pimblr.com

There’s no indication that the catastrophic blaze – which ravaged the elegant white mansion, cratered its roof and covered its signature columns with thick soot early Sunday – was intended to target Gov. Rick Perry or first lady Anita Perry.
The mansion was undergoing extensive renovations, including installation of a fire sprinkler system. The Perrys were living elsewhere, and the mansion’s valuable art and antiques were in storage.
State authorities say they found clear evidence that the fire was set, raising questions about the alertness of the mansion’s round-the-clock security detail.
So far, there have been no arrests, and the state fire marshal is asking the public for help identifying potential suspects.
While a national response unit from the U.S. Department of Justice hits the ground today, heartbroken state preservationists are gathering their own forces, fearful the Greek Revival home will be further damaged in the criminal investigation.
"This is something we couldn’t possibly afford to lose," said Larry Oaks, executive director of the Texas Historical Commission. "It is badly damaged, and we’ve lost a lot of original fabric. But unless there’s something I really can’t see, I would be very surprised if it’s not restorable."
The governor and Mrs. Perry, who have lived in an Austin-area rental home since the mansion’s renovations began, are traveling in Europe and return Tuesday to Texas.
Department of Public Safety security officers at the mansion were alerted to the fire just before 2 a.m. Sunday by a tripped smoke alarm.
By the time firetrucks arrived, the blaze that apparently started by the front door had swept the house and traveled all the way into the attic. The large trees surrounding the two-story mansion in downtown Austin made it difficult for firefighters to position their equipment. It took 100 firefighters and several hours to put the fire out, department spokeswoman Dawn Clopton said.

dallasnews.com

Apple’s now offering movies via iTunes in the UK and in Canada. But that doesn’t interest me so much - it wasn’t a question of if, it was a question of when. The real news here is that they’ve obviously worked a deal with the studios to permit a 48 hour viewing period. A current pain point for many (real or perceived) is the 24 hour limit to complete watching a rental. I’ve thought 36 hours should be sufficient to allow ‘film interrupted’ folks to resume viewing their flick on a consecutive evening. While Vudu has taken things into their own hands (and probably at their own cost) to offer 24 hours of extended viewing (48 total) for an additional $2, perhaps the tide is turning and we’ll hear something (other than iPhone 2.0) out of WWDC next week…
Confused. Why limit it at all? You paid for it. The movie of dripping with DRM and is locked to a closed, proprietary device, no one else will be able to see it.
Surprisingly “hostile” tone from Apple, I thought they were all “free love” “be cool to each other” “Be like Bono” and stuff.
Has anyone ever lined up Amazon’s Unbox ( what I use ) against the iTunes movie store? Does Unbox have at least a comparable selection compared to Apple? I think Unbox is cheaper too, no DRM, media doesn’t “die” can be written to a DVD to watch on plane.
I believe Unbox has more video than Apple, but they’re also restricted (by the studios) to offering a 24 hours rental in most cases. The Vudu people tell me some of the smaller, indy, foreign, etc studios have granted them longer viewing periods.
Dave is correct in pointing out that independent studios offer 48 hour rental window on Vudu. But if Apple or any other provider convinces major studios to offer that, it’s going to be good for others as Vudu/Microsoft/Amazon/etc. will sure push for same terms too (terms are pretty much the same across all on-demand services, it’s the content mix that’s different).

zatznotfunny.com

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Two sea lions were spotted Tuesday snoozing along the boat dock near Joe’s Crab Shack in Old Sacramento.
The wandering pinnipeds have been known to occasionally make their way up the Sacramento River from San Francisco Bay.
The pair seen lounging along the dock appeared to be in no hurry to go anywhere, and instead spent a good deal of time sleeping and occasionally rolling over.
Such sea lions are a common sight at Pier 39, a tourist hot spot in San Francisco.
Sea lions feed on a wide variety of fish and squid.
The animals are protected under the U.S. Marine Mammal Protection Act.
Copyright 2008 by KCRA.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

kcra.com

Jennifer was a child. A child with a deep, dark secret.
She was 11 or 12 the first time it happened. The man was someone she knew well. A parental figure she thought she could trust. She tried to forget about it.
She was 13 when he violated her so badly that she knew she would never forget.
She held the secret inside, not sure what to do.
One night she was at her cousin, Amy’s, house for a sleepover with Amy and another friend. Amy and her friend were a couple of years older than Jennifer.
They stayed up late, talking and giggling and doing all the things teenage girls like to do during a sleepover.
But at some point the conversation took a turn. The friend confessed that she had been sexually abused as a young girl.
It was too much for Jennifer. All of the hidden anger and pain inside erupted. She began to cry. And then, she told them her story.
Her life, as she knew it, was about to come to an abrupt end.
Her aunt and uncle — Amy’s parents — got involved. They, along with Jennifer, went to the police.
But instead of the accused offender being removed from the young girl’s life, Jennifer was reported — by a family member — to be a troublemaker and was hauled away and booked into a juvenile facility. She lived at the facility five weeks. “I was treated like a criminal,” she said.
Another aunt and uncle — not Amy’s parents — picked her up at the detention facility and took Jennifer to live with them in another city some 40 miles from her childhood home.
By the time she was 14, she had lost her home and her loved ones, including her younger sisters that she had cared for as if they were her own, and she was living with relatives in a strange town and attending a new school.

kpcnews.com

When I showed up for dinner in late January at Zebulon’s Southwestern Grill and Tequileria at the Marriott hotel, what I found was the biggest smoking, multicar culinary train wreck I’ve ever seen.
The tequila-specific bar had almost no tequila. The servers knew almost nothing about the food. Two hours of long waits and mediocre, overpriced plates started with the server spilling water on our menus and not mopping it up, and stumbled into a landscape of goofs and gaffs so ridiculous they had me looking around for the hidden camera. The server called the rustic Italian ciabatta bread Chewbacca bread. He arrived with a tray of tequila shots no one had ordered. He did a Macarena-like jig while singing in Spanish when we ordered the Tres Leches cake, then came back with the wrong dessert. When he was explaining the nightly specials, his cell phone rang, and he answered it.
When I found out later that the place had been open only a week, I shelved what had been a less-than-warm-andfuzzy review. It deserved time to find its feet. But last week I went back, and had an almost identical experience, minus the zany waiter.
Zebulon’s occupies a stylish corner of the hotel with tall ceilings, comfy booths, and warm red and yellow walls ranged around a central arrangement of cactus and fountains. It would have looked invitingly hip if on a recent Friday night there had been more than one other occupied table.
When the people at that table saw the hostess bringing us by, they practically pounced on her.
“Please,” a woman said through clenched teeth. “It’s been an hour. My mother would just like some vanilla ice cream.”
“Long wait, huh,” I said. She rolled her eyes.
It wasn’t a good start.
The scattered, not-very-Southwestern menu has changed some since my last visit, but still offers some of the real dogs I thought were mistakes in January, as well as some new ones. The shiitakecrusted salmon in mole ($19.95), which sounds weirdly intriguing, is slathered in a sauce that tastes like little more than salty baker’s chocolate. The seasoned, yellow rice in an ambitious paella heaped with a mix of mussels, sea scallops and shrimp with a hint of chorizo ($24.95) had improved from January’s soupy version, but a quartet of mealy, pungent mussels seemed to be past their prime. Never order mussels in a place with low turnover.

gazette.com

“I was never intimidated by the other girls,” she said. “I just went in each round and did what I know.”
Amy was seen on the reality TV show this season before being eliminated.
Melissa Jenkins of Bartlesville said she couldn’t have been more proud of her daughter.
“She went through a lot of auditions,” Melissa said. “She began in Topeka, Kan., then she went on to Chicago, then L.A. and finally to New York City.”
Melissa is originally from Muskogee and Amy’s uncle, Dice Dawson, still resides here.
While Amy’s stay was brief — she was the third girl to be eliminated from the reality TV show — she said she thought it was the right thing for her.
“I love being a regular girl who likes to eat cheesecake,” Amy said. “There is too much people-pleasing in the fashion industry.”
Amy said she thinks modeling is great, and she is grateful for the experience the show gave her.
“The experience was awesome, but it was really not what I wanted in my life — so much sacrifice in the name of looks,” she said.
Amy said it was especially hard to know what professional model and TV host Tyra Banks and the other judges wanted from her.
“We never saw them on a personal level,” she said. “What you see on camera, is the same as what we saw. We never interacted with them other than the judging. They were very fickle.”
Dawson said he is still pleased with her shot at the top.
“She’s had a good run — not bad for an Okie,” Dawson said.
Amy is now working on figuring out what she wants to do with the rest of her life.
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muskogeephoenix.com

To stop or not to stop?
The American Idol judges couldn't agree if Brooke White did the right—or wrong—thing last night by rebooting her performance of "You Must Love Me."
And there's not quite a consensus among outside singing experts, either.
"Unless it's a total trainwreck, I think you try to make it through," James Lugo, a record producer and vocal coach, said today. "Personally, I think starting and stopping is kind of hack."
To Gina Eckstine, a singer and vocal teacher, going forward is the only way to go. Most of the time.
"If there's no more, and you can't move ahead, sometimes you just have to admit it," said Eckstine.
White opted for the latter route on Tuesday. Some 13 seconds into her performance, she turned to the house band and said, "I'm sorry." Taking the hint, the band restarted the song. White made it through the number, introduced by Madonna in the movie version of Evita, without further incident.
After the song ended, Paula Abdul, the nice Idol judge, looked pained as she considered her words. Firmly but gently, she offered White the following edict: "You must never start and stop."
In a twist, Simon Cowell, the non-nice Idol judge, gave White a pass on the do-over, apparently because it entertained him. "This is why I love live TV," he said. "It was so dramatic—the beginning, you know."
Under questioning from host Ryan Seacrest, White said she restarted because "I lost the lyric."
Cowell claimed he would have done the same thing, and called White's decision "brave." Abdul persisted, telling White she should have vamped until she found the words. Cowell and Randy Jackson, the wild-card Idol judge, disagreed.
On the matter of to vamp or not to vamp, Abdul offered the best advice, the singing experts said.

eonline.com

“Indiana Jones”? Check. “Batman”? Yep. Will Smith? Him too. There will be no shortage of box-office draws during the 2008 summer movie season, which is so loaded with potential blockbusters that it may surpass last year’s record-setting summer grosses of $4.15 billion, the highest in Hollywood history.
That is no guarantee the movies themselves will be good, of course: Just because they’ve made another “Hulk” picture doesn’t mean it will be any better. But at least on paper, the 2008 summer movie lineup certainly looks formidable.
Here is a partial list of the many movies heading our way between now and Labor Day.
“The Chronicles of Narnia:Prince Caspian”: The next installment in author C. S. Lewis’ fantasy series about the magical realm of Narnia is set a year after the events of the first film, which translates into 1,300 years in Narnia- time. Once again, the four Pevensie siblings play a key role in helping the denizens of the land fight off evil forces, etc.
“Indiana Jones and the Kingdomof the Crystal Skull”: Almost 20 years after the last Indy film, Harrison Ford picks up his whip and leather jacket for more old-school, serial-matinee adventure. Director Steven Spielberg and producer George Lucas took their sweet time coming up with a script everyone liked, setting aside the Nazi villains of the first and third films for Cold War-era Russkies, led by a raven-haired Cate Blanchett. Karen Allen and Shia LaBeouf co-star.
“Sex and the City”: Sarah Jessica Parker, Cynthia Nixon, Kim Cattrall and Kristin Davis are all back. As the girls’ lives move on four years from where we left them on HBO, there are new and older offspring and a pending wedding for Carrie and Mr. Big (Chris Noth). Early reviews are through the roof, and so is the fashion. The four friends are still juggling jobs, relationships and the joys of New York City. Fans of Jason Lewis (Smith) will be happy to hear that he’ll be back, and the film is rated R— so it’ll be just as raunchy as ever.

buffalonews.com

See, I never thought much whenever a known poet took interest in a lesser known, up-and-coming poet. Not until I met Chase Berggrun, a 17-year-old poet who lives in Yarmouth and goes to the Sturgis Charter Public School on Main Street, Hyannis. Watching this young man move up amongst the ranks of the poets is a phenomenal event to eyewitness. It is as moving as meeting Gwen Brooks was, for different reasons. I despise the word “protégé,” but must admit having a young poet around to offer advice to certainly elevates my spirit.
Chase is a funny kid. He had been threatening to show up at The Black Spot poetry open mic (the last Thursday of the month) for some time. His mother Susan Russell, a friend of mine, had been calling me, asking that I encourage her son to pursue his writing. She gave me his cell phone number, and I stopped by the house a couple of times to talk with him. Chase had been writing poems for four years, and finally showed up at The Black Spot this past January. Everyone loved him.
The poetry that Chase writes is short, refreshing in a day and age when Slam poetry and Hip-hop, with a leaning toward performance, spout poems as long as songs on the radio. But Chase’s poems work on the page, and are easily remembered. There is something to be said for brevity, and Chase Berggrun has it down to a science.
After that first open mic, Chase used the resources available to him at Sturgis to print up his first chapbook. At his second open mic, he had a table with a book display going on. Sweet. Every artist should take a course in business, except Chase. He’s done quit well in figuring out how to turn poetry into a 100 percent margin of profit, and that’s unheard of.

barnstablepatriot.com

SPRINGFIELD — Standing before a class of 20-plus Maple Elementary third-graders, Maria Avila reads with the poise and enthusiasm of a seasoned teacher, even stopping on occasion to ask the children a question or remark on something silly.
She gets tripped up only once — over “bow wow,” the only English word she comes across in her Spanish-language version of a book of children’s poetry. She pronounces it “boe-woe,” laughing because she knows she didn’t get it right.
Avila didn’t always have such confidence. For her and a dozen other Hispanic parents who read stories at Maple, it’s taken time to grow comfortable at the head of the class.
Helping Spanish-speaking families feel comfortable, welcome and valued is a primary aim of Maple’s Family Bridges/Puentes de Familias program, which began in earnest in the fall of 2006, spearheaded by English Language Learner teacher Zehra Greenleaf.
The program encompasses a range of activities, but at its core are classroom readings, scheduled once every couple of months. Hispanic parents (mostly mothers) stand side-by-side with teachers, taking turns reading storybooks — the teacher in English, the parent in Spanish. Afterward, the pair lead the children in a craft — typically something related to the story and Hispanic culture.
On this day, Avila and student teacher Gina Pearson read “From the Belly­button of the Moon and Other Summer Poems,” a whimsical compilation featuring sunflowers, summer storms and a bi­lingual dog that barks in English (“bow wow!”) and Spanish (“guau guau!”). Then they pass out orange and yellow construction paper circles and ovals, and the kids use glue sticks to create their sunflowers.
Near the front is 8-year-old Giovanni Avila, Maria’s son. Having his mother come in to read to his class (this is her fourth appearance) makes him proud and happy, he says, “because I love her so much.”

registerguard.com