truesee's Blog

Michael Jackson film 'This Is It' premieres for fans and stars around the world

Savulich, Andrew New York DailyJordan Neely (right) and Moses Harper rock with Michael Jackson-like energy in Times Square at Tuesday night's New York premiere of the King of Pop documentary 'This Is It.'

'This Is It' premieres in New York, Los Angeles and around the world.

It was off the wall!

Dueling premieres on both coasts and sold-out theaters around the world marked Tuesday night's debut of Michael Jackson's super-hyped documentary "This Is It."

Fans of the King of Pop turned out in sequins, some doing impromptu moonwalks, as they clamored for theater seats to watch the late icon's swan song.

"He means everything to me," said Jordan Neely, 16, of Washington Heights, wearing a single sequined glove, matching jacket and fedora in honor of the music legend.

"When he died, it was one of the saddest days since 9/11. I just want to see him do it one more time," said Jordan, one of over a 3,000 fans attending the premiere at the Regal Cinema on 42nd St. and Eighth Ave. in Times Square.

Oprah Winfrey's sidekick, Gayle King, was among a roster of stars attending the New York premiere, including Ice-T, Spike Lee, Russell Simmons.

"The main thing you get out of the movie is that the dude was still very much alive," said Ice-T. "It was a cold shot, man. You gotta see it for yourself."

Sherri Sheppard of "The View" agreed.

"It was great. He looked so alive," she said, adding that it's a shame her 4-year-old son will never know who Michael Jackson is.

King said she was compelled to attend "because it's history."

"I loved Michael's music and I can't wait to see the genius that is Michael Jackson," King said.

In Los Angeles, celebrities including "American Idol" winner David Cook, Mickey Rooney, Jennifer Lopez, Will Smith and Paris Hilton strolled the red carpet in front of the Nokia Theatre.

"We've been Michael Jackson fans for a long time," said the 89-year-old Rooney, standing with his wife, Jan. "Everybody who came out tonight came out of respect."

The 111-minute film was culled from 120 hours of footage of Jackson preparing for his comeback shows at London's O2 Arena.

Sony Pictures paid $60 million for the right to distribute the movie, which is expected to gross over $250 million in its first week.

Jackson died at age 50 on June 25 from a prescription drug overdose, just days before his first concert.

"This movie is unguarded, it's real, it's raw and honest," insisted the film's director, Kenny Ortega. "You see Michael not always in perfect situations, going through the process of creating a show, and sometimes it's painful."

Famed lawyer Thomas Mesereau, who successfully defended Jackson in 2005 against child molestation charges, was on hand in L.A. to pay homage to "a true genius."

"I'm here to see one of the greatest performers of all time," Mesereau said.

Premieres were simultaneously held in 16 cities around the world, including London, Berlin and Seol, Korea.
Miko Brando, son of screen legend Marlon Brando and one of Jackson's closest friends, attended the London premiere and said the film showed a resurgent Jackson.

"This was just rehearsing," said Brando, who saw the movie at a special screening over the weekend with Elizabeth Taylor. "You can only imagine what it would've been like if he had performed like this on stage."

Asked how Taylor reacted, he said: "She didn't tell me anything - we just enjoyed the movie together. It's a great performance by my best friend." 

Taylor reportedly described "This Is It" as the single best piece of filmmaking she had ever seen, according to Larry King.

"Sure - I guess she took the words out of my mouth. I agree with her 100 percent," said Brando.

Chucky Klapow, 29, one of the dancers in "This is It," fondly recalled his last rehearsal with Jackson and lamented not being able to perform with him in front of a live audience.

"You can only imagine what the real show would have been," said Klapow outside the Nokia. "He was ready and strong."

LINK TO PHOTO GALLERY OF THIS IS IT FROM AROUNG THE WORLD:

http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/movies/galleries/michael_jackson_film_this_is_it_premieres_around_the_world/michael_jackson_film_this_is_it_premieres_around_the_world.html

Fla. man says Home Depot fired him over God button

Tuesday, 10.27.09

In this undated photo from video, Trevor Keezer is shown in front of The Home Depot in Okeechobee, Fla. Keezer says he was fired from his job as a cashier at The Home Depot in the rural Florida town because he wore an American flag button that read, "One nation under God, indivisible." WPTV NewsChannel 5 / AP Photo

Police in Belgium say one-legged suspect caught after one shoe goes missing from store

Associated Press

9:24 PM EDT, October 26, 2009

BRUSSELS (AP) — Police said a one-legged suspect was caught after only one shoe went missing in a store in Belgium. An amputee was an immediate suspect when a store attendant found one shoe missing from a shop in the western Belgian town of Maldegem. Police spokesman Rik Decraemer said Monday authorities were alerted and quickly found the man who fit the description by shopkeepers. The shoe was also recovered.

The suspect, a Russian asylum seeker, faces possible charges and was handed over to judicial authorities.

Southwest Airlines debuts $25 fare sale

Srakocic/AP

Twenty-five bucks will get you a lot of things, though you probably never expected it to get you an airline ticket. But now it does.

Southwest Airlines debuts its $25 airfare sale Tuesday.  The $25 fare, part of the airline's fourth-quarter sale, is available on several one-way flights of less than 375 miles.  For travel of between 375 and 549 miles, the price is $50; for travel of between 550 and 999 miles, the fare is $75.

The company is heavily promoting these fares on Southwest.com with a campaign that says, "With fares this low, you should invent a reason to go."

The fares are available for travel Dec. 2 - 16, 2009, and Jan. 5 - Feb. 10, 2010.  You can purchase them through Thursday.  Some restrictions apply.

http://www.wbaltv.com/slideshow/news/21427942/detail.html

2 Pit Bulls Rip Bumper Off Car

Ft. Smith Police Still Looking For Dogs

KHBS-TV

POSTED: 9:16 am CDT October 26, 2009
UPDATED: 9:30 am CDT October 26, 2009

FORT SMITH, Ark. -- Animal control officers are searching a local neighborhood for two pit bulls that were able to rip apart the front of a car with their teeth.

Police said a 911 call led them to a Fort Smith home off Kinkead Avenue, where they found two pit bulls on the hood of a car early Sunday morning.

"They turned flash lights on the car. There was one on the car and one on the hood," said Fort Smith resident Ima Jean Vervack.

Police chased the dogs and searched nearby neighborhoods.

Vervack said it's shocking to look at the front bumper of her car that was torn apart by the dogs' teeth.

"The whole front is torn up. The fender is torn off. There was blood where they cut their mouth trying to tear this stuff off," Vervack said.

Vervack said police rushed to her home just before 4 a.m. when her daughter called 911.

"The police --- if they hadn't have seen the dogs, they wouldn't have believed it if we just told them that. So, thank God they saw it," she said.

Vervack said the two dogs ran into the neighborhood with police right behind them.

"He had his gun and my daughter yelled at him and said, 'That dog will attack you. Look what he has done to the car,' and he said, 'No, I'll get him first,' " she said.

Vervack said she didn't find an animal under the car that the dogs might have been trying to attack, but was trying to figure if they were trying to attack something.

"I watch a lot of TV, and I saw on there one of the times where they were training the dogs to break into the cars. I thought of that," she said.

Police said if residents see these dogs in their neighborhoods that they should not approach them, but should call Animal Control.

Police said they don't believe the dogs have rabies, but said they are trying to figure out why the dogs would viciously rip apart a car

LINK TO PHOTO AND VIDEO OF CAR:

http://www.wbaltv.com/family/21427604/detail.html

Billboards now deliver news of local deaths

GUNNAR OLSON

Des Moines Register

October 21, 2009

Last Updated October 24, 2009

Des Moines residents are learning about people's deaths in a new way: electronic billboards.

The obituary, long a staple of newspapers, has taken an evolutionary twist, thanks to Iles Funeral Homes of Des Moines and the local division of Clear Channel Outdoor.

"This is not anything I've ever heard of," said Jessica Koth, spokeswoman for the National Funeral Directors Association in Brookfield, Wis.

Obituaries have broken out of print in recent years with the advance of technology, notably the Internet.

Funeral homes publish obituaries on their Web sites, and Koth said she's heard of funeral homes that post obituaries on social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter. But she said advertising on billboards is new territory.

The electronic billboards are not posting full obituaries; drivers would never have time to read them. The signs are more like service announcements.

Alternating with ads for vacation getaways and gas station soft drinks, the 8-second announcements feature the deceased's name and the day, time and place of the funeral. A picture is optional.

Families don't pay extra.

"We thought that might be a good way to do something similar, to get those service announcements out," said John Wild, general manager at Iles.

The program started with Clear Channel approaching Iles about advertising its funeral homes on electronic billboards, Wild said. He said Iles wasn't interested in advertising itself directly but wondered about doing service announcements.

Tim Jameson, president of the Des Moines division of Clear Channel Outdoor, was mum on details of the program, declining to share even how many electronic billboards the company has in the Des Moines area.

Wild counted at least five, on Interstate Highway 235, 63rd Street, Ingersoll Avenue, Southeast 14th Street and Army Post Road.

Tony Alwin, a senior vice president in marketing and creative with Clear Channel Outdoor, one of the world's largest providers of digital billboards, said he had not heard of the program in Des Moines until a reporter called. He thought it was a good idea.

"I've got to find out more," Alwin said. "That could be something we want to explore more with all of the markets."

Not everyone is a fan.

"Out from the back pages, huh?" said Marilyn Johnson, author of "The Dead Beat," a 2006 book about obituaries.

Johnson, who spent two years studying obituaries from around the world, said billboard obituaries "invite a lot of bad taste."

She said old family photos make bad enough reproductions in newspaper columns, let alone being blown up onto a billboard.

"It could cause accidents, right? Wouldn't you like drive into a telephone pole if you saw your neighbor up there and didn't know? ... "What are you going to do, pull off and mourn?"

Jameson played down questions of whether the ads posed safety issues, saying drivers could just as easily receive news of a loved one's death via a call on their cell phone.

Like it or not, today's world moves at a faster pace, and that includes many distractions on the road, Jameson said. He said the companies that adapt will survive.

"If you think about it, the family living room is not the family living room," he said. "The living room is the minivan."

RODNEY WHITE/REGISTER PHOTO

This electronic billboard can be seen from the northbound lanes of Interstate Highway 235 near Euclid Avenue in Des Moines.

Officer accused of pointing gun at 'House of Screams' character

Off-duty city officer charged with assault in incident involving killer from Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie

Peter Hermann

Baltimore Sun reporter

4:08 p.m. EDT, October 26, 2009

(AP photo/Melanie Dabovich)

This Oct. 1, 2009 photo shows hotel owner Larry Whitten standing in front of the sign for his hotel in Taos, N.M. Whitten has caused a stir in the small northern New Mexico town after he purchased a hotel in the community and Anglicized the Spanish first names of some employees and asked Hispanic employees to not speak Spanish is his presence.

Hotel owner tells Hispanic workers to change names

Published - Oct 26 2009 08:57AM EDT

MELANIE DABOVICH

Associated Press Writer

TAOS, N.M.— Larry Whitten marched into this northern New Mexico town in late July on a mission: resurrect a failing hotel.

The tough-talking former Marine immediately laid down some new rules. Among them, he forbade the Hispanic workers at the run-down, Southwestern adobe-style hotel from speaking Spanish in his presence (he thought they'd be talking about him), and ordered some to Anglicize their names.

No more Martin (Mahr-TEEN). It was plain-old Martin. No more Marcos. Now it would be Mark.

Whitten's management style had worked for him as he's turned around other distressed hotels he bought in recent years across the country.

The 63-year-old Texan, however, wasn't prepared for what followed.

His rules and his firing of several Hispanic employees angered his employees and many in this liberal enclave of 5,000 residents at the base of the Sangre de Cristo mountains, where the most alternative of lifestyles can find a home and where Spanish language, culture and traditions have a long and revered history.

"I came into this landmine of Anglos versus Spanish versus Mexicans versus Indians versus everybody up here. I'm just doing what I've always done," he says.

Former workers, their relatives and some town residents picketed across the street from the hotel.

"I do feel he's a racist, but he's a racist out of ignorance. He doesn't know that what he's doing is wrong," says protester Juanito Burns Jr., who identified himself as prime minister of an activist group called Los Brown Berets de Nuevo Mexico.

The Virginia-born Whitten had spent 40 years in the hotel business, turning around more than 20 hotels in Texas, Oklahoma, Florida and South Carolina, before moving with his wife to Taos from Abilene, Texas. He had visited Taos before, and liked its beauty. When Whitten saw that the Paragon Inn was up for sale, he jumped at it.

The hotel sits along narrow, two-lane Paseo del Pueblo, where souped-up lowriders radiate a just-waxed gleam in the soft sunshine as they cruise past centuries-old adobe buildings. One recent afternoon, a woman slowly rode her fat-tire bicycle along a cracked sidewalk, oversized purple butterfly wings on her back and a breeze blowing her long, blonde dreadlocks.

The community includes Taos Pueblo, an American Indian dwelling inhabited for over 1,000 years, and an adobe Catholic church made famous in a Georgia O'Keeffe painting.

After he arrived, Whitten met with the employees. He says he immediately noticed that they were hostile to his management style and worried they might start talking about him in Spanish.

"Because of that, I asked the people in my presence to speak only English because I do not understand Spanish," Whitten says. "I've been working 24 years in Texas and we have a lot of Spanish people there. I've never had to ask anyone to speak only English in front of me because I've never had a reason to."

Some employees were fired, Whitten says, because they were hostile and insubordinate. He says they called him "a white (N-word)."

Fired hotel manager Kathy Archuleta says the workers initially tried to adjust to his style. "We had already gone through four or five owners before him, so we knew what to expect," Archuleta says. "I told (the workers) we needed to give him a chance."

Then Whitten told some employees he was changing their Spanish first names. Whitten says it's a routine practice at his hotels to change first names of employees who work the front desk phones or deal directly with guests if their names are difficult to understand or pronounce.

"It has nothing to do with racism. I'm not doing it for any reason other than for the satisfaction of my guests, because people calling from all over America don't know the Spanish accents or the Spanish culture or Spanish anything," Whitten says.

Martin Gutierrez, another fired employee, says he felt disrespected when he was told to use the unaccented Martin as his name. He says he told Whitten that Spanish was spoken in New Mexico before English. "He told me he didn't care what I thought because this was his business," Gutierrez says.

"I don't have to change my name and language or heritage," he says. "I'm professional the way I am."

After the firings, the New Mexico chapter of the League of United Latin American Citizens, a national civil rights group, sent Whitten a letter, raising concerns about treatment of Hispanic workers. Whitten says he sent them a letter and posted messages on the hotel marquee, alleging that the group referred to him with a racial slur. LULAC denied the charge.

The messages and comments he made in interviews with local media, including referring to townsfolk as "mountain people" and "potheads who escaped society," further enflamed tensions.

Taos Mayor Darren Cordova says Whitten wasn't doing anything illegal. But he says Whitten failed to better familiarize himself with the town and its culture before deciding to buy the hotel for $2 million. "Taos is so unique that you would not do anything in Taos that you would do elsewhere," he says.

Whitten grew subdued as a two-hour interview with The Associated Press progressed. He said he was sorry for the misunderstanding and insisted he has never been against any culture.

"What kind of fool or idiot or poor businessman would I be to orchestrate this whole crazy thing that's costed me a lot of time, money and aggravation?" Whitten said.

Whitten should have dealt with the situation differently, especially in a majority Hispanic town, said 71-year-old Taos artist Ken O'Neil, while sipping his afternoon coffee on the town's historic plaza.

"To make demands like he did just seems over the top," he says. "Nobody won here. It's not always about winning. Sometimes, it's about what you learn."

http://www.wbaltv.com/video/21410693/index.html

http://www.chicagotribune.com/health/preventivemedicine/chi-10-ways-to-control-your-health-pictures,0,3886332.photogallery

From bad to hearse: Suit over funeral-car explosion

KATHIANNE BONIELLO

 NY Post

Last Updated: 5:01 PM, October 25, 2009

Posted: 3:53 AM, October 25, 2009

She went out with a bang, and it's left her Bronx family fuming.

Glatha Byrd's final send-off was "apocalyptic" -- as the hearse carrying her body exploded and caught fire on the Major Deegan Expressway, says family lawyer James Franzetti.

The family has filed suit in Bronx Supreme Court over the May 13, 2008, incident, accusing the Griffin Peters Funeral Home of causing some of Byrd's relatives "severe and serious" injuries.

Valerie Davis, wife of the Harlem funeral home's owner, Keith Davis, called the suit "ridiculous."

She said she had heard the relatives, who are also related to her husband, joking about the engine fireworks.

And, she added, no one indicated they were hurt as they removed the "unsinged" casket from the hearse, placed it in the back of an SUV and kept going -- leaving behind the shaken funeral director, who had been driving the hearse.

Little did they know the Ferncliff Cemetery burial in Hartsdale couldn't go on without him -- giving the funeral party an hour to kill beside Byrd's open grave.

Franzetti claims the casket was smoke damaged and the flowers were burned.

Tiny, tiny, tiny houses

October 22 2009 at 07:00 AM

SF Chronicles

Mobile dwelling designer Christopher Deam  of Tumbleweed, the Tiny House Company, founded by Jay Shafer, who builds and sells -- you guessed it -- little dwellings ranging in size from 65 to 372 square feet.

Kids build forts with blankets and chairs, carving out their own space inside their parents' home. The space inside those "walls" are as sacred as the boundaries of their very real rooms. It's their safe spot and they can control everything that happens inside it. Not to trivialize these homes in any way, but they remind me of those forts I used to build with my friends -- except these are for grownups.

The Tiny Houses don't require building permits because they're on wheels, so they can literally be placed in a backyard (yes, albeit a very large backyard). The Small Houses are more like real dwellings with a separate room and an option for a 1st floor bedroom.

The XS-House measures 65 square feet.

Tumbleweed Tiny House Company

The Weebee comes in at 102 square feet.

 San Francisco's Modern Cabana offers its very own modern rendition. These range from 120 to 300 square feet.

 Modern Cabana

Modern Cabana

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/wallflower/detail?entry_id=50003#ixzz0Uwcs06OE

Man who listed 'robbery' as occupation sentenced

Thursday, October 22, 2009 7:15 pm

 A 60-year-old Rapid City man has been sentenced to four years in prison for robbing a bank in the city. Police said Lonnie Pannell walked into the downtown Dakotah Bank on Feb. 5 without a weapon and demanded money. He got away with about $2,800.

http://www.boston.com/ae/movies/gallery/top_50_scary_movies/?p1=Well_MostPop_Emailed6