Beauty Bust Pad Pageant

Decisions are made, jobs are found and political issues are debated at one place and one place only: The neighborhood barbershop. It's the place where boys undergo a singular rite of passage to manhood, where jokes are told that can be shared nowhere else and where men openly share among one another the nuances of their lives.

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Voxant, the New Media Network, Adds illumistream health to Growing Catalog of Fully Licensed Health Content

Licensed medical, nutrition and fitness short-form video available to Web publishers.

"illumistream health produces and distributes "expert-centric" short-form video content. Each video clip features a doctor, and answers a complex question in a straightforward manner. The videos are developed in a dynamic, engaging format, and organized into easily accessible series." said Joshua Silberstein, CEO of FullTurn Media, the parent company of illumistream.

DARIUS THE GREAT: In The Shadows of Cinematography with Darius Khondji

He is one of the great names in his profession and yet virtually unknown to the audience at large for he works in the shadows of the film directors and the actors on a movie set. His job is Cinematography, which basically consists of defining what the movie will ultimately look like onscreen: The lights, the type of film and lens to be used up to overseeing the photography are all part of his job. Darius Khondji has remarkably imposed his unique style in both French and Hollywood Films for the past two decades becoming one of the most envied and demanded talents in an already highly competitive industry. Just to name a few of his achievements: Marc Caro and Jean Pierre Jeunet's Delicatessen and City of Lost Children , David Fincher's Se7en, Alan Parker's Evita should be enough to introduce him but would certainly not be complete without Roman Polanski's Ninth Gate, Bernardo Bertolucci's Stealing Beauty, Danny Boyle's The Beach, Sydney Pollack's The Interpreter and once again back to his collaboration with Jean Pierre Jeunet with Alien: Resurrection (deemed by many critics as the Only good follow-up to Ridley Scott's original classic).

Read for delight, not duty

Somewhere between the novel "David Copperfield" and the magician David Copperfield, Americans went from seeing reading as a joy to seeing it as a chore. At least that appears to be the finding in a new study from the National Endowment for the Arts. Poet Dana Gioia, who chairs the NEA, said the culture has become "almost entirely commercial and novelty-driven."

The study highlights the obvious. People — especially young people — have become so busy with school, work, family and the explosion of entertainment that recreational reading is fading. In 2005, 65 percent of college freshmen said they read little or nothing for pleasure. Gioia calls such statistics "probably the single most important social issue in the United States."

The obvious fallout is when the life of the mind is curbed, quality of life in general is diminished.

CVS has plans in Visalia

VISALIA -- In another mark of economic development in north Visalia, CVS Pharmacy is proposing a 24-hour store with drive-through service on North Dinuba Boulevard.The store would join the ranks of about two dozen retail pharmacies in Visalia, only two of which are located north of Houston Avenue -- a Walgreens store at Dinuba and Houston, and a Longs Drugs at Houston and Ben Maddox Way -- to serve a growing number of residents from a recent housing boom.Visalia's first CVS store is planned for the southwest corner of Dinuba Boulevard and Ferguson Avenue, in front of the Food-4-Less store that opened earlier this year. As of mid-2007, CVS Caremark operated 380 stores in California, according to the company's Web site, but none in the San Joaquin Valley. The company's nearest store to Visalia is in San Luis Obispo.Visalia Planning Commission members will consider a land-use permit for the store when they meet at 7 p.m.

Gypsy of the Year Competition Announces Date Change

Because of the ongoing stagehands strike and the subsequent loss of fundraising opportunities in the 27 darkened theatres, the dates for the 19th Annual Gypsy of the Year competition � a fundraiser for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS � have been changed.

Originally scheduled for Dec. 3 and 4, the annual competition will now be presented Dec. 17 at 4:30 PM and Dec. 18 at 2 PM at a theatre to be announced.

The annual competition usually follows six weeks of intensive fundraising by various shows on and off Broadway as well as touring productions throughout the country. Because of the strike and the loss of fundraising revenue at the theatres, Broadway Cares has introduced Team Raiser, a chance for interested parties to donate to the competition on-line. Contributions can be made to one's favorite show, and people can also register to fundraise themselves.

Southern Discomfort

Regional stereotyping is a hallmark of crude humor the world over. Berliners bust on Bavarians; Venetians needle Neapolitans. Almost any perceived difference is fair game: accent, food, fashion and especially brainpower. In the United States, the South�s roguish past makes it an especially juicy target for jokes. Of course, troubled history has forged literary genius. Southern writers such as Tennessee Williams, Eudora Welty and Langston Hughes created tales and characters that drew on their roots without disparaging them. In The Miss Firecracker Contest (1984), playwright Beth Henley does just the opposite. The Mississippi native stuffs condescending clich�s into her script like a sausage maker gone mad. How many �po� white trash� elements can she ram into her characters� Southern Gothic backstories? Far too many is the unfortunate answer.

New in the Neighborhood

3701 E.P. True Parkway, West Des Moines
This video store is closing. The Movie Gallery corporation announced in September that it would be closing 520 of its stores that were underperforming or unprofitable. That includes Hollywood Video stores, which it also owns. A spokeswoman for the company said individual stores are being closed as soon as their inventory is liquidated, which is expected to be soon.
Other area stores under liquidation include the Movie Gallery at 4500 E. University Ave. in Pleasant Hill and the Hollywood Video at 2501 E. Euclid Ave. in Des Moines.
After the closings, the company will still have about 4,000 stores nationwide.

Hollywood Video

2501 E. Euclid Ave., Des Moines
This video store is closing and its inventory is being liquidated.