street smarts vs. book smarts

Everything you do should be calculated. We all make mistakes, but we still need to be thinking.”

By John Charles Reedburg

OK. Why are there only black inmates in this footage?
I think prison needs a better affirmative action policy – by any means necessary.
LOL!

TRENTON, N.J. — DAVID WANG is a young man who’s clearly going places. The Princeton University sophomore is gifted with a brilliant mind, a movie-star smile and an understated self-confidence.

KELVIN WASHINGTON is a middle-aged man who’s not going anywhere for the next 44 years. He’s a career criminal who has spent 29 years behind bars for a string of robberies and burglaries.

An unlikely pairing, the two men went head to head Wednesday at the New Jersey State Prison, a maximum-security lockup. Their battlefield: a chess board.

In an unusual cultural exchange program that began six years ago, Princeton students travel to the prison in Trenton, 16 miles from their Ivy League campus, to play chess with the inmates.

“When I heard about this opportunity, I jumped at it,” said Wang, who has competed three times in worldwide chess tournaments, placing as high as 30th.

Prisons across the nation have thriving chess clubs. Some invite outsiders for matches behind bars. The chess club at the New Jersey State Prison has 75 members, including inmates serving life sentences for murder, robbery and other heinous crimes.

Washington, 52, is six years into a 50-year term for a gas station stickup. Chess offers him an escape from prison — short of actually breaking out.

“It eases my mind off the burden of fighting for my life,” he said. “It relaxes me and transports me to another place momentarily. As soon as it’s over, it’s back to business as usual.”

That involves being awakened by corrections officers at 6 a.m., filing into a dining hall for breakfast and checking a log book to see whether he has been granted a pass to go to the law library or the exercise room. If not, it’s back into the cell.

The numbing routine may help explain the popularity of prison chess.

“For one short, sweet moment, I get to be in charge and make my own decisions,” he said. “I get to decide where to move or what not to do.”

Washington and other inmates see parallels in chess and their daily lives.

“It gives me patience,” he said. “Sometimes you see something on the board and you want to jump on it, when maybe it’s best to hold off for a minute and see what’s developing around you before you just jump out and take it.”

Each year, one or two inmates defeat a Princeton visitor. But on Wednesday, 12 of the 46 inmates prevailed — more winners than in the five previous years combined.

“I feel great, baby!” exulted Alonzo Hill, breaking into dance worthy of an NFL touchdown celebration after defeating Atanas Petkov, a Princeton student from Bulgaria. “He got the Princeton shirt on: He the Princeton dude, and I beat him! I did good!”

Hill, 39, is serving five consecutive life terms for his role in a carjacking murder in which a woman who owned a clothing store was shot in the back of the head.

“I just defended, just defended,” Hill said. “He wanted me to make a mistake, but I defended it to the end, baby.”

The inmates were seated at long folding tables covered by new plastic tablecloths inside the prison’s spacious gymnasium. The games were played on cardboard chess boards with plastic pieces.

Each of the students played as many as nine inmates simultaneously, quickly moving down the line, making moves at each board, leaving the inmates several minutes to plot their next moves.

MICHAEL McCALL, seven years into a 45-year sentence for murder, held off Wang for nearly two hours before succumbing to a checkmate.

“I like strategizing; it’s like life situations,” McCall said. “You have to think about what you do. Everything you do should be calculated. We all make mistakes, but we still need to be thinking.”

When the three-hour session was over, Wang returned to campus to pursue his dream of a medical career.

“My goal is to maybe conquer a disease that’s creating havoc and suffering in the world,” he said.

Washington, after dropping his match, went back to his cell. His goal is simply to get back home one day.

“The tiniest little things you enjoy are the things I miss: Getting up to buy the newspaper in the morning while the wife and kids are asleep, sitting down in my easy chair while the downstairs smells of coffee perking, and I look out into the darkness at the stars. I miss that.”

chief-and-commander of cool

President Obama has “an effect on culture in a major way”

By John Charles Reedburg

No one has swagger like barack

Obama’s influence extends further than polictics

By John Charles Reedburg

I’ve never seen a President with this much shine.

He has more star status than Lil’ Wayne.

Yet he should.

After comedian Jon Stewart announced on election night that BARACK OBAMA was indeed the next president, the “Daily Show” host was joined by confused and sad correspondents, including John Oliver, Rob Riggle and Samantha Bee. They whined about what they were going to do now that this two-year trial had passed. They didn’t know how to cover anything else, they sobbed to their leader.

To soothe his troubled team, Stewart launched into a calming rendition of the “The Morning After.”

But what exactly will that morning look like in terms of comedy, music and books?

“Presidents do have an effect on culture in a major way,” says Maer Roshan, editor in chief of the recently defunct politics and pop culture magazine Radar. “They set the tone from the top.”

President Bush and his administration begat a bumper crop of pop culture -movies like Oliver Stone’s “W.,” novels like Curtis Sittenfeld’s “American Wife,” protest albums from generations of rockers from Neil Young to R.E.M. and Bright Eyes. There were ready-made punch lines for the late-night comics about Vice President Dick Cheney shooting people. And can you imagine “The Colbert Report” without the Bush years?

So, what may be created now that we have a new national ‘tude and an intellectually complex president who encourages honesty and openness?

We asked a cast of pop-culture pros for their predictions.

Obama, a best-selling author, impressive orator and man of well-chosen words, could have a positive effect on the nation’s literacy -judging by the level of excitement among heavyweight American writers.

Pulitzer Prize-winning authors Jane Smiley and Toni Morrison also praised Obama’s literary acumen to the AP. “I had read his first book (‘Dreams From My Father’). I was astonished by his ability to write, to think, to reflect, to learn and turn a good phrase,” Morrison said. “I was very impressed. This was not a normal political biography.”

Southern Indiana-born author John Jeremiah Sullivan, author of “Blood Horses: Notes of a Sportswriter’s Son,” points out that we may not see many non-fiction screeds railing against the system for a little while -from either the Michael Moores or Ann Coulters of the world.

“Something changes when your country moves in an obviously positive direction. It’s harder to establish a contrarian space for yourself, and that’s been such a big part of the identity of writers in my generation and the ones that came before it,” he says. “They saw themselves as just fundamentally in opposition in every way to the mainstream culture.”

Farai Chideya, host of National Public Radio’s “News & Notes” and a walking encyclopedia of politics and pop culture, sees a window of opportunity opening for black writers.

“You’ll see a lot of shattering of what people consider black literature,” she says. “Popular black literature, like popular anything, tends to be very traditional. … There are people working more in the avant-garde.”

She points to black author Paul Beatty, author of the ambitious and absurd “Slumberland,” as a prime example of the type of African-American authors who may break out.

Laura Shine, a DJ in Louisville has been inundated with Obama-themed music -none of which she’s chosen to play on the air - since he became the Democratic nominee.

“Lots of independent artists have been sending their songs about change and Obama. Some of them are not that good, and a lot of them come from sort of questionable sources,” Shine says.

“Some, I believe, are about real change, and people are very excited about it, and some of it seems to be capitalizing on a trend.”

Musicians are singing Obama’s praises worldwide, according to Chideya. “There are a bunch of Kenyan songs, a bunch of reggae songs” about him, she says. She also predicts a new awakening for hip-hop. “There is going to be a post-hip-hop music form that emerges within the first Obama term, if there is more than one,” she says. “Hip-hop has run a certain course, generationally.

“There is going to be a return to music that has, if not a straight-ahead social conscience like protest music, more narrative,” she says.

America’s major purveyors of funny have bemoaned the lack of laughable material the composed and classy Obama offers, especially in comparison to his comedy-gold predecessor. And Bill Maher, of HBO’s “Real Time,” has mused on whether comedians will be afraid to poke fun at a black president -and whether audiences will laugh.

Former “Saturday Night Live” “Weekend Update” anchor Norm, MacDonald, said on a local radio station last Friday that he had to change his entire act now that Obama has been elected.

Well, we have some good news. Chideya says Larry Wilmore, “The Daily Show’s” “senior black correspondent,” is on the case. He’s producing and starring in a Comedy Central series “where he will portray an Obama-like character,” Chideya says. That’s all she’ll say for now about the project.

She also notes that ground has already been laid for more fresh political satire.

“Now you have ‘Chocolate News,’ on Comedy Central with David Alan Grier, and ‘D.L. Hughley Breaks the News’ on CNN. You’re seeing a spectrum,” she says. “You’re going to see a lot of people try to hit that sweet spot with blackness-humor in the news, and it’ll be interesting to see who actually hits it and what combination works.”

“I’ve got to admit, as a comedian, I’m going to miss President Bush because Barack Obama is not easy to do jokes about,” Jay Leno said last week. “See, this is why God gave us Joe Biden.”

By John Charles Reedburg

Yeah. I know this is my second Mike-J post.
Let’s just say I’m feeling a bit off the wall.
LOL!

Check out behind-the-scenes footage of Michael Jackson during the cover shoot for the December issue of Ebony Magazine.

can’t call out sick this time

Jackson’s lawyers say the pair never entered a valid agreement and that Al Khalifa’s money was given freely

By John Charles Reedburg

So hard staying out of the news.

London, England — The son of an Arab monarch took the King of Pop to court Monday, charging that MICHAEL JACKSON took $7 million as an advance on an album and an autobiography that he never produced.

Lawyers for SHEIKH ABDULLA bin HAMAD AL KHALIFA say their client paid Jackson expenses as an advance on the book and joint recording project with the sheikh, who is an amateur songwriter. Jackson claims the money was a gift.
Al Khalifa, 33, was due to testify at London’s Royal Courts of Justice on Wednesday. Jackson’s lawyer Robert Englehart said he was seeking permission to have Jackson testify by video link from Los Angeles.

A lawyer for Al Khalifa said the royal first spoke to Jackson, 50, by telephone while the singer was on trial in California following his 2003 arrest on child molestation charges. Attorney Bankim Thanki said that Al Khalifa wanted to work with Jackson on rebuilding his career. Jackson’s finances fell apart after his arrest and he was desperately short of cash.

Al Khalifa’s first payment, for $35,000, went toward paying the utility bills at Neverland, Jackson’s 2,500-acre (1,000 hectare) ranch and miniature amusement park in California, Thanki said. When Jackson was found innocent of the molestation charges in June 2005, Al Khalifa footed $2.2 million in legal bills, the lawyer said.
Al Khalifa said he believed the money would be repaid once Jackson’s career recovered from the damaging trial.
“I saw the payment as an investment in Michael’s potential,” the sheikh said in a statement read out by his lawyer in court. “He said he would pay me back … through our work together.”

Al Khalifa moved Jackson and his entourage to Bahrain almost immediately after the trial, setting up a recording studio for him in Manama, the Gulf state’s capital. The sheikh, who is the governor of Bahrain’s Southern Province, supplied Jackson with $500,000 in cash to subsidize his lifestyle and splashed out on a $350,000 European vacation for Jackson and his associates in February of 2006, Thanki said.

“The costs even included the expenses of bringing out Mr. Jackson’s hairdresser,” he said.
The lawyer said Jackson and the sheikh became close friends and at one time both lived in a palace in Abu Dhabi owned by Al Khalifa’s father, Sheikh Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, Bahrain’s king. The singer stayed nearly a year in Bahrain as a guest of the son, but the relationship soured when Jackson repudiated a business deal Thanki said they had agreed to.

Jackson’s lawyers say the pair never entered a valid agreement and that Al Khalifa’s money was given freely.
Thanki acknowledged that Al Khalifa gave some gifts to Jackson but said that most of what the singer received was part of a business deal.
The gifts, he said, “were essentially personal effects — watches, jewelry.”

Thanki said the sheik was wealthy but that paying Jackson’s bills had taken a big bite out of his finances.
“Some of the payments were staggering by any standards,” Thanki said, saying the expenditure “should not be regarded as loose change for my client.”
As for Jackson, he still appears to be in difficult financial straits.

Last week, he was forced to give up the deed on Neverland, which is named for the mythical land of Peter Pan.
The trial is being held in London because the parties had agreed to take any disputes over their deal to an English court, Al Khalifa’s representatives said. The trial is due to wrap up by the end of the month.

By John Charles Reedburg

I agree.

On “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” BRAD PITT says his kids are “the funniest people I’ve ever met. And you know it really tells you — it’s a great mirror for yourself.”

billionaire in denial

Cuban alleges, “that he was the victim of a political vendetta by the agency in the waning days of the Bush administration”

By John Charles Reedburg

Shocked and surprised.

As anyone who follows the National Basketball Association knows, MARK CUBAN, the Internet entrepreneur turned owner of the Dallas Mavericks basketball team, has never shied from a fight. But now the pugnacious billionaire is squaring off against his biggest adversary yet: the federal government.

On Monday, the Securities and Exchange Commission filed a civil suit charging Mr. Cuban with insider trading for selling shares of a small Internet search company in 2004, just before its share price fell.

Mr. Cuban saved himself a $750,000 loss, according to the complaint filed in United States District Court in Dallas.

Mr. Cuban swiftly fired back, accusing the regulator of “prosecutorial misconduct” and alleging that he was the victim of a political vendetta by the agency in the waning days of the Bush administration.

“I am disappointed that the commission chose to bring this case based upon its enforcement staff’s win-at-any-cost ambitions,” Mr. Cuban said. “The staff’s process was result-oriented, facts be damned.”

Since he bought the Mavericks in 2000 with money he earned by selling his start-up, Broadcast.com, to Yahoo for $5.9 billion before the dot-com crash, Mr. Cuban has become one of the biggest lightning rods in American professional sports. From his seat behind the Mavericks bench, clad in his signature team gear, he has not hesitated in picking arguments, and has paid nearly $1.7 million in fines to the N.B.A.

(After once saying he would not hire the N.B.A.’s chief of referees to “manage a Dairy Queen,” Mr. Cuban paid a $500,000 fine — and spent a day at a Dairy Queen serving Blizzards to fans.)

But he also turned around a flagging franchise, attracting star players and helping to bring the Mavericks to the brink of an N.B.A. championship in 2006.

Mike Bass, an N.B.A. spokesman, declined to comment.

The charges could pose a problem for his dreams of a burgeoning sports empire. Mr. Cuban is widely reported to be the lead bidder for the Chicago Cubs baseball team, but he is thought to be too hot to handle by many of Major League Baseball’s current owners. The insider-trading lawsuit may only make his quest for the baseball team more difficult to fulfill.

At issue in the S.E.C.’s lawsuit is Mr. Cuban’s sale in June 2004 of shares in Mamma.com, a small Internet search engine based in Canada, whose corporate name is now Copernic.

Mr. Cuban had purchased 600,000 shares, or a 6.3 percent stake, just three months earlier as the stock was soaring. The share price tripled over a two-day period in early March on volume that totaled more than 12 times the number of outstanding shares. That prompted an S.E.C. investigation that ended without charges being filed.

Scott W. Friestad, the S.E.C.’s deputy director of enforcement, said the investigation of Mr. Cuban’s trading began in early 2007, but declined to say what had set off the inquiry.

On June 28, 2004, Mr. Cuban called Mamma.com’s chief executive after receiving an e-mail message from the executive, who told him of a planned stock offering and asked if he would like to invest. Such offerings often depress share prices, at least temporarily.

According to the complaint, Mr. Cuban was told the information was confidential.

After the conversation, the chief executive wrote to the company’s chairman in an e-mail message: “As anticipated, he initially ‘flew off the handle’ and said he would sell his shares (recognizing that he was not able to do anything until we announce the equity).”

But within minutes of the call Mr. Cuban began selling his shares, and completed the sales on June 29, according to the lawsuit, fetching an average of $13.24 a share. The next day, after the offering was announced, Mamma.com stock opened at $11.89, sparing him a $750,000 loss. By July 8, the shares had plummeted to $8. On Monday, the stock closed at 28 cents.

“Mamma.com entrusted Mr. Cuban with nonpublic information after he promised to keep the information confidential,” Mr. Friestad said. “Less than four hours later, Mr. Cuban betrayed that trust by placing an order to sell all of his shares. It is fundamentally unfair for someone to use access to nonpublic information to improperly gain an edge on the market.”

In a press release (and in a post on his blog), Mr. Cuban accused the S.E.C. of being “infected by the misconduct of the staff of its enforcement division,” but did not discuss details of the suit.

A person close to Mr. Cuban provided what he said was one of a series of e-mail messages from Jeffrey B. Norris, an S.E.C. lawyer in Fort Worth, who accused the billionaire of being unpatriotic for helping to finance a movie named “Loose Change.” In the e-mail message, Mr. Norris described the movie as a “vicious and absurd documentary” that “posits that President Bush planned the demolition of the World Trade Center as a pretext for going to war against Iraq.”

In the e-mail message, sent from his S.E.C. e-mail address, Mr. Norris said he was informing Christopher Cox, the chairman of the S.E.C., of Mr. Cuban’s actions.

“If this upsets you, I wonder how George Bush feels,” Mr. Norris wrote. “I assume that Mr. Cox would view your involvement with ‘Loose Change’ much as I do. After all, he served his country as a Republican congressman from Orange County for nearly 20 years and was appointed by President Bush.”

An S.E.C. spokesman said that Mr. Norris had no role in or knowledge of the Mamma.com investigation, which was handled by the S.E.C. in Washington.

He said the e-mail matter was “referred for disciplinary action,” but did not say what action, if any, was taken against Mr. Norris. Mr. Norris did not return a phone call.

The S.E.C. spokesman said Mr. Cox had recused himself when the commission voted to approve filing the complaint. The S.E.C. has the authority to bring only civil suits, not criminal complaints. The Justice Department can file criminal insider-trading charges, but does so only rarely and did not in this case. Mr. Cuban presumably could have settled the S.E.C. case by paying the $750,000 and perhaps an additional penalty, and accepting an injunction barring him from further violations of securities laws.

what’s in the dark comes to the spotlight

“[Ashley Dupre] already recorded an interview with Diane Sawyer on ABC”

By John Charles Reedburg

I wonder.

What more does he have to hide.

I guess ASHLEY DUPRE’s music career hasn’t taken off as well as she had hoped, because now she’s finding other ways to get media attention back on her. To refresh your memory, Dupre’s alias is “Kristen,” the call girl of choice for New York Governor ELIOT SPITZER. The two were implicated in a prostitution scandal earlier this year after some suspicious money transfers from Spitzer’s bank account were uncovered - to Emperor’s Club VIP, Dupre’s escort agency.

Ashley Dupre on the cover of the New York Post after the scandal. Now months later, Ashley has finally decided to speak publicly about the incident. According to Newsday, she already recorded an interview with Diane Sawyer on ABC, which is scheduled to air this Friday on “20/20.”

Don’t get too excited - apparently the interview is part of a larger segment focusing on prostitution in general, so you may not get some of the juicy Eliot Spitzer tidbits you were hoping for. Expect to hear more about what led Dupre to prostitution than the scandal itself. On the other hand, she was reportedly paid a hefty “consulting fee” to give the interview in the first place, so they will have to at least touch on the subject. Either way, this is the girl who brought on the resignation of a very powerful public official, so I’m definitely tuning in.

By John Charles Reedburg

This little girl is so fast!

That is what my grandmother would say.

LOL!

New York, NY - MILEY CYRUS exits an office building after a meeting and is mobbed by photographers and fans. At one point Miley’s publicist Jill falls hard on the pavement. Later, Miley enters the Essex house for the “Bolt Press” event and is asked to show off her promise ring. Miley had an enthusiastic fan following in the rain on his bike. He rode a long way through the city to get a picture and autograph with Miley

wildin’ out without the cast and crew

Williams resisted their please, exclaming “[He] doesn’t trust anyone anymore”

By John Charles Reedburg

I was always knew that this dude wasn’t wrapped too tight.

After a series of missed gigs, an arrest on a gun charge and weeks of troubling rumors about bizarre behavior, a spokesperson for comedian KATT WILLIAMS announced on Sunday that the “Norbit” co-star has sought a doctor’s help.

“Following an arduous 300 shows and an 18-month touring schedule that left him incredibly fatigued, Katt, felt compelled to be with his family in an effort to deal with his stress,” read a statement from Yvette Shearer. “While doing so, he is under a doctor’s care.”

According to the South Carolina paper the “Sumter Item” the hospitalization came after family members concerned about Williams’ behavior confronted the comedian following a run-in with police in Sumter on Friday. The paper reported that Sumter police received a call Friday morning about suspicious behavior by Williams, 35, who was attempting to book a room at the Mount Vernon Inn.

An officer told the paper that around 8:30 a.m., police received a call from hotel employees, who said they became suspicious when Williams tried to rent a hotel room while dressed in a bathrobe, with a towel wrapped around his head. Police responded to the scene, spoke to Williams, determined there was no criminal activity and left.

Local station WIS-TV has posted a video of a confused-looking Williams trying to check into the hotel, searching his pockets for ID and squatting by the door after the clerk informs him that his traveling companion will have to take responsibility for the room.

The newspaper reported that Williams then walked several blocks to the office of local attorney GARRYL DEAS and told the lawyer that the police were “attempting to violate his rights” and that he was interested in hiring Deas to represent him.

Deas said he had a pleasant conversation with Williams, who described his entertainment career to the lawyer, mentioning that some people thought he was missing recently due to a series of skipped gigs, including a no-show at the BET Hip-Hop Awards, a missed “Late Night With Conan O’Brien” appearance and an arrest on November 6 on gun charges.

Williams was also recently the subject of a rumor that he had died in a plane crash.

Deas reportedly told Williams he had to leave for court and invited the comedian to hang out in the meantime, which Williams did. When Deas returned an hour later, he said Williams’ demeanor had gone from “alive and in color” to “a little bit troubled” and “disoriented.” Shortly after, family and friends arrived to try to persuade Williams to go to a hospital for a mental evaluation, according to the paper. Shearer would not comment on Williams’ condition beyond the statement.

Deas said a confused Williams resisted their pleas, said he “doesn’t trust anyone anymore” and that “everyone has turned against him,” and began speaking “in gibberish.”