When he got fired by his board, he turned around and sued the bastards, then bitched to the press ("Do you want to feed the children or feed the lawyers?"), then convinced funders to pull millions of dollars in gifts, then threatened to destroy the charity with bad publicity ("the Web will kill you"), and then had the gall to say he wants to sit down and work it out "in a Christian way," without all the lawyers.

Of course he doesn't want lawyers—he's clearly a bully who gets what he wants by intimidation. Lawyers always want to use rational argument and garbage like that.

And what did our good Christian neighbor get fired for in the first place?

Directors fired Jones after he admitted having hidden microphones installed in April in the charity offices of three executives, including his daughter, Larri Sue Jones, the charity’s general counsel.

Police began an investigation after a private investigator on Aug. 19 found remnants of the devices in the ceilings. Prosecutors are not expected to charge Jones.

And why was a private investigator inspecting the ceilings of this "Christian" charity?

The Oklahoman leaves that stone unturned.

Thanks to Slog tipper Matt.

The Kentucky census worker found hanging from a tree with the word “fed” scrawled on his chest staged his own death to look like a homicide so that his son could collect his life insurance, the authorities said Tuesday.

Plaintiff's attorney Joann Brown Williams had brandished a clean, white piece of fabric before the jury in her closing argument and written the word “slut” on it with a permanent black marker.

“This is what [Smith] did to the fabric of Vicki Stewart’s life,” she said. “She made her into a slut, an atheist and an alcoholic. Ms. Smith’s irresponsible words have stained the fabric of Vicki Stewart’s life. These stains will never come ou

The injured party won $100,000. After the verdict was announced, she claimed "All I wanted is for this not to happen to anyone else." Yes. Thank God this disturbing trend will never take off. Authors will never again base fictional characters on real people. What a terrible idea.

Animal is the best.

And despite a suspicious Wikipedia entry which wrongly (and kinda embarassingly) elevates him into the company of Stockhausen, Ligeti, and Xenakis, I'm intrigued by his championing of Radical Computer Music, which could cover databending, locative media, spectral inscription, software-based systems composition (think Max/MSP, CLP, PD et al.), various modes of data translation and much more.

Later tonight, the Northwest Film Forum hosts sound artist Pamela Z at 8 pm. THE NWFF description is spot on: "She will create texturally complex layers and loops by processing her voice using gesture-activated MIDI controllers to trigger samples and manipulate audio and video in real time." Pamela Z treats language symphonically, deflating common words of their usual meaning and piling 'em up into musical, and often extraordinary, entities.

Second, and much more important: The New York Observer says that Time Warner is working with its competitors to build an iTunes for magazines:

The company will prepare magazines that can work across multiple digital platforms, whether the iPhone, the BlackBerry or countless other digital devices. The company will not develop an e-book, but create something that people familiar with the plans compare to iTunes—a store where you can buy new and distinct iterations of The New Yorker or Time. Print magazines will also be for sale.

John Squires, an executive vice president at Time Inc., is planning to leave Time Inc. and become the interim executive of the new company, sources told The Observer.

I would very much like to suggest that this new company brings comic book publishers like Marvel, DC, Dark Horse, and Fantagraphics on board, too, as well as digital magazines like Electric Literature. If I may use another political cliché that has become nauseatingly commonplace: Your team of rivals needs to be all about the big tent.

Yes, The Eagle.

But really, no. The Eagle.

For the benefit of the naïve, the wholesome, and the unwary, I’ll slop together a picture: The Eagle is ancient. It was born to be the most scurrilous of gay bars—a rough old stand-and-deliver fagbar standard, a deeply niche-marketed leather-daddy gay bar chain of sorts. Yes, chain! There are/were Eagles in New York, San Francisco, Portland, Atlanta…Jesus, everywhere with a pulse, a fresh supply of chaps, and a protracted anus. To be quite blunt (oh, innocents! Shield thine eyes!), The Eagle was designed for and populated by lusty leather-lovers, the piss-thirsty, and the fisty. The boot-licky. The cigar-chompy. It was shadowy and seedy and conspicuously secret by design. Thom of Finland, the whole thing was, if you get my drift. And so it went for ages.

The Eagle.

However. Disquieting new chatter from the frontlines indicates that the old Eagle is making an aggressive snatch at an even bigger piece of the gay nightlife pie.

Startling, very deliberate changes are transforming the old Eagle into a very un-Eagley place, indeed. The scandalous old pool table, for example—upon which tangoed the ghosts of a million alleged gangbangs—has been permanently evicted, replaced with a dance floor, blink-blinky disco lights, and a new DJ booth. (And Thom of Finland wept.) And in accordance with said new dance floor, The Eagle has rolled out a series of new DJ-driven club nights that cater not to the excessively hirsute and brutish Eagle crowd of yore, but to the discerning, hard-partying, markedly less grizzly and far fancier Hard Times/Comeback/Pony crowd of now. They host a brand new every-Saturday Underwear Party aimed at body-shaved metrojoxuals, a Thursday night dance party called Shakedown, an every-now-and-then event called Tainted Love—all very un-Eagley events, traditionally speaking.

And now, enter the glitteriest, rhinestone-studdiest, most non-Eagley event of all!

Poised and ready to scoop up the soon-to-be wandering and homeless Hard Times crowd (but quite eager to remind us that the event not a Hard Times replacement, as the event is not cancelled, merely without venue at the moment) is "Fringe", a new DJed dance event thrown by Kevin Kauer, the photographer/nascent DJ who so artfully chronicled the divine madness of Hard Times (final one at The War Room, this Wednesday! Don’t forget!). Mr. Kauer says,

It shall be amazing…the first is going to be sailor themed with rhinestoned sailor go-go dancers, spun by DJs Nark (Kauer) and JT.

Fringe’s inaugural fringing will commence Friday, December 4th, with big plans to continue every Friday thereafter, forever (including Christmas! The sacrilege!)—marking, perhaps, the final glittery goodbye to the hand-balling bodyhair farmers of The Eagle’s many sordid yesterdays.

Farewell, old Eagle. Hello, new Eagle! It will never be the same (or quite as fisty) again...

• Robert Ullman

Not only do they have to do egregious things to retain their manhood from the castration-like trauma of watching the film—one reviewer "ran out of the theater" with his "manhood somewhat intact" and was forced to watch "HOURS of lesbian porn" to get over the pain of sitting through a movie and remind himself that he is a man—but they also take the opportunity to drag out old war stories of women who done them wrong, like Massawyrm from Ain't It Cool News:

I dated a girl like Bella once. Thank god they make medication for girls like that now…Yeah, Bella Swan is textbook; farm raised, corn fed cocktease bemoaning her pathetic lot in life. That women identify with her at all troubles me…If you see this, see it with beer or with promise of sex afterward. Just don’t let her lather up your dong in body glitter. You have to draw the line somewhere.

I know there are all kinds of creepy Mormon undertones to Twilight, but these jackasses are actually making me side with the movie. Let's look specifically at the biggest problem with the second review. Bella isn't a "cocktease"—she's the only character in the whole goddamned book/movie who actually wants to have sex. Unless Massawyrm is saying that Bella wanting to be a non-sexual friend with Jacob is teasing his cock, in which case fuck off, Massawrym.

Seriously, nerd-men. Are your weenies so teeny that you have to get threatened when women's sci-fi/fantasy is successful? Are you going to give the girls noogies out on the playground after lunch? There are plenty of legitimate reasons to hate Twilight; cooties is not one of them.

• Overheard in the office: 'He has hair all around his head!'

Radical Computer Music is a performance and talk by Goodiepal, a renowned yet controversial Scandinavian electronic musician and professor of music composition. Goodiepal is currently touring the states, spreading his new theories.

Time:
3:00-4:00pm

Place:
Lawrimore Project
831 Airport Way S
(between 5th and 6th in the International District)

Cost:
Free and open to the public.

GOODIEPAL
A former teacher at the Royal Academy of Music in Aarhus, Denmark, Goodiepal left his position when they refused to support his radical ideas about modern music. He declared war on the Academy and the stupidity of modern media art in general by opening his own free alternative school, first in London and more recently out of a castle in Norway.

The term Radical Computer Music was coined by Goodiepal in relation to his Mort Aux Vaches Ekstra Extra compositional game scenario. It promotes an expanded dialogue between human beings and artificial and alternative intelligences as a way to transgress a condition of stagnation which, according to Goodiepal, is prevailing in contemporary computer music and media art. The game scenario is an exercise in the creation of musical scores to challenge the mindset of “other” intelligences, considering issues such as utopia, time, notation techniques, language, levels of unscannability, and the role of the composer.

An expert commission of African leaders today announced their plan for comprehensive reform of music band U2. Saying that U2’s rock had lost touch with its African roots, the commission called for urgent measures to halt U2’s slide towards impending crisis.
“Our youth today are imperiled by low quality music,” said Commission chairman Nelson Mandela. “We will be lending African musicians to U2 to try to refurbish their sound to satisfy the urgent and growing needs for diversionary entertainment at a time of crisis in the global music and financial sectors.”

Music

The Books

• See what else is happening in Music on Tuesday »

This movie is obviously terrible. That said, am I a racist idiot? Discuss.

The thing is, this actually happened. (Interesting! So make a fucking documentary, dickbuckets!) Michael Oher is a real person and so is Mrs. Benevolent White Lady, but their on-screen dramatic representations are about as far from real people as you can get without being, like, a fern. And the racial stereotypes (oooh! Dark, roiling nest of inner-city drug dealers!) are as nasty and dated and unconsidered as anything since white people first discovered black people. But instead of making a movie in which real humans do believable things—you don't always have to redecorate the facts to make them fascinating—The Blind Side, unsurprisingly, takes the nonsensical, manipulative emotional boilerplate route.

Read the whole thing HERE.

It's actually factory farming that this ad condemns... so I assume it's okay with PETA if we eat an organic, free-range, non-burned, non-kicked, non-stomped turkey on Thanksgiving? Or is going vegan the only answer?

Iranian-born Newsweek correspondent Maziar Bahari recounts his time (118 days, 12 hours, 54 minutes) in the notorious Evin prison, where the Iranian regime holds (and beats, and executes) political and religious prisoners. Bahari's interrogators threatened to kill him if he ever talked about what happened, but he refuses to be cowed:

"We can put people in a bag no matter where in the world they are," he said menacingly. "No one can escape from us."

I did not believe him. I do not believe him. But the doubt lingers, which is what he wanted—what the regime he serves wants from all of us, in fact. They are masters of uncertainty, instilling it among their enemies, their subjects, their friends, perhaps even themselves.

The story would be black comedy if it weren't true:

"You've been to New Jersey, haven't you, Mr. Bahari?" The thought seemed to infuriate him, and I was struck by the feeling that for some reason he might have wanted, secretly, to go to New Jersey himself. The worst thing that can happen in any encounter with Islamic Republic officials is for them to think that you're looking down on them.

"It's not a particularly nice place," I said, trying to sound conversational. (Article continued below...)

"I don't care. But it is as godless as what you wanted to create in this country."

"I'm sorry. I don't understand."

"You were planning to eradicate the pure religion of Muhammad in this country and replace it with 'American' Islam. A New Jersey Islam." He was building his case, and my responses were irrelevant. "Tell me," he said, "did any of the women at the dinner party have their veils on?"

"No."

"Then don't tell me that you didn't have a secret American network. A New Jersey network."

And his guards were obsessed with this segment from the Daily Show in which Bahari appears:

"Why is this American dressed like a spy, Mr. Bahari?" asked the new man.

"He is pretending to be a spy. It's part of a comedy show," I answered.

"Tell the truth!" Mr. Rosewater shouted. "What is so funny about sitting in a coffee shop with a kaffiyeh and sunglasses?"

"It's just a joke. Nothing serious. It's stupid." I was getting worried. "I hope you are not suggesting that he is a real spy."

"Can you tell us why an American journalist pretending to be a spy has chosen you to interview?" asked the man with the creases. "We know from your contacts and background that you told them who to interview for their program." The other Iranians interviewed in Jason's report—a former vice president and a former foreign minister—had been arrested a week before me as part of the IRGC's sweeping crackdown. "It's just comedy," I said, feeling weak.

Read the whole harrowing, bizarre thing here.

Via Sullivan.

• Examiner.com

Stephen Colbert took a run with the U.S. bobsled team, all of whom were upstaged by Colbert's wad o' manhood. Here's a butt shot!

Thank you, Slog tipper Grace.

Amy Goodman does an early afternoon reading with Denis Moynihan at Elliott Bay Book Company today. Goodman reads from Breaking the Sound Barrier, which is a collection of her recent work. They'll be reading elsewhere in a few days, but this is your only chance to see them for free.

And then, at 7 pm at Elliott Bay, Katherine Harmon reads from her book The Map as Art: Contemporary Artists Explore Cartography. This looks like a beautiful book. I own Harmon's other book, You Are Here: Personal Geographies and Other Maps of the Imagination, and I can stare at the maps in that book for hours on end.

The full readings calendar, including the next week or so, is here. And if you're planning on staying in and you're looking for personalized book recommendations, feel free to tell me the books you like and ask me what to read next over at Questionland.

Thanks for the heads up, WOW Report.

Does anyone really want to leave the house? It's a Tuesday night, a holiday week. But if I can manage to tear myself away from my udon noodle soup and collection of DVDs from the Seattle Public Library, my pick for tonight would be Amanda Blank. She's opening for Peaches, who is also worth another go if you haven't seen her recently. [On an X-Y graph of inverse proportion, Peaches' songs are getting increasingly commercial while everything around them (videos, live show) just gets weirder and weirder. I reviewed her last Seattle appearance, which was pretty ass-kicking, here.]

Anyway, don't look Ms. Blank up on YouTube. The existing video pretty much makes me puke; there's a lot of acting cute and flirting with balloons, which is so not what I'd expect from the aggressive, leggy Philadelphia rapper with the husky voice and hardcore-by-way-of-party-girl lyrics. Amanda pretty much killed it at Rock the Bells last year, sharing the stage with Spank Rock and Devlin & Darko, looking like brunette Axl Rose. She also came across as genuinely friendly, taking the time to talk excitedly with fans after her set.

I liked her then and am primed to like her now. Her first full length album, I Love You, released in August 2009, is fun although detractors might note that it shows more potential and positioning than delivery. She covers Vanity 6, interpolates LL Cool J's "I Need Love" and generally promotes having a rowdy, slutty good time. (Which you can do tonight at the Showbox, if udon noodle soup doesn't win.)

After an event in the International District yesterday afternoon intended to highlight her efforts to take Washington's Basic Health plan national, Sen. Maria Cantwell sat down with a few local reporters to talk about the overall health insurance reform effort.

The house passed its reform bill on Nov. 7. On Saturday the senate voted to begin debate on its measure. As we wait for that debate to begin (after the Thanksgiving recess), I asked Cantwell what her red lines are going to be.

For example: Will she vote against any senate bill that includes language similar to the house's Stupak Amendment, which would limit federal funding for abortions? (Cantwell said she would.) And will she vote against any senate bill that lacks a public option? (Cantwell left herself a lot of wiggle room on that one.)

Not on the video: a prediction from Cantwell that the senate will finish debating and vote on this slow-moving measure by Christmas.