing operations. Please consider sharing with everyone who you know that are government employees.
Pets on Wheels is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization that brings therapy animals to facilities across Maryland for friendly visits. Pets on Wheels has over 400 volunteer teams and currently visits over 290 facilities on the entire western shore of Maryland's Chesapeake Bay.
A Pets on Wheels visit can provide a resident confined to a facility the opportunity to interact with a friendly pet who loves unconditionally, can brighten the day, and improve morale. A therapy animal can lower anxiety and blood pressure and have a calming effect on the recipients of their visits. Pets on Wheels therapy animals can also visit libraries to participate in reading programs like PAWS to Read and Read to the Dogs. These programs allow children the opportunity to eliminate peer preesure and have a non-judgemental listening ear in a Pets on Wheels therapy pet. Pets on Wheels therapy pets visit several libraries across Maryland to make these visits, including many Baltimore County and Carroll County libraries. View the Pets on Wheels reading program schedule.
What is a therapy dog?
A therapy dog is a dog trained to provide affection and comfort to people in hospitals, retirement homes, nursing homes, schools, hospices, people with learning difficulties, and stressful situations, such as disaster areas.
Therapy dogs come in all sizes and breeds. The most important characteristic of a therapy dog is its temperament. A good therapy dog must be friendly, patient, confident, gentle, and at ease in all situations. Therapy dogs must enjoy human contact and be content to be petted and handled, sometimes clumsily.
A therapy dog's primary job is to allow unfamiliar people to make physical contact with it and to enjoy that contact. Children in particular enjoy hugging animals; adults usually enjoy simply petting the dog. The dog might need to be lifted onto, or climb onto, an individual's lap or bed and sit or lie comfortably there. Many dogs contribute to the visiting experience by performing small tricks for their audience or by playing carefully structured games. In hospice environments, therapy dogs can play a role in palliative care by reducing death anxiety. (Excerpt taken from Wikipedia)
Pets on Wheels' Visits Presentation Video
Larger Than Life, a segment about Pets on Wheels' animal-assisted therapy visits with therapy dogs Bodhi and Teagan and volunteers Terry Deguilmi and Bob Pazdersky by Louie Dane on Vimeo.
For questions, regarding Pets on Wheels in your area, please contact the appropriate County Coordinator.
Contact Information
Central Maryland Coordinator
(Baltimore City, Baltimore, Harford, & Cecil Counties)
Cathy Mazzotta - Phone: 410-294-8501 P.O. Box 44176, Baltimore MD 21236 Fax: 410-558-6464
Western Maryland Coordinator
(Carroll, Frederick, Howard, Montgomery, Washington, Allegany, & Garrett Counties)
Robin Stewart - Phone: 301-996-1429 P.O. Box 113, Myersville, Maryland 21773 Fax: 443-331-0384
Southern Maryland Coordinator
(Anne Arundel, St. Mary's, Calvert, Charles, & Prince George's Counties)
Donna Sovaiko - Phone: 410-935-8000 P.O. Box 4428, Crofton, MD 21114 Fax: 1-800-451-4915
Executive Director
Pat Pawloski - Phone: 443-977-9726 P.O. Box 44176, Baltimore MD 21236 Fax: 410-592-7492
Special thanks to:
Webmaster, Graphic Design, & Photography - Jen Pawloski
Website/Database Development & Support - Scott Johnson
Maryland Pet Gazette
Maryland Pet


text:
Skip to content
In association with
By MCN -
General news
08 August 2012 13:20
Judging by the numbers of people attending events such as the recent Festival of 1000 Bikes and Stafford Show, interest in classic bikes has never been greater.
So do you see yourself ending up pottering round (or indeed thrashing round) on a classic bike?
Upload stories, photos or videos direct to the site, or email firstname.lastname@example.com.
Or call us on 01733 468842 (+44 1733 468842)
Add your comment – Poll: Do you think you'll end up riding a classic?
Sign in You must be signed in to submit a comment.
i do already..it is a vn1500..lovely bike for an ole git..xx
15 August 2012 10:45
No Thanks
I am not into old for the sake of old – would rather have a retro styled bike (e.g. Suzuki TU250X, current Bonnie, Moto Guzzi V7) that requires a minimum of fuss.
Of course this year I purchased a new bike with 1987 styling and technology (Yamaha TW200) – but the $3,000 US price tag makes that easy to take.
14 August 2012 04:54
But only If my bike keeps going and I live long enough.
12 August 2012 21:43
If its got two wheels, I can generally appreciate it!
If bikes like the Manx Norton, Gold star and AJS look so desirable now, can you just imagine how amazing they would have been back in their day? I can definantly see me heading down the classic route, once i've had a few more years of sportsbikes.
11 August 2012 10:48
Old geezersays
Honda 400/4
I did many years ago to get back into biking....Bought an old (r reg) 400/4 and spent a fortune doing it up.
It was horrible!.....Didn't go/ handle/brake as well as my rose tinted glasses led me to believe, so I moved onto more modern bikes (Cbr 600/900 Hornet/Vfr800). I've now gone full circle and my biking is done on a 400/4 again....But the Superfour grey import, and guess what? I have three useable examples for less than half the cost of an old 400/4 and each one outperforms the old 400/4 in every way.
11 August 2012 09:42
Save money by comparing quotes. It's quick and easy
With over 18,000 products, MCN shop is the best place to buy your biking kit
Motorcycle Cover | Cheap Motorcycle Insurance | Moped Insurance | Scooter Insurance | 125 Insurance | Work Experience | Complaints Policy
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text:
The General Department of Fisheries under the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development announced the amount at its year-end meeting in Hanoi on December 25.
In 2013, the sector will step up inspection of inputs for production, multiply the model of fishing teams, modernise the fleet and encourage private enterprises to participate in breeding, said Deputy Minister cum Head of the Department Vu Van Tam.
Tam underscored that the sector's key task in 2013 is to continue its sustainable development with more value-added products and restructuring its production with focus placed on items of the highest competitiveness.
The sector also set out other goals such as increasing aquaculture area and output and seafood catch.
In 2012, the total output of aquatic products reached an estimated 5,876,000 tonnes, up 8.8 per cent compared with the set goal. Exports brought home $6.12 billion, representing 94.2 per cent in comparison with the set plan and equivalent to the 2011's figure.
Source VIR/VNA


text: In his fifteen year NFL career, future Hall of Fame wide receiver, bipolar diva, and noted pain in the ass Terrell Owens set numerous records. For example, Owens is the only player in the history of the league to score a touchdown against all 32 teams. (He took it a step further actually, and scor ... More >>


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about 17 hours ago in collection: ρic ☆.。. o(≧▽≦)o .。.☆
~ɑɴɴʏєo☺ zɑʜʁɑ ♚17 ʏєɑʀs oʟd fɾoм кsɑ ɪ'м кɪssмє's
Now available in your language!Use in your language! Go back to English
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A guide to assessing the significance of cultural heritage objects and collections
Our inherited culture is a rich resource through which we can reach a deeper understanding of our past and the environment in which we live.
There are an estimated 41 million objects held in Australian museums, art galleries and historical collections. Collectively, these objects tell the story of our history and the seminal events which contribute to our sense of identity and national pride.
Important objects do not reside solely in our major museums and collecting institutions. Every community, small regional museum, art gallery or historical collection are custodians of much of our cultural heritage significant items that are held in trust for all Australians.
Significance: a guide to assessing the significance of cultural heritage objects and collections has been developed to assist all those who care for collections to identify and preserve our cultural heritage.
By using this guide, organisations can assess the significance of objects in their collection - providing a sound basis on which to make collection management decisions relating to conservation, preservation and access.
This guide will assist in ensuring that Australia's cultural heritage is a legacy for coming generations.
Significance Training is also available online. It is a training package developed for institutions and individuals to understand and apply the concept of significance in a range of museum contexts.
Note: this publication has been updated. See: Significance 2.0: a guide to assessing the significance of collections published by the Collections Council of Australia (2009)
As part of our committment to supporting artists and developing our community, we feature regular exhibitions throughout the year.
Our Main Gallery provides an intimate contemporary space presenting...


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Local Veterinarians in Your Area
17940 Newhope St, Fountain Valley, CA 92708
Please join us on Saturday, September 13, for the Fountain Valley Grand Opening from 9am-4pm. You'll have the chance to meet our team, tour the facility, enjoy refreshments and win prizes. Banfield is a convenient, affordable and wise choice for all of your pet's healthcare needs. We take anview deal
18440 Amistad St, Fountain Valley , CA 92708
VCA All-Care Animal Referral Center is located in Fountain Valley. You'll find multiple veterinary specialties under one roof—from sophisticated surgery to cutting-edge cancer treatments. Our highly trained veterinarians work in partnership with primary-care veterinarians to provide advanced care
460 Forest Ave, Laguna Beach , CA 92651
Welcome to Laguna Beach Animal Hospital! From the moment you enter Laguna Beach Animal Hospital you will know your pet is going to receive the best care possible. We are a full service animal hospital serving Laguna Beach and many of the surrounding areas providing general care and emergency
2140 E. 17th Street, Santa Ana, CA 92705
Here at Banfield in Santa Ana our doctors and medical team love your four-legged family member (almost) as much as you do. We are amongst one of the more modern vet hospitals and our devoted veterinarians are critical to your pet's long-term health and happiness. Ask about our Optimum Wellness
26761 Aliso Creek Road, Aliso Viejo, CA 92656
This Banfield Hospital offers the highest standard of medical, surgical and preventive care for your Pet. Walk-Ins and new clients are warmly welcomed. Ask about our Optimum Wellness Plans® that provide free office visits and exams for life. Our Doctors: George Bishay, DVM Steven Whipple, DVMview deal
1 South Pointe Drive, Lake Forest, CA 92630
We're more than an animal hospital! We're the place where pet parents know they can bring their pets for superb veterinary care that sets new standards for quality and kindness. For pets and pet parents alike, a trip to our clinic is an opportunity to see how our neighborly, welcoming staff caresview deal
23602 El Toro Rd, Lake Forest, CA 92630
This Banfield Hospital offers the highest standard of medical, surgical and preventive care for your Pet. Walk-Ins and new clients are warmly welcomed. Ask about our Optimum Wellness Plans® that provide free office visits and exams for life.view deal
24861 Alicia Pkwy, Laguna Hills, CA 92653
We at Trinity Pet Hospital provide high quality medicine using the latest technology in a friendly and inviting environment for you and your pet. We strive to provide affordability without compromising quality. Services Trinity Pet Hospital provides your pet with comprehensive Medical andview deal
18364 Beach Blvd., Huntington Beach, CA 92648
Crossroads Animal Emergency has been an A.A.H.A. certified hospital for 29 years. We're open Nights, Weekends and Holidays. 6pm to 8am Monday through Friday, and 24 Hours a day on Weekends and Holidays. Crossroads has experienced doctors on staff all night long. As fellow pet owners our
25800 Jeronimo Rd, Mission Viejo, CA 92691
Alicia Pet Care Center is a full service veterinary hospital that has been providing high quality care for its patients since 1975. Recently relocated into a brand new, state-of-the-art facility, Alicia Pet Care Center strives to be the best veterinary hospital in South Orange County. We offer allview deal


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Story: Nov 24, 2014
Artist-in-residence Chi-Yu Liao appreciates CIA reception
CIA Exhibition: Nov 07, 2014
Fall 2014 Exhibitions
Story: Nov 15, 2014
Students capture two of the top prizes in museum's surreal d...
Events: Dec 01, 2014
The Art of Designing Everything
Social: about 20 hours ago via Facebook
Holiday shoppers: skip the lines today and hold out for CIAs annual student holiday sale, Dec. 5-7. Here, you can purchase one-of-a-kind gifts, including ceram...
Story: Nov 04, 2014
New CIA building taking shape; set for December completion
Events: Dec 05, 2014
Student Holiday Craft Sale
Story: Aug 18, 2014
CIA again named to "Best in the Midwest" list
The Cleveland Institute of Art Cinematheque is one of the country's best repertory movie theaters, proclaimed by The New York Times. Founded in 1986, the alternative film theater shows art, independent, and foreign films as well as revived classics. The Cinematheque offers discounted tickets to all CIA students and contributes to the richness of the college's public programming in the arts.
Find out what's showing at the Cinematheque on the film schedule page. Or see film trailers, analysis, and more at the Cinematheque blog.
General Admission: $9
Member: $7 (includes CIA I.D. holders)
Age 25 & under: $7 (proof of age required)
Additional film on the same day: $7
You can support independent cinema while saving at least $2 off regular admission prices for one full year when you become a member.
at the Cleveland Institute of Art
11141 East Boulevard
Cleveland, OH 44106
Cleveland public radio reporter David C. Barnett talked to one CIA faculty member and one graduate for a story on a recent report about Cleveland's... more


text:
Product Information
- Description
This product is delivered via email to your provided email address for your convenience. Upon request the keycode and / or the original packaging with Certificate of Authenticity can be mailed to you. SoftwareMedia stores your keycode which can be accessed anytime under My Account in case you ever need to authenticate the purchase of a genuine license. For more info check out our FAQ Page
The V7 22" Class (21.5" vis) LED monitor provides superior image quality with vivid colors and lifelike images. The LED backlight technology saves you up to 40% energy and yields blacker blacks, pure white and more clearly defined grays for a vivid picture making it the perfect choice for home or office. Key specifications include: 1920x1080 Full HD resolution, 16:9 aspect ratio, 1000:1 contrast ratio, 250 nits brightness, reduced blur with 5 ms response time and customized picture settings to fit your needs. The LED215W2R-8N reduces clutter and provides more desk space while sitting in a black glossy bezel weighing 6.4 pounds and panel measuring only 1.26 inches deep. The widescreen monitor is easily wall mountable and provides a tremendous price to performance value.
- Features
- Security Lock
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- Specifications
Brand V7
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text:
Captain Phillips
English uploader: subDownload subtitle
Order by: highest rated, latest
Brilliant, already had the movie without the subs and was getting a bit confused. Thank you again for superb work!
Great subs, non English parts only.
On my gs4 I in zipped the sub into my captain Phillips folder then started the movie and hit the menu button on the tab and turned on subs and selected the file.
Non English speaking parts only, good subs
Hi. I'm English and i'm only interested in subs for the Somali speaking seen.
How do I download and open on galaxys4


text:
UPDATE, Friday 8/3
The in-home daycare where a one-year-old girl nearly drowned has been ordered to close.
Just before 1:00 on Thursday, the girl was found unresponsive in the Osceola home's pool.
At the time, police said there were eight other children being cared for.
State law requires in-home daycares to be licensed if they care for six or more children.
Because the daycare wasn't licensed, the state served it a cease and desist letter on Friday.
Metro homicide and child protective services continue to investigate.
ORIGINAL, Thursday 8/2
An Osceola neighborhood is in shock after a 1-year-old girl nearly drowned at a well-known in-home daycare.
Osceola police were called to the home on Bethany Court just before 1 p.m. Thursday.
They say at least two adults and nine children had been swimming in the home's in ground swimming pool.
After they came inside to change, they noticed one of the children was missing.
Police say a 4-year-old girl who was outside jumping on the trampoline found the 1-year-old unresponsive in the pool.
St. Joseph County Metro Homicide says it doesn't appear adults left the child outside.
"I think she was the last one in the pack and must have got out and gone in or fell in," said Osceola resident Stacy Miller, whose son attended the daycare.
An adult pulled the child from the pool and started performing CPR until police arrived and took over.
The girl was transported to a local hospital and placed on a ventilator. Police say she had a pulse.
The child was then airlifted to Riley Hospital for Children in Indianapolis. Her condition is unknown.
"We saw all the ambulances out the back door and we looked in the backyard and we could see them hovering over the baby," said neighbor Kathleen Wood. "I just hope the baby's going to be OK."
St. Joseph County Metro Homicide is investigating the near drowning.
Child Protective Services was also at the home Thursday questioning adults and children.
Several neighbors and parents say the woman who runs the daycare, Mary, has been watching children for decades.
"This is like a one in a million fluke thing," Wood said. "She's been watching kids forever. How this little one got away is beyond me. And I'm sure she is beside herself."
Police say they were told an in-home daycare doesn't have to be licensed in the state of Indiana unless the provider is caring for more than nine children.
But, according to the Indiana Family and Social Services Administration website, a child care home is classified as a home where at least six children unrelated to the provider and under the age of 14 are being watched for more than four hours per day.
Police say while there were nine children at the home Thursday, there are only six children being cared for on a regular basis.


text:
- 21st Century Health
- California Gold Nutrition
- Carlson Labs
- Country Life
- Doctor's Best
- Enzymatic Therapy
- Enzymedica
- Garden of Life
- Healthy Origins
- iHerb Brands
- Jarrow Formulas
- Life Extension
- Madre Labs
- California Extracts
- Doctor's Best
- Eclectic Institute
- Gaia Herbs
- Jarrow Formulas
- Life Extension
- Natural Factors
- Acure Organics
- Alba Botanica
- AnneMarie Borlind
- Aubrey Organics
- Avalon Organics
- Aveeno
- Derma E
- Desert Essence
- Acure Organics
- Alba Botanica
- Andalou Naturals
- AnneMarie Borlind
- Aubrey Organics
- Avalon Organics
- Bee Naturals
Rainbow Light, Herbal Prescriptives, ThinBerry Satiety, 60 Veggie Caps
- 运输重量: 0.18 磅 (0.08 公斤)
- 条形码: 021888810413
- 包装数量: 60 Veggie Caps
- 体积重量: 1.9 x 1.9 x 4.5 in, 0.15 磅 (0.07 公斤)
- Controls Appetite
- Supports Fat Burning
- Slendesta & Green Coffee Bean
- Herbal IQ Guarantee
- Herbal Supplement
Herbal IQ Guarantee
Our extracts, potencies and complementary nutrients are backed by the latest science. Extracts are identity-verified and purity-tested for optimal efficacy and safety. Formulated by Christopher Hobbs Ph.D and produced in our GMP compliant USA-based facility.
Natural Appetite Control and Weight Management with Green Coffee Bean, Green Tea and Slendesta, a proprietary potato extract with the researched, standardized dose of Proteinase Inhibitor (P12) that safely increases CCK, a gastrointestinal hormone that aids in suppressing appetite so you feel fuller longer.
One capsule 30-45 minutes prior to both lunch and dinner. For advanced use take 2 twice daily. Not recommended for persons under 12 years of age.
(Natural or mineral source): L-leucine. Capsule: hydroxy propyl methyl cellulose.
Guarantee: 100% natural - Free of artificial colors, flavors, sweeteners and preservatives and other objectionable additives often found in vitamin products. Contains no sugar or lactose.
Allergen Safe Guard - Free of gluten, yeast, milk, eggs, soy, nuts, fish/shellfish.
Vegan Guard - screened for vegans to be free of animal products.
Keep out of reach of children.
Consult a health care practitioner prior to use if you are pregnant, lactating, taking medication or have a medical condition.
|Supplement Facts
|Serving Size: 2 Capsules
|Servings Per Container: 30
|Amount per Serving
|Chromium (as Histidinate Arginate)
|200 mcg
|Slendesta Potato Extract (solonum tuberosum)
|150 mg
|Proteinase Inhibitor II (P12)
|15 mg
|Green Coffee Bean Extract
|180 mg
|Chlorogenic acid
|90 mg
|Green Tea [leaf] Extract
|200 mg
|180 mg
|Ashwagandha [root] 4:1 Extract
|200 mg
|Acai Berry Juice Powder
|50 mg
|* Daily Value (DV) not established


text:
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Butler is located in western Pennsylvania, approximately 29 miles north of Pittsburgh. The city is the seat of Butler County and is considered part of the Pittsburgh metropolitan area. Butler apartments for rent offer attractive options for joining the growing population of more than 13,800 people living across 2.72 square miles of land.
The city is situated along Benjamin Franklin Highway and State Route 68, providing accessible road transportation to its residents. Residents can also take advantage of the Butler County/K. W. Scholter Field Airport, and Pittsburgh International Airport is a little more than an hour's drive away.
The first settlers to the Butler area were of Scottish or Irish descent, with German immigrants arriving to the area in 1802. The city was named to pay tribute to Major General Richard Butler, who was killed in 1791 during the Battle of Wabash. Butler was incorporated as a borough in 1816 and reached the status of a city in 1918.
The city of Butler is proud to provide its citizens with neighborhood schools, playgrounds and parks. In addition, it has a thriving commercial district that primarily features family owned business, restaurants, and specialty shops. The community is actively engaged in efforts to improve the city, and Butler Downtown is a grassroots initiative aimed at revitalizing the city's central business district.
People living in Butler apartments have numerous cultural attractions to enjoy, including the Marindon Museum, which gives visitors insight into Japanese and Chinese art and culture. The Butler County Historical Society established its headquarters at the Senator Walter Lowrie Shaw House, which now serves as a museum on the area's rich history.
For outdoor recreation, Raccoon Creek, McConnells Mill and Hillman state parks all provide residents with scenic, natural landscapes to enjoy. Other notable attractions in the area include Butler County Heritage Center, Moraine State Park, National Aviary, Pittsburgh Zoo and PPG Aquarium.
To find your next rental apartment or house in Butler, take a look at our listings on Rent.com®.
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Special Election Today for Key Virginia Senate Seat
January 21, 2014 by Marty Rouse, National Field Director
Polls are now open for a key Northern Virginia State Senate race.
With control of the Virginia state senate hanging in the balance, today residents in Fairfax and Loudon counties will determine whether or not the state Senate moves forward or not on LGBT and other issues.
The Human Rights Campaign has endorsed Democrat Jennifer Wexton in this special election to fill the vacancy created when HRC-endorsee State Senator Mark Herring won his race for Attorney General.
Wexton is running against Independent Candidate Joe May, who previously served the 33rd District in the House with an anti-LGBT agenda, and Republican John Whitbeck, who opposes marriage equality.
In a recent special election earlier this month, nine votes separated the winner from the loser. Every vote counts.
HRC is calling on fair-minded Virginians in the DC-suburb counties of Fairfax or Loudon (Senate District 33) to brave today's snowy weather in the name of equality.
Voters are like snowflakes. By themselves they are unique and delicate, but watch out for the power they wield when they stick together. Brave the elements today and help plow a better future for Virginia.
Polls will close at 7 pm. Please check your voting card to find your polling place.
Click here for the Loudoun County polling precincts and click here for the Fairfax County polling precincts.
Paid for by Human Rights Campaign PAC. Authorized by Jennifer Wexton, candidate for State Senate
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October 13, 2014
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October 17, 2014


text:
10 Celeb Little Kids With Big Style
12 Celebrities Who Are Kind of Gross
The Embarrassing Reason Khloe Kardashian Knew She Needed to Lose Weigh
Kim K and The Jenners Act Totally Shameless
20 Super Awkward Celebrities
Guess What Kylie Jenner is Hiding Behind Those Famous Lips
20 Celebs You Didn't Realize Have a Twin Sibling
Mismatched Celebrity Couples That Weirded Us Out
Who Had The Best American Music Awards Hairstyle?
15 Unquestionably Creepy Celebrities
Can You Guess Which One of These Celebs is Older?
New Fat Burner Takes GNC by Storm
Watch Miley Cyrus Fall Down on Stage Wearing a Fake Butt
What the Devil? Drake Flashes Rihanna's Picture Along With Satan?
5 Wildest Quotes From Smith Kids' Latest Interview
The 5 Worst Celebrity Kissers
Watch Miley Cyrus Fall Down on Stage While Wearing a Fake Butt
Home / Photos Beyonce: Her Face Says It All
Emma Watson's Intentional "Side Boob"
10 Tricks to Instantly Look More Attractive in Photos
Nick Jonas Explains Hilarious Photoshopped Kim Kardashian Butt Pic
Inside The Secret Hunger Games Romance
Kanye West Just Killed a Kardashian Family Tradition
Only Rihanna Could Wear Adidas Like This
The Most Educated Rappers in The Game
5 of Gemma Ward's Most Memorable Vogue Covers
Kendall Jenner Stands Up To Viscous Weight Criticism
Nicki Minaj Dresses Totally Normal For Once
You Won't Believe What Miley Wore This Time
Halle Berry Can't Keep it Together: The Latest Drama Unveiled


text:
The more the Fort Worth City Council talks about public art, the more confusing the topic gets.It starts out pretty simple: The council passed an ordinance in 2001 saying the city would dedicate 2 percent of each capital improvements bond program, plus 2 percent of the operating expenses of the Water and Sewer Fund, to create and maintain works of public art.The Arts Council of Fort Worth and Tarrant County provides day-to-day administration for the program and consults with the Fort Worth Art Commission in preparing an annual public art plan.The Water and Sewer Fund provided about $1 million last year, which city officials say pretty much paid administrative and maintenance costs.The council is planning a $292 million bond election next May. Two percent of that would provide $5.84 million for art works more-or-less tied to individual bond projects throughout the city.That's the end of the easy part.Councilman Jungus Jordan, who represents District 6 on the south/southwest side of the city, is the one gumming up the works. But he has some good points.Jordan has served on the council for seven years, long enough to have his finger on the pulse of his district. He says the people who elected him would rather spend the money on completing a large park than spreading it out on different art projects.You can't do that, a phalanx of attorneys told the council Tuesday — or at least you can't have a single council member decide individually how the money will be spent in a specific district."The (bond) propositions are city-wide, which makes the public art program city-wide," said Deputy City Attorney Peter Vaky.So let's say Jordan is right and the people in his district would rather have a new park than more public art. If voters in the rest of the city approve the bond program and its public art element, Jordan's constituents have no choice but to accept the art projects.They could have, say, a part of a park with a real nice mural where the swings and picnic tables and open space should be.But they can't be sure whether it will be a mural, or what the mural would depict. That's because the specific art projects don't get planned until after the election.Even for a while after that, when architects and engineers are working on the details of the bond projects, the arts money sits in a pot and waits. The art itself isn't planned until it's known what its environment will look like.Jordan tied the council in knots with another suggestion: Provide voters with a separate bond proposition allocating a specific dollar amount for public art or funding for some specific art projects.The lawyers had to consult with the state attorney general's office about that one. No city in Texas has ever done it that way, they said, and the AG's office initially balked at the idea.Finally, the lawyers said, the AG's attorneys agreed that they would approve such a proposition, but they said they would want to know beforehand what the public art would be and how the money would be spent.But wait: Voters in Fort Worth don't get that kind of information under the way things are done now, and it's their money. How come the attorney general's office can require advance approval of the projects but the voters can't?From the looks of things, all Jordan may be accomplishing is to muddy the waters on public art. Comments from other council members and from Mayor Betsy Price seemed mostly to favor no changes in the public art funding process, although it might be a close vote.
Have more to add? News tip? Tell us


text:
Taylor Armstrong defends herself against allegations that she's lied about being abused.
Part I: Taylor Armstrong discusses how she's been portrayed on each season of 'RHBH.'
Part II: Taylor Armstrong and Gretchen Rossi talk Taylor heading south to the OC.
Part III: Slade and Gretchen reveal their freakishly high freak numbers.
Andy gives his Mazel of the Day to California for overturning Prop 8.
Taylor Armstrong and Gretchen Rossi pick the superior posterior in 'Booty-ful Stranger.'
Taylor Armstrong struggles under the pressure of 'Plead the Fifth.'


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From Lindsay Lohan (at 20) to Susan Sarandon (gorgeous at 60!), these stars prove that real beauty is timeless. By Cara Lynn Shultz with Janet Mock
Credit: Jim Spellman/WireImage
Updated: Monday Apr 09, 2007 | 03:00 PM EDT
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Drew, Jessica Biel and more took it all off – their makeup, that is – for the cameras
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Birthdate: October 4, 1946 Hometown: New York City Love Line: She's been involved with Tim Robbins since 1988. They have two children, Jack Henry, 17, and Miles Guthrie, 14. She previously dated Franco Amurri, with whom she has daughter Eva, 22, and was married to actor Chris Sarandon. Milestones: The five-time Oscar nominee won in 1996 for Dead Man Walking; was nominated for two Emmy Awards and seven Golden Globe Awards.
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Old Town Scottsdale Condo Rental Photos and Description
1 bedroom, 1 bathroom, sleeps 2
Location, Location, Location!!!!! Close in to Old Town Scottsdale. Pool is just steps away from the front door. This remodeled condo features down comforter, down pillows and soft sheet for your comfort.,Internet and Flat screen TV with DVD player and Cable.
Email or Call Craig @ 206-793-2222 or Madison @ 425-533-8979
- Suitability:
- Long-term Renters Welcome
- Low Allergen Environment
- non smoking only
- pets considered
- suitable for elderly or infirm