IN THE NEWS...

[muthagoose]

Corey Feldman Subpoenaed in Jacko Case
Thursday, February 10, 2005

LOS ANGELES — Actor Corey Feldman, who says in an interview airing this week that Michael Jackson showed him nude pictures when Feldman was in his early teens, was subpoenaed by prosecutors in the singer's molestation case, the actor's manager said Thursday.

Feldman described the pictures in a new interview with journalist Martin Bashir, who was responsible for the documentary "Living With Michael Jackson." That program, which aired on ABC in February 2003, has footage of Jackson and his accuser holding hands and Jackson defending his practice of sharing his bed with children.

Feldman, 33, said he went to Jackson's home when he was 13 or 14 and saw a book on the coffee table with pictures of naked men and women.

"And the book was focused on venereal diseases and the genitalia. And he sat down with me and he explained it to me, showed me some different pictures and discussed what those meant," Feldman said, according to an excerpt of an interview scheduled to air Friday on ABC's "20/20."

Feldman was contacted last week by prosecutors who want to question him about his relationship with Jackson, said Feldman's manager, Scott Carlson.

"I guess they're subpoenaing anyone who they think or hope might have anything to say," Carlson said.

Feldman himself was unavailable for comment because of a gag order in the case, Carlson said.

The actor, who starred in the hit 1980s films "Stand By Me" and "The Goonies," was arrested for heroin possession in 1990. He has been sober for 14 years, worked recently on the film "The Birthday," and has television and stage work lined up, Carlson said.

"He's been very busy. He had nothing to gain by coming forward and saying anything," his manager said.

Feldman told Bashir he didn't consider the nude pictures "a big deal," but became concerned because of the current molestation charges against Jackson.

Jackson, 46, is accused of molesting a 13-year-old former cancer patient and giving the boy alcohol and conspiring to hold him and his family captive. Jury selection in the case is scheduled to continue Monday.

Feldman said Jackson never touched him inappropriately and he never saw the singer act inappropriately with anyone else. He said he defended Jackson in an interview with police investigating molestation allegations in 1993 involving another boy. No charges were ever filed in that case.

"I did what I believed was right as a friend — I defended him up and down. I did so publicly and I did so behind closed doors with the police," Feldman told Bashir.

[muthagoose]

Student receives semen-frosted brownies

By Associated Press
Posted March 10 2005

COEUR D'ALENE, Idaho -- A teenager has agreed to admit to three counts of disturbing the peace after anonymously sending semen-frosted brownies to a fellow student. The recipient shared the treat with two other teens, police said.

They said the 17-year-old Coeur d'Alene High School student was upset after a prank in which the other student put peanut butter in his cheese sandwich days before. He told a school resource officer that "he hated peanut butter and it made him more mad than he could explain," according to the police report.

The teen later told School Resource Officer Jeff Walther that he got the idea of putting his semen on the brownies from the movie "National Lampoon's Van Wilder," in which characters send pastries filled with dog semen to a fraternity house.

The student was arrested and booked into a juvenile detention center. He has since been released on a judge's order that he has no contact with the students who ate the brownies.

The youth is to be sentenced on April 4 on the three misdemeanor counts, which are each punishable by up to 90 days in detention, prosecutors said.

The victims' parents were notified and the children were tested for anything that could have been transmitted through the body fluid, although Panhandle Health spokeswoman Susan Cuff said the chance of the students' health being affected would be "extremely remote."

School Superintendent Harry Amend declined comment on any school discipline against the teenager.

---

: Motley Crue - Ten Seconds To Love

---

[MASON]

Alright, I don't have the article yet, but Jackson also showed up an hour and a half late for his own trial and was almost arrested. I have no intention of posting the article just yet. Also, here is my question: when this kid appeared on Jackson's special by Martin Bashir, they said he was close to dying by a few months. Now, he is alive. Don't you think that if you were dying of cancer and you were molested that you would be so traumatized that you would literally die within a few weeks? Also, after the special aired, the kids in the school teased the cancer survivor kid so unmercifully that he had to leave school early. THEN the lawsuit was brought against Michael Jackson. Sounds funny to me...

[stallion]

I just hope Jacko goes to jail for a long, long time. It would almost make OJ getting off and Martha Stewart getting a slap on the wrist OK.

[muthagoose]

Should people in Wisconsin be permitted to hunt down and kill free-roaming cats?

Residents of the state are voting on that very question. The advisory results will then go to Wisconsin's Natural Resources Board. From the Associated Press:

La Crosse firefighter Mark Smith, 48, helped spearhead the cat-hunting proposal. He wants Wisconsin to declare free-roaming wild cats an unprotected species, just like skunks or gophers. Anyone with a small-game license could shoot the cats at will....

Every year in Wisconsin alone, an estimated 2 million wild cats kill 47 million to 139 million songbirds, according to state officials. Despite the astounding numbers, Smith's plan has been met with fierce opposition from cat lovers.

Critics of Smith's idea organized Wisconsin Cat-Action Team and developed a Web site - dontshootthecat.com. Some argue it is better to trap wild cats, spay or neuter them, before releasing them.

[muthagoose]

Britney Spears pregnant - Pop star expecting her first child with husband Kevin Federline

The Associated Press
Updated: 6:30 p.m. ET April 12, 2005

LOS ANGELES - Britney Spears has revealed what might be Hollywood’s worst-kept secret: She’s pregnant.

advertisement
In a posting on her Web site, Spears told fans that she and husband, Kevin Federline, were expecting their first child together. The couple were married in September.

“The time has finally come that we share our wonderful news that we are expecting our first child together. There are reports that I was in the hospital this weekend, and Kevin and I just want everyone to know that all is well. Thank you for your thoughts and prayers.”<br>
Magazines have speculated for weeks that the 23-year-old singer was pregnant, noting her expanding waistline. She’s previously expressed a desire to start a family.

Federline has two children with ex-girlfriend actress Shar Jackson.

[muthagoose]

California chimp attack leaves man in critical condition
Last Updated Fri, 04 Mar 2005 14:04:36 EST
CBC News

CALIENTE, CALIF. - Two chimpanzees broke free from their cage at a California animal sanctuary Thursday, chewing off most of a 62-year-old man's face and biting his wife.

The couple, St. James and LaDonna Davis, had been visiting their former pet chimp Moe at the Animal Haven Ranch. Moe had been removed from their Los Angeles home in 1999 for aggressive behaviour.

The couple, who had brought a birthday cake to Moe, were standing outside his cage when two other chimps in an adjoining cage, Buddy and Ollie, attacked.

Sanctuary officials say they don't know how Buddy and Ollie escaped from their cage.

Hospital officials say St. James Davis is in critical condition with massive injuries to his face, arm and leg. His testicles and a foot were severed and he will require extensive surgery to re-attach his nose.

His wife, LaDonna, was bitten on the hand while trying to save her husband.

The son-in-law of the sanctuary owner shot and killed Buddy and Ollie.

Two other female chimps in the cage with them also escaped, but were captured five hours later and returned to the enclosure.

[Ponyone]

BANGKOK (Reuters) - Doctors found around 50 maggots in the ears of an 84-year-old Thai man after he went to hospital complaining of an itch.

Wednesday's Nation newspaper said Anan Temtan, who lives in the tsunami-hit southern resort island of Phuket, had used cotton buds to relieve the itching, but had scratched so hard his eardrums ruptured and started bleeding.

"We believe flies might have gone inside his ears to lay eggs, which hatched into larvae and caused the itching," said Somsak Nonthasri, the doctor who treated him.

Somsak, who used tweezers and a small suction device to remove the maggots, said Anan would be kept in for observation for a while to make sure no more eggs hatched.

[Captain Obvious]

www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_76570.html

Taken from ananova.com

Penis explodes during sex

Doctors in Romania are treating a 28-year-old whose penis exploded while he was making love to his girlfriend.

Ilarie Coroiu was taken to hospital in the Transylvanian town of Cluj after his girlfriend, Magdalena, 18, "felt something strange" and noticed that the bed was covered in blood.

Dr Angela Domocos, head of the accident and emergency department at Cluj General Hospital, said: "It is very rare for this to happen. We call it an exploded penis because it happens when the blood cavities in the penis burst.

"I don't know what this couple were playing at, but there must have been tremendous pressure inside the penis to make this happen."

Mr Coroiu is now recovering after an operation to stop the bleeding.

Didn't see it posted anywhere else on the site, and I figured you guys would want to know...

[Ponyone]

OSLO (Reuters) - A Norwegian court has sentenced a woman to nine months in jail for raping a man, the first such conviction in the Scandinavian country that prides itself for its egalitarianism.

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The 31-year-old man fell asleep on a sofa at a party in January last year and told the court in the western city of Bergen he woke to find the 23-year-old woman was having oral sex with him.

Under Norwegian law, all sexual acts with someone who is "unconscious or for other reasons unable to oppose the act" are considered rape.

The court sentenced the woman Wednesday to nine months in jail and ordered her to pay 40,000 Norwegian crowns ($6,355) in compensation.

"This is a very harsh sentence," the woman's lawyer, Per Magne Kristiansen, told the Norwegian news agency NTB. The woman argued the man had been awake and consented.

The prosecutor had sought a 10-month sentence and argued the court should not be more lenient with a woman than a man. It was Norway's first conviction of a woman for rape.

Norway has long traditions of equality -- 40 percent of the cabinet of Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik, for instance, are women.

[stallion]

Funny. If you wake up and a hot girl is giving you a bj, life is good. If it's a skank, you sweep her under the rug and don't tell anyone. But you NEVER bring rape charges! That's reserved for people like Mason!

[muthagoose]

In the same ballpark as the last story...

ContactMusic.com is reporting that MÖTLEY CRÜE drummer Tommy Lee is playing down his latest romantic encounter after reportedly seducing a transvestite in a Seattle, Washington club.

Lee was a guest DJ at Club Medusa when he spotted the blonde bombshell, according to American tabloid the National Enquirer, and made his move.

According to onlookers, the rocker allegedly invited his date into a VIP area of the club and spent the evening kissing her before she headed for the restrooms and was spotted relieving herself at the men's urinals.

The news didn't get back to Tommy Lee, however, and the drummer left the club with his new friend.

[muthagoose]

AZCentral.com has issued the following report:

While Tara Reid laughs off rumors that she is romantically linked to "Desperate Housewives" hunk Jessie Metcalfe, PageSix has the lowdown on who really lights her fire. According to the item, the "American Pie" actress and bad boy Tommy Lee have found each other.

Reid reportedly hooked up with Lee, an infamous womanizer, in Las Vegas and traveled with MÖTLEY CRÜE to their show in Loveland, Colorado. More recently, the frequently tipsy Reid was spotted at the Hudson Hotel looking very cozy with Lee, sipping watermelon martinis that were whipped up only after the busboy was commanded to buy a watermelon.

But the fun and the drinking didn't end there. The couple was spotted later mixing it up with Cameron Diaz, Justin Timberlake and "Girls Gone Wild" guru Joe Francis at Butter.

Perhaps Reid has finally met her match.

No word on if her prosetic leg hooked up with anyone.

[muthagoose]

Paula Abdul Voicemails Not Linked to Terrorism, Feds Say

Federal agents reportedly recorded the messages that American Idol judge Paula Abdul left for Idol wannabe Corey Clark as part of a terrorist sting operation. The agents, who were monitoring Clark's phone calls under a provision of the Patriot Act, were after suspected Jordanian terrorist Buelah Abdul.


The Patriot Act snares a celebrity

By Deanna Swift

WASHINGTON, DC—Inquiring minds want to know: exactly how did ABC get the hot-and-heavy voicemail messages left by American Idol judge Paula Abdul for Idol-wannabe Corey Clark? Blame it on the Patriot Act, says a high-ranking US intelligence official who claims that Ms. Abdul was the unintended victim of a sting operation intended to sniff out Jordanian terror suspect Buelah Abdul. The messages were recorded by federal agents under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

"I can't give you a lot of details," says the intelligence source. "But I can confirm that Paula Abdul is no longer being investigated as a suspected terrorist, and the voicemail messages that she left for Mr. Clark have been returned to him."

Paula no friend of Patriot Act
The FBI agents who conducted the top-secret investigation apparently confused the Hollywood A-list Abdul with her similarly named counterpart on the US terror list. They reportedly relied on roving wiretaps to monitor the lovebirds' conversations as well as to tape numerous voicemails left by Ms. Abdul for the 22-year-old Clark. Under the Patriot Act, passed in the weeks after September 11, 2001, the federal government may monitor the phone calls of individuals "proximate" to the primary person being tapped, in this case, Ms. Abdul.

Talk of 'judges' raises alarm
The intelligence source says that FBI agents believed that they had correctly targeted suspect Buelah Abdul because of the content of the conversations overheard between Ms. Abdul and Mr. Clark. Agents reportedly heard talk of 'silencing the judges,' leading them to believe that Ms. Abdul and the American Idol hopeful planned to target federal judges as part of a terror operations. Suggestions that Mr. Clark 'trim his beard in order to look more mainstream' also raised a red flag, as did references to a person or persons being "the bomb" or "bombing."

The suspicious terms and phrases used by the Ms. Abdul and Mr. Clark were automatically picked up by the National Security Agency's ECHELON program, a global surveillance operation that listens for key words used by terror suspects.

Was Paula profiled?
But when Buelah turned up in Amman, Jordan in February and was detained by police there, the FBI realized that they'd been after the wrong Abdul. Agents reportedly removed the wiretap from Ms. Abdul's phone and inadvertently returned the voicemail messages to Mr. Clark, who then sold them to ABC.

A spokesperson for the ACLU quickly condemned the incident, charging that Ms. Abdul was singled out because she is a prominent Arab-American. Ms. Abdul was recently featured in a brochure created by another prominent Arab-American, Casey Kasum, entitled "Arab Americans Making a Difference." "You have to understand that to the Bush Administration all Abduls are the same," says ACLU spokeswoman Lucy Travis. "Paula Abdul epitomizes what's great about this country. She's the star of a show that features amazing talent, where everyone has a fair shot at becoming famous. Isn't that really what America is all about?"

What star on 'tap' next?
The number of court-authorized wiretaps in the US jumped by 19% in 2004, not counting the 1,754 court orders for terror-related investigations under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, like the one that entrapped Ms. Abdul. Ms. Abdul is the first star to be snared under the Patriot Act, the federal law that greatly expands the US government's ability to conduct surveillance operations on its citizens.

[pardoe]

Check out this crazy shit....they dont grow um like this in cordova that is for sure!!!!!

news.yahoo.com/photo/050519/480/aq10105192327

[Ponyone]

ewwwwwww.

[muthagoose]

Christian Slater Charged With Groping Woman
Tuesday, May 31, 2005

NEW YORK — Actor Christian Slater was arrested early Tuesday and charged with groping a woman on a Manhattan street, police said.

Slater, 35, was accused of touching the woman's buttocks near 93rd Street and Third Avenue on the Upper East Side around 1:50 a.m., said a police spokesman, Detective John Sweeney.

The woman, who was not identified, flagged down police to report the incident, Sweeney said. Slater was found nearby and the woman identified him as the man who groped her.

Slater, who's appearing on Broadway in "The Glass Menagerie," was arrested on a charge of third-degree sexual abuse. He was expected Tuesday in Manhattan Criminal Court.

Slater starred in the 1980s classic "Heathers," as well as "True Romance," and "Untamed Heart" in the 1990s.

In August 1997, he was arrested after he allegedly bit a man in the stomach and threw a police officer against a wall during a rowdy party in Los Angeles. The actor later pleaded no contest to the charges and served 90 days in jail.

He filed for divorce earlier this year from television producer Ryan Haddon. In 2003, Haddon was accused of hitting him with a drinking glass during a fight in their Las Vegas hotel room. She was jailed briefly but no charges were filed.

[muthagoose]

DUI Defendants Skip Charge By Asking How Test Works

SANFORD, FL - Hundreds of cases involving breath-alcohol tests have been thrown out by Seminole County judges in the past five months because the test's manufacturer will not disclose how the machines work.

All four of Seminole County's criminal judges have been using a standard that if a DUI defendant asks for a key piece of information about how the machine works - its software source code, for instance - and the state cannot provide it, the breath test is rejected, the Orlando Sentinel reported Wednesday.

Prosecutors have said they do not know how many drunken drivers have been acquitted as a result. But Gino Feliciani, the misdemeanor division chief in the Seminole County State Attorney's Office, said the conviction rate has dropped to 50 percent or less.

Seminole judges have been following the lead of county Judge Donald Marblestone, who in January ruled that although the information may be a trade secret and controlled by a private contractor, defendants are entitled to it.

``Florida cannot contract away the statutory rights of its citizens,'' the judge wrote.

Judges in other counties have said the opposite: The state cannot turn over something it does not possess, and the manufacturer should not have to turn over trade secrets.

[stallion]

Yet another "legal loophole" that lets the guilty parties buck the system.

[muthagoose]

Pac-Man chomps up milestone, turns 25

(AP) -- For a video game, Pac-Man is getting downright old. The ghost-wary hero with an insatiable appetite for dots turns 25 this month.

From the early 1980s "Pac-Mania" to today's endless sequels and rip-offs, the original master of maze management remains a bright yellow circle on the cultural radar.

But there was more to Pac-Man's broad appeal than eating dots and dodging on-screen archrivals Blinky, Pinky, Inky and Clyde.

"This was the first time a player took on a persona in the game. Instead of controlling inanimate objects like tanks, paddles and missile bases, players now controlled a 'living' creature," says Leonard Herman, author of "Phoenix: The Rise and Fall of Videogames." "It was something that people could identify, like a hero."

It all began in Japan, when Toru Iwatani, a young designer at Namco, caught inspiration from a pizza that was missing a slice. Puck-Man, as it was originally called, was born. Because of obvious similarities to a certain four-letter profanity, "Puck" became "Pac" when it debuted in the U.S. in 1980.

Its success spawned a romantic interest (Ms. Pac-Man), a child (Junior Pac-Man), a cartoon show and hundreds of licensed products. The phenomenon even reached the pop music charts when "Pac-Man Fever" by Buckner & Garcia drove us all crazy in 1982.

Billy Mitchell, the first and only person known to play a perfect game of Pac-Man (he racked up a score of 3,333,360 after clearing all 256 levels in more than six hours in 1999, according to video game record keepers Twin Galaxies) says Pac's popularity was in its nonviolent simplicity.

"The fact that it's cute, it's almost like a hero running around the board from bad guys. It's not an appeal based on violence," the 39-year-old from Hollywood, Florida, said. "Whether it was an 80-year-old lady or a kid, everyone could adapt to the Pac-Man world."

Billions of quarters later, Pac-Man's influence continues.

As part of a final project for a class in New York University's Interactive Telecommunications graduate program last year, students with cell phones and Wi-Fi Internet connections mimicked the game, tracking their movements on a grid spanning several city blocks.

They called this analog re-enactment, where four people dressed as ghosts searched for Pac-Man on the streets around New York's Washington Square Park, Pac-Manhattan.

"We never had anyone clear the entire board," said Frank Lantz, a game designer who taught the course.

Namco, which can't offer an exact date for Pac-Man's birth, sold 293,822 of the arcade machines between 1980 and '87. It shows no signs of giving up on the franchise.

The company has several new games this year, including "Pac-Mania 3D," "Pac-Man World 3," Pac-Pix" and "Pac-Man Pinball." It even began making a special 25th anniversary edition of the old arcade machine.

"People say, 'Who buys Pac-Man?' It's one of the few games where the answer is, 'Everyone,"' said Scott Rubin, general manager of Namco America.

Herman said Pac-Man's place in video game history is forever secure, saying: "It was a milestone of video game history."

[muthagoose]

Two-faced kitten shocks owner, veterinarian



‘Gemini,’ a now 4-day-old kitten belonging to Lee Bluetear of Glide, is a cat with two faces. - Laurie Kell / courtesy photo

It was born with four eyes, two noses, two mouths and two tongues, but it’s just one cat.

A two-faced female kitten, named Gemini, was born late Sunday night. The kitten is owned by Lee Bluetear of Glide.

“It’s like it’s got one head. Up at the front is where it’s split,” Bluetear said. “Right at the front (the faces) are basically independent.”

The two mouths appear to flow into one throat, Bluetear said.

“The vets and I both agreed that she probably has one brain,” she added.

So far, Gemini is alive and well, much stronger and drinking more milk than its first days.

“Everybody is totally amazed that this thing exists,” Bluetear said.

That includes Roseburg veterinarian Alan Ross, who examined Gemini on Tuesday. “With the three of our veterinarians here, we have a combined total of 50 years of experience,” Ross said. “We have never seen anything like this.”

Ross is cautious when he talks about Gemini’s future. He says he cannot be sure how long the kitten will survive, especially because he has not seen it since Tuesday.

“When I saw it the other day, I wouldn’t have given it more than a 10 percent chance of survival,” he said.

He said there are simply too many unanswered questions in a case like this.

But after hearing that Gemini was doing a little better, Ross said the kitten might have a better outlook.

“If this kitty makes it I’ll be extremely surprised, but happy to hear it’s doing better,” he said.

Ross said that if Gemini does survive, it might need surgery to remove some extra tissue in between the two mouths.

Bluetear, 40, has lived in the Glide area for six years, and has been breeding different kinds of animals, starting with dogs, since 1980.

But about three years ago, she discovered a litter of smaller than normal kittens she calls “miniature cats.” She now has plans to market the miniature cats on the Internet.

The miniatures grow to about 3 1/2 to 5 pounds, Bluetear said. Gemini was born to a miniature mother and a full-size father.

“She’s going to have a maximum weight of five pounds,” Bluetear said.

Bluetear is aware that her kitten might not live a full life.

“I kind of feel sorry for her, because I can’t know for a fact if she’s going to live or die,” she said. “If she makes it, she should be a perfectly normal and healthy cat. Other than having two faces.”

[The Duke]

I thought this was a funny story....damned if I'd ever do it, though!:

news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20050617/od_nm/britain_nettles_dc;_ylt=AsHkDsjhitJzpSCFD1Hu_uqs0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA2YnFncG91BHNlYwNvZA--

[Ponyone]

Brain Areas Shut Off During Female Orgasm

By EMMA ROSS, AP Medical Writer




COPENHAGEN, Denmark - New research indicates parts of the brain that govern fear and anxiety are switched off when a woman is having an orgasm but remain active if she is faking.

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In the first study to map brain function during orgasm, scientists from the Netherlands also found that as a woman climaxes, an area of the brain governing emotional control is largely deactivated.

"The fact that there is no deactivation in faked orgasms means a basic part of a real orgasm is letting go. Women can imitate orgasm quite well, as we know, but there is nothing really happening in the brain," said neuroscientist Gert Holstege, presenting his findings Monday to the annual meeting of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology.

In the study, Holstege and his colleagues at Groningen University recruited 11 men, 13 women and their partners.

The volunteers were injected with a dye that shows changes in brain function on a scan. For men, the scanner tracked activity at rest, during erection, during manual stimulation by their partner and during ejaculation brought on by the partner's hand.

For women, the scanner measured brain activity at rest, while they faked an orgasm, while their partners stimulated their clitoris and while they experienced orgasm.

Holstege said he had trouble getting reliable results from the study on men because the scanner needs activities lasting at least two minutes and the men's climaxes didn't last that long. However, the scans did show activation of reward centers in the brain for men, but not for women.

Holstege said his results on women were more clear.

When women faked orgasm, the cortex, the part of the brain governing conscious action, lit up. It was not activated during a genuine orgasm.

Even the body movements made during a real orgasm were unconscious, Holstege said.

The most striking results were seen in the parts of the brain that shut down, or deactivated. Deactivation was visible in the amygdala, a part of the brain thought to be involved in the neurobiology of fear and anxiety.

"During orgasm, there was strong, enormous deactivation in the brain. During fake orgasm, there was no deactivation of the brain at all. None," Holstege said.

Shutting down the brain during orgasm may ensure that obstacles such as fear and stress did not get in the way, Holstege proposed. "Deactivation of these very important parts of the brain might be the most important necessity for having an orgasm," he said.

Donald Pfaff, professor of neurobiology and behavior at Rockefeller University in New York, said the interpretations were reasonable. "It makes poetic sense," said Pfaff, who was not connected with the research.

___

On the Net:

European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology

www.eshre.com

[muthagoose]

Notorious B.I.G. murder gets day in court
Rapper’s family is suing city of Los Angeles

LOS ANGELES - One of the murkiest rapper murders of the 1990s finally got to court Tuesday, eight years after a series of shootings and assaults widely attributed to a turf war between East and West Coast rap record labels.

Tight security, including metal detectors and guards, marked the beginning of jury selection in federal court in Los Angeles in a wrongful death lawsuit filed against the city of Los Angeles by the family of Notorious B.I.G. The family says a rogue police officer played a role in the rapper’s death.

Notorious B.I.G., born Christopher Wallace, was shot to death in March 1997 after attending a music industry party in Los Angeles. No one has been charged with his slaying, which came six months after Tupac Shakur -- the era’s other leading rap artist -- was shot and killed in Las Vegas.

Shakur’s murder has also gone unsolved but the two killings have spawned books, movies and conspiracy theories involving gang rivalry and music industry feuding.

The civil lawsuit filed by B.I.G’s family is based on a theory promoted by ex-Los Angeles police officer Russell Poole. Poole wrote a book claiming a rogue LAPD officer planned the killing on behalf of Death Row records label owner Marion ”Suge” Knight, and arranged for a friend to carry it out.

Perry Anderson, lawyer for B.I.G’s mother and widow, told potential jurors Tuesday the case was circumstantial and was not directed at any individual.

But he said it would show Los Angeles police “allowed cops to be involved in criminal activity” and “to associate with gangsters.”

The city of Los Angeles, represented by Vincent Marella, said family members were trying to collect money from the city despite a thorough investigation by police and the FBI that resulted in no criminal charges against anyone.

The case is expected to take about a month.

[muthagoose]

Old ballgame has newfangled twist

Here’s one for the record books.

The first two innings of the July 16th game between the Kansas City T-Bones and the Schaumburg Flyers will be played virtually.

Equipped with Microsoft Xbox game controllers instead of baseball gloves and bats, two video gamers will climb into recliner chairs around home plate at CommunityAmerica Ballpark and slug it out on the park’s 16- by 24-foot video screen.

Their scores from playing two innings of MVP Baseball 2005 on an Xbox will stand when the T-Bones and Flyers take the field to finish the last seven innings of the game.

Mike Stone, commissioner of the minor-league baseball Northern League, said the idea “brings new meaning to the term ‘fan involvement.’ ”

The idea for the promotion came from the 6-year-old niece of Bryan Williams, director of community relations for the T-Bones.

“It was a fun way to get my niece involved in things I do every day,” Williams said. “Then it just grew and grew and took off.”

T-Bones fans began competing last weekend for a chance to take the field. The two finalists will be chosen after competing for high scores at CompUSA stores in Overland Park and Independence. The competition continues through July 6. A playoff for the top 16 players is scheduled for July 9.

“There’s never been anything like it in baseball,” said Bryan Stoffel, sales manager at CompUSA’s Overland Park store.

In addition to providing stats and players from major-league baseball teams, the Xbox version of MVP Baseball 2005 also allows players to create their own teams.

The T-Bones are creating two Xbox teams with the statistics and even facial characteristics of T-Bones and Flyers players, Williams said. The gamers will be allowed to choose their lineups, and the play-by-play will be called by stadium announcers.

“Everybody in the world is going to want to do this after us,” Williams said.

While the virtual baseball game is a first for professional baseball, flashy marketing isn’t new for the T-Bones. Last year, the team auctioned rights to a night in a fan’s honor on eBay. The winner found his likeness on 3,000 bobblehead dolls.

“The Northern League is known for its unique promotions, and Kansas City is setting a new standard,” Stone said.

The details are still being worked out, but the Flyers will be allowed to choose which of the top gamers will play for the suburban Chicago team.

There will be a lot at stake for the two players.

The Flyers came from behind to beat the T-Bones in the best-of-five Northern League playoffs in 2004.

“It’s kind of a grudge match,” Williams said.