Monday, December 28, 2009

The Colts Lost

The Colts lost . . . to the Jets?

Cut the crap.

What about those poor gamblers in Vegas who had their money on the Colts? Did you think about them when you pulled your starters? Maybe there should be an investigation. Maybe there should be arrests. The Colts ownership THREW a game. Isn't that a crime?

Thanks,

Preston

Saturday, December 26, 2009

Say It Isn't So

Gator Fans All Over the Nation Are Wishing This is a Big April Fool's Prank!!


No, no! Say It AIn't So!

Thanks,

Preston
__________________________________________

Urban Meyer Steps Down at Florida, Cites Health Reasons
by Clay Travis

from Fanhous



In a move that has already sent the college football universe into a post-Christmas state of shock, the University of Florida announced Saturday afternoon that Urban Meyer would be stepping down as head coach of the Gator football team after coaching in the Sugar Bowl on January 1.

Meyer, who has won two national titles and three SEC East titles in his five years at Florida, leaves with the highest win percentage in Gator football history and a career mark of 56-10. In nine years as a head coach at Bowling Green, Utah, and Florida, Meyer's career record was 95-18.

Immediately the GatorZone website where the official release went up was so flooded with visitors that it became inaccessible. In the release, Meyer stated as follows:
"I have given my heart and soul to coaching college football and mentoring young men for the last 24-plus years and I have dedicated most of my waking moments the last five years to the Gator football program," Meyer, 45, said in statement. "I have ignored my health for years, but recent developments have forced me to reevaluate my priorities of faith and family.


"After consulting with my family, Dr. Machen, Jeremy Foley and my doctors, I believe it is in my best interest to step aside and focus on my health and family." "I'm proud to be a part of the Gainesville community and the Gator Nation and I plan to remain in Gainesville and involved with the University of Florida."

Meyer, just 45 years old, is 32-8 all-time in the SEC, and led his Gators to a perfect 12-0 start to the 2009 season before losing to Alabama in the SEC title game on December's first weekend. In the wake of that game, Meyer was hospitalized and he now cites his health as the reason that he has chosen to resign as Florida football coach.

The Florida Gators, who recently lost their defensive coordinator, Charlie Strong, to the University of Louisville, play on New Year's evening against the Cincinnati Bearcats. In the meantime, the shockwaves from Meyer's abrupt departure will be felt for months, if not years.

Meyer remains the only coach in college football with two consensus BCS titles, and this past summer some were comparing him with legendary Alabama coach Paul "Bear" Bryant. Those comparisons are, for the moment, at rest.

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

The Saints Lost

The Saints Lost.

One down.

One to Go.

Colts? You're next!

'72 Dolphins Rule!

In a Nation of over a Billion, There is Only One Half-Black?

I found this on CNN.

Thanks,

Preston
_______________________________________


Half-Black Singer Raises Race Questions in China

By Emily Chang
CNN

SHANGHAI, China (CNN) -- It all started with the lure of the glitz, the glamour and the dream of being China's next pop star. But, as with many reality shows, Lou Jing's instant fame came with unanticipated consequences.

Lou Jing was born 20 years ago in Shanghai to a Chinese mother and an African-American father. According to her mother, who asked not to be identified in this report, she met Lou's father while she was still in college. He left China before their daughter was born.

Growing up with a single mom in central Shanghai, Lou Jing said she had good friends and lived a normal life. "When I was young, I didn't feel any different," she said.

But as soon as she stepped into the national spotlight on a Chinese reality television show called "Go! Oriental Angel," Lou Jing became a national sensation -- not necessarily because of her talent, but how she looked.

"After the contest started, I often got more attention than the other girls. It made me feel strange," Lou said.

The reality show hosts fondly called her "chocolate girl" and "black pearl." The Chinese media fixated on her skin color. Netizens flooded Web sites with comments saying she "never should have been born" and telling her to "get out of China."

Lou Jing's background became fodder for national gossip, sparking a vitriolic debate about race across a country that, in many respects, can be quite homogeneous. There are 56 different recognized ethnic groups in China, but more than 90 percent of the population is Han Chinese. So people who look different stand out.

"We lived in a small circle before," said her mother. "But after Lou was seen nationwide, some Chinese people couldn't accept her."

It has been a shocking ordeal for someone who says she always considered herself just like every other Chinese girl.

"Sometimes people on the street would ask me, 'Why do you speak Chinese so well?' I'd just say, 'Because I'm Chinese!'" Lou said.

But, as any curious child would, Lou Jing certainly thought about why she looked different. In a clip reel aired on the show, her classmates say they tried to protect her from feeling out of place.

"She used to wonder why she had black skin," said one classmate. "We thought about this question together and decided to tell her it's because she likes dark chocolate. So her skin turned darker gradually."

Another classmate weighed in, "We said it's because she used to drink too much soy sauce."

Even Lou Jing's maternal grandmother admitted in a taped interview, "I told Lou Jing she was black because her mom was not very well and had to take Chinese medicine."

But such explanations were not enough for a voracious Chinese public. Show producers convinced Lou Jing's mom to appear on-air and asked her to address the many unanswered questions.

"Lou Jing did not ask about her father until she was sixteen years old," her mother told the audience. "She said, 'Where is my dad?' I didn't answer, I just cried and Lou Jing never asked me this question again."

On stage this time, it was Lou Jing who wept as she held an arm tightly around her mother, gripping the microphone in the other. The camera zoomed in on audience members tearing up as well.

"Lou Jing would cook dinner for me before I got home," her mother said. "I was quite sad then. In other families a girl her age would have a mom and a dad who loved her."

Although her father has been absent, Lou seemed to be curious about learning more. On the reality show, the host inquired, "Lou Jing, have you ever thought about going to find your dad, to get to know him?"

Lou Jing pauses for a moment and softly responds, "Yes, I have thought about that before."

In this way, the most private aspects of Lou Jing's otherwise quiet life became painfully public. But as the show went on, so did Lou Jing. She stuck with her daily routine, listening to Beyonce, her favorite artist, hanging out with her friends and continuing to go to school.

"I was so angry," said her drama teacher, Tao Yandong, of the Shanghai Drama Academy's School for the Television Arts. "My student had been insulted by others so of course I felt bad, too. But she told me she was fine and wasn't letting these things hurt her heart."

Watching Lou Jing laugh and gossip with her Chinese classmates today, this appears to be true. Back in her modest two-bedroom apartment, it is hard to imagine that Lou Jing and her mother are subjects of national scrutiny.

Instead, they are focused on her future. Her career goals are many, spanning from hosting a television show to becoming a diplomat "to bring people together," she said.

As a college junior, Lou Jing is thinking about graduate school applications, hoping to pursue a master's degree in foreign policy in New York City after she graduates from college.

When asked what she will do without her mother, Lou excitedly said, "My mom is going to come with me!"

Her mom shakes her head and smiles. If anything, their enduring bond as mother and daughter only seems to have gotten stronger. After all, for all their critics, there were just as many supporters.

Until the end of her run on "Go! Oriental Angel," fans continued to vote for Lou Jing show after show. The judges praised her confidence. Lou Jing was eventually eliminated before the finale, but not without a powerful parting message.

"I think I'm the same as all the girls here, except for my skin color. We share the same stage and the same dream. I've tried my best, so no matter what happens, I'll hold onto my dream."
Filed under: World

© 2009 Cable News Network. Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Elin Leaves House With Police Escort

She's leaving the house.

I found this on aol/Fanhouse.

Thanks,

Preston
____________________________________


Elin Leaving Tiger With Police Escort Assistance

by Will Brinson of AOL Golf/Fanhouse



Reports have been floating into the internet ether today -- though photographic evidence has yet to emerge -- that Elin Nordegren is rolling out of Tiger Woods' home amidst a heavy police escort in what is being rumored as a likely permanent exit strategy.

Nordegren supposedly wants, as mentioned earlier on FanHouse, a stunning $300 million and custody of their children and is not budging from that stance via a divorce. Such reports -- if true -- would theoretically support her exiting their Orlando home, which X17Online.com (safe for work, despite the potentially misleading name) noted today:

An X17 photographer on the scene tells us, "With Tiger off on his yacht, Elin's had enough. She's ready to take the kids and go back to Sweden. And with this many cops on bikes entering the community, we can only imagine they're preparing a motorcade for her to get herself and the kids to the airport quickly and safely."

Two police choppers are also hovering overhead waiting for the motorcade to start their move.

Now, if anyone is wondering why Elin needs so much security, it should be obvious: Tiger and his wife and his seemingly unending list of mistresses have been the talk of every tabloid, gossip magazine and sports Web site since Thanksgiving, and if Elin leaves the house, she will be dealing with the paparazzi.

That's just an indisputable fact; Elin knows it as much as anyone else, and taking extra precautions to make sure she doesn't put herself or her children in any harm because of overzealous reporters is a smart idea.

He Won! He Won! Tiger Woods Won!

I found this on AOl/Fanhouse

Thanks,

Preston
__________________________________

Tiger Voted PGA Player of the Year!


PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. (AP) -- Tiger Woods was voted the PGA Tour player of the year by the players on Friday, the 10th time in his 13 years on tour that he has won the award.

The PGA Tour does not disclose vote totals.

Woods started and finished the season the same way -- with questions when he would return. He was coming off knee surgery at the beginning of the year, and last week announced an indefinite leave to work on his marriage after admitting to infidelity.

In between, he won six PGA Tour events, captured the FedEx Cup and its $10 million bonus, won the money title for the ninth time in his career with over $10.5 million, and had the lowest scoring average for the ninth time.

No one else won more than three times on the PGA Tour. It was only the second time that Woods was voted player of the year when he did not win a major. In a peculiar twist, Woods won in his final start before each of the four majors.

Marc Leishman of Australia was voted PGA Tour rookie of the year, becoming the first since Charles Howell III in 2001 to win the award without having won a tournament.

Leishman was the only rookie to reach the FedEx Cup finale at the Tour Championship.

Players voted on the awards over the last month, with balloting ending Friday.

It was the eighth time that Woods has swept all the major PGA Tour honors -- Byron Nelson Award for the lowest adjusted scoring average (68.05), Arnold Palmer Award for the money title and Jack Nicklaus Award for player of the year.

Radio Giant Files for Bankruptcy

Citadel Broadcasting Files for Bankruptcy

I found this on Aol by Jeff Bercovici.

Thanks,

Preston

________________________________________

JEFF BERCOVICI Posted 12:13 PM 12/21/09 Company News, Media

Faced with the likelihood of breaching its financial covenants, Citadel Broadcasting (CTDB) -- which syndicates such broadcasters as Don Imus (pictured) -- took the initiative Sunday and filed for bankruptcy. The Chapter 11 filing will let the radio broadcaster get out from underneath most of its $2.5 billion debt.

Under a pre-arranged plan approved by more than 60% of Citadel's lenders, the company's creditors will end up with 90% of the reorganized company's equity. In return, they'll exchange $2.1 billion in loans for a more manageable $762.5 million.

Losing out big in the deal is Forstmann Little & Co. The New York-based private equity firm is currently Citadel's biggest stakeholder, with 28.7% of its equity. Forstmann had already written off its investment in Citadel, according to The Wall Street Journal, which included a $1.5 billion infusion in 2001.

Citadel owns 224 radio stations, including WABC in New York and WLS in Chicago. Among the programs it syndicates are Imus in the Morning and The Mark Levin Show. Just three years ago, it was still aggressively expanding, shouldering heavy debt to finance a $2.7 billion merger of its stations with Disney (DIS)-owned ABC Radio. That deal turned Citadel into the country's third-biggest radio operator, behind Clear Channel and CBS (CBS) Radio.

But then the bottom fell out of the radio-advertising market, and the ad economy in general. Citadel's ad revenue was down 14% in the third quarter. Overall radio spending is off an even steeper 19% in 2009, according to the consultancy BIA/Kelsey.

A covenant with its lenders requires Citadel to have $150 million in cash on hand by Jan. 15. As of Sunday, the company had only $24 million.

Friday, December 18, 2009

Now, This Guy Is Real Gambler. Take the Money and Run! Lol.

He's a bad, bad boy.

Thanks,

Preston

____________________________________


Lottery Winner's Wife Evicted From Home After He Flees With His Winnings




MIRAMAR, Fla. -- A South Florida woman whose husband won the lottery and then left her was set to be evicted from her home Tuesday evening.

But Local 10’s camera was rolling when Donna Campbell received an early Christmas present.

Campbell was given until Tuesday to pack up and leave the Miramar home she once shared with her husband, Arnim Ramdass.

I have asked myself over and over what I did to deserve this, to deserve this ending," Campbell said.

Ramdass and several other airline mechanics won $19 million in a June 2007 lottery jackpot. Instead of sharing the wealth, Campbell said her husband did not tell her about his win and eventually left her.

A previous lawsuit Campbell filed was dropped. Ramdass stopped paying the mortgage, and their home went into foreclosure.

While they are still legally married, Campbell said Ramdass has vanished.

"I have no idea where he is," Campbell said.

In fact, the only reminder of the man with whom she once shared this home were wedding pictures on the dining room table. As far as the rest of her belongings, she was prepared to have to let them go.

“I could part with anything in the house. It doesn’t matter. But the Christmas stuff means a whole lot to me,” she told Local 10’s Jen Herrera.

Campbell spent Tuesday packing up pictures and clothing. She said she would leave behind furniture and other large items, as she had no place to go and can't afford to store them.

But when the folks at AA Varco moving company saw Campbell’s story on Local 10, they offered to move her belongings and store them at their facility for free.

“That would be wonderful. Thank you very much. You made my Christmas,” Campbell told the man on the other end of the phone when she heard the news.

Campbell wants to divorce Ramdass, file suit for her half of the money and serve him with papers, but her husband is nowhere to be found.

"I intend to find him. I will keep trying until I get him," Campbell said.

In the meantime, she plans on moving in with her sister while her attorney continues to look for her husband to serve him divorce papers.

Say It Isn't So

Oral Roberts

1918-2009


You lived your three score and ten, plus many more.


R.I.P.

Walking Away from Your Mortgage? What's Going on Here? What Does All of This Mean?

I found these profiles on Aol.

Thanks

Preston
_____________________________

Jim Warr
Situation: Walked Away

"I walked away from my house four months ago in Albuquerque. It was the smartest thing I've done.

My house was worth $360,000 when I refinanced it and $280,000 when I quit paying. There was only one way I could pull any equity out and that was to live in it for as long as I could and save as much as I could. I stopped making payments on everything except [my] cars. For 10 months I saved about $50,000 -- not really in cash -- but in what I would have paid [for the mortgage] and I still would have had bad credit.

Credit scores were invented not to stop people from borrowing but to make it possible for creditors to make more money. You can buy a house, new cars, get credit cards with bad credit; it just costs more. Every time I have to pay higher interest rates I think of that $50,000 I didn’t pay for 10 months and I’m ok with it. Renters spend 26 percent less on rent than home owners do on their mortgage. I will never buy another house."

_____________________

You can find the other profiles here.

http://realestate.aol.com/real-estate-finance/walking-away

Thanks,

Preston

Fantasy Football

I found this on Aol.

Preston
______________________________

Fired Over Fantasy Football: The Unfortunate Case of Cameron Pettigrew


From Fantasy Fanhouse/Aol.com




On the surface, Cameron Pettigrew seems a lot like many people you might know. A young, ambitious guy who felt he found his ideal job at Fidelity Investments in Westlake, Texas. He even joked one time about getting a Fidelity tattoo.

Good thing he didn't.

In late October, Pettigrew and three other fantasy football league commissioners were fired by Fidelity. Pettigrew, a distinguished employee in the Private Client Group who had been with the company for two and a half years, was left scrambling for further explanation. Pettigrew said he never received a single verbal or written warning before his dismissal.

His slip-up had overridden an impressive resume, which contains multiple company honors, including being the only person chosen for an exclusive, 10-member program (Future Leaders of Westlake) who was not already in a management position. Three weeks before his firing, he was offered a position at Fidelity's prestigious Wall Street branch, but Pettigrew said he chose to decline the offer due to the high cost of living in New York City.

"I loved my job, my coworkers, and frankly, I loved Fidelity. I practically begged to have my job back," Pettigrew told FanHouse. "I spent weeks trying to appeal my termination ... I even said I would take a demotion if they accepted me back."

Pettigrew was commissioner of a $20 entry fee league with nine other employees. According to Pettigrew, those other nine league members -- which included three team leaders and a manager -- were simply given warnings and got to keep their jobs. "They are all dear friends of mine and I would never want for them to be fired or additionally reprimanded," said Pettigrew, "but the way in which Fidelity applied our punishment was flawed and unequal."

According to Pettigrew, he was questioned by two company investigators for an hour and a half, where they wanted to know everything he knew about fantasy sports at the Westlake site. "They were insistent upon knowing about everyone involved, especially leadership, and whether those persons even mentioned a league," said Pattigrew. "I kept thinking, 'All of this over a $20 fantasy football league?' "

In the past, Fidelity made it known to employees via e-mail that participation in fantasy sports activities is not permitted on company time. However, Pettigrew says "nobody at the entire Westlake site took the policy seriously." He claims there are numerous different active leagues at Fidelity and team leaders, managers and directors discussed fantasy sports regularly. For many participants, fantasy sports is considered a harmless hobby that has potential to bolster camaraderie between employees and overall morale.

When FanHouse contacted Fidelity for details on the policy Pettigrew violated, FanHouse was told by spokesman Vin Loporchio that the company doesn't comment on either current or former employees "out of respect for their privacy and confidentiality" and that nothing should be construed from the lack of a comment.

"The only official communication I ever received about Fidelity's policy against fantasy sports was a very generic e-mail which could easily be overlooked," said Pettigrew. "We were definitely never told that this could be a 'fireable' offense."

According to Pettigrew, that fireable offense included two incoming instant messages from league members, wherein brief conversations followed about teams and players. "Those two messages were received when I was idle and not in contact with any clients."

The league Web page, which was hosted on Yahoo! Sports, is blocked from access on work computers, according to Pettigrew, so members did not check their lineups on company time. And he claims the $20 league buy-in was only paid by a couple of guys on work property. "I only accepted the money during a scheduled break or after work, so I thought I was not doing so on company time."

Despite his appeals to Fidelity, Pettigrew was labeled with a stain on the Termination Explanation of his U5 form (Uniform Termination Notice for Securities Industry Regulation) ... VIOLATION OF COMPANY GAMBLING POLICY INVOLVING FANTASY FOOTBALL.

"They see the word gambling and it's as though I am toxic," said Pettigrew, who made note of the tough economy. "I have been blackballed in my industry."

According to Pettigrew, his department director and local leadership fought hard for his job, but he was considered an "organizer of gambling activities" by the corporation, because he was commissioner of the league.


Interestingly, Pettigrew says he never played fantasy football before coming to Fidelity. "Last season I was approached by one of the managers who asked that I be in his league. I knew vaguely about the policy at the time but figured that if a manager was involved than the rule was probably just something of an outdated law, like how it's illegal in Michigan for a woman to cut her own hair without asking her husband first."

In a statement offered to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram last week, Fidelity spokesman Vin Loporchio said: "We have clear policies that relate to gambling. Participation in any form of gambling through the use of Fidelity time or equipment or any other company resource is prohibited. In addition to being illegal in a lot of places, it can also be disruptive. We want our employees to be focused on our customers and clients."

That "gambling" label has drawn the ire of leading Fantasy Sports Trade Association members. While fantasy sports may be considered gambling in a minority of states, it has been deemed one of the exemptions in the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act, according to Professor I. Nelson Rose, who is a published expert on gambling law.

Paul Charchian, president of the Fantasy Sports Trade Association, had this to offer: "No fantasy sports company has been the subject of prosecution for gambling. No person has been the subject of prosecution for gambling related to fantasy sports participation."

A former Fidelity employee, who spoke to FanHouse on the condition of anonymity, claimed: "Saying the word 'gamble' at Fidelity is like saying 'bomb' on an airplane." He also alleges that "Fidelity likes to make examples out of people and this was probably seen as a good opportunity to do so."

With the evidence available, this seems more of a corporate culture issue than anything. On one hand, you could just ignore Pettigrew's strong track record and say company policy is company policy, end of story. Even if any given policy outlaws fantasy sports, or for that matter, Facebook usage and 15-minute smoke breaks. On the other, you can show leniency and let him off with probation, or perhaps even soften the termination explanation on his U5 form to exclude "gambling".

In a way, Pettigrew and three other employees are out of work because they were fantasy league commissioners -- the "organizers" -- and therefore the easier targets for Fidelity to exhibit that said activities will not be tolerated.

Certainly, it's not the first sympathetic termination story we'll hear, and it won't be the last. Yesterday, a woman e-mailed FanHouse to say her daughter was fired after eight years of service for bringing a one-pound puppy to work to show her friends for five minutes. One year later, she claims her daughter still can't find a job.

Sounds outrageous? In these times, you can believe it.

In the meantime, Cameron Pettigrew is available for employment.

He just wishes he could have his job and his life back.

Monday, December 14, 2009

Football Bet

As a reformed gambler, I have vowed never to make another wager, but my oh my it's getting pretty hairy out there with two (count them--Two!) undefeated "thirteen and Oh my oh my" teams out there . . .

And my beloved Rams are being pummeled every week.

Ah, well, there is always next year's draft.

Stop it! Just stop it!

Naked Pictures of Tiger Woods?

Stop it! Just stop it!

This is too much, people.

_____________________________________________

I found this on AOL




Playgirl Magazine recently claimed that they have naked pictures of Tiger Woods and may publish them if they can verify their authenticity. A "third party" is shopping the photos, and a Playgirl spokesman said, "Our lawyers are currently going over them, the source, the entire package."

Yup, that's why attorneys go to law school ... to look at Tiger Woods' package. Woods' lawyers are fighting back globally and have obtained an injunction in the UK against the publication of any nude pictures. Using sneaky lawyer talk, they aren't acknowledging that any naked pictures actually exist, but they don't want those pictures with his likeness published, Photoshopped or not. In the internet age, I'm not sure that there are enough lawyers in the world to stop the distribution of naughty pictures if they exist.

Friday, December 11, 2009

Donaghy: The NBA REF Who Bet On Games

I am intrigued with this guy.



Donaghy Sticks With His Story

By Henry Abbott
ESPN.com


At times, former NBA referee Tim Donaghy was vague in an interview Monday about his role in gambling on NBA games.
At times he was combative. At times he was indignant. At all times he was controversial.

Donaghy spoke with ESPN on Monday about allegations in his book, "Personal Foul," which was published last week. He talked about the biases of NBA referees and his own career as a gambler.

He called the NBA more of an entertainment show than a true competition. He said that so many referees were so biased that he could win more than 70 percent of his bets simply by knowing which referees carried which grudges.

And to those who doubt that he won as often as he did, he said: "I can tell you that the FBI was brought into this because of the success of the picks that we were giving."

Donaghy pleaded guilty and served a 15-month sentence on federal wire fraud charges. He was released from prison last month. He was an NBA official for 13 seasons before being snared in an FBI investigation of gambling on NBA games.

Donaghy said he was betting $2,000 or so on games when he first started betting. He said the wins came easy and so did the money.

"It's euphoria," he said. "I'm making picks. I'm the go-to guy. And I'm continually winning at an unbelievable rate."
While keeping his bets small to avoid attention, Donaghy said he was making so much money it was hard to hide it all.

"I'm stuffing it everywhere. Suitcoat pocket, card games, golf games, luxury items for the wife and kids," he said. He estimates he made roughly $100,000 betting on the NBA. Donaghy said his picks were once right 15 out of 16 times, a rate that he and gambling experts agree is nearly impossible with just luck. That streak, he said, "scared the living daylights out of us and almost made us think we should stop, because we were scared that we were going to be detected."

In his book, Donaghy wrote of a number of techniques he used to win at an astounding rate. Among the ways Donaghy said he made money was to bet on big underdogs when Dick Bavetta was one of the referees, because Bavetta liked to keep games close.

"He would instruct other referees to change their style, too," Donaghy said. "He'd say, 'Let's not embarrass anyone.' Get the marginal calls at one end, but not down at the other end of the floor. Not to change the outcome of the game, but to keep anyone from getting embarrassed."

However, an analysis of box scores during the period Donaghy was betting shows that betting on double-digit underdogs in Bavetta games would have resulted in a 17-25 record.

Donaghy insisted that other officials were also predisposed against certain players. He wrote that teams that include Allen Iverson underperform when Steve Javie is one of the referees, yet tend to beat the spread when Joe Crawford is officiating. He wrote that referee Joe Forte also gave a boost to the Memphis Grizzlies when Mike Fratello was the coach.

However, an analysis of final scores and betting lines showed that using that criteria would have resulted in just 35 wins out of 109 games.

"These are some of the criteria that I used," Donaghy said Monday. "I'm not saying I bet every game. ... You can spin the stats any way you want. ... The FBI investigated thoroughly. ... To sit here and say there was a science to how I did this, with the stats you're throwing at me ...

"Based on the information you're using, with your equation, it's not even in the same ballpark," Donaghy said. "There were other factors that came into play. Inside information about injuries. Home game or away game. Home crowd. Many more factors to take into consideration.

"I'm claiming that I picked 15 out of 16, and I'm also claiming that all the facts in this book are true, and it's what I used to pick games."

Donaghy was similarly indignant about a tale from his book involving Charles Barkley. As a player, Donaghy wrote in his book, Barkley stalked into the referees' locker room looking for Donaghy after an on-court dispute between the two in a Los Angeles Clippers-Houston Rockets game. Barkley, Donaghy wrote, then dumped a bucket of Gatorade and ice over the referee.

In a text message to ESPN's Mark Schwarz, Barkley insisted he has no recollection of any such thing. Donaghy said Monday it was true.

"The two refs in the locker room know it happened. I know it happened," he said. "For Charles Barkley to lie like that is troublesome to me. Maybe we both need to sit down and take a lie detector test, and maybe the loser needs to give $500,000 to charity. And I'd like to see what his response would be to that."

Donaghy told Schwarz in a separate interview that he couldn't say for certain that any other NBA officials gambled on NBA games.

He did say that NBA commissioner David Stern "needs to take his head out sand" in terms of Donaghy's accusations.


Henry Abbott writes the TrueHoop NBA blog for ESPN.com.


In a Dec. 7 ESPN.com story, the number of games included in an analysis of games involving referees Dick Bavetta was incorrect. It should have included only 109 games.

Gambler Blows 127 Million

In my novel, ALL OR NOTHING, my protagonist ends up blowing 50 million dollars.

Some readers were skeptical, writing to me: "I think it's a serious exaggeration, Mr. Allen, that anyone would blow that kind of money."

My answer would be: "If you feel that way, then you don't know gamblers. The people I met during my time in GA spanned the range from minimum wage workers to millionaire athletes and corporate CEOs. If you have a hankering to meet famous people, join GA."


Then I found this on Sphere.com through Aol.com.


GAMBLER BLOWS $127 MILLION: SHOULD CASINO SHARE BLAME?

SAN FRANCISCO (Dec. 8) -- Terrance Watanabe sometimes got so high on painkillers and alcohol in Las Vegas that he walked into doors and passed out at the gaming tables.

The Omaha philanthropist consumed more than two bottles of expensive vodka daily and gambled for days at a time without sleeping. In a single year, he lost $127 million at two casinos owned by Harrah's Entertainment. Nearly $1 billion in wagers passed through his hands.

This embarrassing portrait of excess and dissipation comes from legal documents filed by Watanabe's own attorneys, who are defending him against criminal charges that he still owes Harrah's nearly $15 million from his gambling spree.

Watanabe's lawyers cast the once wealthy businessman as the victim of heartless executives who enticed him to their casinos with offers of lavish rewards, then plied him with massive quantities of alcohol and drugs to keep him under control as they milked him of his fortune.

From Harrah's perspective, Watanabe is a deadbeat gambler who faces four felonies and is telling his story publicly in a desperate attempt to avoid jail.

A civil lawsuit and a complaint to the Nevada Gaming Control Board filed last month by Watanabe's lawyers allege that Harrah's kept him a virtual "captive" at the Caesars and Rio casinos in 2007 and supplied him with the prescription painkiller Lortab without a doctor's diagnosis or supervision.

"They preyed on a vulnerable person who had a gambling and alcohol addiction," said Pierce O'Donnell, one of his attorneys. "Terry Watanabe takes responsibility for what he did, and Harrah's needs to take responsibility for what they did."

Watanabe, 52, is the former head of the Oriental Trading Co., a direct marketing firm that sells novelties and party items. In Omaha, he is known for donating money to AIDS patients, military families and the police department. He now lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. He declined through his attorneys to be interviewed.

Watanabe sold his interest in the family company in 2000 and by 2006 was gambling heavily in Las Vegas. In the parlance of the Strip, he was a "whale," a high-roller whose huge losses can be a casino's biggest source of revenue. Casinos vie with each other to entice whales to their tables, offering opulent rooms, private jets, gourmet meals, exclusive show tickets and all manner of other inducements.

Watanabe was one of the biggest whales to come along.

For a time he played at the Wynn casino, where he ran up losses of $26 million by June 2007. Owner Steve Wynn personally cut him off from further play, citing his apparent gambling and alcohol addictions, according to the complaint to the gaming board. A spokeswoman for Wynn said the casino had no comment.

Watanabe soon took up residence at Harrah's properties, first the Rio and then Caesars, under an agreement that offered him 20 separate incentives, including a free luxury suite, an airfare allowance, discounts on his losses, private gaming areas, and deferred marker payments of at least 60 days, the complaint says.

The dispute over how much Watanabe owes Harrah's centers on that agreement, which was recorded in a series of e-mails between Watanabe's assistant and a Harrah's executive, his attorneys say.

On its Web site, Harrah's calls itself a leader in responsible gaming and says it trains its employees to recognize problem gamblers.

"Our company's long-standing and continuing commitment to responsible gaming is something we take great pride in," the Web site says. "Harrah's position on this issue is clear: We want everyone who gambles at our casinos to be there for the right reasons: to simply have fun."

But in Watanabe's case, his attorneys say, the casino staff played a different role.

The complaint alleges that Harrah's assigned employees to watch over Watanabe and ensure that he continued gambling at its properties.

During a six-month period in 2007, employees continually plied him with drinks, ignoring several requests from an acquaintance to water down his vodka, the complaint says. Photos of Watanabe were posted in staff areas so employees would know he should not be denied anything he wanted, his lawyers allege. At the height of his binge, witnesses say he consumed two to three bottles a day of his favorite brand, Jewel of Russia, according to court documents.

If Watanabe was absent from the casino floor for a time, his handlers would call or visit his hotel room and steer him back to the casino floor, the complaint alleges.

Staff members who objected to the way the casino was treating Watanabe were reassigned or dismissed, according to the complaint.

His attorneys say that Harrah's carefully managed a daily routine for Watanabe that included alcohol and drugs, inadequate sleep and pressure to continue gambling. As his intoxication grew worse, his losses increased.

His condition began deteriorating markedly in September 2007 after he slipped on the marble floor in his suite and injured his back. He asked for aspirin or Tylenol, his attorneys say.

Instead of calling a doctor, casino employees began giving him Lortab, a prescription narcotic that should not be mixed with alcohol, the complaint says. Casino staff continually supplied him with the drug, it says, on one occasion delivering the pills to his room in a candy box.

Witnesses say Watanabe became so intoxicated that he slurred his speech, walked into obstacles and at times passed out while playing, according to the complaint. "Rather than taking him to his room, a staff member would wake him up to continue gambling or to sign a marker," O'Donnell said in the complaint.

There is no indication from the documents that close friends or family members spent time with Watanabe in Las Vegas until he had lost much of his fortune.

Watanabe's spree came to an end in December 2007 after his sister visited and persuaded him to leave Las Vegas.

By that time, he had given Harrah's $112 million. But he balked at paying $14.75 million more in markers, contending that the debt was offset by promised discounts and other incentives that Harrah's never delivered.

After Watanabe hired an attorney to help him negotiate, Harrah's submitted the markers to his bank for payment. When the markers were returned because of insufficient funds, Harrah's asked the district attorney to prosecute the man who had been their best customer.

In February, Watanabe turned himself in to face four felony counts of theft and fraud.

Under a unique Nevada law, Harrah's turned over the markers to Clark County District Attorney David Roger for criminal prosecution.

The company is seeking the money despite the $112 million it has already taken from Watanabe -- a sum so large it constituted almost 6 percent of casino revenues for the entire Harrah's chain in 2007, the complaint says.

The prosecutor's Bad Check Unit alleges that the markers Watanabe signed are the equivalent of checks that must be paid on demand. Watanabe's lawyers contend that the markers represent loans, not checks, and therefore should not be subject to the bad check law.

The Bad Check Unit has handled cases involving the markers of several prominent gamblers, including the recent $900,000 debt of former NBA star Antoine Walker. But the $14.75 million at issue in the Watanabe case is the largest sum the unit has sought to recover.

Under the law, the district attorney's office will receive a 10 percent commission on any amount it collects from Watanabe. O'Donnell, a prominent Los Angeles trial lawyer, questions whether such an arrangement is constitutional.

"The statutory scheme in Nevada creates an unholy alliance between private gambling companies and the public prosecutor," he said in an interview. "There is no other industry and no other state where this happens. To give a bounty to the district attorney for collecting private debts is extraordinary."

Deputy District Attorney Bernie Zadrowski, who supervises the Bad Check Unit, did not return telephone calls from Sphere.

Jan Jones, Harrah's senior vice president for communications and government relations, issued a brief statement saying the company has no intention of asking the district attorney to drop the case.

Jones said Watanabe's lawsuit and his complaint to the gaming board contain "false statements" but did not specify what she considers untrue. Jones and other Harrah's representatives declined to answer any questions about the case.

"We will not get into a public debate with a criminal defendant who is trying to avoid imprisonment," Jones said in her statement. "He is the one on trial; he's the one who needs to explain his actions."

Watanabe's civil lawsuit does not specify the amount of damages it is seeking. In the complaint to the gaming board, O'Donnell calls for an investigation of Harrah's and the possible suspension of the two casinos' licenses.

"Mr. Watanabe is the victim of a ruthless corporation that deserves the harshest sanctions for its unlawful conduct," he wrote. "Indeed, the evidence is overwhelming that Caesars reprehensibly behaved like a predator stalking, trapping and consuming its prey."


Filed under: Nation, Top Stories
2009 AOL Inc. All Rights Reserved.

100 Year Old Pedophile Set To Be Released from Prison

I found this on AOL


BUFFALO, N.Y. (Dec. 10) -- Everything that pedophile Theodore Sypnier has to show for his 100 years on earth is packed in a single duffel bag as he prepares to begin a new chapter in life: freedom.

It's a chapter that prosecutors, judges and others who know him never wanted -- or expected -- to see written.

New York's oldest registered sex offender is scheduled to move by week's end out of a Buffalo halfway house for released inmates and into a place of his own, after completing his latest term in state prison for molesting little girls.


The judge who sentenced him said at the time that she expected him to die behind bars.

But 10 years after his last arrest, as Sypnier prepared to shed the closely monitored lifestyle of the halfway house, its director warned that the spry and active Sypnier has not changed from the manipulator who used his grandfatherly charm to snare and rape victims as young as 4.

"Whether he's 100 or 101 or 105, the same person that was committing these crimes 10, 25, 30 years ago still exists today and has an unrepentant heart," said the Rev. Terry King, director of Grace House, which has twice taken Sypnier in from prison. "He is someone that we as parents, as members of the community, any community, really need to fear."

Six months after marking his 100th birthday in the Groveland Correctional Facility -- becoming the first New York inmate to reach the milestone while incarcerated -- the retired telephone company worker now says he wants to get to know the youngest members of a family that has disowned him.

"I'll tell them I never harmed any children," the father, grandfather and great-grandfather told his hometown newspaper, The Buffalo News.

A former daughter-in-law said he is not likely to get the chance.

"No one from the family plans to have any contact with him," Diane Sypnier said before ending a brief phone interview.

Being grandfatherly was how the 5-foot-5, 150-pound Sypnier found his victims, authorities say. After his most recent arrest at age 90 on charges of raping and sodomizing a 4-year-old girl and her 7-year-old sister, his neighbors in the suburb of Tonawanda recalled what appeared to be a kindly Sypnier offering rides to adults, handing out money to children so they could buy candy, and baby-sitting.

The victimized sisters called him "Grandpa," their mother said at the time, adding that it "was a total shock" when police showed her sexually explicit pictures of her girls found in Sypnier's apartment.

Sypnier's convictions date to 1987, when he was given three years' probation for sex abuse. He spent a year in prison for sexually abusing a minor in 1994. His neighbors in Tonawanda never knew of Sypnier's background because he was convicted before the adoption of laws requiring sex offenders to register with police.

A relative once came forward and said Sypnier had molested her while she was growing up, former Erie County prosecutor Frank Clark told the News. Authorities wonder what else might lie in Sypnier's past.

"People don't start to become pedophiles at 78," Erie County District Attorney Frank Sedita told the AP. "I call them vampires. ... This is something that's deep inside of them, and they won't want to stop doing this until they're dead."

But Sypnier says he is the victim of a miscarriage of justice, despite twice pleading guilty in the case involving the sisters.

"Those children crawled into bed with me because they were frightened, but there was never any sexual hanky-panky," Sypnier told the News.

Sypnier initially pleaded guilty in 2000 to two counts of rape, 15 counts of sodomy and endangering the welfare of a child for molesting the Tonawanda girls, as well as three in Buffalo. An appeals court threw out the conviction in 2002 after Sypnier claimed he was confused at the time, leading to another plea the following year to a lesser charge.

In sentencing Sypnier to as many as 10 years in prison, state Supreme Court Justice Penny Wolfgang told him she expected he would spend the rest of his life behind bars.

"The sheer notion of him wandering the streets unattended or unsupervised is a scary proposition," King said.

Sypnier was released on parole in 2007, only to be returned to prison in 2008 after failing to attend sex-offender counseling. He completed his term in November and will be on parole through 2012. Until then, he's forbidden from using e-mail, chat rooms or social networking sites; hanging around playgrounds or schools; or spending time in bars.

Instead, he spends his days watching television, cooking, socializing in the halfway house and attending programming, King said.

Sypnier's new address has not been disclosed, but the law requires him to enter it in the state's sex offender registry.

Although his age makes him New York's oldest registered sex offender, there is at least one older offender elsewhere. Bert Jackson of Utah is 103 and living under home confinement.
Filed under: Nation, Crime
Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press. Active hyperlinks have been inserted by AOL.

Nude Female Teachers

I was going to write about Tiger Woods, but this article by BRETT SINGER caught my eye.

Female Teachers Caught Nude Together In Brooklyn HS Classroom
by Brett Singer Dec 9th 2009 3:01PM



Two female teachers were allegedly caught nude together in a classroom in Brooklyn, according to a story in the New York Daily News.

The women are both language teachers at James Madison High School. According to the newspaper, the linguists were in a classroom nude and "speaking the international language of love" while the students were in the auditorium "watching a talent show." Janitor Robert Colantuoni saw a little show of his own, and, well, informed the principal.

According to the Daily News, one of the women is single and a French (ooh-la-la) teacher. The other is married and teaches Spanish. The News called the Spanish teacher's husband and he said, "The school district has not informed my wife of these allegations and they are untrue." (What else would the guy say?)

The best line from the story (or the worst, depending on your point of view) is this: "Students said both teachers were popular." One student is quoted in the News as saying that one of the teachers is "kinda sexy" and "dressed like a teenage girl ... low-cut tops, shorts, three-quarter length jeans." The other reportedly wears less provocative clothing but is still described by students as "pretty" and "good-looking," according to the News.

Both teachers have tenure. They have been sent to NYC Education Department "rubber rooms" pending an investigation.

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Lumberjack Wins 5 Million

I found this on AOL.


You gotta love this guy.

Thanks,

Preston
___________________________

LAS VEGAS (Nov. 10) -- What is Darvin Moon going to do with his new fortune? "Put it in the bank," said the lumberjack who came in second place at the World Series of Poker.

It was a characteristically plain-spoken response from the 46-year-old from rural Maryland who had never flown in a jet plane before coming to Las Vegas in July to play -- and eventually beat -- many of the world's greatest poker players. Tuesday, he walked away with the $5.1 million purse after Joe Cada, a 21-year-old from Detroit, pushed him out.

Normally, potential champions are Type A glory-seekers, people who dream of being on TV and splurging on luxuries and soaking up all the media attention they can. Throughout the tournament, Moon has baffled onlookers as a plain-spoken guy who doesn't use the Internet, doesn't own a credit card and flat-out refused to sign any of the online poker Web site endorsement deals that are de rigueur for final table players.

"I'm not interested," he said, sporting the only swag he's received: a New Orleans Saints cap the team sent him after he told reporters he was a fan. "Why sign something that's gonna change me so that I'm gonna have to be sitting in a corner in front of a computer? That is like watching paint dry on the wall. I like being outside, moving, doing outside things."

When it was all over early Tuesday morning, following four hours head-to-head and about 90 hands on the stage where illusionists Penn & Teller perform, Moon was beaten by someone very different: a gregarious, eagerly famous 21-year-old from Detroit. Moon wouldn't acknowledge that he was relieved to be able to return to anonymity, but he did tell a Washington Post reporter who was blogging and tweeting his every move, "Why is everybody so upset? It's all good. This is fun."

The break between July and the November finale was designed to give the nine finalists a chance to promote themselves and the tournament while leaving the ultimate result unknown as ESPN aired weekly shows of the summer's action. Moon, the chip leader, largely went back to work, talking to journalists if they caught him on his phone but declining to fly to Europe and elsewhere to play in poker events as other players frequently do.

"I'm not going to that stuff," he said. "I'm not interested in that. I may go to some other games, but I'm going to the ones I want to go to when I want to go."

None of this computed in the balloon-boy era and, in fact, was met with some hostility in a poker community that talks constantly about the importance of good "poker ambassadors." Even his new poker-pro pals seem to believe that Cada's victory may be better for the game.

"Darvin's a great guy and he's turning into a good friend of mine, but he is not a person who wants to go out there in front of the media and anything like that," said Dennis Phillips, who finished third in the 2008 World Series. "Joe will be more that way. So in that aspect, yes, there's a difference. But believe me, Darvin's a heckuva good guy."

Moon lives in Oakland, Md., where even his great-grandfather grew up and which boasts fewer residents than the number of contestants he outlasted in the tournament. He owns a logging business and drives to Yellowstone for hunting trips once a year. Also, he likes to play poker, earning entry to the World Series by winning a tournament at a casino in Morgantown, W.Va., that cost him $130 to enter.

His rough-edged demeanor served him well at the poker table where he sat with a steady, inscrutable frown as his head rested on the palm of one of his thick hands. Even when he won big hands or busted someone out, his expression changed little. He said later he felt it was rude to appear to celebrate someone else's ouster.

Moon received his minimum payout of $1.26 million for finishing in the top nine before departing Las Vegas in July. Most of it's in the bank, but he did buy new logging equipment and a new pickup. He and his wife, who have no children, also accelerated previously laid plans to replace the 14-by-70-foot trailer they've occupied for 17 years, but the new house, also a modular, will be no bigger or fancier than they previously had planned for, despite the money.

"He almost has roots in the old pioneer West or something of people who went into the woods," said Nolan Dalla, the announcer at the event. "Living a rural lifestyle with his family and parents, he has no use for the perks of the modern society. That's pretty unique in the poker world because it's all about money and fame and glory. He's the antithesis of that."

Indeed, asked how he liked Las Vegas, Moon replied, "It sucks. Too many people, too fast-paced for me."

Had he seen any shows or had any great meals?

"I had a good shot of whiskey in the casino at 5 a.m. this morning."

Of the media circus that engulfed him?

"I'm as uncomfortable as hell."

And what about all the money he just won?

"No, Uncle Sam won a crapload. And what'd he do?"

And he had exactly the response one might expect for his plans when he gets back home.

"I'm gonna change my phone number."

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Mob Hit Man Comes Out in Court

I found this one on AOL.

Thanks,

Preston
_____________________


(Oct. 20) -- Mob hit man Robert Mormando had two surprises for the Brooklyn, N.Y., judge who sentenced him Monday: first, he renounced the mob and then he announced that he was gay, the New York Daily News reported.

Mormando, 44, was being sentenced for his part in the 2003 shooting of a bagel store owner, who was wounded in his driveway. The hit was ordered by Vincent Gotti, the paper said.

"That's the first time I've heard this in court," Federal Judge Jack Weinstein said of the gangster renouncing the mob.

Mormando, a divorced father of two who became a government informant just after the shooting, has been living in hiding from the Mafia.

"He has been openly gay since he left the mob," his lawyer told the judge.

Mormando faced up to 17 years in prison but was sentenced to time served, even though he hadn't served any prison time, the Daily News said.

2009 AOL LLC. All Rights Reserved.
2009-10-20 09:15:40

_____________

This is the first time the judge has heard someone renounce the mob. But it's not the first time (I am assuming) that he has heard a mobster come out in court. Okay. Deep. The times they are a changing.

Preston

Friday, October 16, 2009

Doctor Wins 189 Million Powerball

Congratulations, doc.

Preston
____________________________________

Doctor Wins $189M Powerball Prize
AOL

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (Oct. 16) - An Orlando dermatologist is Florida's first Powerball winner.

Dr. William Steele chose to take a $101 million lump-sum payment Thursday rather than $189 million spread over 20 years.

That's the largest jackpot of any kind awarded in Florida history.
The Orlando Sentinel reported that Steele kept the winning ticket in his wallet for days without checking it.

His wife, Frankie Summers-Steele, an inspirational writer and speaker, accompanied him as he turned in his ticket and collected his prize.

Steele, who lives in a gated community nicknamed "Millionaire Road" for its fancy homes, recalled breaking the news to his wife.

"Honey, do you love me?" the doctor asked her.

"I always loved you," she replied.

"I love you, too. Oh, by the way ..."

The doctor said he plans to continue his practice "if the public will let me" and give much of the money to charity, the Sentinel said.

Florida became the 30th state to offer the high-jackpot game in January. It abstained for years, fearing Powerball would detract from sales of the state's own lottery games.

Steele was the sole jackpot winner in the Oct. 3 drawing.

The winning numbers were 12, 24, 48, 50, 57 and the Powerball was 22. The Power Play was 3.


2009 AOL LLC. All Rights Reserved. Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press. Active hyperlinks have been inserted by AOL.
2009-10-15 13:44:53

Thursday, October 15, 2009

Justice of the Peace Refuses to Issue Marriage License to Interracial Couple

I found this on AOL.

No Comment.

Thanks,

Preston

______________________________________________



No Marriage License for Interracial Couple
AP

HAMMOND, La. (Oct. 15) - A Louisiana justice of the peace said he refused to issue a marriage license to an interracial couple out of concern for any children the couple might have.

Keith Bardwell, justice of the peace in Tangipahoa Parish, says it is his experience that most interracial marriages do not last long.

Neither Bardwell nor the couple immediately returned phone calls from The Associated Press. But Bardwell told the Daily Star of Hammond that he was not a racist.

"I do ceremonies for black couples right here in my house," Bardwell said. "My main concern is for the children."

Bardwell said he has discussed the topic with blacks and whites, along with witnessing some interracial marriages. He came to the conclusion that most of black society does not readily accept offspring of such relationships, and neither does white society, he said.

"I don't do interracial marriages because I don't want to put children in a situation they didn't bring on themselves," Bardwell said. "In my heart, I feel the children will later suffer."

If he does an interracial marriage for one couple, he must do the same for all, he said.

"I try to treat everyone equally," he said.

Thirty-year-old Beth Humphrey and 32-year-old Terence McKay, both of Hammond, say they will consult the U.S. Justice Department about filing a discrimination complaint.

Humphrey told the newspaper she called Bardwell on Oct. 6 to inquire about getting a marriage license signed. She says Bardwell's wife told her that Bardwell will not sign marriage licenses for interracial couples.

"It is really astonishing and disappointing to see this come up in 2009," said American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana attorney Katie Schwartzman. "The Supreme Court ruled as far back as 1963 that the government cannot tell people who they can and cannot marry."

The ACLU was preparing a letter for the Louisiana Supreme Court, which oversees the state justices of the peace, asking them to investigate Bardwell and see if they can remove him from office, Schwartzman said.

"He knew he was breaking the law, but continued to do it," Schwartzman said.

According to the clerk of court's office, application for a marriage license must be made three days before the ceremony because there is a 72-hour waiting period.

The applicants are asked if they have previously been married. If so, they must show how the marriage ended, such as divorce.

Other than that, all they need is a birth certificate and Social Security card. The license fee is $35, and the license must be signed by a Louisiana minister, justice of the peace or judge. The original is returned to the clerk's office.


Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press. Active hyperlinks have been inserted by AOL.
2009-10-15 16:11:52

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Say It Isn't So

Captain Lou Albano

1933-2009

R.I.P.

Paranormal Activity

This movie sounds like a winner.


My students who have seen it are saying . . .

"The scariest movie I have ever seen."

"I hated it! It scared me too much. I can't stop thinking about it."

"This one will scare you."

"It's worth the money, if you can stay through the whole thing."



Okay, PARANORMAL ACTIVITY--I will see it.

The last movie to give me a good scare--though only a brief one--was THE SIXTH SENSE. It was during that scene when the vomit-girl show up suddenly in the red tent. That gave me a nice jolt.

Thanks,

Preston

Good Books Don't Have to Be Hard

This article from the Wall Street Journal put some goosebumps on my spine.

But it makes sense to me.

Thanks,

Preston
_____________________________________________

Good Books Don't Have to Be Hard
A novelist on the pleasure of reading stories that don't bore; rising up from the supermarket racks

By LEV GROSSMAN



A good story is a dirty secret that we all share. It's what makes guilty pleasures so pleasurable, but it's also what makes them so guilty. A juicy tale reeks of crass commercialism and cheap thrills. We crave such entertainments, but we despise them. Plot makes perverts of us all.

It's not easy to put your finger on what exactly is so disgraceful about our attachment to storyline. Sure, it's something to do with high and low and genres and the canon and such. But what exactly? Part of the problem is that to find the reason you have to dig down a ways, down into the murky history of the novel. There was once a reason for turning away from plot, but that rationale has outlived its usefulness. If there's a key to what the 21st-century novel is going to look like, this is it: the ongoing exoneration and rehabilitation of plot.

Where did this conspiracy come from in the first place—the plot against plot? I blame the Modernists. Who were, I grant you, the single greatest crop of writers the novel has ever seen. In the 1920s alone they gave us "The Age of Innocence," "Ulysses," "A Passage to India," "Mrs. Dalloway," "To the Lighthouse," "Lady Chatterley's Lover," "The Sun Also Rises," "A Farewell to Arms" and "The Sound and the Fury." Not to mention most of "In Search of Lost Time" and all of Kafka's novels. Pity the poor Pulitzer judge for 1926, who had to choose between "The Professor's House," "The Great Gatsby," "Arrowsmith" and "An American Tragedy." (It went to "Arrowsmith." Sinclair Lewis prissily declined the prize.) The 20th century had a full century's worth of masterpieces before it was half over.

But let's look back for a second at where the Modernists came from, and what exactly they did with the novel. They drew a tough hand, historically speaking. All the bad news of the modern era had just arrived more or less at the same time: mass media, advertising, psychoanalysis, mechanized warfare. The rise of electric light and internal combustion had turned their world into a noisy, reeking travesty of the gas-lit, horse-drawn world they grew up in. The orderly, complacent, optimistic Victorian novel had nothing to say to them. Worse than nothing: it felt like a lie. The novel was a mirror the Modernists needed to break, the better to reflect their broken world. So they did.

One of the things they broke was plot. To the Modernists, stories were a distortion of real life. In real life stories don't tie up neatly. Events don't line up in a tidy sequence and mean the same things to everybody they happen to. Ask a veteran of the Somme whether his tour of duty resembled the "Boy's Own" war stories he grew up on. The Modernists broke the clear straight lines of causality and perception and chronological sequence, to make them look more like life as it's actually lived. They took in "The Mill on the Floss" and spat out "The Sound and the Fury."

This brought with it another, related development: difficulty. It's hard to imagine it now, but there was a time when literary novels were not, generally speaking, all that hard to read. Say what you like about the works of Dickens and Thackeray, you pretty much always know who's talking, and when, and what they're talking about. The Modernists introduced us to the idea that reading could be work, and not common labor but the work of an intellectual elite, a highly trained coterie of professional aesthetic interpreters. The motto of Ezra Pound's "Little Review," which published the first chapters of Joyce's "Ulysses," was "Making no compromise with the public taste." Imagine what it felt like the first time somebody opened up "The Waste Land" and saw that it came with footnotes. Amateur hour was over.

But we don't live in the Modernists' world anymore. We have different problems. We've had plenty of bad news of our own. Some of which has to do with the book business itself—sales of adult trade books declined 2.3% last year, compared with 2007. Should we still be writing difficult novels? Isn't it time we made our peace with plot?

After all, the discipline of the conventional literary novel is a pretty harsh one. To read one is to enter into a kind of depressed economy, where pleasure must be bought with large quantities of work and patience. The Modernists felt little obligation to entertain their readers. That was just the price you paid for your Joycean epiphany. Conversely they have trained us, Pavlovianly, to associate a crisp, dynamic, exciting plot with supermarket fiction, and cheap thrills, and embarrassment. Plot was the coward's way out, for people who can't deal with the real world. If you're having too much fun, you're doing it wrong.
There was a time when difficult literature was exciting. T.S. Eliot once famously read to a whole football stadium full of fans.

And it's still exciting—when Eliot does it.

But in contemporary writers it has just become a drag. Which is probably why millions of adults are cheating on the literary novel with the young-adult novel, where the unblushing embrace of storytelling is allowed, even encouraged. Sales of hardcover young-adult books are up 30.7% so far this year, through June, according to the Association of American Publishers, while adult hardcovers are down 17.8%. Nam Le's "The Boat," one of the best-reviewed books of fiction of 2008, has sold 16,000 copies in hardcover and trade paperback, according to Nielsen Bookscan (which admittedly doesn't include all book retailers). In the first quarter of 2009 alone, the author of the "Twilight" series, Stephenie Meyer, sold eight million books.

What are those readers looking for? You'll find critics who say they have bad taste, or that they're lazy and can't hack it in the big leagues. But that's not the case. They need something they're not getting elsewhere. Let's be honest: Why do so many adults read Suzanne Collins's young-adult novel "The Hunger Games" instead of contemporary literary fiction? Because "The Hunger Games" doesn't bore them.

All of this is changing. The revolution is under way. The novel is getting entertaining again. Writers like Michael Chabon, Jonathan Lethem, Donna Tartt, Kelly Link, Audrey Niffenegger, Richard Price, Kate Atkinson, Neil Gaiman, and Susanna Clarke, to name just a few, are busily grafting the sophisticated, intensely aware literary language of Modernism onto the sturdy narrative roots of genre fiction: fantasy, science fiction, detective fiction, romance. They're forging connections between literary spheres that have been hermetically sealed off from one another for a century. Look at Cormac ­McCarthy, who for years appeared to be the oldest living Modernist in captivity, but who has inaugurated his late period with a serial-killer novel followed by a work of apocalyptic science fiction. Look at Thomas Pynchon—in "Inherent Vice" he has swapped his usual cumbersome verbal calisthenics for the more maneuverable chassis of a hard-boiled detective novel.

This is the future of fiction. The novel is finally waking up from its 100-year carbonite nap. Old hierarchies of taste are collapsing. Genres are hybridizing. The balance of power is swinging from the writer back to the reader, and compromises with the public taste are being struck all over the place. Lyricism is on the wane, and suspense and humor and pacing are shedding their stigmas and taking their place as the core literary technologies of the 21st century.

From a hieratic, hermetic art object the novel is blooming into something more casual and open: a literature of pleasure. The critics will have to catch up. This new breed of novel resists interpretation, but not the way the Modernists did. These books require a different set of tools, and a basic belief that plot and literary intelligence aren't mutually exclusive.

In fact the true postmodern novel is here, hiding in plain sight. We just haven't noticed it because we're looking in the wrong aisle. We were trained—by the Modernists, who else—to expect a literary revolution to be a revolution of the avant-garde: typographically altered, grammatically shattered, rhetorically obscure. Difficult, in a word. This is different. It's a revolution from below, up from the supermarket racks.

—Lev Grossman is the book critic at Time magazine and the author of "The Magicians," a novel.


Copyright 2009 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved
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Sunday, September 27, 2009

Roman Polanski Arrested

Big Fan of Polanski. Chinatown. The Pianist. Rosemary's Baby.

Not a big fan of sleeping with 13-year-olds.

Thanks,

Preston
______________________________________

From AOL

ZURICH (Sept. 27) - Organizers of the Zurich Film Festival say director Roman Polanski has been taken into custody on a 31-year-old U.S. arrest warrant.

The organizers say Polanski was detained by police Saturday. Zurich police couldn't immediately confirm the information.

The festival said in a statement Sunday that Polanski traveled to Switzerland to receive an award for his lifetime of work as a director. They said he was arrested in relation to a 1978 U.S. request, without specifying.

Polanski fled the United States in 1978, a year after pleading guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse with a 13-year-old girl.

Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press. Active hyperlinks have been inserted by AOL.
2009-09-27 06:29:21

Saturday, September 26, 2009

MacArthur Award Winner! Congrats to Edwidge Danticat!

Edwidge Danticat to read at FIU next week.

Thanks,

Preston
___________________________________________

By LUISA YANEZ
lyanez@MiamiHerald.com
Local author Edwidge Danticat, a recent MacArthur ``Genius Award'' winner, will speak at a Florida International University event next week.

The Haitian-born author, who last week received the prestigious award that comes with a prize of $500,000, will speak at an event of the Honors College at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday at the Mary Ann Wolfe Theater on the Biscayne Bay Campus, 3000 NE 151st St. ``A Conversation with Danticat'' is free and open to the public. Danticat will discuss her work, which focuses primarily on Haiti and Haitian culture.

Danticat has won the National Book Critics Circle Award, the American Book Award and the Pushcart Short Story Award.

She holds a B.A. from Barnard College and an M.F.A. from Brown University and has served as a visiting professor of creative writing at New York University and the University of Miami.

For more information, contact Honors College associate dean and fellow Juan Carlos Espinosa at 305-348-6795 or espinosj@fiu.edu.

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Say It Ain't So

Patrick Swayze!

1952-2009

Ghost

Dirty Dancing

Red Dawn

R. I. P.

Sunday, September 13, 2009

Attention Black People! Skin Whitener for Sale!

Among Americans, I am considered black.

Okay . . .

Heck, among black people, I am considered black. I am a very dark skinned black man. I am not honey skinned or brown skinned or red skinned or tanned--I am black.

The interesting thing is that I did not know how dark I was until a few years ago I pondered a photograph I had taken with some of my dark skinned black friends. I had always considered them very dark, but when I looked at that photo I made the decision to stop using the "very" when describing them. Among these dark hued brethren, I was the darkest (and the cutest, but that's another story).

That was so weird. When I looked at photographs from my childhood, I was less black. I was more brown. Now I am black.

Then I started looking around to see if I could find black people who were darker even than I was. And there they were. They weren't too hard to find. I would stand beside them and glance furtively, comparing skin tones. I would make excuses to take photographs with them.

Cool, I thought. Cool. There were people even darker than I was.

And my student from Nigeria--I was fascinated by her skin. It was so black it seemed to swallow light and ooze it back out as a sort of sheen or shine. She made even dark skinned people like me seem light.

I recall a conversation I had with this student after class because of a self-deprecating comment she had made during class discussion. Like I said, she was very dark, much darker than I (though much cuter and much smarter). "But Professor Allen," she said, "I'm no different from any other black person. Sometimes the blackness is a burden. Sometimes I just wish I were white. I think we all feel that way sometimes. Right?"

"No. Not all of us," I told her. "Not me. Not as far as I can recall. I've never wished I were white. Maybe I wished it when I was a kid and I cannot remember it, but I even doubt that. My head is just not made that way."

"You've never wished you were white? Come on, professor," she said. "Be honest. You're just trying to act all superior."

"No. I am being honest. I've wished for money. I've wished for fame. I wished to be a best selling novelist. I once even wished to be taller. I wished to be Spider-man when I was a kid, but not because Peter Parker was white, but because I wanted to spin webs, climb walls, and be strong enough to beat up bad guys. I once wished to go out with the prettiest girl in my class, who was white. But again, I did not wish myself white. I saw us together as black and white--in fact, I saw her as pleading with her parents to support her brave love for the amazing black guy that she had fallen in love with. It never happened, of course. I was too shy to even talk to her."

"So you've never wished to be white."

"No. Never," I said. "But I have wished that I could live in a world where there weren't extra hurdles and obstacles because I was black."

She locked onto me with her gaze. "Yes, professor, all black people wish for that, but let me put it to you another way. Do you wish you were black?"

Her question puzzled me. I shrugged. "I am black. I do not have to wish."

"Okay," she said. "When you're about to have a child, do you wish it were black?"

I sensed a trap, but could not see where it was being laid. I answered with joviality, "I certainly do not wish it were white. Hahaha, that would mean my wife had been spending quality time with male company other than myself."

Her expression remained serious. "Do you wish it were as black as you, professor?"

"Uh." The trap. "Uh," I said, searching for words or more joviality.

"Don't equivocate," she said. "Do you wish the child were as black as you, or do you wish, silently, somewhere deep down inside that it were lighter?"

"It does not matter. I do not wish a complexion upon my children. I love my children regardless of their complexions."

"But does the world? Does our country?" she said. "When you have a child, you might wish it were many things that we as a culture find attractive and/or desirable. You might wish he were tall, that she were beautiful, that he were strong, that they were smart, that he were athletic, that she were clever and independent. And if he/she is born with very dark skin, you accept it--but you do not wish it."

"But--"

"No more than you would wish your child were born with a defect. You would love the child regardless of the defect, but you certainly would not wish it upon him/her. I can just see you now, professor, sitting in the waiting room excitedly speculating 'Ooooh, wouldn't it be nice if she gave birth to a sweet little down syndrome boy.' "

I cried foul. "Young lady, you are quite mixing up the issues here--"

But she stuck to her guns. "It's the same way with homosexuality. We are all liberal-minded folk who accept people of all sexual proclivities and persuasions, but who among us wishes to give birth to a little lesbian? Oooo, wouldn't it be nice to bring home a bouncing baby queer boy?" she laughed.

I forgot to mention that on the first night of class she made it clear, to the chagrin of many of her classmates, that she was a very out lesbian.

I countered, "While I do not wish for a dark child, I certainly do not wish that the child be NOT dark. I think dark skin is beautiful as are all of the other possible complexions. In fact, of late even the world has come to see what I have known all along: that very dark skin is beautiful. Just look at the number of famous celebrity beauties and fashion models with very dark skin. Wesley Snipes, a very dark man, is considered quite handsome. And if we take a cynical look at even our history of slavery, we have to admit that the incidence of very white skinned men visiting their sexual passion on what must have been very dark women (since they had come straight from Africa) is further evidence that in the eyes of sexualized males (even white ones) black has always been beautiful, or at least not ugly enough to repulse as is sometimes claimed."

She shook her head sadly. "Blah, blah, blah. And Michael Jackson was rich and handsome and black, and he did something, who knows what, to make his skin lighter. All right, professor, now you're rationalizing, which tells me that you're not going to drop your facade, even though you know that I am right. So I give up."

"It is no facade. Black is beautiful. As beautiful as white. As beautiful as brown. As beautiful as tan."

She said, "I will leave you with one more question. You don't have to answer it. Just promise me you'll go home and think about it."

"What's the question?" I said.

"If you could pull a Michael Jackson," she said, "would you do it?"

"What?"

"If through a medical treatment (or some kind of magical elixir, or maybe even a skin creme) black people--dark people like you and me--could become lighter or even white, would you use it?"

That was the question. And then she left.

But the key for me has always been this: I like Preston. You cannot get me to start disliking Preston. He's got black skin, so then I like black skin. I also like people who like Preston. I like them a whole lot. What I don't like are people who don't like Preston. I don't like them at all.

But I had to admit it was a very good question.

A very troubling question.

____________________________________________________

And then along came this article I found on AOL.

OMG!!!

There are a whole lot of dark people who want to be light, and now I see why!

If you are light, you will get the girl of your dreams. LOL.


_______________________________
NEW DELHI, India (Sept. 10 ) -- Cosmetic advertisements in Asia are targeting men with blunt campaigns aimed at skin color that one lawmaker labels racist.

In one TV commercial, two men, one with dark skin, the other with light skin; stand on a balcony overlooking a neighborhood. The dark skin guy turns to his friend and says in Hindi, "I am unlucky because of my face." His light skin friend replies, "Not because of your face, because of the color of your face."

Suddenly the light skin guy throws his friend a cream. It's a whitening cream.

It is one of several television commercials aimed at men in Pakistan and India. In the end the darker skin actor is shown several shades lighter and he gets the girl he was after. Most of the ads end up that way.

The commercials are sending a not-so-subtle message to men in Asia: Get whiter skin, and you'll get the girl and the job of your dreams. Or at the very least you'll be noticed.

"We always have a complex towards a white skin, towards foreign skin or foreign hair," Jawed Habib says.

Habib should know. He owns a chain of 140 salons located in India and across the world. "We Indian people, we Asian people are more darker, so we want to look more fair."

Skin whiteners were once targeted only to women. Now the products are a hot commodity for men.

Many of the brands being advertised for men are well known around the world -- including Nivea and Garnier.

A marketing study found sales for skin whitening creams have jumped more than 100 percent in rural India and sales for male grooming products are increasing 20 percent annually.

Hindustan Unilever, one of the largest consumer products companies in India, noted in recent annual reports that "skin lightening continues to be a major area of emphasis" for its skin care division.

And Emami Ltd., the company which produces "Fair and Handsome," sent CNN an email saying: "Fair and Handsome is a market leader with almost 70 percent market share in India and doing extremely well in Gulf countries and the Middle East as well."
But in a country where most people have brown skin, the message being sent to men and women has some people outraged.
"Basically if you need a job you have to have white skin. If you want a good partner, a companion you need white skin and you always seem to get it once you've used the fairness cream. Basically I think it's completely racist and highly objectionable," says Brinda Karat.
Karat is a member of India's Parliament who has made formal complaints about the advertisements to Indian authorities. She says the ads are simply playing on a social stigma that already exists in India.

To get a good look at the pervasiveness of the stigma attached to dark skin in India all you have to do is look at the want ads for brides and grooms in the newspaper.

Arranged marriages are still commonplace in India, and the advertisements for brides and grooms often list physical attributes of the person being sought. Many of the ads list "fair" as one of the wanted physical characteristics.

"I mean at a time when we're talking about talents and skills, and the need for the accessibility to that to develop our potential; what does it do to dark persons' self esteem?" Karat says. "I think it should be stopped."

But the product makers say they are simply giving the public what it wants, and a few Indian consumers agreed.

Deepak Rajput said: "Everybody wants to look handsome and beautiful, why not me?"
Salon owner Jawed Habib says he will accommodate if that is what the customer wants, but he doesn't push the skin whitening products.

"Why do you even think about it?" He says: "Let's accept the way we are."

© 2009 Cable News Network. Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
2009-09-10 10:42:16

Saturday, August 29, 2009

I Am Desperately Trying to Give Away Millions of Dollars

. . . But Nobody Wants It!


Here are three business plans I years ago gave to my close friends, who are an MBA and two attorneys. They laughed at me, dismissing the plans as silly and unworkable. But as recent events will prove, Preston L. Allen is, as always, ahead of the curve.

1) A Clock that runs backwards (counter clockwise). You can hang it on the wall behind you in the bathroom so that while you are shaving you can keep track of time by staring straight at the mirror instead of turning around; the backward-running clock on the wall behind you will read forward when you look at it in the mirror.

2) A company that harvests human breast milk from lactating women and markets the milk and its related "human" dairy products.

Check eBay and you will find people looking to purchase breast milk as well as looking to sell it . . .

3) Celebrity funerals: People, I argued, will be willing to pay top dollar to be buried next to celebrities; therefore, we run a company that pays living celebrities a few million dollars up front to allow a select number of their fans to be buried near their final resting place; the company then charges the fans, wealthy fans, a tidy sum for the privilege of being interred near their favorite movie star, musician, athlete, politician, and so on; the burial spot will be predetermined so that if the fan dies before the celebrity, he/she dies knowing that eventually, and eternally, the celebrity will reside nearby.

In the case of celebrities that are already deceased, I argued, our company will make arrangements with their surviving kin, or caretakers of the property; for example, for fans of Elvis Presley, Graceland would be contacted to make arrangements to have select fans buried near the King (is Elvis actually buried at Graceland? I do not know, but it makes little difference. In fact, whether he is buried there or not, many of his fans would pay for the privilege of being buried there.)

Think about this third business plan as you read the following brief article about Marilyn Monroe--and remember, Preston L. Allen, your forward-thinking novelist, came up with it first.


Thanks,

Presty

________________________

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – An American widow sold her husband's burial crypt directly on top of film legend Marilyn Monroe's final resting place for $4.6 million on Monday, through online auctioneer eBay Inc.

Elsie Poncher has said she was selling the crypt in a small, celebrity-heavy cemetery in Los Angeles to pay off her mortgage.

The auction opened earlier this month at $500,000 and attracted 21 bids before closing on Monday. eBay did not say who submitted the winning bid.

"We are currently working with the seller and the high bidder to finalize the sale and will be happy to report more of the details once the sale has been completed," it said in a statement.

Poncher's husband, Richard Poncher, bought the crypt from baseball star Joe DiMaggio, Monroe's ex-husband, as the famous couple was divorcing in 1954.

Monroe died at age 36 in 1962. Richard Poncher died in 1986 at age 81. Elsie Poncher said her husband's body was positioned to allow him to look "face down" on Monroe.

She plans to move his remains over one spot to a crypt that had been intended as her own final resting place. She now will be cremated when she dies.

The Westwood Village Memorial Park cemetery, surrounded by office buildings in the suburb of Westwood, is home to such celebrities as Dean Martin, James Coburn, Roy Orbison, Truman Capote, Natalie Wood, Carl Wilson, Minnie Riperton and recent arrival Farrah Fawcett.

(Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis; Editing by Dean Goodman)
_____________________________

Kidnapped Girl found 18 Years Later

Read the sick news below and then read my short story entitled "I Am Dragon" on my other blog at Allornothingthenovel.blogspot.com

Thanks,

Preston



_______________________________
(from NY Daily News)

A California mom whose 11-year-old daughter was kidnapped 18 years ago got a call she never expected: On the other end was the child she had long thought was dead.

Jaycee Lee Dugard, who was abducted from in front of her South Lake Tahoe home in 1991, was privately reunited with her mom Thursday night.

"It's an absolute miracle. Can you imagine this after 18 years?" said Jaycee's stepfather, Carl Probyn.

Cops arrested a 58-year-old religious fanatic and convicted rapist, Phillip Garrido, who they say kept Jaycee hidden in a "secret backyard" and fathered two children with her - one the same age as the victim was when she vanished.

In their first conversation Wednesday night, Jaycee gave her mother a double jolt, Probyn said.

"I have something to tell you. I have babies," Jaycee told Terry Probyn, 50, who asked how many.

"Two," she replied.

Also arrested was Garrido's wife, Nancy, who police charge was with Garrido when they snatched Jaycee on June 10, 1991, as she walked to her school bus stop.

"I gave up hope for 18 years, just went into recovery mode," said Carl Probyn, who witnessed the abduction but was too far away to stop it. "Now, I just won the lotto. It's just unbelievable."

Probyn said his estranged wife called him soon after getting word from the FBI that Jaycee was safe and healthy.

"She said, 'They found Jaycee. She's alive,'" said Carl Probyn, 60, now of Riverside in Southern California. "We cried for about two minutes."

In an interview with KCRA3, Garrido on Thursday night urged people to wait for more details about the case to come out before making a judgment.

"What's kept me busy the last several years is I've completely turned my life around," he said.

"And you're going to find the most powerful story coming from the witness, the victim - you wait. If you take this a step at a time, you're going to fall over backwards and in the end, you're going to find the most powerful heartwarming story."

Lt. Fred Kollar of the El Dorado County Sheriff's Department said Garrido and his wife kept Jaycee for nearly two decades hidden the backyard of their home in the suburban San Francisco town of Antioch.

"My understanding is they went directly to that property right after the kidnapping," Kollar said. "The children were born there and they lived there since."

He said that Jaycee, now 29, and her two daughters, ages 11 and 15, were kept in a shack and two tents hidden behind a tree-lined, 6-foot-tall fence at the rear of the suspects' backyard.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/2009/08/28/2009-08-28_kidnapped_girl_found_years_later.html#ixzz0Pd5mTTO4

Nice

(From NY Post August 24, 2009)

A retired South Carolina state employee won a $260 million Powerball jackpot. Solomon Jackson Jr., of Columbia, refused to say much about himself or his plans. It's not known whether he will take his winnings annually over three decades or in a $129 million lump sum. Lukas Alpert

Oh, Stop it

Disney Employee Wins the Lottery
(from New York Post August 24, 2009)

Here's a story about Snow White and the seven figures.

In a fairy-tale twist, a smoking-hot actress who played Snow White at Disneyland walked off with a cool $5.2 million after winning the California Lottery.

"I know I played Snow White, but I feel more like Cinderella," said Natalie Marston, 22. "In a million years, I would not have thought something like this could happen to me."

Marston hit the jackpot on the California Lottery's "Make Me a Millionaire" game show, on which contestants get to appear by buying a winning scratch-off ticket.

Marston -- who has appeared in films like "Magnolia" with Tom Cruise -- will take home an annual $195,000 after taxes for 20 years, for a total of $3.9 million, lottery officials said.

She has already quit her Disney job, which she said she was doing only to further her acting career. . .

Say It AIn't So

Senator Edward Kennedy (1932-2009)

R. I. P.

Friday, July 31, 2009

Say It Ain't So

Walter Kronkite (1916 - 2009)

As a child, I watched Walter Kronkite on the CBS Evening News many nights, imitating the way he spoke to improve my accent. I wanted to sound like Walter Kronkite.

Moon Landing

Viet Nam

Watergate

Nixon's final goodbye as his helicopter lifts off the White House lawn

Kronkite told it like it was.

RIP

Say It Ain't so

Reverend Ike

Frederick Joseph Eikerenkoetter II 1935 - 2009

"Close your eyes and see green!"

RIP

Saturday, June 27, 2009

Wikipedia Warning

The day Ed McMahon died, I looked up his bio on Wikipedia.

Near the end of his entry I read the words, "Ed McMahon was known to cruise gay bars in Miami."

I suspected that this bit of info was a prank line snuck in by someone trying to get a cheap laugh or by someone testing how quickly the Wikipedia guardians would find and delete it. It's kinda like cyber-graffiti. Marking up a public space with your TAG.

At any rate, the line stood out as odd.

The next day when I checked, the line was gone.

"LOL," typed the prankster to his Myspace buddies. "They caught IT."

I'm sure Ed McMahon's family didn't find IT amusing.

Wikipedia is a great concept, though not a new one.

Read PROFESSOR AND THE MADMAN, and you will see that the idea of building an exhaustive body of knowledge by encouraging the masses to contribute is how the Oxford English Dictionary was put together, way back when.

To build the Oxford English Dictionary, the assemblers requested that lovers of words simply mail definitions to Oxford, England; then they, the assemblers, spent many decades sifting through the millions of entries sent in, checking for accuracy, of course, and selecting the best definitions and phrasings for this or that word.

In short, the assemblers of that great, seminal work were making sure that the wheat was separated from the tares, the good stuff from the junk, the serious contributers from the pranksters.

It was an overwhelming task that took many decades to accomplish as well as many succeeding teams of assemblers. In fact, those who began the work on the Oxford Dictionary were not alive to see the printing of its first COMPLETE set.

Wikipedia's attempt to maintain accuracy of information on its site is perhaps even more daunting (and, perhaps, ultimately impossible).

Wikipedia receives billions of entries on every subject in dozens of languages.

The Oxford people had the luxury, if you want to call it that, of having language experts sift through all of the entries for decades before they felt confident enough to print and bind their many-volume work.

Wikipedia's format is virtual, the absence of paper and ink allowing for a faster (perhaps immediate) "printing", or posting, of new (and unverified) information.

Nevertheless, when you want information fast, Wikipedia can't be beat.

I go to it, pretty much, every day, though I don't completely trust it.

The information is not always accurate, you see?

Furthermore, the mistakes in spelling, punctuation, and grammar . . . okay, let's not even get into that.

So Wikipedia is always my first source.

Never my only.

Never my last.

This week, you are going to be reading a lot about MJ and Farrah on Wikipedia. But don't fret--the Wikipedia guardians will be watching those sites carefully for pranks and unintended falsehoods because MJ and Farrah were big.

Then again, Ed McMahon was big too.

Thanks,

Preston

Say It Ain't So

Rough Week for Entertainment.

You are correct, sir!


Ed McMahon

March 6, 1923 – June 23, 2009

Friday, June 26, 2009

Say It Ain't So

Two Words:

Michael Jackson

August 29, 1958 – June 25, 2009


Billy Jean
Will You Be There
Beat It
Off the Wall
Bad
ABC
Ben
Pretty Young Thing
The Love You Save May Be Your Own

The teens of my Generation, classes of 81 through 85, you ALL know what you do when you hear the opening bass and keyboard riffs of BILLY JEAN. You stop right where you are standing--whether you are in traffic or in court or trying to get up into some of that sweet stuff. You start nodding your head in time to the beat. You make eye contact with another human, if you can, and you say, 'Damn, boy, back in the day, back in the day,oohhh, this is my jam!' as Michael sexily hiccups and spits those immortal words, 'She was more like a beauty queen when she crossed the scene . . .

Say it ain't so. Say it ain't so.


R.I.P.

Lipshitz 6

Lipshitz 6
Reading T Cooper for Christmas

Punk Blood

Punk Blood
Jay Marvin

Breath, Eyes, Memory

Breath, Eyes, Memory

Anonymous Rex

Anonymous Rex
Reading Eric Garcia for Christmas

Vinegar Hill

Vinegar Hill
Reading A. Manette Ansay for Christmas

Nicotine Dreams

Nicotine Dreams
Reading Katie Cunningham for Christmas

Junot Diaz

Junot Diaz
Pulitzer Prize Winner!!!

Edwige Danticat

Edwige Danticat
New Year's Reading

Greed

Greed
This Brother Is Scary Good

One More Chance

One More Chance
The genius Is At It Again/The Rapper CHIEF aka Sherwin Allen

Sandrine's Letter

Sandrine's Letter
Check out Sandrine's Letter To Tomorrow. You will like it, I insist.

All or Nothing

All or Nothing

Editorial Reviews of All or Nothing

New York Times--". . . a cartographer of autodegradation . . . Like Dostoyevsky, Allen colorfully evokes the gambling milieu — the chained (mis)fortunes of the players, their vanities and grotesqueries, their quasi-philosophical ruminations on chance. Like Burroughs, he is a dispassionate chronicler of the addict’s daily ritual, neither glorifying nor vilifying the matter at hand."

Florida Book Review--". . . Allen examines the flaming abyss compulsive gambling burns in its victims’ guts, self-esteem and bank accounts, the desperate, myopic immediacy it incites, the self-destructive need it feeds on, the families and relationships it destroys. For with gamblers, it really is all or nothing. Usually nothing. Take it from a reviewer who’s been there. Allen is right on the money here."

Foreword Magazine--"Not shame, not assault, not even murder is enough reason to stop. Allen’s second novel, All or Nothing, is funny, relentless, haunting, and highly readable. P’s inner dialogues illuminate the grubby tragedy of addiction, and his actions speak for the train wreck that is gambling."

Library Journal--"Told without preaching or moralizing, the facts of P's life express volumes on the destructive power of gambling. This is strongly recommended and deserves a wide audience; an excellent choice for book discussion groups."—Lisa Rohrbaugh, East Palestine Memorial P.L., OH

LEXIS-NEXIS--"By day, P drives a school bus in Miami. But his vocation? He's a gambler who craves every opportunity to steal a few hours to play the numbers, the lottery, at the Indian casinos. Allen has a narrative voice as compelling as feeding the slots is to P." Betsy Willeford is a Miami-based freelance book reviewer. November 4, 2007

Publisher’s Weekly--"Allen’s dark and insightful novel depicts narrator P’s sobering descent into his gambling addiction . . . The well-written novel takes the reader on a chaotic ride as P chases, finds and loses fast, easy money. Allen (Churchboys and Other Sinners) reveals how addiction annihilates its victims and shows that winning isn’t always so different from losing."

Kirkus Review--"We gamble to gamble. We play to play. We don't play to win." Right there, P, desperado narrator of this crash-'n'-burn novella, sums up the madness. A black man in Miami, P has graduated from youthful nonchalance (a '79 Buick Electra 225) to married-with-a-kid pseudo-stability, driving a school bus in the shadow of the Biltmore. He lives large enough to afford two wide-screen TVs, but the wife wants more. Or so he rationalizes, as he hits the open-all-night Indian casinos, "controlling" his jones with a daily ATM maximum of $1,000. Low enough to rob the family piggy bank for slot-machine fodder, he sinks yet further, praying that his allergic 11-year-old eat forbidden strawberries—which will send him into a coma, from which he'll emerge with the winning formula for Cash 3 (the kid's supposedly psychic when he's sick). All street smarts and inside skinny, the book gives readers a contact high that zooms to full rush when P scores $160,000 on one lucky machine ("God is the God of Ping-ping," he exults, as the coins flood out). The loot's enough to make the small-timer turn pro, as he heads, flush, to Vegas to cash in. But in Sin City, karmic payback awaits. Swanky hookers, underworld "professors" deeply schooled in sure-fire systems to beat the house, manic trips to the CashMyCheck store for funds to fuel the ferocious need—Allen's brilliant at conveying the hothouse atmosphere of hell-bent gaming. Fun time in the Inferno.

At Books and Books

At Books and Books
Me And Vicki at Our Reading

Bio


Preston L. Allen is the recipient of a State of Florida Individual Artist Fellowship in Literature and the Sonja H. Stone Prize in Fiction for his short story collection Churchboys and Other Sinners (Carolina Wren Press 2003). His works have appeared in numerous publications including The Seattle Review, The Crab Orchard Review, Asili, Drum Voices, and Gulfstream Magazine; and he has been anthologized in Here We Are: An Anthology of South Florida Writers, Brown Sugar: A Collection of Erotic Black Fiction, Miami Noir, and the forthcoming Las Vegas Noir. His fourth novel, All Or Nothing, chronicles the life of a small-time gambler who finally hits it big. Preston Allen teaches English and Creative Writing in Miami, Florida.