By Staff
This writer's not on strike, so pass the envelopes, please. It's time for the 25th annual Lefties.
This year's girl: Bald Britney bashing cars with an umbrella like a mad, melted-down Mary Poppins who shoplifts.
Honorable mention: Paris Hilton seemed to go away after 23 days in jail and one uncomfortable night Sept. 28 on "Late Show with David Letterman." Dave apparently didn't feel like enabling her fragrance and clothing line, choosing instead to pelt her with mocking questions about life behind bars and the prison menu. Paris' confident smile melted into a pout. She didn't want to talk about the slammer anymore. "This is where you and I are different," Letterman said bluntly, "because this is all I want to talk about."
Or, Lindsay Lohan, arrested for cocaine possession and DUI weeks after her second stay in rehab. The actress, so convincing as an out-of-control party girl in "Georgia Rule," exiled herself in Utah to rest up for 84 minutes in jail on Nov. 15.
Or, Kim Kardashian, inspired by the celebrity Paris' sex tape spawned, posed for Playboy and turned reality star on E with her sisters and mother. No wonder Bruce Jenner looks so awful.
Or, the Olly Girls, fired on "Sunset Tan."
The stalkerazzi have so much raw material out there in the Hollyhood that snarky Chelsea Handler has her own show.
Who are all these lonely people who can't drive making fame look unattractive?
"I don't know why anybody would even want to go into show business these days," says mom Julia Roberts, who mostly lays low in New Mexico.
The Spice Girls reunited. So did Van Halen, Led Zeppelin, the Police and Smashing Pumpkins, albeit without Darcy and James Iha, but then Billy Corgan plays all the instruments doesn't he?
End of an era: I spent my first vacation racing through "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," J.K. Rowling's seventh and final installment in an extraordinary series about the boy wizard who rescued reading and his gay headmaster, Albus Dumbledore.
It sold 8.3 million copies July 21, its first day on U.S. shelves.
What's left of the record industry freaks: Radiohead releases "In Rainbows" online in October and lets fans decide what it costs, leaving Wal-Mart out of the loop.
On the other hand: The Eagles release "Long Road Out of Eden" only at Wal-Mart, yet debut at No. 1 with 711,000 copies sold. It's their first album in 28 years – since Jimmy Carter was president and Walkmans were new.
Great moments in live entertainment: Gov. Jennifer Granholm and the Gerald R. Ford Museum in Grand Rapids, Feb. 2; Blue Oyster Cult at Time Out Sports Bar in South Bend, Ind., March 2; "South Pacific," Jordan's last school play, March 25; Rainbow Farm author Dean Kuipers at Cass District Library, April 15; poet Ted Kooser at Dowagiac Middle School Performing Arts Center (PAC), May 11; my first Tigers game at Comerica Park, although Detroit lost to the Royals, 5-2, July 22; author Jonathan Safran Foer at the PAC, Oct. 25; Franz Jackson Still Swingin' at 95 at the PAC, Nov. 4; Gov. Granholm at K&M in Cassopolis, Nov. 5; Young Americans at the PAC, Nov. 20; Jeb Bush at Economic Club, Nov. 27; and Jackson and friends at Wood Fire, Dec. 7.
Whatever happened to?: Former Cass County prosecutor Margaret Chiara, one of the fired U.S. attorneys, in September became general counsel for a bipartisan federal commission in Washington studying prison rape. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and other top Justice Department officials ended up resigning over the scandal. The agency's inspector general is investigating whether Gonzales lied to Congress about the firings being politically motivated.
Pages: I read 12 books, including "Backstory" by Ken Auletta, "The Tipping Point" by Malcolm Gladwell, "The Dark Side of Camelot" by Seymour M. Hersh and "Everything is Illuminated" by Jonathan Safran Foer.
Demolished: Central Middle School, where I attended grades 7-9, in March.
Stephen Colbert pulled the plug on his presidential bid after his home state, South Carolina, blocked him from the primary ballot. "I have chosen not to put the country through another agonizing Supreme Court battle," quipped Colbert, who faced off with Fox Noise's Bill O'Reilly Jan. 18. Sure miss "The Colbert Report" and Jon Stewart and "The Daily Show." There's no point in having a year-long slog toward the White House without their satire.
Gone but not forgotten: Those two 84-year-olds with a special Dogwood bond to Dowagiac, Kurt Vonnegut and Norman Mailer, former Dowagiac resident "Sneaky Pete" Kleinow, the pedal-steel guitarist for the Flying Burrito Brothers and an Emmy Award-winning animator, gonzo journalist Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, columnist Molly Ivins, journalist David Halberstam, the Rev. Jerry Falwell, Lady Bird Johnson, Quiet Riot frontman Kevin DuBrow, CBGB founder Hilly Kristal, Denny Doherty of the Mamas and the Papas, Boston lead singer Brad Delp, "These Boots are Made for Walkin'" songwriter Lee Hazlewood, singer Robert Goulet, "Tiny Bubbles" singer Don Ho, opera singers Luciano Pavarotti and Beverly Sills, "Monster Mash's" Bobby "Boris" Pickett, country singer Porter Wagoner, George Osmond, "The Stepford Wives" author Ira Levin, Paul Tibbets the pilot who dropped the atom bomb on Hiroshima, Lois Maxwell who played Miss Moneypenny in 14 James Bond movies, motorcycle daredevil Evel Knievel, Aquaman creator Paul Norris, Ramen noodles inventor Momofuku Ando, model Anna Nicole Smith, actress Deborah Kerr, singer Dan Fogelberg, musician Ike Turner, Rat Packer Joey Bishop, "Wheel of Fortune" creator Merv Griffin, mime Marcel Marceau, game show celebrities Brett Sommers and Charles Nelson Reilly, directors Ingmar Bergman and Michelangelo Antonioni, movie critic Joel Siegel, late night talk-show host Tom Snyder, "Falcon Crest's" Jane Wyman, Yvonne De Carlo of "The Munsters," "Scooby Doo" animator Iwao Takemoto, political humorist Art Buchwald, Tige Andrews of "The Mod Squad," historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr., comedian Richard Jeni, "Cool Hand Luke" director Stuart Rosenberg, Calvert DeForest (Letterman's Larry "Bud" Melman), "Porky's" and "A Christmas Story" director Bob Clark, father of U.S. film ratings Jack Valenti, "Tonight Show" saxophonist Tommy Newsom, "Newhart's" Tom Poston, fashion designer Liz Claiborne, "Mr. Wizard" Don Herbert, Frankie Abernathy of "Real World: San Diego," Bill Pinkney of The Drifters, Tammy Faye Messner, Alice Ghostley (Esmeralda on "Bewitched" and Bernice on "Designing Women"), Dick Wilson (Charmin's grocer) and electronic music pioneer Karlheinz Stockhausen.
Prince Feb. 4 delivered a memorable Super Bowl halftime show in pouring (presumably purple) rain. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers have a tough act to follow Feb. 3, including Paul McCartney and the Rolling Stones before Prince. He won't be playing "You Don't Know How It Feels" because the NFL doesn't want Petty to suggest, "Let's roll another joint."
Tube: "The Daily Show," "Lost," "Grey's Anatomy," "Survivor," "House," "Family Guy," "The Simpsons," "Nip/Tuck," "King of the Hill" and "Beauty and the Geek."
Never did see: "The Sopranos."
Song of the year: "Hey There Delilah," Plain White T's.
Quips, quotes and qulunkers: "It's time to appeal to Him who can and will make a difference. God, we need you. We need rain."
– Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue, praying for an end to drought Nov. 13. In the weeks that followed, rainfall in the state fell 72 percent below normal, proving once again the need for separation of church and state.
"We used to have rent-a-cops. Now we have rent-a-soldiers. As CEO of Blackwater, the most notorious private-security contractor in Iraq, Erik Prince has his own navy, air force and spy agency. This guy is building nothing short of a parallel national-security apparatus."
– Bill Maher. Blackwater also has its own line of teddy bears.
"I think it is every American's duty to watch (Countdown with) Keith Olbermann on a nightly basis."
– actor Jason Bateman
"The show I'm really into is 'I Love New York.' She's, like, the weirdest person I've ever seen. But it's really entertaining because she's so, like, nuts. And I watched 'Rock of Love,' too."
– Avril Lavigne
Drew Carey takes over hosting "The Price is Right" from Bob Barker, whom I interviewed once. Barker, 83, retires after 6,586 episodes over 35 years.
Iraq war supporter Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., decided to walk his talk in April, striding confidently through an outdoor Baghdad market. Thank goodness for his personal security detail of 100 troops, two Apache helicopters and three Blackhawk helicopters or I might not have met the presidential contender July 23 at Lake Michigan College.
War movies tank: With troops still in Iraq, not even Tom Cruise, Meryl Streep and Robert Redford could save "Lions for Lambs." A similar low box office fate awaited such serious fare as "Rendition" and "In the Valley of Elah."
The butter-fingered Bush administration has trouble hanging onto things. Among items lost: 190,000 assault rifles and pistols issued to Iraq's security forces, 5 million White House e-mails, 150 dossiers of secret evidence used to detain "enemy combatants" at Guantanamo, a video of alleged "dirty bomber" Jose Padilla's military interrogation and six live nuclear warheads – although the latter were located on a B-52 bomber after it flew from North Dakota to Louisiana.
A new National Intelligence Estimate found Iran shut down its nuclear weapons program in 2003.
Iran made hip hop illegal, joining most rock music (Queen's Greatest Hits is excluded because lead singer Freddie Mercury was of Iranian descent.)
Rupert Murdoch bought the Wall Street Journal.
Apple June 29 released the status symbol of 2007, the iPhone – phone, MP3 player and Internet browser.
Martin Scorcese finally won an Oscar – for "The Departed."
Split: Larry and Laurie David after 14 years of marriage, followed by a fictional breakup with Cheryl Hines on "Curb Your Enthusiasm"; and Hulk Hogan and Linda Marie Bollea after 24 years.
Weather watch: Warming in the Alps forced organizers of a renowned ski race to spend $389,000 to fly in snow.
Support the troops?: The Pentagon required that soldiers discharged early due to battlefield injuries repay their enlistment bonuses and sent a National Guard unit home after 729 days of Iraq combat – one day shy of the 730 that would have qualified the soldiers for education benefits.
"Kicks for Guns": One of those weapon-trading programs local police run – this one in Orlando – swapped sneakers for firearms and received a four-foot-long surface-to-air missile launcher. Police gave the man Reeboks for his daughter.
860,000: Estimated number of names on the FBI's terrorist watch list, including 14 of the 19 hijackers killed in the 9/11 attacks in 2001. "The list is virtually useless," according to the ACLU's Tim Sparapani. "It grows seemingly without control."
Sen. Larry Craig of Idaho ruined the Minneapolis airport for me after allegedly soliciting gay sex from an undercover officer in an airport bathroom in June. He blamed his "wide stance" and a hand movement he used to pick up a piece of toilet paper. Odd behavior for a guy who voted for a federal ban on gay marriage and against extending hate-crime protection to gays. Craig initially pleaded guilty and promised to resign. Then he withdrew his guilty plea and did not quit.
The Navy spent $600,000 to change the shape of swastika-shaped barracks in San Diego.
A White House Secret Service agent accidentally discharged his gun, wounding two colleagues. President Bush, attending a ceremony commemorating the Virginia Tech shootings, was unharmed.
john.eby@leaderpub.com