Posted on: Wednesday, 21 May 2008, 12:00 CDT
By Bill Blankenship
By Bill Blankenship
Topekans will get a chance this summer to help select who they will see performing at a show this autumn at the Topeka Performing Arts Center.
Tickets go on sale at 10 a.m. Thursday for NBC’s “Last Comic Standing” Live Tour, which will stop at 7:30 p.m. Oct. 9 at TPAC.
Tickets for the TPAC show will be $48 and $38.
They will be sold in person at the TPAC box office, 214 S.E. 8th, or through Ticketmaster at 234-4545, www.ticketmaster.com or its retail outlets, including the Dillons stores in Topeka at 300 S.W. 29th, 5720 S.W. 21st and 801 N.W. 25th.
The lineup for the comedy tour will depend on who makes it to the finals of Season 6 of “Last Comic Standing,” which premieres at 8:30 p.m. Thursday on NBC.
The show can be viewed locally on KSNT Channel 27, which is seen on Channel 7 on the Cox cable system in Topeka.
The first few shows of this season of the Emmy-nominated series will feature auditions across the United States, as well as tryouts for comics from 20 other countries.
For the first time on the series, a parade of NBC comedy stars from past and present hit shows will join “Last Comic Standing” as talent scouts.
Helping to “find the funny” are talent scouts Angela Kinsey, Oscar Nunez, Brian Baumgartner and Kate Flannery (”The Office”); Dave Foley (”Thank God You’re Here!”"Newsradio”); Neil Flynn (”Scrubs”); George Wendt and John Ratzenberger (”Cheers”); Richard Belzer (”Law & Order: SVU”); Steve Schirripa (”The Tonight Show With Jay Leno”); Kathy Najimy (”Veronica’s Closet”) and French Stewart (”Third Rock From the Sun”).
Josh Gomez (”Chuck”), Lonny Ross and Keith Powell (”30 Rock”) also serve as talent scouts, along with Richard Kind and Fred Willard (”Mad About You”) and Alfonso Ribeiro (”The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air”).

redorbit.com

M’s update: A scout’s life
Bob Fontaine flashed a satisfied smile when asked how many college and high school baseball games he’d seen the past 3½ months.
“I couldn’t tell you,” said Fontiane, the Mariners’ scouting director who has been at a ballfield — or two, or three, or four — almost every day since the college season began Feb. 22. “But I still can’t believe they pay me to do this.”
Fontaine and his scouts have been in the office the past few days preparing for the amateur draft, which begins Thursday. The Mariners select 20th in the first round, and Fontaine said his wish list includes starting pitchers, relief pitchers and left-handed hitters.
For months, he’s been at the places he loves most — the high school and college fields that often are far removed from the luxury of the major leagues.
Fontaine’s schedule is nothing casual, and he may own the record for most games seen in one day.
“I was at a tournament and saw 16 games one day,” he said. “It was a cloverleaf (of diamonds) and I sat where I could see them all. I left there not quite sure what I had just seen.”
In addition to documenting the strengths and weaknesses of dozens of players, Fontaine said he has kept a particular list for his own amusement.
“It’s all the different ways to get a game cancelled,” Fontaine said. His count is at 46, and it goes far beyond rainouts and snowouts.
“I was at a game that was bee’d out because of a swarm of bees,” he said. “One was called off because of snakes in the outfield, one because there was a carnival on the infield and one when the team bus ran out of gas.”
Uncomfortable position: Manager John McLaren, in praising pitcher Jarrod Washburn for his mental toughness during a season when his record has gone soft (2-7), said nobody on the team has given up despite such a poor start.

heraldnet.com

As if record-high gas prices weren’t enough, CNN’s “Your $$$$$” speculated about “what if” oil were to spike to $200 a barrel.
“Well, if you think it is bad now, it could get worse and it could get worse pretty fast. Fasten your seat belt; fill ’er up, because as you say, it could get a lot worse,” special correspondent Frank Sesno told host Ali Velshi on the May 10 show.
Yes, $200 a barrel, Sesno said: “Hard to imagine? Think again.”
Sesno said with oil at that level, prices at the pump would reach $6 per gallon. Other analysts have concluded that prices will settle far before we reach that extreme prediction.
The $200 mark is the new media fantasy. A recent NBC News report insinuated CNBC contributor John Kilduff was predicting that price, though on CNBC’s “The Call” the same day he suggested oil would top out in the $130s per barrel.
Though his numbers were merely figments, Sesno worried viewers with the ripple effects of such pricey oil. Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez “has threatened it,” he said, while “prominent Wall Street analysts” think “there is a high likelihood oil could go to $200 a barrel and beyond.” And were prices to reach this level, food, heating oil, transportation and refrigeration would all experience accelerating price increases.
Sesno conceded that “a lot of people dispute this $200 a barrel scenario,” but didn’t include any of those people in his report. On the contrary – he featured industry analyst Matthew Simmons, famous for his “peak oil” view that world oil supply has already reached its highest point.
“A lot of people dispute this $200-a-barrel scenario. They say there’s plenty of oil,” Sesno said. “But $200, even $300-a-barrel oil is a what-if scenario people ignore at their peril, argues Matthew Simmons…”
Simmons told viewers, “This is the biggest threat to sustainability of the 21

businessandmedia.org

In a speech here, on the final weekend of campaigning before the Indiana and North Carolina primaries on Tuesday, Mr. Obama urged voters to move beyond the political controversies that have dominated the Democratic nominating fight and stirred skepticism about his strength as a general election candidate.
“That’s the only way I can win this race,” Mr. Obama said, “if you decide that you’ve had enough of the way things are, if you decide that this election is bigger than flag pins or sniper fire or the comments of a former pastor — bigger than the differences between what we look like or where we come from or what party we belong to.”
As Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton appealed to voters in North Carolina, holding a breezy chat session with a few hundred mothers and later appearing before Nascar enthusiasts, she highlighted her support for suspending the federal gas tax this summer. Mr. Obama derided the idea as “a Shell game — literally,” drawing distinctions with Mrs. Clinton and Senator John McCain of Arizona, the presumptive Republican nominee.
Mr. Obama’s speech here underscored his efforts to retool his campaign — and fend off what his aides acknowledged was unexpected strength from Mrs. Clinton in Indiana and North Carolina — by forcefully returning to themes that had served him well in Iowa and other states, presenting himself as an outsider and an agent of change. He did not, at least on this day, seem prepared to end the campaign with harsh attacks on Mrs. Clinton.
In television commercials and in his public appearances, Mr. Obama confronted the issue Mrs. Clinton has put at the front of her campaign — a three-month moratorium on gas taxes — and tried to turn it against her, portraying her as being politically calculating and cynical. That left the two rivals pointedly arguing over one of the few major policy areas on which they disagree.

nytimes.com

CNN is giving one-quarter of its screen to the actual primary-night coverage and three-quarters to John King randomly doodling on the touch-screen. For, like, the last half-hour. Anderson Cooper and some talking head are doing the talking-head thing, tucked over on the left side of the screen, and King is randomly doing his Tom-Cruise-in-Minority-Report shtick, scrunching the map down with his thumb and forefinger, shifting county maps back and forth, scribbling with the Glowing Green Finger. On most of the screen. A month after CNN put the touch-screen on the map (and vice versa), they have now fetishized it past irrelevance and into annoyance.
Now they’ve taken the actual people whose actual voices are doing the actual analysis offscreen altogether, so we can watch nothing but John King doodling distracetedly on his gigabyte Etch-A-Sketch. He doesn’t even seem to realize he’s on camera.
I’m flashing on that weekend in 1990 when Newsworld, new on air and fetishizing its shoestring, seat-of-the-pants vibe, ran 20 minutes of unedited Oka video, in an infinite loop, right through a weekend. Dozens of hours of the same unedited video. Instead of, you know, editing the video.
Maclean’s is Canada’s only national weekly current affairs magazine. Maclean’s enlightens, engages and entertains 2.8 million readers with strong investigative reporting and exclusive stories from leading journalists in the fields of international affairs, social issues, national politics, business and culture.

blog.macleans.ca

Ah, it’s your wedding day.
Birds are chirping, the church is packed, the beaming bride walks down the aisle. You pucker your lips, lift her veil and it’s Dr. Laura.
The image may scare you into joining the priesthood, but it’s just what John Daly needs. He and other sports stars have turned to gambling, drinking, carousing, psychiatrists and pharmaceuticals to help their careers.
All they needed was an ideal mate. Of course, if finding one were easy, then 49 million people wouldn’t currently be lying about their height, weight and love of opera at Match.com.
Sports figures don’t usually have to resort to Internet dating, but finding a match is still hard. Joe DiMaggio’s hitting streak ended with Marilyn Monroe. Andre Agassi lost his match with Brooke Shields. Then he won with Steffi Graf, who until that time had only been in love with her backhand.
Some marriages you know are doomed (see: Mike Tyson and Robin Givens). Others you figure would last forever end up in People magazine.
Chris Evert was married for 18 years to ex-ski champ Andy Mill. Then one of Mill’s best friends intruded on the love match.
“Greg Norman at one time was my best friend,” Mill said. “I would have taken a bullet for this guy. But I didn’t realize he was the one who was going to pull the trigger.”
They don’t call him the Shark for nothing. Now Norman and Evert are engaged. All of which proves how uncertain the nuptial game can be.
Check that. We’re absolutely certain that somewhere David Justice is still kicking himself for blowing it with Halle Berry.
Anyway, the one thing most successful marriages have is teamwork. The players complement each other. His strengths are her weakness, and vice versa. Put the yin and yang together and they can live happily ever after.

orlandosentinel.com

The Vikings took Notre Dame center John Sullivan with the first of their two sixth-round selections. The pick was acquired when Minnesota and Kansas City swapped sixth-rounders as part of the Jared Allen deal and fell at No. 187 overall and No. 21 in the round.
The Chiefs used the pick (No. 182) the Vikings previously held in the round to take Utah State wide receiver Kevin Robinson.
Here is the Pro Football Weekly summary on Sullivan: Regressed as a senior starting alongside two freshmen guards. … Despite limited agility, he is very strong, plays with power and could bring the most value to a team that likes to play with power. Could warrant looks at right guard.
Sullivan started all 13 games in 2006 and last season he started 10 games, missing two contests because of a right knee sprain for a subpar Notre Dame team. Sullivan didn’t express concern that the Irish’s poor season caused his stock to drop.
“At this point, I’m with a team that I’m incredibly happy to be with,” he said. “I couldn’t be happier with the result of how the draft went and looking at draft stock, up, down, it doesn’t matter to me at this point. I’m on a great team and I’m happy with my situation.”
The brainpower of the Vikings’ center tandem is a bit scary right now. Matt Birk is a Harvard grad and now a Notre Dame kid enters the picture? With Birk entering the last season of his contract, Sullivan could be groomed as his replacement. Sullivan also has the ability to play guard and see he would be comfortable in that role. “Whatever the coaching staff feels is the best for the team, will help the team win, I’m willing to do that and give anything my all,” he said.
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ww3.startribune.com

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reuters.com

NEW YORK: DaJuan Hawkins spent four months in jail for assault and thought he was a “nothing” destined for a life of street crime.
Today, the 17-year-old high school senior is heading for college and writing poetry.
Bobby Marchesi hung out with a tough group of Italian boys who clashed violently with black kids at his Brooklyn high school. Now, he is a lawyer in private practice.
What transformed Hawkins and Marchesi into confident, productive and compassionate human beings, they say, is Council For Unity.
Founded as a small anti-gang group in 1975, the council now claims to reach 100,000 people of all cultures in New York, Milwaukee, San Francisco and Vermont — and as far away as Nigeria and Moldova.
And its mission has expanded: The group recently published a book of student writings. It works with families and in correctional facilities. It is developing a public safety curriculum in partnership with police in Riverhead, Long Island.
The group's story begins with its founder, Bob De Sena, a one-time gang member and former English teacher at the once-troubled John Dewey High School, the same Brooklyn school Marchesi attended.
De Sena said he turned his life around because someone gave him a second chance. He wants the Council For Unity to do the same for new generations of kids from broken homes and crime-ridden neighborhoods.
The group has a 33-year history of getting gang members together to talk, based on a message that when you bring everybody together, there is nobody left to fight.
At Christopher Columbus High School in the Bronx, gang activity ceased altogether after the group's classes were introduced into the curriculum, principal Lisa Maffei Fuentes said. She said her school was on the city's most dangerous list three years ago.
“They've come to respect their home site, their school,” she said.

iht.com

Pope Benedict XVI is making his way to the United States next month, and while many Catholics are anticipating the visit and making travel plans, one local business is doing more. Patrick Baker & Sons Inc., of Southington, is supplying candles, vestments and other items for the pope’s Masses in New York.
“It is an honor,” said Michael Baker, a salesman at the business’s 1650 West St. location. “It is a highlight in my career” to supply goods for the event.
The pope will visit New York from April 18 to 20, following his visit to Washington, D.C., from April 15 to 17.
On April 18, Benedict will address the United Nations, then participate in an ecumenical service at a parish church in the city. On April 19, he will celebrate a Mass with priests, deacons and members of religious orders at St. Patrick’s Cathedral and meet with youths and seminarians at the St. Joseph Seminary and with disabled children in the seminary’s chapel. On April 20, the pope will visit ground zero and celebrate a public solemn pontifical Mass at Yankee Stadium, according to a press release from the Archdiocese of New York.
Tickets for the Mass at Yankee Stadium were allocated to parishes, and all ticket deadlines have passed.
“I’m very excited for everybody who would take the event seriously and be there,” Baker said.
For many, this will be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see the pope, Baker said. This visit, however, will not a first for Baker; his business also supplied items for Pope John Paul II’s visit in 1995, and he was able to see the pope then.
Baker said that he is especially excited about this visit because he will attend a smaller Mass with the pope in a chapel, and will be closer to the pope.
Patrick Baker & Sons has had a strong relationship with the Archdiocese of New York over the years. The company will provide candles with the papal seal, candlesticks, chalices and vestments for the priests. The business is also polishing old metal ware for the Masses.
Baker & Sons has done extensive work at St. Patrick’s and at other Catholic churches in the Northeast, newspaper files show, including renovations to bring sanctuaries into compliance with the Vatican II liturgical reforms enacted in the 1960s. Among those renovated sanctuaries were those at Most Holy Trinity Church in Wallingford and Our Lady of the Assumption Church in Woodbridge.

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