allison_stokke's on Teenwag.com

Excuses for Lindsay Lohan

Tue, 24 Jul 2007 17:57:13 GMT

The collective working world took a deep sigh of relief this morning. While people were filing into their cubicles bracing for a day of tedium and staring at computer screens, one of our own national heroes, Lindsay Lohan, reminded everyone with a sub par job, nonexistent sex life, and cramped apartment, that life could get worse.

Just two weeks after being released from the day spa/rehab center known as Promises in celebrity drenched Malibu, California, La Lohan has managed to not only get arrested on suspicion of drunken driving, but she has finally been caught with the one substance she has allegedly never done - cocaine.

Lohan, who already has a DUI trial pending after crashing her 2005 Mercedes SL-65 onto a curb and into bushes on Sunset Boulevard on May 26th, may soon be taking lessons from Paris in how to sing the jailhouse blues. After blowing a .13 BAC, it's going to be hard for Lindsay to wiggle her way out of (now) two charges of suspicion of driving under the influence of alcohol and driving on a suspended license, and two felony charges of possession of cocaine and transport of a narcotic. Let's just say she has a lot going against her at the moment.

With the recent spate of celebrity DUIs, one outsider begins to wonder what is forcing all these beautiful, educated, intelligent, and charismatic women to jump behind their imported cars, grasp their leather wheels, and drive hellfire through the streets of LA?

After closely examining Lohan's recent battle with the law, I'd like to propose why Lindsay should not be held responsible for driving drunk through the City of Angels (because only a completely narcissistic, delusional, masochist would race around the streets of LA exhaling liquor fumes with cocaine in-tow while still awaiting the results of a prior DUI trial).

1. SCRAM - After being released from rehab two weeks ago, Lohan did what any responsible, self-assured starlet would do: voluntarily wear a Secure Continuous Remote Alcohol Monitor (SCRAM). Clearly, the SCRAM is directly at fault here. How was Lindsay to know that driving after consuming 7 gin and tonics, 2 grams of cocaine, and God-knows-what-else would lead to a DUI. The SCRAM should've warned her. Why couldn't it just speak up? Where were you SCRAM!?

2. Promises - Promises rehab is just too good to be true. Like other famous Promise alumnae such as Britney Spears, once Lindsay graduated, she celebrated her Lindsay Lohan Busted Again victory over alcoholism by taunting the sordid beast she just conquered. What better way to goad the monster then to fill a water bottle with vodka, drive to Teddy's, and show alcoholism that YOU are now the boss.

3. Felipe de Neve - Many people overlook the lasting influence Felipe de Neve, the Spanish governor who founded the Los Angeles Pueblo in 1781, has had on our current stable of celebrity hedonists. If only Señor Felipe had the foresight to see that LA's pristine weather, golden sands, and green mountains would attract the beautiful intelligentsia from around the world, he could have more thoughtfully designed the city's nightclubs within easy walking distance of celebrity homes.

4. Michael Lohan - "I want to withdraw everything - court wise - sit down with Dina as Lindsay's parents and figure out how to help her," Michael reports to TMZ, "Lindsay can't do this on her own... when we were together, none of this was happening." Lacking paternal guidance, Lindsay had no chance of maintaining sobriety. Now, if she can look past the fact that her father was recently released after spending two years in jail for a DUI, she can regain an important role model in a young girl's life.

5. Lindsay's Assistant's Mother - The real witch to blame in Lindsay's latest trial is Lindsay's assistant's mother. After quitting her job as Lindsay's assistant, Lindsay's assistant's mother picked her daughter up. However, Lindsay realizing that she still owned her assistant for another fortnight pursued their vehicle. Terrified about the inebriated red-haired diva in hot pursuit, the assistant's mother called the police who found our poor Lindsay drunkenly defending her property. Can you blame a girl?

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Review

Tue, 24 Jul 2007 17:56:27 GMT

Like being forced to part ways with a beloved shirt that you've worn consecutively for far too many days, reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the 7th and final entry in the Harry Potter series, is an emotional task.

For many who have been around since the beginning, this moment has been nearly 10 years in the making. The characters, the settings, and even the prose have found fans the world over, and saying goodbye to them (in more ways than one - the body count in Hallows is the highest of any Potter book) isn't easy.

Author J.K. Rowling knew expectations for the finale would be sky high, and her novel doesn't disappoint. Among its surprises are dramatic revelations, nail-biting adventures, laugh-out-loud humor, heart-wrenching sadness, an earth-shatteringly epic climax, and above all else, characters so real, diverse, and engaging they practically climb right off the pages (or fly, or creep, or disapparate, as the case may be).

Readers familiar with the series knew book 7 would not be structured like the others. Having dropped out of Hogwarts' Wizarding School at the end of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Harry and his friends were preparing to embark on an urgent mission to destroy "Horcruxes"-enchanted objects into which Lord Voldemort had split his soul as part of an evil plan to become immortal. Destroy the 7 Horcruxes, and Voldemort would be as vulnerable as an epileptic Billywig.

While the Horcrux quest is central to the book, the plot unfolds in a somewhat counterintuitive manner; fans expecting non-stop mystery and puzzle-solving in faraway lands may be surprised to discover that instead, the action takes place far closer to home. The book is heavy on things coming full circle, and most of the settings are places that have been visited at various times over the course of the series. In this way Hallows reads a bit like a 'greatest hits' of Harry Potter's universe wherein long-lost characters and locales pop up all over the place.

Counterintuitive, as well, is the story's pacing, as breathtaking action sequences will often be followed by extended periods of conversation and reflection - something that may seem boring or frustrating but which ultimately allow readers to catch their breath, process what has just occurred, or even mourn over whoever has just kicked the bucket.

And there's plenty of mourning to be done.

Characters both major and minor find themselves tortured, beaten, or killed on a pretty steady basis throughout Hallows, some of them even seemingly re-introduced just for the sake of killing them off, thus resolving their storyline. "Oh, I forgot about them... too bad they just died in a terrible manner" readers might find themselves saying.

As has increasingly occurred in the Harry Potter series the longer it's gone on, this book includes a cornucopia of obscure names and creatures who have been mentioned in previous installments. Unless you're a diehard fan, you'll find yourself reaching for the Internet or a phone several times throughout your read to check out the meaning of words (such as 'squib' - I'd completely forgotten it was a wizard child who could not perform magic) or back-story on various supporting characters (most of the bad guys are familiar-sounding but, at least for me, didn't ring any bells). Rowling does little retreading here for the novice reader, giving further incentive to read or re-read the previous books, possibly.

While it's at times a little frustrating to get through some of the slower parts (what seems like hundreds of the book's pages are spent preparing for Bill Weasley's wedding and hanging out in various safe houses), it's perhaps better to look at it as a stylistic feature of Rowling's writing which ensures the pace never gets so furious that events lose their meaning.

Are the big questions answered? Definitely, and satisfyingly. Particularly alluring is the clever manner in which the book's main question (will Harry die?) is handled. You'll have to read the book for yourself to find out, but let's just say there's something for everyone inside. Meanwhile, the only possible complaint I'd submit about the book's logic is that answers seem to occasionally fall from the sky, often after the characters have spent chapters upon chapters agonizing over the question. Rather than figure things out by means of deduction or reasoning, someone may just smack themselves in the head all of a sudden and exclaim "But of course!..."

Story-wise, the death of many of the supporting characters becomes a tad irritating as well. Some are killed off almost because of what would seem to be pure logistical writing problems. For example, Harry's beloved owl Hedwig dies very early in the book, and for no apparent reason other than to just bring the reader down and make them appreciate the emotional toll of Harry's journey. I understand why he couldn't exactly carry it on his belt while he's whizzing around England destroying Horcruxes, but couldn't he have given the owl to a friend's kindly grandma for safekeeping? Just about the same argument could be made on behalf of many of the book's less fortunate characters, although grandma's house would get a bit crowded if all of the doomed characters were holed up in there.

Thematically, this book might be a difficult one for the kiddies to appreciate - the plot gets a bit metaphysical at times, and the profanity is a tad coarser this time around. Readers over 10 years old should do OK, but I'd refrain from recommending this book to anyone younger than that (unless you're comfortable explaining to little Susie what a 'two-faced bastard' is or why one of her favorite characters just got their ear blown off in a battle).

The book's strengths far outweigh its weaknesses, however, and it's an enormously enjoyable read from start to finish, with the final 300 pages of particular page-turning pleasure. Watching the pieces fall into place and being vindicated (or surprised at times) on various plot-based bets will make reading this book a very quick experience the first time around, while taking in its nuances and subtle humor will make for a more engrossing 2nd or 3rd read.

Will it all come together the way you expect? Very unlikely not. Will it live up to and at times exceed your expectations? Absolutely. But most of all it should make you appreciate the power of imagination that began as a simple story about a young boy and his adventure in a magical world that began almost a decade ago and has grown into a richly engrossing epic tale. The Harry Potter adventure will go down in history not only as one of the greatest fantasy series ever, but as one of the greatest stories ever. A magnificent accomplishment, no doubt. But perhaps most impressive of all is how J.K. Rowling has magically reignited a love of reading in the world's youth. For this, she and her characters will always be remembered.

China finds new species of big, bird-like dinosaur

Wed, 13 Jun 2007 10:48:03 GMT

China has uncovered the skeletal remains of a gigantic, surprisingly bird-like dinosaur, which has been classed as a new species.

Eight meters (26 ft) long and standing at twice the height of a man at the shoulder, the fossil of the feathered but flightless Gigantoraptor erlianensis was found in the Erlian basin in Inner Mongolia, researchers wrote in the latest issue of Nature.

The researchers said the dinosaur, discovered in April 2005, weighed about 1.4 tonnes and lived some 85 million years ago.

According to lines of arrested growth detected on its bones, it died as a young adult in its 11th year of life.

What was particularly surprising was its sheer size and weight because most theories point to carnivorous dinosaurs getting smaller as they got more bird-like.

"It had no teeth and had a beak. Its forelimbs were very long and we believe it had feathers," Xu Xing at the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology & Paleonanthropology said in a telephone interview.

Through analyzing its skeleton, the researchers believe the Gigantoraptor shared the same ancestor and belonged to the same family as the Oviraptor.

With a beak and feathers, the Oviraptor is also bird-like and flightless, but weighed a mere 1 to 2 kg, Xu said.

Other similar feathered dinosaurs rarely weighed over 40 kg, which means the Gigantoraptor was about 35 times heavier.

The largest known feathered animal before the Chinese discovery was the half-tonne Stirton's Thunder Bird, which lived in Australia more than six million years ago.

"It's a giant dinosaur that looked very much like a bird ... whereas from what we have known before, bird-like dinosaurs were very, very small. Large dinosaurs are usually not bird-like. So this Gigantoraptor was an exception," Xu said.

If the Gigantoraptor had lived to a full-sized adult, it would have been a lot larger, but Xu could not estimate what that would have been.

However, the researchers believe it had an accelerated growth rate that was faster than the large North American tyrannosaurs.

SURPRISING DISCOVERY

The scientists had originally thought they had found tyrannosaur bones, as they were so large.

"It was a very surprising discovery, not at all what we expected," Xu said later at a news conference in Beijing. "So we spent a lot of time investigating the fossils which is why it took us so long to announce the results."

The scientists showed off two huge fossilized bones from the animal, and a model of its beaked head.

Its feathers were likely for show and for keeping its eggs warm, Xu added.

"We think it's the largest feathered animal ever to have been discovered," he said.

It had both herbivorous features -- a small head and long neck -- but also carnivorous ones -- sharp claws for tearing meat -- and could likely run fast on its long, powerful legs, the professor said.

"Of course, there's no way of knowing for sure," he added.

Its site of discovery, near Erenhot on the Chinese-Mongolian border, is known for fossils and calls itself "dinosaur town."

The city of just 100,000 is hoping to leverage this fame to attract tourists, said its Communist Party chief Zhang Guohua, and will spend more than 100 million yuan ($13.11 million) on a new dinosaur fossil museum this year.

The Aftermath of the hot Pole vaulters photos - Teen Tests Internet's Lewd Track Record

Tue, 29 May 2007 11:06:15 GMT

Early this month, 18-year-old Allison Stokke walked into her high school track coach's office and asked if he knew any reliable media consultants. Stokke had tired of constant phone calls, of relentless Internet attention, of interview requests from Boston to Brazil.

In her high school track and field career, Stokke had won a 2004 California state pole vaulting title, broken five national records and earned a scholarship to the University of California, yet only track devotees had noticed. Then, in early May, she received e-mails from friends who warned that a year-old picture of Stokke idly adjusting her hair at a track meet in New York had been plastered across the Internet. She had more than 1,000 new messages on her MySpace page. A three-minute video of Stokke standing against a wall and analyzing her performance at another meet had been posted on YouTube and viewed 150,000 times.

"I just want to find some way to get this all under control," Stokke told her coach.

Three weeks later, Stokke has decided that control is essentially beyond her grasp. Instead, she said, she has learned a distressing lesson in the unruly momentum of the Internet. A fan on a Cal football message board posted a picture of the attractive, athletic pole vaulter. A popular sports blogger in New York found the picture and posted it on his site. Dozens of other bloggers picked up the same image and spread it. Within days, hundreds of thousands of Internet users had searched for Stokke's picture and leered.

The wave of attention has steamrolled Stokke and her family in Newport Beach, Calif. She is recognized -- and stared at -- in coffee shops. She locks her doors and tries not to leave the house alone. Her father, Allan Stokke, comes home from his job as a lawyer and searches the Internet. He reads message boards and tries to pick out potential stalkers.

"We're keeping a watchful eye," Allan Stokke said. "We have to be smart and deal with it the best we can. It's not something that you can just make go away."

On May 8, blogger Matt Ufford received Stokke's picture in an e-mail from one of his readers, and he reacted to Stokke's image on instinct. She was hot. She was 18. Readers of Ufford's WithLeather.com -- a sports blog heavy on comedy, opinion and sometimes sex -- would love her.

The picture was taken by a track and field journalist and posted as part of a report on a California prep track Web site. The photo was hardly sexually explicit, which made Ufford's decision to post it even easier. At 5 feet 7, Stokke has smooth, olive-colored skin and toned muscles. In the photo, her vaulting pole rests on her right shoulder. Her right hand appears to be adjusting the elastic band on her ponytail. Her spandex uniform -- black shorts and a white tank top that are standard for a track athlete -- reveals a bare midriff.

By targeting his comedic writing to 18- to 35-year-old males, Ufford has built a sports blog that attracts almost 1 million visitors each month. Ufford writes tongue-and-cheek items about the things his readers love: athletes and beautiful women. Stokke qualified as both. She was, therefore, a "no-brainer to write about," Ufford said. He posted her picture and typed a four-paragraph blurb to accompany it. Meet pole vaulter Allison Stokke. . . . Hubba hubba and other grunting sounds.

"I understand there are certain people who are put off immediately by the tone of my blog," Ufford said. "Every week, there's somebody who takes offense to something, but that's part of being a comedy writer. If nobody is complaining, it probably wasn't funny. You are hoping for some kind of feedback."

By that measure, Ufford's post about Stokke created a landmark for success. He received a handful of angry e-mails, including one from the photographer who threatened to file suit if his picture of Stokke remained on the blog. But Ufford also attracted a record number of visitors in May, thanks largely to Stokke's picture. More than 20 message boards and 30 blogs copied or linked to Ufford's item.

From her computer at home, Stokke tracked the spread of her image with dismay and disbelief. She had dealt with this once before, when a track fan posted a lewd comment and a picture of her on a message board two years earlier. Stokke had contacted the poster through e-mail and, a few days later, the image had disappeared. But what could she do now, when a search for her name in Yahoo! revealed almost 310,000 hits? "It's not like I could e-mail everybody on the Internet," Stokke said.

For the first week, Stokke tried to ignore the Internet attention. She kept it from her parents. She focused on graduating with a grade-point average above 4.0, on overcoming a knee injury and winning her second state title. But at track meets, twice as many photographers showed up to take her picture. The main office at Newport Harbor High School received dozens of requests for Stokke photo shoots, including one from a risqué magazine in Brazil.

Stokke read on message boards that dozens of anonymous strangers had turned her picture into the background image on their computers. She felt violated. It was like becoming the victim of a crime, Stokke said. Her body had been stolen and turned into a public commodity, critiqued in fan forums devoted to everything from hip-hop to Hollywood.

After dinner one evening in mid-May, Stokke asked her parents to gather around the computer. She gave them the Internet tour that she believed now defined her: to the unofficial Allison Stokke fan page ( http://www.allisonstokke.com), complete with a rolling slideshow of 12 pictures; to the fan group on MySpace, with about 1,000 members; to the message boards and chat forums where hundreds of anonymous users looked at Stokke's picture and posted sexual fantasies.

"All of it is like locker room talk," said Cindy Stokke, Allison's mom. "This kind of stuff has been going on for years. But now, locker room talk is just out there in the public. And all of us can read it, even her mother."

An impostor created a fake profile of Stokke on Facebook, a social networking site intended mainly for college students. Stokke's classmates at Newport Harbor High School started receiving Facebook messages that seemed to be from Stokke -- except she typed in Southern jargon and listed her interests as only "BOYS!!!!"

Last week, Stokke wrote a complaint letter to Facebook, and it immediately took down the fake profile. She hasn't contacted any other Web sites, she said. Allan Stokke, a defense attorney, studied California's statutes so he would know if he saw or read anything about his daughter that went beyond distasteful to illegal.

"Even if none of it is illegal, it just all feels really demeaning," Allison Stokke said. "I worked so hard for pole vaulting and all this other stuff, and it's almost like that doesn't matter. Nobody sees that. Nobody really sees me."

Last Friday night, Stokke stood underneath the stadium lights at Cerritos College here, 20 miles southeast of downtown Los Angeles. A few thousands fans had come to watch a postseason meet, and dozens of photographers and cameramen roamed the field. Before her first jump, Stokke tried to control her breathing as she chatted with her coach. A good jump here would qualify her for the state championship in Sacramento.

A former gymnast, Stokke had tried pole vaulting as a lark as a freshman in high school. Two months later, she set a school record. She won the 2004 state championship three months after that. Stokke had augmented her natural, pole-vaulting disposition -- speed, upper-body strength and courage -- by lifting weights three times each week. College programs including Harvard, Stanford and UCLA also recruited her.

During her meet at Cerritos College, Stokke cleared 11 feet, then 12 feet, then 13 feet and qualified for the state meet. By the time she stared ahead at a bar set 13 feet 6 inches, all other nine pole vaulters had maxed out. Stokke warmed up by herself, the only athlete left.

She loved pole vaulting because it was a sport built on intricacies. Each motion required calculation and precision. A well-executed vault blended a dancer's timing, a sprinter's speed and a gymnast's grace. "There's so much that happens in a vault below the surface," Stokke said.

As the sun set Friday night, Stokke positioned her pole as if she were jousting and sprinted about 100 feet toward the bar. She ran on her tip-toes, like she'd learned from ballet. As she approached her mark, Stokke bent her pole into the ground and coiled her legs to her chest. She lifted upward, twisting her torso 180 degrees as she passed over the bar. It was a beautiful clearance, and the crowd stood to applaud.

Back on the ground, her vault accomplished, Stokke smiled and took in the scene around her. In the stands and on the field, she was surrounded by cameras. And for a second Stokke wondered: What, exactly, had they captured? And where, exactly, would it go?