Tastemaker

Twentieth Century Fox may be close to a deal with Apple to provide its feature films on the computer company's iTunes Music Store website, CNN reported Wednesday. The cable news network said that News Corp President and COO Peter Chernin told analysts during a conference call that the studio had been having "positive talks" with Apple but that "several details still needed to be worked out" before an announcement could be made. Hollywood studios including Fox have hesitated to make their films available at a price below that of DVDs, something that Apple has insisted on. So far, only Disney has made films available on the iTunes site. (Apple chief Steve Jobs is Disney's largest individual shareholder.) Since September 12, the date Disney films went on sale for the first time, Apple has reportedly sold 125,000 copies. Sales are expected to climb beginning this week with the release of the Disney hit, Cars.

-From IMDB Pro Studio Briefing

Jessica Delfino Is Sorry to Disturb You is an open "apology" for Jessica's dark, sometimes disturbing sense of humor. Described as "A cross between Redd Foxx and Jewel" by The Onion and called, "The Lower East Side's folkie queen of obscene" by The Village Voice, Jessica Delfino's style of comedy has offended, irritated, annoyed, bugged, boggled and even pissed off at least one person of every race, color and creed. So, Jessica has decided it's high time she set things right with the world. Showing examples of her offenses, the show features her dirtiest ditties, her most vulgar stand-up and her most outrageous short films, as well as some surprises, all of which she attempts to atone for. (Or not.) Come prepared to get all up in a tizzy.

On Theatermania.com

Every 4 months, Baldwin brother Daniel has an "event"! See below:

Actor Daniel Baldwin was back behind bars on Tuesday after allegedly stealing a car. The star was arrested in Santa Monica, California after police found him behind the wheel of a car reported stolen in Orange County, California. According to police reports, obtained by news website Tmz.com, police tracked the car to a motel and spotted Baldwin getting inside. Baldwin was then arrested and charged with grand theft auto. The actor was also booked on charges of possessing illegal drugs after police conducted a search of his motel room and allegedly found a stash of narcotics and drug paraphernalia. This isn't the first time Baldwin has found himself in police custody - in April he was arrested at another Santa Monica hotel after police were called following a fight, in which the actor reportedly threatened a woman. The authorities allegedly found cocaine in Baldwin's possession. That case is pending. In July, Baldwin hit the headlines again after crashing his car into two parked cars at high speed. Cops observed the 45-year-old, who had a suspended license, driving his rented Ford Thunderbird in excess of 80 miles-per-hour through traffic before running a red light and crashing. Baldwin, who was examined in hospital after complaining of neck and back pains, was held for questioning but not arrested.

We did it!!! We've won the House, won the Senate, and finally have a proper check and balance to the Executive branch. My faith in Democracy is surging! Thank you, Montana, thank you Virginia.

Bush just announced it. Major happiness. Good things are coming out of this election, and I'm finally feelin' some pride!

ART JAM: the Day After is a special post-election edition of the monthly performance salon hosted and curated by Earl Dax. Have Bush's dreary approval ratings cinched victory for the Dems or did the Diebold-manufactured voting machines have the last laugh? Either way, come to Galapagos for the pay-what-you-can mayhem of ART JAM featuring the darling of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Taylor Mac; Well playwright and star and "lesbian brother" Lisa Kron; Shortbus lead actor and singer-songwriter Jay Brannan; interdisciplinary artist Charlotte Shioler; and legendary Jackie 60 performer Jessica Rabbit Domination.

Wednesday, November 8 at 7:30 PM
Galapagos Art Space
70 N. 6th Street, Brooklyn
Admission: Pay-What-You-Can

Areas that researchers have declared the most polluted in the world are typically little known even in their own countries. Yet they in total afflict more than 10 million people, experts reported today.

The kinds of pollution in these areas not only lead to cancers, birth defects, mental retardation and life expectancies approaching medieval levels, but are also often found all around the globe.

"They cause an enormous amount of misery and harm, especially to children," Richard Fuller, founder and director of the Blacksmith Institute, the New York-based environmental group who released a report on these areas today, told LiveScience.

The Top 10 most polluted places for 2006, in alphabetical order by country:

Linfen, China, where residents say they literally choke on coal dust in the evenings, exemplifies many Chinese cities;

Haina, Dominican Republic, has severe lead contamination because of lead battery recycling, a problem common throughout poorer countries [image];

Ranipet, India, where leather tanning wastes contaminate groundwater with hexavalent chromium, made famous by Erin Brockovich, resulting in water that apparently stings like an insect bite [image];

Mailuu-Suu, Kyrgyzstan, home to nearly 2 million cubic meters of radioactive mining waste that threatens the entire Ferghana valley, one of the most fertile and densely populated areas in Central Asia that also experiences high rates of seismic activity;

La Oroya, Peru, where the metal processing plant, owned by the Missouri-based Doe Run Corporation, leads to toxic emissions of lead;

Dzerzinsk, Russia, one of the country's principal chemical weapons manufacturing sites until the end of the Cold War [image];

Norilsk, Russia, which houses the world's largest heavy metals smelting complex;

Rudnaya Pristan, Russia, where lead contamination resulted in child blood lead levels eight to 20 times maximum allowable U.S. levels;

Chernobyl, Ukraine, infamous site of a nuclear meltdown 20 years ago; and

Kabwe, Zambia, where child blood levels of lead are five to 10 times the allowable EPA maximum [image].

The research team analyzed 35 polluted sites, narrowed down from more than 300 nominated by local communities, non-governmental organizations and local, national and international environmental authorities. The team was made up of international environment and health experts, including faculty members from Johns Hopkins and Mt. Sinai Medical Center serving on the technical advisory board of the Blacksmith Institute.

Fuller said the institute is currently working with national and international organizations to help clean up six of these sites. - Live Science

Britney Spears has reportedly filed for divorce from Kevin Federline.

The web site TMZ.com reports Spears filed legal papers today in Los Angeles Superior Court, citing “irreconcilable differences.”

Her petition asks for legal and physical custody of their two kids, one-year-old Sean Preston and two-month-old Jayden James.

MEANWHILE...
K-Fed’s New York City gig at Webster Hall wasn’t cancelled as some predicted — but it reportedly took some big-time begging on his part.

“They were going to cancel this concert, but he begged them to keep it on,” a Webster Hall bartender told Star. “He had to fight with them to keep this concert.” Only 300 people showed up at the club that holds 1,500.

Federline’s performance has been described as “mercifully short.” Britney Spears’s hubby only rapped for about half an hour and, reports one eyewitness, “seemed really confused about how to act on stage. He would pace from one side of the stage to the other, just saying things like, ‘Hey’ thirty times in a row or ‘New York, thank you for coming — buy my CD.’ ”

-both notices are from MSNBC's The Scoop

Two NY area festival screenings are fast approaching for Be My Oswald, a feature length film about a militant vegetarian and her conspiracy to assissinate Santa.

New York International Film & Video Festival – Fri. Nov. 10

6:10 pm @ Village East Cinema - 12th and 2nd ave.
$12 ticket includes after-party, party goers need to be 21, no jeans, no sneakers.

4 th Annual Queens Film Festival – Sunday November 19

12:30 matinee, box office opens at noon
Kaufman Zukor Studio, 34-12 36th Street, Astoria
$8 ticket at the door

Kevin Tillman joined the Army with his brother Pat in 2002, and they served together in Iraq and Afghanistan. Pat was killed in Afghanistan on April 22, 2004. Kevin, who was discharged in 2005, has written a powerful, must-read document:

It is Pat's birthday on November 6, and elections are the day after. It gets me thinking about a conversation I had with Pat before we joined the military. He spoke about the risks with signing the papers. How once we committed, we were at the mercy of the American leadership and the American people. How we could be thrown in a direction not of our volition.
How fighting as a soldier would leave us without a voice until we got out.

Much has happened since we handed over our voice:

Somehow we were sent to invade a nation because it was a direct threat to the American people, or to the world, or harbored terrorists, or was involved in the September 11 attacks, or received weapons-grade uranium from Niger, or had mobile weapons labs, or WMD, or had a need to be liberated, or we needed to establish a democracy, or stop an insurgency, or stop a civil war we created that can't be called a civil war even though it is. Something like that.

Somehow America has become a country that projects everything that it is not and condemns everything that it is.

Somehow our elected leaders were subverting international law and humanity by setting up secret prisons around the world, secretly kidnapping people, secretly holding them indefinitely, secretly not charging them with anything, secretly torturing them.
Somehow that overt policy of torture became the fault of a few "bad apples" in the military.

Somehow back at home, support for the soldiers meant having a five-year-old kindergartener scribble a picture with crayons and send it overseas, or slapping stickers on cars, or lobbying Congress for an extra pad in a helmet. It's interesting that a soldier on his third or fourth tour should care about a drawing from a five-year-old; or a faded sticker on a car as his friends die around him; or an extra pad in a helmet, as if it will protect him when an IED throws his vehicle 50 feet into the air as his body comes apart and his skin melts to the seat.

Somehow the more soldiers that die, the more legitimate the illegal invasion becomes.

Somehow American leadership, whose only credit is lying to its people and illegally invading a nation, has been allowed to steal the courage, virtue and honor of its soldiers on the ground.

Somehow those afraid to fight an illegal invasion decades ago are allowed to send soldiers to die for an illegal invasion they started.

Somehow faking character, virtue and strength is tolerated.

Somehow profiting from tragedy and horror is tolerated.

Somehow the death of tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of people is tolerated.

Somehow subversion of the Bill of Rights and The Constitution is tolerated.

Somehow suspension of Habeas Corpus is supposed to keep this country safe.

Somehow torture is tolerated.

Somehow lying is tolerated.

Somehow reason is being discarded for faith, dogma, and nonsense.

Somehow American leadership managed to create a more dangerous world.

Somehow a narrative is more important than reality.

Somehow America has become a country that projects everything that it is not and condemns everything that it is.

Somehow the most reasonable, trusted and respected country in the world has become one of the most irrational, belligerent, feared, and distrusted countries in the world.

Somehow being politically informed, diligent, and skeptical has been replaced by apathy through active ignorance.

Somehow the same incompetent, narcissistic, virtueless, vacuous, malicious criminals are still in charge of this country.

Somehow this is tolerated.

Somehow nobody is accountable for this.

In a democracy, the policy of the leaders is the policy of the people. So don't be shocked when our grandkids bury much of this generation as traitors to the nation, to the world and to humanity. Most likely, they will come to know that "somehow" was nurtured by fear, insecurity and indifference, leaving the country vulnerable to unchecked, unchallenged parasites.

Luckily this country is still a democracy. People still have a voice. People still can take action. It can start after Pat's birthday.

Brother and Friend of Pat Tillman,

Kevin Tillman