Recurring Themes
Once again, someone found a suspected live explosive on his property, put it in his car, and took it to the local police station (this time, a hand grenade, in Devon, England, in November). (For the record, emergency personnel would rather be told about an explosive than have it brought into their building.) Once again,…
Feuds
The Catholic archbishop overseeing a convent near Bari, Italy, closed it down in August after the mother superior was attacked and beaten by her two nuns, who were angry at her authoritarian ways. Ex-parishioner Angel Llavano, who had left a phone message for Father Luis Alfredo Rios criticizing one of his homilies, filed a defamation…
Science on the Cutting Edge
Babies Out of Order: Amelia Spence, 29, gave birth in Glasgow, Scotland, in October to two babies, one just minutes before the other, but they were not twins. The apparently super-fertile Spence, though on contraceptive pills, conceived twice in a three-week period with eggs from successive monthly cycles (“superfetation”). In Cary, N.C., a woman gave…
Injudicious Judges
Pennsylvania Superior Court judge Michael Thomas Joyce, 58, was indicted in August for fraud in connection with $440,000 he received after his car was nudged (at 5 mph) in a 2001 accident. Joyce claimed that he was in such neck and back pain as to be prevented from certain activities such as holding a coffee…
Least Competent People
In November, Britain’s new weather-themed Cool Cash lottery game was canceled after one day because too many players failed to understand the rules. Each card had a visible temperature and a temperature to be scratched off, and the purchaser would win if the scratched-off temperature was “lower” than the visible one. Officials said they had…
Airport discontinues ‘door-to-door’ service
Will Rogers World Airport’s Director of Airports said today shuttle service from the main lot to the terminal has been changing for the last 10 days. “Door-to-door” service has given way to a routine transportation from shelters to the shuttle to the terminal. “We started a soft rollout last week,” Mark Kranenburg said. Shuttles…
Long May She Reign – Ellen Emerson White
Feiwel & Friends This fourth offering in a series about the daughter of the first woman U.S. president finds 18-year-old Meg Powers, alive “? barely “? following kidnapping by terrorists. She has survived as a result of grim, stubborn tenacity in the face of abuse from the twisted captor who delighted in both her wry…
Pudding Attack trades guitars for keyboards on new CD
Pudding Attack isn’t the worst name in the world ” at least not for the Oklahoma City trio which has re-emerged with the album “Miniskirt Cash Machine.” The band has traded in the electric guitar for a menagerie of keyboards and electric pianos, making for fistfuls of fuzzy blips and beeps. Attack member Robb Benhoff…
This Christmas
Reviewer’s grade: B- While it won’t make anyone forget “It’s a Wonderful Life” anytime soon, “This Christmas” is still better than a lot of manufactured holiday cheer you’ll find at the cineplex these days. Writer/director Preston A. Whitmore II (“Crossover”) has fashioned a big, fat dramedy about a family reunion over Christmas, the kind…
Fine Points of the Law
The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled in October that attorney Michael Inglimo did not violate a state regulation that bars a lawyer from having sex “with a current client”: Inglimo had sex with a client’s girlfriend during a three-way session, but according to the judges, the regulation bans only direct sex with the client. (However, the…
August Rush
naways in an abandoned theater. Keri Russell (“Waitress”) and Jonathan Rhys Meyers (“Match Point”) are the parents. The movie has more coincidences than the collected works of Charles Dickens and none of the characters are particularly likable. For all its optimism and supposed charm, the whole enterprise is deader than a Confederate victory party.…
Visionary leadership
Oklahoma and Oklahoma City have been enjoying several years of prosperity. Some of the credit goes to former Oklahoma City Mayor Ron Norick for his visionary leadership on MAPS. Norick convinced voters that taxing themselves would give the city new life. Few politicians ever have been willing to promote a tax increase ” and lived…
Holiday crafts focus of kids’ program at Village Library
Holidays of all kinds will be celebrated at the Village Public Library’s “Holiday Make and Take” from 10 a.m. to noon Saturday at the Village Library, 10307 N. Pennsylvania. Kids ages 4 to 12 can make gifts, decorations and even something to eat at the annual event. “We like to incorporate everyone’s tradition into it,…
100 Ideas’ book being assembled before submission deadline
Would-be “best” ideas from the more than 3,000 sent into Lance Cargill’s “100 Ideas” campaign were already being culled before the deadline closed, according to spokesman Pat Schnake. Schnake said the push to publish the book into which the “best” 100 ideas are to be printed forced organizers to start the selection early. “They have…
New football league considering OKC as host city
A new outdoor 11-on-11 league is giving pro football a shot. It’s dubbed the United Football League, and officials are scouting out 13 potential franchise cities to host the first eight teams. As fate has it, Oklahoma City is one of them. Officials already have been in town, talking to business owners, seeing who…
Carpenter Square’s ‘O’Conner Girls’ rings secrets, laughs from patriarch’s passing
Just after Christmas in snowy Minnesota, and a year of extended care, the Irish patriarch of the O’Conner family dies. Even before the funeral, wife Sarah begins cleaning out the clutter of memorabilia and clothes that represent his life. Gradually, the family story unfolds, with some secrets that are not necessarily earthshaking, but reveal significant.…
Annual pottery sale held at City Arts Center
City Arts Center at Fair Park’s annual pottery sale is going on now through Dec. 21. City Arts Center pottery students and teachers have been hard at work all year creating one-of-a-kind clay creations, including:” bowls, ” vases, ” sculptures, ” sake sets, ” decorative items, ” wind chimes and ” many other handmade pottery…
Lost art of etiquette making comeback in metro
Etiquette and protocol training is making a comeback, but it’s not just about knowing which to fork to use; instead, the focus is on improving communication and relationships, particularly those between disparate cultures. “A lot of people think etiquette is old-fashioned and not necessary and outdated, and it’s just the country club set that do…
Multi-instrumentalist Brooks Chambers performing at open-invite wedding reception
Most audiences are lucky to receive a performance from an artist who can play one instrument well, but Brooks Chambers is a one-man band. And although he hails from Texas, there’s something about Oklahoma City that keeps him coming back. When he first started touring this year, his main goal was to find markets that…
Enchanted
Reviewer’s grade: C Snow White, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty “? they’re all ancestors for Giselle, a princess drawn in the classic Walt Disney mold (skinny, lily-white, apple-cheeked, impossibly cute). But their terrors don’t compare to the hell that awaits Giselle when she’s plunged into the real world that is present-day Times Square! Lost and…
Oklahomans offer 100 ideas
In the waning hours of a deadline to propose ideas on making Oklahoma a great state, it seems the state has plenty of people with lots of time on their hands. Lots of time. Shortly after he became the state speaker of the House, Rep. Lance Cargill, R-Harrah, set forth an initiative to collect…
Hitman
Reviewer’s grade: D+ Who is the “Hitman?” He’s Agent 47 (Timothy Olyphant, the bad guy from “Live Free or Die Hard”), a completely bald but completely stylin’ contract killa with a suitcase full of C4, guns and swords. He works for one of those off-the-radar secret agencies that pays him to eliminate politicians and…
Rock act Deconstructing Jim combines two singers with three-part harmonies
Illinois rock band Deconstructing Jim has two sides: ” one that displays a knack for catchy, uplifting numbers to hum along to, and ” the other, which wants to pull the listener beneath, into the dangerous undertow. Vocalist and guitarist Jeff Julian explained how the band operates as a unit despite having two singers and…
Norman’s Nadia to compete on TV’s ‘The Apprentice’
Mere days after appearing at the Oklahoma Centennial Spectacular, five-time Olympic gold medalist and Norman resident Nadia Comaneci was among the 14 names announced to compete on NBC’s “Celebrity Apprentice.” The show will be an all-star version of the network’s once-bustling reality series, in which the young, upwardly mobile and completely vacuous competed for jobs…
Overholser Mansion to be returned to its original glory
The Overholser Mansion is a chateau-style structure that’s showing its 105 years with crumbling plaster, faded and chipped paint, as well as cracks running along the walls. It was once the opulent home of Henry Overholser, the “father of Oklahoma City,” but now the mansion is declining into disrepair. To offset the damage of time,…
Being a Sooner was ‘best thing,’ says former OU running back
The list of accomplishments Tommy McDonald realized as a college and professional football player is nothing less. Not only did he play his way into the College Football Hall of Fame during his days at the University of Oklahoma, but as an encore, McDonald fashioned a career in the National Football League splendid enough to…
Rapper’s Oklahoma City native mother laid to rest
The funeral for Donda West, mother of chart-topping hip-hop performer Kanye West, was held at a metro church on Nov. 20, according to various press reports. The 58-year-old Oklahoma City native, a 1967 Douglass High School graduate, former college professor and Chicago State University English department chair, died in Marina Del Rey, Calif., on…
Metro media outlets increase focus on serving Hispanic population
Spanish-speaking football fans of the University of Oklahoma and Oklahoma State University tuned in last weekend to listen to the bedlam game en Español. For the second time in OU’s history, a football game was broadcast in Spanish on KTUZ-FM 106.7, “La Zeta.” “Last year I started watching the enrollment figures in the Oklahoma City…
Bloodsimple – Red Harvest
Reprise Making heavy music is a tricky affair, and it seems nearly impossible to make any fan of the genre happy. There is something indefinable in good metal music that is equal parts awesome and hilarious. Mot
The Entrepreneurial Spirit!
A price war broke out in November among chain stores in Britain, with Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Asda vying for the cheap-drunk customers, and at press time, Asda was leading by offering a low-end lager in multipacks for the equivalent of 46 cents a pint, which is less than colas or bottled water. For those Britons…
Oklahoma man prevents himself from having the plug pulled
According to a story in The Oklahoman, the Oklahoma Highway Patrol had Zack Dunlap, 21, of Frederick, classified as the state’s 610th accident fatality of the year for about six hours. But it appears Dunlap didn’t cotton much to being a statistic, the story shows. The article states that Dunlap was riding his four-wheeler…
Women’s roller derby team splits from league
The Oklahoma City-based Tornado Alley Rollergirls roller derby league is going through some changes. The Victory Dolls has left TARG fold to form its own entity, amending its title to the Oklahoma Victory Dolls, effectively createing an autonomous league with the stated purpose of competing at the national level with other leagues around the country.…
Various artists – Latino Modern: The Greatest Songs Ever
it in the same league as Junior Senior or Fatboy Slim. Andrea Echeverri brings the tempo down a notch for “Amortiguador,” but Bomba Est
My Kid Could Paint That
Reviewer’s grade: A A documentary about a 4-year-old expressionist painter that becomes a documentary about media distortion and manipulation, “My Kid Could Paint That” is a clever commentary on what happens to normal people when they enter the public eye. Marla Olmstead, the aforementioned preschool-aged painter, takes a backseat to the machinations of her…
Garth Brooks ‘never intended’ to sing at statehood concert, says spokeswoman
The Oklahoma Centennial Spectacular, held on Nov. 16, was a celebrity-studded variety show filled with performances from well-known Sooner State musicians “¦ except country superstar Garth Brooks. As soon as Vince Gill took the Ford Center stage to sing “Oklahoma Rising,” it became clear to the many in the sold-out crowd that the show was…
Pitbull – The Boatlift
TVT Watch out! It’s the Pitbull’ the Cuban-American rapper with neither bark, bite nor any knack for songwriting. “The Boatlift” is an insufferable, 18-track CD from the Miami hip-hop disaster. Tackling modern dilemmas like chicks on MySpace, Pitbull sinks his fangs into “Go Girl,” a song that features the always awful Trina,…
Christmas Connection gives choices to metro residents in need
The Christmas Connection Connection at S.W. 25th Street and S. Hudson Avenue may sound like a seasonal organization, but it’s spreading holiday cheer all year round to Oklahomans in need. “The mission of Christmas Connection is to link those in need of receiving to those in need of giving,” said Valerie Finley, Christmas Connection executive…
The Mist
Reviewer’s grade: C- Talk about your counterprogramming for the holiday season. Ho-ho-no. This is a Stephen King story about a group of normal folks “? normal except for the religious fanatic and the soldiers from the base where experiments in dimension-manipulation are going on “? trapped in a grocery store by a mysterious mist…
Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead
Reviewer’s grade: A A noir thriller with an almost gleeful cruel streak, “Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead” is a riveting return to form for 83-year-old director Sidney Lumet, whose credits include “Dog Day Afternoon,” “Network” and “Prince of the City.” In this, his 45th feature-length picture, Lumet sharpens his knives on some stuff…
Cremation is no longer green enough
As an alternative to burial, cremation is no longer green enough, say environmentalists, because it releases smoke and mercury, and thus the industry is considering “promession,” in which the body is frozen in liquid nitrogen to minus-320 degrees (F) and then shaken until it disintegrates into powder. For green burials, the United States has at…
Norman tattoo artist hold first show of paintings
150 align=right vspace=10 border=0> The mantra of “success is assured” was the source material for David Bruehl’s first painting for the Think Ink tattoo artist’s first show: an illustrated version of himself, looking more than a little overwhelmed. “I was dealing with the whole process of producing so many pieces in the spare time between…
OCU screening Oscar-nominated ‘Joyeux No
To spread holiday joy early this year, a special presentation of “Joyeux Noël” will be shown at 3 p.m. Sunday in Oklahoma City University’s Kerr-McGee Auditorium, N.W. 27th Street and N. McKinley Avenue. The 2005 Academy Award nominee is inspired by the true story of the events that took place on Christmas Eve in 1914.…
State art collection moves to new home in state Capitol
The Oklahoma State Art Collection, which opened on Nov. 17, includes more than 100 works of art. Its gallery space in the Capitol is the first permanent home for the collection, which started in 1971. Previously, selected works were shown at the Omniplex and in traveling exhibits. “It tells our story and brings to light…
Hoops hoopla
I am not a basketball fan. I do not follow the NBA and only pay attention to college basketball in March. Yet, I am keeping a keen eye on recent developments with the Seattle SuperSonics’ potential move to Oklahoma City. Already I am hoping against hope that I can go to games with friends…
